Labour will justify the cost of living crisis, not solve it

The Labour Party has proposed a windfall tax on energy companies' excess profits, but they also want to intensify the sanctions on Russia that are to blame for the cost of living crisis.

Danger to pensioners

A windfall tax can backfire by discouraging investors and result in the energy companies raising prices even more. It can also take significant money away from pension funds that invest in the energy companies while expecting them to make significant profits, creating a danger to people's pensions and threatening the very people most at risk in cold winters.

Flipflopping mastery

Most importantly, flipflopping and moralistic posturing by Labour's leadership, and their lack of willingness to apologise for anything they do, equips them more to make excuses for a cost of living crisis than to solve one. It is more realistic that Labour will take action against people who talk about the cost of living crisis on social media and try to brand them as agents or fake accounts from Russia, rather than deal will the crisis itself.

Let's starve for Ukraine

The most realistic prediction of what a Labour government would do about the cost of living crisis is to talk at length about their windfall tax, fail to implement it in Parliament, blame the Tories, and then push for increased sanctions on Russia that will clearly worsen the cost of living crisis. Any increased sanctions on Russia, of course, will be implemented, as the imbecilic foreign policy handed to London by the demented halfwit in Washington is the only thing both sides in Parliament currently support.

In a Labour government, ministers would insist that supporting pointless Ukrainian and NATO confrontations with Russia is mandatory, and that costs of the war must be endured by everyone, even if they have to starve.

Five reasons Imran Khan will return to lead Pakistan

There are good reasons to believe the unfairly removed Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, will achieve political victory and be able to lead the country again.

#1 All opponents gather together

Because they conspired to create the current government, any blame for shortcomings in government policy will fall on all of Imran Khan's opponents in a single blow to them all, creating the distinct impression that Imran Khan is the only alternative to their rule. This may turn Imran Khan into a far more powerful figure than he already was, as the people will see him as a force equal to all his enemies. The anti-PTI parties may be perceived as one entity and be ineffective at competing with each other as if they have independent visions, because they may all be perceived to share blame for the country's problems equally following Imran Khan's removal. The 'imported' government are simply the same group responsible for decades of mishandling the economy and are likely to only worsen life across the nation, discrediting any claim that they needed to remove Imran Khan to save the economy.

#2 Imran Khan's popularity

Despite efforts to tarnish his character on an international level, Imran Khan has remained popular within Pakistan. Pakistan's people don't seem susceptible to the influence of the international media, which labours to discredit Imran Khan. People get their information from each other, which causes smear campaigns to be less effective against an honest leader. This seriously complicates the efforts of the new authorities, because they desperately needed to perform a character assassination on Imran Khan and seem to be clueless about how to achieve this. Instead, we could see Imran Khan become even more popular.

#3 Reversed US coups are a thing

US coups have been reversed quite effectively in other parts of the world. Foreign propaganda campaigns and repressive rule have proved ineffective against mass movements in countries such as Brazil and Bolivia. In Brazil, former president Lula da Silva was impeached and jailed and his successor Dilma Rousseff faced impeachment as well. However, Lula is now free once again and is making a successful political comeback, being expected to return to power and replace Jair Bolsonaro in the October election. In Bolivia, despite a US-encouraged coup against him that created a floundering puppet regime for a single year, Evo Morales' popular Movement for Socialism returned to power. As such, even if Imran Khan is jailed on some false charge, this will only be a temporary setback for his movement. In such an event, people will contrast his behaviour with his opponents fleeing abroad when under investigation. If he were to stay in Pakistan against all pressure, this could only make him appear to be a more patriotic and righteous person. Despite whatever hardships he and his movement may be put under, his return to power and his reversal of the US-led regime change is an eminently realistic and likely outcome based on precedents in other countries.

#4 US impatience

The US helped Imran Khan's opponents into power with a goal to get specific policies enacted in Islamabad that are against the nation's interests. These policies are actually foolish and unlikely to be implemented even by the usurper government. The hope to separate Pakistan from China in the economic and military spheres is likely to be at the top of the wish list of US diplomats, but will never be implemented as the cooperation of Islamabad and Beijing is likely too advanced at this point. As a result, the US will only increase pressure once again on the current authorities in a vain attempt to get the results they want. This will ultimately empower Imran Khan, who will be in a position to simultaneously show the current authorities as ineffective at maintaining relations with the US, while at the same time being the US's corrupt puppets. The usurping authorities will appear to be corrupt and incompetent even at their one purpose of serving the US's will.

