Another Failure of Imagination?

Masks!  Masks!  Masks!  Russia! Russia! Russia! China! China! China!  Vaccines, “lockdowns”, civil liberties, jobs, schools, the economy, the election! Mmmaaasks!! Global temperatures rise exponentially, 2020 a record-breaking year.  Drought covers 45% of the US, which was still burning in late October, following summer’s unprecedented floods in China, fires and smoke in Russia’s Siberia, the Amazon, Australia, (last summer), and the Arctic, where sea ice is growing back at the slowest rate ever recorded.  Masks?

Changing jet streams threaten droughts, fires and food supplies.  AMOC is now measurably slowing.  We’ve run out of alphabet for storms and hurricanes.  The US economy has been on life support since 2008 despite the debt-based counterfeit “recovery” and the machine’s about to be shut off.  Two decades of US scorched-earth scrabbling for oil and other declining resources has spread wars, famines, refugees, persecutions, subjugations and chaos across the non-Western world while Western populations are being mind-melded into their phones.  And, the US population, obliviously absorbed in its very own domestic color revolution since at least 2016, can’t smell the cookies baking. 

Masks?   

Really?

Table of Contents

The first time I tried that 9-dot puzzle – you know, the one where you have to connect three rows of three dots with four lines without lifting your pencil?  No neophyte to thinking outside the box, I just couldn’t see it.  I hated it.  Stupid puzzle!  Its solution remains a humbling reminder to enlarge my frame of thinking.  Like much excellent analysis written this year, this girl, or this sailboat

are but pieces of a vast canvas, this one painted by the master of dots, Seurat.

Escape from the box

When it comes to understanding how their world works or why it matters, most Westerners seem to be living in a small box under the stairs.  (Hey, there’s HDTV and Facebook – what could be better?)  Their MSM tells them what they “need to know”.

Nobody knew there'd be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody had ever seen anything like this before. ~  President Trump, March 19, 2020

“Nobody really knows.  We’re all flying blind here.  This is something really different than we’ve ever seen…  ~ Louise Sheiner, Brookings Institution, March 25, 2020

“I don’t think anyone ever imagined that we’d see a replication of the Spanish flu.” ~ Tom Ridge, Former Homeland Security Secretary, co-chairman of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense | Beyond the Blueprint, September 24, 2020

Except for this 1999 Library of Congress Report (p.15),  this 2003 prophecy made with help from the CDC, or this and this in 2005, this 2010 exercise, a TED on this in 2015, this in the UK in 2016, these in 2017 and 2018, and another prophecy and this in 2019. And, this in 2020. Also these.  For starters.  

Throughout 2020, free and independent non-Western nations have helped their own people and each other, provided medical and economic aid, built their overall capacity to provide for themselves and others, and sent volunteers and supplies as well as messages of encouragement and collegiality to all – even to those sabotaging, attacking, blockading, sanctioning and denigrating their nations’ peoples and their heroic efforts whether past or present.

Conversely, the Exceptional Western Nation^TM  and its Western Cohort used the convenient “coincidental” cover of corona chaos to step up bombing, bombing, bombing;  sanctioning,  sanctioning, sanctioning; stealing, looting, invading, threatening, hijacking and other war crimes - Rinse & Repeat – again – all while their people became infected and died at some of the highest rates in the world. 

With a combined 7.1% of global population, the US, UK, France, Germany and Israel together exceptionally claimed 30.7% of global deaths as of October 4, 2020 - down from 52% on May 3^rd. [Daily tracking April – Oct here] In April, two in every three US COVID-19 patients survived. Of course, that meant one in three died.

Since then, most Western mortality rates have fallen below 5%, except for France (24%), Belgium (31%) and Italy (11%).  The UK started out with 96.6% of cases ending in death and ceased reporting recovered cases (April 11) as did Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain.  But, all four are similar now to the US.  Failure of imagination?

China, starting from scratch, worked seriously, locked in a mortality rate in the 5% range, recovered and got on with their lives.  Cuba (1.9%), Iran (6.8%), and Venezuela (.9%) have taken care of their people despite the West’s sanctions, stolen supplies, blockade, sanctions, sanctions and threats.  Despite a color revolution courtesy the West, China’s Hong Kong SAR rate is 2.0%.  Are these just lucky coincidences?

Nobody in our government at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envisage flying air planes into buildings...  ~ George W Bush, 2004

I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. ~ National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, 2002 

Except for this and this. And this.

In dealing with this crisis, there were deficiencies in both the local public health response and the federal government’s ability to manage it….the extent of coordination needed among responders… the necessary agreements in place….communication among response agencies was generally effective, but they ran into trouble reaching clinicians to….the number of entities…. The federal government was similarly challenged…to meet demands from local and state officials as well as coordinate the federal response….in handling the voluminous amount of information…communicating with public health officials, the media and the public….the shortcomings in clinical tools available…—such as vaccines and drugs—and the lack [of] training for clinicians….  ~  Harvard, “The Project BioShield Act of 2004: An Innovative Failure,” May, 2006

On Aug. 6, 2001, then-President George W. Bush received an intelligence briefing and was handed the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." memo….Nearly two decades later, Trump received multiple reports with equally serious warnings about a viral threat. ~ MSNBC, April 28, 2020

Déjà vu?

History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme.  ~ attributed to Mark Twain

When the US reported its first COVID-19 case on January 21 and Trump responded from Davos, “We have it totally under control,” the Strategic National Stockpile had not been replenished under Obama after 2009’s H1N1 episode.  Much of its stock was expired; its longtime director was retiring in a week without permanent replacement.  The experienced director in charge of global health security, biothreats, and US pandemic response left abruptly in May 2018, under a rearrangment which included resorbing the pandemic response team into other agencies and abolishing its top position.  (Bolton was in charge.)  

In the EU, the billions-funded Innovative Medicines Initiative, a “public-private partnership” reaped big profits for big pharma but invested nothing in pandemic preparedness.  In the UK, healthcare funding was cut by nearly a quarter between 2015 and 2020.  Why?  Failures of imagination?  Sheer incompetence?  Can Western governments just not get their act together? Nuclear-armed Keystone Cops?  Inept?  Unprepared?  “Plandemic”?  Hoax?  Theft of civil liberties?  Skewed statistics?  Martial law? 

It’s infuriating, and anger makes us think funny. But, do “failure of imagination,”  “incompetent” or “inept” reconcile with a group who’ve appropriated 41.6% of the world’s wealth, dominated the entire globe for 600 years, addicted 1 in every 2 people on the globe to a smart[sic]phone, and commandeered 60% of the worlds seeds (food supply) under the control of four of their corporations?  Are 2001 and 2020 separate events, unrelated other than through “failures of imagination” and feigned stupidity?  Did 2020 events spring from whole cloth at the end of December, 2019 – and in China, to boot, our loudly denounced, highly maligned “adversary”?

Watching China’s huge population go into war mode against the virus as against an attack – the people first, all-for-one-and-one-for-all spirit – was awe-inspiring, and something I’ve not felt in the West for decades.   Daily reading their research and ongoing real-time updates (here, then here) on symptoms, transmission, genomes, characteristics and treatments during three months before most people in the US had any idea what was coming soon to a neighborhood near them, I could see how seriously China was taking this threat.  And, I suspected I knew why.  

When the Western “response” kicked in, it was as though China’s experience (and by then South Korea’s, Italy’s and Spain’s) had never happened.  China's exemplary success did not exist.  China is solely an “adversary”.  Blame China.  New York Times science and health reporter, Donald G. McNeil, Jr., who had been in Wuhan during the outbreak, agreed.  Western governments, excepting perhaps Germany, did everything they could to make matters worse, as New York City journalist Rong Xiaoqing observed. The US CDC absurdly claimed that people should not wear masks because they’re ineffective and health care professionals need them.   Got that?

Seriously, Surgeon General?

CDC does not currently recommend the use of facemasks to help prevent novel #coronavirus. Take everyday preventive actions, like staying home when you are sick and washing hands with soap and water, to help slow the spread of respiratory illness. #COVID19 https://t.co/uArGZTJhXj pic.twitter.com/yzWTSgt2IV — CDC (@CDCgov) February 27, 2020

The CDC’s advice was absurd. The UK’s was virtually identical.  The question is, how much did both contribute to proliferation and prolongation of the disease and is that just coincidental?  Are similarities between 2001 and 2019-20 just coincidental? 

In 2000, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) released “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” mentioned (p. 59)” new methods of attack – electronic, “nonlethal,” biological – will be more widely available.” [emphasis added]

Was the US’ rejection of the Biological Weapons Convention protocol for transparency and inspections on July 25, 2001 – which put the international Bioweapons Convention treaty in disarray – an isolated event, merely coincidental to the passing of the PATRIOT Act in September 2001 which, in Section 817, expanded the biological weapons statute?  Or, to the investment of billions in building hundreds of US biolabs following the anthrax attacks beginning September 18?  Someone would like us to think so.  

Cui bono?

Who is the big “They” behind events?    Who are the ones reaping the huge lockdown profits at the top while hundreds of millions of the world’s “germ-ridden masses” continue losing jobs. 

During the 11 weeks from March 18, when U.S. lockdowns started, the wealth of America's richest people surged by over $565 billion, while 42.6 million workers filed for unemployment, the report said. ~ Reuters, citing an Institute for Policy Studies report

Are they simply “America’s richest”, or is there more to it that might explain their actions, their motives or what, besides money, makes them so very different from the rest of us?

Let me tell you about the very rich.  They are different from you and me.  They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.  They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.  Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are.  They are different.  ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Rich Boy”

The “They” who don’t exist

Let’s dispense with this annoying roadblock. Ruling class is the Name That Dare Not Be Spoken and a good deal of effort is expended to see that it’s not.  As a result, those near the bottom notes of the pay scale are well aware they’re being screwed; by whom is the tricky bit.  They may actually admire the ultra-wealthy but view their closer neighbors in the middle classes as pretentious.

It’s those in the middle, who are sampling varying degrees of benefits and privilege, who definitely don’t want to talk about it.  They may identify as “left” or “progressive”, but in safe ways which signal their virtue without threatening their position or recognizing its connection to the power that grants it.  They guard the castle gates because it benefits them.  They are gatekeepers.

Still less can he emancipate himself from the remarkable belief that his career, his work and his reward exist in vacuo; that little or none of it is tied to hunger, need or devastation of those…who have been consistently excluded from the competition in which he was victor only by default…. If he did, I think his whole world would begin to crumble. ~   Jonathan Kozol, The Night Is Dark and I Am Far From Home, p. 222.

The mocha-flavored matrix of lattes, laptops and smart [sic] stuff directs its members toward what’s truly important:  What sex they are today and where they can find fault with others and unleash some of their best, most vicious insults.  The vast majority of Westerners are profitable media users ($420 billion by 2021) diced into demographics and niches like derivatives.  Conditioned to be Looking for Guilt in All the Wrong Places, just wind them up and they'll hurl blame wherever they’re pointed. 

Ruling class?  Owners? Where?  You mean like those dictators [sic] in repressed [sic] places like Venezuela and Russia and China?  Classes don’t exist in demockracies.  You must be a conspiracy theorist!

Now, this is largely because any class dissection will tend to unearth connections that have been hidden, consciously, by Capital…those hidden forces and histories are experienced by the liberal left and faux left as somehow impossible.   ~   John Steppling, “No Class,”

[I]n a new interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates said she and her husband do not — repeat, do not — have “outsize influence”’ in public education.  When reporter David Marchese said “certainly you have more influence than, say, a group of parents,” Gates replied: “Not necessarily.”  That prompted a “jaw-dropping” tweet from author and journalist Anand Giridharada… “True privilege is denying you have it.”  ~   Washington Post, April 16, 2019

I met many Russians over the years who were convinced my brothers and I were a cabal, pulling strings behind the scenes to shape American foreign policy….I would try to explain…that I didn’t wield that kind of power….   ~ David Rockefeller, Memoirs, p. 224-5

…to call someone ‘middle class’ is in itself very middle class…No upper-class person would do it.  No upper-class person would ever admit that such a thing as “class” exists.   ~ Stephen Birmingham, The Right People, p.341   

There!  We’re all agreed:  Class does not exist in America, the “Land of Opportunity”.  “$uccess” is a matter of hard work, timing, talent, luck, and the right attitude.

More comfy now?  Me, either. 

"Class exists and is part of the hierarchical system of global capitalism."

~   John Steppling, “No Class”

Origins

First, let’s narrow the definition of “ruling class” from simply the ultra-wealthy to those ultra-wealthy whose ambition is to control on a global scale not local or regional.  Obviously, this won’t leave out many people; no one accumulates wealth at .0001%, or even .001% without a generous helping of ruthless ambition and disdain for sharing.  Nevertheless, to be scrupulously fair from the outset, let’s allow an exemption for any outliers who do not see wealth accumulation as simply the “natural order of things” and who invested their wealth in the Earth or their fellow creatures and walked away from the system that created it.  There must be half a dozen.  But then, they’re no longer billionaires, are they?  See the problem?

From the start, America’s colonial leaders, transplanted from the European aristocracy, dominated everyone else in the colonies:  tradespeople, servants, indentured servants, indigenous, slaves and even the farmers and bourgeois merchants. When this domination continued after winning “Independence” and proved as oppressive as King George’s had been under colonization, the people rebelled, led by Daniel Shays. They were crushed and their subservience codified within the Constitution so that, as Hamilton wrote, “the rich and well-born” capitalist ruling class would have a permanent check against the “turbulent” “mass of people” and the “imprudence of democracy,” resulting in “we the people” having almost no say.

‘It is very well known that in England (and the same will be found in other countries) the great landed estates, now held in descent, were plundered from the quiet inhabitants at the conquest. The possibility did not exist of acquiring such estates honestly… That they were not acquired by trade, by commerce, by manufactures, by agriculture or by any reputable employment is certain. How then were they acquired? Blush, aristocracy, to hear your origin, for your progenitors were Thieves…When they had committed the robbery, they endeavoured to lose the disgrace of it, by sinking their real names under fictious ones, which they called Titles. It is ever the practice of Felons to act in this manner.’  ~Thomas Paine | Dissertation on the First Principles of Government | 1795

The Western ruling class is built on capitalism:  private property, private resources, commodification of everything.

America was invented and developed by…entrepreneurial adventurers who …could look into the virgin forests and see trees felled for lumber and houses, who could forge rivers and streams and see water harnessed for power, and who could cross a lake by canoe and see it one day spanned by a bridge for commerce.  ~ Stephen Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, p. 305

The words leap out at you with their lucid encapsulation of the chasm between those who love life and those who love power.  The former are stunned by the latter’s deeds…

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?  ~  Ted Perry, for the film Home

…but the latter will go to any lengths to eliminate the former.  

European socialists saw the democracy and equality of Turtle Island [North America] as something to be celebrated and spread, but European rulers saw it as a barrier to capital accumulation that had to be crushed.  ~ Indigenous Sovereignty & Capitalism

Whether “buying”, seizing or exploiting the commons for private gain and then selling back pieces of it –at a profit – to the people from whom it was stolen, externalizing costs or minimizing wages, the capitalist ruling class creates a minimal number of “winners” at the expense of a maximal number of losers.

“The community of interests is the principle that a certain number of men who own property can do what they like with it.” ~J.P. Morgan, in Birmingham, Our Crowd, p.263

The contemporary Western capitalist ruling class

“Each of them is one in a million. They number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the world's most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the global superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time.” ~ Barnes and Noble Overview, David Rothkopf, Superclass, 2008

The question "Who?", when pressed, is challenging because fewer than 10,000 comprise the current global ruling class and less than half that in the US.  A relatively small group who spend their lives in venues inaccessible to the public, they are titans of finance, industries and technology.  But, the “Who?" question is normally asked less for tuition than to invalidate their existence:

“’Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?”’  For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers.  But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels?  Indeed, they meet in rooms:  corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove… resorts, hotels, and estates…conference rooms…..  And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure.  No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. ~ Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths, p. 174

There is, of course, an operant-conditioned, CIA-authored, mature, logical adult response to Parenti's reasonableness: “Conspiracy theorist!”  

