Given that the realm of politics, in fact pretty much everything is largely, if not completely, a male thing, is it any wonder that men who claim to be progressive, you know, enlightened and liberated, for the most part are absolutely clueless about 50% of the human race? In fact, judging by appearances, it would seem that females are a different species, let alone judged by their behaviour!
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
— Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”, The National Interest, No.16 (Summer 1989)
Hmmm… so much for predictions.
The Russians have surely put the cat amongst the pigeons and put paid to “the end of history” nonsense, big time! All our traditional yardsticks, the way we evaluate events and ideas in this post-Soviet space, have we to jettison them all because of Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ (SMO) in the Ukraine? Even the much-vaunted contest between left and right, a contest all of us have grown up within, has been cut adrift from its moorings, but these alone don’t identify the key elements of the transition to a neoliberal planet, however brief its reign may be. But of course, it’s not just the Russian SMO, it’s the entire trajectory of events since the US’s regime change operation that overthrew the Soviet Union in 1989, that have been leading up to this denouement. What is depressing, is that so few in the West recognise it for what it is, and of course this is intimately connected to what has happened to politics in the West. Or rather the disappearance of politics, which in its way, explains in part, why the left has been rendered impotent. If you like the SMO is a wakeup call as it signals a new epoch in the making for both left and right to chew on. So far however, the left has shown that it’s not up to the task.
And of course, underneath it all, propelling it along, like some demented, out-of-control train, is the capitalist system, hidden yet in plain sight and desperate to hold on to ill-gotten gains, even if it risks the ending of humanity.
My second irony and it’s not (yet) about left and right, events have overtaken both the left and the right and found both wanting. And this is not the first time by any means, that this has happened. But what makes this time different is that unless the crisis is dealt with correctly and promptly, it’ll probably be the last time we have the luxury of decision-making about anything. The irony lies in the fact that whilst the left, in all its various iterations, seems content to count the number of capitalists there are on the head of a pin, can’t seem to figure out what the SMO is all about or indeed what the ‘Pandemic’ was really all about. This is first and foremost about the crisis of capitalism, perhaps the final crisis.
Most of the Western left faces a real quandary over Russia’s SMO but not so our compañeros in the Global South. They’re all pretty much of one mind about the real objectives of the Collective West as it is now known or, to give it its ‘classical’ name, “Imperialism” and events, not just in the Ukraine but the entire neocolonial project since the 1960s, headed by the US and executed by NATO. Why is this? What is it about the politics of the Left in the West that leaves them so confused and so easily misled about events and their causes? Does it not call into question as to what their true intentions are, especially when it comes to their relationships with the Global South. Or perhaps, they are simply clueless about things but I don’t buy this. I can say this from my own, direct experience of working with solidarity groups connected to Central America and Southern Africa. I call it (generously) the ‘We know best’ syndrome. Left or right, we are always telling everybody else, not only what to do but how to do it. Lenin was more direct; he called it ‘social imperialism’ where imperialist views are masked by socialist rhetoric.
The Western left has a kind of schizophrenia about Russia/Soviet Union but of two types: type 1 are those, with whatever provisos they had, who supported the Soviet Union and 20th century socialism; type 2 are those who never supported the Soviet Union, they considered that the Russian Communist Party had sold out, reneged on its principles, had a abandoned the Revolution or never had that as an objective in the first place. Russia’s Special Military Operation has either confirmed these longstanding views of Russia – whether the socialist or capitalist version – that Russia is an imperialist state bent on conquering the planet. Or, that Russia has legitimate concerns over where USNATO’s march East is going to end up and after having its security concerns ignored by the ‘Collective West’, it acted, quite rightly in my view, to defend its legitimate national interests.
Why shouldn’t it be Putin who leads the challenge to Western hegemony? Wasn’t it the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdal Nasser who challenged the hegemony of the European imperialists, France and England but he was, like Putin a nationalist, a patriot if you like, not a Communist (he locked them up). Thus there is no contradiction between Putin’s politics and his right to defend his homeland.
Multi-polarity, which importantly, didn’t originate in the West or with the left. No wonder the Western left is confused but then the Left never did have a sense of irony. And isn’t it ironic that the first, viable challenge to 500 years of Western hegemony should come from an anti-communist and deeply religious government. I mean it’s wild! All the old relationships have disappeared overnight! All of a sudden, Russia has rediscovered its Mojo but in an entirely new setting, a setting that nobody in the West saw coming. And as if to reinforce this new reality, we now see the reinvention of the Non-Aligned Movement but now including Russia and China and it’s called Multi-polarity. Who wudda thunk it?
It proves that the last century’s sparring between the West and the rest never ended with the end of the Soviet Union but instead of being a triumphalist West celebrating the end of history, it finds itself being that end.
Isn’t it also ironic that Russia should once more be the liberator of Europe (by default), though of course, to most it doesn’t seem like that right now because most of Europe has no idea what’s really going on, the censorship, the rewriting of history, is now virtually complete. A handful of US Marines won WWII and the Russians had the winter to defeat the Nazis, at least, in a nutshell, that’s how the ‘Collective West’ projects the past.
We have been imprisoned inside a bubble, a fantasy, the invention of the servants of capital, where everything is reversed; good is bad, day is night, right is wrong.
So, what exactly is going on? Why has Russia, a capitalist country, found itself the enemy of the ‘Collective West’ which seems intent on destroying the Russian Federation? Before, that is to say, when the Soviet Union existed, the rationale for confrontation and war was those evil, Godless communists, out to destroy the God-fearing Democrats of the West. So what’s the excuse now? It would appear that the only reason the Collective West can offer, is that they’re Russian, no other justification is needed after 100 years of rabid, racist Russophobia. What is it they call Russians in the Collective West? White Niggers, which says it all. Yet of course, whether capitalist or communist, Russia is a competitor and it possesses vast natural resources, probably the most educated population on the planet and of course vast markets for US products. This is what it’s really all about and it always has been.
Multi-polarity?
