Showing posts with label coercion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coercion. Show all posts

Monday, January 9, 2023

Don’t Be on That Side

Advice for the New Year

Here’s a key to understanding what’s happening in the world: the side that is about controlling others is the wrong side. Be on the other side, the one about freedom and responsibility.

A secondary clue is, the side that is obscuring the truth, stifling speech, or outright lying is the wrong side. Be on the other side, the one about truth and transparency.

A third clue is, the side that is inciting fear and helplessness is the wrong side. Be on the side of courage and resourcefulness.

A really big clue is when you see incitement of fear, combined with lying and censorship, in order to assert control over others, that's the wrong side. Be on the good side.

What can you do to be on the good side?

Speak truth. Strengthen family. Pay attention and think clearly. Treat others fairly. Have courage. Trust God.



 

Stories I’m Looking at as We Begin the New Year

Bill Gates Shows Which Side He’s On

In an interview on Al Jazeera (clip shown in this Viva Frei video), Bill Gates is commenting on preparing for the next pandemic. He says, 

Governments are there to protect us. And so, you know, they have us practice for earthquakes. They have a fire department with lots of full-time people to stop fires. They have armies that are there to deal with wars. But the pandemic is a disaster that they didn’t prepare for. The actual resources required, they have a global surveillance team to make better diagnostic technologies, to do quick detection. It’s actually not going to be that expensive once the world gets organized and makes it a priority.

Governments are instituted to protect our lives, liberty, and property from those who would take those things from us. Pandemic response is quite different from a fire department. A fire department is a local-run entity to deal with fires and similar emergencies, which are relatively rare in each person’s life, but a threat to property, and possibly also life, when they happen.

A pandemic is a worldwide health problem. But it is dealt with by each individual. Nations less developed—and therefore with less access to the globalist solution, faired better than developed nations.

Gates talks about this vague “they.” “They” have “us” practice for earthquakes. “They” have a fire department. “They have armies that are to deal with wars.

What does that mean exactly? Who is practicing for earthquakes? Who is the vague “they” that requests a vague “us” to do that?

As for armies, they are to protect sovereign borders of a nation. There should be no wars to deal with unless those borders are threatened. There are many ways to threaten a nation now, because of the global market and the online world. But wars aren’t something armies “deal with”; wars are fought, presumably because the nation and its people are being attacked.

And who is the vague “they” that supposedly didn’t prepare for the pandemic? That seems disingenuous at best. There was a lot of preparation for what "they" did. They war gamed this particular pandemic just a month or so before it happened. By this time they had banned, limited, disparaged the medications it was quickly known could have easily and cheaply prevented hospitalization and death in all but the most ill from other factors, mainly age. 

And their war gaming used quarantine of the entire population—of well people—as the prescribed strategy, controlling vast swaths of people who were not at risk from the illness. Meanwhile, they put at risk people in greater risk. It was coordinated.

Then there was the experimental vaccine—pressed on people, using coercive tactics on top of fearmongering. Gates just happens to be a person who believes the human race should be radically reduced in numbers. And he suggests vaccination as a way to accomplish that end. Hmm.

 

Prayer Is Acceptable on the Field

Good news today is that football player Damar Hamlin was released from the hospital. The 24-year-old had been in critical condition following a heart attack during a game between the   and the Cincinatti Bengals a week ago. The game ended, with players from both teams kneeling together to pray for him.


Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals players pray on the field
following the cardiac arrest of Bills player Damar Hamlin
image found here

Sports commentator Dan Orlovsky later prayed for Hamlin on the air, during a broadcast.


Dan Orlovsky prays on air for Demar Hamlin
screenshot from here

This past weekend players from the Titans and Jaguars got together on the field and prayed for Hamlin.


Players from the Titans and Jaguars pray on the field
image found on Wallbuilders Facebook re-post

Hamlin himself is openly Christian and involved in charities. I do not know what caused a cardiac arrest in a fit young athlete. But the young man’s ongoing recovery, which seems miraculous, and the unashamed willingness to pray for him, also miraculous, are worth prayers of thanks.

This is just months after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of high school football coach Joe Kennedy, who had been fired for praying on the field after games, where he could be seen by people who hate seeing signs of religion. 

May this be a new acceptance of prayer and religion in public once again!

 

We Have a Speaker

We knew in the end it would be Kevin McCarthy, as Speaker of the House, following the November election, which turned over the speakership to Republicans. No one else wanted the job badly enough to take him on.

But there were 20 members of the House Freedom Caucus who were willing to use the opportunity to push for reforms that were badly needed to break free of the Pelosi-controlled way of doing business. It took 15 votes over several days. The Freedom Caucus—and the American people—won a number of concessions, assuming Speaker McCarthy follows through. Here’s a pretty good list, told to Roger L. Simon by Rep. Andrew Ogles, for The Epoch Times (with a bit of added commentary from me):

1.      As has been reported, it will only take a single congressperson, acting in what is known as a Jeffersonian Motion, to move to remove the speaker if he or she goes back on their word or policy agenda. [This means they have to vote on it, once one person has made the motion. Pelosi had required 50% to support the motion for it to get a vote.]

2.      A “Church”-style committee will be convened to look into the weaponization of the FBI and other government organizations (presumably the CIA, the subject of the original Church Committee) against the American people.

3.      Term limits will be put up for a vote. [The only way this could be binding would be if they vote to amend the Constitution, it passes also in the Senate, and then the required number of states ratify it. But this does put the representatives’ votes on record on this issue. It's a platform issue going forward.]

4.      Bills presented to Congress will be single subject, not omnibus with all the attendant earmarks, and there will be a 72-hour minimum period to read them. [Two hurrahs for this. It can’t be representative government if it’s decided in back rooms and our representatives are pressed to vote for legislation they cannot even look at ahead of time.]

5.      The Texas Border Plan will be put before Congress. From The Hill: “The four-pronged plan aims to ‘Complete Physical Border Infrastructure,’ ‘Fix Border Enforcement Policies,’ ‘Enforce our Laws in the Interior’ and ‘Target Cartels & Criminal Organizations.’” [We’re simply asking the federal government to do what it is expressly required to do. What a concept!]

6.      COVID mandates will be ended, as will all funding for them, including so-called emergency funding. [And no such powers should ever be within the grasp of these power mongers ever again.]

