“What Biden’s Top China Theorist Gets Wrong” calls for an article entitled “What the author of ‘What Biden’s Top China Theorist Gets Wrong’ got wrong.”
American propaganda has become so engrained in the Washington narrative that nobody understands it is propaganda anymore.

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Oct 10 2021 15:31 utc | 3

Thanks b, for your efforts. Re Bellingcat – thanks for that Gray Zone article – it’s good to peel back the layers of ‘honest brokers’ to see the rot that permeates everything Empire touches.
Re food production etc…. it’s too bad things like Covid (purposely) divide us as we slouch toward a Billionaire’s dystopia that makes the work of Orwell and Huxley look tame.
You will own nothing. Especially not your mind.

Posted by: gottlieb | Oct 10 2021 15:34 utc | 5

thanks b..

Posted by: james | Oct 10 2021 15:39 utc | 7

Interesting read by Tom Luongo.

There is no Agenda 2030 on the horizon if Germans freeze to death in their homes or get decimated by COVID-9/11 because they can’t afford to heat their homes.
This will crush France and Macron, overthrow Davos at the mid-terms here in the states and break the European Union in the process.
Germany is the lynchpin to the entire Davos edifice. Without a compliant and beaten Germany there is no further Great Reset. A Germany that breaks from the euro becomes a Germany that realigns with Russia and Eastern Europe. It’s a Germany no longer hell bent on internal European mercantilism and the establishment of the Fourth Reich through the EUSSR.
The German people keep asking for that policy to end but aren’t given the options by their leadership to make that happen. Then again, they keep giving their leadership just enough power to forestall their having to make a real decision. That decision is coming at them, fast.
As it is everyone across the West in various guises.
So, as as Powell under extreme pressure to go full MMT retard with five little basis points, Putin, with a few million BTUs of gas, is forcing open fault lines in the aristocracy that thinks it deserves to run the world. Together, if they simply sit back and continue to do nothing, can bring down the whole rotten edifice.

European Energy Crisis — And is That Gas You Think You’re Burning?

Posted by: Down South | Oct 10 2021 16:00 utc | 9

went and looked at that shitty right wing rag – the national post which you linked to in the covid article, to see what stupid headlines they had… they didn’t disappoint! it’s why i never read that paper!
top headline –
‘No illusions:’ Taiwan president says country refuses to bow to China

Posted by: james | Oct 10 2021 16:16 utc | 11

I am concerned about the inclusion of Mahan Ghafari’s research on the basis that it is a preprint and hasn’t been peer reviewed and is not balanced with preprints that do not support the pro-Covid-19 narrative. Also, I find the estimates questionable and alarmist and the research emanates from Oxford rather than an Iranian institute. Ghafari’s research, if accepted, is, by implication, damning of Iran and the help they received from, I believe, both Russia and China
Regardless, this propaganda has been going on for quite a while, see Excess deaths associated with the Iranian COVID-19 epidemic: a province-level analysis (also authored by Mahan Ghafari, dated December 2020 on Researchgate.net) which makes much the same points. However, in this particular report I am struck by this comment:
“We also detected unexpectedly high levels of excess mortality during fall 2019 (from 23 September to 21 December 2019) across 18 provinces. Our findings suggest that this spike cannot be a result of an early cryptic transmission of COVID-19 across the country and is also inconsistent with the molecular phylogenetics estimates for the start of the pandemic and its arrival to Iran. However, in the absence of appropriate surveillance data for detecting severe acute respiratory infections we were unable to make a determination as to what caused the spike in fall 2019.”
So the excess deaths from 23rd September to 21st December 2019 are nothing to do with Covid-19 whereas the excess deaths from 22nd December 2019 are due to Covid-19. Talk about having your cake and eating it!

