Tory Death Parties - celebrating not avoiding avoidable harms. Indict them all - seriously. We must indict them.

#torydeathparties

They did die, because this Government rejected suppression of community transmission in favour of 'Herd Immunity'.

Making an error, and repeating it? Deliberate policy. "Who will we not save?"

Lies and Gaslighting, a CDO salesman takes over responsibility for the populations Right to Health and thrashes it.

@corneiliusmusic Tory Death Parties #torycorruption #torydeathparties ♬ original sound - corneiliusmusic

Have we seen how people die of COVID? Our News Media has not shown us much of that reality - but NHS staff are forced to deal with this every day.
Have we seen how people who are afflicted with Long COVID suffer, day in day out, from a Vascular Disease? Yes, it's not the 'Flu - it is a vascular disease that attacks every organ of the human body, and lingers. We do not know the long term implications of infection into future decades and we cannot say with any confidence there are none.

Do we know people whose businesses have been destroyed? 

Do we know how many overnight millionaires have been minted by unlawful crony contracts in the midst of all this harm?
Do we fully understand the realities of the harms imposed upon the population of the UK by the manner in which this misGovernment deliberately engineered their Herd Immunity strategic stance, since February 2020?

Indictments are deserved.
Johnson must not be allowed to resign - he must be indicted for Misconduct in Public Office, Malfeasance, Corporate Manslaughter by deliberate negligence and, of course, he must be indicted for corruption. It is written on the wallpaper.
He and the entire Cabinet, and the Corona Virus Recovery Group of Conservative and Unionist MPs and their sponsors must be indicted for Misconduct in Public Office, Malfeasance, Corporate Manslaughter by deliberate negligence.
They are all intimately involved in promoting and advocating the policy of allowing the virus to spread in the community, and rejecting any concerted attempt at Suppression of Community Transmission of the virus. They are all involved in peddling dangerous misinformation that has killed and maimed many, many innocent and vulnerable people. 

They are culpable and should be made liable.
They are all culpable. 
The parties are small beer. A stale, sour beer. They are indicative of the character of this misGovernment.
The massive toll of avoidable harms deliberately not avoided is the main course. 
The entire media sphere is studiously avoiding detailing the reality of the main course. They helped set the toxic table upon which it was served, so it's no surprise they are generally mute on this. Those who enabled misinformation to percolate are culpable for the harms that has caused.
This Government misused furlough.

When they should have been chasing the virus down, protecting our borders with quarantine so that the virus is neither imported nor exported, enhancing NHS capabilities, recruiting more NHS Staff, enhancing NHS Test and Trace by funding it from an expert base, when they should have been localising the Test & Trace workforce, providing economic support to anyone exposed to the virus so that they could safely and comfortably isolate and not be forced to return to work, and take the risk of spreading the virus, when they should have been mandating PPF2 masks, alerting the population to the realities of COVID as an aerosol transmitted risk, when they should have been noting the understanding that COVID is also vascular disease in order to inform people of the long haul risks of infection with SARSCOV2, be they symptomatic or asymptomatic - they did none of this.

They also neglected the 3 million 'excluded' from any form of economic or moral assistance. Furlough was designed to protect the employers interests, rather that the populations right to health. Getting people back to work in offices even as the virus was among us was about the rents the property developers and owners were concerned with.

The removal of the paltry 'Covid Uplift' by Sunak plunged more people into poverty and reliance on food banks and will expose millions of people to increased fuel poverty as a direct result. It was a spiteful move. Especially when one considers that every penny of that uplift would be put into the economy, rather than extracted from the economy and hoarded in off shore facilities, much of it to be used as a Free Market political weapon. 

Their abandonment of mitigations in our schools is an appalling deliberate failure. Using children as super spreaders to generate booster infections in the adult vaccinated population? Yes, they did that too. 'Herd Immunity' was/is their 'objective' in spite of it's mythical status. Look at the death and disease rates among their teachers.
Everything they did impose upon us all was designed to look like help and designed to allow the virus to transmit, with the tactical calculation involved in trying to maintain the harms at a level below the collapse of NHS and other services, to remain below radar of polling and electoral loss of popularity, as they pursued 'Herd Immunity' - an imaginary state for a virus that mutates as rapidly and as unpredictably as this virus has been proven to do.  
Every measure they undertook was designed to extract wealth from the Public Purse, and pass it to cronies and allies. Their profit, our loss. Pretending to help us they raided the kitty.

Herd Immunity, Endemicity, Vaccines
There is no such thing as endemicity with this Virus whilst the entire world is struggling with a Pandemic. 

IndependentSAGE hosted a brief chat on what endemic really means. Malaria is endemic, and it kills millions every year. Many other diseases are endemic, and not at all 'mild'. There are global programs to reduce all of those diseases. We do not accept that people must simply 'live with them'.

This Government opposes waiving Intellectual Property rights on Vaccines which undermines global populations Right to Health and increases the risk of variants of concern becoming variants that cause even more harm. Omicron is not 'mild'. The Vaccines are doing a decent job of reducing the harm of Omicron,  but the increased infections are increasing hospitalisation, deaths and other adverse impacts.

A more detailed, nuance charge sheet.
The People's Covid Inquiry has, in addition to all of the above, laid out the charge sheet that this Government abrogated their duty to protect the population's Right to Health. 

