Source: YouTube
The Declaration of Independence read by John F. Kennedy
Source: YouTube
Governance
Over $57 Million Paid by U.S. Government for Vaccine Injuries in 2020 as Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine Fast Tracked | Vaccine Impact & Health Impact News
By Brian Shilhavy
With the nation currently gripped by the Coronavirus crisis, and with most of the public lauding the fact that the FDA is fast-tracking a new vaccine to supposedly fight the Coronavirus, with testing beginning already on humans with the experimental vaccine while bypassing animal testing, unknown to most of the public, a meeting was held on March 6, 2020 with the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV), under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
These are quarterly meetings held every 3 months, as required by law, but seldom, if ever, publicized or reported on by the corporate “mainstream” media.
Health Impact News might be the only place where these quarterly meetings are reported, and you can review past reports here. We have been accused of publishing “Fake News” when we publish these reports, but all of the information is available to the public and posted on the Federal Government’s websites.
The Big Tech companies that control so much of the Internet’s traffic, work hard to suppress this information. If you visit one of Health Impact News‘ Facebook Pages, for example, you are likely to see this notice inserted to the top of our page:
The March 6th meeting by the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines included a report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) on cases settled for vaccine injuries and deaths as mandated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).
The NVICP was started as a result of a law passed in 1986 that gave pharmaceutical companies legal immunity from being sued due to injuries and deaths resulting from vaccines.
If you or a family member is injured or dies from vaccines, you must sue the federal government in this special vaccine court. Many cases are litigated for years before a settlement is reached.
The March, 2020 DOJ report states that 288 petitions were filed during the 3-month time period between 11/16/19 – 2/15/20, with 181 cases being adjudicated and 146 cases compensated.
The March, 2020 DOJ report lists 74 of these settlements for vaccine injuries and deaths, and 60 of those were for damages caused by the flu vaccine. Read more…
Plans to Re-Open – U.S. Surgeon General Dumps Gates ‘Predictive Contagion” Model | Fort Russ News
By Andrew Joseph
In a stunning turn of events, Surgeon General Jerome Adams explained in an interview on live XM radio, that the Coronavirus Task Force has, effectively, dumped the Bill Gates/CDC/WHO predictive contagion model, and is now working with the real data.
He explained on the Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow, that given the new data, businesses will begin to re-open as early as May, others in June.
This runs contrary to the out-and-out fear-mongering of Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates who have made a media tour, threatening the public that businesses may not re-open for six months to a year, or until and unless governments purchase their conveniently patented, big-pharma vaccination.
According to Dr. Adams:
“What the American people need to know now is we actually have data, and so we’re tracking that data,”
Before this about-face, which appears to have come as an order from the Trump administration in consultation with the findings of Dr. Adams, the task force was working with’predictive models’, which had been created by the Bill Gates dominated WHO and CDC. Dr. Fausti’s control over the CDC has been criticized in the past for its for-profit motive in handling a range of illnesses from HIV to H1NI.
In those inflated, ‘fear-based’ models, the deaths of millions worldwide, and hundreds of thousands in America, were touted. These were used as the basis for what many experts have termed a ‘grossly disproportionate response‘.
Previously, the task force was working with predictive models, frequently criticized because of their tendency to exaggerate the possible effect of the virus on the United States. Models predicting the deaths of millions and hundreds of thousands in America appear to be overblown, as the real-time data is showing the death count much lower.
Adams said that the models usually took data from different cultures and places around the globe, but they were able to track more accurately what could happen in the United States based on real data gathered in places such as California and New York.
“We’re following this data every single day, and we’re giving that data to communities so that they can make informed and intelligent decisions about when and where to reopen,” he said.
A significant indicator for communities being allowed to reopen, Adams said, was actual testing data, not a predictive model.
“I feel confident that some places will start to reopen in May and June. Other places won’t; it will be piece by piece, bit by bit, but will be data-driven,” he said.
Adams praised South Korea and Singapore, which closed their borders early, just like the United States did with travelers from China. But he said there are lessons learned across the board.
