Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.
This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.
So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.
This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.
Pirates Attacked Stolt Apal Oil Tanker Sailing Under UK Flag off Yemen on Sunday – Ship’s Manager (sputniknews, May 17, 2020)
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/202005171079332995-vessel-attacked-off-southern-coast-of-yemen—reports/
“According to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), the incident happened at 12:30 GMT. The organisation advised extreme caution to any vessels transiting the area.
The company Stolt Tankers, which operates chemical and parcel tankers, said Sunday that one of its vessels had been attacked by pirates off Yemen’s coast. The vessel Stolt Apal, sailing under a UK flag, was approached by two speedboats.
“After multiple warning shots were fired by the armed guard team aboard Stolt Apal, the skiffs opened fire on the ship. The armed guard team returned fire, disabling one skiff and ending the pursuit”, Stolt Tankers said.
The company said that the attack resulted in a minor damage to the bridge area from the bullets, with no casualties or injuries among crew members. The ship continued its voyage after the incident.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said earlier on Sunday that a vessel came under attack in the Gulf of Aden without providing further details.
“Vessels transiting the area are advised to exercise extreme caution”, UKMTO said in a warning notice on its website. The attack happened at 1230 GMT, it said.
According to the coordinates given by the agency, the incident occurred offshore of Yemen’s port of Mukalla.
The UKMTO provided no further details regarding the incident.
According to maritime security firm Dryad Global, this was the ninth reported incident in the Gulf of Aden this year.
Last Sunday, at least 19 people were killed and 15 more injured after the Iranian Navy frigate Jamaran accidentally struck the Konarak general-purpose vessel during live-fire exercises near the Gulf of Oman.”
Tara is getting worse, she has major tightness in her chest, a raw throat blood oxy level 82 with a 102.2 temp. She is feeling very hot (the fever) and just fell and dinged up her elbow. She also hs a sore throat making it painful to eat, drink or talk and is getting some congestion in her lungs and has some coughing. She wakes up feeling good and about 2 o”clock PM she starts with the bad symptoms.
She is scared and is well past my knowledge on what to do.
She talked to the hospital and they want her to go in tomorrow morining for X-Rays and some tests to see if they need to change her meds.
She is very scared and is asking if any of you can give her any advice and what to do and what to expect.
I would appreciate it if all of the believers would pray for her.
The fear certainly makes it all worse for sure. Compounds it actually.
Will her doctor try her on Hydroxychloroquine?
They are using that only when they are putting the people on a ventilator.
82 !!
Should hit the hospital tonight.
She shouldn’t lie down on her back, roll over to face down. Sit upright in a chair, if possible.
Drink lots & lots of water, fluids: “Drink until you pee, keep it up.”
Thank you very much I will pass this one and pray they give her Hydroxychloroquine, but the Dr told here that that was used only when the patient is on a ventilator.
She is doing all of the above, I agree about the Hospital but they are not putting Wuhan Flu suffers in the Hospital until they need ventilators. Same with the Hydrozy, I think they are playing politics with peoples lives but can’t prove it and couldn’t do anything if I could prove it.
It’s obscene.
refuah shelama – My prayers are with you.
……..
Two Coasts. One Virus. How New York Suffered Nearly 10 Times the Number of Deaths as California
https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california
Research Rings Alarm on Iran, Hezbollah ‘Sleeper Networks’ in West
https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2288251/research-rings-alarm-iran-hezbollah-sleeper-networks-west
“There is growing number of indicators and warning signs that Iran and Hezbollah have sought to create a sleeper network in the US and Western Europe, which could be activated to launch attacks as part of a retaliatory attack.
Those indicators were revealed in a research published by Ioan Pop and Mitchell Silber in an article entitled “Iran and Hezbollah’s Pre-Operational Modus Operandi in the West.”
The two writers said tensions between the United States and Iran/Hezbollah spiked in January 2020 when US strikes killed Qassem Soleimani the leader of Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force.
“There is mounting evidence that in recent years, Iran and Hezbollah have sought to create a sleeper network in the US and Western Europe, which could be activated to launch attacks as part of a retaliatory attack,” the article said.
