thanks b for all the work you put out on all of this.. will look at some of these links on the bottom.. thanks..

Posted by: james | May 17 2020 15:38 utc | 1

Thank you to b for adding to the review links Taibbi's latest essay. It is a good one, I think, and I haven't been reading him since he endorsed Obama's second term. Worth a read and a re-read, I think, as a personal manifesto of disillusionment with a party Taibbi has been committed to for a very long time. There is a clear opening here for a third party, and I hope the Greens are up to the challenge of it. I posted a while back the first interview of prospective Green candidates - those interviews were said to be going to continue. I will update the link if they do.

On the Taibbi essay, here is a quote:

"...Democrats strongly supported the PATRIOT Act in 2001, and Barack Obama continued or expanded Bush-Cheney programs like drone assassination, rendition, and warrantless surveillance, while also using the Espionage Act to bully reporters and whistleblowers..."

He also gives a warning about NY Governor Cuomo as a likely substitute for Biden, plus an accurate remark that "...there isn't a single regular contributor on any of the networks one could describe as antiwar..." Bravo to any who still can watch these compromised 'news' platforms; I can't. And I'll also say that the sombre anti-covid message that gets played on PBS makes no mention of masks at all, nada!

How dumb do they think we are?

Posted by: juliania | May 17 2020 15:53 utc | 2

About "American desperation" (covers American endeavors against China, Syria and Venezuela):

Profitability, investment and the pandemic

I recommend read it in full, but here's the key part:

So the world capitalist economy was already slipping into a recession (long overdue) before the coronavirus pandemic arrived. Why was this? Well, as Brian Green explained in the You Tube discussion that I had with him last week, the US economy had been in a credit-fuelled bubble for the last six years that enabled the economy to grow even though profitability has been falling along with investment in the ‘real’ economy. So, as Brian says, “the underlying health of the global capitalist economy was poor before the plague but was obscured by cheap money driving speculative gains which fed back into the economy”.

The links to the data and sources are in the article.

In my previous comment in yesterday's post, I predicted that, if the USA is to survive these challenges to its status as the world's sole superpower, it will emerge as a Pacific-oriented empire, focused on Japan and Australia. I also predicted that it would emerge as a more than ever Christian empire.

I forgot to put there that it would also emerge as an ever poorer and unequal Empire. Yes, even if the USA wins, it will lose, as the inner contradictions of the capitalist system would still be in place - as the article I link above explains.

The USA would still be the "World Empire" - but it would not be the vibrant and flourishing one of the post-war (1945-1975), but a duller, poorer and more obscure one. It would be a "Byzantine-era" USA.

We would thus have a nice division in the USA's history: revolutionary period (1776-1865) ("transition crisis" 1861-1865), republic (1866-1945) ("transition crisis" in 1929-1945), high empire (1946-1975/1979, "transition crisis" 1974/5-1978/9), late empire (1975/9-2008/?, "transition crisis" 2009-?(2020/2?), "byzantine" empire (multipolarity?) (2020/2?-?).

--//--

Well, this is an embarrassing news for the Japanese government/Japanese capitalists:

Japan's drop in suicides may not hold as fallout from pandemic grows

The Japan Times - echoing official statements - has been propagandizing us that suicides would "skyrocket/spike" because of enforced lockdowns in Japan.

But - surprise, surprise - suicides have fallen.

The reason for that is very simple: most suicides in Japan are not the result of depression, but of excess workload ("karoshi"). The human body, through chronic sleep deprivation and long working journeys, induce its brain to rationalize suicide as a logical solution. It's a pretty straightforward, scientifically demonstrated, biochemical reaction that happens in the brain.

Lockdowns ended those long period sleep deprivations among the Japanese working class, therefore ending the vicious cycles that induced many of the them to commit suicide.

I commented here a long time ago that, contrary to common sense, economic recession in capitalist societies raise - not lower - life expectancy. That's because deaths by workplace accident, automobile accidents, heart attack induced by stress and other forms of violent death fall drastically (specially for men) because people tend to spend more time at home and sleep more and better. Yes, some people get depressed and commit suicide thanks to lockdowns, but their deaths are more than compensated to the millions who are spared from daily risks to their own lives, imposed by the capitalist mode of production.

Unless the Japanese government stops with financial help to the working classes as to induce financial insecurity to them, suicides will continue to fall in Japan. The reason the Japanese government is fearmongering its own people with suicide rates is very simple: financial insecurity is the main weapon of mature capitalism to impose labor discipline. The worker works (and cannot stop working) because he/she has periodic bills to pay. The Japanese capitalist class must make clear to the Japanese working class that the world where they are not working is worse than the world they are working.

Posted by: vk | May 17 2020 16:22 utc | 3

Also thanks for the MEI piece. That is a site worth attending to! Very good analysis of Russia's positioning vis a vis Syria, and not a long read.

Posted by: juliania | May 17 2020 16:23 utc | 4

As we are in conspiracy land...

Earlier today b posted a conspiracy theor... observations about the timeline of the death of the Chinese ambassador to Israel.

Yesterday, on another thread I made up a conspiracy theory about the genome on COVID-19:

A CONSPIRACY THEORY

Another explanation might be that the RT-PCR tests in use do not pick up earlier pre-Wuhan strains.

Americans were very reluctant to start testing, and even forbid doctors in Washington state from analyzing samples taken from likely COVID-19 patients in January. A conspiracy theory would suggest that American knew that a domestic strain of SARS-CoV-2 was spreading among the US population but did not want it to be identified. The German PCR test promoted by the WHO was banned from the US as it would have picked up the earlier strain. Instead a new test was developed by the CDC specifically to distinguish between the earlier strain ("COVID-18"), and COVID-19. To disprove this theory one would have to analyze all existing samples from 2019. But as I said, this is a conspiracy theory without any support in any of the published data.

Today Robert Bridge thinks he has found something suspicious.

A New Pandemic? Two Trailblazing COVID-19 Researchers Dead in a Month

Academia does not really have a reputation for being riddled with violence and sudden unexplained deaths. Yet at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, two young pioneering researchers from the same obscure field of study met with mysterious ends.

Outside of academic circles, Dr. James Taylor and Dr. Bing Liu were relative unknowns. Inside of the scientific community, however, the two had achieved something like rock-star status. And now, within a period of 30 days, both young men are dead at a time when their talents are needed most.

According to police statements the apparent murder-suicide of Bing Liu was likely the result of a “lengthy dispute regarding an intimate partner.” I do not put much weight in police statements in suspicious murder cases.

This is what I wrote on November 5, 2019 about the shooting in Orinda of black guests at an "Airbnb party" in an all-white neighborhood.

POLICE HUNT FOR SETH RICH'S KILLER

There is something missing from this story. Someone in a house with a hundred guests shoots and kills five people. Yet no one sees anything. No one knows how many shooters there were, where they men or women, were did they come from, where did they go. No, there is no manhunt continuing in California. The police is not looking for anyone. They have no clues. They are about as interested in the killers as the DC police are about the killers of Seth Rich.

I suspect the police shot the victims. They responded to a complaint about noise and found a house full of black people in an all-white neighborhood. Someone looked suspicious, so the police acted in "self-defense". The news coverage has been taken over by fake news of airBnB banning parties.

P.S. - Did I mention Mikhail Lesin?

Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 17 2020 16:27 utc | 5

Mr Taibbi doesn't understand why the Dummycrats have let him down. It's very depressing to think that someone held up as an astute analyst apparently knows no history and has no understanding of how the US political machine operates.

I hope he learns soon.

Posted by: Trailer Trash | May 17 2020 16:40 utc | 6

Article, 15 May 2020, lays out the facts (dates all correct, afaik) that supports an ‘escaped from a lab’ type-theory, in this case, from Fort Detrick USA, with the virus sent to Wuhan co. the US soldiers for the military games.

https://ahtribune.com/world/covid-19/4152-american-genie.html

A *possible* take imho. (I have checked the dates of Dr. Li’s group e mails, the reprimands by the Chinese, the Bat Lady’s publication of the genome, etc. and though they are very tight they can fit.)

It’s seductive because the ‘atypical pneumonia cases’ in the US, Springfield July 2019 (author mentions these) and the vaping illness which clearly had nothing to do with vaping which I posted about previous, June 2019, were so weird, and seemed to be treated as of ‘no account’ or with soothing or loopy explanations. “No infectious agent found” .. old ppl near death anyway .. “acetate in the vaping products” (?? - note no cases outside the US, with the exception of Canada..)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–2020_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak

This throws Event 201 into a strange light, the aim of this post. October 18 2019, in NY, a bunch of ‘experts’ gathered to join in an event where they would play themselves (their roles would be their own personae!) and how they would act, react, to a pandemic, ‘simulated’ for the occasion, due to a novel coronavirus which would create symptoms from mild flu-like to severe pneumonia > death.

Event 201 was organised and supported by John Hopkins, the World Economic Forum, the Bill + M Gates foundation. There was much talk of coordination, cooperation between global business, Govmts, health organisations. Supply chains were a concern. How the anti-viral med. or vaccine could be distributed came up several times. Repressing fake news and panic and controlling social platforms.. The stated aim was how to diminish socio-economic consequences (i.e. protect biz. etc.) Vids on site, I reco watching at least the first, 11 mins.

https://youtu.be/AoLw-Q8X174

- note how the simulation produces its own ‘fake’ - here admittedly and purposely fake - product. Event 201 mimics CNN! A simulation attempts to act, copy, ‘fake’ or ‘real’ news..to try and gauge effects..and what to do in ‘real life’ - that is, the distorted picture of ‘real life’ these ‘experts’ have.

from https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/

More to come.

Posted by: Noirette | May 17 2020 16:52 utc | 7

Here's another link: Patrick Lawrence interviewing-at length- Diane Johnstone.

France, but it applies to the UK and elsewhere:
"A major paradox is that the left and the Yellow Vests call for economic and social policies that are impossible under EU rules, and yet many on the left shy away from even thinking of leaving the EU. For over a generation, the French left has made an imaginary “social Europe” the center of its utopian ambitions...."

Germany
"But Germany has been an occupied country—militarily and politically—for 75 years, and I suspect that many German political leaders (usually vetted by Washington) have learned to fit their projects into U.S. policies. …But I also think that the political debate in Germany is overwhelmingly hypocritical, with concrete aims veiled by fake issues such as human rights and, of course, devotion to Israel..."

