Something absolutely monumental is happening on planet earth and we really need to be talking about it.

People are not dying…by the millions…mortality rates around the world are in free fall. Yes the Corona virus is real and many are dying from it, and many, many more would be dying from it if we did not take such extreme, concerted efforts to address it but almost all the other reasons people die are reduced.

Every year some 50 to 60 million people die all around the world. About half that number are unavoidable deaths such as old age, incurable disease, natural disaster, etc. The other half die from possibly preventable issues and most of those are going down during this self inflicted power down.

The air is so clean in many regions around the world that young people are seeing blue sky for the first time. Some 2 million or more people die every year just due to air pollution, millions more suffer illness and disease from constant exposure to air pollution. Animals of fir and feather die by the millions from it. When pollution falls out water dwelling species and soil life suffer and die. BLINK! Not so much any more.

Fossil fuel burning for transportation has dropped to a fraction of what it was and CO2 is falling with it. Something that even the most ardent ecologist said we couldn’t do.

Auto related accidents kill millions around the world. BOOM! Deaths down more than half. Stress related illness, work related illness, both of which make up a large part of the # 1 killer Cardip pulmonary disease and heart attacks, hospitals and ambulance companies around the world are reporting cases are down 40 to 60 %. Millions are not waking up facing a soul sucking bull$hit job doing useless, repetitive tasks from a cubicle. We are buying less useless junk and therefor throwing away much less junk. It seems as if everyone in the world has discovered gardening, cooking and long walks…Oh nO!!!!!

We basically stoped the global hamster wheel so most people could get off and nobody is dying (well there is always death where there is life) in fact they are not dying by the millions. In addition hundreds of millions are not being exposed to the toxic illness and death causing elements of industrial society that we all take for granted as not being optional. In other words a future of less illness, much better health, and an over all healthy environment for all life on the planet. KumBa Freaking Ya my friends.

The down side is people don’t get the money they need to keep paying all of the extortion payments that the rich and powerful demand in order for them not to die. Let me make this clear… the #1reason that TPTB are pushing hard to get everyone back to work is not so the 99% can live, It’s so the 1% can keep getting paid and if you don’t understand that then you have a hell of a lot of self-educating to do. Well the rich and powerful have been giving themselves tens of trillions of dollars for decades now without any problem so now we just use those trillions a year for healthcare, education, housing, running water and flushing toilets, electricity, mass transit, etc. Break up the monopolies as we have always done in the past. Write off all debt. Break up the venture capital/hedge funds/private equity firms that own everything, do nothing, and give back nothing. Tax the rich at 90% (many of them will still be billionaires thats how much they have).

Posted by: jef | May 10 2020 14:18 utc | 1

The question is: when dozens of people are sticking to a certain story they don’t believe in, is this a kind of spontaneous coordination? Could be...

Posted by: Norwegian | May 10 2020 14:22 utc | 2

@1 jef. One thing is for sure, some of us wont go back to the way things were: Trapped in a big city with the pollution, stress and rat race. At least the CV19 saga shows us how vulnerable the Global North is. If you look at the numbers, in many parts of the Global South, where people are closer to nature and conserve some of their traditional values, they fare alot better then in the post-modern, neoliberal hell that is become the North. Madagascar has zero death (maybe thanks to Artemisia), Costa Rica is doing great, some Caribbean islands are spared, etc.
So pick your spot, figure a way to earn income and remove them corporate shackles..

Posted by: Lozion | May 10 2020 14:37 utc | 3

yes, and as former president Lula da Silva said ' there is no wealth without labor and there is no labor without the active presence of workers'.

Posted by: augusto | May 10 2020 15:14 utc | 4

Russiagate has been an obvious coup attempt from the beginning, and several attempts have followed...
__________________________________________________

That is not at all obvious.
Russiagate was obviously designed to look like a coup attempt, but you have to be extremely gullible to believe any of it is real.

The recent Flynn bruhaha is a perfect example of the phoniness surrounding Russiagate.

The FBI investigators that interviewed Flynn believed he had not been deceptive and any fool who was paying attention at the time believed he was not guilty because 2 weeks before that FBI interview the news media had reported that the phone call with Kislyak had been recorded by the FBI and that there was nothing improper or illegal that would motivate Flynn to lie about his talk with Kislyak. The story that Flynn lied to the FBI is unbelievable on its face.

Don't blame the FBI for creating this fake story. Trump is the one and only one that created the fake Flynn-lied-to-the-FBI story, Before Trump created the phony story that Flynn had lied to the FBI nobody else had at that time believed Flynn lied to the FBI.
But once Trump had created the phony story that Flynn lied to the FBI then all the gullible morons started to believe the phony story. And even Flynn himself goes along with Trump's phony story because he is a good soldier that follows command.

Trump says he fired Flynn for lying to the FBI

Before Comey's testimony to Congress that suggested that Trump was twisting Comey's arm to let Flynn go for lying to the FBI no one had ever said that Flynn lied to the FBI. That story was created by Trump and reported by Comey.
And then Mueller and Flynn and Comey all helped Trump foist that phony story that Flynn lied to the FBI onto the public.

The implication of Comey's testimony to Congress was that in order to get Flynn off a charge of Lying to the FBI Trump first tried to cajole Comey to go easy on Flynn and when that did not work Trump fired Comey.
The problem with that whole BS story is that the crux of it (that Flynn lied to the FBI) never happened. It was entirely invented by Trump to make it look like Trump was engaged in mortal combat with the deep state. But it was all staged and fake (i.e. Kayfabe)

Posted by: jinn | May 10 2020 15:20 utc | 5

...
The question is: when dozens of people are sticking to a certain story they don’t believe in, is this a kind of spontaneous coordination?

Yes. Completely $pontaneou$.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | May 10 2020 15:39 utc | 6

Russigate falls apart:

_______________________________________________
Well duh....

Russiagate was designed to fall apart.

It was obvious all along that all the stories that came out in the Mueller Report were badly written sit-com material - the script for a comic soap opera. And they were all scripted to fall apart when examined closely.

What I could never figure out was what this guy Mueller was going to say when he was dragged in front of Congress and required to answer tough questions about all the garbage he had produced. I thought for sure that for Mueller the jig would be up there was no way the farce would not be revealed for all to see.

And then it happened. Mueller testified and it turned out Mueller could not remember any of it.

Senator: Did you say XYZ?
Mueller: Is that in the report??
Senator: yes it is.
Mueller: Then it is true.

Making Mueller Senile and unable to remember anything was brilliant - pure genius. The rest of the Russiagate script was mediocre at best.

Posted by: jinn | May 10 2020 15:42 utc | 7

there is a poem getting attention from all the right people
and platforms
and if you want to believe Covid is a gift
that poem is for you.

if your head is not up their ass looking for morsels on which
to subsist, I have a poem that may be more to your
liking

THE GREAT DIVIDE
by William Skink

build back better
your betters say
creative destruction
hooray! hooray!

you never would have
gone along
so we sang
the pandemic song

you dirty hordes
make the planet sick
with fertile wombs
and dumb fuck sticks

with you inside
the earth rebounds
culling is kindness
up is down

I sense confusion
your furrowed brow
your sovereign delusion
you’re not our cow

at the appointed time
go bang your pans
or loudly howl
or clap your hands

those who question
are not your tribe
ignore their protests
the great divide

is our greatest tool
since the cross
to win the mind
some hearts get tossed

Posted by: lizard | May 10 2020 15:58 utc | 8

Obama weighed in this week...on Flynn. Why?

What is he trying to preempt?

He only steps in at critical moments to stop something, as he did before SC to block Bernie.

Now this. How does it relate to Russiagate and his potential liability?

Posted by: Prof K | May 10 2020 16:05 utc | 9

thanks for all the work and these links b... much appreciated..

i lost track of kraftwerk a long time ago.. i continue to listen to andre mehmaris work - brazilian pianist who is doing great music.. here is a recording that improvises on milton nascimento, lo borges and other brazilian artists that i admire.. -Clube da Esquina No. 1

Posted by: james | May 10 2020 16:41 utc | 10

There was nothing mysterious about "Russiagate." It was a transparently false narrative designed, by the most incompetent election campaign team in history, to excuse their shocking inability to defeat one of the weakest and most discredited Presidential candidates there has ever been. A man for whom the Democrats actively campaigned in the Republican primaries on the basis that he would be the easiest of the Republicans to beat.
And so he was. It took real genius of the Buster Keaton variety to get beaten by Trump. It was almost impossible but the Democrats managed it.
And, when the election was over, just to remind the world how fucking dumb they were, they came up with the nonsense, immediately apparent at the time as being nonsense, that the Russian government had conspired to put Trump in the White House.
How did this story become accepted?
We all know the answer to that.
The media and The Establishment- their tongues in cheeks- got together to spread the story and to insist that, although there was no evidence to support it, it was true and that to be critical of it was to identify oneself as part of the conspiracy-a Russian bot!
I have always found it hard to believe that anyone with the slightest knowledge of the matter could actually believe any of it.
But in America that doesn't matter: people are socialised to believe all manner of things which are evidently false (see Bible) and many of which it is obviously against their interest to espouse (see anticommunism, fear of socialism, support for regressive taxation etc). Believing what is evidently incredible has long been a test of loyalty, a sign of being willing to fit in.
The basis of the state is to intimidate the public into conforming and denying what is evident. I was reminded of this almost twenty years ago when I emailed a relative, an intelligent and independent person, to the effect that the entire world knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that war on Iraq was unjustifiable. His reply " The Iraqis should have thought of that before they blew up the World Trade Centre on 9/11."
He didn't believe a word of it but he knows that it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you don't step out of line. It is this very weird intellectual atmosphere, unlike anything in any other country that I can think of, that fosters the American taste for the most extravagant and improbable explanations of the simplest of events. And there is no event in nature simpler than the spread of a virus across an overpopulated ( I speak not in the Malthusian sense) planet.

Posted by: bevin | May 10 2020 16:41 utc | 11

@1: CO2 levels are not falling, check Mauna Loa data. We are in a warm up period between two ice-ages and physics reduces CO2 solubility in sea-water. Anthropogenic emissions are not really decisive.

Posted by: E | May 10 2020 16:42 utc | 12

COV19. If you measure death rate by total number of people recovered / death it might end up being closer to 10% but those numbers are not in yet. Christian on prev. thread.

