Open Thread 2021-85
I was asked to remind people to keep their comments reasonably short. This is no place to post long essays or text that can be found elsewhere on the internet. Link to that text and maybe post an excerpt but not the full piece.
News & views ...
Posted by b on November 4, 2021 at 13:23 UTC | Permalink
next page »https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-021-00329-3.pdf
Chinese study with Chinese vaccine. Elevated Hemoglobin A1c across the board.Kidney failure.Diminished immune response.
How much of this will apply to mRNA vaccines or vectors vaccines? Won’t know until someone looks. Since they are 110% guaranteed safe and effective why would anyone look.
Posted by: Oldhippie | Nov 4 2021 14:07 utc | 2
FBI up to their usual tricks in court... claim to have [very conveniently] "LOST" high-resolution version of crucial Drone video of events.
LIVE: Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Day 2
Is the state’s late-revealed FBI aerial infrared video the decisive evidence the prosecution has claimed?
On Day 1 court heard that apparently the FBI had possessed both the low resolution aerial video shared with prosecutors, and a high-definition version of the same video.
To the outrage of the defense, however, it was discovered today that the high resolution version of the video had been “lost” by the agency.
Reportedly even Judge Schroeder was left aghast at the possibility that the FBI had tossed away evidence relevant to a homicide case,
Posted by: Contra-Conspiraloon | Nov 4 2021 14:09 utc | 3
RE: The Kenosha Kid trial and FBI attempts to predjuidice it:
The fact the ever-increasingly openly corrupt FBI felt that not only did they need to keep hidden, til the very last minute, the very existence of this video, but that they additionally felt they needed to oh-so-conveniently "LOSE" the high-resolutio version, suggests that the video is a lot more favorable to the Defense than the prosecution would like.
Posted by: Contra-Conspiraloon | Nov 4 2021 14:21 utc | 4
@Posted by: Contra-Conspiraloon | Nov 4 2021 14:21 utc | 4
Prosecutorial Malfeasance aka Standard Operating Procedure
Posted by: librul | Nov 4 2021 16:15 utc | 5
Grieved linked to this on the dying tail of the week in review thread and it needs to be shared on this new thread for people to read: "The Manufacture of Decline" by Patrick Lawrence.
For a multitude of reasons, for some inspiration for one, people should reread Pericles' Funeral Oration. lots of great stuff. "Let them walk into our city and see our defenses..."
It is curious that slavery doesn't appear in the oration, quite contrary to the historical narrative, and women only appear to be told to shut the hell up. No Electra or Antigone allowed. No grief for the heroic dead. whiny Andromache and leaky Dido won't rebuild Troy...
"we have left our monuments in every land..." indeed.
no grief for what has been lost is allowed. in public discourse in the US, the covid dead don't even merit a yawn.
Posted by: rjb1.5 | Nov 4 2021 16:24 utc | 7
A day after the US military declared "no misconduct" in the drone incineration of seven children, the ICC announces a probe of Venezuela for "crimes against humanity" for building homes and establishing food programmes for its citizens in the face of siege-like U.S. economic sanctions. Oh wait...no, the claim -first presented to the court by members of the Lima Group, which supports the sanctions and defies international law by demanding regime-change in Venezuela - is that Venezuelan security forces engaged in torture and extrajudicial killings. The Marduro government is cooperating in the court's "probe" - which is not yet, contrary to reports in the western media, a "case".
The Associated Press reports the ICC chief prosecutor "said he was aware of the political 'fault lines' and 'geopolitical divisions' that exist in Venezuela. But he said his job was to uphold the principles of legality and the rule of law, not settle scores...Human rights groups and the US-backed opposition immediately celebrated the decision. Since its creation two decades ago, the ICC has mostly focused on atrocities committed in Africa."
Posted by: jayc | Nov 4 2021 16:29 utc | 8
who could forget that, in his final speech, Pericles acknowledges that the plague might destroy their empire, since all things are mortal...such fatalism doesn't build the 4th Reich. you gotta believe!
anywho, some people have recognized for a long time a connection between disease outbreaks and the organized devastation of warfare. Iliad 1, e.g. but who believes in yesterday? history is bunk.
Posted by: rjb1.5 | Nov 4 2021 16:36 utc | 9
@ 6 karlof1... thanks for that... i have been away the past few days! good article... i quote - "Do Americans think there is no price to pay for this kind of self-deception?" the same can obviously be said for canada, uk and the rest of the western non leadership at this time..
i am curious if blinken has chimed in on assange.. does anyone know what kind of platitudes he expresses in this direction??? the usa is so full of shite, it gets very tiring reading all the bromides coming out of these con artists or worse... that the media carries water for them regularly shows why so many people turn off the media.. they are also full of shite and unwilling or unable to call a spade a spade..
gulag usa..
that was my response from reading @ 3/4 Contra-Conspiraloon.... how are shares in the penitentiary corporations?? have we gone down to 2 strikes and yer out yet??
the 2 day break was nice.. went out to tofino and saw very big waves and some surfers too.. being on the west coast is exhilarating.. the road there not so much!
Posted by: james | Nov 4 2021 16:44 utc | 10
I posted this at the end of the last open thread. It is an RT article about a film I helped out on. Ukraine: The Everlasting Present. There is a link to the film on YouTube in the article. I think some of you might be interested in watching. There are interviews with Viktor Yushchenko - the guy who became president after the Orange Revolution in 2004. Also, Rudy Guiliani is in it. There are a bunch of other people, most notably Andrii Derkach.
Ukraine 30 Years of Independence
Posted by: lex talionis | Nov 4 2021 16:45 utc | 11
here's a great phrase to convey the utterly psychopathic mentality of the bourgeoisie, attributed to the gratefully dead Z-pig Brzkinzski: "give the Soviets their own Vietnam." the US takes its revenge for its own defeat out on the Soviets via Afghanistan, all to the cost of millions of lives and ecological devastation and...and...
good thing these same people are running the "environmentalism" and the "human rights campaigns." I feel safer.
DeSantis/Youngkin 2024!
Posted by: rjb1.5 | Nov 4 2021 16:55 utc | 12
When you thought things couldn't get worse, you just have to wait a minute.
It appears Blackrock and other feudalistic entities are making a move to monetize nature by buying up privately held land and making them into"nature preserves" for a profit. What exactly is e entailed in these preserves isn't clear, but knowing how these people operate one might imagine large swaths of monoculture and more industrialized agriculture.
While under current government land ownership via National Parks and whatnot the total amounts to 12%. Under the feudalism the amount of land would increase to 30%. Hey! It's the American Way! We are exceptional, after all!
https://scheerpost.com/2021/11/04/wall-streets-latest-scheme-is-monetizing-nature-itself/
Posted by: Michael | Nov 4 2021 17:24 utc | 13
British Medical Journal Covid 19 Investigation: Researcher blows whistle on Pfizer Vaccine Trials
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
Posted by: Gulo | Nov 4 2021 17:49 utc | 14
I'm on a roll.
A very humorous article in "The Hill". It appears all 24 female US Senators have signed a letter to Biden encouraging him to stand up for women's rights in Afghanistan. While I'm all for equality, it appears the senators' hypocrisy and stupidity eluded them as we never heard a peep from them all the while we were droning the Afghan women and children for 20 years.
Should Afghanistan sue for reparations?
Posted by: Michael | Nov 4 2021 17:50 utc | 15
LA port shipping delays getting worse this week?
Maritime Executive update on shipping congestion
Despite the increasing efforts to increase the movement of containers through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, yesterday, November 2 the San Pedro Bay again tied a record set two weeks ago with 44 containerships waiting beyond the anchorage. Another 33 containerships are in anchorages with a total of 104 vessels of all types waiting for space at the two ports’ terminals. Another 41 vessels, including 19 containerships, are due to arrive before the end of the week with the Marine Exchange of Southern California saying the trend remains stable in the near term.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 4 2021 17:59 utc | 16
And more signs of "winning" in America
Long Beach college allowing homeless students to sleep in their cars in the parking lot
College District official Mike Muñoz said that close to 70 students sleep in their cars each night.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 4 2021 18:01 utc | 17
@ lex talionis | Nov 4 2021 16:45 utc | 11...
thanks for posting it again.. i was going to back and look for it, but this is easier! i will watch it in the next few days.. cheers james
here is is again for anyone interested.. Ukraine: The Everlasting Present -> Documentary dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence
Posted by: james | Nov 4 2021 18:24 utc | 18
Remember the governments indemnity agreement with Pfizer, etc?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-compensation-lawsuit.html
If you experience severe side effects after getting a Covid vaccine, lawyers tell CNBC there is basically no one to blame in a U.S. court of law.The federal government has granted companies like Pfizer and Moderna immunity from liability if something unintentionally goes wrong with their vaccines.
However...
(Is there a however?
Maybe)
If Pfizer committed fraud prior to the indemnity agreement can a good lawyer get that agreement torn up?
Despite its best efforts to cover-up what appears to be a completely fraudulent corporate clinical trial for its experimental gene therapy mRNA Covid-19 ‘vaccine’ injection, a whistleblower has now confirmed what many had already suspected: the drug giant has relied on falsified trial data, has been caught unblinding trial participants, employing poorly trained vaccinators, and has not bothered to properly follow-up on serious adverse reactions (which might cast a shadow over its own self-generated ‘glowing reports’ given to lax government regulators) following its human vaccine experiments.
Posted by: librul | Nov 4 2021 18:53 utc | 19
Lex...yup watched most of the film via rt documentaries. Jolly good...concise...well done...needs to be archived. Does explain the historical context and delusional Ukraine politicians. Perhaps they are finally beginning to realise the hopelessness and desperation of their as situation. Lots of staff changes last couple days....might mean something or not...just the usual circus?