Their paper assesses Iran and Hezbollah pre-operational modus operandi in the West derived from court documents and open source reporting of the recent arrest of Hezbollah and Iranian agents in the US and abroad. It also sheds light on the recruitment, training, and placement of these agents and the intricacies of their past operations.
The authors’ analysis is based on Iran and Hezbollah’s past operations, foiled plots, the recent US arrests of Hezbollah operatives, and their personal experience leading Iran and Hezbollah intelligence investigations for NYPD.
They have conducted seven principles that underpin the preoperational modus operandi of Iran and Hezbollah: The intelligence gathering and surveillance activities, the plausible diplomatic, business, education and other covers to conceal operational activities, the infiltration of Iranian dissident groups, the logistical planning for possible future attacks, the preparing “human target packages” to enable assassinating dissidents and adversaries, the counter-intelligence tradecraft and operational security, and the recruiting operatives with dual nationalities and Western passports from the Shiite diaspora.
Modus Operandi 1: Intelligence Gathering and Surveillance Activities
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Iran and Hezbollah’s modus operandi for operational planning in the West has been the sustained commitment to undertaking precise intelligence gathering and surveillance activities on targets that could support long term attack planning.
In some cases, Iranians have conducted intelligence-gathering activities and in other cases it has been Lebanese expatriates acting on behalf of Hezbollah, who have burrowed into diaspora communities overseas to disguise their efforts.
New York City has witnessed intelligence-gathering activities by both Iranians and Hezbollah operatives that demonstrate methodology and possible targets. In the case of Iran, between 2002 and 2010, the NYPD and federal authorities detected at least six events involving Iranian diplomatic personnel that these authors (who were then serving in the police department) struggled to categorize as anything other than hostile reconnaissance of New York City.
Iranian intelligence gathering and surveillance activities have extended beyond New York City. In November 2019, two men—Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, a dual US-Iranian citizen and Majid Ghorbani, an Iranian citizen residing in California—pleaded guilty to acting as illegal agents of the government of Iran on charges stemming from monitoring two Jewish facilities in Chicago and as well as American members of an exiled Iranian opposition group, Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MeK), an Iranian dissident group that seeks regime change in Iran.
According to the criminal complaint, both men were accused of “acting on behalf of the Iranian government to gather information that could be used to identify and locate individuals and facilities.”
On December 3, 2019, Ali Kourani was sentenced to 40 years in prison for “covert terrorist activities on behalf of Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization.” Samer El Debek’s case is still pending in courts.
Modus Operandi 2: Plausible Diplomatic, Business, Cultural and Other Covers to Conceal Operational Activities
During a 2008 visit by an NYPD Intelligence Division team (including one of the authors) to Buenos Aires, Argentinian intelligence officials outlined how Hezbollah, in cooperation with various elements within the Iranian intelligence, was responsible for two separate terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires, the 1992 Israeli Embassy and the 1994 AMIA bombing. In both cases Iran leveraged a highly complex local intelligence network developed since the mid-1980s, which was run from Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires and its Cultural Bureau. While the authors were told by Argentine intelligence officials that the decision to attack Argentina in 1994 was made at the highest levels of Iran’s governmental structure, the Iranians used diplomatic cover, business cover and NGO/religious cover to mask their network on the ground in South America.
Similar to the organizations hiding under different types of cover in Buenos Aires, in New York City, Iran’s presence included the Alavi Foundation, a nonprofit ostensibly devoted to charity works and promoting Persian and Islamic culture. In December 2009, Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, described Alavi as having “effectively been a front for the government of Iran…..”
“…Modus Operandi 3: Infiltration of Iranian Dissident Groups
Iranian security agencies use a range of tactics to safeguard the regime, including infiltrating opposition groups. These agencies have “identified and eradicated opponents and defectors inside and outside of the country”. In the 1990s, elements within the Iranian Intelligence focused on targeting the opposition outside Iran and are believed to have been responsible for assassinating various dissidents, including Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under the Shah. In August 1991, Bakhtiar was stabbed and strangled to death at his home in France by three Iranian agents.
Iranian intelligence has a history of infiltrating opposition groups such as the MeK, which in 2002 disclosed publicly that Iran has two covert nuclear facilities located in Natanz and Arak.
