(Here is a reflection from contributor Scott Ventureyra on the accountability/amnesty debate over draconian Covid protocols, not least the vaxx mandates and lockdowns. This intrigues me, for I wonder who would ever hold the powers-that-be to account? Most of the sources of authority are still on their side, from courts, to judges, to police, military and, of course, politicians of all stripes. Is there some sort of tribunal of which I am unaware? And said protocols are not over yet, with vaxx apartheid still imposed across this dominion, in parishes, hospitals, homes, and mask mandates looming like a recurring nightmare. The provincial court of Alberta just decreed that patients had to be vaccinated against Covid to receive an organ transplant, effectively, albeit passively and by omission, condemning some of the non-vaxxed to death. Of course, as they argue, such is their ‘choice’. (This may be appealed to the Supreme Court). We’re not out of this yet, and we must keep up the good fight, for freedom and for our God-given rights. Editor)
Recently, Economics Professor at Brown University, Emily Oyster, writing for The Atlantic, in a piece titled: “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” pleaded that: “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.” She goes on to state in her article: “We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge.”
But is it that simple? We need to be reminded of the distinctions between forgetting, forgiveness, reconciliation, and amnesty. They all call for different responses.
Never Forget
Since March of 2020, the world has been brought to its knees by unscientific and unethical mandates related to the COVID-19 situation. These mandates have destroyed the world economy and the lives of countless individuals. The “cure” that has been offered by medical bureaucrats and politicians has been much more deadly than the disease (COVID-19). The imposition of ludicrous lockdowns, mask wearing, coerced vaccination, and vaccine passports have not only proved to be ineffective, but also much more harmful than SARS-CoV-2 and all its variants. Many lives have been gratuitously lost because of the administration of deadly medical treatments, and the rejection of effective treatments that follow genuine science. In the process, our rights, and freedoms that we have taken for granted for decades have been disparaged and desecrated, including our freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to peacefully assemble, our mobility rights, equality rights, and legal rights. Consequently, our governments have made a mockery of informed consent. We have had pastors like Artur Pawlowski, and freedom fighters like Pat King and Tamara Lich, arbitrarily, unjustifiably, and illegally detained and imprisoned. The last surviving signatory of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Brian A. Peckford, has vocalized his discontents with these mandates and government overreach with the invocation of the Emergencies Act, only to be met with silence by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada. (The never before invoked Emergencies Act had no justification whatsoever, as I have extensively argued elsewhere in March of 2022, and the inquiry, based on testimonials given at the Public Order Emergency Commission in recent weeks has substantiated much of what I have argued.)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau labeled those who opposed receiving experimental injections, as “a fringe minority” that held “unacceptable views” that were “unscientific” and who were often “racist and misogynistic,” and that wrongfully “occupy space.” These are reprehensible words from an even more reprehensible individual. For close to three years, those who resisted the nefarious agenda and all of its follies through the guise of “public health safety” were vilified, and now some of these very people are panicking and asking for pandemic amnesty?
It is also disheartening to see Francis Collins, a prolific scientist, Templeton award winner for science and faith, and a self-proclaimed devout Christian, involved in scandals with funding gain of function research, as well as at the forefront of polarizing the vaccinated and unvaccinated. He has violated people’s medical conscience through supporting compulsory vaccination upon private businesses and employees at the NIH. He has demonized the unvaccinated and has labeled them unchristian, even murderers. This rhetoric is dangerous and based on many falsehoods. When an allegedly devout Christian who is a leading scientist partakes in demonizing and attacking dissenters’ freedom of conscience, it is a sign of dangerous times.
Similarly, we can witness this division within the Catholic Church. Despite the fact that the mRNA vaccines and the Janssen vaccine, which are produced and/or lab tested with aborted fetal cell lines, Pope Francis has called vaccination an “act of love.” Calling coercive mandates an act of love is extremely troubling. An act of love must be voluntary. So is inoculating children who, for the most part, have natural immunity to SARSCoV-2 and its variants.
