How Do You Think The Lockstep Scenario Is Coming Along So Far?

threadreaderapp  |  23. Citizens were more tolerant and even eager for top down direction and oversight and national leaders had more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit.

24. In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms, biometric IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests" END

25. Quite something isn't it. Amazing what was outlined. I've provided the document link which is worth reading. If you want to read just the lockstep section its pages 18-25.

Alternatively I have screen captured the relevant parts below.

riapriamolitaliainsalute.it/allegdenuncia/…

26. Hopefully you're now linking RF, JH, BMGF & WEF for the last 20 months.

Now the banks. Don't forget the Fed is connected to the banks & the likelihood of a digital currency being implemented will be through using the covid digital pass & ultimately social credit score system

27. But where does RF fit in. In 2019 The Commons Project Foundation was founded.

Projects include CommonHealth, COVIDcheck & CommonPass. Basically Covid Apps backed by RF.

Better still the domain was registered in 2018.

Interesting timing. Pre-covid.
thecommonsproject.org

Last Summer I Pointed You Toward The Lockstep Scenario (REDUX 7/30/20)

wrongkindofgreen |  (wrong kind of green dollar-dollar-bill-y'all is just entirely too clever)

“The ruling class exists, it’s not a conspiracy theory. They operate as a class, too. They share the same values, the same sensibility and in Europe and North America they are white. They act in accordance with their interests, which are very largely identical. The failure to understand this is the single greatest problem and defect in left discourse today.”

— John Steppling, Author, Playwright


“This report is crucial reading for anyone interested in creatively considering the multiple, divergent ways in which our world could evolve.”

— Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation

Storytelling. Dystopian scenarios. Not Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury or Brunner.

Scenario planning for corporate strategy was pioneered by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s. [Further reading on scenario planning: The Art of the Long View]The following excerpts are highlights from the May 2010 “Scenarios for the Future of Technology & International Development” report produced by The Rockefeller Foundation & Global Business Network. Not just the more known “Lock Step” scenario, but all four scenarios.

Following “Event 201” (Oct 18, 2019), we must concede that the ruling class has been gifted with phenomenal and prophetic intuitions and insights. (They truly are the chosen ones.) Thus it is worthwhile, even mandatory, to study their scenario exercises and simulations.

“We believe that scenario planning has great potential for use in philanthropy to identify unique interventions… scenario planning allows us to achieve impact more effectively.” [p 4]

“The results of our first scenario planning exercise demonstrate a provocative and engaging exploration of the role of technology and the future of globalization.” [p 4]

“This report is crucial reading for anyone interested in creatively considering the multiple, divergent ways in which our world could evolve.” [p 4]

“*I offer a special thanks to Peter Schwartz, Andrew Blau, and the entire team at Global Business Network, who have helped guide us through this stimulating and energizing process.” [*Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation] [p 4]

“*I hope this publication makes clear exactly why my colleagues and I are so excited about the promise of using scenario planning to develop robust strategies.” [*Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation][p 5]

Peter Schwartz is an American futurist, innovator and co-founder of the Global Business Network (GBN), a corporate strategy firm, specializing in future-think & scenario planning. Founded in 1987, GBN was “a membership organization comprising executives from many of the world’s leading companies alongside individual members from business, science, the arts, and academia.” The proprietary list of GBN’s corporate members included “more than 100 of the world’s leading companies, drawn from virtually every industry and continent.” Members paid an annual subscription fee of $35,000. [Source] Following an acquisition by Monitor in 2000, GBN then specialized in scenario-based consulting and training. GBN ceased to be active following the acquisition of the Monitor Group by Deloitte in 2013.

“Perhaps most importantly, scenarios give us a new, shared language that deepens our conversations about the future and how we can help to shape it.” [p 7]

“How can we best position ourselves not just to identify technologies that improve the lives of poor communities but also to help scale and spread those that emerge?” [p 8]

The Four Scenarios

“Once crossed, these axes create a matrix of four very different futures:

LOCK STEP – A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian eadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback

CLEVER TOGETHER – A world in which highly coordinated and successful strategies emerge for addressing both urgent and entrenched worldwide issues

HACK ATTACK – An economically unstable and shock-prone world in which governments weaken, criminals thrive, and dangerous  innovations emerge

SMART SCRAMBLE – An economically depressed world in which individuals and communities develop localized, makeshift solutions to a growing set of problems”

“Each scenario tells a story of how the world, and in particular the developing world, might progress over the next 15 to 20 years,… Accompanying each scenario is a range of elements that aspire to further illuminate life, technology, and philanthropy in that world.” [p 17]

Scenario #1: LOCK STEP

“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain — originating from wild geese — was extremely virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly 20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million in just seven months, the majority of them healthy young adults. The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.” [p 18]

“The pandemic blanketed the planet — though disproportionate numbers died in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America, where the virus spread like wildfire in the absence of official containment protocols. But even in developed countries, containment was a challenge. The United States’s initial policy of “strongly discouraging” citizens from flying proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the U.S. but across borders. However, a few countries did fare better — China in particular. The Chinese government’s quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter postpandemic
recovery. [p 18]

Winter Siege Allgemeine Impfpflicht - ISRIB And SIRT6 - But Not For You Pissants....,

consentfactory |  So, GloboCap has crossed the Rubicon. The final phase of its transformation of society into a pathologized-totalitarian dystopia, where mandatory genetic-therapy injections and digital compliance papers are commonplace, is now officially underway.