#5 Instability

A lack of acceptance of the perceived usurpers is widespread. The resulting weak mandate to rule will result in an inability to effectively handle or be perceived to handle internal and external security threats. If any kind of violence or terrorism grows, perhaps encouraged by the ongoing political crisis, the dubious legitimacy of the regime itself will be first thing to be blamed for any ineffectiveness on the part of authorities. This will intensify any such crisis, perhaps also causing the Army to lose confidence in this regime and creating the possibility that they will prefer the return of Imran Khan.

With patience, it is likely that Imran Khan and his party will return to power. Bumbling conspirators and corrupt leaders may destroy themselves. They will to fail to satisfy anyone, abroad and at home, and it is possible that conniving elements of the establishment will realise that going against the people's will was impractical and destabilising even for their own interests.

Will "Ukraine fatigue" become Ukraine defeat?

Far from defending its sovereignty and independence, since February 2022, Ukraine has become an empty shell dependent on handouts from Western countries.

Ukrainian government officials receive their salaries from the US government. Under Russian strikes, the country has lost its military industry (once a key strength and source of pride for Ukraine), and is entirely dependent on pleading for US and NATO supplies now.

The war to start all wars

From the above facts, it should be clear by now that the war is not being fought to protect Ukraine's independence and sovereignty. The war is being fought to establish Ukraine's Western alignment and the positioning of Western weapons on its territory. NATO wants Ukraine. The Ukrainian government, for its part, is more and more under the spell of American neoconservatives who see no use for diplomacy in international relations and think the US should rule the world.

Sanctions have failed

Unfortunately for NATO, the biggest part of its strategy has backfired. As of now, international sanctions on Russia have failed. Vladimir Putin's government is going strong, with ample popular support for his military campaign, whereas Western regimes are faltering and unable to find a convenient exit strategy from what is becoming a new long-term foreign policy disaster following their defeat in Afghanistan.

Your sacrifices for Ukraine

It is now clear that Western efforts to help Ukraine are the source of the cost of living crisis, having resulted in higher food and petrol costs. More accurately, this cost of living crisis is directly caused by our sanctions on Russia.

Rather than create a case for removing the sanctions on Russia, ministers (and also the "opposition") are instead trying to justify the cost of living crisis and lecture the public by saying to us that we want to sacrifice our money and welfare willingly for Ukraine (some sort of mind trick?) They are then proceeding to do this for us, without offering us any choice in the matter anyway. We have two major parties in Parliament who both want to do this.

False promises

Politicians have also managed to hoodwink their constituents into thinking this connection between our failing effort to save Ukraine and the agonising cost of living crisis doesn't matter or should be tolerated because there will be ways to mitigate the cost of living crisis. However, nobody actually has a plan to make this work.

Ukraine tires

Boris Johnson recently warned of "Ukraine fatigue", something also predicted at this blog, which deliberately uses the same language used with regard to public frustration with the Covid-19 pandemic and the policies associated with it. This is an appropriate term to use, being the subject of a post already at this blog.

As established earlier, Ukraine depends on us. However, that lifeline keeping Ukraine fighting is a flimsy thread that can suddenly snap once our people here in places like Britain get bored with the repetitive messaging and flag-waving. Increasingly, there is a recognition that time is on Russia's side, producing calls either for the West to escalate aggressively or tell Ukraine to surrender territory before the outcome looks too much like a Russian victory. "Ukraine fatigue" is not just inconvenient to Ukraine, it is fatal.

Ukraine faces South Vietnam's fate

Once the war is too old and intractable for people to be interested in maintaining it in the West, Western support for Ukraine will evaporate as quickly as Western support for South Vietnam or the Ghani regime in Afghanistan did. Both of them were buoyed by similar Western delusions and propaganda claiming they were feisty independent nations, when they were actually cardboard cut-outs sponsored by the US. Any suggestion that the Russians will give up first is absurd, since Ukraine's territory is in their heartland and is their business, on an indefinite basis. The West has once again propped up a regime in a region where it does not have the will to win, and the other side does.

Give Gaddafi’s son a chance?

Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, is seeking to be elected as Libya’s president. Should this man, representing what remained of his father's political movement after his violent ouster from power, be given a chance in a democratic system?

It seems unlikely that Gaddafi's son could achieve power, with his image being too linked to the violence that tore the country apart in 2011. However, some sought to block him entirely. In 2021, he was disqualified for alleged participation in war crimes during the civil war. That decision was overturned shortly thereafter, allowing him to stand once again.

