Dear Moa,
I should think if you are looking to place blame for the high housing prices in Vancouver and other major cities in Canada, you need look no further than the Canadian federal government and the Quebec provincial government.
In 1986 the Canadian federal government and the Quebec provincial government started investment programs (in Quebec, the program is known as Quebec Immigrant Investor Program or QIIP) encouraging wealthy migrants with at least $2 million in assets to settle in Canada and Quebec province respectively, provided that, among other conditions they had to meet as immigrants, they invested a minimum amount of $1.2 million (as a loan to the respective governments) into the country or province to generate business, revenues and jobs. Thousands of immigrants gained permanent residency in these programs but the ways in which their applications for permanent residency were processed were sloppy: no proper checks into the applicants’ past financial histories were done, officials involved in the programs never had enough staff or money to do proper due diligence and were pressured to accept applications in spite of the lack of time and resources to vet applicants properly.
The Canadian federal program ended in 2014 but as far as I’m aware (I live in Australia), the QIIP still continues. It has delivered very little of what it was originally supposed to do – deliver immigrant investment funds to small and medium-sized businesses to stimulate the economy and help generate jobs in Quebec – and instead acts as a giant slush fund operation taking money from Mainland China and Hong Kong (which should have been paid as taxes to Beijing) and laundering it through property purchases in Vancouver, Toronto and other cities in Canada, driving up property prices and putting pressure on local city authorities to supply services to the “immigrants” and in some cases educate their children as well in local schools.
There is a documentary on Youtube, “Operation Mr Chen: The Hidden Face of Quebec’s Golden Visas” made for Enquete TV by Francis Plourde in 2018, if you are interested. There is this article as well “How over 46,000 wealthy immigrants took a back door into Vancouver and Toronto’s housing markets”.
There are online articles discussing this QIIP financial scam monster and the cynicism of Ottawa and Quebec in thinking they can sell Canadian residency and citizenship for big bucks to paper over their own economic and financial failures.

Posted by: Jen | Mar 24 2020 23:57 utc | 103

arby @114–
That’s an excellent question, one I don’t have an answer for, but I can tell you where to look. Start by perusing this section of Global Times, particularly earlier pages for articles on the topic. IMO, there was likely some centralized distribution of food and other necessities that minimized contact but kept people fed and healthy, and arranged for the decontamination of the city.
uncle tungsten @106–
Thanks much for posting that link!!

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 25 2020 0:14 utc | 105

Arby @ 114:
I was reading an article in a specialist medical newspaper at the doctor’s surgery this morning while waiting to pick up my blood test results. The article was written by a doctor who was part of an Australian medical delegation visiting China recently. Among other things the doctor mentioned was that government services personnel had been redeployed into other areas away from their usual ranges of expertise. He saw a woman giving instructions to medical personnel on how to wear medical gowns. He assumed she herself was a doctor; she turned out to be a receptionist.

Posted by: Jen | Mar 25 2020 0:27 utc | 107

karlof1 110
American transcendentalism Is probably a term I have been looking to describe what Trump, not so much plays to but leads. I have only been able to use nationalism to describe it.
Somewhat similar to Putin’s sovereignty. That was interesting in that Putin was able to use peoples anger against US sanctions to usher in self sufficiency which would have been a high priority for Putin as he could see where the world was headed and has been preparing for this for a long time.
Trump, similar in some respects as with sovereignty and transcendentalism =self sufficiency, but a lot of differences. For me, that half of the first Kaiser report went into what I was seeing in the US with Trump’s support base. Putin and Trump though differ greatly in their outlook to the wider world. Trump is still the arrogant American who will stand over whatever countries he can to take what he needs.
The second report you linked I haven’t got into much as yet. Looks to be more on the economics.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2020 0:40 utc | 109

Moa @ 120:
The Chinese “scrapped” their civilisation starting in the 1950s. By then it was on its last legs anyway, after over 100 years of degradation from mass opium addiction brought by the British, followed by decades of foreign interference and the consequences of that interference: a messianic cult culminating in the Taiping rebellion in the 1860s and then the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the 20th century, among other things.
Amy Chua is just one person whose mother’s family came from Fujian province in SE China and settled in the Philippines, along with several other families from that part of China. (Former Philippines President Corazon Aquino also had family from Fujian.) People living in Fujian and Guangdong (the old Canton province) were exposed to more Western / European influences than other parts of China. Fujian and Guangdong are also the areas where most overseas Chinese communities living in SE Asia and the West, up to the 1980s, hailed from.
So if you are talking about people in SE Asia and the West hating Chinese for their behaviour, exemplified by the behaviour of Amy Chua to her own daughters and of her family to its Filipino servants, and the behaviour of people in Hong Kong and Singapore with their status-seeking and selfish materialist values, and their adherence to extreme Protestant Christian beliefs, bear in mind where they learned their lessons.
I speak as one of those you damn.

