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Lockdown: Locking in the New Global Order

Colin Todhunter

On 12 March, British PM Boris Johnson informed the public that families would continue to “lose loved ones before their time” as the coronavirus outbreak worsens. He added:

We’ve all got to be clear, this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.”

In a report, the Imperial College had warned of modelling that suggested over 500,000 would die from the virus in the UK. The lead author of the report, epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, has since revised the estimate downward to a maximum of 20,000 if current ‘lockdown’ measures work. Johnson seems to have based his statement on Ferguson’s original figures.

Before addressing the belief that a lockdown will help the UK, it might be useful to turn to an ongoing public health crisis that receives scant media and government attention – because context is everything and responses that are proportionate to crises are important.

The silent public health crisis

In a new 29-page open letter to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason spends 11 pages documenting the spiralling rates of disease that she says (supported by numerous research studies cited) are largely the result of exposure to health-damaging agrochemicals, not least the world’s most widely used weedkiller – glyphosate.

The amount of glyphosate-based herbicides sprayed by UK farmers on crops has gone from 226,762 kg in 1990 to 2,240,408 kg in 2016, a 10-fold increase. Mason discusses links between multiple pesticide residues (including glyphosate) in food and steady increases in the number of cancers both in the UK and worldwide as well as allergic diseases, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, obesity and many other conditions.

Mason is at pains to stress that agrochemicals are a major contributory factor (or actual cause) for the spikes in these diseases and conditions. She says this is the real public health crisis affecting the UK (and the US). Each year, she argues, there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with no treatments making any difference to the numbers.

Of course, it would be unwise to lay all the blame at the door of the agrochemicals sector: we are subjected each day to a cocktail of toxic chemicals via household goods, food processing practices and food additives and environmental pollution.

Yet there seems to be a serious lack of action to interfere with corporate practices and profits on the part of public bodies, so much so that a report by the Corporate Europe Observatory said in 2014 that the then outgoing European Commission had become a willing servant of a corporate agenda.

In a 2017 report, Hilal Elver, UN Special rapporteur on the right to food, and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes Baskut Tuncak were severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”.

The authors said that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole, including an estimated 200,000 deaths a year from acute poisoning. They concluded that it is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.

At the time, Elver said that, in order to tackle this issue, the power of the corporations must be addressed.

While there is currently much talk of the coronavirus placing immense strain on the NHS, Mason highlights that the health service is already creaking and that due to weakened immune systems brought about by the contaminated food we eat, any new virus could spell disaster for public health.

But do we see a ‘lockdown’ on the activities of the global agrochemical conglomerates? Not at all. As Mason has highlighted in her numerous reports, we see governments and public health bodies working hand in glove with the agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals manufacturers to ensure ‘business as usual’.

So, it might seem strange to many that the UK government is seemingly going out of its way (by stripping people of their freedoms) under the guise of a public health crisis but is all too willing to oversee a massive, ongoing one caused by the chemical pollution of our bodies.

Mason’s emphasis on an ongoing public health crisis brought about by poisoned crops and food is but part of a wider story. And it must be stated that it is a ‘silent’ crisis because the mainstream media and various official reports in the UK have consistently ignored or downplayed the role of pesticides in fuelling this situation.

Systemic immiseration

Another part of the health crisis story involves ongoing austerity measures.

The current Conservative administration in the UK is carrying out policies that it says will protect the general population and older people in particular. This is in stark contrast to its record over the previous decade which demonstrates contempt for the most vulnerable in society.

In 2019, a leading UN poverty expert compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and warned that unless austerity is ended, the UK’s poorest people face lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused ministers of being in a state of denial about the impact of policies. He accused them of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”.

In another 2019 report, it was claimed that more than 130,000 deaths in the UK since 2012 could have been prevented if improvements in public health policy had not stalled as a direct result of austerity cuts.

Over the past 10 years in the UK, there has been rising food poverty and increasing reliance on food banks, while the five richest families are now worth more than the poorest 20% and about a third of Britain’s population lives in poverty.

Almost 18 million cannot afford adequate housing conditions; 12 million are too poor to engage in common social activities; one in three cannot afford to heat their homes adequately in winter; and four million children and adults are not properly fed (Britain’s population is estimated at 63 to 64 million).

Welfare cuts have pushed hundreds of thousands below the poverty line since 2012, including more than 300,000 children.

In the wake of a lockdown, we can only speculate about how a devastated economy might be exploited to further this ‘austerity’ agenda. With bailouts being promised to companies and many workers receiving public money to see them through the current crisis, this will need to be clawed back from somewhere.

Will that be the excuse for defunding the NHS and handing it over to private healthcare companies with health insurance firms in tow? Are we to see a further deepening of the austerity agenda, let alone an extension of the surveillance state given the current lockdown measures which may not be fully rolled back?

The need for the current lockdown and the eradication of our freedoms has been questioned by some, not least Lord J. Sumption, former Supreme Court Justice. He has questioned the legitimacy of Boris Johnson’s press conference/statement to deprive people of their liberty and has said:

“There is a difference between law and official instructions. It is the difference between a democracy and a police state”.

Journalist Peter Hitchens says a newspaper headline for what Sumption says might be – ‘Former Supreme Court justice says Johnson measures lead towards police state’ or ‘TOP JUDGE WARNS OF POLICE STATE’.

But, as Hitchens implies, such headlines do not appear. Indeed, where is the questioning in the mainstream media or among politicians about any of this? To date, there have been a few isolated voices, with Hitchens himself being one.

In his recent articles, Hitchens has questioned the need for the stripping of the public’s rights and freedoms under the pretext of a perceived coronavirus pandemic. He has referred to esteemed scientists who question the need for and efficacy of ‘social distancing’ and keeping the public under virtual ‘house arrest’.

An open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, emeritus professor of medical microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to Angela Merkel calls for an urgent reassessment of Germany’s lockdown response to Covid-19.

Then there is Dr Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University. He argues that we have made such decisions on the basis of unreliable data. These two scientists are not alone.

On the OffGuardian website, two articles have appeared which present the views of 22 experts who question policies and/or the data that is being cited about the coronavirus.

Shift in balance of power

Professor Michel Chossudovsky has looked at who could ultimately benefit from current events and concludes that certain pharmaceutical companies could be (are already) major beneficiaries as they receive lavish funding to develop vaccines. He asks whether we can trust the main actors behind what could amount to a multibillion-dollar global (compulsory) vaccination (surveillance) project.

The issue of increased government surveillance has also been prominent in various analyses of the ongoing situation, not least in pushing the world further towards cashless societies (under the pretext that cash passes on viruses) whereby our every transaction is digitally monitored and a person’s virtual money could be declared null and void if a government so decides.

Many discussions have implicated the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in this – an entity that for some time has been promoting the roll-out of global vaccine programmes and a global ‘war on cash’.

For instance, financial journalist Norbert Haring notes that the Gates Foundation and US state-financial interests had an early pivotal role in pushing for the 2016 demonetisation policy with the aim of pushing India further towards a cashless society.

However, the policy caused immense damage to the economy and the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions in India who rely on cash in their everyday activities.

But that does not matter to those who roll out such policies. What matters is securing control over global payments and the ability to monitor and block them. Control food you control people. Control digital payments (and remove cash), you can control and monitor everything a country and its citizens do and pay for.

India has now also implemented a lockdown on its population and tens of millions of migrant workers have been returning to their villages. If there is a risk of coronavirus infection, masses of people congregating in close proximity then returning to the countryside does not bode well.

Indeed, the impact of lockdowns and social isolation could have more harm than the effects of the coronavirus itself in terms of hunger, depression, suicides and the overall deterioration of the health of older people who are having operations delayed and who are stuck indoors with little social interaction or physical movement.

If current events show us anything, it is that fear is a powerful weapon for securing hegemony. Any government can manipulate fear about certain things while conveniently ignoring real dangers that a population faces. In a recent article, author and researcher Robert J Burrowes says:

“… if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course. And no action either.”

And, of course, each day we live with the very real danger of dying a horrific death because of the thousands of nuclear missiles that hang over our heads. But this is not up for discussion.

The media and politicians say nothing. Fear perception can be deliberately managed, while Walter Lippmann’s concept of the ‘bewildered herd’ cowers on cue and demands the government to further strip its rights under the guise of safety.

Does the discussion thus far mean that those who question the mainstream narrative surrounding the coronavirus are in denial of potential dangers and deaths that have been attributed to the virus? Not at all. But perspective and proportionate responses are everything and healthy debate should still take place, especially when our fundamental freedoms are at stake.

Unfortunately, many of those who would ordinarily question power and authority have meekly fallen into line: those in the UK who would not usually accept anything at face value that Boris Johnson or his ministers say, are now all too easily willing to accept the data and the government narrative.

This is perplexing as both the government and the mainstream media have serious trust deficits (putting it mildly) if we look at their false narratives in numerous areas, including chemical attacks in Syria, ‘Russian aggression’, baseless smear campaigns directed at Jeremy Corbyn and WMDs in Iraq.

What will emerge from current events is anyone’s guess. Some authors, like economist and geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, have presented disturbing scenarios for a future authoritarian world order under the control of powerful state-corporate partners. Whatever the eventual outcome, financial institutions, pharmaceuticals companies and large corporations will capitalise on current events to extend their profits, control and influence.

Major corporations are already in line for massive bailouts despite them having kept workers’ wages low and lining the pockets of top executives and shareholders by spending zero-interest money on stock buy backs. And World Bank Group President David Malpass has stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet – on the condition that further neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded:

Countries will need to implement structural reforms to help shorten the time to recovery and create confidence that the recovery can be strong. For those countries that have excessive regulations, subsidies, licensing regimes, trade protection or litigiousness as obstacles, we will work with them to foster markets, choice and faster growth prospects during the recovery.”

In the face of economic crisis and stagnation at home, this seems like an ideal opportunity for Western capital to further open up and loot economies abroad. In effect, the coronavirus provides cover for the further entrenchment of dependency and dispossession.

Global conglomerates will be able to hollow out the remnants of nation-state sovereignty, while ordinary people’s rights and ability to organise and challenge the corporate hijack of economies and livelihoods will be undermined by the intensified, globalised system of surveillance that beckons.

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Petra Liverani
Petra Liverani
Apr 10, 2020 11:20 AM

Excellent article.

Mucho
Mucho
Apr 5, 2020 9:49 PM

Great article, these crimes are so brazen, the public so brainwashed. Trying to explain the benefits of organic food to English people is like trying to explain to a dog the benefits of doing sit-ups. A waste of time.

I once gave a lift home to a bunch of farming students who told me on no uncertain terms that they had been taught all they need to know about organic farming and how it was basically impossible to achieve any yields, the crops always die. They had been totally brainwashed against it.

Natasha
Natasha
Apr 5, 2020 10:45 PM
Reply to  Mucho

Didn’t any of the students question this idea? Every one that has studied the comparisons of organic farming with standard method farming surely knows that organic crops yield more and are better quality. (Many studies done in the Mid Western states of the US specifically done mostly with corn after the issues over genetically altered seeds arose.)

Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
Apr 7, 2020 10:05 AM
Reply to  Natasha

It’s capitalism at work. The ONLY thing that matters is profit maximisation for the parasitic elites.

Tom Welsh
Tom Welsh
Apr 6, 2020 12:53 PM
Reply to  Mucho

A peculiar belief, since all farming before the 19th century was 100% organic – by necessity. Yet billions of people lived long and healthy lives while eating that organic produce.

Magnus
Magnus
Apr 4, 2020 2:58 PM

Here’s another one of those “coincidental” predictions coming true now, from none other than the Rockefeller Foundation:

“China’s government was not the only one that took extreme measures to protect its citizens from risk and exposure. During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets.

“Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified… At first, the notion of a more controlled world gained wide acceptance and approval. Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty…”

Scenarios for the Future ofTechnology and International Development
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-tNG7MjZUicS-wiJb/mode/2up

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 4:32 AM

Behind our modern western government are ghouls, pure and simple. The sort of people who are not really people at all, but cogs in an infernal machine, which was designed to wreck all that is human about human beings.
We have to stop talking about, “if we don’t act now, then this, this, and this will happen”.
It has already happened. So we have to talk about that instead, and how we can make it unhappen, never to be seen again.
The Jewish victims of WW2 spoke of the evil behind their tribulations as something to be experienced “never again”, yet here it is, staring us in the face, bold as brass, no longer focused on any particular racial group, and, yes indeed, again.
It’s the mindset which gives it away. The slavish devotion to a flat screen and the contemptuous glance at the person who called the mainstream news b/s. It makes no difference whether the object of adulation is a “leader”,”dear leader” popular senator, attractive news reporter, party chairman, expert scientist, or famous rock star. The absence of actual thought behind the superficialities is the common characteristic.
And yet, along with the ghouls, we certainly have wise, conscientious, compassionate and noble people amongst us. Now all we have to do is remember how to turn to them for guidance. The media, primarily motivated, as they are, by the financial profit inherent in drama and hysteria, have successfully tempted most of us into turning for guidance to the worst of all people: Career politicians and their supporting corporate parasites. This social sickness is never going to fix itself voluntarily. That would be like asking Margaret Thatcher whether she might not be happier in a nunnery…

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 5:43 AM
Reply to  wardropper

+1000, wardropper

…tho’ i would just say, re:…

“And yet, along with the ghouls, we certainly have wise, conscientious, compassionate and noble people amongst us. Now all we have to do is remember how to turn to them for guidance.”