For many, disqualifying Gaddafi’s son will seem like a prudent move in the interests of democracy, but that opinion in itself is contrary to democracy. In order for democracy to be genuine, you need to give people genuine choices. That necessarily includes choices you may find threatening to democracy itself.

There are valid reasons to think democracy can become a dead end for a nation. Democracy can be suspended in the name of democracy itself. Western governments embraced the suppression of the winning party in Algeria in the 1990s for this reason, triggering a devastating civil war. The US government also maintains this same attitude with regard to Hamas, which it maintained was a terrorist organisation despite it being legitimately elected.

Western regimes like to exploit the idea of democracy and the good feelings of many towards it as a facade for their own uncontested rule, because it is the system vulnerable to their interference. Western leaders discard democracy for a coup and bans targeting opponents, as soon as they are frustrated with the results, until a sufficiently malleable and vulnerable political system is back in place again.

The word “democracy” is repeated by our politicians in the West, but they regard the people as vile and deserving to be cheated rather than served.

Reasons social media should end

Social media is central to many people's lives. It is increasingly a focal place for political expression, too, with many having no means of doing so other than social media. However, there are reasons to think humanity is better off without it.

Stop (most) fake news

It is likely true that lies spread faster than truth on social media. Social media users are able to lean on one another as sources of information rather than going to official sources that at least have some (albeit not always) reputation to maintain for accuracy. Random people you meet on the internet are under no pressure to be accurate or reliable. In addition, mainstream news sources are able to get away with more fakes with the help of social media, since it allows to creation of media that can be quickly deleted and swept under the rug when it is not convenient, or followed up with haphazard apologies.

Improve mental health

There is adequate reason to think getting rid of social media would decrease mental illness and especially suicide among young people. Such a move would be a problem for some though, and result in them being more isolated. However, those isolated people would just be fringe minority communities who naturally are isolated anyway. If the majority at risk, their welfare has to always be addressed before that of any minority.

Reduce political interference

Dismantling social networks would remove a threat to governments by unpredictable and profit-driven actors. It would remove the ability for foreign governments where the social media companies are located, mainly the United States, to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Likewise, it would allay Western fears of election interference by Russia and China, which are continuously voiced by politicians and journalists.

Improve political discourse

Social media may be ruining political discourse simply due to the way it works. Whether you are a conspiracy theorist or someone who just relies on mainstream media, you are similarly being duped by an industry that focuses on the endless, mindless consumption of news under a model intended for entertainment, rather than stopping to analyse or understand the world.

Of course, it is highly unlikely that social media will be eliminated for the reasons above, because it is too lucrative to the companies involved and the politicians they influence. Nevertheless, governments should certainly create options to get rid of it in the least disruptive way, in the interests of preparation against foreign interference. How to effectively do this will eventually be the subject of another post.

Five reasons Americans can’t be disarmed and Brits can

While Britain and America differ a lot in terms of values, the different handling of the right to bear arms is down to more than this.

A recent shooting that claimed four lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma will likely see the debate over gun ownership reignited in the United States. For our part in Britain, we almost all believe the lax American attitude to guns is crazy and dangerous. It seems hard to argue that someone with mental illness living in a place with no apparent threats could need access to guns, and seems right that they be barred.

Nonetheless, there are ample reasons to think America is just a different enough place that owning firearms is more justified there than here.

#1 States’ rights

The US is in some ways more like a federation of smaller countries than an individual nation, and life in each state can be supposed to be quite different. As such, laws governing just about any aspect of life can be different from state to state, and this is necessary to the large and diverse nature of the United States’ territory and people. Many things cannot be helped. In some states, the population may be sparse and it may take too long for police to respond to incidents in certain places to truly rely on them to protect the public. In others, firearms may even be needed to defend against wildlife. All of this would be unheard of in the UK, where the level of protection expected of a member of the public is just about the same everywhere you go.

#2 Large territory

In a country with vast and sparsely populated regions, the ability to police the territory reliably and at all times is greatly hampered. Police in the UK will typically respond to any incident within mere minutes, or spot it before it can happen, because their patrols are so frequent. Surveillance is pretty reliable and covers almost everything, so any serious criminal can barely get started on any crime without realising they have already left enough evidence to be jailed. In the US, the large size of the territory likely makes this harder. Areas can be sparsely populated, and consequently not so monitored by law enforcement in great detail. Many altercations may take place for enough from the eye of the law that only carrying one’s own firearm can make a person feel somewhat more secure. The problem of the country’s large size would also drastically complicate any hypothetical policy of gun confiscation, compared to a much smaller and more densely populated island nation like Great Britain. 

