Michelle Malkin: Same Players, New Wave of Invaders

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In case you missed it, and you might have because corporate media and even some Republicans have been working hard to silence the indomitable Michelle Malkin, here is her analysis of the sudden Haitian invasion of our wide open southern border.

At the Santa Barbara News-Press:

The manufactured border crisis

In nearly 30 years of covering America’s corrupted immigration and entrance policies, I can tell you definitively that every “border crisis” is a manufactured crisis.

Caravans of Latin American illegal immigrants don’t just form out of nowhere. Throngs of Middle Eastern refugees don’t just amass spontaneously. Boatloads of Haitians don’t just wash up on our shores by random circumstance.

All the world’s a stage, and as I exposed in my most recent book, “Open Borders, Inc.,” the world’s migrants are nothing more than expedient tools to globalist elites, profit-maximizing corporations, self-aggrandizing religious and nonprofit groups, and criminal smuggling syndicates.

That’s how the so-called border crises under former Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all played out.

The players are always the same: United Nations operatives, U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and its sovereignty-undermining shelter operators around the world, Jewish and evangelical Christian refugee resettlement contractors, international drug cartels, human traffickers, and their militant multicultural abettors.

It’s the same old, same old under President Joe Biden.

Keep reading!

RELATED ARTICLE: Afghan Evacuee Allegedly Assaulted Minor Boys at Ft. McCoy

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Apologies from me for not being able to keep up with everyone’s requests for information.  I am overloaded on all fronts as I try to maintain some balance in my life.  Some of you have noticed that I have deactivated my Facebook page—yes, I have. My e-mail boxes are full and overflowing! The very best way to reach me is to send a comment to this post if there is something you want me to see.  I do review and moderate comments every day or so, and if you have sent me  some information that is off topic, I won’t post it, but will see it.

4 Ways Americans Are Fighting Back Against Anti-Science COVID Restrictions

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What’s more American than apple pie? Civil disobedience.

In the US, it would be easy to believe the vast majority of people are in lockstep with the government’s pandemic policies. Networks are aflush with headlines claiming their polls show a majority of Americans support policies like masks and vaccine mandates, and detractors are painted as fringe.

Every good politico knows that, with the right framing, you can get a poll to say anything you want it to. But aside from the unreliable nature of the polls and headlines dominating our airwaves, there is another problem with the media’s reporting: they never seem to elevate stories that tell a counter narrative.

One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of Americans who have simply had enough of the anti-scientific and unconstitutional COVID mandates. We know, and have known for over a year, that the majority of masks in use provide little benefit in warding off the coronavirus. Additionally, studies have shown that mask mandates failed to reduce COVID deaths, hospitalizations, or even cases. And on top of all of that, we consistently see the same leaders who push these unscientific mandates on the rest of us flout the rules whenever it suits their fancy—like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Met Gala or San Francisco Mayor London Breed partying at a local jazz club.

Vaccine mandates present similar problems. Besides being flagrantly unconstitutional and a violation of bodily autonomy, these mandates ignore the natural immunity that millions of people have built up.

The rules only get sillier and more nonsensical from there. Former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, forced restaurants and bars to close at 10 pm earlier this year—as though he thought the coronavirus only came out at night. An athletic association in Ohio allowedstudents to wrestle—but not shake hands before or after matches. And some hot yoga studios require students to wear a mask from the door to the studio…before sweating out every drop of water in their body for the next 60 minutes.

It’s easy to see why many people are fed up. And in true American fashion, individuals are taking matters into their own hands and carrying out acts of civil disobedience in response.

Here are four big examples of ways that people are fighting back and standing up for our founding principle of individual liberty in the process.

Knoxville, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs, previously known as the professional wrestler “Kane,” wrote a letter to President Biden to tell him that Knox County “would not comply” with his new executive orders on vaccines.

In August, the president unrolled sweeping new orders that directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to require all businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested once a week.

This is yet another example of a silly pandemic policy as it also ignores the possibility of natural immunity. Furthermore, it is quite obviously unconstitutional for the federal government to mandate the ways private businesses and local governments operate. Jacobs, who is known to be a constitutional stalwart, was having none of it.

In his letter, Jacobs wrote:

“As the chief executive of an organization that employs 2,700 individuals, your action adds financial, legal, and regulatory burdens that will ultimately impact Knox County taxpayers. In addition, it potentially hinders our ability to attract quality employees since many folks in our community will not work somewhere that unjustly imposes vaccine mandates.”

“As a fellow elected official who has sworn an oath to uphold the US Constitution just as you have, I am alarmed by the alacrity with which you issued this order, contradicting both Article I, Section 1 — which vests legislative power in the Congress — and the Tenth Amendment — which recognizes the sovereignty of the states or the people over matters the Constitution does not delegate to the federal government.”

Now that’s leadership.

The Chicago Public School system issued a vaccine mandate that requires all employees to be vaccinated by October 15. In response to the new policy, 73 of the system’s public school bus drivers quit the day before the Fall 2021 semester began. This left 2,100 kids without a ride to school and the district scrambling to make new arrangements.

Ultimately, they ended up having to pay parents a $1,000 stipend to use public buses or ride-sharing services to transport their children to school. That is only expected to cover the first two weeks of school though, meaning taxpayers will be left with a hefty bill when all is said and done.

And while Chicago’s incident got the most attention, they are by no means the only district scrambling to find staff that will comply with their mandates.

“A new survey about the bus driver shortage shows just how severe the problem is across the country,” Business Insider reported. “The survey found that 78 percent of respondents said the shortage ‘is getting much worse’ or ‘a little worse’ per the press release. Over half of respondents described their shortage as ‘severe’ or ‘desperate.’”

Indiana’s largest hospital system also attempted to implement a vaccine mandate and was met with swift backlash. A whopping 125 of their staff and personnel decided to leave their system rather than comply with the policy.

This comes at a time when hospitals across our country are already facing severe staffing shortages that show no sign of turning around anytime soon.

In New York, which is requiring all healthcare workers to get the first dose of the vaccine by September 27, dozens of staff members walked out of one local hospital. That facility is now so short-staffed it recently announced it will no longer be able to deliver babies.

Bloomberg reports one in eight nursing professionals do not intend to get the shot, which spells trouble for our entire healthcare system if these mandates persist.

A popular video on TikTok shows a group of teens peacefully defying their school’s masking policy in Michigan earlier this year. The video took place at Manchester Junior & Senior High School in Washtenaw County, Michigan, whose county health department issued a masking order shortly before the event.

In the video, parents can be heard encouraging their kids to enter the building saying, “they cannot touch you” and “be kind and respectful.” The kids chant “let us in” and tell the school official guarding the door that the policy is a mandate, not a law. Eventually the official moves out of the way and allows them to enter the building.

The famous American philosopher Henry David Thoreau often spoke on the virtues of civil disobedience remarking, “I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

Other giants in our history, such as Martin Luther King Jr., utilized civil disobedience to effect great change. From Vietnam draft resisters, to our modern day examples, civil disobedience is a great American tradition that advances civil liberties and individual rights.

These are just a few examples of the ways Americans are refusing to allow government bureaucrats to run their lives or make decisions for their bodies. In the famous novel Atlas Shrugged, the world’s entrepreneurs and creators tire of unjust government edicts and withdraw from participating in a corrupt system. It would seem many Americans are experiencing an “Atlas Shrugged” moment, and choosing to walk away when pushed to the breaking point by invasive government policies. Good for them.

These cases should serve as a hopeful reminder of the power of the individual, and our ability to fight back against government when it oversteps its bounds.

COLUMN BY

Hannah Cox

Hannah Cox is the Content Manager and Brand Ambassador for the Foundation for Economic Education

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Thousands Take To NYC’s Times Square To Protest Vaccine Mandates And Vaccine Passports

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Chants of ‘F*ck Joe Biden’ In Biggest U.S. Protest Yet.

Finally, some signs of life in a city on life support.

Thousands of New Yorkers protested against vaccine mandates on Saturday. A diverse crowd demonstrated in New York City against the government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate orders in a protest dubbed the “rally for freedom,” which was a part of a worldwide demonstration.

A diverse crowd marched through the streets of New York City on Saturday; some waved American, Gadsden, and LGBTQ flags. Other demonstrators were holding signs that read: “My body, my choice,” “Latinos against forced vaccines,” “God is with us,” and “LGBTQ people for medical freedom.”

Times Square stormed by anti-vaxxers protesting in NYC

By Jesse O’Neill, NY Post, September 19, 2021

Hundreds of anti-vaxxers flooded Times Square for a polarizing protest Saturday.

The event included a pole dancer, and a person who held a sign comparing the inoculation effort to the Nazi’s mass murder of Jews.

“How did the Nazi’s do it? They said the Jews were diseased,” one woman’s sign read, social media images show.

The woman held in her other hand a picture of a swastika made out of syringes with the phrase “what happened to ‘never again?’” according to the images.

American flags and less offensive signage with slogans such as “freedom over fear” and “wake up New York” were also on display in the Crossroads of the World, pictures showed.

Few in the crowd wore masks, as many demanded an end to the city’s vaccine passport mandate.

The protest came as more than two-thirds of all New York City residents have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, health officials said.

RELATED ARTICLE: Chants of ‘F*** Joe Biden’ at diverse vaccine mandate protest, thousands hug at NYC freedom rally: ‘This is the power we want to send to the world’

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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PODCAST: Avoiding Political Censorship

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So you are a conservative and want to write a political OpEd piece, eh? And you want publishers to print it and social media to promote it. The reality is that it is easier said than done. I do not care how well you write or the importance of your message, it is necessary to form relationships with members of the press. Even conservative publications are tightly controlled by publishers and editors. Frankly, it’s a “good ole boy” club you have to contend with. You’re best chance for success is to correspond with them to establish some rapport. If they happen to make a presentation somewhere, be sure to attend and introduce yourself sometime during the meeting. Like most people, publishers and editors like to associate a name with a face (remember this, next time you print business cards). If you cannot contact them this way, pick up the phone and call them to discuss your idea for writing.

I have been writing political copy for several years now and I have learned a thing or two about censorship along the way. Hopefully, the following tips will be of use to you in getting your article published. First, let’s consider the embodiment of your article; here we need to discuss the Title, the Body, and Follow-up.

  1. The Title – give some serious thought to this as it will be used to entice people to read your article, and will be monitored by social media which automatically scans titles to alert them of potentially unsuitable content. For example, try to avoid the following keywords from your title: BIDEN, TRUMP, OBAMA, REPUBLICAN, DEMOCRAT, LIBERAL, CONSERVATIVE, ANTIFA, BLM, KAMALA, AOC, ILLEGAL, IMMIGRANTS, BORDER, AFGHANISTAN, IRAN, GREEN, BUDGET, ENVIRONMENT, SOCIALISM, CAPITALISM, POLITICS, POLITICIAN, etc. Such words are automatically picked-up by social media and may result in one of three things: voiding or delaying your posting, the triggering of “fact checkers” which will also void your copy, or suppression of the dissemination of your message. For example, it has been my experience on Facebook, where I have nearly 2,000 “friends,” depending on my posting, either they will all see it or only a handful (my political pieces typically fall into the latter category). Social media also monitors patterns in your postings which can result in an adverse effect on your readership. So keep this in mind when you create your title, your headline is important to getting your article posted and promoted.
  2. The Body – keep it clean and avoid crude language. Both publishers and social media alike will scan your copy looking for foul language and will stop your article from being published if so discovered. Also, add facts to support your argument, but be sure to note their source. Better yet, embed links into the copy to allow the reader to visit the source of the fact.
  3. Follow-up – provide a very brief bio of yourself (one to two lines at most). Be sure to include information on how to contact you, such as an e-mail address or web site. I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU PRINT YOUR TELEPHONE NUMBER as you will likely be harassed by wackos.

If your article is published on the web, be sure to follow reader feedback. Under no circumstance should you get into a heated debate with a detractor, just ignore them or, better yet, delete them if possible. As Mark Twain said, “Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

Here are a couple more things I have observed regarding social media and e-mail:

1. In some social media, such as Facebook, you may join different clubs. For example, I belong to several political clubs within Facebook. If I have a political column I want to promote, I may “copy and paste” a notice in the clubs as well as notify certain friends (what I like to call “germ carriers” – people who will help spread your message). Here’s the problem: if you “copy and paste” too fast and too often, social media will automatically detect this and cancel your postings. So what can be done? Two things: do not “copy and paste” too rapidly, and slightly alter your postings. For example:

TEACHING RACISM IN THE CLASSROOM – Here is one way left-wing politics penetrates the classroom.

TEACHING RACISM IN THE CLASSROOM – Here is one way left-wing politics penetrates the classroom.

BRYCE – TEACHING RACISM IN THE CLASSROOM – Here is one way left-wing politics penetrates the classroom.

As an aside, this “copy and paste” phenomenon is actively used by the Democrats, particularly in the “Letters to the Editor” sections of newspapers. They simply “copy and paste” the same text for publication in several national papers. If you are properly organized, it takes just a few minutes to perform this.

2. This same phenomenon occurs in e-mail, particularly if you are trying to send bulk e-mails. If you are using Gmail, Yahoo!, MSN or others, they will be automatically looking for bulk e-mails and, if you are not careful, you will be classified a “spammer” and none of your messages will get through. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do here: break down your e-mail list into smaller batches (30-40 receivers at most); change the name in the “Subject” section of the e-mail to avoid detection of repetition (see above), and; mail to your receivers as “Blind Carbon Copies” (BCC), this keeps people from seeing the other receivers on your list.

3. If you don’t play by the rules of the social media, or write something they do not like, you may get suspended for a period of time (aka, “Facebook Jail”) or expelled completely. You can fight the suspension, but I haven’t heard of too many people being successful in reversing their decision. The length of suspension varies, anywhere from days, to weeks, to months, to permanent. When you come back, you are put on a watch list and carefully monitored. Another way to overcome this problem is to register as a new user, but use a substantially different name. The only problem with this, you lose all of your “friends” you have connected with over time, thereby hampering your ability to communicate with them (which is what the social media wants).

The last point I want to make is regarding fights with Liberals regarding your work. If you write several pieces regarding politics, as I do, and they are not aligned with Democrat dogma, they will assign an individual to monitor and criticize your work. The person’s objective is to harass, discredit, and tempt you into a fight. No matter what you write, they will disagree with you, regardless of how logically correct your argument is. Not surprising, the person is usually an “anonymous” person to avoid identifying themselves and face retribution themself. As such, they are cowards.

If your work is routinely printed in a journal, particularly if it is a public periodical, they will demand the publisher censor you and suppress your 1st Amendment Right to free speech. Again, this is what happens when you become popular and do not follow their political dogma.

