411

Morning in Hell

John Steppling

“it’s the proper morning to fly into Hell.”
Arthur Miller (The Crucible)

“One of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death’s prisoner.”
Emil Cioran (On the Heights of Despair)

Increasingly, I think, the American public operates in a mild dissociative state. I wrote about it here. It is almost as if people are afflicted with a kind of PTSD — only one where the trauma is generalized, relatively low grade, but ongoing.

Any of us who have questioned the Covid narrative have had to put up with an inordinate amount of hectoring, name-calling, ridicule, and ostracism. I remember when I signed on the artist appeal as part of the Milosevic Defense Committee, and the abuse and anger I faced whenever this topic came up. People who had no history with the region, knew little of the political landscape, would nonetheless wax irate, furious and near tears that I would hold such outrageous positions.

Now, over a decade later, two members of that committee have won Nobel Prizes (Harold Pinter and Peter Handke). You would think that might cause people to take a moment, reflect, recalibrate their thinking on the topic. But alas, it rarely does.

The Covid narrative has generated the same near-hysterical indignation. The narrative, as it has been constructed by the WHO, CDC, and more likely a dozen or so billionaires (including Bill Gates) is so rife with contradiction and illogic that one might think cracks would begin to show.

That many who accept the word of authority in general, might at this point start to question why none of this story makes sense. But no. Not in America anyway. (or rather, to be more precise, there is a pushback, but it keeps to a low profile lest the little Cotton Mathers of the haute bourgeoisie put one in the stocks).

Leave it to America to make the flu into a morality play. However there are clear signs of people waking up. In Europe certainly.

And not only Germany, doctors and health care professionals in Belgium, too. But the governments are sticking to the story they were handed.

In Norway here I still cannot drive to Sweden. Why? Who knows, there is no reason provided. The PM uttered something about better safe than sorry, and staying the course. Everything is discussed this way, in infantile baby talk, gibberish and slogans. Anti-democratic edicts delivered as if by a kindergarten teacher.

Someone wrote to me on social media the other day and said “Not everyone gets to live in Norway. Here we are surrounded by death”. Now he lives in Los Angeles. In a nice westside area. He is not surrounded by death. Or rather only in his hallucinatory inner theatre of the mind is death present, surrounding him.

But this language has a quality I associate with Hollywood. Its kitsch image-making. Never mind it’s literally not remotely true. But this is a version of something that I think happens all the time now. This man is in his own private movie.

It is a movie made of diverse parts; there is something from all the various post-apocalyptic zombie films (and TV, think Walking Dead), there is something of Norman Rockwell in there, or even Thomas Kincaid, there is Dr Phil and Oprah and the cheapening of emotion. The snarky pedestrian thoughts of a Bill Maher, too.

This is what has come to pass for public intellectuals and intellectual discourse. All are almost impossibly banal. There are parts from a dozen disaster movies, too. I mean literally all the way back to Towering Inferno. And there is, perhaps most significantly, a quality that is harder to define or outline, but which I associate with JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon.

It is a quality of comforting superficiality, of controlled threat in worlds of generic cheeriness. Interestingly both were born in NY and are only a year apart in age (mid fifties). Both have a background in animation and computer generated affects. Both came out of a comic book sensibility and have, more than anyone else in contemporary media, helped to shape the manufactured nostalgia for a fantasy of America.

It is the creation of a longing for a past that never was. But both have established a universe of whiteness and equilibrium where the threat is from without.

For it cannot be from within because there is no ‘within’.

In that sense these are the anti Psychoanalytic purveyors of a youth culture for adults. A comic or cartoon world view in which the sentimental plays an enormous role. It is a world without tragedy or real suffering. And just beneath the surface but always implied, is a respect for authority. It is also a world where one is encouraged NOT to grow up.

The Covid story takes place in a universe of Whedon and Abrams, with parts of The Hunger Games, Breaking Bad, and the films of John Hughes. (Hughes was really the precursor for both Whedon and Abrams). Covid is taking place on the streets where Breakfast Club was filmed. In people’s heads anyway.

Covid the virus is an overdetermined symbol — and one that only makes even a tiny bit of sense if it is located in these personal streaming sites in your brain. (and I recommend Jonathan Beller, The Cinematic Mode of Production).

There is a tendency toward fetishization, too, and hence the ubiquitous appearance and opinion of celebrities. Its bordering on surreal much of the time: Hip Hop moguls are asked about climate change, Silicon Valley billionaires voice opinion on overpopulation or vaccinations, soap opera stars offer thoughts on stem cell research.

Nothing is investigated, really. It is all driven by whatever is most lurid or sensationalized. The ruling class has clearly encouraged, if not mandated, a certain line of thinking on the pandemic. The ruling class has profited enormously from the lockdown, and is quite happy with a semi-permanent state of crisis.

In fact it is likely that this was at least partly all planned. I mean what does one think those billionaires at the Bilderberg meeting talk about? Or at DAVOS or the like? The ruling elite anticipated crises in Capitalism, and the lockdown certainly provides cover for massive plunder or pensions, real estate, and really, most everything.

But the system, to some extent, does the work for the ruling class without instruction at this point. For revenue is generated by blood and violence, and secondly by sex. The template has already been put in place. (If it bleeds it leads). Although something has happened to the ‘sex sells’ dimension of the Spectacle. People seem less and less in the throws of passion or lust.

The societies of the west are declining into some form of neurasthenic bloodless onanism. The consumption of porn is up, but I’m pretty sure sex acts are actually down. And the allegorical dimension of the Covid narrative serves as both substitute gratification and as a symbolic purification ritual.

This week Trump announced he had “tested positive”. He had been campaigning for the previous week and felt fine. Then he tested positive and is described as having flu-like symptoms. That this is part of a strategy I have no doubt, but I also could not begin to describe that strategy. But the magical appearance of symptoms the minute he tested positive echoes the overall magical thinking involved in this entire narrative.

There is a veritable mania, now, concerning testing. And yet even the NYTimes admits the tests are virtually meaningless. But no matter. We must test more!

Magical thinking permeates the climate discourse, as well. Never in history, or never since the Enlightenment, have so many people pretended to know so much. For the educated thirty percent (white and reasonably affluent) it is the era of the TED talk. Nothing dare last longer or be more demanding than a quick (and entertaining) ten minutes. The fires in California have come primarily from downed power lines (badly out of date and rarely serviced), but exacerbated by homeless encampments (rarely mentioned) and fireworks — and of course the drought that has extended backward a decade.

California has always burnt. It was part of the ecosystem to rid the hills and forests of dead of dead shrub and trees. Climate is clearly a part — snowpack is down, and summer heat has dried out shrubbery. But much of what is dried out is shrub not native to California (stuff like cheatgrass, a native of Asia and parts of Africa, and notoriously invasive) whose forests are overstocked anyway.

Infrastructure in America is rotting, and per California, the wild areas have been neglected for almost a hundred years. But that is not a part of the narrative. The narrative must be about the rebellion of Earth itself and population. And population matters only in terms of who can afford to over consume. The problem is that the most obvious pollution issues (militarism and the packaging industry) are never addressed.

US imperialism is the cause of most of the suffering in the world. Most of the instability. But the infantile anthropomorphizing of much green discourse is just more baby talk. I often hear “we are waging war against ourselves”. This is a dangerous bit of mystification. [note that this riff goes all the way back to the Pogo comic strip in the 1960s].

Its more simplistic sloganeering and like most such chestnuts, class analysis is absent. I have written a good deal on the psychological appeal of certain hi-tech fantasies, the seductive aspect of AI, and yet the world is more proletarianized than ever.

Yes people, in a very general sense, can be seen as self-destructive. It’s one of the most troubling byproducts of the habituation to screens, the loss of literacy and numeracy and the loss, really, of an ability to think critically. But this cultic hysteria is driven by the increasing precarity and desperation in contemporary life.

The loss of unions plays a part, the absence of a real left party, a radical Marxist party. For all the terrific work activist groups do (Prison abolishment groups, criminal justice reform, and stuff like the Innocence Project) there remains a vacuum in terms of electoral politics. Perhaps that is just going to be the way this goes.

Maybe the entire electoral apparatus is dead. And maybe that is a good thing.

There is a quality of suffocating sameness and emptiness that permeates daily life. People don’t look at each other on the street, they look at their phones. One is walking, all the time, among the pod people. America’s mental health is in a dire state. The U.S. and really this is increasingly true in Europe, too, but not nearly to the same extent, is an excruciatingly lonely country. People have lost the ability to make, and more, to sustain friendships. And how the role of social media plays into that is an open question. Or media in general.

So while yes, the marketing of technology serves to manufacture an appeal, on one level there are troubling numbers of people who seem, all by themselves, to *want*, to desire, ravishment by our robot overlords. Android sex is a thing, and its growing.

And it’s not just men who want “pleasure model” androids (ok, for now they have to settle for dolls), but many want to not just fuck androids – but to get fucked *by* androids.

The engine is capitalism.

A number of world leaders have contracted Covid. Much as many get the flu. There is something curiously similar in nearly everyone of these cases. Boris Johnson, Bolsanaro, the fascist interim President of post-coup Bolivia Jeanine Anez, Mikhail Mishustin of Russia, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, and India’s Amit Shah (the #2 strongman behind Modi), and also in India, Pranab Mukherjee, former President, who subsequently died (age 84) from the virus (no, actually he died from a blood clot on his brain).

I only mention this because I experience an unsettling vertigo when trying to parse all this and make it into something comprehensible. The way Covid tests work one might well think everyone on the planet has the virus.

Already there has been significant psychological harm done to children. The clear lesson is to fear the other. That humans are contagious and potentially lethal. Intimacy is officially discouraged.

I cannot imagine that message were I fourteen or sixteen. Growing up in the sixties the idea was to promote intimacy, feelings, and to exactly *not* fear emotional openness. The English speaking west has gone from Paul Goodman to Theresa Tam.

The resurgent Puritanism is not restricted to odd ducks like Tam. Even bourgeois pundits are noticing. This is Zoe Williams in The Guardian:

There remains, in public life, a rich seam of puritanism that you notice only when times are so bleak that you could really do without it. A sense that frivolity is immoral, even if it is 95% of your economy; a feeling that they had it coming, all those people dedicating their lives to the generation of fun. Puritans tend not to announce their disapproval except in the most roundabout ways, so you can rarely pin it on them. But standing on the precipice of a year that ends without dancing, bears, dancing bears, playhouses, ale houses, music or Christmas, all I can think of is how happy Oliver Cromwell would have been. It is like all his cancelled Christmases come at once. He would be dancing (not dancing) in his grave.”

This is a lament from the privileged class, but perhaps that’s actually a good sign.

The ruling class don’t wear masks or have travel restrictions imposed on them.

There is no longer even a pretense. The rich are entitled to special treatment. The rich deserve a clean depopulated world where they can cavort on the green, frolic in elysian fields by murmuring brooks, and to not be troubled by darkies and riff-raff. Remember it was a mere hundred years ago that Belgium brought Congolese from their African home, to be paraded in human zoos. Those they hadn’t already murdered.

Covid is the final act in the transference of wealth to the top 1%. And culture is being destroyed along with everything else. Cinemas are closing, permanently, theatres, too, permanently, and museums. Galleries and other art spaces are shuttered, likely to never reopen. Something like 30 million jobs have been lost. There is an acute desperation across America.

Who survives? Amazon, Netflix, Google, Comcast, Facebook, et al. Those who control the screens control the world. It is a new morning in hell.

SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

4.3 48 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

411 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 7:34 AM

The societies of the west are declining into some form of neurasthenic bloodless onanism.

Brilliant!

Here’s an excerpt from my blog :

More pragmatically, it has become incredibly (and I don’t misuse this word) obvious that the entities identifying as human beings in the modern world DO NOT have sapience and cannot be called sapient. By their fruits you shall know them…

The political solution to this dissonance would be of course to simply change the biological name for the species. By constantly re-defining the meaning of words, it is possible to mould reality for profit, as the predators and parasites preying on the planet have long known.

Since Homo pseudo-sapiens would be too close to home, I propose a change to Homo domesticus, or Homo utilis – the useful idiot.

Unfortunately I don’t have a commentary that is a sufficiently offensive response to the current situation!

https://app.sigle.io/almondson.id.blockstack

austrian peter
austrian peter
Oct 15, 2020 8:38 PM

So they have taken away the circuses and left the bread. They have to leave the bread lest the plebs revolt and cut off their heads. However, I for one, am happy to witness the demise of Hollywood and the narcopathic sociopaths that inhabit that place. The collapse of puerile entertainment is to be welcomed but perhaps serious culture like opera and Shakespeare et al should be rescued.

It is regrettable that we are left with the dregs of social media but perhaps the loss of advertising revenue will limit these monsters too. I welcome a world where less is more and consumerism dies on the vine to be replaced with quality leisure, creativity and psychological value add.