So, is this the ‘next step’ in the evolution of our global civilisation? What is it, this ‘multi-polarity’? Well it’s not (yet) about socialism, it’s as Lenin so succinctly put it over 120 years ago; it’s about Imperialism (versus the Planet), the highest, or perhaps the last stage of capitalism. Yet of course, ultimately, it has to be about socialism or it’s as we see, right now, it’s Barbarism and planetary death. And 87% of the planet have realised this, that’s what multi-polarity is all about. What is it Putin calls us in the Collective West? The Golden Billion, that for five hundred years has sucked the planet dry; it’s earth, it’s water, it’s air, it’s plants, it’s animals, even it’s insects and of course its populations. Nothing is sacred to Capital.
Collectively, that is, Russia and China and the Global South, now have the economic and military power to challenge the hegemony of the USA. So I think it’s no exaggeration to say that this is a ‘do or die’ moment, literally for us all. Multi-polarity is our tipping point. It’s Multi-polarity’s historic mission to repair the planet’s ecology.
Ukrainian Neo-Nazis (note the Flags of nATO and the Azov Battalion and of course, the Swastika)No, I don’t think it’s nostalgia and it’s not Andrei Tarkovsky’s stunning movie, ‘Nostalghia‘ either, it’s the image below, one of the 100s of Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, they are after all, One People and somehow, it makes sense. I view it as a tribute, or perhaps acknowledgement of the 27 million Russians who died in the Great Patriotic War (WWII to you and me), including virtually all of the Russian side of my family, made all the more hurtful by the presence of these Neo-fascists, openly celebrating the Ukrainians who sided with Hitler’s Germany and exterminated 100s of thousands of Jews, Roma and Slavs in Ukraine during the war. Perhaps I should have called this, ‘Lest we Forget’ instead because clearly we have forgotten or been made to forget.
Russian armoured vehicle flying the Soviet Hammer & Sickle
The Ravine of Babiy YarPerhaps Yevgeni Yevtushenko’s poem on the slaughter by the Nazis (both German and Ukrainian) of thousands of men, women and children, will give you some idea of the depth of feeling involved. It’s reckoned that 100,000 Jews, Roma and Slavs were executed and dumped in the ravine called Babiy Yar in Ukraine. And how apt his poem is, as if it were written yesterday for precisely, now.
Over Babiy Yar
There are no memorials,
The steep hillside like a rough inscription,
I am frightened.
Today I am as old as the Jewish race.
I seem to myself a Jew at this moment.
I, wandering in Egypt.
I, crucified. I perishing.
Even today the mark of the nails.
I think also of Dreyfus. I am he.
The Philistine my judge and my accuser.
Cut off by bars and cornered,
Ringed round, spat at, lied about;
the screaming ladies with the Brussels lace
poke me in the face with parasols.
I am also a boy in the Belostok,
the dropping blood spreads across the floor,
the public-bar heroes are rioting
in an equal stench of garlic and of drink.
I have no strength, go spinning from a boot,
shriek useless prayers that they don’t listen to;
with a cackle of ‘Thrash the kikes and save Russia!’
the corn chandler is beating up my mother.
I seem to myself like Anna Frank
to be transparent as an April twig
and am in love, I have no need for words,
I need for us to look at one another.
How little we have to see or to smell
separated from foliage and the sky,
how much, how much in the dark room
gently embracing each other.
They’re coming. Don’t be afraid.
The booming and the banging of the spring.
It’s coming this way. Come to me.
Quickly, give me your lips.
They’re battering in the door. Roar of the ice.
Over Babiy Yar
rustle of the wild grass.
The trees look threatening, look like judges.
And everything is one silent cry.
Taking my hat off
I feel myself slowly going grey.
And I am one silent cry
over the the many thousands of the buried;
am every old man killed here,
every child killed here,
O my Russian people, I know you.
Your nature is international.
Foul hands rattle your clean name.
I know the goodness of my country.
How horrible it is that pompous title
the anti-semites calmly call themselves,
Society of the Russian People.
No part of me can ever forget it.
When the last anti-semite on earth
is buried forever
let the International ring out.
No Jewish blood runs among my blood,
but I am as bitterly and hardly hated
by every anti-semite
as if I were a Jew. By this
I am a Russian.
And somehow Yevtushenko’s poem, written in 1960 or thereabouts, hits the same nerve, of Russians bearing the same pain, even if of a different name or as they are called in the West, ‘White Niggers’.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, thousands of images showing Russian soldiers and vehicles have emerged online. Some of these images shocked viewers when they saw the flag of the Soviet Union waving on some Russian military equipment. For residents of Ukraine, a former part of the Soviet Union, the flag may represent “an expression of a desire to repress them”, according to a post-Soviet politics specialist who spoke to the FRANCE 24 Observers team.- France 24 (my emph. WB)
Hmmmm…another ‘expert’. The racism of the Anglo-Saxons, 400 years or 76 Years and not a damn thing has changed!
24 December 2020 — Investigating Imperialism
Stop the world I want to get off! – Anthony Newly
Update 3: 24 December 2020
24 December 2020
So I’m now officially Covid Positive. After my trauma of taking a shower on Monday, yesterday, I got transported to my local hospital’s A&E department to get checked out where I discovered that it wasn’t a heart attack but this bloody Virus wot done it!
I had a wonderful doctor take care of me, bloods done, x-ray, the works and an hour so later, the result; covid positive and pneumonia in one lung. So five days of penicillin and it should be over. And I was discharged, well kind of. I waited, in vain, for six hours for transport that never came, so finally, getting toward midnight, I walked out and caught a cab home (I live 10 minutes away).
So why all the scare tactics? It’s got to the point where people glance at you suspiciously on the street if you get ‘too close’. An atmosphere of paranoia pervades this (formerly) green and pleasant land (was it ever?), to be replaced by a very unpleasant sense of fear and alienation.
