Category Archives: Speech
The Religion of Statism
From the book: 'The Mission of Gd', by Joseph Boot
From chapter 4 of Boot’s book:
“The Puritan missiologist, however, is neither a retreatist pacifist nor a neo-Marxist, but believes in the necessity of civil government, qualified by the biblical conviction that the state only has abiding legitimacy where it surrenders to its limited God-ordained role as minister (diaconate) of justice in terms of God’s authority (Rom. 13:4)
[. . .]
“As soon as the state steps outside this sphere it plays God and offers every form of counterfeiting of the Word of God. [. . .] Such a state will be judged by God and once a state commands what God forbids, if Christ is truly Lord, then the Christian has to religious duty to resist. [Emphasis in the original.]
[. . .]
By moving outside its God-ordained sphere, the state thus progressively destroys localism and with it, liberty, as it asserts a messianic (saving) role for itself in the centralized politics of power that exists to serve itself. This is done by attaching to itself the prerogatives of God. It is fascinating to observe in this regard that the theological categories of God’s word are inescapable to all people, and if denied to God are typically transferred to the individual (anarchism) or the state (totalitarianism). When examined through theological lenses, statism involves a pretending to deity by offering everything from usurped sovereignty and law (in terms of human autonomy and positivistic law-making), to providence (cradle-to-grave security through state welfarism), predestination (by social science and planning), incarnation (by the implementing of man’s ‘word’ and idea), atonement (via political reparations, payments, and the politics of guilt), salvation (through a growing world order) and judgement (by threatened environmental and social catastrophe for disobedience) and thus a counterfeit kingdom – the dream of Babel.
This is more than a free speech crisis
It’s a humanity crisis, says Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi, a journalist who has been investigating how the FBI and other US authorities influenced Twitter during the pandemic to uphold a certain “narrative”, spoke recently to a Free Speech gathering in London. Below is an excerpt of what he said. The full text is here.
[. . .]
But after looking at thousands of emails and Slack chats, I first started to get a headache, then became confused. I realized the old-school Enlightenment-era protections I grew up revering were designed to counter authoritarianism as people understood the concept hundreds of years ago, back in the days of tri-cornered hats and streets lined with horse manure.
What Michael and I were looking at was something new, an Internet-age approach to political control that uses brute digital force to alter reality itself. We certainly saw plenty of examples of censorship and de-platforming and government collaboration in those efforts. However, it’s clear that the idea behind the sweeping system of digital surveillance combined with thousands or even millions of subtle rewards and punishments built into the online experience, is to condition people to censor themselves.
[. . .]
But it goes deeper. Michael and I found correspondence in Twitter about something called the Virality Project, which was a cross-platform, information-sharing program led by Stanford University through which companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook shared information about Covid-19.
They compared notes on how to censor or deamplify certain content. The ostensible mission made sense, at least on the surface: it was to combat “misinformation” about the pandemic, and to encourage people to get vaccinated. When we read the communications to and from Stanford, we found shocking passages.
One suggested to Twitter that it should consider as “standard misinformation on your platform… stories of true vaccine side effects… true posts which could fuel hesitancy” as well as “worrisome jokes” or posts about things like “natural immunity” or “vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway.”
This is straight out of Orwell. Instead of having “ambiguities” and “shades of meaning” on Covid-19, they reduced everything to a binary: vax and anti-vax.
They eliminated ambiguities by looking into the minds of users. In the Virality Project if a person told a true story about someone developing myocarditis after getting vaccinated, even if that person was just telling a story – even if they weren’t saying, “The shot caused the myocarditis” – the Virality Project just saw a post that may “promote hesitancy.”
So, this content was true, but politically categorized as anti-vax, and therefore misinformation – untrue.
[. . .]
“This continual process of seeding doubt and uncertainty in authoritative voices,” wrote Graphika, in a report sent to Twitter, “leads to a society that finds it too challenging to identify what’s true or false.”