But then, I am old, and can only stand by and observe the crisis unfold without having the power to alter the magnitude or direction of change. This must be left to the upconing generations whenever the last of the Boomers decide to loose the reigns of power – soon I hope.

SteveK9
SteveK9
Oct 15, 2020 3:08 PM

Solutions?

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 8:03 AM
Reply to  SteveK9

Mass legal action against official lies and misinformation,and against the lockdowns.. Take down the propaganda not by a frontal attack, but by many small sideways attacks on specific parts of the narrative and specific official peddlers of lies.

I am focusing on the burial of the fact that low intensityy UVC lamps can be used to cheaply and harmlessly destroy any DNA/RNA “viral” material floating around in indoor spaces.

(of course sunlight contains UVC light and will do this outdoors but we’re not supposed to know that- it is best to wear your slave gag at all times to “keep others safe”)

The relevant study was published in Nature in 2018

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21058-w

but has been completely ignored.

I have found a statement by a university professor on a government “covid myths” “fact checking ” website (not UK) where he has published lies and misinfo, stating that UVC light “burns” human skin and “does not kill the coronavirus”… I am contacting lawyers and scientists whpo have spoken out againt the scamdemic to take this fucker down. We will sue him for whatever we can.

ChrisG
ChrisG
Oct 14, 2020 9:09 PM

There is a radical Marxist Party in America. ‘Revolution’, which is the US section of the International Marxist Tendency.

Binra
Binra
Oct 13, 2020 7:45 PM

With regard to an opening quote in the article:
Life as death’s prisoner is the nature of invested illusions.
The desperate doubling down in self-illusion is what generates the hollow parody of life set in inability to mask its own blatant self contradictions.

Investing identity IN the image, the role, the script, are all the result of ‘falling’ or splitting into a masked off sense of private possession and control – and a resulting ‘war with truth’ in which truth does not reciprocate and so we generate symbolic representations to ‘mask in, or mask against.

For all that the recognition, resonance and alignment in truth of being, opens a purpose of healing or reintegration in place of a conflicted sense of fear-driven lack. So looking on the Gates of Hell, offers the bottoming out of an addictive self-evasion that was never founded in truth, but in mis-taken identity.

The key theme perhaps is that fearing something to be true can operate the belief it is true and on the basis of such a false, faulty or incomplete belief a ‘War in Heaven’ proceeds as the breakdown of Communication, and the invoking of an overriding defence of a disconnected or private control – greatly in need of protection and allies.

And WHO told you you were naked?

Fear that truth damns us or exposes lack of validity is not at the rational level – which operates in mutually agreed ‘truths’ or definitions of generally accepted currency.
This is not to say that Reason is mere rational self justifying narratives, but that the latter mask as Reason even while providing cover for masked over contradictions – that become apparent in what Orwell called doublespeak.

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 8:08 AM
Reply to  Binra
Reader
Reader
Oct 13, 2020 5:21 PM

Resist. Speak up about what you see and feel and learn. Laugh. Connect. Love. This nightmare will end like they all do. Goodness and truth are stronger that the current sh**show.

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 13, 2020 7:54 PM
Reply to  Reader

Yes – it’s important to realise that the media is attacking you. These hypnotic voices and concerned talking heads are part of a machine that doesn’t like you and is trying to drive you mad and – I suspect – ultimately kill you. The way I am talking now is the kind of thing that I would have called paranoid at one time but I no longer think so. The best thing you can do is turn the whole thing off. As Nietzsche once said,

What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!

Binra
Binra
Oct 13, 2020 8:23 PM
Reply to  Reader

Yes but resist the temptation to become framed by deceit and be the love that you are anyway – and in any way – just because! and not as a ‘should’ driven agenda.

Loving life in any act or endeavour is living it.

But if we do this in order to beat or heal or fix our problems – then we bring ALL such psychic mess into what we simply are and love to be, such as to lose the simple grace of being to a complicated self-conscious set of issues.

But it is so that where we align in truth as an expression of our being, we release ‘problem-driven struggle’ to be the state where we are not available to it nor feeding it. And that experience grows perspectives that see the ‘problems’ in ways that become practically workable – in the alignment of purpose and encouragement to be our life.

Truth Is.

If we seek to make a weapon of truth or love, we bring the mask or the wish of truth and love into the arena of conflict, pain and loss. The need is to bring the conflict into the light of a free awareness, so as to discern what is moving here and release what no longer applies or never was true. Free attention is released from conflict to wholeness naturally in aligning with who we are and where we are.

I hold the following two principles to be testable:

What we resist, persists.

What we do not use fades from non use.

If you consider a battle of wills – with another or within yourself, you can perhaps see.

That fear can pass through us without reaction, is where we have no resonant correspondence. When we notice emotional reactivity, we may also notice that we are being baited or triggered out from our peace. This is an opportunity to bring curiosity or enquiry into play instead of reaction. When we open to moments of joy or shared appreciation in life we have the quality of peace or wholeness as that expression, and this opens the point from which to see before having reacted rather than within the confusion of having already reacted.

Writing can sound like steps or techniques but it isn’t, it is involvement, participation and in many ways messy. But learning what we choose to focus in and feed and what we can let fade from non use, is the basis for not making a self-indulgence of the difficult.

Taking ourself lightly is also not being set up to take offence at everyone and everything that doesn’t fit our wishes of expectations.

i don’t assign this post to personal achievement but to the art of getting out of our own way. Everyone has their own way.

Judith
Judith
Oct 13, 2020 2:47 PM

I’m trying to post a comment on Schwab article but it’s not going through. Have tried over the past hour. This happened last week also.

I thought maybe it’s because too many people are commenting at once?

Thought I’d try commenting on a past article to see if it goes through.

Judith
Judith
Oct 13, 2020 2:49 PM
Reply to  Judith

Well, it went through, so perhaps I was correct. Too many people trying to post at one time. There are still no new comments on Schwab article after an hour.

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 13, 2020 3:08 PM
Reply to  Judith

It’s nice to read a civilized response to a non-appearing comment as opposed to the usual “Where is my comment you bastards? Why are you censoring me?”

Judith
Judith
Oct 13, 2020 3:23 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Ha ha! I will not be ignored – or censored!

Well, I just went back to the Schwab article to where I had posted the comment, and it was gone. I couldn’t even click on post comment anymore. I have to say, it is frustrating. But I don’t take it personally. It’s those wankers at the letter agencies.

Thanks for the reply.

Sam - Admin2
Admin
Sam - Admin2
Oct 13, 2020 5:22 PM
Reply to  Judith

Curious. Wasn’t aware of anything out of the ordinary there. Will check it out. Please let us know if you have further problems.

Judith
Judith
Oct 13, 2020 5:42 PM
Reply to  Sam - Admin2

Thanks Admin. As I said, I wrote to you on Oct 9 about the same thing.

Another commenter on today’s article (Schwab) just wrote that he has had the same thing happen to him/her.

Could it be a comment traffic jam or (more likely) nefarious reasons?

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:24 AM

See, your fear of communism and decades of swallowing the CIA’s lies has worked out well for you hadn’t it. At this rate mankind will be gone by 2040

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 13, 2020 7:23 PM
Reply to  Koba

“At this rate mankind will be gone by 2040”

Optimistic. I would have said by this time next year!

Charlotte Ruse
Charlotte Ruse
Oct 13, 2020 2:29 AM

HYPOCHONDRIA INDUCING ILLNESS

“Everything is discussed in infantile baby talk, gibberish and slogans. Anti-democratic edicts delivered as if by a kindergarten teacher.”

The Covid campaign gained traction scaring the living daylights out of all creatures thinking the grim reaper is going to knock on their door, if they didn’t wear masks, social distance, refuse testing, or were in COVID denial. The sane and logical morphed into hysterical docile blobs willing to believe “it all” as long they’re protected from the coronavirus boogeyman.

After two decades, the 9/11 hysteria subsided, however, the initial panic caused by the collapsing Towers was the catalyst for the War On Terror. The official narrative said a dialysis ridden Bin Laden single-handedly masterminded 9/11. Nonetheless the really important detail was Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. But of course, that myth couldn’t be true, inasmuch, as like
North Korea the US would never invade Iraq if it thought it had nuclear weapons.

But I digress, a killer virus is the current issue at hand. The mysterious virus attacking in a multitude of ways affecting your sense of smell and taste or causing uncontrollable diarrhea. This baffling virus is similar to the flu in that it hits the elderly and those with compromised immune systems the hardest.

What’s particularly peculiar is that many are aware the COVID tests are unreliable, but the mainstream media news takes as gospel their sketchy test results characterizing millions as “COVID cases.” Intentionally misleading their viewers by correlating positive test results with an undeniable assumption that they’ll contract a life threatening respiratory disease. When in fact, most positive test results are asymptomatic. It should also be noted, that when asymptomatics are told they’re positive it terrorizes them which in itself psychologically results in enough stress to lower immunity causing a minor cold to surface which is then diagnosed as COVID. To put it simply, COVID apprehension results in hypochondria inducing illness.

Oh by the way, did I mention improper use of medical masks can cause infections: “It is very difficult to use the masks because once they become sweaty, they quickly can cause infections……..Any rips or tears in a mask renders it ineffective. Masks must be changed if they become wet, soiled or show signs of wear or the elastic gets broken or stretched out. If you’re using a cloth mask, it needs to be washed after every use. Just like other materials and pieces of clothing that can become contaminated by bacteria and viruses and can cause infections if they’re worn for a prolonged period of time without being cleaned.” We can assume millions are wearing dirty bacteria laden
masks which instead of protecting are causing the spread of disease.

John Goss
John Goss
Oct 12, 2020 10:25 PM

People, especially medical practitioners have probably always been awake. The Great Barrington Declaration is getting lots of support from medics and medical scientists and concerned citizens. You can sign it too.

https://gbdeclaration.org/

It is not without its problems. Google in particular has been removing it from searches. If you try to share it the comment is likely to disappear as I found yesterday. It is frightening some not easily frightened people.

https://johnplatinumgoss.com/2020/10/11/a-quick-blog-about-the-gbd/

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 13, 2020 10:04 AM
Reply to  John Goss

Nafeez Ahmed demonstrates the desperate underhandedness of the mainstream Left by his “proof” that this petition is a hoax. And his “proof”? That he can carry out a hoax on it!:

https://twitter.com/NafeezAhmed/status/1314529971923279873

Note his bitching about how “There are no meaningful standards, checks or controls for new ‘scientists’ signing Declaration in addition to original signatories.” Yes, I think we know by now what Ahmed’s meaningful standards, checks and controls mean.

John Goss
John Goss
Oct 13, 2020 4:17 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Thanks for the link. The underhandedness, as you hint, comes from Nafeez Ahmed. To think that people pay for the crap on his site!

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 13, 2020 7:19 PM
Reply to  John Goss

And to think that I eagerly bought up his “radical penetrating” books! I feel like using them as toilet paper now. (Might as well since the supermarkets are bound to run out again!)

John Goss
John Goss
Oct 13, 2020 9:32 PM
Reply to  George Mc

We need to be careful that his other work is not dragged down by one article. Nafeez has written some worthy pieces but in this instance, instead of attacking the petition, he has sought to attack one of the financial sponsors of the hosting site and gone off on one about global warming when the issue is herd immunity versus lockdown.

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 13, 2020 11:21 PM
Reply to  John Goss

Yes it seems that distraction mechanisms are the order of the day e.g. associating skepticism with libertarianism. Gore Vidal thought highly of Ahmed. And I can thank Nafeez for first bringing Guido Giacomo Preparata to my attention. I have fundamental disagreements with GGP’s agressive anti-Marxism but I think I can appreciate that he was ostracized by the mainstream Marxist academic community – and I am beginning to feel a great antipathy towards that community after recent events re: COVID. But Marx himself has my unconditional admiration.

Binra
Binra
Oct 13, 2020 7:34 PM
Reply to  John Goss

You are entitled your your view but after reading the declaration properly I recanted of an over hasty signing and took the route to be removed.

The wish that something be what I wanted or hoped it to be, operated over my intuition.
I am glad to be able to have undone my error.

I commented on John Goss that recently I had a comment – not on OG – that erased while writing in a text box – which id true is a new one on me. I think it was on a YT comment and mentioned Five gee.

It may happen that the Net becomes unworkable for anything but compliance.
I have no reason to trust the apparent alternative means are independent.
Who in Financial and tech terms is ‘independent’?

John Goss
John Goss
Oct 13, 2020 9:27 PM
Reply to  Binra

That’s fair comment Binra. But to deliberately add a signature to criticise the petition is as bad as a honey trap.

