I’m very busy right now, but this here needs reading —-
https://armswatch.com/georgia-cover-up-of-deaths-in-3-3-billion-pharmaceutical-project-documents/
I won’t have the vaccine simply becouse lack of trust in the big pharmaceutical company’s. To closely connected to Israel.

Posted by: Mark2 | Jan 3 2021 16:25 utc | 3

New Years Eve in Wuhan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3oIGZNa5ys (9 min)
Fun (if kind of creepy) fact:
Year 2021 in the Buddhist 12 year cyclical calendar system followed in many countries incl. China and Japan,
is the Year of the Cow ( or Ox).
‘Cow’ in Latin is ‘Vacca’
Vacca is the root of the term ‘vaccination’, coined after Jenner discovered that inoculation with COWPOX pustule fluid to be and an effective preventative measure to protect against the spread of deadly smallpox.

Posted by: gm | Jan 3 2021 16:55 utc | 5

Jackrabbit. 1:
There aren’t just 30 Senators, there are 100. So vote for your edification: 11 does not a majority make.
You’ve confused “the real deep state” with a bunch of xenophobic, highly anti-Semitic, gold bugs, some of whom hold some power within US government institutions.
In 2016, Trump’s “wins” of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, and therefore the presidency, were stolen for him by throwing out massive numbers of votes from cities like Detroit and Milwaukee. It didn’t work this time. Why do you think Trump was whining in such a racist manner starting 2AM eastern on Weds morning of election night. So he didn’t “come from behind” to beat Hillary. He faced a terrible candidate, Hillary Clinton, who then had no interest in challenging Trump’s “win” of Michigan.

Posted by: Jay | Jan 3 2021 17:14 utc | 7

I notice that one of the ingredients in the Pfizer vaccine is “2- hexyldecanoate),2-[(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,N-ditetradecylacetamide (ALC-0159)
Would that be the same as below? Here in the Whitney article:
“The mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech contain polyethylene glycol (PEG). 70% of people develop antibodies against this substance. This means that many people can develop allergic, potentially fatal reactions to the vaccination.”
“Let’s summarize:
“The new messenger RNA vaccines could make recipients more susceptible to serious illness or death.
Spike proteins can “trigger an immune reaction” that will “result in infertility.” (Once again, Population control)
The new vaccines contain polyethylene glycol (PEG) which can be “potentially fatal.”
The trials were not long enough to determine whether the vaccines are safe or not. FDA approval does not mean “safe”. Quite the contrary. The FDA is “captured” in the same way the FAA is captured. (Think: Boeing 737 Max)”
So b is the FDA captured in the same way as the FAA?

Posted by: Bluedotterel | Jan 3 2021 17:55 utc | 9

thanks b… lots of interesting observations and links to read.. i appreciate it… sometimes the comment section is really fascinating too, lol…

Posted by: james | Jan 3 2021 18:07 utc | 11

Anther kind of amusing take on Covid times:
https://www.unz.com/rbonomo/the-coronavirus-test-are-you-a-clock-or-an-orange/
“The most important takeaway from the COVID-19 crisis isn’t the science. The ‘science’ depends entirely on one’s politics. Whether to get on with life and take our licks or hunker down and ride it out at home has nothing to do with empirical evidence or peer review; it’s entirely about our ideological leanings and psychological profiles.
Thousands are dying, billions are locked down, business is shuttered; life as we knew it has basically come to a stand still. The clocks and the oranges are in a standoff and the stakes are probably much higher than most realize.
This is not about a pandemic. What we are deciding now is the kind of world we want to live in. The clocks would love us to sit back, follow their sage advice and allow them to usher in a ‘new age’. Sooner or later they will get their way, but are the oranges ready to give in just yet?
So what is it kid? Are you a clock or an orange?”
Myself? I suspect I am a clockworked orange.

Posted by: Bluedotterel | Jan 3 2021 18:23 utc | 13

Circe at #11 has a reading problem that should be noted. My response was the valid outcome of the election cannot be accurately determined without complete and detailed audit. Circe seems to think this supports the occupant of the WH. Circe is not competent to govern my reply or dismiss it as claptrap, nor is Circe balanced enough to draw valid conclusions. I repeat: Circe needs professional help. Advise not responding to TDS tirades from Circe until they start breathing oxygen again and some gets to their grey cells.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Jan 3 2021 18:32 utc | 15

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 3 2021 15:51 utc | 1
The concept of Deep State of Jackrabbit is strange, and I do not see any evidence for it.
There are various influential groups that have somewhat diverse interests and different tools of influence. Most powerful groups are almost equally comfortable with “mainstream” Republicans and “mainstream” Democrats. Trump was somewhat safe choice for them. but too erratic and too polarizing, so Democrats got the bulk of plutocratic support this time. Groups with influence over CIA, FBI etc. wish for an obedient Administration, and they weaken potentially stubborn candidates — FBI weakened both Clinton and Trump, using bogus means in both cases. However, among the faults of Biden and surrounding clique of closest advisers, stubbornness against their priorities is nowhere in evidence. In short, why they should bother to overturn the election even if they could?
OTH, the long term consequences of a drastic turn of events could be highly detrimental IMHO.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 3 2021 18:49 utc | 17

