The vaccine moment by Paul Kingsnorth
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Sajai Jose
Dec 9, 2021, 10:24:24 AM12/9/21
to radical ecological democracy
Below are two essays by writer and environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth about what is wrong with the vaccine enforcement and how all this is part of the larger plan to establish a technocratic authoritarian rule.
mp
Dec 10, 2021, 2:53:31 PM12/10/21
to radical_ecolog...@googlegroups.com
he has a bit of standing on the cultural stage as a writer.
However, I think it is important to be careful with the development of a
counter-narrative. The last thing we need is that resistance feeds the
powers that be.
For a coherent and solid position I do believe it is necessary to go the
extra mile to steer clear of simple conspiracy lingo and choice of words
that circulate among the far right and trolls.
This is what I think:
If there was a plan and if there was someone in charge of writing up
that plan, then we could probably burn their documents and dispose of
those in charge. There isn't.
This is not a plandemic, but a bureaucratic nightmare unfolding in
cahoots with the biomedicinal industrial complex. It is far worse than a
plan. It is a no-plan. Just money and power unfolding haphazardly and
politicians needing to be seen to act. And lots of scared people.
It begins with the funding structures for research: nothing is funded
that doesn't have a commercial application. Over the last few decades
science has been reduced to mere product development. Even the most well
intentioned scientists feed into the nightmare machine. It has become a
closed loop and critical science is dead. The problem is systemic. Of
course there are conspiracy practices, but that's nothing new: people
work together, so do radical, ecological democratisers.
Of course a lot of people have turned their backs on all this nonsens
and a burning Babylon and started making their own medicine and herb
gardens, etc. etc., and joined with indigenous movements and so on to
take their health into their own hands.
And we will all have to. Vaccine efficacy is fading fast and if this
approach is going to work, then it will, to put it starkly, be necessary
to inject 8 billion people every 6 months with an upgraded formula
forever after. Is that feasible, is that desirable?
Here's just a few bits of info.
"Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68
countries and 2947 counties in the United States":
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
"The epidemiological relevance of the COVID-19-vaccinated population is
increasing":
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(21)00258-1/fulltext?s=08#%20
mp
Dec 10, 2021, 2:54:56 PM12/10/21
to radical_ecolog...@googlegroups.com
On 09/12/2021 15:24, Sajai Jose wrote:
See also:
https://unherd.com/thepost/paul-kingsnorth-why-i-changed-sides-in-the-vaccine-wars/
Sajai Jose
Dec 12, 2021, 12:53:59 AM12/12/21
to mp, radical ecological democracy
Dear MP
Thanks for your response.
Setting aside the question of covid itself as a 'conspiracy' (that's a separate debate, though by no means unimportant. Let's not forget that the 'lab leak' hypothesis too was denounced as a conspiracy theory initially, and attempts are still on to bury it: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/to-deny-the-lab-leak-covid-theory
The author Greenwald, some regard as controversial, but his essential point is valid I think), it's not hard to see that a 'conspiracy' of sorts is on to take advantage of this crisis. We see it in the World Economic Forum' 'great reset' plan, and in the fact that Pfizer and others stock prizes gained $10 billion just on news of omicron outbreak before a single death was reported, that BlackRock assets have crossed $10 trillion, and in how goverments have used it to suppress dissent (as when the Modi govt tried to in India against two major agitations - the anti CAA NRC struggle (somewhat successfully) and the more recent farmer's protests (unsuccessfully). If there's no 'conspiracy' - and by this I mean a kind of informal consensus at the very top to milk this economically and politically to the maximum, a consensus not democratically or transparently arrived at or even intended to be, about lockdowns, vaccine mandates etc despite their dubious efficacy, the massive economic fallout for the poorest, and in the face of genocidal consequences, again for the most vulnerable (Covid-19 disruptions killed 228,000 children in South Asia, says UN report
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56425115) then how come this agenda is going through so smoothly, without any resistance? What explains this consensus when the cure is clearly worse than the disease? Why aren't the UN agencies (who compiled the above report) or human rights groups - the entire 'humanitarian' establishment - silent? The same folks who squabble and split hairs over non issues for a living? The common people are the only ones protesting, and not always for ideological reasons but practical ones, because their lives and livelihoods are affected, and while some of them may have ideological axes to grind or may hold politically unsavoury views, we shouldn't fall for the official propoganda that tars them all with one brush. Because we know that they are not all of one kind. and if they're being branded as right wing nuts and conspiracy theorists (let's not forget that many of the goverments cracking down on such dissent and enforcing the mandates are actually run by right-wing nuts), then it's not them, but the common questions they're asking that are being discredited, the issues that that have brought them together that are being buried. And we ignore those questions at our peril.
