We are now facing a regime that is losing, is aware that it is losing, and wants at all costs to survive even if it means damning everyone else. That is the picture that we get, in bold strokes. In practice, there may be considerable divisions and emergent factionalism within the pandemicist regime. By pandemicism I mean the intersection of catastrophism and authoritarianism. This article is written from within the Canadian and sometimes the Quebec contexts.
Three Factions: Fugitives, Perpetual Promoters, and Vandals
Fugitives: Typically led by provincial government leaders, some local politicians, the federal Conservative Party, and a small number of doctors, academics, and journalists who have broken away. At the provincial level these are politicians who have lifted all mandates and restrictions, even as the federal Liberals wanted them to be permanent, and augmented (national compulsory “vaccination,” for example). They have resisted reimposing any of the previous measures—yet they also state that what they have done is merely to “suspend” such measures.
An unflattering description, by those who have suffered their harms, would go like this: this faction consists of those who, like unwilling accomplices fleeing the scene of a crime, seek refuge in a web of alibis, disclaimers, disavowals, and caveats.
They may wish to recant, but do not want to admit guilt publicly—instead, they revoke, recall, and “relax the public health measures”. This faction seeks to avoid further damage to the economy, society, and health and welfare of citizens, by cutting losses and trying to withdraw under the pretext that success has either been achieved, or the costs are too high to continue. At least there is recognition in this group that the imposed restrictions did far more harm than good (as they should have known, since not even the WHO recommended such policies, and pre-existing preparedness plans in Canada were simply discarded—see Dr. Schabas here). This faction realizes that its members have served as an instrument for causing massive damage—politically, economically, and socially—and at most can only indirectly admit to that fact by now pursuing a different course. The fugitive faction would like to see us exit this trauma without any hard feelings, with little if any accountability, cheered by the promise that “we won’t do it again”. They would prefer to declare that “it is all subsiding” as we “learn to live with the virus”.
The existence of a faction of fugitives may also explain why suddenly there is more room in some media outlets for views that, until moments ago, were banished and censored as “misinformation” and “fake news”. We see such examples appearing in Newsweek(onmultipleoccasions), the Wall Street Journal(also here), the Toronto Sun (numeroustimesinfact—also here) and even the Globe & Mail(more than once), among others. While in Canada regime media speak of “anti-mandate” figures as if they were a rogue species of criminals, even a hard-line publication like The Economist can paint a grim picture of the harms of lockdowns for children. That these media publish the views of members of this faction is just a reaffirmation of the simple fact that it is easier for former insiders to be heard, than it is for outsiders who were never let in to begin with.
Fugitives, having developed doubts, misgivings, or even regrets, are joined by a large portion of the population that simply does not want to hear anything ever again about Covid, lockdowns, “masks,” “the pandemic,” and so on. Typically, these are people who have had two doses of the non-vaccines, and will not have a third—and will also resist having their children injected (more on this later).
In the Canadian context, in terms of size and influence, this is the largest of the factions. Its size and influence has grown particularly as 2022 has progressed. At the leadership level particularly, this faction contains those who have drifted away from the other two factions. Elements of this faction existed very early in 2020, before folding themselves into the pandemicist lockdown regime. Early expressions of doubt from political leaders, messages that contradicted the lockdown dogma that was imposed at lightning speed, and reopening policies that alarmed the media, were some of the indications of the existence of this prospective faction. A large percentage of the population that was coerced into getting “jabbed” forms the popular base of this faction. Otherwise, it is quite distinct from the resistance that has been fighting “vaccine” mandates, lockdowns, and other restrictions from the start—and who do not constitute a splinter of a regime to which they never belonged.
Internationally, the already existing global mass movement against mandates and restrictions is being joined by other disaffected quarters that have been harshly affected by economic transformation, ushered in by the same lockdown regimes, in what appears to be a rising global rebellion.
Perpetual Promoters: Unperturbed enthusiasts of eternal lockdowns, this middling class of stay-at-home professionals cherishes the pandemic as a lifestyle choice. This faction seeks straightforward continuity—maintain or reintroduce “measures,” encourage further “vaccination,” maintain or bring back “masking,” and so on. A Zoom-based social segment, this preachy faction consists of regime media and regime academia, whose specialties as advocates is to manipulate symbols and re-engineer values in order to normalize the state of exception. These exponents of the emergency lifestyle strive to maintain a permanent pandemic by sustaining a high level of propaganda and fear-mongering. They are constantly on alert. They are champions of “vigilance”. Behaving like overzealous hall monitors and pompous snitches, they are pious apostles of authoritarianism. In terms of its reality-denial capacity, it is the most psychotic of the factions—that is not an insult, but more of a clinical diagnosis.
This faction now invites ridicule from former believers (citizens qua parishioners), because this faction’s members fail to recognize the depth of indifference or anger that has sprouted in the society, especially post-Omicron, with the evident failure of the non-vaccines and the resulting rupture of the contract that believers were promised. Members of this faction also seem entirely numb to the consequences of their choices.
Unbridled enthusiasts of every wrong decision and the worst of choices, they continue cheerleading even when the game is over. They are idealists, true believers, who will cheerfully offer one booster after another until immune systems completely collapse, just in time for the complete collapse of the social system. This faction can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from the following, far more sinister cluster of interests, because to a significant extent it is, in functional terms, the “useful idiot” of what follows.
Initially extremely influential, and well remunerated from the Canadian federal government, this faction has seen its influence decline dramatically, especially in 2022.
Vandals: The third faction, that of the progressivist wreckers proclaiming a new order, is the one that is most worrying. This faction, consisting of champions of demolition, is the one that is capable of considering one final all-out assault that is so massive that it can only end in total destruction and provoke generalized violence in the form of civil unrest. This is the faction that seeks to crash the economy, by aggravating inflation, maximizing fuel shortages, damaging agricultural production, all under the pretext of “greening” the economy and ushering in a “transition” to “renewables” while fighting to preserve the phony “liberal world order” against the Russian bogeyman. Failed tools, like “vaccines” and sanctions, have been their favourites thus far, but they are capable of worse forms of collective punishment against recalcitrants. This third faction actively aims to escalate tensions and create further divisions in the society. This faction desires censorship to be institutionalized, legalized, and normalized. It wants pure dictatorship (in the name of “saving our democracy,” that is, the democracy that allows space only for them alone). The model some admire is China’s dictatorship, because that totalitarian system has served their interests very well. Key actors in this faction include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, Big Pharma, the World Health Organization, numerous Harvard graduates, NATO, the European Commission, the Atlantic Council, and so on. The third faction is also the one serviced by political functionaries such as Justin Trudeau, Mark Rutte, Emanuel Macron, and Joe Biden. Members of this faction may call themselves “liberals,” but they are in fact ex-liberals, illiberals, or post-liberals. They detest individual freedoms, civil liberties, and human rights. They embrace “social justice” only when it is cost-free, benefits (microscopic) minorities, and helps to create social divisions. (Note: according to the most recent census, Canada’s “trans” and “non-binary” population amounts to a whopping 0.003% of the total population—and even that is more than twice as large as the number of officially proclaimed “Covid deaths”.) They want a New World Order ruled by absolutist technocrats, unaccountable and non-elected “experts,” and they are willing to tempt the apocalypse to get to their destination.
If the experts, elites, and functionaries in power, who belong to this third faction, come to the realization that they cannot rule any longer, then they are going to make sure that there is nothing left to rule, or nothing left that is worth ruling. They are that suicidal and nihilistic. Bringing forth the full violence that is latent in progressivist ideology, they will opt for a scorched earth policy if they are not defeated first.
This third faction is the one that is least popular in the society, but it retains most of the levers of power—in particular, a monopoly over the means of violence, a tight grip on the country’s finances, and almost total sway over the courts and the media. It is by far the most dangerous faction and is located at the top of the regime’s pyramid of power.