Posted by: ADKC | Oct 10 2021 16:29 utc | 13

Tsai’s ‘Double Ten’ speech is a carefully choreographed performance: Global Times editorial
Tsai’s Double Ten speech a political farce: Secessionist DPP cannot abduct will of 23 million Taiwan compatriots
The GT Ed is correct in calling Tsai’s speech “a farce”. As a historian, there’s one piece of information that gives it away: that the speech was done in an air force base (in Hsinchu – this information later mysteriously vanished from the media, and only appears on Google cached versions). If Tsai – and, therefore, the DPP – had the unconditional support of the Taiwanese population, she would’ve made the speech on “national” (i.e. provincial) television, preferably from a well-known and public and crowded place, so as to give morale and amp up the masses for total war.
But since she gave the speech in a controlled and closed place (an air force base), that means a combination of these two factors: 1) she can’t fathom the entire Taiwanese population fully mobilizing for a total war against China, therefore she’s just giving the usual call for mobilization of the professional military personnel and/or 2) she’s (therefore also the DPP) not so popular with the Taiwanese population as the Western media portraits to be. Sure, the DPP is a major party in Taiwan, but it probably is not the 97% popular support party the CPC is. In this second factor also falls the expectation of “America is coming to save the day”, because, is she’s counting with a foreign empire to serve as her benefactor, it is implied she doesn’t have even close to enough popular support in the island province.
Another factor that indicates she’s a farce is the fact that her most recent interview (the one she used the adjective “Western” to describe Taiwan) was published in the rarefied, elitist and specialized magazine Foreign Affairs – not in a major opinion-making mass newspaper in the USA like the NYT or the WaPo. Well, if she – and the American elite – thought her position would be so popular with the American population in general, her interview would be published and widely talked upon by those public-opinion-maker newspapers. No American (except if you are from the political elite) reads Foreign Affairs.
–//–
No time for US’ James Bond theatrics – let’s talk recoupling, China’s envoy Qin Gang says
Envoy Qin is correct. The fact is: the West has become so good on propaganda warfare (polished by decades of Cold War) that they started to believe themselves in their own propaganda. As a result, it seems their approach to foreign policy came directly from a Hollywood movie or tv series.
–//–
India military learned nothing from last year’s clash: observers
Speaking of farces, India is probably the greatest farce of capitalism in the 21st Century.
China started to develop its Western provinces as a natural consequence of socialist development. There is a village on the Chinese side of the border in that region, which started to be developed. The Indians, probably to avoid envy from their side of the border, made an incursion to the Chinese side of the border in order to try to trigger some kind of war in order to both stop Chinese socialist development in its most poor and isolated regions and to, maybe, start a war to conquer the entire Tibetan Plateau.
This bizarre plan – clearly made out of desperation – obviously didn’t work, even the USA not taking India’s side on this.
–//–
The collapse of First World capitalism:
Life expectancy gap in England ‘a growing chasm’ exacerbated by Covid
The West has no one to feed: it is waiting for salvation from Russia, by Valery Mikhailov, for Ria Novosti
Empty shelves across the UK amid reports one in three lorries on roads are empty
For the first time in History, America’s ‘middle class’ now holds a smaller share of wealth than the top 1%
Just one observation on the EU gas fiasco: when I talked about the Green Party in this blog some weeks ago, I had a theory that Baerbock had to improvise her anti-NS-2 narrative with an 11th-hour interpolation in order to save face at the gates of the elections. Now, observing the what the EU itself is talking and also the USA, I think I was proved right: those motherfuckers simply didn’t know a gas price spike could happen at all; their team of “experts” and political geniuses were completely blindsided by this. Russia has them by the balls now.
–//–
Meanwhile, far from the kabuki that is American domestic politics, capitalism continues to be capitalism:
Coca-Cola bottler invests 900 mln yuan in China’s Henan
You know those op-eds in the NYT talking about a “labor crunch” and a wages rise in the USA? That’s Keynesian bullshit.
The American successful companies know where the good labor power and good infrastructure and governance are. They’re not willing to throw some dozen billions down the drain in some random factory in the Midwest, where infrastructure is shitty and the labor force is meth/heroin-addicted and of low quality and morale.
–//–
Speaking of Keynesians:
Stop the Debt Ceiling Nonsense, NYT Editorial Board
Neoliberalism was already dead (after the humiliation of September 2008). Now, with this NYT-EB, the epitaph finally came out.
The problem isn’t in the fact that Neoliberalism is dead – that’s good news. The problem is that, with neoliberalism’s death, the (Post-)Keynesians (MMTers and friends) think they’ve come back. That’s the dangerous path the USA seems to have chosen, one that will certainly lead to endless decline.
–//–
Xinhua Commentary: Why bearish takes on China’s economy always proven wrong?
The obvious answer to this is that the Western economists are bourgeois, therefore they use capitalist metrics to try to measure a socialist economy.
The other factor is that the West is going through a process that I like to call “imbecilization”, which describes the process where an empire or civilization goes through a path of intellectual degeneration and decline, alongside economic degeneration. This is a normal process in History, and it’s inevitable.

Posted by: vk | Oct 10 2021 17:08 utc | 15

“Creative destruction” is, in capitalism, the birth of a new company from the bankruptcy of a business.
When I look at US and EU policy it seems their goal is the birth of a new political system from the moral bankruptcy of the current ideologies.

Posted by: Passerby | Oct 10 2021 17:24 utc | 17

The review published by Lawfare – “What Biden’s Top China Theorist Gets Wrong” – is a product of The Quincy Institute, which hosts the Responsible Statecraft website, a home for the “realist” school of American foreign policy wonks. Certainly part of the mainstream – I.e. the Institute receives funding from the Iikes of Rockefellers, Ford Foundation and Open Society – the “realists” have had little post-war influence other than being often correct in analysis of the pitfalls of US belligerence. Their position today, a subtext of the review, is that the US should accept the soft-landing out of its now unsustainable hegemonic ambitions offered them by their strategic rivals – a responsible and realistic stance. However, as long as the US can always blunder through its overreach, the realist school will be politely read and ignored in favour of policies which ensure large national security budgets, a situ which has been baked into the US polity since the late 1940s. Hard landing ahead, maybe by end of this decade, and then they’ll try to take everyone else down with the ship.

