I’ve had plenty of time to ponder things during this Covid Lockdown. That has lead me to the observation that this lockdown is functionally indistinguishable from the Green New Deal and the goals of Cultural Marxism.
Think about it.
Nobody is diving anywhere that is not absolutely essential.
Nobody is using airplanes (and all their petroleum).
Shipping is largely at a standstill.
Trains are empty, as are buses.
The entire petroleum sector is in collapse from lack of demand.
That is EXACTLY what the Green New Deal demands. You are now “Living The Dream”! /sarc;
Furthermore, we all are being given money by the government ‘for free’, we just can’t spend it anywhere on anything of interest. Marxism 101, really.
“Frivolous” consumption, i.e. all the things you want to do, is banned. (Bars, restaurants, sporting events, concerts, cruises, theme parks, movie theatres, plays, beaches, sport boating, parks, etc.)
The Government decides where you can go, when, and for what reasons.
We get to stand in lines at the grocery store to enter it.
The Police are using drones and electronic surveillance to assure you are doing as told by Government.
Only activities deemed “essential” by the Government are allowed.
There’s effectively a curfew in that there’s nothing to do at night as all the (few allowed to open) shops are closed.
Electricity consumption for all manner of things is way down. No aluminium needed for cans or cars, after all. All that superfluous “consumption” oriented activity halted. AND the energy demand that goes with it.
There are meat shortages in the pipeline (several meat packers closed from staffing issues) and right behind that farming / crop issues as labour is not getting where it needs to go. Just think of all the petroleum we will soon be saving on the farms… and food trucks…
So here it is, The Green New Deal, sampler / starter edition.
Musings from the Chiefio 
I think you are broadly correct EM … pleased to support this from UK experiences within Agenda 21 process that would confirm this. (Much of which you have already covered … but all is not as it seems).
Sensible, truly sustainable technologies/approaches (in energy, food and water) are actively suppressed – instead we get phony cr*p … Michael Moore covers some of this in Planet of the Humans, full movie :
(All fairly easy to resolve – like overspecifying turbine gearboxes for extreme longevity, small local pumped storage that doubles as flood control in hilly regions, etc … significantly, that all protect local interests).
Are the CV solutions being suppressed too ?
Click to access Chlorine-Dioxide-against-Coronavirus.pdf
Interesting, and scary, observations.
Gets scarier :
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-test-kits-contaminated-covid-19-a4403021.html?fbclid=IwAR1IhwmvuqEMFvxdpH8_ZjIK6mlxZPeN9-xTfuxvzpzIX3jGzXoISkOHAIc
I agree. Re lock-down developments. At the onset, yer biological fight or flight response, lacking information, best retreat to safe distance and suss it out… Then those historical considerations… government never letting a good crisis go to waste, and especially yr Gramsci closed society brigade on the game kick in. Nuthin’ new from wa-a-ay back ter Plato’s Utopia, society’s top – down make-over. …
That’s what serfs think. (
This serf is with you, Beth.
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The term “Trump Speed” has surfaced because he doesn’t see any reason to go through all the bureaucratic B.S., the way things are always done, and works to get to the desired outcome in the fastest way possible. Trump Speed has heads spinning everywhere in D.C. and around the World for that matter.
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Anyhow, we learned a LOT in the past month or so, despite the TLA’s foot dragging and YSM lies. The key thing is how fast treatments and preventives have been found, whereas in February, the Kung Flu seemed to be a death sentence.
Look where we are now. It the GEBs who are milking this crisis for all it’s worth and trying to keep it going.
Yup. Some people are going to die from this virus or another, but I think we know enough now to deal with ChiCom-19.
Serfs with you, H.R. Notice how anything suggested by Trump or others that might help us combat the Coronavid,.. Hydroxochlorine and Zinc, Vitamin D, ‘n C, masks, – nope. Be passiive ‘n compliant to each guvuhmint regulation and yu MAY, at some unstipulated time, come out of this, just trust and obey us in every way.
@Beth:
What I have found fascinating, in a scary kind of way, is just how incredibly swiftly any proposed fast fix or good news is dissed and banned from the public square.
We know, from Korea, that masks, gloves etc. cuts transmission to nearly nothing and the disease dies out. But we are told “Masks are not for you”…
We know, from several trials done by M.D.s with their communities, that HCQ + Zpack + Zinc given prior to hospitalization either cures or dramatically reduces severity. Yet the YSM is busy shouting that it’s quackery and from Faceplant to Twitter Nazis to Youtube there’s moves to ban discussion of it.
There is clearly a strong movement to suppress “things that work”.
