Viral Reactions: The Smugness of Celebrity Self-Isolation
Binoy Kampmark
The rush to elevate self-isolation to Olympian heights as a way to combat the spread of COVID-19 has gotten to the celebrities. Sports figures are proudly tweeting and taking pictures from hotel rooms (Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton being a case in point). Comics are doing their shows from home. Thespians are extolling the merits of such isolation and the dangers of the contagion.
All speak from the summit of comfort, the podium of pampered wealth: embrace social distancing; embrace self-isolation. Bonds of imagined solidarity are forged. If we can do it, so can you.
The message of warning varies in tones of condescension and encouragement. Taylor Swift prefers to focus on her cat. “For Meredith, self-quarantining is a way of life,” she posted on Instagram. “Be like Meredith.” Meredith, of course, had little choice in the matter.
John Legend delivered a concert on Instagram, wife Chrissy Teigen beside towelled and quaffing wine. “Social distancing is important, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. I did a little at-home performance to help lift your spirits.”
Then there was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually boasted two miniature ponies. “We will get through this together.” So good of him to let us know.
Others, like model Naomi Campbell, can barely hide their revelations, moments of acute self-awakening amidst crisis.
“I’m learning what it means to put my busy or complicated life on hold and just to be still for a while, in one place, with hyper awareness of the people and spaces directly around me and the moment to moment actions I am making.”
A long dormant, cerebral world, awoken by a virus.
Similarly, singer Lady Gaga has found that within that deodorised, heavily marketed form of celebrity is the heart of a human. “This is reminding me I think a lot of us,” she reflected on Instagram “what it is to both feel like and be like a human being.”
Self-isolation has seen the rich with their entourages making an escape for holiday homes and vast retreats. Then come the eccentric and the slightly ludicrous options: the well-stocked and equipped bunker; the safe room. Such an approach is far more representative of the estrangement between haves and have-nots.
“One of the best options is in Middle America,” comes the recommendation from Adam Popescu in Vanity Fair. “If you’re part of the 1%, why wait or sluggish government support when you can burrow 175 feet underground in a refurbished Air Force missile silo in rural Kansas that markets itself as a survival condo?”
The condo in question, the brainchild of developer Larry Hall, sports nine-foot think concrete walls, epoxy-hardened for good measure. Their purpose, ostensibly, is to withstand nuclear blasts. Current interest, however, is over a possible occupancy to ride out the coronavirus pandemic.
Florida entrepreneur Tyler Allen has already reserved his spot. While he has “other fortified locations”, he has a preference for the Kansas condo project.
“Some of my hard facilities have a bunker but it doesn’t have protection for biological infection, doesn’t have protection for radiation. The survival condo has layering; it has it all. I’m protected from everything.”
His advice is not cloying and congratulatory. It is more of the self-preservation school of thinking. Let the idiots watch the disaster unfold on phones, screens and social media while I go about arming myself for doom.
All this excitement about upright behaviour provides a noisy distraction from those who are simply in no position to isolate themselves. Food from increasingly bare counters must still be put on the table. Doctors and nurses must still perform their dangerous tasks in increasingly overwhelmed health systems. The menial jobs where contact with the public inevitably continue.
Then come those who have been in isolation well before the term came into vogue: the forgotten elderly, the impoverished, the vulnerable. But even here, the celebrities lurk with message and instructions, waiting to pounce. Never let chances to do the good deed, and talk about it, go by. At the very least, it has presented opportunities to tell others to do good works for the poor. For actor Ryan Reynolds, “COVID-19 has brutally impacted older adults and low income families … If you can give, these orgs need your help.”
Reynolds and his wife Blake Lively have donated $1 million to be divided by Feeding America and Food Banks Canada. Lively, for her part, has a lesson. “Though we must be distancing ourselves to protect those who don’t have the opportunity to self-quarantine, we can stay connected,” she suggested in an Instagram post. “Remember the lonely and the isolated. Facetime, Skype, make a video.”
As with other forms of life, combating disease comes with its hierarchies. Luxuries and miseries are unevenly distributed. The allocation of resources is skewed. But valiant efforts are made to suggest that the well moneyed celebrity shares the lot with the proles and the hoi polloi.
An Esquire contribution does just that, though the effort is risibly unconvincing. “Celebrities, they’re just like us!” it cheekily proclaims. “Self-isolating in their cavernous houses, dancing up their marble stairs, pouring themselves a crystal tumbler of citrus-scented tequila and sauntering into the home-cinema to wait for all this to blow over.”
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
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I don’t know of a single sick person.
My family don’t know of a single sock person.
My work mates don’t know of a single sock person.
But every celeb……
Hollywood Celebrities Are Psyops Wrapped In Human Skin
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/22/hollywood-celebrities-are-psyops-wrapped-in-human-skin/
Very good analysis.
Just let me relate one reaction: someone I knew in my childhood called me to see how I was coping. Her father just had a serious heart problem this week and was admitted to hospital. There is no one to operate (A European nation) and they are giving therefore only medicine and are about to send him back home. She is totally accepting so she was explaining how its normal that they let him be. I should add they she is close to one of the
prestigious” scientific institutions and the team working on a vaccine, which is advising the government enforcing full lockdown. I did not dare ask her whether her own father’s life was worth less than anyone dying with the virus.She then said she had had to take personal things for him to the hospital, like toothbrush. And she was very upset because the nurse at reception kindly said why dont you go see your father yourself and give him this in person? She was upset because she felt they were not applying measures correctly by allowing her to go to her father.
And no she’s not on bad terms with her parents.
The information I managed to indirectly get out of her was their worry as to how the population was going to take being locked up if it was prolonged. It seemed from what she said that that is a main hesitation at this stage from locking people up for months. So I guess if everyone accepts quietly, accepts that their parents die, or themselves because they have diseases that are unrelated to the virus…
I know two cancer sufferers who are very worried: one has been told not to come back for his weekly checkup, and the other can only keep the side-effects of chemiotherapy at bay by intensive outdoor activities (which the doctors have acknowledged), but she is not even allowed to go to the mountains where there is nobody to walk.
What is frightening is the loss of humanity especially of those confined to laboratories, thinking that to change a molecule here and there just like a technician is science, away from human life, and statistical studies have obscured actual lives behind… Researchers who have become so reductive and overspecialized that they cant see the larger picture by focusing exclusively on one little technical aspect year in and year out in secluded surroundings. Researchers who have forgotten what science is.
I too have been reading about cancelled operations and treatment for already seriously ill patients in the UK for the forthcoming three month period. The appalling thing is that these steps are being taken in anticipation of a less damaging, non-existent threat. The majority of the public will be thinking that these steps are because all the hospitals are stretched to the limit already as a result of serious Covid19 cases; that’s what the media tells them. The media alone will bear responsibility for many premature deaths but I don’t suppose they will be held to account for it.
Hospitals may be stretched and it may be because of the virus, but from what I can judge it is largely because of time wasters asserting they have coronavirus because they blew their nose last night or because they had an asthma attack for which they already have an inhaler. In this ‘woke’ society nobody feels empowered to tell them to just go home or get off the phone and stop wasting resources better utilised elsewhere. The media need to recognise that they are responsible for encouraging people to join the bandwagon by their irresponsible coverage of celebrities and attention-seeking nonentities. But they won’t, of course. They’ll just move on to endorse and promote the next fake narrative and pat themselves on the back.
Hi Anne, Tell your friends to give their parents and themselves high doses of Vitamin C with Sulphur/Zinc/Selenium/Alpha Lipoic Acid/CoQ10
Oh the MSM love that word Lockdown. It’s repeated ad nauseam on The Guard’s front page… lovely militaristic, fascisty lockdown….
Then, how bizarre, the article: “Enemies everywhere: photos show absurdity of life under the Stasi”
Yes, I hate that abominable word. Also, “call out”. Call out who, from where FFS! Then there’s the slovenly use of ‘likely’ instead of ‘probably’: “the hysterical panic over bat flu will likely trash the world economy”. Any others?
None of which is even worth a line of media coverage, but where would the mainstream be without their wall-to-wall wallpaper . . .
“Hello. This is your TV set. I have loved and cared for you all your life. When you were a child, I sang you lullabies about furry little creatures in hedgerows. When you grew up I supplied you with comedies about foreigners with funny accents and festive specials with comics who reassured you that we were all part of some big happy family. And that nice old lady with the crown came out and soothed you with her comforting nasal whine.
True – there were times when you needed to be protected. Like in the mid-80s when those filthy pit workers got a bit uppity. Or in 2001 when some swarthy towel heads started kamikaze attacks. Why – just last year we saved you from a crusty old Hitler reincarnation.
