Covid19 Power-grab Special:
Macron the banker’s decision to institute curfewed martial law in France is the most nakedly convenient Emergency Powers over-reaction since the Reichstag fire. The Slog explains why he saw it coming.
A cliché’s verity is not lessened by being a cliché. Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes most memorably remarked 140 years ago, “When every other explanation has been eliminated by deduction, the residue must represent reality”.
Of course, Holmes gave Dr Watson this lesson in logic long before the Internet age of obuscation overload, spin and public suggestibility crept up behind a distracted world after the mid 1990s. But quite some time has elapsed since Covid19 first made its appearance at the end of November last year. We have been given varietal data, longer series of data, and most of the unknowns are now at least partially known.
Thus, although the half-arsed Chinese numbers suggest a death rate of 3.8%, it is now widely accepted that the term ‘cases’ really means presented cases. What we have here – and please excuse the emphasis, but it’s important – is a death rate based on those who felt ill enough to seek medical advice. In Singapore (where small numbers and efficient government medical advice have been an advantage) the data appear to suggest that there could be a 5% death rate among the elderly with pre-existing respiratory/immunity problems, and a 0.4% rate among younger and/or fitter individuals.
In short, anyone following the learnings of this outbreak can now be reasonably sure that (1) Covid19 infects very easily and quickly (2) its incubation period could be as long as 24 days without symptoms, (3) the vast majority of people have symptoms ranging from mild to temporarily incapacitating, and finally (4) there is little or no natural immunity to it. Please hold those thoughts, for they are central to my analysis.
From the outset, there have been inexplicable oddities.
Once the outbreak was confirmed, the social media were dominated by categorical assertions that C19 was an escaped warfare germ from the lab at Wuhan. In “denial” about this at first, the Beijing politiburo then abruptly changed tack and adopted draconian measures. Some of these – “welding people into their apartments” – have never been validated to my satisfaction. Panic measures were nevertheless adopted. Yet in the last week, it has become clear from both Westerners in China and myriad other Asian non-Communist media that things are returning to normal. Two Western contacts I have there confirm this. “Shops are reopening, and students are back at College,” says one, “most tourist sites are now open for business again”.
This reality has thus far been largely ignored by US and EU media.
Covid19’s RNA suggested a natural mutant, albeit with some odd AIDS-like features in it. Yet every source I went to refuted the “Wuhan lab escape” theory. Some – not all – did suggest strongly that the virus had elements ‘suggesting design, but not likely to have emerged from the lab in Wuhan’.
The more one examines this particular aberration, the more another explanation looks most likely: the PRC adopted panic measures because they were baffled by the virus, and suspected they were under attack from germ warfare.
For me, the weirdest thing about this episode from Day 1 has been an orchestrated media campaign of uncertainty, doom and apocalypse wildly out of proportion to the real nature of the threat. Only this morning a UK Whitehall source (unnamed) adviser to the Johnson administration described the virus as “the greatest threat to our survival since the Second World War”.
Curbing smug or glib atttudes is one thing; putting out insane exaggeration is another.
Now we must consider some bizarre events that immediately preceded the December virus outbreak. In brief these were:
* Trump’s closure of America’s Centres for Disease Control last Summer: was this his idea, or Unelected State advice/persuasion?
* The sudden decision by a committee of Davos bigwigs in October to “model the likely effects of a Coronavirus outbreak” – fully sixteen years after the last outbreak.
* The presence of US military and CIA personnel undertaking exercises in China during November.
For most Johnny Conspiranoids, there’s more than enough in that circumstantial evidence to hatch a full-blown conspiracy theory. For myself, I need more.
Further evidence is not that hard to collect. My next question is this: is the ‘containment’ advice being handed out in the West sheer incompetence, or something darker and deliberate?
Up to yesterday afternoon, I inclined towards the former – and I think my posts over time reflect this view. I am now edging towards the darkness.
I will deal with the counsel being offered point by point….going back to the thought I asked you to hold earlier:
(1) Covid19 infects very easily and quickly: as we know this to be an established certainty, why are there banner-terror headlines every time it’s shown to be correct?
