This Week in the New Normal #119

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. CBDCS JUST KEEP ON TRUCKIN’

With war and Trump and Epstein et al. dominating the headlines, we’ve stopped getting our regular updates on the global move toward central bank digital currencies.

This is entirely accidental, I’m sure. But don’t worry, they’re still out there doing their thing.

In India, for example, a pilot scheme was launched, testing the digital rupee as a payment platform for state welfare plans.

In South Korea, the new Chief of the Central Bank – Shin Hyun-song – announced in his inauguration speech that the second phase of “Project Hangang”, the central bank’s scheme testing digital currency across payment platforms, is still ongoing.

In New Zealand, “experts” are telling the press that a digital currency is needed to “help NZ’s monetary sovereignty”.

And that’s just from the last three days.

Technocracy is coming, no matter who sinks what in the Strait of Hormuz.

2. Space Race 2.0

Fresh from Artemis II (allegedly) going around the moon and then coming back, we’re about to be launched into a new space race. Or even two!

First, there’s the private race between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Who’s going to win? It doesn’t matter. In the long run, it will be related to us as a symptom of billionaire hubris. Irresponsible use of private wealth to harvest something that should belong to all of us – the sky.

The real space race will be national and geopolitical – mostly US/China, but maybe Russia and others too. What nation will be the first to mine on the moon? It’s going to be so exciting to find out!

My prediction is that America will “push too hard”, and maybe get a photogenic (and totally real) astronaut killed, while China’s “grown-up” approach means they win long-term rewards and “international respect”.

The current characterisation of these nations in the news narrative makes this an easy-ish guess. The Guardian even calls them “the tortoise and the hare”.

In the long run, the “successful team” will be the one who cooperates with the “international community”, and it will be a sign of all the great things that are possible when we have a global government telling us all what to do…sorry, I mean “when we work together”.

That’s what Nature thinks, anyway.

3. Norway comes to the PArty

Every country of the world is announcing, one at a time, that they are banning social media for the under 16s, or the under 18s, or under 14s or…whatever.

It’s actually becoming pretty much a joke at this point.

Like an episode of a sitcom where, by pure coincidence, all the characters turn up at a Halloween party dressed in the same costume.

And, just like this, that contrivance would be the rather predictable and derivative work of writers who are paid more than they are worth but think they’re very clever.

If you’re interested in Norway’s particular brand of online anonymity-ending legislation, it will be for under-16s, and they are introducing it because…

[We] want ​a childhood where children get to be children,”

…according to Prime ​Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.

As I said on Twitter, politicians are constantly playing a game where they all have to say the same sentence in slightly different words.

And they all suck at it.

BONUS: Poorly chosen date of the week

Multiple reports this week claimed that Germany was concentrating resources into re-arming, with the aim becoming “the strongest military in Europe” by a particular date…

Hmmm. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

It’s hard to believe a media machine so saturated in WWII imagery and references could possibly have chosen that year by accident.

It’s not all bad…

The good news this week is that the UK’s Assisted Dying bill is, well, dead. For now.

The House of Lords stopped the bill with a successful filibuster on Monday. So, no state-backed murder yet, or at least no legal state-backed murder.

Backers of the bill are up in arms, complaining about the will of the people being thwarted by a “handful of zealots” in the Upper House.

So the good news comes with a rider: it is temporary. They will push “reform” of the Lords, citing this as an excuse, and then force the bill through again in the future. They’ve been floating that since January.

It takes only a glance over the always-educational Guardian comments to see where this is going.

Kim Leadbetter, the MP driving the bill, said after the defeat:

“We will go again. The issue is not going away. There’s a very clear direction of travel around the world.”

Somewhat ironically, the Assisted Dying bill is going to be kept alive by artificial means until it can be fully resuscitated.

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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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