When you are censored by a publication or social media, do not be surprised if you are not allowed to defend yourself. We must remember the mainstream media is very liberal, as is social media, making their stranglehold on what is printed or said rather formidable. They have a deep disdain for opposing opinions and will go to any lengths to thwart them.

Mark Twain seemed to sum it up accurately when he observed years ago, “It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people, who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations, do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies.”

The most important trait you, as a writer, must possess is perseverance. Keep looking for new venues to write for, such as a conservative club newsletter, local papers, political blogs and podcasts, etc. Next, learn from your mistakes; consider language and sentence structure, excessive use of jargon, typographical errors and punctuation. Most importantly, KEEP WRITING! Practice makes perfect.

Good luck!

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – For a listing of my books, click HERE.

RELATED VIDEO: Australians are suffering the same censorship and MSM one sided agenda.

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

The 4 Biggest Problems with Biden’s Vaccine Order

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Surely, the White House’s vaccine mandate plan cannot stand. 

Back in December of 2020, then President-elect Biden said that he would not make vaccines against COVID-19 mandatory, nor did he think they should be mandatory. Given the new vaccine mandate by the White House, set to affect nearly 100 million Americans by some estimates, one reasonably conclude that Biden misled the people. However, Biden’s actions will likely increase vaccine hesitancy, lead to further distrust of the government, and can expect multiple legal challenges – as well as civil disobedience. These outcomes can all be expected due to four distinct challenges to the mandate.

First, Biden’s executive order is just that – an executive order. Congress, the legislative branch, and thus the entire concept of representative government, has been bypassed by President Biden. The White House has no legislative authority to create an emergency rule under OSHA and it says as much in the U.S. Constitution. Article 1, Section 1 states very plainly, in a single sentence: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Nowhere in that sentence are legislative authorities granted to the Executive branch. Likewise, the President does not reserve such powers – powers which belong to the states or to the people, as outlined by the Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

Second, proponents of the White House’s actions have cited a legal precedent – the 1905 Supreme Court Case Jacobson v. Massachusetts, specifically – which is unlikely to hold up to any serious scrutiny. In that case, a Massachusetts law passed by a legislature and adhering to the principles of the separation of powers (unlike an executive order authored by the President) allowed local town health boards (not federal agencies run by unelected bureaucrats) to establish mandatory vaccines if it was deemed necessary by local, municipal, elected officials. Those who did not comply were prosecuted with a simple fine of five dollars. A challenge was raised to the law, and the Supreme Court – the Fuller Court specifically – upheld it.

However, when compared to Biden’s new mandate, one can readily see legal issues. Apart from the legislative process that the Massachusetts law first underwent as outlined above, Biden’s executive order places the burden not on the people, but on private companies, effectively turning employer against employee. Certainly, in an employer-employee relationship, and even more so in a government-as-employer setting, vaccine requirements have a clearly established basis. What is not clearly established, if established at all, is the federal government pre-arranging the medical requirements upon which an employment relationship may commence between private individuals.

Furthermore, the appeal to Jacobson v. Massachusetts ought to enrage many Americans, especially women and minorities. Jacobson was decided under Chief Justice Fuller, who presided over Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), when racial segregation was codified under federal law. That decision has now been overturned, but remains held in absolute contempt, and rightly so. In addition, Jacobson was decided nearly 15 years before women received the right to vote at the federal level, and was also later cited as precedent – even served as the basis – for the decision of Buck v. Bell (1927) when SCOTUS allowed for compulsory sterilization of women deemed mentally unfit for motherhood.

Third, and speaking of women, there are still ongoing concerns about the safety of the COVID vaccines. Although the CDC has said there is little-to-no risk, and the FDA has fully approved the vaccine, there have been recent reports that the vaccines have been affecting women’s menstrual cycles, raising serious concerns about reproductive health. As recently as early September, in fact, the National Institutes of Health has approved 1.67 million dollars to investigate those claims. The NIH appears to be taking these reports very seriously – unlike the White House, the CDC, and the FDA.

Given the recent tensions and commentary from the Biden Administration in opposition to Texas’ new 6-week abortion law, we might assume that the Biden Administration would be a little more supportive of both bodily autonomy and reproductive health. However, that does not seem to be the case. Furthermore, we might hope that supporters of the Biden Administration would never dream of giving so much deference to a SCOTUS decision made under a Chief Justice who helped codify segregation, and was later used as the basis for forced sterilization. But that does not seem to be the case either.

Fourth and finally, Biden’s mandate makes no exception for natural immunity against COVID, now believed to be more effective than vaccines. Todd Zywicki, a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School, has already successfully fought George Mason University’s vaccine mandate after filing a lawsuit against the mandate on the basis of natural immunity. Requiring vaccines for those already immune is unnecessary and a violation of medical ethics, and Zywicki’s previous efforts will likely serve as a basis for legal challenges going forward.

It is astounding, truly, to watch the White House bypass the legislative process, ignore representative government, and disrespect the separation of powers. It is enraging to watch supporters of the Biden Administration cite a Supreme Court decision made under the same Chief Justice who presided over Plessy v. Ferguson, years before women had the right to vote, and later used to support forced sterilization.

It is horrific that vaccines be mandated before a new investigation into their safety for women is concluded. And it is unconscionable that such an executive order would make no provision for those possessing natural immunity. Surely, this cannot stand.

COLUMN BY

Mason  Goad

Mason Goad is a student at the Schar School of Policy and Government, located at George Mason University. Follow him on Twitter.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Proof of Genocidal Hospital Protocol

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Our First Hand ICU Story – What is ACTUALLY Killing People In The Hospital.

TruthINRADIO published the following commentary and video:

My husband WALKED out of the ICU in just 3 1/2 days. Fastest ICU patient in history of Cov. What we did. What to tell others. It’s not “blovid”- the protocol is what is killing people in the ICU. Here is what to do and how to do it. What to demand. What treatment. Please Share This! More at katedalleyradio.com in show notes on entire story. My husband had 4 major “risk” categories- so by their “blovid” standards, should be dead. We changed THEIR protocol and saved his life. This is how we did it. ( I look puffy and terrible here on vid because I was brought to tears on the air on my syndicated radio show.)

©TruthINRADIO. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: THE “VIRUS” PANDEMIC IS A FARCE – DR. THOMAS COWAN AND DR. ANDREW KAUFMAN INTERVIEW WITH MIKE ADAMS

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The Myth That Our Planet Faces an Overpopulation Crisis

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Shortly after my wife graduated from college, she joined Zero Population Growth. Looking back, she tells me it was an emotional reaction fueled by reading Paul Ehrlich’s apocalyptic claims. In his book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Ehrlich’s book, despite being spectacularly wrong, influenced millions. Zero Population Growth has morphed into the Population Connection. Ehrlich is unrepentant and still claims the collapse of civilization is a “near certainty” in the not too distant future.

Ehrlich is not the only voice proclaiming the end is near. The UK’s “Optimum Population Trust (OPT) believes Earth may not be able to support more than half its present numbers before the end of the century,” The Telegraph summarized. The OPT movement has attracted followers such as David Attenborough.

In the US, Bernie Sanders recently vowed to support “empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth” as a response to climate change.

Moreover, James Lovelock advanced the Gaia hypothesis that Earth is one “self-regulating organism.” Lovelock forecasts the population of the Earth will fall to one billion from its current total of over seven billion people. Given Lovelock’s cheerfulness about such carnage, it is easy to see why Alan Hall, a senior analyst at The Socionomist, wonders whether “today’s drives to limit consumption and population” are ideologically related to the eugenics movement from the past century. In his essay “A Socionomic Study of Eugenics,” Hall writes in the Socionomist:

Circa 1900, influential intellectuals in Europe and the U.S. voiced concerns about uncontrolled procreation causing a supposed decline in the quality of human beings. Today, similar groups voice concerns about uncontrolled population growth and resource consumption causing a decline in the quality of the environment…Today’s green advocates brandish images of an overrun, dying planet.

Today, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working to aid the lives of children living “in extreme poverty.” In his book, Factfulness, the late professor of international health Hans Rosling, reports on critics of the Gates Foundation who reject such efforts. “The argument goes like this,” Rosling writes. “If you keep saving poor children, you’ll kill the planet by causing overpopulation.”

In the face of advocates for such beliefs, no wonder Hall asks us to reflect on whether we “will make the cut” if those seeking to cull humanity are successful.

We’ve all heard the SparkNotes version of Malthusian predictions of doom caused by overpopulation. Malthus thought food production could not keep pace with population growth. In his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population,” Malthus anticipated the suffering that awaited humanity.

The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

Unlike Ehrlich and others, Malthus had reason to be a pessimist in his lifetime. If Malthus had been writing history or predicting the near future, he would not have been far from the mark.

“The good old days were awful,” observes Johan Norberg in his book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. The year 1868 was one of famine in Sweden. Norberg shares this powerful testimony of a survivor remembering back to his childhood.

We often saw mother weeping to herself, and it was hard on a mother, not having any food to put on the table for her hungry children. Emaciated, starving children were often seen going from farm to farm, begging for a few crumbs of bread. One day three children came to us, crying and begging for something to still the pangs of hunger. Sadly, her eyes brimming with tears, our mother was forced to tell them that we had nothing but a few crumbs of bread which we ourselves needed. When we children saw the anguish in the unknown children’s supplicatory eyes, we burst into tears and begged mother to share with them what crumbs we had. Hesitantly she acceded to our request, and the unknown children wolfed down the food before going on to the next farm, which was a good way off from our home. The following day all three were found dead between our farm and the next.

Sweden was so poor back in the 19th century, Norberg observes, that “it was poorer, with shorter life expectancy and higher child mortality than the average sub-Saharan African country.”

The population of Sweden in 1868 was a bit over 3.5 million. Today Sweden’s population is almost 300 percent larger. Is Sweden more overpopulated today than it was in 1868?

Norberg writes, “In 1694, a chronicler in Meulan, Normandy, noted that the hungry harvested the wheat before it was ripe, and ‘large numbers of people lived on grass like animals.’”

Today people live like animals in North Korea. They, too, eat grass and bark off trees.

Geographically, North Korea is almost 25 percent larger than South Korea. The population of modern South Korea is about double the population of starving North Korea.

Overpopulation is relative to the ability of an economy to provide a decent standard of living, adequate nutrition, and minimize the impact on the environment. Using that measure, North Korea, with more land and fewer people, is overpopulated compared to South Korea. Nineteenth-century Sweden was overpopulated compared to today’s Sweden.

If you think South Korea, with its more modern economy, inflicts more harm on the environment than the poor economy of North Korea, you would be wrong.

In North Korea, some rivers run black from uranium mining.

The poor people of North Korea “harvest forests for fuel and to make fields during a succession of famines… Some people resorted to eating bark,” the Scientific American noted earlier this year. The result has been widespread deforestation and a denuding of the landscape.

Ecologist Margaret Palmer visited North Korea, and she saw the “entire landscape was lifeless and barren.” She saw a Malthusian nightmare:

Emaciated looking farmers tilled the earth with plows pulled by oxen and trudged through half-frozen streams to collect nutrient-rich sediments for their fields.

“We went to a national park where we saw maybe one or two birds, but other than that you don’t see any wildlife,” Palmer said.

Dutch soil scientist Joris van der Kamp reports on the North Korean environmental collapse. “The landscape is just basically dead. It’s a difficult condition to live in, to survive.”

Van der Kamp added, “There are no branches of trees on the ground. Everything is collected for food or fuel or animal food, almost nothing is left for the soil.”

Elon Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, but he can find in North Korea a dead landscape with warmer temperatures, more oxygen, and minuscule travel costs compared to the Red Planet. When communism collapses in North Korea, capitalism will terraform the country at an inestimably small fraction of the cost of terraforming Mars.

Based on its ability to support its human population and protect its environment, sparsely populated North Korea is one of the most overpopulated countries in the world.

Norberg explains what Malthus got wrong.

[H]e underestimated [humanity’s] ability to innovate, solve problems and change its ways when Enlightenment ideas and expanded freedoms gave people the opportunity to do so. As farmers got individual property rights, they then had an incentive to produce more. As borders were opened to international trade, regions began to specialize in the kinds of production suited to their soil, climate and skills. And agricultural technology improved to make use of these opportunities. Even though population grew rapidly, the supply of food grew more quickly.

The more specialization and exchange, the wealthier and better fed a growing population will be. In countries like North Korea, Venezuela, and Mao’s China, central planning leads to reduced specialization, which leads to starvation. As Matt Ridley explains in his book The Rational Optimist:

[I]f exchange becomes harder, [people] will reduce their specialisation, which can lead to a population crisis even without an increase in population. The Malthusian crisis comes not as a result of population growth directly, but because of decreasing specialisation. Increasing self-sufficiency is the very signature of a civilisation under stress, the definition of a falling standard of living.

Ridley explains that embracing specialization increases human ingenuity and increases the possibility that more people “can live upon the planet in improving health, food security and life expectancy and that this is compatible with cleaner air, increasing forest cover and some booming populations of elephants.”

In short, Ridley writes, “Embracing dynamism means opening your mind to the possibility of posterity making a better world rather than preventing a worse one.”

In their book, Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson have startling facts for those who believe the population will continue to explode.

No, we are not going to keep adding bodies until the world is groaning at the weight of eleven billion of us and more; nine billion is probably closer to the truth, before the population starts to decline. No, fertility rates are not astronomically high in developing countries; many of them are at or below replacement rate. No, Africa is not a chronically impoverished continent doomed to forever grow its population while lacking the resources to sustain it; the continent is dynamic, its economies are in flux, and birth rates are falling rapidly. No, African Americans and Latino Americans are not overwhelming white America with their higher fertility rates. The fertility rates of all three groups have essentially converged.

Looking at current trends and expecting them to continue is what Hans Rosling calls “the straight line instinct.” That instinct often leads to false conclusions.

Rosling explains why critics of the Gates Foundation’s efforts to save children are dead wrong.

“Saving poor children just increases the population” sounds correct, but the opposite is true. Delaying the escape from extreme poverty just increases the population. Every generation kept in extreme poverty will produce an even larger next generation. The only proven method for curbing population growth is to eradicate extreme poverty and give people better lives.

With better lives, Rosling writes,

parents then have chosen for themselves to have fewer children. This transformation has happened across the world but it has never happened without lowering child mortality.

In the past 20 years, “the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty” has fallen by half. Rosling adds that already the “majority of the world population live in middle-income countries.”

When feverish dreams of doom are used to justify controlling the lives of others, restricting personal and economic freedom, expect more poverty and environmental degradation with real overpopulation like that of North Korea. It is capitalism and freedom that lift humanity out of poverty, vanquish overpopulation, and offer a sustainable future.

