World Affairs Brief, February 19, 2021 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.
Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).
Arrest of Dr. Simone Gold was Excessively Heavy-handed: I mentioned last week that the FBI had arrested Covid and CDC critic, Dr. Simone Gold, for merely being at the capitol protest and speaking to Trump supporters about the exaggerated pandemic. Pamela Geller points out that she was treated rather violently during the arrest, unlike how the FBI treated agent provocateurs on the Left.
FBI agents banged on the door of the Beverly Hills home of Dr. Simone Gold, emergency room physician, attorney and founder of America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS.com). In short order, law enforcement broke down the front door and took her into custody. Shades of Roger Stone. Not knowing what charges were filed against her, Dr. Gold was removed from home, shackled and prohibited from taking any belongings, not even a purse. Her phone and computer were removed as evidence.
This is how the Deep State treats enemies of the state—sending a message to other’s who don’t accept the official narrative, especially those who have a voice and a following.
Henna Maria – The Ten Stages of Genocide
54:45 Jack Bauer and ’24’
2:11:50 The Catholic deception: praying to ‘saints’ instead of God
“I was praying a prayer to Saint Michael in my head” — when requiring strength to not fight back.
Bank of America “is actively but secretly engaged in the hunt for extremists in cooperation with the government,” he said. “Bank of America is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies. Bank of America effectively is acting as an intelligence agency, but they’re not telling you about it.”
According to the exclusive evidence his program obtained, BoA allegedly combed through the financial records from its more than 60 million customers looking for those who “fit a specific profile.”
Here’s what that profile was: “1. Customers confirmed as transacting, either through bank account debit card or credit card purchases in Washington, D.C. between 1/5 and 1/6. 2. Purchases made for Hotel/Airbnb RSVPs in DC, VA, and MD after 1/6. 3. Any purchase of weapons or at a weapons-related merchant between 1/7 and their upcoming suspected stay in D.C. area around Inauguration Day. 4. Airline related purchases since 1/6.”
The first thing you should notice about that profile is that it’s remarkably broad. Any purchases of anything in Washington, D.C.; any overnight stay anywhere in an area spanning three jurisdictions and hundreds of miles; any purchase not just of legal firearms, but anything bought from a “weapons-related merchant,” T-shirts included; and any airline-related purchases — not just flights to Washington, but flights to anywhere, from Omaha to Thailand. That is an absurdly wide net.
Bank of America identified a total of 211 customers who met these “thresholds of interest.” At that point, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has learned, Bank of America turned over the results of its internal scan to federal authorities, apparently without notifying the customers who were being spied upon. Federal investigators then interviewed at least one of these unsuspecting people. That person, we’ve learned, hadn’t done anything wrong and was cleared. (Fox News)
At 3:50, Jake Morphonios tells the story:
This week, one of Vladimir Putin’s main political opponents in Russia, Alexei Navalny, returned to the country and was immediately taken into custody.
Navalny made a name for himself in Russia as an anti-corruption lawyer who repeatedly accused Putin of various crimes – including making himself rich by diverting Russian money into multi-million dollar properties and other fronts. Navalny tried to run for president against Putin, but was barred from doing so.
With over 5 million Youtube subscribers and 2 million Twitter followers, Navalny has vast influence – and many believe that he is receiving support from the Central Intelligence Agency.
Navalny has led many protests over the last several years. He has been jailed many times and has also been the victim of multiple physical assaults. In August of 2020, Navalny was on a flight to Moscow when he suddenly became deathly ill.
The plane made an emergency landing. By the time he arrived at the hospital, he was in a coma. they placed him on a ventilator to keep him alive.
After toxicology tests, scientists in Germany declared that Navalny had been poisoned with Novochok nerve agent – a chemical weapon that had been developed in the Soviet Union.
Eventually, Navalny emerged from his coma and, despite believing that Putin or the Kremlin had ordered the hit on him, he returned to Russia from Germany on January 17th, 2021.
Before landing, his plane was ordered to divert to an alternate airport where Russian security took in him into custody on charges of parole violation. He is being held until at least January 29th when he will face a hearing to determine whether he should return to prison. His wife has since been taken into custody as well.