Circe@11 wastes time asking if anyone honestly believes Trump won the election. This is absurd. The vast majority of people who favor Trump are not honest and will not answer such a question honestly. Asking how anyone can rationally believe at the same time the Republicans won down ballot races but the presidential race was fixed has a related problem: People who are irrational are by definition unable to judge their rationality.
The best explanation for the mismatch between poll projections for a higher Democratic party vote with the surprisingly favorable results for Republicans, given that so many of the votes were counted by Republicans, is that local vote suppression, gerrymandering, voter purging, etc., etc., the Republican plan, suppressed the Democratic vote sufficiently to win so many down-ballot races. But on a national level, where vote rigging in all its corrupt but legal ways, is still impossible to coordinate, the presidential race, could not be fixed in the same way. Thus Biden won, by a large enough margin that not even the corrupt and legal ways used by Republicans could fluke out into an Electoral College victory. Trump never won the Electoral College because he was a stable genius, any more than Biden won the Electoral College because he is a criminal genius. That is the insane proposition of the Trump landsliders, after all.
Again, again, again: The people who can falsify the votes are the ones who count the votes. Those were mostly Republicans. Further, on the national level, there is no way to coordinate vote falsification in the fragmented US political system. The national elections, the presidency, is where the genuine will of the population that votes, is most likely to be successfully expressed, instead of suppressed. That’s why the Democrats keep winning popular presidential votes, because they are branded as more left (“socialist” is for shameless liar.) And the people as a whole are more left-wing than the so-called middle classes or the reactionary cranks trained by right-wing petty bourgeois ideologues who ultimately take a paycheck from the owners of this country.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Jan 3 2021 18:58 utc | 19

@ Jackrabbit
If TPTB actually select Trump for another four years, I’ll be shocked. But, yes, it appears the possibility isn’t zero. Your “great leader” scenario is mildly starting to frighten me. I think I prefer Sleepy Joe and Bad Kopmala to ruin, er, run things for a while.

Posted by: oglalla | Jan 3 2021 19:12 utc | 21

Circe @Jan3 18:00 #11

Do you believe Trump won the 2020 Election? YES or NO

This question is impossible to answer and will only serve to spark a partisan battle for the remainder of the thread.

1. The question is not well defined – even Republicans have conceded that Biden won the popular vote.
2. USA is not a democracy and election tampering is a known to occur in USA (in many forms).
3. Answering requires expertise that few possess – not just voting procedures but voting machines and intelligence agency capabilities to hack/subvert them.
   We know the issues that Trump & friends have raised about the election but we don’t have the means to know how valid they may be AND who should decide these issues is another perplexing question (State Supreme Courts? U.S. Supreme Court? Congress?).
4. Any answer is moot. Enough influential people believe that the election was sufficiently flawed that the issue will be raised in Congress in three days. We will get a better understanding at that time.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 3 2021 19:23 utc | 23

Circe@11 Repost with third option “Don’t Care” You may get more responses.

Posted by: TDeL | Jan 3 2021 19:44 utc | 25

Bluedotterel@10
Glycol

Posted by: Digital Spartacus | Jan 3 2021 19:50 utc | 27

Circe @ 11
——— no ———

Posted by: Mark2 | Jan 3 2021 20:28 utc | 29

My next door neighbor is such a great believer in Science, that he says he’s going to ask his doctor for a triple dose of the sars/covid vaccine. It’s such a Good Thing, he thinks, that you can’t get too much of it. True story!

Posted by: groucho | Jan 3 2021 20:31 utc | 31

@Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 3 2021 18:34 utc | 17

“I keep wondering why the China side fails to point out the public/private finance difference in a highly clear public manner?”

It is my impression that China is not about lecturing others or trying to change what other states do with internal policies.
This excerpt from the recent Escobar—Hudson conversation may explain further the Chinese position.
Michael: They’d [Blackstone] like to be able to create Dollars to begin to buy and make loans to real estate; let companies grow, let the real estate market grow and make capital gains.
The way people get wealthy today [under finanance capitalism] isn’t by making an income, it’s been by making a capital gain. Total returns are current income plus the capital gains. As for capital gains each year; the land value gains alone are larger than the whole GDP growth from year to year. So that’s where the money is, that’s where the wealth is.
So, they are after speculative capital gains, they would like to push money into the Chinese stock market and real estate market. See the prices go up and then inflate the prices by buying in and then sell out at the high price. Pull the money out, get a capital gain and let the economy crash, I mean that’s the business plan.
Pepe: Exactly. But Beijing will never allow that.
Michael: Well, here’s the problem right now, they know that Biden is pushing militarily aggressive people in his cabinet. There’s one kind of overhead that China is really trying to avoid and that’s the military overhead because if you spend money on the military, you can’t spend it on the real economy. They’re very worried about the military and they say, how do we deter the Biden administration from actually trying a military adventure in the China sea or elsewhere. They said well, fortunately America is multilayered. They don’t think of America as a group. They realize there’s a layer and they say, who’s going to represent our interests.
 
Well, Blackstone and Wall Street are going to represent their interests. Then I think one of the, Chinese officials last week gave a big speech on this very thing, saying look, our best hope in stopping America’s military adventurism in China is to have Wall Street acting as our support because after all, Wall Street is the main campaign contributor and the president works for the campaign contributors.
 