The questions are just:
Why? Who? Intent?
Is it really just TDS on Steroids with Orange Man Bad psychosis driving everything? Or is is a ChiCom effort to damage The West through their minions and Useful Idiots? Or Deep State designs on Social Change?
IMHO it is just too complete and too swift to be organic growth. There’s something else going on. Perhaps the overlay of several of those motivations / groups with similar outcomes. A parade of Left Fellow Travelers…
What it isn’t is the normal workings of a free people looking for a solution.
Ya think?
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld
“Let no Crisis go un-utilized.” Keep the Crisis running as long as possible to institutionalize every Socialist point as Normal operations of government. These people have only one goal, One party rule of Communists apparatchiks that direct all government bureaucracies.
“What I have found fascinating, in a scary kind of way, is just how incredibly swiftly any proposed fast fix or good news is dissed and banned from the public square.”
EM: Yes – see this, misrepresentation of Kawasaki Syndrome by UKGov – swiftly stamped on by our Great Ormond St Hospital. Scaring UK parents, including me with a 9 month, but making doctors “angry” – https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/29/doctors-say-alert-inflammatory-disease-killing-children-issued-early-12625179/
Ossqss : Yes Agenda 21 was bad enough … getting much worse in latest iteration. But overall, “keep your friends close, those who are not even closer” was my approach. Maybe daft, it has cost me dear for sure – but also enabled some sound environmental work meantime … might yet see light of day.
Meantime YT censorship is promoting ‘Digital Freedom’ – with big audiences :
https://londonreal.tv/digital-freedom-platform-interview-1-dr-rashid-buttar/?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20-04-28++Dr.+Rashid+Buttar+%28resend+to+unopened%29&utm_content=Bill+Gates%2C+5G%2C+%26+Coronavirus+Vaccines+%F0%9F%92%89Dr+Rashid+Butter+on+Donald+Trump%2C+COVID-19+%26+Dr+Fauci
@E.M., “this lockdown is functionally indistinguishable from the Green New Deal and the goals of Cultural Marxism”
That’s because they are the same thing, the urge to control: YOU will do things MY way. Which is another way of saying: I own you; you are a herd of animals, I am the master, you do not get a say.
Kings, Popes, Dictators, Emperors, Godfathers, it’s all the same. Paternalism writ big (and it’s not always men). The other part of the problem is that there are so many willing sheep to worship their masters.
The YouTube censorship of the pair of doctors has been noticed.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/04/28/youtube-censors-video-of-california-doctors-calling-for-reopening-of-country/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-youtube-coronavirus-censorship-science
“More informed debate is exactly what we need to make wise decisions going forward. Unfortunately for all of us, informed debate is exactly what the authorities don’t want. They want unquestioned obedience so they are cracking down on free expression.”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/mike-huckabee-youtube-must-answer-for-pulling-down-ca-doctors-video
“Last week, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN that “anything that would go against the World Health Organization [WHO] recommendations would be a violation of our policy.””
Evidently, YouTube/Google knows WHO policy better than WHO itself.
You can search for “WHO Michael Ryan Sweden” and find articles like this:
Sweden could be ‘model’ for coronavirus policy: WHO official …
WHO lauds lockdown-ignoring Sweden as ‘model’ for countries
World Health Organization praises Sweden for coronavirus …
https://www.dailywire.com/news/who-official-changes-tune-after-suggesting-homes-be-searched-sick-placed-in-isolation-sweden-a-model
The audio recording of the WHO press conference is here:
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/media-resources/press-briefings#
29 April 2020 — from about 40 minutes to 45 minutes in the recording, the key part starting at 44:00.
The difference between Sweden and other countries is that Sweden “has trusted its own communities to implement that physical distancing”. It relies on citizens to self-regulate … a partnership with the population … the health system has always remained within their capacity.
No police-state for Sweden. The following video explains Sweden’s approach very well. From the top guy, Prof. Johan Giesecke. He says the problem with lockdowns is that there is no good way to get out of them. As we now see. He also says, you can pay up front, or you can pay later (not his words). Sweden might have higher deaths now, but it will avoid the rebound second wave later.
Sweden decided that its actions should be evidence based. Washing hands, known good. The rest, no evidence. Protect the old and the frail. “When I first heard of the draconic measures, I asked how are they going to climb down from that?” “What I am most afraid of is the dictatorial trends” “in China you can do it [lock them in] but in a democracy you can’t.” “How long do you think you can keep people locked up like this?” “You have to climb down one rung of the ladder at a time”
BREAKING :
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741
Fauci : A bio-weapons man (Anthrax etc), apparently …
Commentary :
Maybe download while available …
I being an old aussie bastard and a hermit look at all this with a sense of wonderment.
