disorder
disorder
Paul Cudenec
Wed, 05 Oct 2022 13:13:11 +0000
1. Death to the Metaverse!
We are increasingly being forced to spend our lives in a virtual reality.
Global power has used Covid to get us all used to online work, to QR codes, to the need for a digital identity in order to access state services and our bank accounts.
This process, aimed at locking us down in a panopticon of constant surveillance and total control, is set to rapidly accelerate in the years to come if we don't manage to stop it.
We are being pushed towards a Chinese-style social credit system, where everything that we consume and do in life is measured, calculated and evaluated by the authorities, with conformity rewarded and dissidence punished.
This totalitarian nightmare is already being rolled out in Europe with the digital identity wallet championed by European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen.
The Italian cities of Rome and Bologna are launching a "smart citizen wallet", based on the supermarket loyalty card model.
And in France, authorities in Sarthe announced that they are going to distribute smart bracelets to all 30,000 middle school pupils under the pretext of combatting sedentary lifestyles.
Yahoo! news reports: "The initiative has already been tried out in a school in Le Mans, where the bracelets in question were given to the children as Christmas presents. Once on their wrists, the bracelets were to stay there for duration of their four years of education in that establishment".
The global mafia have invented a new word to describe this virtual concentration camp: the Metaverse. Facebook has thus already changed its name to Meta and numerous other big businesses are linked to the project.
According to Bloomberg, the Metaverse market could explode to become twenty times bigger than today by 2024, so in under two years.
Ark Invest and Grayscale estimate that revenues generated by the Metaverse could quickly reach a trillion dollars.
Various capitalists and speculators are saying that investing in the Metaverse today is like buying shares in Apple in 1980.
But what exactly is the source of all these enormous anticipated profits? What is the product, do you think, that is going to allow the richest and most powerful people in the world to become even richer?
It's us! It's our lives, our futures, our children!
We already know that personal data has become the new gold of the digital era: big data makes big money!
In the sinister world of the Metaverse, all our various data will be united within one single digital identity.
From that point on, our existence in the real world will serve only to feed the digital version of our life, our avatar, our virtual twin. It's this virtual twin, turned into a product, from which the financial parasites want to profit.
They have already invented an "impact" investment system, which consists of privatising all public services, whether that be education, health or social care.
More than that, it allows financiers to speculate on the results of their investments. And note, please, that they might bet not just on their success but also on their failure!
In fact, they have a vested interest in never resolving all the various problems that their investments are supposed to address, because the persistence of these problems guarantees sustainable profits for those who want to sell the "solutions".
The Metaverse is about reducing people to the status of objects, of casino chips, of human capital exploited by technocrat vampires.
And even if corporate greenwashing tells us that this world to come will be 100% sustainable, any common sense we still possess will tell us that this is very far from being so and that the production of all the technological infrastructure needed for the Metaverse, as well as the electricity to power it, will cause untold damage to the natural world.
This infrastructure depends on an ubiquitous 5G or 6G network, meaning we are faced with the depressing prospect of an Earth disfigured by masts, of the air polluted by microwaves and the sky cluttered with satellites.
There is no room for nature in the Metaverse.
Nor for reality.
Nor for humankind, our values and our lives.
The Metaverse is a world of artifice, sterility, emptiness and toxicity, built on a pathological craving for ever more wealth, power and control.
The Metaverse means death.
So death to the Metaverse!
Wed, 05 Oct 2022 13:12:00 +0000
2. Mort au Metaverse !
De plus en plus on nous oblige à passer nos vies dans une réalité virtuelle.
Le pouvoir mondial a profité du Covid pour nous habituer au télétravail, aux QR codes, au besoin d'avoir une identité numérique pour accéder aux services de l'Etat ou à nos comptes bancaires.
Ce processus, dont le but est de nous enfermer dans un panoptique où nous sommes tous soumis à une surveillance continue et à un contrôle total, risque, si on ne parvient pas à l'arrêter, de s'accélérer rapidement dans les années à venir.
Nous sommes dirigés vers un système de crédit social à la chinoise, où ce que nous consommons et faisons dans la vie est de plus en plus mesuré, chiffré et évalué par les autorités, avec récompense s'il y a conformité et punition en cas de dissidence de notre part.
Ce cauchemar totalitaire est déjà en train d'être imposé en Europe avec le projet d'un « portefeuille européen d'identité numérique » dirigé par la présidente de la Commission européenne Ursula Von der Leyen.
En Italie, les villes de Rome et de Bologne mettent en place un « portefeuille du citoyen vertueux », censé s'apparenter au mécanisme d'« une collecte de points de supermarché » .
Et en France le département de la Sarthe annonce qu'il va distribuer à ses 30.000 collégiens, sous prétexte de « lutter contre la sédentarité » , un bracelet connecté.
Yahoo ! Actualités raconte : « L'initiative a déjà été déployée dans un collège du Mans, où les fameux bracelets ont été reçus tels des cadeaux de Noël par les enfants. Une fois enfilé à leur poignet, le bracelet ne les quittera pas durant les quatre années que durera leur scolarité dans l'établissement. »
La mafia mondiale a inventé un nouveau mot pour décrire ce camp de concentration virtuel : le Metaverse. Facebook a ainsi déjà changé son nom en Meta et nombre de grandes entreprises, très présentes dans l'affaire, sont associées au projet.
Selon Bloomberg, le marché du Metaverse pourrait exploser et être vingt fois plus important qu'aujourd'hui d'ici 2024, soit dans moins de 2 ans.
Ark Invest et Grayscale estiment que les revenus générés par le Metaverse pourraient vite atteindre 1 trillion (1000 milliards) de dollars.
Les capitalistes et autres spéculateurs avertis insistent qu'investir dans le Metaverse aujourd'hui, c'est comme acheter des actions Apple en 1980.
Mais quelle peut bien être l'origine exacte de ces énormes profits anticipés ? Quel produit alors enrichira à votre avis plus encore les personnes les plus riches et les plus puissantes du monde ?
C'est nous ! Ce sont nos vies, nos avenirs, nos enfants !
On sait déjà que les données personnelles sont devenues le nouvel or de l'époque numérique : big data makes big money !
Or, dans le monde malsain du Metaverse, toutes nos données diverses et variées seront réunies sous une seule identité numérique.
Dès lors, notre existence dans le vrai monde ne servira qu'à nourrir la version numérique de notre vie, notre avatar, notre jumeau virtuel.
C'est de ce jumeau virtuel, devenu produit, que les parasites financiers veulent profiter.
Ils ont déjà créé un système d'investissement « impact », qui consiste à privatiser tous les services publics, qu'il s'agisse de l'éducation, de la santé ou de l'aide sociale.
