Choice and Freedom: Wear a mask, be kind, stay safe, stop the spread, spread the Love.

Choice and Freedom

If I am free to choose, and if my choice causes harm to another person, a harm that they then cannot avoid, what then, of their freedom? My choice has removed their freedom to be free of harm.



What of mine?

You - yes... you, the person who might be reading this and might be thinking, "I will not wear a mask! My freedom to choose matters!"

I guarantee that you did not come up with the freedom of choice agenda about wearing/not wearing a mask, in this epidemic and global pandemic, all on your own - someone whispered it into your digital ear.

You did not originate that thought yourself. I know this. You know it too.

Thinking is more than having thoughts. It involves following those thoughts through, and examining them in depth, testing them against what you already know to be true.

Hierarchy, and Hitler was a Lefty!

Hitler was a violent Hierarch. The organisation he headed up had Socialist in it's name.  Everyone knows the Nazi ideology was anti-socialism. Stalin was not a socialist either, he was a military dictator. Churchill was also a military dictator, albeit guided by a military committee.

Perhaps within a hierarchy of violence system, everyone is a fascist, by default.

Not because they want to be, but because there are no truly egalitarian operations happening within this system. No place to be egalitarian.

We all pay rent to someone.

Perhaps that's really difficult to really look at.

Every Hierarchy of Power and Violence is just that, whether we call it Nazi, Communist, Democracy, Monarchy, Gang, Abuse Family, Religious State, Empire, Federation or Union.

It's all the same blood spattered room, just a different pattern of wallpaper.

Hierarchy systems have to condition the people to habituate to being exploited, to see the system as normal.

No child left behind.

Everyone must be educated! Self education is considered a threat, so much so that education is mandatory in many countries, truancy is a crime.

Perhaps everybody within a hierarchy system who seeks to reform the system with a better hierarchy is a deluded fascist, deluded in that hierarchies always produce people who want to topple the hierarchy, which creates an inevitable tension that causes those in charge to exercise violence to maintain their version of the status quo. For your own good, they say to the people at large.

Egalitarian cultures are healthy cultures, the biological default is trust..

“In other words, the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

The context of this statement by Sapolsky is that we are sensitive, vulnerable babies who learn by experience, that our behaviour is mostly learned. Very little of our behaviour is predetermined. And the science suggests strongly that the default state, the base line of healthy behaviour resolves around trust.

“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. 

Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortex from genes.”

 Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Cults and Clubs.

Hierarchy cultures are cults  - they have to dominate every child's mind and psyche, they have to habituate everyone to the 'normalcy' of hierarchy...

Left/right is just a set piece, a clever ploy, a distraction that is meaningless in that it does not lead to the kind of healthy change we need, it impedes learning and healing.

Marx's theories would still have led to workers destroying the planet.

NeoLiberalism is destroying the planet just as assuredly as Chinese Socialist Capitalism is.

Perhaps.

To me it does not make bio-logical sense to 'create' a species that is dysfunctional.

It makes more sense to say that a functional species placed under chronic stress will become dysfunctional.

Fact: an aboriginal body in a rain forest is as evolved for egalitarian relationships as my body in London.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways

"We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close to that of hunter-gatherers. 

The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared. 

It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions. 

It meant that even parents didn't have the right to order their children around; hence the non-directive childrearing methods that I have discussed in previous posts. It meant that group decisions had to be made by consensus; hence no boss, "big man," or chief."

The difference is the culture.

In terms of sensory capacity, in terms of the capability to be loving and of being loved, in terms of creativity and intelligence required to build shelter, to find food, the energy and effort to care for children and elders we are precisely and beautifully evolved,  and bio-logically adapted for healthy relationships.

The difference is the culture you grow up within, and what it tells you about how you 'should' behave and what to expect.

I live in London, the cultural center of a hierarchy of power and violence.

No such hierarchy persists in old growth rain forest.

Peter Gray, again, explains it another way:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/human-nature-teaching-ii-how-hunter-gatherers-taught

"As I explained in that earlier post, hunter-gatherers had faith that their children would, on their own initiatives, learn what they needed to know, and so they did not worry about their children's education or attempt to control it. 

Moreover, hunter-gatherers held strongly to the values of personal autonomy and equality. They believed that it is wrong for anyone to try to control another person's life, either in the short run or the long run, even if that other person is a child.  Hunter-gatherers believed that it is presumptuous for anyone to think that they know what is best for another person."

For most of us habituated to hierarchies of power systems thinking, this is all idealist and dangerous nonsense. But is it?

Obviously any transition from where we, in this Industrialised Hierarchy of Power and Violence culture, are towards a culture approaching that degree of mature kindness is going to be a rather large undertaking, yet that does not mean it is impossible, does it?