The politician works for the campaign contributors. They’re in it for the money! So fortunately, we have Wall Street on our side, we’ve got control of the political system and they’re not there to go to war so that helps explain why a month ago they let a wholly owned US banks and bankers in. On the one hand, they don’t like the idea of somebody outside the government creating credit for reasons that the economy doesn’t need. If they kind of needed it, the bank of China would do it. They have no need for foreign currency to come in to make loans in domestic currency, out of China.
 
The only reason that they could do it is number one, it helps meet the world trade organization’s principles and, number two especially during this formative few months of the Biden administration, it helps to have Wall Street saying; we can make a fortune in China, go easy on them and that essentially counters the military hawks in Washington.
transcript @
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/12/a-hard-look-at-rent-and-rent-seeking-with-michael-hudson-pepe-escobar.html

Posted by: suzan | Jan 3 2021 20:41 utc | 33

Jackrabbit, 19:
“Sure, but many of them [Republican Senators] have not said how they would vote. Assuming that only 11 would vote for the proposed commission is misleading.”
More than a major of Senators, some of whom are Republican, have made clear that they will certify Biden’s win on Jan. 6th. No evidence contradicts this, no matter what you choose to rumormonger. Nor do Republicans have some massive Senate majority.
“=
[Me:] You’ve confused “the real deep state” with a bunch of xenophobic, highly anti-Semitic, gold bugs, …
I’m not sure how you arrive at this view. The Democratic Party and Biden are just as Zionist and pro-Empire as the Republicans.”
You’re very confused about what I wrote, even though you quoted me.
“The Deep State is a group that exercises power, not a willy-nilly collection of self-styled patriots.”
The Deep State [of the USA] is many different groups which don’t always see eye to eye.
“This failure followed Bernie’s sheepdogging: he would not attack Hillary on “character issues” (he famously declared: “Enough with your damn emails!”). Bernie’s fake candidacy (he admitted that he was a friend of Hillary’s for 25 years) ensured that she would face Trump (another friend of the Clintons).”
And yet, HRC still had to have her “win” of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primary arranged. Ironically, her “win” involved vote tossing and voter suppression, much akin to what “elected” Trump in 2016.
I see too that you didn’t bother to address Trump’s 2016 loss to HRC, instead pretending to introduce the subject of how a bad a candidate HRC was, BUT that’s something I’d already made clear in my post to which you were responding.
HRC’s emails were only ever an issue to uninformed wingnuts, the private email server from which she ran the State Department is a different matter.

Posted by: Jay | Jan 3 2021 20:54 utc | 35

“Get ready for false side effects” I already have from headlines such as “Man dies of Covid-19” (he was 98 suffered from emphysema and lived in a factory death farm nursing home.)

Posted by: Tom | Jan 3 2021 21:22 utc | 37

Jay @Jan3 20:54 #36
Thanks for responding.
=
More than a major of Senators, some of whom are Republican, have made clear that they will certify Biden’s win on Jan. 6th.
We shall see in three days.
=
You’re very confused about what I wrote …
Ok. Please clarify.
=
The Deep State [of the USA] is many different groups …
Intel/MIC are at the top of the pecking order.
=
… you didn’t bother to address Trump’s 2016 loss to HRC, instead pretending to introduce the subject of how a bad a candidate HRC was …
I did address it. And I didn’t say she was a bad candidate, the trust of my remarks is that she threw the election to Trump.
Why would she do so? Because she’s a team player and Team Deep State’s #1 priority since 2013-14 is to counter the Russia-China Alliance. MAGA was first proposed by Kissinger in a WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014.
=
HRC’s emails were only ever an issue to uninformed wingnuts …
That’s irrelevant as to whether Bernie was a real candidate or not. Real politicians don’t let their opponents off the hook on any issue, real or imagined.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 3 2021 21:35 utc | 39

Correction @Jan3 21:35 40: thrust of my remarks
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 3 2021 21:52 utc | 41

Whose the goat? ‘Sore loser’ Trump? or Corrupt Biden?
For most, “the answer” depends on their own partisan leanings.
But I think that MAGA! is a core part of the strategy to counter Russia and China, not simply a campaign slogan to be discarded. That strategy was first described by Kissinger in a WSJ Op-Ed 10 months before Trump became the MAGA! candidate.
To breathe life into that strategy requires what Trump termed winning. Winning instills confidence and pride. And we’ve seen Trump’s winning abilities in partisan kayfabe: the Democrats feeble/fake “resistance” has resulted in several big wins for Trump: the Russiagate investigation came up empty; Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed despite loud objections; the impeachment trial was a farce; Flynn was found to have been set-up. Then Trump topped it off with a resounding (and very suspicious) “defeat” of Covid-19 via American bio-tech, principally Regeneron and Remdesivir.
Is this glorious streak of MAGA! winning ending? Is that what a Deep State planner would like to see?
I doubt it.
Trump was warning about mail-in ballots in early Summer. And political “war games” were conducted at about the same time:

They met virtually on Zoom, four days over two weeks in June, to hold simulations known in the military and intelligence communities as “war games.”
There were 67 players – many of them high-profile critics of President Donald Trump – including law professors, retired military officers, former senior U.S. officials, political strategists and attorneys.
Instead of mapping out a geopolitical conflict, the group peered ahead to the Nov. 3 election, now less than 90 days away, and explored how the race between Trump and Joe Biden could turn into a post-election crisis.
John Podesta, a former top aide to President Barack Obama and President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, played Biden. Two outspoken Republican critics of Trump, David Frum and Bill Kristol, portrayed the president.
After gaming out various scenarios, the group said its conclusions were “alarming:” In an election taking place amid a pandemic, a recession and rising political polarization, the group found a substantial risk of legal battles, a contested outcome, violent street clashes and even a constitutional impasse.
“We assess with a high degree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape,” the Transition Integrity Project, which organized the “war games,” said in a report this week.

