REVIEW: Planet of the Humans
Michael Moore produced documentary on The Green New Deal lands the occasional hit, but pulls too many punches
John Steppling
Michael Moore is estimated to be worth 50 million dollars. He is a wealthy man. His political support is for the Democratic Party. He has stumped for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in New York and for Rashida Tlaib in Michigan (does one need to say more?). Moore is essentially a brand.
Moore came to prominence with Roger and Me, but became a part of the cultural zeitgeist with Bowling for Columbine. Moore was satirized in TV cartoons like South Park (a sort of cultural marker for brand success), but despite his celebrity there has been in subsequent films a gradual yet inexorable expression of the law of diminishing (box office) returns.
He has now granted his imprimatur as producer (a bit like Nike is now branding medical face masks. Well…ok…not exactly like that, but still…) on a new documentary by Jeff Gibbs: Planet of the Humans.
Now, the essential and overriding two problems with this film can be generalized as absence of class analysis, and an absent analysis of western Imperialism.
More succinctly, the military is never mentioned, not ever. And the open Malthusian meme ‘we are the problem’, or what is often called ‘the overpopulation argument’ (or Pogo argument) is a profoundly reactionary and racist idea based on classic eugenics, and the one glaring omission and the other rather disturbing ideology, eclipse the genuine (though limited) truths of the film.
And I say limited because while, yes, Al Gore is a ruling class vulture and Bill McKibben an opportunistic self-promoting liar, and pointing this out is correct and even satisfying, these points are subsumed by Gibbs greater political mystifications.
The curious result of these missing ideas and the criticism of them and by extension the film, means that finds oneself aligned, however fleetingly, with people who hate the film for exactly the wrong reasons — the pro capitalist DNC linked pro climate justice. Green energy supporters, among whom one can count Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who producer Michael Moore supports and campaigns for (cognitive dissonance exhibit A) and all the myriad other corporate interests that Cory Morningstar painstakingly catalogues in her Wrong Kind of Green blog.
There have been hysterical attacks on Gibbs from these people, and they are wrong. And their egregious *wrongness* here still doesn’t mean its not a flawed film.
But herein lies the real issues that need to be carefully tweezed apart. Even Cory Morningstar linked to the film on the above-mentioned blog.
On an importantly positive note, the stuff that Gibbs gets right is important and one wishes dearly he were a more sophisticated political thinker. And that he wasn’t working with Moore. But details on industrial energy, palm oil, all the massive destruction caused by solar and wind power. That the hype for renewable energy is dishonest and manipulative. Gibbs is exactly right (though a bit late to the party one has to say).
The attacks on him from the proto-capitalist green energy people are cynical and dishonest.
The film is not without poignancy. The image of an 800-year-old Joshua Tree being ground up will not soon leave you, nor the image of the Orangutan – that Orangutan – this is the future under capitalism. There is no escape from it.
I want to return to the nature of the acute ambivalence this film elicits, but first, another factor needs to be noted. Timing.
That this film (which was rejected, apparently, by major distributors, although I have no direct evidence of this) is released during the Corona panic (for free), during the global house arrest (and this, in turn, means a necessary sidebar on Bill Gates) is troubling.
One of the most prevalent themes being repeated ad nauseam in media is one that depicts the suddenly clean waters of the Venice canals, the return of wildlife to the suburbs of America and northern Europe, and the generally breathable air of previously polluted big cities. And the message is, like the Gibbs film, “we are the problem”. Get rid of people, or keep them inside, and voila…an Edenic Gaia. The film then becomes tantamount to a marketing campaign for depopulation simply by virtue of its release date.
This, in turn, links to another problem with Planet of the Humans, and that is that it is very white. And I find a surprising number of (surprise) white people who either will object to this description, or simply tell you it has no meaning. But it does have meaning and it has history.
A history where twelve presidents owned and worked slaves. A history in which the U.S. Army gave out blankets, infected with smallpox, to native american tribes. Ponder that. The U.S. history is so interwoven with its slave-owning and genocidal past; add Manifest Destiny, and the Monroe doctrine, and sixty years of intense anticommunism and covert CIA coups – many of which targeted post-independence Africa – that history is inseparable from any cultural or political product.
THAT history colours all cultural discussion, it cannot be escaped. And there is an unsettling sense of privilege (even if not literally true) in listening to a white guy intone for a hundred minutes.
So, when white men narrate films where nearly all humans are white, it is ipso facto problematic. White men with apparently no politics beyond ‘trees are nice’.
Now, having said this, the subject Gibbs is tackling is important. Many of his conclusions are correct, but only up to a point because looming over everything is the spectre of de-population. And this Malthusianism is so threadbare at this point, so utterly at odds with the facts, that for Gibbs to promote it means he loses credibility for everything. And it’s sinister.
There are not too many people; thats simply not true, and in fact across the planet birth rates are cratering (why is IVF such big business?) But again, if one reads the reviews in corporate-owned media (Vox, or Salon et al.) it’s enough to make one root for and defend Gibbs…almost.
In fact, reading the mainstream press on the topic of this film is an object lesson in how propaganda is disseminated. It is a perfect illustration of the internalizing of the meta-narrative for climate, as it is for Covid 19. They can’t be separated, just as drone assassination and US/NATO Imperialist wars cannot be separated from SWAT teams kicking in doors in south-central.
The fact that the U.S. has over two million people in prison, which is the most per capita and real in the world, and that two million with a disproportionate number of black prisoners, is also suggestive of a deep intractable terror of a planet with dwindling white power.
But cutting across this, as I say, is the frightening erosion of democracy in the Covid 19 emergency. Never mind Malaria killed 400,000 last year, or that even the slimy frontman for Gates and his friends, Dr Fauci, admits the case mortality rate will be very low. It doesn’t matter because this stopped being about the virus long ago.
Here is essential reading regarding Gates….two pieces. One from Jake Levich and the next from Alison McDowell.
I read in social media how people are so inspired about ‘frontline medical workers’ (you see there is always a new vocabulary, much like with climate and carrying capacity and wet bulbs and 6th mass extinction etc) and yet, in fact, huge numbers of hospitals are closing (likely to never reopen) and those doctors and nurses and now among the growing mass of unemployed in the US.
It seems the American bourgeoisie want to believe this is a dire threat. They want to self isolate. Perhaps this massive quarantine is a time of leisure that they don’t often get. I have no idea, honestly. But I do know for certain the quarantines will kill far more than the virus, in the long term, and that the new mass upticks in surveillance and invasions of privacy won’t ever be rolled back. But the bigger question is in terms of global travel and the Gates agenda (see Fourth Industrial Revolution, smart cities, etc).
What Gates wants is everyone to carry a certificate (or microchip) that indicates if they have had this or that vaccination. This is exactly what your dog has to have when you fly them out of the country.
I am deeply sorry Gibbs did not resist, or maybe actively joined, the agenda of the eugenicists. And as to the lack of mention of the military, well, I honestly don’t know how that is even possible if you claim to be making a documentary about destruction of the planet. The US war machine cuts across ever aspect of human existence today. That is not hyperbole. And yet Gibbs ignored it. I want to defend Gibbs against the corporate attacks against him, but I find it hard. And a final thought on all this.
The white liberal educated class so hate Trump that all rational perspective is lost. Anything that throws shade on Trump is a good thing. And this hatred is being enjoyed far too much; it is as if Trump came along and answered their unconscious prayers for active exercise of a deep soul-crushing hate. It bonds people, a negative bonding to be sure, but that is better than nothing.
The pimps for lockdown seem impervious to the loss of millions of jobs (just today in Norway SAS airlines cut 5000 jobs, and nobody expects them back. Or in Hollywood, as shooting resumes, crews are decimated. Thousands of jobs that likely won’t return). The importance of specific facts in Planet of the Humans are undeniable. I sincerely hope people will watch it, but watch it with an educated critical eye. For Gibbs is in bed with this man.
Two multi-millionaires performing the role of concerned citizens, and confused, confused I tell you, why people don’t want to lose their jobs and ability to feed their families.
Cory Morningstar wrote just the other day:
A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that, while tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the #coronavirus pandemic, America’s ultra-wealthy elite have seen their net worth surge by $282 billion in just 23 days.”
There seems an almost class divide actually, for both climate discourse and corona discourse. The working-class fear loss of food and shelter far more than an only moderately lethal virus. They fear the excesses of federal bureaucracies, and the boot-heel of domestic US city police departments, not to mention custodial supervision. The white educated bourgeoisie fear but are also exhilarated by this contagion. As the lockdown began the top viewing film on Netflix that week was Contagion (Soderbergh, 2011).
This is exciting they think, and it allows yet another new vocabulary. So in social media where once one was confronted with endless white guys who were getting to play being scientists and climatologists, now one is running into a constant stream of Epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists and biologists.
I’m going to quote myself here, with apologies, from a recent blog post:
The pandemic is fetishized and much like the climate alarmism associated with Greta and The Guardian paper, there is a curious fetishized and cultic response in much of the population. And it is the latent masochism of the already terrorized. It also feels like a faint cry of Puritan angst, a call to piety. This is a very American sensibility, this punitive moralism.
And I want to quote Paul Haeder, who is a social worker and writer in Oregon. This is a comment he made on his blog (which you should all read) here:
And the underlying message is population control. They great white hope of Michael Moore and I guess Jeff Gibbs is really the underpinning of the flick – and no credence is given to the millions upon millions of people fighting this bastardization of humanity, of life, called Western Capitalism. There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of groups that Gibbs could have put front and center who are local, indigenous, part of the peasant movement, others, who are real forest protectors and water protectors and life protectors.
The for Evidence-Based Medicine (Oxford University) has the infection fatality rate at between 0.1% and 0.36%. That is pretty much what seasonal flu comes in at. Something many of us said a month ago. The comparisons between the climate discourse and the Covid discourse are striking. One might even think there was an agenda here. But such topics are nowhere to be seen in the Gibbs film.
Which is fine, I suppose, if he only had viewed the lies and venality of the boosters for New green capitalism in something like a political frame. His obvious personal disappointment ends up feeling like, again, privilege.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is one meant to permanently eliminate humans from their work and livelihoods. This is the dream of the 1%. The fact that western capital continues to promote the “we are the enemy” meme should make us suspicious. It does not seem to have made Gibbs suspicious at all.
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“More succinctly, the military is never mentioned, not ever. And the open Malthusian meme ‘we are the problem’, or what is often called ‘the overpopulation argument’ (or Pogo argument) is a profoundly reactionary and racist idea based on classic eugenics, and the one glaring omission and the other rather disturbing ideology, eclipse the genuine (though limited) truths of the film.”
Are you sure about that John? I’m not. I just read Matt Orfalea’s defence of (the imperfect) Planet Of The Humans and his statement, below, about that supposedly Malthusian thrust has me wondering whether you’ve imagined it.
Matt: ““Planet of the Humans” discusses the issue of ever increasing population growth. However, there is absolutely no mention or suggestion of population control in the film. Instead, the film’s solution is to reduce consumption, not population. Nevertheless, Fox accuses the movie’s “old white guy” filmmakers of pushing “eco-fascism”.
Funny but I just watched the film, and I think I also saw people of colour in it…I mean get real people, if you make a good chunk of a movie in Burlington Vermont, what do you expect to see? I think that to name race issue in connection with this film is not fair.
Obviously the war machine is a huge culprit in destroying the planet. But I didn’t see the film as being an all-encompassing treatment of everything that humans do. The film would have has to be 10 hours long to treat all the subjects.
I saw the MAJOR point in the film as the unfortunate reality that most renewables are still dependent on the fossil fuel industry, and that the renewable energy industry, or some sectors of it at least are also guilty of contributing to the ongoing environmental disaster that our planet is being subjected to. And the other major point is that the people and industries with the means to do so have been very clever in re-branding themselves in an incredibly effective act of green-washing. So effective that even the environmental groups and activists are not critically examining what is happening.
I also agree with wardropper: the idea of de-population and common sense both in limiting our use of resources and in the number of our offspring are very different things indeed. I interpreted Gibbs’ warning in the latter rather than the former sense.
It is funny, I didn’t want to watch the film at all, as also I have a great distaste for Michael Moore’s blind and pathetic support of the Democratic party, and figured anything he was making these days would not be worth my time. But my partner said that it wasn’t at all in Moore’s flag waving stupendously naïve patriotic style, and was well worth a look. And he was right.