Source: Fort Russ News
Snowden: Governments Using Pandemic to Build “Architecture of Oppression” Surveillance | The Mind Unleashed
By John Vibes
Snowden fears that world leaders will hold onto new emergency powers well after the pandemic ends.
In addition to quarantines and lockdowns, some governments like those in China, Taiwan, and South Korea have been using a surveillance strategy called “contact tracing” to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.
While each country’s contact tracing program has slight variations, all of them are essentially cell phone apps that keep a running record of the user’s heath and the health records of all the people they come into contact with.
If a cell phone comes in close contact with someone who might have the virus, the user receives a text message informing them and then instructing them to self-quarantine for 14 days.
However, the quarantine is not necessarily voluntary, depending on where you live. In some countries, phones have been used as a sort of house arrest ankle-bracelet that will notify authorities if the person being monitored leaves the house for any reason.
These apps are being touted as the way to end the shut down in both Italy and the UK and it appears that officials are going to be taking things in that direction.
At face value, it may appear that this could be a useful strategy in preventing the spread of disease, but privacy advocates and tech experts are concerned that this information could be misused and that the unprecedented surveillance capabilities could be kept and held by corrupt governments long after the pandemic is over.
In a recent interview with Vice, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden expressed his concerns about the coming surveillance program, calling it the “architecture of oppression.”
“Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what’ is being built is the architecture of oppression,” Snowden said.
Snowden recognized that the virus was a serious threat and said that the intelligence community was well aware that it was only a matter of time before a massive pandemic crippled the country, even back when he was working in the NSA.
“There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a world where we are just living on top of each other in crowded and polluted cities, than a pandemic. And every academic, every researcher who’s looked at this knew this was coming. And in fact, even intelligence agencies, I can tell you firsthand, because they used to read the reports had been planning for pandemics,” he said.
Snowden questioned the positive numbers that have come out of China in recent weeks and pointed out that the Chinese government has been credited with reducing the spread of the illness because they took such draconian measures during the lockdown.
Perhaps their extreme strategy is not working as well as they say it is, but since the government maintained tight control of any information coming out of the country, it is impossible to say for sure.
“If you’re looking at countries like China, where cases seem to have leveled off, how much can we trust that those numbers are actually true? I don’t think we can. Particularly, we see the Chinese government recently working to expel Western journalists at precisely this moment where we need credible independent warnings in this region,” Snowden said.
In a statement published on Friday, Apple and Google announced that they were teaming up in a rare partnership to develop compatible contact tracing apps, which they claim will work on an “opt-in” basis.
However, according to Bloomberg, the companies are planning to eventually build the contact tracing into the device’s updates.
Apple and Google insist that you will still be able to opt-out of the program if you don’t want to participate, but it is possible that rankings on these apps could be used to gain entry into grocery stores or larger businesses and events once the economy opens up again.
“As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world,” Snowden warned.
Source: The Mind Unleashed
Trump Administration Opposes Bill Gates’ Vaccine Tracking System on ‘Personal Liberty’ Grounds | Big League Politics
By Shane Trejo
The Trump administration has come out against a proposed digital tracking system that could tell authorities about an individual’s vaccination history.
The Orwellian measure has been proposed by technocratic oligarch Bill Gates, who is attempting to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to inch closer toward mandatory vaccinations.
“Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it,” Gates said during an “Ask Me Anything” appearance on Reddit about the coronavirus.
Attorney General Bill Barr is skeptical of Gates’ idea to tag people with these mark-of-the-beast implants. He said he is concerned about “the tracking of people and so forth, generally, especially going forward over a long period of time.” Barr also said that he is “very concerned about the slippery slope in terms of continuing encroachments on personal liberty.”
However, Barr said he did feel like “appropriate, reasonable steps are fine.” This leaves the door open for some sort of government action in order to enforce vaccine compliance.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation bankrolled research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that advocated essentially tattooing vaccine data “directly into the skin” of children.
“Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin. The dye would be expected to last up to five years, according to tests on pig and rat skin and human skin in a dish,” a Dec. 2019 Scientific American article wrote about Gates’ scheme.
Gates has been aggressively propagandizing on behalf of vaccines throughout the coronavirus pandemic. He has made it clear that he wants countless shots administered to supposedly stop the spread of coronavirus.
