During the polio epidemic (1948-1951), the Asian Flu (1957-59), the Hong Kong flu (1968-69), the Avian bird flu (2006), and the Swine flu pandemic of 2009, all very serious diseases, mitigation was conducted by medical professionals. However, the mitigation during Covid has changed the protocol.

In 2020, the model-building disease mitigators and the bureaucratic medical professionals have become the darlings of the central planners, Hollywood’s useful idiots and corporate media. In turn this model based disease mitigation has been used by authoritative politicians to intimidate. Modeling is a tool that should only be used to prepared for a worst case scenario.

Epidemiology took a turn around 2006, when agent-based modeling strategies displaced the accumulated wisdom of the ages. In his report “Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science; Volume 4, Number 4, 2006,” *Donald A. Henderson, (1926-2016), concluded that the overriding principle in Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza is that;

“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

Our catastrophe has been an orchestrated campaign to override the wisdom of the real medical professionals, epidemiologists, economists and historians. Today’s Covid mitigators choose to trampled on commerce, life, and the freedoms of the people. Lockdowns jeopardized people’s health, their welfare, and create conditions for a financial collapse that will be felt for generations. 

Quarantining and lockdowns are not about mitigating a virus, they are about coercion. How to control and create a dependent society without force or violence. The “passive coercion” being perpetrated upon us is scary and should not be underestimated. However, human freedom has always been the best path to responding to life’s risks, including this virus. Why the change? 

There once was a popular bumper sticker proudly displayed by many liberal “boomers” that read “Question Everything.” What happened to that spirit? The lockdown has no precedent, it is not based on science. There is no proven relationship between lockdowns and virus control. The burden of proof belongs to the “lockdown” scientist that overthrew 100 years of public-health wisdom and replaced it with an untested, top-down imposition on freedom and human rights.

A virus will not be intimidated and frightened by credentials, edicts, speeches, and computer-generated forecasts but humans are. The fact is that intelligence and medical therapeutics fare much better than fear, panic, and coercion. A virus is going to do as viruses do, same as always in the history of infectious disease.

Let’s recapture the wisdom and freedom of the past to deal intelligently with viruses in the future, “Question Everything!”

*Twentieth-century’s most acclaimed disease eradicator, credited with ridding the world of smallpox.

George W Bush challenged the public school system to “leave no child behind.” What was the intended message? The statement seems to indicate that every child must be gathered and brought onboard. The question is, onboard what? I’ve always loved John Madden’s adage, “It doesn’t matter that the horses are blind, just load up the wagons.” Maybe Woody Guthrie’s description was closer to what Bush had in mind, “this train is bound for glory, don’t carry nothing but the righteous and the holy”.

Well, the righteous and holy have extended formal education from youth to the “adulthood” of their 20’s and now pushing into their 30’s. John Taylor Gatto claims that this is one of the public school’s top priorities. He believes that by expanding the school years adulthood is delayed. Why is this a priority? Children are more dependent and require protection.

Gatto goes on to state that, “maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives.” He claims that easy divorce, easy credit, easy entertainment, and easy answers have contributed to “a nation of children, happily to surrender our judgment and our wills to political extortions and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults.”

Authority is smart, calculative, and predatory, they realize that compliance is the key to power and survival. So they offer us a deal, their protection in exchange for compliance. H.L. Mencken wrote that public school “is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.”

Compliance vetting is a responsibility that they delegated to the public school system. In school, the non-compliant are medicated, ostracized, humiliated, and disciplined into submission. Those uncompromising individuals are eventually faced with the dilemma; comply or be kicked out of the club. Based on family financial limitations and social acceptance they usually get on board the train bound for glory.

The educational Marxists have perfected a system that has standardized behavior and thought. More importantly, they have mastered a standardized reaction to defiance and dissent. The group-think, cancel culture of diverse and different opinions nurtured in the public schools has graduated into society. Lenin could only dream of a system capable of producing such a compliant society awaiting instruction from a corrupt media to announce the latest statue, person, group, organization, or policy to hate.

The COVID-19 hysteria is an assessment of the public school’s system of compliance and ridicule of defiance. We surrender freedoms for protection; we comply with the authoritative experts; we will listen to the medical geniuses.  For what? The biggest social, economic, and political crisis of the last century.