Parenti reassures the idiocy-irritated:

A structural analysis that a priori rules out conspiracy runs the risk of not looking at the whole picture.  Conspiracies are a component of the national security political system, not deviations from it. ~ Parenti, ibid, p. 186

One of the first things one learns about those who regulate our lives is that we’ve never heard of most of them.  With exceptions:  The Rockefellers have served as both symbols and decoys, their identity formed around their “philanthropy,” an image carefully cultivated after the Ludlow Massacre in 1914.  “Warren Buffet” and particularly “Bill Gates” produce a similar Stockholmian public reaction.  Some names make news when they exploit the commons (e.g., US Post Offices) for private gain (Blum/Feinstein), or profit from others’ pain (Sackler) by pushing a product that may addict or kill them and using a fraction of the wealth generated to display their names across wings of prominent buildings. 

Generally, name recognition and influence do not necessarily equate, e.g., John McFarlane, Jennifer Morgan, and Steve Schwarzman I found in Peter Phillips’ Giants and had to then look up, though one family name is famous.  Or,  Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, MacKenzie Scott, Larry Ellison, Pierre Omidyar, Sheldon Adelson, or Eric Schmidt.  Schmidt’s name recognition is moderate to low though we’ve all used (or been used by) products with which he’s been directly affiliated and he exercises immense influence over the daily lives of a majority of the planet’s people and governments right up to (and over) what he calls “creepy line” and into the global future he’s facilitating as the former Alphabet/Google CEO who now advises the US Department Of Defense. 

Utah Phillips is often credited with saying, “The Earth is not dying, it’s being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses,” the point being the names are accessible, the people and their influence quite real.   So long as we ignore those who have shaped the present and limited the future, we are left to adapt to the “world they create” – or destroy:

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality— judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.  ~ an unnamed White House aide, reportedly Carl Rove, to Ron Suskind, New York Times, Oct 17, 2004 

They and the world they create for their profit have been chronicled by numerous authors. (Appendix) Stephen Birmingham’s entertaining study, The Right People (1958) begins with tongue in cheek:

In America, there is Society.  Then there is Real Society.  Real Society is a part of Society – the upper part.  Everybody who is in Society knows who the people in Real Society are.  But the people in Real Society do not necessarily know who the other Society people are.  The two groups seldom mix.  Real Society is composed of older people. It is composed of older families.  Older families are better people.  Better people are nicer people.  Newer people may be richer people than older people.  That doesn’t matter.  Ordinary Society people may get to be Real Society people one day only if they work at it.  It sounds confusing, but it is really very simple.  Cream rises to the top.

Cream is, of course, but one thing that floats on the surface.  It’s all a matter of perspective.  

From their world apart from ordinary mortals, with their focus on power and control, their perspective becomes one that seems very foreign to the rest of us.  It is their destiny to control all “resources,” whether animal, vegetable, mineral or human.  They reject noblesse oblige in favor or “wise use”.  Not an end in itself, exorbitant wealth is a tool to gain the power to govern the present and formulate the future.  They’re poised for a hostile takeover.  Of the globe.  We may know this, but what do we know about them?  No doubt the answer is “not as much as we should know about the people who control our lives.”

To connect more dots, dissect the rich and their handiwork

No one can say it better than George Carlin in “The American Dream” section (end of track 6) from Life Is Worth Losing (2005), excerpt transcribed below [video section here]:

It’s never going to get any better. Don’t look for it.  Be happy with what you got.  Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

 

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have owners! They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want.  Well, we know what they want:  They want more for themselves and less for everybody else….. 

 

And, you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.  You and I are not in the big club.

Dot 1:  Their world

Wealth or “success”, as Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers illustrates, rarely begins from zero.  No doubt they experience greater predetermined assumptions – theirs and their family’s – regarding their future course than most of us.  A good many of us grew up expected and expecting to “do better than our parents did” but did not set out to do this from the top.

They attend primary, preparatory, university, boarding, day, single-sex, co-ed, schools where annual tuition in the tens of thousands insures association with others of their class. They may cross paths with the less privileged – those intelligent and capable enough to have gained admission and found means to cover tuition. But, meals, accommodations, social organizations and academic clubs are more likely to be as exclusive as they. 

The exclusivity of their circle ensures a suitable partner who furthers money, power and influence much as royalty in prior centuries wed their countries together for geopolitical gain and maintenance of the family fortune. 

“[T]he true concern of the rich is for the future:  where the money will go. A child is more than a child. He is also the carrier of the money into the next generation, and the one after that.” ~ Birmingham ibid, p 115

The child is also likely to carry forward the business as well as the philanthropic work and global projects.

Image: “Last scraps” by Stephanie McMillan 2010, with permission

“But they have jobs and families and children, like us” someone once objected during a presentation I was giving.  No. Not like us.

Membership-by-invitation begins in school and continues for life, forming alliances, opening doors, solidifying power.  From the famous Bilderberg Group to the Boao Forum, Bohemian Grove, Club of Madrid, Munich Security Conference, World Economic Forum (Davos):

They are places to convene, places to network, places to cultivate relationships, places to share views. To paraphrase Mark Malloch Brown, they are the village greens of the global elite.  ~ David Rothkopf, Superclass, p.265

Most will be familiar with this attributed but unconfirmed David Rockefeller comment:

We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years......It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.   ~ Source unverifiable

These gatherings and concurrent ancillary parties and meetings are largely unreported to the world they mold. 

[C]orporate rich are drawn together by bonds of social cohesion as well as their common economic interests. This social cohesion is based in the two types of relationships found in a membership network:  common membership in specific social institutions and friendships based on social interactions within those institutions….Social cohesion is important… in arriving at consensus when dealing with a problem….[S]ocial bonding can be seen as another reason why the corporate rich are cohesive enough to dominate the rest of society despite their small numbers. ~ G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?, p. 72

Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will.  If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. ~ David Rockefeller, Memoirs, p. 405

Of all the powers the superclass possesses, one of the clearest and most important is the ability to set agendas for the rest of us. ~ Rothkopf, ibid, p. 303

Their private memberships are global and their allegiance follows their membership rather than simply their country.

The selfish spirit of commerce… knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain. ~ Thomas Jefferson to Larkin Smith, 1809. ME 12:272  

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. ~ Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119

As the pandemic spread this year, there were many purchases of citizenship in nations with low or no incidence of COVID-19 and moves from the US and other Western countries.

Right now, however, to the surprise of many, a lot of Americans are leaving the ‘the richest country in the world’ after getting a glimpse of how the pandemic has overwhelmed their nation's defences. Henley & Partners saw a 700 percent increase in applications alone from Americans in the last quarter of 2019. 

 

So what safe port in this storm are all these people and their wallets heading for? The firm has identified Cyprus and Montenegro as the current leading destinations for investors buying real estate-based citizenship. For simple residence by investment, Portugal is the popular choice currently. There's also a solid demand for Maltese citizenship and that of the Caribbean island St Lucia.  ~ Chris Sweeney, “The rich are shelling out up to $6mn for ‘pandemic passports’ to flee Covid-19's aftershocks while everyone else is left to suffer,” May 5, 2020

Dot 2:  Hyperopnia

Farsightedness as in future-sightedness or long-term-sightedness is endemic to the ruling class, but easily overlooked by us. This planning ahead seems comprehensive only insofar as it concerns their own interests.  While broad, it is exclusive, not inclusive of others' interests (including the planet's).  Their group have owned and ruled the world for centuries and intend to continue doing so for the long term, or at least the New American Century. They sell change to older generations as “progress”, through all media, especially social [sic] media.  They introduce major change through the education system and all media aimed at the younger generation, who then accept the change as just the way things are.  When people complain that the education system is "failing" and blame teachers, they should ask the real question:  "Failing at what, exactly, and how does this 'failing' help the ruling class?"

Whoever was speaking to Suskind (above) with the swaggering insolence of a newbie, “And while you’re studying that reality…we’ll act again, creating other new realities,” captured a glimpse of this time gap between those of us living through today’s events and those who planned them and are now conducting after-actions and adjusting the next decade’s plans accordingly.

Dot 3:  Detachment

In the early ’80s, I worked for a great guy in the outer-most orbit of the wealthy class.  In today’s money he’d be worth only about $250 to $500 million.  While he was not a member of the ruling class, working closely with him was, for me, illustrative and educational.

He once kept an older, quite wealthy and influential friend waiting for a few minutes before the two of them left for lunch.  A handsome young British couple who worked in the house on my boss' estate inquired whether the guest would care for refreshment while waiting.  Finding the pair engaging, the guest talked to them for several minutes.  When he later discovered who they were, he chastised my boss for not dressing the servants in livery so his time wouldn’t be wasted talking to nobody. 

One morning another employee who shared my office on the estate was glancing at the morning’s headline while she made coffee. She read it aloud to me because it announced a charitable donation by a friend of my boss. As she read, I scribbled numbers on paper. “Own anything outright besides your car?” I interrupted. “No,” she continued reading until I interrupted again, “Ever given $5 to the Girl Scouts for cookies?” She had. “Did your name headline the newspaper?”  I showed her that her five dollar donation was a greater share of her net worth than the tens of thousands donated by my boss’ friend were of his.  Many times greater, actually.

“Philanthropy” is a Bernaysian tool deftly wielded against the math-challenged public to whom it does not occur that the money the ruling class donate is a) a proportionately small amount of their amassed wealth, b) often given to organizations from whose activities they profit, and c) not “given” so much given as given back. “[P]hilanthropy is no substitution for taxation and a fairer set of social arrangements,” observed Anand Giridharadas.

…[Bill] Gates has proved there is a far easier path to political power, one that allows unelected billionaires to shape public policy in ways that almost always generate favorable headlines: charity….  The Nation found close to $250 million in charitable grants from the Gates Foundation to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds: Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi, Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva, and numerous start-ups—with the grants directed at projects like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services. ~ The Nation, “Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox”,  March 17, 2020

American median net worth (January, 2020) was, according to Marketwatch, $97,300.  A $305 donation from this hypothetical middle person to charity represents just .31% of net worth – sufficient to top Bill Gates’ recent pandemic relief pledge of $305 million or .28% of his net worth.  And, after making the $305 donation, our middle person would have $96,295 left.  Bill Gates will have about $113,395,000,000 left after his donation, which is pledged for vaccines and equipment in which he’s invested, i.e., it will go into a company or nonprofit which generates more income for him. According to The Nation report previously cited, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation received $28.5 billion in investment income and gave $23.5 billion in grants.   It’s not the way we normally look at the ruling class’ “philanthropy”, but it should be, and it’s readily available. 

Anytime a superwealthy plutocrat makes a charitable donation, the public ought to be reminded that this is how our tax system works. The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes. ~ Jesse Eisinger, “How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself”, December 15, 2015

We all donate primarily to causes we’d like to further, without seeking either control or admiration.  It’s not about us, but about supporting a cause we favor.  There must be some altruism among the ruling class, but philanthropy is definitely more detached, more about them.

As a thought experiment in detachment, suppose you raise chickens in your backyard and you have five, whom you raised from chicks, you named and know by personality. You feed and protect them; they give you eggs, affection and entertainment. Try to feel the affinity, even if you don’t particularly like chickens, okay?

Now, you are CEO of a corporation invested in, among other things, 1000 poultry farms, each farm with 10 sheds, each shed housing 10,000 chickens, for a combined total of 100 million chickens?  How’s that affinity doing?

Zooming out from five to 100 million is comparable to standing on a skyscraper observation deck and looking down at the buildings and traffic below:  Individuals become all but invisible.  Great wealth creates great distance.  Distance creates otherness.  It is easy to read a speech about the lives of those in the audience, but nearly impossible to feel anything except perhaps superior.  "Didn't they want to better themselves?" and "I'm a self-made man.  I started out with only a million."  "The only way the little guy will do better is if we do a lot better." (paraphrases from comments heard) Extreme wealth inequality no doubt seems natural from that vantage point.  

Dot 4:  Destiny as exculpation, or the tabernacle of exceptionalism   

America was to him a nation blessed by Providence, powerful to the point of invincibility, whose people were destined to spread, civilize, and command.  He transmitted this belief to his grandsons.  ~ Stephen Kinzer, describing John Watson Foster, “the first American secretary of state to participate in the overthrow of a foreign government” (Hawaii) and grandfather to Foster and Allen Dulles, The Brothers, p. 11

In the Exceptionalist religion, Manifest Destiny is the sacred credo.  Numerous writers similarly describe the religious fervor of American Exceptionalism, which motivated continental “development” to the Pacific in the mid-1800s.

“American Progress” by John Gast, 1872, public domain

“Manifest Destiny” drove expansion to the West Coast during the 19^th century, as captured by John Gast in his “American Progress” (1872) portraying spirit “Columbia” guiding Americans across the West, to replace  “darkness with light and ignorance with civilization”,  Nature and the Indigenous with technology and development, and communal self-rule with continent-wide “democratic” oligarchy of the ruling class.

“Like the Massachusetts Puritans who hoped to build a "city upon a hill, "courageous pioneers believed that America had a divine obligation to stretch the boundaries of their noble republic to the Pacific Ocean….The religious fervor spawned by the Second Great Awakening created another incentive for the drive west. Indeed, many settlers believed that God himself blessed the growth of the American nation….At the heart of manifest destiny was the pervasive belief in American cultural and racial superiority.”   ~  U.S.History.org

A focus outside one’s own borders is built into civilization and common to empires, e.g., France’s la mission civilisatrice and the German Sacrum Imperium Romanum or Heiliges Römisches Reich.  The sense of holy purpose in exploiting others is reassuring, but the naked truth is:  Rulers create empires for the resources. 

“A civilization…is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, a form of government and symbolic systems of communication such as writing…. centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labour, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming and expansionism.”  ~ Wikipedia  [emphasis added]

Complexity is brittle. Since we first formed cities and packed more people into a land base than that land base could feed and water, other land bases have had to be acquired to support our populations. Since most people aren’t going to give up their water and food willingly, they need to be made to give it up.  A divine mission helps.

 “Texas is now ours….no longer to us a mere geographical space….a mere country on the map. She comes within the dear and sacred designation of Our Country….our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” ~ John O’Sullivan, editor, Democratic Review, article “Annexation”, 1845, probably written by Jane Cazneau

Once they had reached the Pacific, US rulers began thinking beyond.

[P]rominent Americans have described the United States as an "empire of liberty," a "shining city on a hill," the "last best hope of Earth," the "leader of the free world," and the "indispensable nation." …Most statements of "American exceptionalism" presume that America’s values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration….that the United States is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.…has a divinely ordained mission to lead the rest of the world. Ronald Reagan told audiences that there was "some divine plan" that had placed America here, and once quoted Pope Pius XII saying, "Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind." Bush offered a similar view in 2004, saying, "We have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom."  ~  Stephen M. Walt, “The Myth of American Exceptionalism”, Foreign Policy, October 11, 2011

Over the past century, ruling classes have laid the groundwork for unified world governance by the Exceptional West:  globalized capitalism controlling every resource and individual on the planet.

“We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest.”  ~ James Paul Warburg, Chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations, testimony before the U.S. Senate, Feb 17, 1950, son of Paul Warburg, father of the Federal Reserve System

Unscathed and well enriched from WWII, having proven their superiority by murdering over 200,000 people with two nuclear bombs, US rulers and their now subordinate European counterparts began at once to systematically clear Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard of all competition in preparation for securing global control. 

In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation.  To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski, ibid, p. 39 (1997)

Globalism, for the West’s ruling class, simply extends “Manifest Destiny” to its planetary limits.  (And, they’ve been planning for decades to go beyond that, though they will no doubt be sorely disappointed.) Underscoring this religious zealotry for world domination is a belief in “Good vs Evil”, i.e., “Us vs Them”, Western wealth and power as proof of superiority and divine mandate.

Image: Globalism Sources: Wikimedia, NASA, American Progress by John Gast, public domain

In thinking about particular instances of US foreign meddling, intervention, and invasion, it is critical to realize that none of these instances were somehow aberrations.  Rather, they have been, and continue to be part and parcel of a consistent, seamless, and unwavering policy of the United States dating back to colonial times, and they are firmly supported by an ideological belief system which rises to the level of a religious faith. This faith has a name, and it is Manifest Destiny – the belief that the expansion of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific in North America, and beyond, was and is not only inevitable, but is in fact a God-given moral right.  ~ Dan Kovalik, The Plot to Control the World, p. 2

Detachment and “manifest” destiny wield decisions unthinkable for the rest of us.  Privatization becomes akin to a divine right because the chosen will do the best job of managing the world’s resources, both planetary and human.  They simply consider whether the poultry farms portfolio is profitable and how best to dispose of it if it's not, and we are the chickens.  Globally, any who resist being “saved,” “freed,” “civilized,” and “democratized,” are obviously lost, of little consequence, and may be dealt with accordingly.    

