THEY ARE ROLLING OUT THE ARCHITECTURE OF OPPRESSION NOW BECAUSE THEY FEAR THE PEOPLE

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: Waking Times

“As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world,” NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said in a recent interview. “Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression.”

“Apple Inc. and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19,” reads a new report from Bloomberg. “People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population.”

“World Health Organization executive director Dr. Michael Ryan said surveillance is part of what’s required for life to return to normal in a world without a vaccine. However, civil liberties experts warn that the public has little recourse to challenge these digital exercises of power once the immediate threat has passed,” reads a recent VentureBeat article titled “After coronavirus, AI could be central to our new normal“.

https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/1248470867538931712

“White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, and whether hospitals can accommodate them, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions,” reads a recent article by Politico, adding, “But the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about its impact on civil liberties well after the coronavirus threat recedes, with some critics comparing it to the Patriot Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.”

“Mass surveillance methods could save lives around the world, permitting authorities to track and curb the spread of the novel coronavirus with speed and accuracy not possible during prior pandemics,” The Intercept‘s Sam Biddle wrote last week, adding, “There’s a glaring problem: We’ve heard all this before. After the September 11 attacks, Americans were told that greater monitoring and data sharing would allow the state to stop terrorism before it started, leading Congress to grant unprecedented surveillance powers that often failed to preempt much of anything. The persistence and expansion of this spying in the nearly two decades since, and the abuses exposed by Snowden and others, remind us that emergency powers can outlive their emergencies.”

As we discussed recently, it’s an established fact that power structures will seize upon opportunities to roll out oppressive authoritarian agendas under the pretense of protecting ordinary people, when in reality they’d been working on advancing those agendas since long before the crisis being offered as the reason for them. It happened with 9/11, and we may be certain that it is happening now.

The reason for this is simple: the powerful are afraid of the public. They always have been. For as long as there has been government power, there has been the fear that the people will realize the power of their numbers and overthrow the government that is in power. And understandably so; it has happened many times throughout history.

This is more the case now than ever. The oppressive, exploitative nature of neoliberalism has created a dissatisfaction that’s converged with humanity’s historically unprecedented ability to network and share information, which has seen anti-government protests and movements arising all around the world. Despite the longstanding media blackout on the Yellow Vests protests in France, you may be absolutely certain that eyes widened and leaders snapped to attention all around the planet when the words “We’ve chopped off heads for less than this” were scrawled in graffiti on the Arc de Triomphe during the early days of the demonstrations.

Leaders are made vastly more fearful and skittish by the fact that this dissatisfaction with the current world order just happens to be occurring at a time when that world order is already at its most tenuous point in decades, with a surging China poised to surpass the US as a superpower on the world stage and collaborating with Russia and other unabsorbed nations to create a truly multipolar world. It becomes much more difficult to control dominant narratives in a way that can effectively manufacture consent for the aggression that will be necessary to freeze and reverse this shift away from unipolar domination when the denizens of that unipolar empire are out in the streets demanding its downfall.

And so of course internet censorship is being ramped up as well, with the mass media demanding that plutocrat-owned tech companies do more to combat coronavirus “disinformation” and these government-allied tech giants all too happy to oblige. In a recent escalation in this ongoing trend, Youtube changed its rules and began deleting videos accordingly after David Icke said there is a connection between coronavirus and 5G in a controversial video on that platform. Youtube is owned by Google, which has been a military-intelligence contractor with ties to the CIA and NSA since its very inception; you don’t have to like Icke or his views to be repulsed by the idea of this institution manipulating human communication with an increasingly iron fist.

The escalations in internet censorship and the escalations in surveillance are both directed at a last-ditch effort to control the masses before control is lost forever, and neither are intended to be rolled back when the threat of the virus is over. People are now off the streets, with their communications being restricted and the devices they carry in their pockets being monitored with more and more intrusiveness. There are of course some good faith actors who legitimately want to protect people from the virus, just as there were some good faith actors who wanted to protect people from terrorism after 9/11, but where there is power and fear of the public there will be an agenda to reel in the freedom of the masses.

Journalist Jonathan Cook said it best when he wrote, “Our leaders are terrified. Not of the virus – of us.”

The Culture of Fear: Coronavirus and the Human Animal

By Steve Attridge

Source: Waking Times

Fear is a weapon. It is also a deadly disease, far more potent than Corona virus. It also tells us much about our society, our relationships and ourselves. Fear inhibits thought, it restricts freedom, it limits imagination and it isolates us from each other and ultimately from ourselves. It is also a useful political and cultural tool to bend and even break people.

A dictionary definition of fear is that it is an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.

So it is a mental state. An imaginary act, and the key word is threat. There are well over five hundred fears and phobias, and the list is growing as our culture becomes increasingly terrified of itself, narcissistic and neurotic.

There is real fear and there is manufactured fear. If someone is running at you holding a machete and saying they want to kill you then flight or fight kicks in and fear is good. If a suicide bomber jumps at you shouting Allah Akbar fear is good. It will also help the adrenalin to kick in when you run away. To stay put and ignore your fear is just silly.

But manufactured fear is something else altogether. It may be based on something entirely imaginary, such as four years ago if the majority voted for Brexit the economy would collapse overnight. People actually said that. It didn’t. Or it may be based on something real, like coronavirus, but then be distorted. In that case the fear is not a healthy response, it’s kneejerk reaction that paralyses us from proper understanding.

The manufacture of fear has three steps to it; one. Seed it. Two – let it grow. Three – harvest it. Why frighten people? Because frightened people are diminished. They shrink. They eventually lose their humanity. They are easy to manipulate. The holocaust is a terrible example of this.

Just think of the things that have been used to frighten us: Brexit, the Corona virus, financial collapse, political correctness, global warming – all of these things have a currency of fear. Even something like the TV license is designed to create fear. You get a letter from the TV Licensing agency – of course outsourced by the BBC with tax payers money to get someone else to do their dirty work. You’d think if the BBC was so great they’d say – look what amazing things you’re getting for your money – re runs, WOKE dramas and propaganda – who wouldn’t want to pay for that. But no – the letter is a threat, full of words like warning, enforcement, penalty, criminal, which criminalise you in advance and is designed only to frighten you into paying their absurd tax – over five billion a year to supplement ludicrous salaries, exorbitant expenses, and substandard programming that fewer and fewer people want to watch.

The coronavirus is the latest example of fear mongering and it is part of a bigger picture. In a surveillance society and where police are already being used to monitor people, it only takes a few emergency powers to crank up the law telling us where we can go, who we can go with and how long we can stay there. The army is on standby.

In terms of a Fear index this virus also shows how far we have come along the road of expecting others to do our thinking for us.

This virus is nasty but it does not justify the global terror unleashed by constant media fear mongering. In the UK 6,600 people have died of flu and 120,000 people have been hospitalized with it during the 2019-2020 flu season, but we haven’t got our knickers in a twist over that. At the time of making this video 71 have died in the UK of coronavirus. It seems that most people recover from the virus. It is real but it is distorted in how it is presented and perceived. And we must guard against false perceptions. Science is still grappling with this virus so we should be wary of those who espouse certainties.

We live in a world of manufactured fears because in a sense they are easier to deal with than real fears. And so many people think they know best. And they can’t shut about it and themselves. I was in a coffee shop in London’s Soho about a month ago. Next to me was a man wearing expensively scruffy jeans, a little goatee beard hiding a double chin, and talking very loudly. It was clear he was a metropolitan liberal and, I had to smile, it turned out he worked in television. The woman he was talking at, rather than to, nodded furiously at everything he said and constantly furrowed her brow to create the illusion of thought. In fifteen minutes he poured ridicule on Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Brexit, Nigel Farage, global warming – all the usual suspects for metropolitan liberals – as well as Israel, the virus, the Syrian government, racists, fascists – these last two seemed to be everyone who didn’t think like him. He said he found all these things terrifying and only the ignorant wouldn’t be scared shitless by them. As he pontificated he scoffed a panini with ham and lettuce and smashed avocado on the side. He also had a double expresso. The woman held a Pierre Cardin bag.

Four things about this. One. The ham came from a pig. If motormouth with a beard really wanted to experience fear, indeed terror, just visit an abattoir. Two. Avocado farming is causing deforestation, destroying ecosystems, funding drug cartels, and contributing to climate change. In the biggest avocado producing region in the world in Mexico, farmers are illegally razing pine forests in order to plant lucrative avocado trees. Three. Coffee is often used by drug cartels to smuggle drugs. Drug cartels are often used to protect coffee production. Migrant workers are paid poorly and are at the mercy of seasonal variations. Many die. Four. Pierre Cardin has repeatedly come under fire for using suppliers that employ child labour that amounts to slavery. Fear of starvation often forces these kids into slavery, and many become ill. Many die prematurely. So while Motormouth was pontificating his litany of moans the real holocaust of fear and suffering was on the little table in front of him where the ghosts of a thousand stories went unheard.

My point is that people prefer their fears when they can blame someone else and not take responsibility for the actual concrete details surrounding them. That requires real thought and real responsibility.

Fifty years ago, the psychiatrist R.D. Laing said that we are becoming frightened of our own minds. Psychophobia. That the medical profession is constantly coming up with new illnesses, new phobias, new forms of depression, so that eventually everyone is ill, just as in WOKE thinking everyone is a victim or an oppressor. So, everyone is frightened of something. But what they are actually frightened of is themselves – of the body that harbours disease, of thoughts that are no longer allowed, ideas that are frowned upon, or even outlawed, of speech that dares to criticise and articulate uncomfortable truths. So this is the real virus – the manufacture and dissemination of fear. And it’s deadly.

Social media narrows our field of vision and experience too by placing us in discrete groups of like-minded people – and of course we collude in this – so that people start to feel the whole world thinks like them. Then when differences do strike , people either get ‘triggered’ or terrified or abusive.

The supermarket is full of murderous intentions. The person who last week was a good liberal is now considering hacking an old man to death to steal his toilet roll. The woman who last week was delivering meals on wheels is now thinking of battering her neighbour with her shopping trolley because she’s taken the last 23 tins of baked beans. At my local hospital people have ripped the hand sanitisers off the walls and stolen them and filched toilet rolls from the hospital toilets. In America there are queues outside gun shops as people panic buy weapons because of the virus. This is a culture that has been fed on fake news, news as propaganda, partial science, WOKE thinking and a popular culture that is addicted to zombies, invasions, virus stories, and an arts culture that has been sanitised to the point of banality. Walk into a crowded room and say you’ve got corona virus and sneeze and then see how long before people are smashing each other to the ground to get out.

We are so used to living in our little bubbles that we have lost touch with the real, with each other and with ourselves. We are slaves to fear. We are paralysed by it, from small nagging anxieties to full-blown pathologies. Peoples imaginations have become shrunken receptacles for fear.

The lion doesn’t fear attacking the antelope. The mosquito doesn’t fear biting. The hawk doesn’t fear flying or hunting. These creatures are simply being themselves and their natures are acting through them, that they may survive.

People will say – Oh but we have bigger brains. We’re top of the pile. But the question is not how big the brain is but how much of it is used. To judge by the behaviour of many, about one per cent, so in reality we may be on the bottom rung of the evolutionary ladder.

