Category Archives: Facts

The Great Reset for Dummies

[Maybe it’s called “for dummies” but I would say the following article/essay/rant, whatever is not for dummies but for people who don’t mind having their brains challenged. This is how I like to view a global issue: not in little bits of “facts” but in an overall pattern. Show me the whole picture, not just bits and pieces that can be used to turn one frightened individual against another. Show me how a fake “god” is manipulating the world to guarantee his rule will not be challenged by the rank and file.
For those who want more from this author, the article is found at:

Sourcehttp://www.zerohedge.comTue, 11/03/2020

Authored by Tessa Lena via ‘Tessa Fights Robots’ substack

[Sha’Tara]
____________________________________________

The Great Reset for Dummies

Where do we go from here?

The peasants are getting fat, and they are breeding!
Oh no.

What is “the Great Reset”?

The Great Reset is a massively funded, desperately ambitious, internationally coordinated project led by some of the biggest multinational corporations and financial players on the planet and carried out by cooperating state bodies and NGOs. Its soul is a combination of early 20th century science fiction, idyllic Soviet posters, the obsessiveness of a deranged accountant with a gambling addiction—and an upgraded, digital version of “Manifest Destiny.”

The mathematical reason for the Great Reset is that thanks to technology, the planet has gotten small, and the infinite expansion economic model is bust—but obviously, the super wealthy want to continue staying super wealthy, and so they need a miracle, another bubble, plus a surgically precise system for managing what they perceive as “their limited resources.” Thus, they desperately want a bubble providing new growth out of thin air—literally—while simultaneously they seek to tighten the peasants’ belts, an effort that starts with “behavioral modification,” a.k.a. resetting the western peasants’ sense of entitlement to high life standards and liberties (see awful “privilege”).

The psychological reason for the Great Reset is the fear of losing control of property, the planet. I suppose, if you own billions and move trillions, your perception of reality gets funky, and everything down below looks like an ant hill that exists for you. Just ants and numbers, your assets.

Thus, the practical aim of the Great Reset is to fundamentally restructure the world’s economy and geopolitical relations based on two assumptions: one, that every element of nature and every life form is a part of the global inventory (managed by the allegedly benevolent state, which, in turn, is owned by several suddenly benevolent wealthy people, via technology)—and two, that all inventory needs to be strictly accounted for: be registered in a central database, be readable by a scanner and easily ID’ed, and be managed by AI, using the latest “science.” The goal is to count and then efficiently manage and control all resources, including people, on an unprecedented scale, with unprecedented digital anxiety and precision—all while the masters keep indulging, enjoying vast patches of conserved nature, free of unnecessary sovereign peasants and their unpredictability. The king’s world feels far more predictable and relaxed when the chaos of human subjectivity is contained for good.

Plus, as a potentially lucrative aside, a bunch of these tightly managed “assets” can be also turned into new financial instruments and traded. Game on!

In other words, it’s an “efficient” global feudalism that goes much farther than its medieval brother since the scanner is all-seeing: every person, every mineral, and every berry is digitally tagged and tracked. Under that framework, every peasant has a function that is derived not from the mystery of life, and not from their inner calling—but from AI, the master of efficiency and the servant of the king. Ideally, the peasants can be convinced that it’s good for them (or necessary to be safe, see “contact tracing”) and that this is what progress and happiness are like—but if not, there are other ways, from classic violence to virtual prisons to “morality pills.”

The reform in question is meant to disrupt all areas of life, on a planetary scale: government, international relations, finance, energy, food, medicine, jobs, urban planning, real estate, law enforcement, and human interactions—and it starts with changing the way we think of ourselves and our relationship with the world. Notably, privacy is a huge thorn in the collective eye of our “great resetters”—and—as I am typing this, they are pushing their sweet talking points about how privacy is really an outdated concept—especially when it comes to people’s medical data, sheesh—and that we simply cannot move forward with the bright future if silly people keep clinging to their privacy.

I will briefly go over different elements of this slippery reform in a sec—but to sum it up, the desired end result is a giant, joyless, highly controlled global conveyor of everything and everybody where privacy is tremendously expensive, dissent is unthinkable, and spiritual submission is mandatory. It’s like a 24/7 medicated reality, except the medications are both chemical and digital, and they are reporting you back to the mothership, which can then punish you for bad behavior by, say, blocking your access to certain places or by putting a hold on your digital bank account—perhaps without any human intervention at all.

Thus, on a sensory level—as it relates to money and power—this conveyor is an attempt of the super wealthy to organize and monetize their “assets,” including people—more efficiently than ever before. On a theological level, the initiative is shaped by transhumanism, a formal belief system rooted in a pathological feeling of being repelled by all things natural—and a resulting view of biological forms as defective robots, which are made perfect, serial killer perfect, by merging with machines in a way that redefines the meaning of being alive and defies death itself.

I would like to stress that we should never underestimate the importance of subjective feelings and theology in the shaping of historical events. Our entire history is a sum of subjective choices—where the choices of the more powerful and the more driven weigh more. And religious reform, which typically stems from various powerful individuals’ subjective preference for what the big picture should be like, has been a driver of large-scale social, economic, and cultural changes on this planet for centuries. What we are looking at here is a new religion—and as much as I want to believe in the general cleanliness and rationality of the system—on the higher level, we are not dealing with a rational, scientific, honest, benevolent—or even misguided—attempt to make things better. When it comes to the masterminds of the Great Reset, we are dealing with a combination of standard greed—and the emotional pathology of restless, rotting madmen who are freaking out over the maintenance of their property in this new era, and who resent their biological nature as such and want to be gods. Sadly, the crazies are rich and well-connected, and they can hire a million underlings to put on a convincing, feel-good, rational external-facing presentation about their new religion. And to bribe the media. And politicians. And academics. And campaign organizers. And non-profits. And let’s not forget my brethren, the artists, who, out of starvation and indignity, will then create beautiful, artful, moving ads for anything that pays. And by the time the circle is complete, we have a brand new public opinion and technically, still a “democracy”! If only those conspiracy theorists went away…

So, who are the people leading this, and how coordinated is this effort?

From the looks of it, it seems to be the usual suspects: top capitalists of the world, historically wealthy dynasties from different parts of Earth, members of secular and religious royalty, billionaires, etc.—in other words, it’s the people who have enough money to feel like this world is theirs, the 0.0001%—and maybe also the people immediately under them who are seeking upward mobility. Some familiar faces, some faces we’ve never seen.

Obviously, they are not a monolithic mass, and I am sure that they don’t agree with each other on everything and probably compete over who gets to eat more peasants. There is certainly rivalry between the American and the Chinese elites, for example, or between the American and the Russian elites—as well as between different individual super sharks. But all in all, even as they compete, they have shared interests and shared messaging, and there is more strategic camaraderie and common ground between them than between any of them and any of the peasants. For example, none of them is likely to turn down the idea of creating a new class of financial assets to make money off! In addition, they also have advisers—who, in turn, are competing with each other for the highest pay, trying to push their ideas through. All subjective, yet also extensively—and expensively—coordinated in areas of their shared interests.

