offguardian--2020-12-13--Partly Truth and Partly Fiction – Totally Genius: Kris Kristofferson

Great songwriters , like great poets , are possessed by a passionate melancholic sensibility that gives them joy in the telling .
They seem always to be homesick for a home they can ’ t define or find .
At the heart of their songs is a presence of an absence that is unnameable .
That is what draws listeners in .
While great songs usually take but a few minutes to travel from the singer ’ s mouth to the listener ’ s ears , they keep echoing for a long time , as if they had taken both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out and back , and then , in true Odyssean fashion , replay the cyclic song of the shared poetic mystery that is life and death , love and loss , the going up and coming down , the abiding nostalgia for a future home .
Kris Kristofferson ’ s songs keep echoing in my mind .
My very old mother , as she neared death , would often tell me , “ Don ’ t let me go.
” I would tell her I was trying , knowing my efforts were a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we were building what D. H. Lawrence called her “ ship of death ” : In those days she also used to ask me : “ Now that you have lived more of your life in Massachusetts than in New York City , where do you say you are from and which do you consider your home ?
” I didn ’ t know what to say but would wonder where I would like to be buried , as if it mattered .
I would be dead .
Home .
I don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so why does it matter where .
Home isn ’ t a place for permanently sleeping .
It ’ s the place from which we launch our ships out into the world .
The place that we discover when all our sailings are done .
Where was the lightning before it flashed ?
Kris Kristofferson , who is now an old man in his mid-80s , is an astonishing songwriter , a man of faith and conscience , and a humorously devilish performer with an on-stage persona of a spiritual satyr .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finest songs in the American songbook .
A man ’ s and a woman ’ s man , he has written songs of exquisite passion and sensitivity and rough rollicking freedom that only an emotionless zombie would fail to be moved by .
And in the last 10 or so years he has fearlessly confronted his mortality , writing many brave songs that bookend his earliest hits , such as Help Me Make It Through the Night .
I have loved and listened to his music for a long time and have wished @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is my small tribute to a great artist .
Counterpose what is perhaps his most well-known song , Me and Bobby McGee , first made famous by the rocking swirling twirling wild dervish Janice Joplin , a former lover so I ’ ve heard , with his lilting poem that is little known : Shadows of Her Mind .
Two meditations in very different song styles on love , loneliness , searching , loss , and the secrets of one ’ s soul – a magician at work .
Whether partly truth or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Secrets are secrets .
Kristofferson broke barriers when he found success in Nashville ’ s country and western scene in the early 1970s .
He made explicit the sexuality and the yearning for love that underlay traditional country music .
The endless yearning that never ends .
Its secret .
Not just sex in the back room of a honky-tonk , but the “ Achin ’ with the feelin ’ of the freedom of an eagle when she flies , ” as he sings in Loving Her Was Easier .
Something intangible .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ He was an oddball .
Here was a man whose inspiration for Me and Bobby McGee was a foreign film , La Strada ( The Road ) , made by the extraordinary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini .
Not the stuff of movie theaters in small Texas towns .
In the film , Anthony Quinn is driving around on a motorcycle with a feeble-minded girl whose playing of a trombone gets on his nerves , so while she is sleeping , he abandons her by the side of the road .
He later hears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was always playing and learns the girl has died .
Kris explains : Not exactly country , yet a traditional storyteller , a Rhodes scholar and a former Army Captain , an Oxford “ egghead ” in love with romantic poetry , a sensitive athlete , a risk-taker who gave up a teaching position at West Point for a janitor ’ s job in Nashville to try his hand at songwriting , a patriot with a dissenter ’ s heart , he is an unusual man , to put it mildly .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heaven and hell are born together and that the body and soul can not be divorced , that all art is incarnational and meant to be about ecstasy and misery , not the middle normal ground where people measure out their lives in coffee spoons .
He ’ s always wanted to tell what he knew , come what may , as he sings in To Beat the Devil : What do people want to know ?
A bit here and there , I guess , but not too much , not the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ truth about their government ’ s killers , the lies that drive a Billy Dee to drugs and death and the hypocritical fears of cops and people who wish to squelch the truths of the desperate ones for fear that they might reveal secrets best buried with the bodies .
Secrets not about the dead but the living .
There are only a handful of songwriters with the artistic gift of soul sympathy to write verses like the following , and Kris has done it again and again over fifty years : Like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s mentors – “ Can I see another ’ s woe/And not be in sorrow too ?
/Can I see another ’ s grief/And not seek for kind relief ?
” – Billy Dee captures in rollicking sound more truth about addiction than a thousand self-important editorials about drugs .
Kristofferson joins with Dylan Thomas , the Welsh bard , another wild man with an exquisite sense for the music of language and the married themes of youth and age , sex and death , love and loss , home and the search @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his songs lack overt political content , such concerns are scattered throughout his massive oeuvre ( nearly 400 songs ) where his passion for the victims of America ’ s war machine and his respect for great spiritual heroes like Gandhi , Martin Luther King , and John and Robert Kennedy ring out in very powerful songs that are not well known .
Note his use of the word they in They Killed Him , surely not a mistake for such a careful songwriter .
And in The Circle , a song @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an Iraqi artist and her husband and the wounding of her children , his condemnation is powerful as he links it to the disappeared of Argentina in a circle of sorrow .
Of course no one is responsible .
As everyone knows , songs have a powerful hold on our memories , and sometimes we learn ironic truths about them only years later .
When I was young , my large family , consisting of my parents and seven sisters and me – Bronx kids – would go on vacation for a week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called Edgewater .
We would pack our clothes in cartons weeks in advance and would load into the car like sardines layered in a can .
On the trip north to the Catskill mountains , in our wild excitement we would sing all sorts of happy songs , many from Broadway shows .
As we approached the farm , we would go crazy with excitement and sing over and over the repetitive song we had learned somewhere : We ’ re Here Because We ’ re Here Because We ’ re Here .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ joy ; we had arrived at our Shangri-La , our ideal home , paradise regained .
To this day , the name Edgewater is like Proust ’ s madeleine dipped in tea for many of us .
What we didn ’ t know was that the song we were singing was the sardonic song that WW I soldiers sang as they awaited absurd and senseless death in the mud and rat-filled trenches of the war to end all wars .
Sardonic words to them and joy to us .
They were there because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We sang it out of joy .
So Blakean : To listen to Kris Kristofferson ’ s vast oeuvre is a confirmation of that Blakean truth .
It is to realize that all those songs he has written and sung have been his way of fulfilling the words of another Romantic poet who was Blake ’ s contemporary , John Keats .
Keats called life “ a vale of soul-making , ” meaning that people are not souls until they make themselves by developing an individual identity by doing what they were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ fascinating documentary series , Country Music , Kris answers the question of why he took such a radical turn early on and gave up his military road to success for a lowly job as a janitor in Nashville where he hoped to write songs .
He said : When he answered this call of the spirit and took such a dramatic turn away from the conventional road to success , his mother wrote him a letter essentially disowning him ( “ dis-owning ” – an interesting word ! )
.
When Kris @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , “ Isn ’ t it nice to get a letter from home ?
” Not devoid of humor , Kristofferson wrote Jessie Younger , a catchy tune that no doubt concealed his pain while sharing it , an example of his extraordinary ability to use words in paradoxical ways .
A close examination of so many of his lyrics leaves me aghast at his talent .
There are just a handful of songwriter/performers who can match the art of Kris Kristofferson .
Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen come to mind , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spiritual questing for home .
Both have been greatly celebrated in recent years , Dylan with the Nobel Prize and Cohen with accolades after his death .
Kris Kristofferson may have been “ out of sight and out of mind ” in recent days , so I would like to bring him back to your attention and salute him .
Thank you , Kris .
You are an inspiration .
Blessings .
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely .
He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ He is the author of the new book Seeking Truth in A Country of Lies

Edward Curtin
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise. – William Blake, Eternity
Great songwriters, like great poets, are possessed by a passionate melancholic sensibility that gives them joy in the telling. They seem always to be homesick for a home they can’t define or find. At the heart of their songs is a presence of an absence that is unnameable. That is what draws listeners in.
While great songs usually take but a few minutes to travel from the singer’s mouth to the listener’s ears, they keep echoing for a long time, as if they had taken both singer and listener on a circular journey out and back, and then, in true Odyssean fashion, replay the cyclic song of the shared poetic mystery that is life and death, love and loss, the going up and coming down, the abiding nostalgia for a future home.
Kris Kristofferson’s songs keep echoing in my mind.
My very old mother, as she neared death, would often tell me, “Don’t let me go.” I would tell her I was trying, knowing my efforts were a temporary stay and that through our conversations we were building what D. H. Lawrence called her “ship of death”:
Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.
***
We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
***
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into her house again
filling the heart with peace.
In those days she also used to ask me: “Now that you have lived more of your life in Massachusetts than in New York City, where do you say you are from and which do you consider your home?” I didn’t know what to say but would wonder where I would like to be buried, as if it mattered. I would be dead. Home. I don’t think so. Not underground, so why does it matter where. Home isn’t a place for permanently sleeping. It’s the place from which we launch our ships out into the world. The place that we discover when all our sailings are done.
Where was the lightning before it flashed?
Kris Kristofferson, who is now an old man in his mid-80s, is an astonishing songwriter, a man of faith and conscience, and a humorously devilish performer with an on-stage persona of a spiritual satyr. He has written and performed some of the finest songs in the American songbook. A man’s and a woman’s man, he has written songs of exquisite passion and sensitivity and rough rollicking freedom that only an emotionless zombie would fail to be moved by. And in the last 10 or so years he has fearlessly confronted his mortality, writing many brave songs that bookend his earliest hits, such as Help Me Make It Through the Night.
I have loved and listened to his music for a long time and have wished to honor him for years.
This is my small tribute to a great artist.
Counterpose what is perhaps his most well-known song, Me and Bobby McGee, first made famous by the rocking swirling twirling wild dervish Janice Joplin, a former lover so I’ve heard, with his lilting poem that is little known: Shadows of Her Mind. Two meditations in very different song styles on love, loneliness, searching, loss, and the secrets of one’s soul – a magician at work. Whether partly truth or partly fiction doesn’t matter. Secrets are secrets.
Kristofferson broke barriers when he found success in Nashville’s country and western scene in the early 1970s. He made explicit the sexuality and the yearning for love that underlay traditional country music. The endless yearning that never ends. Its secret. Not just sex in the back room of a honky-tonk, but the “Achin’ with the feelin’ of the freedom of an eagle when she flies,” as he sings in Loving Her Was Easier. Something intangible. True passion for love and life.
He was an oddball. Here was a man whose inspiration for Me and Bobby McGee was a foreign film, La Strada (The Road), made by the extraordinary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. Not the stuff of movie theaters in small Texas towns. In the film, Anthony Quinn is driving around on a motorcycle with a feeble-minded girl whose playing of a trombone gets on his nerves, so while she is sleeping, he abandons her by the side of the road. He later hears a woman singing the melody the girl was always playing and learns the girl has died. Kris explains:
To me, that was the feeling at the end of ‘Bobby McGee.’ The two-edged sword that freedom is. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him. That’s where the line ‘Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose’ came from.
Not exactly country, yet a traditional storyteller, a Rhodes scholar and a former Army Captain, an Oxford “egghead” in love with romantic poetry, a sensitive athlete, a risk-taker who gave up a teaching position at West Point for a janitor’s job in Nashville to try his hand at songwriting, a patriot with a dissenter’s heart, he is an unusual man, to put it mildly. A gambler. A man who knows that heaven and hell are born together and that the body and soul cannot be divorced, that all art is incarnational and meant to be about ecstasy and misery, not the middle normal ground where people measure out their lives in coffee spoons. He’s always wanted to tell what he knew, come what may, as he sings in To Beat the Devil:
I was born a lonely singer, and I’m bound to die the same,
But I’ve got to feed the hunger in my soul.
And if I never have a nickel, I won’t ever die ashamed.
‘Cos I don’t believe that no-one wants to know.
What do people want to know? A bit here and there, I guess, but not too much, not the secrets of our souls. Not the truth about their government’s killers, the lies that drive a Billy Dee to drugs and death and the hypocritical fears of cops and people who wish to squelch the truths of the desperate ones for fear that they might reveal secrets best buried with the bodies. Secrets not about the dead but the living.
There are only a handful of songwriters with the artistic gift of soul sympathy to write verses like the following, and Kris has done it again and again over fifty years:
Billy Dee was seventeen when he turned twenty-one
Fooling with some foolish things he could’ve left alone
But he had to try to satisfy a thirst he couldn’t name
Driven toward the darkness by the devils in his veins All around the honky-tonks, searching for a sign
Gettin’ by on gettin’ high on women, words and wine
Some folks called him crazy, Lord, and others called him free
But we just called us lucky for the love of Billy Dee
Like William Blake, one of Kristofferson’s mentors – “Can I see another’s woe/And not be in sorrow too?/Can I see another’s grief/And not seek for kind relief?” – Billy Dee captures in rollicking sound more truth about addiction than a thousand self-important editorials about drugs.
Kristofferson joins with Dylan Thomas, the Welsh bard, another wild man with an exquisite sense for the music of language and the married themes of youth and age, sex and death, love and loss, home and the search, always the search:
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Although most of his songs lack overt political content, such concerns are scattered throughout his massive oeuvre (nearly 400 songs) where his passion for the victims of America’s war machine and his respect for great spiritual heroes like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and John and Robert Kennedy ring out in very powerful songs that are not well known. Note his use of the word they in They Killed Him, surely not a mistake for such a careful songwriter.
And in The Circle, a song about Bill Clinton killing with a missile an Iraqi artist and her husband and the wounding of her children, his condemnation is powerful as he links it to the disappeared of Argentina in a circle of sorrow. Of course no one is responsible.
“Not I” said the soldier
“I just follow orders and it was my duty to do my job well”
“Not I” said the leader who ordered the slaughter
“Im saddened it happened, but then, war is hell”
“Not us” said the others who heard of the horror
Turned a cold shoulder on all that was done
In all the confusion a single conclusion
The circle of sorrow has only begun
As everyone knows, songs have a powerful hold on our memories, and sometimes we learn ironic truths about them only years later.
When I was young, my large family, consisting of my parents and seven sisters and me – Bronx kids – would go on vacation for a week in the late summer to a farm called Edgewater. We would pack our clothes in cartons weeks in advance and would load into the car like sardines layered in a can. On the trip north to the Catskill mountains, in our wild excitement we would sing all sorts of happy songs, many from Broadway shows. As we approached the farm, we would go crazy with excitement and sing over and over the repetitive song we had learned somewhere: We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here. To us it was a song of joy; we had arrived at our Shangri-La, our ideal home, paradise regained. To this day, the name Edgewater is like Proust’s madeleine dipped in tea for many of us.
What we didn’t know was that the song we were singing was the sardonic song that WW I soldiers sang as they awaited absurd and senseless death in the mud and rat-filled trenches of the war to end all wars. Sardonic words to them and joy to us. They were there because they were there and it was meaningless. We sang it out of joy. So Blakean:
Man was made for joy and woe
Then when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul to bind.
To listen to Kris Kristofferson’s vast oeuvre is a confirmation of that Blakean truth. It is to realize that all those songs he has written and sung have been his way of fulfilling the words of another Romantic poet who was Blake’s contemporary, John Keats. Keats called life “a vale of soul-making,” meaning that people are not souls until they make themselves by developing an individual identity by doing what they were meant to do.