It was the same with someone who shared true research about the efficacy of natural immunity or suggested that the virus came from a lab. It all might be factual, but it was politically inconvenient, something they called “malinformation.” In the end, out of all of these possible beliefs, they derived a 1984 binary: good and ungood.
They also applied the binary to people.
This was new. Old-school speech law punished speech, not the speaker. As a reporter I was trained that if I commit libel, if I wrote something defamatory that caused provable injury to someone, I would have to retract the error, admit it, apologize, and pay remuneration. All fair! But the court case wouldn’t target me as a person. It wouldn’t assume that because I was wrong about X, I would also be wrong about Y, and Z.
[. . .]
One last note. As Michael and I found out recently with regard to the viral origin story, things deemed politically good often turn out to be untrue, and things deemed ungood turn out to be true.
I can recite a list if need be, but many news stories authorities were absolutely sure about yesterday later proved totally incorrect. This is another characteristic Orwell predicted: doublethink.
He defined doublethink as “the act of holding, simultaneously, two opposite, individually exclusive ideas or opinions and believing in both simultaneously and absolutely.”
Not long ago we were told in no uncertain terms the Russians blew up their own Nord Stream pipeline, that they were the only suspect. Today the U.S. government is telling us it has known since last June that Ukrainian forces planned it, with the approval of the highest military officials. But we’re not expected to say anything. We’re expected to forget.
What happens to a society that doesn’t square its mental books when it comes to facts, truth, errors, propaganda and so on? There are only a few options. Some people will do what some of us in this room have done: grow frustrated and angry, mostly in private. Others have tried to protest by frantically cataloging the past.
Most however do what’s easiest for mental survival. They learn to forget. This means living in the present only. Whatever we’re freaking out about today, let’s all do it together. Then when things change tomorrow, let’s not pause to think about the change, let’s just freak out about that new thing. The facts are dead! Long live the new facts!
We’re building a global mass culture that sees everything in black and white, fears difference, and abhors memory. It’s why people can’t read books anymore and why, when they see people like Russell who don’t fit into obvious categories, they don’t know what to do except point and shriek, like extras in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
We have been complaining about censorship, and it’s important to do that. But they are taking aim at people in a way that will make censorship unnecessary, by building communities of human beings with no memory and monochrome perception. This is more than a speech crisis. It’s a humanity crisis. I hope we’re not too late to fix it.
Ivermectin Could Have Saved Millions of Lives, Why Was It Suppressed?
"This mass experimentation can legally be interpreted under the Nuremberg Code as a genocidal attack on humanity."
Article by Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null.
Excerpts:
In 2004, the US Congress passed an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act known as Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). This piece of legislature legalized an anti-regulatory pathway to allow experimental medical interventions to be expedited without proper safety evaluation in the event of bioterrorist threats and national health emergencies such as pandemics. At the time, passage of the EUA amendment made sense because it was partially in response to the 2001 anthrax attacks and the US’s entry into an age of international terrorism. However, the amendment raises some serious considerations. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, EUAs had only been authorized on four occasions: the 2005 avian H5N1 and 2009 H1N1 swine flu, the 2014 Ebola and the 2016 Zikra viruses.
Each of these pathogen scares proved to be false alarms that posed no threat of any pandemic proportions to Americans. The fifth time EUAs were invoked was in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, which seemed far more plausible than previous EUAs.
Before the government can authorize an EUA to deploy an experimental diagnostic product, drug or vaccine, certain requirements must be fulfilled.
First, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must have sufficient proof that the nation is being confronted with a serious life-threatening health emergency.
Second, the drug(s) and/or vaccine(s) under consideration must have sufficient scientific evidence to suggest they will likely be effective against the medical threat. Despite being insufficient, the evidence must at least include preclinical and observational data showing the product—diagnostic test, drug and vaccine—targets the organism, disease or condition.