7.      Budget bills would stop the endless increases in the debt ceiling and hold the Senate accountable for the same. [Has it been since Pelosi first got in in 2006 that we last had a budget? I should check whether there was one in 2017 or 2018. (There’s this story showing charts up until 2018.) Again, the budget is the one thing Congress is required by law to do, and they’ve failed to do it year after year.]

I have very little trust and faith in the federal government. But if there is to be any hope for regaining our constitutional republic, we must see it kick into gear immediately with this Republican-led House. I’m glad they did what they did. I hope it leads to meaningful immediate changes. Better freedom means better lives for all Americans.

 

 

 

Thursday, July 29, 2021

A Letter of the Law

There was an announcement this past week from the CDC that the commonly used RT-PCR tests are unable to differentiate between COVID-19 and the regular flu. This has been known for some months (see this FDA announcement).That would explain why flu cases dropped so dramatically—almost to zero—this past year, while everything was attributed to COVID. A comment I read online (so, anecdotal only) said his wife worked in a pharmacy, and they had distributed only one prescription for Tamiflu in a year. This may mean that a lot of people suffered a worse flu than necessary, because they were misdiagnosed as having COVID.

In contradiction to this new information, based on more positive tests—which are admittedly now inaccurate—we have jurisdictions alarmed about this spike in cases. Which might not be cases. Which aren’t causing higher death rates. Which aren’t significantly increasing hospitalizations. So alarmed that they are threatening mask mandates—for everyone, even those who are fully vaccinated (which is supposed to mean they are safe from contracting or spreading the disease) and those who have natural antibodies from surviving the disease (who cannot contract or spread the disease). So there's science, if you can find it, and there's something else altogether that you might hear from those claiming to be citing the science.

 

Bringing Suit

image found here
A couple of days ago, attorney Robert Barnes shared something on his Locals.com account that was both amusing and helpful—in case you’re considering a particular type of lawsuit. This info just came to him—well, here’s how he says it: 

This letter just came to me in a bottle, and I have no idea who might have penned it, nor can I possibly vouch for it, and what you fine folks do with it is entirely in your own hands, as the Gentlemen of the Bar remind me I can proffer no general legal advice in the matter, and must officially disclaim proffering any such advice here.

“The letter” is sort of legal-type information related to forced vaccinations. He suggests going ahead and editing and/or using the info as you see fit (such as for your personal lawsuit against an employer, or maybe even some other entity, that attempts to coerce you to take this experimental intervention). So I’ll share a good chunk of it.

“The letter” starts by saying, “Compelling any employee to take any current Covid-19 vaccine violates federal and state law, and subjects the employer to substantial liability risk, including liability for any injury the employee may suffer from the vaccine.”

“The letter” notes that Kaiser Foundation legal team has put out such a liability warning, among other hedging of bets.

Then come three “key concerns,” and added information related to each:

1.      While the vaccine remains unapproved by the CDC and authorized only for emergency use, federal law forbids mandating it, in accordance with the Nuremberg Code of 1947.

o   Subsectionbbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III) of section 360 of Title 21 of the United States Code, otherwise known as the Emergency Use Authorization section of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, demands that everyone give employees the "option to accept or refuse administration" of the Covid-19 vaccine.

o   This right to refuse emergency, experimental vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccine, implements the internationally agreed legal requirement of Informed Consent established in the Nuremberg Code of 1947. As the Nuremberg Code established, every person must "be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision" for any medical experimental drug, as the Covid-19 vaccine currently is. The Nuremberg Code prohibited even the military from requiring such experimental vaccines. (Doe #1 v. Rumsfeld, 297 F.Supp.2d 119 (D.D.C. 2003).

2.      The Americans with Disabilities Act proscribes, punishes and penalizes employers who invasively inquire into their employees' medical status and then treat those employees differently based on their medical status, as the many AIDS-related cases of decades ago fully attest.

o   demanding employees divulge their personal medical information invades their protected right to privacy, and discriminates against them based on their perceived medical status, in contravention of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (42USC §12112(a).) Indeed, the ADA prohibits employers from invasive inquiries about their medical status, and that includes questions about diseases and treatments for those diseases, such as vaccines. As the EEOC makes clear, an employer can only ask medical information if the employer can prove the medical information is both job-related and necessary for the business.

§  If the employer asserts the employee’s medical status (such as being unvaccinated against a particular disease) precludes employment, then the employer must prove that the employee poses a “safety hazard” that cannot be reduced with a reasonable accommodation. The employer must prove, with objective, scientifically validated evidence, that the employee poses a materially enhanced risk of serious harm that no reasonable accommodation could mitigate.

3.      International law, Constitutional law, specific statutes and the common law of torts all forbid conditioning access to employment upon coerced, invasive medical examinations and treatment, unless the employer can fully provide objective, scientifically validated evidence of the threat from the employee and how no practicable alternative could possible suffice to mitigate such supposed public health threat and still perform the necessary essentials of employment.

o   Conditioning continued employment upon participating in a medical experiment and demanding disclosure of private, personal medical information, may also create employer liability under other federal and state laws, including HIPAA, FMLA, and applicable state tort law principles, including torts prohibiting and proscribing invasions of privacy and battery. Indeed, any employer mandating a vaccine is liable to their employee for any adverse event suffered by that employee. The CDC records reports of the adverse events already reported to date concerning the current Covid-19 vaccine.

That third one brings to mind Typhoid Mary, who was a vector for the spreading of that Typhoid fever back in the day. It turned out she, herself, just working in establishments, spread the illness. But they had to prove that before they could deprive her of making her living.

It would be hard to prove that one unvaccinated employee would/could spread this illness to vaccinated co-workers—unless you admit that the vaccine doesn’t prevent the spread of the virus, in which case there’s no compelling interest for the company to require it, since it’s ineffective anyway.

Somewhere in the body of “The letter,” it offers a bit of basic logic:

At the outset, consider the "problem" being "solved" by vaccination mandates. The previously infected are better protected than the vaccinated, so why aren't they exempted? Equally, the symptomatic can be self-isolated. Hence, requiring vaccinations only addresses one risk: dangerous or deadly transmission, by the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic employee, in the employment setting. Yet even government official Mr. Fauci admits, as scientific studies affirm, asymptomatic transmission is exceedingly and "very rare."

