Lordre: COVID

Showing posts with label COVID_19. Show all posts

Will "Ukraine fatigue" become Ukraine defeat?

Far from defending its sovereignty and independence, since February 2022, Ukraine has become an empty shell dependent on handouts from Western countries.

Ukrainian government officials receive their salaries from the US government. Under Russian strikes, the country has lost its military industry (once a key strength and source of pride for Ukraine), and is entirely dependent on pleading for US and NATO supplies now.

The war to start all wars

From the above facts, it should be clear by now that the war is not being fought to protect Ukraine's independence and sovereignty. The war is being fought to establish Ukraine's Western alignment and the positioning of Western weapons on its territory. NATO wants Ukraine. The Ukrainian government, for its part, is more and more under the spell of American neoconservatives who see no use for diplomacy in international relations and think the US should rule the world.

Sanctions have failed

Unfortunately for NATO, the biggest part of its strategy has backfired. As of now, international sanctions on Russia have failed. Vladimir Putin's government is going strong, with ample popular support for his military campaign, whereas Western regimes are faltering and unable to find a convenient exit strategy from what is becoming a new long-term foreign policy disaster following their defeat in Afghanistan.

Your sacrifices for Ukraine

It is now clear that Western efforts to help Ukraine are the source of the cost of living crisis, having resulted in higher food and petrol costs. More accurately, this cost of living crisis is directly caused by our sanctions on Russia.

Rather than create a case for removing the sanctions on Russia, ministers (and also the "opposition") are instead trying to justify the cost of living crisis and lecture the public by saying to us that we want to sacrifice our money and welfare willingly for Ukraine (some sort of mind trick?) They are then proceeding to do this for us, without offering us any choice in the matter anyway. We have two major parties in Parliament who both want to do this.

False promises

Politicians have also managed to hoodwink their constituents into thinking this connection between our failing effort to save Ukraine and the agonising cost of living crisis doesn't matter or should be tolerated because there will be ways to mitigate the cost of living crisis. However, nobody actually has a plan to make this work.

Ukraine tires

Boris Johnson recently warned of "Ukraine fatigue", something also predicted at this blog, which deliberately uses the same language used with regard to public frustration with the Covid-19 pandemic and the policies associated with it. This is an appropriate term to use, being the subject of a post already at this blog.

As established earlier, Ukraine depends on us. However, that lifeline keeping Ukraine fighting is a flimsy thread that can suddenly snap once our people here in places like Britain get bored with the repetitive messaging and flag-waving. Increasingly, there is a recognition that time is on Russia's side, producing calls either for the West to escalate aggressively or tell Ukraine to surrender territory before the outcome looks too much like a Russian victory. "Ukraine fatigue" is not just inconvenient to Ukraine, it is fatal.

Ukraine faces South Vietnam's fate

Once the war is too old and intractable for people to be interested in maintaining it in the West, Western support for Ukraine will evaporate as quickly as Western support for South Vietnam or the Ghani regime in Afghanistan did. Both of them were buoyed by similar Western delusions and propaganda claiming they were feisty independent nations, when they were actually cardboard cut-outs sponsored by the US. Any suggestion that the Russians will give up first is absurd, since Ukraine's territory is in their heartland and is their business, on an indefinite basis. The West has once again propped up a regime in a region where it does not have the will to win, and the other side does.

There is something insidious about the biological warfare warnings by the Russian and Chinese governments coinciding with acute geopolitical conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the obsession of Western governments and elites with vigilant public health policy.

A US military paper described “public resistance to public health measures” as a military threat to the US preparedness to withstand a biological attack. It is also a threat to US preparedness to launch such a germ warfare attack on an adversary, because it impairs the ability to carry out necessary inoculations of US troops and civilians at home ahead of just such an attack, to avoid the viral weapon backfiring on America.

Inoculation against what, again?

The US government's supposedly defensive Project Bioshield includes the aim of developing vaccines. This makes no sense. Inoculation campaigns would require knowledge of the exact biological threat, both in terms of its identity and the timing of its deployment as a weapon. You would require samples of the specific viral threat to already exist in the lab, to even begin work.