Wear a mask, be  kind, stay safe, stop the spread, spread the love.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

New Zealand, Vietnam - Elimination Strategy works - what is stopping others from doing what works?

Eridcation or Suppression? Australian TV asked the question whether or not elimination of community transmission of the virus vs eradication of the virus is the better choice.

  
They carefully avoided a direct or conclusive answer, and spun the elimination protocol outcome as a problem, closed borders, and suggested suppression as the favoured choice by omission.
They did not qualify suppression in terms of lives lost, impact of disease, and instead implied permanently closed borders would be a problem - without mentioning that a 2 week quarantine is not a closed border.
It was only a short piece, for a news segment, so obviously detail was not their intent. I am using this piece as an introduction. My thesis is simple. Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus from a given population/territory where a single Government operates is wholly feasible. New Zealand has proven this. Every time any reporter or member of the Press faces members of the UK Government, all they really need to be doing is repeating "New Zealand, New Zealand." Really. Their obsequious questioning is complicit in the crime being committed.

Now, June 21st, two months on from that news segment, and New Zealand is clear of SARSCOV2 virus, community transmission has been eliminated and there are no new cases of COVID19 after an eleven week intensive elimination protocol.

Vietnam is also clear and there are other States, such as Taiwan which have also eliminated the uncontrolled spread via community transmission within their populations, and others Finland, Norway are getting very close to clear by following the Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus protocols. Video : Vietnam - Dr. John Campbell speaks to a fellow Brit in Danang, Vietnam.
Sweden's failures. Sweden has been excluded from a Nordic Free travel Zone until it has mastered the virus, having chosen to ignore the elimination protocol in favour of a herd immunity approach, and shielding the vulnerable. It has failed. They got it wrong. Sweden's per capita death rate was 10 times that of it's neighbours, running to close to 10% of all confirmed cases/ Video : Sweden - Dr. John Campbell speaks about Sweden reviewing the data and their strategy.
Senecide Video: Sweden - Dr. John Campbell speaks with Dr. John Tallinger, a GP in Sweden, dedicated to working with elder patients, saving lives for COVID19 patients over 60 with chronic disease, with oxygen supplement, due to Swedish Health Governance policy directions to administer palliative care medications, rather than admit to general Hospital.


Neighbours can be a problem, if their arrogance inhibits sociality. Proof

Thus we have living proof, scientific proof, epidemiological, social, political and economic proof that Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus protocols can and do work. We have ample proof that herd immunity approaches are lethal. That said, this achievement requires a certain degree of discipline and commitment. It is not easy, by any stretch of the imagination. One has to 'stay alert'. Quarantine, and unacceptable failure. Then in June, New Zealand had two new cases, imported from Britain, by two sisters returning on June 7th, to visit a dying parent, who had become very, very close to death and who then died whilst the two sisters were in quarantine. Very sad for all concerned. The local officials allowed the sisters compassionate leave on June 13th to travel to their dying parent's family, to be with the surviving parent, which was before their quarantine time was up, but they did not test them. One of the sisters had already presented with flu-like symptoms and was not tested as it was believed the symptoms were due to a pre-existing condition. That was the first error. The second error was allowing them to travel unaccompanied by any officials, unguarded so to speak. There were a number of other errors made by the officials in handling the case. I assume some of those errors were compounded by the sisters British based perception of Corona Virus, as their behaviour would indicate. I will focus on that perception later in the article. As the symptomatic sisters symptoms became more severe, the sisters were tested on June 14th, and their tests came back, positive for both of them, on June 16th. They were placed in isolation.
The NZ contact trace system kicked in and located more than 300 people who could have been infected via these two sisters, within 24 hours, and placed all on quarantine, urging them to get tested.

"Health officials are tracing 320 people who are regarded as “close contacts” of the women, and they will be urged to get tested. Close contacts could include passengers on their flight to New Zealand and other quarantined travellers at their Auckland hotel, as well as hotel staff and flight crew. The women were now in isolation with a relative, officials said."
The whole affair brought to light how important discipline is in maintaining clarity and effectiveness of the protocols. That discipline depends on everyone fully understanding the evidence, the science and the public health risks and taking appropriate steps to maintain a virus free status, and to isolate as soon as any sign of infection emerges. Jacinda Arden spoke of these and said the errors were 'unacceptable' and ordered all compassionate leave to be suspended in future until they can be sure the best discipline is fully operational at all times.



The discipline of Government, it's officials and agencies and of the people is a critical element in any elimination strategy. From start to finish, and afterwards. People spread the virus. The virus is unlikely to travel on goods when proper screening is undertaken -and if a solid quarantine ans testing system is in place for all travellers, then the most likely un-quarantined infection route would be people smugglers, drug smugglers and so forth. Covert and unofficial lines of transmission which can only be countered by extreme vigilance, rapid and unrelenting action and confrontation. Systems exist for that purpose. Elimination Strategy is simple in principle, complex in practice, complicated by power gaming.

Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus - when there is a given population, a bordered territory and the state has the ability to pick up every symptomatic case, and has the ability to trace every contact, observe those contacts in quarantine and has top notch provision for treatment of anyone presenting with symptoms, away from the community, that state can eliminate the virus within that population. Bit by bit, day by day, until they close down all community transmission, and have everyone in treatment being cared for, and they have a situation where they have no new infections for two weeks after the last deaths, and the last recoveries from the disease, then that population can be sure that no more transmission of the live virus is occurring. The virus cannot live long outside the human body. It can only transmit from body to body. The State and community must still maintain vigilance.

This can be done, all of it, without total shut down. 12 weeks is the length of time it takes to move through this entire protocol in any population, the only limiting factor being the volume of resources deployed. Where community transmission is out of control, then massive resources are required because more ground has to be covered, rapidly.

Shut down is only needed when community transmission is out of control - which was the status in mid January in Wuhan, and in late February, March and into April in the UK. Community Transmission out of control. Unfortunately, community transmission is still out of control in the UK in spite of the effort and endurance of vast majority of British people staying home, staying safe. The UK has not managed to 'control the virus' and is perilously close to starting a second peak as I write. I say second peak, because for their to be a second wave, there must be a trough in between, and that is not the case.

This is entirely down to the failures of the UK Government to take the Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus route from the outset. The responsibility lies with the Conservative and Unionist Party Government, with Parliament and the News media, which has behaved in a most feeble manner. No-one else. Current estimates of excess deaths due to the virus and other effects from bad policy choices is 65,000+. This is terrifying and infuriating in equal measure. I am ok, personally. I have had the disease, five weeks of awful illness. I have lung and kidney issues since then, slowly improving. I have stopped smoking, and I am taking exercise every day and doing some running. This is not my personal fear anymore. I have degrees of immunity. I am resilient.

However at the age of 60, I have many friends whose situation is not so secure. Friends and family members with chronic disease conditions, cancer and other illnesses that put them all at greater risk of severe or even lethal outcomes should they become infected. They do not feel this government is doing it's utmost to protect them. They do not feel safe. I also have friends who have bought into the conspiracy theories, and others who are Brexiteers who support Johnson no matter what else is happening. But they are a minority. Most people I know are aware, paying close attention to the science and are taking care of one another, enduring the situation. Good people predominate.
The problem in the UK is not the people. The problem has been the UK Governments atrocious handling of the situation. The deliberate delays in responding at the beginning, the lack of PPE and other equipment, the wholly ill-advised and inadequate policies they have chosen, their deliberately confusing public messaging, the prevalence of unethical theory (Herd Immunity) and opinion over scientific, epidemiological and public health practice evidence, the lack of adequate support for pre-existing stresses across the community as they were shunted into sudden shut-down, the willingness of the Government to lie and dissemble about their failures and decisions, their readiness to place resources in the wrong hands, and a media that is even still unwilling to confront a lethally dishonest Government head-on have all combined to guarantee the spread of the virus and have lead to 60,000+ excess deaths within four months. Why did the UK Government avoid the obvious elimination protocol? It's not rocket science! Making Elimination Strategy Work.

To make Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus work the State and the people must have a rigorous discipline and there must be genuine trust in the process among the population.

To make Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus work the State and Health Authorities must have superb contact tracing up and running, the State must make quarantine and isolation treatment an integral part of track and trace, and it must be made as easy and as comfortable as possible for the people affected to comply, and the State must resource the protocols fully, no questions asked.
That means the State and Health and Education systems must have superb, honest and transparent communication to the population, at all levels, at all times. The only must the Boris Johnson was familiar with was the Island of Mustique. The Role of The Press.

The press and news media must be willing to debunk and dismiss all contheories, concepts such as herd immunity and other woowoo health claims, in order to insulate the population and the politicians from any possibility of such nonsense afflicting public policy or public behaviour.   Spreading lies to allow a virus to spread is not free speech!

We are all in this together.
It has to be that the entire population, the State, the press are operating on an evidence base for the correct action to be taken, so that the discipline is emergent, collective, engaged rather than imposed and draconian. Honesty must prevail, Scientifically and Ideologically.


The likes of David Icke, Nigel Farage, Trump and Johnson lies and manipulations such as the 'China Virus' idiocy, and other such statements by leading politicians and so forth cannot be allowed to run free. They have to be debunked. Openly, transparently. Honest Borders.

The State must also accept that it will have to police the borders intensely, that the populations holidays must be taken within the populations territory, that all private cross border travel must endure a well monitored quarantine, including billionaires in private jets, for as long as the quarantine is needed.

