jueves, 26 de marzo de 2020

The End of The World as We Know It


By Coos Palmboom

Lots of things can happen in a month. Whatever I wrote in late February about the state of the world is totally out of order now. Literally everything has changed and what may have changed particularly is how people view their leaders. Still think they have your interest at heart? The latest news is that the gloves are off. It’s all out in the open now, straight in our faces. Covid-19 can and will be used against us. Covid-19 heralds the beginning of the endgame and not many pensioners in the West are supposed to make it to the next level. As a result, anybody who thinks their secrets may be worth some money will sell while there still is an investment in safety to be made. Expect myriad outings and shame stories while the economy is crumbling under their feet, quite the spectacle. All this is neither funny nor tragic, all this is the plan. If you happen to be on the inside and you have difficulty following my words, try stepping out of your head and seeing the whole sorry affair from a plan side. Why is the West going down?

Many reasons can be found. The most urgent must be that its population is getting old and expensive. A shake off would be welcome and as new clear war is impossible, a killer virus is chosen to do the benign work. In fact, you get the feeling the virus is just the cabbie and that it carries some genetic monstrosity which is burning people’s lungs. Many stories point to an American origin. Likely so, as the rulers of this planet still have very strong connections with designated parts of USA. They set out the virus in China and Korea and Iran and Italy and Spain and in many other places and they knew it would bounce back and hit their own uninsured populations. To be sure, a substantial pre-detection contagion had already been taking place in the Homeland, possibly from August onwards. Meanwhile, European countries taking lots of different measures and not always the smartest ones have made them surpass now seemingly controlled Wuhan in casualty numbers with no end in sight. How is that for feeling safe in your superior democracy?

Was Covid-19 an act of warfare against the Chinese Republic? Of course, on the level we contemplate world affairs as they are presented to us this can be considered an attack on the Chinese people, as it successively was on many other nations. But there is another level as well, it’s where the only meaningful struggle on this planet takes place, and that is the haves against the have-nots, the eternal struggle which the haves are winning thanks to their technological advancement. The haves know no loyalty other than their peers, an international jet-set of winners and hangers-on. It is on this level, that a game is being played out. The game is called new world order. Ever since papa Bush used these words in a presidential speech, the world has anxiously been looking for new orderly moves coming out of USA. Yet this is not how the rulers play their games. They like to keep things in the balance. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, on the slow rhythm of Earth’s pendulum. They knew the masses of people around the world would resent full control by USA in this moment in time and that a period of strife and rebellion might ensue, whereas they prefer social peace to effectively push through their control measures, if only because many people would be thankful for their interference if control meant an end to insecurity. Peace comes at a price, no? So they find a different path to their desired big brother state. They have USA and the West at large play an increasingly ugly role on the world stage. War against Yugoslavia and the Middle East, war against Sahara and individual countries all over the world, economic wars against Russia and China, ecological concerns given a lot of airtime but very little attention, Earth’s billions suffering from the West’s idiotic self-image which sees no harm done. People all over the world are sick and tired of America, including in growing parts of the West, finally. The hysterical propaganda coming out of our media channels has become unbearable. Everybody knows they are lying, even if we can’t get ourselves to admitting it. Meanwhile, life has been getting harder for a lot of people and talk of the next crisis has become inescapable. Trump is there only to help you hate US even more. And in the midst of all this malaise a virus of its own making starts hitting out at those costly boomers. Okay, boomer, thanks for starting it up, and off you go. People are desperately fleeing from so much depravity. People are fearing the virus, but they must by now have begun fearing their failing governments more. What is going on here, why are people sacrificed? It’s a very hard game, covid-19, and it’s played, or rather it’s started by US.

And then, while we are desperately trying to get to grips with our new reality, our governments not doing what they are told not to do and us citizens cut off from our existence, there is this golden sunrise, the glorious emergence of the other player. China kills off the virus in two months. China offers the nations which have been attacking it face masks and respirators. China promises to somehow rescue the global economy. Russia sends war planes chock full of goodies to Italy. A fabled Cuban wonder drug is making the rounds. So far Big Pharma hasn’t offered to produce it at cost price, nor has it been ordered to. Meanwhile Westerners are confined to their homes, waiting for their lives to crash. The world has turned topsy-turvy.

Ira Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby and The Boys from Brazil, penned a futuristic novel about a machine controlled high tech world where nobody passes 60 years of age, apart from the rulers of course, called This Perfect Day. While many people are referencing Soylent Green as the next imperial milestone on our path to oblivion – Blade Runner already well past us – I have always been waiting for TPD. Perhaps I prefer the mark of the beast over the meat grinder. None of the above, yeah sure, those days have gone forever. This wholly deliberately induced crisis – once again – can only lead to starvation for the many and corporate rescue for the urban professional class. And who will lead us into this new world order if it can’t be the Americans who are killing us all? Well, look around you. According to TPD it was no other than general Wei who secured world peace when he beat the forces of decadence and heralded in the golden era of controlled satisfaction, no questions asked. And I ask you, where are we now?

