Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

We’re not your lab rats any more: Convoy update IV

Denyse O'Leary
February 24, 2022
Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Science
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As of March 13, 2022, this page will not be updated. The issues re COVID-19 have now moved to the stage where only serious enquiries into the costly Crazy will be any use. Meanwhile, we leave you with this thought:

Now, as we move forward (or not), a final message: Maybe you didn’t care when ID proponents lost their jobs for not fronting Darwin. After all, you didn’t think it would spread. But it does.

The COVID Crazy is what happens when “science” becomes a placeholder for a variety of wants and fears, power grabs and pursuit of profits. Now that you had to live with it – and should justifiably fear the next Crazy coming down the pike – what do you think about what has become of science?

Much of the worldwide panic porn has been driven by false counts and misunderstood risks. Governments will need to be, um, prodded to face up to these problems. In our own jurisdictions, we can all be good citizens and help.

The post “We’re not your lab rats any more” III — as the world fights back against a lab rat status in the COVID-19 “Trust the Science” Crazy — was getting too big (especially on cell phones). So go here for the whole story up to Canada’s Trudeau suddenly dumping the Emergencies Act aimed at the protestors against ridiculous COVID-19 rules.

—

United States, March 13, 2022

The reckoning begins (and continues, we hope):

Facts Matter (March 11): The Pfizer Documents: 158K Adverse Events, 42K Case reports, 1.2K Fatalities in First 3 Months Expect lots of tooth-and-nail fights, devious tactics, and sudden disappearances of critical documents as corporate and government crats seek to hide things we weren’t supposed to know.

Fear: Growing Number of Countries Identify Cases of ‘Deltacron’ Variant

Um, no. A solid mass of people — who can thank the Canadian truckers for finally calling out all the crap — will resolutely oppose another round of Crazy.

Crazy? How about this: Lockdown Debate Was Skewed Because Skeptical Scientists Had Less ‘Twitter Firepower’: Study Let that sink in, people. The Twitterati you never listened to were helping run your life.

Oh, and get this: “Mask Mandates Not Linked to Lower COVID-19 Case Rate or Transmission: Study” Huh? It would be amazing if the shopping plaza masks were any use. In that case, everything we ever knew about sterile procedure would turn out to be false.

Massachusetts to Reduce ‘Significant Overcount’ of COVID-19 Deaths. But will the state government follow through?

Much of the worldwide panic porn has been driven by false counts and misunderstood risks. Governments will need to be, um, prodded to face up to the risks.

Now, as we move forward (or not), a final message: Maybe you didn’t care when ID proponents lost their jobs for not fronting Darwin. After all, you didn’t think it would spread. But it does. The COVID Crazy is what happens when “science” becomes a placeholder for a variety of wants and fears, power grabs and pursuit of profits.

Now that you had to live with it – and should justifiably fear the next Crazy coming down the pike – what do you think about what has become of science?

All some of us ever say is, Let the enquiries begin!

—

Canada, March 13, 2022

Okay, it begins: An actual enquiry into how government mismanagement hastened elders into an early grave: Who Killed Granny? Pandemic Death Protocols in Canada’s Long-term Care Facilities Granny’s death was great for pumping up the panic that closed elementary schools and teen drop-in centres, even though her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were not at risk of COVID but were at risk of delayed literacy/numeracy and/or depression and suicide attempts. Nice going, Public Health!

Plus

Harms From Vaccine Mandates May Outweigh Benefits, Say Vancouver Coastal Health Officials So someone is finally discussing that… ? We can talk about vaccine injuries now?

It doesn’t bode well that most people will only ever have heard the term “vaccine injuries” from disapproved sources.

The panic abruptly died in the province of British Columbia, where O’Leary for News lives: “BC Will End Mask Mandates on March 11, Vaccine Passports on April”

The vast majority were never in danger. And never would have been.

Meanwhile, the Crazy lives on. Hordes of mentally fragile people mask up here even in broad daylight on the streets — in the teeth of a cold wind off the North Pacific. Superstition does that to people. But why call it “science?”

Meanwhile, as many BC residents finally breathe free indoors in public places, watch the MASSIVE legacy media effort at concern trolling:

Meanwhile, British Columbia, is also firing doctors who won’t prescribe the vaxx even though the province faces a huge doctor shortage. Good to know the government has its priorities right.

That is, if you needed someone to address your heart failure, you are out of luck, whether you have or haven’t had the shot or suffered from it or whatever. This is what happens when government gets a stranglehold on medical science. And probably on any science.

Punditry

As mandates and other crazies are falling across the country: How the Government’s Response to Freedom Convoy Differed From Its Approach With Other Protests in Canada (Omid Ghoreishi):

Just before COVID-19 became the major crisis of the past two years, Canada was in the midst of grappling with railroad blockades by opponents of a pipeline development project in B.C. in early 2020. The weeks-long blockades crippled freight and passenger rail traffic in most of Eastern Canada.

Early in 2022, Canada saw another series of protests, this time in opposition to COVID-19 mandates, with participants setting up camp in downtown Ottawa and others blocking Canada-U.S. border crossings.

But there was a vast difference between how the government dealt with the anti-mandate protest and how it responded to the anti-pipeline protest as well as other protests in recent years.

Um, right. Canada’s future, going forward, largely depends on whether it makes any difference that the government’s response to the uproars around COVID was for citizens to be trampled by police horses.

—

United States, March 9, 2022

Is an AI-driven social control system emerging in America? The gradual merger of Big Tech and Big Government is worthy of close analysis. The beginnings of such a system can be seen in the behavior of Canadian banks during the trucker’s Convoy — and of American credit card giants at home. Yes, it is already happening in the United States.

People just didn’t notice because they thought that kind of thing would only happen to “bad people”… But no. These things aren’t like that.

Meanwhile, Facebook Called Out for Vaccine Marketing Alliance

A health alliance formed by Facebook in June of 2021 has been funding research into “how best to use behavioral science, social media and digital platforms to build confidence in and access to vaccines.”

Called the “Alliance for Advancing Health Online (AAHO),” members of the Facebook-led group include the World Health Organization, pharmaceutical giant Merck, and the CDC Foundation—which is the fundraising arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has corporate partners that include Pfizer and other world giants in vaccine manufacturing…

“This is absolutely appalling,” Pierre Kory, president of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a prominent advocate for alternative COVID-19 treatment, told The Epoch Times.

“This doesn’t have a true, scientifically-supported public health objective for getting people vaccinated, it’s more of a marketing aim with the sole goal of increasing vaccine rates.”

On the bright side: Facebook’s got a bundle, right? Will they compensate the vaccine-injured? One reason for fronting inquiries would be to unearth more of what really happened and pave the way for something like that.

Mooted: Why we must demand that leaders who got COVID wrong admit it and apologize Please, no! The leaders didn’t just “get it wrong” like somebody slipping on the sidewalk. Let’s probe the links between Big Gov, Big Social Media, and Big Pharma before we decide whether many of the people involved are just fools — or villains.

Convoy? The People’s Convoy Makes Its Mark Despite Media Blackout:

More than a thousand big-rig trucks, pick-ups, SUVs, passenger cars, and motorcycles circled the 64-mile Capital Beltway on Monday to demonstrate their opposition to vaccine mandates and the government’s pandemic policies.

There were no traffic jams. The convoy was orderly, almost precision-like in its discipline. The protesters gave the right of way to other vehicles using the highway, staying in the right-hand lane for the entire circuit. It was peaceful.

Despite the expectations of the media and many in government that the convoy would become violent, the protesters have, so far, shown no inclination to cause disruptions to Washington traffic or take part in violent demonstrations in the city itself.

Same thing in Canada. All the violence was caused by the police.

If Americans media continue on their present course, they will go from blackouts to demands for censorship of those providing news.

The Trust the Science! Chokehold loosens in some places: Florida starts to make sensible plans going forward:

Florida is clearly leading the way toward a more sane, science-based approach to the pandemic. CDC data shows that school-age children have a COVID recovery rate of 99.997%—better than their mortality risk from the seasonal flu, and studies have shown that unvaccinated children are safer from COVID than even vaccinated adults of any age.

Other countries are acknowledging this data. In fact, earlier this year, health officials in Sweden decided against recommending COVID vaccines for kids aged 5-12, arguing that the benefits don’t outweigh the risks.

No, but the big question is really: What’s behind the stampede elsewhere to vaxx them all anyway? Demand enquiries!

Now let’s talk about masks:

Some of us don’t care if our neighbours want to wear a mask on the street — or a Batman or Tweety Bird getup — just leave the rest of us alone. And don’t make kids do it in school. The rest of us have really, truly, had enough.

—

Canada, March 9, 2022

Convoy organizer Tamara Lich has been granted bail There are way bigger issues to deal with than Tamara Lich. Let’s start with out-of-control government, high on Trust the Science!, locking down an entire nation for basically stupid reasons.

Meanwhile Ontario to Lift Mask Mandate for Most Settings on March 21 Keep talking, folks. And you had better.

Local bureaucracies continue to be vicious: Struggling mom-and-pop restaurant faces charges, fines for not kicking out patrons. As times remain tumultuous for entrepreneurs, establishments like Vivian’s Country Cooking (Norfolk, Ontario) are yet again in jeopardy of losing everything.

Edmonton Drops Mask Bylaw as Alberta Moves to Ban Separate Municipal COVID Rules: During the COVID Crazy, every little town or township was a dictatorship. And that’s another thing that must be addressed: = You people get back to dealing with stray dogs and ragweed, okay?

While ‘crats sit at home in front of their laptops…

Meanwhile, the interim Ottawa police chief, responsible for the country’s reputation-wrecking carnage vows “systemic change.” Can you guess what the change is? We fear you can:

The statement outlined other upcoming measures the force would prioritize including “a new, diverse hiring class that is representative of our community” and “hiring an equity and race data specialist” to continue efforts to increase reporting on police data such as traffic stops and arrests.

“Together with the community, we will rebuild public trust, continue to address systemic racism and violence against women, promote equity, diversity and inclusion, increase diversity-focused hiring and contribute to our communities through neighbourhood policing,” said the statement.

Nothing about the batons, pepper spray, and trampling police horses…?

Will the horses be taught to avoid trampling “diverse” persons? Well, that’s a start maybe, but hardly the thoroughgoing reform the rest of us had in mind.

Meanwhile, the interim Ottawa police chief, responsible for the country’s reputation-wrecking carnage vows “systemic change.” Can you guess what the change is? We fear you can:

The statement outlined other upcoming measures the force would prioritize including “a new, diverse hiring class that is representative of our community” and “hiring an equity and race data specialist” to continue efforts to increase reporting on police data such as traffic stops and arrests.

“Together with the community, we will rebuild public trust, continue to address systemic racism and violence against women, promote equity, diversity and inclusion, increase diversity-focused hiring and contribute to our communities through neighbourhood policing,” said the statement.

Nothing about the batons, pepper spray, and trampling police horses… Will the horses be taught to avoid trampling “diverse” persons? Well, that’s a start maybe, but hardly the reform the rest of us had in mind.

And as for the bankers… (If you are not a Canadian, pay even more attention; this is coming to you too.)

Banks Froze Convoy Protesters’ Accounts Beyond RCMP’s List: Canadian Bankers Association

RCMP Say Freezing Convoy Protesters’ Accounts Necessary as Opposition MPs Question Why Court Orders Not Used:

Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair had claimed that the protest movement was a “largely foreign-funded, targeted and coordinated attack.” However, crowdfunding platform GoFundMe told the Public Safety Committee on March 3 that 88 percent of donations to the Freedom Convoy fundraiser originated within Canada.

A court order was risky as it would have forced this information into the open. So they proceeded without one.

And finally on this topic, a Member of Parliament has asked the Privacy Commissioner to investigate the GiveSendGo hack:

“The illegal hacking of crowdfunding platforms and email accounts has resulted in tens of thousands of Canadians’ personal information being circulated online,” wrote Bezan in his March 9 letter to Commissioner Daniel Therrien.

“This blatant breach of privacy has resulted in ‘doxxing’ campaigns on social media, numerous media stories in national and international media, mapping of personal and business addresses found in this data, and targeted harassment campaigns.”

As was probably intended. The real lesson here may be that we can no longer trust financial systems that have much to do with governments or are vulnerable to their operatives. The world awaits workable crypto.

—

United States March 7, 2022

The Freedom Convoy has arrived in Washington but, unfortunately, are split as to tactics. Bad news. The one thing that kept the Canadians together despite both fierce government and corporate opposition has been awareness that — just as in the United States— the elite hate and despise us more than any of us hate or despise each other. Their position depends precisely on that. We can best defeat them by remaining united on one thing: End The Crazy. End It Now.

Meanwhile: NFL Suspends All CCP Virus Protocols, Citing Decreasing Spread Well, the NFL must sell tickets, right? It’s surprising how many bureaucrats — in sharp contrast — only pay attention to “science” when it can be used to pump up panic, not when it suggests that the epidemic is running the usual course and protocols can be relaxed.

Put another way: If we all behaved toward the flu, which kills many thousands every year, the way we have behaved toward COVID-19, no one would ever attend a Major League game — or any game, anywhere — again.

So say goodbye to

On the other hand, if the U.S. Freedom Convoy gets the message through… maybe Americans will breathe free again.

