The mass rollout of COVID-19 vaccines should be halted immediately. These experimental vaccines pose serious dangers. That is the message contained in a statement from concerned citizens soon to be forwarded to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The statement’s signatories include medical scientists, doctors, epidemiologists, civil servants, civil society organisations and “deeply concerned mothers, fathers, husbands and wives”.
Concerned citizens of India can sign on to the ‘The Truth of COVID-19 — The India Statement’ prior to its dispatch to the PM in the link provided at the end of this article.
Internationally renowned professionals in the field of medical science have also joined this effort by offering their expertise, including Dr Mike Yeadon, Dr Peter McCullough, Dr Pierre Kory, Dr Roger Hodkinson, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi and Dr Tess Lawrie.
The statement comprises two parts. Part one is a five-page summary of the main points and recommendations. This is supported by part two, a 62-page document which quotes the relevant literature and has dozens of references to back up the assertions made about the vaccines, COVID-19 and the vaccination programme.
Some of the key points and recommendations contained in part one are summarised below.
The statement begins by saying that a coronavirus vaccine has never before been used successfully. One problem has been the development of antibody disease enhancement (ADE). The vaccine produces antibodies, but sometimes this does not prevent disease – it instead makes the disease more serious and ADE can extend into the future (this has been seen before, for example regarding the rollout of a Dengue vaccine in Manila).
All the vaccines use the spike protein and this was thought to be a good idea at first because the virus uses its spike protein to attach to the host cells. But the statement notes this is a blunder and a major catastrophe. The spike protein is the toxic part of the virus that causes major (vascular) disease.
It is now confirmed that the synthetic spike protein of the vaccines is also toxic and is similarly causing the likes of clotting and bleeding disorders.
Many thousands of people taking the vaccine have died. The vaccine leaves the injection site in the arm and, contrary to what was assumed, and unexpectedly, travels into the bloodstream, spreading all over the body including with concentrations in the ovaries, bone marrow and lymph nodes.
Moreover, the mass rollout of the vaccines is putting selection pressure on the virus to evolve into strains that are resistant to the vaccine, like Delta and Omicron. This is well-known science that follows the same pattern as, for example, in anti-biotic resistance.
Dr Luc Montagnier, the Nobel Prize winner who discovered the AIDs virus, has raised an urgent warning about this phenomenon. The statement notes that this process of new variants will not stop as more and more people get vaccinated.
Data from Israel (where the vast majority are vaccinated) show an increase in hospitalisations and deaths among the vaccinated. This is a repeated pattern occurring in other countries and was predicted by Dr Montagnier and other leading virologists.
The protective effect of the vaccines is also waning and is now below the required regulatory efficacy of at least 50%. The US health agencies are already advising a booster third dose. However, leading vaccine experts and immunologists and the vaccine manufacturers knew this all along. It was hidden though from the public.
It is clear that people who recover from Covid-19 develop natural immunity, which is long-lasting with antibodies that are effective against several viruses or variants. A large percentage of the Indian population, around 70% or more, already have this natural immunity. The statement concludes that vaccines are therefore not required.
As the vaccines can produce antibodies to a protein, syncytin, which, in the future, may cause abortions in women, the assertion is that women of child-bearing age (50 and below) should not be given the vaccines.
The statement notes that children have not had much problem with Covid, but some doctors are suggesting that a third wave will affect them. This is based on speculation, not science. Moreover, the long-term impacts of these vaccines and in particular the toxic spike protein are unknown. It would thus be quite unconscionable to risk the future of children. Given the data, it is clear that the risks of Covid-19 vaccines far outweigh the benefits for children.
India has a major disease burden in terms of communicable diseases, (TB, diarrhoeal, etc) and children are seriously impacted (more than 2,000 children die every day). On the other hand, the incidence and deaths due to COVID-19 are negligible. Children are not impacted by this disease.
In India, levels of serious malnutrition are worrying (and the COVID-related lockdown of the country can only have exacerbated this).
According to the statement, stopping unneeded vaccinations would release the huge sum of Rs 35,000 crores (almost 4.1 billion euros) for a public health system in dire need of resources to deal with killer childhood diseases and for improving the health of the population.
The statement notes that at the very heart of the problem of unsafe vaccines is the endemic conflict of interest that engulfs the institutions of health worldwide, not least in the US (NIA/FDA/CDC) the UK (MHRA) and the WHO.
It is for all the reasons mentioned above that vaccine manufacturers demand to be indemnified from any harm their vaccines may cause. Pfizer and Israel have made an agreement to hide Covid-19 vaccine adverse reactions for 10 years. Yet, these adverse effects are key to understanding vaccine science.
The statement also says that routine RT-PCR testing as presently conducted, including on asymptomatic cases, should be discontinued. PCR-driven ‘cases’ mislead the public on Covid infections. Furthermore, it is clear that the vaccines have failed to provide immunity and also fail to stop transmission from those vaccinated. India has acquired ‘herd immunity’ and does not need these vaccines. Medical science therefore does not support their continued rollout.
The statement concludes:
India must stop the vaccines with immediate effect… Preventive measures, early treatment and treatment protocols through all the stages of the diseases with Ivermectin and other off-label drugs are proven… very early on, India took exemplary action with regard to the ICMR [Indian Council of Medical Research] guideline on HDQ (hydroxychloroquine) and UP state with its public health measure of dispensing Ivermectin, which was an acknowledged success. We need to widen these measures across India. Both are ‘repurposed’ drugs, are medically proven and safe solutions, and there are others in our toolkit of medical products, along with vitamins (D, C and zinc).”
The PM will be urged to implement the recommendations set out in the statement and these will be at a fraction of the cost of vaccines. The funds released will allow the government to invest in overall health infrastructure (children’s health in particular), the economy, farmers and agriculture and the environment.
Concerned citizens of India can sign on to the statement here, where links to both parts of the statement are provided.
MIDWAY THROUGH 1999’S THE MATRIX, Keanu Reeves’s hacker-cum-cyberpunk-messiah Neo sees a black cat shivering in a doorway. Then, he sees it again. “Woah,” he utters, in that trademark, flat Keanu Reeves way. “Déjà vu . . . ” The phenomenon, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) tells him, means big trouble. In the titular world-scale digital simulation in which the bulk of the film unfolds, déjà vu signals a computer glitch: a case of the simulation tweaking its code in real time.
