Mass Distraction And Fake “V-Shaped” Recovery Provide Cover For The Fed Induced Crash

By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.com

This article, originally titled ‘The Fed Just Got Cover For The Collapse Of The US Economy’, was written by Brandon Smith and first published at Birch Gold Group

The scapegoating has already started. In almost every sector of the economy that is collapsing, the claim is that “everything was fine until the pandemic happened”. From tumbling web news platforms to small businesses to major corporations, the coronavirus outbreak and the national riots will become the excuse for failure. The establishment will try to rewrite history and many people will go along with it because the truth makes them look bad.

And what is the truth? The truth is that the U.S. economy – and in some ways, the global economy – was already collapsing. The system’s dependency on ultra-low interest rates and central bank stimulus created perhaps the largest debt bubble in history – the Everything Bubble. And that bubble began imploding at the end of 2018, triggered primarily by the Federal Reserve raising rates and dumping its balance sheet into economic weakness, just like it did at the start of the Great Depression. Fed Chair Jerome Powell knew what would happen if this policy was initiated; he even warned about it in the minutes of the October 2012 Federal Open Market Committee, and yet once he became the head of the central bank, he did it anyway.

For a year leading up to the pandemic, the Fed was struggling to maintain and suppress a repo market liquidity crisis. National debtcorporate debt and consumer debt were at all-time highs. Companies were desperate for new stimulus, and they were getting crumbs from the Fed, rather than the tens of trillions that they needed just to stay afloat. The central bank had sabotaged the economy, but they had to keep it in a state of living death until they had a perfect cover event for the collapse. The pandemic and inevitable civil unrest do the job nicely.

What many people do not understand is that the Fed does not care about the economy. In fact, every Fed action since its inception in 1913 has led to the downfall of the U.S. The Fed is not a maintenance man trying to stave off collapse; the Fed is a suicide bomber willing to destroy everything including itself in order to serve a greater ideology.

Total global centralization is the goal, and every new disaster is exploited to this end by the establishment. “Order out of chaos” is the motto of the global elites; in other words, in every crisis there is “opportunity”. This crisis has been no different. Suggested solutions have ranged from the creation of a cashless society operating on a digital currency system, to permanent lockdowns in the name of stopping “global warming”, to a surveillance state and medical tyranny utilizing 24/7 tracking of citizens in order to “stop the spread of the virus”. But how does the establishment plan to get people to go along with such freedom-crushing policies?

The pandemic by itself is not enough. The George Floyd riots may be a motivator, but they might fizzle out over time. The real catalyst, as I have said for many years now, will be an ongoing economic crash. This crash, engineered in 2008, has been a long time coming. Everything that is happening today is an extension of what happened over a decade ago. That said, the current phase was set in motion in 2018, as noted above.

The virus and the lockdowns solidified the crash, and while some people including Trump are calling for a V-shaped recovery, this is not going to happen.  Perhaps Trump is referring to stock markets artificially inflated by the Fed stimulus backstop?  Is anyone gullible enough to believe the stock market represents the real economy?  Because today’s jobs report from the BLS, despite all the hype, does not suggest V-shaped recovery to me.  The US lost 40 million jobs in the span of 6 weeks.  The BLS reports a gain of 2.5 million jobs in May as the country “reopened”.  So, we are still down nearly 38 million jobs in the past couple months yet the BLS stats are being called “stunning” and a “sign of recovery”?

The assumption being made here I think is that job gains will now be constant each month from now on.  I think not.  I think the jobs that were gained in May are the peak, and every jobs report after today will disappoint.  Here’s why…

The latest Fed models predict a GDP plunge of 52.8%, and the manner in which the Fed calculates GDP is actually rigged to the upside. It is difficult to predict the REAL fall in data, but we know it will likely be larger than 52%. Keep in mind that this crash is in the 2nd quarter, while the Fed pumped trillions into the system. What exactly did this money printing buy? Well, stock markets stabilized, but the rest of the economy didn’t, and stock market optimism isn’t going to last much longer either is there are renewed lockdowns.

The primary reason we now face a second Great Depression is because the small business sector has been destroyed. Small businesses are vital to the U.S. economy, representing around 50% of the job market. The closures resulted in around 40 million job losses in the past two months. Add that to the 95 million Americans that have been out of work but not counted by the BLS as unemployed – as well as the 11 million people that are counted – and you are looking at nearly 150 million working age people not generating an income.

The latest BLS jobs gains and the way they are being hyped by the media are suspicious to me.  It seems as if the establishment is trying to convince the public that the pandemic will have no affect on the economy and that their jobs will simply be waiting for them after every new shutdown (as long as they adhere to the rules and restriction set up by state and federal governments).

But it’s only going to get worse from here on…

The public doesn’t realize it yet, but many of the businesses that shut down over the past couple months are not coming back. Sure, a lot of them will try to reopen, and there will be a last gasp of activity during the next month or two, but the levels of debt attached to these ventures was already high before the pandemic hit. The recent small business bailouts seemed as if they were designed to give people false hope. According to figures out of JP Morgan, of the 300,000 clients that applied for the small business aid, only 18,000 actually received any. And, of that 18,000, many were larger corporation, not small businesses.

Business sectors most affected include retail and service, which crashed a record 16.4% overall in April. Food service lost approximately 30% of sales. Electronics and appliances lost 60%. Clothing plunged 78%. Auto sales fell 33% in May, and the expected rebound after the reopening has been disappointing.

The businesses most likely to die first are those that had large debt obligations before the lockdowns, as well as those that received no bailout money. Even though companies like General Electric, Verizon, IBM and Tesla all have massive debt issues, they may be kept alive by government bailouts, at least for a time. Small businesses, on the other hand, appear to be slated for destruction.

In particular, I suspect most restaurants besides major chains will go into bankruptcy. Boutique stores and clothing outlets will run out of money fast. Movie theater chains will collapse. Car rental outlets will collapse. Tourism businesses will close en masse and tourism towns will suffer profit losses despite the “reopening” in some states. Larger companies, like airlines, will continue to decline, and they will have to diversify into other areas, such as shipping, in order to survive. The auto industry is not coming back any time soon.

In the case of restaurants, the social distancing requirements reduce the number of customers that they can seat at any given time. Restaurants were already suffering major declines before the pandemic, and while take-out venues might have seen an uptick because of the lockdowns, this will not last as people begin to run out of cash and start cooking at home.

The same goes for small boutique stores, which rely on consumers with expendable cash flows. Such consumers no longer exist, and notions of “extra cash” will disappear along with waning government checks. As for tourism, I think there will be some travel, as lockdown restrictions are partially lifted. Many people in the cities will try to get away for a week or two just to escape and feel normal for a little while. However, I also think mainstream economists are underestimating the number of people who will refuse to travel because of concerns about coming in contact with the coronavirus. Just as retail refuses to rebound, so will tourism profits.

Air travel is unlikely to improve for the same reasons. Social distancing makes airplane flights a losing investment as passenger capacity is reduced. New car sales will remain stagnant because people are traveling less, and the used car market is being stocked with product as average people sell off vehicles to get extra cash to make ends meet.

All of these factors result in long-term job losses and debt defaults for small businesses as well as some larger companies. Which means much higher poverty rates and further dependency on government welfare programs.

The real test for the public will come when lockdowns return. I realize that there is a bit of denial in the population when it comes to this idea. I see many people operating on the assumption that the “reopening” is a long-term situation. I assure you, it is not. As I have noted in many previous articles, the establishment intends to use what I call “wave theory”, or a cycle of shutdowns and openings over the span of a year or longer. There WILL be new lockdowns, if not in the name of a resurgence in COVID infections, it will be in the name of stopping the national riots.

The response from the American people will be critical here. Will we support further lockdowns or martial law, even though the measures would harm us economically? Or will the public resist? Will the political left embrace a second lockdown in the face of further infection spikes? Will conservatives embrace lockdowns in the face of leftist protests and riots? Both sides of the political spectrum are being tempted with the use of a totalitarian government response in order to ensure their personal “safety”.

People must be made to understand the reality of our situation: the economy has already been undermined and this threat is far greater than either the virus or the riots. This is the danger that is being hidden by the pandemic and civil unrest distractions, and it is a threat that the government has no means or intention of saving us from. We must save ourselves, and doing that requires preparation and acceptance that the world is changed.

Why We Stay Asleep When Covid-19 Is Trying to Wake Us Up

By

Source: KellyBroganMD.com

There’s a phrase we all keep hearing: It doesn’t make sense.

We’ve heard it from citizen journalists, from hospital and police force whistleblowers, and from otherwise compliant and law abiding self-quarantiners whose personal, lived experience simply isn’t adding up to what they are being told is happening by mainstream media.

So what is it that doesn’t make sense?

Is it:

  • that many medical experts have actually downgraded the potential threat of Covid-19 from initial projections by orders of magnitude, including Dr. Anthony Fauci himself, in a New England Journal of Medicine report where he wrote that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) …” yet we are seeing unprecedented, draconian style control measures being implemented by executive order?
  • that there were staged planning events in October 2019 including Urban Outbreak and Event 201, nationwide CDC Quarantine Program job postings from November of 2019, a coronavirus patent, World Bank pandemic bonds, well in advance of when this pandemic supposedly started, and spontaneously erupted and disseminated globally in a manner that could never be explained through person to person contagion?
  • that doctors are being told to code all deaths as covid without so much as the facade of testing when up to 99% of case fatalities are in individuals with multiple pre-existing conditions, the vast majority of them elderly?
  • that hospitals are supposedly full to the brim with intubated patients when hospital staff are being laid off or furloughed, and whistleblowers are speaking to iatrogenic harm and death (including through intubation) being systematically committed by physicians?
  • that the plan for “return to normal” is being dictated by an unelected software technocrat who happens to also fund GMOs (including non-meat synthetic products), 5G, all of the labs currently working on the vaccine, implantable tracking devices, and the WHO?
  • that people were dying en masse from all manner of preventable illnesses ranging from obesity to hunger to properly prescribed medications with no historical precedent for governmental intervention around these far deadlier epidemics, but now we are to believe that the government cares so much about us that it will “keep us safe” even against our will?
  • that we should consent to be traced and tracked as law-abiding, healthy civilians even when convicted felons and many sex offenders are not?
  • that facial coverings ranging from a scarf to a reused surgical mask with mm pore sizes are going to “keep out” what we are calling a virus which is nm in diameter? 1
  • that mask-wearing has been enforced when the Surgeon General, the WHO and even Fauci say to not wear them, and elected officials congregated on television have never worn them?
  • that Walmart, Target, and Costco are open while small businesses, parks, and beaches have been shuttered since March 14th, many of which will remain permanently closed due to the irreversible economic impacts of the shutdown?
  • that the list of the virus’s associated symptoms have grown and changed, all the while without there being unequivocal evidence of the virus’s point-of-origin in isolation in Wuhan or proof of global contagion?
  • that 5G networks are being installed during a time of “essential work only” in every major metropolitan area while we are quarantined in our homes?
  • that the immune system thrives on diversity of exposure, sunlight, time in nature and in loving company of others, but we are being told to hide alone, indoors?
  • that 30 million people in this country alone have suddenly lost their jobs through “essential business” restrictions, however there happened to be a 1000 page piece of legislation spontaneously prepared to institute the roll out of a system of government handouts and cashless currency?
  • that numbers of cases are determined through testing methods that do not confirm Covid-19, have tested positive in fruit and animals, and which the test inventor said should not be used to identify a specific disease?

This is just a starter list of all that “does not make sense,” and each question invokes a state of cognitive dissonance or confusion…which, when courageously explored, can be a very fertile state for the evolution of thought, perspective, and belief. Courage, in this sense, refers to action in the face of fear. And there is tremendous fear that is brought up through the rupture of trust in our government and associated authorities.

The fear is in place as an emotional caution tape between our defensive survival strategies of childhood and the emancipated sovereignty of individuated adulthood.