Considering it all as a storm in a teacup and a reason the government marxists took control.
Someone more sagacious than I once said ” It is the governments job to invent an endless stream of demons and hobgoblins to keep the populous clamorous for them to save them.
It has been demonstrated that this virus is very treatable a flu shot and a hiv shot seems to do the trick it would seem that a malaria shot also helps. All this hoo ha shutting down the world is BS personified.
And do not forget that the Green New Deal / Agenda 21 types have a couple other important goals: One, to replace religious belief and worship of a Supreme Being with belief in and worship of, a “god” of manmade dictates; and, Two, to destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States.
This pandemic is looking more and more like a hoax…
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@ Concerned Virginian:
Another goal is probably to prevent any more Trump rallies. ;-)
The Green Nude Eel bunch are getting their wish regarding meat. I read that 30% of U.S. meat processing capability is out of commission right now.
I went to the store yesterday to stock up on a little more meat before the shortages hit. I was almost too late. The meat section was down about 75% and there was no chicken to be had. Vegan, here we come, right?
But then I got to wondering how produce harvesting and distribution was holding up. If the fruits and veggies supply chain gets messed up, the hardcore vegans and vegetarians will be hit very hard; no meat AND no veggies.
E.M. posts gardening threads and prepper threads and prepper gardening threads and it seems a lot of us are doing some gardening to a greater or lesser extent, and we know we can do the dirt bag quick garden/greens and some hydroponics in a pinch.
I am in no way wishing for the food supply chain to be hit any further, but if it is, all vegans-because-politics gang are probably going to be very hard up for food.
I believe I’m the only one in our development of 42 homes that has a garden. There might be one other garden, but I haven’t spotted it over the course of 20 years, so I doubt it. A few neighbors do container tomatoes on the patio and a few do herbs in a pot as well.
And the Social Justice Save The Planet vegans in the cities will be totally screwed.
I really don’t think the majority of the GND crowd truly understands the difficulty we’d be in if meat production stopped.
I’ve been thinking about this idea EM. I actually don’t agree with you that the virus & disease is Greenist plot.
However I do think that that the Corona virus pandemic & the associated lockdowns has destroyed completely any chance of the Dimocrats Green New Deal ever getting up.
The CCP virus has shown us all what life would be like if it was ever implemented.
That just won’t fly at all..
@Bill In Oz:
Um, It was not my intent to imply that either the virus or disease was a plot by anyone. At most, I think it was an accidental lab leak from stupid experiments (gain of function).
I was just pointing out that the EFFECTS of the lock down and associated economic horrors are the same as what we will get from the Green New Deal. And the GND proponents need to have that thrown in their face. Often.
@H.R.:
I try to maintain a non-panic tone on things like food shortage. Lots of others (IceAge Farmer, etc) can do the hair on fire stuff.
The reality is that, at most, we would need to change what we eat a little and stop burning 1/3 of our corn crop in cars.
However, that requires the nation not act stupidly. So far, at every chance, the nation has chosen stupidly….
So I’m increasingly seeing distance between “can have no problem” and “will have sack of shit”.
BTW, at COSTCO today, beef and lamb and fish were in good shape. Pork more limited, but plenty of processed pork products ( I got lots of bacon). Though the bacon display cases were about 1/2 prior space / area / sizes. Chicken was “limit 2” but only expensive “organic” was left, and then just a few whole chickens, plus packs of legs and wings cut for buffalo wings. Oh, and whole duck was about $3.30 /lb instead of the prior $2.19 so folks swapping to alternative birds and driving prices up.
The non- big box stores had more meat and chicken than the big box stores.
BTW, got house brand Pepcid knock off at the 3rd stop today. COSTCO & CVS sold out, but Walgreens house brand was in stock.
In general, looks like going to smaller shops and off brands gets supply after The Hoard swoops in.