#3 Large land borders

Although different US administrations have tried to address problems at the border with Mexico, and sought to make it much harder for illegal immigrants and contraband to get across, the reality is that fully sealing the border with such a populous neighbour may be too costly compared to just dealing with whatever crime leaks into the US. Therefore, guns are likely to get through here and end up being sold, regardless of what is done about gun ownership laws at a federal level. This can of course be disputed by the fact that most of this smuggling is from the US side into Mexico, but it still shows how easily products can cross the border, and criminals are likely to be able to still traffic weapons despite restrictions on how individuals can make gun purchases. Compare this with the United Kingdom, where the seas seal us off from Europe, which in turn has its own measures against gun ownership. Everything passing into the territory of the UK goes through customs, often in the EU and then in the UK separately (following Brexit), whereas many things making it into the US likely don’t.

#4 Many people already bear arms

The facts on the ground are just too unfavourable to even begin to confiscate people’s guns in America. Where would anyone begin? Gun culture and gun ownership is so pervasive that any federal force hypothetically tasked with confiscating guns would likely suffer insurmountable casualties for the attempt, if it encountered even a fraction of the resistance threatened by many American gun owners to such a move. In the UK, very few citizens have access to guns or ammo. These people know that there are vanishingly few like them, and government surrender schemes for people to turn in their weapons without punishment do result in significant numbers complying.

#5 The Constitution

The right to bear arms is such an undeniable core part of the US Constitution that the country would not be the same without it. This is a key part of the American identity and something that defined the country ever since its people decided to shoot up their British former masters. In Britain, our society evolved directly from a feudal one, in which very small bodies of armed men formed the authorities and ruled over the rest, and their access to weapons marked them out as the state. The people were always expected to have no weapons.

Practical realities

To conclude, it is very much ethical and feasible for the British people to have no weapons among their property. For the most part, we aren’t at risk of armed criminals, animals, or vacuums of authority, however transitory, on our territory, so people carrying guns all of a sudden would make our lives less safe. In the US, however, social and even geographic factors make their different attitude to gun ownership better for them. Given enough time, values and ideologies tend to adjust to practical realities in a given locale, rather than vice versa. America works out best as a home for those of a more libertarian view. This is a great example of how different people and places in the world should be entitled to their own values and way of handling their affairs, rather than a single ideology being right for the world.

Is normalisation with Israel aimed at Islam's destruction?

Israel’s efforts at normalisation with Arab countries and trade deals with them, like that recently agreed with the United Arab Emirates, are not based on goodwill but at improving their own situation in what they see as a hostile region. 

Israel is also developing military cooperation with unpopular authoritarian regime Bahrain to help extend some of its power to the Persian Gulf and threaten Iran. This shows the alignment of such an unthinking regime with outside powers against the regional interest.

Holy site under attack

At the same time, some Israelis push for demolishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock to replace these with a Jewish temple. Violence by Israeli security forces at the Islamic holy site has increased the sense that it is in peril. Declaring Jerusalem as a Jewish-ruled city and the Israeli capital rather than an Islamic one (as done by the United States and Israel) can already be seen as a comparable attempt to undermine Islam, as it would be to put the other two holy sites of Mecca and Medina under their military occupation.

Israel's so often repeated 'right to exist' in no way depends on attacking Islam (as can be seen by Arab states being willing to normalise relations), yet this is what Israel chooses to do. Every time it seems that Israel was accepted in the region, Israel itself will commit some kind of outrage, as if it wants conflict. Destroying the Al-Aqsa site would create an unending state of conflict in which Muslims would either be actively resisting Israel and the West, or Islam would be destroyed.

Making atrocities manageable

It could be that many Israelis believe Islam is irreconcilable with the existence of their state, whose only previous iteration (ancient Judea) predated Islam as a religion. Therefore, they should be expected to seek the destruction of Islamic holy sites.

Clearly, normalisation efforts with Muslim countries would make atrocities much more manageable for Israel, by making it difficult for those Muslim countries to uncouple from Israel economically, much less commit themselves to any form of resistance against Israel.

Bilderberg, WEF abandoning the globe for the West

Considering the agendas listed for their most recent meeting, it is noticeable that the Bilderberg forum is focusing less on the supposedly empathy-driven management of world human welfare and much more on the survival of the West. The West, meaning the narrow portion of the world whose most influential people attend these very meetings.

The new focus on ongoing conflicts like Ukraine's reveals that this group is not focused on managing the world’s economic wellbeing but the group’s own members’ desires and insecurities.

