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China Updates Its ‘Art of (Hybrid) War’ – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 20, 2020

Internally, Beijing will boost support for state-owned enterprises that are strong in innovation and risk-taking. China always defies predictions by Western “experts.” For instance, exports rose 3.5% in April, when the experts were forecasting a decline of 15.7%. The trade surplus was $45.3 billion, when experts were forecasting only $6.3 billion.

Beijing seems to identify clearly the extending gap between a West, especially the US, that’s plunging into de facto New Great Depression territory with a China that’s about to rekindle economic growth. The center of gravity of global economic power keeps moving, inexorably, toward Asia.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/no_author/china-updates-its-art-of-hybrid-war/

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

In 1999, Qiao Liang, then a senior air force colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, and Wang Xiangsui, another senior colonel, caused a tremendous uproar with the publication of Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America.

Unrestricted Warfare was essentially the PLA’s manual for asymmetric warfare: an updating of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. At the time of original publication, with China still a long way from its current geopolitical and geo-economic clout, the book was conceived as laying out a defensive approach, far from the sensationalist “destroy America” added to the title for US publication in 2004.

Now the book is available in a new edition and Qiao Liang, as a retired general and director of the Council for Research on National Security, has resurfaced in a quite revealing interview originally published in the current edition of the Hong Kong-based magazine Zijing (Bauhinia).

General Qiao is not a Politburo member entitled to dictate official policy. But some analysts I talked with agree that the key points he makes in a personal capacity are quite revealing of PLA thinking. Let’s review some of the highlights.

Dancing with wolves Read the rest of this entry »

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Right To Work and the Betrayal by Lockdowns – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 20, 2020

It’s madness to think that putting millions out of work can stop an epidemic, especially one that’s already well underway. Its madness and ignorance to think this can be done without causing a great many more deaths by other follow-on effects of the lockdowns.

In sum, all people, including Americans, have a right to work, a natural right. It follows from the basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And following from the right to work are rights of travel over means paid for by taxpayers, who largely work and also use those means for other ends.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/michael-s-rozeff/right-to-work-and-the-betrayal-by-lockdowns/

By

The right to work in this blog is not the phrase as used for union issues. It’s the natural right. For us human beings, work means “Such effort or activity by which one makes a living; employment.” Your right to work means that at your voluntary option you may make employment exchanges or bargains with other people with similar liberty; and at the same time people external to the bargaining parties, i.e., other than you and the people you are exchanging with, may not coerce either of you to prevent, change or modify the work arrangement.

Right to work doesn’t mean that anyone owes you any stuff like this: “…technical and vocational guidance and training programmes, policies and techniques to achieve steady economic, social and cultural development and full and productive employment under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual.” Nor do you owe anyone an affirmative action or non-discrimination aspect of your bargain.

Obviously, labor laws in the U.S. prevent you from exercising your right to work fully and freely. “The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) administers and enforces more than 180 federal laws. These mandates and the regulations that implement them cover many workplace activities for about 150 million workers and 10 million workplaces.”

We do not live in a free country.

The lockdowns are even more totalitarian than the labor laws and regulations on the books. They prevent you from working even if you are obeying all the existing labor laws!

Did your legislatures pass lockdown laws? No. One available list shows that state governors in the U.S. mainly did this. Health authorities, counties and cities seem also to have instigated lockdowns.

In the name of a health measure, state governors infringed the natural right to work. It’s a natural right because that’s how you sustain yourself and live. That’s how you pursue happiness. If you are denied the means to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, you cannot have or secure those natural rights. The right to work follows as a natural right because it’s necessary to achieve the major ends of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the making of voluntary work arrangements involves only the presumed justly-held property of the participants making the exchange.

By ordering lockdowns, these governors betrayed the Declaration of Independence “…That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted…” They betrayed us. They betrayed their states. They betrayed their country. They may have done so in panic or mistakenly or to look good or to save lives or for any number of reasons, but there is no doubt. Their lockdowns orders were and are betrayals.

The governors betrayed our principles. There is no point in having principles, such as individual rights to work, to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness, if they are violated hastily and unlawfully and then replaced by their very opposites. It’s worthy of the term “betrayal”

Supposing that our governments are actually designed to possess “…just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…” as the Declaration says, can lockdowns that abrogate natural rights possibly be exercises of “just Powers”? How can government actions that do the very opposite of securing rights, which is the main purpose and end of our governments, be seen as anything other than exercises of UNJUST powers?

To implement one’s right to work generally involves travel on public roads. Does the government’s presence in the system of roads render right to work an empty idea, stymied because of a property rights barrier? Not one whit. Highway departments maintain roads, governments get them built, but the funding comes from taxes at all levels. Taxpayers own the roads, not your City Manager or County Supervisor. They are your agents. The right to work includes rights to travel on the roads, over bridges, through tunnels, etc. Having paid for them, they are your property, jointly owned to be sure, but meant to be available so that you exercise your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They too are essential parts of the larger right to work. They are necessary means, and the use of them cannot coercively be prevented by governments without violating your right to work.

