What it says on the tin; a perspective for the silenced majority.
Keep in mind that until the last 30 years and the rapid replacement of the old world order by newspeak and spin - especially by Tony Blair in the UK, Bill Clinton in the USA, and the EU commission - fairy stories were introduced by the phrase "once upon a time", now they are introduced by "according to experts".
One of the the founding fathers of the European commercial internet - Peter Dawe, founder of Uniplam Pipex - has been peering into his crystal ball for a long while, trying to warn others of what he was seeing, but ever since the oracle Cassandra created the genre, no one wants to believe bad news.
Peter has recently issued one of his occasional "state of the nation" reports, and coincludes.
"50 years ago, the existential “comet” of the “Limits to Growth” report was spotted by Jorgen Randers and others. The Comet was a long way away, and there was no certainty that it would hit humanity.
In 2008, I took a look at the “Comet” in my book “The New Noah” and concluded that its track needed to be researched and updated. I funded the “Exoshock” world economic model at Anglia Ruskin University.
The Exoshock model demonstrated that the “Comet” was still on track to wipe out civilisation, and that this was likely to happen in the next 20 years.
Working from that model, I concluded that the decline of civilisation would occur in a series of steps, rather than a steady decline, or indeed a one-off catastrophe. However there were steps society could make that could delay the crash, or at least mitigate the consequences for some.
Over the last 10 years I have sought to warn society, and to get it to take measures that would help. Sadly these efforts have been unsuccessful. I’m sure many of you will acknowledge that I tried very hard, using all the tools at my disposal.
The Covid pandemic might have been the catalyst for a crash. However, the world’s governments mostly managed to control the consequences, or at least delay them. Covid seriously damaged the global industrial supply chains. Damage that is still significantly affecting global industrial productivity.
This brings us to September 2021. The global “dash-to-gas”, in order to disguise the lack of commitment to solving climate change, pushed the demand above available resources. This caused a sharp up-tick in the price. As a consequence, Ammonia production, especially in Europe, was moth-balled, in the expectation that the price of Natural Gas would fall back. However, the fundamentals of the industry meant this was not going to happen. So global fertiliser production reduced significantly. I realised that this was a existential threat to civilisation, and started my final campaign to get the world to understand the consequences of this appalling decision.
And then the Ukraine war. This war did for the global food supply chain, what Covid did for the industrial supply chain. The supply of natural gas for fertiliser in Europe simply stopped. Virtually all ammonia plants across Europe closed. Exports of fertilisers from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus also stopped, or at least massively diminished. The consequences of a lack of fertiliser only hit 6 to 18 months later at the next affected harvest. Timing depends on stocks and timing of the harvest.
So today, we have world leaders announcing that there is about to be a World Food Crisis. However, when one looks at what they are actually doing about this crisis, it makes one despair! Only the US and China have prioritised fertiliser production in the allocation of natural gas. This week, the government of Pakistan SHUT its ammonia plant, to redirect gas to electricity to power a/c system of the middle class! The US is still converting crops to bio-fuels, indeed a recent policy relaxed restriction on bio-fuel production!
I use wheat as a proxy for all basic foods, The international price of a tonne of feed wheat has gone from £140 last August to £340 today. This comes on top of the price of energy doubling over the same period. However, currently the headline rate on inflation is below 10%. How can this happen? The answer is stocks. The world is still eating last years harvest, bought at last years prices. However, those stocks are now exhausted.
The next 6 months, will see global food price inflation reflect the underlying price. Global food prices will at least DOUBLE in the next 6 months. The consequences of this on many civilisations across the globe are indeed existential!
The great problem for me up, is I’ve watched milestone after milestone of the descent of civilisations go pass. For me the Comet has hovered over me for years, getting bigger, getting more inevitable. Over the last period, I have been posting evidence of each milestone we pass. I’m now going to stop posting. There is no longer any point, the next 6 months is set, and what happens as a consequence is totally out of my vision.
As in “Don’t Look Up,” the “Mad Entrepreneur” built an escape pod, and to some extent I have too. And maybe the pod can be the basis for rebuilding a better civilisation.