Here's the legal requirements of a Government faced with a public health threat:

1. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948 Article 25); 
2. The Constitutional provisions of the World Health Organisation (WHO) 
3. Constitution of the World Health Assembly  International Health Regulations (IHR 2005).
4.  1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights* (ICESCR). 
Article 12 by which the government must act in a manner compatible with the 
5. European Convention Articles (ECHR), for example Art 2, the Right to Life.
6. National Health Service Act 2006 section 2A - which imposes a duty to protect public health from diseases and other dangers to public health, and indicates appropriate steps which may be taken.
*(1) and (2) read:‘The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest standard of physical and mental health.The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right SHALL include those necessary for ... (c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases.’
Corruption, Anti-Democratic legislation.
And then we come to the corruption, the lies and gaslighting by Johnson and every senior minister, and much of the Press and Broadcast Media and the on-line grooming operations that push conspiracy hypotheses that are intimately linked to the CRG and the ERG.

Then there's the anti-democratic legislation criminalising democratic protest, endangering our elections in order to retain power, removing independent electoral oversight, criminalising the entire Traveller community for their way of life, (an established and acknowledged ethnic group and way of life - 'first they came for....') and much else besides, as blatant a political power grab as any by Hitler, Stalin, Trump or Mao.

A Home Secretary whose wet dream is Capital Punishment bodes ill for this nation.

A decade imprisonment for defacing a Statue, less than the Tariff for many much more egregious crimes that cause harm to the person, their body or mind - Rape, for example draws a 5 year sentence.

Death Parties.
The 'Work' Parties at Downing Street and across Government Offices, to give them their correct status, were Death Parties. They were celebrating their work - look at the outcomes of that work.
160 thousand deaths by Covid, millions of operations cancelled, 1.3 million cases of Long Covid, an economy in deep distress, enhanced poverty for 14 million households whilst British Billionaires added to their number, and increased their wealth by £150 billion.
And here we are into the third year of this Pandemic and there is no end in sight.
How many times have this atrocious misGovernment claimed that they had beaten the virus? 

Gaslighting, pretending to act, deliberate negligence.
How many times have this Government said - "we must not waste the success of our efforts to quell the virus"? How many times have they cited the harms they caused as reasons to drive even worse policy, such as sending our children into unsafe schools as a method of delivering a booster of infection to a vaccinated adult population, as a tactic in their overall strategic stance - 'protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin'?
How many more must they kill, maim and and how many businesses and social institutions must they distress and degrade before the English people understand the true nature of these awful, callous, grubby, greedy, nasty men and women who are abusing the power invested in their official positions, by a trusting electorate, a vulnerable population?

Who will rid us of this dangerous Government?
Johnson and the entire cabinet must be indicted. Resignation that allows them to walk away from the criminality of their political action is not adequate to the situation.

We need a national unity parliament, where our legislators set aside their current adversarial dynamic with regards to the Pandemic. Indeed the pandemic is, it could be said, a training run for the co-operation and mutual aid that will be necessary in dealing with Climate Change, Pollution and Poverty all of which looms as even greater causation of mass harm in the years ahead.

This is an appeal to all decent MPS, councillors and others tasked with good governance - step up to plate.
We need a Leveson II to regulate and rein in the Press and Broadcast Media that supported this odious misGovernment at every turn.
The Spectator ought to be closed down - spreading misinformation is not Free Speech, it is a deliberate abuse of Free Speech. Free Speech has, since the inception of the concept,  been understood best as a matter of speaking truth to power, of speaking honestly, of taking full responsibility in the public domain to uphold integrity and probity to counter political lies and gaslighting.
The Sun must be shut down. Murdoch and his minions must be indicted for the vast harm their misinformation operations have caused to the public perception of this virus, the disease and the pandemic in general. Their track record on Racism and Misogyny is likewise grim.

Revolution?
If the general public were to go on a general strike, and then took the path of a 'revolution' and dragged these awful men and women out of Parliament, and put them in the stocks, to be pelted with rotten fruit and humiliated in public, it would be wrong - that said the anger the population feels suggests such a reactionary move would be partially understandable, given the harms this misGovernment has deliberately caused to the English people themselves.

Luckily, for the misGovernment, the English people are not so violent, not so indecent, not so easily led down paths of political violence - and correctly so.  The point of indictments is not punishment, it is accountability and the prevention of future harms. A deterrent to future politicians behaving in such harmful manner.

Given the choice, I imagine anyone would probably much prefer to be pelted with rotten fruit than endure death by COVID, no matter how humiliating the experience.

The most important thing we can do is uphold the Law to it's fullest extent, in the most honest manner possible, so that probity, honesty, integrity are restored to Parliament and the Civil Service.

Rotten fruit will not do that. Nor will riots of any kind.
Indictments for Misconduct in Public Office would be the correct method of addressing the criminality and negligence of this misGovernment. 
Have you seen how people die of COVID?

Look at that, if you have not done so. Our NHS staff have had to witness that awful, horrific, terrifying process, day in day out. The relatives of those who died were blocked from seeing that intense traumatic and blocked from attending to loved one's in their final moments. Let that inform your view on this matter.

Celebrating their work? Death Parties one and all. 

Every Friday, a piss up to bolster the troops?

Death Parties.

PS: PS: 'Austerity' was and remains a deliberate policy of collective punishment, imposing a stress position to break the community that cares for the vulnerable.

Cruel, deliberate lethality.

The 'savings' of Austerity, de-staffing the NHS as 'efficiency', the reduction in beds as 'efficiency', knowing full well they were implemented by managers ordered to do so to get their annual funding allocations. "No new cash, if you don't make these 'savings'."
'Externalised costs' - the costs in ill health, distress, staff exhaustion and deaths are ignored, set aside in favour of the 'savings'. It's truly appalling and profoundly amoral.