And currently, the “winning” concept of the day seems to be a world filled with abbreviations: AI, 5G, IoT, and so on. A world where the money is digital, the food is lab-grown, where everything is counted and controlled by giant monopolies, and the people are largely deprived of free will. A world where each element of nature and each living being is either a data host, or a source of energy—or both. A world where the flow of the peasants’ everyday is micromanaged by ever-monitoring, ever-nudging AI that registers thoughts and feelings before the people even get a chance to make those thoughts and feeling their own. A world where living itself is outsourced to the machine, and a human being is essentially a meat suit.

Now, I don’t think that this exact vision will ever come true in full. It is likely to implode before it gets half-way there—and some of what I just described is no more than daydreaming of a very broken mind. But the powerful crazies are trying their best to make this nightmare reality. Thus, the danger is not in being overtaken by suddenly self-conscious AI but in the disruption of normal life and in the utter misery that the crazies may cause to our minds and bodies as they rush to slice and dice the world, using various convenient catch phrases such as “global health crisis” or “climate change.”

And yes, there is definitely coordination and continuity, as there is continuity in dynasties and philosophical trends. Some of it is more ephemeral, and some of it is more concrete. On the ephemeral side, the vision of the “resetters” is related to the futuristic ideas that were popular in the early 20th century, to the dream of a global corporate monopoly that propped up the bolshevik revolution of 1917, and to the overall crave of controlling the world with technology, something that was attempted and failed in the Soviet Union in the 60s—using the language very similar to today’s. On the concrete side, the Great Reset (which by the way is very well coordinated, to the extent that both Biden and Johnson are using the same coded words put forward by the WEF) grows out of the post-WWII efforts to maintain a “correct” power balance in the world, with “correct” financial interests reaping the benefits.

The “sustainability” language, which is an important pillar of the Great Reset marketing kit, was initially created as a part of various United Nation’s programs—such as “Agenda 21” and “Agenda 2030,” and I am sure that during the production of those programs, both elements—conspiracy and benevolence—were present. Both are sets of extremely dry and boring documents about resource management and justice, which read like something written by a tired, square Soviet teacher with a good grasp of bureaucratic terms, written mostly to justify the paycheck of the bureaucrats and the existence of the United Nations. What’s interesting about the latter is that typically, the UN is pretty useless, meaning that people get together, talk, come up with long bureaucratic documents and non-binding resolutions—and then nothing of essence happens. But not this time. Not now. The program’s on! So it must be important to somebody who’s paying. And yes, I am cynical. In everything that happens, there is always a combination of good intentions, greed, ambition, personal relationships, financial interests, delusions, and so on. Politicians talk to financiers, generals talk to politicians, somebody is somebody else’s uncle, and this is how things get done. Unfortunately, the less straightforward the top-down messaging, and the more abundant the propaganda, the less the value of good intentions, and the easier it is for villains to pull off utter absurdities.

And of course, initiatives of such great magnitude may go through very long and quiet “planning phases,” during which the desired ideas are being planted in the heads of the desired people through private conversations, small meeting, funded research, industry conventions, and the like. So by the time the “action” button is pressed, it feels like a trend is already there. And let me repeat again, absolutely everything in history is a result of subjective choices made by subjective people. The way everything in history happens is that people get together, decide what they want to do, and do it. When important people act, the impact is more visible. So, in a way, everything is a “conspiracy,” because everything comes through human agency. And often, the important people cover up their deeds, that shouldn’t be a radical idea.

And yes, by now, the top power holders in the West have figured out that it’s more cost-effective and less labor-consuming for them to just bribe the media “of record,” the scientists, the academics, the politicians, and even the “controlled opposition”—and have them convince the peasants—than to police everything and everyone by force. And by the way, while the pinnacle of this tower is a conspiracy in earnest, in a sense of it being a coordinated effort where the masterminds are acting in general alignment with each other, without disclosing their true long-term goals to the peasants—the rest of the tower is probably the usual human stuff, multiplied by the lack of the old-fashioned, moral sense of responsibility. The usual human stuff is a medley of ambition, hustling, greed, carelessness, arrogance, and even good intentions. The closer to the bottom, the more ignorance and the better the intentions—because most people do believe that they are doing good—but it doesn’t change the tragic trajectory of the “resetting” cavalcade.

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Okay but maybe hold on, there is a real crisis, and the rich have woken up because they want to live? What if there is no conspiracy per se, and they have simply realized that the planet is a mess, and now they want to address the issues of overpopulation and pollution because there really are too many people on the planet who are all over-consuming and polluting? What do you say to that?

I am glad you asked, so let’s talk about that.

It is absolutely true that the soulless, utilitarian approach to nature, to life, and to other living beings has been extremely destructive—with the most immediate, most visible destruction outsourced to “third world countries” and to the less financially fortunate people in the West. (See landfills, Cancer Alley, and unhealthy, poison-filled non-organic foods). It is true that massive consumerism and the use of disposables (brought to us by more or less the same parties who are now scolding people for consumerism) have created a lot of messes. It is true that our oceans and lungs are full of plastic, that the amount of chronic disease is skyrocketing, and that many species are dying off. It is true that our soil, our food, and our bodies are tainted with highly toxic glyphosate. It is true that usually, decades pass between the time manufacturers realize the toxicity of their product and the time when saying so in a conversation stops being a conspiracy theory. All true. However, it is also true that the people who are pointing fingers at social ills and telling us that we need a Great Reset are from same camps and lineages that have caused it in the first place. It is true that underneath the language of their marketing brochures, there is toxicity and havoc that greatly exceed what we have today. Thus, they are either idiots or liars—and I am afraid it is the latter. However rich, they are not even remotely morally qualified to fix anything in this world. And whatever we choose to do to heal our relationship with nature and with each other—it definitely isn’t the technofascist, neofeudal Great Reset.

A metaphor: If the leader of the Rapists Party came up with a Platform Against Rape that didn’t stop the raping but that rebranded the very act by saying that if one uses a pink dildo made of recycled plastic to penetrate, then it’s not rape… would you think it’s a platform against rape in earnest?

So no, they are not the people to lead the way (just check out this garbage in space idea). If we go along, we will end up with a world that looks like this: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/UwahG1s4dqI?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0

Speaking of solutions, there are plenty of activists and local leaders, such as Vandana Shiva, for example, coming up with ways to heal our relationship with nature. There are whistleblowers. There are lawyers fighting corporate giants and sometimes winning. There are doctors risking their careers to protect their patients. There are local farmers. There are artists baring their souls. There are truth tellers. There is dignity, and there is respect if we insist on them. I believe that good long-term solutions come from inner honesty and peace, and that each of us possesses the unique genius that helps us locate our piece of the puzzle, which ultimately heals the world.

As far as there being too many people on the planet, I think even that is spin. Actually, Vandana Shiva has produced analysis of industrial vs. traditional local agriculture in terms of numbers, and it looks like we’ve been lied to by Big Ag about their importance, too. Also, the biggest “demographic problem” in the West right now is the growing number of the old vs. the young. And even in the “developing world,” the trends seem to be different from what we are are taught to think. And furthermore, the planet has enough for all, and the reason we are facing scarcity is because that 0.0001% of people control a lot. Ironically, they are the same people who are worried that there is not enough, pushing the idea of overpopulation—often while breeding enthusiastically—and infecting young brains with the idea of overpopulation to the extent that now, some middle-class young people don’t want to have kids, “to save the planet.” How messed up is that?

