How to Improve Personal Relations during Lockdown

thank you for sharing such great post

The choice to post these 2 comments here, is made because I felt that open communication and honest sharing of feelings and views, in this time of change, is as healing as helpful to create a co-operative attitude, coping with change. Especially, when the source, or reason, of why we suddenly are thrown in a lifestyle-change is unknown and fear is the fertilizer to grow the seeds of self-doubt and separation. Although, there are seeds of sunflowers and bluebells mixed in, people finding creative solutions, helpers.
There are blessings in disguise. I believe that Sven Ake Hulleman makes this very clear.

Here’s Sven’s speech, translated in English:

“Welcome to a war already lost. My subject for tonight is a more austere subject, which concerns both publishers and editors. I want to talk about our common responsibilities In the light of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped alleviate that challenge for some, but the magnitude of the threat has loomed on the horizon for years.

Whatever our hope for the future, to mitigate or mitigate this threat, to live, there is no escape from the weight, or the totality of its challenges, for our survival and our safety.
A challenge that confronts us in an unusual way in every sphere of human activity. This deadly challenge imposes two demands on our society, which both press upon us. When government leaders, society as a whole, engage directly. Two demands, which seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled, if we are to face this national and international danger.

I refer first to the greater need for much more public information and, secondly, to the need for much greater official confidentiality. The word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are as a people (Dutch), inherent and historically, against secret societies, against secret oaths and secret procedures.

We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unjustified concealment of relevant facts far outweighed the dangers cited to justify keeping it a secret. Even today, it makes little sense to resist the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary limitations. Even today, it is of little value to ensure the survival of our country and of our democracies, when our traditions are no longer allowed to survive with it.

There is a great danger that an announced need for greater security will be seized by those seeking to extend its meaning to the limits of official censorship and concealment. I do not intend to allow that, as far as it is in my power.

No civil servant, no fellow human being in this society, whether high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here, tonight, as an excuse to censor the news, suppress dissent, cover up our mistakes, withhold the press and the public from hearing the facts they deserve to know.

I, therefore, ask every publisher, editor, and journalist in the country to reconsider their own standards and the nature of the danger, of our country, of our democracy, of our people and of Europe, and to acknowledge our civilization. In times of war, governments and the press have usually worked together, based on self-discipline, to prevent the unauthorized disclosure to the enemy. In times of clear and current danger, the courts have ruled that even privileged rights must give way to the public’s needs for national security.
Today, however, no war has been declared and however fierce the battle may be, it should never be declared in a traditional way. Our way of life is under attack. Those who declare themselves as our enemies make progress all over the world.

The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired. If the press waits for a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, I can only say that no war is ever more threatening to our security than what we see now.

If you are waiting for evidence of clear and current danger, I can only say that the danger has never been so clear and its presence has never been so great. It requires a change in vision, a change in tactics, a change in missions, by society, by the people, by every businessman or union leader, and by every newspaper, analog or digital.

For we are opposed all over the world by a monolithic and brutal conspiracy based mainly on hidden means of expanding its sphere of influence. On infiltration, instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerillas at night, instead of daytime armies.

It is a system that has deployed enormous human and material resources to build close-knit highly efficient machines that combine military, diplomatic intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. The preparations are hidden, not published. Their mistakes are buried and are not in the news. The dissidents are silenced and they are not praised.

No edition of them is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. In short, it is waging a cold war, with a wartime discipline that no democracy should ever wish, or wish to emulate. Nevertheless, every democracy recognized the necessary constraints on national security, and the question remains whether these constraints must be more strictly enforced if we are to resist both attacks of this kind and an outright invasion. And by invasion, I mean vaccination of course.

The fact is that the enemies of this country and of civilization have been openly proud of obtaining information through our newspapers and television, for which they would otherwise hire agents to obtain them through theft, bribery, or espionage. That details of the secret preparations of this country, to counter the secret operations of the enemy, were available to every newspaper reader, friend, and enemy. That the scope, strength, location, and nature of our strength and our weapons and our plans and strategy, for their use, have all been determined with sufficient precision, in the press and other news media, to satisfy any foreign power and, in at least 1 case, the publication of details of a secret mechanism involving the following of satellites, the alternation requirement, which took a lot of time and a lot of money.

The newspapers that published these stories were often loyal, altruistically responsible, and well-intentioned. If we had waged an open war, they would undoubtedly not have published such items. But in the absence of open warfare, they recognized only the tests of journalism and not the tests of national security, neither the security of our democracy.

And my question, tonight, is whether additional tests should be approved now. You can only answer these questions at home, no government official can answer this question for you, no government plan can impose restrictions on your will. I would not fulfill my duty as a human being if I had all the responsibilities we now carry, and all the means available to fulfill those responsibilities, and not consider bringing this issue to your attention and insist on a thoughtful consideration on your part.

