I like conspiracy theories;
they attempt to inject meaning into otherwise meaningless sets of assorted
facts. They bring Logos into our life, as our friend E. Michael Jones would
say. An enemy of conspiracy theories would write in the New York Timesdenouncing Sir Isaac Newton as
a notorious conspiracy theorist: out of totally disconnected facts (apple fall,
water pumping, artillery shelling) he concocted the conspiracy theory of
gravitation claiming that bodies are mutually attracted proportionally to their
mass. This is obviously false, he would say, as you can observe at any beach;
if there should be a formula, it is that of inverse proportionality. Slim girls
and boys attract much more than obese body-positives, and mutuality does not
come into this equation. Still the gravitation hoax of Newton has been taught
in schools. In NYTimese, this is simply “spreading baseless lies and debunked
nonsense about the false rumours”.
The great coronavirus panic of
AD 2020 with its enormous consequences is an event that calls for a sensible
explanation. How could a minor disease killing an infinitesimal part of
population (0.000045) had caused the collapse of civilisation as we knew it?
Why is a civilisation that robustly weathered the killing of the flower of its
youth in its prime on the fields of Verdun and Stalingrad unable to survive the
demise of a few superannuated men such that it withdrew into self-isolation,
while giving up the faith, love of neighbour, opposition to old enemies and
then destroying its economy, education and reproductivity?
One wants to find a conspiracy
to explain it away. Who did it? Who locked billions under house arrest; who
caused men and women to view each other as a source of mortal danger instead of
potential friends or even lovers; who turned churches, mosques and synagogues
into empty and unneeded buildings? There are many forces that enjoyed the
accompanying windfall, and quite a few were ready for it for a long time. But
there is a non-conspiratorial explanation: perhaps we experience such a
systemic shift that no single force would be able to achieve; a systemic shift
of magnitude unseen for hundreds of years.
We are still in an early stage
of the ongoing transformation; we still hope it will be over in the summer, or
at least at autumn, or next winter, but most probably our life as we knew is
over. Can we blame it on the virus, even if it was manufactured in the evil
labs of the US or China, as has been convincingly suggested by Ron Unz?
There are millions of viruses, and mankind had managed to live with them all.
There was no reason to freak out and destroy our civilisation for another
virus.
Imagine a man who received a
Nigerian letter, promising him millions; and he sold his house, took a loan,
sent his wife and children to beg on the street in order to collect the
Nigerian millions. We wouldn’t say, “the Nigerian letter caused his downfall”,
because so many people had received Nigerian letters, but only one man acted
like he did. No doubt, the letter was a nasty attempt to defraud, but the
problem was in him, not in the Nigerian letter.
The previous shift of such
magnitude occurred in late 18th century; it is called the Industrial Revolution. Then the
factory owners had begun to replace their skilled labour with inexpensive
machines, and the workers were losing their jobs, livelihoods and self-esteem.
In 1811, the workers formed the Luddite movement. The Luddites would break into
factories and smash textile machines. It lasted until 1816, when the movement
ran out of steam. The workers were defeated, (a lot of them escaped to
America), and the British bourgeoisie prospered. It took many years until the
workers regained some of their previous positions in society, mainly due to the
threat of Communist revolution.
Now we are coming to the new
Digital Revolution, with workers being replaced by smart computers and an AI
future. Millions of office workers already function as a human interface to the
computer. You may have noticed this as you talk with them: they are trained to
avoid making decisions; they say sentences that were scripted for them, and the
decisions are made by the computer that was programmed to do their master’s
will. As lockdown had forced millions to communicate with computers directly, a
lot of workers became superfluous.
The process of shedding
millions of workers in the existing economic system is likely to be painful for
the unemployed. The virus-blamed lockdown and digital control allows the owners
of the digital companies to carry out the revolution with minimal risks for
them. What would need an army and police involvement against riotous unemployed
workers, can be achieved with greater ease under threat of the pandemic. The
economy will be modernized and made more efficient. Alas, for us this script
presages the fate of highly qualified weavers in 18th century England, even if
we shall avoid the total AI takeover Terminator-style.
Probably the scariest piece of
news is not about the numbers of “infected”. It is a meaningless word, for
there are persistent carriers who do not succumb to disease; the vast majority
of the “infected” are asymptomatic, meaning they aren’t sick and aren’t
infectious; the number of “infected” is in direct proportion to the number of
tests; the tests are dubious at best, and none is verified by the methods
accepted in pre-corona medicine, while the methodology approved and enforced by
the WHO can’t be described as scientific. It is not about deaths, for we do not
experience more deaths than in 2018. Moreover, in many countries, notably in
France and in Norway there are 30% fewer deaths in certain weeks of April and
May in this year than in the last year.
