By Jonathan COOK

When I criticize meddling in Syria by Britain and America, or their backing of groups there that elsewhere are considered terrorists, it does not follow that I am, therefore, a cheerleader for the dictatorship of Bashar Assad or that I think that Syrians should be denied a better political system. Similarly, when I criticize Joe Biden or the Democratic party, it does not necessarily follow that I think Donald Trump would have made a better president.

A major goal of critical thinking is to stand outside tribal debates, where people are heavily invested in particular outcomes, and examine the ways debates have been framed. This is important because one of the main ways power expresses itself in our societies is through the construction of official narratives – usually through the billionaire-owned media – and the control and shaping of public debate.

You are being manipulated – propagandized – even before you engage with a topic if you look only at the substance of a debate and not at other issues: such as its timing, why the debate is taking place or why it has been allowed, what is not being mentioned or has been obscured, what is being emphasized, and what is being treated as dangerous or abhorrent.

If you want to be treated like a grown-up, an active and informed participant in your society rather than a blank sheet on which powerful interests are writing their own self-serving narratives, you need to be doing as much critical thinking as possible – and especially on the most important topics of the day.

Learning curve

The opportunity to become more informed and insightful about how debates are being framed, rather than what they are ostensibly about, has never been greater. Over the past decade, social media, even if the window it offered is rapidly shrinking, has allowed large numbers of us to discover for the first time those writers who, through their deeper familiarity with a specific topic and their consequent greater resistance to propaganda, can help us think more critically about all kinds of issues – Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Israel-Palestine, the list is endless.

This has been a steep learning curve for most of us. It has been especially useful in helping us to challenge narratives that vilify “official enemies” of the west or that veil corporate power – which has effectively usurped what was once the more visible and, therefore, accountable political power of western states. In the new, more critical climate, the role of the war industries – bequeathed to us by western colonialism – has become especially visible.

But what has been most disheartening about the past two years of Covid is the rapid reversal of the gains made in critical thinking. Perhaps this should not entirely surprise us. When people are anxious for themselves or their loved ones, when they feel isolated and hopeless, when “normal” has broken down, they are likely to be less ready to think critically.

The battering we have all felt during Covid mirrors the emotional, and psychological assault critical thinking can engender. Thinking critically increases anxiety by uncomfortably exposing us to the often artificial character of official reality. It can leave us feeling isolated and less hopeful, especially when friends and family expect us to be as deeply invested in the substance – the shadow play – of official, tribal debates as they are. And it undermines our sense of what “normal” is by revealing that it is often what is useful to power elites rather than what is beneficial to the public good.

Emotional resilience

There are reasons why people are drawn to critical thinking. Often because they have been exposed in detail to one particular issue that has opened their eyes to wider narrative manipulations on other issues. Because they have the tools and incentives – the education and access to information – to explore some issues more fully. And, perhaps most importantly, because they have the emotional and psychological resilience to cope with stripping away the veneer of official narratives to see the bleaker reality beneath and to grasp the fearsome obstacles to liberating ourselves from the corrupt elites that rule over us and are pushing us towards ecocidal oblivion.

The anxieties produced by critical thinking, the sense of isolation, and the collapse of “normal” is in one sense chosen. They are self-inflicted. We choose to do critical thinking because we feel capable of coping with what it brings to light. But Covid is different. Our exposure to Covid, unlike critical thinking, has been entirely outside our control. And worse, it has deepened our emotional and psychological insecurities. To do critical thinking in a time of Covid – and most especially about Covid – is to add a big extra layer of anxiety, isolation, and hopelessness.

Covid has highlighted the difficulties of being insecure and vulnerable, thereby underscoring why critical thinking, even in good times, is so difficult. When we are anxious and isolated, we want quick, reassuring solutions, and we want someone to blame. We want authority figures to trust and act in our name.

Complex thinking

It is not hard to understand why the magic bullet of vaccines – to the exclusion of all else – has been so fervently grasped during the pandemic. Exclusive reliance on vaccines has been a great way for our corrupt, incompetent governments to show they know what they are doing. The vaccines have been an ideal way for corrupt medical-industrial corporations – including the biggest offender, Pfizer – to launder their images and make us all feel indebted to them after so many earlier scandals like Oxycontin. And, of course, the vaccines have been a comfort blanket to us, the public, promising to bring ZeroCovid (false), to provide long-term immunity (false), and to end transmission (false).

And as an added bonus, vaccines have allowed both our corrupt leaders to shift the blame away from themselves for their other failed public health policies and our corrupt “health” corporations to shift attention away from their profiteering by encouraging the vaccinated majority to scapegoat an unvaccinated minority. Divide and rule par excellence.

To state all this is not to be against the vaccines or believe the virus should rip through the population, killing the vulnerable, any more than criticizing the US war crime of bombing Syria signifies enthusiastic support for Assad. It is only to recognize that political realities are complex, and our thinking needs to be complex too.

To be clear, I haven’t ‘changed my view’. I’ve kept an open mind throughout. I scorn the media’s silencing of dissenting scientists, the general celebration of vaccine profiteering, the unscientific discounting of natural immunity, and the divisive use of mandates to scapegoat https://t.co/83L1UXR4ga

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 3, 2022

‘Herd immunity

These ruminations were prompted by a post on social media I made the other day referring to the decision of the Guardian – nearly two years into the pandemic – to publish criticisms by an “eminent” epidemiologist, Prof Mark Woolhouse, of the British government’s early lockdown policies. Until now, any questioning of the lockdowns has been one of the great unmentionables of the pandemic outside of right-wing circles.

Let us note another prominent example: the use of the term “herd immunity,” which was until very recently exactly what public health officials aimed for as a means to end contagion. It signified the moment when enough people had acquired immunity, either through being infected or vaccinated, for community transmission to stop occurring. But because the goal during Covid is not communal immunity but universal vaccination, the term “herd immunity” has now been attributed to a sinister political agenda. It is presented as some kind of right-wing plot to let vulnerable people die.

I’ve had run-ins with Off-Guardian of late, but they’re right to highlight the WHO mucking about with the established definition of ‘herd immunity’. This kind of thing does nothing but undermine trust in science and scientists https://t.co/SgEMqnptZu

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 2, 2021

This is not accidental. It is an entirely manufactured, if widely accepted, narrative. Recovery from infection – something now true for many people – is no longer treated by political or medical authorities as conferring immunity. For example, in the UK, those who have recovered from Covid, even recently, are not exempted, as the vaccinated are, from self-isolation if they have been in close contact with someone infected with Covid. Also, of course, those recovered from Covid do not qualify for a vaccine passport. After all, it is not named an immunity passport. It is a vaccine passport.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has at least been open about the “reasoning” behind this kind of discrimination. “In a democracy,” he says, apparently unironically, “the worst enemies are lies and stupidity. We are putting pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting, as much as possible, their access to activities in social life. … For the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.”

Notice that the lies and stupidity here emanate from Macron: he is not only irresponsibly stoking dangerous divisions within French society, he has also failed to understand that the key distinctions from a public health perspective are between those with immunity to Covid and those without it and those who are vulnerable to hospitalization and those who are not. These are the most meaningful markers of how to treat the pandemic. The obsession with vaccination only serves a divide and rule agenda and bolsters pandemic profiteering.

Crushing hesitancy

The paradox is that these narratives dominate even as the evidence mounts that the vaccines offer very short-term immunity and that, ultimately, as Omicron appears to be underscoring, many people are likely to gain longer-term immunity through Covid infection, even those who have been vaccinated. But the goal of public “debate” on this topic has not been transparency, logic, or informed consent. Instead, it has been the crushing of any possible “vaccine hesitancy.”

Dr John Campbell is always worth listening to. The bottom lines of the latest omicron research are positive:
a) It’s likely to be more like a cold
b) It’ll spread so quickly there’s a good chance we’ll have herd immunity within months, at minimal suffering https://t.co/GIpGYbXZOX

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 8, 2021

I have repeatedly tried to highlight the lack of critical thinking around the exclusive focus on vaccines rather than immune health, the decision to vaccinate children in the face of strong, if largely downplayed, opposition from experts, and the divisive issue of vaccine mandates. But I have had little to say directly about lockdowns, which have tended to look to me chiefly like desperate stop-gap measures to cover up the failings of our underfunded, cannibalized, and increasingly privatized health services (a more pressing concern). I am also inclined to believe that the balance of benefits from lockdowns, or whether they work, is difficult to weigh without some level of expertise. That is one reason why I have been arguing throughout the pandemic that experts need to be allowed more open, robust, and honest public debate.

It is also why I offered a short comment on Prof Woolhouse’s criticisms, published in the Guardian this week, of national lockdown policies. This evoked a predictably harsh backlash from many followers. They saw it as further proof that the “Covid denialists have captured me,” and I am now little better than a pandemic conspiracy theorist.

Framing the debate

That is strange in itself. Prof Woolhouse is a mainstream, reportedly “eminent” epidemiologist. His eminence is such that it also apparently qualifies him to be quoted extensively and uncritically in the Guardian. The followers I antagonize every time I write about the pandemic appear to treat the Guardian as their Covid Bible, as do most liberals. And they regularly castigate me for referring to the kind of experts the Guardian refuses to cite. So how does my retweeting of a Guardian story that uncritically reports on anti-lockdown comments from a respectable, mainstream epidemiologist incur so much wrath – and seemingly directed only against me?

The answer presumably lies in the short appended comment in my retweet, which requires that one disengage from the seemingly substantive debate – lockdowns, good or bad? That conversation is certainly interesting to me, especially if it is an honest one. But the contextual issues around that debate, the ones that require critical thinking, are even more important because they are the best way to evaluate whether an honest debate is actually being fostered.

Either Prof Mark Woolhouse has arrived at this view very late in the day, or corporate media like the Guardian have until now effectively gagged eminently qualified scientists critical of lockdown policy. Either way, it looks like we’ve been screwed over pic.twitter.com/Gmj1RjXrBe

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 3, 2022

My comment, intentionally ambiguous, implicitly requires readers to examine wider issues about the Guardian article: the timing of its publication, why a debate about lockdowns has not previously been encouraged in the Guardian but apparently is now possible, how the debate is being framed by Woolhouse and the Guardian, and how we, the readers, may be being manipulated by that framing.

Real, live conspiracy

Interestingly, I was not alone in being struck by how strange the preferred framing was. A second epidemiologist, Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician at Harvard who serves on a scientific committee to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), saw problems with the article too. Unfortunately, however, Prof Kulldorff appears not to qualify as “eminent” enough for the Guardian to quote him uncritically. That is because he was one of three highly respected academics who brought ignominy down on their heads in October 2020 by authoring the Great Barrington Declaration.

