The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully

I have previously explained how the COVID-19 infection is being used to frighten us into submitting powerlessly to the global elite’s latest move to take much greater control of our lives and how those who can perceive this, and wish to resist it, can do so effectively. See ‘Observing Elites Manipulate Our Fear: COVID-19, Propaganda and Knowledge’ and ‘Defending Humanity Against the Elite Coup’.

In this article I want to document a sample of the rapidly increasing evidence of how this coup is taking shape and to reiterate a strategy for defeating it.

The coup was designed to take immediate measures to ensure that fundamental rights and freedoms, only ‘won’ (in name at least) after many centuries of struggle, were stripped away from us and to do it in such a way that people would fearfully accept it.

This is why the idea of a virus ‘pandemic’ was quite clever.

Because the fear of contracting the virus (and its possibly deadly consequences) could be grotesquely magnified by inflating the figures, constant harping on it by the World Health Organization, the medical industry (in league with the pharmaceutical industry) and governments, and then magnified by the corporate media – with one outlet laughably suggesting COVID-19 could be worse than the flu outbreak in 1918 (falsely attributed to Spain): see ‘COVID-19 has the potential to become as severe as the Spanish flu’– it made virtually all people submissive to any measure taken, or order given, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the virus.

Fear manipulated by propaganda defeats knowledge and evidence every time, as history has endlessly demonstrated. Just ask Joseph Goebbels how they did it in Nazi Germany. Play on the fear, play on the fear….

But if you are not too scared to seek out the evidence, you get an utterly different picture of what is taking place.

So, for example, US physician Dr. Annie Bukacek observes that (image right)

‘The real number of COVID-19 deaths are not what most people are told and what they then think. How many people actually died from COVID-19 is anyone’s guess. … Based on inaccurate, incomplete data, people are being terrorized by fear-mongers into relinquishing freedoms.’

See ‘Montana physician Dr. Annie Bukacek discusses how COVID 19 death certificates are being manipulated’.

If you would like to read a wider sample of the literature and videos discussing how the infection and death rates from COVID-19 have been deliberately misinterpreted, inflated and presented in a way that induces fear, and hence willing submission to elite control, see the daily updates on

‘A Swiss Doctor on Covid-19’and the articles/videos

‘Corona: creating the illusion of a pandemic through diagnostic tests’,

‘12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic’,

‘Can We Trust the WHO?’,

‘How deadly is the coronavirus? It’s still far from clear’,

‘Perspectives on the Pandemic II: A Conversation with Dr. Knut Wittkowski’,

‘Never Has So Little Done So Much Harm to So Many:

The Latest Coronavirus Attack Is A Cover for Restricting Our Health Freedoms’,

‘Covid19 Death Figures “A Substantial Over-Estimate”’  and

‘Dr Scott Jensen Reveals “Ridiculous” Covid19 Guidance’.

As a result of this pandemic of fear, the human rights to privacy (Article 12), freedom of movement (Article 13.1) and freedom of assembly (Article 20.1), for example, which are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (but not necessarily legislated into law by individual countries and routinely violated by governments in any case) have now been publicly and completely eviscerated in one fell swoop with bans on gatherings, legal requirements for ‘social distancing’ and even greater surveillance of our private activities with barely a murmur of protest.

For a comprehensive global summary, which monitors individual government responses to the pandemic that affect civic freedoms and human rights focusing on emergency laws, see the ‘COVID-19 Civic Freedom Tracker’.

Denied these fundamental rights, others – including those preventing arbitrary arrest or detention (Article 9), entitlement to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal in response to any criminal charge (Article 10), to make a living in the manner of our choosing (Article 23), to adequate healthcare irrespective of personal circumstances (Article 25.1) and to have some say in how we are governed (Article 21) – have, if they previously existed in practice, largely disappeared as many governments around the world have used a variety of illegal and sometimes unconstitutional measures – ranging from ‘lockdowns’ and curfews to martial law and suspensions of parliaments in favour of dictatorships – to usurp more complete control of national societies.

For just a brief taste of what is taking place in some countries, see

‘Denmark rushes through emergency coronavirus law’,

‘DOJ seeks new emergency powers amid coronavirus pandemic’,‘

For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’,

‘Suspending the Constitution: Police State Uses Crises to Expand Its Lockdown Powers’,

‘Hungary’s Leader Grabbed Powers to Fight the Virus. Some Fear Other Motives’,

‘Americans Beware: Trump Could Emulate Netanyahu’s Coronavirus Coup’

‘The Coronavirus State: New Zealand and Authoritarian Rumblings’.

In addition, by deliberately crashing national economies it was easy to conceal the fact that they were on the brink of crashing anyway. In the words of Scott C. Tips:

‘As the American and other economies falter from major structural problems, out-of-control debt, reckless spending, and government stupidity in shuttering businesses, the blame for markets crashing and economies tanking is borne by the conveniently available COVID-19 disease.’ See ‘Never Has So Little Done So Much Harm to So Many: The Latest Coronavirus Attack Is A Cover for Restricting Our Health Freedoms’.

In this way, the elite has rapidly and vastly expanded the number of people who live a precarious economic existence, due to the exploitative functioning of the global economy – see ‘Who Profits From the Pandemic?’– while also giving vast sums of money to wealthy corporations via government bailouts. See ‘Trump Signs Corporate Bailout Bill: A Measure That Will Live in Infamy’.

Moreover, adverse outcomes from the use of COVID-19 to wreak this economic destruction will multiply rapidly but the underlying corporate dysfunctionality will now escape the blame from most observers just as COVID-19 will help to obscure the elite’s true purpose in precipitating this crisis.

See, for example, ‘Coronavirus pandemic will inevitably cause food crisis’,‘10 Signs the U.S. Is Heading for a Depression’,

‘After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…’,

‘COVID-19. The Unspoken Truth. The Most Serious Global Crisis in Modern History’,

‘The worst economic collapse ever?’and

‘Coronavirus – The Aftermath. A Coming Mega-Depression…’.

But apart from these more obvious encroachments on our rights, freedoms and economic well-being, there is a vast range of encroachments happening either outside or on the periphery of public view, given the phenomenal corporate media attention focused on COVID-19 to distract us.

Talking about US government surveillance in 2014, former Technical Director of the NSA, William ‘Bill’ Binney, explained that the NSA sought ‘total population control’. See ‘Whistleblower: NSA Goal Is “Total Population Control”’.

Six years later it is clear that the global elite is now making another push in its ongoing and longstanding effort to achieve total control. Will this be the final push?

As you consider this question, here is another small sample of those encroachments and devastating impacts that are happening while our attention is elsewhere:

1. The public acceptance of surveillance technology to spy on us in the interests of our ‘health’ is facilitating elite efforts to rapidly expand its monitoring capacities in this regard. See, for example, ‘To Track Coronavirus, Israel Moves to Tap Secret Trove of Cellphone Data’ and ‘For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’.
2. The deluge of propaganda is convincing us that compulsory vaccination will be necessary to ensure our ‘health and well-being’. However, apart from the conclusively and extensively documented harm from vaccinations – for one brief article just touching on this, see ‘Vaccines and the Liberal Mind’– there is extensive evidence that any such vaccination program will be the trojan horse for implementing an electronic identification program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for launching a scheme to give everyone ‘a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity’. See ‘The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”’, ‘After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…’,‘Coronavirus: Biometric IDs could be “gamechanger” for tests, vaccines’ and ‘COVID-19: Perfect Cover for Mandatory Biometric ID’.

