A Pandemic of Power Grabs
by tts-admin | Apr 25, 2020 |
Autocrats see opportunity in disaster
The Economist – April 23, 2020
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ALL THE world’s attention is on covid-19. Perhaps it was a coincidence that China chose this moment to tighten its control around disputed reefs in the South China Sea, arrest the most prominent democrats in Hong Kong and tear a hole in Hong Kong’s Basic Law. But perhaps not. Rulers everywhere have realised that now is the perfect time to do outrageous things, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the world will barely notice. Many are taking advantage of the pandemic to grab more power for themselves.
China’s actions in Hong Kong are especially troubling. Since Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997, Hong Kong has been governed under the formula of “one country, two systems”. By and large, its people enjoy the benefits of free speech, free assembly and the rule of law. Foreign firms have always felt safe there, which is why Hong Kong is such an important financial hub. But China’s ruling Communist Party has long yearned to crush Hong Kong’s culture of protest. Article 22 of the Basic Law (a kind of mini-constitution) bans Chinese government offices from interfering in Hong Kong’s internal affairs. That was always understood to include its Liaison Office in Hong Kong. But on April 17th the office, China’s main representative body in the territory, said it was not bound by Article 22. This suggests that it plans to step up its campaign to curtail Hong Kong’s freedoms.
Xi Jinping’s incremental power grab in Hong Kong is one of many. All around the world, autocrats and would-be autocrats spy an unprecedented opportunity. Covid-19 is an emergency like no other. Governments need extra tools to cope with it. No fewer than 84 have enacted emergency laws vesting extra powers in the executive. In some cases these powers are necessary to fight the pandemic and will be relinquished when it is over. But in many cases they are not, and won’t be. The places most at risk are those where democracy’s roots are shallow and institutional checks are weak.
Take Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been eroding checks and balances for a decade. Under a new coronavirus law, he can now rule by decree. He has become, in effect, a dictator, and will remain so until parliament revokes his new powers. Since it is controlled by his party, that may not be for a while. Hungary is a member of the European Union, a club of rich democracies, yet it is acting like Togo or Serbia, whose leaders have just assumed similar powers on the same pretext.
Everywhere people are scared. Many wish to be led to safety. Wannabe strongmen are grabbing coercive tools they have always craved—in order, they say, to protect public health. Large gatherings can be sources of infection; even the most liberal governments are restricting them. Autocrats are delighted to have such a respectable excuse for banning mass protests, which over the past year have rocked India, Russia and whole swathes of Africa and Latin America. The pandemic gives a reason to postpone elections, as in Bolivia, or to press ahead with a vote while the opposition cannot campaign, as in Guinea. Lockdown rules can be selectively enforced. Azerbaijan’s president openly threatens to use them to “isolate” the opposition. Relief cash can be selectively distributed. In Togo you need a voter ID, which opposition supporters who boycotted a recent election tend to lack. Minorities can be scapegoated. India’s ruling party is firing up Hindu support by portraying Muslims as covid-19 vectors.
Fighting the virus requires finding out who is infected, tracing their contacts and quarantining them. That means more invasions of privacy than people would accept in normal times. Democracies with proper safeguards, like South Korea or Norway, will probably not abuse this power much. Regimes like China’s and Russia’s are eagerly deploying high-tech kit to snoop on practically everyone, and they are not alone. Cambodia’s new emergency law places no limits on such surveillance.
False information about the disease can be dangerous. Many regimes are using this truism as an excuse to ban “fake news”, by which they often mean honest criticism. Peddlers of “falsehood” in Zimbabwe now face 20 years in prison. The head of a covid-19 committee under Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan warlord, says: “We consider anyone who criticises to be a traitor.” Jordan, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates have banned print newspapers, claiming that they might transmit the virus.