One can’t help but be reminded of this idea watching The Matrix Resurrections, a long-gap sequel to the original sci-fi trilogy, which ended with Reeves’s Neo striking a détente between the machine overlords that enslaved mankind within a counterfeit reality and the fleshy human resistors who opposed them. The new film opens as the original does, following a heavily-armed SWAT team as they swarm a seedy motel room where a leather-clad hacker is plonking away at a computer terminal. The scene expands to introduce a new character, Bugs (Jessica Henwick), who notes to her compatriot that this familiar scene is a training module, designed to hone the skills of the digital heavies who patrol the parameters of the matrix. Or rather, a version of it that exists within the original matrix. It’s sixty years after the events of the last film, and nearly twenty years after its release. Things have gotten deeper—if only slightly.
The simulation now includes a popular video game trilogy—called, of course, The Matrix—that re-stages the events of the original films. Neo, too, is back, in his guise as Thomas Anderson. This time he’s not a computer programmer but a video game designer, whose “great ambition was to make a game indistinguishable from reality.” He’s the chief architect of the Matrix game trilogy, which has just seen a sequel green-lit within the fiction of both the matrix and The Matrix. (Matrix Resurrections was itself promoted with a tie-in video game demo, The Matrix Awakens.) Like William James’s image of our world resting on an infinite regress of rocks, it seems like it’s matrixes all the way down.
The planned game sequel prompts much hand-wringing. Characters bat ideas back and forth in an open-concept office, trying to get to the heart of what made the original Matrix work. Resurrections abounds with this sort of dorky meta-humor. There are jokes about the game design firm’s parent company being Warner Bros. (the actual film’s producer) and jokes about déjà vu. A fourth-wave coffee shop is called “Simulatte.” That kind of thing. It’s the sort of stuff that elicits barking, staccato guffaws from in-the-know audience members that quickly fade into barely bemused titters. It’s meant to be cute, but it’s mostly annoying.
Still, the film is not without its charms. Some of the early action scenes crack along reliably, playing with inversions of gravity and time, like a fleeter Christopher Nolan flick. And the notion of revisiting the world of the matrix is not without appeal. After all, the original film forecasted a world of digital disenfranchisement that is now, under the auspices of our current Silicon Valley overlords, regarded as aspirational. (In a telling touch, Resurrections moves the action from an implied Chicago to the Bay Area, explicitly marked by familiar landmarks and San Francisco PD cruisers.) And with its image of two pills representing diverging ideological bents, The Matrix provided a ready-made vocabulary that has been embraced in our real world, where everyone is redpilled, blackpilled, Danpilled, or Tedpilled. But Resurrections never manages to meaningfully intervene in the very conditions it seems to be diagnosing—and which the series had already diagnosed, decades ago. Like postmodernity itself, the state of digital dependency dramatized by The Matrix cannot be alleviated. It can only be mediated, with increasing levels of irony and winking self-awareness.
To wit: Resurrections is not about digitization, or the metaphysics of reality, or the broken promise of the cyberpunk genre. It is about movie reboots. Here, Neo must be liberated again, literally remaking his quest from the original film, with the obstacles re-skinned and old foes appearing in new guises (Jonathan Groff, playing the meddling computer program Smith, is a hunkier, paler imitation of the menacing Hugo Weaving). Characters snipe about how humanity is merely reframing the same handful of archetypal themes and ideas. “We’re still telling the same stories we’ve always told,” says one game designer, sounding like he’s been watching too many Jordan Peterson YouTubes. “Just with different names, different faces.” This may well be true. But it also feels like a cop-out. Especially because the original Matrix, as imagined by sororal duo Lilly and Lana Wachowski, felt genuinely inventive. It blended Terminator-styled dystopian sci-fi with Hong Kong wire-fu action and state-of-the-art special effects, all draped in the industrial liveries of a turn-of-the-millennium goth club. It may not have been wholly new. But it was thrilling remix. It spoke to the ennui of America at the “end of history.” It captured the soul-deadening, Dilbert-esque daily doldrums explored in films like Fight Club and Office Space. It also played straight to the anxiety around “Y2K” and the mounting cultural panic that home computers and toaster ovens might break down or turn against their owners. The Matrix felt like it was speaking to its time. Now, movies seem to chatter only among themselves.
There’s plenty of precedent here, of course: Ready Player One; the recent Space Jam sequel; and the new Spider-Man movie, which draws together two decades worth of sticky narrative threads spun across three distinct franchises. Corporate wheeling-and-dealing is increasingly allegorized onscreen, to the point that many blockbusters are now about their own production. Within ten years, we’ll see Aaron Sorkin hoisting an Oscar overhead, rewarded by his peers for helming a chatty drama about the backroom legal finagling that saw a Star Wars-branded lightsaber licensed to the movie Free Guy. Hollywood is already lodged in the post-postmodern rabbit hole, with little to show for it. The culture is glitching, looping, stuck in some long, static interregnum, like a radio drifting between channels. If a new Matrix movie felt grimly inevitable in such a climate, it also had great potential.
And I suppose it’s nice that director Lana Wachowski (going solo this time) returned to wield some control over a story that would otherwise be expropriated however-which-way by the studio. But she has only a passing interest in the new convolutions of the simulation itself. Wachowski is more invested in revisiting Neo and Trinity’s wrenching, realities-spanning romance. Rather than the heady ideas at play in the premise—which have been by-and-large replaced by geeky in-jokes—she wants to explore (again) the profound power of love as some supernatural force. At its worst, the Wachowski worldview recalls that classic Simpsons joke: the secret ingredient is always capital-l Love.
This strain of touchy-feely sci-fi certainly has its admirers, and I sometimes count myself among them. But I find the Wachowskis’ sappiness (however earnest) more tolerable when enlivened by their stylistic and technical inventiveness. The rote, underdog rhythms of Speed Racer (2008) only work because they unfold within an aesthetic landscape that splits the difference between La Chinoise and Paper Mario. The Matrix’s heavy hooey about fate and choice and freeing one’s mind is leavened because, well, the movie is entertaining as hell. But now, the ideas are stale (2003’s The Matrix Reloaded already introduced the concept of its story being a remake), and the action settles into tedium: graceful bullet-time ballets are replaced by crunchy, John Wick-style fights and repetitive CGI set pieces that see Neo stopping hails of bullets with his hands, over and over and over again.
