Nhân Chủ-Chủ Quyền Cá Nhân Con Người-Thượng Đế, Nhà Nước là Ảo Thể- Chúng Ta là Thực Thể- Không có Thượng Đế, Không có Nhà Nước, Chỉ có Chúng Ta, Tôi và Quí Vị phải Quyết Định Phương Cách Tự Trách Nhiệm Trao Đổi để Sống Chung Tự Do, Bình Đẳng với Nhau Mà Thôi!
“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had
taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark
moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed
exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the
sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the
struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big
Brother.”
― George Orwell, 1984
When I started The Corbett Report in 2007, the idea that governments
were watching and listening to everything we do was still wild-eyed
conspiracy theory. Oh, sure, the fact that the NSA had been secretly and
illegally wiretapping Americans since at least 9/11 was, by that point,
mainstream news.
But those “revelations” (which themselves were old news to conspiracy
realists) were not enough to convince the dyed-in-the-wool coincidence
theorists that the government was actively engaged in the electronic
surveillance of everyone.
We conspiracy realists could (and did) talk till we were blue in the face about the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act and Stellar Wind and Room 641A.
“The NSA is splitting off the internet trunk lines and running them
into locked off server rooms, for crying out loud!” we shouted. “What
more do you need to know?”
We talked to NSA whistleblowers like William Binney and Russ Tice. We learned about ThinThread and Trailblazer, and how mass collection of everything was ready and waiting to go before 9/11. We learned how the NSA was spying on high-ranking officials
within the US government itself, including senior congressional
leaders, high-ranking military generals, the entire Supreme Court, and
even then-US Senator from Illinois and future President, Barack Obama.
We made note of the mainstream media’s own casual admissions of the
power of the deep state’s spying tools. We observed how our phones are listening to us even when they’re “off.” How smart appliances will be used to spy on us in our own homes. How the FBI can go back and listen to a recording of any phone conversation you’ve had at any point in the past, even if you weren’t under surveillance.
“Big Brother is already here!” we warned. “1984 is today!”
And we were laughed at.
Fast forward to 2020, and now no one is laughing. Instead, everyone’s
shrugging their shoulders: “Yeah, of course the government is tracking
us. They have to! It’s for our own good!” So what happened?
The turnaround started in 2013. That’s when the public was given
another of its phony heroes: Edward Snowden. Finally, here was a real,
honest-to-gosh whistleblower spilling the beans and sharing the
documents that proved that the NSA was . . . collecting metadata?
Yes, our wise and crusading Hero For Truth Snowden shined a light on the real
problem with Big Brother: He isn’t filling out the right paperwork, or
using the right legal mumbo jumbo to justify his spying. And so this
“whistleblower” (who washed out of special forces training and worked
for the CIA before becoming a super-duper computer god with access to
the NSA’s internal network while he was in his 20s, somehow) just wanted
to bring this spying to light so we could have a “conversation” about
it!
(Oh, and don’t worry, guys: Snowden says
there’s nothing to any of that silly 9/11 conspiracy stuff or to
chemtrails or aliens or any other crazy theory, so you don’t have to
bother thinking about them anymore, OK?)
Hearing his reassurances was actually something of a relief, even for
the people who barked about how Snowden’s irresponsible actions had
endangered American lives blah blah blah. Because, you see, now we could
stop doing all that doublethink about government spying. Of course, the
government is spying on us! . . . But maybe that’s a good thing. At any rate, it’s a debate we should be having. How much spying is too much? I mean, there is a terror threat, after all, and we want to get the bad guys, right? And you don’t have anything to hide, do you?
And so we admitted there is a Big Brother.
But that wasn’t enough for Big Brother. Oh no, you can’t just be aware of what Big Brother is doing. You can’t just tolerate Big Brother’s actions. You also must learn to love Big Brother.
Then China caught a cold. And so did Europe. And New York City.
And—sure, why not—the rest of the world did, too. Maybe not in that
order. Or maybe not at all. Don’t fret about the details. The important
thing is that (say it with me) nothing will ever be the same again.
You will never again be able to leave your house without thinking
about the mortal danger that each and every physical interaction with
every human being on earth poses.
What? Get within six feet of someone? . . . Without a mask on? Are you nuts?
Oh, if only someone could save us from this dreaded scourge!
But wait . . . Whatever happened to that Big Brother guy? Can’t he
find out everywhere we’ve been? And everyone we’ve been in contact with?
And if someone gets sick, can’t he just go back and force everyone in
that chain of connection into quarantine? Hey, it worked in Korea! Problem solved, right?
What? The contact tracing apps don’t actually work unless a “critical mass” adopts them? Well, then, just make them mandatory! After all, what kind of weirdo doesn’t walk around with a phone surgically attached at all times, anyway?
I want professional health care providers (and professional contact
tracers and government employees and big tech companies and their
subcontractors and app developers and extortionware makers and hackers
and everyone else in the world) to know where I’ve been, who I’ve been
talking to, what I’ve been buying and doing, and when I’ve been buying
it and doing it!
I want to be spied on, dammit! It’s for my own good!
And that, my friends, is how we won the victory over ourselves. We love Big Brother now.
ABOUT THE FILM: Humanity
is imprisoned by a killer pandemic. People are being arrested for
surfing in the ocean and meditating in nature. Nations are collapsing.
Hungry citizens are rioting for food. The media has generated so much
confusion and fear that people are begging for salvation in a syringe.
Billionaire patent owners are pushing for globally mandated vaccines.
Anyone who refuses to be injected with experimental poisons will be
prohibited from travel, education and work. No, this is not a synopsis
for a new horror movie. This is our current reality.