For ‘officially recognized COV19’ cases (i.e. those identified as such, which will vary by country, state, region, place, etc. and is always an understandable undercount, asymptomatics, nobody knows how many, varied testing policies, plus deliberate fudging, etc.) the outcomes, the *closed* cases -> recovered or died - has been as high as a little over 20% (21, 22..) but is today down to 17% for the World, (nos. from May 9 at link, they change each day.)

USA. May 9: For ‘declared cases that are now closed’, one quarter have died, 3/4 have recovered.

At present oscillating around a plateau of:

since 2 April, 30K new cases per day

since 7 April, 2K deaths per day, maybe slightly diminishing to 9 May, but not significantly so.

If all continues as is on May 9 - 1,096,567 US active cases, a very large no. of deaths are baked in.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Imho growing non-compliance with whatever rules, forcing workers back to work, and ‘opening up’, will create, in 2 - 5 weeks, a sharp / slowish / jerky rise in the unfavorable nos, with an alarm point at week 3-4. This is under the assumption that the varied and ‘semi’ lockdown measures in the US did ‘flatten the curve’ with some success, and that the ‘bad’ numbers will not be entirely supressed (which might happen.)

Posted by: Noirette | May 10 2020 16:43 utc | 13

Norwegian @ May10 14:22

Russiagate has been an obvious coup attempt from the beginning

jinn @ May 10 15:20

That is not at all obvious... you have to be extremely gullible to believe any of it is real.

IMO Russiagate was about initiating a new McCarthyism.

And Trump's Deep State selection was about re-igniting nationalism in response to the Russia-China alliance which was recognized as a threat to the Empire in 2013-2014 with Russia's blocking of US action in Syria and Ukraine.

I've been saying this for years.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 10 2020 16:52 utc | 14

There was nothing mysterious about "Russiagate." It was a transparently false narrative designed, by the most incompetent election campaign team in history, to excuse their shocking inability to defeat one of the weakest and most discredited Presidential candidates there has ever been.
_________________________________________________

Yeah that is what we are asked to believe, but the problem is how did this incompetent election campaign keep the ball in the air for more than 2 years?

They did not invent the Flynn lied to FBI story and they did not invent the Trump obstructed justice stories. And they did not create any of the silly stories about contacts with Russians. There is no doubt the Hillary supporters sat on the sidelines and cheered all the nonsense that was unfolding in the Russiagate narrative but the storyline that they were cheering for was all created by Trump and his lackeys.

Posted by: jinn | May 10 2020 16:54 utc | 15

bevin @ May 10 16:41

It was a transparently false narrative designed, by the most incompetent election campaign team in history ...

Occam's razor says Hillary threw the election. No seasoned politician would make the mistakes that she made - especially when they yearn to make history (as the first woman president) and the entire establishment (left and right) is counting on them to win.

Believing what is evidently incredible has long been a test of loyalty ...

And you prove your loyalty with the belief that Hillary lost because of an "incompetent election campaign".

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 10 2020 17:01 utc | 16

IMO Russiagate was about initiating a new McCarthyism.

And Trump's Deep State selection was about re-igniting nationalism in response to the Russia-China alliance which was recognized as a threat to the Empire in 2013-2014 with Russia's blocking of US action in Syria and Ukraine.
_______________________________________________
That may be true. I don't really know what all the deep state is up to, but I agree it is extremely unlikely that Trump is at odds with the goals of the deep state.

The way I see it the purpose of Russiagate and other similar "witch hunts" is to create the illusion that Trump is at odds with the deep state. Trump's credibility with his supporters (and his detractors too) rests on his ability to maintain the illusion that the deep state does not like like what Trump is doing.

Posted by: jinn | May 10 2020 17:07 utc | 17

@ ProfK 9

Whether or not General Flynn is loathed or liked, there is Supreme Court decisions setting precedence for dropping a case when found to be wrapped in prosecutorial misdeeds:

As for the first 'black' president out from the shadows;

Obama, the petit constitutional law scholar, signed the NDAA National Defence Authorization Act which allows imprisonment of Americans forever has no standing to claim the "rule of law is at risk" and he may want to call Eric Holder.

Certified Hypocrite.

Now why is Obama against General Flynn? Hmmm. Good question.
Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security?
LINK

Posted by: Likklemore | May 10 2020 17:08 utc | 18

Likklemore @ May10 17:08

Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security?

Gen. Flynn: Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support Sunni extremists (a Jihadi proxy army) against Assad.

This directly contradicts the phony narrative of Obama as peace-loving black man (as certified by his Nobel Prize!).

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 10 2020 17:31 utc | 19

There is a typo in the title of the Billboard article that b linked to. They misspelled his surname.
Ah well. Errare humanum est.

Posted by: hopehely | May 10 2020 17:34 utc | 20

Thanks B, for all the good analyzing and this Week In Review.
I did Read the "The Macutazo: Timeline of an Absurd Military Adventure - Caracas Chronicle" and some other post on the caracaschronicles.com.
I must however say (although I dislike it), this Caracas Chronicles is not a neutral source, and cannot be listed for correct reporting&anlyzing. It is a opposition platform , and hostile to Maduro and Chavismo. Their Timeline may be correct in date&time, but is far from correct on the facts and conclusion.

Posted by: iano | May 10 2020 17:36 utc | 21

@ Jackrabbit 19

Thanks for that additional link. And that's why Obama could not standby with Flynn in the NSA role. Recall Hillary's on Trump-"if he is elected we'll hang" (paraphrased)

In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."

Fast Forward to 2011 he signs NDAA.
"How Obama disappointed the world." Der Spiegel had such an article 9 Aug.2011. But he was re-(S)-elected.

Posted by: Likklemore | May 10 2020 18:11 utc | 22

E @12 - The world is using 15 to 20 million LESS barrels of oil a day. That is only one of the pollutants the transportation sector emits.

Posted by: jef | May 10 2020 19:06 utc | 23

Obama didn't disappoint the world, he betrayed it.

Posted by: Perimetr | May 10 2020 19:17 utc | 24

COV19. The W-MSM loves to hail the success in handling the deadly virus of Asiatic countries that are perceived as not Chinese .. such as S Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore.

The MSM praises, advises, supports the tracking of everyone, endless apps, surveillance, etc. Immunity passports, health status control, like the noble ‘pass’ documents of old, etc. etc. Testing, testing, testing. Aka Hyper Kontrol. Cams everywhere. Giving up ‘freedums’, etc. (Thereby ironically following in part the Chinese model.) Huh. -- Btw the US cannot implement such a system, it hasn’t the infrastructure, the capability, or the will, imho.

What is left out is a different type of success. Deliberately.

Vietnam, 0 deaths. (10 May.)

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/viet-nam/

Venezuela: 10 deaths (haven’t seen that contested at all anywhere.)

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/venezuela/

Venezuela sent by internet, phones, a health questionnaire to all (pop 28 million), 11 million responded. (Around second half of March.) Of these 21K reported they (or someone in family) had flu-like or weird symptoms.

13K docs were mobilised to visit these ppl at home. (Cuba sent some docs to help. Note that is less than 2 home visits per doc.) By 22 March, 17.5K ppl were examined, tested (? not sure.. China sent 2 million tests), and all of 77 were diagnosed with COV19. These were removed from their home to isolation (hospital, free) and their families and contacts were put in home quarantine for 2 weeks.

Summary of the little I read in F Press and some Spanish articles. I have no personal knowlege. Would like to hear more.

wiki on Venez. posts crazy alarming charts colored in red etc. - but only 10 deaths if one cares to look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Venezuela

Posted by: Noirette | May 10 2020 19:25 utc | 25

Next up could be a "Venezuelagate" because it surely looks more like an internal US intelligence (propaganda, media) operation for some kind of political gain to attack opponents with than anything else.

It could have been instigated by anyone, just as Russiagate could have been, and could easily follow a blueprint of "do something incredibly stupid, let the noise and accusations commence, and play the long game/backlash for 'profit'".

Just another possibility among many. Could be wrong, could be right.

In case I'm being difficult to understand what I'm trying to point out is that there's nothing to limit shenanigans to a simple "A then B" logic or for that matter an almost equally simple "A then B then C" logic.

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | May 10 2020 19:31 utc | 26

>wiki on Venez. posts crazy alarming charts colored in red etc. -
>but only 10 deaths if one cares to look.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Venezuela
>Posted by: Noirette | May 10 2020 19:25 utc | 25

Sure is a huge article for the size of their epidemic. There are 136 references! Who the hell put so much time and effort into it, who payed them, and why? The Talk page is sort-of interesting, with a lengthy discussion claiming that official sources should not be used, 'cuz they are commies, or sumthin.

Posted by: Trailer Trash | May 10 2020 19:39 utc | 27

@ 26 sunny runny burger regarding usa creating a scene in venezuala... on the one hand we are dealing with a fully confirmed liar and on the other a clear target of this same liar... that is the only clear picture to me...

@ 25 noirette... yes... it is interesting how this is largely impacting the west! total cases in the usa as of today from the same site you link - 1,357,076...

regarding obama.. those apples that look so good on the outside are not all worth buying or biting into.. obama is one of them.. the rot's beneath the surface.. with trump it is a lot more clear what one is getting on the outside..

Posted by: james | May 10 2020 19:40 utc | 28

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | May 10 2020 19:31 utc | 26

Next up could be a "Venezuelagate" because it surely looks more like an internal US intelligence (propaganda, media) operation for some kind of political gain to attack opponents with than anything else.

Nope, that shit is real.

Posted by: hopehely | May 10 2020 19:44 utc | 29

Interesting colonization of virus bill 6666 (no kidding!)

see "bill 6666" tinyurl[dot]com/y74hgz4u

Read the details...

Ventura County is supposed to be the locus of the "rollout"...wanna bet about the plan?

Read the detail.

Posted by: Walter | May 10 2020 20:13 utc | 30

No-one seems to mention that Blackrock has been inserted into the US Fed/US Treasury duality, allowing The Fed to now buy the world. Who needs China to buy US Treasuries to keep the debt game and the wheels upon the Frankenstein machine spinning.

WW1 only arose after the creation of the US Fed, the source of the capital which would drive a half-dozen empires to ruins, pushed far beyond their natural limits. Welcome to the Balfour Declaration.

And Blackrock has been inserted while the world is distracted by Covid-19. Coincidence?

What dark design is now destined for the world?