Like Woolhouse, the Declaration offered an alternative to blanket national lockdowns – the official response to rising hospitalizations – but did so when those lockdowns were being aggressively pursued, and no other options were being considered. The Guardian was among those that pilloried the Declaration and its authors, presenting it as an irresponsible right-wing policy and a recipe for Covid to tear through the population, laying waste to significant sections of the population.

My purpose here is not to defend the Great Barrington Declaration. I don’t feel qualified enough to express a concrete, public view one way or another on its merits. And part of the reason for that hesitancy is that any meaningful conversation at the time among experts was ruthlessly suppressed. The costs of lockdowns were largely unmentionable in official circles and the “liberal” media. It was instantly stigmatized as the policy preference of the “deplorable” right.

This was not accidental. We now know it was a real, live conspiracy. Leaked emails show that Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, and his minions used their reliable contacts in prominent liberal media to smear the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. “There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?” a senior official wrote to Fauci. The plan was character assassination, pure and simple—nothing to do with science. And “liberal” media happily and quickly took up that task.

The Guardian, of course, went right along with those smears. This is why Prof Kulldorff has every right to treat with disdain both the Guardian’s decision to now publish Prof Woolhouse’s criticisms – so very belatedly – of lockdown policy and Prof Woolhouse’s public distancing of himself from the now-radioactive Great Barrington Declaration even though his published comments closely echo the policies proposed in the Declaration. As Prof Kulldorff observes:

Hilarious logical somersault. In the Guardian, Mark Woolhouse argues that [the] UK should have used focused protection as defined in the Great Barrington Declaration, while criticizing the Great Barrington Declaration due to its mischaraterization by the Guardian.”

Hilarious logical somersault. In @guardian, Mark Woolhouse argues that UK should have used focused protection as defined in the Great Barrington Declaration, while criticizing the Great Barrington Declaration due to its mischaraterization by @guardian. https://t.co/lJfKVbzgaC

— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) January 3, 2022

Reputational damage 

If we put on our critical thinking hats for a moment, we can deduce a plausible reason for that mischaracterization.

Like the rest of the “liberal” media, the Guardian has been fervently pro-lockdown and an avowed opponent of any meaningful discussion of the Great Barrington Declaration since its publication more than a year ago. Moreover, it has characterized any criticism of lockdowns as an extreme right-wing position. But the paper now wishes to open up a space for a more critical discussion of the merits of lockdown at a time when rampant but milder Omicron threatens to shut down not only the economy but distribution chains and health services.

Demands for lockdowns are returning – premised on the earlier arguments for them – but the formerly obscured costs are much more difficult to ignore now. Even lockdown cheerleaders like the Guardian finally understand some of what was clear 15 months ago to experts like Prof Kulldorff and his fellow authors.

What the Guardian appears to be doing is smuggling the Great Barrington Declaration’s arguments back into the mainstream but trying to do it in a way that won’t damage its credibility and look like an about-face. It is being entirely deceitful. And the vehicle for achieving this end is a fellow critic of lockdowns, Prof Woolhouse, who is not tainted goods like Prof Kulldorff, even though their views appear to overlap considerably. Criticism of lockdowns is being rehabilitated via Prof Woolhouse, even as Prof Kulldorff remains an outcast, a deplorable.

In other words, this is not about any evolution in scientific thinking. It is about the Guardian avoiding reputational damage – and doing so at the cost of continuing to damage Prof Kulldorff’s reputation. Prof Kulldorff and his fellow authors were scapegoated when their expert advice was considered politically inconvenient, while Prof Woolhouse is being celebrated because similar expert advice is now convenient.

This is how much of our public discourse operates. The good guys control the narrative so that they can ensure they continue to look good, while the bad guys are tarred and feathered, even if they are proven right. The only way to really make sense of what is going on is to disengage from this kind of political tribalism, examine contexts, avoid being so invested in outcomes, and work hard to gain more perspective on the anxiety and fear each of us feels.

The corporate media is not our friend. Its coverage of the pandemic is not there to promote the public good. It is there to feed our anxieties, keep us coming back for more, and monetize that distress. The only cure for this sickness? A lot more critical thinking.

mintpressnews.com

Amid studies showing a link between some vaccines and heart problems, professional athletes appear to be collapsing on the field of dreams like never before. Are these incidences normal occurrences, coincidences or symptomatic of mandatory vaccine programs?

As more countries make vaccinations mandatory requirements for participating in many aspects of life, including that of sporting events, stadiums around the world have become something of testing grounds for determining the efficacy of the rollout. Thus far the results do not look particularly promising.

Last month, the world of female rugby was rocked by the news that Scottish sensation Siobhan Cattigan, 26, died suddenly “in non-suspicious circumstances,” as the Daily Mail reported. Yet anytime a young person – not least of all a healthy star athlete – dies unexpectedly there is some inherent element of ‘suspicion’ involved. Perhaps not in the criminal sense, but certainly from a medical point of view.

Moreover, had Cattigan’s premature death, the cause of which has not been disclosed, been an isolated event then it could be chalked up as something of a tragic ‘fluke.’ It appears, however, that Cattigan’s sudden death was not an isolated event, but rather part of a disturbing trend in the world of sports.

Scottish Rugby is deeply saddened to hear of the tragic passing of Scotland international and @StirlingCounty player Siobhan Cattigan.

https://t.co/txAVOHsqMs pic.twitter.com/l13wtlOYl4

— Scottish Rugby (@Scotlandteam) November 30, 2021

Last month, three professional athletes were stricken by health emergencies in the same week. Football player for Wigan Athletic, Charlie Wyke, 28, suffered cardiac arrest during scrimmage and was taken to hospital where he was reported in stable condition. Wyke credited emergency CPR performed by manager Leam Richardson with helping to save his life.

Days later, John Fleck, 30, a player with Sheffield United, was carried off the field on a stretcher during a Championship game against Reading. The Daily Mail, citing an anonymous source, reported rather defensively that “John Fleck’s issue was not vaccination related.” The list doesn’t end there.

In late October, Barcelona player Sergio Aguero, 33, considered one of the best strikers today, had his dazzling career cut short after being diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia following a match; on November 1st, Icelandic midfielder Emil Palsson, 28, required resuscitation after a cardiac arrest 12 minutes into play; on June 12, Denmark midfielder Christian Eriksen, 29, named Danish Football Player of the Year a record five times, suffered a heart attack at Euro 2020 and given cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He announced his retirement from the sport after being fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator to regulate his heartbeat.

Footballers suddenly collapsing on the field used to be a mercifully rare experience.

It’s now almost a daily one.

Are any mainstream media journalists investigating the sudden rise in these events? https://t.co/RK6xj7YaGd

— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) November 25, 2021

Do any of these health emergencies prove that the mandated Covid vaccines were to blame? Absolutely not. In fact, many medical professionals who have been quoted in the media on these incidences are inclined to blame “coincidence.” The Daily Mail went so far as to say that many scientists have rejected the suggestion that vaccines were suspect “especially as the country braces itself for a possible wave of more cases and deaths from Covid after the discovery of the Omicron variant.”

The conclusion by Reuters, after consulting with a number of medical experts, was nearly identical: “No evidence COVID-19 vaccines are linked to athletes collapsing or dying from myocarditis.”

Nevertheless, the sudden spate of on-field emergencies has raised questions among several seasoned veterans of the game.

“In my 19 years as a pro footballer & and then my 20+ years watching and commenting, I’ve never seen ANY players collapse, pass out, etc either live or during any of the thousands of training sessions and matches I’ve taken part in,” remarked ex pro-footballer Kevin Gage over Twitter.

Former England star Trevor Sinclair speaking about the incident involving Fleck on radio station TalkSport, commented: “I think everyone wants to know if he (Fleck) has had the Covid vaccine.”

Everyone I speak to about these heart problems suffered by footballers (which worryingly seem to be happening more regularly) are they linked to covid vaccines or not??

— Trevor Sinclair (@trevor8sinclair) November 24, 2021

Anecdotal evidence aside, is there anything in the medical literature to suggest a cause and effect may be in play? The answer points to the affirmative, with various studies indicating possible health issues associated with the vaccines, yet these risks, albeit rare, are being downplayed by social and mainstream media.

In early November, the American Heart Association, not your average right-wing group of conspiracy theorists, released a report with the lengthy title: ‘Abstract 10712: Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning.’

The conclusion from the AHA seems worthy of some attention: “We conclude that the mRNA vacs dramatically increase inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination.”

Despite the long-standing reputation of the AHA, Twitter actually fixed a warning stamp on the link to the study, claiming it may be “unsafe.”

What the hell is going on? pic.twitter.com/WlpUKP8QFU

— Heidegger (@Kukicat7) November 8, 2021

Meanwhile, the first glimpse of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine trial data – which is being released at the excruciatingly slow rate of 500 pages per month, meaning that full disclosure will not occur until the year 2076 – does little to instill confidence.

Zerohedge, quoting journalist Kyle Becker, reported “there were a total of 42,086 case reports for adverse reactions (25,379 medically confirmed, 16,707 non-medically confirmed), spanning 158,893 total events.

More than 25,000 of the events were classified as “nervous system disorders.”

Again, none of this proves that the vaccines are to blame for the apparent rise in collapses now happening in various sporting events. Indeed, it has been suggested that Covid-19 itself may be to blame for increasing the frequency of cardiac arrest through “some inflammatory response,” Dr. Satjit Bhusri, a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told WebMD.

The point is we just don’t know. As the world navigates its way painstakingly through this period of impenetrable darkness, along a coastline riddled with dangerous rock formations, it would seem wise not to discount any possibilities, no matter how unsettling. That is the only way of allowing the science to indiscriminately determine the facts. Ignoring the other side of the debate as ‘conspiracy theorists,’ however, will prevent the necessary discussion from happening in the first place, which may very well be the goal behind such a risky game.

Were you following the news this last week? Vaccine mandates are everywhere: one country, after another, is doubling-down, to try to force, or legally compel, full population vaccination. The mandates are coming because of the massive uptick in Covid – most of all in the places where the experimental mRNA gene therapies were deployed en masse. And (no coincidence), this ‘marker’ has come just as U.S. Covid deaths in 2021 have surpassed those of 2020. This has happened, despite the fact that last year, no Americans were vaccinated (and this year 59% are vaccinated). Clearly no panacea, this mRNA ‘surge’.

Of course, the Pharma-Establishment know that the vaccines are no panacea. There are ‘higher interests’ at play here. It is driven rather by fear that the window for implementing its series of ‘transitions’ in the U.S. and Europe is closing. Biden still struggles to move his ‘Go-Big’ social spending plan and green agenda transition through Congress by the midterm election in a year’s time. And the inflation spike may well sink Biden’s Build Back Better agenda (BBB) altogether.