To borrow from another seminal book. “Bye and thanks for all the fish”
And here we go... (21May22)
Africa starves: https://youtu.be/I0kWvBEbtbI
...there is much worse to come...
Don't be distracted by talk of climate, Africa has always been a victim of drought and other climate extremes long before time climate change became a thing.
This present situation is now seriously compounded by Putin's single-handed destruction of Ukraine grain and cooking oil industries, and his part in the energy crisis. His propaganda even taunts the West by suggesting Europe will be overrun by starving refugees.
All of these things should have been seen coming by our politicians and the hopelessly shambolic United Nations... who have barely mentioned the rapidly increasing population in territories where food is always going to become an issue at the first sign of trouble. Elon Musk's insistence that the world is underpopulated is so bizarre, you have to wonder if he is actually all there at times - the world has no buffer capacity or regions left for food surplus growth or population migration. A small crisis quickly grows and spreads.
The big question is "are we going to accept there is currently nothing that we can do about this, and concentrate on putting on our own oxygen mask and life jacket (as per the safety instructions on an aircraft) or are we going to be distracted by the sight of possibly 20% of the earth's population starving, and go down in flames with them?"
The self-sufficiency of the United States and Canada is the envy of the world. Yet both of those countries are under the control of leaders who are demonstrably unfit for the task, and who appear to be manipulated by the Klaus Schwab WEF gang.
And all the BBC and UK media continue to talk about is partygate...
Elon Musk's battle for free speech flushes out the enemy...
Updated May 13th 2022
The conspiracy of liberal elite money, influence and politics to intimidate Elon Musk is typical and deeply sinister. The effort to associate all aspects of populism with the "extreme right wing" betrays the liberals' fear that free speech will inevitably expose the cultural Marxism that is the foundation of its subversive manipulation of public opinion. Control of the permitted vocabulary of public debate first "became a thing" in the form of political correctness, and has got far worse over recent times.
A cabal of activist organizations and NGOs signed a letter to companies who advertise on Twitter, warning them to reconsider if Elon Musk makes changes Musk has pledged to lift the 'censorship' of Twitter: critics worry that he will give free rein to those trafficking in hate speech and dangerous scientific theories. The letter writers said that Musk 'will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety'.
But these people seem mostly concerned that they are going to lose their ability to set the social agenda with the cancel culture that started with political correctness and peaked when a president of the US was de-platformed for becoming more powerful than Twitter's ability to intimidate.
They wrote: "Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformation, with your brand attached".
Musk replied, wanting to know who was behind the 26 groups signing the letter, and commenting: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant'
Some of the most high-profile "liberal" figures have joined together to encourage advertisers to boycott Twitter if Elon Musk brings in his promised policy of unfettered 'free speech.'
After 26 activist organisations and NGOs signed a letter to Twitter advertisers asking them to boycott the platform if Elon Musk makes content moderation changes, it has been revealed that some of these groups are funded or tied to billionaire philanthropist George Soros, former US presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
After Musk tweeted about “who funds these organisations that want to control your access to information,” the reports surfaced that the groups behind the anti-Musk campaign belong to wealthy Democrat donors and their family foundations, labour unions and the governments of European nations.
Yes folks, it's the usual suspects of the WEF and New World Order globalism. And it is high time we defined the word "liberal".
Does the "silent majority" at last have a champion who is willing to stick his neck out and confront the occupants of the Washington swamp and Westminster blob that have stealthily established themselves as the alternative to democratic government, as vast vested interests learned to manipulate mainstream and social media to achieve their ends without the inconvenience of the democratic process.
If you are getting the impression that democrtactic governments have been dangerously undermined by the "new money" that has exploded as the tech industry has learned how to exploit online and electronic media using embedded spyware with "atrtificial interlligence" to track and tag users - whilst avoiding all accountability and traditional checks and balances of the traditional media, you would be right.
Long established bricks and mortar businesses that grew up over a hundred years, employing millions in traditional enterprises were overtraken in value by new tech companies less than 2 years old, that got lucky and rode the hype that was built on bankers' fear of losing out on the next big thing.
The subversive quality of this effort relies on the smokescreen and distraction created by and amplified by social media with its focus on trivia - including celebrity lawsuits, Partygate and Beeergate. We are being buried in trivia while Soros and his cohorts steadily undermine the democratic foundations of any country that has been willing to allow its culture driven by tech manipulation and cancel culture.
