Empire of Clowns vs. Yellow Peril

 June 14, 2021

By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times

Global South will be unimpressed by new B3W infrastructure scheme funded by private Western interests out for short-term profit 

It requires major suspension of disbelief to consider the G7, the self-described democracy’s most exclusive club, as relevant to the Raging Twenties. Real life dictates that even accounting for the inbuilt structural inequality of the current world system the G7’s economic output barely registers as 30% of the global total.

Cornwall was at best an embarrassing spectacle – complete with a mediocrity troupe impersonating “leaders” posing for masked elbow bump photo ops while on a private party with the 95-year-old Queen of England, everyone was maskless and merrily mingling about in an apotheosis of “shared values” and “human rights”.

Quarantine on arrival, masks enforced 24/7 and social distancing of course is only for the plebs.

The G7 final communique is the proverbial ocean littered with platitudes and promises. But it does contain a few nuggets. Starting with ‘Build Back Better’ – or B3 – showing up in the title. B3 is now official code for both The Great Reset and the New Green Deal.

Then there’s the Yellow Peril remixed, with the “our values” shock troops “calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms” with a special emphasis on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

The story behind it was confirmed to me by a EU diplomatic source, a realist (yes, there are some in Brussels).

All hell broke loose inside the – exclusive – G7 room when the Anglo-American axis, backed by spineless Canada, tried to ramrod the EU-3 plus Japan into an explicit condemnation of China in the final communiqué over the absolute bogus concentration camp “evidence” in Xinjiang. In contrast to politicized accusations of “crimes against humanity”, the best analysis of what’s really going on in Xinjiang has been published by the Qiao collective.

Germany, France and Italy – Japan was nearly invisible – at least showed some spine. Internet was shut off to the room during the really harsh “dialogue”. Talk about realism – a true depiction of “leaders” vociferating inside a bubble.

The dispute essentially pitted Biden – actually his handlers – against Macron, who insisted that the EU-3 would not be dragged into the logic of a Cold War 2.0. That was something that Merkel and Mario ‘Goldman Sachs’ Draghi could easily agree upon.

In the end the divided G7 table chose to agree on a Build Back Better World – or B3W – “initiative” to counter-act the Chinese-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Reset or else

The White House, predictably, pre-empted the final G7 communiqué. A statement later retracted from their website, replaced by the official communique, made sure that, “the United States and our G7 partners remains deeply concerned by the use of all forms of forced labor in global supply chains, including state-sponsored forced labor of vulnerable groups and minorities and supply chains of the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors – the main supply chains of concern in Xinjiang.”

“Forced labor” is the new mantra handily connecting the overlapping demonization of both Xinjiang and BRI. Xinjiang is the crucial hub connecting BRI to Central Asia and beyond. The new “forced labor” mantra paves the way for B3W to enter the arena as the “savior” human rights package.

Here we have a benign G7 “offering” the developing world a vague infrastructure plan that reflects their “values”, their “high standards” and their way of business, in contrast to the Yellow Peril’s trademark lack of transparency, horrible labor and environmental practices, and coercion methods.

Translation: after nearly 8 years since BRI, then named OBOR (One Belt, One Road) was announced by President Xi, and subsequently ignored and/or demonized 24/7, the Global South is supposed to be marveling at a vague “initiative” funded by private Western interests whose priority is short-term profit.

As if the Global South would fall for this remixed IMF/World Bank-style debt abyss. As if the “West” would have the vision, the appeal, the reach and the funds to make this scheme a real “alternative”.

There are zero details on how B3W will work, its priorities and where capital is coming from. B3W idealizers could do worse than learn from BRI itself, via Professor Wang Yiwei.

B3W has nothing to do with a trade/sustainable development strategy geared for the Global South. It’s an illusionist carrot dangling over those foolish enough to buy the notion of a world divided between “our values” and “autocracies”.

We’re back to the same old theme: armed with the arrogance of ignorance, the “West” has no idea how to understand Chinese values. Confirmation bias applies. Hence China as a “threat to the West”.

We’re the builders of choice

More ominously, B3W is yet another arm of the Great Reset.

To dig deeper into it, one could do worse than examining Building a Better World For All, by Mark Carney.

Carney is a uniquely positioned player: former governor of the Bank of England, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, adviser to PM Boris “Global Britain” Johnson and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, and a trustee of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Translation: a major Great Reset, New Green Deal, B3W ideologue.

His book – which should be read in tandem with Herr Schwab’s opus on Covid-19 – preaches total control on personal freedoms as well as a reset on industry and corporate funding. Carney and Schwab treat Covid-19 as the perfect “opportunity” for the reset, whose benign, altruistic spin emphasizes a mere “regulation” of climate, business and social relations.