If courts understand and defend the police power as an essential if unstated part of government constitutions, then why should they not also understand and defend the right to work as an essential right of We the People? Why should we all not recognize it and strongly resist its abrogation?

These lockdown orders were extreme. It’s madness to think that putting millions out of work can stop an epidemic, especially one that’s already well underway. Its madness and ignorance to think this can be done without causing a great many more deaths by other follow-on effects of the lockdowns.

In sum, all people, including Americans, have a right to work, a natural right. It follows from the basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And following from the right to work are rights of travel over means paid for by taxpayers, who largely work and also use those means for other ends.

For whatever motivations, governors issued lockdown orders denying the exercise of the right to work, without which life cannot long be sustained. This is reason enough alone to condemn the lockdown measures strongly.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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Forgotten moments from the history of vaccines; yes, history matters « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

Posted by M. C. on May 20, 2020

In part, this recession may be attributed to improved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, 1977

WE need to slough off this promoted bad dream and stand firm against the little gods who traffic their vials in every doctor’s office, hospital, school, drug store, and tented parking lot—making them into shooting galleries.

We already have natural immune systems. They work.

https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/05/19/forgotten-moments-from-the-history-of-vaccines-yes-history-matters/

by Jon Rappoport

Scientific propaganda about vaccines has reached dizzying heights, as officials point the uninformed public toward the Day of Liberation, when a COVID shot, otherwise known as God, will rescue Earth.

Here, from a chapter in my 1988 book, AIDS INC., is an excerpt exposing some of the infamous moments in vaccination history—hidden by the press, or simply forgotten.

For those denialists who cling to the notion that vaccines are remarkably safe and effective, this article is a pill you can swallow, bitter to be sure, but immunizing against the effects of bald lies from the bent medical establishment.

Understand: this is only a partial history of disasters and revelations, and it stops at 1988.

“The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization. In part, this recession may be attributed to improved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, 1977

“In a recent British outbreak of whooping cough, for example, even fully immunized children contracted the disease in fairly large numbers; and the rates of serious complications and death were reduced only slightly. In another recent outbreak of pertussis, 46 of the 85 fully immunized children studied eventually contracted the disease.”

“In 1977, 34 new cases of measles were reported on the campus of UCLA, in a population that was supposedly 91% immune, according to careful serological testing. Another 20 cases of measles were reported in the Pecos, New Mexico, area within a period of a few months in 1981, and 75% of them had been fully immunized, some of them quite recently. A survey of sixth-graders in a well-immunized urban community revealed that about 15% of this age group are still susceptible to rubella, a figure essentially identical with that of the pre-vaccine era.”

“Finally, although the overall incidence of typical acute measles in the U.S. has dropped sharply from about 400,000 cases annually in the early 1960s to about 30,000 cases by 1974-76, the death rate remained exactly the same; and, with the peak incidence now occurring in adolescents and young adults, the risk of pneumonia and demonstrable liver abnormalities has actually increased substantially, according to one recent study, to well over 3% and 2%, respectively.” Richard Moskowitz, MD, The Case Against Immunizations, 1983, American Institute of Homeopathy.

“Of all reported whooping cough cases between 1979 and 1984 in children over 7 months of age – that is, old enough to have received the primary course of the DPT shots (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) – 41% occurred in children who had received three or more shots and 22% in children who had one or two immunizations.”

“Among children under 7 months of age who had whooping cough, 34% had been immunized between one and three times…”

“… Based on the only U.S. findings on adverse DPT reactions, an FDA-financed study at the University of California, Los Angeles, one out of every 350 children will have a convulsion; one in 180 children will experience high-pitched screaming [can indicate brain damage]; and one in 66 will have a fever of 105 degrees or more.” Jennifer Hyman, Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, special supplement on DPT, dated April, 1987.

“A study undertaken in 1979 at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the sponsorship of the Food and Drug Administration, and which has been confirmed by other studies, indicates that in the U.S.A. approximately 1,000 infants die annually as a direct result of DPT vaccinations, and these are classified as SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) deaths. These represent about 10 to 15% of the total number of SIDS deaths occurring annually in the U.S.A. (between 8,000 and 10,000 depending on which statistics are used).” Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, CW Daniel Company Limited, Saffron Walden, Essex, England, 1987.

“Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt, Jr., MD, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, rounded… figures off to 9,000 cases of convulsions, 9,000 cases of collapse, and 17,000 cases of high-pitched screaming for a total of 35,000 acute neurological reactions occurring within forty-eight hours of a DPT shot among America’s children every year.” DPT: A Shot in the Dark, by Harris L. Coulter and Barbara Loe Fischer, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Read the rest of this entry »

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PA Gov. Tom Wolf Signals He’s Open to Federal Investigation into Nursing Homes

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2020

Governor Tommy must have received his medical training the same place as Cuomo.

Masks? Some are just more equal...

Levine admitted last week that he removed his mother from a nursing home during the pandemic.

“My mother requested, and my sister and I as her children complied to move her to another location during the Covid-19 outbreak,” Levine explained. “My mother is 95 years old. She is very intelligent and more than competent to make her own decisions.”

