90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

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Nationalism Good and Bad

Reflecting on the willingness of people to fight for their own.

The last two weeks we have been inspired by the brave resistance of Ukraine’s people to the brutal violence of the Russian invaders. Outmanned and outgunned, the Ukrainians have continued to fight against overwhelming odds, even as the invaders answer their resistance with atrocities like the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol.

The paradox is that both sides in this war are in part motivated by nationalist loyalties that the transnational “new world order” has proclaimed are quaint superstitions and folkways at best, and intolerant promulgators of xenophobia and violent aggression at worst. What the Russo-Ukrainian war shows is that patriotic nationalism, like pretty much everything we humans do, can be good or bad, depending on the intentions and purposes it serves.

The weakening of nationalism reflects the globalist ideology that slowly developed over the last two centuries. It reflects two developments that define modernity: secularism and the world-shrinking technologies that expanded global trade. For most of humanity, faith has been one of the foundations of national identity like language, history, culture, customs, and mores. But especially in the West, faith has been reduced to a private preference banished from the public square, rather than being part of the collective expression of national identity. It’s no coincidence that over time the decline of patriotism has paralleled the decline of faith.

The other development was new 19th-century technologies like the railroad, telegraph, and steamship, which created a global economy. International commerce brought the world’s peoples closer together and bound them by trade, creating a global economy which brought disparate national cultures together. The gradual growth of greater global trade and its managerial elite suggested that international cooperation and similar interests were more efficient and beneficial than the zero-sum national difference that frequently, like religion, fomented violent conflict. Similarly, transnational organizations, covenants, and treaties would turn force into a costlier and less effective means of adjudicating conflicting national interests than international diplomacy.

Especially after the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 20th century––which were blamed on nationalist loyalties rather than on the malignant novel ideologies that exploited them––nationalism fell out of favor, particularly to the global elites and supranational institutions of the “rules-based international order.” Nationalism became a malignant ghost from the past that the enlightened global elites scorned.

But this charge against nationalism leaves out the fact that most of the world’s peoples live and spend most of their lives not in an imagined “global community,” but in a particular place with particular languages and cultures that give them their particular identity.

Moreover, it ignores the critical role of the nation-state as the foundation of modern consensual government and political freedom. The nation-state allows large groups of people to create a solidarity that binds them together and gives them a common destiny. Without shared identity and values, this affection for their own way of life and for those who share it with them, people are left rootless and fragmented into niche identities, connected now only by consumerism, popular culture, and transient fads and fashions.

Finally, such a Balkanized society is vulnerable to its more cohesive rivals and enemies who do believe in something worth fighting, killing, and dying for. As the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut writes, “It is inhuman to define man by blood and soil but no less inhuman to leave him stumbling through life with the terrestrial foundations of his existence taken out from under him.” Those “foundations” are what make people willing to risk their lives on their behalf. After all, no one is going to die for the United Nations, the European Union, or the World Bank. But like Ukrainians today, they will fight and die for their homeland, the culture and customs that make them what and...

Visage à trois #120

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Rheanne Wirkkala is awaiting Senate confirmation for the role of Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs at the Pentagon

Rheanne Wirkkala – recently tapped by President Joe Biden to advise Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin – appears to have been duped by a prank phone call offering compromising material on Donald Trump while working for her prior boss, Congressman Adam Schiff.

Wirkkala, who is awaiting Senate confirmation for the role of Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs at the Pentagon, currently serves as the Special Assistant for Strategy to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. “In that role, Wirkkala helps drive Secretary Austin’s national defense priorities, and is responsible for long-term strategic planning for the Secretary of Defense,” explains the White House.

Despite Wirkkala’s influential role in America’s military planning, the former top aide to Congressman Schiff appears to have fallen for a prank carried out by Russian comedians who offered to give the California congressman’s ‘compromising’ dirt on Donald Trump.

Amongst the items offered by pranksters posing as the chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament were nude photos of President Trump and a Russian reality show star. Schiff appeared to be taking notes on the conversation and repeatedly inquired about spellings of names and documentation he could send to the FBI.

“I’ll be in touch with the FBI about this. And we’ll make arrangements with your staff. I think it probably would be best to provide these materials both to our committee and to the FBI,” said Schiff during the conversation.

Despite Schiff’s office claiming they knew the call was “bogus,” a recording published by the Daily Mail showed the Democrat appearing to take the eight-minute call seriously.
The outlet also revealed correspondence between Schiff’s office – via Wirkkala – and the Russian comedians, nicknamed ‘Vovan’ and ‘Lexus’. The pair are notorious for their prank calls to high-ranking American officials and celebrities.

