The Covid Hypocrites: 'Lockdowns For Thee, But Not For Me!'

Governors, mayors, and other officials across the country and across the world are laying out restriction upon restriction for their subjects in the name of fighting a virus. But when it comes to obeying the edicts they demand others to follow, more often than not they are exposed as hypocrites...or worse. Also today, insanity in Washington state, violence in France, kids and quarantine, and a heroic gym owner. Don't miss today's Liberty Report:



from The Covid Hypocrites: 'Lockdowns For Thee, But Not For Me!'

Hungary and Poland Create The Unbridgeable Gap of the Great Reset

There comes a point where negotiation becomes surrender. Those actively undermining you will always demand more than their right. Those behind the Great Reset have been creating no-win situations for voters for decades to this exact end.

Over the summer Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki led the opposition to the EU’s budget and COVID-19 relief package standing firm that funds not be tied to any internal political decisions member EU states make.

Both of these countries have incurred the wrath of German Chancellor Angela Merkel over things they do she doesn’t like, invoking Article 7 against Poland over changes made to its Supreme Court, for example.

So, this is nothing new. Neither is the way the EU conducts itself in negotiations.

For the past four years we’ve watched the EU put the United Kingdom through the worst kind of psychological torture over Brexit negotiations which have been anything but.

Fishy Brexit Talks

It’s been a calculated and cynical campaign coordinated with global media, foreign governments, paid political propagandists and intelligence agency operatives.

Through bullying, bad arguments, derision and shaming the relentless pressure of sociopaths and psychopaths wears most people down to the point where they negotiate away something that they didn’t have to.

They get you to agree to putting on a mask to make people feel better, accepting “sensible” gun legislation, voting for the guy who promises to only take 25% of your income versus that guy that wants 40%, etc.

In Brexit talks the EU tried to cleave off Northern Ireland as a cost to Brexit or maintain control over British law through the European Court of Justice.

Negotiation is a natural part of human interaction. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, as long as both sides approach the negotiation honestly.

But, in politics, especially when dealing with those of a particularly self-righteous leftism so common today — as as shorthand I’ll just call them Commies — negotiation for them is a tactic in a strategic war.

Because at the core of their argument is always the threat of violence at worst and emotional blackmail at best. And that forms the basis for a negotiation that truly isn’t one, but made to look like you have a say in the outcome.

But in reality you don’t. They want all that you have and are willing to take it from you one bite at a time. In fact, the most psychotic of them truly enjoy this process of consuming you slowly.

Brexit negotiations have supposedly come down to how much French fishermen will still be able to plunder British fishing waters even though the U.K. is supposedly a sovereign country. The latest offer from the clueless Michael Barnier is the Brits get tithed 15 to 18% of what the French steal.

This is supposed to be seen as a breakthrough, according to the breathless regime media. But really it’s an insult. If the U.K. is sovereign and by international law these waters are theirs, then the EU has no rights to them unless the Brits grant them access.

But it seems on this small issue, which has now become symbolic of the entire Brexit process, the U.K. is still saying no. Negotiating even this small point is tantamount to surrender.

And they are right. Because agreeing to anything with these people is ultimately telling them what your price is.

Cigarettes and Blindfolds?

This is why, in all things political from the local to the trans-national, every small victory codified into some rule or same treaty is used as a springboard to the next victory and so on. There is no end to the war until one side achieves total domination or the other side, backed into a corner, stands its ground.

While I’ve used Brexit talks as the metaphor here, it’s not really apropos because Brexit, legally, already happened. In a little over a month there may be no formal relationship between the U.K. and the EU.

For Hungary and Poland, however, the situation is far more existential. And it is why they had to veto the 7-year EU budget and with it the COVID-19 relief package two weeks ago.

This piece of news is truly one of the most historic decisions made by any national leader in 2020. And if not for the US presidential election fraud it may well have been the biggest story of the past month.

Neither Hungary nor Poland have the economic or political power of even the U.K. Together they aren’t close to the U.K. in global influence. And because of that have much more to lose in angering the EU gods in Brussels than the Brits ever did.

It’s why both Prime Ministers Orban and Morawiecki tread lightly and go along with so many terrible edicts that come from the EU — really from France and Germany — against their will.

Both men understand the difficult position their countries are in, trapped between no less than three major powers — the US, the EU and Russia. The balancing act between those three powers is, at best, a difficult one. At worst, it’s a complete nightmare.

So them standing tall here is truly a momentous event and most probably a harbinger of big changes coming to the EU. They’ll both be under the most intense pressure to cave. Expect activation of Soros-bots in Hungary.

The smartest thing either could do right now is to open up new rounds of talks with the Russians who just announced they are pretty much done with negotiating anything more with the EU.

That would give them both tremendous leverage with Brussels, by cutting down their list of ‘enemies’ from three to two, even if it means courting further sanctions from Merkel and her new Stasi.

Where the State, as an institution, is at its most pernicious is in providing a vector by which these people, when their arguments are rejected via persuasion, can force them into being through the ballot box or legislative fiat.

And since we all agreed to be governed by these rules, so the argument goes, then you have to submit to the outcome otherwise there is chaos. And that’s the rhetorical and psychological wedge tyrants use to separate you from your liberty and, most importantly, your money.

When in the Course of Human Events…

But what happens when the people in the negotiations lie, cheat, manipulate and bend the rules? What happens when negotiations at one point in time, say July at the European Council Summit, yield one outcome and the final legislation says the exact opposite?

If you are Viktor Orban and Mariusz Moraweiki you stand your ground and realize that anything less than outright rejection is full on surrender, no different than the argument over EU fishing access to UK waters.

This is what these men had to do. Because by tying vague EU standards of what constitutes violations of the ‘rule of law’ to disbursement of funds under the budget is far more than what Hungarians or Poles signed up for when they entered the EU in the first place.

It is precisely because of this creeping centralization of control to the unelected bureaucracy in Brussels that the Brits voted for Brexit, in effect, twice. The second time they did so even more emphatically than in 2016.

Hungary and Poland are very clear as to what their problems are and why they will not budge. Read their joint statement here. The most important part is the final paragraph however.

Our common proposal is to facilitate the speedy adoption of the financial package by establishing a two-track process. On the one hand, to limit the scope of any additional budgetary conditionality to the protection of the financial interests of the Union in accordance with the July conclusions of the European Council. On the other hand, to discuss in the European Council, whether a link between the Rule of Law and the financial interests of the Union should be established. If it is so decided, then the appropriate procedures foreseen by the Treaties, including convening an intergovernmental conference, should be considered in order to negotiate the necessary modification of the Treaties.

Note they use the word ‘negotiation.’ But they also tie the outcome of that negotiation to a modification of the Treaties signed by each member state. In effect, saying, we as heads of state will negotiate the best possible offer, but it will still be up to you, the people, to ratify this.

And if you turn us down, then so be it.

This, of course, is anathema to the World Economic Forum, Open Society Foundation and the rest of the burgeoning technocracy being built through the expansion of powers wielded by the European Commission, which this budget and relief package sought to greatly expand.

We all know how voters choose in Europe when it comes to the European Union and the vote is open, fair and the people well-informed. The EU would never survive such a vote on the amendment of the Treaties which form it.

