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Doug Casey on the Real Reason Why the Mainstream Media is Dialing Up the Fear

Posted by M. C. on September 9, 2021

International Man: How can the average person find the truth about a given issue?

Doug Casey: First of all, you have to actively cultivate habits of critical thinking. Ask yourself about everything you read or hear from any source: Does this make sense? What’s the hidden agenda?  What is being omitted? What’s being shaded, twisted, and spun?

This is an essential skill. Subject everything to a process of critical thinking. Question everything—especially authority.

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-the-real-reason-why-the-mainstream-media-is-dialing-up-the-fear/

by Doug Casey

mainstream media

International Man: The mainstream media can dial up the fear in society much like you can with the thermostat in your house. And right now, they seem to be cranking up the fear to hysterical levels.

Governments are able to enact radical policies when people are fearful.

What is your take on the situation and the media’s role in it?

Doug Casey: The great American journalist H.L. Menken once said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

He was right.

Fear is one of the most powerful and primal emotions, and government has always used fear to unite the people behind it. Government—which produces nothing—only exists because of fear. Fear of foreigners is allayed by its army. Fear of domestic chaos is allayed by its police.

The media is an ideal way to transmit fear. The media has transformed itself into the government’s lapdog. It has the same talking points and communicates “the narrative” in the same way. Government and media have always worked hand in glove, of course, but today more than ever. There are no longer thousands of independent newspapers scattered across the country, just a few conglomerates that control all significant print and electronic media.

One thing that hasn’t changed as far as the media is concerned is the old saying “if it bleeds, it leads.” Fear, danger, and violence make stories interesting and exciting. They make events urgent—and most important, they make people want to buy newspapers and visit their websites.

I don’t trust neither the government—which has its own interests and enforces them with coercion—or the media which, if it knows what’s good for it, either touts the party line or acts like a “loyal opposition” to give readers the impression they actually have real choices.

It’s a dishonest and disgusting charade.

International Man: CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, The NY Times, The Washington Post, and others are notorious for sensationalizing stories, dramatizing situations, and propagandizing certain issues.

How does the mainstream media today contrast with the mainstream media in previous decades?

Doug Casey: They’re very similar in essence because the newspaper business wants to sell newspapers, and TV and radio want the public to hear ads. The magazine business wants to sell magazines. The more you sell, the more advertising dollars you generate. That results in a tendency to generate outrageous copy. It’s why you must be a skeptical, critical thinker and demand proof for everything.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, we had the yellow press. Hearst and Pulitzer were famous for pumping up public enthusiasm for wars. Everybody wanted to hear news from the front. There’s absolutely nothing better—nothing even close—than a war for generating readers, listeners, and viewers.

The mainstream media hasn’t changed much from that point of view. Newspapers and the media have always competed with each other based on outrageous headlines. If they’re wrong, you forget them and drive on. If they’re right, they never let the booboisie forget it.

People like stuff that’s interesting. That hasn’t changed much, although today it is more advertising rather than subscription-driven. That is especially the case with the ongoing COVID-19 hysteria. Big pharma has big advertising dollars, and you don’t want to make your major advertisers unhappy.

There are, however, other meaningful differences between the media of today and that of years past. First, the people who became reporters in the past weren’t college-educated. They were basically street kids who liked to write; they were much closer to the ground level. They actually had to put boots on the ground to get the story.

Today’s reporters have all gone to college, as opposed to the school of hard knocks, to learn journalism. They get most of their information from their computer, as opposed to firsthand research, the way reporters used to do it. They now just Google something and accept what somebody else says as fact.

Another big difference is that Washington DC has grown exponentially more important over the last 100 years; there’s vastly more reporting about the government in DC than there ever has been in the past.

Reporters once reported about things that they knew, their local scene. Today, unless he’s posted in DC, a reporter is nearly irrelevant; all they know is what other people say on the internet. In general, the quality of reporting has gone down tremendously over the years.

International Man: Does real journalism exist today? Where can it be found?

Doug Casey: The so-called “paper of record” in the US is the New York Times. I used to read the NY Times, but not anymore; it’s totally woke. It shouldn’t be trusted. I don’t even trust their science section anymore.

Everything has been very politicized. They try to relate everything to global warming, COVID, or what the government should do to solve some real or—usually—imagined problem. Everything is written through that filter. They even try to tie science issues into Critical Race Theory and gender.

I like to see what people are reading, so I read book reviews. But in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books—I still subscribe to them out of inertia—it seems the majority of books today are written and/or reviewed by people of color (POCs), people with sexual aberrations, or women. And they all seem to grind Left-wing axes.

The Left—the statists and collectivists—has completely captured the mass media, especially the upmarket mass media, like The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and the publications I just mentioned. They’re just vehicles the elite use to talk to each other about being elite.

If you want to subscribe to anything today, I recommend that you consider subscribing to blogs, of which there are thousands on the internet. Look for blogs you think are reliable, and subscribe to select newsletters. Since it’s your subscription dollars—not the advertisers’ favor—that they have to earn, they generally try to be more intellectually honest, although, at least in the financial realm, many have become nothing but overpriced tout sheets. Be discriminating.

However, there are still some magazines out there I think are good—like Reason Magazine and The Spectator—but it’s slim pickings.

International Man: Large tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google are the new information gatekeepers.

Are these companies becoming the new mainstream media in that sense? What are the implications?

Doug Casey: Frankly, these Big Tech companies have had their day in the sun. They’re too big to be managed efficiently. They’re arrogant and corrupt. And, I suspect that even though everyone uses them, most people no longer like or trust them.

There will be either a change in technology or a change in the public mood that will turn them into dinosaurs. I’m not interested in owning their ultra-expensive stock, and not just because I despise them and their editorial takes; they’re stooges for the State.

The fact is the government still can’t directly censor things. It’s too hard because the First Amendment, at least in name, still exists. But as I said earlier, these media companies work hand in glove with the State. Big Government prefers to work with Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and the rest. There’s no law against Big Tech censoring somebody—nor should there be—because they’re a private business. You certainly don’t want to give the government even more power.

This type of “private” censorship is a clever way to get around the Constitution. The fact is that these companies have become unofficial arms of the government—that’s part of what the “Deep State” is all about. The good news is that this will eventually cause them to cut their own throats. They’ll be superseded by changes in technology and the public mood. Many people—including myself—already deny them support in any way possible.

