New Pentagon-Google Partnership Suggests AI Will Soon Be Used to Diagnose Covid-19

Google recently teamed up with the Pentagon as part of the new, AI-driven “Predictive Health” program. Though only focused on “predictive cancer diagnoses” for now, Google and the military have apparent plans to expand the AI model for automating and predicting Covid-19 diagnoses.

By Whitney Webb

Source: Unlimited Hangout

At the beginning of September, Google Cloud announced that it had won a project from the Pentagon’s relatively new Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to “prototype an AI-enabled digital pathology solution at select DoD [Department of Defense] facilities.” This prototype, per a Google Cloud press release, combines “augmented reality telescopes” with “AI-enabled” cancer detection tools that will allegedly improve the accuracy of “predictive cancer diagnoses.” It is the second DIU contract Google has won this year, with the first being related to combatting “cyber threats.”

The initial implementation of this Pentagon-funded, Google-created “digital pathology solution” will take place “at select Defense Health Agency (DHA) treatment facilities and Veterans Affairs hospitals in the United States,” and the program includes “future plans to expand across the broader U.S. Military Health System,” according to Google.

The initiative is part of a larger DIU-led program called “Predictive Health” that is also partnered with the joint AI effort of the US military and US intelligence community, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and JAIC’s “Warfighter Health” initiative. The JAIC, which is currently led by a former Silicon Valley executive, is providing much of the funding for Predictive Health, while its related “Warfighter Health” initiative more broadly seeks “to field AI solutions that are aimed at transforming military health care.”

In addition to its stated goal of improving the accuracy of cancer diagnoses, the implementation of this Google-DIU AI-driven medical diagnosis tool aims to show “frontline health practitioners” that such tools “can improve the lives” of US troops, according to Google executives. As Mike Daniels, vice president of Global Public Sector at Google Cloud, noted in a statement, Google is “partnering with DIU to provide our machine learning and artificial intelligence technology to help frontline healthcare practitioners learn about capabilities that can improve the lives of our military men and women and their families.” Google also stated that the use of their tool at military health facilities would also “lower overall healthcare costs.”

The Google-DIU effort to outsource human doctor decision-making to a tailor-made artificial intelligence algorithm is, for now, only focused on the diagnosis of cancers. However, last Thursday, less than two weeks after winning the DIU contract, Google announced that it was donating $8.5 million to several organizations to advance the development and use of AI  “for monitoring and forecasting” Covid-19. That money is part of a larger $100 million donation from Google for financing “solutions” to Covid-19 that was announced in May.

Further evidence that Google soon plans to offer AI-driven “predictive diagnoses” for Covid-19 came in August, when Google Cloud partnered with Harvard’s Global Health Institute to provide “Covid-19 Public Forecasts,” which “provide a projection of Covid-19 cases, deaths, and other metrics over the next 14 days for US counties and states.” The announcement of the Google-Harvard collaboration coincided with an announcement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would begin “harness[ing] AI for COVID-19 diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring.”

Notably, other tech companies that have produced “predictive diagnosis” AI models for Covid-19 also began first by offering AI-created “forecasts” of “likely” Covid-19 outbreaks. For instance, the Israeli intelligence–linked Diagnostic Robotics initially offered AI-driven predictive “forecasts” of cities and districts to guide lockdown policy in Israel and the US state of Rhode Island before then teaming up with the US-based company Salesforce to develop a platform that uses AI to “predict” which individuals are likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19 and then uses AI to monitor and even “treat” those individuals.

Furthermore, in partnership with researchers at Mount Sinai healthcare centers in New York, tech giant Microsoft has already aided the development of an AI algorithm that “rapidly diagnoses” Covid-19. Mount Sinai’s AI model, supported by a recent grant from Microsoft’s “AI for Health” initiative, “was as accurate as an experienced radiologist in diagnosing the disease,” according to one of the lead researchers behind the model’s development. While its development was aided by Microsoft, the core of the Mount Sinai AI model is TensorFlow, which was developed by Google and is Google AI’s second-generation system for machine learning.

In addition, both Google and Microsoft are part of a Europe-based effort aimed at “automating diagnoses” for Covid-19 via an AI algorithm that analyzes CT scans, which is similar in several ways to the Mount Sinai AI model. Thus, it seems highly likely that Google’s efforts to offer AI-powered “predictive diagnoses” will soon expand to include tools that use algorithms to diagnose Covid-19, not just cancer.

The Merging of the Pentagon, the CIA, and Silicon Valley

Established in 2015, the Defense Innovation Unit of the Department of Defense officially exists to transfer “leading-edge commercial capabilities to the military faster and more cost-effectively than traditional defense acquisition methods” and to accelerate “the adoption of commercial technology throughout the military and [grow] the national security innovation base.” As the DIU makes clear on its website, the “national security innovation base” it seeks to “grow” consists of private tech companies, namely those based in Silicon Valley, that provide “advanced commercial solutions” to “national security challenges.” This, of course, includes the tech companies that already double as contractors for the national security state, such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, among numerous others.

The DIU boasts offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, and at the Pentagon itself and is largely led, not by career military men, but by former Silicon Valley executives. For instance, its current director—Michael Brown—is the former CEO of cybersecurity giant Symantec and, prior to that, led the Quantum corporation. In another example, the leader of the DIU’s artificial intelligence portfolio is Jeff Klugman, a former top executive at TiVo, the Quantum corporation, and Hewlett-Packard.

A year after the DIU was created, it was followed by the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), which is composed of “leaders from across the national security innovation base” and provides recommendations that “have been used to inform DoD leadership strategy and action, as well as congressional legislation.” Like the DIU, Silicon Valley is well represented on the DIB, as its members include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman as well as top executives from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

Notably, just months before the DIU-led Predictive Health program was launched, the DIB noted in March 2020 that the Pentagon “owns the largest repository of disease- and cancer-related medical data in the world,” asserting further that “if the entire repository were leveraged to its fullest potential, it would advance diagnosis and treatment for thousands of illnesses, saving lives across DoD and the global population.” The DIB then specifically suggested that “artificial intelligence and machine learning models may help pathologists sort through this massive dataset more quickly and effectively to provide better care for patients in and out of the military,” adding that these troves of medical data should be used “to support DoD reform and modernization efforts in the field of AI/ML [Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning].”

In other words, the Silicon Valley–dominated DIB called for what is now the Predictive Health program just months before the Silicon Valley–dominated DIU formally announced it. Also noteworthy is that Google—whose former CEO, current vice president, and several other Google-tied researchers and businessmen serve on the DIB—is the very company that won the DIU contract to have its AI models serve as the foundation for the Predictive Health program. This, of course, means that Google’s AI models will benefit immensely from the Pentagon’s “unique” and massive medical datasets, which the DIB previously stated was something that the Pentagon “must treat . . . as a strategic asset.”

It is also important to point out the considerable overlap between the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board and the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The NSCAI is chaired by Eric Schmidt (also on the DIB) and includes representatives from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon as well as the current and former leaders of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel.

The official purpose of the NSCAI is “to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.” As I previously reported for The Last American Vagabond, the vice-chair of NSCAI, Robert Work—former Deputy Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS)described the commission’s purpose as determining “how the U.S. national security apparatus should approach artificial intelligence, including a focus on how the government can work with industry to compete with China’s ‘civil-military fusion’ concept [my emphasis].”

For this reason, the NSCAI unites the US intelligence community and the military, which is already collaborating on AI initiatives via the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and Silicon Valley companies. Notably, many of those Silicon Valley companies—like Google, for instance—are not only contractors to US intelligence, the military, or both but were initially created with funding from the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, which also has a considerable presence on the NSCAI. Thus, while the line between Silicon Valley and the US national-security state has always been murky, now that line is essentially nonexistent as entities like the NSCAI, DIB, and DIU, among several others, clearly show. Whereas China, as Robert Work noted, has the “civil-military fusion” model at its disposal, the NSCAI and the US government respond to that model by further fusing the US technology industry with the national-security state.

It is also certainly interesting that, just like the DIB, the NSCAI called for what would become the DIU’s Predictive Health program a few months before it was formally announced. In a NSCAI paper from June 2020 titled “The Role of AI Technology in Pandemic Response and Preparedness: Recommended Investments and Initiatives,” the commission recommends investments and initiatives aimed at using AI for diagnosing illnesses, including Covid-19. This seems to suggest that the Silicon Valley–led but Pentagon-housed DIU is the body that actually creates the government-industry partnerships and initiatives that are first planned out by the DIB and the NSCAI.

It’s All About the Data

While Google has stated that one of their main goals in participating in the Predictive Health program is showing health-care practitioners how AI can “improve lives,” the DIU was decidedly more direct regarding their intent in implementing this “predictive diagnosis” program. For instance, an article on the Google-DIU pilot program at DefenseOne, citing military officials, notes that the “enormous amount of healthcare data, unique to the Department of Defense, also presents a rare opportunity for the Department to train new machine learning tools.” It then adds that “there are 9.6 million beneficiaries in the Defense Health System, which means a lot of data to improve the accuracy of [AI] models.”

DIU’s chief medical officer, Niels Olsen, who created the Predictive Health program, recently stated that massive quantities of data planned to be obtained by the program and used for developing improved AI algorithms was a critical component of the project. In a Pentagon press release, Olsen stated that “the more data a tool has available to it, the more effective it is. That’s kind of what makes DOD unique. We have a larger pool of information [i. e., medical data] to draw from, so that you can select more diverse cases.”

Thus, the implementation of the Predictive Health program is expected to amass troves upon troves of medical data that offer both the DIU and its partners in Silicon Valley the “rare opportunity” for training new, improved AI models that can then be marketed commercially. This may explain part of the interest in partnering this initiative with the Defense Health Agency (DHA), which “owns the largest repository of disease- and cancer-related medical data in the world” through its management of the Joint Pathology Center, which was noted by the DIB in its March 2020 publication. In addition, as previously mentioned, Google will now be able to access that trove of sensitive data to refine its AI “health-focused” algorithms, thanks to it having won the DIU contract earlier this month.

Notably, the relatively new Predictive Health program builds on past DIU initiatives, such as an AI algorithm that predicts illnesses “48 hours before symptoms show.” That algorithm was developed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the DIU, and the health IT company Royal Phillips. The Phillips team that developed that algorithm is now “refin[ing] the model at military hospitals and clinics managed by the Veterans Affairs Department.” According to the DTRA’s Edward Argenta, the focus of the program is to eventually use the AI algorithm to analyze data from devices that remotely monitor individual health, specifically “a wearable device that might sit on your body—like a watch-based one or a chest strap one.”

While various “innovation-focused” agencies at the Pentagon have been busy developing their own algorithms after harvesting mass amounts of medical data from military members and their families, a web of intelligence-linked tech companies, including those represented on the DIB and NSCAI, have gained access to the jackpot of medical data through partnering with the “Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition.”

According to its website, the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition was established as “a coordinated public-interest, private-sector response to the Covid-19 pandemic, convening healthcare organizations, technology firms, nonprofits, academia, and startups.” The coalition, which was launched by the intelligence and defense contractor MITREalso includes tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Palantir, Salesforce, and Amazon and allows its member organizations to “collaborate, collect, analyze, visualize, and share data and insights.” With access to the data from partnered health-care institutions, such as the Mayo Clinic and the Cedars-Sinai Health System, these tech companies are “helping” the coalition “unlock large-scale analytics for Covid-19.” Institutions tied to the US government, and the NSCAI in particular, such as the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, are also members of the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition.

Notably, the recent advances in US-based efforts to “predict” or “automate” Covid-19 diagnoses are all tied to this very coalition. Indeed, all of the companies and institutions mentioned thus far in this report have engaged in developing these tools, as Diagnostic Robotics, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Mount Sinai Medical Center are all coalition members.

Google, in the press release regarding its recent partnership with the DIU, noted that the prototype of the AI model set to make “predictive cancer diagnoses” had been “developed from [unspecified] public and private datasets,” making it possible—if not likely—that the private datasets were obtained through Google’s membership in this massive, yet relatively unknown, coalition of health-care institutions, tech companies, and US intelligence–linked entities like MITRE and In-Q-Tel.

This apparent obsession with medical data may explain the dramatic uptick in hacks of hospitals in the United States, which have been considerable in recent months and have largely targeted patient data. It is worth pointing out that the increase in these attacks seeking patient data coincides with the DIB-NSCAI policy recommendations regarding training AI algorithms on troves of medical data for automated and predictive diagnoses, among other applications.

Notably, the “solutions” offered to many of the health-care institutions that have been hacked have come from government-promoted yet opaque groups that are deeply tied to US and allied intelligence agencies as well as Silicon Valley. These “volunteer groups,” such as “the CTI League” and “the Cyber Alliance to Defend Our Healthcare,” offer their services for free but, notably, gain access to the patient data they are tasked with guarding. Are such groups, given their deep ties to Silicon Valley and intelligence agencies, helping acquire even more data to satisfy the Silicon Valley and national-security state’s endless hunger for more and more data?