And yes, the idea of overpopulation has been worrying the leaders for some decades. I would argue that at times, their thoughts have carried eugenics overtones (see, for example, this 1974 Kissinger Report that brags about “incentivizing” Indian men to get vasectomies). And no, it wouldn’t be completely crazy to posit that eugenics didn’t quite go away since Hitler has ruined the brand, and that whoever believes themselves to own the world, probably wouldn’t mind a little more surgical management of the demographic trends. Can I read their minds? No. I can’t say who exactly thinks what exactly, and luckily for me, I am not invited to their meetings—but every now and then, personas like Gates or Prince Charles say things that sound quite Hitleresque, and it make me wonder. On the other hand, I don’t find it particularly shocking because human nature hasn’t changed since the time when eugenics was socially acceptable in the “respectable society.” Thus, my theory is that some powerful people of the world are truly evil and probably fiddling with eugenics—and some are probably just indifferent to the desires of the peasants—but on my end, I don’t really care which one it is. Evil or indifferent, I don’t want them to destroy my world. Is that too much to ask?

My job is Poison Distributor.
My condition is
Hatred of Biological Forms.
They call me deranged
But I am the sanest of all.
They call me a merciless killer,
A sadist, a robot, a king.
But I am just a perfectionist.

My job is Poison Distributor.
My religion is
Hatred of Unpredictable Shapes.
My poison will find you
In words,
In the water you drink,
In food,
In the air your breathe,
This way or another,
It’ll find you.

My job is Poison Distributor.
A very practical job.
You are welcome.

Now, let’s quickly look at the areas that, according to the blueprint of the Great Reset, need to be disrupted and completely redesigned. That is a giant topic in itself, and I will only touch upon it lightly, with a special focus on the language used and how it overlaps with the “pandemic response.” I strongly encourage you to go to the World Economic Forum website and look around.

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Statehood and Governance.

In the new world, countries still exist but they all abide by a central order. It’s “cooperative” (wink, wink). A lot of government functions are automated and delegated to AI. Decisions are based on data and algorithms, there is no privacy, and there is a lot more fluidity as far as migrations (so unfortunately, the very humane sentiment of being kind to immigrants that is being promoted in the media might not be about kindness, which is a bummer to me personally). There is also a possibility of replacing human governments with AI altogether, but not immediately. The reasoning is simple: In order for the super wealthy to manage global inventory, individual governments have to act more like mid-level managers accountable to international authorities than like independent federal governments.

(Remember how “mom and pop shops” were pushed off the market and replaced by chain stores? Same thing here except in this case, the mom and pop stores are countries.)

Traditional America, now, is very much in the way of this. Its habit of generous consumption and free expression, its self-centered foreign policies, its sense of entitlement, and its big suburban houses are a no-go. A traditional, independent, strong America is an obstacle. In that light—and with a disclaimer that I don’t think that there is such a thing as a just empire, I feel like there is an active effort to “even America out,” to co-opt its government, to destroy farms and small businesses—especially the ones that are not consistent with this all-digital future—and to bring down the entitled middle class, especially in “outdated” career paths. It feels like we are currently in the middle of a “color revolution,” a soft coup. Usually, American elites do it to other nations—but now it’s happening on the domestic soil. It feels like the Great Reset agenda, through its messengers and through its money, is shaping both the schizophrenic “COVID response” and the suddenly mainstream and well-funded, super corporate “social justice / climate” movement, which are all at this point intertwined in terms of messaging. Both pretend to promote public good, and both skillfully weaponize real issues and get a rise out of people who have a real love of fairness in their hearts—all to clear the way for the financial goals of the “great resetters”—such as a complete erosion of privacy (see contact tracing), moving all human activities online (see, well, everything), AI-based law enforcement and precrime (see “defund the police”), and so on. And yes, America has many honest problems. But it’s not like the current structures are being replaced with a council of spiritually grounded, wise indigenous elders who are deeply connected to Earth and who will not hurt any innocent life. What’s being attempted—however fuzzy the marketing coverup—is far worse, far less humane, and far more destructive than what we have today. I don’t like it.

Finance.
It’s digital currency, crypto, and mobile payments all the way. The citizens must be totally transparent and leave a trace of everything they do, remember?

Food.
All I can say is I hope you like cockroach meat, because it’s coming.

Cynical remarks aside, the “future of food” is a disaster. The liars in high chairs have the nerve to use good words like “sustainable development” but there is nothing sustainable about this thing. It’s BigAg on steroids, very toxic. And, incidentally, it’s also energy-consuming as all these robots, sensors, and data centers ain’t free, but who’s counting that.

Also, today’s farms have to go. Not only are the pesky traditional local farmers competing with patented lab-grown food and—also patented—GMOs, and—also patented—soils—they are also taking up the space needed for royal recreational areas, as well as wind turbine and solar panel parks (which all take up a lot of space, by the way). And what do you know, maybe the kings really want to “conserve” some patches of nature by keeping it free of people. It’s their inventory, after all, it makes sense to maintain it well.

No wonder the “COVID response” is hitting the farms so hard, forcing them to go out of business…

Agriculture GENetwork @GenEngNetworkNow a new global citizens report, published by Navdanya shows that behind do-gooding image of the Gates Foundation lies a toxic philosophy of philanthrocapitalism that relies on corporate takeover of our seed,agriculture, food, knowledge and global health Greedy GatesBill Gates is one of the richest people on earth and the founder of the world’s largest philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.Now a new global citizens report, published by Navdanya International, shows that behind the do-gooding image of the Gates Foundation lies a toxic…organicconsumers.org

October 18th 2020107 Retweets134 Likes

Education.
Online.

Medicine.
Tele-

So far, in both medicine and education, we are very much on track, thanks to the global pandemic…

Energy.
Now, this one is interesting. Because fossil fuels, the devil of today’s marketing, are genuinely bad. It’s true that oil extraction is abusive to the planet. The spills create a lot of havoc, and they happen all the time. Oil barons are bandits. People who live close to refineries get sick. Plastic, which comes from oil, is polluting everything, from the oceans to our stomachs and lungs. However, fossil fuels are also the only energy source—besides nuclear—that is currently capable of supporting the world’s population’s consumption levels. Furthermore, if you look under the hood of “green,” it’s not that green, really, unless we are talking the color of money. Solar panels take up a ton on space (see below), they degrade quickly, and turn into toxic heaps. Back To Nature @backt0natureAmazing solar farm October 25th 2020376 Retweets2,585 Likes

Wind turbines also take up a ton of space and have their own problems. Both are highly dependent on weather and don’t provide sufficient energy. It is also noteworthy that the recent film by Michael Moore, Planet of the Humans, which was exploring some of the not so green aspects of “green energy” and shedding light on some of the corruption in the environmental movement, was attacked by the leading environmentalists to viciously and so uniformly that the film was removed from major platforms and kind of disappeared from the public eye.