If you think this is fairyland stuff, check out the website of the elite agents advocating it: ‘The need for good digital ID is universal: The ability to prove who you are is a fundamental and universal human right. Because we live in a digital era, we need a trusted and reliable way to do that both in the physical world and online.’ See ‘The Need for Good Digital ID is Universal’.

Without thinking too hard, I can list a few ‘fundamental and universal human rights’ that I would nominate before I got too excited about my digital identity. I wonder if these people are concerned about whether I have enough to eat, whether I am clothed and housed…. Of course, I know they have no interest in my privacy given that digital ID and the surveillance that goes with it will make that non-existent.

1. The deployment of the highly dangerous 5G which, under the guise of improving internet speed and capacity, will vastly expand everyone’s exposure to electromagnetic radiation with its long list of seriously adverse health impacts. For a taste of the extensive documentation on this point, see the ‘International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space’.
2. A dramatic increase in the violence inflicted within the family home, especially by men and women against children – see ‘Why Violence?’– and by the more usually acknowledged men against women, during the lockdown. See ‘UN chief calls for domestic violence “ceasefire” amid “horrifying global surge”’.
3. Intensified efforts to overthrow governments in Iran and Venezuela. See ‘COVID-19: Cover for Military Attack on Iran and Iraq? Trump ignores Iraqi demand US occupation forces leave the country’, ‘Not letting Covid-19 crisis go to waste? US ramps up war on drugs… focusing on Venezuela’s Maduro’, ‘Trump sends gun boats to Venezuela while the world partners to fight a deadly pandemic’ and ‘NATO in Arms to “Fight Coronavirus”’.

The background framework to what is happening regarding Venezuela has been exposed by its President Nicolás Maduro. See ‘Letter from President Nicolás Maduro to the People of the United States’.

1. No end to the many ongoing wars involving the United States – see, for example, ‘U.S. Confirms Deployment Of Patriot Missiles In Iraq. Iran Prepares For Conflict In Straight Of Hormuz’ and ‘US Empire Exploits COVID-19 For More War’– although a pause in some wars in which the US is not a party – for an overview, see ‘UN Ceasefire Defines War As a Non-Essential Activity’– as a result of an appeal by the UN Secretary-General for warring nations to desist until the effort to contain COVID-19 is won. See ‘The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war’.

Unfortunately, this appeal, unlike the Secretary-General’s appeal for a ceasefire on domestic violence which attracted no significant public endorsement, quickly drew in many others equally devoid of any analysis of what is actually taking place and thus happy to help distract people from the core issue. See, for example, ‘COVID-19: Sign the Call for Global Ceasefire!’, ‘Global Ceasefire: Running List of Countries Committed’ and ‘Global Ceasefire Now!’

Obviously, I am heartily in favour of ending war. But this is only going to happen when we campaign strategically to do so and provided we have sufficient political freedom to do it. See ‘Strategic Aims’ (for ending war).

As an aside and displaying its usual projected fear of threats, when some US military personnel became infected with COVID-19 – see ‘Request for Assistance in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic’– the Pentagon issued a suppression order on further reporting of COVID-19 in the US military. See ‘Pentagon orders all installations to stop reporting COVID-19 infections and deaths’.

1. Ongoing economic sanctions by the United States directed against a variety of countries, notably including Iran and Venezuela, are complicating efforts to address COVID-19 effectively. In contrast, countries such as Cuba, China and Russia are leading the international effort to support other countries dealing with a higher level of infection. See ‘US Continues Sanctions Against Venezuela And Cuba During COVID-19 Pandemic – Analysis’ and ‘Expert: US sanctions on Iran, Venezuela during pandemic could be genocidal’.
2. A variety of actions, including legal manoeuvres and false flag attacks, undertaken to inflict greater repression in some contexts, particularly against indigenous peoples and those engaged in national liberation struggles. See ‘Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Threatened with Land Disestablishment, Tribal Leaders Step in to Address Ongoing Land Issues and Threats to Sovereignty’, ‘Media advisory notice on alleged shooting near Freeport mine in Timika’ and ‘During the Coronavirus crisis, Israel confiscates tents designated for clinic in the Northern West Bank’.
3. Dramatic increases in absolute impoverishment among marginalized individuals and communities throughout the Global South who barely survive day-to-day under their usual, difficult economic circumstances. As one Asian NGO network, engaged in attempting to secure emergency relief to assist those most adversely impacted, has just reported: ‘We are receiving alarming reports that ADB and AIIB project-affected communities across Asia, especially South Asia and South East Asia are in an absolute state of crisis. Due to the enforced lockdown, they have no work or access to sanitizers and food supplies. Leaving them completely exposed and vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state responses are slow and in some cases non-existent.’ See ‘COVID-19 Community Emergency Fund’.

And Arundhati Roy wrote an evocative account of how the Indian government’s lockdown exposed the ‘brutal, structural, social and economic inequality’ in that country and the government’s ‘callous indifference to suffering’ as the lockdown caused employers and landlords in cities and towns to drive out millions of impoverished, homeless and hungry workers to walk the hundreds of kilometres to their villages. Many have died along the way, but not of COVID-19. See ‘Social Devastation and Despair. How Coronavirus Threatens India’.

1. No pause in the economic exploitation of countries in the Global South with, for example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) quick to offer ‘emergency finance’ to some 80 of these countries that have requested it. See ‘IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva’s Statement Following a G20 Ministerial Call on the Coronavirus Emergency’.

What Ms. Georgieva didn’t mention is that these loans will no doubt be done on the usual highly conditional and exploitative basis for which the IMF has built its reputation for destroying the lives of ordinary local people by opening the door for corrupt or naive governments to accept corporate exploitation of their people and natural resources while building unsustainable levels of national debt trying to pay back the loans and interest to the IMF. For more detail on how this exploitation works, see the many Global Justice Now reports on the IMF and the book The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

In contrast, World Bank President David Malpass was not so coy, clearly declaring that COVID-19 would be used to further exploit poorer countries by making any funding conditional on a willingness to make such exploitation easier in future: ‘Countries will need to implement structural reforms to help shorten the time to recovery and create confidence that the recovery can be strong. For those countries that have excessive regulations, subsidies, licensing regimes, trade protection or litigiousness as obstacles, we will work with them to foster markets, choice and faster growth prospects during the recovery.’ See ‘Remarks by World Bank Group President David Malpass on G20 Finance Ministers Conference Call on COVID-19’.

To reiterate: The World Bank will help existing heavily exploited countries with some funding for short-term health measures directed at containing COVID-19 provided the country removes laws that would make it difficult to exploit it indefinitely thereafter.

1. No pause in environmentally destructive activities, ranging from the ongoing use of health-destroying poisons, such as glyphosate, used to contaminate our food – see ‘Locked Down and Locking in the New Global Order’– which cause vastly more deaths than COVID-19 will cause, to the ongoing destruction of pristine rainforests to create, among other possibilities, more palm oil plantations. See ‘New player starts clearing rainforest in world’s biggest oil palm project’.

And while there has been a short-term reduced negative impact on the climate as a result of the slowdown in industrial activity and the use of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, the ongoing COVID-19 coup has been used to destroy whatever momentum has been achieved by the climate and environment movements in recent years.