People who seriously rely on them for their news are basically useless misinformed idiots. Thinking people go elsewhere for news.

International Man: How can the average person find the truth about a given issue?

Doug Casey: First of all, you have to actively cultivate habits of critical thinking. Ask yourself about everything you read or hear from any source: Does this make sense? What’s the hidden agenda?  What is being omitted? What’s being shaded, twisted, and spun?

This is an essential skill. Subject everything to a process of critical thinking. Question everything—especially authority.

Number two is to trust your own eyes, ears, and senses. By that, I don’t mean what you see on television or what you read in Google. Things that you see with your own boots on the ground. Actually, talk to people one-to-one to find out what the man on the street is thinking, not what some reporter says he’s thinking. Or perhaps I should say feeling since few of the public think.

Try to be your own personal reporter. Put your own boots on the ground and investigate the real world first hand. Don’t just accept what some reporter tells you.

Editor’s Note: The 2020s will likely to be an increasingly volatile decade. More governments are putting their money printing on overdrive. Negative interests are becoming the rule instead of the exception to it.

One thing is for sure, there will be a great deal of change taking place in the years ahead.

That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions.

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2 Things Mainstream Media Didn’t Tell You About FDA’s Approval of Pfizer Vaccine • Children’s Health Defense

Posted by M. C. on August 26, 2021

Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”

There is a huge real-world difference between products approved under EUA compared with those the FDA has fully licensed.

And because adults injured by the vaccine will be able to show that the manufacturer knew of the problems with the product, jury awards could be astronomical.

Pfizer is therefore unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/mainstream-media-fda-approval-pfizer-vaccine/

By  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Meryl Nass, M.D.

Buried in the fine print of Monday’s approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of the Pfizer Comirnaty COVID vaccine are two critical facts that affect whether the vaccine can be mandated, and whether Pfizer can be held liable for injuries.

The Defender is experiencing censorship on many social channels. Be sure to stay in touch with the news that matters by subscribing to our top news of the day. It’s free.

Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a biologics license application for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine.

The press reported that vaccine mandates are now legal for military, healthcare workers, college students and employees in many industries. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has now required the vaccine for all teachers and school staff. The Pentagon is proceeding with its mandate for all military service members.

But there are several bizarre aspects to the FDA approval that will prove confusing to those not familiar with the pervasiveness of the FDA’s regulatory capture, or the depths of the agency’s cynicism.

First, the FDA acknowledges that while Pfizer has “insufficient stocks” of the newly licensed Comirnaty vaccine available, there is “a significant amount” of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine — produced under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) — still available for use.

The FDA decrees that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product.

Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”

There is a huge real-world difference between products approved under EUA compared with those the FDA has fully licensed.

EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines.

U.S. laws, however, permit employers and schools to require students and workers to take licensed vaccines.

EUA-approved COVID vaccines have an extraordinary liability shield under the 2005 Public Readiness and Preparedness Act. Vaccine manufacturers, distributors, providers and government planners are immune from liability. The only way an injured party can sue is if he or she can prove willful misconduct, and if the U.S. government has also brought an enforcement action against the party for willful misconduct. No such lawsuit has ever succeeded.

The government has created an extremely stingy compensation program, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, to redress injuries from all EUA products. The program’s parsimonious administrators have compensated under 4% of petitioners to date — and not a single COVID vaccine injury — despite the fact that physicians, families and injured vaccine recipients have reported more than 600,000 COVID vaccine injuries.

At least for the moment, the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine has no liability shield. Vials of the branded product, which say “Comirnaty” on the label, are subject to the same product liability laws as other U.S. products.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices places a vaccine on the mandatory schedule, a childhood vaccine benefits from a generous retinue of liability protections.

But licensed adult vaccines, including the new Comirnaty, do not enjoy any liability shield. Just as with Ford’s exploding Pinto, or Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, people injured by the Comirnaty vaccine could potentially sue for damages.

And because adults injured by the vaccine will be able to show that the manufacturer knew of the problems with the product, jury awards could be astronomical.

Pfizer is therefore unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product.

Given this background, the FDA’s acknowledgement in its approval letter that there are insufficient stocks of the licensed Comirnaty, but an abundant supply of the EUA Pfizer BioNTech jab, exposes the “approval” as a cynical scheme to encourage businesses and schools to impose illegal jab mandates.

The FDA’s clear motivation is to enable Pfizer to quickly unload inventories of a vaccine that science and the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System have exposed as unreasonably dangerous, and that the Delta variant has rendered obsolete.

They know they can’t win this argument on the science and that’s why they had to abolish the public process and independent oversight.

SIGN UP #TheDefender: https://t.co/zL66Edfiw5https://t.co/b6oj4bmnEo

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 23, 2021

Americans, told that the Pfizer COVID vaccine is now licensed, will understandably assume COVID vaccine mandates are lawful. But only EUA-authorized vaccines, for which no one has any real liability, will be available during the next few weeks when many school mandate deadlines occur.

The FDA appears to be purposefully tricking American citizens into giving up their right to refuse an experimental product.

While the media has trumpeted that the FDA has approved COVID vaccines, the FDA has not approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccines, nor any COVID vaccines for the 12- to 15-year age group, nor any booster doses for anyone.

And the FDA has not licensed any Moderna vaccine, nor any vaccine from Johnson & Johnson — so the vast majority, if not all, of vaccines available in the U.S. remain unlicensed EUA products.

Here’s what you need to know when somebody orders you to get the vaccine: Ask to see the vial. If it says “Comirnaty,” it’s a licensed product.

If it says “Pfizer-BioNTech,” it’s an experimental product, and under 21 U.S. Code 360bbb, you have the right to refuse.

If it comes from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (marketed as Janssen), you have the right to refuse.

The FDA is playing bait and switch with the American public — but we don’t have to play along. If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s avatar

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s reputation as a resolute defender of the environment stems from a litany of successful legal actions.

Meryl Nass, M.D.'s avatar

Meryl Nass, M.D.

Meryl Nass, MD, ABIM, is an internist with special interests in vaccine-induced illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War illness, fibromyalgia and toxicology.