Plus encore, il permet aux financiers de spéculer sur les résultats de leurs investissements. Et là, il faut savoir qu'ils peuvent parier non seulement sur leur succès mais également sur leur échec !
En effet, ils ont tout intérêt à ne jamais résoudre les différents problèmes auxquels leurs investissements sont censés faire face, car la persistance de ces problèmes garantit des profits durables à ceux qui en vendent les « solutions »…
Le Metaverse veut réduire les gens au statut d'objets, de pions de casino, de capital humain exploité par des vampires technocrates.
Et même si le greenwashing du big business nous raconte que ce monde à venir sera 100% durable, un résidu de bon sens nous avertit que c'est évidemment loin d'être le cas et que la production de toute l'infrastructure technologique nécessaire au Metaverse, ainsi que de l'électricité nécessaire à son alimentation, causerait des dommages indicibles au monde naturel.
Cette infrastructure, c'est le réseau omniprésent de 5G ou 6G qui la rend possible, si bien que nous sommes confrontés à la perspective déprimante d'une Terre défigurée par les antennes, d'un air pollué par les micro-ondes et d'un ciel encombré de satellites.
La nature n'a pas sa place dans le Metaverse. La réalité n'y a pas sa place non plus. Ni l'humanité, ni nos valeurs, ni nos vies.
Le Metaverse est un monde artificiel, stérile, creux, toxique, fondé sur le désir maladif de toujours plus de richesse, de pouvoir et de contrôle.
Le Metaverse, c'est la mort. Mort, donc, au Metaverse !
Wed, 21 Sep 2022 15:02:42 +0000
3. This odious global system
Throughout my adult life I have tended to describe the thing to which I am primarily opposed as "capitalism".
Over the last couple of years, however, I have started to wonder whether this is quite the right word.
Not only does it hinder communication with people used to different political terminologies, but it is looking increasingly outmoded as the powers-that-be try to push us into a harsh new totalitarian era.
I have gradually stopped using the term and, when I share pieces of my older writing which contain the word, I feel slightly awkward and don't quite know how to reply to people who feel it is not altogether appropriate.
The funny thing, though, is that my views have not actually changed. The entity which I have spent my life combatting remains the same, regardless of the label I might stick on it.
It is not really an "-ism", an abstract ideological concept which mysteriously casts our societies under its motivational spell, but a real and physical system, built on capital, which is maintained by real and physical players.
It is an arrangement by which a tiny minority of extremely wealthy people possess all the power and privilege in the world at the expense of the vast majority of us, whom they regard as both dangerous and dispensible.
It is accumulation for the few, dispossession for the many.
It is a plutocracy, a dictatorship of the ultra-rich hiding behind the rhetoric of democracy while knowing that real democracy would be incompatible with its ongoing supremacy and thus doing all it can to prevent it from ever flourishing.
It is an organized religion of greed, a cult of power. It is an octopus, a monster, it is Leviathan.
It is the rule of gold, of usury, of filthy lucre, of pelf, of Mammon.
It is a mega-organization, an empire which has deliberately and consciously expanded its domination and control to the point where it can now imagine this becoming all-inclusive and permanent.
It is a spider's web of carefully-woven manipulation and deceit, a vast and complex conspiracy which has concealed its existence behind layer after layer of lies.
It is the complete capture of state power by financial interests and the violent imposition everywhere of that illicit and non-consensual authority.
It is a scam, a racket, which has gradually taken over the world's institutions to the point that its insatiable greed for ever more "growth" and "development" has been written into the legislative infrastuctures of our society.
It is an ongoing crime on an unimaginable scale, a slow-motion robbery of 99.9% of humankind and the rape, pillage and pollution of the natural world.
It is the corruption of our societies, the poisoning of human relationships, the paralysis of our organic capacity to live together in mutual aid, solidarity and freedom.
It is the enslavement of the people of the world by the money power, the stifling of our vital breath.
It is the denial of beauty, truth, justice, nature, poetry and the mystery of existence in the name of a stale dogma of sterility, materialism, pseudo-science and artifice aimed at reducing us to a condition of powerless and abject submission to authority.
It is the endless acceleration of the reign of quantity, our descent into a grim grey future from which all that makes our lives worth living will have been banished by our vile vitaphobic overlords.
Even if I may now definitively ditch the term, all this is in fact what I have always meant by "capitalism".
And this is the odious global system which we have to expose and destroy…
Fri, 01 Jul 2022 13:16:34 +0000
4. “I am done with the left-right divide. It’s now the humans versus the deadly robotic corporate state”
Interview with Keith McHenry of Food Not Bombs
Paul Cudenec: Thanks very much for agreeing to this exchange, Keith. It is very encouraging to know that in this age of near-universal deceit and hypocrisy, there are still individuals out there who stand true to their values. First of all, I gather you have a proud family history of fighting for freedom, going back to the American struggle for independence from Britain?
Keith McHenry: Thanks Paul, at this point there is nothing more important than resisting this rush to the totalitarian police state. Our liberty, humanity and connection to the natural world is at stake and we don't have much time to stop this catastrophe. Events grow more dire every day so, by the time people read this, the devastation of war, censorship, famine and digital slavery may be so severe many in our audience are likely to feel hopeless, but hang in there! This could be a transformation even larger than that of the American Revolution.
Yes, the first member of my family to arrive in North America was a young James McHenry who stepped onto the docks at Philadelphia in 1773. I grew up knowing that he had been on George Washington's staff during the war. Family history claims a 20 year old James was recruited into the uprising by Dr Benjamin Rush when James was his medical student. James was tasked with starting a field hospital in Cambridge Port in preparation for what became know as the "Battle of Bunker Hill" and met George Washington there. Dr James McHenry was at the surrender of British general Cornwall at Yorktown, participated in the Continental Congress signing the US Constitution as a delegate of Maryland, was Secretary of War under Washington and Adams. There is a fort in Baltimore Harbor named after him where the text of the US National anthem about bombs "bursting in air" was written by Francis Scott Key during the British bombardment during our war of 1812.
Washington wrote of my ancestor at the low point in the revolution during the winter at Valley Forge: "McHenry's easy and cheerful temper was able to bear the strain which we suppose must sometimes occur between two persons thrown so closely and so constantly together in a position of social equality and military inequality." Those who know me may say I also have a cheerful temper.
On the other hand I had a grandfather who dedicated his life to defending corporate power. My mother's father volunteered to join the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the US-CIA. He directed the globe's most deadly bombing campaign, burning as many a million civilians to death in Tokyo in Operation Meeting House. When I was a child I watched him argue over the phone with his military friends Robert McNamara and Curtis LeMay demanding they drop the nuclear bomb on Hanoi as he swaggered around his office surrounded by photos of his raids on the Japanese city.