It is also impossible to separate the idea of fear from religiosity. Is the coronavirus some sort of punishment by something greater than ourselves, of retribution, of being judged, of something supernatural out to get us, of hell. And traditionally of course religions use fear to control people. If you think there is something out there that knows every thought you have then you might start to fear your own thoughts. In a largely secular society those primitive, animistic, religious fears leap into all kinds of strange territories – why doesn’t the government (i.e. a god substitute) save us? Is it a judgement and punishment from nature? And so it gets complicated and messy.

During this virus, there is much talk of communal solidarity, as in certain communities in World War Two. People helped each other. There will be cases of that, but it’s a bad analogy. During that war there was a perceived common enemy out there and a common purpose. With the virus the enemy is our own biology, our neighbours and the strangers around us. So there is fear everywhere, inside and out. Is he or she a disease on legs? Am I?

Fear weakens and diminishes us. Many have forgotten how to imagine the big picture. To join up the dots. I used to teach a course on Leonardo Da Vinci. The whole purpose of the course was to help people, including myself, to reawaken Renaissance thinking. Focus on detail but always be aware of the big picture. To put apparently isolated events and facts into the larger map. Like the elephant in the land of the blind, where one person touches the trunk and thinks that is an elephant, another the tail and thinks that is an elephant. But it needs someone to see that it is the sum of the parts that makes something what it is. To make connections, not based on wild speculations, but on what is there. And if people laugh at what you discover, or hate you for it, then too bad. Because it is more important to think fearlessly in the hope that you can then live fearlessly.

A few possible ways out of this (there are others, of course):

Magical thinking and Life Writing. Using language to explore and liberate rather than to inhibit or control or punish.

Imaging fear in order to control it, and not the other way round. Image making as a positive route through life. I carry a notebook and if something scares me I make a doodle of what I think the fear looks like. Pretty soon I’m smiling at it.

Reclaiming the unconscious as a journey full of delights and dangers and a place where ideas and thoughts and events can be rehearsed and explored. I think many of my books attempt this, and often fail, but at least I try. I do the same in my teaching.

Related to the unconscious is jettisoning the taboos surrounding certain words and thoughts. Reclaiming free speech, and therefore free thought. Then the world starts to crack open rather than shut down.

Understanding that orthodoxies invariably become corrupt and controlling, in religions and in politics and culture. The way to correct this is by teaching critical thinking – i.e. how to think and not what to think.

Refocusing on the individual as the prime focus for collective action.

The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully

By Robert J. Burrowes

I have previously explained how the COVID-19 infection is being used to frighten us into submitting powerlessly to the global elite’s latest move to take much greater control of our lives and how those who can perceive this, and wish to resist it, can do so effectively. See ‘Observing Elites Manipulate Our Fear: COVID-19, Propaganda and Knowledge’ and ‘Defending Humanity Against the Elite Coup’.

In this article I want to document a sample of the rapidly increasing evidence of how this coup is taking shape and to reiterate a strategy for defeating it.

The coup was designed to take immediate measures to ensure that fundamental rights and freedoms, only ‘won’ (in name at least) after many centuries of struggle, were stripped away from us and to do it in such a way that people would fearfully accept it. This is why the idea of a virus ‘pandemic’ was quite clever. Because the fear of contracting the virus (and its possibly deadly consequences) could be grotesquely magnified by inflating the figures, constant harping on it by the World Health Organization, the medical industry (in league with the pharmaceutical industry) and governments, and then magnified by the corporate media – with one outlet laughably suggesting COVID-19 could be worse than the flu outbreak in 1918 (falsely attributed to Spain): see ‘COVID-19 has the potential to become as severe as the Spanish flu’ – it made virtually all people submissive to any measure taken, or order given, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the virus.

Fear manipulated by propaganda defeats knowledge and evidence every time, as history has endlessly demonstrated. Just ask Joseph Goebbels how they did it in Nazi Germany. Play on the fear, play on the fear….

But if you are not too scared to seek out the evidence, you get an utterly different picture of what is taking place.

So, for example, US physician Dr. Annie Bukacek observes that ‘The real number of COVID-19 deaths are not what most people are told and what they then think. How many people actually died from COVID-19 is anyone’s guess. … Based on inaccurate, incomplete data, people are being terrorized by fear-mongers into relinquishing freedoms.’ See ‘Montana physician Dr. Annie Bukacek discusses how COVID 19 death certificates are being manipulated’.

If you would like to read a wider sample of the literature and videos discussing how the infection and death rates from COVID-19 have been deliberately misinterpreted, inflated and presented in a way that induces fear, and hence willing submission to elite control, see the daily updates on ‘A Swiss Doctor on Covid-19’ and the articles/videos ‘Corona: creating the illusion of a pandemic through diagnostic tests’, ‘12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic’, ‘Can We Trust the WHO?’, ‘How deadly is the coronavirus? It’s still far from clear’, ‘Perspectives on the Pandemic II: A Conversation with Dr. Knut Wittkowski’, ‘Never Has So Little Done So Much Harm to So Many: The Latest Coronavirus Attack Is A Cover for Restricting Our Health Freedoms’, ‘Covid19 Death Figures “A Substantial Over-Estimate”’ and ‘Dr Scott Jensen Reveals “Ridiculous” Covid19 Guidance’.

As a result of this pandemic of fear, the human rights to privacy (Article 12), freedom of movement (Article 13.1) and freedom of assembly (Article 20.1), for example, which are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (but not necessarily legislated into law by individual countries and routinely violated by governments in any case) have now been publicly and completely eviscerated in one fell swoop with bans on gatherings, legal requirements for ‘social distancing’ and even greater surveillance of our private activities with barely a murmur of protest. For a comprehensive global summary, which monitors individual government responses to the pandemic that affect civic freedoms and human rights focusing on emergency laws, see the ‘COVID-19 Civic Freedom Tracker’.

Denied these fundamental rights, others – including those preventing arbitrary arrest or detention (Article 9), entitlement to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal in response to any criminal charge (Article 10), to make a living in the manner of our choosing (Article 23), to adequate healthcare irrespective of personal circumstances (Article 25.1) and to have some say in how we are governed (Article 21) – have, if they previously existed in practice, largely disappeared as many governments around the world have used a variety of illegal and sometimes unconstitutional measures – ranging from ‘lockdowns’ and curfews to martial law and suspensions of parliaments in favour of dictatorships – to usurp more complete control of national societies.

For just a brief taste of what is taking place in some countries, see ‘Denmark rushes through emergency coronavirus law’, ‘DOJ seeks new emergency powers amid coronavirus pandemic’, ‘For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, ‘Suspending the Constitution: Police State Uses Crises to Expand Its Lockdown Powers’, ‘Hungary’s Leader Grabbed Powers to Fight the Virus. Some Fear Other Motives’, ‘Americans Beware: Trump Could Emulate Netanyahu’s Coronavirus Coup’ and ‘The Coronavirus State: New Zealand and Authoritarian Rumblings’.

In addition, by deliberately crashing national economies it was easy to conceal the fact that they were on the brink of crashing anyway. In the words of Scott C. Tips: ‘As the American and other economies falter from major structural problems, out-of-control debt, reckless spending, and government stupidity in shuttering businesses, the blame for markets crashing and economies tanking is borne by the conveniently available COVID-19 disease.’ See ‘Never Has So Little Done So Much Harm to So Many: The Latest Coronavirus Attack Is A Cover for Restricting Our Health Freedoms’.

In this way, the elite has rapidly and vastly expanded the number of people who live a precarious economic existence, due to the exploitative functioning of the global economy – see ‘Who Profits From the Pandemic?’ – while also giving vast sums of money to wealthy corporations via government bailouts. See ‘Trump Signs Corporate Bailout Bill: A Measure That Will Live in Infamy’.

Moreover, adverse outcomes from the use of COVID-19 to wreak this economic destruction will multiply rapidly but the underlying corporate dysfunctionality will now escape the blame from most observers just as COVID-19 will help to obscure the elite’s true purpose in precipitating this crisis. See, for example, ‘Coronavirus pandemic will inevitably cause food crisis’, ‘10 Signs the U.S. Is Heading for a Depression’, ‘After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…’, ‘COVID-19. The Unspoken Truth. The Most Serious Global Crisis in Modern History’, ‘The worst economic collapse ever?’ and ‘Coronavirus – The Aftermath. A Coming Mega-Depression…’.

But apart from these more obvious encroachments on our rights, freedoms and economic well-being, there is a vast range of encroachments happening either outside or on the periphery of public view, given the phenomenal corporate media attention focused on COVID-19 to distract us.

Talking about US government surveillance in 2014, former Technical Director of the NSA, William ‘Bill’ Binney, explained that the NSA sought ‘total population control’. See ‘Whistleblower: NSA Goal Is “Total Population Control”’.

Six years later it is clear that the global elite is now making another push in its ongoing and longstanding effort to achieve total control. Will this be the final push?

As you consider this question, here is another small sample of those encroachments and devastating impacts that are happening while our attention is elsewhere:

  1. The public acceptance of surveillance technology to spy on us in the interests of our ‘health’ is facilitating elite efforts to rapidly expand its monitoring capacities in this regard. See, for example, ‘To Track Coronavirus, Israel Moves to Tap Secret Trove of Cellphone Data’ and ‘For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’.
  2. The deluge of propaganda is convincing us that compulsory vaccination will be necessary to ensure our ‘health and well-being’. However, apart from the conclusively and extensively documented harm from vaccinations – for one brief article just touching on this, see ‘Vaccines and the Liberal Mind’ – there is extensive evidence that any such vaccination program will be the trojan horse for implementing an electronic identification program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for launching a scheme to give everyone ‘a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity’. See ‘The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”’, ‘After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…’, ‘Coronavirus: Biometric IDs could be “gamechanger” for tests, vaccines’ and ‘COVID-19: Perfect Cover for Mandatory Biometric ID’.

If you think this is fairyland stuff, check out the website of the elite agents advocating it: ‘The need for good digital ID is universal: The ability to prove who you are is a fundamental and universal human right. Because we live in a digital era, we need a trusted and reliable way to do that both in the physical world and online.’ See ‘The Need for Good Digital ID is Universal’.

Without thinking too hard, I can list a few ‘fundamental and universal human rights’ that I would nominate before I got too excited about my digital identity. I wonder if these people are concerned about whether I have enough to eat, whether I am clothed and housed…. Of course, I know they have no interest in my privacy given that digital ID and the surveillance that goes with it will make that non-existent.

  1. The deployment of the highly dangerous 5G which, under the guise of improving internet speed and capacity, will vastly expand everyone’s exposure to electromagnetic radiation with its long list of seriously adverse health impacts. For a taste of the extensive documentation on this point, see the ‘International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space’.
  2. A dramatic increase in the violence inflicted within the family home, especially by men and women against children – see ‘Why Violence?’ – and by the more usually acknowledged men against women, during the lockdown. See ‘UN chief calls for domestic violence “ceasefire” amid “horrifying global surge”’.
  3. Intensified efforts to overthrow governments in Iran and Venezuela. See ‘COVID-19: Cover for Military Attack on Iran and Iraq? Trump ignores Iraqi demand US occupation forces leave the country’, ‘Not letting Covid-19 crisis go to waste? US ramps up war on drugs… focusing on Venezuela’s Maduro’, ‘Trump sends gun boats to Venezuela while the world partners to fight a deadly pandemic’ and ‘NATO in Arms to “Fight Coronavirus”’.

The background framework to what is happening regarding Venezuela has been exposed by its President Nicolás Maduro. See ‘Letter from President Nicolás Maduro to the People of the United States’.