Posted by: Jen | Mar 25 2020 1:27 utc | 111

What is always missed this business of Chinese buying property it the fact that it is our governments selling our countries is the problem. Blaming Chinese – fine stop them and somebody else will be buying our countries. The problem is the fact that our countries are for sale, not people buying. they could be honest, they could be crooked or just plain old sharks, but they are not the problem.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2020 1:52 utc | 113

In the context of US’ Financial Crisis and Wars, China’s Economic Success and Resiliance and EU’s All-Domain Dilemmas:
Enter COVID-19
Natural evolution or a weapon?
Health consequences – flu hysteria or true pandemic?
Economic consequences – negligible or devastating?
US – a timely excuse for crashing the system already in crisis
CHINA – an opportunity as any other to derail the hegemon
EU – a welcome excuse to pretend solidarity at the cost of a weak economy
Who’s winning?
(WHITE) COVID-19 is natural evolution, Finance hijacks the hysteria for cover, resets the system further concentrating monopolies out of unattended markets, while wiping unproductive social strata, legislation instated fit for the dystopian existence of the survivors. In a more confident scenario, rogue/obscure elements trigger the crisis themselves as a catalyst for same purposes, in foreign territory for deniability (preferably enemy’s) relying on the guaranteed infection backflow allowed by free-market delayed open borders. Offender 2020 advances pawns, plays for ENDGAME.
(BLACK) COVID-19 is natural evolution, possibly in some lab, and this one is not registered in one of our own. Divine intervention or not, Chinese have the capacity and resources to kill this bug which stinks as much as all the conceit around. Epidemiological is tracking not much worse than a bad flu year, and West’s contagious hysteria is not helping. How long will the West endure a Quarantine such as ours? Certainly less than ourselves and they will have no choice with all that hysteria. Immunology also recommends a long scenario, let them face interesting times then. Taps watch, plays for MIDGAME.
(RED) Runs on masks, toilet paper, Crowds bars, clubs and buses, Orders ventilators, alcohol gel, Works from home, Schengen for cargo and Banking alone, Sings twice the duration of any lyrics in 28 idioms, Inflates negative pressure rooms, individual protection equipment, beds, Calls for repatriation and health busy lines. Offender 2020 retreats pawns(!), plays for GAMBIT. (Makes severe face)
(BROWN) Welcome! Your temperature? Register up ahead for the next two weeks. Oil production shall not be reduced. Taps watch, plays for MATE.
————————-
This is inspired in karlof1’s hypothesis. So far he has offered the best explanation for the last 2 months developments, in the early stages I could only see kids running with scissors. If I am to keep testing this hypothesis:
1) For the parties involved it is irrelevant if COVID-19 is natural, weaponized or an actual engineered weapon. The main parties are obviously in conflict, it is crystal clear which long for War and which push for Peace.
2) Epidemiology is not exactly offering a solid grounding, flu hysteria or true pandemic hinges on comparative research which will require equivalent data for multiple flu viruses along yearly seasons. Right now it appears we are building data resulting from mass testing, against data only resulting from limited testing and what I suspect is clinical symptoms from previous years. It does look a very nasty bug, I still would welcome the science to support it. Did I miss something can we retroactively put these flues on the same comparison base?
3) How economically devastating will we allow our response to become depends on clarifying 2). While precaution is advised and immediate action is warranted while we can’t know 2), one must start asking for how long? There’s a term when the damage will be greater insisting on the economic lockdown. We were looking at weeks and are now looking at months.
I am ignoring 1), waiting for 2) and if 3) prolongs for long enough it may prove we entered the ENDGAME which WHITE seeks.

Posted by: Vasco da Gama | Mar 25 2020 2:14 utc | 115

Currency Bombers Fill the Sky No limit to the number of fiat dollars to be created, in order to monetize the debt and manipulate all markets.

Posted by: Perimetr | Mar 25 2020 2:38 utc | 117

SharonM @ 123:
Thanks for the compliment. As you might have noticed, I’ve had plenty of practice here and at Off-Guardian.org.

Posted by: Jen | Mar 25 2020 2:51 utc | 119

Re: psychohistorian | Mar 25 2020 2:56 utc | 132
I agree, it is all about who *controls* the creation of money. I think one of the reasons that JFK was killed was because he had the Treasury issuing silver certificates and he intended to get rid of the *privately owned* Federal Reserve.

