Shaenah said in a comment from this podcast that she was interested in this notion of covid as a tactic to avert a crisis. The following is my way of making sense of this.
I admit that although I’ve read a great deal of Marx and various other economists, much of the discussion of economic processes is, to say the least, obscure to me. I struggled to comprehend the transformations of capital as described by e.g. David Harvey. But I know that the banking crisis of 2008 led to the theft of vast reams of public funds to bail out the bankers – which led to immense rage. And the orchestrators of this knew they couldn’t risk such a manoeuvre again. But one of the glaring scandals of the covid years – once you had recovered from the ceaselessly pushed viral fear porn over the issue – is that yet another transfer of wealth was facilitated through the covid “crisis” and, in this case, not only was there no outcry from the public but there was even a popular sentiment to eagerly propose more to be transferred. The message from the public – as related through the media of course – was “Take more! Take it all! But just save us from this deadly virus!” It resembled nothing less than a protection racket.
Marx somewhere noted that capitalism produces a crisis which, at any earlier time, would have been an absurdity: a crisis of overproduction. The solutions to this tend towards the drastic. One such being war. Marx noted that the effect of this could be replicated by dumping vast resources into the sea. A process “legitimised” as “creative destruction”. I’m guessing that this is what we saw with covid.
But Simon Elmer has written much more perceptively on this matter. Unfortunately he has written so much that I don’t know where to locate the relevant comments. The following link refers to a comparison between what is happening in the UK with what happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet system. Elmer is aware that the comparison cannot be straightforward but goes into the complexities involved. I have inserted an excerpt from the link:
“Today, across the neoliberal democracies of the West, national governments in thrall to the new forms of global governance formed on the justification of addressing multiple manufactured ‘crises’ are implementing equivalent programmes of managed economic collapse devised by the same international institutions of global macro-economic management. Instead of Perestroika, Glasnost, Voucher Privatisation and Loans for Shares, these programmes of economic and political ‘reform’ are called Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals, Universal Basic Income and Central Bank Digital Currency. And although these are being implemented not on the collapse of a centralised command economy like that of the Soviet Union but in neoliberal economies facing the second Global Financial Crisis in twelve years, the aim of these programmes is the same: impoverishment of national populations, bankruptcy of independent businesses, expropriation of national land and resources, instalment of puppet governments to present a facade of democracy to technocratic rule, and an economic and political power-grab by a financial ruling class.”
Since I know that Shaenah likes a challenge, I also include the following links to other Elmer articles. The bottom one is the first of an immense series on the resurgence of fascism in what he calls the Biosecurity State:
The term protection racket is an apt description of the scam used to scare people into going along with all manner of exploitation and then begging the "takers" to save them. Creating a health scare like the COVID-19 pandemic is a tactic for averting a crisis of capitalism and the next step to shoring up the biosecurity state against pushback from the plebes.
The global pandemic followed a script that fits one of four scenarios proposed by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2010 to avert a future crisis. The document claims the scenarios "allow us to focus on issues of equity, climate justice, and poverty, and to explore the implications of our choices for the poor and vulnerable, and their access to energy, food, and good health."...."Our choices" not theirs......meaning ours, we who they would give no choice in our own lives.
The Lock Step scenario was acted out during the tabletop exercise called Event 201 three months before the pandemic was declared. It also corresponds with Blackrock's Going Direct plan to waylay the financial meltdown threatening in mid-2019.
There are way too many coincidences to unquestionably accept that the virus threat was real and not manufactured by an emerging biosecurity state. But the rubber meets the road with the scientific evidence claiming a new virus had been found. Valid evidence in the published literature (peer-reviewed studies) for the existence of Sars coV2 is lacking.
Questioning the worldview of the medical establishment, one of the most profitable arms of global capitalism might lead to questioning the worldview of health and disease ingrained in us, especially the allopathic philosophy based on one theory of disease that has dominated for more than a century and taught to doctors by a profit-first cartel.
I can come up with a few reasons why people balk at scrutinizing the evidence and studies claiming a novel virus was found in 2020. For one, there's a learning curve and that takes time. Two, it calls into question a long-established model of disease-- basically a sacred cow. Trust the science!
It's a line of questioning that is laughed at, dismissed and rarely given air time. And, it can lead to getting unfriended and blocked on social media, possibly out of fear of association.
But, there is plenty of discussion about where the virus originated. This line of questioning is allowed and welcomed, sometimes with pushback, as if it is oppositional while supporting the narrative.
Was COVID the result of a lab leak, accidental or on purpose? Did it come from the Wuhan gain-of-function research lab or Fort Dietrich in the USA?
What about the patents for gain-of-function viruses, people say, while refusing to acknowledge that a patent is never proof that anything was ever manufactured or is more than an idea.