“Our foundation works a lot on diagnostics and vaccines,” Gates said during a recent interview with CBS News. He added that vaccine makers are the only entities “that can really get things back on track where we’re not worried about large public gatherings.”
Gates said that “there’s a lot of dialogue between our foundation experts and the government” about how to get the world back to normal using his vaccines.
“Which activities, like schools, have such benefit and can be done in a way that the risk of transmission is very low? And which activities, like mass gatherings, may be – in a certain sense – more optional? And so until you’re widely vaccinated, those may not come back at all,” he said.
This all comes back to Gates’ primary goal with his foundation and its funding: depopulation.
“Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that [the population] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent,” he said in a 2010 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference.
Gates could not have planned a crisis any better than the coronavirus panic to push his vaccination and depopulation agendas.
Source: Big League Politics
Apple, Google Bring Covid-19 Contact-Tracing to 3 Billion People | Bloomberg
By Mark Gurman
Apple Inc. and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19. People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population.
The technology, known as contact-tracing, is designed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus by telling users they should quarantine or isolate themselves after contact with an infected individual.
The Silicon Valley rivals said on Friday that they are building the technology into their iOS and Android operating systems in two steps. In mid-May, the companies will add the ability for iPhones and Android phones to wirelessly exchange anonymous information via apps run by public health authorities. The companies will also release frameworks for public health apps to manage the functionality.
This means that if a user tests positive for Covid-19, and adds that data to their public health app, users who they came into close proximity with over the previous several days will be notified of their contact. This period could be 14 days, but health agencies can set the time range.
The second step takes longer. In the coming months, both companies will add the technology directly into their operating systems so this contact-tracing software works without having to download an app. Users must opt in, but this approach means many more people can be included. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have about 3 billion users between them, over a third of the world’s population.
The pandemic has killed more than 100,000 and infected 1.63 million people. Governments have ordered millions to stay home, sending the global economy into a vicious tailspin. Pressure is building to relax these measures and get the world back to work. Contact-tracing is a key part of this because it can help authorities contain a potential resurgence of the virus as people resume regular activities.
Still, this technology is controversial because it involves sharing sensitive health information from billions of people via mobile devices that are constantly broadcasting their location. Some politicians and regulators have been warning that citizens’ privacy should be protected.
“We caution that actions taken to contain spreading of coronavirus must also preserve the right to privacy held by each and every American,” members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, wrote in a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump. “Google’s colossal stores of data on daily movements of Americans, coupled with the might of local, state, and federal governments is an alarming prospect.”
Apple and Google stressed on Friday that their system preserves users’ privacy. Consent is required and location data is not collected. The technology also won’t notify users who they came into contact with, or where that happened. The companies said they can’t see this data either, and noted that the whole system can be shut down when needed.
Aside from privacy and trust concerns, challenges include the availability of widespread and free testing to complement the app, as well as access to mobile phones and other wireless devices, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We must be realistic that such contact tracing methods are likely to exclude many vulnerable members of society who lack access to technology and are already being disproportionately impacted by the pandemic,” Jennifer Granick, ACLU’s surveillance and cybersecurity counsel, said in a statement.
For Apple and Google, such a close partnership between these longtime rivals is extremely rare. The technology giants have competed in smartphone operating systems, app stores, media services, and voice-recognition technology for years — while trading barbs over the privacy of each others’ platforms. However, both companies have been under pressure to use their prodigious resources to help fight the pandemic.
“All of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems,” the companies said in a joint statement.
Their system uses Bluetooth, a standard way for most mobile devices to communicate with each other. Apple and Google shared a theoretical example to explain how it works.
Two people meet to chat for a few minutes, and in the background via Bluetooth their smartphones exchange anonymous identifiers to register that they have been in contact. These digital keys change every 15 minutes or so and remain on these people’s devices to preserve privacy.
Several days later, one of these individuals is diagnosed with Covid-19. The person enters the results into a health-agency app on their phone. The system then asks for this user’s consent. If granted, the person’s smartphone sends a record of the other mobile devices that have been in close proximity during the previous days. This information is temporarily stored in a remote computer server for about 14 days.