Having a divine mission is not to be confused with having a conscience.

Dot 5:  Zero sum, or “Only one can be destined”

In the final analysis, their self-image is defined more by possessions and other visible signs of success and power than by love, insight, and compassion, which are abstractions and have little inherent meaning for them.  ~ Dr. Robert Hare, Without Conscience, 1993, p 134

To see how expansion and conquest for resources and divine mission relate to the events we’ve been living through, we should check the ruling class’ resume.  We must bear in mind their perspective that whatever they do is defensive, part of the zero-sum “Us vs Them” game.  The goal of the game is to freely pursue profit and power anywhere in the world as the sole global superpower.  And, those who should bear any guilt are the victims themselves.  Plausible deniability and projection at their finest.

A consequence of this “Us vs Them” as Destiny is the omnipresent need for an enemy – any enemy – even small, defenseless ones.  A highly profitable military industrial complex exists to support this worldview, this obsession for turning life into money and money into power over life.  They are not into sharing, or many of the other things learned in kindergarten.  (Possibly, not theirs.)  That the majority of the UN countries favor an emerging multipolar world order and vote against the US (e.g., here , here, here and here), is of little concern.  If dissenters get too far out of line, "we’ll slap them."

The ruling class deals with dissent though moral relativism, a sort of hedge fund for culpability, by shifting blame to others, i.e., projection.  When they can do this in advance, they call it plausible deniability.

Plausible deniability is the ability to deny any involvement in illegal or unethical activities, because there is no clear evidence to prove involvement…. The use of the tactic implies forethought, such as intentionally setting up the conditions to plausibly avoid responsibility for one’s future actions. ~ Political Dictionary  

The CIA coined the term “plausible deniability” and achieves it through their supervised press.  After all, who better than their scripted MSM to sell heart-gripping wag-the-dog excuses like babies in incubators or yellow cake or imminent threats?   Somebody had to do it.  Look over there!  Shift the blame to the victim and harm the victim twice by making the aggression the victim’s own fault – a two-for-one for the ruling class and the victims deserve it! 

The forumla is well worn at this point.  If someone points out evidence of what actually happened, assume a disparaging tone and call them a “conspiracy theorist”.  It's a sure bet, in fact, that whenever a media mouthpiece haughtily dismisses a contrary opinion with that term, that mouthpiece is lying through its boot-licking forked tongue and definitely has some ‘splaining to do.

Such tools allow Western imperialist nations to continue colonial empires by other means.  They steal a country’s resources, sanction that country when its people and government object, drop a few bombs and blame it on that country’s own government (“They bombed their own people!”), and then target the country’s elected leaders because “Their people are living in poverty and rubble!”  Whenever the US blames a country or leader, it’s safe to say the US committed the act and is blaming the victim. 

Another related tool is the Fall Guy, their favorite being the Lone Gunman.  The CIA seems to have a particular fondness for patsies, especially dead ones who can’t contradict the crafted narrative.  The death of a patsy, Fall Guy or Lone Gunman closes the book on the matter.  Officially, anyway.

Exceptionalitis is a highly infectious and deadly [to others] virus.

Dot 6:  Start with soft power.  It’s cheaper.

With the dollar as global reserve currency and control over the IMF, the US dominates the global monetary system.  The dollar has been losing traction worldwide as global reserve currency while the ruling class have inflated Wall Street to a teetering 132.5% of its value (average of 4 standard market indicators) according to advisorperspectives.com and reaped windfall profits.  Crypto- currencies, electronic payments, digital currencies, digital wallets and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as well as practice with cashless societies in India, Sweden and various business chains, have shown negative affects to both prices and the poor, but no doubt have shown excellent profit margins for the ruling class, as they are all being implemented during the next few years.

If the ruling class is firmly in control of the money supply, where are they going with this?  The 2008 mini-crash relief valve allowed the market to continue inflating, siphoning more wealth to the top while increasing national and household debt.

America’s executive class in the last few decades has settled into a Ponzi-like pattern:  borrow, inflate, strip assets, crash, get bailed out, start over. Both the profits and the size of the bag the rest of the country is left holding get bigger with each cycle. ~ Matt Taibbi, “Resetting the bomb”

When the bubble was sufficiently inflated, a moment was decided upon to coordinate a mass “calling in” of the broker loans. Predictably, no one could pay them resulting in a collapse of the markets. Those “in the know” cleaned up…selling before the crash and then buying up the physical assets of America for pennies on the dollar.  ~ Matthew Ehret, writing about 1929 in “Hyperinflation, fascism and war”

While working on films about the vastly rich, I have seen countless displays of excessive privilege that serve as markers for the staggering inequality that plagues our country. Often times I have imagined that after recording scenes of wealthy prep-school students saying to less fortunate classmates, “Fuck you, I’m from New York. I could buy your family, piss off” that it couldn’t get any worse. I believed that the distinction between The Two Americas that people commonly speak of was as pronounced as it could ever be.

 

But in recent days, watching the super-rich exuberantly anticipate a recession has forced me to realize that I was wrong to assume that the indicators of inequality wouldn’t become more conspicuous. It appears that the opposite is true, that under the threat of hard times the mega-wealthy aren’t feeling a greater responsibility to reflect upon the problems surrounding the growing wealth gap; they are, in fact, trying to fatten their wallets and further insulate their lifestyles. ~ Jimmy Johnson, “The One Percent – the Rich’s Affinity for Recessions” 2011

Another global currency is the British and American empires' language.  English, the most commonly studied foreign language, the language of business, spreads American pop culture, media, education and technology throughout the world.  VOA (Voice of America) bureaus, reporters, transmitters and affiliates ) and Radio Liberty, two of the five agencies currently part of the US Agency for Global Media, bombard local populations in 47 countries with 1800 hours of radio and TV “programming” weekly – now with Facebook (44 languages), Twitter and YouTube (42 languages each). 

"Diplomacy", such as it is, serves as another such tool.  Chalmers Johnson described US embassies as doubling for military and propaganda units, built as “walled compounds, akin to medieval fortresses, where American spies, soldiers, intelligence officials, and diplomats try to keep an eye on hostile populations….” 

The Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, high connectivity/low latency technology are rapidly generating a world where participation – communications, housing and appliances, work, shopping, entertainment, health, transportation, procreation – is manipulated remotely by the personal user but monitored and increasingly manipulated by the end user – the corporate-media-military-surveillance complex.  Information Technology (IT) now produces advantage in surveillance, social manipulation, employee replacement and the military.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) replaces jobs and provokes questions about what it means to be “human”.

Using “Just Walk Out technology” store scanners can read a chip on your phone app (soon tatoo?) and debit you for whatever you take out when you leave.  For online orders, robots will soon pack, self-driving trucks will deliver to hubs and drones will complete delivery of goods to your door.  Aaron Russo’s recounting of Nick Rockefeller’s microchip-implant concept (1990s. It included turning off people’s chips if they got out of line.) is now feasible in far more subtle ways. Social credits could become a part of the digital currency system that will replace the dying dollar.

Dot 7:  “Homeland” soft power

Nowhere has soft power been more successful than in the West itself.  Over 7.7 million times on YouTube people have watched the twelve seconds in which Clinton uttered her flippant obituary and laughed – now in several languages and even set to music (4 of the 7.7 million views). Watching her minions’ videoed butchering of Gaddaffi, then her Caesarian glee, requires a stronger stomach than I have.  Yet, she won the popular vote in 2016, which speaks volumes on the manipulation of the American mind.

Thirst for social acceptance – the hook of social [sic] media – shuts down critical thinking.  During the years I served as a middle school administrator I saw it often:  one kid would rile up two others just to watch them fight.  Those who fought would get sent to the office.  “Why did you hit him?”  “Because my friend said he’d called me a name.”  Brilliant.  Now, spell “patsy”. 

Algorithms regress people to a more malleable state of mind where they’ll easily follow the crowd.  Of algorithms.  Pixels, posing as friends.  Memes far more transmissible than viruses spread rapidly with disastrous results.  People feel good that they and their friends share the same "ideas".  Yes, right down to the exact same words.  And, people pay for the privilege of being programmed.  Like the coins which a condemned prisoner paid the Executioner for a clean, swift beheading, people pay to have their phones leave the head more or less intact while taking over the brain.

These choices - when they are still choices - that people make and spend money on affect plenty of other people, as well.  As of early 2019, over 26 million Americans and globally millions more in over 30 countries, had willingly sent in their own personal DNA and paid global capitalists to have it mapped.  This allowed permanent storage of their DNA sequence and the derivation of that of virtually everyone else without their consent.

And it really doesn’t matter if your sample is earmarked for use in tracing Neanderthal ancestors or just looking for rare disease genes. It doesn’t matter if the sample is destroyed. The code itself is digitized and can be shared countless times and in countless ways.  ~ NBC News, “What you’re giving away with those home DNA tests”, November 29, 2017

As these databases grow, they have made it possible to trace the relationships between nearly all Americans, including those who never purchased a test.”  ~ CNBC, February 12, 2019 [emphasis added]

It’s called “biobanking” and it’s spelled p-a-t-s-y. 

Programmers in their 20s and 30s, reared on post-modern “thought”, facilitate the obliteration of meaning, logic and ethics with algorithms deliberately programmed to be addictive, mesmerizing and manipulative – and Orwellian.

The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works.” ~ Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook Vice-President for User Growth

Orwellian doublespeak‘s transmogrification of language causes otherwise sane people to hold completely contradictory beliefs and never question the divergence.  Social [sic] media itself is oxymoronic, a causal factor in societal breakdown.  Violence is peaceful.  War is peace.  Racism is anti-racist.  Freedom is slavery.  2+2 is five, and unconscious is woke. Ignorance is strength.

Doublethink, convinces the used that they are “users” and that up is actually down. But, that’s at the beginning of the week.  By the end of the week, people “strongly agree” that up and down do not actually exist at all but are constructs of white supremacy. Then they’re set against their peers and told to go kick some butt.  Looking for guilt in all the wrong places again.  

It’s called “brain hacking”. It used to be called intermittent reinforcement, a part of Skinnerian operant conditioning, which is extremely addictive.

Well every time I check my phone, I’m playing the slot machine to see, “What did I get?” This is one way to hijack people’s minds and create a habit, to form a habit. What you do is you make it so when someone pulls a lever, sometimes they get a reward, an exciting reward. And it turns out that this design technique can be embedded inside of all these products.  ~ Tristan Harris, ex-Google design ethicist, founder, Center for Humane Technology

Oh, we shall persuade them [the citizens] that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us, and submit to us. And shall we be right, or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right … Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread made by their hands from them – [only] to give it back to them … In truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands – than for the bread itself! Too well, will they know the value of complete submission! We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all....

 

We will indulge them their sins; allow them to occupy themselves with their vices. We will monitor everything, regulate everything, order and legislate for everything – and be their conscience too – so that they do not have to trouble themselves to think, overly; or, to be obliged to make decisions. They exist only to serve us, the élite who rule over them: The millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak, must exist only for the élite, who rule over them. In this mystery, says the Grand Inquisitor, “lies the great secret of the world.  ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880   [Hat tip to Alistair Crooke]

One would think a "freedom loving" people would fight such plutocratic power over their lives, not pay for it.  We’ve looked at gatekeeping (The “They” who don’t exist) but not its deeper motivation.  The tradespeople, merchants, professionals and farmers who traditionally made up the large middle class were primarily independent.  They could provide themselves and each other with food and necessary goods and have enough left over to sell for whatever income they might still need.  As the US ruling class took on global ambitions at the end of WWII, specialization and corporatization began replacing diversification, i.e., dependence replacing independence. 

Dependency – the ultimate tool of control – is the fetter capitalism imposes through privatization of life’s necessities and the means of procuring them, i.e., dependency becomes domestication.  Corporate-controlled culture furthers such dependencies, effecting a self-perpetuating feedback loop that results in infantilization:

New reporters see news audiences in much the way the College Democrat leaders view students, as helpless beings incapable of exercising judgment or free will. Journalists like me once enjoyed the idea that our audiences were grownups capable of taking in difficult truths and deciding their meaning for themselves:  the new trend is to see audiences as defenseless, childlike lumps, who must be led to the correct political conclusion the way horses are led by their bits.  ~ Matt Taibbi, “The New Puritans”

Domestication is a pervasive way in which humans make animals vulnerable…. ~ The Moral Relevance of the Distinction Between Domesticated and Wild Animals

Dependence on a system over which they have no control means people must defend that system in order to survive.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! ~ Upton Sinclair, “I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked”

And, if the system is treating them well, they will defend it vigorously.

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him.  ~ C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters, p.154-55

People – at least those with smart[sic]phones – are literally being led around by the phone, having paid dearly for their own leash. The very size of the screen in which most Americans live annihilates any vestigial urge to read and obviates research, analysis, synthesis, comparison, contrasting, source-checking, substantiation and assimilation. There’s a program or an app to tell you what you “need to know”, already pre-fact-checked [sic]. Why do people find this “convenient” rather than questionable?  Why do they see “fascism” everywhere but in their own pockets?

Image source: "Big Data and the science of manipulating the masses" article by Raúl Antonio Capote, Granma

If the system is ruthless outside its borders, people don’t really want to know.  The system will always take care of them because they are the Exceptional People of the ruling class’ Exceptional Nation.  In turn, they must defend the system that’s manipulating them and which has long since replaced democracy with theater, leaving them with no real voice.  

William Blum wrote:

The American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don’t want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window. (p.10)

Nor would most Americans, astonished and outraged by the act itself, ever deduce that it was their own father who arranged for the firebomb – including damages and injuries just sufficient to gain an advantage he was seeking.  No, that would be a "conspiracy theory".  Can people afford to acknowledge that their parental system would have them go back into a burning building or die as sitting ducks in order to sway public opinion in favor of extremely profitable wars?  Or, would engage them to unwittingly participate in radiation or drug experiments in order to build a bioweapons program?  The fact that they would and they have fills volumes of documentation by journalists and researchers “left to just study what [they] do”.

“They don’t care about you at all, at all, at all,” Carlin warned and Americans still laugh but do they really get it?  Can they afford to?  More to the point, can any of us afford not to?

Globalization and “high tech” have meant Exceptional Westerners must compete with workers in “third world” and “developing” countries for jobs that global corporations can now place anywhere.  Farmers were the first to feel the corporate squeeze, so much so that in 1985 annual Farm Aid concerts began raising funds for keeping farm families on their land. Tradespeople were the next getting the corporate boot as their jobs disappeared overseas in infamous offshoring, which, according to this study, basically cut 58% from incomes for workers whose jobs were offshored.  And, the professions have seen an influx of well trained foreign competitor professionals.  During the past decade over one hundred merchants have filed bankruptcy and thousands of stores have closed in what’s called the “retail apocolypse”. 

Virtually no group is left untouched, yet the Exceptionalism myth goes on. America is a country of people pleased with themselves, soothed by and dependent upon the creature comforts their assumed Exceptionalism “deserves”, but which can be barely paid for by what most people do for a living.  Some 19% of all Americans receive social benefits, totaling over $1 trillion annually, an expense the ruling class would prefer to annul.  Can you spell “vulnerable”?

Capitalist corporations must maximize profits, so Westerners have increasingly been competing with people they can’t see in places they couldn’t find on a map, people who will work for and live with far less than Exceptional people expect as their due. While believing with all their might in the “recovery”, US consumers (Consumer, ergo sum.) have been segregated into the have-an-awful-lots and the have-nots. 

In Matthew Shaer’s “The Archaeology of Wealth Inequality, Smithsonian Magazine, March, 2018, Matthew Twombly’s graphic on wealth inequality through history is quite telling:

Graphic: Matthew Twombly, Smithsonian Magazine, 2018 (Inequality)

Historically, wealth inequality portends violent social upheaval, another useful tool for the ruling class when carefully directed.  Since 2016, media’s purpose is clear: addict, divide, inflame, with the 2020 election marked as the culminating point for the color revolution that some of us have maintained was always just a matter of time.