In an interview on January 10, 2021, Pope Francis said that “I believe that morally everyone must take the vaccine,” he also emphasized that “it is the moral choice because it is about your life but also the lives of others.” In August of 2021, he said that “getting vaccinated is a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable.” Other Cardinals and archbishops have echoed Pope Francis’s sentiments. The Pope never makes the distinction between who should and who should not take the vaccine. Never a single mention of the potential harm and serious adverse effects. Not a mention of natural immunity, nothing. The Church has also been utterly silent on the many violations perpetrated by governments on sovereign individuals throughout the world. It is all very discouraging and sinister. It’s just as Thomas Paine famously stated: “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest cause.”
Homeopath Ian Watson made this incisive statement regarding the COVID health crisis and its associated authoritarian mandates:
If you have to be persuaded, and reminded, and pressured, and lied to, and incentivised, and coerced, and bullied, and socially shamed, and guilt-tripped, and threatened, and punished and criminalised—if all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance—you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest.
In this instance, it is the homeopath who is approaching the issue of COVID-19 vaccination with more rationality than so-called scientific and medical experts who have swallowed the COVID-narrative.
Accountability and Justice
There must be accountability and justice. There should be no amnesty for those who willfully lied and coerced countless persons. We must be reminded of the Prophet Isaiah’s admonishment: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isa 5:20). We can hope that when the smoke has cleared, many persons will be found culpable for their crimes against humanity, while many others will be complicit in the crimes of politicians, medical bureaucrats, media personalities, and oligarchs. Professors and other educators who are guilty of indoctrinating unsuspecting minds against truth, life, and liberty will face a proportional punishment for leading many astray. CEOs and other higher ups of Big Pharma, CDC, WHO, Health Canada, etc., will pay dearly for these crimes. Scientists working in Big Pharma who do not expose the dangerous lies behind the vaccines will also be held accountable. Medical doctors who abandoned their sacred oaths will be held responsible. Police officers who abandoned their duty to protect their citizens will face justice. (The RCMP authoritarian commissioner, Brenda Lucki, would have made the late former president of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong, and Communist China’s current president, Xi Jinping, proud with her crack down on anti-authority internet opinions.) The lying and smearing mercenary “fact checkers” will get their much-deserved payment. Any Christian theologian worth his salt will be unmoved by the depths of such depravity, knowing full well that there’s nothing new under the sun when it pertains to the darkness of the human heart. However, the question for them would be: Did they preach salvation and truth? Did they warn God’s people of the impending dangers, or did they promote falsehoods? Did they follow in the steps of someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who opposed Nazi tyranny, or of those professors of theology, bishops, and pastors who supported Adolf Hitler’s war against Jews through, for example, their participation in The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life? Judges and lawyers cowering away from truth and justice will also be judged but with more severity. Those who stigmatize the unvaccinated will be judged. How did the unvaccinated treat the vaccinated—were they also guilty of divisiveness?
History will not be kind to philosophers who chose comfort over their love of wisdom and truth. Musicians and artists who willfully lie will be held responsible. Instead, may they follow the example of Eric Clapton, who has shown with his song, “This Has Gotta Stop,” and his stance against vaccine passports, a tremendous amount of courage and respect for the sacredness of human freedom and bodily autonomy. Quite opposite, legendary Canadian singer and songwriter, Neil Young demanded that Spotify choose between hosting him or Joe Rogan. Spotify made the right choice. Young has always been vocal about his leftist politics. Sadly, it turns out that Young is so woke that he cancelled himself. So much for “rockin’ in the free world.” Joni Mitchell took the same stance against Spotify. These former hippies have lost their minds and have come to defend the establishment and Big Pharma over freedom. Parents who participate in injuring their children with these experimental vaccines will not be able to claim ignorance and should be held accountable. And the oligarchs and bankers should prepare themselves for what is to come when they are exposed and truth creeps up behind them—they will not escape justice. For some (pawns at the bottom of the complicity scale) we may say they do not know what they do (Luke 23:34), but for the ones who do, prepare yourselves: “But the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming” (Ps 37:13).
