Lockdown Therapy for Capitalism
Hiroyuki Hamada
Artwork: “Isolation Therapy”, by Jess Ebsworth
One might think that artists wouldn’t mind being isolated and having more time in studios on account of the current Coronavirus situation. After all, we spend an enormous amount of time alone, and isolation allows us to have uninterrupted amounts of time to let our imaginations fly.
But there are other elements in play when we examine creativity. For example, it is crucial that we feel safe to expose all our senses to our environment so that we ground our minds properly to our surroundings, harmoniously with all our channels open.
When the “lockdown” started I was at an art residency in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I lived in a communal setting with twenty other artists and writers. As soon as public spaces became inaccessible and “social distancing” became the norm at the residency, many of the fellow artists experienced lack of productivity. I felt an immediate blockage to my making process.
Perhaps, since our society does not make artists’ activities a priority, this might be the last thing one would consider as a serious “problem”. And to a lesser extent, such a concern might be secondary to many artists themselves who will be subjected to enormous economic difficulties.
It is “understood” that this is a “crisis” and we must “fight together“ against our “common enemy” which is the virus.
But who could blame those of us who are very much suspicious of such a momentum, as we hear “decrees” being issued to dictate our social activities while all instruments of state violence and repression are in place to regulate our behaviors.
After all we live in the same society which has baselessly demonized Muslims while bombing, colonizing and destroying their countries in the name of “war on terror”. Young black people have been openly demonized to justify gentrification, mass incarceration, exploitation through substandard labor conditions and so on and so forth in the name of “war on drug” and “tough on crime”.
We know that a “crisis” presents opportunities and tools for the ruling class to shape and perpetuate the social structure. The system in which they thrive is always “too big to fail” while oppressed people keep failing so that they are safely cornered into hopelessness, cynicism and complacency to the feudal order of money and violence.
It is not a speculation that there are people who prosper and even benefit during an economic crisis—as smaller business owners struggle, large corporations and banks benefit from huge government subsidies, giving them more power to buy failing small businesses, for example. And it is a fact that many of those people have enormous economic power to shape the policies that can benefit themselves.
It is not a speculation that they would appreciate having strict measures of control against the people by limiting their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to travel, or by installing means of surveillance, checkpoints and official certifications for activities that might give freedom to the people beyond the capitalist framework.
It is not a speculation that they would benefit from moving our social interactions to the digital realm, which can commodify our activities as marketable data for the advertising industry, insurance industry and any other moneyed social institutions Including education, political institution, legal institution, and financial institution. Such matters should be seen within the context of western history being shaped by unelected capitalists with their enormous networks of social institutions.
In fact, private foundations and NGOs are working with governmental organizations and global institutions to implement potentially dangerous policies of draconian measures as well as financialization of our activities for sometime.
According to researchers – Cory Morningstar, Alison McDowell and others – the potential impact of the transformation which is about to take place through the Internet, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence etc. under the banner of the fourth industrial revolution can be devastatingly inhumane to our species’ path. Examining those matters must not be subjected to being labeled as “conspiracy” and dismissed.
Needless to say, a draconian momentum against the capitalist hierarchy accelerates hardships of “invisible people” who struggle against economic deprivation and social repression.
How do homeless people “stay home”? How do people in jail practice “social distancing”? How are people vulnerable to domestic violence protected? How do small business owners continue to stay in business? How do poor people survive while public services and spaces are eliminated, while affluent people are stockpiling in their generously equipped gated communities? How do people with addiction stay sober? How do people with suicidal tendency secure their dwindling connection to humanity?
But those discussions are rare among us. A hint of doubt can trigger those people who are “fighting together”. Because once our creative minds learn to live safely in an authoritarian framework of draconian rules and decrees, the narrow framework restricts our thoughts and ideas. Our minds get weaponized to uphold the authoritarianism as a path to “democracy”, “freedom”, “justice” and “humanity”, which have been mere euphemisms to describe blank checks given to the ruling class.
Once people turn into soldiers of the authoritarianism, the path to the ”solutions” is paved by their relentless adherence to corporate political parties, official decrees and carefully concocted narratives within the capitalist framework. Our discussions cease to be mutually respectful exchange, instead, they become battlegrounds in which dissenting voices are vetted, attacked and eliminated.
A society that can’t sustain artists is a society that kills minds to care, understand, empathize and share. A society that enforces its imperatives with fear instead of trust in humanity deprives a healthy mechanism to guide itself.
As I see how public sentiment is developing over the virus situation, I must mention one more thing. There has been a proven method of silencing anti-capitalist voices within our society, used by media, political figures, corporate dissidents and others. It requires a few steps.
First, amplify the voices of people who willingly sacrifice those who they consider to hold lower positions than they do in demanding their righteous positions within the capitalist hierarchy. The voices might come from racist nationalists, patriarchal misogynists, flag waving anti-immigrant activists or heartless Trump supporters demanding old people to die during the coronavirus pandemic. Those people recognize that an aspect or a policy of the establishment will compromise their lives—after all they are also oppressed by the capitalist order. However, they do embrace the capitalist order in essence. They do not tolerate sharing their positions with people who they despise.
Second, claim that you are with victims of racism, misogyny or xenophobia, or old people who are vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic.
Third, falsely equate an anti-capitalist perspective with that of those political villains.
Forth, dismiss those who are calling out the ruling class agenda as “racist”, “misogynists”, “fascist worshiper” and so on.
This method has been very effective. I am sure that anyone who has expressed a concern over capitalist domination can recall being labeled as what they actually oppose.
The method achieves a few things at the same time. First, it obscures the mechanism of capitalist hierarchy. Second, it divides people who should be fighting against the system together—obscuring the meaning of class struggle. Third, it augments the capitalist hierarchy. Forth, it vitalizes the political legitimacy of corporate political parties which utilize the division. Needless to say, the narrative of division is actively generated by corporate political parties as well.
It is imperative that we recognize the predicaments of the people who are most oppressed within our society, while we firmly recognize the dynamics within the capitalist hierarchy, and stay away from being a part of the mechanism which safely turns our predicaments into driving forces of capitalism.
I hope above writing can generate much needed discussions on the topic among us.
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Some lockup therapy and a highly recommended read:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10836816-the-most-dangerous-superstition
Thany you. We have a desperate need to discuss things from a human perspective, not from the perspective of so called “experts” who discuss things from a pretended scientific standpoint in which the bonds with what is human are severed.
Two main systems we know are socialism and capitalism, socialism fell apart and capitalism is falling apart. There is fascism we could use but we know where it takes us.
We as a society love the convenience and any change which will bring less convenience we will fight against. Basically, western society is not willing to give up something that will destroy us.
Maybe the new system with strong laws concentrating on local issues, change of priorities ( less economical “dog eat dog”progress), no army or navy forces apart from the defense force of countries borders.
If there would be a need for any kind of leaders they would have to go through vigorous psychopath tests.
I know I sound naive but there needs to be a change as we can’t function as a society anymore the way we do it know.
Terms such as left or right, communist or capitalist have long since changed into their opposite in a Satanic-Orwellian way. Are the uniformed women armies in East Asia “communists”? Are the “LGBT parades” in Frisco “cultural Marxists”?
The “social democrats” have betrayed the working class and made themselves the useful idiots of the globalists, who always promote corporatism, the economic model of the fascists and Nazis. National fascists cannot exist by essence.
The “Third Way” was an utopian idealistic
idea, but led no less to destructiveness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position
The author confuses capitalism with socialism.
Everything he blames capitalism for, was created by too much government intervention which is socialism.
The solution is MORE capitalism, not less.
What some know about political economy or political economic history can be inscribed on the head of a pin.
Oh dear, oh dear. Government intervention is ESSENTIAL to what you call capitalism. They go in lockstep. Capitalism has government by the short and curlies, haven’t you noticed? The “socialist” bank bailouts should give you an idea.
Oh dear, oh dear.
Capitalism does not allow for bailouts. Capitalism would have inefficient and bankrupt banks go down.
Bailing out companies is a socialist intervention, not a capitalist one.
The problem is that the biggest enemies of capitalism are capitalists by calling on the government for more protectionist policies and interventions. Why do they do that? Because they want to be protected from competition.
But there is no capitalism without competition.
The problem is that in real capitalism competition leads to periodical healthy destruction of inefficient companies and lets only the efficient ones survive.
But people don’t like this necessary healthy destruction, so they appeal to the government to intervene. Which it does. That’s socialism, too.
An government intervention does not become capitalist because it has been proposed by a capitalist.
This is CRONY capitalism aks socialism.
ANY government intervention, doesn’t matter who proposed it, is by definition socialism.
Oh dear, oh dear, if you would be so kind as to humour us, how are you going to bring in this “real” capitalist Utopia of yours?
Yes let’s hear it for fairy capitalism which denies the state but depends on it every step of the way.
Actually existing capitalim is “crony” capitalism which depends on “healthy” destruction and wastage – like the “healthy” destruction wrought by a cancer.
Yes, let’s hear it for fairy socialism and communist utopia. Those worked out really well in the past 100 years.
The conservative estimates stand at around 100 million dead people at the hands of Stalin, Maotsetung, Lenin, or Hitler, who decimated millions in the name of “Gemeinnutz über Eigennutz”, or “the wellbeing of others over the wellbeing for oneself”. Which is a quintessential socialist motto.
Capitalism does not deny the state, it denies the intervention of the state into the economy.
But it does concede that a limited government is necessary to uphold private property rights.
But there are others who say that not even this may be necessary and call for an anarcho-capitalist society with private companies being responsible for every service we need, including the one which is currently provided by the judiciary and executive.
One thing is clear: socialism does not work. Never has, never will.
Yet people are currently so brainwashed that they yearn for the very government form which has caused some of the worst genocides in human history.
Being completely oblivious to the fact that the only thing which ever elevated people out of poverty is – capitalism.
Always will be. Because it is based on universal law: economic law.
How are you going to implement your “pure” capitalism? I asked you that before.
Socialism does not go along with the false distinction of self/other. That distinction is part of the parasitical capitalist whose system “works” for him.
As for the endlessly regurgitated figures of whatever million killed by Stalin, I have been subjected to the most awful bulllshit from the media which I know lies. The deaths accrued by capitalism are naturally something that capitalist propaganda will never raise – because, as Brecht once so correctly noted, “Capitalism is a gentleman who doesn’t like to hear his name mentioned”. It’s not even that capitalism presents itself as a “natural” system. No, it goes one better than that, and doesn’t’ talk about itself at all. It is simply presupposed.
Capitalism needs the state to set up property rights and to provide the basis for its economy. This was never a natural matter but had to be brutally enforced to coerce the peasants into the great soulless grinding machine by depriving them of resources which had been theirs for untold generations. How many millions starved to death to make way for the industrial revolution? How many died in enforced colonisation from the constant drive to exploit abroad? How many economic crashes? And then there is the enthusiastic creation and backing of fascism by our wonderful philanthropic industrialists. Which leads us naturally to those imperialist world wars, the deaths from which can be laid at the feet of capitalism.
And then there is the topic of deception, without which capitalism could not survive for a second. How much money is sunk into advertising – a field which is nothing more than legalised lying? Which also raises the question as to WHY capitalism has to lie about everything. (Including of course your ahistorically assumed “economic law”.)
As John McMurtry once noted, the perfect description of capitalism is “a system that turns living things into dead things”.
Wholeheartedly agreed.
WELL said, George.
No True Scotsman.