Orban, especially, knows this. And he has taken on the leadership role in this fight. You know he is effective because they despise him, drawing him up as a cartoonishly evil cross between Snidely Whiplash and Vlad the Impaler.

And despite the massive amount of money Soros spends in Hungary to overthrow Orban it hasn’t worked. So, something will have to be done quickly to remove him from the game board or we’ve reach Peak EU.

Reset This!

Because the Great Reset is predicated on a few things occurring.

The EU having a budget and mechanism in place where the Commission has tax/spend and debt issuance capability.

This gives them the political bludgeon necessary to consolidate power in Brussels the same way income tax redistribution undermined Federalism in the US

Extending the COVID-19 narrative to purposefully destroy what’s left of the middle class in Europe and the US

Donald Trump being overthrown as President of the US restoring power there to those loyal to the WEF.

All Populist leaders in Europe – like Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, Boris Johnson, Germany’s AfD, Austria’s Freedom Party — neutralized leaving Orban alone against Angela Merkel.

Brexit undermined to the point where either Boris Johnson’s government falls or the U.K. collapses into a failed police state indistinguishable from V for Vendetta.

Control not only over traditional television media but also the flow of information through the newer social media networks, limiting access to any countervailing narratives.

Most of these are in place. Johnson’s personal weakness has squandered one of the greatest political victories of the past century in less than a year.

Trump’s chances of overturning a fraudulent election are at best a coin flip, and realistically, vanishingly small.

AfD has been neutralized in Germany. Italy’s electoral situation is mixed. Austria has been consolidated under a fake populist Sebastian Kurz.

Local police are openly despotic in enforcing the most draconian lockdown regulations.

But Orban and Morawiecki have stood their ground. Trump is standing his ground. David Frost in the U.K., not Boris Johnson, is standing his ground. Will their example inspire others to do the same?

It’s a good question. The sheer desperation of articles like one from the Spectator, entitled “The Visegrád bloc are threatening to tear apart the EU,” speaks volumes when the author realizes the Visegrads don’t hate the EU for its freedom:

It is tempting to focus only on the individuals involved in the budget crisis: to dismiss Orbán and Morawiecki as rogue despots with no public mandate for their actions and to assume that, if full and fair democratic processes were observed, both Poland and Hungary would favour policies similar to those found in Northern and Western Europe.

Yet such a view does not chime with the democratic elections held in the V4 region this year: Duda won the Polish presidency in an affirmation of socially conservative values, while elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia saw very strong performances by anti-immigration parties. It also ignores the fact that the Visegrád Four – whose histories of war, occupation, and communist authoritarian rule in the twentieth century differ so greatly from their northern and western counterparts – have long pursued policies in opposition to some of the EU’s core tenets.

And what core tenets do the EU practice other than extortion, bribery, backroom dealing and arm-twisting, pray tell? Because on display right now all across Europe, from where I’m sitting, there ain’t a lotta tolerance, equality and compassion.

Oh, right, those are ‘mostly peaceful’ water cannons they’re using in Berlin.

Negotiating with Terrorists

And up until the past two weeks or so, decent, productive people have negotiated, they have bargained in the Kubler-Ross model of grief, rather than accept the need to openly confront the real problems in their governments.

The lesson of 2020 to this point has been that negotiation is no longer an option. There can be no settlement on fishing for the Brits, the rule-of-law for EU member states.

For Americans all negotiating has achieved is a terminally corrupt central government running sham elections with a compliant and hostile media telling them they are deplorable scum.

We are now expected to accept the results because they said so. Um, yeah, no.

The only way to accept the current reality is to believe the very people who you wouldn’t buy a used couch from no less lead your government are telling you the unvarnished truth.

Accepting any version of the narrative that this was a close election in the US is the most pathetic form of negotiating your own surrender I’ve seen in quite a long time.

This is the unbridgeable gap of modern politics. It is the infinite gulf between surrender and negotiating with terrorists.

The realization is fast dawning on the people across the West that the terrorists don’t wear odd clothes, carry Ak-47s and speak in foreign tongues.

They are the ones telling you to let Grandma die of loneliness in a nursing home, forbidding you from buying a Turkey for Christmas that can feed more than 6 people and spitting on people for not wearing a mask in public.

Reprinted with permission from TomLuongo.me.

from Hungary and Poland Create The Unbridgeable Gap of the Great Reset

The Strangely Unscientific Masking of America

I remember vividly the day, at the tail end of March, when facemasks suddenly became synonymous with morality: either one cared about the lives of others and donned a mask, or one was selfish and refused to do so. The shift occurred virtually overnight. 

Only a day or two before, I had associated this attire solely with surgeons and people living in heavily polluted regions. Now, my friends’ favorite pastime during our weekly Zoom sessions was excoriating people for running or socializing without masks in Prospect Park. I was mystified by their certitude that bits of cloth were the only thing standing between us and mass death, particularly when mere weeks prior, the message from medical experts contradicted this new doctrine.

On February 29, the US surgeon general infamously tweeted: “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS. . . They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus.” Anthony Fauci, the best-known member of the coronavirus task force, advised Americans not to wear masks around this time. Similarly, in the earliest weeks of the pandemic, the CDC maintained that masks should be worn only by individuals who were symptomatic or caring for a sick person, a position that the WHO stood by even longer.

As rapidly as mask use became a matter of ethics, the issue transformed into a political one, exemplified by an article printed on March 27 in the New York Times, entitled “More Americans Should Probably Wear Masks for Protection.” The piece was heavy on fear-mongering and light on evidence. While acknowledging that “[t]here is very little data showing that flat surgical masks, in particular, have a protective effect for the general public,” the author went on to argue that they “may be better than nothing,” and cited a couple of studies in which surgical masks ostensibly reduced influenza transmission rates.

One report reached its conclusion based on observations of a “dummy head attached to a breathing simulator.”  Another analyzed use of surgical masks on people experiencing at least two symptoms of acute respiratory illness. Incidentally, not one of these studies involved cloth masks or accounted for real-world mask usage (or misusage) among lay people, and none established efficacy of widespread mask-wearing by people not exhibiting symptoms. There was simply no evidence whatsoever that healthy people ought to wear masks when going about their lives, especially outdoors. Yet by April, to walk the streets of Brooklyn with one’s nose and mouth exposed evoked the sort of reaction that in February would have been reserved for the appearance of a machine gun.

In short order, the politicization intensified. President Trump refused to wear a mask relatively early on, so resistance to them was equated with support for him. By the same token, Democratic politicians across the board eagerly adopted the garb; accordingly, all good liberals were wearing masks religiously by the beginning of April. Likewise, left-leaning newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post unequivocally promoted mask-wearing after that March 27 article, with no real analysis or consideration of opposing views and evidence.

The speed with which mask-wearing among the general public transitioned from unheard of to a moral necessity struck me as suspicious. After all, if the science was as airtight as those around me claimed, surely masks would have been recommended by January or February, not to mention during prior infectious disease outbreaks such as the 2009 swine flu. It seemed unlikely that the scientific proof became incontrovertible sometime between late February and late March, particularly in the absence of any new evidence surfacing during that time period. 

Perhaps none of this is particularly surprising in this hyper-political era. What is shocking is the scientific community’s participation in subverting evidence that does not comport with the consensus. A prime example is the Institute of Health Metrics Evaluation’s (“IHME”) rather astounding claim, published in the journal Nature-Medicine and echoed in countless articles afterward, that the lives of 130,000 people could be saved with a nationwide mask mandate.