It should be clear that the research and planning for “war games” with 67 players would have begun months before June 2020.
Does anyone think that people like Podesta, Kristol, and Frum have our best interests at heart? As oglalla @Jan3 19:12 #22 notes, the prospect of a Trump win is scary because (as in 2016) it would be arranged for a frightening purpose: to ensure that USA/West continue and extend their global dominance up to and including war.
It has been argued by some at moa that Biden is WORSE than Trump on foreign policy (because his FP is supposedly driven by the Deep State while Trump’s is not). Biden, like Hillary Bush McCain Brennan etc, is a Deep Stater and avowed Zionist. He will not undo anything Trump has done.
The advantage to the Deep State of Trump instead of Biden is that Trump is: 1) a better communicator and 2) closely associated with MAGA! patriots (aka white people). The US military has never forgotten the cardinal lesson of Vietnam: the war was lost on the homefront. And it wasn’t hippies or marches in support of black civil rights protesters that caused that, it was the disillusionment of the white middle-class.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 4 2021 0:12 utc | 43

PEG polyethylene glycol is one of two major ingredients used as a solvent in ejuice or vape juice .
It and the other major ingredient Vegetable Glycerin are used by ejuice manufacturers because not only are they chemically suitable, a stable solvent, both have been approved food additives for decades and have been tested many times by the FDA and the EU’s food safety authority. I and millions of others have been ingesting PEG for years & have never seen or heard of anyone having an allergic reaction.
If anaphylaxis was even a small % response to PEG, vapers would be dropping like flies, especially so since vapers use the stuff regularly every day. The notion that a couple of small doses of that stuff will kill is laughable.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jan 4 2021 0:27 utc | 45

From Failedevolution blogspot.

etc., etc.,

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 4 2021 0:29 utc | 47

Well I pooped that post 🙂
Failedevolution blogspot reports Palantir porks the Greeks.

With the permission of the Greek PM – who is taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic – Palantir is harvesting and analyzing data from Greek citizens. The government is collecting data today that may be proved useful tomorrow, as the scenario of a general election before the normal completion of Mitsotakis’ administration term in 2023, is becoming more and more probable.
As Documento notes, Palantir collaborated with Cambridge Analytica, using psychometric methods and algorithms to analyze specific Facebook data from millions of users.
Based on the specific data analysis, the company categorized Facebook users in various groups with common characteristics. One of the groups was named “the gullible”. The next stage was to manipulate and influence this group. People of this group had been “bombarded” with specific messages, fake news, videos etc. As a result of the whole operation, many American citizens voted for Trump, while many British citizens voted for Brexit…
…So, it’s quite probable that New Democracy and Mitsotakis had already received some special advice from Palantir to manipulate voters and use the big media to spread the propaganda, before the 2019 general election. As Documento reports, Mitsotakis had already met with Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, during a Bilderberg Group meeting in the summer of 2018.

etc., etc.,

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 4 2021 0:35 utc | 49

Jackrabbit@45 I think is wrong in accepting the US military’s “stab in the back” theory. The US army was defeated in every sense but body counts, a foolish attempt at a quantitative metric. It was not the middle class turning against the war that really caused the problems, it was the collapse of soldier morale, which was due to the inability to defeat the Vietnamese. Soldiers were refusing orders and even killing officers! That was vastly more important than “middle class” white people “turning” against the war. Johnson purged himself but Nixon still won the election of 1968, so the turning is rather overstated. No, the real response of the military was to ditch conscription and got to an all volunteer army, i.e., de facto mercenary (but with a strong underpinning of Christian bigotry, especially among the officer caste.) The apologists can whine about how the Tet offensive was a net loss for the Vietnamese but the fact was that they were already supposed to be beaten. The school that says Tet was the real turning point where the body counts magically added up enough to win ignore the state of troop morale, which was defeated. The military can’t fail, but can only *be failed* by sissy civilians is just more US militarism, I think.
c1ue@46 is correct that people voting (by mail in ballots) is why Trump lost so big in the vote, so big even the Republicans’ vote suppression and the anti-democratic structure of the Electoral College couldn’t turn that loser into a two-term president. And the position that somehow people being able to vote easily is corruption and evil is reflex elitism, anti-democratic (small d democracy, not anti-Democratic Party. Vicious reactionaries hate the idea of ordinary people voting en masse, that’s why they work so hard to legally limit voting to two parties bought and paid for by the donor class.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Jan 4 2021 0:45 utc | 51

