Blog#63: Down on the Farm
Part One
There once was a time when catching a plane was a relatively simple affair. You turned up at the airport, joined the queue for your flight, and awaited your turn. After showing your passport and answering a few questions, you would say goodbye to your luggage for the time being, be given a boarding pass, and would stroll off in the direction of security. Job done.
While some airlines continue to adhere to this system, an increasing number of them have decided to get more modern. One such is Avianca, the Colombian airline. I know this, because my wife caught one of their flights very recently.
It was her first visit to Colombia, the country where she was born, for almost four years. She used to go more-or-less annually, but convid brought an end to all that. And we now inhabit a somewhat different world. 
A couple of airport officials were waiting to shepherd her into a queue, where she joined a bunch of equally bemused Colombians. Just what they were queuing for was not immediately apparent. Anyhow, once she arrived at the front of the queue, my wife told the airline official there that, no, she hadn't checked in online - in common with half the other Colombians there. So she was pointed in the direction of a machine where she could get her boarding pass.
It didn't work. She summoned another airline official to help. It didn't work for him either. He disappeared with her passport to another machine somewhere, and eventually turned up with a boarding pass. Then she joined another queue, and somehow got to check in her bag, though even this took time, as she'd forgotten where she'd put the boarding pass amongst all the mayhem....
By now we were both close to nervous wrecks; just time for a quick coffee before she headed off. It was when we sat down with our refreshments that I spoke. Gesturing with a bold sweep of my hand all around me, it just came out: "This is evil." My wife looked at me surprised, and raised her eyebrows a little shocked. "How can you say that? This is your home, where you live." And then she was gone...
It's an important discussion, but didn't warrant her missing her flight. Not quite.
Part Two
None of it makes any sense, not within the frame of reference that most people inhabit, at least. The airport experience is an economic no-no. There are far more employees involved in the check-in process than in the older system. It is slower, less efficient, more stressful for travellers and workers alike.
It's the same in supermarkets. The number of staffed check-outs is being progressively reduced - and the queues grow longer - while customers are pointed towards the self-service check-outs. These are often a mini-version of the airport experience. Things don't scan properly, or the machines are hypersensitive and go into overdrive at the slightest miscalculation. The machine refuses to work because you haven't put your shopping bag in the right place. An army of supermarket workers needs to be on hand to save the hapless customers trying to buy a bag of potatoes and a tin of peas.
On one especially bad day, my wife accosted a supermarket worker. "Why are there only two people working on check-outs? The queues are really long." A flustered girl looked at her trying to hold back the panic. "We're short-staffed. We can't open any more." A casual glance around the place revealed that the 'staff shortage' was largely a reflection of the large number of workers needed around the self-service area, where their attentions were constantly required to check ID for folk of pensionable age buying alcohol, to count the number of shopping bags they've got, to correct the price of special offers, and the rest.
"Ah" the believers will say. "They are teething troubles. The process is still underway. Everything will run like clockwork once automation is complete."
So what is this process exactly? Reasonable question. Nobody working on the tills. No airline employee in sight. It's somebody's dream; but not mine.
Anybody with a functioning cell in their brain will recognise that there is nothing in the automation/digital/QR code/'scan this, scan that' version of reality to benefit human beings at all. OK, some menial jobs have been done away with, saving someone somewhere a bit of cash. But what's the point? Does anybody really think it's a good idea that you might not be able to find anybody in a bank to speak to, when you can't access your money, or when you've mixed up your PINs, or when you need to pay somebody but can't sort it out? 
Nobody in their right mind will regard this non-human world, run by anonymous digital codes that you can't do anything about, as a healthy thing, as a step forward for human beings. It's placing your life in the 'hands' (it doesn't have hands...) of artificial intelligence, which you won't be able to track down to complain to, which has no face, which has nothing aside from codes which will determine what you can and cannot do in multiple aspects of your life. This is what it is all about: the airports, the supermarkets, the banks, and the rest. It is about taking over your life. It is about control. It is about removing the 'human' from the everyday life of humanity. Sounds great, doesn't it?
In my view, it's worth making an effort to frequent places that are less advanced down this road. I tend to avoid the supermarkets where the check-outs have disappeared the most. Asda, around here, for example. If you need to use a bank, and most of us, hopefully not to our great eventual cost, still do, use a place where you can speak to people about questions and issues, and where there is an option of paying in and out with a bank worker, not only through some infernal money-chomping machine.
So, is this all dipped in evil, or not?
Part Three
Concealing a malicious intent, deliberate deception; feigning benevolence, all the while with the aim of inflicting harm: I would say that this smacks of evil as well.
It is clear now like never before. The performers on the world public stage are a bunch of crazies. To an extent it's always been this way, but over the past four years it's come right to the surface, on public display, for all to see.
Take current mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. At this very moment, he is quite possibly shooting himself in the foot - or at least his political career - by persisting in his LEZ (low emission zone) and especially ULEZ (ultra...) in and around London. It's all got inflated somehow with CO2, global boiling, saving the planet. I haven't looked at it in great depth, but no need: it's all blatantly crazy.