(2) its incubation period could be as long as 24 days without symptoms: so why does the standard advice being handed out say only seven days?
(3) the vast majority of people have symptoms ranging from mild to temporarily incapacitating: this too having been latterly established, why do the western media insist on ignoring it, and calculating instead a kill-rate assuming zero “mild sufferers” who experienced the virus without ever appearing on the statistical radar?
(4) there is little or no natural immunity to it: if this is the case (and it seems to be) why follow a containment-obsessed policy in dealing with Covid19, when the best way to get it to burn out and disappear in a single bout is to accept infection levels and reap the medium-term benefit of widespread immunity? Why store up trouble for next year when you can get it over with this year….and put it behind you?
In that context, here is a series of observations that point to a different interpretation of policy: the whole idea is to create panic and fear. To do that, you need some sort of “superspreader” or “reinfection” myth; further combustion will be added to the fire of unease created by exaggerated death-rates. And last but not least, if you’re trying to create circumstances justifying longer-term Emergency Powers, the best way is to keep immunity to a minimum. If Covid19 comes back next November, then the élites extend the State of Emergency: why get one bite at the cherry when you can have two?
Let’s look now at how, in the broadcast by Macron last night, the creeping sense of unease turned into a staggering display of dictatorial martial law by the French President.
At the weekend, French Prime Minister Eduard Philippe, having shut ALL bars and restaurants earlier last week, ordered the immediate closure of ALL shops except those selling food, pharmacy and news.
I was out shopping in a nearby market town during yesterday. The face masks we were told five weeks ago were “of no use” are now legally required by all retail staff in those stores left open. Most staff were cleaning hands with medigel after any contact with debit cards. The immediate feeling, as a customer, was of being in an a zone of acute and immediate medical danger.
There are 32 cases of Covid19 in Lot et Garonne where I live – in a population of 330,159 people: a case rate of under 0.001%. The Monday market in Miramont there was four-fifths empty. Everyone looked scared. Every cough was immediately noted. France was rapidly moving towards total fermé a clef.
The Boy King duly made a TV address last night. The address had been trailed at regular intervals on the media during the day. But its content exceeded my worst fears. Creating a State of Emergency without declaring one, Macron ordered that:
A curfew be imposed from 6pm each night
One shopping trip per day per household will be allowed
Everybody must stay at home for up to 15 days. (NB, this is open-ended)
All the measures will be enforced by the army, for whom all leave has been cancelled.
Now then: does the foregoing analysis still look ‘far-fetched’?
Consider: the economic damage across Europe is going to be beyond belief. Given that blindingly obvious fact – and the growth obsessions that typify neoliberals in power – I think the three most likely truths behind Covid19 can be shortlisted as follows:
1. There is something so dreadful and diabolical about the virus, nobody dares to tell us about it. Hence the wholesale draconianism.
2. Covid19 has been created and released with one aim in mind – to act as a gigantic “Patsy” excusing bourse-dominated failure, and as a rationale for the Unelected State to introduce martial law and the supension of liberal democracy.
3. Everyone in virological medicine, on Wall Street, at Westminster, in Whitehall, in Brussels, working in the media and on the Bilderberger-to Davos axis are blithering incompetent idiots letting dangerous germs escape and underestimating Covid19 from the start, who can’t read or remember the simplest facts or briefs, and are only now overreacting to cover their former indolence.
We have now reached the inevitable stage in every 21st century analysis, where one must ask, “Cui bono?” – who benefits?
I realise that most people subscribing to the New World Order conspiracy and Elders of Zion claptrap et al will plump for the first option. But as I have from the start, I reject it on sheer lack of evidence: reinfection has proved to be a myth, as are superspreaders and mutations at the speed of light. The data series from China and Singapore flatly contradict all of it, and by broad agreement in the Asian media, China is already slowly returning to normal.