This Brave New Woke World brought to you by an alliance of technocrats and bankers – from the WEF and the UN to the handlers of hologram “Biden” – until recently seemed to be on a roll. But signs in the horizon reveal it’s far from a done deal.

Something uttered by B3W stalwart Tony Blair way back in January is quite an eye-opener: “It’s going to be a new world altogether… The sooner we grasp that and start to put in place the decisions [needed for a] deep impact over the coming years the better.”

So here Blair, in a Freudian slip, not only gives away the game (“deep impact over the coming years”, “new world altogether”) but also reveals his exasperation: the sheep are not being corralled as fast as necessary.

Well, Tony knows there’s always good old punishment: if you refuse the vaccine, you should remain under lockdown.

BBW, incidentally, accounts for a heterodox category of porn flics. B3W in the end may reveal itself as no more than toxic social porn.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Thinking Beyond The Great Reset To The Unthinkable

 By Kevin Smith

Source

Has anyone got a conspiracy theory I can borrow, mine have all come true?

God Save Us From Celebrities

I guess I’m not unique in disliking most modern-day celebrities. I hate their tendency for identity politics and virtual signaling while at the same time demonstrating breath-taking hypocrisy, aculture which has filtered down to us.

During the lockdown restrictions, close behind many politicians and scientists who’ve broken their own unnecessary and ridiculous rules, it’s always the celebrities doing the opposite of what they preach to theirTwitterfollowers.

The matter that has recently annoyed me is celebrities coming out telling the public to take the Covid vaccines. But not their Vitamin D or spinach, more on that later.  This strikes me as incredibly reckless given the vaccine is experimental and independent scientists are raising concerns on so many levels.

But these experts are excluded from mainstream debate, so to a degree you might understand the ignorance in vast swathes of the population. 

However, I think advising people to take the vaccine, or not, is not for celebrities.

As I said previously it is all about informed consent of the individual and weighing up the risk versus benefits. 

Anyway, here’s some of my latest observations and thoughts on Covid-19, each time I return to write here they’ve evolved yet further, as mad just gets madder. 

Enter The Black Celebs – Lenny Henry And Co.

Today I overheard one TV set blaring out in a room in my house speak of the take-up of vaccines among ethnic-minority Britons being lower than the general population. I’ve heard this before and there are probably a number of different reasons.  They’ve now wheeled out the black celebrities to persuade everyone to be vaccinated. 

Certainly, there will be religious and cultural and I suspect historical rooted objections which have filtered down generations. I’ve heard someone say black ethnic-minorities are generally skeptical of ‘white man’s vaccines’ and I suppose the closer-knit structure of these communities tends to mean more will follow the lead of their relatives over government minister’s, media hacks and celebrities, such as Lenny Henry. 

I’m middle-aged and white, though not unqualified to speak.   I have two ex-sister- in laws and nieces of WestIndian heritage, from one I hear her mother and sister have said they are not having the vaccine.  And my elder niece refuses, referring to the ‘New World Order’ and sinister agendas which may well include vaccines.

My ex-wife is from Serbia so our two children therefore are half-Serb and bi-lingual from an early age.   A few years ago, I used to complain to my then-wife that the BBC News was on constantly in the house and after the NATO bombing campaign of her country. I asked why on earth she still watched it. 

Perhaps during our difficult relationship, she did it to spite me, a kind of psychological warfare to get me to leave home.  Yet, despite the NATO destruction of her country, she still seems to largely accept the illusion of reality the BBC spin out on present day matters. 

However, on a more positive note, I hear there is at least some skepticism for this vaccine from my sons still living at home with the BBC, particularly in terms of fertility and it has any benefit for their age-group.  That’s probably more skepticism than you will come across in the average UK household.    

But these examples aside, generally in ethnic communities perhaps there are more sensitivities and less trust and automatic acceptance of authority. 

I used to quite like Lenny Henry but what black person would listen to him now?  He’s past his sell-by date.  Besides, I always viewed him as someone who has not really got involved in black issues before in any meaningful way.  

 I hope following the Queen’s disgraceful intervention on this vaccine and that of other corrupt officials will have the opposite effect and make their audience sit up and wonder why such pressure and coercion is necessary for a ‘miracle vaccine’. 

These events got me thinking more about certain recent disturbing articles and clips I’ve reviewed about Covid-19, lockdowns and vaccines, which go even further beyond the horrors of the Great Reset.

This also led me to the question, why are celebrities doing this? And why are people wearing masks outside and even on their Twitter profile? I think a lot of it is general fear and ignorance. But it strikes me some are trying to make a statement and, more recently, some of this behavior has started to really creep me out. 

Dumb Or Complicit? 