What is Bioshield going to develop a vaccine against, if it doesn't know what the enemy-manufactured virus will be? Inoculations are by definition a preventative measure against a known threat. In a military sense, it is about protecting one's people and resources and preserving them for future action. The development of a military vaccine only seems to make sense if a military is developing an offensive viral weapon and wants to inoculate its own troops to stop the weapon infecting its own forces.

Winning the vaccination debate is a US military objective

The option to impose mandatory inoculations of the population, and especially military forces, is a necessary part of any preparation for biological warfare, whether the attack is to come from an adversary or your own military. The state would necessarily have to forcibly inoculate large parts of its own population, in order to make sure the lethality of its own weapons does not backfire on its people and resources and undermine victory.

Western societies would not simply accept mandatory inoculations without society undergoing the necessary debate over the issue, and we seem to be past that stage now. The intentional politicisation of Covid-19 and very forced attempt to have a public debate over the necessity of mandatory vaccinations (even though the situation was not serious enough for that) could have been preparation to help build offensive biological warfare options against Russia and China. In a way, it is like building nuclear bunkers.

Russians and Chinese spotted something

Then, we come back to the biological weapon claims of the Russians and Chinese, whether one trusts them or not as a source. They allege that the United States has a very aggressive biological warfare program, with facilities near both of these adversary states. They are clearly unnerved, even paranoid. This may be more to do with them noticing Western states apparently hardening themselves for a biological warfare situation at home, taking advantage of the pandemic to overcome any social and political objections to the idea of the sudden inoculation of entire nations on the state's command.

West seems sure of victory

Finally, there is the uncompromising warmongering of Western states, which is uncharacteristic of countries that are held in check by the traditional threat of mutual destruction in a nuclear war. Clearly, Western governments believe they can actually eliminate Russia and China as threats within a short timeframe. This is apparent in their triumphalist attitude, which exceeds their apparent capabilities, as if they intend to lean on indirect or covert means of attack. While many may see the threat in "colour revolutions" (staged uprisings and street violence led by staff at Western embassies), germ warfare also fits such a description. The West talks like it has an ultimate secret weapon, and that weapon could take the form of viruses.

Many of the individuals responsible for advising Western policies (World Economic Forum attendees, for example) have developed an obsession both with pandemics and with enemy regimes at the same time, as if both are certainly on their minds and considerable energy has gone towards both. They also hate alternate sources of information, and especially anti-vaxxers. Their vision is of a society that can live with very harsh public health policies, and also be resolute in its commitment against the "enemy". This is the ideal combination before launching a germ warfare campaign.

Germ warfare preparations failed?

Then again, we can just as easily go back to the US military paper's gloomy conclusion mentioned at the beginning of this post. It may be that anti-vaxxers have ruined everything for them and destroyed their plans.

The extent of rejection of vaccines in Western countries, and official frustrations with much of society's lack of acceptance of harsh health policies, suggest that Western preparations for germ warfare have failed, and our own societies are insufficiently controlled to allow our governments to wage this war. The truth may be that China has a much more compliant population, giving its regime the best capability to both resist biological attacks and launch them.

If Western governments think a biological attack is a viable way to get rid of Russia and China, they are playing with fire. Russia has taken a very aggressive tone since the war in Ukraine started, and would respond brutally to such an attack if it traced it (maybe going straight to nuclear weapons), while China would be able to withstand it and counterattack to deadly effect.

In my country, it seems Ukraine is a successful feelgood cause.

And who can doubt the ability of the British to recognise good causes, and support them? The eventual Sir Volodymyr Zelensky is most probably adored in households across Britain, in a similar way to Sir Jimmy Savile, who was to be followed by Sir Tony Blair.

What surer security is there against being discredited, than the favour of the British public?

The movie

Everyone in Britain seems to assume the war in Ukraine will end swiftly and righteously in Ukraine’s favour, for no reason other than our belief that Ukrainians are playing the hero role and the Russians are the villains of the story. Many people are so accustomed to dramatic structure, from the entertainment they consume, that they are quick to assume they know how history ends. They think we are just a little more than half way through this story.

