In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. (President Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961)
***
The World is being misled concerning the causes and consequences of the corona crisis.
The COVID-19 crisis is marked by a public health “emergency” under WHO auspices which is being used as a pretext and a justification to triggering a Worldwide process of economic, social and political restructuring.
Social engineering is being applied. Governments are pressured into extending the lockdown, despite its devastating economic and social consequences.
What is happening is unprecedented in World history.
Prominent scientists support the lockdown without batting an eyelid, as a “solution” to a global health emergency.
Amply documented, the estimates of the COVID-19 disease including mortality are grossly manipulated.
In turn, people are obeying their governments. Why? Because they are afraid?
Causes versus solutions?
The closing down of national economies applied Worldwide will inevitably result in poverty, mass unemployment and an increase in mortality. It’s an act of economic warfare.
Stage One: Trade War against China
On January 30, 2020 the WHO Director General determined that the coronavirus outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The decision was taken on the basis of 150 confirmed cases outside China, First cases of person to person transmission: 6 cases in the US, 3 cases in Canada, 2 in the UK.
The WHO Director General had the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Big Pharma and the World Economic Forum (WEF). The decision for the WHO to declare a Global Emergency was taken on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland (January 21-24).
One day later (January 31) following the launch of the WHO Global Emergency, The Trump administration announced that it will deny entry to foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggered a crisis in air transportation, China-US trade as well as the tourism industry. Italy followed suit, cancelling all flights to China on January 31.
The first stage was accompanied by the disruption of trade relations with China as well as a partial closedown of export manufacturing sector.
Related
Prof Michel Chossudovsky's comments this is all planned and basically an act of war, gets my whole-hearted endorsement.
ReplyDeletePeople are going to die just the same as if they were hit by bullets, and probably some will die by the bullet, though there are other ways. The number of people suffering acute hunger are predicted to rise to a quarter of a billion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/coronavirus-global-hunger.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/us/politics/coronavirus-hunger-food-banks.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/world/africa/coronavirus-hunger-crisis.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
"Already, from Honduras to South Africa to India, protests and looting have broken out amid frustrations from lockdowns and worries about hunger. With classes shut down, over 368 million children have lost the nutritious meals and snacks they normally receive in school.
There is no shortage of food globally, or mass starvation from the pandemic — yet. But logistical problems in planting, harvesting and transporting food will leave poor countries exposed in the coming months, especially those reliant on imports, said Johan Swinnen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington."
https://cdn.wfp.org/2020/school-feeding-map/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/economy/coronavirus-food-banks.html?action=click&module=RelatedLin
Protests and looting in other countries was occurring and being reported in the New York times at least as early as April. Was any of this covered on Fox News or MSNBC. I don't watch TV so I don't really know, but I doubt it. If it had been widely covered, maybe it would have been easier to place the American protests in context and perspective. There has always been some doubt in my mind how much was due to pent up frustration and how much to BLM, Antifa, and the death of George Floyd. It has been my opinion most is due popular discontent and frustration with the general situation, and at most triggered by George Floyd. It is so easy-- and we have many examples of how easy-- for such a trigger to be contrived and then trumped up using the variety of MSM, governmental, and other levers and switches our plutocratic masters have at hand.
Though why this hoax was launched is obviously an important question, the linked to Global Research article just isn't very helpful, just being a mess of CT buzzwords with nothing much linking them.
ReplyDeleteTo take one point, the role of the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party was obviously important. But in what way? Was this an operation to crash the global economy to take down China? Or a Chinese operation to take down the western economies, with China doing a brief lockdown to encourage it? Or a batman gambit by western intel to induce a Chinese lockdown (to deal with a suspected biowarfare attack), to justify the lockdown in the western countries that were the real targets?
And was the idea to crash the western economies or to provide an explanation for a crash that was happening anyway? I think the author takes both positions in the article. And why the partial lifting of the lockdowns in late May and early June? Planned part of the operation, or was the plan to make them permanent and something went wrong?
Why the virus hoax?
DeleteThat, today, is surely life's greatest unanswered question.
I suspect that an answer would have to take into account the great challenges that confront humanity in the novel and totally alien environment of a high-tech civilization.