Those who cause such harm run scared from the truth revealed. Allowing lies to adversely afflict  and cause such serious harm to a population is unacceptable.

The truth sets us free. Lies imprison us all.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Singapore : a exemplar of suppression of community transmission protecting the populations Right to Health.

Stopping the Spread is Spreading the Love. 

Finally, a Welsh (British) political leader tells it like it is, in clear everyday language.

A government that refuses to protect the populations right to health is a murderous government.

There are lots of things wrong with many Governments, and many mistakes have been made. The worst deliberately bad policy choices have been made by USUK, Brazil and some EU States, because they make the same choices, repeatedly, in spite of the evidence of the harms they are causing. This means they are not 'mistakes', they are deliberate, intentional policy choices. And thus the population are forced to bear the costs. Who profits from all of this? Who is gaining?

Singapore chose to avoid making the mistake it made first time around. Their treatment of migrant workers was harsh, and they corrected that error. 

This piece that follows is adapted from a Tweet by Dr. Dan Goyal.

https://twitter.com/danielgoyal/status/1479078027141259265

Singapore - population 5,918,960, total cases 283,214, total deaths 835

President Halimah of Singapore

Population is 5,453,5600
GDP per Capita c. $59k

Singapore is similar in population and GDP to Ireland. Singapore is just one example of best practice in handling the Pandemic. There are many others countries following similar principles and practice, including China, which when put together covers a global population of  2.4 billion people.

USUK is not in this group.  Why is this the case after two years of this pandemic?

Singapore's COVID-19 response: 

"In April 2020, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore, President Halimah approved her in-principle for the government's request to draw S$21 billion from the past national reserves, aimed at subsidising wages of 1.9 million workers and preserving jobs and businesses.^[66] 

On 7 April 2020, the Supplementary Supply Bill was revised for the Resilience and Solidarity Budgets and the revised bill was asserted by President Halimah on 9 April 2020.^[67] 

On 5 June 2020, the Parliament of Singapore passed the Second Supplementary Supply Bill for the Fortitude Budget, to allow for the government to draw an additional of S$31 billion from the reserves, aimed at securing employment for those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic as the country loosens restrictions after the circuit breaker.^[68] 

On 16 June 2020, President Halimah assented to the Second Supplementary Supply Bill, which enacted the Second Supplementary Supply Act, to allow the government the additional requested funds to ease the effects of the pandemic.

This marks the second time that the past reserves of Singapore were drawn in the financial year of 2020 and it was also the largest amount drawn from the reserves since Singapore's independence, with the funds totalling S$52 billion. She was the 2nd president to exercise the President's discretionary powers for this purpose, after President S. R. Nathan in 2009 for the financial crisis of 2007–2008."

From the very start, Singapore's Government took the view that they would seek to suppress the virus in hospitality, recreation, and work environments to permit schools, hospitals and other essential services to continue.

In other words they recognised that protecting the populations Right to Health demanded that they develop and maintain suppression of community transmission in order to protect all the services and utilities that support the population, including their Health Services. In order to avoid overloading their Health Services, they knew they had to suppress community transmission. 

They focused on suppression of transmission in the community with the following strategies.

- Masks (promoting PPF2 masks, making them available for free)
- Ventilation (HEPA Filters and other air movement measures to reduce viral loading)
- Testing and Tracing - to see where the virus, and suppress it (not merely as a generic diagnostic tool for individuals to use)
- Supported isolation. (Financial support and superb medical advice, with rapid access to more intense treatment at medical centres)
Singapore has a highly vaccinated population, an excellent Covid Clinical Care Pathway, and a functioning Contact and Isolation service. 
Singapore's Government and population, working together, have diminished the threat posed by Covid. 

Take a look at their approach to schools.

https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/singapores-school-management-policy-during-covid-19/

"Singapore’s predominantly state-based school system and agile policymaking ensure minimal impact of the pandemic on its children.

In an ideal year, students in Singapore attend school for 200 days. However, in 2020, Singapore’s primary and secondary school students physically attended 150 days (approx.) of school. The rest of the days of schooling were completed through home-based or blended-learning model. This article takes a look at the challenges faced by students during the COVID-19 pandemic and the policies adopted by the Singapore government to alleviate them.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Singapore government took an incremental and adaptive approach to school management. It implemented staggered breaks in school and suspended large whole school assemblies as early as 4 February 2020. This was followed by suspension of inter-school activities and reduction in tutorial class sizes. The government also imposed additional precautionary measures such as cleaning of school premises and limiting the number of visitors to create a safe physical learning environment."

Mask wearing is mandated for all age groups. Because it works. By operating an suppression of community transmission across all areas of life, Singapore has maintained high levels of safety for their children - their schools are safer than those in the UK. Such measures allowed Singapore to have  face-to-face classes for students without creating a burden of community transmission.

Compare and contrast that to the experience of English school children, who were deployed as immunity boosters by the JVCI, according to their minutes, and the actual practice. It failed. Miserably. We have seen multiple waves driven by school based infections, and we are about to start yet another one. It is quite clear now that allowing school children to become infected does not provide the immunity boost the JVCI and the Government assumed. The English Government policy is a dead unicorn. Even still the Johnson Government, and Parliament, is riding that badly flogged horse. No ifs, no buts.

IndependentSAGE, a team of highly qualified experts and professionals in epidemiology, virology, public health, behavioural science and other related areas have consistently urged the English Government to take the necessary measures to protect schools.

https://www.independentsage.org/category/education/ - their latest report on making schools safe in January 2022 is now available.