In Ken Burns’ fascinating documentary series, Country Music, Kris answers the question of why he took such a radical turn early on and gave up his military road to success for a lowly job as a janitor in Nashville where he hoped to write songs. He said:
I love William Blake…. William Blake said, ‘If he who is organized by the divine for spiritual communion, refuse and bury his talent in the earth, even though he should want natural bread, shame and confusion of face will pursue him throughout life to eternity.’
When he answered this call of the spirit and took such a dramatic turn away from the conventional road to success, his mother wrote him a letter essentially disowning him (“dis-owning” – an interesting word!). When Kris showed it to Johnny Cash, Cash said, “Isn’t it nice to get a letter from home?”
Not devoid of humor, Kristofferson wrote Jessie Younger, a catchy tune that no doubt concealed his pain while sharing it, an example of his extraordinary ability to use words in paradoxical ways. A close examination of so many of his lyrics leaves me aghast at his talent.
There are just a handful of songwriter/performers who can match the art of Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen come to mind, men whose work also contains that deep spiritual questing for home. Both have been greatly celebrated in recent years, Dylan with the Nobel Prize and Cohen with accolades after his death.
Kris Kristofferson may have been “out of sight and out of mind” in recent days, so I would like to bring him back to your attention and salute him.
Thank you, Kris. You are an inspiration. Blessings.
Encore:
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/. He is the author of the new book Seeking Truth in A Country of Lies


offguardian--2020-12-13--Why this campaign of terror?

Why this campaign of terror?

In the morning , the world is as the world should be .
The sun rises , as predicted for this part of England in early December , at around twenty past eight .
Shortly after this , I get up , go through the usual morning routines , have a quick breakfast , wash up , and am at my computer by ten o ’ clock .
The hours pass unexceptionably until lunchtime .
And then I can no longer put off the trip to the shops .
Going to the shops is something I do as little as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ walked in and out of the nearby town centre several times in a day , without thinking twice : but that was when I could move from home to street seamlessly , with no jarring transition between here and there .
Now it ’ s different .
Now , beyond the protective confines of our home lies a parallel universe , a place of outlandish rituals and dogmas , where grotesquely masked figures pass each other warily on the street or , in the supermarket , lurk out-of-touch behind symbolic plastic screens .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the prescribed route between the aisles , disembodied voices warn of death and disease , order me to protect myself and others by maintaining distance and keeping my plague-ridden exhalations to myself .
“ We ’ re in this together !
” they proclaim .
In less than a year some malign necromancy has transformed the fearless social beings who once thronged shops and cafés in the run-up to each Christmas into an infestation of dangerous , outsized germs : or , if scrupulous examination of the facts has left you confident that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more threatening to moderately healthy people than the nastier brands of flu , into the crazed adherents of some apocalyptic cult .
Since I have spent the past nine months scrupulously examining the facts , the eyes now peering out at me over the inadequate face-covering of that woman beating a hasty retreat behind the cans of tuna as I approach are , it seems to me , those of a poor , unhinged lunatic .
But then , I am an unbeliever .
I do not wear the mask of allegiance .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ neck , I do my shopping as quickly as possible , and hurry back to the embattled sanity of domestic life .
Yes , even here embattled : for as the onslaught of propaganda continues without remission , only complete divorce from the outside world can afford protection .
Fortunately , since the arrival of the computer I am beyond the reach of programmed television , but in order to wake to the accompaniment of pleasant but undemanding music , I used to put up with the intermittent smattering of adverts on Classic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the media ’ s most lucrative source of income , however , this is no longer tolerable .
Who wants to be roused abruptly from sleep by inane incantations of “ Hands !
Face !
Place !
” , sometimes repeated twice within five minutes ?
“ It ’ s just an actor !
” my husband pleads with me , as I hurl execrations , and worse , at the radio .
But whether it comes from actors or health ministers , the brain-washing stinks .
“ Don ’ t you just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” a friend asks mournfully , as we discuss the incremental take-over of advertising slots by the government ’ s ‘ nudge unit ‘ .
Even bona fide adverts from the likes of Boots and the big supermarkets are made nauseous by mealy-mouthed assurances of “ safe ” shopping .
The only kind of safe shopping I long for is shopping safe from constant reminders of The Virus : shopping unmasked and convivially mingling ; the chance to browse unimpeded in bookshops , and linger socially-undistanced over cups of coffee in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terror , you have to ask ?
Why , in the midst of a genuine pandemic , would anyone need to be reminded unceasingly that death is dogging their footsteps ?
That at any moment The Virus , wafted abroad by some super-spreader passed fleetingly in the street , might be insinuating itself into one ’ s body – or , worse , that we ourselves , infected but unaffected , might be silently contaminating a loved-one ?
The short answer is , they wouldn ’ t .
In a genuine pandemic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If the Black Death were raging outside my door , government would know full well that they didn ’ t have to fork out millions to convince me to stay inside ; more likely , they would have to pay me to leave the house .
Yet this government has bought the mass media lock , stock and barrel , at vast expense , with the sole purpose , it seems , of hammering home a message of impending doom .
Instead of calming our fears with facts and rational arguments , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ airwaves with slogans calculated to maintain panic ; with disingenuous appeals to the emotions ; with out-of-context death counts , wilful obfuscation of the difference between cases and infections , a criminally dodgy PCR test and graphs and computer models ( rubbish in , rubbish out ) carefully selected to emphasise the worst possible eventualities .
And not content to cow us into submission with a constant diet of skewed and incomplete information , they have unleashed the army ’ s 77 Brigade to troll social media exchanges and snuff out any lingering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prefer to call it , “ misinformation “ .
The aim can only be to induce maximum public terror in the face of a virus which , without all this deceptive ballyhoo , would hardly have been noticed by the population at large .
Why are they doing this ?
Surely , by now , they must be aware that increasing numbers of highly esteemed and experienced scientists contest policies which are killing vastly more people than they are saving , and which will go on killing well into the future !
True @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the reams of conflicting information churned out since we were first put on terror alert back in February and March , but one question is both fundamental and easily answered : are excess mortality figures for this year significantly above average ?
Only a huge and sustained divergence from the norm would indicate the presence of a new disease deadly enough to justify the extraordinary measures the government have taken .
The Euromomo charts for the UK show no such anomaly .
In Northern Ireland there has never been any substantial increase in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , mortality has hardly diverged from the normal range .
Scotland had a well-above-average peak in the spring , but since then has remained almost entirely within the bounds of normality .
Even populous England , despite a death rate which soared sharply to a great height in March before falling equally sharply back by the middle of June , has spent most of the year chugging along below the “ substantial increase ” line , with the usual increase as winter approaches .
A further chart at Covid-19 in Proportion ?
shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then , nor even the 1918 influenza .
In fact , one of the world ’ s premier epidemiologists , John Ioannidis , has long been assuring us that the infection fatality rate of Covid-19 is comparable with that of a bad flu .
His early estimate , in March , of a case fatality rate in the general population of between 0.05 % and 1.0 % , as indicated by the outbreak on the cruise ship Diamond Princess – a conclusion for which the eminent professor was , hilariously , censored by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we are being told that only mass vaccination against this fairly run-of-the-mill virus will allow us to return to any semblance of normal life .
By special dispensation , millions of doses of insufficiently tested vaccine are already in the pipeline , with a guarantee of no come-back for Big Pharma or for doctors turning a blind eye to the precept “ First to do no harm ” , should those treated be hit with damaging repercussions on their health or , indeed , on life itself .
We are told that we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in order to beat “ this dreadful virus ” : it ’ s quite safe – honest , you ’ ve got my word for it , says Matt Hancock .
Yet , side-effects apart , there is no assurance that the Pfizer vaccine , received with jubilation on 8th December by its first grateful recipient , will be effective in preventing either the disease or its transmission : and even if it does turn out to offer initial protection , this may last for as little as three months , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What ?
Repeat injections !
