|
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-037
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> In a recent book, Luke Harding, an investigative reporter at The Guardian, described how Mr. Steele had dispatched his “collector” to surreptitiously approach a real estate broker, Sergei Millian, who was a peripheral figure in the Trump/Russia saga. “Millian spoke at length and privately to this person, believing him or her to be trustworthy — a kindred soul,” Mr. Harding wrote.
But the trouble for Mr. Harding, who is close to both Mr. Steele and Mr. Simpson, was that he wrote those lines before the release of the F.B.I. interview of Mr. Danchenko.
In the interview, the collector said that he and Mr. Millian might have spoken briefly over the phone, but that the two had never met.
Mr. Harding did not respond to requests for comment. <
—
Other issues:
Another CDC Covid-19 Screw up:
Use as open thread …
Corpses Disposed in India’s Rivers, Causing Environmental Experts Grave Concern
Cannot fake that.
The pandemic is real.
–//–
The West has created an imaginary, evil China for its people to hate and fear – and it’s working
Irrelevant how much the Western peoples hate China. China is not Iran, Afghanistan, Russia or some other random Third World country, it is above the pay grade of Western public opinion.
However, it is true China is not up to the level achieved by the Soviet Union. It still has a military disproportionately weak compared to its economic might. That problem will still take some three or more decades to solve, but it is being worked on.
–//–
After Years of Quiet, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Exploded. Why Now?
This headline by the NYT (in the upper right corner of the Home Page) reflects the West’s frustration with Israel. In the first part, they try to tell the reader that the Israeli are waging a war of equals, and not genociding, the Palestinians (and that the USA has nothing to do with it). In the second part, it laments the bad timing by the Israelis, who interrupted their propaganda warfare operation against China on the “Uighur genocide” campaign.
It urges Israel to clean the mess as quick as possible in order for the anti-China propaganda campaign to resume.
–//–
America Is Failing Its Moral Test on Vaccine [NYT Editorial Board]
Can’t lose what you never happened to begin with.
In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, the above statement is literal, as the USA has, so far, exported zero – I repeat, zero (not rounding down) – vaccines so far.
Meanwhile, China has already exported 250 million doses and counting (last time I checked, a week ago) – more than the entire Indian production (India had just exported some 60 million doses).
–//–
Unemployment Pay May Again Require a Job Search. Is It Too Soon?
The inner contradictions of capitalism in plain sight.
On the one side, you have to give people money so they can keep themselves quarantined. On the other side, capitalism requires people to keep working or to keep searching for work in order to pull down wages, thus increasing the rate of surplus value. That’s why conservatives are usually in favor of the Christian charity, that gives only food and shelter, but not cash, to the unemployed, but not of wage raises and unemployment benefits – the fact that you’re paid in cash and not in kind makes all the difference in the world in the capitalist system.
Unemployment benefits only help capitalism is it is low enough just to keep one physically alive and in constant search for jobs. That way, he/she incorporates the industrial reserve army, which brings wages down. The problem with the USA is that wages were already so low before the pandemic that those USD 600.00 checks made 35% (!!) of its recently unemployed recipients richer than when they were employed. Logically, those 35% don’t want to go back to work, as their lives are objectively better now than they were before the pandemic, and that’s why the Republican congressmen and senators are pressuring Biden (as they pressured Trump) to outright extinguish those checks.
P.S.: the top rated commentary in the article (“Great generations of Americans came here 100 years ago…”) by the time I typed this is hilarious, shows the delusion of the average American towards their own system almost perfectly. The other comments are also very funny. The narrative that “there are a lot of jobs available, but no one is skilled enough/wants it” is used by the capitalists every time there’s an economic crisis, just search your favorite newspaper for the years of 1980-1982, 1975 etc. etc. and you’ll see the same bullshit being preached over and over again.
–//–
Israel has chosen a two-tiered society. Violence is the inevitable result.
Talks about apartheid as the only possible synthesis between a Jewish theocratic state and a liberal bourgeois state, which I mentioned in the past two threads about the subject.
As I said before, the system is unstable and is doomed to fail. Either Israel abandons its Zionist project and gives up the idea of being an 100% Jewish state and thus becomes a liberal bourgeois state or it will continue to wither and degenerate until it falls to a civil war.
–//–
China Becomes Second Nation to Land on Mars
It would’ve been the first if not for a providential last grasp effort by NASA, who used the resources it had and didn’t have to pull that off, by a few months.