The scariest piece of news is
that Zoom is worth more than the seven
biggest airlines. These airlines with their accumulated labour
(millions of working hours, hundreds of thousands of employees, highly trained
pilots, masses of sophisticated equipment) just can’t be worth as much as a job
done in a month by a few programmers and which can be done anew in a month. Money
and stock market prices are useful tools if they measure human efforts; they do
not that anymore. What began with bankers earning more money in a day than a
hundred qualified workers and engineers in their lifetime, ended with the
hi-tech lords earning more than a million workers in their lifetime. It means
that Money had banked on the Digital Economy, a Union made in Hell, while the
real economy came up for grabs. Money decided that we won’t fly anymore. They,
the new masters, will fly in their private jets; the era of mass access is
over. You will get satisfied with Zoom and PornHub, instead of the real thing.
Added to this the negative oil
future price and the emission centres issuing more and more money, trying to
smother the fire with gasoline, and you will get a picture of the coming world.
There is probably no place for you and me in this world.
Is the great AI update of
technology an objective need, and will it eventually bring good for mankind?
Perhaps. But it does not mean the process should be drafted by Money and the
Digital Economy, explained by MSM, justified by bio-horrors and carried on at
public expense. It has to be done differently if we want to preserve the
achievements of the long (1945-2020) peace stretch.
And now we can return to conspiracy
theories. If the virus is the great destroyer as presented, why didn’t poor
countries with little value and no hi-tech suffer? Why is poor Cambodia not
devastated by Covid? Cambodians have little medical care, and they accepted a
whole boat-load of “infected” passengers from The Diamond Princess. They also
have thousands of Chinese tourists. And they have no Covid in their poor
country. Why does Mongolia, China’s neighbour with its very strong connections
with China, have no Covid?
Why do only rich countries
suffer? Why is it only the countries with a powerful liberal press, with a
positive connection to the WHO, with developed hi-tech infrastructure and their
own digital lords? Could it be simply that they have something to loot? It
makes sense to loot Belgium, and Belgians have a lot of Covid. But it makes no
sense to loot Mongolia or Cambodia. If you follow me thus far, you will also
see that such things can’t happen by themselves. GAFAM is the prime mover and
the beneficiary, while Gates is the link between them and the WHO.
Without the WHO’s blessing, no
country would entertain the idea of lockdown. The WHO has learned much since
2009, and eventually decided to play Covid as hard as it could. President Trump
has good instincts, even if he provides wrong explanations. The WHO is indeed a
central player in the conspiracy. They even had to kill their own top executive in
January 2020, who notably objected to classifying Covid as a pandemic. The WHO
offered a $60 million bribe to Belarus President Lukashenko for locking down
his nation, but the president refused the bribe as he felt responsible for the
wellbeing of Belarus. And indeed, free Belarus has roughly the same share of
Covid infections and deaths as its locked down neighbours Ukraine and Poland.
Poland is a bit worse off because it is a fatter prey than lean Belarus. The
WHO even tried to bribe Madagascar which developed its own medical low-tech
treatment for Covid sufferers with surprisingly good results. The WHO offered a
bribe to their president to say that people died of the treatment. (Not that
Madagascar, being poor, had much to worry about it.)
President Trump has had reason
to be unhappy about China, as this great country invented lockdown as a tool to
fight epidemics in 2009, when the world was worried about the swine flu H1N1.
Then China began to practice massive
lockdowns, quarantining whole cities, declaring that hundreds of thousands are
infected, restricting air travel and producing a vaccine. The measures were
taken when only 30 persons succumbed to the flu, and the WHO objected to the
Chinese actions. Eventually 3,000 died in the US,
and 800 in China. The profits from marketing the vaccine were enormous.
“Windfall for the Big Pharma”, reported Reuters. WHO
also profited,
and did not report about their own involvement. Thus the partnership of Big
Pharma – China – WHO had been formed, and they were willing to repeat the old
script on a larger scale. They did it in 2020.
The Chinese didn’t hesitate to
lock down Wuhan in 2020, and this time, their example has been followed by
other countries. Enemies of China say that by spreading their model the Chinese
wanted to attack the economies of other states in order to buy their assets on
the cheap. Others add that China locked down troublesome cities like Wuhan,
which were seen as likely to rebel following Hong Kong model. Friends of China
say that the critique of China is connected with the US desire to default on
its $1.3 trillion debt to China. And besides, China had been attacked many
times by US bioweapons, so it had to be careful.