Posted by: Jo | Nov 4 2021 19:52 utc | 20
It was the last sentence from this paragraph that made this article Exceptional
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/11/04/us-moral-superiority-complex-is-accelerating-its-decline/ by Laura RUGGERI
"While the U.S. allocated resources to the destruction ... of sovereign countries ... their main competitor, China, lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty and kept building state-of-the-art infrastructure at home and abroad, that is projects that make a tangible difference in people’s livelihoods.
No wonder concealing the truth has become a matter of national security."
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Nov 4 2021 20:01 utc | 21
karlof1 #6 and Grieved
Thank you for a fine link to savour.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 4 2021 20:03 utc | 22
Thanks to Old Hippie @2 for the Nature pdf - much above my paygrade, but the abstract is short and clear and sobering. Final remarks recommending caution vaccinating people with pre-existing clinical conditions directs me to my disagreement in a past comment with Dr. Malone's claim that the spike protein vaccines should only be given to the elderly and persons with co-morbidities.
The observation in the Nature study that the Chinese vaccine "mimics infection" is alarming. Someone more knowledgeable than I can comment on whether the two observations on the different vaccines mean the one is safe for the healthy (who can repair damage?) while the other for the rest of us.(??)
Posted by: juliania | Nov 4 2021 20:29 utc | 23
USA allegedly to offer legal protection $ to foreign "journalists" under CIA cutout USAID program.
Note the mention of Julian Assange in the final, grammatically incorrect, sentence. They didn't even proofread it.
Also no statement as to whether the program would apply in countries "allied" with Washington.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 4 2021 20:47 utc | 24
Banks suck.
Well you could arrive that shocking conclusion if you read wallstreetonparade ;))
The Fed is not well liked.
Prior to the Fed’s Trading Scandal, an Axios/Ipsos Poll Found 53 Percent of Americans Didn’t Trust the Fed
Neither are the other 'real' banks.
Many folks believed that after Omarova’s recent law journal article became widely analyzed, she would remove herself from consideration or Biden would quietly ask her to step aside. As Wall Street On Parade revealed last week, Omarova’s 69-page paper published in the Vanderbilt Law Review in October, proposed the following:(1) Moving all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve;
(2) Allowing the Fed, in “extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates,” to confiscate deposits from these FedAccounts in order to tighten monetary policy;
(3) Allowing the most Wall Street-conflicted regional Fed bank in the country, the New York Fed, when there are “rises in market value at rates suggestive of a bubble trend,” such as with technology stocks today, to “short these securities, thereby putting downward pressure on their prices”;
(4) Eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insures bank deposits at commercial banks across the United States;
(5) Consolidate all bank regulatory functions at the OCC – which Omarova has been nominated to head.
Omarova is now facing a new brouhaha for calling the very industry that she would supervise the “quintessential a**hole industry” in a 2019 Canadian feature documentary.
Horrors! it sounds like regulation to me. But I will believe it when I see it.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 4 2021 21:15 utc | 25
Pfizer released their financial report over the third quarter of 2021. Comparisons are with Q3 of 2020:
- Eliquis (bloodclots) + 19%
- Vyndaqel (neuropathology and myocarditis) + 42%
- Various oncological products +9% to + 34%
Just imagine to run a business where you make big bucks selling a medicine that doesn’t exactly work, then bribe the politicians to put the blame on the people who didn’t take it, and then make a fortune selling drugs to people who suffer the adverse effects of your failed medicine.
Bingo
Posted by: DG | Nov 4 2021 21:24 utc | 26
Gulo #14
British Medical Journal Covid 19 Investigation: Researcher blows whistle on Pfizer Vaccine Trials
Sh!t happens. On the bright side the BMJ actually published it so that is handy when considering librul #19 post:
If Pfizer committed fraud prior to the indemnity agreement can a good lawyer get that agreement torn up?
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 4 2021 21:26 utc | 27
juliania #23
The observation in the Nature study that the Chinese vaccine "mimics infection" is alarming. Someone more knowledgeable than I can comment on whether the two observations on the different vaccines mean the one is safe for the healthy (who can repair damage?) while the other for the rest of us.(??)
All vaccines are designed the do exactly that: mimic infection. They predispose the mammal to immediately detect viral assault and have a prompt metabolic response triggered as soon as possible. Overwhelm the attacker before it reproduces to an overwhelming assault.
The study compares vaccinated people with those who were naturally infected to examine the consequences. It is helpful when considering post covid (long covid?)consequences and perhaps supportive responses and could apply equally to post vaccinated people.
One of the alarms regarding mRNA vaccines is the durability and potential risk from long term spike proteins lurking about in various organs etc. There are some responses that can be considered to mop these up and that is definitely a worthy research as we enter a calmer, thoughtful stage of societal response. Once the mega corporations of the west have harvested their billions we may be left in peace to harvest our herbs.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 4 2021 21:37 utc | 28
Politics in Georgia is so depressing for the people but it does offer interesting reading and a nice country to smuggle drugs and has a cooperative BSL4 laboratory that is ... well 'unregulated' shall we say. This interesting short report looks at the recent 'elections'.
Election Outcome in Georgia Leaves Many Asking: “And What Now?”
The UNM, the party of former president Saakashvili now in prison in Tbilisi, is “screaming foul” as it has in every recent election.Nika Melia, the head of the main opposition party United National Movement and a mayoral candidate in Tbilisi, claimed that “the victories gained by the opposition in many municipalities were taken away…like they never happened.”
The UNM claims widespread election fraud and vote rigging. They should know, as they turned such practices into a fine art when they were in power.
Sigh, we have heard this from other nations as well but rest assured the USA will find a way or make one:
Georgian elections are modeled on US elections, so they are full of media spin, falsehoods and echo chambers.PBS is already putting spin on the elections here, trying to make it look like the UNM has hundreds of thousands of protestors filling the streets, complaining about rigged election. Friends in USA are sending such links unsolicited, as if now they are deeply informed on Tbilisi politics.
Saakashvili has an American lawyer, John Sandvig, allocated as part of a cleanup operation. Sandvig is definitely not in Georgia to protect Saakashvili’s interests but to try to put a lid on Georgia’s involvement in drug trafficking during his regime, and prevent revelation of how many in the US government, intelligence agencies and DoD were actively involved.
Georgia was then the perfect conduit for drugs and weapons, many of them coming out of Afghanistan. But policies can change overnight, and denying any involvement with all this will ultimately result in Saakashvili’s US friends suddenly discovering his crimes and leading the charge to prosecute him themselves, when Sandvig has found the way to spin this.
One respondent in researching for this article shared how he had personally provided undercover tapes about some of the crimes associated with weapons trafficking to the Georgian authorities several years ago – and if Georgia wants to understand why the American lawyer John Sandvig is getting involved in the case of Mikheil Saakashvili, it is all a matter of official record, supported by his sworn testimony.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 4 2021 21:51 utc | 29
In addition to "The Manufacture of Decline" linked @6, we have its complement, "The U.S. Moral Superiority Complex Is Accelerating Its Decline":
"There is no doubt that the optics of one of the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history damaged the reputation of the U.S. both at home and overseas and that’s why we should expect new and more aggressive initiatives to harden American soft power and tighten control of the narrative through underhand methods.
"Carefully crafted narratives are crucial for the U.S. because it is selling the world a failed model of development. Trumpeting it as inclusive, gender equal, green and sustainable is like putting lipstick on a pig, it looks grotesque. Managing perceptions, denigrating alternative civilizational and economic models, and demonizing the competition is no longer working, an increasingly large segment of the world population is developing stronger antibodies to the virus of American propaganda. That’s why traditional soft-power tools — trade, legal standards, technology — are increasingly being used to coerce rather than convince."
"After the Afghanistan disaster former French ambassador to Israel, UN and U.S. Gérard Araud shared his dismay on Twitter: 'The absence of self-examination in the West is seen elsewhere with disbelief. Wars waged by the West have recently cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians for no result and we still lecture the world about values. Do you have any idea about how we are seen abroad?'" [My Emphasis]
Much of what the author writes is already well know to most barflies, but I'll admit it's good to see it appear in print elsewhere:
"While the U.S. allocated resources to the destruction and destabilization of sovereign countries, and ignored the widening income gap at home, their main competitor, China, lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty and kept building state-of-the-art infrastructure at home and abroad, that is projects that make a tangible difference in people’s livelihoods. No wonder concealing the truth has become a matter of national security.
"Democrats openly admit their intent to co-opt Silicon Valley to police political discourse and silence the bearers of inconvenient truths. They effectively sowed the seeds for a future where everything and everyone can be(come) a national-security threat. Glenn Greenwald revealed that Congressional Democrats have summoned the CEO’s of Google, Facebook and Twitter four times in the last year to demand they censor more political speech. They explicitly threatened the companies with legal and regulatory reprisals if they did not start censoring more. Pulling the plug on dissenting opinions and de-platforming people who challenge the dominant discourse makes a mockery of free speech, one of the rights that the U.S. claims to be defending when it selectively condemns alleged violations of human rights in other countries. Increasing censorship is also an indication that control of the narrative both at home and overseas has become vital for the U.S." [My Emphasis]
I'd only add that the Ds have been in power 2/3s of the time since GHW Bush announced the rise of The New World Order, whereas the continuity of policy proves that it's not the Ds but the Duopoly, although the Ds are clearly far more aggressive than the Rs. Caitlyn Johnstone was 100% correct about the need to delegitimize the Establishment Narrative.
There's much more to excerpt and highlight, but I'll submit to b's request and end my review here although it's barely a third done. Don't forget the complement linked @6, and lumping them together with Alastair Crooke's last 4-5 essays would also be appropriate.
So I was reading the Saker’s latest analysis, “Lots of things happening at the same time.” He posted a link to the video from IRGC showing them defend a tanker from two US warships. I watched the video and without military training, I was confused. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was watching. Then, the Saker gave a very detailed commentary on what was shown on the video. His comments were then expanded on in the community comments posted beneath his analysis.