As my colleague Phil Magness pointed out in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the IHME model was predicated upon faulty data: it assumed that 49% of Americans were wearing masks based on a survey conducted between April and June, while claiming that statistic represented the number of Americans wearing masks as of September 21. In fact, by the summer, around 80% of Americans were regularly wearing them. (Ironically, had Dr. Fauci and the Surgeon General not bungled the message in March, mask use probably would have reached much higher rates much earlier on).

This called into question the accuracy of the 130,000 figure, since many more people habitually used masks than the study presumed. 

Although Magness contacted Nature-Medicine to point out the problem, after stalling for nearly two weeks, the journal declined to address it. Needless to say, the damage had been done: newspapers such as the New York Times undoubtedly would fail to correct the error and any retractions certainly would be placed far from the front page, where the initial article touting the IHME figure appeared. Thus, as expected, the unfounded claim that 130,000 lives could be saved with a nationwide mask-mandate continues to be repeated, including by president-elect Joe Biden and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins. 

That the science behind mask-wearing is questionable at best is further exemplified by a letter to the editor written in response to Magness’s article. Dr. Christopher Murray acknowledged that rates of mask-wearing have steadily increased, but then concluded that masks should be used because they are “our first line of defense against the pandemic” and current IHME modeling indicates that “if 95% of US residents were to wear masks when leaving home, we could prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans” because “masks work,” and “much deeper pain is ahead if we refuse to wear them.”

None of this accounts for the failure of either Nature-Medicine or the IHME modelers to recognize and correct the error. Moreover, neither the IHME modelers nor Dr. Murray provide any evidence that masks work. They assume masks are extremely effective at preventing spread of the coronavirus, and then claim that the model is correct for that reason. This sort of circular reasoning is all-too typical of those who so vociferously insist that masks are effective without going to the trouble of substantiating that contention – or differentiating what is likely a modest benefit from mask-wearing in specific indoor locations and around high-risk individuals from the media-driven tendency to depict masks as a silver bullet for stopping the virus in all circumstances. 

Coverage of a recent mask study conducted in Denmark likewise epitomizes the failure of the scientific community to rigorously engage with results that do not fit the prevailing masks-as-a-panacea narrative. The first randomized and controlled study of its kind (another appeared in May but it pertained to flu and had similar results), it found an absence of empirical evidence that masks provide protection to people wearing them, although it apparently did not assess whether they prevent infection of those who encounter the wearer. The report was covered in a New York Times article bearing the patronizing headline, “A New Study Questions Whether Masks Protect Wearers. You Need to Wear Them Anyway.”

Noting that the results “conflict with those from a number of other studies,” primarily “laboratory examinations of the particles blocked by materials of various types,” the author remarked that, therefore, this research “is not likely to alter public health recommendations in the United States.” Notably, laboratory examinations, as opposed to the Danish study, do not account for the realities of everyday mask usage by non-medical professionals. 

The author then quotes Susan Ellenberg, a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, who claims that the study indicates a trend: “‘in the direction of benefit’ even if the results were not statistically significant. ‘Nothing in this study suggests . . . that it is useless to wear a mask,’” according to Dr. Ellenberg. 

Nor does anything in this study suggest that it is useful to wear a mask, a fact that Dr. Ellenberg (and the headline) conveniently ignores. Furthermore, if a result is statistically insignificant, it should not be used to make the case for any proposition — as even I, a layperson, know.

Scientists ought to dispassionately analyze data that contradicts their biases and assumptions, and be open to changing their beliefs accordingly. That the results of the only randomized, controlled study were and continue to be automatically discounted demonstrates that, when it comes to the subject of masks, anything approximating the scientific method has gone out the window. That is all the more evident given the lack of interest that mask proponents have shown in conducting a randomized, controlled study themselves.

An article in the Los Angeles Times went even further: it twisted the findings of the Danish study to argue, incomprehensibly, that the research demonstrated more mask-wearing is warranted. The author cited, as supposedly compelling evidence that masks work, the low Covid-19 death rates in Singapore, Vietnam, and Taiwan. Indeed, according to the latest YouGov poll, administered in mid-November, 83% of Americans now wear masks in public, higher rates than Vietnam (77%) and Taiwan (82%).

Furthermore, there are other explanations, apart from widespread mask usage, for the remarkably low death rates in these countries. Some scientists believe that previous exposure to other coronaviruses in these regions may confer partial or total immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Others have speculated that obesity, environment or genetics could be the reason that Europe and the United States have substantially higher death rates than many Asian and African countries; after all, obesity is one of the most significant risk factors for severe illness. 

To conclude on the basis of low death rates in several countries that masks prevent coronavirus transmission is patently absurd, illogical, and unscientific. A casual observer might also note that coronavirus cases (albeit not necessarily deaths) are rising in many parts of the world, regardless of mask mandates or rates of implementation. While not a controlled experiment, this fact at least ought to be addressed when making such sweeping claims. 

Ultimately, I do not have the credentials to determine whether or not –or to what extent — masks work. But it is obvious that the issue has become so politicized that mainstream media outlets, politicians, and even scientists seize upon the slightest bit of favorable evidence, dismiss out of hand anything that conflicts with their theory, and most egregiously of all misrepresent the data, to support the conclusion that masks worn by asymptomatic people prevent coronavirus transmission.

And masks are only one part of this story: school closures, lockdowns, and social distancing all have been dogmatically embraced as a means of controlling infection. The substantial evidence that these mechanisms are not effective, particularly beyond their duration, has been automatically rejected for too long. This is not science: it is politics, and those within the profession who have refused to examine their confirmation biases, or manipulated the evidence to score political points, are utterly unqualified for the job. 

Reprinted with permission from American Institute for Economic Research.

from The Strangely Unscientific Masking of America

Trump Pardons Flynn…It’s a Good Start!

Last week President Trump granted a “full pardon” to Gen. Michael Flynn, his first National Security Advisor. In a White House statement announcing the pardon, the Administration pointed out that the relentless pursuit of Flynn was a partisan effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

The pursuit of Flynn was spearheaded by people who refused to accept the results of the 2016 election and worked to undermine the peaceful transfer of power, said the White House. These same people are the ones accusing Trump of undermining the election by challenging what appears to be serious voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.

That is called “projection.”

The White House statement also cites partisans in politics, the media, and the Deep State which sought to prevent Trump from being elected, to prevent him from taking office once elected, and to remove him on false pretenses once in office.

In order to push the false narrative that Trump was somehow elected due to the intervention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the coup-masters had to make it appear that a high-ranking official was involved in monkey business with the Russians. Flynn was the unlucky victim of their smear machine, accused of “Russia collusion” over an innocent telephone call with the then-Russian Ambassador in Washington during the transition to a Trump Administration.

Yet when Joe Biden’s transition people bragged recently that Biden was connecting with foreign officials before inaugurated, the media praised it as a welcome return of the “experts” to foreign policy.

While it is very good news that President Trump is in the mood to pardon those victims of the warmongering Deep State, I very much hope that he is only warming up. It would be a great tragedy if other Deep State victims are left to suffer for their non-crimes.