In response to Navalny’s arrest, tens of thousands of Russians began protesting in the streets throughout the country.
JP red pilling many, brilliantly!
JP sings: “It’s beginning to look a lot like communism, everywhere you go.”
“This year, the holidays are just going to be different.Instead of getting together with your friends and family in person, and risking the transmission of joy, love and connection, you are to practice socialism distancing.”
“Tis the season….”
“In this Christmas video you’ll learn how you can enjoy a communist Christmas. It’s the new normal! Your holiday plans should include no plans, wearing a mask, staying in your home, social distancing, and poverty. Have a very merry communist Christmas!”
“For a number of years now, we’ve made it socially illegal for you to say ‘Merry Christmas.’ We’ve exchanged it with ‘Happy Holidays,’ and you went with it. Thank you for helping our efforts to erase religion, because you can’t have communism with freedom of religion. We wouldn’t people following the Lord’s guidance over our guidance.” “And all churches are closed for the foreseeable future. I love a good coincidence.”
PROBLEM > REACTION > SOLUTION: “They’ve [your government] scared you, so you’re scared, and now they’re protecting you from what they told you to be scared of.”
November 27, 2020
The following is a full text of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion in ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK v. ANDREW M. CUOMO, GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, in which the court struck down the governor’s Covid restrictions targeting church services
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Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis. At a minimum, that Amendment prohibits government officials from treating religious exercises worse than comparable secular activities, unless they are pursuing a compelling interest and using the least restrictive means available. See Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 546 (1993). Yet recently, during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles.
Today’s case supplies just the latest example. New York’s Governor has asserted the power to assign different color codes to different parts of the State and govern each by executive decree. In “red zones,” houses of worship are all but closed—limited to a maximum of 10 people. In the Orthodox Jewish community that limit might operate to exclude all women, considering 10 men are necessary to establish a minyan, or a quorum.
At the same time, the Governor has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers “essential.” And it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians.In “orange zones,” it’s not much different. Churches and synagogues are limited to a maximum of 25 people. These restrictions apply even to the largest cathedrals and synagogues, which ordinarily hold hundreds. And the restrictions apply no matter the precautions taken, including social distancing, wearing masks, leaving doors and windows open, forgoing singing, and disinfecting spaces between services.
Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?
As almost everyone on the Court today recognizes, squaring the Governor’s edicts with our traditional First Amendment rules is no easy task. People may gather inside for extended periods in bus stations and airports, in laundromats and banks, in hardware stores and liquor shops. No apparent reason exists why people may not gather, subject to identical restrictions, in churches or synagogues, especially when religious institutions have made plain that they stand ready, able, and willing to follow all the safety precautions required of “essential” businesses and perhaps more besides.
The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn’t as “essential” as what happens in secular spaces. Indeed, the Governor is remarkably frank about this: In his judgment laundry and liquor, travel and tools, are all “essential” while traditional religious exercises are not. That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids.
Nor is the problem an isolated one. In recent months, certain other Governors have issued similar edicts. At the flick of a pen, they have asserted the right to privilege restaurants, marijuana dispensaries, and casinos over churches, mosques, and temples. See Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak, 591 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (GORSUCH, J., dissenting).
In far too many places, for far too long, our first freedom has fallen on deaf ears.
*
What could justify so radical a departure from the First Amendment’s terms and long-settled rules about its application? Our colleagues offer two possible answers. Initially, some point to a solo concurrence in South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, 590 U. S. ___ (2020), in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE expressed willingness to defer to executive orders in the pandemic’s early stages based on the newness of the emergency and how little was then known about the disease. Post, at 5 (opinion of BREYER, J.). At that time, COVID had been with us, in earnest, for just three months. Now, as we round out 2020 and face the prospect of entering a second calendar year living in the pandemic’s shadow, that rationale has expired according to its own terms.
Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical. Rather than apply a nonbinding and expired concurrence from South Bay, courts must resume applying the Free Exercise Clause. Today, a majority of the Court makes this plain. Not only did the South Bay concurrence address different circumstances than we now face, that opinion was mistaken from the start.