Society has become an extension of high school. Combining an inability for critical thought with addiction for social, group-think acceptance we get a system where the coolness of self quarantines and style of wearing masks elevate you to hero/popular status. These actions are dutifully performed with a deluded spirit of protecting others.

Stepping stones are emerging in a pond of fear leading us to the Isle of Subjugation. We listen to the sirens sing, “we are in this together,” ignoring the implied, whether you like it or not. George W. Bush described it best by saying, “you’re either with us or against us.” This is what COVID has become, not a battle against a virus but a battle to silence the non-vetted voice of dissent.

Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) explains this attitude in “A Few Good Men” “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to the man that rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom [safety] that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just say thank you and went on your way.”

Thank You to all the mask-wearing, self-quarantining heroes that are providing me with a blanket of protection as my wealth diminishes daily. The heroes’ response to the pleas  for intelligent dialog is reflected in Colonel Jessup’s dismissive conclusion, “I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”

Racism = Welfare + Minimum Wage + Gun Control + Public Schools + War on Drugs

Social justice and systemic racism are being used to stimulate divisive rhetoric. However, it has distracted us from discovering the root of the problem. Racism may be a branch growing from the invasive tree of big government but is not the cause. Racism grows as a result of state-supported policies that negatively impact the socio-economic condition of the poor and minorities. Changing these policies may not eliminate racism but will be a good start.

The Welfare State

After President Lyndon Johnson’s legislation passed into law he proclaimed, “I’ll have those “people” voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” The result of his civil rights legislation included a massive increase in the welfare state. This was his legacy also known as the “Great Society.”

Economist Thomas Sowell once wrote, “The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state.”

LBJ’s Great Society increased government welfare programs in the mid-1960s. The Great Society brought about a growing dependency of the economically deprived, in particular the black community, on government programs. This has devastated the black family and in turn a deepening cycle of poverty.

The 2017 U.S. Census Bureau indicated that only 5.3% of families with a married couple live in poverty, compared to 28.8% of households with a “female householder, no husband present. Single mother households are five times as likely to be in poverty compared to households with both parents.

In post-Great Society, the black community rate of unmarried births has tripled to today’s level and 70 percent of all black children are born to an unmarried mother. Socio-economics is the reason why 20 percent of blacks live in poverty, more than twice the rate of whites (8%). Governmental design is the primary architect in the social landscape that surrounds us.

Minimum Wage

Economist Walter E. Williams has labeled the minimum wage “one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of racists everywhere in the world.” The minimum wage laws have succeeded in producing too many young black people coming from broken, low-income homes. These laws have guaranteed a community frustrated and pushed into a life of government dependency or crime. Far too many end up hopeless in prison or in the ghetto.

The socio-economical effect from artificially increasing the wage employers decreases the demand for low-skilled workers. Pricing low-skilled labor out of the workforce makes it harder to enter the workforce and without employment an escape from poverty becomes difficult.

Thomas Sowell underscores this point: “Unemployment among 16 and 17-year-old black males was no higher than among white males of the same age in 1948. It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment rates not only skyrocketed but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers.”

Gun Control

A community caught in a cycle of government dependency and hopelessness finds itself packed in inner cities laden with high rates of violent crime with no legal way to defend oneself. This community becomes more dependent upon a force that preys on the vulnerable.

By imposing strict gun control laws the honest citizens living in the violent inner cities have no way to defend themselves against the criminals. Honest citizens have been rendered defenseless and are forced to let the criminals handle “justice.”

Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter says, “All gun control is racist.” Throughout American history, gun control has been used to keep blacks and Hispanics ‘in their place.’ One of the top priorities of the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War was to enact laws barring gun ownership by the freedmen, making it easier to terrorize them and quiet the racial fears of whites.

Public Schools

Walter E. Williams has written, “the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader. In some cities, there’s an even larger achievement gap.”

Public schools are systemically incapable of providing high-quality education for children and have especially failed minority kids. Educational choice has to be in the hands of parents and families, not politicians and bureaucrats.

Low-income, minority families recognize the government indoctrination centers are not working. In a 2018 national survey by Education, Next found that Hispanic (62%) and black (56%) expressed far higher support school choice initiatives.

Educational options are available but are inaccessible for minority families. Even though they crave access to other educational options they have been shut out. Due to the state monopolist control and protection, the cost of alternative schools is out of their reach.