Anyway, what’s going to happen if fossil fuels go away? By the way—and this is an important point—I am not actually convinced that the “resetters’” intend for fossil fuels to truly go away. I think we could be looking at an act of rebranding. I did think until recently that they really wanted to “disappear” fossil fuels—but then I looked into “climate tech”—and now I am thinking that the things are more complex, that it could be a strategic geopolitical maneuver. I don’t know. There are some peculiar technological overlaps between fossil fuels and “green” energy—but time will tell. In any case, if they either go away or pretend to go away, we’ll quickly discover that wind and solar are not cutting it—and then, we’ll meet our new king of “green” energy, nuclear fusion, yay.

When that happens, our friend, the famous philantrocapitalist, will come to rescue. He is heavily invested in nuclear fusion reactors—in fact, his favorite project, according to himself. (Actually, he happens to be very deeply involved in about every bullet point on the Great Reset list, what a business genius he is.) But wait, to make the intrigue even more interesting, the WHO, which of course enjoys his generous funding, has in the past gone to great lengths to underplay the health toll of nuclear incidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Speaking of energy and finance, let’s talk about “human capital.” In the new world, “human capital” is not just a metaphor for HR or labor. Microsoft, for example, has a patent for a method of transforming human behavior into cryptocurency, which is done through an unspecified device coupled with a server that registers body activity and “mines” crypto. Since under the New Normal, digital and crypto are supposed to become mainstream, this looks suspiciously like a tool that can be used both to tightly control the behavior of the poor who may depend on this for income—and to literally mine the bodies of otherwise “useless” welfare dependents / UBI recipients for energy (which, by the way, is an actual thing, believe it or not).

Furthermore, this patent could potentially be used to create a new financial instrument because, if mined for energy, these people become “assets” that could possibly be bunched together into virtual portfolios and virtually traded. See how neat? Now, we are talking proper serfdom! And yes, this sounds very sci-fi but let’s not forget how some billionaire “visionaries” think—not like normal people, or else the workers at Amazon warehouses wouldn’t be wearing diapers to skip bathroom breaks. Also let’s not forget that today, there is trading of very theoretical items as well as betting on weather. A lot of money in this world is made on strange, arbitrary things!

Speaking of weather, the Great Reset also legitimizes the dangerous, invasive atrocity that is geoengineering, and makes it potentially “cool” and “life-saving,” just like some “climate change movement” white papers do. I noticed that and mourned that fact a couple of years ago, screaming from the rooftops about how messed up it was. Spraying toxic crap in the air is cool and “green”? What an act of linguistic trickery.

Also, a word on carbon. I am not going to get into the entire thing because the article is already long, however, it seems that whatever the story of carbon was at birth, by now the story has transformed into a tool of creating a market out of thin air, and a bunch of financial instruments to make money off, also out of thin air. For example, look at this plant, backed by Gates and some oil giants. My favorite part is that after carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere using a cocktail of chemicals, one of the ways to store the loot is to burn a bunch of trees (sorry, “biomass”). Yes, that makes perfect sense, because who can make money off simply leaving trees alone and letting them do the job, for free? What kind of idiot would allow that?

I would also like to point out the fact that when it’s stored, it’s stored deep underground in ways never done before. (What does is do to the inner processes of the planet? Did anybody think this through?) It also requires building pipelines to transport carbon dioxide from one place to another, much like transporting oil. And finally, carbon capture and storage is incredibly energy intensive, and the energy comes from… fossil fuels? Nuclear? Wind turbines that then have to take up half of the planet’s surface? Oh I don’t know… And speaking of language, the goal is not “zero carbon emissions,” it’s “Net Zero Carbon Emissions,” which means that we can keep polluting, and then build a new lucrative industry on top of it, while creating a new kind of pollution. In other words, business as usual…

Also, while we are on the topic of “green sustainable development,” isn’t building a lot more surveillance tech and infrastructure—which are all extremely energy-consuming not to mention unclean—at odds with the idea of green? I thought about it a while ago when I read, with great initial excitement, the text of the Green New Deal proposed legislation. I was, like, yay justice and indigenous rights, yay…. wait… “smart” power grids? Isn’t it exactly what Big Tech wants, and doesn’t it imply a need for smart sensors that come with more infrastructure and satellites, more towers, a loss of privacy, and new kind of wireless pollution producing untested health effects? It stopped me on my tracks and compelled me to look into various “green” initiatives—and as a result, discover various skeletons in the closet. And then I stumbled into the work of Cory Morningstar, and I was like, wow. My instincts were right, it’s not exactly what it seems!!

Now, this provides a nice segue into how the “global health crisis” narrative plays into the Great Reset.

First, some housekeeping notes.

As I said before, the Great Reset is an extremely ambitious plan of restructuring both the world’s economy—and the very notion of what it means to be alive. (Is an AI-nudged zombie whose decision-making is externalized really alive?) Without a cooperating population, this ambitious economic and religious reform cannot succeed.

What is the best way of making the population cooperate with this very strange reform? It’s fear—because promises of pleasure are not enough to pull off such a massive and bizarro shift. Thus, it has to be fear and stress, whether it’s because of an external enemy, a prospect of a natural disaster, or a disease.

Let’s not forget that prior to 2020, there has already been a very expensively organized fear narrative, supported by more or less the same players who are now pushing for the Great Reset. I am of course talking about the weaponized “climate change” narrative. And while there are plenty of environmental problems that need to be addressed asap, the corporate “climate change” movement has been strangely focused on messaging that roughly coincides with the messaging of the Great Reset campaign, serving their financial goals—and the funding trajectories also overlap. So it looks like the financial interests behind the Great Reset tried out to use the “climate movement” first but it didn’t generate the desired fear levels quickly enough. Not enough people cared. I have personally sat through a training session, and am familiar with “organizing” and the neurolinguistic programming tricks that are supposed to make the audiences very worried about the climate. The messaging is very well thought-through and gives away a generous financial backing, it’s not a hippie grassroots movement—even if a lot of individual people sincerely pour their souls into that. Just like rank-and-file Jehovah witnesses knocking on your door might be extremely sincere.

As a human being, I don’t trust any entity that coldly, calculatedly, tries to make me scared and trigger a stress response. The people I listened to didn’t seem very afraid themselves. They were well-fed, middle-class, and not underemployed. They were not afraid to be arrested at a protest—and actually they sought to be arrested, without any fear for their future employment. After seeing that, I started asking questions as to why they wanted me to be afraid, and what they wanted me to do. When I started asking questions and researching, it turned out that the trajectory of “solutions” included things like smart grids, electric cars (that are not remotely green), and geoengineering. That, to me, was not acceptable. It also meant that they didn’t really respect the planet because if they did, they wouldn’t want to stick towers everywhere or spray crap in the atmosphere to block the sun. Now, it is very possible that the environmental movement was good and honest when it just started—but a lot of it has been since hijacked, in a very stealthy way where the people on the ground don’t even realize whom they are serving. And again, let me repeat: There is a tremendous need for true sustainability, it’s just that the practical measures implied by the coded marketing language are not sustainable at all!