Let us say that China didn’t
and couldn’t force any state to use its model. On the other hand, the WHO and
assorted forces in other countries were quick to recognise the advantages of
lockdown for them, and it was not for any epidemiological reasons. Some wanted
to profit like they did in 2009, but on a bigger scale; some had political
reasons, elections, civil unrest; some wanted to put ordinary people down under
their control. They succeed, at our expense and at the expense of the Real
World.
The present lockdown had
brought the world to the brink of a grim totalitarian dystopia. Even though the
actual disease had been contained, and the perpetrators of the scheme need more
and more crude falsifications to prove the opposite; their drive for control
has just increased.
In Israel, everyone has to
install and use the Mossad-prepared app tracing all your contacts. The app can
send you a text message saying “You passed by a corona-infected person; you
have to immediately proceed to your home and stay there in seclusion for a
fortnight”. You can’t argue with the app, and the app won’t pay your mortgage
and your grocery bills.
In Moscow the regime of control
is also by an app. A person who visited hospital or even a doctor, has to
install the app, and send a selfie whenever the app demands, even in the middle
of the night. An omission to comply within one minute is punished by a 4000
roubles (US$55) fine. If you sleep soundly, you’ll wake up in the morning with
a heap of these fines.
The Moscow regime of
surveillance and control is exceedingly strict. You have to apply for a QR pass
to leave your home, marking your destination and the reason. Churches and parks
are not listed as permitted destinations. Only a few people disagree with the
arrangement. People in general take it easy. They share on Facebook their
satisfaction with the system, enthusing that it was easy to apply and receive
the pass. Is it Stalin’s training of their parents, or slavery (until 1861) of
their more remote ancestors that installed this compliance and obedience, I
mused, but then I noticed the report from the freedom-loving State of
Washington:
“Washington Governor Jay Inslee
(D) indicated that people who refuse to cooperate with contact tracers won’t be
allowed to leave their homes, even to go to the grocery store or pharmacy”.
Alas, people all over the world
are easily bendable to the will of the authorities, especially if they are
scared by medical jargon. Latin Americans, supposedly hot-tempered folk,
placidly complied with Covid regulations; but before that, they obeyed their
tyrants and dictators. In democratic New Zealand, a bill passed giving police
sweeping powers to potentially enter homes without warrants to enforce Covid
rules despite opposition objections, though the Human Rights Commission said it
was “a great failure of our democratic process”. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the book and the
film, remind us there aren’t many rebels. The Majority agrees even to the most
awful regimes. I am against lockdown because I value freedom more than I value
life, but it is just a personal preference.
In order to convince people,
the Covid enforcers say they do it “to save the old and vulnerable”. This is a
pathetic lie. Actually they created an extremely uncomfortable regime for old
people. In Israel, there is a plan (yet to materialise) to issue a ‘green
patch’ to people over 60. Only persons displaying the green patch are allowed
to go into public space. An elderly person is liable to arrest and fine if he
fails to display the patch. The patch will be issued by police after a medical
check-up, and will be valid for a year. Even green patch bearers will be
forbidden to fly. It does not sound like protection of the elderly. Israel is
not alone: in American Samoa, people over 60 must stay at home, imprisoned. You
can view the limitations of natural freedom in various countries to
see how they compete over who will make their citizens more miserable. It makes
for depressing reading.
Was the lockdown necessary at
all for purely medical reasons? Did it save lives? I do not think so, but the
jury is still out. We shall know the exact answer in a year’s time. If Covid-19
will be gone like its predecessors Avian flu (2003) and swine flu (2009), the
lockdown was not too bad an idea. Perhaps it was not really necessary, for it
saved a few people at huge social cost, but it wasn’t not too bad. However, if
Covid-19 has come to stay and will invade regularly, the lockdown makes no
sense at all.
Covid adepts tend to think we
should expect the second wave, and more waves afterwards. Some of them preach
to extend quarantine for a year or longer. It can’t be done – we shall not
survive such a long house arrest as a species. What is annoying is that they
insist on imposing the wearing of masks, even gloves and social distancing
right now and forever. They also block international travel. The Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov predicted that our pre-Covid freedom of movement
won’t come back.
While we can’t possibly derail
progress and stop the Digital Revolution, we can end the accompanying fraud and
extra-legal restrictions on our freedom to move. We also should cherish the few
remaining platforms like UR that allow us to express and share unorthodox
views.