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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-57
Last week’s posts at Moon of Alabama:
- July 17 – Signees Of Letter Against ‘Cancel Culture’ Exposed As Frauds
Related:
Thomas Chatterton Williams on Useful Idiots, Interview Only (vid) – Matt Taibbi & Katie Halper/Useful Idiots
☀️👀 @zei_squirrel – 3:25 UTC · Jul 18, 2020
HAHAHAHAHAHA here’s thomas chatterton williams, the main drafter of the harper’s letter, saying he didn’t have glenn greenwald sign it because he was “outvoted on that”. HAHAHAHA they “cancelled” glenn in the anti-“cancel culture” letter. LMAO you really can’t make this shit up
also LMAO they literally had a whole list of names they “cancelled” beforehand from being able to sign the letter. HAHAHAHA what a pathetic shitshow. here’s your proof that these pathetic grifters used chomsky’s name for clout and nothing more. what a sad bunch of losers
I actually thought glenn was asked to sign it but didn’t out of principle, but of course not. the guy jumps at every opportunity to boost these grifters, he would’ve definitely lent his name to it, but was blocked from being able to by them. godDAMN this is hilarious
btw who else was on the “cancelled” list and why? which people were deemed too “heterodox” for the likes of chatterton williams, yascha mounk and the other hacks who drafted the letter? good luck trying to get them to reveal that. their grift relies on pretending to be principled
I gotta be honest I liked jordan peterson a lot more than this boring trite shit. these people self-destructed and turned themselves into living memes within like a week of gaining a little bit of attention. jp rode that shit for like months before he hit the wall
also we all know it was bari weiss who blocked glenn for having the gall to expose her long history of censoring people she doesn’t like, so you can stop this pathetically transparent feigning ignorance act. god where are you jordan? I WANT YOU BACK THESE PEOPLE ARE SECOND-RATE
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald – 12:39 UTC · Jul 18, 2020
1/ Regarding the apparent fact that the Letter’s organizer wanted to have me sign but the luminaries actually in control cancelled me (I was never asked), it’s been obvious from the start that the Letter was signed by frauds, eager to protect their own status, not the principles.
2/ I’ve been defending these principles for decades, as a lawyer & journalist — **not** as a way of protecting honored elites from criticism, but by defending those with no power punished for their views: often by people like those who signed The Letter: Greatest Threat to Free Speech in the West: Criminalizing Activism Against Israeli Occupation
3/ That large numbers of the Letter’s signatories don’t give the slightest shit about principles of free speech & discourse — many have been at the forefront of “cancelling” — but are only petulantly objecting because they now hear criticisms is obvious. Dozens of them are frauds
4/ All that said, that many of the Letter’s signatories are frauds does not impugn the principles they’re cynically invoking for their petty, self-absorbed interests. I devoted our show yesterday to this: it’s the marginalized that need these protections: Elites are Distorting the “Cancel Culture” Crisis – System Update with Glenn Greenwald (vid)
Use as open thread …
That Glenn Greenwald discords with the people who signed the letter, but believe in the content of the letter is not surprising to me. He may be one of the least worst problems with our world today, but he’s not a revolutionary. When (if) the cookie breaks, he will be at the side of the bourgeoisie (as will this Jordan Peterson many talk about, but is actually just charlatan from an era of advanced intellectual decay of the West).
Just to clarify my argument, here’s my opinion: the apex of Western intellectualism was in the 19th Century. It’s apex was Karl Marx, who was a culmination of both French Illuminism, German philosophy (Subjective Idealism, a.k.a. “Hegelianism”) and British Political Economy.
It is not a coincidence Marx represents the apex and the beginning of the end of Western intellectualism. Immediately after his breakthrough, Marx was persecuted and attacked by all the kinds of charlatans from all fronts you can imagine. He died as a nationless indigent in London, and was buried in a communal grave (his bust at the cemetery does not have the body, and is a much later monument). The capitalist class immediately realized that progress in what we nowadays call “humanities” would lead to revolution, so they purposely enforced a process of imbecilization. Hegel was discarded and gave way, in the post-war, to a chimera called “Neokantism” (the living corpse of Kant wandering around the streets of New York, London, Paris and Berlin). Political Economy was abandoned to give way to “vulgar economics” (they already existed alongside PE, but became the only option available after Marx). Illuminism was silently abandoned: in 1989, the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, the revolution was publicly condemned, with intellectuals there claiming it was “unnecessary”.
After Marx’s death, the West was still able to progress in the so-called “hard sciences” (STEM) for some 100 years more. But now, in the 21st Century, not even in this area the West is being able to progress anymore, with the area being infested with charlatans, big pharma and big tech sellouts and falsifiers of experiments. The Empire has grown old.