Meanwhile, the other person’s phone checks the server periodically to see if any identifier keys have been associated with a positive Covid-19 diagnosis. The phone downloads all positive keys and matches it anonymously to the key belonging to the individual from the original meeting days earlier. This sends a notification to the other person’s phone with information from health agencies about how to quarantine or self-isolate.
The contact-tracing technology isn’t the first step against Covid-19 for either company. Google launched an information website in March, while Apple has released its own screening tools for iPhone users. Apple has also donated over 20 million masks to health-care workers and has designed face shields, and Verily, a unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., is running virus-testing sites in some parts of California.
Other organizations are also working on contact-tracing. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology earlier this week announcedplans for a similar system. Some countries and third-party developers have also tried implementing contact-tracing on phones, but they have faced privacy and connectivity issues that the new system is designed to avoid.
Source: Bloomberg
Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination | Children’s Health Defense
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chairman, Children’s Health Defense
Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.
Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.
Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously\
The most frightening [polio] epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines.
In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain.
In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.
South African newspapers complained, ‘We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.’
In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.
During Gates’ 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.” Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philanthropic practices as “ruthless and immoral.”
In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, “We must make this the decade of vaccines.” A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade. Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines.
A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually.
Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development. The Gates Foundation only spends about $650 million of its $5 billion dollar budget on these areas. They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.
In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children.
Source: Children’s Health Defense
The Coronavirus Conspiracy: How COVID-19 will Seize Your Rights & Destroy Our Economy | London Real
By Brian Rose & David Icke
As one of the world’s pre-eminent professional conspiracy theorists, David Icke has been a regular guest on London Real, discussing topics as diverse as 5G, 9/11 and censorship.
Often described as a maverick or a renegade, David is a unique voice in the space, propounding a number of predictions around his post-Orwellian vision of society and the future.
An introduction to David Icke
“Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground.”
Since his spiritual awakening in 1990, David enjoys a sizable global following, regularly speaking for up to 10 hours at venues such as Wembley Arena to audiences of thousands of people.
As well as public speaking, David is an acclaimed author having written over 21 books including The Robots’ Rebellion (1994), And The Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999) and Children of the Matrix (2001), in which he developed his worldview of New Age thinking.
With a mission to wake up society and free our minds from what governments and mainstream media are trying to make us do, his credentials make him one of the most influential thinkers and catalysts for change.
The episode they didn’t want you to see
We knew the world would be watching when David returned to the studio, but it seems some very powerful people indeed were also watching…
…and they didn’t like what they saw…
…and they didn’t want you to see it either!
In this interview which was reported heavily by the BBC and others and subsequently BANNED, David joined us to talk about the CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, the worldwide COVID-19 LOCKDOWN, how governments have manipulated their citizens and the wider agenda behind social control and a Surveillance Society.
We go deeper into the global crisis, the looming economic recession and the impact of 5G technology and the violation of our rights and freedom of speech.
While we don’t always agree with everything David says, London Real will defend his right to be able to say it. So with that in mind sit back and enjoy this incredible and informative episode with David Icke.
Join us as we discuss:
- George Orwell, the U.S. First Amendment, and the RT-PCR test
- Dr. Andrew Kaufman, 5G technology, and the COVID-19 hoax
- The WHO, Eddie Large, and Lombardy air pollution
- Wuhan reporting, Dr. Neil Ferguson, and Imperial College
- Boris Johnson, the climate change scam, and Bill Gates
- The Freemasons, global fascism and Trump
- The Rockefeller family, Bill Gates and Elon Musk
Offering more than meets the eye on first glance, David Icke is a man with serious credentials and a challenging perspective on our species and planet.
See London Real host and founder Brian Rose’s interview with Alex Jones on Infowars discussing this controversially BANNED interview.
Source: London Real
United Nations Wants 10 Percent of World’s Income to Fight COVID-19| New American
By James Murphy
Avowed socialist and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has announced the creation of a global fund meant to address the coronavirus pandemic. He is asking for all nations to contribute the equivalent of 10 percent of all global GDP to fund a gigantic “human-centered, innovative and coordinated stimulus package,” which would be administered by a global authority, presumably the UN itself.