I’ve puzzled through this basic logic following an exchange I had with someone recently. This person said my refusal to get a vaccine would put at risk her loved ones. I pointed out that, so far, I haven’t spread a single COVID-19 germ to anyone, since I’ve managed not to get it. She encouraged me to continue my hygiene efforts. But I’m wondering how, if her loved ones got a vaccine (probably at her urging), could my not getting it affect them? Unless it’s not effective. In which case, why should I risk my health by taking a vaccine that’s not even effective? Or were her loved ones unable to take the vaccine for some reason, such as the likelihood they would have a bad reaction? And if so, why would I not get that consideration? I’m supposed to ignore that danger to me so that I don’t spread something to her loved ones that I'm not even encountering? I’m somehow disqualified from being such a loved one to someone?

This whole uproar about our duty to society is a logical fallacy.

Anyway, you can’t simultaneously believe this medical intervention stops people from getting the disease and also that the unvaccinated can spread it to the vaccinated.

After the additional information on each of the 3 key points, “the letter” adds an additional point:

Finally, forced vaccines constitute a form of battery, and the Supreme Court long made clear "no right is more sacred than the right of every individual to the control of their own person, free from all restraint or interference of others."

If push comes to shove, I may need this letter.

 

Mask Mandates

One more thing about what is being mandated, about masks. There’s a good visualization of what the relative sizes of particulates, mostly invisible to the naked eye.


infographic by Visual Capitalist, found here

 

Note that wildfire smoke particulates are up to four times larger than coronavirus particulates. So here’s a test: if you can smell wildfire smoke while wearing your mask, it’s not stopping coronavirus particulates.

I haven’t done this test with mine, which has been stuffed in a pocket of my purse for about a month now, left unworn but handy in case I end up somewhere with a requirement. But I know that I have smelled perfume and other odors through it. The doctors—and there are many—who say wearing a mask is like wearing a chain link fence to keep mosquitoes out, are in fact being accurate. In other words, most masks do no good against a virus. What are you accomplishing by wearing a mask? Avoiding spreading larger particulates, such as from pollen or white blood cells (not sure how you’d be breathing or sneezing those out, exactly).

A HEPA filter works on particulates that are .3 microns and larger. Coronaviruses can be up to .5 microns, or as small as .1 microns. So even a HEPA filter only partially helps filter coronaviruses.

An N-95 respirator mask filters to .3 microns, so that covers bacteria (at 1-3 microns) and respiratory droplets (at 5-10 microns), and even some coronavirus (those at .3 to .5 microns), but not all. There’s a note about who should not wear N-95 masks, which includes children, those restricted for medical reasons (such as breathing difficulties), and “patients and visitors.”

Oh, and N-95 masks and others don’t protect the eyes or skin, through which particulates may enter. And men with beards or stubble—they can’t get a tight enough seal. And people should receive proper training—which the regular populace out here has not.


from Frequently Asked Questions Regarding N-95 Respirators 
from Ims Learning from HHH

If your mask doesn’t filter as well as an N-95 respirator, you’re probably mopping up some respiratory droplets and maybe some bacteria, but likely not viruses. They just go through—easier than smoke particulates.

This probably explains why areas with mask mandates and draconian shutdowns had about the same results or worse than those areas that maintained freedom to choose those things.

But now that we have a sudden rise in cases—using the testing that has been declared faulty—we are threatened with returns to mask mandates. Nancy Pelosi is threatening to arrest anyone not following her mandate at the capitol—where they’ve already required vaccines and/or natural antibodies. (Until someone discovers that she never had authority to jail someone over her personal rule.)

And there’s a possible travel ban on airlines for those who don’t have proof of vaccination—regardless of whether they have natural antibodies or should be granted an exemption for health reasons. This is even though airlines use HEPA air filtration. Last time I flew (last fall) masks were required except while eating, but I don’t know whether that had been lifted recently. But today Biden announced that, although I won’t be allowed to fly, he’s lifting the vaccine proof requirement for illegal aliens—because it’s hard for them to get the paperwork. Note that it’s especially hard if they get their immunity by sharing the illness among one another—and everyone else they come in contact with.

In sum, none of this makes sense—except to the tyrants trying to impose control over the masses.

 

Charting the Data

It has been a couple of months since the last time I charted the data for Texas, Harris County, and my zip code. If you’ve been concerned that the sudden super rise in cases means we’re repeating the spikes of last August and January, maybe the data will settle your mind somewhat.

This is the 7-day rolling average of deaths per day in Texas. The two colors represent two sources. I started by getting data daily from the Houston Chronicle, which got data from the Texas and Harris County health sites. Then there came a day when I just went to those official sites myself. The data wasn’t the same, but eventually I noticed that the state was merely a day earlier than the paper, so there’s really just a slight echo. But about a month ago the Chronicle stopped showing data, so I have only the official data now. I guess at some point I’ll redo my file to show just one column. Anyway, it’s the overall shape you’ll look at.



 

This is the 7-day rolling average of deaths per day in Harris County. Again, I track deaths because the count is more accurate than cases, generally. I’ve waited a couple of weeks since the case count started rising to see if the death rate would show up as a lagging indicator. So far it has not.



 

While I don’t measure case counts, the county does provide what they call an epi-curve graph of cases. It’s a pretty good picture of the trend over time. Right now you can see that, while there has been a rise, it was from a pretty low number to a higher but still pretty low number. It’s not exactly alarming enough to return to shutdowns and mandates.


chart from here

In my zip code I measure cases. The numbers are easier to grasp in terms of who I’ll run into at the Kroger down the street. Here I’ve measured the daily new cases and the change in daily active cases—both 7-day rolling averages.



I also look at deaths in my zip code. There has been a total of 25, in a population of 34,885. Up until the last time I shared my charts, we were averaging 1 death every 15 days. We have been at the same count now since May 20—that’s 79 days as of July 28. Earlier this month there was a drop to 24 total deaths for a couple of weeks. And then there were a couple of days down to 23. Now, I’m assuming patients didn’t turn out to be alive after all; I’m assuming someone was numbered in our zip code when they should have been counted in another. Or, it’s also possible a death was attributed to COVID that shouldn’t have been and a correction happened. Or maybe it was just someone making a typo. Then it went back up to 25 this week. I think this is a correction in recording, rather than a sudden new couple of deaths. But either way, we reached 25 deaths on May 20. 