The main difference between the second and third factions is that the latter is far more extreme, while the former is in denial about the extremism of the latter. The second faction is largely dependent on the third, but not vice versa.
What is common about all three factions is that they are dominated by actors who are neither willing nor capable of admitting mistakes. This is a problem, especially because they have been wrong on just about every major issue and significant problem for the past two decades, who can boast only of an uninterrupted litany of failures. In “The Insufferable Arrogance of the Constantly Wrong,” Clayton Fox listed just some of these epic failures of reason, analysis, or basic credibility among these discredited and defeated “experts” and technocrats.
What is to be hoped is that the first faction will break off completely, and form something like a mass movement comprising a cross-section of all classes, occupations, and regions of the country. Within the current regime of interlocking interests and partnerships between governments, the media, universities, the courts, the police and armed forces, and private corporations and foundations, the first faction is the one creating the most friction where the advancement of the plans of the other two are concerned. One hopes that friction will evolve into open resistance.
Outside of this arrangement of factions are those that resisted, criticized, and protested the lockdowns, “masking,” mandates, and the “vaccines” themselves. In Canada they numbered about 10% of the adult population (far less than many nations in Europe, and most in Africa and the Caribbean). However, their influence is growing. Much like the power structure they oppose, they consist of a complete cross-section of the national society: members of all ethnic groups and classes; representatives of every professional occupation; residents in every part of Canada; the complete range of educational achievement; supporters of every political party and ideology; and even politicians at all levels of government. Totally non-existent within the outsider group, however, is the presence of Big Banks, Big Tech, or Big Pharma.
The Stakes: Capital and Power
Much is at stake for the regime, beyond its reputation. The political economy of pandemicism is at stake—the ability to extract capital from the people, and accumulate it in the pockets of the super-rich and their corporations. “Vaccine uptake,” even after the repeated, demonstrated failures of the non-vaccines to achieve even the most minimal of the promised goals (while evidence of damage accumulates), remains a key goal. “Vaccine uptake” is about sustaining demand, that is, of sustaining the profit margins for commercial pharmaceutical interests. The maintenance of fear is thus essential to sustaining demand. In addition to extracting capital, there is the very basic question of power: the unrestrained ability to dominate the masses, without question, triumphing against resistance. The “vaccine” gravy train coming to its last stop threatens all of this, as do a number of other challenges: Ukraine, inflation, and the recession, and the immense unpopularity of those in power.
Like the “war on drugs,” then the “war on terror,” this horrific “war on the virus” (which is in fact a war on the people) is one more grand failure (except, perhaps, as an intentional crime). A regime can withstand only so many monumental failures, or commit so many crimes, before it can stand no more.
Regarding sustaining demand, there is now a gradation of forms of “vaccine resistance,” as reported in data from Public Health Canada:
15% of the population has had no dose;
The 82% of the population that took two doses, dropped to 49% of who took a third—even as the federal government declared those with two doses “not up to date” and removed the term “fully vaccinated” (following Fauci);
Less than 10% have had a fourth dose;
56% of children (5 to 11 years of age) have had one dose, which drops to 42% having the “primary series” (two doses).
As things stand now in Canada, 64% of the population is defined as “not up to date,” that is, not in compliance. In the US there is growing public criticism about the rush to “vaccinate” toddlers, including from esteemed persons who previously formed part of the mainstream second faction, the promoters, such as Dr. Paul Offit.
To an extent, the growing extremism of the second and third factions is apparently impelling the formation of the first faction listed at the outset, driving away even some stalwarts.
In an ongoing effort to “study up,” which includes reading and analyzing the scripts produced by regime media, what follows is just about a week’s worth of snapshots that illustrate some of the main points above. Before proceeding, I want to explore the “regime media” concept a little further.
Regime Media, Part 2
Regime media are a fusion of a police force and a public relations firm. Whether they are privately owned, yet receive government payouts, or they are publicly owned and prey to corporate advertisers, in Canada all of the media of domination (CBC, CTV, Global News, The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail, etc.) are aligned with and actively support the pandemicist regime and indulge its elitist virtue signalling about select, preferred minorities that are elevated for special recognition and rewards. Gesticulating toward celebrity-approved “social justice” issues, and fanning all of the latest moral panics that occupy the minds of the dependent urban middle class, regime media have thus been able to dull suspicions from the left. The self-identified left has largely fallen in line with regime media and extend the regime’s core messages through various “alternative” media—which are no alternatives at all (they are simply less resourced). It is not surprising then to find some of the most extreme advocacy for Zero Covid policies emanating from the left, much of which is also pro-China, the industrial engine of contemporary globalization and the first country to set the pattern for the lockdowns that followed around the world.
Regime media may call themselves “news media,” but there is next to no actual journalism involved in their work. In that spirit, students at contemporary Canadian schools of “journalism” are in fact being trained in the methods of policing restive subjects with “unacceptable views”. Embracing “advocacy,” they have degenerated into mere practitioners of propaganda whose ultimate aim is the reproduction of the ideas of the ruling faction of the regime.
Here they are followed by professors and students in a variety of disciplines which these days are busy churning out one predictable thesis after another that essentially involves policing : using the Internet to engage in surveillance of troublesome “fringe minorities” with “extremist views” that threaten to “incite hatred”—and they do this without any sense of irony. Their work is one-dimensional, simplistic, conspiratorial, and their “data” is cherry-picked. Rather than full and richly textured biographies, they produce caricatures dressed up in the theoretical jargon that is currently in fashion in their disciplines. Master compilers of shitlists, they squat for long days in social media on the lookout for anyone deviating from their preferred narrative, so they can then pounce and declare deviants to be violent extremists. Nobody is permitted to be “wrong” on the Internet. The aim of the students and professors is to make these “minorities” legible to the authorities, while reaffirming their own sense of superiority as specially endowed super-citizens with a natural right to manage inferior others, “for their own good”. Regime academia, like regime media, consists of a non-elected political class mesmerized by its belief in its own inherent goodness, and its right to rule. The writing of this class reads more like pseudo-legislation than scholarly analysis, and their “theories” are little more than ideological wishful thinking mixed in with complaints. They see the world as a collection of “problems” that require their management. An inanely partisan document produced by the UNESCO research chair in Quebec exemplifies many of these traits—see “Le mouvement conspirationniste au québec : leaders, discours et adhésion” (“The Conspiracy Movement in Quebec: Leaders, Discourse and Membership”). The art of these “scholars” consists of punching down while sucking up.
Regime media’s main functions are: surveillance, censorship, and prosecution. Stories are written with a tensely vigilant, accusatory tone, meant to put readers on guard, or on notice. Critical-minded questions, if they are even mentioned, are instantly dismissed out of hand or simply associated with mental illness or amorphous “extremism”. They do not try to keep their “finger on the pulse” of society—they instead aim to determine the pulse rate itself.
Regime media’s public scripts involve a regression to some of the most outmoded forms of propaganda seen since World War I. Their work involves a classically crude command structure: they tell people what to think, plain and simple. Then they tell people what to think about, and here the agenda-setting is particularly exclusive. One will never read stories of the “vaccine injured,” or see or hear interviews with anti-mandate protesters, dissident doctors, and so forth. Theirs is a regimist record, cleansed of all opposition and inconvenient facts. It reads almost like a colonial archive, only with greater gaps and silences.
What the regime media tell people to think is hatred, especially hatred for the non-compliant Other. Inciting hatred against marginalized categories of Canadians over the past two plus years has already been abundantly documented—this is not a theoretical statement, it is now merely an observation.
What the regime media tell people to think about is emergency and safety. Also well documented, any perusal of the pages of the print and Web regime media will quickly confirm this.
