Women's Bodies and the Coronavirus

Emma Barnett writes in The Guardian that "State control over women's bodies is an unforeseen outcome of the coronavirus crisis". There's so much wrong with the title, let alone the article itself, that it bears some scrutiny.

The author mixes up the health crisis, which is almost in its entirety an intentionally created phenomenon as can be seen by anyone who wishes to look up the present death rate in comparison to the same week or month in previous years. It can be done for any country with varying degrees of reliability. The UK is reasonably up to date on this and the UK Gov register shows that the pandemic is largely, if not entirely, of political making. The media's frenzy from Day 1 is not supported by the facts. Don't take my word for it, look it up yourself.

Now onto the second issue, of control over women's bodies.

In the UK, as elsewhere, pregnant women who are in jobs that have not been trashed or postponed by the current crisis are generally having to carry on working. The threat from this coronavirus is no different to working alongside anyone who has bad flu, parasites, aids, sores, fungal infections, etc, and, like all the above, you may not even be aware they are ill. Additionally, this year's coronavirus is particularly virulent only if you are old or with an impaired immune system, in which case you are unlikely even to be working. Pregnant women, especially in the second half of a pregnancy should, in a better world, have the option of parking their job, or changing to a less taxing one, if their job holds dangers for pregnancy. This is often not the case, coronavirus o not.

But the title of the article refers to "state control" over women's bodies, and the risks involved in working are not proportional to state control. Indeed, quite the contrary: more state control would be a good thing, in the sense that women might not need to continue working in a dangerous job merely to keep the salary going, if the state were more involved and if a job did not depend entirely on the economic whims of the company owners. The same could be said for men and children - no one should be forced to work in a dangerous environment.

Marx (yes, you won't die if you mention his name) understood that reproduction is a form of production and should be recognised as such. When women get maternity leave, the state recognises that the creation of the next generation of citizens is necessary and useful, and companies collectively should also value the creation of the next generation of workers.

Then, in the same article, there is the question of whether the UK government should allow medical abortions at home or not. The right to abortion was won only relatively recently and after a great struggle (and is an ongoing struggle in many places). There are so very few women who, if they receive a decent education on sexuality and have the means to control their reproduction, would choose to have an abortion unless they had extremely good reasons for it (malformation in the baby, risk to the mother, or unforeseen circumstances, financial or otherwise).

All evidence shows that the means should be facilitated to the woman who wishes or needs to abort, the earlier the better. But, as any form of abortion brings risks of many sorts to the mother, and bodily harm to the foetus, it should not be treated as if it were an entirely insignificant matter. The government could easily allow doctors to evaluate their patients via an interview conducted online and prescribe medical abortion without the woman having to see the doctor in person. The coronavirus is no excuse for abortion rights being denied.

But to assume that medical home abortions are not a form of control over women's bodies is a mistake. To douse your body with hormones is not in fact having much control over your body. We all of us have given our governments a great deal of control over our bodies, starting with the sort of food we eat and the effects it has on our health; and the type of society we have, which puts huge demands on women especially, as the functions of producing babies, nurturing them, caring for other members of the family, etc are all but incompatible with the demands of an industrial, or post-industrial, society. If you think this is refuted by the many men who do the nurturing, you have not understood why women in general are paid less and given less rewarding jobs. The causes are systemic.

In the same article, we are told that the government is currently suspending IVF treatments, while the crisis lasts. I should imagine that all elective plastic surgery has also been postponed. There is a range of procedures that could well be viewed as bodily harm in a more perspicacious sort of society: unnecessary plastic surgery, caesarians, episiotomies, tooth veneers. There are so many of them, and the majority affect women disproportionately.

IVF is nowadays treated almost as routine, despite the very considerable side-effects of this "toxic cocktail of hormones and hope", including a significant increase in female tumours, lower fertility of the offspring, and the medicalisation of pregnancy and birth. More importantly, why are so many couples (or individuals) needing IVF treatment in the first place? What are we doing as a society to make people so infertile? If whatever-it-is isn't an extraneous control of women's bodies I don't know what is.

The current "coronavirus crisis" is maybe a different control of women's bodies. It is, in a wider sense, a control of almost everybody's body. The rich seem to be able to move around as they like, but the poor's bodies are increasingly confined to being indoors or at work. But in the narrower sense, women's bodies are being controlled more or less as they always have been.

Whatever Happened to Reducing Plastics?

We're extremely susceptible to manipulation, to be sure. Today I see in The Guardian's lead headline that there are people in parks that are not keeping a minimum of 2m away from others and are "very selfish". In practical terms it would be all but impossible to get the virus at a distance of 2m outdoors. The Guardian is, of course, campaigning to get people confined indoors, in a state of virtual martial law like in Spain or Italy, although clearly the measures taken in these countries have not proved helpful. And no one spares a thought for those whose homes or family members (if they even have homes and families) will make confinement far more unhealthy or unsafe than being in the park.

Only a few weeks ago we were obsessing over plastics, finally and rightfully ditching the throw-away plastic bag for a reusable bag and changing over to less packaged purchases at the shops. We were fretting over plastics bobbing about in the sea as, even more seriously, our planet burned. Now we're eyeing others with distrust, even dislike, as we glide past each other at the supermarket, throwing millions of flimsy plastic gloves away every day, and the planet is still burning.

Our present model of life, neoliberalism, has been going for some 50 years. It ratcheted up previous forms of capitalism and preached the infantile notion that greed was good, that rich people were successful and worthy of great respect and emulation, and that the world was a huge playground that could be trashed because a new toy would always come along once it was economically viable to produce one.

We have elevated real freaks to economic positions they should never have reached in the natural order of things. These odd-looking, unempathetic weirdos have been allowed to run riot and buy political power or directly run the world. Think Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Mnuchin (Goldman Sachs banker, currently US Secretary of the Treasury), the list could include just about anyone who is close to power and they are all aberrations. We have idiots and buffoons who have won political positions of importance solely because they were born rich and because we have a political system that generally opposes two candidates from two parties that are in fact the same party: the Corporate Party.

If you think that the coronavirus crisis is simply a health crisis and that once we are past it life will go on more or less as before, stop reading right here. Things are not going back to where they were a few weeks ago. The coronavirus is in fact a minor health event being used to reset our western world to a new world order. Our economies were already lurching from one huge crisis to another. We were barely patching things up after the 2008 meltdown, when the new crisis struck, long before the coronavirus arrived on the scene. Western economic markets were already falling heavily when the coronavirus appeared, and MSM propaganda outlets duly started ramping up the panic, while there were in actual fact only a handful of affected people. We now, of course, have a truly huge economic crisis, not remotely caused by the coronavirus which has only brought it forward.

The perfect storm of environmental degradation and climate breakdown, along with economic meltdown, together with AI having made almost all of us obsolete, and 5G making us easily controllable, means that we are on the cusp of an enormous change, one that has been chosen without our participation in the debate. Capitalism is entirely indifferent to our fate. If our existence becomes unprofitable for the very rich, we will be eliminated.

We have had an opportunity to seize this unique moment, in which nothing, absolutely nothing, about the current order is working for the 99%, and do something about it. Once we are contained within our homes, not allowed to associate with others, that moment may well be lost. Any solution to all these truly massive problems will be imposed from above and will not be to our benefit.