Wolf hired the wrong Levine.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/19/pa-gov-tom-wolf-signals-hes-open-to-federal-investigation-into-nursing-homes/

by Hannah Bleau

Gov. Tom Wolf speaks at a news conference in his Capitol offices as he unveils a $1.1 billion package intended to help eliminate lead and asbestos contamination in Pennsylvania's schools, homes, day care facilities and public water systems, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020 in Harrisburg, Pa. Looking on are Democratic state …

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) on Monday signaled that he is open to a federal investigation into his administration’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in nursing homes, as they comprise the majority of coronavirus deaths in the state…

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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Still, the Global War on Terrorism goes on

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2020

What is more interesting and more telling is the fact that the entire American political class has seemingly concluded that ending the war on terrorism does not qualify as a particular priority. With no expectations of the conflict coming to a conclusion, there is little incentive to expend energy trying to understand it. So all those first order questions to which the Great War was subjected, the GWOT simply evades.

https://outline.com/UYkfmE

The Spectator

Andrew Bacevich

I can think of only a single positive thing to say about World War One: It ended. Yet in addition to precluding any further waste of lives, the Armistice of November 1918 and the ensuing Paris Peace Conference did something else. It allowed historians and other writers to begin taking stock of this ghastly episode, which had caused death and destruction on an unprecedented scale.

Making sense of the so-called Great War exceeded the limits of human capacity. Yet however imperfectly, at least it might be understood. Why had the war happened? Why had it lasted so long? What had motivated the belligerents? What did this horrendous cataclysm signify, both politically and morally? Finally, how could the recurrence of such a debacle be averted?

These were among the questions that gripped European and American intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s. At least initially, efforts to find answers, which centered on apportioning blame, produced more heat than light. But with the passage of time, answers based on reason and the weighing of evidence rather than nationalistic passions took hold. Today, more than a century later, unanimity of opinion remains elusive, but something akin to a consensus has formed. Learning has therefore become possible.

The same cannot be said to the Global War on Terrorism, which may well stand in relation to the 21st century as the Great War does to the 20th. Here, with the crusade that George W. Bush launched in response to 9/11, is where the American imperium — or in Washingtonspeak, American global leadership — came a cropper. So, I believe, future generations are likely to conclude.

Yet it may take a while for scholars to reach that conclusion because unlike the Great War, the GWOT (gee-whot) refuses to end. The military undertaking that President Bush inaugurated nearly 20 years ago still meanders aimlessly along.

US troops today are still out there fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and various other places. For their efforts, they still receive the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal even as the relationship between their service and sacrifice, on the one hand, and the actual security and well-being of the American people, on the other, has become almost impossible to discern.

Barack Obama obliquely and Donald Trump bluntly promised to terminate the wars to which the GWOT gave rise. Neither one has fulfilled that promise. Shame on them. Yet politicians failing to make good on things they vowed to do is not exactly news, whether in the United States or elsewhere.

What is more interesting and more telling is the fact that the entire American political class has seemingly concluded that ending the war on terrorism does not qualify as a particular priority. With no expectations of the conflict coming to a conclusion, there is little incentive to expend energy trying to understand it. So all those first order questions to which the Great War was subjected, the GWOT simply evades.

To a striking extent, members of the American national security establishment have moved on, turning their attention to new ‘threats’, with China presently receiving the lion’s share of attention. In hawkish quarters — the same ones that had urged the United States to embark upon a global offensive in response to 9/11 — the prospect of the United States getting tough on China, with toughness having an important military dimension, now receives enthusiastic support.

That China is an adversary engaged in what is likely to be a long-term competition with the United States is undoubtedly the case. It should be the aim of US policy to manage the competition, not to exacerbate it.

Considered in that light, the prospect of that competition leading directly to a new Cold War, with Beijing standing in for Moscow, should give Americans pause. A new Cold War will necessarily risk real war, potentially resulting in armed conflict on a scale that will make the GWOT look like a skirmish. Even if direct hostilities between China and the United States are avoided, such a strategy will perpetuate the influence of the military-industrial complex, with domestic needs shelved or ignored, and it will deflect attention from threats such as climate change that oblige Washington to collaborate with Beijing. Like it or not, given that restoring a semblance of prosperity after the coronavirus pandemic will require some level of Sino-American mutual accommodation, a new Cold War will delay or prevent economic recovery.

How can it be that a strategy reliant chiefly on the threatened use of military power to deal with China receives serious consideration in Washington circles? There are two answers to that question. The first is that the national security establishment is braindead, its constituent parts so deeply militarized that they are incapable of devising policies other than those based on amassing and preparing to employ armed force. The second reason, related to the first, is the absence of any mechanism of accountability. Nothing exists to oblige the national security establishment to acknowledge and learn from its past failures.

The Global War on Terrorism is one such failure, one that authorities in Washington conspire to ignore even as the war itself persists, with no end in sight.