COLUMN BY

Barry Brownstein

Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of The Inner-Work of Leadership. To receive Barry’s essays subscribe at Mindset Shifts.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

King Biden – The American Self Proclaimed Insane Monarch.

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Late Thursday afternoon, our chief lunatic escaped his bonds and appeared before his serfs and subjects from the basement asylum that he is kept in and mandated new China Covid Virus mandates for America!!

Listen to me carefully – any government that is going to the dictatorial lengths that this one is to push something, trust me, it is not for your benefit or good nor for the country as a whole.

King Biden seems to be under a spell that he is now God! Or made to look and feel like God as he continues being Hussein Obama and Valerie Jarrett tame pet idiot.

He is usurping his power and making sweeping regulations that he has no right to do. This whole China virus episode has been about government overstep. They have walked, nay, trodden all over the constitution and our constitutional rights and we have allowed it.

What the heck is wrong with you all?

Why are we not in the streets protesting?

Why are we not uniting against this extreme tyranny?

Why are we not just refusing to go along with this crap and instead act like good little lemmings leaping off a cliff following the piper?

When did we become so downtrodden as a nation?

America. In case you haven’t got the picture yet I am not a happy American. I did not ‘legally’ immigrate in October 1994 to this awesome country to be a slave – yes, slave – to the demands of leftist extremists, America haters and criminal dictators and their Nazi tactics and propaganda.

I thought I had left all that behind.

I thought I was coming to the land of freedom, the home of the brave. It appears not so much.

So now we have a Federal Government, run by a leadership that fraudulently stole the election, telling companies that if they have 100 employees or more, they must mandate their employees are vaccinated or test them weekly at their cost although they can pass those costs to the employees that refuse, rightly so, to take that pathetic lie they call a vaccine. The one that was one shot, then two, now three, possibly rising up from there, that doesn’t stop you getting the China virus or passing it on or dying from it. God knows how many more variants they will conjure up. Hmmmm… postal ballots fir 2022 come to your mind anyone? Another stolen election? If I had a company with 100+ employees I would lay off the excess or possibly break the company up.

In Biden’s pre written by his handlers words comes this gem. “We’ve been patient,” Biden told the millions of Americans who have declined to get coronavirus shots. “But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.”

His patience? Screw him and his patience. He and his ilk long ago wore my patience wafer thin. They have driven at least 80 million of us to where we are now. Frustrated. Looking at an uncertain future and possible civil war or a breakup of the union.

The non stop attacks on the right of this country are obviously aimed at further dividing this nation. They are attempting to creat a race war to cover their bases too. Add to that the successful so far continued destruction of our standing in the eyes of other nations and the total collapse of our border security plus our absolutely disgraceful pull out of Afghanistan and they may get their wish. All I can say to these traitors and leftist extremists is be careful what you wish for. We are not going to take it much longer.

Approximately 2/3rds of all US workers will now face a decision if they are not vaccinated. They can quit which is not functional for many, they can put this dangerous unknown and untested vaccine in their bodies or they will have to pay every week to be tested. Price unknown.

Just over 53% of Americans able to be vaccinated have been. Therefore using math taught to me before common core, 47% have not.

If any hospital or institution gets Medicaid or Medicare funding ( tax payer money by the way) then his new mandate orders 100% of the workers get vaccinated. No option to test weekly.

Now, I know – well, I pray, that these dictatorial mandates will be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court and therefore take a long time before they can actually be implemented. At that time, with luck, America will have voted and removed the New Socialist Democratic Party’s hold in the House and this stupidity and federal overreach can be reversed.

The U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will write the rules and regulations and enforce them and companies not complying will face federal fines of $14,000 per case or violation.

Federal workers will be mandated to have the vaccine or lose their jobs and pensions if not fully vested. There will be no option to test weekly for them. The Dept. of Defense, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the National Institute of Health will complete implementation of their previously announced vaccination requirements that cover 2.5 million people. No choice. No options. Inject that extremely profitable for the drug companies concoction into your blood stream or become unemployed.

Several Trades Unions have come out against mandatory vaccinations for their members and will hopefully join las suites against these unconstitutional mandates. Unions like Service Employee International Union who covers hospital and health workers to police and firefighter unions have come out against the mandates. This huge federal overreach is also being challenged by some GOP members and many conservatives. One of them, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has stated her legal team is standing by to file a challenge to these dictatorial and unconstitutional mandates. I am sure many other red states will follow.

These Commies in the WH think that we believe that our economy and way of life will only improve once everyone is vaccinated. I call BS. As soon as we reach herd immunity, ie, when the majority have caught Covid and got natural immunity, we can. I say we could anyway because neither this fraudulent administration nor any prior or subsequent administration, has the right or power to have done what they have so far and we allowed. Destroyed the most vibrant economy in the world, ruined millions of lives and jobs, companies, landlords being controlled and told when to open, close etc. When they can get their rent or evict non paying renters. They, the Federal, State, County and City/Town administrations have no right to do any of that.

Sniffer Joe Biden, the mentally incompetent crime boss also is attempting to make stadiums, theaters, arenas etc. insist on seeing proof of vaccine or testing everyone prior to their entrance!!

All this while the WH has admitted it cannot mandate vaccinations.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

The Killer COVID Vax, a Genocidal Bioweapon – Part 2

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“Under international law, widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population are crimes against humanity.” –  Philip Alston, Australian international law scholar and human rights practitioner.

“What connects two thousand years of genocide? Too much power in too few hands.” – Simon Wiesenthal

“All I hope is that the American coalition is doing its best to prevent civilian casualties and the killing of innocent people.” – Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor

We are naïve if we think Nazi Germany cannot happen again.  In fact, the Bible predicts it will.  The Germans and even Hitler himself were all too human.  Read the atrocities around our world. It is clear that raw humanity is certainly not very pretty.  Evil held in check often erupts when the conditions are right.  When restraints are gone, when people are desperate, and when power is up for grabs, the human heart is laid bare for all to see.  We are seeing the Red Fascists rise again, this time in our own country. Few of our fellow Americans even recognize it. It is the face of evil, and it didn’t just start with COVID.

Shocking Stats

In a short clip from her White Coat Summit speech, Dr. Lee Merritt gives some frightening stats.  Dr. Merritt was a ten-year navy surgeon and she’s especially concerned regarding COVID inoculations of our military.

In 2020, there were only 20 Covid deaths of active duty, in all the services put together.  They have a big epidemiological base and can easily find out what’s going on.  The military is jabbing everyone, and they’ve already had tumors and 80 cases of myocarditis and it has a significant mortality rate of 66% in five years.  The “vaccine” program has ostensibly killed more active duty than COVID did.  Leukemia, another blood dyscrasia cancer, has 48 per year, but now VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System, states we’re up to 229.  (Remember Harvard’s study that only one to ten percent of deaths or adverse effects are reported to VAERS.)  

In over 31 years, there were only 317 cases of myocarditis.  Now, after these inoculations, for 2021, there are 1,113. I can pick almost any diagnosis, and you will find the same issues after the clot shots have been administered. 

So, the question we have to ask is, why are we not stopping this?  We stopped many things for far less.  We stopped working on respiratory syncytial vaccine for 22 deaths of infants in hospital.  We stopped the H1NI after 53 deaths or 53 adverse events.  Now, we’re probably doing 53 a day, so why are we continuing these jabs? 

Experimental Subjects

In this second 30-minute interview with Dr. Ryan Cole, he states, “The Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) COVID inoculations are clearly called investigational vaccines and we are asking nurses, students, employees to be subjects in an experiment on humanity. This is a large phase-three trial of getting the shot for something we do not know the long-term side effects of down the road.  We usually don’t see side effects for two to five years.”

Dr. Cole said the shortages we’re experiencing in the medical industry are because people value their bodily integrity.  He looks at data and he’s already seeing the adverse effects from these shots in a laboratory setting.  Individuals are subjecting themselves to this jab in order to keep a job.

However, he states that they’re seeing young people, middle-aged people and old people refusing to take the shot and being told by their employers that they’ll make them cave.  Nurses have shared with Dr. Cole that this is the mantra of their administrations.  They don’t want their bodies damaged, their fertility damaged, their long-term immune health damaged and they don’t want to increase their risks for cancers.  He believes they’ll stand for their health and bodily integrity and that they have every right to do that and not be a subject in human experimentation through coercion.

The result will be huge staffing shortages.  Cole says he’s heard from Indiana and Michigan and the shortages have already started there and it’s going to be massive.  He adds that this is an attack on entire communities, their wellness and access to care.  It is a violation; we made a promise in 1947 after WWII that we would never again experiment on humanity or coerce anyone against their will, and literally this is what we’re seeing.  There were Nazi nurses and doctors hung for doing to humanity exactly what we’re doing now by saying, “You will participate in an experiment or else you will lose your job.”  Dr. Cole states, “We are taking away the freedom and sovereignty of people over their bodies and minds as well.”

“We’ve had three options this year.  We’ve had fear, suffering and “vaccine.” The real option is hope, early treatment and immune wellness.  We as a society have been subjected to a worse outcome because we haven’t focused on some of the basic public health messages.  We are a Vitamin D deficient nation, magnesium and Vitamin K as well.  We’re an obese nation, a metabolically unwell nation, and this has predisposed us to worse outcomes compared to other nations.”

Variants

The data out of India, where the Delta virus comes from, is statistically one-seventh of the western world.  Dr. Cole explains that all viruses acquire benevolent mutations over time, but scientists and physicians believe the Delta strain is the enhanced version of the Wuhan virus and it comes from the COVID injections. He tells us that in the UK right now there are about 15,000 break-thru cases a day in the “vaccinated” of the Delta variant.

Dr. Cole explains, “The reactions we’re seeing are from people who are getting the shot while they’re infected and then the antibodies formed are attacking the organs in your body.  Those who have also mounted an immunity against Sars-coV-2, if they get a shot, there are multiple risks of adverse reactions because they’ve already got antibody immunity.” The inoculations then put the system in a hyper-immune response negating the much stronger natural immunity.

In Israel, a recent study showed that break-thru cases in those who had already had Sars-coV-2 and natural immunity, verses those who had had the shot, showed that the recurrent infection rate in those who were naturally immune was .008% to reactivation of the virus.

The inoculated contracted Delta strain at a seven times higher rate than the naturally immune, clearly indicating that natural immunity is far stronger than vaccine immunity from a leaky vaccine.  This is not a sterilizing inoculation, it doesn’t give you immunity and you can still get COVID, and the CDC admits they’re not telling people that at least 25% of the jabbed are still transmitting the virus.  The CDC has even admitted that 23% of the people in hospital in June were “vaccinated.”

Cole says we’re playing a whack-a-mole game with leaky inoculations, and trying to force people into an experiment with investigational injections for a virus from a year ago.  We need to focus on early treatment and it’s widely available, it’s cheap and it’s generic.  That’s why it’s not approved because if there were a treatment for this virus, they cannot have authorization for these “vaccines.”  About page three in the vax authorization, it states clearly that you cannot authorize this investigational “vaccine” if there is an effective therapy for the virus. And we know there is, and it is being purposely withheld from the public.

Weakened Immune Systems

The FDA failed in explaining the absolute risk reduction (ARR); it literally takes 120 injected patients to decrease symptoms in one patient.  And of those 120, how many are going to end up with auto-immune diseases down the road, and how many are going to end up with cancers?  We don’t know, but what Dr. Cole says they’re seeing in the labs is a decrease in T-cells that protect our bodies from invaders.  The innate immune system is being destroyed by these injections.  In other words, the very marines in your body that fight off outside attacks are being destroyed.

This is why healthy children at a rate of 100% have not gotten this virus.  Their innate T-cell immunity response has two to three times the immunity of an adult T-cell immune response.  They have two to three times the little grenades that blow up the invaders.

But what Dr. Cole and others are seeing in the laboratories after people get these shots, they’re seeing a locked in profile of these T-cells, it’s a total drop in the effectivity of the T-cells.  In labs, they’re seeing an uptick of Herpes viruses, shingles, mono, a huge uptick in human papilloma virus, 20 times increase in adults of a bumpy rash that children can sometimes get, that these T-cells keep in check.  Since January, Cole has seen a 20% increase in endometrial cancers for the year.  He’s also seeing invasive melanomas in younger patients.  It’s normal to catch those early and they’re thin melanomas, but these are thick and they’re skyrocketing in the last month or two.

These early symptoms show that we are modifying the immune system to a weakened state.  A great study out of Germany looked at these profiles on young individuals after the Pfizer jabs, showing this locked in lowered immune system.  Cole adds, “We don’t know that it won’t regenerate and those ratios will go back up, but who is studying it and where are the long-term trials?”  The concerning patterns are there.

In the Pfizer application to the FDA, the fertility rate was decreased by 16%.  Rats are one of the most fertile creatures on planet earth and they were used in animal testing before humans became the guinea pigs.  This is an indication that we need to be hyper-cautious about what we’re doing.  It’s a violation of all medical ethics.  It is pure malfeasance.

Dr. Cole believes that at some point his medical colleagues may wake up from their stupor and trance and reflect upon the harm that they’re doing upon humanity.  We have never before said, “Let’s vaccinate in the middle of a pandemic.”  We are doing something that is anti-science, science is hypothesizing, theorizing, testing, succeeding, failing, taking the theory and hypothesis and remodifying it until it succeeds.

The oath to “do no harm” means no psychological, physical or financial harm to a patient.  Dr. Cole is calling out his colleagues in these administrations and health systems and telling them they are violating their oaths.  He wants people treated immediately, not sent home until a week later their lips turn blue and they’re sent to the hospital, put on a ventilator, a little bit of oxygen, and a weak steroid. (It should be strong steroids to defeat the inflammation.)

Early Treatment Protocols Avoided

According to Dr. Peter McCullough, none of our major academic institutions innovated with a single protocol for treatment.  In fact, to his knowledge, not a major single academic center, as an institution, attempted to even treat patients with COVID-19.

Dr. McCullough is the editor of two peer-reviewed journals and the senior associate editor of the American Journal of Cardiology.  When he saw the fraudulent Lancet Medical Journal article attacking the 65-year-old safe and cheap drug, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), he was incensed.

McCullough comments, “A doctor from Harvard, the company Surgisphere who had data, the reviewers at Lancet, and the editor and associate editor of Lancet…how could they have all colluded together to publish a falsified paper?”

When Dr. McCullough looked at the paper, he knew in two seconds it was fake. Lancet let this fraudulent paper be on their website for two weeks, frightening the entire world against HCQ, which is one of the safest and widely utilized treatments in COVID-19. Lancet never apologized for their deceptive publication. Every government and independent medical organization went with the bogus claim that HCQ was dangerous and outlawed its use.  People died…needlessly.