Time is short. The midterm elections are but 12 months away, after which the legislative window shuts. The Green ‘transition’ is stuck too (by concerns that moving too fast to renewables is putting power grids at risk and elevating heating costs unduly), and the Pharma establishment will be aware that a new B.1.1.529 variant has made a big jump in evolution with 32 mutations to its spike protein. This makes it “clearly very different” from previous variants, which may drive further waves of infection evading ‘vaccine defences’.

Translation: a new wave of restrictions, more lockdowns, and – eventually – trillions of dollars in new stimmie cheques may be in prospect. And what of inflation then, we might ask.

It’s a race for the U.S. and Europe, where the pandemic is back in full force across Europe, to push through their re-set agendas, before variants seize up matters with hospitals crowded with the vaccinated and non-vaccinated; with riots in the streets, and mask mandates at Christmas markets (that’s if they open at all). A big reversal was foreshadowed by this week’s news: vaccine mandates and lockdowns, even in highly vaccinated areas, are returning. And people don’t like it.

The window for the Re-Set may be fast closing. One observer, noting all the frenetic Élite activity, has asked ‘have we finally reached peak Davos?’. Is the turn to authoritarianism in Europe a sign of desperation as fears grow that the various ‘transitions’ planned under the ‘re-set’ umbrella (financial, climate, vaccine and managerial expert technocracy) may never be implemented?

Cut short rather, as spending plans are hobbled by accelerating inflation; as the climate transition fails to find traction amongst poorer states (and at home, too); as technocracy is increasingly discredited by adverse pandemic outcomes; and Modern Monetary Theory hits a wall, because – well, inflation again.

Are you paying attention yet? The great ‘transition’ is conceived as a hugely expensive shift towards renewables, and to a new digitalised, roboticised corporatism. It requires Big (inflationary) funding to be voted through, and a huge parallel (inflationary) expenditure on social support to be approved by Congress as well. The social provision is required to mollify all those who subsequently will find themselves without jobs, because of the climate ‘transition’ and the shift to a digitalised corporate sphere. But – unexpectedly for some ‘experts’ – inflation has struck – the highest statistics in 30 years.

There are powerful oligarchic interests behind the Re-Set. They do not want to see it go down, nor see the West eclipsed by its ‘competitors’. So it seems that rather than back off, they will go full throttle and try to impose compliance on their electorates: tolerate no dissidence.

A 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless” by then dissident and future Czech President Vaclav Havel begins mockingly that, “A SPECTRE is haunting Eastern Europe: the spectre of what in the West is called ‘dissent’”. “This spectre has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting.” Well, today, as Michael Every of Rabobank notes, “the West has polarisation, mass protests, riots, talk of obligatory vaccinations in Europe, and Yanis Varoufakis arguing capitalism is already dead; and that a techno-feudalism looms”. Now, prompting even greater urgency, are the looming U.S. midterms. Trump’s return (even if confined just to Congress), would cut the legs from under BBB, and ice-up Brussels too.

It was however, precisely this tech revolution, to which Varoufakis calls attention, that both re-defined the Democrat constituency, and turned tech oligarchs into billionaires. Through algorithmically creating a magnetism of like-minded content, cascaded out to its customers, it has both smothered intellectual curiosity, and created the ‘un-informed party’, which is the today’s Managerial Class – the party of the credentialed meritocracy; the party, above all, smugly seeing themselves as the coming era’s ‘winners’ – unwilling to risk a look behind the curtain; to put their ‘safe space’ to the test.

Perversely, this cadre of professionally-corralled academics, analysts, and central bankers, all insist that they completely believe in their memes: That their techno-approach is both effective, and of benefit to humanity – oblivious to the dissenting views, swirling around them, down in the interstices of the internet.

The main function then of such memes today, whether issued by the Pharma Vaccine ‘Command’; the MMT ‘transition’ Command; the energy ‘transition’ Command; or the global managerial technocracy ‘transition’, is to draw a ‘Maginot line’ – a defensive ideological boundary, a “Great Narrative” as it were – between ‘the truth’ as defined by the ruling classes, and with that of any other ‘truth’ that contradicts their narrative. That is to say, it is about compliance.

It was well understood that all these transitions would overturn long-standing human ways of life, that are ancient and deeply rooted and trigger dissidence – which is why new forms of social ‘discipline’ would be required. (Incidentally, the EU leadership already refer to their their official mandates as ‘Commands’). Such disciplines are now being trialled in Europe – with the vaccine mandates (even though scientists are telling them that vaccines cannot be the silver bullet for which they yearn). As one high ‘lodge’ member, favouring a form of global governance notes, to make people accept such reforms, you must frighten them.

Yes, the collective of ‘transitions’ must have their ‘Big, overarching Narrative’ – however hollow, it rings (i.e. the struggle to defend democracy against authoritarianism). But it is the nature of today’s cultural-meme war that ultimately its content becomes little more than a rhetorical shell, lacking all sincerity at its core.

It serves principally, as decoration to a ‘higher order’ project: The preservation of global ‘rules of the road’, framed to reflect U.S. and allied interests, as the base from which the clutch of ‘transitions’ can be raised up into a globally managed order which preserves the Élite’s influence and command of major assets.

This politics of crafted, credentialised meme-politics is here to stay, and now is ‘everywhere’. It has long crossed the partisan divide. The wider point here – is that the mechanics of meme-mobilisation is being projected, not just in the western ‘home’ (at a micro-level), but abroad, into American ‘foreign policy’ too (i.e. at the macro-level).

And, just as in the domestic arena, where the notion of politics by suasion is lost (with vaccine mandates enforced by water-cannon, and riot police), so too, the notion of foreign policy managed through argument, or diplomacy, has been lost too.

Western foreign policy becomes less about geo-strategy, but rather is primordially focussed on the three ‘big iconic issues’ – China, Russia and Iran – that can be given an emotional ‘charge’ in order to profitably mobilise certain identified ‘constituencies’ in the U.S. domestic cultural war. All the various U.S. political strands play this game.

The aim is to ‘nudge’ domestic American psyches (and those of their allies) into mobilisation on some issue (such as more protectionism for business against Chinese competition), or alternatively, imagined darkly, in order to de-legitimise an opposition, or to justify failures. These mobilisations are geared to gaining relative domestic partisan advantage, rather than having strategic purpose.

When this credentialled meme-war took hold in the U.S., millions of people were already living a reality in which facts no longer mattered at all; where things that never happened officially, happened. And other things that obviously happened never happened: not officially, that is. Or, were “far-right extremist conspiracy theories,” “fake news,” or “disinformation,” or whatever, despite the fact that people knew that they weren’t.

Russia and China therefore face a reality in which European and U.S. élites are heading in the opposite direction to epistemological purity and well-founded argument. That is to suggest, the new ‘normal’ is about generating a lot of contradictory realities, not just contradictory ideologies, but actual mutually-exclusive ‘realities’, which could not possibly simultaneously exist … and which are intended to bemuse adversaries – and nudge them off-balance.

This is a highly risky game, for it forces a resistance stance on those targeted states – whether they seek it, or not. It underlines that politics is no more about considered strategy: It is about being willing for the U.S. to lose strategically (even militarily), in order to win politically. Which is to say gaining an ephemeral win of having prompted an favourable unconscious psychic response amongst American voters.

Russia, China, Iran are but ‘images’ prized mainly for their potential for being loaded with ‘nudge’ emotional-charge in this western cultural war, (of which these states are no part). The result is that these states become antagonists to the American presumption to define a global ‘rules of the road’ to which all must adhere.

These countries understand exactly the point of these value and rights-loaded ‘rules’. It is to force compliance on these states to acquiesce to the ‘transitions, or, to suffer isolation, boycott and sanction – in a similar way to the choices being forced on those in the West not wishing to vaccinate (i.e. no jab; no job).

This approach reflects an attempt by Team Biden to have it ‘both ways’ with these three ‘Iconic States’: To welcome compliance on ‘transition issues’, but to be adversarial over any dissidence to mounting a rules framework that can raise the ‘transitions’ from the national, to the supra-national plane.

But do the U.S. practitioners of meme-politics, absorb and comprehend that the stance by Russia-China – in riposte – is not some same-ilk counter-mobilisation done to ‘make a point’? That their vision does stand at variance with ‘the rules’? Do they see that their ‘red lines’ may indeed be ‘red lines’ literally? Is the West now so meme-addicted, it cannot any longer recognise real national interests?

This is key: When the West speaks, it is forever looking over its shoulder, at the domestic, and wider psychic impact when it is ‘making a point’ (such as practicing attacks by nuclear-capable bombers as close to Russia’s borders as they dare). And that when Russia and China say, ‘This is our Red Line’, it is no meme – they really mean it.

By Jake JOHNSON

Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech — the makers of the two most successful coronavirus vaccines — are raking in a combined $65,000 in profits every minute as they refuse to share their manufacturing recipes with developing countries, where billions of people still lack access to lifesaving shots.

According to a new People’s Vaccine Alliance analysis of recent earnings reports, People’s Vaccine Alliance,  “It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour while just two percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus,” said Maaza Seyoum of the People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa.

“Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritize the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low-income countries out in the cold.”

Moderna — a Massachusetts-based company that developed its vaccine with the help of government research and around $10 billion in taxpayer funding — has delivered just 0.2 percent of its total vaccine supply to low-income countries, the People’s Vaccine Alliance estimates. The coronavirus vaccine is Moderna’s only product on the market.

Pfizer and its Germany-based partner BioNTech — whose vaccine was also helped along by taxpayer money — haven’t done much better than their competitor, sending less than 1 percent of their supply to poor nations while profiting hugely from sales to rich countries.

“Predominantly, right now, we have already signed orders, and those are with high-income countries,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla recently said of coronavirus vaccine sales for next year, blaming poor countries for not ordering shots quickly enough.

“We are negotiating right now with few middle-income countries, and with even fewer low-income countries,” Bourla said.

But public health campaigners argue that bilateral deals and vaccine donations are not sufficient to bring production and distribution into line with global needs. Instead, they say, pharmaceutical giants must relinquish their vaccine recipes and allow qualified manufacturers around the world to produce low-cost generic versions for their populations.

Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have thus far refused to do so — and lobbied aggressively against a World Trade Organization proposal to temporarily suspend vaccine patents. Bourla, for his part, has dismissed technology-transfer proposals as “dangerous nonsense.”

“Contrary to what Pfizer’s CEO says, the real nonsense is claiming the experience and expertise to develop and manufacture lifesaving medicines and vaccines does not exist in developing countries,” Anna Marriott, health policy manager at Oxfam International, said in a statement Tuesday. “This is just a false excuse that pharmaceutical companies are hiding behind to protect their astronomical profits.”