Watch the magician's hands, not where he is directing your attention!

Posted by: Ric G | May 10 2020 20:21 utc | 31

Dear B,

You may not know this news but back in March this year, another significant musician in the development of German pop and rock music died. This was Gabi Delgado Lopez who is a former member of the band Deutsche-Amerikanische Freundschaft aka DAF to us non-German-speakers. Gabi was 61 years old when he died.

DAF was one of the leading bands in Die Neue Deutsche Welle (The German New Wave) and was one of the first bands in the then West Germany to sing in German at a time when every pop and rock band around the planet, including Japan, sang in English. DAF started out as a punk band, quickly became an electropunk duo performing on synthesisers with synthesised percussion and beats, and later moved into electronic body music. The duo paved the way for other European electronic dance acts like Front 242 and Technotronic.

The band's name DAF was always intended to be sardonic and its most famous song is probably "Der Mussolini".

Posted by: Jen | May 10 2020 20:42 utc | 32

It's hardly just Trump who is, intentionally or not, pursuing a herd immunity strategy. Given the premises of capitalism and the economic civilization as such, it couldn't possibly be any different.

All cadres of the globalist-militarist system, their ideology, their educational background, their mindset is dedicated completely to goals – power and profit – which render it impossible for any of their structures to function effectively toward any other goal. These scientific and medical structures couldn’t act effectively toward the public good, the public health, even if they suddenly wanted to.

This society chose to enshrine capitalism in its most virulent neoliberal form, to entrench it so deeply that even in a crisis where most people, perhaps even most authorities want to pivot to a goal different from sheer profiteering, it's impossible. Now America is stuck with this worthless, counter-productive system. When you take a pseudo-medical structure dedicated to maximizing corporate profit and try to use it for such a completely different purpose as to practice medicine, that won’t work. Same when you try to use a profit-seeking “health insurance” system to provide actual health care. It won’t work.

And all that's on top of the basic biological fact that any potential pathogen is best balanced through biodiversity, while rigid forcible violent attempts at segregation and sterilization are doomed to fail.

No wonder it's clear that all Western lockdown measures have helped no one and been nothing but worthless and destructive, while the one thing that is worthwhile and needful, to protect the most vulnerable, they're still not doing.

Posted by: Russ | May 10 2020 20:53 utc | 33

Trailer Trash @27

Compare the tone of the article about the pandemic in Venezuela with the CIA-pedia article about it in Colombia. It is laughable how obvious the anti-Venezuela jingoism is. It is even too pitiful to laugh at how the authors of the article about the pandemic in Venezuela try to give the Random Guaido glowing praise for delivering a few dozen masks to a couple hospitals.

Really sad how desperate the propaganda is.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 10 2020 20:55 utc | 34

My kids all know Kraftwerk. I was reconnecting with my turntable and I'd picked up a double vinyl album with assorted Kraftwerk songs. Turned out they were actually remixes and the vinyl was colored too and for a while I had to 'play the blue record again' or 'play the red record again'.
They don't know the Beatles though. I think.

Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | May 10 2020 21:04 utc | 35

Research by Vanessa Beeley shows the extent of the links between UK government, UK medical charities / foundations, UK univerity medical research departments, Big Pharma and Bill Gates.

In short: a prolonged lockdown with induced fear is an essential part of the plan to implement very lucrative compulsory vaccination. In the past, Big Pharma outfits developing vaccines without proper prolonged research were indemnified by the UK government (ie the taxpayers) after they had to pay out big time for vaccines that killed children. The current play book provides them, along with associated medics, legal immunity up front. What Could Possibly Go Wrong for those standing to make out big time?

https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/09/who-controls-the-british-government-response-to-covid-19/

https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/10/covid19-the-big-pharma-players-behind-uk-government-lockdown/

Posted by: Ken Garoo | May 10 2020 21:19 utc | 36

Posted by: augusto | May 10 2020 15:14 utc | 4

"yes, and as former president Lula da Silva said ' there is no wealth without labor and there is no labor without the active presence of workers'."

A socialist like myself believe that...Abraham Lincoln - "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Posted by: JC | May 10 2020 21:30 utc | 37

"Occam's razor says Hillary threw the election. No seasoned politician would make the mistakes that she made - especially when they yearn to make history (as the first woman president) and the entire establishment (left and right) is counting on them to win." @16

Don't drag William of Occam into this nonsensical assault on reasoning. Your theory contradicts itself.
The truth is that Hillary was not a seasoned politician, she won one election-handed to her on a silver platter- in New York. She was a rotten campaigner. She simply didn't like the voters. It is almost possible to isolate the errors-which followed many other errors- that led to her losing critical states in the mid-west, where she refused to expose herself, and her unpopularity, by campaigning.
Does anyone else believe that Hillary threw the election? Does anyone believe that that is anywhere close to being the simplest explanation of the 2016 loss?

Posted by: bevin | May 10 2020 21:35 utc | 38

JC | May 10 2020 21:30 utc | 38 (labor is superior...)

Indeed, any man who has worked a day with oxen and axe, or 6 months... Knows this as clearly as a poke in the nose gets attention, eh?

Why is it that Pomerz and the Clown are so fat, anyway.

Posted by: Walter | May 10 2020 21:42 utc | 39

Two days ago the White House tweeted, “On May 8, 1945, America and Great Britain had victory over the Nazis! America’s spirit will always win. In the end, that’s what happens.”

Many posts here have exposed what the White House chooses to forget: until D-Day the Red Army faced the Wehrmacht virtually alone, over 200 German divisions as against no more than 10 faced by the Western Allies, and broke that force such that by the time of the Normandy landings the Westwall defenders were shredded remnants, almost half of them not even German. The Soviets won the war effectively single-handedly; the US and UK only swept in at the end to keep the Red Army from liberating all Europe from the Nazis.

There were many factors that allowed the USSR, only a generation earlier emerging from feudal underdevelopment and devastated by war and civil war, to turn the tide against the far more powerful Germany and its several allies. But this spirit thing…

There were countless heroes and sacrifices, but I can’t help always remembering Lydia Litvyak. At age 14 she joined a young pilots club and had her first solo flight at 15. She graduated from the Kherson military flying school and became a flight instructor; by the time of the Nazi invasion she’d already trained 45 pilots.

(It’s laughable to think this could have happened under Tsarism or some Provisional Government-descended capitalism. None of this would’ve been possible were it not for the October Revolution three years before she was born.)

She joined the all-women 586th Fighter Regiment, flying biplanes pressed into service in the first days of the war. They were dubbed Night Witches by the Nazis as they rained bombs down on German positions after dark, gliding to their targets to achieve surprise before re-engaging their engines to fly back to base. Her distinction here—her commander called her “a born fighter pilot”—earned her a transfer to another regiment where her skills could be put to different use, against the Luftwaffe over the Battle of Stalingrad.

In one encounter she shot down a German fighter on the tail of her squadron commander, saving her life. The Luftwaffe pilot, an 11-victory ace himself, was captured after parachuting from his plane and asked to meet the flyer who had shot him down. When he was taken to Litvyak he first thought he was being made the butt of a Soviet joke, but as she calmly described each maneuver and counter-maneuver of their combat he knew he’d been shot down by this woman.

Litvyak was promoted to lieutenant and selected to become one of the “free hunters” (okhotniki)—ace pilots who flew in pairs searching for targets on their own initiative. Wounded twice in battle, the second time taking her plane down safely making a belly landing, she refused medical leave, demanding to return to her unit. Her Yakovlev-1 fighter, its side emblazoned with a bright “32”, were known and cheered by Soviet ground troops defending Stalingrad in street-to-street combat below.

Another of her victories was against a Wehrmacht observation balloon guiding the accuracy of German artillery fire—notoriously dangerous targets as they were very heavily guarded. Several Soviet airmen had already failed to take it out, driven away by dense anti-aircraft fire. Litvyak flew alone in a wide circle over enemy-held territory, approaching from the rear to detonate the hydrogen-filled balloon with tracer rounds. After this kill she was promoted to command her own squadron in the 73rd Guards Fighter Regiment (the Guards distinction only awarded to the most heroic units).

In her last mission during the Battle of Kursk—her fourth sortie of August 1st, 1943—she attacked a large group of Luftwaffe bombers, not seeing their fighter escort high above. Recognizing her aircraft the escort dove to attack. Another pilot in her regiment, Ivan Borisenko, from another part of the dogfight recalled seeing her turn to meet them; soon all disappeared behind cloud cover. He saw her once more through a gap in the clouds, her plane pouring smoke while pursued by as many as eight German fighters—after the war captured records showed two to have been piloted by Nazi aces who were given credit for killing her. With a mortal head wound she still managed to ram her fighter into the plane of one of the aces, taking his life along with her own. She was 21 years old. She was one of millions.

Here you go, White House—the spirit that defeated the Nazis.

Posted by: Vintage Red | May 10 2020 22:00 utc | 40

"After China Forced Out Reporters, Trump Hits Back With Severe Restrictions On Chinese Media"

"....No doubt, China will retaliate. And given it's not a democracy, it's likely to hit back even harder, it's what's increasingly looking like a race to the bottom. This could ultimately result in zero American reporters legally in China at all."

You betcha! China will retaliates Tit-For-Tat and hit harder. Sooner or later NO Americans reporters or spies in China.. that's where SCMP Alibaba Group Holding’s vice-chairman Joe Tsai and Gary Liu planted SCMP spies in China...

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/after-china-forced-out-reporters-trump-hits-back-new-restrictions-chinese-media

Disclaimer:
Joe Tsai Dual citizen HK and US, family escaped with Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan after defeated by Mao Zedong and Gary Liu ABC family from Taiwan

Posted by: JC | May 10 2020 22:01 utc | 41

After reading this news item, if you're a citizen residing within the Outlaw US Empire I expect you to be livid regardless your stance on opening the economy. "'Criminal Negligence': Trump Officials Ignored Company's Offer to Make 7 Million N95 Masks Per Month in Early Days of Pandemic. [My Emphasis]

"The Washington Post reported that federal scientist Rick Bright, who filed a whistleblower complaint last week over his demotion following his criticism of the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, detailed communications with Prestige Ameritech in January in which HHS ignored the medical supply company's offer to produce masks.

"The head of the Ft. Worth-based company, Michael Bowen, wrote to HHS on January 23, two days after the U.S. confirmed its first case of Covid-19.