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The Calm Before the Storm: Use it To Gain Strength To Fight the Coming Tyranny – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2021

This is the way of achieving total control over the long term of this population. It is based on fear, so new threats will emerge on a regular basis in order to perpetuate a dependence on government as savior. In fact, there will most certainly be additional threats and multi-faceted attacks on the psyche of the American public. Each step of this process will bring more suffering, more misery, and more carnage. This is the nature of the ruling beast, and if their campaign is successful, the people will become easier to control as time passes.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/05/gary-d-barnett/the-calm-before-the-storm-use-it-to-gain-strength-to-fight-the-coming-tyranny/

“Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.”

~ Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Life is full of ups and downs, of calm and crashing waves, of silence and pandemonium, of joy and heartache, of living and dying. What smoothes these ever-changing and precarious times comes only from within, as individual inner spirit and the strength it brings is the essence of not only survival, but of life itself. In order to defeat the oppression and corruption that exists in this world, in order to be free, one must always depend on self, and never cower in the presence of evil. There is in this moment a brief time of more calm, but hell is coming, and death is coming with it. Prepare to face this challenge instead of fleeing from it. Prepare to fight back!

At this point in time, reverse propaganda has begun, and it will become more pronounced in the short term. It is being and will be said more often that the cases and death over the fraudulent ‘pandemic’ are lessening, and permission to move about, albeit with state-supported caution, will be slightly increased, but only temporarily. The ‘vaccines’ will be credited for ‘slowing the spread,’ but of course this is only a lie and a smokescreen. This is the calm before the storm. It is my studied opinion that these poisonous injections falsely called vaccines will cause extreme numbers of deaths in the near future. It may be a few months or later this fall, and certainly sustained over longer periods of time, but the death counts due to the very toxic and deadly nature of all of the Covid-19 shots will weaken the immune systems of tens of millions of people or more, and cause irreparable harm. At that point when deaths greatly increase, it will be blamed on yet another strain of this fake ‘virus.’ When this occurs, new and even more deadly injections will be touted, and the cycle will be never ending.

This is the way of achieving total control over the long term of this population. It is based on fear, so new threats will emerge on a regular basis in order to perpetuate a dependence on government as savior. In fact, there will most certainly be additional threats and multi-faceted attacks on the psyche of the American public. Each step of this process will bring more suffering, more misery, and more carnage. This is the nature of the ruling beast, and if their campaign is successful, the people will become easier to control as time passes.

In addition to these multiple threats, civil unrest, politically promoted and supported violence, looting, rioting, and allowed assaults will become normal, and this will lead to more lockdowns and extreme police state measures being prevalent across the country, especially in the highly concentrated population areas. The more intense this chaos becomes, the heavier the hand of the state will be.

Due to this staged calm, many falsely believe that all will return to what is ludicrously referred to as ‘normal,’ and that the destruction of the economy and financial system is not one of the agendas sought by the ruling class. This is a gross miscalculation, as in order to complete this takeover of society; the current financial and monetary systems must collapse. Controlling property and people, digitizing all money and monetary transaction, and capturing and controlling all life-sustaining necessities such as food and energy, must be accomplished before any finality of control can be assured. This requires starting over and completely restructuring all aspects of existence. This agenda cannot be accomplished by any marginal reform of this social and economic system, hence the term of the oligarchs, “building back better.”

The abhorrent CIA manipulated mainstream media, and the governing class will continually foment extreme division among the masses. This has been easy work to date, as the herd has taken the bait of its masters hook, line, and sinker. The left has been castigated more often by the right for this dividing of society, and it does seem obvious that there is some truth to this as post modern Marxists seem to revel in the destruction of morality, history, and tradition. But of course, this works both ways, and since the left and right where politics are concerned, are one and the same, and their agendas are virtually identical, taking sides is just falling into the division trap from another angle, and therefore a losing proposition. It is a better way to throw off all political ideology in favor of individual responsibility and self-awareness, thus setting the stage for the possibility of real independence for all.

Some may believe that philosophizing about these issues is not constructive and does not give specific solutions for how to defeat these monsters. That thinking is empty and without merit, and is the coward’s way out. It is merely an excuse for not taking action. In order to defeat evil, one must fully understand the enemy and how he thinks. In the case of the Covid scam, and the claimed ruler’s intent, it is imperative to forget the perceived threat, and concentrate on the end game sought. Total control of the people is the goal, and once this is known by the many, the solution should become obvious.

While I tire of saying the same thing over and over again, and of the repetition, the only viable solution to our problems is unity in disobedience, and a refusal to accept any mandate issued by this criminal cartel called the state. This strategy can destroy the perpetrators of this fraud without ever firing a shot or resorting to extreme violence that can only lead to death, destruction and defeat. As simple as this sounds, it is the most powerful response possible, and requires only that one seek independence by taking personal responsibility for himself, his family, and his own freedom. In order to help others, in order to regain sanity, each of us must first help himself, and shun all efforts to seek the rule of others or participate in collective idiocy. Stand and face adversity as an individual, or be swallowed up in a sea of mob ignorance and totalitarian madness.

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

~ Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Source links:

The coming financial coup and the Covid fraud

Depopulation by ‘vaccine’

Premeditated mass murder by vaccine

Obedience is weakness

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Media Pseudo-Debates and the Silence of Leftist Critics The Incompetent, Negligent, Mishandling, Miscalculating Elite Blunderers – Edward Curtin

Posted by M. C. on March 22, 2021

Dr. Martin E. Schotz wrote twenty-six years ago in History Will Not Absolve US that those he had in mind for their defense of the Warren Commission were “such individuals as Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, the editors of The Nation magazine, and, if everyone remembers, I.F. Stone as well.  I think the positions of these individuals are very important because in their surprising (to us) dishonesty and willingness to cooperate with the warfare state in covering up the crime, there is obviously something to be learned.”

http://edwardcurtin.com/media-pseudo-debates-and-the-silence-of-leftist-critics-the-incompetent-negligent-mishandling-miscalculating-elite-blunderers/

ejcurtin

You’ve heard of them, no doubt, the U.S. rulers who can’t rule too well and are always getting surprised by events or fed bad advice by their underlings.  Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned.  They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence.  They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the elites whom allegedly they oppose while ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail.  They never see the storm coming, even as they create it.  Their incompetence is the retort to all those nut cases who conjure up conspiracy theories to explain their actions or lack thereof.  They are innocent.  Always innocent.