Perhaps there’s something modestly clever in the major meta-gesture of this newest Matrix—in its idea of the matrix reproducing its own destruction in the form of an interactive video game. After all, the notion that the very systems that delude us offer self-contained safe spaces for relieving those delusions is apt. Like capital, the matrix survives by evolving quicker than the forces that oppose it. If we take this message seriously, then the goodly thing to do is to ignore The Matrix Resurrections and all corporatized entertainments. To put down Twitter and TikTok and smooch our spouses; build a snowman with the kiddies; clink some beers with a gaggle of good buddies.
That we should all invest not in our virtual existences, but the fleshy, loving, contingent relationships of real life, is a perfectly decent message. That the Wachowskis have been repeating this tired line for two decades speaks despairingly to the conditions of our own, present-day dystopia. Resurrections is suspended between cyberpunk trappings that were already shopworn circa 1999 and the intellectual prison of high-concept meta-mongering. It is a movie of the interregnum, one that could have been auto-generated by it. In this way, The Matrix does manage to speak to the times. Again.
Tsui Hark returns for a third go around in his fantasy blockbuster franchise, sending the titular Dee on another eye-boggling, mind-warping, wuxia-infused adventure. While the first instalment saw Andy Lau take on the title character, the first follow up, ‘Rise of the Sea Dragon’, saw a younger version of Dee (now played by Mark Chao) muddle his way through an assortment of fanatical situations. ‘The Four Heavenly Kings’ is a direct follow on from ‘Rise of the Sea Dragon’, with Chao and many of the core cast returning for another adventure which may just be the best in the series.
Due to his exploits in ‘Rise of the Sea Dragon’, Dee is rewarded the coveted Dragon Taming Mace: a near mythical and indestructible weapon. So coveted it is, that many a nefarious foe want to get their hands on it including Empress Wu (Carina Lau) who hatches a plan to steal it and discredit Dee using a band of mystical warriors. Coupled with the resurgence of a once deadly spiritual tribe, Dee soon finds all is not what it seems as sorcery weaves it evil way, and he and his fellow Bureau colleagues attempt to uncover the conspiracy and battle an ever increasing assortment of fantastical creatures and foes.
Much like the first two Dee flicks, ‘The Four Heavenly Kings’ is an often breathless fantasy blockbuster that doesn’t skimp on the wuxia action, CGI wonderment and imaginative scenarios. These days Tsui Hark is happy to play in the big budget, CGI sandbox and while his recent films have been a bit hit or miss, the ‘Detective Dee’ flicks have arguably been his most enjoyable blockbusters of late. While ‘Mystery of the Phantom Flame’ and ‘Rise of the Sea Dragon’ could be all over the place in tone and plotting ‘The Four Heavenly Kings’ finds Hark on more assured ground. Sure there is still a fair amount of convoluted plotting and subplot/secondary character development a-go-go which takes a while to digest as the narrative often rockets along, but on the whole this entry flows coherently.
Dee’s cohorts (Lin Gengxin and Feng Shaofeng) get fully fleshed character arcs and are just as integral to the plot and action as the lead, with Feng Shaofeng (as General Yuchi) all but stealing the film. This unfortunately means Dee feels somewhat like a supporting character in his own film but the team dynamic is a nice approach to this threequel and keeps the viewer guessing and often surprised as to where the narrative is going. While the film is packed with playful energy, energetic set-pieces and a good amount of silliness, ‘The Four Heavenly Kings’ also packs in a fair bit of menace, not least when the vicious Wind Warriors show up. A truly threatening foe, they add menace and bite to what is essentially a cartoon blockbuster, Hark wringing out some genuine tension every time they appear on screen.
As with the other Dee instalments (and most of Hark’s recent output), this entry is packed with CGI ingenuity which leads to some truly creative scenarios and characters. For the most part the CGI works (save for the odd wonky bit here and there) and blends into the environment and practical action well. Hark certainly can’t resist packing in as much CGI inventiveness as he can but come the finale it certainly works to deliver some truly eye frazzling action: complete with giant gorillas, squids and some sort of colossal demon made up of eyeballs!
If one isn’t a fan of this type of CGI laced, fantasy blockbuster then one is probably not going to get along with ‘The Four Heavenly Kings’ but if one is (and enjoyed the previous jaunts with Dee) then there is a lot of fun to be had here. Tsui Hark delivers a wickedly fun fantasy romp full of wondrous fight action and flights of fancy.
And so, as 2021 goose-steps toward its fanatical finish, it is time for my traditional year-end wrap-up. It’s “The Year of the Ox” in the Chinese zodiac, but I’m christening it “The Year of the New Normal Fascist.”
But this isn’t just a story about New Normal Germany, or New Normal Europe, or New Normal Australia. And it isn’t just a story about mass hysteria, or an “overreaction” to a corona virus. The “New Normal” is a global GloboCap co-production, a multi-trillion-dollar co-production, which has been in development for quite some time, and this year has gone exactly to script.
Given all the drama over the past 12 months, it’s easy to forget that the year began with the occupation of Washington DC by thousands of US (i.e., GloboCap) forces in the wake of the “Terrorist Assault on the Capitol” (a/k/a the “January 6 Insurrection,” or the “Attempted Coup,” or some such nonsense) carried out by a few hundred totally unarmed Donald Trump supporters, who were allegedly intent on “overthrowing the government” and “destroying Democracy” with … well, their bare hands.
This was the long-awaited “Return to Normal” spectacle that had been in the pipeline for the previous four years, the public humiliation of the Unauthorized President (and the “populists” who put him in office) and the GloboCap show of force that followed. Here’s how I described it back in January:
“In other words, GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. I don’t know how much clearer they could make it. They just installed a new puppet president, who can’t even simulate mental acuity, in a locked-down, military-guarded ceremony which no one was allowed to attend, except for a few members of the ruling classes. They got some epigone of Albert Speer to convert the Mall (where the public normally gathers) into a ‘field of flags,’ symbolizing ‘unity.’ They even did the Nazi Lichtdom thing. To hammer the point home, they got Lady Gaga to dress up as a Hunger Games character with a ‘Mockingjay’ brooch and sing the National Anthem. They broadcast this spectacle to the entire world.”
As I assume is obvious to everyone by now, the “Return to Normal” was a “Return to the New Normal,” which the global-capitalist ruling establishment was already imposing on the entire world. The message couldn’t possibly be clearer. As Arnold Schwarzenegger succinctly put it, the message is, “screw your freedom.” The message is, shut up and toe the fucking line. The message is, show me your fucking papers. Use the fucking pronouns. Eat the fucking bugs. Get the fucking “vaccinations.” Do not fucking ask us “how many.” The answer is, “as many as we fucking tell you.”