The theme of the film resonated with me. Saving industrial society with renewable energy will not save the planet from ecological destruction. Wind and solar power are not solutions. They are just other capitalist means to accumulate wealth by exploiting natural resources and take advantage of the working class by creating an illusion of environmental responsibility for social acceptance of the destruction these industries create and the wealth accumulated by green entrepreneurs. Overpopulation was not a theme, which critics have used to imply a sinister motivation of the filmmaker. Over consumption, or developed society consumption, based on infinite growth of industrial means to provide unlimited goods to voracious consumers was pointed out by the filmmaker as unsustainable but also the main sales pitch of the green capitalists. No documentary is perfect. The filmmaker perhaps should have found a way to insert the ruling elites desire to depopulate the planet in order to save it only for themselves into the film. Pointing out redistributing wealth to raise median wages globally is the surest way to reduce population growth would have been welcome, but how to square that solution with the concomitant increase in consumption was beyond the film’s scope. The filmmaker is not a political economist or philosopher attempting to solve the riddle of the human condition.
Interestingly, the only people of color with any role in the film were the people cutting down the forest and attempting to save the traumatized orangutan. Exploited working class people destroying habitats for their capitalist employers at least demonstrated some humanity to save that poor shocked being. A representation of many of us who care about the environment but are also inundated with mass media broadcasts about the dire threat of a virus or rogue terrorist attack while our leaders plunder the globe. We also dutifully go to work in order to maintain our living standards while worrying about the consequences. Unfortunately, how to reduce our collective consumption was also beyond the ability of the filmmaker. A riddle dogmatists have yet to solve.
John, I’ve nothing to add but thanks very much. Your humble review somewhat exonerating of the naïveté of its director Gibbs is generous. Most importantly though, your review is about much more than this sad, empty movie. I wept for the orangutan as well…
I won’t win any popularity contests for saying so, but I feel I have to point out that “depopulation” and appealing to the whole world’s common sense in limiting the number of their offspring, are two very much opposing concepts, so straight away let’s clear off the table the idea that I am supporting any kind of racism or depopulation. It is also true that if the CURRENT authorities were to “appeal” to the world’s common sense, the world, and its common sense, would respond by telling the authorities where to stick their appeal.
All I would like to suggest is an ideal, but one which could still be had in mind for the future: That a respected government, somewhere, sometime, somehow, would make such a perfectly unencumbered appeal to its citizens, without any thought of “enforcement” or enshrining any such thing in law.
I envisage nothing more than a gentle reminder that we are stuck with a certain amount of greed in the world, and the percentage of those pathologically greedy people could probably be accurately measured into the bargain.
So, given that situation, we are also correspondingly stuck with the fact that the food available to the remaining, vast majority, of the world’s inhabitants is not enough to feed them all. My idea of an appeal is, therefore only directed towards people who are aware of that fact – yes, to US – and that those who are sufficiently socially-minded might wish to do their bit towards helping out in this unnecessarily tragic scenario. Of course the same applies to any of the most disadvantaged who are nevertheless aware of the facts and who have some possibility of making a choice in this area. I fully realize that many do not, and I am not addressing those at all.
If, by some miracle – and it would certainly take a miracle – this appeal were made, without any strings attached, I like to think that it might make a small difference to the likelihood that all our children and grandchildren would have to try and survive Hell itself in the future. Otherwise I would not have stuck my head above the parapet and invited vicious personal attack. Again, I think it is very important to distinguish between depopulation, which is almost certainly the agenda of the evil people controlling practically everything today, and informed family planning, which is not even a new thing, but nor is it as much of a conscious issue as perhaps it might be among the world’s educated citizens. I just don’t like the idea of such an idea being automatically labelled, “depopulation” and thrown out, just as so much common sense is thrown out today by being labelled, “conspiracy theory”.
I crave the reader’s indulgence…
We reduce the human population slowly and humanely, or the overlords or the planet”s collapsing ecology will do it rapidly and brutally.
Who decides what is ‘humane’. Who’s is qualified? You? Me? I am pretty sure there’s many a Shipman out there all too willing to take this one on.
I know enough to comprehend the war, pestilence, plague and ecological collapse are NOT humane.
Moore’s film only highlights the fact that all the so called scientists and professors at schools and universities with the MSM have either been lying to students or have no idea about science and climate change.
You can’t have it both ways.
If Patrick Moore or Richard Lindzen would have put this out the left would cry fake news. Then a leftist non scientist puts it out and they go hmm,, it could be true?
So beyond parody.
Yet so true.
I’m a former electronics engineer… I say former, as it became increasingly clear over the years that consumers no longer gave a damn about quality control or performance. I say former, because I realized consumers only wanted it quick and cheap, and would never give a damn about runaway electronic pollution.
Quality (state of the art) electronic equipment used to last decades without a hint of failure. Some manufactures (Like Macintosh and Marantz, even offered lifetime warranties. Anything like that being offered by T-Mobile or Apple?
There are many “unknown” films such as this gem: >
The Toxic E-Waste Trade Killing Pakistan’s Poorest – YouTube
Published on July 11, 2016
Given Moore’s and Gibbs’ prior experience with digging into the details in their other endeavours, they must be held to a higher standard of nuance and to specifically avoid inciting reactionary talking points.
They knew, or could reasonably have been expected to know that their shoddy half-baked easily discreditable hack-job would open-up all the wrong kinds of conversations and contribute net-zero to responsible energy (de-)development policy.
My theory is Jeff had his decade old film sitting on a shelf and in a mid-life crisis fit decided to “get it out there” having convinced themselves as to its invaluable (or rather unvaluable) contribution.
Had they slashed the old footage in half, dropped the biomass bullshit altogether and the slagging of McKibben and Sierra Club and elaborated on the need for radical DeGrowth and DrawDown and regenerative agriculture and food relocalization… it _might_ have been a worthy effort.
Touching the population issue in a film for public distribution is completely asinine. That issue is a skilled specialization upon which white people in high consumption/emission below-replacement countries are unfit to opine.
The closest form of engagement for the unwashed public is to volunteer to help expand the education of girls and family planning in the Global South -tasks which require sensitivity and expertise beyond the “too many (brown) people” yahoo-dumb. Identified by ProjectDrawDown as the #1 solution.
That population-related equation is specious and misdirective even though it is technically correct in the most narrow sense.
How is per-capita anything worked out ?
It is the integration of some rate of consumption / emission across the populations divided by the summation of said populations.
Dividing and/or multiplying by the population summation is a triviality which hides the dis-equal distributions.
Plus, given that current Climate Disruption is due to the _accumulated_ emissions over centuries, the current emissions stats are irrelevant compared to the historical Imperialist Colon-ialist data.
A proper accounting would consist of, for each year back to beginning of industrialization, identifying emissions by country of origin and splitting those up by country-of-consumption.
The domestic and foreign emissions tracked to that country would be summed and then also divided by its population.
Same process for resource production / consumption.
Those stats could of course be summarized and simplified – but at least the details which are currently summarily discarded would be preserved.
The countries which are currently the biggest consumers/emitters have had their infrastructure built by centuries of resource consumption and emissions.
The countries where population growth is highest are mostly the places where Imperialist Colon-ialist exploitation has shithole-ified them.
Having many children has been a hedge against the high mortality rates.
It’s pretty damn hypocritical and dishonest for those who have already maxxed out our eco-credit-cards to tell those new to the party that they are exceeding their preset spending limits.
Also, given that even if all FF emissions were stopped immediately, the already baked-in warming will cause serious Climate Disruption; therefore as important as emissions reductions are, the priority must be focused on resequestration.
Project DrawDown identifies 100 solutions which have many social and economic benefits besides de-carbonization.
Regenerative Agriculture, soil restoration, food-relocalization, radical reduction of chemical/industrial agriculture are all critical issues largely excluded from mainstream discussion. PotH would have been the perfect platform to raise the profile of these somewhat nichey concepts. Some pre-emptive knees-to-the-nuts of the reactionaries/Denialists was necessary – but MIA.
DeGrowth was sort-of alluded to in the film but they failed to properly develop that concept in all its gory details. As is, the reactionary knuckledraggers who view the DeathOfGreen with schadenfreude remain deliberately willfully blind to what is ultimately the most important point raised by PotH.
Another key concept which swooshes over the heads of the hordes is cronyCorpiratism.
One can, given sufficient willful ignorance and ethical confusion view the co-optation of _some_ environmental / Green Energy organizations by corpirations as a serious moral/ethical failure of the entire eco- climate- green- movements. What is deliberately overlooked is the inherent evil of the cronyCorpirate clique.
Whatever “evil” one might be inclined to project onto Green-ness by way of association with corpirations, one must as a point of integrity up-leverage that.
Consider the biomass/biofuel issue fetishized by PotH despite it being a tiny fraction of current “green” energy production …
Nobody involved with the initial development of biofuels conceived that fully functional forest habitats would be clearcut and chipped up and shipped halfway around the earth to be burned for power/heat…(as is currently being done in BC -> Europe).
The concept of “maintaining” forests to reduce excess dead-wood forest-fire-fuel and burning that stuff for energy-conversion rather than allowing it to decompose into GHGs (and then spreading the ash on the land to minimize nutrient depletion ) is sensible enough.
Corpirations have been metastasized into nuance-destroyers solely focused on rentier-shareholder-returns which externalize the risks, costs, harms into the eco-sphere / TheCommons which are accorded zero value.
THAT is the fault/failure of the Greenies?
DeepAdaptation principles, cultivation of community, abandonment of gratuitous consumption, termination of Corpirate Superpersonhood and re-leashing them are all necessary.
Well said, indeed. The film is a Parson’s Egg.
“Roger & Me” is a great documentary I think, about a subject Moore knows something about, his hometown. This was made before he got filthy rich too. The rest of his films… not so great.
“Evil mankind” was already the plot in Schätzings “Swarm”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(Sch%C3%A4tzing_novel)
Animals must preserve swarm intelligence out of survival instinct, while Western man’s oversized brain has become disconnected from nature, it now demonizes everything as “fascist” that was meaningful & logical as evolutionary group intelligence over hundreds of thousands of years and led to its creation.
‘Western man’s oversized brain’-the racism is so normalised and undisguised.
The gutter press lives on Trump like the fly lives on feces. A symbiotic love-hate relationship. Trump promises circulation. The gutter press promises lots of “bad news are good news” for the self-declared badass. Of course they are only two sides of the same coin. In truth, they are all in the same boat and behind closed doors toasting the stupidity of mankind.
Although the method is already ancient and world-famous ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_cop/bad_cop ) “only the stupidity of humans is boundless” (Einstein).
“Unlimited” (not “boundless”) was the precise word.
How can people who regard their own species as “enemies of nature” understand nature? Interestingly, these movies never mention which states are the real originators of waste and pollution. Then the self-proclaimed “humanitarian world power” would be exposed to its perverse longings for self-abolition.
That is why it always seems a bit ridiculous when animals are humanized and people are animalized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Lancaster
h**ps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n5-TDKNS2wmX38tFmmRSnH_2rKHQ-HLF8
h**ps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kRFw2BxegUI2CaAbxD8sW41-YYt1gakuQ
But hasn’t the world always been gaga? “Animals” was also the name of a famous album by Pink Floyd. h**ps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZs6llcWjh7X8wfSeRER-o7u4fJ55tsaa
Misattribution. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-voting-quote/
I must admit that I have never seen a “Planet of the Apes” movie, for precisely that reason. “A bit ridiculous” is a very diplomatic understatement. Thank you for the moral support. Apes are apes, and humans are humans.
And both apes and humans are primates. In some circles, it’s horrific and unspeakable to point out the glaringly obvious fact that humans are animals. And there are inhuman humans, but there aren’t in-ape apes.
Anti-white then are we.
Which ‘white’? Anglo-Saxons? Aryans? Mediterraneans? Nordics?Slavs? Celts? Be specific.
Primarily the leaders of NATO countries.
i can include australia also but any countries who’s troops are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Northern Africa, surrounding Venezuela, iran , etcetc
This whole Korona20 malarkey is primarily a NATO Psyops targetting social and financial engineering, globally. Covering up this financial swindle to wall street.
It is unfettered predatory neo-liberal capitalism that is the cause. That sytem that rewards greed.
We don’t need to go over the disparity in wealth globally (i write this from South Africa)
Us natives are getting restless and agitated. Viva the yellow vests but where are the now?
It is the iron fist of totalitarianism that is necessitated to slam down in order to keep this disparity in place. And now increase it.
There are 80 3rd world countries going to the IMF, World bank for loans, no doubt with neo-liberal conditionalities applied. It is debt slavery and poverty for generations, guaranteed.
I can not describe it more passionately and articulately than Akala:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9X0McxAWm8
Jon Perkins knows too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0
Its a grim state of affairs.
A NATO hegemony needs to be resisted at all costs.
The UN is dead in the water.
We must bring forth a multi-polar world.
Most of NATO are stooges to the USA/Israel beast. Here in Austfailia the entire political, intelligence, MSM verminocracy are TOTAL and abject stooges of the USA. NO dissent is allowed ANYWHERE anymore. The totalitarian nature of the TOTAL absence of debate and dissent is not even mentioned, let alone denied.