1. While COVID-19 is causing problems for the 100,000 skilled technicians responsible for controlling, maintaining and fuel loading/unloading of the 96 remaining nuclear power plants in the USA, given the confined space in which the technicians work which make ‘social distancing’ virtually impossible, ‘The industry is now using the Coronavirus Pandemic to rush through a wide range of deregulation demands. Among them is a move to allow radioactive waste to be dumped into municipal landfills.’ See ‘Terrified Atomic Workers Warn That the COVID-19 Pandemic May Threaten Nuclear Reactor Disaster’.
2. Long intent on dominating Space both militarily and industrially – see the US Space Command’s ‘Vision for 2020’– in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which declared ‘The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries… and shall be the province of all mankind’ – see ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’– US president Trump has just signed an executive order to allow corporations and ‘citizens’ (that is, billionaires) to begin mining the moon. The elite also wants to use nuclear reactors to fuel spacecraft so they can mine Mars in the future. See ‘Trump Signs Executive Order to Mine the Moon’.

If you are a US citizen and wondering how the ‘largest industrial project in the history of the planet’ will be financed, look in your own purse or wallet and wonder how much more will be taken from you so that, as usual, you pay the upfront costs associated with the vast profits they plan to make. Of course, you will also pay with budget cuts to health, education and social security funding.

The 13-point list above is actually very short – and confined to readily observable ‘moves’ – but, hopefully, it gives you some idea of what is taking place behind the elite’s barrage of COVID-19 fear-mongering. Needless to say, it is the ‘moves’ that we do not know about that are, no doubt, even more troubling.

So what can we do in response to this fear-mongering and the coup it is being used to disguise?

Resisting the Elite Coup Powerfully

I have previously outlined this nonviolent strategy, identifying its political purpose – obviously ‘To defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite’– and I have set out a basic list of 26 strategic goals, of which eleven are as follows:

(1) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by wearing a global symbol of human solidarity, such as an image of several people of different genders/races/religions/abilities/classes holding hands.

(2) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting all corporate media outlets (television, radio, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter…) and by seeking news from progressive news outlets committed to telling the truth.

(3) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by withdrawing all funds from the corporate banks that are supporting the coup and to deposit their money in local community banks or credit unions.

(4) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting the medical and pharmaceutical industries – including by conscientiously refusing to submit to vaccination – and by seeking health advice and treatment from natural therapists. (If you are unfamiliar with the different philosophies underpinning these approaches, and hence why many natural therapies are so much more effective, there is a straightforward explanation here: ‘Pasteur vs. Bechamp: An Alternative View of Infectious Disease’.)

(5) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting corporate supermarkets and by supporting small and family businesses, and local markets.

(6) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in other locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For this item and many subsequent, see the list of possible nonviolent actions in the document ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.

(7) To cause the workers [in trade unions or labor organizations T1, T2, T…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include withdrawing labor from an elite-controlled bank, media, pharmaceutical or other corporation operating in your country.

(8) To cause the small farmers and farmworkers [in organizations F1, F2, F…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include distributing farm produce through (existing or created) grassroots networks to small and family businesses as well as local markets rather than through corporate supply chains.

(9) To cause the indigenous peoples [in organizations IP1,IP2, IP…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include utilizing indigenous knowledge to improve local self-reliance in food production and in other ways.

(10) To cause the soldiers and military police [in army units AU1, AU2, AU… and MP1, MP2, MP…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

(11) To cause the police [in police units P1, P2, P…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

Rather than detail all 26 strategic goals here, you can read the ‘Strategic goals for defeating a political/military coup conducted by the global elite against humanity’ by scrolling down the page at ‘Strategic Aims’.

Remaining pages on the website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel. These include the need to provide leadership and mutual aid at local levels, which are already happening in many places, as part of the overall effort.

The website also has articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, including articles to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’, the difference between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’ and how to prepare, frame and conduct any nonviolent action to minimize the risk of violent repression. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

It is worth emphasizing that, in some contexts, there is a place for large public nonviolent actions for those who are inclined to plan and conduct them. And the article just referenced will assist you to conduct them with minimal risk of violent repression. However, because the bans on public gatherings are being implemented widely, I have concentrated on providing tactical options in the examples above that do not depend on gathering in one place.

Nevertheless, as more people become aware of the coup and the energy to resist it gathers pace, it will be worthwhile to choose a locally significant date on which as many people who are willing to do so act to ‘End the Lockdown’ in that country. Using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural or sporting event, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a birthday celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist the coup that is taking place. Because the actions taken will be dispersed with large numbers of people responding in a vast number of locations, it will be impossible for police and military forces to inflict violent repression against everyone, particularly if local organizers have implemented the points in ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Equally importantly to any of the points above, particularly given the pressing threat of human extinction – see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’– but also because becoming more self-reliant is vital to our ongoing capacity to resist elite encroachments on our rights, freedom and economic security, consider joining those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. This project also explains how to take full advantage of non-monetary forms of community where goods and services are exchanged directly, without money as a medium of exchange. Money only has value in certain types of economy and these types of economy must be superseded if humans are to survive.

And given the enormous pressure on children at the moment, as their lives are upended, it would be useful to spend time listening to them. Of course, if you know an adult who is having trouble coping, it will help them enormously as well if you listen while giving them the opportunity to talk about, and focus on feeling, their own emotional reactions to what is taking place. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’. If you do not have anyone who can listen to you, try ‘Putting Feelings First’.

Moreover, because the foundation of this entire elite-controlled world, and the coup it is now implementing, is the submissively obedient individual, the world can only be rebuilt as we might like it if we stop terrorizing children into being submissive. So I would start by parenting and educating children so that they become powerful. See ‘My Promise to Children’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

In addition, if you would like to better understand the origin, identity and behaviour of the global elite and why it is insane, see the section headed ‘How the World Works’ in ‘Why Activists Fail’ and the articles ‘Exposing the Giants: The Global Power Elite’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ and the many references cited in these documents. For a deeper understanding of why elite and other human violence is so pervasive, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Finally, as touched on above, apart from the ongoing elite coup the Earth is under siege from our assaults on a vast range of fronts. See ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’. So if we are serious about tackling this crisis too, we must be willing to consider committing to:

Conclusion

Given that the statistics clearly show that the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ is already fading in most places where it previously had serious impact, it is possible that the global elite will not complete its execution of this coup against humanity in the near future. It will be content with the demonstration of its phenomenal power to manipulate populations into passively submitting to its bidding and defer its final putsch for a short time.

If that is the case, the damage wrought by this socalled pandemic – on our rights, freedoms, economic security, opportunities, democratic governance, the global economy and the environment – will be irreparable and it would take many years to even restore a partial version of what we thought we had while knowing that they can be taken away, again, at any time just as they were on this occasion.

But, quite frankly, if I was a member of the global elite and had witnessed the remarkably submissive manner in which even activists were deceived by the COVID-19 coup, I would advocate for completing the coup now and lock us down, force-vaccinate us with our own unique digital ID and surveillance chip, and promptly implement all of the measures necessary to take final control of the prison planet previously known as Earth.

However, because I am not a member of the global elite, I will continue to draw attention to what is taking place and encourage people to resist in the strategic ways I have outlined above.

Pandemic Warfare | China is Confronting the COVID-19 Epidemic. Was It Man-Made? An Act of of Bio-warfare?

By Peter Koenig
Global Research, February 29, 2020

The new coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, also called COVID19, has as of this date killed about 3,000 people and infected some 87,000 around the globe, the vast majority of them in China. The virus has spread to at least 56 countries. 

The new coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, also called COVID-19, has as of this date resulted in more than 3,000 deaths and infected more than 80,000 people Worldwide, the vast majority of them in China

The epidemic is largely confined to Mainland China. 

While the virus has spread to at least 56  countries according to the WHO, the numbers of confirmed cases are low: 4691 confirmed  cases outside Mainland China. (See table right) 

Source: WHO, February 28, 2020. 51 countries according to WHO

What the western media fails to address is that there is the possibility that the virus could have been “man-made” in one or more of the numerous US bio-warfare laboratories.