…and what if those noble people are *us*? – turn to yourself, then. turn to each other… – we need *yet another* clique of snake-oil selling, pied-pipering ‘leaders’ like we all need a hole in the head…

…leaders? – i don’t trust ’em, i have no faith in them, and i got no use for them, neither…

– *always* let *your* conscience be the guide.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 6:08 AM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

Thanks Sgt.
Just have in mind that I didn’t say the people we need to turn to for guidance are necessarily going to be our “leaders”. Just self-aware people with a conscience, like “us”, as you rightly point out.

Tom
Tom
Apr 4, 2020 2:34 AM

Test

notreallyanonymous
notreallyanonymous
Apr 4, 2020 12:33 AM

So, in real life I have noone left that will sensibly talk about what is happening in this country. It’s like everyone is hypnotised. Either they are completely supporting the police state and fascist measures that have been thrust upon us, or they are sticking their heads in the sand and trying to ignore it. I feel completely alone in a sea of madness. Do you guys have a discord or something like that setup so that those of us who still remain out of the grip of the mainstream media’s propaganda can meet other likeminded individuals?

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 4:55 AM

It’s not hypnosis. Some of the people I know are genuinely, if irrationally, afraid. You are certainly not alone, and I know the pain and frustration of trying to introduce some real facts to some of the people I care about, only to realize that I am hurting them and scaring them by doing so.
For example, I have lots of FaceBook friends when I talk about the weather and about cute animals, but as soon as I enter into the serious territory of political wickedness, I have no friends at all.
It’s really quite understandable, since listening to informed people like you and me doesn’t only hurt and scare people. After all, those with a decent education and perfectly healthy intelligence may well suspect that much of what we tell them is true. But it also makes them uncomfortably aware that they lack the courage to join forces with those prepared to fight for truth and justice. They are just not up for a battle, and we all know that it won’t be an easy battle.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 5:10 AM
Reply to  wardropper

In the meantime, I would suggest trying to be content with just knowing what you know, even as a lone individual. We are all essentially alone with our egos, and that isn’t necessarily such a terrible thing. I wish I could remember who said it, but whoever it was lamented the fact that “all the woes of our species can be traced to man’s inability to sit alone and think” – or something like that. There’s a lot of food for thought in that sentence.
For me, it’s enough to know that I’m not alone in my thoughts and aspirations, even if I don’t belong to any groups. Groups of people with similar views are of course an encouraging thing, but it’s really the thoughts that matter more than the group. I reckon that if the thoughts are pointing in a good philosophical direction, building a group around them should be the easy part.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 4, 2020 9:19 AM
Reply to  wardropper

Thanks Wardropper…. one of the top 2 reasons I come here is to connect with other like minded people who also see the reality; who recognise the blatant fascism being put in place.
The other reason is to educate myself.
Where else now am I going to find articles like here at OffG, or Wrong Kind Of Green, or Global Research.
There’s not many alternative sites I trust anymore – not after quite a few have regurgitated the establishment line on the virus, and some, like the WSWS, with blanket, wall to wall, literally grotesque fear mongering. I’ve wiped them. No ifs or buts.
I’m a bit like you and Notreallyanonymous in that I don’t know any friends or even an acquaintance that is on the same wavelength regards the virus and everything else. They all blindly accept it, and yes, I’ve passed on articles here, at Swiss Propaganda Research, told them to watch the video by Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, etc, etc.
There’s quite a few of us here…

David
David
Apr 5, 2020 2:35 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Charles Mackay from 1843 (slightly paraphrased):
People think as a herd.
People go mad as a herd.
They recover their senses very slowly and one by one.

We will have our day.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 5, 2020 3:06 PM
Reply to  David

Appreciate the quote David… but as far as the ‘we will have our day’ part, all I can say is the Gilets Jaunes needs to be replicated, by many millions of people, on the streets… Everywhere.
Especially in the United States.
At the moment I just don’t see that happening.
I’m Not trying to sound pessimistic, but I think most people are blindly and unquestioningly going along and supporting what has happened (lockdowns, social distancing, etc) even progressive and anti establishment people.

anemone
anemone
Apr 4, 2020 8:09 AM

here in italy, the people’s acceptance and compliance is extraordinary. ‘non-believers’ are hard to come by, here and online. i feel as if i have been excluded from a game that everyone else is playacting in!

Grafter
Grafter
Apr 4, 2020 10:17 AM
Reply to  anemone

They accepted the 9/11 fraud so we needn’t be surprised that the reaction is the same once again.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 2:46 PM
Reply to  anemone

This is a pretty exact replica of the school environment we all remember from our youth:
The footballers create a large group and are fully occupied with that activity every single playtime. This is “the game that everyone else is play-acting in”.
The highly intelligent (always a minority) find, if they’re lucky, another intelligent person in the class with whom they can talk about some of the deeper things in life, like science, art and philosophy. These are the “excluded ones”, and they feel exactly as you have described.
The highly intelligent, the artistically sensitive, and the truly creative are often bullied, simply because they do not belong in the majority crowd. It’s not that they’re snobbish, but they are just not interested in switching off their individual minds in order to take part in group play-acting. They don’t see any point in it.
This isn’t a question of right or wrong, better or worse, but of differences and percentages. Of course some footballers are highly intelligent and have a wide range of other interests, just as some sensitive, artistic people will enjoy playing football occasionally. But on the whole, the football game is what our politicians and media see as most beneficial to their financial and social interests, and so that is what the rest of us get swamped by.
I suppose the only hope I can see for making the best of this situation is through better education in the matter of what our society really is. I was lucky in my secondary school to have teachers who spotted ability in all its different forms and encouraged as many of them as they practically could. I even ended up in a small group of four teenagers, three of whom were excellent at sports, and therefore admired by all, yet were also enthusiastic supporters of my own abilities, which were almost exclusively artistic. I often look back to that time and marvel that it was even possible to belong to such a group, since it seems to be rather a rare thing nowadays. That’s what I’d like to see more of, but I’m sure we can all do our bit in that respect.

1of7billion
1of7billion
Apr 4, 2020 12:22 AM

I think we need to get something clear before we get too excited or worried about anything.

The known history of the world has always been full of a small group in high places mostly using and abusing a large group in low places.

So nothing much is really new, except the technology.

And in fact, as thinkers like Jordan Peterson have pointed out, if you compare our average lives now to what they were like almost universally before the start of the 20th century, we really have it “easy” now in all kinds of ways that we – the average citizen – never, never had before in all the planet’s known history.

It is almost certain that everybody reading this article has got a fairly secure roof over their head, a refrigerator and freezer full of food, facilities like running water (even hot!), and numerous other comfort inducing possessions that their ancestors never had for almost all of human history.

And even under this lockdown, most people except a few true unfortunates (like the beggars on the streets) still have all these things, and probably lots of entertainment to make their lives bearable as well; unprecedented entertainments in fact, mostly due to the Internet, as well as an unprecedented and still mostly free ability to communicate with their fellow men and women.

OK, admittedly, we might be under surveillance, but not very likely unless we are showing some definite signs of actually doing something seriously damaging to the system, instead of just talking about it, which is really all we’re doing here and almost everywhere else on the Internet.

And yes, if we try to have “free speech” on sites like “the Guardian”, we don’t get very far, but then it’s their website, so the rules are up to them really – it doesn’t stop us setting up our independent forums, like this one, for those who have the know-how and the means to do that.

So yes, there are some genuinely serious issues in the above article, that we really do need to be concerned about, especially what the powers-that-be are doing with our food and indeed water supply.

But take this compulsory vaccination issue, that I think most thinking people are instinctively against, because it is at least theoretically possible the vaccine could do us more harm than the disease it’s supposed to be preventing.

The drug companies who make these things also have to consider the possibility of getting sued, if these things backfire on people, and that can cost them an enormous amount of money, if for example they are successfully sued in a class action suit.

So the people really at risk are those who participate in trials (sometime due to being short of money, like some sperm donors also), and of course quite often it’s animal trials, and regardless of animal rights issues, I think most people would much prefer a potentially dangerous drug or vaccine were tested on animals first instead of themselves, rather than being “human guinea pigs.”

So though I think compulsory vaccines would be against human rights, it’s a tricky question, if it really does mean if by failing to have one, you might be putting others at risk, and I doubt in fact that a tested vaccine is even a small fraction as dangerous as the now significantly polluted or manipulated food that we are now often all eating.

But in assessing that even, you have to consider the harm that people are even doing to themselves quite knowingly.

For as far as one can see, smoking cigarettes regularly for example, is a lot more dangerous to the human body than any known and still approved vaccine, as is probably excess alcohol consumption.

And people are still having unprotected sex in their millions, often with strangers, with the result that according to the WHO, up to 1.8 million people are getting HIV every year, and up to 1 million dying of it annually, as well as other pretty unpleasant and dangerous STDs.

And significantly also, no vaccine is yet available for the HIV virus, despite it being around since about 1981.

So the chances of anything for COVID-19 in a hurry are also pretty slim, and in fact, may be totally pointless, as it is only one of many COVID viruses, and may have mutated into something else by the time a vaccine is developed, if ever.

But I think the thing we have to consider most of all is that the real problem in this possible poisoning of our food and environment, is we simply do not have the scientific knowledge to know what the truth is about all these chemicals in most cases.

So some activist like Rosemary Mason, uses some research to justify her belief that chemical x is a terrible problem, which it may be, but then the company producing the chemical says it has research that says the opposite.

And of course, because we see this as a “little heroic campaigner” against the “big rich greedy corporation”, we like to believe that the little “David” (or Davina) fighting the big “Goliath” is in the right, and the corporation is telling lies and in the wrong.

But do we actually know the truth?

I mean, I’d hazard a guess most people are using computers and mobile phones and software etc, and maybe wearing clothes or shoes produced by some corporation or other, but nobody is complaining much about that

i.e. if we ask them “OK, you hate corporations, so can you please send your computers, mobile phones, jeans and trainers back? ” most people would suddenly not think corporations were all bad after all.

Likewise, if we get a toothache, which surely every adult knows by that age can drive you absolutely crazy, we are likewise very happy to get our painkiller, which was undoubtedly made by some huge corporation or other, as are most of the movies we watch and drinks we drink.

And of course we all slag off Amazon and Ebay for one reason or another, including not paying enough taxes, but we all still use them anyway when it suits us, and get a lot of cheap stuff thereby we couldn’t otherwise afford.

I’m not trying to say corporations don’t do very bad things, but I think with a population of over 7 billion on the planet, for the moment at least they are totally unavoidable.

The problem is, when corporations get too chummy with government, to the extent that government no longer holds them to account, by for example failing to tax them properly.

The point is, we have a failure of government. It doesn’t represent us well, and it is not very accountable, as we are seeing now with this global lockdown, which wasn’t really a democratic act.

For example again, let’s take global warming.

We can debate whether man is causing that or not, but it looks like even on a site like this one (i.e. more enlightened than most) we wouldn’t get agreement on that issue, with some people believing the temperature variations are a natural event, and others believing that man is courting disaster by continuing to use these fossil fuels in vast amounts.

My own personal view is that we need to get beyond that debate and say “why take the risk?”

That is, if we could develop technology like nuclear fusion, that would at a stroke put an end to fossil fuel dependency, which everybody agrees is at least causing pollution (e.g. the famous acid rain) whether or not it’s causing global warming.

And in the meantime, we could build enough green energy plants (like wind power) to temporarily cut our dependency on fossil and nuclear, which could be done, if the government didn’t bow down to the oil and gas companies.

Bear in mind getting rid of dependency on fossil fuels, oil in particular, would likely solve the Middle East crisis, because I doubt any Western power like the US would give a damn what they do to each other or their own people in the Middle East except for all that oil there.

Which withdrawal of Middle Eastern interference by the West would likely also instantly put a stop to the Muslim terrorism problem – at least in the West, not necessarily in Israel.

And yes, we need to look at what we are doing in farming and to our food supply, because really by making people unhealthy, we are caught in a vicious cycle of food causing bad health causing need for palliative drugs, etc, which is of course costing our various nations an absolute fortune in drug and hospital treatments.

But the drug companies are only doing what we’d be doing in their position – trying to increasing their salaries, trying to get wealthy or rich.

It’s easy to criticise others when we are not in their shoes, and subject to their temptations.

So government needs to act, to “save people from themselves” sometimes, though I don’t think covid-19 is one of those occasions.

The point being however, that none of these decisions are easy, when for example we now have very sophisticated and once again unprecedented systems of medical diagnosis, which so to speak have been able to detect no end of diseases that people in the past “didn’t even know they had” if you know what I mean – one assumes all they knew was they had pain or disability somewhere, but didn’t know what was causing it.

With the result that the drug companies have very successfully indeed – and usually at considerable expense, though possibly inflated – figured out how to keep us alive much longer on average, though not necessarily with a high quality of life.

But in fact, most people do settle for a not very great life, in preference do death.

So then for a government to say, stop making those chemicals/drugs is nearly impossible.

Likewise, because the public demands perfect food, without blemishes (that’s what we do isn’t it, in the supermarket, pick the fruit/veg that looks “perfect” and leave the rest) – the farmers can’t say no to these various chemicals, or they can’t sell their produce.

So we can point fingers at “the bad guys” but it’s very tricky what to actually do about it, especially as we have this vast global population, that is all hungering for food and medicine.