From Blue Shirts to Brown

By Alan Hamilton

Source: Off-Guardian

On at least 3 or 4 occasions in the past week we’ve had to smash the windows of people in cars and pull them out of there so they could provide their details – because they weren’t telling us where they were going; they weren’t adhering to the chief health officer’s guidelines, they weren’t providing their name and their address.”
Shane Patton, Victorian Chief Police Officer 04/08/2020

On Saturday 5th of September a national day of protest occurred in cities around Australia against the unnecessary and draconian lockdowns that have been occurring across the country and which are still occurring in Victoria. Similar protests have occurred in cities around the world, most especially in Europe.

These protests are a legitimate and rational response to despotic and often unconstitutional laws that unscientifically characterize every member of society as a bio-security risk to everyone else. They are also a protest against law enforcement bureaucracies that identify responsible, civic-minded citizens as criminals if they dare to question such laws or even worse, step out of their homes in defiance of the lockdown to register their dissent.

The Australian protests occurred peacefully and without incident in most places, including Brisbane where I participated. But it was not the case in Victoria where a State of Disaster has been declared due to the ‘extraordinarily high’ number of active Covid cases there.

On the eve of the nationwide protests, mainstream news reported on the harrowing state of affairs in Victoria which was suffering from hundreds of active cases but, as it turns out, had only 20 people in intensive care suffering from covid-related illnesses. This is in a state of 6.35 million people that has 58 metropolitan hospitals and 69 rural hospitals and District Health services.

Despite the ‘extraordinarily low’ incidence of people who were actually sick from Covid 19, the Victorian Premier decided that new case numbers (>100 per day) were just too high to tolerate anyone leaving their homes for any reason other than the four exemptions provided by the government.

What he neglected to mention when insisting on preserving his lockdown was that most new cases are occurring in the under-30 age bracket: a demographic that is almost always asymptomatic to SARS CoV-2 and which has more chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident than of Covid19.

Undeterred by inconvenient truths like this, the Premier announced he had to protect the public from the potentially catastrophic medical emergency that would doubtless result from masked people walking down St Kilda Road to the Cenotaph in a socially distanced manner, so he banned all participation in the national day of protest.

Just days earlier the Assistant Police Commissioner for the North West Metro Region, Luke Cornelius, warned everyone in Victoria against participating in the Saturday protests. He referred to people who planned to protest against lockdowns as “boof heads”, calling them an “anti-vax, anti-mask, tinfoil hat-wearing brigade who were batshit crazy”.

This oddly extreme language from one of the State’s most senior police officers is not accidental. It serves a specific purpose.

In order to get ordinary well-adjusted police officers – who may have joined the force out of a desire to be of public service – to brutalize a population whose only crime is that they object to being locked in their homes for 23 hrs a day for months on end, you need to demonize dissent. If your officers on the ground can identify in any way with the people they are being told to terrorize, they might not follow orders.

This is a perennial problem for martial leaders everywhere. It’s particularly problematic when the rules being enforced are arbitrary or unjust. Hence the need to malign.

As Saturday rolled around, the police were out in force across Victoria on horseback with cuffs, batons, tasers and guns ready to intimidate, arrest and fine anyone unfortunate enough to attract their attention within the vicinity of a protest in any town in the State – even those towns where not a single case of Covid-19 has been recorded.

And here we get to the crux of the SARS-CoV-2 scam. Sure, there’s a virus out there. It’s real and it certainly kills people but we know enough about it now to know that the draconian response taken by Premier Danial Andrews is scientifically indefensible. So why is he persisting with the lockdowns?

My personal opinion is that the global program of lockdowns is a mechanism for reorganizing societies around the world along the lines of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset” agenda and all that this entails. It seems Daniel Andrews is fully on board with this agenda. But make no mistake, its coming to your state and country next.

I believe that sustained lockdowns are a “Stanley Milgram-style” experiment designed to see just how far bureaucrats in authority will exceed the moral limits of their power and how much abuse the Australian public will tolerate before they push back.

As part of this experiment, the algorithms that once monitored every nuance of our social media interactions to make frighteningly accurate predictions about us have been extended to track and predict our off-line experience as well. It should come as no surprise that both the Azure and AWS cloud eco-systems have expanded by 50% since the beginning of the pandemic.

The purpose of all this surveillance is not to better understand us as potential marketing targets (the standard explanation) but rather to better control us as victims in a system of profound inequality. Such a system is already in place across much of the world and under the guise of a health pandemic, it is rapidly being expanded to developed countries as well.

So far as I can see the whole experiment is going spectacularly well for the globalists, billionaires, and authoritarians, and very poorly for free citizens everywhere: mostly due to the effectiveness of media propaganda in driving public passivity.

A SCIENTIFIC DICTATORSHIP

Many medical practitioners are aware that Victoria’s management of the SARS CoV-2 pandemic is based on highly selective medical advice which doesn’t stand up to serious scientific scrutiny.

Recently a group of doctors wrote an excellent letter to the Premier advocating an alternative response to disease management, noting that more than 41,000 people die every year in Victoria, roughly 10,000 each from cardiovascular disease and cancer, yet in 7 months of a supposed pandemic less than 600 Victorians have died of Covid-19: 90% of them over 65 years of age and most with multiple co-morbidities.

The problem with the doctor’s alternative advice is that it assumes the government is merely mistaken or misinformed in its policymaking and implementation. The idea that the exercise of political power in Victoria has become pathological never seems to occur to them – despite a wealth of evidence supporting such a notion.

When governments pass laws that are extreme or unjust or which by-pass constitutional constraints, it is rarely by accident. As doctors they ought to be the first to appreciate what a pathological exercise of power means to the cultural and institutional bonds that hold a society together:

  • As bio-security increasingly substitutes for health care, doctors will find that the personal confidences of their patients are no longer inviolate and that the Hippocratic obligations they once held so dear can be easily compromised by legal mandates to force-medicate people regardless of need or consequence.
  • When politicians rule by executive decree the police force morphs from a public service comprised of citizens in uniform to the enforcement arm of a political clique. When this happens, public trust in the police is lost and this loss of legitimacy results in a loss of respect. Eventually this loss of respect becomes mutual and the police start to despise the people they victimize and abuse the power they have. The opening quote being a perfect example.
  • Similarly with the military: when the exercise of our democratic rights is pathologized by those in power, our servicemen and women eventually find they’re being asked to apply, at home, the counter-insurgency training and urban warfare tactics they learned for battlefields abroad. This is something that has occurred since the time of Thucydides and it’s happening again.
  • Even the tools we use to make sense of the world, such as the scientific method, cease to function properly when our governments become toxic. Once everyone in a society has been force-vaccinated by government decree, it will become legally impossible to prove a link between mandated vaccines and any potential vaccine-related injury. Not because the manufacturers will have immunity from liability (they will), but because there will no longer be a non-vaccinated control group left against which randomized double-blind control studies can be conducted.

Not one of these developments is accidental. All of them are known, predictable outcomes of policy decisions being taken today. And these policy decisions rob everyone of their integrity; health workers, academics, the police and the military.

When those in power have a pathological relationship to the people they rule, you know you are on a road to perdition. We can see such a pathology evolving among our politicians most clearly in Victoria with its home invasions, curfews and lock downs but it is also evident in the overreach of governments around the country.

Western Australia’s recent dispute with mining magnate, Clive Palmer, over the State’s Covid border closure is a case in point. According to the WA Law Society the Government’s anti-Palmer legislation violates several of the fundamental legal principles that underpin the rule of law in a civilized society. Such overreach is also apparent in the ASIO Amendment Act 2020, introduced into Federal Parliament by Peter Dutton in May this year – right at the height of the Covid panic while most members were not even in Canberra.

This legislation is the latest in a succession of Bills that have been passed by our Federal government since 9/11 (85 and counting) which have vastly expanded the powers of law enforcement and security agencies in Australia while limiting public oversight. The legislation effectively criminalizes the free exercise of our basic democratic freedoms.

The Dutton amendment extends powers normally applied to terrorists, to any group or person engaged in any kind of civil disobedience or protest that could possibly result in ‘politically motivated violence’. That would include the anti-lock down protests that I participated in last week.

Among a raft of frightening provisions this bill allows police and intelligence agencies to track, apprehend and question children as young as 14 yrs of age as though they were terrorists. It suspends the rules of habeas corpus and allows the State to arbitrarily restrict a defendant’s access to legal representation.

This is the sort of legislation you’d expect to find in China or Saudi Arabia, not Australia.

The permanent changes to our society that are now in place in Australia following the SARS CoV-2 pandemic mean we qualify as proto-fascist State by any measure of political freedom. This thought is anathema to most Australians and would be vociferously denied by paid-off mainstream media pundits – but probably not constitutional lawyers – because the legislative reality is that we are now much closer to full-blooded fascism than we are to the liberal democracy that existed when I was born in 1963. And we are a very far cry from the nation our diggers returned to in 1945.

The only way we will arrest and/or reverse this trend is if we all take direct, non-violent, physical (not digital) action to exercise our civic and democratic rights at every opportunity we can. The time to speak up and stand up is now. It will be too late tomorrow.

Beware the Transhumanists: How ‘Being Human’ is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup

By Robert J. Burrowes

“If you tell a lie, tell a big one.”
“If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.”
“Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.”
— Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, 1933 to 1945

Transhumanism is a set of beliefs based on the premise that human beings can be improved by genetic manipulation and/or implanting technologies into the brain and body to achieve enhanced capacities. Transhumanism has a long history as an idea but since 1990 it has attracted serious attention from an increasing number of technology-lovers and early advocates are readily identified. See ‘What is Transhumanism?’

As part of his research as an investigative reporter throughout his life, which included writing a comprehensive exposé of how the AIDS hoax was perpetrated in the 1980s, in 2001 Jon Rappoport interviewed a Cold War-era propagandist-turned-anonymous-whistleblower who had spent decades working for the medical and other cartels to promote their agendas to gain increasing control over the human population. Here, in part, is what the propagandist told Rappoport:

Look at the medical cartel. Do they ever declare victory? From now until the end of time they’ll be planting stories in the press about the latest medical advance that will make life better for every person in the world. Most of it is a lie, but that doesn’t stop them. Until the planet is depopulated down to under a billion people and every one left is a robot, these cartels [elsewhere identified as energy, 
government, intelligence, media,
 medical, military,
 money] are not going to quit. And even then, with a lobotomized world, they’ll still push their propaganda. This IS 1984, and people better realize it… The medical cartel. They’re planning to take over the mind… after which PR won’t really matter.… [pp.61-62 & 87.]

The
 cartels 
were
 using 
and 
creating
 and
 bolstering 
the 
Cold 
War 
as 
a
 means 
to
 an
 end.

 Making
 what
 you
 could
 call 
the 
enemy‐game 
a
 part 
of 
the 
human 
psyche
 at
 such
 a
 level 
that 
it 
would 
maintain itself 
as 
a 
living 
myth
 that
 could
 be 
tapped 
into
 at
 any
 time
 with 
any 
enemies 
inserted 
into 
the 
line‐up.

 The 
enemies‐game 
is 
as 
old 
as
 time
 itself. 

But 
this 
was 
the 
version 
of 
the 
moment.

 To 
install
 a 
rigid 
sense 
of
 national 
security 
as 
the 
overriding 
fact or 
that 
would 
damn 
well justify
 the 
deflating
 of 
individual 
freedom 
on 
many 
fronts. 

Make
 national
 security
 the
 thing 
you
 couldn’t
 refuse….
 [p.70.]

A: 


Once
 you 
fatigue
 people
 enough 
with 
the
 strategies 
of 
1984, 
they 
are 
set 
up 
for
 the
 medicalization 
of 
society. 

Which 
is 
the 
brain 
stuff. 

The 
altering 
of 
the 
human
 brain
 with
 drugs 
and
 other 
approaches. 

Genes, 
perhaps. 

A 
brain‐machine
 linkup.

 Creating 
a 
different
 perception 
of 
reality. 

Externally 
applied
 electromagnetic 
fields.

 In 
which
 people
 will 
feel 
happy 
even
 though 
they 
are 
slaves.

 You
 see, 
in 
1984 
it’s really 
all 
about 
hysteria. 

The 
people 
are 
being
 driven
 into 
the 
wall 
with
 lies 
about
 wars 
and 
lies
 about 
enemies 
and 
lies 
about 
political 
structure, 
and
 the 
control 
over
 individuals 
is 
very 
harsh, 
and 
the 
leaders
 are
 not
 looking 
to 
create 
real 
happiness,
 not 
the 
fluffy 
stuff.