Binra
Binra
Oct 14, 2020 12:26 AM
Reply to  John Goss

I signed when very tired at the end of an evening without properly reading or rather taking in the implications of what I read and for whatever reasons I overrode a sense of disquiet under a rationalisation that it was a step in the right direction.

That the disquiet grew in me, led to rereading the declaration and a clear sense that I preferred not to sign it – and say there was an option to remove my name and so I did.

I didn’t sign in order to express criticism. I discovered critical awareness and unsigned.
Now it may be a step in the right direction.
But if there is one thing in all the world of lies that is vital, it is self-honesty.
I have to live with myself and die as myself.

There are very many who look at covid as a primarily medical situation. I have a different view. There are those who see it as a global monopolist program, I see this, but I also see that as a symptom of an underlying cultural or spiritual sickness or if you prefer, psychic insanity.

The choice we align in is to me the critical factor, and your choice to sign could embody the same love of life as moves me to not. And so I am not siding against the choice you or anyone else makes, and any criticism is similar to that I bring to the Media, ie: for what is NOT said as well as what is selected and the way it is constructed, As with Media, if others take it at face value, that is their current decision.

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 8:26 AM
Reply to  John Goss

The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates,

FUCK THOSE SHILLS

Jacques
Jacques
Oct 12, 2020 7:07 PM

Marxism, radical left, socialism …

This is a very good analysis;

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/503267-american-left-corporate-socialism/

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 12, 2020 8:48 PM
Reply to  Jacques

All very well except that I always roll my eyes when these articles mention “the free market”as the supposed solution to it all. This “free market” seems to me to be the most chimerical notion of all.

deanna clark
deanna clark
Oct 12, 2020 5:44 PM

Beloved picture from early America….New England sea captains with their masks off….

comment image

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 8:29 AM
Reply to  deanna clark

A bunch of scumbags preparing to plunder the “New WoIrld”.

deanna clark
deanna clark
Oct 16, 2020 11:41 AM
Reply to  Almondson

As a housewife, I think of the wives and children sitting through 3 hour sermons on total depravity back in lovely New England….and, of course, the Ivy League colleges-to-be endowed by the slave shipping fortunes.

hendRIK Pieters
hendRIK Pieters
Oct 12, 2020 5:44 PM

Belgium did not murder or chopped of hands and feet of Congolese men. It was the business around Leopold2 who did that. Afterwards we have tried to do good. But like all things white men do, it goes wrong. America is dead, the elite is fighting to rule the world. And now is the time for something completely different. And Marxisme is still alive and kicking. The greens do not love nature, they are marxist communists.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:26 AM

The greens are A) not socialists or Marxists or communists and B) they’re always totally useless

hendRIK Pieters
hendRIK Pieters
Oct 13, 2020 4:20 PM
Reply to  Koba

In Europe they are. Marxist Communist, all of them. Greens are not thinking in terms of nature, but in how the can destroy everything.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 9:53 PM

They’re really not they’re bland Middle class liberals with gardening obsessions

hendRIK Pieters
hendRIK Pieters
Oct 16, 2020 1:33 PM
Reply to  Koba

haha

deanna clark
deanna clark
Oct 16, 2020 11:43 AM

They are Total Depravity puritans straight from Cotton Mather and their love of black clothes gives them away…..the worst color for the environment by far.

hendRIK Pieters
hendRIK Pieters
Oct 16, 2020 1:39 PM
Reply to  deanna clark

Just like architects, i’m the only colourfull one, with long hair. 🤣

Peter T
Peter T
Oct 12, 2020 1:27 PM

I found this really interesting until finally the whole point was revealed…yes, Marxism, or rather an absence of it, is to blame. It’s down to horrible old capitalism again, and all those awful people on their mobile phones. I personally blame ABBA, if only people had bought those wonderful albums by those lovely Swedish socialist bands instead of ABBA, we would probably all be living in Utopia by now 🙂

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 12, 2020 6:51 PM
Reply to  Peter T

Small logical point:Marxism only exists as a critique of capitalism I e. We live in a capitalist world. So yes I’m afraid that whatever happens, it must have something to do with capitalism.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:28 AM
Reply to  Peter T

Sweden is not socialist. Never has been. And you’ve never read a word of Marx. Not one. You have read what other liars have said and decided you did t like what the liars had to say. All of them capitalists. Name the socialists states at war right now? None all they’re all capitalists

hendRIK Pieters
hendRIK Pieters
Oct 16, 2020 1:41 PM
Reply to  Koba

Good point, Marx and English had very good ideas of how a community should work better and more enjoyable together.

Pete
Pete
Apr 5, 2021 3:20 PM
Reply to  Koba

Man I have sociology degree, a third of it was f***ng Marx. and I have to say the most boring third, cant tell you the amount of nights I feel asleep reading that s**t. Any text that is so complex to read and understand that it can only ever be grasped by a small few can never be truly good – which is funny given that Marx aimed to liberate all humans from the grasp of capitalism (actually he didn’t – his beef was more with the petit bourgoise if anyone). Whenever I meet someone now who spouts Marx, I just think massive ***** with too much time on his hands. I never met a plumber of a farmer of a builder who read Marx as they go about getting as much money as they can. And of course sweden isn’t socialist darling, nowhere is ‘true’ socialist according to socialists, because Marx’s big girly vision of utopia has never yet been truly realised – mainly because no one in any position of power could ever be bothered to read him – Lenin and Trotsky read him – Stalin didn’t he was too busy planning how to murder millions of people. And socialist countries are too weak to go to war with others – even though they threaten it continually – ie north korea – they much prefer going to war with their own people – like Stalin, Putin, the nutty Kims, and what about China at present – have you read accounts from the Uigurs? Oh right but China isn’t really communist either, no one is. Oh if only everyone in this cruel world spend 300 plus hours reading his boring as hell diatribes, everybody would be lovely to each other and we’d all have sleep overs at each other’s houses and live an agrarian/techno trans positive cloud of joy for the rest of eternity. 🙂

Koba
Koba
Apr 6, 2021 11:15 PM
Reply to  Pete

One Marx was written in the 19th century! Hence different words. Two: Soviet Union under Stalin was socialist and it was lit. Three Stalin is the most lied about man in history, Kims the same, four Putin isn’t even a socialist and six there are no Uighur concentration camps!
18,000,000 gulag prisoners between 1918-1960 takes America six and a half years to jail that many people.
1.2 million deaths in them most during 1941-1946
799,455 Executions
Famine doesn’t count Stalin didn’t pay for the clouds to fuck off! If you doby like my numbers google them!
“ because Marx’s big girly vision of utopia has never yet been truly realised – mainly because no one in any position of power could ever be bothered to read him” the elite have read him that’s why they deride him. When Sweden has worker control over the means of production (socialism) I’ll gladly call them socialist! You tried to take on a stalin supporter! You’ll not be hearing “not real socialism” especially if it’s socialism!

thecommunists.org go on see if we are pro trans and lgbt sandwiches. I enjoy the posh boy who went to uni to study sociology is going to lecture the working class maintenance worker who has a 4 am start and grew up in children’s homes in the north of Ireland all about the working class. Most plumbers etc are and were always middle class. Period

Pete
Pete
Apr 5, 2021 3:25 PM
Reply to  Koba

And I didn’t say Sweden was marxist. I was reflecting on a tv programme I watched recently (made by capitalists) about the rise of Abba and how all these dull grey socialist bands in Sweden objected to them cheering everybody up and were very annoyed when they went ahead anyway and became global megastars, whilst surprisingly, nobody seemed to want to listen to a bunch of dullards with guitars banging on about marxism.

mgeo
mgeo
Oct 12, 2020 10:35 AM

The writer’s focus on US propaganda-culture is is a part of the problem.

Baby talk (NewSpeak) includes invisible enemy, bad guy, enemy combattant/non-combattant, war-fighting, threat reduction, strong response, intervention, punitive action, surge, strike,

The primary goals of Operation Covid include these:
– Deflecting blame for the collapse of the global ponzi scheme from central banks and the largest speculators 
– Deflating the financial bubble
– Reducing production as demand collapses; sustains scarcity, a pre-condition for capitalism
– Evading compensation for lay-offs
– Censoring and evading compensation for pollution
– Plundering more public wealth: “rescuing” the largest speculators and awarding “emergency” contracts
– Plundering more private wealth: buying up businesses/property from the bankrupt and short-selling shares
– Depopulation through fear/dispair (which impacts health), bio-warfare, consequent sterility and disrupting essential goods/services/treatment; partly to evade issue of plundered welfare/pension funds
– Strengthening the means to crush the coming greater unrest

mgeo
mgeo
Oct 12, 2020 12:23 PM
Reply to  mgeo

Also, though most of the leaders and celebrities violated the rules, the few who fell ill seem to have recovered on schedule with none of the dreaded after-effects.

7.62x39
7.62x39
Oct 12, 2020 10:23 AM

“The absence of a real left party, a radical Marxist party”
What tripe! The world needs less government not more. More individual liberty not less. Unrestrained government power is why this covid war on humanity continues.
Marxists and public health tyrants are two peas in the same pod. Both reject individual decision making and self direction. Both are the problem not the solution.

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 12, 2020 6:58 PM
Reply to  7.62x39

I would say the COVID shit is a cover for a collapse that is going to happen anyway. And the collapse is a consequence of capitalism.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:30 AM
Reply to  7.62x39

Where on the doll did the commies touch you mr. slug? Marxism is the withering away of government for total people control. Read some Marx for fuck sake don’t repeat what your head made you say based on NOTHING! Also do you not know how childish you sound!? No commies in power barely any in the west at all and most of those get it wrong. Yet capitalism has failed (yet again but it fails every 4-22 years it’s restarted) yet you blame imagined communists you’ve never met and can’t find the HQ of for your problems. This isn’t the blame game this isn’t even idiocy it’s the mark of the sociopath. Nice job outing yourself you deluded nutter

Koba
Koba
Apr 6, 2021 11:21 PM
Reply to  7.62x39

Marxism is the withering a way of government you fool!!!! Read Marx Yourself or shut the fuck up!

Dr NG Maroudas
Dr NG Maroudas
Oct 12, 2020 10:01 AM

“California, the wild areas have been neglected for almost a hundred years.”

Good news! Let’s have more throughout this “smouldering rubbish dump” of an over-mechanized and over-supervised world.

I recommend “Wilding”, by the aptly named Is-a-Bella Tree

“The whole world is our hospital / Wherein if we do well we die / Of the absolute Big Brother care / That will not let us but prevents us everywhere.” — TS Eliot (with apology).

Vince
Vince
Oct 12, 2020 6:10 AM

Incredible article, truly. Reading through the comments seems like many people can’t get past two paragraphs. I fear for our future.

zdb
zdb
Oct 12, 2020 5:01 AM

Tony
Tony
Oct 12, 2020 3:52 AM

Woke Doom and Gloom!

Voxi Pop
Voxi Pop
Oct 12, 2020 3:39 AM

Agreed. The American public has been traumatized repeatedly on a mass level. As have other publics.

https://worldchangebrief.webnode.comWHO Urges Lockdown Halt/
WHTrade Advisor: CCP Endorsed Biden/
Lifting Veil On Soros/
Pope Preaches NWO/
Whitman Plot-FBI Informant.Leftist/
5G Military Experiments Ready/
Postal Carrier Trashed Ballots/
Olbermann Personifies Pure Propaganda/
Yelp Rates Racists

Round
Round
Oct 12, 2020 2:07 AM

There is so much politics, identity politics and divisive rhetoric that the most practical solution to the need to socialise and have good friends is: Anti-Depressants.

ZenPriest
ZenPriest
Oct 12, 2020 9:19 AM
Reply to  Round

It’s hard though when you’ve just realised most of your friends are brainwashed.

John the First
John the First
Oct 12, 2020 12:17 AM

“The ruling class don’t wear masks or have travel restrictions imposed on them.”

Of course not, also the elites who have oppressed the people in history never went so far with oppression of the people as to create the unprecedented hyper-regulated serfdom society as we have it today. These historical ruling classes were mostly too busy enjoying themselves with their hobbies, after all, if you steal from and live of the people, it would be stupid if you would not use that situation to enjoy yourself.
For such a serfdom of pettiness as we suffer it today (already long before the Corona ‘disaster’), it requires that you have a great multitude of little dictators who are as small of mind as they are great in number…, who, different from ruling elites, know not how to relax and enjoy, having little else than their petty little views and lives. So the ruling class of today leaves it up to the masses among the people to pester each other with their smalltimeness, 24/7, everywhere. It would be really absurd to demand of the contemporary ruling class to suffer as many restrictions as the small time people are imposing on each other.

To each his own way. There is no greater dictator than the people.

John the First
John the First
Oct 11, 2020 11:05 PM

“Everything is discussed this way, in infantile baby talk, gibberish and slogans. Anti-democratic edicts delivered as if by a kindergarten teacher.”