Note: For the record, just like COVID-19, flu typically kills by getting in ahead of metastasizing cancers, inoperable heart failures, etc., in already frail people. That’s why we don’t shut down all life for children, teens, and healthy adults in order to combat flu.

Also: Mainstream media says vaccine mandates are gone, US trucker convoy disagrees:

During the convoy’s rest stop in Indiana, I allowed the truckers to set the record straight. They explained that the cross-border vaccine mandate does in fact exist, and argued that the mainstream media fails to acknowledge this mandate because it would legitimize the aims of the trucker protest.

The only thing the legacy U.S. mainstream media lacks right now is explicit taxpayer funding, which is what the legacy mainstream Canadian media now has. If Americans are fool enough to give taxpayer funding to legacy MSM media to help it survive the online onslaught, they can kiss goodbye ever again to mainstream media coverage that doesn’t uphold current government aims. They will really need the embattled indies then.

Believable medical science news continues to emerge:

● The CDC Changed Its COVID Risk Formula. The Results Are Stunning

To understand why the CDC made the change, don’t look to science. Look to public choice theory

“With widespread population immunity, the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower,” Walensky said, according to the transcript. “Now, as the virus continues to circulate in our communities, we must focus our metrics beyond just cases in the community and direct our efforts toward protecting people at high risk for severe illness and preventing COVID-19 from overwhelming our hospitals and our healthcare systems.”

There are two takeaways here.

The first is that Walensky’s call to direct efforts “toward protecting people at high risk for severe illness” sounds a bit like the Focused Protection strategy many public health experts and epidemiologists have been advocating all along, some of whom were labeled “fringe” scientists by the government’s top infectious disease bureaucrats.

Second, it’s worth examining how Walensky reached this conclusion. During the call, Dr. Greta Massetti of the CDC noted that “70% of Americans are in areas with low or medium COVID-19 community levels.” [emphasis added]

The question Americans should be asking themselves is, why did the panic promoters get star billing while the people who turned out to be right were dismissed as fringe?

● Bayer Executive Says mRNA Vaccines are Gene Therapy

“I always like to say, if we had surveyed two years ago in the public—‘would you be willing to take gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?’—we probably would have had a 95 percent refusal rate,” he added.

The pandemic has given the pharmaceutical industry innovation opportunities that may have not been possible before, Oelrich said.

Yes, it’s gene therapy. If you were told otherwise, you were being given incorrect information. But the Big Story is the efforts Big Social Media have made to suppress this fact: “Anyone calling the novel COVID-19 vaccines gene therapy or questioning their safety and effectiveness continues to get censored on social media.”

If you even wonder whether that suppression is in your interests, rethink “Trust the Science!”

● Covid-19 news: Booster protection against omicron may wane in months

They found that a booster dose substantially increased protection against developing mild illness from the omicron variant. Two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were only 8.8 per cent effective against the omicron variant after 25 or more weeks. But a third booster dose of this vaccine increased protection to 67.2 per cent. However, this then dropped to 45.7 per cent after 10 or more weeks.

There are also known side effects. So people should be hounded from their jobs because they refuse to get it? That’s happening where I live.

● How Vitamin C Evidence Was Censored Because of Covid

Many of us reach for vitamin C for any cold or flu. But doctors who administer, or even promote, this nutrient to treat COVID-19 risk intimidation and censorship.

On April 23, FBI agents raided the Allure Medical Clinic in Shelby Township, Michigan. The visit came soon after Allure announced that it was treating COVID-19 patients using intravenous vitamin C therapy, “with great results.”

The stampede to get everyone vaxxed, regardless of consequences and of the known merits of other approaches to coronaviruses, deserves a serious investigation.

Before we go back to being serious:

From the Babylon Bee: Americans who cowered under government oppression for 2 years urge Ukrainians to die for freedom

and

Progressive Christians are sad that they have no way to love their neighbors now that mask mandates are gone

Punditry

Asked at American Thinker: What’s a university for, if not to question ‘the science’?

But here we have a topic that could not be more vital — our medical response to a virus — and the subject is off-limits as if the very notion of interrogating it introduced a ripple in the placidity of doctrine, heresy into an unchanging belief system. Consequently, as Kirsch puts it so simply, “students will not have the opportunity to consider that there may be an alternate hypothesis that better fits the evidence on the table.”

To the extent that universities, especially elite ones, become a means for a ruling class to meet, mingle, and assert both rule and privilege over others, their actual relationship to science might be whatever they choose to make it.

At MercatorNet Groupthink today: an endless circle of scapegoating:

The pandemic presented a single uniting truth: a pandemic is bad, and we must act to save lives. Along with this great truth, however, were grouped a multitude of half-truths and outright lies that all became part of the established narrative.

But it was a package deal. You either accepted the narrative as presented by the politicians, experts, and media, or you were in the other group—a victim or purveyor of misinformation and disinformation, a something-denier, an anti-something. There was no room for nuance, subtlety, scepticism, independent analysis of evidence, or even honest questions. There was only a binary choice: pro or con. And the more successful the propaganda, the more powerful the groupthink, and the larger the pro-narrative group became.

It was obvious to anyone who scratched the surface of the narrative that something was amiss. But once people had planted their flags, they weren’t going to budge. And voicing doubts could be costly to one’s career and relationships.

—

Canada March 7, 2022

The Parliament Hill demo and Freedom Chains along the TransCanada continued this weekend as Canadians start waking up, blinking, and asking “How did we let bureaucrats inflict such immense damage on all of us in the name of “science”?

It’s highways that — practically speaking — link Canada, which is why truckers there were the first to raise a protest against the insanity.

Meanwhile: Fat’s in the fire!

Quebec Email Revealing No Scientific Basis for Curfew Prompts Calls for Probes Into COVID-19 Measures Across Canada:

Revelations that the Quebec government ordered its December 2021 COVID-19 curfew contrary to scientific advice have prompted calls for investigations into pandemic measures imposed by Quebec and other jurisdictions across Canada, including by two civil and constitutional rights groups.

“Professionals from Montreal Public Health and also from the [Quebec] public health institute said explicitly directly to the chief of public health that there is no scientific evidence for this,” Joseph Hickey, executive director of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA), told The Epoch Times…

When the province’s public health institute said it didn’t have an existing analysis and couldn’t produce one on such short notice, Quebec imposed the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew anyway…

Asked to provide justification for the curfew at a press conference on Dec. 30, Quebec Premier Francois Legault called it “du gros bon sens,” or common sense. [Public health official] Dr. Arruda resigned less than two weeks later, citing public skepticism on the “credibility of our opinions and our scientific rigour.”

In short, it was a display of raw political power that had nothing to do with public health. But what did it have to do with? This is why enquiries are needed through much of the Western world. The fact that frightened, wittering people went along with it is irrelevant. Many of them would have gone along with drinking cyanide-laced cocoa, Jonestown-style. The rest of us need to ensure that “science,” as claimed by government, doesn’t mean this kind of thing, going forward.

And now for that business about seizing donations intended to support the Freedom Convoys…

GiveSendGo Founders Want Hackers of Truck Convoy Fundraiser Brought to Justice:

GiveSendGo cofounders Heather Wilson and Jacob Wells say an investigation has been opened to find the culprits who hacked their website during fundraising efforts for the Freedom Convoy protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates…

“We’ve got forensic teams as we speak working on tracing all of this out, figuring out how in the world could it happen. … It is interesting that this hacker, who’s named himself online, has connections to Canadian intel and doing work for them in the past, and the group Anonymous—a very high level sophisticated orchestrated attack against GiveSendGo.”

Wells said they haven’t seen any coverage from legacy media about the denial-of-service (DDoS) hack that targeted their company last month during a fundraiser for the Canadian trucker protests. What’s worse, some of the people who donated to the campaign have been identified and harassed.

Indeed. Harassment of donors was the likely purpose and at least one taxpayer-funded pravda gladly joined in. Toronto Star:

Good luck with getting any justice, Wilson and Wells — the main thing just now is to pierce the blanket of lies created by increasingly authoritarian governments and their pravdas. And other enablers.

One person we didn’t cover, in the rush of things, was pastor Artur Miller, much persecuted by — and often jailed by — the Alberta government for his stance against the Lockdown Crazy against churches in that province. Here’s an interview with him:

Pastor Artur Pawlowski is not your run-of-the-mill Canadian. He was born and raised in communist Poland and immigrated to Canada as a young man. For many years he has been the pastor of a church in Calgary, Alberta. He is known as an uncompromising Christian who feeds the poor and defends the God-given rights of the Canadian people. He has attracted the ire of the Canadian authorities for his ongoing exposé of totalitarianism as poison to the soul.

The only reason Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, ostensibly a Catholic Christian (I used to see him, now and then, at an Ottawa church), could get away with this stuff is that — as with fellow Conservative Premier Doug Ford in Ontario — much of the political opposition would have been absolutely demented by comparison. Apparently, he only locked up one pastor, not all of them.

That’s another reason thorough enquiries are needed. Let’s find out more about the crazies who would, in pursuit of a strategy against COVID-19, derail any semblance of sane government while wrestling with their own inward demons.

No, not to persecute them. Just so we know what to expect, in case this happens again. Which it will, if other serious enquiries — as to the origin of the virus, for example — are somehow, mysteriously, not funded.

And, of course …

Justin Trudeau says democracies are “turning towards slightly more authoritarian leaders”

No kidding!! Justin baby, see you on the hustings. Fat lot of good your sucking up to practically every totalitarian on the planet has done.

Punditry:

Invoking Emergencies Act Had More to Do With Partisan Politics Than Canada’s Interests (Senator Leo Housakos). Well, of course, because the elite no longer even have the same interests as other Canadians. (It’s no different in the U.S., by the way.)

From the very beginning, the prime minister has used the pandemic to prey on the fears of Canadians and to wedge and divide for political benefit.

Starting with the weaponization and politicization of vaccines during the last federal election, he effectively categorized the vaccine-hesitant and opponents of vaccine mandates as the “Other.” Mr. Trudeau then interpreted his re-election as an admission to continue with his divide-and-conquer approach and to push through with punitive measures on the unvaccinated.

Faced with growing opposition from his vindictive mandate on truckers, he resorted to shaming and name-calling, accusing those who disagreed with him of being racists, misogynists, and white supremacists.

The only solution is to make sure it doesn’t pay off for him and other defenders of “Trust the Science!”

—

A note to readers, March 5

For some days now, one commenter has been allowing us to know that as a resident of Ottawa, Canada, he feels wronged by the Convoy, demanding to know:

How do they justify occupying several blocks where people live, harassing them and blasting their horns at all hours, for three weeks. Do you act like this when the government does something you disagree with? These are the actions of selfish narcissists, not freedom fighters.

As the person he was insulting at the time is not a Canadian — and I am — let me answer that one:

I lived in Ottawa for eight years, between 2012 and 2020. Because Ottawa is a national capital, I knew when I moved there that demonstrations would be a usual feature of life that especially affects persons who choose to live downtown. Ottawa is a medium-sized city. It is possible to live far from the madding crowd. But if one simply must have a view of Parliament Hill, one must also develop a tolerance for demonstrations, especially ones that are critical to our national life.

Coincidentally, I left Ottawa at the beginning of the developing COVID crazy, which meant watching as the lives of all the Canadians surrounding me in another city faraway were warped and tormented for two whole years by one ridiculous bureaucratic dictate after another. Schooling, careers, health, marriages, lives, all lost – crammed into the maw of a bureaucracy that seemed largely exempt from the suffering.

The truckers knew better than most of us how bad it all was (they travel, after all). And finally they blew up, with a large proportion of the population joining in.

It’s not even over. Here in British Columbia province, knowing full well that their superstitious measures are useless, our “health bureaucrats” continue to enforce them anyway, while other provinces are dropping them. Because they can. And they want all the rest of us to know they can – and cower.

Here’s a message that runs every week in a local church bulletin (after the government had grudgingly permitted the church to be open again):

Please note that Fr X has asked that people be reminded of the above restrictions, that bylaw officers have already visited [St. X Church] to ensure that the mask mandate is being followed, and that failure to comply, without a valid reason, will result in a heavy fine, as well as a reprimand from the local diocese.

Meanwhile, Trudeau the Younger has proved that he can send in mounted police to trample citizens and attract international attention by destabilizing the once-trustworthy Canadian banking system if he wants to.

The Canadian media that taxpayers are forced to fund have proven that they are beneath contempt. (I exempt the honorable indies, of course.)

I admire the truckers’ courage and joie de vivre in a country currently dominated by witless bureaucrats and wittering old ladies of all ages, male and female.

Every time I heard the truckers honking either in live streamed footage or here in my own city, it was music to my ears. The one thing that made me miss the brutal Ottawa winter is, wish I’d been there with them on Parliament Hill! Would have loved to have seen the looks on the deceptive bureaucrats’ faces as they watched the convoys crossing Canada and the crowds cheering them on from every overpass…

On a more serious note, the real battle is yet to come and this is one where the truckers are not the first line of defence.

There has been a massive amount of misrepresentation of all kinds to do with the origin of COVID-19, effective treatments for it, useful public health measures, and injuries from the vaccines. Many professionals’ reputations have been unjustly ruined as they tried to tell what they knew that did not happen to suit the governments’ or Big Social Media’s or Big Pharma’s “narrative.”