Russia in Europe:
"Including Russia, Europe might become an independent pole of power. The U.S. is currently doing everything to prevent this. But there is a school of strategic thought in Washington which considers this a mistake, because it pushes Russia into the arms of China. This school is in the ascendant with the campaign to denounce China as responsible for the pandemic. As mentioned, the Atlanticists in Europe are leaping into the anti–China propaganda battle. But they are not displaying any particular affection for Russia, which shows no sign of sacrificing its partnership with China for the unreliable Europeans.
"If Russia were allowed to become a friendly bridge between China and Europe, the U.S. would be obliged to abandon its pretensions of world hegemony."
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/17/a-circle-in-the-darkness-post-war-europe/

Posted by: bevin | May 17 2020 16:55 utc | 8

Ha! vk @ 3, I know you won't agree with this, but it being Sunday, and that I have just read that the followers of Christ were first called 'Christians' after they had traveled to Antioch, I will simply observe that the words 'Christian' and 'Empire' don't really align. Nor do they in any of the early Christian texts.

I'd certainly make that statement for any empire, east or west. Your points about the advantages of the lockdowns are good ones, even as we face adversity because of them. If the virus is telling us anything, it is telling us this. And indeed, as we sleep better and reconnect with our families, we begin to savor that we are all in this together, empire or no.

Posted by: juliania | May 17 2020 17:11 utc | 9

Matt Taibi says that "he doesn't understand why" the Democrats have suddenly given up on Civil Liberties.
Of course her spent a lot of the '90s in Russia but he must have heard about the Clinton administration and its many and varied assaults on the poor, mass incarceration and Welfare 'reform.' He can't have missed what the War Party was doing in Yugoslavia either. I guess it just takes some people a long time to wake up.
The truth is that the Democrats-the old party of Jim Crow- have been laughing at civil liberties and the rule of law for generations. There is nothing new about this. It goes back to Truman and the Cold War- a deliberate choice that the party made then when Medicare for All was the alternative on the table. A choice which involved Taft Hartley, which had so much Democratic Party support that Congress over rode the veto, one of the most obvious assaults on civil liberties and democratic rights in US History. And that is saying something.

As to this Taibi judgement
"..Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional principles, so long as the targets of official inquiry are figures like Flynn or Paul Manafort or Trump himself. In the process, they’ve raised a generation of followers whose contempt for civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent..."
Compare it with the MeToo movement which positively delights in trashing every one of the cherished civil liberties that protect people from improper conviction and false imprisonment. That is a Democratic Party initiative (or at least it until recently and the Tara Read accusations) and wholly consonant with the treatment meted out to Flynn.

Posted by: bevin | May 17 2020 17:18 utc | 10

@noirette,

I have been reading about what you are discussing for many weeks at other virtual locations that haven't engaged in trying to shut down speculation.

for those who still have a brain that can engage in critical thinking, this article is worth checking out, titled How Huxley's X-Club Created Nature Magazine and Sabotaged Science for 150 years.

Posted by: lizard | May 17 2020 17:23 utc | 11

>a bunch of ‘experts’ gathered to join in an event where they would
>play themselves ... and how they would act,

One wonders if they also practiced all the chaos, confusion, conflicting orders, task force melodrama, etc.

All the millions of dollars over years allegedly spent on epidemic preparedness and planning, but when the real deal shows up they are completely unprepared and have absolutely no plan, not even whether masks are "good" or "bad". It's all a bit hard to believe.

Posted by: Trailer Trash | May 17 2020 17:30 utc | 12

A team of Australian scientists has produced new evidence that the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 "is uniquely adapted to infect humans", that is, COVID-19 is optimized for penetration into human cells rather than animal cells, undermining the theory that the virus randomly evolved in an animal subject before passing into human beings, and suggesting instead that it was developed in a laboratory.

Posted by: Perimetr | May 17 2020 17:36 utc | 13

I think another key news item is Russias resumption of progress on Norde Stream. I suspect this is getting PompAss' considerable nickers in a bunch.

I am baffled as to why I dont detect observe comments from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Indian nationals on this or most other alternate news sites - perhaps I do on ZeroHedge, its hard to know what to make of that site currently. Also it seems concurrent with virus I see collapse of news reporting.

I sense world is slowly coming to realize that virus is not of natural origin (arguement to contrary is suspect) which is important only that it raises important issue of whether release was planned or accidental.

Posted by: jared | May 17 2020 17:45 utc | 14

>- note how the simulation produces its own ‘fake’

I watched it, all 12 painful minutes of it. It's complete B.S., also known as marketing. It seems to be advertising for "Put Us In Charge = We'll Save You!". It's all hand-waving from people who would fail at organizing a lemonade stand.

Where is the plan from this exercise, you know, the document that says who would do what, and when, and how to make it happen. I thought there would be rooms of people making phone calls like, "We need x thousand masks - how many can you ship?" Instead, it is just a bunch of talking heads having meeting, to be followed by cocktails at 5 pm.

Posted by: Trailer Trash | May 17 2020 17:53 utc | 15

Almost every freaking day Trump and Pompeo bashing China including Huawei.. Not a day of peace without china bashing.

Days earlier ZeroHedge, SCMP and other media reported freaking Trump and Pompeo... no companies inside or outside USA can sell American software or technology items or chips made with USA properties or machines to Huawei. Meaning TSMC a Taiwan chip’s foundry not permitted to sell any chips to Huawei, TSMC has been the world's dedicated semiconductor foundry. "curtailing its chip supply, an escalation of its campaign against the Chinese company that may also hurt Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co."

"China has the most fab projects in the world.... 30 facilities planned, including 10/7nm processes, but trade war and economic factors could slow progress......SMIC’s move would put it on par with some of its foreign rivals. In addition, SMIC has obtained $10 billion in funding to develop 10nm and 7nm. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a publicly held semiconductor foundry company, and the largest in China.

"Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing (HSMC), a logic IC foundry founded in late 2017, is gearing up for 14nm and 7nm process manufacturing eyeing to be China's most advanced contract chipmaker.....Shang-yi Chiang, the former executive VP and co-chief operating officer overseeing R&D for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), will join a Wuhan-headquartered foundry in China. "<

Posted by: JC | May 17 2020 18:03 utc | 16

Posted by: Perimetr | May 17 2020 17:36 utc | 13

COVID-19 is optimized for penetration into human cells rather than animal cells, undermining the theory that the virus randomly evolved in an animal subject before passing into human beings,

Human cells ARE animal cells. Humans ARE mammals, a hairless big apes. For a zoo-virus, we are just meat bags as every other animal. This corona virus seems to be able to infect bats, monkeys (including humans of course), cats (including tigers) and pangolins. Only what matters is that target cells have the matching docking structure, like orbital station for a spacecraft.
And COVID-19 is the name of disease, not a virus...you seem to be scientifically illiterate.
Your moniker suggest Russian origin, so you should have strong math and science background. Strange.

Posted by: hopehely | May 17 2020 18:13 utc | 17

About rewritting of history and US way of proceeding, a recommendation on books...

"The Myth of the Good War.The US in WWII" by Jacques R. Pauwels

Review:

This book is not exactly a novelty, but we already warned that we were going to undertake this trip without consulting schedules. Our imaginary about the Second World War is essentially nourished by images and scenes from the great Hollywood film productions. How much or how little we know about those years that devastated the world is always mediated - interfered, perhaps - by the narratives projected on the big screen. Hollywood has imposed the story of World War II.

The Normandy landing, on D-Day, is represented as the turning point of a war that Americans have resorted to to save Europe from Nazism. The American soldier, who misses his family, whom he feels very far, steps on the floor of the Old Continent with the gesture of a hero, when he intervenes in a war that is not his own, but that due to a moral imperative, motivated by his altruism, he is forced to participate. And to win. In the final scene, the US raises the flag of victory, like the army that has liberated Europe. This is the story that the US has built about World War II and that the Hollywood film industry, as a good propaganda apparatus, has been in charge of popularizing.

Of course, there remain dark places on which the historian Jacques R. Pauwels sheds light in "The Myth of the Good War". The presence of the United States in World War II differs from myth. First of all, their participation is late, since at first it was not even clear who their enemy would be. The US would choose its enemy from whomever it was most debilitating from the clashes between the Nazis and the Soviets. He never ruled out an alliance with Hitler. In fact, when it finally allied itself with the USSR, the North American oligarchy, openly philophascist and with important business going on with Nazi Germany, believes that their country has made the wrong enemy.

The truth is that neither the entry of the United States into the war was decisive nor the landing of Normandy marked a before and after in the victory of the allies. When the United States enters as a belligerent force in the conflict, it does so because it sees as very likely the worst scenario ever imagined: that the USSR emerged from the Second World War as the sole winner of Nazism. A scenario that would leave the Americans in an unfavorable geopolitical position. Similarly, Pauwels points out that "the purpose of the landing in Normandy was to allow Western allies to reach Berlin before the Red Army". And he adds that the triumph of that battle did not depend exclusively on the American military potential, but on a Soviet offensive that prevented the Germans from transferring troops from the eastern front to France. No heroics or altruism. This is only one of the episodes referred to, and clarified, by Jacques Pauwels in "The Myth of the Good War". An essential book to dispute the relate of History. For historians and for those who do not want their past stolen. For those who do not want others continue telling them movies.

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 17 2020 18:19 utc | 18

@bevin #10

I think you have distorted Taibbi's stance by leaving out the core, the context of of his quote. This argument is made around the Russiagate nonsense, which he has been exposing for a long time; and the point is that democrats are wholeheartedly practicing the authoritarian tactic Joe McCarthy once used. Dem leadership is signing off on a very crude model of party discipline. Just because a Dixiecrat faction can be traced in the party's history doesn't negate the rich history of democrats in the struggles for civil rights bringing civil rights battles to the courts and waves of protests in the streets. I don't know why, but you seem to insinuate that Taibbi would have some affinity for the Me Too movement,---and that is not at all true.

I find a lot to admire in Matt Taibbi: He has an agile sense of humor that's appealing, and a quick intelligence. He is well read and a gifted political writer. He covers economics and Wall Street chicanery with a style that's very funny, and charming.

Posted by: Copeland | May 17 2020 18:20 utc | 19

@ Posted by: Perimetr | May 17 2020 17:36 utc | 13

In the link you posted:

Important: e-prints posted on arXiv are not peer-reviewed by arXiv; they should not be relied upon without context to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information without consulting multiple experts in the field.

The ACE-2 efficiency thing was already known. This article came out at 13th May, 2020, well after the discovery.

We already know the mechanism with which the SARS-CoV-2 bind with human cells. And we know it does the job much better than other similar viruses.

This doesn't mean it was created in laboratory.

What these scientists (probably opportunists who are trying to get extra revenue through cheap politics) are exploiting is the survival bias: we know the result, so we rationalize the past as a given (i.e. as if it was scripted by a greater entity).