  1. No end to the many ongoing wars involving the United States – see, for example, ‘U.S. Confirms Deployment Of Patriot Missiles In Iraq. Iran Prepares For Conflict In Straight Of Hormuz’ and ‘US Empire Exploits COVID-19 For More War’ – although a pause in some wars in which the US is not a party – for an overview, see ‘UN Ceasefire Defines War As a Non-Essential Activity’ – as a result of an appeal by the UN Secretary-General for warring nations to desist until the effort to contain COVID-19 is won. See ‘The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war’.

Unfortunately, this appeal, unlike the Secretary-General’s appeal for a ceasefire on domestic violence which attracted no significant public endorsement, quickly drew in many others equally devoid of any analysis of what is actually taking place and thus happy to help distract people from the core issue. See, for example, ‘COVID-19: Sign the Call for Global Ceasefire!’, ‘Global Ceasefire: Running List of Countries Committed’ and ‘Global Ceasefire Now!’

Obviously, I am heartily in favour of ending war. But this is only going to happen when we campaign strategically to do so and provided we have sufficient political freedom to do it. See ‘Strategic Aims’ (for ending war).

As an aside and displaying its usual projected fear of threats, when some US military personnel became infected with COVID-19 – see ‘Request for Assistance in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic’ – the Pentagon issued a suppression order on further reporting of COVID-19 in the US military. See ‘Pentagon orders all installations to stop reporting COVID-19 infections and deaths’.

  1. Ongoing economic sanctions by the United States directed against a variety of countries, notably including Iran and Venezuela, are complicating efforts to address COVID-19 effectively. In contrast, countries such as Cuba, China and Russia are leading the international effort to support other countries dealing with a higher level of infection. See ‘US Continues Sanctions Against Venezuela And Cuba During COVID-19 Pandemic – Analysis’ and ‘Expert: US sanctions on Iran, Venezuela during pandemic could be genocidal’.
  2. A variety of actions, including legal manoeuvres and false flag attacks, undertaken to inflict greater repression in some contexts, particularly against indigenous peoples and those engaged in national liberation struggles. See ‘Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Threatened with Land Disestablishment, Tribal Leaders Step in to Address Ongoing Land Issues and Threats to Sovereignty’, ‘Media advisory notice on alleged shooting near Freeport mine in Timika’ and ‘During the Coronavirus crisis, Israel confiscates tents designated for clinic in the Northern West Bank’.
  3. Dramatic increases in absolute impoverishment among marginalized individuals and communities throughout the Global South who barely survive day-to-day under their usual, difficult economic circumstances. As one Asian NGO network, engaged in attempting to secure emergency relief to assist those most adversely impacted, has just reported: ‘We are receiving alarming reports that ADB and AIIB project-affected communities across Asia, especially South Asia and South East Asia are in an absolute state of crisis. Due to the enforced lockdown, they have no work or access to sanitizers and food supplies. Leaving them completely exposed and vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state responses are slow and in some cases non-existent.’ See ‘COVID-19 Community Emergency Fund’.

And Arundhati Roy wrote an evocative account of how the Indian government’s lockdown exposed the ‘brutal, structural, social and economic inequality’ in that country and the government’s ‘callous indifference to suffering’ as the lockdown caused employers and landlords in cities and towns to drive out millions of impoverished, homeless and hungry workers to walk the hundreds of kilometres to their villages. Many have died along the way, but not of COVID-19. See ‘Social Devastation and Despair. How Coronavirus Threatens India’.

  1. No pause in the economic exploitation of countries in the Global South with, for example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) quick to offer ‘emergency finance’ to some 80 of these countries that have requested it. See ‘IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva’s Statement Following a G20 Ministerial Call on the Coronavirus Emergency’.

What Ms. Georgieva didn’t mention is that these loans will no doubt be done on the usual highly conditional and exploitative basis for which the IMF has built its reputation for destroying the lives of ordinary local people by opening the door for corrupt or naive governments to accept corporate exploitation of their people and natural resources while building unsustainable levels of national debt trying to pay back the loans and interest to the IMF. For more detail on how this exploitation works, see the many Global Justice Now reports on the IMF and the book The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

In contrast, World Bank President David Malpass was not so coy, clearly declaring that COVID-19 would be used to further exploit poorer countries by making any funding conditional on a willingness to make such exploitation easier in future: ‘Countries will need to implement structural reforms to help shorten the time to recovery and create confidence that the recovery can be strong. For those countries that have excessive regulations, subsidies, licensing regimes, trade protection or litigiousness as obstacles, we will work with them to foster markets, choice and faster growth prospects during the recovery.’ See ‘Remarks by World Bank Group President David Malpass on G20 Finance Ministers Conference Call on COVID-19’.

To reiterate: The World Bank will help existing heavily exploited countries with some funding for short-term health measures directed at containing COVID-19 provided the country removes laws that would make it difficult to exploit it indefinitely thereafter.

  1. No pause in environmentally destructive activities, ranging from the ongoing use of health-destroying poisons, such as glyphosate, used to contaminate our food – see ‘Locked Down and Locking in the New Global Order’ – which cause vastly more deaths than COVID-19 will cause, to the ongoing destruction of pristine rainforests to create, among other possibilities, more palm oil plantations. See ‘New player starts clearing rainforest in world’s biggest oil palm project’.

And while there has been a short-term reduced negative impact on the climate as a result of the slowdown in industrial activity and the use of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, the ongoing COVID-19 coup has been used to destroy whatever momentum has been achieved by the climate and environment movements in recent years.

  1. While COVID-19 is causing problems for the 100,000 skilled technicians responsible for controlling, maintaining and fuel loading/unloading of the 96 remaining nuclear power plants in the USA, given the confined space in which the technicians work which make ‘social distancing’ virtually impossible, ‘The industry is now using the Coronavirus Pandemic to rush through a wide range of deregulation demands. Among them is a move to allow radioactive waste to be dumped into municipal landfills.’ See ‘Terrified Atomic Workers Warn That the COVID-19 Pandemic May Threaten Nuclear Reactor Disaster’.
  2. Long intent on dominating Space both militarily and industrially – see the US Space Command’s ‘Vision for 2020’ – in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which declared ‘The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries… and shall be the province of all mankind’ – see ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’ – US president Trump has just signed an executive order to allow corporations and ‘citizens’ (that is, billionaires) to begin mining the moon. The elite also wants to use nuclear reactors to fuel spacecraft so they can mine Mars in the future. See ‘Trump Signs Executive Order to Mine the Moon’.

If you are a US citizen and wondering how the ‘largest industrial project in the history of the planet’ will be financed, look in your own purse or wallet and wonder how much more will be taken from you so that, as usual, you pay the upfront costs associated with the vast profits they plan to make. Of course, you will also pay with budget cuts to health, education and social security funding.

The 13-point list above is actually very short – and confined to readily observable ‘moves’ – but, hopefully, it gives you some idea of what is taking place behind the elite’s barrage of COVID-19 fear-mongering. Needless to say, it is the ‘moves’ that we do not know about that are, no doubt, even more troubling.

So what can we do in response to this fear-mongering and the coup it is being used to disguise?

Resisting the Elite Coup Powerfully

I have previously outlined this nonviolent strategy, identifying its political purpose – obviously ‘To defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite’ – and I have set out a basic list of 26 strategic goals, of which eleven are as follows:

(1) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by wearing a global symbol of human solidarity, such as an image of several people of different genders/races/religions/abilities/classes holding hands.

(2) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting all corporate media outlets (television, radio, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter…) and by seeking news from progressive news outlets committed to telling the truth.

(3) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by withdrawing all funds from the corporate banks that are supporting the coup and to deposit their money in local community banks or credit unions.

(4) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting the medical and pharmaceutical industries – including by conscientiously refusing to submit to vaccination – and by seeking health advice and treatment from natural therapists. (If you are unfamiliar with the different philosophies underpinning these approaches, and hence why many natural therapies are so much more effective, there is a straightforward explanation here: ‘Pasteur vs. Bechamp: An Alternative View of Infectious Disease’.)

(5) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting corporate supermarkets and by supporting small and family businesses, and local markets.

(6) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in other locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For this item and many subsequent, see the list of possible nonviolent actions in the document ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.

(7) To cause the workers [in trade unions or labor organizations T1, T2, T…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include withdrawing labor from an elite-controlled bank, media, pharmaceutical or other corporation operating in your country.

(8) To cause the small farmers and farmworkers [in organizations F1, F2, F…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include distributing farm produce through (existing or created) grassroots networks to small and family businesses as well as local markets rather than through corporate supply chains.

(9) To cause the indigenous peoples [in organizations IP1,IP2, IP…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include utilizing indigenous knowledge to improve local self-reliance in food production and in other ways.

(10) To cause the soldiers and military police [in army units AU1, AU2, AU… and MP1, MP2, MP…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

(11) To cause the police [in police units P1, P2, P…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

Rather than detail all 26 strategic goals here, you can read the ‘Strategic goals for defeating a political/military coup conducted by the global elite against humanity’ by scrolling down the page at ‘Strategic Aims’.

Remaining pages on the website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel. These include the need to provide leadership and mutual aid at local levels, which are already happening in many places, as part of the overall effort.

The website also has articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, including articles to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’, the difference between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’ and how to prepare, frame and conduct any nonviolent action to minimize the risk of violent repression. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

It is worth emphasizing that, in some contexts, there is a place for large public nonviolent actions for those who are inclined to plan and conduct them. And the article just referenced will assist you to conduct them with minimal risk of violent repression. However, because the bans on public gatherings are being implemented widely, I have concentrated on providing tactical options in the examples above that do not depend on gathering in one place.

Nevertheless, as more people become aware of the coup and the energy to resist it gathers pace, it will be worthwhile to choose a locally significant date on which as many people who are willing to do so act to ‘End the Lockdown’ in that country. Using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural or sporting event, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a birthday celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist the coup that is taking place. Because the actions taken will be dispersed with large numbers of people responding in a vast number of locations, it will be impossible for police and military forces to inflict violent repression against everyone, particularly if local organizers have implemented the points in ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Equally importantly to any of the points above, particularly given the pressing threat of human extinction – see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ – but also because becoming more self-reliant is vital to our ongoing capacity to resist elite encroachments on our rights, freedom and economic security, consider joining those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. This project also explains how to take full advantage of non-monetary forms of community where goods and services are exchanged directly, without money as a medium of exchange. Money only has value in certain types of economy and these types of economy must be superseded if humans are to survive.

And given the enormous pressure on children at the moment, as their lives are upended, it would be useful to spend time listening to them. Of course, if you know an adult who is having trouble coping, it will help them enormously as well if you listen while giving them the opportunity to talk about, and focus on feeling, their own emotional reactions to what is taking place. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’. If you do not have anyone who can listen to you, try ‘Putting Feelings First’.