On November 19, 2021, the government of New Normal Austria decreed that, as of February, experimental mRNA injections will be mandatory for the entire population. This decree comes in the midst of Austria’s official persecution of “the Unvaccinated,” i.e., political dissidents and other persons of conscience who refuse to convert to the new official ideology and submit to a series of mRNA injections, purportedly to combat a virus that causes mild-to-moderate flu-like symptoms (or no symptoms of any kind at all) in about 95% of the infected and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%.

Austria is just the tip of the New Normal spear. Prominent New-Normal fascists in Germany, like Der Führer of Bavaria, Markus Söder, and Minister of Propaganda Karl Lauterbach, are already calling for an allgemeine Impfpflicht (i.e., “compulsory vaccination requirement”), which should not come as a surprise to anyone. The Germans are not going sit idly by and let the Austrians publicly out-fascist them, are they? They have a reputation to uphold, after all! Italy will probably be next to join in, unless Lithuania or Australia beats them to the punch.

But, seriously, this is just the beginning of the Winter Siege I wrote about recently. The plan seems to be to New-Normalize Europe first — generally speaking, Europeans are more docile, respectful of all authority, and not very well armed — and then use it as leverage to force the new pathologized totalitarianism on the USA, and the UK, and the rest of the world.

I do not believe this plan will succeed. Despite the most intensive propaganda campaign in the history of propaganda campaigns, there remain enough of us who steadfastly refuse to accept the “New Normal” as our new reality.

And a lot of us are angry, extremely angry … militantly, explosively angry.

Does The Spike Protein Epigenetically Silence Endothelial SIRT6?

wmcresearch  |  One may view the actions of the spike protein by reversing a well-worn saying:

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

The Spike prefers:

“If you stop a cell from repairing itself, it just dies. If you teach the host to stop repairing itself, you rob it of its lifetime.”

On May 31^st of this year, researchers in Israel discovered the Fountain of Youth. They observed that SIRT6 controls the rate of healthy aging. If you increase this, the mice live for an average of THIRTY PERCENT LONGER. So, imagine 130 being the new 100. SIXTY being the new THIRTY! LITERALLY!

An interesting observation was also made by the team: “If we can determine how to activate it in humans, we will be able to prolong life, and this could have enormous health and economic implications."

Enormous implications, indeed. Clearly there are those who certainly DO NOT want Seven Billion people living an extra thirty years…

So, what happens if you REMOVE SIRT6? You guessed it. Very, very bad things happen. Especially death.

Without SIRT6 your body is unable to repair the DNA damage that we experience every day, and which is ENORMOUSLY increased in states of disease, particularly so in the case of SARS-CoV-2.

THE ENDOTHELIAL SENESCENCE CONNECTION

It has been established that endothelial cells become senescent when transfected with the Spike Protein. They have not determined WHY it happens, just that it DOES HAPPEN and the effects it has. I now know why it happens. The Spike Protein is epigenetically silencing SIRT6.

What does SIRT6 do, in addition to controlling DNA repair?

DNA Repair, Gene Expression, Telomeric Maintenance, Mitosis and Meiosis, Stem Cell Pluripotency and Differentiation (how cells obtain their specific functionality), Metablic Diseases (Diabetes, for example), Cancer, Immune Regulation, Stress Response, Senescence and Aging.

Everything COVID and Long COVID.

It has already been hypothesized that Sirtuins are implicated in COVID. In a paper on COVID and related Sepsis it was determined that Metformin may improve metabolic derangements, improve mitochondrial function, and decrease cytokine production. NAD+ boosters such as resveratrol, a naturally occurring polyphenol, found in red grapes and blueberries, activate Sirtuin activity and attenuate the NF-ĸB activity, improve endothelial function, and decrease microvascular inflammation.

SIRT1 is also implicated in COVID: COVID-19: NAD+ deficiency may predispose the aged, obese and type2 diabetics to mortality through its effect on SIRT1 activity

But, what are the possible long term implications? Organisms that are deprived of their natural SIRT6 have very, very short lifespans. Mice, for example, die within four weeks without SIRT6.

Are Vaccinated English Adults Under 60 Dying At Twice The Rate Of Same Age Unvaccinated?

alexberenson  |  This chart may seem unbelievable or impossible, but it's correct, based on weekly data from the British government. 