We allowed huge inequality to arise, hoodwinked by the absurd analogy that a rising tide raises all boats, absurd because wealth is a zero sum concept. If we all have a million euros, then a million euros is no longer worth very much. If we want to think that money is merely the equivalent of what you can buy with it, this finite planet is the limit of our collective wealth. The huge inequality we did not stop in time allowed an new plutocracy to arise, global in many senses, and they will do literally anything to protect their wealth. We have become collateral damage.

Once the coronavirus crisis is over, when we finally notice that the overwhelmed hospitals we are seeing on TV were already overwhelmed before it started, the merry-go-round will not start up again. We might think it has but we have now shown how easily manipulated we are, and how easily controlled.

The Generational Divide

There has been a lot of intentional confusion about the Baby Boomer generation so I am going to start with a bit of history and a few definitions taken from Wikipedia.

First of all, the Baby Boom Generation is the demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is most often defined as individuals born between 1946 and 1964, during the post–World War II baby boom.

The preceding generation, the Silent Generation is defined as individuals born between 1928 and 1945. This generation was comparatively small because the financial insecurity of the 1930s and the war in the early 1940s caused people to have fewer children.

The modern welfare state was initiated in the United Kingdom with the National Insurance Act in 1945, creating compulsory contributions from employees and relief for unemployment, death, sickness, and retirement, followed by laws shortly afterwards to provide cover from the "cradle to the grave". All this was initiated while Britain was burdened with a 400% debt to GDP, due to the Second World War, a huge amount, and it was achieved through political will and immensely talented politicians, almost entirely from the Labour Party, and the foresight of a generation that understood the value of solidarity in any human endeavour.

(That said, the Spanish Second Republic long before, in 1931, brought in popular sovereignty and universal suffrage, freedom of meeting, association, and expression, divorce, co-education of
boys and girls and the end of religion as a mandatory subject taught in schools, among other things.)

In the USA the beginnings of a true welfare state, brought in by the F D Roosevelt government (1933-1945) were well initiated but effectively pushed back later on by the far Right.

The Silent Generation was a small, motivated and solidarious generation that won the rights that we most value now. It was an altruistic generation that had gone through a terrible war, with the spirit of them being all in it together.

They were followed by the Baby Boomers in two large demographic waves: the first cohort from 1946 to 1955 was far larger than the second from 1956-1964. Both have proved to be staggeringly selfish and lacking in empathy (especially the first cohort), short-sighted (both) and intellectually inept (especially the second). The successful 1987 film Wall Street emblemized the Baby Boomer creed with Gordon Gekko saying, "Greed is good", and telling us that it was all a game. Trickle Down Theory could never have worked but it sounded good to greedy people, that all would benefit from each of us grabbing as much as we could. Many of the most influential of them avidly gobbled up turgid prose and half-baked ideas from Ayn Rand that gave credence to their inner desires, that selfishness and lack of consideration were good things in the greater scheme of things.

During their lives the Baby Boomers, especially the first cohort, have ruled the roost every time they've voted, whether they voted for Ronald Reagan (President of the USA in 1981) or Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister of the UK in 1979), and when they later voted for Bill Clinton in the US or Tony Blair in the UK.

Reagan and Thatcher brought in the entirely common-sense idea that a government should balance its books. It sounded good, although it is in fact grossly unfair. The same large generation that had cost a previous generation so much to nurture and educate, when it came to their productive years, the years they would pay taxes, voted to reduce those taxes and "balance the books". Not a word about balancing the books when they have retired, and they are once again a massive drain to the state (pensions are 13% of GDP in the EU, not taking into account healthcare, free public transport or other costs). During decades, states were hollowed out, ensuring that politicians in the main represent the Corporate Party and that welfare and decent jobs are now absent for large parts of the population.

The second cohort has been passive to an extreme, generally being led by the first on all matters of opinion. Generations that have followed have been small enough to ensure that their political opinions are irrelevant, leading all but the old to be entirely passive as concerns voting and politics. At this stage, many of the second cohort have not yet reached retirement age and some may have potentially little pension to look forward to nor substantial savings, unlike those of the first cohort.

These years have been of neoliberalism, of sociopathic leaders supporting imperial and corporate interests, and have been years of shocking corruption and decadence. It is a well-known fact that left-wingers and young people do not vote in the main, in many cases because they are the same people and time has shown them that nothing will ever change whether they vote or not. The official left-wing opposition is left-wing in name only, it talks the talk but does not walk the walk. There is so much money from vested interests mixed up in politics and the mainstream media that it would be difficult to imagine any politician who won power being in a condition to change things anyway.

The result of all this greed, competitiveness and self-preening has been the trashing of the lives of those that are weak, be it other people or those unfortunate animals that come into our cross-hairs. A generation has trashed the environment, ditched hard-won human rights, waged constant war, voted for unbelievable corruption, denied later generations a decent education beyond regurgitating useless data, and by its sheer force of numbers made sure that nothing ever changes, at least until it is no longer around to face the music.

And now we have the mother-of-all economic crises upon us, brought about by the mother-of-all pandemic propagandas (and I wonder if that itself was caused by the underlying mother-of-all climate crises). We are happily ditching the economic future of the young and those of working age in order to supposedly safeguard the health of the very old and infirm, locked up and terrified as they are, watching scary TV on their own, hour after hour. The rest of us, those who still had a future a couple of weeks ago, are being thrown into the trash can, and for nothing. Because once again, the Baby Boomers have got it all wrong and they are being taken for a ride.

They are at it again!

Nature and The Police State

I notice today that The Guardian is suggesting we be encouraged to get out more on our bicycles, which would be without a doubt a good way to do a bit of exercise, enjoy some fresh air and maintain our distances from one another. I am not going to go into the very dubious claim that distances should even be maintained, as I have made my opinion clear enough in previous blogs that the medical case for this lock-down is not simply debatable but totally absent. There is a mass of well-documented evidence out there, the sort that has actual data and not merely screaming hysteria and panic.

There is also in The Guardian today the very sensible suggestion that we should deal with our horrendous anxiety - over our early, and forced, retirement, lack of job, money, you-name-it - as an opportunity to get in contact with Nature.

These two measures are not going to be of much use to most of us. In much of Europe, alas, we are currently banned from going out on our bikes, unless we can prove it is to go to work, in which case a packed tube or bus will do just as well. Likewise, in Spain you are not allowed to walk in the park, or stroll to the shops admiring the spring flowers, unless you can prove you are doing some serious shopping or that you are dashing to the tobacconists (yes, really).

Many people have no garden nor patio, no balcony even. We have over the last 40 years or so totally abolished the idea of a world to be shared in common or of a common goal for humanity. Some 300 years ago, capitalism enclosed what remained of common land and established the human goal as competitive, the accumulation of private wealth - some of which could be shared for a profit -, and public misery. The basic notion of being able to wander around, enjoy the spring flowers and nature in general, chat to other people - all of this is currently fanciful, subversive even.