I live in an area of New Mexico which during the last 17 years has become nearly exclusively populated by secret society members – mostly Freemasons and Eastern Stars and occultists of every ilk. About 10 years ago, when tax rebates were offered for people installing solar energy, about 65% of the residents got solar, in spite of the fact their investment will never pay for itself in their lifetime, and energy costs here are low. At the time I thought something strange about so large a percentage making this investment, yet didn’t know quite what to make of it. Now I understand it is for a future time when electricity is either rationed or shut off to merely inconvenience those people not a part of the New World Order marxists’ club. These days when I want to know what my future holds, I watch YouTube videos of what the marxists are doing to their fellow citizens in Venezuela where starvation is epic and there are shortages of everything. Venezuelans are dying a slow tortured death, horrible to watch. Lastly, for Julian Jones who was the first commenter on this thread, he needs to know Michael Moore is “controlled opposition” merely a cog in the Hegelian Dialectic and not to be taken seriously. Attached is a link to an hour and one half long documentary exposing Michael Moore from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIY_kktWJlg&list=PL4TagJan1mM0y-QzFSufyWzgQZcY7M8un&index=4&t=0s
@E.M. – The U.S. has plenty of critters. There is no shortage of cattle, pigs, or chickens (or squirrels [grin]). It’s the meat processors that are bollixed up right now.
It’s going to be the same with meats as it was with toilet paper for a while. We didn’t get much TP or paper towels from China. It’s just that too many people were filling their garages with TP and the supply chain could not deal with that kind of spike. BTW, paper products are just about caught up. They seem to be in good supply in all sizes from a few rolls to the pillow packs and I see just a normal number of carts with paper goods at the stores.
Retail meats have a completely different processing/distribution system from commercial meat providers, and we’ve gone to a retail-heavy demand with people stuck at home. It’s starting to show with some processors shut down at a time of added demand.
I was doing stock-up on meats to have choices, both type of meat and price. I’ll be out of the market now for a while so that will help others can get what they can. With things opening up a bit at restaurants, this retail shortage should not last too long.
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Yes, in keeping with the topic that the current panicdemic is pretty much the GND, I was pointing out that when you mess with one aspect of the current supply chain, be it energy or in this case, meat, there are unintended consequences that are often 180 degrees out of phase with the desired outcome.
The sheeple with less candle-power than AOC will be happy that there are no meats in the stores. They want us to be a vegan/vegetarian society. Just like wind and solar replacing fossil fuels, you can’t get there from here right now. You can’t change the US to all-veggies-all-the-time instantly, and the die-hards who are true veggie believers will starve just as much as everyone else, and maybe faster as they are concentrated in cities where there is little chance of growing enough veggies for their own use.
My point being one should be careful what one wishes to force on others, particularly when you have a “And I want it right now!” mentality.
@H. R. Yes, indeed; and these city-dwellers have *no clue* what life was like at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Yet they want us to go back to 17th century conditions (and unaware how close we came to carbon dioxide starvation the last glacial maximum)? Any they think *they* will survive? Some will; but I’d be very surprised if the relative losses weren’t higher in the big cities. Suburbia and the really rural areas will find it easier to adapt; and the ‘obese’ will have the largest personal reserves to live on while they adapt. (There’s a reason why my children of the depression parents did not want us to be ‘skinny’, since ‘skinny’ was often sickly and died young fairly often.)
@H.R.:
As my freezer was already full and I had a bunch of jars of chicken already canned (and enough of those cute little 1 pound canned hams for a weekly ham & yams dinner for about 2 months :-) …
I was mostly just doing a “price and availability” check. Not particularly worried. At most, had they been rich with cheap chicken, might have bought one package for a bbq run.
One week ago (last visit) Smart & Final had once again put chicken on discount at 89 ¢ / lb. so I bought and roasted one, saving the freezer stock. Thus my statement about big box raids vs smaller stores with stock. Next week will again be S&F or Grocery Outlet Bargain Market who use smaller brands from other processors and seem stocked well.
Yes. The USA has lots of critters, but that is part of the problem. Pig grow out operations are a flow through design, not seasonal batch. So as the market sized stock backs up, behind them are several cohorts of smaller pigs in smaller spaces all getting bigger… eventually something isn’t going to work.
(Enter story telling mode :-)
Now when I was a kid, we would have just called up the local farm butcher or done it ourself. We did both… not hypothetical. Dad hauled the calves up on the designed in hoist on the back of his cattle hauler truck rack to drain them. (The butcher was very happy with the “free” blood sausage ingredients…) Then off to the butcher for packing (for a share… paid in kind) . Dad and I did rabbits ourselves. He made sure I could do everything from start to end. Feeding to plate.
But now, many operations are “industrial contract”. Farmer doesn’t own the chickens… He met his growout contract. The big Corporation just wants to collect the insurance money and doesn’t care about the wasted product. So they “shoot & shovel” instead of find a way to DIY the meat.
So you get a hole in the supply for the duration of the outage.
I’m pretty sure it will be just a couple of weeks as they make the packing plants more sanitary for the workers. So no worries for me & mine.