It is ironic and tragic that the UK entered the internet age with its BBC World Service respected and largely in control of the soft diplomacy that had been deployed over 75 years - establishing a reputation as a trusted and reliable source of world news and comment.
No unelected and unaccountable offshore behemoth like Meta, Alphabet, tiktok, Microsoft, Apple or Amazon should have been permitted the opportunity to manipulate the judgement of UK residents using information acquired by stealth and spyware.
UK politicians were warned 10 years ago that they would lose control the social agenda unless something was done to kerb the likes of Facebook and Twitter, and now it is too late. UK owned operated and responsible alternatives to all the major social platforms may be the only way forward.
And now... TalkTV - it must be time for a rethink of TV news
Oh well... it's a clone of GBNews with a fatter budget.
There is something surreal about news agenda priorities and the way that
TV news in the UK is not adequately analysing the growing threat of a
nuclear response. The isolated nut jobs in the Kremlin are plainly not enjoying the
goading from the West - which is enjoying the sight of Russia's armed forces being humiliated. We're not sure what is more stressful - watching
Steve Coogan's flagging career being given a plug on the BBC sofa, or
the prospect of glowing in the dark?
And now GBNews and TalkTV
are fighting over exactly the same silent majority/ moderate
conservative/ "realistic right" audience... and advertisers! But Talk TV has VASTLY more
resource from the Murdoch coffers, and his newspapers to plug it.
Realistically, GBNews is doomed... so is there a way for them to combine
their efforts, and set about creating examples of fresh thinking that
is obviously better than turgid BBC TV? Not hard, you would think. We
just wish it was possible to lose the commercials; NOBODY likes the
interruptions, do they?
Then the BBC could be shut down and rebooted as a
simple (and cheap) public service broadcaster to appease the nations with
Welsh, Gaelic, and the Thoughts of Chairman (sic) Sturgeon, without any
need for a detailed discussion with the BBC?
It's not obvious
why Sky News (now owned by US behemoth Comcast) has chosen to be another
stronghold of the hectoring woke hegemony. Possibly because of the
mania/malaise that has overtaken the US since the last presidential
election - when even more evidence is emerging that the big plutocrat
money with a globalist WEF agenda, did indeed influence the election for
the worst president in history. Remember that "political correctness" -
a precursor to "woke" - (https://www.ourcivilisation.com/pc.htm)
originated in the US in the 80s when big business did the sums and
realised that traditional WASP demographics were being overtaken by
"non-WASP" (https://www.chicagoreporter.com/the-us-white-majority-will-soon-disappear-forever/),
and that these were the consumers of the future. Big business could not
afford to be called out for advertising with media that was not pushing
a relentlessly positive BAME agenda.
The BBC has no commercial
pressures, having led many years of charmed life and spent the past 20
years mocking the audience that pays its stipend. The last time the BBC
produced anything properly entertaining was 20 years ago - before the
woke revolution stripped humour from its tedious output. 'Ello 'ello,
Only Fools, Porridge, Yes Minister etc. Not forgetting Doctor Who, before Russell T
Davis turned into a tiresome sequence of woke sermons.
So while
the BBC and Westminster bubble obsesses over beer, cake, and parties -
we should all be a LOT more angry about the COLOSSAL increase in energy
costs, the coming food shortages, inflation destroying savings - and the
other consequences of a supine parliament being apparently helpless to
do anything meaningful about any of it.
"Net Zero" perfectly sums up the Carrie and BJ clown show.
A
sense of proportion is completely missing from the cloistered world of
the BBC as it carries on regardless to push it's tiresome metrolectual
liberal elite woke agenda. Dominic Littlewood telling us when it's the
best time to buy a new car and much coverage of £34k+ EVs with their
dubious economics and uncertain battery futures. These are still
basically experimental electric prototypes because only Hydrogen fuels cells have a real future. A £60k tesla may be fun for the Islington set that
drives 40 miles a week to Waitrose and a Hampstead eatery, but not for the rest of us,
living out in the real world. And with a perfectly good car that has been
built at the zenith of the internal combustion art, and able to last a good 25 years with reasonable maintenance, and deliver 50 mpg. It's interesting that the once-cynical motoring press has been bought by the terrifying performance of many 2 ton EVs with acceleration of 0-60 in under 5 seconds... we digress....