“A large-scale, coordinated and comprehensive multilateral response amounting to at least 10 per cent of global GDP is needed now more than ever. This crisis is truly global. It is in everyone’s interest to ensure that developing countries have the best chance of managing this crisis, or COVID-19 will risk becoming a long-lasting brake on economic recovery,” the UN report states.
“The new coronavirus disease is attacking societies at their core, claiming lives and people’s livelihoods,” Guterres said.
The plan — entitled Shared Responsibility, Global Solidarity: Responding to the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 — would entrust the UN (or another globalist entity yet to be named) with approximately $8.7 trillion, which it would supposedly use to fight and eradicate the coronavirus and address other problems that have resulted from the virus.
The UN’s current budget is approximately $3 billion. The $8.7 trillion would be 2,900 times greater than its current budget.
The plan calls for a massive global stimulus in order to “restore confidence in the future.”
“The global nature of the economic shock we are facing, with simultaneous collapses in both supply and demand, calls for the first truly global fiscal stimulus in history,” the plan states.
Needless to say, it also calls for a massive redistribution of the planet’s wealth.
“To be effective, the stimulus package will need to focus on direct and targeted transfer of resources to the most vulnerable households and scaling up health emergency preparedness, social protection, tax abatement, low interest rates, access to credit, insurance and wage support schemes. Support must be provided to countries that lack capacity to implement these measures.”
Among the measures in the plan is to give approximately $100 billion to the World Health Organization, whose director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was complicit in the spread of the virus by continually repeating Communist Chinese talking points, including the farcical claim in January that COVID-19 was not transmissible to humans.
Money from the fund will also be used to pay specific “attention to continued delivery of sexual reproductive health services, such as access to contraceptives without prescription during the crisis.” As “reproductive health services” is a globalist euphemism for abortion, the folks at Planned Parenthood should be happy.
To Guterres, the Chinese virus represents a turning point in human history and a chance to truly implement the UN’s 2030 Agenda and also put some teeth in the Paris Climate Accord of 2015.
“And when we get past this crisis, we will face a choice — go back to the world we knew before or deal decisively with those issues that make us all unnecessarily vulnerable to this and future crises. Everything we do during and after this crisis must be with a strong focus on building more equal and inclusive societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change, and the many other challenges we face,” the plan states.
“We already know what we need to do. It is laid out in the global road map for the future — the 2030 Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.”
The UN is not the only entity to take an interest in a globalist response to the coronavirus. The World Economic Forum has presented a strategic intelligence overview of the COVID-19 that is so layered, so intricate, and so complex that it is hard to believe it could have been created in the scant weeks since the pandemic was declared.
An interactive graph details COVID-19’s impact on financial markets, travel, trade, global workforces, and the various healthcare issues such as vaccinations and halting the spread of the disease.
It’s almost as if these plans preexisted the Chinese virus — as if the plans were waiting for the just the right crisis in order to be unveiled.
Guterres and the UN are asking for the entire solar system, perhaps in hopes of being granted the moon. We have to be vigilant and make certain that they are not granted that moon or even a small asteroid to rule over.
The best way to remove the criminal influence of the UN is to remove the United States from its membership roll.
Source: New American
Liberty: The Last Casualty of the Pandemic | The Epoch Times
Johnny Liberty, Editor’s Note: Finally, somebody’s writing about the overreaching power of the federal, state and local governments during this COVID-19 crisis. After 911 the USA Patriot Act was passed and never repealed. It was just up for renewal a few weeks ago. Will there ever be a return to this new normal?
By Dustin Bass
In December, the outbreak in the City of Wuhan, located in China’s Hubei province, was officially detected. On Jan. 31, Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency. On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic. On March 13, President Trump declared a national emergency.
In the span of that following week, gatherings of 250 or more were discouraged and then banned by numerous states. That number immediately dropped to 50, and now it has dropped to 10. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, banned all gatherings for the largest state in the Union. It was unprecedented. No matter. Eleven other states quickly followed suit. More are to follow, as 17 other states have banned gatherings of 10 or more.
