Crisis Update - Projecting Covid Onto Ukraine's Anguish

We are being urged to excuse criminal politicians by blaming Putin

Ukraine is pain expiated, an inner death shared with a person you neglected to save,
Projected upon another's fate in Donetsk, or seeking catharsis in Carpathia…
Spying this shambles, Covid engorges, and once again takes aim.

(1,200 words, six minutes’ read.)

Mar 29, 2022

As one raised in the Tropics, bugs and bites abounded. As a toddler I got lost in Kaduna, to be found by a local youth in a dried riverbed where, the following day he located our mutual nemesis: a sleeping python.

I suffered malaria twice before I encountered mumps and measles. Decades later they stamped my blood donations “plasma”: I felt second class. How little I knew.

A nod to Bill Gates and the silly rich: I know the wealthy travel to places where the pests are more virulent. And from that perspective, I can almost understand why they may be more obsessed with bugs, viruses and diseases than regular people.

As the child of one in government service, I dodged dengue and yellow fever. We did not walk bare foot in the grass because of coral snakes.

I guess if you have a private island in the Caribbean or Maldives which you visit only occasionally you might be terrified of threats that the rest of us take for granted. That is where the philanthropists get their fear. And they use their foundations to project their insecurity on the rest of us.

These individuals have no conscience, says Dr. Lee Vliet, a certified psychiatrist. Such a disturbed personality has no empathy or ability to recognize the life of an animal or the life of another person. For some to inflict pain gives sexual pleasure. [1]

Being so over protected, they must shudder at the thought of a mosquito bite. We, being unkempt bretheren, don’t give a mite.

We were policemen's sons and daughters, regimental sergeant majors’ offspring, children of diplomats or Peace Corps volunteers. Such was our exotic yet modest world, desiring above all to mimic the normal life of those we'd left behind.

Once a year, at Christmas, a box would arrive, containing — depending on your seniority and country of origin — Marmite, Vegemite, patum peperium or peanut butter, Kool Aid, Jello and candies galore. For the rest of the year it was back to nibbling chenets, licorice sticks, drinking mauby, sorrel or squeezed lime with a drop of quinine or Angostura bitters — and chowing down on yams, oxtail, lambi, chicken feet and offal.

Bill Gates apparently sticks to Big Macs. But we didn't fear about a thing.

Soundtrack of your clot

Did you notice Bob Marley's Three Little Birds is often used by cultural programmers — slowed down in the recent movie Songbird to sound menacing: “Don't worry about a thing / 'Cause every little thing is gonna be alright.”

Well, having grown in the tropics, I was familiar with Marley from 1975. Mostly, I saw the spiritual side of reggae because they were performers soaked in their culture rather than playing to the international pop markets that the record labels targeted. Apart from the Wailers there was Culture and Burning Spear, among others.

For 20 years it was a private pleasure. No-one much listened to reggae except those with a connection to WI or the alternative John Peel radio set. Then, all of a sudden, Millennials were marketed Caribbean and "World" music to push them into tropical gap year holidays.

Same thing happened with Brazilian music which I grew up with in Rio in the mid 1960s. Suddenly it was feel good music. Bear with me...

I resented the appropriation of music, bereft of its culture and context, which the political elite openly despised. Much “roots” (for want of a better word) music is deeply set in the culture and suffering of the poor.

Suddenly it was a commodity, of commercial value and cachet in faraway Western society! First to market travel all over the world for the privileged middle class. And then as the soundtrack of pandemic. Appealing to the same cohort: hook them on a sound, get them to travel gratuitously, excessively; then punish them for it (guilty of carbon, and spreading viruses) and terrorize them with the same musical sound.

Emotion in the time of Covid

If our emotions are guided thus, as explained by David McGowan in his book “Weird Scenes” about the Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, and the music that launched the 1960s rock scene — why not today? Music is the language of manipulation that speaks most directly to the emotions.

There are other influences upon our reactions: our shame and denial at having fallen for the Covid scam or, worse, having the injury or loss of others upon our conscience. Who can live without weeping for those who should outlive us?

We feel shame at having abandoned our friends and relatives, the outward projection of self harm, and the infliction upon others one's own anger at failing to stand up for friends and loved ones.

This is a catharsis, perhaps, a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. But wait… If Putin's war with Ukraine was inevitable, was its timing contrived? Did the West rush barking at Russia's borders with the intend of stirring a response which it knew would come one day?

The present timing suits the authorities well. The U.S. has just given its near-entire military the clot shot, prior, I guess, to evolving its transhuman super soldiers. That will take some years.

The public, without the institutional rigour to prop them up, needs time to grieve and to come to terms.

Watch the birdie

While you are being urged to pick a side in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, you are being dragged into a fake “blues and yellows” versus “reds” confection of a dog fight.

The television stations don’t help much: Sky News, BBC, Al Jazeera, CNBC, TRT, Reuters — I know their limitations, I worked for them all, from the role of executive producer downwards.

There used to be a rule: don’t criticize your old employer, you never know if you’ll have to work with them again.

Yet it’s easy to manipulate television journalists. Say, for example, you want to raise fears of food or fuel shortages: the handful of top news agencies make only those images available. Producers will reach for the script and the latest pictures.

This gins up support for war, encouraging the populace to share the view of the bankers, investors and plutocrats who see resources and trade zones as acquisition, through the eyes of security and military force — hugely energy intensive, very backward economically. Wars are expensive.

This brings us back to The Great Reset and the limits on resources. You owe it to yourself to make an honest assessment of your own — and not to adopt your attitudes from the media, or let the television tell you how to think.

Instead you could ask why planned obsolescence is not addressed, unnecessary production is not reduced. The answer from the financial-technology world is always to use more electricity, linking an ever-expanding mountain of data to identity using a smart phone, in which everyone is permanently surveilled, their energy inputs and outputs calculated in real time. They buy your compliance with unfeasible dreams of electric cars and gadgets and groceries by drone.

Surveillance capitalism is always on, consuming Gigawatts. Imagine the inefficiency compared with a person who introduces themselves only when needed. Privacy is like being in standby mode. Which do you think is sustainable?

One path clearly tells you that depopulation is essential. It is anti-human and transhuman. The other path is spiritual, embracing our humanity with all its flaws, and learning to live with one another and with less.

[1] Dr. Lee Vliet — American Psycho: Profiting from Premeditated Murder