E-mails provided to the Daily Mail show Wirkkala praising the call as “productive” as well as attempting to arrange a “pick up” of...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #294

Blogs With Rule 5 Links

The Other McCain has: Rule 5 Sunday: “Violent” 2D Girls

Proof Positive has: Best Of Web Link Around

The Woodsterman has: Rule 5 Woodsterman Style

EBL has: Rule 5 And FMJRA

The Right Way has: Rule 5 Saturday LinkORama

The Pirate's Cove has: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

The US Military Has Its Own Version of VAERS, And The Results Are Frightening

On January 24, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) held a round-table discussion on the COVID shots and other treatment protocols. Near the end of the 5-hour discussion, attorney Thomas Renz stunned attendees with data obtained from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED). This data was obtained by Renz from three whistleblowers who felt the data must be shared with the general public.
Why did the whistleblowers feel so strongly about it?

DMED contains anonymized medical data of all US military servicemen and women, and there is overwhelming proof that the COVID-19 jabs are causing devastating harm.

Here’s a sample of what the database contains:

300% increase in miscarriages
300% increase in certain cancers, and
1000% increase in neurological disorders.
Bell’s Palsy (319%)
Guillain-Barre Syndrome (250%)
Multiple sclerosis and other demyelinating diseases (487%)

Put in perspective, Renz explained that between January and November 2021, neurological disorders jumped from 82,000 to 863,000.

Let that sink in.

Other shocking data include:

Pulmonary embolisms (467%)

Immunodeficiencies (275%)

Neoplasms (often a precursor to cancer) (296%)

Non-traumatic hemorrhages (including subarachnoid and intracranial) (312%)

Spontaneous abortions and miscarriages (306%)

HIV (590%)

To put the HIV cases into perspective, over the last five years, the military database reported, on average, 454 annual cases. But in the first ten months of 2021, the number of reported HIV cases jumped to 2,681.
And, by the way, the jabs are not preventing military men and women from being diagnosed with the SARS-CoV2 virus.

DMED data: The Smoking Gun

Percentage increases were compared to the averages over the previous five years of DMED data. Attorney Leigh Dundas explained in this video from Dr. Charlie Ward that the data for previous years were relatively constant. Even the 2020 data was fairly stagnant; if COVID-19 were actually affecting young people as they claimed, we would have seen a much greater increase due to COVID infection in the 2020 data.

However, there were very few changes. When the COVID jabs were introduced in December 2020, the incidence of diseases skyrocketed, increasing a thousand-fold. Dundas explained that nearly every ICD-10 code increased, except for one – Chagas disease, an infection seen in members deployed to Mexico, Central America, and South America that is caused by a parasitic transmission from the tsetse fly to humans.

Renz told Senator Johnson,

“Our soldiers are being experimented on, injured and sometimes possibly killed.”

Watch Renz’s full testimony here.

Dundas and Renz presented evidence that the top military brass is likely covering up the true picture by manipulating DMED data to conceal certain conditions and diseases. Case in point: Anxiety had a massive percentage increase in the database but “anxiety” can include racing heart and other cardiac symptoms possibly indicative of myocarditis.

Is the military trying to hide the number of heart issues induced by these shots? Whistleblowers have noted from DMED searches for “acute myocarditis” revealed approximately 1,200 cases in August 2021. Were 900 cases truly miscategorized and later recategorized, or did the data get scrubbed?

Myocarditis cases rose from 127 to 363, a 285% increase, but the purportedly scrubbed data represent over a 1000% increase. Incidences of chest pain rose by a whopping 1,529% and breathing difficulty by 905%. Myocarditis and anxiety are certainly not the same. Myocarditis creates permanent heart damage and is certainly career-limiting as well as life-limiting.

In stark contrast to the DMED data, CDC only reports three main conditions in adults: (1) thrombosis, (2) Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), and (3) myocarditis. Despite the CDC’s own admission that 12- to 29-year-old males are most at risk for developing vaccine-induced myocarditis, the military did nothing to protect the vulnerable 18-29 age group of soldiers.

But there’s more.

DMED is the anonymized version of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) premier epidemiological resource that has all the military data, called the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS). This database is considered to be one of the best in the world, and is frequently cited in many peer-reviewed journal articles. Shortly after Renz made his whistleblower information public, the DoD said that they discovered a...