The idea is to clean up the air of the capital by discouraging people with 'dirty cars' from using them. You do this by charging them a fortune for every time they get in the driving seat and venture out. And you know when they venture out, because you've got your spy cameras installed all over the place.
The thing is this: the air around London is pretty clean these days, far cleaner than forty or fifty years ago. Many of the suburban areas, to which Khan has recently extended the programme, are fresh. Where it is bad is on the underground, where nothing is done.
It might be worth recalling that this lunatic is a member of the Labour Party, originally established to provide a voice for the poor, the underprivileged, the 'working class'. And who are the people with the oldest, 'dirtiest' cars, those hit hardest economically by the ULEZ restrictions? Oh, it's the poor, the underprivileged, the working class.....
Some people characterise the ULEZ programme as a money grab. And although there is some truth in this, they have missed the main point, the real evil craziness.
I watched a short video clip (that's plenty....) of Sadiq Khan 'responding' to the objections to his great ULEZ scheme for London. He said that he knew there would be opposition, but that he was surprised at all the conspiracy theories that had been voiced against his plans. Conspiracy theories? Does anybody still believe that the term has any validity? It's been done to death, surely: overused, misused. What it normally means is any idea that more might be going on than the 'authorities' like Sadiq Khan are letting on.
Take a look at the guy. Do you see anybody there? Do you see a unique, intelligent, free-thinking individual? Or do you see something more like a kind of computer software, just rolling out what it's been programmed to spout? Just asking....
Part Four
While seeing off my wife to foreign parts, I spent a bit of time watching the planes. There were lots of them, arriving, departing. It was still late summer, and large numbers of tourists were turning up on the British shores. The sense of holiday was palpable.
The same entities that push through schemes like ULEZ would dearly like to stop all this fun, all this international travel. It's there in documents, reports. Air travel is public enemy number one, spewing deadly CO2 into the atmosphere and frying us all. It's irresponsible, terrible, and should be curtailed forthwith, for the sake of all life on Earth.
It's all bullshit. The degree of deception would surprise even a conspiracy theorist. I gazed, and mused: why are some entities so intent on putting a stop to all this? Why, really?
Look at some of these things that have been doing the rounds of late; what have they in common? Demonisation of air travel; ULEZ and the like; 15-minute cities; electric cars; 'global warming, it's too hot and dangerous to go to the Mediterranean on holiday'. Not to mention the restrictions of the convid era: lockdowns, you mustn't go out of your local area etc. It seems that someone or something does not want you moving around. Simple as that.
When I was watching the aeroplanes, it came to me: they are control freaks. Addicted to control. Chronic insecurity to see people behaving from their own free will. I have known a few control freaks during the course of my life, and it's that precisely. All their actions are underpinned by a felt but probably unconscious need to be in control of events that effect them. If you step out of line, they really don't like it, and you're in big trouble.
Fortunately, the controlling measures being implemented by Khan and his like, mainly in the name of global warming, do not seem to be popular. People don't like skyrocketing food and energy prices, then being told they need to pay £12.50 to drive their car out into the street.
Despite the hysteria which continues to be spewed out of the BBC and its media buddies, panic about global warming is pretty low - serious cases like 'just stop oil' and 'extinction rebellion' aside. A lot of people appear to be tired of it all, and of being told what to do. There are folk going around taking down ULEZ cameras in the London suburbs, making the programme impossible - good on them, I wish them every success. Popular non-compliance is the key; maybe this will turn out to be a poll tax situation. 
There is one over-riding and glaringly obvious fact which proves that all the climate change propaganda and activism is bullshit; and, by the way, that the real aims are completely different to those proclaimed on the tin.
If you truly believe in the CO2-is-killing-us story, and you want to do something about it, you will ignore what is happening in the UK (or in most other countries on the planet). The British Isles could sink into the Atlantic along with all its inhabitants tomorrow, and without climatic trace.
If you are logically serious about curbing CO2 emissions in a way that will make a difference, you will focus all your energies - and I mean all your energies - on the two great CO2 monsters of this world, China and India. You will be camped outside their consulates and embassies around the world, demanding change and refusing to move until something is done. You will be calling for a boycott of Chinese goods. You will be on your electric bike, heading for the Chinese borders to put on a mass protest against the authorities there who are boiling us all to death.
But not a word. The foot soldiers of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion just don't go there. It is tragic, but they have been well-and-truly had, deceived into agitating for the very forces of darkness which they believe they are railing against. The entities behind these organisations, some of the main financial backers, know what they are doing. They are following another narrative altogether.
It's all lies and bullshit, folks. It becomes more transparent by the day, as the would-be controllers play all their cards in a hurry. Maybe in truth they are getting desperate....
I have read David Icke's new book, 'The Dream', and fantastic it is. More to be said later, for sure. But he did this interview recently which sets out quite a bit of the subject matter from the book. David's metaphysics have developed in an extraordinary manner, and the way that he talks coherently about this stuff amazes me. Highly recommended....