Immigration must cease until there are virus clear countries at both starting and ending journey countries, and it must also be disciplined by a two week quarantine.

Air travel for tourism, right now, is a luxury that we do not need. Air Freight is another matter. Land freight and sea freight must be handled with care.

Cross border Cruise and Tourism are luxuries - we do not not need them. When local populations take holidays in own countries, the income stays at home, this is better for everyone, and potentially there will be less carbon exhaust particulates in the air. Stop overs in infected areas cannot happen, of course. The workers need to be furloughed, for the 12 week period. The Companies can be helped.

Aviation and Tourism will take a hit, but only for as long as it takes to Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus s in departure/destination areas. Their ability to lobby governments to take stupid action has to be curtailed. They deserve support from the State just as any others do. According to their needs to stay afloat. 12 weeks, three months. It is not too much to ask, given the potential death toll of allowing the virus to infection millions upon millions of people, among them 11.5 million vulnerable people. Allowing Herd Immunity is cruelty.

The alternative to Elimination of uncontrolled spread of the virus is slowly achieving herd immunity across a given population at the practical HI level of 93% and unfortunately that guarantees that all vulnerable people WILL be exposed and that will come with a fatality and human damage cost which is unethical to consider for economic reasons, precisely because it is avoidable. It is wholly unethical to permit heard immunity by exposure. There is so much that is still unknown about the long term effects of this virus that to drop the precautionary principle at this early stages is epidemiological stupidity, and reckless misGovernance.

Unless a State Establishment wants to exploit the virus to rereig Economies and State systems, in which case ethics are irrelevant. Trump and Johnson are two leaders who have ably demonstrated that ethics mean nothing to them personally or politically. Go figure current policy behaviour and outcomes.
Which is precisely what the UK and US Governments are doing, today, right now, right before your eyes. They are exploiting the situation, and causing great harm. This is insane, and it is profoundly unethical. "New Zealand, New Zealand!" It has to be said, in the clearest possible terms. This cannot be allowed to continue into the autumn. it really cannot be allowed. Something must be done, and soon.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Statues, hierarchies of violence and honest history.

Everyone.
Pay attention.



Putting up statues to venerate violent bullies was a lie about whatever happened in the first place.
OK?
If you do not understand that, I have just explained it. It is clear as daylight.

Read it again. Putting up statues to venerate violent bullies was a lie about whatever happened in the first place You're welcome. If you do not accept this - it is the truth here, no equivocation, no ambiguity - then you are unable to correct it and you are, obviously, unwilling learn anything useful about this matter, and you shouldn't even be in the room talking about this.

You are unqualified.

Period.
Monuments to violent bullies within violent cultures are lies.



Period.
Either you face the truth or you protect the lie. The Colosseum is a lie. It is not a wonder, it is a monument to horror and cruelty. Notre Dame is a lie. It is a monument to Hierarchy and cruelty. Churchill's statue is a lie. It is a monument to propaganda and cruelty.
This culture itself, Industrial Civilisation, is a hierarchy of violence.
To not see this is completely a matter of intellectual weakness and emotional blindness beyond all rational comprehension.
So let's just grow up, really.
Enough whining already. Be mature.

F*ck your statues, all of 'em. 
Build statues of kind people,
if you must have statues,
after all poverty is abolished.
Abolish poverty first, though.

Belief, Poverty, Death and COVID19

"The Government are committed to tackling child poverty." 



This tweet articulates a simple statistic.


Foodbanks have increased since 2004, and the need has grown more rapidly since 2010. Low wages and benefit changes including sanctions are the driving factors in this enlargement of need. A huge escalation has occurred in 2020. Foodbanks and their growth are a signal that ordinary folk care about each other, and that the Ruling class care little for the lowest income class, the most economically vulnerable.

The UK, allied to the US Military Giant, invaded another Sovereign State, Iraq  in 2003 on the pretext of a lie. Foodbank use started to grow after that.

Billions of UK Taxpayers funds have been wasted in UK/US sponsored bloodletting ever since. Where has all the money gone? It did not go to workers. It did not go to veterans. It did not go to the British people. It did not go to the British children. Some shareholders and CEOs made a lot of money out of this.

Foodbanks and Warfare.

Both are wholly avoidable phenomena. Both are the results of bad Government policy.

Poverty has been deliberately exacerbated by this run of Caring Conservative Governments since 2010.

It is also true, to be fair, that neither New Labour nor Conservative and Unionist or indeed Conservative - Liberal Democrat Coalition governments have ever had a policy of Abolishing Poverty, which is, to my mind,  the only sound, socially adept, humane and logical policy stance possible in a 21st Century Democracy.

To allow poverty to persist is a deliberate cruelty.