Here's a series of articles looking at the lived experience of school children during the ongoing pandemic.

https://www.orfonline.org/series/children-and-the-pandemic-an-analysis-across-countries/

Covid Resilience stands on suppression of community transmission.

The Singaporean Government and population are now looking to "Covid Resilience Phase", that is to say maintaining lowest possible levels of community transmission, remaining vigilant in order to keep the economy open and safe. They fundamentally understand that a health economy rests upon a healthy population. 
This stands in stark contrast to the position of USUK.
1. Singapore's response remains dynamic, shifting protective measures depending on level of cases
2. They have limited work environments to max of 50%, sometimes only vaccinated, and all require LAT flows to enter work environment. Employers have guidance on ventilation.
https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19-phase-advisory

3. Schools intermittently move to online learning, again if case numbers are high. 
4. They are also moving further towards community management of low risk cases by providing financial and practical support to GPs to facilitate at the local level.
5. Shortened isolation period under certain conditions

There is very clear public messaging and instructions on how to self-isolate at home, regular support and clear criteria for escalation: prolonged fever, shortness of breath, chest discomfort..

The object of the exercise is to suppress community transmission and to achieve that the people affected must feel they are fully supported, they must trust the Government and the services. 
This short video outlines their 'buddy' system of getting the best information out to the population.

Home Recovery Buddy
Summary

Singapore have enjoyed more freedom than many countries, better economic recovery, and MOST importantly, they have saved thousands of lives through a combination of public health interventions and good clinical care.
Singapore now face the more transmissible Omicron variant with...
- a good level of vaccine derived immunity,
- a highly efficient well resource working Contact and Trace service at all levels
- evidence based criteria for relaxation/escalation of protections
- clear home treatment pathways
- significant increase to healthcare capacity

China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and a good number of other countries have prevented the levels of harm that the USUK has not avoided.

Community Transmission is the key - if we can reduce it to bare minimums, (and we can) and then keep it there, then we will move towards the end of the Pandemic.

England's open borders policy allowed the seeding of the original virus (from Northern Italy, Austria and Spain) into the UK, then Alpha, first discovered in Kent, and allowed to spread, was exported to India, where it evolved into Delta, and it was re-imported into the UK (and spread across the globe) with disastrous consequences.

The airline lobby are powerful. The WHO does not have any authority to close borders or even advise - that responsibility rests entirely with each countries Government.
What can we learn?
1. Diminish the threat posed by the virus
- good clinical care pathways
- support primary care
2. Dynamic response to keep essential services open
- prioritise schools, healthcare, etc...
3. Maintain good public health controls

4. Clarity of information, in a timely fashion prepares the population for engagement with the protocols to suppress community transmission, and prevent lockdowns.

5. Success in suppressing community transmission builds trust between Government and population.

6. Tight quarantine on all borders to prevent accidental importation of the virus, or any of it's variants.
7. Transition to "Living with it" in Singaporean terms means they all know that have to work effectively and efficiently to protect the population from community transmission - a soon as transmission goes beyond surveillance, it is likely to become uncontrolled. 

This is in contrast to USUK 'Living with it' where there are no effective efforts to suppress community transmission - efforts are aimed a merely ensuring Health Systems to not collapse, and this is political choice, because any Government that allows a Health Service to crumble will lose all popular support, rapidly, and even within it's own ranks that support will wane accordingly.

USUK 'living with it' entails a constant state of attrition rather than suppressing community transmission, and this state of attrition will lead to surges that can only be stopped by lockdowns.
Therefore testing is best used to find where the virus is (and is not) in order to focus efforts on limiting spread. 
The population deserve efficient financial and logistical support to achieve this.
That is our right, under various international treaties. Governments are bound by Law to protect the populations right to health.
https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/11/the-right-to-health-in-times-of-pandemic-what-can-we-learn-from-the-uks-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak/
The People's Covid Inquiry, led by Michael Mansfield, QC have issued a detailed report proving beyong any doubt that the Johnson Government (and others) have undermined the English populations Right to Health.
https://www.peoplescovidinquiry.com

As they say, 'Houston, we have a problem.' Well, in the UK, we the population have a problem and it is sitting in the Houses of Parliament and on the editorial boards of billionaire owned news media, walking hand in hand in avoiding the obvious - suppression of community strategy is the only viable short, medium and long term strategy.

With all of the above in mind, I suggest my readers view the first briefing of 2022, by IndependentSAGE, from 7th January.


It is quite clear what needs to be done, and it is quite clear that the UK Government is deliberately failing to take the correct action to protect and uphold the populations Right to Health. Parliament is enfeebled at a time of continuous crisis.

When the videos of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and various critics of Government COVID strategy that reject suppression of community transmission and call for 'opening up' and 'protect our freedoms' such as CRG and HAART and others gain millions of views, and Independent SAGE's videos have less than 50,000 views, one has to wonder what is going on here?

We know what to do, but what can we do?

This situation is FUBAR!
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Mass Psychosis Hashtag Trend - where the psychosis originates, who it afflicts, whom it harms and what steps might be taken to prevent it.

#Masspsychosis is trending on Twitter.

