Category Archives: culture

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

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By Stephen Parato

Source: Waking Times

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Obedience is the connective tissue of oppression.

In other words, any form of control on a collective level can only be carried out through obedience. A dictator can’t arrest or kill an entire population himself; he needs mindless minions to do the dirty work. This principle applies across all forms and degrees of systematic control, even the most subtle.

The desires of any wannabe controller can only come to fruition through the compliance of others. And that’s been the case throughout recorded history (his-story). The desire for control becomes a virus, driven by fear and infecting more and more people, until there are enough drones to oppress an entire population.

This phenomenon isn’t just the case with large-scale atrocities; it applies to anything which is an impediment to freedom or love; be it a person, group, system or idea.

Everything is held up by belief. Laws are merely words written on paper, only legitimized by collective acquiescence. Laws need people to enforce them. And if laws are unjust (as most are), those who carry them out must unquestioningly submit to authority and go against their own inner knowing.

The only way control or oppression works on any scale is through compliance. Too many people do the work of ‘the man’ for ‘the man.’ That’s the problem. The solution lies in civil disobedience.

Freedom Cannot Be Granted

“Freedom cannot be granted. It must be taken.” ~Max Stirner

Asking for freedom is oxy-moronic. If you have to ask for freedom, you’re already a slave.

How is freedom taken? The simple decision to be the master of your own body and mind.

It really is as simple as that, though difficult to apply. It’s easy to blame problems on others, it’s easy to neglect our health and think “the doctor can fix me.” We’ve been conditioned to externalize our power since childhood. We’ve been taught to not trust ourselves. We’ve been taught to submit to authority without question.

This is a recipe for a control system to stealthily and slowly permeate society (the totalitarian tiptoe).

When you attain a degree of self-mastery, you do not acquiesce to the will of destructive people or disharmonious institutions. Which leads to the next point…

Fear-Based Programming

“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service.” ~Albert Einstein

The covert means by which oppression takes over is through fear-based programming.

If you have people in fear, you can easily control them. Fear activates the part of the brain known as the amygdala (the center for emotional behavior/motivation) and inhibits neocortex function (our “thinking brain”). This means that rationality and intellect are thrown out the window, the perfect storm for brainwashing. There’s even a term for this fear response; amygdala hijack.

The media is one big amygdala hijack, perpetually programming the population with which boogeyman to fear next. This is a massive ritual of fear-based programming that insidiously shifts entire populations into thinking and acting irrationally out of fear. Television is called programming for a reason.

Remember the whole weapons of mass destruction fiasco with Iraq in 2003? US military action in Iraq and massive destabilization of the middle east (which continues to this day) was predicated on that lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. But lingering fear from 9/11 resulted in a string of irrational behavior and many people blindly believing the hype.

The holocaust took place because German soldiers were thoroughly conditioned to carry out orders. They didn’t carry out orders because they liked doing it, but because they feared the wrath of their higher ranking officers, or even because they were conditioned to fear jewish people. These abominations only occur when fear is the driving force.

Fear is hard to pin down. It’s slippery, and ultimately illusory (False Evidence Appearing Real). Yet it’s the undercurrent of all “negative” emotions. Fear is what stops us from saying no to evil. Fear might actually distort our perceptions to support evil. That’s why it’s so dangerous.

When you cultivate self-mastery, you’re able to break the cycle. The spread of fear stops before you and is transmuted by the omnipotent force of unyielding love.

Love Over Fear

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” ~John Lennon

Strive to choose love over fear in every situation. You can never go wrong if you act from a place of compassion. This is the fulcrum of change, and it starts within you.

The change we all yearn to see in the world will only happen in the wake of a fundamental change in consciousness. Everything we see in this world starts in the realms of imagination before coming into manifestation.

The change begins within and ripples outward. Embodying the change is the first step, the prerequisite. Without inner transformation, humanity will be stuck on the same merry-go-round of madness.

When a critical mass of people create positive inner changes, it will open up doors we never could’ve imagined before and will provide possibilities far beyond our current limited perspective. Solutions will spontaneously emerge.

Go within and stop the momentum of fear. Learn to listen to and trust your intuition. Have the courage to follow your heart instead of cowardly bowing to fear.

“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant ‘To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.’” ~Brene Brown

Compliance with destruction, hatred, oppression, violence and fear is cowardice, while noncompliance is courageous. In the depths of your being, in your heart of hearts, you know what is right.

Choose love over fear.

Have the courage of heart and freedom of mind to disobey oppressive forces.

Be the change.

Saturday Matinee: Psycho Goreman

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[Movie Review] PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN

By Sarah Musnicky

Source: Nightmarish Conjurings

It’s not often that you find a movie that is completely batshit crazy, all the way extra, yet entirely wholesome all in one package. Yet, this is what we have in PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN. Coated with ounces of blood, campy humor, and adolescent sassafras, audiences will be taken through a wackadoo journey that will have their heads spinning. While not quite the type of family film one would put on family night, there is enough family-fun goodness to add this to the list once all members are grown and prepared to have their eyeballs explode. By film’s end, you’ll find yourself unexpectedly wanting the best for everyone, even if it means pure, utter destruction is the end result.

Siblings Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) accidentally awaken an ancient alien overlord with no name from a millennia-long prison sentence. Why was this overlord imprisoned you ask? Well, he attempted to destroy the universe after working under an oppressive system that exploited his labor. While the creature has no chill, Mimi is undaunted, especially when it’s discovered that she is in possession of a magical amulet that enables her to force the creature to obey every single command she makes. Every. Single. Command. If you know children well, you know this is an absolutely awful idea.

They decide to give the evil creature the name Psycho Goreman (Matthew Ninaber), which they shorten to PG to keep things easier. PG’s re-appearance, though, triggers attention across the galaxy. There are those who want to destroy him, remembering the destruction he caused eons ago. And there are others who wish to help him, for a price that is. As the galaxy’s creatures start to zero in on this small Earth town, the fate of the galaxy may be up to Mimi and Luke. But first, we get a heavy dose of sitcom-style shenanigans, which sow the seeds of heartwarming payoff that we experience at the film’s end.