So then, how
about developing a combination of TalkTV with GBN? They could share the adaptable "focal coverage" of
emerging trending events, (we hesitate to call it Twitter TV, but...) , and
between them continue to expose the irrelevance (and bias) of BBC news and social engineering coverage..?
We are being desensitized to the Ukraine situation, and not putting
enough pressure on politicians to sort it out. There is a good argument
for the launch of a dedicated news channel that reports the Ukraine
situation from all points of view. Especially the horrors and cynical
funding for Putin from Germany, plus weapons from France. But the BBC's
relentless pro-EU fanaticism is throttling its ability to call out EU
countries that are feeding the Russia problem.
There's no shortage of reporting going on
in Ukraine if you look just slightly away from mainstream narratives and
news services. The reports just need to be gathered, collated, knocked
into shape and given "warnings" where necessary.
Will this cause kids to be traumatized? We suggest that those that play
any sort of computer games will already be desensitized to the sight of
body parts flying in all directions. The benefits of educating them in
the realities of modern politics and its infinite capacity for hypocrisy
may outweigh the trauma. After all, it's not as if this is a
short-term event, we are now being warned the Ukraine War may last up to
10 years! Really?
Meanwhile, the German cash is paying for devastation like this - maybe they should be required to deposit an equivalent amount in the fund to rebuild Ukraine?
The battle for Popasnaya
What can possibly be done shorten it? The oligarchs
would really love to get their yachts and bank account access back. And
the west needs to be able to buy cheaper oil and gas once more. So
please let's work on developing that theme? Shame the Germans and others
that continue supporting the Russian war machine.
Rupert
Murdoch's News TV project looked moribund from the off. If only he had
had the nerve to launch it as the Ukraine channel, and put Piers Morgan
on the front line in a helmet... but Rebekah Brooks - the old school
print exec who is in charge in the UK - does not seem to understand the
medium and its possibilities. Nevertheless, top marks to Julia
Hartley-Brewer who is giving excellent Douglas Murray the opportunity to
do what he does best - tell it like it is, not how the Islington
liberal hive-mind wished it was.
Let's set the scene with the challenges facing a would-be leader. In effect, Musk is setting out to grasp the baton of thought leadership via Twitter. This post is going to evolve, so please come back and review progress. As long as the target keeps moving, it may never reach V1.0, and it will be a major mission to try and get there...
George perfectly sums up why the present Twitter board are trying to make Elon go away... in a single sentence
"...If I was pure evil and wanted to control global public debate in a simple, subtle but utterly pernicious way, I could do no better than invent twitter...."
But first a word about plutocrats by one...
From a 2014 Ted Talk....
Nick Hanauer is a rich guy, an unrepentant capitalist — and he has something to say to his fellow plutocrats: Wake up! Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-revolutionary France. Hear his argument about why a dramatic increase in minimum wage could grow the middle class, deliver economic prosperity ... and prevent a revolution.
The way forward is not managing the status-quo, but innovation that solves problems and focusses on growing a thriving middle class.
When I started this piece in October 2021, I observed that the world has been a relatively stable place since WW2 with only a
number of "local difficulties" in the form of regionally contained
conflicts. NATO has kept Europe safe from Russian ambitions, and the
sheer overwhelming nature of the US military machine kept the lid on
around the globe, while China remained an enigmatic oriental conundrum
that kept very much to itself behind a bamboo wall. Japan was mostly
confined to the far East and Pacific during the second World War, but
with few natural resources and no significant military alliances, it has
not since been a global military threat, and instead focused on
manufacturing and trading its way to prosperity. The same lesson was also learnt
eventually by Germany, with its subtle but effective control of the
European Union to provide workers and customers for its industry.
Religious rivalry in the Indian subcontinent
remains unresolved, in fact religious rivalry remains unresolved just about everywhere. But with India and Pakistan both (openly) having nuclear weapons, it's a
major worry. If they actually believed their religious teachings, neither has anything to fear from the afterlife themselves...