Modus Operandi 4: Logistical Planning for Possible Future Attacks
Iran/Hezbollah’s modus operandi is often characterized by advanced logistical planning for potential future attacks. In some recent cases, this preparation has focused on the secret accumulation and storage of explosive material for potential forthcoming attacks. According to Israeli intelligence sources, as reported in the Israeli press, the effort by Hezbollah’s Unit 91099 involves “long-term planning for immense, game-changing terror attacks.”
Hezbollah repeatedly and across different continents conducted this advanced logistical planning by establishing large stockpiles of harmless-looking “First Aid” ice packs filled with ammonium nitrate. This characteristic Hezbollah tradecraft for prepositioning explosives around the world has been evidenced by discoveries in Thailand, Cyprus, and the UK.
The first time Hezbollah’s stockpiling of ammonium nitrate in First Aid ice packs was detected was in Thailand in 2012 and were linked to the efforts of previously mentioned Unit 910 member, Samer el Debek.
Modus Operandi 5: Preparing “Human Target Packages” to Enable Assassinating Dissidents and Adversaries
“Target packages” are a file of information that “enable an intelligence or military unit to find, fix, track and neutralize a threat. A human target package includes information collected about an individual, such as the official position of the individual; an analysis of personal vulnerabilities or other opportunities to exploit the individual and confirmation of the identity and location of the individual.” A target package could include “capture/kill operations”. There is strong evidence that assembling human target packages has been a consistent element of Iran/Hezbollah’s modus operandi in the West with examples in the Netherlands, France, Denmark, New York City, and Washington DC.
For example, in Amsterdam, Iranian anti-regime dissident, Ahmad Mola Nissi, was likely the victim of an Iran/Hezbollah liquidation operation in late 2017, when he was gunned down in front of his apartment. As the leader of the ASMLA, a movement that promotes the rights of the Ahwazi, an Arab people who feel oppressed in the oil-rich Iranian region of Khuzestan, he had sought refuge in the Netherlands since 2005. In the month leading up to his attack, Nissi had gone to the police expressing concerns about his safety. US Secretary of State Pompeo appeared to refer to the alleged assassination in May 2018, when in a major statement he noted, “today, the Iranian Quds Force conducts covert assassination operations in the heart of Europe.”
Modus Operandi 6: Counter-Intelligence Tradecraft and Operational Security
Another hallmark of Iranian/Hezbollah tradecraft is employing counter-surveillance tradecraft and sophisticated operational security. A variety of modalities of this tradecraft has been utilized and observed in the United States.
One example was the Doostdar case. The information outlined in the paragraphs below comes from details publicly released by the Justice Department. “From approximately July 25 through July 30, 2017, Doostdar was in Costa Mesa, California, where he met several times with Ghorbani. Doostdar employed intelligence tradecraft and ran surveillance detection routes before, during, and after his meetings with Ghorbani.”Doostdar also utilized tradecraft like “changing clothes before each meeting, visiting meeting locations prior to the actual meeting, and arriving and departing from each meeting in a circuitous manner.” FBI surveillance teams also noted that “Doostdar walked slowly and was constantly looking around his surroundings” and looked at “the reflection of store windows as he passed by, consistent with checking for surveillance.” Consequently, the FBI assessed that Doostdar engaged in “intelligence tradecraft and counter-surveillance measures” that were “consistent with having received training from an Iranian intelligence service.”
Modus Operandi 7: Recruiting Operatives with Dual Nationalities and Western Passports
Iran and Hezbollah have a history of recruiting operatives globally from within Shiite diasporas, preferably those who have Western passports. A representative example of this is Mansour Arbabsiar, a naturalized US citizen of Iranian descent, who is October 2011 was arrested and charged with plotting to kill Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. According to the court documents, Arbabsiar claimed he had been recruited by a cousin in Iran who was a high-ranking member of IRGC’s Quds Force.
Similarly, the recent arrests of the reported Hezbollah Unit 910 operatives, Ali Kourani, Samer el-Debek, and Alexei Saab in the US, reinforce the idea that Hezbollah focuses its external recruitment on individuals residing in the West, with dual nationalities and access to Western passports.