Now that’s the big question.  Are these celebrities and others mentioned somehow complicit with the wider agenda which is the Great Reset and possibly far worse? 

Or are they simply dumb, reading off a government script? My view, it’s possibly a mixture of both.   Some surely can’t believe what they are saying, others do but work on a vaccine premise provided to them by the government, no matter if it makes no sense after 10 minutes of reflection.  

Obviously, the fear factor of Covid-19 has entered into the minds of many.  Fear causes irrational behavior.  But are there other are factors in play? 

Various Theories And The Alleged Depopulation Agenda? 

Recently I’ve started to wonder if David Icke has a point. After all, he’s been right on many things.  And he’s not been the only commentator with similar views about what is truly the driving force behind Klaus Schwarb, Bill Gates, their cronies and their eco-communist agendas.  

In the above clip, he suggests that part of the reason people are becoming disconnected from reality is due to the material in vaccines and a deliberate attempt by the shadowy elites pushing and profiting from them to disconnect our senses and effectively remove the soul from people. 

I can’t endorse this theory. In fact, to me it sounds unlikely.  But I can no longer dismiss the theories I’m hearing purely because such scenarios are too calculating and evil for comprehension.  The elites and their puppets have shown how evil they are given what we now know about their attempt to bring about the Great Reset through the backdoor to enslave and impoverish humanity. 

Months ago, I would have dismissed any of this talk as too unbelievable to entertain.  In my view, after what has gone on this last 12 months, I think we all need to keep an open mind on everything Covid-19 related. 

Last week I came across quite a convincing clip that Covid-19 was man-made and deliberately released across the world.   

Motive, means and opportunity. And past track record too. 

And I’ve watched a lot of presentations about the vaccines, many people, including serious commentators such as Dr Michael Yeadon and Dr Vernon Coleman, suggesting they may be related to an intention to depopulate the world. 

It appears the Great Reset has an agenda to reduce population and towards ‘sustainability’. I don’t think a few months ago, many would have equated this agenda to some present-day predictions that they wish to wipe out 90% of the world’s present population. 

But given everything that has happened this last 12 months, almost 100% of Covid-19 and lockdown narratives being outright, proven lies, the rapid rollout of experimental ‘vaccines’ and the coercing of millions to take it, I really think more of us should wake up to the possibility something is seriously wrong.   

From a collective sum-up of circumstantial evidence and my instinct, such ‘conspiracy theories’ should be entertained.    As the saying goes “have you any conspiracy theories I can borrow, mine have all turned out true?”. 

The links above explain the means they could do this, ranging from the vaccines themselves to pathogenic priming when the vaccinated are exposed to the wild virus again.   

At the moment, the pathogenic priming  scenario worries me and perhaps is the most convincing scientific explanation for how we could all be done away with, either intentionally or not. 

The other day I came across this presentation.  It probably represents the so-called fringe on the Christian Right.

It makes the assertion that humanity is about to enter a new dark period, famines, war and mass depopulation, much of which was written in sections of the bible. Outlandish it may be for some but it seems to fit in with the many various events around the world in recent times.

Don’t close your mind to any of this.  Research the motives and don’t accept that such evil on this scale doesn’t exist.  It does. It’s just whether such evil is prevalent enough in elite society and has spread its tentacles to our governments, media, other institutions and even the general public. 

Some Suggestions 

As I said before, there’s very little doubt the Great Reset is upon us. That is evil enough.   Stay vigilant for possibly even worse.  If there’s a god as many believe, then there’s a devil. 

Humanity may be on the back foot right now, but these are a few things I recommend. This clip from Vernon Colman is useful but here’s some of mine. 

1)The Power Of Spinach, Vitamin D, And Zinc 

In these times where the elites are attempting a global coup and possibly our demise, strengthening our psychological and immune systems could be vital.  So, I conducted an experiment on a few family members.  

Before the trial, they wore trendy masks, seemed brain-dead and had a docile yet hostility to sceptic-lockdown narratives.

Over a period of 3 days, I fed them a diet of a type of beef/spinach casserole (a Serbian dish with original Turkish origins) and mixed in some Zinc and Vitamin D pills.  In every instance, each patient emerged with a healthy glow in the face and was lucid and socially engaging for 7 days following. Try it.   

2) Depopulate The Celebrities 

Turn off the TV and celebrity Twitter profiles. 

3) Pray To God

For protection but also patience and forgiveness to others. Have faith that there is a God who will protect the good and aware on this planet against the evil.

At present I find my faith keeps me going. I feel my prayers are answered and are being listened to.  I tentatively became involved in religion 5 years ago after a life-changing experience.  I feel I was saved to be able to carry out the work I was destined for.  

That is to write articles for OneWorld Press and one day be personally decorated by President Putin.  