More like stooges of your country CCP.
“There are not too many people; thats simply not true”
I disagree. Can you prove that please?
I’m not a fan of Extinction Rebellion or the exploited child that is their standard bearer, but we have raped this planet.
We have filled the oceans with plastic = human waste. We have made thousands of species extinct. We are destroying virgin rainforest.
There are without question “too many” people! The bigger question is perhaps what do we do about it?
The author has also highlighted the racial characteristics of the person behind the film. Still don’t understand the relevance of a person’s skin colour to this debate.
And can you tell me what colour I am please?
Hello John Pretty: Excellent comment. Thanks. > We have rapped the planet. < The film simply attempts to point out the obvious…
The article stunk. It points to many (alleged) areas of bias, yet carries it's own set of personal biases. "So, when white men narrate films where nearly all humans are white, it is ipso facto problematic. White men with apparently no politics beyond ‘trees are nice’.” —White men—???
Let’s continue to fog the mirrors of “racism” with another alleged anti-racist pile of bullshit.
Civilians of all races are facing major destruction of common habitat. The film only touches on a few examples of habitat extinction. Fact: Mankind (all races) is involved in causing the sixth mass extinction. Over population is not the problem. The problem is over exploitation of resources and the corporate/capitalist system driving the bus off the cliff.
What the world needs is cheap energy for all then the poorest nations won’t need 8 kids each to look for food and work on farms. Western nations are having less children,, why? Because we used coal for energy and industry to build our nations and to live in these cities and these cities are not cheap so kids are expensive.
The sooner we help poorer nations build there economies and not hinder them with hopeless renewable energy the better the world will be. Clean Coal and safe nuclear energy is the only way.
And btw oceans are not filled with plastic.
Dumber and dumberer it gets. You’re not ‘Hank’ Pence are you? Where’s the usual religious mambo-jambo that Yankee Trumpistas usually regurgitate?
I’m not sure I understand what all the misdirection is all about. The idea that the world may be overpopulated is something that the movie narrative touches on as if it were more a question than a definitive statement.
Its as if they are asking is this the next bullshit agenda ? Lets blame it on too many people?
I rather think not and furthermore it underlines the basic fault with the whole mass populace when it comes to the renewable energy postulate, and that is that they are gullible and uneducated, ready to believe anyone and anything with a green tree in their logo.
They already did the world is over populated hysterical fear-mongering. Remember, Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb”. The only problem is everything he predicted turned out to be false. So nowadays he devotes his misanthropy to Climate Change alarmism.
Yes your correct.
You would think Henry Kissinger just made a movie ?
Every life-sustaining ecological system on Earth is collapsing or near collapse. Ehrlich was correct, but a little premature. And it’s not population but over-consumption, over-extraction and over-exploitation primarily by the rich world that is killing us.
Richard you do know that the planet is greener than it was just decades ago?
Fear of being branded with a label is what helps them drive all the leftist agenda.
I am surprised that you still believe there is a left and a right. Its all the same thing in the ‘democracy’ you enjoy. In theory sure there is but there has not been one in practice for as long as I can recall.
Mr.Trump is about as close to it as we have in the Western circles and look at what they are doing to him. Misdirection and lies to suite the agenda of a left and a right when in reality its one massive hand out.
Don’t be surprised by facts and it certainly isn’t the same thing in a democracy I enjoy unless it’s the communism you enjoy?
I’m trying to think of a label for you, Hank the Yank, but I suspect ‘Hank’ might soon become a byword itself.
For what length of time should white males be allowed to intone then?
Or would any length of time greater than zero automatically convey an ‘unsettling sense of privilege’ ?
RICH white guy is more relevant.
Is not that there are too many people but that there is to much GREED.
Our esteemed 0.1% would like a big cull, of around 7 billion (goys only, of course), leaving a residue of 500 million.
More than enough to leave them with all the personal trainers, personal hairdressers, personal astrologers, personal rabbis, and child sex slaves they need.
“Greed is good, it gives you drive, drive to depopulate”. Bill Gates.
A PLANET OF INHUMAN, HUMANS
In less than 100 years the species Homo sapien ravaged an entire planet. The obsession for the domination of all resources resulted in environmental devastation. For thousands of years expansion was the raison d’etre for all Empires rooted in militarism. The 20th and 21st Century has been no different. The sun never sets on the British Empire was quickly replaced with from sea to shining sea, or perhaps “from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” The US seized the reins of Empire and all its endless wars.
Is it no surprise that just today, The “Hill” website announced an alert saying: “Terrorist threats rise amid coronavirus pandemic. Government officials and researches are warning world leaders not to lose focus on global security threats as extremist groups and terrorist organizations exploit the coronavirus pandemic to increase their operations.”
Billions are assaulted with a threat of a virus, a terrorist attack, or a military invasion. The Earth is beseeching its inhabitants to ameliorate these horrors, but is only met with silence. The oceans cry out as they’re smothered in islands of forever plastics, the soil is begging for relief from burning toxic chemicals, the air pleads to be free of all poisons. The agonized planet is
dependent on the benevolence of inhuman, humans an unfortunate fate leading to its decimation.
How tragic for a fragile ecosystem to hang its hopes on inhuman, humans. It will be miserably disappointed. Creatures big and small scramble as they find themselves eternally dispossessed like
refugees fleeing from war torn Africa and the Middle East. They all roam the planet in permanent diaspora.
What would the earth be like if it wasn’t managed by inhuman, humans. Would those in more advanced cultures allow indigenous peoples to determine their own fate. Would advanced societies coexist with the natural environment without seeking dominion. Would each individual be given equal deference and liberty. Would science and technology only improve lives. If there were no longer inhuman, humans would genocidal wars be as alien as human, humans………..
Crying Earth
For a lot more than 100 years.
Ask the woolly mammoths, if you can find any.
“It is estimated that up to 500 species have gone extinct in the last 100 years. These extinctions have been linked to human activity, such as overhunting, destruction of ecosystems/habitats, and pollution.”
Hundreds of thousands more species are emerging.
Radioactive mutations that light up in the dark……😱
The Cuckoo has landed!
So Charlotte what are you personally doing in response to all the human insanity you describe?
Are you being conscious are you being a human being?
Are you one with everything?
Do you know who you are beyond the trouble making little me =egomind?( cause of all this greed and madness)
You repeat the ( mainstream media meme) “Bad US ” which in fact the US does not run the world but that is what the banking cabal want you to think for the US vs china war they plan.Bad US.What a mind job.Nationalizing= a UN shadow govt tool.
That is ‘Saving the Planet’ from George Carlin.
Transcript
We’re so self-important, so self-important. Everybody’s gonna save something now: “Save the trees! Save the bees! Save the whales! Save those snails!” and the greatest arrogance of all: “Save the planet!” What?! Are these fucking people kidding me?! Save the planet?! We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We haven’t learned how to care for one another and we’re gonna save the fucking planet?! I’m getting tired of that shit! I’m getting tired of that shit! I’m tired of fucking Earth Day! I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists; these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths! People trying to make the world safe for their Volvo’s! Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet; not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live; their own habitat. They’re worried that someday in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet… nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine… the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat? That somehow, we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?
The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away! Pack your shit folks! We’re going away and we won’t leave much of a trace either, thank God for that… maybe a little styrofoam… maybe… little styrofoam. The planet will be here, we’ll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance. You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people in Pompeii who are frozen into position from volcanic ash how the planet’s doing. Wanna know if the planet’s all right? Ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who build their homes right next to an active volcano and then wonder why they have lava in the living room?
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: The Earth plus Plastic. The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth! The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn’t know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question: “Why are we here?” PLASTIC!!! ASSHOLES!!!
So the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now, and I think that’s really started already, don’t you? I mean, to be fair, the planet probably sees us as a mild threat; something to be dealt with, and I’m sure the planet will defend itself in the manner of a large organism. Like a beehive or an ant colony can muster a defence, I’m sure the planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet trying to defend against this pesky, troublesome species? Let’s see… what might… hmm… viruses! Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And uh… viruses are tricky; always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps this first virus could be one that-that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along and maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.
Well that’s a poetic note and it’s a start and I can dream can I? See, I don’t worry about the little things… bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we’re part of a greater wisdom that we won’t ever understand, a higher order. Call it what you want. You know what I call it? The big electron… the big electron. [Imitates electronic hum] It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is and so are we… for a little while…
We’re too ignorant to understand.
When it comes to any cognitive understanding of measurable physical sciences, George Carlin was an excellent comedian. In other words: He didn’t know ditty.
what exactly did Carlin get wrong?
I think you went out your way NOT to comprehend what I was saying.
Charlotte – there is no surer way to incur the wrath of many than by pointing out what is glaringly obvious and horrific – but unspeakable – in polite society.
You’re probably right–it’s the inconvenient truth……
Perhaps, I should have started my comment by saying I’m not a fan of Michael Moore, especially after he’s proven time and again to be a lackey for the Democratic Party. During his interview with Krystal Ball and Saagar he sounded like a putz when he talked about COVID-19. He’s such an overweight pile of crap. There’s no doubt Moore has underlying health issues.
That being said, I thought it was important that Moore illustrated how billionaire bullshit artists are exploiting the Green New Deal.
However, I still think decentralization and self-sustainability should be a goal.
You have to be totally out of it to believe that the oceans are not polluted and that the future is becoming increasingly bleak for future generations.
I lost all respect for Moore’s integrity when he morphed seamlessly in 2016 from “Bernie supporter” – to complete silence as the Wikileaks emails demonstrated to the whole world the complete corruption of the DNC – to unabashed Hillary supporter and “resistance fighter.” Chameleons should be so ‘flexible’ in their efforts to simply blend in.
Moore and the Hollywood elite could have called for an open convention in 2016, but instead their silence was deafening and their behavior craven. That Moore was in any way associated with this movie comes as a surprise to me, and I’ll certainly give credit where credit is due in that regard.
A world under Full Spectrum Dominance of the USA, the greatest force for Evil in history, and individuals like Pompeo who exude Evil like a filthy miasma, must destroy itself, the process through which we are being force-marched.
So I guess you agree there’s inhuman, humans.
I think communism would give it a run for its money.
That’s sure a ‘Hank’ of a rejoinder.
Hello Charlotte Russe: I agree.
The pathological corporate/industrial fantasy is responsible for the decimation of common Natural habitat and wholly instrumental in the collapse of Earths weather systems and ability to sustain life. Over 10 million humans starve to death every year, whilst civilians in the urban west rave on and on about “politics” and socioeconomic balderdash.
The last mass extinction was 65 million years ago. Current rates of extinction exceed last mass extinction figures by over 1700%… Over 250 species are going extinct EVERY DAY… Let that sink in.
That’s one way of perceiving things. Another is to compare like to like in order to perceive the enemy of the biosphere as the technosphere. The technosphere is defined and described by Dmitry Orlov as “…an emergent global intelligence that hates all forms of life, likes physics and chemistry, hates anything that it cannot dominate or control, is adept at using humans for its own purposes, but is quite ready to kill them when they are no longer needed or when they get in the way, which it can easily do because its most advanced and effective technologies are its killing technologies—conventional, nuclear and chemical weapons; germ warfare; and political technologies that send people into battle… From the point of view of the technosphere, the biosphere is simply there to provide it with resources and services. Its view of the biosphere demonstrates the technosphere’s striking mental deficit: it is unable to see limits.”
…
“Here I wish to correct myself: the technosphere can indeed see physical limits. In 2019, it appears to have come to the common realization that the fracking bonanza in the US has pretty much run its course and that no further expansion in the use of oil, and therefore no further economic expansion, would be possible.”
Maybe the emergence of the technosphere ought to be greeted with a yawn and a shrug and a collective “So what? Who cares about “no further economic expansion would be possible”?” Maybe that’s a natural consequence of The Great Acceleration. Who cares about having knowledge of “the technosphere”? Who really knows what “the concept of an emergent global intelligence that transcends the confines of every nation, continent and civilization” even means? That once seen it’s unlikely for anyone to be able to un-see it because it is just too glaringly obvious? We all know how important what’s “obvious” is. What’s the value of understanding that the biosphere is good but “the technosphere” is (corruptly) powerful, depraved, and profoundly both immoral and amoral? It’s not like “the technosphere” can be fought and defeated.
You’re describing the apprehension some scientists have towards AI. Once artificial intelligence find humans useless what’s next…….
Yes. That what you said about scientific apprehension about artificial intelligence and more than that. “A glaringly obvious emergent global intelligence that transcends the confines of every nation, continent and civilization” combines AI with the psycho- & socio-pathy of the Party of Davos, the oligarchic ruling classes of capitalists & rentiers, the billionaire class who have become the landed aristocracy/nobility of this neo-feudal socio-economic system lording it over the serfs (the poor, the working poor, the working class enslaved to wage labor & debt, the lumpenproletariat, every class underneath the lords of finance capital).