Where should anyone really begin when discussing this film? First off, PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN is a practical effects wet-dream. From slowly crawling brain-boys to a suicidal melty zombie police officer to every alien character having their own specific costume that almost reminds of classic Power Rangers episodes mixed with Doctor Who flair, there is so much craft-based love in this film that it made this reviewer positively giddy to see what we’d see next. Knowing the amount of work that went into the effects onscreen, it’s an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking in this day and age. But, in all honesty, it is so worth it to see it come to life onscreen. Forever pro-practical all the way!

With the practical effects aiming to seduce our hearts, we have to keep in mind that this is not all that writer-director Steven Kostanski is bringing to the table for us to consume in PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN. The writing and the delivery of performances from the actors really help to sell the chaos that is taking place onscreen. Matthew Ninaber’s PG’s sinister, almost deadpan delivery contrasts nicely against Nita-Josee Hanna’s manic over-the-top energy she delivers for Mimi. While this reviewer would have loved more levels in Hanna’s performance, the direction and delivery of her character performance still worked well for the over-the-top nature of the film. Adam Brooks is also a notable standout, with his comedic timing and everyman performance providing a much-needed contrast to the adventures of the children onscreen.

The script itself is hilarious and heartwarming, with lines about hunky boys coming out of PG’s mouth that would seem out of place in any other film. Yet, this is a heartwarming, tongue-in-cheek type of film that lends itself to these subtleties, where each character undergoes their own spiritual journey. Just, with wallops of blood, gore, and viscera. These little moments are subtly interwoven in, which maximizes their impact upon arrival due to the black comedy that Kostanski leans into. And, if that isn’t enough for you, the various homages paid to family-style shows in the script really help remind the viewer of the lengths this film will go to remind of what PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN is really about – love and finding your own family. Even if that family consists of a psychotic girl, a mom-turned-administrator of misguided justice, or – even – a bloodthirsty alien warlord.

Overall, PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN is a film that would make an epic Midnighter event at any film festival. It would have been a crowd-pleaser pre-COVID and it certainly will after. This reviewer would argue that it’s the alien warlord version of the little girl paired with bodyguard/former military turned babysitter trope. It’s heartwarming, bloody, incredibly fucked up, and extra as all get out. And, while at times the performances can be more one-note than not, the film just really works. It’s a family film gone wrong, which seems perfectly fitting for the age we’re in now.

Watch Psycho Goreman on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14004800

Sickcare is the Knife in the Heart of Employment–and the Economy

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don’t start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.

American Healthcare is a growth industry in the same way cancer is a growth industry: both keep growing until they kill the host, which in the case of healthcare is the U.S. economy.

While a great many individuals in the system care about improving the health of their patients, the healthcare system itself only cares about one thing: maximizing profits by any means available, including sending many patients to an early grave via medications which corporations declared “safe” and rigged the political-regulatory-research systems to comply.

I call this maximizing profits by any means available system sickcare, for obvious reasons: this system profits by managing sickness, i.e. chronic diseases, rather than addressing the causes, which in most chronic disorders trace back to lifestyle: SAD (standard American diet), poor fitness and a generally unhealthy lifestyle of convenience (i.e. sedentary), heavy work/financial stress and addictions to meds, drugs, social media, etc.

Sickcare’s single-minded profiteering would be bad enough if we could afford its spiraling ever higher cost, but we cannot: as I noted way back in 2011, Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation all by itself. three years ago I noted that U.S. Healthcare Isn’t Broken–It’s Fixed (5/26/18), as generic meds that cost $22.60 for a month’s supply are pushed by Big Pharma as branded meds for $1,120 per month. Such a deal!

I’ve been discussing employment recently, and one of my patrons pointed out the enormously negative impact sickcare costs have on employment. I covered the incredibly negative impact of soaring sickcare insurance costs on small business back in 2011: Here’s Why Small Business Isn’t Hiring, and Won’t be Hiring (7/11/11), but the same soaring-costs dynamic makes Corporate America reluctant to hire anyone in America, too.

You’d have to be insane to pick America as your global base, given the grossly asymmetrical cost of healthcare in the U.S. compared to our developed-world competitors in Europe and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Sadly, the treatment for your insanity will be so costly in America that your psychiatric problems will soon be exacerbated by financial ruin.

Those with heavily subsidized healthcare insurance may not realize that insurance for a family can cost more than a wage earner’s entire monthly net income. This generates a perverse incentive (from the perspective of a healthy economy, as opposed to a corrupt, rigged economy run for the exclusive benefit of profiteers, fraudsters, speculators and political fixers) for one spouse to quit their jobs or cut their hours to reduce the household income to the point that federal subsidies (ObamaCare) kick in and pay much or most of the insanely overpriced sickcare insurance tab.

The subsidies are of course ultimately paid by the taxpayers; sickcare profiteers thank you.

Needless to say, employers facing monthly healthcare insurance costs of $1,500 for an employee earning $2,500 will be looking for automation or overseas alternatives. How can the employer afford to keep paying healthcare insurance costs that spiral far above the Consumer Price Index (CPI)? Ultimately these higher costs come out of the employee’s paycheck, as employers could have given raises but instead had to fork over all the dough to the sickcare profiteers.

One driver of wages’ ever-declining share of the national income is trillions of dollars have been siphoned off by sickcare. As the comparison chart below shows, the U.S. pays roughly $5,000 more per capita (per person) per year for healthcare than other equally developed nations: the U.S. pays $10,966 per person per year and the average paid by other developed nations pay roughly half: $5,697 per person per year.

330 million Americans X $5,000 is $1.65 trillion a year. No wonder wages have gone nowhere for decades and corporations couldn’t wait to offshore jobs in America. (Not that the Corporate America needed much more of an incentive to offshore U.S. jobs, but let’s recognize that sickcare costs put American companies at a huge global disadvantage.)

Please examine the chart below of healthcare expenses per capita (per person) in the U.S. from 2000 to 2018 (the last year available on the St. Louis Federal Reserve database). I’ve marked up the chart to indicate where healthcare costs per capita would be if healthcare had tracked the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the past two decades.

Strikingly, the cost had U.S. healthcare risen by the same percentage as everything else–$5,852 per capita per year–is very close to the average costs in comparable developed nations: $5,697 per capita per year. Instead, U.S. healthcare costs per person were $9,000 per year as of 2018.