I’ve been looking at another data source that shows changes from the week previous, updated daily. I collect it but haven’t charted it yet. They do things like show a 200% rise in cases, which looks dire. But then you look and find out it was an increase from one new case to three new cases in a small county. So, it seems useful if you’re trying to get an emotional reaction, but not really that informative. Anyway, one of these days I may chart that one too, just to test my guesses.

Anyway, case counts are up—using testing that is verified inaccurate and will be replaced completely by the end of the year. The claim is that this is a new variant. Word from Israel is, the Pfizer vaccine is only about 39% effective against this variant.

Individually, COVID-19 could still be a scary challenge for any individual who actually gets the disease. But I would look to natural and long-time safe medications first—if you know you actually have it (loss of smell seems to be a consistent indicator). Chances for recovery are extremely high, regardless of your age, if you follow early at-home treatment protocols. Chances of avoiding the illness by taking the jab? Not so much.

You don’t have to take my recommendations, of course. And I shouldn’t be coerced to take yours.

 

 

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Something Is Up—and It’s Worldwide

After my last blog, I heard a fair amount more from Dr. Peter McCullough, whom I referenced in that post. And Tucker Carlson, whom I also referenced. Dr. McCullough was a guest on Carlson’s Fox Nation show Tucker Carlson Today, which unfortunately requires a paid membership (which I obtained in order to hear it).

Carlson had someone send him the testimony of Dr. McCullough in front of the Texas Legislature a few weeks ago. I listened to that too. Dr. McCullough is very reputable—Tucker suggests you Google him so you know for yourself. He’s not a conspiracy theorist. But repeatedly he said, “Something is up. And it’s worldwide.” So I’d like to go over what is up.


Dr. Peter McCullough testifies to the Texas Senate HHS Committee March 11, 2021.
screenshot from here

 

WHY DON’T WE HEAR ABOUT TREATMENTS?

The original question that interested Carlson is, Why, if there are treatments, are we not hearing about them?

We went over some of the available treatments in the last post. But the question of why the knowledge of those treatments is suppressed is the puzzlement. Dr. McCullough doesn’t speculate on what is going on, beyond maybe group fear.

There’s a timeline issue he illustrates with this from Australia:

PM: And Tucker, it’s worldwide. Something is up. Listen to this. Queensland, Australia—you’ve probably been there. April [2020]—they put on the books as a law—as a law!—if a doctor attempts to help a patient with COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, that doctor will be put in jail for six months.

TC: What?

PM: Yes. In April they put it on the books.

TC: Why?

PM: Something is up. If you look at the TGA. Let’s not fry the US agencies. So let’s look at the TGA, the FDA equivalent in Australia. And Australia is interesting. They’ve been kind of spared of COVID-19. They’ve been in these draconian lockdowns. They have this huge, susceptible population. They’re all distributed. They’ve been in fear for 14 months. The TGA has some guidelines for COVID-19. It must have two dozen recommendations:

·         Don’t use hydroxychloroquine.

·         Don’t use Ivermectin.

·         Don’t use steroids.

·         Don’t use anticoagulants.

·         Don’t use—

They list everything you should not do. It’s like, what should you do? Net answer: nothing.

TC: But, OK, so COVID-19 became known to the West in January of 2020. So that was one year and four months ago. OK, so how could—with such a short period of time—the health regulators of Australia know, to the point where they codified it in a regulation, that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective therapy against COVID-19? Like, how could that be known? It couldn’t be known. Correct?

PM: It couldn’t be known.


Dr. Peter McCullough (left) is interviewed by Tucker Carlson May 7, 2021.
screenshot from here (may require paid membership)

 

MORE TIMELINE ODDITIES

Let me add a couple of things to that puzzlement. Much of the world, still, believes a fake Lancet study, which was withdrawn almost directly afterward—well, here’s what Dr. McCullough said about that study:

Lancet published a fake paper that came from a fake database that implied that hydroxychloroquine hurt people in the hospital. And we looked at it. In two seconds I knew it was a fake paper. They had 70,000 patients in a database that had detailed drug information back in December and going forward; we didn’t have that back then. Mean age was 50— 49; we don’t hospitalize people at age 49. This went through peer review. It was agreed upon by all the editors. It hung up in Lancet for two weeks and scared the bejabbers out of the world by using hydroxychloroquine…. And this is the most frequently used, widely relied upon drug in the world… for treating COVID-19. But something’s going on.

When asked about the fake data in the Lancet study, Dr. McCullough adds this:

PM: Well, it came from a company called Surgisphere, which rapidly dissolved. The Lancet published a retraction that said, “You know, we just couldn’t verify the data, and so we’re retracting it.” No apologies. No explanation of how this could have influenced world events. It greatly influenced the FDA staffers, who wrote an FDA warning. It said, “Well, listen, we think hydroxychloroquine causes harm. Doctors shouldn’t use this.” It was based upon a fake paper. This went to the American Medical Association, then the Board of Pharmacies.

TC: Is this a real story?

PM: This is a real story. And doctors were writing prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine, and all of a sudden their medical licenses are being threatened. There have been cases all over the country of doctors trying to help patients. And hydroxychloroquine is one of four to six drugs we use for COVID-19. It is extraordinary.

The Lancet study is still used. I was aware it was fake back a year ago. But people are still citing it. I heard the very sensible Niall Ferguson on a recent Uncommon Knowledge interview surrounding the release of his book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. Here’s a segment from the interview: 

Peter Robinson: Here’s another quotation. The press, from Doom: "If a population is to make good choices, good information is vital." Vital! "The fact that President Trump retweeted a video of a hydroxychloroquine claim, a clip that was viewed more than 13 million times in social media, neatly encapsulated the nature of the dual plague the world confronted in 2020." Close quote. First of all, just remind us about that hydroxychloroquine, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Could you just remind us about that incident? What was that all about?

Niall Ferguson: Hydroxychloroquine was supposed to have some effect, prophylactic or possibly also as a remedy against COVID-19. President Trump heard about this. The story did the rounds. There were some very shaky, I believe French studies suggesting that there might be some benefit. And he began, along with a great many people on social media and elsewhere, to recommend it as a prophylactic or as a treatment.