Jackrabbit #45
Another scenario I consider is that the permanent state preferred Trump to win in 2016 as they could test his blatant nationalism and MAGA concept to push the overton window waaayyy to the right and simultaneously poke Russia, China, Iran to test their malleability in the face of provocation. They were gaming in real time to assess their next strategy which was to return the D party (without Clinton) to the Presidency and Congress in 2020 being certain that their return would be further beneficial to wage aggression across the globe and enrich the Banks and MIC. I say – without Clinton – as they likely found her too big for her boots or damaged goods beyond redemption and therefore unfit for their safe use.
It keeps solid perimeters around the two party system
It further drives the trigger happy rightist cells to better organise and maintain their rage
It binds the left and reinforces the permanent state’s manipulation of the fringe such as the Democratic Socialist party
It enlarges the use of wedge politics to suppress any chance of progressive legislation in a crisis
That way they maintain their capacity to steer both parties and the legislative agenda behind their opaque wall.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 4 2021 0:56 utc | 53

Why is it so difficult to answer a question with a simple YES or NO?
Either you believe Trump won the election or you believe he lost.
Why are you all so chicken (with the exception of Mark2) to state where you stand on this? Yes Trump won; No, he lost. Either he won or he lost! There is no middle ground or grey area on this. So which is it?
On Wednesday, (maybe the following day for Europe), I know b will have a thread on the Election results subject, because it will be the No.1 issue all day in Congress and in the news front and centre. Might as well come clean now on where you stand on this.
Saker believes the election was stolen from Trump, ergo, believes Trump won. His readers expressed their view. Why can he express it and you can’t?
Do you believe Trump won the Election? And don’t give me: it doesn’t matter. There’s a winner and a loser…period. Whether it matters who won is another topic for a different discussion.
From all you’ve witnessed and read, do you believe Trump won the election?

Posted by: Circe | Jan 4 2021 1:14 utc | 55

I just want to know one thing from you: Do you honestly believe Trump won the Election?
And then explain why Republicans have no problem with the results down the ballot?
It’s okay to clamor and protest for more social justice, but what is not okay is to overturn a process where people actually exercised their will and in numbers historically unprecedented.
If you destroy fact with fiction and eliminate the will of 81,000,000 people; 7 Million more than Trump got, then does anything else matter?
Don’t skirt the question: Do you believe Trump won the election?
I’ll answer with numbers…..
It is acknowledged that Trump got 74 million votes.
There were 156 million voters registered….
About 62% voted… == 97 million voted.
That leaves 23 million for Biden….
This accords with the number of people at his rallies compared to those attending Trump’s rallies….
Then there is the not too small issue of the 1998 Unanimous Supreme Court Decision in the Louisiana case…
“The election must occur on one day… It ends at midnight on that day”
Given that is the case… all votes not counted by midnight on 3 Nov should have been discarded… or the vote nullified…
That requirement alone would give PA, WI, GA, AZ, to Trump because he was leading in those states prior to midnight. Were this to happen Trump would win hands down….
So, to answer your question…. Trump won… Biden lost…
But to go further… Putting Biden in the Oval Office represents a loss for the electorate. Biden is corrupt, his entire career has been one trying to eliminate Social Security and other entitlement programs including Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and AFDC. Biden is for all intents and purposes, in-competent.
The democrats should have gone with Vermont Senator Sanders… Who is not a Marxist, by any measure.
I’d much prefer Sanders… as would almost all US Citizens….
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Jan 4 2021 2:47 utc | 57

Note: since the Chinese working class’ average wage has been doubling in real terms every ten years since the CPC took over, I’m assuming you’re talking about the victimization of the American working class only (specially, but not only, the white working class from the Rust Belt).
Some math…..
From US Census Data…
Total US Population = 331,002,651
Average US Per Capita Income (USD 2019) = $35,977.
From World Odometer
Population of China = 1,442,055,798
Chinese Per Capita Income (USD – 2020) = $10,276
US Population X Per Cap Income = 11.9 USD$(trillions) = 54% of US – GDP
PRC population X Per Cap Income = 14.8 USD$(trillions) = 96% of PRC – GDP
By this metric……
Chinese Main Street GDP is 124% of USA Main Street GDP
This means that 46% of US GDP consists of financial manipulation in the FIRE sector, while the FIRE sector in China is only 4% of the Chinese economy.
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Jan 4 2021 3:05 utc | 59

Also, the CPC has shown that it cares about the citizens of China
To add to this, Vijay Prashad has noted that there is much more civic duty in China (and other socialist countries) as well. China’s remarkable response to COVID relied not just on competence of the government but also of citizens who volunteered at local level to help with all manner of tasks such as contract tracing, buying groceries for neighbors, helping the elderly, & etc. to make the brief quarantine be effective. Ironically in the US, the citizens passively waited for government to come to their rescue. Socialism, as it turns out, cultivates civic responsibility, initiative, and independence in people.