The brown line represents weekly deaths from all causes of vaccinated people aged 10-59, per 100,000 people.

The blue line represents weekly deaths from all causes of unvaccinated people per 100,000 in the same age range.

I have checked the underlying dataset myself and this graph is correct. Vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are running well above normal.

I don’t know how to explain this other than vaccine-caused mortality.

The basic data is available here, download the Excel file and see table 4:

 

 

Civilization Looks The Way It Looks Because Powerful People Have Mapped It Out This Way

caitlinjohnstone |  If your opinion about a legal case would be different if the political ideologies of those involved were reversed and all other facts and evidence remained the same, then it’s probably best not to pretend your position on the case has anything to do with facts or evidence.

People who defend US foreign policy are terrorist sympathizers.

Any time you see the US empire picking on a smaller nation just search that nation’s name plus “Belt and Road Initiative” and you’ll usually find a connection.

To get an idea of just how insane things are, there are people whose actual job is to sell policymakers on the idea that dropping more bombs would be a good thing, and those people are paid by actual bomb manufacturers.

To get an even clearer idea of how crazy things are, attempts to stop dropping bombs will be opposed on the grounds that it will hurt the jobs of bomb manufacturers. Media pundits will actually come right out and say this on nationwide TV broadcasts.

Civilization looks the way it looks because powerful people mapped it out that way. Then the storytellers of civilization come in and assure us that civilization looks this way because of an accident of democracy and rank-and-file commerce. But we never really had a hand in this.

And this mapping continues. All the plans for capitalism, Covid policies, climate change, green energy transitions etc are being planned out with no real input from the general public. The importance of our opinions begins and ends with how far we can be pushed without revolting.

 

 

Why Aren't These Negroes Stealing Anything Useful?

nbcnews |  More than a dozen people stormed a Louis Vuitton store in a Chicago suburb and were caught on surveillance footage grabbing bags and wiping shelves clear, according to police.

The theft took place at the store located in the Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, Illinois, on Wednesday around 3:30 p.m., police said.

The footage shows the suspects, wearing masks and hooded sweatshirts, burst into the store and spread out, filling their arms with bags and other goods before dashing out.

Police said the 14 suspects all escaped the scene in three separate vehicles waiting for them. As of Friday, the Chicago Police Department recovered one of the three vehicles allegedly used in the theft: a Dodge Charger reported stolen in October out of Chicago, Oak Brook police said. 

No injuries were reported and no weapons were displayed. 

Oak Brook police said in an update Friday that the merchandise taken was worth an estimated $120,000. 

"We are still developing and working several leads to identify the offenders involved in our incident," Oak Brook police said Friday.

 

Flash-Mobbing Negroes Are Why You Can't Have Nice Things This Christmas!!!

reuters |   Police in California on Sunday were seeking about 80 suspects who they said swarmed into a Bay Area Nordstrom department store in a coordinated robbery, ransacking as much as they could carry and fleeing in cars they had parked outside.

Three people were arrested at the scene of the "organized theft" reported shortly before 9 p.m. local time on Saturday in suburban Walnut Creek, about 15 miles (25 km) east of Oakland, police said.

"The remaining participants in this criminal mob fled from the area in cars at high speeds," Walnut Creek police said in a statement on Sunday.

The robbery followed another brazen mob-heist of high-end stores on Friday night in San Francisco's Union Square, about 25 miles (40 km) to the west.

Video posted by a KNTV television reporter showed several people running out of the store with merchandise and climbing into about 25 parked cars that ringed the building and jammed traffic on the streets.

"It was crazy for a second," said Brett Barrette, a manager of a restaurant across the street, who told KPIX-TV that the thieves wore ski masks and were armed with crow bars and weapons. "All the guests inside were getting concerned."

Police said the suspects assaulted two Nordstrom employees and pepper-sprayed another. They said they are reviewing surveillance footage in an effort to identify them.

Good News Everybody - ALL Libraries And Bookstores Are Safe From Them!!!

 

Public Policy Has Become More Representative Of Religion Than Science

@sameo416  |  “How Covid-19 spreads: narratives, counter-narratives and social dramas”. Some thoughts and highlight of one aspect, how what they describe is more representative of religion than science 

They distinguish between inside track and outside track that shape policy narratives while the inside track are the literal insiders, SAG. This sounds like Fleck’s esoteric and exoteric circles. In the Stanford entry on Fleck is this prescient para, h/t @awsparling

 

“If the position of an elite is stronger than the position of the masses, the elite isolates itself and demands obedience from the masses. Such collectives develop dogmatic styles of thinking in which a test of correctness is usually located in some distant past in a more or less mythical master or savior. Collective life acquires a ceremonial character and access to the esoteric circle is well-guarded. Conservatism reigns: there is no place for fundamentally new ideas, and one can only better or worse realize the revealed principles.” 