 Redemption,
 yes. 

Forgiveness, 
perhaps. 

The 
people 
are
 being
 fed 
pain 
and 
big 
brother 
is 
commanding
 them 
like 
a 
drill 
sergeant
 through 
their 
TV
 sets. But
 after 
that,
 after 
people 
sink 
into
 an
 acceptance 
of
 the 
delusions 
that
 are
 being 
foisted 
on 
them, 
then 
comes 
the 
science. 

The
 making
 of 
some
 kind 
of 
replica
  of
 happiness.

 The 
old
 order 
is
 1984. 

You
 can 
call 
that 
the
 Plan 
from
 the 
dawn
 of
 time
 to 
about 
1945. 

After 
that 
is 
the 
transition
 to 
Brave 
New
 World.

Q: 


And
 that’s 
why 
the 
medical 
cartel 
is 
the 
prince 
of 
the 
cartels.

A: 


The
 prince, 
the 
king.

Q:


 1984…

A: 


Leaves 
people 
with 
no 
moral
 conviction. 

It 
runs
 over
 that
 like 
a 
freight‐train.

 1984
 is 
dark. 

Brave 
New 
World 
is
 sunny 
and
 light 
and 
the 
control 
is
 applied
 so
 that
 the 
interior
 life 
changes.

Q: 


So
 you 
worked 
on 
medical 
stories.

A:


 Yes. 

Making 
the 
medical 
cartel
 look
 good, 
look
 humane,
 look 
rational, 
look
 like
 excellent 
science 
that 
works. 

Especially 
psychiatry
 and
 neurology.

 And
  pharmacology.

 That 
became 
a 
major 
job 
for 
me. Because…they’re 
experimenting
 on
 the 
human 
race, 
and 
they 
want
 their 
horrible 
mistakes 
which
 are
 legion,
 to
 look
 like
 advances
 and 
good
 science
 at 
every 
step
 until 
they
 get 
it 
right,
 until 
they
 have 
your
 brain 
in 
their 
hands 
from
 cradle 
to 
grave. [p.71.]

As noted earlier, the words above were penned in 2001. If you would like to read the full transcript of the interview, which offers a reasonably accurate explanation of what is happening around the world at the moment, you can do so in ‘The Matrix Revealed Volume 1, Jon Rappoport Interviews Ellis Medavoy (Part 1 of 3)’.

And if you would like to read about the AIDS hoax (‘caused’ by the non-existent HIV) and how it was done, using much of the same formula being used to perpetrate the elite’s Covid-19 hoax (‘caused’ by the non-existent SARS-CoV-2), you can do so in AIDS Inc.: Scandal of the Century.

Unfortunately, the Covid-19 hoax is being played for stakes that are infinitely higher than they were during the AIDS hoax.

After 200,000 years of Homo Sapiens, the species is about to ‘evolve’ rapidly and profoundly. But it won’t be a natural evolution. And it won’t be an improvement unless you don’t like the many qualities that make humans human, biologically and socially.

If the transhumanists have their way, individual human identity will vanish along with human volition. Homo Sapiens will be superseded by ‘Homo Cyborg’.

If this all sounds like science fiction or just plain ridiculous, let me invite you to consider the evidence below.

As ‘warned’ by scientist Andrew Herr in an article – see ‘This Scientist Wants Tomorrow’s Troops to Be Mutant-Powered’ – published in 2012:

Greater strength and endurance. Enhanced thinking. Better teamwork. New classes of genetic weaponry, able to subvert DNA. Not long from now, the technology could exist to routinely enhance – and undermine – people’s minds and bodies using a wide range of chemical, neurological, genetic and behavioral techniques.

It’s warfare waged at the evolutionary level. And it’s coming sooner than many people think.

Well, that time has arrived. The thin edge of the wedge, if we keep allowing it to happen, is the various restrictions and technologies being introduced under cover of Covid-19 which are supposedly being used to tackle the ‘virus’.

However, just as in the ‘AIDS epidemic’ when no (HIV) virus was ever scientifically demonstrated to exist, there is zero science to prove the existence of the ‘virus’ labeled SARS-CoV-2. Instead, this elite coup is designed and being conducted to achieve a profound transformation in the nature of the human individual and human society, including a substantial ‘depopulation’. Moreover, it is proceeding rapidly because it entails a complexity and depth that is not easy to comprehend but also because it seems so preposterous that few people are inclined to contemplate the possibility objectively. Joseph Goebbels knew why. For some of the detail of essential elements of this coup, see ‘Covid-19 Does Not Exist: The Global Elite’s Campaign of Terror Against Humanity’ and ‘Halting our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

But for another recent comprehensive history and critique of the coup being conducted by the ‘billionaire’s club’, see Dr. Jacob Nordangård’s insightful article ‘Analysis: Globalists’ reboot of the world and their plans for us’ which opens with the following words:

The Corona crisis is the trigger for a global coup d’état of monumental dimensions. It is the beginning of a new era, with a new international economic order that risks completely destroying human freedoms. Tyrants have now taken over to forcibly steer us into a ‘climate smart’ and ‘healthy’ world through the World Economic Forum’s new techno-totalitarian roadmap – ‘The Great Reset’.

In this article, however, I want to focus on the agenda of the transhumanists under cover of this coup and what this would mean for Homo Sapiens unless it is stopped.

Technotyranny

In one of his videos about the Covid-19 coup – watch ‘This Couldn’t Possibly Happen. Could it?’ the transcript for which can be accessed by clicking the ‘Health’ tab after entering his website – the UK’s Dr Vernon Coleman explains the sinister agenda of the technological control sought by the transhumanists:

If you were a mad doctor and you wanted to control an individual it would be a doddle.
You’d just tell them you were giving them an injection to protect them against the flu or something like that and in the syringe there would be a little receiver. And then you’d stick a transmitter on the roof of the house across the road from where they lived.

And then you could send messages to make them do whatever you wanted them to do. You could make them sad or angry or happy or contented. You could make them run or fight or just spend all day in bed.

Remember, that’s what Dr Delgado was doing over half a century ago. It’s nothing new.

Of course, if you wanted to do the same thing for lots of people you’d need a whole lot of people to help you….

And you’d need something to inject into people. A medicine of some kind for example.

And then you’d need someone good at software to help with all the transmitting and the receiving and you’d need people with access to lots of tall poles or roofs where they could put the transmitter things.

But none of that would be any good unless you had a reason for injecting people. You can’t just go around injecting millions of people for no reason.

Ideally, you’d need them all to be frightened of something so that they were keen to let you inject them. And then you could put your tiny receivers into the stuff that was being injected. Or squirted up their noses or whatever.

Introducing her own careful explanation of the agenda of the transhumanists, in her video Dr. Carrie Madej opens with the following words:

So what do you think about going from human 1.0 to human 2.0?… Transhumanism… is about taking humans, as we know ourselves, and melding with artificial intelligence…. That might seem kinda cool to you, we might have some superhuman abilities… that’s the idea, that’s what you see in sci-fi movies… Thinking about this topic… I [had thought that it was] many years in the future.

However, this question, this idea is now right in this moment. We need to make a decision… because I investigated the proposed Covid-19 vaccine and this is my alarm call to the world. I looked at the pros and cons and it frightens me.

And I want you to know about this, you need to be very well informed because this new vaccine is not like your normal flu vaccine. This is something very different, this is something brand new, something completely experimental on the human race. And it’s not just about being a different vaccine. There are technologies that are being introduced with this vaccine that can change the way we live, who we are and what we are. And very quickly….

Some people… like Elon Musk, who is the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Automotive, as well as Ray Kurzweil, who is one of the bigwigs of Google, … are self-proclaimed ‘transhumanists’. They believe that we should go to human 2.0 and they are very big proponents of this. There’s a lot of other people… involved with this…. I think the easiest way to explain this to you is to go with one of the frontrunners for the vaccine and go into a little bit of the history and tell you how they want to make the vaccine and I think that will speak volumes. So, for instance, Moderna is one of the frontrunners for the Covid-19 vaccine…. Watch ‘Human 2.0 – Transhumanist Vaccine – A Wake Up Call to the World’.

If you doubt the capacity of ‘medicine’ to achieve this level of human transformation, in this video produced in August 2020, transhumanist Elon Musk explains how his Neuralink microchip will be surgically implanted into the human brain, as has already been done with animals. While he specifically mentions the chip’s capacity to monitor certain health parameters and to play you music, he does not mention its intended uses for digitization of your identity, recording of your personal data such as medical and bank records, any of its surveillance functions or its capacity for emotional, thought and behavioural control. Watch ‘This Is How Elon Musk’s Neuralink Microchip Will Be Put In Your Brain’.

As Raul Diego explains in his own article on this subject:

The most significant scientific discovery since gravity has been hiding in plain sight for nearly a decade and its destructive potential to humanity is so enormous that the biggest war machine on the planet immediately deployed its vast resources to possess and control it, financing its research and development through agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and HHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

The revolutionary breakthrough… [involved devising] a way to ‘reprogram’ the molecules that carry the genetic instructions for cell development in the human body, not to mention all biological lifeforms.

These molecules are called ‘messenger ribonucleic acid’ or mRNA and the newfound ability to rewrite those instructions to produce any kind of cell within a biological organism has radically changed the course of Western medicine and science, even if no one has really noticed yet. As [inventor, Professor Derek] Rossi, himself, puts it: ‘The real important discovery here was you could now use mRNA, and if you got it into the cells, then you could get the mRNA to express any protein in the cells, and this was the big thing.’ See ‘A Transhumanist Dream: A DARPA-Funded Implantable Biochip to Detect COVID-19 Could Hit Markets by 2021’.

Moreover, as Patrick Wood, who has intensively studied and reported the efforts of the transhumanists for decades, explains in a recent article – ‘The Siamese Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism’ – and discusses in a related video – ‘Humans 2.0: GMO Vaccinations and Transhumanism’ – that draws out some of the more nuanced elements of their agenda:

Technocracy and Transhumanism have always been joined at the hip. Technocracy uses its ‘science of social engineering’ to merge technology and society. Transhumanism uses its field of NBIC to merge technology directly into humans. To put it another way, Technocracy is to society what Transhumanism is to the humans that live in it….

NBIC stands for Nano (nano-technology), Bio (bio-technology), Info (information technology) and Cogno (cognitive sciences). These four scientific disciplines remained separate avenues of study in Universities around the world until the early 1970s. Today, NBIC has become an established discipline of its own in most major universities with personnel contributed from each separate department….

All together, NBIC offers a scientific cauldron to Transhumans in their quest to create Humans 2.0….

It’s also no wonder that the upcoming vaccine for COVID-19 being produced by Moderna is also using NBIC science to accomplish a merging of the human body with advanced technology. The Trump Administration has contracted with Moderna – see ‘Trump Administration collaborates with Moderna to produce 100 million doses of COVID-19 investigational vaccine’ – to deliver 100 million doses of its investigational vaccine, ostensibly to be kitted and transported to the nation by the U.S. Military….

[Technocracy and Transhumanism are both] extremely dangerous for all of humankind and must be rejected before it is too late to stop them.

And Whitney Webb provides further insight into the elite intention in this regard. In one of her meticulously-researched articles – ‘Coronavirus Gives a Dangerous Boost to DARPA’s Darkest Agenda’ – she outlines the hidden technological agenda behind the Covid-19 coup that might well be delivered as part of any vaccination program by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). After carefully outlining the history and ‘logic’ of what is taking place – such as the development of ‘cyborg “super soldiers”’ and ‘injectable Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs) with the capability to control one’s thoughts’ – she concludes with the chilling words:

Technology developed by the Pentagon’s controversial research branch is getting a huge boost amid the current coronavirus crisis, with little attention going to the agency’s ulterior motives for developing said technologies, their potential for weaponization or their unintended consequences.…

Those who are fearful and desperate will not care that the vaccine may include nanotechnology or have the potential to genetically modify and re-program their very being, as they will only want the current crisis that has upended the world to stop.

In this context, the current coronavirus crisis appears to be the perfect storm that will allow DARPA’s dystopian vision to take hold and burst forth from the darkest recesses of the Pentagon into full public view. DARPA’s transhumanist vision for the military and for humanity presents an unprecedented threat, not just to human freedom, but an existential threat to human existence and the building blocks of biology itself.