Let me ask you something, Paola, and please don’t answer with simplistic-scapegoat-words like capitalism, socialism, competition, etc.
If we agree that our goal is ultimately the survival of mankind, why should we compete among us in the first place? Isn’t it more intelligent to cooperate?
Socialism and capitalism are mortal enemies… like the pig ignorant destroying the only hope of human survival
Socialism is the only hope of human survival? Based on what evidence?
Neither socialism or capitalism offers any hope for human survival in our over populated and grossly polluted world. Democracy has been usurped by a faceless elite who are easily able to manipulate morons who are blinded by propaganda and the impossibility of socialism – while they take control of a dieing planet.
Can this elite save the planet? Only by cleaning up the mess and reducing the population to less than 1 billion!
Our so-called elites are all corrupt, they shamelessly abuse the trust entrusted to them. Imagine you entrust your neighbour with the key to your apartment, but he robs it in your absence. Strong “Law & Order” state – or anarchy? The Asians have chosen the “Middle Way” and are screwing all of us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way
While we are polarized (divide and conquer) even within families. In Eastern Europe, they do not want governments based on the liberal “Western model”. For good reasons! Nor do they want “multicultural” cities that look like ours. They see and feel still everyday that our system is just a fraud system.
some years ago – when visiting friends for a few days, I noticed they had a computer playing a game, it was left to run, and all very busy seeming, with medieval folk running around building things – I asked what it was about, ” oh, you just leave them to it” , friend said…”it goes on and on, we look in briefly, check their progress, interesting fun”….it reminded me of the Gods in Olympus – looking over Jasons progress – and Philip K Dick – ” we live in a Computer-Programmed Reality”…..and then, as it does, the mind wonders, and a plot of my own came to mind, I called it “Principium” – briefly we moved through the generations, the levels, in-time…and reached the inevitable point where humans returned to their artificial origin – – it didn’t just appear when we reached it, it was there always, we being an Augmented Intelligence, awaiting our own result, when at which point the system was reset – the idea, was to break free of it, all one had to do was to find the origin – search for the true nature outside of the simulated fabrication, failure was like a very long Lockdown, to repeat, suffering generations of rebirth, and all that came with it….. .
🙂
I think the problem we face is there are different types of people on the planet – not just races or genders or even religious or non-religious groupings, but types.
i.e. though a large part of the population would like to be artists – and of course what an artist is, has a wide range of possible definitions, as even some sportsmen and women might well consider themselves artists – most of those in the world we live in are not able to do that even if they wanted to, except maybe as a hobby.
Historically, artists tended to need patrons, who were often persons holding positions of authority or aristocrats or royalty, or rich merchants.
The ones we know from history almost all had patrons, like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and so on.
And unless you can in modern times somehow get such a patron, or a commercial backer who will sell you to the public, or you get some kind of arts grant out of the authorities, it’s still extremely hard to be an artist in the current capitalist dominated world.
But on the other hand, without the capitalist system as it has been for the past few centuries, would artists like the Beatles or Pink Floyd for example ever have seen the light of day, ever been famous worldwide?
But there is indeed a massive change underway now, really since the industrial revolution, and it has intensified massively since the computer and robot age, so that the truth is very few people are actually needed to keep the system running, and the fact this lockdown is happening at all is a reflection of that fact.
If the rich people needed thousands of people to go down the mines to produce energy as they used to do, and millions to harvest wheat in the fields like they used to (think of Russia with its hammer and sickle or scythe) you can rest assured there wouldn’t be any lockdown.
And what this means is for essential work, up to 75% to 90% of the public are either no longer needed for formal work, or that will be the case increasingly so in the future.
If you think about it hard enough and long enough you will come to the conclusion that there are very few jobs indeed that cannot be carried out by some sufficiently sophisticated machine or robot or computer system.
Arguably art is itself one of the very few remaining.
We are rapidly moving to a situation like in John Wyndham’s short story “The Machine Stops”, in which the automation had got to such a level, that people’s limbs had even atrophied, and when the machine that provided all they needed finally stopped, they were utterly helpless.
But obviously in our future world, one assumes that the small minority of people needed to maintain the machines and computers and robots would still be available, though even that is not a certainty if the machines/robots get so sophisticated they can not only repair themselves but each other, which of course computers already do to a large extent, carrying out all kinds of automatic maintenance of which the user is seldom aware.
So the real truth is, this supposedly temporary mass unemployment that perhaps 80%-90% or more of the population is currently in, is in due course going to be “the new normal.”
Despite the tyranny and freedom and rights denial, this lockdown therefore, in which huge numbers of people are now relying on government handouts, is in some senses “the trial run” for what in the economic sense may be “the new normal.”
Because when I’d guess 90% of people are not needed for work, and what jobs that exist are likely to be shared, so people are likely to work say 2 or 3 days a week rather than 5, 6 or even 7 (small businesses often do that to some degree, as do artists/writers) basically most people are not going to have any money unless the government gives it to them, or certainly if they only do part time hours, not enough – in the UK a lot of jobs and businesses are already propped up by government subsidies, so this is happening widespread already.
I mean, there is already far more mass unemployment than is being admitted by governments worldwide.
It is being hidden massively in the UK for example by the fact we have about 5 million carers (for elderly relatives mostly) who might otherwise be working and don’t appear on the unemployed register however in most cases, many millions of part-time, many millions who are self-employed but not working much or viable in many cases.
And also millions of part-time workers and millions in general who are being subsidized by tax-credits, and then also you have up to about a million students or so at any time, and also an unknown number of people who have been forced off benefits by the Draconian benefit regime (of working age) who are simply surviving on the charity of their parents or relatives.
So I’ve worked out in recent years that though the government usually claims about 1 million unemployed lately, there are probably at least 15 to 20 million who are not employed in full-time work on a salary that they could support themselves with, or only exists because it is subsidized by the state.
So personally I am not against a “universal basic income” because otherwise I see a future in which only extremely highly qualified and skilled people will have jobs, and almost nobody else will.
We’re most of the way to that already, and the only exceptions seem to be near slave labour like cycling up a big hill in the middle of winter with a Deliveroo box on your back, as if the internal combustion engine had never been invented.
The problem isn’t a universal basic income, but ensuring it’s enough to live an at least basically comfortable life on.
As much as I personally resent this lockdown therefore, it is possible that we can come out of it closer to reality – in a world that starts acknowledging that less people than ever are needed to work at production or maintenance jobs, and acknowledges therefore, instead of calling people “benefits scroungers” (I suspect now that huge numbers of millions are dependent on them, they’ll think twice about using that language in future against unfortunates who can’t find or cope with the available work for whatever reason), that we are living in a technocratic society so sophisticated now that there simply aren’t enough jobs to go round, and unless this technology somehow disappears there never again will be.
To put it differently, the governments of the future are going to have to pay people to do whatever they like!
Or else they will starve.
So the important thing is to make sure that the government starts facing up to and talking about this new reality – the “new normal” in which most people aren’t and won’t ever will be need to do “essential” or “necessary” work – and start determining how the wealth of the world is going to be shared out more fairly.
This is going to require more socialist inclined governments of course, which too many people have been for too long resisting.
But when this coming era of forcible mass unemployment arrives, they are suddenly going to see the necessity for this sharing of the world’s wealth in a way they never did before, and an awful lot of capitalist supporters are going to turn into socialists when they see that capitalism isn’t working for them any more.
If you think about it, it’s already happening with the likes of Bernie Sanders in America getting close to power, and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, getting even closer.
But to speed this transformation up, as I’ve said here and elsewhere many times before, we badly need electoral reform, as for example under this UK electoral system, what is generally happening is that less than 25% of the electorate (so mostly the wealthiest 25%) can keep putting a Conservative government into power, and thereby dominate the other 75%.
David Cameron got a slim majority in his last election with less than 25% of the electorate vote (his proportion of the actual vote was higher than that, but that’s discounting those who didn’t vote, as many rightly believe there is little point, so about 1/3 don’t bother to vote, which is a staggering 15 million in the UK who don’t vote!).
Under full proportional representation voting that would never have happened, and I suspect neither would this lockdown.
Because bear in mind Boris Johnson’s main argument for it was “to protect the NHS”, but if it had been properly funded by him or those who preceded him, it would not have had any problems coping.
Excellent analysis. Leading the Pedants’ Revolt, I had thought E.M. Forster had written “The Machine Stops” but I don’t recall withered limbs, so maybe Whyndam’s story had a different title. Here in NZ, we have PR, but every system can be corrupted alas.
Yes, thanks Hugh – you seem to be right about The Machine Stops being written by E M Forster but I’ve not been able to find a copy of it to check.
Whatever it was it was a very long time ago when I read it (maybe even 50 years or more), so I remember the story, but maybe I did get the author wrong. I just have a fragment in my head of the passage in which the machine stopped and the person was unable to move to get what they needed, due to I’m not totally sure if it was withered limbs or just ones too weak from long term lack of use.
As to full PR, the problem we have in the UK is the domination of the 2 or 3 party system which has more or less mutated into a 1 party state aka dictatorship.
So parties like the Greens get 1 seat for their roughly 1 million votes, but would get about 13 under full PR, and could quite possibly have a lot of influence then they don’t have now.
Likewise UKIP in a recent election got 4 million votes, but no seats whatsoever in parliament! – that’s nearly 12% of the electorate, but no seats, so under full PR would get about 80 (out of 650 in total).
So basically, under FPTP no other party stands a chance, so we basically have a lockdown in politics here worse than the covid-19 one, and that since about 1979 when Mrs Thatcher rose to power and destroyed most of British industry and energy self-sufficiency within a few short years.
So by the early 80s we had about 3 million unemployed, from not long earlier it being “an employee’s market”, with more jobs available than workers to fill them.
I mean, honestly, I recall those days when you could get a job on a Monday, and if you didn’t like it, you could pack it in and get another one you liked better the following week!
The lower classes have never recovered from this destruction of most of their jobs by Mrs Thatcher under globalisation policy, and that’s one of the reasons the Brexit vote happened.
Of course, I don’t think full PR on its own is enough to make enough change, and the other thing that needs doing is getting control over electoral candidate lists, which are often now just comprised of people from “special interest groups”, so they do not actually represent the public in general, and so you are right in thinking that no system will work well unless that is also addressed.
Perhaps that is your problem in New Zealand. I don’t know.
So sorry to hear you don’t think PR is working well there, but I think most people in the UK envy the idea of living in a beautiful country like New Zealand apart from the earthquakes!
Anyway, thanks again for the input and support.
PS I said UKIP would get about 80 seats for 4 million votes, I meant about 50.
1of7 Billion. We quit the UK because of Blair’s supposedly Labour Government completely ignoring our 2 million strong march through London protesting against the illegal invasion of Iraq. I realised that Democracy was truly dead in the UK. We came out to NZ and Helen Clark was PM. Hurrah! Until she was replaced by National Party’s John Key, a Wall Street Banker!!! Then they re-elected him twice more. Maybe it’s me that has a problem with Democracy? However, despite the madness, we are blessed to live in NZ. The people, despite their poor understanding of deep state politics, are wonderful.
“Because bear in mind Boris Johnson’s main argument for it was “to protect the NHS”, but if it had been properly funded by him or those who preceded him, it would not have had any problems coping.”
And then I found this
And he pushes the idea that the pandemic is real.
There is always something ‘curious’ about your comments. This time it is the notion that the government will give basic income, as otherwise the population would starve.