The survival bias is a fallacy because evolution only makes itself apparent after long periods of time. It is pure trial and error, pure chance. It is random. The virus became a pandemic in our world because our world imposed the rules within which it had to follow in order to become a pandemic (Natural Selection). When we have a pandemic, it is already given the virus is perfectly adapted to the ecosystem it is in. This was not the result of "intelligent design", but trial and error over decades in a fixed ecosystem. The SARS-CoV-2 became uniquely adapted to infect humans because that's the ecological prerequisite for a virus to be pandemic, not vice-versa - that's logic, it doesn't need any empirical evidence.

We know the SARS-CoV-2 is fruit of evolution because we can detect "garbage mutations" in its genome, not because it is adapted to be a pandemic virus. A lab designed virus would not have these unnecessary mutations, as it would result in unnecessary costs for the lab and also because the whole point would be to shorten the process, otherwise it would be simply better to wait of it to occur naturally.

Posted by: vk | May 17 2020 18:23 utc | 20

Noirette,
my first thought was: most of the ppl who will receive the link and watch it with some auto subtitles on if they don't know English will/do/have believe(d) that this is the genuine stuff, and that this whole mess came from porks in China. Not so many are following the news accurately enough to have kept a track of when it started, officially or not.
China blame +1.
However, at 2nd thought, I thought they are also going to kill their own pork industry, because lots of ppl who see that will stop eating pork.

Posted by: Mina | May 17 2020 18:36 utc | 21

Trade wars are easy to win can't remember who said that. Well we'll see who win. Anyway China cannot depend on the Democrats either no different from the Republican. You get Rusiangate or Chinagate.
Democracy?

Posted by: JC | May 17 2020 19:18 utc | 22

Smart protest by Belgium nurses at the occasion of a visit of the health minister to their hospital

https://dai.ly/x7tytt2

Posted by: Mina | May 17 2020 19:19 utc | 23

The Global Preparedness Monitoring board. Board: Grutland, Norway, ex WHO director. Dzau, Pres. Nat. Academy of Medecine, USA. Elias - he is the face of the Bill and M Gates Foundation and is all over the place. Farrar, dir. of Wellcome Trust, UK. Fauci. Gao, CDC China.

Conveners: World Bank and WHO. Mission: will play a critical role in advising about preparedness for health crises, highlight the relationship between key players, etc.

https://apps.who.int/gpmb/work.html

CEPI is an innovative global partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations launched in Davos in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics. …. CEPI will advance vaccines against known threats through proof-of-concept and safety testing in humans and will establish investigational vaccine stockpiles before epidemics begin— “just in case”

CEPI is a Norwegian association, founded by the Gvmts of Norway and India. The board has 12 voting members: 4 investors (yes..), and 8 from industry, global health, science, finance. Amongst them,

Farrar, dir. of the Wellcome Trust. Peter Piot (of Aids fame), London School of Trop. med. Venkaya, from Takeda pharmaceutics.

Their funding comes from Gvmts., the Bill and M Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust…and:

All investors contributing to CEPI’s funding pool are invited to join our Investors Council.

https://cepi.net

There are others, but enough for now. These are the orgs taking care of our, the mopes, unaware citizens, health. The likes of Trump, Bojo, Macron, etc. know very little and are obviously completely out of their depth, contradicting themselves, veering between different policies, etc. Which suits those in the backroom fine, creating mega confusion is a plus.

- lizard thx for link will read

- trailer thrash, ha ha, yes. these ppl have power, or want it, meaning a fight against COVID is only useful as a for-profit endeavour.

- mina yes it was heavy on the pigs, an echo back to swine flu

Posted by: Noirette | May 17 2020 19:26 utc | 24

"Iran FM: Threatening Iranian tankers by US amounts to piracy, jeopardizes intl. peace "

link

Posted by: arby | May 17 2020 19:30 utc | 25

"Russia says US cannot trigger snapback of UN sanctions on Iran "

link

Posted by: arby | May 17 2020 19:36 utc | 26

Many will be familiar with the story that a businessman pulls into a small village and places $100 as a deposit on a room for the night, before running around as a tourist.

While he is away, the hotel uses the $100 to pay their debt to the baker, who then pays the butcher his $100 debt, and so on, until the last person in the village pays the hotel his own $100 debt. The village is now free of debts.

The businessman then decides that he will not stay the night, picks up his $100 and leaves. We can call this the 'pacman' or debt-eater solution, where a small seed input of capital can be used to remove huge swathes of debt.

Why then can't our governments input debt-eating capital into the debt matrix, until the debt mountain is reduced to something which is not a terrifying structure, over hanging our world economies?

Does anyone see any problems with the pacman debt-eater concept?

Posted by: Ric G | May 17 2020 19:43 utc | 27

Just a thought if people like Gordon Guthrie Chang, Jennifer Zeng, Peter Navarro or even Maria Bartiromo suggest to the two dude Trump and Pompeo sending FBI, CIA agents or even national guard to American's rural areas, small isolate farming communities in Pennsylvania, Oregon ripping off every Huawei and ZTE hardwares 2G, 3G, 4G and maybe 5G if any, cell towers and replaced it with Ericsson and Nokia would make America great again.

Posted by: JC | May 17 2020 20:31 utc | 28

@Ric G Does anyone see any problems with the pacman debt-eater concept?

yes, it conflicts with the demonic death-eater concept of acquiring power and control over life by any means necessary.

Posted by: lizard | May 17 2020 21:02 utc | 29

I like to read comments, pro and con in websites and YouTube, often saved best ones not trollers.. here a good one, b may not like long and plagiarism.. Read it before he delete. I'm not 100% in agreement with Vic nor willing to join the commie party. But Vic has many good points I'm willing to accept. If I'm young again I'll start all over back to my father's fatherland Huanggang, Hubei. Even my smartest kid with advance degrees left this freaking USA to Finland .Thanks sorrie b.

Vic toews

3 weeks ago
"I am 3rd generation Canadian who has vacationed extensively in USA, but in 2014 spent 1/2 a year traveling through China. My eyes were opened, all my life the western propaganda machine had me believing lies. Walking at night in the down town of major cities in China is safe while trying that in Atlanta or Phoenix, or Miami or Los Angeles is a life threatening experience. I've seen both. America thinks it's free because you can change the government. BUT GOVERNMENT WARS NEVER STOP because the elected officials answer only to corporations and CASH. In China they can't change the government but they are more free to change government policy. Like the policy that pulled 800 million people out of poverty. No American wants to have perpetual war and yet they do. No Chinese wants perpetual war so they don't. Who has more control. Who has more freedom? In China if you want policy changes you either organize a peaceful public display about what needs changing or join the Communist party to effect change from within. We in the west must stop being so hypocritical, changing our government changes nothing. The bombing and sanctions must go on, someone controls that but it sure isn't the voters. We in the west must start understanding that other systems work as well and perhaps better than ours. We meddle in the affairs of virtually every country in the world."

AMEN

Posted by: JC | May 17 2020 21:16 utc | 30

What are they planning for?

This is too much of this new COVID reality: Colombian company creates hospital bed that converts into a coffin

https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1261650155012362241

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 17 2020 21:26 utc | 31

Trailer Trash #6

Mr Taibbi doesn't understand why the Dummycrats have let him down. It's very depressing to think that someone held up as an astute analyst apparently knows no history and has no understanding of how the US political machine operates.

I hope he learns soon.

Great observation TT, somehow I doubt that he or Katie Halper will learn much soon. Let alone speak of it if the truth dawns. They have this jolly program courtesy of the Clinton adoring Rolling Stone Magazine that doodles about on the surface and NEVER goes deep.

Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are most likely useful idiots of the private finance elite and their fashionable followers rather than journalists.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 17 2020 21:41 utc | 32

ooops got that blockquote tag RS about

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 17 2020 21:42 utc | 33

I see Petri Krohn @5 has already linked to Robert Bridge's article, as I do again since the overall trail linked to James taylor, "a trailblazer in computational biology and genomics research," seems worthy of pursuit sine it appears research into the nature of COVID-19 is being throttled by forces unknown:

"The current state of much of the Wuhan pneumonia virus (COVID-19) research shows a regrettable lack of data sharing and considerable analytical obfuscation … This impedes global research cooperation, which is essential for tackling public health emergencies, and requires unimpeded access to data, analysis tools, and computational infrastructure."

IMO, the culprit's Pharma and the shady links it has to covert forces, and so forth. And the other victim noted in the article seems to have met his fate from similar forces. He was on to something and confided in someone. I hypothesized the possibility of masking a GMO to make it appear natural. Perhaps Bing Liu uncovered something connected to that process.

Yes, the Chinese Ambassador's death is certainly curious; but these three deaths demand deeper investigations than what's now being done.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 17 2020 21:57 utc | 34

Petri Krohn #5

Thank you for that post and your previous conspiracy theory post. It has troubled me from the beginning that the USA rejected any covid test other than its own. Beyond mere national chauvinism in my suspicion. Much more analysis needs to be focussed on the many virus in the USA and elsewhere in the period between 2018 and 2019. What motivated the convening of Event 201. Was there a data set such as that revealed by the 'vaping epidemic' that lay behind that conference?

Now you publish word of the deaths of two remarkable researchers at the pinnacle of their investigations and intellectual efforts one into Coronavirus and the other into open systems data base for Coronavirus.

Their pursuits would appear to represent a challenge to the proprietary rights to patent other research by other people. Their death is an intimidation of other leading scientists that share their objectives.

Is there a big pharma gang out there 'cleaning the slate' as it were?

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 17 2020 22:05 utc | 35

At his FB, Pepe Escobar links to a 2015 article in Nature, about which he says:

"COVID-19: A NORTH CAROLINA BABY?

"This is the key original research.

"It's all here.

"USAID was one of the key sources of funding. Arguably, THE top source, much more important than Fauci’s NIAID.

"And that’s when it gets hot.

"USAID is essentially an arm of the CIA. And among other things, also a convenient front for US bio-warfare research.

"US biowarfare research includes a network of bio-labs – including some the Russians are pointing at, 11 in Ukraine and one in the outskirts of Tbilisi, in Georgia.

"This particular research was quite clever - choosing a Chinese bat virus and including the Wuhan Institute of Virology to supply the bat virus.

"The project started in 2006. The successful bio-weapon came up in 2015.

"China had very little to do with it. No wonder the redoubtable Shi Zhengli-Li published a scientific report saying the Sars-Cov-2 virus could NEVER have escaped from her Lab of Special Pathogens and Biosafety.

"Essentially, this all leads to the scenario of Covid-19 broken down as a US bio-weapons project. Target: to come up with a disease virtually impossible to find a vaccine against in the case of elderly patients.

"Mission accomplished."