But I’m afraid things have got a bit majorly out of hand now. There is a new enemy. A truly invisible one. It could be right in front of you even as I speak. You could be breathing it, eating it, fucking it etc. This will require some extraordinary measures. And it will take A LONG TIME to deal with.
But here are some guidelines: The people around you may be dangerous. If they cough, don’t go near. If they look flushed, don’t go near. If they are breathing at all, don’t go near.
But be reassured that we are doing our bit too. For we have devised a cure. It’s this: Since all contact between members of the public is dangerous, we must abolish any opportunity for such contact. This will mean doing away with such sinister sources of contamination as hospitals, schools, postal services – indeed any service that features the word “public” is automatically suspect and must be eliminated. The only safe areas are private – which is why we must siphon off all money to the most wealthy individuals who can be guaranteed to keep the required distance from each other.
In the meantime, here is some music….
“And now/ the end is near/ and so I face/ the final curtain…””
“You could be breathing it, eating it, fucking it etc.”
George, I’m not shagging a virus.
Ah but do you KNOW you’re not shagging a virus? The BBC will decide!
I think we should help all these seeking safety in their various bunkers for the future remergence of civilisation after the great calamity by adding a few barrowfulls of added security concrete upon their doorways.
We will always have them able to broadcast to us in safety. Thank god for little mercies.
Across their doorways??
I was thinking binkers deep beliw the ground thus upon – but you are also correct they probably have surface access before descent into safety – so yes across too – can’t be too safe!
i can across this just now. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/herd-immunity-why-britain-is-actually-letting-the-coronavirus-spread-20200315-p54a5h.html?fbclid=IwAR1P-8z694LTjg5bJmjSPG75859tpey75oa-ZVIINLygXTGfvT3AnqHSR3E
my dd in the uk tells me things there are fairly ok as opposed to donegal , where i am and people have gone full fascism compliant.
It’s rather sobering to realise that the only sites I can find seriously questioning the whole Covid19 outbreak, especially the mass hysteria of the presstitute media and on the streets are:
OffGuardian, Wrong Kind Of Green and Swiss Propaganda Research.
Except for a some individual writers here and there (like CJ Hopkins) I can’t find any other independent site that has asked people to seriously consider what is really going on. That, to me, is pretty scary.
As leaks emerging from US show how the senior politicians have used that available information from early February for Insider Dealing purposes for personal benefit and for their political financial backers – there is no way it hasn’t also happened here and across the world.
It is also used as a cover for the bursting of the stock market bubble and gfc2 which should be bringing down governments and financiers.
This is not just Bozo’s long awaited Social Care policy – ‘kill them all quickly, no more problem!’ – This is certainly yet another handout to the bankers balance sheets without taking their assets in return until they have paid back.
It is obvious now also that without the toilet paper meme being msm’d masses of people wouldn’t have been crowding into supermarkets in close spreading contact to make the virus spread faster.
it is completely terrifying but not surprising.
try unz.com
MOU
Peter Hitchens is also doing a good job, check out his twitter feed and some of his articles.
(He’s right wing, but hates the Tories).
There are plenty of sites that question it. Many are blogs.
It’s just that you will not find them with google. (Or duckduckgo)
We need a new search engine, preferably, or exclusively, with the option to only list independent sites.
Admin2 – this is a tag test for TABLES (more may follow if/when, as now, I realize they’d be useful in a real post). Always only HTML 4.01 (HTML 5 too dodgy interactively and editor-implementationwise). Maybe with simple inline style (though not here/now).
One
Two
Aa
Bb
Cc
Dd
Admin2: As I suspected, TABLES don’t work. Life is too short to do experiments determining stuff that anyone familiar with the code for the editor (as distinct from markup posted into and from the editor) will know or could–theoretically–easily determine, so, if Wild River or their providers* can be persuaded, a sticky list somewhere would be helpful.
* I was recently checking out an ‘app’ from Google’s ‘Play Store’ and came across a note from the ‘developer’ saying that he couldn’t understand why his ‘development’ had suddenly started to throw up a notification to the effect that “This module should be licensed for continued use”. JFC. At least Google got the name of its Android software repository right.
Rob… Just letting you know, this comment of yours to Admin 2 ended up in my Gmail just now.
According to my clock, I received it at 1.03 am (Australian Eastern Standard Time) but its only just appeared in my inbox now sometime in the last 1.5 hrs (some 19 hrs later!) It wasn’t there couple hours ago when I checked for replies from OffG.
We are in very surreal times indeed.
Should I also add Kafkaesque?
“Rob… Just letting you know, this comment of yours to Admin 2 ended up in my Gmail just now.”
Hi Gezzah,
Admin2 told me to post any such tests into a BTL that I can’t now get back to and they’d be deleted on sight. However, I don’t keep a record of my posts and getting back to any BTLs concerned is basically beyond me (I think it’s called ‘senile dementia’, but maybe that terminology is as past its sell-by as me). However however, I can still reason more or less OK, so my guess (as I posted it under your “It’s rather sobering to realise that the only sites I can find seriously questioning the whole Covid19 outbreak…” because I was going to use a little HTML ‘table’ to format a response to that and hoped the test for tables would still find Admin2 even if that wasn’t the appropriate BTL) is that it’s not the ghost of Kafka, but you, Gezzah Potts, who caused its appearance in your email box: do you leave notifications of replies to your posts turned on?
Robbob
Thanks for the explanation Rob. Regards your last question about notifications, yes I do leave it on.
I also think as this ramps up more, and the screws are tightened, the name Kafka or Kafkaesque will be used more often…
Postscript… Um, I need to go to Specsavers… I received that comment at 1.03 pm this afternoon, not 1.03 am this morning. But it still appeared in my Gmail tho…
So there we were in the pub late afternoon yesterday. Then the word from bar staff was that THEY were going to tell them that the pubs would be closing. By the early evening the word was cast in stone. The pubs would have to close. All eyes turning to the bar tv staring at the latest bad BBC news with po-faced Boris trying to look serious. The bar owner tells us he will buy us all a free pint. Much hilarity and good cheer followed. We discussed what might happen to all that unsold beer down in the cellar. WTF. We wondered how long will this nightmare continue ? Today silence reigns and the depression like the virus is spreading.
ireland went from ” don’t stand so close” on thurs to all pubs closed on mon to gestapo guards in PO making sure we observe the 2 meter rule, and similar in shops from cashiers, or managers re cashiers not being fierce enough. streets nearly preempt, children not eve out back except rarely. and some evacuating crying children.
i would NOT have expected this of ireland 🙁
as a german i always feel to over the top rule obeying here, fel.
I was at the GPO in Dublin on Thurs to draw my pension and make a few transactions. No problem, business done in less than 15 minutes. My only disappointment is that my favourite cafe in that area was closed, but I did manage to find another one open not far away.
Boris Johnson now seems to be able to close down who sectors of the economy without a vote in Parliament. Dictatorship without a shot being fired, and the pathetic flag-wavers nowhere to be seen. The whole thing is a tinderbox for civil unrest or worse.
That should have been ‘whole sectors’ obviously. Sorry.
what about this though https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/herd-immunity-why-britain-is-actually-letting-the-coronavirus-spread-20200315-p54a5h.html?fbclid=IwAR1P-8z694LTjg5bJmjSPG75859tpey75oa-ZVIINLygXTGfvT3AnqHSR3E
Could not resist.
How about this one?:
Some people are enjoying this.
I walked past a few people stood talking yesterday and one woman was excitedly telling the others that “it will be hard for a few months …”
I think her no doubt boring and humdrum live had been given a purpose. A battle was to be had and “we’re all in it together”.
This is an entirely media driven crisis. Even I, a virus sceptic, can get alarmed by all the scary headlines if I dwell on them for too long. It’s all written using alarmist language – it’s the tyranny of the superlative.
Nobody actually knows what will happen to them in the future. Okay you will die, but if you look after your health there’s a good chance you’ll live to a ripe old age.
My 77 year old mother seems to be another who is not unduly disturbed. A practising Roman Catholic, she didn’t go to church last sunday saying “we all sit too close together” and “well you just don’t know”. Hmm, okay mum.
By contrast my 77 year old father who was recently diagnosed with a treatable prostate cancer is modestly defiant. On tuesday he told me he still plans to play golf with his mates and go to the pub. I really worry about him if he cannot play golf – he lives for it. If he’s forced to stay home for three months he will lose fitness. I fear he might never be strong enough to take up his clubs again.
To add: the people who will be potentially affected by this are the old. And being old is not always nice.
My grandmother, who died in 2002 used to tell me about old Mrs Lewis who lived down the street and who was in her 90s. She hated life. Living was a burden to her. I couldn’t understand why Mrs Lewis didn’t want to live to be 100. In the end, the old dear was put out of her misery aged 99.