The ‘infantile baby talk, gibberish and slogans’, it works, it is and has always been part of democracy, that it degrades into ever more infantile ‘baby talk’ is part of the inevitable regressive development. Every individual insisting on democracy is a supporter of this, by supporting mob rule. Demagogy is essential to it. The democracy which the writer has in mind exists only in the form of idealistic theory, it has never existed in reality.

To quote Rousseau:

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 11, 2020 10:53 PM

I wrote, in a notebook, in November of last year:

15-American Society and its Foreign Policies, historically and in any contemporary sense, are profoundly violent illustrations of the obvious principle that if you have something that everyone (anyone) wants, and can’t defend it, it will be taken from you. Period. That is the lesson and example America offers the world… none of that crap about Freedom/ Equality/ Progress/ Hope. Why do we persist in claiming otherwise? The “American Dream” = SUPERIOR FIREPOWER”

And that’s basically what’s happening. We are unable to defend our own dignity and freedom, so they’re being completely removed. What were we thinking?

https://berlin8berlin.wordpress.com/2019/11/26/november-notebook/

Rick Giombetti
Rick Giombetti
Oct 11, 2020 9:41 PM

“…In Norway here I still cannot drive to Sweden. Why? Who knows, there is no reason provided…”
For the same reason I can’t drive about 100 miles north of where I live into Canada. A new passport system, a digital passport, is in the works. But it won’t be for simply crossing international borders, but for being allowed go go anywhere internally in the countries we live in. Why? Because Big Tech can make a lot of money off of it.

Arne
Arne
Oct 11, 2020 9:38 PM

If you want to effectively oppress people, you must
first establish several antagonistic political ideologies.

Then hatred between “progressives” and
“traditionalists” has already been created.

Then he should incite women against men by propagating
“feminism”. As a counter-movement, masculism (MGTOW)
will emerge. Furthermore, a distinct cult of youthism is also
part of it, which regards the old as inferior. At the same time,
social envy for the wealthy should be stirred up in order to
demonstrate to the less wealthy what failures they all are.

The stupid rank and file is busy bashing each
other’s heads in for decades. The age-old prin-
ciple of maintaining power is divide and rule.

Arne
Arne
Oct 12, 2020 8:42 PM
Reply to  Arne

It goes without saying that it is essential
for the phalanx of power to bring the eco-
nomically and culturally most advanced
countries on colliion course with the eco-
nomically and culturally most regressive
countries. One must persuade the first that
they’re perpetrators and guilty, and the let-
ter that they are victims and have claims.

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 11, 2020 9:04 PM

To our writer Mr. John, sorry but if you were on the side of Milosovic, all i can say as a middle eastern person and a best friend to a bosnian is “you can go fertilize youself”. The noble Nobel Laureates can join you too. ( as if nobel prizes means nothing but political conducts)

Ernest Judd
Ernest Judd
Oct 11, 2020 9:24 PM
Reply to  A leaf

I guess that you absolve the U$A of ALL crimes!
Milo was set up so the U$A can have a deflection from their PERPETUAL crimes.

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 11, 2020 11:30 PM
Reply to  Ernest Judd

Ah come on i don’t love usa it is the absulute opposite, but i don’t care who is a puppet either people choose to be puppets.

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 12, 2020 12:10 AM
Reply to  Ernest Judd

And yes the poor little milo was set up, of course he was. Usa and other european countries never misses opportunities like that. Germany was the one that persuaded the yugoslavia division etc.. but you can not in any instance can calim that milosovic did not know what was happening in bosnian cities

Tomoola Sitchin
Tomoola Sitchin
Oct 12, 2020 12:50 AM
Reply to  A leaf

“…but you can not in any instance can claim that Milosovic did not know what was happening in Bosnian cities”

Of course that can be claimed and it may be right, but it’s a total red herring and it is nothing whatsoever to do with the almighty Covid-19 scam.

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 12, 2020 8:49 AM

Well if you are so surely claim that it can be claimed, I suggest you to think the other way around too. And as I answered to your repetitive answer down there, yes my friend I can write about it as the writer himself mentioned about this. If you willingly leave the door even the tiniest bit ajar, then you must not get surprised by the enterance

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 11, 2020 10:07 PM
Reply to  A leaf

“as a middle eastern person and a best friend to a bosnian”

Ah another one who has “direct inside information” or who “was there at the time” or “knows someone who was”. Well who needs any further investigation or analysis?

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 11, 2020 11:55 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Well probably you should. I am Turkish. My friend imigrated to Turkiye when the civil war erupted, But some of the relatives remained in Gorajde city. The Muslim resistance organization founded by Nasser Oric, one of Milosevic’s former bodyguards, defended Srebrenica in the first years. Against the Serbs who used all the means of the Yugoslav SFC army, the bosnians were trying to fight back with light weapons and a small number of bullets due to the embargo imposed on the region and a lot of them died.
Ratko Mladic ordered more than 8000 bosnians to be slaughtered and 400 dautch DM soldier watched this without flicking a finger.
And if you are implying that both Radovan Karadzic, political leader of Bosnia’s Serbs in the 1992-95 war, and Serbian President Milosevic, who armed and funded Bosnian Serb forces did not know about these than you can go and fertilize yourself with the rest.

Tomoola Sitchin
Tomoola Sitchin
Oct 12, 2020 1:17 AM
Reply to  A leaf

Possibly interesting, but definitely irrelevant on here, as it is nothing whatsoever to do with the massive Covid scam.

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 12, 2020 8:40 AM

Definitely relevant as the writer himself specifically mentioned this in his piece so I can .

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 13, 2020 4:00 PM
Reply to  A leaf

Maybe a few of your opponents here didn’t read the whole essay…?

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 12, 2020 8:10 AM
Reply to  A leaf

And did you witness all this directly? Maybe your friend did?

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 12, 2020 8:44 AM
Reply to  George Mc

Did the writer himself witnessed the innocence of milo ? Was he with him all those 3 years with every desicion he made ? Were you with every people when they told you about their lifes, days and when you believed them. This was such a weak attack without merit and childish. I almost laughed and was ready the give you an answer as childish as you deserved yet the topic is so sensitive and sad I will not

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 12, 2020 9:22 AM
Reply to  A leaf

Ooh moral outrage in high gear!

The point I was making is that we are all dependant on some media. But bear one thing in mind: that scandalous matter of the “Bosnian concentration camp” photo i.e. the one that was utterly misrepresented. It had all the ingredients: war torn landscape, barbed wire, emaciated rib cage …and it was bullshit – based on an illegitimate interpretation which the magazine “Living Marxism” revealed. LM were then successfully sued by ITN who originally sanctioned the bullshit. From which we can safely conclude that 99% of the mainstream media is indeed bullshit. And that is why we must read carefully. And treat as suspicious anyone who claims “to have been there” or to “have connections” etc.

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 12, 2020 2:38 PM
Reply to  George Mc

This wasn’t a moral outrage cry it was a cry for your irreverence. Our lives as middle Eastern are not bullshjt news reports you read from your comfortable houses in Europe etc..these are real lives, real people not news. We lived it. You read wars, talk and discuss believe or dismiss them but we live them. I have witnessed Bosnians immigrate,pkk war,Syrians flooding my country because of emperyalist countries and my equally guilty goverment. So stop being a zealot, bigot or any ot. You people cry non stop about your voices not heard about sarscov2 yet in the sight of any idea or talk that is not on par with yours you act exactly the same as the ones you complain about and try to ridicule or hush the opposite party

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 12, 2020 3:08 PM
Reply to  A leaf

You’re doing it again. All those breathless statements from someone who – I am supposed to assume – is there as it happens. It’s like the COVID tales that go “You bastard! I’m holding a dying infant in my arms even as we speak” etc. Well I ‘ain’t buyin’ it.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 13, 2020 4:15 PM
Reply to  George Mc

“Ooh moral outrage in high gear!”

Nah. He sounds understandably irritated at all the (armchair) Geopolitical Expertise being marshaled to invalidate his POV; it’s as though he’s bashing his head against the Hammer Algorithm that sees everything as not only a nail to bash but as the same nail. Life is sadly more nuanced. Eg: Saddam was a bastard and Uncle Sam was a psycho: no paradox. Business as usual.

Is there a possible Reality in which both A) the “Bosnian concentration camp photo” was a sham AND B) Milosevic wasn’t quite Mary Poppins?

“And that is why we must read carefully. And treat as suspicious anyone who claims “to have been there” or to “have connections” etc.”

Wise words (whenever I claim that the Apollo Hoax was a hoax, I end up having to argue with everybody who had an “uncle working mission control”). But treating “leaf” suspiciously… and circling him with your thumbs in your ears while blowing raspberries are very different things. Mob psychology, innit?

I don’t know “leaf,” have no way of knowing if he’s real. But, Jeezis...

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 13, 2020 7:21 PM

Nobody is saying Milosevic was an angel. That’s a straw man. But what I am saying is that I am not falling for the emotional blackmail “I’m speaking to you directly from the bomb site” stuff.

deanna clark
deanna clark
Oct 16, 2020 11:53 AM
Reply to  George Mc

Always remember NATO has a stated, formal objective against the Orthodox world.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:40 AM
Reply to  A leaf

Name this Bosnian then or get him to leave his experiences here!

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 3:29 PM
Reply to  A leaf

I must admit I don’t understand why you’re being attacked here.

A leaf
A leaf
Oct 12, 2020 10:55 PM

I have no idea why all the negatives..too many milosovich supporters here I guess.. i don’t care a tit if somebody believes me or not. It is my life but what I care and get irritated is the double faced people here. They cry that the world dismiss different opinions about covid yet they easily dismiss an opinion different from theirs which is funny and sad at the same time..

Saraj
Saraj
Oct 20, 2020 5:55 PM
Reply to  A leaf

Only an idiot and fascist can be a member of “Milosevic Defense Committee”, defending leader who started 4 wars, attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo. Only in Bosnia, where I’m from, there were 100.000 dead, mosty civilians, including more than 10.000 children, plus thousands of raped women, even some men. Majority of crimes done by Serbs, with their leader Milosevic. Genocide in Srebrenica confirmed by court, but also done in ethnically cleansed other towns in Bosnia. Etc.
SWPR has it totally wrong on Yugoslavia, probably under Serbian propaganda, not differentiating between 1990s Nato actions with UN approval and 2000s unilateral.

McMurphy
McMurphy
Oct 13, 2020 2:58 PM

We’re slightly digresing here but I guess propaganda is propaganda.. Imperial agressions or Covid etc. This might give you a clue:
https://swprs.org/propaganda-in-the-war-on-yugoslavia/

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 13, 2020 3:58 PM
Reply to  McMurphy

I always think of NATO vs Saddam; the CIA vs Torrijos and then the Marines vs Noriega and so forth: sure, Uncle Sam/ NATO have a nasty habit of turning on former lackies, whom they will smear and demonize… but that doesn’t mean the former lackies and/or strongmen are gentle innocents. (The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, as the saying goes).

It’s like Iran: I was with an Iranian dissident (who left Iran when she was 5, with her mother, after the Islamic Revolution) for five years. Several of her uncles were assassinated by the regime and she has a personal grievance that isn’t invalidated by the fact that NATO/ Israel blatantly demonize Iran to justify an invasion.

In conflicts like these, typically, all the actual powers, on both sides of the conflict, are wrong (the most powerful tend to be the most wrong, surprisingly enough): it’s only the innocent victims who are right. I don”t know “leaf” or his story; it would take quite a bit of analysis to understand it well enough to justify a passionate opinion on the matter. Meanwhile, I’m not going to attack or champion him. Just wondering at all the vituperation towards a commenter who appears to have a personal reason for his feelings, right or wrong. And this is not exactly the most implausible thing I’ve read all day:

You people cry non stop about your voices not heard about sarscov2 yet in the sight of any idea or talk that is not on par with yours you act exactly the same as the ones you complain about and try to ridicule or hush the opposite party

I also think that this would be a weird place for a “shill” to spread anti-Milosevic “disinfo” … do we really think anyone is still on the payroll doing that…? Is it like those legends of Japanese soldiers on desert islands who weren’t aware that the war was long over, still fighting for the Emperor, decades later…?

deanna clark
deanna clark
Oct 16, 2020 11:58 AM

Alas, in the Balkans time means nothing…

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 16, 2020 12:28 PM
Reply to  deanna clark

“Alas, in the Balkans time means nothing…”

Sure, but would there really be a sleeper-agent shill (supposedly “leaf”) waiting all this time, for a reference to Milosevic to pop up, in an English-speaker’s forum, so he could spring into action and pretend to have a personal stake in it…?

deanna clark
deanna clark
Oct 16, 2020 11:51 AM
Reply to  A leaf

If anyone cares, this goes back centuries and especially WWII and the Ustasi fascist collaborators. The cover story is religion.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:39 AM
Reply to  A leaf

Noble Nobel laureates?! Hahahahahahaha

I_left_the_left
I_left_the_left
Oct 11, 2020 8:42 PM

How did American imperialism and capitalism create covid19 and the hard turn to authoritarianism among western democracies? I see other, more solidly human culprits. On an unrelated note, the WHO has just done a massive u-turn on lockdowns. It now condemns what it previously called vital. Somebody tell Boris and the lockdown mob.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus-who-backflips-on-virus-stance-by-condemning-lockdowns/news-story/f2188f2aebff1b7b291b297731c3da74

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 9:13 AM

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

He can eat excreta with the rest of them.