Was Covid-19 a bioweapon and who might have made it and why?
These are discussed at length, and all uphold the dominant belief in THE VIRUS.
The mainstream narrative is backhandedly pushed by people like Kennedy who support the medical cartel's worldview of health and disease, while questioning the protocol alone as the only acceptable debate or argument.
Did governments have a right to do what they did to protect people against this virus? Was the virus simply not that virulent to warrant the protocols? Or did the government overreach because it is in bed with the corporations that profited from the lockdowns and pushed the experimental vaccines? Did governments have a right to use people as guinea pigs for untested technology just because a new virus was circulating?
There are a lot of weeds to get lost in, including comparisons of the Covid vaxxes, like Shaenah did when she pointed out that the Johnson & Johnson vax was the only COVID shot that did not use mRNA technology to deliver a code to cells to get the body to fight the virus.
It was taken off the market when blood clots and other side effects were reported and possibly used as the fall guy to prove to the wary that the FDA cares about people's health enough to pull a problem child from circulation. So they can be trusted when they claim the OTHER covid vaxxes on the market are safe and effective.
Yet ALL have all caused great physical harm. And, any risk-reward profile espoused by WHO and CDC to coerce the fearful into taking the poison is rendered moot with the recognition that there was no new virus to treat or vaccinate against.
I know these views and the evidence I provide for them, especially that viruses are an unproven hypothesis based on the available studies are dismissed here so I'll end my comments on this line of the discussion.
I appreciated the links to Elmer's articles, George, especially his writings and involvement in the movement to maintain housing for renters in the UK. I am curious if the pandemic changed his outlook in the second manifesto for social housing, written in January 2020.
His investigation and inquiry into how the lockdowns affected renters coincides with what happened and continues here in the US. I plan on reading his book on immigration.
Elmer also writes poetry. I especially liked this one.
Mass Transit Railway
Posted on DECEMBER 3, 2024
Something like my age, though with Chinese women
It’s hard to tell, her black hair still silky
Though tied in a bun from which every luxury
Had been wrung. But her hands, small and rubbed raw,
I also appreciated having direct contact with you. And I just realised that, due to the time difference, it must have been 5.30 a.m. in Oregon when we started. So I also empathise with the strain that must have caused.
I managed to join in because I'm on holiday this week. Next week I'm back at work and so I'll be back to the usual "split shift" podcast if John still wants to do it that way.
Impressive invective. Elmer’s recent stuff about replacement is inadvisable since it is easily suitable for charges like the ones you are levelling. But he has said the woke agenda is like the old imperialist rhetoric whereby a minority are taken to represent the population – as in the classic example of the British whites ruling India. Only this time it is various ethnic minorities who are taken to represent the UK population. He doesn’t mean these minorities are actually in power. Only that this representation is deliberately intended to exclude the majority of UK residents.
He also says that Islam is being used as a divisive tool by the UK powers. Admittedly, this is dangerous ground since it can easily be misconstrued.
Elmer blocked me on Twitter which is probably an indication of increasing paranoia on his part. I don’t see this as any kind of “white supremacism” though – just a (sadly justified) acknowledgement that “The Left” now seems to be a label through which the post-covid rhetoric can attack “Right” heretics who reject the fables (covid, climate change, transgenderism) of the new biosecurity state.
you are engaging our inhouse troll. Psychotic and apparently she just cant help herself. Its absolutely weird. I figured it was about time for this virus to come infect us once more. But as with the previous ten or fifteen times, she is blocked
First of all, why are you so aggressive and hostile? Normally I'd expect someone to say, oh, I think you misspoke. Etc. Second of all, I dont really consider Workers World a trot organization, but perhaps they are to some. Same for PSL. We were referring to WSWS or the SEL or ISO. And I think that is what most people would think of when trotskyists are brought up. Third, you use an alias and have no online identity. None. Ergo you are a troll.
Shaenah said in a comment from this podcast that she was interested in this notion of covid as a tactic to avert a crisis. The following is my way of making sense of this.
I admit that although I’ve read a great deal of Marx and various other economists, much of the discussion of economic processes is, to say the least, obscure to me. I struggled to comprehend the transformations of capital as described by e.g. David Harvey. But I know that the banking crisis of 2008 led to the theft of vast reams of public funds to bail out the bankers – which led to immense rage. And the orchestrators of this knew they couldn’t risk such a manoeuvre again. But one of the glaring scandals of the covid years – once you had recovered from the ceaselessly pushed viral fear porn over the issue – is that yet another transfer of wealth was facilitated through the covid “crisis” and, in this case, not only was there no outcry from the public but there was even a popular sentiment to eagerly propose more to be transferred. The message from the public – as related through the media of course – was “Take more! Take it all! But just save us from this deadly virus!” It resembled nothing less than a protection racket.