Inversion and projection are key tools of regime media: their work consists of broadcasting disinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories, false allegations, hyperbole, fear-mongering and character assassination, while producing “news stories” that are entirely and exclusively one-sided and indistinguishable from straightforward editorials.
In 2022, such regime media turned their attention to explicitly attacking freedom. Openly praising sheep, an article in the Globe & Mail advocated that humanity follow the example of sheep. In the same paper, another article cautioned that freedom “is not absolute,” and it does not mean we have the right to do anything we want—in other words, the author fully tilted against a complete straw man (absolutely none of the anti-mandate protesters ever advocated any such thing… they just wanted their jobs back). The CBC laboured to turn “freedom” into a dirty word that it conflated with the politics of “far-right” extremism. Canadians though they may be, they publicly worry about flying the Canadian flag, because it has been sullied by those fighting for freedom. Perennially perturbed by “nationalism,” they have no such qualms when painting their social media profiles with the Ukrainian flag, or claiming to support First Nations.
Perpetual Promoters: “Do Not Allow the People to Rest Even for a Moment”
Here I will continue my commentary on the work of the second faction, and simply illustrate it with snapshots taken over the course of a week (if that much). The significance of the week in question is that it featured the proclamation of a “seventh wave” in Quebec. This time—given the degree of popular contempt for restrictions that are proven failures, and mindful of a provincial election in October—the government of Quebec is acting like a member of the Fugitive faction. Members of the Perpetual Promoters’ faction are turning on the government, trying to school it back into authoritarian “measures”.
As an anthropologist, I have been trained to view the narratives of authorities with considerable skepticism, knowing that such narratives tend to push for a desired reality more than they accurately describe an actually existing reality, and that such narratives reflect the vested interests of powerful actors. Reality in the papers and reality on the ground are thus often very different. As an anthropologist with ethnographic experience, I tend to privilege reality on the ground—and on the ground, there is no “seventh wave”. People are carrying on as normal, meaning a pre-2020 normal. They seem to be enjoying their summer as best as they can, at least in the rural region where I live: swimming in lakes; boating; barbecuing; setting off fireworks every weekend; gathering with friends around backyard fires; neighbourhoods alive with the sounds of children playing; shopping and dining occurring without “masks” or any apparent concern for “social distancing,” and so on. Nobody is panicking. The Perpetual Promoters just hate that.
One example of a common injunction against any relaxation from anxiety, is an article like this one from the Montreal Gazette: “It’s too soon for Montrealers to bet on a COVID-free summer: experts”. No summer for the masses—the “experts” have sealed this: “Few masks, plentiful travel and a highly contagious sub-variant mean we need to remain cautious”. The fear-mongering was thus also intended to boost the social capital of “experts” while draining the people of any sense of hope: “As COVID-19 case counts fall and hospitalizations slowly drop, Quebecers are wondering if they’ll be able to enjoy another relatively COVID-free summer this year. The short answer is probably not…”. The experts warn, and lament: “only 52 per cent of Quebecers have gotten a third vaccination, leaving half the population vulnerable as the immunity from their vaccinations or infections wane”. They added: “And for sure get your third dose. This is not a virus that anyone wants to get”. The stress is on an imputed “vulnerability” which then becomes a sales pitch for Big Pharma’s experimental gene therapies which have done nothing to prevent spread. The experts also imagine a severe virus, one that nobody wants to get, but everyone got anyway (and without a massive die off). Be cautious, feel vulnerable—even knowing all of the damage done by sustained fear and anxiety for people’s mental health, in a desperate bid to remain relevant the perpetual promoters throw any real care for public health to the wind.
They are immune—so now it is time to scare them to death. This time courtesy of Global News, we have another lesson in how sophistry works. To be clear, absolutely nothing in the article proves that those infected by Omicron will likely get sick from a subsequent infection with an Omicron variant. The purpose of the article is simply to make people feel insecure, and then rush for the nearest shot of precious mRNA. The way the author of the article tries to smuggle through the fear messaging, is first by lumping together both those who were mRNA injected and got Covid, and those who kept their systems clear of the experimental gene therapies to begin with (with no increased incidence of myocarditis or pericarditis, which is not the case for the injected). By conflating the two groups, the author does not need to talk about immuneimprinting, and the fact that those with three doses now have significantly negative immunity. Across Canada, in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, government data show that those with three doses or more account for the majority of hospitalizations and deaths, despite numbering no more than 50% of the population. However, it is standard fare for regime media to generalize all risks, which justify one-size-fits-all (i.e., totalitarian) “solutions”.
What Global News does is to take the analogy of the glass half full to an extreme: “… one in every eight people who contract the virus do not develop antibodies in their blood from their illness”. “So forget going to some kind of ‘COVID party,’” said Dr. Catherine Hankins, a professor at McGill University in the Faculty of Medicine and co-chair of Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force: “Infection is not a viable strategy to achieve or maintain immunity”. Why forget the Covid party? Did the article not just state that 7/8 people develop immunity? Therefore, if we take their data at face value—with zero scrutiny or debate—that means that 87.5% of persons have immunity. That sounds like a pretty viable strategy. At this point one might only hear the din of preparations resuming for Covid parties (not that it would even be necessary to have these anymore).
The article also quietly conflates infection with actual sickness. So you might test positive again for Covid (assuming you even care to be tested). And so what? The Perpetual Promoters continue to instill shame in infection, as if infection were proof of some sin. Colleagues and students of mine have “admitted” to getting Covid: “I know!” one exclaimed apologetically.
Prof. Hankins, the party pooper at McGill, also added: “We do have one in eight people that don’t show any antibodies in their blood, so they’re not responding to the vaccine. And if they get infected, we’re not seeing evidence of it… So we don’t quite know what’s going on”. Indeed.
Later in the same articleGlobal News’ “experts” admit that one reason why there are lower levels of antibodies among the Omicron-infected, is because “it’s a milder infection”. However, as if forgetting themselves and losing the train of their own thought, moments later they repeat the mantra: “there is strong scientific evidence showing the vaccine does prevent severe illness and death”. But if Omicron itself does not cause severe illness and death—which they admitted—then how do they credit the non-vaccines with saving people?
The real purpose of the article is clearly revealed at the end. It uses fear as a sales pitch: “I think it’s important that people understand that if you’ve had it before, you are still a sitting duck… you don’t have the immunity that you had closer to when you got your vaccine… So it’s really important to get that booster”.
Yet another editorial appeared in The Montreal Gazette moaning about breathing barriers not being forced onto everyone’s faces, immediately. It has been only a couple of weeks since “mask” mandates have been lifted in Quebec, for all settings except medical ones. We are only half way through the summer, but regime media cannot wait until the fall—restrictions need to come right back now. Remember: no summer for you, the party is over. This is the second such editorial in a week. The editorial board is complaining that Quebec’s plans looks like “everyone for themselves”—and while they speak of “everyone,” what they are really doing is using “the immunocompromised” as rhetorical and political shields. Adept as hostage-takers (humanitarian abduction), regime media will hold any minority they can find at ransom, until everyone else is forced to bend.
To further add to a record of deception, deflection, and sophistry, the editorial board argues: “It is hard to imagine that the dropping of just about all masking requirements has not also contributed to the upswing in cases. Relatively few people seem to be wearing masks these days”. There is not even a pretense of “science” anymore; now it is just a matter of “imagining”. For some reason they are unable to recollect, even a few short weeks later, that 50% of Canadians got Omicron over the past few months, when we were still at the height of mandates and restrictions. “Masks” did nothing to “protect” people. Indeed, virtually nobody needed “protection”. Most visitors to the Gazette’s website now know that.