The plot has to deal with issues of population, the dysgenic consequences of modern welfare regimes, climate and other environmental impacts of human activity that threaten the welfare of the species, the existence of nuclear and other potential species-destroying weapons, and other matters that must concern global elites -- for example, how do the present elites ensure the elite status of their progeny for ever more.
In light of such questions, the utility of Covid19 seems clear. It is preparing the way for universal chipping of every member of the population. This will be for our own good, the only effective defense, in fact, against a truly vicious new virus, natural or man-made.
Anyone who stands against universal tracing technology will be seen as a threat to society. For those without a cell phone, the necessity of tracing will mean compulsory micro-chipping -- just a tiny chip inserted painlessly beneath the skin without any health consequences.
After that, the question of social control becomes a manageable technical challenge. A statue has been torn down in London -- OK, we know the names and present locations of every person who was present when the crime was committed.
A non-politically correct message was posted on FaceBook or where ever? Then the antisocial individual responsible will find their ability to engage in financial transactions will be automatically limited or blocked, their freedom to travel by bus or train etc, limited.
The virus economic shut-down has had the desirable effect of lowering incomes and hence consumption by a large fraction. The aim will be to resist any return to consumption levels of the past.
Money printing, a necessary consequence of the economic shut-down, is driving real interest rates negative, which in turn keeps the real estate market afloat and inflating. At some point, the process will be reversed and single-family home ownership will henceforth be available only to the elite. The rest will live in compact apartments in densely crowded cities where they will not need a car to get to work, or to get to anywhere they need to be.
We are undergoing a transition to a global system ruled by an international plutocratic elite, that will use advanced technology willingly provided by a privileged class of technocrats.
Eugenic measures will bring about the desired population reduction and the transformation of the masses from what they are today to a class of technicians who will live comfortably provided they accept their subordinate condition.
"And was the idea to crash the western economies or to provide an explanation for a crash that was happening anyway? I think the author takes both positions in the article. And why the partial lifting of the lockdowns in late May and early June? Planned part of the operation, or was the plan to make them permanent and something went wrong?
ReplyDeleteI think it was to crash the living standards and strip the remaining political power of the world's working classes (or whatever you want to call them.) It doesn't seem to have crashed the financial world of the plutocrats, who have actually profited quite nicely so far. Their wealth has increased dramatically, though the real payoff will be in the way this positions them for monopolizing all future profit and giving them complete control and ownership of the entire world.
I wondered for awhile if the hoax was being used to explain, or to cover up the need for an actual explanation, the free-fall of the stock markets, due to a necessary market correction,long overdue. Yet I knew there is no free market or true, operative, market forces, since 2007, and so there can't actually be anything properly termed a necessary market correction. The world has a command and control economy which is not genuinely capitalist. The mechanisms of capitalism have been destroyed for about thirteen years.
The DJIA collapsed from somewhat 29,551 on February 12, to 18,591 on March 23. A real correction would have gone much deeper than this. It would, in my opinion, have continued downwards to 15,000 at least, and maybe as low as 12,000, if not lower. It also would not have bounced back so quickly and easily. By June 8, the DJIA was almost retesting its previous highs, and closed at 27,572. How come nobody seems to need an explanation for this recovery? If the pandemic was offered as an explanation for a crash that was happening anyway, it would have been sufficient to cover a sustained, prolonged crash in the DJIA.
Nothing like this happened in 1929 or in any other chart of the DJIA I have ever seen. It can't be explained by people regaining confidence in the future growth of the American economy (the real economy, the one that matters to working people) or investors foreseeing future growth in the profitabilty of American corporations (at least in terms of the conventional capitalistic meanings of these terms).
I take this to be evidence to answer your question: the pandemic is not an explanation for a crash that was going to happen anyway. It is designed to impoverish the masses, and facilitate placing them in bondage, without harming the interests of the wealthy at all. Indeed of furthering them, and immediately so. (This is somewhat different from saying the intention was to crash the western economies. The intention was to, with the exception of the plutocratic classes, crash all classes worldwide.)
The lock downs were accompanied by the most massive transfer of wealth in history-- to the wealthy. From everybody else and to the wealthy. We're talking 6 to 10 trillion-- or who knows how much?
Keep in mind at this very same time, in April, the Trump administration intended to implement its ending of Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (food stamps) to 700,000 Americans. This was only stopped by an injunction, which the Trump administration is now appealing.
