Deborah Frank Feinen, Mount Holyoke ’89, Illinois Institute of Technology Kent College of Law ’91, God/Empress of Champaign, Illinois.

With Coronavirus deaths in the US, as of 3/16, rising to 69, governmental responses have been enthusiastic and proactive, to say the least.

I think that a record of some kind was set by one Deborah Frank Feinen, two-term mayor of Champaign, Illinois, a small city of 81,000 souls in Central Illinois, joint home with its sister city Urbana of a major satellite [Correction: the main] campus of the state university.

Deborah Feinen, last Friday, issued an Executive Order, confirmed immediately by the city council, which confers upon the mayor such deliciously complete powers that it seems an oversight that the edict did not also modify her title to God-Empress.

Her mayoralty’s ascension to Divine status and assumption of her full powers made national news on the basis of Provisions 6 and 7 which authorized her Imperial Supremeness to ban firearm sales and transfers and to confiscate them at will, but really the full 30 Provisions basically entitle the Divine Deborah to set aside the US Constitution, the entire corpus of Common Law, and all customary rights to personal freedom and property as she sees fit.

After the declaration of an emergency, the Mayor may in the interest of public safety and welfare make any or all of the following orders and provide the following direction:

(1) Issue such other orders as are imminently necessary for the protection of life and property.

(2) Order a general curfew applicable to such geographical areas of the City or to the City as a whole, as the Mayor deems advisable, and applicable during such hours of the day or night as the Mayor deems necessary in the interest of public safety and welfare.

(3) Order the closing of all retail liquor stores, including taverns and private clubs or portions thereof wherein the consumption of intoxicating liquor and beer is permitted;

(4) Order the discontinuance of the sale of alcoholic liquor by any wholesaler or retailer;

(5) Order the discontinuance of selling, distributing, or giving away gasoline or other liquid flammable or combustible products in any container other than a gasoline tank properly affixed to a motor vehicle;

(6) Order the discontinuance of selling, distributing, dispensing or giving away of explosives or explosive agents, firearms or ammunition of any character whatsoever;

(7) Order the control, restriction and regulation within the City by rationing, issuing quotas, fixing or freezing prices, allocating the use, sale or distribution of food, fuel, clothing and other commodities, materials, goods or services or the necessities of life;

(8) (a) Order City employees or agents, on behalf of the City, to take possession of any real or personal property of any person, or to acquire full title or such lesser interest as may be necessary to deal with a disaster or emergency, and to take possession of and for a limited time, occupy and use any real estate to accomplish alleviation of the disaster, or the effects thereof;

(b) In the event any real or personal property is utilized by the City, the City shall be liable to the owner thereof for the reasonable value of the use or for just compensation as the case may be.

(9) Order restrictions on ingress or egress to parts of the City to limit the occupancy of any premises;

(10) To make provision for the availability and use of temporary emergency housing;

(11) Temporarily suspend, limit, cancel, convene, reschedule, postpone, continue, or relocate all meetings of the City Council, and any City committee, commission, board, authority, or other City body as deemed appropriate by the Mayor.

(12) Require closing of business establishments.

(13) Prohibit the sale or distribution within the City of any products which could be employed in a manner which would constitute a danger to public safety.

(14) Temporarily close any and all streets, alleys, sidewalks, bike paths, public parks or public ways.

(15) Temporarily suspend or modify, for not more than sixty (60) days, any regulation or ordinance of the City, including, but not limited to, those regarding health, safety, and zoning. This period may be extended upon approval of the City Council.

(16) Suspend or limit the use of the water resources or other infrastructure.

(17) Control, restrict, allocate, or regulate the use, sale, production, or distribution of food, water, fuel, clothing, and/or other commodities, materials, goods, services and resources.

(18) Suspend or limit burning of any items or property with the City limits and up to two (2) miles outside the corporate limits.

(19) Direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from any stricken or threatened areas within the City if the mayor deems this action is necessary for the preservation of life, property, or other disaster or emergency mitigation, response or recovery and to prescribe routes, modes of transportation and destination in connection with an evacuation.

(21) Approve application for local, state, or federal assistance.

(22) Establish and control routes of transportation, ingress or egress.

(23) Control ingress and egress from any designated disaster or emergency area or home, building or structures located therein.

(24) Approve the transfer the direction, personnel, or functions of City departments and agencies for the purpose of performing or facilitating emergency or disaster services.