Judging by what has already been reported, power grabbers on every continent are exploiting covid-19 to entrench themselves. But with journalists and human-rights activists unable to venture out, nobody knows whether the unreported abuses are worse. How many dissidents have been jailed for “violating quarantine rules”? Of the vast sums being mobilised to tackle the pandemic, how much has been stolen by strongmen and their flunkeys? A recent World Bank study found that big inflows of aid to poor countries coincided with big outflows to offshore havens with secretive shell companies and banks—and that was before autocrats started grabbing covid-related emergency powers. Better checks are needed.
“Right now it is health over liberty,” says Thailand’s autocratic prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha. Yet many of the liberty-constricting actions taken by regimes like his are bad for public health. Censorship blocks the flow of information, frustrating an evidence-based response to the virus. It also lets corruption thrive. Partisan enforcement of social distancing destroys the trust in government needed if people are to follow the rules.
Cruel, but inept
Where does this lead? Covid-19 will make people poorer, sicker and angrier. The coronavirus is impervious to propaganda and the secret police. Even as some leaders exploit the pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable. In countries where families are hungry, where baton-happy police enforce lockdowns and where cronies’ pickings from the abuse of office dwindle along with the economy, that may eventually cause some regimes to lose control. For the time being, though, the traffic is in the other direction. Unscrupulous autocrats are exploiting the pandemic to do what they always do: grab power at the expense of the people they govern. ■
Source
Why would ANYONE in their RIGHT MIND (If they still HAVE a brain after decades of Far Left NAZI propaganda) Wnat to sign up to the FAR LEFT ZIONISTS agenda driven ”Economist’?? It is right up there with the Guardian (And more recently the Daily Mail since thier Zionist takeover a few years ago) for FAR LEFT NAZI Propaganda
The Economist is not leftwing. It is pure propaganda and I stopped reading it about 13yrs ago.
this article focus on nations that oppose the zionists agenda , the accusation of taking advantage of plandemic is clearly on those who planed it , ignoring that and focusing on little opportunists that might exist is no less than disinformation .
china russia Bulgaria what’s common about this country ?
What a worthless shit-rag is The Economist; just more Rothschild-run NWO toxic puke. Funny how this drivel of an article doesn’t mention the power grabs in the Jewnited States or Jew-K. This electronic bucket of chum makes specific mention of Viktor Orban, leader of Hungary and an avowed nationalist who has been very vocal and steadfast in opposing the destruction of Europe by the forced “migration” invasion of millions of worthless degenerates from Africa and the Middle East, an invasion fostered by the evil sacks of shit who get some sort of perverse thrill, and more power of course, from sowing chaos.
The covid-1984 scamdemic is, at least in part, another huge transfer of wealth from those who have a little to those who have an ungodly amount. It’s never enough for those demons. Never. Millions and millions of small business owners and small land-holders are being forced into ruin by the billionaires and satanic Jew World Order proponents, so they can, once again, swoop in and scoop up more assets for pennies on the dollar. Those hopelessly evil anti-humans need to be impoverished and dangling by their necks from streetlights all over the world.
I read, mentally declined the invitation — yet another REGISTRATION??? — and silently thanked UK’s The Truthseeker for the easy test this Saturday morning. Back to your garden, Candide! We have food to grow!
It is hard to believe that anyone is buying the propaganda now. Everything the corporate media has pushed over the past few years has proved to be complete and utter lies. Whether it is Assad gassing his own people, Russia orchestrating the war in the Donbas in the Ukraine, the wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, the Skripal fiasco, Assange being guilty of anything, the Russians interfering in elections all over the world, the US choice for President in Venezuela, now China being behind the CV pandemic (lies). The list is pretty endless going back to 1945.
The corporate media is complicit in Deep State crimes, and can no longer rely on a once brainwashed public accepting anything on face value.
Oh come on…The Economist…..yeah right,give us a break…
Britain a democracy…..yeah right…..its nothing of the sort.It is a very corrupt oligarchy with a very active secret police (MI5) who are to be found working in the media!!….
If Britain WAS a democracy there is no way in hell that Britain would have allowed millions of alien people to live there….NO WAY.
Apparently the British Navy has just intercepted more third world illegal immigrants and brought them to live in Britain….obviously there are “exceptions” in the “lockdown”.