Posted by: Perimetr | Mar 25 2020 3:01 utc | 121

Below is a repeat of a comment I pulled together about Stephen Zarlenga’s The Lost Science of Money which provides some needed context refresh for our current societal kabuki with money at the core.
”
Hand, The Invisible is from The Lost Science Of Money by Stephen Zarlenga which I recently finished ploughing through its 685 pages. The Hand, The Invisible may have come from one of Zarlenga’s sources, I haven’t been able to find it again..
Zarlenga wrote that in the US there should be a fourth, monetary, part of our executive, legislative and judicial parts and I agree.
The cult of private finance has stolen the ability of each of us to control the definition of our personal interactions through our government, that core socialistic experiment of social governance we are executing today, like we did yesterday, but don’t have to do in the same way tomorrow.
Below is some more about the Stephen Zarlenga book
Zarlenga, who died in 2017, writes in his book, “The Lost Science Of Money”, that monetary reform is needed and that Money’a Nature must dictate that reform.
Zarlenga bases his understanding of the Nature of Money on
Aristotle – “Money exists not by nature but by law;”
Plato – “a money token for purposes of exchange;”
Paulus – “This device being officially promulgated, circulated and maintained its purchasing power not so much from its substance as from its quantity.”
Berkeley – “Whether the true idea of money as such, be not altogether that of a ticket, or counter?;”
Locke and Franklin viewed money as a pledge for wealth rather than wealth itself.
Del Mar “…what is commonly understood as money has always consisted tangibly, of a number of pieces of some material, marked by public authority and named or understood in the laws or customs: that its palpable characteristic was its mark of authority; its essential characteristic, the possession of value, defined by law; and its function, the legal power to pay debts and taxes and the mechanical power to facilitate the exchange of other objects possessing value.”
Knapp – “Our test, that the money is accepted in payments to state offices.”
Zarlenga – “Money’a essence (apart from what is used to signify it), is an abstract social power embodied in law, as an unconditional means of payment.”
As I wrote in my earlier comment, Zarlenga wanted to add a fourth, monetary, branch to the US government.
His 3 steps to get there from here are
1. Nationalize the Federal Reserve
2. End fractional-reserve banking and institute the 100% reserve solution developed by Frederick Soddy (guy who also laid groundwork for big bang theory)
3. Institute anti-deflation programs and beware of deflation
Zarlenga wrote about Pope John Paul II calling for a debt Jubilee and saw usury stopped with new public money and “….a national legal limit of 8% annual interest, including credit cards, with no offshore loopholes. No interest should be paid on checking accounts. Cumulative interest should never be allowed to exceed the amount loaned…..”
I believe that Western society, to become a civilization, needs to evolve to a public form of money, or it will remain in the barbarism approach that Trump and his staff are showing.
China is leading the way and forcing this issue…..socialism or barbarism…..I vote for socialism.
”

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 25 2020 3:07 utc | 123

@125 yes but ‘your’ countries are not really ‘your’ countries. They are built on land taken from indigenous people so technically they belong to anyone. That is the thinking now anyway. So any government that tried to stop the sale would be called reactionary or racist.

Posted by: dh | Mar 25 2020 3:09 utc | 125

Dude, you still with us? How did the reaction recommendations go over? I would guess quite well, considering India’s announcement. What was Germany planning to do? France? Belgium? Holland? Spain? Britain? Ireland? Scotland?
Italy?

Posted by: Josh | Mar 25 2020 3:19 utc | 127

@ Perimetr who wrote
”
The ability to create infinite amounts of digital “money’ provides infinite power to those who can use that legal tender to purchases whatever they wish.
”
I would rather have that in government hands than some private human group/cult.
The creation part most is loans so it is risk management. China has an annual meeting where they seem to declare debt jubilee or write off certain investments/loans.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 25 2020 3:30 utc | 129

On March 21 both myself and Imagine predicted the number of new cases in the US for March 25 at 50 k and 55k +/- 5. End of today (March 24) we have an official number of 54.8. We used slightly different approaches but both relied on the assumption that the increase was log linear. We were both pretty close but the rates (i.e. an exponent in the equations were just a little low). What this implies is that the value of the exponent is increasing slightly. A log linear increase in the number of cases is what terrifies epidemeoligist. If the exponent in those equations is slightly increasing then it is even more terrifying.
I used to teach this stuff. Many people do not have any understanding of what a log linear increase implies. Listening to many of our leaders who have babbling away over the last month or so it is clear that most of those do not have a clue. At least over the last few weeks it appears that some are starting to get the picture. But unfortunately some still have no clue (i.e listen to the Lt Gov of Texas).

Posted by: ToivoS | Mar 25 2020 3:42 utc | 131

psychohistorian #142

Fed Hires World’s Largest Asset Manager To Manage Its Massive Asset Purchases
At what point are people going to understand about the dictatorship of private finance

That is too good. Reminds me of the snake eating its tail. Those are ASSETS ?? try TRASH! The King Fed is naked, the robes are woven air, the people admire the robes and the pickpockets circulate in the crowd.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 25 2020 4:10 utc | 133

Circe @130
“Trump believes the Easter Bunny is going to make Coronavirus disappear….”
Maybe not the Easter Bunny but I would not be surprised as if by magic the elusive cure all is pulled out of the magicians hat.
We just have to be patient until all the corporate bail outs are locked in place.
The suspension & erosion of civil liberties have to be pushed to the point where they cannot be rolled back easily.
There’s still plenty of money to be made yet.
Maybe Trump will come out of this smelling of roses, the saviour of the American people.