But the government doesn’t care of populations starve (ask Madeleine Albright)
I find it much more likely that governments will give basic income, otherwise people will revolt! And because their system needs obedient people who buy trash as that keeps the economy going.
I also find it quite curious why you place your comments in relatively old threads. It is as if you don’t want skeptical people to read your comment. And the length of your comment of course prevents people to read on below your comment.
Of course only a commenters who is payed to gaslight people would do such a thing. And I think that you are such a person. Cannot proof it of course, but you certainly behave like a gaslighter.
‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be’
I hesitated to reply to you as I doubted it would do any good, but I’ll have a go anyway, but not with any particular expectations of success.
I’ll reply to you bit by bit, in the hope of ridding you of what seems to be a budding unhealthy obsession with “me” – I put me in “quotes”, as you can’t possibly know who I am by just reading a few words I write on a page now and then, so perhaps I should say you seem to have an unhealthy obsession with my comments.
Either way, here goes.
You wrote:
“There is always something ‘curious’ about your comments. This time it is the notion that the government will give basic income, as otherwise the population would starve.
But the government doesn’t care of populations starve (ask Madeleine Albright)”
When you say “the government”, it’s not necessarily a static body, it changes, and the person you name above is not part of the UK politics with which I am primarily concerned, as I live in the UK – perhaps you don’t realise that – you don’t sound like you do.
So for example, we had a government here after World War II which was democratically elected led by Clement Attlee, who brought in the welfare state and NHS, and pensions, so that people without work or inherited wealth could feed themselves.
Clearly that government did care about the population not starving.
As to the current one led by Boris Johnson, it still does provide benefits and pensions, so it may care about people not starving too unless it is doing it only because of the reason you suggest below…
“I find it much more likely that governments will give basic income, otherwise people will revolt!”
Yes, if people had no food they would probably revolt.
But there’s also the possibility the government could just shoot them all or deport them to death camps like in Hitler Germany and starve them to death or incinerate them there.
But as yet, they don’t, so you can’t actually be sure if the government cares or not.
People are not so simple they are either pure evil or pure good, so I think you put this in a too simplistic manner.
You seem to apply the same logic to me, suggesting I must be some kind of malevolent person for some reason – you talk about “gaslighting” below, whatever that means, I’ll come to that shortly.
But because I am advocating the government takes care of everybody, it is hard to understand why you seem to think I am some kind of bad person.
Perhaps you can explain that to me, as I can’t understand it.
” And because their system needs obedient people who buy trash as that keeps the economy going.”
Well, the thing is, it’s not just governments who decide if “trash” gets sold or not, it’s a lot of ordinary people who produce things that others want and then they buy it.
Whether it’s trash or not is a matter of opinion, but clearly a lot of people want it, or they wouldn’t buy it.
If you mean, “inessential luxuries” by trash, then again, it’s a matter of opinion, but I do agree we should spend more of the national and global wealthy on things that are really needed, when there are so many people who don’t yet even have the basic necessities of life like a good home, healthcare, good food, clean water, education and so on.
“I also find it quite curious why you place your comments in relatively old threads.”
I don’t generally place a comment in anything that is more than a day old. But the simple explanation of why I am not posting quite often on the latest comment, is that my comments often take several hours to write, by which time new threads/articles have often come out.
Also sometimes, I am just not interested in the latest thread, so I will post on one that’s probably from the previous day.
Don’t forget a lot of people may look at the site here and not post comments, so just because there are not a lot of comments being posted on the article, that doesn’t mean people aren’t still reading it.
“It is as if you don’t want skeptical people to read your comment.”
I don’t see how it quite follows that posting a comment on an older thread, means skeptical people won’t read it.
In fact, if I were seeking “likes” (so from people who mostly agree with me) then in fact you have a much better chance of getting those if you post on the latest thread.
You also have a much better chance of getting likes if you go on the most active thread, because even if the majority of people on it don’t like it, it maximises your chance of finding people who do.
The other point is, I on the whole try to write something that a lot of people might not like, because if I don’t challenge other people’s views, I don’t think there’s much point writing here.
Frankly I’m not sure there is much point in me writing here anyway, because I wish a lot of people to take up the ideas I am suggesting such as “proportional representation” and so on, and I really don’t know if I can reach many people from a website like this or not.
But basically, the main reason I post here is because this is one of the very few places I know of where there’s much free speech allowed, so it’s pretty much either here (or one or two other places) or nowhere.
So I consider this somewhat a “message in a bottle exercise” – it’s a community of people of a reasonable size, which links to other communities – so when you throw your “message in a bottle” out into the water somewhere, you don’t really know where it will end up, but one hopes for the best, because some hope is better than no hope.
So as long as I think it might be of some use posting here, I will continue to do so, unless other circumstances intervene with means I can’t any more, as nobody can predict the future very well.
“And the length of your comment of course prevents people to read on below your comment.”
Sorry, I don’t quite get that. I mean everybody knows how to scroll down don’t they? The “Page Down” button usually helps or you can drag down the scroll bar at the side.
“Of course only a commenters who is payed to gaslight people would do such a thing.”
I don’t know what gaslight means I’m afraid, so I can’t help you there.
But if you think I’m getting paid for this then as you can’t prove I am and I can’t prove I’m not, then nothing apparently can shake a delusion that you are having (I know it to be a delusion, you can’t know it of course without proof that I cannot give you), but one that in any case suggests that the people coming here do not have brains in their heads to think with to judge what I write on its own merit, whether I was being paid or not, which if you think about it I’ll think you will find is more insulting to them than it is to me.
” And I think that you are such a person. Cannot proof it of course, but you certainly behave like a gaslighter.”
Sorry to “take the mickey” but as I don’t even know what a gaslighter is, all I can say is I don’t even have a cigarette lighter, never mind a gaslighter.
“‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be’ ”
Maybe you are pretending to be something, but I am not.
A quote from an old song may say it better that I can (recorded by The Animals in 1965 and others):
“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”
Really, as much as you are dressing it up as “outing an illuminati plant” or whatever it is you think you are doing, actually all you are doing is good old “ad hominem attack.”
i.e. attacking the person, and not what he says.
So please in future why don’t you just debate what I say, instead of making it personal.
You might consider nobody here likes being personally attacked, so if you keep doing this, you might “get away with it” with me, as if you notice, I never attack anybody else’s comments or ever give downvotes (not visible here as to identity but they are on other sites), but I don’t think anybody really likes this kind of behaviour even when they see it done to somebody else, because nobody knows if they will be the next victim.
I am quite sure I used to get attacked by trolls relentlessly on the Guardian and other places, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt – I don’t think you are actually a troll, but for whatever reason what I write seems to bother you.
If that is the case, perhaps you would be better off just not reading it.
Nobody is forcing you, you know.
Perhaps you just don’t like the degree to which I exercise my free speech. Which would then seem to be your problem, not mine.
Our planet has a small Martian population who are manipulating our destinies. In the process creating mischief (like building two new and useless air craft carriers at a total cost of 20 billion) while thousands of our children live in poverty.
If you believe that humans are still in control then they are a bunch of sick bcstards!
Thank you for your very insightful article. As you welcome discourse, these are my thoughts, which are much more fully expanded upon and substantiated in my series of articles Covid-19 Crash.
We need to come together like never before. Today they announce we should all carry mobile phones so they can monitor our every move… and it’s not just so they can monetise our every gesture, as suggested above… it is so they can exercise complete control. I wrote about this form of social control, (which, in the case of China employs social credits), last year, where I warned our freedoms are under attack. At that time 23 million Chinese were in Smart prison’, not permitted to have a job, rent an apartment or get a ticket out of their predicament. This is a death sentence if no-one is willing to help you! I quizzed Carne Ross about it, and he said the Chinese system was coming here. The stark facts are this. The economy tanked before Con-Vid-19. The Western currencies are bankrupt. The extremely wealthy own all the assets worth having. Lockdown has shut us up, but has intensified our suffering. Lay offs and business failure is widespread. But, technology is set to make 9 out of 10 people utterly redundant, and there’s a lot of people out there who are saying the world is over-populated… The green movement has long since been ‘captured’ by corporate interests, so there’s no-one more zealously touting this BS than your average eco warrior.
But, the truth is… We need to learn to share and co-operate… and fast. But, the filthy rich, who have rigged the system and created this utterly stinking state of affairs, would rather keep all of their ill-gotten wealth and community be damned. But, what they don’t understand, in their psychopathic haze, is they are very much cutting off their nose to spite their face. Just like corporations are poisoning the planet we all live on!
We must acknowledge that many of those who now wield the power and who are willing to forego so many and so much, are actually clinically unwell and need to be removed from positions of power, within corporations and governments, so that the sane caring elements of society can deal with the very real, and appalling fall-out of our fiat currencies having finally crashed out into oblivion.
As mentioned, I have written a series of articles further expounding and substantiating my ideas here :: https://www.wilddigital.co.uk/covid-19-crash/
This article deals specifically with the financial situation :: Our Economy Is Way More Sick Than Us!
these so-called “leaders” are free to decide whatever they like – though their directions are only of meaning to those who listen and believe – is it forgotten that there is an unquestionable right to refuse it mandate – that to comply isn’t absolute….as only ever has meaning and becomes real, if the people bend to it – and in doing so, impede themselves…just as with any who tells other to do a thing, there is the choice to deny obedience….that the True problem, and it the same thing as ever, “People” – just as they foolishly return to the ballot box with it’s repeated promises and manifest lies…it can only be assumed that they’ve become addicted to dishonesty and invention – What does that say of them, their lives and values – how small minded and sick with falsity, weakness, and insecurity are they – and what does that announce of a system that governs over them – one that doesn’t look to cure the sickness – but is at its most gratified when feeding from it – because, it knows, that the weaker they are….the more extended security It has.
The ‘society’ being created by Western elites is NOT a mass society. The future is neo-feudalism, or extermination.
PUT ON YOUR RABBIT EARS
The “intuitive antenna” immediately rises for all those with an in-depth knowledge of significant past events. Every security state driven crisis, namely 9/11 and all subsequent military invasions turned out to be riddled with falsehoods awash in exaggerations resulting in unneeded death and destruction. The decimation of the World Trade Center brought us the Patriot Act which promptly eliminated the Fourth Amendment. So naturally, the notion of a lockdown would shutdown sensitive soulful minds. The fear these delicate folks feel is less from a virus, but more from the impending iniquitous agenda hidden until it suddenly surfaces under the guise of a crisis.
THERE’S NO FREE LUNCH
The state-run mainstream media news is implying those who want to end the lockdown are population
“cullers.” Know-it-all obnoxious commentators want everyone to remain at home until the entire population is either tracked and traced or a vaccine magically appears. A media “terror blitz” is causing mass hysteria. These loudmouths seem almost proud their propaganda campaign resulted in massive unemployment. Well, that brings me to our charitable government. Let’s just say, large-scale
unemployment forces the implementation of Universal Basic Income (UBI), millions will be dependent on the largess of capricious legislators. UBI would create a whole “new class” designated as “non-
essentials.” Non-essential people are like non-essential activities they’re easily eliminated. Didn’t the lockdown prove that, functions designated as non-important are kaput. Autocratic bureaucrats now have the authority to determine where and when you can have fresh air. So isn’t it a bit scary to think these same thugs will control whether millions receive vital resources.
So who’s really doing the culling? Anyone who truly has the best interests of workers in mind would be against the consolidation of businesses into monopolistic beasts and avidly promote local small business owners. By the way, when workers remain in lockdown they’re proving they’re non-essential.
