Dysfunction
A 2019 study found that the U.S. is the country that is best prepared for a pandemic.
It turned out that assessment, like so many others, had been wrong.
- Viewpoint: We’re Losing the Fight Against COVID-19 So Far - BMJ - Mar 9, 2020
- Why We’re Losing the Battle With Covid-19 - NY Times - Jul 14, 2020
- Why the U.S. Is Losing the War on COVID-19 - Time - Aug 13, 2020
- L.A. County hospitals are losing the battle against COVID-19 surge as problems multiply - L.A. Times - Jan 6, 2021
- We Have Lost The Battle Against Covid-19, But You Can Still Reduce Your Own Risk - Forbes - Aug 25, 2021
Thirty months and a million excess death later I am sorry to see that no lessons have been learned from this catastrophe.
- The U.S. May Be Losing the Fight Against Monkeypox, Scientists Say - NY Times - Jul 9, 2022
> The first cases of monkeypox were reported in May, but tests will not be readily available until sometime this month. Vaccines will be in short supply for months longer. Surveillance is spotty, and official case counts are likely a gross underestimate. <
In the latter half of the last century the U.S. was seen by much of the rest of the world as a positive example. The new deal in the 1930s and the success in World War II had left an enduring positive impressions.
There were negative aspects like ingrained racism, the Vietnam war and the aids pandemic. But the U.S. still seemed able to recognize its faults and to correct them. In the 1990s that changed. The cold war had ended but the U.S. continued to be an ideological empire. It is the last one:
As other powers abandon ideology in favor of reasserting national and civilizational claims, the United States and its various clients and satraps remain committed to ideological struggle, to bolstering liberalism—the one modern ideology that survived the previous century’s clash of ideologies.
During the later 1990s I visited the U.S. several times and traveled throughout the country. It was already crumbling. Much was patched over but the damage underneath was clearly visible. In 2000 the dot.com bubble burst followed by another crash in 2008. The war on Iraq and the response to Covid added to the negative impressions. Together they turned the global view around. The city upon a hill had lost its shine.
Today the skyline of St. Petersburg no longer shies away from comparisons with New York. Even tier-3 cities in China beat U.S. metropolises with their quality of life.
International soft power is acquired by being a good example. By being the one that others will strive to be. To get there and to be that requires the ability of the whole society to self correct its mistakes.
The U.S. has lost that capability.
Posted by b on July 9, 2022 at 11:40 UTC | Permalink
next page »I would highly recommend reading some of Michael Hudson's work like J for Junk Economics, or Killing the Host or any of his many lectures/talks online to get a sense of why the West is in decline and Eurasia is not
Posted by: leaf | Jul 9 2022 11:50 utc | 2
Considering that next president to be Kamala or Donald one has to purchase tissues or get a drink or cringe.
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 11:51 utc | 3
The USA people had all of their best attributes STOLEN from them. They are never lost but they are still there - at the end of a hard road. Good luck people.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 9 2022 12:02 utc | 6
The United States of America (not THE America) has long ago adopted the parasitic DNA of that other parasite that took over this nation, at least since 1913 with the establishment of the privately owned Fed. Even if one goes back to 1776, this nation has never been that "shinning city on the hill" for itself or for the rest of the world. Its beloved and greatly self-proclaimed "Constitution" is basically a legal document that enshrines the rights of white landowners, at the expense of the natives and blacks and others. And history has proven this basic truth.
Today, the USA is running on the fumes of Hollywood, hence the necessity of "narratives" in its news media. Almost all the recent and new movies are based on one or another version of comic book heroes! This alone should tell you about the real rotten state that the real USA is in currently and has been since the assassination of JFK which probably was the last chance for real changes. Although, realistically there were no more chances.
The results of Covid, in contrast to that of China's, demonstrate the utter failure and complete disregard of the so-called American government for the welfare and well being of its people. The US "Mother of all Sanctions" launched against Russia is final proof that the USA is running out of steam.
