"Vaccinated" children as human shields: A Saddam Hussein Story

Hands off the kids! You are not a Middle East dictator.

I saw the picture above on Twitter recently and it made me stop and think.

I’ve had plenty of thoughts about the evils of vaccinating kids but the framing of the sentence on the banner was especially true. You are right honey, it’s not your job at all.

I’ve been thinking about human shields recently, and those thoughts connected with this banner. It’s not this girl’s job to be a human shield for the old and the afraid.

The old and the afraid do not have the right to use her as a human shield.

My son’s friend, a lovely young man about 20 that I know well, went and got his two doses. I’m pretty sure he knew better but he succumbed to the sum of all the pressures, but is now highly hesitant of the booster. He has spent time around me and my son, he has seen his mates come down with serious adverse reactions and to top that all off he has seen his jabbed mates come down with pretty bad Covid too, so he has rightly concluded: What’s the point?

He wants to get off the “purchasing my immunity” bandwagon. But this has not gone down well at home at all. His parents are very unhappy that he has decided “to put THEM at risk”. Yes, they are angry with their healthy, martial arts practicing, physiotherapy studying son, because he no longer wants the job of being a human shield for them. They are really angry.

My favourite explanation of psychosis is that given to me by Mark McDonald in his wonderful book The United States of Fear:

When a number of associated delusions organise themselves into an irrational belief system, a state of psychosis can develop. When the man who believes the world is out to get him also insists that his restaurant food is poisoned, that his wife is having a lesbian affair with the neighbour’s daughter, and that his boss is somehow involved in both, he is psychotic.

What an amazing, interesting, and evil psychosis this is. There are enough untruths (delusions) in their mind that they are in a full psychotic state, that makes them believe that they are entitled to the full use of their son’s body as a human shield.

What are some of these collected untruths?

• The virus is deadly to me, and especially deadly to my parents (your grandparents)

• The “vaccine works” to stop transmission so if you get the virus, you cannot give it to me

• We can never know if you have the virus because you can get and transmit it without symptoms (haven’t you heard about Asymptomatic Spread, it’s all over the ABC)

• And off course, the jabs are safe, there is nothing to worry about

These are just 4 untruths (delusions) that when existing in the same person (which is most people today) create a psychotic state.

Now, the reason I’ve been thinking about human shields recently is because I have my own first-hand experience with the subject. I have known people that were used as human shields. Not many people can say that.

Let’s just say that I know a human shield when I see one.

The year is 1991, the three month Gulf War was about one month old. I was 21 at the time. Here is a story I wrote about 17 years ago for myself to not forget and for my kids to know some history.

Amiriyah, Public Shelter no. 25

Dad’s family continued to live in Mansur until mid-1990 when the landlord’s son got married and needed to move into their property. It was time to find another home. By now Maggo, my aunt, and both my uncles had moved out leaving my grandparents and my two other aunts, Suso and Shamo in the one house.

Their whole life they had been renters. Not a single member of the family either in this generation or in any previous generation had ever owned their home. No one had ever aspired to owning their home neither as it was impossible to do so. There was one bank in Iraq that took deposits, but you were never really sure if you would get that money back, and lent money only to a small, connected few. The vast majority of the country would never have a loan; they would never have the opportunity of asset ownership.

One of Suso’s friends that lived overseas had a property that needed looking after in one of Baghdad’s outer suburbs called Amiriyah. They were happy to have them move in rather than leave the property empty and open to vandals and were prepared to accept only nominal rent. The arrangement suited both parties perfectly.

Shortly after their move to Amiriyah, in August 1990, Kuwait was invaded.

I would see my father’s family much less than before as Amiriyah was further away from us than Mansur. In February 1991, about one third of the way into the Gulf War I heard of bombing in their area and decided to go and see if they were all right.