"Bowen offered to use four dormant production lines to produce as many as seven million N95 masks per month, but was told by Laura Wolf, director of the Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection at HHS, 'I don't believe we as a government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet.'

"'We are the last major domestic mask company,' replied Bowen, who at the time was fulfilling orders for masks from all over the world. 'My phones are ringing now, so I don't 'need' government business. I'm just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad.'"

There's more and it must be read, but what this provides is yet more evidence that not responding was policy made at the top. I think there's an excellent case for Negligent Murder by the executive branch of the federal government. The Intercept also has a more in-depth article detailing the affair. The following excerpt points to deliberate policy to do nothing:

"Though officially tasked with quickly mobilizing a national response to public health crises, [Robert] Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response and formerly Bright’s boss, is described in the report as a petty tyrant who ignored, mocked, and thwarted Bright’s repeated efforts to address the imminent shortage of masks and other personal protective equipment in January and February, as the virus began spreading across the country.

"In a lengthy, detailed account that reads like a script from a horror movie and will likely earn Kadlec the lasting enmity of everyone who has lost a front-line worker to the virus, Bright lays out a series of unsuccessful and increasingly desperate attempts to push Kadlec and HHS Secretary Alex Azar to recognize and address the looming shortage of personal protective equipment. The attempts to call attention to the crisis began in mid-January, when Bright, a virologist who has spent decades in government preparing for public health emergencies, called for a senior-level meeting to coordinate the response to the coming pandemic."

The following behavior is what we've seen from TrumpCo: Throw $$Trillions are the already filthy rich and God Damn the little people, give them a bit of sand but make sure those tiny grains take forever to get to their recipient such that the sand's essentially useless when it arrives.

And you think Circe is the #1 Trump hater here. Well, think again.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 10 2020 22:16 utc | 42

Colonel Klank @32--

FOAD! We discuss Black Rock and its ilk here constantly, particularly me since it's a major part of the Money Power illegally vested with the nation's monetary policy. So, instead of crying, why not post some good dirt about that Parasitic company. Come on--Get Busy!!

Posted by: karlof1 | May 10 2020 22:21 utc | 43

bevin @ May10 21:35

The truth is that Hillary was not a seasoned politician ...

This is absurd. She previously ran for Senate and President. She is married to Bill who is has considered one of the best political strategists for 30 years. She had the money and connections needed to get whatever advice or help she needed. Her prominance as a politician is underscored by the fact that everyone in America and much of the rest of the world know who she is with just one word: "Hillary".

She was a rotten campaigner.

The establishment tells us that Sanders was a 'real' candidate despite his deference to Hillary and the Democratic Party and that Hillary was a 'real candidate' despite her deliberate, nonsensical alienation of progressives, blacks, and white "deplorables".

She simply didn't like the voters.

LMFAO.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

Once again, you pass the loyalty test that you described @May10 16:41:

Believing what is evidently incredible has long been a test of loyalty ...

Which is not surprising to me or any other moa reader that is familiar with positions you've taken in other matters.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 10 2020 22:24 utc | 44

Thank you Karlofi ! That right there is a large ‘smoking gun’ or will they call it a coincidence? Those same people. are who we the public trust to solve this pandemic.

Posted by: Mark2 | May 10 2020 22:28 utc | 45

David Blanchflower in the NY Review of Books on youth unemployment
"...Adding those 7.5 million to the 22.5 million actually reported, to get a total of 30 million jobless, and then dividing by a labor force of 155.8 million results in a true unemployment rate of 19.3 percent.

"Such a number is unprecedented in most people’s lifetimes. In the crash of 2007–2008, it took nearly two years for the unemployment rate to double from 5 percent in December 2007 to 10 percent in October 2009. This time, the rate has quintupled in eight weeks. The only comparable numbers were in the Great Depression, but even then, the increase took much longer. The annual unemployment rate in the US was 3 percent in 1929, 9 percent in 1930, 16 percent in 1931, 24 percent in 1932, and 25 percent in 1933. By 1941, just before the US entered World War II, it stood at 10 percent. So we may be facing a very long haul out of this abyss.

"The concern is that the most vulnerable are the worst affected—much as they are in terms of the death rates from the Covid-19 virus—and this is indeed what we are seeing. The unemployment rate of those with less than a high-school diploma jumped from 6.8 percent on the month to 21.2 percent; and for high-school graduates, it went from 4.4 percent to 17.3 percent. For those with some college education, the numbers rose from 3.7 percent to 15 percent; and for college graduates, from 2.5 percent to 8.4 percent. The Hispanic unemployment rate rose particularly steeply, from 6 percent to 18.9 percent.

"There is a special concern about young people, who are going to struggle to make the transition from school to work. We know that a long spell of unemployment when you are young creates a permanent scar—reducing earnings for decades and increasing the risk of adverse life events. Even for those with college education, the graduating class of 2020 from universities is going to have a tough time. But minority youngsters with less education are going to be especially hard-hit. For many, in the past, one response to a bad labor market is to go back to school—but that doesn’t look that attractive right now."

An interview with "Swiss professor, deputy and writer Jean Ziegler ... Special Rapporteur to the United Nations for the right to food from 2000 to 2008, he is now Vice-President of the Human Rights Advisory Committee to the United Nations - functions which made him witness to poverty, misery and inequality around the world." It is in French but translates well.

"...So what's going to happen? The virus will cause the rupture of the alienated consciousness and in one way or another, popular movements will be born and will destroy this cannibalistic system of capitalism ...

"Well, we cannot decide on the path that the people will take, but the fact that there will be an insurrection, that is certain."
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/le-choc-de-cette-crise-va-provoquer-la-revolution-entretien-avec-jean-ziegler-lhomme-qui-veut-en-finir-avec-le-capitalisme/

You are just a troll @45.Yawn.

Posted by: bevin | May 10 2020 22:36 utc | 46

karlof1 @ May10 22:16

Back on February 7, the World Health Organization sounded alarm bells about “the limited stock of PPE,” noting demand was 100 times higher than normal for this equipment.

Yet the same day as the WHO warning, the Trump administration announced that it was transporting to China nearly 17.8 tons (more than 35,000 pounds) of “masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials.”

Back on February 7, the World Health Organization sounded alarm bells about “the limited stock of PPE,” noting demand was 100 times higher than normal for this equipment.

Yet the same day as the WHO warning, the Trump administration announced that it was transporting to China nearly 17.8 tons (more than 35,000 pounds) of “masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials.”

<> <> <> <> <> <>

Canada’s department of Global Affairs shipped 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment to China [in February] to help Beijing fight the novel coronavirus, an effort that it undertook even after the World Health Organization had warned countries to prepare for possible cases.

Amir Attaran, a professor at University of Ottawa’s school of epidemiology and public health and its faculty of law, said he was surprised to learn Global Affairs shipped personal protective equipment (PPE) to China.

... “It was absolutely certain in early February that we would need this equipment,” he said. “This decision went beyond altruism into high negligence and incompetence because Canada did not, and does not, have surplus equipment to spare.”

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 10 2020 22:36 utc | 47

Der Spiegel suffers an epic pratfall at the hands of "German intelligence".
"On January 21, China's leader Xi Jinping asked WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to hold back information about a human-to-human transmission and to delay a pandemic warning."

The putdown from WHO was brutally succinct:
"Dr Tedros and President Xi did not speak on 21 January and they have never spoken by telephone."

Oh, and just to put the knee to the groin:
"To note: China confirmed human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on 20 January."

Ouch! That's gotta hurt.

I'm going to say that those are errors so amateurish that the BND must have received their "intel" directly from the office of Fat Mike Pompeo. Nothing else could explain the bald-faced, utterly shameless lying that went into it.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 10 2020 22:37 utc | 48

Fascism didn't end in 1945; it just changed faces is the gist of this well done article. Consider the UK & Outlaw US Empire's treatment of the USSR on the 75th anniversary of VE Day when the USSR was completely omitted from mention by those governments while you read the piece. Financialized Fascism's home is in NYC within the Outlaw US Empire and is the #1 Enemy of every human on the planet.

Mark2 @46--

I bet every sensible mother who got roses for Mother's Day would gladly entwine Trump, Pompeo, Pence, and the other miscreants responsible for so many murders with their thorny roses, to the point of drawing blood such that they all bleed-out, for those fuckers risked the life of every citizen within the nation and continue to do so!!!! There's just no way to be tactful about their deadly actions--in a Just society, they'd be removed from power and exiled at least--charged with Treason is IMO altogether quite proper.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 10 2020 22:48 utc | 49

Addendum:

@ Jackrabbit 19; Perimetr 24

Oh my. !!!! SHTF. This is a damning, devastating, Bombshell .....delivered on TV in an interview this morning:-

Flynn’s Attorney Claims Obama in on Plot to ‘Frame’ Ex-National Security Adviser
LINK

On Friday, former US President Barack Obama torched a Justice Department decision to drop the criminal case against Trump's former national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, reportedly stating that “rule of law is at risk” in the United States.

The Lead attorney for former US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, during an interview on ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ on Fox News network, accused former US President Barack Obama of being involved in a plot allegedly orchestrated by top officials to frame the retired general.[.]

“These agents specifically schemed and planned with each other how to not tip him off, that he was even the person being investigated,” Powell said, pointing out that FBI officials did not inform Flynn that he was under investigation during the their conversations with him. “So they kept him relaxed and unguarded deliberately as part of their effort to set him up and frame him”.

Recently released testimony suggests that Obama told then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and then-FBI Director James Comey that he knew about Flynn's phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak weeks before FBI agents interviewed him, according to Fox News.

“The whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, [Former CIA Director John] Brennan, and in the Oval Office meeting that day with President Obama,” the attorney continued.

In response to a question on whether she believes that Flynn was a victim in a plot in which the former president was involved, the lawyer said, “Absolutely”.[.]

Leave it there. An incredible accusation. Wait for the four to lawyering up. Big bucks litigation.

What price a ticket at the Bar?

Posted by: Likklemore | May 10 2020 22:55 utc | 50

Don't miss this excellent summary of the current crisis of capitalism Professor Radhika Desaiof the Department of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba.

"...In the Western core neoliberal countries, the severity of the pandemic and associated crises cannot be overstated. These governments, particularly those of its Anglo-American heartland, are caught in a scissor crisis: there is a widening gap between the mounting challenge and limited capacities—public health, governmental and political—whittled down by four decades of neoliberalism. This scissor has required nation-wide lockdowns of indeterminate length as the only way of limiting infections and fatalities. In turn, this has accelerated a long-overdue reckoning with the neoliberal order.