(25) Accept services, gifts, grants, loans, equipment, supplies, and/or materials whether from private, nonprofit, or governmental sources.

(26) Require the continuation, termination, disconnection, or suspension of natural gas, electrical power, water, sewer, communication or other public utilities or infrastructure.

(27) Close or cancel the use of any municipally owned or operated building or other public facility.

(28) Declare, issue, enforce, modify and terminate orders for quarantine and isolation of persons or animals posing a threat to the public, not conflicting with the directions of the Health Officer of the community.

(29) Exercise such powers and functions in light of the exigencies of emergency or disaster including the waiving of compliance with any time consuming procedures and formalities, including notices, as may be prescribed by law.

(30) Issue any and all such other orders or undertake such other functions and activities as the Mayor reasonably believes is required to protect the health, safety, and welfare of persons or property within the City or otherwise preserve the public peace or abate, clean up, or mitigate the effects of any emergency or disaster.

If Deborah the Magnificent should decided to appoint herself a one-goddess Committee of Public Safety and take possession of all private and personal property and food and medicine, if she decided to confiscate all firearms, ban protests and assemblies, ban the personal movement of any or all of her 81,000 subjects, and erect a guillotine in Champaign’s Place de la Concorde, well, there you have it! the city council confirmed all of her powers.

Amusingly, national comment over the possible gun confiscations on the basis of a virus ensued, and faced with criticism, her honor the mayor quickly retreated from Olympus, issuing a public denial stating: “there is currently no firearm ban and no intent to seize property or close businesses. Additionally, there are no restrictions on the sale of alcohol or gas or the ability to enter or leave Champaign.”

The list of 30 powers and authority, sufficient to do anything and everything, was pruned down to a modest 11, and all the grandiose claims of powers over persons and property oddly enough went missing. And, in conclusion, we were all assured that nothing was going on here, we were completely mistaken in being concerned. Nothing was changed.

The Mayor has the authority to exercise other emergency powers under the Champaign Municipal Code Section 12-39, which have been in existence since 2006; however, and under the known circumstances, no further measures are anticipated.

Uh huh! Right!

Ron Unz (2015):

[A]nother suspicion I’ve often had is that much of that massively-promoted total nonsense like transexualism and Gay Marriage is meant to flush out and expose potential troublemakers potentially lurking within ranks of the elite before they can rise high enough to become a serious problem. In support of this hypothesis, the leading purge victims are usually found within the fields of popular culture, entertainment, celebrity, and the media, which constitute a crucial chokepoint in controlling our society. It’s obviously much easier and safer to detect and purge a future Mel Gibson while he’s just a rising young actor than after he’s spent a dozen years as Hollywood’s #1 star.

Suppose that Kim III officially declares that the Moon is made of blue cheese. Who would question that? Dimwitted people would believe whatever they heard on TeeVee. Cowardly people would just keep quiet or mouth the propaganda. Dishonest, opportunistic people would shout the slogan and endlessly promote it. Those sorts aren’t much threat to the Regime.

On the other hand, a few people might raise questions about the dogma, revealing themselves to be exactly the sort of individuals who might eventually question other, far more serious matters. And purging them on the blue cheese nonsense tends to avoid bringing unwanted attention to those other issues. Furthermore, if some borderline people grit their teeth and publicly endorse the blue cheese question, their spirits may have been partially broken, making it less psychologically likely they’ll eventually rebel over other matters. Towards the end of the USSR almost nobody believed in the regime ideology, but most people still pretended they did.

I think Orwell made some of these points in 1984.

So the reason the King walks down the street naked in his imaginary suit is to draw out and catch those people unwilling to say they see what isn’t there.

In an actual historical example, the Emperor Caligula appointed his favorite horse to the highest official government position in the Roman State. How better to break the spirit of potentially disloyal Senators and military commanders, and determine which of them might have independent thoughts.

This sort of system tends to be metastable, holding together until sufficient pressure causes a crack to develop, at which point the entire edifice collapses, possibly in very messy ways. Eventually Caligula and almost all of his relatives were butchered in a revolt by the top imperial courtiers and the palace guard.

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Dalrymple, in 2005, similarly observed:

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

The late Dan and Zanto

Opposing Views passes along a story that makes your blood boil.

A man in Denmark was so devastated when authorities seized and euthanized his dog that he took his own life.