Of course, if you want to read how involved corporations, DARPA and other elite agencies explain it, you can do so. But unless you dig beneath the surface you will only get their sanitized accounts which, just like Elon Musk, focus on seemingly benign elements like ‘digitized identity’ and health reporting while not mentioning the technology’s capacities and intended uses for the invasion of your privacy, the recording of your personal data such as medical and bank records, any of its surveillance functions or its capacity for emotional, thought and behavioural control. See, for example, ‘Moderna’s mRNA Technology’, ‘Profusa is pioneering tissue-integrating biosensors for continuous monitoring of body chemistries’, ‘A Military-Funded Biosensor Could Be the Future of Pandemic Detection’ (which discusses the role of ‘hydrogel’) and DARPA’S ‘Developing novel, safe and efficacious treatments for COVID-19’ following its much earlier ‘In Vivo Nanoplatforms (IVN)’. For two elite presentations of the importance of your ‘digital identity’, see ‘The Need for Good Digital ID is Universal’ and ‘ID2020 and partners launch program to provide digital ID with vaccines’.

What is at Stake?

As discussed above, the technology now available after decades of effort enables receiver nanochips to be sprayed, injected or otherwise implanted into human bodies. With the ongoing deployment of 5G (which includes extensive space and ground-based technologies: see ‘Deadly Rainbow: Will 5G Precipitate the Extinction of All Life on Earth?’), just one outcome of these combined technologies is that it will be possible to direct the individual behaviour of each person so implanted. Given that the control technology will be owned by corporate executives, here is a list of examples of how the elite might direct that it be used (more or less as a ‘drone pilot’ sitting in the United States controls a drone flying in the Middle East that fires weapons on local people):

  1. The official chain of command to launch nuclear weapons can be subverted by using remote control to direct the chosen individual in a particular chain of command to order (or execute) the launch of one or more nuclear weapons at the target(s) nominated at the time(s) specified. Subordinates can be directed to follow orders they might otherwise question.
  2. ‘Cyborg soldiers’ (either as mercenaries or as members of national military forces) in groups or as individuals can be deployed anywhere to fight as ordered by those in charge of their remote controls.
  3. ‘Cyborg workers’ can be directed to work in dangerous conditions for extended periods and simply be replaced as required. Someone else nearby will have been vaccinated too and can be directed to take their place.
  4. ‘Cyborg consumers’ can be directed to purchase a particular product, irrespective of its functionality, including health or otherwise, for the person so directed. That is assuming that money is not just taken directly from their bank account, given that it will no longer be under their exclusive control.
  5. ‘Cyborg activists’ on any issue can simply to be directed to refrain from further involvement in their campaign. Or to actively take the opposite position to the one they had previously.

What can we do to halt this transhumanist agenda and the elite coup itself?

Fortunately, we can do a great deal.

For a detailed series of options on how to have strategic impact, see the end of the article ‘“Ye are Many, They are Few”: Nonviolent Resistance to the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

Importantly, however, if you would like to be part of the campaign to defeat the elite coup and prevent implementation of the transhumanist agenda, see the list of strategic goals necessary to achieve these outcomes here: Coup Strategic Aims.

If you wish to nurture children to be far more able to critique society and elite propaganda, rather than be easily duped, see ‘My Promise to Children’.

If you wish to reduce your vulnerability to elite control, consider joining those who recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Finally, if you want a better fundamental understanding of how we reached this point, see ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

Conclusion

In the elegant words of South African liberation activist Steve Biko:

The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

When he uttered these words before being tortured to death in an Apartheid prison, Biko presumably did not realize the profound meaning they would acquire in 2020.

The transhuman mind will be owned and controlled by the oppressor.

If we are to avert this fate, we must struggle with clarity and purpose.

 

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.

One real but ‘polemic’ way to defeat COVID-19

By Andre Vltchek (1962-9/22/2020)

Source: New Eastern Outlook

COVID-19 is not just a disease; it is also a state of mind, a psychosis, a fear. It is an event that, all over the world, unleashed irrational behaviour by the governments, individuals, and media. It triggered speculations, bizarre analyses, and selective ‘cut-and-paste science.’

Result: while there are, undeniably, few optimistic success stories, including the Russian vaccine, China’s and Vietnam’s ability to contain the pandemic without ruining economy and livelihood of the citizens, the great majority of the world is undoubtfully in disarray. Hundreds of millions of people are literally tossed into a gutter. Other billions, all over Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and to some extent, the United States and the UK are locked in, unable to travel abroad, and unwilling to accept visitors from other countries.

All this is pure insanity. Families are divided, broken apart. People are locked out of their homes in other countries. Lovers are told they cannot see each other, perhaps for years.

Extreme right-wing governments that are ripe to fall, like those in Thailand or Chile, are hiding behind the COVID-19, not allowing anyone to enter and face their downfall.

International life patterns of billions of people are ruined which leads to suicides, deep depressions, violence, as well as COVID-19 unrelated but lockdowns-related health issues.

In brief: The world is screwed! Most likely, billions of human lives are.

Apart from my work in several parts of the United States after the murder of George Floyd, and then in Aruba, from where the NATO is threatening Venezuela, I spent almost five months in a brutal lockdown in Chile. Truly brutal, because I arrived there after covering several conflict zones in Asia, with the COVID-19 at my heels. One airport after another was closing behind me, after my departure. A journey took eight days: Hong Kong to Bangkok, then Seoul, Amsterdam, Suriname, Brazilian Belem, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, and finally, Santiago.

At the conflict zones, including when I was filming in devastated Borneo, my guts and eyes got attacked by some vicious parasites (or was it COVID-19, after all?), and something happened to my feet; I could hardly walk. Well, once in a while, I have this tendency to run myself to the ground, after the excessive doses of Afghanistan, Syria, Indonesia, Iraq, DR Congo, Kashmir, Gaza… I never stop until it is too late, or more precisely, until I fall on my face.

But then, after I do, after I find myself flattened on the ground, I know precisely what to do. Which is: a few months of rest, rigorous exercises, foot massages, sea, diet, sun. Until I can move again, and return to performing duties, I have towards humanity.

But this time it was different. With a single digit of popularity, Chilean Pinochet-style regime utilised COVID-19 in order to stay in power, to crack on the opposition and to rob indigenous people of that little they still had left. Result: bizarre, total lockdowns with tanks on the streets, with the meaningless curfews, with even a small park at the back of my building out of reach to the tenants.

My only ‘walks’ were inside the apartment. I needed to get to my place in Bangkok; small, but with a gym and pool and with a garden. But Thailand’s rulers made sure to keep the foreigners out, too. Clearly, for political reasons.

And so, I was forced to spend the longest time in my life in one place. The longest since I was 15 years old if I remember correctly.

And instead of improving, my health deteriorated in that monstrous lockdown, where I was facing bare, depressing winter Andes, and the 160-average pollution levels (US AQI). When I was finally departing, I could hardly walk and had to use a cane.

 

***

I RAN away on one of the first re-introduced non-stop Iberia flights to Madrid. I was lucky that I could, as one of my passports was that of the EU.

It had to be Madrid or Italy. I would also happily run to Russia, but in August, it was still closed.

When I was very young, I used to escape to Madrid, in order to be as far away as possible from New York. I despised my life in the United States. I couldn’t write there. In Italy and Madrid, I could easily. For months I would be saving, and then disappear from the United States, for 5–6 weeks. My plan was to travel all over Spain, but Madrid was so absorbing, so fascinating that in the end, I lost all my desire to leave it. Cafes on Plaza de Olavide were where I used to write my fiction.

And now, beaten, hardly able to move, I returned. Before my interviews in Turkey and Serbia, and before at least some parts of Asia would be re-opening, Madrid became my logical destination.

 

***

I ANTICIPATED what would be waiting for me here. And all of my expectations came through.

In Madrid, life didn’t stop. It slowed down, to some extent, yes. Some visible and invisible barriers were erected. Many precautions have been taken. But there was no ‘full stop.’ Unlike in New York and Santiago, colours were everywhere, and so were beauty, elegance, and harsh Castellan sense of humour.

First of all, Madrid was clearly demonstrating that life is much stronger then death, but only if life is pitched against death, and lived with unwavering strength and passion.

In Prado Museum, I rediscovered one of the greatest and most frightening artworks of all times: Pieter Bruegel’s the Elder: ‘The Triumph of Death.’ I searched for it, and I found it in one of the main halls.

Here, in this surreal, powerful, and highly perverse artwork, it was depicted all. Yes, Death is frightening. Yes, it has tremendous strength, and it has its own ‘army of skeletons.’ And yes, in the end, it always wins.

But you look out, through the windows of Prado, and you see the ancient, green, and beautiful trees, you see the splendid architecture, and lovers holding hands. Death may have the last word for all human beings, but life goes on, too. It never gets defeated, and it never surrenders. There is time to live and time to die.

Bruegel, who painted his macabre masterpiece c. 1562, wanted us to live in constant fear of death.

Today’s Madrid, with its passion, wants us to forget about death, at least for that short but brilliant moment, which is called life.

This new and hopefully short-lived era of COVID-19 terror is throwing us, human beings, back to the middle ages, where continuous anxieties and images of horrors were masterfully manufactured, even mass-produced, in order to poison our existence and strip us of dreams, of power, and joy.

Throughout the middle ages, at least in Europe, suffering and fear were habitually glorified. Joy and desires were suppressed, often chastised.

In the middle ages, Christianity reached perfection in scaring humans to death, in stripping life of almost all delights, and in administering brutal, grotesque punishments. And this is when the Muslim armies arrived, liberating a large part of Spain from the religious fundamentalism. Glorious caliphate of Cordoba was erected, synonymous with the golden age of Islam; caliphate admired for knowledge, poetry, playfulness, the quest for freedom and beauty.

There, Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together; they freely mingled together, building one mighty, tolerant, and creative society. It was a society without fear, society full of hope.

Caliphate of Cordoba also defeated death, at least from one’s birth till demise. Great Pakistani thinker, Tariq Ali, wrote beautifully about that era, many years before COVID-19 appeared on the horizon.

I took Talgo, high-speed train, to Cordoba. I had to revisit the old mosque, where the fight for tolerance began. All this was now relevant. It was not just the medicine, not just the science, which had to be mobilised.

The battle against COVID-19 has to be also fought by thinkers, by artists, by all those who can make life meaningful, or at least bearable.

 

***

SPAIN and its capital Madrid can easily ‘go either way.’ The city can be oppressive and harsh when it goes through the ‘bad wave.’ It can ruin millions of lives, as it did when it embarked on the horrid colonialist expeditions, religious fundamentalism, or fascist dictatorship.

But Madrid can also be highly enlightened, creative, and forward-looking. It can be light and reasonable, embracing life.

In the age of COVID-19, Madrid decisively refused to lock up millions of people in the proverbial cages. Few weeks of confusion and enough! The government tried, half-heartedly, but failed to impose full oppressive order.

By the middle of August 2020, the number of Covid-19 cases was higher in Spain, then in many other EU countries. Madrid made it to the ‘red list’ in such countries as Germany and the UK.

But walk through the streets of the city, sit in its cafes, look at children playing in the elegant parks, and then compare all this with terrible stress in those societies full of rules and regulations, such as Germany or Macron’s France.

Brueghel’s skeletons are clearly depicting destruction and death. Scenes are full of nihilism. They fit perfectly well into the devastated landscapes of the excessively locked down, terrified cities.

Some cities with a relatively small number of infections, like Bangkok, already died. How come? They lost, they handed victory to death. They threw up their hands without the battle. They surrendered, offering to death precisely what she has been demanding: voluntarily, they stopped living.

In the United States or such places like Southeast Asia, Facebook, Amazon, Apple have been making fortunes. Bookstores, museums, theatres all surrendered; they closed down.

 

***

MADRID introduced social distancing, imposed masks regulations, a limited number of visitors, but rapidly reopened cinemas, gardens, galleries. Cafes are functioning, too, and so are the restaurants. Soon, after the summer holidays end, the city’s theatres and concert halls will reopen.

It is not because the city is reckless. Not at all. Disinfectants are everywhere and when walking or in public places, people are wearing masks. The streets of Madrid are meticulously clean. Various safety regulations are imposed. But life goes on. Airplanes are taking off towards many parts of the world. Madrid is an open city. Not yet to all, but at least to many.

And as a reward, there are smiles. There are politeness and kindness. People do not look suicidal. They do not explode at the slightest conflict. No honking, no shouting. No animalistic, all-consuming fear.

Madrid understands that there is a certain degree of danger. But it deals with this state of siege with admirable dignity and courage.

After the panic and ugly behavioural patterns that I observed in the United States and Chile, Madrid impressed me enormously. The COVID-19 pandemic brought economic and social hardship to some, but there was no national agony so clearly noticeable in New York, Washington DC, or Santiago.

Even if they struggled, people made sure to put on their best, to behave with dignity, and confront danger with both strength and heart.

When my still weak feet let go on the third day, when I stumbled and fell on an ancient sidewalk, several people immediately ran to my rescue. They fought for me. In my own way, I came here in order to fight for them, too.