"Though neoliberalism was billed as the sure-fire recipe for reviving growth when the West led the world in taking this route out of the crisis of the 1970s, it never did so. Rather than addressing it, Western states exacerbated the underlying demand problem while deregulation only benefitted finance. The resulting financialization of Western economies diverted resources towards speculation and away from productive investment......
"..This manifesto seeks to map the domestic and the international terrain on which the left must advance today. Since there are few unified left forces anywhere, it seeks to enable left parties, movements and groups to reinforce each other’s efforts and effectiveness by proposing a framework into which their diverse and discrete struggles can fit and which can give them a wider understanding of our purposes and struggles. It also maps the terrain on which the forces of capital and the right are organising and fighting and the strategies they are using.

"The battle lines must be drawn around the false choice they offer us between lives and livelihoods, where the latter is equated with preserving the neoliberal order. This choice must be refused. To do so, any left strategy must clearly distinguish between what must be done to preserve both lives and livelihoods in the emergency and in the reconstructed economy beyond."

Radhika Desai is a professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of

http://www.defenddemocracy.press/political-hope-rises/

Posted by: bevin | May 10 2020 22:59 utc | 51

Bevin wrote:

The truth is that Hillary was not a seasoned politician, she won one election-handed to her on a silver platter- in New York. She was a rotten campaigner. She simply didn't like the voters.
__________________________________________________
Yeah that sure does seem it is the way it looks, but looks can be deceiving.

_____________________________________________________
Does anyone else believe that Hillary threw the election?
____________________________________________________

Well it certainly has crossed my mind. I don't have any clear evidence she threw the election but I suspect she benefited enormously by losing. Its not like it would ever be possible for Hillary to give herself that kind of huge tax cut if she had been elected. Do you have any idea how much money losing has made the Clinton's?

______________________________________________

Posted by: jinn | May 10 2020 22:59 utc | 52

There was a post earlier that reported artemisia as a herbal assistance in fighting respiratory infection etc. Alone, that might assist but is better combined with ravensara which a well known herbal relief for all things respiratory. These are not necessarily a cure but they are best considered as an assistance to manage the distressing features of colds and flu when it comes to your need to ease your breathing. Essential oils in a diffuser is a good approach. Probably in short supply right now. Ravensara is native to Australia and Madagascar as they used to be joined at the hip. Artemisia is a traditional medicine and been in use for maybe millenia. Ravensara likewise.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 10 2020 23:05 utc | 53

Karlofi @ 50
Yes to all that !
Here in the U.K. bozo Boris is relaxing the stay at home, for a phased back to work. But at what cost to human life ? What will be an acceptable level of increased deaths ? Will enyone here like to answer that ! It’s the cold hearted calculated exceptence that shocks me !
But then psychopaths have no empathy.

Posted by: Mark2 | May 10 2020 23:05 utc | 54

to Vintage Red

Thank you for an amazing history. It is often not fashionable to think of women as physically brave. You have given us a very clear example of the opposite. On the subject of bravery, I read somewhere, possibly here, of the Russian custodians of a seed bank in Stalingrad who starved to death rather than eat the seed bank. Do you happen to have a reference for that story?

Posted by: Miss Lacy | May 10 2020 23:10 utc | 55

Vintage red, 41

I have watched a Russian production titled the "Night Swallows" which describes the actions of these courageous Soviet pilots.

It is on Youtube with English subtitles.

The courage and spirit of patriotism in these women are astounding.

here is a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFK9wAOatGE&t=89s

Posted by: CarlD | May 10 2020 23:25 utc | 56

karlof1 @43

Robert Kadlec has served as an international biodefense consultant for "Emergent Biosolutions". There are concerns that this conflicts with his role as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (Preparedness and Response). The concerns are the conflict between public service and that of private interest/profit.

"Emergent Biosolutions" used to be known as "BioPort".
"BioPort" profited greatly by selling questionable anthrax vaccines to the US military/bio-defence industries as a result of the 2001 anthrax attacks which killed 5 people.

The 2001 anthrax attacks where initially blamed on Al Queda and Sadam Hussian/Iraq but the anthrax spores where eventually traced to Fort Detrick (i.e the source of the anthrax). The blame was put on Bruce Ivins who worked at the US government's bio defense labs at Fort Detrick and was a top biodefense researcher. Ivins committed suicide before he could be charged. Many people that know Bruce Ivins strongly believe that he would not (and could not) have carried out the anthrax attack. Even wikipedia states:-

"It was widely reported that the FBI was about to press charges against him, but the evidence was largely circumstantial and the grand jury in Washington reported that it was not ready to issue an indictment. Rush D. Holt, Jr. represented the district where the anthrax letters were mailed, and he said that circumstantial evidence was not enough and asked FBI director Robert S. Mueller to appear before Congress to provide an account of the investigation. Ivins's death left two unanswered questions. Scientists familiar with germ warfare said that there was no evidence that he had the skills to turn anthrax into an inhalable powder. Alan Zelicoff aided the FBI investigation, and he stated: "I don't think a vaccine specialist could do it…. This is aerosol physics, not biology"."

The implication is that Ivins was a patsy and was "suicided".

According to Whitney Webb in her article A Killer Enterprise: How One of Big Pharma’s Most Corrupt Companies Plans to Corner the Covid-19 Cure Market:

"Just months before the Pentagon’s BioThrax vaccine program was deemed illegal, Congress passed the Project BioShield Act, an act that was largely written by Emergent BioSolution lobbyists and greatly influenced by Robert Kadlec, who was then serving as the Homeland Security Council’s Director of Biodefense. The goal of the act was to allocate $5 billion to be used to purchase vaccines, including millions of doses of anthrax vaccine, and stockpile them in the event of a future bioterrorist attack. Given that these vaccines have a limited shelf life (three to four years in BioThrax’s case), the stockpile would continually need to be renewed as its contents gradually expired.

"Emergent Biosolutions" aim to profit greatly by providing a Covid-19 vaccine.

Posted by: ADKC | May 10 2020 23:34 utc | 57

Vintage Red | May 10 2020 22:00 utc | 41

Thanks Vintage Red. Great story, great writing.

Posted by: fairleft | May 11 2020 0:32 utc | 58

I read an article in one of the Sydney newspapers (The Daily Telegraph no less, one of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda rags) some years ago about the Night Witches of the Soviet Union. One thing that impressed me was that many of the planes the women flew were literally made of wood and sometimes even cardboard with string.

Posted by: Jen | May 11 2020 1:37 utc | 59

bevin #39

Does anyone else believe that Hillary threw the election? Does anyone believe that that is anywhere close to being the simplest explanation of the 2016 loss?

Thank you bevin. I will hazard this response: There once were two neo-liberal private finance stool pigeons campaigning for an election. One made a better deal with the permanent state than the other and so Trump won in 2016. Trump then chose the late 2019 period of market demands and distractions and poured $Trillions into the permanent state's pockets. In 2020 Trump continues to pour $Trillions into their pockets.

Meanwhile the losing stool pigeon continues to rake in $millions through her corrupt foundation.

In 2020 many neo-liberal private finance stool pigeons are campaigning for an election...

Is that close enough to reality ;-)

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 11 2020 1:53 utc | 60

@61 Jen Several WW2 Russian fighters had plywood wings. It has several advantages: lightness, stiffness, and the all-too-important ability to draft "non-essential" resources and skills into the war effort.

Basically, the same advantages that De Havilland exploited when they made the very effective twin-engined Mosquito, which was almost entirely made out of plywood.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 11 2020 1:55 utc | 61

Giant Sequoia " I know that Putin has done some positive things (annexing Crimea, saving Assad, modernizing the Nuclear arsenal, etc.), but all of his accomplishments look like a complete joke compared to the Soviet Union,"

Soviet Union never gained the military tech supremacy over the US that Russia now has.
Soviet Union was never self sufficient in grain and able to export food as Russia now does.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 11 2020 3:12 utc | 62

Yeah, Right at 63

The Japanese Zero was also a plywood airplane.

Antoinetta III

Posted by: Antoinetta III | May 11 2020 3:18 utc | 63

Jackrabbit at #16

Why would the Hildabeast (or anyone for that matter) throw an election for POTUS? It is the ultimate political jewel in the US, that would have been the crowning pinnacle of the Hildabeast's career. Her glory would have been heightened by being the first female president. What could possibly motivate her to deliberately throw all this away?

No, I think Occam's Razor points to a supreme overconfidence. Ever since the Hildabeast and Trump became the nominees, no one thought Trump had an iceberg's chance in Hell. Virtually all the polls in the months before the election showed Trump with single percentages in odds of winning, and the Hildabeast with over 90% chance of victory. These same odds persisted right through election day and until the first polls closed and results started trickling in. So entrenched was this belief that it seemed that the outcome was preordained, that it was metaphysically impossible for Trump to win, and that the election was a mere formality of counting the votes.

Since this was the near unanimous view of the political chatterati, it seems likely that this was the sense of the Hildabeast and her campaign minions. Her primary mistake was failing to spend any time campaigning in the swing states. But this wasn't because she wanted to throw the election. She failed to do this because she saw no need to; she felt that she had already won.

Antoinetta III

Posted by: Antoinetta III | May 11 2020 3:20 utc | 64

Peter AU1 @ May11 3:12

Soviet Union never ... that Russia now has.

Adding:

Soviet Union never had an alliance with an economic superpower (China) that Russia now has.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 11 2020 3:22 utc | 65

Jeff @1

"Fossil fuel burning for transportation has dropped to a fraction of what it was and CO2 is falling with it."

NOAA Weekly Trend CO2

Posted by: guidoamm | May 11 2020 3:32 utc | 66

Antoinetta III @ May11 3:20

Supreme overconfidence

This is just another excuse like bevin's "incompetence".

Those who offer an explanation that relies on Hilary's state of mind demonstrating a affinity with her that makes their analysis suspect.

=
no one thought Trump had an iceberg's chance in Hell

Yes. The media and political pundits considered Hillary to be a shoo-in. That means little when you examine the larger picture.

- Why was Trump the only Republican populist?

- Why didn't any of the other 18 candidates for the Republican nomination change their strategy (become more populist?)

