Monday, June 01, 2020


UK: The two other casualties of the coronavirus crisis... our humanity and the truth

What will she tell her grandchildren in years to come? Holding up a placard saying ‘Cummings you are full of sh*t!’ as she joined a screaming mob haranguing the Prime Minister’s senior adviser outside his house, where he lives with his wife and four-year-old son.

Perhaps she’ll proudly show video footage of the scenes. And the newspaper articles. It’s probably too much to hope she’ll look back with any semblance of shame.

It’s become a feature of British political life – especially on the liberal Left – that the moral certainty of a position only exists in direct proportion to the viciousness deployed in defence of it

We’re near the end now. The point at which Coronavirus 2020 stops being our lived experience and enters the realm of legend and myth. Government Ministers privately acknowledge lockdown is collapsing.

Schools and shops are gradually reopening. Soon, what for the past ten weeks has been ‘the new normal’ will be elbowed aside by a return to the old realities of life.

When it does, we’ll begin to tell our own tales. Just like our parents and grandparents did with their wartime experiences. Of sacrifice and hardship and collective endeavour.

The Thursday evening clap for the NHS. The children’s rainbows spontaneously appearing in windows across the country. The Queen’s moving promise that ‘we will meet again’.

But there are things that will be forgotten. In particular, a convenient veil will be drawn over the fact that the population initially confronted Covid-19 with trademark British humour and stoicism. And then, slowly but surely, were driven to the edge of collective madness.

On one level, Dominic Cummings has no one but himself to blame for the firestorm that engulfed him and the Government. He’s characteristically fought his battles with ‘a no quarter asked or given’ brutalism.

And he can hardly complain when his enemies – having finally cornered their prey – opted to repay him in kind.

‘He can’t recover from this,’ said a normally loyal Minister.

‘He’s been exposed for the elitist he is. He’s been overrated since he won a referendum against a very poor Remain campaign and has worked to create an image of a mad genius that I’ve never seen a shred of evidence to support.’

But the last week hasn’t really been about Cummings the man. It’s been about us as a nation. And the way a country already being pushed to the brink by an unprecedented global crisis finally lost its way.

First, there was the gleeful savagery with which a mob turned not just on the PM’s aide, but on his family.

It’s become a feature of British political life – especially on the liberal Left – that the moral certainty of a position only exists in direct proportion to the viciousness deployed in defence of it.

So we had neighbours behaving like vultures, leaning out of their windows and baying at Cummings. As local Labour MP Emily Thornberry proudly proclaimed: ‘The people of Islington South and Finsbury can always be relied on to say it as it is.’

But, for me, the defining moment came during Cummings’s Downing Street rose garden inquisition.

It was his revelation that while isolating in County Durham, his sick son Cedi had to be taken to hospital by ambulance.

Normally a child’s serious illness would elicit nothing but sympathy. But not in Britain in 2020. Not in the Age of Coronavirus. This was a national scandal.

His family were condemned, literally, as plague-carriers. Being sick and having visited a ‘rural’ hospital, they were irresponsibly risking spreading their infection.

This is the prevailing distorted mindset. To take your ill child to hospital is a crime. One punishable by summary justice at the hands of the self-styled Covid vigilantes.

But if one of the first casualties of this crisis has been our sense of common humanity, another has been that other perpetual victim in our twisted culture. The truth.

On Wednesday, BBC bosses announced they had – correctly – censured Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis for breaking impartiality guidelines over an introduction to the programme’s coverage of the Cummings story.

Her deliberately controversial opening statement – ‘Dominic Cummings broke the rules, the country can see that. But it’s shocked the Government can’t see it’ – was, her defenders angrily claimed, justifiable because it was a statement of fact.

It wasn’t. But let’s put that to one side and test just how important facts and truth really are.

The saga started eight days ago with headlines in The Guardian and Daily Mirror such as ‘Dominic Cummings investigated by police after breaking coronavirus lockdown rules’.