Seriously gang, religious or not, be strong have faith. Laugh. Good always overcomes evil. 

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Our lives between the covers of the Raging Twenties

March 11, 2021

By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times

I have a new book out, Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism. For those who don’t use Amazon, here is a mini-guide on how to order and buy the book.

The Triumph of Death, fresco by an unknown artist, housed in a palazzo in Palermo. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The journey of a book finding its readers is always an idiosyncratic, mysterious and fascinating process. To set the scene, permit me a short presentation drawn from the book’s introduction.

The Raging Twenties started with a murder: a missile strike on General Soleimani at Baghdad airport on January 3. Almost simultaneously, that geopolitical lethality was amplified when a virus trained its microscopic missiles on all of humankind.

Ever since, it’s been as if time had stood still – or imploded. We cannot even begin to imagine the consequences of the anthropological rupture caused by SARS-CoV-2.

Throughout the process, language has been metastasizing, yielding a whole new basket of concepts. Circuit breaker. Biosecurity. Negative feedback loops. State of exception. Necropolitics. New brutalism. Hybrid neofascism. New viral paradigm.

This new terminology collates to the lineaments of a new regime, actually a hybrid mode of production: turbo-capitalism re-engineered as rentier capitalism 2.0, where Silicon Valley behemoths take the place of estates, and also of the state. That is the “techno-feudal” option, as defined by economist Cedric Durand.

Squeezed and intoxicated by information performing the role of a dominatrix, we have been presented with a new map of Dystopia – packaged as a “new normal” featuring cognitive dissonance, a bio-security paradigm, the inevitability of virtual work, social distancing as a political program, info-surveillance and triumphant trans-humanism.

A sanitary shock was superimposed over the ongoing economic shock – where financialization always takes precedence over the real economy.

But then the glimpse of a rosy future was offered towards more “inclusive “capitalism, in the form of a Great Reset, designed by a tiny plutocratic oligarchy duly self-appointed as Saviors.

All of these themes evolve along the 25 small chapters of this book, interacting with the larger geopolitical chessboard.

SARS-CoV-2 accelerated what was already a swing of the power center of the world toward Asia.

Since World War II, a great deal of the planet has lived as cogs of a tributary system, with the hegemon constantly transferring wealth and influence to itself – via what analyst Ray McGovern describes as the SS (security state) enforcing the will of the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex.

This world-system is irretrievably fading out – especially due to the interpolations of the Russia-China strategic partnership. And that’s the other overarching theme of this book.

As a proposal to escape our excess hyper-reality show, this book does not offer recipes, but trails: configurations where there’s no master plan, but multiple entryways and multiple possibilities.

These trails are networked to the narrative of a possible, emerging new configuration, in the anchoring essay titled Eurasia, The Hegemon and the Three Sovereigns.

In a running dialogue, you will have Michel Foucault talking to Lao Tzu, Marcus Aurelius talking to Vladimir Putin, philosophy talking to geoeconomics – all the while attempting to defuse the toxic interaction of the New Great Depression and variations of Cold War 2.0.

With the exception of the anchoring essay, this is a series of columns, arranged chronologically, originally published here by Asia Times and also by Consortium News/Washington D.C., and Strategic Culture/Moscow, widely republished and translated across the Global South.

They come from a global nomad. Since the mid 1990s I have lived and worked between (mostly) East and West. With the exception of the first two months of 2020, I spent the bulk of the Raging Twenties in Asia, in Buddhist land.

So you will feel that the scent of these words is inescapably Buddhist, but in many aspects even more Daoist and Confucianist. In Asia we learn that the Dao transcends everything as it provides serenity. There’s much we can learn from Daoist humanism, no metaphysics necessary.

The year 2021 may be even fiercer than 2020. Yet nothing condemns us to be lost in a wilderness of mirrors while, as Pound writes:

a tawdry cheapness / shall reign throughout our days.

The hidden “secret” of this book may be actually a yearning – that we’re able to muster our inner strength and choose a Daoist trail to ride the whale.

---

Pepe Escobar’s new book is Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism.

 Follow him on Telegram.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Xi and Putin make the case for win-win vs. zero-sum

February 02, 2021

By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times

So the Davos Agenda has come and gone.

That was the virtual Great Reset preview, hosted by Kissinger acolyte cum World Economic Forum (WEF) oracle Herr Klaus Schwab.

Still, corporate/political so-called “leaders” will continue to wax lyrical about the Fourth Industrial Revolution – or its mild spin-offs such as Build Back Better, the favorite slogan of the new White House tenants.

The WEF co-sponsors – from the UN and the IMF to BlackRock, Blackstone and the Carlyle Group – will continue to expand their synchronicity with Lynn Forester de Rothschild and her corporate-heavy Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican – pop Pope Francis at the helm.