Evading the basic questions to which the Great War was subjected — above all the question of how to avert any recurrence of a debacle akin to the GWOT — has become in our own day intolerable. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that in this year of national elections either political party will demonstrate the courage to take those questions on.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

 

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The Rutherford Institute :: The Worst Is Yet to Come: Contact Tracing, Immunity Cards and Mass Testing | By John W. Whitehead |

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2020

This war on COVID-19 will be yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry at the government’s disposal: thermal imaging cameras, drones, contact tracing, biometric databases, etc.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_worst_is_yet_to_come_contact_tracing_immunity_cards_and_mass_testing

By John W. Whitehead

“The things we were worried would happen are happening.”—Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York

No one is safe.

No one is immune.

No one gets spared the anguish, fear and heartache of living under the shadow of an authoritarian police state.

That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every sensationalist news story that titillates and distracts, every new prison or detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, every school that opts to indoctrinate rather than educate, and every new justification for why Americans should comply with the government’s attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot.

Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

Now there’s talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

These may seem like small, necessary steps in the war against the COVID-19 virus, but they’re only necessary to the police state in its efforts to further undermine the Constitution, extend its control over the populace, and feed its insatiable appetite for ever-greater powers.

Nothing is ever as simple as the government claims it is.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police.

The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention.

The war on immigration turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”

This war on COVID-19 will be yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry at the government’s disposal: thermal imaging cameras, drones, contact tracing, biometric databases, etc.

So you see, when you talk about empowering government agents to screen the populace in order to control and prevent spread of this virus, what you’re really talking about is creating a society in which ID cards, round ups, checkpoints and detention centers become routine weapons used by the government to control and suppress the populace, no matter the threat.

This is also how you pave the way for a national identification system of epic proportions.

Imagine it: a national classification system that not only categorizes you according to your health status but also allows the government to sort you in a hundred other ways: by gender, orientation, wealth, medical condition, religious beliefs, political viewpoint, legal status, etc.

Are you starting to get the bigger picture yet?

This is just another wolf in sheep’s clothing, a “show me your papers” scheme disguised as a means of fighting a virus.

Don’t fall for it.

The ramifications of such a “show me your papers” society in which government officials are empowered to stop individuals, demand they identify themselves, and subject them to patdowns, warrantless screenings, searches, and interrogations are beyond chilling.

By allowing government agents to establish a litmus test for individuals to be able to exit a state of lockdown and engage in commerce, movement and any other right that corresponds to life in a supposedly free society, it lays the groundwork for a society in which you are required to identify yourself at any time to any government worker who demands it for any reason.

Such tactics quickly lead one down a slippery slope that ends with government agents empowered to force anyone and everyone to prove they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books.

It used to be that unless police had a reasonable suspicion that a person was guilty of wrongdoing, they had no legal authority to stop the person and require identification. In other words, “we the people” had the right to come and go as we please without the fear of being questioned by police or forced to identify ourselves.

Unfortunately, in this age of COVID-19, that unrestricted right to move about freely is being pitted against the government’s power to lock down communities at a moment’s notice. And in this tug-of-war between individual freedoms and government power, “we the people” have been on the losing end of the deal.

Curiously enough, these COVID-19 restrictions dovetail conveniently with a national timeline for states to comply with the Real ID Act, which imposes federal standards on identity documents such as state drivers’ licenses, a prelude to this national identification system.

Talk about a perfect storm for bringing about a national ID card, the ultimate human tracking device.

Granted, in the absence of a national ID card, which would make the police state’s task of monitoring, tracking and singling out individual suspects far simpler, “we the people” are already tracked in a myriad of ways: through our state driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, bank accounts, purchases and electronic transactions; by way of our correspondence and communication devices—email, phone calls and mobile phones; through chips implanted in our vehicles, identification documents, even our clothing.

Add to this the fact that businesses, schools and other facilities are relying more and more on fingerprints and facial recognition to identify us. All the while, data companies such as Acxiom are capturing vast caches of personal information to help airports, retailers, police and other government authorities instantly determine whether someone is the person he or she claims to be.

This informational glut—used to great advantage by both the government and corporate sectors—has converged into a mandate for “an internal passport,” a.k.a., a national ID card that would store information as basic as a person’s name, birth date and place of birth, as well as private information, including a Social Security number, fingerprint, retinal scan and personal, criminal and financial records.

A federalized, computerized, cross-referenced, databased system of identification policed by government agents would be the final nail in the coffin for privacy (not to mention a logistical security nightmare that would leave Americans even more vulnerable to every hacker in the cybersphere).

Americans have always resisted adopting a national ID card for good reason: it gives the government and its agents the ultimate power to target, track and terrorize the populace according to the government’s own nefarious purposes.

National ID card systems have been used before, by other oppressive governments, in the name of national security, invariably with horrifying results.

For instance, in Germany, the Nazis required all Jews to carry special stamped ID cards for travel within the country. A prelude to the yellow Star of David badges, these stamped cards were instrumental in identifying Jews for deportation to death camps in Poland.

Author Raul Hilberg summarizes the impact that such a system had on the Jews:

The whole identification system, with its personal documents, specially assigned names, and conspicuous tagging in public, was a powerful weapon in the hands of the police. First, the system was an auxiliary device that facilitated the enforcement of residence and movement restrictions. Second, it was an independent control measure in that it enabled the police to pick up any Jew, anywhere, anytime. Third, and perhaps most important, identification had a paralyzing effect on its victims.