Posted by: jayc | Oct 10 2021 17:58 utc | 19

“They’re not willing to throw some dozen billions down the drain in some random factory in the Midwest, where infrastructure is shitty and the labor force is meth/heroin-addicted and of low quality and morale.”
vk | Oct 10 2021 17:08 utc | 16
Here we go again. First, thank you again for your great analysis. Here I do a sanity check rather than a fact check of any depth.
How bad is the drug problem in the US Midwest?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/midwest-states
65 of 350
0.1857142857 of the population lives there.
18%
https://www.opioidhelp.com/epidemic/midwest-opioid-abuse/
9,853 of 40,000 =
0.246325 of opioid deaths occur there.
25%
I am the last one to minimize the seriousness of addiction and while there is some truth to this characterization I find it is also overblown.
I would agree there are issues with morale and skills training. The economy is bad which drives these things.
What’s perhaps more revelant is that this belief is fairly common to the detriment of an already struggling region. vk isn’t the only person holding these views.
Empathy is a strength vk. Easy does it friend.

Posted by: David G Horsman | Oct 10 2021 18:50 utc | 21

@ Posted by: David G Horsman | Oct 10 2021 18:50 utc | 22
Relax, man. It’s just an obiter dictum and doesn’t affect my overall argument. This is not a serious scientific forum, just a blog comment section, we can make light-hearted jokes and other less rigorous observations.
–//–
@ Posted by: BM | Oct 10 2021 18:26 utc | 21
Your observation doesn’t make any logical sense. We can make many critiques of Western civilization – but incapacity to gather reliable statistics is not one of them.
The USA (or any other major Western nation, for that matter) has a reliable national/state death certificate system and data collection. For all practical purposes, there’s no reason not to trust these kind of sources. Your argument would be valid up to the end of the 19th Century, but not in 2021.

Posted by: vk | Oct 10 2021 19:09 utc | 23

All the China tough talk must be making the Taliban laugh very hard.
With respect to virus variants… not having confidence in what either side is claiming… biology / science / history say that viruses generally get more contagious but less harmful.

Posted by: Rae | Oct 10 2021 19:52 utc | 25

Chronicles of Democracy.
It is reported that three American Marines, employees of the US Embassy in Moscow, in a Moscow cafe stole a backpack from child psychologist Dmitry Kornilov, who, according to him, came to the capital’s bar in the evening “after a hard day’s work.”
The investigation has a video of how the Americans enter the US Embassy building with a stolen backpack.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that representatives of the US Embassy, who were suspected of stealing a backpack in Moscow, left Russia.
DOUBLE FACEPALM.

Posted by: alaff | Oct 10 2021 20:05 utc | 27

The roots of Trudeau’s embarrassing Venezuela policy
Why is Canada still humiliating itself on the world stage by persisting in its regime change efforts against Venezuela?
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-roots-of-trudeaus-embarrassing-venezuela-policy
Posted by: Canadian Cents | Oct 10 2021 20:00 utc | 27
Trudeau is innovative* in finding ways to humiliate himself, but his policies on Venezuela, China, and I bet on many other foreign issues are not among them. How many folks in Canada care? How many folks abroad are surprised that the country plays a faithful dog (the breed in dispute, Labrador, Foundland? Chihuahua?).

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Oct 10 2021 20:54 utc | 29

“Our establishment news media and ostensible opposition parties never go into any of this. Better to keep the electorate in the dark in our “democracy” that is really a plutocracy.” Canadian Cents @27
There is so much, foreign and domestic, that our establishment news media and ostensible opposition parties never go into. Very sad.

Posted by: spudski | Oct 10 2021 21:19 utc | 31

I find it remarkable that experts who were unable to foresee today’s natural gas prices are able to forecast when natural gas consumption will peak.

Posted by: Passerby | Oct 10 2021 21:50 utc | 33

@ Posted by: Patroklos | Oct 10 2021 21:36 utc | 33
I think the problem in the West is much deeper than a simple lack of education/teachers. Your example falls more in the case of the problem of “imbecilization”.
The West not only has a problem of absolute lack of intellectualism, but that the intellectuals they’re graduating are simply of inferior quality, and/or outright bad-faith sellout propagandists. And this is not a new phenomenon: it goes back to the High Cold War (1945-1975). If you read, for example, Edward H. Carr’s 14 volume “A History of Soviet Russia”, and then read the (much smaller, even though they claim to have more material) works of his successors (e.g. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Wheatcroft), you can clearly see a steep decline in the quality of the Western intellectuals – in this case, historians. They are clearly intellectually inferior, and clearly more “pamphletary” and ideological than their predecessors.
Just to stay on the example of historians in the West, you can also observe the rise of those Holocaust Institute-sponsored historians who made free-association hodgepodges with clear propaganda goals (e.g. Timothy Snyder). In the case of the Anglo-Saxon historians, this is amplified by the fact that they envisage earning a significant amount of money publishing books for general consumption, so they publish absurd books full of errors and imprecision that would not pass the undergraduate level.
Of course that the process of imbecilization is not genetic. The present generation of Westerners is not literally dumber than its predecessors. In this specific case (of the History of the USSR), I think there are two classes of historians that turned propagandists:
1) cold warriors who consolidated their fame as serious academics during the Cold War for the simple fact they had restricted (or could claim access was restricted) access to Soviet archives, therefore they could comfortably extrapolate “partial” evidence without this fact clashing with scientific method. After the fall of the USSR, they finally had access to the Soviet archives, and those archives disproved their hypotheses, over which they built their entire careers (and fame). They then resorted to pure propaganda and lying by omission. This is clearly the cases of Sheila Fitzpatrick and Wheatcroft (who, coincidentally or not, are both Australian), but you can also observe this phenomenon in “transition” intellectuals – those who got their Ph.D.s in the end of the 1980s – like Roger R. Reese. In simpler terms, a class of historians had to keep they myth of “Communist Darkness” alive after 1991 for the simple reason this was a necessary condition for the continuation of their own academic careers;
2) a new class of postmodern and global history historians. Many of these are obscure historians or not historians that were recycled as the new generation of historians of the Soviet Union (or, to update it to the 21st Century, “Eastern Europe History”). They make the most absurd free associations of evidence, taking them completely out of context, they resort to the most dubious methodologies (like using demographic extrapolations through crappy models of population growth to prove Stalin killed 3.3 million people during the First Five-Year Plan), “comparative history” (i.e. fitting history into a formula by comparing two completely unconnected events of History) and absurd scientific objects deduced from postmodern ideology (e.g. a “history of violence”, “history of exploitation”) to build chimeras that don’t make any sense. In this class I would put the likes of Timothy Snyder and many others.
The process of imbecilization happens in many ways – and it doesn’t happen in all areas of society. Sure, as the economy shrinks, this process becomes more and more bestial and barbaric, but not all areas go through this process. The USA, for example, still thrives on the field of financial innovation.