Madrid is not a perfect city. Actually, I keep repeating it again and again: there are no ‘perfect cities’ in this world.

And Madrid’s way is not the only example of how to fight and defeat the latest deadly pandemic.

But perhaps it is the most agreeable one: full of smiles, support from friends and families, with the exposure to the sun, to excellent food, nature, culture, and arts.

It is the Latin spirit, joie de vivre, which is put to work here, in order to overpower Brueghel and his army of skeletons, together with the excessive religious asceticism of El Greco.

We still don’t know how to defeat COVID-19, scientifically, but in such places as Madrid, we are learning how to prevent it from defeating us.

Nine days in Madrid did not fully ‘cure me,’ but it gave back the optimism to my scarred soul. It gave me the strength to fight again. As well as the desire to walk forward!

 

Originally published 8/20/20

COVID-19: Trigger for a New World Order. Economic Stagnation and Social Destruction

By Patrick Henningsen

Source: Global Research

I can remember them saying that ‘everything changed after 9/11’. It did, but certainly not for the better. I think we can all agree on that.  I remember how everyone surrendered their rights and key aspects of democracy, all in the name of ‘keeping us safe’.

Back then, world-changing decisions were made in reaction to an exaggerated threat, with sweeping ‘emergency measures’ and laws enacted. Usually, nothing good follows from a government that is making decisions and formulating permanent policy, suspending constitutions and rights – imposing all of this on a population operating from a position of fear. That much we did learn. Some of us did anyway.

In January, like a leviathan sprung forth from the titans Oceanus and Ceto in ancient Greece, the global coronavirus pandemic was born. Like 9/11, it was a disruptive event, but this time on a scale unimaginable. Whether or not one believes this was naturally-occurring or a biologically-engineered pathogen (there is every reason to believe it could be), it is beyond argument that this ‘crisis’ is and will be used to advance a multi-pronged globalist agenda, likely to feature more wars between the great powers.

Modern man is now entering realms of dystopia only imagined before by the likes of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, with more than a hint of Philip K. Dick. What makes all of this difficult for so many is that the sudden transition has been almost instantaneous, leaving people in a near callow state of bewilderment, wondering what just happened to their old life.

No matter which way this situation goes, it’s almost certain life will never be the same.

COVID Crisis

By now we should be familiar with the story: a novel coronavirus, scientifically known as SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, has made its way across the planet, infecting millions of people and registering over 100,000 deaths (as of the time of writing) across 180 countries. The victims of this outbreak are overwhelming elderly persons over the age of 70 and those in palliative care, most of who have severe and chronic underlying medical conditions.

Make no mistake about it – this is a disruptive event on a scale the modern world has never seen before. The shock and awe began from the moment the story broke from the Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei Province. Global audiences were inundated with images of Chinese authorities putting hundreds of people into biological suits, hosing down the outside of buildings, before quarantining themselves in their apartments. Then began a state-sanctioned medieval-style program that western media and politicians enthusiastically dubbed a “lockdown,” a term aptly borrowed from the prison industrial complex.

Wuhan was an unforgettable spectacle which really impacted the western psyche, such that when the coronavirus made it to European and North American shores, the public was already conditioned to expect a Chinese-style response from their own governments. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what they got and, in fact, it was what they demanded.

On 12 March, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called an emergency press conference where he took to the podium, flanked by his two leading science advisors, Sir Patrick Vallace and Chris Whitty, who proceeded to explain the government plan of action which was centred around the commonly known epidemiological concept of “herd immunity.” Their strategy was a familiar one because it has been the orthodoxy in modern epidemiology – allow a virus to go through approximately 60-80% of the population in order to achieve herd immunity, naturally extinguishing the virus in a single season.

But Johnson made the fatal error of grossly overestimating the death rate at 1% of the total infected, an estimate that would have left the country with some 52 million infected and 500,000 fatalities. Of course, in hindsight, these numbers were pure fiction, but at the time everyone was so enveloped in fear that they believed the ‘experts’. Nonetheless, the herd immunity approach was more or less identical to the ‘no lockdown’ approach taken by European countries Sweden and Iceland, as well as Belarus, Mexico, and Japan. This would entail standard random sample testing nationally and for those exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms. The elderly and vulnerable people would be told to self-isolate for a period of time while studies were conducted.

‘Plan A’ didn’t last long. On 24 March, Johnson appeared on national TV, this time without his science team, to announce a nationwide lockdown – an effective shutdown of society and most of the country’s economy. The UK was now following fellow NATO member states France, Italy, Spain and others, which had already imposed draconian national lockdowns, including strict new ‘social distancing’ guidelines preventing people from being together.

It appeared that Johnson’s sudden 180º degree turn was prompted in part by an alarmist report generated by one of the government ‘expert’ teams at Imperial College London, led by controversial computer modeler Neil Ferguson who was previously responsible for the 2001 ‘Foot and Mouth’ crisis, a debacle which ended in the unnecessary culling of some six million livestock in Britain.

This time, Ferguson and his team worked their modelling magic to come up with an estimated half a million coronavirus deaths if the government did not implement “very intense social distancing and other interventions now in place.”

While the figure was completely fictional, the media seized on it, as did government officials, which fuelled fear and panic across Britain’s government-media complex. Frightened and unsure, the public accepted the authoritarian measures, but the government never gave an end date to the quarantine; it was left open-ended at the discretion of the government’s scientific coterie.

Once that bubble of fear had been sufficiently inflated, a medieval-style lockdown was a fait accompli in numerous countries including Australia and New Zealand. The impact of a full national quarantine is yet unknown, but it’s already becoming clear that it will be nothing short of cataclysmic for those countries who agreed to the voluntary self-destruction of their economies and the indefinite suspension of democracy.

It’s worth noting this isn’t the first time the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), and Imperial College tried conjuring a global panic over a flu virus. Back in 2005, the “range of deaths,” the UN warned of bird flu virus H5N1, “could be anything between five and 150 million.” Officials even drafted in Imperial’s most reliable doomsayer, Neil Ferguson, to help come up with another completely fictional death toll of 200 million people. His high school level math equation was breathtaking in its over-simplicity:

“Around 40 million people died in the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,” said Prof. Ferguson. “There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.”

That doomsday prediction led to the culling of tens of millions of birds in Southeast Asia, but the pandemic never really materialised. In the end, human fatalities numbered in the hundreds worldwide. It was a non event.

Similar unremarkable numbers followed the global hype over the H1N1 swine flu in 2009. Thanks to the work of investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US was caught over-inflating the number of cases – a fraudulent move that had grave implications for government policy and stoking unfounded public fear.

With COVID-19, the globalist medical industrial complex, led by WHO, hoped to repeat the previous public relations campaigns by hyping the novel coronavirus as the next Spanish Flu. This time they were given an extraordinary opportunity thanks to China which put on an incredible media performance and ‘show of strength’ in the month of January by ‘locking down’ Wuhan – inspiring western and other leaders to try the same big government approach.

However, the results would turn out economically disastrous for western ‘lockdown’ countries.

Economic Collapse

All of this is certain to trigger a protracted global recession marked by at least 12 months of negative growth, with economic and social displacement the likes of which the world has never seen before. The decision by countries like the UK, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US to voluntarily implode their economies and place most of their populations under house arrest will have a lasting impact not only on national economies but also the global economy for years to come.

In terms of scale, the damage caused to markets and industry has already surpassed the 2008 financial crisis by orders of magnitude, and there’s no end in sight.

To ‘fight the coronavirus’ governments have imploded their real economies and replaced them with nationalised pools of finance earmarked for each section of the economy. This emergency transformation is the same as a wartime mobilisation of an economy, with a heavy focus on the medical and pharmaceutical industrial complex, the military, and selected corporate partners hand-picked by the state. This hard fusion of state and corporate interests is classic corporatism or fascism. In this brutal and constrained environment, these are some of the only institutions strong enough to remain viable.

The net effect of immediately putting millions of workers onto government welfare rolls and pushing hundreds of thousands of small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMEs) into bankruptcy will be the largest consolidation and transfer of wealth in modern history. Those with enough capital to ride out the crisis will be able to buy-up companies, and even whole industries, for literally pennies on the dollar. Monopolies like Amazon, Google and telecoms giants will consolidate and solidify their market shares as competitors gradually die off and are swallowed-up in receivership. Formerly independent contractors will now be reliant on government assistance, as will any business qualifying for government ‘relief’ grants and loans. Large corporations will now have governments covering the cost of their payrolls for the duration of the crisis.

There is no semblance of any discernible sound economic model to describe what is now happening with government printing up record amounts of money to cover the enormous cost of the shutdown. For a wealthy country like the US, the Federal Reserve Bank will simply go into overdrive, creating trillions of dollars to be released through various ‘stimulus plans’ and bailouts. The New York Fed is now pumping trillions of new dollars into banks, with the Fed also issuing ‘bridge’ loans directly to businesses. This never happened before in history. The US is also buying up unprecedented amounts of corporate stock in order to keep Wall Street afloat. With these levels of quantitative easing, there are risks of hyperinflation and other systemic problems. This may be coupled with higher food prices due to supply shortages, and stagnant wages due to a glut in the labour market after the government’s domestic scorched earth economic policies. The end result of all these bailouts (if they ever end) will be exactly as with any war in history: a rapid wholesale transfer of power, control and ownership into centralised government and the central banking cartel.

For individuals and families, this means your savings are wiped-out, your property collapses in value, and your future prospects are dim, at least in the short to midterm, and you will have no choice but to load up on personal and family debt to survive.

Before this crisis, we saw the largest wealth gap in modern history since the Gilded Age (1870–1900), with the richest 1% now owning more than half of the world’s wealth. After the first phase of this crisis, that gap may double or even triple. With SMEs wiped out, the only jobs available will be with the government or with a handful of mega-corporations.

As is often the case after any war, developed and developing countries are likely to become dependent on credit lines from either the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or from the United States itself which will have plenty of dollars and US Treasury bonds for sale or loan at near zero percent interest rates. Plenty of funny money to go around, mostly for the elites.

The shutting down of the world’s airlines – along with biosecurity and financial stagnation hitting certain sections of global trade – will severely injure the dominant system of globalisation. This will no doubt encourage already existing regional trading blocs, like ASEAN in Southeast Asia, and the African Union, leveraging their interests to create more regionalised and resilient trading networks. As physical trade and relations are codified regionally, globalisation will increase in the online digital sphere and with international e-commerce, online learning and social networking.

Now, with massive economic recession, marked by record levels of mass unemployment and debt, the balkanisation of formerly open globalisation routes, combined with a new global veil over scarcity of resources, all under a broad cloak of biological insecurity – the soil is fertile for more dismantling of democracy and a rise in fascist regimes, particularly in the West. The trend was already moving in this direction before the crisis, but now it will only accelerate.

Historically speaking, the scene is now set for another world war in which the winner sets the agenda for a ‘new world order’ going into the 21st century.

Full Spectrum Dominance: World War Footing

Just as in 1914 and the onset of World War I, the year 2020 will be a major pivot point for the early 21st century and should be seen as a tangible prelude to a new world war. There are a number of reasons why this is likely.

It is true that you can implement more change in two years of war than you can in twenty years of peace. In the case of the corona crisis, that two years was reduced to two months. Presently, events are being framed by western powers as the “global fight against an invisible enemy,” but the corona crisis has created a number of new paradigms some of which are classic precursors for war. The first and most obvious is the fact that virtually overnight, the western countries, especially NATO member states the United States, United Kingdom and France, have effectively mobilised all aspects of their country’s economy and restructured society to reflect both a wartime economy and a state of martial law. The western bloc countries are now prepared to bunker down for a long war if need be.

The threat of a biological agent presents some serious problems for a globally-embedded military as America’s. Already the US had to cancel major NATO drills in Europe, and pull some of its naval fleet into dock because of the coronavirus and fears of infecting large numbers of military personnel. Other countries may have similar issues. In this sense, the disease has severely slowed fighting across the world – one of the more unexpected, albeit welcome, tertiary benefits of the crisis.

The western powers first obvious choice for instigating either a hot or cold war is China, along with its allies. When US President Donald Trump refers to COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus,” he is signalling to his base and to the war hawks in the Republican Party that the White House is preparing a confrontation. Anti-Chinese rhetoric and media propaganda has increased substantially in the US since the onset of the corona crisis, with many Americans, particularly the right-wing, now blaming the Chinese for releasing this pestilence into the world.

After a few more months of economic destruction, social malaise and an increasing death toll in the US, the new ranks of unemployed will be demanding a scapegoat for their terrible suffering, at which time a war with China could become more viable for Washington. This could take the form of an on-off, hot-cold war which lasts for 30 or 40 years, and pulls in other major powers using proxy battlegrounds in third party countries.

