With no vaccines to save them and very little exposure to Omicron, the Chinese have embarked upon an indefinite dystopia of masking, testing, mass surveillance and periodic lockdowns – all for nothing
They get their money from the same folk who are bringing us culture war, covid, and climate change. It is not worth risking lawsuits and losing 6-figure salaries to speak out. They, like the ACLU, et al are owned and will remain on message.
I got into a text conversation last year with a volunteer from the local ACLU chapter here in Sacramento, and the "person" on the other end (could have been AI) trumpeted the freedoms from infection through mandating vaccination. Very magnanimous of them to allow me to have my body autonomy after I take the required treatment.
A long time ago I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Then big donors hijacked their leadership and they became another tool of the establishment. Sad.
I remember that Amnesty International refused to consider the violations of the human rights of Ernst Zundel in both Canada and the US. He was quietly living in the US, when he was arrested by about 30 jack booted thugs from Homeland Security, locked up in a US jail for weeks and eventually "deported" to Canada where he was locked up in a jail with no furniture, forced to sleep on the floor, where the lights were kept on 24/7 with no privacy or exercise periods. He was kept that way for 2 years and was eventually sent to Germany where he was locked up for another 5 years. At least in Germany he was given the basic comforts while he was in prison. Amnesty International is has about as much concern about human rights as does a serial killer.
Amnesty also ignores Julian Assange in their list of tortured journalists; they only care about human rights abuses that support NATO targets for regime change. It's a disgusting fraud.
Indeed, their silence is cowardice. You really can't be neutral on a moving train. Neutrality only benefits the oppressor, never the victim. And the ACLU is even worse, first they were silent, but then they came out IN FAVOR of these mandates, effectively rubber stamping them.
It is safe to say their economy is in freefall. I buy dozens of different commodity chemicals and prices have dropped between 20-50% in the last 6 months. Vendors are also quite aggressively seeking volumes/shipments, and are pulling out all the stops to prevent order cancellations. This jives with their typical factory production model; which is continuous production no matter what
Any sort of data being released from official sources is BS; they are in deep deep trouble
We should in a sense be thankful to Xi Jinping. Many of us have been fretting about a world economically and technologically dominated by the Chinese in as little as a decade, and of course the inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Thanks to ZeroCovid, Taiwan (which is full of Covid) is safe, and we in the West can go back to committing economic and cultural suicide, as opposed to being taken over by another power.
Its actually rather amusing. SARS-2 will eventually overwhelm them; the virus has to win once, ZeroCovid has to win every day.
China doesn’t have a zero COVID policy. They have a population control policy. I believe the global economy is spiraling and about to completely crash. China is building the infrastructure to quell mass uprisings. That’s their true threat. Commies don’t care about their people. Covid has a 99.97% survival rate. Commies don’t lock down for that. Even If there were a 30% IFR, commies would still force their workers into the factories at gunpoint. 30% reduction in population, while emerging as a global superpower while the rest of the world runs and hides from the virus.
Indeed... The idea that China is going through this out of concern for the health of its citizens is absolutely comical. China's history is littered with sacrificing its people by the millions just to appease whoever was in charge or prevent having to admit failure. They've been dumping toxic chemicals and destroying the environment with no regard for public health whatsoever. Many of their cities are completely unlivable and you actually *need* face masks to walk around them because of the all the smog and particulates. For many Chinese if you get cancer at early age because you've been living in one of these hell-holes you are simply out of luck and you will die. And add on top of that they are working people to death.
And now all of a sudden the Chinese government is pulling out all the stops to prevent people catching the sniffles while the rest of the world has already proven they can just carry on without any large scale health effects?
I guess you have to believe in Putin blowing up his own gas pipes to be able to believe that Zero-Covid in China is about public health...
i don't think anyone inferred the policy was about public health. it is merely about a dictator who put an impossible plan into place and will do as you said- sacrifice it's people to appease the guy in power who cannot be wrong, no matter the cost
More like a foretaste of the great reset. The same devils will be oppressing, wrecking and destroying people lives on steroids, if they gain total control of every facet of everyone's life.
What is the percentage of lives lost here? I think that Biden is jealous of China. Communism seems to have been created for weak leaders who crave control.
"China is building the infrastructure to quell mass uprisings"
That's chinese thing .... building a wall in nowhere, building a highway to nowhere, building a city with no one in it ... crazy! I guess the communists are making them work silly jobs since they are going to get paid anyway
And the biggest irony: apparently their supposed idol, Karl Marx, was a "let it rip" kind of guy when it came to disease. He would never have supported lockdowns or "Zero COVID" (TM).
The "inevitable invasion of Taiwan" is Chinese propaganda. It will never happen because of the uncertainties in planning and executing a large amphibious invasion, especially one where you're dealing with 100 miles of treacherous seas, limited landing areas, frequent bad weather, and a large, well equipped, well-trained, force of motivated defenders.
China's military planners have no experience with amphibious operations. In 1944 the United States, which had a LOT of experience with amphibious operations, nixed a plan to invade Taiwan as too risky. Read up on "Operation Causeway" for a summary of some of the difficulties the U.S. faced when contemplating invading and occupying then Japanese-occupied Taiwan to use as a base against Japan's home islands. Then ask yourself what would happen if the PLA actually tried something like this. It would almost certainly be a major catastrophe.
A PRC invasion of Taiwan, producer of the world's semiconductors, would instantly bring about a worldwide economic depression, including China itself. They dare not kill the golden goose.
60 Minutes did a segment on Taiwan and the China threat last night. The people in Taiwan and officials they spoke to seemed oddly unconcerned about the possibility of China taking them over.
We need to be on the lookout for the dragons invading the US. No doubt they would love to snatch all our private property and resources. I heard somewhere that Chinese already own some real estate in the US.
I remember in the 80s and early 90s when everyone was alarmed that Japanese oligarchs were buying up US real estate. A recession came along, the market collapsed, and they were forced to sell off at fire-sale discounts.
Plan B. Blockade of Taiwan. No messy amphibs, easy to drive off shipping and well within the range of tens of thousands of anti ship missiles. USN isn't going to break that blockade no matter what dc propaganda says otherwise.