Dan, whose last name has not been disclosed, was 27 years old.

Dan was given just eight days to prove that his dog Zanto was not one of the breeds banned in Denmark, and under Danish law, the burden to prove dog breed is placed upon owners. When he was unable to do so, authorities removed Zanto and arranged for him to be killed. Soon after Zanto was taken, Dan was reported to have overdosed on pain medication.

His dog, Zanto, had been euthanized in adherence with Denmark’s Breed Specific Legislation on Pit Bulls. Danish legislation titled the “Dog Act” also dictates that police are required to euthanize dogs that “savage” a person or another dog, but Zanto hadn’t attacked anyone. He was simply considered an illegal breed.

The Dog Act bans the ownership and breeding of 13 breeds of dogs, including the Pitt Bull Terrier, Kangal, South Russian Shepherd Dog and American Bulldog. Some breeds have been illegal since 1991, but legislation in 2010 brought the number to 13.

Nebra sky disc

The National Post describes, with grossly naive exaggeration and the worst kind of statist prejudice, an interesting, rather pretty Bronze Age artifact with an outrageously offensive history.

The Nebra disc was found in 1999 along with two bronze swords, two hatchets, a chisel, and fragments of spiral bracelets, by Henry Westphal and Mario Renner using a metal detector.

The government of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt claims to own everything in the ground and, as knowledge of the find gradually became known to the public, confiscated all the artifacts found and charged the discoverers with “looting.” Westphal and Renner were convicted and sentenced to prison, as a reward for their discovery, for four months and ten months in 2003. When they appealed, the appeal court raised their sentences to six and twelve months.

Thus, as the National Post reports, the precious artifacts were “saved from the black market” and transferred to the custody of bureaucratic officialdom and the all-knowing administrative state.

The disc has been dated on the basis of the style of the bronze swords buried with it to the mid 2nd millennium BC. Radiocarbon dating of a bit of birchbark found on one of the swords was dated to between 1600 and 1560 BC confirming the former estimate.

The author of the article was scarcely able to breathe while describing the totally astonishing alleged scientific significance of the disc. Why, the Nebra disc represents the earliest human depiction of the cosmos!

Saxony-Anhalt’s house prehistorian & archaeologist Harald Meller (who personally confiscated the horde on behalf of the Leviathan state) has interpreted the disc as a tool used for determining when a thirteenth month – the so-called intercalary month – should be added to a lunar year to keep the lunar calendar in sync with the seasons. When certain prominent constellations, particularly the Pleiades, lined up with the sun and moon as displayed on the disc, every 2-3 years, it would be time to add an extra month in order to bring the lunar and solar calendars into agreement.

Or maybe it was simply made as a piece of decorative art, depicting the most prominent constellations in the night sky.

There is, of course, no real reason, beyond arrogance and brute force, why any state should be entitled to lay claim to ownership of all undiscovered archaeological finds, and there is also no particular reason to believe that immediate state ownership is essential to their preservation. Art objects have been collected and preserved historically most commonly privately since Antiquity. In the modern world, art objects privately owned have a strong tendency to make their way via philanthropy into institutional collections.

These days, we read frequently of absolutely fascinating finds made by hobbyist metal collectors in Britain. In Saxony-Anhalt, I expect we will be reading about fewer of those, since the reward for discovery there is imprisonment for looting.

Wikipedia article

Meller’s theory explained

Jaguar E-Type

Road & Track simply marvels at the astounding overreach of proposed eco-tyranny.

In an effort to further reduce pollution in Great Britain, new regulations have been proposed that would effectively ban all classic cars from London’s city center. R&T understands that the mandate, which was first floated last February, would establish an Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ), disallowing all pre-2005-registered vehicles from entering a prime area of downtown London effective 2020. …

Britain, always fertile ground for irony, also seems to have forgotten that its auto industry hasn’t contributed anything truly noteworthy to the motoring zeitgeist in roughly half a century (with a few notable exceptions, such as the McLaren F1). Thus, the ULEZ would take every great English car ever made—the Jaguar E-Type, Aston Martin DB5, Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, the Lotus Esprit Series 1, and even the original city car, Issigonis’s Mini—and promptly ban them all from entering the most visible area of the nation’s capital.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

Well-intentioned? Sure, but the proposed ULEZ is ignorant at best and outright draconian at worst.