In most societies poor people are known for having larger families, for a variety of reasons but one is that the children may well continue in the same vein of work, manual or otherwise, as their parents, and will not move far away from home in the future. It thus makes economic and affective sense to have children. Not so well known is the fact that the wealthy also have large families. Wealthy children will carry on the dynasty and have similar business interests. The middle classes on the other hand have low fertility as the cost in general of bringing up and educating children, and that of the childcare associated with working mothers, is prohibitively expensive.

At this moment, during the coronavirus lock-down, there are children from wealthy families playing in their gardens, many allowed the company of other children behind the gardens' high walls, and who will not be unduly affected by the stringent measures in force. School studies will be done in the morning, helped along by well-educated parents and the household's staff. In poor households, there will be no garden and no opportunity to leave the flat for weeks. Little studying will be done in the end. The middle class's children will study but not have much opportunity to play with other children or get outside bar a dreary wander around the patio or small garden.

Even if it were shown that the coronavirus was a significant risk to the old, beyond the risk that is posed by old age itself and accompanying illnesses, we could have put the elderly into quarantine, delivered their food, made sure that they had sufficient care and company, and done all of this at a minuscule fraction of the cost that crashing our economies has meant. The data shows conclusively that there is statistically no serious health risk to anyone who is not old or sick. The years and years of new austerity on the horizon should have been taken into account. Austerity that once again will negatively affect all but the very wealthy.

The 10 years of austerity in the UK after the 2008 crash caused 130,000 unnecessary deaths. Many of those who lose jobs, houses and their health, and all of the many who lose their lives, will never recover. Why was a small risk to very elderly or sick turned into a massive decline in living standards and, foreseeably, in life expectancy for everybody else?

Robber Barons and the Black Death

There is a mind-blowingly large transfer of money from the 99% to the 1% going on right at this moment and no one seems to be noticing it.

Central banks are "injecting" an enormous amount of money into the "economy", to "stimulate the markets". These terms are simply not explained to the general public, nor what these astronomical amounts actually mean. There is now no waffle about "quantitative easing", in case we should wonder why we had all that quantitative easing over the last 12 years just to end up in the mother of all crises yet again. A few days ago the ECB surreptitiously injected some some 120 billion euros ($135.28 billion), all of which upped share prices during a few minutes before they fell again. The Fed's amount was $1.5 trillion. The Bank of England has just printed up £330 billion. You could throw a dollar out of the window every second for 143,000 years and still not get to the end of the amounts that these three central banks have thrown at the markets in one day. Not to mention the pounds, euros and dollars that have been "injected" on other days too numerous to mention.

The "economy", despite the constant mismatch, is NOT the stock market. The stock market is vital to bolster capitalism's workings but does NOT translate into a better life for the vast majority of its citizens. It does make some people very wealthy, and they will and do use that wealth to make sure that things generally keep getting a little bit worse for everybody else.

These obscene amounts of money were ostensibly not available over the years for a top-class health or education service, nor for decent homes and jobs. Instead, when capitalism starts to stumble, money is quickly thrown at the business community, ie given to corporations, that then spend it on buying back their own shares as so many of their top directors depend on the share price for their jobs and bonuses. They do not buy bonds as interest rates are kept so low; but they do accumulate debt for themselves, for the same reason, meaning that indebtedness soars even as money is thrown at them. This money, in essence just printed up, will be paid for by you and me and the next generations in reduced public services, the merming of our scant savings, the loss of our jobs and the further reduction of our remaining rights. It will not save the stock market this time in any case. Money will be thrown at the markets but the system is now so rotten to the core that it will be like throwing money at a black hole. High inflation is on the horizon, good for those who have debts, bad for those who have managed to save a bit (but are not owners of large tracts of land).

We are locked in our homes, being bombarded with scary messages, being led to believe that this coronavirus is like the Black Death - although the number of fatalities is risibly low -, or like the misnamed Spanish flu. Curiously Wikipedia has just revised downwards its mortality rate for Spanish flu and its new rate is now entirely incompatible with the number of people who actually died. Some have suggested that Wikipedia has done this in order to make people think that the current coronavirus is as dangerous as Spanish flu and that hundreds of millions will die. They will not. We live in regions where there is clean water, for a start, and conditions have absolutely nothing to do with the Late Middle Ages or with countries devastated by war and hunger.

But the capitalist venture continues apace meanwhile, undebated and not voted for. I notice that Mike Pompeo in the US is once again ramping it up about human rights in Iran (at the very moment that we are in lock-down over here and ostensibly without so many of our most basic rights); and that the British MOD (Ministry of Defence) has just ensured that the crimes soldiers commit abroad, as they trample over the rights of people in foreign lands in search of plunder, now expire after 5 years. This legislation is, apparently, to stop ‘vexatious’ claims.

No lock-down for the military it seems.

How Coronavirus Hysteria will Be Very Bad for Young People

The University of Leeds has looked into inequality in 86 countries and found that the 10% richest consume 20 times more energy than the 10% poorest. They drive SUVs, jet and helicopter all over the world, have mansions to air-condition, and so on. As far as I can see this figure does not take into account the energy that goes into their excessive consumption: caviar and champagne flown over to wherever they find themselves, the first beaujolais rushingly brought to their table, designer clothing to be worn a couple of times and then thrown out...

And yet there is an idea that the world is overpopulated. It is, of course. There are nearly 8 billion of us, and we and our suffering domesticated animals have increased uncontrollably to take up almost all of the biomass of our planet and have left wildlife virtually no habitat. Population control would be a good thing, starting with the very rich, who after all use up a hugely disproportionate amount of the world's resources. But it does not look like that is going to happen.

From here it looks like the current coronavirus hype is being used to firstly control the workers and lower classes, taking away our right to movement and association, making us regard each other with great suspicion, making us terrified of others giving us germs, and giving us a false notion of passivity and lack of political nous as being patriotic. Once the hysteria has died down, no one will bother to tell us that life expectancy was NOT significantly reduced by the virus. Meanwhile there is a massive transfer of wealth going on upwards, as central banks print money, sorry "inject", that is going to the business sector, ie corporations that will, with interest rates at 0 or below, return to buying back their bonds, bolstering their stock price, and laying off workers.

There were some theories at the start of all this that China put the whole thing in motion in an attempt to cull its excessive population. Think about this. If you want to reduce your population there's no point killing old people. They are not going to have children and they are going to die soon anyway. If you wanted population control you would go for young people, who are incidentally those not particularly affected by the virus.

The current hysteria will only die down once the mainstream media stops scaremongering, and that will be once a vaccine is ready and once it has been imposed on all the world's population they can get their hands on. As a correlative fact, western populations, which are very widely vaccinated from birth, are not breeding well (this could actually be a good thing in the larger scheme of things). It may surprise you to hear this, but the fact that almost every corner in every city has an assisted reproduction centre is not a sign of good genetic health in the population. A new coronavirus vaccine will be produced, making Bill Gates and a few laboratories very rich, and people will rush to get it, despite coronaviruses being notorious for mutating, and despite this year's vaccine being useless against next year's virus. In any case, lots of people will want it, and illogically they will feel aggressive towards those that try not to be vaccinated. After all, if it works, why worry about those who do not get it?