Tweeting about her legislation that calls for charges against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange to be dropped and the Espionage Act reformed, US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard told President Trump, “since you're giving pardons to people, please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state.”

My good friend Rep. Thomas Massie, a Ron Paul Institute Board Member, is a co-sponsor of Rep. Gabbard’s legislation, making it a real bipartisan effort to restore the rule of law in the United States and to rein in the Beltway warmongers.

Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are not criminals. They are heroes for telling us the truth about what criminals in government were doing in our name and with our money.

The fact is we were lied into war over and over again. While those wars were profitable for the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex, they snuffed out the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people overseas and robbed our own children and grandchildren of trillions of dollars wasted on neocon lies. And meanwhile, as Ed Snowden showed us, the intelligence community declared us the enemy and set up an elaborate internal spy network that would make the East German Stasi green with envy.

President Trump: you have the incredible opportunity to right the terrible wrongs perpetrated by the Obama/Biden Administration. History will smile kindly upon you if you also grant full pardon to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – and any other truth-teller who faces persecution for exposing the Deep State warmongers.

from Trump Pardons Flynn…It’s a Good Start!

Lockdowns Destroy What Makes Us Human

While GMU economist Tyler Cowen may have dismissed the idea of more pandemic lockdowns as being “a straw man” and saying that the extreme measures that started in March of this year “are now behind us,” it seems that governors and other politicians around the country have failed to get the message. More and more states have begun to once again impose ruinous lockdowns. The media and Twitter are filled with self-righteous scolds shrieking about the impending doom of families gathering together for Thanksgiving. CNN host Jake Tapper suggested that “Christmas is probably not gonna be possible.” 

If such people had their way, everyone would remain under veritable house arrest and not see anyone else for months or even years, as the duration of such onerous impositions has gone from “fifteen days to slow the spread” to months or even years into the future. That such ideas are even being considered demonstrates just how out of touch with human reality much of our “expert” class and their hordes of lemming-like followers are.

Things have not changed much from when I addressed some of the disastrous unintended material consequences of lockdowns in April of this year. However, as 2020 has dragged on, it has made clear that at least some of the lockdown logic is rooted in a fundamentally flawed and relatively recent conception of human nature.

Nearly every culture and religion throughout human history has held that humans are both material and spiritual beings. However, living in the secular age as we do, the material aspect of our existence has supplanted the spiritual to such an extent that it is barely recognized to exist.

Russell Kirk goes so far as to claim that the dividing line in contemporary politics hinges on this difference in understanding, stating that “on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

A purely material outlook on human existence will of course lead to certain policy prescriptions, especially in the face of a pandemic. To deny the spiritual existence of man is to deny the possibility of life after death—only the void of annihilation awaits. From this perspective, it makes sense that one might conclude that earthly life must continue on at any cost—that no tradeoff is too high to put off the coming oblivion.

In contrast, those who retain a more traditional conception of human nature, no matter the specific religion or creed to which they belong, can easily see an entire world of costs to lockdowns that those with a purely materialist perspective are not even capable of understanding.

Humans are social beings. Our very existence and development as human persons rests upon this social nature. Social contract thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau may fantasize about a solitary human existence, but all evidence from feral or isolated children indicates that without other humans a solitary individual would swiftly perish, not to mention fail to develop self-awareness or the ability to think and speak with language.

Some personalist scholars, such as political theorist David Walsh, argue that our entire conception of self can only be formed in relation to other persons. In contrast to Descartes’s famous line that “I think, therefore I am” a personalist would argue that we are not even capable of understanding the existence of “I” until we have first understood the existence of an “I” in others. Much like we can never truly see our own face, but only the faces of others, which in turn allows us to understand our own unseen face, we cannot become aware of ourselves until we find ourselves in the context of others, and through them recognize the mutual nature of our interior lives that makes us persons.

Many religions, in some form or another, speak of the interconnectedness of the world and of people and of the illusion of separation. While most often associated with Eastern religions such as Buddhism, this spiritual unity is not foreign to Christianity and the West. Indeed, the Christian Trinity is understood to be one God in three persons. Jesus Christ references this unity in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John when he prays “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you…that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

Leaving the specific religious implications aside, humans have recognized for millennia that when persons gather together we enter into one another on a spiritual level through the recognition of our mutual personhood. However, this spiritual unity that is so essential to our very existence as human persons does not occur in a vacuum, but rather in the context in which we gather in the material world.

Humans could acquire all the nutrients we need by imbibing Soylent Green in solitude, but instead, we often turn our meals into ritualistic social occasions. Shared meals not only provide material nourishment but spiritual sustenance as well. Dancing alone in your kitchen is all well and good, but it pales in comparison to experiencing a crowd of thousands moshing at an electronic dance music festival or the pounding feet of a Sufi sect dancing the dhikr. We are fortunate to be able to access great art at the click of a mouse, but watching Swan Lake home alone on YouTube is no substitute for the experience of seeing it live in a crowded hall as every person is moved to tears.

There are few events more brimming with the spiritual unity of the attendees than a wedding, a celebration of the literal unity of two persons as one in the presence of their friends and loved ones with feasting, singing, and dancing.

Yet how many weddings have been canceled or celebrated in private this year thanks to lockdowns? How many shared meals have not been eaten? Dances left undanced, songs left unsung, conversations not had? How many parents and grandparents in nursing homes did not get to see their loved ones before they departed this earth? How many children have suffered in front of a screen alone all day? These are not mere frivolous luxuries that we humans can do without. The dual material and spiritual contexts of our personhood cannot be separated. These contexts of our families and communities are not nice additions to life, they are human life itself.

There is no denying that during a pandemic there will be a need to alter one’s behavior, but just as no state bureaucrat can successfully plan the economy, no public health official is capable of centrally planning a response for hundreds of millions of people who are all in different conditions of life, with different material and spiritual needs.

Every person must decide for himself what the proper course of action is in light of his unique life circumstances. Ripping these decisions from every person and placing them in the hands of public health bureaucrats has yielded disaster.

Suicide rates are up all around the country, in some places as much as 70 percent compared to the same time last year. Military suicides are up 20 percent. Drug overdose deaths are on track to reach an all-time high. The RAND Corporation has found an upswing in heavy drinking this year. The Associated Press reports on the horrific conditions in nursing homes around the country that may have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of residents in excruciating and horrific circumstances, as their families have been forbidden from caring for them. What’s more, it seems many patients simply withered away, their spirits broken from being locked in veritable solitary confinement with no contact with friends or family for months.

Medical central planning that doesn’t even recognize the spiritual and social aspect of human existence has caused the deaths of untold numbers of people around the country, perhaps more than the virus itself in the long run.

Our vaunted leaders may act like pure materialists when it comes to their dictatorial decrees obliterating society and our very humanity, but on some level they obviously understand the importance of their own spiritual health. Why else would the leaders of California be breaking their own rules to dine at luxurious restaurants or flying to Hawaii for meetings and not be content with takeout and Zoom like the rest of us peasants? But what else can be expected from a system of top-down control?