These two relatives helped shape my belief that I need to dedicate my life to ending corporate power and at the same time showed me that a mortal like me I could have an impact on the direction of society.
PC: It took me quite a while, as a young man, to find my way to anarchism, but I understand you got there at a very early age! How did that happen?
KM: My first step in my evolution to adopting the ideas of anarchism really started in the ancient Hopi village of Old Oribi in what is now Arizona. My father's father had lived with the Hopis during the Great Depression, becoming friends with the elders of the 2,000 year old stone pueblo. I was witness to the Snake Dance where young men held rattlesnakes in their mouths as the community watched from the roof tops above the dusty plaza. Large drums roared at one end. At the end of the dance, the boys who had just become men handed food to their audience who, like me and my family, were perched on the mudded roofs of the rock homes surrounding the dance floor. This was before electricity had arrived in these majestic lands.
"I was witness to a vast wilderness free of the modern contraptions of murder and sterility"
My family also sat on the rim of Glenn Canyon and watched the cement trucks hugging the far wall descending to the mighty rapids to dump their loads into the foundation of a dam on the Colorado River that would, once it was completed, flood hundreds of Anasazi cliff dwellings, beautiful rock ruins I would be one of the last people to see. I was five and six when I stood on the edge of Second Mesa at Walpi hundreds of feet above the burial grounds. The spirits of those whose centuries of graves lay below bathed me in a warm golden wind of eternity, flooding my essence with a feeling that I would always be one with the cosmos. I was witness to a vast wilderness free of the modern contraptions of murder and sterility. That feeling has never left me.
A few years later when my father was a ranger stationed at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia he gave me a copy of "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau. I had just learned to read so I started with the shorter essay in the back of the paperback called "On Civil Disobedience" and that snippet of inspiring text, "I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically" changed me.
I read that life-changing text when I was in the fifth grade. The Vietnam War was raging. Like many American families we ate dinner while watching the chilling images of the bloody conflict in Southeast Asia with those body count numbers on the evening news. My mother's brother who I adored was eager to join in the tragedy as a paratrooper. He was spared that horror because he contracted hepatitis in basic training and was hospitalized. The failure to live and die in the jungles as a hero doomed him to a life of self-hate.
Another relative was stationed at the national morgue and gave our family a drive through the Dover Airbase where I was witness to the huge stacks of shiny tin coffins that marched along the tarmac like rows of city blocks. Block after block of caskets waiting to receive the bodies of America's dead youth.
I lived in the racially segregated town of Luray, Virginia at a time when "colored only" and "whites only" signs were sold at the local Five and Ten shop on Main Street. The murder of Martin Luther King Jr and the riots that followed was another influence that made Thoreau's night in jail as a tax resister have relevance. Our family happened to head out on a vacation from our home, passing a burning Washington DC and Baltimore and a journey through the black neighborhood of Philadelphia under military occupation. Tanks, gatling guns and helmeted soldiers armed with M-16s and angry german shepherds made an impression. Smoke from the uprising filled our hotel room that evening.
So when I read Thoreau's argument in his lecture "On Civil Disobedience", explaining that he had refused to pay his poll tax because he would not contribute to the funding of the Mexican war and a slave state, I saw the similarities to my own time and adopted core aspects of his philosophy.
When I was 14 years old I took my first job cleaning an art gallery. I recall being so happy that I had joined the fellowship of working Americans as I sat on a step of the building across the street eating my first lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That was also the moment I vowed to never pay for war and started my journey as a tax resister and free person untethered to the state. I was also determined to create my own version of Thoreau's Concord of seekers. Food Not Bombs became my global Concord. I would cast off the use of my Social Security number after my first arrest when I was 18 years old and lived free from the clutches of the State.
PC: Could you say a little bit about Food for Bombs, how that came about and what it aimed, and indeed aims, to do?
KM: Food Not Bombs is a global all-volunteer movement that protests war and poverty by taking direct action. Our people share the gift of food with anyone, without restrictions, while reclaiming the public commons. We are independent of state and corporate power. Our activists recover food that can't be sold from groceries, bakeries, farms and distributors, prepare vegan or vegetarian meals that are shared on the streets behind the banner of Food Not Bombs.
Our main goal besides meeting the needs of the poor is to influence the public to take action to force the state to redirect our resources from the military to provide access to healthy food, safe housing, education and healthcare. We are a classroom that practices the philosophy of anarchism without the dogma of the fashion anarchist.
The first collective came together at an anti-nuclear action in New Hampshire, "The May 24, 1980 Occupation Attempt of Seabrook Nuclear Power Station." A friend, Brian Feigenbaum, was arrested at the protest and we were able to secure his bail from someone with means. On the way home we agreed to hold bake sales to pay the contributor back. That turned out to be a slow way to raise money. We also had a moving company called Smooth Move and one family we were helping was tossing out a copy of the poster "It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber". This gave us the idea to buy surplus military uniforms, set up our poster at our bake sale and tell those walking by that we needed help buying a bomber. This got the attention of pedestrians who otherwise would have rushed past, giving us the opportunity to speak to them about the threat of nuclear war, poverty and hunger.
In 1979 and 80 I was a produce worker at a natural food grocery called Bread and Circus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I took the produce that was wilted or bruised and could not be sold to several families living in public housing on Portland Avenue. One day one of the mothers pointed out the construction of the new glass building across the street from their crumbling housing, noting that it was about to be completed and that scientists who would be designing nuclear missiles would be moving in. This gave me the idea for the name Food Not Bombs.
The street theater of our bake sale was so effective at engaging people who walked past in conversation that we adopted the street theater ideas of the Living Theater. We also started a campaign against the banks who financed and would profit from the construction of the Seabrook Nuclear Station. The First National Bank of Boston was our main target and when we learned that their stockholders meeting would be held on March 26, 1981, at the Federal Reserve Bank we decided to protest by setting up a soup line on the Atlantic Avenue sidewalk outside the towering facility. We asked our friends to join us at a "soup line" dressed as Depression Era hobos with the intention of giving a visual example of the future we would face if we failed to stop the policies of Ronald Reagan, the nuclear industry and banks. The night before the action we realized we had not recruited enough people to look like a soup line so I went to the last surviving homeless shelter from the days of the Great Depression. I spoke with those sitting around the bleak tile room of the Pine Street Inn about the protest. Some recalled their participation in the protests against the Vietnam War and expressed excitement at attending. The next day nearly everyone I had spoke with joined us. Pedestrians rushing past said they were surprised to see a soup line just a month after Reagan had become president. The guys from the shelter told us there was no food for the homeless in Boston and suggested we set up every day. That evening we agreed to do just that.