As I started soaking in some of this, it got me to wonderin’ about this container ship off the coast of Vancouver Island, MV Zim Kingston. In late October, during stormy weather, it lost 100 containers and then started on fire. No one knows what caused the fire. But could it have been struck by something non-natural, like a strike by the Canadian Armed Forces?
The other curious part about this is that the New York Post has a very good article about it. I learned more from it than from the Canadian media coverage. New York… shipping… mining chemicals… …. Take a look — damage caused by a storm? Or by something else?
https://nypost.com/2021/10/25/crew-evacuated-from-burning-container-ship-near-canada/amp/
Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Nov 4 2021 22:17 utc | 31
An example of the impact of the Bezzle shrinking: Cisco in 2000 vs today
Cisco in 1999/2000 was supposed to be the first $1T market cap stock – their market cap today is $240B. Their earnings in 2020: $12.2B revenue, $2.6B income.
Compare with Cisco in 2000 was over $500B, closer to $600B or $700B at peak even as their revenue and earnings were a fraction of 2020: revenue $3.9B, income $415M.
Note that Cisco today is during a late stage bubble as well, so the $240B market cap is unquestionably inflated as well.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 4 2021 22:24 utc | 32
@uncle tungsten #25
It isn't clear to me how giving *more* power to the NY Fed, or the Fed period, is in any way positive.
Moreover, the issue isn't that they don't have the power - the issue has always been how they use what they have (or more specifically, don't use).
I am unconvinced that putting anyone in charge of either OCC or Federal Reserve is going to make any difference so long as those institutions are staffed and run as they have been.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 4 2021 22:28 utc | 33
I went over to the Marci Wheeler-Emptywheel-site to check whether she had any apologies to make for years of embroidering the Russiagate nonsense.
Of course she had nothing about it. She is too busy nowadays persecuting Julian Assange:
".. Assange’s team has spent the last nine months spinning wildly about topics other than US prison conditions. They did so, first, by falsely claiming that an article in which Siggi Thordarson reaffirmed one of the most damning things he said about Assange would doom the case against Assange, even though as a co-conspirator, Siggi is unlikely to be called as a witness. More recently, Assange’s team has embraced an article showing that CIA Director Mike Pompeo was unable to pursue a variety of measures to attempt to thwart the release of (still substantially unreleased) stolen hacking tools, even though the article proves that Assange lied wildly in his extradition hearing about when and why the US government changed its understanding of his actions and further shows that the US didn’t charge Assange in the face of Pompeo’s pressure, but only did so when Russia attempted to exfiltrate Assange..."
So it was Russia again!! And planning Assange's assassination was totally justified!
What a disgrace the Democrats and their propagandists are.
Posted by: bevin | Nov 4 2021 22:35 utc | 34
"when Russia attempted to exfiltrate Assange..."
Posted by: bevin | Nov 4 2021 22:35 utc | 34
When did "Russia attempted to exfiltrate Assange" happen?
Sounds like it's just another of Marcy EmptyBrain's many many very vivid but very unreal imaginings
Posted by: Contra-Conspiraloon | Nov 4 2021 22:55 utc | 35
German Member of the European Parliament Martin Sonneborn leaks uncensored Pfizer contracts
https://twitter.com/martinsonneborn/status/1455836782587748352?s=28
p.62: 10 Nanograms of DNA per shot are allowed in the "mRNA" vaccine, corresponding to 5 x 10^10 small DNA fragments. Genomic integration possible.
German top geneticist establishes a sentinel program for genetic ailments after vaccination:
"Adenoviral Vector DNA- and SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-Based Covid-19 Vaccines: Possible Integration into the Human Genome - Are Adenoviral Genes Expressed in Vector-based Vaccines?" Virus Res. 2021 Sep; 302: 198466.
doi: 10.1016/j.virusres.2021.198466
Posted by: BelleDelphine | Nov 4 2021 22:58 utc | 36
c1ue #33
Thank you, I'll drink to that. The only power that should be given to the Fed and other banks is the power of gravity as they are hurled off a decent tower.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 4 2021 23:21 utc | 37
@GEROMAN at twitter is worth a visit.
More of the tribes around and in Marib city have defected to join the nationalist resistance to Saudi Arabia and the USUK war crimes in Yemen. Geroman reports the battle for the city will commence in the next day or two unless of course the entire population choses peace and escapes from the evil Bone Sawman and his mullahs.
Just below that report is one of the best Karen hysterics I have ever seen on a US flight. Watch it with a wine or beer ready. Mirth is good for the spirit and there is heaps here.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 4 2021 23:33 utc | 38
"Modern-day gunboat diplomacy largely ignores the historical circumstances and emotive aspects of the divide of Taiwan and China. The issue of Taiwan and China reunification has been narrated from a geopolitical perspective, and most arguments do not adequately address the sensitivities of the issue.China’s intractable stand on reunification, which it considers an internal affair, cannot be fully comprehended without an attempt to see it from the emotive aspects of a divided country...."
https://johnmenadue.com/a-long-march-chinas-unfinished-business-on-taiwan-reunification/
Posted by: Paul | Nov 4 2021 23:48 utc | 39
Posted by: juliania | Nov 4 2021 20:29 utc | 23
The observation in the Nature study that the Chinese vaccine "mimics infection" is alarming.
___________________________________________________________________
Why would that be alarming? That is what vaccines are designed to do. Mimicking infection is how vaccines generally work. Ideally the mimicked infection from vaccination produces only mild adverse effects.
This article is not suggesting that certain at-risk people should not take the vaccine. It is recommending that certain at-risk people should be watched closely when vaccinated because the vaccine can have some of the same negative effects as covid (although maybe not as severe).
What amazes me is that so few people grasp that SARS2 targets the weaknesses in modern (particularly western) living. If you have a weak heart, or are overweight, or have high blood sugar, or high blood pressure, or don't spend much time outdoors in the sunshine and get covid19 you may be in serious trouble when you get covid19. Those are all conditions created by lifestyle choices. If you have made the life style choices that create those conditions then you have much to worry about from covid19, but if you have not you are not so vulnerable.
My personal belief is that SARS2 is not a man made virus. Instead it is an accident that has just been waiting to happen for a long time. If it is man-made then it was made by someone who opposes what modern people are doing.
Posted by: jinn | Nov 4 2021 23:52 utc | 40
@ 20 - jo - Thank you for the kind words about the film. We did it in one month literally. Well, maybe five weeks. We have another film that just premiered at the Rome Film Festival. Qazaq - History of the Golden Man. Oliver Stone conducted three extensive interviews with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first president of Kazakhstan as well as interviews with Dariga Nazarbayeva, Nursultan's daughter. Tomorrow it premieres at the Asian American International Film Festival in Los Angeles. I will add some links soon.
I want to extend my thanks to b and all the people that comment on MoA. I have learned so much from you all. It has helped my understanding of so much that is occurring in the world. And the films I have the good fortune to work on are greatly improved by everyone's input on this godsend of a website.
Слава Бого.
Posted by: lex talionis | Nov 5 2021 0:06 utc | 41
Michael Hudson's The Zero Hour interview on his 3rd edition of Super Imperialism. I suggest watching the video as the transcript is very muddled, but still readable. He's more explicit than ever in saying the Outlaw US Empire is in essence a Financial Gangster. Here's Richard Eskow's reaction to Hudson's description of what's really happening:
"People like Obama and his administration present themselves as technocrats. But what you’re describing is really a ferocious and passionately held ideology, it seems to me, as well as people behaving out of self-interest. People like this — let’s not be partisan about it. This is ideological extremism to me. This is people saying the dollar rules and I rule the dollar and you do what I say, and that’s the way it should be." [My Emphasis]
For a multitude of reasons, for some inspiration for one, people should reread Pericles' Funeral Oration. lots of great stuff. "Let them walk into our city and see our defenses..."
It is curious that slavery doesn't appear in the oration, quite contrary to the historical narrative, and women only appear to be told to shut the hell up...
Posted by: rjb1.5 | Nov 4 2021 16:24 utc | 7
IMHO, Athenian democracy is the precursor of contemporary democracies, WARTS AND ALL, in part because American Founding Fathers and solons in many other countries were well read in classics, in part because of similar social processes.
From Wiki: "Pericles' mother, Agariste, was a member of the powerful and controversial noble family of the Alcmaeonidae," and it is worth pondering who were Alcmaeonidae and why they were "controversial". They were noble, wealthy (extremely amusing story why they were very wealthy, sanitized version), and they quarreled with a populist tyrant family that ruled Athens before they were replaced with democracy. Till the end of the democratic period, members of that family or their kin like Pericles were in leadership positions, often on opposite sides of political controversies -- thus controversial. In a way, political strife in Athens was between cousins of one family. In short, it was an oligarchy, but one that gave voice to the "people" (suffrage had restrictions similar to those in USA and UK 200 years ago), and relied on demagoguery rather than autocratic fiat.
----
The amusing, less sanitized story of riches. Not far from Athens there was a city of Sicyon, ruled by Dorian landowners with Achaian serfs. A "tyrant", Achaian with anti-Dorian and thus populist policies gained power, but he lacked sons, and the future looked gloomy: Dorians were gaining external support (Sparta?) and the chances for pro-Achaean policies to survive his death were slim. Thus he decided to marry his daughter abroad with a huge dowry. Under his rule, Sicyon had an excellent position as a trade center. Two main suitors were Athenian nobles, one well mannered member of Alcmeonidae and protoplast of the future oligarchs of democratic Athens, the other a flamboyant Hippocleides. After some competitions in athletics, poetry etc. there was a large party were the suitors and other guest could drink wine and amuse themselves. At some point, Hippocleides call to the musicians to play dance music and danced, then he called for a table, and danced on the table, and finally, he danced on the table upside down. The ensuing dialogue became proverbial: Dad: Hippocleides, you danced your marriage away! Hippo-lad: Hippocleides does not care!