It would be many alt.media writers’ wet dream come true to see Xi be the real Wei. There really is no trust in the West left, so to hell with it. This going to hell is now taking place. The question remains: how many are needed this time and when can we (or you) expect the next attack? What may be expected from Xi? Will he restore the monetary system in some way and give the survivors hope? It will be Chinese command from now on, of course, and I assume a Chinese pace to life. That may be challenging at first. Until my next utterly different report. Meanwhile, stay away from the virus. It doesn’t seem quite as contagious as everybody makes it out to be, but when it catches you it kills your lungs. At no age is lung damage a healthy companion for the rest of your life.


Splendid Isolation



by Coos Palmboom

Get ready for the local economy. The worldwide economy is being destroyed right before our bewildered eyes. The meltdown corona virus madness engulfing the planet is leaving little doubt about our near-future destiny. It may not necessarily happen in the end, but there's already a wide-spread feeling it could all go wrong for our way of life. In such circumstances, please allow me to offer some words of comfort.

When dealing with a pandemic, it is important to think pandemically. And what we have seen pandemically so far is nothing to get all pandemic about. Yes, the disease is spreading fast, but no, not many people are dying from it. It's worse than the ordinary flu but not that much worse. It's a bit like the appearance of the tiger mosquito or the flying cockroach. Bigger and nastier than you were used to, but not that different in the end. Sod off, is your first reaction, but you already know you will have to learn to live with it soon. So you start getting on the look out for signals virus has its weak sides, and you understand there are none, apart from its fatality. Covid-19 is on a winning streak and staying uninfected unfortunately has become impossible. Virus has been walking around town and anybody can carry it. So the next best thing is living healthily, to shrug off infection like you would an ordinary flu. Too tough to be bothered, too busy also. Poor souls who get the lung infection, often the weak it seems, they will have no option but to seek hospitalian help. The rest of you lot stay cool. You're not going to escape contagion, so don't bother obstructing the health service with your non-problem. Think of it this way: getting infected early on and taking that 2% death rate on the chin may work out better than chancing on the virus not getting more virulent with passing time.

At the stage we are in by late February, one would be excused to believe we are experiencing a dry run for a real global killer disease. We are certainly not all going to die from covid-19, yet the illness is treated by health and other officials as if we were. Extreme panic, nicknamed necessary precautions, has set in and people are quarantined for up to two weeks even when they do not show any signs of being infected. Yet, nothing has been done to stop the disease from spreading, in fact a lot is done to help it spread. I am sure halting the dissemination of a corona virus is mostly impossible, but why are people allowed to continue travelling around the world, only to be locked up once they are back home? If isolation can help contain the advance of the virus, as is clearly taken for granted, then why wasn't the Wuhan region shut off more effectively? And if covid-19 can't be stopped after all, then what is the point of those quarantines? The way it looks like through the eyes of a seasoned conspiracy thinker is that the powers that be are interested in knowing how well local authorities are capable of locking up their populations and how willing people are to be incarcerated under mostly false pretences. Soon enough it will become clear the problem is not so much the infection as rather the possibility to shut off vast expanses of highly developed land.

What we are seeing is how covid-19 is happily hopping from one place to the next, riding the waves of our globally interconnected society. Interestingly, this gives us an idea of how different places around the world are linked and which places are tighter connected than others. Restricting ourselves to Spain here, is it any wonder that the first cases of contagion are to be found on the Mediterranean coast? Is Madrid already announcing fake infections? And how hubby is in fact that famous economic hub Netherland where covid-19 so far has refused to enter? Update: they're both on the map. And why isn't the United States reporting more cases when it is supposedly the centre of the universe? Are ulterior motives causing these places to stay out of the picture? Considering the impact covid-19 is having on the inflated stock markets (the main source of growing wealth for the already wealthy) a little white lie would serve many well.

A variety of conspiracy theories can be extracted from the way this disease is spreading around the world and how it is dealt with, but one thing is clear: if we continue shutting down communities, the global economy will grind to a halt and stop functioning. We will soon run out of a wide range of supplies, from oil and clothes to medicine and food staples. Thus far, many people have voluntarily readied themselves for quarantine in the idea they were helping contain the problem. But what happens when shops are empty and cars no longer work? How complacent will people be then? Will we see the military in the streets to keep us locked inside?

Most countries keep strategic supplies to be employed in case of emergencies, so I presume many places will be able to weather a short storm. But what happens to all those companies that are dependent on just in time delivery systems to keep their operations economically viable, which have left themselves through the pressure of capitalist logic unprotected from the whims of chance? One can imagine that a tightly run country like China should be able to freeze its reality for a while – all we really need is food, water and electricity – and start up again once the plague is behind it, but countries where the dogma of free market enterprise has rendered authorities powerless may have a much harder time preventing their economies from tanking. In fact, such countries would do best to pretend there is no contagion taking place within their borders and accept a few extra deaths over the destruction of large sections of their societies.

For a long time I have contemplated the possibilities of wilfully terminating consumer society. Not by me, don't worry, I don't have such power. I have merely written about it, most notably in my novel Jungle Town, published in 2017. The stories are different, but the results are the same. We are suddenly getting a lot closer to where we don't want to be. What Jungle Town wanted to convey is that we powerless people who have no role in how reality is playing out will have to find ways of collaborating to prepare for harsh times ahead and this will not always be easy. Yet there seems to be no alternative. Let's resist the idea the police should take over society because we are supposedly only capable of violence. Be cool and work together and see where that gets you, is what I say. It's your only hope. Come to think of it, our only hope is standing strong and not asking for help. These are revolutionary times.