Donald Trump (video): I happen to be taking it. I happen to be taking it.

Reporter (video): Hydroxychloroquine?

Donald Trump (video): I'm taking it, hydroxychloroquine.

Niall Ferguson: As soon as any rigorous studies were done, it turned out that there was not only no benefit, but in fact, potential harm from taking hydroxychloroquine. And that was just one of a great many fake stories that did the round.

So, a smart person, who has done research on the topic, in fact written a book on it, still thinks the Lancet study, which was fake, was a “rigorous study.” There was one other study—in which they waited to give hydroxychloroquine to the seriously ill hospitalized COVID patients, and then they gave them several times the recommended dosage—without the other drugs in combination that were found to be working together—and killed those patients, then announced to the world that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. I was aware of the flaws in these studies at the time. Both bogus. But Niall Ferguson—even after a year of additional successful use by doctors like Peter McCullough and thousands of others—still believes those fake stories. That’s weird.

Ferguson mentioned some very shaky French study. That was odd too. I’m guessing it was a Dr. Raoult, who up until the moment he recommended hydroxychloroquine had been highly renowned; suddenly he was scorned. Only for recommending HCQ, as far as I can tell. I heard about his recommending HCQ—the day before President Trump mentioned it among other possible remedies that he believed showed promise. The press for some reason focused in on HCQ—told the story about a woman who used fish tank cleaner on herself and her husband (killed him) because a version of HCQ was an ingredient—among several other toxic chemicals; the press claimed this was proof Trump’s recommendation was dangerous. Remember that?

Then, when you’re looking at oddities in the timeline, there was the change in HCQ from a safe over-the-counter medication in France to being suddenly prescription only and possibly unsafe—just ahead of the pandemic. I wrote about this here

Dr. McCullough talks some more about timeline oddities:

And in fact there are pieces of the timeline that are suggesting that something is very wrong going on in the world. And whatever’s going on, it is worldwide. It is not just US. Things are worse in Canada. There are anguishing doctors and nurses in norther EU, and in Scandinavia about euthanasia and having the seniors literally just be euthanized. There’s some horrible things going on.

For a profession that say, "First, do no harm," this is both puzzling and disturbing.

I think one of the strangest parts of the timeline is the planning conference right ahead of the actual pandemic, and some other planning prior to that. I wrote this in July 2020

In September 2019 [Bill] Gates participated in a “pandemic exercise,” called Event201, which was specific about response to a coronavirus outbreak—one month before it appears to have begun in Wuhan.

In 2018 a video called “A Simulation for a Global Flu Pandemic,” was made by The Institute for Disease Modeling, posted courtesy of the Gates Foundation, showing a flu virus originating in China and spreading across the globe, killing millions—eerily similar to what has actually happened. 

In 2017, just as the Trump administration was beginning, Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke at a conference, predicting that sometime during this administration’s term there was a high likelihood of an infectious disease outbreak. He was pushing for funding in preparation. 

 

WHY ARE DOCTORS NOT ACTING LIKE DOCTORS?

AAPS COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines
available here
What seems strangest of all, perhaps, to Dr. McCullough is the refusal of doctors to treat sick patients. He helped develop a protocol last spring. He shared it, and it was the most widely downloaded piece in the American Journal of Medicine on COVID—still is. That was published in August of 2020. In November of 2020 Dr. McCullough testified before the US Senate. I believe by that time or shortly afterward, he helped publish the AAPS guidelines for treating COVID. Still, most Americans are unaware that COVID-19 is treatable for outpatients. And most patients still get told to wait at home a couple of weeks until they’re sick enough for hospitalization.

When asked why the hesitancy to treat, Dr. McCullough says,

PM: The innocent explanation is, it’s driven out of fear. And the fear is, you know, “We don’t know how to deal with this. We don’t have large clinical trials. We don’t have the intellectual support to support our group think.” And then, “Because of this, we are going to err on the side of doing nothing,” almost as if we’re dealing with some type of contagion that you’d read in a Michael Crichton book.

It could have been all fear driven. But I have to tell you, as a doctor, that’s not in my moral DNA to let people die without treatment. Of course I’m going to try some steroids or some Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine. I’m going to add Lovenox and some other drugs. Of course I am. And sure enough, myself and others found out over time, we can get people through the illness.

I wonder what the “not innocent explanation” might be.

There seems to have been a “group think” among doctors and public health officials worldwide. Normally they collaborate, they try drugs they think might work, based on past similar illnesses. They share their results. They learn and get better. What they do not do—ever—is sit back and wait for permission to treat until some public health organization “rules” on what’s allowable. Except this time. Something is up.

He found that there are groups in the US—the Frontline Doctors and others; there’s the Bird group in England, Panda in South Africa, Treatment Domicilari in Italy, COVID Medical Network in Australia. But we don't have the CDC, NIH, or WHO doing anything but obstructing. He says,

We’ve got like-minded people that say, “Listen, treat this early at home.” But we don’t have a single bit of regulatory support. We don’t have a single bit of your conventional medical society support.

 

ABOUT THE VACCINES, THE NUREMBERG CODE, AND COERCION

Refusal to treat is not the only oddity; there’s also the oddity about how the vaccines have been handled. Dr. McCullough is pro-vaccine. But it depends on the patient. One thing he’s clear on is that there should be no coercion or lack of consent. This comes out of the Nuremberg Code, which came out of WWIII, where atrocities in testing on captive humans was done. He says,

We live by it every day. It says the person—the individual—gets to decide what happens to their body. They can take advice, but what happens to their body—without pressure, coercion, or threat of reprisal. This is really important.

A friend sent me an article just this past week referring to violations of the Nuremberg Code. It shows what the code is, and then describes a suit against entities in violation. Here’s the introductory summary of the claims:

Dr. Reiner Fuellmich
screenshot from video embedded in this article

A team of over 1,000 lawyers and over 10,000 medical experts led by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich have begun legal proceedings against the CDC, WHO & the Davos Group for crimes against humanity. Fuellmich and his team present the faulty PCR test and the order for doctors to label any comorbidity death as a Covid death as fraud. The PCR test was never designed to detect pathogens and is 100% faulty at 35 cycles. All the PCR tests overseen by the CDC are set at 37 to 45 cycles. The CDC admits that any tests over 28 cycles are not admissible for a positive reliable result. This alone invalidates over 90% of the alleged covid cases/”infections” tracked by the use of this faulty test.