To appreciate what happened, you must understand that Greeks of the period did not use trousers, and neither they used underwear. So the upside-down dance was truly a moment of "full disclosure". As a result, Alcmenoidae became very influential and Hippocleidae were not.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 5 2021 0:55 utc | 43
bevin | Nov 4 2021 22:35 utc | 34... i did the same a few days ago.. i was curious if she is still ranting about january 6th.. the women and her site has completely lost the storyline... all i can say is i hope the intel agencies are paying her well, although with craziness like that, i am not sure it is a wise investment either! for someone who showed good analytical skills in the past - maybe 5- 10 years ago, she really has gone down into the gutter the past 5 or more years.. sad to see...
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2021 1:02 utc | 44
@BelleDelphine #30
Thank you for the link.
As I expressed very long ago: the mRNA tech unquestionably leaves lots of bits in the vaccine.
We don’t know what these will or will not do. The makers say the pseudo nucleotide prevents the body from recognizing said bits; but do we really know if “nature will find a way”?
The ongoing vax wars are ridiculous: the risk/reward for people under 40, much less children, is minuscule.
It is also 100% clear that vaxing is not going to either eradicate COVID or keep vaxed from getting / spreading it.
It is just idiocy all the way through.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 5 2021 1:04 utc | 45
How can 84% of Chicago Public Schools students graduate when only 26% of 11th graders are proficient in reading, math?
https://wirepoints.org/how-can-84-of-chicago-public-schools-students-graduate-when-only-26-of-11th-graders-are-proficient-in-reading-math-wirepoints-quickpoint/
Long Live the Chop: Poetic Justice & Karma for the MLB and Robert D. Manfred
https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/long-live-the-chop-poetic-justice
Latest UKHSA report shows Vaccinated accounted for 82% of Covid-19 Deaths & 65% of Hospitalisations in England over the past 4 weeks
https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/22/england-82-percent-covid-19-deaths-vaccinated/
Posted by: Dogon Priest | Nov 5 2021 2:33 utc | 46
@ lex talionis # 11
Thank for the link and information on the Ukraine documentary that you helped out on.
I'm going to watch it but the early footage of Bush 1 and the triumphalist U.S. talking heads are going to cause me some stomach rumbles. I will have to get mentally prepared and keep an empty stomach to watch it all the way through.
I visited Kiev in 2009 and thought it was a beautiful city. I also visited the Donbas, Lughansk and Donetsk. Not tourist areas even in 2009, but I was interested in viewing this Soviet era industrial and mining region. 5 years later it was a war zone.
Sorry I did not get to Odessa or Crimea on my trip. Anyway, should be a more interesting documentary than anything on Netflix.
Posted by: Randy G | Nov 5 2021 2:46 utc | 47
@ DP 46
How can 84% of Chicago Public Schools students graduate when only 26% of 11th graders are proficient in reading, math?
How many of the high achievers in your community became successful because of proficiency in reading and math? . . .I claim not many, when industry, creativity, leadership, people-skills, salesmanship and many other various factors are important to becoming successful in life. . .But hey, reading and math are easy to test, and enable the establishment to call the poor readers and the algebra haters "failures." . . So that answers your question.
Posted by: d | Nov 5 2021 2:51 utc | 48
I am in the US, West Coast that has a Health Management Organization (HMO) called Kaiser Permanente and I have my health care with them.
Just this evening I received an email from them telling me that they have received a strike notice from one of the unions in their organization....the strike has not happened and they are in negotiations according to the email....it is my guess it is about forced Covid vaccination.
The shit show continues until it doesn't. Good for the unions representing their constituents which is more than our government folks do now that Corporations are people
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 5 2021 3:26 utc | 49
@49 psychohistorian
Please keep us posted on anything you may learn of those negotiations. We live in an interesting slice of these interesting times - a moment of importance.
Last we talked it was over an article that I wish we all had time to read properly, but it basically said the time is coming that the attack against the ordinary person has spent its maximum force and may now be regrouping - and that this is when the counterattack by the oppressed will begin.
Now the Administration launches the OSHA offensive, to begin January 1 against businesses. The line of absurdity has been crossed, and the lawsuits have begun, claiming that this is unconstitutional. Thus, the opening salvos.
I never saw so clearly how - in comparison with the rest of the Five Eyes - the 2nd Amendment shields us from outright massive violence from the State. Although actually I've seen this all my life, quite clearly, as I'm sure have you.
~~
They pushed this thing to see what barriers they could breach, and they made tremendous headway. It seems important now that when they get pushed back we retake all that lost ground and much more.
More union strength would be good. New unions would be wonderful.
Yes, I know the task is practically impossible, on paper. But reality starts from the ground, not from the drawing board. And from the ground, I've seen people organize in unity without one scrap of paper, and prevail in getting a better life, purely from natural instinct.
But, organization would surely help - I wonder who's out there now, organizing?
Of it all, only solidarity matters.
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 5 2021 4:03 utc | 50
WaPo
Officials tell AP that Iran seized Vietnamese oil tanker
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program. . .here
Tehran Times
IRGC Navy aborts U.S. move to steal Iranian oil in Oman Sea
TEHRAN – The national TV announced on Wednesday at noon time that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy reclaimed a cargo of oil that U.S. forces had stolen from a tanker carrying Iranian oil in the Sea of Oman. . .here
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 5 2021 4:04 utc | 51
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 5 2021 0:55 utc | 43
Those of us who teach classical literature will prefer to go to Herodotus (6.129) for the story of the suitors of Agariste. The account and its source deserve better. The wiki entry is a 19th-century interpretation (at best) with all of its Dorian vs Achaean nonsense. Not sure why tyrant is in inverted commas (Kleisthenes of Sikyon was a turannos). There are infinitely better versions of the nature of Athenian democracy and the role of its elite than the History Channel version offered, and that's quite apart from the absurd suggestion that "Athenian democracy is the precursor of contemporary democracies". IMHO people should be careful peddling nonsense in comments. One risks opening one's mouth to remove all doubt.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 5 2021 5:27 utc | 52
addendum to the above: I recommend actually making a close study of the Kleisthenic reforms of 508/7 BCE. It will quickly become apparent that it was a very sophisticated and successful attempt to remove decision-making power from regional elites, distribute that power in a decentralized way, detach the non-elite from elite patronage and create new foundations for defining civic identity. It was not called demokratia until much later (the contemporary word was isonomia and bore little to no resemblance to any so-called democratic institutions that appeared after 1789.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 5 2021 5:33 utc | 53
Grieved @50:
Of it all, only solidarity matters.
Solidarity comes from collective resolves. Collective resolves arises from collective knowledge of the true situation. At ground level, collective knowledge of the situation is so confused that some voted for dope and some voted for snake oil salesman. No one seem to know what they are for nor what they oppose. How do we gather the forces for the push back? I'm much less of an optimist than you are.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 5 2021 6:26 utc | 54
Video, Tim Grimsey's [short] ABC time lapse video of Aurora Australis.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-07/tim-grimseys-timelapse-of-aurora-australis,-seen/10472704
Posted by: Paul | Nov 5 2021 6:56 utc | 55
I do agree though that to effectively push back, solidarity matters. But how to show solidarity at ground level? I propose that next November, we don't vote. When less than 10% of eligible voters bother to vote, I think the message is truly loudly delivered. Let them politician scramble for an explanation to carry on their vavaging of the nation, notice would have been served as to what comes next.
What comes next of course should be a 10 fold replay of January 6, 2021.
Now, some would say with 10% voting, bad guys will get into office. Well, what do we really have to lose? Are there any candidates in races that you would really wish to have won in the past 40+ years? Ain't it the consensus here in the bar that all them politicos are bad apples?
Better than town meetings, better than caucuses, better than writing to editors, collective refusal to vote would deliver the loudest message.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 5 2021 7:06 utc | 56
First the collective refusal to vote. Then the collective refusal to pay taxes on grounds that government voted in by less than 10% of people has no legitimacy to direct the expenditure of governance. Then we voice our demands of a diligent government at 1/2 of the present budget.
When this sequence is brought to pass, I think we'll be on a right track.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 5 2021 7:18 utc | 57
Iran Azerbaijan Armenia border issues and the influence of Turkey and Russian interests discussed in a very good report by Agha Hussain at the Cradle here.
This brings into focus the strategic trade routes serving Indian export goods to Iran, through both Azerbaijan to Russia and on to EU and Armenia through Georgia and across the Black sea to Bulgaria and even Turkey if there is a good enough reason for it. These are components of the local transport web that is under development and a moderator of conflict in the South Caucasus.
A taste of the intrigues being examined:
Iran views the major role Israeli armaments played alongside Turkish ones in the Azerbaijani victory as having boosted Israel’s status in Baku’s strategic calculus as a reliable extra-regional backer for the latter’s more assertive posture in the Caucasus.Tehran wishes to forestall nearby states from so perceiving cooperation with Israel as a vector for power in the Caucasus, especially considering its own notable lack of impact on the Nagorno-Karabakh war. In this endeavour, Azerbaijan is at present both an ideal and urgent target.
Iran interprets various Azerbaijani regional goals as serving Israeli interests and now opts to use the threat of escalation and region-wide rivalry with Azerbaijan to make it take this interpretation seriously. Doing so will allow Iran to directly obstruct or challenge these goals with the result that Baku agrees to cut back its dealings with Tel Aviv.
This approach is presently being applied to the planned ‘Zangezur Corridor’ between Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan enclave via Syunik province in south Armenia.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 8:56 utc | 58
More from The Cradle on Saudi Arabia and the travails of the Bone Sawman. An interesting report by Ziad Hafez.