The risk to old and infirm people that is inherent in most coronaviruses will be exchanged for a vaccine risk, however small, to everybody else, plus a huge reduction in young people's fertility, I believe. It seems to me that vaccination does reduce a population's fertility, and it seems to me that this particular vaccine will be allowed to skip any serious testing of its secondary effects, or may even have a birth control component built into it.

We have, after all, allowed Artificial Intelligence to make us almost redundant to the elite and they must be wondering if they actually need us any more. We have been distracted by this coronavirus from noticing that capitalism was crashing long before it arrived and that inequality and herd thinking are the biggest problem for human and planetary health.

¿Qué pasa con la desobediencia civil?

Mire a tu alrededor. ¿Se están acumulando los cadáveres por todas partes? Ah, Ud. responde, es importante aplanar la tasa de infección por coronavirus para no sobrecargar nuestros servicios públicos sanitarios, los únicos que le tratarán gratis por el coronavirus. (El mismo sistema de salud que se destrozó y se privatizó sin tregua durante décadas). ¡¡¡Hay que "aplanar la curva"!!! Por lo tanto, tenemos que aislarnos.

Tengo dos cosas que decirle:

1. Sería bueno asegurarnos en el futuro de que nuestro servicios públicos no estén funcionando a plena capacidad, o más, en tiempos normales, de modo de que los nuevos brotes de algún virus no creen el armageddon.
2. La implacable propaganda que se arroja desde cada pantalla de televisión y periódico es precisamente lo que ha hecho que las personas sobrecarguen el sistema de salud con unos síntomas que mejor se tratan permaneciendo en la cama, no propagando los gérmenes.

El bombardeo mediático ha sido más parecido a la caída de las Torres Gemelas que cualquier otra cosa. Donde quiera que mire, los medios de comunicación están gritando "¡Virus!" y "Pandemia!", señalándolo con enormes letras rojas, en imágenes estridentes y repetitivas. Recuerde que la baja tasa de mortalidad de Corea del Sur por el virus se debe a que las autoridades allí identificaron con gran eficacia a quienes tenían el virus en primer lugar. La tasa de mortalidad de la OMS del 3% es, en sus propias palabras, "ingenua y engañosa", porque depende del número de casos reportados del virus, que es un pequeño reflejo del número real de casos. No se registra la gran cantidad de casos leves; las personas que mejoran solas o con un par de paracetamol no están allí. La cifra total de casos de la OMS es solo de aquellos que se enfermaron gravemente por el virus y terminaron en el hospital, desproporcionadamente los ancianos y los enfermos, y su tasa de mortalidad es más alta. Las personas en países sin un sistema nacional de salud generalmente solo van al hospital cuando están muy enfermas, especialmente aquellos que son pobres y desfavorecidos.

Tenga en cuenta que los menores de 30 años en Corea del Sur tienen una tasa de mortalidad del 0%. Y con 66 muertes de 7.869, la tasa de mortalidad es solo del 0,84% entre los casos de infección detectados, con un nivel más alto entre los hombres debido al tabaquismo. En Inglaterra y Gales, según el British Medical Journal (una de las revistas médicas más prestigiosas del mundo), el número total de muertes NO aumenta, el número de muertes respiratorias NO aumenta, el total de muertes NO ha aumentado y las muertes respiratorias NO han aumentado. Entonces, dado que la tasa de mortalidad por coronavirus es más o menos similar a la de los otros coronavirus que padecemos cada año durante la "temporada de gripe" en alcance y objetivo, la histeria mostrada por los medios, el gobierno y la población hace mucho más daño que la enfermedad misma. En España, vi en la televisión nacional a un reportero que mostraba una "terraza" con gente tomando cerveza (¡ay, ya no más!), que los llamaba irresponsables y mencionaba con gran contundencia que estaban en un espacio abierto cerca de otras personas y "comían aceitunas usando la mano". La OMS tardó mucho en llamarlo "pandemia", mientras que los medios masivos lo hicieron desde el primer día implacablemente. ¿Sin embargo, es la crisis realmente una pandemia? En realidad no existe ningún definición cuantificada de "pandemia", que es sencillamente una epidemia que se ha extendido a varios países. ¿Llamarías el refriado común "pandemia"? La Fundación Bill y Melinda Gates es ahora el segundo mayor donante de la OMS, después del gobierno de los Estados Unidos (piénselo). También ha financiado una vacuna que dice que podrá estar lista en abril. No hay conflicto de intereses allí entonces. Llámeme cínica, pero apuesto a que Bill y Melinda no se vacunarán. Las medidas drásticas y burguesas que se toman, confinar a la gente en sus hogar, prohibir las visitas a amigos, cerrar todos los espacios públicos, etc., son extremadamente perjudiciales para las personas vulnerables: las personas mayores que pasan días sin ver a nadie y ven contenido incesantemente aterrador en la televisión, los niños que dependen de las comidas escolares, las personas que viven con familiares con enfermedades mentales o violentos, etc. Sin mencionar a las personas sin hogar. El cierre de escuelas y guarderías significa que muchos trabajadores sanitarios se quedarán en casa para cuidar a sus propios hijos o familiares dependientes. Ya Ud. no puede salir, ni siquiera a un parque, aunque nadie nunca haya contraído un virus al caminar por el parque. Sus hijos deben permanecer en el interior en un futuro previsible. Se le permite tomar el metro o autobús abarrotados para ir al trabajo, o hacer teletrabajo codo con codo con otros trabajadores, y usar auriculares que otros han usado minutos antes. Ud. no puede ir de compras a menos que vaya solo al supermercado, pero puede comprar golosinas y tabaco. Está previsto que los drones y personal militar harán cumplir la ley. Mientras tanto, 30,000 soldados estadounidenses están llegando a Europa en su mayor operación militar de los últimos 25 años, sin medidas sanitarias y con absoluta libertad de movimiento en su tiempo de ocio. (La postura agresiva de los EE.UU. ha puesto a Rusia en alerta máxima). Ahora que el desorden obsesivo de lavarse las manos repetidamente se ha vuelto prescriptivo, una orden incluso, ahora que nuestras propias manos se han vuelto intocables, ahora que ya no debemos contactar físicamente con otras personas, excluyendo el ridículo saludo de codo, ¿no hay nada que no esté prohibido o obligatorio en este nuevo régimen totalitario? En tan poco tiempo, hemos sucumbido al lavado de cerebro y a la mentalidad de rebaño que dicta que es irresponsable, o incluso un abandono del deber cívico, encontrarse con otras personas, hablar cara a cara y tocar a otros seres humanos, todo esto cosas ahora potencialmente sancionables con severidad. ¿Dónde está el derecho a la libre circulación en nuestro planeta común, a la asociación pública o privada con otros, y a la manifestación pública contra la corrupción y el poder que se ha extralimitado? ¿Quién defenderá a los perseguidos o los discriminados? El verdadero desinterés y el sacrificio se han convertido de la noche a la mañana en comportamiento peligroso, subversivo y desconsiderado que debe detenerse a toda costa. En cambio, estamos obligados a mostrar un patriotismo de manada aplaudiendo desde nuestros balcones en solidaridad con los trabajadores de la salud, aplaudiendo junto a todos aquellos que votaron una y otra vez por los partidos políticos que destruyeron los servicios públicos sanitarios. No existe suficiente nivel de amenaza para la salud -y el coronavirus actual está muy lejos de ser una amenaza importante para la salud pública-, para justificar que las élites dicten quién puede reunirse dentro o fuera de su hogar, o dónde pueden ir. Los ricos, como están las cosas, no han restringido sus movimientos, sino que se han marchado, empleados domésticos y todo, para disfrutar durante las próximas semanas en el lujo de sus segundas residencias y en compañía de sus amigos gángsters. Tampoco se arriesgan a perder el sustento. Mientras tanto, los bancos centrales acaban de inyectar otra auténtica fortuna a los bolsillos de los muy ricos. Tenga en cuenta que no han decidido perdonar la deuda estudiantil o la deuda hipotecaria de quienes pierdan sus empleos. Por ejemplo, el Banco Central Europeo ha inyectado unos 120 mil millones de euros ($135,28 mil millones), todo lo cual desapareció en minutos. El monto de la Reserva Federal de EE.UU. fue de $1.5 trillones. Ud. podría tirar un dólar por segundo durante casi 50,000 años (piénselo). Este dinero, en esencia recién impreso, será pagado por usted y por mí en servicios públicos reducidos, la pérdida de valor de nuestros escasos ahorros, la pérdida de nuestros trabajos o una mayor reducción de nuestros derechos laborales restantes. De hecho, las cantidades son mucho más altas. Han estado inyectando dinero subrepticiamente durante meses, parcheando un sistema económico en ruinas que ahora ha encontrado el chivo expiatorio perfecto. Al mismo tiempo, hemos perdido el derecho ganado con tanto esfuerzo -murieron muchos por ello- de manifestarnos contra la desaparición de nuestros derechos más básicos de movimiento y asociación. Agregue a eso el derecho fundamental a la integridad corporal, que pronto será tirado por la ventana cuando se nos vacune a la fuerza, bajo pena de arresto o peor (y posteriormente vacunación) por no querer aceptarlo. Al igual que 11S, que también tuvo un antes y un después en lo que respecta a los derechos civiles, estamos sucumbiendo sorprendentemente fácilmente al bombardeo pasivo-agresivo que estamos recibiendo. De hecho, los dos mensajes son incompatibles, pero no deje que eso le desanime. El mensaje: "No se preocupe, mantenga la calma, siga trabajando y luego enciérrese en el interior de su casa"; seguido del otro: "¡Pandemia! ¡Virus! ¡Ud. va morir!" No caiga en la trampa.