The message is, there will be no more unauthorized presidents, no more leaving the European Union, no more “populist” rebellions against the global hegemony of global-capitalism and its soul-crushing, valueless “woke” ideology. GloboCap is done playing grab-ass. They announced that back in March of 2020. They informed us in unmistakable terms that our lives were about to change, forever. They branded and advertised this change as “the New Normal,” in case we were … you know, cognitively challenged. They did not hide it. They wanted us to understand exactly what was coming, a global-capitalist version of totalitarianism, in which we will all be happy little fascist “consumers” showing each other our “compliance certificates” in order to be allowed to live our lives.
I’d like to end on an optimistic note, because, Jesus, this fascism business is depressing. So I’ll just mention that, as you have probably noticed, more and more people are now “waking up,” or relocating their intestinal fortitude, and finally speaking out against “vaccine” mandates, and “vaccination passes,” and social segregation, and all the rest of the fascist New Normal program. I intend to encourage this “awakening” vociferously. I hope that those — and you know who you are — who have been reporting the facts and opposing the New Normal, and have been ridiculed, demonized, gaslighted, censored, slandered, threatened, and otherwise abused, on a daily basis for 21 months, as our more “prominent” colleagues — and you know who you are — sat by in silence, or took part in the Hate Fest, will join me in applauding and welcoming these “prominent” colleagues to the fight … finally.
Oh, and, if you’re one of those “prominent” colleagues and you start beating your chest and sounding off like you’ve just rediscovered investigative journalism and are now leading the charge against the New Normal for your YouTube viewers or your Substack readers, please understand if we get a little cranky. Speaking for myself, yes, it’s been a bit stressful, doing your job and taking the shit for you out here in the trenches for the past 21 months. Not to mention how it has virtually killed my comedy … and I’m supposed to be a political satirist.
But there I go, getting all “angry” again … whatever. As the doctor said, “buy the ticket, take the ride.” And it’s the season of joy, love, and forgiveness, and publicly crucifying dissidents, and paranoia, and mass hysteria, and persecuting “Unvaccinated” relatives, and, OK, I might have had one too many. Happy holidays to one and all, except, of course, to the New Normal fascists, especially the ones that are torturing the children. God, forgive me, but I hope they fucking choke.
Anyone who has followed the political culture in the US, Canada, UK, EU over the past twenty years must have realized that a war on epistemology, on truth, on semantics is going on. We witness the hijacking of concepts like democracy, freedom, peace, patriotism, human rights — and their instrumentalization for domestic and geopolitical purposes. We observe a process of language destruction not unlike what Orwell foresaw in his sadly visionary book 1984. “Newspeak” is not the future, it is now, hic et nunc. We recognize it in the jargon of political correctness, the language and practice of the “cancel culture”.
The military-industrial-financial complex in the US, Canada, UK, EU is hell bent on full spectrum cognitive control and inundates the population with plausible “narratives” based on fake news, fake history, fake law, fake diplomacy and fake democracy. We are literally swimming in an ocean of lies – but, remarkably, most people are not conscious of the fact that they are systematically manipulated by governments, corporate media, compliant think tanks and universities. The power of “political correctness” surrounds us in direct and subliminal ways. Most accept it as the “new normal”, as long as they continue having Hollywood entertainment and lots of sports on television. The classical panem et circensis (Juvenal).
A particularly worrisome phenomenon is the gradual emergence of a “human rights industry” that systematically subverts and weaponizes human rights. The holistic approach to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights advocated by Eleanor Roosevelt has been quietly denatured, dismantled, discarded. We see how the “industry” transforms the individual and collective entitlement to assistance, protection, respect and solidarity — based on our common human dignity — into a hostile arsenal to target competitors and political adversaries.
In the stockpile of weaponized human rights, the technique of “naming and shaming” has become a sort of ubiquitous Kalashnikov. Yet, experience shows that naming and shaming fails to alleviate the suffering of victims and only satisfies the strategic aims of certain governments, non-governmental organizations and of a burgeoning clique of human rights operativesin government, academia and even in international organizations. Allegations of real and putative human rights violations have proven politically very useful to destabilize rivals, denouncing and demonizing them. To this end the deliberate use of double-standards, the maximation of human rights violations by a targeted country and the negation or suppression of evidence of violations by our own governments or by our allies, prepares the population to accept patently unjust and illegal actions to prepare “regime change” elsewhere. Precisely this kind of indoctrination of the population through evidence-free allegations and hyperbole paves the way to barbarism e.g. the aggression against Iraq in 2003 and against Libya in 2011, to name only two emblematic examples.
The Iraq invasion, which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan repeatedly called an “illegal war” found the support of a “coalition of the willing” – 43 States that turned their backs on the UN Charter and on international law, with the support of many university pundits and the corporate media. One could affirm without fear of contradiction that the Iraq war constituted an international revolt, an assault on the international order established under the UN Charter and a negation of the Nuremberg Principles.
The Iraq war was preceded by a public relations and disinformation scheme of “naming and shaming”, a concerted campaign about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, about the extraordinary criminality of Saddam Hussein, who a few years earlier had done the Pentagon’s bidding in the US proxy war against Iran. Barely eight years later, in 2011, alleged human rights violations were again invoked to denounce Muammar al-Gaddafi for the sole purpose of destabilizing Libya, imposing undemocratic “regime change” and facilitating the looting of Libya’s natural resources. This occurred in flagrant violation of the customary international law principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign States, also contained in treaties and stipulated in the 1986 Judgment of the International Court of Justice in the Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua case[1].
Many rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council, European Commission and Inter-American commission also make use of “naming and shaming”, a strategy that rests on the false premise that the “namer” somehow possesses moral authority and that the “named” will recognize this moral superiority and act accordingly. Theoretically this could function if the “namer” were to practice “naming and shaming” uniformly, in a non-selective manner. Alas, the technique frequently backfires, because the “namer” has many skeletons in the closet and engages in blatant double-standards. Such intellectual dishonesty usually stiffens the resistance of the “named” party, who will be even less inclined to take any measures to remedy the alleged violations.