As the cauldron's stirred, it's getting murkier.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 17 2020 22:26 utc | 36

I see that Matt Taibbi is meeting with the kind of casual slander that crops ups often on these threads. Taibbi is an accomplished journalist with years of work behind him. He has a body of work covering crimes and outrages that happen in the financial sector and on Wall Street. He is a fine analyst and dives deeply into the structure of the crimes that he covers in his articles.

Matt and Katie Halper indulge in jokes and quirky commentary on their show that is called "Useful Idiots" --a title which is tongue-in-cheek. I personally think that only someone who is humor-impaired would fail to laugh and enjoy the witty and outrageous comments. One has to laugh at the burlesque and absurd scene that is our political life in this country. Their show is a bright spot which also features high quality interviews with journalists and activists; and it has an open-mindedness that is refreshing.

Posted by: Copeland | May 17 2020 22:58 utc | 37

FOX viewers make me so sad

Easily led and they do represent the majority of Americans, do we even listen to ourselves?

China is stealing U.S. research to develop Covid19 vaccine before we do.
We collectively shudder on cue because ... a. less people will die (maybe even Iranians).
b. The U.S. is too incompetent to cyber-hack and manufacture the new vaccine back from China,
c. the headline mentions 'China stealing from the US', no other words matter.
Answer: C. (FOX audience)

Obama let our stockpile of PPE dwindle and Trump had to spend 3yrs making the world fear our military
This is the same as saying that Trump made the Blue Angels great again but chose not to spend a the pittance it would take to rebuild the PPE. FOX viewers and hosts alike are too dumb to make this connection even when Trump says this in the same sentence five times a week during his news conferences.

Pompeo / Treasury dept looks to stop Iran from sending gasoline tankers to Venezuela and sue Mexican companies for selling food and water to Venezuela
Story not covered on FOX. FOX is too busy digging up nonsensical stories to make Iran an Venezuela always the villain and use the victim.

Congress to allow U.S. citizens to file civil lawsuits against China's handling of Coronavirus
Of course China will get a fair trial in U.S. courts (never mentioned). NY was our epicenter, we got sick from Europe because we did nothing between 1/31 - 3/15. The nonsensical timeline from Tom Cotton in Dec/Jan is irrelevant.

Posted by: Christian J Chuba | May 17 2020 23:02 utc | 38

Posted by: Trailer Trash | May 17 2020 16:40 utc | 6 Mr Taibbi doesn't understand why the Dummycrats have let him down. It's very depressing to think that someone held up as an astute analyst apparently knows no history and has no understanding of how the US political machine operates.

That was my exact reaction. People who believe in the "the state" (and "society" and "the social contract") can't allow themselves to recognize that said "state" (and the society that allows it) is the cause of all the problems they obsess about. Because if they did, they'd have to change their entire philosophy they've clung to since they were in high school or college. They'd have to recognize that they've been wrong about *everything* they believe in. Most people are incapable of that.

"Social contract" - where's my signature on that, I can't find it.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 17 2020 23:15 utc | 39

@ Ric G | May 17 2020 19:43 utc | 27

>> Does anyone see any problems with the pacman debt-eater concept?

Great question. IMHO, when we turn that theory into practice, it looks different:

“While he is away, the hotel asks the baker to accept $75, who then asks the butcher to accept $50, and so on, until the last person in the village gets $25. With no other choices, the last person declares bankruptcy and stiffs the hotel on his $100 debt.

The businessman that decided not to stay the night is the banker that loaned the money. Because business hasn’t picked up, the hotel can’t refund the deposit. So, the banker forecloses on the hotel and sells it to a related group of investors with money borrowed from the bank.”

Something like that.

Posted by: oglalla | May 17 2020 23:27 utc | 40

Posted by: vk | May 17 2020 18:23 utc | 20 This was not the result of "intelligent design", but trial and error over decades in a fixed ecosystem.

Well said. This "bioengineered" conspiracy theory is the same error as the "intelligent design" argument for God, i.e., that the universe was designed by God for us. In reality, of course, we evolved in the universe so we *assume* it was "designed" for us, whereas in reality we were "designed" - by evolution - for the universe that actually exists. If some other universe had existed, we would either not exist or would be something completely different.

This sort of thing reflects human need to have "someone" - anyone - in control of things so the world doesn't appear to be chaotic or out of their control. Humans are hierarchical primates. If there's no "boss monkey", they haven't a clue what to do with themselves.

In tribal days, it wasn't too bad - they had a tribal leader and clear needs and rules to solve those needs. Today civilization is too big for them. They're slotted into "social roles" in a system they can't comprehend and have zero control over. And nothing demonstrates that more than this pandemic.

A lot of people are in cognitive dissonance shock right now, so expect all kinds of irrational reactions.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 17 2020 23:32 utc | 41

karlof1@36, i've tried the link to nature several times. thank you for relating what you have, the paper sounds interesting indeed, & i hope others can provide the paper in its entirety. thank you.

Posted by: emersonreturn | May 17 2020 23:38 utc | 42

Vk's "if the USA is to survive these challenges to its status as the world's sole superpower, it will emerge as a Pacific-oriented empire, focused on Japan and Australia."

this is the most dishonest BS i ever read in MoA comment section , Australia totally dependant economically to china and not to US , if china dont buy australian it will crash and US wont come to help it. Japan is a dying nation demographically and fiscally.. Check how much insanity japanese print money and buy more US treasury bill.. It will crash along with US into disaster and it cannot go back up since it is a fake 1st world country as proven by the covid mismanagement by Abe's administration

See this is classic nonsense from Neocon narratie , US will be strengthened by Australia , japan and india.. talk about 3 dying and irrelevant nations trying to prop a dying empire..

Posted by: milomilo | May 18 2020 0:09 utc | 43

Ric G @ 27:

Even Bob McTeer, an economist and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, could not find anything wrong in the story.

As Oglalla says, the businessman has acted as a clearing house.

I think the flaw here is that in the real world, these actions would take place over several days (maybe weeks or even months) and not in a single day. Once there is a time dimension involved, then money starts losing its value after the first day. A $100 bill that buys $100 worth of goods and services on the first day of the month may not necessarily buy - on the first day of the next month - the same value of goods and services. Money loses its value over time.

Oglalla alludes to the issue of money losing value and how monetary systems compensate for this loss with the concept of charging interest @ 40.

Posted by: Jen | May 18 2020 0:11 utc | 44

@40 and @44

My concept would be that the Pacman, valued at say $5000, would be designed as a hot-potato so as soon as it hits a bank account it searches for any form of debt in the accounts and deposits itself, cancelling that value of debt in the account. It them moves instantly to the account to which that previous $5000 was owed, and so on up the links of the chains of debt,maybe 100 links, until that debt chain is erased.
Wave after wave of Pacmans can be released in micro-seconds, so that in a single banking night 50-100% of the world's debts will be erased. You can stop the Pacmans at any level you previously determine. Or do the process over months, if you choose to do so.

@29 And yes, as debt is power and assets to some, they will come out screaming, but a few crocodile tears will not bother anyone else!

It just means that people will wake up in the morning to find that their bank account is now free from debt!

Any problems with this concept?

Posted by: Ric G | May 18 2020 1:01 utc | 45

The US Navy reports that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which was sidelined by a severe coronavirus outbreak, has had a sailor diagnosed with tuberculosis, another infectious disease.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sailors-uss-theodore-roosevelt-coronavirus-tuberculosis-2020-5

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 1:02 utc | 46

A letter from Jeff Bezos: "Though it’s true that the pandemic has brought the world to its knees, it also has the power to bring us together, and in little, unseen ways it can even make us billions more dollars than we were making before."

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/now-is-the-time-to-cherish-the-little-things-by-jeff-bezos

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 1:14 utc | 47

Italian MP Sara Cunial Speaks the Truth About Covid-19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn3EE7EMfXc

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 1:17 utc | 48

@ Posted by: milomilo | May 18 2020 0:09 utc | 43

That's true, but we have to take into consideration the fact that the working classes of the First World countries are demonstrating exceptional faith to the capitalist system - even after two crippling structural crises, on top of almost 10 consecutive years of dismantling the "welfare states".

It is not guaranteed that those working classes will resort to any kind of social revolt, let alone a communist revolution (socialism). As their life conditions continue to worsen thanks to capitalism's tendency of the profit rate to fall. In fact, we must begin to take seriously the possibility that they are more prone to form a neofascist army than to help the working classes of the Third World to install socialism.

People who were born in the 1940s-1960s know capitalism is degenerating and that it only brings worse life quality for the working classes even in the First World. But people being born now (to reach adulthood in 2050) won't have that information. They will be raised in a world where capitalism is the only world possible (assuming China is incapable of breaking geopolitical isolation). They will be more prone to fight for a capitalist army than the their parents and grandparents. They don't need to live better - they'll only need the illusion that they're living better.

When Diocletian reunited the Roman Empire, the aristocracies of the time rejoiced, claiming he had saved it. Now we know that he didn't: what he did was to revive its corpse to a zombie state, marking the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of Late Antiquity. But they didn't have Wikipedia at the time, so at least they could use that as an excuse. Nowadays, the peoples of the First World will choose to be ignorant under explicitly political-ideological interests - not lack of information.

On a geopolitical level, there are a lot of unknowns for now. The biggest and most important of them is the post-Putin Russia. If it is to keep itself sovereign and dignified, the Atlantic door will be all but shut for the American Empire. It would then have to consolidate South American or go all in in Africa. Africa would be an extremely costly operation, which would require funds the Americans simply don't have anymore (if they ever had in its existence - remember that 1946 USA refused a Marshall Plan to Latin America). Africa is vast (twice the area of Russia) and sparsely populated (only 1.3 billion inhabitants). The Saharan Desert makes a formidable natural barrier that blocks it from the World Island (Eurasia), and India is closed off thanks to the Himalayan Chain.

That would mean the USA would have to consolidate South America, in which Brazil is the key. If, by some miracle, Brazil is lost to a communist revolution (socialism), then it would be truly catastrophic for the Americans. It would age two centuries in a few decades. It would definitely be reduced to a Pacific-oriented empire - only now by sheer necessity for survival, not by choice.

I've heard the USA is planning to install nuclear missiles in Poland (if Germany refuses them). That would practically seal the Western Eurasia door to the Americans for the foreseeable future (unless a post-Putin Russia becomes a Neoyeltsinite Russia). All the focus would be redirected to a hot war against China in the Western Pacific.

If post-Putin Russia degenerates to a Yelstinite-type state, however, the inverse is true: the USA would rejuvenate two centuries in two decades. China could be easily besieged, a la Cuba and North Korea. Victory for capitalism would be just a matter of time, as the situation would be inverted: Eurasia would be closed off to China, and opened up to the USA.