But the Montreal Gazette, with its increasing desperation on display, is starting to play its hand too visibly. From “science” we have gone to “imagination”. From “protecting health,” we have gone to the Gazette’s real target: that “segment of the population being courted by the Quebec Conservative Party, whose star seems to be rising”. Here they allude to Eric Duhaime, the popular leader of the Quebec Conservative Party, only you would not know how popular he has become thanks to the blackout in Anglophone Quebec media. His weekly meetings and call-in programs with tens of thousands of Quebecers during “the pandemic,” have helped to build a powerful grassroots anti-mandate, anti-emergency movement that, in Quebec, likely helped to shape the first faction mentioned at the outset of this article.
Regime academia, promoted by regime media. Regime academia is keen to gin up fear of the “seventh wave,” but is clearly anxious about not being able to exploit it. McGill’s Donald Vinh “says the province should reimplement public health measures. And refusing to do so because it may seem like taking a step backward after removing them, he added, is a ‘failing mentality that could get us in trouble’”. Dr. Nathalie Grandvaux outright proclaims a permanent pandemic, and urges everyone to follow her hysterical signalling: “The virus is constantly here, she said, and there’s no reason to believe the province will somehow be shielded from future variants, either”. “Speaking about waves is a bit like telling people there’s nothing to be concerned about between them,” Grandvaux said. “But that’s not the case — the virus is always there”.
“I think at this point, we all have to make it part of our life. I think we have to start moving on and moving forward, because the number of small businesses that closed and didn’t get to reopen, it can’t happen again because too many people will suffer.”
“I think that the media likes to play on people’s fears and make it worse. We just have to deal with it.”
“I think we should be talking more about what it means to live with a virus period, rather than this virus, because there are going to be many viruses and it’s going to happen again. I think the world is a little more prepared for a heavy-duty virus. I’m not particularly worried about it.”
“Maybe we should stop talking about waves and start talking about a new normal.”
“I think the customers feel super safe here. Those who don’t feel comfortable just don’t come. It feels like normal times again.”
“I think it’s just another virus we will have to live with, like the flu.”
As minimal and polite as such remarks are, they are the surface evidence that people have turned against the narrative of the failed elites and the discredited expert class. They have joined all the other fugitives. Pandemicism eventually has to meet resistance, and it can and will be defeated. And not even a reich proclaimed for a thousand years lasted more than 12. Tick-tock.
Tanzania’s Maasai people have faced a violent crackdown from police over the past two weeks, amid plans to evict them from their ancestral homeland in parts of the Serengeti National Park to make way for trophy hunting and conservation zones.
Human rights organisations and the Maasai people have accused Tanzanian police of using teargas, live bullets and beating protestors who oppose the planned development in the Ngorongoro district near the village of Ololosokwani.
So far, at least 700 Maasai villagers have fled across the border to neighbouring Kenya as refugees, while dozens have been wounded by police. The response by the Tanzanian authorities has been condemned by the African Commission on Human Rights and Peoples’ Rights who called on the government to halt the ongoing forcible evictions and to open independent investigations into the violence against the Maasai people who should be consulted and allowed to review plans to establish the conservation area.
According to a report by Al Jazeera last week, the protests erupted after police began to demarcate 1,500 square kilometres (540 square miles) of land to make way for the reserve, to be operated by a UAE-owned company.
The government denies accusations that it is trying to evict the Maasai from their ancestral land, and has claimed they will still have access to 2,500 square kilometres of it.
The East African Court of Justice is to rule on a legal challenge to the planned evictions, but is likely to rule in favour of the controversial move, which could displace up to 70,000 people but will be a major contribution to the country’s vital tourism sector.
WASHINGTON, D.C. 2 JUNE 2022 – The 68th Bilderberg Meeting will take place from 2 – 5 June 2022 in Washington, D.C., USA. About 120 participants from 21 countries have confirmed their attendance. As ever, a diverse group of political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia, labour and the media has been invited. The list of participants is available on bilderbergmeetings.org.
The key topics for discussion this year are:
1. Geopolitical Realignments
2. NATO Challenges
3. China
4. Indo-Pacific Realignment
5. Sino-US Tech Competition
6. Russia
7. Continuity of Government and the Economy
8. Disruption of the Global Financial System
9. Disinformation
10. Energy Security and Sustainability
11. Post Pandemic Health
12. Fragmentation of Democratic Societies
13. Trade and Deglobalisation
14. Ukraine
Founded in 1954, the Bilderberg Meeting is an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. Every year, between 120-140 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, labour, academia and the media are invited to take part in the Meeting. About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; approximately a quarter from politics and government and the rest from other fields.
The Bilderberg Meeting is a forum for informal discussions about major issues. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor any other participant may be revealed.
Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity, and hence are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions. As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no detailed agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken and no policy statements are issued.
~~~
Attendees include, amongst many other interesting names,
Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Cabinet Office
Tom Tugendhat, MP; Chair Foreign Affairs Committee, House of Commons
David Lammy, Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, House of Commons
Jeremy Fleming, Director, British Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ
Mark Sedwill, former UK Cabinet Secretary and former National Security Adviser, now chairman,
William J. Burns, (USA), Director, CIA
José Manuel Barroso, former President of the European Commission, now Chairman, Goldman Sachs International LLC
Albert Bourla, (USA), Chairman and CEO, Pfizer Inc.
Emma Walmsley, (GBR), CEO, GlaxoSmithKline plc
Mark Carney, Vice Chair, Brookfield Asset Management, UN Climate Change envoy
Henry A. Kissinger, (USA), Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc.
Yann LeCun, (USA), Vice-President and Chief AI Scientist, Facebook, Inc.
Eric E Schmidt, (USA), Former CEO and Chairman, Google LLC
Irina Slav is a voice speaking truth to power. Her posts and opinion pieces at OilPrice.com deserve reading and study.
One of her recent posts called out the perilous double-down-on-failure approach of the EU (and UK) on energy policy. It says much about the sorry state of energy thinking that environmentalists greenwash and complain about energy companies greenwashing. Climate alarmists/forced energy transformationists treat good news as bad in their religious compunction to rail against modern living and prosperity.
Her article follows.
The feeling of being right about something should be a pleasant one. Unless you’re right about something rather unpleasant. I tend to have the latter kind of experiences and the latest instance was this week, when media reported that the EU was planning to substantially facilitate the construction of more wind and solar farms, to the point of removing the requirement for an environmental impact assessment for projects.
This unleashed a flood of images that to some might be illustrations of our species’ progress but to me are images of environmental devastation. In case anyone thinks I’m being melodramatic, here’s a fact: you can’t build solar installations just anywhere. Land needs to be cleared and flattened for them, including forests, should they happen to be in the way. Same for wind mills but on a much, I believe, smaller scale.
Of course, the EU has tied its pants with the stipulation that only projects proposed for designated “go-to” areas will be spared the trouble of environmental impact assessments. It’s a completely worthless stipulation, however, since governments would rush to designate go-to area after go-to area whether out of a genuine if misplaced belief that renewables will save the world or pure, primal greed.
Here’s an FT quote I instantly fell in love with: ““Lengthy and complex administrative procedures are a key barrier for investments in renewables and their related infrastructure,” according to the draft. The plans could “result in the occasional killing or disturbance of birds and other protected species”, it added.”
It might also result in the disturbance of agricultural land and sensitive ecosystems because all ecosystems are sensitive and if you really get going building gigawatts of solar power, you will disturb them because, quite simply, everywhere is an ecosystem. And this plan comes from the same EU that has been fining Bulgaria (with reason, I’m sure and I’m not being sarcastic for a change) for violating environmental protection regulations.
So, the EU has since last September been suffering the consequences of a too fast buildout in renewable capacity, rooted in the arrogant assumption that it only takes a few million solar panels and wind turbines to save the planet from the effects of centuries of human activity.