Given its erratic financial stability, ambitious domestic economic plans are likely to be further delayed due to the disastrous Saudi decision to launch an unnecessary, treasury-draining war on Yemen. The expectations of achieving a decisive victory within weeks or months, thereby cementing MbS’s legitimacy and competence, proved to be tragically misplaced.Riyadh is now contemplating a humiliating defeat that has already delivered a blow to the crown prince’s carefully crafted image. The expected fall of the city of Marib in Yemen is likely to seal the fate of the war in the coming few weeks.
War, insecurity, and a region in flux:
This unanticipated outcome has led Saudi decision makers to revisit old policies and strategies, and to examine new ones. Most importantly, the ruling dynasty has to ensure its security.
For the last 76 years, that protection was ensured by the United States. In exchange for a steady supply of oil, Washington protected the Saudi dynasty from the turmoil in the region caused by the establishment of Israel, communism and left-wing activism, and later, the ascendence of rival political Islamism.
Marib will be liberated by the national liberation forces of Yemen very soon so watch that Saudi space for hysterics or a sideshow in Lebanon.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 9:13 utc | 59
ooops link to The kingdom's tough choices: between MbS and a hard place.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 9:15 utc | 60
Thierry Meyssan imagines a better world in this report at Voltairenet.
Some of it seems a stretch too far and yet it is a pleasant view of a world where the FUKUSA is rendered less significant. Here is the warm up:
A New World Order takes shape (Part 5) Russia prepares the curtain call
Russia is making great strides in implementing the Geneva agreements of last June. It is bringing Syria back into the concert of nations, preparing to expel Turkey, reconciling Israel and Iran, gaining a foothold in Africa and distributing absolute weapons in Asia. The United States is no longer the master of the world. Those who do not follow the current upheavals will be the losers of the new era in preparation.The implementation of the conclusions of the US-Russia summit in Geneva (known as "Yalta II"), held on June 16, 2021, continues. It seems that the concessions made by Washington to Moscow are much more significant than previously thought. President Vladimir Putin continues to put the world back in order not only in the wider Middle East, but also in Africa and Asia. Substantial changes are already observable in four months. In the Russian tradition, nothing is announced, but everything will be revealed en bloc when things have become irreversible.
A good read but time will tell.
I get the impression that no one has informed General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that this is the new world order. Perhaps they are afraid of ending up like Michael Hastings.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 10:12 utc | 61
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 5 2021 4:03 utc | 50
(Re psychohistorian | Nov 5 2021 3:26 utc | 49)
“Please keep us posted on anything you may learn of those negotiations.”
Yes, please do. My former partner was a nurse at Kaiser. They worked her into exhaustion and she came home totally
spent, a factor in my saying ‘former’. Nurses are heroes, especially the ones speaking out and taking action.
Grieved, the second part of your post #50 is most important. The bar spends a lot of time referencing the actions of nations
and politicians - current events if you will - not so much about ‘what is to be done?’. That question is fundamental.
“Yes, I know the task is practically impossible, on paper. But reality starts from the ground, not from the drawing board. And from the ground, I've seen people organize in unity without one scrap of paper, and prevail in getting a better life, purely from natural instinct.”
It is almost impossible, but practically it is possible. We must believe that!
“Of it all, only solidarity matters.”
Solidarity means working with everyone to your left and to your right against everyone who is on top of you. I think
it’s worth another look at William Gruff’s post #177 in the Some Musings on ‘Wokeness’ thread of Oct. 21, 2021.
If you get past the gruff, huff and puff, there’s some good thoughts there.
I’ll leave this link and a quote from it for those who are caught up on their reading and want more:
What is to be done?
“The most modest demand, if the ruling class is unable or unwilling to fulfil it and provided the people are
sufficiently organized to say, well, in that case, we’ll fulfil it ourselves, can become revolutionary.”
Posted by: waynorinorway | Nov 5 2021 10:18 utc | 62
Oriental Voice @ 57
First the collective refusal to vote. Then the collective refusal to pay taxes on grounds that government voted in by less than 10% of people has no legitimacy to direct the expenditure of governance. Then we voice our demands...
Yes, as I've been saying for years. Quite simple, actually, just passive resistance, 'cause the largest eligible voting bloc is already the one that doesn't vote. It's kinda like pulling teeth, though, 'cause non compliance from a dumbed down and consumeristic society might be non negotiable...
but I think we're getting there.
Posted by: john | Nov 5 2021 10:22 utc | 63
@19 librus
"The government" doens`t have an indemnity agreement with Pfizer. The US government has.
The contract with the EU doesn`t contain an indemnity clause. (One of the few things that von der Leyen did right.) Pfizer is liable for all adverse effects of it`s vaccine and can be brought before court in the EU for any such issues.
Posted by: m | Nov 5 2021 10:56 utc | 64
US absolutely able to ‘defend Taiwan,’ but that’s just empty words: Global Times editorial
Unless your leader is Bolshevik, he's sure to lead from behind. That's the nature of every aristocracy in History.
So, yes, this Joseph Wu will lead from behind, like his founding father Chiang Kaishek did. Liberals only care about one thing: themselves.
The same logic applies to the Pentagon aristocracy.
--//--
Saving face:
China stocks bounce after regulatory shock and awe: Rebound points to China’s still massive profit potential but Beijing needs to get its policy mix right to sustain the momentum by William Pesek, for the Asia Times
Unless you're talking about straight up confiscation of wealth, policy doesn't affect profits. Either the profit rates are high or they're not.
The real reason Pesek is associating "profit potential" with "policy" is this: bourgeois economy doesn't have a conception of profit. To them, profit is merely an accident, a collateral effect of the inherent virtue of the "entrepreneur". The entrepreneur, through his "animal spirits", accidentally generates innovation, which accidentally generates profit; he doesn't now he will generate profit, he's acting by the Will of God, through the "Invisible Hand". That's why he's associating the risk to "profit potential" with arbitrary policy by the CPC and nothing more.
If we want to get even more concrete, then we have the simple fact that the Asia Times is the newspaper of the neoliberals who tell the story from the viewpoint of the financial sector. To then, everything starts and ends with the stock market. When Chinese stocks started to fall after the reforms, they came up with the traditional bourgeois narrative that the evil communist CPC was raping the delicate flower of capitalism; when the stocks rebounded as fast as the fell, they realized the obvious - profit rates in China are too high to be ignored - and now they came up with the "the CPC should not waste this vote of confidence of the entrepreneurs" in order to save face.
I have a simpler counter-narrative: everything the Asia Times believes in and cherishes is a lie. They're fucked up by design. Nobody should ever read it.
--//--
Joke of the week:
The company that frequently falsifies its trial data and did so with its COVID-19 vaccine now, suddenly and after the leak of the whistleblower, announced it has a pill that's much better than Merck's. And it is all being announced by the Western MSM as if it was an incontestable truth, no questions asked.
But what can we say, the American people likes its pills and hates its vaccines. They will pay the price for this inferior treatment no matter if it is fake or not for the simple fact they will be able to go to the drug store and buy them (in opposition to having some evil government official injecting something in their arms).
--//--
Pathetic:
Ancient History Shows How We Can Create a More Equal World
First of all, Comparative History is pseudo-science. It gets even more absurd when you have the nerve to not just do comparative history, but with Ancient History - the most distant period possible to compare with.
Second, why look into fucking Ancient History when there's a Prussian philosopher of the 19th Century - the greatest philosopher of all time - who already has the solutions to our present-day problems?
To make things even worse, the conclusion of the authors is just the same pathetic liberal utopia of the 1990s.
More signs of what is to come: fertilizer prices spiking (again)
CEO of fertilizer company warns
"I want to say this loud and clear right now, that we risk a very low crop in the next harvest," said Svein Tore Holsether, the CEO and president of the Oslo-based company. "I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis."Speaking to Fortune on the sidelines of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Holsether said that the sharp rise in energy prices this summer and autumn had already resulted in fertilizer prices roughly tripling.
...
"To produce a ton of ammonia last summer was $110," said Holsether. "And now it's $1,000. So it's just incredible."
So now we know food price inflation is not going to abate. We are already seeing shortages as the lockdown induced shocks to the food supply system have distorted "eat-out" supply chains vs. "eat-in" supply chains. The ports are backed up, so don't expect imports to substitute.
And then there's this:
US Farmers can't export due to port problems
“We’re at the mercy of foreign shipping companies,” said Roger Isom, president and CEO of the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association and the Western Agricultural Processors Association. “We’re in a game, somebody changed the rules on us and we have no way to correct it.”California is the nation’s biggest supplier of tree nuts — almonds, walnuts and pistachios. Most of them are sold to other countries, totaling more than $8.1 billion in exports in 2019, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
But last month, Isom said more than 80% of scheduled shipments were canceled. Processors have resorted to paying much more to ship their products to other ports, sending pistachios and walnuts by train to Texas and Maryland and flying bales of cotton to Peru.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 5 2021 13:42 utc | 66
@ Posted by: c1ue | Nov 5 2021 13:42 utc | 66
And those liberal intellectuals (both bourgeois economists and the postmodern troupe) still insist there's a difference between goods and services...
This is important:
Canadian Professor of Ethics and Ancient History on Vaccine Mandates
In the fall of 2019, I was a professor of ethics and ancient philosophy; I taught students critical thinking + the importance of self-reflection, how to ask good questions and evaluate evidence, how to learn from the past and why democracy requires civic virtue....
“The right to determine what shall or shall not be done with one’s own body, and to be free from non-consensual medical treatment, is a right deeply rooted in our common law.” These aren’t my words; they are the words of Justice Sydney Robins of the Ontario Court of Appeal.
With very few exceptions, each person’s body is considered inviolate in Canadian law, and this is the underlying ethos of the Nuremberg Code, a promise to humanity that we would never again endorse uninformed, non-voluntary medical decision-making, even for the patient’s own good, even for the sake of the public good.
By definition, vaccine mandates are coercive immunization strategies: in the absence of coercion — the threat of a loss of employment, for example — people would voluntarily agree to do what the mandate is trying to achieve!