To justify its result, the concurrence reached back 100 years in the U. S. Reports to grab hold of our decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11 (1905). But Jacobson hardly supports cutting the Constitution loose during a pandemic. That decision involved an entirely different mode of analysis, an entirely different right, and an entirely different kind of restriction.
Start with the mode of analysis. Although Jacobson predated the modern tiers of scrutiny, this Court essentially applied rational basis review to Henning Jacobson’s challenge to a state law that, in light of an ongoing smallpox pandemic, required individuals to take a vaccine, pay a $5 fine, or establish that they qualified for an exemption. Id., at 25 (asking whether the State’s scheme was “reasonable”); id., at 27 (same); id., at 28 (same). Rational basis review is the test this Court normally applies to Fourteenth Amendment challenges, so long as they do not involve suspect classifications based on race or some other ground, or a claim of fundamental right.
Put differently, Jacobson didn’t seek to depart from normal legal rules during a pandemic, and it supplies no precedent for doing so. Instead, Jacobson applied what would become the traditional legal test associated with the right at issue—exactly what the Court does today. Here, that means strict scrutiny: The First Amendment traditionally requires a State to treat religious exercises at least as well as comparable secular activities unless it can meet the demands of strict scrutiny—showing it has employed the most narrowly tailored means available to satisfy a compelling state interest. Church of Lukumi, 508 U. S., at 546.
Next, consider the right asserted. Mr. Jacobson claimed that he possessed an implied “substantive due process” right to “bodily integrity” that emanated from the Fourteenth Amendment and allowed him to avoid not only the vaccine but also the $5 fine (about $140 today) and the need to show he qualified for an exemption. 197 U. S., at 13–14. This Court disagreed. But what does that have to do with our circumstances? Even if judges may impose emergency restrictions on rights that some of them have found hiding in the Constitution’s penumbras, it does not follow that the same fate should befall the textually explicit right to religious exercise.
Finally, consider the different nature of the restriction. In Jacobson, individuals could accept the vaccine, pay the fine, or identify a basis for exemption. Id., at 12, 14. The imposition on Mr. Jacobson’s claimed right to bodily integrity, thus, was avoidable and relatively modest. It easily survived rational basis review, and might even have survived strict scrutiny, given the opt-outs available to certain objectors. Id., at 36, 38–39.
Here, by contrast, the State has effectively sought to ban all traditional forms of worship in affected “zones” whenever the Governor decrees and for as long as he chooses. Nothing in Jacobson purported to address, let alone approve, such serious and long-lasting intrusions into settled constitutional rights. In fact, Jacobson explained that the challenged law survived only because it did not “contravene the Constitution of the United States” or “infringe any right granted or secured by that instrument.” Id., at 25.
Tellingly no Justice now disputes any of these points. Nor does any Justice seek to explain why anything other than our usual constitutional standards should apply during the current pandemic.
In fact, today the author of the South Bay concurrence even downplays the relevance of Jacobson for cases like the one before us. Post, at 2 (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.). All this is surely a welcome development. But it would require a serious rewriting of history to suggest, as THE CHIEF JUSTICE does, that the South Bay concurrence never really relied in significant measure on Jacobson. That was the first case South Bay cited on the substantive legal question before the Court, it was the only case cited involving a pandemic, and many lower courts quite understandably read its invocation as inviting them to slacken their enforcement of constitutional liberties while COVID lingers. See, e.g., Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church v. Pritzker, 962 F. 3d 341, 347 (CA7 2020); Legacy Church, Inc. v. Kunkel, ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ (NM 2020).
Why have some mistaken this Court’s modest decision in Jacobson for a towering authority that overshadows the Constitution during a pandemic? In the end, I can only surmise that much of the answer lies in a particular judicial impulse to stay out of the way in times of crisis. But if that impulse may be understandable or even admirable in other circumstances, we may not shelter in place when the Constitution is under attack. Things never go well when we do.