Dr. McCullough’s interpretation of this is that it was very, very intentional.  What happened with ivermectin in the ICU was also intentional and an act of collusion.  Dr. Jean-Jacque Rajter of Broward County Florida, pioneered using ivermectin in the ICU and saved hundreds of patients.  His wife, Dr. Juliana Cepelowicz Rajter, published the overall results in Chest Journal with using ivermectin.

Life Saving Protocols

They are afraid to look at the protocols of the frontline care docs at FLCCC.net. These are some of the premier critical care doctors in the world.  They have protocols that are saving patients 70, 80, 90% more than in the hospitals right now. Hospitals are following the government, the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA with their very weak protocols.  Dr. Cole says it’s time for those in the hospitals to catch up to the protocols that are far more successful in saving lives.  Ivermectin is even on the WHO’s list of most essential safest drugs necessary for humanity, and the hospital protocols won’t even try them. These docs say, “Well, I need a randomized controlled placebo trial,” which takes years, but Dr. Cole says, “Look, it’s just a sugar pill if it doesn’t work, and if it does work, you’ve saved your patient.”

Out of 19,000 patients and studies on ivermectin and 26-29 randomized control trials, there’s a one in four-quadrillion chance statistically that this molecule doesn’t have a chance of improving the outcome in Sar-coV-2.  The Gold Standard meta-analysis in medicine is to have several small trials, add them all up and look at the statistics.  The Gold Standard meta-analytically down out of five nations shows that ivermectin works against Sars-coV-2, given early, given late you decrease that rate by 67-68%, given early you decrease the death rate by 88-96%.

Ivermectin is endorsed for Afghan refugees by our CDC, but Americans are being told by our Pravda media that it is an animal anti-parasitic and not for humans.

The FDA stop valve for approving a vaccine is at 25 deaths.  Leo Hohman’s latest article exposes the fact that the CDC is not reporting actual deaths from the jab.  The true data is far higher than most believe.

COVID is Survivable

COVID is a survivable virus and we’re not getting that message.  Again, if the jabs were approved, they would have to be pulled from the market for the number of deaths. The push to vaccinate children needs to be left alone, they survived this at 100%, but the injections will hurt them.  We are seeing a 200% increase in inflammation of the heart in young men, and once your heart is damaged, it’s damaged for a lifetime.  It does not rejuvenate as some other organs do.

Dr. Cole says, “Don’t let your child near these shots.  We don’t know any of the long-term effects of these injections.  Any university that is mandating this for their students is criminal. These young healthy individuals are at no risk from death from this virus.  We have treatments and we’re ruining the health of a generation and killing them as well.  It is unethical, a violation of all morality let alone medical ethics. This is immoral. Step back and look at the data.”

Health Impact News reports that COVID shots are killing and crippling teens in record numbers…and our young children are next.  Beside fetal deaths, breastfeeding babies are dying and becoming sick following mother’s COVID jabs.

Clot Shot Antibodies

Dr. Cole calls the Delta variant a lie.  For the majority of people who are healthy and well, it’s turning into what all viruses turn into overtime, a common cold.  He says that in order to keep your job, one of the side effects of this jab is death.  That’s not moral or ethical.  He calls the Delta variant a scariant because they’re 99.7-99.8% the same virus and a benevolent mutation.  It’s weakening and not killing people at a higher rate.

If you’ve had COVID and recovered, your antibodies are great, and they’re forever, but if you got them from the COVID injections, they are your enemy.  Test animals injected with a spike protein vax, form antibodies, an immune response.  However, when they were exposed to wild type virus down the road, a high percentage of them died very quickly.  When you prime someone with an antibody that is not good, they die.  He says, “Sit back with the popcorn because we’re going to be seeing something horrific immunologically happening to the population down the road.”

Religious Convictions

We have an horrific track record with coronavirus vaccines.  There’s a reason the FDA never let Sars-coV-1 or MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) vaccines come to market.  Every time, they saw the signals and said, “This is too dangerous for humanity.”  This virus is the same as Sars-coV-1, so why do they not have the same mindset now?  We know how horrifically Sars-coV-1 and MERS failed, and now without long-term safety data, we’re pushing forward an investigational vaccine on a population without knowing those long-term signals.  It’s a crime against humanity.

If you’ve had Sars-coV-2 you have a broader immunity than anyone who has gotten the jab.  You have antibodies against the spike, the envelope, the membrane, nucleo caps. You have hundreds of antibodies compared to dozens from the jab.  You have a broader immunity.

There are plenty of people with underlying health conditions and this shot is contraindicated for them and there are protocols for their protection.

Many people have religious convictions and under the civil rights act, you cannot be questioned on your religious convictions.  You have a right to refuse based on religious grounds.

Pfizer and Moderna don’t contain aborted fetal cells, but were developed on aborted fetal cells and were proved and processed on aborted fetal cells.  J&J is grown on aborted fetal cells and may contain human DNA as well as human protein per their application to the FDA.  J&J has human fetal DNA in it

For many of us that matters, so there’s another religious argument.  Number one natural immunity, number two underlying health conditions that would contraindicate the jab, and number three on religious grounds or on moral and ethical grounds alone.  Those three should be an exemption.

Good News

The Idaho Republican state central committee voted unanimously for a resolution to end mandatory jabs in their state.  Dr. Ryan Cole lives and practices in Idaho.

World Net Daily reports that resistance against the experimental jabs is growing.  Spread the word, keep the last of our people from being experimental guinea pigs.

Dr. Cole tells us, “You need to speak out, you need to stand up, there are those of us fighting this insanity, but you need to join us.  We’re banning together.  Moral ethics are being thrown out the window for something we don’t know the long-term outcomes for. It is an absurdity.”

Conclusion

The Nazis in Nuremberg stated they were only following the” laws of the land,” and that their own legal system protected them.  Even Adolph Eichmann said, “I was simply following the laws of war and my flag.”

Romans 13:1-14 tells believers to “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”  Paul belabored the point that we are to be at peace and submit ourselves to governing authorities since all authority comes from God.

Judeo-Christians believe in the one true God and know that abortion is evil and against God’s law.  We battle this evil, despite it being the law of the land.

In Egypt, the midwives refused to murder the newborn Jewish babies, lied to Pharoah and allowed them to live…against his edicts.

According to the Book of Joshua, Rahab, a woman who lived in Jericho in the Promised Land, assisted the Israelites in capturing the city by hiding two men who had been sent to scout the city prior to their attack, against the law of the land. She knew these two men were God’s people and she ultimately took her place with righteous converts.

When the law of the land contradicts God’s command, we are to disobey the law of the land and obey God’s law.  We are again at that precipice.

Make your choice.

©Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.

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Some Progressives Are Flirting With a $24 to $26 Hourly Minimum Wage

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But as economist Thomas Sowell famously explained, “the real minimum wage is always zero.”

The #Fightfor15 is old news, apparently. Some progressive activists and academics are now arguing that the minimum wage should be closer to $26 an hour, claiming that this is the level it would’ve reached if wages had kept up with productivity in recent decades.

The online discourse all started after the publication of a recent piece from the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research titled “The $26 an Hour Minimum Wage.”

“[A $26 hourly minimum wage] may sound pretty crazy, but that’s roughly what the minimum wage would be today if it had kept pace with productivity growth since its value peaked in 1968,” progressive economist Dean Baker wrote. “And, having the minimum wage track productivity growth is not a crazy idea. The national minimum wage did in fact keep pace with productivity growth for the first 30 years after a national minimum wage first came into existence in 1938.”

“Think of what the country would look like if the lowest paying jobs, think of dishwashers or custodians, paid $26 an hour,” Baker continued. “That would mean someone who worked a 2000 hour year would have an annual income of $52,000. This income would put a single mother with two kids at well over twice the poverty level.”

This favorable analysis of the prospect of a $26 minimum wage was reported in many left-leaning media outlets, such as CBS News and the Independent.

Perhaps relatedly, former-Labor-Secretary-turned-progressive-commentator Robert Reich recently tweeted out that “​​Today seems like a good time to remind you that if wages had kept pace with productivity gains over the last 50 years, the minimum wage would be $24 an hour. $15 is the floor, not the ceiling, of what working people deserve.”

To be clear, support for a $26 minimum wage is still not the majority position on the American Left. Yet the movement is gaining enough traction for the prospect to be worthy of evaluation—and it’s a frightening one.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Baker is right about productivity and wages, and ignore the fact that this disparity may itself be caused by government rather than private businesses (see https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/). This still doesn’t imply we should raise the minimum wage. Why?

Well, while it might sound idyllic for everyone to make $26 an hour, idealism can’t change economic reality. And, as economist Thomas Sowell famously explained, “the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force.” (Emphasis mine).

Why is the real minimum wage zero? Because there’s always the option not to employ the worker at all. And if the minimum wage is arbitrarily set at a level above the value of the worker’s labor, employing them would be charity, not business. As nice as it may be to think that dishwashers would receive $26/hour, in many cases, businesses would invest in technology to do the job, hire illegal immigrants, or otherwise contrive to hire far fewer dishwashers.

“The state can legislate a minimum wage rate,” Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously explained. “It can hardly require employers to hire at that minimum all who were formerly employed at wages below the minimum. It is clearly not in the interest of employers to do so. The effect of the minimum wage is therefore to make unemployment higher than it otherwise would be.”

Many studies have confirmed that a $15 minimum wage would kill millions of jobs in the US. We can reasonably assume that for a $24 or $26 minimum wage, the job-killing effect would be far more pronounced. In fact, the progressive economist who started this whole conversation, Dean Baker, acknowledged as much.

“The $26 an hour is useful as a thought experiment for envisioning what the world might look like today, but it would not be realistic as policy for local, state, or even national minimum wage without many other changes to the economy,” he wrote. “A minimum wage this high would almost certainly lead to large-scale unemployment, and that would be true even if it were phased in over five or six years.”

However, Baker doesn’t view this as an insurmountable hurdle. He argues that “we [would] have to make many other changes in the economy to make [a $26/hour minimum wage] possible,” citing massive regulations and taxation of finance, banking, and corporations. “These changes are well worth making.”

Of course, we all want to see wages go up. But as evidenced by recent raises for Walmart and Costco employees, this occurs in free markets naturally because employers are forced to compete for labor. It can’t occur with top-down force, at least, not without serious fallout.

So, here’s hoping that this misguided, extreme minimum wage argument doesn’t catch on among progressives. A $15 minimum wage would have bad enough economic consequences. To impose a $26/hour wage would do tremendous damage and leave many workers out of a job entirely.

WATCH: The Ugly Truth About the $15 Minimum Wage (EXPLAINED)

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

Stanford Study: More Businesses Have Already Fled California This Year Than in All of 2020 [Video]

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California is in decline. The Golden State lost population in 2020 for the first time in decades, and the exodus included celebrity entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. A long list of businesses, some as well known as Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle, and Toyota, have either relocated or sent some jobs outside of the state in recent years.

But just how bad have things really gotten in California? A new study from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University analyzes the anecdotes and finds a damning trend.

Authors Joseph Vranich and Lee E. Ohanian examined available reports of companies relocating their headquarters outside of the Golden State. They find that 265 major companies have moved on to greener pastures since January 1, 2018.

The study also reports that the rate at which businesses are leaving the state is rapidly accelerating. For the first six months of 2021, the rate is nearly twice as high as it was last year. That means more businesses have already left California this year than in all of 2020.

The authors note that this count is, if anything, an enormous underestimate. Many small businesses exiting the state do not receive media coverage and are not required to file compliance reports, so many of their exits go uncounted in the analysis.

These businesses take more than just jobs with them when they leave the state. The local communities lose out on investment, income for local businesses, tax revenue, philanthropic work, and much more. So, it’s of the utmost importance to analyze why businesses are leaving California en masse.

Per the study, major reasons for leaving include “high tax rates, punitive regulations, high labor costs, high utility and energy costs, and declining quality of life for many Californians which reflects the cost of living and housing affordability.”

These issues all ultimately trace back to the state government. California has regulated and taxed its once-thriving economy into a coma. The state now ranks as the 50th-worst state to do business in, according to Chief Executive magazine’s 2021 survey. Meanwhile, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council ranks the Golden State the 49th-worst state to do business in. And the Tax Foundation reports that California has the 49th-worst business tax climate in the country.

It’s little surprise that top destination states, per the study, include Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, and other states that have taken markedly different policy approaches.

The great thing about a federalist, 50-state system is that different states can try different things. But this new Stanford study exposes the devastating results of California’s experiment with big government and welfare-state largesse. When empowered to vote with their feet, citizens and businesses alike choose freer markets over centralized government control.

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

The 10 States Leading the Economic Recovery All Have One Thing in Common [And So Do the Worst Ones!]

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The economy continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing government restrictions. But newly released Labor Department data show that the recovery isn’t equal across all 50 states and Washington, DC. Some parts of the US have almost or entirely returned to pre-pandemic unemployment rates—while others remain strangled in stagnation.

Here are the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates as of July 2021.

  1. Nebraska: 2.3 percent
  2. Utah: 2.6 percent
  3. New Hampshire: 2.9 percent
  4. South Dakota: 2.9 percent
  5. Idaho: 3.0 percent
  6. Vermont: 3.0 percent
  7. Alabama: 3.2 percent
  8. Oklahoma: 3.5 percent
  9. Montana: 3.6 percent
  10. Georgia: 3.7 percent

Many different factors influence unemployment rates, but there’s one glaring thing these 10 states all have in common: Republican governors. Generalizing, GOP-led states had lighter government lockdowns on their economies and reopened sooner. So, too, except for Vermont, these states have all prematurely terminated the ongoing supplemental unemployment benefits that can pay unemployed households up to $25/hour. (More than what many workers made in their previous jobs.)

In stark contrast, here are the 10 worst states (counting Washington, DC) with the highest unemployment rates.

  1. Arizona: 6.6 percent
  2. Louisiana*: 6.6 percent
  3. Pennsylvania: 6.6 percent
  4. Washington, DC: 6.7 percent
  5. Illinois: 7.1 percent
  6. Hawaii: 7.3 percent
  7. New Jersey: 7.3 percent
  8. California: 7.6 percent
  9. New Mexico: 7.6 percent
  10. New York: 7.6 percent
  11. Nevada: 7.7 percent

With the exception of Arizona, these states struggling with high unemployment all have Democratic governors (or mayor, in the case of DC). Generally speaking, they had longer and harsher government restrictions on their economies than the top 10 states. And, except for Arizona, all of these bottom-ranking states continued to offer residents expanded payouts to stay on unemployment benefits. (*Louisiana ended the benefits on August 3, but the unemployment rates are for July 2021, before this change took effect).

The picture painted here is clear.