...
In emergencies, the Parliament and provincial legislatures have a limited power to pass laws that violate certain Charter rights for the sake of the public good. But, to justify those violations, vaccine mandates would need to meet a very high threshold: COVID-19 would, for example, need to be a highly virulent pathogen for which there is no adequate treatment, and the vaccines would need to be demonstrably effective and safe.
The current state of affairs in Canada meets neither of these criteria.
Consider these facts:
1) COVID-19 has an infection facility rate not even 1% that of smallpox (and it poses even less risk to children)
2) a number of safe, highly effective pharmaceuticals exist to treat it (including monoclonal antibodies, Ivermectin, fluvoxamine, Vitamin D and Zinc), AND
3) The vaccines have reported more adverse events (including innumerable deaths) than every other vaccine on the market over the last 30 years.
In light of these facts, I have so many questions:
Why are the vaccinated granted vaccine passports and access to public spaces, when the Director of the CDC has stated that the COVID-19 vaccines cannot prevent transmission?
Why is vaccination the ONLY mitigation strategy when emerging evidence (including a recent Harvard study) shows no discernible relationship between the vaccination rate and new cases?
Why does our government continue to withhold Ivermectin as a recommended treatment when the U-S National Institutes of Health supports it, and when the state of Uttar Pradesh in India distributed it to its 230 million people, reducing its COVID death rate to almost zero? How has India surpassed Canada in Health Care?
Why are we about to vaccinate 5 year olds when COVID poses to them less risk than the potential vaccine reactions AND while there is NO effective monitoring system for the vaccines?
Why are we focused on the narrow benefits of vaccine-induced immunity when real-world studies show natural immunity is more protective, more potent, and more enduring?
Why do we shame the “vaccine hesitant” and not the “vaccine adamant”?
“Why,” as a nurse recently asked, “do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that did not protect the protected in the first place?”
I have said many of the very same things, repeatedly, in posts here on MoA.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 5 2021 14:16 utc | 68
Mike Yeadon, Ex-Pfizer Scientist Sent This Out on Thursday. We Are Approaching Stage 5
Phase 1: Simulate a threat and create fear. (December 2019-March 2020)
Mount a plandemic
– Kill tens of thousands of elderly people.
– Increase the number of cases and deaths
– Position vaccination as the only solution from the beginning.
– Focus all attention on Covid-19.
Result, (almost) general panic
Phase 2: Sow the tares and division. (March 2020-December 2020)
– Impose multiple unnecessary, liberticidal and unconstitutional coercive measures.
– Paralyze trade and the economy.
– Observe the submission of a majority and the resistance of a rebellious minority.
– Stigmatize the rebels and create a horizontal division.
– Censoring dissident leaders.
– Punish disobedience.
– Generalize PCR tests.
– Create confusion between cases, infected, sick, hospitalized and dead.
– Disqualify all effective treatments.
– Hope for a rescue vaccine.
Result, (almost) general panic.
Phase 3: Bring a treacherous and deadly solution. (December 2020-June 2021)
– Offer a free vaccine for everyone.
– Promise protection and return to normality.
– Establish a herd immunization target.
– Simulate a partial recovery of the economy.
– Hide statistics of side effects and deaths from injections.
– Passing off the side effects of the injections as “natural” effects of the virus and the disease.
– Recover the notion of a variant as a natural mutation of the virus.
– Justify the maintenance of coercive measures by not applying the herd immunity threshold.
– Punish health professionals for the illegal exercise of care and healing.
Result, doubts and feelings of betrayal among the vaxx, discouragement among opponents.
Phase 4: Install Apartheid and the QR code. (June 2021-October 2021)
– Voluntarily plan for shortages.
– Impose the vaccination pass (QR code) to reward the vaccinated, punish the resistant.
– Create an Apartheid of the privileged against the others.
– Take away the right to work or study from non-vaxx.
– Withdraw basic services to the non-vaxx.
– Impose PCR payment tests on non-vaxx.
Result, First stage of digital control, impoverishment of opponents
Phase 5: Establish chaos and Martial law. (November 2021-March 2022)
– Exploit the shortage of goods and food.
– Cause the paralysis of the real economy and the closure of factories and shops.
– Let unemployment explode.
– Apply a third dose to the vaxx (boosters).
– Take up the murder of the living old men.
– Impose compulsory vaccination for all.
– Amplify the myth of variants, the efficacy of the vaccine and the immunity of the herd.
– Demonize the anti-vaxx and hold them responsible for the dead.
– Arrest opposition leaders.
– Impose digital identity on everyone (QR code): Birth certificate, identity document, passport, driving license, health insurance card …
– Establish martial law to defeat the opposition.
Result, Second stage of digital control. Imprisonment or removal of opponents.
Phase 6: Cancel the debts and dematerialize the money. (March 2022-September 2022)
– Trigger the economic, financial and stock market collapse, the bankruptcy of the banks.
– To rescue the losses of the banks in the accounts of their clients.
– Activate the «Great Reset».
– De-materialize money.
– Cancel debts and loans.
– Impose the digital portfolio. (Digital Wallet)
– Seize properties and land.
– Ban all global medicines.
– Confirm the obligation to vaccinate semi-annually or annually.
– Impose food rationing and a diet based on the Codex Alimentarius.
– Extend the measures to emerging countries.
Posted by: Perimetr | Nov 5 2021 15:27 utc | 69
Yesterday marked Russia's Unity Day with Putin in Sevastopol at the brand new memorial dedicated to the end of Russia's Civil War. Quite an impressive complex judging from pics:
"The monument presents a sculptural composition with two male figures at the centre symbolising the two opposing sides in the Civil War. Above them rises a statue on a pedestal representing Mother Russia that calls on its sons to be reconciled. The bottom of the monument carries the inscription: 'We are a single people, and we have only one Russia.' This is where the eternal flame is burning."
Putin's speech was short but with a note of defiance aimed at those wanting to destroy Russia:
"National Unity Day marks a dramatic, life-changing period in the history of our country. In the early 17th century, Russia found itself on the brink of losing its sovereignty and could have disappeared from the European and world maps forever. However, the people of Russia did not let this happen. They came together in a volunteer army led by Minin and Pozharsky to defend their homeland, chase out the invaders and traitors, restore a strong state, and stop sectarian strife. They took on the task of saving the country and paved the way for Russia’s revival and strengthening....
"The memorial complex in Sevastopol shows that Russia remembers and loves all its devoted sons and daughters no matter what side of the barricades they once were on, and that our country has recovered its historical unity.
"It is of course here, in Sevastopol, in Crimea, that one gets the keenest sense of this live, indissociable bond. Sevastopol and Crimea are now with Russia and will stay with it forever, because this was the expression of the sovereign, free and uncompromising will of our entire people. [My Emphasis]
I'm sure many Ukrainians listened to Putin's speech wondering when the Motherland will come to save them.
Also yesterday, a meeting of the Supreme State Council for The Union State met to sign a series of important documents with Lukashenko presiding:
"I would also like to make a request to my good friend and colleague: Mr Putin, if you have the opportunity, at least via Crimea’s leadership, would you please pass on the most sincere greetings from Belarusians to Crimea’s residents and wish them good health and courage amidst these difficult times. They must understand that they are not alone, we stand next to each other and will support and help each other during this challenging period."
Quite a bit of substance is relayed by Putin and Lukashenko, and I'm pleased I read the entire transcript, otherwise I'd have missed out on some very important context related to the new monument Putin dedicated, which I'll share:
"Vladimir Putin: Yes, I am indeed in Sevastopol today to mark National Unity Day as well as to attend the unveiling of this monument. It is a great statue I think, and I recommend everyone to see it. And the story itself is quite exciting, I mean the people depicted – the Berens twin brothers as far as I know – looking so valiant and handsome. One of them joined the ‘red’ side and commanded the navy in the Russian Federation, and the other – the White Movement naval forces. Both were admirals, and they never saw each other again after one of them emigrated from Russia. Both died without ever seeing each other again. It is an interesting story, and I hope that this symbolism – the twins, two naval commanders standing side by side on this pedestal – truly reflects a return to the unity of the multiethnic Russian nation."
What former member of the Soviet Union will be next to join the Union State? Perhaps the two Donbass Republics.
So one year on, things are getting much hotter in the Horn of Africa again, and massive floods and crop failures is S. Sudan.
State Department urges US citizens to leave Ethiopia
UN says 800,000 people affected by floods in South Sudan
Posted by: Bemildred | Nov 5 2021 16:57 utc | 72
Michael Hudson has a new article posted at CounterPunch, entitled "Is This the End of the Unreformable Democratic Party?", in which he discusses the US political duopoly and identity politics..
"The Democratic role is to protect the Republican party from challenges from the left. Its tactic for many decades now has been to use identity politics to replace the traditional economic concerns of voters as wage earners, consumers, debtors and, in a rising proportion of cases, as renters faced with losing their homes if they fall into arrears as rents and housing prices are soaring. Identity politics is a strategy to fragment the wage-earning majority of voters into separate ethnic, racial and gender identities. That distracts attention from their class consciousness whose interests do not match those of the Donor Class that has gained control of the Democrat-Republican duopoly. This control and divergence of interests explains the DNC’s refusal to back progressive candidates...."
Posted by: spudski | Nov 5 2021 17:02 utc | 73
@ spudski | Nov 5 2021 17:02 utc | 73 with the Michael Hudson quote....thanks
As I and others have written at the bar for years, the one change that the bottom needs to demand of the top in our society is the elimination of private finance entirely as it has proven to provide no intrinsic value to society, only an unequal/unjust society.