Humans are both material and spiritual beings. Just as we have material needs that central planners cannot anticipate, so too do we have spiritual needs that can only be filled in a myriad of ways that central planners cannot plan for, especially when they don’t even recognize they are needs at all. When they are not fulfilled, our physical health suffers just as assuredly as if we had a virus. The social and communal aspects of human life, whether a holiday dinner with family, going to church, having a wedding, or even the mundane relations of everyday life are not mere luxuries that can be dispensed with, they are human life itself. People must be free to navigate these difficult times armed with the knowledge of their circumstances that only they possess.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

from Lockdowns Destroy What Makes Us Human

Eric Clapton and Van Morrison’s Musical Collaboration Against Coronavirus Crackdowns

In October, I wrote about marquee musicians Van Morrison and Eric Clapton speaking out against coronavirus crackdown measures that greatly restrict live music performances, as well as Morrison’s preforming in concerts and recording protest songs to challenge the crackdowns, with profits from the protest songs being used to help musicians who have financially suffered due to the crackdowns. Now Clapton and Morrison have moved beyond joint condemnation of some of draconian measures taken in...

Read the full report by clicking the title, below...

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2020/november/28/eric-clapton-and-van-morrison-s-musical-collaboration-against-coronavirus-crackdowns/

Biden Euphoria Already Over

Donald J Trump believes he was set up. Perhaps he was. And, understandably, he wants revenge for three years of harassment on Russia. After all, that’s how he is when crossed. But the bigger picture is that Trump owes Sheldon Adelson $80M+ in tribute because that’s what Adelson paid him. President Trump owes much of his political existence not just to hedge fund managers and casino billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and Rebekah Mercer* -- but to Israel as well. In this article we'll explore the related mix of foreign policy scenarios that may result going forward, where the playing field has already evolved since the US election.

Trump’s crew has only a few weeks to appease its donors. Clearly, the current regime has got little time to settle scores and the donors want results for their money. Trump needs to provide those results, since the family knows such tribute will protect them from prosecution going forward. As such, Trump may leave a war legacy for Biden despite all the talk that he is ultimately a man of peace. That won't sit well with the “Deplorables,” even if the five-layer chess match is far more complex than imagined.

Likewise the residual regime may be intent on setting up Democrats to fail, since Beltway Neoliberals screamed for years about Russian-state election meddling with constant diatribe about collusion. Note how the major media's Russophobia has largely vaporized now since the Beltway Blob has its mouthpiece in office -- or almost does.

Most of all, the Evil Empire wants to sucker punch Iran into war because this is seemingly the ideal time (the end of this presidential term) to do so. But first, a little history. The end -- or beginning -- of any US regime offers unique opportunity, usually with negative result. CIA Operation Ajax. Operation Cyclone. The Bay of Pigs. Iran Contra. CIA’s Timber Sycamore, CIA Project Fubelt, etc etc. Recall that Reagan gave free reign to George Schultz to enable Israel's aggression in southern Lebanon, especially at the end of Reagan's second term. Schultz's euphemism to Shamir was essentially, “knock yourselves out” (to defeat Hezbollah). Israel failed. And that was all under cover of the “Schultz Peace Plan” which had no possibility to succeed. Sound familiar? The current regime follows the same playbook… with the same failed result.

Now giving Israel free reign in Syria and attempting to sucker-punch Iran into war by assassinating its top nuclear scientist is somewhat reminiscent of Reagan's Iran policy at the end of his term, but with a difference. Reagan's donors were not so entrenched, nor so wealthy, nor so powerful as Trump's -- or Biden’s. And the United States was not so politically beholden to Israelas it is now... not to mention the Kingdom.

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh occurred just subsequent to Netanyahu “secretly meeting” with US Secretary Pompeo and Crown Prince bin Salman in Riyadh. Iran blames Netanyahu, but covert Israeli operatives seldom truly put themselves in harm’s way. So this political assassination was certainly a joint covert action between the Kingdom, Israel, and US State. The United States and the Kingdom do engage in political assassinations, where Israel employs political assassination as a matter of national policy.

Such toxic adventurism puts Joe Biden’s foreign policy on toxic ground right here, right now. And the Empire’s assassination of Fakhrizadeh has ended “peace talks” between Israel and the Kingdom. That’s Because bin Salman is a rogue actor, acting independent of the current King who is essentially unaware of what’s happening in his Kingdom. The foregoing is of course a US foreign policy failure, one which the Trump-Kushner axis is unlikely to care much about when the US is obsessed with its contagion and a blown general election, and their own politically numbered days.

Ongoing issues in Iraq, the US stealing oil in Syria, the Saudi war on Yemen, America’s endless war in Afghanistan, and the Israeli siege of Gaza are all coming to a head – the real head of the snake where the Evil Empire is concerned. And Mr. Warfare State Biden will be in a real bind if Trump-Pompeo continue to poison the foreign policy well, not just on Iran, but with China and Russia, too.

A greater pattern certainly exists. For example, the much-touted Israeli “deal” with the United Arab Emirates -- where the UAE has been a weapons trader with Israel for many years as well as an illegal gold trader-- proves that “normalization” of trade with Israel is simply a formality. The same applies to Sudan, whose caretaker government agreement entered into a baseless agreement with Israel on false pretenses. The foregoing bodes poorly for peace with Arab nations, especially those that cannot be bought by the west.

Virtually unreported in the west, attacks on a tanker and Saudi oil terminal provide a window on how Iran may avenge the assassination of its scientist. Iran has options in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, too. So how will Mr. Blinken address that? Especially when Mr Pompeo – a Statecraft subversive run amok if ever there was one -- further poisons the well. Where do Pompeo’s State orders come from? Hark back to the donor class and to the hands behind them whose names we do not know.

Point being, the media euphoria about Biden and that America is back! – is a concept that is as eerie as it is surreal. The very thought that common sense will now prevail in a landscape that has lost its collective geopolitical mind is not only misplaced, but abjectly delusional. And false.

It’s a complex matrix of an unworkable system based upon MMT, corruption, graft, and Grifter’s Rule too… not just about murderous Pentagon/CIA planners and foreign policy. It’s a world where political assassination is accepted as the rule of law, then whitewashed as “targeted killing”. One can only conclude that this amorality and chaos will continue.

Truly this chaos is just beginning. It’s engineered and it’s inevitable with the plutocracy we have. As examined in Anarchy in the USSA we are all in for a very rough ride. Not by our failings, but by those “leaders” and the media we have allowed to program us, to manipulate our media, our thoughts, and our beliefs. It’s not just Joltin’ Joe. It’s going to be a real rough ride going forward. Real rough. Hang on.

*Mercer is an anti-Islam advocate https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mercer-funding-trump-anti-muslim-advert-group-claims-2016-election-documents-open-secrets-a8290986.html

Nothing is guaranteed except change. Follow Steve Brown on twitter: @newsypaperz

from Biden Euphoria Already Over

Was the Election Free and Fair? The American Foreign Policy Establishment Doesn't Care.

There’s at least one good reason to support Donald Trump’s ongoing lawsuits challenging the election results in several states: the US foreign policy establishment doesn’t want you to.

As Newsweek reported last week, “A group of more than 100 national security experts” from Republican administrations have condemned the president’s challenges to some states' vote-counting process. These "experts" are claiming these legal efforts "undermine democracy" and "risk long-term damage" to the nation's institutions. The signatories include people like Michael Hayden, John Negroponte, and Tom Ridge. These are the usual sort of “deep state” technocrats—for example, James Comey and John Brennan—who chime in to defend the status quo in the United States and insist it is an outrage that anyone (i.e., Donald Trump) departs from the usual way of doing things.