Reducing poverty merely maintains poverty, and that is a political choice that serves the owners, the Oligarchies, who make profits from low wages and who use poverty and destitution as behavioural nudges, whips that allow them to dominate the working population. Maintaining poverty harms the people as a whole.

The Minimum Wage is a very bad joke, a lie, a deceit. It is an act of cruelty.

This is an abuse dynamic and it is also masked by a key Christian ideological dynamic, one which underlies Capitalism.

"The poor you will always have with you" Matthew 26:11 is a core teaching of Christianity, we are told.

Jesus said so, it is written. There is, of course, no prima facie evidence He did say this. But it has been written so. And he was not the only one. It is previously mentioned in Deuteronomy.

"England is a Christian Nation" said Theresa May. She did say that. It is recorded in Hansard. There is no record in Hansard of any British Prime Minister proposing a policy of abolishing poverty. The Bible and Hansard are in accord, they are congruent. The poor you will always have with you.

For there will never cease to be poor in the land; that is why I am commanding you to open wide your hand to your brother and to the poor and needy in your land.



The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them whenever you want. But you will not always have Me.

The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me."


And in the hands of the Merchant Puritan, whose sponsorship built great Churches, invented Racism, provided Colonial conquest with a cover story, that teaching became Wealth is God's sign of approval, Poverty is His sign of  disapproval, and therefore Poverty is obviously a personal flaw, a sin of the poor, rather than the structural imposition that it really is.

Colston's Charity assuages guilt without correcting the problem.

Sir Edward Colston's statue stood the test of time, only because successive generations venerated his philanthropy over honesty in History.

Prosperity Gospel and New Age Abundance ideology are variations of the same toxic thinking. The arrogance and delusion of the billionaire class, the beautiful people, is that they believe that are innately superior to the ordinary folk, and that their innate superiority is why they are so wealthy.

Burning £50 notes in front of homeless rough sleepers. Spaffing £53 million on a paper bridge to nowhere. Spaffing £12 million on an already unworkable contact tracing app, when a free and entirely functional version was already available and on offer. Someone trousered a lot of cash for nothing. Value for money?

A very public school boy aptitude, and such teachings were also aimed at the patriotic working class who were urged to move up the property ladder, who were  conned into servicing debt (£1.8 trillion as we write today, and rising) to gain wealth, to convince them of their own worthiness, to assert their innate superiority, and to underpin the inferiority of those who are forced to endure poverty, or who come to this country to do the essential but low paid work. People who are then blamed for 'stealing our jobs'.

The 'comedic' abuse of Little Britain, and 'edutainments' such as 'Benefits Street' and others serve to embed that discrimination, disguised as culture, into the patriotic consciousness. Shop for Britain.

Laughing at, rather than with, the vulnerable. Very British.

Iain Duncan Smith opposes Universal Basic Income as one method to assist the working population through the worst of the Corona Virus epidemic on the basis that it will work as a disincentive to work.

Treasury officials claim that furlough has become an addiction.

Boris Johnson hopes the virus will go away, urges that we get back to work before it is eliminated from the population.

He means 'we the workers' given that his personal work rate is minimal for someone in his position.

He also has the happy arrogance of assumed immunity. The Reaper passed him by. I am glad of that for his sake, and for the sake of his fiance and new child. That does not mean I am glad he is in office. How could this be, knowing what he is participating in, understanding the harm it is causing?

Gavin Williamson tried to bully parents, students and teachings by shaming them with the distress his Governments policies are creating for many people, as emotional blackmail.

Ministers have misled,  lied and gaslighted the public.

Observing this one is drawn to the conclusion that this is indeed an abusive relationship dynamic, posing as a system of Democratic Governance.

150,000 excess deaths over a decade.

60,000 excess deaths over a 4 month first wave of an epidemic.

All wholly avoidable, all caused by UK Government policy.

An abuse dynamic if ever I have seen one. 

This begs the question, what on earth is happening within the UK? Why is this being allowed to continue? Who is responsible for this?

Corona Virus Policy variations, Evidence, Belief and Opinion.

The worlds best researchers in epidemiology, public health science and health and social care are an international, supra national collective of serious minded, open minded people whose entire focus is evidence based.

New Zealand Government studied the work and  the experience of that community with regards to COVID19,  and they took action based on that evidence and experience.

The New Zealander people are now free of the virus - it is not being transmitted person to person within the population - apart from two British residents who imported it as they were allowed entry to see a dying parent, and who are now in treatment and isolation, along with c.300 people they might have infected - and New Zealand economy is strong. It took the New Zealanders, Government and people together, 11 weeks to achieve this happy state. They remain vigilant.

The UK Government chose a different path. Deliberately. Just as they continue to choose not to abolish poverty. Just as they chose to invade Iraq.

