![]() ![]() Those in the blue and green uniforms, the masked and overworked, are expected to metaphorically slave all day for the needs and whims of those of us who lie around all day, doing nothing but eating, reading, sleeping or messing around on the internet. …To turn Foucault on his head, you could easily argue that it is the medical staff who are the slaves, rather than the masters, in the NHS Panopticon. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge… ach individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements.’ Foucault asked: ‘Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?’ ‘The judges of normality are present everywhere. After several years of finding themselves at the receiving end of rhetorical assaults from rising Right-wing populists, the experts seized on the pandemic as an opportunity to reassert their own status and authority - and that of the liberal-technocratic politicians with whom they are largely aligned.įoucault saw the tendencies to try to control, normalise and rationalise everything as ubiquitous in industrialised society. The scientific and medical establishment’s uncritical support of masks and other dubious policies is just the latest manifestation of its lack of independence from political imperatives. When cases and deaths spike, it is the fault of the citizenry, not the leadership. The overcrowding of ICUs can be blamed on the bad behavior of “anti-maskers”, rather than on the allocation of resources by governments and hospital CEOs. They also offload responsibility for controlling the pandemic to ordinary people. ![]() Masks are the perfect form of hygiene theatre, conveying an intuitive sense of safety regardless of demonstrable efficacy at scale. It is not difficult to see why mask mandates proved irresistible to politicians. Miller confines himself to the data, and if there’s a limitation to his book, it’s that he does not offer any compelling explanation of why the expert class threw itself a policy it once regarded as worse than useless. This raises the question of why they changed course and sacrificed their own credibility in the process. Two years into the pandemic, the experts are now the last to acknowledge the accuracy of their earlier predictions. Following the first wave of Western sanctions, in 2014, and partly in retaliation against them, Putin embarked on what analysts have dubbed a “Fortress Russia” strategy, building up the country’s international reserves and diversifying them away from US dollars and British pounds, reducing its foreign exposure, boosting its economic cooperation with China, and pursuing import substitution strategies in several industries, including food, medicine and technology, in an effort to insulate Russia as much as possible from external shocks. Far more likely is that this turns out to be the latest Western strategic miscalculation in a long list of strategic blunders, of which the United States’ inglorious withdrawal from Afghanistan is just the most recent example.Īfter all, Russia has been preparing for this moment for quite some time. But history suggests otherwise: see Iraq, or more recently Iran. ![]() At the very least, we’re told, they will hinder Russia’s war efforts. This suppression of dissent is a signifier of paternalism that effectively removes critics from the public sphere.So what should we expect from the sanctions? Western pundits and commentators have little doubt: the sanctions will hamstring the Russian economy, sow discontent among the Russian people and elites alike, and possibly even cause the downfall of the Putin regime. ![]() The Cabinet Office’s Rapid Response Unit (RRU) and a shady “information warfare unit” employed by the British Army’s 77th Brigade also went far beyond their remit and surveilled British citizens online. The CDU was not the only secretive unit participating in large-scale digital surveillance activities. High-profile individuals who shared vaccine efficacy concerns were included in a ‘vaccine sceptics’ file. Conservative MP David Davis was one among those monitored by this unit for being critical of the Imperial model. According to their report, “Ministry of Truth: the secretive government units spying on your speech”, a Counter Disinformation Unit based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport engaged in sinister media monitoring which included surveilling politicians, journalists, and human rights campaigners. On 29th January, Big Brother Watch revealed that secretive units within the UK have been spying on the British public online. ![]()
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