In any case, scaring the people with the official narrative of the climate emergency definitely created a ripple in people’s consciousness and a degree of environmental anxiety, especially in Gen Z—but it didn’t do enough to either paralyze or mobilize. But when the virus came along, as if by magic, things started falling into places quickly—things that had been unthinkable before. No, I am not saying that the virus isn’t real. And I am not making any definitive statements about where it came from or how it came about. I have my theories but some things, I just won’t know, and can’t change. But what I know is that the reaction has been absurd, unprecedented, and strangely consistent with the action items that had already been on the agenda. Speaking of emergencies, Woodstock happened during a big pandemic…

So let’s see.

Did we forcefully move most activities—such as education, medicine, shopping, sex, and recreation—online for now, as we are working on “digitizing” the physical world, for easy tracking and surveillance?
Check.

Did we, despite the lockdowns for white collar peasants, continue with construction—including very robust construction of new telecom structures and cellular antennas, necessary to support the IoT?
Check.

Did we succeed at near destroying the livelihoods of many independent farmers who were competing with our new “edible” products, and also at disrupting the traditional food supply chains?
Check.

Did we also succeed at destroying a good number of small face-to-face businesses?
Well, of course!

Live music venues and theaters?
For sure.

Are we working on replacing law enforcement with AI?
You bet! Defund! Defund! Defund!

Are we trying to legitimize complete erosion of privacy and easy access to private health data?
Yes! Because health emergency.

Are we on target when it comes to tracking every movement of every person?
Contact tracing, yes! But some countries are still behind.

Is a digital health ID now required for international travel?
Yes, Common Pass is live!

Have we been able to disrupt political and legal procedures and create chaos?
Yes, Sir!

Importantly, have we succeeded at messing up human thinking and relationships to the extent that we, the robot, the abuser, are now everybody’s only friend?
Still working on it but close.

Are we well on target with prepping the people for a broad rollout of smart wearables?
Yep. Wear your mask.

Are we legally controlling people’s sex lives?
Yes!

Speaking of, state control of people’s bodies and sexuality is a classic sign of a religious reform. Whenever that happens, watch out.

Or let’s take lockdowns, for example. Lockdowns and restrictions of movement and physical contact are great tools of behavioral modification—and behavioral modification, also known as social engineering, is for sure a very respected art form among the powerful ones. A self-respecting social engineer plans ten steps ahead and creates situations in which targets beg for desired changes! I posit that currently, we are subjected to an involuntary S&M dance. We are in the middle of a ritual designed to create a sense of confusion, insecurity, and dependence—eventually to be resolved by our Masters, for which we will be very grateful because we will just want to the unbearable tension to be resolved. Already, many have developed the Stockholm Syndrome, siding with the abuser. The measures are entirely arbitrary—but it doesn’t matter, we are expected to comply and to accept that our suffering and deprivation are for our own good. It makes us a “better person.”

In the eyes of a psychopath, there is no joy.

In the eyes of a slave, there is an acceptance of a strange feeling of numbness where the soul used to be.

Re-blog: The Only Truly Civilized People are Anti-War

NOTE: The following is a re-blog from
https://talesfromtheloublog.wordpress.com/2019/12/05/the-only-truly-civilized-people-are-anti-war/

I chose to copy and paste the entire article rather than just leave a link because some readers do not like reading white font on a black background.  I’m still waiting for Lou to change his background… Please go to the above link page if you wish to comment on Lou’s blog, thanks.

The Only Truly Civilized People are Anti-War
Posted by Lou on December 5, 2019

Posted in: AntiwarCivilizationElitesHorrorIdeologyImperialismMoralityPolitical scienceWarLeave a comment

The Only Truly Civilized People Are Anti-War

lewrockwell.com

By Gary D. Barnett   December 5, 2019

“What is left after war is silence: The silence of the death; the silence of the debris; the silence of the birds! After war even the screams of sadness are silent because the pain is in the very depths of the soul!”  ~ Mehmet Murat ildan

“What is left after war is silence: The silence of the death; the silence of the debris; the silence of the birds! After war even the screams of sadness are silent because the pain is in the very depths of the soul!”  ~ Mehmet Murat ildan

Justification for war has taken many paths. All those paths were tainted and immoral, and all those paths led only to death and destruction. There is never a need for war; there is only a want for war. This hard fact is very disturbing to those who have been manipulated through fear to not only support and accept war, but to embrace the very concept of national pride and aggression. This I believe exposes the major failing of man, as the killing of others is also the killing of the human soul.

War knows no bounds. It is indiscriminate in its brutality, in its scope, and in its torturous methods. It matters not who are the victims, whether men, women, children, entire families, communities, or the flora and fauna of nature. It breeds massive suffering, famine, death, and homelessness, and leaves only stark landscapes filled with the lifeless bodies of rotting flesh. It is literally the curse of mankind.

If war were waged in order to solve a legitimate local threat due to an active attack on our soil, it would be self-defense, not war, and would have to end immediately once that threat was squelched. Any force evident after the immediate threat subsided, would be nothing more than pure aggression, and therefore criminal and immoral. Considering that all U.S. wars since the inception of this country have never been due to any direct attack on the mainland, and therefore not self-defense, the entirety of U.S. war history has been one of only barbarous invasion. This is a difficult truth to accept, but until accepted by the masses, war will be unending, and intensely perilous to civilization.

The idea of war is not normally one of the people at large, unless that idea is planted in their psyche due to the trickery of the controlling class. This is normally accomplished by fomenting fear among the common citizenry due to the creation of false-flag strategies of terror meant to cause alarm. Heavy mainstream media propaganda is used to spread lies about alleged monsters from afar. The state can create an enemy simply by false claims and accusations about everything from unfair trade, non-existent weapons production, charges of human rights abuses, and a myriad of other reasons that can lead to regime change operations through aggressive measures. Natural human emotions are easy to stoke, and the general populace is often fooled into a false sense of rage that turns into acceptance of heinous acts carried out by the state.

Elite controllers and the puppet political class seek war in order to gain support in times of popular dissent or disapproval. They seek war to support the banking and corporate class for monetary gain. They seek war to gain territory, whether by actual possession or in order to take geopolitical control. They seek war to steal the natural resources of other countries, and in the process exploit the people for their own gain. And in all cases, mortal invasion by these warmongers is meant to expand empire. Currently, especially considering the U.S., this seems to be a primary factor, as the future of war appears to be in large part based on a global consolidation of power by a select group of oligarchs mainly outside the political arena, but in concert with them.

Many refer to this plot as the creation of a “New World Order,” including some of those responsible for orchestrating this coup. In fact, this seems to be the desired and planned agenda of the fascist oligarchs. Of course, this is almost always attributed by the mainstream to “conspiracy theory,” but then that gives credence to my assertion, as those who scream “conspiracy theory,” a term coined purposely by the CIA, are normally trying to eliminate or marginalize the truth tellers. Actually, the globalization of the politics of control is now in the advanced stage, so a conspiracy is already evident, and is not theory.

It is crucial to understand that war is always about money, power, and control. Without ever being directly threatened or having its mainland attacked, the United States has been at war 93% of its entire existence. How could this be possible since there has never been any legitimate reason to defend this country from aggression at home? This should be a stark reminder to the bourgeoisie who in the past were fooled into supporting state murder, to rethink their undying support for the criminal and murderous policies advanced by this nation-state called America.