But what if the war doesn’t end? What if, like the War on Terror, this movie just goes on and on, until we just decide to leave the cinema?

The arrest

What if Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s term goes on and on, with no elections, due to the war and the complete lack of opposition in the country? What if we see him presiding over a country in ruins, inhabited by a disease-ridden, war-fatigued, starving population with no way out in the conflict with an uncompromising Russia, even while retaining power after five or even ten years? What if, under the pressure of the war, there are increasing arbitrary executions of suspected traitors and defeatists by his regime? Worse for audiences, what if his beard grows long and he becomes unsightly, unsanitary or insane? What storytelling would work for him, then?

Eventually, prolonged war could turn Ukrainians against Zelensky or turn our own country against him, as he could be associated with a certain phase of war that could become inconvenient to us as we become more level-headed about the conflict. Zelensky himself may try to stay in power indefinitely, afraid that he will be used as a scapegoat or face some sort of prosecution under the next administration, if he leaves office. Remember that he himself tried to have his political rivals arrested, including former president Petro Poroshenko.

If Zelensky is arrested, then our obligation to encourage Ukraine as an ally will require our media to go after Zelensky and destroy him, just as easily as we had built him up and lionised him.

The long struggle

In the West, the public will become fatigued by the propaganda if the war drags on, like it did with the former Syrian rebels, now reduced to shabby terrorists at the country's fringes. We originally thought the Syrian rebels were brave, portraying them like rock stars, but that image sagged as ISIS grew and the image of those rebels turned into dying victims in Aleppo, rather than brave victors marching on Damascus for democracy.

People are receptive to simplistic messages and marketing at first, but it begins to wear thin if the same level of enthusiasm is being continuously demanded of them. If a face is shown to us long enough, we will begin to find it ugly. Zelensky's scowling, bearded face will be no different and people will begin to suspect something is hideous about him.

Wars are no longer fought over a few years, with a clearly marked turning point or end. Almost every war now seems to last immeasurably long, and only be ended out of fatigue. The Russians feel they have a centuries-long bond of blood with lands that encompass Ukraine, where millions of Russian soldiers died in the Second World War, whereas our connection to that land is nothing more than a simplistic marketing and messaging campaign that began in February 2022. An influx of Ukrainian refugees does not create any strong personal or cultural bond between Britain and Ukraine, other than as a fleeting illusion. As such, the long-term investment, emotional commitment and willingness to endure hardship in this conflict is more likely to be on the Russian side than ours.

Fatigue

As the hardship of the Ukrainian conflict may really affect us, like Covid measures did, Western populations could become fatigued by the efforts to prop up Ukraine after only two years, thereafter deciding to actively scorn and mock the Ukrainian cause. This would be in stark contrast to the twenty years it took for us to give up in Afghanistan and no longer care what happened to the regime in Kabul. The handling of dissent in Western regimes, where authorities simply try to brand anyone who raises questions as an enemy or a cretin, is also extremely ineffective and just increases resistance to whatever message the government tries to spread.

It is likely that the Russians will never grow tired of the conflict in Ukraine, no matter how bad we try to make it for them, as to them Ukraine is sacred ground lit by their memorials and eternal flames. Western media can claim the Russians are just temporary invaders, but the Russians see themselves as holy warriors fighting on their own territory. Our pretence as if Russia had just invaded Switzerland, and so doesn't belong there, is purposely ignorant and we know it.

Seemingly violating the law in his own country and certainly violating his own pledge to support peaceful protesters, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a hypocrite.

Events in Canada reveal the despair of many people living under anti-populism and misanthropy. In such a regime, the energy and funding of the politically educated goes into denigrating normal people, discrediting popular pleas and local interests, and revolving instead around highbrow condescension.

Strangely, the anti-popular impulse of Trudeau, like the Democrats in the United States, is referred to usually under the lie of safeguarding democracy or democratic institutions, when in fact it is aimed at suppressing the will of an irritated and uncomfortable population.