Posted by: nkvd | Jan 4 2021 3:21 utc | 61

So Pelosi is voted in as speaker of the house, which means the famous faux-socialist “Squad” supported her at the expense of leveraging a floor vote on Medicare For All.
These total poseurs successfully ignored the #ForceTheVote groundswell, and completely discredited themselves as any kind of left wing, if those terms even mean anything anymore (I don’t use them personally but I accept that the words are still in common currency).
Many thanks to uncle tungsten for bringing all this to our attention – I wouldn’t have known otherwise, and I suppose that most of the country are completely unaware of what just happened. But YouTube comedians and other independent journalists are aware, and maybe there will be ways to shame these Squaddies when their own votes come up someday.
Well done, Jimmy Dore – citizen activism at its finest and most authentic.
I really liked what guest comedian Ron Placone said in a kind of exasperated despair on Jimmy’s show:

“It’s not an unreasonable ask. If asking for a vote on healthcare during a pandemic is a bridge too far, then, what’s the point of even being a country?”

Amen.

Posted by: Grieved | Jan 4 2021 3:45 utc | 63

Jackrabbit:
“… you didn’t bother to address Trump’s 2016 loss to HRC, instead pretending to introduce the subject of how a bad a candidate HRC was …
I did address it. And I didn’t say she was a bad candidate, the trust of my remarks is that she threw the election to Trump.”
Changing what you said afterward doesn’t vitiate the fact that you didn’t address HRC’s win of the general election in 2016.
There is no evidence HRC threw the election to Trump.
There’s evidence that she believed her marketing, that she was a strong candidate, and the Obama marketing that the US economy was good for most.
Important fact about HRC’s election wins. She’s had exactly 2 real ones. And neither was a great challenge. She was gifted the 2000 New York State Democratic Party’s nomination for Senate–there was no primary–and ran in the general election against a weak candidate, who had replaced Rudy Giuliani. Then HRC faced no serious challenge to her 2006 re-election as Senator. But someone that next to no one had heard of beat her in the 2008 primary race. She’s not very bright and not a good campaigner.
“HRC’s emails were only ever an issue to uninformed wingnuts …
That’s irrelevant as to whether Bernie was a real candidate or not. Real politicians don’t let their opponents off the hook on any issue, real or imagined.”
In the 2016 primary, Sanders campaigned on the issues, the emails weren’t an issue to anyone but uninformed wingnuts. The email server, like HRC’s speeches to GS, were an issue.

Posted by: Jay | Jan 4 2021 4:15 utc | 65

Posted by: Digital Spartacus | Jan 3 2021 19:50 utc | 28
Thanks for the clarifying link, and
Posted by: Debsisdead | Jan 4 2021 0:27 utc | 47
Thanks for for muddying it up again.
Maybe in a couple of weeks or so, I can get a break and do some research myself. I simply don’t trust Pfizer due to its corporate crime record: testing drugs illegally on African children, defective heart valves, Heart attacks with arthritis drugs, and on and on and on. And Pfizer is one of the more ethical Big Pharma Corps! I don’t know if people are more anti-vaccine as anti-big pharma vaccine.

Posted by: Bluedotterel | Jan 4 2021 4:45 utc | 67

YES 2 NO 3
Remember this all you hiding from this question of whether you believe Trump won the election?:
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. quote by Dante or JFK
I actually believe your deliberate ambiguity represents the cowardice that coexists with duplicity.
Although Uncle T. is in the NO group, he sounds like he wishes he were in the YES group with those sour grapes he just delivered.
Trump was a depraved individual whose sanctions hurts millions of people in Iran, Venezuela, Syria and Cuba, not to mention funding war crimes in Yemen and trying to undo the ACA domestically. But, strangely he doesn’t rail against that, he just spits vile hate against Biden who isn’t even in power yet.
I see the M4A propaganda stunt failed. Good. AOC was right. The timing of this with the power of Congress at stake with two Senate races in a Conservative leaning state like Georgia was self-sabotage. Once the Dems take the Senate, AOC and Sanders can lead that effort, and not some cynical clown with a megaphone who has trouble saying one bad thing about Trump and who just wants to blow up the Left to get attention.

Posted by: Circe | Jan 4 2021 5:09 utc | 69

@ Circe 11
NO Trump did not ‘win’ the election.
Neither did Sleepy Joe ‘win.’ These days candidates don’t win, incumbents loose, such is the contempt most people hold for the corrupt, bland and uninspiring choices on offer, particularly in the major English speaking countries. In Australia, for example, voting is compulsory, probably for the reasons above. It doesn’t matter who you vote for… A politician always gets in.
That’s why we need real freedom of speech and a real free media. Freedom of speech is indivisible…. you either have it or you don’t.

Posted by: Paul | Jan 4 2021 5:40 utc | 71

Posted by: Lemming | Jan 4 2021 5:47 utc | 77
The current term “globalization” was originated by Ted Levitt in an article in the Harvard Business Review in the 80s and taken up by the Reaganites to push for offshoring of factories to countries with fewer workers rights and environmental concerns. He edited the magazine and was a professor at Harvard Business School. Those “weirdos” who championed the term were the corporate and financial behemoths that preferred it as a euphemism for “economic imperialism”

Posted by: Bluedotterel | Jan 4 2021 6:04 utc | 73

@ james, @ jen
It’s been a year since I bothered interacting with our resident DNC zealot. Since at times I felt more “on the same wavelength”, I figured I’d try to communicate. Oh well…