Marx somewhere noted that capitalism produces a crisis which, at any earlier time, would have been an absurdity: a crisis of overproduction. The solutions to this tend towards the drastic. One such being war. Marx noted that the effect of this could be replicated by dumping vast resources into the sea. A process “legitimised” as “creative destruction”. I’m guessing that this is what we saw with covid.
But Simon Elmer has written much more perceptively on this matter. Unfortunately he has written so much that I don’t know where to locate the relevant comments. The following link refers to a comparison between what is happening in the UK with what happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet system. Elmer is aware that the comparison cannot be straightforward but goes into the complexities involved. I have inserted an excerpt from the link:
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2023/02/16/the-western-oligarchy/
Excerpt:
“Today, across the neoliberal democracies of the West, national governments in thrall to the new forms of global governance formed on the justification of addressing multiple manufactured ‘crises’ are implementing equivalent programmes of managed economic collapse devised by the same international institutions of global macro-economic management. Instead of Perestroika, Glasnost, Voucher Privatisation and Loans for Shares, these programmes of economic and political ‘reform’ are called Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals, Universal Basic Income and Central Bank Digital Currency. And although these are being implemented not on the collapse of a centralised command economy like that of the Soviet Union but in neoliberal economies facing the second Global Financial Crisis in twelve years, the aim of these programmes is the same: impoverishment of national populations, bankruptcy of independent businesses, expropriation of national land and resources, instalment of puppet governments to present a facade of democracy to technocratic rule, and an economic and political power-grab by a financial ruling class.”
Since I know that Shaenah likes a challenge, I also include the following links to other Elmer articles. The bottom one is the first of an immense series on the resurgence of fascism in what he calls the Biosecurity State:
https://peopleslockdowninquiry.co.uk/articles/stay-at-home-lockdown-laid-bare-britains-housing-crisis/
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2022/04/20/the-road-to-fascism-for-a-critique-of-the-global-biosecurity-state-1-the-return-of-fascism/
The term protection racket is an apt description of the scam used to scare people into going along with all manner of exploitation and then begging the "takers" to save them. Creating a health scare like the COVID-19 pandemic is a tactic for averting a crisis of capitalism and the next step to shoring up the biosecurity state against pushback from the plebes.
The global pandemic followed a script that fits one of four scenarios proposed by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2010 to avert a future crisis. The document claims the scenarios "allow us to focus on issues of equity, climate justice, and poverty, and to explore the implications of our choices for the poor and vulnerable, and their access to energy, food, and good health."...."Our choices" not theirs......meaning ours, we who they would give no choice in our own lives.
The Lock Step scenario was acted out during the tabletop exercise called Event 201 three months before the pandemic was declared. It also corresponds with Blackrock's Going Direct plan to waylay the financial meltdown threatening in mid-2019.
There are way too many coincidences to unquestionably accept that the virus threat was real and not manufactured by an emerging biosecurity state. But the rubber meets the road with the scientific evidence claiming a new virus had been found. Valid evidence in the published literature (peer-reviewed studies) for the existence of Sars coV2 is lacking.
Questioning the worldview of the medical establishment, one of the most profitable arms of global capitalism might lead to questioning the worldview of health and disease ingrained in us, especially the allopathic philosophy based on one theory of disease that has dominated for more than a century and taught to doctors by a profit-first cartel.
I can come up with a few reasons why people balk at scrutinizing the evidence and studies claiming a novel virus was found in 2020. For one, there's a learning curve and that takes time. Two, it calls into question a long-established model of disease-- basically a sacred cow. Trust the science!
It's a line of questioning that is laughed at, dismissed and rarely given air time. And, it can lead to getting unfriended and blocked on social media, possibly out of fear of association.
But, there is plenty of discussion about where the virus originated. This line of questioning is allowed and welcomed, sometimes with pushback, as if it is oppositional while supporting the narrative.
Was COVID the result of a lab leak, accidental or on purpose? Did it come from the Wuhan gain-of-function research lab or Fort Dietrich in the USA?
What about the patents for gain-of-function viruses, people say, while refusing to acknowledge that a patent is never proof that anything was ever manufactured or is more than an idea.
Was Covid-19 a bioweapon and who might have made it and why?
These are discussed at length, and all uphold the dominant belief in THE VIRUS.
The mainstream narrative is backhandedly pushed by people like Kennedy who support the medical cartel's worldview of health and disease, while questioning the protocol alone as the only acceptable debate or argument.
Did governments have a right to do what they did to protect people against this virus? Was the virus simply not that virulent to warrant the protocols? Or did the government overreach because it is in bed with the corporations that profited from the lockdowns and pushed the experimental vaccines? Did governments have a right to use people as guinea pigs for untested technology just because a new virus was circulating?