Back in February, the English Libertarian 'think tank' The Academy of Ideas produced a video exploring this idea.  
The Academy of Ideas is an offshoot of The Institute of Ideas, led by Claire Fox, which itself was an off shoot of Living Marxism the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which folded in 1981. The staff of Living Marxism created Spiked Magazine, which is funded by The Adam Smith Institute, a creation of  Right Wing Billionaires the Koch brothers. Academy of Ideas is funded by a number of global Corporations notably Pfizer and Novartis, and others similarly inclined.

source: https://www.theguardian.cm/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation

In a rare public statement, in an essay published in 1978, Charles Koch explained his objective. 
“Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm. Our goal is not to reallocate the burden of government; our goal is to roll back government. We should consistently work to reduce all taxes, our own and those of others.

Defund the State and all social care programs under the guise of creating freedom for the Free Market. Pre-empt regulation of the Wealth Extractor class. Survival of the fittest, economic eugenics for billionaires who believe they are superior to all others. The weak and vulnerable must be allowed to fall.

Mass Psychosis.

The Academy of Ideas produced this video on the question of mass psychosis in the context of The Pandemic, and I think they were seeking to undermine the obvious need for collective action, supported by populations and their Governments, working as a co-operative to take preventative public health measures to protect everyone's health.
They do so by claiming that various governments existing strategies are driving an irrational tide of mass fear which is leading to an insanity that threatens 'our freedoms'. They accuse people of action driven by fear, when it is driven by concern, care and empathy.

Anti-masking is based on the idea of freedom, not the evidence of efficacy.

The NeoLiberal Anti-Statist

The - the Kochs, Rineharts, Rees-Moggs, Murdochs, Sunaks, Trumps et al liken support for preventative public health measures, (which the English and American Government cast as 'restrictions' - a deliberate trigger) to tyranny, while carefully ignoring the obvious insanity, cruelty and adverse outcomes of the English and US Governments repetitively failing strategies on limiting the harms of the spread of the SARSCOV2 virus.

1.3 million horrific Covid deaths across USUK/EU compared to China, with a similar population and 5k Covid deaths. China stopped the spread, USUK/EU enabled more spread.

Just the same as they ignore the obvious cruelty of allowing climate change to run, maintaining poverty and warfare, and doing little to prevent pollution. None of their wealth is invested into fixing the problems - it is directed to profit from the problems. COP26 was a failure. COP has always been a failure because it is adversarial - the people who show concern and empathy in an uneven struggle with the people who wish to retain power, and continue to extract wealth from the population.

One of their tactics is citing the harms of bad policy to argue for even worse policy options - an old trick.

The Academy of ideas video opens with the following :

“All one’s neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear. . . In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.”

Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion

Similar to the old accusation of Hysteria as a uniquely female disorder, rather than understandable symptoms of trauma. When it comes to the Pandemic the vast majority of people in every country are showing more genuine concern than fear, we are demonstrating a desire to care for one another.

That is what wearing a good mask is about - preventing oneself becoming a vector of transmission.

Anti-masking is selfish and stupid but it must be noted it's only happening where well funded misinformation is allowed to circulate. And it's only occurring in people who have been mislead, persuaded , groomed through their biases, fears, insecurities - the groomed are being victimised. The people who organise the grooming are the real problem.

Equating people's genuine concern to Fear is gaslighting.

The narrator continues...

"According to the psychologist Carl Jung the greatest threat to civilization lies not with the forces of nature, nor with any physical disease, but with our inability to deal with the forces of our own psyche. We are our own worst enemies or as the Latin proverb puts it “Man is wolf to man”. 
In Civilization in Transition Jung states that this proverb “is a sad yet eternal truism” and our wolf-like tendencies come most prominently into play at those times of history when mental illness becomes the norm, rather than the exception in a society, a situation which Jung termed a psychic epidemic. "

They cited the following as part of their hypothesis:

"When it is understood that a flood of negative emotions, in conjunction with a weak and insecure sense of self, can trigger a descent into madness it becomes clear how a mass psychosis can occur. A population first needs to be induced into a state of intense fear or anxiety by threats real, imagined, or fabricated and once in a state of panic the door is open for either the positive or negative reaction to unfold. If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient and inwardly strong individuals a positive reaction can take place, but if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure and helpless individuals a descent into the delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility. Great stress, in other words, can bring out the best in an individual or society at large, but it can also bring out the worst, or as the psychologist Anthony Storr writes about the potential for a mass psychosis: 
“. . .it is only if we accept the existence of a latent paranoid potential lurking in the recesses of the normal mind that we can explain the mass delusions which led to the persecution of witches and the Nazi slaughter of Jews. Vast numbers of ordinary men and women held beliefs about witches and Jews which, if they had been expressed by one or two individuals instead of by whole communities, would have been dismissed as paranoid delusions. There are extremely primitive, irrational mental forces at work in the minds of all of us which are usually overlaid and controlled by reason, but which find overt expression in the behaviour of those whom we call mentally ill, and which also manifest themselves in the behaviour of normal people when under threat or other forms of stress.”

Storr's book is about the need for solitude as a resource for creatives... the tone is one of individualism rather than one of creatives as part of a healthy community. That said Storr's view of humanity at large is rather negative. 

"it is only if we accept the existence of a latent paranoid potential lurking in the recesses of the normal mind that we can explain the mass delusions which led to the persecution of witches and the Nazi slaughter of Jews,"

This is a deeply negative view of our species in general. And it is utterly incorrect. Behaviour, good or bad, is learned. Very little is innate. Which is why the diversity of culture exists..

Culture and Behaviour

Alice Miller wrote in "The Roots of Violence" that the culture of parenting handed down by 'authorities' can, if it is adult centered, punitive and set to meet adult needs above children's needs, afflict a population, generation after generation.

