Brief Introduction to Video-30

The next video features the work of Aaron and Melissa Dykes at Truthstream Media. The title of their piece is: "We're Living In 'The Twelve Monkeys.'" The "twelve monkeys" reference alludes to a 1995 movie staring Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Madeleine Stowe, Christopher Plummer, David Morse, and others that tells the story of a time-traveller who has the task of discovering the source of, as well as a way to deal with, a plague that will destroy humanity if the disease is permitted to infect the inhabitants of Earth. After touching upon some of the parallels between the aforementioned movie and the COVID-19 times in which we live, Aaron and Melissa settle into a deep dive of an article by Gideon Lichfield, the editor in chief of MIT Technology Review.

The article which they examine in some detail is entitled: "We're Not Going Back To Normal" and was published on March 17, 2020 ... a time that was relatively early in the COVID-19 scenario that had been unfolding for several months in places such as Wuhan, China, as well as Italy, Iran, and, finally, the United States. Lichfield begins his article by saying: "To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members." At no time during the course of the article does Lichfield prove that his opening statement is evidentially sound, nor does he ever provide any details in his article about just what it is about the nature of the coronavirus that would require us to radically change everything that we do ... rather, he wants his readers to accept his working premise that, somehow, coronavirus is a game-changer.

A little later Lichfield asks: "... how draconian do social restrictions have to be?", but he never puts forth a reasoned, evidence-based case for why the response to the coronavirus needs to be draconian in the first place. Subsequently, he goes on to state: "As long as someone in the world has the virus, breakouts can and will keep recurring without stringent controls to contain them."

Once again, however, there is an absence of proof in his article to back up his claim. Indeed, Lichfield is engaging in a process of framing in which he wants his readers to accept his declarative premises as being accurately reflecive of the way the world is rather than merely being claims that need to be critically engaged in order to determine whether, or not, Lichfield has anything of value to say (As far as the article in question is concerned, he doesn't).

Lichfield is giving expression to a technocratic world view in which the only solution to any issue is one in which technocrats impose their will on people in order to be able to control the population with the right degree of draconian stringency and authoritarian command in order to serve the interests and agendas that technocrats wish to advance. Aaron and Melissa do a good job of parsing out the implications of the Lichfield article and, in the process, delve into ideas such as Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS), digital ID, and various forms of surveilance systems. The perspective that is being given expression through the Lichfield article (as well as some other things he has written) is a page from the playbook of the World Economic Forum. It seems that Lichfield is little more than a propagandist for a certain technocratic agenda.

---