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Posts Tagged ‘Lockdown’

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Governments don’t know what to do about Covid-19, but they’ll lock us down before admitting it — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on April 29, 2020

Telling entire populations not to go anywhere is not a plan; it’s a lack of one.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/487094-governments-covid19-lock-down/

Simon Rite

Most governments, institutions and experts don’t know the best way to deal with the coronavirus – that’s pretty obvious at this point – but they’ll never admit it publicly.

First, let’s start with some sympathy; global pandemics don’t happen every week, so it’s absolutely understandable that responding to one involves a level of improvisation for all involved.

Some nations are on lockdown, some aren’t. Some order populations to wear masks, some don’t. But honestly, they don’t even know how many people have Covid-19 or have died from it. Don’t fall for the show of confidence; it’s guesswork at this point.

The lockdowns are an obvious sign. Telling entire populations not to go anywhere is not a plan; it’s a lack of one. Think about all the times you’ve screamed “Don’t move.” Did you shout it because you had a strategy, or because you needed time to come up with one? Every time a lockdown is extended, it’s an admission that the authorities need a little more thinking time.

 

That’s why one characteristic of this crisis has been the array of methods used to say “We don’t know” without actually saying it. Governments deflect to the science, the science relies on the numbers, and journalists try to sound like they know what should be done while blaming the government. And on it goes.

Look, it’s the nature of politics that, whether they’re worried about re-election or avoiding uprisings and public lynchings, there is very little to be gained for governments in admitting ignorance. When trying to sell BS, it’s essential to do it with confidence.

Take the British government. The past masters of arse-covering phraseology have come up with “We’re being guided by the science.” This little motto was invaluable when the initial strategy of trying to achieve ‘herd immunity’ was slammed into reverse and replaced with legally enforced Netflix and chill.

The U-turn happened because there is no “the science” to be guided by; there are, in fact, all kinds of science you can choose from, depending which is the most politically expedient.

This is a brand new virus, and scientists are scratching their heads about what to do just like everyone else. While one group of boffins can concoct a model showing 97% of the population will be dead by Thursday lunchtime if a bat sneezes, another will produce a table of numbers suggesting only pensioners with advanced pneumonia and intimate knowledge of pangolins are at risk.

In the UK, Imperial College London came up with a deeply pessimistic prediction for the fatality rate among those who catch Covid-19, while another group at Oxford University predicted that large parts of the population may already have had it and not really noticed. In other words, neither group really knew.

The uncertainty of science can be a deeply flawed basis for guiding politicians who have to exude confidence. The scientific method involves a hypothesis (aka a wild guess) being drawn up before attempts are made to disprove it. That’s great, but once a government chooses a specific scientist’s model to guide policy, it becomes almost impossible to admit that it may not be 100% correct. And if the one they chose happens to be the most pessimistic, it becomes very hard to find a way out of lockdown after the population has been left petrified.

This is why I want to shout out to Sweden’s government, who have gone one step further in following the science and essentially put a scientist in charge. State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell is the driving force behind the Swedish refusal to close down society in the way much of the rest of the world has. He is the hero of this piece, because when he was asked how he knows it’s better not to shut restaurants and schools, he said that he didn’t know, but neither did anyone else. Honesty at last!

There is another phenomenon at play with Sweden though, as I get the impression that there’s a clamour for the strategy to fail miserably. Because at least then, other governments can say: “Sure, we didn’t know what we were doing, but at least we knew more than the Swedes!”

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Next in Coronavirus Tyranny: Forced Vaccinations and ‘Digital Certificates’

Posted by M. C. on April 28, 2020

Proponents of mandatory vaccines and enhanced surveillance are trying to blackmail the American people by arguing that the lockdown cannot end unless we create a healthcare surveillance state and make vaccination mandatory. The growing number of Americans who are tired of not being able to go to work, school, or church, or even to take their children to a park because of government mandates should reject this “deal.”

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/april/27/next-in-coronavirus-tyranny-forced-vaccinations-and-digital-certificates/

Written by Ron Paul

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In my first week in the House of Representatives in 1976, I cast one of the two votes against legislation appropriating funds for a swine flu vaccination program. A swine flu outbreak was then dominating headlines, so most in DC were frantic to “do something” about the virus.

Unfortunately, the hastily developed and rushed-into-production swine flu vaccine was not only ineffective, it was dangerous. Approximately 50 people who received the vaccine subsequently contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome, a potentially fatal form of paralysis. According to an expert with the Centers for Disease Control, the incidence of Guillain-Barré was four times higher among those who received the swine flu vaccine than in the general population.

That sad history may soon repeat itself. Right now, governments and private industries are working to rapidly develop and deploy a coronavirus vaccine. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is a major funder of these efforts, has suggested everyone who receives a vaccine be issued a “digital certificate” proving he has been vaccinated. Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose record of wrong predictions makes him the Bill Kristol of epidemiology, also wants individuals to carry some proof they have been vaccinated.

Another authoritarian proposal floated to deal with coronavirus is to force everyone to download a phone app that will track their movements. This would allow government officials to identify those who may have been near anyone who may have had coronavirus. Such mandatory “contact tracing” is an assault on our privacy and liberty.

Vaccines can improve health. For example, vaccines helped reduce the incidence of diseases like polio. But not all vaccines are safe and effective for all people. Furthermore, certain modern practices, such as giving infants multiple vaccines at one time, may cause health problems. The fact that vaccines may benefit some people, or even most people, does not justify government forcing individuals to be vaccinated. It also does not justify vaccinating children against their parents’ wishes. And it certainly does not justify keeping individuals and families in involuntary quarantine because they do not have “digital certificates” proving they have had their shots.

If government can force individuals to receive medical treatment against their will, then there is no reason why government cannot force individuals to buy medical insurance, prohibit them from owning firearms, dictate their terms of employment, and prevent them from taking arguably harmful actions like smoking marijuana or drinking raw milk. Similarly, if government can override parents’ wishes regarding medical treatment for their children, then there is no reason why government cannot usurp parental authority in other areas, such as education.

Proponents of mandatory vaccines and enhanced surveillance are trying to blackmail the American people by arguing that the lockdown cannot end unless we create a healthcare surveillance state and make vaccination mandatory. The growing number of Americans who are tired of not being able to go to work, school, or church, or even to take their children to a park because of government mandates should reject this “deal.” Instead, they should demand an immediate end to the lockdowns and the restoration of individual responsibility for deciding how best to protect their health.