Now, the bloc plans to accelerate this buildout even more because, of course, it never acknowledged the role that too-fast buildout had on its energy troubles. On the contrary, the overwhelming sentiment appears to be that European countries are not building wind and solar capacity fast enough.
The EU will also accelerate the acceleration even further because now Brussels has set its sights on completely quitting all sorts of fossil fuel imports from Russia by 2027. This would cost the bloc the modest sum of 195 billion euro, or 32.5 billion euro per year until 2027, on top of all other investments in renewable energy. The goal: to source 45% of its energy from renewable installations by 2030. Given the track record of wind and solar, this is, of course, totally feasible.
Meanwhile, European economies are panting under growing inflation weight, dumped on them by the same people who are now urging the accelerated ramp-up of wind and solar. At a time when all commodity prices are soaring. At a time of various material and equipment shortages.
Doing the same thing and expecting different results has been said to be the definition of insanity and the EU is acting like an excellent example of this definition. It refuses to acknowledge that the results of its actions in energy so far have been less than positive, so to speak. Except on the level of emissions. Those are falling, so that’s a win for the EU narrative (and for our lungs, if we’re talking about fine particulate matter). On the security and affordability front, however, things couldn’t be different-er.
In the UK, the FTreported this week, some households are being forced to take out loans in order to be able to pay their electricity bills. Meanwhile, the government is raising its 2030 renewable capacity target to 50 GW for offshore wind alone while Chancellor Sunak is berating the oil industry for not investing enough at home. As one reader would say, this reads like a soap opera script, and a bad one, at that.
The UK is not the EU but the energy policies of the two are remarkably identical. In the EU, as in the UK, member states are providing direct financial support to their citizens and businesses to help them cope with higher electricity prices. Those would be the same prices that are high precisely because of these governments’ energy policies. And even with that help, a lot of people are struggling with their bills.
At the same time, these same governments are providing direct financial support to wind and solar developers, while charging their citizens extra for the renewable power in their supply mix (Note: This is an extrapolation, based on the existence of renewable power surcharges in Bulgaria and Germany.). And they are planning to build more of the renewable power capacity that citizens pay more for the privilege of using to heat their homes and cook their food.
In other words, EU governments are paying aid to their citizens for excessive electricity prices while at the same time charging these same citizens more for the renewable electricity they want to produce more of. The aid will end, sooner rather than later. The surcharges are not going anywhere.
The outlook for European energy prices meanwhile remains quite grim. According to economists polled by the Wall Street Journal, energy prices in the EU will remain high and even rise further in the coming months thanks to Western sanctions on Russia that are reducing the availability of Russian oil for Europe.
The sanctions have also started reducing the availability of gas for Europe, first because of Poland’s and Bulgaria’s refusal to pay in rubles for gas deliveries and as of this week because the Ukraine decided to move the entry point of Russian gas into the country from one place to another, because the first one is controlled by Russian forces.
Gazprom said that was technologically impossible (for capacity reasons), so the Ukraine is turning the tap — which is one of the taps for Europe — off. According to the Ukrainian side, that channel accounts for a third of all Russian gas transited through the Ukraine to Europe. For context, in 2021, the total amount of Russian gas shipped to Europe via its eastern neighbour totalled 41.6 billion cu m.
Soon after this, Moscow sanctioned a host of Gazprom subsidiaries in Europe, cutting off their access to gas, in response to EU sanctions. Gas prices jumped further, as usual, and Brussels’ resolve to shake off the hydrocarbon chains tying it to Russia probably hardened. We might be about to hear about another revision of renewable targets for 2030, with the appropriate price tag, of course.
In all fairness, in this particular context of energy insecurity, the argument for local energy production from whatever you have handy, be it coal, nuclear, or wind and solar, makes a lot of sense. In fact, the “local supply = energy security” argument has always been the strongest pragmatic one in favour of wind and solar.
The problem is in details such as costs, energy density and, as always, reliability. But nobody in Brussels and national capitals seems to care about petty details. The political EU is firmly in “Whatever it takes” mode and we’re all footing the bill.
The “green energy world” is in a pickle. Only government intervention and deficit spending is holding the artificial boom afloat. And just imagine all of the good things that the same dedication of resources could have created if they had gone for goods and services that consumers wanted. That is a story for another day.
The 108th anniversary of this event just happened last month. Always feels strange how a century can go by and little details slip through the cracks, forgotten. We thought we knew this story… but then we had to go and dig. {An edition to our new “Forgotten History” series}
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
A German museum has agreed to loan back ancient artifacts looted from the African country of Namibia by the former European colonizer instead of returning them to their real owners.
Berlin’s Ethnological Museum announced on Tuesday that it will send 23 ancient pieces of jewelry, tools and objects to the National Museum of Namibia to enable local artists and academics to conduct research on the items.
The ancient artifacts include a three-headed drinking vessel, a doll wearing traditional dress and various spears, hair pieces and other fashion accessories.
Authorities said the indefinite loan of the artifacts is part of a project to encourage rapprochement between the two countries.
The move is a new chapter in “the long, complex history that Namibia and Germans have”, Esther Moombolah, director of the National Museum of Namibia, told journalists in Berlin.
Namibians should not “have to get on a plane to see our cultural treasures which are kept in boxes in foreign institutions”, she said. “We urge all future partners to follow suit like this institution.”
Germany’s Ethnological Museum has 75,000 African artifacts. In addition to stealing Namibia’s treasures, German colonizers plundered resources and committed genocide in Africa, killing tens of thousands of natives, particularly in the 1904-1908 massacres.
Other western countries, most notably France, Britain, Belgium, Holland, Italy and Spain, did the same.
France’s Quai Branly Museum has almost 70,000 ancient African artifacts, the British Museum has 73,000, and the Netherlands’ National Museum of World Cultures has 66,000. Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa alone has 180,000 ancient African items in its possession, and museums in the United States have 50,000.
In this regard, French President Emmanuel Macron has gone as far as publicly acknowledging past atrocities committed by French soldiers and police in African states’ history.
He just became France’s first leader to give back looted African colonial-era treasures, returning a dozen artifacts to Benin, and a sword to Senegal.
Macron, however, ruled out an official apology to France’s former African colonies and instead ordered setting up expert commissions to dig into historical archives.
That select group of elites from around the world who come together at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland really are conspiring to control the direction of society and politics worldwide. It is a conspiracy in practice, not just a conspiracy theory. That is the admission of WEF Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab in his Monday welcoming remarks for this year’s WEF annual meeting.
Here is the conspiracy admission from Schwab’s speech:
Let’s also be clear. The future is not just happening. The future is built by us — by a powerful community as you here in this room. We have the means to improve the state of the world, but two conditions are necessary. The first one is that we act all as stakeholders of larger communities, that we serve not our only self-interest but we serve the community. That’s what we call stakeholder responsibility. And, second, that we collaborate. This is the reason why you find many opportunities here during the meeting to engage into very action and impact oriented initiatives to make progress related to specific issues on the global agenda.
The WEF annual meeting is not just some people getting together to chat, socialize, and hear some speeches. It is about, as Schwab states, bringing together a “powerful community” that pushes initiatives that “make progress related to specific issues on the global agenda” and by whom “the future is built.”
By the way, don’t be too comforted by Schwab’s assurance that the conspirators do all this conspiring while acting as “stakeholders of larger communities.” It is unlikely that many people at the WEF annual meeting are looking out for you as part of their communities. As the comedian George Carlin famously said, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
Is the UK now at the forefront of eugenics? Are the Covid-19 gene-therapy/altering vaccines the gateway to public acceptance of this? And has the pandemic provided cover for a takeover, not by scientific experts, but dangerous eugenicist nerds?
The Government’s head gene-gnome, Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance, recently spoke to Genomics England (a company owned by the Department of Health to provide ‘whole genome sequencing diagnostics’) on the potential future uses of genomics beyond the fields of healthcare and medicine.