“It is also a complete failure of government to allow these companies to maintain monopoly control and artificially constrain supply in the midst of a pandemic while so many people in the world are yet to be vaccinated,” she added.

Common Dreams via consortiumnews.com

The mandatory Covid vaccination policy in the U.S. army is an extension of Biden’s ideological purging program, but the logic behind it is not thoroughly understood by the public.

Conservatives see a likely decrease in morale and enlistment, while liberals see an opposite likely outcome. But enlistment in a volunteer army may not be the end-goal, and so we must interpret the moves in light of the growing potential of a blanket draft.

Superficially, the premise for the purge is the equating of vaccine hesitancy with so-called ‘Trumpism’, which in turn is ‘linked’ to right-wing extremism such as white nationalism – a logical fallacy. Because the logical fallacy is so clear, and the purge of norm-centric political views is the goal, it gives rise to all kinds of questions and theories.

Military officials would absolutely know that this is a false equivalence, as the recent Pew Research poll on vaccine hesitancy shows that roughly 40% of Americans do not want the jab. Certainly 40% of Americans are not white nationalists. Because this data is readily accessible, and really because claims to the contrary are heuristically absurd prima facie, it effectively fuels any number of questions about the patriotism and intentions of the brass:

“Why would top brass stand by while the false equivalence is used as a pretext for an ideological purge of America’s most patriotic and pro-constitution elements?”

But there’s a further problem in this conflation of anti-vax and far-right. This vaccine hesitant view also has a high correlation with African-American enlistees who may be aware of the history of the U.S. government experimenting on this demographic, which also reflects an overall distrust in governmental institutions within various African-American communities.

And this is compounded by a view in the populist right, that the problem with vaccine safety means there is a design to weaken the military. Then there is the government’s heavy-handed and politicized response to the Covid pandemic, including the publicized concentration camps for quarantining.

Moderna Covid-19 vaccine administered at Vilseck Army health clinic, Germany. Dec. 28, 2020 

Through understanding military sociology alongside the real challenges that the U.S. faces, both internally and geopolitically, we can trace future plans of the American elites.

While the brass have become convinced that a ‘Woke Army’ will be well-situated to suppress constitutionalist and anti-reset citizens in an insurgency, the same woke policies aim to improve resilience against Chinese propaganda in a conflict scenario. Eliminating anti-Covid vax soldiers is quietly equated to eliminating soldiers who will also refuse other orders likely to result in death or serious injury.

There are invisible costs to this proposition. Enlistment may take a hit, but there will be even more pushback if there is a full-scale military conflict which requires a draft. The hedge against this is to increase wokeness, as counter-intuitive as this seems for many.

What we are seeing is how the military is doing sociology in the present year, which may be quite wrong. The whole premise of the purge is only as useful as the sociology is accurate. Typically, good military sociology – results-driven – accurately gauges the public’s attitude in order to translate that into sound military policy and training. That’s how the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy was arrived at. It matched Main Street’s attitude in the 1990’s.

The U.S. military does not openly track the party affiliation or belief-systems of its enlisted members, and unscientific voluntary polls by publications like ‘Military Times’ tend more to reflect the views of its regular readers (conservative) than the actual population of enlisted on the whole. Of course, there are career enlisted, and those who just perform four years active duty and two years inactive IRR in their minimum MSO. Career enlisted probably tend to be more conservative than general enlisted numbers would indicate. But it would be an error to think that such tracking did not take place within the institution, but more, such analysis has been carried out by notable military sociologists.

But because of the ideological purge in academia over the last fifteen years, which hit the social sciences first and hardest, there has been a dangerous and growing principles-driven approach.

This principles-driven approach – ‘woke because we should be woke’ – is at odds with the realist and functionalist schools in state-sanctioned sociology which orient towards making policy on the pragmatic basis of results.

Marxian tools in sociology have proved invaluable over the past century, when they are utilized in harmony with Durkheim’s functionalist theory. C. Wright Mills, who wrote extensively on Marx, also informs the framework of military sociology. But the Marxist school by itself is rooted in conflict theory, where the principle of conflict (the class struggle) is central to society.

Sociologist C. Wright Mills on his BMW motorcycle – pictured in this undated photo

Naturally, the wokeness campaign is being couched in the language of pragmatism, – ‘woke because this is smarter’ – because this is still the attitude of the brass. In brief, the brass is being misled by academia, which in turn is unfit for purpose.

The weaponization of conflict theory towards the perceived pragmatic aims of the state, as the population is ruled through division, carries a high-risk of misapplication when the present body of literature is dominated by actual conflict theorists. This can lead to a bigger disaster if the aim is to prepare for a draft.

A key factor to understand, again, is the increasing push to normalize the draft. As Max Margulies of West Point writes on this military sociology question:

“One common belief is that maintaining draft registration bolsters the link between civilians and soldiers, which has weakened significantly since the U.S. military became an all-volunteer force. Through the last two decades of war, only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military.

Some experts suggest that such a weak civilian-military connection contributes to a number of problems, including a lack of familiarity with the military, a military that is not representative of society and an unfair distribution of the human costs of war.”

Rather than aiming to defang the military, a transformation of military ideology is underway that is believed to a.) better prepare it for future conflicts abroad, b.) attract more recruits from minority groups (or make a future draft more palatable), and c.) prepare the force for use against American citizens identifying as constitutionalist, conservative, etc.

Point ‘c.)’ is probably the most disconcerting. The old-left with its ties to both the Soviet Union and organized labor had been traditionally considered the likely source of domestic counter-insurgency crises. Hence, committed anti-communist conservatives were drawn into the volunteer military, especially true for pipe-hitters in the special forces. This was part of a relatively clear world-view: communism is the enemy at home and abroad.

A social shift occurred with the collapse of the USSR, in combination with the insertion of Frankfurt School theories and the successful co-option of left-radicalism by the Soros associated non-profit industrial complex. The outsourcing of industrial jobs to developing countries was also part of this change of left-radicalism, from labor-industrial unionism into the loftier and deeply abstracted halls of academia.

Now with social media, as part of the intelligence services, there is an ability to entirely control radical left-movements. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, for example, is effectively the ‘Minister of Information’ for Antifa and BLM. There was a pragmatic rationale behind American elites push for progressivism as the unofficial ideology of the state. This is because American conservatism, with its roots in classical liberalism, favors decentralization, while progressivist socialism generally favors the centralization of state authority.

In our analysis “Biden’s Pro-Terrorism Policy & Ideological Purging Is a Dangerous Combination That Strains Social and Military Support”, we emphasized that “America’s deep state and oligarchy have landed upon a type of civilizational about-face, where the legitimating social ideology is increasingly being made into the legitimating ideology of the military.”

This much is to be expected, however, since the median views among the ranks of the enlisted including NCOs ought to generally reflect those of society. It is a greatly related matter, though, that the NGO industrial complex in the U.S. has promoted this ideological shift among the civilian population.

In other words, American culture has been artificially shifted in the most radical way, not seen since the introduction of mandatory public schooling a century ago.

But the changes being implemented in the military come at a high cost, because they strain support from historically pro-military and conservative segments of the population. This may lend towards the creation of a counter-insurgency crisis as much as they are believed to be in place as a counter-measure.

In strategic planning for future conflicts in light of 4^th Generation Warfare (4GW) where a Baudrillardian simulacrum is constructed, there is an ostensible benefit side to this high cost in the equation.

This relates both to morale, unit cohesion, but also the motivations of individual soldiers in America’s future conflicts – likely in Latin America and also against China across numerous possible theaters. A conflict with Russia is also a potential conflict included in the thinking behind the ideological shift in the military

The thinking here is in part that soldiers indoctrinated into a culturally left outlook (or at least a left ‘dictionary’) will be better prepared in occupation and subsequent counter-insurgency operations at home and abroad, but also better inoculated against foreign/enemy propaganda aimed at the enlisted which increases perceived racial inequities in American society.

If the conflict is with Russia, then the thinking here is that since Russia is painted as an ultra-conservative state in liberal western media, then a ‘woke’ U.S. military might find similar inspiration as American soldiers in WWII.

Another part of the thinking as Margulies would likely affirm, is that this type of ‘woke’ sensitivity training among NCOs in the field may influence a change in banter and even decision making on operation assignments, so that soldiers of color do not believe opportunities and risks are assigned on the basis of race.

Historically, America’s opponents have weaponised social contradictions in the U.S. along the lines of race, which is in part attributed to the morale crash in the Vietnam War.

So-called Vietnam syndrome was warned about by Northwestern University sociologist Charles Moskos, architect of the ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy. Moskos, a veteran himself, dedicated his career to the study of the U.S. military as a social institution, and his analysis and the methods he developed continue to form the basis of military policy.

A 2018 Blue Star Families Military Lifestyle Survey results showed that military felt both disconnected from their communities and from the military itself:

“Forty-eight percent of respondents reported not feeling a sense of belonging to their civilian community, and 43 percent felt the same about their military community. This finding was critical because “a lower sense of belonging to a community has been linked with both depression and suicide.”

The blatant politicization of once-respected research institutions like MIT has increased a growing distrust in institutions. And this feeds right into vaccine hesitancy – not only among conservative soldiers, but also black American soldiers, overlap here aside. But it is also true for those on the other end of the spectrum who exhibit trait openness, and are accustomed to critically challenging mandates from authorities.

The tone-deaf approach of the brass under the Biden administration on vaccines has worked against the desired result. At the end of the day, the military can mandate the vaccine. But what happens when these become bi-annual, tri-annual? Quarterly? Monthly? What happens if we move from adverse reactions to long-term chronic impairment and illness?

The present rate of vaccination for Covid among the enlisted is reportedly about the same as in the general population – just under 60%. But the costs against morale and cohesion may be much higher.

In concluding our thoughts, it will be a surprise to many conservative citizens that there are ostensibly strategic reasons for the introduction of elements of Critical Race Theory and ‘revisionist’ American history into the training of commissioned officers and enlisted of the U.S. military.

It is especially important to understand the rationale behind this sea-change underway, as they are sociological in nature, but to do so requires letting go of certain assumptions and beliefs. This is because conservative thinking is also principles-driven, and can lose sight of results. Instead our thinking must be carried out in terms of realism and pragmatism.

The U.S. military today is insufficient for a full-scale conflict, let alone a total war with Russia or China. If both are allied, there is a close to zero chance of victory. The idea of reinstating the draft has been bandied about for some time, but it is a view that has grown in popularity.