States that harshly restricted their economies and continue to offer expanded welfare programs are trapped in a labor market coma. Meanwhile, free states that eschewed long-term lockdowns and welfare excess are leading the recovery. That’s no coincidence—and the principle here is worth remembering long after the pandemic.

Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

WATCH: I Went on The Young Turks to DEBATE Why Capitalism is Better Than Socialism

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Can a Free and Open Society Allow Vaccine Passes?

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Public health is increasingly based on top-down, coercive public health mandates and the policing of intimate aspects of our private life.

Western societies, at least up to very recently, have distinguished themselves by their commitment to two fundamental principles.

The first is the principle that social life is open to all citizens, irrespective of the colour of their skin, their religious creed, their political beliefs, or their personal history, provided they obey rudimentary rules of decorum and civility.

The second is the principle that each person should be afforded a space of personal freedom and trusted to act responsibly, rather than micromanaged in the minutiae of their everyday decisions.

The public and governmental response to the Covid-19 pandemic across much of Europe and parts of North America profoundly threaten both of these bedrock principles. Personal freedom is increasingly morphing into an obligation to blindly submit to arbitrary and coercive government edicts, while the ideal of an open and inclusive society is being corrupted by the notion that only those who make the “right” health choices (as defined by certain public authorities) deserve full access to social life.

In many parts of Europe, people find themselves compelled, under duress, to comply with a string of odd health restrictions mandated by government, like asking customers to wear masks between sips of beer, requesting people to book into a hotel in order to enjoy indoor dining, or giving school lessons with one’s nose and mouth covered up.

Businesses, schools, universities, and restaurants live in constant fear of being shut down or found liable for “enabling” a Covid outbreak. They know they will be less liable in the event of an outbreak if they are seen to comply with whatever regulations the government prescribes, however irrational, contradictory, or inhumane.

Public health is increasingly based on top-down, coercive public health mandates, the policing of intimate aspects of our private life, and the abridgement of a broad range of civil liberties, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and freedom of worship.

The most recent step in the erosion of civil liberties under the auspices of public health is the introduction of vaccine passes. If you are not vaccinated and wish to travel between countries the European Union, you must now present a recent negative Covid test, obtained at your own expense.

Vaccine passes are now being extended in some European countries to domestic social venues. For example, Ireland, Austria, and Denmark, have made vaccination a legal precondition for access to restaurants, bars, and other social venues. President Macron has implemented vaccine passes across France. The UK government, having initially taken vaccination passes off the table, has now declared its intention to introduce them by the end of September for crowded venues.

These discriminatory measures have proved controversial, sparking protests in several major European cities, including Dublin, Paris, and Athens. Soon after President Macron announced his intention to make vaccine passes mandatory in a range of social venues, over 100,000 French citizens marched through the streets of France, chanting slogans like “Liberté” and “Passe de honte” (“Pass of Shame”).

People who protest against vaccine passes are not protesting principally on scientific or strictly medical grounds – even though the evidence for the potential efficacy of vaccine controls at reducing Covid infections is underwhelming. Rather, they are protesting against the negative impact of vaccine passes on the freedom and social standing of the unvaccinated.

Let’s start with the implications of a vaccine pass for freedom.

While a health pass would not directly mandate vaccination, it would make social life and travel significantly more burdensome for those who opt, based on their own preference or risk assessment, not to vaccinate. This is medical coercion in all but name, in direct conflict with the right to informed consent to medical treatment, a hallowed principle of medical ethics in the West.

As a rational being, a large part of my dignity resides in not being coercively recruited into projects, enterprises, or relationships that implicate my life in a decisive way, such as marriage, employment, or sexual relationships.

While there is significant political and philosophical disagreement over the limits of a person’s rational autonomy, and it cannot give anyone a blank check to act in a self-destructive or other-destructive manner, there is nonetheless a broad legal and philosophical consensus that it includes the right of adults of sound mind to decline medical interventions in their body, even if those interventions are intended for their own benefit.

Societies that have given public authorities the right to medicate or treat patients without their informed consent have gone down the path of racist and eugenic policies of the vilest sort.

Second, there is the issue of discrimination. Vaccine discrimination is no more ethically acceptable than discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, or religion. What possible justification could there be for systematically closing the doors of bars, restaurants, cinemas, and other social venues to customers who happen, for whatever reason, to have declined a vaccine?

If we punish an adult of sound mind for making a different judgment call than that of a government agency about which forms of treatment are most conductive to their personal health and well-being, we are removing agency from that person, treating him like a ward of State.

Furthermore, vaccine-based discrimination cuts directly against the ideal of equal citizenship, in which all law-abiding citizens can participate freely in social life, irrespective of their ethnicity, place of origin, or vaccination status.

The fact that Western governments would seriously propose turning unvaccinated citizens into a new social under-class shows just how blind they have become to core Western values such as the right to informed consent to medical treatment and the equal standing of all citizens in the public square.

We can only hope that ordinary citizens, as well as bar and restaurant owners, will have the courage and integrity to refuse to have any hand or part in all this. If they do not, Western governments will only be further emboldened to keep chipping away at our civil liberties, as they have been doing from day one of the pandemic.

COLUMN BY

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: The Scourge Of Our Times

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Does anyone know of the origins of Political Correctness?  Who originally developed it and what was its purpose?

I looked it up.  It was developed at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany, which was founded in 1923 and came to be known as the “Frankfurt School”.  It was a group of thinkers who pulled together to find a solution to the biggest problem facing the implementers of communism in Russia.

The problem?  Why wasn’t communism spreading?  The “answer”?  Because Western Civilization was in its way.  What was the problem with Western Civilization?  Its belief in the individual – that an individual could develop a valid idea.  At the root of communism was the theory that all valid ideas come from the effect of the social group of the masses.  The individual is nothing.  And they believed that the only way for communism to advance was to help (or force, if necessary) Western Civilization to destroy itself.  How to do that?  Undermine its foundations by chipping away at the rights of those annoying individuals.

One way to do that?  Change their speech and thought patterns by spreading the idea that vocalizing your beliefs is disrespectful of others and must be avoided to make up for past inequities and injustices.  And call it something that sounds positive:  “Political Correctness.”

Inspired by the brand new communist technique, Mao, in the 1930s, wrote an article on the “correct” handling of contradictions among the people.  “Sensitive training” – sound familiar? – and speech codes were born.

After Hitler, in 1935, the Frankfurt School moved to New York City where they continued their work by translating Marxism from economic to cultural terms by using Sigmund Freud’s psychological conditioning mechanisms to get Americans to buy into Political Correctness.  In 1941, they moved to California to spread their wings.

But Political Correctness remains just what it was intended to be: a sophisticated and dangerous form of censorship and oppression imposed upon the citizenry with the ultimate goal of manipulating, brainwashing and destroying our society.

My first conscious exposure to Political Correctness was in 1959 – the first year of Castro’s revolution in Cuba – while attending an indoctrination session at a neighborhood elementary school in Havana.  There I learned for the first time of the claimed superiority of life in the Soviet Union vs. the U.S.  There I also learned that the word “compañero” (filtered version of the communist “comrade” – Fidel was denying his communist preferences) was the correct way to refer to the other members of the new Cuban society-in-the-making.

Mr., Mrs. or Miss was no longer acceptable, and their further use could reveal that you were not a Fidelista.  Since repression and violations of human rights came roaring in right behind Castro’s sweep down from the mountains in 1959, objection or rejection of Fidel Castro’s revolution would (still will) land you in a lot of trouble or you could easily lose your life in those summary executions at La Cabaña prison under the direction of Che Guevara.

But don’t worry about Che.  Che was later transformed and cleansed by the masters of Political Correctness.  His likeness became a revered icon of the far-left with T-shirts and posters still adorning the campuses of America.  The same techniques were used to clean today’s “hero” (even if he was convicted of killing a cop due to overwhelming evidence), Mumia Abu-Jamal.

And under the pervasive guidance of Political Correctness that took hold from elementary school to university, from the media to the arts, from the country fields to factories and offices, Cubans learned to say what it was safe to say.  Always in line with the overpowering state.  Always following the dictums of the only political party left: the Communist Party.  The self-censorship resulting from Political Correctness easily trampled freedom of speech.  Political Correctness has succeeded in Cuba by creating a uniform political discourse that has lasted for 43 years.

Political Correctness has given the state (Castro) complete control of speech.  That is the main reason why the U.S. media cannot extract the truth of what Cubans really feel when they interview regular citizens and deceptively present their comments as valid to the American public.  The same was true in the former Soviet Union and the former satellite countries.  The same continues in the remaining communist world.

It’s nothing new.  The U.S. media must know that, so, why don’t they openly report that fact in stead of misleading the public?  Perhaps that is the reason why the American people are so uneducated about the Cuban tragedy and acted regrettably during the Elian Gonzalez affair.

With profound dismay, I have seen how the scourge of Political Correctness has taken hold in the U.S.  It is very well entrenched in our educational system, at scientific, religious and community levels, the media, the workplace and even our government.

It is changing the American society from within and the citizens of this nation are increasingly censoring themselves and losing their freedom of speech out of fear of Political Correctness repression.  It is the nature of the Western Civilization to be civilized – respectful of others and concerned to correct injustices.  We don’t need Political Correctness to make us think we are not civilized on our own and restrict our thoughts and words.

In December 2001, in Kensington, Maryland, an annual firefighters’ Santa Claus festivity to light the Christmas tree was objected to by two families.  The City Council, in the name of Political Correctness, voted to ban Santa from the parade.  Fortunately, due to citizen outcry, the decision was reversed at the end and many people protested by dressing up as Santa.

Logically and respectfully, how can one person’s benign icon be objectionable to the point of banishment?  Offer to add other people’s icons.  Make it a broader celebration.  That’s the Perfectly Correct American way.

The rulers of Political Correctness reach absurd levels when they even refer to the betrayal of America by the spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – executed in 1953 – as “non-traditional patriotism”!

We see shameful situations created in our schools and universities in America that have fallen prey to Political Correctness.  Some professors, students and publications are being attacked for expressing a point of view that differs from that imposed by a fanatical far-left under the guise of Political Correctness.

In the educational and work place, we see that “diversity” has degenerated into reverse discrimination, where often the less qualified are admitted and the incompetent cannot be fired.  We have seen characters like Rev. Jesse Jackson shamelessly blackmailing and threatening to boycott entire corporations if they don’t hire those selected by him or simply make “donations” to his organizations.

Our Constitution requires the separation of church and state, which has always discouraged our public education system from teaching religion.  However, in December 2001, while Christmas cards, symbols and decorations were being objected to for the first time in American public schools in Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oregon, in an elementary school in Texas, a girl was allowed to give to her classmates an overview and show a video about her Muslim religion.

And in January 2002, a public middle school in San Luis Obispo in California, had its students pretend to be warriors fighting for Islam.  Another school near Oakland, California also encouraged 125 seventh grade students to dress up in Muslim robes for a three-week course on Islam.  This arbitrary double standard was applied in the name of Political Correctness following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

According to Ellen Sorokin’s No Founding Fathers? published by The Washington Times on its front page on January 28, 2002, even our Founding Fathers have fallen victim of the travesty.  The article says of the New Jersey Department of Education’s history standards, “The latest revisions to the state standards have disappointed educators across the country, who said the board’s exclusion of the Founding Fathers’ names is ‘Political Correctness at the end of the nth degree.’”

Sorokin points out that “the standards specifically note that students should identify slavery, the Holocaust and modern Iraq as examples ‘in which people have behave in cruel and inhumane ways.’”  However, conveniently, communism is absent.

In another article by Sorokin published by The Washington Times on March 10, pg. A2, Report blames anti-Americanism on college teachers, she presents two examples of upcoming courses for next spring and fall.  They are, “’The Sexuality of Terrorism’ at University of California at Hayward; and ‘Terrorism and the Politics of Knowledge’ at UCLA, a class that, according to its course description, examines ‘America’s record of imperialistic adventurism.’”

Recently, a historic photograph of the New York firefighters rising the American flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center was going to be made into a sculpture as a memorial.  But history’s revisionists used Political Correctness to dictate that other minority faces replace some of the faces in the historical photograph!  Fortunately, in the end that didn’t fly either due to the outcry of firefighters and the public.

For people with a background and firsthand experience living inside a totalitarian communist society it is obvious the tilt and the goal of the dictators of Political Correctness in America.  The beneficiaries in the end will be the fanatic believers in the totalitarian state, who, in spite of the dismal failure of communism and the 100 million people exterminated pursuing that criminal system, have not given up.

Political or religious fanatics, as demonstrated by the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the subsequent war in Afghanistan, are extremely dangerous in today’s world.

All citizens who cherish liberty must reject the scourge of Political Correctness.  Freedom of speech must be preserved in America if we are to continue to be free.

Let’s say it: Castro is not a “president” as the U.S. media’s Political Correctness calls him.  Castro has not been democratically elected to anything in Cuba.  The correct word to define him is: tyrant.  He is not just a “leader” as the U.S. media also calls him.  He is more of a criminal Mafioso-type character.

Why criminal?  Because he has caused the death of more than 100,000 Cubans.  Thousands have died through his supported guerillas in Central and South America.  Thousands of blacks were killed by Castro’s soldiers in Africa.  Castro in the 1980s introduced the use of bacteriological weapons to kill blacks in Angola.  How many thousands have died in America as a result of his drug-trafficking into the U.S.?  How many thousands have died all over the world due to terrorists trained in Castro’s Cuba?

Former Soviet colonel Ken Alibek, who defected to America, was once in charge of the Soviet Union’s production of biological weapons.  In Alibek’s 1999 book, Biohazard, he reveals that with the help of the Soviet Union, Cuba, in the 1980s, created laboratories to produce chemical and bacteriological weapons of mass destruction – just 90 miles from U.S. shores.  The information of Castro’s involvement with bacteriological weapons comes also from various independent sources.  We must not forget either that Cuba is in the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist nations.

Why Mafioso?  Well, Castro is like an untouchable godfather, surrounded by bodyguards and thugs and a private army of about 40,000 soldiers for his personal protection (roughly the size of the entire army of Cuba prior to 1959).  He stole foreign and national properties in Cuba.  He has become one of the richest men in the world according to Forbes Magazine.  He has created a despotic and corrupt elite to exploit the Cuban people and keep himself in power.  He has made the Cuban people hostages and slaves of his corrupt regime.

The U.S. media does not call Al Capone “the former leader” of the Italian Mafia.  Why the double standard with Fidel and other far-left regimes?  The answer can be traced to where the sympathies lie inside the elite dictating Political Correctness in America.

It’s one thing is to be educated, considerate and polite, and have good manners, and another is to be forced to self-censor and to say things that are totally incorrect in order to comply with the arbitrary dictums of a deceiving and fanatical far-left agenda.  Let’s preserve our freedom and say NO to the scourge of Political Correctness.

©Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton. All rights reserved.

Crooked Senate Democrats Determined To Pass Pro-Election Theft Bill Before Recess

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Now that the Democrats have stolen the presidential election and consolidated their power across every branch of government, they are going for the kill – ensuring one party rule for time for the foreseeable future through pro-election fraud, anti-integrity bill.

They had to steal the Senate. This is why.

Senate Democrats planning procedural vote on new voting rights bill before recess

Sen. Merkley says the bill will include a ‘national set of standards’ for voting in elections

By Nicholas Ballasy, August 6, 2021:

Senate Democratic leaders are planning to hold a procedural vote on new election reform bill before the August recess begins, a senator close to the process said Friday.

“We anticipate that we will again try to move a bill to the floor before we leave here sometime this coming week,” Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said during a press conference with Texas state representatives who fled Texas for D.C. last month in protest of state GOP voting legislation. “You never know with the U.S. Senate how long things will take.”

Merkley described the legislation as “Manchin 2.0,” referring to the proposal West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin supported as a replacement to the Democrats’ “For the People Act.” He said the new proposal will include a “national set of standards” for voting.

“It takes on dark money. It takes on gerrymandering by setting standards for redrawing districts. It takes on early voting, vote by mail protections, registration protections, polling day protections, so standards that will ensure a clean, clear path for every American to cast their ballot,” Merkley said.

Merkley said the Democrats must “find a way” to pass national voting legislation if the latest proposal fails to garner enough votes in the Senate.

He was asked if Democrats will add voting provisions to the $3.5 trillion filibuster-proof reconciliation bill

“I am going to defer to the majority leader to lay out how that vote will be held,” he replied.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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We Can’t Solve the Sexual Assault Problem Unless We Solve The Porn Problem

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The porn industry is an example of “limbic capitalism”, a business system in which global industries encourage excessive consumption and addiction.

The issue of sexual assault has been at the forefront of the public mind of late. This is largely due to the shocking revelations of a study released earlier this year that claimed 86 percent of women aged 18-24 had experienced sexual assault in a public space. A previous study in 2014 found that 33 percent of women across the EU had suffered physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15.

The difference in these findings is probably more to do with methodology than with anything else. However, whichever study paints the more accurate picture, there is clearly a crisis in sexuality that cannot be solved by simply setting a curfew for men and it would be a fruitless exercise to attempt to change the current culture without first addressing the problem of porn among young men.

A survey conducted in 2020 found that men across Western European countries consumed, on average, 70 minutes of porn a day – while 2.2 percent of respondents consumed more than seven hours. More shocking still is the level of consumption by children and young teenagers. In Australia, research shows, 93 percent of adolescent boys have been regularly exposed to pornography, and children as young as seven are exposed to it due to availability via online devices.

The pandemic and subsequent lockdown policies have exacerbated the problem and have been instrumental in the rise of the pornography platform “OnlyFans” which has been used by many “sex workers”.

The porn industry is an example of “limbic capitalism”. The historian David Courtwright has coined this term “to describe a technologically advanced but socially regressive business system in which global industries, often with the help of complicit governments and criminal organisations, encourage excessive consumption and addiction. They do so by targeting the limbic system, the part of the brain responsible for feeling…”

Consumers are trapped in damaging cycles of behaviour the consequences of which are only now becoming clear. Much of the male population is now exploited by the sex “industry” – though clearly not as much as many of the women “working” in it – and it is having terrible effects.

The consumption of pornography has many perverse consequences. In fact, there is pretty strong evidence that porn consumption and sexual assault are closely linked. Studies show that porn makes many consumers more likely to support violence against women; to believe that women secretly enjoy being raped; and actually to behave in a sexually aggressive manner in real life. The aggression may take many forms – verbally harassing or pressuring someone for sex; emotionally manipulating such a person; threatening to end a relationship unless “favours” be granted;  deceiving or lying to another about sex; or even physically assaulting them. The campaign Everyone’s Invited provides yet more testimony to the effect of pornography on relationships between the sexes.

There has been little recognition of the destructive impact pornography has on the perception of what is appropriate sexual conduct. The sex industry debases and exploits women. Men are wholly capable of having fictitious and “satisfying” interactions with women where the concept of consent and rejection are entirely absent. The issue of sexual assault can never truly be tackled unless we can solve the problem of pornography.

Most men living in Western Europe and the USA do respect women and that is a mark in some measure of how advanced and humane our civilisation is, but the prevalence of porn is a sign of decadence and moral decline. Women must be treated with the dignity that is theirs as fellow children of God, and not as mere objects for sexual gratification.

This article has been republished from Conservatives Global

Greg Teague

Greg Teague is currently studying a Masters degree in Early Modern History at King’s College, London. More by Greg Teague

RELATED ARTICLE: Germany: Two women are gang-raped every day, half of the suspects are Muslim migrants

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘State of Fear’: Are We Being Manipulated by Behavioral Scientists?

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British journalist Laura Dodsworth argues that the UK government is ‘weaponizing’ fear.

Long before David Attenborough brought his soothing voice to the explication of animal behaviour for the BBC Life series, the North American television public had been introduced to the majesty and oddities of the natural world through Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

I remember lying on my stomach in my grandparent’s living room watching programs about lions and eagles, the Great Barrier Reef, the reindeer of Lapland. Footage from those hours of Sunday viewing flooded back to me in the first weeks of Covid lockdown. I watched my friends and neighbours react to media messaging like herds of grazing animals suddenly elevating necks, pricking up ears, rippling hides in response to a predatory shadow or scent.

A threat had been detected. Anxiety came in waves.

I was not immune to fear, of course. In early April 2020 I messaged a group of friends, “Raise your hand if you have experienced this: You haven’t left the house for four days, you go out to do groceries and when you come back you think, ‘Is that a little tickle in my throat? Why do I suddenly need to cough?’”

To a woman, they all raised their bitmoji’s hands.

As those first weeks of lockdown extended into months of restrictions, we learned more about the virus and about the threat it did or didn’t pose. Yet I grew increasingly concerned at how fearful and herd-like we had become. Many seemed to be stuck in panic mode. How and why had so many become so very, very frightened?

In her recently published book, A State of Fear, British photographer and journalist Laura Dodsworth provides penetrating answers. She analyses her government’s use of behavioural psychology in its attempt to direct the public response to the threat of SARS-CoV-2. Dodsworth asserts the government “weaponised” fear and, indeed, weaponized behavioural psychology. To everyone she interviewed, she posed the question: “Is it ethical to frighten people ‘for the greater good?’”

I grew increasingly concerned at how fearful and herd-like we had become. Many seemed to be stuck in panic mode. How and why had so many become so very, very frightened?

Fear is an important response to perceived threat that elicits physiological changes in the body. Fear does several things, including suppressing rational thinking and heightening suggestibility. This controlling emotion has long been recognized as a powerful tool in the manipulation of human behaviour. Marketers, religious leaders, the media, and politicians have all deployed it. Fear, notoriously in both the domestic and the political arena, encourages compliance.

The lockdowns implemented in the spring of 2020 were an unprecedented response to a public health crisis, and Western politicians were uncertain how their citizens would respond. How could they ensure compliance? Dodsworth says the British government took advice from behavioural insight teams. Five groups played a role in shaping and implementing the government response:

Dodsworth outlines techniques used by the government, including “seeding” and “foot-in-the-door.” These two concepts will be familiar to students of Psychology or Marketing 101. The former involves planting an idea like a seed to prime clients for a sale – or citizens for the next pandemic restriction. For example, masks were originally introduced to the public mind as not-fit-for-purpose; but by bringing them into the discussion, even negatively, the idea of mask-wearing had been seeded. When masks were reintroduced as an important tool in the fight against the virus, the proposal was no longer novel.

“Foot-in-the door” works on the principle that, once one has agreed to the first request, it becomes more difficult to refuse the next and bigger request. Confinement for “two weeks to flatten the curve” was accepted by the majority. It had a definite timeline and seemed manageable. But it was soon followed by new demands, by endless months of business and school closures, restrictions on movement, locked churches, and isolation.

Dodsworth argues that behavioural science is no longer occupied primarily with predicting human behaviour. Its mandate now is to influence and direct behaviour. And governments have taken a keen interest in its power to do so.

In Britain the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), unofficially known as the Nudge Unit, was set up in 2010 under Prime Minister David Cameron. BIT is now a profit-making company with offices in the US, France, Australia, and Canada.

Canada not only hosts a BIT office in Toronto; it has its very own unit. A Toronto Star article in February 2021 noted that Dr Teresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, had referenced a behavioural insight team located within the Privy Council Office. It is called the Impact and Innovation Unit and was set up in 2017. The Star’s Susan Delacourt remarks that the role the Impact Unit played in Canada’s Covid messaging is a “social-science experiment” one that “may have given government clues on how to modify citizen’s behaviour for other big global issues – such as climate change, for instance.”

Prior to the pandemic, the “nudge” might be quite mundane: a prompt to eat our five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, reduce food waste, or submit our taxes on time. In Covid times these teams are orchestrating more dramatic campaigns to generate full compliance with public health measures and providing politicians with talking points in defence of these measures. Their campaigns frequently stoke fear and scapegoat the non-compliant.

In illustration, Dodsworth quotes from a discussion paper presented to the Scientific Advisory Group by its pandemic behaviours subgroup on March 23, 2020: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”

At the outset, it was the unmasked, the quarantine-breakers, the youth congregating at house parties, and the religious who were the “covidiots” responsible for driving numbers up and “killing granny.” A few months ago, an op-ed published in Israel’s Ha’aretz even described ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not follow State rules as “Covid insurgents” and “terrorists.”

Today, about three months after publication of her book, Dodsworth has proved prescient in her prediction that the unvaccinated would be condemned as “reckless, socially irresponsible or stupid.”

She is a lockdown critic. Some may find far-fetched her comparison of the manipulation of public opinion by the government to the behaviour of a cult. But this is not a book about the ethics or utility of lockdowns. It is a book that asks important questions about the negative, long-term effects of a campaign of fear deliberately conducted by the government. It queries the part played in that campaign by the media, both mainstream and social. And it probes the role of unelected “psychocrats” in the design and implementation of the campaign.

A State of Fear also raises the “why” question – to what end was this campaign directed? Dodsworth does not think it was only about handling Covid. She thinks that by exacerbating the fear around Covid governments (or those who advise them) are building compliance muscle-memory in citizens, perhaps to prepare them for future sacrifices that will be demanded in a war against climate change.

Her call for a public debate should not go unheeded. She has demonstrated that “the behavioural science framework for making the population comply with being locked down involved powerful techniques which deserve public consultation.” Her own fears for the future, if no such debate takes place, are fears I share.

But along with those memories of Sunday afternoons stretched out in front of Animal Kingdom listening to Marlin Perkins, there is another memory that comes back to me, in a different voice.

In 1978, at his Inauguration Mass, St. John Paul II began his papacy with the clarion call that would become the hallmark of his papal ministry: “Be not afraid!” Later, in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he would remark that in a certain sense this was “an exhortation addressed to all people, an exhortation to conquer fear in the present world situation.”

John Paul II knew from his experience in Poland what it meant to live in a State of fear. He knew also, from his experience with God, that there is no reason for us to be in a state of fear.

“Have no fear of what you yourselves have created, have no fear of all that man has produced, and that every day is becoming more dangerous for him! Finally, have no fear of yourselves,” he advised.

“Peoples and nations of the entire world need to hear these words. Their conscience needs to grow in the certainty that Someone exists who holds in His hands the destiny of this passing world; Someone who holds the keys to death and the netherworld; Someone who is the Alpha and Omega of human history – be it the individual or collective history. And this Someone is Love.”

This article has been republished with permission from Convivium

Anna Farrow

Anna Farrow is Executive Director of the English Speaking Catholic Council, a lay organization which acts as a coordinating forum for English-speaking Catholics in Quebec. 

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CDC Considers Putting Us in Camps!

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Foreword by Fred Brownbill. I was sent this by a retired Lt. Col friend and patriot. I read it and although not surprised, was still shocked that Americans could still be thinking of this sort of action against fellow Americans. Please as always read and share, hit the like button and feel free to comment. As always the link is at the end of the article. Please share it fast as I am sure social media ‘fact checkers’ will remove or say it is a lie. IT IS NOT. Please take the time to read this blog in its entirety and then look at all the links they used for references.

America. These are so called Americans discussing this, deciding our futures. This is the totalitarian thinking of a communist nation – NOT a free nation.

Operational Considerations for Humanitarian Settings. Updated July 26th 2021.

This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance documents focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings.1,2  This approach has never been documented and has raised questions and concerns among humanitarian partners who support response activities in these settings. The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data. Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available. Please check the CDC website periodically for updates.

What is the Shielding Approach1?

The shielding approach aims to reduce the number of severe COVID-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (“high-risk”) and the general population (“low-risk”). High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or “green zones” established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector or community level depending on the context and setting.1,2 They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.

Current evidence indicates that older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19.3 In most humanitarian settings, older population groups make up a small percentage of the total population.4,5  For this reason, the shielding approach suggests physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population to prioritize the use of the limited available resources and avoid implementing long-term containment measures among the general population.

In theory, shielding may serve its objective to protect high-risk populations from disease and death. However, implementation of the approach necessitates strict adherence1,6,7, to protocol. Inadvertent introduction of the virus into a green zone may result in rapid transmission among the most vulnerable populations the approach is trying to protect.

A summary of the shielding approach described by Favas is shown in Table 1. See Guidance for the prevention of COVID-19 infections among high-risk individuals in low-resource, displaced and camp and camp-like settings 1,2 for full details.

Table 1: Summary of the Shielding Approach1

Level

Household (HH) Level:

A specific room/area designated for high-risk individuals who are physically isolated from other HH members.

Movement/ Interactions

Low-risk HH members should not enter the green zone. If entry is necessary, it should be done only by healthy individuals after washing hands and using face coverings. Interactions should be at a safe distance (approx. 2 meters). Minimum movement of high-risk individuals outside the green zone. Low-risk HH members continue to follow social distancing and hygiene practices outside the house.

Level

Neighborhood Level:

A designated shelter/group of shelters (max 5-10 households), within a small camp or area where high-risk members are grouped together. Neighbors “swap” households to accommodate high-risk individuals.

Movement/ Interactions

Same as above

Level

Camp/Sector Level:

A group of shelters such as schools, community buildings within a camp/sector (max 50 high-risk individuals per single green zone) where high-risk individuals are physically isolated together.

Movement/ Interactions

One entry point is used for exchange of food, supplies, etc. A meeting area is used for residents and visitors to interact while practicing physical distancing (2 meters). No movement into or outside the green zone.