Declaring a blockade and actually enforcing it are two entirely different matters. Is the PLA Navy ready to intercept a US Navy warship in international waters, and sink it if necessary? How about Japan and South Korea? A large percentage of their maritime trade traffic goes through the Taiwan straits. Is the PLA Navy prepared to stop, board and inspect their merchant ships, and seize their cargo if it's discovered that it's actually bound for Taiwan? Keep in mind that if things escalated, the Japanese Self-Defense Force could probably sink China's navy before lunch.
Good questions, D, but read comment. The USN isn't going to get within 100 miles of any CCP ships due to Chinese shore to ship missiles. Thousands of them. If a blockade ever happens, you can be sure the CCP will tell the US that any warships that come anywhere near Chinese vessels will be sunk. Period. Same for Korea and Japan.
The world has changed, my friend. The US has been exposed repeatedly now as a paper tiger. We lack the will to risk all out war w Russia or China, and certainly both. Better believe that non Western nations are seeing the sinking US ship and getting off as fast as diplomacy allows.
And, yes, China won't have any problems turning away ships from Taiwan if necessary. They already bully ships in international waters now over fishing and energy rights. Taiwan is extremely dependent on food and energy imports. A blockade would be fast and devastating. And the US won't be able to stop it anymore than they stopped the Taliban or the Russians.
Did they actually stop blockading Taiwan after those exercises or did they just invade and take over the news messaging? Maybe I worry too much that I don't actually know what is going on now the news media seem to be fully bought and paid for.
Great question. Everything is such 24 7 propaganda now. Consider sources and consider who is promoting. For ex, if i see a narrative being peddled by people like Nuland, Blinken, and their ilk i can be 99.9% sure its bullshit. Ive developed a small network of sources who have proven themselves over time to call it straight. That helps.
China's ability to monitor and target ships on the high seas is still rudimentary, and their few modern long range anti-ship missiles have not been fully tested. Then you have to consider US fleet anti-missile defense systems such as Aegis and SeaRAM. And don't forget the US Navy currently deploys 50 attack submarines, which those missiles can't touch. If they want to play chicken, I'm pretty sure the US Navy could sink the entire PLA Navy in an afternoon.
I'll just return to my main contention that the US is spineless when it comes to direct combat w anyone who can fight back, at least since Vietnam. We talk a good game and we spend trillions on overpriced weapons systems that get Northern Virginia contractors (and their crooked Congressors ) stinkin rich, but the US doesn't commit troops anywhere we think will result in real casualties. We love a good, long quagmire, against goatherders preferably,with unwinnable objectives. Plenty of money and promotions for the MIC. When it comes to China and Russia? We're all bluff. Oh sure, we'll fight to the last Ukrainian (and Pole if it comes to that) but no way will the DC Regime go toe to toe w China or Russia. And we know this (as someone on Larry Johnson's blog noted) because the US hasnt done $^#@ against relative pipsqueaks like Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and NoKo notwithstanding their unwavering and infuriating middle finger in Uncle Sam's face for decades.
Yeah, we gotta lotta hardware. We sail it all over the place but we're peacocks. Unless the job involves somebody who is an easy kill, we sail on by.
Yeah, China destroys itself through pride and arrogance of the leadership. Instead of capitalizing on this gift we just decide to go along the same route, for the same fundamental reasons. It has indeed turned into an amusing theater of the absurd.
And of course the virus is going to win, as viruses have beaten humans since the dawn of time. When has anybody ever managed to "zero" a virus away? Not gonna happen now, hasn't happened ever.
'......... viruses have beaten humans since the dawn of time.'
No, if that were true we wouldn't be here; you (and I) would not be commenting on this article. At worst it's a continuing battle, neither side winning comprehensively.
True, I should have said more accurately that we can't achieve "zero virus x", whatever the virus in question may be. We can't make it disappear, we can adapt to it, some of us will die, others will recover and require immunity and so on. But we can't just mask up and stop shaking hands and it will just go away.
Thankful to Xi maybe. Although he is maybe a bit like Tolstoy's Napoleon; the forces at work were going to ensure this progression of events and he is the least free of everyone to to anything about it.
With all of your experience dealing with the Chinese and knowing about the effects of their covid campaign, why haven't you figured out the agenda behind the covid war against their own people? Surely you must have developed a thesis on why the Party is executing this war against their own country. They've put the expansion of their economy and their grip on international commerce on hold and you know damn well, they don't care about the people. There is a REASON why the party is executing this economy destroying, covid plan for so long. I just don't know what it is, but it must be to support their long game in some way.
I have no idea. The same sort of national mass insanity that led them, for 36 years, to impose and enforde One Child, which involved countless forced abortions - even of 9 month pregnancies- forced contraception (copper IUD) and all manner of horror. My only explanation is that fear of covid took root early on, and became politically expedient. The CCP doesn't do 180s and so is all in. There is no why.
Thanks for that report about their economic truth. They are reaching a horrible demographic issue of too many seniors. The one-child policy has doomed a full two generations and they face a real shortage of able, trainable workers as I understand it. In order to rebuild the economy it seems they are going to force harsh measures to get more work from working ages. Strong controls will be needed to avoid any backlash over the decline in prosperity. I suspect that's why they are imposing such controls now to tame unrest. We shall if it works. Seems pretty dumb to me, but I'm not in their system.
The Chinese reaction is super weird - it sort of shows how the world is being led by absolute idiots with absolutely no real plan about anything. If China stays on this zero covid path it will destroy itself. It already has huge financial and social problems - how far can a population be pushed before it has nothing to lose by retaliating?
Xi Jingping is being illogical about zero covid. Biden is being illogical about Ukraine. Zelensky and Putin are on a road to destruction because they can't find a way to stop. The EU leaders are being illogical about energy. At what point do the people of the world rise up and cast these fools aside?
I think the Chinese expect that SARS-COV-2 has a bunch of tricks up its sleeve that it hasn't displayed yet.
They have studied how corona viruses can be weaponized, their bureaucracy understands these viruses better than ours. That could also explain why they don't want to shoot up their population with the mRNA/DNA stuff.