Wouldn’t it be delightful if the technology invented to enslave the planet actually eliminates the enslavers.
If you are guilted out (and called a violent ape= planet of the apes )you are more likely to take your govt punishment of home detention ( cage) meekly.
The ” man made climate change ” movement and “COVID19” psyop are the same as pseudoscience is their basis for a UN desired NWO.
As co-creators in this world we should not be growing or creating their “planet of the apes” for them.
Solution.
Awareness.
Then you can see the fearmongering and catastrophising as it is and not get hypnotized or deceived by it.
That analogy is completely ludicrous.
Enjoy
something you don’t hear on the british media
Q (May 2, 2020):
Sometimes you can’t TELL the public the truth.
YOU MUST SHOW THEM.
https://qmap.pub/read/4076
—
Yup, and there is probably a lot more which needs to be both shown and seen.
Michael Flynn’s 4th of July message:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/06/notorious-fourth-independence-day-in-the-land-of-the-captive-the-home-of-the-cowed/#comment-200854
Who’s Afraid of Qanon?
https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/20/kamala-kabbalah/#comment-225964
Do people actually think Tucker is a credible journalist?
The msm doesn’t do journalism. It does propaganda and opinion, and most of the presenters are merely sock puppets reading off the autocue. I assume Tucker pushes as much of his own opinion as he thinks he can get away with.
Racist China-bashing arrogance from a US elite MSM thug? You hear it EVERY day, throughout the British and Western MSM.
Spoken like a China troll
I’ve yet to watch the film, but I did read Ozzie Zehner’s book when it first appeared, and the ideas of that book, given Ozzie Zehner’s role as a producer of the film, would seem to be the underlying inspiration for the movie. The book impressed me immediately as being far more sensible than the prevailing ‘green’ climate and did harken back to the ideals of the first Earth Day fifty years ago, which is almost certainly why the movie was released when it was — the 50th anniversary of the First Earth day and nothing whatsoever to do with the current corona crisis.
The above essay descended into identity politics, which mutilates it. There was never any eugenics or racism implied in the first real mass awareness of the population explosion. There are too many people, and it threatens the survival of everyone. And it’s the world’s most perplexing problem because it is rife with paradoxes.
Technology enabled humans to proliferate, and if one examines it, support of larger population is entirely what technology is for. There is, however, a price to be paid for technology and population, and we see it both in our social and environmental condition.
One thing that’s long been obvious is that poverty corresponds to higher birth rate. It used to correspond to a staggeringly higher death rate, but now it’s simply a significantly higher death rate. The reason for the change is that third world countries (and third world type poverty situations in developed nations) were given advanced agricultural technology to ward off starvation but, because of capitalism, not the other technological material that signifies escape from poverty and a way of life with more options other than prolific procreation.
No, it is not racist to want population control. It is actually humanitarian because it implies a sharing of resources and an economic situation that transcends capitalism.
The present world population is not sustainable, and there has to come zero population growth followed by net population decline. And there eventually has to be migration from cold climate energy intensive survival situations to less energy intensive tropical climate survival situations, and by that time our senseless notions of race will have had to have disappeared.
I suspect that many who deny over-population (and over-consumption is the greater disaster)are being disingenuous, and wish that the population rise, because that will cause that Malthusian, rapid, mass depopulation that the elite truly desire. Recognising over-population and treating it at the root, by ending poverty through restitution from the billionaire parasite thieves, is definitely NOT what the elites desire, or will ever allow.
Sounds like you love communism. Maybe you should take the chances in life like the billionaires have and make something of your life and then you could give restitution.
It’s intriguing to watch a ‘mind’ crumble almost by the hour-and from such a low base, too.
Spike – here’s a fun fact. The Democratic Republic of Congo has a population of 84 million in a country the same size as Western Europe which has a population of 196 million. Yet which is seen as having an overpopulation problem?
Both! Zero population growth followed by net population decline is needed everywhere. The solution is to eradicate poverty. It actually takes less energy per capita to have a middle class existence in Africa or India than it does in Europe or North America because of the warmer climate.
If you’re interpreting my talk of “eradicating poverty” as “eradicating the poor” and thus “eradicating black and brown people” you are reacting with that unfortunate toxically racist cultural zeitgeist of the time.
The original mass awareness of the population explosion was just as concerned with the post WWII baby boom in developed countries as it was for what might have been happening anywhere else.
and what do YOU propose as the population reduction methodology of choice ?
Project DrawDown identifies the combination of education of girls and family planning as the number one most effective solution to the excessive accumulated atmospheric emissions.
Might you be planning to sign up ?
typically any talk of “overpopulation” by the unwashed hordes in the most hyper-consumptive hyper-emissive below-replacement nations is purely evasionary
“Dont look at me… lookit all dem brown pipple”
even if people stopped fucking and stopped burning FFs, that would not be enough
so… DrawDown is mandatory to resequester GHGs and to increase food resiliency, and to reduce the dis-equality of cronyCorpirate trickle-up predatory capitalism
Absolutely kurt. This ‘overpopulation’ meme began really spreading a decade or so ago, and it was immediately plain to see that it is a racist attempt to justify the genocide of the ‘useless eaters’ in order to allow the privileged Western elites to go on mindlessly over-consuming forever.
I get the point…
I also agree that this film comes very well in handy to promote the depopulation operation.
But you guys don’t need to worry about this film. It’s a mere distraction. Even if it points out that “green energy” is just a slogan!
Billionaire Bill Gates ANNOUNCED PUBLICLY 10 YEARS AGO what was is PLAN.
CORONA CHANGE
He invested many billions since 2010 to reach OPERATION COVID – the 1st stage – to try to achieve his GOAL!
For him the formula is clear: Only by reducing ‘P’ can I secured my lifestyle and life on this Planet. All this because they’ve also realized that the other options – Mars, Cryonics – are useless for the rest of TIME they have left…
They scraped OPERATION “CLIMATE CHANGE” and ALL (SRF & BILLIONAIRES & jesters) are now fully engaged in REDUCING P
Have FUN!
They are still continuing with the man made climate change myth.
Two things based on falsified data, lies and pseudo science.
Stupendous Dunning-Krugerism, the cream of the crop.
OPERATION CLIMATE CHANGE continues inexorably. PS It’s no ‘operation’. It’s reality.
”Weinstein served as an executive producer on Moore’s 2004 documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” distributed by Miramax, and the Weinstein Co. recently bought the rights to his new Donald Trump documentary “Fahrenheit 11/9.””
I often wonder if Weinstein was punished for supporting Moore’s films. Moore himself was very quick to throw him under the bus. And Kevin Spacey for making a film about one of America’s most ardent critics of Empire, Gore Vidal.
Michael Moore ate all the pies.
Why the planet is fucked.
The usual tripe trotted out in this article :
1 – there are not too many people;
2 – to claim otherwise is racist.
There is no controversy over whether we are over stressing the planet’s ability to renewably furnish us with the resources we currently consume. The profligacy prevalent mainly in the West is certainly one of the primary causes. Although that level of consumption has to be reduced, the opposite is the trend, mainly due to economic improvements in the developing world. There’s no arguing that we in the west are the main culprits of the excess demand on planetary resources. We have to reduce our ecological footprint. There are only two ways to do that. Reduce demand and reduce population. In my view we must do both.
There is huge injustice in the fact that we in the West consume per capita around ten times the resources they do in, say, Bangladesh. We in the West must lead by example by reducing ecological footprint through a reduction in consumption and the introduction of impactful sustainability measures throughout our economies and cultures. Communities like the Findhorn ecovillage operate at less than half the EFP of the UK as a whole, proving it can be done relatively painlessly. What’s missing in a progressively globalist world is the political will and the political muscle to administer the necessary medicine.
Economic growth in the developing world will obviously impose additional demands on global consumption. This will be amplified by population growth. A doubling of population in any part of the world means a doubling of demand for food, metal, fuel, lumber, chemicals, medicines, etc. It’s palpable nonsense to argue that because one maintains that continued population growth of the magnitude we see in these countries is not sustainable it therefore must be racist. If we in the West have the courage to take the necessary steps to significantly reduce our EFP, it is not racist, nor unreasonable, that we ask those in the developing world, responsible for 97% of world population growth, to do the same through voluntary, benign population-reduction measures. Either we collectively look for planetary solutions and agree to adopt meaningful sustainability policies voluntarily across the board or, sooner or later, this train is going to hit the buffers and population reduction measures are going to be forced on us by the planet itself.
Actually it’s not the Planet that is already doing it!
The depopulation train already left the station… Enjoy OPERATION COVID. The 1st stage in the depopulation Plan of the SRF & BILLIONAIRES & jesters.
And the Train operator is Bill Gates!
“Enjoy OPERATION COVID. The 1st stage in the depopulation Plan of the SRF & BILLIONAIRES & jesters.”
Less people = less workers and less consumers; not so easy to keep up your millionaire ways in such a setting is it?
You’re not paying attention. Off Guardian has tweeted (several times) the the wealth of the world’s richest people has gone up by 378 billion since lockdown started. And that will increase a whole lot more once they start buying up the carcasses of businesses that have died because of lockdown (a practise called disaster capitalism).
Fewer
Even harder on a planet where all the life-sustaining systems have collapsed, not to recover for millennia.
That’s why the SRF & Billionaires need fewer animals on their Herd of Modern Slaves!
Why do you guys THINK that the Secular Ruling Families & Billionaires & jesters started OPERATION COVID?
Their FIRST PLAN of reducing the Herd Size or reducing the DESTRUCTION an enormous Herd causes FAILED: the plan tag was “Humanity Caused Climate Change”!
They are now FULLY AWARE that a forced reduction of the Herd Size must be executed or ELSE their lifestyle and awesome life is in jeopardy.
So the SRF & BILLIONAIRES & jesters went for the Backup Plan “CORONA CHANGE”…
The formula is SIMPLE:
CO2=P*S*E*C – since they can’t fix the unbalance on the S(services)/E(energy)/C(carbon emissions), THEY CAN ONLY go for the P(people). The correct and more realistic word is S(sheeple).
And They even publicly announced Their intentions back in 2010!
But the Herd was grazing and is still on that mode…
So GOOD LUCK with the depopulation!
Read the forecasts from the World Bank, and enjoy!
Really? We are clearly unaware of how the MAIN SYSTEM works!
In the EU & UK, we have falling birth rates, which are not enough to replace our population.
https://www.ft.com/content/9b03216c-33a0-11ea-a329-0bcf87a328f2
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51118616
One of the film’s key point is overconsumption. This review overlooks it. Was that intentional?
Overconsumption like Bullshit Jobs https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ is as much political as it is economic. David Graeber has been much quoted here in recent weeks for his analytic conclusion that productive jobs are being replaced with pointless jobs for political reasons: to keep people occupied so that they don’t have time on their hands to challenge the 1%.
Of course it’s overlooked! WE want to keep consuming useless stuff as much as we can!
Of course it’s overlooked! WE want to keep consuming useless stuff as much as we can!
Why buy a smartphone every 3/4 years if we can buy a new one every 6 months/1 year?!
Why use a car during 20 years if we can change for a new car every 2/3 years?!
Why can go on, but you get the picture, I assume?!
Some missing letters on that previous comment! Sorry…
“One of the film’s key point is overconsumption. This review overlooks it. Was that intentional?”
No, Steppling is just another capitalist hater that doesn’t notice that capitalism isn’t our only problem.
Capitalism IS the only problem.
Well spotted.
It is great that Michael Moore has finally exposed the preachers of the renewable energy movement and their deluded followers as the frauds and idiots they always were, after all the science was resolved wasn’t it?
The film is telling us that the green movement failed to active what they wanted it to do, and this official exposure of this fact heralds in a period of more brutal self-hate of the human spices by the human spices, with the gun now firmly pointing at us.
As a call for mass murder or genocide, which is clearly where this message will end up, it is as deluded and stupid as was the original love of renewable fuels, and will be enacted with the same brutal cold illogical inhumanity.
It would be far better if we forgot the absurd War on Carbon, and just tried to stop pollution and saved our natural environments through prosperity and reacted to any climate change as it happens, if there is any. We can’t be trusted to do anything else.
We must be like Sweden in the Covid crisis, we should and learn from the Covid farce, shortly to become a humanitarian crime, that the our panicked reaction to a perceived crisis, always produces far worse results than the origin crisis itself, especially when analyses is being delivered by corrupt doctors, scientists or environmentalists zealots.
We can’t afford to react to a changing climate, because we are going to destroy ourselves in the process of reacting. All we can hope that our hard wired addiction to growth will provided the solutions, as it has done for the past 50,000 years.
Burning coal IS pollution you ….polite words fail. As for ‘zealots’ you bow to no-one.
