This post from England was first published on The Stirrer blog
In this piece – Situation report – January 2022 (7.1) – I wrote how it could well be overtaken by events. Let’s just say that in the short period since this was written, a LOT has happened! As I sit here writing yet another piece in a bid to get a handle on what’s going on and trying to predict what may well happen, I have to admit that it can be a struggle keeping up with developments. These pieces are basically me thinking out loud and then sharing the results of that exercise with the world. All I can hope is that people bear that in mind when reading them!
Where the heck are we?
We have ‘partygate’ which is ‘revelations’ of parties that took place at 10 Downing Street during May 2020 when the country was under lockdown restrictions. Note the use of quotes around ‘revelations’ because a fair few people, journalists included, have known about these gatherings and it’s only now they’re coming to light because what can best be described as an agenda is in play. There’s a lot of outrage along the lines of ‘while we were making sacrifices, these people were partying without a care in the world’. Pretty predictable outrage to be honest, certainly understandable, but only looking at one aspect of the situation while disregarding the elephant in the room.
Think back to May 2020 when we were subjected to a torrent of government propaganda designed to terrify us into adhering to lockdown rules, one of the consequences of which was a massive increase in social isolation. We were being told to regard our fellow humans as vectors of disease to be kept at bay at all costs. Yet at the same time, Downing Street staff and doubtless a fair few elected politicians were partying away at close quarters, not in the least bit worried about catching Covid from each other. What does this prove? Basically, the bastards didn’t believe their own propaganda which dramatically overplayed the threat posed by Covid – this is the elephant in the room. Sure, those with underlying health issues and some of the elderly were and still are vulnerable to Covid but for the vast majority, the measures they were being subjected to were massively disproportionate. In the furore about ‘partygate’, let’s not lose sight of this.
‘Partygate’ could well topple Johnson: Tory MPs say Boris Johnson has lost the moral authority to lead amid ‘wine time Friday’ reports. Media speculation seems to be getting ramped up daily to the point where Johnson’s political demise will become a self fulfilling prophecy. Many sections of the media have been complicit in calling for tougher restrictions throughout the whole of this crisis. Bear in mind that in our January situation report, we did point out that compared to many other countries whose populations are being subjected to severe restrictions, England is a bit of an outlier that for the moment, seems to be getting away with what could look like an easing off. That’s not sitting well with many of the big players in this ongoing shitshow…
The media and those who they’re doing the bidding for have an agenda – toppling Johnson and backing a replacement who will be more than happy to start tightening things up, particularly when it comes to the roll out of vaccine passports. This is why the media furore about this needs to be interrogated because they’re not just reporting on the situation, they are setting out to influence the outcome. For sure, this kind of media manipulation has been going on for decades and is nothing new. However, given what’s at stake, the agenda of a fair few sections of the media really does need to have a spotlight shone on it.
There’s a perception in some circles that things are easing up and we could be entering the end phase of this crisis. There’s this on facemasks in schools: Face masks in schools could be ditched within weeks as Covid cases have peaked. The Omicron variant doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as virulent as some forecasters were predicting with cases plateauing and now dropping: As Covid-19 peak seems to near, experts warn against letting guard down. Obviously, the experts are urging caution but given the vested interests at stake, this doesn’t exactly come as any surprise! There’s a feeling in some quarters that if things carry on as they are, the government may well allow a return to normality, albeit if that were to happen, it would not be the same as 2019 because too much has changed. This is not a view that I share and I’ll endeavour to explain why…
What’s really happening?
It would appear that the government has realised that leveraging the Covid crisis as a means of bringing about the changes needed to usher in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is starting to run out of steam. While they may well be starting to think about rolling back on Covid, they have no intention of rolling back on the 4IR. My gut feeling is that the government, the corporations they serve and the media which do their bidding will use the next few months to take stock before finding another way of pushing the changes that will accelerate the 4IR. There’s a lot for them to consider, a heck of a lot…
Doubtless, they will reflect on the relative ease they had in pushing people to accept lockdowns and a whole host of other restrictions in the name of the ‘greater good’. While there’s a growing level of pushback now, for a fair while, it seemed like the majority of people complied, even when for many of them, what they actually experienced in real life did not match was was being pumped out in the media. That’s down to a combination of government nudging and a largely compliant media that seems to have forgotten what proper journalism is all about. A caveat…there are signs that some commentators are attempting to revise their positions as it becomes clear that a growing section of the population are becoming aware that they’ve been subjected to what to all intents and purposes was a massive psyops. Are these commentators having a genuine change of heart or are they trying to cover their arses in the event of a blowback from the public? Only time will tell…
One of the key components of the 4IR is a cashless economy that would be linked into some form of social credit. The last two years have played their part in accelerating the move away from physical cash. At the start of the crisis in 2020, it was portrayed as something ‘dirty’ and a vector of disease, hence the switch to payment by card and also, by phone app. The switch away from cash to card and phone is now being presented as being more ‘convenient’ and something to be welcomed. With government spending a lot of the last two years doing their best to micro-manage our lives in the name of the ‘greater good’, those that willingly went along with it probably wouldn’t need too much persuading to accept some form of social credit. If that could be tied into a way of tracking carbon emissions, there’s every reason to expect that a fair chunk of the middle class would be more than happy to go along with it.