Are the young and healthy facing a lifetime of booster shots against a disease that is dangerous almost exclusively to the old and sick ?
And if this isn ’ t crazy enough , we are being told that , even while being turned into human pin-cushions , we will probably need to go on wearing masks and holding our friends and family at arm ’ s length well into the future : a future , it is hinted , of health passports and routine mass surveillance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public transport or generally engage in life beyond our doorstep .
This , it seems , will be the New Normal – but not to worry !
After all , you ’ re already masking up automatically when you leave the house , aren ’ t you , and following the one-way footsteps on the pavement as a matter of course ?
And if it becomes too much of a nuisance to carry your proof of vaccination around with you , well , we should soon be able to offer you the trouble-free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cover all eventualities : health ; finance ; your social credit score … Sometimes I think it would be better to be one of the masked zombies .
Trusting , obedient , they live in a world which , though threatening , they understand and accept .
It is real to them .
They know , unquestioningly , that a dreadful plague has been visited upon us , a plague which threatens to wipe out the species : and they know that if they wear their masks faithfully , wash their hands a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of other human beings , they will be doing their bit to save the nation , and , eventually , be granted the supreme unction of a vaccine ; after which , they believe , everything will go back to normal – perhaps with a few more bicycle lanes and wind farms , and somewhat fewer jobs – but hey !
– what will that matter , when the nice , compassionate government is promising us all a Universal Basic Income ?
For the rest of us , it ’ s not so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ live in a world where our own perceptions are remorselessly challenged by the prevailing lie .
Guided by rational thought processes and the evidence , we know that we are at no more risk from Covid-19 this year than we were in previous years from one of the more aggressive strains of influenza , but as soon as we venture into the outside world , everything contradicts our inner reality : and though we may not participate actively in the maskerade , we are condemned to a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illusion being played out all around us , under the direction of the government .
And to what end ?
If it were ever possible to put the enormities which have taken place since last March down to mere blundering , it certainly is not now .
The argument that the government has simply blundered , and is now trying to save face by digging itself in deeper does not wash .
Nor does the line about saving the NHS .
The NHS has regularly survived winter flu seasons which saw beds lined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their feet .
Besides , the Nightingale hospitals were quickly whisked into existence : and if the amount of money poured by the government into fear porn and the purchase of dud PCR tests and hastily concocted vaccines had been diverted into more beds , plus better pay for nurses and other non-administrative staff , the lesson might at last have been learned , and future winters made less chaotic .
It was obvious from the start to anyone with a basic education who bothered to check the facts that closing down the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and limb than any virus .
Why was this not also obvious to a prime minister with a PPE degree from Oxford , who is surrounded by whole cohorts of colleagues and advisers armed with equally prestigious qualifications ?
Even granting an initial surge of panic when faced with hysterical predictions from the Imperial College fortune-telling team , it would have been possible to withdraw in fairly good order after the first lockdown , when many scientists were already saying that the danger had been exaggerated , that the virus was now endemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sight .
Why didn ’ t our government seize the opportunity , in June , to give themselves a pat on the back , announce that the lockdown had worked , and ease us all back into rationality via an interval of sensible voluntary precautions , as practised in Sweden ?
Given a modification of the propaganda , the country would have believed them .
When adroitly handled by the Behavioural Insights Team the country , it appears , will believe anything .
Why , then , insist on sticking to the advice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credence to the serially failed speculations of Neil Ferguson , rather than attending to the more balanced suggestions offered by Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta ?
Instead , the government chose to fan the flames of fear with an intensification of propaganda and orders to mask up , extending the reign of unjustified terror into the autumn , when the annual onset of respiratory diseases began to fill up hospital beds , and allowed the death counts and lockdowns to resume .
One by one , those small businesses which survived the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it seems that our rulers will not rest content until every last man , woman and child in Britain has been thrown into the linked arms of corporate and state dependency .
What price conspiracy “ theories ” now ?
What we are dealing with are facts .
As countries throughout the world commit consensual suicide to a rousing chorus of “ Build Back Better !
” , what makes more sense ?
To shake the head in puzzlement , that so many nations , with one accord , should not only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year , but are now insisting , in unison , on entrenching the evils that have been unleashed ?
Or to contemplate the possibility that a network of powerful supranational agencies – banks , corporations , NGOs – have for some time been collaborating to direct the course of world events through placemen and beneficiaries in local and national governments and their attendant bureaucracies , and that “ the novel coronavirus ” is being used to achieve the final push into an era of artfully camouflaged “ global governance ” : an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unelected committees are handed down to elected heads of state in the shells of what were once independent nations , and passed on by them to regional mayors and administrators for implementation and enforcement .
I caught the Asian flu in 1957 .
So did my mother : the only time I ever knew her to take a couple of days off work .
The infection swept through the country , and tens of thousands died .
In 1968 the Hong Kong flu passed me by , but once again the death toll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On neither occasion was it considered necessary to destroy millions of lives and livelihoods by closing the country down , nor was any attempt made to terrorise its inhabitants .
Covid-19 is no more lethal than either of those previous infections – less so , unless you actually believe that all those currently described as dying “ with Covid ” , or dying within 28 days of testing positive , actually died from Covid .
Never before have such destructive policies been inflicted on the nation in a futile attempt to wipe out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war time , has the population of the UK been subjected to such outrageous assault and battery by a government propaganda machine .
Draw what conclusion you will .
I ’ m off to feed the ducks .
They don ’ t do anti-social distancing , and they don ’ t wear masks .

Gillian Dymond
In the morning, the world is as the world should be. The sun rises, as predicted for this part of England in early December, at around twenty past eight. Shortly after this, I get up, go through the usual morning routines, have a quick breakfast, wash up, and am at my computer by ten o’clock. The hours pass unexceptionably until lunchtime. And then I can no longer put off the trip to the shops.
Going to the shops is something I do as little as possible nowadays. Once I might have walked in and out of the nearby town centre several times in a day, without thinking twice: but that was when I could move from home to street seamlessly, with no jarring transition between here and there.
Now it’s different. Now, beyond the protective confines of our home lies a parallel universe, a place of outlandish rituals and dogmas, where grotesquely masked figures pass each other warily on the street or, in the supermarket, lurk out-of-touch behind symbolic plastic screens. Instead of muzak, as I follow the prescribed route between the aisles, disembodied voices warn of death and disease, order me to protect myself and others by maintaining distance and keeping my plague-ridden exhalations to myself.
“We’re in this together!” they proclaim.
In less than a year some malign necromancy has transformed the fearless social beings who once thronged shops and cafés in the run-up to each Christmas into an infestation of dangerous, outsized germs: or, if scrupulous examination of the facts has left you confident that “the novel coronavirus” is no more threatening to moderately healthy people than the nastier brands of flu, into the crazed adherents of some apocalyptic cult.
Since I have spent the past nine months scrupulously examining the facts, the eyes now peering out at me over the inadequate face-covering of that woman beating a hasty retreat behind the cans of tuna as I approach are, it seems to me, those of a poor, unhinged lunatic. But then, I am an unbeliever. I do not wear the mask of allegiance. Marked out by the lanyard around my neck, I do my shopping as quickly as possible, and hurry back to the embattled sanity of domestic life.
Yes, even here embattled: for as the onslaught of propaganda continues without remission, only complete divorce from the outside world can afford protection. Fortunately, since the arrival of the computer I am beyond the reach of programmed television, but in order to wake to the accompaniment of pleasant but undemanding music, I used to put up with the intermittent smattering of adverts on Classic FM. Now that government has become the media’s most lucrative source of income, however, this is no longer tolerable. Who wants to be roused abruptly from sleep by inane incantations of “Hands! Face! Place!”, sometimes repeated twice within five minutes ?