For example, according to court documents, Kourani was recruited mainly because his residence in the United States. Similarly, Samer el-Debek, arrested for his links to Hezbollah, claims he was recruited because as a US naturalized citizen, he was in possession of a US passport.
Although Alexei Saab was recruited in Lebanon before he spent time in the US, within five years of his lawful entrance, he applied for naturalized citizenship in the US. Subsequently, according to court documents, Saab entered into a fraudulent marriage in order to gain US citizenship.”
Watch out for John Kerry’s son-in-law.
Physical proximity and access to intelligence on high-value targets in the USA.
WHO: Over 113,000 suspected cholera cases in Yemen this year
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200517-who-over-113000-suspected-cholera-cases-in-yemen-this-year/
“There has been approximately 113,000 suspected cases of cholera in war-torn Yemen since January, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), Anadolu reports.
A total of 56 cases were confirmed by laboratory-research and 29 deaths were registered from cholera.
The WHO supported 138 centres in the fight against diarrhea and 58 centres for thirst treatment, it said.
It pointed out that diarrhea and thirst are among the most obvious symptoms of cholera.
Yemen has been beset by violence and chaos since 2014, when Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital of Sana’a. The crisis escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led military coalition launched a devastating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains.
Since then, tens of thousands of Yemenis, including civilians, are believed to have been killed in the conflict, while another 14 million are at risk of starvation, according to the UN.”
European embassies raise LGBTQ flag in Iraqi capital to mark International Day Against Homophobia
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/5/17/eu-embassies-raise-lgbtq-flag-in-iraqi-capital
“The colourful LGBTQ flag was raised in Baghdad on Sunday to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, prompting both praise and backlash online.
The move was spearheaded by the Canadian and British embassies in the Iraqi capital, along with the European Union Delegation.
“Together with @CanadainIraq and @UKinIraq, today in Baghdad we join EU Delegations worldwide in raising the rainbow flag to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and highlight the rights of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender people”, the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Iraq said in a tweet on Sunday, which was also translated into Arabic.
The tweet showed the flag flutter alongside the the flags of the EU, Canada and Iraq in Baghdad, prompting a barrage of tweets both in support and opposition to the historic move…”
Second Somali governor killed in Al-Shabaab suicide blast in just weeks
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/5/17/somali-governor-killed-in-al-shabaab-suicide-blast
“A Somali governor and three bodyguards were killed in a suicide attack claimed by the Al-Shabaab jihadist group in the regional capital of Galkayo on Sunday, a security official said.
The attacker rammed a scooter taxi into a car carrying Ahmed Muse Nur, the governor of the north-central Mudug province, and his security detail before detonating an explosive device, official Muse Ahmed told AFP.
A witness named Bile Mohamed described the attack in a phone call with AFP, saying: “Everyone in the vehicle including the governor and his driver died, there was smoke and fire all everywhere.”
Muse Ahmed confirmed the toll of four and added: “There are other casualties but the details are still being investigated.”
Al-Shabaab, an Islamist militant group waging a deadly insurgency in Somalia, claimed responsibility for that attack as well…”
Moroccan Street Signs Carrying Names of Gulf Salafists Stir Controversy
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2020/05/302911/moroccan-street-signs-carrying-names-of-gulf-salafists-stir-controversy/
“Controversy has emerged after activists and inhabitants of the city of Temara, a suburb of Rabat, brought attention to some street signs carrying the name of Wahhabi Salafists from Gulf countries.
The names include Khaled Saoud Lahlibi, a Saudi Salafist whose name is linked to radicalism, activists argued on social media.
The street signs are not new, but Moroccans reacted strongly after photos of the signs circulated on social media.
President of the Modernity and Democracy Forum Abdellah Eid Nizar slammed Temara authorities for choosing the Salafists’ names instead of using the names of Moroccans who bring pride to the country.”
Turkey criticizes EU position on disputes in eastern Mediterranean
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-criticizes-eu-position-on-disputes-in-eastern-mediterranean-154829
“The Turkish Foreign Ministry has criticized a joint statement by EU foreign ministers on the issue of disputes in the eastern Mediterranean and called on the EU to consider international law as well as the legitimate rights and interests of Turkey.