I started a second group in San Francisco in 1988. The police made 94 arrests of our volunteers for sharing food without a permit that summer. I would learn some 35 years later that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force had sent a memo to the San Francisco Field Office about the August 22 arrests, claiming Food Not Bombs was "a credible national security threat". The arrests sparked interest in other cities so I took my notes on how I started the San Francisco group and made a flyer, "Seven Steps to Starting a Local Food Not Bombs Group" and mailed it to those who wanted to start a chapter in solidarity. During the next few years the city would make a total of 1,000 arrests and with each wave of repression more people would respond by starting their own local group. I also made a point of letting people know they could use the carrot and fist logo and any other Food Not Bombs images or texts without restriction.
I was arrested 94 times between 1988 and 1994 and was framed on three violent or serious felonies and faced 25 years to life in prison, spending a total of 500 days in jail. Volunteers were beaten by the police and our food was seized and tossed out. We organized a system to reduce the loss of meals using decoy buckets with tiny amounts of food.
These arrests in San Francisco, followed by arrests in Florida, inspired the formation of more chapters. Today there are at least 1,000 groups in over 65 countries. We provided the food aid to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina and hundreds of our volunteers helped with Hurricane Sandy. Our volunteers also provided food and material relief after super Typhoon Yolanda smashed the Visayas region of Philippines.
Food Not Bombs has also provided food and logistical support for direct actions to defend the environment, indigenous sovereignty, strikes, anti-war actions, Occupy and many other anti-globalization protests including the WTO blockades in Seattle in 1999 and Cancun.
"We need to take action against the 'Build Back Better' stakeholder capitalism policies of the WEF, the WHO and other global corporate institutions"
Maybe the most impressive action we inspired was the uprising against the corrupt government of Iceland that resulted in the collapse of the political leadership and the jailing of several bankers. It is clear to me that Food Not Bombs must step up our organizing efforts as the planned economic calamity of 2022 will make the 2007 financial crisis seem minor by comparison.
Our four decades of organizing against international economic policies takes us to the point where we are today, where we need to take action against the "Build Back Better" stakeholder capitalism policies of the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization and other global corporate institutions. There is a continuity in our founding resistance to corporate plunder and its ravages of poverty and war outside the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston and our resistance to the trans-humanist totalitarian technocratic globalist policies threatening our humanity and Earth today.
PC: What projects were you involved in at the start of 2020 and what was your initial reaction to the Covid moment?
KM: I had just returned from three weeks in Guatemala where I had been writing a book about my life when news came that a deadly pandemic was about to sweep the country. I had intended to continue writing and help with the preparation and sharing of our weekend meals but that changed four days after my arrival in Santa Cruz, California.
When we learned that the indoor meal programs for the homeless and poor had been ordered to close on March 14, my local Food Not Bombs group agreed to fill that void. If we didn't start sharing food and water with the unhoused community, hundreds of our friends would go hungry and suffer from a lack of drinking water.
That morning we met to formulate a plan on how to share meals safely under the reported conditions. We moved our weekend meal to the Clock Tower, a public plaza across the street from where we shared our normal weekend meal because about 20 people were camping up against the fence that protects the Post Office from the homeless. We didn't think it was wise to have a line of over 100 people standing so close to people and their tents.
Like many other people in our group, I had the impression the crisis would last a month or so and the other food programs would reopen. That was at a time when the authorities were claiming we needed "two weeks of quarantine to flatten the curve". So we set up a daily meal, our DIY hand washing station and a distribution of survival gear in solidarity with our local homeless organization, calling our project the Santa Cruz Homeless Union COVID-19 Relief Center and Food Not Bombs meal.
I remember being impressed to hear that many of my unhoused friends found that the lockdown was liberating. Everyone, housed and unhoused, was united in this chaos. Many people who lived in the streets told me on day one that they thought the whole fear story was a scam and nearly every unhoused person who I spoke with claimed that their rough life would make them immune from any plague. None of my homeless friends worried about getting COVID. The only concern they had was being able to get drinking water and something to eat.
It seems crazy now but in the first weeks of the pandemic we had an aggressive policy of wiping down our tables and our delivery van with bleached water. We wrapped caution tape looped through large yellow Trader Joes grocery lugs that we placed around our serving tables to add distance between the servers and the people coming to eat. A week later we spray painted white dashes in six-foot intervals for social distancing along the sidewalk leading to the serving area. The police claimed the virus could be passed from person to person if we continued the practice of letting people rummage through our clothes donations and, to avoid being shut down, we had volunteers hold each item up so our friends could decide if it was something they would need.
That same week the City erected homeless triage centers in downtown parking lots that were nothing more than chain-linked cages with a couple of portable toilets. The mayor of the city stopped at our meal and asked us to move to a location where we could help them lure the unhoused into their cages. I refused. I wouldn't let them use the trust we have with the unhoused to intern those who live outside. They abandoned their program a couple days later after they realized the unhoused were not interested in cooperating. The governor of the state announced that the government would provide millions to buy or rent hotels for the homeless to quarantine but our city and county refused to take them up on the offer, even though we are a tourist town and the hotels were nearly empty. Our city leaders have been vocal about the unhoused being less than human and not worthy of help, which was at the core of their refusal to move everyone inside.
I remember thinking this could be the beginning of an economic collapse and that we needed to prepare. It looks like I wasn't far off the mark. Our Food Not Bombs chapter ordered a truck load of dried goods from Second Harvest Food Bank. Twenty or more pallets of rice, beans and can goods were unloaded outside the kitchen we were renting at the time. But the county government took over the facility to shelter a couple dozen unhoused people in pup tents lined across the auditorium above the kitchen. We had to find a new place to cool and moved our pallets of food to a closed restaurant and a 20-foot refrigerated shipping container we had secured a year before with a grant from the food bank.
My girlfriend Kathleen was a social worker at two local hospitals. Patients said to have COVID were wheeled down the hallways under plastic tents on their way to a COVID floor. The first days had a feel of a dystopian science fiction movie. Radio and TV programs blasted out doom. They screamed that we could all die if we didn't obey. Nonstop fear. Homeless triage cages, images of body-bagged people being wheeled to refrigerated trucks, health officials standing with Trump announcing emergency measures. We all witnessed the media madness. This was my first tip that there was another agenda other than public health.
It is no wonder those locked into their homes lost the plot. If you didn't venture outside you would think, from the constant terror on the media, that the streets were littered with the dead.
I had just sold my permaculture farm in New Mexico and was given a financial award by a group to honor my dedication to promoting a vegan lifestyle, so I had a bit of money for the first time in my life. In an attempt to build pressure to provide dignified accommodation to those forced to live in the streets, I paid for eighty beds and announced I would be providing hotel vouchers at 6:00 pm that evening. Over 100 people arrived and the crush of desperate people seeking for a chance of a night in a bed and a hot shower was heartbreaking. The chief of police declared it a violation of COVID gathering restrictions, telling the media that we were holding an illegal rally rather than providing a chance to sleep in a hotel for the evening. I was able to pay for two more nights for 180 people and the local shelter asked me to put up half their people on the fourth night. I was investigated by the police for handing out counterfeit hotel vouchers but they never took me to court.