She shows in her book, and in interviews, how a culture of authoritarian parenting promoted by State and Church, and tinged with intergenerational trauma, leads to varying degrees of harmful behaviour as a normal across a community.  Misogyny, Racism, Class and Caste ideologies are fed by this unhappiness.
She described some of the psycho-dynamics of Nazi Germany and the cult of Hitler (and others) as outcomes of a culture of child abuse. 
At that time corporal punishment of children was the norm across Europe, and was supported by the various authorities, state, educational and religious. 
A nation that bullies most children can indeed lead to the emergence of widespread bullying among adults, layered into the social hierarchy. Hurt children can become adults who hurt others. Authoritarian parenting can also lead to leaders emerging who have deep issues, presenting as irrational hatreds rationalised, veiled by claims to be seeking freedom and justice.

It's not everyone.

However it is not the case that all Germans bought the lies of anti-Semitism and Nazism. There was a resistance to that. Those who resisted were persecuted, publicly. Others who disagreed remained more or less quiet, in order to survive and protect their families and communities.

Storr and many others lay the blame on the ordinary people who are ruled over, citing their 'weakness' without making the effort to understand the nuances and variations to be found in a population being ruled over in such an oppressive manner. Blaming the victim.

It is a world view held by Ruling Classes who assume they are superior to the ordinary folk, and thus entitled to Rule.

If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient and inwardly strong individuals a positive reaction can take place, but if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure and helpless individuals a descent into the delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility. "

This text suggests that there is an innate quality of us human beings that reflects the validity of a classification of superior and inferior,  that the inferior are weak and prone to stupidity, ignorance, delusion, insanity and mass hysteria.  
The poor are blamed for their impoverishment. 
The subtext, given the date of publication, is that support for preventative public health measures such as suppressing community transmission, to better manage the Pandemic, are a form of tyranny. A mass psychosis.
Scapegoating?

I would say the psychosis is in fact resident in the Hierarchies of Wealth Extraction and Violence that intentionally dominate entire countries, afflicting their populations. 

The Academy of Ideas rejects this, and harnesses the Jungian view of people as possessed by 'demons' to pull the cart of the Libertarian ideology that the Sovereign Individual should take precedence over collective good governance.

By claiming that existing (all) Governments are inherently oppressive and that ordinary people are generally weak, and prone to psychosis, therefore 'tyrannical' Governments must be restrained so as to protect the people (cover story).

The actual objective is to enhance the Liberty of the Free Marketeers to engage in wealth 'creation', by which they mean wealth extraction which relies upon externalised costs, a process that causes so much harm because externalising refuses to pay to prevent the harms and refuses to make good what has been harmed.

The Neo-Libertarians making the case that small weakened State government is needed in order for Civilisation to progress.

What they really mean is democratic regulation of Wealth Extraction must be pre-empted as we all face the challenges of Climate Change, Pollution, Poverty and War Fare. Obviously they cannot say that openly. That is a psychopathic stance. 

Too close to the bone.

In Nuremberg the Allies brought to trial a small number of active Nazi's and did not  put the German population on trial. They did impose forms of collective punishment during the war and in the aftermath.

The pursuit of Nazi's who fled Germany did not include those adopted by the US for their 'research' under Operation Paperclip.

The Allies also rejected putting Japan's Ruling Class on trial, in the same manner as they did at Nuremburg, because to do so would have exposed the realities of colonialism as a crime given that the practice followed by Japan had indeed been followed by Britain for centuries.

"Justice Radhabinod Pal argued that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the exclusion of the fire bombings of German cities from the list of crimes and the lack of judges from the vanquished nations on the bench signified the "failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate".  

In this he was not alone among Indian jurists, with one prominent Calcutta barrister writing that the Tribunal was little more than "a sword in a [judge's] wig."

Justice Röling stated, "[o]f course, in Japan we were all aware of the bombings and the burnings of Tokyo and Yokohama and other big cities. It was horrible that we went there for the purpose of vindicating the laws of war, and yet saw every day how the Allies had violated them dreadfully."

Source : Wikipedia

So we see that a significant difference between Japan and Germany in WWII was that whilst the Nazi project was not an overtly Colonial project, and the prosecutions of German war leaders were for War Crimes, the Japanese project was definitively a colonial project and given that the British Empire project was still extant, active and globally powerful as an economic hierarchy of wealth extraction that was oppressing and exploiting hundreds of millions of people the focus on Japan's War as a Colonial War would have drawn attention to the British and their crimes, not least from those countries still under the thumb of Britain.

Lesson to learn - the Ruling Class will always defend their interests, and bend every tool to that task.

#MassPsychosis - has been trending on Twitter and I saw this post, and responded to it. That response initiated this blog article.

"Twitter Thread : As #MassPsychosis trends. It seems timely to highlight the following: that most, if not all, governments suffer a recurring problem. That power & the quest for it, attracts pathological personalities. It’s not simply that power corrupts, but that it’s magnetic to the corruptible."
-- source: https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1477659141388832769?s=20 
my response: 
https://twitter.com/coreluminous/status/1477711001005006849?s=20
For this piece I have expanded from the thread I wrote on twitter, to add some more detail and a few relevant references (not exhaustive...).

I think that the hash tag #masspsychosis' is in part a distraction, a scapegoating trend that could be used to scapegoat the people most afflicted by the malign behaviour of powerful institutions that influence Governments.

I think we have to be very careful with this.

I also think that there is a form of psychosis that is inherent to Ruling Class behavioural dynamics within a Hierarchy of Wealth and Violence system. Monarchy is the original knife crime syndicate, and  as far from the claims of 'nobility' as any other claim ruling class entitlement makes.