This is operative for so many right now who feel the irrepressible tension between what we are being told is happening (a deadly virus is spreading that we need protection from) and the sense that there is more to the story. But so many minimize, dismiss, or otherwise defend the mainstream narrative because to do otherwise would require truly cutting the umbilical cord connecting them to mommy medical system and daddy government. It would require stepping into their adult authority which is their own, individual truth and sovereign power…a terrifying initiation to self that can feel like the world as you know it must end in order to accommodate this new truth and perceived reality.

If we want to feel free, then why would anyone continue to trust and obey an authority that is not here to protect but rather to control and enslave?

Why we stay asleep: unhealed trauma

Aldous Huxley said that the brain is a reducing valve for a much vaster consciousness. We allow in what we are able to, so what constricts the valve?

A child needs to believe that her caregivers fundamentally are doing the best they can to care for and love her. She also believes that they could abandon or reject her at any turn and that this could be life threatening. So she develops many strategies to survive in the unavoidable setting of her dependency on these deficient parental authorities. These strategies involve suppressing her true feelings, her true beliefs, and blaming herself (“I must deserve this”). They lead to dominant thoughts that reflect the parents’ introjected statements or imagined opinions such as “you’re only lovable if you’re useful/keep the peace/follow orders” or “you’re worthless and your body isn’t yours, it’s mine to handle as I see fit” or “you don’t deserve to be happy because you’re bad.”

How does a child stand up to a parent that is abusing them when they are powerless to defend themselves? They don’t. They acquiesce, submit and align with the reality of their abuser in order to stay safe.

But what happens if we never reclaim ourselves from this imprint? What happens when the feelings that surface when we reconsider allegiance to those big, looming authorities that we imagine could crush us if we don’t comply? This is the pattern of intergenerational trauma we see running through the lineage of humanity now, where unexamined trauma leads to a fugue state of dissociation from self and intuition in service of a preserved trust and loyalty to parentified authorities.

And this is how and why world citizens told to go to their room lest the boogie man get them, dutifully comply, stay inside of their homes, and await further orders, welcoming in the “new normal” for themselves and their children.

Global Stockholm Syndrome

There is a name for the psychemotional dynamic of defending the parentified aggressor and we are seeing this surface en masse. It is called Stockholm Syndrome. It refers to a positive bond of attachment formed between a victim of abuse and the abuser. It’s why women defend their right to birth control, antidepressants and medicalized birth, without perceiving the dangerous shadow side of these technologies. And it’s why, today, all around the world, people are shaming, judging, and otherwise deputizing themselves to coerce dissenters into compliance. “Wear a mask! You’re killing people!

When the wounded and traumatized child is pulling the strings behind the curtain, she says that you can’t handle the emotions that might surface if you choose to relinquish trust and dependency on an outside authority. She says that you will be abandoned, rejected, and may even die. So, if you are feeling powerless, then bully someone else and diffuse some of the discomfort. On an individual level and on a collective level, these dynamics keep us divided against the true oppressor — the authority we unduly empower. This Stockholm Syndrome is characterized by:

  • Positive regard towards perpetrators of abuse or captors.
  • Failure to cooperate with police and other government authorities when it comes to holding perpetrators of abuse or kidnapping accountable.
  • Little or not effort to escape.
  • Belief in the goodness of the perpetrators or kidnappers.
  • Appeasement of captors. This is a manipulative strategy for maintaining one’s safety. As victims get rewarded—perhaps with less abuse or even with life itself—their appeasing behaviors are reinforced.
  • Learned helplessness. This can be akin to “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” As the victims fail to escape the abuse or captivity, they may start giving up and soon realize it’s just easier for everyone if they acquiesce all their power to their captors.
  • Feelings of pity toward the abusers, believing they are actually victims themselves. Because of this, victims may go on a crusade or mission to “save” their abuser.
  • Unwillingness to learn to detach from their perpetrators and heal. In essence, victims may tend to be less loyal to themselves than to their abuser. 2

So how is this dynamic upheld? Why wouldn’t we recognize that we are aligning with the perpetrators of our victimhood?

Tactical capture: manipulation and mind control

“The conscious intelligent manipulation of the organized opinions and habits of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.” ~ Edward Bernays

One of the great perils of any survival strategy that relies on a benevolent parentified authority and power structure is that we are unable to see how and where and why this system may not share our same values and may indeed be doing us harm. Such systems rely on the empathic and compliant nature of dependent individuals for manipulation and mind control. These psychological operations are totally ineffective if the subject sees through the presented reality to the darker agenda beneath — the story behind the story.

In this way, propaganda can be delivered as a mass public relations campaign, hidden in plain sight to manufacture consent. At this point, every single consensus narrative — on climate change, 9/11, the suffragette movement, war, HIV/AIDS, vaccination, and yes, today’s pandemic — is a smokescreen for deeper agendas that we have been strategically manipulated to accept. Strategic marketing campaigns are also behind the transformation that Bill Gates has enjoyed from a corrupt software engineer to a global philanthropist. It has been through philanthropocapitalistic infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars into the global media (including NPR, and even seemingly impartial “fact checking” organizations), that this reputation has been manufactured out of thin air generating a shared public perception that is divergent from if not antithetical to a lived private reality.

It is because of our unexamined traumas that we fail to critically think, question deeply, and see what is for the seeing. And the fear that these traumas keep active in our present day leads us to abdicate freedoms in exchange for the illusion of safety. We may never question whether the perceived danger originated with the very authority to which we have sacrificed our freedoms. This is why today, we see citizens self-quarantining, policing their neighbors, and begging for a vaccine. Create a problem, agitate the public, and offer a solution that would not have been easily introduced without the previous two steps.

Transitioning paradigms: waking up to adulthood

There is a narrative that is predicated on the belief that things are what they seem to be, or what we see is what it is: the President is an elected official and he makes decisions on our behalf and does the best he can to manage competing interests in service of his party’s priorities or that with our current political party system using elections, that we actually have a choice. There is also an underlying belief that government exists to serve the best interests of the people. There is a belief that our current medical system is a scientifically based care delivery approach that organizes itself around saving lives with safe and effective pharmaceuticals. And yet another belief that the mainstream media may be a bit biased in one direction or another, but is generally reporting on actual events as they unfold and that those who may be censored in the news or social media are disseminating harmful and dangerous information; so if they are censored, justice has been served and people were protected by the censorship. In this worldview, the government is at best, bumbling but functional in its role as protector of the people, and systemic problems are par for the course given the amount of people they are trying to serve and room for human error; and at worst, financially motivated, but not organized or malevolent.

And if our inherent belief is that there are no “bad” people in power, as defined by a significant privation of morality, and that there is a basic order of fairness to our world where justice evens out power imbalances, we will seek out information, people and sources to reflect that belief, and we will feel discomfort when presented with a contrary narrative. Likewise, if our values reflect a sense of benevolence and kindness then we will assume in a very naïve and egocentric way that everyone operates with kindness, maybe doing some harm unintentionally, but really doing the best they can, even when we are faced with opposing facts.

But for many, at some point, the perspective of the idealized authority ceases to align with a personal, lived experience, and our true selves begin to rattle the cage. This process represents, for many, the death of the former self, of familiar reality, and of all that is known.

We slide down the rabbit hole of critical thinking, and we see a the mainstream orthodoxy as reflective of agendas that are highly designed, intentionally deceptive, and strategically organized, whether by extraterrestrial vampires, the deep state elite, or the medical or military industrial complexes, and that reality is anything but what we have been told it is. In this narrative there is a deep conviction that morality has no place in politics and that power and advancement should be sought using any means necessary, no matter the lives lost or people harmed, the overall agenda of the ruling is the objective. There are layers and layers of information and ever deepening realities that begin to reveal a plan hidden in plain sight as in the widely accessible “possible scenarios” Lockstep 2010 document  and Agenda 2030, that reveal an intent to subjugate the human species into a new global governance structure (i.e., new world order), welfare state dependencies, real-time total surveillance and tracking, and biomedically delivered slavery.

And with this awakening to truth, you begin to see all of the ways in which you have supported, condoned, and permitted the parentified controller to manipulate you. It’s as if you are a 45 year old woman living at your parents’ house; and they abuse you, physically, emotionally, and verbally; they starve you, and control you; and you feel that you don’t have a choice to live on your own because you’d be homeless otherwise. Is that really the truth? What if the most incredible life awaits you just outside of your choice to self-emancipate? This narrative cuts cords with the belief that health and “safety” is anyone’s responsibility but our own. It leaves us with this: own your self, govern your self, and learn how to love your self so that we can finally honor one another and this planet.

Why it’s time to bring your shadow into the light

And we wait with the house of our civil liberties being burnt down right in front of us because first and foremost we have an aversion to looking not only at the darkness outside of us, but inside of us as well. This denial and lack of acknowledgement helps fuel the fire of our house burning down, as Martin Luther King said, “For evil to succeed, all it needs is for good men to do nothing.”

If you are ready to resolve your cognitive dissonance by stepping into awareness, it will be imperative that you resist the temptation to run victim stories around all that you discover. When you finally see beneath the veil of the manipulation, mind control, deceit, and social engineering that renders us dependent on a system that cares not for our well-being…this awareness can lead to rage, fear, indignation and a kind of demonization that ultimate keeps us donating our energy to the very source of our potential victimization.

So how do we hold this new awareness with sovereignty?

You recognize that the feelings have been there since childhood. They are not new, and they are not even necessarily about anything happening in the world today. So learning how to hold those feelings, release, and transform them can allow you to engage with equanimity and compassion. It allows you to remain self-possessed.

It’s possible that in this moment in time, our shadows are coming to light, meaning we are experiencing opportunities to see where and how we might be holding the very same energy of those we judge and condemn. We are seeing what we are capable of doing when we don’t know what we are capable of doing…in other words, the ways in which we unconsciously derive a sense of power through our need to be right, be in control, control others, and to otherwise imagine that we are important or superior to anyone else. When we look at these areas of our life and relationship (wherever there is conflict in one’s life), we will be given the opportunity to own it or deny it. When we own it, we see that the “enemies” in power are representatives of the suppressed parts of our collective and individual unconscious — the darkness of will within each of us that is disconnected from the heart. And we can simply choose to stop feeding that unconsciousness by remaining, always in our heart space as we allow our awareness to expand and expand and expand.

Travel Tips

How do you know what’s real and what’s not? When your body gets clear, it tells you the truth. You feel it as a quiet, uncharged knowing, often in the depths of your gut. The truth never feels like fear or urgency, so let the emotions alchemize and then check in.

Who do you trust? Trust can be a donation of personal power, a vector of dependency, and a path to unconscious attachment. What if you treat everyone as if you don’t trust them, or everyone as if you do? What if you never give something away that is contingent upon the person you are giving it to protecting you in a way that you can’t protect yourself? This way, we remain centered in our own agency, relating as individuals without undo merger, but with listening ears and open hearts.

Does your truth matter or is that just ego? It may be an important time in human history to voice your truth. A time to dismantle the illusion that only experts get to speak. So do your research, find your voice, and share it without needing anyone to agree with you or even support you. Recognizing that it may be only your truth, and that it still matters even if it is.

What role does hope play? There is no savior on a white horse. No doctor, politician, president who is going to make everything alright. This is an inside job for each of us. It is time to adult, step into our power, resolve our internal and external conflicts with radical self-acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness, and begin to explore what it would be to recognize that the system isn’t broken, it was made this way. Can we move beyond external forms of governance and the illusion that we need to be protected? That we don’t know how to care for and heal ourselves? It may be time to find out, but it requires giving up all hope of salvation from the outside, and finding that deep faith, trust, and vigilant commitment to policing and governing oneself.

The truth is that we wake up when we are ready, and not one second sooner. And as we do, we’ll need each other to walk the path into the wild unknown to the experience of freedom, joy, and simple beauty that has always been our birthright.

 

References:

The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction

By Robert J. Burrowes

The global elite is conducting a coup that is designed to destroy all of the key elements of human society. It is doing this by destroying the essence of what it means to be human, by destroying the nature of existing human relationships, and by destroying the political, economic and social institutions of nation states.