In the early 1900s, America’s first
billionaire, John D. Rockefeller bought a German pharmaceutical company
that would later assist Hitler to implement his eugenics-based vision by
manufacturing chemicals and poisons for war. Rockefeller wanted to
eliminate the competitors of Western medicine, so he submitted a report
to Congress declaring that there were too many doctors and medical
schools in America, and that all natural healing modalities were
unscientific quackery. Rockefeller called for the standardization of
medical education, whereby only his organization be allowed to grant
medical school licenses in the US. And so began the practice of immune
suppressive, synthetic and toxic drugs. Once people had become dependent
on this new system and the addictive drugs it provided, the system
switched to a paid program, creating lifelong customers for the
Rockefellers. Currently, medical error is the third leading cause of
death in the US. Rockefeller’s secret weapon to success was the strategy
known as, “problem-reaction-solution.” Create a problem, escalate fear,
then offer a pre-planned solution. Sound familiar?
Flash forward to 2020…
They named it COVID19. Our leaders of
world health predicted millions would die. The National Guard was
deployed. Makeshift hospitals were erected to care for a massive
overflow of patients. Mass graves were dug. Terrifying news reports had
people everywhere seeking shelter to avoid connect. The plan is
unfolding with precision. But the masters of the Pandemic underestimated
one thing… the people. Medical professionals and every-day citizens are
sharing critical information online. The overlords of big tech have
ordered all dissenting voices to be silenced and banned, but they are
too late. The slumbering masses are awake and aware that something is
not right. Quarantine has provided the missing element: time. Suddenly,
our overworked citizenry has ample time to research and investigate for
themselves. Once you see, you can’t unsee.
The window of opportunity is open like never before. For the first time
in human history, we have the world’s attention. Plandemic will expose
the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global
health system, while laying out a new plan; a plan that allows all of
humanity to reconnect with healing forces of nature. 2020 is the code
for perfect vision. It is also the year that will go down in history as
the moment we finally opened our eyes.
by James Corbett corbettreport.com May 02, 2020
If you’ve spent any time around the conspiracy realists who
understand the true nature of the central banking fraud, the political
fraud, the war on terror fraud and all of the other deceptions that are
sold to the public by their misleaders, you’ve no doubt heard some
iteration of the following remark:
“As long as Joe Sixpack and Jane Soccermom have their football and their cheeseburgers, nothing’s ever going to change.”
The implication is that if we can halt the flow of mindless
entertainment that distracts the masses and the chemically processed
garbage that keeps them fat and sluggish, we could have a revolution by
the morning.
Be careful what you wish for.
The sports were the first to go. (In fact, the cancellation of the
NBA season was the moment I realized they were going to go all the way
with the plandemic psyop.)
And now, in case you hadn’t noticed, the cheeseburgers are disappearing.
The latest news is that McDonald’s is now taking direct control
over how much beef and pork each franchisee will receive. This comes on
the back of ominous statements from major McDonald’s suppliers like
Tyson Foods, whose chairman is now warning that “millions of pounds of
meat will disappear from the supply chain” as the plandemic starts to
cripple food processing plants.
Now, there are no doubt many people who are relieved to hear that
McDonald’s may be forced to limit the sales of its chemical-laden,
poisonous garbage “food products” (and, trust me, I’m one of them).
And there are no doubt many who are relieved to hear of the impending
collapse of the factory food processing system that has so utterly
disconnected us from the real sources of our food.
But, once again, I must warn you to be careful what you wish for.
What is happening right now is not cosmic revenge for the poisoning of
the public with toxic garbage
that the factory food processors and fast food purveyors have been
engaging in for decades; it is actually the next step in the complete
reengineering of the food supply and the fundamental transformation of
the human experience that such a reengineering entails.
First, we have to understand that this is no mere American phenomenon. It is happening in Canada. And the UK. And Europe. And China. And Japan.
And it’s not just beef and pork supplies that are being disrupted. It’s milk. And produce. And rice. And wheat.
And it’s not just the food processors whose entire industry is being upended by this chaos. It’s wreaking havoc for farmers. And truckers. And supermarkets. And restaurants.
And to make it all even more horrific, the crisis won’t just affect
the food supply itself. It will affect all of the workers in these
industries who are being laid off as a result of the disruption, and who
now find themselves among the ranks of the recently unemployed. They
are lining up at food banks, which, as you might imagine, are struggling
to keep up with the record demand on their dwindling reserves.
In case you can’t see the bigger picture yet, what is already in the
process of happening is a fundamental disruption of the entire food
chain that much of the world relies on. The impact of this disruption is
only just now beginning to be felt, and the ripples caused by this
cascading chain of failures and crises will at some point in the near
future directly affect every single person reading these words.
Demand for food aid is already leading to stampedes in Kenya and protests in Bangladesh and looting in Colombia and clashes in South Africa. Given that we’ve already seen supermarket freak-outs and shopping brawls breaking out in the US and Australia and the UK,
can there be any doubt that severe food shortages will cause widespread
chaos in the streets of the developed world? (In case there is any
doubt, I’ll just leave this here.)
If only the Problem that is causing this Reaction had an easy Solution!
Oh, wait! There is! It’s called “lab-grown meat” and it’s being served up by Bill Gates and his corporate cronies.
Yes, as James Evan Pilato and I discuss in the latest edition
of New World Next Week, everyone’s favorite billionaire philanthropist
just happens to have a burning desire to help the planet by switching us over to lab-grown meat
for some reason. (Hmmm. Funny, that. Must be part of that same selfless
impulse that motivates him to inject as many poor, starving children as
possible with his experimental vaccines.)
Before the vegans in the crowd start celebrating the realization of
their dream to get the world to stop eating meat, we should all realize
this for what it is. This is not a kumbaya moment where the world acts
to reduce animal suffering, but the ultimate achievement of the global
food corporatocracy’s wildest dream: to replace the food supply with a
fully synthesized, patented, corporate product that cannot be grown in
the field or raised in a farm. If this corporate takeover of the food
supply happens, the majority of your food will come directly from Big
Food, Inc.