Every effort will be made by many people who don’t like all the honk-honk to prevent the no-nonsense enquiries that are now needed.

You can be sure of this: If those enquiries are not conducted and the problems are not addressed, it is only a matter of time before another gain-of-function virus escapes a lab and all the top people are once again lying about it and trying to inflict another useless Reign of Terror on the rest of us to create the impression of doing something useful.

By my advice, thank a trucker for honking and — don’t let the politicians and bureaucrats in your country get away without those serious enquiries. You can be sure they will try. And it’s you that’ll pay.

—

Canada, March 5, 2022

Next step: The Human Freedom Chain

Coast-to-Coast Human ‘Freedom Chain’ in Canada Planned for Saturday

The plan is for the Freedom Chain to reach across the entirety of the country along the Trans-Canada Highway, which spans 7,476 km, beginning in Victoria, British Columbia, and extending to St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.

There aren’t nearly that many people in Canada but the main thing is to be seen at the key points, as when people gathered on the highway overpasses to cheer the truckers on their way up to Ottawa to honk at the bureaucrats for millions of the rest of us:

PS: Not a Canadian? Don’t gloat. It is happening where you are but, like most Canadians a month ago, you have never even imagined anything like it. Including crackdowns long hoped for by government and then swift in execution.

From their cold, thwarted hands …

Canadians Should Now Do ‘Individual Risk Assessment’ for COVID-19, Federal Health Officials Say

Federal public health authorities said Friday that it’s time for Canadians to evaluate their own risks relating to COVID-19 and to make it a personal habit, as the country sees the return of more social and economic activities.

Sure, but don’t be under any illusions that the Crazy is going away just because top ‘crats say that. The Crazy rules drop when people start convoying and marching. True everywhere. And THEN we need thorough enquiries as to just how the “Trust the Science!” Crazy got started, who was driving it, who benefited, and who was harmed. Facts and figures, truthful testimony, please. We should count all rhetoric about “the science” apart from that as a distraction, intended or otherwise.

Also: ‘Highest Risk Is Behind Us’: Ontario on Course to Lift Mask Mandate by End of March,Says Moore On course? Are they indeed?

The Ontario province bureaucrats had better be on course. That is, if they don’t want those horns honking around their fancy neighbourhoods, where most Canadians couldn’t dream of living. They forgot who they were and who we are.

While we are here: Petition Calls on Feds to Reinstate Public Servants Terminated For Vaccine Choice Turns out they had good cause for concern. Notice how many refuseniks were health care workers…

How Big Social Media keeps us in the dark, illustrated:

Just look at what they censor:

Note: “This tweet can’t be replied to, shared, or liked.”

But Aaron Ginn didn’t say anything about whether the vaccine worked or not. He didn’t really talk about the vaccines at all, other than quote a pharmaceutical executive at the World Health Summit. This is their website, if you’re curious. It’s a huge meeting, in Berlin, produced in coordination with the UN’s WHO.

But then ignorance is bliss, right? Besides, if you even want to know things, you are under immediate suspicion in Trust the Science! world.

Punditry:

David Sacks:

Last summer I wrote a post for @bariweiss warning that financial deplatforming would be the next phase of online censorship. This has now arrived in Canada. We cannot allow it to become our future in the U.S.

How did things get to this point? For years, ideologues have used accusations of bigotry to hound people from their jobs, kick them off social media, and rescind their right to participate in the online economy. However, many observers shrugged off these cases as outliers—fringe examples that could be ignored because they affected unsympathetic individuals. But now we have a wide-ranging group of working-class people and their supporters who are being financially deplatformed for civil disobedience.

The self-conception of these pundits and politicians could not be more at odds with reality. They pose as defenders of democracy while invoking emergency powers without legislative or public debate, or without an emergency for that matter. They claim that diversity and tolerance are their highest values while insisting that only one political point of view is acceptable and censoring the alternatives. Above all, progressive elites see themselves as the champions of the disadvantaged while demonizing working-class men and women whose economic livelihoods have been devastated by their draconian Covid policies.

At Newsweek, reflecting on how it plays out in the United States and riffing off a common elite talking point:

Cancel Culture Comes to Banking

Why should anyone care if a “private” business such as Chase chooses to blackball a particular individual or industry—can’t they just get financial services somewhere else? But that’s the rub—financial services is one of the most heavily regulated sectors of the economy, characterized by vague and varying regulatory standards articulated in no manual or published rule. The hook for Operation Choke Point, and Chase’s decision to terminate Flynn’s credit cards, for example, is the regulatory standard of “reputational risk,” which in practice might amount to little more than the regulator’s subjective assessment of the “ickiness” of a particular individual or industry. Once de-banked, it is often difficult or impossible to find someone else to serve you.

Vague regulatory standards bear little resemblance to the rule of law. The same regulators who devised these standards can prevent entry by new banks that might be willing to serve unpopular individuals and industries. The burdensome nature of these (and other) barriers to entry is evidenced by the fact that only 44 new banks, including state and federal banks, have been established since the financial crisis. Virtually all of these new banks are small, geographically circumscribed community banks that cannot fill the gap left by mega-banks.

The author, a U.S. law school prof, asks rhetorically: “What, if anything, can be done?”

Hmm. Start by standing on an overpass over Highway 401 (Ontario province’s main artery) or by the side of the TransCanada and cheer on the flag convoys.

Actually, you could do exactly the same thing in the United States. Never mind your fear-addled neighbours. They need help but first we must turn off the spout of nonsense from our betters that is driving them crazy.

Above all, restore the fact that our betters work for us and we pay them, not the other way around. And we know that the COVID Crazy is nonsense, probably concealing some really serious missteps and misdeeds. We cannot un-know it. Let the nonsense stop and the enquiries begin.

—

United States, March 4, 2022

Well, the truckers are still convoying:

Hundreds of supporters gather in remote desert town to support U.S. trucker convoy:

Among the supporters were members of the Navajo Nation tribe. One elder explained that he came out to support the truckers because he’s had enough of COVID related mandates. Other Navajo tribe members cooked traditional native food for the truckers.

They were also converging in Indiana.

Why Congressional hearings?:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released 55,000 pages of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine safety data, and it doesn’t look good.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to delay the release of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine safety data for 75 years despite approving the injection after only 108 days of safety review on December 11th, 2020.

Meanwhile, Senate passes resolution to end federal COVID state of emergency That Get Out Of Jail Free card for outrageous health bureaucrats was supposed to expire March 1 anyhow.

Believable but not popular medical news

Unintended Consequences of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19:

As of December 3, 2021, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has logged an astounding 927,738 COVID jab related adverse events, including 19,886 deaths. VAERS can receive reports from vaccine manufacturers and other international sources, and if we exclude those, the death toll reported in U.S. territories exclusively stands at 9,136.

Moderna Hijacked Technology for COVID-19 Vaccine, Lawsuit Alleges “Arbutus Biopharma and Genevant Sciences, the companies, claim in a civil lawsuit that Moderna used “breakthrough technology Arbutus had already created and patented” to create the COVID-19 vaccine such as the lipid nanoparticle delivery system, according to a complaint (pdf) filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware. Genevant is owned by Roivant, a company that licensed the patents in question from Arbutus.”

FDA Warns of Possible False Results From Some COVID-19 Tests

Fauci Agency Knew Chinese Authorities Were Withholding COVID-19 Data in January 2020, Documents Show

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said he believes the 90 pages of communication records between the NIH and the Wuhan lab show that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s agency, NIAID, has been “hiding information on China’s failure to provide essential data on COVID-19.”

Are we flabbergasted or what? The Congressional hearings will be most interesting….

The political climate is changing anyway: Democrats turn against mask mandates as Covid landscape and voter attitudes shift

The message is backed by advice from Biden’s polling firm, Impact Research, which studied voter attitudes to Covid and found that most Americans are “worn out” by the restrictions and “have personally moved out of crisis mode.”

In a Feb. 16 memo, the firm told Democrats to take “the win” on Covid, warning that by 49 percent to 24 percent, Americans are more concerned about it causing economic harm than infecting them or a family member, and that far more parents and teachers worry about learning loss than illness for their kids.

Most people can’t be looney tunes indefinitely.

—

Canada March 4, 2022

Keep on truckin!

This just in: GoFundMe Tells Committee 88 Percent of Freedom Convoy Donations From Canada “The government’s claim that the trucker-led movement against COVID-19 restrictions was a “largely foreign-funded, targeted and coordinated attack” on Canada’s democracy, as described by Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair, was contradicted by numbers shared by GoFundMe’s president.”

The entire meeting at Parliament was a prolonged upper class tantrum against freedom for ordinary Canadians. And yes, it is happening where you are too; you just haven’t noticed.

The province of British Columbia has made it clear that it is staying with masks, mandates, and crackdown generally, after others are easing off. The top COVID smackdown doc, Bonnie Henry, told a recent press conference,

However, she says not everyone will be ready or able to leave behind some pandemic measures like masks so it’s important for people to be respectful of those who are immunocompromised or elderly because they’re still at risk of infection.

That’s Newspeak for: “The people we have irrationally terrified will need time to adjust.” Yer news hack (O’Leary for News), who has lived in B.C. for nearly two years, can testify that that is — at least in principle — a valid consideration. Lots of people have been terrorized into irrational fear — but mostly by people like Bonnie Henry. The teens who obsequiously wear masks all the time out on the street, and veer off the sidewalk when anyone approaches from the opposite direction who is not wearing a mask, will need help adjusting to reality. But whose fault is that?

Meanwhile, Henry is doubling down on firing halth care workers who won’t get the vax:

On February 9, B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced that come March 24, all health-care workers in the province will need to be inoculated with at least one COVID-19 jab to remain working in their profession, and will need two shots within a month after that.

B.C. is desperately short of health care workers but that doesn’t seem to matter:

The province has been experiencing a health-care worker shortage for years, but it didn’t stop them from putting in place and enforcing vaccine mandates that fired and put more capable health-care workers on leave without pay than any other province in the country last year.

Hey, it’s the first taste of real power, for some…

By contrast, Quebec: Quebec to Relax Masking Mandate in April, End Other Measures Early

Quebec is planning to lift its mask mandate in public spaces by mid-April and remove most other COVID-19 measures earlier than previously announced.

The Quebec government said in a March 2 release that as of March 12, all public places can return to 100 percent capacity and resume normal business hours, with no table capacity limits in restaurants, bars, taverns, and casinos.

By that date, proof of vaccination will no longer be required to access the places where it was previously instituted.

But how can people trust them anyway? Anti-mandate convoy rolls on in Edmonton [capital of the province of Alberta] as restrictions set to be rolled back: “Many demonstrators said they do not trust promises from Jason Kenney after being told once before that the province was ‘open for good’.”

Government keeping the Panic going because it’s all they’ve got:

But wait. Top heathcrat Tam may, by then, be facing a very different population, one that has watched what happened to the once-proud Canadian banking sector (= their own savings) for one thing, when accounts were suddenly frozen. By now, everyone knows there are no bodies in the streets and that most COVID victims were potential flu victims, etc. She may find Big Panic a tougher sell when nothing other than Karen’s nerves is at stake. And Trust the Science! will take an even bigger beating.

Unless there is more to the story: Real Concern of Emergencies Act Is Government’s Control Over Canadians’ Life Savings: Legal Expert “‘What you have now is a government that has deputized financial institutions to essentially go into their customers’ accounts and make their own judgments, in their discretion, about whether or not those accounts should be frozen, without a court order and with a free hand,’ Bruce Pardy from Queen’s University told EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders program on Feb. 22.”

Cash-strapped governments could be trolling for bigger fish. People who live in other countries with an aging population and a powerful bureaucracy should take heed. It was Canada first but it’s not only in Canada, you know.

Punditry

Here’s an interesting take on the Convoy crackdown in Canada from the Wall Street Journal:

Among the many myths about Canada that have been shattered is the old chestnut that, unlike the U.S., with its cutthroat Darwinian ethos, Canada is a largely egalitarian and compassionate society—the kind of place where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “sunny ways” rule. The Freedom Convoy and the government’s heavy-handed response (“Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Tyranny,” Review & Outlook, Feb. 23), invoking the Emergencies Act to subdue peaceful civil disobedience, has cast into sharp relief class divisions bubbling under the superficially egalitarian surface of the Canadian self-image.

Huh? The infinitely superior Laurentian Mafia to which Justin Trudeau belongs, has been sneering at, when not outright acting malevolently toward, Western Canada for generations! Their political power is anchored in central Canada, where their sneery (and now taxpayer-funded) legacy mainstream media launches attacks similar to those in the United States on people who live in “flyover country.” Now, of course, that sneer encompasses all Canadians below a certain level of privilege. In response, let’s just say, many grovel, many fight. The biggest problem is that too much of the Opposition, the Conservative Party, is just like the Liberals (the Natural Governing Party) to supplant it. But get people desperate enough and that might change…

Commentator Mark Steyn on the difference corrupt legacy media make:

The now ubiquitous media expression “the narrative” suggests, for example, widespread acceptance of the imposition of stock clichés from the most moronic forms of storytelling upon the subtle and shifting complexities of reality. To my mind, the Ottawa truckers are heroic. But apparently, to a majority of my fellow Canadians, they are the baddies, and racist baddies to boot. And, to two-thirds of American Democrats, the Totalitarian Mammy-Singer is the hero. To modify Dr Mahathir: If they can make a man who likes to black up and shove a banana down his pants the anti-racist hero, they can make anything.