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Open Letter From a Pastor: Can We At Least Let the Children Play? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 25, 2020

This was courage in a city of cowering people, going through every which means of contortion in order to comply: the face masks that probably don’t work, the social distancing that probably doesn’t work, the quarantines which almost certainly don’t work, the shameful ‘essential workers only’ mandate which evokes this.

Even the USSR had no massive peacetime lockdown of hundreds of millions like this. The atheist communists couldn’t manage to close churches like America has done this spring………

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/no_author/open-letter-from-a-pastor-can-we-at-least-let-the-children-play/

By Pastor Rich Little

Pastor Rich Little sent this message to friends, family, and leaders in his Michigan community on April 9, 2020.

All Brothers & Sisters in Christ –

I have been trying very hard to “stick to my lane,” as I was told when I was in the Army, and concentrate on Christ and the Gospel as a pastor during this crisis.

Truly, the Lord and His Word is the one eternal thing that endures and matters, and will save us in the end – His promise of forgiveness and life are literally all we have.

However, as a human being, deeply flawed and self-serving and sinful as I am, I can’t help but being very upset and dismayed by what I see taking place around me. So I am going to take a bit of a risk, perhaps going “out of my lane” a bit, and speak from my heart now on what I see going on in the world, because what I saw today disturbed and saddened me greatly. 

We live in a county in Upper Michigan that has zero cases of this virus. Yet, children are not only not legally permitted to play with one another outside of immediate family (by order of the Governor), but now our local officials have seen fit to put chains and locks on the playgrounds.

Think about that: chains and locks on the playgrounds!

As I have been taking my 10-year-old granddaughter, Lorelei, out daily, so she gets some fresh air and sunlight in God’s good creation, the playgrounds were the one place where we could play and have fun and be, well human again – no fear, no stress, just love and fun. Now, that’s gone too.

What next? Arresting people for walking too much? What price are we paying here when we become so myopically focused on “flattening the curve” or even “saving just one life” that, even if we are still physically alive at the end of all this, it now feels much more like death and hell than actual life? And make no mistake about it, this is a foretaste of what hell is like: being alone, afraid, suspicious of others, constantly in fear of others as a threat to your life – self-preservation above all.

Yes, this coronavirus is new and scary and some people are dying if not of, at least in part, from it. We can debate numbers and how many of this and that and what to do etc. We can even also debate if we are being short-term “wise” but being “long-term” foolish as the economic costs add up to many future lives lost too.

But I think that all of you have pretty much already formulated from whatever source you have gotten your information where you stand on all that stuff. I am not trying to talk you out of that as it’s almost an impossibility, as the one truly defining characteristic of sinners, that is to say humans, is that we are natural “self-justifiers” and we will go to great lengths to be “right,” even if wrong (all of us are both right and wrong on this factually to one degree or another).

So, again, I am not writing this paragraph of this message with the hopes of trying to talk you out of your opinions but I would just like to point out once more, as we are all sinners, none of us gets to claim to be righteous before God in their opinions or actions in all of this. To our sin, Christ says “I forgive you.” He alone makes us right before God. So where you stand on this is not a “right hand kingdom” or salvation issue. This is not a matter of the Gospel. It’s a matter of the law and how we live in the earthly or “left hand kingdom” for now until Christ’s return.

Having said that, one of the great gifts we receive from Christ, as His chosen, forgiven sinners (Christians) is that even as we patiently await Our Lord’s return, and with it the new age of grace, He alone will usher in. We do receive back this old creation (the earthly or “left hand kingdom”) for now to love and to care in our humanity for as it is still God’s good work too. In this regard, in our humanity, we work hard to care for God’s creation and our neighbors. In this capacity, we are all called to fight evil as we see it under the law. The law is for now God’s gift to preserve life and order in this age, and I can’t help but feel a great evil is at work here beyond whatever deaths or economic ruin this virus may bring. The evil is we are losing our humanity.

What truly saddens, and what I think is a great evil, is that we fail to recognize that we lose our humanity by not realizing that there are many other forms of dying we can experience before physical death.

Living in constant fear, not only of some virus, but of the people around you too – either that they may be carriers of the infection or informers to the police that you are a “violator” of the “orders” – so we go about our day, even the best of us who recognize the problem and try to fight off this urge to fear, suspicious of the intentions of others. Not that we didn’t have this tendency toward self-preservation before, as sinners, but now it is on the loose “on steroids,” as the expression goes.

This constant looking over one’s shoulders is a powerful form of dying before physical death, I think. We are now looking not with charity to our neighbors who actually simply want to get on with the business of being human, but are actually treating them as criminals, or somehow selfish, for somehow posing a hypothetical risk of being disease carriers.

Were we not enjoined by Luther in the 8th Commandment to “think well of our neighbor, promote their good name, property, etc”? I know we fail in this regard routinely, but how can we even remotely attempt to do this under these circumstances?

Last night, as I was surfing the internet news late, as my sleep is not the best now either, I ran across this story that literally made me cry as it summed my personal experience today ironically and incredibly well.

As I acknowledged, yes, we all have our own opinions on this virus, the “lockdown”, etc and I know this person has a particular bias too; certainly politically he is biased toward personal liberty. But, then again, we all have our own biases. So yeah, there is stuff you may disagree with in the article – perhaps strongly disagree with or even say is “dangerous” and that’s okay.

I am not trying to impose an opinion on you, even if I am perhaps very poorly trying to express my own opinion. But I do think the author does capture what, from my perspective, is an important eternal, biblical truth quite well. In our never-ending quest for health, “safety,” and security in this world for our physical lives, are we not actually, in the process actually failing to live out our humanity in love?

I will just give you with this short quote from the article to consider as the sheer, simply beautiful truth of it touched the deepest reaches of my heart:

“But there she was.

Here was a mother bucking that, taking her son to the playground. A profile in courage, in the midst of corona.

And before long, the father followed with their dog, who was also happy to get out.

They ran about the morning park, availing themselves of the beautiful playground that everyone else was too gullible and cowardly to visit. Dozens of parents an hour would pass through that park just a few weeks earlier.

This was courage in a city of cowering people, going through every which means of contortion in order to comply: the face masks that probably don’t work, the social distancing that probably doesn’t work, the quarantines which almost certainly don’t work, the shameful ‘essential workers only’ mandate which evokes this.

Even the USSR had no massive peacetime lockdown of hundreds of millions like this. The atheist communists couldn’t manage to close churches like America has done this spring………

In the midst of that, a mother and a father courageously determined they would reject that distraction and instead live their lives.

