WEEKENDER: Who really governs us? by Wiggia

This is another of those statements that a few years ago would be laughed at and consigned to a conspiracy theory bin. Today, not so much, as one item after another post Covid unravels; despite scant reporting in the MSM we should be asking questions on who, what and why certain actions were taken almost universally across the western world.

Was it just coincidence with lockdowns being prescribed by everyone at the same time, or was it just  a reaction from an indolent political class following the course that China had embarked on and thinking ’we have no other solution so let's follow that’? Anything sounds plausible in this clown world we currently live in.

Well in retrospect nothing really worked in the way that was described other than delaying everything to save the NHS, which needs saving from itself.

It has been interesting during the Covid period to see how groups have used the distraction to further their own aims, something I have alluded to in previous pieces. Nowhere has it been more evident than with the unelected WEF who have seemingly never been off the front pages with their ‘you will own nothing and be happy’ slogan. In normal circumstances they could be ignored, even laughed at and to a degree have been for years, yet suddenly during the pandemic they were anything but ignored; they took a centre stage role. Western leaders flocked in private jets to their forums and returned never explaining to the populace that elected them why they went in the first place and Klaus Schwab in his Ming the Merciless outfit has started to recruit ‘young global leaders’ to his WEF gang.

What is going on? If he is as insignificant as many say why do the political elite all make pilgrimages to his Davos forums? Something is not very democratic about all this and when you see Macron making WEF signs in public like an outed masonic lodge member one does start to think there is more to this than meets the eye.

Should we be concerned? I have no idea but an organisation that attracts Bono and private-jet-addicted Leonardo de Caprio to its fold is a bit worrying for reasons that don’t need explaining.

He set up his Young Global Leaders program in 2004 and now it includes actual leaders of western countries, the most prominent being Justin Trudeau, and half his cabinet are also adherents to the WEF; did anyone know this when they voted for him?

Emmanuel Macron, currently in the running to win another term as French president is also an advocate of the WEF and a YGL. How much of that was included in his speeches to the nation in recent times? Yet here he is making along with others the sign of the WEF:

                     

And never far away from all this are George Soros and Bill Gates. Soros has been pouring money into the pockets of organisations he approves of or wants to influence for decades, Bill Gates more recently

and in a much more public fashion. Again, why is he sitting in on a government team dealing with Covid? The blank given to a FOI request is telling:

And why did Boris give the Gates foundation several hundred million for vaccine development when we were developing our own? One would have thought that Gates' allegedly disastrous Indian vaccine campaign would have excluded him from anything to do with vaccines. Whatever the truth the Indian government have rolled back the program:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms

If nothing else there appears to be no justification for governments to wed themselves to organisations that are unelected, in this way. All governments take advice from experts in various fields of manufacturing business and the sciences, but when money is being taken from the same it should be transparent at the very least; but despite government assurances on being ever more transparent they are anything but in many areas.

So how much clout do these individuals and organisations have from outside of government? This goes further than lobbying Parliament which itself has become tainted with backhanders and non-disclosure.

The fact that huge sums of money have disappeared in fraudulent companies and individuals during the pandemic with just a nod to the actuality again gives the impression rightly that politics is now out of the little people's hands. Whoever and whatever we vote for we get an ever more watered down version of democracy, hence the immediate slamming of anything that is populist: after all, we can’t have anything the people who pay for it all having something they actually want, so populism becomes grouped with far right and probably Hitler.

It does seem that globalisation has become in itself a form of government. Huge financial clout on the world stage gives ever more power in the political arena to those who pull the strings behind the screen and now ever more in front of it. The demise of the West that is currently gaining pace might just see a great reset of a sort not envisaged by the WEF or any of its adherents.

Who is pulling his strings…?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Dancing with joy, by JD

Roger Scruton understood the value of dancing; it is essentially about what he called 'withness' i.e. dancing with as opposed to dancing apart from other people. 

Interestingly he prefers the modern 'rock an roll' energetic dancing of couples in preference to the degeneracy of stiff formal ballroom dancing. He sees the former as having a natural link with to older style of traditional dance in the Mediterranean. 

"The dance is a social activity, in which we exalt and idealise our rational nature. It shows freedom and discipline united in a single gesture, and at the same time made subject to the demands of social order..... it is an occupation of the whole person, and a display of the grace and completion of the soul."

• https://www.roger-scruton.com/homepage/about/music/understanding-music/173-the-lost-love-of-dancing
• https://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.com/2016/01/britain-is-no-country-for-old-dancing_4.html

All of that is a long winded way of intruducing these dance videos showing loosely choreographed and (mostly) spontaneous displays of 'social cohesion' or 'withness' as Scruton describes it.