In fact, not only was Gates an important early backer
of “Impossible Burger” and its lab-grown synthetic biology food
substitute, but, as Corbett Report member Camille of PleaseStopTheRide points out, he is also investing millions into “hacking your microbiome”
to reengineer your gut bacteria. You see, as it turns out, researchers
are discovering that the microbiome—the mixture of bacteria, fungi and
viruses that develop in the gut—can have serious effects on children’s
physical and mental development, especially in the first year of life.
So the same man who is extremely concerned about overpopulation is also plowing millions of dollars into researching how food supplements can help poor third-world children grow up big and strong. What could go wrong?
But don’t worry about Gates; his investments are already paying off. The “fake meat” industry is raking in the cash
in the corona world order, with Impossible Foods Inc. in particular
using the generated crisis as an opportunity to expand into 777 more grocery stores across the US. (Hey, at least it wasn’t 666 more stores!)
And there you have it: Problem – Reaction – Solution, food supply edition.
But if you’re interested in this controlled demolition of the food
supply chain, I have some advice for you: Don’t post it to Twitter.
They’ve already thrown talk about food shortages into the same category
as warnings about the safety of 5G technology and banned it from their platform.
If there were any greater sign that this is going to become an issue of
vital importance in our lives in our very near future, I don’t know
what it is.
Coronavirus là một nồi nung kim loại chính trị, làm tan chảy và định hình
lại các quy tắc hiện hành. Thời đại mới sẽ là "Một Địa Cầu Pháo Đài"
hay là điềm báo trước cho một xã hội biến đổi dựa trên những giá trị
mới?
Coronavirus Spells the End of the Neoliberal Era. What’s Next?
Coronavirus is a political crucible, melting down and reshaping
current norms. Will the new era be a “Fortress Earth” or a harbinger of a
transformed society based on a new set of values?
Think Bigger
Whatever you might be thinking about the long-term impacts of the coronavirus epidemic, you’re probably not thinking big enough.
Our lives have already been reshaped so dramatically in the past few
weeks that it’s difficult to see beyond the next news cycle. We’re
bracing for the recession we all know is here, wondering how long the
lockdown will last, and praying that our loved ones will all make it
through alive.
But, in the same way that Covid-19 is spreading at an exponential
rate, we also need to think exponentially about its long-term impact on
our culture and society. A year or two from now, the virus itself will
likely have become a manageable part of our lives—effective treatments
will have emerged; a vaccine will be available. But the impact of
coronavirus on our global civilization will only just be unfolding. The
massive disruptions we’re already seeing in our lives are just the first
heralds of a historic transformation in political and societal norms.
If Covid-19 were spreading across a stable and resilient world, its
impact could be abrupt but contained. Leaders would consult together;
economies disrupted temporarily; people would make do for a while with
changed circumstances—and then, after the shock, look forward to getting
back to normal. That’s not, however, the world in which we live.
Instead, this coronavirus is revealing the structural faults of a system
that have been papered over for decades as they’ve been steadily
worsening. Gaping economic inequalities, rampant ecological destruction,
and pervasive political corruption are all results of unbalanced systems
relying on each other to remain precariously poised. Now, as one system
destabilizes, expect others to tumble down in tandem in a cascade known
by researchers as “synchronous failure.”
The first signs of this structural destabilization are just beginning to show. Our globalized economy relies on just-in-time inventory
for hyper-efficient production. As supply chains are disrupted through
factory closures and border closings, shortages in household items,
medications, and food will begin surfacing,
leading to rounds of panic buying that will only exacerbate the
situation. The world economy is entering a downturn so steep it could exceed the severity
of the Great Depression. The international political system—already on
the ropes with Trump’s “America First” xenophobia and the Brexit
fiasco—is likely to unravel further,
as the global influence of the United States tanks while Chinese power
strengthens. Meanwhile, the Global South, where Covid-19 is just
beginning to make itself felt, may face disruption on a scale far greater than the more affluent Global North.
The Overton Window
During normal times, out of all the possible ways to organize
society, there is only a limited range of ideas considered acceptable
for mainstream political discussion—known as the Overton window.
Covid-19 has blown the Overton window wide open. In just a few weeks,
we’ve seen political and economic ideas seriously discussed that had
previously been dismissed as fanciful or utterly unacceptable: universal
basic income, government intervention to house the homeless, and state
surveillance on individual activity, to name just a few. But
remember—this is just the beginning of a process that will expand
exponentially in the ensuing months.
A crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic has a way of massively
amplifying and accelerating changes that were already underway: shifts
that might have taken decades can occur in weeks. Like a crucible, it
has the potential to melt down the structures that currently exist, and
reshape them, perhaps unrecognizably. What might the new shape of
society look like? What will be center stage in the Overton window by
the time it begins narrowing again?
The Example of World War II
We’re entering uncharted territory, but to get a feeling for the scale of transformation we need to consider, it helps to look back to the last time the world underwent an equivalent spasm of change: the Second World War.
The pre-war world was dominated by European colonial powers
struggling to maintain their empires. Liberal democracy was on the wane,
while fascism and communism were ascendant, battling each other for
supremacy. The demise of the League of Nations seemed to have proven the
impossibility of multinational global cooperation. Prior to Pearl
Harbor, the United States maintained an isolationist policy, and in the
early years of the war, many people believed it was just a matter of
time before Hitler and the Axis powers invaded Britain and took complete
control of Europe.
The Yalta Conference, 1945: Allied leaders reshaped the new global era
Within a few years, the world was barely recognizable.
As the British Empire crumbled, geopolitics was dominated by the Cold
War which divided the world into two political blocs under the constant
threat of nuclear Armageddon. A social democratic Europe formed an
economic union that no-one could previously have imagined possible.