Filtering out the lies

It should be noted that so-called journalists are equally involved in the state's misanthropy and crowd control, with their part in the tag team being to loyally defend the government, ridicule any kind of popular demands, and present themselves as pedantic teachers on what ideas and causes are permissible. They also conduct "fact-checks" whereby they miraculously find that every popular demand against the misanthropes is based on disinformation or linked somehow to Russia, because some tall forehead at an intelligence agency said so in a patronising voice.

You may not be aware of it, but if you rely on mainstream media, it probably means the approved agendas spelled out at gloomy board meetings and gatherings of dirty sponsors are the only political causes you recognise or tolerate. The passion and colour in the things the mainstream corporate media have to say and what dissident cause they show as trendy (for example, BLM) is as artificial and false as what gets injected into grey food matter in a factory. Fact-checkers are also appointed by the same dirty method and are equally useless and uninterested in facts, instead representing the interests of the sponsors.

That being said, plenty of non-mainstream media are also full of fakes and equally driven by profit. One needs to subject all big claims to the tools of scepticism: find expert consensus from opposing interest groups or undisputed video or other raw source material, to determine if a claim can be accepted.

A people trampled

Crowd control is a reasonable way to describe the anti-populism in places like Canada and the United States. Crowd control, of the misanthropic kind that recently occurred when Canadian mounted police trampled a crowd and were rumoured to have killed someone, although they deny it. The fatality is unlikely to be real at this moment, given that it cannot be verified, but one only need watch video of it to see that those who ordered this were deliberately endangering lives.

The perilous threshold I warned of in this very blog, at which government employees cease to be protective of the population and begin instead risk outright violence and chaos with lethal consequences on a scale potentially worse than the virus they hope to contain, could get close. In the Arab world, we have seen how widespread protests, when met by dismissive and condescending responses by the state, can reach boiling point.

Widespread protests can give rise to protracted crises with significant potential for violence, not to mention a substantial drain on the state's capability to provide for the population. Ultimately, the decision to fight the people rather than listen to them may eventually undermine the state's own ability to respond to the pandemic, making Trudeau himself a threat to health and wellbeing in Canada. Trudeau could waste the government's resources on quashing dissent, resulting in more deaths from the pandemic than would result from simply cancelling the vaccine mandate and opting for a more polite response.

Hypocrisy at many levels

Is it worth risking grievous injury and death to citizens, as shown in the horse incident, for the sake of health policy? Is such a heavy-handed response by a state indeed aimed at health, or at protecting the condescending political circles the state evidently represents?

While describing protests as illegal, Trudeau himself illegally invoked his country's Emergencies Act prematurely as an excuse to begin clobbering his people. If he had indeed waited for the event when protests might turn violent, rather than making a very highbrow and strange academic argument about the "inherent violence" of the racist symbols he falsely claims protesters are brandishing everywhere, his use of the measures could be defended. As it stands, his actions are unsupportable and extreme and suggest what Trudeau did was an outburst of personal hatred against the protesters.

Trudeau has made pledges never to support anything like this, even abroad, yet he supports this on the streets of his own country. When farmers rightly protested peacefully in India, Trudeau said “Canada will always be ready to defend the right to peaceful protest.” Now, he is evidently okay with taking the risk of even killing protesters, rather than so much as acknowledging the widely heard popular demands that he change course on Covid vaccine mandates.

What is worse than an authoritarian is someone who pretended to be something else and can't follow his own pronouncements. If Justin Trudeau can adhere neither to his own pledge of support for peaceful protesters, nor his pledges to health that are the very justification for his violence, there is no telling what he might do.

Contrary to his speech denigrating protesters, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs to listen to their demands and avoid alienating a huge portion of the population of his country.

The entire point of Covid-related policies is to prevent a crisis, and to prevent what is essentially a form of congestion in the state's ability to help the people. The whole idea of vaccination is to prevent the waste of the state's resources on treatments, the taking up of hospital beds, the use of supplies, et cetera. If the policies are instead causing exactly such problems or similar problems due to opposition, they need to be re-evaluated

Against interlopers

It should be unacceptable for those without knowledge of health matters to intrude into them and tell people what is best for them, and it is akin to malpractice or even murder. However, there is the problem of the reverse, when medical advice takes precedence over economic advice and even overrides any tact in how to handle human affairs or govern a country.