What's Happened to Civil Disobedience?

Look around you. Are dead bodies stacking up everywhere you look? Ah, you answer, it's important to spread out the coronavirus infection rate so as not to overload our national health service, the only one that will treat you free for the coronavirus. (The same health service relentlessly run down and privatised for decades.) We have to "flatten the curve"!!! So we have to self-isolate.

I have two things to say to you:

1. It would be good to make sure in the future that our national health service is not running at full capacity or more in normal times, so that new minor viruses do not create armageddon.
2. The relentless propaganda being spewed from every TV screen and newspaper is precisely what has made people overload the health system with symptoms best treated by a stay in bed and not spreading your germs around.

The media blitz has been more akin to that of the Twin Towers coming down than anything else. Wherever you look, mass media is screaming "Virus!" and "Pandemic!" at you with huge red letters, in loud repetitive images.

Remember that South Korea's low death rate for the virus is due to having identified with great efficiency those who had the virus in the first place. The WHO's death rate of 3% is in its own words "naïve and misleading", because it depends on the number of reported cases of the virus, which is a tiny reflection of the real number of cases. The very large number of mild cases are not reported, those people who get better on their own or with a couple of paracetamol are not in there. The WHO's figure of total cases is only of those who were made seriously ill by the virus and ended up in hospital, disproportionately the elderly and infirm, and their death rate is higher. People in countries without a national health system typically only go to hospital when they are very ill, especially those who are poor and disadvantaged.

Note that the under 30s in S Korea have a 0% death rate. And with 66 deaths out of 7,869, the death rate is only 0.84% among detected cases of infection, with a higher level among males due to smoking.

In England and Wales, according to the BMJ, the total number of deaths is NOT rising, the number of respiratory deaths are NOT on the rise, total deaths have NOT increased and respiratory deaths have NOT increased.

So, given that the coronavirus death rate is more or less similar to the other coronaviruses we get every year during the "flu season" in scope and target, the hysteria shown by media, government and population does far more harm than the illness itself. In Spain I saw on national TV a reporter showing a "terraza" with people having beer (alas, no more!), calling them irresponsible and mentioning their cardinal sin of being in an open space close to other people and "eating olives using their hands".

The WHO only recently called this a "pandemic", while the MSM did so since the very first day relentlessly. Does this make the crisis a pandemic though? There really isn't even an quantified definition of "pandemic", merely being an epidemic that has spread to various countries. Would you call the common cold a "pandemic"?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now the second largest donor to the WHO, after the US government (think about it). It has also financed a vaccine that will be ready in April. No conflict of interest there then. Call me cynical but I bet you Bill and Melinda themselves won't be having that vaccine.

The drastic and bourgeois measures being taken, confining people to their homes, prohibiting visits to friends, closing all public spaces, and so on, are extremely detrimental to vulnerable people: old people who are spending days without seeing anyone and watching scary content incessantly on their TVs, children who depend on school dinners, people who live with mentally ill or violent people, and so on. Not to mention the homeless. The closing of schools and daycare centres means that many health workers will stay at home in order to look after their own children or dependent relatives.

You may no longer go outside, not even to a park, although no one ever got a virus by walking in the park. Your children must stay indoors for the foreseeable future. You are allowed to take a crowded tube or bus to work, and to work in a cramped call centre, using headsets that many other have used minutes before. You may not go shopping unless it is to a supermarket, on your own, and you can buy sweets and tobacco. Drones and the military are being used to enforce the law. Meanwhile, 30,000 US soldiers are arriving in Europe in its largest military operation for the last 25 years, with no sanitary measures being taken and with absolute freedom of movement in their leisure time. (The US's aggressive stance has put Russia on maximum alert.)

Now that the obsessive disorder of repeated hand-washing has become prescriptive, an order even, now that our very hands have been rendered untouchable, now that we are no longer to physically engage with other people - excluding the ridiculous elbow bump -, is there nothing that is not prohibited or prescribed in this new totalitarian regime?

In such a short time we have succumbed to the brainwashing and herd mentality that dictates that it is irresponsible, or even a dereliction of civic duty, to meet up with other people, talk face-to-face and touch other human beings, all these things now potentially severely sanctionable. Where is the hard-won right to free movement on our common planet, to public or private association with others and to public demonstration against corruption and power that overreaches itself? Who will now stand up for the persecuted or those who are discriminated against? Has real selflessness and sacrifice really become, in the popular eye, a dangerous, subversive, inconsiderate behaviour that must be stopped at all cost. Instead we are obliged to show a herdlike patriotism by clapping on our balconies in solidarity with health workers, clapping alongside all those same people who voted over and over again for political parties that destroyed the national health service.