There’s the move online which will eventually lead towards the ‘metaverse’. A lot of shopping has moved online and while with the easing of restrictions, there’s a bit of a return to physical, real life shopping, it’s not going to be enough to save the metaphorical ‘high street’. That means existing shopping centres such as Basildon facing ‘reinvention’ while on the outskirts of our towns, we’ll see more logistics facilities going up. Work from home for the middle and professional classes has become more of an accepted option. What this does is blur the line between work and the rest of life. It also keeps people isolated from each other and therefore easier to manage. Again with the easing of restrictions, there’s been a return of sorts to the workplace for the professional classes but working arrangements are going to become more hybrid in the future. What will that do for town and city centre property? There will be less office blocks and more work from home style apartment towers going up. Literally the building blocks of the ‘smart cities’ we’ve been promised. The property sector will treat these changes as a challenge and an opportunity.
During the lockdowns, the only way people could keep in touch with each other was via social media. There was a massive growth in the number of people using this and spending more time doing so. A consequence of this is the amount of resources being piled in to make online interaction a much more ‘immersive experience’ – this is what’s pushing the drive to the metaverse. Us oldies who’ve lived most of our lives without the internet see social media as a useful add on but it’s no substitute for real life, face to face contact. The worry is that some of the younger generation will see it as equal to real life contact and possibly, superior to it. The consequences of this are deeply worrying…
Then there’s the divide and rule which, as we outlined in our January bulletin, is something that’s still ongoing and if anything, is escalating as the unjabbed are increasingly demonised. The government have learnt that they can have us at each others throats pretty much anytime they see fit to do so. It’s not just the rhetoric that’s coming from too many commentators that’s worrying, it’s the significant minority of people who swallow it wholesale and become willing accomplices in the demonisation of the unjabbed which is pretty bloody alarming.
They’ve also managed to neuter much of the left and into the bargain, a fair chunk of the anarchist movement. That means they’ve sidelined two potential sources of opposition to what they’re trying to impose upon us. Although it should be noted that co-opting and nudging movements towards ghettoisation, irrelevance and being unwitting useful idiots when it comes to compliance aren’t exactly new phenomena. The push towards embracing identity politics over class, in particular gender identity is something that has been nudged and manipulated behind the scenes for some while. For a full exposition of this, we recommend that you follow the 11th Hour blog. Suffice to say, that particular manipulation had already inflicted a lot of damage before anyone had ever heard the word Covid.
All of those actors pushing the agenda for the 4IR can afford to take a brief period out to reflect because the bastards have achieved more than they could have initially hoped for in using and exaggerating a crisis to ‘control’ the populace. Note the use of quotes around ‘control’ because a fair bit of this has been achieved by nudge and psyops that make people think that they’re the ones in control of moderating their behaviour. That’s some achievement and a bloody worrying one at that.
What comes next?
Other Covid ‘variants’ may be discovered but to honest, this one is starting to run out of steam. Any more attempts to manipulate this are likely to spark a massive backlash from the public that the authorities would struggle to control. It’s not like we’re short of real crises that could be leveraged to bring about the changes needed to accelerate the push towards the 4IR.
It has been postulated that one of the motivations for leveraging the Covid crisis was to fend off another serious financial meltdown: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Systemic Collapse and Pandemic Simulation – Fabio Vighi | The Philosophical Salon | 16 August 2021. Let’s be clear that a lot of what the 4IR is about is the re-structuring of capitalism to enable the corporations to carry on screwing us over, albeit wearing a smiley face while doing it. The financial black holes have not gone away so one way or another, the agenda that the Covid crisis was leveraged to implement will have to be imposed upon us one way or another.
With wholesale gas prices leading to massive hikes in fuel bills this year – domestic, commercial and industrial – there’s going to be an inflation crisis. There are also going to be a lot of people thrown into fuel poverty with inevitably tragic results. People have been stretched over the last two years and this may push a fair few over te limit with the result being they’ll be taking to the streets…hopefully…
Would the contentious issue of climate change be the next crisis to be manipulated in such as way as to keep us plebs in a state of dependent poverty while the ultra rich and the ruling elites continue to swan about with their profligate lifestyles? Look at the naked hypocrisy of the amount of carbon spewing transportation used by world leaders as they went to COP26 in Glasgow last year while lecturing us mere plebs on how we need to rein it in and reduce our by comparison, paltry carbon emissions.
Monitoring people’s carbon emissions is something that could well be done by a phone app and we can see a lot of people enthusiastically embracing that. This is when we would need that conversation about the human and environmental costs of smartphones… The problem is that there are enough middle class people who would happily buy into this agenda and also, grab with both hands the virtue signalling opportunities that would come with it. We will need to be having a few discrete chats with people we know in the climate change movement to alert them to the possibility of their cause being hi-jacked by those pushing the 4IR agenda. I’ve got a feeling that these will not be easy conversations to have!
There’s a number of other scenarios being touted around as something the actors involved in pushing the 4IR agenda could weaponise against us. Some are plausible, some less so and some are off the wall. The point is that to date, a lot has been invested in the 4IR agenda. Just because it looks as though leveraging Covid might not bring about all of the changes they want to bring about, it doesn’t mean they’re going to give up and walk away. They’ve gained enough from this leveraging to give themselves the confidence to carry on after what may seem to be a brief pause. Only seem though because rest assured the bastards are planning the next stages of this.
A rallying call
While after what we’ve been through over the last couple of years, it would be tempting to ease up a bit and have a rest, it would be wrong. I know this is not what a lot of us want to hear and it’s not what I personally want but, we’ve got to deal with reality as it is, not the fantasy we want. Things are going to get weirder and quite possibly wilder as this year progresses. If it looks as though we’re getting a temporary lull, let’s use that to prepare ourselves for what’s coming, even though we can only make an educated guess as to what that will be. We’re living through historical times. As we’ve mentioned a fair few times before, history is written by the winners. Let’s make sure we’re the winners and the ones writing the history!