And yes, they accept Visa.

Predictably, the two really crucial events at Davos received minimal or non-existent coverage across the wobbly West: the speeches by President Xi and President Putin.

We have already highlighted Xi’s essentials. Aside from arguing a powerful case for multilateralism as the only possible road map to deal with global challenges, Xi stressed nothing substantial may be achieved if the inequality gap between North and South is not reduced.

The best in-depth analysis of Putin’s extraordinary speech , hands down, was provided by Rostislav Ishchenko, whom I had the pleasure to meet in Moscow in 2018.

Ishchenko stresses how, “in terms of scale and impact on historical processes, this is steeper than the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk combined.” The speech, he adds, was totally unexpected, as much as Putin’s stunning intervention at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, “the crushing defeat” imposed on Georgia in 2008, and the return of Crimea in 2014.

Ishchenko also reveals something that will never be acknowledged in the West: “80 people from among the most influential on the planet did not laugh in Putin’s face, as it was in 2007 in Munich, and without noise immediately after his open speech signed up for a closed conference with him.”

Putin’s very important reference to the ominous 1930s – “the inability and unwillingness to find substantive solutions to problems like this in the 20^th century led to World War 2 catastrophe” – was juxtaposed with a common sense warning: the necessity of preventing the takeover of global policy by Big Tech , which “are de facto competing with states”.

Xi and Putin’s speeches were de facto complementary – emphasizing sustainable, win-win economic development for all actors, especially across the Global South, coupled with the necessity of a new socio-political contract in international relations.

This drive should be based on two pillars: sovereignty – that is, the good old Westphalian model (and not Great Reset, hyper-concentrated, one world “governance”) and sustainable development propelled by techno-scientific progress (and not techno-feudalism).

So what Putin-Xi proposed, in fact, was a concerted effort to expand the basic foundations of the Russia-China strategic partnership to the whole Global South: the crucial choice ahead is between win-win and the Exceptionalist zero-sum game.

Regime-change that commie!

The Xi-Putin road map is already being examined in excruciating detail by Michael Hudson, for instance in this essay based on the first chapter of his upcoming book Cold War 2.0: The Geopolitical Economics of Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism. Many of these themes have been elaborated in a recent conversation/interview between Michael and myself.

The whole Global South is figuring out how the contrast could not be starker between the American model – neoliberalism redux, in the form of turbo-financialization – and East Asia’s productive investment in industrial capitalism.

Alastair Crooke has outlined the dubious “appeal” of the American model, including “asset markets…severed from any connection to economic returns”; markets that “are not free, but Treasury managed”; and “enterprise capitalism…morphed into monopolistic oligarchism”.

The glaring counterpoint to Xi-Putin at Davos has been a so-called “strategy paper” released by NATO think tank The Atlantic Council, pompously titled The Longer Telegram, as if this was as relevant as George Kennan’s 1946 Long Telegram that designed the containment of the USSR.

Well, the least one can say to the anonymous “former senior government official with deep expertise” on China is, “Mr. Anonymous, You’re No George Kennan”. At best, we’re dealing with a sub-Mike Pompeo with a massive hangover.

Amidst a tsunami of platitudes, we learn that China is a “revisionist power” that “presents a serious problem for the whole of the democratic world”; and that the Chinese leadership better get its act together and operate “within the US-led liberal international order rather than building a rival order”.

The usual toxic mix of arrogance and condescension totally gives away the game, which boils down to “deterring and preventing China from crossing US red lines”, and applying good, old Kissingerian Divide and Rule between Russia and China.

Oh, and don’t forget regime change: if the “strategy” works, “Xi will in time be replaced by the more traditional form of Communist Party leadership.”

If this is what passes for intellectual firepower in Atlanticist circles, Beijing and Moscow don’t even need enemies.

The Asian center of gravity

Martin Jacques, now a visiting professor at Tsinghua University and a senior fellow at the China Institute of Fudan University, is one of the very few Westerners who actually has real “expertise” on China.

He’s now focusing on the main battlefield in the evolving US-China clash: Europe. Jacques notes that, “the trend toward a growing distance between Europe and the US will be slow, tortuous, conflict-riddled, and painful.” We are now “in new territory. American decline means that it has increasingly less to offer Europe.”

As an example, let’s jump cut to a distinct feature of the BRI/New Silk Roads and one of its key hubs, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): the Digital Silk Road .

In partnership with Huawei, fiber optic cable is being laid out all across Pakistan – as I saw for myself when I traveled the Karakoram Highway, the northern part of CPEC. This fiber optic cable all the way from the Karakoram to Balochistan will link with the Pakistan-East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) submarine cable in the Arabian Sea.