Third, although the drug or vaccine does not undergo a rigorous evaluation by the FDA, it must at least show that its potential and known benefits outweigh its potential and known risks. In addition, the product must be manufactured in complete accordance with standard quality control and safety assurances.
However, when we look back at the government’s debacles during the Covid-19 pandemic, two other EUA requirements should be spotlighted. On the one hand, an EUA cannot be authorized for any product or intervention if there is an FDA approved alternative product already available, unless the experimental product clearly shows to have a significant advantage. Moreover, and perhaps more important, EUAs demand informed consent. Every individual who receives the drug or vaccine must be thoroughly informed about its experimental status and its potential risks and benefits. Recipients must also be properly informed about the alternatives to the experimental product and nobody should be forced to take it.
One final EUA requirement is that there must be robust safety monitoring and reporting of adverse events, injuries and deaths potentially due to the drug or vaccine. This is the responsibility not only of the private pharmaceutical manufacturers but also the FDA, physicians, hospitals, clinics and other healthcare professionals.
Obviously there are important cautions to be considered after reviewing the EUA requirements and the dangerous implications if they are not properly followed or at worse abused. Foremost are the inherent heath risks of any rapid response of experimental medical interventions, especially novel drugs and vaccines.
As we observed during the FDA approval process and roll out of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA Covid-19 jabs and J&J’s adenovirus vaccine, no long-term human trials were conducted to even estimate a reliable baseline of their relative efficacy and safety.
But perhaps equally important, the public should only place their trust in these EUA-approved experimental drugs and vaccines if their evaluation by federal health authorities is conducted in a manner that is completely transparent and takes every potential ethical challenge into consideration. However these cautions were categorically ignored and transgressed in every conceivable way. Moreover, conflicts of interests plagued the entire EUA review process.
Most egregious was that Anthony Fauci at the NIAID and other federal officials had full knowledge that other FDA-approved drugs existed that could effectively treat Covid-19 infections. The antiparasitic and antiviral drug Ivermectin best stands out.
Ivermectin was first introduced to the market in the early 1980s as an anti-parasitic drug for veterinary infections. However, its effectiveness was observed to be so remarkable and multifaceted that researchers started to investigate its potential for treating human diseases. In 1987, the FDA approved ivermectin for treating two parasitic diseases, river blindness and stronglyoidiasis, in humans.
Since then an enormous body of medical research has grown showing ivermectin’s effectiveness for treating other diseases. Its broad range antiviral properties has shown efficacy against many RNA viruses such avian influenza, zika, dengue, HIV, West Nile, yellow fever, chikungunya and earlier severe respiratory coronaviruses. It has also been found effective against DNA viruses such as herpes, polyomavirus, circovirus-2 and others. The drug is capable of modulating a host immune response during viral infections and reduces pro-inflammatory cytokines that contribute to viral tissue damage.
Unsurprisingly, its discovers Drs. William Campbell and Satoshi Omura were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Ivermectin was not a drug simply hidden away in a back closet; rather it has been prescribed to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Given its decades’ long record of in vitro efficacy, it should have been self-evident for Fauci, the CDC and the WHO to rapidly conduct in vivo trials to bring ivermectin into becoming a first line of defense for early stage Covid-19 infections and for use as a safe prophylaxis. For example, if funding were devoted for the rapid development of a micro-based pulmonary delivery system, mortality rates would have been miniscule and the pandemic would have been greatly lessened. Repurposing ivermectin could have been achieved very quickly at a minor expense.
[. . .]
Early in the pandemic, physicians in other nations where treatment was less restricted, such as Spain and Italy, were sharing data with American physicians about treatments they found were effective against the SARS-2 virus.
