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Samizdata quote of the day

Things descended into absurdity when A. abruptly asked:

Do you seriously believe that countries all over the world have coordinated and agreed to order restrictions like these? Northern Italy last year, China, etc.?

I was totally dismayed by her open cluelessness. Had she slept through these world-historical moments? Did she have no idea that lockdowns were demonstrably imported from China, with the help of the WHO and other actors? Was her implication that all these restrictions had arisen in spontaneous response to conditions, and that everything must therefore be in order? In any event, she called me “naive,” because I naturally answered her question with “yes.”

A. and B. are both intelligent and competent people in their fields, and I value both for different reasons. Nevertheless, they are swimming in these currents as if hypnotised, like countless others, and with their complicity our country has devolved into a dystopian dictatorship.

Martin Lichtmesz

17 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • staghounds

    Because Fauci and Pritchard and all the others don’t have television or the telephone.

  • Forget Brave New World and 1984. It’s starting to feel like we’re living in the Illuminatus trilogy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy

  • Flubber

    The NPC meme is real. A lot of people just seem to be incredibly suggestible.

    My resistance may have something to do with having gotten rid of my TV licence over ten years ago.

    You can of course add in goodthink, conformity, virtue signalling etc

  • Sam Duncan

    Flubber, I’ve said elsewhere that I’m absolutely certain mine is due, ironically, to my hypochondria. As things started to kick off, I knew that watching the news would drive me loopy, so I just stopped following it at all, even independent websites, for at least two months.

    Anyway, one of the Tweets Lichtmesz quotes, calling for even more authoritarian measures:

    Those who refuse vaccination must sign a form during vaccine counselling with their doctor, that they will forego hospital treatment in the event of infection.

    You first. You’ve taken a vaccine, so you won’t need treatment for a Covid infection. Therefore signing such a declaration should be no skin off your nose. Right?

  • Sam Duncan (November 20, 2021 at 8:01 pm), yes, the vaccinators faith in the virtue of the vaccine seems to be not quite matched by their faith in its actual efficacy. But is there not a possible rival? Are these vaccinators as into denying early treatment as such people usually are? If so (I’m not au fe with the Austrian situation so am just guessing by analogy with similar fanatics in the anglosphere) then Martin could try accusing all these deniers of ‘horse medicine’ and hydroxychloroquine of being guilty of just the sins they claim he is – prolonging the problem and overburdening the Austrian medical facilities with avoidable cases. We know they don’t care about liberty, but they claim to care about reducing the load on Austrian hospitals. Offer a deal in which Martin gets his return on the sums he’s paid into Austrian health services in terms of early treatment if he tests positive, while they forgo that in favour of the vaccine (and late-treatment hospitalisation if they nevertheless get seriously ill). It would seem fair – and may the fittest survive.

    There is also the point that lockdowns burden hospitals in many ways. One we are noticing in the UK is the statistically-faster mental deterioration of the elderly when subject to lockdown which (as well as being very sad for them and their relatives) means the NHS has to do more statistically per person. This is just part of increased mental health demands generally. Another problem is the backlog of delayed operations. Another is that many conditions (cancer for one) are only noticed later, so begin treatment later (when they are more serious), so demand more from the NHS per case – the virus is by no means the only disease where the ‘experts’ approach results in a denial of early treatment. All this is now showing up in increased pressure on the NHS here.

    Maybe Austrian lockdowns are different – but the UK experience certainly offers evidence that, over time, a lockdown leaves a health system deficit that can become significant in itself. It would at least be interesting to see how ‘A’ and ‘B’ would react to such a discussion.

    In summary, Martin is arguing liberty, prior flue seasons when the impact was endured, etc., but he does not (in the post, AFAICS) directly accuse A and B of perpetrating precisely the problems they accuse him of perpetrating. Unless Austria’s ‘experts’ are in some ways very different from the anglosphere’s, a valid argument for that could probably be made.

  • Paul Marks

    Good post.

    The international organisations, such as the World Health Organisation and the World Economic Forum, are fairly open in their activities.

    That this is has been part of an international campaign is simply to state the obvious.

    How can “A” and “B” not see this – when it has NOT been hidden, indeed representatives of the various international organisations have been on television (almost every day) explaining their “Build Back Better”, “Great Reset” plans? Most (although not all) national governments parrot the line – quite OPENLY parrot the line.

    There is no “conspiracy” – it has been out in the open.

    It has been from the start – after all Dr Schwab’s book “Stakeholder Capitalism” is not some secret text, it was published 50 years ago (1971) and his new book “The Great Reset” is also openly available – so anyone who says “the Great Reset is just a conspiracy theory” is either a liar, or incredibly ignorant.

    How can it be a “reaction” to Covid 19 – when it was laid out decades before Covid 19, ditto how can be it a “reaction” to the C02 causes Global Warming theory – when it was laid out decades before this theory.

    United Nations Agenda 21 came out at the start of the 1990s (“legally nonbinding” and approved by such “conservative” governments as that of President George Herbert Walker Bush and Prime Minister John Major) – how can it really have been a “reaction” to James Hanson’s C02 causes Global Warming theory, when this theory was fairly new at the time. What happened (as with Covid 19) was that international bureaucracy (government and corporate) jumped on an justification for what-they-wanted-to-do-anyway and politicians (such as President Bush 41 or Prime Minister Major) rubber stamped it all being told “it is not important – it is legally nonbinding, it is just rhetoric”.

    Then the administrators (and so on) got to work making “legally nonbinding” things, such as the doctrines on the use of LAND, legally BINDING (not “nonbinding”) – via national and local regulations.