THERE’S NOWHERE TO HIDE
The manufactured hysteria associated with COVID-19 is artfully being used to step up the restructuring of US society where AI will reign supreme, and millions are no longer needed. Heightened surveillance techniques and contact surveillance tracing will be initially deployed in the most indigent communities. These lucky folks, might be the first to test the new COVID vaccine.
Having said that, let me reiterate it’s always a mistake to advance any crisis the security state promotes. They always have an ulterior motive especially, when advancing widespread terror and that motive never benefits the working-class. Case in point, Baltimore just passed a law allowing surveillance airplanes to monitor the city for a six months. “The pilot program is aimed at helping law enforcement investigate violent crime, and will effectively restart a tactic secretively used three years ago. The flights, which civil liberties groups oppose, will start in May 2020 and gather footage during the hours when the city experiences high rates of crime.” As Baltimore goes, so goes the rest of the country. The next step will be cameras everywhere. They’ll be so many cameras the surveillance state will put proctologists out of business.
And that takes me back to Whitney Webb’s recent article which I cited in a previous post: “Techno-Tyranny: How the US National Security State is Using Coronavirus to Fulfill an Orwellian Vision.” She cites a report mentioning that “prior” to COVID-19 the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence recommended the US adopt “AI-driven mass surveillance systems” far beyond those used in any other country in order to ensure American hegemony in artificial intelligence. This commission believes the hysteria associated with COVID-19 is eliminating all “obstacles” that previously prevented the implementation of such a program. To put it simply, Covid-19 is paving the way for a new and improved “AI driven Patriot Act.”
Good points all, Charlotte.
Another thing about UBI that I would like to add is that it’s basically just going to be another government subsidy (albeit indirect) for the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Pretty much all of our small- and medium-sized businesses are gone at this point! Unlike Bezos & Frendz, family-owned businesses just aren’t considered ‘essential’ anymore. So UBI will be the only way for these oligarchs to continue to sell anything to us.
Yes, UBI will be a way for business to continue as usual, while the US devolves into a neofeudal surveillance state.
(UK) Cummings was apart of the leave e.u campaigne also helped the CONservaties during the s -election in December 2019 and has connections to Peter Thiel Palantir
a strategics like bannon high intelligence front faces
hence why not much intel on ‘scientific’ advisory group as such
as a computer AI is helping run the stimulation’s
Peter Thiel Palantir has been asked by unmpe lumppa to help with CV in tracking CV
aka people
Palantir has already been used for future crimes by some usa state
Neil sanders articles Cambridge Analytica and the creation of right wing media shows how Bannon and his lot used AI algorithms during trump campaign they also did the same for Brexit Nigel fraage brexit party and in many othe counters and other parts of e.u and allover it has military clearance as neil saunder show in the link below
U>k again
DWP department of work and pensions has invested in bots and also algorithms AI
in-the finer print one can opted out the right to not be subject to automated decision-making, including profiling
in essence they been doing this a long time but one can appeal a decision of they find out they can opt out to quote them
automated decision-making is when a decision is made solely by automated means without any meaningful human involvement.
local councils have been doing it also IT just unless you read you not going to find out.
https://neilsandersmindcontrol.com/index.php/neils-blog/cambridge-analytica-and-the-creation-of-right-wing-media
Trump Administration Gives Coronavirus Tracking Contract to Peter Thiel’s Palantir
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-administration-turns-to-peter-thiels-palantir-to-track-coronavirus/body
How AI Detects Mass Benefit Fraud
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/10/29/how-the-uk-government-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-identify-welfare-and-state-benefits-fraud/
“They’ll be so many cameras the surveillance state will put proctologists out of business.”
Ain’t that a fine kettle of fish.
Liked your comments very much.
Very well written and very engaging, until about halfway through.
Thank you.
I am a musician who cannot play with others now. The joy of making music is in large part the joy of the communal experience. I had enviously written to a relative who is an artist and can still do art at home alone. This article opened my eyes.
On the issue of protest, in speaking with friends in the US, I find that they equate the anti-lockdown rallies with Trump rallies. As an outsider, it never occurred to me that that is how they would be framed. Otherwise intelligent people think that whatever Trump “believes” – “says” is probable the better word – you must believe the opposite. If he says “open up the economy,” then keeping it closed (even if you’ve lost your job) must be the answer. If he withdraws funding from the WHO (admittedly, along with vilifying the Chinese), then, no matter what you thought before, the WHO is now a magnificent, uncorrupted institution. Where is the exit to this thinking? Time and hardship?
Sadly, that’s how it is among today’s American liberals. If Trump says the sky is blue, then perforce it must not be blue … because Trump. This is what we call TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome. A very sad state of affairs.
Its a form of reverse conditioning. Works though, doesn’t it!
Excellent piece. A few of the cliches in it which are an intergral part of what is being criticised IMHO, but no problem.
I think one point that might be made is that capatilism and big socialism have so much in common it’s not wonder they work so well together. Plus, the left consists now largely of state-employed well-to-do bourgeois who share the social values of the ruling class. Good luck to them. The worst of capitalism with the worst of socialism, that’s where we were headed before this all happened, looks like we might get there sooner. The End of History indeed…..
PS But it’s not all bad news: As someone who works in a near-empty UK hospital with a handful of C19 patients, I have found it rather reassuring to be categorised as a right-wing conspiracy theorist while taking on the radical ideas of the anarchist left of the 60s.
Damn the typos! Sorry.
I particularly like your last point: to suspect a conspiracy is to risk being accused of being right wing. I have a vague recollection of Blair’s dismissal of accusations of his secret collusion’s with GWB as being left wing conspiracy theories. Perhaps, it is relative: who could be further right than Blair? And left wing is a pejorative if you are right wing. Not that such lazy labels matter. Labels are just an excuse for swift categorising, thus negating any thoughtful analysis.
Another mainstream left site gives us the mainstream vision:
https://socialistproject.ca/2020/04/coronavirus-crisis-and-the-end-of-neoliberalism/
The idea that the pandemic has been hyped gets a momentary airing here:
This then signals a footnote giving examples of these nay-sayers:
You will note that these links all refer to religious people who can, naturally from a secular angle, be easily denounced as “fanatics”. But note that the date for this article was April 17 i.e. almost a month after Off-G posted about the 12 medical experts who questioned the virus panic. No sign of contradictory professional opinion here.
But there is a questioning of the official narrative …by suggesting that the virus is *under* reported:
The link here tells us little about economic losses but dwells on those death figures crowned by that magical figure of 980 “daily” deaths on April 10th i.e. the one that Off-G already debunked.
Countless under-reporting! Get the message? Well let’s go over it again – and again – and …..
Indeed, as one who works inside the UK system, and who started out very concerned about what might happen and that we weren’t prepared, I can tell you, this is being massively overtstated. Not that there isn’t a virus or a problem, but we are coping.
And then they say that the massive overstatement is a massive understatement. It’s as if they are saying, “Well we’ve bullshitted the figures as high as we can. Now it’s over to you to excrete them even further!”
“PM returns to face critics and talk of “New Normal”. ……..The Guardian
“Ministers plan how to get Britain back in business……..The Times
So they are getting us back to a “New Normal”. What exactly this “New Normal” is I can’t wait to find out. What is ‘abnormal’ is their psychotic behaviour over this manufactured pandemic where plod has found a new sense of purpose on the streets of our cities and towns. Getting us “back in business” sounds promising but just how many will be “back in business” is not defined. That Times article comes with a nice picture of two masked mounted cops on horseback “patrolling” a deserted beach in North Berwick devoid of any activity as the sheeple were safely locked up in their homes. It’s good to know we are being kept. “safe” in this madhouse by mounted police, drones and over zealous politicians.
And, as Dr Dan Erickson, Californian MD, says in the recently much linked (on here) press conference about the virus, “safe” is a euphemism for “under control”.
If it’s new, than it’s not normal. It’s new. That’s the way my brain perceives it.
It’s not even new. It’s just another “reign of terror”, even worse than the previous one.
Quite.
James Corbett on
Contact TracingBig Brother:I can’t find it online, but in today’s print version of the Daily Fail (I have to buy it for an elderly person) there was a reference to our having to use one of these apps by a government spokesman (sorry can’t remember who).
Also a reference to Neil Ferguson saying that if we let young people go back to normal now, 100,000 people could die (or something ridiculous like that). OK, found it:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8258043/Professor-Neil-Ferguson-warns-100-000-UK-coronavirus-deaths-lockdown-lifted-soon.html
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.”
“We have one that can see.”
Excellent and thought provoking observations by Hiroyuki (not sarc 😉 ). I completely agree with the final sentiment: “I hope [the] above writing can generate much needed discussions on the topic among us.”
It seems to me that now the capitalist order is beginning to fail: so many are running around looking for someone to blame for corrupting the system. Which is natural: but not very helpful in understanding the nature of the problem …which at the very least was already extant before anyone alive now was even born.
No one can even begin to get to grips with this without understanding the conception of “recuperation”: as put forward by Guy Debord and the Situationists. As a point of reference: “The Society of the Spectacle” was written 53 years ago: to describe the emergence of the totalitarian incorporation of the capitalist economic order …that had recently gone autonomous. Which was rapidly recuperating perception and cognition into a unitary imagistic systematision – the Spectacle …already half a century ago.
Debord was developing Marx’s conception of commodity Fetishism; and Lukacs’ concept of reification …which takes us back 150 years. To problems of human perception, conception, cognition and categorisation that were already old: even then.
Recuperation is much more subtle than the idea of the Che Guevara tee-shirt adorned in Jay Zee’s bling. Or even the incorporation of Debord’s legacy into the french national library – the BNF – under Sarkozy. That is the recuperation of a recalcitrant recuperation …the taming of the radical as the orthodoxy of order.
To understand recuperation is to understand the capitalist order as a linguistic communicative order: which is the systematisation and totalitarian economisation of language; culture; politics; behaviour; perception; and cognitive consciousness itself into a singular unitary order. That is the true revelation of the Spectacle.
So how do we make this known? Every word has a fixed ordinate meaning and invariant behavioural co-ordination within the cultural classification, categorisation, and commodification of the canonical knowledge-base. Which was fixed and determinate before anyone was born. That is – we were pre-socialised into an already extant ordering and identification system. Which was itself an ahistoric corpus of control and incorporation.
We are socialised into pre-existing linguistic habits – with fixed invariable meaning structures of invariant (essentially eternal) identities – which predetermine a certain fixed status quo social classification and hierarchical categorical relationships that constrain – with symbolic violence (that can quickly become actualised from threat to physical brutality) – the autonomous qualities of life. In return for an economically determined, heteronomous, externalised order of reified institutionalised behavioural ordering and ordination …we get?
As it stands: to communicate is to recuperate. Which appears to be too deep for the chicken littles running around – bwawking systematisations of systemic orders of ahistoric control. If understanding control was as easy as “ABC blame Gates”: how come Debord and Mark Fisher succumbed to suicide? Because they were stupid? Because they were too intellectual? Because they deliberately resisted linguistic ideologies and iconisations of prominent systemic personalities (like Gates)? Was their generalised and analytical abstraction – treating the system as a system – too abstruse? Or did they actually understand the crisis of the Spectacular in a way we do not?