The fractured nature of Islamic factions across the middle
and far East is not resolving itself, and a glance at the population
figures in Islamic states suggests a long game of "overwhelm by
numbers".
According to a
Japanese university - https://www.waseda.jp/top/en/news/53405
- the world population of Muslims has been increasing significantly in recent times. The Muslim world population stood approximately at 1.6 billion in 2013
and is estimated to reach 2.9 billion (making up 26% of the world population)
by 2050. There are currently 21 Muslim-majority Asian and African countries
highly influenced by Islam. None are tolerant democracies in the western sense.
Among them, countries such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and
Turkey are expected to grow as consumer markets, 1.2 billion in terms of
consumer population.
Meantime, the
unchallenged supremacy of the US as the "world policeman" has
dramatically declined under Obama and now Biden. In the past 20 years, the
emergence of drones has confused the once unchallenged value of manned fighters
and ground attack aircraft. Bombers were already overtaken by cruise and
ballistic missiles from the 60s and 70s - with countries outside NATO using
tech stolen by classic spying, supplemented by cyber incursions and intercepts; and also acquired more subtly by the flood of foreign
students at Western universities.
It has never been simpler for the disloyal to send secret information around the world for profit or philosophy... revenge on a system they want to destroy without bothering about due democratic process.
A further subtle development has been the adoption of English as the global second language - especially in science and transport. There are more English speakers in China than England.
English speaking countries grew from the times of the British Empire, when Rhodes observed that "to be born an Englishman is to win life's lottery". Such a statement is regarded as insensitive to those cultures that do not share the Empire heritage, but it remains a realistic if uncomfortable truth. Of course, the fact that Cecil Rhodes, has been "cancelled" by woke culture, led by the Education establishment, which pays little regard to current reality in pursuit of a coercive agenda of thought control through dogma and doctrine, to establish its preferred new reality.
The British Empire also introduced (or imposed, if you must) a legal and parliamentary system that is based on Common Law, which is a topic for further discussion and analysis, along with a review of the state of democracy, as financial reality increasingly suggests that democracy is a function of affordability.
In 2022, the
world is a far less certain place, with China - by sheer dint of numbers - now in possession of nearly all
the industrial and military cards. Whilst the US - for all its critics - did a
fair if occasionally clumsy job of promoting democracy, China doesn't make any
secret of its agenda to promote its own best interests at almost any cost to
human rights. China does not do democracy, which is an anathema for a society that can only function through unquestioning conformity.
China's
territorial expansion includes its declared intention to re-annexe Taiwan;
Hong Kong's assimilation is a done deal and serves to remind that there is no such thing as an
equitable deal - where China is concerned. Its own best interests will always
prevail - try and stop them! It now has footholds across Africa, and has
thoroughly rattled resource-rich Australia in recent years. The lithium rich mountains of unruly Afghanistan are on the shopping list. However, Afghanistan has
confounded all presumptive world powers for centuries by its ability to be
fundamentally ungovernable. We shall see...
A previous
essay in the series set out the state of the post Empire United Kingdom
following World War II, so where does a global perspective now leave the United
Kingdom? Currently, something of a shambles with the home Nations unhelpfully
set against each other by Tony Blair's unhelpful gerrymandering strategy of
national devolution. This most notably resulted in the emergence of a conniving demagogue
in Scotland, just as the rest of the world has become far less secure and predictable, and it is more important than it has been since WW2 for the nations of the United Kingdom to avoid squabbling rivalry. The petty antagonism between Edinburgh and London is not serving any discernible useful purpose for the people of the UK.
Many
conspiracies have been swirling around the idea that China has carefully and
thoroughly infiltrated the US Democrat party and supporters to influence US
policy. There really needs to be a forensic examination of the vulnerability of
the curious US election process where there are almost no identity checks and
"voting machines" that send results around the world for processing
to determine the fate of not just the US but the free world. The stakes are
such that we are all involved, and entitled to ask questions - and get answers. It is increasingly obvious that the best interests of the United States and free world are not being served by a president who can barely function.