In South Africa during apartheid, pass books were used to regulate the movement of black citizens and segregate the population. The Pass Laws Act of 1952 stipulated where, when and for how long a black African could remain in certain areas. Any government employee could strike out entries, which cancelled the permission to remain in an area. A pass book that did not have a valid entry resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of the bearer.

Identity cards played a crucial role in the genocide of the Tutsis in the central African country of Rwanda. The assault, carried out by extremist Hutu militia groups, lasted around 100 days and resulted in close to a million deaths. While the ID cards were not a precondition to the genocide, they were a facilitating factor. Once the genocide began, the production of an identity card with the designation “Tutsi” spelled a death sentence at any roadblock.

Identity cards have also helped oppressive regimes carry out eliminationist policies such as mass expulsion, forced relocation and group denationalization. Through the use of identity cards, Ethiopian authorities were able to identify people with Eritrean affiliation during the mass expulsion of 1998. The Vietnamese government was able to locate ethnic Chinese more easily during their 1978-79 expulsion. The USSR used identity cards to force the relocation of ethnic Koreans (1937), Volga Germans (1941), Kamyks and Karachai (1943), Crimean Tartars, Meshkhetian Turks, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars (1944) and ethnic Greeks (1949). And ethnic Vietnamese were identified for group denationalization through identity cards in Cambodia in 1993, as were the Kurds in Syria in 1962.

And in the United States, post-9/11, more than 750 Muslim men were rounded up on the basis of their religion and ethnicity and detained for up to eight months. Their experiences echo those of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were similarly detained 75 years ago following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Despite a belated apology and monetary issuance by the U.S. government, the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to declare such a practice illegal. Moreover, laws such as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) empower the government to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone they “suspect” of being an enemy of the state.

You see, you may be innocent of wrongdoing now, but when the standard for innocence is set by the government, no one is safe.

Everyone is a suspect.

And anyone can be a criminal when it’s the government determining what is a crime.

It’s no longer a matter of if, but when.

Remember, the police state does not discriminate.

At some point, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white. It will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen. It will not matter whether you’re rich or poor. It won’t even matter whether you’re driving, flying or walking.

After all, government-issued bullets will kill you just as easily whether you’re a law-abiding citizen or a hardened criminal. Government jails will hold you just as easily whether you’ve obeyed every law or broken a dozen. And whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, government agents will treat you like a suspect simply because they have been trained to view and treat everyone like potential criminals.

Eventually, when the police state has turned that final screw and slammed that final door, all that will matter is whether some government agent—poorly trained, utterly ignorant and dismissive of the Constitution, way too hyped up on the power of their badges, and authorized to detain, search, interrogate, threaten and generally harass anyone they see fit—chooses to single you out for special treatment.

We’ve been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we don’t seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.

All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government today—warrantless surveillance, stop and frisk searches, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, indefinite detention, militarized police, etc.—started out as a seemingly well-meaning plan to address some problem in society that needed a little extra help.

Be careful what you wish for: you will get more than you bargained for, especially when the government’s involved.

In the case of a national identification system, it might start off as a means of tracking COVID-19 cases in order to “safely” re-open the nation, but it will end up as a means of controlling the American people.

For those tempted to justify these draconian measures for whatever reason—for the sake of their health, the economy, or national security—remember, you can’t have it both ways.

You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if you’re inclined to advance this double standard because you believe you have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, beware: there’s always a boomerang effect.

 

 

 

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Government Licensing Is Just As Illegitimate – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2020

But the occupations necessitating a license and the requirements to obtain a license vary so widely from state to state that the whole process seems quite arbitrary and illogical. And besides, since when is it the proper role of government to forbid or permit people to exercise what should be their natural right to make a living? Since when is it the proper role of government to forbid or permit people to freely contract with other people to provide them services?

Although the states opening up and removing the ridiculous restrictions
they have imposed on businesses because of the coronavirus insanity is a
good and necessary thing, it does not mean that we will be returning to
a free society—not when Americans still need permission from the
government to work. Government licensing needs to be done away with
along with government lockdowns and restrictions.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/laurence-m-vance/government-licensing-is-just-as-illegitimate/

By

Karl Manke, a barber in the fascist state of Michigan, recently opened his barbershop in downtown Owosso in violation of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order for non-essential businesses to remain closed. He has been following all of the ridiculous government safety guidelines: wearing masks, social distancing, and using an ultraviolet sanitizer on his tools.

Customers came from around Michigan and waited hours to get their hair cut. “I’m doing walk-ins, appointments, working people in between appointments,” Manke said. “It’s hard, but I love doing it. I’m so grateful I can make a living again.” The 77-year-old barber said that he was “not trying to prove some point,” but just “needed to get back to work.” Governor Whitmer “is not my mother,” he added. “We’re not children, we can manage our own lives.”

