Tag Archives: coronavirus

Reactions to the Corona Virus Hint of a Wider Agenda

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By James O’Neill

Source: Land Destroyer

The western world has gone into a phase of unprecedented lockdown. Major airlines have ceased international operations. It is an open question is to whether or not they will be able to resume operations when and if the current draconian restrictions are lifted. In Australia, the Federal government has ceased to sit and the government has announced that this parliamentary closure will extend until at least August.

Quite why such a lockdown is necessary is unclear. No convincing explanation has been offered by the government and it is an extreme step that comparable nations in North America, the United Kingdom and all of Europe have found unnecessary. One of the most alarming consequences of this fundamental attack on the notion of Parliamentary accountability is that the decision was met with acceptance by the official Opposition and muted negative comment, if at all, by the major mainstream media.

Media coverage of the pandemic has been extraordinary. At least half of the nightly main television news bulletins have been devoted to coverage of the pandemic, although whether it actually adds to our degree of knowledge is at best debatable.

The statistics as to those affected, dying and recovery are presented each night like some grizzly football score. How accurate or complete those statistics are is a very open question. They are presented however as some form of immutable truth with nary a question as to their accuracy or reliability.

There are serious questions being asked as to the real origins of the current pandemic. We are constantly told by the mainstream media that it originated in China, and that “fact” is presented as something beyond question. The more we learn however, the less reliable that complacent assertion appears to be.

It is true that the first mainstream media reports of the virus came out of China’s Wuhan City, and urban agglomeration of some 12 million inhabitants. That reporting betrayed a number of assumptions that are difficult to sustain.

Where a virus is first reported does not automatically equate with where it began. One reason for this is that people being infected or dying are not necessarily correctly defined as to the cause of death or illness. This is particularly the case here with multiple instances of the illness were initially defined as the current illustration of the annual influenza epidemic which inflict and kill millions of people each year.

A second factor is that a virus can be imported into a country, either by accident or deliberately, by those acting for or on behalf of another nation. This is not idle speculation in the present case. There is now very good evidence that the virus was imported into the city of Wuhan at a time contemporaneous with the holding in that city of the quadrennial Military Games.

Representatives of more than 100 nations attended and participated in those games. The United States contingent was of particular interest for a number of reasons.

The first is that its soldier participants had their worst medal performance since the games were first held a half century ago, not winning a single gold medal and finishing well down the medal table.

The second factor was that the hotel where the United States military participants stayed was itself a hotbed of infection, recording more than 40 cases of employees and guests infected by the virus. This is a remarkable coincidence that challenges the laws of probability theory.

A third clue is the way the western media have reported the Chinese experience. They have given prominence to United States President Donald Trump’s description of the pandemic as the “Chinese virus”. We know from 100+ years of experience with the Spanish flu of 1919 how a false label can be used to define an entire country on a wholly false basis.

The record clearly shows that the Chinese government alerted the World Health Organisation as soon as they had established the reality of the virus they were dealing with. This was before most western countries had even acknowledged that there was a problem.

This suspicion has been reinforced in recent weeks by the reporting of western media of the actions of the Russian and Chinese government to provide assistance where it was asked for. The Italian government for example was refused assistance by its European Union “partners” and it was the Russians who flew in giant planes full of urgently needed medical supplies, taking a lengthy roundabout route because of obstructive flyover permission.

This assistance was greeted with a sneer by the western media who contrived to find some sort of Russian plot in a selfless humanitarian exercise. A similar result was seen in the media’s response to Chinese aid which was denounced as either medically inadequate or done with ulterior motives.

In neither case was that View shared by the governments involved, the medical staff of the overstretched and under resourced hospitals, or the citizens of those countries aided by the Russian and Chinese medical supplies.

The writer Dimitri Orlov, who recently returned to live in Russia after many years residence in the United States, had a cynical but arguably realistic view of the virus. On 8 April 2020 he had this comment to make on his Patreon:

“China has just taught the world a major masterclass in biowarfare defence. It doesn’t matter whether SARS-Covid-19 was concocted in a United States biowarfare laboratory or not. The point is, it could have been, because why else would the United States have bio- warfare laboratories scattered around the globe? And why were they collecting DNA samples from local populations except to target them using bioweapons? And so after some amount of uncertainty and vacillation China opted to treat the SARS-COV-19 outbreak as an act of war and won! Russia has followed suit, and although it is too early to declare victory it too is likely to score a win on the biowarfare front.”

I respectfully share Mr Orlov’s view. We also have the curiously unexplained events at the United States’ Fort Detrick biowarfare facility. In July 2019 the facility was forced to temporarily close, reopening at the end of the year. It is one of the literally hundreds of such United States facilities scattered around the globe.

What makes Fort Detrick of particular interest in the current context was that it was known to be working on a Covid-19 type biological weapon. That the United States had succeeded in developing such a weapon was publicly proclaimed by Johns Hopkins University in October 2019. The timing of this announcement, the problems at Fort Detrick and the outbreak of the coronavirus goes beyond mere coincidence.

The wall to wall media coverage of the outbreak in the western media nonetheless fails to raise these fundamental and clearly relevant points.

It is one of the grim ironies of the present pandemic that the United States may well turn out to be the principal victim, at least among western nations. Even there, some questions exist. We know from the published data thus far that 70% of the fatalities in the United States have been in the black population, that represent only 10% of the national population.

Television pictures showing mass graves being created in public parks will do little to assuage growing public concern that allegedly “the richest country in the world” cannot even properly treat or bury their own disadvantaged citizens.

The consequences of this pandemic are likely to be vastly greater than originally thought. The average citizen would do well to strap themselves in for what is going to be a very bumpy ride.

COVID-19: A Pretext for World Government and Totalitarianism

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We are now beyond the point of no return.

By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Another Day in the Empire

The crazy thing about the COVID-19 “crisis” is how easy it is for the state and its media to frighten the public and manipulate ill-informed citizens into embracing economic and social decapitation. 

Blinded by scary headlines based on irrational speculation—subsequently revised downward and published on page C-23 of corporate newspapers demanding a bailout—the American people have embraced authoritarian measures supposedly imposed to win a battle against an invisible enemy. 

We are now beyond the point of no return. The inflicted economic and social damage has already taken a heavy toll and it will get worse the longer health bureaucrats, state governors, and a remarkably clueless president and his apparatchiks demand we stay imprisoned in our homes, frightened of a bug the state and its media have fictionally rendered as an insatiable and inescapable Gorgon of Doom. 

https://twitter.com/BarbaraMcK42/status/1246210326405599232

Scott C. Tips, president of the National Health Federation, writes:

In February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO)—never known for its accuracy or consistency—declared a “Pandemic” for the coronavirus and claimed that the mortality rate for the novel coronavirus disease now designated as COVID-19 was 3.4%, while that for the seasonal flu was 0.1%. Of course, the news media ran with those numbers and splashed scary headlines across the World stating how much more deadly this new virus was than the seasonal flu. The problem with WHO’s statement, however, was that they applied two different formulas for the two viruses. For the COVID-19 disease, for example, they simply didn’t count any of the mild cases of COVID-19 that resolved themselves; yet, they did with the seasonal flu. If WHO were to apply the same formula to seasonal flu cases as it did with COVID-19 cases, then the seasonal flu is revealed more truthfully as being twice as deadly as the COVID-19 virus.