And finally.......... the painting which illustrates this last video refers to the 'heretical' text known as The Acts of John which tells how Jesus led his disciples in a round dance before the crucifixion as described here - http://gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/grsm_hymnofjesus.htm

The Hymn of Jesus was set to music by Gustav Holst and there are one or two versions elsewhere on YouTube.

Lord Of The Dance Hymn (Contemporary Worship Song)

Inflation? Look at tax!

 This is how some everyday items are impacted by taxation:

Sources:

• https://www.racfoundation.org/data/taxation-as-percentage-of-pump-price-data-page
• https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco
• https://www.allstarcard.co.uk/tools/uk-fuel-prices/
• https://groceries.asda.com/shelf/beer-wine-spirits/spirits/whisky/jack-daniels/1215685911554-1215685911575-1215685911576-1215685402038
• https://groceries.asda.com/shelf/beer-wine-spirits/tobacconist/cigarettes/benson-hedges/1215685911554-1215186475298-910000975497-1215685242137

WOKEWATCH (1): Google's overt censorship

There is an issue of whether media platforms are publishers and should be regulated (and legally liable) accordingly, especially as regards intentionally false and inflammatory material. 

On the other hand, when Google also runs your email and search engine, should there be rules about how it exploits its near-monopoly position to suppress and distort information for propaganda purposes, as in e.g. the information revealed by Hunter Biden's laptop?

Is Nick Clegg responsible for this aspect of Google's operations? Who is on the team that composed the following? How can one answer back? How do you define 'liberal' and 'democrat', Sir Nick?

By the way, President Biden has accused Russia of committing genocide - should that allegation be censored? It's clearly not true, and obviously a very serious charge.

Also, Ukraine has been shelling the Donbass since 2014; since that is on the pretext of disciplining separatists, then it must be that the government sees the latter as 'its own citizens' and it is certainly 'deliberately attacking' them; a statement forbidden by the 'guidance' below.

Censorship opens a can of worms.

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Xi will fall...

- sooner or later, I think. When you do this to the middle and upper classes in China's showcase city:

Political personalisation and the jigsaw

Historian David Starkey has been asked (from 6:00 here) whether the Chief Librarian at the British Library should continue in her post. In his reply he says that British institutions now have a particular strand of political thought running through them like the letters in a stick of rock.

Not so long ago I thought that intelligent children shouldn't attend school if there is some reasonable alternative; I now think the same about many universities, which because of their ideological intolerance I call 'monoversities.'

But this being so, there is no point in trying to remove an individual from the structure. If you take a piece out of a jigsaw it leaves a hole that only another piece with exactly the same shape will fill. It is the picture itself that is a misfit.

The same craziness is evident across the Atlantic; and as here, there is more than one jigsaw. Right-wing commentators go on about strands of socialism and race relations; but at the top of American society the jigsaw is about wealth, its increase and preservation by power and influence, and the main political parties appear to collaborate so well that some commentators I read refer to them as 'the uniparty.'

These collusions and petty tyrannies, encouraged by their success to overreach, are likely to continue and worsen until there is a revolt. Starkey cites Brexit as an example.

Is it too feebly idealistic to hope for reform, instead?

EMAIL FROM AMERICA (6): Slavery and History, by Paddington

Tracking the chaos...

The United States has had a tortured history with slavery and its legacy, beginning long before the Revolutionary War and lasting into today.

For one tiny example, the Texas Board of Education ordered History textbooks for the entire state a couple of years ago, which explained that millions of Africans came to the country 'to work'. Technically true, I suppose, but missing the point.

The current culture war over Critical Race Theory appears to mostly be an effort by certain conservatives, especially in states of the former Confederacy, to ban discussions of racism and slavery.

Today's editorial in the Washington Post provides a lovely vignette in this area.

Montpelier is the Virginia home of James Madison, the 4th President, and was built by hundreds of slaves who lived and died there. While the historic site and museum are owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it has been governed by Montpelier Foundation for over two decades. In that time, the governing board of 25 people has had either zero or one African-American member.

Last year, they announced that the board would balance the majority white membership with descendants of slaves. The latter were to be picked by a committee, recognized by the foundation, consisting of leaders in the Black community from academia, business and elsewhere.

Last month, the governing board re-wrote their bylaws, and declared that they would be the ones to select their members, totally rejecting the 10 people recommended by the committee.

This has resulted in an uproar from all directions and a mass exodus of employees, leading to the situation of a former slave plantation now having exactly one African-American employee.

Some people just have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world.