Institutional Blackmail — No Jab, No Job, No Livelihood

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 11 Oct 2021

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service

Reframing Virtual Death and Assisted Dying by “Just Suffering Theory”

Introduction

11 Oct 2021 – Government responses to the pandemic have been cautiously sensitive to the need for informed consent with respect to vaccination. This reflects the concerns articulated in the Nuremberg Code (1947). Progressively however those provisions have been consciously circumvented through policies of “No Jab, No Job”, together with other measures by which restrictions are imposed on the unvaccinated — and freedoms are reserved for the vaccinated.

The process might be compared with what has been hailed as the most famous line ever uttered by a movie gangster — a simple promise delivered by Marlon Brando, playing Don Vito Corleone, in The Godfather (1972): I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse — as discussed by Jacob Shelton (What’s In A Line? The Godfather’s ‘Offer He Can’t Refuse,’ Explained, 27 January  2019).

The sidelining of ethical issues is justified under emergency provisions (Rachel Gur-Arie, et al, No Jab, No Job? Ethical Issues in Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination of Healthcare Personnel, British Medical Journal: Global Health, 6, 2021, 2; Rhiana Whitson, Compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations at work could face legal challenges, lawyers warn, ABC News, 4 June 2021).

An emphasis is increasingly placed on the scope for mandatory vaccination and the responsibility of employers to implement this requirement ( Matthew Boyle, These Are the U.S. Companies Requiring Covid Vaccines for Employees, Bloomberg, 9 September 2021; Clea Skopeliti, Biden introduces vaccine mandate for 100 million workers, The Guardian, 10 September 2021; Tara Subramaniam, Are Biden’s vaccine mandates ‘unlawful’? CNN, 19 September 2021).

Very little is mentioned in public discourse about the loss of livelihood of those who do not give their consent to be vaccinated — and therefore lose their job. Expressed otherwise, there is little mention of “blackmail” with respect to policies of “No Jab, No Job”, “No Jab, No Access”, and the like.

In losing their livelihood, those refusing vaccination (and thereby losing their gainful employment) may well be faced with a high level of personal disaster: inability to feed a family, inability to pay rent or mortgage, inability to pay school and medical fees, inability to travel, inability to seek work, family breakdown, and the like. Responsibility for this condition is placed firmly on those who refuse to give their consent — as is typical of any blackmail situation. It is their choice — having been presented with an offer they can only be deemed extremely foolish to refuse. Those making the offer in the name of the highest human values are thereby framed as entirely innocent and without blame in doing so.

There is seemingly no official sensitivity to such forced loss of livelihood, nor does any such threat figure in any official modelling of the evolution of the pandemic (Misleading Modelling of Global Crises: unquestioned bias in authoritative representations of reality by science? 2021). Rather there is a progressive official tendency to shift the blame for any failure of pandemic policies onto those who refuse vaccination — who refuse to be blackmailed (Beyond universal vaccination: planning an exit strategy and cover-up, 2021). The mainstream media reinforce this perception in the eyes of those who have chosen to be vaccinated.

In this context it is appropriate to explore the ultimate meaning of “loss of livelihood” — to the extent that it necessarily implies loss of ability to sustain life, namely a form of death, virtual or otherwise, especially given the tendency to suicide it may engender. Again however, any such death is the responsibility of those rejecting vaccination — however much any death may be officially deplored and constrained by legislative measures.

The irony of the situation is the manner in which the indifference to the suffering of those faced with loss of livelihood is effectively reframed by analogy with “just war theory” and “just torture theory”. From that perspective, there is a progressive elaboration of what might be appropriately termed “just suffering theory” with the fundamental indifference it implies.

Such a theory specifically precludes any consideration of assisted dying of those faced with extreme suffering, irrespective of the degree to which there is institutional complicity in the death of many others elsewhere. This is notably evident in foreign conflict arenas (if only as collateral damage) or in impoverished countries faced with levels of malnutrition endangering life.

Recognizing the perverse connotation of “just” as “merely” (in contrast with “justice”), the argument concludes with discussion of the problematic implications of any “just consent theory” or “just dissent theory” in the engagement with authority.

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – laetusinpraesens.org

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Anthony Judge is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and mainly known for his career at the Union of International Associations (UIA), where he has been Director of Communications and Research, as well as Assistant Secretary-General. He was responsible at the UIA for the development of interlinked databases and for publications based on those databases, mainly the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, the Yearbook of International Organizations, and the International Congress Calendar. Judge has also personally authored a collection of over 1,600 documents of relevance to governance and strategy-making. All these papers are freely available on his personal website Laetus in Praesens. Now retired from the UIA, he is continuing his research within the context of an initiative called Union of Imaginable Associations. Judge is an Australian born in Egypt, a thinker, an author, and lives in Brussels. His TMS articles may be accessed HERE. (Wikipedia)

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