They and their media mouthpieces offer Americans, who are most eager to accept, what Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed at age thirty-nine by Hitler, called cheap grace: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.  Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance…”

These incompetents are, in the immortal words of the New York newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, “The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”

Except they could and can.

They’ve actually shot a lot of people, here and abroad.  It’s one of their specialties.  But they mean well.  They screw up sometimes, but they mean well.  They care, even while they kill millions with their guns and bombs. But they have their followers.

As another dissident thirty-nine-year-old pastor, executed by the American state, Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Mainstream Media Pseudo-Debates

The U.S. rulers have their defenders.  Most are corporate mainstream journalists whose jobs are to defend the ruling elites of both political parties.  They will criticize across the political divides depending on their organizations’ political leanings at the moment. But they will never attack the fundamentals of the oligarchic war system since they are part of it. Their jobs depend on it.  So CNN and The New York Times will obsessively attack Trump while Fox News will do the same to Obama or Biden. This is a game.

These days such massive media conglomerates are seemingly starkly divided and basically serve as adjuncts of one political party or the other.  They are essentially political propagandists for either the Democrats or the Republicans and have abandoned any pretense to be anything else.  They speak to their respective audiences in self-enclosed vacuums. They promote the divide that runs down the middle of the USA, a divide they helped to create.

Some have argued that this radical division of the media turf is because of economic and business factors; that the media organizations and their “journalists” have seen this strategy as the path to greater profits. There is probably some truth in this.  But it is a small part.

For all sides of the corporate media serve the same overarching political function: to divide and conquer the population; to set the so-called left against right; middle America against the east and west coasts; white against black; working class against middle-class; men against women; husbands against wives, etc. To keep people, who in reality should be allies, fighting with each other.  It is a classic strategy of divide-and-conquer that is carried out by the mainstream media pursuant to their unstated mandate. It is not an accident and has been conducted with a vengeance in recent years.

And crucially, it is anchored in the false premise of the myth of left vs. right with a reasonable center somewhere between.  Such a center has never existed. While left and right might once have been useful categories, they have long since outlived their usefulness. They now just serve to engender pseudo-debates.

Pseudo-debates are not new but they are highly effective.  They are debates based on false premises. In this case, the premise is that the massive corporate media conglomerates are not part of the same system of control and containment of the population, but are genuine opponents in the battle for truth and democracy.  Accept this premise and you have entered into endless debates leading nowhere.  It is a classic method of intelligence agencies to sow uncertainty and confusion and to have people following Alice down the rabbit hole, tumbling and tumbling into an endless void as they argue continually about nothing.[1]

See the rest here

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The Virus Is Your Fault, Says the Fauci Regime – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 2, 2021

Thus Elaine Godfrey at The Atlantic just wrote, “In November I wrote a story about how COVID-19 was overwhelming Iowa’s hospitals. Back then, public-health experts predicted another big surge after the holidays, but it never came. I went back to those experts to find out why.”

Those “experts” have been wrong over and over again, yet Godfrey still considers this mysterious.

She’d better follow up with these people who were totally wrong, ask them why they were totally wrong, and then uncritically repeat their answers to her audience.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/03/thomas-woods/the-virus-is-your-fault-says-the-fauci-regime/

By Tom Woods

You’ve heard it again and again:

The spread of the virus is your fault.

According to our opinion molders, any movements in the COVID-19 numbers are a reflection of the compliance, or otherwise, of the public with the usual array of the state’s so-called mitigation measures.

Now if we had any actual journalists, some of them would observe the absurdity of all this. After all, societies with little in common and remote from each other have seen exactly the same curves; we’re supposed to believe that this is because their peoples all complied, and then didn’t comply, and then complied again on exactly the same timetable?

Can people really be this thick?

Thus Elaine Godfrey at The Atlantic just wrote, “In November I wrote a story about how COVID-19 was overwhelming Iowa’s hospitals. Back then, public-health experts predicted another big surge after the holidays, but it never came. I went back to those experts to find out why.”

Those “experts” have been wrong over and over again, yet Godfrey still considers this mysterious.

She’d better follow up with these people who were totally wrong, ask them why they were totally wrong, and then uncritically repeat their answers to her audience.

Now she could have consulted people who have been right, and who have been critical of the public-health apparatus, to see if maybe these folks have some insight into why the always-wrong people were wrong yet again, but that would be journalism, and that is not Elaine Godfrey’s field.

No, instead she wrote a follow-up article called, “Iowans Were Scared into Taking the Virus Seriously.”

Yes, this is the best she can do: public-health officials did such a good job panicking about a “surge” that they persuaded people to change their behavior!

Know what the trouble with this is?

Iowan public-health officials must have scared people so much that the scariness spread into North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas, too, which had identical curves and declines in their numbers with no change in public-health messaging and no change in the public’s behavior.

Oops!

Note, too, that this decline occurs during the holidays, when we were told there’d be a major spike. Yet in these states the numbers fell. Is that because people in these states got together and coordinated a gigantic decision to follow “public health” guidelines at precisely the same moment, or might climate zones and seasonality have more to do with it?

Naturally, Iowa’s relatively more laissez-faire approach had the usual suspects screaming and predicting doom. “Iowans can expect to see nothing less than a tsunami,” said Dr. Eli Perencevich. “In a lot of ways, Iowa is serving as the control group of what not to do.”

“Iowa Is What Happens When Government Does Nothing,” warned the Atlantic.

And then hospitalizations plummeted.

In late 2020 the authorities in Minnesota tried to claim that their most recent wave of ruining people’s lives had helped get their state’s case numbers down faster than neighboring states.

But in fact the numbers showed neighboring states doing as well or better than Minnesota.

Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana adopted completely different policies and implemented them at different times. And yet their hospitalization curves look strikingly similar.

It’s almost as if none of this makes any difference, isn’t it?

Well, a member of the mainstream media — on MSNBC, no less — finally, after months and months, asked The Question.

Her guest: White House COVID adviser and crazed doomer Andy Slavitt.

She asked him:

“Contrast states like Florida and California, California basically in lockdown and their numbers aren’t that different from Florida.”

Slavitt proceeded to do everything but answer the question.

He began with this:

“Look, there’s so much of this virus that we think we understand, that we think we can predict, that’s just a little bit beyond our explanation.”