In other words, the globalist WHO—essentially a PR group for transnational Big Pharma and what should be considered the health-industrial complex—is engaged in massive fraud. 

The COVID-19 aggrandizement and propaganda campaign is not simply a public relations scheme for Big Pharma and its highly dubious—and often deadly—vaccines. It also serves as a cover for authoritarian measures the ruling elite have schemed to put in place for decades, measures designed to monitor and control everything you do. Orwell’s helicopters peering in bedroom windows in search of sex offenders—or drones in search of the infected and suspected vaccine scofflaws—are now a stark reality.

9/11 wasn’t sufficient. The reach of that false flag event’s fear quotient and authoritarian measures were limited and ultimately muted. The fairy tale prospect of cave-dwelling terrorists plotting dirty bomb attacks on kindergartens and other nefarious acts of deviltry had limited effectiveness and relatively short shelf life. 

However, an invisible virus portrayed as a pandemic on par with the Black Death is far more effective than a cartoon nemesis like Osama bin Laden in the ongoing effort to move cattle—as our rulers consider us—in the preferred direction. 

In addition to “smart” surveillance and control of the populace, the virus panic is being manipulated to cover and shift blame for a ransacked economy. 

“The economy was already faltering. The false boom stimulated by a decade of monetary meth was likely turning to bust even before the virus,” writes Keith Weiner. 

The real culprits pushing for economic collapse—the globalist financial class and kindred corporate fascists—want to attribute slamming on the economic brakes and toppling an already precarious house of cards to a virus that so far is little worse than seasonal flu, if that. 

It is now obvious a thoroughly propagandized populace will readily accept what amounts to an open-ended house arrest and the nonsensical authoritarian demands of the state—don’t go outside, don’t go to the grocery store or pharmacy, fashion DIY masks out of t-shirts and furnace filters, snitch on your neighbors if you suspect an infection, condemn the preppers as selfish hoarders, et cetera. 

Our future is no longer in doubt. The psychopathic control freaks are steering us toward world totalitarianism. Henry Kissinger recently advocated as much in the War Street Journal, following up a similar call for by the former “Right Honorable” Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. 

A virus has accomplished what the war on manufactured terror was unable to pull off—driving us with nary a bleat of complaint toward the rocks of economic and social destruction. 

Government Authority, Incompetence, and SARS-CoV-2

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U.S. Army National Guard photo by Edwin L. Wriston

By Jason Brennan

Source: Bleeding Heart Libertarians

Previously, I’ve commented on how the data we are using to estimate the danger of this disease are extremely poor. Until very recently, for the purposes of estimating the danger, we have been testing the wrong thing (current shedding of the virus) the wrong way (mostly testing people who present themselves as sick). When you read that as of March 3, the WHO estimated the death rate of COVID-19 cases at 3.4%, you have to keep in mind they had non-random testing, testing only for current infection, and testing based almost entirely on sick people presenting themselves for care. The result is that there is severe selection bias which pushes the hospitalization and death estimates upward. The big question is by how much. None of us would be able to publish a paper in a third-rate econ or poli sci journal with such bad data; the editors would desk reject us. Nevertheless, governments around the world used such estimates to impose economic misery and dramatic restrictions on civil liberty on the masses.

On top of this, as economists and other math savvy people look into epidemiology, it’s becoming clear that the models they use are quite poor, because they have difficulty with endogeneity and with variance.

Shortly, I suspect my friend Phil Magness will go public with an article about how many of the epidemiological experts you see on TV and whose models are being used to create government policy have a long (20-30 year+) history of making dramatic and sometimes apocalyptic predictions about the dangers of past diseases, predictions which never came true, even though in the past governments did little to stop those diseases.

How does this bear on politics?

In Against Democracy and elsewhere, I’ve argued that competence is a precondition of political legitimacy and authority. The Competence Principle says:

It is presumed to be unjust, and to violate a citizen’s rights, to forcibly deprive a citizen of life, liberty, or property, or to significantly harm her life prospects, as a result of decisions made by an incompetent deliberative body, or as a result of decisions made in an incompetent way or in bad faith. Political decisions are presumed legitimate and authoritative only when produced by competent political bodies in a competent way and in good faith.

My main argument for this principle is by analogy to clear cases. I ask readers to imagine a capital murder trial. A defendant is accused of first degree murder. If found guilty, he will lose his property, his freedom, and possibly his life. Imagine the jury finds him guilty for any of the following reasons:

  1. Ignorance: They simply ignore the facts of the case and flip a coin.
  2. Stupidity/Lack of Understanding: The case requires sophisticated reasoning and analysis, which they lack the capacity to do.
  3. Maleficence: They find him guilty because they hate people like him (e.g., suppose he’s white, rural working class Republican and they are average university professors).
  4. Selfishness and Conflict of Interest: They find him guilty because they personally benefit from him going to jail or being executed. (E.g., suppose they own a rival business, or suppose they would get fame and fortune for being the jurors who put him away, regardless of whether he is actually guilty.)
  5. Irrationality: They pay attention to the information, but process it in highly irrational ways, beset by a wide range of severe cognitive biases.
  6. Conformity and authoritarianism: They find him guilty because they have a political bias to defer to state power, to do what is expected of them regardless of whether it’s right, or to be seen as doing something/anything during times of crisis.
  7. Misinformation: The jurors decided properly in light of the information they had, but it later becomes clear the information was extremely poor, misleading, or false.

If we learned the jury found him guilty for any of this reasons, we would hold their decision is unjust. Moreover, it would be wrong to enforce their decision. The defendant could demand a retrial, and in many states, would be entitled to one.

I think this point generalizes to many political decisions beyond jury cases.. When a person or group makes a high-stakes decision, imposed involuntarily and through force upon others, a decision which can greatly alter people’s life prospects and deprive them of property, happiness, freedom, or life, that person or group must be competent in general, and must make that particular decision competently and in good faith. If they fail to do so, then their decision is presumed to lack authority (there is no obligation to obey it) and legitimacy (there is no moral permission to enforce it).

Now apply this to government actions on the basis of the COVID-19 disease.

As a philosophical matter, it’s easy to show that in principle, governments can restrict our freedom to stop the spread of disease. For instance, in The Journal of Medical Ethics, I have a paper arguing that governments can force us to accept vaccinations, not for paternalistic reasons, but to stop individuals from imposing unjustifiable risk of disease upon others. At his blog, anarchist libertarian powerhouse Michael Huemer says something similar:

Of course, what counts as unreasonable risk is open to debate. It’s going to have to do with the probability of harm, the total magnitude of the threatened harm, and how good one’s reasons are for imposing it (see previous post on meat & disease risk).

That’s the core of the libertarian justification for disease-prevention measures. Any individual who is at risk of carrying a communicable disease, such as Covid-19, is posing a risk of physical harm to others when he interacts with them. If the risk is ‘unreasonable’ (in light of the probability, magnitude, and reasons for imposing), then those under this threat would be justified in using coercion to protect themselves from the potential physical harm. Since individuals could justly do that, they can also delegate it to the state to do that (if you accept the state as legitimate in general).

