Free Thinkers,
What is the best way to enslave (other) people?
This is the important and recurrent question, plaguing our shadowy puppet-masters again these days.
It has already been established that physically enslaving people is very costly, brutal, and inefficient, because the slaves know they are slaves and hate their masters, who they are able to identify and take revenge upon.
Debt slavery was the permanent-fix, but it is also showing signs of weakness. It needs shoring up with better marketing.
Other aspects of technology also demand consideration. Machines are better slaves for a lot of work than people are, and machines are getting better at running the machines. They also show promise in learning to fix other machines, and AI is good at figuring out what is wrong, so most of the debt-slaves will soon become redundant to industry.
Economics still needs "markets", so living humans will buy and use stuff, as long as they have money.
Our puppet-masters hate giving handouts to "useless eaters", but they are having to wade in that pond a little this year.
This is all so confusing, because we are made to live in a world of other people, animals and plants.
We just don't think and feel right to deal with a world of machine-slaves, which we rule absolutely.
Maybe our shadowy puppet masters can find a way to transfer their consciousnesses into super-intelligent AI platforms, and live forever, ruling a world of other intelligent and less intelligent machines.
Until then, there is another war on, the war for our consciousnesses, but there is armed back-up, to make sure our bodies comply, until our consciousnesses are completely subsumed into the nice Borg.
A Polish writer lays out the war underway, between elite factions, to control our conscious worldviews. Thanks, Eleni.
For six thousand years, since the invention of the wheel, the measure of human progress was movement, the ability to move. There is something ... fair in the fact that the end times we seem to live in are heading towards the complete immobilization of humanity. This is no accident, though for at least several decades, if not for 100 years, that the technological progress has been sought in the old way: individual wings, flying cars, even teleportation, and of course the conquest of space – but real... traffic is in the opposite direction. It is no accident that the word “communication” means both straight transport and information transfer. At least from the expansion of the internet, if not from the proliferation of personal computers, humanity pulls feathers from its wings by itself, wanting to be stuck in one place, but not in the old, safe, high, community sense, but in extreme individuality combined with extreme susceptibility to external imprinting. Dystopian visions of passive skin bags connected to information systems are dangerously approaching as the future of the human race.
And this fight is accelerating right before our eyes. On the one hand, we have been more than ever chained to computers, online banking, closed and isolated. At the same time, the signs of material culture are being destroyed, the same which could lead (at least the wanted ones) to a conclusion, that there had once been some other reality. And finally, at the decision-making level, there is a war - a real, global, and ruthless war over resources, sources and tools of power and control. And the only positive (?) is that this time that conflict is not about our lives, but only our consciousness, so something that when we lose it, we will not remember that we ever had it...
Who are those Federal Military squads, hustling civilians away in unmarked vans, without ID or due-process, up in Portland.? Thanks, Jerry.
Bortac, a quasi-militarised outfit some compare to the Navy Seals, has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan In January 2011, James Tomsheck, then a top internal affairs investigator inside US Customs and Border Protection, attended a meeting of about 100 senior CBP leaders in a hotel in Irvington, Virginia.
Amid the sanitized splendor of the hotel ballroom, he vividly recalls hearing the nation’s then highest-ranking border patrol agent, David Aguilar, laying out his vision for the future. Border patrol, the former CBP deputy commissioner said, was to become the “marine corps of the US federal law enforcement community”.
Another leading CBP figure remarked that border agents were not required to adhere to the same constitutional restraints on the use of force as other law enforcers. “We are not cops,” he said.
In my last post, "Cooperative Survival", I linked to an 89 page online pre-publication, "Rethinking Humanity", about a "different" predictive model of human near-term future. The introduction was promising, appeared to have "good facts" and seemed rational. A couple of sharp commenters at the blog replied with further insights after reading into it.
I read further, myself, and my view changed from curiosity about answers, to curiosity about seductive threats to humanity. I read it entirely, so you don't have to.