In addition, there was a large corpus of medical research indicating that older drugs with antiviral properties could be repurposed. Doctors who started to prescribe drugs such as ivermectin and HCQ, along with Vitamin D and zinc supplementation, observed remarkable results. Unlike the dismal recovery and high mortality rates reported in hospitals and large clinics that relied upon strict isolation, quarantine, and ventilator interventions, this small fringe group of physicians reported very few deaths among their patient loads. Even those deaths reported were more often than not compounded by patients’ comorbidities, poor medical facilities and other anomalies.
Very early into the pandemic, medical papers were showing that ivermectin was a highly effective drug to treat SARS-2 infections. In April 2020, less than a month after the WHO declared Covid-19 as a global pandemic, Australian researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute of Infection and Immunity had published their paper “The FDA- approved drug ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 virus in vitro.” Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Australia had also published an early study that ivermectin destroyed SARS-2 infected cell cultures by 99.8 percent within 48 hours. But no government health official paid any attention.
[. . .]
Although the EUA amendment provides some protections to authorized drug and vaccine manufacturers, it was the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP) in 2005 that expanded liability protections. In addition to protecting private corporations, PREP also shields company executives and employees from claims of personal injury or death resulting from the administration of authorized countermeasures. The only exceptions for liability are if the company or its executive offices are proven to have engaged in intentional and/or criminal misconduct with conscious disregard for the rights and safety of those taking their drugs and vaccines.
During the pandemic, the FDA issued widespread EUAs with liability immunity for the PCR diagnostic kits for SARS-2, the mRNA vaccines and anti-Covid-19 drugs such as Remdesivir, molnupiravir and Paxlovid. Even the PCR test failed to go through a robust evaluation to determine whether it could accurately predict a SARS-2 infection. Curiously, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services invoked the PREP Act on February 4, 2020 giving liability protections; this was over a month before the pandemic was officially announced, which raises serious questions about prior-planning before the viral outbreak in Wuhan, China.
From the pandemic’s outset, Fauci embarked on the media circuit to promise Americans that federal health agencies were doing everything within their means to get a vaccine on the market because there was no available drug to clear SARS-2 virus infections. As we have seen with respect to ivermectin alone, this was patently false. Rather the government placed an overriding emphasis on vaccination with a near total disregard for implementing very simple preventative measures to inhibit infections from progressing. Once mass vaccinations were underway, we were promised that the SARS-2 virus would be defeated and life would return to normal. In retrospect, we can look back and state with a degree of certainty that American health authorities and these products’ corporate manufacturers may have violated almost every EUA requirement. Everything that went wrong with the PCR kits, the experimental mRNA vaccines and novel drugs could have been avoided if the government had diligently repurposed effective and safe measures as pandemic countermeasures. Very likely, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved.
Shortly after the pandemic was formally announced, and with no promising treatment in sight, the FDA recommended HCQ but then quickly reversed its decision in June after Fauci publicly announced the future arrival of Gilead’s novel drug Remdesivir. The FDA’s approval of Remdesivir baffled many scientists, according to the journal Science, who were keeping a close watch on the drug’s clinical reports about a “disproportionally high number of reports of liver and kidney problems”
Similarly the FDA issued a warning statement against the use of ivermectin. Although Merck was ivermectin’s manufacturer, the company discredited its own product. Shortly after ridiculing its drug, the Alliance for Natural Health reported, “Merck announced positive results from a clinical trial on a new drug called molnupiravir in eliminating the virus in infected patients.” Molnupiravir has a poor efficacy rate across the board including viral clearance, recovery, and hospitalizations/death (68 percent). One trial, funded by Merck, concluded the drug had no clinical benefit. More worrisome, molnupiravir was found to potentially contribute to lethal mutations in RNA viruses. The drug also has life-threatening adverse effects including mutagenic risks to human DNA and mitochondria, carcinogenic activity and embryonic death.