Posted by: oglalla | Jan 4 2021 6:20 utc | 75

@77 lemming
You are not bright.
Tell me a better term than “globalist” for nationals who are titans of industry who betray their fellow nationals in the labor force by looking outside their own nation?
Yeah, didn’t think you COULD come up with a better term because, guess what, it is a term with great merit. And yes, we are currently in the death throes of the globalist epoch.
Deal with it.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 6:34 utc | 77

As I have mentioned to vk before, the pure binary set-up of capitalism/marxism is smashed and broken upon the rock of nationalism.
For vk’s fantasy of marxism to ever occur, the world would have to dispense with the idea of nation.
Does anyone see this happening in the short term? Me neither.
Long term?
Me neither.
Globalists are merely good at outrunning pitchforks…for a while.
But the nation wants what it wants and will not be denied. I eagerly await the spillage of blood in the metaphorical sense which will signify the beginning of a new epoch.
Read the old testament and the tower of babel to know what happens when men seek glory beyond the borders of their own nation. It’s there in black and white.
And it is the same reason why us Americans can’t stand Europeans and James (a stand-in for a garden variety Canadians). And vice versa. No offense.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 6:46 utc | 79

@ Dr. George W Oprisko | Jan 4 2021 2:47 utc | 61
Comment 269 on OT 2020 – 103 copied here:
@ Circe | Jan 3 2021 14:34 utc | 267
Dearest Circe,
You seem to have lost all rationality in your commentary, being subsumed with overwhelming emotional political attachments. You do not allow others their political choices, just as a precocious kindergartener just learning social behaviour.
The answer you demand does not require support of your favourite evil to be answered. What answers your demand is: Has the election been conducted in a fair and legal manner? With numerous sworn affidavits as well as certified malfunction of vote counting from programming on a widely used voting machine provider requiring a close and complete audit everywhere that machine and program were used to establish veracity of the recorded vote in those districts and states. Until these are done, no result can effectively be certified. Don’t make a fool of yourself further by insisting on your narrow demands of supporting one candidate over your preferred emotional choice. You do need professional help for a TDS recovery program.
Yours is a symptom of a generation who have lost the necessary skills and ability to enter into functional communication, the ability to negotiate and ultimately enter into agreement with others; it is based on moral absolutes, non-negotiable, imperatives. Such cost the generations coming of age in the 1960’s and ’70’s their claims for revision of national policies. Your path will not prevail any more than that of antiwar hippies did against ‘law and order’ and ‘moral majority’. Don’t continue coding yourself otherwise. Please grow up before your numbered days – you just might enjoy the views of adults.
Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Jan 3 2021 16:38 utc | 269
It is certainly possible to have a republic without public elections – see Venetian Republic where the mercantile class held power as one example or the city-states of Italy, but it is impossible to have a democracy without a secure process of election that is trusted by the designated electorate. Not to overlook the fact that (near) universal suffrage does not a democracy make, only a widespread citizenry within a political institution, even monarchies can claim to be democracies FFS, so bizarrely construed has the language become. Once the trust in the election process is destroyed, like the Humpty egg on the wall, reconstruction is near impossible. Circe has been delusional for some time. Circe decided I was a supporter of DJT from the copied material above that doesn’t even contain the president’s name. Circe cannot respect anything but Circe’s POV. Circe will receive the respect Circe shows others, at least from me.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Jan 4 2021 6:47 utc | 81

@87 lemming
What does that make the Chinese then to be able to play the capitalist game better? Marxists?
Go read some more. And THINK.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 6:56 utc | 83

@ debs
Thanks. I’ve been around a while but probably only the past 7 years. While I’m addressing you possibly for the first time, I should mention I enjoy reading your posts!
@ bemildred
Thanks for chiming in on my question to the group in a recent thread.
…
Happy 2021 to all of you. You people continue to educate me. Thank you!

Posted by: oglalla | Jan 4 2021 7:01 utc | 85

Debsisdead @Jan4 6:37 #83
Just accept you got it wrong bunny and move on – learn from it don’t try to hide it.
I made the point that MAGA Trump would be the logical choice as winner if the Deep State is moving to a war footing against Russia, China, and Iran. And I have described why that is so.
The “landslide” prediction was based NOT on what I want to see but my analysis of Deep State priorities. And many Trump supporters (NB I am not a Trump supporter!) believe that Trump did win by a landslide (see Dr. George W Oprisko @Jan4 2:47 #61 for an example).
So what exactly do you have an issue with?
=
The idea that the amerikan elite is comprised of 100% like-minded supporters of a one track mind monolithic organisation is what got you into this mess bunny.
You are mischaracterizing my view. I believe that US intelligence and MIC were motivated to pull rank/take the reins due to the threat posed by the Russia-China alliance. A threat that was belatedly recognized in 2013-14 when Russia stood up to USA in Syria and Ukraine. Before that, it was assumed that Russia would eventually join with the West and China would be isolated.
Its funny that some commenters here argue that USA/Empire is falling behind but seem to expect that the US power elite will not act to prevent that from happening despite evidence that they are indeed doing so.
Isn’t it clear by now that USA is not trying to reach a rapport with Russia and China? They are gradually eliminating trade ties with Empire adversaries and are preparing for war with a big military build-up, discarding arms control treaties, militarizing space, and breath-taking belligerence like 1) reneging on NK peace treaty; 2) occupying Syrian oil fields; 3) snubbing the UN to support Israel; 3) assassinating Gen. Soleimani; 4) seizing Venezuelan State assets; and I would add 5) the Beirut port explosion – a 911-like event for Lebanon that has effectively sidelined Hezbollah as a political force.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 4 2021 7:24 utc | 87

Posted by: oglalla | Jan 4 2021 7:01 utc | 90
Happy 2021 to you too, and to all of the barflies, whatever their persuasion!