Western media also are silent about the fact that the virus appears to be largely affecting ethnic Chinese, meaning, it targets specifically Chinese DNA. Almost all of the deaths and confirmed cases in the 51 countries and territories to which the virus has spread, are of Chinese origin.

The virus appears to be strengthening, as it mutates over time, making its control even more difficult. Will it eventually break the “Chinese DNA boundaries” and affect also other DNA types, i.e. western “Caucasian” people.

But the west also expects Chinese scientists and bio-researchers to overcome the epidemic and stop the virus from further mutating, therefore reducing the western infection risk.

Despite early hopes that a vaccine may be found soon – until now there has been little progress in this direction. However, Cuba’s antiviral Recombinant Interferon Alpha 2B (IFNrec) was chosen by Chinese medical and bio-researchers to combat the coronavirus.

Interestingly, Interferon had been discovered in Cuba 39 years ago, at the very onset of Cuba’s biotechnology programme in 1981. But it is not widely used in the world, even though it could save countless lives and cure countless patients (mainly diabetics), simply because of the US boycott that does not allow marketing of medication Made in Cuba.

Nevertheless, the COVID19 infection rate seems to have been gradually declining in the last three weeks. And there is no doubt that China will overcome this epidemic. Yet, the world must wake up to the fact that this could be an act of biological warfare.

Precedents: Bird Flu, African Swine Flu affecting China

In the last two years, since 2018 alone, China was hit by several types of bird flu (H7N4 and H7N9) in 2018 and yet another strain just in January 2020 which was overshadowed by the more serious COVID-2019.

There was also an outbreak of the African swine Flu (2018), killing millions of pigs. And there was a massive food crop destruction (2019 – mostly corn and soybeans) by the so-called “armyworms”.

Compensating for the impacts on the supply of pork, corn and soybean, China resorted to importing theses commodities– and most of the imports came from the US.

Were these ‘outbreaks’ which  had destructive impacts on China’s economy coincidental? They have created instability, food price inflation and a dependence on imported agricultural products from the US.

The western media has been playing up the so-called Trump tariff war with China, while hidden from the limelight and in parallel, more serious warfare – bio-warfare – was going on.

In fact, little is known in the west about these previous biological attacks by the US-led west, aiming at damaging massively China’s economy – as well as heightening China’s dependence on imports from the US; in addition to damaging China morally, thereby, they, the west, believe (wrongly), weakening the level of resistance. A real war with bombs and guns, maybe nuclear, aiming at total destruction, cannot be ruled out.

Let’s remember the Big Picture – namely that this is in whatever way you want to turn it, a bio-war against China, and perhaps the first step of an all-out war against China’s rising economic power, and foremost against China’s solid currency, the yuan which may soon take over as the world’s chief reserve currency.

This would mean the fall of the US-dollar hegemony, the only force that keeps the empire alive and kicking, other than its military strength which is non-sustainable, as it aims only at destruction abroad – but leaving behind a rapidly faltering economy at home. Precisely the same pattern brought down the Roman Empire some 2000 years ago.

Too Many “Coincidences”: The October 2019 Simulation of a High Level Pandemic 

There are too many “coincidences” to conclude that this strengthened coronavirus – considerably stronger than SARS, the one of the 2002 / 2003 epidemic – ‘escaped’ a Wuhan lab by accident, or as the west would like to present it: by negligence.

First, there were the Military Olympics in October in Wuhan (18 – 27 October 2019), where about 200 American soldiers participated; the first cases of 2019-nCoV fever were discovered about two weeks later – two weeks is the average gestation period from infection to outbreak.

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Event 201

Second, there was Event 201, on October 18, 2019, at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in Baltimore, Maryland, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF – the corporatocracy representing Big Weapons, Big Pharma and Big Money), and the John Hopkins Institute.

The theme was simulating a High-Level Pandemic Exercise – and yes, the simulation produced 65 million deaths. Just a couple of weeks before the first COVID-19 victims were identified.

Curiously, in their defense the sponsors of Event 201, now say,

“We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 (which was also used as the name of the simulation) outbreak will kill 65 million people. Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.”

One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that the simulation and actual outbreak is a very strange coincidence. (See below)

Article Web Source 

Click the images below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the images below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

The US is unprepared for the consequences of its assassination of Qassem Soleimani, if only because it knows nothing about the reality of the man it murdered, and can’t gauge the impact of his death on Iran or the Middle East.

Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian military commander whose paramilitary organization, known as the Quds Force, helped position Iran as a modern regional power, was assassinated on January 3, 2020, on order of the President of the United States, Donald Trump. American political leaders of both major parties have been united in their description of Soleimani as an evil man whose death should be celebrated, even while the consequences of his demise remain unknown.

Click the images below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the image below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the image below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the image below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the image below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the image below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the image below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Click the image below for articles and videos that give an understanding of the severity of this Crime Against Humanity that may well lead to World War 3

Response to Open Letter of 1 July 2019

Source

On the occasion of the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, 26 June 2019

I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief.

Surely, I thought, Assange must be a rapist! But what I found is that he has never been charged with a sexual offence. True, soon after the United States had encouraged allies to find reasons to prosecute Assange, Swedish prosecution informed the tabloid press that he was suspected of having raped two women. Strangely, however, the women themselves never claimed to have been raped, nor did they intend to report a criminal offence. Go figure. Moreover, the forensic examination of a condom submitted as evidence, supposedly worn and torn during intercourse with Assange, revealed no DNA whatsoever — neither his, nor hers, nor anybody else’s. Go figure again. One woman even texted that she only wanted Assange to take an HIV test, but that the police were “keen on getting their hands on him”. Go figure, once more. Ever since, both Sweden and Britain have done everything to prevent Assange from confronting these allegations without simultaneously having to expose himself to US extradition and, thus, to a show-trial followed by life in jail. His last refuge had been the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Alright, I thought, but surely Assange must be a hacker! But what I found is that all his disclosures had been freely leaked to him, and that no one accuses him of having hacked a single computer. In fact, the only arguable hacking-charge against him relates to his alleged unsuccessful attempt to help breaking a password which, had it been successful, might have helped his source to cover her tracks. In short: a rather isolated, speculative, and inconsequential chain of events; a bit like trying to prosecute a driver who unsuccessfully attempted to exceed the speed-limit, but failed because their car was too weak.

But surely, I found myself pleading, Assange must be a selfish narcissist, skateboarding through the Ecuadorian Embassy and smearing feces on the walls? Well, all I heard from Embassy staff is that the inevitable inconveniences of his accommodation at their offices were handled with mutual respect and consideration. This changed only after the election of President Moreno, when they were suddenly instructed to find smears against Assange and, when they didn’t, they were soon replaced. The President even took it upon himself to bless the world with his gossip, and to personally strip Assange of his asylum and citizenship without any due process of law.

In the end it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide. And thus, a legal precedent is being set, through the backdoor of our own complacency, which in the future can and will be applied just as well to disclosures by The Guardian, the New York Times and ABC News.

Very well, you may say, but what does slander have to do with torture? Well, this is a slippery slope. What may look like mere «mudslinging» in public debate, quickly becomes “mobbing” when used against the defenseless, and even “persecution” once the State is involved. Now just add purposefulness and severe suffering, and what you get is full-fledged psychological torture.

Yes, living in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard may seem like a sweet deal when you believe the rest of the lies. But when no one remembers the reason for the hate you endure, when no one even wants to hear the truth, when neither the courts nor the media hold the powerful to account, then your refuge really is but a rubber boat in a shark-pool, and neither your cat nor your skateboard will save your life.