The last year of my gran’s live was also a burden. My grandad died in 2001 aged 85. They had been married for 60 years and she couldn’t bear life without him. She died just short of a year after grandad. I think she was pleased.
Younger adults are large percentage of coronavirus hospitalizations in United States, according to new CDC data
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/19/younger-adults-are-large-percentage-coronavirus-hospitalizations-united-states-according-new-cdc-data/
The data from China shows zero deaths under 10. zero. Those under 50 are similarly not going to be seriously affected unless already seriously ill. As your source is the Bezo’s WAPO I will treat it as fearmongering.
I live in Las Vegas/US. I don’t know anyone sick from this
That doesn’t mean that nobody is sick from this in Las Vegas.
Not to mention all the obese, sedentary people who are likely to get even bigger now that they are being actively (!) encouraged to sit at home watching TV and stuffing themselves with a shedload of stockpiled crisps which have a ‘Best Before’ date on them.
the rather cozy story of the golf sum of all year fears
no mention of the biggest heist in history
Question 1:
Are the media getting fully paid? How about the MPs and Civil Servants??
If so, the fascists are in the money and tell the rest to starve. Literally.
Question 2:
Will the Government encourage or ban private equity coming in and picking up the decimated industries for a song?
If the latter, they are traitors who need the final solution.
Question 3:
Do Boris Johnson, Sadiq Khan and Fiona Bruce know the first thing about science?
Absolutely, without question: NOT ONE SCOOBY.
So we are being ruled by fascist ignorami.
There is one encouraging aspect to this. Marx noted a delicious contradiction in the way that capitalism needed to create centralised collections of workers but that that very centralisation meant that workers could form their own armies against the system. One notable aspect of all this panic is that people, who would normally ignore each other, are starting to talk to each other. The media which is trying to scare everyone into isolation is actually forcing people to come together!
Good point. I’ve been searching for intelligent life on this planet for a few years now. I finally found it on this web site. Hope you people are real and this isn’t some sort of Jabob’s Ladder hallucination
It’s just more of the “Me, look at me, me, me!” that is what’s so wrong with our whole model of civilization. And while we’re panicking about the virus, and taking selfies telling people to live their little lives all alone, while I’m dashing to get a vaccine for it to protect me-me-me, why is no one pointing their finger at the coronavirus link with the animals we torture and then eat. Sars, bird flu, swine flu, coronavirus…: they are all animal viruses. Deal with that – a bit more compassion towards other sentient beings – and we would not be in this panic nor trashing our economies without a plan B. https://ocultoaplenavista.blogspot.com/2020/03/technology-and-fear.html?m=1
Mate, viruses exist in every mammalian species, it is nothing to do with how we look after animals.
Cottontail Papillomavirus, one of the most historically significant entities in cancer research, was isolated from rabbits in the wild. They were not controlled in any way by humans. They carried a virus.
You think the 600+ coronavirus strains already found in bats by Chinese researchers had anything whatever to do with humans? Of course not, they emerged in the wild.
There are viruses in plants too.
There are viruses in bacteria too: they are called bacteriophages. Some of those phages are the reason we have modern genetic technologies: all the early work elucidating how to analyse biological molecules and systems was done on model systems like bacteriophage lambda, all early DNA sequencing involved using a single stranded DNA virus to propagate DNA sequences for elucidation.
Nature is as nature is.
Here’s a stat to make your eyes water. From wikipedia:
“Viruses have an estimated abundance of 10 to the power of 30 in the ocean (ten followed by 30 noughts).”
I think they estimate around a million viruses in a teaspoon of seawater.
This sums it up well, from 1944
Just been re-reading David Graebner’s penetrating and at times hilarious book Bullshit Jobs. This guy has really got a handle on the way contemporary society works. The expansion of employment from the productive economy – i.e., people making things, has given way to the extractive economy, i.e., an economy based upon rent-extraction by tapping into other peoples’ income streams. Insurance, Banking, monopolistic pricing rent on land are all examples of this change. This development has lead to the creation a different employment structure involving the creation and diffusion of white-collar service jobs. This mostly involves pushing pieces of paper around, and often being paid enormous amounts of money for doing so. These are what Graebner calls Bullshit jobs.
To cite a trivial example I used to take my little dog for walks over Wimbledon Common. Drove up parked my car and spent a pleasant hour on our little walks. One day, however, parking meters appeared. Pure Rent extraction. Wimbledon Common is a public good but the blood-suckers saw an opportunity to extract rent and took it. Never mind the fact that I paid local taxes to the London boroughs of Merton and Wandsworth for the upkeep of the Common. This is Bullshit economic activity, nothing, no value, was produced, but my pocket ,as well as many others, was duly picked. This is Bullshit economics.
Then I got to thinking that Graebner’s theory as it was applied to jobs, could be extended to the whole system of late capitalist parasitism and mind control. So we have Bullshit politics, Bullshit media, Bullshit Institutions of 21st century capitalism (IMF, BIS, WORLD BANK, OECD, WTO) Bullshit culture (Courtesy of Hollywood) and on and on – name your own.
The other significant aspect is the fact that most people (the proles and the more aware members of the radical intelligentsia) firstly from their university education and, in the case of the proles, through their lived experience, are all fully aware of this.
Whether they will do anything about it is another question.
I’veseen many of these BS jobs referred to as ‘guard jobs’. The idea behind the term is that you stratify society into roughly three tiers with the middle tier — the guards — acting as support and protection for the upper tier against the mass of the bottom tier. I’m not describing this very well but on reflection its actually just a modern take on medieval society, the way its always been and probably always will be unless we as humans can grow out of it.
I dont know what’s more depressing the lockdown or the mindset of people. I went on the guardian site and put a few factual comments on and the abuse I got was ridiculous. It seems people are on board with this nightmare and are not willing to comprehend that something else is going on. Needless to say my comments questioning the over reaction to this virus have all disappeared. We are in serious trouble when no one is prepared to question what’s going on
The Guardian and other similar sites, plus social media are teeming with armies of sock puppets right now, detailed to keep the narrative straight. So don’t look to them for representative opinion.
Our perception at OffG is there is currently more skepticism in people on the street than in alternative media circles. Between us we have met more people who don’t buy this story than who do – and that covers a fair range of demographics.
The sock puppet army theory seems accurate to me. I have noticed certain commenters (and I shall mention no names in case they appear like Beetlejuice when you mention them) whose activity is not exactly consistent i.e. they can spout interminable high falutin’ medical waffle and then resort to the most infantile name calling – as if they are not single posters but collectives.
The opinion “on the street” – even from right wingers – has been extremely skeptical, not necessarily about the virus but certainly about the media coverage. Everyone feels that if the media did not want to panic people then they had a funny way of not doing it!
My view about the media is simple: if a single BBC reporter can fly to Italy to do a piece, then any advice from them to tell a whole nation to self-isolate is meaningless.
They are just elitist liars, trying to create a world where they are in the everything community whilst the majority are in the nothing community.
Absolutely spot on Rhys.
The British Brainwashing Corporation has come into it’s own.
I watched the news last night with my mouth open when they showed a piece about sportsmen keeping their skills honed by kicking toilet rolls around?????
If that isn’t taking the piss, then I don’t know what is! Whoever thought of this, and actually trawled round ‘celebrity’ houses filming, needs to seriously rethink the purpose of their existence
I am a very strong woman ‘for my age’ but this is beginning to get to me. Not fear of any virus because it is pointless, I am on my last furlong anyway.. but the fact that I can’t see or touch my precious Grandchildren is killing me, I can’t stop crying every time I look at their photographs. All because my daughter thinks she is protecting me…..
Of course we can ‘face time’ but it is not the same as a physical cuddle and kisses.
This is what will cause the majority of old people to give up, and move on.
At least during the war everyone was able to get together and give a reassuring hug and support. (Not that I was alive then, but my Mum used to tell me.. I was born as war ended)
There are many ‘confused’ people who live on their own anonymously, barely known to their neighbours. How many of them will closet themselves away thinking they will be imprisoned if they step outside their front door, and will be found in weeks or months to come because they starved to death? And no, I don’t think I can be accused of exaggerating the risk.
My late mother died in 2009 age 95, in her life she’d never owned a television, yet she was constantly hounded by the television licencing authorities, so much so she actually went to the village post office and asked the sub post master whether she should buy a licence, although she had no TV.
He assured her that if she had no TV then she didn’t need one.
The constant stream of letters she’d received, had threatened her with all sorts, from an appearance in court, a fine, possible imprisonment and the loss of her good name.