There have been plenty of bad people and bad regimes, and countries that have a history of committing heinous acts of war in the past. There is any number of brutal dictators, tyrants, and evil politicians in this world, all with control over military might. But none have ever reached the level of death, destruction, and military presence as the U.S. Empire. This is not pleasant to hear, but it is the truth. With that knowledge, it is time for Americans to stop the terror and murderous wars committed by their own country, because this country is the world leader in violence. It is unethical to condemn the acts of those in other lands when one’s own acts are far more savage and deadly. Common ethics require correcting self before attempting to correct others.

Civilized society requires a peace-loving, anti-war stance. With war, no true civilization exists, as war brings about barbarity, depravity, and inhumanity toward mankind. That is the essence of a cold and heartless society, not one that embraces culture, intellect, art, compassion and enlightenment. Peace and harmony amongst people is the only way to create a civilized society, and one that will sustain and prosper throughout time.

The Best of Gary D. Barnett

The Only Truly Civilized People Are Anti-War

Something about Today and the Future

[thoughts from   ~burning woman~   by Sha’Tara]

Fact: Climate change (CC) is real and getting “realer” by the day.

Fact: Most national governments are subsidizing the fossil fuel industries like there is no tomorrow. (Because they know there isn’t one.)

Fact: A few people (relatively speaking) are concerned; a few love to use CC as a convenient topic of conversation and ranting; most remain content to see consumerism on the rise and honestly either don’t have a clue about climate change (i.e., what it means) or don’t give a flying f**k about it. I’m being observationally honest.

About CC: does it matter if it is a natural event or if it is anthropogenic (OK, man-made!)?

It does only in the sense that, if it is a natural event, nothing man does will make an iota of difference – it will run its course and how “deep” or how “high” it runs is outside of man’s control. So, there is no “option one” here.

If anthropogenic then man has a degree of control over it. He can change the focus of his technology (or ditch it altogether if changing it is too slow) and watch billions die horribly as their citified infrastructure no longer provides the means for health care, food, shelter, heat, water, sewer or and he can watch billions die from fossil fuel (FF) pollution and environmental collapse. 

Any attempts to re-focus global technology from FF to “renewable” or “clean” or “green” technology using the existing template dictated by predatory capitalism is, of course, hopeless. Capitalism is a totally predatory system. To use it, you have to present yourself to the bank with a predatory plan, or a sub-system that will feed the insatiable main god’s appetite for living prey. Anything that intends to curtail the god’s food supply will be mocked, delayed indefinitely, changed, or it will “fail” to meet certain “standards.” If it is economically viable however it will be allowed to proceed and the end result will be no better and likely worse than what it replaced. Do note: the problem isn’t the pollution but the accompanying mindset.

My opinion after a life time of involvement in environmental issues and social change, is that “man” as a species has simply overreached itself through greed and heartless corruption and it is reaping what it has been sowing for thousands of years. It needed only the higher numbers combined with an inhuman and inhumane science and machine-based technology heavily favouring oppression and destruction to bring itself to its own ignoble, fully deserved,  demise. 

If I really feel that way, and I most certainly do, then what words would I have for anyone who does care? Not much, except to say that the future isn’t annihilation, nor on a dead planet nor in some religiously concocted heaven, hell or nirvana. 

“You offer no alternative yet you speak as if there was a future for us?” would be a logical question.

Answer: there always was a future; there always will be a future. What we are living in now is the future we have made for ourselves. It was a short-sighted, dead-end future but it promised so much in terms of power over others; in terms of money and sex and other sources of self-gratification, we felt it was worth the throw of the dice. So we made our Faustian bargain with time; we were loaned stacks of “free” tokens to play with and we’ve played them all and the house won. Now? Now all we have to do is walk out of the casino – it’s about to go down in flames – and figure out how to create a new future – without the “free” tokens (which by the way are nothing more than insane debts of valueless currency owed to non-existent capital power structures fronted by psychopaths).

That’s what self empowerment means. It doesn’t mean smart inventors (and investors) figuring out how to keep your swimming pool filled when the water is running out. It doesn’t mean a hundred, or a thousand “Greta Thunberg” or “David Suzuki” or more political and elected advocates for some Green New Deal (or voting for them); or more never-binding international treaties on CC.

For me it has meant changing my lifestyle in specific and observable (demonstrable) ways. That’s “my” lifestyle, not anyone else’s. Self empowerment is not leading campaigns to change the world, or setting up alternate energy corporations within the existing religious/political/capitalistic agenda. It is all about changing me so I become the change I wish to see. Yeah, old and corny saying but quite valid nevertheless. 

If you still have a couple of minutes, here’s something from George Monbiot… a well-researched journalist with a few very meaningful comments on our times. 

Fossil Rebellion – monbiot.com


Fossil Rebellion

Posted: 12 Aug 2019 04:50 AM PDT

In the midst of climate breakdown, governments around the world are funding and protecting the fossil fuel industry

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 7th August 2019

The tragedy of our times is that the gathering collapse of our life support systems coincides with the age of public disservice. Just as we need to rise above self-interest and short termism, governments around the world now represent the meanest and dirtiest of special interests. In the United Kingdom, the US, Brazil, Australia and many other nations, pollutocrats rule.

The Earth’s systems are breaking down at astonishing speed. Wild fires roar across Siberia and Alaska, biting, in many places, deep into peat soils, releasing plumes of carbon dioxide and methane that cause more global heating. In July alone, Arctic wildfires are reckoned to have released as much carbon into the atmosphere as Austria does in a year: already the vicious twister of climate feedbacks has begun to turn. Torrents of meltwater pour from the Greenland ice cap, sweltering under a 15°C temperature anomaly. Daily ice losses on this scale are 50 years ahead of schedule: they were forecast by the climate models for 2070. A paper in Geophysical Research Letters reveals that the thawing of permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic now exceeds the depths of melting projected by scientists for 2090.

While record temperatures in Europe last month caused discomfort and disruption, in Southwest Asia they are already starting to reach the point at which the human body hits its thermal limits. Ever wider tracts of the world will come to rely on air-conditioning not only for basic comfort but also for human survival: another feedback spiral, as air-conditioning requires massive energy use. Those who cannot afford it will either move or die. Already, climate breakdown is driving more people from their homes than either poverty or conflict, while contributing to both these other factors.

A recent paper in Nature shows that we have little hope of preventing more than 1.5° of global heating unless we retire existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Even if no new gas or coal power plants, roads and airports are built, the carbon emissions from current installations are likely to push us past this threshold. Only by retiring some of this infrastructure before the end of its natural life could we secure a 50% chance of remaining within the temperature limit agreed in Paris in 2015. Yet, far from decommissioning this Earth-killing machine, almost everywhere governments and industry stoke its fires.

The oil and gas industry intends to spend $4.9 trillion over the next 10 years, exploring and developing new reserves, none of which we can afford to burn. According to the IMF, every year governments subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of $5 trillion: many times more than they spend on addressing our existential predicament. The US spends 10 times more on these mad subsidies than on its federal education budget. Last year, the world burnt more fossil fuels than ever before.