In addition to the flawed tests and fraudulent death certificates, the “experimental” vaccine itself is in violation of Article 32 of the Geneva Convention. Under Article 32 of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV, “mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person” are prohibited. According to Article 147, conducting biological experiments on protected persons is a grave breach of the Convention.

The “experimental” vaccine is in violation of all 10 of the Nuremberg Codes which carry the death penalty for those who seek to violate these International Laws.

The “vaccine” fails to meet the following five requirements to be considered a vaccine and is by definition a medical “experiment” and trial:

The list, with some detail, includes these points:

·         Provides immunity to the virus.

·         Protects recipients from getting the virus.

·         Reduces deaths from the virus infection.

·         Reduces circulation of the virus.

·         Reduces transmission of the virus.

And then the ten violated codes are listed, followed by a video

I don’t know whether Dr. McCullough knows anything about this case, only that he mentioned the Nuremberg Code, and his main point was that consent was being violated. He and Carlson talk about this in relation to coercive pressure today:

PM: And as we move forward in research, we wanted to learn from this Nazi research, which was awful— We had a terrible situation in the United States—the Tuskegee experiments, where, for research, people ought to have informed consent. And they can freely participate or not. And we follow that in clinical medicine. This is really important. If a Jehovah’s Witness says, “Listen, I’m not taking a blood transfusion,” we can’t force it into their body. If we have a patient who says, “Doctor, I’m not taking a vaccine,” we cannot—"without pressure, coercion, or reprisal.” We can’t have somebody say, “Listen, I’m going to lose my job.” That’s pretty strong coercion, don’t you think?

TC: Yeah. You can’t make a living. You can’t eat. Yeah, that’s about the strongest possible—I mean, short of physical harm. That’s the strongest.

PM: How about, “I can’t go to school”? “I can’t get my college degree?”

TC: “Your children can’t be educated if you don’t obey”? So that’s— I think that’s the point that all decent people have considered at some point in the last week or two, as we’re learning that coercion is real, and that you will be punished unless you obey. My question to you, though, as a physician, is, that is in direct contradiction of the Nuremberg Code. Is that something that all physicians are familiar with?

PM: Yes.

I’m trying to get perspective here. The vaccines are approved on an EUA basis—emergency use authorization, which means no guarantee of either safety or efficacy. Excluded from the trials are COVID-recovered people, pregnant women, women of childbearing age who can’t verify contraception, children under 18, people with compromised immune systems, or people who have had a previous vaccine reaction.

And yet there is a push for EVERYBODY to get the vaccine. College students are often being required to get the vaccine in order to return to classes in the fall. Similar requirements are happening in some public schools, even though children are apparently resistant both to getting the disease and spreading it. And the policies aren’t even written yet—so these school officials haven’t even thought through giving exemptions to people who are in categories excluded from the trials.

Dr. McCullough calls out a hospital here in Houston—and I verify we’ve heard about it here. At first they were offering employees $500 to encourage them to take the vaccine—a coercion in itself that would not be allowed in a clinical trial situation. Not enough healthcare workers took them up on the offer to satisfy them. If the carrot doesn’t work, you try the stick. So they threatened firing. Some of the employees got together and pointed out that some of them didn’t want it, didn’t need it, and some couldn’t take it. The hospital administrators said, “You’re fired.”

There’s this point Dr. McCullough makes about why we take vaccines:

Think about this: We always vaccinate for the purpose of protecting the individual—because the individual takes on the risk. We never vaccinate an individual to protect somebody else—never. Because that’s asking the individual to take the risk for someone else’s benefit.

I’m feeling this coercion personally, because I’m threatened with not being able to travel, not being able to enter stores, not being able to attend a large gathering like a concert or ball game, maybe not being allowed to attend someone’s wedding. Some doctors even refuse to treat patients who come into the waiting room unless they've already had their vaccinations. This prejudice against me is not because I have spread or will spread the disease—but because I am in a category that cannot and should not get the vaccine. I’m supposed to ignore that and risk myself—for what? For the sake of keeping society safe—when I’ve managed to spread exactly zero COVID germs whatsoever during this very bad year? I’m dangerous and should be punished? Should I wear a yellow star to brand myself as subhuman, like we’ve seen before in coercive tyrannies?

And why is there pressure to get everyone to take the vaccine? Especially why for those who have long-term natural immunity already?

Dr. McCullough is very clear that COVID-recovered have the best immunity. The COVID-recovered can’t get the virus again, and they can’t spread it. They have immunity to all the strains. The vaccine is designed only for the “wild” virus, originally from China, but that one has pretty much disappeared from the US at this point. That’s why the vaccine will only be partially effective. He recommends getting a T-cell test, or an antibody test, or both, to show proof of immunity. That ought to be accepted. “They should get a gold passport,” if you absolutely have to show proof somewhere.

Dr. McCullough doesn’t, through all of this, get more conspiratorial than saying, “Something is up. And it’s worldwide.” I can’t solve that puzzle either. But there are far too many things that have made this pandemic plague us in ways it didn’t have to. There’s the control of society. There’s the refusal to allow treatments. There’s the coercive pressure to vaccinate. There’s the timeline, making it appear that this was all planned.

If that is so, who did the planning? And why would so many people blithely go along with their plans when people are unnecessarily dying and society is unnecessarily suffering economic and social disaster? How did they get all the media to buy in?

And how do we heal from this?

For another day, I’d like to know, is it related to other things we can’t explain?

·       Election fraud—and the censorship of truth surrounding it.

·       Biden family corruption (and others in high places)—and the censorship of truth surrounding it.

·       Bad stuff happening because of policy changes regarding the border, Israel and the Middle East, China, energy independence, massive spending and debt—and the censorship of truth surrounding it.

·       The LGBT agenda takeover of our educational system, social institutions, and even the marketplace—and the censorship of truth surrounding it.

·       The tribalism caused by labeling everyone and everything racist, even the country that spread the concept of equality before the law to the rest of the world—and the censorship of truth surrounding it.

And more. I can’t say for certain there is a conspiracy. But something is up. And it’s worldwide.