The people have lost. It is all gone. Even a semblance of America is gone. The pandemic has accomplished this in record time.
There never was any plan as to how we would be released from the lock downs. The plutocrats can now play the people any way they choose. Uncertainty and sudden shifts in direction, part of the general uncertainty, play to their favor. Anything and everything will play to their favor now.
The response to the virus has been the same across the Western nations. So were all governments responding opportunistically to the pandemic, or was there prior knowledge about the release of the virus and agreement on the response?
DeleteIf the latter, it means that the pandemic is the result of a deliberate release of the virus.
But if so, was China complicit? And if China was complicit, does that not imply movement toward a global system of governance, a plan not inconsistent with the financial consequences of the virus that you describe -- and also not inconsistent with China's technology-based system of authoritarian social control under a plutocratic elite.
Are you now leaning toward the idea the virus was real?
ReplyDeletePart of the way China may have been complicit could have been their response to an unreal threat.
Ron Unz and may others thought three things: 1) the Chinese government is competent; 2)the Chinese government regarded the threat as real, deadly, and requiring an extreme response; 3) the Chinese response must be used as a model, regardless of the Chinese response being in disregard of democratic ideals and institutions-- I would say in disregard to everything we've thought in modern western societies, including socialist western societies.
The Chinese are not imperialistic, at least not in the western sense. If the west's plutocratic elite decided of its own accord to adopt China's technology-based system of authoritarian social control under a plutocratic elite, China is not going to object. They'd be complicit in every way they could, and why in the heck not?
I might mention as a sidelight seeming relevant in this context, the US has more legal immigrants from China coming in now than from any other country, including Mexico. (I better check to see how Trump may have modified this in the last few years.) That happened at any time in any year indicates a certain alliance between China's ruling elite and America's own. If in something as significant as immigration, why rule out complicity on something as beneficial to the elite of both countries as this pandemic has been?
The virus is undoubtedly real. If you check Google Scholar you will see that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of scientists already publishing research on the virus. This could not be faked.
DeleteThe Chinese response as reported in the Western media was the correct response to stamp out the virus as quickly as possible and with as few people infected as possible. However, as the example of Sweden indicates, a much less aggressive reaction would likely have sufficed to moderate the toll of illness and death from a virus of relatively low virulence.
Thus, with regard to what you say are Unz's points:
(1) That the Chinese Government is competent.
That is surely correct. The Chinese Government is probably the world's most competent at controlling the behavior of its citizens, which it does by a combination of brute force and advanced technology.
(2) That the Chinese Government regarded the threat as real, deadly, and requiring an extreme response.
The threat that the virus could spread throughout the population was real, so in that respect the Chinese Government was correct. As to whether the Chinese Government considered the threat posed by the virus to be deadly, who knows? And what is meant by deadly? Sure the virus is deadly to some, but not to most of those infected by it.
(3) So the significant question is whether Unz was correct in saying that the Chinese Government was correct in assuming that the virus required and extreme response, to which the answer is probably no, if the object were merely national survival and minimal disruption to the economy. This is the implication of the Swedish response.
However, the answer is yes, if the Covid epidemic was seen an opportunity to test response measures to a truly deadly pathogen, natural or man-made.
I think that the fall out in the West will be for governments to acknowledge the validity of the Chinese approach to stopping a deadly epidemic with the result that they will take measures to acquire the capacity for a similar response in the future.
In that connection, it must be noted that so-called tracking and tracing is central to any effective epidemic control system, and therefore, Covid19 will result in the imposition of mandatory tracking and tracing mechanisms across the world. This may well entail microchipping everyone so that there location is tracked minute by minute 24/7. In that connection, there is a fascinating article in last Friday's National Post that reveals at what trivially low cost it is possible to track people 24/7:
Double Trouble Tracking: How Tim Hortons Knows Where You Sleep, Travel and Vacation
By asking if you thought the virus was real, what I meant was whether you see it as more than a typical flu virus, or even a very, very bad flu virus. I'm asking if you think any unusual precautionary measures were required, if some were needed, which. It still seems you think the lock downs were unnecessary.