I have also wondered if the Chinese know something that the rest of us don't, but what about the picture of those people in bunny suits spraying chemicals on the floor? How does that serve any purpose?
I have had interesting conversations lately about why we should double down on Western liberalism and not succumb to the urge to mimic communist China. I have held to the belief that their totalitarian system will be its own undoing.
Liberalism has strong pluralistic roots which create checks and balances. To the extent we have disregarded these traditions, we sufferend covid. But that is nothing compared to what can happen when all power is centralised and controlled by authoritarian decision-makers. There is no limit to the bad decision making they can inflict on the people. Zero covid is just one example.
The Great Leap Forward under Mao, and likewise Stalin's collectivization in Ukraine are examples. With 40 to 60 million dead, making our favorite villain Hitler look like an amateur.
If the WEF, WHO, UN and Gates all get their way, with the forecasted Decade of Pandemics, and Decade of Vaccines, they will meet or exceed that record easily.
I don't think "liberalism" and pluralism is the right prescription, although I understand your sympathy.
First, there is an open question as to whether liberalism was ever built on a proper foundation; there is a wide gulf between Locke and Mill, but both tended to put Man at the center of reason rather than Wisdom. Locke's libertarian axioms, and token of natural law, evolved to Mill's "harm reduction", which arguably means I can force you to wear a mask or give me money because I can't be free unless you do those things.
Liberalism has decayed to post-modernity and all of its ilk. Liberalism was always sort of a secular compromise that had an ideological conceit -- that if the state were a secular, religiously tolerant democracy, then religious communities wouldn't fight anymore. Which conceit is obviously quite false. And it overlooks that the wars of "religion" were really wars of state.
Perhaps the West shouldn't have modeled its states on modern, centralized states that take the form of ancient Roman republics. Historically this was sold as an antidote to absolutism and religious persecution, but it wasn't long (French Revolution) before parliaments descended into the same totalitarian nonsense. The Western polity was healthier when it centered itself on the natural and divine law, and followed the creed that true liberty is better grounded on those laws and flourishes under them.
While showing an amazing propensity for copying what those in the West have imagined and/or created, the Chinese have shown that their critical thinking skills are practically non-existent. How else can one explain the idiotic devotion to communism?
Generations of breeding for compliance with regular purges of anyone with a still functioning sense of questioning intellect. It really doesn't matter to them if its an emperor or a 'communist' strongman. It's what they do.
i'm afraid that we've taken a giant leap towards "breeding for compliance" with the purging of brilliant, creative and independent thinking doctors and the rewarding of those dullards who followed the CDC's dictates
But we haven't killed them yet so there is hope we can rebuild a parallel economy and intellectual resistance. The Chinese and Russians have a history of outright killing the smart.
correlate that to the western propensities for war, taking in the best and brightest, fine physical specimens as soldiers, and killing and maiming them, many going home psych casualties. Repeat for hundreds of years.
Maybe try to stay in the here and now. Or do you also believe in collective and inter-generation guilt? NATO is a defensive organisation. You can of course argue that they got involved in the Libyan conflict, when that wasn't part of their mandate, but to classify them as warmongers is a bit of a stretch.
did you read my post? I talked about the eugenics of war going back hundreds of years, in reply to a similar sentiment. You can talk specifically about this point in time, but I don't have to "stay in the here and now", not what my point was about.
What about the middle-east wars (Syria, Irak, Afghanistan)? What about the Balkan wars (Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia)? All done under the banner of NATO.
Yep. And we have that savior complex that gifts us such luminaries that can make trains run on time, etc. It makes me cringe when people demand 'leaders' rather than figure it out for themselves.
Increasingly, I am thinking that the more strongly a country (and individuals) are wedded to an extreme ideology, the less able they are to recognize common sense facts and truths and act on them. The ideology is like wearing very narrow blinders. It always seems to lead to a doubling down on stupid. If at first you don't succeed, try try again...and again....and again, ad infinitum.
The mindset of the average Chinese is not one of individualism over community, it is the opposite. Most (not all!) are simply more comfortable with obedience to authority. This has its virtues, but it's something Westerners (especially Americans) struggle to understand.
You make a good point. I worked for 12 years in the Middle East, and was always puzzled by why so many people in that part of the world ended up with authoritarian dictator type leaders, but eventually I decided it might have something to do with their tribal heritage and how within each tribe, there would be a leader who basically made all the rules for the tribe. I realized that democracy as I understood it as a westerner was not something that came natural or instantly to them, nor did they appear to find it especially appealing as an alternative.
What choice do they have?? It’s either comply with the party or end up in a prison or dead. When you live under the boot of tyranny that are your options. It’s not like here in the USA, where people can choose communism based on some egalitarian view that it’s utopia and never having to actually live under it. Those people are simply living with a boot to there necks. The party is all that matters, loyal servants are rewarded, dissenters are extinguished.
Yousef I am a British left libertarian holidaying in Florida and talking to people here. Of course many are from the coastal and mid west parts where islands of covid insanity and muzzle wearing prevail. They visit less authoritarian Florida to escape that. I piqued some interest when I said “I bet Biden regrets saying ‘“ Covid is over”. I explained about how in Scotland we have a left and woke administration which loved Covid , and now it’s gone they are having to deal with real issues. They and their eco -authoritarian allies crave the resurgence of the pandemic. An example Having broken the healthcare system the health minister Humza Youssef (useless) has told us to “look over our shoulder” because Covid has not gone away. That’s because people are complaining about inefficiency and delays in treatment. It’s the same with education, the economy and every other area of policy. I think useless bureaucrats everywhere who crave control are jealous of China,as they take the Great Leap out of the Window. Crazy, yes, illogical yes, but Covid was their get out of jail card.
Many people thought the same as you. Instead, it indeed seems we are watching a crazy side effect of total power centralization. Right now, if you are a political cadre in whichever city in some random province, your metric to be promoted (or even to politically survive) is to avoid outbreaks, or smash them as soon as they occur, and no longer economic performance of your region. That says it all.
We have had many years of warning that this is planned for the entire world. This is top down from those who believe they own the world. China's locked up tight society is the apparent darling of the World Economic Forum. Nearly all world leaders are partnered with the WEF. They are serious.