    Every politician knowns the saying “it is policy” – officials say this all the time, but most politicians never seem to be ask themselves the question “should it not be ME who is making policy – not just presenting the policies I am given?”

    It was the same with Covid 19. As Mr Ed and others have pointed out – it is IMPOSSIBLE that these detailed regulations were created in the brief period between Covid 19 being known and March 2020 when they were imposed.

    The “policy” was already there – waiting for its justification (whatever that eventual justification turned out to be).

    It is people who deny this who are being “naive”.

    There is no way that such people as Prime Minister Johnson, and other politicians, thought all this up so quickly – even if they were hard working people (no comment on that) they simply did-not-have-the-time.

    They were presented with these detailed plans – which were already on the shelf, waiting for an “emergency” justification.

    People dropping dead in the streets (even though these Chinese films were obviously FAKED) looks a lot more dramatic than American government agencies pretending that the 1930s (and so on) were cold when they were actually hot. Presenting fake numbers (false data) always runs the risk of the truth (the actual temperature measurements in the old leather bound books) becoming known, and faked graphs on internet sites do not look that scary anyway – but people dropping dead in the streets, or being welded into apartment buildings, yes that will produce panic.

    And panic was what was wanted – by the international bodies (government and corporate), they even said so. In various countries it was openly admitted that the objective was to terrify people – to make them panic, so they would agree to ANYTHING the authorities wanted to do (and had wanted to do for a long time).

    The question is NOT “does Agenda 2030, Build Back Better Great Reset, exist” – of course it exists, it has never been hidden and goes back many years. The question is – are you for it or are you against it?

    I am against it.

  • Paul Marks

    No apologies for mentioning the French Collectivist from two centuries ago, Saint-Simon, again.

    The international elite do NOT want to be robbed and murdered – Bill Gates and co do NOT want to be robbed and murdered.

    Marxist socialism is NOT what they want (although they may back Marxist groups, such as “Black Lives Matter”, in order to create chaos on the streets – and give an excuse for greater top-down control later) – the form of Collectivism they want is far closer to Saint-Simon than to Karl Marx.

    No shooting of the Credit Bubble bankers and the “Woke” Corporations their funny money props up – on the contrary such people being IN CHARGE of the future international Collectivist “governance”.

    Hence such things as the “Environmental and Social Governance” (ESG) scores in the United States – the effort to copy the Chinese “Social Credit” system, but via banks and corporations.

    Ask them whether they are in support of this and they will say “yes”.

    There is no conspiracy – it is all out in the open.

  • Paul Marks

    Yet again – there is no question as to whether these totalitarian plans exist, they are out in the open.

    The question is – are you for it, or are you against it? Choose your side.

    And if someone goes off to international conferences (World Economic Forum or other) and expresses agreement – then they have have chosen a side. And, no, “the Civil Servants told me I had to say this” or “the officials in my Corporation told me I had to say this” is NOT an acceptable excuse.

  • The BBC just missed a truly ‘historic’ headline.

    Those who know their Roman empire history will appreciate how redolent of the city’s imperial past this headline would have been:

    Thousands of Romans gather at Colosseum to Protest against Greens

    Sadly, the beeb did not quite manage exactly that. I mention in this thread, not elsewhere, because IIUC it was not environmentalists but (green-coloured) vaccine passes that today’s Romans were protesting.

    The beeb are sort of having to admit that Europe is doing (even) worse than the UK – and it almost seemed like it wasn’t quite ‘despite’ their stricter lockdowns. On yesterday’s 10-o’clock news, our vaccination programme was cited as a reason for our happier state, but a single sentence did also mention that we opened up more and earlier, so had more infections over the summer – as if naturally-acquired immunity was an admitted thing.

  • Paul Marks

    Excellent Niall – excellent.

    And, again, simply from a administrative “logistics” point of view it would not have been possible to organise these policies in the amount of time between the first cases of the virus and the March 2020 lockdown.

    The policies were already there – waiting for a justification. And there were roleplaying conferences in 2019.

  • APF

    Paul Marks: “The question is – are you for it, or are you against it? Choose your side.”

    Do you really have to ask, Paul?

  • Paul Marks

    There is an interesting difference in the reactions I get when I say the “extreme” things I say.

    Some people, outside politics and administration, honestly believe I am wrong – and tell me so, but such people do not IN PRIVATE include people with practical experience of politics and administration (people who work in such things themselves).

    Everyone who works in such things knows it is impossible for policy to have been created so fast in so many countries – it just could not have been done in line with the official “time line” (it is not administratively possible).

    But that does NOT mean that politicians and administrators are rushing to say the things we say here – on the contrary, they warn me NOT to say them (even though they know they are correct).

    “You can do no good – you will only harm yourself, nothing can be done about all this”.

    That is the normal private argument. And it may be correct.

  • APL

    Australia seems to be transporting people to internment camps.

  • Shlomo Maistre

    Australia seems to be transporting people to internment camps.

    Link to source for this please?

  • Duncan S

    I know it’s the guardian, apologies, but here’s the story about Australia shipping people to “Quarantine centre”

    Australian defence force called in to help with transferring positive cases and close contacts

  • Shlomo Maistre

    Thanks Duncan

  • Paul Marks

    The government person in the Northern T. of Australia is a finger wager – literally, he wags his finger as he talks. Even if you are vaccinated you are an “Anti Vax” (his term) if you oppose any of his Fascist tactics.

    He clearly enjoys threatening people – I hope I live to see the day when he threatens someone without having any police guards with him.