Courageously they stepped out to go to the park. Courageously they stepped out of the house to live their lives.

And I want to thank them.

Because courage is contagious.”

I don’t know if this family was Christian or not, and frankly, I don’t care. They were human. Deeply human. And as Luther would say, they were “caught” taking a risk and doing and living exactly as God meant human life to be: a circle of peace, love, joy, and harmony with the Creator and other creatures. They were out “planting their tree,” as Luther once famously answered about what he wanted to be found doing when the end of the world came.

Can’t we be courageous too?

We Christians have the promise of eternal life from the lips of the Living God Himself. We have the Holy Spirit to lead us too. Certainly, can we not say to this evil driving us to lock ourselves fearfully behind doors and to push others there too: Enough is enough.

Have we, at long last, no sense of decency left?

In our quest to save our lives or at least save ourselves from the public shaming of supposedly “not wanting to hurt others,” can we not, at least, let the children play in the park unmolested?

Who did they harm?

Who do they want to harm?

Do we have to sacrifice the emotional well-being and happiness of our children too upon the altar of the god of the almighty coronavirus?

Is not our life and times in God’s hands?

The Bible indicates to me that Jesus might have been the most happy in His earthly life when He played with the children. I think I am too. I would gladly, instantly, give my physical life up right now just so the children can be happy and play in the park. That is how God intended His creation, and His children, to be, and that’s worth giving up my life to strive for in my humble opinion.

I know many of us went along with all this, as did I, to be good neighbors, good citizens, good Christians, good pastors. Good intentions all around. Many of you are also “higher risk.” I get that too – I have many aliments from miltary service, like asthma, that put me in that category with you. I am not particularly fond of the thought of impending physical death either, having never experienced that of course.

As Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians 15:26, death is the final enemy to be defeated. Christ hasn’t taken me through that yet. So I am sympathetic to the concern for one’s own well-being and other’s concerns for the well-being of other people and loved ones too.

That is certainly also a legitimate human impulse, that is genuinely of the Spirit, heartfelt and sincere. Nobody wants people hurt or killed needlessly or certainly doesn’t want to be the catalyst for that, but, unfortunately, we don’t get the luxury in a fallen world of “no-risk” only “reward” solutions to complex or life-threatening problems.

There is a cost to all our choices, individually and collectively, as participants in civil society. So as Christians, we must ask as Paul admonishes in Romans 13:10 to determine: “What are the costs?” We don’t have a perfect solution in a sinful world. We can only hope to reason our way to the one which minimizes most the effects – short & long term – of sin.

All I am saying is that we have gone too far in one direction in striving to protect people from this virus. We are drifting beyond even long-term harm, into something, as I see it, that is evil and that soon will be a genie we can’t “put back into the bottle” so to speak.

I also understand that writing what I am writing may come off as an accusation of wrongdoing to some people, which isn’t my personal intent, but I truthfully acknowledge, it might end up being. It can’t help but be this way, because we are dealing with a matter of the law, not the Gospel. We are all placed by Christ back into a world governed and run by law – moral laws, laws of nature, government laws, social laws, and on and on – and the law in all forms always accuses us.

But I do sincerely want to say, I am trying to the best of my fallen, limited, sinful ability to keep in mind that good intentions certainly abounded from almost all folks in this situation. Definitely, this was the case I think as this was billed as something of a temporary inconvenience or sacrifice, but has now morphed into an open-ended solitary confinement prison sentence for billions of people around the world.

None of you wanted to cause harm or death to others nor I think ruin businesses or our Constitutional rights. But this “lock-down” is now a monster that appears, to me, to be “eating its young,” as the saying goes. There is far too much “collateral damage” well beyond the daily “confirmed cases and deaths” going on in this war on the hidden virus for me to stomach any further. So my heart compels me to say:

This has got to stop now. Not tomorrow. Not a week from now. Certainly not months from now, because this is not living, it’s dying while alive.

I know saying this right now is a risk, a big risk because many of you may judge that I am going too far “out of my lane” as a Pastor, as this probably is not a very popular message with you, nor most of the wider world these days. Email is like a virus you know. It’s contagious – you can send this anywhere – and thus potentially deadly, in certain ways for me, for daring to espouse contrary opinions to the popular narrative out there.

So, it could cost me dearly for publicly writing things like this right now. It could cost me a lot. It could cost me my call to our congregation. It could cost me my home in this community. It could cost me my freedom. It could cost me my family. It could cost me my physical life. Who knows? It might sound crazy to you to say this. But a few weeks ago, if I told you that you would be locked in your homes as a virtual prisoner in fear of a virus, you would have thought me quite mad. So anything is possible these days now, in regard to the consequences of freely speaking what is on one’s mind or heart now…..

But, I must confess too, that I believe that Christ died, gave up His own life in love for us, so we can really, for the first time, actually live in freedom, not fear – so we do not have to live in uncertainty anymore, because we now definitively know that God is for us, not against us. We can now dare be human again and leave the business of bringing in the eternal future to God.

So we can play like children in the park and enjoy the love and company of one another once more in the image of God – in peace with our Creator and one another – certain that even if bad things happen, God will be there to pick us up again and return us to living – even from our graves. So I am going to shove down my fear and say what my heart tells me to say, pray to God, turn it over to Him and rest in the promise of my Baptism that whatever may come my way in this old world, Christ is with me and has my life safely in His ever-loving arms, will carry me into His new creation where these things, which bring suffering, pain, and death will trouble me no more. And I know Christ has said this very same Baptismal promise is also for you.

So please pray that our Lord returns soon…..He is, in the end, our only hope!

v/r

Pastor Rich

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Essential, Yet Illegal? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 24, 2020

I am serving a sentence of life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole. In 2002, I was convicted of conspiring to distribute marijuana. I ponder that one quarter mile from here, in Illinois, marijuana distributors are not restrained by the lockdown orders. Instead, they are “essential businesses.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/no_author/essential-yet-illegal/

By Craig Cesal

The US federal government does a bunch of things that mystify me. They cannot discriminate in conferring benefits based on race, oh, unless it is affirmative action. Government agents cannot search you or your home without first earning a warrant, unless they think they should. I’ve even accepted there is alternative truths; you can keep your doctor; and Bill didn’t inhale. But, in the last few days, it seems they overwhelmed my imagination.