We should take heed from the holocaust survivor and medical activist, Vera Sharav, who is very weary of the COVID measures such as lockdowns, constant testing, vaccine mandates, and passports. In a recent interview, she made the following statements drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and the global COVID tyranny:
Fear is an extremely powerful psychological tool, that has been used by politicians always, the Nazis were particularly adept at it… What happens with a public health policy is that public health officials decide who shall live and who shall die… I have come to the conclusion that when doctors become aligned with government—corporations for that matter – they discard their moral and professional responsibility to the individual patient… As public officials they talk about the greater good. Who has the authority to decide what is the greater good?… If the individuals are oppressed or relegated to third-class citizens…what kind of society is it? We are now at the gate of that.
When the interviewer asked Sharav if we are nearing a Nazi-like society, she responded the following:
I absolutely do… One of the main things that has happened in these 18 months of the pandemic is that fear has been the major weapon, which has really crippled people from thinking straight. It has isolated people and taught children to distrust other people: “They might be infected, they might infect me.”
We must be reminded that slaves were never treated this way. It is the first time in history where the majority of the world has been enslaved and “forced” / “mandated” to put something inside their bodies. In the past they have been branded, but nothing that affects their genetic function. This is pure madness. A hundred years from now, assuming we make it out of this dark period in human history, historians will be flummoxed as to how we could repeat these egregious and unforgivable crimes against humanity.
The Distinctions Between Forgetting, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Amnesty
We can never forget how they vilified those who supported a counter-narrative and opposed the mainstream one. It must be clear that forgiveness does not entail forgetting, condoning, excusing responsibility, reconciliation, and most definitely it does not ignore accountability or justice. As Christians, we are commanded to forgive those who have committed offences against us. To forgive family members, friends, and others whose treatment affected us physically, mentally, and spiritually, is done out of obligation to God. However, forgiveness commences with God, before anyone else. First, we must understand that we must forgive, just as God has forgiven us (Eph. 4:32). No human merits the forgiveness of God but is granted it through God’s grace and mercy. So, it is not based on any merit or remorse. Likewise, forgiveness does not require anything from the one who is receiving it. One may lose contact with the person they have forgiven. However, reconciliation is a different issue. Reconciliation is related to the restoration of a relationship between the transgressor and the transgressed. This is not required to forgive someone. There is no expectation that someone who has been involved with harming a loved one, through for example, pushing a medical treatment like an experimental vaccine, there should be no expectation of maintaining a meaningful relationship with such a person. Or perhaps, it was a colleague who reported your Facebook and/or Twitter posts to an employer, and you were subsequently reprimanded because of the snitch’s cowardly action. Therefore, it is important to separate forgiveness from reconciliation. Having said that, for those relationships that may be reconciled, the wrongdoers and offenders can start by offering an apology, perhaps similar to the one suggested by Kennedy Hall in a recent piece written for Crisis Magazine:
I am sorry for doing my best Bolshevik audition, and I promise never to label you a right- wing extremist virus-denying covidiot grandma killing anti-vaxxer again. Also, for all those articles I published that have now completely been proven false, and all those policies I supported that ensured your life was ruined and you lost your business, well, I am sorry for that too. Oh, and while we are at it, I probably shouldn’t have championed a movement to have you treated like a second-class citizen because you justifiably decided to opt out of a medication that hasn’t even finished the normal trial phase. My bad.
Now, when it comes to amnesty, we must seek justice and accountability for all persons involved with the tyrannical and draconian policies and actions of the past 2.5 years, including medical bureaucrats, politicians, journalists and reporters, globalist elites, and those controlling big pharma and big tech, and others, regardless of how big or small their involvement. This is what I call for in my book COVID-19: A Dystopian Delusion: Examining the Machinations of Governments, Health Organizations, the Globalist Elites, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and the Legacy Media, which contains well over 800 references.
In the end, we must uphold the human person’s dignity above becoming complacent and meek Christians for the sake of charity and in the name of a false understanding of forgiveness. We must stand up for what is true and good, regardless of the circumstances and pressures of our society and culture.