They chose to game the virus to rerig the economy in Shock Doctrine fashion. The policy is obviously not based on evidence, rather it is based on a belief, an opinion. But what belief, what opinion?

That choice has caused 60,000+ excess deaths in 4 months.

The policy decisions of the UK Government have caused a whole other bunch of problems that have exacerbated the situation.

Deliberate choices.

PPE shortages, sending patients back into care homes, permitting care workers to move from facility to facility, no provision of Fever Hospitals, focus on home made contact trace apps when there already were apps up and running and offered for free, in Europe, repetitive patterns of wasteful expenditure that did not stop the spread, rather each new policy decision guaranteed the spread, in toto imposing shut down without much effort to stop the spread or to provide fullest support to the  people going through the shut down, easing their pre-existing burdens, lying all the time, even going as far as gaslighting the public.

The UK Government and it's sponsors - Robert Mercer, Arron Banks, right wing Hedge Funders, Cambridge Analytica et al - have been very carefully blaming those problems on the virus and the people, there has been a dedicated online campaign across many platforms to whisper in people's ears this narrative of the Hoax, the Chinese Virus, the Flu, the NWO across New Ager, Alt-right and Christian networks of influence.

All designed to groom vulnerable and gullible targets into breaking the stay home, stay safe protocol so that they can be blamed for any resurgent peaks. And of course, being arrogant, the believers are falling for the play.

It takes humility to stand on evidence, to eschew opinion and belief.

The arrogance of the the believers and the opinionated walking hand in hand with the callous cruelty of the Establishment whilst they believe, crying "Freedom!" and "Take Back Control!" that they are resisting the Establishment.

Satire or Irony are inadequate to this horrific situation.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received



Black Lives Matter, and why All Lives Matter does not matter that much, yet does matter, a bit.

Why 'all lives matter' doesn't matter. And why it matters that we know and understand that it does not mean anything. It is merely a marketing tactic - a manipulative, reactionary, childish and ultimately feeble attempt at a come-back. It is empty, void, dull and inept.

'All lives matter' is nothing more than 'nah-nah nah-nah-naaah' - it is a childish, immature reaction to a genuine banner, a feeble riposte to a global movement that is precise, that is clear in it's origin and purpose. The 'all lives matter' banner is not emerging from the thinking and concern of ordinary folk - it does not reflect any genuine emergent grass roots organising phenomenon that has been created to confront some real and serious abuse of power or any systemic oppression. Oppression of ordinary white folk does exist, of course. But it has nothing to do with skin colour or physiology. Poverty is a common structural oppression that afflicts all of us. All Lives Matter is a scam. ALM was created as a way to attack 'Black Lives Matter', to cast confusion about the messaging of BLM, to gaslight a portion of the white population, who are distressed, angry, who feel their genuine concerns are not being represented within the political system, whose pain is being exploited by the ruling classes in order to obscure the conversation. The conversation should be about hierarchies of power and violence, it ought to be about structural poverty and class, rather than Race. Race does not exist other than as a concept and a prejudice.

In a video interview with Laura Flanders, Black Lives Matter movement co-founder Alicia Garza said that "changing Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter is a demonstration of how we don't actually understand structural racism in this country". 

She went on to say that "other lives are valued more than black lives, and that to take blackness out of this equation is inappropriate". ALM therefore functions as a reactionary counter-punch to a genuine movement that emerged in 2013 in response to the 2012 killing of an innocent teenager, Trayvon Martin, who was only 17. Black Lives Matter and Trayvon Martin

Trayvon was killed by an armed Neighbourhood Watch volunteer. Trayvon was innocent of any crime at the time of the killing, and he had no record of any criminality or other evidence of bad behaviour. The killer was acquitted in a trial, in 2013, under a vague piece of legislation, 'stand your ground'.

The movement 'Black Lives Matter' began as a hashtag - #BlackLivesMatter - that coalesced online response to that acquittal, because it was not the first time this had happened, and many felt it was unlikely to be the last. The feeling was that because Trayvon was black therefore his life did not matter, that his death was yet another crime that was not being accounted for, and this was felt and understood as an injustice by many, many people.
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter became a media focus around other cases of race related police brutality that occurred in the years that followed.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is today an organized movement dedicated to non-violent civil disobedience in protest to police brutality. "Black Lives Matter" exists as a decentralized network with over 30 chapters worldwide. The broader movement and its related organizations typically advocate against police violence towards black people, as well as for various other policy changes considered to be related to Racist and associated inter-sectional oppressions.

Racism is both a falsified logic and a real problem.
Racism was invented, it did not emerge as a natural social phenomenon. There are no racist genes.

The White Race as a concept, was invented by the White European Christians who were the wealthy owners of plantations, the elite of the early colonies of Virginia and Maryland, while they were still British Colonies, under British Rule, protected by British Troops. Racial superiority was a Protestant invention. It was invented to divide the working population within the colonies, and to prepare the legal ground for a massive expansion of institutionalised slavery in order to generate vast wealth.