The third chart shows that the results of this asymmetric expenditure on health hasn’t done much in terms of life expectancy or other broad measures of national health and well-being. America is Number One in costs but far down the list of life expectancy and other measures of well-being.

The human and financial costs of this sick system are pervasive. Those trying to provide care within the sickcare system’s perverse incentives are burning out (see last chart), and businesses are crushed by ever-higher costs for everything related to healthcare. The “solution” for employers is to push more of the insane cost increases onto employees, who are already staggering under the weight of stagnant wages and skyrocketing inflation in sectors other than healthcare.

Small business entrepreneurs end up not hiring any workers because they can’t afford to provide the mandated healthcare. Having to do all the work needed to keep the business afloat burns out the owners and they close the business, to the detriment of their community and the local government, which loses the tax revenues generated by the enterprise.

Here’s a real-world example of how healthcare has become unaffordable for employers: in the mid-1980s I could buy comprehensive healthcare insurance for my single employees (mostly young) for 6 hours’ pay for the average employee and 4 hours of my pay. (My partner and I paid all the healthcare insurance costs, the employees paid zero, I’m just using the hours and pay as a means of measuring the cost of healthcare in terms of the purchasing power of wages.)

Can an employer buy equivalent comprehensive healthcare insurance today for 6 hours’ of the employees’ pay? No, not even close. (Note that I’m talking about real insurance, not bogus simulacra of insurance, i.e. catastrophic coverage.)

Sickcare is a win for the sickcare profiteers and a loss for employers, employees, communities, government and the nation. Like cancer, sickcare will keep growing until it kills the host. We’re getting close.

Sickcare is the knife in the heart of employment. Sickcare puts the nation at a tremendous competitive disadvantage, crushes small businesses and generates perverse incentives to automate and offshore jobs just to get out from underneath the dead weight of ever-higher sickcare costs.

We need a whole new approach to healthcare that includes every aspect of American culture, society, education, economics and governance. We need to ditch SAD (standard American diet) and our unhealthy lifestyle, and incentivize improving health from the ground up rather than generating chronic lifestyle diseases such as metabolic disorders and then managing these disorders as a means of maximizing profits. The national goal should not be profiting from an over-medicated populace, it should be eliminating the need for medications. (A healthy person has no need for handfuls of medications.) Rather than profit from 74% of the populace being overweight and 40% being obese, the national goal should be to eliminate lifestyle diseases entirely by changing behaviors and incentives, not costly procedures and medications. That would free healthcare to serve those suffering from non-lifestyle diseases.

As Charlie Munger famously noted, “”Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” That’s how humans operate: we respond to the incentives presented, even if they diminish the health of the populace and bankrupt the nation. We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don’t start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.

Brave New Cancel Culture World

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By Pepe Escobar

Source: The Unz Review

In 2020, we saw the enshrinement of techno-feudalism – one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties.

In lightning speed, the techno-feudalism virus is metastasizing into an even more lethal, wilderness of mirrors variant, where cancel culture is enforced by Big Tech all across the spectrum, science is routinely debased as fake news in social media, and the average citizen is discombobulated to the point of lobotomy.

Giorgio Agamben has defined it as a new totalitarianism.

Top political analyst Alastair Crooke has attempted a sharp breakdown of the broader configuration.

Geopoliticallly, the Hegemon would even resort to 5G war to maintain its primacy, while seeking moral legitimization via the woke revolution, duly exported to its Western satrapies.

The woke revolution is a culture war – in symbiosis with Big Tech and Big Business – that has smashed the real thing: class war. The atomized working classes, struggling to barely survive, have been left to wallow in anomie.

The great panacea, actually the ultimate “opportunity” offered by Covid-19, is the Great Reset advanced by Herr Schwab of Davos: essentially the replacement of a dwindling manufacturing base by automation, in tandem with a reset of the financial system.

The concomitant wishful thinking envisages a world economy that will “move closer to a cleaner capitalist model”. One of its features is a delightfully benign Council for Inclusive Capitalism in partnership with the Catholic Church.

As much as the pandemic – the “opportunity” for the Reset – was somewhat rehearsed by Event 201 in October 2019, additional strategies are already in place for the next steps, such as Cyber Polygon, which warns against the “key risks of digitalization”. Don’t miss their “technical exercise” on July 9th, when “participants will hone their practical skills in mitigating a targeted supply chain attack on a corporate ecosystem in real time.”

A New Concert of Powers?

Sovereignty is a lethal threat to the ongoing cultural revolution. That concerns the role of the European Union institutions – especially the European Commission – going no holds barred to dissolve the national interests of nation states. And that largely explains the weaponizing, in varying degrees, of Russophobia, Sinophobia and Iranophobia.

The anchoring essay in Raging Twenties analyzes the stakes in Eurasia exactly in terms of the Hegemon pitted against the Three Sovereigns – which are Russia, China and Iran.

It’s under this framework, for instance, that a massive, 270-plus page bill, the Strategic Competition Act , has been recently passed at the US Senate. That goes way beyond geopolitical competition, charting a road map to fight China across the full spectrum. It’s bound to become law, as Sinophobia is a bipartisan sport in D.C.

Hegemon oracles such as the perennial Henry Kissinger at least are taking a pause from their customary Divide and Rule shenanigans to warn that the escalation of “endless” competition may derail into hot war – especially considering AI and the latest generations of smart weapons.

On the incandescent US-Russia front, where Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sees the lack of mutual trust, no to mention respect, as much worse than during the Cold War, analyst Glenn Diesen notes how the Hegemon “strives to convert the security dependence of the Europeans into geoeconomic loyalty”.

That’s at the heart of a make-or-break saga: Nord Stream 2. The Hegemon uses every weapon – including cultural war, where convicted crook Navalny is a major pawn – to derail an energy deal that is essential for Germany’s industrial interests. Simultaneously, pressure increases against Europe buying Chinese technology.

Meanwhile, NATO – which lords over the EU – keeps being built up as a global Robocop, via the NATO 2030 project – even after turning Libya into a militia-ridden wasteland and having its collective behind humiliatingly spanked in Afghanistan.

For all the sound and fury of sanction hysteria and declinations of cultural war, the Hegemon establishment is not exactly blind to the West “losing not only its material dominance but also its ideological sway”.