I think that the effects of that psychosis is institutionalised and that the institutionalised power of those who Rule (rather than Govern healthfully) generates further psychological distress as a symptom within the population afflicted by the dominance systems of any Wealth Extraction system that is protected by violence.
What follows is the expanded text, working from my response to the tweet.
1. I think that the issue is Power Disparity and lack of Accountability. Distal Power is a term that describes the greater the distance between those who have power and those who are disempowered, the greater the disempowerment, and the greater the distress endured by the disempowered due to actions of the powerful. It's one thing to be stressed, it's another thing to be chronically stressed with few social material means to alleviate the stress, let alone prevent it.
2. The first power disparity we all experience is as infants relating to parents. The bio-logical default is to nurture our children in ways that allow them to become high functioning adults by meeting all their needs, in a timely fashion.
3. The degree to which parents use their power to nurture the child or to use their power to get the child to meet the parents perceived needs determines much of adult behaviour. The roots of adult behaviour are often established in the first four years of their lives.
4. Self regulation of Affective State (the ability to regulate one's emotional content) is biologically mandated to complete by 18 months after birth.  External chronic stressors  undermine the ability of many parents to provide the kind of caring relationship that establishes healthy self regulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7XOu0yi-E - Allan Schore on the biology of affective state self regulation. I hour long, quite detailed and superbly laid out. It is a video I return to frequently, and his other work on this is, I think, essential study for anyone concerned with these matters.
5. In any culture predicated upon Rule or Domination by Extreme Wealth Extraction from a population and their shared environment,  or any system of dominance and extraction protected by violence, then we see that warfare and poverty are defining characteristics, they are maintained as active and intentional counterparts to the extraction and concentration of wealth.

Low wages, cheap labour costs, externalised environmental costs are the basis of Wealth Extraction and these impose intense chronic stress upon any population so afflicted. Inequity harms populations. Equity and Justice nurtures populations.
The book 'The Spirit Level' written in 2009, examines this in great detail, looking at the evidence from countries and their economic systems and prevalence of distress.
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/the-spirit-level

"The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better was published in 2009. Written by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, the book highlights the "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption". It shows that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries."
6. Any human culture, where it breaks with well observed and understood biological mandates, must induce chronic stress - it cannot do otherwise. 

Climate Change is one of many examples of this. Many older cultures have understood this and have adopted stewardship behavioural dynamics. sustained over many thousands of years. Those cultures tended to be egalitarian, generating a diversity of organisational systems and ways of living attuned to their shared environment.

7. Rulers  - those who dominate a population - pay close attention to the behaviour of those they dominate, in the same way those who groom vulnerable people do.

Ruling systems have always studied carefully how people either react or respond, and have devised many strategies and tactics to maintain disunity (Left vs Right, promoting ideologies of Adversarial Politics to counter Co-operative Governance) by triggering the reactive, exacerbating and heightening fears and insecurities and knowledge gaps in order to 'nudge' the behaviour of the majority in favour of the Ruling Class. Ruling systems must groom the population they dominate to accept the status quo as natural. Deference must be inculcated, 'your Majesty'.
8. Thus we see clearly in the Cambridge Analytica 'scandal' that a core component of the exercise of Rule as opposed to healthy government is to be able to target insecurities within the population, heighten those insecurities,  and then use those to drive behavioural dynamics that can be exploited.

Destitution and Poverty are essential to maintenance of a cheap labour workforce, which is the basis of Wealth Extraction from 'human resources'.
9. Lack of self-reflection is not a barrier to this capability. If anything it enhances that capability due to the fact that a lack of conscience releases the actor from any sense of responsibility for harmful outcomes others are forced to endure, as long as power is retained over the population targeted.
10. Rulers cannot rest from their task to manipulate/habituate those they dominate because, in spite of all of the above, most people are decent, kind and loving and most people do the best they can do, in terms of genuine caring for family/community, in spite of the systemic barbarism of Rulers. 
Left to our own devices, most of us would veer towards egalitarian modes of behaviour, co-operative organisation, profit sharing.
11. This is good news. Our default setting as a social species is very robust. Rutger Bregman's "Human Kind" explores this in some detail looking at examples of massive trauma events and how people tend to look after each other more often than not.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/humankind/rutger-bregman/9781408898956
“This is a book about a radical idea. An idea that’s long been known to make rulers nervous. An idea denied by religions and ideologies, ignored by the news media and erased from the annals of world history. At the same time, it’s an idea that’s legitimised by virtually every branch of science. One that’s corroborated by evolution and confirmed by everyday life.”

and

"“In the very same years that Rousseau was writing his books, Franklin admitted that ‘No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.’47 He described how ‘civilised’ white men and women who were captured and subsequently released by Indians invariably would ‘take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods’.

Colonists fled into the wilderness by the hundreds, whereas the reverse rarely happened.48 And who could blame them? Living as Indians, they enjoyed more freedoms than they did as farmers and taxpayers. For women, the appeal was even greater. ‘We could work as leisurely as we pleased,’ said a colonial woman who hid from countrymen sent to ‘rescue’ her.49 ‘Here, I have no master,’ another told a French diplomat. ‘I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again when I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in your cities?”

'Do we have to be this screwed up?' written by Suki Price looks at this too, from an anthropological angle.