But it does seem as a general policy, we should try to avoid things that never existed in Nature before if that is avoidable – e.g. the plastic products we use for packaging; but again, it’s not easy to see how they could be replaced by something that would do the same job.

But to at least try to solve any of these problems, we need government that represents us, and it appears to me that is therefore what we should focus on above all, and the problem therefore is nobody is much addressing that.

We see our governments bowing down to the rich and powerful and doing mostly what they want all the time, and not what we want.

So my suggestions are and continue to be that we need a better system of elections.

One in which:

a) we get to pick who is on the candidate lists, instead of that being decided by rich backers and special interest groups, which usually represent minority interests against the best interests of the majority

b) we have a voting system in which everybody’s vote counts, which appears to be Full Proportional Representation, or else we are stuck with our mostly “us and them” 2 party system, with quite frankly one lot not much different than the others – they both once in power tend to bow down to the rich and powerful.

And this it not going to be easy, it is going to be maybe the toughest human right to get that has ever been sought, because it amounts to having true democratic elections for the very first time perhaps, because as Mark Twain put it a long time ago: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”

But it will make a difference, if we actually are able to vote for candidates truly selected from the people on merit, and we have a voting system in which every individual vote counts, so it is worth everybody’s while to be voting, which very much is not the case, much of the time now.

notreallyanonymous
notreallyanonymous
Apr 4, 2020 12:42 AM
Reply to  1of7billion

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but they’ve locked us all up in our houses, forbidden us from getting within 2 meters of each other and forbidden us from assembling into groups. This has gone way past the ‘getting the right candidates into elections’ stage, we are now in serious shit and unless people are willing to put themselves on the line, it’s only going to get worse from here on out.

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Apr 4, 2020 1:47 AM

They’ve effectively replaced the possibility of another more virulent “Occupy Wall Street” movement – with “Occupy Netflix.” How convenient and surely complete coincidence.

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Apr 4, 2020 1:10 AM
Reply to  1of7billion

You make some good points 1 of 7.
Until someone puts a pillow or a plastic bag over your face, most of us don’t realise how beautiful the next breath is.
They may take some of our freedom, but they can’t take our sense of being and belonging.

Refraktor
Refraktor
Apr 4, 2020 2:00 AM
Reply to  1of7billion

I would settle for the realistic prospect of any kind of election. The trouble is I think they’ve possibly gone too far for this to happen.

I wonder what they are planning.

They are being relaxed in the UK to the extent that it is possible to completely ignore the curfew – at least where I am.

They are going to have to put up or shut up. A commenter on Yahoo mentioned large scale troop movements in the direction of Plymouth. I don’t know if there’s anything in this but they may be calculating on mass disobedience in the coming days.

There might well be a crackdown.

As for man-made global warming it comes from exactly the same place as COVID 19.

fred
fred
Apr 4, 2020 4:06 AM
Reply to  1of7billion

“It is almost certain that everybody reading this article has got a fairly secure roof over their head, a refrigerator and freezer full of food, facilities like running water (even hot!), and numerous other comfort inducing possessions that their ancestors never had for almost all of human history.”
In the sixties people could have a big house, multiple bedrooms, kitchen, cellar, garage, garden, the whole nine yards.tc. And all the appliances, refrigerator, tv etc. Couples could have multiple children and go on vacation. And all this on one income.

Now couples need multiple jobs, live in a chicken coop and still can’t make ends meet.
(And on top of all that we have the totalitarian police state.)
Yes you could say we have a good standard of living. Think what that standard of living could be without the economy being pilfered by the powers that be. It would be 10 times, maybe 100 times better. And it would be for the whole world.
Oh and vaccines are bad. Do some research. (In the past I also used to think vaccines were ok so I understand why not everybody is clued in on this yet, but not anymore. Avoid at all cost.)
(There’s much more I disagree with but your comment is too long to address everything.)

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 5:20 AM
Reply to  1of7billion

The drug companies who make these things also have to consider the possibility of getting sued, if these things backfire on people, and that can cost them an enormous amount of money, if for example they are successfully sued in a class action suit.
I understand from information I read here recently that the rush of some unscrupulous companies to manufacture a vaccine super-fast comes with a clause which grants them indemnity in the case of harm being done by the vaccine, due to the short time span available in which to develop it!
That’s about the most evil circular argument I think I have ever witnessed.

paul
paul
Apr 3, 2020 8:31 PM

Compare the reactions of different countries to the CV.
Even before it had itself begun to recover, China was sending medical equipment and medical teams abroad to help 89 countries, including Italy, Greece and some of the poorest nations on earth.
Russia was doing the same on a smaller scale, even while preparing for an imminent outbreak on its home turf – including a giant plane load of urgently needed supplies to New York.
Small, impoverished, brutally sanctioned Cuba, also sent medical teams and supplies to Italy and many other countries. Thousands of its doctors provide free medical treatment to people across the planet.

Poland banned Russian relief flights to Italy.
Czechoslovakia seized for its own use (basically stole) Chinese medical supplies in transit to Italy.
Israel started trying to buy up ventilators from all over the world to make a killing, in more ways than one.
When a German company reported promising developments in producing a vaccine, US agencies tried to buy it up for its exclusive use.
The US took the opportunity to intensify its economic terrorism against Iran, Venezuela and other countries.
The US and UK dismissed the CV as passing flu, and wasted many weeks of precious time to prepare for it.

The differences are instructive.

notreallyanonymous
notreallyanonymous
Apr 4, 2020 12:44 AM
Reply to  paul

Are we the baddies?

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 5:26 AM

We are the usual suspects. Probably bad too. Washington is utterly bonkers, and the UK always follows its instructions.

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Apr 3, 2020 7:26 PM

The Swiss numbers. Victims weighted towards women aged between 40 and 60. That is very different to other countries, no? https://covid-19-schweiz.bagapps.ch/fr-1.html

Magnus
Magnus
Apr 3, 2020 8:31 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Victims ? Cas confirmes=confirmed cases, cas decedes = deceased (with my limited French).

Most deceased are over 70 – in fact – 65 % are over 80 according to that graph.

Any signs of excess mortality in Switzerland ?

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 8:49 PM
Reply to  Magnus

Switzerland
Confirmed: 19,606
Deaths: 591
Recovered: 4,846
Active: 14,169
Death rate: 3.01%

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 8:59 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

Questions:

Were those deaths ‘of’ the corona virus, or merely ‘with’ the corona virus?

You mention the number of confirmed cases, but how many unconfirmed cases are there?

Mark
Mark
Apr 3, 2020 9:11 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

There is a difference in Case Fatality Rate (CFR) and Infection Fatality Rate (IFR).

CFR: Deaths / Confirmed = 591 / 19606 = 3.01% .

If you do CFR on a “normal” seasonal flu, you get around 10%.

Normally IFR is used: Deaths / Estimated. With models they can predict what the number of estimated cases are. Its clear that the estimated cases is far far more than confirmed cases. So, IFR is far lower than CFR. Normally for seasonal flu cases they use IFR, now with Corona they are using CFR.

Its strange to use CFR. Because if you only test in hospitals, with patients that are vulnerable, the chances are higher the group has a high mortality rate.

Mark
Mark
Apr 3, 2020 9:21 PM
Reply to  Mark

Suppose you have 1.000.000 people infected by Corona.

The majority have mild symptoms, but 1000 feel bad and go to see a doctor for testing and they are tested positive. Of these 1000 persons, 30 people die unfortunately. The CFR is: 30 / 1000 = 3%. IFR is: 30 / 1.000.000 = 0.003%

The chance that a relatively large group of those 1000 patient die, is because they were feeling so bad they went to see a doctor in the first place. That is why its strange to measure in CFR.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 2:22 AM
Reply to  Mark

– yup!… thanks mark, – what i was trying to say below: – the sample *is not representative* of the population… – skewed results ensue…

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 2:18 AM
Reply to  Mark

“… Because if you only test in hospitals, with patients that are vulnerable, …”

… – furthermore, by doing this you are not testing *randomly*. therefore you *cannot possibly* infer the correct whole-population stats from the sample taken, and thereby accurately compute the correct IFR.

Refraktor
Refraktor
Apr 4, 2020 2:08 AM
Reply to  Vierotchka

Video evidence is coming in of overwhelmed COVID 19 hospitals that are in fact empty or very near it. Is it really sensible to read anything into government generated figures in the light of this this?

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 9:03 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases in Switzerland (from your link)
Women: 52.4% (9,789 cases)
Men: 47.6% (8,876 cases)

of which

Covid-19 deaths in Switzerland (from the same link)
Women: 36.5% (176 cases)
Men: 63.5% (306 cases)

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 9:05 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Sexist comment follows – look away if you are easily triggered.

If you are an affluent Swiss lady of a certain age and are no longer able to go shopping because of the lockdown, what do you do?

Well if all your friends are self-isolating, then obviously you have to at least get tested.

Refraktor
Refraktor
Apr 4, 2020 2:13 AM
Reply to  clickkid

I upped your sexist comment on principle. I have not the slightest idea what it means however.

Alan Tench
Alan Tench
Apr 4, 2020 1:06 PM
Reply to  Refraktor

Same here. Upped the comment but not sure what it means.

anita
anita
Apr 3, 2020 6:37 PM

There is a major issue that no one talks of, although many famous scientists and other thinkers have throughout the millennia, centuries and in recent years highlighted it:
reducing everything to the smallest part. The whole is not a matter of adding its parts, and especially not its smallest parts.
We humans are complex and hence we have no idea what cures
someone and kills someone else with the same disease.
In some cases it is simply the quality of the loving care of the people around, of their
family that makes it that x survives a serious disease, while y does not.
So its reductive even assuming materialism, i.e. that there is nothing beyond sense-perception.
Two people that science otherwise may not be able to differentiate between can one not even get a disease, while the other one gets it in the same condition; in fact the apparently healthier may get it, while the weaker with other preconditions sails through it without a symptom (I was young and healthy to everyone’s knowledge when I nearly passed away from a virus some 14 years ago, while my mother nursed me through although she suffered from high blood pressure and had already had a mild stroke).
We are in particular completely eliminating the role of the human mind on the body.

This reductionism is no longer the case among the best physicists, because of quantum mechanics. But despite, epigenetics, and other new developments which keep telling us that reductionism of the extent that existed in biology is wrong, it is still there, especially in the field of medicine. Im astounded that not a single scientist, even those saying how the epidemiology, the tests, the virulence, etc of the virus that the mainstream is claiming is wrong, or at the very least nothing shows it to be correct, are not mentioning this.

Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, wrote in the 1970s: “most biologists today still use the language and the way of thinking of classical
mechanics; that is, they describe their molecules as if the parts of the molecules
were just stones or something like that. They have not taken notice of the
changes which have occurred in quantum theory … sooner of later, also in biology, one
will come to realize that this simple use of pictures, models and so on will not be quite correct.” It seems to be later for the vast majority of them, although as in epigenetics and so on, some indeed have.

BigB
BigB
Apr 3, 2020 11:14 PM
Reply to  anita

Scientific reductive materialism is just one aspect of the Cartesian Method which has been both spectacularly successful at determining the nature of the physical universe; and a spectacular failure at describing the nature of everything that lives in it …including us. Which is why there is a gaping black hole in our view of the universe: because it does not have any life in it. Let alone human life: or human consciousness.

Which is pretty much why we are in this mess. None of our systems truly account for what is like to be human and alive: as they err toward a rational, objective, and external observer approach …describing what someone might think it is like for you to be you. Which is necessarily depersonalising and dehumanising. Especially when your externally observed behaviour is compared to outdated and redundant theories and philosophical models that are known to be wrong: ironically, by modern science itself.

But we have no new model: because of the invested interest in the old Rational Choice Theory and ”self-interest utility maximisation” philosophical model we have outgrown. But to get a new altruistic model – and a new moral political paradigm – we need a new economic paradigm. That is why we are stuck trying to reduce biology to chemistry to physics along the lines of the old ”dead positive” model (one no self-respecting scientist would adhere to or defend – but it is still the fundament of the Jurassic moral political paradigm …because the atomisation of rational actors is how to maintain control).

You see, the paradigms of politics, science, mathematics, philosophy, the arts, and humanities all share the same core set of beliefs. If we change one: we have to change them all. Which is why science is stuck with the old set of dysfunctional assumptions – that we are not part of the universe we inhabit (because consciousness is subjective and repudiates the reductive materialism of an objective scientific realism). Which, with no place for humanism …is not very real. But it is a very powerful means of coercion and control.

It is a well known problem of first order science – that it is observer independent and participation free. Which neither neither quantum mechanics – according to Schrodinger – or life itself actually is. Life is observer and participation dependent and interactive. Which is why we desperately need a ”second order” scientific method that is also observer and participation dependent and systems based (the modern ”post-positivist” method accounts for bias: but is not truly observer-dependent). Such a science has already been developed: but is abstruse and marginalised. Because it equalises and de-privileges every element of the system as equally important. Who would want a de-classed, de-hierarchical, and levelised moral political system …where resources could be equally accessed and the weakest provisioned first?

So we are stuck with 18th century Enlightenment metaphors and the rational morality of Classical Liberal Democracy – which fails humanity on every count. Supported by genetic and biological determinism and inhumane social-Darwinian accounts of economic culture …backed up by an ‘expert’ control of objectivity by special priviliged access scientism. Akin with a humanities control over subjectivity: by the determination of the inevitability and naturalised account of market economics of a sociological historicism. As Plato put it: “Those who tell stories rule society.”