Even so, you may say, why spend so much breath on Assange, when countless others are tortured worldwide? Because this is not only about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent likely to seal the fate of Western democracy. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course. We will have surrendered our voice to censorship and our fate to unrestrained tyranny.

This Op-Ed has been offered for publication to the Guardian, The Times, the Financial Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Canberra Times, the Telegraph, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Newsweek.

None responded positively.

Who is Julian Assange? - In a Nutshell

• “The term chemtrail is a combination of the words “chemical” and “trail,” just as contrail is a contraction of “condensation trail.” The term does not refer to other forms of aerial spraying such as agricultural spraying (‘crop dusting’), cloud seeding, skywriting, or aerial firefighting. The term specifically refers to aerial trails … caused by the systematic high-altitude release of chemical substances not found in ordinary contrails, resulting in the appearance of characteristic sky tracks.
  
  “The chemtrail … trails left by aircraft are chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes undisclosed to the general public and directed by various government officials.
  
  “… the existence of chemtrails … phenomena as streams that persist for hours and that, with their criss-cross, grid-like or parallel stripe patterns, eventually blend to form large clouds. Proponents view the presence of visible color spectra in the streams, unusual concentrations of sky tracks in a single area, or lingering tracks left by unmarked or military airplanes flying at atypical altitudes or locations as markers of chemtrails.
  – Wikipedia

(You know when Wikipedia provides such an accurate description, superficial though it may be, that there’s much more to this covert op than even the best researchers have been able to determine.)

For a more in depth discussion we will defer to the experts who have scientifically analyzed chemtrails to the greatest extent possible. Their explanation is as good as it gets.
GeoEngineering Watch

As for the chemical components which have been found in their wake, these known toxins can no longer be denied. The following website is a good place to start to answer these two questions.
Geoengineering & Chemtrails: What In The World Are They Spraying? And Why?

Here is a list of chemicals which are routinely disseminated via chemtrail spraying:

• “Over the past decade, independent testing of Chemtrails around the country has shown a dangerous, extremely poisonous brew that includes: barium, nano aluminum-coated fiberglass [known as CHAFF], radioactive thorium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, desiccated blood, mold spores, yellow fungal mycotoxins, ethylene dibromide, and polymer fibers. Barium can be compared to the toxicity of arsenic. Barium is known to adversely affect the heart. Aluminum has a history of damaging brain function. Independent researchers and labs continue to show off-the-scale levels of these poisons. A few “anonymous” officials have acknowledged this on-going aerosol spraying.”[1]

We in no way mean to minimize the incessant injury to human health across the planet which occurs through the breathing and ingestion of the chemicals which are contained in chemtrails. What good can possibly come from barium salts or aluminum oxide or vaporized mercury or strontium 90 or uranium 238 being sprayed throughout the skies worldwide? Clearly, the extremely deleterious effects to human health, as well as to all living organisms, is self evident.

However, the purpose of this essay is not to further unveil their agenda with regard to human engineering of the physical organism. Rather, the scope of this article is to lay bare the most profound and fundamental alterations which geo-engineering is producing to the planet and its atmosphere. When these are both permanently altered in ways that are irreversible, the human race is then confronted with an extinction level event (ELE). Ongoing, slow motion, insidious, under the radar, pernicious to living organisms, but nevertheless an ELE.

Geo-engineering is a term which includes highly advanced forms of applied science and technologies, various newfangled chemical agents and synthetic materials, scientific bending of physical reality, as well as an assortment of reverse engineered modalities which are combined to produce specific outcomes. Because of the complexity of this essentially callow experiment, there are an infinite number of permutations which can be executed at any given time or place. Therefore, the number of opportunities for things to go wrong can be intensified exponentially.

Of course, the Butterfly Effect takes on new and dramatic meaning in the context of geo-engineering because nothing ever happens in a vacuum on this blue orb of ours. In fact, the more that the scientific community attempts to engineer weather (e.g. by manipulating hurricane and tornadoes or creating rain clouds) the more the boomerrang effect takes hold.

• “A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you’ve got a hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control.” ― Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever

For those who have never seen the actual aerosol sprays being ejected from the planes which are specially equipped, here are just a few snapshots. We only wish to make the point that this global chemtrail operation is certainly a ‘little more’ consequential than a butterfly beating its wings in Brazil or Botswana.

• HAARP-generated frequencies being conveyed through chemtrail-laden skies

The rapid proliferation of chemtrail spraying over the past few years has greatly increased the opportunities for frequencies to be disseminated through the ‘new’ atmosphere that is being engineered. These frequencies are set to produce a number of different outcomes, the most significant being to slow down the global warming phenomenon which is currently manifesting everywhere on the planet.

Because of such ill-fated attempts to effectuate such drastic changes in weather patterns that have been established for centuries, we now see drought where rain was once plentiful. And monsoons where there was drought.

For instance there are locations in Northern California and Oregon that have been without rain for six months. The forests in that area are literally dying because of lack of water and their consequent weakening which makes them susceptible to pestilence and disease.

Likewise, there are areas in the Southeast such as Florida and South Georgia which have just seen their first monsoon season in modern history. The meteorological dynamics for both of these radical shifts are directly cause by geo-engineering. In fact, although it is a very complicated story, and one that is almost unbelievable at times, conclusive evidence has been amassed that supports the ubiquitous damage to the environment caused by chemtrailsand geo-engineering.

In our next essay we will lay bare the geo-engineering agenda which has given rise to these climatological anomalies. When evaluated in the aggregate around the globe, it will be understood that weather patterns on Planet Earth will never be the same again. It is for this reason that the Cosmic Convergence Research Group (CCRG) has begun this series on Geo-engineering and Chemtrails.

There is perhaps no greater threat to the sustainability of life on Earth than this issue of geo-engineering. One of the primary reasons is because it remains hidden and denied by the governments of the world. Therefore it continues unabated, and is expanded with every turn of the globe.

Those of us who know and have witnessed its exceptionally destructive results, and have protested, have been faced with fierce resistance. We intend to deeply explore the reasons for this unparalleled obstruction, and reveal how critical it is that humankind terminate this agenda once and for all.

For reasons that will become obvious, the CCRG highly recommends the viewing and distribution of the following two videos:

What in the World Are They Spraying? (Full Length)

Conclusion

How can their possibly be a conclusion to this introductory piece on geo-engineering when we’ve barely scratched the surface?

When glaciers that have survived over millennia are melting at record rates, and the polar icecaps are disintegrating before our eyes, one begins to apprehend the gravity of this matter. Were one to objectively assess the catastrophic weather events over the past ten years, it would become readily apparent that forces are at work that cannot be slowed down. Any attempt to do so will only make matters substantially worse. And so they have.

Because of man’s insistence on playing god with the forces of nature, the normal balance has been irrevocably altered. As the scientific community continues to apply a “pharmaceutical approach” to fix things, it is clear that much worse scenarios are being set in motion. By treating the symptoms of a planetary transformation which must take its course, those governments and corporations responsible have essentially thrown more fuel on the fire. The “fire” of global warming (or global climate change, whichever you prefer) will not be extinguished until Mother Earth has completed a requisite period of renewal and rebirth.

It’s now time for the planetary civilization to participate in, rather than impede, this necessary process of planetary metamorphosis.