Yes, they do. This takeover has been planned for years and expertly managed. There is a very low awareness of the takeover extent and the real threat in the US. They seem to be under the assumption that an election can change things.
BOOM💥 It’s all rigged! TPTB CHOOSE! And the takeover is upon us. In fact, the businesses and neighborhoods in my general area are all being bought up by the Chinese. I noticed it decades ago (Bay Area)!
I had to double-check to see if this was somehow a post from last year...but no, China is still covid crazed. But maybe the leaders like it as they can control people much better.
Yet another glorious piece of analysis in these pages. So very grateful for your mind, Eugyppius,
"I often wonder if there isn’t something addictive about lockdowns, at least to the bureaucrats who get hold of these policies and implement them."
YES. As someone who has been subject to the rule of a person with the same rotten condition of soul, and the same insatiable lust for control & despair creation, which are evident in Xi and CCP Party leadership: yes, I can tell you that there IS something addictive about it for them. As one who escaped a microcosm within my own family involving too many similar dynamics, this has been my precise personal reason for so loudly and insistently warning that we MUST NOT give the Covid authoritarians of the West a SINGLE INCH. It's a terrifying slope into hell which becomes steeper and slipperier with every millimeter of descent. And the monsters become immeasurably stronger with every morsel we allow them to devour.
As a result, I became myopic about the true drivers which are likely behind the misery of the past 2.5 years (and your well-reasoned analyses and arguments have helped my gain perspective on that, Eugy), but I don't regret my myopia.
I'll keep making noise about it long after we finally extricate ourselves from this ugly era, too. It's the only way to prevent finding ourselves right back here again. In fact, if we do escape, we should count ourselves very lucky.
I remember the first time I went without a mask in our nearest hardware store. I was afraid as I felt I was going against the norm-the crowd and what everyone said was the right thing to do. It still surprises me how difficult it was, given that I thought that the masks didn't work and that people had gone crazy. But I told myself "we have to be brave". And I think there were a lot of other people that were like me.
This will be an interesting story to keep following. The Chinese government has painted itself into a corner. Covid is not going away ever. I'm sure they realize that by now, but what can they do? Are they going to lose face by admitting they were wrong? I don't think so.
I can see them waiting for a lull in spread coupled with the lower IFR and then crowing that the virus has been beaten through the virtuous sacrifice of the citizens and the excellent management of the party leaders...
this is what I mean. they're just a political off-ramp, in the same way Omicron was a political off-ramp. but China has refused both pretences to stop containment, so they're condemned to keep doing this until ... what?
because their vaccine roll-out already happened and they continued their zero-covid policies. they could've had their vaxx rollout and ended containment, but they didn't. that ship sailed. now what?
No vaccine has ever been successful against coronaviruses. Remember Luc Montagnier’s declaration when media started talking about vaccines: ”Vaccination will fail, people will die because vaccines will generate unstoppable new variants and no herd immunity will be reached because of human immunodeficiencies. All these adverse effects are the results of these immunodeficiencies.
Montagnier got the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the AIDS life threatening condition due to the HIV virus.
If today's East Asians are the descendants of a population that was decimated by a corona virus outbreak generations ago, I would expect cultural and/or genetic adaptations that now reduce the impact of corona viruses on their population.
It's why I was always very skeptical of the idea that South Korea or some other place with low death tolls had figured out the One Weird Trick to get this virus under control.
Just as indigenous Americans are intrinsically more vulnerable to this virus, east Asians are intrinsically less vulnerable to it.
Since I don't see it in the threads below: this is very similar to the old Four Pests campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign . I am just astounded to see history repeat itself with such faithfulness, so many decades later, after the world has changed so much.
China is the model of what they want for us. You better read the quote below, learn it, and prepare accordingly.
They promised us all death 2 years ago, and it never came, so any of you that are still afraid of death need to wake up right now and snap out of it, and take that tool (fear) away from these monsters.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago
Spoke to a Chinese co-worker the other day. I don’t know her very well but was curious to hear her opening up. She was mentioning how she missed China but wouldn’t want to be there now--“They’re crazy” she said, “about covid”. Testing whole buildings if just one case is found, all the lockdowns. I said well what happens if you refuse to test? She said you have a green or a red thing on your phone, they’ll turn it to red if you refuse. Then you can’t go anywhere! You can’t leave your building, for starters. She told me most people are brainwashed, even though ultimately they don’t like the system...and that China keeps them “too comfortable” to risk complaining. “You complain,” she said, “and you disappear. They get rid of you.”
This shit is real no matter how much I like to think it’s not.
Human rights NGOs like Amnesty have been silent on lockdowns and mandates. They are compromised and no longer deserve any funding or respect. https://open.substack.com/pub/yuribezmenov/p/how-to-control-your-souls-desire?r=12n5dp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
They get their money from the same folk who are bringing us culture war, covid, and climate change. It is not worth risking lawsuits and losing 6-figure salaries to speak out. They, like the ACLU, et al are owned and will remain on message.
I agree. I lost respect for Amnesty and many many others.
I never had any respect. Leftists.
money as a tool of control.... put leaders in control of organizations and reward them well for following the program
Just like the ACLU, bought and paid for.
I got into a text conversation last year with a volunteer from the local ACLU chapter here in Sacramento, and the "person" on the other end (could have been AI) trumpeted the freedoms from infection through mandating vaccination. Very magnanimous of them to allow me to have my body autonomy after I take the required treatment.
A long time ago I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Then big donors hijacked their leadership and they became another tool of the establishment. Sad.
I'd argue that's been the case for quite some time.
I remember that Amnesty International refused to consider the violations of the human rights of Ernst Zundel in both Canada and the US. He was quietly living in the US, when he was arrested by about 30 jack booted thugs from Homeland Security, locked up in a US jail for weeks and eventually "deported" to Canada where he was locked up in a jail with no furniture, forced to sleep on the floor, where the lights were kept on 24/7 with no privacy or exercise periods. He was kept that way for 2 years and was eventually sent to Germany where he was locked up for another 5 years. At least in Germany he was given the basic comforts while he was in prison. Amnesty International is has about as much concern about human rights as does a serial killer.