Science can’t be seen to change (it has: but don’t tell the public) …which is why the parameters of the dialogue are so tightly controlled. If the paradigm of science changes: all other paradigms have to shift to accommodate it. That is because the principles of the scientific paradigm are the foundation of all other paradigms. And the foundational principle of control.

If all paradigms shift – as Thomas Kuhn made clear – we will be living in a new world. One with us included in it. The regimes of power and knowledge require we are excluded by scientism and historicism. You would not want love, compassion, altruism, and socialised communities of mutual aid ruining two and a half millennia of the ruling value-ethics of individual rationalisation of greed, would you now?

Dave Lawton
Dave Lawton
Apr 4, 2020 12:17 AM
Reply to  BigB

Drop some LSD 25 and when you arrive at the Steady State conduct some quantum physics experiments.That is what we use to do at the physics lab in the 60s and 70s.It was playtime.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 2:49 AM
Reply to  anita

yep!… – classical reductionism/determinism is a *crock* and, with respect to most all physical phenomena including biological organisms, *firmly debunked* by the foundational principles of QM. (chiefly, coherence/superposition, the indeterminacy principle, and the implications of bell’s inequality)…

…complex-dynamic systems theory and non-linear dynamics are far more accurate frameworks for understanding the world.

…as for biology/medicine, the work of humberto maturana and francisco varela, on self-organising systems, and that of john conway, on cellular automata, are good jumping-off points…

Grafter
Grafter
Apr 3, 2020 5:56 PM

It appears that RT are not now allowing comments on their articles.

Sophie - Admin1
Admin
Sophie - Admin1
Apr 3, 2020 7:07 PM
Reply to  Grafter

RT have been plugging turbocharged fear porn since this crisis began. Evidence that the Russian state is firmly on board with exploiting this narrative.

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Apr 3, 2020 7:36 PM

Exactly what I was going to post. Given RT’s model which is to highlight every failing in the U.S. system, and given that Russia claims to have the outbreak under control, it’s notable that RT is playing along with the fear.

paul
paul
Apr 3, 2020 8:38 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Perhaps it’s just telling the truth?
I appreciate that’s an alien concept in western countries, but I just put it forward as a possibility.

Sophie - Admin1
Admin
Sophie - Admin1
Apr 3, 2020 9:20 PM
Reply to  paul

No, they aren’t ‘telling the truth’. They use exactly the same hysterical fact-free language to be found in the western press. No attempt at context, very few to no dissenting voices. These things are objectively and measurably true. No point in denying them, unless reality is too emotionally taxing for you.

polistra
polistra
Apr 3, 2020 10:28 PM

This isn’t really new. RT has always been pretty much the same as CNN or MSNBC or Fox. Handling the same issues in the same vicious destructive way. The only difference was that RT didn’t blame Russia for Trump.

But I’m strongly disappointed to see Putin following the shutdown mode. At first it looked like he was going to stay sane. Now he’s no better than the rest.

paul
paul
Apr 4, 2020 12:03 AM
Reply to  polistra

If RT was “pretty much the same” as CNN, nobody would watch it and its ratings would have gone down the same toilet. Western politicians wouldn’t be forcibly closing its bank accounts and harassing it by withdrawing access and press credentials and forcing it to register as a foreign agent. If Putin followed the same “shutdown mode” with state controlled BBC/ Deutsche Welle/ France 24, the howls of outrage would be deafening.

Domestic Russian TV channels give virtually unlimited air time to Russophobic US/ Polish/ Ukrainian politicians. They are allowed to spew out their bile to the hearts’ content. They get high ratings for these freak shows.

Sophie - Admin1
Admin
Sophie - Admin1
Apr 4, 2020 1:30 AM
Reply to  paul

You were correct and we would have agreed with you – before the COVID19 rollout began. But the geopolitical landscape has completely changed in the last few weeks. RT, Sputnik and other Russian outlets are now promoting exactly the same hysteria as their western counterparts.

It’s important to acknowledge realities as they occur. Being locked in anachronistic inflexible thinking is not an option if you want to be relevant.

paul
paul
Apr 4, 2020 2:46 AM

Perhaps they don’t want to appear insensitive to people falling ill and dying by dismissing it as a bit of flu.
Maybe they are caught up in the general anxiety about COVID because they believe this hysteria, if that’s what it is.
I can’t see what other nefarious agenda they would be serving.
But that’s probably me just thinking inflexibly and anachronistically.
There is a lot of their content I would be critical of.
You take it for what it is.
It has challenged western domination of the narrative as much as Wikileaks. Hence the hysterical attempts to shut it down as well.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 5:39 AM
Reply to  polistra

I have seen very little in RT which I would put in the same category as CNN, MSNBC or Fox reporting. Sad news if it’s losing its grip here.

paul
paul
Apr 3, 2020 11:52 PM

They compare very favourably with any other major western network in both accuracy and balance. If there is any slanting, it just offsets the tidal wave of poison spewed out by the legacy MSM. They give a platform to Russophobic figures like the MP Mitchell as a matter of course, and allow them to state their case. They don’t pre censor or cut off guests who deviate from the preferred line. Figures like King accept the Russiagate hoax as an established fact with no career problems. Any BBC or CNN figure who questioned the Syria gas hoaxes or the White Helmets would find himself at the back of the dole queue the following day. It’s a case of B minus versus D minus.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 9:15 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Bullshit.

Tony
Tony
Apr 3, 2020 8:40 PM

I agree entirely, RT is just one more ideological state apparatus among others and it appears to be contributing to the fear being generated for the suggestibility, behavioural manipulation and obedience required for the next phase in this ‘quiet war’ that’s being waged against the global population with ‘silent weapons’ (including coronavirus). As in the paper ‘Silent Weapons for a Quiet War’ but now with further ‘silent weapons’ additions. I won’t go into the ultimate ins and outs of the direction in which we are now heading as I think you know that already or at least I hope that you do.

paul
paul
Apr 4, 2020 12:10 AM
Reply to  Tony

As a “state apparatus”, RT receives state funding of around $250 million, plus normal advertising revenue.
This compares with £4 billion for the BBC alone.
Chicken feed compared to US state funding.
There are many television channels who are openly hostile to Putin and the Russian state.
They are not closed down or exiled to Siberia.
The level of press freedom compares very favourably with any western country.

Tony
Tony
Apr 4, 2020 11:33 AM
Reply to  paul

Hi Paul,

Not disputing your figures Paul, but what has that got to do with what I have stated about it being ‘one ideological state apparatus’ among others and its contribution to the fear mongering here ?

I hope that you notice that RT HAS NEVER CHALLENGED THE EXISTENCE OF THIS ALLEGED CORONAVIRUS and has for the most part gone along with the rest of the usual propaganda of all the other ideological apparatuses.

What we need is concrete scientific proof of the physical existence of this virus which nobody to date has come up with (or are likely to for reasons that should now be obvious) and to prove that it is the sole cause of COVID-19 (which I know they can’t prove). I’m very surprised Paul that you have not figured out why that has never happened or is ever likely to happen in the near future. How many times do I have to keep repeating this stuff before it sinks in? Nevertheless, here it is AGAIN:

Show me a copy of the original scientific paper (that can be done if the virus claim is GENUINE) that proves and demonstrates conclusively that this pathogenic coronavirus physically exists or any of its alleged ‘mutant strains’ with all the details FIRST. Where and when it was done, who funded it, with the name of the scientist(s) involved who claim to have isolated and purified it (not using serology or PCR methods) sequenced the genome, determined its proteins and obtained electron micrographs showing pure virus particles free from transport vesicles, cell debris and other contaminants, and the proved that it was infectious using all the proper controls. If you can do that, then ask RT or any of the other ISA’s to broadcast the details and see what happens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then you’ll get your answer and the truth of the whole issue.

paul
paul
Apr 4, 2020 2:58 PM
Reply to  Tony

I keep an open mind about whether this is all a biological weapon, a gigantic hoax, an outbreak of mass hysteria, or something more serious that has emerged naturally, like syphilis 500 years ago.

I just find RT’s content generally more informative and worth watching than the rest of the MSM. I don’t give anyone a blank cheque, not even Offguardian. I don’t like some of RT’s content. They do a certain amount of pandering to Israel (though far less than others), and seemed to swallow whole the anti Semitism smears against Corbyn.

That said, you take it for what it is. Everybody has their own agenda. You have to use your own judgment.

Tony
Tony
Apr 5, 2020 10:10 AM
Reply to  paul

Hi Paul,

I don’t disagree with what you are saying. I do think that this is a ‘silent weapon’ in the broadest sense of the term including all the factors that you mention. As you may know if you have read my posts I do reject monocausal theories based on germs especially if they are used to deceive people.

The videos that I have just posted by Dr Andrew Kaufman give a sensible view of Covid-19 and in my opinion what he argues dispels most of the crap about an alleged pathogenic coronavirus as the sole cause of Covid-19. But you can judge for yourself on that one.

I agree that RT is a bit more reliable than other ISAs but it is nevertheless a state ideological apparatus and puts out a mixture of information and disinformation. Such as, the number of deaths from Covid-19 that are not worth arguing about because there is no reliable way to verify them if you catch my meaning.

People can argue about statistics and epidemiology till the cows come home on this one – its a revolving door and a distraction from one crucial issue, namely. coming up with the scientific proof for this alleged pathogenic coronavirus which everybody believes in WITHOUT CONCRETE SCIENTIFIC PROOF. They simply take the word of authority that the virus exists and it is ‘pathogenic’ when its NOT and it is the sole cause of Covid-19 when its NOT and it has not and cannot be proven to be by anybody to date.

The theory of pathogenic viruses itself is contradictory and incoherent for a number of different reasons which I won’t go into here, even if this virus or any other virus could be proven to be ‘pathogenic.’ The problem is microbiologists and virologists can’t bring themselves to admit it – there must be a very good reason to perpetuate the myth.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 9:14 PM

That is simply not true.

Roger Dixon
Roger Dixon
Apr 6, 2020 4:32 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

And the truth is? Come on, don’t be shy.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 6, 2020 5:08 PM
Reply to  Roger Dixon

All you need to do is to go to their website and read their articles to know that what you wrote is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Antonym
Antonym
Apr 4, 2020 1:58 PM

Or Off-Guardian if off about the deadliness of this virus for those with weak immune systems?

Why can’t covid19 be unplanned like other pandemics and be misused as a smoke screen by some to hide a 2008 to the power of 2?

Mister Bump
Mister Bump
Apr 6, 2020 11:04 PM
Reply to  Antonym

Totally agree. This is the most probable and self evident truth, oocams razor and all that.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 8:20 PM
Reply to  Grafter

If I were to write bullshit I wouldn’t want any comments on it either.

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 3, 2020 8:30 PM
Reply to  Grafter

To be fair to RT I had noticed that they ceased taking BTL comments on all online articles from early January. The standard of ‘debate’ had deteriorated to such a dire level that I had assumed that they just thought it was pointless sustaining the comment threads.

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 3, 2020 10:56 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Just to clarify my ambiguity, I was referring to ‘the standard of debate’ on BTL, not RT articles and programmes. The threads would have the occasional constructive comments but would quickly degenerate into ad homs most of which were then censored making threads unreadable.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 5:38 PM

“Nursing staff: The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports: „Throughout Europe, the pandemic is endangering the care of elderly people at home because nursing staff can no longer visit them – or have left the respective country in a hurry to return home.“”

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Apr 3, 2020 7:38 PM
Reply to  clickkid

And yet the Swiss report that one third of Swiss hospitalizations are younger than 60 https://lenews.ch/2020/04/03/coronavirus-one-third-of-swiss-hospitalisations-younger-than-60/

Charlotte Russe
Charlotte Russe
Apr 3, 2020 5:37 PM

An investigation undertaken in 2000 found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States were attributable to low levels of education; 176,000 to racial segregation; 162,000 to low social support; 133,000 to individual-level poverty; 119,000 to income inequality; and 39,000 to area-level poverty. In other words, 4.5% of U.S. deaths were found to be attributable to poverty.

Extreme wealth and income inequality has widened considerably over the last two decades. We can only imagine the staggering death rate resulting from indigence in 2020.

Another troubling statistic is the enormity of young adults who are physically unfit. Interestingly enough, a 2009 study was conducted by the US Military. The study revealed that “75 percent of America’s 17- to 24-year-olds were ineligible for military service due to lack of education, obesity, and other physical problems, or criminal history.

The report goes on to say: “A full 27 percent of young Americans are simply too overweight to join the military. Many are turned away by recruiters and others never try to join. Of those who attempt to join, however, roughly 15,000 young potential recruits fail their entrance physicals every year because they are
too heavy. Nearly 32 percent have other disqualifying health problems, including asthma, eyesight or hearing problems, mental health issues, or recent treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.”

A entire younger generation is unhealthy, physically unfit, and uneducated.

It should also be emphasized, that 80% of the US working-class lives paycheck to paycheck, and most don’t possess enough cash to cover a $400.00 emergency.

This is the destitute backdrop of a society which allows three Americans to hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country. To put it more precisely, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos—collectively hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population, a total of 160 million people or 63 million American households.

Roughly a fifth of Americans “have zero or negative net worth.” Commodifying all aspects of life erected a neo-feudal economy.

