On the Banks

WTMWD #12: "Where Do We Draw Our Line in the Sand?" A Conversation with Sara Brady

 

 

 

 

 

I talk with Sara Brady, the Idaho mom who was arrested for "trespassing" on a park playground that had been closed off as part of that state's lockdown measures. We discuss what happened on that day, her upcoming court battle, and a question each of us needs to be asking ourselves in these times: Where do we draw the line against tyranny?

The video of what happened is here.

News coverage is here. 

And you can contribute to Sara's legal defense here. 

 

 

 

My New Normal

 

 

 

Everyone's talking about some "New Normal" we're all supposed to get used to. Here's mine: A world where people figure out how to live with each other without coercive force and without living in existential fear of each other.

WTMWD #11:Jeremy Hammond on how draconian responses to Covid-19 are an opportunity for health-freedom advocates

 

 

 

 

 

 

I speak with independent journalist Jeremy R. Hammond about the nonsensical and devastating government actions in response to Covid-19, why a vaccine may not be the answer, and the opportunity this represents for educating about health freedom and problems with medical orthodoxy.

 

 

 

Some Important Bits of Information that Might Make it into an Article Soon

 

I don't know about you, but I am barely keeping up with all the information coming at me lately. Let alone writing anything about it. This is me now:

Image: Public domain.

 

So for now, I'm just going to drop a few important pieces of information here that I think people should know about, but that I don't have time to compile into a coherent article just yet. Enjoy:

1. The Imperial College models sucked. No, I mean they REALLY, REALLY, sucked. See here, here, here, here, and especially here. Also here.

2. This is not the first time Neil Ferguson has sucked very very badly at predicting death and devastation that never materialized. See here, and also here. (Thanks to Mark Brady for the tip.)

3. It is now ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that the lockdowns have had NO IMPACT on containing the spread of Covid-19, nor on "flattening the curve" so as to avoid "hospital overload." See here, here, here, here, here, and especially here.

4. ...not that "containing" Covid-19 was ever a worthy, or a realistic goal. Remember, sensible epidemiologists and others have pointed out that the way humanity has dealt with viruses for millennia has been to allow them to run their course, for the young and healthy to become infected and develop immunity, which then becomes "herd immunity", the virus is no longer able to thrive in that particular "herd", and mostly disappears or at least stops being perceived as an existential threat.

5. Remember: If you look back at the Imperial College report, the point in recommending extreme isolation was not to "contain" Covid-19 or to make it go away. The point was to "flatten the curve" and prevent hospitals from being overhwelmed (something that has not even come close to being a problem in the UK and the US with the possible exception of New York City, but no not even that because they had tent hospitals and a big navy ship that sat largely unused, so... no.)

The point was to "flatten the curve" UNTIL THE NEXT TIME - because, by isolating people from each other, including children, the opportunity for building up herd immunity is lost (unless, of course, the virus has been circulating for much longer than we had thought, and a large degree of herd immunity has already been developed. I guess we'll find out in the fall).

In other words, rather than dealing with Covid-19 the way some of the epidemiologists mentioned above recommended, allowing it to run its course while protecting the elderly and more at-risk, and then being done with it in a matter of weeks... the plan put forth by the Imperial College folks was to CONTINUE IMPLEMENTING LOCKDOWNS INDEFINITELY until... until what?

6. ...until there is a vaccine. Again, this isn't an article but a list of bullet points everyone should know about, so I'll just add these, on the topic of developing a vaccine for Covid-19:

a. Previous efforts to develop SARS-related Coronavirus vaccines ran into the problem of serious lung pathologies developing when animals that received the vaccine were then exposed to the virus;

b. This one is being rushed through development at an unprecedented speed that has even long-time vaccine cheerleaders worried;

b. A clinical trial for Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine has resulted in serious adverse event rate of 20% in the high dose group, and scientists asked about the trial's results have said that Moderna has not released the data necessary to make any meaningful assessment of efficacy results; meanwhile, ALL of the monkeys given the vaccine being developed at Oxford ended up contracting Covid-19. That vaccine is now moving to human trials, because researchers believe that it may help to moderate the illness.

c. Immunity from liability is being granted to those manufacturing a vaccine against Covid-19.