If the European Peninsula (Transrussian Europe) is frozen geopolitically and a hot war erupts in the South China Sea, then it is expected Western Europe will slowly but surely degrade and decline in importance, while Australia, Japan, South Korea and the island nations around SE-Asia would rise. That doesn't mean the American East Coast would become a wasteland: as a capitalist country, it is highly unlikely the USA will ever give up a bioceanic interface. But the West Coast will get richer faster and more intensively.

Whatever the scenario, the big question would be this: will the USA still be able to wage a geopolitical war on two fronts in the long term?

Posted by: vk | May 18 2020 1:21 utc | 49

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/03/us-gets-ass-handed-to-it-in-ww3-simulations-with-china-russia-analysts/

The U.S. repeatedly “gets its ass handed to it” in World War III simulations, according to the global research organization RAND.

“In our games, when we fight Russia and China … blue gets its ass handed to it,” RAND senior researcher David Ochmanek said during a panel discussion at the Center for a New American Security think tank last week.

Watch his remarks at approximately 13:07 in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1DtXOuU0M0

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 1:27 utc | 50

regarding the al- monitor article/ link - 2nd from bottom... i get a kick out of the title - Pentagon says Damascus, Moscow exploit discontent in Kurdish-controlled Syria

further down in the article we read the real story which has nothing to do with the title of the article... how much does al-monitor get paid for this shit?? a much more honest title to the article would be " Pentagon determined to screw any relationship with the Kurds and Syria." but i guess that is why the payola al-monitor gets works..

"The SDF is no closer to an agreement with the Assad regime, according to Wednesday’s report, in part because the United States has sought to disincentivize the Kurdish-led body from making any deal with Damascus that would relinquish control of the lucrative oilfields of Deir ez-Zor, a prize the US military has continued to help to defend. Washington aims to keep Syria’s natural resource wealth out of the Syrian government’s hands as leverage toward a favorable political settlement to the conflict."

Posted by: james | May 18 2020 1:31 utc | 51

when you read the 4 articles on syria - either from washington dc or whatever, it's very clear whose screwing who... the usa deserve their present political circus +more..

Posted by: james | May 18 2020 1:35 utc | 52

the max blumenthal article on the bottom is pretty good.. shows what happens when a few heavy sleazeballs get together - sheldon adelson and this morales freak..

Posted by: james | May 18 2020 1:44 utc | 53

@Posted by: lizard | May 17 2020 17:23 utc | 11

“I have been reading about what you are discussing for many weeks at other virtual locations that haven't engaged in trying to shut down speculation.

for those who still have a brain that can engage in critical thinking, this article is worth checking out, titled How Huxley's X-Club Created Nature Magazine and Sabotaged Science for 150 years.”

Apropos your post delving into the historical undersides of ‘objective hard science’ publications, I should add/this more recent example: Robert Maxwell’s (ie. Mossad/ Brit/5 Eyes/USSR? tool, and father of pedo-blackmailer and longtime Epstein buddy Ghislaine Maxwell) acquisition and control (beginning from the ~1970’s (?)) of the Elsevier/ Pergamon Press scientific publishing empire.

“Elsevier says its primary goal is to facilitate the work of scientists and other researchers. An Elsevier rep noted that the company received 1.5m article 1980’s submissions last year, and published 420,000; 14 million scientists entrust Elsevier to publish their results, and 800,000 scientists donate their time to help them with editing and peer-review. “We help researchers be more productive and efficient,” Alicia Wise, senior vice president of global strategic networks, told me. “And that’s a win for research institutions, and for research funders like governments.” “

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science

“The core of Elsevier’s operation is in scientific journals, the weekly or monthly publications in which scientists share their results. Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable. In 2010, Elsevier’s scientific publishing arm reported profits of £724m on just over £2bn in revenue. It was a 36% margin – higher than Apple, Google, or Amazon posted that year.”

“The way to make money from a scientific article looks very similar, except that scientific publishers manage to duck most of the actual costs. Scientists create work under their own direction – funded largely by governments – and give it to publishers for free; the publisher pays scientific editors who judge whether the work is worth publishing and check its grammar, but the bulk of the editorial burden – checking the scientific validity and evaluating the experiments, a process known as peer review – is done by working scientists on a volunteer basis. The publishers then sell the product back to government-funded institutional and university libraries, to be read by scientists – who, in a collective sense, created the product in the first place.”
It is as if the New Yorker or the Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill. Outside observers tend to fall into a sort of stunned disbelief when describing this setup. A 2004 parliamentary science and technology committee report on the industry drily observed that “in a traditional market suppliers are paid for the goods they provide”. A 2005 Deutsche Bank report referred to it as a “bizarre” “triple-pay” system, in which “the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product”.

So, the Invisible Hand(s) apparently exerts political controls at the management level a large portion of scientific publication industry with a 36% profit margin, AND has the ability (ultimately, as a gatekeeper for what gets published) to guide/warp scientific output and scientific consensus on a myriad of disciplines and research areas.

What is not to love?

So it is not only the WaPo/NYT/Fake News we need to keep a skeptical eye on. Add “high impact” scientific journals to the list, including Science, Nature, Lancet, and others.

PS: Many of my posts have been getting disappeared [a la google], w/o explanation, from this site, so if this one interests you, I suggest you do a screen capture of it before it is also gone.

Posted by: gm | May 18 2020 2:07 utc | 54

Say you released 100, $5000 Pacmans, designed as software, each who could eat 100 links of debt, to completion, almost instantly. Each Pacman then would drop back to the bottom of another debt chain, and begin the same process again, over and over.

As the debts are disappearing, so too are the derivative markets based upon debt and the dark pools of finance, based on debt.

100 Pacmans, in a single banking night, could erase the debt burdens of centuries, including two quadrillions of derivatives and the dark pools of the merchants of debt.

We are simply using the banking industries own spreadsheets of double-entry bookkeeping, those of mirror versions of assets and debts, to extinguish the chains of debt, all the way to the 'lender of last resort'.

Now, as our monetary supply is debt, we have lost our monetary supply, but at the same time everybody is re-capitalised so that they can borrow again, with the new levels of debt only mole hills compared to the previous mountains, as compound interest, through time, has yet to work its dark magic.

We will then have the breathing space to ask a simple question, 'if our monetary supply is the greatest treasure in our nation, why then do we create money as debt?' In other words, why do we behave as %#*&@ 'Shakespearian idiots'!

Posted by: Ric G | May 18 2020 2:08 utc | 55

Posted by: JC | May 17 2020 18:03 utc | 16

China currently has a domestic 14nm foundry, 8 Gbit DDR4-3000 and 1.33Tb NAND production. All three aren't bleeding edge, but these are extremely advanced capabilities which aren't supposed to exist in a "developing" country with a per capita GDP of just $10K according to "mainstream" economic theory.

It becomes even more noteworthy when considering the Germans quit this business altogether in 2008, while Japan quit DRAM in 2013 and are now only left with the NAND business.

Posted by: JW | May 18 2020 2:33 utc | 56

Posted by: lizard | May 17 2020 17:23 utc | 11 for those who still have a brain that can engage in critical thinking, this article is worth checking out, titled How Huxley's X-Club Created Nature Magazine and Sabotaged Science for 150 years.

OK, I checked it out.

A monumental waste of time. (Well, in comparison with a lot of other things I've done today, maybe not "monumental.")

tl;dr The bottom line is the notion that science should be concerned with studying nature with an eye toward "God", whereas science today is oriented around...something which precedes from a few scientists a hundred years ago...but is never clearly stated. And supposedly that is the foundation for all the "bad science" - not to mention bad economics and bad politics - we have today.

The one part that was interesting was the comparison between the "American way of the economy" and the "British way". Historically interesting, but ultimately irrelevant to today, especially given 1) that we're talking almost two hundred years ago, and 2) a lot has happened in economics and politics since then, both in the US and the rest of the world.

So...waste of time.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 3:02 utc | 57

The Huawei Kirin 710A chip, based on 14-nanometer semiconductor technology, has achieved commercial mass production. It is the first pure Chinese chip with independent intellectual property rights.

Produced by the Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), the chips have a main frequency of 2.0 GHz, domestic financial news site chinastarmarket.cn reported on Monday.

It reported that almost every employee at SMIC Shanghai had received an Honor Play 4T smartphone on Sunday, with "Powered by SMIC FinFET" printed on the back. The phones showcases the commercialization of 14-nm FinFET chips made by SMIC.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1187993.shtml

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 3:03 utc | 58

Beijing Review
‏
China hacking #US #COVID19 #vaccine?

Nonsense!

China's CanSino Biologics leads contenders in the global race.

Déjà vu: @Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said in 2019, "The US has not developed that (5G) technology, so from where should I steal it?"

Watch another US lie debunked.

https://twitter.com/BeijingReview/status/1261361739419041792

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 3:11 utc | 59

Peter or any Aussie here can explain why your Prime Minister Scott Morrison so freaking stoopid..."Australian Minister Urges China Return His Calls to Avoid Starting Trade War Between the Two States..... and Australia Hopes China Will Hold off on ‘Kick in the Guts’ Barley Tariffs’ Amid COVID-19 Spat"

She kicked China's butts very hard and expected China to talk? How freaking stoopid knowing after Canada holding Huawei CFO and deputy chairwoman of Huawei Technologies Wanzhou Meng as hostage in Vancouver and China retaliated holding two Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor as spies and few drugs’ dealer and one gonna be hanged... Robert Schellenberg, 36, was sentenced to death. There are more comings up China Coal, iron ores and gas which China can divert to Indonesia, Brazil, Peru and Russia Federation... and more than two million Chinese students in Australia in 2019.

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202005171079332510-australian-minister-urges-china-return-his-calls-to-avoid-starting-trade-war-between-the-two-states/

Guess I'll be voting Trump comes 3 November 2020, Why? This Trump is extremely stoopid he'll start a war3 with China or Democrats will surely impeach him again...

Posted by: JC | May 18 2020 3:12 utc | 60

Posted by: JC | May 18 2020 3:12 utc | 60

Peter or any Aussie here can explain why your Prime Minister Scott Morrison so freaking stoopid...

Maybe the answer is here:

https://twitter.com/ChinaDaily/status/1261830316584386561

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 3:33 utc | 61

French doctors may have made a breakthrough in the race to establish where and when the coronavirus pandemic first hit Europe, by establishing that the virus may have been in France much earlier than anyone thought.

A team of researchers in the city of Colmar in northeastern France announced in a release last week that it had identified two X-rays, from Nov 16 and Nov 18, showing symptoms consistent with the novel coronavirus.

https://7news.com.au/travel/coronavirus/new-evidence-in-race-to-find-frances-covid-19-patient-zero-c-1041604?utm_campaign=share-icons&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&tid=1589722099788

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 3:43 utc | 62

RSH @ 49, I guess as this is an open thread I can answer your post, as politely as I can. For those of us who would agree with you on the science, as inadequately as we may, on the issue of 'having a boss' we wouldn't.