This alleged devotion to “democracy” and “the nation’s institutions” rings a bit odd coming from people like Negroponte and Hayden. Hayden, after all, has supported a litany of spying programs, torture, and the wholesale destruction of the human rights of both Americans and countless foreigners. Negroponte was the first director of national intelligence and has long supported spying on American citizens without a warrant. He oversaw the US-funded terror campaigns against Hondurans during the Reagan administration. Negroponte also enthusiastically supported the US’s 2003 war in Iraq which failed to achieve any of the objectives sold to the Americans as the reasons the war was a necessity.

Through scandals like the Abu-Graib debacle, unconstitutional wiretapping, torture, and ceaseless paranoid calls for an ever larger national-security state, the American foreign policy establishment has done more to undermine American democracy and institutions than Trump could ever hope for.

Yet, these people are now speaking as if they are moral authorities on preserving the rights of Americans.

Given their clear disregard for basic human rights in recent decades, however, one suspects it is more likely that what really motivates the signatories’ denunciation of Trump’s election lawsuits is a desire to return to “business as usual.” This, after all, would make it easier for the regime to get back to dismantling the Bill of Rights, initiating new wars, and generally doing what it wants.

This becomes harder to do if millions of Americans begin to suspect that the regime isn’t as legitimate as has been long claimed, and that maybe the game is rigged against those who fail to be sufficiently friendly toward the permanent government in Washington and the so-called deep state.

But lest anyone think that investigating the integrity of American elections is a worthwhile endeavor, these national security bureaucrats resort to the usual, tired claim:

By encouraging President Trump's delaying tactics or remaining silent, Republican leaders put ... national security at risk.

The message is this: Dear Trump supporters, if you demand thorough legal proceedings and a careful look at this election’s outcome, then you support “America’s enemies.” We’ve heard a similar sentiment from these people before, when the Bush Administration declared “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” The message now is: “either you’re with us, or you’re with the Chinese totalitarians.”

It’s the usual sort of ruse that’s been used by the US foreign policy establishment for decades, and this is only the latest illustration. This same impulse is why the Conservative movement’s longtime leader William F. Buckley called for “a totalitarian bureaucracy” in the United States so long as it served the interests of the American national security state.

What’s the Harm in Contesting the Election?

More reasonable people however, should see the value and necessity of a slow, thorough, and public legal examination of the election.

Regardless of how one feels about Donald Trump, anyone who values fair play, honesty, and the votes of legal voters should want thorough audits and investigations. The question: “how much was this election affected by fraud?” warrants serious consideration and serious investigation into how the election was conducted. After all, whenever political power is at stake, there is no reason whatsoever to assume honesty and integrity are guiding the actions of all involved.

Fraud occurs with every election, of course. Anyone who claims any election contains no fraud lives in a fantasy land, or is lying. Voter fraud exists anywhere that votes are cast. Anecdotes of fraud in this election are plentiful, from backdated ballots in Pennsylvania, to The question is whether or not this sort of thing is widespread enough to change the outcome. In a number of lawsuits, the Trump campaign has suggested that it has been widespread.

And there’s no harm in allowing the legal process to proceed. After all, in legal and constitutional terms, the US election process is still very much on schedule.

Contrary to what various reporters seem to think, it is not the case that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “were declared the election's winners more than two weeks ago, after Fox News, the Associated Press and other television networks called” it. The outcomes of presidential elections aren’t declared by infotainment performers working at Fox News.

Rather, federal statutes and constitutional provisions stipulate that the Electoral College will meet in December, and the Congress will declare a winner shortly thereafter. This process is in no danger of being derailed. 

It’s too bad that people like Michael Hayden don’t respect this constitutional process, but that’s just par for the course coming from someone who has been director of the CIA.

For those who actually care about some measure of accountability and transparency from government institutions in charge of running elections, there should be no problem with any presidential candidate demanding a wide variety of legal challenges. This in itself won’t solve the problem of election fraud, and it won’t make the regime respect anyone’s human rights. This wouldn't make government by majority-rule any less problematic. But it would be helpful to gather more information on how much of a gulf lies between the perception of "free and fair elections" and the reality. And it is the very least that should be done in the wake of an election where the outcome is close, messy, and conducted by politicians who are very unlikely to have the average Americans’ interests at heart.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

from Was the Election Free and Fair? The American Foreign Policy Establishment Doesn't Care.

Landmark legal ruling finds that Covid tests are not fit for purpose. So what do the MSM do? They ignore it

Four German holidaymakers who were illegally quarantined in Portugal after one was judged to be positive for Covid-19 have won their case, in a verdict that condemns the widely-used PCR test as being up to 97-percent unreliable.

Earlier this month, Portuguese judges upheld a decision from a lower court that found the forced quarantine of four holidaymakers to be unlawful. The case centred on the reliability (or lack thereof) of Covid-19 PCR tests.

The verdict, delivered on November 11, followed an appeal against a writ of habeas corpus filed by four Germans against the Azores Regional Health Authority. This body had been appealing a ruling from a lower court which had found in favour of the tourists, who claimed that they were illegally confined to a hotel without their consent. The tourists were ordered to stay in the hotel over the summer after one of them tested positive for coronavirus in a PCR test - the other three were labelled close contacts and therefore made to quarantine as well.

Unreliable, with a strong chance of false positives

The deliberation of the Lisbon Appeal Court is comprehensive and fascinating. It ruled that the Azores Regional Health Authority had violated both Portuguese and international law by confining the Germans to the hotel. The judges also said that only a doctor can “diagnose” someone with a disease, and were critical of the fact that they were apparently never assessed by one.

They were also scathing about the reliability of the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, the most commonly used check for Covid.

The conclusion of their 34-page ruling included the following: “In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

In the eyes of this court, then, a positive test does not correspond to a Covid case. The two most important reasons for this, said the judges, are that, “the test’s reliability depends on the number of cycles used’’ and that “the test’s reliability depends on the viral load present.’’ In other words, there are simply too many unknowns surrounding PCR testing.

Tested positive? There could be as little as a 3% chance it’s correct 

This is not the first challenge to the credibility of PCR tests. Many people will be aware that their results have a lot to do with the number of amplifications that are performed, or the ‘cycle threshold.’ This number in most American and European labs is 35–40 cycles, but experts have claimed that even 35 cycles is far too many, and that a more reasonable protocol would call for 25–30 cycles. (Each cycle exponentially increases the amount of viral DNA in the sample).

Earlier this year, data from three US states – New York, Nevada and Massachusetts – showed that when the amount of the virus found in a person was taken into account, up to 90 percent of people who tested positive could actually have been negative, as they may have been carrying only tiny amounts of the virus.

The Portuguese judges cited a study conducted by “some of the leading European and world specialists,” which was published by Oxford Academic at the end of September. It showed that if someone tested positive for Covid at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher, the chances of that person actually being infected is less than three percent, and that “the probability of… receiving a false positive is 97% or higher.”

While the judges in this case admitted that the cycle threshold used in Portuguese labs was unknown, they took this as further proof that the detention of the tourists was unlawful. The implication was that the results could not be trusted. Because of this uncertainty, they stated that there was "no way this court would ever be able to determine" whether the tourist who tested positive was indeed a carrier of the virus, or whether the others had been exposed to it.