It wears the skin of the thing it killed. The same might be said of the SLPC, the WHO, and many other organizations that walk in sheep's clothing.
Amnesty also ignores Julian Assange in their list of tortured journalists; they only care about human rights abuses that support NATO targets for regime change. It's a disgusting fraud.
Interesting article, thanks for sharing. Do we really need the google analytics Urchin Tracking Module spam in the link, though?
Indeed, their silence is cowardice. You really can't be neutral on a moving train. Neutrality only benefits the oppressor, never the victim. And the ACLU is even worse, first they were silent, but then they came out IN FAVOR of these mandates, effectively rubber stamping them.
I agree
I deal with Chinese companies on a daily basis
It is safe to say their economy is in freefall. I buy dozens of different commodity chemicals and prices have dropped between 20-50% in the last 6 months. Vendors are also quite aggressively seeking volumes/shipments, and are pulling out all the stops to prevent order cancellations. This jives with their typical factory production model; which is continuous production no matter what
Any sort of data being released from official sources is BS; they are in deep deep trouble
We should in a sense be thankful to Xi Jinping. Many of us have been fretting about a world economically and technologically dominated by the Chinese in as little as a decade, and of course the inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Thanks to ZeroCovid, Taiwan (which is full of Covid) is safe, and we in the West can go back to committing economic and cultural suicide, as opposed to being taken over by another power.
Its actually rather amusing. SARS-2 will eventually overwhelm them; the virus has to win once, ZeroCovid has to win every day.
China doesn’t have a zero COVID policy. They have a population control policy. I believe the global economy is spiraling and about to completely crash. China is building the infrastructure to quell mass uprisings. That’s their true threat. Commies don’t care about their people. Covid has a 99.97% survival rate. Commies don’t lock down for that. Even If there were a 30% IFR, commies would still force their workers into the factories at gunpoint. 30% reduction in population, while emerging as a global superpower while the rest of the world runs and hides from the virus.
No… commies don’t create “zero disease policies”…
Indeed... The idea that China is going through this out of concern for the health of its citizens is absolutely comical. China's history is littered with sacrificing its people by the millions just to appease whoever was in charge or prevent having to admit failure. They've been dumping toxic chemicals and destroying the environment with no regard for public health whatsoever. Many of their cities are completely unlivable and you actually *need* face masks to walk around them because of the all the smog and particulates. For many Chinese if you get cancer at early age because you've been living in one of these hell-holes you are simply out of luck and you will die. And add on top of that they are working people to death.
And now all of a sudden the Chinese government is pulling out all the stops to prevent people catching the sniffles while the rest of the world has already proven they can just carry on without any large scale health effects?
I guess you have to believe in Putin blowing up his own gas pipes to be able to believe that Zero-Covid in China is about public health...
i don't think anyone inferred the policy was about public health. it is merely about a dictator who put an impossible plan into place and will do as you said- sacrifice it's people to appease the guy in power who cannot be wrong, no matter the cost
Yes. And Xi just wants to beat the virus, because that shows his dominance and ability to beat back anything. And then it all rolls down hill.
More like a foretaste of the great reset. The same devils will be oppressing, wrecking and destroying people lives on steroids, if they gain total control of every facet of everyone's life.
Yep. Personally I believe the vids of people collapsing. Because their sky is brown and the consistency of soup.
And contributing to more poverty, sickness, disease and death.
What is the percentage of lives lost here? I think that Biden is jealous of China. Communism seems to have been created for weak leaders who crave control.
"China is building the infrastructure to quell mass uprisings"
That's chinese thing .... building a wall in nowhere, building a highway to nowhere, building a city with no one in it ... crazy! I guess the communists are making them work silly jobs since they are going to get paid anyway
And the biggest irony: apparently their supposed idol, Karl Marx, was a "let it rip" kind of guy when it came to disease. He would never have supported lockdowns or "Zero COVID" (TM).
The "inevitable invasion of Taiwan" is Chinese propaganda. It will never happen because of the uncertainties in planning and executing a large amphibious invasion, especially one where you're dealing with 100 miles of treacherous seas, limited landing areas, frequent bad weather, and a large, well equipped, well-trained, force of motivated defenders.
China's military planners have no experience with amphibious operations. In 1944 the United States, which had a LOT of experience with amphibious operations, nixed a plan to invade Taiwan as too risky. Read up on "Operation Causeway" for a summary of some of the difficulties the U.S. faced when contemplating invading and occupying then Japanese-occupied Taiwan to use as a base against Japan's home islands. Then ask yourself what would happen if the PLA actually tried something like this. It would almost certainly be a major catastrophe.
A PRC invasion of Taiwan, producer of the world's semiconductors, would instantly bring about a worldwide economic depression, including China itself. They dare not kill the golden goose.
60 Minutes did a segment on Taiwan and the China threat last night. The people in Taiwan and officials they spoke to seemed oddly unconcerned about the possibility of China taking them over.
We need to be on the lookout for the dragons invading the US. No doubt they would love to snatch all our private property and resources. I heard somewhere that Chinese already own some real estate in the US.
I remember in the 80s and early 90s when everyone was alarmed that Japanese oligarchs were buying up US real estate. A recession came along, the market collapsed, and they were forced to sell off at fire-sale discounts.
Plan B. Blockade of Taiwan. No messy amphibs, easy to drive off shipping and well within the range of tens of thousands of anti ship missiles. USN isn't going to break that blockade no matter what dc propaganda says otherwise.
Declaring a blockade and actually enforcing it are two entirely different matters. Is the PLA Navy ready to intercept a US Navy warship in international waters, and sink it if necessary? How about Japan and South Korea? A large percentage of their maritime trade traffic goes through the Taiwan straits. Is the PLA Navy prepared to stop, board and inspect their merchant ships, and seize their cargo if it's discovered that it's actually bound for Taiwan? Keep in mind that if things escalated, the Japanese Self-Defense Force could probably sink China's navy before lunch.