Arne
Arne
Oct 11, 2020 8:41 PM

The media have lost their function of control-
ling the rulers – and have degenerated into a
mere instrument of power over “consumers”.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 11, 2020 8:41 PM

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 11, 2020 9:46 PM

Hey, mods… I know the video clip I posted (above), originally, will probably come back, at some point, but how did the “My Dinner With Andre: Conspiracy Theory Scene HD” clip I posted suddenly become “Migrant Caravan to the US”? This isn’t the first time this clip-switch has happened… how are they fucking with you/us?

Ort
Ort
Oct 11, 2020 10:23 PM

This isn’t much of an answer, but apparently this platform has a software issue that occasionally scrambles videos in a kind of musical-chairs shuffle.

Or so another commenter reported a while back when this happened. I had posted a video link, was baffled to find another video in its place when I returned, and later noticed “my” video parked in another comment that referenced still another video.

Eventually they all returned to their original comments. It’s all part of the inherent crazymaking of computer and Internet use!

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 11, 2020 10:28 PM
Reply to  Ort

Eerie!

Ort
Ort
Oct 12, 2020 2:50 AM

Yeah, it must be the Off-G poltergeist’s work.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 8:52 AM
Reply to  Ort

The poltergeist is going nuts at the moment. Look at all the clips posted, then refresh the page: all shifted!

Jeffrey Strahl
Jeffrey Strahl
Oct 11, 2020 10:41 PM

FWIW, i’m seeing “My Dinner With Andre..”

kevin
kevin
Oct 11, 2020 11:40 PM
Reply to  Jeffrey Strahl

Me too. That was amazing. Thank you for posting it.

Jeffrey Strahl
Jeffrey Strahl
Oct 12, 2020 12:28 AM
Reply to  kevin

Well, it was Steven who posted it, so he should be the one thanked, 🙂 but yes, an amazing movie. I saw it in June 1984 with my then-wife, my father-in-law was present but just read his mainstream fiction book, paid it no attention, she and i didn’t know what to expect, were blown away.

kevin
kevin
Oct 12, 2020 3:49 AM
Reply to  Jeffrey Strahl

Yes, I meant thank you to Steven.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 8:14 AM
Reply to  kevin

At the moment (Monday, 9am CET) the clip has become “NEW REVELATIONS ON THE COVID DEATH COUNT!” Hilarious.

kevin
kevin
Oct 12, 2020 4:33 PM

So strange. It’s still working fine on my end.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 8:20 AM
Reply to  Jeffrey Strahl
Jeffrey Strahl
Jeffrey Strahl
Oct 12, 2020 5:02 PM

If you say so. 🙂

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 6:39 PM
Reply to  Jeffrey Strahl

From my collection of What-A-Clueless-Fuckhead-I-Was-When-I-Was-Young stories

Alan Hamilton
Alan Hamilton
Oct 12, 2020 1:58 AM

great clip. thx.

nondimenticare
nondimenticare
Oct 11, 2020 11:10 PM

Wow! I remember being quite moved by it at the time, but obviously did not really perceive it. I was just speaking last night to someone who told me I must watch it again. And I will.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Oct 12, 2020 3:19 AM

Excellent clip Steven, and completely nails our present predicament. ‘The prisoners are also the prison guards’…. and where can you escape too when the whole world is like this’… I’ve been trying to think of how to get out of Melbourne, as quite a lot of my Facebook friends have been saying the same thing. Just leave.
But the problem is … where do you leave too?

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 8:28 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

I escaped the US after Dubya was elected; I was standing in a big elevator at the airport, in Frankfurt, watching the inauguration with maybe ten or fifteen Europeans and at some point I turned from the screen and said “Sorry!” and everyone laughed. I had 20 years of this very precious feeling that I’d escaped something awful (and, ironically, per the link I posted in the comment thread above, I bumped into Wally Shawn in Berlin early on during those charmed “Happy Escapee Years”). My Wife and I have often wondered where we would go from here if New Shit hit the fan and: voila: that time has come. Where?

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Oct 12, 2020 8:48 AM

That’s my predicament as well Steven. I’m a New Zealand citizen, tho living in the testing ground epicentre, aka Melbourne. Severe lack of funds means I’m restricted in where I can go – apart from a modest amount in a retirement fund (that people here can access due to the immense financial hardship coz of the scamdemic)
I would avoid 5 Eyes countries straight off: United States, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The more draconian measures and authoritarianism seems to be happening in these countries.
Next, avoid all NATO countries… coz they are fully on board as well.
Thru Facebook friends, I hear that both Nicaragua and Mexico are good places as far as more relaxation round covid.
I would think about places that have kicked out the WHO like Tanzania and Madagascar, tho the problem would be getting visa’s. Perhaps a Pacific Island nation like Vanuatu that doesn’t seem to affected by the covid bollocks.
Good luck to you and your wife. Things are going to get more surreal and very dodgy I think. The psychopaths are going for broke with this.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 3:24 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

“The psychopaths are going for broke with this.”

I’m afraid that all the signs indicate that, yes.

kevin
kevin
Oct 12, 2020 4:14 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Given the global nature of this coup, there are so few places that offer hope for anything better, just as Andre says in the clip. Mexico has Covid restrictions imposed by state governments like masks and social distancing but you don’t need any test to enter the country and there’s no quarantine. Nicaragua requires a PCR test.

Here is a regularly updated list of the few countries with no testing or quarantine:
https://www.traveloffpath.com/countries-without-any-travel-restrictions-or-entry-requirements

Good luck to you both.

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 11:55 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Vanuatu has been affected by a lot of other kinds of white man bollocks…Doesn’t seem to be the paradise it once was thanks to the Borg.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:44 AM

You don’t run you stand your ground

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 13, 2020 4:48 PM
Reply to  Koba

“You don’t run you stand your ground”

...said the boy facing the 3-ton steamroller. His last (coherent) words were quite inspiring... laugh.

No, fuck that macho bravado. It’s idiotic. Knowing when and how and why you are outgunned is a key to survival. In this case, there’s nowhere TO run but if there were, I’d take my family there tomorrow.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 9:55 PM

So you’re plan is and was I don’t like this place I’ll move somewhere else and delude myself until it’s too late that my new home is more accepting and whatnot and bright and clever and your plan is well that turned out to be nonsense I’ll find somewhere again to run off too?!

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 13, 2020 11:51 PM
Reply to  Koba

Oh goodgawd, (wo)man… what are you trying to get at? What kind of argument are you trying to have? I had a pretty perfect 20 years before More Evil suddenly loomed to threaten the whole fucking world at once. What was I supposed to have done in anticipation of that… build a rocket ship? Sheesh.

Koba
Koba
Oct 14, 2020 5:02 AM

Yeah you look more ridiculous. Your life was perfect with these free thinking Germans until covid the. You realised the very people hoodwinked by Hitler weren’t as clever as you first hoped for and your plan still is to run away from global worldwide evil by hiding somewhere in the world where apparently you won’t/can’t get touched. Are you a man child? Cos most yanks are

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 14, 2020 7:44 AM
Reply to  Koba

I didn’t move to Germany because the Germans “were more clever,” you nitwit! Laugh. I left the US because the US is a crass DUMP where money is the bottom-line regarding everything and 99% of the Serfs put all of their energy into pretending they’re Lords. Not stupid: insane.

You realised the very people hoodwinked by Hitler weren’t as clever as you first hoped…”

Wrong; in fact, the Berliners are obviously, on the whole, a little less dupe-able than the naive, uni-educated chums I left in the US because they’ve been through the Third Reich thing AND the Stasi thing. I was at the first “Covid” protest and it was massive. None of the Germans I’m acquainted with (most of my friends are expat Aussies and Brits) fall for this ridiculous scam. They all roll their eyes at it.

Berlin is far less draconian in its magical-thinking measures, under the Covid scam, than the UK, the US and the majority of other places… the vast majority of people you see wearing masks on the street (when you see this) are old.

I was hanging out in a popular park last week, at twilight, when it was still warm, and the place was thronged with people in little work-out groups, or Expat dance classes, or Turkish teens on dates, or large groups having picnics, flamboyantly-helmeted Gay Dudes roller-blading, older burghers biking, studs shadow-boxing, incels busking… it was magnificent: not a mask in sight.

You even see the cops driving around in their glass-sided chariots wearing NO FUCKING MASKS. So, sorry there, mate, you amusing little fuckhead jumping the shark with your over-eager Schadenfreude: it’s not exactly Hieronymus Bosch time over here. Conditions are still more than comfortable but I am anticipating the moment the Great Reset begins in earnest, okay? Can you grasp that? And the point I was making, along with other commenters, is that there is nowhere to escape to, on Earth, when TFIC puts everyone on some pathetic UBI tied to “social credit” and vaccines. But: as a dedicated father of a brainy, creative teen and the super-grateful husband of an amazing (and willing and witty) Wife 18 years my junior: a “manchild” I’m not. I’m a MAN, kid. WTF are you? Har: rhetorical question. I know what you are.

THAT was my point.

PS Re: “and your plan still is to run away from global worldwide evil by hiding somewhere in the world where apparently you won’t/can’t get touched.” Can you fucking read?

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 12:03 PM

-“Master, what is the secret of enlightenment?”
-“Teh secret is not to argue with eejits”
-“Master, I am not sure that is really the secret”
-“You are totally right of course”

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 16, 2020 12:30 PM
Reply to  Almondson

That should be a T-Shirt (or a classic Doonesbury strip)

Gwyn
Gwyn
Oct 12, 2020 11:09 AM

Thanks for the clip, Steven. I’ll be watching the film over the next day or two.

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 3:23 PM
Reply to  Gwyn

My distinct pleasure, Gwyn

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 11, 2020 8:34 PM

“And culture is being destroyed along with everything else. Cinemas are closing, permanently, theatres, too, permanently, and museums. Galleries and other art spaces are shuttered, likely to never reopen”

Bearing in mind that most of that “Art” was the talent-free, self-obsessed, fey, twee, zero-impact debris of the children and/or lovers of the lower-middle of The Ruling Classes. Maybe this is an opportunity for Genuine Artists (congenitally dissed, unconnected, filtered out of the University system and barred from the table for being dangerously Aware) to step forward? Every cloud has its tinfoil lining…

David Eire
David Eire
Oct 11, 2020 7:09 PM

Human beings are noospheric creatures; meaning we are primarily mind creatures. We each live in our own mental space or mind wherein we constitute our own personal world. It is not that there is no objective world, there is; it is just we can only ever see it or know it in our minds; and everything known in mind is always an interpretation; a meaning structure. Each of us sees the world, or interprets the world in a personal way.
In my opinion the corporate media elites have known this for a long time and they use that knowledge to control the public mind by providing us with meanings and interpretations which serve their agendas. That’s why propaganda works. Control of the narrative.
Myths can and do replace reality for many human beings. Advertisers rely on it; so do religions and warmongering regimes like Washington; nationalism and patriotism, and so on. All isms rely on the fact we are noospheric creatures in whom myth can be taken to be reality.
The Covid Panic has been mostly a noospheric event; a psyop.

S Cooper
S Cooper
Oct 11, 2020 7:21 PM
Reply to  David Eire

“Poor MS/MR TUMMY. Her/His job description seems to be written out of the picture altogether.”

BDBinc
BDBinc
Oct 11, 2020 7:38 PM
Reply to  David Eire

The problem is we are not just mind creatures and we are possessed by thoughts, fully identified with them and the emotions( the body’s reaction to thoughts). We don’t know who we are awareness consciousness.
You are right only as the mind identified( possessed) entity can the banking cabal manipulate as knowledge of self brings freedom .
Thats why an inner revolution is needed our inner state manifests the outer they know this which is why covid psyop was a fear implanted thought form.
https://notpublicaddress.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/turbulence-and-transconsciousness/

I_left_the_left
I_left_the_left
Oct 11, 2020 8:57 PM
Reply to  David Eire

Don’t forget genocidal communist dictatorships were established and maintained on ridiculously false stories of building egalitarian utopias. In a futile attempt to realise and enforce their vision, Communist elites overruled all human rights and freedoms and murdered many millions of their own citizens who refused to believe and to obey them. 120m were killed over 100 years, say some researchers. The horror continues in the concentration camps of NK and China. So I think the record of communism tops any alleged myths or actual evils from the US, whose citizens funded the huge effort made principally by the US to protect the free world against communism. I guess UK communists must see all this as just more Washington propaganda, rather than actual history, right?