And still the FDA considers these novel patented drugs to be superior to ivermectin. Favoring a vaccine regime and government-controlled surveillance measures to track every American’s movements, American health officials blatantly neglected their own pandemic policies’ severe health consequences. Ineffective lockdowns, masks, social isolation, unsound critical care interventions such as relying upon ventilators, and the sole EUA approvals of the costly and insufficiently effective drugs brought about nightmares for tens of millions of adults and children. Again, the FDA worked in concert with the pharmaceutical industry to increase profit and revenues rather than improve human health and assure patient safety. This was all undertaken under Fauci’s watch and the heads of the US health agencies in direct violation of the EUA requirements to only authorize drugs and medical interventions when no other safe and effective alternative is available. As we have seen, alternatives were available and these were well known throughout the government health agencies. Instead of acting upon them and awarding EUAs to HCQ, ivermectin and other potential off-patent drugs, the government preferred to submit to their pharmaceutical masters’ demands and the financial mills that feed the CDC’s and FDA’s coffers.
The 3-year history of the pandemic highlights a sharp distinction between dependable medical research and pseudoscientific fraud.
We witnessed the CDC adopting a common Soviet era practice to redefine the very definition of a vaccine and the parameters of vaccine efficacy in order to fit their economic and ideological agendas.
This explains Washington’s frequent uninformed decisions and its aggressive public relations endeavors to silence medical opponents. According to cardiologist Dr. Michael Goodkin’s private investigations, several of the most cited studies discrediting ivermectin’s antiviral benefits were funded by the NIH and Bill Gates and intentionally manipulated in order to produce “fake” results. These studies were widely distributed to the AMA, American College of Physicians and across mainstream media to author “hit pieces” to demonize ivermectin. The government’s belligerent and reactive diatribes, brazenly or casually advocating for censorship, were direct violations of scientific and medical integrity and contributed nothing towards developing constructive policies for handling a pandemic with a minimal cost to life. The consequence has been a less informed and grossly naïve public, which was gaslighted into believing lies.
Now that ivermectin, and to a lesser extent HCQ, have been recognized by more and more physicians as part of a first line defense to prevent and treat SARS-2 infections, we can realize that the FDA’s EUAs for the Covid-19 vaccines and novel experimental drugs were in fact an attack on the amendments and PREP directives.
Neither the vaccines nor drugs warranted emergency authorization because effective and safe alternatives were readily available. No doubt a Congressional investigation would uncover criminal misconduct, and this misconduct and conscious fraud have contributed to numerous unnecessary medically-induced injuries and deaths. Moreover, these violations of the PREP Act may have the potential to lead directly into medical crimes against humanity as outlined in the Nuremberg Code.
Between 1946 and 1947, Nazi medical doctors were tried in Nuremberg, Germany. Known as the “Doctors’ Trial”, the court found 16 of 23 doctors guilty of human experimentation that involved conducting experiments with lethal drugs and substances, sterilization, forced euthanasia and other heinous acts. These medical atrocities were conducted on some of the most vulnerable populations.
Seven Nazi doctors were executed by hanging. What became known as the Nuremberg Code after the tribunal is not a legally binding document, however it has held significant ethical and historical importance for medical research and human experimentation. The Code is regarded as a milestone in the development of international criminal law. It has informed international and domestic guidelines and regulations on human subjects, and many countries have implemented legal and ethical frameworks inspired by the Code to regulate their medical research and protect their citizens from medical abuse.
Despite serving as the baseline for modern medical ethics, it is unfortunate that no binding international treaty or declaration has been specifically initiated that directly abides by all of Nuremberg’s obligations. Nor has the Nuremberg Code been officially adopted in its entirety as law by any nation or major medical association.
On the other hand, other international treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki (which is not legally binding), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research on Human Subjects incorporate some of Nuremberg’s main principles that aim to protect people from unethical and forced medical research.