Good questions, D, but read comment. The USN isn't going to get within 100 miles of any CCP ships due to Chinese shore to ship missiles. Thousands of them. If a blockade ever happens, you can be sure the CCP will tell the US that any warships that come anywhere near Chinese vessels will be sunk. Period. Same for Korea and Japan.
The world has changed, my friend. The US has been exposed repeatedly now as a paper tiger. We lack the will to risk all out war w Russia or China, and certainly both. Better believe that non Western nations are seeing the sinking US ship and getting off as fast as diplomacy allows.
And, yes, China won't have any problems turning away ships from Taiwan if necessary. They already bully ships in international waters now over fishing and energy rights. Taiwan is extremely dependent on food and energy imports. A blockade would be fast and devastating. And the US won't be able to stop it anymore than they stopped the Taliban or the Russians.
Did they actually stop blockading Taiwan after those exercises or did they just invade and take over the news messaging? Maybe I worry too much that I don't actually know what is going on now the news media seem to be fully bought and paid for.
Great question. Everything is such 24 7 propaganda now. Consider sources and consider who is promoting. For ex, if i see a narrative being peddled by people like Nuland, Blinken, and their ilk i can be 99.9% sure its bullshit. Ive developed a small network of sources who have proven themselves over time to call it straight. That helps.
China's ability to monitor and target ships on the high seas is still rudimentary, and their few modern long range anti-ship missiles have not been fully tested. Then you have to consider US fleet anti-missile defense systems such as Aegis and SeaRAM. And don't forget the US Navy currently deploys 50 attack submarines, which those missiles can't touch. If they want to play chicken, I'm pretty sure the US Navy could sink the entire PLA Navy in an afternoon.
Fair points, D.
I'll just return to my main contention that the US is spineless when it comes to direct combat w anyone who can fight back, at least since Vietnam. We talk a good game and we spend trillions on overpriced weapons systems that get Northern Virginia contractors (and their crooked Congressors ) stinkin rich, but the US doesn't commit troops anywhere we think will result in real casualties. We love a good, long quagmire, against goatherders preferably,with unwinnable objectives. Plenty of money and promotions for the MIC. When it comes to China and Russia? We're all bluff. Oh sure, we'll fight to the last Ukrainian (and Pole if it comes to that) but no way will the DC Regime go toe to toe w China or Russia. And we know this (as someone on Larry Johnson's blog noted) because the US hasnt done $^#@ against relative pipsqueaks like Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and NoKo notwithstanding their unwavering and infuriating middle finger in Uncle Sam's face for decades.
Yeah, we gotta lotta hardware. We sail it all over the place but we're peacocks. Unless the job involves somebody who is an easy kill, we sail on by.
Yeah, China destroys itself through pride and arrogance of the leadership. Instead of capitalizing on this gift we just decide to go along the same route, for the same fundamental reasons. It has indeed turned into an amusing theater of the absurd.
And of course the virus is going to win, as viruses have beaten humans since the dawn of time. When has anybody ever managed to "zero" a virus away? Not gonna happen now, hasn't happened ever.
'......... viruses have beaten humans since the dawn of time.'
No, if that were true we wouldn't be here; you (and I) would not be commenting on this article. At worst it's a continuing battle, neither side winning comprehensively.
True, I should have said more accurately that we can't achieve "zero virus x", whatever the virus in question may be. We can't make it disappear, we can adapt to it, some of us will die, others will recover and require immunity and so on. But we can't just mask up and stop shaking hands and it will just go away.
Thankful to Xi maybe. Although he is maybe a bit like Tolstoy's Napoleon; the forces at work were going to ensure this progression of events and he is the least free of everyone to to anything about it.
And soon Xi will meet his Waterloo.
With all of your experience dealing with the Chinese and knowing about the effects of their covid campaign, why haven't you figured out the agenda behind the covid war against their own people? Surely you must have developed a thesis on why the Party is executing this war against their own country. They've put the expansion of their economy and their grip on international commerce on hold and you know damn well, they don't care about the people. There is a REASON why the party is executing this economy destroying, covid plan for so long. I just don't know what it is, but it must be to support their long game in some way.
I have no idea. The same sort of national mass insanity that led them, for 36 years, to impose and enforde One Child, which involved countless forced abortions - even of 9 month pregnancies- forced contraception (copper IUD) and all manner of horror. My only explanation is that fear of covid took root early on, and became politically expedient. The CCP doesn't do 180s and so is all in. There is no why.
Thanks for that report about their economic truth. They are reaching a horrible demographic issue of too many seniors. The one-child policy has doomed a full two generations and they face a real shortage of able, trainable workers as I understand it. In order to rebuild the economy it seems they are going to force harsh measures to get more work from working ages. Strong controls will be needed to avoid any backlash over the decline in prosperity. I suspect that's why they are imposing such controls now to tame unrest. We shall if it works. Seems pretty dumb to me, but I'm not in their system.
So astute, Bash.
The Chinese reaction is super weird - it sort of shows how the world is being led by absolute idiots with absolutely no real plan about anything. If China stays on this zero covid path it will destroy itself. It already has huge financial and social problems - how far can a population be pushed before it has nothing to lose by retaliating?
Xi Jingping is being illogical about zero covid. Biden is being illogical about Ukraine. Zelensky and Putin are on a road to destruction because they can't find a way to stop. The EU leaders are being illogical about energy. At what point do the people of the world rise up and cast these fools aside?
I think the Chinese expect that SARS-COV-2 has a bunch of tricks up its sleeve that it hasn't displayed yet.
They have studied how corona viruses can be weaponized, their bureaucracy understands these viruses better than ours. That could also explain why they don't want to shoot up their population with the mRNA/DNA stuff.
I have also wondered if the Chinese know something that the rest of us don't, but what about the picture of those people in bunny suits spraying chemicals on the floor? How does that serve any purpose?
Optics.
I don't think Xi's policies have ever been about Covid, but rather, about absolute loyalty. That seems to be working.
I have had interesting conversations lately about why we should double down on Western liberalism and not succumb to the urge to mimic communist China. I have held to the belief that their totalitarian system will be its own undoing.
Liberalism has strong pluralistic roots which create checks and balances. To the extent we have disregarded these traditions, we sufferend covid. But that is nothing compared to what can happen when all power is centralised and controlled by authoritarian decision-makers. There is no limit to the bad decision making they can inflict on the people. Zero covid is just one example.