An analysis by Barry Saxifrage in Canada’s National Observer shows that half the fossil fuels ever used by humans have been burnt since 1990. While renewable and nuclear power supplies have also risen in this period, the gap between the production of fossil fuels and low carbon energy has not been narrowing, but steadily widening. What counts, in seeking to prevent runaway global heating, is not the good things we start to do, but the bad things we cease to do. Shutting down fossil infrastructure requires government intervention.

But in many nations, governments intervene not to protect humanity from the existential threat of fossil fuels, but to protect the fossil fuel industry from the existential threat of public protest. In the US, legislators in 18 states have put forward bills criminalising protests against pipelines, seeking to crush democratic dissent on behalf of the oil industry. In June, Donald Trump’s government proposed federal legislation that would jail people for up to 20 years for disrupting pipeline construction.

In several nations, led by the Philippines, Global Witness reports, governments have incited the murder of environmental protesters. The process begins with rhetoric, demonising civil protest as extremism and terrorism, then shifts to legislation, criminalising attempts to protect the living planet. Criminalisation then helps legitimise physical assaults and murder. The first stage has now begun in Britain, with the publication by a dark money-funded lobby group, Policy Exchange, of a report smearing Extinction Rebellion. Like all such publications, it was given a series of major platforms by the BBC, which preserved its customary absence of curiosity about who funded it.

Secretly-funded lobby groups – such as the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs – have supplied some of the key advisers to Boris Johnson’s government. He has also appointed Andrea Leadsom, an enthusiastic fracking advocate, to run the department responsible for climate policy, and Grant Schapps, who chaired the British infrastructure Group until last month – promoting the expansion of roads and airports – as Secretary of State for Transport. Last week the Guardian revealed documents suggesting that the firm run by Johnson’s funder and adviser Sir Lynton Crosby has produced unbranded Facebook ads on behalf of the coal industry.

What we see here looks like the denouement of the Pollution Paradox. Because the dirtiest industries attract the least public support, they have the greatest incentive to spend money on politics, to get the results they want and we don’t. They fund political parties, lobby groups and think tanks, fake grassroots organisations and dark ads on social media. As a result, politics comes to be dominated by the dirtiest industries.

We are told to fear the “extremists” who protest against ecocide and challenge dirty industry and the dirty governments it buys. But the extremists we should fear are those who hold office.

http://www.monbiot.com

 

The following is copied from a page on CounterPunch (Copyright © CounterPunch
All rights reserved. counterpunch@counterpunch.org

After the “victory” of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the “settlement” of the civil war in El Salvador, and due to other pressing situations, our support group here in Chilliwack, B.C., Canada, called “The Central America Friendship Committee” was disbanded with a huge sigh of relief. Little did we know that the whole “settlement” thing was, as usual, a two-faced negotiation on the part of Washington and the CIA. Unless they are clearly beaten, as in Vietnam, it doesn’t end, it escalates. Nothing was “settled” and things are not only continuing, but getting worse. As you read the following, if you read the following, note the names of the American presidents who presided over the massacres, tortures and killings of children in Central America. Then in the “killing fields” of refugee seekers in the deserts north of the Mexican border. Then take a few moments to ponder why “Nut’n’Yahoo’s” Zionists can slaughter Palestinian children with such impunity. Washington has always been, remains, and will continue to be the face of racism and genocide worldwide until it is destroyed, or it collapses from its own internal corruption. Those who still believe there is a fix are sadly deluded or they haven’t taken a serious look at the latest presidential face stamped on the latest genocides.

Sha’Tara, July 10, 2018
__________________________________________________________________________________________
July 10, 2018

The Discovery of Central American Suffering

by Nick Alexandrov

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U.S. pundits and politicians just discovered, it seems, that Washington’s decisions harm Central American families. For the New York Times, “separating families…is something new and malicious,” reflecting Trump’s “heartlessness” and violating “fundamental American values.” “This, apparently, is how you turn off the idea of America,” Alex Wagner (The Atlantic) added. The Los Angeles Times thinks “the administration’s cold-hearted approach to enforcement has crossed the line into abject inhumanity,” departing– so we’re to believe– from past practice.

These are half-accurate charges: Trump’s policy is malicious, heartless, cold-hearted. But it isn’t new. Both in Central America and along its Mexican border, Washington has helped rip apart families for decades, forcing children to endure a world without their parents, mothers to cope with their children’s sickening ends. Abject inhumanity, in other words, is a U.S. foreign policy hallmark.

Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras– review their histories. You’ll be crushed by evidence revealing which values shape Washington’s conduct, which norms govern its behavior in a region where it enjoys immense influence. And you’ll begin to understand why many had to flee these countries. Start with Guatemala. Ríos Montt, the dictator the U.S. funded, armed, and encouraged, oversaw the Mayan genocide there. In one episode, on April 3, 1982, the Guatemalan army overran the village of Chel, slaughtering its residents and orphaning Pedro Pacheco Bop, whose great-grandfather, parents, and five siblings (aged two to 14) were all murdered, their blood draining into the Chel River where the troops hurled the dead. Tomas Chávez Brito was two years old when the army fell upon his village, Sajsibán, seven months later, torching his home with his mother, sisters, and other family members inside. In the mountains, where Tomas hid for the following year eating plants to survive, one can only imagine how the idea of orphanhood, his new reality, settled in his mind. Margarita Rivera Ceto de Guzmán’s family separation was quicker. Soldiers knifed her in the stomach, killing her unborn child.

Egla Martínez Salazar, addressing this genocide, explains that assaults on Maya households conveyed “the message that Mayas did not live in ‘real’ families, but rather in ‘living arrangements’ that constituted breeding spaces for ‘international communist indoctrination.’” Erasing these spaces required “the mass murder of children,” plus “the forced transfer of surviving Maya children to military and paramilitary families,” tactics Salvadoran forces also adopted in the 1980s. Apart from killing most of the 75,000 slain there from 1980-1992– the stretch when Carter, Reagan, and Bush I funneled $6 billion into the country– “soldiers [also] abducted children in what an international court says was a ‘systematic pattern of forced disappearances.’”

Similar violence-patterns afflicted Nicaragua and Honduras. The Contras flaunted their family-destroying talents in the former, as when some 1,000 of them, on April 3, 1984, assaulted the village of Waslala. A father there, desperate to save his wife and children, sheltered with them in a ditch. The Contras found him, hauled him out. He was “tortured by having his fingertips and then his right hand cut off, and then killed with bayonets,” and then decapitated, Reed Brody recounts. As a final gesture to their mission’s purity, the Contras, into the dead man’s back, cut intersecting gashes– the shape of the cross. Brody tells another story: in “El Achote a band of contras dragged an agrarian reform worker from his home, and in front of his wife, 11 month old son, and three year old son, cut him into pieces with their bayonets. The man’s wife was then shot, but she lived to watch them behead her 11 month old baby.”

It was Battalion 316 that targeted Honduran families. The Baltimore Sun reported that the unit, “trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency,” “kidnapped, tortured and killed” hundreds in the 1980s. One example: Nelson Mackay Chavarría “was 37 years old and the father of five” when the Battalion found him. When searchers later discovered his corpse, “his hands and feet were tied with rope” and “black liquid spilled from his mouth”– criolina, “rubbed on cattle to kill ticks and mites.”