Logic and common sense fails you too. Pollution and the War on Carbon are different things. CO2 is not a pollutant. We have failing to fight pollution all my adult life, I doubt that will change. ‘Environmentalists’ are fighting Carbon, not pollution.
Yes, jack, that’s where your Dunning-Krugerism burns bright. Science established over nearly 200 years does show that excess carbon containing gases in the atmosphere will destabilise and are destabilising the planetary climate regime, more rapidly in our case, than for at least 55 million years. Just ignorantly proclaiming that hundreds of thousands of scientists and their work and all the observations from reality are wrong, is a dead-end ego-trip.
Tell me Richard, how do you make steel without burning coal? Or are you in favour of us having no more steel?
I believe that research is ongoing to find substitutes in steel-making. I’ll take using less steel over killing ourselves, every day, but that’s just me.
Richard, people believe all kinds of nonsense. There is no way of making steel without burning coal. That is not a matter of belief; it is a fact.
Michael Moore is essentially a gatekeeper at this point or a little better. Just a random thought, looking at that Youtube clip int the piece. Does anyone else have and urge to punch Stephen Colbert in the piehole? He is such an establishment tool, it makes me ill. Its a good example of how these entertainers think they are so clever, but they are merely monkeys for the propaganda machine. He isn’t even amusing in the slightest to me. Maddow is another glaring example.
I know anyone who gets airtime on the MSM or entertainment is essentially a shill. These two seem to annoy me more than most.
and to chime in on “overpopulation”. Overpopulation is a myth. The growth rate of human population is starting to flatten. You could take very person on the planet and give them some square footage in an area the size of Oklahoma. Not that this is desirable, but you get the point. There are too many wealthy elites. Their population needs to be reduced to zero.
One might conclude that Moore is taking us toward an era of genocides, hence the virus operation we find ourselves in the middle of. One more twist of the knife they could easily kill half of us with no objection in o0ur homes, who would know. Just claim there is a more virulent strain.
No millionaires and less people.
livingsb,
‘Their population needs to be reduced to zero.’
Indeed. Just that teensy 1% we hear of. Out of circulation till their genes are gone.
Yeah, not much to disagree with but, again, I am a bit anoyed by the constant, “white guilt” bashing, and of course, the west, but then who are the main drivers for the enviromental shithstorm, Me, or what, why am I whom grew up in the west, whom have jack shit to say when it comes to virtually everything, the ecological catastophes, and I get tha blame just for been white and consumer, when I have nothing more than an average Chines or South American have, and why on earth cant the people in this respective corners of the world take the blame on them selfs, no, I am blamed.
The main driver for an massive desertification of the Northern Norwegian plains, is done by the so called indiginous people in their greed for ever larger herds, ripped the plains to mere dust, and complains about climate change because the raindeers cant find food, while they go balistic when people like me whom comes from the same region points out the main problem, to many raindeers, and persto, the racism card is flipped for the bare life, and they scream at you.
Why dont we debate the Indonesians rape and destruction of the lands, the slaughtering of indiginous people to make large plantations, the African nations whom have no policy to preserve the land, to regulate it, to avoid desertification witch is mainly done by people, not by Me.
South american, the natives is the main force behind the plantations of biofuel and monocultures, this is the main problem in Africa to, done by some few massive international corps, coffy and bananas, etc, they create poverty, and along with native that is corrupted to their bone marrow, whom alwoes this to happen, Somalia and other eastern African nations regarding fisherys, and how is that possible, because of corruption, and instead of dealing with this on an local level, you blame Me.
Then we have to real deal, the little click of international corps whom is not only destroying African cost line, but do exactly the same in Europa to our nation Norway, with bottom trawling to fishfarms, whom is poluting the hell out of our fjords, even when WE have complained for decades, nothing is done, and the real deal is, it takes 3 kg of wilde fish to feed 1 kg of fishfram fish, that alone is mindboggling idiotic but nothing is done, birds are dying because this fishfarms demands food, fishes out the herrings to even smaller fish sorts devestaing the population under the sea suface and above, windmills are chopping doen birds in an staggering tempo, on such windmill park have alread cutt down over hundred White tale eagles, and yet, even the green scumbags is dead silent because we have to reduce CO2.
Yeah.
I could go on for f…. hours, and some how I am blamed for everything.
Eugenics, yeah, I know about that, Norway ended its racial hygeen program in the 80s, did you know that, and I was one of those that was and stil is regarded as Sub-humans, dont talk about blacks or others when I know personaly about the same, and I am white. The problem we have to day, isnt over population that is an late 1800 bloody “science” witch stil is alive, and I dont belive that at all, despite the numbers, when I know one thing, the moment you desimate poverty, gives an nation the land back, and the people have an rise in their wealth, can fix the health care, fix local polution thru cleaning their deposits and water, etc, to build up an sustainable future, the populations explosive growth usualy if not always declines, and I am always surpriced that this isnt even in the debate, why dowe alow some few rule everything, and they have no problems with destroying lands after lands, create massive ecological problems, because they can and we cant do shit about it, but blames Me.
The AGW and the debate that follows is more like an exsercie in bloody stupdity, period, and I find the narratives insulting, and on top of it, I cant do shit, when we are guided by an corrupt MSM and Politicians whom have sold their soul to the highest bidder. Thats the problem and its one of the few things that is indeed global.
I sincerely hope people starts to realise we are all in the same boat, to point on Me or others in the west is not the solution, but we need to work out something more substancial to have an sustainable future.
And by the way, it was blacks whom sould their own people to the Arabs and Jews, whomt rafficed most of the salves to central and south America, and the second thing is, half of them where whites, populare in the Arab nations.
If you are going to debate history you better get the bloody issue correct, and not indulg in sniveling drivel, like the moronic babeling about slavery, when slavery is even done to day, millions are sold and slaves, even in Africa to day and in some of the Arabic nations, why dont we debate that, instead of drooling about history when most of it is not even true, and the blame squarly put upon the wrong people. And when thats said, in Europa children where treated like dirt, in the mines, factorys, etc, and the numbers are jaw dropping, the missery is biblical in scale but we never debate that either.
That goes to the present Africa, Asia, etc.
The premisses for this debate is not real, but been polticied to create an twisted reality, when facts etc are hidden or just ignored.
peace
Absobloodylutely.
This is the best explanation for the quarantine I’ve recently come across. http://newlevellers.blogspot.com/2020/05/gaslighting-coronavirus-by-dimitry-orlov.html
Kudos to both Dimitry Orlov and John Steppling.
Exactly.
I’ve been saying to anyone that hears
Everyone is on a honeymoon period and getting paid 350 quid a week here in Ireland if you’ve been let go of your job.
Why would you question anything when you’ve had your exams you’ve not studied for deferred
Got let go from a job you’ve hated being in.
Now got to spend time with family like never before as of work commitments.
The honeymoon period will end and by that time you’ll have given away your rights and have a tracking app to follow you every move and get a vaccine injected into your pineal gland every year for eternity for being such a dirty little infected pleb.
‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution is one meant to permanently eliminate humans from their work and livelihoods. This is the dream of the 1%.’
Right-on, I think. The dream is pathological at a cellular level, I think too, remembering in D.H. Lawrence and Orwell the 1% of then huddled beside their radios.
“There are not too many people”.
Untrue. There are too many people.
“Across the planet birth rates are cratering.”
Untrue. Breeders are still breeding like factory farm chickens across Africa and North India.
I didn’t bother to read this ludicrous article beyond that.
Bring on the downvotes, see if I care.
The fertility rate in the 1960s was 5.0 children per woman, today is 2.4.
It is very easy to check that for yourself, but the fact that you use terms like “breeders” and “factory farm chickens” to refer to the people of the third world, makes it clear that yours is not an opinion based on judgement or reasoning but instead in prejudice (perhaps something worst?), ignorance and fear.
Just like most of the “overpopulation doomsday cult.
In the EU, the average is 1.59. See my post further up.
Professor Pangloss reassures us.
haha! good one!
But now, seriously, that you see me as Professor Pangloss… We share more than you think,Richard, it is only that I try to keep my despondency at bay (when possible) using facts and reason. Or at least I try to avoid feeding it with unsubstantiated theories and predictions of doom. Is there a point in doing that if everything is most certainly going to get worse anyway?
Cheers
Sceptic, if you really think that descriptions (NOT predictions) of the ongoing collapse of the planet’s habitability are ‘unsubstantiated’ then you are in for a nassty shock. I pity you that awakening.
Again, Richard, you are assuming that I don´t see any problem. I do, I am sickly worried for the future of this planet. Only that I see pollution, deforestation, poisoning, reduction of wild lands etc, as the product of a an economic system lead by a gang of psychopaths willing to burn the whole planet to gain more power and wealth. You, on the contrary, think that the propaganda constructs of those same psychopaths: that we are plague, that our industries change the climate, are the only possible reasons to worry about the habitability of the earth.
I am sure you have the best intentions but you have been mislead.
Agree with the first half, You don’t understand my position, which, as I say, concurs with yours as stated in the first half. Humanity is not a plague, but capitalism IS cancer. And our industries (‘our’?-theirs surely)do change the climate. That is irrefutable, and simply denying it won’t make the ecological collapse stop.
You could stick all 7 billion side by side in the grand canyon with room to spare.
“You could stick all 7 billion side by side in the grand canyon with room to spare.”
So? Overshoot is not a matter of too little space but overexploitation.
How would that feel, do you think ?
Who’s going to make the sandwhiches ?
The 1℅ who put us in there in the first place!
And the Soylent Green would flow down the Colorado.
A pleasure.
(“Now, the essential and overriding two problems with this film can be generalized as absence of class analysis, and an absent analysis of western Imperialism. . . . More succinctly, the military is never mentioned, not ever.”)
(“And the open Malthusian meme ‘we are the problem’, or what is often called ‘the overpopulation argument’ (or Pogo argument) is a profoundly reactionary and racist idea based on classic eugenics”)
The first quote from John I’m totally on board with. I would suggest we can even intelligently pull the lens back a bit further to a wider view and observe that we (all of humanity) remain mired in a larger historical period (over 500+ years now) in which Europe and her colonies have been ruthlessly raping, pillaging and plundering the entire planet with every form of violence conceivable in a cooperative effort to rule in perpetuity. And yes, that is based in a now largely “unspoken/unspeakable” ethos of very real white supremacy that connects directly to not only a “past history” slavery and genocide – but to current “arguments” – such as a “half a million dead Iraqi children are – ‘worth it’.”
As to the “we are the problem” – “overpopulation argument” – I must say I have to differ with John, and perhaps it is simply a matter of which “lens” each is viewing this through. I can vividly remember being about 8 or 9 years old (1959 or 1960) while walking to school in a blue collar neighborhood boarding Detroit and having the following thoughts. We (my family) had just been out a few days early in the countryside listening to the spring peepers (small frogs that sang in truly deafening fashion) in the swamps we visited for a walk in the country.
I found myself thinking what madness it was that as I walked to school I passed yard after yard of mowed green grass, not a dandelion allowed to exist among it much less wildflowers, and I walked on a concrete platform without a bug in sight, instead of the dirt or the gravel of a country road. I remember thinking “where are the frogs?” “What have we done to them?” “Why all this grass instead of the swamp?” “Why would anyone want to live like this?”
Simply the innocence of a child perhaps? However, those early impressions of industrial civilization and it’s voracious appetite to destroy the natural world in order to provide for “more of everything” including space for – “more humans” – those impressions have never faded or left me.
It would be another ten years before my father would retire from 30 years working in a steel mill and we would be able to move to a tiny home in northern Michigan where the frogs still sang in the spring. I’m not sure my soul would have survived had we not made that move. My being barely survived early life in the claustrophobic concrete madness of what is now referred to as “the rust belt.”
The images of the industrial wasteland that was/is Detroit remains vivid in my memory from 60 years ago. The vastness of it, and the the utter and compete destruction of the natural world needed to create it, along with the massive pollution emitted from these industrial constructions appeared to me hellish then and they remain hellish today whenever I return to visit family and friends there.
Bruegel’s painted depictions of hell, ghastly as they may be, have a certain charm compared to the reality of industrial Detroit – where the sky would light up orange when they fired blast furnaces, and hours later white ash would descend on our downriver neighborhood like some mockery of a winter snow in the natural world – a natural world my childhood heart longed for.
All this is to say that as an innocent child it was clear to me that we humans were destroying the natural world, existed in such growing numbers that as a child I watched one suburban development after another spring up around Detroit each to destroy yet another swath of trees and swamp. And yes these were “white” suburbs. Open racism among the white Detroit working class was ubiquitous, though I count myself fortunate that my immediate family was a rare exception in this regard. This was before affirmative action, in the days that a Black, Hispanic or Native American couldn’t hope to land a “good job” with police, firefighters or other city civil services in Detroit.