War on Drugs

The war on drugs has put thousands of minorities in prison for crimes emerging from the government’s attempt to dictate to citizens what they can or cannot put in their own bodies.

“Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino.” The drug war, like the war on poverty, is a major factor in the homes of the black community.

The war on drugs has devastated the minority communities, and its enforcement just increases the number of confrontations between police and minorities. Whether it is a no-knock drug raid or a stop and frisk confrontation, opportunities for police brutality incidences should be minimized not expanded.

Conclusion

Big government is the most violent and threatening enemy of minorities, not racism. State control and intervention is the purveyor. Maybe instead of picking sides in the white against the black divide, we should instead focus our energy on dismantling the state-supported programs that promote socio-economic injustice.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/if-i-were-a-racist/

Policing – Let’s Start There

Let us look at the system that exists beyond the trees of identity politics.

The tragic murder of George Floyd has been hijacked by identity politics opportunists. These exploiters have seized upon the emotional response drawn from witnessing an inhumane police take-down of Mr. Floyd. They have entrapped their flock of followers into a mob mentality environment fueled by calls of racism mixed with violence.

Occupation 

Race, in the United States, is a problem. However, Mr. Floyd’s death came from tactics used by the police. These tactics and George Floyd’s death are the direct results of a military occupational force. Mr. Floyd’s killing is not much different than the “collateral damage” we witnessed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Brutality is the symptom of our communities’ militaristic trend in public policing. This is a system that authority and dominance are a higher priority than problem-solving. A military force is created to occupy not to police.

In an authoritative system, servants are required, after all, what good is authority without dominance?  Therefore, this system preys on the most vulnerable making the minorities and poor communities the selective targets. These two groups in particular have been pushed into a corner and ignored as the state continues to morph further into a system of extortion and violence.

In video after video we see cops terrorizing citizens. Those citizens, mostly minorities and poor people, that have had their doors kicked in and then forced to watch helplessly as their family members abused (in some cases die) are angry. The cops regularly botch their swat-like raids usually for some non-violent action deemed illegal by the state. Then with the aid of qualified immunity, cops that screwed up are cleared of any responsibility.

The herds of misguided protesters must stop and become more independent in thought and action. Their emotional response must be directed towards changing a system that is far more punitive against those that threaten their authority than crimes against private citizens. Mr. Floyd’s death is the result of the militarization of the police. Changing the strategy of policing is the conversation we need to encourage. 

The Media – Go To Hell 

Wake up! The state media, like all good scammers, have perpetrated a bait and switch act to change our focus away from the real problem of state authority. They will continue shepherding us down the convenient road of racism as their masters usurp our liberty. Racism is a problem but in this case, it is being weaponized.

It’s striking that just a few weeks back the “we’re in this together” fools were calling for mothers in parks and hairstylists to be hauled away in handcuffs but now they are in favor of the police standing down to allow private property to be burned and destroyed.

Transitioning from punishing peaceful people for violating arbitrary lockdown orders preventing Covid spreading activities like surfing, playing golf, or hosting a child’s play date to allowing rioters to run amok destroying property is quite remarkable. Those same fools, the political leaders, that overstepped their “pandemic” authority, are now dismissing the damages of citizens’ property as unimportant.

Why is disobeying a government order, no matter how arbitrary, considered more threatening than the property or the lives of its citizens? Is it because the police are the executors and military arm of state politics? Is this agency more interested in preserving the authority of the state than protecting its citizens?

Stop Trolling 

George Floyd was tragically caught in a net that police cast for a non-violent crime. Racism may be a contributing factor, but policing is the crime. Racial profiling may be another factor contributing to this series of toxic events but let’s be clear it is policing that caused the murder. These contributing factors are serious issues but must not blur our focus on the actual cause of this tragedy.

George Floyd’s race, gender, guilt, or innocence is not the issue. The issue is that once a citizen is selected by the police his safety and safety others must be protected to continue within our justice system. That is how guilt or innocence is to be rendered. Even rapists or murders can not be choked to death by a police officer let alone a person of interest for the alleged “crime” of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes.

Injustice can only be ignored for so long before a lashing out occurs. Those that witnesses the George Floyd murder, have been angry at this system of law enforcement for some time. This system is unfair, targeted and more resembles a militarized standing army than the guardian of the law.  America’s system of law enforcement is broken and needs radical change. Is it too late?