On many previous occasions, I have said that these are times that appeal to the sense of sacrifice and self-discipline of every citizen. They call on every citizen to weigh his rights and comfort against his public welfare obligations. I cannot believe that citizens who work for a newspaper believe that they are exempt from that obligation. We cannot re-establish an “office of information” to direct the news-flow. We cannot allow new forms of censorship or new forms of security classifications.

I have no easy answer to the dilemma we face today, and if I had I wouldn’t want to impose that solution on you. We ask journalists, editors, and anyone who is concerned about information and industry, the entrepreneurs of this country, and in Europe, to re-examine their own responsibilities. To consider the magnitude and nature of the current danger and to consider the obligation for self-control that danger imposes on all of us.

Every newspaper now wonders with every story ‘Is this news?’ I suggest you add the question ‘Is this in the interest of my readers?’ I hope that every group, present in Europe and in the Netherlands, unions, businessmen, and civil servants, at all levels, will ask the same question about their efforts and their actions and that they will undergo the exact same tests.

Should the press voluntarily adopt specific new steps, or machines, I can assure you that we will wholeheartedly consider, consider, and weigh, those recommendations. Maybe there will be no recommendations, maybe there will be no answer to the dilemma faced by a free and open society in a cold and secret war.

In times of peace, any discussion on this subject, and any action arising from it, is painful and unprecedented. But this is a time of peace and danger that has no precedent in history. It is the unprecedented nature of this challenge that also gives rise to your second obligation. An obligation that I share with you and that is our duty to inform and warn the people, to make sure they have all the facts they need, that they understand it, the dangers, the prospects, the goals of it. The program of our enemy and of ourselves and the choices we face.

No government, no democracy, and no citizen should be afraid of public scrutiny of its program, because from that research comes understanding, and with that understanding, we can choose support or opposition and both are needed. I am not asking newspapers and journalists and people to support what I am doing or to support what your government is doing, for example. I ask for your help in the enormous task of informing and warning the Dutch and European people. Because I have full confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens when they are fully informed.

I am not here to just suppress controversy among the readers and the people who follow the press. I welcome it, we plan to be candid about the mistakes we make. Because, as a wise man once said, ‘An error only becomes an error if you refuse to correct it.’ We intend to take full responsibility for our mistakes and we invite our government and our policymakers to accept responsibility for their mistakes.

We expect you to point it out to us if we miss noticing our mistakes, but we also expect you to point them out to your leaders and other policymakers if they miss noticing them. Without debate and without criticism, no government and no country can succeed and no democracy can survive. That is why the Athenian legislator Solon ruled that it is a crime for every citizen to avoid the controversy.

Therefore, in the United States, the press is protected by the first amendment. The only profession in the world, specifically protected by the Constitution, not primarily to amuse and entertain you, not to emphasize the trivial and sentimental, not simply to give us what it wants because of your earnings model. But to inform, to arouse to think, to express our dangers and our opportunities, indicate our crises and choices, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion. This budgeted means greater coverage and analysis of international news as it is no longer distant and foreign but it is close and local.

It means more attention for a better understanding of the news and better transmission and education. Finally, it means that the government at all levels must fulfill its obligation to inform you as fully as possible, beyond the narrowest limits of national security. And that’s where we currently see a gap. It was at the beginning of the 17th century that Francis Bacon commented on three recent inventions that were already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder, and the press.

Now the ties between the countries that have been forged by the compass, have made us all citizens of the world, for the first time. The hopes and threats of one who has become the hopes and threats of all of us, in that world’s efforts to live together, the evolutions, to the very limit, of gunpowder, have warned humanity of the terrible consequences of failure.

And so it is for the press, for the writer of the deeds of man, the guardian of our conscience, the courier of our news, that we are looking for strength and help, convinced that man, with the help of the press and the help of all people in the country, and on the continent, will be what man was born for: free and independent.

A good listener has recognized this text. We will, of course, present a link, but we hope that these words do not confuse you. We hope that these words were not unknown to you. If they were, we are proud that we have been able to pronounce these words, in translation, in the present time, because they are relevant. These words are 60 years old and 60 years ago these words were spoken to indicate that there was a danger in our society. A danger that we still see.

A danger that our own press minimizes the consequences of. They say ‘There are conspiracy thinkers’ And they are dismissed as mad and they are squeezed into a corner. But we see the results of policy and we see the lack of control of our democratically elected leaders. We also see the lack of control over all kinds of information-flows that are carried out as if they were the truth.