Yet, when you phone up the Covid-19 ‘hotline’, 119, the first thing you hear is a recorded message telling you that for the great majority, the Virus is not dangerous (a rerun of CMO of England Chris Whitty’s May message). No wonder people are confused and hence scared, they don’t know what to believe! The upshot of this, is that many no longer believe ANYTHING, or alternately believe EVERYTHING they’re told. An extremely dangerous and volatile situation.
And as I go into 10 days of enforced isolation (quarantine), vast swathes of the country is being locked down! It’s as if the government really does want destroy millions of working peoples’ lives. But is this what it’s about? The so-called Great Reset?
I don’t think so. Our gangster government, loaded with incompetent crooks, that have, so far, handed out at least £100 BILLION of our money to the aforementioned crooks (half the annual NHS budget), has not slowed up (see this and this) but it goes far deeper than even the billions siphoned off the public account reveal.
When this, the latest disaster created by neoliberal capitalism took off, back in January 2020, the Tory government admitted 18, yes 18 million people into the UK (I didn’t believe the number either) and as the government had no idea who was carrying the virus, nor where they went, it was inevitable that the disease would explode, effectively at random wherever it found itself, and then spread, especially when winter arrived and all respiratory diseases have a field day. So, new mutation, or simply Winter? Or no effective track and trace. Well it’s too late for that anyway.
But this was the entire purpose of admitting so many millions, they called it ’herd immunity’ and just how big a disaster called ‘herd immunity’ was/is, is now readily apparent. But try finding big mouth corporate/state media investigating the disaster of herd immunity (any more than the disaster of multi-billion pound contracts handed out in exchange for crap). It’s yet another important news event going completely unreported. Instead, the capitalist press would rather frighten the living daylights out of everybody with fake news (eg the ‘new’ covid mutation or is it simply Winter or maybe it’s that removing Lockdowns allows the Virus to spread once more?) Who knows? ‘News’ is no longer News, it’s entered the realm of total fantasy.
So now, having initiated the destruction of most small businesses (the backbone of every high street in the country), the destruction of millions of jobs, the latest lockdown will finish off what’s left! And having further immiserated the working class and thrust an additional 800,000 children into Victorian penury, aside from the 1% (who are not touched and don’t give a fuck anyway), what does anybody in this miserable fucking dump have to look forward to in 2021?
This is why the scaremongering campaign; it’s to cover up the government’s criminal conduct and everything I wrote in my first two essays (here and here) on the Virus of Capitalism have come to pass!
There is NO 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th, Wave. What there is, is the Virus held in check by lockdowns, only to reemerge when the lockdown is lifted because we don’t know WHERE the Virus is and hence can’t block it. And we see the same pattern in the rest of the ‘advanced’ world. And in the meantime, they mutate. There are at least 6 variations of SARS-COV-2 doing the rounds.
Why do you think Wuhan as the single source (at the time) of the Virus was locked down and immediately? But in order for the Chinese govt to lockdown 11 million people, meant that not only had they to feed 11 million people every day, they had to have a health system that could respond without falling apart. Can you imagine this useless, corrupt and incompetent government, feeding 8 million Londoners EVERY day, let alone an NHS short of 20,000 doctors, 40,000 nurses and with only 50% of the hospital beds it had a decade ago.
So, as far as the UK govt is concerned, ‘Herd Immunity’ was an unqualified success. They’ve managed to make sure that wherever you live, you’ll NEVER escape the Virus. So it will be endless lockdowns until they’ve sold enough vaccines to claim that the unfortunate Virus has been beaten into submission. Until the next capitalist created disaster. But don’t worry corporate capitalism will have a ‘solution’ for that one as well.
And in the meantime, secret talks with mostly giant US corporations about the dismembering of the NHS, selling off the profitable chunks and have the state, sorry, the public, foot the bill for whatever’s left over.
It also explains the corporate/state desire for a Vaccine; it’s not to protect our health but to protect the vast profits that Big Pharma is making out of this crisis. If our (and other govts) were so sure of a vaccine, why has Big Pharma been legally indemnified against lawsuits? And it has the further advantage to the state of binding the population to the corporate-security state (eg ‘health’ passports).
Update 2: 21 December 2020
Well still waiting for my test result (and still waiting for my GP to call me), apparently now the wait is 6 days. Meanwhile, I’m under no misapprehension about the fact that I caught virus (I dont need a test to tell me).
So, got my smell and taste back this morning, took a shower but after getting out of the shower, I didn’t have the energy to make it to my bedroom! Instead I had to lay down on the floor instead. So this is the second stage of the virus, stealing my oxygen! So, not sure where this is heading as elsewise I feel okay. So I phoned the 111 number, told them what had happened and they suggested that I phone my GP who shouldn’t take more than 3 days to contact me! And am still waiting…
I’m now convinced I had a heart attack yesterday (20/12/20), I just didn’t recognise it for what it was, the bloody Virus threw me and my GP didn’t believe me, I think she thought I was faking it.
Update 1: 20 December 2020
I lost my sense of taste and smell on Thursday morning and I’m not feeling particularly bright today, though no other symptoms as yet. Is it the Virus? Well hopefully it’s nothing worse than the flu (though I haven’t had the flu in 45 years!), and hopefully, the RT-PCR test is being administered correctly and I’ll find out, hopefully by Monday whether I’ve been struck down or not.
Talking of tests, my local testing station, ‘managed’ by G4S, was a bit of a rinky-dink setup. You get ‘guided’ to a cubical (in fact, I was left standing until someone directed me to a completely open-sided cubical, so no privacy then). On the wall, is quite a complicated diagram in 12 or so stages, from preparing yourself, the test, and then getting it all packed up. The entire process came across as amateurish and half-baked, but then again, the government has given all the cash to their corrupt business cronies, so this is what we get.
Today, Sunday, I still don’t have a high temperature or a cough but I can’t say I’m feeling particularly bright. Apparently, there’s a new variant of the virus doing the rounds that is meant to be extremely infectious. Food tastes awful. Friends have recommended the following: Cloves and Lemongrass infused in boiling water and the steam inhaled. We’ll see.
As to updating the site, well I think I’ll give it a raincheck for a few days and see how this infection goes.