In these days of coronavirus lockdown, mine are spent in cell #107 at the federal prison at Terre Haute, Indiana. I am serving a sentence of life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole. In 2002, I was convicted of conspiring to distribute marijuana. I ponder that one quarter mile from here, in Illinois, marijuana distributors are not restrained by the lockdown orders. Instead, they are “essential businesses.” My indictment reads: “The People of the United States of America versus Craig Cesal,” agreed or confederated to distribute marijuana. The final judgment reads life imprisonment. Who got it wrong—the People of the United States or Craig Cesal? The rules governing that review are quickly evolving.

The thirty-three states that consider marijuana marketing an essential business, they carry on without any intervention by the US government, or even by the People of the US. How can I accept this from my vantage point of being locked in a seven feet by eleven feet prison cell?

While the marijuana purveyors carry on in their marijuana stores, the local county jails are busy identifying prisoners they can release if they determine they are not a danger to the community. Local jails are working to reduce jail populations to staunch the spread of coronavirus. All but violent offenders, including marijuana slingers, are being released, since they are not a threat to anyone. If marijuana proprietors are not a threat to the community, a community made up of the People of the US, why are taxpayers spending over $50,000 per year to keep me in this box?

A guy recently left here. He had been caught dumping his “Honey Wagon,” a tanker truck that sucks out septic tanks, along a dirt road in Kentucky. Wouldn’t you know it, that road was next to a dried up creek bed, and therefore a federal waterway. The US court sent him here for 30 months. Okay, the People of the US don’t want 10,000 pounds of poop lying next to their road. I get that.

Next, a guy down the corridor from me was playing with his new laser pointer one night and pointed it at a helicopter. He later learned it was a Homeland Security helicopter, and the fancy night vision equipment within recorded him standing in his backyard doing it. He’ll be here for the next 40 months. Even though the folks don’t want a pile of poop along their road, others don’t want a flash-blinded helicopter pilot over their houses. In contrast, though, depositing roadside excrement and illuminating helicopters are not essential businesses.

I’m not surprised that all these things are being done or by what the media says about it. Instead, I am befuddled over what is not asked. Thousands of prisoners awaiting trial have now been released from jails because they are of no threat. The truant query is why were taxpayers shelling out hard earned cash to hold them there in the first place? Indeed, if they are no danger to the county, why is so much effort being expended to send them to prison?

A sober peek at who is being held in our jails has resulted in thousands being released. Okay, some will commit new crimes upon being freed, but not the bulk of them. If they never really needed to be held in jail, why were they there? As a prisoner, I know most were jailed simply to keep them from having too much access to resources to prepare a vibrant, and too often poignant defense. Jail is a weapon wielded by the government. Until last month, by and large, the People of the US weren’t allowed oversight as to who is held in jail and why. The outside attention and review has resulted in massive changes to the US jail population.

The same who, what, and why questions should be cut and pasted atop the prison inmate population. About half of the 174,000 federal prisoners are drug offenders, and 17% of those are serving sentences related to marijuana distribution. Those 24,000 inmates conducted essential business—even if they didn’t have the opportunity to pay the requisite tax. This 60-year-old marijuana offender has consumed over $50,000 per year worth of housing, food, insulin, medical care, and more for over eighteen years. Aggregate the cost of prosecution and the People of the US have spent over a million dollars of their tax payments to keep this essential businessman in prison and away from his family and his tax-paying job.

When the People of the US are done scouring the jails for people better off released, I suggest they look closely at the 24,000 essential business people in federal prison.

Craig Cesal is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in Indiana’s Terre Haute prison for a marijuana-related offense. He co-owned a towing company that recovered and repaired trucks for a rental company, some of which were used by smugglers to transport marijuana. He graduated from Montini High School in Lombard, Illinois in 1977. His daughter, Lauren, has obtained more than 300,000 signatures on a petition calling for clemency.

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Who the Hell is Bill Gates and Who Gave Him So Much Power Over the People? — Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch

Posted by M. C. on April 21, 2020

Originally posted on Wake Up To The Truth: HAFApril 5, 2020 Who the hell is Bill Gates, anyway? Who gave him so much power over our lives? What makes him a (the?) top authority when it comes to vaccines? What gives him the right and the authority to demand a national lockdown, or to propose…

via Who the Hell is Bill Gates and Who Gave Him So Much Power Over the People? — Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : What If the Lockdown Was All A Big Mistake?

Posted by M. C. on April 21, 2020

When Anthony Fauci first warned that two million would die, there was a race among federal, state, and local officials to see who could rip up the Constitution fastest.

Last week the UN Secretary General warned that a global recession resulting from the worldwide coronavirus lockdown could cause “hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths per year.”

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/april/20/what-if-the-lockdown-was-all-a-big-mistake/

Written by Ron Paul

From California to New Jersey, Americans are protesting in the streets. They are demanding an end to house arrest orders given by government officials over a virus outbreak that even according to the latest US government numbers will claim fewer lives than the seasonal flu outbreak of 2017-2018.

Across the US, millions of businesses have been shut down by “executive order” and the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Americans, who have seen their real wages decline thanks to Federal Reserve monetary malpractice, are finding themselves thrust into poverty and standing in breadlines. It is like a horror movie, but it’s real.

Last week the UN Secretary General warned that a global recession resulting from the worldwide coronavirus lockdown could cause “hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths per year.” As of this writing, less than 170,000 have been reported to have died from the coronavirus worldwide.

Many Americans have also died this past month because they were not able to get the medical care they needed. Cancer treatments have been indefinitely postponed. Life-saving surgeries have been put off to make room for coronavirus cases. Meanwhile hospitals are laying off thousands because the expected coronavirus cases have not come and the hospitals are partially empty.

What if the “cure” is worse than the disease?

Countries like Sweden that did not lock down their economy and place the population under house arrest are faring no worse than countries that did. Sweden’s deaths-per-million from coronavirus is lower than in many lockdown countries.

Likewise, US states that did not arrest citizens for merely walking on the beach are not doing worse than those that did. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem said last week, “we’ve been able to keep our businesses open and allow people to take on some personal responsibility.” South Dakota has recorded a total of seven coronavirus deaths.

Kentucky, a strict lockdown state, is five times more populated than South Dakota, yet it has some 20 times more coronavirus deaths. If lockdown and house arrest are the answer, shouldn’t those numbers be reversed, with South Dakota seeing mass death while Kentucky dodges the coronavirus bullet?

When Anthony Fauci first warned that two million would die, there was a race among federal, state, and local officials to see who could rip up the Constitution fastest. Then Fauci told us if we do what he says only a quarter of a million would die. They locked America down even harder. Then, with little more than a shrug of the shoulders, they announced that a maximum of 60,000 would die, but maybe less. That is certainly terrible, but it’s just a high-average flu season.