Posted by: ted01 | Mar 25 2020 4:37 utc | 135

ted01@147
What if Trump has just chosen the “sick” option to cull the herd (except the chosen) including:
(1) redundant retirees (eliminate social security and medicare);
(2) drug addicts (social costs of crime and treatment);
(3) people with metabolic and other diseases (medical costs);
(4) unemployed (non-performing assets);
(5) homeless (disease sources useless eaters);
(6) alcohol and tobacco users (see drug addicts)
By the sacrifice of these people to the abstract “god” of money Trump and his handlers will be able to reset the system. The game will then continue until the next reset. One should not fall for the illusion that the Democrats would do anything different under these circumstances.
There are other options, but linear thinkers cannot understand system dynamics nor would the population at large. They only see the abyss of the failure of their comfortable system construct. Perhaps it is too late anyway.
Such a culling would require martial law and in the face of chaos the people will beg for it..

Posted by: krollchem | Mar 25 2020 5:12 utc | 137

Posted by: vk | Mar 24 2020 22:17 utc | 93
“I don’t give a fuck about Chinese culture. In fact, I know almost nothing about it besides the stereotypical thing and I’m not planning about learning about it, ever.
Well said brother, China doesn’t export political ideology but seeking mutual and equal respect.
All I know is the CCP’s extraordinary accomplishments, and what it continues to accomplish. The numbers are out there, they don’t lie, you can see them by yourself.
Yeap before the trade war, China lifted 800 millions or so Chinese from poverty. Wuhan, provincial capital of Hubei builds two hospitals with 2,600 beds respectively in 6 and 7-days. While US of A now getting serious solving Convid-19 and failing economy China on the other hand withdrawing over 42K seasonal health workers (doctors and nurses) from Wuhan, and deploying medical experts includes providing millions masks, equipments and ventilators..
As long as China lives, socialism lives. The rest is of secondary importance in the present geopolitical scenario.
“Socialism with Chinese Characteristic”

Posted by: JC | Mar 25 2020 5:21 utc | 139

Data – reliable data, almost totally absent whether by design or incompetence.
Decisions were made on totally unreliable data.
Data manipulated, distorted, massaged to fit the agenda.
Cracks are now beginning to appear in the official narrative.
Link to the latest dissent from the OffGuardian:-
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic/
VK @3
‘Arizona man dies thanks to cloroquine:…’
‘I hope that man isn’t an MoA reader, because, if he was, then the “miracle drugers” here have just killed a person.’
Probably best to do a bit of research on that little story before making yourself look like a complete fuckwit.
Maybe you can read this – no ‘miracle cure’ but just a bit of honest research.
From 2005 ‘Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus’
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69

Posted by: ted01 | Mar 25 2020 5:24 utc | 141

The sinophobia manifesting its racist eurocentric neocolonial bullshit attitude appearing here is foreign. This blog is leftist. Jen, thank you for that brutal takedown

Posted by: Abu Aisha | Mar 25 2020 5:35 utc | 143

krollchem @ 149
I don’t know whether this coronavirus was deliberate or accidental, but one thing for sure is that it has been co-opted by what can be loosely called the ‘elites’ to generate maximum gain for themselves. The transfer of wealth is currently in progress. Culling the elderly, poor & homeless is currently lagging the ‘Wall Street’ phase.
Cracks are beginning to appear in the narrative.
For the people running this, it is now a delicate balance of how long to let it run for versus blowback from the so far docile populace.
The funny thing with greed is that it has a tendency to blind.

Posted by: ted01 | Mar 25 2020 5:41 utc | 145

Ay admin how can I edit?
Should read:
It is not just the east that is red

Posted by: Abu Aisha | Mar 25 2020 5:56 utc | 147

And Nicaragua. There’s still real socialism alive and happening, existing and pulling people our of poverty. the average English reader does not understand this, not even the brits with their nhs.Today’s Syria a bastion. It is not only the east that’s red.

Posted by: Abu Aisha | Mar 25 2020 6:08 utc | 149

Stimulus bill details agreed upon between Senate leaders and White House. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/489382-senate-white-house-reach-deal-on-massive-stimulus-package