- Why do we no longer hear about Trump's taxes?

- Why has Trump governed like every other President in recent memory? Importantly, it's difficult to imagine that Hillary would've substantially different (despite the fear-mongering of her starting a war - Trump has several wars simmering).

=
polls

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. The polling turned out to be awful. But let's put that aside.

=
Her primary mistake was failing to spend any time campaigning in the swing states.

No. She alienated progressives, blacks, and whites. Each in different ways.

And she not only failed to go to three mid-Western states in the last two weeks (despite knowing that they would decide the election) but failed to send her VP pick who grew up in the mid-West!

What is CLEAR is that Hillary has too much baggage to make a convincing run as 'populist outsider'. And 'populist outsider' is necessary for any politician to be a convincing nationalist because no one really believes that beltway politicians love the country.

<> <> <> <> <>

Hillary ran against her good friend Bernie and then against her good friend Trump. And VP Pence was best buddies with Hillary's good friend John McCain. And William Barr was close to Mueller and the Bushes. And John Brennan vigorously supported CIA Director Gina Haspel - who Trump nominated despite Brennan's supposed anti-Trump. Other Trump nominations have also been fraught.

Lastly, in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed of August 2014, after the Russian-backed Donbas rebels had prevailed in Ukraine, Henry Kissinger called for a revitalized USA to counter Russia and China. Kissinger's call that sounds very much like MAGA. Trump entered the Republican race about 10-months later.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 11 2020 3:55 utc | 67

Two very interesting reports from Vanessa Beeley:-

Who controls the British Government response to Covid–19?

COVID19: The Big Pharma players behind UK Government lockdown

The Corbett Report:-

Bill Gates' Plan to Vaccinate the World

Posted by: ted01 | May 11 2020 4:03 utc | 68

@all who read and responded, thank you. I know better than to expect truth and reason from Washington but the new depths of rewriting WW2 history bespeak, I think, of worse than mere propaganda jabs. As others have commented, fascism was not really slain 75 years ago…

@ Miss Lacy | May 10 2020 23:10 utc | 56,

The bravery, physical or otherwise, of women warriors is no more limited than that of their brothers—given a cause they think worth fighting for—and goes back to prehistory. There were three regiments of women flyers in the Red Air Force, and on the ground many women became accomplished snipers such as Lyudmila Pavlichenko, one of the greatest in history with 309 confirmed kills. Countless Soviet women fought and fell as partisans, just as in the partisan resistance in the rest of occupied Europe. Given the Nazis’ planned genocide against the Slavic people (in Mein Kampf Hitler outright credited the US’s slave plantations and Indian reservations as inspiration) everyone knew they were in a fight to the death. After the war it was no different in Algeria, Vietnam, Palestine, Nicaragua—the Soviet and other guerrilla resistance to the Nazis was a true precursor to what would later be called People’s War. I remember something said in South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid: “Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock. You have dislodged a boulder, you will be crushed.”

I had not heard of what happened at the seed bank but did a quick search—perhaps you are thinking of this team in Leningrad? During the 900 day siege bread rations were often as low as 200g/day and every spring thaw many thousands were found and buried who had simply fallen from starvation over the winter. The scientists sacrificed themselves to safeguard their work, one of the first such seed banks created—warriors of yet another kind. As I wrote this was the spirit that both won the war and preserved all that was possible through it.

As things are unfolding we may need to discover what heroism and sacrifice we ourselves are capable of, and sooner than we think.

@CarlD | May 10 2020 23:25 utc | 58,

I first read of these women fighter pilots in Bruce Myles’ Night Witches, linked to in my post @41, and had heard that their story was being adapted for a graphic novel of the same name—yes, their spirit is astounding. They knew they were fighting for their own and each others’ lives, and for their survival as a people. But I had not heard of this Russian series—thank you, I shall very much check it out.

@Giant Sequoia | May 11 2020 0:25 utc | 59

I have no Russian ancestry—my own feelings on their experience and fighting spirit and those of others around the world is from internationalist solidarity and hatred of fascism wherever it may arise. Whatever its flaws, the fall of the USSR was absolutely a historic tragedy not just for its own people but for people worldwide—and has been discussed my many including myself here at MoA over the years.

I wouldn’t give up on the Russian and other formerly Soviet peoples quite yet, though. There is nothing wrong with their historical memory. Nor the deep well of heroism they are yet capable of. As is said around the world, the struggle continues.

@fairleft | May 11 2020 0:32 utc | 60

Thank you—though really my post almost wrote itself. My main contribution was to draw together Litvyak’s most brilliant deeds as coherently as possible. She and all those like her are the ones we should thank.

@ Jen | May 11 2020 1:37 utc | 61 and
@Yeah, Right | May 11 2020 1:55 utc | 63

What you both say is exactly so. The first “fighters”—improvised light bombers, really—of the 586th Fighter Regiment were PO-2 biplanes. Called “Mules”, they were basically a militarized version of a commonly produced crop duster, and thus made from non-strategic materials. They were used as training aircraft and pressed into combat service in the early days of the war. Simple and sturdy, their service life extended into at least the 1960s.

Their top speed was only 80mph/120kph and their engines so loud German troops called them “washing machines” and their Finnish counterparts “nerve saws”. It was because of this that the women of the 586th cut their engines well away from their targets to glide in silently, then restart them only after accomplishing their mission, escaping before the German fighters could scramble to catch them. Aerial guerrilla warfare.

Posted by: Vintage Red | May 11 2020 4:30 utc | 69

I've just posted three comments on the political thread, thinking folk could perhaps access those through the righthand column here, but I see that even my earliest one hasn't registered, so I will post the link here - it is an hour's discussion between two of the Green Party Candidates on policy and on what they are doing with respect to ballot access. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oGwH6rPG7M&feature=youtu.be

Yes, the link looks strange, but it works.

Posted by: juliania | May 11 2020 4:37 utc | 70

@66 Antoinetta III Nope. The Zero had very thin aluminum skin to keep the weight down, but apart from fabric control surfaces was definitely an all-metal fighter design.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 11 2020 4:47 utc | 71

@ Karlof1
@ Walter

I posted some replies to our conversation in the last open thread here

Posted by: BM | May 11 2020 6:16 utc | 72

Giant Sequoia @ 59:

'... I know that Putin has done some positive things (annexing Crimea, saving Assad, modernizing the Nuclear arsenal, etc.) ..."

Annexing is the wrong term .. the people of Crimea held a referendum, the majority of those who voted were in favour of independence from Ukraine, the government of Crimea then declared their independence and requested to join the Russian Federation. The request was accepted by the Russian government.

While Russian air assistance was valuable to Syria, most of the hard work was done by the Syrian military in modernising its organisation and becoming more effective in fighting the jihadis. The tutelage was done by Iran, much of it in particular by General Qassem Soleymani.

Posted by: Jen | May 11 2020 6:57 utc | 73

BM | May 11 2020 6:16 utc | 75 @ (@Walter, can you give a link to the global research article on the CEOs resigning, I can't find it. Or at least the proper article title.

And what was all that about George Blake being sprung and Korea? That was lost on me."

//////////////

Ok, Thanks. I'll see...

Ok. The "CEO Resign" was at the Duran, but originally seems to have been here> tinyurl[dot]com/rwfmhyc (Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?
March 24, 2020 by Michael Snyder)

George Blake was/is a spy. His wiki is fair, I think. Here's an interview.
( tinyurl[dot]com/ycw656x3 ) Brother Comrade Blake is 97, a retired KGB officer and something of an icon in his circle, ahemm.

Brother Comrade Blake, you will see from the interview, changed sides. His motivation being cumulative but also, since he was a prisoner of North Korea, the "UN" (American) Bombing... here:

George Blake: "Well, the bombing took place continually, and they happened all the time. I had seen the devastation in Germany after the war, but it was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could assure you, compared with the devastation in North Korea. That act, that feeling of shame, together with all the other things, which I have already spoken about, and the other stages of my development made me decide -- made me feel that I was fighting on the wrong side, because I wasn't a neutral person. I was engaged in intelligence work against the Communist world, against the Socialist world. I was engaged I was committed, and I felt I was committed on the wrong side. And that's what made me decide to -- to change sides. I felt that it would be better for humanity if the Communist system prevailed, that it would put an end to war, to wars. I didn't go too much into the rights and wrongs of the beginning of the Korean War. It was very difficult from the position I was in to decide exactly what started it, but now I realise that it was the North who started it. Still it was the experience of that war, which acted as a catalyst, and made me decide to join the other side."

The reason I moot George is to illustrate a particularly pregnant form of the indirect method in Strategy, a Principle, which is "The secondary (et sec) unintended after-effect of violence cannot be predicted and in Time may entirely erase any momentary gain." (more or less.)

The germwar and bombing in Korea achieved? Well, for starters, the Berlin Spy Tunnel Project was blown from the start... And many, most, all (?) of the MI6 fellas in USSR had bad outcomes... Some achievement, eh?

Blake got 42 years in "da joint", and escaped with the help of a highly interesting "criminal" Sean Bourke...escaped to USSR! The book is "The Springing of George Blake", Sean Bourke.

It was an affair everyone knew about, and a scandal.

All because of the Truman fascists and their cruel stupid war.

.....

Not to imply that the present situation would create "George Blakes" - oh! No! That was Then!

Bet me.

Every US bomb creates "George Blakes". That's the point I was implying. I am therefore quite sure that the Russian and Chinese intelligence fellas have a rich and growing field of cooperative and morally motivated "sources". The Imperial Army must be filled with disgusted soldiers willing to "turn" towards the good, or at least what they see as good.

Later Old Man...

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 7:22 utc | 74

It occurs to me that the fair success that China seems to have in dealing with germwar (or germ coincidence!) is a product of the Japanese and American germwar Campaigns... This is another "Unintended secondary after-effect"...and, if Pomperz and gang are behind the game, one of the reasons their jolly plan is not creating the results they may have imagined and hoped, more or less. Of course that second rate junior college "westpoint" may not have told the phatfella about secondary after-effects....

Previously somebody mooted the idea that The Clown and the Pomerz drink a lot... Geewhiz, another secondary unintended after-effect...obviously they are gluttons and their obesity is entirely what you see in men who knock down a few every few hours.