“It’s just an actor!” my husband pleads with me, as I hurl execrations, and worse, at the radio. But whether it comes from actors or health ministers, the brain-washing stinks. “Don’t you just long for a nice commercial about sofas?” a friend asks mournfully, as we discuss the incremental take-over of advertising slots by the government’s ‘nudge unit‘. Even bona fide adverts from the likes of Boots and the big supermarkets are made nauseous by mealy-mouthed assurances of “safe” shopping. The only kind of safe shopping I long for is shopping safe from constant reminders of The Virus: shopping unmasked and convivially mingling; the chance to browse unimpeded in bookshops, and linger socially-undistanced over cups of coffee in a crowded café.
Why this campaign of terror, you have to ask? Why, in the midst of a genuine pandemic, would anyone need to be reminded unceasingly that death is dogging their footsteps? That at any moment The Virus, wafted abroad by some super-spreader passed fleetingly in the street, might be insinuating itself into one’s body – or, worse, that we ourselves, infected but unaffected, might be silently contaminating a loved-one?
The short answer is, they wouldn’t. In a genuine pandemic, this constant mental battering would be superfluous. If the Black Death were raging outside my door, government would know full well that they didn’t have to fork out millions to convince me to stay inside; more likely, they would have to pay me to leave the house.
Yet this government has bought the mass media lock, stock and barrel, at vast expense, with the sole purpose, it seems, of hammering home a message of impending doom. Instead of calming our fears with facts and rational arguments, they have seen fit to flood the airwaves with slogans calculated to maintain panic; with disingenuous appeals to the emotions; with out-of-context death counts, wilful obfuscation of the difference between cases and infections, a criminally dodgy PCR test and graphs and computer models (rubbish in, rubbish out) carefully selected to emphasise the worst possible eventualities.
And not content to cow us into submission with a constant diet of skewed and incomplete information, they have unleashed the army’s 77 Brigade to troll social media exchanges and snuff out any lingering dissent – or, as the government prefer to call it, “misinformation“. The aim can only be to induce maximum public terror in the face of a virus which, without all this deceptive ballyhoo, would hardly have been noticed by the population at large.
Why are they doing this ? Surely, by now, they must be aware that increasing numbers of highly esteemed and experienced scientists contest policies which are killing vastly more people than they are saving, and which will go on killing well into the future!
True, non-scientists could get lost in all the reams of conflicting information churned out since we were first put on terror alert back in February and March, but one question is both fundamental and easily answered: are excess mortality figures for this year significantly above average? Only a huge and sustained divergence from the norm would indicate the presence of a new disease deadly enough to justify the extraordinary measures the government have taken.
The Euromomo charts for the UK show no such anomaly. In Northern Ireland there has never been any substantial increase in deaths overall. In Wales, too, mortality has hardly diverged from the normal range. Scotland had a well-above-average peak in the spring, but since then has remained almost entirely within the bounds of normality. Even populous England, despite a death rate which soared sharply to a great height in March before falling equally sharply back by the middle of June, has spent most of the year chugging along below the “substantial increase” line, with the usual increase as winter approaches. A further chart at Covid-19 in Proportion? shows that
Levels of mortality in 2019/2020 are very similar to those suffered in 1999/2000
Definitely not the Black Death, then, nor even the 1918 influenza. In fact, one of the world’s premier epidemiologists, John Ioannidis, has long been assuring us that the infection fatality rate of Covid-19 is comparable with that of a bad flu. His early estimate, in March, of a case fatality rate in the general population of between 0.05% and 1.0%, as indicated by the outbreak on the cruise ship Diamond Princess – a conclusion for which the eminent professor was, hilariously, censored by the non-scientists at YouTube.
Yet now we are being told that only mass vaccination against this fairly run-of-the-mill virus will allow us to return to any semblance of normal life. By special dispensation, millions of doses of insufficiently tested vaccine are already in the pipeline, with a guarantee of no come-back for Big Pharma or for doctors turning a blind eye to the precept “First to do no harm”, should those treated be hit with damaging repercussions on their health or, indeed, on life itself.
We are told that we should all accept the suspect panacea regardless, in order to beat “this dreadful virus”: it’s quite safe – honest, you’ve got my word for it, says Matt Hancock. Yet, side-effects apart, there is no assurance that the Pfizer vaccine, received with jubilation on 8th December by its first grateful recipient, will be effective in preventing either the disease or its transmission: and even if it does turn out to offer initial protection, this may last for as little as three months, so presumably regular repeat injections will be required.
What? Repeat injections! Are the young and healthy facing a lifetime of booster shots against a disease that is dangerous almost exclusively to the old and sick ? And if this isn’t crazy enough, we are being told that, even while being turned into human pin-cushions, we will probably need to go on wearing masks and holding our friends and family at arm’s length well into the future: a future, it is hinted, of health passports and routine mass surveillance, if we wish to travel on public transport or generally engage in life beyond our doorstep.
This, it seems, will be the New Normal – but not to worry! After all, you’re already masking up automatically when you leave the house, aren’t you, and following the one-way footsteps on the pavement as a matter of course? And if it becomes too much of a nuisance to carry your proof of vaccination around with you, well, we should soon be able to offer you the trouble-free alternative of an implanted microchip, to cover all eventualities: health; finance; your social credit score …
Sometimes I think it would be better to be one of the masked zombies. Trusting, obedient, they live in a world which, though threatening, they understand and accept. It is real to them. They know, unquestioningly, that a dreadful plague has been visited upon us, a plague which threatens to wipe out the species: and they know that if they wear their masks faithfully, wash their hands a thousand times a day and steer clear of other human beings, they will be doing their bit to save the nation, and, eventually, be granted the supreme unction of a vaccine; after which, they believe, everything will go back to normal – perhaps with a few more bicycle lanes and wind farms, and somewhat fewer jobs – but hey! – what will that matter, when the nice, compassionate government is promising us all a Universal Basic Income?
For the rest of us, it’s not so simple. The rest of us must live in a world where our own perceptions are remorselessly challenged by the prevailing lie. Guided by rational thought processes and the evidence, we know that we are at no more risk from Covid-19 this year than we were in previous years from one of the more aggressive strains of influenza, but as soon as we venture into the outside world, everything contradicts our inner reality: and though we may not participate actively in the maskerade, we are condemned to a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, compelled to acquiesce silently in the grand illusion being played out all around us, under the direction of the government.
And to what end ?
If it were ever possible to put the enormities which have taken place since last March down to mere blundering, it certainly is not now. The argument that the government has simply blundered, and is now trying to save face by digging itself in deeper does not wash. Nor does the line about saving the NHS. The NHS has regularly survived winter flu seasons which saw beds lined up in corridors and staff rushed off their feet.
Besides, the Nightingale hospitals were quickly whisked into existence: and if the amount of money poured by the government into fear porn and the purchase of dud PCR tests and hastily concocted vaccines had been diverted into more beds, plus better pay for nurses and other non-administrative staff, the lesson might at last have been learned, and future winters made less chaotic.
It was obvious from the start to anyone with a basic education who bothered to check the facts that closing down the economy would be more damaging to life and limb than any virus. Why was this not also obvious to a prime minister with a PPE degree from Oxford, who is surrounded by whole cohorts of colleagues and advisers armed with equally prestigious qualifications?
Even granting an initial surge of panic when faced with hysterical predictions from the Imperial College fortune-telling team, it would have been possible to withdraw in fairly good order after the first lockdown, when many scientists were already saying that the danger had been exaggerated, that the virus was now endemic, and widespread natural immunity was in sight.
Why didn’t our government seize the opportunity, in June, to give themselves a pat on the back, announce that the lockdown had worked, and ease us all back into rationality via an interval of sensible voluntary precautions, as practised in Sweden?
Given a modification of the propaganda, the country would have believed them. When adroitly handled by the Behavioural Insights Team the country, it appears, will believe anything.
Why, then, insist on sticking to the advice of SAGE, and continuing to give credence to the serially failed speculations of Neil Ferguson, rather than attending to the more balanced suggestions offered by Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta?