Manke received a citation for violating the executive order on the third day he was open. He also faces two misdemeanor charges for reopening his shop despite state shutdown orders: a health department violation and the governor’s executive order violation.

So, what else did the state of Michigan do? It revoked his barber’s license.

Elsewhere in the “land of the free,” restaurants that are reopening in violation of governors’ executive orders are being threatened with having their liquor licenses taken away.

In the fascist state of Pennsylvania, politicians in Beaver, Dauphin, and Lebanon counties declared that their counties would begin returning to business as usual on May 15. “It is time to reopen the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and return our state to the people (as prescribed by our Constitution) and not run it as a dictatorship,” Dauphin County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jeff Haste wrote on May 8.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic fascist governor, Tom Wolf, responded with a threat “to withhold federal stimulus money from counties—and take away liquor licenses from restaurants—that open up in defiance of state law”; that is, his decree. Said the governor:

The enemy is a deadly virus set on destroying us. Yet, over this past weekend, some have decided to surrender to this enemy. These are politicians who were elected to serve their fellow citizens. Others are business owners who have chosen to serve their customers by putting them in harm’s way. These folks are choosing to desert in the face of the enemy.

There will be a price to pay for this “morally wrong” behavior.

To those politicians who decide to cave in to this coronavirus, they need to understand the consequences of their cowardly act.

A greater enemy than the virus is the Pennsylvania governor.

All of this state-level fascism brings up a point that most people are not thinking about: government licensing is just as illegitimate as government decrees ordering businesses to shut down.

Since, as the Michigan barber said, the governor is not our mother, and neither are government bureaucrats our fathers, babysitters, caretakers, or nannies, why is it that adults must get permission from the government to open a business, engage in commerce, work in certain occupations, have a particular vocation, or provide a service to willing customers? In other words, why do Americans need permission from the government to work?

An occupational license is simply a certificate of permission and approval from a government-sponsored board that a job-seeker is required to obtain before he can begin working in a certain occupation. These licenses are most commonly issued by state governments.

And it’s not just professionals like as doctors, lawyers, dentists, and accountants who must obtain a government license. Many other occupations are licensed as well: barbers, auctioneers, child-care workers, animal breeders, manicurists, interior designers, emergency medical technicians, skin-care specialists, upholsterers, hair shampooers, bill collectors, fire-alarm installers, midwives, make-up artists, crane operators, fishermen, security guards, security-alarm installers, coaches, taxidermists, sign-language interpreters, locksmiths, bartenders, taxi drivers, pest-control applicators, funeral attendants, and travel agents. It all depends on the state one lives in.

Proponents of occupational licensing would have us believe that without such government intervention in the economy, businesses would be full of untrained, incompetent, uneducated, unqualified, unscrupulous workers who would take advantage of consumers, rip them off, provide them with poor quality service, injure them, and possibly kill them.

But the occupations necessitating a license and the requirements to obtain a license vary so widely from state to state that the whole process seems quite arbitrary and illogical. And besides, since when is it the proper role of government to forbid or permit people to exercise what should be their natural right to make a living? Since when is it the proper role of government to forbid or permit people to freely contract with other people to provide them services?

Although the states opening up and removing the ridiculous restrictions they have imposed on businesses because of the coronavirus insanity is a good and necessary thing, it does not mean that we will be returning to a free society—not when Americans still need permission from the government to work. Government licensing needs to be done away with along with government lockdowns and restrictions.

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Freedom’s Final Resting Place – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2020

All it takes, of course, is the caveat of Individual Responsibility. Having no one to blame is a giant step most are unwilling or unable to make.

So the cycle of human nature is complete: The Masters need the Slaves and the Slaves are OK with that. Freedom only becomes attractive when Slavery gets ugly. As long as one can trade work, time, life for a Happy Meal, Super Bowl and Big Screen TV, life is Good! Carry on…

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/brian-wilson/freedoms-final-resting-place/

By

The political soap opera has reached Jump The Shark proportions. The clear reality of the police state and the ballet of the characters supporting and advancing it is too far along for critiquing, much less even attempting to warn a somnolent citizenry. You know how cranky children get when they don’t “get their nap out” or, even worse, when they don’t get their way. It’s beyond time to switch from Instructively Advising to Outright Condemnation. At least the latter has a morally cleansing effect. Alas, the human race continues to disappoint.

The upside, tho, is the wellspring of sustainable observations that support the concept of Anarchy as the final resting place for Freedom. Self-governance, the absence of laws and burden of man-made external force is as close as anyone will be able to approach Perfection. All it takes, of course, is the caveat of Individual Responsibility. Having no one to blame is a giant step most are unwilling or unable to make.