In an upcoming podcast episode, I talk with Jeremy Hammond about this, and he gives his take on the real point of the Imperial College report. Hint: It was NOT about containing the virus through social distancing or forced isolation. 

 

7. Oh and yes, a study done by the DOD in 2019 found that those who had received a flu vaccine that year were significantly more likely to contract a coronavirus infection. (Other studies have shown a correlation between receiving a flu vaccine one year and higher rates of respiratory infection in following years.)

8. As an aside, had the US experienced "hospital overload" as predicted by the criminally irresponsible repeat offender Neil Ferguson and team, it would have been largely thanks to government regulation of the healthcare industry, and in particular "Certificate of Need" laws, which impose tight restrictions on building hospitals. The difference in hospital-beds per person between the US and South Korea, for example–a country with what seems to be a much less interventionist hospital industry–is illustrative: South Korea has 12.27 (and rising) hospital beds per thousand people, while the US has 2.77 and falling.

9. Meanwhile, some of the costs of the lockdowns–including the cost in lives–are also becoming apparent. Including setting the stage for what could turn into a serious crisis in healthcare capacity very soon, as well as disruptions to food supplies and a huge blow to small, independent farming, and small business everywhere, not to mention the impact of a culture of fearmongering. See also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I'll plan to write something more coherent soon, but right now there's a giant mouse I need to talk to...

 

 

 

Casualties of a War on a Virus: Connie

 

Image: Public domain.

 

A great deal has been written, and a great deal more will be written, about the tremendous costs the lockdowns are imposing on people, from lost income, to lost businesses and disrupted food chains, as well as those costs that are less easily quantified: The psychological toll of being forced indoors and into isolation, the cost in wellness and even in lives lost, of non-Covid-19-related medical treatments being canceled or delayed. 

This is an account sent in by a reader, whose wife had just passed away after battling multiple sclerosis for many years. Did the lockdown kill her? Not by itself, no. But from her husband's description, it added a layer of stress and fear to an already difficult life, likely shortening her life, and certainly making her final days and weeks much harder. 

So how does that kind of "cost" get accounted for, when we look back at this period in our history? How is it weighed against the purported (and, it increasingly appears, largely imaginary) benefits of these draconian policies? Most likely, it won't be. But we can at least acknowledge these costs, and hope–vainly, I'm sure–that the next time someone tries to sell us all a package of fear wrapped up in shoddy modeling and an authoritarian paradigm, we will all give a little more thought to what it stands to cost us.

From Connie's husband's letter:

 

    My wife contracted multiple sclerosis, some five years after I did, was not in great health as I was, and has gone quickly downhill, while I've remained very active, fighting the fatigue as an enemy.  Connie passed away Tuesday afternoon, either ran out of enough oxygen, or her heart stopped.  I place much of the blame on this lockdown, she was ever more depressed, as she lost ever more freedom of movement, and this was directly from accepting the m.s. as the end, and living "bed ridden”.

    We were married 36 years, this week's been a mess of trying to find out "what I'm allowed to do", while trying to fulfill the will of my two adult children, my in-laws, and the great many friends, neighbors, who knew and loved her, but live in various degrees of fear, based on their relative understanding of what is being done.

    We live in what used to be "the heart of Christian south land", I got here in august of 77, first permanent duty station and decided I would retire here, the following day, and fulfilled the goal, in 97, having married Connie in 84, my second time around in the Corps, and falling in love with this ardent woman, desperate to get her children back, having gone into rehab for alcohol, after her violent husband finally got arrested.

    She'd been a year out from his arrest, completed treatment, was doing well off alcohol, and I'd just quit drinking, having been to Beirut August of 82, spent the winter there, and had returned, and tried to drink away the bad memories.  We met at her mother's church, we both got saved, in each, our own time, and I asked her to marry me.  We got married in January of 84, and returned here, after a tour of duty in Hawaii, and several "deployments" for me, sans family, staying behind in N.C.

    I loved here, because I came from Chicago, murder capital of the world, and found the best race relations I'd seen, since learning of the existence of racism.  It's been over forty years, things have changed, socially, Religiously, but I remain tied to this land, this area, this tiny town, because it has had the best of humanity here, among the farmers, woodmen, the area is tightly tied to nature and natural produce.