This is all I’ve been asking them to say for the past year. Admit that they don’t fully understand it, and that it doesn’t behave the way their mitigation guidance seems to suggest it does. Finally someone admits it.

And then, on to the evasion of the question:

“What we do know is that the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance, and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads, but we have got to get better visibility into variants, we don’t know what role they play, large events, etc.

“As we all have learned by this time, this is a virus that continues to surprise us. It’s very hard to predict. And all around the country, we’ve got to continue to do a better job, and I think we are, but we’re done yet.”

That’s it. That’s all he had to say.

Sorry we decimated your savings, took away your sources of joy, destroyed your business, and stole a year of your children’s lives. We’re just learning, you see.

And we “know,” said Slavitt, that the more people “mask and social distance,” the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads.

In fact, we “know” no such thing. Graph the results any way you like: lockdown stringency, people’s mobility patterns, mask mandate dates, whatever. The results are completely random. They absolutely do not show a clear pattern whereby ruining your life solves the problem.

Not to mention: the very California/Florida comparison the anchor is asking him about clearly contradicts this claim, but Slavitt just repeats it robotically anyway.

Slavitt also mentions “large events,” of which there have been precious few in California over the past year. But there have been a ton in Florida, where I live. Shouldn’t our state be marked by piles of corpses at the side of the road, and California be a paradise – especially since our state has a much higher elderly population?

Well, I’ve taken phenomena like this and assembled it in the form of charts that tell the story better than any essay can.

It’s a free eBook called COVID Charts CNN Forgot.

Enjoy:

http://www.ChartsTheyForgot.com

Tom Woods [send him mail; visit his website] is the New York Times bestselling author of 12 books and host of the Tom Woods Show, which libertarians listen to every weekday. Get a free copy of Your Facebook Friends Are Wrong About the Lockdown: A Non-Hysteric’s Guide to COVID-19.

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The Party With No Ideas

Posted by M. C. on January 7, 2021

https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/cookies?e=4e0de347c8

There Aint No Success Like Failure…

Dear Friends of the Ron Paul Institute:

Like me you are probably looking over photos of supposed Trump supporters breaching the ramparts and storming the Capitol today. That is if you can find them. To “protect” us from viewing these incredibly “disturbing” scenes, Twitter has helpfully announced that it will severely restrict their distribution across its network. We can all rest easier, I suppose. Though even memory-addled Americans may recall the free-for-all in posting BLM and Antifa violence on Big Tech’s Big Platforms.

“Gee that’s not fair! Twitter is discriminating!”

Conservative politicians and “responsible” Beltway libertarians are wringing their hands over the supposedly horrible optics of people breaking through police lines and violating that Most Holy of Sanctuaries, the Senate Floor! The religion of America is politics and any violation of the sanctity of that Holy Body is to be condemned.

Many of us, myself included, are not concerned about weirdos in buffalo horns occupying that sacred space reserved for Saint Mitch McConnell. “Oh no! It will give CNN something to say about how horrible is the opposition to the incoming robber Administration, whose ‘victory’ is doubted even by almost one in five Democrat voters!”

Because absent that, they’d provide balanced coverage.

The mainstream media and whinging Republicans are having a panic attack over those evil people who don’t like the feeling that their vote was stolen! The opportunities for “responsible” Republican virtue-signaling are endless and too intoxicating to resist. 

So do we support the “occupation” of the Senate Chambers as an expression of righteous anger over the feeling that the election was stolen? Not really, because it will not achieve anything. As we said in today’s Liberty Report, the Republicans have lost both chambers of Congress mostly because they are devoid of ideas. They scream about socialism while voting for insane spending bills that only benefit the rich and well-connected. They decry the Democrat obsession with Russia as the enemy not because they know it’s bogus, but only because they want their own enemy: China! They dream of war with Iran and endless occupation of the Middle East. They drool over the prospect of more “American global leadership” without pausing for a moment to think that the rest of the world has had quite enough “leadership” from US neocons and “humanitarians.”

Is anyone shocked that Republican empty minds were rejected at the polling place?

So let’s look for a silver lining. Opposition to Leviathan must be based on principle. The Democrats and Republicans are nearly identical in their view that only the political elites, from the Sacred Throne of Democracy recently defiled by the unwashed masses, can save us from ourselves. We don’t know how to manage our lives, we don’t know how to manage our health, we are far too stupid to simply live without their constant guidance.

Remember the monster Victoria Nuland? Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State who was the prime mover behind the murderous coup in Ukraine? Where thousands died unnecessarily because Obama’s foreign policy geniuses thought bringing Ukraine into the US orbit – regardless of what Ukrainians actually wanted – would be a great idea? The nasty woman who actually walked amongst the most violent US-sponsored thugs and offered them cookies to keep them energized as they murdered their fellow citizens?

Remember Nuland’s intercepted phone call where she did not even try to hide the fact that the United States had arrogated to itself the authority to determine who would run post-coup Ukraine? “‘F’ the EU,” she said. Yeah, that’s “American global leadership,” neocon style.

How many Republicans supported this most idiotic and pointless policy? Most. Because they have no principles.

Well the big failure Nuland is back, demonstrating that there is nothing like being catastrophically wrong in foreign policy to boost your career in Washington’s foreign policy establishment! Incoming Biden has announced that he would reward neocon Nuland for her incompetence with an Assistant Secretaryship for Policy at the State Department.

There are many areas wide open for us – we non-interventionist, non-partisans – to affect the debate in the coming people. It has in a way fallen into our laps: we oppose interventionism on principle and we have no opposition because no one else has any principles! It’s only about empty-headed power. 

Schumer is drooling all over himself with his newfound power, Tweeting “buckle up” earlier today. But he has no real power because he has no ideas. We have the ideas and as Dr. Paul always says no army can stop an idea whose time has come. Our time has come!

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Powerful Presidents Are Incompatible with Liberty

Posted by M. C. on November 11, 2020

The Founders did not intend for the president to set the “national agenda, “ and they would be horrified to see modern presidents assume the authority to order American citizens indefinitely detained and even killed without due process.

The idea that the president should exercise almost unlimited powers is a legacy of the progressive movement. Progressives, who are responsible for the rise of the American welfare-warfare state, have an affinity for a strong Presidency that is not surprising. A government that aspires to run our lives, run the economy, and run the world requires a strong executive branch unfettered by the Constitution’s chains. The Cold War also provided a boost to presidential power, as it justified presidents assuming more unchecked authority in the name of “national security.”