Although the US signed the ICCPR as an intentional party, the US Senate never ratified it. The ICCPR’s Article 7 clearly states, “No one shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” which can legally be interpreted to include forced medical experimentation implied as cruel, inhuman treatment. Other ICCPR articles, 6 and 17, are also applicable to medical experimentation to ensure ethical conduct, obtaining proper informed consent and the right to life and privacy. For a moment, consider the numerous senior citizens in nursing homes and hospitals who were simply administered experimental Covid-19 vaccines without full knowledge about what they were receiving. And now how many children are being coerced by the pseudoscience of health officials’ lies to be vaccinated without any knowledge of these mRNA products’ risk-benefit ratio?
International organizations, such as the United Nations, have the moral obligation to investigate violations to human rights outlined in the Nuremberg Code. Now that it has been convincingly ascertained that Pfizer and Moderna intentionally concealed their mRNA vaccine trials’ safety and efficacy data and the government repeatedly lied to the American public, it is time to hold these parties to account. Forced and mandated Covid-19 vaccination violates the Code’s demand for “voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential” and the ICCPR’s prohibition that “no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.” Mandates to take dangerous experimental vaccines have ruined families, and livelihoods.
The US is also a signatory to the Helsinki Declaration, which, although not directly aligned with Nuremberg, shares much in common. The Declaration also shares some common features with the EUA amendment and PREP Act. These include voluntary informed consent—which is universally accepted, adequate risk and benefit information about medical interventions, and an emphasis on the principle of medical beneficence (promoting well-being and the Hippocratic rule of doing no harm). It also guarantees protections for vulnerable groups, especially pregnant women and children, which the US government and vaccine makers directly violated by conducting trials on these groups with full knowledge about these vaccines’ adverse events in adults. In addition, weighing the scientific evidence to assess the risk-benefit ratios between prescribing ivermectin and HCQ over Pfizer’s, Merck’s and Gilead’s novel experimental drugs conclusively favors the former. This alone directly violates the ethical medical principles noted above.
However, the failure to repurpose life-saving drugs is less criminal than the motivation behind it to make room for a new generation of genetically engineered vaccines that have never before been adequately researched in human trials for long term safety. This mass experimentation, which continues to threaten the health and well-being of millions of people, is global and can legally be interpreted under the Nuremberg Code as a genocidal attack on humanity. If the emerging data for increasing injuries and deaths due to the Covid-19 vaccines is reliable—and we believe it is—the handling of the pandemic can be regarded as the largest medical crime in human history. In time, and with shifting political allegiances and public demands to hold our leaders in government and private industry accountable, the architects of this medical war against civilization will be brought to justice.
The BBC’s position on Climate Change
Established in September 2018
Writes “carbonbrief.org”:
The move follows a ruling earlier this year by Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator, which found that BBC Radio 4’s flagship current-affairs programme Today had breached broadcasting rules by “not sufficiently challenging” Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor.
Here are the essentials of the ruling:
What’s the BBC’s position?
- Man-made climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it. The BBC accepts that the best science on the issue is the IPCC’s position, set out above.
- Be aware of ‘false balance’: As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate. Although there are those who disagree with the IPCC’s position, very few of them now go so far as to deny that climate change is happening. To achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken. However, the BBC does not exclude any shade of opinion from its output, and with appropriate challenge from a knowledgeable interviewer, there may be occasions to hear from a denier.
- There are occasions where contrarians and sceptics should be included within climate change and sustainability debates. These may include, for instance, debating the speed and intensity of what will happen in the future, or what policies government should adopt. Again, journalists need to be aware of the guest’s viewpoint and how to challenge it effectively. As with all topics, we must make clear to the audience which organisation the speaker represents, potentially how that group is funded and whether they are speaking with authority from a scientific perspective – in short, making their affiliations and previously expressed opinions clear.
Deconstructing Marianna in Conspiracyland – Introduction
“Conspiracyland” is a disinformation and propaganda campaign designed to mislead the BBC audience into accepting dictatorship
So says Ian Davis in this article.