Thursday, December 31, 2020

What the Spherical Model Is All About

If you’ve been reading just the past couple of months, you may think this blog is about politics, and mainly about election fraud. This time period is kind of an anomaly. The purpose of the blog, which I’ve been writing since 2011 (almost a decade) is to look at examples and ideas that come up in the news, or in life, to support the Spherical Model concepts.

So then you may wonder, What in the world is the Spherical Model? The Spherical Model is an alternative to the right/left line model for looking at political, economic, and social ideas. The goal is to reach the respective goals of freedom, prosperity, and civilization—while conversely getting far away from tyranny, poverty, and savagery.


The Spherical Model—trying to enlighten the world one blog post at a time.
Sunrise photo found on Wikipedia

There are principles involved in reaching those goals. There are long ways and short ways to cover the concepts: the website (long), the video (short). I usually start with the political sphere, because then we can dispel the ubiquitous but useless, even harmful, right/left model. So I’ll go ahead and do that first.

____________________

The Political World Is Round

Back in 2004, during our homeschooling decade, I was looking for a way to explain political ideas to my kids. And I began to ask questions, like: Is there a better way of looking at political ideas than right or left?

Because there is nothing innately conservative about the right or innately liberal about the left. In fact, the directional terms come from the seating arrangement of European parliaments, in which conservatives favored retaining the monarchy while liberals were in favor of people’s power.

So the typical line model we use to describe political ideas as right and left is just a seating arrangement. Yet we’ve come to think of this line as a spectrum.

Political conversations tend to describe the far ends as extreme, assuming there’s some virtue in being balanced in the middle. And we refer to our nation as center right—just a little more conservative than exactly center.



But what are the extremes? Do we assume communism or socialism at the extreme left, and fascism at the extreme right?



That can’t be right, because communism and fascism are both totalitarian statist tyrannies, just slightly different flavors. Nazi means “national socialist party” and the communist Soviet Union’s name was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

So if Nazism and communism aren’t diametric opposites, then what are the logical extremes?

How about total government control: tyranny; versus total lack of government control: anarchy?



That’s better. Then freedom is that perfect balance in the middle.

But wait; there’s a problem with this model too. It’s common in history for people suffering in anarchy to turn for relief to total government control—anything for security. But in this model, as a people move to the left, they have to pass through that balanced freedom section. You’d think that it would be very common for someone to stop and say, “Hey, this freedom is good. Let’s stop going leftward and stay here.” Yet that pretty much never happens. But going directly from chaos to state control is historically common.

Plus, notice that there’s not that much difference between the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of anarchy. Total government control means the state has all the power—the police, the military. The state can do what it wants, and the mere citizen is without any rights except what the state decides to grant.

Anarchy, on the other hand, means that power belongs to whoever is stronger and meaner than the next guy. If you threaten to beat people up (or kill them) if they don’t give you all their belongings, and you’re strong enough to mean it, then you have power. If someone else is stronger or better armed than you are, then you have to yield power to them.

In other words, anarchy, while less organized, is power in the hands of the strongest and best armed—just like a tyrannical government.

So maybe government tyranny and anarchic tyranny are pretty close to the same thing. To demonstrate this, I use a ribbon, labeled at the ends, and fold it in half, so it looks something like this:



Tyranny and freedom are really the opposite extremes.

Not bad. But it puts all those different kinds of tyrannies in the same location, and maybe there are differences.

A simple line doesn’t give us the dimensions we need.

So, how about if we use three dimensions—a sphere? If we draw a line at the equator, we can separate freedom (northern hemisphere) from tyranny (southern hemisphere). And then we can draw a longitudinal dividing line, with more local interests in the western hemisphere and larger interests—from state to nation, to international, in the eastern hemisphere.

I call this the Spherical Model.


Political Sphere

The Political Sphere of the Spherical Model

Down in the south, you can see that one side of tyranny is the chaos of anarchy, and the other side is the totalitarian control of government tyranny. It’s easy to get from one to the other—which is what much of world history has shown us. You can have communism, socialism, and Nazism as separate patches in their quartersphere, based on how much control they exert on their people (southern direction), or how far they plan to expand (toward the eastward extreme of world domination).

Up north in the freedom zone, location is mostly a matter of whose interest. Free people don’t yield power to a governing authority beyond the appropriate interest. Families make their own decisions about the care, upbringing, and education of their children. Communities on up to cities and counties decide on local law enforcement and protection needs. States (or provinces) deal with their particular infrastructure and laws. Only very limited powers are granted to a nation—as are enumerated in the US Constitution. And that sovereignty would never yield to an international power, but it would cooperate with other free sovereignties concerning international issues.

If we identify ideologies according to level of control exerted onto free people, and also their level of interest, we can identify location on the sphere. And that will tell us how close we are to thriving in the northern freedom zone.

 

Economic Sphere

The Economic Sphere of the Spherical Model

We can use the spherical model again for economic ideas: the north will be the prosperity of free enterprise, and the south will be the poverty of controlled economy. Those differences have direct relationships with political ideologies, so we can overlay the economic sphere right over the political sphere and see how things interrelate.

 

Social Sphere

The Social Sphere of the Spherical Model

And what about social ideologies? Again, we can use the same sphere; the north will be civilization, and the south will be savagery.


All three spheres could be superimposed on one another.


In all three overlaying spheres, the question becomes, not “Which is better, left of right?” But “What are the principles that lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization?” There’s no too-far-north extreme; there’s only getting north enough and doing what it takes to stay there, generation after generation, without southward slipping.

Next time someone suggests you are (or an idea is) far-right extreme, check to see whether their position is more accurately some level of southern statist tyranny.

____________________________

There are places where I’ve written about the principles that get us to the northern hemisphere of the political, economic, and social spheres. They’re detailed in articles on the Spherical Model website. You can also read these:

·         The Basic Principles” Jan. 2, 2017 

·         What Is the Spherical Model” March 1, 2013 

·         Economic Sphere Basics” March 4, 2013 

·         Basics of the Civilization Sphere” March 6, 2013 

·         Economic Principles for Volatile Times” Aug. 27, 2015 

 

Freedom

Today I’d like to add just a bit about identifying freedom. It seems to me that freedom, prosperity, and civilization are self-evidently good. But in our day that is becoming less true. And maybe it’s because of lack of understanding. So let’s define terms.