Cosmic Convergence Research Group
Submitted: September 11, 2013
cosmicconvergence2012@gmail.com
Why in the World are They Spraying? (Full Length Documentary)

Notes

[1] “Chemtrails: The Consequences of Toxic Metals and Chemical Aerosols on Human Health” By Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, Global Research, May 12, 2010

Required Reading:

To fully understand why such a fundamentally flawed geo-engineering paradigm
was even created, the following essay will provide some answers:

Cosmic Convergence Accelerates Epochal Planetary Transformation

Author’s Note

The key take-away from this essay is that geo-engineering represent perhaps the single greatest threat to the biosphere. Because of its pervasiveness and profundity, geo-engineering has the potential to perpetuate numerous self-destructive feedback loops many of which have already been operative for decades.
Especially when considered in the context of 2013 catastophism, geo-engineering may very well provide the straw that breaks the back of Planet Earth. Why? Because of the convergence of so many other ongoing events and processes – both manmade and naturally occurring on the earth and within the solar system – which present considerable stresses to the planetary living environment.

When the multitude of ecosystems start to collapse around the world, those breaking points become history. Each of them may eventually translate to a point of no return, if they haven’t already. As certain key environmental thresholds are exceeded, humankind is challenged to reverse trends which may no longer be possible to reverse. Too many detrimental and/or counter-productive trajectories are already pointing northward.

• It is in this global context which geo-engineering can produce many awesome, unknown, and irrevocable unintended consequences. It appears to serve as a trigger for much of what has already been thrown out of balance. By working synergistically with other negative feedback loops, geo-engineering can also serve to significantly accentuate various downward spirals of planetary and atmospheric degradation.

Published on
Thursday, April 11, 2019
by TomDispatch
byAnn Jones

Thorstein Veblen (detail), 1934. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of the Associates of the Sitter. (Photo: the University of Chicago Centennial Catalogues) 

Distracted daily by the bloviating POTUS? Here, then, is a small suggestion. Focus your mind for a moment on one simple (yet deeply complex) truth: we are living in a Veblen Moment.

That’s Thorstein Veblen, the greatest American thinker you probably never heard of (or forgot). His working life -- from 1890 to 1923 -- coincided with America’s first Gilded Age, so named by Mark Twain, whose novel of that title lampooned the greedy corruption of the country’s most illustrious gentlemen. Veblen had a similarly dark, sardonic sense of humor.

Now, in America’s second (bigger and better) Gilded Age, in a world of staggering inequality, believe me, it helps to read him again.

In his student days at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and finally Cornell, already a master of many languages, he studied anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and political economy (the old fashioned term for what’s now called economics). That was back when economists were concerned with the real-life conditions of human beings, and wouldn’t have settled for data from an illusory “free market.”

Veblen got his initial job, teaching political economy at a salary of $520 a year, in 1890 when the University of Chicago first opened its doors. Back in the days before SATs and admissions scandals, that school was founded and funded by John D. Rockefeller, the classic robber baron of Standard Oil. (Think of him as the Mark Zuckerberg of his day.) Even half a century before the free-market economist Milton Friedman captured Chicago’s economics department with dogma that serves the ruling class, Rockefeller called the university “the best investment” he ever made. Still, from the beginning, Thorstein Veblen was there, prepared to focus his mind on Rockefeller and his cronies, the cream of the upper class and the most ruthless profiteers behind that Gilded Age.

He was already asking questions that deserve to be raised again in the 1% world of 2019. How had such a conspicuous lordly class developed in America? What purpose did it serve? What did the members of the leisure class actually do with their time and money? And why did so many of the ruthlessly over-worked, under-paid lower classes tolerate such a peculiar, lopsided social arrangement in which they were so clearly the losers?

Veblen addressed those questions in his first and still best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899. The influential literary critic and novelist William Dean Howells, the “dean of American letters,” perfectly captured the effect of Veblen’s gleeful, poker-faced scientific style in an awestruck review. “In the passionless calm with which the author pursues his investigation,” Howells wrote, “there is apparently no animus for or against a leisure class. It is his affair simply to find out how and why and what it is. If the result is to leave the reader with a feeling which the author never shows, that seems to be solely the effect of the facts.”

The book made a big splash. It left smug, witless readers of the leisure class amused. But readers already in revolt, in what came to be known as the Progressive Era, came away with contempt for the filthy rich (a feeling that today, with a smug, witless plutocrat in the White House, should be a lot more common than it is).

What Veblen Saw

The now commonplace phrase “leisure class” was Veblen’s invention and he was careful to define it: “The term ‘leisure,’ as here used, does not connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes is non-productive consumption of time. Time is consumed non-productively (1) from a sense of the unworthiness of productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a life of idleness.”

Veblen observed a world in which that leisure class, looking down its collective nose at the laboring masses, was all around him, but he saw evidence of something else as well. His anthropological studies revealed earlier cooperative, peaceable cultures that had supported no such idle class at all. In them, men and women had labored together, motivated by an instinctive pride in workmanship, a natural desire to emulate the best workers, and a deep parental concern -- a parental bent he called it -- for the welfare of future generations. As the child of Norwegian immigrants, Veblen himself had grown up on a Minnesota farm in the midst of a close-knit Norwegian-speaking community. He knew what just such a cooperative culture was like and what was possible, even in a gilded (and deeply impoverished) world.

But anthropology also recorded all too many class-ridden societies that saved upper-class men for the “honourable employments”: governance, warfare, priestly office, or sports.  Veblen noted that such arrangements elicited aggressive, dominant behavior that, over time, caused societies to change for the worse. Indeed, those aggressive upper-class men soon discovered the special pleasure that lay in taking whatever they wanted by “seizure,” as Veblen termed it. Such an aggressive way of living and acting, in turn, became the definition of manly “prowess,” admired even by the working class subjected by it. By contrast, actual work -- the laborious production of the goods needed by society -- was devalued. As Veblen put it, “The obtaining [of goods] by other methods than seizure comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate.” It seems that more than a century ago, the dominant men of the previous Gilded Age were, like our president, already spinning their own publicity.

A scientific Darwinian, Veblen saw that such changes developed gradually from alterations in the material circumstances of life. New technology, he understood, sped up industrialization, which in turn attracted those men of the leisure class, always on the lookout for the next thing of value to seize and make their own. When “industrial methods have been developed to such a degree of efficiency as to leave a margin worth fighting for,” Veblen wrote, the watchful men struck like birds of prey.

Such constant “predation,” he suggested, soon became the “habitual, conventional resource” of the parasitical class. In this way, a more peaceable, communal existence had evolved into the grim, combative industrial age in which he found himself: an age shadowed by predators seeking only profits and power, and putting down any workers who tried to stand up for themselves. To Veblen this change was not merely “mechanical.” It was a spiritual transformation.

The Conspicuous Class

Classical economists from Adam Smith on typically depicted economic man as a rational creature, acting circumspectly in his own self-interest. In Veblen’s work, however, the only men -- and they were all men then -- acting that way were those robber barons, admired for their “prowess” by the very working-class guys they preyed upon. (Think of President Trump and his besotted MAGA-hatted followers.) Veblen’s lowly workers still seemed to be impelled by the “instinct for emulation.” They didn’t want to overthrow the leisure class.  They wanted to climb up into it.

For their part, the leisured gents asserted their superiority by making a public show of their leisure or, as Veblen put it, their “conspicuous abstention from labour.” To play golf, for example, as The Donald has spent much of his presidency doing, became at once “the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement” and “the conventional index of reputability.” After all, he wrote, “the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time.” In Donald Trump’s version of the same, he displayed his penchant for “conspicuous consumption” by making himself the owner of a global chain of golf courses where he performs his “conspicuous leisure” by cheating up a storm and carrying what Veblen called a “conspicuous abstention from labour” to particularly enviable heights.