Excerpt:
Faced with the prospect of no one bothering to pay for their propagandists, so wedded is the government to ensuring that its BBC “programming” continues that it has frozen the current license fee for two years, in the hope of enticing people to stay, while it desperately tries to figure out how it is going to fund its State media operation.
Currently the proposed government solution looks likely to be a direct tax:
Our evidence was clear that some form of public funding for the BBC remains necessary. [. . .] A universal household levy linked to council tax bills is one option which could take greater account of people’s ability to pay. A ring-fenced income tax is another.
As the effectiveness of its threats and menaces wanes, it is clearly essential, from the government’s perspective, that all choice be removed. Taxation at source has the added advantage of stealing money from people who can’t abide the BBC and wouldn’t choose to support it if you paid them.
Update: Breitbart claims there was a host of disinformation in the first instalment of this program.
Europe, Immigration, and Merkel’s Christian Values
"Multiculturalism has utterly failed"
Samuel Gregg writes in this commentary, that when Merkel said the above in 2010, she added that “the issue was not “too much Islam” but “too little Christianity.””
Gregg continues: “We have too few discussions about the Christian view of mankind,” Merkel claimed in a recent speech. She then stressed that Germany needs to reflect more upon “the values that guide us, about our Judeo-Christian tradition.” It was one way, Merkel maintained, of bringing “about cohesion in our society.”
Gregg, who at the time of writing was Research Director at the Acton Institute, comments:
Yet it is hardly a secret that the Judeo-Christian heritage sits very loosely on many European societies. We find this in a type of secular-fundamentalism—exemplified by Spain’s current Socialist government—that has become fashionable among sections of the European Left. But the ambiguity also manifests itself in the persistence of historical legends that diminish, distort, and denigrate Christianity’s contributions to European civilization.
A good example is the mythology of the so-called “Dark Ages” that permeates popular and elite discussion of European history. Most of the moral, political, and legal foundations of modern market economies, for instance, were established in Europe well before the sixteenth century. Likewise the scientific method was born in the Middle Ages. Medieval thinkers such as Albertus Magnus made crucial contributions to the development of the natural sciences. Yet despite these facts, many persist in claiming that market economies are essentially a post-Enlightenment phenomenon, or that Christianity is essentially “anti-science.”
But the problem is not only with secular opinion. Since the 1950s, many European Christians have gradually reduced their Christian faith to a vacuous humanitarianism worthy of the best EU-funded NGO. One difficulty with “liberal Christianity” (or whatever’s left of it) is that it isn’t especially interested in affirming any Christian values that go beyond sentimental platitudes about tolerance and equality which are routinely emptied of any specific Christian content. It’s goodbye Thomas Aquinas, hello John Rawls.
This makes it even more ironic that increasing numbers of secular European thinkers believe Europe can only reinvigorate its distinct identity and values through reengaging its Judeo-Christian heritage. This is certainly the conclusion of one of Germany’s most prominent intellectuals, Jürgen Habermas.
A self-described “methodological atheist,” Habermas has been insisting for some time that Europe no longer has the luxury of wallowing in historical denial. As Habermas wrote in his 2006 book, A Time of Transitions: “Christianity, and nothing else [is] the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization. To this day we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.”
It follows that any serious discussion of Europe’s Christian values in the context of contemporary immigration and identity debates will require many Europeans to go beyond their often-truncated understandings of European history and Christianity. There’s something paradoxical about this being facilitated by the increasing numbers of Muslims living in Europe. But such an engagement is arguably being made even more urgent by the economic reality that Europe will need even more immigrants if its present demographic winter persists for any significant period of time.
What Chancellor Merkel herself understands by “the Christian view of mankind” was not clear from her remarks. Nor is it evident that particular Christian ideas are always compatible with some Muslim positions. Despite the interfaith babble to the contrary, there are some fundamental theological differences between Christianity and Islam, many of which have implications for subjects ranging from religious liberty to the nature of the state. Merkel, however, is undoubtedly correct to insist that any discussion of immigration in Europe should involve Europeans worrying a little less about Islam and paying far more attention to knowing the truth about their own heritage and Christianity’s place in it.