There is no level of threat to health - and the current coronavirus is very far from being even a significant threat to public health - that warrants the elites dictating who can meet up inside or outside their home, or where they can go. The rich have, as things go, not confined themselves, but have headed off, staff and all, to enjoy the next few weeks in the luxury of their second homes and in the company of their gangster friends. They will not risk losing their livelihood. You will not see many images of them as they live it up in their gated compounds, or unseen at the beach. As Orwell said, "The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Goering's bombing planes." After all, we are told this is a war, but it is not the one we think it is.

Meanwhile, central banks have just injected another fortune into the pockets of the very rich. Please note that they have not pardoned student debt or the mortgage debt of those who lose their jobs. For example, the ECB has injected some some 120 billion euros ($135.28 billion), all of which was siphoned off in minutes. The Fed's amount was $1.5 trillion. You could throw a dollar away every second for nearly 50,000 years (think about it). This money, in essence just printed up, will be paid for by you and me in reduced public services, the merming of our scant savings, the loss of our jobs or further reduction of our remaining labour rights. In fact the amounts are far higher. They've been injecting money surreptitiously for months now, patching over a crumbling economic system that has now found the perfect scapegoat.

At the same time we have lost our hard-won right - people died for it - to demonstrate against having our most basic rights to movement and association taken away. Add to that the fundamental right to bodily integrity (legally recognised as habeas corpus in 1679), shortly to be thrown out the window when you are forcibly vaccinated, or arrested and strip-searched (and then vaccinated) for not doing so.

Like 11S, which also had a before-and-after as concerns civil rights, we're succumbing shockingly easily to the passive-aggressive bombardment we're receiving. The two messages are in fact incompatible, but don't let that put you off: the "don't worry, stay calm, carry on working and then lock yourself indoors" message, followed by the "Pandemic! Killer virus! You're going to die!" one.

Don't fall for it.

Technology and Fear

Edward Bernays (1891−1995) was the "the father of public relations" and a true pioneer in the science of propaganda, building on Freud's findings on how we are motivated by emotion not reason. The entire system of  modern propaganda works on fear that is promulgated via the electronic media: television, cell phones, and computers. It is pumped out non-stop and if you pay attention to MSM you'll see that they are all telling you the same thing, albeit with slightly different words.

Today’s news is dominated by the fear of coronavirus, a not particularly lethal illness that from its first appearance has been hyped everywhere you look, and is now becoming the perfect scapegoat for capitalism's new economic crisis on the horizon, one that follows so closely on the previous huge one that, were our attention not grabbed by this false narrative, we would be wondering if we shouldn't be looking for a different economic system to one that crashes every 4-7 years. Instead we are about to have very drastic limitations put on our liberties, particularly on those liberties that are extremely basic (the right to move around and to meet up with other people).

There are around lots of coronaviruses, accounting for most of our seasonal colds. Typically annual infection rates range from 2.8% to 26% in different age groups.

Here is a partial list of other diseases that since 2003 we were told loudly and repeatedly would become pandemics and decimate the human race. Diseases to be very afraid of since they were coming for you if you weren’t very vigilant and forgot to wash your hands, with governments along the way stockpiling at huge cost useless vaccines.

2003 SARS
2005 Avian Flu
2009 Swine Flu
2012 West Nile Virus
2014 Ebola
2015 Mers
2016 Zika
2018 Ebola

Apparently, supermarkets are running out of toilet paper and liquid soap because, along with the abandonment of the most basic common sense, we have forgotten that the most important thing for us is that others wash their hands and keep clean as well. Despite the advice from health authorities to wash our hands all the time (we should of course wash our hands several times a day anyway), for all coronaviruses, transmission likely involves close contact and inoculation of the respiratory tract with infectious secretions via large droplets, ie beware of people coughing or sneezing all over you.

The UK's government's worst scenario would mean half a million people dying from the virus. Really? How would we know anyway, as victims are almost all old and infirm in any case?

AGE	DEATH RATE confirmed cases	DEATH RATE all cases
80+ years old	21.9%	14.8%
70-79 years old		8.0%
60-69 years old		3.6%
50-59 years old		1.3%
40-49 years old		0.4%
30-39 years old		0.2%
20-29 years old		0.2%
10-19 years old		0.2%
0-9 years old		no fatalities

In the US, where universal healthcare is, they're told, just too expensive, the Senate approved 8.3 BILLION dollars in emergency spending for the coronavirus (56 million dollars per infected US citizen, as of when this was written).

But don't dash out to get yourself vaccinated. The US CDC (Centre for Disease Control) gives an optimistic 29% for flu vaccine efficacy (and it does have considerable side effects). Vaccines are Big Business: total revenue from influenza vaccines is estimated by the WHO to have been about $2.2 billion in 2018.

Meanwhile, stock markets are crashing, business activity is down in many sectors, and there will be a new economic crash, though not caused by the coronavirus itself. What sort of economic system do we have that is crashed by an illness killing some 4,000 people in a world of nearly 8 billion? To put this in perspective, there are nearly one-and-a-half million road deaths per year in the world and some 9 million people die of hunger, and in both these cases the victims are not specifically at the end of their natural life expectancy.

There is not much difference between the coronavirus scare and the hyping up nearly two decades ago of the false "Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction" story, leading to the US and its allies invading Iraq in 2003. In 2001,  Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary admitted that $2.3 trillion (you could throw a dollar out the window every second for 73,000 years) could not be accounted for. And never would be, because just one day later the twin towers were brought down and the Pentagon accounts department was impacted by a missile, or an impossible plane (your choice), and its entire archive was destroyed. All of which was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Is there anything we should be afraid of? Here are some things - not in any particular order - that are not talked about so much, but are much more likely to make our lives short and painful, and which are very interconnected:

• Sophisticated modern technology in the hands of corporations and the governments they control that destroy privacy, and poison people and the Earth
• Outrageous wealth in the hands of very few, allowing them total control over us
• Digital dementia, which is a term coined by neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer to describe an overuse of digital technology resulting in the breakdown of cognitive abilities
• The medicalization of our minds and bodies
• Ubiquitous and pervasive propaganda
• Endless wars
• The degradation and contamination of our food supply
• Mass extinction
• Climate change
• Nuclear and biological weapons

Follow the money.

Agresión hacia las mujeres y violencia de género

Hay un poco de confusión allí fuera, alentada en gran medida por bulos y mentiras provenientes casi siempre de la extrema derecha. Y, no obstante, este tema es sumamente importante. Después de todo afecta a por lo menos la mitad de la población.

La violencia de género es generalmente hacia la mujer y es violencia que se ocasiona exclusivamente porque la víctima es mujer, o sea, su origen es sexista, hacia el colectivo de mujeres que actualmente sufre discriminación. La discriminación es generalizada, en el sentido de que las mujeres reciben menos salario por el mismo trabajo, y a la vez acceden a trabajos peor remunerados en situaciones de igualdad de cualificaciones u otros atributos. En España las mujeres ganan como media unos 5.000€/año menos que los hombres. Se ha demostrado que el mismo examen, escrito con la misma letra, recibe una nota distinta si incluye el nombre de una chica o de un chico. La nota de la chica suele ser inferior. Y el salario menor de la mujer repercute en sus posibilidades actuales y en su pensión futura. Puede incluso tener una repercusión sobre si recibe la custodia de su propio hijo o no, así como si decide casarse o no.