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Sajai Jose
Dec 12, 2021, 12:59:30 AM12/12/21
to mp, radical ecological democracy
PS. When you say it's a 'no plan' its the BlackRocks and Pfizers and the govts and the rest of them that you're letting off the hook. When you portray it as madness (and it is, at another level) you're ignoring the method. We have to pick sides, since the battle lines have been drawn.
Rajni Bakshi
Dec 12, 2021, 1:16:16 AM12/12/21
to India Napm, vikalp-sa...@googlegroups.com, radical ecological democracy
Thinking about nonviolence only in relation to humans is a potentially fatal flaw. It is the violence of humans against the rest of nature that now poses the greatest threat to all species on planet earth. In this week’s AHIMSA CONVERSATION the environmental engineer and climate activist, Sagar Dhara, calls for choosing a nonviolent path out of this impasse by powering down, adopting less resource intensive life styles and less unequal economic systems. Just back from attending the COP26 gathering in Glasgow, Sagar explains why the current rate of action is insufficient to avoid catastrophic climate chaos.
The full video--
José Ricapa
Dec 12, 2021, 9:44:31 AM12/12/21
to radical ecological democracy
Furthermore, from a critical thinking perspective, we should have given ourselves time to question the foundations of western rationality around its paradigms to support the justification of the "pandemic". From a holistic perspective, we would have long ago given space to other ways of explaining the disease, other non-western health paradigms, or critical western health paradigms, the body-individual-society relationship, the psycho-emotional issue and even the energetic..., if we will give us time to dig into that and not just accept unquestionably "western medical science" and its protocols.
In this sense, we would have more arguments to at least affirm that the pandemic starting point does not make sense. After that, we could delve, from a critical point of view, into the political-economic power relations, "conspiracies" or not, that may be taking place around this situation. That different starting point would bring us more elements to get out of this situation or at least have a more inclusive position. And that is different to de-legitimizing others points of view, a different explanation, from the beginning...
And of course, also, obviously, taking care of fanaticisms and other fundamentalisms that now also are intersected, but that should not be seen in a generalized way as scapegoats.
And of course, also, obviously, taking care of fanaticisms and other fundamentalisms that now also are intersected, but that should not be seen in a generalized way as scapegoats.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/radical_ecological_democracy/CALrFPNzK0bQBPfb6SCfkSNOzHkFdAZyMnxeVvXXWr65YR%3DuCeA%40mail.gmail.com.
mp
Dec 12, 2021, 10:08:32 AM12/12/21
to radical_ecolog...@googlegroups.com
On 12/12/2021 14:44, José Ricapa wrote:
> Furthermore, from a critical thinking perspective, we should have given
> ourselves time to question the foundations of western rationality around
> its paradigms
journey in that direction:
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/8/2/inflamed_rupa_marya_raj_patel_interview
"....Raj Patel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Value of
Nothing, teams up with physician, activist, and co-founder of the Do No
Harm Coalition Rupa Marya to reveal the links between health and
structural injustices–and to offer a new deep medicine that can heal our
bodies and our world.
The Covid pandemic and the shocking racial disparities in its impact.
The surge in inflammatory illnesses such as gastrointestinal disorders
and asthma. Mass uprisings around the world in response to systemic
racism and violence. Rising numbers of climate refugees. Our bodies,
societies, and planet are inflamed.
Boldly original, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human
body-our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive,
immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, this
groundbreaking work illuminates the hidden relationships between our
biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and
economic systems. Inflammation is connected to the food we eat, the air
we breathe, and the diversity of the microbes living inside us, which
regulate everything from our brain's development to our immune system's
functioning. It's connected to the number of traumatic events we
experienced as children and to the traumas endured by our ancestors.
It's connected not only to access to health care but to the very models
of health that physicians practice...".
https://b-ok.cc/book/17121021/d03be8
Ariel Salleh
Dec 12, 2021, 10:04:17 PM12/12/21
to Sajai Jose, mp, Radcal Democracy
On these matters, Robert Kennedy Jr’s recently published book is impeccably referenced.
mp
Dec 13, 2021, 7:05:55 PM12/13/21
to radical_ecolog...@googlegroups.com
On 12/12/2021 05:53, Sajai Jose wrote:
> successfully) and the more recent farmer's protests (unsuccessfully). If
> there's no 'conspiracy' - and by this I mean a kind of informal consensus
> at the very top to milk this economically and politically to the maximum, a
> consensus not democratically or transparently arrived at or even intended
> to be, about lockdowns, vaccine mandates etc despite their dubious
> efficacy, the massive economic fallout for the poorest, and in the face of
> genocidal consequences, again for the most vulnerable (Covid-19 disruptions
> killed 228,000 children in South Asia, says UN report
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56425115) then how come this agenda is
> going through so smoothly, without any resistance?
to agree on most of these details/issues.