The truth doesn’t just set us free. There’s no future without it.
Nearly a Third of GenZ Favors ‘Government Surveillance Cameras in Every Household’
That's like, Totally Orwellian
Writes Tyler Durden:
Nearly one-third of Generation Z says they’d be just fine with government-installed surveillance cameras in every household under the guise of reducing domestic violence and other illegal activity.
“Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity?” asks a new survey from the Cato Institute. Of the responses, 29% of those aged 18-29 said yes.
When it comes to other age brackets, 20% of millennials (between the ages of 30 and 44) also want everyone watched.
Then, wisdom appears to kick in – as just 6% of Americans aged 45 and older were OK with government surveillance in every home.
Broken down by politics, 19% of liberals and 18% of centrists agreed that our daily lives should be monitored by the government for our own safety, while 9 – 11% of those who identify as conservative, very conservative, or very liberal agreed in what appears to be a “horseshoe” issue that unites both ends of the political spectrum.
Continue reading here.
My interpretation: The government has, over generations, covertly and increasingly overtly taught people in schools that they should seek salvation in government. This is now the result.
Elon Musk Interview With the BBC 4/11/23 Transcript
It went catastrophically for the broadcaster
Jordan Peterson interviews Robert F. Kennedy jr.
The "rogue" Democratic candidate
Video here. (1 h 35 min)
>>>>>>
Update (24/06/2023): I heard a day or so ago that Youtube has taken the video down. Indeed it has been. No problem, see it here instead.
<<<<<<
Noteworthy points from Kennedy’s statements in the interview:
In the US, 70% of all newsshow adverts are from the pharmaceutical industry.
The pharma industry is a “criminal enterprise”. The 4 principal companies (he mentioned Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and another one I didn’t catch) have collectively paid $35 bn dollars in criminal damages and penalties over the past decade. For lying to doctors, defrauding regulators, falsifying science and killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Pharmaceutical drugs are the 3rd largest cause of death in the US after cancer and heart failure.
Medical journals have become vessels of the pharma industry. The Cochrane charitable organisation has been an important counter-balance to this situation. [They recently debunked the myth that masks help prevent covid.] However, Bill Gates has recently started funnelling money into them, so he’s probably going to undermine them.
Kennedy thinks he has a chance as a Democratic candidate for presidency because polls show he would fare better against Trump than Biden would. However, the trick is to get this information out to the public, because the elite that control the legacy media certainly don’t want Kennedy to win (nor do they want Trump to win).
Biden won’t want to debate. Neither will Trump on the Republican side. So Podcasts and other alternative media are the way forward.
JP has this question: The Right knows where its “pathological” limits on the fringe are, and that is e.g. Holocaust-denial, racism etc. The Left does not seem to know an equivalent limit. Where does Kennedy see the limit of politics that can be countenanced?
Kennedy side-steps the answer (a bit of a red flag for me), he says he’d rather think about building bridges than disassociating himself.
JP clarifies that he thinks the left-wing idea of “equity” (equality of outcome) is pathological.
On the subject of climate warming, Kennedy says he definitely believes its happening and that man-made CO2 and methane are significant culprits. However, he is strictly against fearmongering and top-down, tyrannical solutions. He would remove all subsidies for energy and “use the free market”.
He exudes some naivete when he says that once the wind and solar farms are set up they will deliver free energy, all that is missing is a proper grid. I think he’s surprisingly wrong here. Solar panels will have to be replaced from time to time, as will wind turbines (and both will become hazardous waste).
However, interestingly he says that he is an environmentalist not out of fear for the future but out of love for nature (that chimes with me a lot).
Regarding Ukraine he says we have trapped the Ukrainians in a supposedly humanitarian mission. All we are doing is extending the war, therefore shovelling money into the US military-industrial complex.