Imagine if we had used even a fraction of the resources spent to lock down the entire population and focused on providing assistance and protection to the most vulnerable – the elderly and those with serious medical conditions. We could have protected these people and still had an economy to go back to when the virus had run its course. And it wouldn’t have cost us six trillion dollars either.

Governments have no right or authority to tell us what business or other activity is “essential.” Only in totalitarian states does the government claim this authority. We should encourage all those who are standing up peacefully and demanding an accounting from their elected leaders. They should not be able to get away with this.

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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PETER HITCHENS: Have five weeks of mad lockdown panic actually done us good?  | Daily Mail Online

Posted by M. C. on April 20, 2020

Some police officers have also acted with shocking arrogance, and appeared to enjoy it. The harm done by this behaviour may never be repaired.

I pointed out that we also needed to care about the deaths which experts, such as Germany’s Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, repeatedly warned would come from closing down both social life and economic activity for any length of time. It was not life versus money. It was life versus life.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8233479/PETER-HITCHENS-five-weeks-mad-lockdown-panic-actually-good.html

By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday

I find it incredible that it is now five weeks since I wrote here: ‘We have gone quite mad. I know that many people are thinking this, but dare not say so. I will be accused of all kinds of terrible things for taking this view – but that is another aspect of how crazy things are.’

I said we had got our policy on Covid-19 out of proportion.

I said the worst effect of the Government’s behaviour was to savage the economy by scaring people away from normal activities.

Calm, reasoned responses are almost always better than frantic, panicking ones. A police officer is pictured above speaking to a man relaxing on Brighton beach amid the lockdown

Calm, reasoned responses are almost always better than frantic, panicking ones. A police officer is pictured above speaking to a man relaxing on Brighton beach amid the lockdown

 

It was only a week later I realised that there was also a grave threat to personal liberty, and raised that alarm too.

I recall these words because you will all by now have noticed they stand up well to the test of time.

The report from the Office for Budget Responsibility has made clear that the damage done by crashing the economy is deep and dangerous. It may last for many years. And much of it was avoidable.

Some police officers have also acted with shocking arrogance, and appeared to enjoy it. The harm done by this behaviour may never be repaired.

I suspect that many of you know this in detail.

The pain is spreading fast in the form of strangled business, often small enterprises built on brave risk-taking and mortgaged homes. Many are now sinking into bankruptcy – not because they failed, but because the Government’s policy killed them.

Then there are the vanishing jobs, the wage cuts which many are already experiencing, and which more face with every day that this shutdown continues.

The NHS has a huge number of empty beds for the time of year. The mortality figures show a confused picture, not least because it is not clear how the authorities decide who is and who is not recorded as a Covid-19 death. A mural is pictured above in Liverpool

The NHS has a huge number of empty beds for the time of year. The mortality figures show a confused picture, not least because it is not clear how the authorities decide who is and who is not recorded as a Covid-19 death. A mural is pictured above in Liverpool

It really is time that the Cabinet took responsibility for at least limiting this damage. I for one will not jeer at them for doing so. When you make a mistake, as we all do, the test is what you do to put it right.

I was accused when I warned of this of not caring about deaths from Covid-19.

This was false. In fact it poisoned the wells of debate.

I have never doubted the good intentions of those who supported the Government’s policy, I just thought they were mistaken and counter-productive.

I pointed out that we also needed to care about the deaths which experts, such as Germany’s Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, repeatedly warned would come from closing down both social life and economic activity for any length of time. It was not life versus money. It was life versus life.

My warnings would have been fainter (though not wrong) if the Government’s policy had been successful. But has it been? I would say not so far.

Yes, the virus has killed a significant number of people, but the expected mass onslaught of deaths has not arrived. The NHS has a huge number of empty beds for the time of year. The mortality figures show a confused picture, not least because it is not clear how the authorities decide who is and who is not recorded as a Covid-19 death.

The unprecedented, sweeping decision to put the healthy in quarantine has gravely affected society.

But did it lead to a laxness on detailed policy decisions, on the provision of personal protection equipment to doctors and nurses, and on the care homes whose treatment looks to me like a major scandal?

The evidence from Stockholm, which has so far pursued a rational, proportionate, limited policy, still suggests that Sweden will emerge from this less damaged by far than we will.

Calm, reasoned responses are almost always better than frantic, panicking ones. What we are doing isn’t working on any terms. It is time we tried something else.

A question of dodgy justice

I could never stand the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

The questions were either insultingly easy or demanded a profound knowledge of soap operas or sport, which I don’t want to know about. And it was so slow.

So I paid little attention to the ‘Coughing Major’ case, and merely thought it funny.

Now, thanks to the dramatisation of the episode in the ITV series Quiz last week, I have totally changed my mind.

I don’t know if Major Charles Ingram and his wife Diana were guilty of cheating their way to a million-pound prize.

But if the drama was even vaguely true, I don’t believe the case against them was proved beyond reasonable doubt, which is what the law demands. I also have a nagging feeling that the police have better things to do than investigate quiz shows.

The questions were either insultingly easy or demanded a profound knowledge of soap operas or sport, which I don’t want to know about. And it was so slow. So I paid little attention to the ‘Coughing Major’ case, and merely thought it funny. Now, thanks to the dramatisation of the episode in the ITV series Quiz last week, above, I have totally changed my mind

The questions were either insultingly easy or demanded a profound knowledge of soap operas or sport, which I don’t want to know about. And it was so slow. So I paid little attention to the ‘Coughing Major’ case, and merely thought it funny. Now, thanks to the dramatisation of the episode in the ITV series Quiz last week, above, I have totally changed my mind

 

It is odd how many times you find that what you thought was clear and beyond dispute is not, as soon as you know the details.

I discovered this when I read Josephine Tey’s marvellous novel The Daughter Of Time, in which a Scotland Yard detective, stuck in hospital with injuries suffered while pursuing a criminal, investigates the claim that Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower. And lo, it turns out that he didn’t.

The dangerous, greedy campaign to legalise marijuana now has powerful allies on all sides of politics.

In my view, it has never been closer to success here, and the pressing need to raise new taxes may bring that day even closer.

Well, before they fall into this trap, MPs and Ministers should listen to Professor Sir Robin Murray, one of this country’s most distinguished psychiatrists who had until recently favoured limited legalisation.

But now that he has seen how this has actually worked out in North America, he has absolutely changed his mind. Not only is he sure that the drug’s use is linked with mental illness, he now says: ‘I didn’t appreciate how big the cannabis industry was going to be.’