My only concern is with framing in general and the idea of a 'plan' in
particular.
I don't think that any of this is particularly planned - and I don't
think it even matters whether or not it is planned. It was bound to happen.
As you say, it is time to choose sides and, therefore, I think it is
extra necessary to be prudent and economic in language use to not lose
the many people in the middle, who have not yet chosen sides.
I will try to explain.
Why does not matter whether it was planned? Because arguably, the
pandemic has changed nothing. Even if there is a covidspiracy, it
wouldn't help much to remove it. In the same way that capitalism is a
distraction: if we remove that, we are still stuck with an extractive
economy, ploughing agriculture, central command and control of human
resources, and we'd still be blindly marching towards an abyss.
A world system of excruciating exploitation, ruthless extraction, low
quality food, housing etc. that kills, maims, starves and generally
makes people ill, and a "health care" paradigm based on chasing symptoms
for profit and no intention of healing anyone or anything was in place
all along. It has been killing tens of millions of people annually for
decades at least and genocidal peaks have recurred time and again for at
least 500 years.
The pandemic was baked into the system.
Here in the words of Charles Eisenstein (from his email newsletter):
"...Systemic suppression and paradigm maintenance doesn’t require any
deliberate, coordinated plan. The same holds for a lot of the narrative
maintenance around Covid. It is tempting, emotionally gratifying, to
leap to the conclusion that evil people are deliberately harming us.
Someone to hate. A familiar way to solve the problem (defeat the bad
guys). OK, maybe there are wicked people with nefarious agendas, but
what motivates the leap to that conclusion? And what systemic forces
does that focus ignore? We ignore them at great peril, because if they
remain intact then removing the nefarious villains will change nothing.
The system will generate new ones. That is why it is so important to
look at our situation from the systemic level and, beneath that, the
level of myth, story, and psyche...":
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/the-tide-has-turned
Yes, for sure, the pandemic is a good dollar.
Disasters and crashes are ripe with opportunities. See for instance "The
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", by Naomi Klein, which
"...describes how modern capitalism thrives on shocks and disasters. A
tsunami sweeps across Asia, and developers take the chance to clear
fishing communities off the coasts and build luxury hotels. Hurricane
Katrina devastates Louisiana and well-connected corporations turn body
retrieval into a money-making enterprise. There is nothing, it seems,
that cannot be exploited to turn a profit....":
https://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-8/shock-doctrine-rise-disaster-capitalism
Capital consolidation of course results from lockdowns as small players
are squeezed out of the game and then those with cash reserves can pick
up assets and entrench their control of the game. It happens when there
is a hurricane, it happened with the 2008 financial system crash and so
on. It is nothing new. Capitalism is a conspiracy within a small elite.
Resistance is another conspiracy within other groups, who unfortunately
are all too often fragmented and therefore do not represent much of a
challenge, and who have much less financial and political power.
Why does it run so smoothly?
Chomsky, who once had sensible things to say, but now appears dement,
wrote an excellent book called "Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media" together with Edward Herman in which they set
out the concept of a "propaganda model". Written before the rise of
cyberspace, the mechanisms it outlines have since been supercharged with
algorithmic powers and here's now a screen in front of everyone, all the
time, and it explains a substantial part of how evil runs smoothly:
"...A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power
and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It
traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the
news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and
dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public.
The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news
“filters,” fall under
the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner
wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2)
advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the
reliance of the media on information provided by government, business,
and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of
power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and (5)
“anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism. These
elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of
news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed
residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and
interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first
place, and they
explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns...".
The manufacture of consent is not only on the screen and in the papers,
but also within institutions, which are embodied/staffed by people who
have gone through institution upon institution to get to where they are.
There is a systemic/cybernetic/complex system of filtering as you rise
up in the hierarchy, or not, which in the case of, say, a virologist
means you have to dance to the tune of funding structures that are
written out in close collusion with the industry. If you are a banker,
then you will have been conditioned to financial truisms within a
paradigm that is defined by the big wankers, sorry bankers.
It is in this context that Big Pharma operates and the numbers are
staggering (these are US figures, where the manipulation is more openly
played out, but they are an indication of the power at play...):
"...Of the nearly $30 billion that health companies now spend on medical
marketing each year, around 68 percent (or about $20 billion) goes to
persuading doctors and other medical professionals—not consumers—of the
benefits of prescription drugs. That’s according to an in-depth analysis
published in JAMA this week. The study broke down exactly how health
companies convinced us to spend enormous sums on our care between 1997
and 2016. In that time, health companies went from spending $17.7
billion to $29.9 billion on medical marketing. Meanwhile, US healthcare
spending hit $3.3 trillion, or 17.8 percent of the GDP, in 2016 ...