    Connie's been going down, ever faster, because of the ever increasing impression of "government, tightening the screws", fearful, in severe pain, and being dealt with in her pain, and medical condition, like she was a criminal.  Connie was never "morally strong", she had faith, believed, but got depressed easily, and trusted in me to fight the battles.  She was hit hard by the "opioid epidemic", she'd been over-prescribed pain medication, in my view, without considered review, considered consequences, and when it was named, she was a victim of the rapacious effort to "stamp it out”.

    Connie got reduced, level by level, not graduated reduction, timed to allow adjustment, but prescriptions, removed in whole, no concern for her mental or moral health.  I did a stint of three years, "Substance Abuse Control Officer" of an 1100 man squadron, while in Hawaii, was professionally trained for it, and worked the worst, hardest job of my life, surviving three years of constant heartbreak, and suffering, watch so many who simply couldn't control their own problems.  I knew what she was going through, but other than getting her put in a detox-rehab program, could do nothing about it, and she'd been "fragile" and wouldn't have survived such, it never entered my mind.  I was glad I was married to her, because I understood her difficulty, and the cost of opioids.

    The last two weeks of ever more imposition was simply too much, she just wanted to die, had no notion of being able to navigate in the world that is, with her level of health, and hadn't had a doctor that wasn't a confrontation in years.  Our son moved back in to help, because I've been weakened by the physical labor of replacing her muscles with mine, and he, too, was about wore out, I believe she just let herself go to sleep, with the intent of not waking up.

 

 

Actor and comedian Kevin James´s short film on COVID snitches

 

 

 

 

 

WTMWD #10: The Freedom Angels get ready to bring some love to Sacramento

 

 

 

 

The Freedom Angels are moms, and activists for health freedom. I spoke with one of them briefly today about the power of peaceful protest against the lockdowns, and about their event this coming Saturday (May 32rd) in Sacramento: Liberty Fest.

For information on attending Liberty Fest, to donate to help support the event, or to learn more about the Freedom Angels, you can go here.

 

 

 

 

"Fighting a government that would take it to your home, your children - I never expected that."

 

 

 

Salem OR salon owner Lindsey Graham talks about what happened to her when she defied her state's lockdown orders, opening her business after six weeks so that she could begin earning a living again:

"The past ten days, when all I've wanted to do is provide for my family and earn a living and open my business that's been closed for six weeks, I've been threatened and intimidated and bullied daily by the government. And I'm very sad that this is the world that we live in.

"I'm sad that I can drive 20 minutes down the freeway, and that person's job as a hairstylist is essential, according to (Oregon Governor) Kate Brown. But my job, 20 minutes up the street, is non-essential.

"Everyone's job is essential. Not because of what we do or how we do it, but because it's the way we make our living."

Graham says that she has been threatened by OSHA, which has fined her $14,000 for "operating a hazardous facility" for her employees (she says she has no employees, but works with independent contractors), by the City of Salem which has accused her of violating the terms of her lease, by the health licensing agency which has threatened to take away her license and the licenses of all the contractors who work for her (if you don't yet understand why the institution of licensing is pure evil, this might be a good teaching moment), and finally by Child Protective Services, which sent officers to her home and insisted on interviewing her young son without her being present.

News coverage of her story is here and here.

To donate to Graham's fund for legal and other expenses, go here.

 

 

This Saturday. Sacramento. High Noon.

 

 

This coming Saturday. Sacramento. The biggest lockdown protest to date is planned.

If you support ending the lockdowns, oppose mandatory testing, tracking, and mandatory vaccination, please try to be there.

And if you can, please donate a little to help those organizing it - including the Freedom Angels.

You can donate here.

 

 

 

Will the Grinch Steal Christmas?

Image source: Unknown.

 

From my latest article, on LewRockwell.com yesterday:

I keep thinking about the ending of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” How this poor guy’s evil plan doesn’t come off the way he expected it to, all because he doesn’t really understand the Whos. Because all he can see are the material trappings of Christmas, he assumes that that’s all everybody else sees too. But that’s not what Christmas means for the Whos, and after he takes away all of their things, they celebrate anyway.