The morale disaster in Vietnam, with its drafted army, was a strong indicator that the vulnerabilities and inequities in American society on the basis of race would prove to be an Achilles’ heel. Vietnamese propaganda was highly effective in creating an illusion that a disproportionate number (relative to population) of black draftees were killed in action. The propaganda also buttressed already persistent views that the war they were fighting was on the side of those who were oppressing them at home.

While Moskos believed that that the successes of the Civil Rights movement were in part predicated on the desegregation of the military under Truman in 1948, this was still based in a functionalist sociology: Americans were ready for desegregation before Truman’s policy.

Biden’s advisors have turned sociology on its head, changing it from ‘what works’ to ‘what ought to be’. Moskos would not approve.

From CRT ideological tests to vaccine-refusal purges, the toll on the military will be high. While this much is understood, the real value and efficacy of the benefits of these new policies may be similar to those of the vaccine itself.

Part of the thinking is that a ‘woke’ indoctrinated army will be more ready to put down a civilian insurrection, now identified with the far-right as opposed to the historical left. But rather than trying to ideologically train the army for domestic counter-insurgency, the aim should be to be to end the policies that give rise to them.

Rather than trying to fulfill some absurd mandate to ideologically prepare our soldiers for an unwinnable total war with two nuclear powers, managing multipolarity and spheres of influence should be the goal at the foundation of military doctrine.

If it were possible to say with absolute scientific authority that vaccinations are the best way for the planet to escape from the Covid-19 death grip, then it might seem plausible – albeit still highly arguable – for governments to demand proof of ‘the mark’ for participating in the global economy. As things stand, however, nothing to date indicates that there are not more effective and reliable means of moving forward.

The relentless push for vaccine passports by opportunistic authoritarians around the globe took a broadside this week as Israeli researchers discovered what had been suspected by many all along: natural immunity acquired via infection, as opposed to vaccinations, provides the best defense against Covid-19 and its seemingly endless array of Greek-coded variants.

The study, which examined up to 32,000 individuals, found that the risk of developing Covid-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated (with the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine), and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher, as compared to those individuals who had acquired natural immunity.

Equally shocking, individuals who were administered two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were almost six-times more likely to contract the Delta variation and seven-times more likely to have symptomatic disease than those who recovered from the disease naturally, according to the study, which is up for peer review.

“This analysis demonstrated that natural immunity affords longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization due to the delta variant,” the researchers said.

So what grounds are left for forcing vaccine passports on people? The simple answer would seem ‘none.’ As a thought experiment, let’s imagine that a radical new mode of transportation still in the early test stages – perhaps some brainchild from the quirky mind of Elon Musk, for example – had proven to have a better than average chance of exploding for no apparent reason.

Under such grim conditions it is doubtful that governments would coerce their subjects into driving such a flawed vehicle since the product itself would be deemed too dangerous to enter the mainstream. So why isn’t the same sort of logic being employed when it comes to being forced to carry a vaccine passport for a vaccine, which has also demonstrated itself to be dodgy at best, disastrous at worst?

The efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in treating the Delta strain has been measured at just 42 percent, and in some cases even as low as 17 percent. At the same time, thousands of otherwise healthy people have suffered horrible side effects after taking these jabs, up to and including death.

Australian journalist Denham Hitchcock is one of thousands of people who got much more than he bargained for when he got the shot.

“The first week was like any vaccine. Feeling off,” Hitchcock wrote on his Instagram page.

“But nearing the end of the second week my heart started to race, I was getting pins and needles in the arms, extreme fatigue and a very strange sensation of dizziness…By the end of the third week i was getting steadily worse – sharp chest pain – cold shivers and chills – and the dizziness was intense.

“25 days after the shot and probably a little late to hospital – but here I am – diagnosed with pericarditis – or inflammation of the heart due to the Pfizer vaccine.”

Since being in the hospital, Hitchcock says he’s contacted health professionals in Sydney who told him that while his reaction to the vaccine is rare – it’s certainly not isolated.

“One hospital has had well over a dozen cases like me,” he revealed.

 

Посмотреть эту публикацию в Instagram

 

Публикация от Denham Hitchcock (@denhamhitchcock)

Meanwhile, a coroner this week has determined that the death of Lisa Shaw, who worked for BBC Radio Newcastle and passed away in May, was “due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination.”

And lest anyone think the Moderna vaccine is without its own problems, Japan this week removed around 1.6 million vials of the vaccine from use after contamination was reported by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. While such things do occasionally happen, the ministry revealed that the substance found in the vials “reacted to magnets and…could be metal.”

Moderna suggested the problem may have come from a “manufacturing issue” from a plant in Spain.

“The company is investigating the reports and remains committed to working transparently and expeditiously with its partner, Takeda, and regulators to address any potential concerns,” a Moderna spokesperson told Nikkei, saying the drugmaker believed a “manufacturing issue” at a plant in Spain was to blame.

Incidentally, the very inventor of the mRNA vaccines, Dr. Robert Malone, who could be providing governments much-needed guidance during the pandemic, has largely been shunned from polite society from the Western hemisphere’s very own medical Taliban as a conspiracy theorist who peddles in “misinformation.”

When we finally get past all of this, the legitimacy of both the federal public health infrastructure and the legacy media will have been destroyed. And what happens then? Force your mind to think 9-12 months ahead. What do things look like then, based on current trends?

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) August 27, 2021

Getting back to Pfizer, its own lackluster performance apparently means little to regulators as the drug maker just won approval by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to administer its vaccine, which will be distributed under the brand name Comirnaty. Now pressure will certainly ratchet up against those who have second thoughts about the magic juice as many public and private institutions – from schools and workplaces to government agencies – push for a mandatory vaccine regime. This would include society’s youngest and most vulnerable demographic, the children.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for example, is pressuring the National Health Service to begin vaccinating children as young as 12, and despite the fact that the youth have shown amazing imperviousness to the virus. The UK looks set to join the United States, Spain, France and Germany as countries where inoculating the young is quickly becoming standard operating procedure – and with zero democratic debate.

Nobody, however, should be led to believe that things will return to normal once everyone has rolled up their sleeves for the shot. After all, these ‘vaccines’ do not prevent people from getting infected by Covid, and, as studies have shown, may actually precipitate infection. This shocking shortcoming of the jabs, far from sidelining their use in favor of other preventive measures, has allowed the vaccine makers to roll out an endless supply of booster shots, as gleefully discussed at a recent Pfizer stockholder meeting.

Albert Bourla, Pfizer Chairman of the Board & CEO, remarked that “the dynamics in the COVID more and more indicate a potential that we will have a clearly repeated business…Now we still don’t have data about the immunity of our vaccine because it is early. But we do see that the people that have the disease, more and more publications indicate that after several months, the immune response goes down. So there is a need to boost.” Those giddy remarks were made back in February, before the Pfizer vaccine has acquired FDA approval.

In other words, the sky is the limit for Big Pharma as far as profits from vaccinations go. And despite the inherent risks of getting the jab, the Western world’s assembly of petty tyrants, short-sighted leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden are pushing ahead with plans for vaccine passports.

Such an initiative, which flies in the face of freedom and liberty, denies individuals the right to refuse medical treatment – and treatment that is loaded with unacceptable risk. And just because one of the drug makers has secured FDA approval for their product, this will not help individuals who are injured, or worse, from the vaccines. The drug makers are indemnified from any lawsuits that may arise from the victims of their product.

This dire situation has placed the citizens of so-called democracies into the unenviable situation where they must choose between signing up to a lifetime of imperfect shots and boosters to participate in a large swath of the economy, or remain something of a social pariah for the rest of their lives. It is a choice that no citizen of a democratic system should ever be forced to make.

When the global COVID-19 vaccination drive kicked off earlier this year, two distinct faultlines gradually emerged, separating the relatively monolithic pro-vaxxer camp from the more heterogeneous assemblage of fence-sitters, sceptics and outright vaccine refuseniks. The new divide reflected a larger chasm that has prevailed since the watershed event of Sept 11 2001. It was a divide between those who lapped up mainstream narratives and those who instinctively questioned them.

Doubts over the novel coronavirus were sown from the onset by scientific data which appeared sketchy, contradictory and outright dodgy.  Big Tech’s digital pogroms against undesirable questions and expert opinions reinforced suspicions further. It was clear that earnest scientific inquiry, which thrives on vigorous debates, will not be tolerated.

This ironically resulted in the “free world” resorting to the likes of TikTok – a Chinese platform once targeted by the Trump administration – to post their opinions and grievances, including a litany of adverse reactions to various vaccines. Despite this, Western elites still have the gall to view themselves as champions of “free speech” even as mass protests against the New Normal roil their cities.

The hypocritical actions of countless leaders, celebrities and “influencers” worldwide who routinely flouted the very lockdowns they had advocated inevitably hardened public scepticism. If there are different sets of norms for the ruling and the ruled, why shouldn’t there be space for divergent opinions over the coronavirus?

The Informed Unvaccinated

A recent MIT study revealed that coronavirus sceptics were generally better-informed and scientifically literate vis-a-vis their vaccinated counterparts. The unvaccinated cohort also appeared more “sophisticated” in the use of “datasets from official sources” as well as “state-of-the-art visualization methods” to interpret the COVID-19 conundrum.  The qualitative contrasts between the pro-vaxxer and unvaccinated camps are nicely encapsulated in this video clip.

Mainstream tirades against vaccine holdouts – including profanity-laden epithets such as “morons” and calls to “remove them from society” – further alarmed the unvaccinated. Faced with such gratuitous hostility, vaccine refuseniks can be forgiven for regarding the growing inoculation divide as one between septic tanks and sceptic camps.

One set is fuelled by an intractable Wokist dogma that seeks to undermine every society along its path of contagion. Information is curated by anonymous fact-checkers with little or no domain-level expertise. Obedience is demanded in its totality; otherwise every molehill will be raised to the level of a Mt. Everest through a hyper-trolled hissy fit. Trying to understand the Wokist mindset is like data-mining a bottomless sewer.

Vaccine sceptics, as the author observed, are generally informed by caution, a spirit of inquiry and a prophylactic approach to the pandemic. They have been boosting their immune systems through a variety of means since the outbreak. The author himself spends up to 3 hours a day on jungle treks!

Sceptics can also quote an impressive array of experts ranging from mRNA technology pioneer Dr Robert Malone, Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff to Nobel Prize-winning virologist Dr. Luc Montagnier as well as expert testimonies before US state and federal authorities.  Big Tech and Big Media have not only censored these viewpoints, they may have also played a role in removing cheap, prophylactic drugs like hydroxychloroquine, colchicine and ivermectin from over-the-counter (OTC) pharmacy shelves worldwide. It is considered a heresy to even mention these drugs in the social media. Stricter prescription regimens meant that it was sometimes easier to procure illicit drugs.  If one follows the science of statistics, the results are as predictable as they are depressing: Drug overdoses killed 93,000 Americans in 2020, registering a 30% year-on-year increase.