Intentionally or otherwise, the elite coup is also fast-tracking four paths to human extinction.

If this coup succeeds, the human individual will have been reduced to a digitized identity who lives in a ‘techno tyranny’ serving the global elite or Homo Sapiens will be extinct. There is no third option unless we can defeat the coup and stop key structures and processes being put into place.

Do we have long? According to some scholars, as explained below, Homo Sapiens is already ‘functionally extinct’. If this is the case, only a monumental global effort can give us even a remote chance of surviving.

Sound implausible? Preposterous even? Let me offer you the evidence to support the scenario presented above with some brief reiteration to begin followed by more elaborate explanation of the paths to extinction.

And, if you are up for the fight to try to avert this outcome, I have outlined a range of options, designed to have strategic impact, for your involvement.

Destroying the Human Individual

Many authors have explained how vital rights and freedoms that our predecessors fought for decades or even centuries to win have been wiped away in one fell swoop by government responses to COVID-19 – for a summary, see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’ – and how, if it comes to pass, the compulsory vaccination along with the digital certificate that will go with it will leave us as nothing more than robotized organisms monitored and controlled by the elite’s agents.

For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr has explained in ‘Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination’:

Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.

Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.

Former World Bank economist Peter Koenig in The Farce and Diabolical Agenda of A “Universal Lockdown” identifies some parts of the program:

A massive vaccination program, probably through compulsory vaccination – Bill Gates’ dream and brainchild is vaccinating 7 billion people.

Massive population reduction, a eugenics plan – in part through vaccination and other means:… Bill Gates, ‘if we are doing a real good job vaccinating, we may reduce the world population by 10% to 15%’. See ‘Innovating to Zero!’….

An electronic ID for every person on the planet – in the form of a nano chip, possibly injected along with the mandatory vaccination. This nano-chip could be remotely uploaded with all personal data.

But even more importantly, in a recent article Professor Vandana Shiva evocatively explains why the world patent granted by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) to Microsoft on 26 March 2020 titled ‘1. WO2020060606 – Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data’, gives Microsoft (that is, Bill Gates) extraordinary power over our lives and is ‘robbing us of our deep humanity’. In essence:

‘The patent is dramatically changing the meaning of being human…. It is redefining us as ‘mines’ for data – robbing us of our autonomy, our sovereignty, and control over our bodies and minds…. It is erasing our humanity – as sovereign, living beings, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings, making our decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part; and to which we are inextricably related. We are being reduced to being ‘users’ of tasks assigned to us by the extractive digital mega machine. A ‘user’ is a consumer without choice in the digital empire. Human creativity and consciousness disappear in the world imagined in #patent060606.’ See ‘My Earth Journey in defence of Biodiversity, Life and Freedom over 5 decades’.

Destroying Human Society

Simultaneously with the destruction of the human individual, however, many authors have described how the nature of human relationships is being transformed and the political, economic and social structures and processes previously characteristic of national societies are being removed in favor of versions that enable a vastly greater degree of elite control.

Here is a sample of how astute authors describe what is happening politically, economically and/or socially based on the compelling evidence they provide.

Chris Hedges in ‘The Treason of the Ruling Class’:

The ruling elites no longer have legitimacy. They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a mafia state. What the Roman philosopher Cicero called a commonwealth, a res publica, a ‘public thing’ or the ‘property of a people,’ has been transformed into an instrument of naked pillage and repression on behalf of a global corporate oligarchy. We are serfs ruled by obscenely rich, omnipotent masters who loot the U.S. Treasury, pay little or no taxes and have perverted the judiciary, the media and the legislative branches of government to strip us of civil liberties and give them the freedom to commit financial fraud and theft.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky in ‘Global Capitalism, “World Government” and the Corona Crisis’:

The World is being misled concerning the causes and consequences of the corona crisis. The COVID-19 crisis… is being used as a pretext and a justification to triggering a Worldwide process of economic, social and political restructuring. Social engineering is being applied…. What is happening is unprecedented in World history.

A new stage in the evolution of global capitalism is unfolding…. National governments become subordinate to “Global Governance”. The Global Governance scenario imposes a totalitarian agenda of social engineering and economic compliance… It consists in scrapping ‘national autodetermination’ and constructing a Worldwide nexus of pro-US proxy regimes controlled by a ‘supranational sovereignty’ (World Government) composed of leading financial institutions, billionaires and their philanthropic foundations.

The crisis redefines the structure of the global economic landscape. Let’s be clear. This is an imperial agenda. What do the global financial elites want? To privatize the State? To own and privatize the entire planet?

Whitney Webb in Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision examines a great deal of evidence to draw her conclusion:

Like major crises of the past, the national security state appears to be using the chaos and fear to promote and implement initiatives that would be normally rejected by [citizens] and, if history is any indicator, these new changes will remain long after the coronavirus crisis fades from the news cycle. It is essential that these so-called “solutions” be recognized for what they are and that we consider what type of world they will end up creating – an authoritarian technocracy.

And, since the brutal police killing of George Floyd in the United States on 25 May, US constitutional attorney and author of Battlefield America: The War On the American People, John W. Whitehead has warned in ‘This Is Not a Revolution. It’s a Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation’:

The looting, the burning, the rioting, the violence: this is an anti-revolution. The protesters are playing right into the government’s hands, because the powers-that-be want this. They want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law. They want a reason to make the police state stronger. It’s happening faster than we can keep up.

Kurt Nimmo in his article George Floyd Endgame: Martial Law and a Police State: COVID was the first act’ notes that:

Rampaging ‘anarchists’ – many undoubtedly agent provocateurs – are not interested in justice, fairness, nonviolence, and peaceful dialogue. They are providing a pretext to usher in a fascist police state.

This state of affairs will be exploited to call for a clampdown on political dissent. COVID ‘contact tracing’ is now being used to track down activists and those associated with them. Facial recognition is used to find targeted individuals in crowds. From the start, I said this supposed public safety gimmick would be used to isolate and destroy peaceful activism. 

If the chaos continues, there will be citizen demands for law and order…. Officials will argue that the ongoing destruction and violence can only be contained by the military.

Moreover, as Shenali D. Waduge pointed out in her article ‘George Floyd Murder Enflames US. America Is a Failed State’:

The death has also brought to the focus and exposed the double standards of the UNHRC/international human rights organizations and other righteous mouthpieces who remain mum…. 5 days since the murder of George Floyd and not a single statement or condemnation by international entities.

Having noted the above however, it is worth pointing out that most of the people protesting the police murder of George Floyd have been nonviolent (about which I will write more below). But if you would like to better understand the psychology of racist violence, see ‘Why are all those Racists so Terrified?’ and for psychological insight into the pervasive police violence in the United States, see ‘Why are Police in the USA so Terrified?’

But while the global elite is intent on destroying us as individuals as well as destroying the societies in which we have lived, the coup has also accelerated each of the four primary paths to human extinction.

Fast-Tracking the Four Paths to Human Extinction

I have previously explained the four distinct paths to imminent human extinction (that is, within five years), making laughable the elite-driven narrative that we have until 2030 or even 2050 to avert it. I have also explained the three other possible paths to extinction in the near term, particularly when considered in conjunction with the four primary threats, as well as the path to extinction that looms before us when we consider the impact of all seven of these paths in combination with the vast range of other threats to Earth’s biosphere. See ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’.

These interrelated threats have generated a shocking series of ‘points of no return’ (‘tipping points’) that we have already crossed, a mutually reinforcing set of negative feedback loops that we have already triggered (and which we will continue to trigger) which cannot be reversed in the short-term, as well as the ongoing synergistic impact of the various ‘extinction drivers’ (such as ongoing extinctions because dependent species have lost their resource species) we have set in motion and which cannot be halted irrespective of any remedial action we might take. Hence, taking into account all of the above factors, the prospects of averting human extinction are now remote, at best.

Given these ongoing threats, coupled with the latest threats to our essential humanity and political freedom posed by measures being taken during the elite coup, I have also explained the vital importance of defending our humanity and this political freedom from these latest threats if we are to have any prospect of even fighting for our own survival. See ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for Our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future’.

In essence then, the elite coup being conducted under ‘cover’ of the fake virus known as COVID-19 – see ‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the Coronavirus Pandemic’ – has not only facilitated a dramatic acceleration in the process of destroying what remains of the human individual and society, it has also fast-tracked each of the four primary paths to imminent human extinction. Let me briefly elaborate this and explain why it is happening.

Nuclear War

In his 2017 book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, former US nuclear war planner Daniel Ellsberg described the architecture of the nuclear doomsday machine. It is not just the horrifically destructive fission and fusion weapons but the entire framework of the arsenal, from fallible and institutionalized human beings in ‘command’ to antiquated computer systems built in the 1970s and 1980s with thousands of these weapons on hair-trigger alert.

The formal reason, which doesn’t account for the informal reasons such as luck or clear thinking in a panicked situation – see ‘“I was just doing my job”: Soviet officer who averted nuclear war dies at age 77’ – that these weapons have not been used is the nuclear arms control regime that was laboriously built during the Cold War but from which the US has progressively retreated, successively withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the ‘Iran nuclear deal’) and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (which limited the deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons) in 2018.

The US government has also unilaterally signaled its intention to further dismantle treaties that contain the threat of nuclear war by acting in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 by establishing its ‘Space Force’ as a new branch of the US military – see ‘US Making Outer Space the Next Battle Zone – Karl Grossman’ – and demonstrating its disinterest in extending New START: the sole remaining restraint on U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals that caps deployed offensive strategic nuclear weapons to no more than 1,550 each. See ‘Global Zero Urges Trump to Accept Putin’s Offer on Nuclear Treaty’.

Not content with progressively increasing the risk of nuclear war in recent years, the US government has used the COVID-19 coup as an opportunity to ‘sabre (that is, nuclear weapons) rattle’ with Russia and China by considering detonating a nuclear weapon, which would be the first such ‘test’ by the US since 1992. See Trump the Peace Candidate? This President Abhors International Treaties and ‘Trump apparently wants a nuclear test. It could be bad for your health’.

In another provocation, the US government has also announced it will withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, signed in 1992. See ‘The Open Skies Treaty at a Glance’ and ‘Pompeo Announces Open Skies Withdrawal’.

And demonstrating it is not passive in response to these initiatives, the Russian government has declared it will now consider using nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack in particular circumstances including a conventional strike targeting the nation’s critical government and military infrastructure. See ‘Russia OKs Use of Nukes in Response to Non-Nuclear Attacks’.

If you believe that nuclear war is ‘unthinkable’, earlier this year (and taking into account the climate catastrophe), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight, closer to midnight than it was even during the height of the Cold War. See ‘Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight’.

So three developments that elevate the risk of nuclear war that each took place with less scrutiny than might have occurred otherwise – the discussed detonation of a US nuclear weapon, US withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty and the Russian decision to respond to a conventional attack on certain infrastructure with nuclear weapons – have all occurred under cover of the COVID-19 coup.

If you would like a reminder of the frequency with which we have already subjected Earth and its species to radioactive contamination by exploding nuclear weapons, watch Isao Hashimoto’s ‘A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945’.

Deployment of 5G

Also under cover of the COVID-19 coup, the extinction-threatening 5G is now being rapidly deployed in many parts of the world although there is considerable resistance to it by those who are aware of its dangers. This resistance ranges from nonviolent actions (starting with people giving up their mobile phones) to international appeals and legal challenges to its deployment.

If you are not familiar with the danger of microwave radiation to human and planetary health, you can read an explanation by Arthur Firstenberg in ‘Planetary Emergency’ or a more detailed explanation in his book The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life.

In brief, however: the global electrical circuit, which sustains all life, is now being seriously disturbed.

What is the global electrical circuit? How is it being disturbed? Here is a brief explanation:

The global electrical circuit flows through the earth, up to the sky in thunderstorms, through the ionosphere, and back down to earth through the atmosphere and through our bodies. See ‘Planetary Emergency’.