The Coming Revolution
The Coming Revolution
Oct 12, 2020 5:50 PM

If you want to know what communism/socialism are, read 19th century books; then use your lecture to see which ones among those calling themselves Communists/Socialists in the 20th and 21th centuries are telling the truth.

Nixon Scraypes
Nixon Scraypes
Oct 12, 2020 7:58 PM

You’re correct, none of them. Those utopian ideas are slave bait. They know they’re lying, just like their predecessors who laid the trap with words.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:58 AM
Reply to  Nixon Scraypes

Ah Nixon anther man who hasn’t read Marx! Marx mocked the utopinists. So did Stalin. So did Lenin he wrote an entire book on it called left wing communism an infantile disorder. Yet another idiot with CIA and Wikipedia (same thing) levels of knowledge

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 8:56 AM

120 million deaths by communism in 100 years has been long debunked and your stories about dictators are just that: Stories! Inventions of febrile liars of the capitalist class. I love debating anti commies you literally have no idea what you’re talking about. These “some researchers” are the likes of police spy Robert conquest who invented the 100 million claim was debunked in the first week his black book of communism came out by his fellow authors of his book all of them anti communists who stated categorically that he was a liar! Let’s do some anto communist arithmetic! Claim: Stalin killed 6-100 million people. What the evidence says: 799,455 executions between 1921-1953 and 18 million gulag prisoners between 1921-1953 (it takes America 5 and a half to 6 years to lock up that many people often on trumped up charges) only 4 million politically motivated arrests in that time and 12,000 army officers purged (25% returned to work within a year a further 30% after that the rest were either demoted or removed and the guilty were either jailed or shot: all 400+ of them) and one famine in Ukraine that was not man made (more proof of Churchill murdering 3 million Bengali’s – conservative estimate – in non famine conditions in the middle of WW2 than there is ANY evidence whatsoever of Stalin purposely starving people over some fabled Imagined Ukrainian nationalists – who coincidentally were pro Nazi and spent most of the war killing there fellow Ukrainians)! No mention of Kazakhstan which had a worse famine than Ukraine or the fact up to 9 million Americans starved in the depression and you literally don’t give one solitary flying fuck about any of these you just want to bash something you have extremely Threadbare knowledge of! Best bit about anti communists and being pro Stalin? Is when you get confronted you she no answers but emotional shite to fling around! Sit down sad act you went from left winger wanting A generally better life for all to full blown psycho because your side didn’t win you did t like some of them and because you’re a coward! Fuck right off! And ending this with a BUT (and i ta a big but I even capitalised it and everything) the numbers I provided are genuine, legitimate and easy to google, but being a capitalist you need to add several zeroes to the end to make up your phantom deaths numbers. And the black book of communism blamed Nazi deaths on communism and deaths by Nazis ON COMMUNISM! Now that’s dumb. Just like you

I_left_the_left
I_left_the_left
Oct 13, 2020 8:24 PM
Reply to  Koba

Insults reveal your fear and intolerance of those with opinions unlike your own. Being easily triggered is a fascist or fanatic thing, sadly. Your extreme language and comment about ‘emotional shite to fling around’ are especially revealing of your insecurity. By the way, western capitalism made your privileged life possible, while western democracy gave you freedom of speech and fora like this, even for your very emotional diatribes. So does hate for capitalism drive your posts, or more your love for communism? Are you seriously going to defend the Soviet Union, perhaps the most tyrannical and oppressive system of elitist control ever experienced? I’d say most murderous too, but Communist China with 60m victims and counting is even worse, say the critics. The escapees’ accounts and satellite images of hundreds of concentration camps with 3m+ Uigyurs and Tibetans facing Nazi-style fates are not imaginary, even if Trump is the only leader to say so.

Koba
Koba
Oct 13, 2020 10:00 PM

You didn’t debunk a word I said. And China at 60 million is ridiculous! And big wow western democracy allows me to type on a minor website that few know of where our views are marginalised despite being in the main part correct! It’s about to go full fash soon and we’ll see how well I do compared to you someone who literally repeats MSM liberal propaganda on the regular. I’d be under no doubt that your name and claim to fame of leaving the left is fake and you get paid to troll. It wouldn’t surprise me. The west has a lot more bots and paid trolls than China and Russia COMBINED! Google my numbers and stop being triggered over facts mr cannon fodder. And yes I’m defending the Stalin government! Facts over feelings especially when talking about the most lied about man in HISTORY!

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 12:07 PM
Reply to  Koba

All you need to know about the left is in Orwell’s lesser known book A Tribute to Catalunya.
Not sure anyone who claims to be politically aware and hasn’t read that book is worth listening to.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:33 PM
Reply to  David Eire

“We each live in our own mental space or mind wherein we constitute our own personal world. It is not that there is no objective world, there is; it is just we can only ever see it or know it in our minds; and everything known in mind is always an interpretation; a meaning structure. Each of us sees the world, or interprets the world in a personal way.”

We can do better, some of us do… trust me

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:48 PM
Reply to  Theobalt

Every other less evolved beings are finite… their evolution is not going anywhere… WE are the latest work of Mother Nature… we are out of the food chain and can only be dominated by others like us… We are NOT finite… we are not working at full speed… and you know what… these millenniums are very exciting times (another human expression)… I don’t want to be a lion.,.. I’m not even going to invite a lion at my place for a steak, a bottle of wine and a movie… “you stay in your cage now you psychopathic fuck”… We apparently seek for the ultimate… we invented God… But this is it, this is us… and it’s ok (another human expression)… so a message from Mother Nature… “Would you cunts stop bitching around? It’s going this way, it’s my plan… I swear to God the arrogance on you every time you challenge me… It takes time OK?!?!”

David Eire
David Eire
Oct 11, 2020 11:05 PM
Reply to  Theobalt

Easy on there Theo! It’ll be ok.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 12, 2020 5:28 AM
Reply to  David Eire

Lolll… totally deserved that… I get emotional about contempt on humanity… by humans… what can I say

Almondson
Almondson
Oct 16, 2020 12:31 PM
Reply to  Theobalt

lions are not psychopathic…

The Coming Revolution
The Coming Revolution
Oct 12, 2020 5:08 PM
Reply to  David Eire

“and everything known in mind is always an interpretation;”

Exactly. So what is the right interpretation for an observed fact? I think it’s the one based on gut instinct aka common sense. This kind of interpretation is instantaneous, almost a reflex reaction with very little tought process, if any.

What is the right interpretation or meaning of the fact of being born, and living on earth? That our being born carries with it as a necessary corollary entirely based on gut instinct, the liberty at which we should be to enjoy the fruits of the earth; and one cannot contest that liberty without contesting the unconstetable fact of being born. What would a wrong interpretation be? Any one that is mediated by a thought process not envolving gut instinct, such as: we need something that mediates between our liberty to enjoy the fruits of the earth and effectively enjoying them, that is, money.

We all agree here that what’s going on these days is at least a criminal fraud; but this fraud is ongoing within another fraud, centuries-old and taken for granted by almost everyone of us, one without which the first fraud couldn’t possibly happen: the monetary system.

Human life based on the artificial monetary system WILL always need catastrophes, wars, pandemics, deaths, hardships, to keep going. It may benefit some of us but always at the expense of others, or as someone said, for every step forward this system takes, it takes two steps backward.

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Oct 11, 2020 7:07 PM

I know this is completely Off-Topic, but Ozzy Osbourne and His Missus Sharon Osbourne are now talking on Planet Rock. It might actually be live Ozzy sounds, like he can still bloody well sing. He ain’t giving up. They are talking a bit about this COVID bollocks..

Strawberry Fields on Now (Beatles)

I like Planet Rock.

I have met some of their DJ’s

https://planetradio.co.uk/planet-rock/

Tony

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:50 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see…

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Oct 11, 2020 10:26 PM
Reply to  Theobalt

sorry did I drop a bit? Can you help educate me?

I have not got my eyes closed.

How about you?

You have obviously got an internet connection…

How will it work when you haven’t?

Some people take everything for granted…They wil be fucked when nothing works when the power goes off.

What are we going to do?

Wel if you haven’t prepared you are probably going to freeze to death
, before you get hungry

These arseholes in power want to kill you. I see now my posts appear, and then get deleted.

There are other websites.

What did I write that was wrong?

Did I say too much, or was I just f’cking boring

Have the moderators changed shifts?

Tony.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:47 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

I was just signing along with you Tony… but glad to see you’re alive mate

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:49 PM
Reply to  Theobalt

And I’m pretty sure I’ll be fucked too Tony… I know that… 🙂

Voz 0db
Voz 0db
Oct 11, 2020 6:36 PM
Reply to  Arne

Tell those morons THEY DON’T NEED TO WEAR A MUZZLE!

Arne
Arne
Oct 11, 2020 6:59 PM
Reply to  Voz 0db

I do not speak sign language.

Grafter
Grafter
Oct 11, 2020 8:15 PM
Reply to  Voz 0db

Would laugh but it’s tragic.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:52 PM
Reply to  Grafter

Nan! Nan it’s not… (to be played in the voice of Bill Burr.. how’s he doing these days…?)

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:51 PM
Reply to  Voz 0db

lollll

Ort
Ort
Oct 11, 2020 7:24 PM
Reply to  Arne

I’m sure all of the finger and arm motion used in sign language exacerbates the atmospheric spread of Megadeath Virus of Doom particles, so I’m horrified that the person in the photo isn’t also wearing gloves.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:54 PM
Reply to  Ort

Well he’s well informed on “the science”… In sign language it’s even less confusing… all that logic out of the way… you’re left with instructions

Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Oct 11, 2020 6:17 PM

Talking now to an ‘ex’ friend about the plague, that ‘terrible beauty’ which has been visited upon the world. She has now turned into a raving fanatic. For example she argued that 42,000 citizens in the UK had died of CV-19. Well doing the arithmetic I worked out what percentage of the UK’s population this represented. Doing the maths as follows UK population 68,000,000. It’s kiddywink arithmetic really 42.000.00/68,000,000.00 gives you a figure of an 0.06% death rate. Does not quite equate to the Black Death does it. Moreover, all the deaths which have occurred have not necessarily been due and classified as being caused by the CV virus.

But my interlocutor wasn’t moved by mere facts and figures which went straight over her head; she simply doubled down working herself up into a frenzy calling me inter alia an idiot and worst of all a dread ‘conspiracy theorist’ Guardian reader, Brexit Remainer, Labour party supporter (Starmer not Corbyn) of course.

joost
joost
Oct 11, 2020 7:02 PM
Reply to  Donald Duck

Today I just showed a friend the graphs on the euromomo website. It shows a distinct peak of excess deaths that dropped to zero at week 20, no increase since then. In other words, the pandemic ended mid May. Everything after that is a lie. This is bullet proof hard evidence.

Then she started about increasing number of positive test cases. If that is true, while nobody dies, then it is proof that covid 19 is a seasonal disease like the flu and the common cold. It means that we should have ended all restrictions mid May to reach herd immunity before winter sets in. It would have ended the entire nightmare. IF there is a second wave again this winter then it I blame it on the lockdowns and those responsible.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 12, 2020 4:08 AM
Reply to  joost

That’s assuming the deaths are caused by a novel virus… I didn’t even check the CIA website in mid year, I’m almost certain there was no excess deaths in total… in western north countries, it’s about 80 per thousand per year, give or take, for every year since a long time… 85 in Italy and Spain (I think) and up to 95 in third world… So 8000 per million per year in the US… So 329 X 8000… 2.6 million dead per year… what percentage increase justifies the present worldwide situation… better be significant compared to previous years variations..

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:56 PM
Reply to  Donald Duck

You’re gonna have to dump that friend brother… we are all doing it.. we got you.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 9:58 PM
Reply to  Theobalt

The least you can do today is show you’ve made an effort in arithmetics… I never thought “I hate maths” was such a cool statement.

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 11, 2020 10:18 PM
Reply to  Donald Duck

Your ex-friend’s attitude reminds me of that delicious line from that satirical JP Awaken guy regarding how to deal with COVID critics:

“Your emotionally fuelled abstract assumption is obviously a more accurate expression of what they meant than what they expressed.”

Link here (and I’ll never tire of watching this):

Kalen
Kalen
Oct 11, 2020 6:16 PM

It is very likely that COVID event constitutes final hard break from Foucault disciplinary society concocted in the age of Industrial revolution and completion of deployment of Networked Society of Control posited by Deleuze already in 1990 In the emerging age of digital revolution .