Instead, the government chose to fan the flames of fear with an intensification of propaganda and orders to mask up, extending the reign of unjustified terror into the autumn, when the annual onset of respiratory diseases began to fill up hospital beds, and allowed the death counts and lockdowns to resume. One by one, those small businesses which survived the first onslaught are giving up the ghost, and it seems that our rulers will not rest content until every last man, woman and child in Britain has been thrown into the linked arms of corporate and state dependency.
What price conspiracy “theories” now ? What we are dealing with are facts.
As countries throughout the world commit consensual suicide to a rousing chorus of “Build Back Better!”, what makes more sense? To shake the head in puzzlement, that so many nations, with one accord, should not only have made exactly the same mistakes earlier this year, but are now insisting, in unison, on entrenching the evils that have been unleashed ?
Or to contemplate the possibility that a network of powerful supranational agencies – banks, corporations, NGOs – have for some time been collaborating to direct the course of world events through placemen and beneficiaries in local and national governments and their attendant bureaucracies, and that “the novel coronavirus” is being used to achieve the final push into an era of artfully camouflaged “global governance”: an era where policies devised by centralised, unelected committees are handed down to elected heads of state in the shells of what were once independent nations, and passed on by them to regional mayors and administrators for implementation and enforcement.
I caught the Asian flu in 1957. So did my mother: the only time I ever knew her to take a couple of days off work. The infection swept through the country, and tens of thousands died. In 1968 the Hong Kong flu passed me by, but once again the death toll was in the tens of thousands.
On neither occasion was it considered necessary to destroy millions of lives and livelihoods by closing the country down, nor was any attempt made to terrorise its inhabitants. Covid-19 is no more lethal than either of those previous infections – less so, unless you actually believe that all those currently described as dying “with Covid”, or dying within 28 days of testing positive, actually died from Covid. Never before have such destructive policies been inflicted on the nation in a futile attempt to wipe out a virus. Never before, outside war time, has the population of the UK been subjected to such outrageous assault and battery by a government propaganda machine.
Draw what conclusion you will. I’m off to feed the ducks. They don’t do anti-social distancing, and they don’t wear masks.
Gillian Dymond, Whitley Bay.


offguardian--2020-12-14--The Great Reset: The end of Capitalism as we know it

To suggest that there has been an overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic may be the understatement of the century .
The spark that began as a rational fear of disease has been fanned into flames of widespread panic which have raged through state and civil institutions .
The spectacle of the US election aside ( or perhaps a case in point ) , it is fair to say that democracy no longer exists .
The rule of law has been suspended .
A ‘ state of emergency ’ persists throughout much of the world and will likely remain indefinitely .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cover of a declared medical emergency , and like some modern Milgram experiment , the masses have fallen into line .
Anyone who dares to even question the new normal – the constant hand sanitizing ; the ubiquitous temperature taking ; the social distancing ; the contact tracing – is now perceived as a threat to society .
If there ’ s an elephant in the room it ’ s probably the fact that there seems to be no pandemic to speak of .
Regardless of the overblown case reporting there is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deaths compared to a normal flu season .
Covid 19 manifests as a mild flu in the majority of people who get sick from it , while presenting no symptoms at all in most people , it scarcely impacts children , and according to a growing number of physicians it can be successfully treated with inexpensive and readily available medications such as vitamins D , C and zinc .
So what on earth is going on ?
Why are plexiglass screens popping up in front of every teller and checkout ?
Why the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have schools and businesses been forced to close ?
Why has the global economy been brought to a standstill ?
Why are people being locked in their homes ?
Why are the elderly being left to die alone ?
This whole thing needs to be unpacked , but where to even begin ?
What is a reasonable point of entry into this horror story ?
What are the foundational facts needed to present a fair and balanced assessment ?
What assumptions , if any , do we need to start with ?
Perhaps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Great Reset , a proposal put forward by the World Economic Forum ( WEF ) to rebuild the global economy ‘ sustainably ’ following the COVID-19 pandemic , which you can read all about here .
But how do we begin to talk about resetting the global economy without at least a perfunctory introduction to the work of Karl Marx , surely one of if not the most important political economist of the modern era ?
You should have learned about him in school .
Dare we frame this story without at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technocracy , the ideology forged in the embers of the Great Depression which sought to remake the world in a more resilient fashion , leaving out the corruptible human element from decision making processes ?
This may seem of esoteric interest only , but when novels like 1984 and Brave New World begin to read more like instruction manuals than fiction , one has to wonder .
Can we even hope to grasp the full extent of our current situation without understanding the fragile nature of the Post WWII economy and how the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gold standard ?
Probably something more of interest to budding political economists , but again , important fundamentals .
Is it essential to know who John D Rockefeller was ; to know about his history of philanthropy and ties to the pharmaceutical industry , or that the very ground on which the United Nations stands was donated by him and his family ?
( Half a century later the building of the World Trade Centre would be financed by his grandsons Nelson and David , but surely I digress… ) Or how David @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protégé Maurice Strong , brought the climate agenda front and centre in the 1970s in order to wrest control of the world ’ s natural resources from sovereign governments and indigenous peoples into the hands of corporate-owned non-government organisations ?
Or should all of this be filed away under ‘ conspiracy theory ’ ?
Would it be useful to understand the perverse creed of transhumanism , where its agenda intersects with all of the above , and what radical cultural shift has led to puberty blockers now being commonly prescribed to mentally disordered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reality can no longer be spoken in polite company ?
All of these are potential chapters of a book which I simply don ’ t have the time or energy to write .
So for our present purposes can we just agree that when you live under a system that rewards wealth and power and prioritises private profit over human need , and distribute that out across 7 billion people , you end up with the worst aberrations the human species can produce at the apex of power ?
We are ruled over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much for you to take in , I suggest you leave off here and go back to your favourite television news channel and await further programming .
Hint : it doesn ’ t matter which channel .
When six mega corporations own all of the news outlets , IT ’ S ALL FAKE NEWS .
Nothing is as it seems .
The world as we knew it was never as it seemed anyway .
But now there has been a fundamental change .
To put this into historical context , to speak of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a distinct historical period with its own distinctive economic and social characteristics .
Chief among these is a system of property relations controlled by markets , which exist within agreed institutional frameworks backed by political authority .
“ Private property is the golden calf of capitalism and unregulated capitalism is the bible of the ruling class.
” writes Bernd Hamm .
A succinct observation , but I feel the metaphor needs to be extended somewhat , for it seems to me that the golden calf , once worshipped , is now being sacrificed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fundamental to understanding our current situation .
Marx was absolutely correct when he said that the crises of capitalist production are due to under-consumption , ie , production outstripping demand .
In a nutshell , continuing to produce more and more while paying workers less and less results in workers not being able to afford to buy the goods they produce .
Marx describes this as an internal contradiction ; A contradiction embedded in the very DNA of the capitalist system .
Let ’ s not fool ourselves that the ruling class haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and don ’ t know what fate awaits them if capitalism is allowed to follow its ordained path .
Which is why I suggest they have chosen to bring the revolution to the toiling masses , before we bring it to them .
The current global recession may have been inevitable , but the ( mis ) management of the pandemic has been a wrecking ball .
The dire situation in which we now find ourselves presents a “ narrow window of opportunity ” , according to Klaus Schwab , founder and CEO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ reflect , reimagine , and reset our world ” .
It all sounds quite noble and grand , until you realise this cosplaying sociopath is actually calling for the complete annihilation of national economies – economies which have still not recovered from the 2008 global capitalist crisis .
The BoE is calling this the biggest recession since 1706 .
That ’ s not just a 300 year credit bubble , but the entire capitalist enterprise .
The entire modern era .
Capitalism , liberalism , democracy , all gone in one fell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coming back – they have made certain of it .