Sshhh – don’t tell anyone

It is a sad indictment of our mainstream media that such a landmark ruling, of such obvious and pressing international importance, has been roundly ignored. If one were making (flimsy) excuses for them, one could say that the case escaped the notice of most science editors because it has been published in Portuguese. But there is a full Englishtranslation of the appeal, and alternative media managed to pick it up.

And it isn’t as if Portugal is some remote, mysterious nation where news is unreliable or whose judges are suspect – this is a western EU country with a large population and a similar legal system to many other parts of Europe. And it is not the only country whose institutions are clashing with received wisdom on Covid. Finland’s national health authority has disputed the WHO’s recommendation to test as many people as possible for coronavirus, saying it would be a waste of taxpayer’s money, while poorer South East Asian countries are holding off on ordering vaccines, citing an improper use of finite resources. 

Testing, especially PCR testing, is the basis for the entire house of cards of Covid restrictions that are wreaking havoc worldwide. From testing comes case numbers. From case numbers come the ‘R number,’ the rate at which a carrier infects others. From the ‘dreaded’ R number comes the lockdowns and the restrictions, such as England’s new and baffling tiered restrictions that come into force next week. 

The daily barrage of statistics is familiar to us all by this point, but as time goes on the evidence that something may be deeply amiss with the whole foundation of our reaction to this pandemic – the testing regime – continues to mount.

Reprinted with permission from RT.

from Landmark legal ruling finds that Covid tests are not fit for purpose. So what do the MSM do? They ignore it

Dennis Kucinich Says He Is Giving ‘Serious Consideration’ to Running for Cleveland Mayor

In March, I wrote about speculation Dennis Kucinich may run for mayor of Cleveland, Ohio in 2021. Kucinich was mayor of Cleveland in the 1970s before going on to other political activities including serving in the United States House of Representatives and running for president. Here is an update: In a new interview with WKYC-TV Kucinich confirmed he is giving “serious consideration” to campaigning in 2021 for election again to the Cleveland mayorship. Could Kucinich win the race? Sam...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2020/november/27/dennis-kucinich-says-he-is-giving-serious-consideration-to-running-for-cleveland-mayor/

More Salem than Thanksgiving

Had King James’s Privy Council contained a proto-Anthony Fauci in 1620, there might not have been a Thanksgiving holiday for the current-day Fauci and his peers to cancel four centuries later. The transatlantic voyage that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock would have been unthinkable under the ‘stay safe’ philosophy that now governs American life.

Nearly half the 102 occupants of the Mayflower died in their first year of settlement at Plymouth, sometimes at a rate of three a day. Such a mortality rate was predictable. The earlier outpost at Jamestown, founded in 1607, lost 66 of its original 104 settlers in its first nine months. By 1609, following the also predictable loss at sea of a ship coming to resupply the colony, starvation at Jamestown had grown so dire that residents dug corpses from their graves to eat any remaining flesh, later reported the colony’s first president in 1625.

Other early settlement casualties included the outpost of Roanoke, which simply disappeared. Overall, for every six would-be colonists who ventured across the Atlantic, only one survived, according to one estimate. Trying to establish a new life in the New World was most definitely not ‘safe’.

And yet the voyagers kept coming, driven by something beyond safetyism — religious zeal, ambition, passion for discovery, the desire for greater freedom. Those Americans who later spread across the continent, whether as solo explorers or in wagon trains, likewise eschewed a ‘stay safe’ philosophy.

Today, we are strangling American society in order to avoid a risk of death so infinitesimal — roughly 0.001 percent — for the majority of Americans that it would not have registered in any possible cost-benefit analysis governing both notable American endeavors and quotidian activities over the last four centuries. Our current Thanksgiving Day mantras — ‘Stay within your pod. Stay within your bubble. Stay within your household’ (in the words of a University of California, San Francisco, epidemiologist); don’t travel, don’t share food, don’t touch your family members or friends, speak only in hushed tones — make a mockery of the spirit that creates a country and sustains human life.

This present moment is less like that first Thanksgiving celebration and more like the Salem witch frenzy of 1692. To be sure, the coronavirus is real; witches were not. The virus has cost thousands of lives; witches did not. But the fear that has gripped much of the population over the last year, whipped up by sundry experts and authorities, is as disconnected from reason as that emblematic burst of hysteria in colonial Massachusetts and other such panics throughout medieval and early modern Europe. The shared features of all such contagious fear events include the following:

The belief in ubiquitous threat

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has advised Los Angelenos to ‘assume that everyone you encounter is infected’. Under even the most liberal assumptions of undetected community spread, however, only a small fraction of Los Angeles’s population would be infected and currently contagious.

As for the threat of death, most of the population faces none from the virus. The average age of coronavirus decedents is 80, which is four years higher than the average life expectancy for US males in 2018 and just a year under the average life expectancy of females. Most decedents have underlying co-morbities. Up to two-thirds of coronavirus casualties may have died of other causes by the end of 2020. Forty percent of US coronavirus deaths have occurred in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Sadly, death is already the fate of virtually all residents of such facilities, however much we may understandably try to defer it.

Scapegoats and stigma

Public officials have piled onto those intransigents who do not wear masks in the great outdoors, blaming them for the spread. Outdoor mask refuseniks have been screamed at and shamed by citizen enforcers of the outdoor mask dogma. The media imply false causal connections: ‘Wisconsin health officials reported more jaw-dropping COVID-19 infection numbers Thursday,’ recently reported the Chicago Tribune, ‘as people continued to flaunt recommendations to wear masks’ (emphasis added). But there is no evidence for open-air transmission, absent highly unusual packed settings and prolonged contact. Transmission, per the CDC’s own contact tracing guidelines, requires a cumulative 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person, overwhelmingly in poorly ventilated, cramped indoor settings. In the outdoors, circulating air disperses any possible viral dose to the point of non-existence, even if most outdoor encounters were not too fleeting to be of concern.

People who have recovered from the virus are shunned as pariahs, despite their lack of infectious status.

Read the rest here.

from More Salem than Thanksgiving

A Long-Forgotten CIA Document From WikiLeaks Sheds Critical Light on Today's US Politics and Wars

The first time I ever wrote about WikiLeaks was back in early 2010, when the group was still largely unknown. What prompted my attention was a small article in The New York Times which began this way:

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The NYT explained that the Pentagon had prepared a secret 2008 plan in which they plotted how to destroy WikiLeaks, including by purposely leaking to it false documents with the hope that the group would publish the fakes and forever obliterate their credibility — a dastardly scheme which was ironically leaked to WikiLeaks, which promptly posted the document on its website.

Any group that the US security state includes on its “list of enemies” by virtue of publishing its secrets is one that is going to attract my interest, and likely my support. As a result — months before they made international headlines with publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and diplomatic cables from Hillary Clinton’s State Department — I immediately investigated everything I could about the group’s founding and mission; interviewed its founder Julian Assange; and urged readers to help support the fledging group, concluding that “one of the last avenues to uncover government and other elite secrets are whistle blowers and organizations that enable them. WikiLeaks is one of the world's most effective such groups, and it's thus no surprise that they're under such sustained attacks.”