Posted by: norecovery | Mar 25 2020 6:42 utc | 151

OH I’m reposting this from the last thread. Not because I’m a vain prich – which some may claim, but because I’m finding the endless ‘white noise’ about what really happened or is happening, a worthless distraction.
read, ignore dispute those who bother to read this, to yet hearts content,
Those who don’t, fine, but at least construct a coherent rebuttal, one which I may not respond to being being too busy trying this:
re Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2020 4:58 utc | 320
I don’t mean to come across as harsh but, I believe it is foolish to the point of stupidity to imagine that as our previously accepted systems fall apart, the world will automatically turn to socialism.
South Africa is one of the best relatively recent examples of how people are lured away from socialism into ‘anything but socialism’. As has been previously discussed at MoA, after Russia ‘fell’ and the elites called off ww1, all elite energy was devoted to kyboshing socialism. Back then the arseholes got so concerned about we the normal human beings giving them, the arseholes the finger, then getting organised & sticking up for ourselves, that the elites called off a war, a ‘great’ war which they were all making a pile out of, that they had to obstruct an equitable society any way which they could.
In Germany, the spiritual home of socialism all resources were poured into fascism, most of the rest of the whitefella world got sidetracked by being sold the same ‘democratic socialism’ pup which bernie is still attempting to delude the people with.
This is not a time to hunt out reasons why we can’t resist, this is the right time to highlight all the reasons why we should, most importantly how we can.
Anyone with a phone which is less than 10 years old can get a message constructed and hung on an accessible site, a site that isn’t youtube, but one which will allow other humans to access, that will not be the situation for much longer, so now is the time to strike.
Obviously a budget a little larger will be more effective, but the most important element, creativity, cannot be blocked and will allow messages the arseholes don’t want for the duration of this pandemic.
We have some workable ideas about vid and text servers that are unlikely to be uncovered by the forces of darkness which I betcha others can dream up better options than.
Of course not all plans will be viable, in fact it is likely that every move we first consider has been covered by the arseholes. So what, we have time & can beat any richfella nonsense. The most important fact I have discovered in more than 50 years of resisting the bastards is as powerful as some of these pricks are, their imagination is totally lacking so that as you engage them, sure they may win the first coupla rounds but that tells us how they think and it inspires more creative thinking by us who resist. It doesn’t take long before not only can a resister come up with strategies which do work, we can now beat them at their own game and see what they are most likely to try before they can think of it.
What we cannot so easily defeat is the same old same old nonsense which is so ubiquitous, so perfidious, that we to often convince ourselves this lie is true, – that they are too powerful & we too weak. That is nonsense but pervasive nonsense we, the people fall for far too often.
Sure most won’t succeed straightaway, but so what? Who cares even if they do get somewhat humiliated, altho I guarantee anyone trying to speak the truth will be respected by far more people than the handful of paid arseholes spewing venom.There is nothing to lose, but a world for our tamariki & tamariki whāngai to gain.
I like many others here has to accept that yes, I am past my ‘best before’ date but there is little the greedies can do to me that life isn’t already inflicting.
My kids & grankids are what gets me up, so if there is anything which I can possibly achieve that could stand on its head the notion ordinary humans’ existence becoming worse tomorrow than it is today, I will try to give that a go any/every day. And, I betcha, I’m not Robinson Crusoe.

Posted by: A User | Mar 25 2020 8:08 utc | 153

M of A really warmed my heart reading thru the comments. I want to contribute by saying:
I had many-years long and intimate relationships with families from Costa Rica, Taiwan and Vietnam in this lifetime. The effects lead me to remind all that:
Socialism, whatever and however it appears to be, is certainly and without doubt based on the word [in English] and idea called “society”, which is well and clearly defined in any dictionary.
Not high-society, or low or medium. Just the all-inclusive “society”.
As to the purpose of Socialism, Albert Einstein’s analysis was that…
“…the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development,…”
You can read that from the 3rd paragraph, here:
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
And so to bed.

Posted by: chu teh | Mar 25 2020 9:16 utc | 155

@ karlof1 | Mar 24 2020 23:53 utc | 110
To me, Kaisers is a somewhat ambiguous character. While he certainly is correct in many of his conclusions, he also is a pump-and-dump guy, at least when it comes to bitcoin. He’s been promoting bitcoin from a very early stage and never ceased to doing so. True, if one got in early, say 2011-2013, and out when bitcoin was trading between 5-15k then there was a ton of money to be made. How many small speculators achieved that goal? Not many. I always wonder, how many unsuspecting ‘investors’ who were late in the game have seen their savings going up in smoke when bitcoin crashed after its all time high in late 2017.
Same is with Goldmoney Inc. and Alasdair Macleod. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the guy and he most certainly knows his stuff, but he also is talking his company’s book. Not too many people are aware that after James Turk sold Goldmoney Inc. to BitGold in 2015 the new parent company put out a statement to assure the ‘markets’ BitGold and GoldMoney will follow the Comex rules, or, in other words they will comply with anything the US gov. and Wall Street come up with. Not very reassuring in my book in regards of safety of one’s investment/holdings.

Posted by: Hmpf | Mar 25 2020 9:28 utc | 157

@168 I thought you were saying old english land title had the last word.
I dont know about Oz but some native people in Canada say the land is unceded. They seem to think they own the lot. It keeps lawyers busy anyway.