Moreover, because the foundation of this entire elite-controlled world, and the coup it is now implementing, is the submissively obedient individual, the world can only be rebuilt as we might like it if we stop terrorizing children into being submissive. So I would start by parenting and educating children so that they become powerful. See ‘My Promise to Children’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

In addition, if you would like to better understand the origin, identity and behaviour of the global elite and why it is insane, see the section headed ‘How the World Works’ in ‘Why Activists Fail’ and the articles ‘Exposing the Giants: The Global Power Elite’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ and the many references cited in these documents. For a deeper understanding of why elite and other human violence is so pervasive, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Finally, as touched on above, apart from the ongoing elite coup the Earth is under siege from our assaults on a vast range of fronts. See ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’. So if we are serious about tackling this crisis too, we must be willing to consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not buy rainforest timber
  8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Given that the statistics clearly show that the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ is already fading in most places where it previously had serious impact, it is possible that the global elite will not complete its execution of this coup against humanity in the near future. It will be content with the demonstration of its phenomenal power to manipulate populations into passively submitting to its bidding and defer its final putsch for a short time.

If that is the case, the damage wrought by this socalled pandemic – on our rights, freedoms, economic security, opportunities, democratic governance, the global economy and the environment – will be irreparable and it would take many years to even restore a partial version of what we thought we had while knowing that they can be taken away, again, at any time just as they were on this occasion.

But, quite frankly, if I was a member of the global elite and had witnessed the remarkably submissive manner in which even activists were deceived by the COVID-19 coup, I would advocate for completing the coup now and lock us down, force-vaccinate us with our own unique digital ID and surveillance chip, and promptly implement all of the measures necessary to take final control of the prison planet previously known as Earth.

However, because I am not a member of the global elite, I will continue to draw attention to what is taking place and encourage people to resist in the strategic ways I have outlined above. And then do what I can to ensure that as many people as possible, who are powerful enough to do so, respond before it is too late.

I would rather act sooner, while we still have some room to move, rather than later, when we might have much less.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Dr. Peter Gotzsche On Coronavirus: “A Pandemic Of Panic, More Than Anything Else”

By Richard Enos

Source: Collective Evolution

Peter Gotzsche, a Danish physician and medical researcher, is well placed to comment on the measures being imposed to combat the Coronavirus. And he has his reasons to be suspicious of some of those measures.

In 1993, Gotzsche co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration, an international and independent non-profit organization that produces and disseminates systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and diagnostic tests, and promotes the search for evidence in the form of clinical trials and other interventional studies. As I examined in-depth in a previous article ‘Bill Gates Donation Turns Respected Independent Research Company Into HPV Vaccine Supporter,’ a massive donation of over $1M USD from Bill Gates was part of the transformation of Cochrane from an open and independent research company to a top-down hierarchy in which ‘there is stronger and stronger resistance to say anything that could bother pharmaceutical industry interests.’

In an unprecedented move, Peter Gotzsche was expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration in 2018 by a powerful minority within the newly-instituted Governing Board. Gotzsche’s outspoken and independent scrutiny of the pharmaceutical industry, highlighted in his 2014 book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare, made him an insufferable opponent to Cochrane’s new agenda. Suffice it to say, when we hear Peter Gotzsche’s opinion on health-related issues, they are sure to be direct, thoughtful, and unaffected by the prevailing narratives.

Weighing In On The Coronavirus Pandemic

Gotzsche, a specialist in internal medicine that has worked for two years at a department of infectious diseases, is not shy about calling out the ‘Elephant in the Room’ regarding the Coronavirus pandemic, even as some of our governments and medias organizations are treating it like the future of humanity is at stake if draconian measures of the highest order are not instituted across the board for the foreseeable future.

Gotzsche wrote in a recent blog post that he and most of those around him, both lay people and colleagues, ‘consider the Coronavirus pandemic a pandemic of panic, more than anything else.’ He believes that fear and panic are propagated by those with an agenda of control, not those who put the health and safety of citizens first. He cautioned that if people with mild symptoms are made to panic they are liable to flood the hospitals, which does more harm than good.

I do find it very prudent that they told people to stay in their homes in South Korea if they fall ill, and only if they become very sick, will a car come and bring them to a hospital that is not overcrowded. If the infectious dose is high, mortality will also be higher because there will not be sufficient time to establish an immune response. Therefore, overcrowded hospitals will have higher mortality rates. The panic does just that: leads to overcrowded hospitals.

The Perils Of Panic

Panic, in and of itself, is never useful. And during a crisis, it is even more dangerous. We see different types of recommendations coming out from our elected leaders, doctors and scientists, and mainstream media commentators. Often these recommendations are made based on unduly dire predictions about the danger of the virus.

It is important to have fine discernment around who is advocating for calm and who is actually stoking the fires of public panic. Whenever our elected leaders, with the power to legislate societal rules, try to instigate fear in our hearts, and threaten huge sanctions and punishment if we do not obey their decrees, we need to pay close attention to what the real motivation may be.

In a broader sense, we need to ask ourselves: how much are we agreeing to continue to play into the old parent-child relationship that has long existed between our elected leaders and ourselves? Do we really need to be shamed and threatened into a certain type of behavior if we really believe that such behavior will be beneficial for our community and world? And if a small percentage of people are not obeying in lock-step, does this justify the implementation of threats and more draconian measures for the rest of us?

As citizens, it is our duty to avoid following our elected leaders blindly. We actually need to be self-responsible for our actions and their impact on the health and well-being of the community around us. In the long run, it is much more beneficial for society to cultivate self-responsible citizens rather than blind followers. Of course, our leaders might not see it that way. They are aware that self-responsible citizens are more able and likely to hold them accountable and compel them to represent the will of the people, not their own agenda.

How Much Is Too Much?

Peter Gotzsche is the prototypical self-responsible citizen in this regard. And he characterizes some of the responses and measures applied to the Coronavirus as too much. He infers that if we had responded to the viral infection and mortality rates in previous years the way we have with the 2019 Coronavirus, the whole world would have had to be shut down permanently years ago!

Our main problem is that no one will ever get in trouble for measures that are too draconian. They will only get in trouble if they do too little. So, our politicians and those working with public health do much more than they should do. No such draconian measures were applied during the 2009 influenza pandemic, and they obviously cannot be applied every winter, which is all year round, as it is always winter somewhere. We cannot close down the whole world permanently.

Should it turn out that the epidemic wanes before long, there will be a queue of people wanting to take credit for this. And we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time. But remember the joke about tigers. “Why do you blow the horn?” “To keep the tigers away.” “But there are no tigers here.” “There you see!”

Since politicians have little to lose by overreacting, the citizens have to be vigilant about the current response to make sure we are not being drawn into dangerous precedents. Gotzsche calls out the ploy of the political establishment, which constantly seeks to gain more control over the people while making decisions based on what will make them look the best in the end. And the point he made that ‘we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time,’ is worth a much deeper examination–especially in the context of comments made by none other than Bill Gates.

Bill Gates Gives Chilling Forecast

In a recent interview with TED Talks founder Chris Anderson, Gates is given full latitude to speak from his home about the things we should be learning from the Covid-19 pandemic. The following is a summary of what Gates states in the interview:

(1) Covid-19 will fade away within a few months
(2) There will be fewer casualties than predicted
(3) That will be credited to strong action taken by governments
(4) Pandemics serve the purpose of testing and improving response
(5) The correct response centers on the development of vaccines, an industry in which he is heavily invested
(6) Pandemics and global warming have the common advantage of being sufficiently frightful to motivate the public and governments to accept drastic changes to society
(7) Leadership for this must come from technocrats, not politicians

What is most striking in this interview is the way Gates begins to pivot towards his vision of a post-Covid-19 world. Perhaps he had already given up on what may have been his original goal to orchestrate worldwide Coronavirus vaccine mandates; however, he takes the opportunity to explain that future pandemics will be met much more swiftly with medical interventions, and central to those interventions will be the timely development and implementation of vaccines for the entire population. He urges that scientists and technocrats, rather than our elected leaders, should be the decision makers regarding such policies, further alienating the general population from their individual sovereignty.

To listen to Bill Gates without understanding the agendas that truly drive those with power, it may be difficult to discern that he is not actually trying to help humanity. Perhaps for just that reason, it may be interesting to listen to the full interview to see if you can detect any signs of Bill Gates’ agenda of personal profit, depopulation and the creation of a global technocracy in which elite rulers like himself wield even more power than they have today.

Peter Gotzsche certainly has personal experience with how Bill Gates came into a company that was standing in the way of his vaccine-fueled profits and used his money and influence to turn that organization into an ally for his agenda. He has reason to believe that some of the way the response to the pandemic is playing out is aligned with that agenda.

Of course many in the public may dismiss the need for our vigilance and simply spout “it’s better to be safe than sorry.” And in principle I would agree with that sentiment. However if this motto is simply applied to the Coronavirus pandemic in a lazy and uncritical way, and we don’t collectively question seemingly unnecessary draconian moves by our leaders, then a society led by technocrats which further takes medical freedom away from individuals may be the future we are contributing to.

The Takeaway

I’ll be honest. Some of the restrictions and cancellations that have been put in place in our society have benefited me in terms of allowing me to take care of things around the house, reflect on my own life and spend more time with my family. But let’s not get lulled into complacency here. This should not stop us from being vigilant about the response to the Coronavirus in our communities and contemplating and talking to others about whether the response is measured and appropriate.

This applies as well to the responses going on all around the world. I certainly believe that many who are part of our global authority have agendas that are not in the best interests of humanity. It is imperative that we not assume the position that our political leaders and the medical ‘experts’ that are paraded out in mainstream media have the answers and we should blindly follow them. Would you not agree that the current goal for a humanity awakening to what is going on is to break the bonds of authority and become self-responsible and self-governing? In order to make this happen, we need all hands on deck.

Bill Gates Crosses the Digital Rubicon, Says ‘Mass Gatherings’ May Not Return Without Global Vaccine

By Robert Bridge

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

A recurring theme among conspiracy theorists is that the elite are just waiting for the right moment to roll out their ‘mark of the beast’ technology to remotely identify and control every single human being on the planet, thus sealing their plans for a one world government. And with many people willing to do just about anything to get back to some sense of normalcy, those fears appear more justified with each passing day.

In the Book of Revelation [13:16-17], there is a passage that has attracted the imagination of believers and disbelievers throughout the ages, and perhaps never more so than right now: “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark…”

Was John of Patmos history’s first conspiracy theorist, or are we merely indulging ourselves today with a case of self-fulfilling prophecy? Whatever the case may be, many people would probably have serious reservations about being branded with an ID code even if it had never been mentioned in Holy Scripture. But that certainly has not stopped Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has been warning about a global pandemic for years, from pushing such controversial technologies on all of us.

In September 2019, just three months before the coronavirus first appeared in China, ID2020, a San Francisco-based biometric company that counts Microsoft as one of its founding members, quietly announced it was undertaking a new project that involves the “exploration of multiple biometric identification technologies for infants” that is based on “infant immunization” and only uses the “most successful approaches”.

https://twitter.com/NewsAlternative/status/1246337502161416192

For anyone who may be wondering what one of those “most successful approaches” might look like, consider the following top contender for the contract. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed what is essentially a hi-tech ‘tattoo’ that stores data in invisible dye under the skin. The ‘mark’ would be delivered together with a vaccine, most likely administered by Gavi, the global vaccine agency that also falls under the umbrella of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots… emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone,” MIT News reported.

And if the reader scrolls to the very bottom of the article, he will find that this study was funded first and foremost by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Today, with the global service economy shut down to prevent large groups of infectious humans from assembling, it is easier to imagine a day when people are required to have their infrared ID ‘tattoo’ scanned in order to be granted access to any number of public venues. And from there, it requires little stretch of the imagination to see this same tracking nanotechnology being applied broadly across the global economy, where it could be used to eliminate the use of dirty money. After all, if reusable bags are being outlawed over the coronavirus panic-demic, why should reusable cash get special treatment?