Shifting agendas away from world human welfare

If you look at the agendas from 2010 onwards, there is a certain shift from more scientific global concerns to increasingly narrow political ones, driven by a craving by the Western liberal attendees for victory and conquest over other countries and ideologies they personally disapprove of. Notice, in particular, the disappearance of the importance of climate change, formerly a key pressing issue in globalisation and a real basis for global cooperation, now abandoned by these supposedly caring leaders and experts for their preservation of their own political influence. Fear is the motive of their discussions - their own fear, not society's.

Some will begin to ask, was climate change ever real for those people? And, if it is no longer real for them, why should any of their current concerns be taken seriously outside their club? It seems that the most pressing global issues are less interesting to them than what they personally fancy or caters to their personal interests.

The same pattern is apparent at the World Economic Forum, which prioritised talking about the conflict in Ukraine, highlighting global fractures and amplifying conflict rather than maintaining the false liberal tenet of global cooperation. It is striking that the ideological principals guiding Western society just fluctuate depending on what would be satisfying to its richest and most influential individuals at the moment, getting us to scratch their itches. Globalisation and harmony one minute, national power and domination the next. Free markers one minute, state intervention the next.

'Me, me, me'

What we see here is that these forums for bigwigs, experts and public figure seem to be losing their pretence of being caring and responsible managers over global welfare, indicating this was never authentic in the first place. They are out for themselves.

What has happened can be compared with Bill Gates’ apparent obsession with conspiracy theories about himself (also see that one of the Bilderberg agendas is again "disinformation") and his need to save himself from campaigns against his character. Rather than acting like the bewildered but well-meaning philanthropist he claimed to be, and removing himself from a controversial situation, he is increasingly obsessed with defeating a political enemy, even coming into conflict with Elon Musk.

What happened to the experts who focused on the bigger picture of global society and health? Why should we care about their terror at conspiracy theorists in their own society and apparent geopolitical threats from Russia and China to their influence?

Eventually, we will begin to ask: what need do we have for a conference among individuals whose main interest is just their own avoidance of being hanged by the people? Is saving some self-important pencil necks we know very little about, from being snapped, really necessary for the public good and urgent for society to pursue?

Liberalism without prosperity?

The basic appeal of liberalism, and more so the neoliberal economic policy that dominated the world for decades, is meant to be the prosperity it optimises (or at least prevents the loss of). Unfortunately, faced with acute conflict in the world, proponents of this ideology may be increasingly instead turning to sacrifice and austerity in the name of 'civilisation', promoting a geopolitical struggle against competing poles of power like Russia and China. This puts liberalism in the position of, in the future, not presiding over a prospering people but a starved and hobbled people who wonder what it is all for.

Without offering prosperity, liberal democratic states offer nothing. By trying to convince people to enter a global confrontation with opposing continents, and forget about global welfare and even food supplies, the liberal regimes will throw away the only thing they were meant to be about. What hope is there, then, for their survival?

Weaponising everything and everyone

In a way, accusing the other side of weaponising all sorts of things is itself an attempt to weaponise those things. By saying others are weaponising information, for example, as the Guardian does, you are basically turning information sources into targets for military action.

Or, you are telling people to close their ears to other sources and listen instead to you. You are taking the war to the information sphere and telling your audience to fight for you by only listening to you, thereby unnecessarily militarising and weaponising this sphere. You were the one who adopted the idea that making people hold specific beliefs is a military objective you want met, and declared this view publicly. Others may just have welcomed a healthy debate, with every point, from the most banal to the most diabolic, open for consideration. So, who really weaponised something?

Pandemic of censorship

In a 2020 exchange of ideas, the Mont Order information-sharing society agreed that “The way content related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been controlled is a potential gateway to increasingly aggressive censorship by Western governments”. This referred to the handling of medical disinformation, which can indeed be fatal, but later, disputed political information was increasingly being dealt with in the same way.

The Mont Order prediction seemed to come true later, when all dissenting sources on the Ukraine conflict were being treated as enemy operators rather than legitimate participants in a debate. Virtually every statement critical of the West and NATO was also suddenly treated as the statement of none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself. The accepted idea became that everyone must promote a single narrative on any controversial issue, and all dissent must be dealt with like enemy shellfire, and silenced immediately.

