How governments have failed their citizens

Policy malaise

Societies are now finding their health systems are inadequate, where there is an increasing general health crisis in some regions. The green transition is leading to drastic energy shortfalls, which could potentially kill many during a severe European winter. Policies concerned with climate change need to go beyond the carbon paradigm, and take a more wholistic approach. A massive rethink is needed very urgently. The focus on carbon emissions is just too narrow a perspective.

Neo-liberal economic policies are set to drive the western world into a deep recession. Its time to relook at economic prescriptions to solve the complex issues existing today. A cost-benefit analysis is needed on sanctions.

Diplomacy forgotten

The leaders of today have learned little from 20^th Century history and diplomacy. The world is reforming into military alliances rather than use of diplomacy. The US administration and European leaders are doing nothing to broker any ceasefire or peace deal in the Russian-Ukraine war. Western leaders rushing to the Ukraine for photo-opportunities achieves nothing.

Consequently, the Ukraine conflict will be a long and drawn out one, where European countries will suffer many consequences, even though they are not directly involved in the fighting. Energy and food shortages are beginning to make Europe very vulnerable.

Controlling the narrative

Government through its agencies and affiliates has stepped up engagement in controlling the narrative. This was made very obvious during the recent pandemic.

Government enlisted the cooperation of portions of the mainstream media to propagate establishment ideas and narratives. Media organizations such as the BBC, CNN, VOA, and The Guardian carry stories related to the government line and discredit alternative ideas. Companies like Pfizer sponsored many media programs across the spectrum. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided grantsto the Guardian. Mainstream media is very influential in what news it doesn’t report.

A new vocabulary has been established to describe censorship. Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news are have now become justifications for censoring information that goes against establishment ideas and narrative, and even the banning of people from social media platforms.

Factchecking has become a new counter-disinformation industry, populated by firms funded from government, social media platforms, and corporations. These companies claim to be totally independent, however extensive review of their factchecks reveals their partisan positions on issues such as climate change and Covid-19. Individual factcheckers are primarily from the journalism field, with few actually specialists in the areas they claim to be factchecking.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook recently admitted in an interview with Joe Rogan that his organization collaborates with the FBI to censor materialon the platform. This potentially affected the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election.