So the Council on Foreign Relations – in a sort of Bismarckian hangover – is now proposing a New Concert of Powers to deal with “angry populism” and “illiberal temptations”, conducted of course by those malign actors such as “pugnacious Russia” who dare to “challenge the West’s authority”.

As much as this geopolitical proposal may be couched in benign rhetoric, the endgame remains the same: to “restore US leadership”, under US terms. Damn those “illiberals” Russia, China and Iran.

Crooke evokes exactly a Russian and a Chinese example to illustrate where the woke cultural revolution may lead to.

In the case of the Chinese cultural revolution, the end result was chaos, fomented by the Red Guards, which started to wreak their own particular havoc independent of the Communist Party leadership.

And then there’s Dostoevsky in The Possessed, which showed how the secular Russian liberals of the 1840s created the conditions for the emergence of the 1860s generation: ideological radicals bent on burning down the house.

No question: “revolutions” always eat their children. It usually starts with a ruling elite imposing their newfound Platonic Forms on others. Remember Robespierre. He formulated his politics in a very Platonic way – “the peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality, the reign of eternal justice” with laws “engraved in the hearts of all men”.

Well, when others disagreed with Robespierre’s vision of Virtue, we all know what happened: the Terror. Just like Plato, incidentally, recommended in Laws. So it’s fair to expect that the children of the woke revolution will eventually be eaten alive by their zeal.

Canceling freedom of speech

As it stands, it’s fair to argue when the “West” started to go seriously wrong – in a cancel culture sense. Allow me to offer the Cynic/Stoic point of view of a 21st century global nomad.

If we need a date, let’s start with Rome – the epitome of the West – in the early 5th century. Follow the money. That’s the time when income from properties owned by temples were transferred to the Catholic Church – thus boosting its economic power. By the end of the century, even gifts to temples were forbidden.

In parallel, a destruction overdrive was in progress – fueled by Christian iconoclasm, ranging from crosses carved in pagan statues to bathhouses converted into churches. Bathing naked? Quelle horreur!

The devastation was quite something. One of the very few survivors was the fabulous bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius on horseback, in the Campidoglio/ Capitoline Hill (today it’s housed in the museum). The statue survived only because the pious mobs thought the emperor was Constantine.

The very urban fabric of Rome was destroyed: rituals, the sense of community, singin’ and dancin’. We should remember that people still lower their voices when entering a church.

For centuries we did not hear the voices of the dispossessed. A glaring exception is to be found in an early 6th century text by an Athenian philosopher, quoted by Ramsay MacMullen in Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eight Centuries.

The Greek philosopher wrote that Christians are “a race dissolved in every passion, destroyed by controlled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security.”

If that sounds like a proto-definition of 21st century Western cancel culture, that’s because it is.

Things were also pretty bad in Alexandria. A Christian mob killed and dismembered the alluring Hypatia, mathematician and philosopher. That de facto ended the era of great Greek mathematics. No wonder Gibbon turned the assassination of Hypatia into a remarkable set piece in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (“In the bloom of beauty, and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers and instructed her disciples; the persons most illustrious for their rank or merit were impatient to visit the female philosopher”).

Under Justinian – emperor from 527 to 565 – cancel culture went after paganism no holds barred. One of his laws ended imperial toleration of all religions, which was in effect since Constantine in 313.

If you were a pagan, you’d better get ready for the death penalty. Pagan teachers – especially philosophers – were banned. They lost their parrhesia: their license to teach (here is Foucault’s brilliant analysis).

Parrhesia – loosely translated as “frank criticism” – is a tremendously serious issue: for no less than a thousand years, this was the definition of freedom of speech (italics mine).

There you go: first half of the 6th century. This was when freedom of speech was canceled in the West.

The last Egyptian temple – to Isis, in an island in southern Egypt – was shut down in 526. The legendary Plato’s Academy – with no less than 900 years of teaching in its curriculum – was shut down in Athens in 529.

Guess where the Greek philosophers chose to go into exile: Persia.

Those were the days – in the early 2nd century – when the greatest Stoic, Epictetus, a freed slave from Phrygia, admirer of both Socrates and Diogenes, was consulted by an emperor, Hadrian; and became the role model of another emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

History tells us that the Greek intellectual tradition simply did not fade away in the West. It was a target of cancel culture.

Deleting the Reset: The Imminent Struggle Ahead

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By Kevin Smith

Source: Off-Guardian

Awhile ago I wrote an article explaining my journey of learning towards the Great Reset agenda. In that piece I said that I thought this horror show would continue for some time, but ultimately it would fail, but at great cost to our society and to all of us.

More recently I’ve been researching information about the new ‘vaccines’ and like others, now seriously wonder if this is part of something sinister and perhaps even more of a threat our very existence.

For relief from the madness and heavy-reading of the scientific studies, I watch a lot of Ivor Cummins’, Dr Mike Yeadon’s, and Dr Sucharit Bhakdi online presentations which are professional, clear and powerful.  Dr Bhakdi’s recent interview here is brilliant, yet the most terrifying I’ve watched concerning the vaccines.

There are some experts out there with real passion, intelligence and an amazing ability to cut through the complexities.  We should all be grateful to have such brave people setting out the facts.

Of course, many of these experts and commentators have limited access to the so-called mainstream. They’ve been censored relentlessly.  It’s easy to become despondent that the now obvious facts over Covid-19, lockdowns and vaccines are still not getting a hearing.

For me, it’s the frustration that the public are still largely oblivious to the impending nightmare about to descend on them and their families.  And the powerlessness to stop it, like a slow-motion car crash.

DR REINER FUELLMICH

Just recently, I’ve become drawn towards some presentations and interviews involving a prominent German lawyer, Reiner Fuellmich. Quite a few readers here may have watched the same material.

He’s well known for previously taking out successful legal actions against huge companies, Volkswagen, over its fraudulent emissions data and also Deutsche Bank over a financial scandal.

Last year his attention was drawn towards the response to the so-called Coronavirus crisis and with several others, set up the German Corona Investigative Committee to look into it. Now, this committee has conducted much of their investigations and are proceeding with legal actions globally.

I think it’s worth summarising some of this here.