The history of human societal endeavor is fairly well laid out, in a useful way, going into the reset we have just entered. We are faced with the threat of a new-dark-age. Yet there is the promise of a quantum leap to a new economic paradigm of freedom, freedom from want and coercion.
Humanity needs a new operating-system. The operating system of the age-of-empires won't work, because it is extractive, and extraction of human and environmental resources at global scale has put us in the binds that we now see everywhere we look.
The new operating-system will need to arise spontaneously. We can't create it, because we are bound by the worldview of the current operating system, "global capitalism", if I may give it a name.
This arising of a new paradigm usually takes hundreds of years, but we are hopeful that we might get it in 5-10 years this time. We just need to prepare ourselves and wait-for-it. The new paradigm will not be coercive, extractive, nor elitist. Anybody going into it with that predatory and competitive mindset will just be left behind by history.
This new economy will not be based upon scarcity, because the new green energy and genetic engineering of microbes to make our food will be so vastly more productive than anything we have ever seen, that they will just leave the current systems of production in the dust. Nobody will need to "work", as we have always known it, either. We will all be able to find the true spiritual and artistic meaning in our lives.
We will not burn fossil fuels, even for heat or cooking. Nor shall we drive cars. We will use autonomous electric transport of many types, which will be cheaper, safer and more reliable. We can get rid of almost all parking places and a lot of roads. All the roads can be repurposed moment-to-moment for all kinds of traffic flow. Remembering how to get places, or even which side of the road to ride your bike upon will be things of the past. Traffic will all be a big, busy, efficient flow, and Sirie will direct you if you are on a bike.
Cities will become much more efficient, and will be able to safely grow to sizes of 100,000,000 or more, while providing 500 square feet of living space per human, and genetic-designer food, tastier than what we have known until now, from microbial manufacture, close to where we live.
Plants and animals won't need to take up land area, which can be reforested to solve global warming.
All old industries will be defunded and regulated against, so internal combustion vehicles and gas stoves will phase out by 2030, or 3035 at the latest.
Capitalists will not profit from the limitless-solar-electric-society, because all of people's retirement funds will be directed to invest in this productive and safe new world, perfectly meshing the needs of society with the provision of those needs. A bit of raw-material will be needed to "seed" this new world, but just a bit at the beginning. It will all enter a stream of intelligent re-use and recycling after that.
The new paradigm will do all of this very efficiently, without need for government oversight or regulation, except as it pertains to mandating the new way and defunding and criminalizing the old ways, which is a temporary formality in the transition period. Predatory efforts to enslave other humans will just get left-behind as the paradigm unfolds.
Investments and profits would clearly still appear on the books in the transition period, but would just as clearly be swept away by the power, elegance and sublime-equanimity of the new paradigm. Anybody caught with their pants down, mired in capitalist exploitation of others, will be chagrined at least, as the tide of inevitable improvement sweeps them downstream to the Niagara Falls of history.
You may see some interim problems, or potential snags in that plan.
What happens if the new paradigm doesn't arrive right away. Will we be in a holding pattern for 400 years, having already thrown away the past?
What about those greedy capitalists, who bought-up the privatized-by-design all electric economy? What keeps them from just squeezing everybody to the last drop of blood, while the new paradigm waits to manifest? What if such capitalists were to swindle all the retirees out of their fractional ownership of the smart-electric-economy? What would become of them/us?
I am dismayed that this plan does not have any interim failsafe mechanisms, in case the new paradigm takes centuries to arrive. I just can't advise you to put all your eggs in this innovative basket until the new paradigm is already here and we're all cool with it.
For now, I'm still growing vegetables the old fashioned way, pedaling and navigating my own bike through the crazy old-style traffic on Texas roads.
Meanwhile, on the unpaved road to herd immunity, Sweden appears to be in the lead, after taking some early losses.
I'm sorry to say that this article grinds several political axes. I have excerpted some useful facts.