LET THEM EAT GARBAGE

The working-poor are incentivized to dine on rubbish. Foods infused with fructose based syrup causing mass obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. “The addition of fructose in the food supply became popular in the 1970’s when fructose was used to produce high fructose corn syrup HFCS. HFCS can contain up to 90% fructose, however, most of the HFCS that is commercially sold contains 55% fructose and 45% glucose . HFCS is frequently used as a sweetener in the food industry because it is cheaper to produce, has a long shelf-life, maintains long-lasting moisturization in industrial bakeries, and is sweeter than most other sugars.”

Add to this mixture, all the unhealthy snacks and meals encrusted with excessive sodium and you can understand why large portions of the population are chronically ill. “Excess sodium increases blood pressure because it holds excess fluid in the body, and that creates an added burden on the heart. Too much sodium will increase your risk of stroke, heart failure, osteoporosis, stomach cancer and kidney disease.”

Millions of Americans survive on cheap snacks and inexpensive canned products smothered with fructose or sodium. A diet which for decades served the economic interests of the medical industry a system which in reality is a “scam sick-care operation” rather than a healthcare system.

The real medical emergency, is caused by the industries legally allowed to manufacture poison for consumption. A slow acting poison killing millions who are feasting nonstop on obesity causing foods, but totally lack nutrition. The manufacturer’s of “non-nutrition” are supplying a steady flow of medical patients to the health insurance industry.

Predatory economics can only profit from sickness and unending wars.

A sickly malnourished population are most susceptible to viral infections. Infections, that could be fought off by one’s own body’s immunity, if the person was well-nourished, healthy and fit. But then again, feeding a population with healthy fresh foods not awash with chemicals would not be as profitable, nor would it keep millions sustained on an array of deleterious medications.

BREAKING NEWS: INCOME AND WEALTH INEQUALITY IS THE REAL CRISIS.

The wealthy don’t need to be told inequality is a crisis, they’re totally aware that’s the case. After all, since 2016 they’ve seen tens of thousands of enthusiastic Bernie supporters attending numerous rallies where Bernie screams convincingly against social injustice, but recently voted for the bailout designed to transfer trillions to the most wealthy. Oh well, no ones perfect……. In fact, Bernie probably knows that the uber-wealthy are cognizant that inequality results in dreadful social problems, but they just don’t want to part with a dime, or make any social concessions.

Enter–social distancing, self-isolation, lockdowns, quarantines, the National Guard, and heightened surveillance.

I just happened to stumble upon an excerpt from article written in 2007, which many reading at that time would’ve dismissed as sounding too “conspiratorial.” However, this same paragraph read 13 years later during a panic pandemic resonates with insightfulness and truth:

“Do you know what 9/11 was? It was a pretext for a New World Order, where war is perpetual with no winners, where freedom, dignity and privacy are things of the past, where national sovereignty is replaced by centralized global dictatorship, where people serve technology rather than it serving the people and where half the world population is liquidated to make us more manageable. It is a place where everyone is implanted with ID chips, GPS tracking chips and mind-control brain-chips and where your every movement (including your bowel movements and urination) is monitored 24 hours a day by cameras and chips which are imbedded in every single object both in your dwelling space and throughout the entire environment of planet earth. Meanwhile, elites like the Rockefellers will be designated “KMA” or “Kiss My Ass” which means hands off and no surveillance allowed on them. Oh yeah and by the way,
they don’t pay income taxes either.”

mcdonagh4
mcdonagh4
Apr 3, 2020 5:51 PM

Great article thanks for it .

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 3, 2020 11:42 PM

Excellent comment Charlotte, thanks.
That study was done in 2000, some 20 years ago. Obviously those figures will be much worse now, and I think of States like West Virginia, Ohio, Alabama, places like Philadelphia and Camden NJ…. just completely forgotten and basically left to fend for themselves.
And 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck in the ‘land of the free’. And yet the propaganda is relentless, 24/7.
Theres a huge volcano waiting to go off Charlotte, despite what I read about how apathetic people are in the US (same here in Australia). People can only take so much pain and misery.
That paragraph you quoted from that article was chilling.

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Apr 4, 2020 2:41 AM

Thank you for a great comment post Charlotte. The notion that our elites here in America, and their stooges in the political class, care in any way, shape or form about the health or even the life and death of the common person here is completely laughable. A half a million dead Iraqi children are “worth it” to these sociopaths, and as you pointed out, the poverty related deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of America’s poor every year are no doubt also considered – “worth it.”

It will be hard to repeat “Occupy Wall Street” when we are all on lockdown.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 4, 2020 6:00 AM
Reply to  Gary Weglarz

In this all-encompassing game of chess, Black has made its move.
This is Black’s strategy to divert our ADHD-afflicted minds away from Gilets Jaunes, Julian Assange, national health services, government corruption and planned genocide.
I’m not a chess player, but there has to be a superb strategist out there somewhere who is ready and willing to play White’s counter-move.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 5:37 PM

“USA: More videos by citizen journalists show that in hospitals described by US media as „war zones“, it is in fact still very quiet.”

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Apr 3, 2020 6:08 PM
Reply to  clickkid

Jason Goodman: Ghost Town NYC – Is the Military Conducting Clandestine Nocturnal Operations On Park Avenue in NYC?
Have Patented SERCO Fake News Injects Driven A Real Viral Pandemic with Special Guest David Hawkins
Both on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Cl9QaRtuW9CNjP7pP4BBQ/videos

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 5:36 PM

“Italy: Russian experts have noticed „strange deaths“ in nursing homes in Lombardy: „According to newspaper reports, several cases have been registered in the town of Gromo in which alleged corona virus-infected persons simply fell asleep and never woke up again. No real symptoms of the disease had been observed in the deceased until then. () As the director of the nursing home later clarified in an interview with RIA Novosti, it is unclear whether the deceased were actually infected with the coronavirus, because nobody in the home had been tested for it. () In the homes, where medical and nursing teams from Russia are working, corridors, bed rooms and dining rooms are disinfected”

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 5:23 PM

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 5:34 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

Utter nonsense!

How can he know the case fatality rate without knowing the total number of infected?

He mentioned that South Korea has been implementing measures ‘unacceptable in our western world’. However, South Korea has implemented nothing like the European measures.

That’s just from the first few minutes.

I’ll try and find time later to deconstruct this stuff further.

PS – He’s a banker too.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 8:35 PM
Reply to  clickkid

He is far too intelligent for you which is why you didn’t really understand anything he said.

Oh, and he is not a banker at all!

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 8:56 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

“in Geneva, in charge of all private banking market” at 01:35 – English Video.

“He is far too intelligent for you ”

I won’t respond diectly to the ad hominem. I’ll just let is sit there.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 9:37 PM
Reply to  clickkid

You missed the “I was”, which means he no longer is.

In this video, he explains who he is:

That was not an ad hominem, it was a simple statement of fact.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 10:14 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

Based on what – my criticism of a video you posted?

If you’ve got a point to make, then do it with data and reasoning.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 8:49 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

So, I watched both of the videos. He speaks mainly in academic generalities.

He doesn’t engage with two important aspects of the data:

1. How many people are already infected.

2. What are the real death statistics – ie the difference between dying ‘of’ the effects of the virus. and dying ‘with’ the virus.

The importance of these is that their relation determines mortality.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 9:38 PM
Reply to  clickkid

He does in some of his videos in French.

Dave Lawton
Dave Lawton
Apr 4, 2020 12:29 AM
Reply to  Vierotchka

Is he taking the piss? Because there is nothing new in what he is spouting.

John Milton
John Milton
Apr 3, 2020 5:02 PM
Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Apr 3, 2020 6:18 PM
Reply to  John Milton

Some U.S. states already have traffic camera systems that identify vehicles of state employees making them effectively impervious to Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) and airport security checks that wave through certain state employees.

Mike Ellwood
Mike Ellwood
Apr 4, 2020 12:17 AM
Reply to  John Milton

Sounds like another Hancockup.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 3:05 AM
Reply to  John Milton

“Ihre papiere, bitte…”

paul
paul
Apr 4, 2020 3:04 PM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

“No blecks allowed aht withart a parss!”

paul
paul
Apr 3, 2020 4:57 PM

Globalist glove puppet Gutierrez at the UN is now demanding a 10% cut of the entire global economy as a “COVID Recovery Fund..”

Louis N. Proyect
Louis N. Proyect
Apr 3, 2020 4:30 PM

Everyone knows that coronavirus was caused by a new variant of superthermite developed by the Chinese intelligence services in collaboration with George Soros and dispersed via the cellphone network through a conspiracy of the Illuminati and the Sanhedrin.

It’s obvious.

If you see strange flashes from your telephone, dunk it immediately in a solution of colloidal silver and chicken soup, stand on your head, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance backward ten times.

You’ll be all right.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 5:09 PM

Louis, what do you mean by ‘truther’?

paul
paul
Apr 3, 2020 8:40 PM

I think you’ll probably find it escaped from a biological weapons lab in Seattle.

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Apr 4, 2020 3:22 AM

Hey Louie, maybe you can educate we poor sots and write a rebuttal to the just published study out of A&E for 9/11 Truth. It’s a four year study from University of Alaska Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering showing building 7 was clearly brought down by controlled demolition not “fires” – as NIST still maintains in utter defiance of the laws of physics. All the support columns gave way simultaneously the study proved – the building’s collapse was even clairvoyantly predicted minutes before it actually happened – by the BBC I believe it was.

Surely you can debunk all this “scientific” mumbo jumbo nonsense for us Louie – or, well, at least you can take the time to – “mock it” – eh?

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Apr 4, 2020 6:22 AM

A small attempt at mockery Louis?
Very small.
Can you remember the names of the kids you bullied at school?

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 4, 2020 9:43 AM

OMG…. You’re so funny Louis🤣
You could almost do stand up!
Ever hear of the term ‘the compatible left’? Speaking of which, I noticed you have a link to Jacobin on your pithy little site which I thought was incredibly apt.
How’s your old buddy Bill Weinberg going? Must say, judging by the certifiably bonkers stuff he has on his blog, perhaps you two could get together and swap notes?
You know…. kiss and make up?
I’m sure Vanessa Beeley is still waiting on your apology. Be a man. Do the right thing.

BigB
BigB
Apr 3, 2020 3:10 PM

It’s not rocket science: it’s systems science that is needed to understand the lockdown and lobotomisation of freedom and sanity …as part of the globalised centralisation and privatisation of discipline and control. The ruling value ethos and scientific principle (not science itself: the ruling metaphysics that governs science: aka the hegemony of the positivist Cartesian Method toward the alethic monism of a singular Universal Truth = scientism).

It is all about the narrowing of interests and parametric determination of probabilistic system laws into fixed, universal, eternal, law-like determinate fixations of linearised causes and effects (which equals the Nomological Principle of materially determinate (observable and testable) Universals = Cartesian cosmographic Nomos). The ruling drive psychology is economically determined by market mechanisms of Trans-National Money Multiplication Sequences (TNMMS = M-M’-M”-M”’ …M-adic maximisation sequences …with no productive factor whatsoever) of an infinitism of exponential growth: driving atomic actors of Self Interest Maximisation (SIM) of Rational Actor Theorists (RAT) of unconscious life-blind choice [McMurtry]. In other words: the structurally determined drift of unconscious life-blind choices of SIM-RATs.

The globalised yet centralised Behaving System of law-like determinate states and docile bodies: is, in itself autonomous; self-regulating; self-perpetuating as a stateful and purposive entity. That is: it is out of control and controlling …as an autonomous emergent state of the global alignment of atomic actors (hyper-individuals) who themselves are controlled by supra-human systemic laws of the limitlessness of exponential growth (reflexive and self-recursive maximisation of rational growth).

In other words: the globalised market economy is an autonomous, stateful, and purposive emergent entity that controls the narrow-focus behaviourism of its SIM-RAT atomic actors …and not the other way around. The top down autonomic control is metastable and capable of only minimal regulation. The bottom-up control (regulation) of SIM-RAT radical behaviourism of autonomous hyper-individuals is very limited. The economically determined Behaving System controls the radical behaviourism of biological bodies of SIM-RATs: and not vice-versa.

In other words: we are under the control of an all-consuming and subsuming globalised emergent supersystem: whose top-down control orders and structures all sub-machine components as SIM-RAT subsystems …with minimal and highly constrained autonomous adaptive behaviours of their own. Ecologists have been aware of this for some time: but no has been listening to the environment. Apparently, its limitless …just as the cultural SIM-RAT moral DNA told us to say.

The principles of fixation of systemic laws – from probabilistic to universal law-like innate cause and effect determinism – is known as ”allopoiesis” (other-creation: external laws determined by others by dogmatic and doctrinaire application of the nomological principles of scientism). Such law-like lockdowns can be said to be ”allonomic”: that is the centralised, economically rationalised, systemic control from without. I’ve already previously mentioned the linguistic determinations of control descriptions as the hidden ideology of natural language. Only, it is not natural to be controlled from without by an emergent SIM-RAT superorganismic machine. And I do not want to be subsumed as a SIM_RAT simulation.

The only recourse is to ”fake it ’till we make it”: with an emergent evolution of an eco-politics of degrowth, decentralisation, deglobalisation, and regenerative cultures of reciprocity and redistribution. In other words: exactly the opposite of what the SIM-RAT machinic supersystem is trying to subsume, structure and deterministically order our consensual law-like behaviour from without. We can find the biology of love within – that needs no economically determined out-of-control metastisising supersystem of external control – not when we control our behaviour with practices of selflessness and compassion. We evolved to do that. We don’t have to think about it. It’s automatic: at least when we are not being socialised into law-like SIM-RATs. In the meantime: it’s degrowth or supersystemic infinitism of metastatic growth. If we can’t decide because of global compassion and love: I suggest we fake it ’till we make it. We can talk about where it all went wrong later: if we ever get out of this runaway supersystemic shitshow!