All animals and plants are polarized positive to negative from head to feet, or from leaves to roots. An electric current of picowatt per square meter amplitude flows from the positively charged sky to the negatively charged earth in fair weather, courses through the earth beneath our feet, and returns to the sky via lightning bolts during thunderstorms. Every living thing is part of this circuit. The current enters our heads from the sky, circulates through our meridians, and enters the earth through the soles of our feet. This current provides the energy for growth, healing, and life itself. We do not live by bread alone, but by the energy provided to us by the biosphere. Oriental medicine calls it qi or ki, Ayurvedic medicine calls it prana, and atmospheric physicists call it electricity. It provides us energy for life, and information that organizes our bodies. If you pollute this circuit with billions of digital pulsations, you will destroy all life. See ‘Putting the Earth Inside a High-Speed Computer’.

The strength of the atmospheric electrical current is between 1 and 10 picoamperes (trillionths of an ampere) per square meter. Dr. Robert Becker found that 1 picoampere is all the current that is necessary to stimulate healing in frogs…. It is these tiny currents that keep us alive and healthy. See ‘Planetary Emergency’.

Despite its enormous health hazards and implications for intrusive surveillance, which are extensively documented – for recent articles which also cite some of the wider evidence, see 5G: “The End of All Things”. The Health Impacts of Electromagnetic Radiation and How Big Wireless Lobbied Governments to Build 5G for Citizen Data Collection and Surveillance – the deployment of 5G has now started. For example, the Elon Musk corporation SpaceX has already launched 600 ‘first generation’ (‘Gen1’) satellites into Space and is planning to launch another 60 every two weeks into the ionosphere. Again: ‘The ionosphere is a source of high voltage that controls the global electric circuit, which in turn provides the energy for life.’ However, on 26 May 2020, SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission in the United States for 30,000 ‘next-generation’ (‘Gen2’) satellites.

‘If and when Starlink signs up millions of paying customers, it is possible that nothing will survive – no humans, no animals, and no insects. It is likely that it will be blamed on COVID-19, unless this world wakes up in time.’

On 23 March 2020, the ‘Secure 5G and Beyond Act of 2020’ became law in the United States. See Secure 5G and Beyond Act of 2020. It’s purpose?

To require the President [within 180 days] to develop a strategy to ensure the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems and infrastructure in the United States and to assist allies and strategic partners in maximizing the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems, infrastructure, and software, and for other purposes.

Given the military and surveillance implications of 5G, if you think that governments are particularly concerned to investigate and consider the extensive evidence of the enormous hazards of 5G, you might find it sobering to read the dismissive three paragraphs given to the subject in the European Parliament’s official report on 5G. See 5G Deployment: State of Play in Europe, USA and Asia’.

Nevertheless, the resistance to 5G is rapidly gaining pace. For example, you can see a ‘List of Cities, Towns, Councils and Countries that have Banned 5G’.

And if you wish to join those resisting the deployment of 5G, options include signing the International Appeal: Stop 5G on Earth and in Space, supporting legal challenges such as this one in Denmark – see ‘State of Play and Danish Suing FiveG Network’ – and simply getting rid of your mobile (cell) phone. See ‘Cancel Your Cellphone Account Day, 20-21 June 2020’.

Biodiversity Collapse

In 2010, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, noted that ‘What we are seeing today is a total disaster…. No country has met its targets to protect nature. We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.’ In the same year, the UN Environment Programme observed that ‘the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life. Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate.’ Moreover, according to many biologists, the extinction rate ‘is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago.’ See ‘Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief’.

By 2017, Professor Gerardo Ceballos and his colleagues had extensively documented the ‘biological annihilation’ that humans were precipitating on Earth:

‘Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions…. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction … using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species.

Their data revealed that ‘beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ See ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’.

However, in their latest paper Professor Ceballos and his colleagues provide further evidence of the ongoing biological annihilation and what it means for ecosystem functioning while documenting the complicating factors that have arisen during the COVID-19 crisis.

‘Even though only an estimated 2% of all of the species that ever lived are alive today, the absolute number of species is greater now than ever before. It was into such a biologically diverse world that we humans evolved, and such a world that we are destroying…. Millions of populations have vanished in the last 100 years…. The reason so many species are being pushed to extinction by anthropogenic causes is indicated by humans and their domesticated animals being some 30 times the living mass of all of the wild mammals that must compete with them for space and resources’. But, Dr Ceballos adds: ‘Many of the species endangered or at the brink of extinction are being decimated by the legal and illegal wildlife trade.’ See ‘Vertebrates on the brink’.

Of course, as has been extensively documented, while people in countries such as China, the United States and various European nations drive the demand for wildlife, it is filled by poverty-stricken people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America who capture wildlife to trade, eat or sell as bushmeat. And for those people for whom the COVID-19 crisis eliminated other economic survival options, capturing wildlife for trade or food was one backup survival option which simply accelerated the rush to extinction for some species.

You can watch a video of Professor Ceballos and read more about the extinction crisis at Stop Extinctions.

But, in essence, the only way to slow, and halt, the collapsing biodiversity on Earth is to substantially reduce our consumption so that the insects, animals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and plants of planet Earth have the habitat they need to survive.

Climate Catastrophe

Given that Earth passed 2°C above the 1750 (preindustrial) baseline in February 2020 – see ‘Crossing the Paris Agreement thresholds’ and ‘2°C crossed’ – and that carbon dioxide emissions generate ‘maximum warming’ about one decade after the emission actually occurred – see ‘Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission’ – ‘the full warming wrath of the carbon dioxide emissions over the past ten years is still to come’. See ‘2°C crossed’.

Moreover, given that the CO2 level in the atmosphere is already ‘higher than it has been for millions of years’ and temperatures are ‘rising at ever faster speed as the rise in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere is accelerating’ it is arguably the case that human beings are already ‘functionally extinct’, that is, they are ‘threatened to be wiped out by a catastrophe that appears to be both imminent and inescapable’. See ‘Arctic Ocean February 2020’.

However, while the global industrial shutdown has temporarily reduced emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, it has also significantly reduced the aerosol masking effect generated by burning fossil fuels as explained by Professor Guy McPherson in his recently-published paper ‘Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?’

Coincident with industrial activity adding to greenhouse gases that warm the planet, industrial activity simultaneously cools the planet by adding aerosols to the atmosphere. These aerosols block incoming sunlight, thereby keeping cool our pale blue dot. Reducing industrial activity by as little as 35 percent is expected to cause a global-average temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius within a few weeks, according to research on the aerosol masking effect…. The ongoing reduction in industrial activity as a result of COVID-19 almost certainly leads to loss of habitat for human animals, hence putting us on the fast track to human extinction.

Even worse, as Professor McPherson notes in a subsequent paper, because there is ‘no known means to rapidly stabilize or cool the temperature of Earth… [and] temperatures lethal for humans already have been reported, despite climate-change models indicating that such an event would not occur until the middle of the current century’ – see ‘The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance’ – and because even the slow rate of temperature rise assumed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outstrips the adaptive response of vertebrates by a factor of 10,000 times meaning that ‘mammals cannot evolve rapidly enough to escape the current extinction crisis’, the ‘reduction in industrial activity that resulted from the ongoing pandemic might have already reduced the aerosol masking effect sufficiently to trigger a 1 C spike in global-average temperature’ thus triggering ‘the rapid extinction of all life on Earth’. See ‘Earth is in the Midst of Abrupt, Irreversible Climate Change’.

In plain English, human extinction – and possibly the extinction of all life on Earth – might already be guaranteed.

How has this all happened?

‘How has this all happened?’ you might ask. And, unfortunately, the answer is ‘All too simply’. With an insane global elite and a human population that is, on the whole, fearfully and submissively obedient, there hasn’t even been a real fight. Hence, the global elite’s insane and longstanding conspiracy to take much greater control of our lives proceeds apace while driving us all to the brink of extinction in the process.

If you would like to read more about the origin of the fearful obedience of most humans, see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for Our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future’.

And if you would like to better understand the origin, identity and insane behaviour of the global elite, see the section headed ‘How the World Works’ in ‘Why Activists Fail’ as well as the articles ‘Exposing the Giants: The Global Power Elite’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ along with 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.

So what can we do about all of this?

A Nonviolent Strategy to Fight for our Humanity, Liberty and Future

Many people, including authors cited above, have decried the violence by some that has broken out in response to the police murder of African-American George Floyd (by a white policeman who has killed and gone unpunished before: see ‘As Chief Prosecutor, Klobuchar Declined to Bring Charges Against Cop that Killed George Floyd’) and which has captured most corporate media attention.

Of course, a considerable amount of this violence (both against people and property) is initiated by police and their provocateurs to discredit those people peacefully protesting against Floyd’s murder. For a thorough and documented report, see ‘Agent Provocateurs: Police at Protests All Over the Country Caught Destroying Property’.

As another commentator noted in relation to the United States: ‘It came as no surprise that local and state officials across the US reacted to largely peaceful, spontaneous mass protests against police brutality and racism by unleashing a maelstrom of militarized police violence. For a generation, the Federal government has been quietly gifting huge stocks of surplus military equipment, including tanks, to local police forces and sheriff’s offices eager to play with lethal new toys designed for counter-insurgency.’ See ‘Ten Days that May Have Changed the World’.

But some of the violence is also being instigated by those associated with groups that have a very different agenda. These range from white racist groups – see ‘Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists’ – to antifascist groups like Antifa – see ‘What is Antifa?’ – who, as explained above and also pointed out by Timothy Alexander Guzman, ‘has given more ammunition for the establishment to enforce a total police state.’ See ‘US Police Forces Are Trained by Israel: The Knee-On-Neck Tactic That Was Used On George Floyd Is The Same Tactic That Has Been Used on the Palestinians’.

However, whatever the political motivation for their violence, none of these racist or antifascist groups has a coherent analysis or strategy for worthwhile fundamental change in society and can only provoke a response from authorities that would achieve the opposite of what they want, whether it be an authoritarian technocracy, police state or martial law. See ‘War on Antifa: As Trump vows to declare it a “Terrorist Group”, AG Barr equates rioting to domestic terrorism’.

Moreover, we would be unwise to attribute much credit to those former and serving US military leaders, including the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are speaking in defense of ‘the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly’. See ‘Message to the Joint Force [re George Floyd protests]’. When it really matters, however, it is highly likely that virtually all senior military personnel will be called into line and it will depend largely on those in lower ranks to find the conscience and courage to resist their superiors in trying to contain resistance to the coup.

So if we are going to use this crisis, in all of its dimensions, as an opportunity to fight for our individuality, our society and our future, then we are going to need to do some things very differently and do them in a way that makes a strategic difference. Otherwise, we have a very bleak future or none at all.

Depending on your interests and circumstances, here is a range of suggestions that will each make an important difference.

If you wish to address your own emotional health issues preceding or arising from the COVID-19 coup and to become more powerful in the process, consider Putting Feelings First’. If you wish to support others, including children, to become more powerful, see ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

Vitally importantly, you might also like to consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ which will include considering what an education for your children means to you, particularly if you want powerful individuals who can stand up to the violence being inflicted on us at the moment. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

In relation to the coup itself, I have identified the appropriate political purpose – obviously ‘To defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite’ – and set out a basic list of (now) 28 strategic goals for achieving this purpose (which will also play a vital role in tackling key threats to human survival). The first thirteen of these strategic goals are as follows (and you are welcome to consider those you will do yourself and how you, either as an individual or part of a group, might help to mobilize others to do so too):

(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, Google, 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 refusing to download the COVID-19 ‘contact tracing’ surveillance app.

(4) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by ending their ownership and use of a mobile (cell) phone. See ‘EchoEarth: End Cell Phones on Earth’ and ‘Cancel Your Cellphone Account Day, 20-21 June 2020’.

(5) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by withdrawing all funds from the corporate banks and depositing their money in local community banks or credit unions.

