390 replies to this topic

[TVCasualty]

At some level most of us have probably long suspected the reality some of the troubling facts that are being revealed by the various official responses to the pandemic.

 

But it's still a bit jarring to get actual confirmation of such concerns. Here's one example:
 

 

To Track Coronavirus, Israel Moves to Tap Secret Trove of Cellphone Data

 

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has authorized the country’s internal security agency to tap into a vast and previously undisclosed trove of cellphone data to retrace the movements of people who have contracted the coronavirus and identify others who should be quarantined because their paths crossed.

 

The Shin Bet has been quietly but routinely collecting cellphone metadata since at least 2002, officials confirmed. It has never disclosed details about what information it collects, how that data is safeguarded, whether or when any of it is destroyed or deleted, who has access to it and under what conditions, or how it is used.

...

Contrary to some Israeli reports, there is no plan to hack into Israeli citizens’ cellphones. But experts said that was simply unnecessary because the government already receives, as a matter of course, enough data from cellphone carriers to monitor the whereabouts of nearly anyone.

...

 

The former official added that after Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency employee, leaked details about the United States government’s bulk collection of data on American citizens, igniting a furor, “we all laughed, that what the American intelligence community was trying to hide, and what caused such an uproar among the American public, is so clearly written in Israeli law.”

 

 

https://www.nytimes....e-tracking.html

 

That last quote establishes that everything in the article also applies to the U.S..

 

So here's to hoping that over the past 20 years you've never "crossed paths" with anyone who later goes on to commit major crimes or otherwise pissed off whatever government you happen to live under. If you had a cell phone with you the whole time, that is.

 

I imagine that this won't be the only disturbing revelation about what goes on behind the scenes of modern life as the situation continues to progress and various cultural and political facades are torn down (or crumble from within) under the unprecedented pressure this pandemic is placing on everything.

 

So we've just had it confirmed that retroactive surveillance is for real, which anyone paying attention already at the very least intuited.

 

 

We've also learned just how unprepared for even relatively minor disruptions to society we and our governments collectively are. I call this "minor" because the global shutdown is intentional and largely preventative rather than being forced by something completely beyond anyone's ability to do anything about it except picking up the pieces, such as an asteroid impact or a satellite and grid-melting solar flare. That's the level of upheaval and chaos that this situation is just a dress rehearsal for.

 

 

 

Another example IMO are the eyebrow-raising emergency powers available to the President here in the U.S. if he makes certain official declarations. It's one thing to suspect or assume that such measures would be Draconian and overreaching and likely even unconstitutional in some cases but it's something else to get unambiguous confirmation of just how much fuckery we're really being subjected to (and we're probably not getting the whole story by a long shot).

 

 

 

I figured it might be interesting to have a thread that chronicles the things that are being revealed thanks to this massive escalation of global Chaos that some folks would rather keep secret (and what the hell else is there to do right now?). So please add them to this thread as you encounter them, and at least a minimal degree of vetting of sources before posting a story or allegation would be preferable.

 

So what other problematic or concerning revelations of our unsustainable, razor's edge dystopia have y'all noticed or read about lately?

 

That kind of information will likely prove helpful for making plans about what to do next time, which won't be a dress rehearsal.

Edited by TVCasualty, 18 March 2020 - 09:46 AM.

[Coopdog]

I realized all of that many years ago, that we have NO privacy whatsoever. I even went without a cel phone for many years after others were carrying one for just that reason. I have been involved in grow forums and fringe type forums and groups since the internet was only green text and when it took an hour to load a picture. I used to use proxy services and such to attempt to be discreet, but the days of even hoping to have privacy of any sort are long gone. Anything you type into any device and most things you say are all duly noted and stored in the immense datasets that exist on all of us. Big brother is and has always been watching, at least since the 90's for very serious. I threw caution to the wind 10-12 years ago and finally got a facebook account lol. At that point I knew all hopes of keeping my head down were long gone. It is what it is, and we live in the age of DATA. 

[Coopdog]

If you really wanna throw them a curveball, toss the cel phones and drag the TV out into the yard :)

[Moonless]

China has always been very upfront with much of their self surveillance use. When the COVID was at it's peak they had public application that scrubbed everyones cell phone for location data and tracked sick people around town. The app would tell you if you had been in the same area as sick people.

 

[Alder Logs]

This notification came in from www.CorbettReport.com as I was reading this. 

 

 

Jason Bermas joins James

for a powerful interview about the seriousness of the situation

that America is just starting to wake up to.

From lockdowns and quarantines

to the US military and medical martial law,

things are getting real.

Are you prepared for what's coming?

 

Edited by Alder Logs, 18 March 2020 - 01:09 PM.

[Alpoehi]

I am stunned what could happen in this pandemic.