He compares Big Cannabis with the death-dealing Big Tobacco lobby which cynically used its wealth to defy health campaigners for many decades.

He now fears that this ultra-rich pressure group will seduce our cash-strapped Government into giving way.

At any other time, Prof Murray’s intervention would have been big news. Don’t let it be forgotten.

How dare they steal our flag

The awful Blair creature thought he was a British Bill Clinton – more President than Prime Minister. He marked his arrival in Downing Street in 1997 by staging a fake celebration with Labour Party workers waving Union Jacks, a flag they despised

The awful Blair creature thought he was a British Bill Clinton – more President than Prime Minister. He marked his arrival in Downing Street in 1997 by staging a fake celebration with Labour Party workers waving Union Jacks, a flag they despised

The awful Blair creature thought he was a British Bill Clinton – more President than Prime Minister.

He marked his arrival in Downing Street in 1997 by staging a fake celebration with Labour Party workers waving Union Jacks, a flag they despised.

Even the Blairites became embarrassed about how much they were trespassing on Royal territory.

When I found out in 1998 that Blair’s wife, Cherie Booth, had used the Royal Train, his spin machine used all its wiles to bury the story, and nearly succeeded.

Blair also used to love posing with soldiers, during the many wars he dragged us into.

I suspect it was he who introduced the habit of holding Government press conferences in front of the national flag.

It is a bad idea, whoever does it. The government of the day does not stand for the whole nation.

The Queen stands for the nation. The government is temporary, party political and made up of ambitious careerists.

There’s nothing unpatriotic about not agreeing with the present Cabinet. So I object strongly to them appropriating the national flag as a backdrop during the daily Covid-19 briefings. It’s not theirs to use

There’s nothing unpatriotic about not agreeing with the present Cabinet. So I object strongly to them appropriating the national flag as a backdrop during the daily Covid-19 briefings. It’s not theirs to use

There’s nothing unpatriotic about not agreeing with the present Cabinet.

So I object strongly to them appropriating the national flag as a backdrop during the daily Covid-19 briefings. It’s not theirs to use.

I don’t much like the 1984-style slogans, either, but I really do think this fake-American presidential posing is wrong and annoying. They should stop it.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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The Fear Mask and the ‘I Surrender’ Pose – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 18, 2020

Psy ops (alternately PSYOPS, Psychological Operations, or Psychological warfare) is a behavior intended to psychologically weaken a target. The US government is renowned for this.

While I don’t know what is an intentional psy op in my life and what isn’t, I know fear is psychologically harmful to me and those around me. To live in a constant state of fear is hell. It shortens life and reduces the quality of the short life you have.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/allan-stevo/the-fear-mask-and-the-i-surrender-pose/

By

“For if you put me to death, you will not easily find another, who, to use a rather absurd figure, attaches himself to the city as a gadfly to a horse, which, though large and well bred, is sluggish on account of his size and needs to be aroused by stinging. I think the god fastened me upon the city in some such capacity, and I go about arousing…”

-Socrates, as reported by Plato in The Apology

A gadfly friend of mine has never done the pose of submission to the great state, the “I surrender” pose.

You know, the one where you stick your hands up in the air when someone points a gun at you, exposing your vulnerable torso and midsection.

You know, that “I surrender” pose – the pose that is drilled into you every time you pass through airport security. You must enter the naked body scanner and do the pose of submission. If you don’t you will be barked at, eye-rolled at, and huffed at until you do.

Notably, this “I surrender” pose is mere security theater. It looks like it works. It doesn’t actually work. That, alongside the dehumanizing: take off your shoes, get groped, and throw away whatever items you recently bought that happen to be more than 3.3 ounces.

3.4 ounces will take down a plane, we are assured. 3.3 ounces can’t.

Oh really?

Yes, that’s why it must be confiscated. Otherwise, we would never do such an awful thing like confiscate your private property. A half-full 3.4 ounce container can take down a plane too.

Oh really?

Yes, that’s why that too must be confiscated. It’s for your own safety.

Fascinating fiction, this US security theater that doesn’t actually work. But what it does work at is taking some of the most affluent members of society – air travelers – and bossing them around until they submit. The more affluent you are (to a degree) the more you travel by commercial air. The more you travel by commercial air, the more you get put through the compliance tester and obedience enforcer. This is a predictable way to make the most affluent in a society more compliant.

What a toxic thing for America.

You can almost imagine a table of Bush era stooges saying to themselves over beers “What’s the stupidest thing we can get people to do?”

“I know. Hold their hands up in the air for no reason like someone is pointing a gun at them.”

“Let a stranger go through their underwear.”

“No I’ve got one better: Let a stranger CONFISCATE their underwear.”

“This is way better: Let a stranger take photos of them naked.”

“No. Even better. Let a stranger touch them in between the legs.”

“No this is way worse. Get a rattled mother to voluntarily throw away pumped breast milk, because it’s a risk to national security, even if that means her baby goes hungry on a flight and screams for three hours.”

You now know the “I surrender” pose I mean, right? Read the rest of this entry »

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Anthony Fauci, the “Learned Ignoramus” | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on April 17, 2020

Every time the “experts” demand that life be halted into the indeterminate future, they vindicate Ortega y Gasset’s observation that the learned ignoramuses are ignorant of the very nature of the social order itself and are therefore a menace to its preservation.

https://mises.org/wire/anthony-fauci-learned-ignoramus?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=284f6752cc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-284f6752cc-228343965

As the COVID-19 shutdown across the US continues, one cannot but help see the importance of specialization and the division of labor time and time again, as many Americans deal with true shortages of goods for the first time in their lives. Specialization has allowed us to enjoy a much more prosperous life than we would were we all to do everything ourselves. However, as with everything in this imperfect world, specialization comes with certain tradeoffs that are important to understand. As the unemployment numbers continue to rise by millions more every week, as meager savings are eliminated, and as our highly organized society slides into chaos it is important to understand the way in which an unbalanced intellectual specialization has contributed to bringing about the current crisis.

In his 1930 book The Revolt of the Masses, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset addresses what he considers to be a strange byproduct of the prevalence of specialization in everything, specifically the intellectual sphere. “Previously,” he writes, “men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other.” Now, however, a new kind of person has emerged, “an extraordinarily strange kind of man,” who cannot be called “learned for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his specialty,” yet at the same time cannot be considered “ignorant because he is ‘a scientist’ who ‘knows’ very well his own tiny portion of the universe.” Thus, Ortega y Gasset says that the only fitting name for such a person is a “learned ignoramus.”