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 7:38 utc | 75

Trump may in fact lose the election because of the way he mishandled the pandemic and the fact that his tariffs together with the pandemic are bleeding farmers dry. The truly sad part of this is that Democrats failed with their own dirty tricks to provide an honorable candidate to replace Trump, and this moment begs for decent leadership.

Now, the summer is the time to send children back to school and reopen parts of the economy and partially reopen other businesses while imposing even stricter guidelines on social distancing and gatherings and issuing measures protecting seniors and nursing homes.

If this is not done now, then in the Fall it will be too late to salvage much and there will be catastrophic effects both on the economy and public health.

This summer people must be disciplined and sober. This is not a time to break out, gather and party like there's no tomorrow. This is a time to put one's nose to the grindstone while exercising caution and compassion.

It's high time people start behaving responsibly going forward, especially at the top! Everything has changed, so quit acting like it's all going to fall into place like a miracle from heaven without everyone putting in their part for the long haul.

Think more than ever: No pain; no gain i.e. Sacrifice. That's what we're embarking on. Individual and collective responsibility will get the world through this. It's time for XYZ to grow up!

Posted by: Circe | May 11 2020 8:12 utc | 76

DA PAM 21-30 Our Red Army Ally 1945-04-23.

"TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIER — The purpose of the first part of this booklet is to introduce you to the Red Army soldier — the everyday "G.I." of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. You have heard and read a lot about him, now you are seeing and meeting him personally. He is your friend. He is your ally. He has fought hard in this war, just as you have, to bring about a United Nations victory. The meeting of troops of the United States Army and of the Red Army is an historical occasion. It is the first time in history that so many citizens of the United States have met face-to-face with so many citizens of the USSR." Digitized by Google books.

https://archive.org/details/PAM21-30/mode/2up

Posted by: Mao | May 11 2020 8:38 utc | 77

@ Jackrabbit | May 11 2020 3:55 utc | 69

Add to that list that they are all good friends of Jeffrey Epstein.

Actually, when Trump first showed up on the political stage, this is what I immediately pointed out to friends and family, how both Trump and Clinton were intimate friends of Epstein. "Epstein who?" They said.

Still almost nobody discusses the real rotting corpse in Trump's closet, Roy Cohn. Websearching for Roy Cohn together with added search terms such as +"ben rose" +"edwin wilson", well even "dutroux" yields plenty reading material for an extended lockdown. Whitney Webb summarized the less controversial bits in the wake of the Epstein brouhaha. "Epstein who?", "Roy Cohn who!"

Posted by: Lurk | May 11 2020 9:48 utc | 78

I can't make up my mind whether Ockham needs to shave himself or get someone else to do it for him but he should be put out of use. In actual use all it means is 'this idea feels obvious to me so I will call this simple, and therefore all the other ideas are too complicated and I have this rule of law here which says I have to dismiss them'.

Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | May 11 2020 10:06 utc | 79

Re:77 Circe,

I'm not sure how things are in the US, but here in Ontario, Canada the school year is already a write-off, the current return date is June 1/20 but everyone expects that to be moved again (the letter even mentioned that it is likely to be changed). There's virtually no chance of any school operating in the summer for the full number of students for numerous reasons (i.e. there's no labour agreement with the teacher & janitor unions to provide staff for the buildings during the summer beyond the normal summer school needs, which is only for 100 or so schools, not the almost 5000 schools operating during the regular school term).

Posted by: Kadath | May 11 2020 10:29 utc | 80

Russ @ 34

And all that's on top of the basic biological fact that any potential pathogen is best balanced through biodiversity, while rigid forcible violent attempts at segregation and sterilization are doomed to fail

yeah, but they've quite rapidly spawned a new psychosis of shunning, with their masks and miasma, undoubtedly facilitated and beefed up by almost a generation of anonymous human interaction via the internet, what we always knew was the most formidable system of mind control ever devised by man. now we have people walking wide circles around each other, smothered by masks ensuring the decidedly insalubrious rebreathing of excessive carbon dioxide, and the latex hindering physical contact, all of which further cripples and weakens the mind and body and renders one less able to think straight and thus, to act right.

Posted by: john | May 11 2020 10:49 utc | 81

the Night Witches of the Soviet Union. One thing that impressed me was that many of the planes the women flew were literally made of wood and sometimes even cardboard with string.
Posted by: Jen | May 11 2020 1:37 utc | 61

All the early planes were made of solid wooden frames and covered with laquered paper, or sometimes laquered fabric (silk, I think). Some parts of the frame would be laminated (structural) wood i.e. not plywood. All the spars would be solid timber. Cardboard would be too heavy. Some parts of the structure would be reinforced with wire, especially the biplanes, probably twisted steel wire. It is possible they might have used silk string in place of wire in some cases. All the wing surfaces would be laquered paper (or laquered very thin fabric).

Posted by: BM | May 11 2020 12:05 utc | 82

MAO 78 Thanks! I had once seen some things along such lines, but the source you gave us is 84 pages of proof... proof inter alia of the Truman Coup being a Policy Coup, eg a foreign policy coup.

Luck 79 You bet! (und wei!) Cohn caused dark things...his name was spoken of in fear 'round the kitchen table at my house, and there was relief when he was dead. You're probably right about the Orange, The Pimp, and the Cohn...a real pervert too ("Ya wanna get in our club ya gotta...and we take pictures kinna pervert.)

Kadath | May 11 2020 10:29 utc | 81 Very local to Anoxia I observed the unintended consequence of the school's closing is that school teachers are doing tutorial and advanced work with the bright kids, who then advance very rapidly in a 2:1 or 1:1 "school day". Often these bright kids are shirt-tail relations, as families have farmed out their large litters in order to manage to keep jobs or keep from overcrowding...these are rural people, hicks. Thus we shall expect a bifurcation and a small number of rural working class will find they Fates are Changed from follower to leader... Since they reside in "Jefferson", it may be one of these especially bright working class hicks that makes a Treaty between Jefferson and Chine, 20 years from now...who can say?

This is not, I presume, what their Lordships had in mind when they went to war...

.............

In another matter, I strongly urge all to pay careful attention to Dima on the Crosstalk " CrossTalk Bullhorns, QUARANTINE EDITION: Victory in Europe "

Dima's right - and especially at the end...Ru fails to understand the importance of ideology, (self-deception, delusion) in the same way Stalin failed to recognize the ideology of NS... and this failure is perilous.

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 12:14 utc | 83

@ Walter,

Yes, I'd forgotten that Blake was in Korea, and that he was sprung. Interesting point about the "every US bomb creates George Blakes" and the probable wealth of sources for Russia and China - I am sure you are right. There is no question that both have especially good intelligence networks - Iran also, though I think the foreign assets are only one component of a broadly balanced mix, with technical intelligence but especially extremely high quality humint. They have the human skills that on the US/UK side are virtually zero or even negative. Exceptionalism is an excellent handicap for real humint skills!

Posted by: BM | May 11 2020 12:15 utc | 84

: BM | May 11 2020 12:05 utc | 83 The English used biplanes, cloth and wood, to sink the fleet at Taranto in 1939 - supposedly this was impossible. They modified the torpedoes the planes dropped...they climbed to 20 and shut down the motors, and glided all the way to the target... The Japanese naval attache took especial note...and about 11 months later the modified torpedoes of the Japanese (metal) airplanes did the same thing at Pearl harbor. This also was said to be impossible.

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 12:21 utc | 85

@ Miss Lacy 56

I don't know where else the Leningrad food bank story may have been covered, but the latest season of Cosmos, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, actually dedicated an entire episode to it. The Red bashing was kept to a minimum, and I thought it was a quite well done story. Season 3 of Cosmos, sorry I don't know which episode number.

Posted by: J Swift | May 11 2020 12:49 utc | 86

BM | May 11 2020 12:15 utc | 85 (intel source volunteers)

I myself clearly recall President Putin saying to the world, and to Empire explicitly, "We know everything." That was several years ago...

In context there was the suggestion that blackmail and murder and all the crooked deals and methods were transparent to the Eye of Ivan, so to say.

I took the matter as a suggestion that these true and known Crimes might, ah, "come back someday". I have read in commentary at Saker, long ago, a discussion of the Russian intent to bring the criminals to the bar of Justice, when the war is resolved.

I have the idea that this is indeed one of the goals of Ru and Chine...Nuremberg 2.0 Of course it's not necessary to threaten, but they did send the telegram - that was the decent thing to do.

If this does come to pass, would the People of the World cheer?

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 13:02 utc | 87

14 more mercenaries captured in Venezuela yesterday:

Autoridades venezolanas capturan a 14 mercenarios durante las últimas 24 horas

As more and more mercenaries continue to be found out, and as Guaidó denies it was behind the contract with the mercenaries (as if that mattered - Guaidó receives funds from the USG, so everything he does he's doing for the USA) and as the captured mercenaries continue to open their mouths, it is becoming clearer this was indeed a "mini Bay of Pigs" directly sponsored and coordinated by the Americans, and not a CIA asset gone rogue.

Posted by: vk | May 11 2020 13:18 utc | 88

Lurk@79

Your link to the Whitney Webb article is something everyone should read. Rare that I should read a backgrounder like that twice, or even thoroughly once, that one has been digested again and again.

In photos with Roy Cohn, Trump looks happy. Other times he looks confident, full of himself. But not happy. He even looks good when pictured with Cohn. In more recent publications Webb keeps hinting she has material to tie Trump more closely to Epstein. Which of course the Dems will never use because they are just as close to Epstein.

Posted by: oldhippie | May 11 2020 13:28 utc | 89

Is South Korea really in control of the pandemic?

Gov't struggles to trace Itaewon clubbers

The central government and municipal administrations are going all out to locate people who went clubbing in Itaewon between April 24 and May 6, as the number of COVID-19 cases linked to five nightclubs and bars in Seoul's popular nightlife spot jumped to 86 Monday, six days after the first case was reported.

According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), 14 more COVID-19 infections linked to the clubs were confirmed as of 12 p.m., bringing the total number of related cases to 86.

Of the 86 patients, 63 visited the clubs, and 23 others were either their family members or acquaintances.

A very strong "keep up with the Joneses" culture may be helping South Korea in social distancing. But the government is certainly unwilling to lockdown Seul, for obvious reasons. I don't know, something is rotten.