Instigated several years before they erupt, fed and programmed on social [sic] media, color revolutions are designed to bring countries to their knees over “issues” built around a loss leader of truth smothered in monstrous, preposterous, incendiary lies, the bigger the better as Hitler and Goebbels had learned.  Now, what the Western ruling class have done around the globe, they are bringing to the US:  More chaos and confusion amongst the people (who otherwise might rebel), destruction of the wrung-dry dollar financial system by calling in loans at top prices and seizing assets at bottom prices, and potential further breakup of the country by factions and regions – the coasts against the middle sections – rendering total control to the ruling class.  It's the tried-and-true plan.  The proven tools:  social [sic]-media-induced myopia and subsumption of thought. 

Image: Kelly Kline CC BY-NC-ND-2.0 Text & logo (public domain) added

Dot 8:  What are they “bringing home”?

As readers know who are already familiar with the ruling class’ global resume, prior behavior is the best guide to what they have been preparing for 2020-21 and beyond. From the infamous seven countries in five years through the continuing color revolutions (e.g., here,  here, here, here, here, here), when countries resist, the leaders and people pay.  An encapsulation of past accomplishments by the West’s ruling class is one more character reference before examining the virus. 

Members of America’s ruling class worked with and supported Hitler prior to and during WWII.  After the war they brought to the US and UK Nazi and Japanese scientists, researchers, human experimenters – and gave them high level posts at university and government research labs often with new identities, or installed them abroad running labs and detention centers (black ops sites) – saving them from Nuremberg, where the US was, ostensibly, making what they’d done illegal.  For everyone else.

One example was Dr. Shiro Ishii of Japan’s infamous Unit 731 who, over the course of six years subjected 3000 to 12,000 Chinese to vivisection to study the results of germs and diseases, poison gas, electricity, high pressure, flame throwers, and hypothermia on living subjects in real time. Rescued by scientists at Camp Detrick, MD and granted amnesty by General Douglas MacArthur, Ishii was installed at a lab in Asia along with teams of scientists, his WWII notebooks and specimen slides, working for the scientists at Camp Detrick.              

After developing the world’s first atomic weapons types and testing them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – an enemy already defeated, our owners continued after the war, conducting 67 of their next 963 nuclear tests (over twice as many as the other 6 admitted nuclear powers combined) all in one place:  on the idyllic Marshall Islands (Bikini Atoll) over a 12-year period (“the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years”) in order to study the effects of radiation on people during, and for decades following, the detonations.

In 1968, ten years after they stopped nuking the islands, the US Department of Defense returned to the Marshalls to secretly test biowarfare agents in an operation dubbed “Speckled Start” which concluded “a single weapon could cover an area roughly twice the size of modern-day Los Angeles, and produce a 30 per cent casualty rate.” In 1978, the US stationed troops back in the Marshal Islands ostensibly to clean up radioactive soil (wearing shorts) and bury it under a concrete dome (which has been leaking since the 2010s) while garrisoned at Lojwa, where the bioweapons had been tested.

Soldiers at Ft. Detrick, according to journalist Sharon Weinberger, “have been a continuous source of human subjects for Defense Department research for decades…exposed to everything from yellow fever to hallucinogenic drugs.” Weaponized bugs including ticks carrying Lyme disease released on unsuspecting civilian populations (in the US), toxic mosquitos, agent orange, LSD experiments on “’pre-puberty’ boys”(in the US), the Navy spraying bacteria on an unsuspecting San Francisco for a week to see what would happen (1 known death), Operation Dew off South Carolina, Georgia, the UK and Canada, “gain of function” research (research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease in humans), chimera viruses – the lists and documentations make endless, deeply disturbing reading.

Allen Dulles was still CIA Deputy Director for Plans when he hired Sidney Gottleib in 1951 to discover “ways to manipulate the human psyche” which Dulles saw as “the decisive weapon of the coming age.”  Dulles didn’t ask for details, just results. Thus was born MKUltra.  (And, later, the smart[sic]phone.)  Seventy years later (April 15, 2019) Pompeo laughed, “When I was a cadet, what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole….We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

[I]n 1981 by then-CIA Director William Casey during the first meeting of President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet….told this gathering, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”  ~ Ray McGovern, in Joyce Nelson, “The Dangers of Privatized Intelligence”, Counterpunch, January 3, 2020

The USSR was the perfect adversarial excuse for an enormous buildup of armed forces, weapons, intelligence and space programs between 1940 and 1991, costing some $21.93 trillion (2020) dollars, much of which went into the pockets of the ruling class heavily invested in armaments.  Dissolution of the USSR was “Victory!” for the West and the ruling class lost no time insuring a puppet leader (Yeltsin) would open the nation to Western plunder at the expense of his own people.  When Putin stopped the plunder and returned Russia to Russians, Russia went from the “friends” to the “enemies” list and Putin became a “dictator”.  He’d destroyed “freedom”, not for the Russian people for whom he is a hero who has restored them and their country to health.  No, he destroyed freedom for the capitalist plunderers, a crime far worse.

During Yeltsin's tenure, Western NGOs having prepared the way, US Ambassador Miles began the breakup of former Soviet states through color revolutions in ’96.  Yugoslavia’s occurred during a presidential election, a favored time:  mix carpet bombing with depleted uranium, add Albanian genocide and Voila! “Freedom and Democracy!” or what William Blum called America’s Deadliest Export.  Balkanization into eight countries, where formerly there was one, added seven additional voices to the US chorus at the UN.  The human cost to the peoples of a formerly prosperous state was enormous.   

England had subdued China with opium during the 19^th Century; Japan made matters far worse during WWII.  Then, following the 1949 revolution, China went through a period of great reorganization as an independent Communist nation (known in the West as “falling”).  The late ‘70s saw Deng Xiaoping jump-start China’s new economy with an injection of capitalism, which the West mistook (and still does) as a “conversion”.  Thus began China’s opening up, encouraged by Brzezinski (“to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together”) under Carter.

China did a little too well and remained a little too Communist, so in 1989 the Western ruling class began using color revolution techniques to permanently blemish China’s human rights image with the Tiananmen Square “Massacre” Myth commemorated annually in the Western press, followed by two attempts in Hong Kong (2014, 2019) and ongoing attempts and slanders regarding Xinjiang.

The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.  ~ Joseph Goebbels, January 12 1941. Die Zeit ohne Beispiel. Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, p 364-9

In 2000, “a catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” began the US ruling class’ New American Century with a never-ending excuse for war, dismantling of citizen rights  and Wesley Clark’s report of overturning governments in seven countries in five years.  It took a bit longer than seven years, and Syria and Iran, pounded, plundered and bloody, still stand.  Click on the PDF for a list of countries (and their resources) to which the US has brought Freedom & Democracy^TM. PDF CHART

A trail of easier targets have been puppetized, destabilized or balkanized, maintaining conflict, chaos and corporate access through ethnic or religious apartheid.  Color revolutions in China’s Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Cuba have been unsuccessful but the CIA will continue trying while renewing attempts in both Thailand and Nicaragua.  Bolivia’s tragedy (temporarily) insured Tesla lithium for batteries.  Yemen and Taiwan operations continue, along with numerous others.   

Bolivia (oil, tin, silver, lithium, copper), Brazil (coffee, oil), Chile (copper, lithium) and Ecuador (oil) have been recaptured from popular socialist leaders, who’ve been replaced with puppets and repression of the people. In Eastern Europe, Georgia (metals) and Ukraine (location, grain) have been added to the West's compliant countries.

During October 2019, the US deposed Bolivia’s revered, elected, Indigenous socialist leader who had brought a voice, a higher standard of living and education, health care, and a deep love and respect for the Earth Mother to his people. The US ruling class replaced him with their minions:

“When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, …. With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.” …“Pachamama [Andean Mother Earth spirit ] will never return to the palace,” …. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”  ~ Max Blumenthal, “Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and millionaire – with foreign support”

Then “Interim President” Jeanine Añez, tweeted [since removed - but it captures her first thoughts],  “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites, the city is not for the Indians who should stay in the highlands or the Chaco”.  

These fine Christian leaders looted $4.9 billion from the Bolivian people’s treasury in the mere 11 months of their reign.  That’s over $445 million per month.  Capitalism at its finest.  Murder and plunder culturally rationalized as Manifest Destiny, divine mission. 

In November 2020, Bolivia elected, with over 55% of the vote in the first ballot, Luis Arce, leader of the Movement Toward Socialism, the popular party deposed by the US-backed coup.  Despite being attacked with dynamite by the coup party, he took office.  US-installed Jeanine Anez, author of the above tweet and Bolivian coup interim president, asked the US for 350 visas.

Put in more crass terms…we are uniquely good, and therefore have the unique right to expand throughout the world and intervene where we please without limitation.  Indeed, any resistance put up to our expansion and intervention is unacceptable, immoral, and punishable by extreme violence.  ~ Kovalik, ibid

Or, put even more bluntly by this $93.2 billionaire:

We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.  ~ Elon Musk tweet

The West’s ruling class want total global control, “U.S. military supremacy into American geopolitical preeminence.” (PNAC, p. 28)  That means subordinating remaining countries fighting to stay free and independent – China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Cambodia – through sanctions, invasions, resource theft (particularly oil and gold), color revolutions and whatever other available means.  The US-led Western ruling class prefers to control the land mass wherever possible, without having to buy it at fair market value.  They’ll support dictatorships they control, and fight free governments they don’t control.  Nor are they particularly interested in what happens to the people who live on that land, or the leader there, so long as the West can control the resources.

Madeleine Albright was the daughter of a Czech diplomat who immigrated to the United States. She attended Wellesley and Columbia, and taught at Georgetown. When asked about the estimated 500,000 Iraqi children who died due to her State Department’s sanctions, she replied:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq:

We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

 

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:

I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

—60 Minutes (5/12/96)  

For more Albright witticisms, see William Blum’s collection.

Henry Kissinger relayed Nixon’s desire to win by ending the Vietnam war with a major air assault on Cambodia:

''A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.''~ New York Times, “Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises, War and Stark Photos of Abuse”, May 27, 2004

In the ‘90s, under Bill Clinton:

 “’[A]pproximately three million people in Rwanda and the eastern region of the DRC died, even as US corporations were participating in questionable mining deals in the region’ known for some of the purest, untapped minerals on earth, including high-grade copper, cobalt, gold, and coltan (which is critical for electronics and cell phones.)” ~ The World Policy Institute, Dan Kovalik, ibid, p.71

Hillary Clinton was no doubt fully aware that when Muammar Gaddaffi launched the Popular Revolution 1973, Libya had been a quite poor and primarily illiterate nation.  As US Secretary of State, she would know that he brought free housing, health care, education, electricity, equal pay for women.  By 2011, “Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent”….with fewer people “below the poverty line than in the Netherlands” and a literacy rate higher than the US’ (though the West does not publish their literacy statistics in lists with the other countries of the world). 

But for Clinton, none of this was the point.  What mattered was that Gaddaffi had nationalized his country’s own oil to be sold for benefit of his country’s own people, was in the process of launching a unifying pan-African currency backed with 143 tons of Libyan gold and based on the Libyan gold dinar to free the continent’s countries (and resources) from the yoke of the petro-dollar.  This could have cost Wall Street and the City of London – who put Clinton in power – their global financial hegemony. Out of the question. 

Clinton’s color revolution in Libya, a major smear campaign in the Western press, and US troops and proxies on the ground resulted in the unspeakably brutal murder of a sovereign nation’s popular leader – which she then summed up between interviews at CBS:  “We came. We saw. He died.”  Her words were excruciatingly inappropriate for a Secretary of State and chillingly callous for a human being.  But, her words were nothing compared to her psychopathically gleeful laugh which followed them.  The destruction she set in motion – just in Libya – still reverberates throughout Africa today.

With this snapshot of the Western ruling class' modus operandi, we can focus on the virus with which we're currently dealing and think of it in terms of ruling class goals.  It’s a matter of perspective, worldview, origins, membership, distance and detachment.  If "Resources, Profit and Control" are at the top of your Maslow’s Modified Hierarchy, then it all makes perfect sense.

Dot 9:  The virus

The Chemical Weapons Convention, in force since 1997, has been signed by 193 countries all but two of which are in 100% compliance with destroying CW stockpiles.  The US and Japan are still working on it.  Meanwhile, the US used white phosphorus (some examples and here), depleted uranium and here, and burning of food crops. 

Investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva reported in 2018, "A US Army report in 1981 compared two scenarios - 16 simultaneous attacks on a city by A. Aegypti mosquitoes, infected with Yellow Fever, and Tularemia aerosol attack, and assessed their effectiveness in terms of cost and casualties," reporting in Table 5 they could kill 625,000 people for just 29c per death.

Building on their heritage of blankets since 1763, during the Second World War US military research generated the world’s first high containment biological laboratories (HCBLs) where experiments with live viruses take place on live bats, civets, monkeys, mice and other animals.  Since 2008, the US maintains the world’s greatest number – over 1600 – but no one knows the exact number now nor how well they are run since a good percent are privately owned (even Bill Gates owns one) and as of 2007 no agency tracks all of them and no agency is responsible for determining the risks associated.  It's been recommended that be changed, but as of 2019 it has not been.

The US ruling class also collects DNA samples from people of different races and ethnicities worldwide.  In China in the 1990s a US government funded Harvard team took DNA samples from 200,000 farmers in Anhui province in a series of 12 genetic experiments which failed to comply with federal and international informed consent requirements, according to journalist Xiong Lei and this study by the Alliance for Human Research Protection.  The ETC Group (a monitoring group) filed a FOIA request in May 2001.  Harvard responded in January 2002 by turning over two boxes of records to the federal Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) – which shredded them.

The US was also collecting DNA in Russia in the 1990s.  Igor Nikulin, a former member of the UN biological weapons commission, told RT:

“Such attempts were made back in the 90s, when there was a Human Genome program, then there were various programs in the 2000s too… under different pretexts, including the most noble, but for some reason all this happens in the interests of the US military department, and this raises suspicion,” Nikulin said.

The US military collected Russian DNA samples again in 2017 “for research purposes…”.

“Do you know that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions of the Russian Federation? The question is – why is it being done? It’s being done purposefully and professionally. We are a kind of object of great interest,” Putin told Russia’s Human Rights Council   ~ Vladimir Putin, October 30, 2017 to Russia’s Human Rights Council

PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” in 2000:

Today, the United States has an unprecedented strategic opportunity. It faces no immediate great-power challenge; it is blessed with wealthy, powerful and democratic allies in every part of the world; it is in the midst of the longest economic expansion in its history; and its political and economic principles are almost universally embraced….

 

This report proceeds from the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global  leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces….[T]oday the task is to preserve an international security environment conducive to American interests and ideals….Control the new “International Commons” of space and “cyberspace,” and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces [created December 20, 2019] – with the mission of space control….

 

Information systems will become an important focus of attack….And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool….to maintain American military preeminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership, and to preserve the American peace.  ~  PNAC, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” September, 2000  [emphasis added]

In 2010, the US Air Force concluded:

Gene therapy is expected to gain in popularity. It will continue to be improved upon and could unquestionably be chosen as a bioweapon. The rapid growth in biotechnology could trigger more opportunities to find new ways to fight diseases or create new ones. Nations who are equipped to handle biotechnology are likely to consider gene therapy a viable bioweapon. Groups or individuals without the resources or funding will find it difficult to produce this bioweapon. ~ Lt Colonel Joel O. Almosara, USAF,“Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens”, June 2010 [emphasis added]

Also in 2015, USA Today was able to report on 200 admitted Level 3 and 4 labs (about 10% of the total) scattered across the US and reporting an average of 200 safety incidents per year.  The US has biolabs in at least 25 countries besides the US.

High-containment biological laboratories (HCBLs) have become an indispensable part of many national security programmes because they can help counter the three types of biological insecurity: natural epidemics, intentional misuse, and accidental dissemination. ~ A. Peters, University Hospital, Geneva, 2019, “The global proliferation of high-containment biological laboratories”, p 2

Two of three types of threats would not exist without the HCBLs and the research that goes on in them. 

There are thousands of HCBLs worldwide, over 3204 in 2019 registered with governments, the overwhelming majority run or funded by the US or UK or France,  plus an untold number run by military, pharmaceutical and health industry corporations and private companies. It’s big business, with a huge cadre of support businesses surrounding it, all largely unregulated, unaccountable, not transparent.

The Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute wants to draw up to 30 first-rate companies to its 18,000-square-foot incubator set to open on its Torrance campus this spring. So it hired BioLabs – one of the nation’s top operators of co-working spaces for life science startups – to reel them in.  ~ LA Business Journal, “LA Biomed Taps Biolabs”, February 8, 2019

How many thousands of synthetic, genetically intensified viruses now exist because of these labs?  But, countries know that the US has such labs all over the world, so to remain free and independent each country must have their own labs in self-defense or simply sign up at the bottom of the list of US vassal states. 

HCBLs proliferate in the same way as weapons because they are weapons, and it was the international biological weapons inspection protocol for these labs that the US refused to sign in July, 2001 despite the efforts of 183 other nations. The US ratified the convention, but has maintained its refusal to negotiate monitoring of biological weapons.  Israel is not a party to the convention, having neither signed nor ratified it.  In a 2019 report, Lynn Klotz examines the pandemic threat posed by human error alone.

In 2011, two US-funded biolabs – one in Wisconsin led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka and one in the Netherlands – created, in just five mutations, a potentially more deadly strain of H5N1 bird flu that is highly transmissible to and between humans – and published exactly how they did it.  Release of the scientific paper caused a stir and triggered a 2014-2017 moratorium on US federal funding (not other funding) during which efficacy discussions took place regarding “gain-of-function” or “dual use” studies (ones that make viruses more transmissible and/or deadly). 

The “dual” in “dual use” explicitly identifies research that may be used to benefit or harm humanity…. What remains unanswered, here as elsewhere, is the question of how to properly realize the purported benefits of such research. ~ Dr. Nicholas G. Evans, UMass/Lowell, “But Nature Started It”: Examining Taubenberger and Morens’ View on Influenza A Virus and Dual-Use Research of Concern”

Of particular concern is “gain-of-function” (GOF) research resulting in the creation of a “potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)” (GOF/PPP research) where, inter alia, the host range, virulence, or transmissibility of a pathogen is enhanced….all GOF/PPP research generate biosafety and biosecurity concerns….Yet funders…partly determine what scientific questions can be asked.” ~ Dr. Nicholas G. Evans, “Ethical and Philosophical Considerations for Gain-of-Function Policy: The Importance of Alternate Experiments” [emphasis added]

Of greatest concern is a release of a lab-created, mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, such as the airborne-transmissible H5N1 viruses created in the laboratories of Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands and Yoshihiro Kawaoka In Madison Wisconsin.

 

The avian flu virus H5N1 kills 60 percent of people who become infected from direct contact with infected birds. The mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza created in the Fouchier and Kawaoka labs should be able to infect humans through the air, and the viruses could be deadly.  A release into the community of such a pathogen could seed a pandemic with a probability of perhaps 15 percent.~ Dr. Lynn C. Klotz, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “Human Error in High Biocontainment Labs – a Likely Pandemic Threat”, February 25, 2019         

Ruling class objectives supported by biotechnologies include enhancing humans and human reproduction with genes splices or CISPR gene-editing, electronic or biotic implants; creating bioweapons with chimeric and gain of function viruses and pandemic pathogens, development of more healthful or destructive pathogens; maintaining databases of DNA samples for targeting specific populations; developing “Doomsday genes which can selectively target and exterminate entire species”, and developing synthetic  and weaponized life [sic].

Biopharmaceuticals could promote healthier, longer lives or could help reduce the number of people needing social welfare programs, which represent a large cash outlay going to a group often ill-equipped to be a contributing force to the capitalist system.  Options include those initiated in other countries like India, Peru, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and numerous African countries, with or without informed consent (through vaccines ostensibly administered for other purposes), or in the US among those unable to speak up.

Prologue

November 2015 saw publication of another paper which caused controversy during the GOF/PPP moratorium. (The NIH allowed this study, which began prior to the GOF/PPP moratorium, to proceed during a review process, which eventually led to the conclusion that the work did not fall under the new restrictions.)  The paper, published by Ralph Baric, PhD of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with fourteen other scientists in Nature Medicine, “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence,” detailed the creation of a chimeric (also here), gain-of-function virus [bolding added.  Orthologs: genes with shared ancestry which evolved into different species.]:

Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system², we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.

In other words, splicing a bat coronavirus spike with a SARS-CoV of the target species (mouse but ultimately, human) resulted - as far back as 2015 - in a virus pandemically transmissible through breathing, using the ACE2 enzyme to powerfully multiply in the lungs with no known cure. 

ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme/protein) is found throughout the human body, especially in the gastrointestinal system, heart, and kidney, in type II alveolar cells (air sacs) in the lungs, though not in large quantities in healthy people – which helped limit the SARS outbreak in 2002-3.  ACE2 plays a crucial role in 2020.

Baric’s et al chimeric, gain-of-function potential pandemic pathogen virus research was funded by NIAID, NIA, NIH, NNSF-China, and USAID-EPT-PREDICT (CIA and here), the USAID connection (through EcoHealth Alliance, run by Dr. Peter Daszak) being acknowledged in a corrigendum eleven days after publication.  In May, 2020, Baric published the genome sequence  which has “now been deposited in GenBank under accession number MT308984.”  For those readers not yet aware that USAID works hand-in-glove as a CIA front organization, see this, this, this, this or this.

Enter SARS-CoV-2

The virus SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus #2) spreads more easily than SARS-CoV (1) did due to a change in its spike and the disease it causes, COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019), is more virulent than normal coronaviruses which cause seasonal flus.  Transmission is increased through high levels of viral shedding in the upper respiratory tract in those infected, including those people who are presymptomatic, infected, recovered and asmyptomatic.

“The new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is less deadly but far more transmissible than MERS-CoV or SARS-CoV.” (Lancet)  Its ease of transmission relates to its aggressive ability to bind to cells with  “peak concentrations [of viral load]…reached before day 5, and…more than 1,000 times higher” (and here) than SARS.  It also transmits to dogs and cats and other animals.  (Click for Lancet viruses comparison CHART.)

It enters through the nose, mouth and eyes, and has been found in the middle ear.  A respiratory illness, it also affects the central and peripheral nervous system, the brain (specifically cerebral cortex, here), heart, kidneys, digestive tract, gallbladder, testes, and adrenal gland.  In the lungs it can cause the air sacs (alveoli) to fill with fluid, creating its signature “ground glass opacity” in a CT scan, “a shades of grey in between a normal lung scan and one from an extremely diseased lung”.

Chest X-ray, Fig 1, Ground glass opacity, patient with COVID-19 , The British Medical Journal

“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” ~ Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

A drama in five scenes

It’s how SARS-CoV-2 gets into cells that’s sinister.  There doesn’t yet appear to be universal biomedical agreement on precisely how this is done or how the virus is mutating.  I never studied biology (refused to dissect), but found the continuous stream of research articles in online medical journals or pre-prints frustrating, fascinating and absolutely essential to understanding why this virus is dangerous.  I did study drama, so I hope you’ll indulge my attempt to stage what I've learned about the process for you.   

A Partial Cast of Characters:

ACE2 Credit: Emw, Wikimedia, Dec. 2009, CC BY-SA 3.0	ACE ACE2 (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2) “doorkeeper” for cell walls. People have  varying numbers of these.  Image: Structure of the ACE2 protein. Based on PyMOL rendering of PDB 1r42.
Killer T Cells Credit: Alex Ritter, Jennifer Lippincott Schwartz and Gillian Griffiths, National Institutes of Health, Flickr, Aug. 2015, Public Domain	KILLER KILLER CTLs – Cytotoxic T-killer cells   They are on patrol for messages from MHC1 to terminate virally infected cells  marked with a bullseye by “MAJOR”. Image: Superresolution Immunofluorescence image of a group of killer T cells (outer three, green and red) engaging a cancer cell (blue, center). When a killer T cell makes contact with a target cell, the killer cell attaches and spreads over the dangerous target. The killer cell then uses special chemicals housed in vesicles (red) to deliver the killing blow. This event has thus been nicknamed “the kiss of death”. After the target cell is killed, the killer T cells move on to find the next victim.
Cytokines Credit: ScientificAnimations.com, Wikimedia, April 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0	CYTOKINEs Cytokines – cell signaling molecules    These cytokines are pro-inflammatory.  They call white blood cells, like macrophages, to come eat up the virus.  If things go wrong, too many of them may show up (a “cytokine storm”) and call too many macrophages, resulting in too much inflammation and possibly reducing the number of CTLs (“KILLER”) cells. Image: 3D medical animation still showing secretion of cytokines, important in cell signaling
Furin Credit: Emw, Wikimedia, Dec. 2009, CC BY-SA 3.0	FURIN Furin – a “scissor” enzyme, necessary to open (“cleave”) the coating (“envelope”) on all kinds of proteins to activate them.  SARS-CoV-2 is unique among B coronaviruses in having a furin cleavage site (S1/S2) on its spike protein. Image: Structure of the FURIN protein. Based on PyMOL rendering of PDB 1p8j.
Macrophages Credit: Obli at English Wikipedia, from magnaram, //www.flickr.com/photos/42299655@N00/4509223">Flickr, May 2004, CC BY-SA 2.0	BIG EATER Macrophages, a “big eater” type of white blood cell that devours invaders. Image: A macrophage of a mouse forming two processes to phagocytize two smaller particles, possibly pathogens.
Killer receiving a message from Major Credit: Dr. Gary Kaiser, Community College of Baltimore Country (Cantonsville) CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Legal.	MAJOR MHC1 -- Major Histocompatibility Complex Class 1 – is no pushover. Like tiny cellular bouncers, these molecules hang around on the outer wall of every nucleated human cell, on Pathogen Guard.  If a cell is attacked by a minor pathogen, MAJOR’s buddy, MHC2, (also on the outer cell wall) will flag down a Helper T Cell to take care of it.  But, if the cell’s invaded by a villain who’s taking over, the cell itself will tear off a sample piece of the invader and give it to “MAJOR”1 – who nails the piece to a bullseye on the outer cell wall.  This is called “presenting” and it’s a 9-1-1 to “KILLER” (CTL) to terminate the entire infected cell. (Great chalk talk demo here.)  Image: Figure 12.3A.6: A Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte Recognizing a Virus-Infected Cell. The body marks infected cells and tumor cells for destruction by placing peptide epitopes from these endogenous antigens on their surface by way of MHC-I molecules. Cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs) are then able to recognize peptide/MHC-I complexes by means of their T-cell receptors (TCRs) and CD8 molecules and kill the cells to which they bind.    [emphasis added]
ORF8 Image credit: Zhang Lab, University of Michigan	ORF8 ORF8 – Open Reading Frame #8  (With a name like that, you’d use your initials, too.)  This is our villain’s Hit Man, an “accessory gene”, but don’t let that flimsy name fool you.  Absent from other human-pathogenic coronaviruses, ORF8 is the mysterious misfit of the family coronaviridae and apparently a major reason this virus is so dangerous.  ORF8 connects to ACE2 (our doorkeeper) to get inside our cells. It then significantly downgrades MAJOR1’s ability to get help or actually pulls MHC1 inside the cell where it cannot present its bullseye on the outer cell wall to signal “KILLER”.   Image: ORF8 C-I-TASSER 3D structural models and estimated accuracy (TM-score=0.67) May play a role in host-virus interaction. Similar to some Bat coronavirus ns8 genes, but is entirely different from SARS ns8a or ns8b. Zhang Lab, University of Michigan, NSF DBI2030790: RAPID: Genome-wide Structure and Function Modeling of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus
SARS-CoV-2 Image credit: NIAID-RML CC BY 2.0   SARS-CoV-2 Cross Section Image credit:https://www.scientificanimations.com - https://www.scientificanimations.com/wiki-images/ CC BY-SA 4.0  (Click image to enlarge.)	VIRUS SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus 2019, our villain.  To-date it has a 3% global mortality rate (SARS 3%, H1N1 1%-4%) and is highly transmissible. Like all coronaviruses SARS-CoV-2 has many spikes, each in two main sections, S1 and S2.  These create its sun-like halo, crown or “corona”. Image: SARS-CoV-2 - The spikes on the surface of coronaviruses give this virus family its name – corona, which is Latin for “crown,” and most any coronavirus will have a crown-like appearance. NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana, produced images of the novel coronavirus… on its scanning and transmission electron microscopes on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020. More images here.   Image: 3D medical animation still shot showing the structure of a coronavirus
Furin and TMPRSS2 cleaving SARS-CoV-2 spike envelope protein Image credit: Markus Hoffmann medien.dpz.eu Valid until: 04/28/2022	MR.T TMPRSS2 – Transmembrane serine protease 2. Another scissors enzyme.  Works with Furin and opens the coating of spike S2, allowing SARS-CoV-2 cell entry. Both TMPRSS2 and Furin are essential for activation and spread of SARS-Cov-2 in Human Airway. Aktivierung von SARS-CoV-2  Mol Cell PM Header.tif  Credit:  Dr. Markus Hoffmann creator, on white background  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2020.04.022

Scene 1

VIRUS

Scene 2

Lights come up on the same scene.  VIRUS nods to ORF8 and crosses to talk confidentially with ACE. Everyone seems to be getting along okay.

ACE

Sure, I can open it for you.  I just need your “key”.  You understand?

VIRUS

VIRUS

MR. T

VIRUS

FURIN

MR.T

MR. T then whips out a threatening looking instrument, cuts the spike in the appropriate place and puts his cutter away.

VIRUS

Caught off-guard by MR. T’s speed

I wasn’t expecting your cut quite so fast. I almost disarmed you. But…ah…thank you both.

FURIN and MR. T leave, MR. T muttering “I pity the fool…” 

VIRUS catches ACE’s eye and gives him a nod.

ORF8, holding a bound and gagged MAJOR in tow, joins VIRUS. 

Scene 3

Interior of the cell.

VIRUS begins energetically multiplying.  Other VIRUSES appear throughout the cell.

MAJOR

ORF8

What’s that, MAJOR?  Pulls down the gag.

MAJOR

I need to get back outside!

ORF8

No way.

MAJOR

It’s vitally important.

ORF8

Sneering.  I don’t think so.    ORF8 kills the MAJOR. 

Lights dim, except for one spot over ACE, bound and gagged, lying on the cell floor.

(Fade to black.)

Scene 4

Set, as in Scene 1, outside the cell.  Part of another cell is now visible STAGE RIGHT. 

Two KILLERs swim by the LUNG CELL and all looks normal. No messages on the cell wall.  No sight of the MAJOR, either.  They swim on.

A third KILLER swims by and nearly bumps smack into a SARS-CoV-2 filopod arm which is thrusting out through the cell wall and extending toward the other lung cell to infect it.  This KILLER is confused.  MAJOR’s not there and there’s no message posted.  There’s nothing he can do.  He shrugs and swims on.  

Scene 5

VOICE (Offstage)

It’s difficult to breathe right now, I know, but this machine will help you.  Just relax.  That's it.  Good.  Now get some rest.  You should be feeling better soon.

(Fade to black.  Curtain.)

Back in Pandora’s Lab

Much research and media attention seems focused on the ACE2 receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 links “like a key being inserted into a lock”.  According to this study, ACE2 isn’t abundant in healthy cells, “which limited the spread of Sars” to 8000 people worldwide and provides another good incentive for boosting one’s immune system.  Whether ACE2 increases or decreases - or neither - with age appears to be uncertain.

Image: ACE2 acts as the receptor for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and allows it to infect the cell. The Conversation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Less discussed is ORF8, the villain's hit man in our drama, whose mutations and their effects on cleavability were known to virologists since 2007, and whose behavior differs significantly in SARS-CoV-2 from SARS-CoV and other coronaviruses.  In SARS-CoV-2, ORF8 “interacts with MHC1 molecules and significantly down-regulates their surface expression on various cell types….disrupts antigen presentation and reduces the recognition and the elimination of virus-infected cells by CTLs” according to this May, 2020 study.  

Notably, this ORF8 behavior is similar to its behavior in HIV, though “mercifully, the coronavirus does not hijack T cells in order to reproduce, making it far less deadly” (here).  The dendrites or filopodia sent out by SARS-CoV-2 to infect other cells while it’s still in the original cell is another characteristic also shared by HIV as well as smallpox and some influenza viruses.  Owing to its furin-like cleavage the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S1, S2), like HIV’s, allows it to bind with ACE2 and enter many types of human cells, binding to them and making this virus even more persistent than other types of infection. 