Posted by: dh | Mar 25 2020 9:52 utc | 159

@ V | Mar 25 2020 9:54 utc | 172
Agreed, in regards of investment I’ve been referring to Goldmoney stocks, completely different to holdings of PM in physical form.

Posted by: Hmpf | Mar 25 2020 9:58 utc | 161

dh
I haven’t looked into the laws of Canada. Their PM like ours swears alliance to the English monarch to take office. Here the crown does claim ownership of all land.
As for colonist, I’m not sure how my forebears felt when they arrived at the penal colony.
These words indigenous and original inhabitants – when does one become indigenous. And who should own the land the indigenous or the original inhabitants – original inhabitants being the first groups of humans to move into and live an area. Or perhaps all of them become indigenous peoples at some stage.
The aboriginal people here, in places their culture is still intact but the land is an integral part of the social system, the culture. Without that the culture collapses. In places they have been able to get their land back though it remains part of Australia. Other places they must lease their land back, cattle leases ect. to me that is bullshit. They have constant ties to the land and they should be able to hold it without paying lease on their own land.
theres a lot of shit that needs bring out into the open, the massacres and so forth. There is a small government funded team researching and recording these massacres. Most of us white people are brought thinking they were all long ago many generations past. They continued up to the late forties that I know of. I contacted the researcher and gave them the location a site from the late forties. The sixty or so year old who told me about it was was boy when it happened. That was about 2004 2005.
The past cannot be changed dh but the future can.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2020 10:26 utc | 163

Posted by: Hmpf | Mar 24 2020 20:09 utc | 59
It’s called a patent. Many pharmaceutical drugs are based on herbs, however altered slightly so they are patent-able. They aren’t necessarily any better, just more profitable, the accredited drug dispensers only prescribe the patented version. Meanwhile the free growing version gets demonized by the media if getting popular.
Sometimes research into promising herbs gets buried as they couldn’t get a modified version to work. The history of the pharmaceutical industry is a festering cess pit of evil and greed cohabiting.

Posted by: Rancid | Mar 25 2020 10:39 utc | 165

Levity for trying times part three-
An important message from Clarkson, Hammond & May
For anyone who missed part one and two-
Jonathan Pie: LOCKDOWN
Simon PEGG and Nick FROST made a SHAUN OF THE DEAD Quarantine PSA and it’s perfect

Posted by: TJ | Mar 25 2020 10:45 utc | 167

Abu Aisha @161–
see post #11 on Nicaragua. US cannot tolerate a government helping ordinary Jose.

Posted by: arby | Mar 25 2020 11:38 utc | 169

More cracks in the foundation showing up–
“EU Shrugs Off US Sanctions, Gives Millions In Coronavirus Aid To Iran”
From ZH

Posted by: arby | Mar 25 2020 11:45 utc | 171

@ dennis | Mar 25 2020 11:21 utc | 180
That is an ongoing issue for years already. ABN AMRO did this to their customers the first time in 2016, I believe.There’s a saying: If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.
BIS changed rules a couple of years back. Gold, after decades, being considered a Tear1 asset again.
The entire thing just escalated recently. PM dealers sold out and being refused fresh supplies by primary dealers, that is central banks and affiliates.
Wonder why? I don’t, or rather think along the line: Never let a good crisis go to waste! Which tells us a thing or two about the current hysteria.

Posted by: Hmpf | Mar 25 2020 12:12 utc | 173

The empire is not sleeping during Cov19
“The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, denounced this Tuesday that terrorist groups are training from Colombia to attack the country amid the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza denounced Tuesday that the United States refuses to authorize humanitarian flights to bring back the stranded Venezuelans in the North American nation.”
Bolivia
“The presidential candidate has reported on Cuba’s willingness to help the South American country facing the Covid-19’s spread. However, the Añez regime denied this possibility. Deputy Health Minister Erwin Viruez said that accepting this aid would be “an offense to Bolivian doctors.””

Posted by: arby | Mar 25 2020 12:36 utc | 175

Thanks b for continued high quality and hope you can give updates on other “don’t look here now” topics like Idlib, Yemen, Nicaragua, etc.
I also would like to mention my sense of deterioration of quality of comments section due to “tit for tat” cross swiping verbal assaults, increased gratuitous profanity, and combinations and permutations of the same.
If these are a result of increased anxieties, I hope people would learn some relaxation techniques and confine their voodoo doll pin poking to offline rather than destroy the quality of the comments section.
MoA comments has historically been very high quality, and a key attraction. It is a pity to see regression to ubiquitous emotional back biting.
Conversely, the graceful and elegant comments only seve to compliment razor sharp edges of lucid arguments. Thanks to all those offering more light than heat!

Posted by: Екатери́на | Mar 25 2020 13:07 utc | 177

@ Moa | Mar 25 2020 13:13 utc | 190
Actually, you make an interesting point –
The comments seem very western-centric.
Wonder why that is?