Posted by: vk | Oct 10 2021 22:20 utc | 35

Swift, relentless Australian justice..(link abc news)
But not enough…(link abc news)
for all…(link abc news)

Posted by: Dim sim | Oct 10 2021 23:06 utc | 37

Trudeau… here to do the dirty jobs against Canadians for his bosses.
This term will be particularly vicious as his rhetoric is increasingly hostile and outright punitive towards the unvaxed.
Next up Victoria Nuland
We will wish for Trudeau! (jk)

Posted by: ld | Oct 11 2021 0:23 utc | 39

chrystia
i wish i drank

Posted by: ld | Oct 11 2021 0:38 utc | 41

Just wondering, how many people feel their individual rights are being violated when they stop at a red light, or a stop sign?
Maybe it’s just a public safety measure, and nothing more.

Posted by: vetinLA | Oct 11 2021 1:08 utc | 43

Dim sim #38
Thank you for those links. Re the second ABC propaganda piece:
It was a deliberate attack on the Syrian Arab Army that was right on the point of decimating the ISIS forces besieging Deir al-Zor. The city had been under siege for years and is the gateway to eastern Syria. The USA was desperate to break the final SAA assault on its ISIS mercenaries as it would enable the Syrian government to cross the Euphrates and regain access to its oil fields and reunite with arab rural inhabitants. This was never a Kurd homeland at that time. The Kurds have occupied it now along with the USA and (I guess) continued Australian illegal air support.
This Australian attack in 2016 and murder of the Syrian Army Soldiers was a war crime and a continuation of the USA crime against humanity. It caused an uproar in Australian political circles although little was public and certainly smothered from media noise.
The context is critical in this incident. There have never been any prosecutions for the illegal US/Australian invasion of Syria.

Two Australian hornets dropped six bombs as part of botched coalition air strikes which killed dozens of Syrian forces earlier this year, a US-led military investigation has confirmed.
In September, coalition aircraft accidently bombed forces aligned to the Syrian government in an operation around the Deir al-Zor military airport in Syria’s east, which was supposed to target fighters in the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.
Russia claims as many as 83 people were killed.
The investigation blamed “unintentional human errors” for the deadly mistake, while Australia’s Defence Department has confirmed two RAAF hornets dropped bombs in the incident.
The department said there will be improved information sharing among coalition partners following the review, but no coalition personnel will be sanctioned.
The strikes came less than a week into a fragile ceasefire aimed at stopping the bloodshed in Syria’s five-year civil war.
Listen to Andrew Greene’s story on AM(Andrew Greene)
The US military and Australia’s Defence Department at the time said the attack was called off after Russia informed the coalition that Syrian military personnel and vehicles may have been hit.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Oct 11 2021 1:29 utc | 45

@45 vk
I thought you were trying to tell us that ivermectin was snake oil, vk?
Now you are willing to admit that a similar drug may be effective but that you want to chastise those that believed in the therapeutics for being capitalists.
What a silly man you are. Always moving the goalposts. If you could, you would probably go back and scrub any prior posts that cast doubt on your ability to read the writing on the wall. You are one of the only people in history to be absolutely devoid of its own dialectical ability. Sad!

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 11 2021 1:59 utc | 47

@ Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 11 2021 1:59 utc | 48
This Merck pill is also a fraud – there’s no reason to take a pill that best case scenario will only give you a 50% chance of surviving.
What I’m saying is that this fraud is USD 700.00 a piece. Which one do you think those charlatans doctors with their astroturf will promote? There’s no doubt promoting the Merck pill is one hell of a shortcut (Ivermectin you have first to prop up its price through speculation, then profit; Merck’s already blessed by the USG itself, so it’s already propped up from the very beginning).