What we are seeing today is a shift away from production based economies , which you can read all about in the WEF ’ s own literature .
What is proposed by the resetters under the rubric of ‘ building back better ’ is not capitalism ; it is a different system of social and economic organisation altogether .
A ‘ sharing economy ’ in the new parlance – a system of energy inputs and outputs perfectly balanced thanks to the modern marvels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Things/Internet of Bodies .
The defining features of capitalism – competitive markets , a price system , private property and the recognition of property rights , voluntary exchange and wage labor – are conspicuously absent from this new economy , along with any hope of upward mobility .
In real language this is TECHNOCRACY .
Marx was right when he predicted that capitalism would end because of its own internal contradictions .
He was naive to think it would necessarily end due to the revolutionary struggle of the working class .
The ruling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system they intend to foist on us next will be more efficient , more resilient , and more brutal than anything John D Rockefeller could have conceived of in his wildest fantasies .
I was asked by a comrade recently why I labour the point that we are no longer living under capitalism .
To this I can only answer , how are we supposed to mount an effective counter attack when we aren ’ t aware that the terrain has changed ?
Whistling in the dark and pissing into the wind at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We need to address our changing material conditions and update our theoretical framework , or we risk becoming irrelevant .
What we are seeing is not just business as usual .
Not just the latest power grab ; the latest upward redistribution of wealth to the 1 % .
Nor is it ‘ just ’ fascism , ie capitalism in crisis mode .
What we are seeing , or rather failing to see , is so much more than this .
In order to fully understand , we need to look past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The virus is theatre .
Just like climate change was theatre .
‘ Climate change ’ is a deliberately meaningless buzzword invented to serve elite interests .
Blaming all of our problems on an invisible gas which makes up 0.04 % of the atmosphere does nothing to address any of the serious environmental issues we face .
Rather the proposed link between atmospheric warming and ‘ greenhouse ’ gases acts as a diversion from issues which the elites have no intention of addressing .
Deforestation is something we desperately need to take action @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make way for solar farms clearly misses the point .
Dumping billions of tonnes of plastic and chemical waste into the oceans each year poses a serious danger to marine ecosystems and ultimately the entire food chain , but this pales next to current plans by multinational conglomerates to begin strip-mining the ocean floor .
The destruction of aquifers through horizontal drilling puts our precious water supply under continual threat and is allowed to go ahead because natural gas is considered a clean fuel ?
Blow me .
Modern industrial farming practices , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact on biodiversity , but are integral to supply chain management under ‘ green capitalism ’ .
I could go on and on .
But while the climate change industry has been a boon for certain elite interests , it failed the ultimate test – the total transformation of society .
Despite all the expert scientists prophesying certain extinction within decades , the looming threat of a climate apocalypse was still not enough to justify the changes we ’ ve seen in recent months .
They needed something more tangible .
They needed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bodies piling up .
At least on TV .
Enter covid-19 – Something we could all be REALLY scared of .
And just like that , governments acted in perfect synchronicity , on the advice of ‘ expert panels ’ and ‘ top scientists ’ , to put the brakes on national economies ; economies with no more levers left to pull .
25 % of small businesses have now closed , most never to reopen , while retail and tech giants have swept up their market share posting record profits .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added $ 70 billion to his personal wealth , while Elon Musk has pocketed a cool $ 110 billion .
Small change compared to what Bill Gates stands to make from a vaccine which will likely be required by everyone , every year , for life .
This a corporate coup d ’ etat .
We are never going back to ‘ normal ’ .
“ Build back better ” , they keep repeating .
As if they have any intention of rebuilding the pillars of liberal democracy which they just took the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speech , freedom of peaceful assembly etc .
Nope .
If you comply with the new rules they might issue you a “ freedom passport ” .
So long as your shots are up to date and your social credit is good you might even get to keep your pension or your disability payment .
But probably not your house .
A few are talking about it .
There are vague murmurings from the conservative and libertarian camps warning us about this diabolical plot by the elites to install world socialism .
Because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t like is socialism , right ?
Because they have never studied history or political science , in fact most of them sound like they have never read a book .
They just repeat what they hear from their favourite right wing pundits .
Remember those six corporations ?
No , the Great Reset is not about socialism .
Would that that were the case .
The oligarchs want to create a permanent rentier class .
They and their kind will own ALL while the rest of us own nothing .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elimination of private property and restoration of the commons .
n the new economy , everything will be rented .
No one needs to sleep all the time .
Why own a bed when you can rent or share one ?
Why own a car or a bicycle when you can pool a ride in a self driving taxi cab ?
You get the idea .
Some are calling it stakeholder capitalism , but this too is inaccurate .
A more accurate term would be techno-feudalism .
Fiat currency has outlived its usefulness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact markets which will trade in human misery while biometric sensors track our every move .
Did you ever wonder why they call it the world wide web ?
If it ’ s not obvious by now why they are in such a rush to roll out 5G , just read/watch any dystopian sci-fi made in the last fifty years .
This is the world they are creating for us right now .
The old one is gone , and is not coming back .
One way or another we are going forward @ @ @ @ @

Sean Stinson
To suggest that there has been an overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic may be the understatement of the century. The spark that began as a rational fear of disease has been fanned into flames of widespread panic which have raged through state and civil institutions. The spectacle of the US election aside (or perhaps a case in point), it is fair to say that democracy no longer exists. The rule of law has been suspended.
A ‘state of emergency’ persists throughout much of the world and will likely remain indefinitely. All of this has been normalised under cover of a declared medical emergency, and like some modern Milgram experiment, the masses have fallen into line. Anyone who dares to even question the new normal – the constant hand sanitizing; the ubiquitous temperature taking; the social distancing; the contact tracing – is now perceived as a threat to society.
If there’s an elephant in the room it’s probably the fact that there seems to be no pandemic to speak of. Regardless of the overblown case reporting there is no significant spike in the overall number of deaths compared to a normal flu season.
Covid 19 manifests as a mild flu in the majority of people who get sick from it, while presenting no symptoms at all in most people, it scarcely impacts children, and according to a growing number of physicians it can be successfully treated with inexpensive and readily available medications such as vitamins D, C and zinc.
So what on earth is going on? Why are plexiglass screens popping up in front of every teller and checkout? Why the mask mandates and tracing apps? Why have schools and businesses been forced to close? Why has the global economy been brought to a standstill? Why are people being locked in their homes? Why are the elderly being left to die alone?
This whole thing needs to be unpacked, but where to even begin? What is a reasonable point of entry into this horror story? What are the foundational facts needed to present a fair and balanced assessment? What assumptions, if any, do we need to start with?
Perhaps we could just dive right into the Great Reset, a proposal put forward by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to rebuild the global economy ‘sustainably’ following the COVID-19 pandemic, which you can read all about here.
But how do we begin to talk about resetting the global economy without at least a perfunctory introduction to the work of Karl Marx, surely one of if not the most important political economist of the modern era? You should have learned about him in school.
Dare we frame this story without at least a minimal understanding of the cult of technocracy, the ideology forged in the embers of the Great Depression which sought to remake the world in a more resilient fashion, leaving out the corruptible human element from decision making processes? This may seem of esoteric interest only, but when novels like 1984 and Brave New World begin to read more like instruction manuals than fiction, one has to wonder.
Can we even hope to grasp the full extent of our current situation without understanding the fragile nature of the Post WWII economy and how the petrodollar system came to effectively replace the gold standard? Probably something more of interest to budding political economists, but again, important fundamentals.
Is it essential to know who John D Rockefeller was; to know about his history of philanthropy and ties to the pharmaceutical industry, or that the very ground on which the United Nations stands was donated by him and his family? (Half a century later the building of the World Trade Centre would be financed by his grandsons Nelson and David, but surely I digress…)
Or how David Rockefeller, aided and abetted by his protégé Maurice Strong, brought the climate agenda front and centre in the 1970s in order to wrest control of the world’s natural resources from sovereign governments and indigenous peoples into the hands of corporate-owned non-government organisations? Or should all of this be filed away under ‘conspiracy theory’?