Both my sister and I had separately written to the licencing authorities urging them to desist, to no avail’
I am sure that in our later years many of us are inclined to lose a little judgement, an edge that our faculties afforded us in our youth.
My mother had lived through two world wars, yet was terrified of falling foul of the BBC.
So no, I don’t necessarily think you’re exaggerating such a risk.
More gaslighting!
It’s weird. When I try to discuss it with people and tell them what I think, they actually prefer to believe we are heading for global catastrophe. Why? If I was fearing a disaster and someone said to me “Fear not…things aren’t anywhere near as bad as you think” I would genuinely be all ears and wanting to hear something positive. But, oh no, they all seem to want to be proved right that society as we know it is doomed. I just don’t get it.
I think one of our fellow posters got it right a couple of days ago when he said the best way to respond to ‘believers’ is to ask them what evidence they have to back up their fears and then attempt to refute them with facts. I wouldn’t bother trying that approach on MSM ‘below the line’ threads though – that would be a frustrating waste of time.
Hi Judy, I think we are all hitting the same brick wall here. My dear Mum used to say, “you can’t educate pork.” And sadly she has been proved right. What has disturbed me more than anything is just how many ignorant people there actually are, walking amongst us who appear at first glance to be ‘normal’?
Personally, I feel the only way out of this is to laugh at them.. they have had the same chance and time to investigate and educate themselves for the past five just weeks. But have chosen to have house parties and drink themselves into oblivion, and join in the happy clapping fraternity.. I have lost all patience with them, and despair. They remind me of the lazy floating bloaters in ‘Walli’.
I hope i don’t come across as an ‘out-of-touch-grandad-living-in-a-time-warp’ type but who the f*ck is Taylor Swift?
You’re better off not knowing.
You don’t want to know. One of many reasons the world is going down the gurgler
Google is your fiend (sic)
You really don’t need to know Bal, she is just one of many vacuous non entities, who are worshipped by the young, and believe themselves to be influencers.
This one calls herself a singer??
Pretty much like Dusty Springfield and Lulu were ‘in my days’ but they could sing.
Who is Taylor Swift? I ask that question every time I see her face on TV.
I will be wearing a fat suit when I check in to a Motel 6 to Twitter and Skype so nobody knows who I am or where I live.
Just to be alive today is so wreched and we’re all just *** as ****. Like that snake from Jungle Book or something. I do not want to live in a world like this.
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, according to Gramsci.
Interesting. I remember reading a bit about Gramsci and he struck me as a highly intelligent Italian communist. Concerning the will, I remember someone telling me how this lady fought cancer all the way until she eventually died from it, i remeber him saying she fought it untill the end because she was a fighter, thats just who she was. So will perhaps is just part of nature (Schopenhauer) but if corectly assesing a futile situation, rationaly, may be viewed as pesimistic, sure but it doesnt mean its false. Meaning perhaps before mentioned lady fighting cancer, if she had perhaps better critical thinking skills and was more intelligent she may have opted to have taken her own life before she had to go through needless suffering. So will has no regard for the individual. Its just part of nature. A means for a survival of a specie. Its mindless. Empty of essence.
Try to stay positive, it’s genuinely way better these days for most people in “advanced” societies than for previous generations who had to, for example, fight in WW1 or WW2, or lived in the 19th century and prior, toiling away at hard, poor, disease ridden life.
We’ve become pampered, spoilt. Just look at our millennials as evidence of this. We have food delivered at the press of a button rather than needing to venture our to hunt and gather. When we get ill we tend not to suffer and die from our affliction in our caves and shacks, we just go to the doctor or hospital and they more often than not wave a magic wand. We have the world literally in the palm of our hands on our devices. Yes, life has become incredibly comfortable and low risk for the majority of people is these societies.
This global panic will now stir things up a bit, or more, let’s see how resilient our infrastructure and support systems really are. But all that’s happening now is that we’re seeing how far we’ve really advanced, and we are naturally anxious and insecure about going back to the days where we had to fend for ourselves much more. I suspect this storm will fizzle out eventually and the sun will shine again.
Of course things will improve. When the robber barons have allocated their investment capital at rock bottom prices, the world will miraculously be all rosy again.
The only way robber barons can operate is to precipitate crashes and coordinate booms.
Big Brother is counting on that Doug..
I can’t wait to read the statistics of those who take their own lives thanks to this evil plan.
Try and keep positive..
I need to take my own medicine, because I also am spiralling downwards.. Or is it upward toward the light.
To any of the sheeple out there who still think this is a real virus go to FlightRadar 24 now and have a look at the skies over the US and Europe. Wow. You can’t even see land there are so many planes overhead! Major virus containment. LOL It’s horseshit!!!
Yeah you right. I just had a look. There are so many planes overhead you can’t see land. A sea of gold. Ha ha major containment. It’s all bad joke.
Not it’s not “horseshit”. If you actually grab the hard data behind Flightradar24 rather than just glance at the pretty picture, roughly half of flights across the UK and EU are cancelled.
Those that are operating are mostly just 20-% load factors rather than 80+%.
Bookings for future flights have fallen through the floor, many airlines will very go bankrupt unless they are assisted.
These are professional facts, not amateur opinions.
I think if there is a symbol of an aeroplane though, there is an actual plane either flying, just landed, or about to take off. I’ve been monitoring one particular area quite closely today.
You can get FR to tell you about cancelled flights well though, and I know for sure there are plenty of those.
Saw a plane flying from Rome to JFK. WTF? Thought The Donald had banned all flights from Yurope?
Flights are reduced though. Have been closely watching those from s.of. France to London, for personal reasons…
I feel slightly dirty posting this.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-51979654
They’ve got their ‘extraordinary’ powers and the the next round of ‘redistribution’ is well under way.
So now they just need to find a face saving way of rowing back from the massive pain in the arse of lockdown.
And it’s such a pain in the ass that most people will breathe such a huge sigh of relief that they won’t have any energy left to think any deeper about what just happened and what they’ve just lost.
Psychology 101. It won’t work because the sheeple are going to be a LOT worse off.
The modelling team at Imperial College have a track record of absolute incompetence.
They are scaremongerers for hire, nothing but.
The Professor leading that team should undoubtedly lose 100% of their assets for this scam, as I guarantee you, guarantee you, that nowhere near 100,000 people are going to die in this outbreak.
That Professor spewing 500,000 dead is only fit to live in a prison cell and should be castrated before being locked in it.
They are not scientific, they are not biomedical, they are just computer parameter adjusting criminals.
Imperial College should lose its right to be a University over this and all its assets should be seized.
It is a hothouse of criminality and spookery and the sooner the world is rid of it, the better.
And as for the BBC giving any credence to that rubbish, all the journalists quoting it should lose the right to be a journalist for life.
The headline should be: ‘Bullshitting liar paid £100k+ a year to call himself a Professor makes up data to justify robber baron Grand Larceny’.
But no BBC staff member has the cojones, the knowledge, the ethics and the capabilities to actually run it.
I believe rival London colleges call it “Imperious”.
Celebrities celebrating social-distancing are like the glamorous film stars of the 1940’s hawking
war bonds. Irene Dunne, Ronald Coleman, Hedy Lamarr, Greer Garson–Hollywood’s famous supporting the National War Effort. The famous and the infamous today, are peddling a panic pandemic. A virus is bringing forth a parade of lovelies all too eager to glorify self-isolation. The “Ministry of Propaganda” demands that idols do their duty and spread the word– it’s cool to self-quarantine.
This virus labeled COVID-19 has the planet in an uproar. The worldwide death toll is less than 10,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cite approximately 45 million cases of the flu in the United States during the 2017-2018, resulting in an estimated 810,000 flu-associated hospitalizations and an estimated 61,000 flu-associated deaths. Two years ago, I didn’t see the rich and famous posting self-isolation instagrams, or governments ordering a worldwide shutdown.
Is it possible, the earth has stood still for another reason–not related to COVID-19. Is this virus masking a worldwide financial restructuring? Must we burrow down until it’s all resolved. The men in masks and goggles are not quite sure when we can remerge. I wonder, what the entire economic system will look like after it’s reorganized. It’s like hiring a renovator, leaving town and not returning until the project is completed. The anticipation is driving everyone nuts.
The frenetic mainstream media news howls the virus is on it’s way–it’s coming, it’s coming. Every week it’s one more week away.
It’s been lingering around Washington State the Wuhan of the US for more than three months. In soggy weather this virus lurks like a fog coming on little cat feet. There’s been 1,512 cases and 81 deaths. Those who died were in nursing homes, or had underlying medical illnesses. One must remember, Washington State has a population of almost 8 million.