Meanwhile, the US and its allies established a system of globalized
trade, with institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank setting
terms for how the “developing world” could participate. The stage was
set for the “Great Acceleration”: far and away the greatest and most rapid increase
of human activity in history across a vast number of dimensions,
including global population, trade, travel, production, and
consumption.
If the changes we’re about to undergo are on a similar scale to
these, how might a future historian summarize the “pre-coronavirus”
world that is about to disappear?
The Neoliberal Era
There’s a good chance they will call this the Neoliberal Era. Until
the 1970s, the post-war world was characterized in the West by an uneasy
balance between government and private enterprise. However, following
the “oil shock” and stagflation of that period—which at the time
represented the world’s biggest post-war disruption—a new ideology of free-market neoliberalism took center stage in the Overton window (the phrase itself was named by a neoliberal proponent).
The value system of neoliberalism, which has since become entrenched
in global mainstream discourse, holds that humans are individualistic,
selfish, calculating materialists, and because of this, unrestrained
free-market capitalism provides the best framework for every kind of
human endeavor. Through their control of government, finance, business,
and media, neoliberal adherents have succeeded in transforming the world
into a globalized market-based system, loosening regulatory controls,
weakening social safety nets, reducing taxes, and virtually demolishing
the power of organized labor.
The triumph of neoliberalism has led to the greatest inequality in
history, where (based on the most recent statistics) the world’s
twenty-six richest people own as much wealth
as half the entire world’s population. It has allowed the largest
transnational corporations to establish a stranglehold over other forms
of organization, with the result that, of the world’s hundred largest
economies, sixty-nine are corporations.
The relentless pursuit of profit and economic growth above all else has
propelled human civilization onto a terrifying trajectory. The
uncontrolled climate crisis is the most obvious danger: The world’s
current policies have us on track for
more than 3° increase by the end of this century, and climate
scientists publish dire warnings that amplifying feedbacks could make things far worse than even these projections, and thus place at risk the very continuation of our civilization.
But even if the climate crisis were somehow brought under control, a
continuation of untrammeled economic growth in future decades will bring
us face-to-face with a slew of further existential threats. Currently,
our civilization is running at 40% above its sustainable capacity. We’re rapidly depleting the earth’s forests, animals, insects, fish, freshwater, even the topsoil we require to grow our crops. We’ve already transgressed three of the nine planetary boundaries that define humanity’s safe operating space, and yet global GDP is expected to more than double by mid-century, with potentially irreversible and devastating consequences.
In 2017 over fifteen thousand scientists from 184 countries issued an ominous warning to
humanity that time is running out: “Soon it will be too late,” they
wrote, “to shift course away from our failing trajectory.” They are
echoed by the government-approved declaration
of the UN-sponsored IPCC, that we need “rapid, far-reaching and
unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to avoid disaster.
In the clamor for economic growth, however, these warnings have so
far gone unheeded. Will the impact of coronavirus change anything?
Fortress Earth
There’s a serious risk that, rather than shifting course from our
failing trajectory, the post-Covid-19 world will be one where the same
forces currently driving our race to the precipice further entrench
their power and floor the accelerator directly toward global
catastrophe. China has relaxed its environmental laws
to boost production as it tries to recover from its initial coronavirus
outbreak, and the US (anachronistically named) Environmental Protection
Agency took immediate advantage of the crisis to suspend enforcement of its laws, allowing companies to pollute as much as they want as long as they can show some relation to the pandemic.
On a greater scale, power-hungry leaders around the world are taking
immediate advantage of the crisis to clamp down on individual liberties
and move their countries swiftly toward authoritarianism. Hungary’s
strongman leader, Viktor Orban, officially killed off democracy
in his country on Monday, passing a bill that allows him to rule by
decree, with five-year prison sentences for those he determines are
spreading “false” information. Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu shut down his country’s courts in time to avoid his own trial for corruption. In the United States, the Department of Justice has already filed a request
to allow the suspension of courtroom proceedings in emergencies, and
there are many who fear that Trump will take advantage of the turmoil to
install martial law and try to compromise November’s election.
Even in those countries that avoid an authoritarian takeover, the
increase in high-tech surveillance taking place around the world is
rapidly undermining previously sacrosanct privacy rights. Israel has passed an emergency decree
to follow the lead of China, Taiwan, and South Korea in using
smartphone location readings to trace contacts of individuals who tested
positive for coronavirus. European mobile operators are sharing user data (so far anonymized) with government agencies. As Yuval Harari has pointed out, in the post-Covid world, these short-term emergency measures may “become a fixture of life.”
If these, and other emerging trends, continue unchecked, we could
head rapidly to a grim scenario of what might be called “Fortress
Earth,” with entrenched power blocs eliminating many of the freedoms and
rights that have formed the bedrock of the post-war world. We could be
seeing all-powerful states
overseeing economies dominated even more thoroughly by the few
corporate giants (think Amazon, Facebook) that can monetize the crisis
for further shareholder gain.
The chasm between the haves and have-nots may become even more egregious,
especially if treatments for the virus become available but are priced
out of reach for some people. Countries in the Global South, already
facing the prospect of disaster from climate breakdown, may face collapse
if coronavirus rampages through their populations while a global
depression starves them of funds to maintain even minimal
infrastructures. Borders may become militarized zones, shutting off the
free flow of passage. Mistrust and fear, which has already shown its
ugly face in panicked evictions of doctors in India and record gun-buying in the US, could become endemic.