For those with no meat stored, they can eat more pancakes and loaded baked potatoes for a few weeks (or fish or Australian lamb or salami pizza or…)
As a totally hypothetical:
Were there a real long term shut down of meat production, initially we would be in trouble. Corn & soy for cattle feed are not in a form suited to people and feed packers are not set up to make People Chow. Plus, cattle turn things we can not eat into things we can: Range land not otherwise useful, Distillers Grains (the junk left over after distilling), corn leaves & stalks (silage) and more. Since we can’t eat that stuff, total production of food calories drops if we don’t feed cattle & critters.
Longer term and only IF we bother to do it, thanks to our feeding huge quanties of corn and soy to out critters and cars: we could turn that into people food. Soy to TVP & tofu. Corn to polenta and tortillas. (And despite some folks saying we can’t eat field corn, we can. Just not as sweet corn but as dent corn flour / grits). Far more calories than in the lost meat. Cattle are 10:1 feed conversion ratio. 10 lbs dry corn & soy to make one pound of meat that is mostly water. Pigs & chickens are 3:1. Farmed fish 1:1 because they don’t burn food to keep warm.
So an ideal product ratio for survival production would still have meat (range land, distillers grains, silage) but more corn tortillas and tofu. But getting there would be a bother, take time, bankrupt some producers (feed lots, biofuel makers). Plus, I see no reason to do that in current conditions. Just put plastic dividers between workers and issue PPE to the meat packers.
@CDQuarles:
Part of my absorbed “Dad’s Experience By Proxy” was the Great Depression experience on the farm vs cities. At 12 y.o. he was given one .22 LR shell and told to come back with a rabbit. He became a very good shot as that meant he got meat for dinner that night. You always had a garden as that didn’t take money. My Mum, from a more urban context, was more about making something from nearly nothing (jammy tarts, soups, pan dripping gravy) and stock up when you can.
I hope some of that made it to my kids.
Cities are screwed in any collapse. Be it disease, food supply, or war. Nobody wastes bombs on farms. Why I’m only 1/2 comfortable in suburbs and would rather be 15 miles out of town on a “ranchette”… but the spouse wants shopping malls in visual range….
Cut out fossil fuels, cities die.
MAYBE, with a half century program of nuclear power plant production, you could transition, but not quicker without a lot of pain. Try running a rice harvester on batteries… or discing 1280 acres of corn land running 24 x 7 ahead of the weather to plant on time. You could do it with synthetic fuels using nuclear process heat, but biofuels have too low a net energy gain.
FWIW: I’ve picked peaches & walnuts for money and bucked hay bales on the back of a flatbed truck (“110 F in the shade and you ain’t in the shade”). Anyone with idealistic visions of farm life has never worked on a farm. Hot, dirty, smelly, brutal, hard work. But in any collapse, I’d rather be there than in a big city.
Unfortunately, the giant agribusiness operations are destroying the rural ethos along with the family farms and small farm towns. So unclear where that ends up in the next generation. Most people seem quite happy to live in their cubical cage as long as the People Chow keeps coming and they have some free range time in the yard…
Without ‘fossil’ fuels, you’d need *lots* of animals, including children, to do it. They’d have to be fed, too; so you’d need lots of good enough land and timely water. Too few have a clue. “It isn’t so much what my liberal friends know; it is just that so much they know just isn’t so”, Ronald Reagan, if I am remembering correctly.
Re nuclear, well, too few know that this rock is inherently radioactive and that we must live in an environment full of electromagnetic radiation and chemicals that will kill you; whether ‘natural’ or not. Even then, our bodies carry within them the seeds of their own destruction.
Just back from a stop at Grocery Outlet Bargain Market. Late in the day so shelf stock ought to be down.
They had plenty of chicken. I got a flat of thighs (my favorite) for 99 ¢ / lb. house brand. They had Foster Farms name brand leg quarters (my 2nd favorite) for the same price. Plenty of other meat too. And eggs too.
IMHO, this confirms my thesis on panic buying.
Big Box discounter stores get hit by folks looking to “stock up” big quantities cheaply. Neighborhood stores don’t and those with a generally low income clientele don’t get cleaned out as folks living paycheck to paycheck don’t have the extra bucks.
GOBM was also where I scored lots of TP about a month back when both Costco and Walmart were cleaned out. They have some regular stock items, but a lot of their stock comes from over supplied vendors looking to move excess inventory. We’re talking bottom fishing here. So real shortages ought to dry up a lot of their supply.
My conclusion is that most of the empty shelves is excess buying, not actual shortages. So far.
2nd conclusion: when panic buying hits, go to the low end smaller places.