Se incluyen actos como asaltos o violaciones sexuales, prostitución forzada, discriminación laboral, el aborto selectivo por sexo, violencia física y sexual contra personas que ejercen la prostitución, infanticidio en base al género, castración parcial o total, ablación de clítoris, tráfico de personas, violaciones sexuales en guerras o situaciones de represión estatal, acoso y hostigamiento sexual —entre ellos el acoso callejero—, patrones de acoso u hostigamiento en organizaciones masculinas, ataques homofóbicos y transfóbicos hacia personas o grupos LGBT, el encubrimiento y la impunidad de los delitos de género, la violencia simbólica difundida por los medios de comunicación de masas.

La violencia de género está fuertemente vinculada a la calidad de la educación y, por tanto, a la región: las comunidades autónomas que presentan mayor número de casos de víctimas mortales son (en orden): Andalucía (11), Cataluña, la Comunidad Valenciana, y las Islas Canarias (7 en cada una), y Madrid (6)

La violencia contra el hombre se denomina "violencia doméstica", igual que la contra la mujer, si la causa es un conflicto doméstico.

Eso dicho, ¿es cierto lo que afirma Ciudadanos que Podemos quiere rebajar la pena por violación?

El cambio propuesto por Podemos es algo más sutil. A partir de ahora serán delitos de agresión, ya que la violación es en realidad un acto de agresión y de vejación y humillación contra la víctima, más que un acto sexual. Y todo acto sin el consentimiento expreso de la otra parte es agresión. Esto conlleva que la condena mínima sea menor que hasta ahora, ya que un hombre borracho, digamos, que acosa a otra persona habrá cometido un crimen contra esta, pero en algunos casos el crimen es relativamente menor.

Así que las penas por violación, anteriormente de 6-12 años, pasarán a ser de 4-10. Es importante que el homicidio (penado con un máximo de 15 años) tenga una condena sensiblemente mayor que la violación para evitar que se cometa un homicidio para intentar librarse de la condena por violación.

No obstante, aquello que colabora en un acto de agresión, comete un acto de agravación. Los agravantes (como drogar a la víctima, actual en grupo, usar la violencia...) incrementarán la condena. Por lo cual, en casos tan serios como el de La Manada, la sentencia sería mucho mayor.

En Burgos, en el Caso Aradina, los 3 jugadores de fútbol han recibido cada uno 38 años de cárcel, 14 por la agresión y 24 por haber actuado como cooperadores.

El Tribunal Supremo, en la sentencia del caso de La Manada, en el que los acusados fueron condenados a 15 años de prisión, señaló entonces que se incurrió en un error de calificación jurídica de los hechos: "La correcta calificación hubiera sido considerar a los acusados autores y partícipes de una pluralidad de delitos de agresión sexual". Si las acusaciones hubieran incluido el delito de cooperación necesaria en sus alegatos —cosa que no hicieron—, las penas habrían sido probablemente muy similares a las del caso de la Arandina.

No obstante el bulo más engañoso que propaga Vox es acerca del filicidio. Dice que las mujeres matan a sus hijos mucho más que los hombres: según Vox unos 60 niños matados por mujeres. El INE desmiente esta cifra, ya que hay un total de niños murieron por homicidio, sin desglosar el género de quienes los mataron ni su parentesco, de 24 en 2017; 17 en 2016; 26 en 2015. Vox parece incluye a los niños matados por otras causas como la imprudencia, incendio estando solos en vivienda, o por la mala conducción. Según el INE los hombres asesinan en una proporción de 10:1 en comparación con las mujeres. Por ej. en 2017 hubo 1034 asesinos frente a 124 asesinas. ¡En 2018 la cifra de hij@s o hijastr@s matados incluye a uno de 42 años!

Y por último en 2015 en los casos de homicidios y/o asesinatos de menores a manos de sus progenitores, de los ocho menores víctimas 4 fueron víctimas de sus madres, uno fue víctima de su padre biológico, otro fue víctima de ambos progenitores, y dos fueron víctimas de la actual pareja masculina de la madre. Así que es posible, dada la sumisión de muchas mujer frente a su pareja, que ambos cometan el crimen de filicidio en igual proporción. En cualquier caso, una cifra de 8 sobre la cifra total de unos 300 de homicidios no permite extraer mucho de relevancia.

Sobre los homicidios en general, el 62% son de hombres a hombres; el 28%, de hombres a mujeres; el 7%, de mujeres a hombres; y el 3%, de mujeres a mujeres. Ningún año han sido asesinadas a manos de sus parejas o exparejas menos de 48 mujeres, desde 2003.

Frente a las informaciones difundidos por redes sociales o medios de comunicación de poco rigor, es fundamental investigar y, ante todo, pensar.

Coronavirus: The Good News

It is almost certain that the current coronavirus that worldwide has killed more than 3,000 people (as of 6.3.2020) - the vast majority old or infirm - originally came from bats and then possibly spread to the pangolin, a beautiful wild animal, under threat of extinction, that is farmed in China and other Asian countries for its meat and scales, the latter being for medicines, although they contain more or less what our nails contain, ie nothing of use. Wild animals are not, as we would like to believe, hunted humanely in the wild. Hunting is never humane and once you start thinking that an animal can be used up like a throw-away object, you're inevitably going to get to where the Wuhan province was, caging wild animals in horrific conditions.

The world population is getting close to 8 billion people (8 thousand million), so the coronavirus has resulted in the death of a tiny, tiny proportion, most of whom would have died from something or other in the near future. MSM loves hyping a disaster, as it sells copy, in this case advertising space. Governments love this sort of panic as it makes them seem useful. And doctors love it because it gets them on TV.

The UK's government's worst scenario (80% of the population getting the virus, 1% of those dying) sounds bad: it would mean half a million people dying from the virus, although not an increase of half a million deaths, because other causes of death might well be down. But this worst-case scenario doesn't reflect the global reality, which is that the number of people with coronavirus is now going down, day to day. It seems unlikely that, if we've had less than 4,000 deaths so far, now that the virus is active in fewer people we're going to see half a million deaths in just the UK alone.

We constantly see “coronavirus cases reach 95,000” in the headlines, without adding the corollary that 54,000 of those people are already better.

In the US, the same Senate that blocks over and over again the possibility of universal healthcare, saying it can't be paid for, has just almost unanimously approved 8.3 BILLION dollars in emergency spending for the coronavirus. That’s 56 million dollars per infected US citizen.

The good news is that China has totally shut down the $74 billion wild animal farm industry, some 20,000 farms. And has 500 million people currently under restricted movement.

Now this IS good news, although people will be fretting about the economy, because there is a bigger picture. NASA maps shows a huge reduction in air pollution in China over the coronavirus timescale. Given that 2,740 people die in China every day from air pollution, we can expect far more people to live rather than die from the coronavirus. There are also 700 traffic deaths per day in China. There will be fewer as a result of the decreased economic activity.

All this shows that the economy as a man-made construct is not an unmitigated force for good, and certainly not for everyone. And that we would do well as a species to stop cramming animals into horrible spaces in order to mistreat them.