The Great Leap Forward under Mao, and likewise Stalin's collectivization in Ukraine are examples. With 40 to 60 million dead, making our favorite villain Hitler look like an amateur.
If the WEF, WHO, UN and Gates all get their way, with the forecasted Decade of Pandemics, and Decade of Vaccines, they will meet or exceed that record easily.
It's the Green Leap Forward.
I don't think "liberalism" and pluralism is the right prescription, although I understand your sympathy.
First, there is an open question as to whether liberalism was ever built on a proper foundation; there is a wide gulf between Locke and Mill, but both tended to put Man at the center of reason rather than Wisdom. Locke's libertarian axioms, and token of natural law, evolved to Mill's "harm reduction", which arguably means I can force you to wear a mask or give me money because I can't be free unless you do those things.
Liberalism has decayed to post-modernity and all of its ilk. Liberalism was always sort of a secular compromise that had an ideological conceit -- that if the state were a secular, religiously tolerant democracy, then religious communities wouldn't fight anymore. Which conceit is obviously quite false. And it overlooks that the wars of "religion" were really wars of state.
Perhaps the West shouldn't have modeled its states on modern, centralized states that take the form of ancient Roman republics. Historically this was sold as an antidote to absolutism and religious persecution, but it wasn't long (French Revolution) before parliaments descended into the same totalitarian nonsense. The Western polity was healthier when it centered itself on the natural and divine law, and followed the creed that true liberty is better grounded on those laws and flourishes under them.
While showing an amazing propensity for copying what those in the West have imagined and/or created, the Chinese have shown that their critical thinking skills are practically non-existent. How else can one explain the idiotic devotion to communism?
Generations of breeding for compliance with regular purges of anyone with a still functioning sense of questioning intellect. It really doesn't matter to them if its an emperor or a 'communist' strongman. It's what they do.
i'm afraid that we've taken a giant leap towards "breeding for compliance" with the purging of brilliant, creative and independent thinking doctors and the rewarding of those dullards who followed the CDC's dictates
But we haven't killed them yet so there is hope we can rebuild a parallel economy and intellectual resistance. The Chinese and Russians have a history of outright killing the smart.
correlate that to the western propensities for war, taking in the best and brightest, fine physical specimens as soldiers, and killing and maiming them, many going home psych casualties. Repeat for hundreds of years.
You mean the US. They are the biggest warmongers and don't represent the west
NATO ? The British Empire? French colonies?
Maybe try to stay in the here and now. Or do you also believe in collective and inter-generation guilt? NATO is a defensive organisation. You can of course argue that they got involved in the Libyan conflict, when that wasn't part of their mandate, but to classify them as warmongers is a bit of a stretch.
did you read my post? I talked about the eugenics of war going back hundreds of years, in reply to a similar sentiment. You can talk specifically about this point in time, but I don't have to "stay in the here and now", not what my point was about.
What about the middle-east wars (Syria, Irak, Afghanistan)? What about the Balkan wars (Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia)? All done under the banner of NATO.
Yep. And we have that savior complex that gifts us such luminaries that can make trains run on time, etc. It makes me cringe when people demand 'leaders' rather than figure it out for themselves.
Remember, no God is big for them. Atheism is a central key to their power.
I didn’t even know there was a Catholic Church in China!
Increasingly, I am thinking that the more strongly a country (and individuals) are wedded to an extreme ideology, the less able they are to recognize common sense facts and truths and act on them. The ideology is like wearing very narrow blinders. It always seems to lead to a doubling down on stupid. If at first you don't succeed, try try again...and again....and again, ad infinitum.
The mindset of the average Chinese is not one of individualism over community, it is the opposite. Most (not all!) are simply more comfortable with obedience to authority. This has its virtues, but it's something Westerners (especially Americans) struggle to understand.
You make a good point. I worked for 12 years in the Middle East, and was always puzzled by why so many people in that part of the world ended up with authoritarian dictator type leaders, but eventually I decided it might have something to do with their tribal heritage and how within each tribe, there would be a leader who basically made all the rules for the tribe. I realized that democracy as I understood it as a westerner was not something that came natural or instantly to them, nor did they appear to find it especially appealing as an alternative.
Where real Christianity goes, peace follows.
Exactly. But the foreign policy "experts" in Washington continue to project our own values onto everyone in the world, with disastrous consequences.
What choice do they have?? It’s either comply with the party or end up in a prison or dead. When you live under the boot of tyranny that are your options. It’s not like here in the USA, where people can choose communism based on some egalitarian view that it’s utopia and never having to actually live under it. Those people are simply living with a boot to there necks. The party is all that matters, loyal servants are rewarded, dissenters are extinguished.
they went into debt to create infrastructure, the US went into debt to enrich the already rich and annual improvements to the Pentagon budget
Reminder that if we let the leftist vision of dealing with COVID in the USA prevail, this is what we would get.
I say this as someone who generally leans to the left and I have to say that I am largely alone among my peers for fearing this.
Yousef I am a British left libertarian holidaying in Florida and talking to people here. Of course many are from the coastal and mid west parts where islands of covid insanity and muzzle wearing prevail. They visit less authoritarian Florida to escape that. I piqued some interest when I said “I bet Biden regrets saying ‘“ Covid is over”. I explained about how in Scotland we have a left and woke administration which loved Covid , and now it’s gone they are having to deal with real issues. They and their eco -authoritarian allies crave the resurgence of the pandemic. An example Having broken the healthcare system the health minister Humza Youssef (useless) has told us to “look over our shoulder” because Covid has not gone away. That’s because people are complaining about inefficiency and delays in treatment. It’s the same with education, the economy and every other area of policy. I think useless bureaucrats everywhere who crave control are jealous of China,as they take the Great Leap out of the Window. Crazy, yes, illogical yes, but Covid was their get out of jail card.
Many people thought the same as you. Instead, it indeed seems we are watching a crazy side effect of total power centralization. Right now, if you are a political cadre in whichever city in some random province, your metric to be promoted (or even to politically survive) is to avoid outbreaks, or smash them as soon as they occur, and no longer economic performance of your region. That says it all.
very similar to five year plan dynamics, they could torch their whole economy if they can’t get out of the spiral.