I have long felt that we are being conditioned, by politicians and others who benefit by having ordinary people afraid of each other and at each others’ throats, and by an entertainment culture that continually pumps out apocalyptic narratives in which the worst of our human nature rises to the top. This culture gives us worlds in which people are pitted against each other in a desperate battle for survival and the only way to make it out alive is to lie, cheat, steal, brutalize, kill–and sometimes eat–one’s fellow human beings.

It feels to me as if someone with an agenda has been manufacturing these narratives, “training” us to think of each other as nothing more than competitors for scarce resources, enemies even. And to live accordingly. I haven’t seen the film “Contagion”, but I am told that it is representative of this trend: As soon as there is a big disruption in society, the social fabric immediately tears apart and people begin looting and killing each other.

But that’s not what I’m seeing around me now...

Read the rest here.

 

 

WTMWD Episode 9: The Tenth Amendment Center's Michael Boldin on Reclaiming Our Freedom

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Boldin founded the Tenth Amendment Center in 2006. Today, I spoke with him about how the principles articulated by the tenth amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people") have been used by those who wish to regain the freedom taken from them by governments–and how we can use them today.

 

This Review Made Me Sad

 

I'm not complaining. Annabel has been getting mostly really great reviews (including the ones here and here.) But I saw a new review on Amazon a few days ago, and it just made me sad. When I was writing Annabel, I knew the book wasn't going to be for everyone. No book is. I knew that some would enjoy it and some would not, and even that it might piss a few people off. Some, I'm sure, won't even make it past the dedication.

But I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting to feel that it had hurt anyone. Yet here this is:

Sad story-wasn't for me:

The main girl (Annabel) gets bullied by people she thinks are her friends. There are a couple other characters that are deemed "crazy" by everyone. Lots of bullying going on. Not a story my 11 year old daughter enjoyed.

 

All of these things are true, of course. But, at least in my mind (I know, I'm not the reader, so it doesn't really matter what I intended), they are laying the groundwork for the very positive things that come later. That doesn't matter though, because now I've made someone sad - and it looks like her 11-year-old daughter too. So now I'm sad.

I wasn't prepared for this.

 

 

Hitler Learns that Sweden is Doing Fine

 

 

Hitler Learns that Sweden is Doing Fine.

The effort to control the narrative about Covid-19 is failing miserably, and poor Adolf is upset.

Maybe I Was Wrong. Maybe We Have Learned From History:

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The Question is: Are You Going to Stand Down?"

 

 

Watch as a former Marine, Dr. Cordie Williams, speaks to police in riot gear as if they are human beings, appeals to their sense of honor, and to their commitment to the Constitution. He urges them to stand up to their superior officers and to be on the right side of history. 

THEN WATCH WHAT HAPPENS.

One by one, the police start to walk away. 

I don't know what happens after this video. I don't know that the officers who walked off were not later replaced with others. And of course I can't be sure why they walked away. But I'd like to think that it was because of the things Cordie said to them and the questions he asked. 

 

Some Videos from Lockdown Protests - Thread #1: Beaches

 

I'm going to be posting some of the videos I find of lockdown protests here on my site. This thread is for protests on the beaches:

 

This is awesome! It is in Venice, CA. One patriotic woman breaches. The cops go to arrest, and then everybody breaches! They can't arrest them all! This is the way it's done. pic.twitter.com/PpPPFx6UQC

— Susan St. James (@SusanStJames3) May 5, 2020

WTMWD Episode 8: "There's Never Been a Police Presence Like that Before."

 

 

 

Today, I spoke with two people who were at the demonstrations in Sacramento last Friday. The upshot? For some reason, after hours of completely peaceful demonstrations, the throngs of police that had been stationed at the Capitol Building in Sacramento suddenly started arresting people.

The question is: Why?

 

 

WTMWD Episode 7: Kevin McKernan on Covid-19: It's origins, how it may be changing the research process for the better, and why a vaccine is not a good solution.

 

 

 

 

CSO of Medicinal Genomics, Kevin McKernan, explains why Covid-19 may have been with us for much longer than we've thought; how the desire for information is pushing people to bypass peer review - maybe for something better, and why looking to a vaccine as a solution is a terrible idea.