The question of whether governments may in principle do what they are doing is not terribly difficult. But appealing to abstract principles is not enough to justify their actions. We need to know whether they made these particular decisions competently and in good faith, on the basis of good information. In the same way, it’s one thing to show in the abstract that states might have the right to punish criminals, but that doesn’t suffice to justify any particular jury decision. We still need to know whether the particular jury acted competently and in good faith, on the basis of good information.

This brings me to the upshot. Governments around the world appear to be relying on epidemiological models which suffer from serious endogeneity problems and which we know do not handle individual variance well, and which are constructed on the basis of the wrong data collected the wrong way. They thus appear to be deciding incompetently, on the basis of bad information. Whether they are acting in bad faith, I leave to you. (I would like to remind you, however, that we have plenty of evidence they often act in bad faith. For instance, bad faith is pervasive in the US criminal justice system.) Go ahead and remind yourself of your analysis of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, or whether the Patriot Act and the surveillance regime it created is justifiable. While you’re at it, remind yourself of all of those papers published in political science showing that people have a bias toward authoritarianism during a perceived crisis. Surely, that bears on you now, no?

I very much doubt that there are “secret data” of the right sort collected the right way which all governments around the world are holding from us. Instead, they made dramatic decisions, decisions which have little effect on rich intellectuals like me, but which impose severe pain and suffering upon the poor. It’s looks to me like they are blatantly violating the Competence Principle and their decisions presumptively lack authority and legitimacy

The best argument against this position, I think, is something like this: We are in the midst of a possible humanitarian disaster, which could potentially kill millions or tens of millions. Leaders had to act fast on the basis of poor information. They saw what was happening in Italy and took extreme measures.

Maybe, but some rejoinders: First, governments could have collected better data earlier, before they shut the world down. Second, few governments are trying to collect good data now. It’s one thing to shut down in an abundance of caution, but they should subsequently do mass, randomized testing for antibodies so we can determine the real infection fatality rate. (That is, collect the right data the right way.) Why isn’t this being done en masse? Third, the argument that we are in the midst of a potential disaster and so had to act out of an abundance of precaution relied on things like the WHO estimates and other early models and estimates, all of which relied on the wrong kind of data (testing current viral shedding) collected the wrong way (mostly testing people who present themselves as sick). As I’ve been saying, none of you would get a paper published in a third-rate journal with that kind of data, and if I presented a paper using it, you would tear me apart. Fourth, whatever plausibility this argument may have, what about the contrary argument that the bigger the stakes, the better the information you must have?

Note well: I am not a “COVID-19 skeptic” or a conspiracy theorist. I don’t think there is a conspiracy; I just think there is mass government failure. I am not skeptical of the dangers of COVID-19; rather, I am uncertain how bad it is because the early work relied upon poor data and poor research methods.

TURN SELF ISOLATION INTO SELF LIBERATION

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By Julian Rose

Source: Waking Times

One of the most famous paradoxes of this blessed experience called Life, is known as ‘the law of unintended consequences’; and we are at this very moment of time, in the midst of a manifestation of cosmic Lila which exactly fits this paradox.

Under the unprecedented blanket regulatory lock-down imposed by governments all over the planet, a highly unlikely opportunity has arisen to fundamentally redress our life circumstances. An opportunity which will positively equip those who need to become aware, to face the uncertainties that lie ahead with courage and fortitude.

The number one opportunity which being stuck in one’s home for most of the working day presents, is to do some long overdue thinking; the kind that taps into that region of ourselves which has been/is particularly starved due to being heavily preoccupied by the daily chores of the standard working week. That part of ourselves which gives genuine direction to our lives, and brings us face to face with the plethora of superficial activities that preoccupy us, most of which we have, up until recently, taken as gospel.

We are being supported in this vital pursuit by changes underway in the natural environment which surrounds us. Changes for the better that result from a sudden flux of a high percentage of the frenetic hustle and bustle which forms the basic daily pattern of our materialistically centred life, and which brings with it a heavy load of pollution, noise and stress, choking both our planet’s natural environment and our own health and welfare.

Pause to consider, how remarkable it is that the impositions imposed by mostly clueless governments, would have the unintended consequence of enabling much of nature to finally take some decent deep breaths! Enable her sinews to be at least temporarily cleansed from the antithetical materialistic pursuits of the modern world. Pursuits so misguidedly hailed as ‘progress’ and so crassly utilised for achieving the bloated ambitions of corporate giants.

Nature can breathe because motorways are largely free of the noise and pollution caused by rushing cars and trucks, and the air largely free from the constant passage of disruptive commercial jet airlines. The sky is blessedly blue and the sweeter that usual air is full of the sound of Spring inspired birds. It is generally calm – even peaceful. I remember a state like this from my childhood.

Something is happening. Something unusual. And it is coming about due to the ‘law of unintended consequences’ which is actually a cosmic/universal law and not unintended at all, but a direct reflection of Divine Lila. It has provided us with this opportunity – right in the midst of an unprecedented deep-state engendered global crisis – to join in this natural healing process so as to recharge our spiritual batteries and shed our worn-out life styles in favour of a more integrated and conscious sense of purpose.

Listen carefully: the circumstances facing all of us in the immediate two to three years ahead are going to present a quite unique challenge. Not least because they are being conducted by people either ludicrously unfit for the tasks they find themselves responsible for – or who wish to deceive and exploit us so as to acquire powers to control events which they have no legal right to control.

This means that the first call on our meditations about our immediate futures will be to raise and appraise some very practical considerations; the first of which involves taking a big step towards a much more robust and self-sufficient life style. Bear in mind that a return to typical easy access to the ‘daily conveniences’ many have become accustomed to, is no longer a secure bet. Even if governments might make it appear that ‘everything is under control’ and/or ‘things will soon return to normal’. Clearly it is not – and they will not, as by now we are surely well aware – and wishful thinking will not change this situation.

As I mentioned above, we must use this brief open window to shift ourselves towards a much more self-sufficient and simple life style. A largely self-sufficient life style involves knowing how to cultivate the ground so as to grow our own basic food requirements. And/or if not doing this directly, making sure to be closely associated with supporting colleagues who do – and who are willing to share the harvests that result.

This is not going to be possible within an urban environment at this point in time, given not only that there is insufficient cultivatable land available, but that urban environments are largely unconducive to mental, spiritual and physical health. They do not enhance one’s immune system and ability to build the inner and outer strength vital to staying strong throughout the challenges in store for us.

So to make best use of this period solitary confinement, plot the course that will provide a practical way of taking control of your – and your family’s – destiny. Recognising, of course, that under the imposition of a quasi dictatorship there is only ‘x’ amount of room in which to move.

In this article I am taking a deliberately positive line concerning making maximum use of our largely untapped potentials as creative beings. So let’s recognise this as exactly the moment to tap these blessed creative powers – since many have been far too preoccupied with selfish pursuits instead of dealing with necessities. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ so use this one in a million opportunity to meditate on exactly what your key necessities are and how to best manage them.

This should not be an anxiety based exercise. On the contrary, we are in a time of great energetic cosmic support due to the Earth now being in a particularly powerful alignment with the centre of our galaxy, resulting in the rapid growth of heart based empathetic instincts throughout humanity. It is because dark directed forces know about this, that such an intense effort is being made to block the rising-up which is already well underway in us.