Another technique of norm-warfare is what is termed “lawfare”, whereby the apparatus of the administration of justice, both civil and criminal, is complicit in the subversion of the rule of law. We witness how domestic and international criminal law are instrumentalized to demonize certain persons and not others. A self-respecting judge would not betray the profession by playing this kind of game — but some do – as we have seen in the US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador in the Julian Assange case. The book by UN Rapporteur on Torture Professor Nils Melzer (Switzerland), originally published in German and now being released in English translation (by the author himself) The Trial of Julian Assange (Verso, New York 2022)[2] reveals the breakdown of the rule of law in the US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador – a tour de force, far more serious than Emile Zola’s J’accuse in 1898 during the Dreyfus Affaire in France. Instead of safeguarding the ethos of the rule of law, these political judges corrupt it (remember Roland Freisler in Hitler’s infamous Volksgerichtshof!) thus undermining the credibility of the entire system. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Juvenal). This is a crucial question of constitutional law. Who will guard over the guardians? The corruption of the rule of law by those courts that engage in “lawfare” is far more serious than many will admit, because it is precisely the administration of justice that must be the gatekeeper of truth and equity, the defender of the weak and most vulnerable. The deliberate corruption of the administration of justice to target political or economic rivals leaves us powerless against tyranny.
Under certain conditions, “naming and shaming” as we know it from politicians, rapporteurs and the media, raise issues of additionalviolations of human rights and the rule of law, contravening Arts. 6, 7, 9, 10, 14, 17, 18, 19 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and could reach the threshold of what is termed “hate speech” under Art. 20 ICCPR.
Experience shows that “naming and shaming” is an ineffective instrument of change. States and ngo’s would do well to revisit Matthew VII, 3-5 and replace the obsolete “naming and shaming” technique by good faith proposals and constructive recommendations, accompanied by the offer of advisory services and technical assistance so as to concretely help the victims on the ground. Sowing honesty and friendship is necessary if we expect to reap cooperation and progress in human rights terms. What is most needed today is mature diplomacy, result-oriented negotiations, a culture of dialogue and mediation, instead of a petulant culture of posturing, grandstanding, intransigence and holier-than-thou pretence.
The arsenal of weaponized human rights also includes non-conventional wars such as economic wars and sanctions regimes, ostensibly justified because of the alleged human rights violations of the targeted State. The result is that, far from helping the victims, entire populations are held hostage –victims not only of violations by their own governments, but also of “collective punishment” by the sanctioning State(s). This can entail crimes against humanity under article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, when as a consequence food security is impacted, medicines and medical equipment are rendered scarce or are available only at exorbitant prices. Demonstrably, economic sanctions kill[3]. It is particularly disgraceful how several non-governmental organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have preferred to focus on real and alleged violations of civil and political rights by Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and forgotten the fundamental human rights of the Venezuelan people and the fact that tens of thousands of Venezuelans have already perished as a direct result of illegal unilateral coercive measures and financial blockades, as we know from independent reports, including the 2019 report “Collective Punishment” by Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Colombia) and Mark Weisbrot (Center for Economic and Policy Research)[4] .
Another grotesque example of weaponization of human rights principles is reflected in UN Security Council Resolution 1973 concerning humanitarian assistance to the Libyan population. This resolution was promptly hijacked by NATO to wage an all-out war on Libya, leading to the assassination of Libya’s head of State, Muammar Gadaffi in 2011. Ten years later the country is still in civil war and chaos, but the natural resources are safely in the hands of Western economic interests. More recently, in February 2019, USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy organized “humanitarian assistance” for Venezuela and placed an impostor with no constitutional legitimacy, the pretender Juan Guaidó, as the leader who would bring this humanitarian assistance to Venezuela. The operation failed. This was followed by a real coup d’état attempt in April 2019, which again failed, and yet another attempt in May 2020, the Operation Gideon, which similarly failed. The violations by the US and accomplices of fundamental norms of international law – and common decency – were breathtaking. And yet, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox, etc. whitewashed these operations and sided with the putschists – invoking “principles” such as “democracy”, “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect”. Hypocrisy had indeed come a long way.
Yet another form of weaponizing values is the grotesque undermining of peace and human rights by Committees that award such prizes. A notorious disgrace is the undermining of the last will and testament of Alfred Nobel, who genuinely wanted to promote peace and human rights. If one regards the laureates over the past years, we realize that most of them do not come within the testamentary purpose. These days the laureates are not genuine pacifists like Henri Dunant or Bertha von Suttner. They are chosen for purely political purposes – not to advance peace and dialogue, but to denounce certain governments (in 2021 the Philippines and Russia) and to promote a geopolitical model over another. This is totally against the letter and spirit the Nobel Peace Prize. The best book on the subject is by the Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl, The Nobel Peace Prize – What Nobel really wanted.
And let us not forget the politicization and weaponization of sports. We are being manipulated into thinking that boycotting the Beijing Olympics is a good and honourable thing. It is not. It is an oxymoron, a public relations stunt.
What can we average citizens do? First and foremost we must know the facts. And because the corporate media lies to us, we must pro-actively get the information. Thanks to the internet, it is still possible to access information that we do not get in the New York Times (“all the news that’s fit to print”), Washington Post, CNN and Fox. We must demand transparency and accountability from our democratically elected leaders, when instead of formulating constructive solutions to problems they engage in confrontational politics. We must demand that our elected officials learn the habits of collaboration and compromise, enable true competition by guaranteeing a level playing field for everyone, both domestically and internationally. Our politicians, the media and the university pundits should embrace a new paradigm: competition in solidarity. I incorporate these thoughts into my 25 Principles of International Order,presented to the UN Human Rights Council in 2018.[5]
Here our New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Sapere aude (Horace). Get the facts and act thereon.
2. Pushback against the hybrid war being waged by governments and the media. Demand truth from the government and the private sector. Only on the basis of correct information can the citizen exercise his democratic rights.
3. Pushback against the war being waged against whistleblowers, true human rights defenders. Demand the immediate release of Julian Assange. Recognize the contribution of Edward Snowden to the survival of true American values.
4. Pushback against Orwellian newspeak and “political correctness”. Refuse to retreat into self-censorship.
5. Pushback against the military-industrial-financial complex
In 2022 let us commit to listen more to others, practice self-criticism and intellectual honesty, stop instrumentalizing values for short-term political gain.