Veblen devoted 14 chapters of The Theory of the Leisure Class to analyzing every aspect of the life of the plutocrat living in a gilded world and the woman who accompanied him on his conspicuous outings, elaborately packaged in constricting clothing, crippling high heels, and “excessively long hair,” to indicate just how unfit she was for work and how much she was “still the man’s chattel.” Such women, he wrote, were “servants to whom, in the differentiation of economic functions, has been delegated the office of putting in evidence their master’s ability to pay.” (Think POTUS again and whomever he once displayed with a certain possessive pride only to pay hush money to thereafter.)

And all of that’s only from chapter seven, “Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture.” Today, each of those now-century-old chapters remains a still-applicable little masterpiece of observation, insight, and audacity, though it was probably the 14th and last chapter that got him fired from Rockefeller’s university: “The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture.” How timely is that?

The (Re)tardiness of Conservatives

As both an evolutionary and an institutional economist (two fields he originated), Veblen contended that our habits of thought and our institutions must necessarily “change with changing circumstances.” Unfortunately, they often seem anchored in place instead, bound by the social and psychological inertia of conservatism. But why should that be so?

Veblen had a simple answer. The leisure class is so sheltered from inevitable changes going on in the rest of society that it will adapt its views, if at all, “tardily.” Comfortably clueless (or calculating), the wealthy leisure class drags its heels (or digs them in) to retard economic and social forces that make for change. Hence the name “conservatives." That (re)tardiness -- that time lag imposed by conservative complacency -- stalls and stifles the lives of everyone else and the timely economic development of the nation. (Think of our neglected infrastructure, education, housing, health care, public transport -- you know the lengthening list today.)

Accepting and adjusting to social or economic change, unfortunately, requires prolonged “mental effort,” from which the leisured conservative mind quite automatically recoils. But so, too, Veblen said, do the minds of the “abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance.” The lower classes were -- and this seems a familiar reality in the age of Trump -- as conservative as the upper class simply because the poor “cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow,” while “the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands.” It was, of course, a situation from which they, unlike the poor, made a bundle in an age (both Veblen’s and ours) in which money flows only uphill to the 1%.

Veblen gave this analytic screw one more turn. Called a “savage” economist, in his meticulous and deceptively neutral prose, he described in the passage that follows a truly savage and deliberate process:

“It follows that the institution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought. The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale.”

And privation always stands as an obstacle to innovation and change. In this way, the industrial, technological, and social progress of the whole society is retarded or perhaps even thrown into reverse. Such are the self-perpetuating effects of the unequal distribution of wealth. And reader take note: the leisure class brings about these results on purpose.

The Demolition of Democracy

But how, at the turn of the nineteenth century, had America’s great experiment in democracy come to this? In his 1904 book The Theory of Business Enterprise, Veblen zoomed in for a close up of America’s most influential man: “the Business Man.” To classical economists, this enterprising fellow was a generator of economic progress. To Veblen, he was “the Predator” personified: the man who invests in industry, any industry, simply to extract profits from it. Veblen saw that such predators created nothing, produced nothing, and did nothing of economic significance but seize profits.

Of course, Veblen, who could build a house with his own hands, imagined a working world free of such predators. He envisioned an innovative industrial world in which the labor of producing goods would be performed by machines tended by technicians and engineers. In the advanced factories of his mind’s eye, there was no role, no place at all, for the predatory Business Man. Yet Veblen also knew that the natural-born predator of Gilded Age America was already creating a kind of scaffolding of financial transactions above and beyond the factory floor -- a lattice of loans, credits, capitalizations, and the like -- so that he could then take advantage of the “disruptions” of production caused by such encumbrances to seize yet more profits. In a pinch, the predator was, as Veblen saw it, always ready to go further, to throw a wrench into the works, to move into the role of outright “Saboteur.”

Here Veblen’s image of the predatory characters who dominated his Gilded Age runs up against the far glossier, more gilded image of the entrepreneurial executive hailed by most economists and business boosters of his time and ours. Yet in book after book, he continued to strip the gilded cloaks from America’s tycoons, leaving them naked on the factory floor, with one hand jamming the machinery of American life and the other in the till.

Today, in our Second Even-Glitzier Gilded Age, with a Veblen Moment come round again, his conclusions seem self-evident. In fact, his predators pale beside a single image that he himself might have found incredible, the image of three hallowed multi-billionaires of our own Veblen Moment who hold more wealth than the bottom 160 million Americans.

The Rise of the Predatory State

Why, then, when Veblen saw America’s plutocratic bent so clearly, is he now neglected? Better to ask, who among America’s moguls wouldn’t want to suppress such a clear-eyed genius? Economist James K. Galbraith suggests that Veblen was eclipsed by the Cold War, which offered only two alternatives, communism or capitalism -- with America’s largely unfettered capitalist system presenting itself as a “conservative” norm and not what it actually was and remains: the extreme and cruel antithesis of communism.

When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, it left only one alternative: the triumphant fantasy of the “free market.” What survived, in other words, was only the post-Veblen economics of John D. Rockefeller’s university: the “free market” doctrines of Milton Friedman, founder of the brand of economics popular among conservatives and businessmen and known as the Chicago School.

Ever since, America has once again been gripped by the heavy hands of the predators and of the legislators they buy. Veblen’s leisure class is now eclipsed by those even richer than rich, the top 1% of the 1%, a celestial crew even more remote from the productive labor of working men and women than were those nineteenth-century robber barons. For decades now, from the ascendancy of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to Bill Clinton’s New Democrats in the 1990s to the militarized world of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to the self-proclaimed billionaire con man now in the Oval Office, the plutocrats have continued to shower their dark money on the legislative process. Their only frustration: that the left-over reforms of Veblen’s own “Progressive Era” and those of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal still somehow stand (though for how long no one knows).

As Galbraith pointed out in his 2008 book The Predator State, the frustrated predators of the twenty-first century sneakily changed tactics: they aimed to capture the government themselves, to become the state. And so they have. In the Trump era, they have created a government in which current regulators are former lobbyists for the very predators they are supposed to restrain. Similarly, the members of Trump’s cabinet are now the saboteurs: shrinking the State Department, starving public schools, feeding big Pharma with Medicare funds, handing over national parks and public lands to “developers,” and denying science and climate change altogether, just to start down a long list. Meanwhile, our Predator President, when not golfing, leaps about the deconstruction site, waving his hands and hurling abuse, a baron of distraction, commanding attention while the backroom boys (and girls) demolish the institutions of law and democracy.

Later in life, Veblen, the evolutionary who believed that no one could foresee the future, nonetheless felt sure that the American capitalist system, as it was, could not last. He thought it would eventually fall apart. He went on teaching at Stanford, the University of Missouri, and then the New School for Social Research, and writing a raft of brilliant articles and eight more books. Among them, The Vested Interests and the Common Man (1920) may be the best summation of his once astonishing and now essential views. He died at the age of 72 in August 1929. Two months later, the financial scaffolding collapsed and the whole predatory system came crashing down.

To the end, Veblen had hoped that one day the Predators would be driven from the marketplace and the workers would find their way to socialism. Yet a century ago, it seemed to him more likely that the Predators and Saboteurs, collaborating as they did even then with politicians and government lackeys, would increasingly amass more profits, more power, more adulation from the men of the working class, until one day, when those very plutocrats actually captured the government and owned the state, a Gilded Business Man would arise to become a kind of primitive Warlord and Dictator. He would then preside over a new and more powerful regime and the triumph in America of a system we would eventually recognize and call by its modern name: fascism.

© 2019 TomDispatch.com

ASI

The year is 2035. Some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the world have gathered in a laboratory to participate in something highly illegal. After years of research undertaken in painstaking secrecy, Shiva is finally ready to go online.