(6) 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’.)

(7) 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.

(8) 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’.

(9) 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.

(10) 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.

(11) 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.

(12) 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].

(13) 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].

You can read all 28 of 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, as well as articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, such as those to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our ‘deep humanity’, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as the examples I cite in the thirteen strategic goals above illustrate). Hence, three further considerations assume importance.

First, choose/design tactics that have strategic impact, that is, they fundamentally and permanently alter, in our favor, the power relationship between the elite and us.

Second, when tactical choices are made, focus them on undermining the elite coup, not just features of it, such as ‘social distancing’ or the lockdowns. At its most basic, this can be achieved by using tactical choices that mobilize people to act initially, as is happening, but then inviting them to consider taking further, more focused, action as well (such as those nominated in the 28 strategic goals listed or referenced above). This is important because existing actions will have little impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution, which includes reducing us to a ‘digital identity’.

Third, choose/design tactics that also have strategic impact on the greatest threats to human survival, including the collapsing biodiversity on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and the deployment of 5G. Given the incredibly short timeframe in which we are now working to avert human extinction, while people are mobilizing it is important to use this opportunity to give them the chance to perceive the ‘big picture’ of what is taking place – beyond lockdowns and other measures supposedly being used to tackle COVID-19 – and to act powerfully in response.

Equally importantly, the Nonviolent Strategy website explains how to prepare, frame and conduct any nonviolent action to minimize the risk of violent repression and to contain any risk of damage to our cause by association with, or disruption by, those groups and provocateurs with a very different and possibly violent agenda. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns and resist the coup will gather pace. As I have previously outlined, using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural, religious 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.

In addition, as I mentioned above, given the pressing (and, possibly, now uncontainable) threat of human extinction 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 accelerated participation in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth.

And for those nonviolent activists concerned about preventing nuclear war, stopping the deployment of 5G, halting the collapse of biodiversity or the climate catastrophe, and ending other threats to human survival – including those in relation to the environment and war – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Strategic Aims.

Or, for those who want something simpler, 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 ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
  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 own or use a mobile (cell) phone
  8. I will not buy rainforest timber
  9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Some people will no doubt shy away from the analysis above. To those unfamiliar with elite politics, it might indeed sound preposterous. Surely, some might think, this is a ‘conspiracy theory’.

And you are right. See ‘In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer)’.

This is because the evidence that there is a great deal wrong with the world, and that a select group of people, some identifiable, some less easily so, have orchestrated these events over an extended period of time is overwhelming. Even if the emotional and behavioural dysfunctionalities of most people have made it easy for them.

So I encourage you to have a ponder. There is a great deal at stake at this time. A human future, no 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.

 

Four Reasons Civilization Won’t Decline: It Will Collapse

By Craig Collins

Source: CounterPunch

As modern civilization’s shelf life expires, more scholars have turned their attention to the decline and fall of civilizations past.  Their studies have generated rival explanations of why societies collapse and civilizations die.  Meanwhile, a lucrative market has emerged for post-apocalyptic novels, movies, TV shows, and video games for those who enjoy the vicarious thrill of dark, futuristic disaster and mayhem from the comfort of their cozy couch.  Of course, surviving the real thing will become a much different story.

The latent fear that civilization is living on borrowed time has also spawned a counter-market of “happily ever after” optimists who desperately cling to their belief in endless progress.  Popular Pollyannas, like cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, provide this anxious crowd with soothing assurances that the titanic ship of progress is unsinkable.  Pinker’s publications have made him the high priest of progress.[1] While civilization circles the drain, his ardent audiences find comfort in lectures and books brimming with cherry-picked evidence to prove that life is better than ever, and will surely keep improving.  Yet, when questioned, Pinker himself admits, “It’s incorrect to extrapolate that the fact that we’ve made progress is a prediction that we’re guaranteed to make progress.”[2]

Pinker’s rosy statistics cleverly disguise the fatal flaw in his argument.  The progress of the past was built by sacrificing the future—and the future is upon us.  All the happy facts he cites about living standards, life expectancy, and economic growth are the product of an industrial civilization that has pillaged and polluted the planet to produce temporary progress for a growing middle class—and enormous profits and power for a tiny elite.

Not everyone who understands that progress has been purchased at the expense of the future thinks that civilization’s collapse will be abrupt and bitter.  Scholars of ancient societies, like Jared Diamond and John Michael Greer, accurately point out that abrupt collapse is a rare historical phenomenon.  In The Long Descent, Greer assures his readers that, “The same pattern repeats over and over again in history.  Gradual disintegration, not sudden catastrophic collapse, is the way civilizations end.”  Greer estimates that it takes, on average, about 250 years for civilizations to decline and fall, and he finds no reason why modern civilization shouldn’t follow this “usual timeline.”[3]

But Greer’s assumption is built on shaky ground because industrial civilization differs from all past civilizations in four crucial ways.  And every one of them may accelerate and intensify the coming collapse while increasing the difficulty of recovery.

Difference #1:  Unlike all previous civilizations, modern industrial civilization is powered by an exceptionally rich, NON-renewable, and irreplaceable energy source—fossil fuels.  This unique energy base predisposes industrial civilization to a short, meteoric lifespan of unprecedented boom and drastic bust.  Megacities, globalized production, industrial agriculture, and a human population approaching 8 billion are all historically exceptional—and unsustainable—without fossil fuels.  Today, the rich easily exploited oilfields and coalmines of the past are mostly depleted.  And, while there are energy alternatives, there are no realistic replacements that can deliver the abundant net energy fossil fuels once provided.[4]  Our complex, expansive, high-speed civilization owes its brief lifespan to this one-time, rapidly dwindling energy bonanza.

Difference #2:  Unlike past civilizations, the economy of industrial society is capitalist.  Production for profit is its prime directive and driving force.  The unprecedented surplus energy supplied by fossil fuels has generated exceptional growth and enormous profits over the past two centuries.  But in the coming decades, these historic windfalls of abundant energy, constant growth, and rising profits will vanish.

However, unless it is abolished, capitalism will not disappear when boom turns to bust.  Instead, energy-starved, growth-less capitalism will turn catabolic.  Catabolismrefers to the condition whereby a living thing devours itself.  As profitable sources of production dry up, capitalism will be compelled to turn a profit by consuming the social assets it once created.  By cannibalizing itself, the profit motive will exacerbate industrial society’s dramatic decline.

Catabolic capitalism will profit from scarcity, crisis, disaster, and conflict.  Warfare, resource hoarding, ecological disaster, and pandemic diseases will become the big profit makers.  Capital will flow toward lucrative ventures like cybercrime, predatory lending, and financial fraud; bribery, corruption, and racketeering; weapons, drugs, and human trafficking.  Once disintegration and destruction become the primary source of profit, catabolic capitalism will rampage down the road to ruin, gorging itself on one self-inflicted disaster after another.[5]

Difference #3:  Unlike past societies, industrial civilization isn’t Roman, Chinese, Egyptian, Aztec, or Mayan.  Modern civilization is HUMAN, PLANETARY, and ECOCIDAL.  Pre-industrial civilizations depleted their topsoil, felled their forests, and polluted their rivers.  But the harm was far more temporary and geographically limited. Once market incentives harnessed the colossal power of fossil fuels to exploit nature, the dire results were planetary.  Two centuries of fossil fuel combustion have saturated the biosphere with climate-altering carbon that will continue wreaking havoc for generations to come.  The damage to Earth’s living systems—the circulation and chemical composition of the atmosphere and the ocean; the stability of the hydrological and biogeochemical cycles; and the biodiversity of the entire planet—is essentially permanent.

Humans have become the most invasive species ever known.  Although we are a mere .01 percent of the planet’s biomass, our domesticated crops and livestock dominate life on Earth.  In terms of total biomass, 96 percent of all the mammals on Earth are livestock; only 4 percent are wild mammals.  Seventy percent of all birds are domesticated poultry, only 30 percent are wild.  About half the Earth’s wild animals are thought to have been lost in just the last 50 years.[6]  Scientists estimate that half of all remaining species will be extinct by the end of the century.[7] There are no more unspoiled ecosystems or new frontiers where people can escape the damage they’ve caused and recover from collapse.

Difference #4:  Human civilization’s collective capacity to confront its mounting crises is crippled by a fragmented political system of antagonistic nations ruled by corrupt elites who care more about power and wealth than people and the planet.  Humanity faces a perfect storm of converging global calamities.  Intersecting tribulations like climate chaos, rampant extinction, food and freshwater scarcity, poverty, extreme inequality, and the rise of global pandemics are rapidly eroding the foundations of modern life.

Yet, this fractious and fractured political system makes organizing and mounting a cooperative response nearly impossible.  And, the more catabolic industrial capitalism becomes, the greater the danger that hostile rulers will fan the flames of nationalism and go to war over scarce resources.  Of course, warfare is not new.  But modern warfare is so devastating, destructive, and toxic that little would remain in its aftermath.  This would be the final nail in civilization’s coffin.

Rising From the Ruins?

How people respond to the collapse of industrial civilization will determine how bad things get and what will replace it. The challenges are monumental.  They will force us to question our identities, our values, and our loyalties like no other experience in our history.  Who are we?  Are we, first and foremost, human beings struggling to raise our families, strengthen our communities, and coexist with the other inhabitants of Earth?  Or do our primary loyalties belong to our nation, our culture, our race, our ideology, or our religion?  Can we put the survival of our species and our planet first, or will we allow ourselves to become hopelessly divided along national, cultural, racial, religious, or party lines?

The eventual outcome of this great implosion is up for grabs.  Will we overcome denial and despair; kick our addiction to petroleum; and pull together to break the grip of corporate power over our lives?  Can we foster genuine democracy, harness renewable energy, reweave our communities, re-learn forgotten skills, and heal the wounds we’ve inflicted on the Earth?  Or will fear and prejudice drive us into hostile camps, fighting over the dwindling resources of a degraded planet?  The stakes could not be higher.

Notes.

[1] His books include: The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

[2] King, Darryn. “Steven Pinker on the Past, Present, and Future of Optimism” (OneZero, Jan 10, 2019) https://onezero.medium.com/steven-pinker-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-optimism-f362398c604b

[3] Greer, John Michael.  The Long Descent (New Society Publishers, 2008): 29.

[4] Heinberg, Richard. The End Of Growth. (New Society, 2011): 117.

[5] For more on catabolic capitalism see: Collins, Craig. “Catabolism: Capitalism’s Frightening Future,”CounterPunch (Nov. 1, 2018). https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/01/catabolism-capitalisms-frightening-future/

[6] Carrington, Damian. “New Study: Humans Just 0.01% Of All Life But Have Destroyed 83% Of Wild Mammals,” The Guardian (May 21, 2018). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study

[7] Ceballos, Ehrlich, Barnosky, Garcia, Pringle & Palmer. “Accelerated Modern Human-Induced Species Losses: Entering The 6th Mass Extinction,” Science Advances. (June 19, 2015). http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253

Revolution Is Inevitable and Necessary

By Jason Holland

Source: Dissident Voice

None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Bk. II, Ch. 5; source: Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Hamburger Ausgabe, Bd. 6 (Romane und Novellen I), dtv Verlag, München, 1982, p. 397 (II.5).

I keep plotting a revolution no one else seems to be interested in having. So be it. I’ll have my solitary revolution. There will be no pink hats, guillotines, or marches, just me and a bitter jaded middle finger saluting towards the firmaments in utter rejection of most what this society represents. Although I hold no lasting contempt for anyone in this society because I understand we all have fallen into cultural traps and have done things that we believed we had to do so that we could be accepted, or just to be allowed to sleep indoors somewhere and be fed; we’ve had to commodify and sell out pieces of ourselves to serve the desires of those in a system of power who sanction and control the flow of money backed by military forces and institutions of incarceration, and this way of being was set into motion a long time ago, but it doesn’t have to continue if that’s not what we really desire, but for right now it’s close to all we know.