Would it be useful to understand the perverse creed of transhumanism, where its agenda intersects with all of the above, and what radical cultural shift has led to puberty blockers now being commonly prescribed to mentally disordered children? Or why the words biological reality can no longer be spoken in polite company?
All of these are potential chapters of a book which I simply don’t have the time or energy to write. So for our present purposes can we just agree that when you live under a system that rewards wealth and power and prioritises private profit over human need, and distribute that out across 7 billion people, you end up with the worst aberrations the human species can produce at the apex of power? We are ruled over by psychopaths.
If that is too much for you to take in, I suggest you leave off here and go back to your favourite television news channel and await further programming. Hint: it doesn’t matter which channel. When six mega corporations own all of the news outlets, IT’S ALL FAKE NEWS.
Nothing is as it seems. The world as we knew it was never as it seemed anyway. But now there has been a fundamental change.
To put this into historical context, to speak of the modern era is to speak of a distinct historical period with its own distinctive economic and social characteristics. Chief among these is a system of property relations controlled by markets, which exist within agreed institutional frameworks backed by political authority.
“Private property is the golden calf of capitalism and unregulated capitalism is the bible of the ruling class.” writes Bernd Hamm. A succinct observation, but I feel the metaphor needs to be extended somewhat, for it seems to me that the golden calf, once worshipped, is now being sacrificed.
Marx’s theoretical framework is fundamental to understanding our current situation. Marx was absolutely correct when he said that the crises of capitalist production are due to under-consumption, ie, production outstripping demand. In a nutshell, continuing to produce more and more while paying workers less and less results in workers not being able to afford to buy the goods they produce.
Marx describes this as an internal contradiction; A contradiction embedded in the very DNA of the capitalist system.
Let’s not fool ourselves that the ruling class haven’t studied history as well, and don’t know what fate awaits them if capitalism is allowed to follow its ordained path. Which is why I suggest they have chosen to bring the revolution to the toiling masses, before we bring it to them.
The current global recession may have been inevitable, but the (mis)management of the pandemic has been a wrecking ball. The dire situation in which we now find ourselves presents a “narrow window of opportunity”, according to Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the WEF, in which to “reflect, reimagine, and reset our world”.
It all sounds quite noble and grand, until you realise this cosplaying sociopath is actually calling for the complete annihilation of national economies – economies which have still not recovered from the 2008 global capitalist crisis.
The BoE is calling this the biggest recession since 1706. That’s not just a 300 year credit bubble, but the entire capitalist enterprise. The entire modern era. Capitalism, liberalism, democracy, all gone in one fell swoop. And it’s never coming back – they have made certain of it.
What we are seeing today is a shift away from production based economies, which you can read all about in the WEF’s own literature. What is proposed by the resetters under the rubric of ‘building back better’ is not capitalism; it is a different system of social and economic organisation altogether.
A ‘sharing economy’ in the new parlance – a system of energy inputs and outputs perfectly balanced thanks to the modern marvels of the blockchain and the Internet of Things/Internet of Bodies. The defining features of capitalism – competitive markets, a price system, private property and the recognition of property rights, voluntary exchange and wage labor – are conspicuously absent from this new economy, along with any hope of upward mobility. In real language this is TECHNOCRACY.
This is a paradigm shift.
Marx was right when he predicted that capitalism would end because of its own internal contradictions. He was naive to think it would necessarily end due to the revolutionary struggle of the working class. The ruling class have other options, and the system they intend to foist on us next will be more efficient, more resilient, and more brutal than anything John D Rockefeller could have conceived of in his wildest fantasies.
I was asked by a comrade recently why I labour the point that we are no longer living under capitalism. To this I can only answer, how are we supposed to mount an effective counter attack when we aren’t aware that the terrain has changed? Whistling in the dark and pissing into the wind at the same time takes no special talent. We need to address our changing material conditions and update our theoretical framework, or we risk becoming irrelevant.
What we are seeing is not just business as usual. Not just the latest power grab; the latest upward redistribution of wealth to the 1%. Nor is it ‘just’ fascism, ie capitalism in crisis mode. What we are seeing, or rather failing to see, is so much more than this. In order to fully understand, we need to look past the theatrics and examine the mechanics.
The virus is theatre. Just like climate change was theatre. ‘Climate change’ is a deliberately meaningless buzzword invented to serve elite interests. Blaming all of our problems on an invisible gas which makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere does nothing to address any of the serious environmental issues we face. Rather the proposed link between atmospheric warming and ‘greenhouse’ gases acts as a diversion from issues which the elites have no intention of addressing.
Deforestation is something we desperately need to take action on. Clearing millions of acres to make way for solar farms clearly misses the point. Dumping billions of tonnes of plastic and chemical waste into the oceans each year poses a serious danger to marine ecosystems and ultimately the entire food chain, but this pales next to current plans by multinational conglomerates to begin strip-mining the ocean floor.
The destruction of aquifers through horizontal drilling puts our precious water supply under continual threat and is allowed to go ahead because natural gas is considered a clean fuel? Blow me. Modern industrial farming practices, GMO foods and fertilizers have a devastating impact on biodiversity, but are integral to supply chain management under ‘green capitalism’. I could go on and on.
But while the climate change industry has been a boon for certain elite interests, it failed the ultimate test – the total transformation of society. Despite all the expert scientists prophesying certain extinction within decades, the looming threat of a climate apocalypse was still not enough to justify the changes we’ve seen in recent months.
They needed something more tangible. They needed to be able to show the dead bodies piling up. At least on TV. Enter covid-19 – Something we could all be REALLY scared of.
And just like that, governments acted in perfect synchronicity, on the advice of ‘expert panels’ and ‘top scientists’, to put the brakes on national economies; economies with no more levers left to pull. 25% of small businesses have now closed, most never to reopen, while retail and tech giants have swept up their market share posting record profits.
In the last eight months Jeff Bezos has added $70 billion to his personal wealth, while Elon Musk has pocketed a cool $110 billion. Small change compared to what Bill Gates stands to make from a vaccine which will likely be required by everyone, every year, for life.
This a corporate coup d’etat. We are never going back to ‘normal’.
“Build back better”, they keep repeating. As if they have any intention of rebuilding the pillars of liberal democracy which they just took the axe to. Privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of peaceful assembly etc. Nope. If you comply with the new rules they might issue you a “freedom passport”. So long as your shots are up to date and your social credit is good you might even get to keep your pension or your disability payment. But probably not your house.
A few are talking about it. There are vague murmurings from the conservative and libertarian camps warning us about this diabolical plot by the elites to install world socialism. Because, well because anything they don’t like is socialism, right?
Because they have never studied history or political science, in fact most of them sound like they have never read a book. They just repeat what they hear from their favourite right wing pundits. Remember those six corporations?
No, the Great Reset is not about socialism. Would that that were the case. The oligarchs want to create a permanent rentier class. They and their kind will own ALL while the rest of us own nothing. This is fundamentally different from socialism which seeks the elimination of private property and restoration of the commons.
n the new economy, everything will be rented. No one needs to sleep all the time. Why own a bed when you can rent or share one? Why own a car or a bicycle when you can pool a ride in a self driving taxi cab? You get the idea.
Some are calling it stakeholder capitalism, but this too is inaccurate. A more accurate term would be techno-feudalism. Fiat currency has outlived its usefulness. Capital markets are being replaced by impact markets which will trade in human misery while biometric sensors track our every move. Did you ever wonder why they call it the world wide web? If it’s not obvious by now why they are in such a rush to roll out 5G, just read/watch any dystopian sci-fi made in the last fifty years.
This is the world they are creating for us right now. The old one is gone, and is not coming back. One way or another we are going forward.
But where to?