Society Transformed
But it doesn’t have to turn out that way. Back in the early days of
World War II, things looked even darker, but underlying dynamics emerged
that fundamentally altered the trajectory of history. Frequently, it
was the very bleakness of the disasters that catalyzed positive forces
to emerge in reaction and predominate. The Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor—the day “which will live in infamy”—was
the moment when the power balance of World War II shifted. The
collective anguish in response to the global war’s devastation led to
the founding of the United Nations. The grotesque atrocity of Hitler’s
holocaust led to the international recognition of the crime of genocide,
and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Could it be that the crucible of coronavirus will lead to a meltdown
of neoliberal norms that ultimately reshapes the dominant structures of
our global civilization? Could a mass collective reaction to the
excesses of authoritarian overreach lead to a renaissance of
humanitarian values? We’re already seeing signs of this. While the
Overton window is allowing surveillance and authoritarian practices to
enter from one side, it’s also opening up to new political realities and
possibilities on the other side. Let’s take a look at some of these. A fairer society. The specter of massive layoffs and
unemployment has already led to levels of state intervention to protect
citizens and businesses that were previously unthinkable. Denmark plans to pay
75% of the salaries of employees in private companies hit by the
effects of the epidemic, to keep them and their businesses solvent. The
UK has announced a similar plan to cover 80% of salaries. California is leasing hotels
to shelter homeless people who would otherwise remain on the streets,
and has authorized local governments to halt evictions for renters and
homeowners. New York state is releasing low-risk prisoners from its jails. Spain is nationalizing
its private hospitals. The Green New Deal, which was already endorsed
by the leading Democratic presidential candidates, is now being
discussed as the mainstay
of a program of economic recovery. The idea of universal basic income
for every American, boldly raised by long-shot Democratic candidate
Andrew Yang, has now become a talking point even for Republican politicians. Ecological stabilization. Coronavirus has already
been more effective in slowing down climate breakdown and ecological
collapse than all the world’s policy initiatives combined. In February,
Chinese CO2 emissions were down by over 25%. One scientist calculated that twenty times as many
Chinese lives have been saved by reduced air pollution than lost
directly to coronavirus. Over the next year, we’re likely to see a
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions greater than even the most
optimistic modelers’ forecasts, as a result of the decline in economic
activity. As French philosopher Bruno Latour tweeted:
“Next time, when ecologists are ridiculed because ‘the economy cannot
be slowed down’, they should remember that it can grind to a halt in a
matter of weeks worldwide when it is urgent enough.”
Of course, nobody would propose that economic activity should be
disrupted in this catastrophic way in response to the climate crisis.
However, the emergency response initiated so rapidly by governments
across the world has shown what is truly possible when people face what
they recognize as a crisis. As a result of climate activism, 1,500
municipalities worldwide, representing over 10% of the global
population, have officially declared a climate emergency.
The Covid-19 response can now be held out as an icon of what is really
possible when people’s lives are at stake. In the case of the climate,
the stakes are even greater—the future survival of our civilization. We
now know the world can respond as needed, once political will is engaged
and societies enter emergency mode
The world needs to respond to the climate emergency with a similar urgency to the Covid-19 response. Source: David J. Hayes, NYU Energy & Environmental Impact CenterThe rise of “glocalization.” One of the defining
characteristics of the Neoliberal Era has been a corrosive globalization
based on free market norms. Transnational corporations have dictated
terms to countries in choosing where to locate their operations, leading
nations to compete against each other
to reduce worker protections in a “race to the bottom.” The use of
cheap fossil fuels has caused wasteful misuse of resources as products
are flown around the world to meet consumer demand stoked by
manipulative advertising. This globalization of markets has been a major
cause of the Neoliberal Era’s massive increase in consumption that
threatens civilization’s future. Meanwhile, masses of people disaffected
by rising inequity have been persuaded by right-wing populists to turn
their frustration toward outgroups such as immigrants or ethnic
minorities.
The effects of Covid-19 could lead to an inversion of these
neoliberal norms. As supply lines break down, communities will look to local and regional producers
for their daily needs. When a consumer appliance breaks, people will
try to get it repaired rather than buy a new one. Workers, newly
unemployed, may turn increasingly to local jobs in smaller companies
that serve their community directly.
At the same time, people will increasingly get used to connecting
with others through video meetings over the internet, where someone on
the other side of the world feels as close as someone across town. This
could be a defining characteristic of the new era. Even while production
goes local, we may see a dramatic increase in the globalization of new
ideas and ways of thinking—a phenomenon known as “glocalization.” Already, scientists are collaborating around the world in an unprecedented collective effort to find a vaccine; and a globally crowdsourced library is offering a “Coronavirus Tech Handbook” to collect and distribute the best ideas for responding to the pandemic. Compassionate community. Rebecca Solnit’s 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell,
documents how, contrary to popular belief, disasters frequently bring
out the best in people, as they reach out and help those in need around
them. In the wake of Covid-19, the whole world is reeling from a
disaster that affects us all. The compassionate response Solnit observed
in disaster zones has now spread across the planet with a speed
matching the virus itself. Mutual aid groups are forming in communities everywhere to help those in need. The website Karunavirus
(Karuna is a Sanskrit word for compassion) documents a myriad of
everyday acts of heroism, such as the thirty thousand Canadians who have
started “caremongering,” and the mom-and-pop restaurants in Detroit forced to close and now cooking meals for the homeless.
In the face of disaster, many people are rediscovering that they are
far stronger as a community than as isolated individuals. The phrase
“social distancing” is helpfully being recast as “physical distancing” since Covid-19 is bringing people closer together in solidarity than ever before.
Revolution in Values
This rediscovery of the value of community has the potential to be
the most important factor of all in shaping the trajectory of the next
era. New ideas and political possibilities are critically important, but
ultimately an era is defined by its underlying values, on which
everything else is built.