Sweden’s Approach to Covid-19

Many of us say claim to value non-conformity but prove otherwise. Voltaire observed, “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.” In the Covid crisis, Sweden was internationally stoned for taking a “new road.”

Fear of the COVID-19 pandemic has driven the citizens of many countries around the world to be extremely trusting of their governments’ information, predictions, advice, and edicts, the Swedish government flipped the script by placing its trust in its citizens.

Sweden did not institute mass shutdowns or ramped up authoritative policing. Instead of closing its economy, national leaders asked its citizens to limit the spread of COVID-19 another way: by acting responsibly.

The Swedish government’s approach was not overly invasive and many “experts” considered too light. The government’s response was to limit public gatherings to 50 people, asked its residents to wash their hands frequently, encouraged remote work, and self-isolate if they feel ill or are over 70.

The Swedish people lived up to that trust, and have appreciated its leaders’ strategy. It has won the approval of Swedes, and support and popularity have soared.

The 10 million Swedes were allowed to visit libraries and pools, which remain open. People were allowed to drink IPAs in their local restaurants, children still got up to go to elementary schools in the morning, although students over 16 have been encouraged to school at home.  In other words, Sweden’s economy was allowed to pump on most cylinders while people take sensible precautions—without an explosion of deaths akin to those witnessed in Italy and Spain.

Vindication?

Sweden’s unusual approach to fighting the coronavirus pandemic is starting to yield results, according to the country’s top epidemiologist. Anders Tegnell, the architect behind Sweden’s relatively relaxed response to Covid-19, told local media the latest figures on infection rates and fatalities indicate the situation is starting to stabilize.

Is this vindication for Sweden, which has been widely denounced for bucking the trend among governments of imposing draconian “shelter-at-home” decrees that have crippled the world economy and thrown millions out of work. 

If a fair analysis of the Swedish scenario is applied we would question the “well-trodden” path taken by most countries. The Swedish model indicated that our cowering posture has proven to be counterproductive.  We should demand an answer to, “Why were the experts so quick to employ force and the threat of force to impose mass shutdowns?”

“They tried to make me go to rehab, But I said, “No, no, no” Amy Winehouse

Individual responsibility used to be part of the American model. But we have developed a culture of giving up individual responsibility whenever we are shepherded into fear. Fear of terrorists, of economic hardship, of a virus has pushed us towards economic devastation.

If Americans are going to rehabilitate our thinking,  we must rediscover our country’s founding principles and insist that our leaders place at least as much trust in its citizens as Sweden has. In order to accomplish this initiative, we must learn to trust ourselves as a society of individuals, have faith in our neighbors, and understand the concept of spontaneous order.

Leonard Read observed, “The more complex the economy, society, or situation, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely.”

An open letter, published in a recent Vineyard Gazette, inspired this blog:

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2020/04/15/open-letter-vineyard-hospital

COVID – PTSD

My COVID-19 battle has left me with scars. One of those scars is an uncontrollable scoff. I have not yet fallen victim to a COVID inducted PTSD but I am exhibiting some early warning symptoms.

I now scoff at statements like, “we will need to make sacrifices.” I typically reject the “we” collectivism. My past experience with shared “sacrifice” is that those who are comfortable and continued to; receive paychecks, cupboards full, rent paid, and insurance coverage intact do not share as equal as those that lost their job.

I scoff at statements like, “being in this thing together.” I don’t remember joining or trying out for this thing. If I had joined, I definitely would have considered the fee and the members that would surround me. That makes me more of a conscript than a volunteer “in this thing.”

I scoff at statements like “we will need to make those decisions together.” Together! I have not been contacted “to make those decisions.” Besides, how can I be taken seriously if I’m non-essential and told to go home and cower?

I scoff at the self-proclaimed “experts” claiming that they are not “writing these words to create panic” then reference the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Institute, in Seattle and quote forecasts using words like “staggering”, with “death toll” and “men and women of all ages, genders and medical conditions”

I scoff at the COVID-19 pirates that want to “share the reality of where we are today,” by a back-handed admittance of failure. Like “our community hospital … was simply not built to handle an increasing population and a worsening pandemic. That is an alarming mixture in this health care crisis and there is no other way to soften that statement.” We know that! That was the propaganda behind “flattening the curve.” Remember, you “essentials” accepted the responsibility to plan, innovate, and solve those logistic challenges.