We have had many years of warning that this is planned for the entire world. This is top down from those who believe they own the world. China's locked up tight society is the apparent darling of the World Economic Forum. Nearly all world leaders are partnered with the WEF. They are serious.
China doesn’t have millions upon millions of citizens with firearms. The USA does.
Yes, they do. This takeover has been planned for years and expertly managed. There is a very low awareness of the takeover extent and the real threat in the US. They seem to be under the assumption that an election can change things.
BOOM💥 It’s all rigged! TPTB CHOOSE! And the takeover is upon us. In fact, the businesses and neighborhoods in my general area are all being bought up by the Chinese. I noticed it decades ago (Bay Area)!
I had to double-check to see if this was somehow a post from last year...but no, China is still covid crazed. But maybe the leaders like it as they can control people much better.
Yet another glorious piece of analysis in these pages. So very grateful for your mind, Eugyppius,
"I often wonder if there isn’t something addictive about lockdowns, at least to the bureaucrats who get hold of these policies and implement them."
YES. As someone who has been subject to the rule of a person with the same rotten condition of soul, and the same insatiable lust for control & despair creation, which are evident in Xi and CCP Party leadership: yes, I can tell you that there IS something addictive about it for them. As one who escaped a microcosm within my own family involving too many similar dynamics, this has been my precise personal reason for so loudly and insistently warning that we MUST NOT give the Covid authoritarians of the West a SINGLE INCH. It's a terrifying slope into hell which becomes steeper and slipperier with every millimeter of descent. And the monsters become immeasurably stronger with every morsel we allow them to devour.
As a result, I became myopic about the true drivers which are likely behind the misery of the past 2.5 years (and your well-reasoned analyses and arguments have helped my gain perspective on that, Eugy), but I don't regret my myopia.
I'll keep making noise about it long after we finally extricate ourselves from this ugly era, too. It's the only way to prevent finding ourselves right back here again. In fact, if we do escape, we should count ourselves very lucky.
I remember the first time I went without a mask in our nearest hardware store. I was afraid as I felt I was going against the norm-the crowd and what everyone said was the right thing to do. It still surprises me how difficult it was, given that I thought that the masks didn't work and that people had gone crazy. But I told myself "we have to be brave". And I think there were a lot of other people that were like me.
This will be an interesting story to keep following. The Chinese government has painted itself into a corner. Covid is not going away ever. I'm sure they realize that by now, but what can they do? Are they going to lose face by admitting they were wrong? I don't think so.
I can see them waiting for a lull in spread coupled with the lower IFR and then crowing that the virus has been beaten through the virtuous sacrifice of the citizens and the excellent management of the party leaders...
How do vaccines save anyone. They are unsafe and ineffective.
they provide a plausible off-ramp, an end point at which you can stop locking down. that’s all I mean.
The mRNA vaccines are non-sterilizing and therefore can’t provide an end point. According to Geert Vanden Bosche’s analysis the mass prophylactic use of antivirals is the only thing that can save highly mRNA vaccinated countries from a terrible fate. Geert lays out his case in detail here: https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/videos-and-interviews/it-is-5-past-12?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
They can provide a political end point, though, which is in the end what matters with Corona
this is what I mean. they're just a political off-ramp, in the same way Omicron was a political off-ramp. but China has refused both pretences to stop containment, so they're condemned to keep doing this until ... what?
Why can’t China’s own vaccine (traditional live attenuated) not provide this?
because their vaccine roll-out already happened and they continued their zero-covid policies. they could've had their vaxx rollout and ended containment, but they didn't. that ship sailed. now what?
No vaccine has ever been successful against coronaviruses. Remember Luc Montagnier’s declaration when media started talking about vaccines: ”Vaccination will fail, people will die because vaccines will generate unstoppable new variants and no herd immunity will be reached because of human immunodeficiencies. All these adverse effects are the results of these immunodeficiencies.
Montagnier got the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the AIDS life threatening condition due to the HIV virus.
>while benefiting from the strangely mild behaviour of SARS-2 in East Asia
It's not strange to me.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34171302/
If today's East Asians are the descendants of a population that was decimated by a corona virus outbreak generations ago, I would expect cultural and/or genetic adaptations that now reduce the impact of corona viruses on their population.
It's why I was always very skeptical of the idea that South Korea or some other place with low death tolls had figured out the One Weird Trick to get this virus under control.
Just as indigenous Americans are intrinsically more vulnerable to this virus, east Asians are intrinsically less vulnerable to it.
Or that's the way the Covid bioweapon was engineered....
Correct.
Then add the following
1. China has a relatively small % population older than 75
2. China has a very low mean BMI
These 3 factors make China relatively resilient to Covid
And hence "zero Covid" is most likely about some other agenda than stopping a virus
Since I don't see it in the threads below: this is very similar to the old Four Pests campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign . I am just astounded to see history repeat itself with such faithfulness, so many decades later, after the world has changed so much.
China is the model of what they want for us. You better read the quote below, learn it, and prepare accordingly.
They promised us all death 2 years ago, and it never came, so any of you that are still afraid of death need to wake up right now and snap out of it, and take that tool (fear) away from these monsters.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago
Great reminder that I need to order The Gulag Archipelago.
Spoke to a Chinese co-worker the other day. I don’t know her very well but was curious to hear her opening up. She was mentioning how she missed China but wouldn’t want to be there now--“They’re crazy” she said, “about covid”. Testing whole buildings if just one case is found, all the lockdowns. I said well what happens if you refuse to test? She said you have a green or a red thing on your phone, they’ll turn it to red if you refuse. Then you can’t go anywhere! You can’t leave your building, for starters. She told me most people are brainwashed, even though ultimately they don’t like the system...and that China keeps them “too comfortable” to risk complaining. “You complain,” she said, “and you disappear. They get rid of you.”
This shit is real no matter how much I like to think it’s not.
Supposedly if your phone stays red for long enough, they come for you. I don't know if that is for forced testing or reeducation.