I cannot remember why I didn’t take the car. Dad might have been using it for the day or it could have broken down, as it often did then. Either way I made the trip by hitchhiking a ride into Baghdad.  I hadn’t seen Baghdad since the beginning of the bombing, it was quiet. There were no shops open, just some taxis and minibuses looking for work. I hopped onto a minibus that was taking a small group of men in the general direction of Amiriyah. We drove past several Government buildings that had been bombed and couldn’t use the main bridge that connected the two halves of Baghdad as it had been bombed too. Some of the bridges contained important telecommunication cabling, they were bombed and severed on the very first night.

I eventually made it to their place; they were all at home and happy to see me. We sat down with cups of tea to exchange our stories.

Public Shelter no. 25 was one of forty four such shelters Saddam had built around Baghdad. They were built during the Iraq-Iran war, could house over one thousand people at a time and had steel reinforced concrete walls that were ten feet think. They were apparently designed to withstand a nuclear attack, or so the marketing brochure promised.

Public Shelter no. 25 was about a fifteen minute walk from their home. Shortly after the country wide blackout that started on the first night of the bombing, the independent generators of each shelter were turned on and the locals flocked there at night to exchange stories, play games, and watch a movie on one of the many TVs. Saddam had turned the shelters into entertainment centres. What a guy!

My grandparents and two aunts were no different to the rest. Come dark, they would walk down to the shelter and spend the evening with neighbours and friends. This was their routine until one night Suso heard something.

She was sitting, back to one of the main walls talking to her sister and some friends when she thought she heard soft tapping sounds from behind her. She put her ear to the wall and sure enough there was an intermittent tapping sound that sounded very familiar. It wasn’t long before she figured out it was the sound of a typewriter, or more accurately, typewriters. This couldn’t be good.

The next night she made sure that they sat in the same spot again and sure enough the tapping was still going strong. Faint but very much there. Suso has always been a smart woman and this moment was no exception. She decided that the “civilian” shelter was also being used as a military command and telecommunications post. If she was right, then it was no longer safe to indulge in Saddam’s electricity and movies.

She told her family what her suspicions were and that they would be leaving and never returning to the shelter. After a small amount of resistance, they all complied and that was the end of their indulgence in Saddam’s electricity and entertainment.

Four nights later the Americans struck…

Two 2,000 pound laser guided bombs penetrated the ten feet of reinforced concrete. The first removed the majority of the concrete roof and paved the way for the second, following precisely in its footsteps, to easily enter the shelter and cook all inside.

That evening all adult men had left the shelter early to give the women some privacy, they wouldn’t need to cover themselves up without the men there.

The crowd panicked after the first strike. They started running towards the single exit doors. The bunkers sophisticated lock down technology ensured that nobody escaped. The two huge doors that constituted the single entrance and exit slammed shut and locked them inside. They were trapped. Seconds later the second bomb finished off the job.

408 women and children died.

My grandparents and two aunts survived.

This was the biggest civilian casualty list, for a single event, in the history of air warfare. Saddam knew exactly what he was doing; he knew that by hiding his military operations behind civilians he could not lose. He was either going to trick the Americans into thinking it was a civilian setup or they were going to strike thinking it a military target and give him all the propaganda ammunition he needed to suggest they were targeting civilians.

No one in their right mind could accuse America of targeting civilians. They were not. Full stop. The worst they could be accused of in this instance is poor intelligence about the degree of civilian activity in this shelter. That and maybe some poor judgement in underestimating Saddam’s cunning.

That afternoon I walked over to Shelter no. 25 contemplating the irony of the name. Coffin no. 25 would have been more appropriate. I approached it from the side, and it looked so intact, so quiet and undisturbed. How could this be the site of two bombings? I thought. Only when I arrived at the entrance did I see proof that this indeed was a strike site.

The two large steel doors were standing wide open, charred black on the side. They had been bent and pried open by outsiders trying to get in. I can only imagine what that moment must have been like for the fathers and husbands outside. I can see them hearing the first strike and rushing to the shelter only to hear and see the second one go in. I can see them expecting to wake up from the dreamlike horror of the moment. This cannot be happening.