*
That leaves my colleagues to their second line of argument. Maybe precedent does not support the Governor’s actions. Maybe those actions do violate the Constitution. But, they say, we should stay our hand all the same. Even if the churches and synagogues before us have been subject to unconstitutional restrictions for months, it is no matter because, just the other day, the Governor changed his color code for Brooklyn and Queens where the plaintiffs are located. Now those regions are “yellow zones” and the challenged restrictions on worship associated with “orange” and “red zones” do not apply. So, the reasoning goes, we should send the plaintiffs home with an invitation to return later if need be.
To my mind, this reply only advances the case for intervention. It has taken weeks for the plaintiffs to work their way through the judicial system and bring their case to us. During all this time, they were subject to unconstitutional restrictions. Now, just as this Court was preparing to act on their applications, the Governor loosened his restrictions, all while continuing to assert the power to tighten them again anytime as conditions warrant. So if we dismissed this case, nothing would prevent the Governor from reinstating the challenged restrictions tomorrow. And by the time a new challenge might work its way to us, he could just change them again.
The Governor has fought this case at every step of the way. To turn away religious leaders bringing meritorious claims just because the Governor decided to hit the “off ” switch in the shadow of our review would be, in my view, just another sacrifice of fundamental rights in the name of judicial modesty. Even our dissenting colleagues do not suggest this case is moot or otherwise outside our power to decide. They counsel delay only because “the disease-related circumstances [are] rapidly changing.” Post, at 5 (opinion of BREYER, J.).
But look at what those “rapidly changing” circumstances suggest. Both Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have “indicated it’s only a matter of time before [all] five boroughs” of New York City are flipped from yellow to orange. J. Skolnik, D. Goldiner, & D. Slattery, Staten Island Goes ‘Orange’ As Cuomo Urges Coronavirus ‘Reality Check’ Ahead of Thanksgiving, N. Y. Daily News (Nov. 23, 2020), https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronaviruscuomo-thanksgiving-20201123-yyhxfo3kzbdinbfbsqos3tvrk u-story-html.
On anyone’s account, then, it seems inevitable this dispute will require the Court’s attention. It is easy enough to say it would be a small thing to require the parties to “refile their applications” later. Post, at 3 (opinion of BREYER, J.). But none of us are rabbis wondering whether future services will be disrupted as the High Holy Days were, or priests preparing for Christmas. Nor may we discount the burden on the faithful who have lived for months under New York’s unconstitutional regime unable to attend religious services.
Whether this Court could decide a renewed application promptly is beside the point. The parties before us have already shown their entitlement to relief. Saying so now will establish clear legal rules and enable both sides to put their energy to productive use, rather than devoting it to endless emergency litigation. Saying so now will dispel, as well, misconceptions about the role of the Constitution in times of crisis, which have already been permitted to persist for too long. It is time—past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.
JP is spot on — comedic satire at its best!
Two comments:
When a comedian’s jokes are so true that laughing is almost impossible.
I’m going to miss JP when Google finds out that he’s not actually kidding.
I transcribed key quotes:
“Whoever controls the media controls the population. And that’s us. We’re the elite. We control the media, and therefore, we control you.”
“That’s why we make up rules to ‘protect people.’ They clearly don’t, because they’re not designed to protect people. They’re engineered to give us control over people.”
“Do you know what the feeling’s like knowing everyone is putting on a mask to cover their identity just to go into a store and we’re not even there, but they’re doing it anyway? That’s how much control we have over them. It’s intoxicating!”
“Some say it’s kind of like playing God…. It is playing God. In fact, it’s actually more than playing God, because God doesn’t control people. He gives them free will. We do control people….”
“Are the masses of people scared of the virus or what the virus has done? No, even though they think they are. They’re scared of what we’ve told them the virus is, what it has done, and what it will do. Essentially, we want to keep you scared 24/7, even while you sleep. So again, why do we want you scared? So we can control you, because we love control, not you.”
“Getting people to get injected with something is controlling. … But getting people to get injected with something that they don’t want to get injected with is so much more controlling. And that’s what we’re kind of doing here.”
“We also strengthen the venom of control circulating in people by getting them to do what they know is harmful to them. Like we tell people ‘sunlight kills the virus, so stay inside.’ And when they submit to that, even though they know what they’re submitting to doesn’t make any sense and is harmful to them, they’re betraying themselves and becoming more loyal to us, which means we have more control over them than they do. And that’s a win. And in the same vein, we also like to tell people ‘if you’re overweight you’re at high risk, so we’re going to close down all the gyms for your protection,’ and then they don’t exercise.”