There are a lot of weeds to get lost in, including comparisons of the Covid vaxxes, like Shaenah did when she pointed out that the Johnson & Johnson vax was the only COVID shot that did not use mRNA technology to deliver a code to cells to get the body to fight the virus.
It was taken off the market when blood clots and other side effects were reported and possibly used as the fall guy to prove to the wary that the FDA cares about people's health enough to pull a problem child from circulation. So they can be trusted when they claim the OTHER covid vaxxes on the market are safe and effective.
Yet ALL have all caused great physical harm. And, any risk-reward profile espoused by WHO and CDC to coerce the fearful into taking the poison is rendered moot with the recognition that there was no new virus to treat or vaccinate against.
I know these views and the evidence I provide for them, especially that viruses are an unproven hypothesis based on the available studies are dismissed here so I'll end my comments on this line of the discussion.
I appreciated the links to Elmer's articles, George, especially his writings and involvement in the movement to maintain housing for renters in the UK. I am curious if the pandemic changed his outlook in the second manifesto for social housing, written in January 2020.
His investigation and inquiry into how the lockdowns affected renters coincides with what happened and continues here in the US. I plan on reading his book on immigration.
Elmer also writes poetry. I especially liked this one.
Mass Transit Railway
Posted on DECEMBER 3, 2024
Something like my age, though with Chinese women
It’s hard to tell, her black hair still silky
Though tied in a bun from which every luxury
Had been wrung. But her hands, small and rubbed raw,
Told me that her age were better measured
In decades of labour than in mere years.
She wore her clothes like a road-cleaner
Who sweats freely beneath his overalls:
The pullover hanging from her shoulders
Several sizes too big; her shapeless
Black trousers and tiny trainers chosen
With a carelessness bordering on care.
And in her eyes, which stared into the
Middle-distance of the train carriage with
An intensity without object or scope,
There was not the least glimmer of hope
For a future that had never emerged
From the everyday of her present. And yet,
The face that framed her blank stare, exhausted,
Crushed like a flower between the pages
Of her life, withered into gentleness,
Was one I could have looked at forever.
For in every woman there is something
Of beauty, and in her more than in most.
And in its presence, her stooped frame and gait
Were as graceful as a ballet dancer’s;
Her lank hair glossy as a beauty queen’s;
Her ugly clothes hung as elegantly
As those on a fashion model, and her
Eyes sparkled like a movie star’s. But that
Was all in my eyes as I gazed at her,
Unseen by her as she was to herself,
Her secret hidden from her as from
Everybody else on the Mass Transit
Railway. Or so it seemed, to my eyes.
The train stopped, and we both alighted,
She to her exit, heading down the hill,
Me to mine, taking the escalator
To the hotel I have come to call home
On the street she will clean as I sleep
Tonight, anonymous under her mask,
High-viz vest and bright-blue uniform.
— Hong Kong, November 2024
Ooh, I’ll check those articles out. It was good to actually get a chance to talk to you today.
I also appreciated having direct contact with you. And I just realised that, due to the time difference, it must have been 5.30 a.m. in Oregon when we started. So I also empathise with the strain that must have caused.
I managed to join in because I'm on holiday this week. Next week I'm back at work and so I'll be back to the usual "split shift" podcast if John still wants to do it that way.
I hope there are times when you can be on for longer again!
You are blocked again, molly.
Impressive invective. Elmer’s recent stuff about replacement is inadvisable since it is easily suitable for charges like the ones you are levelling. But he has said the woke agenda is like the old imperialist rhetoric whereby a minority are taken to represent the population – as in the classic example of the British whites ruling India. Only this time it is various ethnic minorities who are taken to represent the UK population. He doesn’t mean these minorities are actually in power. Only that this representation is deliberately intended to exclude the majority of UK residents.
He also says that Islam is being used as a divisive tool by the UK powers. Admittedly, this is dangerous ground since it can easily be misconstrued.
Elmer blocked me on Twitter which is probably an indication of increasing paranoia on his part. I don’t see this as any kind of “white supremacism” though – just a (sadly justified) acknowledgement that “The Left” now seems to be a label through which the post-covid rhetoric can attack “Right” heretics who reject the fables (covid, climate change, transgenderism) of the new biosecurity state.
you are engaging our inhouse troll. Psychotic and apparently she just cant help herself. Its absolutely weird. I figured it was about time for this virus to come infect us once more. But as with the previous ten or fifteen times, she is blocked
First of all, why are you so aggressive and hostile? Normally I'd expect someone to say, oh, I think you misspoke. Etc. Second of all, I dont really consider Workers World a trot organization, but perhaps they are to some. Same for PSL. We were referring to WSWS or the SEL or ISO. And I think that is what most people would think of when trotskyists are brought up. Third, you use an alias and have no online identity. None. Ergo you are a troll.