What has most likely happened is that governments, including the Canadian government, have surrounded themselves with health-focused advisers and bodies in an effort to focus on the pandemic, resulting in negligent handling of other affairs of the state. Alienation of the population and an inability to reach or convince many millions of people has resulted, because those advising the government are not skilled in that area.

The risks

The pandemic is one thing, but it is a whole other world of risk to try to confront huge protests and try to lecture the population on their personal choices, or force them to comply. This risk is potentially worse than the pandemic. Countries whose regimes find themselves at odds with their population but refuse to budge can descend into massive violence quickly, with potentially limitless casualties, far worse than the pandemic itself.

States need to consider that in order to help people, they have to be able to placate the population. Nobody appointed governments as arbiters of scientific accuracy, logic and the persuasion of the public to reason. In fact, states are themselves irrational structures based around memory, emotion, and stories sown into banner, edifice and icon. For them to pretend that they now represent the wills of rationalists and scientific bodies, and deny and chastise the masses and their beliefs, is absurd because that is hardly what any government was ever conceived to do.

Health policy must be balanced with respecting sensibilities of those who are ruled, which absolutely cannot be ignored. Vaccine mandates ought to be pursued where agreeable and plausible, and scrapped where not.

Owing to outrage over top government staff holding Christmas parties while the rest of the country followed Covid restrictions, upcoming pressure might see Boris Johnson kicked out of office.

However, that's only if the Conservative MPs really decide they have had enough of him. And, given that the Conservatives lack any other charismatic (or at least "iconic") figure to take over, getting rid of Boris will probably mean getting rid of themselves in short order.

No confidence vote

If a no confidence vote is lost by Boris Johnson and/or a new Conservative leader is selected, there will probably be another snap election in the UK shortly thereafter to cement legitimacy. This is if we go by past events and assume something similar is due. The Conservatives would be set to lose that election, judging by recent data. So, ironically, the temporary spike in support for Labour amid the scandal may be feared by Tories and cause them to shield Boris during a no confidence vote in Parliament so that he wins, as the Conservatives may recognise that the scandal could see them out of power. As such, Boris's fallout with the voters would have rattled his party enough to save him from Parliament.

We have to remember that Boris Johnson is one of the most controversial Prime Ministers the country has had, and has persistently clung to power and defied calls for him to go. Public protests against him were greatest during the country's efforts to exit the European Union, yet resulted in no victory for his critics.

Outrage over Boris Johnson's initial refusal to extend Brexit during 2019 was more visible than the current outrage at his hypocrisy, and it was even suggested that he could be jailed at that time. Presently, there are no visible protests by the public over the Prime Minister's hypocrisy, and it shows a level of apathy among the public over all that has happened.

Omicron variant measures

If anything, there are more likely to be street protests over Boris Johnson's decision to introduce more measures to combat the novel coronavirus in light of the Omicron variant. Yet such restrictions are actually supported by the Opposition and a vocal part of the news media who have been condemning the Prime Minister's hypocrisy. The anti-lockdown advocates also resent Boris's apparent hypocrisy.

The only reason Boris Johnson may be kicked out is due to his own party being fed up with him, rather than public outrage. However, if it results in a snap election, Conservative MPs would soon regret voting against him in the no confidence vote, because right now the voting public has no confidence in them either.

Impact on next election

Boris Johnson is a hypocrite and there will be nobody rushing to his defence, including in his own base of support. However, in the long term, we have to remember that the next general election is in 2024. The public will have moved on to other issues than Christmas parties by that time, so it won't take much of the wind out of the sails that kept the Tories in power.

The half of the population desiring reactionary politics, Brexit, and relaxed policies on Covid has not gone anywhere and may even have grown a little. They will still support Boris Johnson in the event of an election, because the alternative would seem worse to them.

If Covid is still a factor in the 2024 election, the public will likely be sick of hearing about it and vote for a party more dismissive of it, which would likely once again be the Tories. If there is a successful no confidence vote, a Tory leadership contest, and a snap election while the scandal is fresh, Labour could take over.

If the Tories calculate the same, they will keep Boris Johnson for now.

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