The Neoliberal Era was constructed on a myth of the selfish individual as the foundational for values. As Margaret Thatcher famously declared,
“There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women
and there are families.” This belief in the selfish individual has not
just been destructive of community—it’s plain wrong. In fact, from an
evolutionary perspective, a defining characteristic of humanity
is our set of prosocial impulses—fairness, altruism, and
compassion—that cause us to identify with something larger than our own
individual needs. The compassionate responses that have arisen in the
wake of the pandemic are heartwarming but not surprising—they are the
expected, natural human response to others in need.
Once the crucible of coronavirus begins to cool, and a new
sociopolitical order emerges, the larger emergency of climate breakdown
and ecological collapse will still be looming over us. The Neoliberal
Era has set civilization’s course directly toward a precipice. If we are
truly to “shift course away from our failing trajectory,” the new era
must be defined, at its deepest level, not merely by the political or
economic choices being made, but by a revolution in values. It must be
an era where the core human values of fairness, mutual aid, and
compassion are paramount—extending beyond the local neighborhood to
state and national government, to the global community of humans, and
ultimately to the community of all life. If we can change the basis of our global civilization
from one that is wealth-affirming to one that is life-affirming, then
we have a chance to create a flourishing future for humanity and the
living Earth.
To this extent, the Covid-19 disaster represents an opportunity for
the human race—one in which each one of us has a meaningful part to
play. We are all inside the crucible right now, and the choices we make
over the weeks and months to come will, collectively, determine the
shape and defining characteristics of the next era. However big we’re
thinking about the future effects of this pandemic, we can think bigger.
As has been said in other settings, but never more to the point: “A
crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
Jeremy Lent is author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning,
which investigates how different cultures have made sense of the
universe and how their underlying values have changed the course of
history. His upcoming book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe,
will be published in Spring 2021 (New Society Press: North America |
Profile Books: UK & Commonwealth). For more information visit jeremylent.com.
Ngày nay, người Mỹ đang ngày càng bị ép buộc phải sống dưới chế độ Kỷ Trị độc đoán, như Whitney Webb mô tả trong bài viết Techno-Tyranny: Bộ An ninh Quốc Gia của Mỹ thao tác sự kiện coronavirus để thực hiện Viển cảnh một xã hội Orwell. Để theo kịp Trung Quốc về trí tuệ nhân tạo, đại dịch Covid đang cho phép bọn Ngủ Giác Đài, cộng đồng tình báo Mỹ và bọn Thung lũng Silicon triển khai các hệ thống AI giám sát hàng loạt lên quần chúng. Họ đang loại bỏ những trở ngại đã ngăn cản việc triển khai này, dưới chiêu bài chống khủng hoảng coronavirus.
My wife and I began the new year completing a two-week holiday cruise to Hawaii on the Star Princess, sister ship to the Diamond Princess,
returning to Los Angeles on January 3. Our flight home was uneventful.
All seemed well. In February, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an
all-time high (29,551 on Feb 12). Nothing to worry about.
Then came a virus virologists name “SARS-CoV-2” (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoronaVirus-2) which causes “Covid-19” (Coronavirus disease, beginning in [November?] 2019).
On January 20, a man in the Seattle area who had recently returned from
visiting family in Wuhan, China had a fever and dry cough and was found
to be infected with Covid-19.
Mortality
As of April 28, 2020, in the U.S., 1,011,6000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 (Covid) with 58,343 deaths.
The 1918-1920 influenza pandemic (Spanish
flu) killed 675,000 Americans. One of them was my grandmother Mary Ashby
Warden Williams. Several weeks before she fell ill and suddenly died,
her stepmother, Mary Lyde Hicks Williams (my great grandmother), a
professional portrait painter, painted this portrait of Mary Ashby with
her 18-month old daughter Charlotte (my mother) standing next to her.
Mary Ashby died in January 1920 at the tail end of the pandemic, age 23.
Her daughter endures and will be 102 in July.
My wife’s grandmother Agnes Posten, an Irish immigrant, also died in that pandemic, age 26.
More than 30 million Americans had the
Spanish Flu in a population of 105 million and with 675,000 deaths, a
2.3% fatality rate. “Fast forward” to today. The Director-General of the
UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian
politician (and former leader of a terrorist group)—the first
non-physician to head this body—declared that Covid-19 has a 3.4%
mortality rate. With a rate this high Covid could kill many millions of
people worldwide. This spawned a global panic. The Director-General,
however, left out people who become infected with this virus, did not
get tested and didn’t get sick. Up to 80% of people who test positive
for Covid either have no symptoms or only mild ones imitating a cold.
Counting them in the equation, the mortality rate for Covid in Wuhan,
China would be closer to 1.4% than 3.4%.
The 1918-20 influenza pandemic killed
between 15 and 100 million people worldwide, 0.8% to 5.6% in a
population of 1.8 billion (see here). Now, with the population 7.8 billion, one of comparable lethality could kill between 60 to 430 million people.
The “Spanish” flu started in Kansas. It
spread in 3 main waves. The first one, from March to June 1918, was
relatively mild. Soldiers called it “the 3-day flu.” It was seldom
fatal, with a mortality rate near 0.5% (5 deaths in a thousand cases),
close to seasonal flu of 0.1%.
The second wave, from August to December,
was more lethal. One observer noted, “While the first wave of flu in
1918 was relatively nonlethal, the second made up for it in spades.” Two
million American soldiers were shipped to Europe to fight with the
Allies (France, Britain, and Russia) in World War I against the Central
Powers (Germany and its allies). More soldiers died from the flu than in
battle. Laura Spinney, in Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World writes:
“[Flu] Patients would soon be having
trouble breathing. Two mahogany spots appeared over their cheekbones,
and within a few hours that color had flushed their faces from ear to
ear… [If it turned blue] the outlook was bleak indeed. Blue darkened to
black. The black first appeared at the extremities—the hands and feet,
including the nails—stole up the limbs, and eventually infused the
abdomen and torso. As long as you were conscious, therefore, you watched
death enter at your fingertips and fill you up.”