DeleteThe CDC website I've been using hasn't been very good for tracking the virus in real time because it keeps getting revised upward as time passes. Now it shows total deaths at a little under 100,000. Alaska still shows zero deaths, though. (Earlier you'd posted the number of deaths in Alaska as fairly sizable-- that number was clearly erroneous. Right now the Anchorage Daily News counts 13 covid-related deaths. Higher than the CDC but less than that other count, which IIRC was from a Juneau TV station.)
I'm going to check out Google Scholar. Thanks for the tip.
The short answer to your question is that I do not know. However, it is the case that many Covid infections are reported to be asymptomatic and that in children overt symtoms are usually mild, and that the small minority of those who are severely affected by Covid infection have other diseases, including obesity, diabetes, or heart or respiratory diseases.
DeleteFlu viruses, which are not closely related genetically to corona viruses, probably have a somewhat different spectrum of effects to Covid19, but may be no less lethal than Covid19 in the sick and elderly -- infection of sick old people by either virus seems often to end with a lethal bout of pneumonia. Beyond that, there is probably not much more to be said, since even if there were valid stats on deaths due to Covid19, these numbers would not be directly comparable to those for flu as they have been moderated by shutdowns and other measures to limit viral spread.
It appears, however, that Covid19 is highly infectious, probably more so than the flu, and this appears to be the result of gain-of-function modifications as alleged in a recent publication of the Cambridge University Press.
Good discussion, and good comments by Yusuf. My guess is the fact that the lockdowns are being lifted, but in a long drawn out way, and the inability to suppress data that this was a normal flu virus after all, meant that something went wrong. Either the suppression of living standards had to happen quickly, and this was the best "they" could come up with on short notice, or there was supposed to be some sort of next phase making the lockdown permanent that for some reason didn't quite come off. Another possibility was that this was supposed to be a real bio-engineered de-populating plague, which didn't work.
ReplyDeleteWhether natural or man-made, and whether spread by natural means or as the result of human action, Covid19 has provided a vitally important opportunity to test responses for the control of novel and much more deadly pathogens, with which world is certain to be faced at some point in the future.
DeleteUnfortunately, the implication of the test is that the totalitarian Chinese response is the only effective means of dealing with a deadly natural plague or bio-warfare agent.
But you are right that the virus has provided an opportunity for astonishing financial shenanigans, which have massively enriched the already massively rich, while badly hurting the economic prospects of millions of ordinary folks.
"Unfortunately, the implication of the test is that the totalitarian Chinese response is the only effective means of dealing with a deadly natural plague or bio-warfare agent."
ReplyDeleteHopefully you'll be able to present your reasons for this conclusion later.
I wanted to repeat something you'd said earlier about how incredible it was the US government, knowing a deadly viral pandemic was inevitable decades before 2020, had the flimsiest response imaginable. (Taking the advice of MD's and so on.) Why was there not a plan prepared before the pandemic giving details and careful arguments for a totalitarian response as being the best one, and then, if that was so, allowing for full public scrutiny and comment in best democratic fashion so we were democratically convinced and prepared to brace ourselves for what would, without this, appear as nothing more than a monstrous power grab?
I think it would not only be that we'd be ready to take our battle stations, so to speak, but would be able to build into the "totalitarian" response features which would minimize the "totalitarian" (aka brutality) we witnessed in the Chinese response. Overall, we're not a bunch of unimaginative drones nor without innovative and creative powers. Working together on the plan for a response to pandemics, who knows what we could have come up with? I believe we could have come up with something which was not only effective and gentle as possible, but filled with compassion and incorporated what we know is the best of humanity, people helping other people in emergency, danger and difficulty.
We can't have that for this pandemic and, the way it looks to me, probably never will. There will be future ones, I presume, for those we could learn from mistakes and not repeat them. We're not likely to do this as a society. It reminds me so much of 911. We could have made a detailed examination of what happened and why, presented the findings to the public, and then used our democratic institutions to ensure it never happened again. Instead, there was none of that. Just a decided turn towards a much more totalitarian society. Society changed for the worse. (Safer? Maybe. Less free? For sure.)
We're here talking. We can conduct some kind of post-mortem and learn some lessons, come to conclusions, and at least make suggestions for doing it better next time.