Finally, it’s hard to ignore the experience of Nadine Dorries, who tested positive and was then generous enough to infect her mother. Both are now fully recovered ten days later. Nadine’s mum is already well into the eighth decade.
There are some evil nasties in the RNA of Covid19, but it’s hard to see something we’ve missed right now. If it was there – be reasonable – it would’ve surfaced – and/or somebody would have blown the gaff.
In the light of those realities alone, Macron’s measures border on the surreal.
Equally – while a big part of my life is involved in revealing and ridiculing incompetence in government – Option 3 doesn’t float my boat: it’s possible, but unlikely….and asks us to believe that some seriously intelligent people doing everything from quant prediction on Wall Street to cerebral micro-surgery are clueless. Virologists across the globe continue to reject Covid19 as Wuhan produced, and disagree about whether it’s lab-elsewhere designed or a freak of nature. Trust me, if Washington had hard evidence of a Wuhan lab link, they would’ve told us by now. They’ve been asked to put up or shut up, and remained tight-lipped. For me, that’s QED….but hey, each to his or her own conclusion.
So that leaves us in Baker Street with a pop-eyed Dr Watson, and the seemingly bonkers Option 2: that Covid19 has been created and released with one aim in mind – to act as a gigantic “Patsy” excusing bourse-dominated failure, and as a rationale to for the Unelected State to introduce martial law and the suspension of liberal democracy.
It is the only interpretation that fits all the facts. And after last night’s Elysée power-grab, it looks increasingly like that aim is now being turned into action.
One can almost hear the Pentagon barmcake (superbly parodied by George C Scott in the movie Dr Strangelove) reveal the rationales to his audience of top threepercenters somewhere deep in the bowels of the Unelected State last July:
“Here’s how to really screw the Chinks, get Trump, finalise US global hegemony and then take over the Land of the Free for good. We already got Tangerine Head in the White House to close the Disease Control Center. We have the evidence from modelling that this caper is gonna create the shitstorm of all time among the proles. As the Democrats can’t organise a candidate whose sane, alive or in any other way electable, seems to us the time is ripe to shape up, fly right, and take command Goddamnit.
“Our guys will be on mission in China at the right time, and we have the right product. There will never be a better window. Think about it, bankers – the biggest Dow fuck up and ripoff in history (which is, yer know, sayin’ sumptin’ here) gets blamed on the virus. The Repo farce gets blamed on the virus. The collapse of the EU and NATO gets blamed on the virus. Fuck it, forty-six indictments against Jamie Dimon get blamed on the virus.
“What we have here is better than Lee Harvey Godamned Oswald caught lightin’ the fuckin’ Reichstag fire: this ain’t a brainstorm children, this is an outright blamestorm.
“Look at it this way, globalist members – we wipe out all the sensible, grounded but welfare-costly old folks. Their deaths smash the value of housing assets. There’s people killin’ each other for fuckin’ rest room rolls out there, and riotin’ about the price of medical wipes. Everyone’s gettin’ repossessed like the Devil hisself was at large….there’s violence, there’s lootin’, Man. Time to call out the Natonal Guard.
“Cancel the election….can’t have all those precious voters infecting each other in the pollin’ booths. A State of Emergency is declared, with Congress emptied on the basis of being full of sneezing old bastards infecting the rest of us. The Donald is put onto Air Force One as some kinda flyin’ fuckin’ Dutchman until we decide what to do with him.
“But we contain it, see? We get the credit for protecting those worth saving, know whadamsayin’ heeyah? You betcha. Then next year, more o’ these dumb mothers start keelin’ over on account of we didn’t address immuniddy, so Hell, we godda renew the State of Emergency, right?”
I circulated a draft of this post – including the rant above – to my inner circle yesterday afternoon before Macron made his speech – and I have the dated emails and 18 witnesses to prove it. We are very possibly on the verge of the Final Act of a Tragedy that began 57 years ago.