Attention given to the idea of Russia spreading propaganda, and a lack of grasp of what propaganda is (other than that it is enemy information and therefore bad), has likely made many people in the West incapable of spotting a lot of very obvious and shoddy propaganda from the West itself. The cliché that the other side only produces propaganda and its claims can all be dismissed (even if true) is a huge accomplishment in propaganda. Inconvenient information is to be dismissed without consideration and even any source dismissed as an enemy agent, regardless of where it is located or its prior reputation. Everything becomes ad hominem attacks and shooting the messenger (in Ukraine itself, that probably is happening literally).

Being right doesn't mean being correct

Control of all publicly-consumed information works well for winning information wars where the goal is to convince the people of something, but it does not create informed experts. It is not hard to guess that Western journalists and politicians are themselves consuming dubious information, confusing a sense of righteousness for accuracy (the word "right" being the same word used to describe things that are morally encouraged or factually correct is a source of confusion, maybe). A rational person, meanwhile, concedes that our own regimes and the small, narrow blob of familiar corporate sponsors in the West could be motivated to spread their own fakes and propaganda.

In some ways, the discouragement of anything contrary to the single supreme narrative on a given controversy makes the West every bit as vulnerable to mindless propaganda as the most totalitarian societies in history. At worst, it means the very foundations of our supposed Western civilisation are just fakes and falsehoods, devoid of substance. We do not enjoy liberty, and lack access to the truth.

Weaponisation of TikTokers and YouTubers

The Biden administration actually intervened to convince TikTok creators to help it convince users of its position on the fighting in Ukraine. To the US government, everything is a weapon, and its foreign policy goals need to be achieved using every ethical and unethical method it can find.

It can seem as if genuine grassroots voices are rising up to support Ukraine's apparently morally just cause on YouTube, unanimously siding with the West and the supposed universal decency it represents when it comes to conflicts. The reality, though, is that even this behaviour is explained more by these people's reliance on a single platform aligned with the West and the sanctions it uses to control content creators. Creators want to stay in good standing with the platform, and this has more to do with what they say than any genuine moral stance on anything.

The sanctioned point of view

If we focus on YouTube's weaponisation, it is not hard to notice that content (even from entertainers) praising Ukraine or NATO in the ongoing conflict in Europe retains its monetisation (ads still play), in addition to which pro-Ukraine ads are allowed all over the site itself, despite this cause being ethically dirty and politically aligned in a violent conflict (revenue is blocked for video content on other conflicts). This tells us two things. First, that YouTube's management are guided by agents of the US government when it comes to foreign policy (certainly, Google is). Second, that the users creating the content had some kind of advance knowledge of the measures in place to reward or punish people depending on what conclusions their videos endorsed regarding the Ukraine conflict. With such factors in force, how likely is a content creator to arrive at balanced conclusions on the war in Ukraine? Basically, they have been given financial incentives to promote a specific view in their videos.

Clearly, the same narrow group of people who have sway over Western regimes and are able to treat politicians to all kinds of carrots and sticks are doing the same with even small content creators online. Consequently, what appears to be mass support popping up for a cause is always more likely to just be financially motivated and originating from a very narrow source.

To display a Ukrainian flag at one's church, or on one's car or social media profile, is not an autonomous action by people. Nobody was really moved by what they saw in Ukraine or in any other foreign conflict, but by sanctions, i.e. a cycle of reward and punishment by the powerful, which is the basis of all Western policy and morality. The resulting activity supporting the state's policies is subtly state-controlled. One way or another, incentives are created by the state and influence operations take place, in an effort to weaponise everything and everyone to sanitise and prop up an otherwise dubious and dirty policy of inflaming a foreign conflict.

Did anti-vaxxers destroy US germ warfare plans?

There is something insidious about the biological warfare warnings by the Russian and Chinese governments coinciding with acute geopolitical conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the obsession of Western governments and elites with vigilant public health policy.

A US military paper described “public resistance to public health measures” as a military threat to the US preparedness to withstand a biological attack. It is also a threat to US preparedness to launch such a germ warfare attack on an adversary, because it impairs the ability to carry out necessary inoculations of US troops and civilians at home ahead of just such an attack, to avoid the viral weapon backfiring on America.

Inoculation against what, again?

The US government's supposedly defensive Project Bioshield includes the aim of developing vaccines. This makes no sense. Inoculation campaigns would require knowledge of the exact biological threat, both in terms of its identity and the timing of its deployment as a weapon. You would require samples of the specific viral threat to already exist in the lab, to even begin work.

What is Bioshield going to develop a vaccine against, if it doesn't know what the enemy-manufactured virus will be? Inoculations are by definition a preventative measure against a known threat. In a military sense, it is about protecting one's people and resources and preserving them for future action. The development of a military vaccine only seems to make sense if a military is developing an offensive viral weapon and wants to inoculate its own troops to stop the weapon infecting its own forces.