Draw upon this gift we are being sent. It is to strengthen the heart beat of mother Earth and human kind.

If you are not already doing so, start each day with Yoga. Hatha yoga exercises, for example, that have been honed over millennia to bring nourishment to every part of the body and mind. This practice, by co-ordinating breathing and movement, revitalises the chi (energy) of one’s whole being and provides a clearer insight into what is the best and most true action to take each day. A Theseus thread to guide one through the chaos which has been deliberately invoked on this planet.

Couple such practice with a diet rich in immunosupportive foods, preferably direct from the farm.

Yes, the farmers you have linked-up with and offered your support. Hands in the soil and the company of (farm) animals is immensely curative. For millions, it is the life-line to earthed, reawakened health. The forces intent upon pulling us down cannot do so once our spiritual and physical energies are awakened and maintained.  Truly vital right now.

This means, for example, we can devote our new-found ‘freedom’ into actions specifically targeted at stopping the roll-out of the microwave radiation 5G weapon. A brutal technology of human paralysis and planetary ecocide, increasingly implicated in playing a covert role in the current ‘Corona Virus’ scam.

The family of man is ONE family. Our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of all others, as theirs is with ours. Selfishness is a disease far more deadly than any Corona Virus. Make use of your period of isolation to rid yourself of narcissistic tendencies, as the ‘Real I’ in each one of us is not the one that seeks self-satisfaction or indulgence in vanities. It is the one that liberates us into recognising our oneness with all life and all peoples, regardless of colour, race or creed.

Treat the domestic imprisonment being forced upon us – as an opportunity – not as cause for fear. In fact see it as a hurdle being placed in front of you so as to make you reach deeper into yourself for the solution! Because that’s what it actually is: a wake-up call without which you might never have the opportunity to discover your divine eternal flame of greatness, of Godliness.

What Are You Gonna Do About It?

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By Michael Krieger

Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg

Tucked into the recent recovery bill was a provision granting the Federal Reserve the right to set up a $450 billion bailout plan without following key provisions of the federal open meetings law, including announcing its meetings or keeping most records about them, according to a POLITICO review of the legislation.

The provision further calls into question the transparency and oversight for the biggest bailout law ever passed by Congress. President Donald Trump has indicated he does not plan to comply with another part of the new law intended to boost Congress’ oversight powers of the bailout funds. And earlier this week, Trump dismissed the government official chosen as the chief watchdog for the stimulus package.

The changes at the central bank – which appear to have been inserted into the 880-page bill by sympathetic senators during the scramble to get it approved — would address a complaint that the Fed faced during the 2008 financial crisis, when board members couldn’t easily hold group conversations to address the fast-moving economic turmoil.

The provision dispenses with a longstanding accountability rule that the board has to give at least one day’s notice before holding a meeting. Experts say the change could lead to key information about the $450 billion bailout fund, such as which firms might benefit from the program, remaining inaccessible long after the bailout is over.

The new law would absolve the board of the requirement to keep minutes to closed-door meetings as it deliberates on how to set up the $450 billion loan program. That would severely limit the amount of information potentially available to the public on what influenced the board’s decision-making. The board would only have to keep a record of its votes, though they wouldn’t have to be made public during the coronavirus crisis.

A Fed spokesperson did not comment on the changes in the law or whether the Fed would continue keeping records of its meetings.

– Politico: Recovery Law Allows Fed to Rope off Public as It Spends Billions

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

– Arthur Miller

Before going any further, I want to share a graphic that accurately summarizes my position on the current pandemic affecting the world.

Unfortunately, it’s quite common for many to latch on to one of these conclusions and singularly obsess about it to the detriment of the others, when we need to be thinking about all three simultaneously.

It’s absolutely critical we understand governments throughout the world are rapidly mobilizing to use the crisis as an excuse to extract more wealth from society and condition the public to relinquish more precious civil liberties. The response in my own imperial oligarchy masquerading as a country has been particularly grotesque. A government that told us masks don’t work and couldn’t roll out testing for weeks, is now responding with the worst of both post-9/11 and post-financial crisis responses. The idea of representative government or democracy in America is a complete myth. The interests and desires of the people are irrelevant, and our economic system can be best described as financial feudalism.

We’ve seen this movie before. The U.S. government and Federal Reserve used major crises to consolidate wealth and power twice before this century, and it’s happening again. They got away with it before — and they’re getting away with it now — because the public accepts it. I hate to write that, but it’s true. People will tell me the public has no way to fight back, but that’s not accurate. The public hasn’t even tried historical methods like mass strikes and boycotts, instead they’ve been successfully neutered by phony red/blue team mainstream politics, through bickering about marginal issues like pronouns and bathrooms, and by endless entertainment and debt-based consumption. This is why the oligarchy keeps winning. Americans aren’t a serious people yet.

Witnessing the massive theft and power consolidation during the financial crisis a decade ago shook me to my core. I learned so much about how the world really works I simply couldn’t go on in the same way, so I quit my finance job and moved out of NYC. I was convinced such in your face theft would lead to effective popular movements and that the people would discover their power and take direct action, but I was wrong. Rather than economic populism transcending other differences to become ascendant and potent, most Americans were successfully shoved back into convenient political boxes easily managed by oligarchy. The rest is history.

Is the above wishful thinking? It might be. I had similar thoughts a decade ago and nothing truly meaningful happened. That said, I’ve learned some valuable life lessons over the past decade and will share some of them today.

The title of today’s piece is “what are you gonna do about it?”, but let me start by telling you what I’m not going to do. I am not going to vote in the 2020 presidential election. In previous cycles, I went out and voted third party as a protest, but I won’t even do that this time. I refuse to give such a farcical system the satisfaction of even a protest vote. I’m over it. Done. 

Choosing to refrain from participation in a clearly rigged and sham presidential election process may feel like giving up, but it’s the exact opposite. It’s actually quite liberating to give up on the fantasy that voting for one of two sociopaths will materially improve your life or the direction of the country. Once you stop believing in the lazy fairytale version of politics you can get down to real action. If you accept that voting is largely a charade, you can either sit back and take it while playing video games, or you can get motivated. I see two avenues for action that can actually change things.

The first consists of mass organized movements that unite as many disparate factions as possible to focus on a single issue. This can take the form of a workers strike, a targeted boycott or something similar. The key thing that’s prevented this from happening is Americans have been so successfully divided and conquered. “Activist leaders” often demand those who constitute a movement see eye to eye on virtually everything, yet oligarchy knows to unite whenever their core interests are even slightly threatened. A hopelessly splintered public is one reason the people always lose.

Although I’m confident in the success of such a strategy if implemented by enough people, this doesn’t mean it will materialize. I was hopeful it could happen last decade, but it never did. Americans proved to be as divided, conquered and distracted as ever, and it’s possible things will continue along this path in the years ahead. As such, waiting for mass movements that may never occur to materialize is not a sufficient strategy. You need a primary strategy, and that strategy starts with you. 

The only thing you truly have control over is your mindset and your actions. Think about what angers you most about the system as it stands and turn that anger into something productive. What can you do as an individual to protest or reject that system? What can you do to become more resilient? Can you repurpose your skillset or profession in a way where you become more of a solution than part of the problem? Some of us can do more than others, but virtually everyone can take some action. If you can’t think of anything, think harder.