The backbone to his argument was a reiteration of that contained within a report from the Government Office for Science called Genomics Beyond Health, published on January 26, 2022.
It opens with: ‘How would you feel if your genomic information made your car insurance more expensive? If you could find out whether your child was likely to excel at sport or academic pursuits, would you? Should criminal sentencing account for a person’s genomic predispositions? These are just some of the questions that we might face in the not-too-distant future.’
If government nerds are openly discussing such things and publishing their conclusions within the public forum, it means that such novel societal issues are already on their way. And, as befits the soiled morality of the new Petri Dish Epoch, it all reeks of dystopian degrees of experimentation and, well, eugenics.
Unfortunately, as a nation we appear not in the least perturbed by our new role as microbes in the ongoing phase three clinical trial that has seemingly become normal life in Britain; as exemplified by such government experiments as mask mandates, border closures, school closures and work-from-home orders under the still not ruled-out lockdown, alongside the not so experimental fear (‘nudge’ being the euphemism) programme designed to increase adherence to said measures, and the similarly experimental gene-therapy vaccines.
True to form, Genomics Beyond Health, like so many other such pandemic-era scientific reports, doesn’t concern itself with whether or not genomics should in fact have to impact our day-to-day lives at all, but acts rather as a forewarning system – ‘wrap your head around it now, people, ’cause it’s coming whether you like it or not’.
Which leads me to speculate that the current generation of ineffectual and proven-hazardous Covid-19 vaccines are nothing but a means by which – once having wormed their way on to the childhood immunisation schedule – succeeding generations will adopt the future technologies of eugenics by stealth.
Such a long-term objective simply could not be realised if the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency addressed its post-vaccination fatality and extreme adverse event statistics, as one would assume would be routine practice in such a so-called civilised society as ours.
The dismissal of these innocent casualties of the Covid-19 Pharmageddon, particularly as this relates to Genomics Beyond Health, lends credence to the Ministry of Defence’s unofficial view – in turn as it relates to the piecemeal augmentation of humans via their fusion with machines – that to help society face down future national security threats such as Disease X, for example, there could be a ‘moral obligation’ to utilise ‘treatments involving novel vaccination processes, and gene and cell therapies’.
Certainly, far fewer would have taken up the ‘offer’ of the current novel vaccination processes rushed out to crush Covid-19 had the number of adverse events shared the front pages alongside the manufactured case rates and spurious daily Covid death tolls.
So it should come as little surprise then, that on February 28, a month after the publication of Genomics Beyond Health, Pfizer published a complementary blueprint for how to help make the UK a world leader in the adoption of cell and gene therapies.
This is a goal they say could be delivered via ‘the creation of a Gene Therapy Taskforce, bringing together key government departments, agencies, and arm’s length bodies to work together on shared priorities and drive reform. This Taskforce should look to mirror the collaborative, rapid and results-focused approach that underpinned the (Covid-19) Vaccines and Therapeutics Taskforce.’
From pandemic to mock-endemicity. From Covid-19 Taskforce to Gene Therapy Taskforce. From unsullied human to mRNA guinea pig. From mRNA guinea pig to gene-edited superior ‘British’ citizen. From the eugenics of medicine to that of human augmentation. From the hangings of the Nuremberg Trials to a questionnaire and a fifty quid fixed penalty notice. And ultimately therefore, from reality to the Metaverse – the ever-changing climates (pun intended) of the Great Reset’s public health aspect.
Instead of addressing whether humanity should be subjected to the moral conundrums of non-health-based genomics in the first place, the report simply discusses to what conveniently loose and vague degree must the practice be regulated. ‘Will we need more regulation?’ it asks, as if it should even have to.
It continues: ‘We should also consider the impact that genomic services might have if they are offered to the public before the science is truly ready’ – a quite frivolous statement which could easily have been lifted from a pre-rollout Vaccine Taskforce report, the science behind the Covid-19 vaccines themselves long since having proved itself unready.
Yet this hasn’t stopped jabs going into the arms of children who do not require Covid-19 vaccination; the report is therefore all but informing us to expect yet more nauseating medical ethics when it comes to the gene therapies of the future.
‘Regulation on the use of genomic technologies in non-health fields is patchy, and risks being outpaced by advances in the technology … and the UK has no explicit legislation barring the use of genomic analysis in employment (or education) scenarios,’ outlines the report.
‘However, over-regulation risks stifling innovation,’ and (with doubtless a sly wink) ‘if governments hope to make more use of genomic data, that will ultimately need the public’s consent’ (read steal the public’s consent).
How can the microbe-citizens of the Petri Dish Epoch offer fully informed consent when their self-agency is being constantly diluted by the fearful water-torture dripping down upon them from an entirely captured media-pipette? Well, we already know how, don’t we – by their being hurriedly hoodwinked into believing any degree of consent crucial to saving both Granny and Great Britain.
During his discussion with Genomics England, Vallance asked (but made no attempt to answer) the question of whether genomics beyond healthcare, and the practice of assessing people’s genetic ‘liability’ within certain domains of everyday life – known as polygenic scoring – could end up going ‘Wild West’.
The domains he was referring to are such as employment (‘the selection of workers of optimal health or personality for a role’, for example), education (measuring genomic data at birth, ‘so as to enable earlier interventions to improve educational outcomes’, for example), criminal justice (‘to deter or divert those who may be predisposed to criminal behaviour’, for example), and insurance (adjusting ‘people’s car, home, or even holiday insurance’, according to polygenic scoring). It’s not eugenics though, we promise.
That what the scientists ensconced within, or in bed with, the British government are championing is in fact an unnatural system wide open to abuse, stigmatisation, apartheid and financial exploitation appears not to deter dangerous nerds such as Vallance.
He made it clear in his discussion with Genomics England that he is ‘definitely not, and the report is not, arguing for a heavy legislative hand on this, but a wise legislative look at what needs to be done, and a regulatory consideration’.
Wise like the mandates, legislation, guidance, and considerations of the pandemic, Sir Patrick?
The same dangerous nerds lied about the severity of the pandemic. They lied about the merits of locking down the country. They lied when they said that there were no early preventive treatments for Covid-19. They lied about both the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.
On top of all that, they and many of their colleagues of similarly genetically-engineered morality – the Prime Minister included – lied about how they had unequivocally not broken the pandemic rules of their own design: Those rules to which the public were ordered religiously to adhere to no matter the dire personal or societal consequences.
Why would they not be capable of lying about the real aims of using genomics beyond health and medicine, and the future rationales behind its emergency use authorisations?
How many of the nation have repeatedly swabbed around their tonsils and up their noses, and then sent their mucus off to some government-approved eugenics centre, otherwise known as a PCR testing lab? I’ve done it – at one point I wasn’t permitted re-entry to my own country without doing so. Genius.
I doubt there will be much need for commercial ancestry tests in the far future, not when everyone’s genomic family tree will by then be roughly universal: You are of 25 per cent Neuralink, 25 per cent Pfizer, and 50 per cent broadly European descent.
IT IS reported that 21 councils have found a solution to the soaring cost of energy: a source of free electricity which they are providing to wealthy owners of electric vehicles.
A spokesperson for the well-represented Green Party on the council was unapologetic about how they prioritised the distribution of the ‘free electricity’. When asked why they favoured the provision of free fuel to the owners of already subsidised Teslas and Mercedes-EQs, rather than giving it to residents of sub-standard housing who were unable to heat their homes, she replied in a rather abrupt manner: ‘Don’t you know there’s a Climate Emergency! For goodness sake, it’s on the BBC every night! How do you expect the City Council to do its bit to control the weather if rich people drive around in their big cars belching out emissions that are literally killing baby polar bears. It is beastly of you to even ask that question!’