As a last observation, here are some empathetic words from the Australian journalist John Pilger:
A pandemic has been declared, but not for the 24,600 who die every day from unnecessary starvation, and not for 3,000 children who die every day from preventable malaria, and not for the 10,000 people who die every day because they are denied publicly-funded healthcare, and not for the hundreds of Venezuelans and Iranians who die every day because America's blockade denies them life-saving medicines, and not for the hundreds of mostly children bombed or starved to death every day in Yemen, in a war supplied and kept going, profitably, by America and Britain. Before you panic, consider them.

El neoliberalismo y por qué no te conviene

El capitalismo es un sistema muy eficaz para transferir los recursos del futuro al presente. La fe musulmana prohíbe cobrar intereses (ribawi) y por tanto es en esencia incompatible con el capitalismo, que crea deuda para, en principio, permitir la inversión en tecnologías que mejorarán la producción.

El capitalismo entendía que el rentista, el que saca su beneficio sin producir nada, es anatema a una economía en condiciones. El neoliberalismo, la lógica evolución del capitalismo, cree que sacar beneficio, de donde sea, es el objetivo legítimo de una economía; la idea de que siempre es bueno el mercado, incluso cuando los super ricos lo trucan, incluso cuando se rescatan con fondos públicos en caso de quiebra, como ocurrió en el 2008, cuando quebraron un sinfín de entidades privadas y, de la noche a la mañana, esa deuda privada se convirtió en pública. Incluso cuando saquean a otros países y asesinan a los que se oponen al saqueo.

El neoliberalismo nos hace creer que el sector financiero es productivo como tal, cuando no lo es: es parasitario. Elimina gran parte del sector realmente productivo, el que fabrica cosas, porque la acumulación de dinero es más difícil y porque hay trabajadores en medio, susceptibles de organizarse. El neoliberalismo usa la acumulación en manos de oligarcas de dinero proveniente de la especulación para crear enormes burbujas que estallan cada 4 a 7 años (lo cual es el tiempo medio de crisis del capitalismo), haciendo inviable una vida decente para una parte significativa de la población, que pierde su casa, su trabajo, su familia, su dignidad y su salud. Usa su acumulación de dinero para comprar poder político para que haya rescates constantes para los ricos y para que no tributen, mientras pagan a un ejército de periodistas y propagandistas para convencernos de que "crean empleo y riqueza". Si prestas atención, verás que no crean empleo, sino esclavitud, y no crean riqueza para la gran, gran mayoría, sino deuda. Y la deuda pública no es otra cosa que la transferencia de la riqueza de generaciones futuras a los bolsillos de las presentes. O, en el caso de gran desigualdad, a los bolsillos de unos cuantos de las presentes.

La deuda de EE.UU está aumentando enormemente. El déficit actual es de un trillón de dólares (¡uno seguido de 18 ceros!), a pesar de que Donald Trump prometió sanear la economía. Es la metodología de todo gobierno de derechas desde hace décadas, sin excepción. El gobierno de Mariano Rajoy llegó al poder con la deuda pública en un 70% de PIB, y 7 años después la dejó en un 98%, acompañada de recortes y la eliminación de incluso los derechos más básicos, emigración de la juventud más preparada de la historia, paro y trabajo basura.

Que no te cuenten que la derecha cuida la economía porque, como explicó uno de los asesores clave de Ronald Reagan (el abuelo del neoliberalismo), la deuda se eleva a propósito de poder justificar la privatización y los recortes sociales. El dinero que se ahorra reduciendo los impuestos de los superricos no trae beneficios para la sociedad en su conjunto, sino deuda.

Para conseguir la de-industrialización de las regiones anteriormente prósperos hacía falta destruir a los sindicatos y toda lucha colectiva. Para mantener el semblante de un estado de bienestar -y digo "semblante" porque, si existe, ¿por qué hay tantos viviendo en la calle?, ¿por qué hace falta que haya bancos de comida?, ¿por qué el metro abre sus puertas por la noche durante las semanas de más frío?, ¿por qué no hay una solución habitacional para los desahuciados y para las víctimas de violencia de género?-, había que sustituir los impuestos que pagaban los ricos por los que mayoritariamente pagan los no ricos, o sea, por impuestos como el IVA, que afectan más a los pobres, quienes acaban pagando un porcentaje mucho más alto de sus ingresos en impuestos.

El libre comercio y globalización con sus mal-nombrados tratados de comercio entre países o bloques económicos son en realidad tratados de derechos del inversor, que elevan los derechos del inversor muy por encima de los del ciudadano, trabajador o medioambiente.

Y para que todo esto funcione así, sifoneando la riqueza del 99% hace el 1% es necesario un bombardeo constante de propaganda, junto con la vigilancia sobre el ciudadano perpetrada por el Estado. Si coges varios medios de comunicación tradicional, verás que el contenido es el mismo, aunque con diferentes palabras. Y ya que ningún joven lee esos medios, intentan legislar sobre el contenido en las redes y en internet, para que sea delito discrepar de la versión oficial.

Se puede discutir sobre derechos de la mujer, inmigración, transgéneros, si el PP, Ciudadanos, Vox o el PSOE, si coches híbridos, si energía nuclear, si Google o Facebook... ¡cuanto más, mejor! Pero no conseguirás ningún oyente o lector si hablas de clase, si cuestionas el capitalismo en sí. Gritarán por encima de ti, todos aquellos que NO han leído a Marx, todos aquellos que no han experimentado nada que no sea el capitalismo en sus distintas formas, gritarán: ¡Rusia!, ¡China!, ¡Venezuela!, ¡Cuba! -este último, país pequeño y pobre, asediado económica y violentamente por su vecino poderoso y matón, rodeado de países intervenidos por EE.UU. en los cuales las escuadras de la muerte, el robo de bebés, la tortura y eliminación de sus disidentes, la destrucción de sus economías, la creación de una desigualdad abrumante y el saqueo de sus recursos se han llevado a cabo con total impunidad, y sin que despierten el interés de nadie. Ese país pequeño goza de los mejores médicos del mundo, una larga expectativa de vida (mayor que en EE.UU.) y una de las tasas de analfabetismo más bajas (menor que la de EE.UU).

Permitir la acumulación de riqueza, nos cuentan, no es malo porque tú también podrás ser uno de esos ricos. Dejando de lado el absurdo de la idea de que podamos todos ser multi-milionarios (si fuera así, ¿cuánto valdría nuestro dinero si nadie lo necesitara?), esa oligarquía siente auténtico desprecio hacia el resto y, a la vez, tiene los recursos económicos para contratar a un ejército de abogados, jueces, propagandistas, periodistas, intelectuales... para convencernos de una manera u otra de que todo siga igual. Una situación de guerra sin fin: no hay creación de riqueza -¡para algunos pocos!- más idónea que la destrucción masiva (piensa en ello); y además las guerras no admiten de auditoría real de gastos ni recuento de víctimas, todo pagado con la austeridad impuesta al 99%.

Y mientras tanto, mientras alcanzamos el juego final del neoliberalismo con su implacable lógica -hacer obsoleto a gran parte de la humanidad con la inteligencia artificial, el destrozo de prácticamente la totalidad de nuestro planeta-, todo ese ejército pagado por la oligarquía nos cuentan una tras otra vez que no hay alternativa. Es mentira.