Yes, Trudeau really did that stuff… the rules are different for the Laurentian Mafia and the Canadians who call him the “Mammy-singer” are being characteristically polite… But enough of them voted for him anyway as the “Sunny Ways” guy because they did not want to be victims of the Mafia’s organized contempt themselves.

It’s an internal war. of course, though no one calls it so: “Putin and Xi are perceiving the West as a declining power. Their view is that the West is weak, stupid, infantile, hopelessly decadent and thoroughly parasitized by a mercenary Virtual ‘elite’ class that seems more than happy to wage an internal war on their own Physical classes.”

And another view from NS Lyons at Substack:

Specifically, why all this seems like such a perfect reflection of the Reality War.

In that essay, I noted how from the perspective of those with the most wealth and power, as well as the technocratic managers and the intelligentsia (our “priestly class, keepers of the Gnosis [Knowledge]”), digital technology and global networks seem to have created “an unprecedented opportunity for Theory to wrest control from recalcitrant nature, for liquid narrative to triumph over mundanely static reality, and for all the corrupt traditional bonds of the world to be severed, its atoms reconfigured in a more correct and desirable manner.”

In this mostly subconscious vision of “Luxury Gnosticism,” the “middle and lower classes can then be sold dispossession and disembodiment as liberation, while those as yet ‘essential’ working classes who still cling distastefully to the physical world can mostly be ignored until the day they can be successfully automated out of existence.”

It’s far from clear that the working classes will be automated out of existence. Many own their own trucks/construction businesses so they would need to be dispossessed and incarcerated first.

From Peter Stockland of Cardus on the Emergencies Act:

His rationalization for forcing on Canadians the never-before-deployed Emergencies Act, then abruptly withdrawing it with a farcical “Crisis? What crisis?” flourish 36 hours later, was patently false. It was so obviously fraudulent only certain dupes and stooges in the Canadian media could be relied on to buy it.

Even the liberal New York Times, never mind the rock-ribbed Republican Wall Street Journal, laughed up its cross-border sleeve at the gullibility of northern journalistic confreres swallowing it all. It’s easy to see why.

The PM claimed only the federal Emergencies Act afforded the necessary powers to free the parliamentary precinct and downtown Ottawa from the overwhelming force of truck-driving siege meisters. The premise was that neither municipal nor provincial laws gave sufficient authorization to pepper spray protesters in the eyes, use baton-wielding police to drive the miscreants off, seize their vehicles, and finally attack their bank accounts, chattels, mortgages, investments, etc.

Only days before, however, Ottawa’s own chief of police lost his job because, it was claimed, he failed to exercise municipal powers available to him to stop the truckers’ protest. The prime minister’s claim and the city’s claim about the police chief’s ouster could not both be true.

Yes they can both be true in the minds of an elite media who can ignore old ladies trampled by horses. That’s part of why Trudeau must force the taxpayers to support those media. And it is a destructive feedback loop.

—

—

United States, March 2, 2022

This just in: CDC No Longer Recommends Universal Contact Tracing, Case Investigation

One tweeter’s reflection on the SOTU last night

Also, from Washington State:

—

Relax. Washington State residents vote for that; then they get it good and hard.

Meanwhile, California: California weighs punishing doctors for challenging ‘contemporary scientific consensus’ on COVID “Assembly bill promotes long-outdated information about COVID deaths in unvaccinated vs. vaccinated, however, rather than updated Omicron variant figures.” But of course it does.

“Existing law requires the applicable board to take action against any licensed physician and surgeon who is charged with unprofessional conduct,” according to the legislative counsel’s summary, and the bill would “designate the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation” about COVID as “unprofessional conduct,” without specifying what’s prohibited.

Of course it wouldn’t. That way, professional opinion on a wide variety of issues that — whatever its merits — does not suit the Boards can be hunted down and punished. Patients will not come out the winners.

Trust the Science News!:

At The Scientist, Does Science Support Lifting School Mask Mandates? “The CDC has given the OK to lift indoor mask mandates in much of the US, and a growing number of states no longer require face coverings in schools. But most experts agree that masks slow school spread of SARS-CoV-2, and whether now is the right time to allow teachers and students to unmask is a matter of debate.” It was fundamentally a terrible idea that these sorts of people were fronting so they must pretend that there is genuine doubt even now…

Better still, also from The Scientist, New Preprints Further Implicate Market in Pandemic’s Origins

None of the studies pinpoint which animal was the original vector for the virus. Andersen speculates that raccoon dogs, a mammal used for food and fur in China, could be the long-sought intermediate host. Raccoon dogs can harbor several coronaviruses. One of the studies shows that raccoon dogs were sold in a section of the market where coronavirus samples were detected, reports Nature.

“It’s very convincing,” Thea Fischer, an epidemiologist at the University of Copenhagen who was not involved in any of the new studies, tells The New York Times. She says that the question of whether the virus spilled over from animals “has now been settled with a very high degree of evidence, and thus confidence.”

Aw, come on! Once average people learn about the gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, it just isn’t something we can “un-know.” But these people must believe what they must believe…

Believable science news

The Truth Is Coming Out About COVID Deaths

Early on in the COVID pandemic, people suspected that the deaths attributed to the infection were exaggerated. There was plenty of evidence for this. For starters, hospitals were instructed and incentivized to mark any patient who had a positive COVID test and subsequently died within a certain time period as a COVID death.

At the same time, we knew that the PCR test was unreliable, producing inordinate amounts of false positives. Now, the truth is finally starting to come out and, as suspected, the actual death toll is vastly lower than we were led to believe.

Maybe not “vastly” but surely “significantly.” For one thing, a good way to get more of a behavior is to incentivize it. If money gets involved, forget objectivity. Who wants to be the one, for example, to tell the poverty-stricken bereaved partner that she can’t get the special payment because it turns out that her late partner didn’t die of COVID? If that was the story, chances are health care personnel just marked it down as a COVID death. And thus it entered the stats.

Also: New COVID drug trials: Hundreds of COVID trials could provide a deluge of new drugs. So drugs do work, as long as they are not thought to be interfering with a vaccine agenda. Good to know. 

Punditry

At Axios: The limits of “following the science”:

President Biden took office vowing to “follow the science.” But science is much less of a road map than it is information that should be used to choose the best route.

For example, science told us last summer that the vaccines’ effectiveness had waned over time. But it didn’t tell us what level of effectiveness was acceptable, or if and when a booster shot was needed. Policymakers and regulators had to provide those answers.

Similarly, there is no scientific marker for when someone needs to wear a mask. This allows health experts and scientists to be able to disagree on what policy should be while still claiming that they are following the science.

“Two different scientists can look at the same set of data and come up with different conclusions. That’s not to say that one person is being unscientific or ignoring the scientific process,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and a professor at George Washington University. “Public health policy is also a measure of values.”

Sure thing, but that’s actual science, not “Trust the Science!”, like we’ve been enduring for two years.

United States, February 28, 2022

The truckers are convoying to Washington now, as we all know:

So …Fencing Reinstalled Around US Capitol Building Ahead of Biden’s Speech (tomorrow night).

Associated Press is glum about the whole thing: “On cusp of Biden speech, a state of disunity, funk and peril”

After two years of a pandemic that has killed more than 920,000 in the U.S., majorities put masks back on and avoided travel and crowds in January in the sweep of the omicron variant. Now, finally, a sustained drop in infections appears to be underway.

Yes, we know. So why is Karen still in charge?

The truckers: American Trucker Convoy: U.S. government is anti-democratic, not representative of the people

Well, it’s not as simple as that. The U.S. government is still largely on the side of those who have either a vested or an emotional interest in keeping the panic going. And it could get very ugly defending those interests, just as Canada’s federal government did.

Publicity vortex Donald Trump weighs in: “’The tyranny we have witnessed in Canada in recent weeks should shock and dismay people all over the world,’” said Trump. Possibly. But many Woke governments may be using it as a template for all kinds of issues.

Meanwhile: New York Governor Drops Mask Mandate for Schools

And, of course,

Tots in failing schools have to learn to speak while everyone is wearing a mask but those rules never apply to the People Who Matter.

The corporate bureaucracy is holding out: Masks Still Required for Air Travel Despite CDC’s Guidance Change: “The mask mandate for airline passengers and airports, issued by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), remains in effect until at least March 18, when it expires. The mandate could still be extended.” Because they can.

Predictably, Flight Attendants Union Wants Face Mask Rule Extended Allegedly to protect unvaccinated children under 5. It’s a good question whether they should even be vaccinated.

With airlines, as with schools, people just have to start getting tough with unions dominated by neurotics and phobics. Tough love. Or never mind that. Just: Tough

It’s not only flight attendants: Christian Leaders Silent While Unvaccinated are Dehumanized

While pastors and other Christian leaders stay silent, some of their fellow believers are increasingly demonized as killers, “parasites,” “leech[es],” “child abusers,” and “unpatriotic,” as well as being denied access to stores, medical care, and more.

Of course, not all Christian leaders have been mute. Some, notably scientist Francis Collins, have spoken out. Alas, Collins has actually promoted dehumanization of the unvaccinated.

Karen enjoys dehumanizing people and this is one of the few opportunities allowed her these days.

Big cultural news: SNL to Liberals: It’s OK To Question Nonsensical Mask Mandates:

Mocking COVID public health theater is finally going mainstream.

It’s an unexpectedly subversive sketch from a show that rarely aims its fire these days at the liberal political consensus. It’s five minutes of saying aloud thoughts that a lot people have been condemning as off-limits.

Kate McKinnon’s character is “personally so relieved to be vaccinated” but then wonders aloud whether those who are vaccine-hesitant might not have a valid reason for refusing the shot? Mulaney timidly suggests that maybe “we”—read: the show’s liberal audience—have been too quick to demand that the unvaccinated lose their jobs and get shunned from public life.

The main thing to note is that the SNL writers think that their audience actually GETS the joke. That’s a huge change from being the joke.

Not so funny:

Also: Re the Wuhan gain-of-function virus lab:

Finally, as one of Sey’s followers shrewdly noted, this skit could have real-world consequences. Many Americans believed that the “Lab Leak Theory” involving COVID-19 was the stuff of conspiracy web sites, not reality.

You couldn’t fully blame them. Everyone from the media and Big Tech to Dr. Anthony Fauci insisted it was a lie, until they slowly let reality seep in.

It took funnyman Jon Stewart to question that narrative, on the very liberal “Late Show,” before some started questioning the truth behind it.

Non-rubbish medical news:

Repurposing FDA-approved drugs may help combat COVID-19 Wasn’t that something doctors were censored for discussing last year?

CDC says waiting longer between Pfizer, Moderna doses may reduce rare myocarditis risk for younger men So they are admitting that there is a risk? We really don’t know how “rare” it is. Finding out in the current environment would be a serious challenge.

Punditry:

The Democrats are warned by some of their own strategists not to try to keep the COVID crazy going:

Stop talking about restrictions and the unknown future ahead. If we focus on how bad things still are and how much worse they could get, we set Democrats up as failures unable to navigate us through this. When 99% of Americans can get vaccinated, we cause more harm than we prevent with voters by going into our third year talking about restrictions. And, if Democrats continue to hold a posture that prioritizes COVID precautions over learning how to live in a world where COVID exists, but does not dominate, they risk paying dearly for it in November.

You can see a screen cap of the original memo here.

Russell Brand takes us through nonsense from the CDC:

Finally, some worry that the ‘crats and Karens will want masks for another decade. That’s probably true. It’s their life now. So keep on truckin’.

—

Canada, February 27, 2022

More updates later today but first note this: Government mulls money that can only be spent on approved items. Programmable digital currency restricts citizens’ freedoms for “socially beneficial outcomes.” Recent rapid-fire events in Canada leave no doubt that major banks would comply with such directives, leaving citizens stranded without cash.

Meanwhile, Public Health Agency of Canada paid 200k to Telus for cell phone tracking data “The Agency began tracking users’ data in April 2020 and the Telus-related data scoop involved retroactively tracking cell phone location data dating back to January 2019.” “The contract makes no stipulation to require Telus customers to consent to the sale of their data to the Federal government.”

It’s probably not happening only in Canada. Justin Trudeau is a petulant little tyrant whose tantrum-related activities have led to a number of revelations of that could probably be duplicated elsewhere — but the people in charge there are more astute so people keep their traps shut.

Edmonton [Alberta] Police Officers Who Joined Trucker Protest ‘Relieved of Duty Without Pay’ Understandable, but don’t overlook why that was bound to happen.

Meanwhile, Alberta to Lift ‘Vast Majority’ of COVID-19 Restrictions on March 1. Elsewhere? Keep on truckin’! Note: One thing that may save Alberta Premier Kenney’s bacon in the next election is that the opposing political parties are far more unhinged than his. His catering to Karen was utterly disgraceful but he always knew he had that advantage.

Canada’s government-funded media go full Pravda:

Toronto Star:

CBC: Apparently, “phantom honking” is supposed to be Big Trauma in Ottawa now: “Post-traumatic stress from weeks of honking is a temporary ‘mild trauma,’ psychologist says.”

Only suitable response:

Sure, CBC. Devastating lockdowns for two years had no effect, of course… only good comes from bureaucrats and only bad comes from people taking back our dignity and nailing lies.