“The statement by Foreign Ministers of the European Union on the disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean constitutes the latest exhibition of a repetitive and a barren discourse that serves no purpose,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy said in a written statement on May 16.
This attitude remains indifferent to Turkey’s genuine initiatives, said the spokesperson, noting that it is a by-product of “unjust and unlawful claims of Greece and the Greek Cypriot Administration [GCA] and does not stand any chance of contributing to regional peace and stability.”
“It is noteworthy that the solidarity, which the European Union has failed to demonstrate in the fight against COVID-19, is now rendered unconditionally when it is the Greek Cypriots in question,” Aksoy said.
What the EU needs to do, instead of acting “blindly as the mouthpiece of Greece and the GCA under a pretext of solidarity,” is to proceed with common sense while taking international law into consideration as well as the legitimate rights and interests of Turkey and Turkish Cyprus, he stated.
“We reiterate, as usual, our readiness for dialogue on an equitable basis,” said the statement.
Last week, EU foreign ministers held a videoconference meeting and published a declaration that urged Turkey to “respect EU countries’ maritime jurisdiction and sovereignty in territorial waters.”
Following the latest decision by Turkey to dispatch a drilling ship on a new drilling operation within Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone, the EU recalled and reaffirmed its position as clearly defined by previous relevant Council and European Council conclusions, notably those of June 2019 and October 2019 on Turkey’s continued “illegal” activities in the eastern Mediterranean, said the EU ministers.
“In line with previous Council Conclusions, the EU stands in full solidarity with Cyprus and reiterates that concrete steps towards creating an environment conducive to dialogue are needed. Issues related to delimitation of exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf should be addressed through dialogue and negotiation in good faith, in full respect of international law and in pursuit of the principle of good neighborly relations. In this respect, we welcome once again the invitation by the Government of Cyprus to Turkey to negotiate in good faith the maritime delimitation between their relevant coasts,” said the statement.
Meanwhile, the premier of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) on May 16 slammed the EU declaration urging Turkey to “respect EU countries’ maritime jurisdiction and sovereignty in territorial waters.”
“It is a violation of law and lack of vision that the EU still adopts a pro-Greek Cyprus attitude and ignore the rights of Turkish Cypriot and Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean,” said Prime Minister Ersin Tatar.
He stressed that Turkish Cyprus and Turkey use their international rights to explore hydrocarbon in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is contrary to claims by the EU and Greek Cyprus.”
France reports 36 percent rise in victims of anti-LGBT attacks, offences
https://www.france24.com/en/20200517-france-reports-rise-in-homophobic-crimes-by-more-than-a-third
“Homophobic attacks and insults in France rose by 36 percent last year, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry on Saturday, prompting the government to talk of an “anchoring” of homophobia in the country…”
A Silver Lining, by Robert Gore
Who will fight for your rights?
…we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand, Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, Appendix, “The Nature of Government,” 1967
We are no longer fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion, we’ve arrived. It is the stage of which every would-be dictator dreams, where his whims are absolute, and everything everyone else says, does, or thinks must comport with those whims, even—impossible though it would be—when they are contradictory.
Science is anti-whim. Nature, as Francis Bacon observed, to be commanded must be obeyed. Nothing illustrates the ultimate inversion of the official coronavirus response better than its leaders’ assault on science in the name of their “science.”
Doctors have been discouraged or prohibited from administering hydroxychloroquine, by itself or in conjunction with other medications, vitamins, and zinc compounds, to treat Covid-19. They have observed and documented the effectiveness of such remedies—mitigation or elimination of the disease’s symptoms—but their observation and documentation are dismissed. Only the validation procedure mandated by the medical bureaucracy—the expensive and complex multistage tests required of new drugs to establish their efficacy and safety—will suffice for official permission. It’s what their “science” demands of a cheap and seemingly effective remedy that’s been on the market for years as a treatment for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and malaria.
So where were the tests and control-group studies for the pandemic models, lockdowns, social distancing, masks, flattening the curve, closing businesses, and contact tracing that have been the official coronavirus responses? Projections are hypotheses, but only one class of hypotheses was officially accepted—disaster scenarios that fed panic and paved the way for further expansion of governments’ power. The doomsday models have been discredited; cases and deaths have been orders of magnitude less than projected.