Here’s how I define freedom, using my 1980 Webster’s Dictionary, which avoids the last 40 years of redefining, combined with my words:

Freedom: absence of hindrance, restraint, confinement, repression. In the political sense, it is ownership of one’s own life and the production of wealth and property that results from one’s use of life and effort. A government should protect the freedoms of life, liberty, and property; it does not grant these things, but protects them from infringement. A government that takes life, liberty, or property unjustly—when the person has not unlawfully infringed on those rights of another person—that is a tyrannical government, which is the opposite of freedom.

Political freedom means living in a society in which our God-given rights are protected rather than infringed. These would include freedoms of belief and expression, such as freedom of religion and freedom of the press, as well as freedoms of property and security, such as freedom from illegal searches and seizures and the right to bear arms.

Is there a difference between freedom and liberty? Not much. They can be used as synonyms. But they have different antonyms: freedom vs. tyranny; liberty vs. slavery. Liberty has more to do with bodily autonomy, which is a component of freedom:

Liberty: synonym of freedom. It is ownership of one’s own life, to pursue as one chooses, and to enjoy the fruits of one’s efforts. No person or government or other entity owns a person or controls how the person pursues happiness.

There’s another term that is useful here: Agency. Sometimes we combine it with the word free, as in free agency. You’ve probably encountered it when sports professionals leave a team and become free agents, open to a contract with another team. That might be the limit of how you've used it. But it implies the ability to choose. So you can see that agency is related to liberty. A good working definition is

“the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and ‘to act for [ourselves] and not to be acted upon.’”[i]

While it’s related to freedom and liberty, it might also have its own antonym: coercion.

Paradise Lost illustration by Gustave Dore

There’s a story—the oldest story—behind the concept of agency, from before the world was made. It’s the story John Milton refers to in Paradise Lost. It’s in the Bible, in Jude; Revelation 12; Job 38; Isaiah 14; as well as some additional scriptures from my faith[ii]. I do my own retelling of that story in this post, so I won’t do retell it today.

But how does this relate to the Spherical Model? Coercion, the antithesis of agency, is a southern hemisphere concept. You can’t use coercion to get to the northern hemisphere. Coercion is used by people who either aren’t aware there is a northern hemisphere, and think the only options are between chaotic tyranny and statist tyranny [right/left]; or who crave to be the controllers and therefore prefer to stay in the southern hemisphere with tyranny, widespread poverty (except for the elite controllers), and savagery.

For the northern hemisphere, where you find prosperity and civilization, people have to choose to rule themselves. Never in history has a nonreligious or anti-religious people succeeded in self-rule. Individuals, a critical mass of them, have to choose to govern themselves. Government that is granted only limited powers—to protect the God-given rights of the self-governing people—is useful. But, as with fire, it requires careful control.

Freedom—i.e., agency, free of coercion—is required in order to choose goodness. Chosen goodness is required for prosperity to spread and grow. Chosen goodness is required for civilization to develop and spread.

Where there is coercion, there is savagery and misery. No religion or government or society that uses coercion can bring about the good found in the northern hemisphere. In fact, existence of coercion is a way to tell whether a way of thinking fits in the southern or northern hemisphere.

Note that “cancel culture,” the often nongovernmental shunning of people whose opinions differ from the enforcers, is coercion. This may not yet include murder, but it includes taking away reputation, livelihood, and ability to buy and sell and function in society. Sometimes it includes “doxing” (giving out personal information) combined with inciting mobs, which can become violent.

Coercion cannot change hearts and minds; it can only force people to hide their thoughts if they want to avoid the intolerance and brutality. Coercion is oppression; it is tyranny.

When you look at a political ideology, you can simplify the search for the good and true by looking at its closeness to freedom, liberty, ability to choose—or by how dangerously close it is to coercion, oppression, tyranny.

·         Do you get to believe what you choose to believe?

·         Do you get to choose your profession and way of life?

·         Do you get to speak your opinions freely?

·         Do you get to associate with people you choose to associate with?

·         Do you get to enjoy the fruits of your own labors?

It wouldn’t be very convincing to offer you a truthful opposite, such as:

·         Wouldn’t you rather believe what we the powerful tell you to believe?

·         Wouldn’t it be better for you if we the powerful decided what work you were allowed to do and for what pay?

·         Wouldn’t it be better if you were allowed to speak only the words that we the powerful told you were allowed?

·         Wouldn’t it be better if we the powerful decided whom you could associate with and under what circumstances?

·         Wouldn’t it be better for all of us if your earnings came directly to us the powerful, so we could dole them out to those we favor?

No, it has to be done more subtly than that:

·         Let’s stop others from believing things that we believe are just wrong—shut down churches, political groups, nonprofits, businesses, schools, or any individual or organization that does or says things we don’t like.

·         Let’s stop others from making a living in ways we don’t like—like using fossil fuels, or maybe just because the business owners believe things we don’t like.

·         Let’s cancel or coerce others to stop saying things that hurt us because they’re not what we believe—because their words are violence.

·         Let’s take money from the rich and give it to the poor, like us, who are more deserving.

You get the idea. To a person with some enlightenment, the “progressive” or “woke” or “socially just” way is pretty dark. It takes away individual choice. It oppresses individuals. It rules over people tyrannically. If that’s OK with you as long as they’re on your side, not only is that evil of you, but it’s also just a matter of time until the powers-that-be come after you for some perceived infraction.

It’s a continuation of that very old war—the war that pre-dates earth history. It’s a war between good and evil, between light and dark.

Freedom is upward, toward the light. Tyranny is downward, toward the dark.


Linus and Charlie Brown, screenshot from here

As Linus might say, “And that’s what The Spherical Model is all about, Charlie Brown.” In this smallest of all think tanks, I try to share ideas that I hope will help people make better decisions, that will lead toward personal as well as societal freedom, prosperity, and civilization.



[i] This definition comes from Robert D. Hales, “Agency: Essential to the Plan of Life,” speech at LDS General Conference, October 2010. [  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/agency-essential-to-the-plan-of-life?lang=eng&query=Robert+D+Hales+agency#1-PD50021411_000_2020    ] He is quoting from the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:26. [   https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.26?lang=eng#25   ]