This is a brief follow up to the April 6 post, “Illuminations Never Come from the Crowned: Carbon Credit, New Reserve Currency, & the Oligarchic Green Lock-Step to a Post-Covid-19 World.”
It’s sparked by a couple of recent developments. At the personal end of the spectrum, my flight to Europe in June was just cancelled, despite other indications that things are slowly grinding back to (the new) normal in most countries (including Canada, where dentists are going back to work and schools reopening). I will not even attempt to speculate on the reasons for this or what it signifies for the future. I will leave that to parapolitical analysts & social engineers, i.e., to the diagnosticians, and to the peddlers of cures that (one would think) only they could possibly believe in (since they seem designed to benefit only them), were it not for the fact that many ordinary people seem to be lapping up these “solutions.”
Why do I say this? Recently, my wife stumbled upon a video on YouTube, via an algorithmic recommendation that made it past her many anti-mainstream filters. “The End of Normal” is an interview by “Scientists Warning” (Stuart Scott) with John Doyle, the “Sustainable Development Policy Coordinator” of the European Union Commission, and affiliated with the Foresight Group, probably this one, and not, as previously posted, EU Foresight Group (“a leading independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager with over £4.5 billion” of assets under management).
Here’s the video, set to start at an email from Doyle, which is also screen-captured below, for those who want to skip the vid.
Here’s a composite screen capture of the email cited, for the salient points:
So what is this European Commission, enthusiastically promising us centuries of covid pandemics, and total economic makeover within the next 15 years?
The European Commission is the executive body of the EU and runs its day-to-day business. It is made up of the College of Commissioners, 27 European Commissioners, one for each member state, who are each responsible for one or several policy areas. In addition, the ‘Commission’ also refers to the entire administrative body that supports the Commissioners, consisting of the Directorates-General and the Services.
The European Commission is the sole EU body capable of proposing new legislation. The Commission also performs an oversight function, monitoring whether European legislation is properly implemented in the member states. In the event of non-compliance, the Commission can coerce a member state to comply by starting a legal procedure at the European Court of Justice.
Besides this, the Commission represents the EU in negotiations in international organisations such as the World Trade Organisation concerning the Union’s trade relations with countries outside the EU. It holds this function so that it can monitor for any unauthorized state support by foreign governments to European companies, which would jeopardize Europe’s competitive position. Finally, the Commission is responsible for managing the European budget of approximately 150 billion euros yearly. (ref.)
However, given that the planet is now implementing almost word-for-word Greta Thunberg’s proposals in terms of emissions reductions and so on and so forth, maybe we have a chance.
Extinction Rebellion and the EU have a shared goal for human society? Who knew??
The interview, in two parts, has a little over 20,000 views (8,000 for part two) and 200 comments, most of which are wholly positive. A smattering of the comments:
If we had a Landlord we would be evicted for degrading the value of the property.
Man has never been in control but man’s ego has him thinking he’s always in control which will be the demise of mankind
I’m actually quite afraid we’ll return to normal before you know it…
Clearly the old normal was unsustainable and our poorly evolved primate species had no viable plan to change course. Our hubris has been exposed, capitalism is on a ventilator, wealth is no longer the measure of what is essential, the air is clearer than it has been in decades, thank you mother nature for the wake up call.
If COVID creates a new Normal as suggested, perhaps ecological justice is served.
I love the luxurious expansion inherent in the formation of a group dedicated to foresight and insight. Many of us, newly quiet and still in our homes, are provided with our own spaces to engage in foresight and insight. Dare I suggest that we are wise enough to find a better way to live on this planet?
John Doyle’s comments made me cautiously hopeful that the potential reality stemming from COVID-19 will benefit the earth’s climate system in the long run.
The previous “normal” wasn’t working good for me and most people I know. I welcome the new “normal”, it can’t get much worse.
I hope this show goes viral. Scintillating stuff. Humans have little or no agency when Gaia decides time is up.
Gosh – what a clearly articulated and thought-provoking discussion. I may well be ignorant, but not heard EU Commission framed as such a positive, innovative organisation before; not heard money=virus concept before; not heard corona as driver of change before. Thank-you. More of these please – Part 2?