He hadn’t been. In fact, the police had been contacted by Cummings’s father.

He wanted advice on security issues about having the PM’s adviser staying on his property.

Durham Police have confirmed: ‘At the request of Mr Cummings’s father, an officer made contact.’ There was no issue about breaking lockdown rules.

As the police later added: ‘We do not consider that by locating himself at his father’s premises, Mr Cummings committed an offence.’

That initial sensational allegation wasn’t true. Just as the subsequent claim Cummings had driven to London, then back to Durham wasn’t true. And the claim he had been seen strolling along and observing ‘aren’t the bluebells lovely’ wasn’t true. And the claim from a so-called eye-witness ‘we were shocked and surprised to see him’ wasn’t true.

But it doesn’t matter. In the Age of Coronavirus, we again have to pick a side. Forget facts. Forget reality. By choosing to protect his family, Dom Cummings transferred off our team. So he must be destroyed. Along with those around him.

On Tuesday, I was invited on to The Emma Barnett Show on Radio 5 to comment on the affair. I raised the question: What should anyone do in a situation where they and their partner were coming down with the disease and realised there would be no one else to care for their vulnerable child?

To which the answer is simple. You use common sense rather than be rigidly governed by guidelines. Your priority is to take your child somewhere safe.

In response, Ms Barnett told of a friend who had texted her. She had been in that position, too. But she hadn’t sought help, she said, because ‘she would have been scared to be stopped by the police’.

This is what we have become in the Age of Coronavirus. Citizens of a country in which mothers are terrified of seeking help for their sick children for fear of being stopped by the police.

It’s time to call a halt to this grotesque charade. It’s ending anyway, so let’s bring it to a close with some degree of decency and dignity. No more baying mobs. No more coppers’ narks. No more police road blocks.

Over the past week, a nation lost its way. It’s time to find it again.

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Protest troublemakers mostly white, police say

Nearly two-thirds of the 60 people arrested during protests in downtown Detroit over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis were from the city’s predominantly white suburbs, police say.

Thirty-seven of those taken into custody on Friday night were from places like Warren, Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield and even Grand Blanc, which is about 96 kilometers northwest of Detroit, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said Saturday.

Detroit was one of a number of US cities where protests were staged, but didn’t see the levels of violence, damage or altercations with law enforcement that occurred elsewhere.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz blamed destruction Friday night in Minneapolis - including setting a police station on fire - on out-of-state instigators. In Detroit, the message given Saturday by Craig, Mayor Mike Duggan and local activists to outsiders was clear: Stay home.

“To those who threaten the safety of our community, our police officers, who damage property, we will not tolerate your criminal actions,” Craig told reporters. “Our response will be both measured and effective.”

Although Detroit is about 80% black, many of those arrested were white. “We support the right to free speech. We support peaceful protests,” Craig added. “If you want to disrupt, stay home and disrupt in your own community.”

One person died in downtown Detroit after someone fired shots into a vehicle during a protest over Monday’s death of Floyd

SOURCE 





Pastor: Mayor Sent Police to Shut Down Sunday Services

Courtney Lewis, the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Chicago, was in the middle of his sermon when he heard loud banging on the front doors. It was the police.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot had dispatched three squad cars and two unmarked cars along with a representative from the mayor's office.

(On a side note - I warned Americans in my new book that the left would try and shut down American churches. Click here to read "Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation.")

Pastor Lewis said the intent was to shut down their Sunday services. It was "like the Soviet-style KGB," he said.

"The only thing she hasn't done yet is beat the doors down and arrest our members," the pastor said.

Pastor Lewis tells the "Todd Starnes Radio Show" that the men of the church were instructed not to open the doors during the services -- per protocol. The officers were in fact denied entry.

"Thankfully our doors were locked as a normal safety precaution we take each service to protect our members from the escalating gun violence in Chicago," the pastor said.

A church usher, who is typically positioned outside the building during the services, saw the mayor's goon force attempt to enter the building and began taking photographs.