Operational Considerations

The shielding approach requires several prerequisites for effective implementation. Several are addressed, including access to healthcare and provision of food. However, there are several prerequisites which require additional considerations. Table 2 presents the prerequisites or suggestions as stated in the shielding guidance document (column 1) and CDC presents additional questions and considerations alongside these prerequisites (column 2).

Table 2: Suggested Prerequisites per the shielding documents and CDC’s Operational Considerations for Implementation

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • Each green zone has a dedicated latrine/bathing facility for high-risk individuals

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • The shielding approach advises against any new facility construction to establish green zones; however, few settings will have existing shelters or communal facilities with designated latrines/bathing facilities to accommodate high-risk individuals. In these settings, most latrines used by HHs are located outside the home and often shared by multiple HHs.
  • If dedicated facilities are available, ensure safety measures such as proper lighting, handwashing/hygiene infrastructure, maintenance and disinfection of latrines.
  • Ensure facilities can accommodate high-risk individuals with disabilities, children and separate genders at the neighborhood/camp-level.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • To minimize external contact, each green zone should include able-bodied high-risk individuals capable of caring for residents who have disabilities or are less mobile.  Otherwise, designate low-risk individuals for these tasks, preferably who have recovered from confirmed COVID-19 and are assumed to be immune.

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • This may be difficult to sustain, especially if the caregivers are also high risk. As caregivers may often will be family members, ensure that this strategy is socially or culturally acceptable.
  • Currently, we do not know if prior infection confers immunity.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • The green zone and living areas for high-risk residents should be aligned with minimum humanitarian (SPHERE) standards.6

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • The shielding approach requires strict adherence to infection, prevention and control (IPC) measures. They require, uninterrupted availability of soap, water, hygiene/cleaning supplies, masks or cloth face coverings, etc. for all individuals in green zones. Thus, it is necessary to ensure minimum public health standards6 are maintained and possibly supplemented to decrease the risk of other outbreaks outside of COVID-19. Attaining and maintaining minimum SPHERE6 standards is difficult in these settings for the general population.8,9,10 Users should consider that provision of services and supplies to high risk individuals could be at the expense of low-risk residents, putting them at increased risk for other outbreaks.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • Monitor and evaluate the implementation of the shielding approach.

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • Monitoring protocols will need to be developed for each type of green zone.
  • Dedicated staff need to be identified to monitor each green zone. Monitoring includes both adherence to protocols and potential adverse effects or outcomes due to isolation and stigma. It may be necessary to assign someone within the green zone, if feasible, to minimize movement in/out of green zones.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • Men and women, and individuals with tuberculosis (TB), severe immunodeficiencies, or dementia should be isolated separately

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • Multiple green zones would be needed to achieve this level of separation, each requiring additional inputs/resources. Further considerations include challenges of accommodating different ethnicities, socio-cultural groups, or religions within one setting.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • Community acceptance and involvement in the design and implementation

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • Even with community involvement, there may be a risk of stigmatization.11,12 Isolation/separation from family members, loss of freedom and personal interactions may require additional psychosocial support structures/systems. See section on additional considerations below.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • High-risk minors should be accompanied into isolation by a single caregiver who will also be considered a green zone resident in terms of movements and contacts with those outside the green zone.

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • Protection measures are critical to implementation. Ensure there is appropriate, adequate, and acceptable care of other minors or individuals with disabilities or mental health conditions who remain in the HH if separated from their primary caregiver.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • Green zone shelters should always be kept clean. Residents should be provided with the necessary cleaning products and materials to clean their living spaces.

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • High-risk individuals will be responsible for cleaning and maintaining their own living space and facilities. This may not be feasible for persons with disabilities or decreased mobility.11 Maintaining hygiene conditions in communal facilities is difficult during non-outbreak settings.7,8,9 consequently it may be necessary to provide additional human resource support.

Suggested Prerequisites 

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • Green zones should be more spacious in terms of shelter area per capita than the surrounding camp/sector, even at the cost of greater crowding of low-risk people.

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • Ensure that targeting high-risk individuals does not negate mitigation measures among low-risk individuals (physical distancing in markets or water points, where feasible, etc.). Differences in space based on risk status may increase the potential risk of exposure among the rest of the low-risk residents and may be unacceptable or impracticable, considering space limitations and overcrowding in many settings.

Additional Considerations

The shielding approach outlines the general “logistics” of implementation –who, what, where, how. However, there may be additional logistical challenges to implementing these strategies as a result of unavailable commodities, transport restrictions, limited staff capacity and availability to meet the increased needs. The approach does not address the potential emotional, social/cultural, psychological impact for separated individuals nor for the households with separated members. Additional considerations to address these challenges are presented below.

Population characteristics and demographics

Consideration: The number of green zones required may be greater than anticipated, as they are based on the total number of high-risk individuals, disease categories, and the socio-demographics of the area and not just the proportion of elderly population.

Explanation: Older adults represent a small percentage of the population in many camps in humanitarian settings (approximately 3-5%4,5), however in some humanitarian settings more than one quarter of the population may fall under high risk categories13,14,15 based on underlying medical conditions which may increase a person’s risk for severe COVID-19 illness which include chronic kidney disease, obesity, serious heart conditions, sickle cell disease, and type 2 diabetes. Additionally, many camps and settlements host multiple nationalities which may require additional separation, for example, Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya accommodates refugees from 19 countries.16

Timeline considerations

Consideration: Plan for an extended duration of implementation time, at least 6 months.

Explanation: The shielding approach proposes that green zones be maintained until one of the following circumstances arises: (i) sufficient hospitalization capacity is established; (ii) effective vaccine or therapeutic options become widely available; or (iii) the COVID-19 epidemic affecting the population subsides.

Given the limited resources and healthcare available to populations in humanitarian settings prior to the pandemic, it is unlikely sufficient hospitalization capacity (beds, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and staff) will be achievable during widespread transmission. The national capacity in many of the countries where these settings are located (e.g., Chad, Myanmar, and Syria) is limited. Resources may become quickly overwhelmed during the peak of transmission and may not be accessible to the emergency affected populations.

Vaccine trials are underway, but with no definite timeline. Reaching the suppression phase where the epidemic subsides can take several months and cases may resurge in a second or even third wave. Herd immunity (the depletion of susceptible people) for COVID-19 has not been demonstrated to date. It is also unclear if an infected person develops immunity and the duration of potential immunity is unknown. Thus, contingency plans to account for a possibly extended operational timeline are critical.

Other logistical considerations

Consideration: Plan to identify additional resources and outline supply chain mechanisms to support green zones.

Explanation: The implementation and operation of green zones requires strong coordination among several sectors which may require substantial additional resources:  supplies and staff to maintain these spaces – shelters, IPC, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), non-food items (NFIs) (beds, linens, dishes/utensils, water containers), psychosocial support, monitors/supervisors, caretakers/attendants, risk communication and community engagement, security, etc. Considering global reductions in commodity shortages,17 movement restrictions, border closures, and decreased trucking and flights, it is important to outline what additional resources will be needed and how they will be procured.

Protection

Consideration: Ensure safe and protective environments for all individuals, including minors and individuals who require additional care whether they are in the green zone or remain in a household after the primary caregiver or income provider has moved to the green zone.

Explanation: Separating families and disrupting and deconstructing multigenerational households may have long-term negative consequences. Shielding strategies need to consider sociocultural gender norms in order to adequately assess and address risks to individuals, particularly women and girls.18,19,20 Restrictive gender norms may be exacerbated by isolation strategies such as shielding. At the household level, isolating individuals and limiting their interaction, compounded with social and economic disruption has raised concerns of potential increased risk of partner violence. Households participating in house swaps or sector-wide cohorting are at particular risk for gender-based violence, harassment, abuse, and exploitation as remaining household members may not be decision-makers or responsible for households needs.18,19,20

Social/Cultural/Religious Practices

Consideration: Plan for potential disruption of social networks.

Explanation: Community celebrations (religious holidays), bereavement (funerals) and other rites of passage are cornerstones of many societies. Proactive planning ahead of time, including strong community engagement and risk communication is needed to better understand the issues and concerns of restricting individuals from participating in communal practices because they are being shielded. Failure to do so could lead to both interpersonal and communal violence.21,22

Mental Health

Consideration: Ensure mental health and psychosocial support*,23 structures are in place to address increased stress and anxiety.

Explanation: Additional stress and worry are common during any epidemic and may be more pronounced with COVID-19 due to the novelty of the disease and increased fear of infection, increased childcare responsibilities due to school closures, and loss of livelihoods. Thus, in addition to the risk of stigmatization and feeling of isolation, this shielding approach may have an important psychological impact and may lead to significant emotional distress, exacerbate existing mental illness or contribute to anxiety, depression, helplessness, grief, substance abuse, or thoughts of suicide among those who are separated or have been left behind. Shielded individuals with concurrent severe mental health conditions should not be left alone. There must be a caregiver allocated to them to prevent further protection risks such as neglect and abuse.

Summary

The shielding approach is an ambitious undertaking, which may prove effective in preventing COVID-19 infection among high-risk populations if well managed. While the premise is based on mitigation strategies used in the United Kingdom,24,25 there is no empirical evidence whether this approach will increase, decrease or have no effect on morbidity and mortality during the COVID-19 epidemic in various humanitarian settings. This document highlights a) risks and challenges of implementing this approach, b) need for additional resources in areas with limited or reduced capacity, c) indefinite timeline, and d) possible short-term and long-term adverse consequences.

Public health not only focuses on the eradication of disease but addresses the entire spectrum of health and wellbeing. Populations displaced, due to natural disasters or war and, conflict are already fragile and have experienced increased mental, physical and/or emotional trauma. While the shielding approach is not meant to be coercive, it may appear forced or be misunderstood in humanitarian settings. As with many community interventions meant to decrease COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, compliance and behavior change are the primary rate-limiting steps and may be driven by social and emotional factors. These changes are difficult in developed, stable settings; thus, they may be particularly challenging in humanitarian settings which bring their own set of multi-faceted challenges that need to be taken into account.

Household-level shielding seems to be the most feasible and dignified as it allows for the least disruption to family structure and lifestyle, critical components to maintaining compliance. However, it is most susceptible to the introduction of a virus due to necessary movement or interaction outside the green zone, less oversight, and often large household sizes. It may be less feasible in settings where family shelters are small and do not have multiple compartments. In humanitarian settings, small village, sector/block, or camp-level shielding may allow for greater adherence to proposed protocol, but at the expense of longer-term social impacts triggered by separation from friends and family, feelings of isolation, and stigmatization. Most importantly, accidental introduction of the virus into a green zone may result in rapid transmission and increased morbidity and mortality as observed in assisted care facilities in the US.26

The shielding approach is intended to alleviate stress on the healthcare system and circumvent the negative economic consequences of long-term containment measures and lockdowns by protecting the most vulnerable.1,24,25 Implementation of this approach will involve careful planning, additional resources, strict adherence and strong multi-sector coordination, requiring agencies to consider the potential repercussion among populations that have collectively experienced physical and psychological trauma which makes them more vulnerable to adverse psychosocial consequences.  In addition, thoughtful consideration of the potential benefit versus the social and financial cost of implementation will be needed in humanitarian settings.*Specific psychosocial support guidance during COVID-19 as specific subject areas are beyond the scope of this document.

References

  1. Favas, C. Guidance for the prevention of COVID-19 infections among high-risk individuals in camps and camp-like settings pdf icon[465 KB, 15 pages]external icon. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 31 March 2020.
  2. Maysoon, D, Zandvoort K, Flasche S, et al. COVID-19 control in low-income settings and displaced populations: what can realistically be done?external icon. 2020. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
  3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Groups at Higher Risk for Severe Illness. Content source: National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), Division of Viral Diseases. Last content review 14 May 2020.
  4. UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2016external icon.
  5. UNHCR -Rohingya Refugee Response/Bangladesh-Joint Government of Bangladesh-UNHCR, Population Factsheet. Annex I and II. March 31,2020. Sent by email.
  6. The Sphere Handbook. Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, 2018 editionexternal icon.
  7. Butler, N., Tulloch. O. Anthrologica, 2020. Social Sciences in Humanitarian Action pdf icon[275 KB, 8 pages]external icon.
  8. Blum, L.S., Yemweni, A., Trinies, V. et al. Programmatic implications for promotion of handwashing behavior in an internally displaced persons camp in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Confl Health 13, 54 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-019-0225-xexternal icon.
  9. Cronin AA, Shrestha D, Cornier N, Abdalla F, Ezard N, Aramburu C. A review of water and sanitation provision in refugee camps in association with selected health and nutrition indicators–the need for integrated service provisionexternal icon. J Water Health. 2008;6(1):1-13. doi:10.2166/wh.2007.019.
  10. Nyoka R, Foote AM, Woods E, et al. Sanitation practices and perceptions in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya: Comparing the status quo with a novel service-based approachexternal icon. [published correction appears in PLoS One. 2017 Dec 19;12 (12 ):e0190129]. PLoS One. 2017;12(7):e0180864. Published 2017 Jul 13.
  11. Working with Persons with Disabilities in Forced Displacement pdf icon[343 KB, 28 pages]external icon: Need to Know Guidance 1. 2019.
  12. IFRC, UNICEF and WHO. Social Stigma Associated with COVID-19: A guide to preventing and addressing social stigma associated with COVID-19external icon.
  13. Sethi S, Jonsson R, Skaff R, Tyler F. Community-Based Noncommunicable Disease Care for Syrian Refugees in Lebanonexternal icon. Glob Health Sci Pract. 2017;5(3):495-506. Published 2017 Sep 28. doi:10.9745/GHSP-D-17-00043.
  14. Akik C, Ghattas H, Mesmar S, Rabkin M, El-Sadr WM, Fouad FM. Host country responses to non-communicable diseases amongst Syrian refugees: a reviewexternal icon. Confl Health. 2019;13:8. Published 2019 Mar 22. doi:10.1186/s13031-019-0192-2.
  15. Rehr M, Shoaib M, Ellithy S, et al. Prevalence of non-communicable diseases and access to care among non-camp Syrian refugees in northern Jordan. Confl Healthexternal icon. 2018;12:33. Published 2018 Jul 11. doi:10.1186/s13031-018-0168-7.
  16. UNHCR, Kakuma camp and Kalobeyei Settlement Visitors Guide pdf icon[5.7 MB, 10 pages]external icon.
  17. World Health Organization. COVID-19 Supply Chain System, Requesting and Receiving Suppliesexternal icon.
  18. UNFPA: COVID-19, A Gender Lens: Protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights and promoting gender equality.
  19. IFRC, Prevention and Response to Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in COVID-19, A protection, Gender and Inclusion PGI Technical guidance note pdf icon[560 KB, 12 pages]external icon.
  20. Inter-agency Standing Committee Interim guidance -Technical note. Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) during COVID-19 response. Version 1.
  21. Rashad, M, Farrell, S. April 24, 2020. Reuters, Islam’s holiest sites emptied by coronavirus crisis as Ramadhan beginsexternal icon.
  22. ABP News Bureau, April 24, 2020. Pakistani Imams Overrule Lockdown for Ramadan, 253 Healthcare Workers get Infected with COVID-19external icon.
  23. Operational considerations for multisectoral mental health and psychosocial support programmes during the COVID-19 pandemic, Version 1.1pdf iconexternal icon.
  24. Public Health England: Guidance on Shielding and Protecting People Who are Clinically Extremely Vulnerable from COVID-19external icon.
  25. Van Bunnik, Bram A.D., Morgan, L.K., et a. Segmentation and shielding of the most vulnerable members elements of an exit strategy from COVID-19external icon. University of Edinburg.
  26. Michael TM, Clark S, Pogosjans S, et al. COVID-19 in a Long-Term Care Facility — King County, Washington, February 27–March 9, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020; 69:339-342. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6

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Wisconsin Parents Tell Joe Biden To Stuff Masking Their Children Where The Sun Don’t Shine: ‘These Are Not Your Children’

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Moms will save this country. G-d willing.