Punditry

Mike Huckabee: Trudeau backs down:

Perhaps the most important factor in his hasty retreat was that by freezing people’s bank accounts, he signaled that Canada’s banks couldn’t be trusted, launching a run on people withdrawing their money and both domestic and foreign-based businesses canceling their accounts. That’s more damage that will take a long time to repair.

But since it appears that many financial institutions have been working with the government to target conservatives and help institute a Western version of China’s “social credit system,” it can only be a good thing if Trudeau’s ham-handed bungling scares non-leftists into setting up new, independent financial services. That may go down in history as Trudeau’s one great contribution to Western society.

The run on the Big Canadian Banks is the single most important thing to come out of the whole business, actually. A lot of people who thought Woke government was cute feel differently now.

David Solway Canada: The crisis is not over:

Rumors continue to swirl like dust devils. As Breitbart reports, “Legislation making its way through the Canadian Parliament would allow citizens to be taken to court and penalized if they are suspected of simply intending to post ‘hate speech’ online. The proposed law encourages Canadians to report other Canadians to the authorities for intent to post hate speech online, and allows courts to punish Canadian citizens for things they haven’t done yet.” There is no official confirmation that a bill of this nature is being studied, but I would not put it past our national despot to impose a Stasi-like snitch culture upon the nation to complement its proposal to regulate the Internet (Bill C-11), making Canada’s Internet “one of the most censored and surveilled in the democratic world.” Such instruments would be only par for the course for so cynical a leader.

Trudeau’s not cynical. He’s desperate and not very bright. He was told that imposing Woke would be easy. Wait till he tries out his next Big Idea…

—

U.S. February 26, 2022

As the convoys head to Washington, Americans are prying life from the bureaucrats’ cold, dead hands, first by getting admissions of fact: “CDC Drastically Alters Key Measure That Influences Mask Mandates Across US — The federal agency now says nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t need to wear masks because they live in areas with low or medium community risk from COVID-19.”

Breaking: CDC No Longer Requiring Masks on School Buses

Someone better fetch the paramedics for Karen … be sure to ask the medical resident to consider a suicide watch…

A Rebel News (Canada) reporter is embedded with the U.S. Convoy.

Even some college students are wising up: At Princeton, Georgetown and elsewhere, college students protest mask mandates “students protest mask mandates: “Matthew Wilson, a sophomore at Princeton University, is perplexed by his institution’s mask mandate. He does not find the mask mandate necessary “given that our Covid transmission rates are so low and 99% of students have been vaccinated,” he told The College Fix via email.”

But doesn’t he need to prove that he isn’t a white supremacist? Oh wait, he can’t. So he might as well fight to ditch the stupid mask.

On the other hand: ‘Covid Sheep’: Harvard students comply, conform on path to elite status “Julie Hartman, a senior at Harvard University, writes in a February 22 Wall Street Journal op-ed of the draconian COVID restrictions that persist at many elite campuses, adding her voice to the many now calling for a more moderate and sanity-protecting response.”

Elite status? Who wants these little idiots in charge of anything?

Punditry:

How today’s elites manipulate America’s working class:

The widespread lockdowns were nice for members of the Gentry Class, who fired up their laptops and worked remotely. They stayed home “keeping safe” while members of the working class brought them stuff…

And sometimes when the mask slipped, it literally slipped. As many have noticed, we developed a new convention in which the servant class is masked, while the celebrities and the oligarchs go free, something demonstrated at gatherings ranging from the Met Gala to the Oscars. Elsewhere, stars and politicians flouted the mask laws while small businesses were shut down.

Then the mandatory vaccine rules proliferated even as the vaccines appeared to underperform. Canadian truckers who protested were smeared by Trudeau as racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, etc. Trudeau, who took a knee to violent, destructive Black Lives Matter protests, invoked virtual martial law to put the working-class protesters in their place. By arresting people, seizing bank accounts and threatening to take drivers’ trucks, Trudeau was creating his own martyrs.

Polls indicate that most US Democrats support him and would do the same here.–

It doesn’t appear that U.S. Democrats support the working class any more but rather the laptop class. It will be interesting to see how that realignment works out politically. It took a pandemic to make it all so clear.

Canada February 24, 2022

Just because the Emergencies Act has been lifted doesn’t mean that everything is going back to normal. Justin, Chrystia, and Karen are still in charge.

For one thing, it’s not just the federal government. Provincial governments can cash in: “Ontario shuts down 39 trucking businesses involved with Freedom Convoy. Overall, 27 seizure orders were issued to large truck operators from outside Ontario, banning them from operating any commercial motor vehicle within the province.” We can be sure that some will profit from competitors’ downfall and will not be slow to reward those who brought it about.

Ottawa Lawyer Says Convoy Protest Donors May Have Accounts Frozen, Despite RCMP’s Claims Otherwise Keeping people in suspense is a strategy, of course.

$7.8M Frozen: Targeting of Convoy Supporters’ Bank Accounts Draws Fire at Finance Committee “‘The ability for a financial institution—which by the way, is a third party to act as the judge and the jury without the opportunity for an individual to make any representation—I’m having a hard time understanding how that is compliant with the Charter,’ said Conservative MP Adam Chambers.” Well, it isn’t but the Charter is just a piece of paper now.

As for the Mounties: “CONFIRMED: Leaked RCMP chat shows members celebrating violence against freedom protesters. One of the RCMP members laughed off the trampling incident, stating they’ve “watched that horse video,” calling it “awesome,” and that “we should practice that manoeuvre.” As one commentator put it, “Now just regime thugs.”

We are told that, following the crackdown, posters appeared in Ottawa streets listing the names of residents whose donation information had been hacked at GiveSendGo (Hat tip Krock at 477 at Convoy III):

The poster creators are probably operatives rather than typical citizens.

Donors names were published on Google Maps (since removed):

A bit more information emerging about Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s hench (hat tip Jerry at 478 in the Combox at Convoy III: When boring people turn dangerous:

Years later, she is somehow Canada’s Finance Minister, and what another friend from our Russia days laughingly describes as “the Nurse Ratched of the New World Order.” At the end of last week, Minister Freeland explained that in expanding its Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) program, her government was “directing Canadian financial institutions to review their relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades.”

The Emergencies Act contains language beyond the inventive powers of the best sci-fi writers. It defines a “designated person” — a person eligible for cutoff of financial services — as someone “directly or indirectly” participating in a “public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” Directly or indirectly?

Indirectly? … Spreading “misinformation,” maybe …?

Meanwhile,

Saskatchewan Premier Calls on Trudeau Government to End Federal COVID-19 Mandates

and

Trudeau Government Facing Lawsuits Over Emergencies Act “Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and two civil and constitutional rights groups say they will continue to pursue legal challenges of the Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act even after the measure was revoked on Feb. 23.” But of course. Otherwise, he will do it again, anytime he gets into a snit.

Punditry

Trudeau’s References to ‘Misinformation’ When Justifying His Emergencies Act Are Very Troubling:

Legacy media members and politicos were furious when the New York Times dared to report that protesters had been arrested at gunpoint in Ottawa. One CBC TV host called the Times’ story “false and incredibly dangerous rhetoric” while a CBC radio host called the report “BS.” Trudeau confidante Gerald Butts was enraged on Twitter as he called out the New York Times, implying they would lose Canadian subscribers.

Jesse Brown with Canadaland then published a story that included pictures of people who were indeed being arrested at gunpoint in Ottawa. Gerald Butts dismissed the story as “clickbait,” though the photographic evidence was pretty clear.

The New York Times and Canadaland are both liberal-friendly outlets. The issue that establishment media and Liberal loyalists had with the stories wasn’t inaccuracy, it was that the stories contradicted their own narrative.

Trudeau, of course, wants control of the news. The legacy Canadian media — who would not survive except for handouts from the taxpayer — would be happy to help, as it gets them out of actually reporting news (which is work).

A Canadian writer expressed relief when the Emergencies Act was withdrawn:

The feeling of hopelessness was compounded by the videos I watched from independent media coming out of Ottawa: a disabled Indigenous grandmother being trampled by mounted police, police officers beating citizens, hundreds if not thousands of un-identifiable policemen confronting protesters, the police chief intimidating residents, donors to the convoy being frozen out of society and out of their bank accounts at the behest of the petty, disgusting Prime Minister of Canada and his cronies for the crime of opposing him and his regime. There were so many vomit-level episodes here over the week, it would be difficult to list them all. I felt very dark, very sad, psychologically tormented and beaten down. I did lose sleep over it all.

And then as my deadline approached, news broke of the walking back of the Emergencies Act. I had a feeling last night that getting the Act passed in the Senate was not a slam dunk for Trudeau. I wondered, with all the terrible press from around the world, with the anger and rage of so much of the Canadian population and his utter humiliation on the world stage, how could he keep this up? I think the walk back was a combination of several factors: devastating polling, the legal action that was being launched by provincial and national civil liberties associations, the lawsuit being launched by the province of Alberta and the many public denunciations of Trudeau Tyranny. That, coupled with the inarguable fact that there was no emergency, sealed the deal.

But that’s hardly the end of the story. The same bad actors could do it again if they decide to reset Canada on different principles. Thorough inquiries are needed, which includes a vast replacement — not of average Canadians — but of people who should simply not have positions of power that go much beyond choosing shower curtains and what to order for pizza toppings.

Commentator Dennis Prager asks, “Is Canada becoming North America’s Cuba?”

“A senior government official said … police could gather the names and license plate numbers of people participating in a protest or an unlawful assembly and share that information with FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) …

“Banks have been granted immunity against legal action in the event of disputes over whether someone should have been denied financial services. ‘No proceedings under the Emergencies Act and no civil proceedings lie against an entity for complying with this Order,’ the regulations read.”

The majority of Canadians (56%), we are told, currently support this. But then the majority are still dependent on government-funded legacy media for information. Many will find out the hard way what living in a frozen Cuba is really like when it gets round to them. But the way things are going, it may not get round to them — not that they have done anything to deserve the break.

Typical: Joy Break: An Anti-Woke News ‘Freedom Convoy’ Protestor is a Good Samaritan for a Woke News Outlet

When covering the Freedom Convoy trucker camp in Arnprior, Ontario, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) van slid off the road and got stuck in snow. One of the protestors, Tyson Gareau, happened to be wearing a “Defund the CBC” hat. The CBC has been extremely hostile toward the truckers and the Freedom Convoy. But that didn’t stop Gareau from being the proverbial “Good Samaritan.”

CBC’s van slide off the road & got stuck in a ditch beside the protestors’ camp in Arnprior. A demonstrator named Tyson Garneau wearing a “defund the CBC” hat pulled us out knowing we were CBC journalists. He said he’d never leave anyone stuck like that. pic.twitter.com/tNaI2GQPsJ— Ashley Burke (@AshleyBurkeCBC) February 23, 2022

It’s a matter of honour on his part. It would be interesting to know if there was any sense of shame on theirs.

Lastly, some fun:

Ottawa Senators [ice hockey team] Change Name To Ottawa Dictators

“The People’s Republic of Canada must shed the last vestiges of culture that celebrated freedom,” said Supreme Emperor of the North Trudeau. “Ottawa’s beloved team will be renamed as a tribute to my magnificent greatness!”…

In addition to the name change, the team will also adopt Justin Trudeau as their official mascot. The mascot costume will come in two varieties: standard and blackface.

—

World News, February 24, 2022

Iceland Lifts All COVID-19 Restrictions, Says People ‘Need to Be Infected’ Since Vaccines ‘Are Not Enough’ “Both domestically and at the border, all rules on quarantine, social gatherings, and school regulations regarding COVID-19 will be removed, Willum announced. This includes rules on a gathering limit of 200 people indoors.”

Britain has largely dumped the Crazy so the leadership can risk asking some hard questions: “Wuhan lab leak theory ‘accepted as likely behind closed doors at No 10’” Of course the Wuhan Level IV gaon-of-function lab is the most likely origin but never forget that it was once Woke Virtue to emphatically (if not hysterically) doubt that.

Australia

Police confirm use of controversial LRAD device at Canberra protest

What started out at the beginning of the week as the ‘stuff of conspiracy theories’ was eventually confirmed by Police.

Australian Capital Territory Policing admitted that they did use a Long Range Acoustic Device (also known as a LRAD) during the Canberra Convoy Freedom rallies outside Parliament House.

Yes, it’s come to this: The way things are going, when official sources tell us that something is a conspiracy theory, that could just mean that it’s something they think they can keep from people for now.

Premier Daniel Andrews reveals masks to be scrapped in most indoor settings but not for students in year 3 or above at primary school The least likely population at risk… Trust the Science, you ignoramus!

Also, students BANNED from chanting at rowing regatta “COVID-19 cited as the reason behind a call to put a lid on cheer.” Sure thing. Again, Trust the Science, you ignoramus!

and

Useless, complicit media attempts spin to fight back against public awareness of its failure to get the story right: “In a recent episode of Channel 10’s The Project, a segment aired that contained so much projection, it forced the show’s online team to disable all comments from social media posts about it. People saw through it.” That could be happening more now.

New Zealand gets ugly

Note: The correct usage is “Trudeaupian” levels of insincerity, viciousness and entitlement.