“Another strategy that helps volumize the amount of control we have over people is that we prey on the most scared people to get them to police the unscared people. Ever see someone yelling at someone else for not wearing a mask. … We’re controlling them to control you. It’s control squared.
I think it was Einstein who had the breakthrough equation E = MC2. The ‘C’ stands for control. The ‘M’ is for masses, and the ‘E’ is for elite. Elite = Masses Controlled squared, simple math.”
“Will a heroin addict ever feel like they have enough heroin? Probably not. Will we ever feel like we have enough control over you? Probably not. So we’ll gladly continue taking more control if you keep letting us.”
Much wisdom from Ron Paul and Daniel! Much covered!
“Psychopaths and sociopaths are limited in number, but have loud voices.” Ron Paul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xynOcbuRkjc
https://www.facebook.com/nadim.sarwar.984/videos/2740933782829934/UzpfSTEzNDcxNjM2MDM6MTAyMjQ4MTI5NjQ1NzUyMzg/
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it’s okay to say no. Many of us feel uncomfortable saying no, because we’re afraid of conflict, we’re afraid of standing out from the crowd, because we grow up well-behaved and compliant and we place value on the comfort of others and little on ourselves. This lesson applies to all things in life, whether it’s creating boundaries personally or professionally, or even dealing with this new abnormal we’ve been sold every single day in 2020.
During one of the 33 meetings I attended when Rodney was in Anchorage: When we heard angels literally sing in Anchorage, Alaska
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Pastor Rodney Howard Browne: We Have to Make a Stand for the Constitution
July 8th, 2020
Awesome attitude!
Governors and mayors cannot make laws.
I really can’t say this enough… No governor, no mayor, no sheriff, no policeman has any authority to make laws. Not even a judge can make law. Lawmakers make law and there is a law making procedure by which rules laws and regulations are created. Read the language carefully… Your health orders are not enforceable by law if it states it is a directive, it is a recommendation, or you are urged to follow it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uViJX2bpwW0
Police state overreaction to covid overreaction riots. Ughh!
Police walking and doing the shooting, National Guard in the Humvee.
She is amazing! On fire here! 1st Amendment truth!
Notice: the flu vaccine in the past three years combined has only prevented 10% of the flu deaths.
Important discussion with Dershowitz, who insists a covid vaccine can be forced on all Americans unless they can prove they have a health issue which would make it too dangerous. THIS IS SERIOUS!
I posted these two comments:
Israel defeated covid by using Dr. Zelenko’s HCQ + zinc treatment, which Dershowitz doesn’t mention. Minorities are more at risk from covid largely because many have very low vitamin D levels, because their skin needs six times more sunlight to get the same amount of D production as whites. Big Pharma never told them to take D3! We don’t need a vaccine, because our immune systems can be strengthened through vitamins, minerals and nutrition, which Big Pharma won’t mention. Big Pharma currently rejects all of the covid-19 treatments that work. Big Pharma, Big Media and Big Government are responsible for many covid-19 deaths and the consequences from the unconstitutional lockdowns they mandated and pushed without the people’s consent. They deceived Americans by what they said and didn’t say, and still are.
Dr. Shiva wouldn’t be surprised by Dershowitz saying that RFK, Jr. is his friend, because RFK, Jr. may not be serious about stopping mandatory vaccines — “controlled opposition.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuoM3QGSUhM
The cloth and surgical masks the CDC recommends do not effectively stop transmission, and can increase the chance of wearers getting sick.
N95 masks disturb O2/CO2 exchange, and pose a risk for elderly, pregnant women, and those with pre-existing conditions such as COPD, heart disease, etc.
Psychologically, mask wearing is anti-social. Social isolation leads to a decrease in antiviral compounds and an increase in inflammatory compounds.
Americans can say they have a health condition that prohibits them from wearing a mask, and the HIPPA law protects them from having to reveal why to anyone.
Mask topic starts at 13:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUDjfoUZpA
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