I grew up in a home in which the destruction of the natural world AND racism and class and imperialism were ongoing topics of conversation all of which shaped my perceptions and my thinking. Neither of my parents had graduated from high school, yet both were well read and much more astute in assessing how “power” worked in the American political system than were most of my later university professors.
I found the same to be true when as a human rights activist I travelled to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Columbia. The poor and uneducated in those nations had a better grasp of how American foreign policy operates and why than the vast majority of “well educated” Americans do. And yes, they knew their enforced poverty was directly linked to the “lifestyle” we Americans were and are living just to the north.
So perhaps my own conception of the “population” issue is still informed by those childhood experiences of horror at what had to be destroyed in order for more people to be housed, have a car, have a nice green lawn where the frogs once sang in the spring. When one looks at the brutality of industrial agriculture, from animals to grains, all necessary simply to feed our numbers (of course not without the massive waste ubiquitous within the “system”), I’m not sure how one can see anything but more destruction of the natural world as the only solution to continuing this madness. And no, I’m not talking about Africa, or Asia, I’m talking about the U.S. we “colonists” have pillaged and desecrated.
I don’t have data, or any ‘rational’ argument for my position, so much as the very clear intuitive perceptions of childhood that have never changed. This translates not to “we humans are the problem,” but rather to “we humans locked into this particular set of (‘myth systems’) are the problem.” And as Derrick Jensen puts it – most of us are so well indoctrinated within this ‘mythology’ that we can imagine the end of the world more easily than we can imagine the end of industrial capitalism.
Other than having a different perspective than Steppling on this particular issue, I think his review is spot on the money, sad to say. Watching the ferocious nature of the assault on the film makers for what they “did address” in the film, it is hard to imagine that a broader palate would have served to do anything but open them to even more absurd accusations – such as being “Putin Puppets” for daring to question American military madness.
Just watched it. Very powerful. But the scene where Vandana Shiva is briefly allowed to talk sense and then is suddenly just moving her mouth while the narrator intones over her was emblematic of what is described in this review.
i met him once in a line
i believe they call them queues in the uk
i met him near lie chester sqyare he was in front of me in a store called gregs.
i aked him about the clinton foundation and he told me to fuck right off.
when i got up to the girl serving it became crystal clear that all the pies had gone.
everyone is defined by the position they take on the ritual that was the 9 and 11.
moore is a sack a blockage a gatekeeper.
gnome chumpski robert fisked the cockburnt family
moore is a hack sack
assange
someone on a previous thread put up assange interview saying 911 is not important
christopher bolleyn would disagree
the arts projects b thing gelatine the folks that danced on roofs moving urban systems
rabbi dov zackeim michael chertoff and lucky larry many folks thought it was a defining moment a world wide coup
today north lorea iran russia and china all in rokerfella skank lockstep
the world is a stage the stage is the world
satanick entertainment
The US Military, the world’s single largest polluter, is still just an enforcer. The prime mission of the US Military is to maintain the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But following Voltaire’s advice, what does the US military enforce that we’re not allowed to criticize?
There has already been a Green Revolution that we learned about on Sunday night from Uncle Walt and in school from our Weekly Reader. Food production has been taken over by the petro-chemical industry, turning a great percentage of the population into troublesome meat popsicles now that the Bezos Gate’s of the world envision a better world through AI.
CoVid-19 has the USA the hardest because we have been the Green Revolution’s control group for over two generations now, but don’t say a word about America’s obese teen population and the overall poor health of the USA. Imagine trying to start a program like this in 2020 – . It’s as if we’ve been trained not to notice the lack of obese people in pictures from the 60’s and earlier.
NAFTA, NAFTA2, and all other trade agreements almost gleefully give away production jobs, but jealously guard American ‘agriculture’. Monsanto has been written into the Constitutions of Iraq and Ukraine. If we grew our food as we had for the previous 10,000 years, there would be no basis to discuss over-population.
Moore is a fat fake hypocritical POS with 7 mansions and $100 million, not fifty.
Controlled opposition at its worst.
Shilling for corrupt, lying warmonger Crooked Hillary as though she was a cross between Jesus Christ and Mother Teresa.
Expect a lot more of this garbage over the next few months.
What else should we expect?
The Democrats seemed intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory yet again, finding the only candidate in the country the Orange Baboon can be guaranteed to beat. Yet such is his crass incompetence and ineptitude that even Creepy Joe might just pull it off. If the Democrats had any sense (which they don’t) they would shoehorn in Cuomo before November.
Not that any outcome would make any difference to the price of carrots. Just another Shabbos from the same kosher sandwich, serving the same globalist Zionist interests.
We have to expect austerity on steroids for the next few years to pay for the massive transfer of wealth upwards to the 0.1%.
More taxes for the little people. Higher income tax and VAT (but don’t worry, “it’s all for the NHS”), shredding welfare and public spending. Forget about H2S and a 3rd runway at Heathrow, for better or worse. Bedroom taxes, pasty taxes, caravan taxes.
Digital identity cards, blanket surveillance, rigid censorship, shredding of civil liberties.
Welcome to the new normal.
No matter who you vote for, AIPAC wins.
That’s the kosher sandwich.
A fine article about a must watch film , one of Mr Moore’s best , and a perfect example of cognitive dissonance to be sure , as the author finds racism and billionaires Eugenicists a bigger threat than 8 billion and growing by 80 million per year human populations as most of the planets higher life forms become extinct ? As we watch the very divided left completely splinter and cease to exist.
👏🏻
Brilliant comment. Steppling does not answer his own tacit question …”If overpopulation is not the problem: what is?” Answer: overconsumption.
Overconsumption by just 20% of the global population. Which we are in. Ergo: we are the problem. And if we invoke ritualistic class conflict mythologies and screening discourses to obscure …then there is no solution …ever.
The real class Divide is North to South. I’ve practically quoted Jason Hickel chapter and verse. The globally poor support our class conflict with their lives and livelihoods. We need to stop overconsumption in order to redistribute wealth and resources to where they are needed. Then there is no overpopulation crisis. If we continue to consume at pre-Covid rates: there is an overpopulation crisis …caused directly by our overconsumption. We are the problem.
If we do not stop our intentional maldevelopment of the rest of the world: we are condemning billions to death to preserve our way of life. We are the imperialists.
What the film did show was the hypocrysy and paradox of our bourgeois commodification and overconsumption. If we choose the Left political pantomime – and go ‘green’ …we support the billionaires. If we default or choose the Right political pantomime – and stay ‘black’ …we support the billionaires. If we want to disempower the billionaires: we have to destroy our metastasing overconsumption and choose life. Something very few seem to want to do.
Steppling is a hypocrite: we cannot go forward as the support caste of the billionaires. If we do: our reward will be fascistic order and control. We are the problem: we are choosing the wrong options. We could choose life instead: life for all life …not just our own.
If we choose growth and overconsumption: we choose to empower the billionaires. The only thing I do not understand: is why is it taking so long for so many to make the only life-affirming choice we have left to make?
That was quite clearly addressed in the film to be honest. The graphs in the middle section show a tenfold increase in population and on top of that (an average) tenfold increase in consumption per capita : making a hundred fold impact. Gibbs makes the point that the wealthy north take the big share.
It’s there – just not in the language of the Left.
Ergo: the film is a lot better than Steppling’s analysis?
The film makes adequately clear: we are the problem: and we are the solution …if we make the correct choices to end our deliberate maldevelopment of the South and cease our overconsumption. It is really simple. Steppling in no way makes this clear above.
What is hard is the deferring of responsibility for the collective choosing we make. All this “white bourgeois” and “American Imperialism” mythology we are not part of is the last vesting of spaffed cultural creation we have left. You said yourself: the intersection of the Venn diagram of creative resistance is very small. Since you said it: it got a lot smaller.
If we look outside ourselves for change: nothing changes. We are the problem. Moore’s sellouts aside: Jeff and Ozzie’s film is a lot better than Steppling is making out. Industrial civilization is as over as the left: now where did we put Plan B? 🙂
Yes to all that.
Tomorrow I make more frames for the runner beans.
Is taking long cause people usually think according their own life experience. Is not because they are evil, or stupid or anything….is just that they lack the existential experience + the north society has done a terrific job at silencing their inner voice.
To be true, north rich citizens (yes they are rich seen from a south perspective…even if they are just regular workers) have not experienced pain and suffering to the level the south had and whatever experience there was (WW I & II) has long been forgotten and erased
..for them poverty, hunger, suffering, totalitarian powers, corruption etc are just words understood at an intellectual level but that’s it…there is no existencial experience…. wich they are only starting to experience now….then, after the experience has sink in…they will start to understand and, maybe, make the right choice, the choice of life for all.
(I am in and from the south part of the world…and believe me, I have no bad feelings from rich country people…is not a matter of being good/bad but of being conscious/unconscious…as simple as that.)
We live in a world of primal nescience – avidya – where the Tree of Knowledge is the mainstay of dominative overpower. As such: it is in fact the Tree of Nescience.
So what happens when people like Susan George and Jason Hickel try to raise awareness of how the North maldeveloped the South so that the globally poor develop the globally rich? They get attacked and marginalised.
The nescience is not a benign state of ignorance: but a jealously guarded willful ignorance. The people are not going to come around: because the people do not want to come around. Which is a very different case from the one you are suggesting. It is not just the case of raising awareness: Susan George, Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein et al raised awareness decades ago: to a minority grouping and generalised crickets of not listening …hear no evil primate nescience.
You have studied the buddhic dharma. Nescience is not normal: it is high maintenance! Avidya – literally the absence of awareness, knowledge, and wisdom – is a high investment in a self-structure that filters all environmental information to fit the pre-conceived self-structure …it is a self-fulfilling ‘permanent’ state.
We only see, hear, and recognise that which confirms us to us. Which is *manaskara*: which takes constant maintenance and filtering to fit our pre-conceived conceptual self-structure (mind-making; making of and in the mind; self-invested attention …a much broader and deeper conception than modern ‘confirmation bias’).
We have to keep and maintain a mythical structure that collectively protects the individual from ever coming into contact with anything that might raise their awareness of how our ‘wealth’ is acquired. Which is jealously guarded and deliberately secreted. Whilst there is no individual blame attached: it is not benign and simply a lack of awareness. Avidya is an intentional karmic state that proliferates itself with much energetic – actual biophysical materiality flows, not just psychic energy – investment. It is not a state of innocence: it is a collective investiture in ignorance that is jealously guarded (and not just by gatekeepers).
It is only when we get tired of all that investment – or it collapses – that avidya will finally fall away. But not without much wailing and gnashing of teeth for the lost state of ignorance! It is such a bizarre world we live in. We could just chilax and all get on: sharing reserves on a greatest need first basis. We could have lived like so indefinitely in some high level of comfort – way beyond subsistence and false scarcity. But no: we chose to invest everything in ignorance and give the most ignorant the lot …all 2,153 of ‘them’. Avidya, nescience, or ignorance will turn out to be the most costly investment we made. Bizarre!
Thanks for your reply. I try to keep some faith that the seed of wisdom lies within every human….even though (and I fully agree with your perception) it might take long for it to spring and at an extremely high cost. It doesn’t seems that humanity is ready, not even near ready to change course…..
But we are in the Kaliyuga after all….
Metta 🙏
Excellent. One earlier contributor posited ‘over-exploitation’ rather than over-consumption, and I find that equally cogent.
Overthis” or “overthat” are results of overpopulation period. Faulty logic and or bullshit rhetorical won’t change that fact
Racist clap-trap, blaming the poor for your own greed.
Perfectissimo.
This is curious:
https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-police-conspiracy-theories/
The notice that was put up on the Greater Manchester Police force FB page does not mention the virus, nor does the above link. But considering that the notice was put up on 23rd April, it must relate to these recent draconian restrictions. Consider the language in the notice: “Radicalisation”, “conspiracy theories” and, most tellingly, “people who are spreading hate”. These are the obsessions of concerned mainstream “spiritual guidance” for some time now. Yet another indication that this virus is a repeat of 9/11.
Yes .. pretty staggering stuff … they want you to call the police if a “vulnerable” family member has been consuming ” conspiracy theories” online.
Ever since Cameron referred to wrong thinkers as ” non violent domestic extremists” during a speech in Birmingham there has been an agenda to squeeze together conspiracy theorists with terrorists.
The public are now more than ready to accept this as can be seen around us every day. Millions of masked believers genuinely believe that unmasked citizens are an immediate threat to their life.
Hell … todays reports show majority of UK population want the lockup to continue !
Sinister though Greater Manchesters’ Police actions are it is nothing compared to the re tasking of the British Army 77 Brigade. ( previous task was reading RT and Sputnik everyday)
Dressed in desert camo and filmed at a briefing reminiscent of a Desert Storm presser the BigWig announced that 77 Brigade has 2000 fulltime cyber troops , with thousands in reserve actively disrupting wrong thinkers websites , chatrooms etc. and pursuing key individuals.