All this BS we are reading here about some complex way to save ourselves is more obfuscation of and misdirection about the core tenets of the Western form of "social organization" with global private finance. This form of social organization, of which many of us are "clients" is in a civilization war with China who is maintaining a form of social organization that has finance be publicly owned and controlled at the core.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 5 2021 17:13 utc | 74
spudski @ 73, I too thank you for the Michael Hudson article. I will add to what he says that the very first 'tell' for Obama ought to have been that he did not accept the government provided assistance to his campaign, preferring to go with private contributions. I didn't see it myself; I voted for him first time he ran, thinking his issues were different from Bush. I was wrong
But now I know. Here's a bit more from Professor Hudson's article:
"... If the world is polarizing between the One Percent and the 99 Percent, between creditors and debtors, monopolists and consumers, where is the middle ground? The Chinese have a proverb: “He who comes to a fork in the road and tries to go two roads at once will get a broken hip joint.” Being a moderate means not interfering with the economic trends that are polarizing the U.S. economy between the rentier One Percent at the top and the increasingly indebted 99 Percent..."
Having broken my own hip through my own foolishness five years back, this made me laugh out loud. Fool me once...
Can't we make accepting the modest amount of assistance to campaigns that is governmentally affordable mandatory???
Think what that would do.
Posted by: juliania | Nov 5 2021 17:24 utc | 76
Posted by: vk | Nov 5 2021 12:21 utc | 65:
Unless you're talking about straight up confiscation of wealth, policy doesn't affect profits. Either the profit rates are high or they're not.
Policy affects cost of production; policy changes preference in consumptions; policy directs the preferred evolution of products; policy can stop/mitigate flimsy means of making profits. Oh yes, my friend, policy DOES affect profits.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 5 2021 17:24 utc | 77
Recommended read of the day:
Xi Jinping's Speech at a Ceremony Marking the Centenary of the Communist Party of China
--//--
@ Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 5 2021 17:24 utc | 77
Not in practice. The explanation is very complex and would require a fairly advanced knowledge of dialectics, but, long story short, the fluctuations caused by taxation and patterns of consumption and production are minimal in a consolidated capitalist world.
--//--
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 5 2021 17:13 utc | 74
Your rationale (and, for that matter, Michael Hudson's) is wrong. The only reason the Western peoples think private finance is the main enemy is because that's the dominant capitalist sector in the West nowadays. The SE Asian peoples must probably think industrial capital is the main enemy, Latin American peoples think it is agrarian capital that is the main enemy etc. etc.
The main point is: capitalism in general is the enemy.
Regarding #66 above.
According to the ERS, fertilizer is 16% to 24% of a corn farmer's expenses.
Let's say 20% for all farmers just as an approximation.
If fertilizer prices go up 900% ($110 to $1000 per post #66), then farmer's costs will increase 180%? Nor is this likely to be offset by price decreases elsewhere: fuel and transport costs are going up, not down.
How's that for inflation?
Nor is this only going to be for Europe. Asia, US - natural gas prices are rising everywhere. The Fischer-Tropsch process is pretty universal, so food prices are likely going up everywhere.
And while food costs aren't a high percentage of 1st world nation consumer spending, they are extremely visible. Coupled with attendant jumps in energy prices, consumer product shortages, etc - interesting times ahead.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 5 2021 17:38 utc | 79
@75 Cont'd--
Hudson's essay is a polished version of the points he outlined in his interview with Paul Jay. IMO, somebody will make a few pennies marketing a T-shirt emblazoned with "I'm not a Donor; I'm a Voter." Hudson sees no hope from Rs and given reality has written off Ds:
"The current Democratic impasse shows that no progress can be made without changing the institutional structure of American politics. It seems that the only way to do this is to make sure that the Democratic Party loses so irrevocably in 2022 and 2024 that it is dissolved enough to enable the Progressives to revive the near corpse."
Lots of third parties exist at the state level and run candidates for congressional and state offices. IMO, that's where voter effort ought to be directed for 2022 and beyond. Somehow the oligarchic Duopoly must be cut down to the point where it no longer has any clout. The only solution I see is some form of Populist revolt that backs third parties as was done during the two previous eras of Populist Revolt--The Gilded Age and Great Depression. Oh, and that populist resistance/revolt arose in the flyover states by many who were radicalized Rs. Nowadays, both Ds and Rs are radicalized; so it's time to destroy the ID Political barricade and stand together as humans with very similar needs that aren't being fulfilled by government because of the Oligarchy.
karlof1 @ 80
I hate to be reactionary, but if what Perimetr posted at 69 from Mike Yeadon is true, then everyone being mandated everywhere better coalesce a whole lot sooner then the mid terms in revolution, if we're gonna save our skins.
Posted by: aye, myself & me | Nov 5 2021 18:57 utc | 81
Juliana @ 23
Thank you.
uncle tungsten’s quick response is completely correct in its first part. Mimicking nature is the strategy. Think Edward Jenner and smallpox. His answer was spreading nature to more places than it would ordinarily go.
Second part of uncle tungsten a bit queasy. Yes, there are possibilities for mitigating vaccine harm, and that must be explored. But once damage is done much of that damage will remain. Damage to the heart muscle is permanent. Brain damage is permanent. Vascular damage is mostly permanent.
First step is gathering information. Which has become difficult. Peter McCullough is the worlds most published cardiologist. A year ago he had eight groups of initials after his name. He is down to four. And is worried he will
lose the initials ‘M.D.’ Younger and less distinguished doctors are keeping quiet in situations where their clinical observations are needed.
McCullough is stating the spike protein in vaccine damaged myocarditic hearts is two orders of magnitude greater than it appears with ordinary and severe covid infection. The clinical observations are truncated. We really do not know how long either the mRNA or the spike proteins persist. We do not know why some vaccinated patients react strongly and others seem unaffected. There are outliers like Thomas Borody who says he has treated 6000 covid patients with zero mortality and zero long covid. Syed Haider says the same with 4000 patients. Is anyone following up with these clinicians? Of course not.
Posted by: Oldhippie | Nov 5 2021 19:16 utc | 82
Posted by: juliania | Nov 5 2021 17:24 utc | 76
"Having broken my own hip through my own foolishness five years back, this made me laugh out loud. Fool me once..."
Oh Juliana, you made me laugh with you by reminding me of this oldie but goldie that I'm sure we've all seen but always brings
a grin Fool me once
Posted by: waynorinorway | Nov 5 2021 19:17 utc | 83
Following up myself @81
That would be the same Thomas Borody who cured peptic and duodenal ulcers. Someone at this bar suffered ulcers earlier in life, Borody is the reason you are comfortable (and alive) now. Australia let Borody practice medicine for most of the pandemic, he was just too big to mess with. They are messing with him now.
Posted by: Oldhippie | Nov 5 2021 19:23 utc | 84
@ vk
Your Prussian philosopher (is that Hegel or Marx...? Let's assume both) would probably have been the first to admit that the Grundrisse was a footnote to Aristotle's Politics. In other words, the link between Marxist critique and Greek thought (especially Attic tragedy) was one already on display in his dissertation and Notes on Lucretius. Without Epicurus there is no Spinoza and no Marx. So let's not pretend Karl was born fully grown in armour like Athena from the head of Zeus.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 5 2021 20:12 utc | 85
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/11/05/covid-how-long-does-vaccine-based-immunity-last/
Is it only a problem of Wuhan strain based vaccines or can we say that mRNA vaccines do not provide herd immunity versus the classical Sinovac?
Posted by: Tom2 | Nov 5 2021 20:18 utc | 86
@ 73 spudski / 75 karlof1... thanks for drawing my attention to it and the direct link! much appreciated...
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2021 21:48 utc | 87
@Oriental Voice #77
@vk #65
Indeed, let's put just a few examples where policy affects profits directly:
1) Taxes. More taxes, less profit.
2) Lockdowns. Can't operate, no profit.
3) Affirmative action. Not a minority? Greatly disadvantaged federal/state government business unless a multinational corp.
4) Government programs: PPP, Medicare drug policies, etc.
5) Import tariffs.
The real world is different than the nice model put forward by Marx. Just because he presented some interesting concepts doesn't make his work inherently valid or even usable outside of politics.
Posted by: c1ue | Nov 5 2021 22:01 utc | 88
waynorinorway #62
Grieved
The doing part needs to be derived from an analysis of IT and how IT is propagated. From that there can be interruptions, sabotage of the vehicles that serve IT.
One analysis of IT that I found insightful is this report at NEO. Phil Butler sets out an analysis and the means by which IT has been stitched into the social fabric in 'More Clues In Pursuit Of the Nebulous Cabal That Runs Stuff'.
Here is an extract that might assist you to design the interrupts, create the liaisons, build the solidarities that may lead to reclaiming the dialogue and enable change.
Another pitfall of expressing honest views like this in America is that the real far-right fanatics who love Donald Trump will holler either “Hell yeah!” or “Praise Jesus,” depending on which side of the tracks they grew up on. And, if I appear to side with them, disagreeing with “instructing” innocent minds that it’s okay to switch and swap their sexuality further their cause. If I don’t agree with the education system instructing kids to call their Mom and Dad birthing attendants one and two, it puts me (and every moderate American) on the bus with the KKK, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, and worse. And the left-wing ride alongs, the African American and Hispanic communities, they’ll hate me too. Sadly, none of the aforementioned Americans know, it’s the Big Daddy evil geniuses orchestrating the whole thing. Do you get it? It’s the evil genius perfect storm.I know, I know, it sounds like the same old Illuminati conspiracy theory all right. But doesn’t the “rest of us” at one another’s throats on everything seem strange to you?
A friend here in Greece told me yesterday, “The anarchists destroy our art. They gather in the square to execute their only function, to recruit more idiots into the ranks.” The man speaking had taken his own time and money to help reinvigorate a key cultural neighborhood in Heraklion, Crete’s capital. Artists from around the world came to beautify a once wonderful neighborhood square with street art that was magical. And now it’s almost all defaced, spray painted over because the subject matter was not “political enough.” Yes, you got me, medieval, shit for brains stuff. Now let’s flip the page.