We are told by the Volkskrant (newspaper) that people can only travel with a vaccination- passport, we are not even asked whether vaccinations are received, and whether they have already been tested and whether science agrees that certain vaccinations actually occurred that can be used against a virus. A virus that we don’t even know exactly how contagious it is, how deadly it is, and how it behaves. There are so many open ends and in the meantime, all of your freedoms are being stripped, gutted, under the guise of supposed security concerns. And it is all taken for granted by our press, by our policymakers and by the people on the street.

Everyone accepts deprivation of liberty because they are frightened by what is described in this text as a “worldwide monolithic conspiracy”. And there it is presented as a bagatelle, and the concept behind it is, of course, that it is a hidden agenda. A hidden agenda that should be fully exposed when we detect even one hair of it. The existence of certain patents, the existence of certain sources of information, the disappearance of certain people who can provide us with information.

Silencing certain people who are showing us what’s going on here, these are all the signs of the presence of a plan, that you might ask “But how do you get that all in place in plain sight? Because, in that scenario, there must be so many people aware of it, they are all blind spots. Because the method with which certain conspirators in this world are pushing a direction for humanity is similar to cell building, and one little cell does not know what the other little cell is doing.

And they produce something and they get paid for that, and they make use, very conveniently, of the basic needs of the people, until it’s too late. When things are rolled out that have enslaved us all, all scared. Afraid of death, afraid of a virus, afraid of the other, afraid of armies that never come.

And in the meantime, the suffocating system of police drones and police on the street and camera-checks and the disappearance of all our freedoms is not just looming over our heads, it is already there, present all around us. I cannot help but say: ‘When I look at the results, they very emphatically point to something that we all need to look at as a major danger.’

And if you want to know what that danger is, then I will put it as follows: “That danger is a threat to your freedom and independence. That is the aim of this Coronavirus. That is the balance that we all need to talk about and that is what we will see afterward, in the press, if it still exists as a record of our conscience: did we act correctly during this period or do we all become slaves?”’

Here’s, for the Dutch listeners, Sven – Ake Hulleman’s May 4, 2020 statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecjKydVt9ok

Thank you, Edward Morgan, for publishing this beautiful post by guest author Tiffany Harper. These are the posts I love to find here. This time is so unique for every man, woman, and child, right now. Routine is broken, and it feels like a very good thing.
Now that the restrictions are lifted a bit more, it’s suddenly busier in the streets, people walking and traffic increasing much. I’m a bit sad about it, for the quietude was so lovely.
With bird song more prominent and the air clean and fresh, the sunshine brilliant.

My routine has flown out of the window entirely, for I’ve arrived in my home in The Netherlands, March 11th, with a trolley and a backpack. A break from British depression. My sub-tenant has lived for over 2 years in my home. His furniture is gone with him, to a new home since May 1st. Two rooms are entirely empty apart from a concert-piano, in the guest room, belonging to my subtenant. He may choose to return here when I leave The Netherlands next year and travel westward again.

My living room is largely empty, nothing on the walls, and no other belongings of mine, for they’re all in the home where I lived in Britain, waiting for the permission of transport. In a way, it’s a whole new start on old roots, for I’ve lived in this home since 1993. It’s familiar and new at the same time. The comfort of a tidy and well-organized nation is welcome.

All my siblings and their children are in good health, myself included. I haven’t met or heard from friends or acquaintances about a case of bad Coronaflu. One of my sisters told me of a sportsman in her husband’s martial art school, fit as a fox, who was diagnosed with the Coronaflu, needing oxygen at some point, and spent 2 weeks in the hospital.

He came out of induced sleep, recovered enough to go home, but lost his strength and stability of mind, disorientated much. When my sister told me of this, I almost said “Yes, that’s what the treatment does, those weeks on a ventilator. It’s not the virus that does this”
I was just in time to bite my tongue. She believes in the pandemic, see? I don’t, but I play the game as far as not throwing the apple cart when I’m with others who eat those apples.

And now, for something entirely different:
Today, I’ve worked on a translation of a transcript, from a YouTube video by Sven Ake Hulleman, a Dutch critical researcher. He shared his speech, on the Dutch remembrance of WWII deaths, May 4th, 1945-2020, 75 years ago. May 5th is celebrated as the Dutch liberation day each year. Sven’s YouTube channel is called “Welcome to a war already lost” He’s highly appreciated by other critical thinkers in The Netherlands.

Sven’s speech is largely based on President Kennedy’s speech, present below. I’ll post Sven’s speech in the next comment here on this page, with the link to the video where he presents it to the Dutch listeners.

Here’s President J.F. Kennedy’s audio file: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association April 27th, 1961
https://archive.org/details/ThePresidentAndThePressAddressBeforeTheAmericanNewspaperPublishers

Here’s the text of President J.F. Kennedy’s speech: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/193866