Also, although many of us are aware of many of the reasons, motives, timing for the so-called Great Reset, I think Reiner’s insights and thoughts are interesting and collectively provide a more complete understanding of what’s behind it all. And perhaps there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

Below includes my review and some thoughts on the above clips, Reiner’s approach, observations and findings, with some of my thoughts.

BACKGROUND

Reiner set up the investigation committee in July 2020.  This is a good summary of the timeline, concerns and questions raised and conclusions which followed.

They decided the three major questions to be answered in the context of a judicial approach to the coronavirus issues were:

  1. Is there a corona pandemicor is there only a PCR-test pandemic? Specifically, does a positive PCR-test result mean that the person tested is infected with Covid-19, or does it mean absolutely nothing in connection with the Covid-19 infection?
  2. Do the so-called anti-corona measures, such as the lockdown, mandatory face masks, social distancing, and quarantine regulations, serve to protect the world’s population from corona, or do these measures serve only to make people panic so that they believe – without asking any questions – that their lives are in danger, so that in the end the pharmaceutical and tech industries can generate huge profits from the sale of PCR tests, antigen and antibody tests and vaccines, as well as the harvesting of our genetic fingerprints?
  3. Is it true that the German government was massively lobbied, more so than any other country, by the chief protagonists of this so-called corona pandemic, Mr. Drosten, virologist at charity hospital in Berlin; Mr. Wieler, veterinarian and head of the German equivalent of the CDC, the RKI; and Mr. Tedros, Head of the World Health Organization or WHO; because Germany is known as a particularly disciplined country and was therefore to become a role model for the rest of the world for its strict and, of course, successful adherence to the corona measures?

In examining these points and to understand the big picture better, Reiner says that he spoke to over a hundred experts and took testimony.  From scientists, doctors, psychologists and many other experts in their fields, including whistle blowers with knowledge of the Great Reset.

Reiner confidently states in the interview that he has a good case to show that the combine decision making and lockdown measures in response to Covid-19 and PCR tests and other evidence, is a scandal on a massive scale and the biggest crime against humanity, ever.

Without repeating all the events over the last 14 months (which are largely covered within the above links), it’s now obvious that virtually every official western government, scientific narrative and measure has been the complete opposite of how to deal with a genuine public health crises. It’s clear Covid-19 is being used to usher in a regime of complete control over us.

LEGAL OPPORTUNITIES 

Reiner explains in the interview that the legal actions are being planned and will be multi-layered and conducted across jurisdictions internationally.  He believes that in light of favourable judgements in Portugal and Austria regarding the ineffectiveness of the PCR test, this is a good approach. 

He also explains that because the reset agenda is also not limited to one jurisdiction, it makes good sense from this perspective.

It seems to me, on the facts alone, he would have a strong case in any fair court. But I think we’ve all seen examples of European courts issuing inexplicable decisions or ducking out of a judgement on hugely important issues on a point of law or jurisdiction.

Reiner says that perhaps the best chances of legal success are in the US and Canada legal systems he is familiar with, which allow class actions.  Class actions can be joined by individuals who believe they have been disadvantaged by decisions of the state or large company, for example, by fraud, negligence or discrimination.

Reiner states during the interview that the national state systems might not be suitable for this type of case due to the sheer scale of the Covid-19 fraud and ultimately envisages a ‘Nuremberg 2’ scenario.

Some people might feel that the legal process, even if it hasn’t been bought and paid for by the globalists responsible for these crimes, will take too long to stop what’s happening. I think this is a danger, but much work has already been carried out by the German Corona Investigative Committee and much evidence is already in the public domain and cases in the pipeline soon.

In any event, I believe it will be interesting to watch these events, perhaps within the context of the continuing horror of the ongoing health, social and economic destruction and the Great Reset agenda. Such increasing public awareness might determine the outcome, how these cases proceed or are judged, or even if they proceed at all.

THE INTERESTS DRIVING THE GREAT RESET: A LAWYER’S VIEW

What was most interesting from the interview is what Reiner said about the people involved within this agenda and the possible motives behind it.  While I and many of us have a fair idea of what they are, and there seem to be many, I think we struggle to understand the structure behind it all, how it works together and how to apportion responsibility to each moving part (financial and banking, big pharma, world organisations, climate-change agenda, medical profession, judiciary etc)

Reiner’s observations of this are interesting and I think provide some grounds for optimism.

He says from what he’s learned he thinks there are about 3,000 people in the world most directly complicit acting against a population of around 8 billion. He refers to them as the ‘Davos Clique’. He says, however, that he estimates between 10 and 20% of people in the world have woken up to this agenda and possibly many more are on the path to discovery.

So that’s 3,000 hardcore criminals against perhaps as many as 1.5 billion, so far.

Reiner also says that these criminals are made up of people with competing interests and where in-fighting takes place. This, he believes, may be an opportunity to push-back just in the same way they have divided us. It seems whistle-blowers have provided information and as this terrifying agenda unfolds, this should gather pace.

Likewise, when asked who these people are and what combined motives are involved, he explains that they are made up of the ‘usual suspects’ of world organisations such as, WHO, WEF, IMF, the billionaire technocrats, pharmaceutical giants, big media platforms, banks and investment funds.

He says the motive is not primarily financial because these people are outrageously wealthy already. He describes it as more about control over humanity.  This operates under the guise of several motives and agendas, self-preservation and consolidation, Covid and vaccines, climate-change ideology but essentially it is about power. But their money is what oils the machinery below them.

I think perhaps the structure Reiner and others have described is like a pyramid.  He says that these elitist cults have filtered money down to grease the various chains of command below them, such as governments, opposition parties, media, scientists, universities, hospital trusts and so on.

Reiner says that he also believes that some individuals in government could have been bribed, coerced or threatened into co-operating.  We’ve seen possible signs of this elsewhere such as Belarus, Tanzania and Burundi.

I guess the lower you go down the pyramid you get the ‘middle managers’ and ‘foot-soldiers. Some who are being bribed with funding grants. Some who suspect something but are too afraid to speak out. Some who are oblivious to what’s going on.

It’s not hard to imagine with all the forces above pulling together, wittingly or otherwise can commence such a huge undertaking of a global coup.  My analogy is similar to Nazi Germany and the command structure looks very similar.