Countries that haven’t instituted lockdowns have fared no worse than countries that have. Andrew Cuomo, governor of hard-hit New York, recently expressed surprise that two-thirds of hospitalized coronavirus patients had been sheltering in place. As if locking people down—often families under close quarters—in apartment buildings that can’t control cockroaches would somehow protect dwellers against a microscopic, easily spread, fast replicating, and virtually infinite virus.
No science at all supports social distancing; six-feet is an arbitrary construct (i.e., whim) of some medical would-be dictator. Masks force the rebreathing of your own respiratory waste, weakening your immune system for the dubious benefit of that all-powerful totem: public health. The health you’re supposedly protecting is certainly not your own. It’s like eating your own feces or drinking your own urine for a purported public benefit.
Flattening the curve to ensure adequate hospital space for the wave of coronavirus patients that hasn’t happened has flattened the hospitals, leading to empty rooms and wards and layoffs for medical workers. Bankruptcies will follow.
Lost jobs and shuttered businesses are just collateral damage for our would-be emperors, who have waged senseless wars and inflicted grievous collateral damage on other countries for decades. Now the devastation and misery they’ve left in their wake have come home. Americans who’ve never asked themselves how it felt to be a victim of their government’s senseless wars are now victims of their government’s senseless war on a germ. After an unsustainable debt-propelled respite, the Greater Depression has resumed (it started in 2008) and will last for years. Its poverty and devastation will sicken and kill multiples of the people who will ultimately be afflicted by the coronavirus.
All this supposedly guided by “science,” yet its proponents commit the most unscientific offense—they corrupt their own data. By their own admission the tests they use give both false negatives and false positives. By their own admission they’re corrupting the death count. Doctors have been instructed to list Covid-19 as a cause of death if the deceased had any of the symptoms associated with Covid-19, even though those symptoms characterize a number of other diseases that singly or in combination kill people, especially people with compromised immune systems. Hospitals have a financial incentive to perpetuate this fraud. They receive $13,000 from Medicare for each Covid-19 patient and $39,000 for each patient put on a ventilator (Links here and here).
The coronavirus tyranny has nothing to do with science, medicine, or health, and everything to do with establishing that ultimate inversion: the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission. These past few weeks we’ve seen how our rulers attempted to discard the last fig leaf—democracy—covering their creeping, now galloping, totalitarianism and complete lack of legitimacy.
A camarilla within the nation’s intelligence services, the Department of Justice, and members of the previous administration, including Barack Obama, attempted to depose the democratically elected president of the United States. Such coups are the province of two-bit plotters in banana republics that make no pretense of observing or protecting rights, where might alone makes right. The United States has gone full banana—the stage of rule by brute force.
Democracy is tyranny of the majority, a system that inevitably destroys individual rights. For the history-challenged, individual rights were the still revolutionary concept on which the idea—although not always the reality—of the United States was established. The logical consequence of the full protection of individual rights is the freedom to live your life as you see fit, as long as you don’t abridge the rights of others. Society or any other group of people has no rights apart from the rights of the individuals that comprise it. Governments have no rights, only the duty to protect the rights of individuals to live peaceably and freely. Government must be the servant, not the master, of its citizens. (See the Ayn Rand Appendix cited above, “The Nature of Government,” for a more detailed exposition of the proper role of government.)
We’re light years from that ideal. Individuals must receive permission to, among other things, leave their homes, hold a job, assemble with other individuals, attend houses of worship, visit parks and beaches, or patronize businesses. The governor of my state, Michelle Lujan Grisham, just decreed that masks must be worn by everyone outside of their own dwellings (I wrote STOP MLG’S TYRANNY on mine). Breathing fresh air is now at the sufferance of our overlords. Civilly disobedient soul that I am, I have yet to don my mask. Don’t think sheep don’t get angry—I get murderous looks from mask-wearers.
With every decree issued since this repression began, those who advocate for their individual rights or actually exercise them by violating the decree are denounced, shamed, censored, and in some cases arrested. Anyone who disagrees by word or deed is “selfish,” unwilling to sacrifice for the common good.