So, it does seem a revolution of sorts is inevitable due to inequality reaching grotesque heights of avarice where there is no longer any excuse for the wealthy to hide behind in order to explain why it is they have so much and others have so little. However, this just emphasizes the point that this population is largely not wise enough yet to create a revolution worth having, because a more enlightened culture would have taken a stand a long time ago before things became an emergency. Every second we acquiesce to power and don’t push for something radically better we compound an already grim situation. Globally there seems to be a majority who don’t understand what it is to be free, they merely fight to be better treated servants. So it’s highly likely their coming revolution will be a flailing inchoate attempt at something marginally better than what is here now and won’t set out to correct much, if any, of the underlying structural problems.

Consequently, the odds are the revolution we’ll end up with will circle directly back to where we are now or worse in no time at all. But my critiques and frustrations are mine, not a concern for the coming revolution. I must remember it’s their revolution, not mine. I’m not invited to theirs — well, that’s not entirely true.  I just have to ignore most of what I believe to be true, then I’m invited. As things are, I have only a single pathetic pity party scheduled as an event to prove my revolution ever existed, but I should be appreciative of what I have and cease bemoaning what I do not.

So this is where I will make my stand. The beginning and likely end of my revolution of one. In reality my revolution is simply a rough translation through the English language describing my light of truth within, which I’ve gone to great pains to keep safe, dry, and burning from a clean source of fuel. Probably all done in futility except to selfishly inoculate my own mind from the lurking darkness of the culture cave; still, a lingering desire remains to light a path out for others to follow who have become stuck watching dark Platonic shadows flicker across the walls.

With that said, here’s the path I’m lighting with argumentation and I believe it to be a solid one.  We, as in the we consisting of the global middle/lower classes of the entire planet, aka the 99%, are not a free people now nor have ever truly been free while living in the bounds of a social hierarchy. While many a winsome word has been applied to parchment declaring this or that people free, unfortunately soon thereafter the founding document is handed over to record keepers to energize the narratives of posterity while the same ole domination and ownership-driven society meters out the same ole grind. The reward and punishment operant conditioning culture is uniformly applied and chosen specifically to keep people compliant, reactive, and rutted into perpetual business as usual subservience to authoritative forces.

Constitutions supply grandiose ideas which are undermined by underlying conditional legislature where the original words are made into feckless futile notions that allows the ruling authority to do all the draconian bullshit they’ve always done with prettier sounding words. The powers that be couch authoritarian ideas in language that sometimes sounds reasonable on the surface but ultimately leads people to a deleterious state of believing they are free when they are nothing close to any working definition of freedom. Freedom is a condition which is now only possible within our own minds, but our physical bodies are fodder for the whims of a class of people who clearly believe themselves superior to just about everyone else.

Those causing the most damage are simply playing out a cultural role that’s a legacy of deceit passed down from one generation to the next, and each falling prey to traps of chasing after things; endless shiny carrots on shiny sticks. And not just chasing, but lusting, demanding, an obsessive hedonistic pursuit wanting total ego domination at any macabre cost. Pure obsession with the chase. While irony sits on many of their own bookshelves as Melville’s whale tale of wisdom lies fallow and ignored serving only as bookcase filler to give guests the impression they’re well read.

The ego-driven mind thinks primarily in the language of temporal imperatives. Short term must do this, must do that kind of thinking where all thought is disseminated through a lens of self importance with agendas to accomplish to validate that self importance. And if it thinks itself important enough it will eventually see itself as messianic. After they have assumed role of savior it’s just logically congruent that the ruling class allocate all the resources they desire for themselves so they can help all the people they will eventually save, and they need deep pockets to be the inspiration for the entire world.

Over time the ruling class creates rules and cultural dogmas that they claim are for the good of the people, but oddly enough their beliefs always result in making them richer and giving them more power. What an odd purported symbiosis they have dreamed up. The surest sign of being under an authoritarian power is when they make it really difficult to live independent of them. They demand you be hooked up to their electrical grid, pay taxes to live on the land, and hooked into the public water system. Total forced dependency on their system and it is barely noticed yet subtly removing choice and creating an artificial cage. Creating dependency is the best way to control people, and tyranny is then accepted under the umbrella of the common good, so the messianic ones can provide shelter from the storm while, of course, the common person sacrifices most of their free will in the process in a Faustian bargain which is the default role we are thrust into in this world of imperial forces.

Social hierarchies hold their grip on power in increasingly sophisticated ways. They’ve mostly advanced past public executions to keep people in line. They’ve learned it’s far more effective to manipulate minds into believing all are equals and free, and stoke the fear response towards something external that threatens that equality and freedom. It’s become understood by hierarchy that if the ruling power is perceived as the threat they are far more likely to be ousted from that power, so the engines of power must diffuse the blame of their actions lest they be held responsible for the tyranny they impose.

So semi-plausible sounding fears are brought to the forefront so they can provide you with adequate safety, which gives them the power to deprive you of the liberty they are telling you they are protecting, since you know they care so much about you. The gas-lighting of the masses creates reactionary conditioning that puts people in a state where they no longer trust their own mind and become prone to believing all the fears power claims are real. And fear is then used as a prod to move the human animal in a chosen direction power wishes.

Revolution of a real kind, one where our relationship to power radically changes, will be a series of progressions in pulling our minds out of this culture trap. Change will come in relation to how well we come to understand the implications of centralized power and ultimately integrate that knowledge into how we live. Further, how well we learn to work together cooperatively in a voluntary manner will correlate  directly to how likely it is our species survives past the next hundred years. But curing ourselves of  these brutal mental afflictions is not an easy path to traverse. However, I’ll argue a radical change is needed if we want to once again have human lives worth living with real choice and agency over our own mind, body, and time.

The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future

By Robert J. Burrowes

We are being utterly transformed. And the world is being utterly transformed around us.

Ostensibly, this is to tackle a simple virus. In reality, it is to achieve an elite design at staggering cost to humanity and to life generally.

If you have not been carefully following what is taking place, let me highlight some recent developments and what we can do about them.

On 26 March 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) granted Microsoft a world patent. Titled ‘1. WO2020060606 – Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data’, this patent gives Microsoft (that is, Bill Gates) extraordinary power over our lives.

As Professor Vandana Shiva evocatively explains in her latest article, ‘My Earth Journey in defence of Biodiversity, Life and Freedom over 5 decades’, this development is ‘robbing us of our deep humanity’:

The patent is dramatically changing the meaning of being human.

Firstly, it is redefining us as ‘mines’ for data – robbing us of our autonomy, our sovereignty, and control over our bodies and minds…. And just being connected through their ‘server’ is giving consent….

Secondly, it is erasing our humanity – as sovereign, living beings, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings, making our decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part; and to which we are inextricably related. We are being reduced to being ‘users’ of tasks assigned to us by the extractive digital mega machine. A ‘user’ is a consumer without choice in the digital empire. Human creativity and consciousness disappear in the world imagined in #patent060606.

Thirdly, the patent is redefining human values, and the value of being human. Human values include ethical, ecological, spiritual values….

Patent 060606 is aimed at robbing us of our deep humanity. We are being transformed from self organised, conscious, creative, autopoetic beings, into external input “users” whose value will be assigned in cryptocurrency through algorithms, by the very machine that gave us the task in the first place.

But it is not just our humanity that is at stake, horrific though this may be. The world, too, is being transformed so that the humanoids who are not killed off or marginalized into extreme poverty and desperation will perform their assigned roles to serve the global elite within the new techno tyranny that is being created around us.

For just a taste of the evidence in this regard, see ‘Global Capitalism, “World Government” and the Corona Crisis’, The Farce and Diabolical Agenda of A “Universal Lockdown” and Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision.

And if you would like greater insight into the role that individuals like Bill Gates are playing in all of this, see these three recent documentaries produced by James Corbett: ‘How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health’, ‘Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World’ and ‘Bill Gates and the Population Control Grid’. In addition, this article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is instructive: ‘Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination’.

Given the monumental undertaking for global control that this represents, you might wonder how this transformation can be achieved. And, unfortunately, the answer is ‘very simply’. This is because the bulk of the human population has been terrorized into a state of being submissively obedient. And this state is effectively permanent. As a result, mobilizing strategic resistance to what is happening is very difficult.

Why do I write this?

Because the evidence that COVID-19 is a minor health risk, particularly if dealt with appropriately, is overwhelming and extensively documented: ‘According to data from the best-studied countries and regions, the lethality of Covid19 is on average about 0.2%, which is in the range of a severe influenza (flu) and about twenty times lower than originally assumed by the WHO.’ See ‘A Swiss Doctor on Covid-19’.

Having noted that, however, if you want to watch a thoughtful and detailed explanation of why COVID-19 is a ‘fake virus’, try watching molecular biologist Dr Andrew Kaufman’s two hour interview by Brian Rose: ‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the Coronavirus Pandemic’. In this interview, Dr Kaufman carefully explains:

The scientific procedures that have been utilized in all of these scientific studies… it wouldn’t be possible using those techniques to isolate the virus and purify it and prove that it exists…. Taking into account all of the evidence I have looked at which has been almost entirely from peer-reviewed scientific papers and official government websites, my opinion is that this entire pandemic is a completely manufactured crisis. In other words there is no evidence of anyone dying from any novel illness…. And so what I think is going on… is in line with what might be known as a globalist agenda…. All of these things seem to be moving towards control of the people. 

There is not very much about vaccines that makes a lot of sense because if you actually go back and look for the evidence that vaccines have prevented disease you are not going to find any…. Smallpox is an interesting example…. In the mainstream history books the smallpox vaccine has been touted as a major success but that’s not really accurate. If you go back and look at data from the Royal Academy of Sciences what you will see is that the mortality increased substantially while these vaccines were widely used and then when they stopped being used the numbers went back down again. 

So it is really difficult to trust what is in a general textbook or mainstream history book without going and looking at the actual data yourself because all of the textbooks that were in medical schools say that vaccines are responsible for preventing many of these major illnesses that people were suffering from and worried about in the first part of the twentieth century. But if you look at some of the same diseases that did not have a vaccine, such as scarlet fever for example, you will find that scarlet fever also went away with all of the other diseases even though there was no vaccine for it. 

And when you look at the number of cases of the various illnesses like polio or measles or diphtheria, you’ll see that the prevalence or incidence of those diseases and mortality from those diseases, which in some was substantial, went down almost to the current levels before a vaccine was even available for use so you couldn’t possibly attribute a vaccine for causing that reduction in the illness if it wasn’t even around at the time that the illness was reduced….

If you create a vaccine for an illness [such as COVID-19] that has not been proven to even exist, then the vaccine couldn’t possibly work. But if you do a clinical study and have an imaginary disease and give the vaccine to people and then they never get the imaginary disease it would give the appearance that its very successful.

So this is a real win-win strategy for anyone making these vaccines and which is why there have been companies all over the world racing to be the first one to have a vaccine that’s been proven to be safe or effective using the limited criteria that they require. Because whoever gets there first, according to the plans or proposed policies, they’re going to be selling billions of vaccines. Billions! So they’re going to make billions of dollars as a result of this. So there is such a strong financial incentive.

Some of the technological strategies that they are using to make these vaccines are quite scary and unprecedented…. But obviously it couldn’t prevent a disease that doesn’t exist so there must be some other purpose for it.

Remember, the words quoted above are taken from a two hour interview. If any of these words leave you wondering, watch the interview to consider the evidence that Dr Kaufman cites or check his website: Dr Andrew Kaufman.