Writing earlier this month in these pages, geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar provided a compelling argument that the coronavirus, which is driving the world towards a New Great Depression, is “being used as cover for the advent of a new, digital financial system, complete with a forced vaccine cum nanochip creating a full, individual, digital identity.

As one possible future scenario, Escobar imagined “clusters of smart cities linked by AI, with people monitored full time and duly micro-chipped doing what they need with a unified digital currency…”

Those fears took on greater significance when Bill Gates sat down over the weekend for a breathtaking interview with CBS This Morning. Gates told host Anthony Mason that mass gatherings might have to be prohibited in the age of coronavirus unless and until a wide scale vaccination program is enacted.

“What does ‘opening up’ look like,” Gates asked rhetorically before essentially changing the entire social and cultural makeup of the United States in one fell swoop. “Which activities, like schools, have such benefit and can be done in a way that the risk of transmission is very low, and which activities, like mass gatherings, maybe, in a certain sense more optional. And so until you’re widely vaccinated those [activities] may not come back at all” [The interview can be watched in its entirety here].

According to Gates, anything that could be defined as a “mass gathering” – from spectators packed into a stadium for a sporting event, to protesters out on the street in demonstration – would be considered an act of civil disobedience without a vaccine. Little surprise that Gates chose the concept of “mass gathering” to snag all of us, for what is modern democratic society if not one big mass event after another? Indeed, since nobody will want to miss the next big happening, like the Super Bowl, or Comic-Con, or, heaven forbid, Eurovision, millions of people would predictably line up for miles to get their Microsoft-supported inoculation, even if it contains tracking technologies.

https://twitter.com/rooshv/status/1246507620405559301

All of this seems like sheer madness when it is remembered that there are other options for defeating the coronavirus than a mandatory global vaccine regime.

Just last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director, told a Senate Subcommittee that over 80 percent of the people who get infected by the coronavirus “spontaneously recover” without any medical intervention. This makes one wonder why the global lockdown was designed for everyone instead of just the sick and elderly. Meanwhile, the drug hydroxychloroquine, which has been downplayed in the media despite being named as the most effective coronavirus treatment among physicians in a major survey, is starting to get a fresh look.

Just this week, following Nevada’s lead, Michigan just reversed course and is now the second democratic state to request the anti-malarial drug from the Trump administration.

So now it looks as though we are off to the races to see what will become the approved method of fighting the global pandemic – a hastily developed vaccine that may actually worsen the effects of the disease in those who contract it, or the already proven inexpensive drug hydroxychloroquine.

If the winner turns out to be a global vaccine, possibly one that carries ID nanotechnology, don’t expect the wealthy to be lining up with their kids to be the first to get it. In 2015, The American Journal of Public Heath surveyed some 6,200 schools in California – the epicenter of biometric ID research – and found vaccine exemptions were twice as common among kindergartners enrolled in private institutions.

It seems that the elite are betting heavily on the development of an ID-tracking vaccine that would bring all races and institutions together under one big happy roof, but clearly they will continue living in their own fenced-off neighborhood in this one world government. Whether or not they will get a ‘special pass’ from receiving the new-age mark is another question.

Defending Humanity Against the Elite Coup

By Robert J. Burrowes

In a recent article I reported existing evidence on the way in which COVID-19 is being used to implement, but also divert attention from, initiatives being taken by the global elite to consolidate and expand its power in significant ways, and perhaps to make the final drive to take total control of global society. See ‘Observing Elites Manipulate Our Fear: COVID-19, Propaganda and Knowledge’.

Moreover, while global attention is focused on COVID-19, attention has been distracted from the many other ongoing crises – particularly including the vast range of threats that constitute an imminent danger to human existence: see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ – and no doubt other undesirable initiatives being carried out by the global elite outside our view. In addition, activism has been stymied as activists are either themselves distracted by COVID-19 or hindered by the measures (such as ‘social distancing’ and bans on public gatherings) introduced to supposedly deal with it.

Before and since writing ‘Observing Elites Manipulate Our Fear’, more evidence has been published pointing at an elite coup with governments around the world introducing draconian measures severely curtailing human rights and freedoms (including those involving the internet) and destroying national economies.

For just a taste of this literature and these videos, see ‘The “Lock Step” Simulation Scenario: “A Coronavirus-like Pandemic that Becomes Trigger for Police State Controls”’, ‘The EARN IT Bill is the Government’s Plan to Scan Every Message Online’, ‘What more could he do? A look at Trump’s extreme powers’, ‘Police in California Plan to Use Drones to Enforce Quarantine Lockdown’, ‘DOJ seeks new emergency powers amid coronavirus pandemic’, ‘Does the Coronavirus Pandemic Serve a Global Agenda?’, ‘Two Hundred and Thirty Years of Rights and Liberties Shredded: Why I Oppose The Lockdown’, ‘Martial Law is Coming to the USA?’, ‘After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…’, ‘Planetary Hysteria: Manufactured COVID-19 “Health Crisis” Pushes Humanity, Global Society to Total Shutdown’, ‘COVID-19 – The Fight for a Cure: One Gigantic Western Pharma Rip-Off’, ‘Police State Uses Crises to Expand Its Lockdown Powers: Suspending the Constitution’, ‘Whither Coronavirus? When Will It End and What Will Happen Along the Way’, ‘Covid-19: The Panic Is Worse Than the Pathogen’ and ‘Rockefeller Blueprint For Police State Triggered By Pandemic Exposed’ which cites the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2010 document ‘Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development’ with its prescient description of what is taking place now: ‘LOCK STEP – A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.’

As Helen Buyniski notes, using the example of the US Patriot Act, passed by Congress a short time after the 9/11 false flag event that destroyed World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7 in New York: ‘They always declare a state of emergency, they never undeclare the state of emergency or repeal any of the emergency measures.’ See ‘Rockefeller Blueprint For Police State Triggered By Pandemic Exposed’. In any case, with the corporate media endlessly promoting panic, most people prefer to be ‘saved’ by having even more severe restrictions placed on their freedom. See ‘As Trump Eyes Restarting Economy, Nearly 3 in 4 Voters Support National Quarantine’.

In this article I would like to outline a strategic response to prevent this takeover before we find ourselves moving from a version of the dystopian society described in the novel Brave New World to that outlined in the novel 1984 that many of us read as students. We might have been happy with the drugs but Big Brother is now poised with the sword held high above our necks.

‘It won’t happen’, you might say. And perhaps you are right. But my own long and extensive study of the global elite revealing the progressive manner in which it is endlessly consolidating and expanding its power is also matched by others who share my interest in this subject. So I invite you to consider the evidence presented above with the hope that we can mobilize a sufficient response from the wider population to avoid this being the final move in the elite’s strategy to take total control of our lives.

If you would like to better understand the origin, identity and behaviour of the global elite and why it is insane, see the section headed ‘How the World Works’ in ‘Why Activists Fail’ and the articles ‘Exposing the Giants: The Global Power Elite’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ and the many references cited in these documents. For a deeper understanding of why elite and other human violence is so pervasive, see Why Violence? and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice.

Moreover, to highlight brief excerpts from three of the scholars cited above, the distinguished and award-winning author and geopolitical analyst Professor Michel Chossudovsky states: ‘The tendency is towards a Worldwide lockdown spearheaded by fear and media disinformation. Currently, hundreds of millions of people Worldwide are under lockdown…. This is an act of “economic warfare” against humanity.’ See ‘After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…’.

In the view of economist and geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, who spent more than 30 years working for the World Bank and the World Health Organization: ‘We are moving towards a totalitarian state of the world…. [which includes ID2020]. What is the infamous ID2020? It is an alliance of public-private partners, including UN agencies and civil society. It’s an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity. The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity…. Population reduction is among the goals of the elite within the WEF, the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Morgans – and a few more. The objective: fewer people (a small elite) can live longer and better with the reduced and limited resources Mother Earth is generously offering.’ See ‘The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”’.

And here is the assessment of what COVID-19 means to John W. Whitehead, US Constitutional attorney and author of Battlefield America: The War On the American People:

This coronavirus epidemic, which has brought China’s Orwellian surveillance out of the shadows and caused Italy to declare a nationwide lockdown, threatens to bring the American Police State out into the open on a scale we’ve not seen before.

If and when a nationwide lockdown finally hits – if and when we are forced to shelter in place – if and when militarized police are patrolling the streets – if and when security checkpoints have been established – if and when the media’s ability to broadcast the news has been curtailed by government censors – if and when public systems of communication (phone lines, internet, text messaging, etc.) have been restricted – if and when those FEMA camps the government has been surreptitiously building finally get used as quarantine detention centers for American citizens – if and when military “snatch and grab” teams are deployed on local, state, and federal levels as part of the activated Continuity of Government plans to isolate anyone suspected of being infected with COVID-19 – and if and when martial law is enacted with little real outcry or resistance from the public – then we will truly understand the extent to which the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny. See ‘This Is a Test: How Will the Constitution Fare During a Nationwide Lockdown?’

But envisaging such a dystopian future would not be complete without the Pentagon’s take on how it might turn out, with this graphic video describing a future in which citizens, with rights, no longer exist. See ‘Pentagon Video Warns of “Unavoidable” Dystopian Future for World’s Biggest Cities’.

The path on which we are traveling ends with our confinement in ghettos, locked down in one area of the elite’s totalitarian police state, or death.

I am one of those who intends to fight to the end to get us off this path to tyranny.

Fighting for our Humanity

And that is why the primary purpose of this article is to identify the components of a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to defeat a coup attempt conducted by the global elite against humanity.

What does a nonviolent strategy entail? In essence, it works by strategically altering the will or undermining the power of the global elite to repress, exploit or kill us. While the global elite is our ultimate target, we can more immediately impact this elite by targeting its agents including governments, the corporate media, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, retail corporations, the banking industry as well as its military and police forces. Hence, from a strategic perspective, it is imperative that we noncooperate with these institutions and corporations in ways that have strategic (not simply tokenistic) impact. This means that our nonviolent actions – which will involve some risk but without requiring effort that overwhelms us – will both consolidate and build our capacity to resist, while also functionally altering the will or undermining the power of key institutions and corporations to control us.

Here are five examples:

First, if we seek out news from progressive news sources – such as the site on which you are reading this article – that are committed to giving us accurate information about what is taking place, while boycotting corporate media outlets (television, radio, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter…) which are essentially peddling a combination of propaganda and fear in order to scare us into submitting to (or even asking for) greater government control (lockdowns, martial law), then we will reallocate power in society away from a key elite instrument that is being used to manipulate and control us.

Second, given the power of the medical and pharmaceutical industries, which are peddling fear and profit-making drugs, it is important to seek out advice and remedies offered by natural health practitioners who will prescribe dietary measures and nutritional supplements to prevent and/or treat any infection. Given the push for compulsory vaccination which has serious social control implications and entails a high risk of adverse health consequences – see, for example, ‘COVID-19 – The Fight for a Cure: One Gigantic Western Pharma Rip-Off’, ‘The National Plan to Vaccinate Every American’ and ‘A Serious Warning about the Toxicity of Aluminum-Adjuvanted Vaccines – Especially for Infants and the Elderly’ – it is particularly important that we resist this.