After taking a few moments to compose herself, she put down her cat, dabbed her eyes, and continued, ‘We already do a tremendous amount for the poor people. It is horrid of you to imply that we don’t care about them. We send them leaflets which tell them where they can buy cheap overcoats and jumpers. We encourage them to go to the library to keep warm, and we suggest that they buy a second hand bicycle so they can ride up and down our cycle paths. We even send them our ten favourite vegan quinoa recipes. We simply can’t do everything. There is only so much free electricity to go round. One day we hope to give everyone in the District an electric vehicle, or at least an electric scooter.’
When asked about the source of the free electricity, a representative of the City Council’s secretive Special Initiatives Department, based in a bunker in the Forest of Bowland, declined to give too much away. ‘Let me just say that we are working closely with Lancaster University, members of the Morecambe Witchcraft Society and local alchemists, but other than that my lips are sealed. However, I am allowed to tell you that we are about to make a major announcement about our work on the philosopher’s stone. Watch this space.’
There have appeared a couple of stories recently that illustrate how there is only one “red line” that no one dares cross in Washington and that is criticism of Israel and its associated supportive mythologies of increasing “holocaust denial” and “surging anti-Semitism.” The rule is ruthlessly enforced by the Israel Lobby, often by its redoubtable Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is based in New York City but has a regional office in the capital, conveniently close to government offices, from which vantage point it can observe possible deviations and mete out instant punishment.
If one wants to learn how hypersensitive (and vicious) defenders of Israel and/or Jewishness can be it is only necessary to read about the recent experience of strongly pro-Israel Republican Senator Marco Rubio. He denounced “upscale liberals who control the media” in a tweet and was immediately attacked for “the anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the media,” which of course they do, but Rubio is too stupid and too fearful of Jewish influence to be suggesting that. So, one must conclude it is not even safe for a conservative friend of Israel to mention the “liberal media” for fear of being labeled as guilty of “coded anti-Semitism.” Likewise, any mention of the malign influence of George Soros by Republicans is likely to bring down the wrath of the usual suspects, not because it is a fiction but solely because he is Jewish and it implies that Jews can interact conspiratorially, which is demonstrably true.
Another interesting story concerns a government institution that I had never heard of before, the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad (USCPAHA), and guess what? It is nearly all about Israel, Jews and the so-called holocaust! If you don’t believe that bold assertion on my part, go to the organization’s website which includes multiple pictures of people handing out holocaust related “Cultural Pluralism Awards” and smiling for the camera.
The commission was created by Public Law 99-83 in 1985 and its ostensible purpose stated on the website is to “1. identify and report on cemeteries, monuments, and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe that are associated with the heritage of US citizens, particularly endangered properties, and 2. obtain, in cooperation with the Department of State, assurances from the governments of the region that the properties will be protected and preserved… The establishment of the Commission recognized that the population of the United States is mostly comprised of immigrants and their descendants. The United States has an interest in the preservation of sites in other countries related to the heritage of these Americans. The Holocaust and 45 years of atheist Communist governments created a critical need that led to the Commission’s establishment.”
The site also includes a list of “projects” , which are overwhelmingly Jewish/holocaust related and located in the parts of Europe where Jews settled. Alison Weir’s “If Americans Knew” has reported how in the past congress there were 70 largely hidden bills that in some way benefited Israel, and the creation of America’s Heritage Abroad has that smell to it, yet another gift that flies beneath the radar by being attached to a larger piece of legislation.
America’s Heritage Abroad only surfaced in the news due to a stink being raised by ADL over one of the organization’s 21 commissioners, all of whom appear to be Jewish judging from their names. He is Darren Beattie, who has been described as a “Right-wing conspiracy theorist [who] continues to occupy a position in the federal government given to him by Donald Trump, almost a year since Joe Biden took office and gained the ability to fire him. Beattie was appointed by then-President Donald Trump in November 2020 to serve on the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Its main responsibilities are seeking to preserve monuments in eastern and central Europe, many of which memorialize Holocaust victims. He gained new prominence in recent weeks promoting conspiracy theories about the Capitol riot, earning public praise from Trump.”
Recently, the ADL criticized the appointment and said that Beattie, who describes himself as a “proud Jew” on Twitter, should not be continuing to serve on the commission. Spokesman Jake Hyman complained that “Since Beattie’s appointment to the Commission in November 2020, he has continued to spread outrageous and deeply harmful falsehoods and misinformation, including about the January 6 insurrection, that are at odds with serving in such positions of official responsibility. We retain our view that Beattie, who once attended an event with white supremacists and participated in a panel discussion with white nationalist Peter Brimelow, should have no place on a commission that plays a special role preserving Jewish heritage sites from before the Holocaust.”
Beattie claims that he is still on the commission even though he no longer appears on its website. He states that “I’m proud to serve president Biden to honor the memory of the Holocaust” before criticizing ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt as a “Democrat apparatchik” who has “destroyed the reputation of the ADL during his tenure.”
So, the United States is now in the business of promoting holocaust remembrance on the taxpayer’s dime. Another fascinating news report that just surfaced also has a holocaust plus “surging” anti-Semitism back story. It is all about how numerous Biden nominees are stuck in the Senate waiting for approval, but it is really about Deborah Lipstadt who is described as a “renowned holocaust scholar.”
Lipstadt is the Dorot professor of Modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Atlanta’s Emory University, as well as founding director of Emory’s Institute for Jewish Studies. She has also held senior positions at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, another taxpayer supported enterprise that promotes the Israel narrative. Lipstadt has sharply criticized some progressives in the Democratic Party who have dared to criticize Israel, including Representative Ilhan Omar, for describing pro-Israel Americans as a “political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Such statements are “part of the textbook accusations against Jews,” Lipstadt countered, but Omar was, of course, right, though not allowed to get away with the truth when confronted by the Democratic Party establishment led by a foaming at the mouth Nancy Pelosi.
The White House announced in late July that Lipstadt would lead an expansion of the activity of the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, which is tasked with tracking and countering the alleged rise of anti-Semitism abroad. For the first time, the position will have the rank of ambassador, which makes necessary Senate confirmation.
Bear in mind that these are all mechanisms set up specifically to promote the narratives favored by international Jewry. Apart from affirmative action for blacks and other set-asides to favor them, there exists nothing in the US government to enhance the status of any other European, Latino or Asian ethnic groups or religious persuasions that is in any way similar. These commissions, offices and special ambassadorships were established through the assiduous marketing of their brand by Jews using their methodically exploited financial power and the political access that it buys. To cite only one example of what all that networking produces, politically wired Jewish organizations already receive more than 90% of the discretionary grants for “security” issued by the Department of Homeland Security. And the end result is that Washington is a helpless giant that is drawn into conflicts in the Middle East that it would best avoid while also funding the Jewish aggressors, most recently in response to a demand to rearm the Israeli military with $1 billion, conflicts which serve no US national interest.
Finally, should the United States be so obsessed with a narrative that is certainly in many respects questionable and which relates to events that largely took place many years ago overseas? Should the American taxpayer continue to foot the bill for all these contrivances to bind the US government hand and foot to the “heritage” of a small minority of the population and to its favored foreign state? These are questions that are almost never asked though, as Voltaire allegedly put it, “If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.
But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.
Even before Biden’s botched Build Back Better initiative, American progressives faced opposition to their wildly impractical claims about achieving “zero Covid” and “zero emissions”, confronting “systemic racism” by defunding the police, regulating speech, and redefining two biological sexes into a multiplicity.
Increasingly, the “march” has started to falter. Like the French generals in 1940 who thought they could defeat the Germans by perfecting World War One tactics, the progressive establishment has built its own impressive Maginot Line which may be difficult to breach, but can still be flanked.
That is not to deny the progressives’ limited successes. It has certainly developed a remarkable ability to besmirch even the most respected institutions, including the US military. But that is where its achievements stop.