A significant minority of the population WILL go to bars and send someone else to sell German cars. Like trump they will never be able to accept the reality of the situation. They would rather die and will take the rest of us with them
Mother Earth has decided to hit back. We’ve reached the carrying capacity and it’s time for a re-balancing
Just beautiful!! Coronavirus did what we refused to do.
“our illusoin [sic] is that we are in control”
‘Earth has sent us to our rooms to think about what we have done’ – yes.
We’ve always known that if we didn’t solve our ecological problems ourselves, nature would solve them for us.
I felt this to my bones and then the core of my soul, as right. Thank you for sharing your intelligent/wise discussion.
” … still has a niche for humans…” Humans are the virus that mother Earth is testing.
Assuming a vaccine can be found, what happens when the anti vaxxers refuse to be inoculated against Covid 19?
“But there is no doubt that what was needed to be done, we would never have done.” Exactly right. That’s why this pandemic, or something like it, was inevitable. Letting go of human morality (which is another illusion, like economics), the pandemic as it stands is one of the better outcomes, in terms of what we’re locked into now. It’s the sort of abrupt discontinuity we need to bring about real change, which has a chance, at least outside of the US. In the US, the aristocracy knows that the system will never come back if it’s not allowed to resume in the next few months, or even weeks.
The solutions to all the worlds problems can be found in nature. Thanks John for your honesty about your privilege. Remain humble my friend.
A brilliant and hopeful talk. Gives me hope that the EU has people like John Doyle doing this work, and apparently taking it seriously.
No doubt these innocent-minded bellwethers are applauding the Club of Rome as well, for its “Open Letter to Global Leaders – A Healthy Planet for Healthy People” of Mar 26, 2020:
Covid-19 has shown us that overnight transformational change is possible. A different world, a different economy is suddenly dawning. This is an unprecedented opportunity to move away from unmitigated growth at all costs and the old fossil fuel economy, and deliver a lasting balance between people, prosperity and our planetary boundaries. . . .We call on leaders to have the courage, wisdom and foresight to seize the opportunity to make their economic recovery plans truly transformative by investing in people, nature and low carbon development. In so doing, they will help secure a path to net zero emissions by 2050, improve global health, rebuild our relationship with nature, rethink how we use land and transform our food systems. The recovery packages should not be designed as free tickets, but rather include some strong economic incentives and conditions for companies and industries to shift to a low carbon circular business model, and invest in nature and people. Now is the moment to phase out fossil fuels. (ref.)
As further confirmation of my wife’s carbon economy thesis, I also just came upon this post (courtesy of Luke Dodson) from May 13, 2020, by Gail Tverberg (whom Jim Kunstler cites in our recent talk), “Understanding Our Pandemic – Economy Predicament“:
[3] The economy is in many ways like the human body. In physics terms, both are dissipative structures. They are both self-organizing systems powered by energy (food for humans; a mixture of energy products inducing oil, coal, natural gas, burned biomass and electricity for the economy).
The human body will try to fix minor problems. For example, if someone’s hand is cut, blood will tend to clot to prevent too much blood loss, and skin will tend to grow to substitute for the missing skin. Similarly, if businesses in an area disappear because of a tornado, the prior owners will either tend to rebuild them or new businesses will tend to come in to replace them, as long as adequate resources are available.
In both systems, there is a point beyond which problems cannot be fixed, however.
Her final point in the piece:
[10] One way the combination of (a) the activity of the virus and (b) our responses to the virus may play out is as a slow-motion, controlled demolition of the world economy.
For the record, I am not against many of the points raised in the Doyle interview, or the suggestions for better ways to live. What I am opposed to is the rank hypocrisy of a social engineering ruling class preaching the joys of nature, community living, a starch-based diet, and growing potatoes in our garden, as a way to secure what’s left of the natural fuel reserves for themselves, while guilting the greater population into voluntary serfdom.
In a word, who is prescribing these changes and why: what are the actual motives and goals being concealed behind all the eco-rhetoric (cui bono and how), and, most immediately pertinent, how exactly are these new socioeconomic, political, legal, medical, and biometric sanctions going to be enforced?
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If you find merit in these questions, share this post. Also, check out the current 16 Maps of Hell self-publishing campaign, here.