Third, the propaganda campaign is destroying small and family businesses which will consolidate the power of large corporate chainstores. We need to support the smaller and family businesses wherever we can and boycott the elite’s corporate stores.

Fourth, the major banks are participating in this coup, particularly by supporting efforts to force all monetary exchange to occur via electronic means rather than cash. Under the guise of helping to halt the spread of the infection, cash is being refused as a means of payment in an increasing number of outlets and contexts. As soon as possible, we need to transfer all of our banking to small, community-owned banks and credit unions that act in the interests of their members and not the corporations and the elite.

Fifth, the elite must use the police, military forces and security personnel to enforce its laws in relation to lockdown, martial law and whatever else unfolds as this crisis deepens. These individuals live in our communities; they are part of us even if the elite controls their behaviour during their employment hours. Engaging with these people, listening to them carefully, will open space for them to reconsider their own involvement in what is taking place. In the end they are on our side; they just don’t know it yet.

So you are probably starting to get the idea: Collectively, we have enormous power if we deploy it to defend what we want to preserve while undermining the power of those who wish to exploit us. There are 7.8 billion of us and few of them. Their power is an outcome of institutions they control; we can change that, as I explain more fully below.

One other point worth mentioning first, however, is this: So that we can identify those who choose to be part of the resistance, it will be useful to have a symbol that represents our human solidarity: we are all in this together. My own suggestion is that any image that shows several people of different genders/races/religions/abilities/classes holding hands or just being close together represents this solidarity. Of course, the elite might start using this symbol in an attempt to co-opt it. This doesn’t matter.

The point, of course, is that it is our behaviour that defines our allegiance, not the symbol itself. While the elite is encouraging our separation (‘social distancing’) it has always been physical closeness that is the essence of human solidarity. Let our symbol represent that.

The Strategy in More Detail

I have outlined this nonviolent strategy, identifying its political purpose – obviously ‘To defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite’ – and I have set out a basic list of 26 strategic goals, of which eleven are as follows:

(1) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by wearing a global symbol of human solidarity, such as an image of several people of different genders/races/religions/abilities/classes holding hands.

(2) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting all corporate media outlets (television, radio, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter…) and by seeking news from progressive news outlets committed to telling the truth.

(3) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by withdrawing all funds from the corporate banks that are supporting the coup and to deposit their money in local community banks or credit unions.

(4) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting the medical and pharmaceutical industries – including by conscientiously refusing to submit to vaccination – and by seeking health advice and treatment from natural therapists.

(5) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting corporate supermarkets and by supporting small and family businesses, and local markets.

(6) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in other locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For this item and many subsequent, see the list of possible nonviolent actions in the document ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.

(7) To cause the workers [in trade unions or labor organizations T1, T2, T…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include withdrawing labor from an elite-controlled bank, media, pharmaceutical or other corporation operating in your country.

(8) To cause the small farmers and farmworkers [in organizations F1, F2, F…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include distributing farm produce through (existing or created) grassroots networks to small and family businesses as well as local markets rather than through corporate supply chains.

(9) To cause the indigenous peoples [in organizations IP1,IP2, IP…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include utilizing indigenous knowledge to improve local self-reliance in food production and in other ways.

(10) To cause the soldiers and military police [in army units AU1, AU2, AU… and MP1, MP2, MP…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

(11) To cause the police [in police units P1, P2, P…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

Rather than detail all 26 strategic goals here, you can read the ‘Strategic goals for defeating a political/military coup conducted by the global elite against humanity’ by scrolling down the page at ‘Strategic Aims.

Remaining pages on the website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel. These include the need to provide leadership and mutual aid at local levels, which are already happening in many places, as part of the overall effort.

The website also has articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, including articles to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’, the difference between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’ and how to prepare, frame and conduct any nonviolent action to minimize the risk of violent repression. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

It is worth emphasizing that, in some contexts, there is a place for large public nonviolent actions for those who are inclined to plan and conduct them. And the article just referenced will assist you to conduct it with minimal risk of violent repression. However, because the bans on public gatherings are being implemented widely, I have concentrated on providing tactical options in the examples above that do not depend on gathering in one place.

Equally importantly to any of the points above, particularly given the pressing threat of human extinction – see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ – but also because becoming more self-reliant is vital to our ongoing capacity to resist elite encroachments on our rights and freedom, consider joining those participating in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth. This project also explains how to take full advantage of non-monetary forms of community where goods and services are exchanged directly, without money as a medium of exchange. Money only has value in certain types of economy and this economy must definitely be superseded if humans are to survive.

And given the enormous pressure on children at the moment, as their lives are upended, it would be useful to spend time listening to them. Of course, if you know an adult who is having trouble coping, it will help them enormously if you listen while giving them the opportunity to talk about, and focus on feeling, their own emotional reactions to what is happening. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

If you have suggestions that you believe might improve this strategy, please let me know. My email address is in my biodata below.

And while I have a full backup copy of the strategy website, given the obvious vulnerability of websites to removal from the internet by the elite, if people are interested in creating mirror sites of this website, I would be pleased to hear from them. In addition, people are welcome to print copies of this article and pages from the website. The home page of the website is here: Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. It is extracted/adapted from the book The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

If, at any point, the internet is taken down and/or we are prevented from communicating using the electronic means to which we have become accustomed, printed copies of key documents should still be able to be easily copied to share by one means or another. In the worst case scenario: if everyone is confined to their house permanently and receives a routine allocation of food that is delivered to their door, the delivery person might be willing to transfer messages. And so might other service people who will inevitably be necessary. Obviously, until such extreme measures are taken, while we have any freedom to move, even to go shopping, there will be opportunities to communicate and to arrange further opportunities to communicate.

As I mentioned above, however, apart from the ongoing elite coup, the Earth is under siege from our assaults on a vast range of fronts. If we are serious about tackling this crisis too, we must be willing to consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not buy rainforest timber
  8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Humanity is at a crossroads it has never before faced.

The global elite has engineered this latest crisis after many years of planning so that it can take control of the Earth and everything on it. While some ‘sweeteners’ in the short term, such as minimal income support for individuals and businesses in some countries, are being offered to make it look as if governments are responding to the crisis with our best interests in mind, whatever palliative measures are being taken are simply designed to ensure that we remain submissive as we are led to our fate. In any case, of course, the vast bulk of government handouts are going to wealthy corporations. See ‘The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, CARES Act Is Business Giveaway, “Handout” to Monied Interests’.

If you lack the inclination or courage to do the research to understand the nature and depth of this crisis and/or to join the struggle to resist the elite takeover of our world, you are encouraged to support those who do have the inclination and courage. If you simply believe that the ‘COVID-19 crisis’ will pass and everything will revert to how it was, it might be worth reading some political history (focusing on life in those countries that suffered or still suffer under dictatorship or occupation) or simply checking out what Israel is doing now. See ‘Americans Beware: Trump Could Emulate Netanyahu’s Coronavirus Coup’. We are already so far beyond the possibility of ‘a return to how it was’ that the only realistic question worth asking now is ‘How bad will it be?’

In short, this struggle to restore our rights, economic well-being and freedoms will not be won easily. And it will come at significant cost. But it is only if enough people are willing to risk paying that cost, and apply their energy strategically, that this struggle for our humanity can actually be won.

I intend to do everything I can to ensure that we succeed. I hope that you will too.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Observing Elites Manipulate Our Fear: COVID-19, Propaganda and Knowledge

By Robert J. Burrowes

While humans stand on the brink of precipitating our own extinction, with the prospects of now averting this remote – see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ – virtually everyone remains unaware of the critical nature of our plight. Moreover, the ongoing human death toll from the activities that are generating this crisis numbers in the many millions each year while the number of species driven to extinction is estimated at 200 per day.

In contrast, a virus that is killing a very small proportion of the minuscule number it has infected is causing panic in many countries around the world, devastating the travel and tourism industries while emptying supermarket shelves of food and that apparently most vital of commodities: toilet paper.

According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronvirus Resource Center (which is presumably separate from the JHU bioweapons research facility), the last time I checked it before this article was sent for publication, official reports indicate that the COVID-19 virus has so far infected 372,563 people in a world population of 7,800,000,000 (that is, about .0048% of the human population), killing 16,380 (4.3% of those infected) with 100,885 (27%) recovered already (and many more highly likely to do so). Of course, there is an unknown number of people who have contracted the virus but not reported it (through ignorance or intention) thus indicating that the death rate from the disease is (probably significantly) lower than the official rate.

Moreover, as one doctor has reported after researching the data on Italy, where the greatest rate of COVID-19 infection has occurred: ‘80% of the deceased had suffered from two or more chronic diseases’ and ‘90% of the deceased are over 70 years old’. In addition, ‘Less than 1% of the deceased were healthy persons’ defined, very simply, as ‘persons without pre-existing chronic diseases’. Given that northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe, which has already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past, these are undoubtedly factors that help to account for the current local health crisis. See ‘A Swiss Doctor on Covid-19’.

Obviously the utterly inadequate response to the genuine crisis in which humans now find themselves and the panic-stricken response to a simple virus tells us a great deal about how human fear is working in these two contexts and the way in which elite agents, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), governments, medical personnel and the corporate media, have no trouble manipulating this fear to serve elite interests. A few minutes listening to or reading government and medical personnel commenting on COVID-19, as reported in the corporate media, is enough to reveal the extent of the fear they are peddling, although to those who are terrified, this is not obvious at all. It is just frightening.

While the multifaceted existential crisis clearly requires a concerted response ranging from nonviolent strategies to compel key corporations in various industries to desist from their biosphere-destroying behaviours to convincing ‘ordinary’ people to systematically reduce their consumption to relieve pressure on the biosphere as well, the virus problem requires either zero precautions for those individuals who make a point of maintaining their health (preferably by eating healthily-prepared biodynamic/organically grown vegetarian whole food etc which sustains their immune system), or the simplest of precautions (perhaps including taking some nutritional supplements such as vitamins A and C, for example), commensurate with precautions one might take to avoid catching the flu.

Of course, it should be noted, like many other threats to human health – including ‘doctor error’ (see, for example, ‘Table Of Iatrogenic Deaths In The United States’ and ‘Johns Hopkins study suggests medical errors are third-leading cause of death in U.S.’), heart disease, cancer and tuberculosis – the flu kills vastly more people, every day, than COVID-19 is doing. For example, according to the WHO, which ignores deaths from other diseases such as cardiovascular disease that can be influenza-related, seasonal influenza may result in as many as 650,000 deaths each year (an average of 1,781 each day) due to respiratory illnesses alone. See ‘Influenza: Burden of disease’. That is, the global death toll from COVID-19 in the months since it originated is equal to the global death toll from flu every nine days.

Moreover, if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course. And no action either.

So, leaving aside this last point, the key question is this: Why aren’t people scared of the prospect of imminent human extinction and behaving powerfully in response, while vast numbers of people are terrified of catching one particular virus (but, apparently, not scared of being killed by their doctor or catching other viruses, contracting heart disease, cancer or TB) and acting insanely as a result?

And the short answer to this question is this: The elite is using its international organizations (particularly the United Nations and its agencies), governments, education systems, corporate media and other agents to suppress people’s awareness (and hence fear) of the threat of extinction so that business-as-usual (that is, profit-maximization) can continue for as long as possible unhindered by efforts to contain this existential crisis while deliberately triggering people’s fear in relation to COVID-19 so that a greater degree of elite control can be achieved and greater profits can be secured by exploiting certain opportunities (such as ‘short-selling’ on the stock market and profit-making by pharmaceutical corporations) that the panic arising from the virus generates.