 

If that doesn’t sound familiar read some of .@AntibioticDoc posts. The arrogance and hubris we’ve seen out of most of the public health policy makers has exactly followed Fleck’s thought. ‘Demand obedience’ indeed. This bit: “This is characteristic of most religious collectives” 

 

Droplet dogma is the mythical master by which allegiance to the esoteric circle is assessed. Transgression from that master results in something many religious traditions have practiced, shunning.

I’ve worked both engineering and church ministry. Huge red flag for me when science slips into dogmatic practice and thought. Science, by definition, is supposed to be open to new knowledge at any point. Fortress Infection Control does not reflect that attribute. 

 

The article talks about ‘rituals of purification’ that ‘reinforce the official narrative’. This too is religion writ large. Liturgy and what you do at the altar all reinforce the underlying doctrine of the faith. The authors are spot on. 

 

For public masking, it’s discussed and shut down but no evidence is offered to support the anti-mask claims. This too is an aspect of religion. Can debate the types of robes, colours, music, but if we get to core dogma, like the divinity of Christ, there’s no room for debate. 

 

In discussing why the flawed narratives persist, authors highlight why people are unlikely to change their beliefs. Use of the word belief is significant here as that’s what is being described. I don’t have beliefs about the behaviour of electromagnetic radiation… 

 

I hold understandings that are open for revision with further data. Policymakers exhibit satisficing behaviour. Further reason is scientific elitism. This includes the fetishization of the RCT as the only source of reality. This enables a degree of symbolic violence. 

 

Except its not symbolic. Epistemic violence is violence, worse than blows in many ways. That is focused on ‘outside track’ voices, those outside the esoteric and exoteric circles. The focus on maintaining control consumes all energy that could go to real public protection 

 

Final super line, “…the combination of policymakers’ cognitive biases and satisficing behaviour, scientists’ desire to protect their interests, and politicians’ alignment with individualist values and populist sentiment proved perilous.”

 

Policymaking Is A Contact Sport Involving Competing Narratives, Institutions, and Interests...,

authorea |  This paper offers a critique of UK government policy based on mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (which in turn followed misleading advice from the World Health Organisation) through the lens of policymaking as narrative. Two flawed narratives—“Covid is droplet- not airborne-spread” and “Covid is situationally airborne” (that is, airborne transmission is unusual but may occur during aerosol-generating medical procedures and severe indoor crowding)—quickly became dominant despite no evidence to support them. Two important counter-narratives—“Covid is unequivocally airborne” and “Everyone generates aerosols; everyone is vulnerable”— were sidelined despite strong evidence to support them. Tragic consequences of the flawed policy narrative unfolded as social dramas. For example, droplet precautions became ritualised; care home residents died in their thousands; public masking became a libertarian lightning rod; and healthcare settings became occupational health battlegrounds. In a discussion, we call for bold action to ensure that the science of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is freed from the shackles of historical errors, scientific vested interests, ideological manipulation and policy satisficing.

Policymaking is a contact sport involving competing narratives (about problems, how they arose, and how they will be resolved), institutions (especially government and its bureaucratic machinery) and interests (financial, political, ideological).^{1 2} Policy may—ideally—“follow science” but a key question is whosescience and why? Science shapes policy narratives via an “inside track” (e.g. official advisory committees) and to a lesser extent by an “outside track” (e.g. less mainstream scientists, citizen movements).³

 

Pandemic policymaking has been characterised not by clearly-identified knowledge gaps which science obligingly fills but by toxic clashes between competing scientific and moral narratives. Policymakers have risked losing control of the “dramaturgy of political communication” (page 78⁴).

Getting the mode of transmission for a contagious disease right matters, because preventive strategies follow (Table 1).⁵ Being honest about scientific uncertainty also matters, because—among other reasons—it is hard to back-track after declaring a policy “evidence-based”.

 

Table 1: Droplet versus airborne transmission: implications for public health and healthcare worker protection

 

Parasitic Agents Of Invincibility And Status And An Insidious Social Sickness...,

theatlantic  |  Deep in the forests of Germany, nestled neatly into the hollowed-out shells of acorns, live a smattering of ants who have stumbled upon a fountain of youth. They are born workers, but do not do much work. Their days are spent lollygagging about the nest, where their siblings shower them with gifts of food. They seem to elude the ravages of old age, retaining a durably adolescent physique, their outer shells soft and their hue distinctively tawny. Their scent, too, seems to shift, wafting out an alluring perfume that endears them to others. While their sisters, who have nearly identical genomes, perish within months of being born, these death-defying insects live on for years and years and years.

They are Temnothorax ants, and their elixirs of life are the tapeworms that teem within their bellies—parasites that paradoxically prolong the life of their host at a strange and terrible cost.

A few such life-lengthening partnerships have been documented between microbes and insects such as wasps, beetles, and mosquitoes. But what these ants experience is more extreme than anything that’s come before, says Susanne Foitzik, an entomologist at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, in Germany, who studies the ants and their tapeworms. Infected Temnothorax ants live at least three times longer than their siblings, and perhaps much more, she and her colleagues report in a study published today in Royal Society Open Science. No one is yet sure when the insects’ longevity tops out, but the answer is probably in excess of a decade, approaching or even matching that of ant queens, who can survive up to 20 years.