Reflecting on the past decade, every moment I spent taking control of my life and improving as an individual was worthwhile and rewarding, while every moment I spent hoping others around me would change was a gigantic disappointment.

This doesn’t mean we should give up on mass movements, it means you cannot rely on other people to get to the point you’re at as quickly as you’d like. Think about what’s actually in your control and go for it. And good luck.

Weimar America, Here We Come! Virus Hysteria Adds $10 Trillion to the National Debt

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By Mike Whitney

Source: The Unz Review

There’s no doubt that the Coronavirus is a serious infection that can lead to severe illness or death. There’s also no doubt that ‘virus hysteria’ has been used for other purposes. Wall Street, for example, has used virus-panic to advance its own agenda and get another round of trillion dollar bailouts. In fact, it took less than a week to get the pushover congress to ram through a massive $2.2 trillion boondoggle without even one lousy congressman offering a peep of protest. That’s got to be some kind of record.

In 2008, at the peak of the financial crisis, Congress voted “No” to the $700 billion TARP bill. Some readers might recall how a number of GOP congressmen bravely banded together and flipped Wall Street “the bird”. That didn’t happen this time around. Even though the bill is three times bigger than the TARP ( $2.2 trillion), no one lifted a finger to stop it. Why?

Fear, that’s why. Everyone in congress was scared to death that if they didn’t rush this debt-turd through the House pronto, the economy would collapse while tens of thousands of corpses would be stacking up in cities across the country. Of course the reason they believed this nonsense was because the goofy infectious disease experts confidently assured everyone that the body-count would be “in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.” Remember that fiction? The most recent estimate is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 total. I don’t need to tell you that the difference between 60,000 and “millions” is a little more than a rounding-error.

So we’ve had the wool pulled over our eyes, right? Not as bad as congress, but, all the same, we’ve been hoodwinked and we’ve been fleeced. And the people who have axes to grind have been very successful in taking advantage of the hysteria and promoting their own agendas. Maybe you’ve noticed the reemergence of creepy Bill Gates and the Vaccine Gestapo or NWO Henry Kissinger warning us that, “the world will never be the same after the coronavirus”.

What do these people know that we don’t know? Doesn’t it all make you a bit suspicious? And when you see nonstop commercials on TV telling you to “wash your hands”or “keep your distance” or “stay inside” and, oh yeah, “We’re all in this together”, doesn’t it leave you scratching your head and wondering who the hell is orchestrating this virus-charade and what do they really have in mind for us unwashed masses??

At least in the case of Wall Street, we know what they want. They want money and lots of it.

Have you looked over the $2.2 trillion CARES bill that Trump just signed into law a couple weeks ago? It’s pretty grim reading, so I’ll save you the effort. Here’s a rough breakdown:

$250 billion will go for the $1,200 checks that most of us will receive in a couple weeks. And $250 billion will be provided for extended unemployment insurance benefits.

That’s $500 billion.

Working people will get $500 billion while Wall Street and Corporate America will get 3 times that amount. ($1.7 trillion) And even that’s a mere fraction of the total sum because– hidden in the small print– is a section that allows the Fed to lever-up the base-capital by 10-to-1 ($450 billion to $4.5 trillion) which means the Fed can buy as many “toxic” bonds and garbage assets as it chooses. The Fed is turning itself into a hedge fund in order to buy the sludge that has accumulated on the balance sheets of corporations and financial institutions for the last decade. It’s another gigantic ripoff that’s being cleverly concealed behind the ridiculous coronavirus hype. It’s infuriating.

So here’s the question: Do you think Congress knew that working people would only get a pittance while the bulk of the dough would go to Wall Street?

It’s hard to say, but they certainly knew that the economy was cratering and that $500 billion wasn’t going to put much of a dent in a $20 trillion economy. In other words, even if everyone goes out and blows their measly $1,200 checks on Day 1, we’re still going to experience the sharpest economic contraction on record, a second Great Depression.

Maybe they should have talked about that in congress before they voted for this trillion-dollar turkey? Maybe they should have thought a little more about how the money should be distributed: Should it go to the people who actually buy things, generate activity and produce growth, or to the parasite class that blows up the system every decade and drags the economy down a black hole? That seems like something you might want to know before you pass a multi-trillion dollar bill that’s supposed to fix the economy.

It’s also worth noting that the $5.8 trillion is not nearly the total amount that Wall Street will eventually get. The Fed has already spent $2 trillion via its QE program (to shore up the dysfunctional repo market) and Fed chair Jay Powell announced on Thursday that another $2.3 trillion in loans and purchases would be used to buy municipal bonds, corporate bonds and loans to small businesses. The allocation for small businesses, which falls under the, Main Street Lending Program, has been widely touted as a sign of how much the Fed really cares about struggling Mom and Pop businesses that employ the majority of working Americans. But, once again, it’s a sham and a boondoggle. The program is on-track to get $600 billion funding of which the US Treasury will provide the base-capital of $75 billion. The rest will be levered-up by 9-to-1 by the Fed, which means it’s just more smoke and mirrors.

What readers need to realize is that the Treasury has accepted the credit risk for all of the loans that default. In other words, the American people are now on the hook for 100% of all of the loans that go south, and there’s going to be alot of them because the banks have no reason to find creditworthy borrowers. They get a 5% cut off-the-top whether the loans blow up or not. And, that, my friend, is how you incentivize fraud which, as Bernie Sanders noted, “is Wall Street’s business model.”

It also helps to explain why Trump has repeatedly rejected congressional oversight of the various bailout programs. He’s smart enough to know a good swindle when he sees one, and this one is a corker. The government is essentially waving trillions of dollars right under the noses of the world’s most ravenous hyenas expecting them not to act in character. But of course they will act in character and hundreds of billions of dollars will be siphoned off by scheming sharpies who figure out how game the system and turn the whole fiasco into another Wall Street looting operation. You can bet on it.

So, what is the final tally?

Well, according to Trump’s chief economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, the first bailout installment is $6.2 trillion (after the Fed ramps up the Treasury’s contribution of $450 billion.). Then there’s the $2.3 trillion in additional programs the Fed announced on Thursday. Finally, the Fed’s QE program adds another $2 trillion in bond purchases since September 17, when the repo market went haywire.

Altogether, the total sum amounts to $10.5 trillion.

You know what they say, “A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Of course, no one on Capitol Hill worries about trivialities like money because, “We’re the United States of America, and our dollar will always be King.” But there’s a fundamental flaw to this type of thinking. Yes, the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, but that’s a privilege that the US has greatly abused over the years, and it’s certainly not going to survive this latest wacky helicopter drop. No, I am not suggesting the US would ever default on its debt, that’s not going to happen. But, yes, I am suggesting that the US will have to repay its debts in a currency that has lost a significant amount of its value. You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that you can’t willy-nilly print-up $10 or $20 trillion dollars without eroding the value of the currency. That’s a no-brainer. Central bankers around the world are now looking at their piles of USDs thinking, “Hmmm, maybe it’s time I traded some of these greenbacks in for a few yen, euros or even Swiss francs?”