Winning the vaccination debate is a US military objective

The option to impose mandatory inoculations of the population, and especially military forces, is a necessary part of any preparation for biological warfare, whether the attack is to come from an adversary or your own military. The state would necessarily have to forcibly inoculate large parts of its own population, in order to make sure the lethality of its own weapons does not backfire on its people and resources and undermine victory.

Western societies would not simply accept mandatory inoculations without society undergoing the necessary debate over the issue, and we seem to be past that stage now. The intentional politicisation of Covid-19 and very forced attempt to have a public debate over the necessity of mandatory vaccinations (even though the situation was not serious enough for that) could have been preparation to help build offensive biological warfare options against Russia and China. In a way, it is like building nuclear bunkers.

Russians and Chinese spotted something

Then, we come back to the biological weapon claims of the Russians and Chinese, whether one trusts them or not as a source. They allege that the United States has a very aggressive biological warfare program, with facilities near both of these adversary states. They are clearly unnerved, even paranoid. This may be more to do with them noticing Western states apparently hardening themselves for a biological warfare situation at home, taking advantage of the pandemic to overcome any social and political objections to the idea of the sudden inoculation of entire nations on the state's command.

West seems sure of victory

Finally, there is the uncompromising warmongering of Western states, which is uncharacteristic of countries that are held in check by the traditional threat of mutual destruction in a nuclear war. Clearly, Western governments believe they can actually eliminate Russia and China as threats within a short timeframe. This is apparent in their triumphalist attitude, which exceeds their apparent capabilities, as if they intend to lean on indirect or covert means of attack. While many may see the threat in "colour revolutions" (staged uprisings and street violence led by staff at Western embassies), germ warfare also fits such a description. The West talks like it has an ultimate secret weapon, and that weapon could take the form of viruses.

Many of the individuals responsible for advising Western policies (World Economic Forum attendees, for example) have developed an obsession both with pandemics and with enemy regimes at the same time, as if both are certainly on their minds and considerable energy has gone towards both. They also hate alternate sources of information, and especially anti-vaxxers. Their vision is of a society that can live with very harsh public health policies, and also be resolute in its commitment against the "enemy". This is the ideal combination before launching a germ warfare campaign.

Germ warfare preparations failed?

Then again, we can just as easily go back to the US military paper's gloomy conclusion mentioned at the beginning of this post. It may be that anti-vaxxers have ruined everything for them and destroyed their plans.

The extent of rejection of vaccines in Western countries, and official frustrations with much of society's lack of acceptance of harsh health policies, suggest that Western preparations for germ warfare have failed, and our own societies are insufficiently controlled to allow our governments to wage this war. The truth may be that China has a much more compliant population, giving its regime the best capability to both resist biological attacks and launch them.

If Western governments think a biological attack is a viable way to get rid of Russia and China, they are playing with fire. Russia has taken a very aggressive tone since the war in Ukraine started, and would respond brutally to such an attack if it traced it (maybe going straight to nuclear weapons), while China would be able to withstand it and counterattack to deadly effect.

Six signs someone is a neocon

Neoconservatives turn America into all the things it always tried to condemn in other nations - warmongers, tyrants, torturers and enemies of freedom. Guilty of launching the Iraq War, torture programs, and mass surveillance against their own people, there is seemingly no limit to what they might try to do.

Some of these traits may be shared simply by extremists on either side of the political spectrum, but any prominent person or intellectual adopting the below views is a neoconservative. They are a neoconservative because they have the views exclusive to the neoconservative ideology, complete with its absolutistic, utopistic bloodlust.

#1 Condemning “appeasement” regularly

They like to say “appeasement” frequently when describing supposedly weak responses to international conflicts, using it with regard to virtually every war, especially wars their country was already unethically involved in.

#2 Blaming the world's problems on a single “dictator”

They keep pointing to a single person as the public enemy at all times (usually a perceived authoritarian figure e.g., Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Bill Clinton, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin). They portray all these people almost like some reincarnating bogeyman, and the extent of their political theory is that killing or impeaching this bogeyman over and over again will save the world. They claim that political events surrounding this dictator have moral clarity and are like a movie, complete with a beginning, a middle and an end at which this “villain” is killed or defeated, by them or some hero figure, usually an American.