I scoff at those that will tell half of a story and ignore the other half. Yes, the Covid-19 virus is highly contagious and dangerous. But it preys primarily upon a limited, identifiable, isolate-able population that can be protected and cared for at a tiny fraction of the cost being imposed by the hysterical shutdowns now in place.

I scoff at those making most of the noise do not separate the COVID statistics by demographics. Most deaths are those over 69 years of age. Over 80% of those elderly that died had more than one chronic disease inflicting them, primarily hypertension and diabetes. Dementia, coronary artery disease, and renal disease also make the elderly vulnerable.

I scoff at the millions of the younger, under 50, healthy individuals that have yet to realize that they only account for about 10% of all the COVID cases. I scoff because they have been put under house arrest to protect them from a 2.6 per 100,000 death rate. Their death rate from accidents and suicides is higher. What’s next? Taking away their cars, guns, and sharp objects.

I scoff at the experts that offer deep humanitarian wisdom like “agree that this is a time to think of each other and our greater community” while the effect of the economic shutdown projection of the needy is nowhere to be found. Take a look at the food pantries and check out the length of the unemployment lines.

I scoff at those that can frame simple directives into flowery verbiage like: “embracing a spirit of unity with a singular focus of taking care of one another for the safety of one another” instead of just saying “be compliant and wait for their next instruction.”

I scoffed when former White House chief-of-staff to Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, was famously quoted as saying, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” These are dangerous times when crisis empowered authoritarians abuse their influence and scoff at liberty. Liberty comes at a high price a price that many have scoffed at.

Articles like the following have kept my PTSD at bay: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation

I’m Calling You Out

On Wednesday, Martha’s Vineyard witnessed a demonstration requesting the local government to relax the restriction they have levied upon the work conditions of local businesses. Although I support the efforts of the organizers and their reasonable request, I probably wouldn’t have participated. However, my laziness was interrupted by hate, cyberbullying, and slander directed at the organizers. Before Covid (BC) these tactics would be called out as wrong, intolerable, and un-American.

George W. Bush’s once stated, “you’re either with us or against us.” That logic produced two-generational wars “on terrorism.” It appears that this same narrative has been perpetrated on the people. We have been asked to accept one narrative and only one narrative. You are with us, “in this together” or against us “deviating outside your quarantine.”

Since when has asking the authorities to relax their restrictions on workers been labeled as; “against us,” insult to nurses, un-American, a threat to the community and idiotic. Some of the more zealots have even demonized the organizers on social media, Facebook “hate,” cyber-bullying, and calling for boycotting their products.

It should be understood that a recovery of the economy must begin at some time. Our start for a reasonable and safe economic recovery is being delayed by intolerable social responses to any request asking for reduced authority. I do not accept that the quarantine must be observed until “we say it is safe” or “we now have a cure.” This is not a viable path to follow. 

The protesters are asking for the authorities to unchain the creative, economic, and production power of those in quarantine. They are asking local government to restore the peaceful cooperation within our local commerce that existed BC. The victims of Covid are not limited to the symptoms of the virus, there are others suffering economic despair.

Both the protesters and I believe a safe reopening will help to reduce the economic suffering that many of our residences are experiencing. I fear that some of the “lucky,” those that have maintained an adequate income or enough savings to get through the covid-19 shutdown, are insensitive to the hardships facing the “unlucky.”

We are asking our towns to at least explore alternative ways to restore our local economy. This is the basis of the protest, asking them to return authority back to our businesses and residence so that they can lead and share in a safe recovery. After all, in a pre-covid world, the problem-solvers were celebrated and the cowering compliant were tolerated. 

Thank You Hospital Workers – You Flattened the Curve – But!

I understand the levels of stress put on the medical community must be mitigated for us to be released. It appears that the medical community has reached that stage. The original intent of the policy was not to eradicate the virus. It was to buy time for the hospital system, to flatten the curve, for them to function properly.

They succeeded in this objective. Our hospitals have been servicing patients that have become infected, and have continued with their normal operations of caring for those who are acutely ill, who suffer from accidents, chronic illnesses, or are victims of violence. They have done yeoman’s work to prepare our community for the Covid-19 crisis.

In other words, the medical system is functioning very nicely. The hospitals are functioning enough so that we can start to get back to our lives. The hospital has given us assurances that effective treatments are available to everyone and the hospital capacity is not close to being exhausted. 