The global medical gulag ushered in by the New Normal inadvertently brought together like-minded individuals across borders, ethnic divides and language barriers, particularly via the exchange of information that were constantly supressed by Big Tech and Big Media. Examples of successful prophylactic treatment regimens (e.g. Armacao dos Buzios in Brazil) were discovered via these interactions.

Arguments of the Unvaccinated

There are many reasons behind rising pushbacks against an aggressive global vaccine lobby.

To begin with, the approval process for new drugs and medical devices in the United States may take 12 and 7 years respectively while vaccine development traditionally involved a long, complex process that may span 10-15 years.  Nearly all Covid-19 injections flogged worldwide today are experimental vaccines that were developed in less than a year.  Tragic cases like thalidomide babies and the Cutter Incident continue to serve as a cautionary reminder to the unvaccinated. Negative testimonies from families and friends, or from dying patients themselves, are available on TikTok or YouTube alternatives such as BitChute and Brighteon.

Distrust towards official COVID-19 statistics was also fuelled by irrefutable counter-trends. Sweden which had never imposed mandatory lockdowns, masking or mass inoculations is faring much better than its vaccine-obsessed counterparts. Schools were kept open and tourists flowed in. Did Sweden just prove the primacy of herd immunity over vaccines?

As of July 29, the cumulative COVID-19 death toll in Sweden stood at a relative low of 14,617. Yet, during the initial outbreak of the pandemic early last year, the global Ministry of Truth was livid at Sweden’s laissez-faire response. The Nordic redoubt was prophesied to become a “catastrophe” and “an example of how not to handle COVID-19.” Swedish experts were carefully cherry-picked by left-wing bastions to be an echo chamber for the New Normal agenda. For a while, it seemed that the only real science coming out of Sweden were the ones vetted by the incomparably erudite Greta Thunberg.

In the United States, a White House plan for door-to-door vaccination appeared hypocritical in light of a stubborn refusal to reveal the number of “breakthrough” COVID-19 cases among its vaccinated staff. Was contact tracing activated to check on people who may have been infected by these individuals?

With such shocking deficits in government transparency, can one blame sceptics for hypothesizing whether it is the vaccines that are actuating the new coronavirus variants? According to a whistleblower who reportedly accessed raw data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), a mind-blowing 45,000 people have allegedly died from Covid-19 vaccines in the United States. Surely, this figure cannot be true? It is nonetheless a fact that less than 1% of adverse vaccine events are actually reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This leak has sparked a lawsuit led by attorney Thomas Renz against the US federal government. Since a suit has been filed, allegations must be proven in a court of law under the threat of perjury.  At the very least, this action may shed some light on how the opaque VAERS functions. If the lawsuit has any merit – which remains doubtful – another charge may be warranted against the grossly misnamed “fact-checking” industry for being complicit in many deaths.

Scapegoating the Unvaccinated

The renewed COVID-19 surge worldwide has necessitated a predictable scapegoat, going by prevalent liberal logic. CNN’s cherry-picked experts are now labelling the unvaccinated as “variant factories” because “the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person.” This leap of logic can also be used to hypothesize whether the LGBTQK community may act as “variant factories” for more contagious HIV strains in the future. After all, as the CNN-channelled logic goes: “All it takes is one mutation in one person.” But one can just hear the accusatory shrieks of “intolerance”, “bigotry”, and “hate” when a specious argument is countered by a more politically-sensitive one.

As for “variant factories”, whatever happened to those pangolins or bats that were allegedly the source of the novel coronavirus?  Bats can travel up to 800kms and may live for more than 20 years. Bats are also the ultimate “variant factories”. If the zoonotic theory of COVID-19 was correct, bats from southern China should have devastated the northern reaches of neighbouring Southeast Asia last year. However, the worst affected nations in the region are further to the south. Coincidentally, these are the countries that unquestioningly follow WHO recommendations. Calls by former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to learn from India’s successful pandemic management have fallen on deaf ears. India had quietly reinstated hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin into the COVID treatment protocol in the face of subtle opposition from its Silicon Valley diaspora.

Scapegoating the unvaccinated as “variant factories” is not only scientifically unproven and ethically deplorable but it criminally likens them to rats carrying a plague. How soon should we wait before the unvaccinated are targeted by mobs inflamed by the “science” of incentivised experts and anonymous fact-checkers?  For a historical precedent, think of the centuries-spanning mob lynching of “plague-carrying Jews”?

In an ironic twist, nearly 84% of new COVID cases in Israel are among vaccinated individuals – as US Senator Ron Johnson pointed out in a recent interview.  Even if this figure is contestable, how come Sweden does not have a problem with the Delta variant? The efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel has steadily dropped from a purported 90% to just 39% in a matter of months.

At the end of the day, the vaccine Rubicon has just widened. If current vaccines aren’t working against new variants, why should the unvaccinated jump headlong into the inoculation bandwagon? Coercive vaccination campaigns may have also permanently eroded trust in healthcare systems worldwide.

activistpost.com

I get to say this about the drug companies, now that President Biden has said that Facebook is killing people because it was allowing people to use its system to spread lies about the vaccines. There is actually a better case against the drug companies.

After all, they are using their government-granted patent monopolies, and their control over technical information about the production of vaccines, to limit the supply of vaccines available to the world. As a result, most of the population in the developing world is not yet vaccinated. And, unlike the followers of Donald Trump, people in developing countries are not vaccinated because they can’t get vaccines.

The TRIPS Waiver Charade

The central item in the story about speeding vaccine distribution in the developing world is the proposal put forward at the WTO last October (yes, that would be nine months ago), by India and South Africa, to suspend patents and other intellectual property rules related to vaccines, tests, and treatments for the duration of the pandemic. Since that time, the rich countries have been engaged in a massive filibuster, continually delaying any WTO action on the measure, presumably with the hope that it will become largely irrelevant at some point.

The Biden administration breathed new life into the proposal when it endorsed suspending patent rights, albeit just for vaccines. This is the easiest sell for people in the United States and other rich countries, since it is not just about humanitarian concerns for the developing world. If the pandemic is allowed to spread unchecked in the developing world it is likely only a matter of time before a vaccine resistant strain develops. This could mean a whole new round of disease, death, and shutdowns in the rich countries, until a new vaccine can be developed and widely distributed.

After the Biden administration indicated its support for this limited waiver, many other rich countries signed on as well. Germany, under longtime chancellor Angela Merkel, has been largely left alone to carry water for the pharmaceutical industry in opposing the vaccine waiver.

I had the chance to confront the industry arguments directly last week in a web panel sponsored by the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (link included when it becomes available). It’s always educational to see these arguments up close and real people actually making them.

The first line of defense is that the waiver of patent rights by itself does not lead to any increase in vaccine production. This is of course true. Vaccines have to be manufactured, eliminating patent rights is not the same thing as manufacturing vaccines.

But once we get serious, the point is that many potential manufacturers of vaccines are being prevented from getting into the business by the threat of patent infringement suits. In some cases, this might mean reverse engineering the process, something that might be more feasible with the adenovirus vaccines produced by Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca, than with the mRNA vaccines. The manufacturing process for these vaccines is similar to ones already used by manufacturers in several countries in the developing world, as well as several in the rich countries that are not currently producing vaccines against the pandemic.

Another possible outcome from eliminating patent rights is that the drug companies may opt to do more voluntary licensing agreements under the logic that it is better to get something than nothing. If manufacturers are using reverse engineering to produce vaccines, the patent holders get nothing. They would be much better off with a limited royalty on a licensing agreement, even if it is less than they could have expected if they had been able to maintain an unchecked patent monopoly.

The other route that suspending patent monopolies may open is one where former employees of the pharmaceutical companies may choose to share their expertise with vaccine manufacturers around the world. In almost all cases these employees would be bound by non-disclosure agreements. This means that sharing their knowledge would subject them to substantial legal liability. But some of them may be willing to take this risk. From the standpoint of potential manufacturers, the patent waiver would mean that they would not face direct liability if they were to go this route, and the countries in which they are based would not face trade sanctions.

Open-Sourcing Technology

While suspending patent rights by itself could lead to a substantial increase in vaccine production, if we took the pandemic seriously, we would want to go much further. We would want to see the technology for producing vaccines fully open-sourced. This would mean posting the details of the manufacturing process on the web, so that engineers all over the world could benefit from them. Ideally, the engineers from the pharmaceutical companies would also be available to do webinars and even in-person visits to factories around the world, with the goal of assisting them in getting their facilities up-to-speed as quickly as possible.

The industry person on my panel didn’t seem to understand how governments could even arrange to have this technology open-sourced. He asked rhetorically whether governments can force a company to disclose information.

As a legal matter, governments probably cannot force a company to disclose information that it chooses to keep secret. However, governments can offer to pay companies to share this information. This could mean, for example, that the U.S. government (or some set of rich country governments) offer Pfizer $1-$2 billion to fully open-source its manufacturing technology.

Suppose Pfizer and the other manufacturers refuse reasonable offers. There is another recourse. The governments can make their offers directly to the company’s engineers who have developed the technology. They can offer the engineers say $1-$2 million a month for making their knowledge available to the world.

This sharing would almost certainly violate non-disclosure agreements these engineers have signed with their employers. The companies would almost certainly sue engineers for making public disclosures of protected information. Governments can offer to cover all legal expenses and any settlements or penalties that they faced as a result of the disclosure.

The key point is that we want the information available as soon as possible. We can worry about the proper level of compensation later. This again gets back to whether we see the pandemic as a real emergency.

Suppose that during World War II Lockheed, General Electric, or some other military contractor developed a new sonar system that made it easier to detect the presence of German submarines. What would we do if this company refused to share the technology with the U.S. government so that it was better able to defend its military and merchant vessels against German attacks?

While that scenario would have been almost unimaginable – no U.S. corporation would have withheld valuable military technology from the government during the war – it is also almost inconceivable that the government would have just shrugged and said “oh well, I guess there is nothing we can do.”  (That’s especially hard to imagine since so much public money went into developing the technology.) The point is that the war was seen as a national emergency and the belief that we had to do everything possible to win the war as quickly as possible was widely shared. If we see the pandemic as a similar emergency it would be reasonable to treat it in the same way as World War II.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this story is what the industry representative saw as the downside of making their technology widely available. The argument was that the mRNA technology was not actually developed to be used against Covid. Its value against the pandemic was just a fortunate coincidence. The technology was actually intended to be used for vaccines against cancer and other diseases.

From the industry perspective, the downside is that if they made their technology more widely available, then other companies may be able to step in and use it to develop their own vaccines against cancer and other diseases. In other words, the big fear is that we will see more advances in health care if the technology is widely available, pretty much the exact opposite of the story about how this would impede further innovation.