Posted by: vk | Oct 11 2021 3:12 utc | 49

Viruses want to survive. They do not want to kill their host. A virus’ sole mission in existence is to achieve a symbiotic equilibrium with its host where it actually may prove BENEFICIAL to the host in the long run. That is why it is downright foolish to think to ourselves that it is better to simply outrun the virus. I have seen “Fact-Checkers” try to dispel as myth this simple understanding that viruses have an innate desire to proliferate, meaning that their existence is by definition “apologetic.”
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 11 2021 1:47 utc | 47
This is a strange explanation. Equally useful would be to say that volcanoes want to survive, and have no desire to harm humans. The first claim is based on careful study of volcanoes that reveals that all existing volcanoes did survive, many for millions of years… would that be possible without any WILL to survive? The second claim is based on the symptoms of happy volcanoes — the methodology borrowed from studies of snorting horses. Are horses that snort more often happier than non-snorting horses. Indeed, they are. For example, horses allowed more time outside their stables snort more frequently, and, more convincingly, when let to graze on a better pasture, they snort even more frequently, several times per hour.
In this vein, a happy volcano has a steady supply of lava, with enough eruptions to keep it from eroding away. As a result, eruptions are predictable, and people avoid them. Unlike, say Krakatoa, a singularly unhappy volcano that exploded, leaving a hole in its former location. The resulting tsunamis etc. killed a huge number of people, but Krakatoa was not there to realize that.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Oct 11 2021 3:55 utc | 51

There Is Shadow Inflation Taking Place All Around Us

Some companies haven’t been raising prices. Instead, they’ve been cutting back customer services and conveniences, but how should that be measured?

You never heard of this “shadow inflation” for a very simple reason: this is not inflation, but extraction of surplus value, by lowering the cost prices.
There’s only one way to take that into account scientifically, and that is with Marxist theory, more precisely, with Marx’s Theory of Value. But I guess the Americans won’t use that.
P.S.: this is how Japan has been keeping its prices frozen for some decades now. That’s why, in Japan, you have the weird phenomenon where unemployment is very low, there’s no immigration pressure on the labor market, but wages continue to fall. The Japanese capitalist class is simply forcing the Japanese working class to give up stuff for free.
–//–
‘It’s Not Sustainable’: What America’s Port Crisis Looks Like Up Close
Remember 2008, when the American elite told everybody to get used to the “new normal”?
Well, that didn’t last long. Welcome to the “new new normal”.
–//–
@ Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 11 2021 3:22 utc | 51
It is a fraud because the context is absurd. The USA has more than enough vaccines to immunize its entire population, it doesn’t need a 50% effective.

Posted by: vk | Oct 11 2021 4:01 utc | 53

Sometimes Scott Ritter is really insightful. But sometimes he writes just utter nonsense.
So if the Chinese intelligence service finds out the position of every single fighter jet, supply depot etc. on Taiwan the Chinese military will be able to precision-bomb every single fighter jet. supply depot etc. and the Taiwanese military will have to raise the white flag.
Ehem.
Yeah, I mean, technically thats not even wrong. The notion of infinite information dominance on the part of Beijing and infinite intelligence and military incompetence on the part if Taipeh is just a bit optimistic. To put it mildly.

Posted by: m | Oct 11 2021 4:10 utc | 55

@m 56
Fanatic and fact resistant as always, yawn. What Ritter was writing, included

Any surviving Taiwanese units would then be faced with the daunting task of repelling a massive invasion which would likely comprise a combination of amphibious and air assault forces. Assuming enough units survived the pre-assault bombardment to put up a competent defense, they would rapidly run through their on-hand stocks of ammunition, fuel, and food.

To explain it to you: Of course a considerable number of ROC units would possibly survive the first onslaught, at least on Taiwan itself (the Islands close to the Fujian coast would be gone immediately for sure). But, as Ritter rightly explains, those units, already significantly reduced by the initial attacks, would be under sustained attacks over the whole period of combat, before and after PLA soldiers hit the ground of Taiwan. So would be all there supply lines, airfields, radar stations, and other communications.
Outnumbered by a factor of ten at least there would be no chance of survival for the ROC units. A week until all major cities and ports under PRC control, maybe a few weeks to eliminate the remaining pockets of resistance are sound prognoses.
Even US exercises have proven that there is no way, in military terms, to stop that attack. The US may target some PLAN ships outside Taiwan, risking counterattacks on their carrier force which are sitting ducks to hypersonic missiles. Once Taiwan has fallen, the US would not be in the position to launch a counter invasion.
And the question is whether the US would go to war with the PRC over Taiwan.

Posted by: aquadraht | Oct 11 2021 5:58 utc | 57

@11
black bread
source pls
there are no blackouts in GER right now
maybe in the futere

Posted by: Kartoschka | Oct 11 2021 8:40 utc | 59

58@comical aqua
“Outnumbered by a factor of ten at least (…)”
That would be more than 16 million men …

Posted by: m | Oct 11 2021 9:30 utc | 61

oldhippie @ 59
Canadian Medical Association Journal article would have it that covid is overwhelmingly affecting young people with no comorbidities. Also asserting that vaccination offers near perfect protection.
Why would anyone read this? Why do we not laugh?
I guess we don’t have much of a sense of humour, but they, on the other hand, they’re laughing all right…
Though the fireflies laugh in the dusklight
It’s the Festival of Death
Crowd is all laughter, it’s hollow, sadly
They may kill death tonight, but they still live beneath the volcano
Won’t be so many more days
Isn’t much time and it’s gathering darkness, my friend (P. Brown)

Posted by: john | Oct 11 2021 10:00 utc | 63

Sunny Runny Burger #57
Thank you, well said, and after that vent I shall shout you a drink or two.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Oct 11 2021 11:11 utc | 65

@uncle tungsten (46)
The Deir Ezzor bombing in Syria happened at a time when the Syrian Army controlled area there was still an island of government control surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of land where Islamic State and other rebel groups ruled. IS immediately grabbed the opportunity and almost overran the area.
So this was not to block a government offensive. It was to have a continuous rebel controlled area that would be easier to defend. It would also have strengthened rebel claims that they were there to stay.