The county government was offered millions to provide hotel rooms but at the height they placed less then 150 of the over 2,000 people who lived outside in their empty motels. This was a sign that they did not value the unhoused as fully human. In the early months of the crisis there were more than 2,000 unused hotel beds in Santa Cruz since tourism was over for the near term.
During the first months of the lockdowns, the streets of Santa Cruz were empty of vehicles. If I happened to pass another motorist I would wave and they would nearly always respond with a nod or gesture of their own. The public restrooms were closed and drinking water was scarce. The only people walking the streets were those who lived outside.
The largest challenge was calming the violence and acting-out of those who were already suffering from mental health issues. The tension was intense in those early days and those people who were already having emotional difficulties really freaked out, making the sharing of our meals otherworldly. Lots of yelling and fights. There were times when I had to step in and keep people from beating someone to death. But we didn't stop and have been out on the streets sharing food and water with our community for nearly 900 days in a row now. Services that the governments are refusing to provide.
Since we were the only group making sure those who lived outside had food, the public was generous and we were able to buy two more 20-foot shipping containers which we have stocked to the roof with dry goods. We also bought a water filtering system to clean the river water if the electricity failed, which is a real possibility here in the world's fifth largest economy of California. We also prepared to cook outside in the event that gas is cut off, stockpiling propane tanks and stoves.
There was a massive forest fire that forced hundreds of people from their homes. A thick red smoke blotted out the sun for days. Fire evacuees came to us not only for food but to replace their lost clothing. We also have been giving out cheap pup tents to those who have just moved to the streets or had their vehicle or tent confiscated by the city.
We defied the fear with our introduction of a free solar-powered concert at our meals during each holiday. People danced to the live music and enjoyed each others' company. While most people were isolated in their homes receiving food from delivery services while glued to their computer screens, our poor and homeless friends were free. In the first two years only two of my unhoused friends reported contacting COVID. Crystal worked nights at a shelter and she felt ill for two days. Dream Catcher slept at the shelter and was sick for a week. Everyone else I met who said that they had caught the dreaded disease lived inside and did as they were instructed. They had cowered before their TVs and computers and resisted the temptation to interact with other humans.
We frustrated the authorities with our gatherings but there was little they could do. The jails were full and when they did arrest our friends the police released them as soon as they arrived outside the jail gate. The courts were closed for nearly a year so we ignored our charges and went on with our lives. I remember one of our homeless volunteers was ticketed for violating the quarantine. His citation was for $1,000 and his address was marked as "transient." He ignored it, other than to show it around to highlight the insanity of our times.
We were free. We weren't afraid.
The Homeless Persons Healthcare Project has been aggressively injecting people, offering the unhoused $50 gift cards. It has only been in the past few weeks now that my homeless friends have started to report that they are very ill with COVID. All of those I meet who now have COVID have been injected. None of my unvaccinated friends have been ill with COVID in over a year now.
PC: So all this changed your overall understanding of the situation? How would you now describe what has been happening over the last couple of years?
KM: In the first weeks of the pandemic I feared for the worst. I recall posting negative comments about those who questioned the official narrative at first but the fear narrative around COVID was being pushed nonstop in the media, suggesting there was more to this than public health. I was also witnessing that no one I knew who, according to the screaming media should be dying, was ill. Each day I saw that the only impact was closed stores, empty streets and shuttered food programs increased my belief that the pandemic was not as severe as advertised.
"Since I have been the direct target of covert disruption by state intelligence agencies for the past four decades I am naturally suspicious of official narratives"
When Trump announced the Operation Warp Speed, that got my attention. A military program coordinated with some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world suggested there was more to this drama than concern for public health. The endless announcements that each program was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn't add to my confidence that this hysteria was based in reality. I had spent the past two decades organizing against the Gates of the world and the patenting of his GMO seeds with groups like the Organic Consumer Association.
Since I have been the direct target of covert disruption by state intelligence agencies for the past four decades I am naturally suspicious of official narratives. The media lied us into war after war so this had the same feeling as the WMD of Iraq, the babies taken from Kuwaiti incubators, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and other disinformation campaigns of the past.
It wasn't long after that that one of my closest friends, Dr. Shannon Murray, came to Santa Cruz to visit Kathleen and me. She was on her way to start a new life since her employment as a scientist had vanished. She is a virologist and an expert on gain-of-function research.
I knew her when she was helping develop the Moderna vaccine at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She feared there could be major health problems from the vaccines since the first human trials had not yet taken place and more study was needed before they could be considered safe. She shared that the animal trials had not been promising, killing nearly 80% of the vaccinated animals who were exposed to SARS-CoV-1. She also expressed concern that research in these vaccines had abruptly become a secret military program, sharing that her access to data had suddenly gone dark in January. At that time she was still using an alias, as did her coworkers, so they could share their concerns without fear of being banned from their life's work or murdered like former Merck Pharmaceutical sales executive Brandy Vaughan, who was killed just as the pandemic was being announced. Like some of those she worked with at the NIH, Shannon refused to get the COVID jab and encouraged us to refuse as well.
As I said, my girlfriend Kathleen worked at a local hospital with a COVID wing. As the days passed she failed to see the deaths suggested by the news. Sure, many elderly people filled the section but few succumbed to the virus. Once the vaccine program began she would return home to share one story after another of the stroke and heart attack patients who had just received their first jab. Those injected were fast becoming the people who filled the ICU unit. They were the ones leaving in the body bags.
Sharing food every day outside also made it clear that the official story was false. Every day a hundred or more people would gather together to eat. No one said they had contracted COVID or shared that they had the symptoms. The deaths of our friends came at the end of a needle of fentanyl-laced heroin and meth or from the brutality of a life lived unprotected from the elements.
"It seemed every leftist friend had retreated to their apartments in fear of dying"
When I saw people the media called anti-vaxxers armed with AR-15s waving confederate and Trump flags at protests against the lockdowns I was horrified. There is no way I would ever join people like the Proud Boys and Trump supporters in demonstrations against COVID policies. The questioning of Dr Fauci was framed as a position taken only by racist gun-toting Trump supporters, effectively driving my friends in the left into the arms of the military and big Pharma. It seemed every leftist friend had retreated to their apartments in fear of dying.