The superiority of the white race over the black race was based on a false interpretation of Biblical scripture to give it weight. Laws were passed to institutionalise that superiority, bit by bit, over a 40 year period. The false interpretation of Biblical scripture has led to many other inequities and atrocities. Thus the invention of the White Race and their supposed superiority over black and native peoples was a political, social and economic commercially oriented invention.

False prophets for profits, if you will allow the pun. 400 years later and it is still the case that White on Black Racism, or White Supremacy, is still very much alive and active within the USA and the UK, and in many other countries.

There is a problem, and it does revolve around the issue of whether or not the lives on non-Caucasian people's matter to the ruling classes of Caucasian origin, and it is a matter of structural Racism and of grass roots Racism.

Leading members of the ruling classes might not be individually actively Racist, (Obama, for example) yet they do permit Racism to persist in order to more easily divide the working people of the population among ourselves, where we might otherwise find political solidarity and act in coordinated democratic ways to elect officials who would change the legislation that keeps the Established Hierarchy in place. Rulers lives matter? It is also true that the lives of all ordinary folk matter less to the ruling classes than the sense of the Rulers assumed entitlement to rule, The Rulers desire to retain, maintain and enhance their artificial power over the majority of the population supersedes all other concerns. This is what Rulers do. Rulers lives matter, and their power as a class matters more. Virus Spread The fact that the UK Conservative government are planning to return homeless people to the streets by de-funding programs for their temporary housing during the corona virus epidemic, or that they were going to cease funding free meals for 1.3 million vulnerable children during summer holidays, until a public campaign by a footballer pushed back, whilst at the same time paying for the Prime Ministers military operated jet to be painted with the Union Jack as a £900,000 PR stunt, gives a topical account of that lack of care for the lives of ordinary folk. Another pertinent example is the disgraceful behaviour of setting up a contact trace app that the Government knew was not going to be trusted (they were warned, and went ahead). They then set up a person to person contact chasing system that could not be effective, run by an un-elected official with no public health experience. Given that effective apps already existed (Germany had them) and were offered, for free, to the UK Government who rejected the offer, this translates into millions of pounds given to friends of the Government being wasted. Importantly, this diversion has wasted precious time and guaranteed more spread of the virus infection. Clearly, vulnerable peoples lives do not matter to the Rulers of the UK.