Metta and shanti to the communities of the free.

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Apr 3, 2020 3:00 PM

Some excellent points are made in this post. Decade upon decade of our global corporation’s and elite’s complete disregard for the health and welfare of workers and of all of earth’s ecosystems, BUT SUDDENLY – and on cue like trained seals – we plebs are supposed to believe this same class who thinks a half a million dead Iraqi children are – “worth it” – care one whit about the “health” of anything but their personal bank account? How blinded by fear does one have to be at this point – not to question the current narratives and to see them for what they are, and to see where they are taking us?

Cassandra2
Cassandra2
Apr 3, 2020 5:05 PM
Reply to  Gary Weglarz

I’ve just returned from the shops and I’m angry as hell – the degree of BLIND obedience exhibited by the people in observing facile social distancing attired in masks and rubber gloves is disheartening – grist to the mill of the New World Order and a fate worse than death.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 5:10 PM
Reply to  Cassandra2

Do you mind saying which country you are in?

Watt
Watt
Apr 3, 2020 10:40 PM
Reply to  clickkid

Could certainly, and for sure, be the UK. Trust me.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 3:11 AM
Reply to  Gary Weglarz

…b’ b’ but… – look how much they’ve cut air pollution!… – and in just *6 weeks*!!…

😉

paul
paul
Apr 3, 2020 2:59 PM

All the mega bailouts for the banksters, the City wide boys, and the deadbeat tax dodging corporations, will have to be paid for. No prizes for guessing who will have to pick up the bill.
The current bailout is already a multiple of 2008.
That was paid for with years of austerity, welfare cuts, bedroom taxes, pasty taxes, caravan taxes, universal credit, 20,000 fewer police, cutting the army to 70,000, NHS cutbacks, local cutbacks, everything cutbacks.
Maybe this time they will just flog off the NHS as there’s no money for it any more.
They’ve given it all away to their cronies.
Maybe Branson will take his £7.5 billion bailout and set up Virgin Health to replace it.
That’s what happened in Greece.
They sacked 90% of the doctors when they couldn’t afford to pay them any more.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 3:16 AM
Reply to  paul

… – funny innit, how if i lend you a ’20, *YOU* owe *ME*, yet when we bailout (lend) them, *WE* owe *THEM*?!…

paul
paul
Apr 4, 2020 3:07 PM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

It’s called high finance, S.
So kind of our kosher friends to create money out of thin air and charge us interest on it.

Enough
Enough
Apr 3, 2020 2:59 PM

The belief that governments are there to protect people’s health has been continually shattered with their complacency in introducing all sort of chemicals poisons into the food chain.

Thank you immensely Colin for writing about this and demonstrating that government concerns about the health of ordinary people are essentially lip service.

Most governments around the world are in lock-step with the spreaders of cancerous chemicals and are giving Big Poison so much immunity and free pass to alter food composition that it beggars belief.

Citizens must unite, lead and initiate actions to investigate the relationship between so many people in the First World having increasing number of ‘underlying conditions’ and the phenomenal increase in poisonous food additives? (And No, it is not the age alone!!)

George Mc
George Mc
Apr 3, 2020 2:22 PM

Here’s a little preview of forthcoming attractions:

Various day centres for vulnerable groups, e.g. disabled adults, have already been disbanded over the last few decades and the ex-members sent out to exercise their entrepreneurial rights by getting bored in coffee shops. This is wonderful news for the local councils who no longer have to employ a full staff to cover a regular working week. This has happened in urban areas. In more isolated areas, this manoeuvre has been strenuously resisted since there is so much less for the members to do. This resistance has been fierce and, so far, successful.

Ah but that’s all changed now.

All centres closed down and the staff sent home to be on standby for redeployment. Just a temporary measure, you understand. But regrettably the rules of service will have to be (temporarily!) rewritten. Longer hours, uncertain shift patterns. And, equally regrettably, we cannot hope to cover all the (temporarily suspended) members who may have to exercise their entrepreneurial rights by sitting at home and watching telly.

Now currently everyone is under the curious impression that this will one day all just go away. But think: here we have a situation which, for decades, the councils have clearly been aiming for.

And that is just a microcosm of the whole opportunistic scramble.

bob
bob
Apr 3, 2020 2:19 PM

Today’s UK column nails the data – exceptional work by them – plus interview and analysis from Andrew Mather – link not available yet but sure you can find it.

Guess what – the goverment is LYING

Cassandra2
Cassandra2
Apr 3, 2020 5:30 PM
Reply to  bob

-1 a miss aim. Today’s UK column should be watched by ALL, it highlights the gross distortions being perpetuated by MSM with the BBC leading the way . . . . big time.

bob
bob
Apr 3, 2020 6:42 PM
Reply to  Cassandra2

trivial

Dave Lawton
Dave Lawton
Apr 4, 2020 12:32 AM
Reply to  Cassandra2

The BBC has always been National Socialist.
“John Reith Director General of the BBC said to the Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop that the BBC was not anti Nazi and if they were to send his German opposite number over for a visit he would fly the swastika from the top of Broadcasting House.”
Appeasing Hitler Tim Bouverie.

Steve Hayes
Steve Hayes
Apr 3, 2020 2:08 PM

The Coronavirus Act 2020 provides legal authority for fascism. This is not hyperbole. Tucked away, towards the end of the Act, in Part 2 Section 90, there are two clauses: the first states that a national authority may by regulation alter the expiry date; the second states that a national authority may by regulation alter any power. A national authority is a minister of the Crown. Thus, the Act provides the legal authority for the state to do anything, for ever. Yet none of this has been scrutinised by parliament nor has the corporate media bothered to subject it to scrutiny. https://viewsandstories.blogspot.com/2020/04/coronavirus-fascism.html

bob
bob
Apr 3, 2020 2:20 PM
Reply to  Steve Hayes

yes, and the queen FAILED to support ‘her’ people by giving royal ascent to it – she’s so old now must have forgotten her oath in 1953

Steve Hayes
Steve Hayes
Apr 3, 2020 2:26 PM
Reply to  bob

bob That’s too cryptic for me. What bit of the coronation oath do you think she violated by giving the Bill Royal Assent?

bob
bob
Apr 3, 2020 3:46 PM
Reply to  Steve Hayes

The Archbishop shall minister these questions; and The Queen, having a book in her hands, shall answer each question severally as follows:

Archbishop. Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon, and of your Possessions and the other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?

Queen. I solemnly promise so to do.

Archbishop. Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?

Queen. I will.

presumably, having read the coronavirus bill/act she is aware of its meaning – that it denudes the people of their rights – she is ‘our’ protector and therefore, by giving ascent she is knowingly contradicting her role to look after ‘her’ people -this law is BAD LAW

Tony
Tony
Apr 3, 2020 3:57 PM
Reply to  bob

You’ve hit the nail on the head Bob, oppressive legislation doesn’t go away either, it remains on the statute books for future use!

Steve Hayes
Steve Hayes
Apr 3, 2020 3:59 PM
Reply to  bob

bob I very much doubt that she read the Bill. It was three hundred and twenty pages long. But more to the point, the oath does not say what you appear to believe it says. It does not say that she swears to uphold our rights; nor does it say she swears to protect and look after us.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 6:00 PM
Reply to  bob

Bob, the Queen is obliged to give Royal assent.

She does not have a choice in the matter. The UK is a constitutional monarchy and parliament is supreme. Since 1689!

If it was the Queen’s choice then she would be in charge and parliament would be her paid lackeys. It would be an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia. It isn’t. The Prime Minister runs the country.

Enough
Enough
Apr 3, 2020 4:09 PM
Reply to  Steve Hayes

Asking patients with existing conditions to sign ‘do-not-resuscitate’ (DNR) forms is now being discussed by doctors in US and UK, as mentioned in Washington Post, CNN and RT.

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 4:45 PM
Reply to  Enough

I’m dead once, I’m dead, I wouldn’t want to die again…but that is my choice.

Cassandra2
Cassandra2
Apr 3, 2020 5:36 PM
Reply to  Steve Hayes

Everybody seems to be questioning the lack of Media investigation, but such an expectation of the MEDIA reflects a displacement of reality – they work for the initiators of this virus panic and global upheaval.

Cicatriz
Cicatriz
Apr 4, 2020 12:10 AM
Reply to  Cassandra2

I think it’s rhetorical. A kind of tacit acknowledgement that there is no surprise the press is doing nothing.

George Mc
George Mc
Apr 3, 2020 3:16 PM
Reply to  Bed O'des

Unfortunately the majority of people I talk to have a childlike faith in the mainstream news. Indeed – faith doesn’t even come into it. They never think about it at all. What alerted me from the start was the blindingly obvious hysteria mongering. And I cannot understand why anyone – far less almost everyone – cannot see this. They simply “plug in” to the media.

Or perhaps – to be more charitable – they feel that resistance, i.e. to suspect the media of deliberately misleading the viewers, would be too disturbing. For one thing, the sheer brutal alteration of every aspect of everyone’s life indicates a terrifyingly callous and cynical ruling elite.

Another aspect of this capitulation – and one that applies even to those who are suspicious – is the feeling of impotence. And this is where a basic astuteness comes across quite often from those who don’t seem academically bright but who have a far more solid intuitive grasp of situations. I have met people who seem to me to know damn fine what is going on. But they don’t speak up because they are weighing up what can be done and it is clear to them that individually they can do nothing.

And then there are those souls who are so complacently stuck in a conservative attitude and are quite arrogant about dismissing all that “conspiracy stuff”.

Of course, everything I say at the moment only applies to the situation as of now. And it’s early days i.e. early days in a matter which I am certain (and we have even been told) will drag on for months. What will happen after another two weeks and people get fed up with putting lame cutesy jokes on Facebook e.g. “Oh which room will I visit this year for my summer holidays?”

Tony
Tony
Apr 3, 2020 7:51 PM
Reply to  Bed O'des

Nanoparticles are already being used as carrier particles for delivery of certain prescription drugs. The reason why these nanoparticles (NPs) are attractive for medical purposes is based on their important and unique features, such as their surface to mass ratio that is much larger than that of other particles, their quantum properties and their ability to adsorb and carry other compounds.

Here’s an early scientific paper by De Jong et al (2008):

De Jong WH, Borm PJ. Drug delivery and nanoparticles:applications and hazards. Int J Nanomedicine. 2008;3(2):133–149. doi:10.2147/ijn.s596

gordon
gordon
Apr 3, 2020 12:45 PM

round up ready
round them up
in boxes
the cattle must be digital processed
round up round up
ready
glyphosatan
call it what you will
big brudder pharma farma nose best
eat drink pause and refresh
taste freedum
from your home box
you tube poppy or sunflower fields
in 4k
new reality virtually
that is the law
the law the rules of the beast

be sickly eat badly drink fizzy pop sugar corn syrup canola oil a must
johnny sliced bread you can be mended forever
food is not your medicine
medicine not your food.

oil industry synthetic medicine
dna rna manipulation crispr
is your future

herbs are for hippies
organics for swampy anarchists

chemi cull is good

bob
bob
Apr 3, 2020 12:29 PM

just to let Boris & Co how I feel:

don’t mess with me

Greg Bacon
Greg Bacon
Apr 3, 2020 12:18 PM

Between humanity’s exposure to glyphosate, the nano size particles of aluminum, fullerenes, thorium barium, etc being injected into the planet’s atmospheres–in the Pentagon’s quest to weaponize the atmosphere–and the not tested enough 5G technology, it’s no wonder humans might be more susceptible to any kind of virus.

The nano particles are used not only for weather modification, but a variety of schemes, including the coming DEW–Directed Energy Weapons, planet-wide communications and the ability to spy on countries from space. These particles are so small, you don’t have to inhale them to get them into your blood, they can penetrate thru your skin.

Now Bill Gates is hawking his ID2020, as the cure-all for what ails the planet, all you need is to get an injection that will contain who knows what, but will be needed if you want to go shop for food or visit a relative.

Yes, this all sounds crazy, but when you consider then realize that the USA is being run by a motley collection of sadists, thugs, thieves, liars and mass-murderers, it’s not so crazy.

P.S. If you want to find out more about the insanity the Pentagon is doing to our atmosphere, try “Under An Ionized Sky: From Chemtrails to Space Fence Lockdown” by Elana Freeland.

https://feralhouse.com/under-an-ionized-sky/

Alan Tench
Alan Tench
Apr 3, 2020 12:11 PM

The telegraph live update (paywall) has this headline:

UK heads for major recession as services sector enters ‘black hole’

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/04/03/markets-live-latest-coronavirus-news-pound-euro-ftse-100-live2/

Here’s a brilliant comment (that hasn’t yet been censored):

Johnson is acting like a man who has discovered a wasp nest in the loft and has decided to burn the house down to get rid of it.

For Johnson read ‘every world leader’ (except maybe Germany and Sweden).