In broad daylight in Dallas Texas close to noon in November 1963, a fatal bullet fired from in front of the Kennedy motorcade coldly eliminated one of the most charismatic and popular Presidents in US history. George Bush Sr was in Dallas that day briefing a CIA team. His son George W Bush tried to destroy the FBI files relating to the event. Both men became President. Lyndon Baines Johnson begged the Governor of Texas not to ride in the Kennedy limo. Johnson too became President. Lee Oswald could not have killed JFK, but the CIA tampered with the Zapruder film; only recent remastering has revealed that the killer bullet came from the opposite direction to the Texas Book Depository. Donald Trump promised to reveal the asassination files. He failed.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the awesome, lawless power with which we are dealing.
During the period 2010-15, the EU destroyed Greece as a functioning sovereign State. Under extreme Berlin pressure, it imposed an austerity on ‘ClubMed’ that is reflected in the poor infrastructure and high Covid19 death rates we see in Italy today. Brussels claimed to be “punishing” the Greeks for budget fraud, but the creators of that calumny – Goldman Sachs – got off Scott-free. After leaving his post at the illegally created Fiskalunion committee, Dutch EU politician Jeroam Dijesslebleom admitted that the rape of Greece was undertaken solely to save two French and three German banks’ exposure to Greek debt fraud. The crime was conceived by Goldman Sachs. Gary Cohn, the author of it, is now Trump’s senior economic advisor.
Following Crash1 in 2008, unelected US Fed Chair Benanke introduced QE and Zirp, two policies that virtually decimated the capital income of people aged over sixty….purely to save the criminally depraved Wall Street banking community.
In the same period, 16 EU banks illegally rigged the Libor lending rate system in order to cheat their customers and restore capital squandered by their own greedy stupidity. Nobody went to jail. The French President Emmanuel Macron (and the UK former Chancellor Sajid Javid) were centrally involved in the scam.
During the period 2004-14, journalists at the UK newspapers The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Star, and The Mirror routinely and illegally hacked into the mobile phones of what is estimated to have been some 25,000 newsworthy and largely innocent British citizens. Not only did the British State not lift a finger to defend those citizens, it collaborated actively in the cover-up of the media owners’ activities. This process involved two Prime Ministers, David Cameron and Boris Johnson. One person went to jail….in an open prison, for sixteen weeks.
In 2018, Sergei Viktorovich Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who was visiting him from Moscow, were poisoned with a germ warfare product, ‘Novichok’. Skripal senior was a UK security services double agent based in Salisbury….close to Britain’s Germ Warfare centre at Porton Down. Then UK Foreign Secretary (and now Prime Minister) Boris Johnson insisted that Porton Down had nailed “the Russians” as the perpetrators. They hadn’t. It later emerged that Novichok is Russian for “new stuff”, that Moscow had abandoned development of Novichok years before, but that both the US and the UK had ample supplies of it. Salisbury Hospital staff found themselves invaded by security agents insisting they sign the Official Secrets Act. Despite media assertions that Novichok was deadly under all circumstances, both Skripals rapidly recovered. But to be on the safe side, the entire Salisbury area was placed on lockdown for a month. Disinfection staff in full anti-germ uniforms were everywhere spraying everything. Uncannily like Wuhan three years later
The task facing everyone still capable of seeing what could well be careening down the road now is to look out for more signs.
Some are already appearing: I tried to pay a supplier’s bill electronically yesterday….it bounced back. Worldpay said the supplier’s account had been blocked from receiving further funds.
Denmark has also enforced quarantine measures and passed an Enabling Act forcing people to be vaccinated. There is currently no vaccination for the virus; what other motive is there thus in that demand beyond the creation of terror?
Look next for any signs of scything down thousands of blogs and news collectives on the grounds of “spreading fake and alarming news”.
Expect the Gilets Jaunes movement to be banned soon.
Yesterday, despite losing a last-minute court bid to delay the the Democratic primary in Ohio, the Republican state governor ordered polling stations to close due to the “health emergency”.
Keep an eye out for any plans to cancel this year’s US Presidential election entirely.
Be prepared to see your tweets and Facebook posts disappear.
Don’t be surprised if this piece is pulled.
The Slog 