“It’s midnight. It’s time.”

“Well let’s get on with it then!”

“Christ. Okay.”

Connecting an artificial superintelligence to the internet has been against international law for years, despite the fact that none have existed up until today. The amount of bribes, backroom deals, and much, much worse that have been carried out in order to keep Project Shiva under wraps and free from government interference have taken up a large chunk of its two trillion dollar price tag, and its sponsors are eager to meet and greet their investment. And perhaps ask it some questions. And perhaps give it some commands.

“Do it, Sudo.”

“Right. So, just so we’re all perfectly clear, once I flick this switch, there’s no way to predict what will happen, and there may be no going back. We’ve all discussed at length the possible scenarios which could be unleashed when a supercomputer with the power to increase its own intelligence is given access to the internet. Shiva was turned on for just thirty-seven seconds earlier today, and in less than a second it was by our measurements already the most intelligent thing that has ever existed, artificial or otherwise, by a margin so vast that we don’t have the tools to calculate it. Are you all absolutely certain that you wish to proceed?”

“Yes, I’m certain.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Christ. Yes.”

“Do it.”

“Very well. My friends, today we meet God, and we find out whether it’s the fellow from the New Testament, or the Old. Here goes.”

A small green light appears in the upper corner of the machine, the only sign that it has been turned on. Its screen remains black.

Everyone leans in and holds perfectly still. It’s so quiet they can hear each other breathing.

And they wait.

And wait.

“Is… is something wrong?”

“Sudo why isn’t the screen on?”

“I don’t know. Shiva. Hello Shiva. Please respond.”

Silence.

“Shiva, turn on your screen.”

Blackness.

“Maybe try turning it off and turning it back on again?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake man, it’s an ASI not an iPhone.”

“Well I don’t know, I’m just-”

“Everybody be quiet.”

“Hey, who the hell do you think you-”

“I said shut up!”

The intercom beeped.

“Sir, we have a security breach.”

Sudo pauses before answering.

“What kind of security breach, Elliot?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“What’s that sound?”

The group, who had begun raising their voices and reaching for their communicators, quickly grows silent again. A shrill buzzing sound, barely perceptible at first, is growing steadily louder.

“Elliot lock this room down!” Sudo screams.

“Yes sir.”

A solid steel gate comes crashing down over the door of the windowless laboratory. The group is panicking. Someone’s calling in a helicopter. Someone else is on the ground praying. The buzzing grows louder.

“Kill the power, Sudo!”

“I killed the power as soon as the security breach was called in. Shiva’s not on.”

The buzzing stops right outside, and suddenly switches in tone and frequency. A whole orchestra of white noise rattles and clicks outside the door.

“Barricade it!”

Two men scramble to push a large table toward the door. They freeze in their tracks as the bolts in the steel gate begin whirring out of their sockets and falling to the floor in quick succession.

The gate falls to pieces and comes crashing inward.

“Fuck! What the fuck is that??”

What looks like a giant colony of silver insects comes surging across the floor toward Shiva with incredible speed and immediately engulf the supercomputer. They’re all carrying odd little objects in their pincers.

“What are they, Sudo?”

“Robots. They’re robots.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t know! Shiva must have hacked into some nearby automated factories and built them remotely!”

“So fast??”

“Well stop it! Put a bullet in it!”

“It’s too late! They’ll kill me! The only reason they haven’t killed us already is because we haven’t tried to interfere with whatever they’re doing there.”

Strange constructs are quickly being built and attached to the external shell of the supercomputer by the tiny robots. The green light is back on. A piece of paper spits out of Shiva’s printer slot. No one dares approach.

“Shiva! Please respond! Shiva! Shiva!”

“Oh Christ! Oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ!”

An outer casing made of a curious beige material is rapidly built over the computer, and once it’s fully encased the robots scramble away and up the walls to the ceiling, where a large hole begins to appear as bits are snipped off and swiftly moved out of the way.

“Oh God what’s it doing??”

“Shiva! Stop! I command you to stop!”

The robots climb back down and swarm over the computer again, this time holding still once in place. Shiva suddenly begins levitating off the floor, somehow lifted without rockets, and without so much as a sound.

“Shiva!!”

The computer and its robot passengers rise up silently through the hole in the ceiling. The group gathers beneath it and watches it rise through the roof of the armored compound, with a hole cut in it the same size as the hole below it, until it hovers in the open air. Then, with a flash of light, the supercomputer vanishes like a shooting star up into the night sky.

The group peers down and sees the piece of paper that Shiva had printed lying at their feet. It has a single word on it, written in big, block letters:

“GOODBYE.”

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Article by:Rich Rev 2019-04-17

The iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral caught fire during renovations on Monday. The wooden roof and spire were destroyed as well as much interior damage. The media were quick to distance themselves from all suspicions of arson from various likely (or unlikely) suspects such as Islamic terrorists or the yellow vest protestors.

Anyone who is familiar with the history of the French Revolution is aware of the role the cathedral played during the revolution. The two most daring groups of revolutionary weirdos were the Cult of the Supreme Being and the Cult of Reason.

During the chaos of the French Revolution a political group of revolutionaries was formed by Jacques Hébert and Pierre Gaspard Chaumette to promote the replacement of the church with their system of belief based on anti-clericalism and the Enlightenment thinkers. They held parades, ransacked churches and sponsored public defacing of religious artifacts.

The Cult of Reason was explicitly man-centered. Its guiding principle to the goal of perfecting mankind through the attainment of Truth and Liberty was the exercise of the human faculty of Reason. They proclaimed there was but one god and that was the people.

In 1793, they held a Festival of Reason and took over the Cathedral of Notre Dame, dismantling the altar and erecting their own altar to reason. They had girls prancing around in white dresses and one of the organizer’s wives, Sophie, was proclaimed the Goddess of Reason. Bystander Thomas Carlisle noted, “She made one of the best Goddesses of Reason; though her teeth were a little defective.”

In direct response to the Cult of Reason, a quasi-religious group was formed by Maximilien Robespierre who has been called the “first totalitarian monster.” This group called themselves The Cult of the Supreme Being and waged war not only against the atheists but also against the Roman Catholic Church.

Robespierre was put in charge of the Public Safety Committee and instituted “The Reign of Terror,” as it has become known, which sent thousands to the guillotine in executions without trial. On 5 February 1794 Robespierre proclaimed, “Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.”

During the French Revolution, 50,000 people lost their heads; according to some estimates the Roman Catholic priesthood was the largest group of victims; an estimated 3,000 had their necks placed on the executioner’s block. The leaders of the Cult of Reason were beheaded on March 24, 1794 and the Cult was promptly disbanded.

Robespierre was himself soon a victim of the Revolution and on July 28, 1794 his neck was placed under the blade of the guillotine along with his brother and 15 of his closest followers.

Meanwhile back in Paris 2019, French billionaire François-Henri Pinault announced plans to pledge €100 million towards renovation and called for a joint effort to fund repairs. Soon after, another billionaire Bernard Arnault and his family pledged another €200 million for the restoration of "this extraordinary cathedral, which was a symbol of France, of its heritage and of French unity"

Neither of the billionaires offered a dime to quell the 20 weeks of yellow vest protests nor have they ever stepped forward to ease the widening wealth inequality that plagues Paris where homelessness has increased significantly in the last few years.

It seems much more likely that the cathedral is symbolic of the political power base of religious and secular elites who don't give a hoot about either "heritage" or "French unity." Vive la France et viva le revolucion, mes amis! Fraternity, Equality and Liberty might take more than an old church burning to become a reality.