—

United States News, February 24, 2022

As convoys now head for Washington, D.C., some thoughts from Canada:

The truckers meeting in our Nation’s Capital are also protesting COVID restrictions, as well as increased gas prices and critical race theory.

Scranton businessman and vocal critic of the president Bob Bolus is leading the convoy from our area.

He said, “We’ll shut interstate systems down around the country and literally teach them, who are you going to arrest? We’re not coming there just to starve them, we’re going to choke you like a boa constrictor and you’ll have nothing. You’ll either listen to us and listen to one most important thing the ‘we the people.’

A word of friendly advice from Canada to Bob Bolus: Stick to one single issue. The reason people remained united in Canada, despite significant oppression by government, is that we all have one issue here only: End the Crazy. And we judge everything by whether government is doing that or not. Then we can all go home and do other things as we think fit.

For every Convoy I have witnessed here in Victoria, Canada, (now 3), I have seen either a stupid restriction dumped or else more people starting to act like they “get it” about the wittering bureaucrats thinking up rules because they don’t know what else to do — and keeping them in place because they don’t know how to climb down the tree they climbed up. Enough. The Panic should be over now.

So yes, Convoy! But stay peaceful and stick to ending the Crazy.

New Yorkers Hold Rally in Support of Canadian Truckers

The demonstrators chanted, “no vaccine mandates,” “stand with Canada,” “we will not comply, “freedom, freedom, freedom,” “my body, my choice, your vaccine you won’t force” and “coercion is not consent.”

The ages of attendees ranged from mid-20s through senior citizens and included a wide variety of heritages.

Like we said before, please keep it peaceful. Let the government engage in the rough stuff because they’re the ones with a lot to hide. Then, like Trudeau in Canada, they will likely face rebellion from within their own ranks. Eventually, if not sooner, they will face a purge of unsuitable government. Hey, it happened to your Luv Guv and his brother already…

Elite businesses are starting to dump the Crazy: These 3 major cruise lines are set to lift mask mandates as COVID cases drop:

Royal Caribbean plans to drop its indoor mask requirement for fully vaccinated passengers starting Friday. Carnival Cruise Line’s new policy, which will lift mask requirements in most venues, takes effect March 1.

A third cruise line, Norwegian Cruise Line, announced earlier this month that it would let passengers ditch their face masks starting March 1.

If you can afford tropical ocean air, you can at least buy it again now.

More serious medical stuff: Facts Matter (Feb. 22): CDC Caught Hiding Troves of Data: Not Publishing Critical Hospitalization, Booster, and Virus Data Many soourcfdeschose to market panic instead of demanding answers.

The Centers For Disease Control’s Lies Have Destroyed Its Legitimacy:

By refusing to acknowledge the harms of lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination, the Centers for Disease Control has brought everlasting shame to itself.

Last summer, guided by the CDC, President Biden claimed, “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die.” Biden also spread misinformation about vaccinations preventing the spread of Covid-19 by stating, “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”

Who is harmed the most by health misinformation produced by our president and his agencies? Those with low health literacy. Our rich-poor gap is growing in this country, and lying about health issues only exacerbates it.

There’s an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me…

Five reasons why health professionals might not tell you what they themselves know about the situation: Loss of licences, jobs, grants, advancement, and social pressure. All that the coverups are doing is making the situation seem worse than it may actually be.

Worth noting: Big Pharma, domiciled in California, may be contributing to the Crazy there. Follow the money.

And, lastly, another American gets it:

Should we be surprised when all the “liberals” in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States turn out to be fascists in disguise? Should we be surprised that what they truly desire is to exert unlimited power over the lives of others? Of course not. The abuse of power, once power is attained, is practically universal. George Washington rejected absolute authority, and Cincinnatus returned it to the Roman Senate after just 15 days. But in every single other case in history, a dictator remains a dictator until he or his dynasty is killed off.

We are entering the post-Western democracy stage of history. And we’re further along than we thought. No one was shocked when Germany or Austria locked people in their homes during COVID—democracy in a European nation-state has always been a thin veneer. But it was shocking to read of people attempting to climb the fences at Australian COVID concentration camps and being hunted down by the police. It was shocking to see Canada’s party-line vote to prolong emergency powers so they can make protests illegal, imprison political enemies, and confiscate dissenters’ property.

The cost of “Trust the Science!” is pretty steep, it turns out.

At any rate, always remember, many of your neighbors still resolutely believe it:

What is remarkable is the partisan split. Republicans disapprove of Trudeau’s response to the truckers’ protest by an overwhelming 87% to 8%. Independents disapprove by a massive 74% to 21%. But Democrats actually say they approve of Trudeau’s conduct by 66% to 17%.

Most of these people may genuinely believe they are in danger without their masks and lockdowns. Dealing with their mental health status will not be easy.

You may also wish to read:

Let us listen to Dr. Robert Malone, dissenting expert, on the COVID-19 crisis

and, for what’s happening in suddenly famous Canada:

Convoy II : The police swoop in Ottawa: The Constitution? Old news now “Trust the science!” is starting to show its totalitarian face in Canada — but, as they slowly learn the facts, citizens are standing their ground, From the comments: “Canadians: ‘Be polite when you are being arrested.’ u guys rock!” (Sure, commenter. Canada belongs to the people of Canada. And this is how free people fight back. Serfs, by contrast, destroy things and attack people because they have no stake in a free and prosperous society.)

and

What I saw at the Freedom Convoy in downtown Victoria It was all friendly; people were having a good time. There was no violence; I heard no racial epithets and saw no racial insignia. So if media tell you that it is really about white nationalism, etc., remember that the legacy Canadian media are in fact supported to stay in business by the federal government. Because few depend on them for news any more.

You may also wish to read:

Let us listen to Dr. Robert Malone, dissenting expert, on the COVID-19 crisis

and, for what’s happening in suddenly famous Canada:

Convoy II : The police swoop in Ottawa: The Constitution? Old news now “Trust the science!” is starting to show its totalitarian face in Canada — but, as they slowly learn the facts, citizens are standing their ground, From the comments: “Canadians: ‘Be polite when you are being arrested.’ u guys rock!” (Sure, commenter. Canada belongs to the people of Canada. And this is how free people fight back. Serfs, by contrast, destroy things and attack people because they have no stake in a free and prosperous society.)

and

What I saw at the Freedom Convoy in downtown Victoria It was all friendly; people were having a good time. There was no violence; I heard no racial epithets and saw no racial insignia. So if media tell you that it is really about white nationalism, etc., remember that the legacy Canadian media are in fact supported to stay in business by the federal government. Because few depend on them for news any more.