They succeeded in the, “flatten the curve,” mission. Their mission has never been to wait for a cure. They have basically assured us that their treatments and facilities are prepared, if necessary, for added demands from COVID-19. They have been our heroes but it is time for individual risk management strategies to be returned. Pass the baton back to the individual.

A reasonable evaluation of the most recent COVID-19 calculations would indicate that we are entering the backside of the peak in COVID-19 cases. I am not an expert but the signs are pointing in the direction of returning to normal.  Let us return to the social spaces of work, play, and live with one another like we did once upon a time. 

Return to Normal

There are trade-offs when plans to reopen the economic system are at stake. The peaceful cooperation of our resources is ready and willing to solve problems. The USA has always looked to the entrepreneur for discoveries to improve the human condition. Now is the time to create expectations that will guide the local businesses and entrepreneurs in the desired direction.

Free people are not helpless people. We will adjust, we will adapt, and we will take on the responsibility of being architects of our own fate. Society must be judged by how well it minimizes human suffering; physically, emotionally, and economically. It is time to allow the stakeholders to initiate the activities and opportunities that will promote recovery.

Am I foolish to hope that the truth of reality will be our guiding light and not the politics of the state and those compliant with their narrative? Critics will continue to use this crisis to slander classic liberalism and libertarianism. Maybe we all would be better served by embracing the fact that if freedom is allowed to flourish it will provide answers in these turbulent times.

I hope that my presence, at that rally, will help to neutralize the viciousness of the social media clique, fear of the unknown, a corrosive mob mentality, and the divisiveness of the COVID narrative.

Let’s begin our return to normal!

RussMac  OB

Washington’s Three Musketeers

Since Attorney General William Barr’s, March 26th, inditement and $15 million bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Washington’s Musketeers have been busy preparing for a “transitional government”.

On March 31, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, presented the White House proposal for a “transitional government,” in Venezuela, until the holding of new elections. The plan would exclude both Maduro and opposition leader Guaidó from holding power.

The phrase “transitional government” appears to be Washington’s newest buzz word for a coup. You may recall, the White House also used “transitional government” describing Bolivia’s Añez illegitimate administration they helped to impose.

Añez came to power in November thanks to the U.S. supported a coup against President Evo Morales. That “transitional government” has since massacred protestors, pulled Bolivia out of multiple international treaties and indefinitely suspended elections.

Earlier in April, President Trump announced U.S. Navy ships being deployed to waters near Venezuela. This move initiated one of the largest U.S. military operations in the region since the 1989 attack and invasion of Panama.

On Saturday, April 11th, the American envoy for Venezuela, coup specialist *Elliott Abrams warned that if Maduro resisted the implementation of the US proposed “transition government” plan it will be more “dangerous and abrupt”. If you do not move ahead, “you will see more pressure on Caracas from the United States and I think from others,” he specified.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, “the goal is to replace [President Nicolas] Maduro’s illegitimate dictatorship with a legitimate transitional government that can hold free and fair elections to represent all Venezuelans. It is time for Maduro to go.”

Failed Previous Attempts

Trump has been ramping up the Obama sanctions. These sanctions are responsible for over 100,000 Venezuelan deaths. The American U.N. Special Rapporteur recently compared the sanctions to a medieval siege and declared Trump guilty of crimes against humanity.

April 11th just so happens to be exactly 18 years after the U.S. supported a briefly successful coup against Hugo Chavez, the predecessor to Maduro. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the April 2002 coup leaders had traveled back and forth to Washington D.C. several times in the months leading up to the event. Those coup leaders had received counsel and training from American officials.

The U.S. coups attempt did not end in 2002. Since then, Washington has been targeting Venezuela’s national election in attempts to remove the United Socialist Party from power. The US has refused to accept the validity of the presidential elections in 2013 and 2018. Washington has funded the domestic opposition parties for two decades and has approved several other, less successful, coups attempts. The 2014 and 2017 waves of terrorist violence, a failed 2018 assassination of Maduro, and four separate coup attempts last year by self-declared president Juan Guaidó.

“All For One, One For All”

Barr, Abrams, and Pompeo have given the three musketeer motto “All for one, One for all”, a different meaning.  Alexandre Dumas’ musketeers were heroic, chivalrous swordsmen who fought for justice. Washington’s musketeers fall short of that!