Disciplinary society shaped people worldview and behavior via disciplined structured education aimed at instilling self discipline and trustworthy automatic control status achieved by training and examination and by rule based social institutions providing clearly definite path for social life cycle and opened up possibility of social advancement for disciplined individuals even from outside of ruling classes.

Society of control abandons demand for self discipline and hence abandons what we call structured education as a foundation of functioning society and instead applies ubiquitous, clandestine mass surveillance, poling and ad hoc testing to dynamically and intermittently permit or deny access to networked society and social institutions as well as to specific paths of social life cycle.

There are no longer rules and life exams to be passed to move forward along individual life cycle, now uncertainty rules as people are turned in social machines engaged or disengaged from society at will, depending of immediate needs of the system which are never adequately defined or clarified and hence impossible to learn or anticipate and hence impossible to counter within the system of control.

Society of control is a society where all people are atomized deprived of self determination, self governance and fundamental sovereignty of human being as a necessary condition to be accepted or rather allowed or installed to temporarily function as long as it serves undisclosed interests of system of control. Individually self concocted narratives about motivations and outcomes of social machine engagement became irrelevant.

in the core of COVID psyop is a push for normalization of extreme social chaos, extreme social stress driven uncertainty of human bonds, failure of critical social obligations and instability of socioeconomic relations that are required for society to survive.

I_left_the_left
I_left_the_left
Oct 11, 2020 9:10 PM
Reply to  Kalen

What drives this mysterious ‘Society of Control’, and why would it seek social collapse? You remind me of Thanatos. Do Deleuze and Foucault explain its origin or motive, which people would benefit from the collapse, and how to resist?

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 12, 2020 4:16 AM
Reply to  Kalen

Awesome post this. Could benefit from a little punctuation might you, but yep, feels right.

Arne
Arne
Oct 11, 2020 6:05 PM

The U.S. and really this is increasingly true in Europe, too, but not nearly to the same extent, is an excruciatingly lonely country. People have lost the ability to make, and more, to sustain friendships. And how the role of social media plays into that is an open question. Or media in general.

John Ervin
John Ervin
Oct 11, 2020 5:38 PM

At the “Dawn” of, arguably, this new morning in Hell, we have a timely reading to that “desperation” from the Good News of another global phenomenon, but a good one: the WorldWideWord, as read with the set calendar for this “Sunday in Ordinary Time” today in every country of the world, inked by Isaiah in Hebrew 2700 years ago, and with a telling reference to “the web”:

“On this mountain he will destroy
the veil that veils all peoples,
the web that is woven over all nations;
he will destroy death forever.
The Lord GOD will wipe away
the tears from every face;
the reproach of his people he will remove
from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.”

John Ervin
John Ervin
Oct 11, 2020 5:41 PM
Reply to  John Ervin

Offered by no means to minimize Hell, but to put it in the right perspective.

John Ervin
John Ervin
Oct 11, 2020 6:11 PM
Reply to  John Ervin

“When you’re going through Hell, keep going.”

— A Former Prime Minister

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:08 PM
Reply to  John Ervin

Ah!!! (former)

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:06 PM
Reply to  John Ervin

Yeah well… some could argue that “aliens” could wipe out some big chunk of population, using some nuke, and wipe out a lot of tears as was well demonstrated in Hiro/Nagaz… So,,, before I get converted, I want a sit with God… just 20 min of his time… 15?

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Oct 11, 2020 5:23 PM

RE: Covid is the final act in the transference of wealth to the top 1%.

Yup. And all those socialists are patiently waiting for the Pandemic to be over when they plan on launching their fight against the ruling class.

I_left_the_left
I_left_the_left
Oct 11, 2020 9:22 PM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Much of the 1% fund leftist causes like BLM and Antifa because its cool and woke and righteous. Zuck, Dorsey and the rest of big tech are all leftists and known Trump-haters who continue to silence incorrect conservative or critical opinion. The corporate media all belong to the US leftist elite too, minus a few surviving conservative anchors tolerated at Fox. The rich and powerful all know very well that not looking left today gets you cancelled or stigmatised as a racist. It’s how the global elite divide and rule; leftists obediently bash the fasc and so prevent a unified, popular resistance. Perfect.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Oct 12, 2020 3:35 AM

They’re Neoliberals… NOT leftists. Neoliberalism is a form of Corporatism, which, in essence, is Fascism. You know, like Mussolini. How can billionaires and the banking elites be ‘Leftists’ when their entire modus operandi is based on predatory capitalism. Dog eat dog is not a very leftist quality at all Nick…

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 8:41 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

“Dog eat dog is not a very leftist quality at all Nick…”

VERY important to keep our definitions and concepts straight, yes!

Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Oct 12, 2020 9:12 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Yes, I agree but ‘I left the left’ has got a fixation with with something he describes as ‘cultural marxism’ about which he knows precisely zero. His function simply seems to be an attempt to muddy the water and create confusion.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Oct 12, 2020 9:45 AM
Reply to  Donald Duck

I know… I think Nick (ILTL) has had some painful and unpleasant experiences in the past, and seems to have this large chip on his shoulder.
He’s written a few essays (under his real name) and, his defence of Trump is also telling. Almost like looking for a saviour figure.
I see that a lot on posts on my Facebook newsfeed. There’s a lot worse than him here, and he doesn’t issue threats or abuse like certain people that visit OffG. Usually I just let him be. Each to their own I suppose.

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 12, 2020 10:42 AM
Reply to  Donald Duck

Istvan Meszaros’s “Power of Ideology” gives Theodore Adorno a well-deserved kicking but also raises the matter of possible CIA influence and funding behind the Frankfurt School. I would say that, given the obsessive nature of the American ruling class to maintain domination, they would have been watching (as they continue to do) every major aspect of evolving “democratic” institutions – and those German émigré nominal “Marxist” ones in particular. They were certainly funding all that wacky atonal music as a counter to Soviet “Socialist Realism”.

Not that Adorno would have been aware of intelligence funding since he was too busy writing impenetrable self-congratulating gobbledygook to have a fucking clue about matters staring him in the face. But that the US was funding the Frankfurt School (birthplace of that dreaded “un-American” Cultural Marxism) as an anti-Communist bulwark is one of the great ironies. And only goes to show how cynical propagandists are about switching around the props when the new game of deceit requires it.

Fact Checker
Fact Checker
Oct 12, 2020 3:00 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

[To be read in thick Russian accent:]

In Kyapityaleesm, dog eat dog!
In LEFTism, eez exactly zee OPPOSITE.

Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Oct 12, 2020 9:09 AM

BLM are funded by those well known ‘leftist’ organizations like the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. These are part of the liberal-centrist bloc who are hated in equal measure by both the extreme left and extreme right.

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Oct 11, 2020 5:01 PM

Speaking of comic book sensibility, have you noticed how the front men of the IBM-DARPA companies have become more ludicrous with time.

Oracle and Microsoft began with the usual sports-shirts and sneakers and graduated to sports jackets (though Larry Ellison of Oracle has criticised Bill Gates for the greasy mop and stretched sweaters). Now you’ve got cartoon characters like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerface who practically wear a propeller hat with flashing lights saying “I’m a nerd”.

TPTB are determined we get the message: these guys are the brains; do what they say.

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Oct 11, 2020 5:34 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

“these guys are the brains; do what they say.”

then they present Matt Hancock

and they still do what they say.

They will probably bring on this guy next.
It might be an improvement.

https://tenor.com/view/mr-horse-calling-talking-gif-14186393

https://s2.dmcdn.net/v/IbERb1OLgMHt0C28Y/x1080

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:12 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

You are so close to nature, an inspiration really

John Ervin
John Ervin
Oct 11, 2020 6:23 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

Yes, I see the propeller hat, and for YEARS long before you posted. But not the shoes that light up, which is newer tech to form the ensemble. A new class of billionaires: Sillyonaires.

I’ve posted before, but I’ll post it again, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel: the Donald is Reality TV’s Penguin d’Batman, and he really *knows* it:

“QUAAACKK! See, I’m the bird for big development here in NYC. And when I say BIG, I’ve got you this here Bridge, dirt cheap, shtraight outta Gotham, right here very much in Brooklyn. It’s SO big. Score! or forever hold your peace, I mean piece. KWAAAAACKKK!!

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:18 PM
Reply to  John Ervin

Are you gonna be alright John?

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:19 PM
Reply to  Theobalt

I post some innocent videos for once on this site and now this?

Steven Augustine
Steven Augustine
Oct 12, 2020 8:46 AM
Reply to  Moneycircus

“TPTB are determined we get the message: these guys are the brains; do what they say.”

They even produced Hollywood movies and various sitcoms in order to establish the meme of the Totally Trustworthy Super-Brain (who is also a kind of pet). Would anyone have signed up for a FACEBOOK fronted by a cigar-chomping, 55-year-old mogul type… ?

Round
Round
Oct 11, 2020 4:59 PM

Love is the answer:

comment image

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Oct 11, 2020 5:43 PM
Reply to  Round

Beautiful. I am intrigued about the single hair. Did you use film?

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:20 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

You made me go back to find the single hair u know that? (oooofff couuuurse you knowwww)

Voz 0db
Voz 0db
Oct 11, 2020 6:43 PM
Reply to  Round

Isn’t it FUNNY how uman animals behave?!

Because that picture just shows the illusion… Reality, even for dogs, is not that LOVELY!

comment image
Dogs Can Be Trained to Sniff Out COVID-19
We’re now abusing dogs over this entire lunacy! So… That sure doesn’t look like Love!

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:22 PM
Reply to  Voz 0db

Ok there’s a trend here… anyone else picked on that?

Fact Checker
Fact Checker
Oct 11, 2020 6:44 PM
Reply to  Round

Love.
Of woman for dog.
Is the answer.

Got it. Thx a mill.

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Oct 11, 2020 8:12 PM
Reply to  Fact Checker

Stop taking the p1ss. I used to love my budgie, especially when she started laying eggs. Whisky my Cat, never got her. I used to launch ragiregdub from my foot…and she flew around the room. and then went back to her cage to sit on her egg. Unfortunately she didn’t have a male Budgie…so my older sister left the door open..and she flew off to find a male Budgie, and make more Budgies.

Whisky loved her too. She wouldn’t harm her.

She preferred KitEKat

Loads of Budgies round here now.

Just not taught them to speak yet. I did with ragiregdub..

She was a Beautiful Budgerigar, and Thanks to My Sister…

She did get her Freedom and have Sex and make Baby Budgies

Tony

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:24 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

Inspiring

Round
Round
Oct 12, 2020 2:54 AM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

Thanks for sharing the budgie love story. How would that compare to your experience with loving humans?

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:22 PM
Reply to  Fact Checker

lollll

Round
Round
Oct 12, 2020 2:29 AM
Reply to  Fact Checker

Sadly true. I am looking at some dating websites these days. There is a profusion of love for furbabies and furry king boys on display by ‘independent with high EQ’ individuals. A little odd, seeing it occuring on a dating website for humans.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 12, 2020 4:26 AM
Reply to  Round

Ah EQ… the alternative to IQ… part of dumbing you down… Don’t exercise up there, that’s perverted. Feel good, have total control of your emotions, like a psychopath… then we’ll hire you… Not a psychopath? We have pills for that…

Round
Round
Oct 12, 2020 4:40 AM
Reply to  Theobalt

Have you noticed, in particular, that those advocating -and demanding EQ from others- are the biggest examples of the LACK of EQ.

I agree, it is perversion put into practice.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 12, 2020 7:51 AM
Reply to  Round

Well I suppose these people are always in self help books, trying to get out of their mess… that’s where they meet EQ… or at their psychiatrist, or visit at a psych ward… then they become fervent advocates, like people who newly quit drinking or smoking

Harvesta Strong
Harvesta Strong
Oct 11, 2020 4:57 PM

I prefer to look at what is good and how we can make a difference. This article promotes a lot of negative energy and ranting. Bummer. Rather than encouraging the followers that already agree with most of his statements about the US he inadvertently criticizes *them* by association and residence. Yes, I do also feel like the world has been a bad rerun combo of the Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers when it comes to living in the time of Covid, but I’m here to testify that my US neighbors *do* still check on each other. Everyone I pass on a walk *does* says hello and make eye contact – friendly neighborhood strangers. I can ask my neighbors if I need help loading something in the car. They wave if I’m working in the yard, and I’ve only lived in this neighborhood a few years. The kids still play kickball and run around happy at the park and parents visibly love them and play with them. At some point whatever the propaganda of the day, you have to just realize the concepts and arguments on the news – the words written and spoken by people we do not know on glowing screens – will never supercede our love and relationship with our families and friends. These deep quiet bonds that exist all over the US have been grossly underestimated by the author as well as the propaganda machines. The power of these bonds will become apparent when they least expect it.