Comments
Jerry
Anti ID people represent the opposite. They have to or else they would be supporting ID. That why they always avoid answering questions and just pop up like Whack A Mole someplace else with another Inane/irrelevant comment.
They can't have a real conversation because that requires exposing their worldview to scrutiny and it requires sincere transparency.Silver Asiatic
March 1, 2022
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Jerry 116 I liked the comments. The people who filled the world with hysteria and fear, who fired people they disagreed with and ridiculed and persecuted any opposition, now have decided how funny all of that was. They were on the right side of it all along, we just didn't realize how smart they really were.Silver Asiatic
March 1, 2022
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Scamp
Thank God we don’t live centuries ago or in a theocracy.
You're thanking God that you are not an orthodox Jew. Would you try to stop their religious convictions for a theocratic Israel? It's also fairly easy to argue that we are living under secularist/masonic doctrine which is a form of theocracy. People are required to adhere to the secularist doctrines, as your comments here have pointed out frequently.
To the best of my knowledge contact tracing has never led back to a liquor store under COVID restrictions. The same can’t be said for churches.
95,000 deaths were traced back to liquor sales (drunk driving a part of those). 14.5 million people suffer physical damage from alcohol and the WHO reported that alcohol contributes to more than 200 diseases and injury-related health conditions, ranging from liver diseases, road injuries, and violence, to cancers, cardiovascular diseases, suicides, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. Given your emphasis on the "dangers" of church attendance, I'd conclude that you'd want liquor sales banned as a health risk.. I'll also echo KF's concern that anti-Christian bias may be evident here. Are you an atheist? If not, how do you identify yourself in religious terms? It's relevant in a discussion about how you'd restrict religious practice of the population.Silver Asiatic
March 1, 2022
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Thanks, Jerry, at 116. I've embedded the tweet in the OP above at the pertinent point. I was not able to embed the skit by other means.News
March 1, 2022
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In case racism comes up again here is an article in the ultra liberal Guardian saying the same thing Zach Goldberg said a few years ago. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/26/media-news-article-shift-discourse-language It became an issue after Occupy Wall Street failed. And there was resistance to an African American President on his policies. Could it be the raising of race as an issue has little to do with race but is an attempt to inoculate other policies from objections?jerry
March 1, 2022
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Watch a recent SNL skit on the hypocrisy of the left about C19. https://mobile.twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1498383497798504455jerry
March 1, 2022
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Why Fauci being caught lying to Congres
Everyone should read Scott Atlas’s book. “A Plague Upon Our House” to see how corrupt and inept the US government medical bureaucracy (includes especially Fauci and Birx) is. Just read chapters 7 and 8 and you will learn the specifics behind the debacle that they were personally responsible for.jerry
March 1, 2022
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Insurance companies consider that covid lethal shot is "experimental" because they have to pay and not the people who cashed the billions for the "experimental shot". Could we deduce that the numbers of people with side effect from vaccine are THAT BIG that could bankrupt the insurance companies ? Interesting. Why media people who repeatedly spread fake news about IVM and HCQ double down, don't retract but somehow the next day they still have a job and are free to lie with no consequences ? Studies about IVM :https://ivmmeta.com/ Why Fauci being caught lying to Congres is not in jail and still tell people what to do. :lol: If US the most advanced/free/democratic country in the world is so corupt internally how could be a force for stability externally( for 248 armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions from 1945 to 2001, 201 were initiated by the US, accounting for 81% of the total number)? Jordan Peterson : if you want to change the world start with putting your own room in order and then...then...but when you have more power than others the temptation is to fix them first which of course is not possible .Lieutenant Commander Data
March 1, 2022
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Some of our objectors likely see themselves as fact checkers targetting a dubious fringe
ID represents superior science. It represents superior thinking on many other things as it’s based on the use of logic and evidence. Anti ID people represent the opposite. They have to or else they would be supporting ID. That why they always avoid answering questions and just pop up like Whack A Mole someplace else with another Inane/irrelevant comment. On this particular thread, the Canadian government represents inferior thinking on science and the truckers represent superior thinking. One represents an understanding that leads to excess deaths and dysfunctional lives (Canadian government) and the other to more fulfilling and functional lives (truckers.) The Canadian government’s reaction as well as the reactions of their defenders is what’s revealing. Irony at the extreme Aside: the same was/is true of the US government. So not pointing at anyone specifically. This thread is about Canada. Aside2: some how religion has creeped in. As usual.jerry
March 1, 2022
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PS: Some of our objectors likely see themselves as fact checkers targetting a dubious fringe, in their minds, Intelligent Design Creationists who are dressed up Creationists in cheap tuxedos. They often think we are also Christofascist, right wing theocrats and enemies of "progress" and "Science." They would be well advised to do serious rethinking starting from the UD Weak Argument Correctives under the Resources Tab. Also, it would be advisable for them to seriously reckon with the discovery since 1953 that the living cell is inter alia a sophisticated information system; thus, those familiar with information systems can think for themselves about such. I have noted, that D/RNA has string based alphanumeric codes that in part are algorithmic and in other parts are regulatory. That speaks to language and to goal directed stepwise processes with sophisticated regulation. There is just one plausible source for such, once one recognises that explanations must be based on observed capabilities of candidate causal factors: intelligently directed configuration. Blind chance and/or mechanical necessity simply does not have the observation backed, analytically plausible capability to give rise to functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information [FSCO/I], beyond 500 - 1,000 bits. Where, a von Neumann kinematic self replication facility actually compounds the challenge, as Paley understood in this Ch 2 when he considered as a thought exercise a self replicating watch . . . and yes that means those who thought the watch argument was simplistic are in fact committing a strawman fallacy. Cells, on DNA, start at plausibly 100,000 - 1 million plus four state bases. From its root on up, the tree of life is replete with strong, empirically tested and reliable signs of design as pivotal cause.kairosfocus
March 1, 2022
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Q, the irony is, some of those fact checkers imagine they know. However, they lack the background to hold an independent view, or to evaluate conflicting knowledge claims, so they become enablers of a dominant narrative, driven by ideology. And yes, that is TWO domains of expertise there: [1] sufficient subject matter mastery that one can evaluate and hold conclusions in one's own right, [2] a similar degree of knowledge on the business of warrant for relevant knowledge, fact or truth claims. The second, with reasonable breadth of thought, is a multiplier for the first, indeed, it enables it by providing key tools so one does not simply accept the reigning narrative. That is how one comes to a well founded INDEPENDENT position in the first place. As opposed to the error of selective hyperskepticism, which by exerting unjustifiable double standards on warrant, leads to a warped view driven by ideology not genuinely balanced considerations. A key point is, for example to recognise that experts differ and that there are paradigms. Where, paradigms differ and face a comparative difficulties challenge: factual adequacy, coherence, explanatory power/balance: neither simplistic nor an ad hoc patchwork. For instance, it is clear that on the pandemic, there has been considerable overconfidence among officials and their technical advisors leading to a situation where it is the dissenters who have been better warranted. Going back to 2020, I was not impressed by the gold standard rhetoric on warrant, as I was aware that evidence is highly cumulative and if reasonably coherent can be like a rope: many weak and short strands twisted and counter twisted can form a long, strong rope. So, the dismissiveness towards the dissidents was ill advised, as even then there was significant evidence building up on treatment by repurposed drugs and there was reason to see that the double blind placebo controlled standard being touted was itself highly troubled in the face of a pandemic. Both HCQ and IVM were showing known effects across kingdoms of life, suggesting that they affect core, in common cellular metabolic processes and both had shown antiviral effects. So, repurposing them made sense, as did the evidence on vit D deficiency and the impact of vit C and Zn. Azithromycin or Doxycycline as attacks on secondary infection and possibly having some antiviral effects also made sense. So did, the stitch in time principle, find an early treatment that can prevent having to face the U/L trajectory of a serious disease, as the more prone or nearer one is to a life threatening crisis, the higher the risks of adverse outcomes are. likewise, killing the disease in early stages through effective treatment will reduce spreading. The vaxxes, touted by the officialdoms, have not been sterilising nor preventing subsequent bouts and transmission. This is before we look at incidence of adverse effects and potential for long term systemic damage or encouragement of evolved strains that lead to serious consequences. The exaggeration of toxicity concerns said something about the ideological nature of the dominant narrative, e.g. fish tank cleaner and horse dewormer. Ironically, serious concerns on vaccination adverse effects was suppressed. Now, we see much broader issues, connected to the sustainability of lawful, constitutional, democratic self-government. If we fail here, we will slide into lawless unaccountable ideological oligarchy. We need to seriously listen to Plato's parable of the ship of state and to Luke's real life case study in Ac 27. But, ironically, those who most need such lessons are the least likely to be heedful. So, it is up to us to seek to form a critical mass in defence of civilisation. KFkairosfocus
March 1, 2022
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Kairosfocus @107, Yes, the hysteria, coercion, and persecution for political goals has become glaringly obvious to most people. And the story of the origin of the pandemic despite clear statements from the researchers themselves, the papers and emails that reveal the offshoring of illegal gain-of-function research, and the clouds of ink coming from the squids in Washington D.C. to create confusion and contradictions to the point where few people can believe anything from the CDC anymore: https://twitter.com/CartlandDavid/status/1495412605669810180 Thanks for the great article by J. Deane Waldman, M.D. I know that I've certainly lost trust in the CDC . . . no, it's worse than that. I've come to trust that ALL announcements and pronouncements from the CDC are complete lies fabricated solely for political benefit. And not to mention the swarms of self-appointed "fact checkers" without credentials or degrees themselves pronouncing every independent doctor or researcher with stellar accomplishments as a "quack." I've delved into some of their websites and found the information in them to be distortions and flat-out lies. It's beyond disgusting! -QQuerius
February 28, 2022
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F/N: Dr Robert Malone, holder of key mRNA patents, speaks to his own adverse reaction and this is a case of censorship in online media/digital technologies: https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/how-bad-is-my-batch?utm_source=url
as many of you know - I was vaccinated with Moderna twice and had a pretty significant vaccine injury. This was pretty early in the roll-out of the vaccines. It was long before the FOIA Japanese pre-clinical trial data that had so many red-flags and irregularities, long before we learned of all the issues with the clinical trials, and long before the VAERs and adverse events began to be known. To write it, I have never been an “anti-vax” person. I have spent my career working with vaccines. I also know that some vaccines are “hot,” and are less safe. Usually these types of vaccines are reserved for extremely dangerous viruses like Ebola or Yellow fever. Where the goal is to make the vaccine 100% effective. Other vaccines, that are distributed widely, like the flu vaccines need to be very safe. The trade-off being that they are less effective. There is a whole science and art to crafting vaccines to appropriately respond to the “threat.” So, I know to read the literature, do my own due- diligence, etc before taking an experimental product or any vaccine. That is what I thought I did. The government assured us that these vaccines were very safe. I could never imagine that clinical data would be corrupted and even falsified - as we now know it was. Anyway, back to my story. I knew in the beginning of April, 2021, that I had to travel overseas and the word on the street was that the European Union was going to require full vaccination before entering any EU country by summer (that actually never happened BTW). I knew that a full vaccination protocol was a process of weeks - and that i had better get started! Furthermore, there was a lot of buzz around the idea that vaccination would help with “long-COVID.” I had already had COVID, and just couldn’t shake a number of chronic issues that I had developed after getting the disease . . . . in April, 2021, I got vaccinated. It was early enough in the cycle, that I had no choice but to take the Moderna vaccine, as that was available in my area The vaccine was distributed at a local college, with the Army Reserves administering the program. The first shot was fine. No issues. The second shot almost did me in. As in I almost died. After the injection, I had the usual fatigue, muscle-ache and then the palpitations started, as well as shortness of breath. Within a couple days, it got worse - I am not someone who goes to the doctor easily, but luckily for me, I happened to have a routine appointment with my physician. She cuffed me and my systolic blood pressure was through the roof. As she is also a cardiologist, she had more tests run, started me on high blood pressure meds and we got it under control. I kind of feel like I owe her my life. A call out to the fantastic Dr. C. Bove . . . . do know my batch was most definitely in the top 5%. So, not really a surprise in retrospect that I had such a serious adverse event profile. I always felt I was lucky that I happened to be going to my physician that day, who is also a cardiologist (she is my internist - so I wasn’t seeing her for that specialty). But just think- our government had this data way back when in the VAERs system -even last summer. This data is so compelling and yet…crickets. How many people could they have helped by releasing this data? People like me, who if I wasn’t a physician and hadn’t gone to my physician could have easily dropped dead.
Now, his reporting of his experience has been tagged misinformation and has been censored. https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/t-mobile-preventing-some-users-texting-link-interview-mrna-covid-vaccine-critics
T-Mobile preventing some users from texting link to interview with mRNA COVID vaccine critics Doctors Robert Malone and Ryan Cole discuss the CDC's reported withholding of the vast majority of COVID data it has collected . . . . T-Mobile is blocking some of its customers, including this reporter, from texting a link to an article featuring Robert Malone, the mRNA vaccine pioneer who is critical of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and claims he "almost died" from Moderna's second dose. Malone made the allegation in his Thursday newsletter, which promoted a WND article summarizing his video interview with the conservative website formerly known as WorldNetDaily. "Note: the above link is not being allowed to be forwarded by T-mobile and probably other cell phone services," he wrote. "Evidently speaking about censorship and scientific fraud is considered too dangerous by our government." The WND interview with Malone and Ryan Cole, an Idaho doctor facing at least one medical board investigation for his criticism of COVID vaccines and promotion of ivermectin, discussed the CDC reportedly hiding the vast majority of the COVID data it has collected.
Malone has of course been pushed to the margins, but is in fact a key pioneer and is not an anti-vaxxer.kairosfocus
February 28, 2022
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Scamp @99,
I am not opposed to civil disobedience. I am opposed to any illegal actions intentionally intended to cause the suffering of innocent people.
Yeah like beating drums or honking horns? Protests are not intended to cause “suffering,” but rather to draw the attention of the preoccupied and disinterested Canadian government. It certainly cannot be compared to what the Ukrainians would consider suffering.
I’m not dodging it. I’m just not certain what you are asking. Are you referring to their protests over the church run residential schools? Protests over pipelines being built on their land? Protests over the fact that they can’t drink the water? Protests over repeated treaty violations?
Of course you’re dodging the issue by trying to pull me into the weeds. The fact that such protests have had to continue proves my point. If the Canadian government did any more than trying to mollify the First Nations legitimate and ongoing grievances, the First Nations wouldn’t have to continue to attract more attention (and I’m acquainted with native American grievances once having boarded with people of the Navajo, Suquamish, Blackfoot, and Apache tribes). It seems that the Canadian government would prefer all “legal” protests be held in a remote part of the Northwest Territories so as not to disturb anyone, especially themselves. This observation applies to the protesting truckers as well as the protesting First Nations people.
If there are any indigenous protests that meet this standard then I am opposed to them.
I’m not sure what you mean by the “them” that you’re opposed to. The standard? The indigenous First Nations? Or protests that have any non-ignorable impact? -QQuerius
February 28, 2022
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Sc, the underlying anti-Christian bigotry is plain. You would be well advised to recognise that to use the excuse of a pandemic (while suppressing credible alternatives: Uttar Pradesh vs Israel) to engineer regulations and policies that undermine freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and freedom of academic dissent or conscience dissent, petition and protest etc, is to effectively undermine the core of liberty. This is compounded by undermining livelihood and confiscation of financial assets. Such a pattern of abuses and usurpations underscores that officialdom and their media publicists have arguably become misanthropes and enemies of liberty cloaked under colours of health and science. Such is compounded by injection of elements of a surveillance and control state, e.g. the QR coded digital vaccine passports that open up database driven monitoring and control leading to "no one could buy or sell, save . . ." As for oh no cases of liquor shop transmission are recorded, coming from a dubious officialdom, that is not a sound answer, especially when public gatherings in 2020 that were large and uncontrolled were given leave and even argued for; but now a church seeking to meet similarly is to be curtailed and a pastor has been censored under colour of law. i note that credible experts with now population level results behind them have been maligned, marginalised and censored, often under accusation of misinformation that is in reality academic dissent. Those who valued liberty and truth, respected people, their views, their consciences and rights would not act as we have seen. That is already a red flag regarding the cultural and institutional buttresses of constitutional, lawful democratic freedom. Those who have allowed themselves to be caught up in a panic over pandemic, have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated and polarised, have become enablers of lawless unaccountable oligarchy. There is need for sober reflection on our peril and for sharp correction then reform. If, we are to preserve lawful liberty through due balance of rights, freedoms and duties. KF PS: I note a case of professional dissent: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/covids_worst_victim_americas_trust.html