I gather most of us do not share the industry’s concerns that open-sourcing technology could lead to a proliferation of new vaccines against deadly diseases, but it is worth taking a moment to think about the innovation process. The industry has long pushed the line that the way to promote more innovation is to make patent and related monopolies longer and stronger. The idea is that by increasing potential profits, we will see more investment in developing new vaccines, cures, and treatments.

But these monopolies are only one way to provide incentives, and even now they are not the only mechanism we use. We also spend over $40 billion a year in the United States alone on supporting biomedical research, primarily through the National Institutes of Health. Most of this money goes to more basic research, but many drugs and vaccines have been developed largely on the government dime, most notably the Moderna vaccine, which was paid for entirely through Operation Warp Speed.

If we put up more public money, then we need less private money. I have argued that we would be best off relying pretty much entirely on public money.[1] This would take away the perverse incentives created by patent monopoly pricing, like the pushing of opioids that was a major factor in the country’s opioid crisis. It would also allow for the open-sourcing of research, which should be a condition of public funding. This could create the world the industry fears, as many companies could jump ahead and take advantage of developments in mRNA technology to develop vaccines against a variety of diseases.

But even if we don’t go the full public funding route, it is pretty much definitional that more public funding reduces the need for strong patent monopolies to provide incentives. If we put up more dollars for research, clinical testing, or other aspects of the development process, then we can provide the same incentive to the pharmaceutical industry with shorter and/or weaker monopoly protections.

In the vaccine context, open-source means not only sharing existing technology, but creating the opportunity for improving it by allowing engineers all of the world to inspect production techniques. While the industry would like to pretend that it has perfected the production process and possibilities for improvement do not exist, this is hardly plausible based on what is publicly known.

To take a few examples, Pfizer announced back in February that it found that changing its production techniques could cut production time in half. It also discovered that its vaccine did not require super-cold storage. Rather, it could be kept in a normal freezer for up to two weeks. In fact, Pfizer did not even realize that its standard vial contained six doses of the vaccine rather than five. This meant that one sixth of its vaccines were being thrown into the toilet at a time when they were in very short supply.

Given this history, it is hard to believe that Pfizer and the other pharmaceutical companies now have an optimal production system that will allow for no further improvements. As the saying goes, when did the drug companies stop making mistakes about their production technology?

Has Anyone Heard of China?

It is remarkable how discussions of vaccinating the world so often leave out the Chinese vaccines. They are clearly not as effective as the mRNA vaccines, but they are nonetheless hugely more effective in preventing death and serious illness than no vaccines.[2] And, in a context where our drug companies insist that they couldn’t possible produce enough vaccines to cover the developing world this year, and possibly not even next year, we should be looking to the Chinese vaccines to fill the gap.

China was able to distribute more than 560 million vaccines internally, in the month of June, in addition to the doses it supplied to other countries. Unless the country had a truly massive stockpile at the start of the month, this presumably reflects capacity in the range of 500 million vaccines a month. The Chinese vaccines account for close to 50 percent of the doses given around the world to date.

It would be bizarre not to try to take advantage of China’s capacity. There obviously are political issues in dealing with China, but the U.S. and other Western countries should try to put these aside, if we are going to be serious about vaccinating the world as quickly as possible.

“Mistakes Were Made,” Should not be Our National Motto

If a vaccine resistant strain of the coronavirus develops, and we have to go through a whole new round of disease, deaths, and shutdowns, it will be an enormous disaster from any perspective. The worst part of the story is that it is a fully avoidable disaster.

We could have had the whole world vaccinated by now, if the United States and other major powers had made it a priority. Unfortunately, we were too concerned about pharmaceutical industry profits and scoring points against China to go this route.

Nonetheless, we may get lucky. Current infection rates worldwide are down sharply from the peaks hit in April, but they are rising again due to the Delta variant. It is essential to do everything possible to accelerate the distribution of vaccines. It is long past time that we started taking the pandemic seriously.

Notes

[1] I discuss a mechanism for public funding of drug development in chapter of 5 of Rigged (it’s free).
[2] The NYT had a peculiar article last month celebrating Covid illnesses and death in Seychelles, where most of the population has been vaccinated with one of the Chinese vaccines. Seychelles largely avoided the pandemic until the point where it began large-scale vaccinations. If we take the whole period since the pandemic began, the percent of the population that has died from Covid in Seychelles is 0.08 percent, less than half the 0.19 percent in the United States.

Beat the Press via counterpunch.org

By Vijay PRASHAD

In 1869, at the age of 15, José Martí and his young friends published a magazine in Cuba called La Patria Libre (The Free Homeland), which adopted a strong position against Spanish imperialism. The first and only issue of the magazine carried Martí’s poem, “Abdala.” The poem is about a young man, Abdala, who goes off to fight against all odds to free his native land, which Martí calls Nubia. “Neither laurels nor crowns are needed for those who breathe courage,” Martí wrote. “Let us run to the fight … to war, valiant ones.” And in the rousing address by Abdala, comes these lyrical words:

Let the warlike valour of our souls
Serve you, my homeland, as a shield.

Martí was arrested and sentenced to six years of hard labor. Eventually, the Spanish imperial government sent the young Cuban into exile in 1871. He spent this time — much of it in New York — writing patriotic poems, producing political essays and commentary, and organizing the resistance to Spanish imperialism. He returned home in 1895, only to be killed shortly afterwards in a skirmish, his legacy cemented in the war against the Spanish in 1898 and in the Cuban Revolution that began in 1959.

The lines from Martí about the “warlike valour” serving as the country’s “shield” form the basis for the name of the new Cuban vaccine, Abdala. This vaccine, the fifth to be produced in Cuba, was developed by the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in Havana.

In announcing the results of their trials, BioCubaFarma, the country’s leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical institution, noted that it had an efficacy rate of 92.28 percent, almost as high as the efficacy rate of the vaccines by Pfizer (95 percent) and Moderna (94.1 percent). The vaccine is administered in three doses, each given with a two-week gap.

The Cuban authorities plan to vaccinate three quarters of the population by September. Already, more than 2.23 million vaccines have been administered to the 11 million Cubans on the island, 1.346 million people have been vaccinated with at least one dose, 770,390 with the second dose, and 148,738 with the third dose.

Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy (Cuba), “Tu lugar” (“Your Place”), 2006.

Cuba has already planned to export its vaccines to countries around the world and has now produced five vaccine candidates, including Soberana 02 and the needle-free intranasal vaccine, Mambisa. The latter, which holds great promise for vaccine administration in low-resource countries, is named after guerrilla soldiers who fought in the Ten Year War (1868-1878) for independence from Spain.

Each of these vaccines has been developed under conditions of duress imposed by the illegal U.S. blockade. Since 1992, the UN General Assembly has voted annually against the U.S. blockade, except for 2020, when, due to the pandemic, there was no vote.

On June 23, 184 member states of the United Nations again voted to end this blockade. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, said, “Like the virus, the blockade asphyxiates and kills. It must stop.”

Ventilators & Syringes

One of the casualties of the blockade has been Cuba’s inability to buy ventilators to treat critically ill patients, since the two Swiss companies (IMT Medical AG and Acutronic) who made them were purchased by a U.S. company (Vyaire Medical, Inc.) in April 2020. Cuba has now developed its own ventilator in response.

At the same time, Cuba suffers from a shortage of syringes. Syringe manufacturers are entangled in one way or another with the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Terumo (Japan) and Nipro (Japan) have operations in the United States, while B. Braun Melsungen AG (Germany) is in a partnership with Concordance Healthcare Solutions (U.S.). An Indian syringe firm, Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices Ltd., is linked to Envigo (U.S.), which brings U.S. government scrutiny to the Indian firm. In an act of concrete solidarity, a campaign is underway to raise funds towards the purchase of syringes for Cuba.

Belkis Ayon (Cuba), “La consagración III” (“The Consecration III”), 1991.

The Our World in Data project calculates that, as of June 29, just over 3 billion doses have been administered worldwide, which amount to less than 1 billion people out of the 7.7 billion in the world who have been vaccinated. Just over 23 percent of the world population has had their first vaccine shot. But the data shows that vaccination drives have been predictably uneven. In low-income countries, only 0.9 percent of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. In April 2021, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Gheybreysus said,

“There remains a shocking imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines. On average in high-income countries, almost 1-in-4 people has received a vaccine. In low-income countries, it’s 1-in- 500. Let me repeat that: 1-in-4 versus 1-in-500.”

By May 2021, Ghebreyesus said that the world was in a situation of “vaccine apartheid,”

In February 2021, in one of our newsletters, Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research noted that we lived in a time of “three apartheids.” These apartheids include that of food, money and medicine.

At the heart of the medical apartheid is vaccine nationalism, vaccine hoarding, and, as Ghebreyesus put it, vaccine apartheid. Matters are quite grave. The COVAX vaccine alliance has seen vaccines move out of its reach both because of bilateral deals being made between the richer countries and the vaccine makers and because of the lack of financial support from the richer states to the poorer ones. The trends show that many countries will not see significant enough numbers of their population vaccinated before 2023, “if it happens at all,” says the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Raul Corrales Fornos (Cuba), “La caballeria” (“The Cavalry”), 1960.

What is the cause of these three apartheids? The control that a handful of companies exercise over the global economy, driven by five types of monopolies, as our friend, the late Samir Amin, laid out:

1. The monopoly over science and technology
2. The monopoly over financial systems
3. The monopoly over access to resources
4. The monopoly over weaponry
5. The monopoly over communications

We are looking closely at this list and the relationship between each of these elements, analyzing it to see if anything has been left out. Amin argued that it is not the lack of industrialization alone that impacts the subordination of countries; what has kept the world in a situation of great inequality, he suggested, were these five monopolies. After all, many countries in the world have developed industries over the past 50 years but remain unable to advance the social agenda of their populations.

Central to the discussion about vaccine apartheid are at least two of these monopolies: the monopoly over finance and the monopoly over science and technology. A lack of finances in hand draws many of the world’s states to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to various public investors (the Paris Club), or to commercial capital (the London Club). These financiers take their lead from the IMF, which has demanded that countries cut back on several crucial areas of human life — education and health care, for instance.

Cutting funds for education drains countries’ potential to develop sufficient numbers of scientists as well as the scientific temper necessary to create essential technologies such as vaccine candidates. Cutting funds for health care systems and adopting intellectual property rules that block the transfer of technology leaves countries disarmed from being able to appropriately deal with the pandemic.