Posted by: jared | Mar 25 2020 14:02 utc | 179

V / Humph 184 & 185
Thanks, I’ve been out of the gold bug zone for too long.
I was involved with gold in 2005 – 2009 whilst working in a unstable part of the world. I held physical, it was then that I really first understood of the huge efforts to manipulate its price as well as the broadness of its black economy currency use. It seems with Germany’s reduction of permissible anonymous purchases and other clampdowns there is a compliance squeeze occurring aligned with the questionable lockdown on SARS -Cov2.
Dr’s question Sars-Cov2 lockdown:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic/

Posted by: dennis | Mar 25 2020 14:43 utc | 181

Tokyo governor urges people to stay indoors over weekend as virus cases spike

“We are seeing an increasing number of individuals testing positive as of this week,” Koike said at a news conference.
The metropolitan government confirmed 41 cases the same day, more than double its previous daily record of 17 on Tuesday. Tokyo also confirmed 16 cases on Monday.
Koike said the Japanese capital is in a critical phase where it might see an explosion in the number of infections if it fails to act.

Why, all of a sudden, has Tokyo’s governor been suggesting tough anti-pandemic measures? Wasn’t the situation perfectly under control? Wasn’t Japan a model country, to be emulated instead of “draconic, authoritarian” China?
My guess is Japan’s fascist system, coupled with a dire economic situation, created a very toxic policital cocktail where testing was deliberately supressed by the central government’s direct (and utterly secret) orders, the local MSM was ordered to shut up and don’t investigate and don’t keep updating numbers and a huge propaganda operation to prop up the myth of leadership infallibility enforced nationwide. All that in order to not cancel the 2020 Olympics.
When the pandemic became inexorable and the Americans and Canadians warned Japan they were not being fooled by that cheap propaganda blitz, the IOC finally told the Japanese to postpone the 2020 edition to the far future, and the Japanese elite had a plausible deniability narrative to tell its people (that the westerners were “boycotting us” as the chief of the Japanese olympic committee said).
After the damage was done, they are now trying to catch up with the testings – they lost two whole months with this farce.
I expect Japan’s cases to balloon, although it could be theorized the Japanese people has a culture of self-isolation and hygiene that would make the pandemic less worse than in the West.
–//–
China’s economy resilient enough to guarantee stable employment: NDRC
Evaluation of China’s development calls for dialectical, long-term perspective
–//–
Why Italy was particularly hit by this pandemic:
High Elderly Population, Limited Testing May Underlie Italy’s High Covid-19 Death Rate: Paper
–//–
My take on why Germany was less affected than Italy and Spain:
1) Germany has a much superior healthcare system, with much more ICU’s per capita than both countries combined;
2) The Alps serve as a natural barrier between Germany and Italy, which makes flux of people by land between the two countries much more sparse. Sure, Italians could easily travel to Germany by plane, but the numbers are much lower and it is much easier to block an airport for the simply reason airports already had an “authoritarian” culture and infrastructure (it’s the price the middle classes and the capitalist class were willing to pay for their own safety, and to keep the poor out).
3) Germany is not that a popular touristic destination as is Italy and Spain. Berlin may attract people looking for work and some art and architecture enthusiasts, but not the horde of tourists that are most likely to bring the virus.
4) Germany has less old people than Italy.
5) France serves as a buffer zone between Spain and Germany.
6) The UK exited the EU at the right time, thus effectively ending flux of people between it and Germany when the pandemic still wasn’t out.
7) Other geographical advantages: Germany is more to central Europe than to western Europe, and more “land-oriented”. Other eastern European countries doesn’t seem to be having much cases either (relatively to western Europe). The pandemic seems to be raging at the most cosmopolitian regions of Western Europe, drawing a line that goes until the Netherlands. However, Portugal is not that affected, which reinforces the hypothesis the most touristic regions were affected more.

Posted by: vk | Mar 25 2020 15:02 utc | 183

@ vk
Google for “Ischgl covid”. The Austrian ski resort has been the super spreading location for most of the cases in Northern Europe. That means that most of these infected were relatively young, active and in good health. When the infection starts to spread locally, olderand more infirm people will get sick and the mortality rises.
Another point is that a lot of data from The Netherlands is incorrect. Only people who have tested positive are countedin the stats. But only people who arrive at hospitals in a terrible condition are tested. A local guy who went skiing in Ischgl came back and got very ill, but not critically. He went to a local general practitioner’s place and his temperature was taken by “men in white coveralls”. They told him that he had “a virus” and that he should go home and stay put. He recovered at home. He is definitely not counted in the local infections aggregate number.
There is also this very strange circumstance that the biggest baddest covid cluster in The Netherlands is a rural area, smack around the Volkel Airbase, where the USA keeps its nukes that it imposed upon us. In recent months, they have been swapping/upgrading the nukes (of course this was officially denied and lied about, the evacuation of the base by regular personnel and the placement of blinded fencing was nothing special, move along people)
Oh and then another thing about the lack of German mortality:. Could it be that Germans, who are generally quite health aware, commonly take vitamin d supplementation in the winter? A little web searching learns that vitamin d deficiency is linked to acute respiratory distress syndrome – the thing that makes covid so different from regular flu. Aside from that, it is well known that vitamine d protects from viral infections in general.
In my last post a few days ago, I mentioned suspecting to have contracted the covid thing. All my symptoms disappeared after a massive dose of vitamin d. Not proof of anything, but interesting to consider. Why is vitamin d deficiency not discussed more widely?