Posted by: Wim | Oct 11 2021 11:25 utc | 67

@Wim – For all the things EU screws up, they are good at gathering statistics. Here is the mortality data. The blue-grey dotted line is the seasonal baseline (i.e. normal). Above that is excess. Once winter ’20-’21 was over,the excess mortality in the group of countries displayed here was entirely unremarkable.

Posted by: ptb | Oct 11 2021 11:57 utc | 69

The great cover up of abuse continues
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/10/uk-met-police-reportedly-speak-prince-andrew-accuser-virginia-giuffre
The MO of this manoeuvre was set up a few years ago to ‘exonerate’ another high profile case against Lord Janner in the U.K.
The promised judicial Inquiry 10 years old, has been disappeared and many hundreds of accusers testimony equally so.
It works like this – pick a single hand picked complainant, make sure they are unreliable, get them to put fake accusations in and then concentrate on just that ONE.
Then reveal the unreliability of that witness and dismiss the charges – hence all other witnesses and testimony is ignored.
All safely dusted up and pushed under the lumpy carpet!
Voila. Gongs all round.
DAME. Cressida Dick the Commander of the Met Police did this when she oversaw the execution of Menendes on a tube train and has been doing the same covering up the disgraceful sexist racist culture of its unprofessional members, as she is doing with the murders and rapes by these officers currently with the high profile cases in London.

Posted by: D.G. | Oct 11 2021 11:59 utc | 71

vk @ 24 The USA (or any other major Western nation, for that matter) has a reliable national/state death certificate system and data collection. For all practical purposes, there’s no reason not to trust these kind of sources. Your argument would be valid up to the end of the 19th Century, but not in 2021.
<= the strange thing about covid deaths is they have made the system highly suspect.. must be something in the incentive cocktail.. ? take a look.. https://rationalground.com/florida-death-certificate-review-raises-questions-about-official-number-of-covid-19-deaths/
Farm Ecologist @ 37 says “It depends on your definition of death”
Owen Jones visits the annual Tory Party conference, where most delegates seem to agree that Boris Johnson’s government has done a great job handling the pandemic, casualty statistics notwithstanding.
VetinLA @ 44
Just wondering, how many people feel their individual rights are being violated when they stop at a red light, or a stop sign? Maybe it’s just a public safety measure, and nothing more.
<= public safety? On the Florida network one evening a few years ago the designer of the network of traffic lights explained that his designs were based on how much gas the lights could force drivers to expend by stopping and going at each light, and that lights were placed to stop people at or near intersections that had shopping malls or other consumer retail operations. A few months later another person explained how the camera system could be matched to every persons comings and goings..from residence to place of visit to return. A comment one day explained "In Lybia, Gaddaffi's people were restrained from getting from home to the royal palace during his siege by the traffic light system; the private, but foreign corporate contractors in charge of the lighting in his country, just turned red the light, so important defense people could not help Gaddiffi.. I calculated overpasses and underpasses could be built with the savings in gas alone yielding 3 to 5 year paybacks.. Of course that payback depends on the price of gas. But you are doing 45 mph to maintain that speed requires very little gas.. a light turns red, you must brake the forward flow, come to a stop, using up the number of times your brakes work before overall, and using up the gas you expended to get to that 45 mph, then you idle (if your billing rate is $100 per hour then you also loose billing time), using gas, but then real gas guzzle happens when you accelerate again to reach your original 45 MPH. Convert all of the events to minutes, and then compute those multiple events at one light over a day. Assuming the light turns red and stops flow every three minutes, that 480 stops per day. then multiply out the gas used to stop, idle, and start, you get the drift the amount of consumer dollars for gas consumers buy, extracted by the state, from the pockets of consumers, is in the hundreds of X-lions each year.. and the traffic light system is living proof that the state serves its masters the oil and gas industry and their PIGOs. The traffic light system will be used by the state to suppress any popular rising or to enforce its coming lock down mandates. The traffic light system is an automatic guard, with a state of the art 24/7 surveillance and video documentation system. it watches over, and monitors the behaviors of the its captive nation state citizens. The traffic light system is an important link in the chain of defenses available to the state to protect the PIGOs that own the nation state from the governed citizens. Build overpasses(job creating) and put trillions of dollars, paid by consumers for fuel, back into the pockets of the traveling public. NemesisCalling @ 47 Ghost in the data.. we are suffering through where technocrats have a wonderful idea of how society should be ordered, but that they just need us to get out of the way for this to happen. <= what a nice way of saying, except for the PIGOs, humanity might survive with increasing comfort, for ever? NemesisCalling @ 51 I think the Merck molnupiravir solution is looking like it might be in competition with Ivermectin.. do they each work to stop the replication of the virus in its tracks..? Piotr Berman @ 52 .. I don't think a volcano has the same bio molecular capacity to analyze its environmental needs, to relocate itself, and to reinvent its own biology so that the virus itself can defend itself against a vaccine threat to its survival? Volcanos cannot do this? .. What NemesisCalling @ 47 <=I agee, vaccines that work cause red alert to the virus so the virus under attack by vaccines try to re-engineer their own molecular systems IOT overcome or get around the vaccine. Alert to the Bar.. a different PIGO free Internet. is on horizon.. https://sputniknews.com/20211009/us-activists-prepare-for-possible-internet-shutdown-report-says-1089794607.html
If government [shuts down the Internet or block use of the Internet to certain parties] to maintain [government] control”, .. The Communications Act of 1934 allows the president to take control of “any facility or station for wire communication”. <=then will the people use their own? IMO, people around the globe are going to work together to win back their freedoms.