As John Lydon barked on the Pistols / Holidays in the Sun …..
I didn’t ask for sunshine and I got World War 111
I’m looking over the wall and they’re looking at me ..
Good post.
“Dressed in desert camo and filmed at a briefing reminiscent of a Desert Storm presser the BigWig announced that 77 Brigade has 2000 fulltime cyber troops , with thousands in reserve actively disrupting wrong thinkers websites , chatrooms etc. and pursuing key individuals.”
So, the Army chief of staff has told everyone what the 77th Brigade are up to. Off Guardian is one of, if not the most popular champion of alternative narratives on covid19. We know the 77th Brigade are here amongst us: General Carter told us so. So how do we identify them? My view is that we look for posters who make some posts to ingratiate themselves, but also make plenty of posts trying to sow doubt in other posters’ and readers’ minds about leading figures in the alt media by trying to paint them as security services assets. This achieves maximum disruption by discrediting a large swathe of the alt media, and by turning the alt politics movement in on itself. It seems a pretty good yardstick for identifying the scumbag trolls amongst us, though I will concede that it’s not foolproof. Some gullibles were taken in by the ‘such-and-suchabody is a CIA/MI5 asset’ long ago. Though I would have little sympathy for them if they were mislabeled as 77th Brigade disruptors.
It’s like something out of Kafka!
I promised my lad a proper Sunday roast today. So I nipped into the local store first thing to get the stuff for it. People were actually waiting at the ends of shopping aisles for someone to vacate them, or even turning away and going off somewhere else when they saw me someone the aisle! Christ, even SAGE is now saying that you can’t catch it by just walking past someone, but people are behaving like well-trained pet animals!
“It seems the American bourgeoisie want to believe this is a dire threat. They want to self isolate. Perhaps this massive quarantine is a time of leisure that they don’t often get. I have no idea, honestly.”
Okay John. I’ll take your word for that. Although I don’t get how someone familiar with Cory Morningstar’s research and who has done similar research can’t know about the powerful special interests at work here and their agendas. I see this puzzlement by experts all the time. Knut Wittkowski says he’s clueless. Pablo Goldschmidt says he’s clueless and thinks that governments have good intentions. That puzzlement, which is puzzling, speaks to the fact of our technocratic society. And despite the best efforts of otherwise sharp and knowledgeable progressives like James Corbett and Derrick Broze to have us think that technocracy has something (directly) to do with technology, it doesn’t.
Technocracy obtains when you (elites, bosses) have succeeded in bending educational systems to your will so that they no longer welcome and nourish students who crave to know without restrictions. Students are taught with a view to becoming specialists who will run the machinery of Corporatocracy for the benefit of bosses and elites, period. The best explanation of technocracy that I’ve come across, not that I’ve focussed on that (but plan to give it more attention), is by John Ralston Saul in his book “Voltaire’s Bastards.” He also looks at technocracy in “The Unconscious Civilization,” although his explanation in Voltaire’s Bastards is clearest. In a technocracy, people are specialized into stupidity. They may be smart enough, and very smart in their particular fields, but there will be whole areas that they are stunningly ignorant of.
I remember being in a coffee shop downtown when friend wandered in with a friend. We had become friends when I did security in the bank he worked for. The friend who he had with him was writing a book about JFK (and had the usual infection of Camelot propaganda, although he was engaging enough and his book project was interesting, having the goal of interviewing all of the remaining witnesses to JFK’s assassination or something like that.) The pics he showed me were amazing. We talked for a while and then he stopped me and asked what university I had attended. I explained to him that I hadn’t even finished high school and he said “Aha! I knew it.” He pointed out that he could tell that I was self-educated ‘because’ my thinking was not narrow. I thought that that was interesting.
Have you read ‘Robopaths’ by Yablonsky?
No. Tell me about it.
Is good.
I have two new translations up on my blog, if you can handle more German professors…
One is hot off the presses, by Wolfgang Wodarg:
https://midtifleisen.wordpress.com/2020/05/03/the-corona-thriller/
In particular he warns against the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which is being heavily promoted, and he believes is highly dangerous for certain population groups.
And the other one is an interview with Christian Drosten’s predecessor at the prestigious Charité Clinic (Drosten is the Covid-guru for the German government), obliquely criticizing his successor:
https://midtifleisen.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/professor-kruger-on-coronaviruses-this-overall-mood-of-fear-and-ignorance-can-lead-to-mistakes/
(Sorry for hijacking the post.)
More on hydroxychloroquine here:
https://infectiousmyth.podbean.com/e/the-infectious-myth-dangers-of-chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine-with-remington-nevin/
More BigPharma agit-prop. HCQ has been used, safely, by hundreds of millions for malaria. A meta-analysis by a WHO expert group,in 2016, published in 2017, found NO evidence of sudden cardiac death in those hundreds of millions. Vanishly rare effects on the retina disappear after cessation of treatment. Otherwise nada, but BigPharma and its stooges are busy inventing new dangers. Typically Evil.
Hydroxychloroquine is being widely and safely used, including as a post-exposure treatment, to prevent the virus getting established, and as prophylaxis for those in hazardous conditions like A& Es. It is VERY safe, as hundreds of millions of users for malaria, lupus and arthritis over decades can attest. So ‘Wolfgang Wodarg’ must be in BigPharma’s pocket, because they and their propagandists HATE HCQ because it is off-patent, cheap and very, very, safe.
Thanks very much to this article and for putting me in touch with this link, which I think may be the single most enlightening essay on the rise of Gates and philanthrocapitalism as a response to, and substitute for, the “disturbing” rise of interest in anticapitalist ideas:
https://www.rupe-india.org/57/agenda.html
It’s very good. I’ve had Joan’s book on my to-buy list forever. Paul Street (who seems to be going over to the dark side with covid 19) put me onto her. She has a blog but it doesn’t seem to move.
Jacob Levich’s material is great. I’m into part II. It needs updating and I also think that all of us should become familiar with Peter Phillips’s “Giants.” Peter’s book is only a few years old (pub 2018), but so much of it is so relevant that he sounds like he’s talking about covid 19184; and that term is not my idea even though it occurred to me before I saw someone else use it. It probably occurred to most of us before we saw it in writing or heard it spoken! I think that it was James Corbett who tossed out the pithy ‘corona world order’. Peters’s book is very much reference material as well as a great read. It’s higly organized and highly detailed. Anyone into serious research let’s his- or herself down by not having this book handy. I’ll be milking it for some time.
From the late nineteenth century until the Second World War, virtually all educated people believed in the science of Eugenics. After the Second World War, it was virtually impossible to find anyone who admitted to ever having believed in the science of Eugenics. Yet the science of Eugenics had not changed. What had changed was the dominant ideology, which no longer supported Eugenics, although it still took decades to remove the Eugenic policies and laws they had so enthusiastically implemented.
In recent years Eugenics has come sneaking back, piece by piece, into the dominant ideology. Eugenicist ideas have become increasingly acceptable, although the word itself remains (for the time being) taboo. The misanthropic propaganda around such issues as Climate Change, environmentalism and conservation have significantly helped in preparing the way for the rehabilitation of Eugenics.
The carriers of this misanthropic ideology are all members of the strata that engage most in the activities that cause the very problems they decry. The hypocrisy is not merely a personal moral failing, it is built in to their very Eugenic vision. They think there are too many of us.
Spot on.
You are right: 8bn on a tiny planet is not the actual problem. The problem is: how do you keep them alive with hydrocarbons powering the “Green Revolution” as fossil fueled agriculture? At the same time: supporting the gross maldevelopment and overconsumption of just 20% of the world population …the 20% we are all in? The overconsumption bourgeoisie.
The answer is: you don’t. Our maldevelopment and overconsumption condemns the majority of humanity to die. That is the problem.
It is our way of life that has to give as a solution. And I for one am fucking sick of the cynical scorn scapegoated on “environmentalists”. If indeed: that is what you are suggesting? Which is tantamount to supporting the fascism of the billionaires with our imperialist overconsumption.
Environmentalists – the real ones – are humanists – a rare breed – who are trying to save a select privileged section of humanity from destroying humanity. Mostly for abuse. It’s environmentalism or fascism: the fascism we created with personal privileges and grossly unequal overconsumption. The choice: and the eugenics of overconsumption …is ours to make. Though I made mine 40 years ago.
Environmentalism is humanism. There is just about enough to go around if we all consume less. A lot less. If not: we condemn us all to death. As we have manifested actual fascistic tendencies with our piss poor choices: I should have thought this was clear. We need to get over our selves – literally …and stop blaming other people for the world we made.
Sure “They” get more: that is the deal we made. And They repaid us with actual fascism …and still we want more …literally more. The Earth has no more to give: get over it. If we do not like Their monopoly …we have to stop supporting it. If we carry on exactly as we have been: it gets really horrible from now on. If you look around the globe: it already is. We did that.
This is probably the last warning we get. We choose environmentalism: or we choose fascism, misanthropy and eugenicism …which are the habitual choosings we already made.
There is no ‘misanthropic ideology or propaganda’ around environmentalism and climate science. In fact the opposite, as a destroyed planetary ecology is the very worst thing that can happen to humanity. The real misanthropes, the real genocidists, are the denialists working fanatically to ensure that the ecological Holocaust does occur.
The British Eugenics Society didn’t change its name until 1989.
—
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton_Institute
It became the Eugenics Society in 1924 (often referred to as the British Eugenics Society to distinguish it from others). From 1909 to 1968 it published The Eugenics Review, a scientific journal dedicated to eugenics. Membership reached its peak during the 1930s. The Institute is currently based in Wandsworth, London. The Society was renamed the Galton Institute in 1989.
Apologies for the diversion.
Re: https://mobile.twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1256649445783015428
Here Top Cat, licking at the slip of the saucer of TPTB seems to have lost his ability to logically conclude his premises in the process.
One that since the “Establishment” want to reopen the economy that defeats the argument raised by “flat earth conspiracy theorists” that the “Establishment” wants to destroy the economy and as a result destroy lives. For simplicity and to avoid redundancy I’ll include his reference to “Big Business” in the “Establishment” term.
In answer to this. The damage has been done already (and continues to worsen). To say that the “Establishment” want to open to avoid and economic crisis and therefore all us deranged “conspiracy theorists” were wrong is completely fallacious. Even of the “Establishment” were to securely fasten the stable doors, the horse has long since bolted.
Moreover if the “Establishment” serves as the counterweight to the “People” that George claims to speak for that are opposed to the lifting, then how does he explain that it was the “Establishment” that imposed it in the first place and not the “People.” Finding it hard to figure who George actually speaks for here.
Furthermore this “Establishment” fighting to lift the lockdown and seal the fates of many (the falsehood of the projected fatality is covered well already elsewhere) is lifted from the American strawman narrative where it is claimed the Trump Admin are seeking to lift lockdown and endanger lives. In both cases neither administration is seeking anything of the sort. For example Trump criticised the Georgia governors decision to lift the lockdown as rash. While Boris is stalling for time using the threat of a second wave.
But the most egregious lack of follow through is the points on workers rights. He’s consistent in saying that all workers should seek prosecution for having lives endangered in the workplace, “key” worker or otherwise. What he fails to realise is that following the logic of continuing lockdown to safeguard workers lives including key workers (according to him), there would be no one to provide even the basic of services, such as lets say food production, to the nation resulting in mass famine. I’m sure he would reconsider if he felt his family will starve to protect those workers. Therefore if the line in the sand is the risk of famine then better judgement would be favoured to avoid a major catastrophe.
Now if he then agrees key workers maybe should be allowed to work without employers risking prosecution, why is it ok that only those who can afford to purchase provisions be supplied and why cannot others who would like to earn their sustenance continue to in order to avoid their own famine? Aren’t they key workers in their own families?
One last contradiction (that Galloway seems to personify these days) is the flat earther characteristization. Since it was the medieval conventional wisdom (in Europe at least) that the world is flat, based on the same period isn’t it the case that the superstitious majority of that period took cataclysmic events to heart without critical thinking (even if justified at times?
2 minutes of watching someone wanting their cake and to eat it.
The fact that The Establishment wanted the lockdown has always been a problem to the “Left” that want to claim the lockdown as a “Leftist” motion. Indeed, the cognitive dissonance is overpowering here. Which is why this “Left” was always in the embarrassing position of presenting an establishment choice as “radical”. And whilst looking at your Twitter link I noticed this depressing tweet:
How dispiriting to see that a lot of the public are buying this bullshit.
When Medialens tweet praise of Piers Morgan and George Galloway retweets praise of himself from Andrew Neil, we might as well just forget all previous standards and classification of political positions as anachronistic headwash.