The end result will be high-end connectivity between a host of BRI-participating nations and Europe – as the Mediterranean section is already being laid, running from Egypt to France. Before the end of 2021, the whole 15,000 km-long fiber optic cable will be online.

This shows that BRI is not as much about building roads, dams and high-speed rail networks but especially the Digital Silk Road, intimately connected with state of the art Chinese cyber-tech.

It’s no wonder Jacques fully understands how “the gravitational pull of China, and Asia more generally, is drawing Europe eastward. Nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.”

In ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, an extraordinary book published way back in 1998, the late, great Andre Gunder Frank exhaustively smashed Eurocentrism, demonstrating how the rise of the West was a mere historical blip, and a consequence of the decline of the East around 1800.

Now, only two centuries later, the planet’s center of gravity is back in Asia, as it’s been for most of recorded history. The fate of those blind to the evidence and unable to adapt is to telegram themselves to utter irrelevance.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Our Children, Lockdowns, And The Great Reset

By Kevin Smith

Source

Over recent years, I’ve found that relying on life experience, critical thinking and instinct has served me well. I feel I can now think on so many levels than before. Children have this in abundance which we need to learn from. But too much academic learning at an early age often means they leave school with their critical thinking abilities seriously impaired by a system designed to turn out compliant robots.

Many of us will by now have heard of ‘The Great Reset’ and considered how this could affect the future of their children.

I’m sure most parents can recall big or important events and fond memories of their children growing up. My most vivid memories are the funny ones.

These are true stories.

In 1998, my son at the age of 5 was knocked down by a car. He broke his femur bone but had no other injuries.

He had just weeks earlier started school. His teacher at the time described him as ‘chatterbox’ but an intelligent one.

Yet, following the accident, for 6 weeks his leg had to remain in traction in hospital. My wife and I had to spend alternative nights sleeping there beside him.

When it was my turn, after my wife went home, I recall my son shared my love of the Simpsons and Bruce Lee movies, which we watched on TV in the evening.

Due to the time he was in hospital, he was assigned a personal tutor.

Generally, he responded well to probably what was better teaching than he would receive in his class of 30.

But I will never forget one scene in the hospital. My family were all there, including my 3-year old younger son, who permanently wore a Fireman Sam outfit with the helmet.

That day the teacher told my son off for being a chatterbox. She turned her back for a moment and my son took his willy out of his pants and waved it around in defiance. Not appropriate behaviour for this day and age, but he was just 5, it was over 20 years ago – and the teacher didn’t see it.

Watching this scene and of Fireman Sam bursting into hysterical fits of laughter remains with me to this day.

Another funny memory was not long after when he was back home. I used to spend a lot of time watching films with my older son. I remember we sat together for 90 minutes watching the cartoon type version of ‘Hercules’. We were both engrossed throughout.

As the credits rolled, he turned me yawning and said “Dad, what the hell was that all about?”

That same Christmas my mum recalls saying to him, “What do you think Father Christmas will bring you this year”? He turned to her with a look of amazement and said “I’m sorry to tell you Nanna, but Father Christmas doesn’t exist”

At 10, my younger son wanted to play football. He was very tall and quite big for his age and a little clumsy but loved to play sports.

Anyway, I signed him up to Saturday football. With all the smaller, fast and nimble footballers on the field, he rarely saw sight of the ball. The other kids gave him a hard time but he never complained or retaliated.

But the best and most comical moment was when one Saturday the ball was amazingly passed to him. He took it with skill.

He was immediately surrounded by about 3 or 4 of the nimble kids who like skittles at the same moment, fell in a heap, claiming a foul. There was some contact, but not much. My son scored and the goal stood.

I’m so proud that for his perseverance against these smaller bullies, he won ‘most improved footballer of the year award’. He could easily have given up.

Just recently I’ve been picking up my 13-year niece from school. She has an amazing, enquiring mind but is clearly bored with school.

So, I try and draw out her strengths and every day I’d explain the meaning of a new word or provide some wisdom. For example, recently I explained to her what the word ‘discerning’ meant and the importance of keeping an open mind.

The other day I explained about the word ‘incentive’. I explained it as positivity as I could and in terms of well-earned bonuses I received at work. Her response “Uncle Kevin, that rather sounds like bribery.”

My elder niece now has children of her own, but I still regard her from the same generation. Her message to her children is if the school try to jab them with Covid-19 vaccine to refuse and ‘punch the lights out’ of anyone approaching with a needle.

I’m sure many readers will relate to the above stories.

Parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents will always relate to the funny, innocent and incredible insight and resolve of their young relatives.

Our children are special. Right now, there are things we should learn from them. But it’s also our responsibility to wake up and think how we can shield them from the on-going madness.