Posted by: snake | Oct 11 2021 13:18 utc | 73

TextIt’s a big club, and YOU ain’t in it…
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 30 2021 4:22 utc | 89

Hi Tom. Sorry I missed you before.
Remember this?

As a council estate dweller, it’s good to read what my betters are up to. Post more, please.
SRP,
It seems it’s a shame that Violet Kray is no longer with us.
Were she alive, she and Queen Elizabeth would have so much to share and compare. What with both having their two eldest boys in trouble with the police at the same time.
Posted by: John Cleary | Oct 9 2021 9:45 utc | 186

It’s amazing how fast the police work when the powers that be so command…

The Metropolitan police are taking no further action after a review prompted by Virginia Giuffre, who is taking legal action against Prince Andrew.
Met officers made the decision to drop their investigation on Sunday….

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/10/uk-met-police-reportedly-speak-prince-andrew-accuser-virginia-giuffre
Take a close look at that URL. It says “uk-met-police-reportedly-speak-prince-andrew-accuser-virginia-giuffre”
That was the story published earlier on Sunday. That the met were questioning her second son.
Within hours the story had changed. It became

Met police drop investigation into Prince Andrew in Virginia Giuffre case

What do you think? Her Majesty didn’t like the comparison?

Posted by: John Cleary | Oct 11 2021 13:33 utc | 75

Bolivia
Ranier Shea has a good, long summary of what happened starting with the coup, Evo Morales’s realization that he and MAS members had mistaken in their soft approach toward military reform vs Venezuela and Cuba’s hardcore, proactive purging and hypervigilence. That was then. Bolivia– and Nicaragua– are taking much more agressive actions toward the fascists. Both countries are on a knife edge of explosive violence. Shea exposes more detail of ongoing coup attempts and cites the parallels with Ethiopia: all roads lead back to Washington. Evo Morales and president Arce appear to have strengthened their ties and are coordinating MAS actions at both building AND fighting.
“Since the socialists retook power last year with the election of President Luis Arce, Morales has been continuing to try to prepare his movement for future backlash from his position as MAS leader; this summer, amid the revelation that coup regime officials had been secretly plotting to carry out a second coup to undo Arce’s election, Morales warned about the imperialists that “They do not forgive us.” He’s learned a jarring and painful lesson about the true conditions anti-imperialists face, and he doesn’t want other anti-imperialists to proceed without learning that lesson beforehand.”
https://orinocotribune.com/the-new-bolivian-regime-change-attempt-its-terror-tactics/
Here’s the Jan. 12, 2020 Reuters article linked by Shea in which Evo calls for armed militias modeled after Venezuela: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-evo/bolivia-exiled-ex-president-morales-calls-on-radio-for-armed-militias-idUSKBN1ZC066
Twitter followers–not me anymore– can get good updates on South and Central America from Camila Escalante, a Salvadoran American now Bolivian citizen.https://mobile.twitter.com/camilapress/status/1445500214710734857

Posted by: migueljose | Oct 11 2021 15:23 utc | 77

@77 vk
No, vk, I was merely pointing out that where once you wrote here that ivermectin was snake oil, now you say that it isn’t but that merck will make money off the therapeutic so that now it is bad for making money.
Simple moving of the goalposts is what I was pointing out with you.
I will stick with Ivermectin where I can find it, dude. No need for the Merck.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 11 2021 15:38 utc | 79

@ Posted by: Jackrabbit | Oct 11 2021 15:39 utc | 81
Besides the fact that your source is not reliable (what the fuck is “Christianity Daily”?), you have the objective fact that the article itself doesn’t quote any source for its claim Molnupiravir is “very similar” to Ivermectin – it’s just a “dude, trust me” argument.
–//–
@ Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 11 2021 15:38 utc | 80
From your post @ 51:

A +50% boost hospital/survival-rate versus control group doesn’t sound like a fraud to me, vk. I once again gave you an out and you plowed right through anyway.

Posted by: vk | Oct 11 2021 15:59 utc | 81

@5

@3 I’m curious how they plan to deal with the 100 million or so very well armed, non-vaxxed people occupying much of that farmland right now?