... The finding that pharmaceutical companies spend most of their
marketing oomph on charming doctors isn’t surprising, though. In 1997, a
whopping 88 percent ($15.6 billion of their total $17.7 billion) of
medical marketing went to swaying doctors, according to the analysis.
And the way in which drug companies woo doctors hasn’t changed much
either. They largely do so by sending sales representatives to doctors’
offices for face-to-face visits, providing free drug samples and other
swag, offering payments for speeches, food and beverages, travel, and
hosting disease “education.”... Ultimately, “trust in physicians and
health care institutions may be at stake if medical marketing… continues
to increase unchecked,” they conclude.":
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/healthcare-industry-spends-30b-on-marketing-most-of-it-goes-to-doctors/
Additionally, politicians are also inside the media and marketing (spin)
system and need to be seen to act (showing strength, determination,
overview) and the modern world is based in large part on the progress
myth (science and technology is taking us towards an ever more
enlightened state of being and peace, harmony and prosperity is just
around the corner, we are almost there), so the next technofix might be
the one to solve all problems. The modern mind is at home in cognitive
dissonance, the crowds are mad.
Vaccines, in this modern world where infections and civilisational
diseases are always on the rise, have been elevated to one of the main
technofixes in the last century and occupy a special place in the psyche
of people who have lost the power, knowledge and abilities required to
heal their own bodies and minds - by surrendering these most basic
subsistence requirements to external authorities. Disempowered and
helpless, hope can be found in that injection. Science is the rew religion.
By the way, a similar thing happens within the left: it is a hierarchy
where expertise in Marx, Lenin, maybe Gramsci, or even Keynes, and the
rhetorical powers required to communicate Left Truths in a convincing
fashion sufficient to create followers, will get you far. Further than
just being a good person with good intentions.
These institutional structures have neurological effects. We are up
against structure much more than we are up against agency of a
conspiring group of people.
The long and the short of it - to my mind - it's a systemic problem. You
can kill off the evil conspiracists at the top, but unless you kill all
their children and all their surrounding followers immediately too, then
their seats will quickly be taken.
When we speak of conspiracy and when we share narratives and terminology
with the far right, the racists, and so on, then we let the system off
the hook. We focus on agency, on rotten apples, and particular people -
like Gates or Fauci, who become scapegoats - and thus the focus is
shifted from the fact that they can and will be replaced when they die.
This is not a conspiracy, it is far worse than that.
Cows are pigs, war is peace, and free speech is a Nazi slogan.
This is the 21st century.
Welcome.
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Sajai Jose
Dec 14, 2021, 11:07:19 PM12/14/21
to mp, radical ecological democracy
Dear MP
I did not mean to focus on the conspiracy angle - but i didn't want it to be brushed under the carpet either, because conspiracies are also facts/practice, not just theories, and there are countless examples for it... saying it doesn't matter amounts to saying the facts don't matter - only interpretation does. the lab leak hypothesis is a good eg - won't it make a difference to the systemic critique if it turned out that the virus leaked from a lab?
you made a strong case for systemic critique, which is well taken. i just want to point to the other side. See this item (India Covid-19: PM Modi 'did not consult' before lockdown https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56561095). Only a handful of people were involved, none of them any kind of experts, and hardly any deliberation or consultation done - let alone a democratic process adopted - before arriving at a decision that impacted a billion lives so severely, leading to hundreds of deaths directly, and thousands more indirectly, apart from the rest of the impacts. we in india saw the same thing happen with demonetisation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation]
In the financial sphere, BlackRock and Vanguard control $ 20 trillion between them - about 82% of the S&P 500's market capitalization
In digital technology (Apple, Google, FB etc), in agrochemical tech (Bayer Monsanto, Syngenta-China chem), retail (Amazon, Wlamart), Pharma and every other field there is a similar consolidation, which means a steady concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. Bill Gates, an individual, via his foundation, is now among the biggest funders of the WHO, if not the biggest - officially
there is a real problem with this picture
Of course, we can make a systemic critique of this process of concentration of wealth and power, analyse in terms of political economy, trace it to its roots historically and philosophically [and Paul Kingsnorth does this in his essays], but none of this does not take away from the fact that an increasingly smaller group of individuals now form a global power elite (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40923001-giants) and play an increasingly larger role in shaping reality. We decry the growing concentration of wealth and power, but shrink from blaming individuals or small groups, even when momentous and disastrous decisions are traced to these individuals (as with Modi on the lockdown)- which is a contradiction.
So I feel its important to acknowledge and hold both/all these aspects in our heads as part of our understanding of the unfolding reality - even if we may choose to highlight one or the other for strategic/ideological reasons.
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