 

*For decades, Elliott Abrams’ has been abusing the power of the U.S. government, overtly and covertly, to overthrow sovereign states through coups, sanctions, and genocides. From his first accomplishments as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs when he covered up the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, conducted by a death squad created, armed and trained by Washington to his architectural work in the “dirty wars,” genocides and regime changes in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Panama.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/18-years-after-us-coup-against-venezuela-us-warns-another-attempt/266598/

 

 

 

Alexander Hamilton spoke about the reactive ingredients of populist sentiment during times of crisis. The people will allow, perhaps demand expanded government and the government will gladly respond. The problem is, the government rarely contracts once the crisis is over. There is a pattern of assumed power that never fully gets annulled after the crisis ends.

We recognize our vulnerabilities as citizens in times of crisis, vulnerabilities that political demagogues know how to exploit. Passion during a crisis is not political, it is human nature. But the exploitation of a crisis is political.

Today we need leaders committed to the principles of liberty and a version of power described in the Constitution, representatives who possess a true affection for freedom and who will lead with an insistence that the people and nation come first. 

However, our form of government has been fundamentally misaligned with its founding principles. The American president has become the “leader of the free world” and “party leader”  as we morph closer to nationalism and further away from federalism. The roles of Congress, the judiciary and the states have all relinquished many of their duties to Washington’s executive branch.

The founding fathers documented an American president as the nation’s chief of state, as its symbolic head. The president was never intended to be the head of a political party or ideology. In a divisive, winner-take-all mentality, where the president is “campaigner in chief” we now have a political system that has virtually eliminated the ability of a president to respond in nonpartisan terms. Both in the White House and in Congress every decision is determined by political benefit.

Our governmental process has jumped the track, we have created a political split that needs to be healed. COVID-19 has provided us with an opportunity to restore our government and the presidency back to the principals outlined in the U.S. Constitution. We need to return to that institution that deliverers stability and calm, not authority and panic.

Then, and only then, would we see a Congress that would resume its intended responsibilities: balance and oversight. Then, states would be newly empowered to make local, independent decisions—free from the threat of political retribution.  Then, we would see a return to a more dignified office of the president, elevated to protect the unity, the welfare and liberty of a nation.  

After all the Constitution was written,  “… to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

Maybe we need a “Do-Over.”

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/with-each-crisis-potus-becomes-more-powerful-and-partisan/

Julian Assange, ex-publisher of Wikileaks who has been indicted with 17 counts under the US Espionage Act related to WikiLeaks’ 2010-11 publications: concerning US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, embarrassing US diplomatic details, US torture in Guantanamo Bay Prison and the publication of the Collateral Murder video, exposing war crimes and killing of innocent civilians including two Reuters journalists, may have been sentenced to death.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with the world screeched to a halt, the prosecution of Julian Assange continues. Assange, who has significant dental problems along with a lung condition, life is at great risk if exposed to coronavirus. Assange’s lawyers made an emergency bail application two weeks ago for his temporary release. On March 25 Judge Vanessa Baraitser, rejected the bail application, stating that “No cases of COVID 19 having been confirmed in HMS Belmarsh.”

Assange, being held (bail violations) for the US extradition request in southeast London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, is “unwell,” and was unable to attend this hearing. COVID-19 has now hit Belmarsh prison. It has been alleged that there have now been four coronavirus cases among prisoners at Belmarsh, with one of them having died.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the British Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced that they were preparing to release thousands of low-risk inmates in England and Wales. Yet Assange was excluded from this temporary release. A Belmarsh prisoner list showed Assange being one of just two inmates of the 800 at London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison who are being held for violating bail conditions (20% of prisoners are murderers, with nearly 2/3 violent offenders).

Dr. Jill Stein, the former Green Party Presidential candidate, has noted:
“Assange is at dire risk in UK prison. Even before #Covid_19 nearly 200 @Doctors4Assange called for his release due to health emergency. As a nonviolent prisoner awaiting trial he should be released on bail. If he dies, how is this not premeditated killing of a political prisoner?”

Assange has been rendered defenseless as the freedom of the press has been given a death sentence. COVID-19 maybe attacking mankind but an oppression contagion is killing journalism.

 

https://original.antiwar.com/Nozomi_Hayase/2020/04/09/assanges-extradition-covid-19-brings-death-sentence-to-free-speech/