Following the Taliban’s victory over US-NATO forces in Afghanistan, Washington is walking into another death trap, but this time on Russia’s borders with the neighboring Ukraine. So now, Washington’s non-partisan bureaucrats and the Military-Industrial Complex are calling for ways to fight “Russian aggression”. On November 30th, a report published by Reuters ‘Putin warns Russia will act if NATO crosses its red lines in Ukraine’said that Putin mentioned what is at stake if NATO expands eastward while they deployed the Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Poland and Romania:
The Russian leader, who questioned why NATO had ignored repeated Russian warnings and expanded its military infrastructure eastwards, singled out the deployment in Poland and Romania of the Aegis Ashore missile defence system. He made it clear he did not want to see the same launch MK41 systems, which Russia has long complained can be used to also launch offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles, in Ukraine.
“Creating such threats (in Ukraine) would be red lines for us. But I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope that a sense of common sense, responsibility for both our countries and the world community will prevail,” said Putin
To make matters worse, US senators from the Republican party submitted a bill that calls for $450 million in military aid to the Ukraine with new sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 project. The bill will also label Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” according to a December 18th report from rt.com, ‘Russia reacts to US ‘state sponsor of terrorism threat’:
On Wednesday, eight American Republican party senators submitted a bill, speculatively titled the ‘GUARD Act’, containing a range of measures designed to support Kiev. The proposed legislation would authorize an additional $450 million in military aid and impose new sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the recently constructed pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Europe through the Baltic Sea, which Ukraine and the US have strongly opposed.
The bill would also officially designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” if Moscow advances militarily on its eastern European neighbor. In recent weeks, American and Ukrainian intelligence services have accused the Kremlin of “aggressive actions” on the border with Ukraine, including troop buildup, and said they suspected a Russian invasion could be in the works
A financial partnership between China and Russia, the world’s largest energy importer and the world’s largest energy exporter, is an indispensable instrument for dethroning the petrodollar. In 2015, approximately 90% of trade between Russia and China was settled in dollars, and by 2020, dollar-denominated trade between the two Eurasian giants had almost reduced by half, with only 46% of trade in dollars. Russia has also been leading the way in cutting the share of US dollars in its foreign reserves. The mechanisms for de-dollarizing China-Russia trade are also used to end the use of the greenback with third parties – with advancements being seen in places such as Latin America, Turkey, Iran, India, etc. The US has been pumping out dollars to the entire world for decades, and at some point, the tide will change as the sea of dollars return home with increasingly diminished value
Russia and China has also been working on alternatives to the SWIFT system:
The SWIFT system for financial transactions between banks worldwide was previously the only system for international payments. This central role for SWIFT began to erode when the US used it as a political weapon. The Americans first expelled Iran and North Korea, and in 2014, Washington began threatening to expel Russia from the system as well. Over the past few weeks, the threat of using SWIFT as a weapon against Russia has intensified.
China has responded by creating CIPS and Russia developed SPFS, both being alternatives to SWIFT. Even several other European countries have banded together with an alternative to SWIFT to curb Washington’s extra-territorial jurisdiction and thus continue trading with Iran. A new China-Russia financial architecture should integrate CIPS and SPFS, and make them more available to third parties. If the US expels Russia, then the decoupling from SWIFT would intensify further
The US wants its dollar to remain king by any means necessary. One of the main reasons Washington went to war with Iraq was not only about oil, it was because Saddam Hussein had switched from selling oil in US dollars to accepting payments in Euros as retribution for US sanctions. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and murdered by US-backed forces because he was creating an alternative currency which was a gold-backed African dinar to replace U.S. dollars and Euros in the African continent.
A recent press conference, the US president and liberal war hawk, Joe Biden was asked about what consequences Russia would face if they invaded Ukraine’s territory. The liberal cheerleaders for war at CNN have been reporting what US and European leaders have been up to in regards to planning harsh sanctions on Russia because it’s President, Vladimir Putin is misbehaving, therefore punishment must be served by the American empire, So how dare you Vlad for wanting to protect your country!, “the kinds of costs the US and European allies are discussing for Russia are “designed to be implemented very, very fast,” the official said, without detailing what those measures would be. “That is partly why we have chosen the measures that we are working on.” One of their actions is most likely to cut Russia off the Swift payment system since the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency for the moment. “The Biden administration has repeatedly said there will be severe economic consequences. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan also made clear last week there will be further US defensive military support for Ukraine as well as US support for NATO countries on the eastern flank of Russia invades Ukraine”, continued:
I’ve made it absolutely clear to President Putin,” Biden said. “If he moves on Ukraine, the economic consequences for his economy are going to be devastating. Devastating, number one. Number two, we will find it required that we’ll have to send more American and NATO troops into the Eastern Flank, the (Bucharest) 9, all those NATO countries where we have a sacred obligation to defend them against any attack by Russia. And number three, the impact of all of that on Russia and his attitude, the rest of the world, his view of Russia would change markedly. He’ll pay a terrible price
In early December, rt.com also has been documenting what’s been happening with the Ukraine’s decision to recklessly build-up its troop levels in the Donbass region which is a clear threat to Russia’s security concerns:
Ukraine has now stationed well over 100,000 troops and large quantities of hardware in the war-torn Donbass region, the Russian Foreign Ministry alleged on Wednesday morning, amid rising tensions. Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that “the Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing [their] military force, pulling heavy equipment and personnel.”
“According to some reports, the number of troops… in the conflict zone already reaches 125,000 people, and this, if anyone does not know, is half of the entire composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” she said. Zakharova also condemned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for submitting a bill to the national parliament that would allow units from foreign armed forces to enter the country as part of multinational exercises next year. According to her, such a move directly contradicts the Minsk agreement, signed in 2014 in a bid to end the fighting between Kiev’s forces and troops loyal to two self-declared breakaway republics
What’s even more dangerous is the talk of a first-strike option with nuclear weapons against Russia by Mississippi’s high-ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker as reported by FOX news:
Sen. Wicker made the startling comment during an on-air interview where he was asked about the escalating situation abroad. Wicker, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he is ruling nothing out as a potential response to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty against Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin. “I would not rule out American troops on the ground,” Wicker said, adding, that “We don’t rule out first-use nuclear action”
Let’s make something clear, if the US and Europe are considering a war against Russia through Ukraine, it can escalate into another nuclear standoff reminiscent of the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.
Russia is well-prepared for an all-out war with the west because they know that the American empire will not quit until they submit to Washington’s demands. Russia is ready, they learned a long-time ago when they were the former Soviet Union during World War II when more than 27 million Russian civilians and soldiers lost their lives fighting Nazi Germany within their borders. Washington is backing Ukraine’s aggressive behavior which will bring them closer to war with Russia. Although I believe cooler heads will prevail, anything at this point in time can happen with an out of control empire worried about losing their control over the planet. The US has its back against the wall, the question is what will they do knowing that Russia and China have the military capabilities including their new hypersonic missiles that can hit the US mainland at anytime.