I can see the first men rushing to the sealed entrance door and severely burning their hands as they first touched the red hot doors. I can see everyone else backing off, looking for crowbars and hard metal rods to use on the doors. Others, running around trying to find other entrance points. Others, wailing in the street, knowing full well that none of their children and wives were coming out. Others, with their arms around their wives and children, watching from a distance, praying, and thanking their God for delivering them from their neighbours suffering.

For most there that night, 13th February 1991 was a Godless moment.

(burned into the wall, the imprint of a child’s hand inside Coffin no. 25)

Saddam and his psychotic cronies were happy to use Iraqi women and children as human shields.

I’m reminded of the wonderful line in Shrek: “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make”.

Saddam viewed the people as personal assets; they were his to sacrifice as he saw fit. He was entitled to use their bodies as he say fit.

Entitled. That’s the key word.

So, what’s this Iraqi story about. Here is one take:

A regime (the entity) using the bodies of others to protect itself from harm.

What’s that got to do with jabbing kids? Well…

There is an entity today that’s using the bodies of others (kids) to protect itself from harm.

Who’s the entity in this jabbing story? Well, it’s a bit more complex and there are more moving parts, but I’m going to frame it as primarily the old and the afraid.

The old that I am referring to is the 75+ group. In Australia this group makes up 7.1% of the population. This share of total population is the largest share in Australian history. 30 years ago, they made up 4.3% of the population. This is the population born after 1945, yes, the baby boomers.

You will find a similar theme all over the Western developed world. A record breaking portion of the population aged 75+.

This is not insignificant.

As we have been told from the beginning, “the virus is much more deadly to the old”, certainly “much more deadly than the flu”. This it statistically true, but I want to remind everybody of a simple yet seemingly forgotten fact. EVERYTHING is more deadly to the old, that’s what it means to be old.

I cannot move on without making this point also, the average age of PCR+ death is HIGHER than life expectancy in Australia and the shape of the story is similar everywhere else. It’s 85 versus a backdrop of general life expectancy of 82 here in Australia. Seeing that it’s “much more deadly to the old” how come the average age of death isn’t say 76? Why is it that the extremely old are dying off in the highest numbers? How come the “new” societal death curve pretty much maps over the “old” societal death curve? Maybe I’ll write about this in more detail at another time, but I just want to leave this point by saying that the “deadly to the old” argument, although true, has been blown out of all proportion, even among the reasonable and the awake.

But back to baby boomers. I’ve spent my professional life with them, some of my best friends are baby boomers 😊. I’ve had a front seat view of the Australian baby boomer for almost 30 years. There is much to like about them as a generation, but I’m going to focus on one very particular aspect of the group psychology of this cohort. They are an entitled generation. If you could measure “entitlement” I think they are the most entitled generation in the history of this country.

I’ve got many stories to back this up, but I’ll tell you one, possibly my favourite.

About ten years ago I caught up for a coffee with my favourite client, he’d been someone I had worked with for about 15 years to that point. I’d advised him on his money management and retirement plans over that time and at the time we had caught up he had been already retired a couple of years. The reason I call him my favourite client, is because he was the nicest most reasonable, most logical of all the hundreds of people I had worked with. Just a lovely man.

He was married to a similarly lovely woman, they had one son who had moved out of the house. They had a wonderful home that was fully paid off and they had something in the order of $4m Australian dollars to live on in their retirement. Certainly, an above average amount of money, even by Australian standards. Now, I’m good at my job, and the Australian tax and retirement system is really a system built by baby boomers for baby boomers and if you know what you are doing you can legally allocate your money is ways that mean you pay virtually NO TAX AT ALL.

So, when they retired, they were collecting well over $150,000 per annum in income with $4m in the overall retirement bucket and weren’t paying any tax on anything. Legally.

Anyway, the discussion eventually came around to his retirement, and his current setup. I said something to the effect: “John, I know that you’ve ended up paying no tax as we have taken advantage of all the breaks the system gives retirees, but you’d have to agree that although it’s legal it’s not really right, is it? Retirees are going to live some 20-30 years into retirement and surely it would be logical and fair that they make a reasonable tax contribution into the system…don’t you think?”.