Let me elaborate.

If one investigates the state of Earth’s biosphere, it quickly becomes evident that the biosphere is under siege on many fronts: There is the ongoing threat of nuclear war (perhaps started regionally) as the Cold War infrastructure containing this threat has been progressively dismantled. There is the ongoing threat posed by the progressive collapse of biodiversity as habitat is destroyed at an accelerating rate while animals, birds, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles and plants are killed in vast numbers by a multitude of concurrent assaults. There is the ongoing threat posed by the climate catastrophe. There is the ongoing threat posed by the deployment of 5G (and electromagnetic radiation generally). And these threats are complemented by the imminent collapse of the Amazon, the widespread radioactive contamination of the Earth, the use of geoengineering and the ongoing ecological destruction caused by the many ongoing wars and other military activity. Among a wide variety of other threats.

The nature and details of these threats are readily available – again, for example, see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ – and can be accessed by virtually anyone on Earth interested. Moreover, there is a great deal of evidence to support the argument that human extinction is now imminent given the synergistic impact of these (and so many other) threats. In essence, if one chooses, one can consider the evidence oneself and use this knowledge to behave sensibly and powerfully in response.

However, only a rare individual is seeking out and considering this wide range of evidence so that they can consider modifying their behaviour in light of this multifaceted crisis. Why?

Because our fear allows our life circumstances (‘I am busy with work/my family’ etc.) and elite agents, such as the corporate media, education systems and the entertainment industry, to distract us from paying close attention to these interrelated crises. This means that, if we do pay attention, it is usually to the corporate media’s version of the ‘evidence’, as presented by corporate scientists, and we are directed how to interpret this information; only the rarest individual seeks out the science for themselves or reads the scientists who courageously tell the truth. See, for example, ‘Arctic News’. In this way, strategically-focused action based on an analysis of the driving forces, even by those who self-label as ‘activists’, can be prevented and business-as-usual continues.

In contrast, because events such as the COVID-19 virus – like the long list of such threats (including AIDS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome [SARS], Mad Cow disease and Ebola) that preceeded it – are created to expand elite political, economic, social and geopolitical control as well as to generate greater profits in some sectors of the economy (including through stock market windfalls by ‘short-selling’), our fear is deliberately played upon by the propaganda distributed through various elite agents. The resulting panic ensures that the bulk of the human population – willing to surrender control on the promise of greater material security – serves elite interests precisely. For a sample of the literature and videos that thoughtfully discuss points such as these, as well as others consistent with them (such as the push for compulsory vaccination and marginalization of the elderly), see ‘COVID-19 Coronavirus: A Fake Pandemic? Who’s Behind It? Global Economic, Social and Geopolitical Destabilization’, ‘This Is a Test: How Will the Constitution Fare During a Nationwide Lockdown?’, ‘China – Western China Bashing – vs. Western Biowarfare?’, ‘CoVid-19 – What the government is really covering up’, ‘Plunging stocks, pandemic fears, quarantines – what’s the real operation?’, ‘How Many People Have Coronavirus?’, ‘The Coronavirus Phenomenon is a Political Pandemic, not a Medical Emergency’, ‘The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”’, ‘The Coronavirus Hoax’, ‘Pandemic: The Invention of a Disease Called Fear. People are being “Herded”. Disrupting the World Economy’, ‘Coronavirus scare – the hoax of the century?’, ‘Corona Panic – erstaunliche Einblicke / stunning insights’, ‘The Coronavirus: Crown Jewel of the New World Order or Crippling Blow to Globalization?’, ‘Coronavirus and the Gates Foundation’ and ‘In a Europe Closed Down by the Coronavirus the EU Opens its Doors to the US Army. Could the Defender become the Invader of Europe?’

In essence then, knowledge – whether of those actually possessing it but even of one’s own – is marginalized because once people are scared, their fear overwhelms their capacity to think, assess, evaluate and critique, as well as to feel the other emotional responses that tell them what is actually taking place. Only the occasional individual pauses to consider – and research – what is happening in order to respond powerfully.

Of course, knowledge might not be easy to acquire given that, in this instance, there are various theories, apart from those mentioned above, about what is happening. These include the hypotheses that the virus is a (deliberately or even accidentally) released bioweapon – see ‘Author of US Biowarfare Law: Studies Confirm Coronavirus Weaponized’, ‘Who Made Coronavirus? Was It the U.S., Israel or China Itself?’, ‘China is Confronting the COVID-19 Epidemic. Was It Man-Made? An Act of of Bio-warfare?’ and ‘Bioweapons Expert Speaks Out About Novel Coronavirus’ – and that the virus is being used to obscure the death toll from the deployment of 5G (already done extensively in Wuhan, for example). See ‘Wuhan China, One Big 5G FEMA style Camp & Not because of Coronavirus’ and ‘China, 5G, And The Wuhan Coronavirus: The Emperor’s New Virus’.

However, just because knowledge requires effort, it does not mean that it is not available if we conscientiously apply our intelligence to identify and investigate credible sources, such as those mentioned above. Moreover, if knowledge is genuinely sought, we might also need to spend time endeavouring to comprehend the complexity of some issues, starting by asking key questions. In this case, for example, there are many people benefiting from this crisis but doing so even though they work at different points in relation to it. How does this help us to understand what is going on?

The fundamental problem, of course, is that applying intelligence to a challenge is effectively impossible if, as is the case with the bulk of the human population, the individual is (unconsciously) terrified and hence easily stampeded into panic, especially if the stampede is precipitated deliberately to serve specific elite ends.

So why is virtually everyone so (unconsciously) terrified? Unfortunately, it is the standard state of virtually all human beings after being terrorized into submission by parents, teachers, religious figures and other adults during childhood. But also denied the opportunity to feel and release this fear, the individual suppresses their awareness of the fear which simply remains in the unconscious endlessly shaping behaviour without the individual even realising. For a full explanation of this, including the roles that ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence play in generating this outcome, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

One way in which this works is as follows. Children start learning at a very young age to identify, often unconsciously, when a parent or other adult is delusional about something. This is particularly the case when this involves the parent projecting their fear onto the child (or something the child is doing), when there is actually no danger. See ‘The Psychology of Projection in Conflict’. The child can perceive the parental projection because the child’s perceptions are not yet as damaged as those of the adults around them. However, because the adult is always fearfully attached to their delusions and projections as a key outcome of their own childhood terrorization experience, the child also quickly learns that if they seriously contradict a delusion or projection held by the parent/adult, they are highly likely to be punished. And so the child acts to avoid punishment by not challenging the delusion/projection.

As Anita McKone further explained her understanding of this process during a recent discussion, she noted the way it feels for the parent in this context: ‘If you don’t help me to keep safe from my projected fear/delusion (which, of course, for me is absolutely real), then I consider you to be dangerous to me and I will attack you!’ The problem for the child in this circumstance is that the parental fear and the threat it poses are overwhelming and so, after a time, the child copies the fear and ceases to remember how things actually were. But without a subsequent opportunity to feel the fear holding this delusion/projection in place, the child will retain this delusion/projection for life, just as the parent has done.

However, the problem is that once a childhood fear is suppressed, it spends the remainder of the individual’s life seeking ways of being felt and expressed. This can occur in ways that are easily not noticed, such as feeling scared while watching a horror movie. However, the most usual ways in which this suppressed fear manifests in later life is by projecting it at activities undertaken by one’s children that trigger this fear. And because it is not actually frightening to control the child’s behaviour, the parent will seek this control so that they can feel the relief of (temporarily) getting their own fear back under control.

But another way in which this fear can be given a safe outlet on something that is not actually frightening, is by participating in ‘socially-approved’ activities that allow the fear to be expressed. For example, the people who are participating in the panic-stricken purchase of foods and goods from supermarkets are simply responding to their unconscious fear which has been deliberately triggered to enable elite-desired outcomes for greater social control to be achieved by making political use of this panic. Again see articles cited above such as ‘This Is a Test: How Will the Constitution Fare During a Nationwide Lockdown?’

In essence then, the COVID-19 pandemic was created as just another step in the endless effort to fully establish elite political, economic and social control. With the WHO, governments, medical personnel and the corporate media warning the population (with their superficially suppressed terror readily accessible) of the dangers of the virus and directing them to respond in particular ways under threat of punishment, governments implementing measures to restrict freedom and movement (including ‘lockdowns’, border closings, bans on gatherings in a variety of public contexts and a range of other drastic measures), the corporate media endlessly referring to and discussing possible ‘horror’ scenarios, people’s fear is readily triggered to ensure there is little resistance to the ongoing curtailment of their rights (and many even end up asking for these curtailments if it will make them feel safer).

The fundamental problem is this: once we fearfully surrender a right, it is rarely won back. And we are one step closer to living in a dystopian (technologically-monitored and controlled) police state. If you think this won’t/can’t happen, I gently encourage you to read the relevant references cited above, each of which was carefully chosen because it illustrates this point in one way or another.

Whether COVID-19 is intended to be the final step or just another in what remains of the series, we will soon know. In any case, if we are not resisting strategically, the elite will ultimately succeed.

So here is the summary:

Our existing parenting and education models are designed to produce submissively obedient children, students, workers, soldiers and citizens. After all, we want children, students, employees, military personnel and even citizens who obey orders, not think for themselves. But this outcome can only be achieved by terrorizing children throughout childhood until they suppress their awareness of their own self-will so completely that they submit to the will of adults virtually without protest. Now devoid of their own unique and powerful self-will, they become sheep herded from one supermarket to the next by their own fear. No need for a shepherd.

Then, when the global elite plans and implements its next move, using COVID-19 as ‘cover’ on this occasion, to consolidate its ever-tightening grip on the human population (more militarized policing, new and improved police/military weapons systems, privacy-abusing law, surveillance technology, facial recognition system, vaccination regime, genetically-mutilated organism, monetary or banking convenience….), it simply instructs its agents in the UN, government, education systems, the corporate and social media, and elsewhere to carefully explain why this particular response is so beneficial to everyone with genuine critiques confined to those few outlets with modest audiences, such as this one, that tell the truth.

Terrorized into accepting adult dogma as a child, the typical adult now participates in many delusions, such as the one that the choice offered at elections constitutes having a say in how a country is governed. Devoid of the capacity to critique society beyond the most superficial level, elite propaganda is devoured as ‘knowledge’. And once their deeply-suppressed terror is triggered, these ‘adults’ will be readily panicked into doing as the elite directs. People in a terrified state are in no condition to defend themselves and their rights and so they readily give these up on the promise of not having to feel afraid.

What can we do?

Well, because the foundation of this entire elite-controlled world is the submissively obedient individual, the world can only be rebuilt as we might like it if we stop terrorizing children into being submissive. So I would start by parenting and educating children so that they become powerful. See ‘My Promise to Children’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

If you need help to parent in this manner, try ‘Putting Feelings First’ and learning how to nistel to your child(ren). See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

If you know someone who is frightened, or even panicking, about COVID-19, and you feel capable of doing so, it will help them enormously if you are able to listen to them talk about, and feel, their fear. Again, see ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

If you want to better understand the origin, identity and behaviour of the global elite and why it is insane, see the section headed ‘How the World Works’ in ‘Why Activists Fail’ and the articles ‘Exposing the Giants: The Global Power Elite’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

If you want to better understand the link between suppressed fear and panic-buying in supermarkets, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

If you wish to campaign to defend our rights and the integrity of our biosphere, then consider doing it strategically. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. The global elite is not about to give way unless we compel it to do so. We have plenty of power if we deploy it strategically.