‘These Are Not Your Children’: Wisconsin Parents Tell Joe Biden To Stuff Masking Their Children Where The Sun Don’t Shine

By: Jordan Davidson, July 31, 2021:

Nearly 40 advocacy groups representing more than 20,000 families in Wisconsin ripped into President Joe Biden and Democrat Gov. Tony Evers for the new wave of potential mask mandates and lockdowns facing their state.

In the letter, organizations including We The Parents, Wisconsin United for Freedom, and No Left Turn in Education Wisconsin pledge to reject any mask requirements on children in schools

“Simply put, these are not your children. They are ours and they too, are Americans with rights. They are our responsibility and our most beloved. They are not yours,” the letter states.

The parents also said they would refuse to allow the government “to use your private sector counterparts to enforce invasive mask mandates on our children in various stores or at community activities” and “subject our children to any further local, regional, or national lockdowns or movement restriction.”

“We have watched the last week unfold in abject horror – observing our government institutions and leaders failing our children at every turn, again,” the letter continues. “Your renewed calls for lockdowns, enforced mask mandates, and masking in schools is not rooted in science and is objectively cruel to the most vulnerable in our society, our children. We believe that you are in fact aware of this and continue to play political games with our children, despite our efforts to work with you over the last twelve months.”

Just this week, the Biden administration endorsed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s newest mask recommendations for vaccinated Americans. Some schools in Wisconsin were already planning on requiring face coverings for everyone even before the most recent CDC decision. Now, the state’s health department is doubling down to back the CDC’s flip-flop and encourage children as young as two years old to mask up.

“We must protect our children as they head back to school this fall, along with all other Wisconsinites who are at an increased risk for being hospitalized from COVID-19. Vaccines and the additional protection from wearing masks are the best combination of tools to achieve this goal,” Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk said.

While Biden also threatened another round of lockdowns and Evers is known to go back on all of his pandemic promises, the parents said they refuse to give up their parental choice.

“We are strong. We are united. We are in control. We have never and will never co-parent with the government,” the letter concludes.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Biden Camp Considers Us Domestic Terrorists

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I don’t know whether you read the Whitehouse.gov website regularly but it contains a lot of information on their leftist and extremist future actions against who you and I call patriots and they call domestic terrorists. I am copying and pasting a press release from June 23rd written and released by Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall. She is a career liberal minded government worker, (from 1986 with then Senator Biden) who has staunch leftist views. She has notably worked with testosterone challenged Hussein Obama and our mentally challenged Joe Biden, both of whose radical agendas she supports. Her father, surprise, was a wealthy liberal lawyer and patron of the arts in LA.

I want you to take the time to carefully read what I have copied here and understand the steps they are taking to silence the right and our voices, to ruin our lives and careers and take note who they are doing this with. I hope you are as alarmed as I am. As regards that web site, try hit it at least weekly. You will be shocked at what they post. They are not even trying to hide their agenda now.

As always I have included the link below for you all. Feel free to share this blog far and wide!!

Remarks by Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall at the University of Virginia on National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

Good afternoon. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, even if only virtually, and to discuss the Biden Administration’s new National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

I asked to speak in the historic setting of Charlottesville because the nation was riveted four years ago this summer on the chilling events that reflected disturbing trends in our culture raised the specter of domestic terrorism.

President Biden launched his campaign by pointing to the violence we saw in Charlottesville in August 2017—including domestic terrorist violence. He called it a battle for the soul of America.

In his inaugural address, President Biden specifically pointed to “a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.”

The use of violence to pursue political ends is a profound threat to our public safety and national security. And it is even more than that: it is a threat to our national identity, our values, our norms, our rule of law—our democracy.

We saw this vividly on January 6th when the Congress and the U.S. Capitol were attacked.

Democracy isn’t something we create once. Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is, as President Biden said today, “a way of being.”

We have to renew it and reinvest in it in each generation, affirming a simple but profound premise: that we can and must resolve our differences peacefully, through civil civic discourse and at the ballot box, rather than through physical intimidation and violence.

At the same time, our efforts to counter domestic terrorism must take place within the context of upholding Americans’ civil rights and civil liberties—the very freedoms that make us the United States of America.

President Biden is briefed regularly on the domestic terrorism threat and has discussed what we need to be doing to counter it in a series of meetings in our first five months in office with his key Cabinet members, including Attorney General Garland, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas, FBI Director Wray, and Secretary of Defense Austin.

And he has consistently guided us to undertake this vital work without undermining our values and freedoms or, inadvertently, exacerbating the very challenges we are seeking to address.

Notably, we are tackling these challenges 20 years after the events of September 11th, 2001, which led to the building of a strategy and indeed an entire architecture to counter global terrorist threats—which is work that Fran Townsend pioneered earlier in her career. We have learned a lot over the last two decades. That experience has taught us the importance of remaining true to who we want to be at home and in the world, and about finding the balance between countering very real threats while protecting basic freedoms that are the foundation of our democracy and our enduring advantage in the world.

I’d like to explain some of the core guiding principles that informed our approach to that vital task and then set forth the four key pillars of our strategy, which the Attorney General announced in a major speech at the Justice Department last week, on June 15th.

Our first guiding principle: Start with the facts, and analyze them rigorously.

This is foundational to everything we do on this front – as it is more broadly in the national security domain.

To establish an objective, fact-based view of the domestic terrorism challenge we faced as a new Administration in January 2021, President Biden tasked the intelligence and law enforcement communities during his first week in office to produce a comprehensive assessment of today’s domestic terrorist threat. The goal was to understand the risks that domestic terrorists pose and let the expert assessment guide us as we formulate a strategy and implement it.

The career professionals found that domestic violent extremists motivated by a range of ideologies pose an elevated threat to our country —with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and anti-government militia violent extremists posing the most lethal threats.

Further, violent extremists who promote the superiority of the white race have the most persistent transnational connections.

Overall, however, the report did not find a robust nexus between domestic terrorists and foreign actors. At this time, this is largely an inside-out problem, not an outside-in problem, though we know that our adversaries are seeking to sow divisions in our country.

This brings me to our second guiding principle: Make this a clear White House priority so that the entire U.S. Government gives immediate attention to an urgent threat and sustains that attention throughout our Administration.

That’s why we built a team at the National Security Council specifically dedicated to coordinating our government’s domestic terrorism strategy—the first team of its kind ever created within the White House. We have learned lessons from international terrorism where we could; and we treat domestic terrorism as distinctive where we should.

The third guiding principle underpinning this work is to ensure that we learn from the career professionals and experts who do this hard work every day.

Our team has worked with an extraordinary community of relevant experts across the Federal Government, including law enforcement and homeland security components and elements that haven’t traditionally been part of national security conversations, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs. They have helped us to grasp what important efforts are already underway to address issues related to domestic terrorism and shared lessons learned from previous efforts about where there are gaps and opportunities to innovate and improve, so that we evolve as quickly as the threat is evolving.

The fourth guiding principle is that we must be in ongoing conversations with the broader stakeholder community, from civil rights groups to faith-based organizations to technology companies to universities like the one hosting this dialogue today to law enforcement partners at the state and local level. We have also consulted with Members of Congress—both Democrats and Republicans—to learn how they regard this evolving threat and to ensure they understand our approach.

By following these core principles, we developed America’s first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, with a focus on four key pillars.

The first pillar, which addresses understanding and sharing information about domestic terrorism, builds directly on the comprehensive threat assessment completed in March. We must understand this threat fully in order to address it fully. That’s why we’re ensuring that the Federal Government is gathering information on domestic terrorism comprehensively, within existing authorities and consistent with constitutional protections, to improve that understanding. For the first time, The Department of Justice is now tracking Federal law enforcement’s investigations nationwide in this area comprehensively. For the first time, the Department of State and other agencies are making this issue a priority for information exchanges with foreign partners. And, for the first time, we’re creating a structured mechanism to ensure that our government benefits, in a consistent and systematic way, from the worthwhile research and analysis done on this issue by non-governmental experts like the experts at the Karsh and Miller Centers.

That understanding informs the Strategy’s second pillar, which focuses on prevention.

Drawing on the expertise of a variety of Federal departments and agencies, we will work with communities to become more effective at preventing individuals from ever reaching the point of committing acts of terrorism.

To do this, we will strengthen domestic terrorism prevention resources and services and work to improve public awareness of Federal resources to address threatening behavior before violence occurs.

For example, the Department of Homeland Security is building on its counterterrorism mantra that if you see something, you should say something. Recognizing that family, friends, and co-workers may be the first to realize someone is radicalizing to violence, we need to create pathways for sharing information that feel comfortable and are easily accessible.

For the first time, DHS has designated “Domestic Violent Extremism” as a National Priority Area within the Department’s Homeland Security Grant Program, which means that over $77 million will be allocated to state, local, tribal, and territorial partners to prevent, protect against, and respond to domestic violent extremism.

To offer another example, the Department of Defense is ensuring service members leaving the military are aware that they could be targeted for recruitment by violent extremists.

We will also be augmenting efforts to address online terrorist recruitment and mobilization to violence by domestic terrorists. This is an enormous challenge and one that will require ongoing ingenuity and collaboration with the private sector. The strategy directs increased information sharing with the technology companies and the creation of innovative approaches to foster digital literacy and build resilience in the face of terrorist recruitment and mobilization.

Relatedly, in May, we announced our decision to join the Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online, an international partnership among 56 governments and 10 technology companies including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube that works to develop new solutions to eliminating terrorist content online while safeguarding free expression.

This framework was forged by some of our closest foreign partners following the 2017 attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that left 51 dead and dozens wounded. What they’ve built has energized and guided an important global conversation about how to address terrorism threats online while protecting and indeed promoting freedom of expression that we as Americans cherish. And we are stronger when we stand together with countries that share our values, especially in urging technology companies to take vital actions to secure their platforms against exploitation.

Prevention efforts are important, but we know they will not always succeed in stopping radicalization toward violence. That’s why the Strategy’s third pillar involves disrupting and deterring domestic terrorists.

Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement are critical to countering domestic terrorism. We are deliberately increasing support to law enforcement to enable them to more effectively address domestic terrorism nationwide.

As Attorney General Garland has emphasized, U.S. Attorney’s Offices and FBI Field Offices across the country are making domestic terrorism a top priority, with the Justice Department and FBI reallocating or requesting appropriate funding and resources to target the threat. In the President’s Fiscal Year 2022 Budget, we have included over $100 million in additional resources for DOJ, FBI, and DHS to ensure that the Federal Government has the analysts, investigators, prosecutors, and other personnel and resources it needs to thwart domestic terrorism and do justice when the law has been broken.

State, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement will have access to increased intelligence sharing and training on domestic terrorism and associated threats. That includes, for example, enhanced training on domestic terrorism iconography, symbology, and phraseology as well as augmented information on how to recognize potential indicators of mobilization to domestic terrorism.

In the Federal Government, we are also working to address the potential “insider threat” posed by deliberate domestic terrorist recruitment of individuals who hold or have held sensitive positions in the military and law enforcement. We are, in particular, improving employee screening to enhance methods for identifying domestic terrorists who might pose insider threats.

The Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice are pursuing efforts to ensure domestic terrorists are not employed within our military or law enforcement ranks and to improve screening and vetting processes. Moreover, resources are being developed for state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement partners to enable them to enhance their own employee screening programs.

Finally, we must also address long-term contributors to domestic terrorism. That is the fourth pillar of our Strategy.

This reflects the context within which our first three pillars are situated, and involves broader possibilities for reducing the drivers of domestic terrorism over the years and generations to come, such as by reducing persistent economic inequality and by helping those who feel left behind in a 21st century economy. Our long-term efforts also involve reducing and protecting Americans from racial, ethnic, and religious hatreds; building trust in our institutions; working toward an information environment that fosters healthy democratic discourse; and stemming the flow of firearms to individuals intending to commit acts of domestic terrorism, including through initiatives that will be discussed by the President later today as part of the Administration’s gun violence and violent crime prevention strategy. While this work is beyond the remit of traditional counterterrorism work, our strategy will be situated within our Administration’s comprehensive efforts to strengthen the long-term health of our nation.

I’ve learned across my opportunities to serve in government, with this being my fourth tour of duty, that strategies mean little unless they are translated into concrete and consequential actions. Having first worked for President Biden in the Senate when I was 26 years old, I can say with confidence that he puts a premium on effective implementation. The work of implementing this strategy so as to make Americans safer is already well underway. And in doing this work today and every day, we will remain vigilant against all threats to Americans, including those posed by terrorists internationally, because we will never take our eyes off threats to our safety and security, whether they come from at home and abroad.

It is a privilege to join each of you today to discuss this vital work. By tackling domestic terrorism together, each of us can make a contribution to safeguarding our precious democratic experiment. So, I thank each of you, wherever you are today, and whatever role you play—perhaps in the Federal Government; perhaps with a state, local, territorial, or tribal partner; or perhaps with a non-profit, such as a university, working on violence prevention or researching terrorist recruitment online.

We are committed to protecting this nation and staying focused on this work. And we believe this Strategy can guide us for years to come. As Justice Thurgood Marshall said upon receiving the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center, “Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage. America must get to work.” That’s exactly what we’re doing: we are getting to work.

Now I’ll turn things back to Fran, who knows very well the challenges of serving as Homeland Security Advisor and tackling existential threats. Fran, thank you again for making time for this, conversation.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

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