So how does this end? Can the Fed continue to write trillion dollar checks on an account that is already $23 trillion overdrawn? Will Central banks around the world continue to stockpile dollars when the Fed is printing them up faster than anyone can count? And what about China? How long before China realizes that US Treasuries are grossly overvalued, that US equities markets are unreformable, that the dollar is backed by nothing but red ink, and that Wall Street is the biggest and most corrupt cesspit on earth?

Not long, I’d wager. So, how does this end? It ends in a flash of monetary debasement preceded by a violent and destabilizing currency crisis. It’s plain as the nose on your face. The Fed knows that when a nation’s sovereign debt exceeds 100% of GDP, “there’s almost no mathematical way to service that debt in real terms.” Well, the US passed that milestone way-back in 2019 before this latest drunken spending-spree even began. It’s safe to say, we’ve now entered the financial Twilight Zone, the Land of No Return. If we add the Fed’s bulging balance sheet to the final estimate, (after all, it’s just another shady Enron-type Special Purpose Vehicle) the national debt will be somewhere north of $33 trillion by year-end, which means that Uncle Sam will be the greatest credit risk on Planet Earth. Imagine how jaws will drop on the day that Moodys and Fitch slash the ratings on US Treasuries to Triple B “junk” status. That should turn a few heads.

So what can we expect in the months to come?

First, the economy is going to slip into a deflationary period as people get back to work and slowly resume their spending. But once demand picks up and the Fed’s liquidity starts to kick in, the economy will rebound sharply followed by steadily rising prices. That’s the red flag that will signal a weakening dollar. Similar to 1933, when Roosevelt took the U.S. off the gold standard and printed money like crazy, economic activity picked up but the value of the dollar dropped by 40%. A similar scenario seems likely here as well. Economist Lyn Alden Schwartzer summed it up like this in an article at Seeking Alpha:

“One of the common debates is whether all of this debt, counteracted by a tremendous monetary expansion by the Federal Reserve in response, will cause a deflationary bust or an inflationary problem…..Fundamentally, evidence points to a period of deflation due to this global shutdown and demand destruction shock, likely followed in the coming years by rising inflation….

In the coming years, the United States will be effectively printing money to fund large fiscal deficits, while also having a large current account deficit and negative net international investment position. This is one of the main variables for my view that the dollar will likely decrease in value relative to a basket of foreign currencies in the coming years….” (“Why This Is Unlike The Great Depression”, Seeking Alpha)

So, after decades of lethal low interest rates, relentless meddling and gross regulatory malpractice, the Fed has led us to this final, fatal crossroads: Inflate or default. From the looks of things, the choice has already been made. Weimar America, here we come!

 

The Psychology of the COVID-19 Coup: The Elite, their Victims and those who Resist

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By Robert J. Burrowes

As the elite coup against humanity continues to gather pace – see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’ – it is invaluable to observe the way in which the dysfunctional and violent psychology of the global elite, including those of its members who have a significant public profile such as Bill Gates, is revealed more starkly.

At the same time, it is interesting to observe the vast number of fearfully submissive people who are willing to accept, or even ask for, greater constraints on our rights, freedom and economic security, ostensibly to ‘protect’ them from a virus. Sadly, too, the fear of these people plays a critical collaborative role in both advancing the elite coup and condemning millions of others to death as the economic consequences of the destruction of the global economy inflicts its devastating impacts on those least able to cope with it.

Clearly complicated by a number of factors, including the locust plagues that have been devastating several countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia during early 2020 – see ‘360 Billion Locusts And Growing – A Plague Of “Biblical Proportions” Is Destroying Crops Across The Middle East And Africa’ – but now particularly because of official responses to COVID-19, as World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director, David Beasley, has recently warned:

If we don’t prepare and act now to secure access, to avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade, we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months… our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period. See ‘WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’.

That is 27,000,000 people, if arithmetic is not your strong point, that will die of starvation, not COVID-19. And this figure, of course, is quite separate from the phenomenal hardship that millions are already experiencing as a result of the economic dislocation which has created a staggering number of newly unemployed people around the world.

In this article I will do three things. I will briefly explain the dysfunctional psychology of the global elite, using Bill Gates as an example, which explains why they seek vastly greater control over our lives at staggering expense to our rights, freedom and economic security. I will briefly explain why so many people are fearfully submissive victims of this coup, unable to perceive the deeper strands of what is taking place. And I will briefly reiterate what those people in a third category, ranging from those skeptical of the fear-mongering in relation to COVID-19 to those already resisting the lockdowns, curfews, martial law and other serious impositions on our lives, can do to ensure that their resistance has strategic impact.

The Violently Dysfunctional Psychology of the Global Elite

While the world is in turmoil, partly in response to the fear-mongering by WHO, governments, the medical industry and the corporate media that has profoundly inflated people’s fear of COVID-19 but also because of the adverse cascading impacts of the long list of ill-advised decisions, particularly those that impact national economies made to supposedly deal with COVID-19, the primary concern of Bill Gates is that we all submit to vaccination and acquire a ‘digital certificate’ to prove that we have done so. For explanations of Gates’ unsavory motives in promoting and conducting extensive vaccination, see ‘Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination’ and ‘Bill Gates and the Depopulation Agenda. Robert F. Kennedy Junior Calls for an Investigation’.

While this has led to substantial resistance on social media, including that Gates be arrested for crimes against humanity – see ‘“Arrest Bill Gates” – Says every Instagrammer on Gates Account’ – it is, in fact, only the most public initiative by a member of the global elite even though it constitutes a key element of how the global elite intends to capture complete control of our lives to create what Whitney Webb describes as a ‘techno tyranny’.

Citing a range of evidence obtained from official but largely ignored organizations, decisions and documents in recent years, Webb thoughtfully describes a frightening view of the techno tyranny that is almost upon us and for which the latest moves are being rapidly implemented under the guise of combating COVID-19. Involving an unsavory alliance of the ‘intelligence’ community, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley, COVID-19 is being used as cover to remove economic and social ‘obstacles’ (including so-called ‘legacy systems’ with which we are all familiar) to implementing the so-called fourth industrial revolution – ‘a revolution characterized by discontinuous technological development in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, fifth-generation telecommunications networking (5G), nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and quantum computing’ – to achieve everything from a cashless society and AI-driven technologies (particularly for mass surveillance and law enforcement) to driverless cars and ‘telemedicine’.

For a sample of the documentation, see ‘Competing With China on Technology and Innovation’, the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, the ‘Chinese Tech Landscape Overview’, US Attorney General William Barr’s ‘Implementation of National Disruption and Early Engagement Programs to Counter the Threat of Mass Shootings’, the ‘American Artificial Intelligence Initiative: Year One Annual Report’ of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the recent advice by the White House that ‘President Donald J. Trump Announces Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups’. Whitney Webb has written two recent articles – ‘Meet The Companies Poised To Build The Kushner-Backed “Coronavirus Surveillance System”’ and ‘Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision’ – and been interviewed – see ‘Security State using coronavirus to implement Orwellian nightmare’ – that thoughtfully describe what is taking place.

In short, it will leave those of us who are still alive and who haven’t been replaced by robots as little more than digital entities, devoid of rights and freedoms, who are monitored and controlled to serve elite ends. You might still be able to choose what you buy, provided you do it online.