The way that the media which helped to promote and install Joe Biden and his administration is now looking down at its feet in embarrassment is more than simply "unfortunate". The role of media (and money) when influencing politics around elections needs to be better defined and closely monitored.
However, the
hopelessly divided political situation in the US means that half the country regards the
other half as naively under the influence of a right-wing egomaniac, and that
half regards the other as a coterie of communism, manipulating a senile and
barely functional frontman, soon to be replaced by the rapidly unraveling Kamala Harris.
Worryingly,
there is much remarkably obvious evidence to support both of these contentions.
Which of course plays into the hands of America's enemies in Russia and China.
Biden's clumsy
retreat from Afghanistan appears to have handed the vast Lithium resources over
to China. The Biden administration does not appear to be in control while the
general disruption and division of US society created by BLM and campaigns to
defund police, continue to reinforce division. Including in the US military. A
US retreat into introspective isolation - never mind the expansive but
ultimately empty words of the administration, suits Russia and China just fine
for the time being.
Remember Comrade Bezmenov's advice that the US would destroy itself from the the inside, and then consider just where the doctrine of Political Correctness has taken the US since Reagan observed in 1975 that if fascism ever arrived in the US, it would come disguised as liberalism.
Awkward.
Never
underestimate the depth and subtlety of the games being played. There is no
doubt that both China and Russia understand the nature of the information
society better than the western marketing minds that developed the
internet as a marketing machine for social media (especially), with cookies and
other forms of individual tracking in the first place. Totalitarian societies
(cf 1984) understand the crucial roles of propaganda and fake news. The
diplomacy game has evolved, and gunboats have been replaced (supplemented) by weaponized
information.
A revolution
once involved insurgents taking over the national TV station and shooting the
president. Now they take over the fact-checkers and key media influencers, and
deplatform the President.
The move to buy Twitter by Elon Musk could be a game changer. He appears to want to re-establish the idea of freedom of expression and discussion. It's not beyond possibility that he's bidding for the vacant role as leader of the world...
Twitter and other social media has progressively closed down debate and free speech by prescriptive censorship - not all of which is obvious. The insidious "shadow ban" leaves users to go on ranting and raving, but not being penned in their echo chambers if allowing their heretic views reach a wider audience there is a danger of damage to Twitter's commercial strategy.
A US version of Russell Brand - An0maly - does a good job of analysing - remember you can speed up playback 1.5x and easily follow... he explores the topic in a unique and disarming way - he runs on a bit, but in such a way that you can be pretty confident that he is expressing honestly held views...
If Elon does close this deal, he will become a major influence broker and be a folk hero among those who are trying to strip misdirection, hypocrisy and social engineering from social media. We hope his heart is in the right place. Musk is very much a risk-taker, and a believer that market driven capitalism delivers the best results.
The way Twitter is trying to resist Musk in not commercially rational, and suggests they are far too attached to their power. Interesting times.
Fast forward to 10:03 to go to the Musk segment - although the discussion of markets that precedes it is worth the time...
And then here is the state of play on April 16th as Twitter attempts to poison the deal so Musk goes away. But no one is yet asking and discussing "what does it cost to launch an alternative and better Twitter?" The answer is not nearly as much as buying Twitter.
Musk is assured of many millions of his fans signing up on day one.
Let's hope Elon has worked that out, and is going to sell his stake to
the mug private equity business that appears to planning to outbid him, and ups the price he
already paid. Using that profit, Elon could then have the Twitter killer developed inside 3 months (it really is a simple software task) destroy Twitter value
within 12 months.
This just in, Elon musk at TED
And the full further earlier interview with Chris Anderson.
Given that Russia/Ukraine seems to be playing out as a visceral spat between Mafia bosses - where no other country has actually got the cojones to put boots on the ground and flesh in the game, whilst being happy to see how Russia performs agaisnt a number of motivated guerillas armed with a minimal number of weapons, the new world leader's first proper job is to tackle unresolved questions around the origin and
propagation of a certain virus. Whoever emerges to lead the free World needs to strip away the rumours and conspiracy.
About the only thing we do know for sure is
that it started in China and spread out from Wuhan ...the rest is yet to be
explained. All leaders seem scared to grasp this nettle in case the evidence of a Chinese conspiracy is inescapable. After all - what would anyone be able to do about it? Send them to the naughty step? Ask them to refund the 5 trillion dollars their negligence has caused?