It takes a lot more than merely identifying icons of ideal case capitalism – Gates, Soros, ‘the billionaires’ – or their moneyed institutions – CDC, WHO, CEPI, GAVI, Imperious College, the Wellcome Foundation – as the visible incorporation of life-blind incorporated institutionalisation. It is the invisible institutionalisation and incorporation process of the imagistic and the spectacular …through the incorporation of the meaningful into the meaningless signification of ordinations of dead meanings and dead linguistic metaphors that recuperate as they go. That takes some understanding: which is boring …but necessary. Otherwise, the spectacular recuperates word by ordinate word. Which locates subjectivity in the co-ordinations of an unconscious behavioural order. Which is the mere spectacle of the meaningless speech act.
How to undo this order has undone everyone who tried. It is a cultural koan: or so it seems. The subtlety of the Spectacular was itself recuperated into the capitalist order. Capitalist Realism has become recuperated into Covid Realism or Novel Coronaviral Realism: and much of the ‘alternative’ media has itself been recuperated. We have to “stick with the lockdown” until we are more orderly, or so it seems.
Capitalisation is totalisation: no one can expect to retain some of the personalised, privatised sense of orientating and reflexive ordination …the co-morbid mutating former life. It is a systemic totalitarian singularity: that means and orders as a communicative behavioural linguistic ideology and erasure of authentic creativity and autonomous freedoms of living. The Spectacular works by consensual communication and ordinate fixations of meaning categories and co-ordinations of behavioural orderings. Which are externalised and heteronomous …delivered by a spectacular clown outside a spectacular clown house for all to see.
The moral: no one person can shift meaning away from linguistic auto-recuperation. Sub-cultural communities of speech – like the Situationists – can arise. But generally they get neutralised by orthodoxies of communal and consensual beliefs (Folk Psychologism and Cartesian subjectivities) …and recuperated into the capitalist orthodoxies of ordination and co-ordination of Cartesian order.
It is a difficult problem. If it was easy: it would be solved by now. Mere aversion to the capitalist order also ordinates and co-ordinates subjectivity into the capitalist order. The pseudo-Left gave up and pitched in decades ago. “Ne Travaillez Jamais”, dérive, and détournement are quaint philosophical philogisms of equal potency to ”psycho-geography”.
The ‘Left’ never took up the Situationist baton. The radical critique of the capitalist order became the capitalist order – despite Mark Fisher’s and a few later others best efforts. Presuming that there is an ”out”: it is going to take more than running round self-recuperating the capitalist order by co-commodifying iconisations of ideal case capitalists. Bwawking chicken littles. The capitalist order is much more subtle and totalising than that. It had already endocolonised the collective unconscious before anyone – including Guy and Mark – were even born. It produced us even as we reproduce it in a communicative ordinate and behavioural co-ordinate constative unconscious order. The unravelling of which cannot even begin without understanding the recuperation process of the linguistic ideological order.
Hello, I could not agree more that “the ‘Left’ never took up the Situationist baton” and I think you state these subtle problems of recuperation and the “cultural koan” very well. Do you happen to have a blog where you post your writing? Thank you!
On the money. The problem is that such a perspective is too individualistic, perhaps even anarchistic, but I’m in.
Boring. Go Home.
lockup is not art or therapeutic
Another great Corbyn brother. No wonder the elite didn’t want them near power.
half truther
also q anon endorser
talks about everything except trump
Good article thanks for it.
Lovely people of Glastonbury saying NO, I think it was quite well attended given the size of Glastonbury itself and will become more popular as word spreads around the area. What a wonderful protest.
That did not come out as expected or intended, one can either click on the text in the firs post of copy and paste here..
Oh fucking well done 😂😂😂
Now ask yourself this,does this look like a totalitarian state ?
Ok,now you’ve all stopped laughing,the serious thing is this, in Putin’s Russia,especially Chechnya a little stunt like this would probably get you arrested,beaten up and tortured,probably some poor bastard would have to die just to absolutely make the point not to fuck with the authoritarians who run the place!
The point being Britain isn’t a FUCKING TOTALITARIAN STATE,BECAUSE IF IT WAS YOU WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO DO SHIT LIKE THIS VIDEO,OR WATCH IT
do you actually understand that OFF GUARDIAN ??????
This is a sliding scale, obviously. UK is at an unprecedented level of authoritarianism. I question the accuracy of your summing up of the situation in Russia. However, if you are saying that there are worst-case scenarios and we haven’t reached that point yet, what is your point? Hungry people have no right to complain if it can be demonstrated tha hungrier people exist? That a car isn’t headed for a cliff, because it hasn’t reached the cliff yet? I don’t understand.
OK,yes i see, a clear case of whataboutism!
If you look real careful like, you’ll see the fuzz lolling about in the background,not smashing heads
You question the position in Russia because you’ve become indoctrinated by their propaganda,which is entirely your prerogative,but not an excuse to not understand whats going on there
Incidentally Russia has now broken into 9th place globally for covid cases,not bad considering Putin said recently that everything was under control,which it isn’t
“OK,yes i see, a clear case of whataboutism!”
That would be you bringing up Russia in response to the video, would it not?
Oh and one last thing for today,it seems a few of my comments have gone down the, you know what again,be a good chap or whatever you are and do the right thing 😘
Where have I said it is a totalitarian state? If you are not careful you will make folk communist just to spite you! one step away of joining the UK Communist Party as a protest, cheap and cheerful and one can end membership whenever they like and stop paying subs, I think it being Corbyn’s elder bro and perhaps a combination of the Glastonbury po-po are still enjoying all the gear they conviscated at the last festival. They almost certainly was told not to split it up and I don’t think they really wanted to, there is an argument to recruit fresh police recruits with Uni degrees as they would be far more critical in their thinking and whats required of them, at least that is the theory. I can show you clips of UK coronavirus popo picking on and then arresting a coloured guy who rode his bike the pavement, several police there, talking absoulure bollocks.
Perhaps the protest banging on about 5G had something to do with it, handy diversion, better we point the finger at the Chinese than our own guys wut wut!
….and i can watch old episodes of Police,Camera, Action, and uk plod being a total fucking idiot going back years,or m y current favourite,Police interceptors, all showing stupid plod at its heavy handed overreacting best!
But not because of covid, but more because the uk has become a really stupid fucking hysterical place, populated by fat fucking horrible pigs,well its been like it for decades now,so what do you expect?
VERDICT: You have an interestingly diverse position, and possible a faulty keyboard.
Give it time, these are early days…….we need the consent of a few more people before we start persecuting the outliers properly.
Outliers a term from the Sci Fi series WestWorld ? I like it.
Hey, Chrispy, it’s called inverted totalitarianism. See Chris Hedges on uTube.
No its called BS ,and i don’t need reality pointed out by some self seeking idiot conspiracy hack from America
Regretfully, as world circumstances indicate, we’re ALL self-seeking idiots, and our largest institutions are all run by conspiring leadership hierarchies. It saddens me that someone of your obvious intelligence doesn’t see that.
Crappy’s still pissed off that Putin put an end to his jihadist idols’ head-lopping.
Killed like the ladies with the breasts ?
Well done Glastonbury. We need more of this nationwide. Real people talking and demonstrating not sitting on their arses watching overpaid announcers, politicians and “experts on the BBC or Sky TV.
Have you seen the YT comments on this? Not universally supportive.
Well that is perhaps something to do with the 77th Brigade and their ilk, like it or not, those now in their senior years were around during the 60’s pretty chilled generation on the whole, and our kids and grandchildren look to us for truth, none of my family members buy this shit, maybe on or two colleagues do, and a handful of friends some of whom are beginning to question.
Anyway nice vid from over a decade ago, shortly into the vid a song is played about being taken back to 1969. enjoy.
Wow. The Glastonbury Uprising. I’m impressed.
Glastonbury is full of cunts
whoops! meant the Festival…
The Festival was ruined when the BBC got involved in the early naughties and it went mainstream. The energy changed for the worse.
You Muppet.
proper
Frankly, Boris Johnson’s return performance today has to leave the viewer/listener wondering whether he has an Equity card – a very poor rendition of Churchill – with sinister overtones of a second wave of the killer virus and no consideration of ending the lockdown – so, obviously the tide is turning in favour of a new phrase – this is now LOCKUP not lockdown – we are all in prison for no discernable crime, indefinitely according to the british regime – deaths due to the lockup are increasing but you’ll have trouble finding any analysis of this – despite the pleas of Handycock to visit your local A&E the NHS is now complicit in murder as is the regime – this is an inhuman and criminal act in my eyes. No doubt the happy clappers will see it differently ….
syringe injectable mesh electronics integrate seamlessly with minimal chronic immune response in the brain
So are all these FiveGee masts coming up in super affluent areas too?
all over essex
rolling out all over south london
look out for the street ones that look like a giant cotton bud giant triggering doses
israel invented the technology yet they are sticking with the older tech
chelsea limited roll out apart from the odd council block
Four US state prisons tested prisoners for the coronavirus. Ninety-six percent of those who tested positive were asymptomatic. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in/in-four-u-s-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms-idUSKCN2270RX
So, we have here a population under the strictest lockdown conditions – ands o many still test positive.
The point is that the ninety-six percent are asymptomatic, which means that the World Health Organisation is not only wrong, it means their claims about the danger the virus poses is wrong by orders of magnitude.
Or that the test is meaningless.
https://theinfectiousmyth.com/coronavirus/RT-PCR_Test_Issues.php
https://lockdownsceptics.org/the-incredible-and-scary-truth-about-covid-19-tests-2/
https://theinfectiousmyth.com/coronavirus/EvidenceExistenceCOVID19Corbett.pdf
Which only adds to the criticism of the World Health Organisation’s statistics.
When are they going to announce the constant surveillance App? which gives you permission to shop, and go out…..They seem to be delaying it and very afraid to do it, I think they realise there will be massive opposition and they never like to push too-far, too quickly in case the tyranny is called out and challenged in a massive uprising which they will lose.
The way it would be done would be to invite people to volunteer. Once there are enough volunteers, it will be de facto compulsory.
Prescient hip-hop from 2013. Follow the lyrics closely . . .
Meh, this is the kind of thing I was into twenty years ago, when I thought I was some kind of radical lefty. Now all of this communism vs. capitalism talk leaves me cold–so twentieth century, as the Millennials used to say.
The real division in the world today is not left vs. right, but top vs. bottom. The left/right paradigm is just something they use to divide and confuse the masses. As for the oligarchic élites themselves, whether they are inherently more capitalist than communist or vice-versa is completely beside the point. They may use a ‘capitalist’ (i.e., private-sector) strategy to achieve a certain objective here, while deploying a ‘communist’ (public-sector) strategy to achieve another objective over there; but in either case, the oligarchy using those strategies remains the same.
And the same is true of the resistance against that very oligarchy. The strange schisms we’re seeing in the alt-media right now over this fake plague are case in point. Whether a source considers itself left-wing or right-wing is absolutely no predictor of where they’re going to come down on this issue. Consider the case of Moon of Alabama vs. the Off-Guardian, or Ron Paul vs. Ron Unz. Totally random!
Being left wing is about fighting for the rights and economic wealth of the poor, against the richest, that battle has not changed, it’s hundreds of years old.
Those who claim to be speaking for the poor are always shown to be liars when the do attain a modicum of power. Even the legendary Jesus was an us against them guy.
What idiocy.
Well ,this position too is ” so 20th century”. In Italy, where fascism was temporarily defeated (only to be reinstated by you know who), this argument is called “Qualuquismo” (since 1947). This concept could be beyond the grasp of most non-Italian speakers and requires some understanding of Italian politics. Cheers!
Toilets are so 19th century too, but we still need to poop. I don’t need to be Italian to understand class struggle, thanks.