“Some other parasites do extend life spans,” Shelley Adamo, a parasite expert at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia, who was not involved in the study, told me. “But not like this.”

Under typical circumstances, Temnothorax ants live as most other ants do. They reside in communities ruled by a single fertile queen attended by a legion of workers whose professional lives take a predictable trajectory. They first tend the queen’s eggs as nurses, then graduate into foraging roles that take them outside the nest. Apart from the whole freaky parasite thing, “they are pretty boring,” Foitzik told me.

Normalcy goes out the door, however, when Temnothorax larvae ingest tapeworm-egg-infested bird feces trucked in by foragers. The parasites hatch and set up permanent residence in the young ants’ abdomens, where they can access a steady stream of nutrients. In return, they offer their host an unconventional renter’s fee: an extra-long life span that Foitzik and her colleagues managed to record in real time.

This Isn't An Accident, It Is Desired By Global Capital And Will NOT Go Away

consortiumnews |  A few days after the Nov. 2 election, The New York Times published a vehement editorial calling for the Democratic Party to adopt “moderate” positions and avoid seeking “progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas.” It was a statement by the Times editorial board, which the newspaper describes as “a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values.”

The editorial certainly reflected “longstanding values” — since the Times has recycled them for decades in its relentless attacks on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

The Times editorial board began its polemic by calling for the party to “return” to “moderate policies.”

Translation: Stick to corporate-friendly policies of the sort that we applauded during 16 years of the Clinton and Obama presidencies.

The board also said the election results:

“are a sign that significant parts of the electorate are feeling leery of a sharp leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build Back Better, which have some strong provisions and some discretionary ones driving up the price tag.”

Translation: Although poll after poll shows that the Build Back Better agenda is popular with the broad public, especially increased taxation on wealthy and corporate elites to pay for it, we need to characterize the plan as part of “a sharp leftward push.”

And the board noted:

“the concerns of more centrist Americans about a rush to spend taxpayer money, a rush to grow the government, should not be dismissed.”

Translation: While we don’t object to the ongoing “rush to spend taxpayer money” on the military, and we did not editorialize against the bloated Pentagon budget, we oppose efforts to “grow the government” too much for such purposes as healthcare, childcare, education, housing and mitigating the climate crisis.

“Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing that. He captured the nomination—and the presidency—because he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence.”

Translation: No need to fret about the anti-democratic power of great wealth and corporate monopolies. We liked the status quo before the Trump presidency, and that’s more or less what we want now.

“‘Nobody elected him to be F.D.R.,’ Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, told the Times after Tuesday’s drubbing.”

Translation: Spanberger, a former CIA case officer and current member of the corporate Blue Dog Coalition in Congress, is our kind of Democrat.

“Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people.”

Translation: Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people but not go overboard by helping them too much. We sometimes write editorials bemoaning the vast income inequality in this country, but we don’t want the government to do much to reduce it.

“Congress should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and — frankly — a host of lesser-known Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might oppose were not in office.”

Translation: We editorialize about social justice, but we don’t want structural changes and substantial new government policies that could bring it much closer. We editorialize about the climate crisis, but not in favor of government actions anywhere near commensurate with the crisis.

Getting To Net-Zero Means Getting Rid Of You No Longer Necessary Middle-Class Eaters...,

epochtimes  |  It is too often overlooked in all the discussions about the “transition” to a net-zero emissions economy that the most consequential transition is that from democratic capitalism to feudal serfdom.

This is the conclusion of American demographer and “blue-collar Democrat” Joel Kotkin, who has highlighted that the supposedly well-intentioned green policies being adopted across the West come at enormous expense to the working- and middle-classes.

As Kotkin wrote in ‘Spiked’ earlier this year, “extreme climate measures have driven the loss of traditional blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, construction and energy, while other environmental regulations have boosted housing prices.”

Kotkin’s thesis is that the West is on the road to serfdom. Rather than maintaining our capitalist societies where a large, asset-owning middle-class underpin a stable democratic system, we are becoming stratified feudal societies.

Home and small business ownership are declining, especially among the young and the less well-off, a group of technocratic elites are establishing themselves as permanent rulers in the apparatus of the administrative state, and corporate oligarchs are coming to dominate both the economy and broader society.

his transition has been occurring for some time, but it has been accelerated by the COVID-19-inspired lockdowns and the zeal with which Western governments have thoughtlessly adopted net-zero emissions targets.

Both play out as an aggressive form of reverse Robin Hood asset stripping, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.

Australia is now officially committed to a net-zero emissions by 2050 target.

But beyond the slogan “technology not taxes,” the Australian people do not know how the government plans on achieving its newfound ambition.