The Spanish flu targeted healthy young
adults. People between age 20 and 40 were the high-risk group. Their
robust immune systems would launch a “cytokine storm”—a cellular
(macrophage)-induced severe inflammatory reaction, both against the
virus and oneself. Flooding one’s lungs, this “storm” could kill a
person within 24 hours after the onset of symptoms.
(The nations fighting in World War I
censored any mention of this pandemic, which laid waste to both sides.
Spain remained neutral and did not censor its newspapers, thus the name
“Spanish flu.”)
Debate continues over Covid’s case
mortality rate. The number of Covid deaths is falsely high in
jurisdictions where people who die with the virus (test
positive for Covid) in actuality die from a pre-existing condition
(heart disease, cancer) and get included with people who die from
the virus. And there are Covid-positive people who remain asymptomatic
that are not counted, which also makes the case mortality rate falsely
high. To remedy that everyone in a given population must be tested.
After testing positive for Covid one
develops antibodies—immune markers in serum indicating prior exposure to
a specific pathogen. Antibody tests will capture all previously
infected cases, including the asymptomatic ones, thus supplying the
correct fraction for calculating the case mortality rate. Controversy
currently exists, however, over the sensitivity and specificity of the
new antibody tests for SARS-CoV-2. A low specificity yields false
positives of supposedly asymptomatic cases, a larger denominator and
thus a falsely low case mortality rate.
Elderly people with pre-existing conditions are the high-risk group with Covid; but a growing number of studies
show that its overall lethality is lower than initially thought,
somewhere between 0.1% and 0.4%, in the seasonal flu range. Most healthy
older adults without pre-existing conditions do well and have immune
systems strong enough to handle the virus.
The Diamond Princess finished a
roundtrip 15-day tour of Southeast Asia from Japan on February 2, 2020.
It had 3,711 passengers and crew—2,666 passengers (median age 69) and
1,045 crew (median age 36). Some passengers tested positive for Covid on
the cruise, and Japanese authorities quarantined the ship when it
docked back at Yokohama—its passengers for up to three weeks and crew,
four weeks. Health workers tested almost everyone on board for Covid and
found that 712 (19.2%) were infected—567 passengers (21.2%) and 145
crew members (13.8%). There were 14 deaths (0.4%), only in elderly
passengers. Analyzing the data from this “ship laboratory,” researchers
estimate that the mortality rate from Covid in China is around 0.5%,
like in the first wave of the Spanish flu.
SARS-CoV-2 is one of seven coronaviruses.
Several of them cause the common cold. Two other dangerous
coronaviruses, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV (“Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome”) kill people. The 2002 SARS epidemic caused 770 deaths and the
2015 MERS epidemic, 850 deaths. But they did not come in several waves.
The current coronavirus may not come back in a second wave either.
Evidence shows SARS-CoV-2 is bioengineered.
A Biosafety Level 4 laboratory in Wuhan, China released this new
coronavirus, presumably by accident. Migrating water birds spread the
Spanish flu virus to humans.
Lockdown
During the Spanish flu, until the
Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended World War I, President Wilson kept
the nation fixed on fighting and winning the war. He did not let a
worsening influenza pandemic interfere. John Barry, in his The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, writes this about the state of American society in 1918:
“Wilson’s hard line threatened
dissenters [against the war] with imprisonment. The federal government
also took control over much of national life. The War Industries Board
allocated raw materials to factories, guaranteed profits, and controlled
production and prices of war material, and, with the National War Labor
Board, it set wages as well. The Railroad Administration virtually
nationalized the American railroad industry. The Fuel Administration
controlled fuel distribution (and to save fuel it also instituted
daylight savings time). The Food Administration—under Herbert
Hoover—oversaw agricultural production, pricing, and distribution.”
Responding to the Covid pandemic, the
nation has simply shut down, economically and personally. Computer
models greatly overpredicted the deaths it would cause. They predicted
that more than two million Americans would die from this infection (even
factoring in mitigation), as compared with 30,000 seasonal flu deaths.
This prompted government officials to shut down the economy and order
people to stay home. Along with its predictions, however, Imperial
College modelers did acknowledge this: “We do not consider the ethical or economic implications of either strategy [suppression or mitigation]” (emphasis added).
Adverse consequences from the lockdown on
human health and behavior include domestic violence, child abuse, and
the risk of suicide, followed by civil unrest and crime waves. These
consequences are yet to fully appear and be measured but they will be
substantial and likely overshadow Covid deaths. Hospitals have halted
“elective” surgeries for people who suffer other diseases. Delaying them
also carries risk.
A more unrestricted approach is better.
While shielding vulnerable senior citizens, younger people who have a
negligible Covid mortality risk should be able to go to work, to
restaurants and bars (and church), like in Sweden. People there do go to
work, cafes and restaurants are open, and its parks full. The country
remains open for business.
Covid-infected people who have mild
illness help establish widespread immunity against subsequent and
possibly more virulent waves of the infection.
Treatment
There were no vaccines for the Spanish
flu. But vaccine companies a century later are working nonstop to
develop one for Covid. But human trials to confidently establish a
vaccine’s efficacy and safety take time, 18 months or more. Of note, 93%
of vaccine trials fail.
Vaccines for flu viruses have a checkered
history. Public health officials had to recall the one made for the 1976
Swine flu when it was found to cause Guillain-Barré Syndrome—immune
system damage with slowly progressive paralysis ending in death. Vaccine
officials promoted the vaccine Pandemix for the 2009 Swine flu and
fast-tracked it without the requisite clinical trials. This vaccine
caused narcolepsy—difficulty sleeping at night associated with night terrors, hallucination, and mental health problems.