Reiner also mentioned two interesting scenarios which I hadn’t considered as much.  He says that he was told by a whistle-blower that the original plan was to introduce the reset in 2050.  This was brought forward to 2030 and then to now as some elements within this group became impatient.   He says that he believes this being rushed through now is why they are making so many obvious mistakes that can be exploited.

Further Reiner says he was told that Europe is the battleground where they are trying to get control over the most. This is because Europe and the central bank is essentially bankrupt and particularly the big pension funds which for obvious reasons don’t wish people to know.  They figure pushing through their agenda under the guise of pandemics, climate-change, conflict and other crisis will distract the public and by the time they wake up, they will be under full control.

After the same people caused the previous financial crash, they reassured us everything was alright again but since have been printing money and plundering more.

Reiner believes, as the financial system started showing signs of imploding again in 2019, this was when the globalists decided to meet and agreed to push the Coronavirus narrative and towards the Great Reset.

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF STOPPING THEIR POWER GRAB?

Reiner is quite hopeful that this could happen and a better world could emerge and away from the globalism which has created the world’s problems.  He says that, if we fail, it could be the end of humanity, so we can’t fail. I share this assessment and cautious optimism.

Personally, I think the globalist cults may have bitten off much more than they can chew at once.  Due to the overall agenda being a shared goal among different interests, but combine with many smaller agendas within these groups (which sometimes conflict), I think it’s hard to pull off.

I believe the courts in theory offer remedies as long as they are independent or there’s a chance at least, the globalists may back off or settle if they see the evidence against them is overwhelming and awareness growing.

Whistle-blowers could start coming forward more, perhaps caused by an unexpected event or opposition which the elites haven’t factored in or further mistakes they make. So, there’s a strong psychological element to this battle.

Likewise, many more people than we realise now could be on the verge of waking up and a spark somewhere, perhaps major civil unrest could cause contagion.  The elites could lose their nerve, become too greedy, divisions and in-fighting could follow leading to self-destruction.

But I believe the elites could double-down with further generated crisis. Food chain problems, power cuts new variants and other distractions.  There could be evil that we have not factored in.

The tragedy for humanity is if people don’t wake up now, they may not realise until they are in the nightmare, where they will own nothing and be expected to be happy, or far worse.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Reiner says it’s not worth the effort trying to actively persuade the people who seem to have switched off their brain and rolled up their sleeves.  Rather concentrate on spreading the message and connect to like-minded individuals or those who simply have doubts about what’s going on.

In my mind there are two things we need to do as individuals. To win, and cope until we do.

My own thought is to take one day at a time, not to overthink the unthinkable. My view is also to spread the powerful messages, the grave doubts about the vaccines, passports, digital currencies, highlighting the Great Reset and what this will mean to the lives of all of us if we accept full control by a bunch of Bond Villain-style criminals.

Use strong language, call this agenda for what it is.  Communism, fascism, eco-authoritarianism or analogies with Nazi Germany.

Use fear of their real, terrifying agenda, just as they have used fear of a “virus” which is not a threat, against us. When spreading this information use images, ridicule and humour.

Finally, for me, one very compelling part of Reiner’s interview was to do with spirituality which he mentioned in parts of his clip near the end and is worth listening to.

He says that he is not religious but has come to believe that some people have perhaps a gift or ability to see things the majority can’t or won’t.  I guess he was suggesting something beyond researching events. Possibly more a superior perception of events, a spirituality, or a natural instinct well above the general human ability to perceive or rationalise things – which he feels is relevant to this and connecting with each other.

Reiner gave the example of a friend who was describing their child in the company of other children, him being different to the rest.

This is something I can relate to, in the direction of my life from one which was largely aimless and unfulfilled to today fighting injustice wherever I see it.

I feel there is a spiritual dimension there and I sense this with others fighting this and similar causes. Whether it is spiritual or there’s another explanation, I think the essence of what Reiner is saying is very true and will resonate with many people whether it’s opposing foreign wars or fighting against the war the global elites and their puppets have now unleashed on all humanity under the guise of Covid-19.

At the end of the interview, the interviewer asks Reiner if history would look back fondly on him and others who took part in this fight now.  Reiner replied “absolutely, of course”

Reiner is clearly a person of much integrity, passion and intelligence. One of many excellent people we have fighting for us.

The ‘new normal’ – what will we lose?

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By Alex Bartlett

Source: Off-Guardian

This is the question is it not? Even though tens of thousands of experts, thousands of skeptics and all of the rest of us have been consumed over the last year debating, questioning, arguing and worst of all, just listening to endless stream of covid coverage it really comes down to this.

After sifting through all of the science-sourced “facts”, claims, death statistics, cases updates (so many, many cases) and the dire, ever grim projections from our modern-day high priests with their computer models it really just comes down to this question.

What will we lose?

For many reasons I am reluctant to write about this subject. I know nothing of epidemiology or virology or public health. I really have no business writing about loss due to covid 19, my profession is in high demand for the moment, my wife is gainfully employed and recently promoted and our living situation is quite good.

I will not dare pretend that I can speak about real hardship or suffering due to covid compared to what small business owners would be going through or what the working poor have had to endure but at the same time, only a complete fool would suggest that they have not lost anything in the past year.

With this in mind, at the same time, I cannot fully ever hope to comprehend all that I, no, all that we have lost and all of the ways this has happened. The sheer magnitude of these changes, almost all entirely some kind of loss for the vast majority of us is truly staggering. Perhaps for the 1st time in a very long time, perhaps ever, the other majority, the world’s poorest citizens will finally see the rest of us experience real empathy, a genuine understanding of some of the challenges and daily injustices they have been forced to accept as a normal way of living.

The worst aspect of my personal situation so far is that my elderly mother has been basically imprisoned in a care facility for over a year, unable to see any family save for myself and my brother who have been permitted to be designated “essential caregivers” so that she may have a few visitors.

So far with this measure, our Ontario Government has not been heartless enough just yet to completely isolate the elderly but all other friends and family are forbidden to visit. The last time she was allowed outside, almost 8 months ago, she was in the presence of a “minder” who kept us 6 feet apart, masked and who afforded us no privacy. I will lose my mom soon, she may die alone, forcibly confined with simple pleasures like walks in a park, the chaotic, non-judgemental love of grandchildren with their extra exuberance on holidays and birthdays all but eliminated.