Probably just by waiting the dumb fuckers out, but also probably by making them an offer they won’t (not “can’t”) refuse: lots of money for their small plot of land. This is already how finance companies are buying up houses. Offer $300k for a $150k home. Economically rational people will accept such a deal.
There will be holdouts. They won’t matter. Nor should we cater to them as if big business is really worse. America ruled by its petit-bourgeois class would collapse overnight. Their liquidation as a class is a prerequisite for a substantive revolution, and that liquidation will be accomplished by the laws and institutions that the petit-bourgeoisie established through its political dominance in the GOP. They made their bed, and now they get to sleep in it.

Posted by: fnord | Oct 11 2021 16:15 utc | 83

@VetinLA 44

Just wondering, how many people feel their individual rights are being violated when they stop at a red light, or a stop sign? Maybe it’s just a public safety measure, and nothing more.

I for one, hate stop lights. It is a flagrant display of incompetence and gross wastefulness, that ironically, most people never notice even when it is brought to their attention. And that is not to speak of “environmentalists” who are woefully ignorant of such simple, relatively low cost measures that can be implemented immediately. No, no, how about we make cars that turn off at stop lights instead? Or make cars that recharge a battery when they stop? And while we are at it, lets up the price of said cars! Ay caramba!
Stop lights do work, but they unfortunately are misused and outdated as snake points out @ 74. More overpasses, yes. Redesigned streets, yes. But most importantly cars have to be redesigned. As a driver I have 4 ways of communicating. Tail lights, turn signals, horn, and high beam flash. These are fine, but far too limited. For example, I have no way of showing drivers or pedestrians at an intersection that I am stopping, and I have no way of giving someone right of way except by using my goddamn hand. The streets are nothing more than a crowd of dumb mutes jostling around in a tube!

Posted by: Justin | Oct 11 2021 16:24 utc | 85

Posted by: migueljose | Oct 11 2021 15:23 utc | 78
Thank you for the update on Bolivia. Much appreciated. It is good to see that they have things figured out now. You have to take all their money away, or they will never give up using it to take power back.

Posted by: Bemildred | Oct 11 2021 16:35 utc | 87

#74 Gruff: “I urge every reader having any contact with America’s education system to honestly examine what kind of talent America has in those academic pipelines and very carefully and deeply consider where those pipelines are channeling America’s up-and-comers.”
https://www.michigandaily.com/news/academics/following-blackface-incident-professor-bright-sheng-takes-step-back-from-teaching-smtd-composition-course/

Posted by: jayc | Oct 11 2021 16:41 utc | 89

@m #56
Have you actually met a lot of people from Taiwan?
I cannot imagine a group less amenable to military conflict, except perhaps Singaporeans.
I don’t care how many are officially in the military – I simply don’t believe there is much fighting spirit in that populace.
Japan at least has had a historical background of armed conflict and the samurai families still exist – but there is no such thing in Taiwan. Furthermore, its KuoMinTang immigrant’s experience was mostly at losing to numerically and technologically inferior PLA guerrillas.
Mainland Chinese urban dwellers aren’t much different – but China has an enormous rural population still who grew up with literal physical hardship and toil.

Posted by: c1ue | Oct 11 2021 17:11 utc | 91

Today marks the 60th Anniversary of the Non-Aligned Movement and the celebration’s in Belgrade, the city where it began. Lavrov was there to present Putin’s words along with his own:
“Russia, like the members of the Non-Aligned Movement, regards the continuing attacks on the UN Charter as destructive and dangerous. The same goes for the attempts to replace the UN-centric architecture with non-inclusive concepts like the ‘rules-based order,’ which is actually based on double standards and threatens to take us back to the era of neo-colonial bloc politics and divides. I am confident that by its united action the Non-Aligned Movement can oppose these attempts with success and to defend the ideals enshrined in the UN Charter.
“The mutually respectful cooperation between Russia and Non-Aligned Movement members, including at the UN General Assembly, clearly confirms the consonance of our positions on key global issues from opposition to illegitimate unilateral sanctions to the fight against terrorism and the protection of human rights.
“I hope that Russia’s obtaining observer status will help to enhance the effectiveness of our joint work, mutual support and coordination of actions in defence of the principles of international law in the interests of bringing more democracy into international relations.”
Far from being isolated, Russia’s more deeply involved with the world’s nations than at anytime in its past.

Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 11 2021 17:48 utc | 93

Roger @95–
Great observation! The Outlaw US Empire was very carefully taught by its predecessor the Outlaw Anglo Empire.

Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 11 2021 18:25 utc | 95

@Roger #95
I don’t disagree with what you said.
I will add, however, that Japan made a pragmatic decision to acquiesce. Their view is that having the US protect them vs Russia and China is well worth the loss of 30+ years of economic progress. The amount of government spending saved by having very low military spending (up until recently) didn’t hurt either.
This decision isn’t far removed from what the EU has done.
And both economic areas use all manner of friction to delay and frustrate carpetbaggers.

Posted by: c1ue | Oct 11 2021 18:46 utc | 97

@ Piotr Berman
Re volcanoes: ROFL.
Attributing anthropocentric subjectivity to a virus is absurd. And under the microscope their placards say that want the delta variant really wants is job security and a good dental plan and they want it now. Their posts are going viral on the internet…

Posted by: Patroklos | Oct 11 2021 19:21 utc | 99