Curious fact: Marx is the first truly universal philosopher in Human History. In China, you can see his portrait alongside the other great Chinese philosophers, as if he was their successor. The Chinese consider Marxism the legitimate successor of their own philosophy. You can also see Marxism in Japan (its minuscule after a century of vicious persecution, but it’s there), India and Africa (where it was responsible for one or two revolutions). That makes Marx the only philosopher who can claim both the Western and the Eastern lineages of human thinking, thus the only true universal philosopher of our times.
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On to the news:
China’s human rights progress deserves applause instead of smearing
Westerners should stop supporting a tribe of terrorists and pretending to like Islam all of a sudden just to smear China. It’s ridiculous, it’s not deceiving anyone.
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China’s industrial robot output surges 29.2 pct in June
That’s socialism. As Lenin once said when the USSR was formed: “Communism [N.A. – socialism] is Soviet government plus the electrification of the whole country”. That is, socialism is all about reality, praxis: there’s time for speech, and a time to build. Mostly to build.
Give me one capitalist country that will do the same during an economic crisis.
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IMF says U.S. economy will drop 6.6% in 2020 in face of pandemic
Another revision by the IMF (the first one was some -2%, and I called here it was “too optimistic”).
I think a -6.6% fall in GDP is plausible for the USA. The USA, as the HQ of capitalism, has tools and weapons that the rest of the world doesn’t have, so, if they get lucky, a mere 6.6% fall is possible.
But, all in all, I still think it’s still too optimistic. For example, the IMF still refuses to admit a second wave will come to the West.
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DoJ confirms role in Brazil’s regime change:
Departamento de Justiça dos Estados Unidos confirma atuação informal na Lava Jato
The only doubt was which institution of the USA was involved, and how many.
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While China builds robots, Europe does… erm…
Sun, sea, safety: Greece woos Europe’s pensioners with 7% income tax rate
The amazing thing is that this is a positive article by The Guardian. Not joking – it even states at the sub-headline that “Athens offers generous tax incentives to lure retirees – and boost its own struggling economy”.
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Joke of the week:
Coronavirus: Boris Johnson insists he can avoid second England-wide lockdown
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EU recovery summit could end with no deal, says Merkel
If you have to name your summit a “recovery summit”, then you automatically admit there won’t be any recovery. If you can commence a recovery, you just do it, you don’t need to talk about it.
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It’s not just the USA:
After dark in central Seoul’s nightlife epicenter
American idiot? More like South Korean idiot.
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Huawei losing its 5G grip on Europe
Or, alternatively: “Europe losing global power status by refusing to use Huawei 5G”.
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Financial Institutions Urged to ‘Sacrifice’ Profit to Support Businesses
China Plans to Strengthen Control Over State Financial Institutions
Update: China Seizes Multibillion-Dollar Firms Controlled by Fallen Tycoon
You won’t see this in a capitalist country.
Posted by: vk | Jul 19 2020 15:24 utc | 6
Yet the one consistent thing I see from the Left is endless insults against people who oppose the lock downs or mandatory mask wearing. EoinW
I really must say that I do not understand why the mask wearing is such a problem for USAians. Blue Dotterel
> from prev. thread.
Well The Mask is becoming a real-life object symbol in the USA’s culture divide, which reflects in some measure a growing tribal split, the outcome of slice-n-dice electoral politics and the oligarchic aim of divide to control.
In the US, symbolic, so-called ‘cultural’ aspects are pushed to the fore-front, in contrast to real-life issues, dollars for food, gas, med care, etc. vs. Statues, slogans written in the street, language used to address and describe people, use of bathrooms, awards given, etc. (Compare with the Gilets Jaunes who coalesced against a small tax hike on diesel fuel, which impacted them terribly.)
Engineered to obscure the deeper issues. The illusion of a rich country is bolstered: heated arguments and social stratification apparently rest on language use, skirt wearing/length, love of aragula, movie tastes, presence of penis or not, ugly hats, etc.
So … to Masks. Making sudden radical changes in sumptary laws is very difficult in a culture where ‘do your own thing, be your own person’ is ingrained and class-defined, and where rules, conventions, are very strict (ex. nudity, corporate wear, ties, bras..) – conservatism and class divides in appearance are set in stone.. it becomes hard to add or subtract, change.
Wearing a mask, under orders, removes the last vestiges of one’s identity, the face and its expression; implies being muzzled, shut off, not allowed to speak or claim a public presence. (See Gitmo. Dangerous dogs. Torture.) Plus, if donned willingly, the mask signals hiding oneself for deceptive purposes, or even Satanic intent. No wonder ppl object.
Finally, why should Americans trust, or even roll-yr-eyes listen to the likes of the CDC, Trump, Fauci, local governors, Medicos galore, when all of them sent out superficial junk messages, masks don’t work oh no, or they work but only for med. perso not you, or they do work but not so much, yes we lied for x reasons, some masks are good, now everyone shoud wear them, even a bandanna is great, etc. etc.
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 19 2020 18:28 utc | 16
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