The UK Treasury, by contrast, recently released a Net-zero Review report (pdf) which provides some detail of how the UK government expects to reach net-zero.

The report includes a surprisingly honest admission from the bureaucracy: “The costs and benefits of the transition to a net-zero economy will ultimately pass through to households through a range of different channels.”

It includes a helpful chart that shows that, regardless of the specific policy or mechanism, the costs of net-zero will always fall on households, that is, everyday mums, dads, and workers.

This insight is evident to many but is too often obfuscated.

Bill Nelson - Going Where No Previous NASA Administrator Has Gone Before

medium |  “I’ve seen the classified report,” Nelson told CNN’s Pamela Brown in an interview shortly before the June 25th “Preliminary Report on UAP” came out. “It says basically what we thought. We don’t know the answer to what those Navy pilots saw.”

“Now, they know that they saw something. They tracked it. They locked their radar onto it. They followed it. It would suddenly move quickly from one location to another. And what the report does tell us that is public is that there have been over 140 of these sightings, So, naturally, what I ask our scientists to do is to see if there’s any kind of explanation from a scientific point of view and I’m awaiting their report.”

This summer NASA press secretary Jackie McGuinness confirmed her new boss Nelson had directed researchers to move forward with exploring any lines of questioning around the topic as they see fit.

“There’s not really a lot of data and scientists should be free to follow these leads, and it shouldn’t be stigmatized,” McGuinness said, acknowledging that UFO research can be negatively associated with unfounded conspiracy theories. “This is a really interesting phenomenon and Americans are clearly interested in it so if the scientists want to investigate, they should.”

This is great news for large numbers of scientists who have been frustrated about attempts to get research started because of the stigma the topic generates. The idea that NASA itself is willing to authorize, support and coordinate such work is revolutionary.

What Questions Did He Ask Again?

Now you read it in the earlier breakout quote in this article, but in one of his responses Nelson asked a series of questions. Let’s give them a little more breathing space as we wrap up here:

• What, who is out there?
• Who are we?
• How did we get here?
• How did we become as we are?
• How did we develop?
• How did we civilize?

It’s worth considering that these are not the first things a public official is likely to say when questioned about the June 25 Preliminary Assessement: Undentified Aerial Phenomena, is it? On the other hand, we know he has had the Full Monty of the classified briefing, and probably others. We also know that if Joe Biden wants to know what the hell is going on, he’s apt to call up Bill Nelson.

Still, it sure sounds like Nelson seems to be saying something with a little more complexity than the version of human development we get taught in high school and college. He’s asking questions that make it seem like we had help.

Why Is He Talking Like This?

It seems the main reason is that he believes it. That, of course, would be refreshing and illuminating and, from what I’ve read, seen and heard, it appears to be the truth.

But it may also be that his age has something to do with it. Nelson turned 79 this year. He was born in World War II, fought in Vietnam, had a lifetime of experiences that many of us will never have. He knows in his heart that something strange is going on now, and has been for the entire time he’s been on this Earth.

He seems ready to play his part now by saying the quiet part out loud.

Keep it coming, Bill. Turn your teams loose on this. Tell them they can speak truth to power. Find out some answers. Confirm what you can and offer the best theories and interpretations that can be made about the explanations. We’ve all been waiting a long time, too.

Is The Pentagon Withholding Full-Spectrum UAP Data?

medium |  After Congress was briefed on the classified portion of the Pentagon’s UAP report in June, D.C. power player and scientist Robert McGwier participated in a panel discussion on the Canadian UFO and paranormal radio program Spaced Out Radio and said he’d heard from an acquaintance in the closed-door session.

The briefing, he said, included the National Security Council and members of Congress — just how many of the latter, it wasn’t clear from McGwier’s off-air remarks during one of the show’s breaks, which are live-streamed on YouTube while radio listeners hear commercials. This elite audience of Washington power brokers was privy to information that has not been publicly released.

“Seventy pages and 14 videos,” he said. “They got to see the good stuff.” Later in the program, he added a caveat: “I want to make very, very clear: I heard no classified information whatsoever.”

McGwier, affectionately known as “Bob the Science Guy,” is an academic and active member of the ufology community.

An expert in radio technology with a Ph.D in applied mathematics from Brown University, he joined the Institute for Defense Analyses Center for Communications Research, a non-profit think tank in Princeton, N.J. in 1986. When he was hired in 2011 to head a research center at Virginia Tech, the school noted that McGwier’s work with the U.S. government had earned him the intelligence community’s “highest honor” in 2002. His job at Virginia Tech, according to the school, was to “develop strategic research relationships within the industry and government working in the national security sector.”

Put another way, he has connections in Washington D.C. McGwier continued:

“I know several people who were in the National Security Council meeting,” he said. “The best comment I heard was, ‘What we had was 40 minutes of science fiction movies. We were all gobsmacked.’