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/november/09/powerful-presidents-are-incompatible-with-liberty/

Written by Ron Paul

The mainstream media has declared former Vice President Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. However, this does not mean the 2020 Presidential campaign has come to an end. President Donald Trump is continuing his legal challenges to the vote counts in some key states.

The emotional investment of many Americans into the race between Trump and Biden would have shocked the drafters of the Constitution. The Constitution’s authors intended the presidency to be an office of strictly limited powers that would not impact most Americans. The Constitution authorizes the president to administer laws passed by Congress, not create laws via executive orders. The president serves as Commander-in-Chief of the military following a Congressional declaration of war, with no authority to unilaterally send troops into foreign conflict.

The Founders did not intend for the president to set the “national agenda, “ and they would be horrified to see modern presidents assume the authority to order American citizens indefinitely detained and even killed without due process.

The idea that the president should exercise almost unlimited powers is a legacy of the progressive movement. Progressives, who are responsible for the rise of the American welfare-warfare state, have an affinity for a strong Presidency that is not surprising. A government that aspires to run our lives, run the economy, and run the world requires a strong executive branch unfettered by the Constitution’s chains. The Cold War also provided a boost to presidential power, as it justified presidents assuming more unchecked authority in the name of “national security.”

The concentration of power in the executive branch does not mean presidents are all-powerful. For example, even though presidents are judged by the state of the economy, the unelected, unaccountable Federal Reserve Board typically has greater influence over the economy then the president. Presidents often must tailor their economic policies to deal with the consequences of the Fed’s actions. This is why presidents spend so much time and energy trying to influence the “non-political” Fed. Fed Chairs usually, but not always, reciprocate by attempting to tailor polices to be “useful” to the incumbent president.

It has become cliché to say that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” This means no one—not even Members of Congress, should ever oppose or second-guess a president’s foreign policy decisions. However, this rule does not apply to those comprising what has become popularly known as the “deep state”: the military-industrial complex, the national security bureaucracy—including the CIA— congressional staffers, and members of the media. This deep state serves a permanent government and has an agenda it pursues regardless of the wishes of the president or the American people.

The deep state has derailed President Trump’s (modest) efforts to fulfill his campaign promise to pursue a less interventionist foreign policy and end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Members of the deep state were instrumental in the Russiagate hoax and the impeachment of President Trump. Many supported impeachment because President Trump’s actions contradicted the DC “consensus” on US -Ukraine relations and the need for a new Cold War with Russia. President Trump is not the first president to be undermined by the deep state and he will certainly not be the last.

The 2020 election has awoken many Americans to the corruption of the modern welfare-warfare state. These Americans are ripe for the message of liberty. They can help with the vital task of demystifying the US Presidency, destroying the deep state, restoring our constitutional republic, and regaining our lost liberties.

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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Now Americans Are Rioting Over Mini-Golf And Bagels

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

The mainstream media deserves a lot of the blame for this. Over and over they keep telling us that the riots that are happening in our major cities each night are “peaceful”, but everyone can see that they are not. In Portland, protesters have been regularly firing projectiles, vandalizing buildings and setting fires, and they keep getting away with it. Other than Fox News, the major news outlets in this country have put their full stamp of approval on what these rioters are doing, and that sends a very dangerous signal to everyone else.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/now-americans-are-rioting-over-mini-golf-and-bagels

Have you noticed that people all over the country are starting to completely flip out for little to no reason?  People are becoming violently angry even over very trivial matters, and you never know when someone might erupt.  One moment you could be talking to a seemingly mild-mannered middle-aged woman, and the next moment she could transform into a raging “Karen”.  And of course I am not singling out women in particular, because most of the people that have been involved in the violent riots that we have seen around the nation in recent weeks have been men.  People of all ages and backgrounds are suddenly going completely nuts, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

The mainstream media deserves a lot of the blame for this.  Over and over they keep telling us that the riots that are happening in our major cities each night are “peaceful”, but everyone can see that they are not.  In Portland, protesters have been regularly firing projectiles, vandalizing buildings and setting fires, and they keep getting away with it.  Other than Fox News, the major news outlets in this country have put their full stamp of approval on what these rioters are doing, and that sends a very dangerous signal to everyone else.

If it is perfectly acceptable for rioters to attack police officers, destroy buildings and commit other acts of violence because they are “offended” by the system, then a lot of other young people out there are going to give themselves permission to violently erupt when they are “offended” by something as well.

For example, there was just an incident in Tennessee where hundreds of teens started going on a violent rampage at a mini-golf center because “the game machines ate their cash”…

A Tennessee mini-golf center erupted in chaos Saturday night when 300 to 400 teenagers began terrorizing staffers and smashing up the premises because the game machines ate their cash, Jam Press reported.

The riotous scene at Putt-Putt Fun Center, at Golf and Games Family Park in Memphis, was caught on camera by an alarmed bystander and shows the violent teens go berserk and throw various heavy objects at staff because they didn’t issue the kids a refund.

To really get a feel for this incident you need to see some video footage, and someone posted a short clip of the chaos on Twitter right here.

100 years ago, young people in America never would have conducted themselves in such a manner, and this is yet more evidence of how dramatically our culture has decayed.

Over on the east coast, three male “Karens” completely freaked out and caused 13,000 dollars in damage to a bagel shop when they were told that they had arrived too late to get food…

Footage released by police shows the suspects smashing up The Brothers Deli & Bagel in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn at around 5.30pm on Friday after workers had packed up and were waiting for their deliver man to bring the bikes inside.

The video shared Tuesday shows the would-be customers knocking drinks off a shelf, flipping over snacks, and turning tables after seemingly realizing they were too late to buy food.

In a civilized society, people resolve their differences calmly and peacefully, but the truth is that we are becoming less civilized with each passing day.

For many people, resorting to violence is becoming option number one and talking things out rationally is way down the list.

Down in South Florida, nobody is quite sure why a bunch of people in bathing suits started “pummeling each other” at a local casino, but it ended up making headlines all over the globe…

Three people were arrested and several more were banned from a South Florida casino after they were filmed in a violent brawl.

Video on social media shows several individuals, wearing bathing suits, while pummeling each other inside the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood on Friday.