There can be no doubt that numerous learned ignoramuses can be found in all parts of society, but most importantly they are very clearly involved in the response to the COVID-19 virus, as sweeping calls for months of lockdown make clear.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and seen by many as the face of the federal virus response, has perhaps made the most ridiculous assertion, stating at a White House briefing on April 1 that “we could ‘relax social distancing’ once there’s ‘no new cases, no deaths,’ but the real turning point won’t come until there’s a vaccine.” Similarly, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an architect of Obamacare and current advisor to Joe Biden, declared that it will be impossible to return to “normalcy” for eighteen months and that no matter the economic cost: “The truth is we have no choice….We cannot return to normal until there’s a vaccine.”

Such ideas are frankly madness, and would take an incalculable toll on the health and wealth of all Americans. Tens of millions of Americans find themselves out of work or with reduced hours or pay. The idea that society could continue to exist in such a state betrays a lack of any understanding of the social order.

Smithfield Foods is shutting down a meat processing plant that produces 4 to 5 percent of all the pork in the entire country, and its CEO warned that “the closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply. It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running.”

Mass unemployment will inevitably lead to an increase in suicide and substance abuse and the stay-at-home orders have already led to increased domestic violence. New instances of outrageous police conduct in the name of enforcing lockdowns emerge everyday. It is no exaggeration to say that in eighteen months there would likely not be any society left to “reopen.”

Truly, only learned ignoramuses could suggest such an obviously catastrophic course of action. Those plebeians who dare to question “experts” such as Fauci and Emanuel are lectured to listen to their betters, who use “science” to understand the situation and are far more knowledgeable. In other words, “stay in your lane.” Yet such critics miss their glaring contradiction. Public health officials certainly have a role to play, but they themselves are not experts at everything. By definition, they do not fully understand the other consequences and considerations that must be weighed and balanced, and they, of course, are lacking in the local dispersed knowledge needed to make such decisions. Yet that does not stop them from making declarations dripping with arrogance, such as Fauci’s assessment of the implosion of the economy and the resulting unemployment and hardship as being merely “inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint.” As Ortega y Gasset pointed out, learned ignoramuses are “ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.”

The phenomenon of the learned ignoramus can be seen in every field and at all levels of intellectual life and popular punditry. However, the current crisis reveals the damage such “experts” can wreak upon civilization itself.

Ortega y Gasset fully recognized the important role that specialization has in making modern life possible; however, he calls for a balanced intellectual specialization, in contrast to the unbalanced status quo that he fears threatens the advancement of scientific discovery itself. Two such balanced intellectuals are without a doubt Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek; although economists, they could be more accurately called social thinkers whose work encompassed far more than that of the typical economist today.

Rather than insular, unbalanced specialization, Mises argued that “He who wants to achieve anything in praxeology must be conversant with mathematics, physics, biology, history, and jurisprudence.” Hayek similarly warned that “Unless you really know your economics or whatever your special field is, you will be simply a fraud. But if you know only economics and nothing else, you will be a bane to mankind, good, perhaps, for writing articles for other economists to read, but for nothing else.”

Undoubtedly, the entire situation would look entirely different from the chaotic disruptive mess it is now if our public health officials and social scientists were trained in the mold of Mises and Hayek. Whereas both men stressed the complex and ultimately fragile nature of the social order, and therefore the need for broad understanding of this complexity, the learned ignoramus, in the words of Ortega y Gasset, “believes that civilization is there in just the same way as the earth’s crust and the forest primeval.”

Every time the “experts” demand that life be halted into the indeterminate future, they vindicate Ortega y Gasset’s observation that the learned ignoramuses are ignorant of the very nature of the social order itself and are therefore a menace to its preservation. This crisis demonstrates how prescient Ortega y Gasset’s warning was. Hopefully it is not too late to prevent a true societal catastrophe.

Be seeing you

 

 

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The Resistance Has Begun! 24 Examples of Americans Resisting – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2020

The BBC describes the American death count with this problematic sentence: “At present in the US, any death of a Covid-19 patient, no matter what the physician believes to be the direct cause, is counted for public reporting as a Covid-19 death.”

Probably happening everywhere.

More free government/EU/UN money, more grants, more publicity. The entrepreneurial spirit is strong.

If your church still refuses to open, have your own service.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/allan-stevo/the-resistance-has-begun-24-examples-of-americans-resisting/

By

Neil Ferguson has called for an 18-month rolling quarantine. Many government officials have cited his Imperial College paper as defense of the corona lockdowns. Like every other algorithm, this too has turned out to be based on the mere guess of an academic. Algorithm is another word for “guess.” Model is another word for “guess.”

It turns out that those guesses aren’t actually panning out. We have wagered a lot on those guesses, and taken unprecedented anti-social action. New York, for example, has needed some 18,000 hospital beds, not the 55,000, 73,000, or 136,000 that some predicted.

Data from Oregon shows the lockdown to be unnecessary. A professor there demonstrated more than a week ago that lockdowns are not working.

Though there are severely inflates death counts, only 150 healthy individuals are believed to have died of Covid-19 with no pre-existing conditions. The BBC describes the American death count with this problematic sentence: “At present in the US, any death of a Covid-19 patient, no matter what the physician believes to be the direct cause, is counted for public reporting as a Covid-19 death.”

Wow. Corona wasn’t that big of a deal? That’s great news.

These lockdowns aren’t working? That’s some pretty big news too.

What are officials doing in response? Doubling down on lockdowns.

What are people across the country starting to do in response to that? Saying they’ve had enough. The resistance is here.

The Face Mask Resistance – If You’re Gonna Wear A Mask, Make It A Guy Fawkes Mask

75 people showed up outside the Ohio State House to protest the lockdown. Some came masked, not in the obligatory fear mask mandated by the national top-down fear mask movement, but in Guy Fawkes masks!

Video footage of Ohio state house protests can be found here and here. Photos here.

If they make you wear a mask, send a message. If you think face masks work, please read this pre-politicization of face masks (2016) piece. They certainly don’t work well enough for people to get violent with those not wearing them.

Early Victory: Philadelphia Fear Mask Resistance Forced The Hands Of Pols

People were being pulled off busses in Philadelphia for not wearing face masks, some of the thugs doing the enforcing weren’t wearing face masks themselves.

Philadelphia‘s SEPTA public transportation system required passengers to wear a face mask as of Thursday, April 9. Passengers refused and stood their ground.