Which is to say, 40 minutes of video of UAPs doing their thing out over the ocean, running circles around U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and fighter pilots, whatever it is they do out there. Not fiction, but actual reality.

Imagine video, then, that gives you the palpable feeling of shit getting unnervingly real, of the world shifting beneath your feet. It’s what the American philosopher and physicist Thomas Kuhn called in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions a “paradigm shift,” or what philosophy and religious studies professor Jeffrey Kripal calls “the flip.” Out with the old, in with the new — and the woo.

Make no mistake: The videos we’ve already seen, acquired and published by the New York Times (and those reportedly leaked and subsequently dribbled out by ufologist and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell) are extraordinary, game-changing documents. They are, at this point, probably the most famous “authentic” UFO videos ever seen by the public. Future books on the topic will probably feature images from these videos the way UFO books published during the 1970s and ’80s included the famous Trent photos from McMinnville.

Thing is though, they’re not enough.

 

Why Is The CDC's Drug Overdose Data So Much Better Than Its Covid Mortality Data?

CDC  |  This data visualization presents provisional counts for drug overdose deaths based on a current flow of mortality data in the National Vital Statistics System. Counts for the most recent final annual data are provided for comparison. National provisional counts include deaths occurring within the 50 states and the District of Columbia as of the date specified and may not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period. Provisional counts are often incomplete and causes of death may be pending investigation (see Technical notes) resulting in an underestimate relative to final counts. To address this, methods were developed to adjust provisional counts for reporting delays by generating a set of predicted provisional counts (see Technical notes).

The provisional data presented in this visualization include: (a) the reported and predicted provisional counts of deaths due to drug overdose occurring nationally and in each jurisdiction; (b) a U.S. map of the percentage changes in provisional drug overdose deaths for the current 12 month-ending period compared with the 12-month period ending in the same month of the previous year, by jurisdiction; and (c) the reported and predicted provisional counts of drug overdose deaths involving specific drugs or drug classes occurring nationally and in selected jurisdictions. The reported and predicted provisional counts represent the numbers of deaths due to drug overdose occurring in the 12-month periods ending in the month indicated. These counts include all seasons of the year and are insensitive to variations by seasonality. Deaths are reported by the jurisdiction in which the death occurred.

Several data quality metrics, including the percent completeness in overall death reporting, percentage of deaths with cause of death pending further investigation, and the percentage of drug overdose deaths with specific drugs or drug classes reported are included to aid in interpretation of provisional data as these measures are related to the accuracy of provisional counts (see Technical notes). Reporting of the specific drugs and drug classes involved in drug overdose deaths varies by jurisdiction, and comparisons of death rates involving specific drugs across selected jurisdictions should not be made (see Technical notes). Provisional data presented in this visualization will be updated on a monthly basis as additional records are received.

The U.S. Govt Has Seized Enough Fentanyl This Year To Give Every American A Lethal Dose

CNN  |  America's drug epidemic is the deadliest it has ever been, new federal data suggests.

More than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States during the 12-month period ending April 2021, according to provisional data published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

That's a new record high, with overdose deaths jumping 28.5% from the same period a year earlier and nearly doubling over the past five years.

 

Opioids continue to be the driving cause of drug overdose deaths. Synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, caused nearly two-thirds (64%) of all drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending April 2021, up 49% from the year before, the CDC's 's National Center for Health Statistics found.

 

Drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30% in the past year, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics. More than 100,000 people died from a drug overdose between April 2020 and April 2021, up from 78,000 the year before and nearly double the deaths five years ago.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic and the rise in use of fentanyl have both been key contributors to the rising overdose death toll, experts say.

 

The latest provisional data on drug overdose deaths captures those occurring in May 2020 through April 2021. Covid-19 killed about 509,000 people in that same timeframe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

 

"What we're seeing are the effects of these patterns of crisis and the appearance of more dangerous drugs at much lower prices," Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told CNN. "In a crisis of this magnitude, those already taking drugs may take higher amounts and those in recovery may relapse. It's a phenomenon we've seen and perhaps could have predicted."

But the rise of fentanyl, a stronger and faster-acting drug than natural opiates, has made those effects even more deadly, she said.

 

Increasing use of the synthetic drug caught the attention of experts before Covid-19 hit, but the pandemic may have exacerbated the problem. 

 

With international travel limited, synthetics that are easier to manufacture and more concentrated were likely more efficient to smuggle across borders, Volkow said.

 

Fentanyl Is The Grim Reaper's Constant Background Hum In Nashville

nashvillescene |  On April 7, Tyler Smith graduated from a 10-week addiction treatment program in Athens, Tenn. His family traveled from Knoxville for the occasion and felt optimistic that, this time, his recovery might last. At 31 years old, he told his mother Danita McCartney that he was ready to be done with the cycle that had shaped his life for more than a decade.