Posted by: Lemming | Jan 4 2021 7:28 utc | 89

@ NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 6:34 utc | 82
Tell me a better term than “globalist” for nationals who are titans of industry who betray their fellow nationals in the labor force by looking outside their own nation?
A term of rather recent vintage is Labour arbitrage that is substituting less costly labour for higher costing labour. The driving motive for all offshoring or externalising labour resources from the home marketplace. Walmart made billions doing this as does Amazon.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Jan 4 2021 7:47 utc | 91

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 7:35 utc | 95
See, that’s what decades of propaganda in the US managed to do to american discourse.
Would you describe North Korea as a communist/marxist state? yet they are ferociously nationalistic. The whole concept of Juche is very close to some of Trump’s main talking points (produce in your country as much as possible, trade but don’t become dependent), and you just have to listen to their TV bulletins and public declarations.
Would you describe Cuba as a communist/marxist state? yet they also are very proud of their nation, and they are practicing Catholics.
Same with China. Describing them as “nationalistic” is irrelevant to the fact they are a sovereign communist country with Marxism as their founding principles. Nationalism is not an economic system, it’s something any sovereign country experiences.
The USA, being the quintessential capitalist state (or cartel of corporations, really), has problems with sovereignty. Nothing new under the sun.

Posted by: Lemming | Jan 4 2021 8:04 utc | 93

@82 and @98 Nemesis Calling and Lemming
I agree with Lemming’s position on this. And I think Nemesis Calling is wrong about what the term “Globalist” implies. If a “nationalist” is someone who’s loyal to a nation, then isn’t a “globalist” someone who is loyal to the whole globe? Humanity today has many massive problems that are extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to deal with on a purely national basis. Nuclear weapons, global climate change, pandemic diseases, the potential threats and benefits of real artificial intelligence, the extinction of so many species, controlling multinational corporations, the threat of mass starvation, global inequality… these are all problems which seem to many people to need the whole human species, or the whole globe, working together to address them. I think the major reason why many capitalists started calling themselves “globalists” back in the 1980’s was because they saw this was an idea which was becoming increasingly popular, and they wanted to try and coopt it for their own benefit.
The trouble was that the CEO’s who decided it would be personally profitable for them to ship their companies jobs to low wage countries were not “real” globalists. If they had really understood what the decisions they were making would do to their countries, or even to the corporations they were responsible to their shareholders for managing, they might be accused of being frauds or even traitors. But they probably didn’t understand, so it’s probably more accurate to just call them parts of a greedy and shortsighted elite, which was far too arrogant to realize how countries like China would be able to exploit their shortsighted folly. They thought they were being so clever about their plans to exploit the Chinese. But the irony is that a major reason why they underestimated the Chinese is that they didn’t understand that the fact that the Chinese were Marxists meant that the Chinese had a different and in some ways better understanding of how Capitalism worked than they did. They never dreamed that the Chinese would be able to make Lenin’s prediction that capitalists would sell them the rope they needed to hang capitalism come true.

Posted by: Fnord13 | Jan 4 2021 8:44 utc | 95

@Stonebird | Jan 3 2021 18:21 utc | 13

This is what to watch on monday.
Assange will be told (and we will learn) whether one of the foundations of western society, “freedom of speech”, is to be kept on a leash.

There will be live coverage from 11:00 UT at
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/01/03/watch-cn-live-new-episode-judgement-day/
I expect only the very worst from these criminals, but would like to be surprised.

Posted by: Norwegian | Jan 4 2021 9:03 utc | 97

Thank you b for the SCMP link on EU China negotiations. I see Xerxes Biden has been told to flip the digit and commence blathering again:

US President-elect Joe Biden called for a “coordinated approach” with the European Union against China on Wednesday, shortly after Brussels and Beijing finished negotiations aimed at concluding a landmark investment pact
.
“The Biden-Harris administration looks forward to consulting with the EU on a coordinated approach to China’s unfair economic practices and other important challenges,” said a transition team official, who added that further comment about the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)
would not be appropriate before Biden and Kamala Harris take office on January 20.
With commitments on market access, state subsidies and adherence to global labour standards, the EU accord is meant to address many of the concerns that human rights activists and industry associations have criticised China about. It aims to replace more than two dozen bilateral investment treaties between the alliance’s 27 member states and China, according to EU policy explanations.

Many USAi human rights activists and trade unions I know of are vehement in their criticism of USAi ignoring calls of labour unions for a living wage, persistent calls of millions of Americans for Medicare for All, failed Congressional will to value the human rights and needs of Americans in a pandemic, the vicious assault on press freedom and the coercion and kidnapping of Corporate directors for no crime other that competition.
The clown cart Biden administration seems like it is about to fart into a bottle again.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 4 2021 10:11 utc | 99