For the US empire, one primary objective in confronting China would be to disrupt and possibly derail Beijing’s historic infrastructure and economic development known as the Belt and Road Initiative, designed to link Europe with Asia along various routes over land and sea. If successful, the global centre of gravity would shift away from the US and back towards Eurasia. In the event of a global depression post-corona, the US is geopolitically well-placed to weather the storm as it commands the control of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. China’s Belt and Road would effectively upend Washington’s plans for Fortress America lording it over all global markets during this new tumultuous epoch.

In some ways, the crisis has disrupted the emergence of a new multipolar world, but the imperative for multipolarism may also be propelled by the economic balkanisation and the fact that the US will continue withdrawing its military assets from stalwart outposts like the Middle East. Any US withdrawal from the world stage will be filled by other emerging powers like Russia, India, Turkey and possibly Japan. Many of these emerging powers require resources and materials, so the scramble to establish trading routes in Africa will be a post-corona feature.

The corona crisis also provides a convenient cover for the aggressive roll-out of 5G networks around the world. These look to be the backbone of a new global surveillance state able to track and record everything in real-time. Along with millions of masts in towns and cities, the network will also feature an array of new satellites with the potential to flood our atmosphere and communities with even more untested high-frequency radiation.

One World Health & Medical Martial Law

The current ‘state of war’ extends internationally with blanket travel restrictions already in place. There looks to be a rapid drive to institute a streamlined global system of mandatory digital tracking and tracing, implemented under the auspices of ‘global health’ and spearheaded by the World Health Organization (WHO). They are joined by participating governments and the transnational corporations that will roll out these new ‘health surveillance’ systems.

The real question that remains unanswered is what will happen once all the ‘lockdown’ measures are relaxed, and international air travel opens up again?

There are already noises coming from governments and organisations about requiring citizens to pass some form of ‘immunity test’ for COVID-19 to be granted freedom of movement within society by carrying an ‘immunity passport’ or digital certificate stored on a microchip or smartphone.

This dovetails with the rapid drive for a cashless society as a result of the corona scare. Due to corona contagion fears, paper money and coins are being stigmatised as ‘dirty’ with many retail outlets refusing to accept cash. Once this system is adopted domestically, it follows that these same restrictions will be extended to international travellers. Needless to say, this has grave implications for personal liberty and privacy. At present, this juggernaut seems difficult to stop.

If allowed, this new bio regime will become the de facto governance for the world’s population. Microsoft founder Bill Gates (net worth $97.8 billion) has called for a national vaccine tracking system in the US, funded in part by an estimated $100 million he and his wife Melinda’s Gates Foundation have donated to fight the coronavirus to discover ‘a fix’ as quickly as possible. Gates is already heavily invested in vaccine research, development and production and, with his wife, they are a primary driver in the proliferation of vaccines globally. Gates says he will front the investment for seven new vaccine factories around the globe, and as he told Daily Show host Trevor Noah during an interview on 2 April, “until we get the world vaccinated.”

Clearly, he has a vision for vaccinating every person on the planet, presumably for the coronavirus, or until the next big ‘outbreak’. “The only thing that really lets us go back completely to normal and feel good about sitting in stadiums with lots of other people is to create a vaccine and not just take care of our country but take that vaccine out to the global population,” said Gates.

From oligarchs like Gates, the transnational pharmaceutical corporations, and the government officials in their pocket, the warning is clear: you will not be permitted to resume ‘normal life’ until you accept the latest vaccine. And do not expect the list of newly required vaccinations to end with the novel coronavirus. Once this first precedent is set, countries dependent on international travel and trade will be forced to adopt the regulatory framework of this new ‘one world health’ security complex. The trail is then blazed for a constant stream of vaccine requirements to ‘fight’ various and sundry outbreaks and ‘biothreats’, be they real, exaggerated or completely fabricated. This could be another disruptive force going forward.

Combine this with naked authoritarian statements made by other self-appointed corona tsars like Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director of WHO, who recently remarked that members of families may need to be removed from their homes by force. “Most of the transmission actually happening in many countries now, is happening in the household at family level…. In some sense, transmission has been taken off the streets and pushed back into family units. Now, we need to go and look at families to find those people who may be sick and remove them, and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner,” said Ryan.

The obvious danger here is that this new state-corporate regime will discriminate against and marginalise citizens based on their immunity records, requiring them to take a new vaccine to receive rights and privileges. This would be a complete abrogation of personal liberty and human rights, effectively turning the clock back hundreds of years – all based on what many leading doctors and epidemiologists agree is no more of a significant public health threat, in terms of infections and fatalities, than seasonal influenza.

A COVID Green New Deal?

One of the clear main political beneficiaries of a COVID-19 global shutdown has been the climate change lobby.

By forcibly shutting down millions of businesses and pulling tens of millions of cars off the road and grounding world commercial airlines, the crisis has delivered young Greta Thunberg the evidence she and her supporters need to demonstrate the virtues of a net zero carbon world in a real-life simulation.

This will also accelerate the adoption of a so-called ‘Green New Deal’ internationally, which may have less to do with saving the environment or ‘changing the climate’, and more to do with the creation of new global financial bubble based on the commodification and financialisation of Earth’s ecosphere. This is essentially a new ‘green-backed’ and fully tradeable monetary credit, bond and derivatives market.

Greta didn’t appear out of nowhere in 2018. She and her handlers have been tasked with a mission, and now in just three weeks they are very close to realising large pieces of their agenda, which also dovetails with UN Agenda 2030 sustainability goals.

Who’s Winning: Globalism or Nationalism?

Another unexpected byproduct of this crisis has been a number of European Union member states kicking Brussels to the curb, either for not reacting fast enough to help, or simply for not releasing enough funds for struggling public institutions and businesses. As a result, countries like Italy and Poland are exerting their nationalist power over Brussels’ relatively weak and ineffectual response to requested assistance from members states.

At the same time, this new global control grid lends itself towards the implementation of a world government structure to be used to fund an international regime that regulates and adjudicates problems, as well as manage future ‘outbreaks’. In late March, former British PM and Chancellor, Gordon Brown, called for world leaders to create a provisional global government body in order to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and manage the global economic collapse.

Whatever geopolitical and social engineering agendas were already in motion before the crisis, you can be sure that the coronavirus has accelerated many of them.

In terms of power-grabs, this is the embodiment of “never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Oh, and don’t forget –it’s really all about saving lives. 

 

*

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Patrick Henningsen is the founder and editor of the news and analysis website 21st Century Wire, and is an independent foreign and political affairs analyst for RT International. He is also the host of the SUNDAY WIRE radio program which airs live every Sunday on the Alternate Current Radio Network. Learn more about this author at: http://www.patrickhenningsen.com

Notes

1. Professor who predicted 500,000 Britons could die from coronavirus and prompted Boris Johnson to order lockdown accused of having ‘patchy record of modelling pandemics’, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8164121/Professor-predicted-500-000-Britons-die-coronavirus-accused-having-patchy-record.html

2. Return of the oppressed, aeon.co/essays/history-tells-us-where-the-wealth-gap-leads

3. Is an ‘immunity certificate’ the way to get out of coronavirus lockdown?, edition.cnn.com/2020/04/03/health/immunity-passport-coronavirus-lockdown-intl/index.html

4. The first steps after lockdown ends: How will Spain return to normal life?, english.elpais.com/society/2020-04-05/the-first-steps-after-lockdown-ends-how-will-spain-return-to-normal-life.html

5. Bill Gates Calls For National Tracking System For Coronavirus During Reddit AMA, www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/03/18/bill-gates-calls-for-national-tracking-system-for-coronavirus-during-reddit-ama/

6. Bill Gates on Fighting Coronavirus – The Daily Social Distancing Show (YouTube), www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyFT8qXcOrM

7. The coronavirus is washing over the U.S. These factors will determine how bad it gets in each community, www.statnews.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-how-bad-it-gets-different-communities/

8. Gordon Brown calls for global government to tackle coronavirus, www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/26/gordon-brown-calls-for-global-government-to-tackle-coronavirus

‘Ye are Many, They are Few’: Nonviolent Resistance to the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup

By Robert J. Burrowes

On 16 August 1819, an estimated 60,000 pro-democracy and anti-poverty activists were peacefully protesting the utterly corrupt nature of the Parliament in Westminster and demanding the reform of parliamentary representation (which afforded less than 2% of people the right to vote). The gathering took place in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in England.

The protest was precipitated by the acute economic slump, including chronic unemployment and harvest failure, following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars as well as by enforcement of the Corn Laws which kept the price of bread high, by blocking (or imposing tariffs on) the import of cheap grains, at the expense of ordinary people.

After arresting some key figures on the speaker’s cart at the gathering, the cavalry was ordered to disperse the crowd. Charging with sabres drawn, approximately eighteen people were killed and nearly 700 seriously injured, with the event dubbed the ‘Peterloo massacre’ by radical media in a bitterly ironic reference to the bloody Battle of Waterloo some four years earlier. See ‘The Peterloo Memorial Campaign’.

In his evocative tribute to those peaceful activists gathered at St Peter’s Field, Percy Shelley penned what might be considered the first modern words to capture a sense of nonviolent resistance in his poem ‘The Masque of Anarchy’. The poem’s 38th verse, repeated in the 91st (and final) one, is as follows:

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.

The history of much of human existence since the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago can be written simply: the endless struggle by those who are oppressed and enslaved against the insane elite that oppresses, enslaves and kills them. For brief explanations, see ‘Why Activists Fail’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’. For insight into the terrified psychology that traps members of the elite, and their agents, in an endless cycle of profit-making and wealth accumulation at the expense of the rest of us, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

Of course, nothing has changed although four important points have given the latest manifestation of this perpetual struggle a profound importance that far exceeds earlier (and other ongoing) versions.

  1. The elite coup currently being conducted is taking place under cover of a non-existent ‘virus’ that has been labeled SARS-CoV-2.

If the evidence that the virus does not exist, such as that cited in ‘Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’, has not persuaded you so far, you are invited to consider the further evidence by watching ‘Do Germs Actually Make You Sick?’ or reading ‘Flaws in Coronavirus Pandemic Theory’.

As David Crowe writes in the article just cited: ‘What is being published in medical journals is not science, every paper has the goal of enhancing the panic by interpreting the data only in ways that benefit the viral theory, even when the data is confusing or contradictory. In other words, the medical papers are propaganda.’

Another option you have if you are seriously interested in the truth is to spend the time to seek out the documented scientific proof that the ‘virus’ labeled SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated, purified and proven to cause a consistent set of disease symptoms among those it ‘infects’, which is then labeled Covid-19. So far, the many of us who have searched for this document – including some of the world’s leading virologists – have not found it.

  1. This coup involves all of humanity, not just a local, provincial or national population.

For just two of the many detailed exposés of the coup and what it portends, see the report written by the Association of French Reserve Army Officers ‘Investigative Report on the COVID-19 Pandemic and its Relationship to SARS-COV-2 and other Factors’ and the video ‘Plandemic II’.

As Pepe Escobar characterizes this coup in his article ‘From 9/11 to the Great Reset’:

A drive by design towards ironclad concentration of power and geoeconomic diktats was first conceptualized – under the deceptive cover of “sustainable development” – already in 2015 at the UN (here it is, in detail).

Now, this new operating system – or technocratic digital dystopia – is finally being codified, packaged and “sold” since mid summer via a lavish, concerted propaganda campaign.

The whole Planet Lockdown hysteria that elevated Covid-19 to post-modern Black Plague proportions has been consistently debunked…

The de facto controlled demolition of large swathes of the global economy allowed corporate and vulture capitalism, world wide, to rake untold profits out of the destruction of collapsed businesses.

And all that proceeded with widespread public acceptance – an astonishing process of voluntary servitude.

  1. Unless we succeed completely in defeating this coup the very essence of what it means to be human will be taken from us.

Introducing her careful explanation of the agenda of the transhumanists, in her video Dr. Carrie Madej opens with the following words:

So what do you think about going from human 1.0 to human 2.0?… Transhumanism… is about taking humans, as we know ourselves, and melding with artificial intelligence…. That might seem kinda cool to you, we might have some superhuman abilities… that’s the idea, that’s what you see in sci-fi movies… Thinking about this topic… I [had thought that it was] many years in the future.

However, this question, this idea is now right in this moment. We need to make a decision… because I investigated the proposed Covid-19 vaccine and this is my alarm call to the world. I looked at the pros and cons and it frightens me.

And I want you to know about this, you need to be very well informed because this new vaccine is not like your normal flu vaccine. This is something very different, this is something brand new, something completely experimental on the human race. And it’s not just about being a different vaccine. There are technologies that are being introduced with this vaccine that can change the way we live, who we are and what we are. And very quickly….