But while you can consider this evidence at your leisure, my own concern in this article is to explain why members of the global elite are so willing to inflict their violence on us, and to exploit us so mercilessly, without even caring. Why does their vision for the world and their effort to create it resemble the works of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, rather than something that many more of us would consider desirable? Is profit really all that matters? What about people?

In short, the explanation for their behavior is that they are completely insane. But like some other versions of insanity that are also defined as ‘normal’ – essentially because they are so widespread (like over-consumption in industrialized countries) that few think to question whether or not the behavior is actually functional – it is fairly straightforward to explain both the origin and outcomes of their insanity.

At birth, every human child has enormous unique potential. However, to fully realize that potential, the child must be nurtured physically, emotionally, intellectually and in other ways so that their unique potential unfolds. This includes caring for them in their unique physical environment while allowing their natural inclination to learn, an evolutionary gift, to guide the manner and nature of their inquiry.

Unfortunately, however, adult humans do not appreciate and value the innate learning capacities of their children so we ‘teach’ them, in the ways of our choosing (particularly by funneling them all through the one-size-fits-all institution we call ‘school’), what we want them to know instead. Because the child naturally resists this, the child is subjected to an extraordinary range of ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ violence to force them to conform to societal norms.

Then, using what I have labeled ‘utterly invisible violence’, we ensure that the feelings of fear, sadness, anger and pain (among many others) that this causes are suppressed so that we do not have to deal with the emotional and behavioral consequences of the violence we inflict on the child. This leaves the child with an unconscious legacy of fear, self-hatred and powerlessness that will manifest, depending on the context, throughout the child’s life. For a thorough explanation of this, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

One outcome of being terrorized into submissive obedience throughout childhood is that the human ‘individual’ enters adulthood with no sense of their unique identity but fully comfortable with the socially constructed delusional identity they gradually took on during childhood. Having been terrorized into obedient submission to parents, teachers and religious figures, virtually all people readily take on the role of submissive worker/soldier and citizen fulfilling some fairly meaningless role in a society largely devoid of meaning. Understanding no other way and in a last resort to feel some sense of control over their life, they also then terrorize their own children into being submissively obedient.

And people like Bill Gates are not all that different except that the opportunities provided by their wealth and the privilege that goes with it, enable them to inflict their dysfunctional and violent behaviors on a vastly greater number of people in a fruitless endeavor to feel ‘in control’. And they can do so without attracting the sanctions, legal and otherwise, that might constrain the behaviors of the rest of us.

So, as documented in the articles about Bill Gates cited above, his vaccination programs have wreaked havoc on adults and children throughout the global south, killing or incapacitating substantial numbers of people. This is unsurprising given the historical role of vaccination in precipitating a great many disorders and deaths, by introducing into the body contaminants such as aluminium and glyphosate. See Sayer Ji’s 326 page bibliography with a vast number of references to the literature explaining the exceptional range of shocking dangers from vaccination – see ‘Vaccination’ – or, if you wish to just read straightforward accounts of the history of vaccine damage and the ongoing dangers, see these articles by Gary G. Kohls MD: ‘A Comprehensive List of Vaccine-Associated Toxic Reactions’ and ‘Identifying the Vaccinology-Illiterate among Us’.

But does Bill Gates care about the staggering harm these vaccinations are causing? Does he care that future vaccinations are intended to be used to grotesquely infringe our rights and freedoms with the insertion of biometric data? See ‘COVID-19: Perfect Cover for Mandatory Biometric ID’. What of his love? Compassion? Empathy? Sympathy? Does he have a conscience to call him to account, even if no legal system does? Does he respect people? Does he believe everyone should be given an individual and informed choice about whether or not they are vaccinated?

Tragically, Bill Gates is so psychologically damaged that he is simply devoid of qualities such as these. They were never given the chance to develop by parents who showed him the same lack of love, sympathy, care, respect and consideration. Moreover, because of his fear of being out of control, as he was when endlessly suffering the incredible violence of his parents throughout childhood, he now endlessly seeks control in the highly dysfunctional ways that his unconscious fear projects. That is, by seeking to control us all.

If you want to read more about the psychological dysfunctionality of Bill Gates and other members of the global elite, as well as their agents, and how this always manifests to our detriment, you can do so in articles such as ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’, ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ and ‘Understanding Self-Hatred in World Affairs’.

Sadly, however, it is not just members of the global elite who are psychologically dysfunctional. There is a substantial portion of the human population who have suffered a similar fate, even if it manifests very differently. However, while this dysfunctionality might manifest in an extraordinarily wide variety of ways, it almost invariably includes fearful submission to those considered to be ‘in authority’.

The Dysfunctional Psychology of Victims

Because each human being is unique, the individual is born with a powerful evolutionary gift: Self-will. This means that the individual has an incredible range of tools, including the capacity to apply sensory perception (sight, sound, touch…) to observe what is happening, the emotional capacity to feel what this means (is it satisfying, enjoyable, frightening, infuriating…), to think for themself about the significance of it, to compare and contrast it with relevant memories, to gauge it against one’s conscience and so on until an integrated sense of how to behave in response is formulated and then acted on.

If a person is doing this then we might describe them as ‘Self-aware’. And they are, truly, an individual.

However, because of the experience of childhood terrorization, briefly touched on above, most children are compelled to surrender the essence of these various capacities, and hence their Self-will, by a very young age. In these circumstances, the child becomes a fairly malleable instrument, easily transformed into a victim who is now devoid of the capacity to look deep within themselves to make sound judgments about what is taking place and to behave powerfully in response.

Instead, they simply obey the will of another: parent, teacher, religious figure, employer, political leader…. and act more out of habit than consideration. Given the endless violence (usually labeled ‘punishment’) that is inflicted to ensure that children are obedient to others, rather than allowed to follow their own self-will, it takes an extraordinary child to survive with even a semblance of the potential with which they were born. As a result, most human behavior lacks consideration, conviction, courage and strategy, and is simply driven compulsively by the predominant fear in each context.

For elaboration of this explanation, see ‘The Disintegrated Mind: The Greatest Threat to Human Survival on Earth’ and ‘The Psychology of Victimhood: Obama, Cameron, Netanyahu, Clinton, Kissinger’.

A primary outcome of this childhood terrorization experience in materialist cultures is that the child learns to suppress their awareness of how they feel by using food and material items to distract themself. By doing this, the child rapidly loses their emerging self-awareness and learns to consume as the substitute for this awareness. Clearly, this has catastrophic consequences for the child, their society and for nature (although it is immensely profitable for elites and their agents whose Self-awareness is non-existent). For a fuller explanation, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

In essence, a victim is utterly terrified and powerless. These feelings are unconscious to the victim, which is why they are incapable of intelligently seeking out and personally assessing evidence (such as that in relation to COVID-19 and how it is being used) and they simply submit without protest once told to obey.

An equally important outcome for the victim, is that they have little, if any, capacity to see beyond themselves or their immediate concerns (which might include an activist preoccupation). They are incapable of perceiving and considering the wider ramifications of what is taking place – the ‘big picture’ – such as for those millions of starving people referred to by WFP Executive Director David Beasley above. Any sense of a ‘wider self’, of human solidarity beyond the most superficial kind, is incomprehensible to them.