16 September 2020 – Investigating Imperialism
By William Bowles
Source: https://twitter.com/JohnDStats
[T]he great majority of people will not die from this [virus] and I’ll just repeat something I said right at the beginning because I think it’s worth reinforcing:
Most people, a significant proportion of people, will not get this virus at all, at any point of the epidemic which is going to go on for a long period of time.
Of those who do, some of them will get the virus without even knowing it, they will have the virus with no symptoms at all, asymptomatic carriage, and we know that happens. – Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, 11 May, 2020
But this is not what the British public have had been told (as well as a host of other countries who have been railroaded into joining the Great Scampede). The government and the mainstream media have presented the Virus to us as something akin to the Bubonic Plague, and of course the public have responded by behaving as though it is the Bubonic Plague. This is why the government changed the name of the virus from SARS-COV-2 (its correct designation) to COVID-19 in order to sever the connection to the Influenza virus, its possible ancestor. The state (and of course, big Pharma) had to present this virus to us as ‘novel’ and infinitely more dangerous than the Flu, which it’s not, it has about the same death rate as seasonal Flu, although it is especially dangerous to a vulnerable minority, average age 85 with multiple health issues, who should be protected and by-and-large, aren’t, itself a entirely preventable crime of vast proportions. (Each year, about 1 Billion people come down with the Flu globally and up to a 1 million die from it but still less than those who die from another highly infectious disease, Tuberculosis which in 2017 killed nearly 1.5 million).
But why has the world been shut down? Why destroy most of the world’s economies in order to quell (conquer, defeat?) a virus which is not dangerous to the great majority of us, perhaps 95% or more? Has some kind of mass psychosis taken hold of the political classes of the major (read imperialist) economies of the world who kicked this off? You really have to ask, ‘what’s in it for the ruling class’ that would lead them to deliberately inflict such mayhem on hundreds of millions of people and appear to destroy the economies of the leading capitalist states? What is it that the rest of us are not seeing or being prevented from seeing?
…The financial crash of 2020 was not only anticipated but planned and pushed forward with clear understanding of its instrumental role in the Great Reset sought by self-appointed protagonists of creative destruction. The advocates of this interpretation place significant weight on the importance of the lockdowns as an effective means of obliterating in a single act a host of old economic relationships. – ‘Was COVID-19 a Cover for an Anticipated or Planned Financial Crisis?’ By Prof. Anthony Hall
Whatever it is, it’s being presented to us as the ‘New Normal’, without however, telling us what this ‘New Normal’ actually consists of. But let me hazard a guess that whatever the ‘New Normal’ is it wont be nice for a great percentage of the world’s population. Already, it’s estimated that at least 1 billion people are in great danger of dying from starvation and disease caused directly by the lockdown, not the Virus.
Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the Oligarchy was there—a fact established in blood, a stupendous and awful reality. Nor even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well shows, was any permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its overthrow was a matter of a few short years, was the judgment of the revolutionists. – The Iron Heel, Jack London, 1910.
It would appear that the major capitalist classes of the world have waged total war on the planet’s people without firing a shot and at the same time set up the infrastructure needed to enslave us, and all in order to preserve the rule of a bankrupt Capitalism. The ‘New Normal’ really is Jack London’s The Iron Heel made real.The Virus is all about saving capitalism from itself.
How ironic then, that the catalyst for this global coup d’etat was China and one has to ask the question, why China? Could it be that China is a major obstacle to the establishment of the ‘New Normal’ and if so, it gives us an insight into what this ‘New Normal’ is really all about.
These are just some of the UK government’s documents prepared for the ‘New Normal’. Most deal with the ‘security’ aspects of an alleged pandemic rather than the health issues, except of course when it comes to considering vaccines. So aside from the clampdown on our civil liberties in the name of fighting the Virus, the goverment failed to deliver on every other key issue!
“Australian Police Go FULL NAZI, Smashing in Windows of Civilian Cars Just Because Passengers Wouldn’t Give Details About Where They Were Going.” – Sky News, August 13, 2020
Undoubtedly, capitalism is in crisis, perhaps its final crisis, though what might follow may be even worse (a new form of Fascism?), at least judging by how the state has responded to ‘rule breakers’. But what does shutting down the global economy achieve (aside from much pain and death for the vast majority) and what is the objective once you dismiss the idea of ‘defeating’ the virus as the rationale behind it? After all, it’s already clear that the global shutdown is causing many more deaths than the Virus has, or will ever do.
Some talk of a global conspiracy, the imposition of a world government (engineered by George Soros and co.) and no doubt somewhere, there’s talk of the Illuminati being involved. But undoubtedly, there is a conspiracy and at the very highest levels of the ruling political classes. Others have compared the Virus to 9/11 and look what that did to us! Is it really our health and well-being that occupies the minds of the elite any more than the War on Terror was about protecting us from terrorists.
Jump to 2020. Let me start in reverse while color-coded designs are fresh in our minds. As the COVID-19 lockdowns were under way, a funny thing happened as people were wishing that life could return to normal and they could be let out of their cages. Similar color-coded designs popped up everywhere at the same time. They showed the step-by-step schedule of possible loosening of government controls if things went according to plan. Red to yellow to green. Eye catching. Red orange yellow blue green. As with the terrorist warnings following September 11, 2001. In Massachusetts, a so-called blue state where I live, it’s color chart ends in blue, not green, with Phase 4 blue termed “the new normal: Development of vaccines and/or treatments enable the resumption of ‘the new normal.’” Interesting wording. A resumption that takes us back to the future. – ‘From Terrorists to Viruses: Dystopian Progress‘ by Ed Curtin, 7 September 2020
It’s clear now, that the only way to sell the ‘New Normal’ (or the ‘Great Reset’), was to create an abject fear of our existing life. Thus social distancing, the compulsive hand-washing, masks and of course the Lockdown, all serve, not as health aids but to destroy the old order. It’s now reached the point where rather than ‘seeking our permission’ via the government’s ‘nudge unit’, force is now needed. To that end a new kind of ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) has been created:
To help enforce the new measures, [Boris] Johnson…announced that he would be recruiting thousands of new ‘COVID Marshalls‘. The first group of England’s newly deputised Marshalls could be seen on Monday enforcing meticulous social distancing orders, one-way system on pavements, and telling people to wear masks in shops and at takeaways venues. They will also be handing out masks and hand sanitizer in order to “keep everyone safe.” – ‘UK ‘Coronaphobia’ is Pushing the Country Towards a Stasi-like State’, 21st Century Wire, 15 September 2020
The objective being the undermining of the existing social and economic relations but critically, without replacing capitalism with something better. In other words, these new and enforced conditions of existence have nothing to do with health or with the virus and its spread but everything to do with Capitalism attempting to reinvent itself. The Virus is simply a convenient and very useful excuse, assuming you can convince the world of its danger to life, which explains the censorship and suppression of any views that challenge this fictional narrative, called COVID-19 or, as BBC News, the Guardian, the Australian government and a host of others now call, that “deadly virus”.