Links from the discussion:

Preprint site, BioRxiv

Preprint site, MedRxiv

Nextstrain

The Braun, et al paper he mentions. 

And you can find Kevin at:

Medicinal Genomics

Kevin McKernan on Twitter

Kevin McKernan on Facebook

My previous podcast episode with Kevin discussing the problems with peer review and a revolutionary solution, is here.

 

 

The Pandemic Isn't the Threat, the Paradigm Is

 

Image: Public Domain, courtesy of the Public Domain Review.

 

From my latest article on LewRockwell.com:

 

In the US, with the exception of a very few cities like New York City, hospitals are anything but overwhelmed. Many are actually shutting down or furloughing staff because of the sudden drop in elective procedures. China’s lockdowns have ended, and the government of Iran is beginning to lift lockdowns there. But here in California, instead of simply declaring the lockdown over, Governor Newsom has assembled a task force to examine the question of how best to end it.

Why? Did he need a task force to implement the lockdown? No. Nor will he ever be made to pay for the human and economic (are the two really separate?) costs of these unprecedented authoritarian moves.

THE AUTHORITARIAN PARADIGM:

But that is the nature of political systems: The people making the decisions are not the ones who will suffer their consequences. Government entities are–by design–not accountable for their actions. And that is the whole problem. What we are facing right now is not the threat of a deadly pandemic. We are facing the threat of a deadly paradigm.

It is a paradigm that tells us that the best way to deal with threats–especially big, scary threats that could impact us all and potentially kill a lot of people–is for a central authority to make decisions that are then imposed by force on everyone else. (The pushers of this paradigm like to leave out the whole lack of accountability thing.)

To a panicked population, this might sound reasonable. “Freedom and individual rights are all well and good when things are fine,” people may tell themselves, “but this is an emergency! We need the parental figure of the state to step in and do something!”

Don’t laugh. It’s how a lot of people actually think. Or rather, it’s how they don’t think. Because if they were thinking, they would notice the catastrophic results all around them of allowing central authorities to make decisions in crises like this.

They might also remember that we all learned an important lesson about this in the Twentieth Century. You remember: That was the century when a bunch of places “experimented” with totalitarian regimes that did exactly this: Imposed by force, decisions for everyone living under them about what they could buy, what they could sell, what work they could do, how much they could be paid for it, and on and on.

What humanity learned from those experiments was precisely what economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek told us we would learn: That centralized decision-making not only “doesn’t work”, it leads to disastrous and brutal results in every imaginable way–and some unimaginable ones. Again: Results for which the perpetrators never have to pay.

But there is another paradigm. One that respects as inviolable the rights of individuals to make their own decisions over their own lives and their interactions with others. Both history and theory have demonstrated time and time again that this is not just the best, but really the only way for decisions to be made in a way that meets everyone’s (as opposed to a few people at the top of everyone else) needs and wants.

“But this is a pandemic!” The people who buy into the first paradigm will scream. “Don’t you understand??? This is a terrifying pathogen that knows no national boundaries, and no individual boundaries! This is a threat to all of us, and so we must all respond as one!”

THE PARADIGM’S COUNTERPART IN MEDICAL SCIENCE:

Not only does this flawed thinking not hold up in the realm of political economy (basic economic principles do not magically disappear during a crisis–if anything, our adherence to them is even more critical in those times). It is also not true that we need to “all respond as one” in the realm of infectious disease.

 

Read the rest here.

 

 

 

Cop Served After Arresting Mom on Playground

 

 

When police in Idaho, enforcing lockdown orders there, arrested a mom who had brought her children to play in a playground area that had been closed off, this is what happened (above.)

People are always asking me "what can we do" to combat government violation of our rights, and to create a free society. 

This. This is what we can do. Hold the individuals who enforce government tyranny responsible for their actions. This is one way to do it, and it is completely peaceful. I don't know who the guy in the hat is, but his attitude here is a model for anyone who wants to bring about a free society: Don't make enemies of the individuals who are working for an evil system, but DO hold them accountable for their actions. 

UPDATE: Well, THAT'S embarrassing. I didn't even recognize Ammon Bundy. That's him. In the hat.