The tendency, however is clear. NASA will soon cease to exist as we know it and essentially become the State façade of SpaceX. The USA’s space program will then be entirely dependent on the genius of Elon Musk.
–//–
Cuban vaccines (Abdala and Soberana 02) continue advancing on their trials:
Va Abdala, como marca de vida en los brazos de Cuba (+Video)
Posted by: vk | May 16 2021 15:19 utc | 14
Space Force commander sacked after claiming US military is under assault from ‘neo-Marxist’ critical race theory
At this point I think the term “Marxist” has become a generalist term to designate anybody in the left-wing in the USA. I don’t think any American knows what Marxism is anymore, and, frankly, I don’t think they want to know what it is either.
What is interesting, though, is that Lohmeier’s book didn’t need a security review, he being relieved only when he accused the present government of being “Marxist” in a podcast. That means the USG finds it ok when the term “Marxism” is abused in general, but not when used against itself.
My take on these identity movements (Feminism, Black activism, LGBT movement) is this: those movements were strong when they didn’t use any theory and existed strictly as ad hoc political movements, with concrete and very specific (and very achievable) agendas that could be done by the strike of a pen of the POTUS, in a single four-year mandate. However, when they went well beyond their expiring date and started to be absorbed by the system, they tried to make the jump to academia, thus creating a plethora of sociological theories that are not, in general, of any scientific value and just collaborated to endlessly split the movements. Now, with the system itself collapsing (capitalism), they see themselves in a position where they have to occupy the vacuum left by the old Marxist movements of the working class (unions, parties etc.), they’re trying to – in a very grotesque and vulgar manner – trying to absorb and in many cases outright plagiarize, in a dumbed down form, Marx’s theory. But even those “Marxized” forms don’t exist in the USA: they’re more restricted to fringe groups in Latin America or other locations of the Third World.
So, the only conclusion I can take from this is that the alt-right fears the American people will essentially reverse engineer themselves into Marxism, in a convergent evolution historical movement. I don’t think that will happen any time soon, if it ever happens, which leaves me with the much more simple hypothesis that there is a project by the far-right to create some eternal capitalist dystopia based on the nazifascist kernel.
A curiosity: this hypothesis by Lohmeier is identical to the Brazilian military’s. The entire doctrine of the Brazilian military turns around the fact that a communist revolution will happen any time now in Brazil and that, when it comes, it must be crushed by whatever means necessary by the Armed Forces. We joke the Brazilian Armed Forces is the first 100% non-nationalist modern military force in the world. All of this may be related to the infamous School of the Americas. Does anybody here know if Lohmeier taught there?
–//–
‘Voter ID racist, but vaccine ID not a problem?’ Conservative activist Candace Owens asks, amid calls for vaccine passport system
Wait, what?
I don’t think Candace Owens realized the contradiction he stuck herself in with that one.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this whole voter ID thing lies on the fact that the USA, in opposition to most of the rest of the world, doesn’t have a unified (federal) ID system. Americans usually use their driver’s license as their de facto ID (because everybody in the USA has a car and the driver’s license has a photo), but it is not obligatory anywhere unless you’re stopped by a police officer, try to buy adult things (tobacco, alcohol) or something like that. In other words, the American legal structure does not envision any universal, unified ID system and any Law that envisions one is a legal aberration.
That means, if you legalize vaccine IDs, you essentially solve the problem of the voter ID, because there is no authoritative universal/federal ID in the USA: any document with photo is an ID. The Democrats, not being stupid, would surely make the vaccine ID to have photos, so we’re excluding the possibility of photoless vaccine IDs. Also, the same moral about freedom of vaccination can be used about freedom of voter identification (voting is the lifeblood of democracy, plus you would know, before the fact, that every individual without a voter ID voted on nobody, which would be a breach on the concept of secret vote).
So, Candace Owens, by being pro-voter ID, is essentially a pro-vaccine ID, since the vaccine ID would be the voter ID. I don’t think she think that out straight when she spoke that flashy political phrase.
That is, unless she’s explicitly against vaccine ID but pro voter ID – but that would be putting your real intention on the voter ID too much in the open. Everybody and their mothers know the GOP wants to pass those voter ID bills in order to keep the Deep South firmly in their hands.
Posted by: vk | May 16 2021 21:35 utc | 64
|