An early pre-print paper from the University of Delhi was withdrawn under pressure that it "promoted conspiracy theories”:

We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. ~ Bishwajit Kundu, “Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag“, Indian Institute of Technology, Acharya Narendra Dev College and University of Delhi, February 2, 2020.  NB:  Paper withdrawn.

Concurrent and subsequent research papers do refer to similarities between the two viruses, SARS-CoV-2 and HIV, (links above) through which researchers hope to find therapeutic treatments.  Less severe viruses like herpes also share suppression of MHC1 molecules and can remain in the body permanently once contracted, recurring periodically, i.e., medicines cannot cure, only control. These characteristics raise the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could remain in the body, and therefore in circulation, for a long time. 

“The furin-like cleavage site in the S-protein of 2019-nCoV may have implications for the viral life cycle and pathogenicity.” ~  Antiviral Research, April 2020

A mutation at position 23,403 (of 30,000 letters in the total genome) changing the amino acid from D (aspartic) to G (glycine) may increase S1, S2 (spike) ability to attach to ACE2 (doorkeeper) and enter the cell wall.  This mutation may be more studied than ORF8, but without clear conclusions to-date as to significance.  Scientists speculate the cause could be the availability of so many hosts (meaning no pressure to evolve or die out). “But it could also indicate that the virus has been with people longer than we know, and was spreading before the first known cases in Wuhan, China, in December 2019,” reported Kai Kupferschmidt in AAAS’ Science Magazine, July 2020.  This, and other evidence, opens wide the question SARS-CoV-2’s country of origin.

If the SARS-CoV-2 genome structure causes it to not entirely leave the body, does it become persistent or latent?  It is still too early to tell, according to Dr. William Petri of the University of Virginia, who explains the difference and the lingering symptoms. Dr. Petri notes that coronaviruses do not “establish latency” which would be reassuring if SARS-CoV-2 were a garden variety coronavirus.  

Recovery does not mean “back to normal” for as many as ten percent of people infected.  Since it attacks the nervous system, SARS-CoV-2 may leave patients with a diminished sense of smell and taste lasting a few days or much longer.  Confusion may persist, regularly or intermittently, after the infection has “cleared”. 

In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems….neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion.  And recovery can be slow, incomplete and costly, with a huge impact on quality of life….What is surprising about this virus is the extent of the complications occurring outside the lungs….[T]here will be a huge healthcare expenditure and burden for individuals who have survived COVID-19. ~ Dr. Sadiva Khan, cardiologist, Northwestern Medicine, Chicago

Now that the first wave is receding, the patients who need our attention are the estimated one in 10 with prolonged symptoms. Many of these people were previously fit and well….The ones I am treating have normal investigations, with nothing to see on a plain chest x ray and no signs of infection, inflammation, or blood clots in their laboratory tests…. If you previously ran 5k three times a week and now feel breathless after a single flight of stairs, or if you cough incessantly and are too exhausted to return to work, then the fear that you may never regain your previous health is very real,” ~ Dr. Helen Salisbury, “When will we be well again?”, British Medical Journal, June 23, 2020 [emphasis added]

Weeks and months after the onset of acute COVID-19, people continue to suffer. Paul Garner, a professor of epidemiology at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, wrote on the 95th day after the onset of symptoms that “I am unable to be out of bed for more than three hours at a stretch, my arms and legs are permanently fizzing as if injected with Szechuan peppercorns, I have ringing in the ears, intermittent brain fog, palpitations, and dramatic mood swings.”¹ ….Other people also describe similar complaints.^{2, 3}   78 of 100 patients in an observational cohort study who had recovered from COVID-19 had abnormal findings on cardiovascular MRI (median of 71 days after diagnosis) and 36 of those reported dyspnoea and unusual fatigue.⁴ We are seeing patients in clinics dedicated to COVID-19 convalescents….not only those recovering from the severe form of the acute disease (ie, post intensive care syndrome), but also those who had mild and moderate disease. ~ Lancet, September 2020

In a panel discussion reported in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), “Long covid: How to define it and how to manage it,” Nisreen Alwan (associate professor, public health, University of Southampton) defined the “long covid” as “not recovering [for] several weeks or months following the start of symptoms that were suggestive of covid, whether you were tested or not….A very common feature is the relapsing, remitting nature of the illness, where you feel as though you’ve recovered, then it hits you back.”  Alwan, who has personal experience with COVID-19, later added, “You have to drop your baseline by 90%; you are a different person.” 

In some patients the virus has reactivated (and here) or they become re-infected with a different clade– group from a common ancestor – of the virus.  Globally, there appear to be five major clades or families of SARS-CoV-2 corresponding to geographical areas:  three North American types in the East, Midwest and West Coast, one type in Europe and one in China, South Korea and Australia.  Symptoms seem somewhat variable among the clades; apparently recovery from one clade does not preclude reinfection from one of the other clades or even with the same clade since antibodies may not last more than a few months and it may be possible for the virus to remain in the body and recur later.  Below is a graphic definition of a clade, followed by a geographic distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades.

 Image:   Clades Clade (1 of 2) definition 

Source: University of California Museum of Paleontology's Understanding Evolution Used with permission.

Could long-term immunity versus recurrence depend upon the clade or area where one’s infection originates?  The research seems unable to say. How often is SARS-CoV-2 mutating?  There appears to be little uniformity on that question either, but this research director’s comment seems more hopeful:

The novel coronavirus SARS CoV-2 is not a highly mutable one, so there are sufficient reasons to expect that immunity acquired as a result of vaccination or in a natural way will be long-term. ~ Areg Totolyan, Director of the St. Petersburg-based Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, October 22, 2020, TASS

Pandemics in perspective

We know pandemics have occurred throughout history, most often coinciding with wars or natural disasters like drought-induced famines, e.g., when people’s health is already highly compromised.   Overcrowding of humans and/or livestock leading to poor sanitation has been another catalyst for both human and zoonotic transmission of contagious diseases.  Compiling the European Scientific Working group on Influenza list of six influenza-type viruses since 1918, Live Science’s 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history (beginning 3000 BC), History.com’s “Pandemics That Changed History” and Wikipedia’s “List of epidemics” bears out these leading causes, at least until the 20^th Century. (View PDF Here.)

But, in the 21^st Century the causes, but particularly the numbers change.  Finding each of the aforementioned lists in agreement on the epidemics they covered, I chose Wikipedia’s aforementioned list - the longest of those I studied - and focused on the 116 epidemics and pandemics listed between 1900 and 2019.  I tallied 40 epidemics and 5 pandemics during the 20^th Century, or 45 total, a rate of .45 per year. Then, during the first 20 years of the 21^st Century (2000 – 2019), the tally went to 65 epidemics and 6 pandemics for a total of 71 and a rate of 3.55 per year. (View PDF Here.)   

Why the massive upsurge in epidemic and pandemic illnesses?

War, historically a cause, certainly has not gone away. The incessant, euphemistically termed “conflicts” caused by Western neo-colonial empires’ accelerated scramble for dwindling resources unquestionably affect health in victim nations. So, I compared the lists of epidemics and color revolutions (which seem a good indicator of civil strife and national chaos), but found little correlation.  

At the beginning of this article, I compared COVID-19 mortality statistics from countries under siege or sanctions (medium to low) with those peacefully enjoying far higher standards of living in the West (medium to high).  Even in Yemen, suffering the largest humanitarian crisis in the world (and where reporting is no doubt exceedingly difficult) there were fewer than 600 deaths attributed to COVID-19 and a deaths-to-completed-cases rate of 31% as of October 12, compared with Belgium’s 33.4%.  

International disease monitoring and reporting by the WHO began in 1965 according to the CDC.  Advances in global technology, biotech, and virology have no doubt significantly increased reportage since then, but eight-fold?  If not war, sanitation, technologies or information collection, what is causing numbers of new problematic viruses to surge? Why are we experiencing an increase in infectious diseases – mostly viruses – approaching 800% since 1999? 

Before 1990, there had been only two BSL-4 labs in the United States…. In the nineteen-nineties, three were added. In the first seven years after 9/11, the United States opened ten more. In a 2007 report, Keith Rhodes…observed…“a major proliferation of high-containment BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs is taking place in the United States….No single federal agency knows how many such labs there are in the United States…no one is responsible for determining the aggregate risks associated with the expansion of these high-containment labs.”…[A] 2017 report from the G.A.O. counted two hundred and seventy-six high-containment select-agent labs in the United States. But the actual number is almost certainly higher, because not every dangerous pathogen is on the federal list. ~ Elisabeth Eaves , “The Risks of Building Too Many Bio Labs”, The New Yorker, March 18, 2020 

The possibility of accidents, thefts or diversions, or malicious use of pathogens multiplies with every additional laboratory built. The more labs we build to protect ourselves, the more ostensibly unstable the situation becomes….[M]any of the world’s HCBLs belong to private or academic institutions, many…not subject to governmental oversight…[I]nformation available varies significantly from state to state: often, facility location, activities and ownership are unknown, even to the government of the state in which the laboratory is located. ~ A. Peters, University Hospital, Geneva, “The global proliferation of high-containment biological laboratories”, p 3, 4

Dr. Peters’ list includes some, but not all of these Pentagon HCBLs, which the US places on Russia’s and China’s borders and then collects their DNA.

Map, Dilyana Gaytanzhiera, used with permission

Dr. Mark Woolhouse et al in “Human Viruses: Discovery and Emergence” (2012) looks at why new diseases are emerging and finds the overwhelming majority of the new diseases are caused by viruses, not bacteria.  His study found:

Several reviews…have listed so-called ‘drivers’ of the emergence of novel viruses or other pathogens…. a diverse set of environmental and biological factors, many of which—such as ‘urbanization’ or ‘land use’—seem intuitively reasonable but are too broad to relate to mechanistic causes of emergence. Moreover, identification of drivers is usually a subjective exercise: there are very few formal tests of the idea that a specific driver is associated with the emergence of a specific pathogen or set of pathogens.  [emphasis added]

Two-thirds of Woolhouse’s “219 virus species that are known to be able to infect humans” are zoonotic whose potential drivers of emergence he suggests might be [emphasis mine]:

1. that we are currently living through a ‘perfect storm’ in which increases in many potential drivers [population, urbanization, travel, trade, livestock production] are acting in concert, or
2. there is a sufficient diversity of pathogens available—each with their own biology and epidemiology—that any change in the human environment (but especially in the way that humans interact with other animals, domestic or wild) is likely to favour one pathogen or another, which responds by invading the newly accessible habitat, or
3. emerging pathogens possess different life-history characteristics to established, long-term endemic pathogens….the most striking difference identified so far is that the majority of recently emerging pathogens are viruses rather than bacteria, fungi, protozoa or helminths.

Let’s term hypothesis (a) the Coincidence Hypothesis in that a number of favorable factors are coinciding.  This chart looks at urbanization.

Source:  Our World In Data, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia, with graph annotations

I have added bars to show the width of centuries and to mark 1900 and 1990.  Clearly, the rate of urbanization continues an accelerating trend begun in in the mid-19^th century and does not experience an 8-fold increase between 1990 – 2000 over 1900 – 1990.  Even in China, showing the largest increase between 1990 and 2000, the increase is 3-fold, not 8-fold.

Livestock production increases as shown in this graph by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have been equally tame in comparison with virus discoveries.

Source:   FAO open access pdf

This US Census Bureau chart shows a decadal decline in global population growth between 1990 - 2000, with growth of 12.6%.

Hypothesis (a) does not appear to satisfy an 8-fold growth rate.

Hypothesis (b) changes in humans' environment and interactions with other animals – seems directly linked to urbanization and would act in concert, but by what multiple is not known.

Hypothesis (c) seems to lead directly back to my original question:  Why?  Why are the characteristics of emerging pathogens are different from previous pathogens, why are they now primarily viruses, and why are there suddenly so many?  Where are these viruses coming from?  And, why do they appear to coincide with the proliferation of biolabs studying and enhancing them? 

Further, “capable of infecting” does not equate to actually infecting, yet Woolhouse et al, conclude:  “an effective global surveillance system for novel viruses is needed…. The first line of defence against emerging viruses is effective surveillance.”  His solution is a global virus surveillance system, i.e. more High Containment Biolabs (HCBLs).  

HCBLs can, as noted by Dr. Alexandra Peters above, “help counter the three types of biological insecurity”, i.e., natural bio-insecurity (with which we’ve always had to cope, yet somehow there are nearly 8 billion of us), as well as lab-created accidental incidents and geopolitical intentional incidents - both of which are produced through HCBLs.  

It’s of interest to note that, like Ralph Baric’s gain-of-function research at the University of North Carolina which synthesized a new, chimeric, more transmissible SARS-CoV), the Woolhouse study “was partly supported by the USAID PREDICT programme led by Peter Daszak”.

In 2008:

In the global human population, we report the emergence of 335 infectious diseases between 1940 and 2004…. Zoonoses from wildlife represent the most significant, growing threat to global health of all EIDs. ~ Peter Daszak et al, “Global trends in emerging infectious diseases”, 2008

Dr. Daszak is, like Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka (University of Wisconsin, H5N1), Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID, part of the NIH), and Mark Woolhouse’s team above, intent on finding new viruses that might become transmissible to, or might be shown to mutate to become transmissible to, humans.  And, to stop them in their tracks!  Or, enhance them. Or, something. 

Who will surveil the labs in which these viruses are studied, created, spliced, diced or enhanced to be more lethal and transmissible?   Who will surveil the “surveillants” – the people who work in these labs and the people, corporations, universities, private foundations, billionaires and Department of Defense programs that fund them?  Simple answer:  no one.

In 2004, Dr. Anthony Fauci published an editorial in JAMA, “Emerging Infectious Diseases: a Clear and Present Danger to Humanity”:

The steady stream of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases since the 1960s has been a sobering wake-up call....It is now clearer than ever that the human species is in the midst of a war with the microbial world—a resilient foe that will never be completely defeated.

If this sounds familiar, it should:

Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. ~ George W. Bush, September 20, 2001

Totally foreign and unforeseen, they hijack a carrier and explode into our lives, terrifying and threatening death.  The virus is the new terrorist, the perfect bogeyman, “a type of mythical creature used by adults to frighten children” except that, unlike mythical creatures, both terrorists and novel viruses actually destroy lives and kill, while being used by the Western ruling class to threaten people “into good behavior” and purging the weaker or less fortunate.

Who benefits from a War on Viruses?

If you answered, “The Western ruling class”, congratulations!  A cornucopia of nano enemies that can appear anytime, anywhere now threaten Our Way of Life^TM.  And so, Big Biotech’s nearly trillion-a-year firms join Big Pharma (nearly twice as profitable as other corporate giants – where big fines are a normal business expense) and the two together do battle with viral nano-monsters.  Joined by the Military Industrial Complex (in which ruling class families have been profitably invested since the Revolution and here , here, here) and the Mass Surveillance Industry (video surveillance alone estimated at $75 billion annually) to Protect and Defend global capitalist control.

But biotech began out of science and good intentions, didn’t it?  No.  To review, in 1941, FDR’s Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson requested a National Academy of Sciences review of the feasibility of biological warfare.  The review, headed by Edwin Fred of University of Wisconsin, said “Yes!” and Camp Detrick biowarfare labs were opened in 1943 under the scientific direction of “Dr. Ira L. Baldwin, professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  Ten years later, Professor Baldwin would guide Allen Dulles in hiring a former U of Wisconsin student whose name might be familiar.  Sydney Gottleib and Dulles would hit it off and Gottlieb would become the Poisoner in Chief director of MKUltra, one of the CIA’s more well known bioweapons programs.  Meanwhile, Camp Detrick carried out bioweapons experiments with sand flies, mosquitos and other vectors of disease from the 1940s through the 1980s, tried out on the peoples of North Korea (whom they’d already bombed into oblivion), China, and several African and South American countries.  Biowarfare grew to be an integral part of the US Department of Defense, as this declassified program sample shows:

Template: U.S. biological weapons made Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 

Then a new opportunity opened, as the journal Nature explains, “The Human Genome Project was a 13-year-long, publicly funded project initiated in 1990 with the objective of determining the DNA sequence of the entire euchromatic human genome within 15 years,” actually declared complete in 2003.  The next decade saw the project heavily augmented by individuals who paid to contribute their own DNA.  It’s useful to pause here to look again at the Epidemics & Pandemics chart. 