What would have happened, if we were never told this was a “special virus” would we know it was any different than the flu? Those who became ill would just say: “that damn flu shot didn’t work again…” Those who became seriously ill would be seen as similar to victims who perish during any seasonal influenza–would anyone notice, or know the difference? Why is this virus such a mainstream media news “darling.” Why is it more special then all past raging viruses infecting 45 million…..
Money Charlotte! There’s money to be made from any crisis.
Like snake oil salesmen. Even Bono, never shy of a bandwagon to jump on, has released a single for the sopranos of northern Italy just in time for St Patrick’s day [no doubt a nice little money earner in the current hysterics].
If you remember the story, St Patrick tried to self isolate Ireland from such snakes…
Pharmaceutical companies will literally and figuratively make a killing…
It’s one of the most disgusting things of this outbreak. I won’t be surprised if they are encouraged or told to hold back treatment until these companies and their puppets in Congress create a way to maximize profit.
10,000 bodies doesn’t sound like a lot. On paper, or in real time, those figures only amount to .00001% of all humanity currently alive.
But if they were deposited all at once, on any given day, in your backyard, or even any large cemetery for that matter, it would be overwhelming. They’d all have to be cremated. It would be a logistical nightmare.
Sort of like this lock-down, but not as global.
Governor Newsom and his entourage of officials, with straight faces mind you, said last night that it is projected that this killer bug -which I will always remember fondly as The BoogeyMan Bug of 2020- will infect 56% of Californians in the near future…
A few beats later he nimbly pulled his punches, adding that that figure was arrived at only as a projection, if we don’t immediately stop doing everything in the state until…..
Yes of course, the patriarchal state will protect us from all menacing prospective threats…….
There is a birth in New York City every 4.4 minutes. There is a death in New York City every 9.1 minutes.
It’s not global, Charlotte: this is a bad case of afluenza and economic determinism …and is largely confined to the West …that is, the economic core of the World System. Bracketing off Hubei: one of my main contentions is why is Russia not crippled? As of Thursday: Russia had only 65 cases; the entire 15 countries that border China fad only 300 or so; Africa and much of South America remained relatively untouched. Of course, the official propaganda is lack of testing (with a test that does not work) and under-reporting. Assuming there is anything to report.
There are far simpler, Occam’s Razor type explanations – which is becoming consensus here – it’s just not that deadly. Or, particularly, out of the ordinary (the official line that this has the same lethality as the 1918 H1N1 ‘Spanish’ flu is a monstrous propagandic lie). Then we look at the West, where Macron is the new Mussolini, with 100,000 paramilitary police enacting national lockdown.
As per the economic determinism: first – their tactic is actually called ”suppression” …of the ‘virus’ supposedly. That tactic is not to mitigate or delay (to save the NHS which a history of political ideology and swingeing cuts has rendered incapable of coping with anything out of the ordinary): but to keep us apart and vulnerable until there is sufficient vaccine to rapidly immunise the entire population. Which, by their own admission, is 18 months away. During which time they cannot relax restrictions (which is one thing they are not being straight about).
That 18 months is questionable, though. The vaccine has to be viable: but also there has to be enough of it to immunise Western Europe, America, and the rest of the world. Global vaccine, testing, ventilators, etc …kerching!
Then there are the loans etc – many as interest bearing. It sounds benevolent: but it is a form of state dependency. And state dependency is market dependency. These are market solutions: not humanist or altruistic solutions. Which will engineer an even more market dependent population – which is a form of market totalitarianism.
So, the market outlook must be rosy? For some. The briefest synopsis is that private investors are checking out (the biggest ”dash for cash” in world history): and the Central Banks are checking in. Any money injected is going straight into private hands and will never, ever, ever, be put toward anything at all that could be called ”productive”. It is a carbon copy of the 07-09 Great Financial Crash – the biggest privatisation of public wealth ever. Kerching!
When it works out: Main Street is bust …but Wall St and the City? I can’t speculate too much, because the situation is fluid – but safe to say: the divide caused by the biggest disproportionate distribution of wealth in history is getting bigger …and at some point, we will be handed the bill.
And: given no one can actually see the future …the chance of ‘normal’ life resuming in two years is also receding day by day. What the Zeitgeist ”new normal” will be – no one knows. Maximum fear and uncertainty have been created by the inept way this is being handled. We know what powers Hancock has had ”nodded though” Parliament. Whether they get enacted depends on the stability of the markets – not the contagion (or lack of it) of any virus.
So we are involved in a collective social engineering project – where we are cattle waiting ”herd immunity” (we really are: see quote from the Governments own scientific modeling below). If they can get control and stability in the markets: we can go back to something like a semblance of ‘normal’ life. If not, who knows?
No one can predict: but the likelihood of bailouts to BigOil and the banking cartels is very high. BigPharma has a brighter future: with research into how to vaccinate global populations and restore some sort of ”herd immunity” for the global order.
If it all sounds too bleak, well it is. The uncertainty is the worst thing for the human psyche. All eyes are on the state …that is the market state. What will transpire is even beyond their control. The likelihood of ‘normal’ global service being resumed is relatively small. But resistance would probably prove futile. They have us ”suppressed” for our own safety. They have our interests at heart with their handouts, loans, and bailouts. Or: they are preparing us for the reciprocal bailouts of the banks …who represent the best interests of those whose insatiable greed has caused the collapse of the social order …which they get to redesign …for us.
I’m not sure the enormity of it all has quite sunk in yet. It’s only just sinking in with me. So, peace to you and yours. Stay safe. If things nosedive: we have to assume that Off-G will not be around as a locus for dissenters for much longer.
Thank you for the safe space. Long may it continue. But it is all out of anyones control now. Where things end up will be for the markets to decide.
In order to save capitalism the markets might demand that neoliberalism devolve into neofeudalism…..
Russia
Confirmed: 253
Deaths: 1
Recovered: 12
Active: 240
Occams Razor doesn’t test “different explanations.” It says that if there are two or more different hypotheses claiming to explain the same proposition or event or fact (or sets of propositions or events or facts) then, if and only if the hypotheses are equally logically valid, choosing the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions will usually but not always* provide the best candidate for proceeding with a formal proof (or, in later, ‘scientific’ milieux, specifying and conducting definitively falsifiable experiments or tests). The hypothesis that Occam’s Razor helps select is, in general but not necessarily in particular*, to be preferred (but not yet taken as definitive) in the subsequent work of establishing veracity.
In other words, Occam’s Razor is a logistical tool of use, when properly applied, in organizing and optimizing the direction of the subsequent research required to establish logical proof (e.g. the construction of valid ‘truth tables’, etc) or definitively falsifiable scientific experiments. Occam’s Razor, in itself, says nothing about the truth or falsehood, proof or disproof of the hypotheses it is used to rank for further consideration.
* for example, in the many circumstances where, of those hypotheses advanced to explain the same ‘entity’ (i.e. fact, event, phenomenon, etc) a more complex hypothesis is the–or a more–actually correct one then Occam’s Razor, whether in Ockham’s formulation (pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate–plurality should not be posited without necessity) or in one of its many prior or subsequent formulations, shaves far too close to the bone to be of value to anyone except, maybe, the plastic $urgeon later called in to clean up the mess.
“…shaves far too close…”
in the stunningly ignorant, stunningly careless, stunningly ubiquitous misinterpretation of any of the principle’s many formulations
It’s sinking in with me. And that’s something I’m worried about as well B.
When the screws are tightened even more, sites like OffGuardian, that are genuinely anti establishment and look at this rationally will be zapped by the bastards.
Same as with Wrong Kind Of Green, John Steppling (Facebook) The Greanville Post and others…
Imagine? The complete barren, vacuous conformity of the Internet. All safe and unthreatening.
I texted a friend last night (who reads The Guardian) and told him my thoughts on where all this was heading, and to check out the Covid19 articles at Swiss Propaganda Research.
He got back to me a while later, and stated he ‘didn’t think there was any agenda going on’ and that ‘the authorities have to act for the public health of people’.
He also believed the White Helmets were genuine civil defence and the Free Syrian Army were ‘revolutionaries’.
Sent the Swiss Propaganda Research links to other, quite affluent friends a few days ago, and there’s just been silence since, no reply. They also read The Guardian.
Sp0ot on Charlotte, but you are preaching to the converted.. how will you get this message through to those trapped in the cave???
in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical reasoning.
‘The Allegory of the Cave’ by Plato” Where he distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who really do see the truth. It goes like this:
The Cave
Imagine a cave, in which there are three prisoners. The prisoners are tied to some rocks, their arms and legs are bound and their head is tied so that they cannot look at anything but the stonewall in front of them.
These prisoners have been here since birth and have never seen outside of the cave.
Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between them is a raised walkway.