Why do "ordinary Russians" not know what is being carried out in their name, and protest?
V 1.1 27APR22
The wise monkeys of media: reaching behind the iron curtain
Life is about the organisation of many conflicting priorities, and keeping it simple. Every decision making process starts with a need for reliable news and information.
Version 1.0 of this post didn't last long before it has been overtaken by events again... 10 days to be precise. Twitter goes headless chicken, Ukraine nuclear threats getting louder as the West rallies to support what no longer appears to be a lost cause - as Russia's limited military competence is exposed by resourceful Ukrainians, inflation balloons, food shortage forecasts. The need for a single trustable source of authoritative, cohorent and fact-based news to reach beyond the censors and to override the number of dangerously subjective commentaries that are proliferating, is more crucial by the day. The cacophony or conflicting opinions grows louder. What a pity, the BBC World Service has been compromised over the past 20 years as most attention has been diverted into online projects.
Former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov describes how Marxism has been eating western democracy from the inside - especially the USA - and how Russia has quite brilliantly played the long subversion game. It turns out that "leftists" are useful idiots who serve only to destabilize the society. Bezmenov is a KGB trained subverter, and in this video he tells about the influence of the Soviet Union on Western media and describes the stages of communist takeovers. This interview was conducted by G. Edward Griffin in 1984.
Complete interview https://youtu.be/Cnf0I2dQ0i0
Orwell's 1984 made the point about the crucial importance of controlling the messages delivered by Big Brother. The lesson learned by totalitarians and tyrants during WW2 was that news by radio is a powerful influence, and that oppressed populations would go out of their way to try to access it when they realized their own country's big-brother was trying to conceal awkward and inconvenient truths.
When
the internet became ubiquitous in the 80s, most of the world's
broadcasters abandoned shortwave radio as a means of communicating with
their overseas audiences. Finally switching off in 2011. But while the Russians and Chinese did not demolish their
transmission capabilities, the UK and US completely abandoned them, and even demolished the transmission sites that could once deliver radio signals directly into the homes of all 8 billion of the planet's inhabitants.
Effective
news broadcasting requires that there is a degree of trust between
broadcaster and listener - something the BBC had established over many years to the envy
of the world.
While there
has been endless talk of the influence on politics and elections by foreign intervention, and endless talk of "fake news", the loss of access to trusted news radio that could not be cancelled or doctored by "psyops" was not taken into consideration. However, it was a lot simpler for Russia (and China?) to target regimes/countries and arrange for "useful fools" to be in
charge of overlooked strategic resources to ensure that the west lost
its ability to reach behind despot firewalls in times of emergency. The BBC and Voice of
America were once able to reach just about everyone on the planet who had access to a £10 portable
radio. And the broadcasters took it for granted, and then allowed internet and cellular to shatter and dissipate that audience over >50000 alternative delivery routes - all potentially controlled by a tyrant with a firewall switch.
“It’s often said truth is the
first casualty of war,” Tim Davie, director-general of the BBC, said in a
statement. “In a conflict where disinformation and propaganda is rife,
there is a clear need for factual and independent news people can
trust.”
It's a pity the BBC has lost so much of the respect and trust of its UK licence payers over the past couple of years by promoting a "liberal metrolectual narrative" that fuels the divide that crystallized around the surprise election of Donald Trump in 2016. It is not so much about the traditional politics of left and right as it about the chattering classes and establishment elites, versus populism and the silent majority: globalists versus nationalists- "remainers" versus leavers.
Globalism encompasses most liberal elites - and also the interests of big businesses. It is the mantra of those who support the aims of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the clubs of elite economies at Davos and Bildeberg, and there is substantial and growing populist opposition who have been shocked by the WEF proposition that "we will soon own nothing - and be happy".