I had the impression I was one of only a couple of progressive activists that thought something wasn't right. I would slowly learn that several other left friends also shared my perspective. I connected Shannon with an old journalist friend, Sam Hussini, who had been writing on gain-of-function research and bio-warfare programs at places like the Fort Detrick Biological Warfare Laboratories. I learned that another colleague of mine, the director of the Organic Consumers Association, Ronnie Cummings, and my associate Vandana Shiva were also expressing concerns that mirrored our work together against Monsanto. So even though I remained publicly silent, worried my opinion could cause harm to the Food Not Bombs movement, I started to feel less alone. This was the era where, in desperation, I started to post cryptic messages about understanding how people like the artists Käthe Kollwitz must have felt as everyone she knew seemed to have signed on to the National Socialist agenda during the march towards World War Two. I did get some confused comments.
When my dear friend in her 40s messaged me from Australia that she almost died from myocarditis I could not be silent any more. That was the last straw and I became a vocal opponent of the jabs.
I first wrote a letter on this subject when I received an invitation to attend a meeting forming a new progressive alliance. To participate you had to provide proof of a vaccination or a negative COVID test. I wrote to invite the progressive community to stand in solidarity with the working class by refusing to meet in facilities that demand proof of participation in the vaccine experiments. Nearly every "essential worker" I depended on for auto repair, printing and other supplies shared my perspective on the COVID clampdown. The left I had known stood for workers' rights during the first four decades of my life, but that had changed. We had become tin foil hat deplorables even though those smearing our position depended on us to provide their needs.
Before the invitation to this meeting asking me to help start a new progressive group, I had shrugged off the proof of vaccine requirements. I ignored the proof of vaccination requirement for attendance to the American Civil Liberties Union awards ceremony since I couldn't go anyway because I had to cook that day. I later learned that the outdoor venue for the meeting did not require this proof, nor did the Simpkins Family Center where the progressive alliance was intending to meet. My allies were the ones implementing this policy. Allies I know had been sitting at their computers during the entire pandemic and rarely went outside to see reality. One of the organizers kept trying to get me to be "an example for the community" by getting "vaccinated". I patiently explained the reasons I would never subject myself to the poison but he continued to pressure me.
I also had friends that were eager for me to attend the opening of the documentary "Foodie for the People" that had a section that featured me and the work of Food Not Bombs. The filmmaker was excited to tell me that he used a clip from his interview with me to promote the film. The announcement for the film required proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test. But I also learned that Del Mar Theater, where the movie was being shown, didn't require proof of vaccination or a negative test yet those showing the movie had made it a requirement.
The final insult was the day I went to my favorite activist cafe and was told I could not enter unless I could show proof of vaccination. That was it. I had been outside nearly all day, every day of the pandemic. I never spent a second inside being quarantined. I could see the reality of the pandemic with my own eyes. I couldn't remain silent any longer.
I wrote an essay, "Looking at COVID as a Progressive" that I posted online and emailed it to the community. That broke things open. By the end of the week I started to get emails and calls of relief from friends who had been silent, believing they too were alone in feeling that the pandemic restrictions were part of a power grab.
One of the most discouraging aspects of the psychological operation was to see posts by Food Not Bombs groups promoting the vaccines and masks. One New York chapter shared an announcement that people could come to our meal and get vaccinated under the headline SAFE – EFFECTIVE – FREE. Another chapter posted an announcement to an outdoor protest in late June 2022 with a large type demand to "Wear Masks". To see the movement I helped start actively support a totalitarian corporate agenda has been heart-breaking.
PC: Are there now many others in your circles who share your dissident take?
KM: Thankfully several of my close housed as well as unhoused friends are on the same page. As I pointed out before, my many of my homeless friends didn't fall for the fear campaign right out of the gate. I was heartened when I watched The Convo Couch podcast early in the crisis and heard Pasta and Fiorella express the same bewilderment at our friends and allies pushing the agenda of those we had spent years organizing against. Glory and Steve at the Slow News Day also expressed amazement at the way in which those who once stood with us in the issues of workers' rights, resistance to mega corporations and the military had become vocal defenders of those threatening our freedoms. After I posted "Looking at COVID as a Progressive" my circle doubled.
PC: Two things surprised me about the reaction of the rump of the left, including anarchists, to Covid. The first was the position they took, completely accepting the official line and supporting masks, lockdowns, social distancing and injections. The second was the way that this was not just an opinion, but an article of faith which had overnight somehow become ideologically essential. If you questioned government, opposed Big Pharma, exposed the links between the two or stood up for individual freedom, you were suddenly considered "right-wing"! The vitriol and vehemence with which I was attacked really shocked me. Did you experience anything like that?
KM: I have often been called a Trumper or right wing by my anarchist and other left friends during this insanity. People are not so bold any more but for the first two years people said they were shocked that I had become a far right Republican Trump follower since I had been known as an anti-war leftist. I think the fact that I have been out on the streets for nearly 900 days, sharing food when the state provided nearly no support at all for the unhoused, has made it difficult for local people to express this opinion openly to me. I am also seeing less of these direct attacks on social media now. I find it interesting that my allies in the anti-globalization and peace movements do not see a connection between our protests against the Weapons of Mass Destruction lies before the Iraq war, GMOs, a woman's right to choose abortion and big Pharma but now are public about supporting forced vaccination, censorship, and the war in Ukraine.
PC: I have spent a lot of time trying to work out exactly why the left/anarchist scene collapsed so dramatically as a force for resistance in the Spring of 2020. Do you have any thoughts on this?
KM: Based on my having survived four decades of state and corporate intelligence agency disruption, I believe I have an educated guess. It looked like there was an effective strategy linking covertly controlled far right groups waving Trump and Confederate flags and AR-15s with opposition to the COVID policies. I know I didn't witness any other left anarchists denouncing the policies in the first months so like many others who may have shared my perspective I thought I was alone. The headlines of most corporate media blasted stories like "Coronavirus: Armed protesters enter Michigan statehouse" with the media showing footage of protesters outside state houses chanting "Let us in!", "Let us work" and "This is the people's house, you cannot lock us out". Before COVID, unarmed leftists would have been the ones chanting these slogans but the images of Trump-supporting, gun-toting anti-lockdown protesters helped shape the narrative. In the early days of the crisis, the Los Angeles Times had a story showing a Proud Boy Nazi with swastika tattoos stabbing a pedestrian during a lockdown protest.
But this is only one of the many aspects of the psychological operations that was effective. The use of media to repeatedly claim isolation, masking, social distancing and shots were all about protecting the community and for the greater good of all, fed into some of the core beliefs of the left. No self-respecting leftists wants to be accused of being selfish.
The left also did not want to be anti-science and since all alternative ideas were censored or attributed to tin foil hat Qanon Trumpers it became a badge of honor to smugly sneer at those ignorant hillbilly deplorables.