"They recommended that people maintain a safe distance between each other and they banned gatherings of 50 people or more. They also asked their elderly citizens to isolate themselves and to avoid interacting with other people as much as possible. Other than that, Swedes were encouraged to work, exercise and get on with their lives as they would normally even though the world was still in the throes of a global pandemic." ...
"Experts compared mortality rates and cases in 50 badly-hit countries up until May 1 and calculated that only 33 out of every million people had died from the virus…The study found that imposing lockdown measures succeeded in stopping hospitals becoming overwhelmed, but it did not translate into a significant reduction in deaths." ...
“Sweden’s top health authority says people who have had the novel coronavirus are likely to be immune for at least six months after being infected, whether they’ve developed antibodies or not….A recent study from King’s College London showed that the level of antibodies may drop to a degree that makes them undetectable as soon as three months after infection. However, the body also mounts other forms of immunity responses, including from so-called T-cells, which appear to play an important role in protecting against reinfection with Covid-19.
Research from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute has indicated that about twice as many people infected by Covid-19 have developed a T-cell mediated immunity response as those who have a detectable level of antibodies.
I think Texas is emulating Sweden, though not saying it that way. About 14 Texans per thousand have had confirmed COVID diagnoses. In round numbers the number of infections might be 10 times as high, about 14%. This is really a rough estimate. It's about 1:7 Texas residents. That is still a long way from 70%.
The kids will go back to school, as will teachers and staff. It remains to be seen who might be excepted from physical presence. The elementary and middle school kids seem to be at low risk of getting and spreading significant disease, due to their bodies keeping virus contained and at low levels in the nasopharynx. There are exceptions, and this benefit wanes by high school. This is a big societal experiment in pandemic management. I hope it goes well.
After weeks of confusion and conflicting signals, Texas has settled into policies that effectively compel schools to reopen their classrooms this fall no later than eight weeks after the academic year begins, whether they want to or not.
Teachers, parents, school administrators and public health officials have been seeking clarity for weeks on how the state will approach reopening schools safely as coronavirus infections and deaths rise across Texas.
The heart is a highly vascular organ. So are the lungs, kidneys, brain and eyes. SARS-CoV-2 attacks the lining of blood vessels, causing inflammation, injury and blood clots, lots of little tiny clots and sometimes big ones that cause strokes and heart attacks. We still don't know if viral infection persists in some people, either.
Two new studies from Germany paint a sobering picture of the toll that Covid-19 takes on the heart, raising the specter of long-term damage after people recover, even if their illness was not severe enough to require hospitalization.
One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of the patients had recovered at home. More than two months later, infected patients were more likely to have troubling cardiac signs than people in the control group: 78 patients showed structural changes to their hearts, 76 had evidence of a biomarker signaling cardiac injury typically found after a heart attack, and 60 had signs of inflammation.
These were relatively young, healthy patients who fell ill in the spring, Valentina Puntmann, who led the MRI study, pointed out in an interview. Many of them had just returned from ski vacations. None of them thought they had anything wrong with their hearts.
Kodak may be making chemical precursors to hydroxychloroquine and other drugs soon. They may even manufacture a vaccine. Stocks went up. (It has been a roller coaster since this story was published.)
Kodak Soars After Government Loan To End China Medical Supply Chain Reliance
Fauci Accused Of 'Misinformation Campaign' Against Hydroxychloroquine; Ohio Gov Wants State Officials To Reverse Prohibition
The anti-HCQ push has infected Silicon Valley as well - as tech giants have been labeling pro-hydroxychloroquine content as 'misinformation' - most recently banishing a press conference by a group of doctors touting the drug from just about every platform.
To that end, Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch has accused Dr. Anthony Fouci of waging a "misinformation campaign" against the drug, according to Just The News.
Free Gardener
(Jenny is pictured this morning in the Yoakum vegetable garden, improving from surgery 2 weeks ago)