The 2010, USAF Counterproliferation Center report by Lt. Col. Joel Almosarat, “Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens” discusses “stealth viruses”:

Stealth Viruses: The basic concept of this potential bioweapon is to “produce a tightly regulated, cryptic viral infection that can enter and spread in human cells using vectors” (similar to the gene therapy) and then stay dormant for a period of time until triggered by an internal or external signal. The signal then could stimulate the virus to cause severe damage to the system. Stealth viruses could also be tailored to secretly infect a targeted population for an extended period using the threat of activation to blackmail the target.

Your tax dollars at work.

The $cience of prediction

In 2011, debate was raging among scientists on whether to block publication of the paper by a NIAID-NIH team led by Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka from the University of Wisconsin describing how they had effected human transmissibility in the H5N1 virus (avian influenza or “bird flu”, caught from poultry, 60% mortality rate) in just five mutations, a study also funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  In late May 2016, Dr. Kawaoka developed a strategy to predict flu mutations before they occur in nature by simulating viral evolution in the laboratory.”   

Flu viruses mutate at least annually and flu vaccines average 40% vaccine efficacy (VE) rate, with studies showing lower rates for H3N2s, higher for B viruses and highest (41%-66%) for H1N1s.  So, finding ways to better predict virus mutations should theoretically lead to better vaccines.  Yet, life is not computerized, not yet anyway.  Viruses require living beings in whom to replicate.  Natural beings, forces, systems – trees, tomatoes, tigers, toddlers, teens and tornados – share the frustrating and humbling characteristic of doing the unexpected, right out of the blue. 

Despite Dr. Kawaoka’s groundbreaking viral augury formula in 2016, the 2017-18 and 2018-19 US flu seasons each broke records (severity and longevity, respectively), but not for their vaccines (38% VE, 39% VE, respectively).  

Meet Dr. Michael Callahan, Harvard, DARPA biodefense USAID Director-Nigeria, DTRA, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Cooperative Threat Reduction Program gain-of-function studies at six former USSR - now US - Bioweapon HCBLs.  Dr. Callahan agrees with Dr. Kawaoka:

Prophecy was another program created by Callahan at DARPA. It sought to “transform the vaccine and drug development enterprise from observational and reactive to predictive and preemptive” through algorithmic programming techniques. In layman’s terms, the program proposed that “viral mutations and outbreaks” could be predicted in advance to more rapidly counter the unknown disease with preemptive drug and vaccine development.  ~ Raul Diego, DARPA’s Man in Wuhan, July 30, 2020

Interest in and funding for the science of prediction both seem high. Dr. Kawaoka’s 2016 research was funded by

• the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation
• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Public Health Service research grants (USA);
• ERATO (Japan Science and Technology Agency);
• the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis (CRIP) funded by the NIAID contracts HHSN266200700010C and HHSN272201400008C;
• the Japan Initiative for Global Research Network on Infectious Diseases; Grants-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Japan; Grants-in-Aid from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan;
• grants from the Strategic Basic Research Program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency
• Advanced Research & Development Programs for Medical Innovation from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED).
• C.A.R. was supported by a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society.
• The authors acknowledge a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI grant, European Union (EU) FP7 programmes EMPERIE (223498) and ANTIGONE (278976);
• Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) programme grant P0050/2008;
• Wellcome 087982AIA
• NIH Director's Pioneer Award DP1-OD000490-01.
• D.F.B. and D.J.S. acknowledge support from CamGrid,
• the University of Cambridge distributed computer system.
• The Melbourne WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza is supported by the Australian Government Department of Health.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation portion alone was nearly $60 million for Health Grant OPPGH5383 reported in this Kawaoka study.

Gates has funded research and development for biotech, food, population, drugs and global organizations.

In 2010, Bill Gates promoted the HPV vaccine connected with lowered fertility rates, explaining in a 2010 TED Talk, “Innovating to Zero” that the vaccine is important for women in developing countries and that global population will increase by over a billion but “if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.” [at 04:20]

The Gates Foundation focuses on world health and population and high-lights its strategy of accelerating scientific discovery with reducing costs. Since the early 2000s, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (Gavi), Global Health Innovative Technology Fund and PATH, all heavily funded by the Gates Foundation, have been distributing vaccines and drugs to vulnerable populations in Africa and India.

 

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded experimental malaria and meningitis vaccine trials across Africa and HPV vaccine programs in India. All of these programs resulted in numerous deaths and injuries, with accounts of forced vaccinations and uninformed consent. Ultimately, these health campaigns, under the guise of saving lives, have relocated large scale clinical trials of untested or unapproved drugs to developing markets where administering drugs is less regulated and cheaper. ~ Sharmeen Ahmed Golden Gate University School of Law, “Accountability of International NGOs: Human Rights Violations in Healthcare Provision in Developing Countries and the Effectiveness of Current Measures”, Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law, Volume 22

In March 2015 Bill Gates gave a TED talk, "Bill Gates warns on future disease epidemic". Gates has been involved with global pharmaceuticals since at least 2000 when his Global Alliance for Vaccines & Immunization) (Gavi) took over the Childrens Vaccine Initiative and focused first on polio, resulting in tens of thousands of cases of “NPAFP” (non-polio polio) in both India and the African continent.

An article in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics in 2012 concluded, “In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of NPAFP. [NPAFP stands for Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis] Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated.” Instead, Gates and Company proclaimed India “polio” free…. By calling it non-polio, they defined polio as eradicated in India. But their vaccines are killing and paralyzing tens of thousands of children. ~ William Engdahl,”Polio or Something More Sinister?”, June 4, 2015

[B]etween August 2019 and August 2020, there were 400 recorded cases of vaccine-derived polio in more than 20 countries worldwide. Ironically, WHO disclosed this “setback” barely a week after it declared the African continent to be free of wild poliovirus—which has not been seen in Africa since 2016….WHO is warning that “the risk of further spread of the vaccine-derived polio across central Africa and the Horn of Africa” is high….The Gates Foundation is a leading funder of oral polio vaccination in Africa and around the world, having dedicated nearly $4 billion to such efforts by the end of 2018. ~ Children’s Health Defense, “Polio Vaccine Causing Polio Outbreaks in Africa, WHO Admits”, September 3, 2020

Now I appreciate why Gates and his colleagues want to call these technologies "vaccines". If they can persuade the body politic that injectible credit cards or injectible surveillance trackers or injectable brain-machine interface nanotechnologies are "vaccines," then they can enjoy the protection of a century or more of legal decisions and laws that support their efforts to mandate what they want to do.  As well, they can insist that U.S. taxpayers fund, through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the damages for which they would otherwise be liable as a result of their experiments—and violations of the Nuremberg Code and numerous civil and criminal laws—on the general population.  ~ Katherine Austin Fitts  [emphasis added]

Executives from their foundation regularly move back and forth between the BMGF and multi-lateral institutions and corporations. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has noted that philanthropic foundations no longer see themselves as merely donating money. They expect to be treated as full-fledged development partners who get a say in problem analysis and agenda setting….The BMGF’s influence, and such the personal influence of Bill and Melinda Gates, on the global health and agricultural agenda is immense….thus increasingly shapes international health care. It takes a market-based approach, relying primarily on technical solutions to complex problems. ~ Barbara Unmüssig, “Private-sector billionaires setting global agenda”, 19/11/2017 D+C, Germany

Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO made Gates its largest donor, effectively privatizing the global organization in charge of health and pandemics.  Another coincidence for the coincidence theorists.

Lawrence Gostin the director of WHO’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, told Devex the potential of a private foundation becoming the largest donor to the organization could be “transformational.” “It would enable a single rich philanthropist to set the global health agenda,” he said.  https://www.rt.com/usa/491003-bill-gates-conspiracy-theories-who-contributions/ Get short URL

Having founded and funded CEPI, GAVI, GCGH, IHME, and COVAX and heavily influenced the NIH, Gates, his and his wife’s foundation (BMGF), his money, organizations and media muscle are in a lead position for global COVID-19 response. 

Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) money are integral to 2020 events.  Both Gates and Zuckerberg and their wives are heavily invested in private and governmental human disease work. 

The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub is “conducting research that helps solve big health problems”, one of them being COVID-19, where they’ve joined with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard – already a partner in digital cash payments. Like Gates’ with vaccines, Zuckerberg is using countries in Africa for trials of digital cash.  

NOTE:   This 4-part series by James Corbett is well researched, entertaining, recommended viewing.

Global corporations, NGOs and governments have led a McCarthyist campaign for mandatory vaccinations successfully intimidating and indoctrinating the public into accepting all vaccines as unconditionally good and demonizing anyone with questions, increasing pharmaceutical industry incomes six-fold this century and bringing annual corporate returns like 9% in the US and 4400% in developing countries. 

As a side note, it seems tragic that some of this enthusiasm has not found a cure or preventative for cancer. But, it appears that cancer may have become, for Big Pharma anyway, too profitable to cure. 

Western ruling class predilection for planning well in advance and then practicing has included many tabletop exercises beginning at least as early as Dark Winter in 2001,  Atlantic Storm (2005), a RAND tabletop exercise template (2006), Lockstep, Clever Together, Hack Attack, Smart Scramble (2010) [pdf], a WHO “Risk Communication” tabletop template  (2012), Clade X (2018), Crimson Contagion 2019, through Exercise 201 (2019).  The CDC in 2006 produced a handy series of slides for health departments, but they didn’t follow them in 2020, even though by the first of April SARS-CoV-2 was already over 2% in the US, which is Category 5, the highest on their Severity Index.

While the ruling class prepared their support troops, the corporate media/entertainment industry primed the public with a 2007 mini-series, a 2008 South Park episode in two parts, a board game in 2008, lots of films:  Outbreak 1995, I Am Legend 2007, Contagion 2011, Solanum Virus 2013, and Flare 2014 , Carriers 2009, 93 Days 2016, Pandemic 2016, Virus 2019, The Next Pandemic 2019, and Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak January, 2020.

There have also been those suddenly numerous viral outbreaks to study:  in 2003 SARS-CoV, 2009-10 H1N1 a new flu virus which emerged in the US, 2012 H5N1 (“bird flu”), 2014-16 Ebola, and 2015-16 Zika.  And, of course the 2017-18 flu season seemed to catch everyone off-guard with its virulence, despite Dr. Kawaoka’s prediction strategy:

The 2017-2018 influenza season was a high severity season with high levels of outpatient clinic and emergency department visits for influenza-like illness (ILI), high influenza-related hospitalization rates, and elevated and geographically widespread influenza activity for an extended period….The 2017-18 season was the first season to be classified as a high severity across all age groups. ~ US Center for Disease Control

The longest flu season in a decade followed in 2018-2019 consisting of two waves of the two common strains, (H1N1) and (H3N2).  These two flu seasons are significant because the origin of the virus has definitely not yet been substantiated by scientists.  For example, cases of COVID-19 have been detected in Spain in March 2019 (original), Italy in September 2019, New Jersey in November 2019, Los Angeles CA and France in December 2019. 

On July 17, 2019 two nursing homes in two communities in Fairfax County, Virginia reported dealing with a “deadly respiratory illness outbreak” that affected 63 residents, 3 of whom died, and 19 employees at one of the facilities.  Fifty-five miles away in Frederick Maryland two weeks later, on August 2, 2019, Ft. Detrick was temporarily closed due to safety concerns – two breaches in biosafety level 3 and 4 laboratories – in the nation’s original bioweapons facility.  “It was a voluntary stop” according to Col. E. Darrin Cox, who is now commander of USAMRIID. Just a coincidence.  Ft. Detrick reopened March 30, 2020.    

E-cigarettes were introduced in the US in August, 2006.  Thirteen years later in the busy summer of 2019, a “mysterious lung injury outbreak in the US, which is claimed to be associated with e-cigarette, or vaping, has affected 2,807 people and caused 68 deaths” by mid-February, Global Times reported.   Have any of these cases been retested for COVID-19?   Yes:  Though “no pathognomonic findings can distinguish EVALI from COVID-19” some young male patients test negative for COVID-19 but have vaped in the past 90 days before testing.    (View PDF Here)

False negatives for COVID testing, however, do occur and have been a problem in the US.  US lack of accurate COVID tests during the vaping illnesses (June 2019 – February 2020) no doubt increased confusion.  China, where vaping was introduced in 2003, has reported no EVALI cases.  Like COVID-19, EVALI may cause acute respiratory failure, constitutional complaints, and ground glass opacities on chest imaging, according to the NIH-sponsored University of Utah-led study quoted above. 

Numerous products in tech development and market testing coincided with pandemic preparation. Shipping began in May, 2020 for 50 million Covi-Pass Digital Health Passports (now called C-PASS™) to 25 European countries. Through a phone app, the program displays the user’s current color:  Green is A-OK, yellow is booster-time, and red is uh-oh as in this 4-minute video.

Last year, Gates-MIT developed a “quantum dot tattoo” that’s applied to the skin and read with a smart[sic]phone camera app and filter.  This is why he can deny planning to wed microchips with vaccines, although he did fund Microchips Biotech, Inc. in 2014, acquired by Dare in 2019, for development of a fertility regulating microchip for women.  

Vaccines delivering medicine plus data through infrared quantum dots (McHugh, 2019) readable on smart[sic]phones and other scanners bring us a step away from wearing our wallets – with their usual inclusions of currency and personal identification – just under our skin, to be periodically renewed along with our vaccine and data-dump updates.  Gates money was instrumental in founding ID2020 in 2014 to provide universal digital ID.

 The American Chemical Society convention in San Diego, August 2019 featured a microneedles skin patch  - developed in Sweden in 2016 - for medicine delivery.

Image:  Rajabi M, Roxhed N, Shafagh RZ, Haraldson T, Fischer AC, Wijngaart Wvd, et al. (2016) CC BY 4.0, Flexible and Stretchable Microneedle Patches with Integrated Rigid Stainless Steel Microneedles for Transdermal Biointerfacing. PLoS ONE 11(12): e0166330. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166330

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated more than $21 million towards developing a vaccine technology that uses a tattoo-like mechanism which injects invisible nanoparticles under the skin that is now being tested in a vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19.

 

The microneedle technology is also being wed to injectable technology, funded by [BMGF] which embeds under the skin a vaccination record visible by near infrared light that can be read by smartphone technology….with aims to enable “house-to-house” vaccine campaigns undertaken by people with “minimal training.”~ Celeste McGovern, Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures Fund Microchip Implant Vaccine Technology

Biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots, created by injecting quantum dots “with a copper indium selenide core and aluminum-doped zinc sulfide shell were tuned to emit in the NIR spectrum” (near-infrared).  Delivered by a microneedle patch, they can last well enough to still be readable after five years.  The study, “Biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots delivered to the skin by microneedle patches record vaccination” (link to abstract) was led by Kevin McHugh of MIT.  It’s worth clicking here for the full study, especially the photos, to better understand the concept.  The study was funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the Koch Institute. 

Robert Bridge, reporting on Strategic Culture in April, 2020:

Today, with the global service economy shut down to prevent large groups of infectious humans from assembling, it is easier to imagine a day when people are required to have their infrared ID ‘tattoo’ scanned in order to be granted access to any number of public venues. And from there, it requires little stretch of the imagination to see this same tracking nanotechnology being applied broadly across the global economy, where it could be used to eliminate the use of dirty money After all, if reusable bags are being outlawed over the coronavirus panic-demic, why should reusable cash get special treatment?...[G]eopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar provided a compelling argument that the coronavirus… which is driving the world towards a New Great Depression, is “being used as cover for the advent of a new, digital financial system, complete with a forced vaccine cum nanochip creating a full, individual, digital identity.