The notion that supporting the lockdown is somehow ‘a support for workers’ is a strong contender for the most extreme inversion since the last reversal of planet Earth’s magnetic poles. George’s thinking ain’t looking too gorgeous right now.
The film also has no mention of China the biggest polluter and rapist of resources and minerals from the earth. Blood n Gore.
It doesn’t need to, it’s Gibbs’ personal journey of discovery in his home territory, not a comprehensive analysis of all countries’ problems and contribution to the problem.
This must be a joke since America and other western industrialized nations have been raping resources and societies for generations. Not to mention the west sends all its toxic trash to Asia, which China recently banned, as did Malaysia and others.
The racists are crawling out from ‘neath their rocks.
I too have noticed this crass superficial celebration of how wonderfully clean and healthy the air, the skies, the roads, the landscape all is now. How the media is masturbating over this return to the never never land of Tolkien’s Shire as if this wondrous new Eden can somehow just go on forever. After all, those frightful proletarian Orcs have been banished back to Mordor which has now sank underground where they will be so much easier to exterminate.
Also, does that bit about the white bourgeoisie being so attracted to the virus narrative not also cover the Left? The question arises again and again: Why are the Left doing their utmost to side with the coronavirus narrative? Whether they know it or not, they are saying that they are all in favour of the draconian surveillance, the lockdown that negates the very possibility of solidarity, and the disruption to employment which, it is becoming increasingly obvious, will be permanent. Is it the case that the Left we are talking about is very far from being the proletarian Left? That they are themselves have been thoroughly swallowed by that bourgeoisie they claim to despise?
And having followed some of Mr Steppling’s links, I have found a perfect description of the “coronavirus as saviour of humanity” mentality:
Yes, George Mc, that’s me, you are citing above and my take on the film? It’s on other sites, and you glean from the blog I wrote. Thanks. Some of us have thrown off the coils and electrodes and give shit about style, APA, MLA and what a review should and should not include.
It’s a hell of a bunch of irrelevant shit we write about looking into Gibbs or Naomi Klein or the McKibben-boy, the George Monbiot- freak, Michael Hillary-love-Moore, and anything coming out in documentaries produced, directed, written by, err, white joes and joeys.
Yep, the revolt and revolution will be Skyped and on You Tube (not). It’s perfectly clear we are in this comment section, this cauldron of cantankerous libertarians, socialists, capitalists, anarchists, communists, and, shoot, a few other dozen -ians and -ists — to again, reinforce how we forget the simple daily battles to stay alive in this US of Israel, and, well, the rest of the colonized world where whichever form of capitalism and militarism have set down their toxic roots over the people, the 80 percent of the world.
Twenty percent of the world that is so separated from farming, land, life, they are the masters of the universe with their point-zero-=zero-one percent and One Percent and the other 19-percenters who are glad to be included in their Little EIchmann cabals and slave patrols and middling knowledge worker offices and churches of believers in that soft shoe song that the poor, the fornicating poor, need uplifting in any form of -ians and -ists that bark up our fucking trees.
We can’t even feed Guatemalan undocumented in Lincoln County, or put Puerto Rico back together, or Haiti, still using Walmart blue tarps?
Kick it over here —
Guatemalans here, in US of Israel, on the Oregon Coast, cleaning those Air B & B’s, filleting halibut, picking salal to be sent to Amsterdam for floral arrangements. Seems pretty petty of me to write a review of Gibb’s shallow flick. And we know “review” should be used with a chunk of lithium salt . John Steppling can do whatever he wants in his analysis and riffing of the fucking film, as I can too. He’s spot on in most of his analysis. ANd there’s some fun he’s having at the expense of Gibbs and Moore. Bravo.
I passed Journalism 101 almost 45 years ago when I was a cub reporter for newspapers in the US southwest. A film review can be anything in a time of sycophancy. So can Gonzo Journalism, or anything else we want to push out there in this creepy world wide arachnid web!
Way to go, Paul! I love the way your review gives a “live and in real time” feel about this movie, as if you can’t wait to get to the end because you have to express your rage right away. Yup – I’m having that impatience more and more these days. I’m also developing an instant dismissal attitude too with items where you figure out very quickly that they’re not even worth responding to. The BBC certainly fit into that category but, being the only source for vast numbers, you unfortunately have to pay them some attention. In general, the mainstream media is pure poison dripping into your soul.
It’s a bummer (I can think of other words) to have to deal with the onslaught of stupidity, George.
*Yes, Trump and Company are doing Zero to help humanity, and it’s misanthropy on steroids, so any m-f who says anything positive about the dude or his administration is a piece of shit — this is fact, George. You know, you judge people by the very bad they have done, so this rotten rich felon and pedophile needs guillotine
*Yes, SARS-CoV-2 is real, and the responses on all ends of the spectrum are wrong but for those panicked and freaked out, that makes more sense than ANYTHING coming out of despotic governments, pigs on Adderall, and the like.
*Anyone with a million bucks and more who actually vaunts capitalism and pushes their racist ideology should also be frog-marched to the, hmm, guillotine.
*Yes, public education in USA was becoming bad decades ago, but not one inch should be given to the masters of the financial universe, to techies, to Devos and company.
*Yes, we have an economic draft, but over time — decades — we have a society in the USA that loves their men and women in uniform. Most of those men and women are warped sons of bitches and deserve the same frog-marching most PD’s or cops or jailers or DA’s or judges need quickly, again to the guillotine.
* Yes, the ecosystems are dead and dying. Water scarcity is real, and water pollution is the norm. Yes, water cycle has been disrupted. Yes, a million cool kick-ass scientists are doing the real work, and the first extermination event is real. Ya gotta hate Fortune 1000, all the extraction industries, all the pigs in suits, all the pigs in uniforms. Take a vial of blood from any mammal on earth and you get that PFA and flame retardant marker. So, McKibben has his heart in the right place but he is co-opted. The entire liberal class is dead, credentials and retirements and lovely trips to climate talks and smiles by a million.
*Yes, communism works, but it will never be allowed to work with military giants and capitalists feeding their death programs to the world, even their own fat and happy people.
*Yes, tragedy of the commons is real, and capitalism on steroids is that tragedy.
* Most discourse is pushed through the mealy mouthed white race, and there are lots of prognosticators with super articulate moves and riffs. It is tiring to listen to these putrids. Who gives a shit if they run Jacobin or Off Guardian. People who are in the trenches, they should have the mic and have the gavels.
* If you do not believe the US is USI, United States of Israel, then something is very very wrong with your brain.
* Sick stuff — lock-down is the only way states can deal with this since we have a killer in the white house, killers in the GOP, killers killers killers. You just do not understand USI without spending time with these pieces of shit. They want dead people, they want dead children, they want blacks-browns and Native Americans, DOA. So, it’s so difficult to even start spinning perspectives when the entire white race it seems is a fucking madhouse.
So George I am attempting to frame this shit in a new polemic, after I get my gig job ducks in a row. Absolutely it’s time to start spreading botulism in the Big Macs gobbled up by GOP and Trump and Company. Fuck the razor blades. Just cook up your own botulism (in Oregon, we have several mushrooms that can take out the Schumers, Clintons, Trumps, McConnells, the entire familia muerte of the political and billionaire classes — see last link below for mushrooming). NOTE: I am a fiction writer, so the above is just a thought experiment!!!
This is the sadness — the several million rapists and murderers and their sick offspring never get anything anymore. Not even a cream pie in their faces. Stockholm Syndrome and fear of the devil is constant.
https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/05/monkey-planet-moore-misses-the-message-of-the-book/
https://www.discoverourcoast.com/oregon-coast-today/columnists/in-the-eye-of-the-eagle/article_de389e80-7838-11ea-9d2c-ff1ce5dedcea.html
https://www.discoverourcoast.com/oregon-coast-today/columnists/a-real-life-toxic-avenger/article_d58acffe-a4d7-11e9-af18-9334354e2cd6.html
‘Shrooms, https://mushroomobserver.org/species_list/show_species_list/221
I can’t access two of your links (the middel ones). This comes up:
(Cue theme from Twilight Zone)
That’s bullshit!
The middle two are from Oregon Coast Today.
I suppose using Gulag-Google you could put in a strip-search “Oregon Coast Today and Real Life Toxic Avenger” and then for the other one, “Oregon Coast Today and In the Eye of the Eagle” Just two interesting people living out here in no-man/woman’s land with narratives that compelled me to write about them.
Ugh, yes, this is another meme that goes right through me like nails on a chalk board. (Actually, I think I’d rather listen to the entire oeuvre of some die-screaming-with-sharp-things-in-your-head metal band than pretty much anything on TV now. My poor blood-pressure– I can’t have a medical incident, they’d count it as COVID-19.) There’s something so blatantly misanthropic about it, as though these largely ephemeral impressions of ‘returning Eden’ are somehow outweigh even a single human life. Yet I’m the one accused of being heartless and selfish for not bowing to the virus.
Mind you, I appreciate nature and believe we should always be mindful of future impact on the planet, largely because you should never shit where you sleep. But the idea that human lives should somehow be thrown on a bonfire to ‘renew and revitalize the planet’ seems to me a grotesque hypocrisy coming from the same people who claim their hearts bleed over suffering ‘front line’ first responders or oil-soaked ducks.
The vision of “nature untainted by humanity” goes all the way back through affluent bourgeois – indeed aristocratic – notions cf. Joy Adamson throwing those frightfully unphotogenic natives off “her” land so she could have a vast playing field for her pet leopard. Similarly those photos of pollution free city scapes are a kind of eco-porn for the rich to fantasize about what the world would look like without those all those uncouth workers.
True say.
They are the Fake Left. Simple.
Just a quick note to say that if anybody is confused – the May day bank holiday in Britain tomorrow is cancelled. Instead the british regime have offered us a bank holiday on Friday 8th May to celebrate VE Day – oh the hypocrisy and irony as the whole fucking country is locked up
Have a look at this thread to show how people feel about it, there are many great comments
https://twitter.com/KateOfTarragon/status/1256555202511015936
maybe try this -i’m not on twitter and don’t always understand it so may have got the wrong thread
https://twitter.com/KateOfTarragon/status/1256555202511015936/photo/1
Oh, wow. What a slap in the face. It’s the 75th anniversary too. How quickly we forget the lessons we claimed so vociferously to have learned.
Yes, the mood that created Brexit has made war more likely.
My wife told me that Boris was going to send us all a cardboard soldier. I’m still not sure whether she was joking or not. It would be appropriate though: a cardboard soldier from a cardboard Winston Churchill.
No doubt we will be expected to stand outside and clap and/or wag the flag.
Steppling,
does every criticism of capitalism have to be overly explicit? Isn’t showing how capitalism ditches everything in favour of profit enough?
‘there is a curious fetishized and cultic response in much of the population’
Yep, there sure is! Human beings are programmed to react collectively to outside threats – especially medical ones. We fall into line, police each other, internalize moral imperatives for our actions…’if I snitch, I save lives’…, look to ‘experts’ and hunker down. Any ‘threat’ to this siege consensus is ‘dangerous’ and even threatens our very existence. I really do not think that this was a planned process, it seems much more likely that the cult approach has gathered steam because, remarkably, people comply…they even want more…So, build your inner resources and try to remain a dissenter in the cult new world.
Also programmed to stay away from each other as we could all be infected and not know it. AKA don’t have sex so there is less of us.
G-d, can you imagine the post-Covid dating scene? ‘Well, this dating app says the attractive photo I’ve selected belongs to someone who has the vaccine– I’ll have to check their digital tattoo, of course, and then we’ll both take our temperatures via our iWatches before we leave. We were able to get reservations weeks in advance at this tacky little franchise place (so difficult, you know, with all the smaller venues folding and the whatever-percent capacity rule). We will, of course, maintain social distancing the entire time and it will be hard to read one another’s expressions with the combination of masks and romantic lighting, but I’m sure we can text obnoxious little bunny emojis to one another to show how much we agree on the wonderful work of first responders and out war-time leaders. Though, really, this is a dreadful amount of effort for a first date. Maybe we should stick to Zoom meetings and sexting until we hit a real milestone, like our medically authorized engagement. Oh, look, it says my date has an actual job, can you imagine?’
I’m a socialist but sorry comrades, overshoot can not be fixed by even distribution. Forget the eugenicists, the human race will be culled by the laws of nature and they don’t favour skin colour or educational background.
I am assuming that is a direct quote from Rev. Thomas Malhus “An Essay on Population” penned in 1798 , when obviously world population was much less than it is now.
Thank you for translating it into the modern vernacular.
I was so extremely disappointed with WSWS coverage of covid 19. Early on, I noticed funny stuff and my polite on topic posts were either ignored or removed. I’ve left them behind. I can live without fakers.