Even more disturbing, an individual in an unmarked car with tinted windows was seen filming and photographing church members as they arrived to worship Jesus Christ.

"The mayor wants to educate everyone into compliance - which means intimidate," the pastor said.

Rev. Lewis wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney John Lausch pleading for help and protection against the city's Democrat mayor and her jackbooted thugs. Click to read the Letter of Grievance.

He said the church has gone out of its way to follow CDC guidelines by having online services, outdoor services and engaging in social distancing. All church members must also have their temperature taken before entering the sanctuary.

"We are trying to follow the laws of man as much as reasonably possible but when the laws of man conflict with the laws of God I as a pastor have a duty to follow the laws of God," he wrote. "We will not be intimidated by this overhanded government bully, but we are requesting the assistance of our president and our Justice Department in correcting this grave miscarriage of the law."

Pastor Lewis said Christian pastors are under attack in Chicago and they need help.

"All we are seeking is the same consideration and trust that is being tendered toward the liquor stores, abortion clinics and Walmart," he told the "Todd Starnes Show".

SOURCE 






Pritzker Drops All Church Restrictions After Lawsuit Exposed Him 'Ignoring the Science'

On Thursday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) dropped his coronavirus restriction capping attendance at religious services to ten people, after five churches filed the latest of many lawsuits, claiming the governor’s church restrictions were “ignoring the best science.”

Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which represented churches in three of the lawsuits, condemned Illinois for having “the harshest shutdown order in the country, with little regard for the rights of people of faith and ignoring the current best science. Every one of Illinois’ neighboring states has ‘followed the science’ and taken strong steps to safely reopen both their for-profit businesses and their not-for-profit houses of worship.” Yet Illinois did not revise its limits on churches until Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday afternoon, Pritzker announced that the Illinois Department of Public Health “has provided guidance, not mandatory restrictions, for all faith leaders to use in their efforts to ensure the health and safety of their congregants.” In other words, Illinois effectively lifted all restrictions on religious services.

“This is a total and complete victory for people of faith,” Breen said in a later statement. “Illinois’ governor and his administration abused the COVID-19 pandemic to stomp on the religious liberty of the people of Illinois. By issuing guidelines only and not the previously announced mandatory restrictions, he has handed a complete victory to the churches in Illinois.”

The Thomas More Society represented three separate lawsuits over the coronavirus restrictions, the latest of which involved five churches that filed the lawsuit on Wednesday.

Dr. George Delgado, M.D., served as an expert consultant to the churches. In a declaration to the court, he argued that “a limit on the number of persons attending church services diminishes the risk of transmission to a far smaller degree than other prophylactic measures that churches can implement.” He claimed that the risk of transmission in churches celebrating indoors with the appropriate social distancing measures is “far less than the risk of transmission in ‘essential business’ activities like grocery stores and manufacturing plants operating without attendance limitations.”

Delgado’s studies showed that “the calculated risk of contracting COVID-19 at a house of worship is 0.125 or 12% the risk [of contracting it] at the supermarket, and no one is arguing that going to the grocery store is not safe.”

One of the five churches in the lawsuit, Zion’s Christian Assembly, operates a state-funded community food pantry in the church’s building. That food pantry was allowed, even encouraged, to serve the community, and it had 25 people in the building on May 21. But the same church building was forbidden to host a service with more than ten people.

“There is no logic that can defend why a Sunday worship gathering would be more dangerous to one’s health than a food pantry distribution in the same location, with the same number of people. Yet the former is prohibited, and the latter encouraged,” Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Martin Whittaker argued. “That is blunt defiance of the Illinois Constitution’s Bill of Rights and of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Called out on this horrendous violation of religious freedom, Pritzker caved, and now Illinois churches can open with no restrictions, only guidance. This comes just in time for Pentecost this Sunday, the holiday that celebrates the birthday of the Christian Church. What a celebration that will be in Illinois!

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here
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