#3 Saying “can”, “should”, and “must” too often

Usually this is preceded by the word “America” or “we” as shorthand for the nation, or Western military alliances like NATO and US or Coalition military forces, usually accompanied by the idea that these forces are invincible in war and are only held back by weak liberals. They might personally have the physical prowess of a potato resting on a couch, but believe that their suggestions about sending soldiers into combat makes them akin to a cape-wearing hero. They also might make statements that America would have won or even did win in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but was betrayed by liberals (very similar to the “stabbed in the back” Nazi myth about World War One).

#4 Hating Kissinger and Carter

They think Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, is a coward for not sharing their simplistic good-vs-evil view of international affairs and conflicts. They might also really hate Jimmy Carter, seeing his administration as the weakest in American history. They might think America was later redeemed by the hero Ronald Reagan, seen by them as a superhero who single-handedly destroyed the Soviet Union. They hold the false belief that the Cold War was not a complicated affair ended by agreements, and instead insist it was simple battle between good and evil, believing that the good side (the West) won this “war”, and Russia surrendered and gave up its security (a key cause of the current Ukraine war).

#5 Advocating atrocities

They are willing to go on television and just advocate killing a civilian, even if this isn't their job, and think this is socially acceptable. They might think other members of their own society or fellow citizens should be censored, detained, tortured or killed for disagreeing with them on issues such as the above, presenting their own view as an unambiguously moral or factually correct default position rather than realising they are bloodthirsty fanatics for an ideology. They have no moral problems with torturing your body and killing your entire family if they judged you to be an impediment to their ideology (yet another trait they share with Nazis).

#6 Having protagonist syndrome

Another thing all neocons have in common is that their ideas are rooted in entertainment rather than reality. Neocons have Hollywood brains that love simplicity, villains, heroes, and a lot of violence against whoever they decided is bad (even if it later becomes clear that they are not bad). To quote someone taking the neocon path, “I had no knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo”.

Dead democracy theory

There is the 'dead internet theory' according to which most of the supposed humans on the internet are fakes, although this hypothesis probably doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

However, things that are far more important may be mostly fake. The advanced democracies in what we call the West are home to exceedingly unpopular regimes that seem to rely more on backing by pre-existing rulers, manipulative lobbies and media conglomerates than authentic popular support. As such, the democratic mandate of these regimes could be said to be false.

When a democracy gets too old

If the majority of people are against the regime, then such a regime cannot be said to be a living democracy. Perhaps a democracy being "advanced" translates to it being "aged", dying, or perhaps dead. These democracies are advanced and unflinching in their confidence not due to some sort of robustness and maturity, but because of their inflexibility and lack of any true loyalty to the people.

One can speculate that advanced democracies are long dead, having sagged outside the bounds of their original constitutions to become evil. Stepping outside of metaphor, it would mean they have existed for so long that any way of gaming the system to thwart the wishes of the people has long ago been discovered and refined to perfection by the few who have power. Every loophole is mapped by those who need to know about it, such that there are infinite ways of thwarting the people and defying their will, while maintaining the window-dressing of democracy. 

Rulers have effectively insulated themselves from the people, so that the system is effectively a lifeless and sterile corporate husk. The only “democracy” to be witnessed is futile cosmetics and the repetition of the word itself, more like an article of faith than a factual reality.

Young democracies are full of life and purpose, having recently emancipated their people. However, all old democracies, even in the ancient world, eventually perished, having lost support among anyone other than a small elite who were cheating and exploiting the system.

'Lesser evil'

Voter apathy is far worse than mere low turnout in elections, since it includes those who only grudgingly cast votes for the lesser evil, as if any living democracy would be like that. This gives rise to a reality in which nobody other than a tiny minority, heavily engaged in the political system and shaping the available candidates, believes in its legitimacy. Meanwhile, the vast majority are quietly resigned to being governed by whoever is in power or picking from a menu that features nothing they want, feeling certain that any effort they made to participate would be thwarted successfully by the pack of wolves who fought their way to the top long ago.

The result is that advanced democracies may be hostage to a hyper-vocal and aggressively involved minority, perhaps twenty percent of the people, often driven more by their deep contempt for all the other people than any respect for their will.

If the above speculation is right, then the ones who most like to pretend democracy is alive may be those who believe it serves their narrow interests. Such a group is hardly the people, who are in fact lifeless corpses kicked and beaten by that narrow group who rule. The say of those lambs is absent, they are dead, and what persists is only the hijacking of the state by predators eating them.

All of this is, of course, only an exercise in speculation, like the dead internet theory. But it helps to sometimes posit the most diabolic interpretation of the state of things, so to stimulate thought.