Some people… like Elon Musk, who is the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Automotive, as well as Ray Kurzweil, who is one of the bigwigs of Google, … are self-proclaimed ‘transhumanists’. They believe that we should go to human 2.0 and they are very big proponents of this. There’s a lot of other people… involved with this…. I think the easiest way to explain this to you is to go with one of the frontrunners for the vaccine and go into a little bit of the history and tell you how they want to make the vaccine and I think that will speak volumes. So, for instance, Moderna is one of the frontrunners for the Covid-19 vaccine…. Watch the video ‘Human 2.0 – Transhumanist Vaccine – A Wake Up Call to the World’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7J2SPl3-O4

Whitney Webb provides further insight into the elite intention in this regard. In one of her meticulously-researched articles – ‘Coronavirus Gives a Dangerous Boost to DARPA’s Darkest Agenda’ – she outlines the hidden technological agenda behind the Covid-19 coup that might well be delivered as part of any vaccination program by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). After carefully outlining the history and ‘logic’ of what is taking place – such as the development of ‘cyborg “super soldiers”’ and ‘injectable Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs) with the capability to control one’s thoughts’ – she concludes with the chilling words:

Technology developed by the Pentagon’s controversial research branch is getting a huge boost amid the current coronavirus crisis, with little attention going to the agency’s ulterior motives for developing said technologies, their potential for weaponization or their unintended consequences.…

Those who are fearful and desperate will not care that the vaccine may include nanotechnology or have the potential to genetically modify and re-program their very being, as they will only want the current crisis that has upended the world to stop.

In this context, the current coronavirus crisis appears to be the perfect storm that will allow DARPA’s dystopian vision to take hold and burst forth from the darkest recesses of the Pentagon into full public view. DARPA’s transhumanist vision for the military and for humanity presents an unprecedented threat, not just to human freedom, but an existential threat to human existence and the building blocks of biology itself.

  1. And one consequence of this coup will be human extinction in the near term, by one or more of four possible paths: nuclear war, the collapse of biodiversity, the deployment of 5G, the climate catastrophe.

For fuller explanations of each of these four points, together with the evidence for the paths to extinction, see ‘Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

But to highlight just one symptom of the accelerating climate crisis, for example, you can read the daily update on the 100 or so extreme wildfires in the western United States (including Alaska) on the National Interagency Fire Center website. Importantly, however, you can also read or watch Dane Wigington’s accounts of the role of climate engineering in precipitating these catastrophic fires to destroy forests on GeoEngineering Watch.

And for a taste of the accelerating collapse of Earth’s biodiversity, this article briefly explains some lowlights of the latest Living Planet Report: Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss – see ‘Humans behind 70% fall in world’s wildlife over last 50 years’ – while this brief report highlights another of the largely ignored risks to biodiversity and life itself. See ‘Sellafield nearly goes bang, and The Guardian totally misses story’.

So why is this being allowed to happen?

Unfortunately, despite the enormous gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves, most people remain too frightened to seriously investigate and consider the evidence regarding what is taking place and to respond powerfully. Why? Because our parenting and education models mass-produce unconsciously terrified and submissively obedient individuals. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

For these individuals, it is far less frightening to simply accept the elite-driven narrative, promulgated by the World Health Organization, the medical industry, governments and the corporate media, and to submissively accept the savage curtailment of our rights and freedoms. And to powerlessly hope that this assault on our identity, liberty and future will all go away ‘once we have the “virus” under control’.

But as anyone who understands political history or has even the vaguest genuine understanding of modern geopolitics well knows, this will not happen. If we do not struggle, it will be our own obedience, our own cooperation that will condemn us all to the fate being orchestrated by the global elite.

Moreover, given the depth, complexity and multifaceted nature of the threats we now face, unless we struggle strategically there is no real prospect of succeeding.

Resisting the Elite Coup so Far

Fortunately, courageous individuals all around the world are doing what they can to inform and mobilize people before it is too late. These range from individuals writing articles or producing videos to expose the simple fact that the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 does not exist and the non-existent disease labeled Covid-19 is being used to ‘cover’ the elite coup, it involves individuals working to defend our hard-won rights and freedom by using legal challenges to the Covid-19 lockdown measures and, vitally, it involves those people taking nonviolent action to defeat the coup or aspects of it.

And, of course, these measures are having impact as evidenced by the actions being taken by elite agents to suppress awareness of this effort and to thwart it. These actions range from censorship of resistance documents and videos, public disparagement of those resisting (perhaps by being labeled ‘conspiracy theorists’ or ‘anti-vaxxers’), the corporate media ignoring or misrepresenting those protesting, and sham scholarship purporting to describe those resisting as psychologically disordered – see ‘Psychopathic traits linked to non-compliance with social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic’ and ‘Adaptive and maladaptive behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of Dark Triad traits, collective narcissism, and health beliefs’ – to police harassment, intimidation and arrest of those who take action to resist the coup or one of its features.

But for a taste of the most recent mobilizations, here are some examples.

At the rally in Berlin on 29 August 2020, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke the following words:

The pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elite who are dictating these policies. It gives them the ability to obliterate the middle class, to destroy the institutions of democracy, to shift all of our wealth to a handful of billionaires [while] impoverishing the rest of us. And the only thing between them and our children is this crowd that has come to Berlin…. Thank you all very much for fighting. See ‘Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Speaks at Berlin Rally for Freedom and Peace’.

You can see a compelling photo of police at the Berlin rally removing their helmets in solidarity with the people at ‘Peaceful Rallies Around the World to Champion Freedom’.

At the Unite for Freedom Rally in Trafalgar Square, London, also on 29 August, David Icke spoke as follows:

We gather here today because a dangerous disease, a deadly disease is sweeping across this land and across this world and it’s not Covid-19, it is fascism…. This world is controlled by a tiny few people because of a simple sequence of imposition and acquiescence. All the way down the pyramid: imposition-acquiescence…. How do we break that sequence? We stop acquiescing! Human race get off your knees!… Stay in your home? No! Wear a mask? No! Let your kids be psychologically dismantled? No!

It is well past the time when we learn the lessons of history. The entirety of human history is one of the few controlling the many because the many acquiesce to the few. Enough!… And I say to the police opposite: ‘You have children, you have grandchildren. And you are enforcing the fascism which your own children and grandchildren will have to live with. Join us, for goodness sake and stop serving the psychopaths.’ There are billions of us and the core of the core of these psychopathic wimps…. I think I can see a way out of this. Come on people of the world. Let’s go! See ‘David Icke’s Speech at the Unite for Freedom Rally’.

But apart from earlier gatherings of large numbers of people to protest the coup that I have previously reported – see, for example, ‘Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’ – you can read a report of the demonstration in Ottawa on 29 August 2020 here: ‘Parliament Hill protestors denounce “tyranny,” demand end to COVID-19 restrictions’.

There was also an ‘Anti-mask and anti-vaccination demonstration in Zurich’ on 29 August 2020.

And you can see a selection of videos from around the world here: ‘People of the World Do not Consent to Tyranny’.

Meanwhile, the government of the state of Victoria (in south-eastern mainland Australia) continues to cling tenaciously to its record as the most repressive police state on Earth, even arresting people for encouraging others to attend protest rallies. See ‘Victorian woman charged over alleged anti-lockdown protest plans’ and ‘Australian Woman Arrested For Making A Facebook Post About A COVID Protest’.

This is occurring despite the obvious illegality of federal and state government actions in Australia (and Victoria particularly) which have been carefully detailed, for example, by Victorian lawyer Serene Teffaha who explains the substantial range of laws that are being violated by the government of Victoria (including sections 60, 61, 88, 90, 91, 92 and 95 of the Australian ‘Biosecurity Act 2015’ which takes precedence over its Victorian equivalent, the Public Health and Mental Well-being Act 2008) in her video ‘Lawyer Serene Teffaha explains the Law re: Bio-security act – forced medical measures & procedures’.

If you thought that the rule of law would protect you from government overreach, it might be a good time to review your belief. The law is simply another tool in the elite’s armory against you and it is being used with devastating impact right now. See ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’.

In his 77-minute recorded statement to police after his own arrest – ‘The accused at Greater Melbourne between the 16th of August 2020 and the 27th of August 2020 did incite another person/persons to pursue a course of conduct that involved the commission of an offence by promoting a planned protest with the intention to incite person/persons to contravene namely s 203 (1) of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 by encouraging them to not wear masks and also to leave their residence without a specified reason as provided by the stay at home directions’: see ‘Solihin Millin Interview with Victorian Police After Arrest’ – 76 year old scientist Solihin Millin stated the following:

We live in a supposedly free society, surely we can debate…. Then we use our intellect and our ability to choose. It is stifled, it is censored everywhere by the Australian government, by the Victorian government, by unfortunately the police, who in my words are supporting extortion because [Victorian premier Daniel Andrews] knows that the way to people’s hearts is through their pockets and so he is extorting money from us to make us do his will and, of course, everyone is filled with fear. This is not an epidemic of a virus, it is an epidemic of fear….

I follow the value of truth, I follow the value of unconditional love, I follow the value [of] virtue… (‘help ever, hurt never’), [I follow] the value of peace and the value of nonviolence…. Our behaviour has to be Godly, it has to be pure, it has to be peaceful. However, the sword that we hold in our hand is the sword of truth…. And that is what’s not being allowed. And you will find that I have been arrested because I have a particular point of view which is against these dictates of the health minister…. So I have been arrested.

And within two seconds I can… prove to you there is no pandemic. Just some simple arithmetic: How many people have died [in Australia]? Three, four hundred? How many Australians are there? 26,000,000. How long has this nonsense been going? Seven months. This is rubbish! And they are stealing – and this is absolutely guaranteed scientifically – they are stealing old-age deaths, with comorbidity features – cancer, heart attacks, pneumonia, diabetes – and they are assigning those old-age deaths to Covid-19. And you know if you look on the Australia Bureau of Statistics website all they have to do is assume Covid-19. They don’t even have to test for it! Watch ‘Solihin Millin Interview with Victorian Police After Arrest’.

Resisting the Elite Coup Strategically

So while there is considerable ongoing resistance to this coup, given the extraordinary nature of what is at stake, my own preoccupation is to encourage and facilitate a strategically-focused resistance to it so that we have the impact we need in each of the dimensions – including those threatening human extinction – necessary for us to be successful.

Hence, if you already understand what is at stake – or you are willing to consider the evidence more carefully – but you are not yet ready to act powerfully in response, I invite you to focus more intently on how you feel in response to the threats posed and to give yourself adequate time to do so. By gaining a clearer sense of your emotional response – fear, anger, despair, frustration… – you will be better able to utilize this, along with other mental faculties such as your intellect, conscience and intuition, to craft an integrated and powerful way forward. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

And, depending on your interests and circumstances, there is a range of possible responses that will each make an important difference (with many entailing no risk whatsoever).

Fundamentally, you might 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 – not ones who are submissively obedient to elite directives and project their fear onto others – who can perceive reality and resist violence. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

You might consider supporting others to become more powerful. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

You might also consider how your diet and healthcare could usefully be revised to empower you to resist medical propaganda, particularly given the extensively documented death-dealing for which corporate medicine is responsible. See, for example, ‘Pharma Death Clock’.

If you wish to strategically resist the elite coup, you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals for doing so, from here: Coup Strategic Aims.

Remaining pages on this 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’ and ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our essential humanity, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as are those listed on the Strategic Aims page nominated above). 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 strategic goals referenced above). This is important if our actions are to have impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution, including the robotization of humans for work and war-fighting.
  • 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.

Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns, resist other limitations on our rights and freedoms (such as contact tracing, Covid-19 testing/temperature checks, mask-wearing and vaccinations) as well as resist the coup itself 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 nonviolent action, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist. As has been happening.

If you wish to focus on powerfully resisting one of the primary threats to human existence – nuclear war, the deployment of 5G, the collapse of biodiversity and/or the climate catastrophe – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Campaign Strategic Aims.

You might also consider joining those who are powerful enough to recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance as essential elements of these strategies by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. While you over-consume or are dependent on the elite for your survival, in any way, you are vulnerable.

In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

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

There is no SARS-CoV-2 virus. There is no Covid-19 disease. Therefore, you cannot be tested for it, you cannot ‘prevent’ infection by social distancing, wearing a mask, vaccination or being under house arrest. You cannot ‘catch’ a virus that does not exist.

However, under cover of this manufactured ‘health crisis’ the global elite is fundamentally reshaping global society to serve its own purpose with millions (in industrialized countries) being marginalized and millions (in countries throughout Africa and Asia particularly, where disruption of food distribution systems has hit hardest) being killed in the process. See WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’ and ‘COVID-19 could kill more people through hunger than the disease itself, warns Oxfam’.