The US-NATO forces would not prevail on a multi-front war with Russia and China, they should have learned a lesson in Afghanistan with the Taliban who had by far, a less-developed fighting force than Russia or China but had managed to defeat US-NATO forces after 20 years of conflict. Washington and the Pentagon knows deep down that defeating Russia, China and the rest of their adversaries will be a difficult mission, but it seems that the psychopaths in Washington and Brussels live in a fantasy land and believe they can win this coming war. Let’s hope it don’t get that far because it would be disastrous for the entire world.
It’s that time of the year, and instead of following tradition and making new predictions and forecasts (which we preppers do all the time anyways), I usually look back into the recent past, review my (and other’s) work and previous analyses, what transpired (or not), where my perspectives need adjustment and where, and so forth.
I decided to review and expand on a few topics addressed previously here and see where we are on those. In April, I wrote about the thirdworldization of the United States, as both it, and the rest of the First World, is gradually shifting towards the Third World.
It’s not only happening, but accelerating. And the entire world is going that way, too – or soon it will, judging by the signs. These things have a delay and don’t happen linearly, but in waves.
Thirdworldization 2.0 – When the First World becomes the Third World
Let’s see some more about how life can be in places constantly suffering with economic crises, political upheavals, moral degeneracy, authority demoralization, institutional failure and social decadence.
For anyone who’s never lived in such a context, understanding the dynamics of the system and societies in the Third World (or any place in which the order has changed drastically, yet not totally evaporated), can be a good way to prepare for what’s already underway.
The current crisis is global and unlike others seen in recent times
Notwithstanding the crap lining up just waiting to hit the fan – a pandemic, a debt time-bomb, geopolitical tensions, and lots more – the capacity to deal with all that is at an all-time low. Even wealthy nations look exhausted, depleted and lost like never before.
There’s zero willingness to cooperate and coordinate a solution, despite authorities’ constant and oddly similar declarations to the contrary. Speaking of the leadership currently in charge, it’s as mediocre, misguided, and uninspiring as it can possibly be.
And this is everywhere. We’re screwed.
It’s impossible to say for sure whether or not all that will end up in a full-blown SHTF of some kind, much less when. It can take a year, or ten. What’s certain is this: until things reach that catalyst point, degradation will force large swaths of populations worldwide, in most if not all countries, to take a few steps back in many fronts.
As I said before, it’s already happening.
The Third World will get much worse, and the First World will become a lot like the Third.
This is not SHTF as some might see it, but a middle-of-the-road-yet-still-gloomy scenario. Many in Preppersphere can’t conceive of anything less than the Apocalypse. Fine, to each their own. Besides, preparing for the worst means covering for everything less, so in principle it’s not a bad strategy, right?
I live in Brazil, but have visited the US, EU, and a few other countries and continents, even having lived abroad for a period during the 1990s. I’ve experienced both realities under different circumstances and gained some perspective on the contrasts between advanced societies, and ones with broken, inefficient, and corrupt institutions, and with weak social contracts.
That’s what I’m here to share. I’ll continue to raise awareness to what society converts into long before TEOTWAWKI happens, and try to help others prepare and deal with that. I do this not only because this is where I have some degree of knowledge, but also because that is what I see happening.
It’s hard to make progress in a ‘quicksand environment.’
In developed countries, people frame their decisions and take action based on reasonable probabilities, and the assumption that certain basic conditions of the social contract won’t change radically or suddenly, depending on who’s in charge or some other spurious reason.
A functional checks-and-balances system warrants the stability of laws, regulations, the tax regime, while the political rules and institutions create a favorable environment for investment and risk taking by people, families, and businesses. That’s what promotes the development and advancement of a country.
That’s perhaps the most important thing to understand about (and consequently prepare for) thirdworldization: it’s not just that things change, but how they change. Thirdworldization is the present and constant possibility that things can get done, undone, and again, at any moment, in unpredictable ways, without debate or warning.
How do you make plans for the future in such context?
Instability and uncertainty make life in general much harder to navigate in the Third World.
If the goalposts are constantly moving, everyone will act short or near term as a way to adapt and survive. The harder and more unstable the context, the faster you must both adapt and act (what is SHTF if not chaos?). So, there’s a silver lining to living like this, but also a price: it’s riskier, more stressful, tiresome, and frustrating.
I won’t say it’s hell, because it’s not.
Most people don’t live 24/7 in fear or under serious risk, not even in severely hit places. It’s not a full-scale SHTF. Life’s just more fluid, more challenging, and not as predictable and calm as in more civilized nations. Actions and consequences don’t follow a linear, predictable path.
Look around and see the sweeping anxiety and depression everywhere. I’d argue it’s not being caused by the pandemic, or even the economy going kaput, but by the appetite of governments everywhere to change basic rules and destroy freedom and individual liberty in the name of an emergency. When you combine this with people’s willingness to forfeit their rights, privacy and liberties in the name of illusory safety you end up with our current world.
That’s what I mean by the world going the way of the Third World.
Observing and understanding the real nature of fluidity in everyday life of a dysfunctional society can be critical, because dysfunctional is exactly what the world is fast becoming.
I’ll give some examples to illustrate what I’m talking about…
What does the path to authoritarianism look like?
The executive, legislative, and judiciary overstepping each other is common in banana republics. Every country can have a bill of rights, but it’s the separation of powers that make the constitution effective. Without a checks-and-balances system, rights are just words on a piece of paper.
This creates both confusion and infighting while simultaneously eroding confidence in the government’s institutions. People lose reference, politicians tend to abuse this strategy more and more, and from there it’s only downhill. It’s the exact script dictators and populists everywhere follow every single time to not only take power but to try to keep it forever.
For a long time this was something unacceptable and unseen in advanced nations. Despite this, though, it’s still been happening for some time now only having escalated in the last couple decades. Since 2020 it’s exploded, and it’s now eroding political and social stability in various developed countries.
And this is not only about inflated presidents declaring wars and contracting treaties and other actions without congressional approval, but also the government ceding increasing powers to agencies – NGOs and others organizations of unprepared, unelected tyrants aligned with the elites, eager to interfere and micromanage both society and people’s lives, as they steal people’s inherent rights and freedoms.