I’ll always remember that moment, this most reasonable of men looked at me as if I had just grown a second head. I could see it in his eyes, he thought I had gone mad.

He said: “I’ve paid my taxes all through my working life, why should I pay any more?”.

Are there it was, the entitlement, it managed to surface in this most reasonable of people.

His generation had grown up with free, well-funded, public schooling, free university, affordable housing, and plenty of job prospects and once they got to retirement believed that there was no duty nor moral need to further contribute into the system. Even though they would drive on the roads, call the police when necessary, go to a hospital when necessary and generally participate in society for the next 20-30 years but believed that they didn’t need to make any contribution into that system. So, who would make the contribution, well the kids obviously.

This generational entitlement manifests in a form of theft. A generation that has used the power of the state to take from the young for its own benefit.

Where is the loud lobby of older Australians out in force arguing for a complete stoppage to the child jab campaign? How many grandparents have you come across screaming at their kids “Don’t you dare inject my grandchild!!”. Crickets.

Now, let’s talk about “the afraid” a bit. Well certainly the baby boomers are terrified, why wouldn’t they be, it’s pretty much certain death if they get the virus, isn’t it?

That terror has co-opted their kids into this “human shield building entity”. The kids, the 30-50 year old’s now want to “protect grandma” and they will do whatever it takes to protect grandma. The one-two of the baby boomers and their kids are the primary source energy of this zeitgeist, this entity as I call it. You might argue that the kids of the baby boomers (Gen X I think) are volunteering as human shields for their parents, sure, whatever. But you don’t get to “volunteer” your 5 year old as a human shield for grandma.

In my letter to my kids, I wrote this, as I was concerned the media and their peer groups might brainwash them into “doing their bit” for society and “protecting those that cannot protect themselves”.

A letter to my two adult kids: Vaccines and the free Spike Protein

Responsibility to the old

One of the last Hail Mary attempts at guilting people (mostly the young) into getting the injection is to call on their “obligation” towards the old.

Let’s get this straight, you do not have an obligation to put your personal health at risk for the old. We have an obligation to treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve, and to provide the best targeted protection we can. But not to put our personal health at risk!

It is not only a silly idea, but also morally corrupt and evil…and does not stack up to any level of slow thinking or analysis.

It attempts to conflate any obligation you might have or feel towards your immediate family members, brother, sister, mum, dad, grandparents, or even a best friend, with an obligation towards greater society.

It is bullshit.

At no point would anyone go to get a flu vaccine to protect a stranger’s grandparent.

You do it to protect yourself and maybe the family you live with. That’s it.

A 10-year-old has NO DUTY towards the 85-year-old grandmother of a stranger. At most if they were about to visit a stranger and the kid had the flu, then maybe the kid would stay at home. They certainly wouldn’t get an experimental treatment to protect the stranger.

The idea that a 20-year-old who has 65 QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years) ahead of them put that at risk to protect the 1 (or less) QALY of the 85-year-old stranger is among the evilest ideas I have ever come across.

That is not how it works and is not how anyone should think…please do NOT fall into that trap.

If someone in your family needed a kidney, you MIGHT consider giving them a kidney…it would be a big deal, but you might decide to do it. You would never decide to hand over your kidney to a total stranger just because they needed it. That is not how personal and social obligations work.

We are compassionate creatures, and that compassion has been weaponised.

Evil is both a noun and a verb. To become the noun, you need to do the verb.

If you are a baby boomer and expect your grandkids to get injected to become a human shield to protect you, your expectation and entitlement is the verb and you have become the noun.

If you are the child of a baby boomer and you want to use your child’s body as a human shield to protect yourself and your parents, your usage of that body is the verb and you have become the noun.

It’s easy to point at Saddam Hussein and tell all that would listen “There stands evil”. But it’s far harder to look in the mirror and realise that the person you are looking at is pure evil, arguably worse than Saddam.