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This Week in the New Normal #109

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1. Atlantic current collapse a “national security threat”

The Icelandic government has designated the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation — the currents which bring warm water to the north Atlantic – a national security threat.

To quote Reuters, with added emphasis:

Iceland has designated the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system a national security concern and an existential threat, enabling its government to strategize for worst-case scenarios, the country’s climate minister told Reuters.

What this means in real terms remains to be seen, but as precedent, it is vital. As the article notes:

This is the first time a specific climate-related phenomenon has been formally brought before the National Security Council as a potential existential threat.”

Expect others to follow, with the aim of putting ourselves on a “war footing” to deal with the environment.

The history of social control since the end of the Cold War is the history of trying to create a permanent state of war with a conceptual list of enemies – drugs, terror, climate change and COVID – that, for all intents and purposes, do not actually exist.

2. “The climate crisis is a public health crisis”

Staying with Climate Change to honour COP30, we have this tweet from the United Nations:

We have covered this a lot over the last few years, but this flagrant statement of intent merits a revisit.

What is the point of this tweet? It’s very simple.

Currently, most countries in the world have implemented COVID laws, acting as precedent for emergency powers being implemented for a “public health emergency”. Conflating “climate change” with “public health” means those emergency powers can be used to (allegedly) tackle environmental issues.

It’s as simple as it is cynical.

3. The end of paper tickets?

Reported in the Mirror last week, it seems budget airline Ryanair will no longer be accepting hardcopy boarding passes. Instead, passengers will use digital passes via their app:

Ryanair will bring in a major change from Wednesday (November 12) in a move aimed at improving its airport experience for passengers. The change – which will see the airline adopt 100% Digital Boarding Passes (DBP) – means travellers will no longer be able to download or print a physical paper ticket, and must instead access it in their Ryanair App.

If you don’t check in with the app before arriving at the airport, you’ll face a fee for checking in at the airport.

No more hard copies, everything digital all the time. It is the way the world is heading.

BONUS: Suspicious death of the week

An American pilot died this week, allegedly of tick-borne meat intolerance:

And here’s a WEF “bio-ethicist” talking about engineering humans to be meat-intolerant so we can save the planet.

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All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention narrowing road lanes to protect cyclists or Scotland potentially allowing sex-selective abortion.

There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.

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