Consider that: "the rest of us at one another's throat".
How very Medici is that reference.
This same mechanism is what has been used successfully throughout centuries to corrode solidarity and turn the energy in on the oppressed so that Oligarchy and monopoly can rule without challenge. Marx and Engels understood that very well.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 22:37 utc | 89
On the 'Let's Go Brandon!" phenomenon this is good:
https://tinkzorg.wordpress.com/2021/11/02/2740/
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 5 2021 22:53 utc | 90
juliania #23
Further to my response at #28 I can recommend reading on the various methods of blocking spike proteins. Or at least attenuating their impact. There are a number of compounds that are well known to have some effect, Ivermectin (soil based isolate) has been reported as active and so has Dandelion (herb based).
Here is a link to Dandelion. A quick search will yield much more on that herb.
There are likely numerous other herbs and fungi throughout the planet that can contribute to attenuating spike proteins and perhaps through this, then reversing the damage due to conventional bodily healing. In the end we do rely on the capacity for healing with some help from our herbal and medicinal friends.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 22:55 utc | 91
Ellen Brown has a posting up at her web site about the NAC (natural asset company) financialization of nature with the link below
Conservation or Land Grab? The Financialization of Nature
The God of Mammon idolization is spreading the financialization cancer further over/through society.....will it be stopped?
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 5 2021 23:06 utc | 92
Patrick Boyle gives us the drum on regulating pseudo currencies here.
Federal regulators requested more power from Congress to regulate stablecoins, a fast-growing type of cryptocurrency that they warn could result in bank runs and consumer abuse unless lawmakers act quickly, according to a report issued Monday by the Treasury Department.The report, which was undertaken by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, called on Congress to pass a law that makes issuers of stablecoins subject to requirements like those of traditional banks and financial institutions. Such a change would require that those institutions hold adequate reserves to ensure they can meet the demands of customers to cash out quickly.
The call for congressional action comes at a pivotal moment, as cryptocurrencies are exploding in growth with limited federal oversight in place to regulate them.
Stablecoins, have not always proved as securely backed as companies claim, which the Treasury report warns could pose significant problems for customers, investors and the overall financial system.
Who heads the regulator you might ask? Janet Yellen.
This is bound to end well as a diversion for failing to regulate the criminal oligarchs that are Wall St.
More Democrat fakery to give them a feather disguise their naked corruption.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 23:11 utc | 93
@ Posted by: c1ue | Nov 5 2021 22:01 utc | 87
Taxes do not lower profits. It all depends on what the State spends those taxes. For example: more taxes in the USA means more profits to the MIC.
Indeed, some sectors of capitalist exploitation can only exist with the direct consumption (taxation) of the State.
If the State spends taxes build a road, the company hired to build said road will profit from those taxes. Those taxes means money-capital in the hands of the road building company.
The only scenario where taxation lowers profitability is when the State spends it on the Welfare State. The Welfare States makes labor power more expensive to all capitalist sectors at the same time, therefore lowers the social profit rate.
Higher salaries (and bribes) for politicians also don't hurt profitability, because those politicians will spend this money on luxury items and estates, therefore boosting the luxury sector's profit rate. The same logic applies to retired people (who will spend their money on the tourism sector and the medical-pharmaceutical sector).
This same logic applies to what you denominate "affirmative action" and government programs.
The existence of the State is absolutely necessary to capitalism. Without the State, the Free Market cannot exist, because the Free Market presupposes a neutral arbiter to set the rules of the Free Market in the first place.
The pandemic is a natural disaster of epic proportions. Economic theory does not apply to such events.
Import tariffs often represent a loss for the foreign capitalist sector, but in retribution of an abnormally high profit rate of the domestic capitalist sector. Capitalism survives either way.
Patroklos #89
On the 'Let's Go Brandon!" phenomenon this is good:
Thank you and in honor of the continuing charges and pending prosecutions of the corrupt 'Russiagate' advocates and their running dogs perhaps I could suggest Let's go Putin.
That will get idiot Maddow and her screaming hysterics going.
Jimmy Dore is running a great interview with Aaron Mate on the russiagate meltdown right now.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 23:33 utc | 95
@89 Patroklos - On the 'Let's Go Brandon!" phenomenon this is good: The Decisive Battle - Malcom Kyeyune
I agree this is good. This is the long essay I decried in an earlier thread for being so long (at 4,000 words). I said it was a shame that such an excellent point was made with so many words.
I think I must now eat some crow. The essay is long-winded, but its excellence makes it worth reading. All of the points made by the author are good. So I'm going to share some of his best parts with some abridging.
~~
First, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a desperate gambit that failed:
The Americans are furious, yes, but they don’t seek the quick and decisive battle the Japanese are hoping for. Instead they simply wait, and wait, and wait, focusing on the land war in Europe while building ships and preparing plans for when they will eventually take the war to Japan ... If the Americans make this war about production and manpower, Japan will crumble ... it has in fact already lost the war the second the Americans refuse to follow the script the Japanese had – quite naively – laid out for them.
Kyeyune likens this gambit to the stroke made by the woke class and the opponents of Trump. This class threw all of itself into defeating Trump in 2020, and assumed therefrom that the deplorables were defeated:
Every sector of America’s ”knowledge worker” caste came together from the middle of 2020 up to the election ... and it worked perfectly – Joe Biden was [elected]...and [the opponents] were swiftly denounced as terrorists and traitors to the nation. [The Woke] scored a perfect victory, just as the Japanese scored a perfect victory at Pearl Harbor. In 2016, the ”forgotten people” of America had, incredibly, used the power of their votes to narrowly push Trump over the finish line. In 2020, the very much not forgotten people of America’s urban cores and prestige institutions gathered all their might and routed the deplorables from the field.Or so they hoped.
What happens now?
In a world where nobody is actually convinced by the media, the fact that you control the media doesn’t actually help you. The ”email job caste” of America has a war machine that has already been maxed out. There are no reserves of fence-sitting journalists that can be drafted to fill in the holes and somehow make the message control more far-reaching or effective than it already is. There are no huge reservoirs of apolitical, unwoke university professors that can be drafted into talking some more sense into the chuds. What we all saw in 2020 represents, to some fairly significant extent, the full scope of the political, social and economic power of team blue in America today. And that team took its best shot in 2020, only to find out in 2021 that all that power has now decisively failed to settle any issues or end any conflicts in America. Team red is still there, and like the ”sleeping giant” that was America in 1941, they are now slowly waking up and starting to use their own power, on their own terms, in order to fight back
It's Kyeyune's perception and description of these details that make the essay so powerful. His comparison with Pearl Harbor is brilliant, and honors the true strategic scale of what is happening.
In 2020, the HR manager and CRT commissar pulled off their own little Pearl Harbor attack on the trucker and the pilot ... But when the trucker now refuses to go to work over Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates, and the pilot openly mocks the power and legitimacy of the media and the credentialed classes over his airplane intercom, the utter hopelessness of the woke position is increasingly made manifest. They had hoped for a decisive battle, after which the ”forgotten people” would go back to being forgotten. Instead, the email job caste of America now finds itself locked into a hopeless conflict against people whose work and toil they rely on, but who do not need them to anything close to the same degree...there’s no more media that can be used. Censorship on social media platforms has failed to stop the spread of forbidden thought and subversive opinion, but there aren’t any big platforms left that didn’t partake in some way in 2020. The power that’s been used thus far has not been enough, but it’s increasingly unclear where the email job caste will get more power from.
As you can see, Kyeyune's writing is very readable. If you have the time, it's worth reading all of the essay. It took me a lot of words just to do it justice, but I couldn't have done it in less.
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 6 2021 0:14 utc | 96
Patroklos @ 89
Thanks so much for that link. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I too thought it a tad optimistic but is that not what is needed so badly in this world?
Laughter and optimism, the best medicine to remind us of the power of the people.
Posted by: ld | Nov 6 2021 0:44 utc | 97
Little chat about that submarine still, even with public notice that various officers have been canned for the incident. Enquiring minds...
Posted by: Bill | Nov 6 2021 1:12 utc | 98
karlof1 #75
spudski
Hudson Essay
Excellent reference and thank you both for this.
It was infuriating to read the quotes from Bernie Sanders:
Most egregious is cutting taxes for the wealthiest home owners, especially on the East Coast, by raising the income-tax deductibility of property taxes – the State and Local Tax (SALT) – from $10,000 to $72,500. As Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Bernie Sanders sounded exasperated on election-day Tuesday when he explained that this $400 billion giveaway to the wealthiest 5 percent was so large, that “the top 1% would pay lower taxes after passage of the Build Back Better plan than they did after the Trump tax cut in 2017. This is beyond unacceptable.”Sanders pointed out that “Democrats campaigned and won on an agenda that demands that the very wealthy finally pay their fair share, not one that gives them more tax breaks.”[2] But the Democratic leadership replied that without favoring the Donor Class, their campaign financing would shrink – a prospect that would lead Senate recipients of lobbying largesse to vote down the BBB.
Imagine an old political dog such as Bernie with a lifetime of immersion in the "political struggle" being done over by Dem treachery. Gosh what a shock.
Where was this BS faker when the #fraudsquad had the opportunity to #forcethevote? Silent. Perhaps he was fully engaged in important Senate business and didn't see the one strategic opportunity in his life?
I guess Bernie can see that the USA political elite is not agreement capable. And that includes him.
This is a great report by Hudson and illuminates some interesting aspects of this eternal debate.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 6 2021 1:15 utc | 99
@Geroman reports that the governor of Marib has fled to Turkey 12 hours ago. If so it will be a rapid collapse of the Saudi traitor class and victory for the Yemen patriotic resistance and its liberation of Marib city.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 6 2021 1:58 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
marib-video if the Saudi lose in Yemen.. how will human rights courts react?
Posted by: snake | Nov 4 2021 14:03 utc | 1