2019-2020

In the last quarter of 2019, the media were warning about the economy:

CNN:  5 of the world's biggest economies are at risk of recession

Business Insider:  Germany's economy just shrank, meaning Europe's biggest economy is 'teetering on the edge of recession'

The Washington Post:  9 key countries are on the verge of recession, driving fears the U.S. could follow

Brookings:  October 2019 update to TIGER: Sliding into synchronized stagnation

The Economist:  Prepare for an unusual kind of downturn

The giant, ever-inflating bubble seemed precarious again, a decade after its mini-reset.  Due to Western governments’ tactics of COVID-19 has exacerbated the recession which will continue and then worsen in 2021, setting the stage for the great digital currency reset, possibly with “stablecoin”.  Brookings observed in September:

The economic crisis is unprecedented in its scale: the pandemic has created a demand shock, a supply shock, and a financial shock all at once. ~Triggs and Kharas, 2020

With nearly half a billion people projected to fall into extreme poverty due to the COVID response, loss of income, high out-of-pocket costs for healthcare, food insecurity, increased unemployment levels, and lower educational attainment. These will all have a direct effect on morbidity and mortality worldwide in the longer term. ~  https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Non-Communicable-Diseases-and-COVID-19-A-Perfect-Storm--20200610-0007.html

Global capitalism has consolidated its clutch….The State is being privatized. The tendency is towards authoritarian forms of government.” ~ Prof Michel Chossudovsky, “Towards A New World Order? The Global Debt Crisis and the Privatisation of the State”, 5-3-20 

As we saw before, the ruling class is using COVID-19 to polish off the failed dollar economy which they’ve wrung dry...

by converting Covid-19 into an engineered shutdown of significant economic activity and the bankrupting of millions of small and medium-sized businesses. The managers of the dollar system are under urgent pressure to use new technology to centralize economic flows and preserve their control of the financial system. ~ Katherine Austin Fitts  https://home.solari.com/deep-state-tactics-101-the-covid-injection-fraud-its-not-a-vaccine/

The Western ruling class has played 2020 as a waiting game, pleading ignorance, lack of information or failure of imagination.  They’ve sown confusion, blamed adversaries, instigated then inflamed social divisions, all while inflating the market a bit longer.  Distract.  Divide.  Defuse.  Delay.  Why?  What are they waiting for?  A "Tyler Durden" Zero Hedge article describes a recent report by the head of Bank of America Global Research, Ethan Harris, on the "Covid Feedback Loop".  It describes a cycle whereby the number of COVID-19 cases forces lockdown, lockdown eases caseloads, lockdown is lifted, the economy recovers a bit reinfecting more people, forcing another lockdown, easing caseloads, relieving the economy again. 

This is an apt description of a strategy which accomplishes two things.  First, it stairsteps the economy downward so the ultimate intended crash will be more a culmination, less an abrupt catastrophe.  Second, it increases the number of cases and deaths.  For example, China's unity and governance brought everyone together during a strict lockdown, over in three months, followed by a nearly complete V-shaped economic recovery.  China has had 86,414 total cases (60/1 million population), while the US has had 12,274,726 cases (36,999/1 Million population).  Other Western countries have followed the same path as the US, as we saw at the beginning of this article. 

Early in 2021, holiday debt and the end of debt holidays, lost jobs and failing businesses, housing problems amid winter weather, and ordinary winter illnesses augmented by stress and COVID-19 (with possibly increased transmissibility) would be an ideal time for the Western ruling class to burst the bubble that’s long begged for a pin.  As James Howard Kunstler deftly phrased it, "The global banking system is ten-months pregnant with Rosemary's Baby." 

Once the bubble, now leaking, has burst, the ruling class can begin to buy up national, state, county, local and private assets, including water and other utilities, land, lakes, housing developments, whatever can be converted to profit.  They will take over businesses, gobbling up any remaining minnows, all for a fraction of current value.  And COVID-19, having infected nearly 60 million people globally with nearly one and a half million dead (and counting) has most severely impacted people by race/ethnicity, age and income.  It will be easier ending costly social programs when fewer people need them – freeing up billions for the ruling class.

At some point, we’ll reach Peak Fear. People in the West, shut in their homes for the winter (those who still have a home), will turn to their media tormentors for comfort.  Media will continue feeding the stress, channeling it against peers of the “wrong” persuasion, culminating America’s own color revolution begun in 2016 and possibly others in process across the globe.  That just may do it.

The panacea will no doubt arrive like the Deus-ex-Machina.  Here it is:  The Vaccine.  The Path Back to Normal.  Probably voluntary to start (having been primed with “mandatory” through the media, “voluntary” will seem less threatening) it will be inviting.  Voluntary will also be more practical. Manufacture and distribution of 330 million doses in the US alone will require numerous separate batches over time, the first going to the military and essential workers.  Normal, here we come!

Of course, it will be only a cheap basement-sale knock-off of “normal”.  And, only for those who are vaccinated. Whether app or microneedles implant or tatoo, delivery is sure to include much more than an RNAvaccine, if not initially, then in the near-certain requisite boosters required by the vaccine’s design as well as the virus’ talent for lingering in the body.  No doubt there will also be new correlated smart[sic]phone apps as well, gradually linking freedom of movement in public with digital currency, ID, vaccination schedule and any other data records.

The World Economic Forum site has devoted much of the year to the Great Reset, to make it all look very exciting, at least at first.  There may be lots of new building, purportedly “green”, new types of jobs, everything smart [sic], digitized, connected, responsive [sic] and part of a global movement!  Progress! 

To start, it may simply expose all that’s already in place in stores, at airports and hotels, with home appliances, each previously introduced separately while people weren’t adding them up.  Contacts, movements, creditworthiness, shopping habits, personality type, beliefs and attitudes, fines or police and court documents, complete medical history and healthcare correspondence.  Like the closet that hasn’t been cleaned in forever, there’s lots of information in there already that we’ve not thought about for a long time.

Unrestricted re-entry into the public sphere cannot restore jobs, favorite hangouts or relationships now gone.  Phone apps will do more – and control even more – than they do now. New jobs may seem exciting – getting a paycheck will be exciting – but lifestyle changes will definitely be part of the new normal. 

Dear Coincidence Theorists, what are the odds? 

Here’s your average 120-nanometer (nm) member of the Orthocoronavirinae gang – big guys in the virus world.  Name’s SARS, and he’s leaning against the wall of a tiny pulmonary alveolus, feeling restless, constricted, bored.  He’s looking for adventure and has got that viral urge to mutate and move on to a different, more interesting immune system than his current furry landlord has left to offer. Maybe if he changes his ORF8, cuts out a section, messes with his code….“Voila!”  Sensing a much bigger warmblood nearby, he jumps on the next exhale and catches a ride straight toward the hairless human and right up its nose.  Paradise! 

What are the odds that a virus’ mutation could happen in such a way as to be highly infectious to humans, evading their immune systems through a novel mutation and remaining in some of them for a long time, requiring continual highly profitable medical intervention?  What are the odds that the virus' mutation would create the pandemic the Western ruling class has been predicting and preparing for ever since they began building high containment bioweapons biomedical labs worldwide?  Or, resemble some of the viral mutations made in those very labs? 

Contingent deaths “Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19” Source: CDC

Or, reduce global population (through the virus and contingent deaths) particularly in those demographics dependent on unprofitable social programs and unable to satisfactorily contribute to the economy?  Or, provide an excuse to replace the old economy with the desired (by the ruling class) new one linked to IDs and a digital currency, leading to influence over, tracking and control of every human on the planet?  Or, reduce demand for global resources and make huge swaths of assets available for pennies on the dollar? 

And, renew Western ruling class dominance and global compliance through economic destruction?   Appear to originate in the US’ current greatest adversary, allowing the West to blame and further sanction them?  How about increasing the chaos planned for the 2020 US election, culminating in the color revolution planned since 2016?  The timing appears singularly serendipitous.  

Cue the Church Lady:  “Well, how conveeenient!”  (Here, if you were born after 1983.)

SARS-CoV-2 has accomplished much for the ruling class.  If it “jumped” directly from an animal, it was a bald eagle.  Its persistence in the human body, making vaccinations potentially ongoing for life for at least a portion of the global population (and reaping trillions for pharmaceutical corporations), is bad enough.  But, its true menace lies in its GOF/PPP provenance, i.e., we don’t know yet what else it’s capable of.  Nor do we know what’s next. 

To believe the appearance of this virus with its auspicious timing and world-altering effects, all supporting the prior trajectory of the Western ruling class, was the result of a chance mutation and random zoonotic leaping is Coincidence Theory of the highest order.  A true failure of imagination. 

Epilogue - Beyond 2020

People have pinned their hopes on the pandemic ending and things returning to normal – or to a better world that they can help fashion.  But there can be no return to what was already gone or never really there in the first place.  SARS-CoV-2 is a catalyst, an accelerant, an excuse, a Fall Guy, not a cause of destruction except to human bodies it infects. What it could destroy is the illusion in which we’ve lived.

Yes, this will crush the economy. It's meant to; it's been unavoidable and imminent for 11 years. Yes, it sucks. Yes, "our way of life" is drastically changing - had already changed in ways most people had not yet acknowledged. When we've all given each other a moment to scream in mourning, the question then becomes:   How do each of us want to move forward?

We are no longer living in a democracy, if we ever truly did.  News that counters the mainstream media is heavily censored.  Websites and online accounts of journalists with integrity are slandered, blocked or taken down, daily.  Constant blame, shame, and ad hominem attacks threaten anyone who dares to disagree with blatant nonsense, hypocrisy and lies.  Good, intelligent, hardworking people have been brainwashed into blind obedience of directives from "their" national leaders and into reprehensible censorship of their peers’ opinions – even their own opinions, or ability to form opinions.  The US is being shredded.  Razed.  Third-world-ized.  This cannot end well because no cushion remains to soften our fall. 

Mother Nature, though mostly absent from this article, is nevertheless omnipresent, omnipotent and unimpressed by our endgames.  She has her own. Going by atmospheric and planetary conditions created by her current humanoid tenants, she began housecleaning some time ago though we didn’t notice until the 1960s.  First, she ended our oil binge, giving us plenty of warning to wean off our addiction, warning we largely ignored.  Now her rapidly accelerating pace escapes our notice only through a willful effort (or, that comfy small box under the stairs). 

We’re rushing her a bit with “the most abrupt and widespread extinction” rate in 66 million years.  But, she’ll handle it much better than we will.  Our Anthropocene will indeed be Exceptional in its pitiful brevity, which appears set to end as soon as 2030, certainly well before 2100 or even 2050.  Our species will not be the last standing (that’s insects and bacteria), having lost habitat (i.e. the ability to grow food) before the epoch itself ends.

Technology?  The damaged worldview that’s created the vast majority of all technology makes it an adolescent’s toy.  It’s not going to save us, nor does it have time to replace us.  (And, all those “dog” and humanoid robots get their “life” from fossil-fueled electricity.)  All “modern” technology runs overwhelmingly on electricity generated by fossil fuels.    Regardless of “color”.  “Green alternatives” are no different.  Our ruling class’ scramble to drill more oil in every sea and ocean will simply speed the process.

Nor can we somehow stop using electricity to save ourselves.  That would cause the meltdown of all 440 nuclear power plants due to lack of cooling – and any place to deposit the radioactive waste not requiring constant energy attention – and would destroy the global dimming which at present is protecting us from the worst of the heat we’ve already created.  The timeframe is down to decades or years. There will be no negotiations, no mitigations, not even for homo sapiens exceptionalis moneybaggus psychopathicus. 

We can take some comfort in the fact that, if the Western ruling class decides to threaten either China or Russia with force, it will all be over in a flash.  Literally.  Neither will surrender sovereignty to the West, nor permit a unipolar world, regardless of the sacrifices they must make.  The suffering of both from Western policies for more than a century has been too vast and the memories remain fresh.  Their people have now rebuilt and tasted freedom.  They will not go back.  Nor, I believe, would either allow the other to fall.  It is in their own defense to prevent such an occurrence. For US-led Western nations to attempt force against them is omnicidal.  Which doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Nicaragua and a growing list of other nations, plus a good many people in the West will not submit, though they will – and they do – pay for their “insolence”.  All, no doubt, suspect the origins of the virus.  Articles on Middle Eastern and Eurasian websites have diplomatically asked for “more transparency” from the US.  But, for reasons aptly explained by Larry Romanoff here, they have otherwise held their tongues.  The Western ruling class has worked hard to weaken these countries into capitulation, but not succeeded. 

There’s no going back.  It’s so much bigger than all the malicious rubbish on any of the ruling class’ media. They’re not “trying to control us” – they already do.  They’re not “taking away our civil rights” – they already did.  Where were you?  The virus is not a “hoax” – it’s a serious weapon.  Wear a mask, for Pete’s sake, a good one, no valves, not a piece of cotton, and learn how to put it on and how not to wear it (funny - read it!).  And, if it even crosses your mind to worry whether your mask was made in China, see this and remember they’ve recovered.  Learn how to wash your hands and your groceries.  (Then read this for fun, to lighten up a bit.)  

No one wants a virus meant to never entirely go away.  The Western ruling class has done everything possible to spread it. Don’t help them.

Stop helping them hurt you.  Get out of the damned box.  Get OFF social [sic] media.  “The only winning move is not to play.”  If giant platforms were controlled by the people who use them, if they were there solely for us to communicate with each other (“open source, creative commons”), they’d be great.  They’re not.  (And, people who try to fight for an open internet don’t always live that long.)  They’re DOD/CIA funded from startup as the internet itself was, and controlled just as the hardware, worldwide undersea cables, the server farms and data centers (using terawatts of energy and contributing to worldwide emissions) are.

In other words, the Internet was hardwired to be a surveillance tool from the start.  No matter what we use the network for today…it always had a dual-use nature rooted in intelligence gathering and war. ~ Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley, p. 6

Get a dumb phone and an old computer – one that can’t see or hear you, one that works for you, not them.  When news sites tell you “What you need to know”, immediately ask yourself what exactly is it that they think you don’t “need to know”?  Get your news online from as many different non-Western countries as possible while they’re not yet censored.  Pick independent nations and websites, not wholly owned subsidiaries of the CIA.  Use alternative OS, browser, social media (if you must), video and here, movie, and email.  Disengage, step back and take a breath.  Go outside; hug a tree.  A wise colleague advises, “Live a life of excellence,” as the best way of facing a world crashing in on all sides.   

Put serious thought and effort into becoming as self-reliant as possible – taking back some of the power and independence they’ve stolen from you.  “Control oil/control nations. Control food/control people.”  So, grow some:  in your own garden, containers, in the on city rooftops, in community gardens.  Store food.  Store emergency supplies.  When the electricity fails and trucks aren’t delivering on schedule, what essentials can’t you supply for yourself somehow?  How can you start to fill in the gaps and who could help you, or needs your help? 

No amount of preparation can change what’s happening, but it can make us less immediately vulnerable, give us the breathing space in which to find our own way to face it all – on our own terms, not theirs. If you are independent-minded, that will make a difference to you.  Resetting our lives outside of, independent from the system that “Doesn’t care about you at all-at all-at all” is both difficult and immensely freeing.    

Once you’ve got your own oxygen mask on, go wherever your skills and passions lead. Our hearts are hurting; if we open them and let them lead us, it will help.  Fight back in some way, if it’s your path; lose yourself in whatever and whomever you love.  Get in touch with friends via cards, letters and phone calls. (Remember them?) Spend time outdoors and with plants and animals.  Most of all, stay aware how precious each moment is and make it count. 

If we cannot wrap our heads around the enormity of what’s happening and change our lives accordingly, it will be our failure of imagination. 

“Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.”

~ President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Feb. 23, 1942

Author

Caren Black , MA, MEd is an experienced researcher, writer and educator with four decades in teaching and educational administration overlapping with two decades in music, dance/choreography, and children’s theater directing and tech, and another decade in small business/consulting, another two in community and nonprofit activism.  Her writing includes children’s musicals, numerous articles, two books on education, and research work.  She blogs at TEOLAWKI Times for TitanicLifeboatAcademy.org where she’s site editor. In self-sufficient exile from the Western system since 2004, she lives on a homestead and raises chickens, ducks and sometimes awareness.

Appendix

Our Crowd (1967), The Grandees (1971), Real Lace (1973), The Rest of Us (1984) and America’s Secret Aristocracy (1987) are all Birmingham.  Frederic Morton’s The Rothschilds (1961), numerous volumes by Ferdinand Lundberg (1936-1994),; G. William Domhoff ‘s Who Rules America? (continuously in print, with updates), The Higher Circles (1970), The Bohemian Grove (1974), The Power Elite and the State: How Policy Is Made in America (1990), State Autonomy or Class Dominance? Case Studies on Policy Making in America (1996), David Rothkopf’s Superclass (2008) and Power, Inc. (2012), or Peter Phillips’ Giants (2018) with its annotated list of “the top 389 most powerful players in world capitalism” illuminate.

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