The BBC seems to believe that its audience reflects its view of the world, where half are (younger) enlightened liberals, rejoicing in and promoting the BBC's woke metrolectual globalist philosophy ... and the other half are (older) "populists"; dismissed as dangerous right wing conspiracy theorists who require constant re-education, and that need to be kept away from polite liberal society until they repent and accept that Aunty Knows Best. The view that they are mostly retired and due to expire soon enough anyway, so not worthy of inclusion, is widely held in "progressive" media and politics. These same unenlightened conservative folks are also actively cancelling the BBC licence fee in their thousands, and finding their news and entertainment amongst the other 5000 channels. The Facebook Group "I hate the BBC" is the largest of several online groups where dissidents gather to express their outrage at the BBC.
This creates a problem for a government that needs to have a way to communicate en masse to convey important messages in real time. Awkward things like pandemics, natural disasters and wars happen, when the need to send the same message to everyone at the same time can be a matter of life and death. The UK government is presently mismanaging the evolution of public service broadcasting and the future of the BBC - by managing to conflate and distil the worst of all worlds.
The UK government has been overtaken by inexperienced advisers who have eagerly bet - based on their own experience - that the smartphone will be the fulcrum of all future lifestyles. Including establishing a means of enabling a universal tracked identity, which is required as a cornerstone of the shift towards a cashless society controlled by politicians and civil servants.
All your communication will be carried out online and "branded" with your tracked digital ID - because it's "good for you" - remember, own nothing and be happy.
Yes, there will be those who object, loudly. But as long as the means of communicating dissent are controlled by the same politicians, these objections can be diverted and dissipated across 5000 channels of anodyne online mush. And if you don't like it, the same politicians hold the key to your entire digital existence - the central digital identity, without which you simply cannot exist. You can see how this already plays out in China and other totalitarian regimes.
The BBC has also been on a tireless mission of inclusive social engineering, eagerly seeking out, recognizing and celebrating all of society's marginalized waifs and strays. This process has made robust humour nearly impossible, given that (funny!) humour almost inevitably plays off the unconventional and misfit aspects of society. And when there is not an "off the shelf" example of a suitable oppressed and marginalized group for the "narrative", then the BBC (and Channel 4) would eagerly probe and agitate to help create one.
The social media platform operators - especially those that notionally facilitate discussion and debate, such Facebook and Twitter, have been hugely influential in creating a cancel culture that limits the scope of the language by reference to community standards. On threat of "cancellation", users are obliged to accept frequently absurd and contradictory limitations on the range of "acceptable" expression and discussion that are mostly established and controlled by vociferous minorities.
In a country like Russia and China, cancellations are performed by government under the umbrella excuse of state security. It amounts to policing thought by intimidation, so any attempt to express a thought that strays beyond the "party line" is an invitation to cancel. So how can dissent be expressed and shared? The answer is disarmingly simple - once again broadcasting news, knowledge and debate using radio that bypasses state censorship.
Some of us have been trying to point out the folly of abandoning the BBC's respected World Service short wave radio services for years. The UK
government departments responsible for this policy were not listening. The original Cold War propaganda rationale had morphed and changed - but not gone away. Never mind that the sulking hulk of Russian resentment has been an ongoing factor that has made occasional appearances that should have reminded us. The brazen nature of these clues was actually breathtaking in a civilized society: Winchester Novichok attacks, Polonium tea, Civilian aircraft targeted over Ukraine, Annexation of Crimea, the increasingly bold propaganda from RT.
Who is asking how did Russia get away with it? How many useful fools has Bezmenov's KGB placed in western politics and media? RT is an interesting case, it easily picked up on the growing dissatisfaction with BBC News, and made efforts to identify call out the absurdly woke elephants in the populist room - and in doing so become the friend of many BBC listeners who felt they had been abandoned as the BBC relentlessly focussed on issues that are barely relevant to maybe 20% of licence payers.
The cost of building and
deploying a new SW broadcast network to reach all 8 billion of the planet's inhabitants using the latest SW transmission technology would
be a fraction of the cost of one fast jet - or a few cruise missiles.
Russia latterly adopted less subtle tactics for controlling the media, when Russian projectiles struck the main radio and
television tower in Kyiv. Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister,
wrote on Twitter that Russia’s goal was “to break the resistance of the
Ukrainian people and army,” starting with “a breakdown of connection”
and “the spread of massive FAKE messages that the Ukrainian country
leadership has agreed to give up.”