That the rest of the world went along with it, is simply testament to the power of the Imperialist states to cajole and threaten any country that resists. Sweden for example, was made to look like some kind of mass murderer of its population, simply because it refused to implement a Total Lockdown (instead, it relied on obedience).
Well, they know where they want to go, the question is, can they get there?
The Great Reset is immensely ambitious, spanning over 50 fields of knowledge and practice. It interconnects everything from economy recovery recommendations to “sustainable business models”, from restoration of the environment to the redesign of social contracts.
The beating heart of this matrix is – what else – the Strategic Intelligence Platform, encompassing, literally, everything: “sustainable development”, “global governance”, capital markets, climate change, biodiversity, human rights, gender parity, LGBTI, systemic racism, international trade and investment, the – wobbly – future of the travel and tourism industries, food, air pollution, digital identity, blockchain, 5G, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI).
In the end, only an all-in-one Plan A applies for making these systems interact seamlessly: the Great Reset – shorthand for a New World Order that has always been glowingly evoked, but never implemented. There is no Plan B. – ‘From 9/11 to the Great Reset. From Al Qaeda to Covid The Virus…’ By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times
As I’ve stated before, there will be a massive shakeup of corporations; bankruptcies, mergers, new governments and new social orders and of course the further destruction and reformation of working and middle class life. Critically, and of great importance to the imperialist states, will be ‘The Great Reset’s’ devastating impact on the Global South, the consequences of which we are already witnessing. The Great Reset implements the objectives of the Club of Rome (COR) initiated in 1965, that saw one, if not its major objective, a vast reduction in the populations of the Global South, a process that has reached its apotheosis in the Global Lockdown.
“We believe in fact that the need will quickly become evident for social innovation to match technical change, for radical reform of the institutions and political processes at all levels, including the highest, that of world polity. And since intellectual enlightenment is without effect if it is not also political, The Club of Rome also will encourage the creation of a world forum where statesmen, policy-makers, and scientists can discuss the dangers and hopes for the future global system without the constraints of formal intergovernmental negotiation.” – The Limits of Growth.
This was from the COR’s first publication in 1972. It sold 12 million copies. Many of COR’S executive members were drawn from NATO, that should give you a good idea where COR stands in the scheme of things.
It’s been calculated that the capitalist economies in the so-called developed world, can survive with perhaps 20% of the working population, the managerial class, kept in work to maintain the capitalist order for its masters. As for the rest? Well it will be a vastly enlarged ‘precariat’, thus the ‘experiments’ with so-called universal basic income (rather than letting great chunks of the formerly employed starve to death, keep them alive on a subsistence ‘wage’).
What I do find really depressing (though not at all surprising), is the degree to which the left and organised labour have been sucked into this nightmare but then again, they’ve been bitten by the fear bug as well. Organised labour of course, has a vested interest in maintaining the existing order, most of its members work directly or indirectly (via privatisation) for the corporate, capitalist state, hence their (assumed) interests coincide. The term ‘labour aristocracy’ has never rung so true.
The left, such as it is, has bought the ‘Great Reset’, hook, line and sinker. All rational thinking appears to have fled, as the Great Scampede wreaks its havoc.
The omens are not good. Without a coherent and organised opposition to this insanity, it looks like what we should really should call the The Iron Heel will succeed in reshaping the world according to its own desires while the rest of us look on, powerless to stop it and simultaineously grappling with the ravages of climate change, also caused by a rampant capitalism.
12 July 2020 — Investigating Imperialism
By William Bowles
Why can’t I shake the feeling that the Virus is really the back story, a story that diverts us from something far deeper and much more threatening than the much-maligned Virus? The social distancing; the masks; the lockdown; the shutdown; all designed to distract? And the glue that cements it all together? Fear.
There are so many colliding stories coexisting in the history of the Great Global Lockdown, that serve to confuse and misdirect investigations, that figuring out what’s actually going on, is very, very difficult. Conflicts of interest abound, hidden agendas can be briefly glimpsed, then vanish under the waves of state-directed propaganda. But if there’s one overriding aspect to this event it’s fear. Fear engendered in the populations and the fear the ruling classes are experiencing that their rule might be coming to an end, either through environmental collapse or (praise be) revolution.
Global Heating and the Crisis of Capital, two earth-shattering issues. One threatens the future of Humanity and the other, the future of Capitalism. That the two are intimately interconnected, is surely obvious to all who care to look. And then we have the Virus. Taken together, the perfect storm?
Once more, the inherent contradictions of the capitalist economy are manifesting themselves, also in the usual manner; a falling rate of profit leading to reduced investment leading to bankruptcies and the meltdown of the economy, leading to, as before, mass unemployment and ultimately of course, war. At least, that’s how it used to be. But is war on a global scale now possible, or indeed even necessary to solve the crisis of the over-accumulation of capital and the falling rate of profit and all the other paradoxes and contradictions that capitalism creates for itself?