A lack of funds has driven many states to surrender the possibility that they could advance the well-being of their populations (as of April 2020, 64 countries spend more to service their debt than on healthcare). It is not enough to demand the transfer of technology to states in the midst of a pandemic so that they can make the vaccine. Technology is yesterday’s science; science is tomorrow’s technology.

To use the social wealth of a population, to teach science, and to establish a basic norm of scientific literacy are essential lessons of the pandemic. These are lessons well-learnt by the Cubans. This is why Cuba has, against all odds, developed five different vaccines. Abdala and Cuba’s four other vaccines stand as a shield against Covid-19. These vaccines emerge out of the social productivity of socialist Cuba, which has not surrendered to the ugliness of the five monopolies.

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research via consortiumnews.com

With the UN World Food Program announcing that some 270 million people worldwide now face starvation, the ongoing debate about the real aims of the technocracy is profound. The question is whether their aim tends more towards major population reduction, or more towards a new type of slavery.

It appears that philosophical and long-term practical questions remain a mystery. We will argue that evil, not simply the influence of the base upon the superstructure, is at the core of this endeavor. We have defined evil as inflicting the highest degree of pain upon the greatest number of resisting subjects. In short, we have defined evil as sadism, inflicting evil because it brings satisfaction to those inflicting it.

Because evil is fundamentally a destructive force, it cannot create anything: nothing in it is truly novel nor of use to humanity. Its pleasures are short-lived and spurious. It is unsustainable, self-defeating, ultimately leading to self-destruction.

We have adequately assessed from any number of sources that nefarious interests are behind this process, who seek to make the process also about the exercise of power, in addition to several other aims (remaining in power, exercising power in ways consistent with their occult beliefs about evil, etc.). We understand that they are ‘evil’ because they involve a type of ‘power-over’ (as opposed to power-with/consent) which derives this power from fear-mongering and terrorism upon the population. Terrorism here is defined as the operationalized use of fear, pain, and other injury towards socio-political aims.

Had their plans not been rooted in evil, they would have used soft-power tactics like manufacturing consent, to arrive at their ends.

The aim of the Great Reset is to transition the ruling plutocratic oligarchy into a technocratic one. The basis of plutocracy is finance, and the introduction of AI and automation eliminates the basis for finance as the foundation of an economy of scale. This is because automation and deflation move in tandem, making new technologies net losers. Therefore a new paradigm accounting for this post-financial ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, must be introduced.

Side-by-side comparison of auto-assembly line: 1920 vs. 2020 – ‘Humans need not apply’

But the ideology of the Great Reset is based within the old financialist paradigm, which is one of cost externalization. When human beings are no longer involved in the valorization process in the production of goods and services, then humanity itself is the cost that requires externalization – elimination.

But how it is that sadism became the occult religion of the ruling class, presents a “chicken-or-the-egg” type of question. That is, did the corporate ideology mutate into occult sadism, or did occult sadism find its expression through the corporate ideology? This question will no doubt form the basis of later inquiry.

We often defer to nefarious motivations or processes in terms of ‘greed’, or ‘self-interest’, ‘power obsession’ or the ‘crisis of capital accumulation’, ‘speculative bubbles’.

And these do not suffice in the final analysis, though they provide explanatory power. The problem arises in predictive power, because while we face a crisis of diminishing returns due to automation (as the increasing tendency towards net loss on new large capital investments), the real psychological needs that motivate the present plutocracy as a power-group are actually undermined in significant and sudden population reduction, or new post-coercive technologies that eliminate human agency. This may seem counter-intuitive, but in light of an understanding of the self-defeating nature of evil, we will explore this question.

When we map out the probabilities of three intersecting policy vectors, we can understand this question even better. Those policy vectors are a.) neuralink/AI/Neural Implants/magneto proteins and related transhumanism, b.) depopulation as part of stated Agenda 2030 goals, c.) automation/roboticization, 4IR, and IoT.

This will follow from our last piece on the subject, The Great Reset Morality: Euthanization of the Inessentials:

Neural Implants

The development and introduction of neural implants, magneto proteins, etc., can go in any number of directions. Some types of these promise to give elites ‘super-human’ cognitive abilities. However, another very practical application is to mandate that these are used on the general populace as to handicap them or control their thoughts in some way.

In that sense, neural implants can work like pharmaceuticals are used in psychiatry. In the creation of this sort of Huxleyesque ‘Brave New World’, we can easily see the continuation of a paradigm already existing today. This is one where it is common-place to find various predictable depressions, anxieties, and neuroticisms caused by contemporary social conditions, but treated psychiatrically instead of resolved socio-economically.

Neural implants can also perform a similar function, but go even further. Beyond emotions or basic effect on the re-uptake of certain hormones like serotonin, etc.; neural implants can direct thoughts or change whole cognitive processes. Beyond feelings, drives, and impulses, neural implants promise to produce actual thoughts in the minds of the subject.

LLNL engineer Vanessa Tolosa holds up a brain implant – credit: Extreme Tech Magazine, July 2014

In between these two is a hybrid form – nanotech and chemogenetics working with optogenetics. Because the delivery system to the brain can be through injection, nanolipids and other compounds can come in the form of shots. These can be delivered as part of a required ‘vaccination’ regimen (insofar as that term has been redefined), as nanotech features already in the Covid-19 shot.

Therefore, such can be included – whether disclosed to the public or not – in required vaccinations.

The development of these would seem, however, to be a technology that would support slavery, but does not rule out genocide. Certainly the ability to control the thoughts of a population would greatly mitigate risk in the view of the state apparatus, especially as it moves towards genocide.

Depopulation: Myths vs. Facts

Population control and population reduction have long been policy at various institutions and think tanks committed to global governance, from the UN to the World Economic Forum. It was a part of the UN’s Millennium goals, and since the dawn of the 21^st century, has been part of UN Agenda 2030.

It is important to now introduce a framework for understanding the problem of population in light of economic development. The long standing view is that economic development leads to population stagnation, even decline. The idea here is that education and urbanization are processes which lead towards better knowledge of basic family planning, in tandem with improved access to abortion and birth control.

The underlying postulate is that people naturally do not want to be burdened with children, that children are an affront to freedom in the abstract. The formula is that as people are better educated and have more meaningful work and interesting lives, they know both how to prevent pregnancy and also no longer have ‘primitive’ inclinations towards large family building.

This mythology was built up around a notion that people are fundamentally self-interested in the narrowest sense, to the exclusion of other desires, needs, and impulses. They are presented as the norm such to furthermore create a broader culture which opposes procreation.

Instead, the real mechanism pushing population stagnation in the 1^st world are increased pressures of work, and increased costs of living. Rather than ascribing population stagnation to improved conditions of life, these are more related to austere conditions imposed by late modernity. The costs of property, of rents, of food, and also because of the decline in quality of goods through increased planned obsolescence, has placed more economic pressure on individuals and couples. It has led to the requirement that both members of a household are working full-time. And even with this, home ownership in cosmopolitan centers is practically impossible for most. Austerity has also led to stagnation in life expectancy.

This truth is exposed in actual policy papers like “New strategies for slowing population growth” (1995). Here, the doublespeak is evident, with easily decipherable phrases within it; “…reduce unwanted pregnancies by expanding services that promote reproductive choice and better health, to reduce the demand for large families by creating favorable conditions for small families…”. What could possibly be meant by ‘create favorable conditions for small families’?

Economic development does not reduce population, but if we add austerity and demanding and inflexible work obligations, then we land on an answer. Economic prosperity, as it has for time immemorial, promises to greatly increase the population in the absence of a program of population reduction. Because an organic 4IR not brought in by the technocracy would decrease work obligations and increase quality of life markers, we would expect a population boom.

Consequently, projections that that population will top off at just under 10 billion by the 2060’s are as erroneous as they are linear. Without a technocracy working to actively reduce population, as they believe, an economy based on automation and AI would see a population explosion.

Conclusion

It is still likely that the would-be technocrats have indeed thought out the end-game, and that there are any number of possibilities that will allow them to harvest sadistic pleasure as an exercise of absolute power, in perpetuity. This might mean increasing fear of extermination far beyond actual population reduction. It could mean maintaining many aspects of agency for the controlled population, so that their pains are internalized in multivariate and complex fashions, that include confused feelings of self-blame, identifying with the abuser, resentment, regret, and also violations of will and dignity. Again, if will is not a factor, then all of these potential arenas of psychological pain are not present.

To frame the following, it is fundamental to understand that in a post-labor civilization, the status of humanity no longer exists upon a metric of utility. Either civilization exists to improve the human condition, or to increase human suffering. There are no trade-offs or costs. Society is either good or evil.

But evil is short lived and short-sighted, and this is why: Sudden population reduction is a fire-cracker, it explodes just once. The pleasure in the process of eradicating billions of people, and the fear, pain, and suffering this would cause, within the span of a few short years, only gets to be enjoyed once. It’s a sacrificial ritual upon the altar of Moloch that can only be performed one time.

Likewise with post-coercive technologies: Without agency, controlling people serves no purpose in terms of violating their own will or desire. Causing pain on a subject that does not resist because he has no will, gives the sadist much less pleasure than would pain on a subject against their will.

Moreover, the position of being elite is relative to a number of factors such as distribution of wealth, power, and/or privilege, and the sheer numbers in terms of population, that one possesses these advantages over.

If there are only elites remaining, then they would have merely introduced a new kind of egalitarian society on the foundation of superabundance and a miniscule human population. If living conditions of an existing humanity can be greatly reduced, then the relative privilege and luxury enjoyed by the elites grows in that proportion.

Absent some radical life-extending technology, it is conceivable that science and technology have already reached the zenith point at which privilege and luxury cannot be furthered. A reasonable solution would be to reduce living conditions for others so as to enhance their own relative privilege. The greater number of people who live in reduced conditions, the more privileged one’s position of privilege actually is.

Likewise, it would seem that maintaining some human population as ‘possessions’ would serve to augment ownership over human beings, perhaps the most valuable type of possession because they are aware that they are owned – but only if that humiliates them. For what other purpose is there for slavery, in a world without human labor?

Does it have any meaning, or is any satisfaction achieved, by governing over people without the possibility to have the will to either consent, or conversely, resent the ruler? Here we can understand it along these lines: the possibility for agency means that governing can happen with their support, or against their will.

But neural implant control over cognitive processes, eliminates the possibility for will, which would deprive technocrats of the pleasure of ruling with or against the will of the ruled.

Therefore, the destructive evil framework of those behind the Great Reset is revealed. The use of strategy, planning, and cunning to achieve their desired result is prevalent. But have they examined the foundation of their desires? Do they understand what their victory would deliver to them?

The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites. It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own.

For these reasons, it is likely that some elites have seen the problem in this end game. This would explain the inter-elite conflict which we have explored previously, and will return to in the near future.