In more recent decades, the U.S. government has forged the Mexican border into a family-wrecking zone. President Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper, for instance, “only made it harder for people to cross the border at relatively safe places and forced them to cross in more dangerous places, such as the Arizona desert,” writes Carolina Bank Muñoz. She stresses that “the policy broke up families, as few families were willing to take such risks by crossing a dangerous border together.” Maggie Morgan and Deborah Anker, citing ACLU work, note that “the risk of dying while crossing in Arizona was 17 times greater in 2009 than only a decade earlier”– and that “the mortality rate almost doubled” from 2009-2012, on Obama’s watch, “with children constituting roughly 10 per cent of fatalities each year.” Todd Miller estimates these “Southwest ‘killing fields’” have taken some 21,000 lives since the early 1990s.

There’s no question Trump’s migrant policies warrant outrage. But his are only the latest from Washington rattling– if not terminating– Central American lives. If we delude ourselves, if we choose to believe his actions depart from some moral norm, we risk satisfaction with superficial policy shifts. A deeper overhaul is needed to ensure Central American suffering ceases.

More articles by:Nick Alexandrov

Nick Alexandrov lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  He can be reached at: nicholas.alexandrov@gmail.com

Remembering is a Radical Act

Another article by George Monbiot.  Since there is no “reblog” on that website, I just copy and paste whenever an article that touches me, appears in my e-mail. This is such an article, to make anyone think, then think again.

In Memoriam – monbiot.com


In Memoriam

Posted: 02 Jul 2018 03:35 AM PDT

As our wildlife and ecosystems collapse, remembering is a radical act.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 29th June 2018

It felt as disorientating as forgetting my pin number. I stared at the caterpillar, unable to attach a name to it. I don’t think my mental powers are fading: I still possess an eerie capacity to recall facts and figures and memorise long screeds of text. This is a specific loss. As a child and young adult, I delighted in being able to identify almost any wild plant or animal. And now it has gone. This ability has shrivelled from disuse: I can no longer identify them because I can no longer find them.

Perhaps this forgetfulness is protective. I have been averting my eyes. Because I cannot bear to see what we have done to nature, I no longer see nature itself. Otherwise, the speed of loss would be unendurable. The collapse can be witnessed from one year to the next. The swift decline of the swift (down 25% in five years) is marked by the loss of the wild screams that, until very recently, filled the skies above my house. My ambition to see the seabird colonies of the Shetlands and St Kilda has been replaced by the intention never to visit those islands during the breeding season: I could not bear to see the empty cliffs, whose populations have crashed by some 90% this century.

I have lived long enough to witness the vanishing of wild mammals, butterflies, mayflies, songbirds and fish that I once feared my grandchildren would experience: it has all happened faster than even the pessimists predicted. Walking in the countryside or snorkelling in the sea is now as painful to me as an art lover would find her visits to a gallery, if on every occasion another Old Master had been cut from its frame.

The cause of this acceleration is no mystery. The United Nations reports that our use of natural resources has tripled in 40 years. The great expansion of mining, logging, meat production and industrial fishing is cleansing the planet of its wild places and natural wonders. What economists proclaim as progress, ecologists recognise as ruin.

This is what has driven the quadrupling of oceanic dead zones since 1950; the “biological annihilation” represented by the astonishing collapse of vertebrate populations; the rush to carve up the last intact forests; the vanishing of coral reefs, glaciers and sea ice; the shrinkage of lakes, the drainage of wetlands. The living world is dying of consumption.

We have a fatal weakness: a failure to perceive incremental change. As natural systems shift from one state to another, we almost immediately forget what we have lost. I have to make a determined effort to remember what I saw in my youth. Could it really be true that every patch of nettles, at this time of year, was reamed with caterpillar holes? That flycatchers were so common I scarcely gave them a second glance? That the rivers, around the autumn equinox, were almost black with eels?

Others seem oblivious. When I have criticised current practice, farmers have sent me images of verdant monocultures of perennial rye grass, with the message “look at this and try telling me we don’t look after nature”. It’s green, but it’s about as ecologically rich as an airport runway. One of my readers, Michael Groves, records the shift he has seen in the field beside his house, where the grass, that used to be cut for hay, is now cut for silage. Watching the cutters being driven at great speed across the field, he realised that any remaining wildlife would be shredded. Soon afterwards, he saw a roe deer standing in the mown grass. She stayed throughout the day and the following night. When he went to investigate, he found her fawn, its legs amputated. “I felt sickened, angry and powerless … how long had it taken to die?”. That “grass-fed meat” the magazines and restaurants fetishise? This is the reality.

When our memories are wiped as clean as the land, we fail to demand its restoration. Our forgetting is a gift to industrial lobby groups and the governments that serve them. Over the past few months, I have been told repeatedly that the environment secretary, Michael Gove, gets it. I have said so myself: he genuinely seems to understand what the problems are and what needs to be done. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do it.

He cannot be blamed for all of the fiascos to which he has put his name. The 25-year plan for nature was, it seems, gutted by the Prime Minister’s office. The environmental watchdog he proposed was defanged by the Treasury (it has subsequently been lent some dentures by Parliament). Other failures are all his own work. In response to lobbying from sheep farmers, he has allowed ravens, a highly intelligent and long-lived species just beginning to recover from centuries of persecution, to be killed once more. There are 24 million sheep in this country and 7400 pairs of ravens. Why must all other species give way to the white plague?

Responding to complaints that most of our national parks are wildlife deserts, Gove set up a commission to review them. But governments choose their conclusions in advance, through the appointments they make. A more dismal, backward-looking and uninspiring panel would be hard to find: not one of its members, as far as I can tell, has expressed a desire for significant change in our national parks, and most of them, if their past statements are anything to go by, are determined to keep them in their sheepwrecked and grouse-trashed state.

Now the lobbyists demand a New Zealand settlement for farming after Brexit: deregulated, upscaled, hostile to both wildlife and the human eye. If they get their way, no landscape, however treasured, will be safe from broiler sheds and mega-dairy units, no river protected from run-off and pollution, no songbird saved from local extinction. The merger between Bayer and Monsanto brings together the manufacturer of the world’s most lethal pesticides with the manufacturer of the world’s most lethal herbicides. Already the concentrated power of these behemoths is a hazard to democracy; together they threaten both political and ecological disaster. Labour’s environment team have scarcely a word to say about any of it. Similarly, the big conservation groups, as usual, have gone missing in inaction.

We forget even our own histories. We fail to recall, for example, that the Dower report, published in 1945, envisaged wilder national parks than we now possess, and that the conservation white paper the government issued in 1947 called for the kind of large-scale protection that is considered edgy and innovative today. Remembering is a radical act.

That caterpillar, by the way, was a six spot burnet: the larva of a stunning iridescent black and pink moth that once populated my neighbourhood and my mind. I will not allow myself to forget again: I will work to recover the knowledge I have lost. For I now see that without the power of memory, we cannot hope to defend the world we love.

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