The ruling classes of the Anglo-American Empire have concluded that the coming environmental collapse will deal with the ‘problem’ of surplus labour and the propitious arrival of the virus will between them, take care of these twin problems and the problem of the falling rate of profit but without recourse to turning the planet into a radioactive cinder first. Well that’s the theory. As they say, a ‘global reset’ is in order, that is to say, a reset of the major capitalist economies. The weak and unprofitable will be eliminated, the losers absorbed by the survivors. A global fire sale of bankrupt corporations will take place. An even vaster concentration of capital will take place.
This is not to say, that it was planned, the ruling class are nothing if not opportunists and in any case, are they really masters of their own destiny, driven as they are by forces that most are, at best, only dimly aware of? You need proof? Dominic Cummings. Donald Trump. Boris Johnson.
The virus is merely the catalyst, the global lockdown will take care of the ‘surplus’ population as it already is. Predictions of a billion starving people, virtually all in the Global South, are already coming to pass. But we, in the so-called developed world have, for the most part, been well-insulated from the reality of a planet in lockdown. Fear rules us and makes us impotent.
Back in February, the doomsayer of the British state, Neil Ferguson, told us that his ancient software predicted half-million deaths from the virus. Fear ruled us and in that moment, the Coronavirus Bill was ushered through Parliament with nary a dissenting voice. The Lockdown State was upon us. Within weeks millions were made redundant. Small to- medium-sized businesses make up 80% of the real economy and the High Street died, probably never to recover. But note that the major supermarkets that control the bulk of purchases were allowed to remain open. As was Amazon. Make no mistake, this is all about Big Business.
Then Ferguson revised his Nostradamus-like predictions downwards, from 500,000 to 20,000 and still got it wrong but for an entirely different reason. Having set the virus of fear loose, it was vital to take back control of the narrative. But the half million served its purpose. Time to move on to the real business of saving capitalism, from itself.
There is some kind of insane logic to the way the Tory government operates, I believe it’s called ‘flying by the seat of your pants’. The British capitalist class has a bunch of total incompetents trying to run the state on their behalf as if it were merely outsourcing business opportunities to some very flaky ‘entrepreneurs’. Corruption and incompetence rules. A crew of nasty imperialist racists who can’t see beyond the current ripoff, that’s who is pretending to run Great Britain. Churchill must be revolving slowly in in his grave.
What appeared to be the government’s apparent indifference to the arrival of the Virus was in fact a thinly disguised Fascism in the shape of ‘Herd Immunity’, itself a variant of the theory of Eugenics or Social Darwinism or survival of the fittest, an idea that first surfaced in the 19th century and was enthusiastically adopted by the ruling classes of Britain, Germany and the USA. Let the Virus spread and the ‘weak’ will die and the ‘strong’ will survive, best exemplified when the virus was given free reign to spread through care homes and the proof is in the numbers, and although it’s proving difficult to find accurate figures, it’s estimated that at the very least 16,000 people died in care homes who needn’t have had their lives cut short and so brutally, about half of the total number of deaths, so far, though because of changes made to how deaths are recorded by the Coronavirus Bill, making accurate estimates is now all but impossible.
About 3,500 people died in care homes in Germany compared with more than 16,000 in the UK, despite Germany having a care home population twice as large. Its test-and-trace system and 14-day quarantine for people leaving hospital have been credited with protecting homes from outbreaks. – The Guardian, 28 June 2020
Benign neglect? I don’t think so. Discharging people sick from the Virus back into care homes, turned them into modern versions of Typhoid Mary. Care home workers were given no protection whatsoever, guaranteeing that their carers would both spread the virus and get infected by it, from those they cared for!
Hospitals were emptied for a flood of patients that never materialised! The so-called Nightingale Hospitals, 17,000 beds in total and launched with great fanfare had a total 60 patients and those were moved from regular hospitals. People were discouraged from visiting their local doctors, operations were cancelled, examinations were cancelled. Will we ever know the real death toll, not from the Virus but from the denial of needed care or from those too afraid to go to hospital? I’m prepared to wager that the total number of these ‘excess’ deaths will far outnumber the deaths from the Virus.
And of course, the destruction of vital social services by the Tory government fed into how the government responded to the Virus and it was directly expressed in the propaganda blitz; ‘Protect the NHS’, ‘Save Lives’, an NHS that had been emasculated by the very government that now claimed it wanted to protect it! Worse still, the same propaganda assault, blamed the public for the government’s failures in stemming the spread of the Virus.
But lest we forget, because the government’s initial reaction was to ‘let the virus rip’ through our communities, all the subsequent ‘social distancing’, ‘lockdowns’ and ‘face masking’ was rendered useless (if any of it ever worked in the first place) as the virus had been allowed to spread throughout the entire British population! It’s this initial event that was the single cause of the UK having one of the highest death rates, per capita, in the so-called developed world.
And to this engineered disaster, we haves the destruction of our social services after 10 years of Austerity as part of the neoliberal agenda of privatising everything! 50% fewer hospital beds than 10 years ago; a shortage of 40,000 nursing staff; the closure of hospitals and Accident & Emergency departments, as the state gears up for the total privatisation of health care in the UK. No doubt, the profitable bits will be fire-saled to US investors and the public will pick up the costs of the unprofitable bits left behind, after being raped by international capital. Again, the irony is not lost on the writer, of a former empire that ripped off the planet, now being picked clean by its successors. But it’s no justice to the millions of people the NHS still tries to serve, or to the millions who work for the NHS, the biggest employer in the UK.
After all, the virus and the methods chosen to allegedly, ‘deal’ with it, do not affect the rich, for them life goes on, no need of a ‘furlough’ for the 1%. Yes, it is an inconvenience but nothing that the ruling classes haven’t dealt with before eg, World Wars I and II come to mind. And indeed, as we have seen over the past three months, specific sections of the capitalist economy have made vast profits from the virus, especially the new digital industries. And for the most part, the professional middle classes have been only minimally affected by lockdowns and closures, so the core of neoliberal Britain, finance and consumption, appears, bizarrely, to continue as if everything is hunky-dory! Watching tv commercials brings it all home, to me at least. A parallel universe in garish colours, close-up, where people play out fantasy consumption roles for an imprisoned audience.