February 28, 2022 COVID's Worst Victim: America's Trust By J. Deane Waldman, M.D. In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross published a seminal work, On Death and Dying, where she described five stages of grief that individuals experience after a profound emotional loss, such as the death of a loved one. Today, Americans are grieving — their trust in great institutions has died. Americans have lost faith in Washington; in federal medical bureaucracies like the CDC, FDA, and NIH; in legal institutions including the FBI and DOJ, and in school systems from K–12 through universities. Science itself has been called into question. Politicians and bureaucrat-M.D.s claim they "follow the science," but real scientists, clinical physicians, and policy experts say that what Washington follows isn't science at all. As COVID spreads and trust fades, Americans are experiencing grief in five stages: confusion, panic, control, disillusionment, and renewal. Early in the COVID pandemic, Americans were confused. Based on advice from the COVID Task Force, state governors implemented mandates for masks and other PPE, social distancing, the prohibition against gatherings, testing everyone, and strict lockdowns. The FDA prohibited therapeutic drugs, though frontline doctors were reporting success. Fauci told people to wear two masks, not merely one, even though studies in Florida, Massachusetts, and school systems in New York and Sweden found no "correlation ... [between clinical outcomes and] mask mandates." Contrary to Task Force recommendations, President Trump wanted to stop the lockdowns, focus testing on high-risk persons, and use therapeutic drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and monoclonal antibodies. Americans were scratching their heads. COVID-19 was labeled a "novel" virus, yet anyone who has had a cold has been infected with a coronavirus. Every year there is an epidemic with a respiratory virus quite similar to COVID: the flu. The number of COVID cases is touted as though these are sick people. In fact, "cases" are merely those who test positive for the antigen — almost all of whom are healthy. COVID deaths are reported in large numbers, even though more than 75 percent of the "deaths" are due to co-morbid, life-threatening pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and chronic lung disease, not because of the virus. People had good reasons to be confused. With a constant drumbeat of imminent death, Americans entered the second stage: panic. Generating public fear was intentional. In fact, NIAID director Anthony Fauci told policy expert Dr. Scott Atlas, "Yes, they need to be more afraid." A fearful public naturally turned to the federal government for protection. Doctors like Fauci and Deborah Birx are bureaucrat M.D.s who do not practice medicine and have no expertise in public policy. Yet in the name of public health, they recommended policies that took away constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and did irreparable harm to the nation. Despite the First Amendment, freedom of speech and religion were curtailed. [--> notice, tendency to refer to documents not the underlying due balance of built in rights, freedoms, duties] The right to assemble was abrogated. When ordered to accept injections of an experimental gene therapy (mRNA vaccines), Americans were no longer "secure" in their persons (Fourth Amendment). Washington had created a "pandemic of fear" and used it to justify nullifying the Bill of Rights. [--> Compare Nuremberg Code regarding informed consent, refusal to coerce, refusal to subject to undue and/or undisclosed risk, right to withdraw, duty to terminate if dangers emerge etc] As panic persisted and intensified, America entered the third stage: control. To protect the narrative used to justify their power-grab, Washington had to control the flow of information. The CDC released misleading data; later, it changed its tracking methods and definitions. The FDA "canceled" promising drugs to treat sick COVID patients. Washington also controlled the available information using proxy censors such as news (really propaganda) outlets, social media, and even search engines like Google to label contrary data "misinformation" and to suppress any reports that question or dispute Washington's policies. When Scott Atlas tried to dispute the fake science touted by Birx and Fauci, the press viciously attacked him to "cancel" his credibility. Washington tightly controlled any information given to the public. Following valid scientific data, the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) recommended limited testing and focused protection, in contrast to the official approach of testing everyone and locking down the country. In response, then–NIH director Francis Collins ordered Fauci to create a "devastating published takedown" of the GBD. Dispute will not be tolerated — control must be maintained. Jessica Rose, Ph.D. in computational mathematics, studied the database of adverse effects following mRNA vaccination and found massive under-reporting and under-counting. Her research paper was submitted to an academic journal but was rejected by the publisher, not by peer reviewers. Censorship is poison for real science. People who decided not to accept the mandated "jab" or chose not to wear a mask were reviled for lack of social responsibility, canceled, and fired. Control by coercion: "no jab, no job." [--> Shades of a religious text of protest from a despised Book of Scripture: Rev 13: 16 - 18. A text that needs to be properly expounded and applied, publicly, as part of the corrective.] Though Washington remains in the control stage, Americans have moved to disillusionment. People have experienced the disconnect between what Washington says or promises and what actually happens to them. Masking did not stop the spread; neither did social distancing. People died despite vaccination. Many gathered at football games, in churches and temples, without incident. The virus spread in states with strict mandates as well as those without. The data increasingly looked untrustworthy, such as counting a motorcycle crash victim as a COVID death. Disillusionment deepened when Washington failed to prepare the public for the harms inflicted by mandates. Millions lost their jobs and their savings when more than 200,000 small businesses closed. Crime, drug usage, and teen suicides hit new highs. Children locked out of school lost the opportunity to learn. This was especially hard on poor families, whose children could not learn online, lacking home computers and internet access. Americans began to ask, "We gave up our freedoms, our children's future, and our savings, for what?!" The illusion of Washington protecting the people from COVID was exposed as totally false. Their so-called "science" was made up. Trust was gone, and Americans were disillusioned. But there is hope in the final stage: renewal. As trust fades in elected officials such as President Biden, in appointed officials like Merrick Garland, and titled bureaucrat-M.D.s (viz., Fauci), Americans are renewing their faith...in themselves: their own judgment, their independence, and their power! Instead of blindly following orders from politicians and self-styled experts, Americans are demanding to make their own decisions, especially medical choices.
Change a few specifics and the same pattern comes out from too many other jurisdictions.kairosfocus
February 28, 2022
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Kairosfocus @102, Thanks for your comments and for the correction to my statement about the Nuremberg Code. It was indeed an after-the-fact summary of the principles that resulted in the convictions of a number of Nazi doctors and administrators. The principles included coercive actions, non-consent, and incomplete information. A number of these monsters were found guilty, received lengthy prison sentences, and some were hanged by the neck until dead. Sadly, the principles enumerated in the Nuremberg Code were ignored since then, but that does not absolve the current medical criminals of their culpability. They were adequately warned by history and they have no excuse. Hopefully they will be brought to trial someday. -QQuerius
February 28, 2022
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SA: For many centuries it was absolute. It is absolute in theocracies that exist today.
Thank God we don’t live centuries ago or in a theocracy.
Some people attend church at the risk of being put in jail by Communists, or as has happened continually through history – at the risk of being killed just for attending Mass. So, for those people, religious liberty is absolute.
I think we differ on what “absolute” means. In the cases above, there was no religious freedom. What I am referring to are things like city clerks can’t deny issuing a marriage certificate to a same sex couple and use religious freedom as a defence. Or a jehavah’s witness parent can’t prevent necessary blood transfusions for a severely anemic child. Or, in a more extreme example, nobody can kill a homosexual, or an unfaithful wife, and use religious freedom as a defence. Well, I guess they can use it as a defence, but they would never be acquitted on those grounds.
When liquor stores are permitted to stay open but churches are forced to close, then the idea of what is the “socially responsible thing to do” is rendered nonsensical.
The socially responsible thing to do is take the necessary steps to reduce the risk of transmission. To the best of my knowledge contact tracing has never led back to a liquor store under COVID restrictions. The same can’t be said for churches. This being said, I do agree that, due to their psychological importance for many people, the closing of churches should be kept to the bare minimum (ie, during the exponential growth stage of a wave). Once the curve starts flattening, they should be allowed to open under capacity limits, masking and spacing.Scamp
February 28, 2022
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Scamp
Religious freedom has never been absolute.
For many centuries it was absolute. It is absolute in theocracies that exist today.
And never should be.
People take many risks to practice their religion - not merely the risk of contracting a flu. Some people attend church at the risk of being put in jail by Communists, or as has happened continually through history - at the risk of being killed just for attending Mass. So, for those people, religious liberty is absolute. I'm thinking you are an atheist or at least not a religious person. If so, then you don't value religion as much as others do. I wouldn't want your opinion to be imposed on people who value religion in that case.
Throughout history, churches have closed during pandemics and plagues. Because it was socially responsible thing to do.
When liquor stores are permitted to stay open but churches are forced to close, then the idea of what is the "socially responsible thing to do" is rendered nonsensical.Silver Asiatic
February 28, 2022
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SA: I think KF made the point. Liquor stores were not shut down and were considered “essential services”.
Yes, they did. With strict capacity limits, spacing and masking requirements, plexiglass barriers and sanitizing of counter tops between customers. All of which the liquor stores followed.
Pastors believe that access to religious care is more important than having access to liquor (or at least as much so).
And I would agree that for many parishioners, this is very true. And, to their credit, most churches found ways to continue to provide this access through alternative means. Maybe this pastor should have asked other pastors for advice rather than openly flaunting public health directives.
In my faith tradition, pastors implement sacramental care which has value (for believers) far beyond anything else.
I don’t doubt this. My in-laws are very devout Christians and really missed services when the church was closed. But the minister got off his ass and arranged for donations of iPhones/ipads and data plans for his parishioners who didn’t have internet. He broadcast his services for all to see. He also arranged for phone circles to make sure that people were constantly in contact. He also made a point to frequently visit all parishioners who lived alone or had no local family, which was permitted even under the times of lockdown.
That’s why governments should respect religious freedom – especially governments in historically-Christian environments where this sort of value system is well-known and has been a fabric of the society for centuries.
Religious freedom has never been absolute. And never should be. Throughout history, churches have closed during pandemics and plagues. Because it was the socially responsible thing to do. During the Spanish flu, churches in North America were also closed, forcing churches to find alternative means to minister to their parishioners. If they could do that long before the internet, and even before telephones were present in every household, it can certainly be done today. Without being too cynical, might I suggest that the few pastors who flaunted the public health directives may have been motivated more by the collection plate than they were by the well-being (spiritual and otherwise) of their parishioners. And in closing, need I remind people here of the large number of COVID outbreaks and deaths that have been linked to church outbreaks.Scamp
February 28, 2022
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Q, the gain of function, lab leak and early containment issues are cases in point where we need to look beyond officialdom. KF PS, as there may be pouncing on, the Code was written after the Doctor Trials. It sums up the lessons and yes too much of what has happened looks dubious in its like.kairosfocus
February 28, 2022
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Sc, the talk points are past sell by date. As the official narrative unravels, we will more and more see what officialdom sought to marginalise. Of course, it would have been interesting to hear your remarks on the pandemic significance of the protests riots etc of 2020 and the attitude of much the same officialdom by contrast with how you have spoken of churches, but the side stepping itself carries significance. As for the marginalised treatments, Uttar Pradesh is a standing rebuke to the official narrative and party line. KFkairosfocus
February 28, 2022
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Kairosfocus @94, Good points and well said. I've been keeping up with the published studies, including several that demonstrate the amazing efficacy of gargling, swishing, and rinsing with 0.5% povidone iodine (aka PVP-I) both as a prevention and treatment of Covid-19. I've purchased it in bulk, dilute it from the common 10% solution. The suppression of effective treatments by the CDC and the hysterically partisan media constitute medical malpractice and misinformation. Mandatory and coerced injections are a violation of the Nuremberg Code that was used to convict, imprison, and in some cases hang Nazi medical doctors and administrators. I don't see how our current situation is any different now, not to mention the illegal (thank you, President Obama) gain-of-function research that was funded and off-shored by the U.S. to China. -QQuerius
February 28, 2022
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Querius: I guess you’re dodging that issue, but I appreciate that you could get arrested in Canada for the wrong answer.
I’m not dodging it. I’m just not certain what you are asking. Are you referring to their protests over the church run residential schools? Protests over pipelines being built on their land? Protests over the fact that they can’t drink the water? Protests over repeated treaty violations? I am not opposed to civil disobedience. I am opposed to any illegal actions intentionally intended to cause the suffering of innocent people. If there are any indigenous protests that meet this standard then I am opposed to them. Did you have any in mind? Maybe our disagreements have to do with what my parents taught me over 60 years ago. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And taking out your perceived wrongs on innocent people is not right. It’s just selfish immaturity.Scamp
February 28, 2022
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Querius
I guess you aren’t aware of the “public health” risks African-American church goers in the south endured, including “lead poisoning” and being burned alive:
Excellent point. The protests were considered instigations and were not only illegal but brought violence and physical harm on the parishioners. But MLK and others risked this because the values they were defending were of the greatest importance. It's the same with pastors now.Silver Asiatic
February 28, 2022
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Scamp
What people fail to mention is that the vast majority of churches accepted gathering limits ...
In a civilized place, minorities still have rights. I think KF made the point. Liquor stores were not shut down and were considered "essential services". Pastors believe that access to religious care is more important than having access to liquor (or at least as much so). In my faith tradition, pastors implement sacramental care which has value (for believers) far beyond anything else. That's why governments should respect religious freedom - especially governments in historically-Christian environments where this sort of value system is well-known and has been a fabric of the society for centuries.Silver Asiatic
February 28, 2022
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Kairosfocus @92, True and I'd be tempted to classify them according to a hierarchy, On top would be religious mandates such as Torah for Jews. Natural law covers many others including life, liberty, property, due process, equality under the law, the pursuit of happiness, matters of conscience, and so on. -QQuerius
February 28, 2022
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Scamp @92,
What about applying your objection to the civil disobedience in Canada by First Nations protesters?
I guess you're dodging that issue, but I appreciate that you could get arrested in Canada for the wrong answer. The chance of catching Covid-19 out doors is virtually nil due to virus dispersion and rapid degradation from solar radiation. A person also needs a certain "viral load" to catch the disease. But apparently the Canadian authorities only "follow the science" when it's in their interests.
A role model for all. But MLK never put his own parishioners at risk by flaunting public health directives. And I doubt very much that he ever would have.
I guess you aren't aware of the "public health" risks African-American church goers in the south endured, including "lead poisoning" and being burned alive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_against_African-American_churches -QQuerius
February 28, 2022
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Sc, do you not see that the measures being pushed and compelled have been of questionable public health effect? Do you not see that masks are more of a social signal than an effective remedy and that the six foot rule clearly did not work? Or, that effectively locking people down from their livelihood did enormous damage? Etc? Is it not obvious that a serious alternative, the growing number of effective treatments, was marginalised and stigmatised without good reason? The misrepresentation of Ivermectin as toxic horse worm medicine without credible effect is an outstanding case in point. Note here the census level results of Uttar Pradesh vs Israel now on jab no 4. Is it not plain that we have been corralled into a false dilemma? Is it not manifest that officialdom overreached and violated fundamental rights, smearing those who begged to differ? BTW, were the same officials and media who overreacted to outdoors church services similarly exercised in 2020 when there was a wave of protests? Do you not see that censoring a pastor from speaking is a gross violation of rights, right up there with financial confiscation, damaging livelihood, or even trampling protesters through using cavalry rides into protesters or clubbing and kicking protesters etc? (All on video and linked in discussions.) Your enabling continues. KFkairosfocus
February 28, 2022
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Q, we are coming full circle to what was so violently resisted when I put it on the table some months back. Perhaps, i/l/o real world cases, we can more fully recognise the value, validity and soundness of the self evident, branch on which we all sit, so inescapably binding, first duties of right reason, core, built in law of our morally governed nature. Namely, the ciceronian first duties:
1st - to truth, 2nd - to right reason, 3rd - to prudence [including warrant], 4th - to sound conscience, 5th - to neighbour; so also, 6th - to fairness and 7th - to justice [ . . .] xth - etc.
Note, especially, sound conscience, duly guided by the other principles. Where, the point is, that no one can justly compel another to taint sound conscience, i.e. one's awareness of fundamental duties, thus of rights, freedoms and justice. Any man-made regulations that violate these canons are automatically fallacious, invalid, chaotic, likely unjust. So, when we see what has been going on at hands of officialdom, in the name of pandemic response and science, we have reason to be seriously concerned that inconvenient truth is being smeared as misinformation, reasonable people are being censored and maligned -- defamed in fact [yes, tort applies], policing and regulation are serving increasingly lawless oligarchy, and the complicit media and chattering classes are enabling folly or even evils. It is time for a serious rethink and better choices. KFkairosfocus
February 28, 2022
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SA@88, I agree that MLK was a heroic individual. A role model for all. But MLK never put his own parishioners at risk by flaunting public health directives. And I doubt very much that he ever would have. The demographics of most church parishioners is such that they have a higher proportion of people at higher risk from COVID than the general population. What people fail to mention is that the vast majority of churches accepted gathering limits for what they were intended; an effort to reduce and slow the spread of COVID to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. This pastor is definitely no MLK.Scamp
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