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 3:34 AM
Reply to  Alan Tench

…during his occasional dispatches from self-isolation, is it just me, or is bojo looking/sounding *massively* coked out of his skull and pissed as a fart, rather than, y’know, ‘a bit flu-ey’?…

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 3, 2020 12:11 PM

Here’s an interesting flowchart produced by NICE (updated 27 March 2020). It specifically covers a frailty assessment of people admitted to hospital who have physical and mental disabilities (presumably confirmed as Covid19 patients although the chart itself doesn’t directly make that clear). Note that, depending on a judgement made by an assessing physician, the patient could be placed on track for “end of life care”.

An initial (subjective) assessment is made to ‘track’ patients as ‘More frail’ or ‘Less frail’. Those categorised as ‘More frail’ are then subdivided by (subjective) assessment as ‘Critical care considered appropriate’ or ‘Critical care not considered appropriate’.

As someone commenting BTL on another website stated, the Nazis would have been proud of this guidance.

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng159/resources/critical-care-admission-algorithm-pdf-8708948893

Tony
Tony
Apr 3, 2020 2:07 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Well Judy, I did warn people that we are already in a ‘quiet war’ with ‘silent weapons’ being used against us at different levels under the ruse of being for our own health and protection to prevent ‘contagion’ from this alleged ‘deadly’ coronavirus and COVID-19. This is just one means by chance or by design for us to be jackbooted another step further toward the goal corporate fascism on a local and a global scale -but that’s nothing really new is it?

Unfortunately, the people will only put up with so much for so long and the war may eventually become ‘noisy’ and ugly if people start to figure out what a gift this bogus coronavirus was to the central bankers, politicians, the pharma cartel and corporations that will profit by it in various ways. Then the authorities will bring in the repressive forces of the state to continue to maintain law, order and further obedience to their authority.While many of the small businesses and medium size businesses will most probably have gone to the wall by then and people will continue to suffer and undergo further hardship. Is there any sign of hope? Not that I can see if people continue to desire their own oppression they can only await their karma.

There are no coincidences in life everything has a cause and an effect even if you cannot see or determine the precise nature of the causal processes at the time.

Grafter
Grafter
Apr 3, 2020 11:32 AM

Is there a link to information relating to deaths solely due to Cov19 as opposed to deaths with underlying health issues from Cov19 ?

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 11:44 AM
Reply to  Grafter

That’s akin to finding a video of George Bush working the plunger magneto wired to the charges in the buildings on 9/11.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 12:09 PM
Reply to  Grafter

No, because it is hard to be clear on this anyway. An example:

An 80 year old lifelong heavy smoker with lung cancer dies. He tests positive for coronavirus. What killed him?

The best way to assess the increase is to compare the numbers dying with the weekly average. “Average” mind you – there is still variation even within weeks.

So if in this week in the UK 10,000 people on average die (comparing with the same week in prior years) and the figures show 10,500 died then a maximum of 500 died due to coronavirus alone. Again, that is a maximum, because there is always some variation.

The other problem is that perhaps there is not one cause of death alone. Again, an 80 year old lifelong heavy smoker with terminal lung cancer has a heart attack and dies. What killed her?

It’s a shitshow, it really is. The issue, as I have said many times before, is (IMO) not this virus. It is fear.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 12:16 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

Actually, I must correct myself slightly here. If this week would have otherwise been less than the average then (in my hypothetical example) there would be more than 500 deaths, so it would not necessarily be a maximum. It would be a reasonable guide to do it this way though and should give some reasonable approximation.

I am still not clear if cv19 has actually killed anyone who was otherwise healthy.

George Mc
George Mc
Apr 3, 2020 12:36 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

The issue is the *deliberately stoked* fear. And those troublesome ones not playing along are already being branded “deniers” and being linked to brutal Darwinists and even eugenicists.

Oliver22
Oliver22
Apr 3, 2020 12:58 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

Coronavirus of course, what else could it possibly be. Don’t you listen to hysteria?

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 3:45 AM
Reply to  Oliver22

…road traffic accident fatality, tests *positive* for nCov-SARS-2…

… – cause of death?…

: – Covid-19!

*RESULT*!!!…

Alan Tench
Alan Tench
Apr 3, 2020 12:12 PM
Reply to  Grafter

No. That would be too close to the truth.

Bryan
Bryan
Apr 3, 2020 2:21 PM
Reply to  Grafter

Pretty sure that ALL deaths are due solely to Cov19 at this point.[ citation needed]

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 6:06 PM
Reply to  Bryan

No they are not.

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 3, 2020 11:03 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

Maybe it’s just me, but I presumed Bryan was actually being facetious/ironic in what he said, hence the emphasis on ALL.

Tony
Tony
Apr 3, 2020 7:36 PM
Reply to  Bryan

Bryan, all swans are white too, until one black swan turns up to negate the first proposition.

However, if the truth be known it would perhaps be a tad more reasonable to suggest at this juncture, that the real number of deaths from Covid-19 are unknown due to much epidemiological and statistical obfuscation from both official and unofficial sources.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Apr 3, 2020 8:43 PM
Reply to  Tony

Australian swans.
comment image

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 4:02 AM
Reply to  Bryan

– struck by lightning? – covid-19!!…*

– fell into the blades of a combine harvester? – covid-19!!…*

– parachute failed to deploy? – covid-19!!…*

– auto-erotic asphyxiation? – covid-19!!…*

– mauled by tigers? – covid-19!!…*

– fell down a manhole? – covid-19!!…*

– swallowed by a whale? – covid-19!!…*

– attacked by ninjas with the 5-point-palm-exploding-heart technique? – covid-19!!…*

– reduced to component atoms in a particle accelerator accident? – covid-19!!…*

– savaged by a yeti? – covid-19!!…*

– drowned in a vat of silage? – covid-19!!…*

– turned inside-out by a star trek transporter beam? – covid-19!!…*

…and on…

…and on…

…and on…

*(according to ‘official figures’…)

Tony
Tony
Apr 3, 2020 3:17 PM
Reply to  Grafter

Grafter,

If I may, add something to your question.

Lets first consider epidemiology which is supposed to be a branch of medical science concerned with epidemics – the study of the cause distribution and control of disease in different groups of people and why?

Well, judging by what’s being reported on this and on other threads relating to the number of people actually dying of cases of COVID-19 and those suffering from the same signs and symptoms allegedly caused by coronavirus and erroneously diagnosed by using bogus antibody and PCR tests, it is not very impressive or very accurate at all as a discipline.

The issue also involves whether or not we can we trust statistics based on systematic empiricism which uses statistical methods to measure the so-called ‘observed facts’ of a global pandemic whether the results obtained are official or unofficial.

The results are bound to conflict and confuse. Empiricism itself is not scientific it is a theory of knowledge that derives from philosophy and statistics can be manipulated empirically, politically and medically to try to prove whatever you want to prove like an ‘average cow’ has 3.4 legs or a coronavirus (weather ‘mutating’ or not) is the cause of Covid-19.

So a link to information relating to deaths solely due to Covid19 as opposed to deaths with underlying health issues from Covid19 would not mean much at all because of the erroneous methods they are using to test for Covid-19 and make an accurate diagnosis.

The only way to prove that is to isolate the alleged virus itself FIRST from the patient, sequence the genome and determine the proteins, then prove that it is indeed infectious using the proper lab methods and controls. Then you would know exactly who has genuine symptoms of Covid-19 and who has NOT.

But that will never ever be done BECAUSE THEY CANNOT PROVE THAT CORONAVIRUS PHYSICALLY EXISTS OR ANY OF ITS ALLEGED STRAINS LET ALONE BLAME IT AS BEING THE SOLE CAUSE OF COVID-19.

Hope this helps.

Magnus
Magnus
Apr 3, 2020 11:05 AM

Apparently this Corona virus mutation now spreads even through discussing with other people. My local tabloid rag had a headline claiming this. They were referring to this

https://www.nap.edu/read/25769/chapter/1

So it’s digital cash, digital social life, digital services, digital sex life (which the altruists at P*rnhub provide for free) and digital entertainment that’s left for us..

John Ervin
John Ervin
Apr 3, 2020 11:38 AM
Reply to  Magnus

The internet was initiated by DARPA as a socially counter-insurgent (US) weapon. It’s not reliable.

jim
jim
Apr 3, 2020 12:39 PM
Reply to  Magnus

“Children Being Medically Kidnapped from Parents Due to Coronavirus Scare.”

Two mothers have recently spoken out about how the Coronavirus pandemic has been used to take away their children against their will, and some judges are ordering the removal of children due to potential exposure to the Coronavirus with their parents.

A mother in Oklahoma shared a post on Facebook on March 21, stating: “The police showed up on my doorstep at 10 PM and took my kids from me because I WORK IN A CLINIC.”

sharon marlowe
sharon marlowe
Apr 3, 2020 1:28 PM
Reply to  jim

The “Children Being Medically Kidnapped From Parents…” article cites that the children will be taken from the mother and custody will be given to the father. The allegation is a pre-existing condition one of the children have, and the “alleged neglect” in the past by the mother. This looks like a parental custody case, and one of the parents have taken advantage of the present crisis. Not quite yet a State kidnapping, in my view;)

TFS
TFS
Apr 3, 2020 10:36 AM

As a Brexiteer, I never actually understood why some Brexiteers choose the Tories over Jeremy Corbyn.

I never understood why the last 3yrs was spent arguing over Brexit when greater issues were about, the Financial Collapse being the most important one. What would they do and who would they have as the Patsy for the heist and debt slavery.

It was a simple case of who do you want in power when that collapse happens, the Tories or Jeremy Corbyn?

Hopefully most people will finally see the Guardian and its comrades in arms against Jeremy Corbyn, for the state familias they are.

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Apr 3, 2020 10:43 AM
Reply to  TFS

I lived in Dublin when the 2007/08 financial collapse was breaking… and the main discussion in the Dáil was now that plastic bags were no longer free in supermarkets, what price should be charged for them. It went on for months.

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 11:04 AM
Reply to  TFS

Corbyn sat on the fence and refusing to state labour’s position on ‘brexit’…When He finally did, it was to declare that labour would hold a second referendum..
This is why He lost, no real surprise.
All Boris had to do stop juggling the three edam cheeses, stop honking his clown horn and get off His unicycle and declare that He would deliver the Brexit…
Winner, winner chicken dinner.
Of course anyone who knows Bozo knows that He is a ‘raging Europhile’ and we would never really leave the EU and Lo, suddenly it is no longer an issue and no one will bother.
I seen a war coming as a pretext, not this, it is genius albiet pure evil. This buttons down growing dissent against against the neoliberal crooks and the mugs will attack anyone who is not behind Bozo Stalin.
They are all owned anyway, so I do not expect things would have been different under any circumstances outside of the Second Comming (Please, don’t tarry).

TFS
TFS
Apr 3, 2020 11:34 AM
Reply to  jay

Again, Brexit/Second referendum wasn’t THE issue. People got played and distracted.

I’m not even sure the Brexiteers who sided with the Tories carried the win. I would suggest our voting system is open to all sorts of chicanery.

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 11:46 AM
Reply to  TFS

They sure got played like a cheap piano in a Bullington Boy Brothel.

Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
Apr 7, 2020 11:40 PM
Reply to  jay

That position was forced on him by the Blairite PLP Fifth Columnists.

Dave Lawton
Dave Lawton
Apr 4, 2020 12:43 AM
Reply to  TFS

Corbyn is confused and has no bottle unlike his brother.He also supported Extinction Rebellion which was involved in the overthrow of socialist indigenous President of Bolivia.For a socialist how stupid is that.He should be ashamed of himself.

Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
Apr 7, 2020 11:39 PM
Reply to  TFS

Too late. Much too late. The morons will now get their just desserts.

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Apr 3, 2020 10:30 AM

Maybe the pharma companies won’t be getting the payout they hoped for. No vaccine payola this time. From the FT: Marseille’s maverick chloroquine doctor becomes pandemic rock star.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 10:51 AM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Who do you think manufactures chloroquine Moneycircus?

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Apr 3, 2020 2:08 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

I head the patent expired decades ago, so that’s why it’s not as popular as it used to be. But is still works well enough, apparently.

paul
paul
Apr 3, 2020 3:04 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

The Indians do, for less than 1p per pill.

Ishmael
Ishmael
Apr 3, 2020 10:18 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were noted to be highly efficacious by Chinese doctors, many weeks ago, but they are ‘mere Asiatics’ after all. BigPharma wants vaccines, not cheap medications off patent.

paul
paul
Apr 4, 2020 3:10 PM
Reply to  Ishmael

I don’t see why.
They’d be quite happy buying up Indian chloroquine and selling it on at their usual mark up, say $750 a pill.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 3, 2020 10:05 AM

As someone stuck at home with no income due to this Orwellian situation, thank you Colin for this tour de force.. I appreciate your powerful words here.
A quote from a site I often go on called Neoliberalism Softpanorama:
“(neoliberalism) is a coercive cult enforced by a corrupt, deceitful financial oligarchy with the explicit goal of milking the common people (aka deplorable)”
130000 deaths since 2012 as a result of austerity cuts that prevented improvements in public health policies.
And yet, politicians everywhere are running round like Chicken Little implementing the most blatantly draconian – nay fascistic orders:
Heavy on the spot fines for not maintaining social distancing or self isolation, the police and even army on the streets, lockdowns, martial law, getting people to snitch on their neighbours, shops banning people from entering if they have similar symptoms to the virus, states of emergency, on and on.
Did this sort of thing even happen during WW2? It’s like the whole world has been turned upside down within weeks.
Welfare cuts, rising poverty everywhere, 18 million in the UK cannot afford adequate housing, yet right now, the mega Corporations and Banks are having many billions showered on them.
End of the day, these vultures couldn’t give a flying fig about the common people (where’s Jarvis Cocker?). They only care about themselves. No matter how many human beings die.