I also think that those in power were clever and their foundations started to fund a loyal opposition with haste when the Democratic Party chose Biden as the leader of the regime. One of the first reports on the popular left program Democracy Now! featured Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance claiming a bat virus in a Wuhan wet market was the likely source of the Pandemic. My friend, investigative journalist Sam Husseini, was never asked to refute Daszak's claim even though Sam had several articles published in April 2020, on the history of gain-of-function releases at American-funded bio-weapons laboratories, a dramatic subject that would have interested Amy Goodman before the crisis. The host Amy Goodman breathlessly reported on the refrigerator trucks outside New York City hospitals. She was all in on the official COVID narrative and that has had a major influence on the American left.
"The funding of the non-profit industrial complex is often a means of controlling dissent in the United States"
Foundations have helped to coopt as many left organizations as possible. Most of our allies accepted their support, surrounding the left with community groups who danced to the tune of Gates, Soros and other philanthropists. The funding of the non-profit industrial complex is often a means of controlling dissent in the United States. The messaging was unified and total. It was intimidating. My early posts of "I always support secret military programs and Big Pharma", in my ironic response to social media demands to comply with the totalitarian program, were either mocked or commented on with confusion. Reminding activists of our struggle against the World Trade Organization and its direct line to the proponents of a digital slavery of vaccine passports, and other programs of globalist associations like the World Economic Forum and The World Trade Organization, seems to have evaporated with the fear of COVID and the potential of being mocked for not going along with the crowd.
PC: How do you see the relationship now between the likes of you and me and those we previously called our comrades? Have the division lines softened at all over recent months, as you maybe hinted, or are we looking at a decisive rupture, do you think?
KM: It could take many years for a large portion of our allies to join the struggle even as they are forced to participate in an ever-increasing digital slavery. The impact of Mass Formation has been effective. But there is some hope. I often attend a Freedom gathering on Sunday afternoons and of the 30 or 40 people who participate at least half are left activists and the other half are Republicans. I am witnessing a shift where people on the left are now silent about anything to do with COVID and are starting to focus on the economic collapse and the dire conditions we face. Many are even starting to become quiet about their worship of Zelensky now that a Ukrainian victory is less certain. They are not ready yet though to connect the COVID program and war to the march towards the Great Reset. As events spin out or control, it is possible there will be some unity around some aspects of the Great Reset if it is presented as an attack by global capital, but the mask/vaccine area of this program may be impossible for our friends to see and they may continue to support things like censorship, digital passports and mandates. It seems that even as my fully vaccinated friends keep getting COVID or die of strokes and heart attacks, they are so wedded to the narrative that they are not able break out of the trance.
PC: How should we go forward from here? How can we best build new alliances of resistance without compromising our core values which, for me at least, remain exactly the same as they were before Covid?
KM: This is a tough question in light of the global chaos and successful divide and conquer strategy of capitalism. One path is to build local systems of mutual aid so we can survive. The war on thought is unrelenting. Building local communities that support one another emotionally and with the necessities of life may be our only alternative. Food Not Bombs history may provide some guidance. We have intentionally formed a non-hierarchical decentralized system of organizations that seeks to address the needs of the community. Housing with Homes Not Jails, transportation with Bikes Not Bombs, Food Not Lawns, Free Radio, Composting, and of course the food of Food Not Bombs. The other key idea one could take from 42 years of Food Not Bombs is a joyous welcoming atmosphere that encourages dialog by providing literature, music and theater with the necessities of survival gear and a hot meal. Evading the violence of the state may be difficult and strategies of self defense need to evolve.
On the points connected to the fear of COVID, many of our former allies may be lost to us for decades to come but on the issue of digital slavery, police repression and the economic collapse we may have some unity. As difficult as it can be, I make a point of being understanding of those who worship the COVID narrative, always make sure they know I am unvaccinated and move my conversations towards our shared history of resisting the corporate exploitation and the economic slavery of the global institutions.
"As free thinkers we can encourage a great transformation of the human spirit where we find solutions outside the left-right paradigm"
The latest preplanned trauma in the United States is centered around the divisive issues of guns and abortion. There is, however, an intersection around privacy and personal autonomy with those who are pro-choice on the issue of abortion and those who want the freedom to refuse the jabs. There should be unity with the principle that censorship is never justified, but so far anarchist are still on the "silencing uncomfortable ideas" train. And there must be universal agreement between the left and right for the need to end war in Ukraine and an urgent demand to ban all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
As free thinkers we can encourage a great transformation of the human spirit where we find solutions outside the left-right paradigm. That discussion and search must continue in earnest. I am done with the left-right divide. It's now the humans versus the deadly robotic corporate state. My message in my 1992 book "Food Not Bombs, How to feed the hungry and build community" was to organize against the death culture of state and corporate power. That remains my perspective today, only now this fight must find a solution and fast. We need to form a strategy that is difficult for the intelligence agencies to disrupt, builds solidarity and threatens the power elite while nurturing a thriving community. The anarchist theories of decentralized local autonomous social structures I believe are key to survival. Total noncooperation with the system while operating survival projects independent from state and corporate institutions is the path I am taking.
We are nearing a point where the goal may be having food and shelter while avoiding being interned or killed by those loyal to the Build Back Better stakeholder capitalists. As I respond to your questions, I worry these comments won't reach the public before the first nuclear weapon is launched or we are captured and removed from society for our thought crimes.
Follow Keith McHenry on Twitter via @keith_mchenry
Mon, 27 Jun 2022 18:46:15 +0000
5. Voice in the void
My usual means of expressing myself has long been the written word, whether during my quarter of a century in newspaper journalism or in my current books and articles.
But recently I have taken great pleasure in rediscovering the use of my physical voice and, with the encouragement of my friends at Nevermore Media, have embarked on a series of online interviews and audio recordings of my writing.
I say "rediscovering" because I realised, on reflection, that vocal expression has, over the years, often been important for me.
Between the ages of 11 and 14 I used to spend hours of the school holidays recording, with my little sister, satirical radio "programmes" which our mother was later obliged to listen to with appropriate amusement.
Later, at university, a group of us recorded a few satirical videos and collaborated on writing potential scripts for TV and radio.
Although the intermediary form for the latter was obviously the written word, this was not the case for either the creative process or the (imagined!) end product.
I co-hosted a weekly English-language local radio show on the Franco-Swiss border back in 1983-84 and later applied for professional training in radio journalism, though I ended up on the NCTJ newspaper course.
As a young man I was constantly making up poems and songs which I recorded on cassettes via my trusty ghetto blaster but never played to anyone except my girlfriend.
In my early 30s I finally found some people to create music with and ended up writing and recording a few DIY punk tracks with my friend and colleague Steve. He was on guitar, I was on vocals.