At this point, video of the brawl has been seen more than four million times, and I suppose that should not come as a surprise to any of us.

As I was writing this article, several lines penned by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament came to mind…

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Everywhere you look, people are exceedingly angry, and we are starting to see Americans take out their anger on one another with frightening regularity.

And if things are this bad already, what is the U.S. going to look like when events really start to spiral out of control?

The way that we raise and educate our children really matters.  For decades, most of the country has completely thrown out all traditional forms of morality, and we have raised our children to believe that they can define “right” and “wrong” however they wish.

Our education system is a complete and total joke, most children have been raised without any real moral foundation, and our culture relentlessly pounds a “victim mentality” into the heads of our young people.

A society is only as strong as the sum of the individuals that make up that society, and right now the lack of character in the United States is absolutely frightening.

Yes, there are certainly lots of exceptions.  I know some truly wonderful people, but I just wish that there were a whole lot more of them.

Unfortunately, the social decay that is eating away at our society like a cancer is getting worse with each passing year.  Decades of incredibly bad decisions have brought us to this point, and there are no indications that our nation is going to choose a different course any time soon.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

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Young white woman killed by BLM thugs simply because she spoke the TRUTH: “All Lives Matter” – NaturalNews.com

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2020

“To top it off after the 2 young people continued their walk and then turned back, that is when the multiple black Blm assailants came out of hiding and shot JESSICA in the head.

“Why isn’t anybody outraged about this?” Snavely added. “Is it that BLM was involved or that it was white young adults that [were] the victims?”

Or both.

https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-07-14-young-woman-killed-blm-thugs-truth-all-lives-matter.html

by:

 

Image: Young white woman killed by BLM thugs simply because she spoke the TRUTH: “All Lives Matter”

Have you heard any of the wall-to-wall coverage of the young white woman who was killed by Black Lives Matter thugs after she dared to challenge them with the truth — that “All Lives Matter?”

What do you think about all of the nationwide protests, massive demonstrations, rampant destruction, wanton looting, and violence directed towards police as a result of that murder?

What are your thoughts about ‘ALM’ activists now intimidating and attacking black people, toppling and defacing monuments to Martin Luther King Jr. and painting murals saying, “All Lives Matter” across the street from Barack and Michelle Obama’s homes in Washington, D.C. and Martha’s Vineyard?

You don’t have an opinion on any of these things, no doubt, because they haven’t happened and they aren’t going to happen.

And yet, a young white woman was killed by BLM thugs along the canal in Indianapolis, Indiana over the Fourth of July holiday specifically because she told them All Lives Matter.

Outside of local media and a few independent news sites, few Americans have heard this heartbreaking story — because it is ‘anti-Mainstream media narrative’ and does not comport with the Democratic Marxism of the ongoing culture war against our founding.

Fox59 reports:

An Indianapolis mother was shot and killed along the canal early Sunday, marking the second homicide on the canal in a week.

According to the victim’s family, the shooting started over some racially charged language. 

The victim, Jessica Doty Whitaker, leaves behind a little boy.

“She shouldn’t have lost her life. She’s got a 3-year-old son she loved dearly,” said her fiance Jose Ramirez.

According to Ramirez, he and the victim and two other people were hanging out along the canal when someone in their group used a slang version of the N-word.

That led to a confrontation from a nearby group of black males who, you know, never call each other the “N” word (except that they do, and they celebrate it in rap music as well).

At one point, Fox59 noted, someone in the shooting suspect’s group shouted, “Black Lives Matter,” prompting a response from Whitaker or someone in her group, “All Lives Matter.” (Related: Marxist BLM terrorists cut down memorial to 9-11 firefighters in New York: This isn’t about George Floyd anymore.)

The local station says that eventually both groups realized each other were armed so they “fist-bumped” and separated. But then, according to Ramirez, as he walked with his fiancee, someone from the other group ambushed them from a bridge and ran off.

Whitaker, 24, was struck in the head and leg, according to reports.

“It was squashed and they went up the hill and left we thought, but they were sitting on St. Clair waiting for us to come under the bridge and that’s when she got shot,” said Ramirez, who admitted he returned fire but did not hit anyone.

“It’s hard to tell him his mom is in heaven and if you want to talk to her you have to look up and say, ‘I love you mom,’” he said.

Whitaker’s response — ‘All Lives Matter’ — was confirmed by her family in interviews with The Gateway Pundit’s Cassandra Fairbanks.

According to her report, the victim’s grandfather wrote on Facebook that she was attacked by “multiple black assailants.”

“How is it that 2 white young people are out for some alone time they drop her 3 year old off at her grandmas house expecting to have an evening to reconnect, but all they got was terrorized by multiple black BLM assailants on the canal in downtown Indy,” the grandfather, Dale Snavely, wrote.

“To top it off after the 2 young people continued their walk and then turned back, that is when the multiple black Blm assailants came out of hiding and shot JESSICA in the head.

“Why isn’t anybody outraged about this?” Snavely added. “Is it that BLM was involved or that it was white young adults that [were] the victims?”

That’s a great question.

Sources include:

TheGatewayPundit.com

Fox59.com

NaturalNews.com

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Archbishop Viganò: Dictatorships arise because not enough voices oppose them | Blogs | LifeSite

Posted by M. C. on May 29, 2020

There was a time when, with the obedience of the masses, a hellish dictatorship committed a very serious crime, making itself responsible for the deportation and death of millions of innocent people, only because of their faith and line of descent. Even then the mainstream media praised those in power and remained silent about their crimes;…

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/archbishop-vigano-dictatorships-arise-because-not-enough-voices-oppose-them

Maike Hickson

May 26, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has responded to a German Rabbi, Jehoschua Ahrens, who called the Viganò Appeal concerning the corona crisis and its dangers for constitutional liberties a “shock,” adding that he is glad that the German bishops have distanced themselves from it.

The Italian prelate defended issuing the May 7 appeal, stating: “I think it is the duty of each one of us to express our concerns about a situation that, taking advantage of the Covid crisis, goes far beyond reasonable safety measures, imposing on entire nations the deprivation of constitutional freedoms.”

Archbishop Viganò warned that recent German history has much to teach about the rise of a “hellish dictatorship” that few opposed and spoke out against at the time it was happening.

“There was a time when, with the obedience of the masses, a hellish dictatorship committed a very serious crime, making itself responsible for the deportation and death of millions of innocent people, only because of their faith and line of descent,” he said.