While the Pentagon’s top brass focused on “domestic terrorists” and a progressive social agenda, it calamitously bungled its withdrawal from Afghanistan and appears utterly unprepared for Chinese or Russian competitors. And the effect of this progressive march is plain to see: the percentage of Americans who feel “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military” has dropped in just three years to 45% from 70%.
This decline in trust in major institutions, so evident in America, is also rife across Europe and Australia. In Europe, for example, young people express less pride in their cultural and religious heritage, and are almost three times as likely as their elders to believe that democracy is failing.
The great paradox of progressivism is that nowhere are its shortcomings more evident than in its geographic heartland: the dense urban centre. Conventional wisdom has dictated that America’s high-tech economic future will be shaped in dense urban areas, where superstar companies stand the best chance of recruiting superstar employees.
But while the upper crust of the labour force continue to head to the dense urban cores, on the ground people are moving in the other direction. Across the high-income world, not only in America but Europe as well, the vast preponderance of growth has taken place in suburbs and exurbs. In the last decade over 90% of all US metropolitan population growth and 80% of job growth took place on the periphery. On the ground, then, the progressive dream is withering.
The pandemic has greatly enhanced these trends, with downtown neighbourhoods recovering far less quickly than suburban, exurban, and small towns. But even if these changes are not permanent, at least not entirely, city residents will still have to contend with another pitfall of the progressive agenda: rising crime. Twelve American cities have experienced record homicides this year; all are ruled by Democratic, often progressive, leaders, many of whom explain away crime and excused, even praised, the looting and mayhem caused by protestors in the summer of 2020.
Yet despite this visceral impact on urban neighbourhoods, it is in education that our new hegemony could have its most long-lasting impact. The West’s new educational mandarins, increasingly strident and increasingly influential, have no use for our liberal inheritance, which they consider little more than a screen for racists and misogynists.
In Canada, we have seen an instance of “flame purification” for everything from old encyclopaedias and maps to Depression-era cartoons. In America, the disconnect between the professoriate and the people also keeps growing, as conservatives head towards extinction on many campuses: on some well-regarded campuses such as Williams, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans reaches between 70 and 132 to 1.
These trends have long been evident in the fading humanities and social sciences, but now even the sciences are becoming politicised. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that universities are losing credibility even among some traditional Leftists, who marvel at how they burnish their progressive credentials while making huge profits off their endowments and seriously underpaying most of their employees.
And just as with the growing disaffection for the military, teachers, students and parents are starting to push back. A number of teachers who have been “cancelled” or otherwise threatened for dissenting are now fighting back in the courts. There’s also considerable criticism from parents and alumni, some of whom are now pledging not to contribute to their schools, and instead support well-publicised and well-funded efforts to start new initiatives, such as the recently announced University of Austin. Even more importantly, would-be students are also voting with their feet: after decades of rapid expansion, the number of college students enrolments fell by 5% last decade, and dropped an additional 6.5% since 2019.
Likewise, only one in three Americans have confidence in their public schools, where the education establishment’s goal seems to be to obliterate merit. In my adopted home state of California, this “post-colonial” approach includes deemphasising the importance of tests, excusing bad behaviour, and imposing ideology on often ill-educated students. The San Diego Unified School District, meanwhile, is busily getting rid of mandates for such things as knowing course material, taking tests, handing in work on time, or even showing up; all these, the district insists, are inherently “racist”. This in a state that ranked 49th in the performance of poor, largely minority students. (Still, the situation could be worse: neighbouring Oregon no longer requires any demonstrable proof of competence to graduate.)
In the past year, this blindness has incited considerable public outrage. Criticism of Critical Race Theory buoyed the Republican win in Virginia in November, and has become a rallying principle for parents around the country, including a recall drive against San Francisco school board members.
Other parents are trying to opt out of the public system altogether. The pandemic saw the departure of more than one million American students from public schools, while 1.2 million families switched to home-schooling last academic year, bringing the total number of home-schooled students to 3.1 million, roughly 11% of the total. According to the Census Bureau, Black and Hispanic families now have the highest estimated rates of home-schooling, at 16% and 12%, respectively.
Meanwhile, the mass media, particularly its legacy outlets, constitute another progressive bastion losing credibility. One recent survey found that barely one in three Americans trusts the media, including a majority of Democrats, while only 15% of Americans have confidence in newspapers. Part of this surely stems from their bias: although there remain some powerful conservative voices, notably on talk radio and Newscorp properties, the vast majority of journalistic power lies with the Left. It’s the same story with social media, which increasingly dominates news access and is also widely distrusted.
But the media’s Maginot Line may prove more vulnerable than expected, and this breach is certainly a far better prospect than those that came with the German flanking. There is a definite challenge not just from the traditional Right but a plethora of new publications which offer intelligent analysis outside the establishmentarian party line, as well as from Substack. Unless the media oligarchs find ways to repress these elements, a resurgence of free thinking may rescue journalism from progressive editors and journalism schools.
The shift in the media parallels that in mass culture. As late as the Fifties, mass culture was seen as largely neutral. But in recent decades, it shifted towards a more monochromatic look — one which a significant portion of the public are fed up with. Gender flipping may excite progressive creatives, but politically correct remakes of household favourites have proved box offices disasters. Indeed, it’s striking that openly conservative presenters, such as Fox’s Greg Gutfeld, now do better in ratings than their more established network rivals like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
Yet perhaps nothing is more ironic, and potentially dangerous, than the takeover of the corporate suite by progressive ideology. Traditionally, the dispersion of ownership and the conflicting views of entrepreneurs and inheritors fuelled the dynamism of democracy: you had far-Left businessmen like George Soros and doctrinaire Right-wingers like the Kochs in competition. They fought it out, and sometimes even aligned. But they came from diverse viewpoints.
Today this diversity of viewpoints is being obliterated by design, with corporate behaviour now married closely to the notion of the “great reset” and “de-growth”: an economy where improving conditions for the masses is replaced with lowering carbon emissions and diversity tokenism. Such standards, of course, do not apply to snotty private schools attended by their offspring, or areas that are home to their mansions.
The oligarchs may feel they deserve dispensation from the masses by their “good deeds”, but people are not as stupid or malleable as the ruling elites believe. Trust in major corporations, never too robust, is below 20%, less than one third that for small businesses. It is slowly becoming apparent that ‘woke capitalism’ will never solve divisions which are essentially economic. The key, notes Richard Parsons, former President of Citigroup, lies not with racial quotas or hiring transgender workers but the economic growth and opportunity. There will never be “unity”, he suggests, until people “feel it in their pockets”.
The question now is whether there will be sufficient pushback to turn the tide. Unlike local school boards, online magazines, and even alternative colleges, it’s difficult to replace or challenge an Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Morgan Stanley. Yet fortunately these institutions do not yet control all wealth. Big companies may have shamed themselves out of oil and gas, but investors are ramping up due to the soaring price of these assets.
So, here’s the good news. On what sometimes seems the inexorable course towards progressive capture, we can see multiple fronts of resistance, and the early congealing of independent-minded forces, from the rational Right to the traditional liberal-left. Our society may never regain the feistiness of previous eras, and our new elites might continue marching through our institutions. But as they become increasingly discredited, they would be unwise to forget that all long marches one day come to an end.
Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His new book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is now out from Encounter.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a series of threats toward Iran and its interlocutors in the West, including the US, as serious negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program seem more plausible.
As a possible rapprochement looms between the US and Iran, Netanyahu has attempted to impose impossible Israeli conditions on the negotiators, such as the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, not to mention threatening military force.
Whatever the deal that could materialize between Iran and the West, Israel is going to find itself before an open-ended path. One can foresee three possible scenarios… continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
Aletho News 