by Doug Casey, International Man:

International Man: It’s been over a year since the COVID lockdowns started, and they have established a terrible precedent.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has issued what they call a “dire warning.” They say there will be a 5% increase in carbon emissions as global economies reopen after the COVID shutdowns this year and that it will be “anything but sustainable” for the environment. This implies that the shutdowns have been good for the environment and that returning to normal is bad.

There has also been a flood of articles in the mainstream media advocating for the use of lockdowns to address so-called climate change.

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Do you think that the COVID lockdowns could become climate change lockdowns?

Doug Casey: Without exception, almost everything they say in the above article is either an overt and intentional lie or just factually incorrect. Things that are controversial at best are presented as incontrovertible facts.

Let me first reiterate a few facts about COVID.

It’s hard to be sure because everything about it has become highly politicized, but COVID itself seems no more serious than the Asian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, Bird Flu, or Swine Flu that have come and gone in recent decades and is not even remotely comparable to the Spanish Flu of 1918.

The numbers show that COVID is a risk for people over 70, the obese, and the sick—but a medical non-problem for everyone else. That’s why the average age of decedents is 80, even though it appears that everyone who dies with the virus in their system is reported as a statistic—even if they die of an auto accident or a heart attack. People with zero symptoms are, nonetheless, listed as “cases” if they fail the overly sensitive and very expensive PCR test.

We might ask: “What’s behind this insane flu hysteria—which is radically restructuring the world’s political and economic landscapes? And why now?” It seems very oddly coincidental with a few other phenomena.

One is that the world is on the cusp of a fantastically devastating depression due to the insane creation of currency units all over the world by central banks. Is the phony COVID hysteria—and, yes, I believe it’s 80% phony—being used as an excuse for the coming collapse, a way to recuse those responsible for the insane economic policies causing the depression? In other words, is the COVID hysteria an artificially constructed force majeure used to distract from the real cause of the Greater Depression?

Another phenomenon is that the COVID hysteria has proved an excellent way to scare the hell out of the public everywhere. Terrified people demand “strong” leaders and strict controls. It’s a godsend for the kind of people who go into government, anxious for any excuse to self-aggrandize and take more power. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste” has been an operating principle of powermongers since Day One. And war is the most serious kind of crisis. Don’t forget what Randolf Bourne said in 1914: “War is the health of the State.” But a real war with a real enemy is always risky and may not always be feasible. So powermongers create phony wars. In order to fight a war—any kind of war—you need a State to organize and legitimize it.

The first major phony war in living memory was Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty—the poor lost. Then came Richard Nixon’s war on drugs. Then, Baby Bush declared war on terror. They’re all still ongoing, but it seems time for a two-front war. A war on global warming combined with a war on COVID will be ultra-effective for breeding fear in Boobus americanus. They say global warming can destroy the planet and COVID can kill everyone. A sure-fire combination. They’re certain to get widespread support from the usual suspects.

As a bonus, there’s a very high correlation between those who support the COVID hysteria and those supporting the climate change agenda. And both of them claim to have a new ally, “the science,” to sell the wars to scared chimpanzees. Not just in the US, but everywhere in the world. These two new wars will bring out the worst in everyone, everywhere.

Once you wash away their social veneer, the patina of civilization, you find that humans are tribal. Put them in groups and they revert to the lowest common denominator—they act like our anthropoid ancestors and relatives. Get people excited, hooting and panting like chimps, and they’re anxious to wage war on one thing after another. Imagine them as the anthropoids contesting the watering hole in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Conflict gives them a sense of solidarity and gives their lives meaning.

That’s especially true of humans with collectivist views, which is to say, Leftists and busybodies. In today’s world, they include the “woke,” social justice warriors, progressives, BLM supporters, Antifa, and, of course, socialists, communists, Marxists, and all their fellow travelers. They’re all Puritans motivated to control other humans. The Left has always been that way, although it occasionally disguises itself as pro-freedom to seduce the naive.

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