We now have moral ambiguity from top to bottom.
As we go lower down the scale into a full-fledged Third World nation, everyday life begins to border on the bizarre. In developing countries, the public administration is a cesspool of incompetence, poor planning, lack of vision, populism and corruption which drains precious resources and wealth from what would otherwise be a productive population.
The bureaucracy can reach paralyzing levels. The tax regime is so complex and illogical that it’s almost impossible to comply, even if you want to. The regulations are unstable and mutating. Besides punishing the population, these regulations lower the appetite of people and businesses to invest and take risk. The economy becomes less dynamic, less competitive and, eventually, it crawls.
Finally, when the government, institutions, and other authorities begin to become ambiguous with their defining the rules they create and enforce, people start thinking “why should I follow any of that?”
And once this happens, then it’s only a matter of time for disorder to increase and morality to collapse. That’s what a slow-burning SHTF means, after all: a semi-functional system where everything is fluid and the laws have little practical effect.
There’s little guns can do to solve bigger issues.
But let’s switch gears a little to explain something related: guns are important and can save us in some specific situations. But they can’t help with any of the stuff I’m talking about.
Who are we gonna shoot? The politicians? The corrupt cops? The lazy public workers? The stupid laws? That would solve nothing. All it would mean would be civil war, which only makes everything worse.
Things might get to that point, but it’s a completely different dynamic. When the system is up, shooting someone can land you in jail – even in the Third World.
“How’s that any different from anywhere else?” you might ask. In many ways, this starts with an ineffective investigation apparatus: here only about 6% of intentional homicides are solved, in comparison to an average of 65% in US, 80% in France, and 90% in UK.
Translating, it’s a lot more discouraging to commit a crime in the First World than in the Third. But then other distortions and inequalities come into play. The rich and/or connected almost never go to jail, no matter the crime.
And this leads to the second big difference: the slow and utterly unfair justice system that punishes the entire society, by not punishing the deserving, as it should.
And then there’s the infamous Third World penitentiary system…
These are true SHTF microcosms. No prison anywhere is paradise, obviously. But do you have any idea how bad and dangerous a Third World jail is? If having forty dangerous inmates in a small cubicle originally designed to hold four gives you chills, you understand why honest citizens (especially preppers) are so reluctant to brag about firearms and shooting others in developing countries.
In there, one can get raped, beat up, killed. Or co-opted by one of the many factions that command organized crime, to whom you’ll belong for protection, for the right to live, or even to keep your relatives from being abused, tortured, or killed outside.
Instead of rehabilitating prisoners, this system turns them into even better (that is, worse) criminals.
Mass escapes are also commonplace in Third World prisons. So are violent riots and rebellions in which enemy factions fight, torture, kill and literally rip apart their rivals, as a way to display ruthlessness and inflict fear into opponents. Sure, these things also happen in First World prisons, but not with nearly the same frequency, brutality, or impunity.
There are many ways to get unwillingly involved in this mess of a system, too.
As the situation worsens, so does the entire system. If you do everything right, lay low and get lucky, you may be well. It’s not guaranteed though. Something crazy can happen by pure chance or opportunity, and you’re suddenly involved in something you didn’t ask for, but can’t avoid or escape anymore.
For instance, one day the cops or some government agent – inspection, fiscal, whatever – pay a visit to your small shop or business and ask for a “collaboration”, for… reasons. You pay, of course. It’s extortion, but you don’t want to upset the “law” – and the system can’t protect you from itself.
Now you’re a cash cow.
You go for a jog in the streets and 99% of the time nothing happens. One day you get mugged, or your wife or daughter get groped while riding a bicycle, and there’s little you can do (if you thought “guns!”, go back a couple paragraphs and read what I said about those again).
And then, there’s the organized crime…
I could talk about organized crime for forever, discussing how it grows and spreads based on the same principles and practices that high-profile corporations use to grow and spread. How it infiltrates all levels of society, by corruption, intimidation, lobbying, or even by financing people to occupy strategic positions. How it gets involved with politicians, legitimate businesses, the media – until it’s just one big thing with tentacles everywhere.
Instead, I’ll do you all a big favor and just point to a couple of movies that not only show in true, raw, vivid colors how this whole mechanism works, but do it in a very entertaining and thrilling way. Elite Squad (1997) and its sequel, The Enemy Within (2010) are two of most brilliant and well-made Brazilian movies ever (both rated 8.0 on IMDB).
Apart from superb action flicks, they’re blunt, brutal, realistic portraits of crime, drug fighting/trafficking, institutional corruption, and overall social and moral decadence. They explain how crime evolves and takes over the system – how it gets “institutionalized”. It’s shocking, revealing, and educational.
There’s a reason I keep returning to the topic of crime.
Crime and violence are insidious and pervasive – the first evidence of collapse – while at the same time both the cause and consequence of deeper issues. Crime is the antecedent to (serious) shortages, and skyrockets when the grid goes down. It becomes both a collective and an individual problem. It affects us directly, and indirectly, physically and mentally – an itch no one can scratch.
Look how fast crime has grown in the US and around the world just in the past few months. I’m not talking about a 2% increment, but something in the two or even three figures in some places – and again, in months. For many, especially the part of society living in safe and civilized regions, crime may seem like something distant, numbers and statistics presented in the news.
That all changes when it comes to our door, and then the cat is definitely out of the bag.
To conclude, there’s been a lot of talk about the possibility of civil war in the United States. I think that it can happen, but not necessarily like 1871. It could be a mix of guerrilla warfare and crime, for instance. Or we could witness a steep, sudden, and widespread rise in crime and violence. In Haiti, gangs rule the country and casualties are high. It affects everyday life and impacts the whole population, the economy, everything. It may not be declared, but its de facto a civil war.
Abandoning innocence
When everything is good and there’s a surplus, collaboration happens easily and even spontaneously. With all the challenges and hardships we’re facing, people are entering survival mode everywhere. Becoming more knowledgeable about the dynamics of living in a dysfunctional society can build psychological preparations to live in a fluid and unstable world.
I acknowledge none of what I talked about here is prerogative of Third World or collapsed countries. Disorder, corruption and malfeasance are part of human nature and exist everywhere. But again, it’s certainly more widespread and violent where it’s not contained, and – this is critical – not punished.
And that’s precisely in proportion to the level of institutional efficiency, solidity and civil cohesion. Once these decay, the doors to social maladies are held wide open. And wherever this happens, a similar scenario unfolds.