I read a quote somewhere that children are so bright because they have not yet learnt. That is so true and why we need to protect them in these times.

To some extent, many children are shielded by their parents from the fallout of Covid-19 and lockdowns.

Yet children aren’t being shielded enough from the general madness being inflicted on us all. The madness that affects them directly such as the fear of passing Covid-19 to granny, mask-wearing and school closures. Mental health concerns all of a sudden swept aside during lockdowns.

Most children have spent much of the last year home schooling, away from that all important social interaction, vital for their development. Mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are going through the roof.

As we’ve all discussed here, adults in general have retreated into a shell. They’ve stopped thinking, and when I venture out on to the streets of suburbia, they resemble a kind of zombie-land.

Ivor Cummins summed it up well in several interviews when asked why he continues his fight to bring out the truth about Covid-19. He gave two reasons. One, the fight for science. But first and foremost, to protect the future of his 5 children.

So, what can we take from the memories described above and similar experiences all parents have of their children? And positively apply these to life now to fight the reset agenda? Perhaps quite a bit.

Learning From Our Children

Be sceptical and question everything

Like my 5-year old son, raising grave doubts about Father Christmas and my niece’s insightful interpretation, as adults we need to raise our game. In a way, Covid-19 is like Father Christmas. Yes, contrary to my son’s scepticism, he may exist, but he’s not a big threat to young children.

But seriously, history is littered with examples of where being lazy and complacent in our thinking ends badly.

Be a bit rebellious and draw your red line.

I don’t suggest waving one’s willy around the place or to punch anyone’s lights out, although it might come to that one day. But there are various ways of making a stand My red line is when they make masks mandatory outdoors. For now, I’ll go along with indoor wearing pointless masks in shops as for certain personal reasons, it’s just not worth the bother. Find your red line and fight tooth and nail when it’s breached.

Always stand up to bullies

This is something I learned, too late in life.

My older niece is an example of someone who won’t compromise on her core beliefs. Perhaps this a result of having a more difficult childhood. Nevertheless, we should instil values in our children to fight for our beliefs on the main matters.

The imminent threat is one of tyranny with the Great Reset which threatens all our futures. There are various ways of standing up to bullying, as my younger son discovered.

He fought from within and become a better person by participating and refusing to be side-lined.

In terms of modern-day challenges, adults are often forced to take on a more outside activist role. Either way, history always rewards those who resolve to remain independent and determined. Such people will determine our future rather than those who simply follow the crowd.

Instinct, creativity and education.

Over recent years, I’ve found that relying on life experience, critical thinking and instinct has served me well. I feel I can now think on so many levels than before.

Children have this in abundance which we need to learn from. But too much academic learning at an early age often means they leave school with their critical thinking abilities seriously impaired by a system designed to turn out compliant robots.

Occasionally when I’m stuck with a problem or idea, I ask my young niece what she would do. More often than not she comes back with an instant solution or a great idea, something I’d never thought of.

Parents need to balance the value of qualifications against drawing out their natural strengths to produce well rounded, creative children with a good overall understanding of the core subjects and life.

This is possibly a good example of the creative approach my young relatives then or a child now might take to solving a problem. This is an exchange of readers on the site ‘Off Guardian’ recently. The replies put the entire onus on an employer proposing a ridiculous request of their employees, and in my experience is an effective strategy.

Protecting our children.

Above all, we need to put concern about our kids as our top priority. Although this is obvious, I think in the present climate of fear our priorities have not always focused on this. So, it’s about creating a new sense of self-awareness.

I suppose at this stage we can only protect our children if we learn a few lessons from them. And wake up to the potential nightmare which threatens their future.

One lesson I learned, and everyone will have experienced, is being in a bad situation and wondering how you will recover. My son being in the hospital took me down that road. Yet 6 weeks later, he was better, and I now have nothing but lovely memories of that time. Things usually get better if you take things one day at a time.

But we must not be complacent. Major life-changing events, wars, etc., always happen in a lifetime. We can’t assume we can permanently carry on as usual as there’s always a threat to deal with.

To fight we have to realise that we are in a fight and that’s the challenge right now. Realisation of the reset agenda is the first goal. Then the fight starts and we have tools at our disposal.

And during these times, we need to draw upon the type of memories of children as I’ve mentioned.

Innocence, honesty, being inquisitive, humour, rebelliousness, determination and creative thinking. All things if you look at in your children today, or in the memories of the past, you will find in plentiful supply. We need to defend these things like mad to deal with all the imminent challenges now facing us.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Xi reads the Multilateral Riot Act at Davos

 

January 26, 2021

by Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times

The virtual Davos Agenda is finally on, from Monday to Friday this week, promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

No, this is not The Great Reset. At least not yet. The Agenda is the aperitivo towards the Great Reset apotheosis at the WEF’s Special Annual Meeting, which will take place this coming spring in Singapore.