My children are also no longer allowed in school even though kids are not and never were at risk and at the moment, over 75% of our schools in Ontario did not even have a single “case” when last in session. They are not only losing education but also social skills, study skills, valuable daily interactions and life lessons as well as exercise and fresh air and tragically, a large portion of that small, finite amount of time where they could just simply be kids.

I feel despair most days when I see my daughter, perched at the dining room table in front of a laptop ready to sign into virtual school, on her own and alone. Our wonderful, neighbourhood school sits shuttered while my daughter emulates the routine of an office worker at the age of 8. At the end of the day we can sometimes catch ourselves almost berating her like low level managerial assholes for not paying attention and fooling around during the day with the computer. For Christ sakes, what have we become as parents?

My 5 years old son cannot even last a 20 minute lesson online by himself. I initially felt frustrated that he could not persist in the same fashion the other young innocents can in these disembodied zoom classes but now I could be more accepting of this except that we both have to work during this “school time” and we need him to be occupied. Maybe this lack of digital “focus” speaks to how little screen time he had prior to this abomination of online “learning” or maybe it is simply because he is just 5 years old and he has no business being treated like this.

Am I surprised at how easily I just became a jaded, middle aged man who mostly complains to like minded friends and who wears himself and others out with the same impotent questions about “why and “how” could this happen? I did try emailing almost anyone in authority to question the safety and efficacy of the school mask mandate but this effort soon failed after so many “cut and paste”, formulaic responses from the bureaucratic minders along with their links on “community spread” and “how to safely wear a mask.”

It would have been nice to actually have been able to talk to school staff about my concerns in person but parents have not been permitted inside the school for over a year now. Will we ever be allowed back inside our schools or will there be new measures, new “threats” to keep us outside or have we simply just lost this ability to view and interact with this critically formative environment we immerse our children into?

I have not had a haircut since November 2020. “Unsafe” they say while putting all hairdressers on welfare for the better part of a year and also while making “working from home” just that much more undignified. Dogs have actually been permitted more frequent access to professional grooming than adults have here in Ontario in the last year.

Perhaps this is why booze, marijuana and fast food have always been available during this pandemic. I guess they know that as long as we remain in a well-fed stupor with Netflix porting us from reality, there will be no real angst or frustration on the streets.

For a brief moment last week, when announcing our latest stay at home order due to our hypersensitive, 47 cycle PCR test cases (approximately 1 case for every 4,500 residents here in Ontario mind you), our bumbling high school educated Premier tried to impose a quasi-martial law edict. The police would have been able to stop you and question your intent if you ventured outside of you home. I found it laughable that you could legally comply by saying you were “off to buy booze, weed or fast food” and these would all be valid, essential destinations for such an excursion. Meeting a friend for a walk in the park though, this is not safe, nor recommended or even permitted!

Luckily, they pulled back from this stance, the lawyers probably said it was unlawful, the police probably said that they did not want to enforce this heavy handed stance and perhaps the weary, bleary eyed, stumbling public would have probably, finally, maybe have said “enough”.

At this point, I think only the naïve believe that our old lives are coming back. Perhaps that is why they are so willing, so adamant to get the jab. It is not really to save the lives of others or prevent the scourge of an infectious disease but because it mainly seems like most people just want to travel again or to have the chance to no longer have to hear or worry about covid constantly.

Once again, I realize I have no business writing about loss. My friends are still all employed, I really do not know anyone who runs a small shop or a restaurant. I have no idea what it would be like to watch your business disintegrate, the debts pile up and the financial vultures start circling around you. I do understand why these small business owners and employees would be so motivated for everyone to get vaccinated so that they can finally open up and claw their way out of this deep covid hole they have been plunged into with the other end of their government issued loan lifelines handed to the big banks as a financial noose around their necks that will continually tighten in the months and years to come.

For the moment the rest of us are all still shielded by this work from home employment model that has not had any significant layoffs due to a massive, unchecked national Government wage subsidy program that even pays a 70% wage subsidy to large, significantly profitable corporations that are still paying dividends to shareholders. This white-collar job market stability is still further enhanced here in Canada by the re-bounding stock market that keeps rising to ever record heights thanks to the government debt printing machines.

So, how much will they really take from us in the months and years to come?

Let’s forget about PCR testing cycles, what constitutes a “case” vs. a clinical case, vaccine trials, if masks work or if lockdowns really achieve anything. These are all unnecessarily divisive discussions that, in the absence of any real or honest mainstream journalism, will never be permitted to be resolved in the public forum.

What we should really care about is that our children have been forbidden to interact with each other, to pursue hobbies, musical lessons, school clubs or just simple play-time with their peers. They are sent to school, when deemed “safe” based on the computer models, bound and gagged as invalids for up to 8 hours a day. Lunchtimes and playtimes are truncated, discouraged and replaced with silent lunches in front of a screen and ”socially distanced” outdoor play during shortened recess periods.

What will school look like in the years to come? What kind of digital ID’s will our children be forced to carry with them at all times and which big Tech conglomerate will collect, curate, market and disseminate all of their medical, scholarly and personal data?

What will replace all of the small restaurants, pubs and shops that have gone under? Will all of these beautiful brick and mortar establishments be bought up on the cheap by a large private equity firm that will offer the least equitable employment terms to desperate applicants?

At the moment I am not supposed to leave my neighbourhood limits. When will I be able to travel internationally and what risks must I accept with new vaccines and boosters to qualify to come and go and what private information must I sacrifice upon request to comply?

I feel that most of the online world I encounter is awash in mis-information, how soon will it be before the small and beleaguered sources of genuine information that I can find online are completely demonetized, de-linked, banned or de-platformed from the internet? The access to content and commenting that we have lost in the last year alone would have been incomprehensible to almost all of us just a few years ago, now the most “liberal democrats” are braying for big tech and the regulators to do more, to take more stringent actions. Soon we may experience a very harsh and unforgiving internet, one that reports us for straying outside of the ever-narrowing community guidelines.

What about my freedom, my right to refuse a hastily developed medical technology, one that has not been thoroughly tested but is still supposed to, guaranteed to (almost) provoke the appropriate immune response to a virus that poses almost no harm to me whatsoever?