The policy of allowing the infectious virus SARSCOV2 to spread across the population, rather than do as new Zealand has done, and stop the spread, eliminate community transmission to protect the vulnerable portion of their population, and their economy is deliberate. Whose lives matter? In addition to all the other work being done to address this issue of Racism - and I think Black Lives Matter is doing this work really well and that they need much wider support - I think that a ruthlessly honest history curriculum in all schools and libraries within all former colonial States and their former colonies is essential. The truth will set us free. A lot of people who are racist do not really understand why they are racist, they do not know how they became racist. Honest educative exposure could liberate a lot of those people from their prejudice. Honesty in education could eradicate Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia and Homophobia from our grass roots communities within a generation. Police brutality and Race. Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups. There are similar patterns in other countries, not least the UK. Black Lives Matter has developed into a global activist organisation, with solid, serious work being done to seek justice for cases of police brutality against black citizens, globally and to confront the history of Racism where it is not being addressed. Black Lives Matter has grown and developed many campaigns, and is dedicated and active. There is no 'All Lives Matter' activism, anywhere There is no known organised 'all lives matter' activism anywhere on Earth that is focused on all oppression that causes death and harm to any people, by one group onto another. There is no 'all lives matter' organisation or movement in any nation seeking to draw attention to oppression against any and all people - nada, diddly squat, zilch, zero, a void, empty space, nothing, Not a single cent or penny is being spent on such activism under the banner 'all lives matter'. Nobody is funding and organising a grass roots movement 'all lives matter' that is actively confronting for example anti-Gypsy or anti-Roma abuse, or confronting lethal homophobia or seeking to stop the invasion of Indigenous inhabited undeveloped lands by miners, loggers, prospectors, or confronting genocides, or protesting global poverty or confronting child trafficking. There is no activist group under the banner 'all lives matter' seeking justice through the court systems in any state or country to protect the lives of any group. The entire impetus of the slogan ALM is coming from groups who have plenty of power - white supremacist ruling class - who want ordinary folk to fight among ourselves, who want to undermine the message of Black Lives Matter and use it as a weapon among us - and they are using every technique and every platform available to spread this puerile reactionary slogan, including massive micro-targeting on-line. Micro-targeting “user data is feeding artificial intelligences whose objective is to manipulate the attention and behavior of users without their knowledge or approval.” and "Microtargeting in political advertising: Facebook, in particular, enables advertisers to identify an emotional hot button for individuals that can be pressed for electoral advantage, irrespective of its relevance to the election. Candidates no longer have to search for voters who share their values. Instead they can invert the model, using microtargeting to identify whatever issue motivates each voter and play to that. If a campaign knows a voter believes strongly in protecting the environment, it can craft a personalized message blaming the other candidate for not doing enough, even if that is not true. In theory, each voter could be attracted to a candidate for a different reason. In combination with the platforms’ persuasive technologies, microtargeting becomes another tool for dividing us. Microtargeting transforms the public square of politics into the psychological mugging of every voter.” and “Zeynep Tufekci, the UNC scholar who is one of the world’s foremost experts on the impact of emerging technology in politics, has observed that internet platforms enable the powerful to affect a new kind of censorship. Instead of denying access to communications and information, bad actors can now use internet platforms to confuse a population, drowning them in nonsense. In her book, Twitter and Tear Gas, she asserts that “inundating audiences with information, producing distractions to dilute their attention and focus, delegitimizing media that provide accurate information (whether credible mass media or online media), deliberately sowing confusion, fear, and doubt by aggressively questioning credibility (with or without evidence, since what matters is creating doubt, not proving a point), creating or claiming hoaxes, or generating harassment campaigns designed to make it harder for credible conduits of information to operate, especially on social media which tends to be harder for a government to control like mass media.” Use of internet platforms in this manner undermines democracy in a way that cannot be fixed by moderators searching for fake news or hate speech.” ― Roger McNamee, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe The pattern of use of All Lives Matter falls into this category, as a distraction, a means to confuse, distort, shout down, drown out and thus counter genuine voices seeking justice and an end to racist violence, and an end to Structural Racism. 'ALM' is being worked in conjunction with white supremacist political grooming operations. Questions to ask So if anyone cries 'all lives matter' you might want to ask them these questions: "What are you doing to stop the oppression of all and any lives anywhere? What funds are you donating to what 'all lives matter' activist organisations or campaigns and what are they doing to prevent abuse, and what are they doing to protect the lives of any group of people under threat? What charities or NGOs operating under the 'all lives matter' banner are you supporting that are directly confronting lethal abuse by any party against another? If 'all lives matter' to you, are you actively working to abolish poverty, everywhere? Do you support the immediate abolishing of poverty for all people, everywhere, without exception?" Because if 'all lives matter', and then they do not support these aims, then clearly, they do not really mean that 'all lives matter'. It could also mean that they have not thought this through - it may mean they have been misled, and thus by posing the questions one might offer them a pathway towards helping them work that out for themselves. This is a task for white people, a white in white non-violent action. Either way, Black Lives most certainly do matter - Racism is disgusting invention and a dysfunctional behaviour at every level; it is based on falsehoods that can only be sustained by indoctrination and dishonesty within the social structures around us. We must deal with both, and we must with the violence inherent in one group claiming superiority over another.


Aboriginal people, the oldest living culture on Earth then, and now, in chains, in Australia.
Estimates suggest that a total of 2 billion Aboriginal people have lived in that time span, and until the white Christian Europeans arrived, they were a stable, diverse, egalitarian culture, with 500 language groups, spread all over Australia. The last uncontacted group emerged from the bush in the 1960s. They have suffered horror upon horror, and are still profoundly oppressed by the invading culture.

Black Lives Matter.

Racism and White Supremacy was well established, as an international phenomenon, by the time the European Christians arrived. It remains a serious problem within Australia to this day.

It is one of the English speaking worlds most shameful situations.

It is one few speak honestly about.

It is a crime against Humanity.
What to do, a thought exercise.
1. Acknowledge that all Hierarchy of Violence Cultures are toxic, abuse ridden cultures. Just admit it. Say it out loud, now. Get it off your chest. Be honest.
2. The monuments and structures such cultures construct are therefore monuments to pathological abusive behaviour. They may be very well made, beautifully crafted. But being stabbed by a kitchen knife or a bejewelled, golden blade made by superior Japanese craftsman makes no difference. It is still being stabbed. Harm is harm.
3. Take them down, all of them. Dis-establish them.
4. For example, take the stone of the Pyramids, or the Norman Castles, and re-purpose it to build social housing to last centuries. These are both monuments to Power Disparity that was built to enable, justify and rationalise atrocity and abuse. They do not deserve to stand.
5. Create scale models of these monuments for museums, so that we can look back on the odious history and understand the crimes committed, the harms caused, the realities of the lives lived under such duress. And we can say 'never again' and mean it.
6. Be aware of all and every Artificial Power Disparity that permits abuse to occur, and dismantle all of them. A police man with  gun, and a bad attitude. Not a healthy social entity.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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