Fortunately, awareness of what is at stake is now steadily rising. And so is the resistance. But we are a long way from dealing effectively with either the coup – and all that this portends – or the primary paths to imminent human extinction.

In the words of David Icke: ‘Human race get off your knees!’

Viral Fantasies of Control

By Russ Bangs

Source: Volatility

It was clear from the start that if SARS-COV-2 really posed an unusual danger which in theory merited aggressive government intervention, there was no good solution since we have only incompetent and malign systems trying to apply fundamentally wrong-headed ideologies and practices against nature at her most assertive, fluid and flexible. It was always clear that the best societies could do was to take precautions to protect the most vulnerable while otherwise letting the bug do what it certainly is going to do anyway regardless of all attempts to violently segregate and suppress it. Lockdowns accomplish nothing but to delay the inevitable while adding immense collateral harms to physical and mental health, human community and culture, and radically accelerate the economic liquidation of the people.

And yet protecting the vulnerable is the one thing most Western societies refused to do, while those same societies acted very aggressively imposing every kind of worthless measure upon the general population which is not in any special danger from the bug and which inevitably must attain herd immunity. SARS-COV-2 already was irretrievably at large long before any measures were undertaken in the West, so any possibility of limiting the range and infection rate went glimmering long ago. The only likely place to have limited the virus was at the bioweapons lab where it was engineered or modified in the first place, whether this lab be in Maryland or Wuhan. Once it was let slip from there, and once it evaded any local quarantine (it was long gone by the time any measures were taken), the game was up, nature took over and the epidemiological cycle was guaranteed to complete itself. Societies never had any option but to let nature take its course toward herd immunity.

What’s been done has been exactly upside down. It’s the vulnerable who should be shielded while nature takes its course among the general population, who go about life as usual. Dominionist-technocratic rigidity can’t prevent the cycling of Gaia in spite of the delusions of the modernist religion which is merely an updated biblical dominionism. This is especially true since Western societies began their measures far too late anyway. From the start it would’ve been best to let herd immunity develop as fast as it naturally will, at which time the virus recedes from lack of hosts and is likely to mutate in a milder direction along the way. This is the only way to bring a safer environment for all including the most vulnerable. Nothing else was going to work, while the lockdowns add a long list of purely gratuitous evils: The very high number of preventable deaths from the lockdown itself, political cover for the most extraordinary Fed interventions yet to prop up the collapsing financial system, political cover for this latest Wall Street plunder expedition empowered by the lockdown’s controlled demolition of the economy, the radical escalation of the police state, the euthanasia campaign the campaign has enabled against the sickly aged, the escalation of anti-China war propaganda, the deep trauma disorienting people into total submission and social conformity, the radical aggravation of the anti-social, anti-human atomization of the people.

Those who can’t or are unwilling to understand these concepts seem motivated by prior police-statist ideology and/or mental collapse into a state of terror caused by the propaganda campaign, but it has nothing to do with rationally deliberated concern for any public health.

Therefore any debate over what in theory would be the best response if the bug was coming but not yet here always was moot. The only rational response was for society to exert itself to protect institutions where the most vulnerable are congregated while letting nature take its course through the general population, just like any regular flu.

Instead governments did the radical opposite of this, imposing general lockdowns while doing nothing real, only sham, to protect nursing homes and hospitals. As a result those became slaughterhouses. At the same time the pointless lockdowns are causing tremendous ancillary health harms and will kill more than the bug itself.

Yet even now most still believe that lockdowns and similar measures are worthy and that the bug can be stopped short of cycling thruout the population.

From day one this has been as true of “alternative” types as it is of the mainstream. Both equally heeded the propaganda call to “Stampede!” and joined the technocrat-led chorus howling the imperative, “We Have to DO Something!!” From there it follows as religious doctrine that there must exist a Good Solution when in fact no such thing exists. For most problems and crises the dissenters’ alleged Good Solution is different from that of the mainstream, but in the case of Covid they’re in lock step. Indeed the pre-existing alternative establishment largely has dissolved itself back into the mainstream, very likely permanently. Just as most individual “anti-authoritarians” have their personal fetishes which cause them to metastasize to a tyrannical advocacy, so the Covid Death Cult has proven to be the road back to authoritarian mainstream home for almost all erstwhile “dissidents”. Their regression to the neoliberal mainstream in the cases of Trump Derangement and Brexit were mere rehearsals.

Many among the apostates still cherish the Stalinesque fantasy that from the Covid apocalypse and the ashes of humanity it leaves behind will arise the phoenix day of a new city of social justice and ecological sustainability. According to this vision, the closer the economic civilization comes to totalitarianism and ecological collapse the closer it comes to a utopian transformation from all that’s bad to all that’s good. (Stalin imparted the dogma that the worse the class struggle gets, the closer society is to the communist revolution.) This is one reason why almost all leftists, “anti-authoritarians”, anti-imperialists have ardently embraced the Death Cult and acted as propagandists for it – they believe in doing so they’re speeding the descent of their version of Revelation’s New City.

But there’s no reason to believe in such daydreams. The globalist corporate system deliberately used the Covid propaganda pretext in order to undertake the controlled demolition of the global economy, precisely in order artificially to generate the conditions for a new round of elementary capitalist accumulation. The economic civilization, a metastatic cancer dependent on “growth” in order to sustain itself at all, always needs a bleeding boundary where it is rending and destroying hitherto unassimilated “resources” in order to turn them into commodities. At the limits of the globe, where the civilization has long since found itself, it can only rip open old wounds, destroy parts of itself in order to render them capable of being re-assimilated in new bouts of cancer-growth. This disaster capitalism most often has used war or economic collapse as its agent of destruction, but disasters like Hurricane Katrina or hoax disasters like Covid-19 also serve. This current, most extreme campaign of disaster capitalism is also being called the Great Reset, exactly the right term: Global capitalism, more broadly the economic civilization itself, is collapsing of its own top-heavy parasite finance extrusion and desperately has needed a reset, a vast newly devastated zone where it again can recycle its rampage. This is why the system seized upon the objectively mild Covid-19 epidemic to launch a global propaganda campaign fraudulently depicting it as a lethal pandemic, in order to gain the political pretext to lock down, i.e. deliberately demolish, the global economy which was on the verge of chaotic collapse.

Therefore any economic slowdown effects, and any environmental and social benefits which went along with this slowdown were purely incidental. Nor is there any prospect I can see of any new movement arising to turn these to pivotal social effect. No one, and least of all the leftist alternative types, actually wants any significant degrowth, any significant dismantling of the economic civilization. On the contrary all political factions agree the system must resume with all the ecocidal and mass homicidal violence of which it’s capable. There’s no constituency for any alternative path. On the contrary all system factions which purport to want a more ecologically harmonious path are touting the Green Capitalist, Green New Deal, Green Cancer/”Growth” fraud, which simply means business as usual, albeit with a “green” tone.

So there’s no way to turn the Covid-19 to “progressive” effect. This demolishes the apostates’ only constructive rationale for their adherence to the cult. (How ironic and psychopathic that they accuse Covid skeptics and dissenters of being willing to let people die, when they’re the ones who, in the same breath where they conjure the specter of millions dying also evoke utopian visions of what goodness will come of this. Not to mention that most of the deaths which have transpired were victims of the lockdownists’ own euthanasia campaign.)

There will be no control of the Coronavirus and no control of the destiny of social humanity under the boot of the terror-lockdown campaign other than in the direction of police state tyranny amid general economic devastation. This will be the direction, if the people continue to allow it and continue to embrace or obey the cult.

The Pandemic Is Accelerating Trends That Are Disrupting the Foundations of the Economy

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

The problem is the economy that’s left has no means of creating tens of millions of jobs to replace those lost as the 1959 economic model collapses.

Fundamentally, the economy of 2019 was not very different from the economy of 1959: people went shopping at retail stores, were educated at sprawling college campuses, went to work downtown, drove to the doctor’s office or hospital, caught a flight at the airport, and so on.

The daily routine of the vast majority of the workforce was no different from 1959. In 2019, the commutes were longer, white-collar workers stared at screens rather than typewriters, factory workers tended robots and so on, but the fundamentals of everyday life and the nature of work were pretty much the same.

Beneath the surface, the fundamental change in the economy was financialization, the commodification of everything into a financial asset or income stream that could then be leveraged, bundled and sold globally at an immense profit by Wall Street financiers.

This layer of speculative asset-income mining had no relation to the actual work being done; it existed in its own derealized realm.

For decades, these two realmsthe structure of everyday life (to borrow Braudel’s apt term) and the abstract, derealized but oh so profitable realm of financialization–co-existed in an uneasy state of loosely bound systems.

If you squinted hard enough and repeated the mantras often enough, you could persuade yourself there was still some connection between the everyday-life economy and the realm of financialization.

The two realms have now disconnected, and the real-world economy has been ripped from its moorings, as patterns of work and every-day life that stretch back 70 years to the emergence of the postwar era unravel and dissolve.

The trends that are currently fatally disrupting retail, education, office work and healthcare have been in place for years. When I wrote my 2013 book about the digitized future of higher education in a low-cost union of high-touch and low-touch learning, The Nearly Free University, all these trends were already clearly visible to those willing to look beyond the models embedded in the economy for decades or even centuries.

Visionaries like Peter Drucker foresaw the complete disruption of the education and healthcare sectors as far back as 1994. Post-Capitalist Society.

The problem with this disruption is it eliminates tens of millions of jobs–not just the low-paying jobs in retail and dining-out, but high-paying jobs in university administration, healthcare, and other core service sectors.

The last real-world connection between everyday life and financialization was the over-supply of everything that could be financialized: the way to reap the big profits was expand whatever could be leveraged and sold. So retail and commercial space ballooned, colleges proliferated, cafes sprang up on every corner, etc.

Meanwhile, financialization’s unquenchable thirst for higher profits stripped everything of the redundancy and buffers required to stabilize the system in times of crisis. So hospitals no longer kept inventory because by the logic of financialization, all that mattered was maximizing the return on capital–nothing else could possibly matter in the derealized realm of speculative profiteering.

Now healthcare finds itself trapped between the pincers of financialization’s stripmining and the collapse of retail in-person demand–the financial foundation of the entire system. Under the relentless pressure of financialization’s stripmining and profteering, healthcare only survives if it can bill somebody somewhere a staggering amount for everything from office visits to procedures to hospital stays to medications.

Once that avalanche of billing dries up, the entire sector implodes: a sector that accounts for almost 20% of the U.S. economy.

Higher education is also imploding, and for the same reason: its output no longer justified its enormous cost structure. The same can be said of overbuilt retail and commercial space: the financial justification for sky-high rents have imploded and will never come back. The over-supply is so monumental and the collapse of demand so permanent, the gigantic pyramid of debt and speculative excess piled on all these excesses is collapsing.

A bailout by the Federal Reserve won’t change the fundamentals of the collapse of financialization; all the Fed can do is reserve scarce lifeboat seats for its billionaire banker-financier pals. (Warren, you know Bill, have you met Jamie, Jeff, Tim and the rest of the Zillionaire Rat-Pack?)

Despite the record highs in the stock market–the ultimate expression of financialization disconnected from the real-world economy–financialization is also imploding. Financialization still claimed a connection to the real world of income streams and the value of the collateral underlying all the speculative profiteering: the high rents paid by the restaurants on the ground floor and the businesses for office space above justified the high value of the collateral, the commercial building.

Foundational swaths of the real-world economy have been swept away, and so the collateral is largely worthless. Lots of people want their employer to start paying for business-class airline seats again so they can jet around the country on somebody else’s dime, staying in pricey hotels and attending conferences, but these activities no longer have any financial justification.

The economy of 1959 is finally expiring. The enormous time and money sinks of transporting humans hither and yon no longer have any financial justification.

The problem is the economy that’s left has no means of creating tens of millions of jobs to replace those lost as the 1959 economic model collapses. We all know that automation is replacing human labor, but the real change is the collapse of the financial justification for the enormously costly systems we now depend on to generate jobs: healthcare, retail, tourism, dining out, education, working downtown, and all the professions dependent on managing all this complexity.

While the elimination of low-skill jobs–a longstanding trend–is attracting attention, the implosion of the 1959 economic model and financialization will soon sweep away millions of high-paying professional jobs that no longer have any financial justification.

As the 1959 economy implodes, so does the tax system based on payroll taxes and property taxes. This article sketches out the perverse incentives for employers to invest in automation rather than hire workers: Covid-19 Is Dividing the American Worker (WSJ.com)

There are alternatives, but they require accepting the implosion of both the 1959 economic model and its evil offspring, financialization.

I sketched out an alternative way of organizing work, everyday life and finance in my book A Radically Beneficial World. There are alternative ways of organizing civilization other than the insanely wasteful and exploitive system we now inhabit.