Category: Bad ideas!

I’ll be writing a number of pieces on this issue in the coming weeks. This a placeholder post where I’ll dump material that is related to the issue. I may or may not get time to read this/ watch the videos listed below.

I saw this video yesterday. Shocked that hardcore communist Kavitha Kuruganti – who opposes all kinds of productivity reforms that can increase farmers’ incomes – was interviewed!

THE THREE ACTS

Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020

Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020

Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020

SUMMARY/EXPLANATION

Farm Laws 2020 Explained: Everything you need to know about the new agriculture reforms in India

KEY VIEWS

TOI ARTICLEhttps://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/farms-laws-3-experts-2-opinions/articleshow/79790878.cms

OTHER MATERIAL (much of it is Marxist)

Farm Laws… What Government should do

A night at India’s largest farmers’ protest

Republic Day 2021 – Let Our Farmers Parade!

Farmers’ group invites Hema Malini to Punjab to explain farm laws, offers to bear all expenses

Interview with Mr. Somnath Singh Shastri, former BJP MP, Planning Commission Member and briefly Agriculture Minister in Vajpayee government. He is suggesting the recommendations of the GoI High Powered Committee on Agricultural Policies and Programmes setup in 1990 as solutions to the present farmer crisis and struggle (18 and 24 minutes, and closing remarks). I

The article.

My critique:

This is a piece clearly from someone who has worked from home and enjoyed the lockdowns. This was a big test of science and philosophy and we have failed on both counts.

a) The science was very clear: there shall be no lockdowns for flu-like viruses. The last they were tried was for Ebola in 2014 and an evaluation showed that they did not help (targeted quarantines did help). Substantial literature existed in the past to refute the idea of indiscriminate lockdowns, also because these infringe human rights. Snowdon obviously cares not for basic freedoms.

b) The argument of lockdown opponents is not against social distancing per se. Voluntary social distancing and hand hygiene are a part of good practice, as followed by Sweden. They too had lockdowns but these were not coercive. That coercion is the real problem, not social distancing.

c) Australia should never be cited as an example: it is nothing short of the most inhumane totalitarian society in the world today, not a role model for anyone in the civilised world or for anyone who considers himself human. Those of us who have lived through living hell in Melbourne and locked up in Australia like chicken in a coop (borders closed for a year), with wide-scale police brutalities on the young who underwent the most extreme mental torture ever, know that this is the worst form of civilisation in human history. That a few (extremely elderly) lives might have been saved from a natural cause is no excuse to cause such extreme harms. And hundreds of people have also died FROM lockdowns – See my complaint to the International Criminal Court for details. We do not authorise a government to take the life of person X while trying to save the life of person Y.

d) Are we going to do this for all other pandemics in the future? Is this our new “science” – divested entirely from consideration of humanity and liberty? I’m afraid I will never support such “science”. There are thousands of smarter ways to deal with pandemics than the way we have dealt with them in the West, copying Jinping’s totalitarian program.

I see from this article that the IEA might have now effectively become a promoter of police brutalities and totalitarianism. This is extremely unfortunate given the good impression I once held of this institution.

Lockdowns and quarantines for a flu-like virus are the personal invention of China’s President Xi Jinping, being unheard of before Wuhan. Never before had lockdowns been recommended or implemented for a respiratory flu-like virus (or even for any other virus – only for Ebola these had been attempted once, but found ineffective).

The great genius Xi Jinping came to this brilliant idea all by himself.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/world/asia/xi-china-coronavirus.htm

This is the speech [Source: http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2020-02/15/c_1125572832.htm]

IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT NO WRITTEN INSTRUCTION IS AVAILABLE, NO ANALYSIS, NO SCIENCE, NO NOTHING!! JUST THE WORD OF THE GREAT MAN XI. WHATEVER HE SAYS WE MUST OBEY.

The Wuhan lockdown started on 23 January 2020.

The WHO’s representative in China, Gauden Galea, disavowed the lockdown idea on 24 January 2020: “trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science. The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history, so it is certainly not a recommendation the WHO has made”. [Source]

The 24 February 2020 Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 said: “General Secretary Xi Jinping personallydirected and deployed the prevention and control work [namely, the lockdowns and quarantines] … China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vitallessons for the global response”(emphasis added).

On 30 January 2020 – barely a week after the Wuhan lockdowns had started and without any evaluation of these experimental “remedies” – Tedros Ghebreyesus fawningly announced: “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response. It’s not an exaggeration”. A “new standard”, indeed!

THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED

In my complaint to the International Criminal Court I’ve provided extensive proof that there have never before been lockdowns for any respiratory virus (the only time they were imposed was for Ebola). Here’s a professor of the history of medicine (who studies the history, so presumably should know something), saying the same thing:

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/world/asia/coronavirus-quarantines-history.html