That is not the point at all of our beliefs, diverse as they are, as humankind has the intelligence to think of things greater than ourselves. Being greater, wouldn't they take our own perfections to the Nth degree? And a boss isn't by any means that.

So come now, at least see the argument we propose. We take what we ourselves imagine to be the finest thing, be it beauty, mind, thought, compassion, love, fidelity - any of the virtues. And we say that this universe itself, a created thing, is larger than we can imagine, has laws of being that we cannot imagine, and its workings we are figuring out, the life and death of planets, the nearness of stars and their life cycles. All of this science has been telling us as we gaze upward and invent ways to look even further in. It's amazing stuff! And even if we don't last longer than an eyelash on a cosmic scale, less than that even, we have the intellect to see it and we have the heart to wonder at it. Where, where did these things, these elements of our souls, come from? They aren't biologically necessary!

I say they are gifts from a greater mind, a greater heart, and they are gifts by which we ought to value our very existence! And if that one is greater -- we cannot grasp that magnitude! If we could we would be the great ones so it isn't possible!! Humility is fine but we are not beasts; we can see what science brings to light. Beasts can't do that.

The Greeks at least knew to wonder. They didn't have the science but they went as far as their minds would take them. Here's what Pasternak says at the end of Dr. Zhivago:

"It has often happened in history that a lofty ideal has degenerated into crude materialism. Thus Greece gave way to Rome, and the Russian Enlightenment has become the Russian Revolution. There is a great difference between the two periods. Blok says somewhere, 'We, the children of Russia's terrible years.' Blok meant this in a metaphorical, figurative sense. The children were not children, but the sons, the heirs, the intelligentsia, and the terrors were not terrible but sent from above, apocalyptic; that's quite different. Now the metaphorical has become literal, children are children and the terrors are terrible, there you have the difference."

I think we are on the materialistic downgrade of history. We are the metaphorical sons and daughters of the ideal. But just as for Russia there was an amazing enlightenment period before the cataclysm that brought down the Revolution (does anyone know that there was? I do!) -- so too, beyond the materialism of this age there will be, for the children, the real children now born and growing in a different world, a new enlightenment period.

We build upon our enlightenments; we endure the materialistic downgrades. And so it goes. We need to look at them, the children, and look after them as much as we can. They are the future! I can see it in my grandchildren, they are the real children of the time, and they are beautiful.

And meanwhile maybe the wild things are having a quieter time too!

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 3:45 utc | 63

well, I'm sure some readers here might find how some science is suppressed worth reading about.

sorry to waste your precious time, Dick.

Posted by: lizard | May 18 2020 3:47 utc | 64

Posted by: vk | May 18 2020 1:21 utc | 49 In fact, we must begin to take seriously the possibility that they are more prone to form a neofascist army than to help the working classes of the Third World to install socialism.

I would tend to agree with that. One big problem is that US citizens really don't give a rat's ass about anyone outside the borders of the US. That would tend to limit any "solidarity" movements.

"They don't need to live better - they'll only need the illusion that they're living better."

Like the Situationists of the 1960's argued - the Society of the Spectacle. Bread and circuses, while freedom goes down the drain. How much "reality TV" can the US tolerate? Apparently a hell of a lot.

"China could be easily besieged, a la Cuba and North Korea."

China is rather bigger - in all ways - than Cuba or North Korea... I don't see that working, unless as you say Russia suddenly becomes a US ally - which I also don't see happening. Today ain't the 1990's and Russia isn't the "sick man of Europe" it was then. Anything is possible, but I doubt that scenario - unless both the rift between the US and Russia created over the last 20 years is somehow closed, *and* a rift between China and Russia is created equivalent to their old rivalry. I doubt either is likely.

"Whatever the scenario, the big question would be this: will the USA still be able to wage a geopolitical war on two fronts in the long term?"

In my view, nope, it won't. And I think as time goes on, the US is going to get a lot less support from countries that might otherwise have supported it. I think the UK will continue to be a US poodle, but the EU will drift away somewhat. Even Australia and Japan and South Korea may drift away somewhat. Malaysia and Indonesia, as well. India might continue to support the US as a counterbalance to China. Africa outside the Middle East is mostly irrelevant. Not sure about South America except Brazil, as you say, but I tend to view them as the same as the Middle East - not really relevant. BRICS may be fracturing due to Brazil, and perhaps India; not sure about South Africa; but again unless Russia and China rift, I suspect China has a better chance to influence those nations than the US does - that's kinda why BRICS formed, IIRC.

All in all, the future for the US hegemony project doesn't look good.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 3:52 utc | 65

I see I will have to unravel my comment somewhat. I have combined Richard Hack @ 41 with vk @ 49. It's late for me- apologies to both!

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 3:59 utc | 66

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 3:45 utc | 63 I say they are gifts from a greater mind, a greater heart

Uhm, no...

Which is about the only way I can respond to someone with a religious belief who posts that sort of "argument". Reading that post really was a waste of time even greater than Lizard's link. At least Lizard's link had some historical interest.

Posted by: lizard | May 18 2020 3:47 utc | 64 well, I'm sure some readers here might find how some science is suppressed worth reading about.

I'm well aware of how some science is suppressed. Perhaps other readers would be interested. I'm sure there are better sources for that information, however.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 4:02 utc | 67

Here is the paragraph in your comment @ 41 that inspired me, Richard. I thank you for the entire comment as there is much I agree with in it.

"...This sort of thing reflects human need to have "someone" - anyone - in control of things so the world doesn't appear to be chaotic or out of their control. Humans are hierarchical primates. If there's no "boss monkey", they haven't a clue what to do with themselves..."

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 4:06 utc | 68

Roger Waters:
‏
Social distancing is a necessary evil in Covid world. Watching "Mother" reminds me just how irreplaceable the joy of being in a band is.

https://twitter.com/rogerwaters/status/1262003693920022529

Posted by: Mao | May 18 2020 4:07 utc | 69

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 3:59 utc | 66 I see I will have to unravel my comment somewhat. I have combined Richard Hack @ 41 with vk @ 49. It's late for me- apologies to both!

No apologies necessary, to me, anyway.

You might be interested to realize, however, that I have a considerable interest in - if not *belief* in - occult theories, especially those than form the basic for concepts of "magick", of the classic sort and the Aleister Crowleyan sort. I have a considerable library on the hard drive of this stuff. I also have a considerable interest in Taoism and Zen, although I consider those "spiritual philosophies" more than religions. I even have a slightly soft spot in my opinions for the Wiccans (they're frequently very nice people.)

So considering me a pure "materialist" - if that term means anything in modern physics - might not be quite on the mark. However, I *do* believe that everything that happens is resident in the "physical" universe - however, recognizing that the "physical" in this universe is composed of energies and possibly "dimensions" we don't come close to understanding as yet. So as I say, the term "materialist" is really reductive these days.

What I do *not* believe in and in fact dismiss entirely are religious notions of "deities" and the concomitant religious "worship" of same. We know where that psychology comes from, we know the historical development of the various belief systems, we know the professed arguments are not logical, and we know the social consequences have been disastrous. So regardless of any willingness to consider "cosmic" theories, I remain a rabid atheist and foe of any and all religious denominations and organizations, East or West, large or small. My hatred for religion is on a par with my hatred of the state. As Aleister Crowley used to say, "The Christians to the lions!" And you can add Judaism, Islam, Buddhism (to the degree that it is a religion) and many others to that.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 4:17 utc | 70

Ah Richard, I see that I can include your thoughts but you cannot include mine. Yes, for you a waste of time, so apologies. And nonetheless, I thank you.

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 4:17 utc | 71

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 4:06 utc | 68 Here is the paragraph in your comment @ 41 that inspired me, Richard. I thank you for the entire comment as there is much I agree with in it.

Thank you. I see we're crossing comments out of phase, so I'll end that here.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 4:18 utc | 72

This is how the rest of the country will look if Trump has his way...

No masks. No gloves. No problem. As coronavirus cases soar, carefree day-trippers from Illinois pour in
https://tinyurl.com/y7lqf6to

Morons. Then people wonder why I despise humans. their primary characteristics are stupid, ignorant, malicious and fearful - that's why.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 4:24 utc | 73

Agreed. I will just thank you for your considered response @ 72. I did try to leave any specifics out of my 'dissertation' and you were kind to elucidate further. We probably hate the same things, so being an atheist is not the kiss of death for me. But I won't pursue that thought except to say

better to be hot or cold than lukewarm. Thanks again.

Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 4:24 utc | 74

Hack,

guess what else is going to happen, children might get to interact with other children again. my middle kid is lucky, he has a friend he can talk to through the fence. we are doing this to protect you, Dick.

but it's not enough, is it. you buy into the TRUMP MAGA depictions from corporate media. my dad sounds just like you. he lamented to me the other day that people weren't paying attention to the new signs in the box store that said go down this aisle one way, and that aisle the other way. the stupid rules change so fast, it's impossible to keep up, but for my smart dad with his corporate tech job, it's just stupid people to blame.

I'm watching a video right now reminding me where the evil exists in its most concentrated form, and it's not the people you are directed to hate by corporate media.

you want to go down a rabbit hole, really dig into the web around James Alefantis.

Posted by: lizard | May 18 2020 4:40 utc | 75

JC @ 60:

The last time we Australians had a political leader with an IQ in triple digits, he was not allowed by Washington to see out his full term as Prime Minister.

From Nick Beams, writing at wsws.org:
"New facts revealed on 2010 ousting of Australian PM"

"... In December 2010, leaked US diplomatic cables provided by WikiLeaks showed that the main plotters in the anti-Rudd coup within the Labor Party and the trade unions, including Mark Arbib, David Feeney and the then Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes, provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and were characterised as “protected sources.”

While domestic factors such as the mining companies’ heavily-funded campaign against the proposed resource rent tax undoubtedly helped create an air of “crisis” around the government, the coup was the outcome of geo-political shifts emanating from Washington.

In 2010, the Obama administration was setting in place the foundations for its anti-China pivot to Asia. As events over the past four years have made clear, Australia and Japan are the two major anchor points for US preparations for military activities against China. However, before they could go ahead, political changes had to be carried out.

In Japan, a few weeks before the anti-Rudd coup, the US was centrally involved in the removal of Yukio Hatoyama as prime minister following a clash with the US over the future of its base at Okinawa and his orientation toward a closer relationship with China.