Making sure our Resistance to this Coup has Strategic Impact

So this is why a third group in relation to this elite coup is so important: Those individuals who are already resisting the coup or those who will soon choose to do so. Clearly, these people have sufficient sense of Self, the intelligence and emotional capacity (including courage) to consider the evidence in relation to COVID-19 and what lies beneath it, and to draw conclusions at variance with those presented by the elite through its international organizations (such as the World Health Organization), governments and corporate media.

And it is to these people that this final section is particularly addressed.

I have previously explained a nonviolent strategy to resist this elite coup against humanity. See ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’.

This included identifying its political purpose – obviously ‘To defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite’ – and setting out a basic list of 26 strategic goals for achieving this purpose. You can read the ‘Strategic goals for defeating a political/military coup conducted by the global elite against humanity’ by scrolling down the page at ‘Strategic Aims’.

Remaining pages on the website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, 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 how to prepare, frame and conduct any nonviolent action to minimize the risk of violent repression. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

While many of the tactics identified are designed to make it very easy for individuals to be involved, an increasing number of people are already participating in nonviolent actions based on public gatherings to ‘End the Lockdown’ using social media messaging with that or similar labels. See, for example, ‘Protesting the Lockdowns is Getting Going – #endthelockdown’.

Therefore, as more people become aware of the coup and the energy to resist it continues to gather pace, it will be worthwhile to choose a locally significant date on which as many people who are willing to do so act to ‘End the Lockdown’ in your country. Using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural or sporting event, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a birthday celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist the coup that is taking place.

Because the actions taken can be dispersed with large numbers of people responding in a vast number of locations, it will be impossible for police and military forces to inflict violent repression against everyone, particularly if local organizers have implemented the points in ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

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

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

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

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

The Earth Pledge 

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

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

Conclusion

Given that any serious investigation of the circumstances underlying the so-called COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ reveals that the entire global episode has been contrived to further an unsavory elite end, at staggering cost to humans everywhere, it is imperative that those who are capable of perceiving this reality also take action to bring this ongoing coup to an early end.

The longer it takes to muster a full response to defeat this coup, the more damage – to our rights, freedoms, economic security, opportunities, democratic governance, the global economy and the environment – will have been inflicted, making the struggle to restore them vastly more difficult.

More importantly, if human solidarity means anything to you, the lives of millions of people (in the global south) are at stake and the economic security (through lost employment) of millions more.

And these lives, if lost or marginalized, while suiting some elite depopulation agenda, will be a stark but ugly reminder that COVID-19 was never about a virus but about our fear.

 

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.

 

There’s No Going Back, We Can Only Go Forward

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Photo by by Adam Brummett

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

What I see is a global collapse of intangible capital that is invisible to most people.

It’s only natural that the conventional expectation is a return to the pre-pandemic world is just a matter of time. Whether it’s three months or six months or 18 months, “the good old days” will return just as if we turned back the clock.

I think the situation is much more akin to being injured. Since I worked for decades in construction, I’ve had numerous potentially serious injuries, including slipping off roofs, being perched on ladders that fell, my finger sliced open by a steel stud, high winds peeling a heavy sheet of plywood off a stack and sending it flying into me, etc.

Immediately after impact, your first instinct is to assess how badly you’re injured. Of course we all hope we’re not seriously hurt, but the initial adrenaline-fueled relief can be misleading: we might have suffered internal injuries that we can’t feel.

That’s the global situation: we want to assure ourselves the injury is minor and we’ll be back on our feet in no time, but I think the financial-economic injuries are severe and to some branches of global capital and labor, fatal.

Those in power around the world crave one thing above all else: control. If you can’t control the situation and key assets, then what good is your supposed power? If you can’t control the situation and key assets, your power is illusory.

Those in power cannot completely control the forces unleashed by the pandemic. The tide has turned, and everyone trying to return their corner of the world to its pre-pandemic conditions is swimming against the tide–or shoveling sand against the tide, if you prefer that analogy. In either case, they will exhaust themselves and the tide will continue on, regardless of their titanic efforts to print money and maintain control of their populaces.

In my recent book, Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World, I focused on intangible capital, which includes all the forms of capital that cannot be commoditized and purchased for cash like goods and services. Intangible capital includes social capital, social stability, a diverse, resilient local economy and control of one’s own capital.

What I see is a global collapse of intangible capital that is invisible to most people. This includes confidence, trust in institutions and a complacent sense that the tide is carrying us all to greater prosperity.

The tide has reversed, and the key dynamics are income, net worth and costs. As I explained in The New (Forced) Frugality (March 28, 2020), incomes are falling and will continue to fall. Since income is the foundation of asset valuations, asset values will also fall. This will reverse the “wealth effect” that supported the enormous increases in spending and borrowing globally.

When our net worth is rising, we feel wealthier and are more likely to borrow and spend more, confident that our rising wealth will support the debt and higher expenditures. When our assets are declining in value, we feel poorer and are less likely to borrow and spend.

Income is fragile and prone to instant decay, while costs are extremely resistant to declines.

Consider stock valuations: the core driver is profit, which is revenues minus costs. As revenues drop and costs rise, profits vanish literally overnight. That sudden erosion of profits is global, and it will affect companies previously perceived as bulletproof. Facebook and Google depend on advertising, and with the global economy in free-fall, what’s the point in wasting scarce cash on marketing? Essentially no one needs a $1,000 iPhone or a $40,000 Tesla. Aspirational spending is as fragile as income.

Consider real estate: commercial real estate is based on the income generated by enterprises renting space. If businesses fold or stop paying rent, the value of the property falls accordingly.

Even residential real estate is intimately connected to income: as household incomes plummet, the number of potential buyers plummets, too. Institutional buyers of houses base the value on rental income, just like commercial property. As household income plummets, fewer people can afford sky-high rents, and so supply exceeds demand and rents will fall accordingly.

Consider bonds: the value of any bond, government or corporate, is based on the yield paid to the owner. While the general expectation is that yields will fall to zero because central banks are buying bonds, this may be less of a guarantee than generally assumed. The volume of bonds being issued may well exceed central bank buying, and yields (and interest rates) will rise despite central bank intervention.

The world depends on expanding debt to pay for government services and private-sector spending. Debt is also dependent on income; lenders who issue loans to households and enterprises with faltering income are very likely to lose money as these marginal borrowers default.

As income falls, lending dries up, as lenders cannot afford to risk making loans to people and businesses that are practically guaranteed to default. This is especially true for borrowers who are already burdened by existing debts.

As incomes decline, asset values decline and borrowing dries up. Once borrowing dries up, spending dries up, and enterprises and governments must cut payrolls by any means available: don’t replace retiring employees, cut wages and benefits, and eliminate overtime and bonuses.

As stock values fall, so do the value of employee stock options–another example of the reverse wealth effect.

Meanwhile, costs will continue rising as cash-strapped governments eventually seek more tax revenues and supply-chain shocks lead to higher prices.

We cannot go back to the pre-pandemic side of the river of time, and it’s dangerous to focus on returning to a time that has already been lost. We cannot go back, we can only go forward.