Who indeed? This is the first time I have sensed anger from this node. There is plenty of anger to be held elsewhere. This is not a place for anger. But rightly so. For what it’s worth, i went to visit my encarcertad father tonight. In a care home. Unavoidably. It happened to be at the same time as the clapping seals for “our NHS”.m 8pm. I was walking along a residential street. I couldn’t resist shouting back, angry at first, then mocking. I’ll spare auticulture types what I said.
I half-expected someone in a football top to come out and punch me, but no, they just stared at me. It was a cold hard stare. As if was from another planet.
I think we might be outnumbered.
I thought I should feign some indignation for the occasion.
Well, indeed. I’ll let other correspondents have a laugh at the ridiculousness of the current situation. If we laugh, we don’t cry.
In Serbia, after about three weeks of daily (?!) applause for our NHS equivalent at 8 pm, we started banging pots and pans, and playing music loudly, five minutes after the seal show to express disapproval over the measures. It was a good way to show each other that we’ve not alone in disagreeing with the dictatorship. All the government measures were anti-Constitutional. They passed the Emergency laws WITHOUT a vote in Parliament. Alas, the lockdown is over, the opposition already split into fragments which will achieve nothing at the next elections (not that I vote, I just spoil my ballot paper so no one can vote in my name). I haven’t wished for a violent uprising since my twenties. Reverting to type!
“If we laugh, we don’t cry.” Agreed, and yet, the machine keeps rolling forward whatever we do.
I feel like you and your wife are pulling together a number of important threads here, Jasun. I wonder where the Fourth Industrial Revolution fits into all of this? Will the planned smart-cities be subjected to the same controlled demolition? Or will they be incorporated into our future of eco-friendly serfdom?
Jeff Gibbs’s recent (Michael Moore-backed) documentary Planet of the Humans has come under attack from the green-left for exposing the fact that ultimately renewable energy sources depend on extractive processes every bit as much as fossil-fuels. There is much quibbling and hand-wringing over how the filmmakers used dated information and how much more efficient solar panels and wind farms are now, but it doesn’t do much to discredit the essential message of the film. However, despite the fact that some commentators have suggested the film might have actually destroyed the Green New Deal (let’s hope), I can see how this might be worked into the larger (wrong kind of) green agenda. Ozzie Zehner, whose work underpins the film, recommended smart-grid systems for reasons of energy conservation in his otherwise-excellent 2012 book Green Illusions, after all…
Transcript from Part 1:
****
07:43 In fact, this new Commission has decided to mainstream Foresight into all policymaking at all levels, which is really interesting and Foresight has tended to be …
So there will be foresight activities across all the services. So whether it’s dealing with
research or agriculture or fisheries or strategies for transport, all of our
Commission services contain a Foresight element, and and those … that Foresight …
those Foresight groups can work quite independently on Foresight for this specific area,
but then they always then meet in a network of … to exchange these ideas and see how Foresight, both their specific insights for their field and the broader insights that we might generate through contracts and so on and so forth might better inform the overall thrust of policy.
Furthermore, but the European Parliament and the council also conducted their own Foresight activity, so it’s one of the things I often quote a lady called Ann Mettler, who was part of the previous Commission, and S pass, which was the European kind of assemblage of Foresight actors within the three institutions produced this … the report where they … where they explicitly and for the first time and something I mentioned when I replaced you in Geneva, explicitly and for the first time mentioned that humanity was …
was facing an explicit existential crisis that if we didn’t turn this around in a big hurry,
there was a measurable and not insignificant chance that our species was going over the … over the brink.
Now this this made quite a splash, you know, headline wide, worldwide.
So, I say Foresight, the notion of Foresight is really, it’s almost a safe space to think and therefore attracts all sorts.
Good. No. Thank you. I wanted to clarify that because I hold your group, the Foresight group, in great honor for what it is.
I don’t think there’s anything comparable in the United States, except what’s private, you know, in the military or intelligence communities
but your … you have a public intelligence organization out there.
10:10 Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, public intelligence is a pretty good way. I like that. Yeah.
****
So what is it? A think tank, Intelligence operation or a private equity bank? Why does Enron come to mind?
Foresight: “a leading independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager with over £4.5 billion” of assets under management.”