But from a purely political perspective, the Ds and Rs have thoroughly demonstrated the inability of Man to govern Man. Call it ‘Human Nature’, ‘Imperfection’,’ Bullshit-On-A-Stick’…labels are only required to wrap up the definition with easily-stored names. Libertarians – as a party – are the side-show to the center ring of the political circus that comes to town every 4 years, with those foreplay-to-quickie “mid-terms” in-between. The Libertarian Party is a summary of libertarian contradiction. Like the Ds and Rs, they have constructed an unsustainable “platform” even their Party does not support (except to talk show hosts and Letters To The Editor). I don’t know which is more laughable: the LP struggling to get a million votes nationally or a million dollars in campaign donations. Then there is the insurmountable Political Establishment, the suffocating Bureaucratic Machine and the unanswerable challenge: “If I vote for you, the Democrat will win.” And that doesn’t even address the conflict of the Non-Aggression Principle, the cornerstone of Libertarianism, which creates the next embarrassing question: How does a Libertarian hold an elected office that relies on the initiation of the Force of Government? The only answer is: Can’t (unless he wants to swell the ranks of the Dead Hypocrites Society.

And that leaves Anarchy as the Last Alternative Standing for those looking for a personal governance track to run on. You are your own President, King, Ruler for Life! Your welfare is your concern. Your life is yours to live, love, spend, waste as you wish. The only Don’t is initiating force against another – unless, of course, you want to up the ante on the “waste your life” option listed above since your violation of another’s right to live in similar anarchistic freedom will likely cost you yours. How simple and perfect is that?

Mutual cooperation if desired…mutual respect as a logical extension of everyone’s desire to live peacefully and be left alone, free from the initiation of force requiring one to live the way another decides. Anarchy is the only hope for the majority of humans. Or maybe not the “majority”. Maybe the majority will be satisfied being “cared for” by those who just can’t resist telling others how happy they would be if they just did “it” their way. In return, They will give Them the security of bondage to an imposed standard, like discipline for children; the security of enforced boundaries beyond which they cannot be trusted to be self-sustaining much less self-disciplining. So the cycle of human nature is complete: The Masters need the Slaves and the Slaves are OK with that. Freedom only becomes attractive when Slavery gets ugly. As long as one can trade work, time, life for a Happy Meal, Super Bowl and Big Screen TV, life is Good! Carry on…

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Another Reason Why This ‘Pandemic’ Is Looking More Like A Social Engineering Experiment – Collective Evolution

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2020

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2020/05/18/another-reason-why-this-pandemic-is-looking-more-like-a-social-engineering-experiment/

CE Staff Writer

In Brief

  • The Facts:The ‘thanks’ proffered by our authority to our health-care workers during this pandemic is so ubiquitous, it should have us all wondering about the true motive behind it.
  • Reflect On:What would our world be like if we were no longer affected by our authority’s tried-and-true social programming methods?

Why This Pandemic Is Looking More Like A Social Engineering Experiment, Part 1

When something is repeated over and over, it often has the capacity to put us to sleep. But occasionally, it has the opposite effect. Sometimes in the wake of redundant messaging our senses are aroused to a bitter taste or a stale odor that tells us something is just not right.

I had such an experience in tuning in to Ontario’s daily COVID-19 briefing today which I had done, optimistically, to see if there was any advance on when schools would be opening for my 6-year old. (no such luck). It came at the beginning of health minister Christine Elliot’s segment:

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge and celebrate our amazing nurses, on this first day of National Nurses Week. Day and night our heroic nurses work tirelessly to care for the people of Ontario. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Over the past few months, Ontario’s health care system has demonstrated remarkable responsiveness to the COVID-19 outbreak. That is in large part to our partners on the front lines, including our nurses, doctors, homecare, hospital and long-term care staff, personal support workers, and first-responders among many others. As we’ve confronted COVID-19, we’ve made historic investments to dramatically expand hospital capacity, and support the brave heroes working on the front lines of our healthcare system.

Elliot was literally gushing as she extolled the virtues of our health care workers. It was almost as though she had convinced herself that her plaudits were sincere.

What’s The Motive?

The surface political motive for many of our leaders to heap praise on health care workers, and encourage the public to do the same, is fairly straightforward. In thanking others, one gets to bask in the reflected glory of their accomplishments.

But upon deeper reflection, one can see that this strategy is so widely employed in the case of this pandemic because it simultaneously touches on all the bases that our authority want conveyed during their public proclamations. In fact, there are few social programming techniques that I can think of that are more powerful or effective. Let’s touch on a few of the bases ourselves:

Amplifying the Severity of the Pandemic. Through the clever sleight-of-hand of the praise of others, which the listening audience tends to take in readily with their guard down and their discernment filters on pause, the speaker is able to fully convince us of the danger we are facing, by commending health care workers for being willing to confront this danger. The more heroic we are made to think they are, the more danger that is implied. While the praise towards our fellow human beings (who are not part of the authority) makes us feel good to a certain extent, what is really being heightened in us is that low-level fear that this virus is lurking, ready to pounce on us at any misstep. A public that is in this state of fear is much easier to control and manipulate.

 

Legitimizing Western medicine. Listen to her terminology. ‘our partners on the front lines…the brave heroes working on the front lines.’ Why ‘Front lines’? Why is health care a ‘fight,’ always some kind of ‘war’? Because this has been the pre-eminent strategy of Western medicine all along–to make us feel that there has been an enemy invasion (a virus). To make us feel that our body does not have the necessary defense mechanisms (Western medicine virtually ignores our immune system). To make us feel that we are under attack, need protection, and the army of doctors and researchers spawned from Western medical school is our only hope (of course this is why traditional medicine, which works in concert with the immune system, has for so long been labelled quackery and pseudoscience).