Well….Hungary wouldn’t put their owns citizens lives in jeopardy….now would it.BUT….here we have those Economist FAKES condemning its government .
The editor of this magazine should be put in jail.
The Economist ??
Totally useless, not like the Guardian which can replace the lack of Toilet Paper ??
The Economist is another Rothschild-owned propaganda tool, used in part to tell all the Rothy minions and followers what is going on and what views they ought to adopt. However, this article is the central propaganda voice of Big Brother of the New World Order. It is saying, “We are watching you maverick nations out there. Don’t take advantage of our carefully engineered pandemic psyop..”
Hey, cartel heads! Listen up! If you don’t like your Covid psyop anymore, then call it off!
But you can’t do that right now, can you? This little article is your special signal as to how serious you want the pandemic to appear, and that it has to be prolonged, without anyone taking advantage of anything until after the reset, or the people getting together. Right?
Crash the economy totally and as suddenly as you can, creating such a crisis that even the dollar appears poised to fail, and there you are with the IMF to bail everyone out, making it a fait accompli for the big reset, which most government heads have already agreed to, except for the people of the nations who never really know what is going on, is that it? It must be something like that, because anyone who can connect two dots knows that the economic shutdowns from this Covid thing is a total crock.
And when the economy grids to a total halt, what about your SDR’s or equivalent, like perhaps a digital dollar bolstered with a little bit of gold to please some eastern governments, and that one of these currencies becomes the sole global reserve currency, all under the cartel’s control, of course? Is that the plan as well? Then there is that Gates fellow with vaccinations, ID chips and all of that high tech 5G stuff bringing much financial coordination and control to come. Wow, the future looks pretty good, at least from you perspective.
The Western financial system itself now needs constant QE transfusions of fiat plasma due to a century of your bank-cartel mismanagement and plundering, and now the rest of the world is ready to entrust you with governance of the fiances of the entire world? Is that what is really happening? Well done. What idiots. But when your have control of the money you always win no matter how you screw up, right?
Now, all you have to do is to make the shutdowns last long enough to put just a little more stress on the economic heart strings, much like the Covid virus itself with an aged patient on life support. Then when he gets the virus his death is blamed on the virus. All you need do is to shut down as many functions of the economy as possible and blame the virus.
Your propagandist says, “Large gatherings can be sources of infection; even the most liberal governments are restricting them.” That’s right Jacob, if more people were to smell a rat and the truth should spread that could be absolutely deadly to your smooth transition into this new-world-order your cartel has cooked up, and they may not go very quietly for their inoculations and the final control measures.
The official organ of the Rothschilds speaks.
Under the guise of well meaning concern for humanity’s health, The Jewconomist goes on to slide the mind-raping hypodermic needle into the vein of cognition with off-handed phrases like,
“Take Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been eroding checks and balances for a decade,
“Rulers everywhere have realised that now is the perfect time to do outrageous things, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the world will barely notice. Many are taking advantage of the pandemic to grab more power for themselves.”
And disguised behind the scenes, Jew cries out as he strikes you, to quote excellent Polish proverb, going on to list the enemies, i.e., resisters to messianic Antichrist project Tikkun Olam):
“Xi Jinping’s incremental power grab in Hong Kong is one of many [notwithstanding that HK was the icing on the Opium Wars cake enjoyed by the Rothschilds and Sassoons in recognition of their genocide of the Chinese nation],
“Right now it is health over liberty,” says Thailand’s autocratic prime minister,
“Regimes like China’s and Russia’s are eagerly deploying high-tech kit to snoop on practically everyone …”
What Jew would call his rogues gallery, those unwilling to bend a knee to Noahide law.
Nowhere in the article do I see the mention of Israel and the dire situation in Gaza and West Bank where IDF marauders are dismantling makeshift COVID testing tents—because in the squinty, beady eye of Economist, Israel is a paragon of democratic virtue.
When the Truthseeker.co.uk puts out an article from the Economist then I wonder if a power grab has been accomplished on this website