The differences between Washington and Rudd, while not so public, were no less significant. Rudd had advanced a perspective for an “Asia-Pacific Community” based on accommodating the interests of a rising China within the region. Rudd was never anti-American—far from it—but any conception that Washington should somehow make room for China was an anathema.

The essential significance of any crisis, sometimes obscured in the swirl of events immediately surrounding it, often emerges in its aftermath.

On the day she assumed office, Gillard pledged unswerving allegiance to the US alliance, despite the fact that Rudd had never questioned it. She held a lengthy telephone conversation with Obama and made a public appearance with the US ambassador, Jeffrey Bleich, Obama’s point man in Australia for implementing the pivot.

Having twice cancelled trips to Australia during Rudd’s prime ministership, Obama visited Australia in November 2011 where he officially launched the “pivot” in a clearly anti-China speech delivered from the floor of the Australian parliament. Agreement was reached on establishing a US marine base at Darwin—the first time US forces had been stationed on Australian soil since World War II.

In the three years since the pivot’s launch, the entire Australian political, military and intelligence establishment has become ever more closely integrated into the US war machine ..."

It should be noted that as PM, Kevin Rudd often did take a stand that was hostile to Beijing's interests, and there were occasions where he advocated taking a stronger position against China on some issues than the US under Obama was prepared to take. The difference between Rudd and other Australian leaders immediately before and after him was that Rudd was not lapdog material.

Posted by: Jen | May 18 2020 5:04 utc | 76

Ric G @ 55:

That is the issue - how to stimulate an otherwise closed-system economy when all debts have been paid and everything is back to zero.

In your earlier example of the village, where everyone each had an outstanding debt of $100 to someone else in the village, an external stimulus was needed, and that stimulus came in the form of the businessman tourist who had planned to stay the night in the village.

Once he leaves the village with his $100 bill, everyone has paid everyone else, but in a closed system, who will now generate a new series of transactions? Will the villagers start a new chain of debt? Or will they wait for another business tourist with $100 bills?

Posted by: Jen | May 18 2020 5:14 utc | 77

@ juliana #63

A beautiful piece of writing. Well done.

Posted by: Copeland | May 18 2020 5:40 utc | 78

@Jen77

We are conditioned from birth to believe that unless someone creates money as debt for us then we are as poor as a church mouse. Why not create money as an asset so that we are trading assets for assets and avoiding the whole abyss of usury?

As I posted, the monetary supply is the greatest ASSET in the nation, so why then do we create money as debt, except of course to enrich a small cartel of debt bankers.

Robert agrees.

'If all the bank loans were paid up, no one would have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of currency or coin in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks for our money. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp upon the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible – but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.'

Ralph M. Hawtry, former Secretary of the Treasury.

Posted by: Ric G | May 18 2020 6:54 utc | 79

Though this horse is clinically, truly and irreversibly dead and has been declared as such by the coroner, with, short of divine intervention, no earthly possibility of ever breathing life back into the poor animal, I shall nonetheless, bravely give it one more, glorious and final whipping....

Imperial Model Could Be Most Devastating Software Mistake

Origins Of Lock Down Idea

Israeli Prof Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern

Michael Levitt Nobel In Chemistry

----

In an attempt to produce a sensational piece both on the virus and on the cruise ship industry, The Guardian unwittingly gave us an accurate time line of the spread of the virus on The Zaandam. Luckily, their breathless and needlessly malign incompetence, showed us the limits of this virus.

Onboard The Coronavirus Hit Ship

The story tells us how the Zaandam was stranded at sea for 14 days during which it was turned away at all ports on its route. During this time, the population of more than 2000 passengers and crew rolled around in Covid19 good and hard. Result of the races of this sorry saga, was a few hundred infected individuals and 4 fatalities of which, only 2 tested positive for Covid19 at time of disembarkation.

This data, is consistent with information we have obtained from other cruise ships as well as the Aircraft Carrier Theodore Roosevelt.

Diamond Princess, Grand Princess, Ruby Princess and Theodore Roosevelt represent a population of more than 15000 individuals. The majority of passengers on the cruise ships are men and women over 60 years of age with several underlying health conditions

Some cruise ship health trivia for your amusement

NCBI Health Research

"694 passengers (53% women) with median age 66 years with data from 540 crew (27% women)
Skin disorders dominated in the crew and were more frequent than in the passengers (29% versus 13%, p<.01), respiratory problems dominated in the passengers and were more frequent than in the crew (26% versus 17%, p<.01), while cardiovascular disorders were more common in the passengers (7% versus 1%, p<.01). Forty-six injuries (35 passengers, 11 crew) were recorded. One passenger died aboard. Seventy-six crew (14%) were not able to work for a total of 110 days (1.1 crew sick per day), while five crew were signed off for medical reasons.

Academic Research

"This investigation also illustrated that cruise ships can present infection control issues similar to those in nursing homes. Cruise ships often serve high-risk passengers and offer extended medical services (e.g., oxygen therapy and onboard renal dialysis units) for their passengers. The survey of passengers on the ship in this investigation showed that about three-fourths were elderly and about one-fourth reported having at least 1 additional risk factor for respiratory complications of influenza. Several passengers on the ship traveled with portable oxygen, 36 passengers reported having cancer (not in remission), and 3 passengers were undergoing onboard renal dialysis. "

------

Blanket and indiscriminate lock-downs are futile at best.

Aqua per pontem.

Posted by: guidoamm | May 18 2020 8:06 utc | 80

That is the issue - how to stimulate an otherwise closed-system economy when all debts have been paid and everything is back to zero.

In your earlier example of the village, ...
Posted by: Jen | May 18 2020 5:14 utc | 77

A fascinating example of currency creation was in Micronesia before the contact with Europeans, thus before the knowledge of metals. Even of the islanders were inclined to metallurgy, tiny islands had no ores etc. But there were some rocks, and from these rocks they fashioned "coins", stone discs of various sizes. They had an extremely ingenious idea for avoiding hyperinflation. The value of coins depended on size AND the distance to the island that produced the coin. Island groups formed a large ellipse. It was profitable to transport a coin to the next island wbere jt would be worth more, but also hard to do and risky, because their ships were outrigger dugouts and the discs were larger than the boats. So the coins were advancing on the ellipse of the main maritime route. But what to do if an island with several villages has very few (very large) coins? Fractional ownership! Seems that cryptocurrencies copied that stone age idea.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | May 18 2020 8:47 utc | 81

Guidoemn @ 80
To compare a ship containing 2000 temporary ‘residence’ with a world containing 7 billion people, in a pandemic needing a short, medium and long term plan, seems to be a very simplistic and dangerous example of false science!
I suspect some hidden agenda or bias mistake reinforcement.
We need to eradicate this virus, not except it or the mortality that results.

Keep the lockdown plus introduce ‘cordon sanitare ‘

Posted by: Mark2 | May 18 2020 9:24 utc | 82

Mark2

A closed sample, gives us an indication of arithmetical progression of the infection.

Professor Ytzhak BenIsrael and Michael Levitt both demonstrate the limits of the rate of infection of this virus which appear to conform to the progression of the infection aboard the ships.

Eradication of Corona viruses is a non starter. You cannot eradicate it.

Also, a vaccine is a non starter. 30 years of R&D on a Corona virus vaccine, says we are not going to have one in 18 months and likely not in the next 5 years.

Posted by: guidoamm | May 18 2020 10:05 utc | 83

guidoamn @ 83
You can eradicate this virus area by area, district by district, country by country and we should do so !
To suggest otherwise is to accept this Malthusian, genicidal, psychopathic US, UK Israeli plan.

Posted by: Mark2 | May 18 2020 11:29 utc | 84

Jack Keane a voice of sanity on FOX?

FOX Commissar Harris Faulkner was interviewing Gen Keane and after the China bashing intro condescendingly asked a leading question, 'isn't China weaker than they let the world believe them to be?' Keane responded, 'well that's true of most countries, China is stronger than Russia was when they were the Soviet Union and it is unrealistic to believe that we can completely remove them from the global supply chain'.

Wow, I did not see that coming. Perhaps the military types cannot bring themselves to lie 100% of the time but thank goodness for Dan Hoffman. Being a CIA operative he will always be there to pick up the slack and keep the narrative going when someone has a momentary lapse.

Posted by: Christian J Chuba | May 18 2020 11:59 utc | 85

Someone mentioned Noirette's comments elsewhere, would it be possible to known where?

Posted by: Mina | May 18 2020 12:17 utc | 86

Posted by: lizard | May 18 2020 4:40 utc | 75 you buy into the TRUMP MAGA depictions from corporate media.

Are you nuts? *Me* buying into *anything* from Trump? If I believed corporate media, would I be here (aside from the trolls who come here because they don't know any better)? Try not to sound dumber than you are.

"the stupid rules change so fast, it's impossible to keep up"

The rules are simple: stay away from people without a mask on, don't go near people if *you* don't have a mask on, wash your hands every time you touch something someone else has touched, and don't cough, sneeze or breath on people for more than a couple minutes at a time if at all. That's incredibly simply. If you can't comprehend what is necessary to stop people from dying in a pandemic, then *you* deserve to drop dead. And that has nothing to do with Trump, who wants everyone to get the "flu" so he can win the election.

"people you are directed to hate by corporate media."

I don't hate anyone as directed by corporate media. I hate people who are stupid, ignorant, malicious and fearful. Which as it turns out is most of the population of the planet - and an even greater population of the Internet.

"you want to go down a rabbit hole, really dig into the web around James Alefantis."

Oh, seriously, we're going the "Clinton pedophile ring" route now? I don't have time for this. Either bring proof to the cops, or shoot the ring leaders yourself - or piss the fuck off. What the hell do you expect me or any significant percentage of the US population to do about corrupt politicians? I'm willing and at some point will hopefully actually be prepared to shoot their asses (assuming I'm not busy shooting other assholes like CIA and FBI management.) Are you? Or are you just another lame who is prepared to bitch about it on the Internet?

You want to do something? Buy a gun - an AR-15 or AK-47 or AK-74. Plus some 9mm or .45 handguns. Learn to shoot straight. Learn to shoot under combat conditions. Learn tradecraft. Join a militia (if you don't mind being infiltrated by the FBI *and* Secret Service - in the same group.). Or take individual action.

But don't waste my time with "hidden pedophile codes" in pizza orders or whatever the hell that crap you're spouting is about.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 12:22 utc | 87

Christian J Chuba @85

Real military people rarely deliberately lie about such matters. Pretending that the truth about one's adversaries is something other than what it really is never works out well on the battlefield. Military deception is a completely different beast from political deception. Military people will try to lie if they are ordered to because following orders is their job, but watching them lie is like watching an elephant try to dance ballet: awkward, to say the least.