Posted by: Lurk | Mar 25 2020 15:36 utc | 185

@vk #196
Germany has been under restrictions, some quite severe, since March 15. The rate of spreading has begun to slow. People are generally heeding the restrictions and not convening in large groups. The rate has slowed down to doubling every 4-5 days compared to every 3 days before the restrictions.
But even for that, the big crunch is coming in the next couple of weeks.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 25 2020 15:50 utc | 187

Came across this comment in Off-Guardian article titled: “Italy: Only 12% of “Covid19 deaths” list Covid19 as cause.”
Thoughts?
England (so excluding other UK regions) death statistics for 2017 focusing on over 75s were published last October. They showed the following:
(In 2017) 230,428 people in total died in hospitals in England, that is 631 people per day (average) of which 427 were over 75 years old
For most people aged 75 and over who died in hospital their underlying cause of death was not the same as the primary diagnosis at the point of admission to hospital in the hospital in which they died. Pneumonia and [other] infections were recorded as the primary reason for admission in a large proportion of hospital admissions that ended in death. Details are in the following paragraph:
Based on figure 3 in the linked report, the total number of people 75 and over who died in 2017 with pneumonia as the primary reason for admission was about 26,000; the equivalent total number for [other] infections was about 18,000. That is a combined total of 44,000 hospital deaths equating to 121 deaths per day. Out of this number an approx total of 10,000 had pneumonia and infections as the underlying cause of death, equating to approx 27 deaths per day. So roughly 100 people over 75 died every day on average in 2017 (in England alone) from diseases other than pneumonia or {other] infections but had been admitted to hospital with pneumonia or [other] infection diagnosed on admittance.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/older-people-who-died-in-hospital-england-2017/older-people-who-died-in-hospital-england-2017

Posted by: Allen | Mar 25 2020 16:08 utc | 189

An interesting review of Thomas Piketty’s latest book about the ideology of neo-liberalism
http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-thomas-piketty-takes-ideology-inequality
The review concludes with this rendition of Gramsci’s lament:
“…In the meantime, as Antonio Gramsci observed, the old is dying but the new struggles to be born.”
Which encapsulates our current situation.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 25 2020 16:26 utc | 191

Peter AU 1 @119–
Thanks for your feedback, and from others who also commented on the Keiser Report episodes, although not much talk about the issues discussed as the nature of those talking took precedence. Trump knows nothing of the Transcendentalist Movement or what it would genuinely take to MAGA as most of his actions go in the opposite direction.
Vasco de Gama @127–
Thanks very much for the additional work you put into my hypotheses! With so many of the usual distractions quarantined, the public might finally become more aware of what’s being done to them, but it’s very difficult to gauge that currently. I think it very educational to read the following very different views. Hudson reiterates his views based on history that he’s discussed for most of the past year, tailoring it a bit to accommodate COVID-19–the historical grounding being very important given its immoral foundation. Contrast Hudson with what IMO stands for Trump’s stance as filtered by Dr. Luboš Motl, a Czech theoretical physicist, who quickly informs us of his ignorance of the past and indoctrination via his time spent at Harvard. I suggest reading Hudson last as most barflies I trust are familiar with his POV.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 25 2020 16:44 utc | 193

Some better news from here in the UK, the government asked for 250,000 volunteers to help delivering supplies, driving patients home from hospital and making phone calls to check in with vulnerable people who are isolating at home. Less than 24 hours later over 405,000 have signed up.

Posted by: TJ | Mar 25 2020 17:46 utc | 195

China’s People’s Daily goes off denouncing the Outlaw US Empire as “the creator of human right disasters” wherein we learn,
“The U.S. has been wantonly pursuing unilateralism. It bragged about its human rights situation and shirked international responsibilities. At the crucial moment when the world is fighting against the coronavirus, the U.S. announced to cut its funding to the WHO by half in the 2021 fiscal budget.” [My Emphasis]
Typical reaction to an agency whose actions it didn’t like. The entire report is a worthy condemnation of the vast excesses of immorality engaged in by the Outlaw US Empire against its own populace and all others on the planet.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 25 2020 18:08 utc | 197

LIVE NOW! Virtual Press Conference – COVID-19 — 25 MARCH 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4us_py7GUw

Posted by: JC | Mar 25 2020 18:22 utc | 199