What do they mean by selfish? Is it selfish to fight for your rights? Is it selfish to want to work and produce? Is it selfish to be more concerned with your own welfare and the welfare of your family and friends than with the welfare of strangers, the public, or the government that supposedly represents that public? Is your desire for freedom selfish?
There are those who will tie themselves in intellectual knots answering those questions in the negative, but nevertheless asserting that individual rights and their exercise—free expression, free inquiry, free production, and free exchange—can all be justified as conferring the greatest public good. They then wonder why they never win arguments with those pushing collectivized notions of the public good. When might makes right, the public good is whatever the collective’s masters say it is—argument over.
Fighting for one’s freedom and all that flows from it is selfish, profoundly so. If you don’t fight for that which is yours—the individual rights that are the essential condition of your existence—who’s going to do it for you? Anthony Fauci? Bill Gates? Nancy Pelosi? President Trump? Joe Biden? George Soros? Jerome Powell? Adam Schiff? Mark Zuckerberg? Eric Schmidt? Santa Claus? The Tooth Fairy? When was the last time you even heard the term “individual rights” in polite, mainstream discourse? When individual rights are mentioned at all, they’re treated as a quaint anachronism.
And what do they mean by sacrifice? They mean that instead of selfishly fighting for your rights and freedom, you are to unselfishly place them on the sacrificial altar known as the public good. You’re selfish for resisting the sacrifice of that which is rightfully yours, but those collecting what is not rightfully theirs are selfless saints. If you voluntarily board that cattle car, you’ll secure your spot in the Unselfish Hall of Fame, along with millions of others who have lost their property, happiness, freedom, and lives without selfish protest or resistance. You might even be designated a Hero of the Public Good, posthumously of course.
If you find the world’s descent into evil unfathomable, it’s time to rethink the premises that the selfless is the good and the selfish is evil. Collectivist butchers, including the ones pushing the coronavirus hoax, always demand fealty to some cause greater than one’s self. Fall for that one and you’ve already lost two important parts of yourself—your self-respect and your ability to reason.
The precautionary principle—that no risks can be assumed if someone or something somewhere might be harmed—is anti-mind and anti-life, absurdly evil on its face. That philosophical abomination now excuses wholesale violation of individual rights and deadly economic devastation based on projections, bureaucratic whim, and political expediency. The precautionary principle would, if consistency applied, bring human progress to a halt, eventually rendering the human race extinct. Nothing is as unsafe as an insistence on absolute safety.
Risk is what makes life worth living—it’s the driver of human knowledge and progress. Imagine the choices that confronted early humans as they made their first choices. If we build a fire, will it warm us and cook our meat…or consume us? If we eat oysters, will they nourish or kill us? Will the canoe we’ve built float or sink? The forward steps of both our individual and humanity’s journeys have always involved unanswered questions, hypotheses, risk, experimentation, trial and error, tragedy, and triumph. It takes no imagination at all to envision potential risks. Make fear and safety paramount and none of those steps could have or will be taken.
To believe that risks can be eliminated by arbitrary edicts is delusional; to enforce those edicts tyrannical; to comply with them suicidal. Wars are always fought and tyrannies always established in the name of somebody’s safety. The betrayal of individual conscience and surrender of individual rights to a collective for safety’s sake never produces safety, only misery, destruction, despair, terror and death. That’s a lesson we’re set to relearn as we proceed through one of those darkest periods of human history.
There is a silver lining in all this: the curtain has been lifted, we now know exactly what we confront. Present governments and their many bootlickers and minions do not recognize—much less protect or hold themselves subordinate to the protection of—individual rights. Nor should we expect that they will do so within our lifetimes. Absent their replacement via revolution or abandonment via secession, we will continue to live in a political order where they are free to do as they please while we may act only by permission.
If we want our rights, our freedom, and our lives, we’re going to have to fight for them with word and deed. It has ever been so; it will ever be so. Those who choose to fight will have one important ally: rule by brute force is the agent of its own collapse. It has always failed, it always will. Whether we have the virtue and wisdom to replace it with it’s antitheses—freedom and individual rights protected rather than destroyed by government—remains to be seen.
Stay sane.
https://straightlinelogic.com/2020/05/17/a-silver-lining-by-robert-gore-2/