If you wish to remove a corrupt or electorally unresponsive government, see Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

If you wish to fight powerfully to save Earth’s biosphere against those governments and corporations so intent on destroying it, but you prefer local engagement, consider joining those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which outlines a simple program to systematically reduce your consumption and increase your self-reliance over a period of years.

You might also consider joining the global network of people resisting violence in all contexts, particularly that inflicted by the global elite, by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Or, if none of the above options appeal or they seem too complicated, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that: 

  1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not buy rainforest timber
  8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Each of the measures nominated in the section above identifies ways in which we can restore our power to resist elite insanity and/or take strategic action to resist elite violence once we have the power to do so.

If we do not take measures such as these, the insane global elite will continue to manipulate us into doing its bidding, usually using more insidious techniques than COVID-19, until human beings cease to exist. As touched on above, the evidence strongly suggests we do not have much time.

What you decide is therefore critical.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

 

Detect, Deter and Annihilate: How the Police State Will Deal with a Coronavirus Outbreak

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Fear is a primitive impulse, brainless as hunger, and because the aim of horror fiction is the production of the deepest kinds of fears, the genre tends to reinforce some remarkably uncivilized ideas about self-protection. In the current crop of zombie stories, the prevailing value for the beleaguered survivors is a sort of siege mentality, a vigilance so constant and unremitting that it’s indistinguishable from the purest paranoia.”— Terrence Rafferty, New York Times

What do zombies have to do with the U.S. government’s plans for dealing with a coronavirus outbreak?

Read on, and I’ll tell you.

The zombie narrative was popularized by the hit television series The Walking Dead, in which a small group of Americans attempt to survive in a zombie-ridden, post-apocalyptic world where they’re not only fighting off flesh-eating ghouls but cannibalistic humans.

For a while there, zombies could be found lurking around every corner: wreaking havoc at gun shows, battling corsets in movies such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and running for their lives in 5K charity races.

Understandably, zombie fiction plays to our fears and paranoia, while allowing us to “envision how we and our own would thrive if everything went to hell and we lost all our societal supports.” Yet as journalist Syreeta McFadden points out, while dystopian stories used to reflect our anxieties, now they reflect our reality, mirroring how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.

Indeed, the U.S. government has spent a lot of time and energy in recent years using zombies as the models for a variety of crisis scenarios not too dissimilar from what we are currently experiencing.

For instance, back in 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put together a zombie apocalypse preparation kit “that details everything you would need to have on hand in the event the living dead showed up at your front door.” The CDC, in conjunction with the Dept. of Defense, even used zombies to put government agents through their paces in mock military drills.

Fear the Walking Dead—AMC’s spinoff of its popular Walking Dead series—drove this point home by dialing back the clock to when the zombie outbreak first appears and setting viewers down in the midst of societal unrest not unlike our own experiences of recent years (“a bunch of weird incidents, police protests, riots, and … rapid social entropy”). Then, as Forbes reports, “the military showed up and we fast-forwarded into an ad hoc police state with no glimpse at what was happening in the world around our main cast of hapless survivors.”

Forbes found Fear’s quick shift into a police state to be far-fetched, but anyone who has been paying attention in recent years knows that the groundwork was laid long ago for the government—i.e., the military—to intervene and lock down the nation in the event of a national disaster.

We’re seeing this play out now as the coronavirus contagion spreads.

What we have yet to experience (although it may only be a matter of time) is that the government through the imposition of martial law could pose a greater threat to our safety (and our freedoms) than any virus.

As the Atlantic noted about Fear the Walking Dead: “The villains aren’t the zombies, who rarely appear, but the U.S. military, who sweep into an L.A. suburb to quarantine the survivors. Zombies are, after all, a recognizable threat—but Fear plumbs drama and horror from the betrayal by institutions designed to keep people safe.”

Indeed, zombie fiction perfectly embodies the government’s paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats that need to be monitored, tracked, surveilled, sequestered, deterred, vanquished and rendered impotent.

Why else would the government feel the need to monitor our communications, track our movements, criminalize our every action, treat us like suspects, and strip us of any means of defense while equipping its own personnel with an amazing arsenal of weapons?

For years now, the government has been carrying out military training drills with zombies as the enemy. In 2011, the DOD created a 31-page instruction manual for how to protect America from a terrorist attack carried out by zombie forces. In 2012, the CDC released a guide for surviving a zombie plague. That was followed by training drills for members of the military, police officers and first responders.

As journalist Andrea Peyser reports:

Coinciding with Halloween 2012, a five-day national conference was put on by the HALO Corp. in San Diego for more than 1,000 first responders, military personnel and law enforcement types. It included workshops produced by a Hollywood-affiliated firm in…overcoming a zombie invasion. Actors were made up to look like flesh-chomping monsters. The Department of Homeland Security even paid the $1,000 entry fees for an unknown number of participants…

“Zombie disaster” drills were held in October 2012 and ’13 at California’s Sutter Roseville Medical Center. The exercises allowed medical center staff “to test response to a deadly infectious disease, a mass-casualty event, terrorism event and security procedures”…

[In October 2014], REI outdoor-gear stores in Soho and around the country are to hold free classes in zombie preparedness, which the stores have been providing for about three years.

The zombie exercises appeared to be kitschy and fun—government agents running around trying to put down a zombie rebellion—but what if the zombies in the exercises were us, the citizenry, viewed by those in power as mindless, voracious, zombie hordes?

Consider this: the government started playing around with the idea of using zombies as stand-ins for enemy combatants in its training drills right around the time the Army War College issued its 2008 report, warning that an economic crisis in the U.S. could lead to massive civil unrest that would require the military to intervene and restore order.

That same year, it was revealed that the government had amassed more than 8 million names of Americans considered a threat to national security, to be used “by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.” The program’s name, Main Core, refers to the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”

Also in 2008, the Pentagon launched the Minerva Initiative, a $75 million military-driven research project focused on studying social behavior in order to determine how best to cope with mass civil disobedience or uprisings. The Minerva Initiative has funded projects such as “Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?” which “conflates peaceful activists with ‘supporters of political violence’ who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on ‘armed militancy’ themselves.”

In 2009, the Dept. of Homeland Security issued its reports on Rightwing and Leftwing Extremism, in which the terms “extremist” and “terrorist” were used interchangeably to describe citizens they perceived to be disgruntled or anti-government.

Meanwhile, a government campaign was underway to spy on Americans’ mail, email and cell phone communications. News reports indicate that the U.S. Postal Service has handled more than 150,000 requests by federal and state law enforcement agencies to monitor Americans’ mail, in addition to photographing every piece of mail sent through the postal system.

Fast forward a few years more and local police were being transformed into extensions of the military, taught to view members of their community as suspects, trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and equipped with all of the technology and weaponry of a soldier on a battlefield.

The Obama administration then hired a domestic terrorism czar whose job is to focus on anti-government American “extremists” who have been designated a greater threat to America than ISIS or al Qaeda. As part of the government’s so-called war on right-wing extremism, the Obama administration agreed to partner with the United Nations to take part in its Strong Cities Network program, which is training local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism.

Nothing has changed for the better under the Trump Administration.

Those who believe in and exercise their rights under the Constitution (namely, the right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share their political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), continue to be promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

“We the people” or, more appropriately, “we the zombies” are the enemy in the eyes of the government. This coronavirus merely ups the ante.

So when presented with the Defense Department’s battle plan for defeating an army of the walking dead, you might find yourself tempted to giggle over the fact that a taxpayer-funded government bureaucrat actually took the time to research and write about vegetarian zombies, evil magic zombies, chicken zombies, space zombies, bio-engineered weaponized zombies, radiation zombies, symbiant-induced zombies, and pathogenic zombies.

However, in an age of extreme government paranoia, this is no laughing matter.

The DOD’s strategy for dealing with a zombie uprising, outlined in “CONOP 8888,” is for all intents and purposes a training manual for the government in how to put down a citizen uprising or at least an uprising of individuals “infected” with a dangerous disease or dangerous ideas about freedom.

Rest assured that the tactics and difficulties outlined in the “fictional training scenario” are all too real, beginning with martial law.

As the DOD training manual states: “zombies [stand-ins for “we the people”] are horribly dangerous to all human life and zombie infections have the potential to seriously undermine national security and economic activities that sustain our way of life. Therefore having a population that is not composed of zombies or at risk from their malign influence is vital to U.S. and Allied national interests.”

So how does the military plan to put down a zombie (a.k.a. citizen) uprising?

The strategy manual outlines five phases necessary for a counter-offensive: shape, deter, seize initiative, dominate, stabilize and restore civil authority. Here are a few details:

Phase 0 (Shape): Conduct general zombie awareness training. Monitor increased threats (i.e., surveillance). Carry out military drills. Synchronize contingency plans between federal and state agencies. Anticipate and prepare for a breakdown in law and order.

Phase 1 (Deter): Recognize that zombies cannot be deterred or reasoned with. Carry out training drills to discourage other countries from developing or deploying attack zombies and publicly reinforce the government’s ability to combat a zombie threat. Initiate intelligence sharing between federal and state agencies. Assist the Dept. of Homeland Security in identifying or discouraging immigrants from areas where zombie-related diseases originate.

Phase 2 (Seize initiative): Recall all military personal to their duty stations. Fortify all military outposts. Deploy air and ground forces for at least 35 days. Carry out confidence-building measures with nuclear-armed peers such as Russia and China to ensure they do not misinterpret the government’s zombie countermeasures as preparations for war. Establish quarantine zones. Distribute explosion-resistant protective equipment. Place the military on red alert. Begin limited scale military operations to combat zombie threats. Carry out combat operations against zombie populations within the United States that were “previously” U.S. citizens.

Phase 3 (Dominate): Lock down all military bases for 30 days. Shelter all essential government personnel for at least 40 days. Equip all government agents with military protective gear. Issue orders for military to kill all non-human life on sight. Initiate bomber and missile strikes against targeted sources of zombie infection, including the infrastructure. Burn all zombie corpses. Deploy military to lock down the beaches and waterways.

Phase 4 (Stabilize): Send out recon teams to check for remaining threats and survey the status of basic services (water, power, sewage infrastructure, air, and lines of communication). Execute a counter-zombie ISR plan to ID holdout pockets of zombie resistance. Use all military resources to target any remaining regions of zombie holdouts and influence. Continue all actions from the Dominate phase.

Phase 5 (Restore civil authority): Deploy military personnel to assist any surviving civil authorities in disaster zones. Reconstitute combat capabilities at various military bases. Prepare to redeploy military forces to attack surviving zombie holdouts. Restore basic services in disaster areas.

Notice the similarities?

Surveillance. Military drills. Awareness training. Militarized police forces. Martial law.

As I point out in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if there is any lesson to be learned, it is simply this: whether the threat to national security comes in the form of imaginary zombies, actual terrorists, American citizens infected with the coronavirus, or disgruntled American citizens infected with dangerous ideas about freedom, the government’s response to such threats remains the same: detect, deter and annihilate.