Posted by: vk | May 11 2020 13:36 utc | 90

19 martyred, 15 injured in naval incident in southern Iran

I've been stating a very unpopular opinion here, and I will continue to do it: if Iran wants to have any hope of triumphing against an enemy of the USA's caliber, it will have to abandon its bizarre and outdated neoliberal-theocratic economic system. There's no place for religion in the 21st Century.

Iran should immediately do socialist reforms, a la China, and industrialize and enlighten its people as fast as possible. Time is not in their favor.

Calling each needlessly killed soldier "martyr" won't erase the embarrassment, let alone hide the socioeconomic contradictions of the country.

--//--

‘Open anti-Semitism’: Leaked letter shows Ukrainian police demanded Jews’ names & addresses ‘to fight organized crime’

Remember that this new Ukrainian government is openly supported by the USG, the IMF and, among others, George Soros.

To the Zionists, it is not enough to be Jew - you have to be the right kind of Jew (the type with a lot of money) to be protected by the "antisemitism" shroud.

Posted by: vk | May 11 2020 13:51 utc | 91

: vk | May 11 2020 13:51 utc | 92 (unpopular)

Well, I do not find your opinion about the "internal contradictions" (as I would say it, in Iran) to be in the slightest degree unpopular, or wrong...I agree with it.

Religion simply is, as Caesar said, men believe what they will. But obviously the present State is, as all, somewhat transient and provisional...so Religion in Iran may, probably must, significantly decline in the political realm. I simply expect that to take place after the war, not just as it come upon them.

However the implied assumption that the war between Empire and Iran will be resolved by "defeat" of Empire by Iran, or defeat of Iran by Empire does not seem to take into account dynamic internal fissures and contradictions within Empire, such that Iran by temporizing and delaying open direct major conflict...and each day Empie's internal diseases of greed, crime, moral bankruptcy bring the possibility of resolution without a full-on conflict somewhat closer.

It does seem to me that there is a necessity for Iran to re-structure, but this may happen when the war with Empire is resolved by Imperial Retreat, in the backwash of war, the intrigues and latent political forces withing Iran then being freed of the war-time necessities...

.......

I agree with respect to zionish... Zionizers treat their Jewish Brothers like chit, unless they cough up the money and spout the tripe. They treat them as pawns...and did so in concert with the nazis...their shared ideologies make this part of their Policy.

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 14:14 utc | 92

about> "Government by Blackmail: Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s Mentor and the Dark Secrets of the Reagan Era "

I have the idea that this was what Comrade Putin was speaking of when he said "We know everything."

Like Ripper said in Strangelove "Two can play at that game."

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 14:18 utc | 93

Neoliberals in charge-UK

"..After millions forced back to work this morning, govt only releases guidance at 2pm – then says changes not meant to take place yet. This is murder

"Chaos and confusion as weapons against working-class people

"Millions poured back to work this morning after Johnson's chaotic message. How many will die in the inevitable new spike?

"...Last night, Johnson told workers that they must return to work this morning unless they can work from home - ending the lock-down in all but the most peripheral sense and condemning millions of mostly low-paid people to run the gauntlet of infection on public transport and in workplaces. His exhortation to walk or cycle instead is utterly meaningless for the vast majority.

"To rub salt into the wound of his gross mockery, the so-called guidance the government promised on the 'safe' use of public transport was issued at 2pm today, hours after people were forced to flood back into the streets, trains and buses - terrifyingly shown on Transport for London CCTV footage.

"And the government has now said that its instruction to return to work was not meant to be implemented immediately, but rather on Wednesday. Maybe.

"60,000 people have died so far because of this virus, perhaps many more - and the hands of Johnson and his helpers are stained with their blood. There will now be another 'spike' in a couple of weeks and thousands more will die - along with hundreds more health workers, teachers, transport and other front-line staff.

"Using chaos, lies and misdirection as a weapon, the Tories are murdering people and using the media to cover their arses." The SKWAWKBOX

This from Philip Roddis' blog suggests a strategy to fight back
http://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2020/05/11/a-nation-wide-peoples-hq-for-covid-19/
No unsafe return to work!
Stay at home!
Unite across the UK to save lives and to work for a socially just reconstruction!

Posted by: bevin | May 11 2020 14:25 utc | 94

jef@1 I was musing on your comment this morning, and thought best to add to it the caveat which b noted in the previous post - that in areas of the US the evidence is not so bright as you at first point out may be true other parts of the world. In fact, for those areas, and New York is the prime example morbitity is way higher than it would normally be at this time of year.

This is an indictment of the current government but also of governments leading up to this one. Austerity policies have left the US extremely vulnerable to this and future pandemics or natural disasters. We saw it first in New Orleans so it isn't as if we haven't been warned before. It is time for people to chuck austerity for good and all. For good, and all!

Posted by: juliania | May 11 2020 14:36 utc | 95

"Early Lockdown Lifting will prolong the Greater Depression"

We are told by the Bureau of Lying Stats (BLS) that the April unemployment rate is 14.7%; however they missed 7.5 million unaccounted.

The real rate is already north of the 32% projected by the St. Louis Fed.
Shadowstats, the go-to reliable analytics, has the more realistic Corrected Numbers at 39.6%.
See Commentary No: 1435.
Many businesses will not reopen which will cement the Greatest Depression in over 100 +years of recording. It will be a long climb out.

==========

With China bashing, this is a head scratcher.

Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor and one of 4 largest meat processing plant, is owned by a China Group. Smithfield, along with Cargill, JBS, and Tyson was closed due C-19 infected workers. Trump invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act to keep plants open.
Costco, Kroger, et al are limiting per consumer purchases to 3 packs.

As U.S. meat workers fall sick and supplies dwindle, exports to China soar

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump ordered meat processing plants to stay open to protect the nation’s food supply even as workers got sick and died. Yet the plants have increasingly been exporting to China while U.S. consumers face shortages, a Reuters analysis of government data showed.

Trump, who is in an acrimonious public dispute with Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act on April 28 to keep plants open. Now he is facing criticism from some lawmakers, consumers and plant employees for putting workers at risk in part to help ensure China’s meat supply.[.]

==========

Will the Supremes deliver a decision on the "faithless" Electors before November 3rd?

As 2020 presidential contest looms, U.S. Supreme Court mulls power of 'electors'

[...] in the complicated Electoral College process set out in the U.S. Constitution to determine the winner of presidential elections. Chiafalo was one of 538 electors who cast their votes in the aftermath of the November election, ultimately designating the Republican Trump as the winner over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

In most states, electors - typically party loyalists - must pledge to vote for their party’s candidate if that person wins state’s popular vote. Chiafalo, desperate to thwart Trump, had other intentions and voted for someone else.[.]

Chiafalo is now at the heart of one of two closely watched cases being argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday that will determine whether electors have the constitutional right to exercise independence and defy the will of the voters - a question touching upon the integrity of American democracy.[.]

the integrity of American democracy !!?

A democracy or A republic governed by cronies? The usual hats - GS, BR, CG, JP - the Trillions.

Federal Reserve Chairman Powell and Blackrock - Is there a conflict of interest?

You'd think there would be a regulation for his shares to be placed in a Blind Trust. But rules for thee, not for me.
It's a small Club and we ain't invited.

Posted by: Likklemore | May 11 2020 14:37 utc | 96

Emphasis added for the Trump (and fear) Deranged here at MoA (who continue to hyperventilate fear and apocalypse despite fact that CV19 is extremely rarely dangerous to healthy people under age 50):

Politically, you'd put both Sweden's and Belarus's government on the left. That's worth bearing in mind when you hear some leftists/centre-leftists in Britain and America trying to stereotype opponents of strict lockdowns as "Trumpian right-wingers".

In Sweden, the leading grouping in the ruling coalition is the Social Democratic Party. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven is a former metal-worker. Alexander Lukashenko's mother was a milkmaid. Could it be that leaders from the working-class are more sensitive to the economic cost to working-people of a long lockdown? That’s one more thing to consider when examining why Sweden and Belarus dared to be different.

Why Sweden and Belarus Defied the Lockdown 'Consensus'
Neil Clark
https://sputniknews.com/columnists/202005081079237565-why-sweden-and-belarus-defied-the-lockdown-consensus/

Posted by: fairleft | May 11 2020 14:38 utc | 97

The twiiterfeed of Redfish provides an example of one of the several internal contradictions and fissures...

Evidently about 1000 very motivated "black" bikers and others, armed, have given the esteemed Governor of lil'ol Georgia fits...

Nixxerz wid gunz.. Oh wait, I saw this movie afore...

Unintended secondary after-effect...the basis of all Strategy is to anticipate these after-effects correctly, while your "partner" fails to do so.

twitter[dot]/redfishstream

Posted by: Walter | May 11 2020 14:40 utc | 98

@lurk and old hippie,

WW is doing phenomenal work that many reasonable, obedient people will dutifully ignore.

I tried talking to my dad yesterday about Bill Gates and his ties to Epstein, emphasizing Gates' continued contact AFTER Epstein's first arrest, helping America's most prolific pedophile to donate some of that CIA/Mossad compromise cash to MIT.

my dad will absolutely, eagerly take whatever vaccine is presented to him, and he asked me if I would deny something good (vaccine) just because I think someone is bad (sociopath Bill Gates).

I suggested he look into Gates and his involvement in Africa and India and tell me how many children have to die or get paralyzed for the good to take effect.

on a separate note, looks like Germany is having to crackdown on its own population and their frustrations with being locked down. wouldn't it be great of a german blogger could illuminate what's going on in his own backyard?

Posted by: lizard | May 11 2020 14:58 utc | 99

Posted by: Jen | May 11 2020 1:37 utc | 61
Posted by: BM | May 11 2020 12:05 utc | 83

"All the early planes were made of solid wooden frames and covered with laquered paper, or sometimes laquered fabric (silk, I think)...with wire, especially the biplanes, probably twisted steel wire. It is possible they might have used silk string in place of wire in some cases. All the wing surfaces would be laquered paper (or laquered very thin fabric)."

I know a fair bit of aircrafts, certified FAA and UK - A&P Licensed worked and trained on many prewar and postwar airplanes: Stinson, De Havilland Tiger Moth, Auster (UK) DC3 or Dakota, Piper including Boeing 747, Douglas DC9's, 10's and career changed in 70s.

Woods not any woods but only the best Sitka Spruce from Pacific NorthWest with fabrics such as Dacron or Nylon glue and finished with butyrate/Nitrate dope.

Posted by: JC | May 11 2020 15:36 utc | 100