What about unintended consequences? What happens to me if I suddenly develop any number of rare or debilitating health conditions in the future? My chances of catching covid-19 or experiencing ill effects from it are quite low so why can’t I be allowed to take this risk without being judged for doing so?

What happened to our acquired knowledge as a society as to how to behave when sick? This has served us well for thousands of years. When our amazing immune systems were fighting a significant illness, it was almost always obvious that the sick individual should be cared for but isolated and kept from others.

Why have we lost this trust in ourselves and in our own judgement? We are still permitted to raise our children (for now) but we are unable to properly assess our own health and infectivity as it may pertain to others at work or at school? Exercising our own good judgement is a critical aspect of a well functioning, civil society. Removing this right, this freedom of choice will only lead to a punitive, dystopian type of society, one that eagerly turns on each other rather than to help one another.

The optimists, those that believe in the system, the same system that has half the planet living in poverty mind you but don’t worry about that, just a minor flaw, they believe this fabulous system of democracy and commerce will deliver us the health outcome we all deserve. It will protect us and our weakest and all we need to do is take a shot, or two or three, every year and don’t mind the costs or how or to whom the money was distributed, it was necessary, it will be worth it.

Once this happens, once we reach the now newly re-defined as solely vaccine derived “herd immunity” then life is back! School, travel, friends and family. You can have it all but you may need a mask for just a bit longer, maybe two masks actually.

The rest of us, a small vocal minority or perhaps, hopefully a larger, mostly silent and dumbfounded mass of citizens will finally start taking stock of what we have lost and what we are truly at risk of losing.

It is hard to do. I still want the others to be right. I want the vaccine to be safe and effective. I want the sacrifice to be worth it. I want to travel and do all the things I imagined I would do with friends and family and at work. I want my kids to have these same options that I had. I want to believe that my government and our health officials are working with our best interests in mind while unaffected by conflicts of interest.

But the data says otherwise. This data that has always been there. That data that shows us that Covid is neither dangerous or all that contagious to anyone under the age of 70. The historical data that tells us that Influenza A and B and all the other sub-types could not possibly just disappear worldwide in the last twelve months. The data, all the data, these recent 12 months of newly acquired covid raw numbers from all over the world that does not lie…

So, the media does.

So do almost all Governments as well.

They have the full cooperation of all of the big tech companies for maximum efficacy. Information has never been more widely available but then immediately censored or “fact” checked. Prominent voices of reason, objectivity and truth are shadow banned or de-platformed. Even the miniscule, insignificant frustrated comments I make against my better judgement on our national news website are quickly and automatically deactivated within minutes of posting. I should know better than to waste the pixels, however temporary they might be.

What can be done? Not much on our own but then quite a lot if we all do something. Close to a half a million marched in London on April 24th. It was wonderful to see. How many more will march in May? I hope at least twice as many will next time and that they will persist, and persist and persist. I hope that as the weather warms, more and more people will see that it is possible to be outside and inside, to be together and to celebrate our lives, our professions and our passions together without shame or fear.

What else do we have to lose?

Saturday Matinee: Another Round

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By Brian Tallerico

Source: RogerEbert.com

Four teacher friends start a social experiment in Thomas Vinterberg’s smart and ultimately moving “Another Round.” Based on a belief that the human body is born with too low an alcohol level, they strive to maintain a 0.05% BAC at all times—buzzed but far from drunk. They set rules. They can only drink during work hours (yes, as teachers). The idea is that a low-level buzz releases stress and tension in ways that nothing else can. To varying degrees, all four men are going through what could be called a midlife crisis, dissatisfied by the mundanity of daily life as teachers, but it’s Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) who is in the deepest funk. He has lost all passion for teaching his history class, feels distant from his family, and can’t find many reasons to get up. The social experiment breaks him out of his rut in a relatively predictable way, but Mikkelsen elevates what could have been another traditional message movie about living life to the fullest even after you think you’ve had your final drink.

Shortly after the experiment begins, Vinterberg stages a scene in Martin’s classroom, where he’s engaging with his students in a way he clearly hasn’t in years. He’s getting them involved with vibrant conversation and new ways to look at history. He’s smiling in that very Mads way. What’s brilliant about the scene is how Vinterberg and cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen replicate that slightly wobbly feeling that comes after just a strong drink or two. Martin is nowhere near blacking out or doing anything embarrassing, but the slightly unsteady camera swoops in for a close-up and then back out again in the inconsistent way that the world sometimes does after a couple glasses of wine—the filmmaking coming to life like how Martin is with his new buzz on life. It’s indicative of the high craft on display here as the visual language subtly matches the character’s journey.

Martin’s colleagues (Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, & Lars Ranthe—all effective) find similar success, at least at first. A music teacher encourages his students to sing more with their hearts and souls; a philosophy teacher catches onto the anxiety of one of his students in a way he may not have given his previously detached approach. Then the quartet starts to change the terms of the experiment, which everyone knows is a bad idea. If 0.05% works so well for Martin that he feels better even when he’s sober, maybe he should go higher? They start pushing the envelope. Absinthe gets involved. As anyone who has tried it can tell you, Absinthe is almost always a bad idea. Trust me.  

“Another Round” reaches beyond its set-up when it becomes a study in individuality. The experiment affects each of the four men differently, and everyone knows that a drunk night comes with a hungover morning. A student near the end gives an exam on the Kierkegaardian philosophies on anxiety and accepting fallibility and failure, which is what all midlife crisis films are about to a certain degree—coming to terms with mistakes after you realize you may be running out of time to correct them.  

The midsection of “Another Round,” wherein the guys open up and alter their experiment based on results, has a tendency to drag, but Vinterberg avoids cliché in this bulk of the film, thanks largely to casting his favorite leading man (Mikkelsen starred in the director’s excellent “The Hunt”). The “Hannibal” star is such a genuinely captivating actor—one of those performers who holds the camera like a movie star while also feeling completely realistic and in the moment at the same time. He doesn’t hit a single false note in a film that really could have been all broad humor and wacky hijinks. Even as the final act starts to get a bit manipulative by stretching some previously established realism, Mikkelsen holds it together, and then he comes out literally swinging in one of the best final scenes of the year. It’s such a jubilant moment that you may walk out of the theater feeling a little buzzed.

Watch Another Round on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14121002