The reason for my conclusion was that WikiLeaks had been exposing incriminating secrets of corrupt power centers for years. The technology they pioneered — enabling sources to leak to them troves of documents without anyone, including WikiLeaks itself, knowing the source’s identity — was a major innovation in enabling greater transparency for the world’s most powerful factions.

But it was one WikiLeaks document that particularly caught my attention at first: a classified 2010 CIA “Red Cell Memorandum,” named after the highly secretive unitcreated by Bush/Cheney CIA Director George Tenet in the wake of the 9/11 attack.

What made this document so fascinating, so revealing, is the CIA’s discussion of how to manipulate public opinion to ensure it remains at least tolerant if not supportive of Endless War and, specifically, the vital role President Obama played for the CIA in packaging and selling US wars around the world. In this classified analysis, one learns a great deal about how the “military industrial complex,” also known as the “Blob” or “Deep State,” reasons; how the Agency exploits humanitarian impulses to ensure continuation of its wars; and what the real function is of the US President when it comes to foreign policy.

What prompted the memo was the CIA’s growing fears that the population of Western Europe was rapidly turning against the War on Terror generally and the war in Afghanistan specifically — as evidenced by the fall of the Dutch Government driven in large part by the electorate’s anger over involvement in Afghanistan. The CIA was desperate to figure out how to stem the tide of anti-war sentiment growing throughout that region, particularly to shield France and Germany from it, by manipulating public opinion.

The Agency concluded: its best and only asset for doing that was President Obama and his popularity in Western European cities.

Read the rest here.

from A Long-Forgotten CIA Document From WikiLeaks Sheds Critical Light on Today's US Politics and Wars

Thousands of Guests Attend Secret New York City Wedding in Defiance of Coronavirus Crackdown

Some state and local governments in America have, in purported efforts to counter coronavirus, become in significant ways like communist countries suppressing religious activities while promoting certain favored large-scale political demonstrations. New York City has been a prime example of this development with Mayor Bill de Blasio praising select demonstrations in the streets while shutting down religious assemblies. Thousands of individuals defied the suppression of religious assemblies...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2020/november/24/thousands-of-guests-attend-secret-new-york-city-wedding-in-defiance-of-coronavirus-crackdown/

Democratic Member Seeks To Disbar Two Dozen Lawyers Challenging Election Results

We have been discussing the campaign of harassment and threats against Republican lawyers to get them to drop election challenges. New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell expanded that campaign this week with a malicious and frivolous demand for New York and other states to disbar roughly two dozen lawyers for representing Trump, the Republican party, or the Trump campaign in the litigation. While Democratic members and the media discuss attacks on democracy and the rule of law, they appear to...

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from Democratic Member Seeks To Disbar Two Dozen Lawyers Challenging Election Results

Pandemics Are Over When the Public Decides They're Over

In Colorado, reported cases and hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients are at higher levels than ever before. And yet politicians are worried that if they issue new stay-at-home orders, the public won’t obey them. For instance the Denver Post last week reported Colorado Democrats admitted the public isn’t listening very closely anymore: [State Senator Steve] Fenberg and many other state leaders are worried … about whether a stay-at-home order would even work this time around. People have grown...

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from Pandemics Are Over When the Public Decides They're Over

Lockdown Backlash: California Is Sick Of Newsom

After being caught dining with a large group in an exclusive restaurant - against his own orders - California governor Gavin Newsom is facing a bit of a rebellion among the citizens. First, virtually every southern California sheriff and many northern California sheriffs made it clear that they would NOT enforce the governor's absurd Thanksgiving guidelines. Then, large groups have gathered in places like Huntington Beach to defy and protest the governor's new 10:00 PM curfew. Also a recall...

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from Lockdown Backlash: California Is Sick Of Newsom

On Coronavirus, We Must Not Allow Politics to Dictate Science

In these past couple of weeks, two important studies have been published that could dramatically increase our understanding of the Covid-19 disease. Adding to the science of how we understand and treat this disease is something that should be welcomed, because properly understood it can save lives. The only problem is that because the results from these two studies challenge what the media has established as conventional wisdom about the disease, the reports are at best being ignored and at...

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from On Coronavirus, We Must Not Allow Politics to Dictate Science

Gavin Newsom the hypocrite punishes Californians with curfew

Show the governor in a bad light — and you will pay. That’s the message sent Californians’ way after a photo that outed Gov. Gavin Newsom as a face mask-less, non-social distancing partying hypocrite surfaced, and shortly after, he ordered state residents to obey a curfew. Seriously, there’s a special place in hell for public servants who abuse their powers to subjugate their citizens — their employers, actually. “The virus is spreading at a pace we haven’t seen since the start of this...

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from Gavin Newsom the hypocrite punishes Californians with curfew

How 'Western' Media Select Their Foreign Correspondents

Did you ever wonder why 'western' mainstream media get stories about Russia and other foreign countries so wrong? It is simple. They hire the most brainwashed, biased and cynical writers they can get for the job. Those who are corrupt enough to tell any lie required to support the world view of their editors and media owners. They are quite upfront about it. Here is evidence in form of a New York Times job description for a foreign correspondent position in Moscow: Russia...

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from How 'Western' Media Select Their Foreign Correspondents

Covid Deaths Mount in France and the Czech Republic as Lockdowns Fail

Lockdowns are back on in Europe and are making a quick comeback in the US as well. Spain, the UK, Belgium, and France are back in full lockdown mode, although a multitude of restrictions on movement within each country remained in place even when full lockdowns were ended over the summer.  In France, for instance, one now “need[s] a certificate to move around,” yet in spite of long maintaining some of the continent’s most stringent lockdown and social distancing measures, total deaths per...

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Joe Biden: I Do Not Want a National Shutdown; I Just Want a National Shutdown.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden declared that he would be ready and willing as president to follow the recommendation of scientists to shut down the country in the name of countering coronavirus. Then, on Thursday, Biden insisted he would not, as president, impose a national shutdown. But, it turns out Biden, in his Thursday comments, was just playing a word game. He defined “shutdown” such that it describes something no government has undertaken in the name of countering...

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The Pentagon and the CIA Are in Charge of Foreign Policy

President Trump has announced that he is ordering a partial withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq during the waning days of his administration. Why only partial? And why now in the waning days of his presidency? After all, when Trump campaigned in 2016. his expressed aim was to bring all the troops home from those two countries. He repeatedly vowed to bring an end to America’s “forever wars.” There is a simple explanation for Trump’s failure, one that unfortunately so many...

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Major New Study: No Evidence Masks Work

In the first comprehensive, peer-reviewed study the efficacy of face masks to prevent the spread of Covid has been called into question. Within the margin of error there is virtually no difference between a masked group and an unmasked group, Danish scientists discovered. Yet this major discovery about the virus is being completely ignored by authoritarian governors who are demanding even MORE intrusive mask mandates. Are we really following "the science"? Or politics... Watch today's Liberty...

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Americans are Finally Growing Weary of Lockdowns

There are public protests against lockdowns in Denmark, Italy, France, and all over Europe. They are growing in numbers and fury. Why not the US? Scott Atlas suggested in passing that Michigan residents “rise up” against new lockdowns in Michigan, and major media collectively fainted in shock. Preposterously, he was forced to clarify that he didn’t mean violently.  I came across a Twitter account from one protestor who demanded to know where the Americans are in all of this. Why is this...

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