The Agenda’s theme for 2021 is “A Crucial Year to Rebuild Trust.”

Oops. Davos, we got a problem: trust is always earned, never built.

Trust, anyway, in Davos speak, must always lead towards – what else – the Great Reset, introduced here in a Tik Tok-ready clip crammed with catchy slogans such as “a new dashboard for the new economy” or “right people, right place, right time”.

The message clincher is “tune in, turn on, get involved”, borrowing shamelessly from 1960s Timothy Leary (but ditching “drop out”).

It obviously escaped the clip’s producers that their P.R. opus indirectly admits to rigged elections and blanket censorship on social media.

The Agenda’s P.R. blitz must have a hard time dismissing the predominant perception this is all about Davos Man – and Woman – losing their sleep over global wealth inequality while enthusiastically applauded by a bunch of glitterati sociopaths.

Onwards with the sessions.

Here’s your new social contract

On day one, a “Leadership Panel” examined

How to restore growth, advising the public and private sectors on how to build a “new economic agenda”. Sleep-inducing platitudes were the norm.

WEF’s Agenda sessions cannot possibly address the iron imperative: the implosion of the old economic order under a Green camouflage, conducted by self-appointed, sub-Platonic sages which belong to the world’s wealthiest, will only benefit this 0.0001%.

The Great Reset is not an organic grassroots movement coordinated and benefitting the over 99%. It will lead, inevitably, to techno-feudalism, as I previously argued. Herr Schwab, the Oracle of Ravensburg and Davos supremo, insists in his writings “you will own nothing”.

A WEF graph – Top Ten Most Likely Fall Out for the World – should in fact be interpreted as The Great Reset’s ultimate targets. This is not a warning: it’s the road map ahead.

A session on advancing the new social contract neatly merged with a discussion about “stakeholder capitalism”. That’s a clever P.R. advertisement – what else – for Herr Schwab’s new book: Stakeholder Capitalism, which advances a “more sustainable, resilient and inclusive” global economy and argues for – what else – a “clearly defined social contract” which will allow “governments, business and individuals to produce the most optimal outcomes.”

So here’s how it works. You don’t earn trust: you rebuild it (italics mine). This trust metastasizes into the social contract – which is absolutely necessary for The Great Reset. Selling this new social contract is a matter of rebranding turbo-capitalism globally as “stakeholder capitalism”, or capitalism with a human face.

Not a peep about the Great Reset as a mechanism of unbridled expansion of mega-corporate power, hermetically securing/serving the 0.0001%, which are not, and will never be, suffering The Great Depression.

Stripped to the bone, that’s also one of the key themes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: consolidating, crushing and shepherding the working class masses into the unstable gig economy, commanded by “emotionally intelligent” leaders.

The Who nailed it half a century ago: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

A realpolitik stunner

It’s still unclear what China, Russia and Iran – the real Three Sovereigns in this Brave New World, and the key nodes of progressive Eurasia integration – will counter-propose when faced with the Great Reset.

Into this toxic mix steps in none other than President Xi Jinping, the leader of the global superpower in the making. Instead of Reset platitudes, his Davos Agenda address was quite a realpolitik stunner.

Xi stressed, “to build small circles or start a new Cold War, to reject, threaten or intimidate others, to willfully impose decoupling, supply disruptions or sanctions, and to create isolation or estrangement will only push the world into division and even confrontation (…) We cannot tackle common challenges in a divided world, and confrontation will lead us to a dead end.”

Xi might be interpreted as aligning with Herr Schwab. Not really. Xi stressed solutions to our current plight must be multilateral; but the key is how to implement them geopolitically.

It’s unclear how the new dispensation in the US – humanitarian imperialists, Dem oligarchs, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Media – will react to Xi’s call: “The misguided approach of antagonism and confrontation, be it in the form of a Cold War, hot war, trade war or tech war, would eventually hurt all countries’ interests (…) “Difference in itself is no cause for alarm. What is alarming are arrogance, prejudice and hatred.”

Xi emphasized a straight to the point definition of multilateralism as

“having international affairs addressed through consultation and the future of the world decided by everyone working together (…) To beggar thy neighbor, to go it alone, and to slip into arrogant isolation will always fail.”

What Xi has made it crystal clear, once again, is the acute contrast between relative Asian serenity and stability and the volcanic chaos engulfing the West’s top power centers. How this intertwines – in realpolitik terms – with Her Schwab’s Brave New World will be a work in progress. For the moment, Xi has just read the Multilateral Riot Act at Davos. The whole Global South is paying attention.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!