Lacking a vaccine or an effective
antiviral drug against Covid, physicians search for any pharmaceutical
agents that might be effective in treating it. The Trump-hating media,
notably the New York Times,Washington Post, CNN, and
MSNBC chastised President Trump for promoting the antimalarial drug
chloroquine (hydroxychloroquine) for Covid-19. Long used for treating
malaria, hydroxychloroquine prevents single cell malarial parasites from
invading red blood cells and eating their hemoglobin. Research
shows that SARS-CoV-2 also attacks red blood cells, rendering its
hemoglobin incapable of transporting oxygen to the body. An
intensive-care physician describes how patients who become seriously ill
from Covid suffer more from hypoxia—a lack of oxygen—than from
viral/bacterial pneumonia. Covid is more like high altitude sickness (here).
The way hydroxychloroquine shields red blood cells from malarial
parasites can explain how this drug could also do the same thing against
this coronavirus. (See Dr. Dave Janda’s interview
with Karen Whitsett, Democratic member of the Michigan House of
Representatives on her experience with hydroxychloroquine.) As one
blogger sees it, “Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have
finally found its secret” (here).
Thirteen years ago I researched and wrote, “Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead.” It remains relevant, as this March 2020 review of the subject confirms. In one study,
86% of all Covid patients with normal vitamin D levels (30 ng/ml or
above) had a mild illness, while 73% of cases that became severe or
critical had a vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/ml). Vitamin D
switches on genes in immune-system macrophages that make antimicrobial
peptides, antibiotics the body produces to attack and destroy invading
bacteria and viruses.
Vitamin C given intravenously in high
doses is proving to be an effective way to salvage critically ill Covid
patients. Zinc, which suppresses virus activity, also helps; but one has
to be careful with zinc.
For the Spanish flu some physicians
advised patients to take Aspirin, up to 30 grams a day. A dose that high
is toxic and can cause a buildup of fluid in the lungs—pulmonary edema.
Aspirin was a relatively new drug in 1918. (Physicians today consider
60 to 300 milligrams, 0.06 to 0.3 grams, to be the best dose for
aspirin.)
Depression
The Covid pandemic has pricked the debt-fueled Everything Bubble and precipitated a Greater Depression.
Maintained with multi-trillion-dollar bailouts, it could persist for
years, like the Great Depression did. Michael Pento sees it this way:
“This [Greater Depression] is a global depression just like we had in
the 1930s combined with a 2008 style credit crisis.” Doug Casey: “We’ve
entered a downturn that is going to be longer, deeper, and different
than the unpleasantness of 1929-1946.” And Jim Quinn: “When ATM machines
stop spitting out twenties, food shelves are bare and gas stations are
shuttered, social chaos will ensue.”
Zerohedge.com reports that for every Covid death 565 Americans have lost their jobs. And
“Nearly one in three Americans have experienced a temporary layoff,
permanent job loss, reduction in hours, or reduction of income as a
result of the coronavirus situation. Eighteen percent have experienced
more than one of these disruptions.” The Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Louis estimates that the unemployment rate in the U.S. could reach 32.1%
in the second quarter as 47 million workers are laid off, easily
eclipsing the 25% rate during the Great Depression.
In 1918 Americans used gold and silver
coins to buy things and pay debts. Paper dollars (Federal Reserve Notes)
were redeemable in gold. Federal Reserve Notes today have become a fiat
currency and have lost 98% of their original value. Since 1971 the
dollar has also fallen 98% in real terms measured in gold. Government’s
unlimited printing of dollars will accelerate as more companies and
financial institutions default, courting hyperinflation.
The 1920-21 Depression followed the
Spanish flu. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 47%, industrial
production fell 32%, and corporate profits, 92%. The government did not
provide any “fiscal stimulus” to cure this Depression. Tax rates were
lowered, the national debt reduced by one-third, and the economy
recovered quickly on its own. (See The Forgotten Depression, 1921: The Crash that Cured Itself by James Grant.)
(On April 6, 1919,
President Woodrow Wilson caught the Spanish flu in Paris during peace
negotiations. He became quite ill, returned home, and four months later
had a severe stroke. Without his tempering input, the punitive Treaty of
Versailles set the stage for World War II.)
Brave New World
Narrative managers would have Americans
live obediently observing Covid shutdown orders. They do not want to see
doctors present arguments for lifting the lockdown. After going viral
with 5 million views, YouTube deleted the video of two California doctors who support the case that states should begin reopening their economies.
Today Americans are becoming increasingly compelled to live under an authoritarian technocracy, as Whitney Webb describes in “Techno-Tyranny: How the US National Security State is Using Coronavirus to Fulfill an Orwellian Vision.”
In order to keep up with China in artificial intelligence, the Covid
pandemic is enabling the Pentagon, intelligence community, and Silicon
Valley to implement AI mass surveillance systems. They are removing
obstacles that have prevented their implementation “under the guise of
combating the coronavirus crisis.”
The U.S. National Security Commission on
Artificial Intelligence, created by the 2018 National Defense
Authorization Act, cites three “legacy systems” holding back adoption of
AI-driven technologies: cash and credit/debit card payments, individual
car ownership, and receiving medical attention from a human doctor. In
their place would come financial transactions done only with smart
phones (and computers), ride-sharing driverless cars, and AI robotic
medical care. Plus, authoritarian technocrats would have us stop
shopping in stores (many of which are going bankrupt in the lockdown)
and buy everything online, enabling them to more easily track our
purchases.
The “Spanish” flu occurred in the spring
of American imperialism, which started in 1898 with the Spanish-American
War and Spain ceding its ownership and control of the Philippines and
Guam to U.S. forces. World War I turned the United States into a
full-fledged imperial power. Now, sparking the Greater Depression the
Covid pandemic arrives in what is becoming winter of American
imperialism.