You meant to type “Qualunquismo”, right?
Typo, sorry … and thanks.
Stay random don’t let experts tell you what to do. They need to provide you with the facts – not their opinions. Then you decide.
There is a difference between people that isn’t just top/bottom. Politically, some from the top would see modern art as an investment but also as cultural rubbish. The same is true of some from the bottom, both of these groups would see abstract expressionism as worthless daubing. They are the same with architecture with a healthy respect for neoclassical and a love of chocolate-box twee. They have strong views on crime and punishment, education, the military, cultural identity and nationalism. They are fascists. ‘Identity’ is a word co-opted by both left and right, think ‘cultural Marxist’, ‘identity politics’, ‘social conservative’ and ‘white working class’. We’ve split into authoritarian/libertarian factions but we still have traditional right/left bias, it’s just that this outbreak has seen both left and right react the same but possibly for different reasons?
Globalism can be both Communist and Capitalist, it’s effects are bad at the moment but it would be good if we were attacked by aliens or half the world was struck by a drought. If this outbreak was really dangerous, anthrax? the world would have to work together. As it is, we see this outbreak as a false flag but this issue isn’t predictive of our overall politics.
Oh joy and bliss! The Aussie govt has just released its ‘spying ap’ which you can download on your phone for free. This is how they sell it ….. ”
About 1.13 million people had downloaded the federal government’s COVIDSafe app by 6am today, just 12 hours after its release last night, said Health Minister Greg Hunt. The government is hoping at least 40% of the population will make use of the app, designed to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus disease.
Previously dubbed TraceTogether – in line with a similar app rolled out in Singapore – the coronavirus contact tracing app has been an ongoing cause of contention among the public. Many people have voiced concerns of an erosion of privacy, and potential misuse of citizen data by the government.
But how does COVIDSafe work? And to what extent has the app addressed our privacy concerns?
Read more: Coronavirus contact-tracing apps: most of us won’t cooperate unless everyone does
Getting started
The app’s landing page outlines its purpose: to help Australian health authorities trace and prevent COVID-19’s spread by contacting people who may have been in proximity (to a distance of about 1.5 metres) with a confirmed case, for 15 minutes or more.
The second screen explains how Bluetooth technology is used to record users’ contact with other app users. This screen says collected data is encrypted and can’t be accessed by other apps or users without a decryption mechanism. It also says the data is stored locally on users’ phones and isn’t sent to the government (remote server storage).
COVIDSafe requires certain permissions to run. In subsequent screens, the app links to its privacy policy, seeks user consent to retrieve registration details, and lets users register by entering their name, age range, postcode and mobile number.
This is followed by a declaration page where the user must give consent to enable Bluetooth, “location permissions” and “battery optimiser”.
In regards to enabling location permissions, it’s important to note this isn’t the same as turning on location services. Location permissions must be enabled for COVIDSafe to access Bluetooth on Android and Apple devices.
Importantly, COVIDSafe doesn’t have an option for users to exit or “log-off”.
Currently, the only way to stop the app is to uninstall it, or turn off Bluetooth. The app’s reliance on prolonged Bluetooth usage also has users worried it might quickly drain their phone batteries.
Preliminary tests
Upon preliminary testing of the app, it seems the federal government has delivered on its promises surrounding data security.
The coronavirus contact tracing app won’t log your location, but it will reveal who you hang out with
Overall, it seems COVIDSafe is a promising start to the national effort to ease lockdown restrictions, a luxury already afforded to some states including Queensland.
Questions have been raised around whether the app will later be made compulsory to download, to reach the 40% uptake target. But current growth in download numbers suggests such enforcement may not be necessary as more people rise up to their “civic duty”.
Well I won’t be “rising up to my civic duty” by spying on others. As we’re now allowed out of detention to go on picnics, i will start to enjoy the “luxury” of going on picnics, now possible in my state in Oz.
Talk about orwellian double-speak. So far over a million gullible ockers have fallen for this.
Even worse, the Oz govt has made an agreement with Amazon to keep our data! Details of this agreement are not available to the peasants.
Of course a US CIA, arm Amazon is keeping your data, it is a US operation. People better refuse this app or they are screwed. It is when shops and gyms start asking for proof you have the app on your phone, that you will need to get worried because they will not be happy until everyone has it on their phone.
Yes. Quite a fortunate ‘coincidence’ that Jeff Bezos and Amazon seem to be raking it in while their rivals are either shut or driving customers away by government edict by forcing them to queue for ‘public health’ reasons.
No doubt part of the plan is to drive non-American firms into bankruptcy (yes, even Virgin Atlantic) and then buy them up on the cheap, while having a servile population unable to work.
I don’t think supermarket workers so enthusiastically implementing government ‘guidelines’ reallise they will be next in the great jobs purge.
FYI: most American firms are headed for bankruptcy, too. Only the giants like Amazon will be left.
Thanks for the info. I won’t be installing it either.
A couple of choice statements from our turd of a PM:
“My preference is not to do that, my preference is to give Australians the go of getting it right … I don’t want to be drawn on that [making it mandatory], I want to give Australians the opportunity to get it right,” he told Triple M. “That is my objective, that is my Plan A and I really want Plan A to work.”
“In the war, people bought war bonds to get in behind the national effort. What we’re doing in fighting this fight is we’ll be asking people to download an app which helps us trace the virus quickly and the more people who do that, the more we can get back to a more liveable set of arrangements.”
Sticks out like dogs’ balls that Plan B is to make the app mandatory if too many of us insist on continuing to kill our fellow sheep.
Absolutely. If there was no plan to make it mandatory, I’m sure he would have said so.
You don’t talk about a plan A if there is no plan B.
i’m an aussie a satanist and a mason i also do a lot for charity like jimmy saville but on a lower level if get my 32 degree drift.
i’m very proud of my country my people just so happy at the bloody heroics of everyone in the bloody bastard aussie nation.
it is also good to note that many of are docs and nurses have not been dancing for hours on end cos they have been on the beach going sun block free getting massive doses of vit d.
this tracking device via phone should only be seen as a stop gap as
injectables are already here
Syringe-injectable mesh electronics integrate seamlessly with minimal chronic immune response in the brain
“nanowire probes could drive high-resolution brain-machine interfaces”; and
Precision electronic medicine in the brain
good times
Unable to create links on my iPad, I have to resort to memory. The author’s lament for locked down art reminds me of JFKs eulogy to Robert Frost, which perforce I must paraphrase…that art is not propaganda, but truth. In a free society, the artist must follow where his spirit takes him. Art must act as an antidote to power. These were lofty sentiments indeed. But it is noticeable that in a Totalitarian systems, all art must be deployed to support the status quo. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression are always dangerous to the elite.
This one?
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/01/jfk-amherst-speech/
Under capitalism ‘art’ is a commodity, like everything else, and ‘success’ is judged at the auction house.
https://youtu.be/yrxYhv2O3wU
Ray Dalio tells us exactly where this is going…currency devaluation and a New World Order. The two interviewing him are hilarious, their just waiting for Marks & Spencer to reopen and Dalio’s telling them, ‘no this is the big one’. It was no doubt mapped out at the last Davos meeting.
This is exactly what the German critic Ernst Wolff is saying is the plan.
High-minded and embittered artist seeks victimhood through dramatically ordered paint-by-numbers leftist jargon and pet-project intersectionalist complaints. Guess the facts weren’t that sacred on this one then. What a stupid and irritating article. Is this off-Guardian or the Guardian?
I totally agree. This is the worst type of Alinskyism we despise from the Guardian:
‘After all we live in the same society which has baselessly demonized Muslims while bombing, colonizing and destroying their countries in the name of “war on terror”. Young black people have been openly demonized to justify gentrification, mass incarceration, exploitation through substandard labor conditions and so on and so forth in the name of “war on drug” and “tough on crime”.’
We are living through immense hyperdemoralisation with so many grim possibilities such as collapsing oil production, economic devastation, food supply chain stresses and an obvious global coup that will make all our lives immeasurably worse and we are subjected to this filth?
Prepare for the downvotes accordingly.
When China catches a cold the rest of the world is sent into isolation by their oligarchic classes around the world. And this will be the annual seasonal plandemic adjusted to new Chinese calendar from the year of the bat. Or at least when we were lead to believe “bat shit crazy” is the new normal.
Of course, by the parasitic classes, we are made to think through their media hypno-tubes, what we are supposed to think and believe their lies. It’s a dream come true for them, how a spoonful of nonsense made their poison go down a treat; so easily just, “stay at home and save lives”. And of course if you are elderly your life saving operation has been cancelled to save lives! The logic of the capitalist system at work.. stunning. You have to wonder if leaving Boris Johnson unattended in a hospital corridor to build natural immunity might have been more meaningful for the public who are in this fight together with a fragment of RNA.
It is easy to see how the New Year is the best time to start your plandemic and by spring it has bloomed into a panicdemic just by adding the regular numbers of the annual mortality rate.. together. October should be avoided as the stats would be unimpressive as the numbers would be already large.
Now you are a prisoner in your own home and will be regarded a criminal if you try to lead anything like a normal life. They [the oligarchic class] have convinced most of their populations that a mindless virus has put a stop to all normal human existence. While they continue their existence of isolated wealth extraction unhindered as before.
i felt for all the celebs self isolating in there mansions
it really brought to home just how difficult it much be for them
as for MPs in the u.k the 10k work for home bonus isnt enough
should of got paid more i mean
coke smak and rent boys/girls is a essential item and things have gone up.
across the pond maverick trump wants to protect Americans from drugs and addiction as venezuela is pushing drugs them.
some of what i wrote is slightly embellished
great video
Such a catching tune!
“It’s not safe To go into the garden.”
It wouldn’t take me long
To tell you how to find it
To tell you where we’ll meet
This little girl inside me
Is retreating to her favourite place
Go into the garden, go under the ivy
Under the leaves, away from the party
Go right to the rose
Go right to the white rose
I sit here in the thunder
The green on the gray
I feel it all around me
And it’s not easy for me
To give away a secret
It’s not safe
To go into the garden, go under the ivy
Under the leaves, away from the party
Go right to the rose
Go right to the white rose
Go into the garden, go under the ivy
Go under the leaves with me
Go right to the rose
Go right to the white rose
I’ll be waiting for you
It wouldn’t take me long
To tell you how to find it.
Kate Bush
I sit here in the thunder
https://www.beautifultoilets.com/TRTC-Wooden-Thunderbox-Toilet-with-Cistern-p/toitrtc12.htm
Yes I remember when I was six years old in Llantwit Major going in fear to the bottom of the garden to use the outside toilet.
i met kate long time ago
on wimbledon common
i was walking i saw her
i slowed down
she seemed to slow down
i smiled
she smiled
recognition on my side on hers
maybe it was is he crew
i could see from her eyes
that she wanted to say something
wanted to run away from the commotion
in the trees
behind her
maybe she wanted
wanted to tell a stranger a secret
but it was not safe
secrets and lies
the virus as an idea
for fear
daemons indeed
it’s in the trees it’s coming
The trick now is to watch out for the massive false narrative that comes with the Covid operation, not only in the main stream media, which is very easy to spot but the false narrative in the alternative media, which is well entrenched and still selling it’s fake narratives to distract from the US empire. When you can print dollars to infinity 10 fake bloggers are easy to fund.
Come on, jimbo, no need to beat around the bush. We all (except for the four, most likely newbies, who gave you a thumbs-up) know that what you mean by “false narrative(s)” and “fake bloggers” is anything and/or anyone that mentions “globalism”. You are so transparent it’s laughable.