Now part of the CIA's job, on the other hand, is coordinating massive multi-channel deceptions. Even more than murder and torture, lying is what they do.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 18 2020 12:27 utc | 88

Posted by: guidoamm | May 18 2020 8:06 utc | 80 Blanket and indiscriminate lock-downs are futile at best.

And once again, these idiots can't comprehend the words: test, trace, isolate.

And they don't want to. All they want to do is bitch about the lockdown. Why? Because they're ignorant Trump supporters who want him to win the election - and if the economy tanks, he won't. So then they'll have to live under Biden. Oh, boo hoo. Like there's a difference between a four-year-old having a temper tantrum and a dementia case.

Strange how the minute fairleft got kicked out, this guy comes in and starts spouting exactly the same BS fairleft did and with exactly the same methodology: repetitive assertions, citing irrelevant "data", ignoring all debunking of their positions, etc.

These people are being paid to do this by someone. b is right to be suspicious. This is troll farm behavior.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 12:29 utc | 89

Ships represent a fantastic case study for the spread of infections.

A ship offers a confined space with a high density of population in an environment that is ideal for the spread of viral and bacterial infections. This happens routinely in fact.

In the particular case of the Zaandam, since the ship was not allowed to disembark at any port since the day it set off, passengers and crew spent 14 days mingling intimately without a care in the world.

It was on day 14 that the first flu-like symptoms manifested and passengers and crew were asked to self isolate.

It was then on day 22 that the Zaandam made port and passengers were allowed to disembark.

If Covid19 was as infectious as it is purported to be, the Zaandam should have resulted in the totality of the population to be infected.

Instead, what we got, was fewer than 300 infections and 4 fatalities of which only 2 tested positive for Covid19.

Across all the cruise ships that have been infected by Covid19, I believe that the Grand Diamond is the one that suffered the highest rate of infections at 700 cases in a total population of over 3000 passengers and crew.

The information we gleaned from across the ships therefore, is remarkably consistent.

Lock downs are futile.

Posted by: guidoamm | May 18 2020 12:34 utc | 90

Posted by: William Gruff | May 18 2020 12:27 utc | 88 Real military people rarely deliberately lie about such matters.

Problem is there are precious few, if any, "real" military people left in the services. Most of these clowns are brown-nosers looking for upward career mobility until they can retire and suck down those heavy corporate board sinecures by getting more wars started and more of their former "men" killed for nothing. I suspect Colonel David Hackworth was the last of the reasonably competent officers. I used to visit his Web site and read the letters from soldiers in Iraq who were bitching about the incompetence of their commanders.

I spent three years in the military, from 1967-1970. Of course, that was before the "new", "action", "professional" military that started forming in the late '70's and '80's after the Vietnam debacle. But based on what I've read from people in the military over the last 18 years, nothing really has changed. It's still the blind leading the blind - from behind. Incompetence and out-dated and ineffective procedural dogma have rendered the US military next to impotent. The rise of so-coiled "COIN" doctrine and its utter failure in Iraq and Afghanistan was a clear example. The only thing the US military is good for is dumping large amounts of expensive ordinance on civilian populations. Perhaps some of the Special Operations people have competence in their limited area of operations, but that's about it. And quite a few of them appear to be right-wing clowns as well. Not to mention some of the more prestigious units like the SEALS have had their reps tarnished pretty badly based on the usual "few bad apples" (which almost always means a systemic problem.)

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 12:42 utc | 91

Posted by: guidoamm | May 18 2020 12:34 utc | 90 Lock downs are futile.

See what I mean? Ignore, deflect, repeat the assertions.

What more proof do you need? Troll farm.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 18 2020 12:44 utc | 92

"Join a militia (if you don't mind being infiltrated by the FBI *and* Secret Service..." --Richard Steven Hack @87

... and the state cops and the local cops and the sheriff's department and the ATF and ICE and even the IRS. Hell, even HUD and HHS sometimes join the fun.

Some militias and radical groups have more government infiltrators than legitimate members. Radical leftist groups all also have representatives of the CIA in the mix in addition to the authorities listed above. In fact, no small number of them are even financed and run by various alphabet agencies because attracting radicals to captive organizations makes it easier to keep tabs on them than sifting through the general population for potential threats to the establishment.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 18 2020 12:47 utc | 93

Hey Dick,

I'm no Trump supporter, but clearly you are so blinded by anger and hatred toward your ignorant fellow man it doesn't matter what I say.
it is actually possible to be critical of lock-down policies without being a Trump supporter, but no, it's easier for you to dismiss criticism as paid troll behavior.

I've been commenting at this blog, Dick, for many, many years. you might just have to accept that not everyone has the same faith in what we are being told about this pandemic by lying media, lying politicians and lying sociopaths who see nothing but dollar signs to be made on human suffering.

you can also dismiss the billion dollar child trafficking reality and feign impotent helplessness regarding the evil in the world, and mock those who do take seriously that Epstein was running a compromise operation that ensnared not just Clintons, but many others, including scientists who want to make realistic cyborg fuck dolls.

maybe a cyborg fuck doll would do you well, since stupid humans don't seem to do it for you.

Posted by: lizard | May 18 2020 12:47 utc | 94

Richard Steven Hack @91

What you describe is typical of imperial militaries in an empire's later stages. That is, military leadership positions increasingly transform from military to political roles. This is the empire's attempt to keep the military loyal despite the deteriorating economics of the empire.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 18 2020 12:59 utc | 95

Richard Steven Hack

So lets test, trace and isolate.

Why was it not done? Why is it not done?

South Korea got going very early on with just that strategy with remarkably positive results. Whey can't we do the same in Europe and the USA?

Why are nursing homes still not isolated sanatorium style?

Why is Sweden's fatality rate not an outlier when compared to Belgium's, the UK's, France's or, indeed the USA per 10 million population?

Where is the "irrelevant "data", ignoring all debunking of their positions" in the data presented by Michael Levitt or Itzhak Ben Israel?

Why is ship data irrelevant?

What was debunked in the data we had from the ships?

Is there anything to be debunked in data we have from ships?

In case there is, who debunked the data we gleaned from ships?

... but, more to the point, what are you talking about?

Posted by: guidoamm | May 18 2020 13:05 utc | 96

Gail Tyerberg on her Our Finite World blog makes the most interesting arguement I have seen so far against Lockdown, it is simply unaffordable!

World governments cannot print resources. What they can print is debt. Debt can be viewed a promise of future goods and services, whether or not it is reasonable to believe that these future goods and services will actually materialize, given resource constraints.

We are finding that using shutdowns to solve COVID-19 problems causes a huge amount of economic damage. The cost of mitigating this damage seems to be unreasonably high. For example, in the United States, antibody studies suggest that roughly 5% of the population has been infected with COVID-19. The total number of deaths associated with this 5% infection level is perhaps 100,000, assuming that reported deaths to date (about 80,000) need to be increased somewhat, to match the approximately 5% of the population that has, knowingly or unknowingly, already experienced the infection.

If we estimate that the mean number of years of life lost is 13 years per person, then the total years of life lost would be about 1,300,000. If we estimate that the US treasury needed to borrow $3 trillion dollars to mitigate this damage, the cost per year of life lost is $3 trillion divided by 1.3 million, or $2.3 million dollars per year of life lost. This amount is utterly absurd.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/05/13/understanding-our-pandemic-economy-predicament/

Posted by: SwissArmyMan | May 18 2020 13:15 utc | 97

@guidoamm,

the most common answer to the questions you pose to Dick Stevie Hack is the Trump regime is dysfunctional and incompetent specifically, and the west in general is not culturally equipped to do what non-western countries have done.

the more skeptical/paranoid interpretation of why things weren't done is because the sociopath elite know we won't accept their "solutions" unless we are properly terrorized and desperate enough.

I am having a difficult time reconciling why RSH would want us stupid humans to help other stupid humans by wearing masks if he hates stupid humans so much. won't it be beneficial to planet earth to get infected and go kiss grannie?

Posted by: lizard | May 18 2020 13:16 utc | 98

I almost forgot Richard,

Testing, tracing and isolating is wholly consistent with reopening of the economy.

So no need to be so disparaging towards me.

Posted by: guidoamm | May 18 2020 13:31 utc | 99

Japan slips into recession, but worst is yet to come

GDP is expected to fall by 21.5% (-21.5%) by Q2 2020 - worst recession for the country since 1955 (the Dodge Plan recession).

But sure, I guess those three months of laissez-faire and pandemic denial by the Abe government saved Japan from a worse recession...

--//--

Trump bets the farm on Huawei equipment ban

It's begun, folks. It's begun.

--//--

@ Posted by: juliania | May 18 2020 3:45 utc | 63

Can't believe I'm arguing with a movie, but here it goes: I completely disagree with your quoted excerpt.

First of all, because the Ancient Greek weren't idealists. In fact, the invention of the materialism-idealism dichotomy was invented in Germany in the 19th Century. Germany is the birthplace of a philosophical school called Idealism - which is commonly divided in two periods: Objective Idealism (Kant) and Subjective Idealism (Hegel). Materialism was "founded" by also German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (born 1804). The intense debate between idealists (Hegelians) and Feuerbach was an important factor on Marx's philosophy, which represents the synthesis between idealism and materialism.

The Ancient Greeks (and the Romans) didn't make this differentiation. They lived in much more primitive times, where the economy (Ancient Slavery) was much closer to a natural economy than today's industrial economy. The Roman Emperor, for example, was both the religious leader (Pontifex Maximus) and administrative leader (economic + legal): he needed to allocate the funds properly, apply justice in order to install order and placate the Gods in order to avoid natural catastrophes and to be favored in wars. It was all connected for the simple reason humanity hadn't developed a technology advanced enough to tame "Mother Nature"; religion was the closest thing they had to understanding it.

And we have the Schrodinger's Russian Revolution. For the neocons, it was pure idealism, a false hope based on an utopia. For the center-left, it was "crude materialism".

What happened was both: it was a revolution based on a theory. But it only happened because the material conditions of the vast majority of the Russian people was insufferable. Tsar Nicholas II refused to get out of WWI, where peasant-soldiers were being mowed down. When they got the luck to go back to their homes, they saw their land uncultivated and devastated. It was either death in the trenches or death by starvation in the wasteland. The Tsar's "sublime" empire was bound to collapse, with or without the Bolsheviks - and there's no gold enough to decorate the Orthodox basilica to avoid that.

What did happen, though, was that some intellectuals that came from a late 19th Century "school" didn't like the antielitism of the Russian Revolution. They didn't like their knowledge to be universally taught in schools, they didn't like the end of the palaces and castles that once inspired them, they didn't like their loss of monopoly over the arts.

Posted by: vk | May 18 2020 14:15 utc | 100