 

Due to quarantine there is increased traffic on the internet. The German government is thinking about banning streaming services like Netflix. There is also:

 

- 50% more video conferences

- 25% more online gaming

 

Swiss internet provider Swisscom cannot avoid having problems with temporary overload in internet traffic.

The swiss government reacted promptly advising its citizens not to draw on streaming services like Netflix in the intensity as it is now, else priorities would have to be shifted and streaming services could be shut off.

 

This could threaten rules of neutrality on the internet and its use.

 

Source: Welt, german newspaper

[ElrikEriksson]

This is why I endorse piracy, download once and have it for years/decades
I'm binge watching long ago downloaded Supernatural seasons so I'll be caught up for the last season when it finishes.
A very large porn torrent site had a coronavirus freeleech event, I barely got anything since I have 2 TB of porn stockpiled.
I wonder if old text based chat systems will have a bit more life breathed into them if peoples net gets capped.

I feel for people who don't read. I know many people who don't own any books.
No books, no downloaded content, no physical hobbies like woodcarving, can't even cook, what will these people do in lockdown with no net? Just stare at the wall and live in fear?
I have rocks gems and woods, a machine shop, hundreds of fiction books, a thousand technical books, tens of thousands of scientific papers, mushroom grows, cactus grows, medicinal herb garden, food garden, organic chemistry lab begging for hobby work, a thousand movies, a whole file tree of downloaded TV series', loads of DMT, a decade supply of ß-carbolines, loads of mescaline, loads of mushrooms, loads of porn, three thousand downloaded talks by buddhist monks, I cook, I lift weights, and I meditate.
Christ, I'm glad I'm on lockdown. I hope it lasts a while, I have tons of stuff to do!

Edited by ElrikEriksson, 18 March 2020 - 04:30 PM.

[TVCasualty]

If we can't numb our minds with streaming TV then I guess we can go out looting 'n' shit.

 

I really do expect a serious crime wave to erupt soon, assuming it hasn't already begun.

 

I expect a rise in armed robberies as economic pressure mounts and wearing masks becomes more common and accepted, so it's definitely the worst time in the history of convenience stores to be a convenience store clerk since one of your better-case scenarios is the store shuts down and you get laid off and end up broke and homeless.

 

Commercial theft will probably skyrocket at all the empty, shut-down businesses. Burglaries will probably drop a lot since so many more people will be home all the time, though home invasions may rise. Police response time will likely get ridiculous as crime increases while the number of officers (and firefighters, and EMTs) fluctuates depending on virus infection rates. Legions of individuals will end up working as the equivalent of indentured servants in Amazon warehouses.

 

All of the ingredients needed to inspire a global Summer of Rage are in play and getting worse. We're about to find out a whole lot about ourselves and much of it won't be pretty.

 

The fuckery has already begun in the (several) cases of black hats using the Johns Hopkins map as a vehicle for spreading malware, so here's to hoping those assholes all get hit by empty buses ASAP instead (since they might survive the virus).

 

And I can't prove it but I'm starting to suspect that the International Olympic Committee is pulling some sketchy financial shit by continuing to pretend that there's going to be a Summer Olympics this year, which is insane and absurd. Since every other big event on the planet is being cancelled or postponed it's a no-brainer that the same needs to happen tp the Olympics so IMO the only reasonable explanation for why officials are continuing the charade is some sort of attempt to maximize interest as long as possible, defer defaults as long as possible, and/or complete some sort of behind-the-scenes manipulations intended to minimize their losses (by shifting them to the citizens of Japan who will ultimately get the bill). Fuck the Olympics (which has been my stance for many years).

[TVCasualty]

The pandemic is also reinforcing things we already more or less knew, such as how much Youtube sucks:

 

 

 

I do not believe that whomever wrote that nonsense has any clue at all about just how hard what they're doing is going to be to deal with for a vast number of individuals, advocacy groups, media watchdogs, etc, who produce less-than-mainstream content for a living and aren't established major mainstream media companies. 

 

They're erring on the side of fucking over all the non-corporate content publishers while somehow pretending that screening videos isn't one of the easiest kinds of jobs there is to do from home. Heck, I watch videos from home quite often and I'm no tech genius so it seems like a major tech company with lots of tech geniuses could do it if they felt like it.

 

And of course we all damned well know that they could do this if they wanted to, which suggests there's a not-so-subtle effort going on that's intended to turn the site into an online version of old-school cable TV (with independently-produced alternative content being just as hard to find, if it's allowed to exist at all).

Edited by TVCasualty, 19 March 2020 - 12:28 PM.

[August West]

Totally ramped up, along with Fedbook, censoring of content/comments calling into question the US response, past and ongoing, to the virus outbreak.

[Myc]

This is why I haven't commented very much on the virus itself.