By the way, “it’s” means “it is”, not what you think it means.
some more artistic licence from a labour MP:
Rosena Allin-Khan MP caught in a lie…. Sky’s Sophie Ridge drops the ball. Richie Allen dissects. Classic.
somemore artistic ability from the bbc:
No surprise. They do it all the time. Who can forget Boris Johnson’s Remembrance Sunday appearances at the Cenotaph, which of course was an unfortunate (but convenient) splicing in of archive footage “by mistake”?
It’s an easy mistake to make. Old clips just lying around; accidentally splicing in an exactly contextually relevant clip, which effectively spared Johnson’s blushes; failing to mention it until pressed.
Could happen to anybody. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
You are falling for the stupid ‘Good cop’ (trump) vs ‘bad cop game, Trump is as much part of the scam as anyone else, I doubt he’ll be turning down any of the 6 trillion in loans he just approved.
Making the far-right the heroes of this ‘crisis’ is going very well.
You didn’t see us do that. You don’t dare say anything. The art of the school bully. The BBC’s technique is to give you a glimpse of the hands pulling the strings. The reason is: they can’t be sure of hiding every deception, so they bring the more intelligent viewers in on the act. Belief, despite evidence to the contrary, becomes a matter of faith. A loyalty test.
The media organizations doing the ‘gaslighting’ are the same ones popularizing the term.
I remember last year (I think – time seems to blur at the moment) the BBC announced it was sending people into schools to teach the children how to spot fake news.
At first I thought it was a joke, but now I’m thinking: “Who better?”
check out the charidee BBC Media Action – they receive funding from DfID ( ie taxpayers money) to undertake ‘subversion’ in many countries – allying to those who would overthrow democratically elected governments
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if I could react with “that’s a surprise” with no overtone of sarcasm.
Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I’ll take a deep breath and have a look at what those idiots are up to now. Cheers.
That outfit is choc-a-bloc with spooks.
Thank you for that. I’ve sent it to a USian who had been, I thought, brainwashed into Trump Derangement Syndrome (he’s always a fool, and if he’s for it, you must be against it) and, lo and behold, she was shocked into skepticism by the BBC shenanigans. Much more effective than trying to discuss the propaganda.
Lincoln heads out on a rainy Sunday. Encounters with an ambulance medic, a couple of binmen and cops in a six-car convoy.
What conclusion should we draw form this ?
Up to you. I enjoy these virtual tours of New York. Seen a lot of it in the past month.
The British military are into art – “In our 77th Brigade,” he said, “… we have got some remarkable talent when it comes to social media, production design, and indeed Arabic poetry” ( the head of the British Army, General Sir Nick Carter)
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/british-military-information-war-waged-their-own-population?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ukc-newsletter-14-jan_105
Ever wondered who this site and others are up against? – read on
It must be them who are active in the Guardian comments pages bullying people who write the truth.
A couple of legit accusations, mixed in with a pinch of leftist ideology, all in a pathetic tone, without pointing at anything concrete or naming names, and this acrticle is what you get. “We are artists, you need us! The capitalism doesn’t support us!”. Tell you what- there were worse times history for artists and folk like you- and those guys managed to make better art than today’s.
I think you’re being unfair, Matthew. To me the message in the article is more profound than you are suggesting. My immediate reaction on reading the first few paragraphs was to feel a sense of relief at being able to relate to the description of feeling completely psychologically deflated and demotivated by the lock down situation. I read it as a semi-allegorical representation of the way in which the PTB set out to psychologically oppress the public in order to gain control over them.
I would concede that the message may have been better presented if the author had used a term other than ‘capitalist’ to describe those behind the global domination and controls that we are witnessing in action – there is much more to it than being simply the product of a capitalist mindset.
In summary, it is far too simplistic to accuse the author of bleating because artists are being repressed, at a superficial level, by the State controls. It is much more than that. It is a condemnation of those behind the current measures whose objective is to control minds, censure independent thought and free-thinking, and censor debate or opposition.
it’s what the behavioural insights team are all about (c/o the british cabinet office)
Well said JudyJ. It is art in all it’s forms which makes life worth living. Whether it be the cave paintings in France, Praxiteles in Athens, the Sistine Chapel, Shakespeare’s plays, John Dunne’s poetry, Tolstoy’s literature, Mozart, Milos Forman’s “Amadeus”…Artists enrich and ennoble the Human Condition. Ars longa, vita brevis.
I now call my TV ‘the wizard’s curtain’
Like Brexit, the Covid operation is the US trying to take possession of it’s dependent states in Europe and the 5 eyes network. The US have been attacking Italy via their financial press for a decade now, they consider it the weakest link in Europe. Steve Bannon has managed to get a far right party running the country, next they will use the economic weakness they have created to undermine the Euro. Brexit demonstrated that the US can use it’s media to overturn governments via social media and shift any country to the right with very little effort. The threat of mass murders that the US is committing in Iran and Venezuela hangs over the governments of Europe, I hope they hold put until Dollar collapse which is coming soon.
The main problem with your thesis is that EU and the ECB are also instruments of imperial control. The euro, after all, is just another IMF/Worldbank currency like the dollar, while the EU is the economic/political arm of NATO, just as the ComeCon was for the Warsaw Pact.
Bottom line: however ineffective they may be, anti-euro activism in Italy and the Brexit vote in the UK are genuine populist insurgencies against the established order.
Yes and no, the EU are forced into a lot of the Empires scams and often play along, but they also oppose and fight-off many of the USA’s projects, like TTIP, the Russian gas pipelines and threats against the EU. My own view is that the EU is very aware of the damage the US can do, and they do their best to circumvent that damage. As the empire collapses, via the dollar implosion, you’ll see the EU and Japan escaping the US jackboot more and more. The UK not so much, they will go down with the empire.
Jack( jim). You’re talking clap trap, I’m being polite 😉
The big German industries all wanted TTIP,so did Merkal,she was still trying it on with Trump as soon as he became POTUS,and rumours have it he may still sign up to something like it
In fact all of Europe’s big industrial corporations wanted,and still want TTIP,look up the European Round Table of Industrialists,or the CBI for what they want,tgey probably push even harder after covid to try and gets things chugging along again
A good deal of UK MPs were also very keen to get it signed off,including Labour politicians with impeccable socialist credentials such as Hillary Benn,i think I’ve spelt his name wrong,who fucking cares,stupid name,stupid man!
Uk parliament didn’t even bother with little brother to TTIP,CETA in 7 years those useless cunts in parliament couldn’t be bothered to debate CETA once,well no surprise there as they all believe in globalisation and selling the working classes out!
Which i find highly ironic considering what a fucking song and dance they’ve made about parliamentary sovereignty since the Brexit referendum
You are just not right, both Germany and France refused TTIP and the US was forced to drop it. Yes I know the US claims it was dropped by them, that is a lie to save face, President Hollende, stated he will not be signing it.
Yes and no.
The EU is the ‘new model’ empire, whereas the US is the ‘old model’ empire.
They reject deals with the US because they know the US won’t be around for very much longer in its current form (key qualifier – before anybody leaps on me). Those who control both the US and the EU are essentially stateless anyway and will strip whatever they need from wherever it is to further their aims.
The EU will fail though. Such agglomerations of sovereign nations under one flag always have. Before this current ‘crisis’, I would have said it will fail sooner rather than later. Now, though, I’m not so sure. But it will fail.
The euro is a rival to and enemy of the dollar, which is why it is under constant attack from the anglo sphere’s financial press.
The Euro is finished. But, like all currencies nowadays, it continues to be worth something because we all believe it’s worth something. The Euro is more fragile than most. If the EU hadn’t funnelled huge sums to the French and German banks by way of the fake first Greek bailout, the Euro and the EU would be gone already. Nothing that fragile or precarious was meant to survive. Darwin always wins in the end.
Crazy talk, the Euro is the most stable currency, it just doesn’t move. Whatever hysteria is generated by the UK.US press.
Nothing to do with anything generated by the press.
It’s simple economics.
Any currency that has to be propped up, illegally I might add, to the extent the Euro has been, is doomed.
ECB rules prevented a direct payment to the French and German banks that had over-extended in Greece. Therefore, the first Greek ‘bailout’ went nowhere near Greece. It went straight to those banks. It was an illegal bailout and the Greeks picked up the tab for the French and German casino banking practices. Look it up. But not in the UK/US press – you won’t find it there.
That wasn’t the first (although it may have been the biggest) and it won’t be the last. The Euro is toytown money – more so than most other currencies, which are also mostly toytown money, to be fair – whether it moves or not. Seriously – do a bit of research. The information isn’t hard to find.
Well said. All of these institutions are controlled by the dominant globalist faction of the ruling class. Brexit, while partly fueled by genuine populism, was supported by an anti-globalist faction of the ruling class.
Don’t forget the lizards.
WORDS FAIL ME…Neil Ferguson interview 27.04.20
Ferguson is just a Patsy.
Like Fauci in the usa, these guys are bought and paid for and can be relied upon by the deep state to serve their agenda whenever called upon.
Yup. I hope they’re the first ones to get Bill Gates’ mystery injection.
Agree. Mr Ferguson is proof that left and right as political ideals no longer exist.
a murderous one!
Does He even exist, is He CGI?
patsy
which one?
neil or nial i get so confused with all these zio ashkanazi with scottish rite masonick names
Niall Ferguson is a much more entertaining English elitist in the “Flashman” mode . His books and televised lectures hold many nuggets of truth Neil Ferguson is simply an English bureaucrat with a medical degree who has become useful yet again to the powers that be . He created the Mad Cow panic a while back that distorted society and skewed macro economics in a beneficial way for our rapacious elites , during the Blair era. .
yes – around 11 million healthy cattle slaughtered – he’s only an expert in death – of course people have forgotten that mainly but not in the farming communities
This self satisfied cretin sits there and casually downplays his role in this ongoing fiasco. Himself and his fellow scientists are directly responsible for the handling and fear generated by this government’s actions. He refuses to be drawn into the political implications as to the outcomes of his flawed research and modelling of statistics. He refuses and sees no connection with the outcomes of his deliberations. This whole pandemic based on misinformation and fear reminds one of the events surrounding T. Blair who relied on “expert” advice resulting in the carnage of death and destruction in Iraq.
When I was young, I couldn’t get my head my head around what were “left” and “right” in the political sense.
I no longer blame naivity and try to square that particular circle of cognitive dissodence.
There is only one correct way to run things. “Left” and “Right” confer advantages to disperate groups and disadvantages to others. That is their appeal.
The “caring capitalism” of Margaret Thatcher is certainly appealing to those who buy Care Homes as a business with an aim to asset strip them, Sport. This involved throwing confused old ladies onto the street and selling what was once their home.
Whereas, The Left justifies theft on the premise of “fairness”, kontrol freakery as “protecting” and “nurturing”.
The left/right paradigm is now gone. The tyrant has uncloaked, the “Externalisation of the Hierachy” is sure to happen soon. Say “Hello” to your real ruler.
I can’t say that I am a big fan of Frank Zappa’s music, He has a Marmite appeal but I still laugh at some of His witticisms:
Why has this happened, why is this possible? This quote is from Albert Pike’s ‘Three World War Letter’ 1871:
The Pike letter describes perfectly all of the World Wars that subsequently came after it was written…Some say, it is a forgery, maybe not. It also desribes a third world war.