"I wanted to repeat something you'd said earlier about how incredible it was the US government, knowing a deadly viral pandemic was inevitable decades before 2020, had the flimsiest response imaginable. (Taking the advice of MD's and so on.) Why was there not a plan prepared before the pandemic giving details and careful arguments for a totalitarian response as being the best one, and then, if that was so, allowing for full public scrutiny and comment in best democratic fashion so we were democratically convinced and prepared to brace ourselves for what would, without this, appear as nothing more than a monstrous power grab?"
DeleteHaving in my innocent and naive youth, worked briefly for three different governments, I think I can answer that question.
Government bureaucracies are all more or less brain dead. They are run by courtiers, i.e., the top civil servants who's rise through the ranks has been achieved not by serving not the public interest but the interest of those in whose hands their career advancement depends, i.e., the bureaucrats above them, and ultimately the politicians who are the titular heads of departments -- for example, by making arrangements that serve corporate outsiders who will reward the politician with directorships, etc. after the politician leaves office.
This has been the recognized method of bribing politicians serving in nominally democratic governments since the emergence of the first modern parliamentary system in the UK at the end of the 17th Century (as documented in Thomas Macaulay's famous work: The History of England Since the Accession of James II.
To rise in the public service requires relentless sycophancy and Machiavellian ruthlessness in dishing competitors. In that struggle, the avowed objectives of the government are irrelevant. Moreover, the kind of people who thrive in bureaucracies are exactly the kind of people with the least interest in technical matters and the poorest grasp of the science and mechanics of effective government action.
Thus, for example, in Canada, Federal and Provincial Governments between them have managed to: (a) destroy Canada's Atlantic cod fishery, (b) transform the forest industry from a producer of high value old-growth timber to a producer of diminishing quantities of second/third growth timber of the lowest quality, and (c) are well on the way to destroying the West coast salmon industry. In a country dependent on resource industries for its prosperity, that's a pretty astounding track record.
Other examples of governmental criminal stupidity (in all of the examples I have cited, policy was dictated by corporate interests) can be provided essentially without limit.
It is because of endemic corruption that the Western responses to the virus have differed so sharply from that in China where a revolutionary, nationalistic, totalitarian regime seeks global hegemony and has every intention of using its vast and growing scientific and engineering resources to that end.
One cannot see any prospect of Western states overcoming their systemic corruption in order to compete more effectively with China. Therefore, it would seem inevitable that the West will seek to destroy China as it functions today.
Sorry,CS, I missed your response posted 6/15, at 8:41 am. I still haven't considered it well enough.
ReplyDeleteI am just really worried about the idea this was a test. This is not the way you do a test. You don't wreck the entire world doing a test. You don't necessarily have to wreck anything. If this was a test, it was Dr. Megele experimenting on living humans. (Dr. Megele's experiments was Dr. Megele torturing people. Not only that, as far as we know, he learned nothing and proved nothing worth torturing anyone at all.If torturing can ever be justified...Not by my lights.)
If this was a test, it was Dr. Megele experimenting on living humans.
DeletePeople like George Dubya Bush who said, before election, "fuck Saddam, we're gonna take him out" and who, with his partner Blair, went to war on a bunch of lies and killed maybe a million Iraqis while institutionalizing the use of torture, are on exactly the same moral level as Dr. Mengele. And in politics, psychopaths of that type are perhaps less the exception than the rule.
Just in the last twenty-four hours I've started seeing some good coverage of what's happening. really happening:
ReplyDeleteMillions of Job Losses Are at Risk of Becoming Permanent
By Olivia Rockeman and Jill Ward
June 14, 2020, 3:00 AM AKDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-14/millions-of-jobs-could-be-permanently-lost-in-reallocation-shock
COVID-19, asset prices, and the Great Reallocation
https://voxeu.org/article/covid-19-asset-prices-and-great-reallocation
"...where 42% of U.S. jobs lost during the pandemic — an estimated 11.6 million jobs — will be gone for good."
Yeah, this is the biggest depression since the 1930's. But at least we know, if Milton Friedman got it right, what to do: prime the pump by printing money and doling it out to all and sundry. And Donald Trump's the man to do the job, apparently, as he is promising a $trillion right off the bat.
DeleteLots of lovely opportunity here for graft and corruption. But spewing money in all directions will get things moving again.