People outside the cave walk along this walkway carrying things on their head including; animals, plants, wood and stone.
(…)
The Escape
One of the prisoners then escapes from their bindings and leaves the cave.
He is shocked at the world he discovers outside the cave and does not believe it can be real.
As he becomes used to his new surroundings, he realizes that his former view of reality was completely wrong.
He begins to understand his new world, and sees that the Sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning..
He see’s that his former life, and the guessing game they played was useless.
The Return
The prisoner returns to the cave, to inform the other prisoners of his findings.
They do not believe him and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free.
Spread the word and hope you don’t get banned……
Found this. It’s quite fun watching it for a while. The world population clock:
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
… it keeps going up. And up.
Apparently there have been 12,892,445(+) deaths in the world this year. I think cv has accounted for around 11,383 of them, or 0.088 percent.
Why do we not care about the 99.912 percent who did not die of coronavirus (plus existing condition)?
… and still the world’s population keeps going up …
Madonna will be along soon to adopt three children who have ‘tested positive’.
I have to add that many people don’t seem to understand that the petrodollar is collapsing.
I also have to add that most people don’t understand what a petrodollar is, and how it effects their lives.
The power of propaganda, ay.
I’m going to pour myself another glass of gin and join Winston in the cafe…
To give some context, from a year ago…
https://www.rt.com/business/455607-saudi-petrodollar-oil-trade-nopec/
The Saudis and Russians have now effectively strangled all American oil supplies (fracking in America, apart from destroying the natural environment, produces a ‘lift price’ that cannot compete globally).
And MBS has now gone AWOL
Cue the next American ‘regime change’ operation; but thus far it hasn’t worked. The dying American Empire is now trying a different tack. You figure it out.
And don’t forget to self-isolate…
America is imposing swingeing sanctions on Venezuela and Iran. Surprise surprise!
Yes-Vlad the Impaler has skewered MBS nicely. And the US shale oil fracking Ponzi racket. Always a few steps ahead, the old ‘Judoker’.
Collapsing the Petrodollar has always been the cabal’s plan. Watch for the emergence of the Fedcoin. Then we’re in real trouble.
welcome
no welcome
goyim
a new order
a compliance test
a database exercise
all the lessons learned from china
slow roll out.
same old scum that did the talmudick ritual that was 9 and 11
gone big
it is the biggest heist in history
trillions pumped into the banks billions into big pharma
right off’s zero ing out
so many great things here if you are a demonick synagogue of satanist
mass cull wordwide so regimes do not have to pay old folks pensions.
big zio masonic mumbers game 13 33 66 77 kaballa casting of spells.
bank bail in haircuts for the sheep
9 and 11 was a trial a test
this crown virus thing is the real deal contagion cover story
economic collapse and grand theft on a simply giant scale
china smart cities compliance testing
rolling out worldwide
make sure your papers are in order
this is early days the bosheviks ashkanazim satanists are running amok
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/london-pubs-cinemas-and-gyms-may-close-in-covid-19-clampdown
Anyone who thinks this is normal needs a brain transplant,
Celebrities are for people who have shallow minds, scared of the deep end. For the rest of us the shallows are boring. Hitching your life to celebrity exploits should be recognised as a mental disability.
Indeed. The only celebrities I recognise are the great classical composers, the great poets, the great visual artists and the great scientists and thinkers (Beethoven, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Einstein, Darwin, et al). Nearly all the ‘celebrities’ of our time are (unjustly) famous for being famous.
Substitute Einstein and Darwin with Tesla and Royal Rife and I’m with you.
Just did some quick calculations after seeing the convoy of military trucks needed to take the bodies of the dead in Italy somewhere. In approximately 15 days Italy has had about 4,000 deaths from the virus and therefore need a convoy of military trucks to move the huge amount of dead bodies. On a normal non-covid day approximately 1,785 people normally die in Italy. In 15 days that would be about 26,775 people. What do they do with those bodies? (The stats are freely and easily available from a number of sources on the internet.)
I found this ‘tweet’ on OffG Twitter feed. I can’t comment on its accuracy but it clearly refutes the info we have been getting about the military trucks.
https://twitter.com/Ilpapero88/status/1240962624126418949
The latest from maggot Macron:
President Emmanuel Macron’s main men in the fight against the spread of coronavirus in France were at pains on Friday to prepare the country for an extended lockdown.
Castaner said on Friday that police would patrol major transport hubs to check whether intended trips were valid.
http://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200320-castaner-v%C3%A9ran-france-confinement-coronavirus-macron-lockdown-covid-19
Here’s a bit of French for you: Va te faire foutre.
(it’s always a good swear phrase in French)
You will note that countries with severe lockdowns like France and Italy are also dense population areas with high unemployment and active labour movements. They are also financial basket cases. Italy’s debt levels are beyond comprehension. France is not much better and Spain is pretty bad. Hence the super exaggerated horseshit in these countries and border closures. If I’m right they will shutdown all social media services in those countries soon. So when the sheeple finally figure out what this really is about those will be serious shtf hot spots. UK? I’m terrified. 60 Million people on a small island with 20 cows and a sheep named Fred. Global economy. What a joke. I’ve said it for years. If a country cannot sustain itself watch out! My vote for best countries to be in right now: Russia, NZ, Australia, Iran, N Korea, Cuba.
I forgot California!! Total lockdown. If you had to pick one state in the US that will be a shtf hotspot it would be California.
They are not financial basket cases.
France and Italy are some of the biggest economies in the world (at least 7th or 8th, depending on how the psychopaths measure these things).
Do you have anything else to say, while the world collapses?
To determine the financial status of some country, you must subtract from its actual productive capacity, not just its outstanding debts and liabilities, but also the amount of wealth that its ruling class intends to skim off in the future.
Given the insatiable appetites of European elites, this calculation might well result in the conclusion that France and Italy are, and will remain, financial basket cases, as long as the elite wealth-skimming operation is allowed continue.
You might assume, for example, that Greek billionaires are not suffering any particular hardship, and that this fact might have some consequences for the conditions of life of the non-billionaires in that country.
Jesus H Christ, I can’t believe what I’ve just seen. Nancy Pelosi addressing the people of the United States wearing toilet paper earrings.
Beam me up Scotty!
There is no intelligent life down here.
‘It’s Life-but not as we know it’.
“their dangerous tasks” Do you mean ‘their no more dangerous than usual jobs’? That I could agree with.
“what it is to both feel like and be like a human being.”
So – are these the non human beings who are requested everytime when logging in to a site to establish that they are ‘ Not a Robot?’
And they actually are?
They are not “human beings ” that’s for sure.
You can of course re-jig the phrase as ” We’re not Ordinary – like you lot”
Personally I am deeply ashamed to say that I have had an illness that some Celebrities have had despite only being just ‘ordinary .’
On UK TV I’ve sen the rows of Self Isolating Celebrities speaking cheerily to the cameras and intimating to a audience of the interested that they have had the Corona Virus the worst.
I’ve had proper flu three times in my life and I suffered on every occassion of CBA.
Can’t Be Arsed ( doing anything ) so miracles do happen if you are well known.
I never knew that.
Selfie addicts.
Trump being their role model.
It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen here in France. At the time of writing Macron seems to have stepped down from introducing an afternoon curfew.
Acte 71 tomorrow does seem to be shaping up to a massive demonstration, because most of the French understand what’s going on.
This latest wave of protests in France started in January 2016. The gilets jaunes are just the latest manifestation of it.
None of this is reported by the joke media in the West.
Some massive protests would call their bluff, as it would be difficult to explain how so few marching were sickened by that act…
You might get such a scenario in France, but never in the USA.
But since this whole thing is an Act of State, to use the title of Wm. Pepper’s book about the assassination of Martin Luther King, they would just regroup and show, with charts and graphs, that the protests infected even more people than all those many who were marching, to make their point. They would take pains to prove the protests put us over the brink. And who would become the scapegoats then?
Like they did with NBA All Star Rudy Gobert when he mocked them two weeks ago. There is famous footage of him mocking their warnings by touching many of the microphones in the press room as he was leaving (all the media coverage said “all” of the mics”, which is itself interesting).
And how convenient that ESPN and sports coverage nationwide had headlines blaring everywhere, very soon after, that Gobert had just tested positive, a skip and a beat after he made his satires. I thought, “Of course, how could it be otherwise!” That’ll teach him! I’m surprised they haven’t tried to euthanize him, and make him their anti-viral poster boy.
At the time he was the only one. Now that’s quite a coincidence. And best of all, he’s French! But wait, there’s more: soon after, his only other Utah Jazz All Star teammate, Donovan Mitchell, was infected. Bing, bang, boom: hat trick. Now that’s hockey!