The rapidly escalated reactions prove that the threat to our national health is very high. The threat to our individual freedoms? Higher. From the Declaration of Independence to the Amendments, recent government action flies directly in the face of the nation’s founding documents.
The Declaration of Independence
The founding document of our nation stated that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The biological threat against the former has ushered in an existential threat to the latter two. One may argue that without the first, the other two cannot exist. True. But without the latter two, what is the point of the first?
Unless Americans merely perceive this moment in our history as “light and transient,” then there should be no need to clamor. Americans have grown accustomed to the subtle threats to our freedoms since John Adams and the Fifth Congress; and as long as citizens are still free to determine the course of the country every two, four, or six years, then these “evils are sufferable.”
This is unless, of course, we perceive those threats to be a “long train of abuses and usurpations.” The federal government has rarely felt a restriction on its massive powers, like the constant wars in far off places, spying on citizens, dislodging citizens without habeas corpus, or creating unelected government agencies armed with the three branches of power.
State governments now have become fearless in exercising their might by forcing people into their homes under the threat of penalty of law. It is for this reason the Founding Fathers created our extended republic so instead of overthrowing a king, voters would be able to “throw off such government” every two, four, or six years. Citizens need not look solely at the federal government, but at their local and state governments as well.
The Constitution of the United States of America
There are 50 States and 50 Constitutions, which all fall under the supreme law of the land: the Constitution of the United States of America. Our national Constitution was ordained and established to provide six services to the People. One of those is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
With state governments seamlessly conducting the aforementioned gathering bans; the shutting down of non-essential businesses in 18 states, along with three other states shutting down non-essential retail; the mandatory quarantines of 13 states; and the forced closure of bars and restaurants, except for take-out and delivery, in nearly every state in the Union, it may prove difficult for the blessings of liberty to reach our posterity.
In a state of national emergency and pandemic, however, there are no solutions—there are only trade-offs. The trade-off for a dramatically decreased risk of contracting the coronavirus and having it spread further is the surrender of several rights listed in the Constitution.
The Amendments
The right that has been most obviously violated is “the right to peacefully assemble.” Of course that ends with “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Some may argue that people are not conducting a redress of grievances against the government; therefore, the First Amendment doesn’t apply. But a redress of grievances is not truly possible without the threat of assembly. Petitions on Change.org are easy ways to obtain signatures, but they don’t assume the power of a physical redress.
This violation of the right to assembly causes a direct violation of the free exercise of religion. Churches have been forced to close, and groups have been dispelled throughout the nation due to their size. Congregating is the most common form of Americans’ ability to exercise their religion; it’s the tradition of religious practitioners going back millennia. In fact, as a majority of religious people in the United States practice Christianity, Hebrews 10:25 states to not forsake assembling together.
Some government officials have taken the opportunity to target religious groups. In Indiana, Allen County Health Commissioner Dr. Deborah McMahan issued a recommendation against gatherings of more than 10, but prohibited churches from gathering together, even in non-church venues. The state’s attorney general, Curtis Hill, contested McMahan’s order as “unconstitutional religious discrimination.” The order was rescinded.
In Houston, bars and restaurants are under threat of a $1,000 fine or 180 days in jail for not maintaining social distancing in their place of business. This penalty is on par with a first-time drug offense. Houston’s Harris County, one of the nation’s largest counties, has even gone so far as to create a hotline for people to report businesses not in compliance.
In this economic crisis, business owners have more to worry about than the precise spacing between customers, which has created a possible violation of the Fourth Amendment of being secure in their person.
Comparable to the case in Indiana, businesses are not treated equally, as places such as WalMart, Target, and grocery chains are free of these threats. Considering the dire economic situation the country is in, this could qualify as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, as a $1,000 fine in many cases would be excessive. These two examples definitely do not exemplify equal protection, a violation of the 14th Amendment.
The nation, in this time of crisis, does feel on fire. Alarmingly, our founding documents are being used to put out the flames. When this crisis passes, and it will as all do, the search will inevitably begin for what remains among the ashes.
Dustin Bass is the co-founder of The Sons of History, a YouTube seriesand weekly podcast about all things history. He is a former-journalist-turned-entrepreneur. He is also an author.
Source: The Epoch Times
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