Like many teens, Tyler partied in high school, drinking beer and smoking weed on occasion. But the beast got its claws in him toward the end of his senior year, when a co-worker at a restaurant — a work environment where drugs are often found about as easily as any other ingredient — showed him how to crush an OxyContin and snort it. He spent the next 12 years in and out of the clutches of addiction. Danita would cling to hope where she could find it. As a young boy, Tyler had always been deathly afraid of needles — perhaps that would at least keep him from shooting up. It didn’t.    

But Danita says there were wonderful seasons of sobriety. Tyler loved the Grateful Dead and the mountains. Despite it being where he was introduced to hard drugs, the restaurant industry had made him into an excellent cook, and he delighted in taking over the kitchen at holidays to make a meal for the whole family. 

In between those seasons, Tyler wandered, living for short stints in various places around the country. When he struggled, he had the support of his family, and his mother says he found great treatment through urban rescue missions similar to the one where she works in Knoxville. He spent time in recovery programs in Alabama, Indiana and Florida before moving to Nashville, where he rekindled a relationship with a young woman he’d known in high school. He found a job at a downtown restaurant — there, again, he found drugs. In January of this year, he survived an overdose after his girlfriend was able to revive him. That prompted his family to send him to the program in Athens, where he stayed for more than two months. 

After he graduated from the program, Tyler returned to Nashville and got a job at an irrigation company, deciding to stay away from the kitchens where he’d been unable to resist substances. He talked on the phone with his mother frequently, never failing to end a conversation by telling her he loved her. But on the morning of Tuesday, April 14, Danita received the phone call she’d been expecting for years but could never prepare for. Tyler’s girlfriend had found him dead in the living room. A toxicology report later revealed what was in his system: meth and fentanyl, the latter a synthetic opioid that can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and lethal in doses as small as 2 milligrams.

Tyler’s death inducted his family into a growing, grieving community — those who have lost loved ones to a raging epidemic of drug deaths, the majority of which have been caused by fentanyl. It’s the other epidemic, one that has been largely overshadowed by the global COVID-19 pandemic. But in Nashville, it’s claimed almost as many lives. From March 20, 2020 — the day of the first confirmed COVID-19 death in Nashville — to Oct. 16, 2021, the city reported 1,113 deaths from the virus. In that same time period, 1,070 suspected drug deaths have occurred in Nashville. That figure includes residents, non-residents and people whose status is unknown. According to the Metro Public Health Department, residents have accounted for around 70 percent of all drug deaths in Davidson County this year. 

The coronavirus pandemic has made us all terribly familiar with the notion of the so-called curve. Fentanyl deaths are still rising, and this curve is showing no signs of flattening.

Brain Computer Interfaces Are Still A Loooong Ways Away...,

technologyreview |  In a 12-by-20-foot room at a skilled-nursing facility in Menlo Park, California, researchers are testing the next evolution of the computer interface inside the soft matter of Dennis DeGray’s motor cortex. DeGray is paralyzed from the neck down. He was hurt in a freak fall in his yard while taking out the trash and is, he says, “as laid up as a person can be.” He steers his wheelchair by puffing into a tube. 

But DeGray is a virtuoso at using his brain to control a computer mouse. For the last five years, he has been a participant in BrainGate, a series of clinical trials in which surgeons have inserted silicon probes the size of a baby aspirin into the brains of more than 20 paralyzed people. Using these brain-computer interfaces, researchers can measure the firing of dozens of neurons as people think of moving their arms and hands. And by sending these signals to a computer, the scientists have enabled those with the implants to grasp objects with robot arms and steer planes around in flight simulators. 

This story was part of our November 2021 issue

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DeGray is the world’s fastest brain typist. He first established the mark four years ago, using his brain signals to roam over a virtual keyboard with a point-and-click cursor. Selecting letters on a screen, he reached a rate of eight correct words in a minute. Then, right before the covid-19 pandemic began, he demolished his own record, using a new technique where he imagined he was hand-­writing letters on lined paper. With that approach, he managed 18 words per minute.

One of the people responsible for the studies with DeGray is Krishna Shenoy, a Stanford University neuroscientist and electrical engineer who is among the leaders of the BrainGate project. While other brain-interface researchers grabbed the limelight with more spectacular demonstrations, Shenoy’s group has stayed focused on creating a practical interface that paralyzed patients can use for everyday computer interactions. “We had to persevere in the early days, when people said Ah, it’s cooler to do a robotic arm—it makes a better movie,” says Shenoy. But “if you can click, then you can use Gmail, surf the Web, and play music.” 

Shenoy says he is developing the technology for people with “the worst afflictions and the most need.” Those include patients who are utterly locked in and unable to speak, like those in the end stage of ALS. 

But if the technology allows people like DeGray to link their brain directly to a computer, why not extend it to others? In 2016, Elon Musk started a company called Neuralink that began developing a neural “sewing machine” to implant a new type of threaded electrode. Musk said his goal was to establish a high-throughput connection to human brains so that society could keep pace with artificial intelligence.