In the exact opposite of social distancing, passengers were violently pulled off buses by gangs of cops in Philadelphia for not wearing masks. After these shameful displays of police violently removing unmasked passengers were captured by bystanders on social media, the face mask requirement was rescinded.

In our heavily charged political climate, somehow the willingness to not wear a face mask has itself become a potent sign of civil disobedience in some corridors of America.

The Bravest Principal In California

Principal Derrick Bravo at Outside Creek Elementary in California’s San Joaquin Valley has kept his school open. It is the only public school in California that remains open.

A Gulag California Restaurant Owner Has Quietly Stayed Open

In his essays these past weeks on black markets and corona, Arizona sheriff candidate David Hathaway has predicted that, just as the prohibition on alcohol caused speakeasies to form, speakeasies and other informal arrangements will open around restaurants. Daniel McAdams proves him right.

America Was Founded In Religion

Religious freedom has been an important theme since America’s European settlement began. It can be no surprise that some of the most active resistance to corona communism is taking place among the religious.

Mississippi Preacher Taunting The Police

Temple Baptist Church of Greenville, Mississippi had a drive-in prayer service this past week. Police raided, ticketing the congregants $500 each, saying the mayor wanted to make an example of the congregation.

How did the pastor respond? Did he cower? Did he apologize? Did he admit he was wrong to worship against the will of the local officials? In his words “I told them to get some more tickets ready because we will be preaching Sunday morning and Sunday night.”

Church Bravery In Louisiana

A pastor in Baton Rouge said of the members of his congregation “They would rather come to church and worship like free people than live like prisoners in their homes.” Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church, vowed to hold an Easter celebration.

The media in the weeks preceding Easter was vocal about the need to shut down the church, but was afterward surprisingly silent about whether the Easter service took place.

When I called the church to verify that they held an Easter service, the most distinguished sounding Southern gentleman picked up the phone and said to me matter-of-factly, “We’re Christians, we hold church every Sunday.”

It’s “Legal” To Go To Church Again (Sort Of)

Laws are made by legislatures. Laws are not made by governors. Rights are granted by God, or some would say by nature of being a human, but not by constitutions. Any governor who thinks he makes the law is a fool. A few governors have gotten the message.

Easter services were made “legal” again in Wisconsin (sort of), as long as the service is held outdoors.

Church was made legal again in Texas too, before Holy Week got under way, with the Governor being reminded that he’s only a visitor in the governor’s mansion. A handful of other governors have gotten the same message.

In Colorado churches are now “exempt” from the lockdown after a Baptist group threatened a First Amendment lawsuit.

Standing Up To Police Intimidation In Kentucky

Kentucky’s Governor vowed to track down Easter worshipers by using license plates: which certainly means there were a lot of people expected to worship there on Easter, otherwise there would be no need to even make such a policy. Good on you Kentucky!

Despite finding nails on the ground, meant to harm and deter them, and police in their parking lots, meant to intimidate them, Christians in Kentucky met on Easter Sunday 2020.

The Sonny Method

When encountered with intimidation, Thomas DiLorenzo points to the “Sonny method” for dealing with cops and media hacks attempting to interfere in a religious ceremony.

Courageous Christians Even in DC

Rather than shutting its doors, St. Cyprian in Washington DC commits to remains open throughout the day, each day, for prayer.

Courageous Serbians

This Serbian Bishop refused to comply with the orders to shutter the churches and boldly said mass.

More Courageous Californians

Parishioners of Bethany Slavic Missionary Church are said to be meeting in small groups in private homes for worship. Some would consider this admirable. The church, perhaps tiring of the legal attention, tiring of the media publicity, and wanting to be left alone, denies this.

Tennessee Resistance

Even though Facebook removed his post for “promoting a crime,” Greg Locke, lead pastor of Global Vision Bible Church in Tennessee, says he will keep his church open during the coronavirus panic.

The Most Inspiring Use Of A U-Haul

From the back of a U-Haul in a parking lot, this priest refused to abandon his flock. In contrast to some of the many cowardly clergy out there, the image of the U-Haul and the sea of cars is something to behold.

Stop Giving – Let The Obedient Churches Go Broke

Some American pastors are shocked that their congregations won’t pay for them to do nothing when they are most needed. Churches are being hit hard by the lack of collection. If your pastor won’t re-open the church doors, let the church go broke.

Social Distance From Compliant Pastors

Speaking of do-nothing pastors, Laurence Vance calls on all Christians to socially distance from milquetoast pastors in our age of corona communism.

Have Your Own Service

If your church still refuses to open, have your own service. Here’s how one LRC reader started his Easter.

Have Your Own Service 2.0

And one can also take it a step further than having your own Easter celebration. You can invite others and welcome them to bring their guns. Ammon Bundy invited hundreds for Easter in Idaho and got a decent turnout. The corona bans demonstrate the point that without the Second Amendment, there really is no First Amendment.

Republican Idaho State Representative Heather Scott has spoken against the Republican Governor’s corona ban, as has Bonner County Sheriff Daryl Wheeler. Wheeler has called for a meeting of the full Idaho State Legislature to discuss the Governor Brad Little’s actions.

Bravely Helping Others

In defiance of an order to stay off the streets,  a doctor and a team of volunteers has provided Covid-19 testing to homeless in Miami.

Keep Minding Your Own Business

In a hilarious video, a police officer came after a man running down what was ostensibly a closed beach. The guy’s response: he just kept on running.

Power To The People

Pulling out a camera is a potent statement to someone in power that they are being put on the record. This gentleman called out an officer’s arbitrary rules and filmed the officer.

San Francisco Style Corona Response

A freedom cell in San Francisco responded to lockdown orders with some disruptive entrepreneurship. They opened an underground night club. Police responded by confiscating the booze and arresting no one.

There Are Even Examples Of Government Coming To Its Senses (Very Slowly)

Recognizing that Covid-19 is not turning into the catastrophe some experts predicted it might be, Seattle sent back a 250-bed army field hospital after 9 days. It never saw any patients.

Republican Tennessee Mayor Glenn Jacobs calls out Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee for his bad decisions in issuing a statewide stay-at-home order.

The president of Brazil is snubbing social distancing.

Thomas Massie, will go down as a hero during this chapter in American history, for his bold stand against corona communism.

Courage Is Contagious

If this collection of notes from the resistance inspired you, please pass it along to others. Courage, after all, is contagious. Resistance thrives on courage.

If you have inspiring tales from the resistance to share, shoot me an email.

Be seeing you

 

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