I predicate this view on the fact that the capitalist class knew quite well that its predations of the natural world would, at some time lead to ‘novel’ diseases, they even carried out a ‘dry run’ just prior to the appearance of the Virus and shortly thereafter produced the Coronavirus Bill here in the UK, consisting of hundreds of pages that had obviously had been in preparation, if not already written, well before the Virus’ arrival. Precognition? I don’t think so. More importantly, the Bill handed the state ever more draconian powers over our liberties, powers that as I write, are being further extended. We are now living in a de facto police state. Except the rich.
It’s also obvious that the government knew quite well the consequences of its actions, whilst at the same time, proved totally incapable of acting on the basis of all the studies and dry runs that the government had conducted prior to the arrival of the Virus. Incapable or unwilling, or both?
In other words, the government is a ‘ship of fools’ and this is probably the most dangerous thing about the this Tory regime when you add their incompetence to their bankrupt, neoliberal ideology.
A lot of the mystery of the British state’s use of the Virus as a means of social control, became much clearer after I’d read the UK Cabinet Office’s document called ‘Mindspace’ – Influencing behaviour through public policy‘. Engineering opinion so that the public ‘gives its permission’ to be herded like cattle, locked up, pauperised and deprived of a future. The tools used are called Behavioural Psychology and involve evoking Pavlovian responses in the populace, which is how they get us to ‘give the state’ our permission, to do stuff:
‘Mindspace’ – Influencing behaviour through public policy‘
This report is not just an overview of theory; it addresses the needs of policy-makers by:
- Condensing the relevant evidence into a manageable “checklist”, to ensure policy-makers take account of the most robust effects on our behaviour
- Demonstrating how behavioural theory can help meet current policy challenges, including full case studies of its application in the UK
- Showing how government can build behavioural theory into its current policy-making practices
- Exploring important issues around the need for public permission and the role of personal responsibility [my emph. WB]
The Report continues:
But when applying MINDSPACE in practice, it should not simply be seen as an alternative to existing methods. “Behaviour Change” is part of policy-making, rather than a novel alternative that can be bolted onto policies. Therefore, civil servants need to better understand the behavioural dimension of their policies and actions. MINDSPACE can help them do so in three different ways:
- Enhance. MINDSPACE can help policy-makers understand how current attempts to change behaviour could be improved, for example through a better understanding of how people respond to incentives and which types of information are salient. The logic here is that if government is already attempting to shape behaviour, it should do so as effectively as possible.
- Introduce. Some of the elements in MINDSPACE are not used extensively by policy-makers, yet may have a considerable impact. For example, there is room for more innovative use of social norms and commitment devices in policies. Of course, introducing new measures in this way may require significant efforts to ensure there is public permission for the approach.
- Reassess. Government needs to understand the ways it may be changing the behaviour of citizens unintentionally. It is quite possible that government produces unintended – and possibly unwanted – changes in behaviour. The insights from MINDSPACE offer a rigorous way of analysing whether and how government is shaping the behaviour of its citizens.
MINDSPACE builds on existing methods of policy-making government produces unintended – and possibly unwanted – changes in behaviour. The insights from MINDSPACE offer a rigorous way of analysing whether and how government is shaping the behaviour of its citizens.
/../
The use of MINDSPACE (or other “nudge‟ type policy tools) may require careful handling – in essence, the public need to give permission and help shape how such tools are used. [my emph. WB] – ‘Mindspace’ – Influencing behaviour through public policy‘.
At the same time, this kind of approach to ruling people has a downside. The state can’t keep people in a state of fear indefinitely, any more than it can curtail economic activity indefinitely. The irony of the situation is that trade unions are demanding no return to work for fear of the Virus, even if for the vast majority the virus poses no threat.
[T]he great majority of people will not die from this and I’ll just repeat something I said right at the beginning because I think it’s worth reinforcing:
Most people, a significant proportion of people, will not get this virus at all, at any point of the epidemic which is going to go on for a long period of time.
Of those who do, some of them will get the virus without even knowing it, they will have the virus with no symptoms at all, asymptomatic carriage, and we know that happens. – Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, 11 May, 2020
Whitty spilled the beans, almost at the beginning of this nightmare, which may explain why we see so little of him these days.
The mindbenders are hard at work invoking the ‘Spirit of WWII’, Churchillian rhetoric, kindof, Spitfires, the Blitz and Sacrifice, which translates as more and even worse Austerity for us all. After all, somebody has to pay for this mess and it won’t be the political class or its masters, the ruling class. As usual, it will be the poor what gets the blame and pays the price.
So it would seem that we are all in for a wild ride into an uncertain future, with the state pressing our buttons – fear then less fear, then more fear then back to less fear again. The effects are already apparent with a rise in mind injury, especially amongst the young. Fear keeps us from resisting this outrageous assault on what’s left of our liberties and all to preserve the rule of BIg Capital.
Copyright William Bowles & Cheryl Byron
August 1977
Cheryl Byron
This is the first song I ever wrote, actually co-wrote with my dear friend and musical colleague, Cheryl Byron, (1947-2003) in August 1977 following the Blackout in New York City, in my little ‘railroad’ apartment on Madison Avenue in East Harlem. It was Cheryl who actually encouraged me to write songs, I actually had no idea how at the time. We recorded it on a 4-track but unfortunately I’ve lost it! The amazing Cheryl died in 2003 and there’s a very strange story to this that I’ve appended at the end here.
Were yer-sittin’ in an uptown bar?
Or-jus’ cruisin’ in yer car?
Takin’ in a movie?
Or getting’ down an’ feelin’ groovy?
Refrain: Who were you when the lights went out?
Who were you when the lights went out? (Repeat 2 times)
The streets transformed as blanket spreads
Settlin’ on eight million heads
Dark ages empty stages
Across the city freedom rages
Chorus: But the fat cats got their own power
Sittin’ in an ivory tower (Repeat 4 times)
Shutters crack an’ plate glass smack!