In another video Dr Kaufman explains how early scientific papers on the subject suggested an association (not causation) between a novel coronavirus ‘with human to human transmission and severe human infection’ whereas a subsequent key ‘scientific’ paper that made a claim which helped drive the global response to COVID-19 ‘flat out lied’ about their results: ‘Following the first outbreaks of unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, a new coronavirus was identified as the causative agent in January 2020.’ See ‘Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19’. In fact, Dr Kaufman points out: ‘they cannot reference any science to back that up whatsoever’. Moreover, subsequently to this paper, another article – see ‘I study viruses: How our team isolated the new coronavirus to fight the global pandemic’ – declared ‘The emergence of a new coronavirus in a market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 set in motion the pandemic we are now witnessing in 160 countries around the world’. But again, Dr Kaufman counters, ‘no evidence was provided at all’ to support this claim: ‘just flat out lies’. For the details and citation of all the scientific sources for this explanation of how the COVID-19 ‘rumour mill’ got started, see ‘The Rooster in the River of Rats’.

If you wish to watch a more scientifically-oriented lecture, explaining more of the technical detail of what Dr Kaufman argues ‘is really going on’ and which is consistent with the evidence, then you can view it here: ‘Special Report: Humanity is NOT a virus!’

So while the evidence that there is neither a virus nor a pandemic is grounded firmly in the science, the evidence that the global elite is using COVID-19 as ‘cover’ to implement its coup against humanity is rather overwhelming. In addition to the articles cited above, see these two articles which cite many other extensively-documented sources as well: ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’ and ‘COVID-19: Breaking the Lockdown, Defeating the Coup, Averting Extinction’.

But while this evidence is readily available, it requires someone who has not lost the capacity to investigate and think for themself. And that is a huge problem.

Of course, little of the evidence in these regards is available through education systems or the corporate media, given that the purpose of these institutions is to serve elite interests. And controlling access to, and manipulating perception of, the evidence is vital in both regards.

So if, for example, you believe that the corporate media is reporting the ‘news’, you might like to reflect on these words of David Rockefeller spoken at the highly secretive elite Bilderberg meeting held in Germany in 1991 but subsequently leaked:

‘We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government…. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.’ See ‘David Rockefeller at Bilderberg meeting in Baden 1991’ and ‘David Rockefeller’s Chilling 1991 Speech at a Bilderberg Meeting’.

The motto of The Washington Post is ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’. What it does not proclaim is that the Post, along with the other corporate media outlets, has long played its part in the global elite’s program to ensure that democracy – and hence any meaningful role in how we are governed – cannot flourish. But for a detailed critique of the corporate media exposing its role in perpetrating elite power by distributing elite propaganda as ‘news’, see Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Hence, while increasing numbers of people are lamenting the submissive response to elite initiatives to imprison us in our own homes (and strip us of rights and freedoms that it took centuries to win) – see, for example, ‘A Nation of Sheep’ and ‘To All Cowards Who Meekly Succumbed To the Unlawful Lockdown… Hang Your Heads In Shame’ – and some authors have written commentaries illustrating and explaining the ways in which people’s fear is manifesting in response to a simple virus – see Dr. Rudolf Hänsel’s explanation in ‘The Diabolical “Game” with Fear as an Instrument of Domination. The Reflex of Obedience’ and Dr. Pascal Sacré’s thoughts in ‘COVID-19: An Ocean of Fears and Lies’my own interest lies in explaining why people are fearfully and submissively obedient in the first place and how we can go about restoring agency to the individual’s life so that they can use their own investigatory and analytical capacities to track down and consider the evidence, and to then act sensibly and powerfully in response.

While, regrettably, this cannot be done quickly, it is an essential component of any strategy to effectively resist elite encroachments on our rights, freedoms and economic security while also acting powerfully to deal with the genuine threats to human survival such as those posed by war, the environmental and climate catastrophes, biodiversity loss and the deployment of 5G, among others. See ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ and, for astute insight into the disastrous impact that the global industrial shutdown is having on the aerosol masking effect and hence the global climate, see ‘Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?’

This is because fear suppresses (other) emotional responses (including the anger that would mobilize resistance), distorts sensory perception (so that people disbelieve, rather than consider carefully, evidence that contradicts the elite-driven narrative), inhibits analytical capacity, falsifies memory (to conform with explanations that are less frightening) and thwarts powerful behavioural responses. As a consequence of being victims of their own fear, most people live in a world of delusion and projection and are quite incapable of being anything but submissively obedient.

In brief, fear makes people want to believe, and hence to actually believe, that there is ‘nothing wrong’ with elite directives distributed by international organizations (such as the World Health Organisation), governments, the medical industry, education systems and the corporate media. This means that they do not have to feel and think for themselves, consult their conscience or change their own behaviour, each of which is particularly frightening when their fear and the (unconscious) imperative to obey already have them paralyzed.

So how have we ended up with a population of ‘individuals’ who are so devoid of any sense of Selfhood that they are submissively obedient as Drs Hänsel and Sacré discussed above and which we are now witnessing on a global scale as people are imprisoned in their own homes?

Fundamentally, this has occurred because our parenting and education models are based on terrorizing children into obedience using a combination of ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence. For the details of how we do this, see ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

Hence, while we pay lip service to the notion of ‘the individual’, the reality is that we prefer ‘individuals’ who follow the orders of ‘the authorities’, whether at home, school, work, in the military, at a religious gathering or as ‘citizens’ in society generally. After all, our definition of ‘individuality’ long ago ceased to mean any more than that the person clothes themself differently and has their own combination of interests to while away their spare time.

The genuine individual who has an integrated mind, trusts their own (emotional and intellectual) judgment, articulates the truth and behaves powerfully in accord with their conscience, whatever the cost, is only supposed to appear as a fictional character in novels or films. We certainly do not want them in real life. Just ask Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, for example. Shot dead or imprisoned for having the qualities of a genuine individual.

For further explanations of how we systematically destroy the individuality in our children, see ‘The Disintegrated Mind: The Greatest Threat to Human Survival on Earth’, ‘Most Attitudes and Beliefs are Outcomes of Fear’ and ‘The Psychology of Projection in Conflict’.

So here we are at the most important moment in human history. At the brink of precipitating our own extinction – again, see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ and ‘Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?’ – and now imprisoned in our own homes (for those who have them) while the global elite implements more of its plan to reduce us from human individuals to digital identities that are readily tracked and controlled while playing our robotic role in the techno tyranny that is almost upon us.

Even those two writers of the classic dystopian novels of the twentieth century, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, would be horrified that we participated so obediently, so submissively, in the destruction of our ‘free’ world (whatever its limitations). And I doubt they would get any solace from knowing just how well they truly understood the terrified and submissive nature of the human condition.

So with virtually everyone ‘distracted’ from the ‘main game’ – the coup in which the global elite is taking vastly greater control of our lives and even dramatically increasing the risk of imminent human extinction – while we sit back, or even ask for, greater restrictions on our rights and freedoms, the only important question remaining is this:

Can we mobilize sufficient people, even at this late moment, to strategically defend our humanity, defeat the elite coup and avert the imminent threats to human survival?

Unfortunately, as recent evidence clearly indicates, with even most activists obviously deceived by the use of COVID-19 as ‘cover’ for the coup and oblivious to its catastrophic environmental consequences, this is proving far more difficult than I originally hoped.

Nevertheless, in the hope that we can build on the existing resistance, such as that being documented by Professor Chenoweth and her colleagues – see ‘The global pandemic has spawned new forms of activism – and they’re flourishing’ – while sharpening its focus for greater strategic impact, let me reiterate a previously outlined strategy below, particularly taking into account the insanity of the global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – and the emotional health issues (including anxiety and depression) that are arising during the lockdown that are now complicating people’s existing compulsion to be obedient in the belief that compliance with COVID-19 (that is, coup) measures will make them ‘safe’.

A Nonviolent Strategy to Fight for our Humanity, Liberty and Future

So, if you wish to address your own emotional health issues arising during the COVID-19 coup, consider ‘Putting Feelings First’ and/or, if you wish to support others, including children, to do so effectively, see ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

In relation to the coup itself, I have identified the appropriate political purpose – obviously ‘To defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite’ – and set out a basic list of (now) 28 strategic goals for achieving this purpose (which will also play a vital role in tackling key threats to human survival). The first thirteen of these strategic goals 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, Google, 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 refusing to download the COVID-19 ‘contact tracing’ surveillance app.

(4) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by ending their ownership and use of a mobile (cell) phone. See ‘EchoEarth: End Cell Phones on Earth’ and ‘Cancel Your Cellphone Account Day, 20-21 June 2020’.

(5) 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.

(6) 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’.)

(7) 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.

(8) 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’.

(9) 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.

(10) 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.

(11) 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.

(12) 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].

(13) 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].

You can read all 28 of 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, as well as articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, such as those to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our ‘deep humanity’, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as the examples I cite in the thirteen strategic goals above illustrate). Hence, three further considerations assume importance.

First, choose/design tactics that have strategic impact, that is, they fundamentally and permanently alter, in our favor, the power relationship between the elite and us.

Second, when tactical choices are made, focus them on undermining the elite coup, not just features of it, such as ‘social distancing’ or the lockdowns. At its most basic, this can be achieved by using tactical choices that mobilize people to act initially, as is happening, but then inviting them to consider taking further, more focused, action as well (such as those nominated in the 28 strategic goals listed or referenced above). This is important because existing actions will have little impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution, which includes reducing us to a ‘digital identity’.

Third, I would choose/design tactics that also have strategic impact on the greatest threats to human survival, including the collapsing biodiversity on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and the deployment of 5G. Given the incredibly short timeframe in which we are now working to avert human extinction, while people are mobilizing it is important to use this opportunity to give them the chance to perceive the ‘big picture’ of what is taking place – beyond lockdowns and other measures supposedly being used to tackle COVID-19 – and to act powerfully in response.

Equally importantly, the Nonviolent Strategy website explains how to prepare, frame and conduct any nonviolent action to minimize the risk of violent repression and, as some nonviolent activists are concerned, to contain any risk of damage to their cause by association with, or disruption by, those groups and provocateurs with a very different and possibly violent agenda. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns and resist the coup will gather pace. As I have previously outlined, 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.

In addition, as I mentioned above, given the pressing (and, possibly, now uncontainable) threat of human extinction 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 accelerated participation in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

And for those nonviolent activists concerned about tackling the climate and/or other threats to human survival – including those in relation to the environment and war – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Strategic Aims.

Or, if you want something simpler, 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 ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
  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 own or use a mobile (cell) phone
  8. I will not buy rainforest timber
  9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Using COVID-19 as ‘cover’, the global elite is conducting a coup to take vastly greater control of our lives and, in fact, to neutralize our humanity. This is being made very easy by the compulsion to obey that most people acquire in response to the ‘socialization’ experience they suffered as a child.

As a result, there is very little resistance to the coup, and none of which I am aware that is strategically focused. Consequently, the coup is readily measured by the destruction of our rights, freedoms, emotional health, political participation and economic security as well as its devastating impact on the Earth, further complicating the already grave series of interrelated threats to our survival and that of vast numbers of other species with which we share this planet.

As you ponder your response to this coup and the vastly increased threat to our survival, it might be worth remembering the words of David Rockefeller in his autobiography Memoirs, published in 2003:

Some even believe [the Rockefeller family is] part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

If you believe that Rockefeller’s vision is benign from the viewpoint of people like you and me, it might be worth reading more about the Rockefeller family’s interests in our well-being, starting with the report from 2010 titled ‘Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development’ which discusses four scenarios for the human future in which one is based on ‘Lock Step’ following a pandemic: ‘A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback’.

Hence, if you share my concern that the time to act powerfully in defence of our humanity, to defeat this elite coup and to fight vigorously and strategically on the many interrelated crises that threaten human extinction, then you are welcome to become involved in one or more of the ways suggested above.

Whatever we do, however, it is vitally important that we do not submissively obey the global elite and its agents such as international organizations, governments, corporations and the mainstream media. The elite and its agents might wear a benign smile at times but their loyalty is not to us or to the Earth. They are too insane to have loyalty to either; their loyalty is to themselves exclusively and we are expendable.

So I gently encourage you to have a good look at the evidence for yourself and to act while we still have some personal autonomy and political space to do so. If we do not act now, we will not have this autonomy and space for much longer and human extinction will follow imminently.

 

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.