"Modern life is full of problems - in individuals and in society too. Increasingly we see damaged and disturbed children, mental health problems, addictions of many kinds, antisocial behavior, and crime, violence and war. So it seems sensible to ask: does life have to be this way? Was it always like this for human beings? We ve been around for maybe as much as two million years: surely we didn t evolve to live such difficult and dysfunctional lives? Do We Need To Be So Screwed-Up?! sets out to discover the answer to this question and finds plentiful evidence to show that, on the contrary, human beings evolved to be naturally egalitarian, cooperative, and peaceful. Indeed, for over 95% of our history until about 10,000 years ago - that is how we were: kind, cheerful and happy! This is a paradigm-busting re-evaluation of human nature and our potential for happiness."
source : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17048084-do-we-need-to-be-so-screwed-up

I wrote two pertinent articles on this. (well, I think they are pertinent...)
a)  https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-poles-of-society-everything-in.html - on the emergence of hierarchically violent cultures and why the dynamic of domination rides roughshod over co-operative cultures.
b) https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-human-species-is-fine-its-culture.html - the species is not the problem, the culture is the problem. A message of hope and potential.
12. That said, chronic stress and unresolved trauma are trickle down behaviour changing dynamics of being Ruled over by  Wealth Extraction and Violence. It is clear that this is the case.
"Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our societies and cities, comparable to poverty and unemployment. One in four adults in the UK today has been diagnosed with a mental illness, and four million people take antidepressants every year. ‘What greater indictment of a system could there be,’ George Monbiot has asked, ‘than an epidemic of mental illness?’
The shocking extent of this ‘epidemic’ is made all the more disturbing by the knowledge that so much of it is preventable. This is due to the significant correlation between social and environmental conditions and the prevalence of mental disorders. Richard Bentall, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool, and Peter Kinderman, president of the British Psychological Society, have written compellingly about this connection in recent years, drawing powerful attention to ‘the social determinants of our psychological wellbeing’. ‘The evidence is overwhelming,’ notes Kinderman, ‘it’s not just that there exist social determinants, they are overwhelmingly important.’"
source : https://www.redpepper.org.uk/a-mad-world-capitalism-and-the-rise-of-mental-illness/
A sick society or a traumatised cult enduring a traumatising cult is not the same as a 'dysfunctional species'.  Indeed the concept of a dysfunctional species is nonsense, biologically inept and a negative, adversarial ideological stance.
13. There's a series of layered problems inherent to the current Hierarchically Violent Power and Wealth system. The matter is complex, because we are diverse but it is made complicated because the urge to power prevents resolution in order to avoid relinquishing Power.
- the System itself, it's behavioural dynamics as a cult. Admitting this with some degree of empathy and a desire to correct rather than extract retributive punishment is a big ask.
- the adverse effects of chronic stressors such as destitution, poverty, warfare, marginalisation, class/caste beliefs and other dynamic features of being dominated. The need for this understanding to be integrated into education in general is clear.
- the 'need' of The System to cow populations, and to habituate or condition the majority to acceptance of The System as the 'natural state of affairs'. Herbert Spencer's misappropriation of the work of Darwin and Wallace is a case in point. Racism is another example of a falsified claim of 'natural' state of affairs and the Human Condition.
- as long as the resistors remain a minority, Power retains it's grip. 
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

"it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

When resistance is well informed, and is widely supported by the population, then the power dynamics can be altered towards less malignity.

- resisters that are reactive can be manipulated. Political, Ideological and Religious Grooming all operate on this basis. 
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/06/grooming-how-it-operates-why-it-works.html
My article, an exploration of why grooming works, how it was engineered citing Brexit as a case study, how to disarm it with awareness and a suggestion on how to prevent it being deployed across media platforms by making defining grooming as serious intentional psychological abuse and as a criminal offence.
- responsive resistors are much more difficult to handle. Structures are built to offer hope, and thwart it. We see repeated efforts to undermine emerging movements, and their leaderships and to prevent them from accessing the legislative power necessary to regulate the Wealth Extractor dynamic. Corbyn, Sanders and others knocked back, time and time again.
- until the grass roots understands this psycho-dynamic, I think we are facing a steeper uphill struggle than we would if that understanding was common across the grass roots. Trade Unions in a very short time frame, between the 1840s and the 1960s demonstrated the utility of grass roots solidarity and political organisation grounded in well understood evidence.
- Political Grooming Operations are designed in part to prevent that understanding emerging, Establishment News Media have the same function.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/general-strike-to-corbyn-90-years-of-bbc-establishment-bias/
A good article on how this works, using the BBC as a case study.
- Political Grooming Operations are also designed to obscure honest appraisal of problems, they are deployed to generate adversarial dynamics across the population (divide and conquer by diluting grass roots solidarity though triggering arguments and beefs) and they are also used to recruit un-witting operatives who can be exploited by the system.
14. Psychology, as a Science, and as a social health institution must confront this - Psychology must eschew its allegiance to the Establishment, align with the humanity of us humans, as an egalitarian social species.
15. Equity oriented political organisation must become trauma informed, understand the effects of unresolved trauma, chronic stress, poverty and other factors external to the individual that impact each persons living situation.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/trauma-informed-practice-toolkit-scotland/pages/3/
An example from the Scottish Government of how this might be implemented.
16. Without these concerns correctly addressed, it is very unlikely this culture will turn away from the current destructive trajectories.
17. Systemic Power without love or accountability is similar to the Abusive Parent or Partner or Sibling within a family, without love, who is causing harm, maintaining dominance. 
Institutionalised and at scale.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/07/this-is-abuse-relationship-dynamic.html
An article I wrote to suggest this model, using the English Ruling Class as a case study, in 2020.



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Corneilius

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