Gatherin’ ‘round on littered ground
People laugh an’ people cry
An’ somewhere some shall die
Refrain:
Who were you when the lights went out?
Who were you when the lights went out? (Repeat 4 times)
Can yer see your way in the dark
Every block like Central Park
We don’ need no arc light
Pretend yer blind don’ get behind
Refrain:
Who were you when the lights went out?
Who were you when the lights went out? (Repeat 4 times)
An’ fer some a chance to have some fun
For others run an’ get a gun
Stockin’ up at the local mart
Laughin’ as they push the cart
Chorus: But the fat cats got their own power
Sittin’ in an ivory tower (Repeat 4 times)
Pedal Bass central section)
An’ who’s to blame
For the following flames?
For eyeless streets?
An’ rotten meats?
For gilt-edged candles?
An’ city scandals?
For social cuts
An’ concrete huts?
For welfare alms?
An’ useless charms?
For media lies?
An’ human stys?
For breedin’ crime?
An’ wastin’ time?
Chorus: But the fat cats got their own power
Sittin’ in an ivory tower (Repeat 4 times)
An’ all the while we look aroun’
Our words they fall on stony groun’
The people-milling on sultry streets
Who’ve lost all faith in future feats
Chorus: But the fat cats got their own power
Sittin’ in an ivory tower (Repeat 4 times)
The streets transformed as blanket spreads
Settlin’ on eight million heads
Dark Ages Empty Stages
Across the city freedom rages
Refrain: Repeat 4 times
Chorus: Fade
Preamble: I was reading a story by the writer Ed Curtin last week, ‘The Messenger‘ and this memory flooded back into my mind, triggered by his essay:
When I lived in New York City, for a couple of years I worked with a Trinidadian choreographer/dancer, theatrical director, and Professor of Theatre at City College NY, Cheryl Byron, playing bass in her group ‘Something Positive’, a band with dancers, congueros and so forth from all over place. It was Cheryl who got me into writing songs for the first time, something I didn’t even know I could do. In fact we wrote my first song together, in my little apt on Madison Av in E. Harlem, after the Blackout in NYC, in July 1977 (it was called ‘Where were you when the lights went out?’ Wrong! I forgot, it was Dark Ages).
Cheryl was an amazing, multi-talented person. She won an award for her poetry in Trinidad Carnival, Play Mas and just a beautiful human being. We worked together on different projects, including a Reggae musical written by Max ‘War Inna Babylon’ Romeo (which didn’t happen unfortunately, Max couldn’t get backing).
See See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Byron for more on Cheryl’s amazingly creative life.
Then of course, we parted ways very amicably, moving onto different things but staying in touch until I left the US and moved to Johannesburg in 1992.
In 2002 I moved back to the city of my birth, London and about a year later, whilst working with someone on a project, Cheryl’s name suddenly popped up in my mind, completely unbidden. Curious, I found an old, battered address book from my Big Apple days and there was her number. So on a whim I phoned, not expecting to connect to Cheryl and I didn’t, but I did get the same answering machine message! So I left message for her with my contact details.
The following morning I got a phone call. It was from one of the musos in the band I’d worked in (I think he played congas or perhaps he was one of the dancers?). Sadly, I’ve forgotten his name so I’ll call him Tony and we had the following conversation (obviously not verbatim):
Tony: ‘Bill, this is Tony, what made you phone Cheryl yesterday morning?’
Me: ‘I don’t know, her name just popped into my mind so I found her number and on the off-chance that she was still at the same address, phoned to say hi’.
Tony: ‘Cheryl died yesterday morning and as she lay dying she called out to you and sent you her love’.
I was staggered. How could this be? I hadn’t spoken to her in at least 15 years. Cheryl was two years younger than me, so not that old (then). Tony told me she died of cervical cancer, at home surrounded by friends in her little, one-room apt on E. 87th Street, in Manhattan, that I knew so well. Crazy white boy that I was, she used do my hair in corn rolls and braids. It took hours. I used to call her, CB Radio.
Like you, I’m not religious, I don’t believe in the ‘supernatural’, but I can’t explain it. So, as you say, synchronicity?
Date: Some time in the late 1960s
I started writing poetry whilst still at art school, then they got buried away for over 50 years, never to see the light of day, until now. For some reason, I got the urge to dig them out recently and some seem to have stood the test of time. I’m very divided about editing them, after all, I’m not the same person I was in the 1960s or whenever they were written. This one I’ve transcribed pretty much verbatim, aside from spelling errors.
This poem was a request as it were by another poet, long since dead, Steve Piper and it was the very first attempt at writing poetry. We used to hang out in a pub called The Cricketers Arms on Trinity Road, opposite Wandsworth Common, in South London. Steve gave me the theme as it were. The Which Report was/is tested consumer products. I had to read it out in the pub. Very embarrassing.
All samples were were tested
to destruction
Out of the twenty-seven samples
submitted
three proved
electrically unsafe
two makes failed to
pass the erection test
seven were of foreign make
and all of these
could not match up to
the british makes for
bollock snugness and
cheek gripping
five makes made access
fore and aft difficult
shit stains proved difficult
to remove in twenty of the
samples
and sag proved to be a
serious obstacle
seven makes produced bad
rashes on the foreskin
eight makes tangled badly
with most types of pubic hair
nine of the samples tested are
good-byes
16 March 2003 — Investigating Imperialism
Welcome to the World of Double Standards
“The challenge to the post-modern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the post-modern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself.
12 May 2020 — The New Dark Age
A must read (and frightening) document that details the UK government’s programme to control our thoughts and opinions (see also https://williambowles.info/2020/05/12/covid-19-uk-column-news-11th-may-2020/ )
From the Executive Summary:
Influencing behaviour is central to public policy. Recently, there have been major advances in understanding the influences on our behaviours, and government needs to take notice of them. This report aims to make that happen.
Investigating Imperialism 