 

I believe that this event is being used as a catalyst - just like 9/11 - in order to get us to hand over our civil liberties willingly. Once precedent has been set..........there's no going back.

Follow the money.

I suspect this is being used as a way to "avoid" the inevitable economic collapse which was to follow 2008. Notice how every country is pumping fresh money into their economies - just like the bailouts of 2008/2009.

Convenient, to say the least.

[ElrikEriksson]

I don't think this is being used to avoid a recession, I believe this is being used as a way to excuse one.

Most western economies, some more than others, are fundamentally structured into a "boom, bust" archetype. This lets the more clever rich get perversely wealthy at the cost of periodically trashing the national economies. The majority of those countries population is kept ignorant of the fact that these routine, predictable, and usually predicted economic collapses are a designed feature of the system.

In every recession the affected nations try to find a scape goat to take the blame and distract the masses from the fact that it was always intended to occur.

Now we have the perfect excuse. Make the coming recession happen 'in response to' covid-19 and slip by the bailouts and stimulus packages as part of a medical emergency so fewer people complain.

A simple but elegant solution to keep the masses in the dark about the inherent inequity of their economic system.

If we were actually badly overdue for a global recession, and I were the tin foil hat type, I might even think coronavirus was released for economic reasons.

Thats very unlikely, though. Multi-billionaires are just taking advantage of it to become multi-multi-billionares with little opposition.

[August West]

I'm not sure I agree with this ^. Though I'm not sure I disagree, either, yet. There's probably a mixture of both.

 

I absolutely agree (I think you're saying this) that recessions are essentially engineered to one degree or another. The only people who lose out on them are the people that, as you say, aren't aware that they're baked into the process and pull their money out of markets at the bottom. Those are the primary people who lost money in the '08 scenario. Pretty much everyone who stayed, made money.

 

I think this may actually be a surprise (taking for granted that it's naturally occurring). At the very least, it seems, the virus is exposing how fragile the economy is with regards to supporting "civilization". All the low-hanging fruit of technological advancement (not my concept) has been picked. Aside from Silicon Valley, advancements in tech have pretty much stalled but we're pretending like we keep sending people to the moon for the first time, over and over.

 

Time will tell, of course, but this feels fundamentally different to me (said a bunch of people throughout history who were proven wrong).

[ElrikEriksson]

Recessions don't just hurt the people who play the stock market. They primarily hurt the people who loose their jobs, people who can no longer afford medical care for their families in applicable nations, people who thought the good times would continue and now can't pay off their mortgage and become homeless, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a communist or an extreme-socialist. Re-reading my last post I realize peoples communist detector might have started beeping

But I'm not a capitalist either, per se. At least not by the contemporary definition. Stock markets, commodities investing, and trading of debt packages should be banned. They have no productive or generative capacity in themselves. They don't create anything, it's just a dangerous game. All they do is turn a nations economy into a casino and destabilize the entire system for the profit of the few.

[Myc]

Elrik - I think we're saying pretty much the same thing. I just didn't bother to elaborate very much.

 

It's not the avoidance - necessarily - just the disguising the moving of money. Recession or pandemic - it was going to happen either way.

I'm saying that this convenient, natural event has been a boon upon which to capitalize.

[TVCasualty]

Multi-billionaires are just taking advantage of it to become multi-multi-billionares with little opposition.

 

Once an indeterminate threshold of disenfranchisement among a given population is crossed then they could very well see opposition to their goals and methods explode from inconsequential to uprisings that result in mounting their heads on pikes (literally) in no time flat. They'd best tread carefully through this unprecedented and unpredictable situation as pissing off millions of enraged people with nothing left to lose is not prudent.

 

We'll only find out where that tipping point is in retrospect, unfortunately. And once a given region erupts in massive and probably-violent unrest to put a stop to the fuckery it could and likely will inspire others to do the same.

 

There is both great danger and great opportunity in Chaos. Thanks to the current (and growing) level of ambient Chaos, many people are going to be making a lot of plays in coming months that they would not have attempted (or even considered) otherwise. Some will be self-serving fuckery and some inspired and altruistic (and will take place in many contexts; political, financial, criminal, vengeful, entrepreneurial, etc.).

 

When I add everything all up it paints a picture of unprecedented unpredictability for the foreseeable future. That kind of Chaos is an existential nightmare for those in power or with significant vested interests in maintaining the status quo but can be a powerful ally of the disenfranchised (on several levels).

 

It's going to be an interesting Summer, to say the least.

Edited by TVCasualty, 19 March 2020 - 02:05 PM.

[August West]

Recessions don't just hurt the people who play the stock market.

Of course you're correct. My comment was focusing solely, myopically, on those who are in the stock market. And, I agree with your comment about the value of most of the "products" sold.