George McFetridge
George McFetridge
Oct 11, 2020 5:07 PM

Real love is rigorous. Does the way you live fit that?

Howard
Howard
Oct 11, 2020 5:21 PM

Apologies in advance, but you have to know your comment will bring out the cynics – like me. And basically everything you say about your neighborhood applies to my neighborhood. But if you look a little deeper, you’ll see that if you veer too far from nice, normal chit-chat, the friendliness will start to unravel.

In a word, it’s an artificial friendliness. Certainly it makes life more enjoyable; but at some point one get a bit bored with living only on the surface. There’s more to life than getting along with others in one’s community.

Specifically, there’s being able to express off the wall ideas without fear of offending someone’s sensibilities. Inevitably, most people in a given community do not stray far from their TVs – from TV wisdom as well as TV visuals.

John Ervin
John Ervin
Oct 11, 2020 6:30 PM
Reply to  Howard

Artificial Friendliness. AF is so AI, it’s the socially distanced default of this Age.

For us to change that somehow.

Off the Wall, but bags well packed, makes nonconformism a specialty.

£4£&$4$+MY2¢~~~~

I promise you all, what is at the bottom of these bottom up inhuman agencies is setting up the Art Spirit. That’s what’s most in the crosshairs, even more than the poor of “Majority World”.

When we sang the Bach B Minor Mass in ’98 it was carried on over 700 terrestrial radio stations in North America. Then I turned around: a few years ago I looked at our flagship station WCLV and found it had reorganized as a “trust” to defend against the buyout rampage and plunder by Philistines ridding the airwaves of classical music for other…well, you know.

Now, there are only under a 100 stations! And sinking fast.

That’s one target, nearly destroyed.

Not the New Normal of $lop, but the New Dark Ages of AI…

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:26 PM
Reply to  Howard

Ok now you’re just steeling my drift… like our Norwegian writer here…

Harvesta Strong
Harvesta Strong
Oct 11, 2020 10:33 PM
Reply to  Howard

I feel sorry for your neighbors. Thanks for the totally unnecessary trolling of my post.

Howard
Howard
Oct 12, 2020 3:05 PM

At least we can both agree on one thing: I, too, feel sorry for my neighbors. A life spent without awakening one’s critical faculties, while not a life wasted (as per the “unexamined life” notion), is certainly a life much poorer for the lack.

Harvesta Strong
Harvesta Strong
Oct 12, 2020 4:41 PM
Reply to  Howard

OffGuardian, I’m starting to realize that commenting on your page is a lost cause as it is constantly con-“trolled” by those who dominate all points of view. I agree with the lies of the plandemic, but trying to engage here in thoughtful discussion here is just as impossible as sites who do believe the propaganda because it is dominated by groupthink.

Howard, et. al, you had knee-jerk reaction to the word “neighbor” on my post, and preceded to endeavor in a strawman’s argument of pretending my point indicated one thing, and arguing that pretend thing. You fill up my inbox with arguments about *your* reality and *your* words not mine. The point of my post is was that the bonds of familial love supercede propaganda and that solutions are preferable to complaining. You did *not* address this at all. You could have placed your intellectual masturbation on your *own separate post* but are filling up my inbox with arguments that are based on *your* reality not mine. Arguing my reality with me (that I do not understand that my neighbors whom you do not know are not really kind? Lol) is idiotic, not intelligent. Start your own posts about your own realities in the future.

Howard
Howard
Oct 13, 2020 3:13 PM

You overlook one point: these comments are triggered by the article itself. When you begin your comment by trashing the article, hence the author of the article, you must be prepared for pushback by those who happen to agree with the tenor of the article.

“This article promotes a lot of negative energy and ranting.” I disagree; I expressed that disagreement to you. It would appear you are comfortable with negativity so long as it proceeds from your perspective.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 12, 2020 4:30 AM
Reply to  Howard

I think so too… there’s a lot of showing off in what we see… how could it be different. We’re constantly reminded to keep it down… Behind closed doors though

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:24 PM

You got me at the second sentence

Jeffrey Strahl
Jeffrey Strahl
Oct 11, 2020 10:37 PM

Yes, neighborhood friendliness right here in Berkeley, Ca, USA,… as long as you wear your mask, and fully accept the narrative of the day, that there’s a great plague loose out in the world, that it’s all the fault of Trump, and “we” have to socially distance, wear our masks, wash our hands,… And don’t you dare talk about the real stats or the Great Reset or anything.

Harvesta Strong
Harvesta Strong
Oct 11, 2020 10:52 PM
Reply to  Jeffrey Strahl

Have a nice day.

LKing
LKing
Oct 12, 2020 7:06 PM

I was born in the 80s. In my childhood (in a middle class hood in Las Vegas, NV), my best friends lived on my block. I and my 5 siblings had sleepovers nearly every weekend. We had friends and their families over for dinner regularly or were eating at friends’ homes. 4th of July everyone gathered in the cul de sac and lit fireworks, shared a BBQ. Now I’m grown, and I have an only child. Her school has kids driving in from all over town, so her closest friends live many miles away, requiring a coordinated effort by parents for a “play date”. We cordially say hi to neighbors on our way in or when getting mail. We don’t have people over very often. As you can imagine, this is only worse now with Covid, because half my family (who are my best friends) prefer to piously “shelter in place.” I’m not sure how to get out of this, but I do feel a loneliness and a quietness that I never experienced when I was a kid.

Ted
Ted
Oct 11, 2020 4:56 PM

I enjoyed this essay, thanks. I think there is something to the observation that for a significant number of people, “reality” is entirely mediated through screens. And not just American bourgeoisie on the West coast (or Washington DC and New York City). I agree that screen addictions mean no one has the time or patience to read anything of any depth any more: visiting twitter, I have yet to see a single reference to a book-length treatment of anything, and never a reference to something written more than a few months ago. I am a working academic, and even most of my colleagues rarely read anything, whether old or new (well never anything old). So, people live in a oligarch financed fantasy world where horrible painful death is everywhere! (note the irony that Los Angeles continues to be the hardest of hardcore lockdown areas in the US … but I digress) … the irony is that death is ACTUALLY always everywhere, as it is a normal daily occurrence: just not for those who have the privilege to spend most of their waking hours glued to a screen. For them, death is a horror to be avoided (psychologically voided) at all costs. Good luck with that.

I_left_the_left
I_left_the_left
Oct 11, 2020 9:41 PM
Reply to  Ted

When you say ‘people live in a oligarch financed fantasy world’, were you referring to humans globally, or just those privileged to live in the developed world? I assume you exclude the illiterate or the hundreds of millions uninterested in screens or unable to afford them. I guess their poverty has saved them from the fantasy world we rich westerners must suffer, even the oligarchs. Also, you are a westerner doubtless possessing many screens, but have clearly escaped from the fantasy world trap. What about tips for helping the less able to do the same?

Ted
Ted
Oct 12, 2020 1:35 AM

Having spent considerable time traveling and living among the poor outside of US, I am happy to report that even the benighted poor are well equipped with screens of all sorts. Moreover, cable outlets on Sat TV are generally piping out major Oligarch supported networks like CNN or BBC. So … well there is that.

And why is the left so obsessed with *doing something*. Has it ever occurred to folks that the global bourgeoisie’s fetish for “activism” IS the problem.

mgeo
mgeo
Oct 12, 2020 12:46 PM
Reply to  Ted

Even if someone did read outside the approved topics, he may not get far. In hard sciences, social sciences and arts, just about everything is being rehashed and presented to suit the supreme religion of greed and domination. Even the plain words of revolutionaries get the spin.

Paul Vonharnish
Paul Vonharnish
Oct 11, 2020 4:38 PM

More empty talk. Civilians all over the world are being manipulated… Modern “governance” is only an advanced model of the traditional “story teller” in ancient clans or tribal groups. The story teller was often a historian, a mythologist, and a spiritual leader. Nothing has changed but the gullibility of the tribe…

No one seems to remember why Julian Assange was arrested, or what WikiLeaks was attempting to expose.

Leaked WikiLeaks Doc Reveals US Military Use of IMF, World Bank as “Unconventional” Weapons

The document, officially titled “Field Manual (FM) 3-05.130, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare” and originally written in September 2008, was recently highlighted by WikiLeaks on Twitter in light of recent events in Venezuela as well as the years-long, U.S.-led economic siege of that country through sanctions and other means of economic warfare. Though the document has generated new interest in recent days, it had originally been released by WikiLeaks in December 2008 and has been described as the military’s “regime change handbook.
 
Complete article: https://www.mintpressnews.com/leaked-wikileaks-doc-reveals-how-us-military-uses-of-imf-world-bank-as-unconventional-weapons/254708/

I_left_the_left
I_left_the_left
Oct 11, 2020 9:48 PM

It’s OK, everyone remembers that Trump is Orange Man Bad, and in no way fighting the globalists or draining the swamp. Besides, he is American and therefore the latest incarnation of the Great Satan or possibly Hitler. Citizens believing these truths are completely resistant to all manipulation by lies or story-tellers.

Arne
Arne
Oct 11, 2020 4:33 PM

In that sense these are the anti Psychoanalytic purveyors of a youth culture for adults. A comic or cartoon world view in which the sentimental plays an enormous role. It is a world without tragedy or real suffering. And just beneath the surface but always implied, is a respect for authority. It is also a world where one is encouraged NOT to grow up.

This statement is very similar to a twenty-year-old
German contribution that I have translated for you.
https://textuploader.com/1phsi Here the original:
http://www.humanistische-aktion.de/infantil.htm

Arne
Arne
Oct 11, 2020 5:14 PM
Reply to  Arne

“Morning in Hell”: probably not a wrong chosen headline. But one
must be seriously careful not out of existential nausea (the ennui)
to become an embittered cynic (like Molières Anceste) oneself as
a critic of all this “culture of decay”. That’s the great danger here!
https://www.litbug.com/2019/10/30/alceste-the-misanthrope-character-analysis/

D.H.Fabian
D.H.Fabian
Oct 11, 2020 3:58 PM

The reason people aren’t “waking up” is that we’re being bombarded with contradictory narratives daily.Some deal with this post-reality confusion by selecting the spins they wish to accept – those that most closely fit into their own overall (political) ideology.Others don’t. I’d say that this is indicative of both the political and media failure of the West.

Researcher
Researcher
Oct 11, 2020 4:11 PM
Reply to  D.H.Fabian

Yes. People are accepting their own spins, whether that’s political, theological, scientific or medical instead of looking at any of this from an evidence and fact based perspective.

But this is not a Western Agenda. It is a globalist agenda. It is a eugenics based agenda. A military technocratic agenda, using AI, mass surveillance, depopulation and medical tyranny.

That agenda and these systems are already operating efficiently in China and now they’re being forced on the rest of the world using ConJob-19 as the catalyst.

The wealthiest nations and the middle class are being purposefully destroyed through lockdown measures to allow an easier takeover for the globalists.

Paul
Paul
Oct 11, 2020 7:15 PM
Reply to  Researcher

Yes it’s a globalist agenda. And in their eyes we are the virus.

They’re not even bothering to hide it anymore.

The majority are too busy swallowing the pseudoscience propaganda, arguing about lockdowns, masks and toilet rolls to even notice what’s going on before their eyes.

They even cheer on their own demise and don’t even realise it.

Pathetic.

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:28 PM
Reply to  Researcher

China seems keen for the ride anyway

George Mc
George Mc
Oct 11, 2020 6:42 PM
Reply to  D.H.Fabian

“The reason people aren’t “waking up” is that we’re being bombarded with contradictory narratives daily.”

And isn’t that the whole aim?

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Oct 11, 2020 3:57 PM

Do you recall the 1970s movie, Rollerball? The masses will be very happily reduced to gladiators.

Look at them in the street competing for the loudest car exhaust… as they fart-pop down the asphalt like a brown-on-black streak wide as a farmer’s furrow.

Idiocracy was not a guide to the future. We’re already there.

Moneycircus
Moneycircus
Oct 11, 2020 4:01 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

BTW if you have such neighbours, with their fart-pop, backfire, turbo-poopers, there is a way to wish them good morning. Remember to smile as they wind down the window. And don’t forget your fluffy, happy ear muffs.

I know it’s all divide and rule, setting us against one another. But sometimes you have to rule.

comment image

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:36 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

lolllll

Theobalt
Theobalt
Oct 11, 2020 10:34 PM
Reply to  Moneycircus

WE!!! not the masses, WE!!!… don’t you think the Bilderburg group is not reading us getting at each other’s throat eating popcorn? They are, I fuckin’ know they are.

Last week I posted a “picture” of what is happening w plastic in grocery stores, a day or two latter (no more) Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announced that he’s going after plastic producers… just like that. Alberta is FURIOUSSS!!!