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 11:11 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Nothing stands close scrutiny these days…
A very thin veneer over seething corruption and evil.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 3, 2020 11:38 AM
Reply to  jay

Highly recommended that Neoliberalism Softpanorama site Jay, tho a warning – it is massive.
Dozens of subsections and many hundreds of linked articles detailing this wicked financial ponzi scheme first instituted by Pinochet closely followed by Thatcher and Reagan.
All based on the insatiable greed of the 0.1% and their sycophants. Many many millions have greatly suffered due to this dogma.

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 11:52 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

A lot of people hold up Thatcher as an example of finacial whizz dome and look back all teary eyed to those Halcyon daze of greed is good…
Only problem, Thatcher concurrently with Ray Gun removed the regulations that prevented the retail banks playing the money casinos…result the financial collapse.
Sport: Thatchers catch phrase “caring capitalism” is explified by the Gordon Gekos buying old people’s homes, throwing out the confused old ladies onto the street and selling their buildings.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 3, 2020 12:57 PM
Reply to  jay

Hammer, nail, head. Correct. As we know, many millions have suffered and been plunged into grinding poverty coz of all the Gordon Gecko’s in the World. Cheers Jay.

John Ervin
John Ervin
Apr 3, 2020 5:14 PM
Reply to  jay

We had a popular name game running around the street 40 years ago, based on the famous Book of Revelations biblical verse:

“You shall know the Beast by the numbers in his name: six hundred three score and six”:

R-O-N-A-L-D (6)
W-I-L-$-O-N (6)
R-E-A-G-A-N (6)

Nancy only grew concerned when their “friends” gave him his Bel Air retirement home in ’87:

666 St. Cloud Drive

She went straightaway to the City Planning Commission and had it changed to 668. She had the clout.

She thought that made a difference.

True story.

milosevic
milosevic
Apr 3, 2020 2:28 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Highly recommended that Neoliberalism Softpanorama site

well then, provide the link.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 3, 2020 11:14 PM
Reply to  milosevic

I appreciate your feedback Milosevic, but I don’t have a computer, only have an android phone, and it’s quite hard posting the url for NS site (and others) onto here using my phone.
I’m looking at a trouble shooting site on this very issue now.
There are some out here who never learnt about computers or technological terms. We were hiding under rocks….
Have a good weekend, given the circumstances we’re all in.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 4, 2020 1:59 AM
Reply to  milosevic

Postscript on providing links:
I worked out how to post the url here Milosevic, tried 3 different sites, including Neoliberalism Softpanorama, and each time a message came up saying my connection was not secure, and my details could be hacked.
As I have bank details and other personal info on my phone, I won’t risk that to provide links, sorry.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 4:20 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

gez’ – i assume if you’re on a phone, you’re probably running chrome browser (google, *errrggh*!), so: – either it’s telling you NS is a genuine honeypot site chock-full of digital lurgi, *OR*: – it’s chrome’s way of *implying* that you’re trying to access a google-blacklisted *WRONGTHINK* site… – ymmv…

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 4, 2020 5:07 AM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

Yeah… Sigh… Yeah, running chrome on my phone, aka Google.
I doubt it’s about honeypot sites coz I tried it with 3 different sites – Wrong Kind Of Green and Global Research, and same thing happened each time, which leaves your second scenario: ‘stay away from blacklisted sites you naughty man’!
Wrongthink indeed. It was all pre installed on my phone when I bought it. Sigh.
My only access with the outside World by the way. Have a good weekend Sgt.

Blubber
Blubber
Apr 3, 2020 11:53 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Crash the economy then create money to bail your mates out ASAP so they can buy up all the assets in the collapsed economy before the money you created becomes worthless.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Apr 3, 2020 2:10 PM
Reply to  Blubber

Yup. The Great Flu-Coup of 2020!

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 4:23 AM
Reply to  Blubber

… – i’ll take ‘debt jubilee and financial reset for the 1%’, for $500 alex!…

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 9:59 AM

My father had pneumonia when He died 7 years ago in hospital, He was 94 years old.
He had had heart problems for some time, we all have to eventually die of something.
The death certificate did not even mention the pneumonia.
I expect that would have been different today and we wouldn’t have been able to visit him on his death bed to comfort Him and say farewell bed because of this great fear.
His last words to me, I still remember and they connected back to the loving father of my childhood.
There would have been no one to mark his passing at any funeral either.
This is evil.

jay
jay
Apr 3, 2020 9:45 AM

Cereal crops are dowsed with Round-up weed killer just prior to harvest, it acts as drying agent.

Ash
Ash
Apr 3, 2020 6:25 PM
Reply to  jay

Not sure if this is done with all cereal grains (anyone know for sure?), but it most definitely is used this way on oats. I’ve been unable to eat them since learning about it.

ajbsm
ajbsm
Apr 3, 2020 9:13 AM

The lockdown strategy will emerge as a catastrophic decision for the global economy and human societies – particularly in the West. The Covid-19 virus issues will pale in comparison to the economic damage. If people get hungry and thirsty, whether it is a police state or anarchist utopia….we remain biological animals that need constant nourishment to exist…and we will kill for this….the longer the lockdown = the bigger the collapse. Note: in a war situation (often used as a comparison), people become even more economically productive – they DON’T sit and watch Netflix. The entire northern hemisphere has ground to a halt and people are doing nothing apart from consuming crap and propaganda….an unprecedented situation. What the f*** will happen after this?

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 9:39 AM
Reply to  ajbsm

Absolutely spot on!

We are still in the ‘Netflix’ stage of this.

Most people just don’t realize how interconnected the world economy is.

Supply chains and payments are now failing in millions of places.

In my opinion we are seeing the death of the current US Dollar dominated system, which so priveleges its issuers, allowing them to create ‘money’ out of nothing to buy things which others must sweat to produce.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 10:05 AM
Reply to  clickkid

“We are still in the ‘Netflix’ stage of this.”

Care to explain this comment? I can’t see the “off” switch.

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 12:09 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

Yes. By the ‘Netflix’ stage I mean that living standards in the West are pretty much as they were 3 weeks ago – still. Everybody is sort of watching and waiting – we still have petrol in the tank.

It is ‘only’ the sociopolitical environment which has drastically changed.

However, production of goods and services has been massively reduced.

Either this situation returns to normal – and soon, or living standards must plunge to accord with the lower level of production.

It’s as if you are driving from A to B in a a car. Suddenly you notice that none of the petrol stations are open. You still have plenty in the tank, but you know it’s not enough to reach your destination.

I can’t name the date, but if this situation goes on, then we will have to get out of the car and walk,

clickkid
clickkid
Apr 3, 2020 12:57 PM
Reply to  clickkid

Just adding:

As the economy sinks three things happen – amongst others:

1. Discontent and anger are fuelled amongst the populace, causing them to challenge and to question things that they did not in times of comfort.

2. The reources available to the rulers for control of the populace shrink.

3. Resources available or health purposes shrink.

NowhereOH
NowhereOH
Apr 3, 2020 12:25 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

Just anecdata, but that seems to be the resounding chorus I hear from all sides when I mention any restlessness, any concern or depression, anything even hinting at the stultifying effects of a quarantine that involves both ‘social distance’ and ‘intellectual distance’ (in that I can’t find anyone in RL willing to have a meaningful discussion about COVID-19, nor anyone who can divert their attention from said long enough to have an interesting discussion about something else). Everyone is so cagey. Online/text/phone interactions are tepid.
“Just watch Netflix for a while and relax!” As if this is some sort of holiday.
I haven’t been near the television set in days.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 10:06 AM
Reply to  ajbsm

“Note: in a war situation (often used as a comparison), people become even more economically productive – they DON’T sit and watch Netflix.”

I don’t remember Netflix being available during WW2?

Edwige
Edwige
Apr 3, 2020 10:25 AM
Reply to  John Pretty

The co-founder of Netflix is a relative of Edward Bernays.

They’re all in it together.

Arsebiscuits
Arsebiscuits
Apr 3, 2020 2:53 PM
Reply to  Edwige

Interesting……

bob
bob
Apr 3, 2020 8:49 AM

There’s a lot to agree with here.

You could have mentioned that the current british regime has happily been killing disabled people for 10 years – not just removing income – via their ‘social benefits’ purge. The DWP has admitted that 20,000 people died waiting for benefit claims to be administered. So they are not afraid of death for the ‘other’ . Which makes their current activity of ‘appearing’ to help the poor and disabled a bit odd. Similarly, their advocating the NHS is ‘odd’ as they have always wanted to get rid of it and currently have a private framework already and waiting.

Nobody made a noise as numbers of disabled people dying came to light – disabled people are obviously still not seen as fully human. Cases hit the ‘headlines’ but nothing was done and nobody cared. It as only when these matters became personal or close to home that there was any outcry.

Has this all been a practice for a full- on showdown with the population? I would say yes, definitely. Politicians are so wrapped up in their ideological positions that they too have become dehumanised unless something directly affects them – when you can see some change. Overall though, the ideology remains and it is time to call them out. Either they don’t recognise their roles as patsies for the elites or they are most definitely part of the scam – they do not, most definitely, represent the people.

Jasper
Jasper
Apr 3, 2020 8:15 AM

Mike Pompeo has been dropped a bollock in a live press conference. He called the ‘pandemic’ a ‘live exercise’, at which point Trump says ‘you should have let us know’. What is occurring is a global exercise in crowd control, in readiness for much worse to come. Life will never be the same again.

Loverat
Loverat
Apr 3, 2020 9:17 AM
Reply to  Jasper

I think looking at the context of the briefing Trump’s ‘ you shoukd have let us know’ was chipping in ‘ China should have let us know’. Not, Pompeo didnt tell him something. It did initially look like that until you observed what was being said. The term ‘ live exercise’ is ambigous wording but again not out of place in an administration full of half-wits – albeit criminal ones who need locking up for all sorts of crimes around the globe.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 3, 2020 11:46 AM
Reply to  Loverat

An administration full of knuckle dragging foaming at the mouth psychopaths who want full spectrum control of the planet…

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 10:46 AM
Reply to  Jasper

“Mike Pompeo has been dropped a bollock in a live press conference.”

I wish he would drop a bollock in a live press conference.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Apr 4, 2020 4:33 AM
Reply to  John Pretty

…*sings*, “Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall…”

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Apr 3, 2020 2:19 PM
Reply to  Jasper

I suspected as much!

Blubber
Blubber
Apr 3, 2020 8:01 AM

I wait in hope for the penny to drop with @caitoz and watch in awe at the masterful way in which so many new media elders have been neutralised and even co opted. Compassion for those who are ill and have died is a beautiful human quality on all sides of this debate but the aggression from many in new media toward those questioning the narrative has been truly surprising.

Have there been any official figures released that show a jump of pandemic proportions in excess deaths? Are there any theories as to how this new media neutralisation has been so brilliantly achieved?

John Pretty
John Pretty
Apr 3, 2020 9:47 AM
Reply to  Blubber

“Compassion for those who are ill and have died is a beautiful human quality”

Compassion, perhaps, but not treating each and every potential cv19 victim as though they were close family. Usually people die without media fanfare.

You don’t have to feel for people you do not know.

Loverat
Loverat
Apr 3, 2020 12:40 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

This is an interesting aspect. I think most of us dont feel much when people we dont know die. Perhaps even disasters and events (Princess Diana) many of us would admit outpouring of grief is unnconnected emotions within coming out. Having said that I feel I care about people caught up in our wars and admire their resilience and intelligence. I therefore have a connection with them I can relate to.

People in the West generally dont have resilience or intelligence or think – so I dont like them or connect. One of my churchgoing relatives said to me recently theres so much goodness around and kind acts and her church in the forefront.

I replied, actually I dont think there is much goodness – much of it is mascarading as kindness (clapping for the NHS) and other acts while good, are not enough when the rest of the world is on fire and no one says a thing.

People just dont think. When they dont think they cant care. Anyway, I told my relative her church might help local communities but in the bigger scheme are hopeless and therefore part of societies sickness. Thats one thing I have about the church – they dont speak out against wars and root causes of war.
Anyway, she didnt like what I said, but its true.

Offlands
Offlands
Apr 3, 2020 12:07 PM
Reply to  Offlands

Apologies, there is actually excess death in the 65+ bracket

sharon marlowe
sharon marlowe
Apr 3, 2020 1:54 PM
Reply to  Blubber

The bizarre focus Caitlin Johnstone has on the health of us in the heart of the empire makes no sense to me. An Australian commenting on the foreign policy of the empire makes sense–everyone around the world should comment on that. But would anyone have thrown there loving arms around the German people in WW2? Or just condemn Germany constantly for their imperialism?

On another note in relation to “new media”, how can Moon Of Alabama ever live down its article, “Coronavirus – A Lockdown Is Not Enough”? At the most corrupt times, the “new media” has failed horribly. More discerning voices will come out of this:)

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Apr 3, 2020 3:37 PM
Reply to  Blubber

At least Caity’s showing a little bit of empathy for us deniers. Maybe that empathy will turn to sympathy as it becomes more and more evident that this is a nothingburger.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/peoples-skepticism-about-covid-19-is-the-fa