 

I've essentially given up on the "capitalism"/"socialism" discussions. I tried for a while to differentiate by saying "state capitalism" vs free-market but people mostly just want to hunker down with generalizations.

Edited by August West, 19 March 2020 - 02:18 PM.

[Alder Logs]

I'm a capitalist because around these parts, you can't not be.  The thing is, I'm the world's worst capitalist. 

[ElrikEriksson]

I'm never quite sure what to call myself, I hated those classes in college

I prefer a society where people work for their money. Be it working to build or grow something, working at a skill like being a doctor or janitor, starting up a business to sell furniture or import goods.

Hundreds of years ago this is what capitalism was. A capitalist might finance a spice trading voyage with capital in the hopes of profit. Putting money, work, or skill down to achieve a tangible objective.

These days capitalism seems to also include gambling with speculation on stocks and manipulating other peoples debts to cleverly invent profit from other peoples losses.

 

At the same time I don't think we should be concerned only with ourselves. Is a nation of individuals that don't want to help each other really a nation?

It just makes sense for everyone to pay the bill for everyones basic medical needs, because financial problems usually happen along side medical problems.

There are even experiments to give everyone enough free money to live in poverty and let them see to earning more themselves. That, at least, is a fascinating idea.

 

Old school capitalist? Free-market socialist? I don't know what I am, but I know I don't want the same label as a billionaire who would gamble the economy and put thousands homeless to get another billion.

[Alder Logs]

Anyone heard of the "gift economy?"  When we think of gifts, we might first think of things.  But what of action?  How about "karma yoga?"  This is more focused on actions, to consider a dharma of work, and the work according to one's dharma.  The rewards of service to others pays off, in my experience.   What I said about having to be a capitalist in the society in which I find my being, is that to get some things, I have to pay out capital.  But in my doings over the many years of a de-facto practice of karma yoga (meaning I didn't really know that's what I was doing -- I just thought of it as service -- if and when I thought about it, which I usually didn't), I worked for no pay as often as not.  My history of working for pay had left me feeling an emptiness, usually coming to a distaste for whatever job it was I was employed in doing. 

 

What kind of capitalist works for no pay?   The world's worst capitalist.  Trying to convince anyone of an upside of living a life of service, in good part shunning monetary motivations, is a pretty hard sell in most of the current world's cultures.   The ones who have made it work to make making it look as good as they can to those who haven't made it.  I think that has turned out to be quite malignant for our thinking species.  Capitalism is all about making money, and then make the money you made make more money.  So, as salt may be basic to cooking, money is basic to capitalism.  It's the coin of the realm (ha ha).

 

Have I experienced a fear of want?  Of course, it's trained into this culture from day one.  All the motivations to acquire capital are negative except if the motivation is to give it away.  Fear and greed could be the same thing.   False pride and greed seem to go hand in hand as well.  Building up that image is so linked to getting and having money that it is probably the top motivator for advertising memes.   At least looking good as our motivation puts a better taste in our mouths than facing our fears straight on. 

 

So, I don't know how much that "happy for no reason" got there at the bottom of my posts from living a life of service, but it is suspected to have some relation.   I have had some pretty broke times in my life.  Lots of them, actually.   My mom died in 2011 and I inherited a bit of money.  She had it in stocks, mostly energy and minerals.  I couldn't be okay with that, so I cashed it all out and have been living off of it since then, depleting it quite a lot since then.  It was at the start of my shiitake growing period, which had brought me here to 'Topia.  So, I tried to make it into service by trying to start a worker owned cooperative mushroom farm, hoping to find members here willing to relocate.  That didn't work out, as everyone was doing what they wanted to be doing where they were for the most part. 

 

Fine, I don't distrust the wisdom of the universe (from the root words, one turning).  I have been happily going broke again, if slowly, living and giving as I find myself moved.  Do I now worry about when the pile runs out or is inflated to worthlessness because I won't buy the fruits of modern mining in the forms of metals?  No, I have always been at the mercy of the universe, yet here I am, happy to be.   Somehow, I have come to see the universe seems to take care of everything.  The fears that come up, they always pass.  The happiness that comes from outside, this passes as well.   Maybe the virus gets me (this body), or maybe I fall off the roof. 

 

There was a time when the fears were my motivators.   I think psychedelic experiences help immensely to see them for the ghosts they were.   When we come down, we don't have to start believing again in all the bullshit we left behind when tripping.  Perhaps the pandemic will reveal a lot of bullshit for all of us.   One thing about the shit hitting the fan, it's just shit, and it can be washed off.  When the shit's all gone, what will be the reality?  Are we in this together, or is every dog for his own the true base of what's called, "human nature?"

 

Going for it with no edits.  Can I do it?   Clicking Post.