{"id":275119,"date":"2023-10-31T07:25:42","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T07:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=275119"},"modified":"2023-11-02T07:33:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T07:33:03","slug":"this-week-in-the-new-normal-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=275119","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the New Normal #76"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Off-Guardian \u2013 Oct 29, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>Our successor to <em>This Week in the Guardian<\/em>, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/category\/this-week-in-the-new-normal\/\">This Week in the New Normal<\/a><\/em> is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re going to be brief this week\u2026because two would-be sections evolved into full articles in their own right.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>1. Bullsh*t question of the week<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>US Professor of Economics Scott Galloway was on Bill Maher this week, arguing there should be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thegatewaypundit.com\/2023\/10\/nyu-professor-who-pushes-harsher-lockdown-policy-now\/?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=nyu-professor-who-pushes-harsher-lockdown-policy-now\">\u201csome grace and forgiveness\u201d<\/a> for those people who supported lockdowns:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I wanted a harsher lockdown policy. In retrospect: I was wrong\u2026 But here\u2019s the bottom line: We were doing our best. Let\u2019s give a little grace and forgiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fact of the matter is that the question of forgiveness is not relevant, and indeed the whole issue is a propaganda construct in itself. A PR campaign designed to sell the idea that lockdowns were an honest attempt to mitigate a real disease.<\/p>\n<p>We know the truth: Lockdowns were deliberately imposed to create poverty and social immiseration.<\/p>\n<p>The people who supported them were either psychopaths hell-bent on breaking the world and ruining lives, or sock puppets who mindlessly repeated talking points handed down by the ruling authority.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, forgiveness is a waste of time.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>2. Dystopian nightmare fuel of the week<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I saw this on Twitter and it made me sad\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">An &quot;influencer factory&quot; in Indonesia <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FSRLiaQ58G\">pic.twitter.com\/FSRLiaQ58G<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PicturesFoIder\/status\/1717597215462760607?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 26, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s what they call an \u201cinfluencer factory\u201d, a bunch of young women set up in a warehouse to post entirely fake social media content to entirely fake social media accounts. All designed to sell makeup, clothes or food. Or, worse, to drip feed hope to poor people who aspire to a more affluent lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s bleak, but it gets bleaker.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it: If things like this exist to sell mascara and lingerie in Indonesia, imagine what kind of factories exist to sell <em>agendas<\/em>, or <em>ideas<\/em>, to the <em>world<\/em>. And imagine how many of the people working in them you\u2019ve wasted your time arguing with.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>3. Quiet-part-out-loud of the week<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In a television interview Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2023\/oct\/22\/mitch-mcconnell-israel-ukraine-biden-aid\">justified military aid to Ukraine<\/a> by arguing that most of that money is coming right back to America because Ukraine uses it to buy American weapons and vehicles from American arms manufacturers.<\/p>\n<p>This is, broadly speaking, true. America goes to war to make money \u2013 however, it\u2019s also a lie. America doesn\u2019t go to war to make money <em>for America<\/em>, but rather the small cadre of criminal psychopaths who have maneuvered themselves into power.<\/p>\n<p>It has nothing to do with \u201crebuilding their industrial base\u201d, and everything to do with profiteering.<\/p>\n<p>McConnel mentions factories and companies, but there are several people he doesn\u2019t mention. He doesn\u2019t mention the Senators who are going to retire to jobs on boards of Boeing or Raytheon. He doesn\u2019t mention his friends and relatives and business partners who own stocks in defense contractors and get handy tips just before big defense bills are signed (or before \u201cterrorist attacks\u201d take place).<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t mention that by taxing ordinary working Americans; giving that tax revenue to a foreign government and then making a profit when that government then pays it to arms companies, they are essentially stealing money, laundering it overseas, and reaping rich rewards.<\/p>\n<p>He tells a bit of a truth, but not much of it.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Joke of the week\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/wef-food-pyramid-800x737-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-275120\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/wef-food-pyramid-800x737-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"553\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/wef-food-pyramid-800x737-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/wef-food-pyramid-800x737-1-480x442.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 600px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">[Credit to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NHpilled\/status\/1717673352158990651\">NHpilled<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p>All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn\u2019t even mention <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/news\/press-releases\/red-meat-consumption-associated-with-increased-type-2-diabetes-risk\/#:~:text=Boston%2C%20MA%E2%80%94People%20who%20eat,Chan%20School%20of%20Public%20Health.\">red meat causing diabetes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, <a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/submissions\/\">email us<\/a> or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Support Off-Guardian:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ko-fi.com\/offguardian\">Ko-fi<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.subscribestar.com\/offguardian\">Subscribestar<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/donate\/?hosted_button_id=CKFB3MH8CGB9U\">Paypal<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2023\/10\/29\/this-week-in-the-new-normal-76\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Off-Guardian charts the world\u2019s descent into the \u2018new normal\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":273448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-Miscellaneous"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275122,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275119\/revisions\/275122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/273448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=275119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=275119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}