Quite a sequence. Conspiracy theorists will run amok with that chain of events for years. You don’t even need to be a sports fan: it’s the NBA equivalent of Bldg. 7, as for unlikelihood. It really flirts with implausible deniability, big time.
Citrus scented tequila? I havn’t even got milk at home for my humble tea bags at the moment.
And all those people that have lost jobs already, all those who don’t even have a computer to pose in front of Skype in their $5000 designer outfits, all those already on pensions or the dole, or ekking out an existence on the streets, all those musicians who’ll have no venue to play in, and many other examples.
Many many real human beings, with real lives with such mundane things like rent and electricity bills are going to be greatly affected by what is happening.
Reading this article, kept thinking about bloody Bono and Richard Branson for some reason, tho the above examples are bad enough.
You have my sympathy. I have never ran out of milk thankfully and have also been lucky with bread.
Still Gezzah, you can consider yourself luck that you were not one of the one in two million Brits who today succumbed to the virus.
Just revisiting that excellent Swiss Propaganda Research site then. In times like this, you find sites (or ones helpfully provided by OffG!) that you didn’t know about or had forgotten.
Currently on way to selling The Big Issue mag… sipping on a coffee. With milk. Have a good weekend John.
Milk?
I just pour gin into my tea, and try to figure out if the world will still be here tomorrow.
I know you’re all dying from the Frankenstein flu (not), but spare a thought…
Don’t forget the tonic, for the quinine!
Go hard with Acte 71 this weekend Rob, and appreciate the clip of the great, truly iconic Smiths, from decades ago. Where did that time go?
Its so bizarre… People now self imposing social distancing on others, self isolating (even tho they’re not even sick) washing their hands with sanitiser every 5 mins, expressing outrage on social media that cafes havn’t got their tables far apart, bemoaning the pandemic, how its curtailing their social life, on and on.
Sheep. Sheep. Sheep. Starting to piss me right off.
— but if one didn’t constantly signal conformity and obedience, one’s career as a social-climbing poseur might stall.
And that would make one sad. After all, one’s entire identity depends on the continuous approval of other status-seeking twits. Without that, one might have to confront the fact that one has never had a single thought or opinion, other than those one absorbed from the mass media and the rest of the manufactured corporate culture.
And that would make one sad.
Apparently, bloody Bono the ego maniac poseur humanitarian (sarc alert) has written a song for the victims in Italy.
Saw that reported on John Steppling’s Facebook page.
Now anyone questioning the agenda here is going to be jumped on by all the sheep that have swallowed this without question, and labelled a conspiracy nut.
Similar thing happened to me last night.
I just caught a snippet of “Googlebox”. I’ve never watched this although I am told that it’s a “great laugh”. You’re not watching TV shows. You are watching people watching TV shows. It looks to me as if you are being told how to react. And the latest one is all about …well of course, the only topic around the media these days. This fucking virus. And you get something like:
“Well it’s just like the common cold innit? And how can you tell if it’s like not?”
“Ah well it’s like much MUCH worse than the cold innit?”
Is this scripted? Or do they just record hours and hours and then select the bits that conform to current propaganda requirements? I have a feeling you won’t have someone say e.g. “This virus is a load of fuckin’ crap innit? It’s just a way of fuckin’ us all over innit?”
I guess I’m missing out on something, but what does “INNIT” mean?
Correct me, if I’m wrong, but I think it’s something British Asian’s say.
INNIT…. Isn’t It. Cockney slang I think. Where’s Norman Wisdom?
Just the way Cockneys say “isn’t it?”
Yup. Sorry I was being Brit centric.
Innit means “Isn’t it?” It’s a question of affirmation but now used as a closing confirmation of a statement, by the yuff intelligensia, innit.
Sorry for being dumb but who are the “yuff intelligensia”?….I’m from NY and don’t understand alot of UK stuff.
When “YUPpie” was first coined, some guy told me he was a “Yuffie”: Young Urban Failure.
Does that help?
Swise utes.
Yuff should have been yoof. This is the word “youth”, but the “th” is mispronounced as an “f” by many Londoners and surropunding areas.
Intelligensia is derived from intelligent, but it’s meant sarcastically since they are not educated, or more often to the point do not want to be educated.
The word “innit” started to be used, as far as a recall, back in the 1990s amongst the black urban “hip” and (c)rap music crowd, but spread amongst the whites too. In fact a lot of white “yoof” now speak with “black” accents. You’ve probably got a similar phenonemon in NYC and other cities.
surrounding not surropunding
In fact a lot of white “yoof” now speak with “black” accents.
Indeed. Just thinking about it, I wonder why they’ve not been accused of the much condemned ‘cultural appropriation’. To answer my own question, probably because their reaction would be a little harsher than 8 year old girls accused of cultural appropriation for having their hair styled into corn-rows simply because they liked the fashion.
No, it’s not scripted at all, it’s often hilarious if you bother to watch it…hilarious as in confirming the view that most British are predicable and highly malleable subjects. Innit.
It may not be scripted but if somebody said “Boris is a shill for big business” and somebody else said, “Boris is just a clown” you know which one would be broadcast.
Giles from Wiltshire definitely isn’t scripted, nor his long-suffering wife Mary. I could watch them for hours.
You may have to!
They are hilarious aren’t they Lundiel. I record all of them and watch just prior to going to bed, to lift my spirits. I adore Giles, he is such a wind up.. Though I couldn’t live with him.. I don’t know where Mary was brought up in Ireland but she certainly had very sheltered childhood.
”Oh Giles don’t bring such crudities into a ladies room.”
He is like a naughty child bursting to say rude things.. and I adore him. Especially when he plays the piano and the recorder, and when he reconfigured an old rake to get wood out of the shed, which then lost its head when he tried it out. lol. I would like to be a fly on the wall when he sees his friends when Mary is away? Now, that is a series I would watch.
The brother and sister from Blackpool have me in tucks, except he ‘loves’ the Queen….. How can anyone be that stupid?
The only ones I don’t like are the sisters from Leeds who have gone from svelte to big buxom girls who are obsessed with stuffing their faces and appear to only have one brain cell between them. They are the new Sandi and Sandra who I was glad to see the back of.. in fact that was why I began recording the shows to skip through their bits.
This programme is ‘supposed’ to be a cross section of the UK population but as George says. Only the pro Government /Monarchy comments are included. Generally the level of ignorance is unsurpassed, apart from the Michaels, and the Scientist guy and his wife.
That said, it is only one of very few things I would watch every day if it was on.
He cracked me up last night when he told Mary how he took off his jumper while driving at 60 mph.
How funny….I’d forgotten that one… when he got the jumper stuck on his glasses and managed to drag them off with his sweater and couldn’t see anything, but managed to get onto the hard shoulder without causing an accident or being injured.. lol! lol! I’ll watch last nights again, because it was really good. I’m even warming to the grumpy git with all the stinking Rottweiller dogs.. especially when one tried to savage him because he had a cat T shirt on.. he is also very dry.
I’m quite partial to Marcus as well, not because of his IQ but because he really is good to look at and his ‘wife’ is very funny, when I can understand what she says.
Did you see the one where Dave the Welsh guy was cleaning out his drawers and brought out a pack of Viagra? The wife didn’t know where to put her self… then he produced a chemist bag with another pack? Clearly she had doubts about where or when he was going to use them. And they were talking about going to the Magic Mike Strip show…. Ooops. I don’t think I’d want to go with my husband? If I was so inclined.. which I’m not. Maybe once upon a time in another life in the 60s.
It’s cheered me up no end, thinking about this. Thanks Lundiel.
I’m not so sure that Mary had such a sheltered life, she met Giles when he was an art student and she a life model. There’s been rumours that there were ‘flings’ with rock/pop stars back in the day; a subject she refuses to discuss.
The Telegraph claims a friendship with Boris and his sister, tales of a joint Scottish holiday.
I think she’s a good deal less prudish than she’d like us all to believe, although she’s been quoted as saying there’s enough swearing on television without Giles adding to it.
Realistically, who really knows?
Never let an opportunity for a good bit of virtue signalling go to waste.
Many of the ruling elite have bought themselves funk holes in New Zealand, where they plant to bug out as TSHTF.
Pre virus, some of them attended a conference in London recently.
They agonised over what actions to take if money lost its value, and how you could still lord it over your underlings, your personal organiser, your personal astrologer, and your personal spiritual adviser in those circumstances.
Could you retain control of the food store to ensure their continued loyalty through starvation if need be?
Could potentially disloyal bodyguards be replaced by robots?
These and other dilemmas were agonised over.
Sometimes being a billionaire can be quite hard.