Reinforcing government authority. In praising the health care workers and the system they operate within, our authority is actually reinforcing its own praiseworthiness without saying it directly. Instead, the government is seen as the benevolent manager of the whole process, ‘partnering’ with those laudable heroes in the health care system. So when the government brags that they’ve ‘made historic investments to dramatically expand hospital capacity,’ should we be standing up and applauding? Or should we be asking, if this whole government-medical system partnership is working so well, shouldn’t we be seeing a reduction in hospital beds instead of a constant increase? Shouldn’t the citizens as a whole be getting healthier, rather than getting sicker and more in need of drugs and treatments, as all the evidence and statistics tell us?

Nobody’s Knocking Our Health Care Workers

Now before anybody starts saying I’m knocking our health care workers, stop. Actually, if you’ve gotten this far in the article, I probably don’t have to worry about you. It is those who just read the headlines and then feel justified in making their outrage known on Facebook about seeing ‘another ridiculous conspiracy theory.’ The fact is, a bit of honest reflection will force us to admit that at some level we all know that our authority is trying to pull something on us every time they speak.

Just for the record, I believe health care is a very noble profession, with a majority of those working within the system being truly dedicated to the health and well-being of the patients they come into contact with.

However, this pandemic has not turned everybody working in health care into Florence Nightengales, as our leaders and mainstream media would have us believe. Those who were competent and caring in 2018 and 2019 are competent and caring in 2020 during this pandemic. Those who were incompetent and apathetic to their patients in the past have for the most part probably remained that way under the circumstances we currently face. Like in any occupation, there are good workers and bad workers. When a patient says ‘thank-you’ to a nurse or doctor for their service and care, it is spontaneous and authentic. It is meaningful. On the other hand, calling on the entire public to say ‘thank you’ to all health care workers, in speeches and promotional ads everywhere, 24/7, is likely staged and grounded in a very different agenda.

The Takeaway

The sooner we see through the motives behind these attempts to tell us what to think and how to feel, the sooner we will have a society founded on truth and authenticity.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Listening to the Coronavirus ‘Experts’ Has Led to Death and Despair

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2020

Americans should pause and reflect on the lies they are being sold. Masks are just a form of psychological manipulation. Many reputable physicians and scientists have said they are worthless and potentially harmful. Lockdowns are meant to condition people to obey without question.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/may/18/listening-to-the-coronavirus-experts-has-led-to-death-and-despair/

Written by Ron Paul

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On April 21st the Washington Post savaged Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s decision to begin opening his state after locking down for weeks. “Georgia leads the race to become America’s No. 1 Death Destination,” sneered the headline.

The author, liberal pundit Dana Milbank, actually found the possibility of Georgians dying to be hilarious, suggesting that, “as a promotion, Georgia could offer ventilators to the first 100 hotel guests to register.”

Milbank, who is obviously still getting paid while millions are out of work, sees his job as pushing the mainstream narrative that we must remain in fear and never question what “experts” like Dr. Fauci tell us.

Well it’s been three weeks since Milbank’s attack on Georgia and its governor, predicting widespread death which he found humorous. His predictions are about as worthless as his character. Not only has Georgia not seen “coronavirus…burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman,” as Milbank laughed, but Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have seen a steep decline since the governor began opening the state.

Maybe getting out in the fresh air and sunshine should not have been prohibited in the first place!

In fact, as we now have much more data, it is becoming increasingly clear that the US states and the countries that locked down the tightest also suffered the highest death rates. Ultra locked-down Italy suffered 495 Covid deaths per million while relatively non-locked down South Korea suffered only five deaths per million. The same is true in the US, where non lockdown states like South Dakota were relatively untouched by the virus while authoritarian-led Michigan, New York, and California have been hardest hit.

In those hardest hit states, we are now seeing that most of the deaths occurred in senior care facilities – after the governors ordered patients sick with Covid to leave the hospitals and return to their facilities. There, they infected their fellow residents who were most likely to have the multiple co-morbidities and advanced age that turned the virus into a death sentence. Will these governors be made to answer for this callous disregard for life?

Yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar admitted the obvious: “We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases.” So why not open everything? Because these petty tyrants cannot stand the idea of losing the ability to push people around.

Shutting down the entire United States over a virus that looks to be less deadly than an average flu virus – particularly among those under 80 who are not already sick – has resulted in mass unemployment and economic destruction. More Americans may die from the wrong-headed efforts to fight the virus than from the virus itself.

Americans should pause and reflect on the lies they are being sold. Masks are just a form of psychological manipulation. Many reputable physicians and scientists have said they are worthless and potentially harmful. Lockdowns are meant to condition people to obey without question. A nation of people who just do what they are told by the “experts” without question is a nation ripe for a descent into total tyranny. This is no empty warning – it’s backed up by history. Time to stand up to all the petty tyrants from our hometowns to Washington DC. It is time to reclaim our freedom.

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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