I drive in to town, the smallish city of Hope, might be a misnomer as I see only fragments of false hope behind a bevy of colorful masks bobbing along two mtrs. apart. Most don’t bother to make eye contact already. I do. And I don’t wear a mask. I’m immune both to the virus and the programming. I’ve never been normal so I feel quite normal now. I think. The empty-headed bobbers are now walking a mile in my shoes. It’s quite funny but I try not to let it show because it doesn’t take much to ignite a spot of rage.
I recall watching hundreds of B/W tapes of the second world war and often wondered how long we would last before we’d see mans inhumanity against fellow man in North America. What could possibly be the impetus? Well, now I have my long sought after answer. Seems a perceived threat is all it takes.
I wonder too if anyone cares to know that the power behind the (puppet) elite, have an agenda so lofty and so well executed it defies belief. It’s been in the works since the fall of man. I do hope that piece of fruit was tasty because we have all been paying for it for about six thousand years.
It’s an interesting time to be alive.
Thank you jnia, I totally relate to you here. An interesting time indeed.
Everyone with a degree of power is seizing the opportunity to not let this crisis go to waste. The green, post-growth thing is an evolving thing. Prominent academics arguing for an end to growthism and involved in extinction rebellion were given air-time (e.g. “question time” in the uk) off the back of the protests, so that was one shift that would have fed-in to the green-dreaming factions in the EU. Now with this crisis they feel bolstered in arguing the case more forcefully. Doesn’t mean there is consensus around this and we can also sense the elements that want to get back to the old normal as quickly as possible are also very much in the mix in terms of what is unfolding now… But the green-dreamers have a point that to keep going as we have been is looking increasingly psychotic. Given that we have social engineering anyway: it is something of an open question for me whether a controlled demolition is worse than an unplanned, chaotic one… Stay liminal…
BTW, not clear to me at all that John Doyle works for the investment bank “Foresight” (website: https://www.foresightgroup.eu/) as opposed to the (seemingly completely separate, to me anyway) “Foresight” think-tank set up by EU’s European Commission… (website: https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/support-policy-making/support-eu-research-and-innovation-policy-making/foresight/about-foresight-research-and-innovation_en)
…fine, they’re both called “Foresight” but what evidence is there that these two entities are linked?
Interesting banner artwork here…
http://www.foresight-platform.eu/
…just don’t go down the rabbit hole!….
updated/corrected the post, thanks
Jasun, what do you make of the fact that on March 18, 2020, right when this seemed to be hitting us the hardest, the Moon was in 25 degrees Capricorn, Mars was in 21 degrees Capricorn, Jupiter was in 22 degrees Capricorn, Saturn was in 29 degrees Capricorn, and Pluto was in 24 degrees Capricorn?
not really my area, but interesting observation…. Capricorn relates to structures…
Right. It would seem that four planets and the moon ganged up on the current structures: Mars-war upon them, Jupiter-justice upon them, Saturn-discipline, Pluto-death, with the Moon adding emotional force. Could you comment on something that would appear to be in your area… Pluto’s role in this gang bang?
the most recent blogpost talks about Pluto by another name; I even sought an image of Hades for one section
This bit of news is interesting a ties directly to the covid/carbon conflation
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/a-big-bailout-with-big-green-strings-attached-1.1442812
“The package, the world’s greenest pandemic bailout, still needs to be approved by the bloc’s 27 members, but it would promote a clean link that was missing in many national Covid-19 bailouts despite encouragement from the commission.”
To access the pandemic bailout : “European Union member-states will need to show that their investment is in line with the ambitious objective of the Green Deal to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions.”
Speaking as a Irishman I planted this comment in the spud field and it was immediately removed..
“This is what the enemy within looks like , John Doyle.
He is that special type of Irish Cunt that has been rejected by his own community for being treasonous and must therefore seek the praise of Dublin Castle and now Euroland – they inject him with primitive Malthusian memes designed to vanquish his mother race and culture and he repeats them as gospel.
But get this he wants us to return to localism now !
He will be eaten alive because once his master has used the sorry little f£$ker up he will have to face what remains of the rest of us.
I am a believer in bottom up localism but not this top down tyranny mascarading as a concern for the environment.”
Spud field. I like that, Duck. May I use that at some point?