It seems that the issues involved of the virus have broadened out to include geopolitical as well as economic issues. Thus:
Apparently NATO’s war games on Russia’s borders which were due to be carried out about now, are being considerably scaled-back owing to the Coronavirus crisis. The move was initiated by Nordic vassal-in-chief Norway. There is a question of funding of this rather pointless operation – when monies might have been diverted to deal with more pressing and realistic options – but of course they usual suspects started kicking up.
‘’ … NATO members Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania said Brussels could undermine European Union ambitions by cutting funding for the “military mobility” program, including measures to quickly move troops and equipment in the event of a conflict with Russia.’’
Well of course that is what we have come to expect form this Petainist war-mongering riff-raff whose sole interest is to milk the US MIC for more dollars.
While full-scale conflict between Russia and NATO is seen as highly unlikely, some experts – and who might these ‘experts’ be, purely out of interest you understand – have warned that increased military activity in the region increased the risk of unintended accidents.
In the event of conflict, Russia’s capability to launch an attack with 24 to 48 hours’ notice and centralised decision-making could give it “military advantage over its neighbours” in the short term, Lithuania’s intelligence agency warned last month.’’ Need I add more? Lithuania, Latvia, Poland are basically US/NATO launch-pads for a war against Russia.
“Apparently NATO’s war games on Russia’s borders which were due to be carried out about now, are being considerably scaled-back owing to the Coronavirus crisis.”
Some good news then. Every cloud has a silver lining.
I’m surprised the US has not yet used the “RUSSIA DID IT” banner regarding the Coronavirus.
Give it time!
Not Russia, but specifically Putin. Give it another week or two and he’ll be blamed.
I think this is a whole new ballgame Frank. Much bigger and different rules.
Who do you think killed Cock Robin!
Its a bit late for that — the offiical line is that “It was the Chinese wot done it”. If they didn’t invent the virus in some secret lab somewhere then their authoritarian government that’s only too willing to squash voices that don’t conform to the Official Line allowed it to spread. Et Cetera. Our media have been dogpiling on this for a couple of months now, so much so that there was this piece in RT that contrasted coverage of identical anti-virus measures in China and Italy with completely opposite messages to the reader. (This probably explains why the Chinese have got a bit fed up with this and asked a number of US journalists to leave. We’re not missing much — recently as China’s got this thing more or less under control our media’s gone silent about it, conforming to the normal practice of “If you can’t find anything bad to say about the place then just keep silent”.)
Of course not: “CHINA DID IT!”
Ha, Ha!….But whoever did it, I do miss going to the movies!
I don’t wish to be unkind to the Baltic states but they’re really tiny, both physically and economically, so they’re a bit of a strategic non-entity. Maybe its where I live (the US) but I think there needs to be some kind of criteria about how large a state has to be before its allowed to play geopolitics. We’ve got cities bigger than them…..
It isn’t about playing geopolitics, it is about being an ‘aircraft carrier’ for the Imperialists.
No invasion of Russia is going to happen. The Soviets were the first to develop ICBMs and they only got better.
The US MIC is greedy but remember what MAD stands for.
The Baltic neo-fascist dystopias are NATO’s ‘sacrifice zones’. Apparently the dumber Balts don’t get it, so haven’t fled overseas like most of the youngsters.
Exactly Richard…
Looks like off guardian and trump agree
https://therecount.com/watch/trump-coronavirus-calendar/2645515793
Having read all the comments below, it occurred to me that the first celeb to announce his martyrdom to the Covid-19 (aka Covfefe-45) was Mr Trusty aka Tom Hanks. I have log suspect Hanks as being a Deep State actor, and most of his films are propaganda. It would make perfect sense therefore to have Hanks lead a psy-ops as the signal for lesser celebs to fall stricken. And was Hanks quarantined in Australia? Or did he get his private jet to whisk him into pampered self-isolation, to watch all his old movies?
According to the Anti New York Times on TheRealHistoryChannel.org (formerly TomatoBubble.com) Hanks is suspected of being a crim of the worst kind.
*Hence Hanks “isolating” himself.
There’s an interesting piece there on Bill Gates and his ‘foresight’ regarding the current ‘pandemic’.
Based211,
Where? Where are your links?
Exactly what I thought Hugh, but thought I might be being a little paranoid… Next on the list Robert de Niro, and Tom Cruise?
Maggie. It might be worth checking on De Niro and Cruise. I may join you in being a little paranoid, but as the old saying goes: “You are never alone with schizophrenia”.
In answer to a query you made above about Bill Gates predictive abilities, I found this on the Daily Mail (which I have not read). I append it merely to show that Event 201 was ‘legit’, and not remotely suspicious 😉
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7951293/Bill-Gates-Predicted-Coronavirus-Like-Outbreak-2019-Netflix-Documentary.html
Whoops! Forgot the link
Channel 4 news presenters and guests have started smirking about it. They are about to reveal that it is all a joke. Presumably it is to do do with the crashing world economy but I would be unsurprised if they revealed that 911 was just a funny joke also.
Well, they and their other media pals caused it with all their relentless idiotic fearmongering.
They are waiting till the 1st of April to reveal that it was all a joke played out, on the sheep.
And the ‘science’ they are using to justify wreaking carnage on people’s lives?
The ”unpolished” opinions of technocrats; updated over a coffee; unfalsifiable, hypothetical, and peer reviewed in the pub …correction: over a sandwich in a …correction: published as is:
And this factual, certain knowledge, ascertained by rigorous hypothetico-deductive empirical modelling; based on cattle studies:
You could not make this up. Only, it looks as though they did.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/756738/SPI-M_modelling_summary_final.pdf
“Much of our understanding comes from epidemics in livestock, especially the foot-and-mouth epidemics of 1969 and 2001 in the UK, …”
Oh that’s hilarious. And the wrong animal. They should have been studying sheep not cattle.
On that note, I may come into close proximity to sheep tomorrow on my country walk. Does anyone know they appropriate social distance I should be keeping? I presume sheep are not immune.
(Don’t worry, that was a joke.)
Nice of Off-G to keep us informed of the sleb news. ;o)
Well, since the celebrities and 1%er’s are sharing their survival tips, I think we plebs should start sharing ours with each other. In that spirit I’d like to share my foul-proof method for dramatically improving your position in ANY long line you might happen to find yourself in during our oh so completely necessary lock-down. For example, perhaps you’re down to only 100 rolls of toilet paper in reserve, so you frantically run out to buy more, but the lines at the local box store are huge. Don’t worry. This technique works every time.
The first step does require a bit of advance planning as it requires that one gets so plastered the night before that you look like an extra from “Night of the Living Dead,” when you arrive in line. Then – and this is particularly important if you happen to live in America in one of our so called “open-carry” states – quickly scan the crowd to be sure no one is sporting an AK-47 or some other lethal crowd control device.
The next part is easy. To start with just force out a few short coughs. Then surreptitiously survey and appraise your audience to determine just how far you may have to go with this. Depending upon the crowd’s response -follow that with a few more intense coughs of longer duration. As those around you begin to notice your presence, let go with your first real no holds barred hacking and coughing episode. For effect I find that falling to one knee while coughing madly – exponentially – magnifies the crowd clearing impact of this technique.
Of course if you’re a real “showman” you can always pull out that white handkerchief you have wadded up in your pocket, press it frantically to your lips and then – voila – open it up to reveal the bright red food dye you sprinkled on before leaving the house. Admitted I sometimes start to feel a bit guilty at about this time in the performance, as I’ve often found myself at the very front of the line, with store personnel hysterically fleeing the scene along with the crowd of customers. At this point one must act quickly – before the police arrive! 🙂
Hey, we all can’t be Taylor Swift’s cat now – can we?
PS – my deepest apologies to anyone I may have offended with this bit of nonsense, but if I didn’t find some humor in all this madness I’d surely be lost.
I will try it tomorrow and report back
The Wuhan Tourist Board T shirt works quite well too.
Thanks for the laugh, Gary. It was much appreciated!
Images of Betty Slocombe come to mind-for some reason or other.
Who would want to move to Kansas?….Hope when all this is over, they’ll stay there!
The problem with these celebrities is one that Thorstein Veblen saw over a century ago: that they are nothing without the millions fawning over them. That they are so eager to post these vacuous self-advertisements of their own affluence is an indication of how desperate they are for an audience to see and envy them. Were they to emerge from their little palatial bunkers and find a world voided of adoring fans, they would have no reason to exist at all. And that is all that would occur to them. The matter of having for once to fend for themselves would never enter their heads.
Then they would apply to go on ‘get me out of here,’ ‘dancing on ice,’ ‘first dates,’ ‘love island’ or ‘celebrities go dating’ and other trash shows.