In my 40s I took part in weekly informal folk-singing sessions led by another good friend, Chris, and was inspired to write and perform a few songs of my own.
And, of course, I have used my voice for giving talks, taking part in meetings, ranting through megaphones and shouting abuse at arms dealers, riot cops and politicians.
As I canter through my sixtieth year on earth, I find myself wondering what exactly it is that this voice of mine has been trying to say over the decades.
From an outside point of view, the political content of what I have expressed might appear to be so wide as to be a sprawling mess of incoherency.
In addition, because malcontents like me are always campaigning against something (something bad that is happening which we are trying to stop), we can be regarded as ridiculously negative.
We are often painted as a "rent-a-mob" of "antis" who take some kind of twisted delight in opposing everything.
I have spoken out and campaigned against wars and militarism, against road-building and property development, against fracking and fascism, against surveillance and "anti-terror" laws, against Capital and its globalisation, against privatisation, phone masts, fake democracy, land grabs and vaccine passports. Amongst other issues!
The first point in my defence is that these struggles are, of course, not separate or contradictory, but part of one struggle against different aspects of one entity, one system, which we might term The Thing.
Secondly, being against The Thing is not being negative, because The Thing is itself the source of all the negativity, destruction, brutality, misery and exploitation that force me and others to speak out and stand up.
Behind my opposition to The Thing lies a vision of what I think life and society should be like.
This archetype, embedded in my psyche, tells of a different possible way of living, a Withway, in which free human communities are rooted in organic co-operation, in cultural cohesion, in a timeless tradition of freedom, self-determination and closeness to nature.
It was this archetype, I see now, that made me feel, as an adolescent, that the modern world in which I found myself was essentially wrong.
It took me a long time to discover all the different ways in which it is wrong and how these all fit together to form one big and very ugly picture.
My self-appointed task has been to try to get to the root of the problem and not to allow myself to be held back by any ideological constraints.
As alliances were forged and then dissolved, as friends came and went, as seemingly permanent realities revealed themselves as the ephemeral phases they had always been, I felt at times like a lonely voice in the void, struggling to be either heard or understood.
This sensation was very much revived in 2020, when so many of those I considered my allies decided that I was a traitor to their cause for daring to put truth and freedom before dogma and conformity.
But the Covid times have also given me the precious gift of finding new affinities, coming into touch with souls whose ideas resonate closely with mine.
And it is this discovery which has given me the confidence to venture out from behind the protective wall of a purely written presence to reveal the human voice behind it.
Below are some links to readings from my books and articles, plus some of my poems and songs whose original creation spans several decades.
I am most probably a better pamphleteer than I am a poet and I am definitely a better writer than I am a singer!
But I hope that somebody, somewhere, can nevertheless take some pleasure or inspiration from these various recordings.
READINGS FROM BOOKS AND ARTICLES
Forms of Freedom – The State Versus Collectivity
Forms of Freedom – The Criminal Power of the State
Forms of Freedom – Nations and the Denial of Real Freedom
Resist the Fourth Industrial Repression!
POEMS
SONGS
Techno-tyranny (1990s punk)
Truth (1990s post-punk)
Fri, 03 Jun 2022 13:51:03 +0000
6. It’s… Monty Satan’s Lying Circus!
Roll up, roll up, dear units of human capital, and shuffle submissively into the sublimely sustainable future of Monty Satan's Lying Circus!
Keep your distance from each other, folks! No chatting! Remember, eye contact can spread misinformation! Keep your muzzles tightly fastened and your brains in stand-by mode!
We've been planning this show for a very long time indeed and we're hellbent on making it a sizzling red-hot hit on a truly biblical scale!
No expense has been spared in our preparations, thanks to the literally unlimited financial resources available to The Satanic Foundation ("Devil-may-care philanthropy for the modern age") and our very close friends at the Bank for Global Enslavement.
We wanted to be quite sure that you would fall in love with our spectacle before you'd even seen it (that's the only way, believe me!) and that you would come flocking in your innocent millions through our jaws… sorry, doors!
Look at all the faces on the posters we have put up outside! Everyone you love and admire, everyone you have even seen on our TV networks and in our newspapers, has endorsed the Big Event of the 2020s!
Celebrities! Politicians! Writers! Religious leaders! Royals! Radicals! We've made quite sure that they're all on board.
And what about the outside of our Big McTop! How could you not be instantly won over and persuaded to step inside without even asking any basic questions?
We've repainted the whole thing green so that you know for sure that we are the good guys! We've put rainbow flags everywhere! Endless photos of smiling young people of all ethnicities! Seductive trans women! There are even plastic models of delicious 3D-printed food which, I assure you, are almost impossible to tell apart from the real thing!
And there, up on the Giant Smile-Screen, is Mr Satan himself, in his best suit but not wearing a stuffy old tie, shedding warm tears of genuine caring compassion for every single poor, under-developed, disabled, disadvantaged or discriminated-against person in the whole wide world!
Sorry Sir? A sick bag? Just head straight towards the Global Niceness Re-Education Zone over there… That's it, yes, where there's all the razor wire decorated in pink bunting.
Oh, you're really going to love the Circus! We got such a bunch of devilishly fabulous acts lined up for you!
Watch with bated breath as Biohazard Bill waltzes gracefully across the High Wire of Plausibility while, amazingly, juggling poison-laden syringes, massive wads of banknotes and inflatable Jeffrey Epsteins!
Marvel as contortionist Fat Klaus makes us wonder what it means to be human by inserting his bald head into his own back passage in the unique manoeuvre he calls the Great Rectal Reset!
Kids will love Rudolph the Red-Toothed Robot, a marvel of the Fourth Industrial Revolution who is 100% climate-friendly because he powers himself by eating human flesh!
Check your privilege, as performance activist Faye Cleft brings systemic change to the traditional art of escapology by creating the postradical illusion that she is trying to break free from her chains while all the time ensuring that she remains safely bound!
Gasp in awe as His Imperial Highness King Konservation, Grand Ringmaster of the World Wildlife Fraud, wins your hearts by herding holograms of elephants, lions and antelope around the arena before triumphantly heading off to Africa, whip in hand, to tame the savages and throw them off the land in the name of protecting nature!
And everyone gets to join in the fun with our Inclusivity Game! Laugh and laugh as Freddy Five-Gee, Dotty Data and the Impact Clowns wrap you all up in their massive Zing-Along-a-Zinta-Net and turn your shitty little lives into yet another pot of gold for their business associates!
No, no, don't worry about that, Madam. It's purely for your own safety that we are confiscating those gorgeous little bundles of pecuniary potential.
Your children? Your children? Really, madam! That kind of hate-speech is neither appropriate nor acceptable. From now on, there's only one owner around here and that's Mr Satan himself!