“Even then the mainstream media praised those in power and remained silent about their crimes; even then doctors and scientists lent their work to a delusional plan of domination; even then those who dared to raise their voices were accused of ‘conspiracy theories.’ One had to wait until the end of the Second World War to discover with horror the truth about which many had hitherto remained silent,” he added.

The Archbishop warned that those who today “delegitimize” the Appeal as an expression of “conspiracy theories” do not “realize the real dangers to which the entire human family is exposed.”

“But I am certain that both Catholics and all men of good will – and among them I think I can include the children of Abraham – have at heart the greater glory of God, the respect for the dignity of individuals, and the freedoms of peoples,” he said.

Rabbi Ahrens’ criticism of Viganò’s Appeal was reported on May 20 by Katholisch.de, the German bishops’ official news website. The Rabbi’s original words first appeared in the newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine.

Katholisch.de especially highlighted the following words of the Rabbi concerning the so-called “conspiracy theories”:

“We have known for some time that there are people within the churches who adhere to such theories. But now they have the courage to express these opinions even more openly.”

While stressing the good collaboration with the Catholic Church in Germany, Ahrens points out that there is still a “minority” among the Catholics in Germany who have conspiracy theories. While insisting that Jews themselves are less “prone to conspiracy theories,” he states that “we know, after all, that in general these theories are about us.”

While rejecting the idea that God is punishing us with this corona crisis, Rabbi Ahrens points out that “it is an intention of Jewry: to turn a negative into a positive, to turn a curse into a blessing,” that is to say, to learn lessons from this crisis.

Archbishop Viganò’s response to the Rabbi was only covered in part by Katholisch.de (adding a link to the full letter only in the end of the post), despite the Archbishop asking that his letter be published in full. Katholisch.de did not even mention that they received the letter from the Italian prelate with this request. LifeSiteNews is pleased to provide the full letter below.

The May 7 Viganò Appeal– which was also signed by Cardinals Gerhard Müller, Joseph Zen and Janis Pujats, as well as Bishops Athanasius Schneider and Joseph Strickland – had called into question the world-wide response of lockdowns and strong restrictions of freedoms of citizens as measures against the coronavirus outbreak.

The signatories of this Appeal, among whom are also journalists, experts, and other clergy, showed concern for the Church and the world that the COVID-19 pandemic is being used as a “pretext” by world leaders to “control” people, strip them of their fundamental rights, while providing a “disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.” They also reminded the public of the liberty of the Catholic Church who “firmly asserts her autonomy to govern, worship, and teach,” thus making clear that the state has not the authority to decide over church closures. So far, more than 51,000 people have signed this document.

***

Full letter by Archbishop Viganò in response to Rabbi Ahrens:

Dear Rabbi Ahrens,
Since I have been criticized for my Appeal for the Church and the world, I ask Katholisch.de to give me permission to answer you.
I must tell you, Dr. Ahrens, that I am not a little surprised by your words when you say: “We have known for some time that there are people within the churches who adhere to such theories. But now they have the courage to express these opinions even more openly.”

I think it is the duty of each one of us to express our concerns about a situation that, taking advantage of the Covid crisis, goes far beyond reasonable safety measures, imposing on entire nations the deprivation of constitutional freedoms: this may not have happened in Germany, but it has certainly happened in many countries.

I ask you, dear Rabbi Ahrens: in your opinion, is it still permissible to express oneself freely, or are there subjects that cannot be discussed anymore in a civil manner? If you can express your disagreement with the content of the Appeal, why should “people within the churches” not be entitled to express themselves freely, as well? And why do you think that one would need to “have courage” in order to do so, as if it were a matter of mere rantings without any reference to reality?

To dismiss these concerns – which have been expressed, moreover, by reputable personalities – as “conspiracy theories” does not seem to me a constructive attitude: especially if one does not have the merit of disproving what is considered untrue. I therefore ask you: in what, specifically, do you disagree with the text of the Appeal? What in the Appeal represents a “shock” for you?

Believe me: I would have never thought that the Appeal could offend you; on the other hand, why should a Rabbi himself feel criticized when there is now talk of the New World Order? The Messiah that Israel awaits is Rex pacificus, Princeps pacis, Pater futuri saeculi [King of Peace, Prince of Peace, Father of the world to come]: not a tyrant without morals who dominates the world by subjugating men as slaves. This rather applies to the Antichrist.

Let us now come to the spiritual significance of Covid. In the Old Testament there are many examples of punishments sent to the Chosen People by God, and the Prophets many times warned the Jews to abandon idolatry, and not to contaminate themselves with the pagans, and to remain faithful to the one true God. I recall here the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, after the burning of Jerusalem by Babylonian troops in 585 B.C.: “Her adversaries have taken over, her enemies prosper; for the Lord has afflicted her for her countless sins” (Lam. 1:5).

This vision, which the Church of Christ shares, shows us a just and merciful God, who rewards the good and punishes the wicked; who like a loving Father punishes also His disobedient children, to bring them back to follow His holy Law. For this reason, “turning the negative into the positive, turning a curse into a blessing” is achieved by recognizing that one has committed a sin, that one has broken the covenant with God, that one has deserved His chastisements. Then the epidemic also becomes an opportunity to return to the Lord, worship Him in His holy temple, follow His precepts.

There was a time when, with the obedience of the masses, a hellish dictatorship committed a very serious crime, making itself responsible for the deportation and death of millions of innocent people, only because of their faith and line of descent. Even then the mainstream media praised those in power and remained silent about their crimes; even then doctors and scientists lent their work to a delusional plan of domination; even then those who dared to raise their voices were accused of “conspiracy theories.” One had to wait until the end of the Second World War to discover with horror the truth about which many had hitherto remained silent.

I am sure that those who today delegitimize the Appeal as an expression of “conspiracy theories” do not realize the real dangers to which the entire human family is exposed. But I am certain that both Catholics and all men of good will – and among them, I think I can include the children of Abraham – have at heart the greater glory of God, the respect for the dignity of individuals, and the freedoms of peoples. Beatus populus, cujus Dominus Deus ejus (Ps 143:15).

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop, Apostolic Nuncio

May 22, 2020, Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord

Translation by LifeSite’s Dr. Maike Hickson

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