Re-Opening the Economy Won’t Fix What’s Broken

 

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Re-opening a fragile, brittle, bankrupt, hopelessly perverse and corrupt “normal” won’t fix what’s broken.

The stock market is in a frenzy of euphoria at the re-opening of the economy. Too bad the re-opening won’t fix what’s broken. As I’ve been noting recently, the real problem is the systemic fragility of the U.S. economy, which has lurched from one new extreme to the next to maintain a thin, brittle veneer of normalcy.

Fragile economies cannot survive any impact with reality that disrupts the distortions that are keeping the illusion of “growth” from shattering. For the past two decades, every collision with reality cracked the illusion, and the “fix” was to duct-tape the pieces together with new extremes of money-creation, debt, risk and speculative excess.

While the stock market has soared, the real world falls apart. If your region needs a new bridge built, count on about 20 years to get all the “stakeholders” to agree and get the thing actually built. Count on the cost quintupling from $500 million to $2.5 billion. Count on corners being cut as costs skyrocket, so those cheap steel bolts from China that are already rusting before the bridge is even finished? Oops. Replacing them will add millions to the already bloated budget.

Want to add a passenger stop on an existing railroad line? Count on 20 years to get it done. The complexity thicket of every regulatory agency with the power to say “no” basically guarantees the project will never get approved, because every one of these bureaucracies justifies its existence by saying “no.” Sorry, you need another study, another environmental review, and so on.

Need a new landfill? I hope you started the process 15 years ago, so you’ll get approval in only five more years. Every agency with the power to say “no” will stretch out the approval, so they have guaranteed “work” for another decade or two.

Did your subway fares double? Was the excuse repairing a crumbling system? Did the work get done on budget and on time? You must be joking, right? All the fare increase did was cover the costs of skyrocketing salaries, pensions and administrative costs. Repairs to the tracks and cars– that’s extra. Let’s float a $1 billion bond so nobody have to tighten their belts, and have riders pay for it indirectly, through higher taxes to pay the exorbitant costs of 20 years of interest on the bond.

Have you been thrown off your bicycle by the giant potholes in the city’s “bike lanes”? The city reluctantly admits that these streets that haven’t been maintained for decades–yes, decades. The city once paid for street maintenance out of its general budget, but alas, that’s been eaten up by skyrocketing salaries, pensions and administrative costs, so now we need to float $100 million bond to fund filling potholes. If all goes according to plan (ha-ha), we should be able to re-pave the streets that have been crumbling for 20 years in… the next 20 years.

These real-world examples are just four of thousands of manifestations of a broken system. Rather than make tough choices that drain power and wealth from vested interests, we simply borrow more money, in ever increasing amounts, to keep the entrenched interests and elites happy.

There are two “solutions” in the status quo: dump the debt on taxpayers or on powerless debt-serfs–for example, college students. (See chart below of the $1.6 trillion that’s stripmining student debt-serfs.) Who benefits from selling all the municipal bonds, bundled student loans, etc. to investors starving for a yield above 0.1%? Wall Street, of course.

The problem is that while debt has soared, productivity and earned income have stagnated. The statistical narrative has been ruthlessly gamed to hide the erosion of living standards, but even with the bogus “low inflation” of official statistics, wages for the bottom 95% have stagnated for decades.

Measures of productivity have also been gamed to mask the ugly reality that the vast majority of the U.S. economy is stagnating under the weight of interest payments on debt, mal-investments in speculative gambles, higher junk fees and taxes, crushing regulatory compliance, high costs imposed by monopolies and cartels and a well-cloaked decline in the quality of just about everything the bottom 95% uses or owns.

What little productivity gains have been made have been skimmed by the top 5%. Coupled with the Federal Reserve’s single-minded goosing of the one signaling device it controls, the stock market, the top 0.1% in America own more wealth than the bottom 80%.

If productivity stagnates and winners take all, the wages of the bottom 95% cannot rise. Real wealth is only created by increases in the productivity of labor and capital; everything else is phantom wealth.

The only way stagnant incomes can support more debt is if interest rates decline. Presto, the Fed dropped interest rates to near-zero a decade ago. Of course you and I can’t actually borrow millions for 0.1%; that privilege is reserved for financiers and other financial parasites and predators.

Debt-serfs were able to refinance their crushing mortgages to save a few bucks, and so they can afford to 1) take on more debt and 2) pay higher taxes to fund the ballooning public debt.

Every one of these extremes has increased the systemic fragility of the American economy. This fragility is reflected in the impoverishment of the bottom 95%, the thin line between solvency and bankruptcy, the decay of public trust in institutions run for the benefit of entrenched interests, and the quickening erosion of America’s social contract.

Re-opening a fragile, brittle, bankrupt, hopelessly perverse and corrupt “normal” won’t fix what’s broken.

 

Virus of Mass Destruction

Medical personnel arrive to perform COVID-19 coronavirus infection testing procedures at Glen Island Park, Friday, March 13, 2020, in New Rochelle, N.Y. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

By CJ Hopkins

Source: Consent Factory, Inc.

There comes a point in the introduction of every new official narrative when people no longer remember how it started. Or, rather, they remember how it started, but not the propaganda that started it. Or, rather, they remember all that (or are able to, if you press them on it), but it doesn’t make any difference anymore, because the official narrative has supplanted reality.

You’ll remember this point from the War on Terror, and specifically the occupation of Iraq. By the latter half of 2004, most Westerners had completely forgotten the propaganda that launched the invasion, and thus regarded the Iraqi resistance as “terrorists,” despite the fact that the United States had invaded and was occupying their country for no legitimate reason whatsoever. By that time, it was abundantly clear that there were no “weapons of mass destruction,” and that the U.S.A. had invaded a nation that had not attacked it, and posed no threat to it, and so was perpetrating a textbook war of aggression.

These facts did not matter, not in the slightest. By that time, Westerners were totally immersed in the official War on Terror narrative, which had superseded objective reality. Herd mentality had taken over. It’s difficult to describe how this works; it’s a state of functional dissociation. It wasn’t that people didn’t know the facts, or that they didn’t understand the facts. They knew the Iraqis weren’t “terrorists.” At the same time, they knew they were definitely “terrorists,” despite the fact that they knew that they weren’t. They knew there were no WMDs, that there had never been any WMDs, and still they were certain there were WMDs, which would be found, although they clearly did not exist.

The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. The majority of the German people were never fanatical anti-Semites like the hardcore N.S.D.A.P. members. If they had been, there would have been no need for Goebbels and his monstrous propaganda machine. No, the Germans during the Nazi period, like the Americans during the War on Terror, knew that their victims posed no threat to them, and at the same time they believed exactly the opposite, and thus did not protest as their neighbors were hauled out of their homes and sent off to death camps, camps which, in their dissociative state, simultaneously did and did not exist.

What I’m describing probably sounds like psychosis, but, technically speaking, it isn’t … not quite. It is not an absolute break from reality. People functioning in this state know that what they believe is not real. Nonetheless, they are forced to believe it (and do, actually, literally, believe it, as impossible as I know that sounds), because the consequences of not believing it are even more frightening than the cognitive dissonance of believing a narrative they know is a fiction. Disbelieving the official narrative means excommunication from “normality,” the loss of friends, income, status, and in many cases far worse punishments. Herd animals, in a state of panic, instinctively run towards the center of the herd. Separation from the herd makes them easy prey for pursuing predators. It is the same primal instinct operating here.

It is the goal of every official narrative to generate this type of herd mentality, not in order to deceive or dupe the public, but, rather, to confuse and terrorize them to the point where they revert to their primal instincts, and are being driven purely by existential fear, and facts and truth no longer matter. Once an official narrative reaches this point, it is unassailable by facts and reason. It no longer needs facts to justify it. It justifies itself with its own existence. Reason cannot penetrate it. Arguing with its adherents is pointless. They know it is irrational. They simply do not care.

We are reaching this point with the coronavirus narrative. It is possible that we have already reached it. Despite the fact that what we are dealing with is a virus that, yes, is clearly deadly to the old and those with medical conditions, but that is just as clearly not a deadly threat to the majority of the human species, people are cowering inside their homes as if the Zombie Apocalpyse had finally begun. Many appear to believe that this virus is some sort of Alien-Terrorist Death Flu (or weaponized Virus of Mass Destruction) that will kill you the second you breathe it in.

This is not surprising at all, because, according to the official narrative, its destructive powers are nearly unlimited. Not only will it obliterate your lungs, and liquidate all your other major organs, and kill you with blood clots, and intestinal damage, now it causes “sudden strokes in young adults,” and possibly spontaneous prostate cancer, and God knows what other medical horrors!

According to all the “scientists” and “medical experts” (i.e., those that conform to the official narrative, not all the other scientists and medical experts), it is unlike any other virus that has ever existed in the history of viruses. It certainly doesn’t follow the typical pattern of spreading extensively for a limited period, and then rapidly dying down on its own, regardless of what measures are taken to thwart it, as this Israeli study would seem to indicate.

Also, “we have no immunity against it,” which is why we all have to remain “locked down” like unruly inmates in a penitentiary until a vaccine can be concocted and forced onto every living person on earth. Apparently, this mandatory wonder vaccine will magically render us immune to this virus against which we have no immunity (and are totally unable to develop immunity), which immunity will be certified on our mandatory “immunity papers,” which we will need to travel, get a job, send our kids to school, and, you know, to show the police when they stop us on the street because we look like maybe we might be “infected.”

Germany (where I live) is way out in front of this. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the federal government plans to introduce a coronavirus “immunity card” as part of its “Infection Protection Law,” which will grant the authorities the power to round up anyone “suspected to be contagious” and force them into … uh … “quarantine,” and “forbid them from entering certain public places.” The Malaysian authorities have dispensed with such niceties, and are arresting migrant workers and refugees in so-called “Covid-19 red zones” and marching them off to God knows where.

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot … the germ and chemical warfare researchers at DARPA (i.e., the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have developed some new type of fancy blood test that will identify “asymptomatic carriers” (i.e., people who display no symptoms whatsoever). So that will probably come in handy … especially if the “white supremacists,” “Red-Brown extremists,” and “conspiracy theorists” keep protesting the lockdown with their wives and kids!

And these are just the latest additions to a list of rather dystopian examples of the “brave new normal” official narrative that GloboCap is rolling out, right before our very eyes (which the OffGuardian editors have streamlined here and here, and which continues on Twitter). It’s all right there in black and white. They aren’t hiding the totalitarianism … they don’t have to. Because people are begging for it. They are demanding to be “locked down” inside their homes, forced to wear masks, and stand two meters apart, for reasons that most of them no longer remember.

Plastic barriers are going up everywhere. Arrows on the floor show you which way to walk. Boxes show you where to stand. Paranoid Blockwarts are putting up signs threatening anyone not wearing a mask. Hysterical little fascist creeps are reporting their neighbors to the police for letting their children play with other children. Millions of people are voluntarily downloading “contact tracing applications” so that governments and global corporations can monitor their every movement. In Spain, they bleached an entire beach, killing everything, down to the insects, in order to protect the public from “infection.” The Internet has become an Orwellian chorus of shrieking, sanctimonious voices bullying everyone into conformity with charts, graphs, and desperate guilt-trips, few of which have much connection to reality. Corporations and governments are censoring dissent. We’re approaching a level of manufactured mass hysteria and herd mentality that not even Goebbels could have imagined.

Meanwhile, they’re striking the mostly empty “field hospitals,” and the theatrical “hospital ship” is now gone, and despite their attempts to inflate the Covid-19 death count as much as humanly possible, the projected hundreds of millions of deaths have not materialized (not even close), and Sweden is fine, as is most of humanity, and … just like there were no WMDs, there is no Virus of Mass Destruction.

What there is, is a new official narrative, the brave new, paranoid, pathologized “normal.” Like the War on Terror, it’s a global narrative. A global, post-ideological narrative. It’s just getting started, so it isn’t yet clear how totalitarian this show will get, but, given the nature of the pilot episode, I am kind of dreading the rest of the series.