Pike was no prophet. He also penned “Morals and Dogma” a tome only intended for high level Masons. On the death of the Mason, the book was to be returned to the lodge.
Here is a quote from therein…
The ‘Great Work’ continues…
oops, “dissonance”
It doesn’t matter if Pike was a work of fiction. It was bloody prescient. It was written by someone who had a damned good knowledge of what was planned.
Let me quote another example. Aldous Huxley. Involved in chemical neuroscience. Later wrote a book about it. Everybody gawps and gasps and says… ooh, look what he predicted. Huxley did not predict. He worked with Louis Jolyon West.
The establishment does not appoint by merit or on trust. Family ensures the strongest loyalty of all, because to break with one is to break with all; to humiliate oneself is to bring disgrace upon one’s dearest. Huxley, A.L. Member of the family of.
Context is all, from Darwin’s bulldog Thomas Huxley (think about that nickname).. to Julian Huxley, founder of IUCN.
“…. and if you tell that to the young people today, they won’t believe you.”
The Skull and Crossbones secret society that claim the Bush family as members.They have an intiation ceremony where the prospect lies naked and hooded in a coffin whaking. Then He relates all of His secrets to the listening Brotherhood.
Blackmail.
Aleister Crowley, stated that the best sacrament to Lucifer is “the taking of the innocence of a high minded boy child”. So, the Luciferians within the lodges may not enjoy kiddie fiddling, it is just a sacrifice to their god.
Blackmail
Forget Skull and Crossbones and the end times crap. The key thing to know about the Bush Crime Family is that they are NAZIS. Old Prescott Bush was raising money for Adolf Hitler in the US in the 1930’s. If it is criminal it is Bush.
PS. Here is a question. What was Prescott Bush’s ownership percentage in Auschwitz Concentration Camp? 10%, 25%, 33%, 50%, none of the above.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bush-familys-links-to-nazi-germany-a-famous-american-family-made-its-fortune-from-the-nazis/5512243
So, what are they “criminals” or idealogical “Nazis”, you seem a little confused to be offering anyone advice.
Somebody needs a hug.
Yup and the next generation still got to be two term presidents, father and son, despite Prescot almost going to jail for trading with the enemy.
Of course, anyone can be pres, so long as you are a direct descendant of Queen Elizabeth…
Just to be equitable, Wall Street money funded the Bolshevics.
Nothing to see here, move along…
Bush snr got ONE term.
Sounds like the Huxleys are a fine lot.
TPTB are now quite clearly practicing social distancing from anything that looks even remotely like a fact.
Yes. It’s that old ‘credibility gap’.
Anti-social long-distancing would be more accurate.
What tipped me off to the coronavirus is not arguments over statistics, reports from the frontline or various videos and pictures but the TONE of the coverage throughout the media (a media which I had already come to detest as hopelessly under the control of the rulers). This tone is the tone of extreme propaganda i.e. wartime propaganda. From demonising German soldiers portrayed as bayoneting babies to anti-communist witch hunts to 9/11, the pattern is always the same:
First, the banning of time to reflect. “There’s no time for that! We are under attack RIGHT NOW! They are coming to get ya! Your life and you family are going to be wiped out if you don’t react NOW!” etc.
Second, the labelling of those who actually do reflect as traitors who endanger everyone. They become “the enemy within”.
Third, the promotion of those who do react “properly” as heroes and, if killed, as saints, exemplars to us all etc.
The coronavirus coverage gives us all these but on a more intense and relentless basis. It is war propaganda on steroids. COVID is basically the World War 3 that has been forecast for so long.
What did it for me, George, wss the fact that several weeks into this ‘plague’, I still didn’t personally know anyone who’d died from it–or even been admitted to the hospital for it. That’s when I began to question and double-check the facts.
Thank God for the Off-Guardian!
And yet I have seen people on facebook say they know someone who died – usually more than one. Whether this was from COVID or with COVID is not added. I haven’t got into arguments since it involves work colleagues and I if I expressed skepticism my job would be on the line. But I have noticed how eagerly some people are to skip on the hysterical bandwagon which underlines that metaphor about entertainers who spin plates. Once you’ve set the system up, it can go on its own momentum. Give people a little scare and they are ever so willing to add to it.
It’s become cultish to say that you know someone who has died ‘from Covid19’; it’s a badge of honour and, in a sense, gives them their (albeit, misquoted) 15 minutes of fame, and the ability to connect to the celebrities who declare en masse that they have had it. Why else would the family of a 21 year old who died of a heart attack claim on Facebook that she had died of Covid19 when she didn’t even have the infection, as confirmed subsequently by the post-mortem?
All this social distancing can only lead to full psychiatric wards where both the patient, the doctor and the nurse are running completely mad.
Having that said, how will these wards guarantee the 1.5 meter distance that is required against viral spreading?
C: this narrative of social distancing that is rolled out cannot stand the test of time as it is self contradictory.
Unless the whole country is the asylum.
Up-vote. And then the planet.
Lunatics running the asylum.
You lost me at “heartless Trump supporters demanding old people die.” Those demands have been coming from the Gaians for a long time, quite explicitly from Greta. Trump’s vocal supporters are NOT populists. They’re standard establishment Republicans who enjoyed Trump’s main goal of Zero Tax and Infinite Dow.
Populists realized a long time ago that Trump is a faker.
“First, amplify the voices of people who willingly sacrifice those who they consider to hold lower positions than they do in demanding their righteous positions within the capitalist hierarchy. The voices might come from racist nationalists, patriarchal misogynists, flag waving anti-immigrant activists or heartless Trump supporters demanding old people to die during the coronavirus pandemic. Those people recognize that an aspect or a policy of the establishment will compromise their lives—after all they are also oppressed by the capitalist order. However, they do embrace the capitalist order in essence.”
She is not making any statement about anyone but is explaining a rhetorical technique “amplify the voices…” the definitions of those “who they consider to hold lower positions than they do” is presumably to be ascribed to them..what or who are the “populists” you refer to?
Yes, I was turned off by that, too, because it was sort of the antithesis of everything else he said. The “heartless disregard for lives of old people” accusation is one of the main ploys of the lockdown defenders. It’s a simplistic emotional appeal that denies how complicated the actual situation is.
These viral respiratory infections have to be regarded as part of the natural cycle. To proceed otherwise is to be tremendously cruel. I can’t overemphasize just how hard it is on nursing home residents to be isolated from their families; just how vulnerable they become to inevitable errors in their care and neglect due to depleted staff. And the virus gets in anyway and is attributed as the cause of death (whether it is or not.)
Studies are vague, but the annual mortality rate in nursing facilities look to be about 15 to 50 percent, i.e. on average about 1/3 of all residents. They know why they’re in there, and it can be safely assumed that they don’t want the world to be destroyed to prolong their lives.
Pneumonia used to be called the “old man’s friend” because it provided a relatively easy way to die compared to the much harder final stages of whatever other progressive disease the individual might have. One should understand that there are always many vital challenges to all people, and those in a weakened condition are just always more apt to succumb to one or another of them. But this gets lost in the current situation to a statistical argument that distorts the actuality of the situation beyond recognition.
I’d say the author of the article fails to mention one or two crucial elements that this crisis presents
He seems to think it is an opportunity for the ruling class only, not for the working class and indeed anyone else to see laid out as if starkly the failures in efficiencies and stupidities of capitalism
A corresponding opportunity to revise and resist
He nowhere mentions the main oppression of the so called lockdowns quarantines etc, the impossibility for the poor to work and earn a living
The herding into d&rule categories of essential and in essential work is a sure indicator of the caste bound régimes to come
There is nothing wrong with capitalism, if regulated, but if you let a criminal element in the US Fed run wild and extort from the rest of the world in the name of Empire, then this is what happens. Military enforced piracy.
Capitalism cannot be regulated except for very brief periods under conditions that cannot be regained. What happens is that, no matter what regulations are put in place, the most profitable companies become larger and fewer as they eat up the smaller ones. As this happens, these successful companies gain more and more power over the legal system which they naturally use to consolidate and extend their wealth. Eventually you end up with a very small number of corporations which have total control over the entire legal system.
Regulation works, including anti monopoly regulation, you just need a democracy that works to implement it. The US does not have a democracy that works.
Yes – but here is the very problem. The ones who have the power get to define the language publicly used i.e. they get to define “democracy” which, under capitalism, is concerned almost exclusively with property rights. One of the most scandalous moves was the redefinition of corporations as individuals – a ludicrous matter which amounted to protections reserved for individuals now being assigned to corporations.
The only way you will ever have an actual democracy is if the majority rise up and have a revolution i.e. it will have to be an act of “crime” since the rulers create the law to defend themselves.
We had a revolution it lasted about 500 years and gave us all we have today. No system is stable, even families are not stable, what do you want?
There are changes and revolutions going on all the time. Most of them for most of history have been slow. But capitalism is the most dynamic system there has ever been and thrives on constant upheaval. It has no respect for tradition, culture, family etc. none of the things that conservatives claim to love (which is of course deeply ironic). And capitalism has to constantly update technology (which, again, ironically attests to its anti-conservative nature). There can be no stable system where the impulse to profit maximisation is all. For all of our lives we have lived with the illusion that there could be a middle ground i.e. a restrained capitalism. We now know that is impossible. Capitalism is totalitarian and must reduce everything to a sellable commodity. John McMurtry called capitalism (and he wasn’t being metaphorical) a cancer. The only question to ask now is whether this malevolent growth will take us all down with it.
George, to what you so aptly described, might I add the phenomenon of “Agency Capture”. A process whereby so called Regulatory bodies are run by people who often held high positions within the industries they are supposed to regulate. I’m sure it’s nice work if you can get it !
We all know what corruption is, his claim is that capitalism was the problem, which it isn’t, if it is regulated.
Regulated capitalism is an oxymoron.
The ignorants of economics on this site is impressive.
ignorance
Maybe you were right the first time.
The CDC in the US being a classic example of this.
Very interesting interview with two California doctors that Ed Curtin posted at his site:
http://edwardcurtin.com/dr-erickson-covid-19-briefing/
Thanks, Gary. Here’s the link to the final part:
Thanks Steve.
There are a couple of interesting things about this interview. 1) These doctors are employees of a private health care something, and 2) While not wanting to venture into the politics of the situation, they intimate that they are critical of (or at least curious about), the long-term secondary effects of the lockdown referring to, as is usual in the US, to the economics of it and the unknown (?) reasons for this kind of behavior, hinting at the elimination of lots of small businesses (his favorite coffee shop).
Plus, did they appear to be in their fifties?
??
No. Based entirely on what they said, I would judge them to be in their early forties: “We have been studying biochemistry, immunology and microbiology for twenty years, each of us…combined, we have 40 years experience”.
Touché. In spite of the questions I raised, I agree with them, totally.
😉
I have absolutely no idea what this means.
I think it means “You need me.”
Love, empathy, curiosity, playfulness, impulsiveness, risk taking, a sense of humour and skepticism are all facets of Creativity (did I miss any?).
Down through the ages artists have utilised these attributes to express themselves and to question Authority.
Long may they thrive.
Hiroyuki, that’s a powerful summary, direct but still too polite. John Dos Passos saw that inhuman times demand a new language.
Language is gentrified, not only neighborhoods: “Polite conversation. Not in front of the children. Compete to be the adult in the room.” And then, to establish our credentials, the F-word. As if that alone makes us a radical, while we blabber the same language as CNN, BBC, The Guardian, academe and the politicians.
The aforementioned notwithstanding, more power to you, Hiroyuki.