The real question then is will the USA go gently and quitely into the graveyard of all empires?
Personally, I don't think so. But one can always hope and pray!
Posted by: Sam Smith | Jul 9 2022 12:03 utc | 7
Posted by: Thomas Turk | Jul 9 2022 11:59 utc | 7
You carefully vetted all that [crap] before posting, I'm sure.
Posted by: inok | Jul 9 2022 12:10 utc | 8
Look at polio statistics. Look at how many died. Look at how many suffered disability. If you don't know the numbers look them up, don't look at me.
Everyone of my generation remembers people with braces and orthopedic shoes from polio. It was completely normal to see these victims. We knew people who died.
Being square in the demographic of those who are dying of covid and square in a geographic area much afflicted by covid I really should know quite a few who died from covid.
Last person I knew who died of polio contracted the disease in the outbreak of 1916. After a lifetime of remission sometimes it comes back. Ada died at age 92, it was definitely a polio death.
It must be true that a million died of covid. It is in all the papers and all the TV news. I would be a bad bad bad bad person if I disrespected all the dear departed. And even worse if I thought my media Lords were liars.
Posted by: oldhippie | Jul 9 2022 12:20 utc | 9
Simple rule: Anything that's treated as a public service in sane countries, but privatized here in US - health, schools, transport, telecom ... ends up overpriced and barely functional.
The functioning of the US, despite its limitations, continues as long as it's possible to attract educated immigrants (which of course leaves kids of the locally born at a disadvantage). These days, the inflow has to be supported by creating chaos in places from which the new people come.
Posted by: ptb | Jul 9 2022 12:28 utc | 10
If the people in America and Europe start to see in front of what an abyss they stand I'm not sure they will want to back off, that's definitely the problem. It has to do with the elites but not only with them. I live in Germany. The "normal people" too think they are better than the people of the global south. They don't say it but they act as such. And if America becomes dysfunctional, fuck America, they certainly think they function well. And they are very willing to pick up the flag of excellence and take the lead - whatever the costs maybe.
Posted by: Isabelle McEwen | Jul 9 2022 12:35 utc | 11
You could add a big slice of Europe to the list of "dysfunctional cities". A few streets from the tourist places urban decay sets in.
Government seems to react mainly by claiming bad is good.
Do not say graffiti is vandalism; say graffiti is urban art. Do not say you are too poor to buy new clothes; say second-hand clothing is recycling and helps save the planet. Do not say you do not have enough money to heat your house; say a colder house is more healthy. Do not say natural gas prices are too high; say taking a shower every day does not benefit your skin.
A friend of mine gets all worked up when he watches tv news. quote they take us for fools unquote.
Posted by: Passerby | Jul 9 2022 12:46 utc | 12
The contradictions of capitalism are apparent even in Bs analysis. Talks about “soft” power and comparisons between St. Petersburg and New York.
All that Soft power at work convincing Ukrainians, West Slavs and the Baltic-Finns just how wonderful it will be being minorities in the Russian world order.
Posted by: Wobblie | Jul 9 2022 12:49 utc | 13
The Reagan Years dismantled US infrastructure. In UK Thatcher dismantled much of the functioning system but Osborne dismantled the Public Health System totally and created the useless Health Protection Agency which had no local knowledge.
Those countries like Italy which collapsed under Covid had dismantled much of their health system after 2008 to impose austerity. The highest incidence of Covid deaths was where old age and respiratory illness (air pollution/smoking) and poverty interfaced.
USA destroyed regions and communities to make Private Equity in New York City very rich. These were not the old Presbyterian Robber Barons who gave something back - but these were often Jewish Robber Barons who only gave to Jewish charities not the public in general like Andrew Carnegie.
Every in USA has been financialised - just as in UK. Everything that is an Asset is burdened with Debt and Debt is daisy-chained as an Asset to another creditor - Re-Hypothocation
Much of US infrastructure dates from New Deal when you see ceramic tiled road tunnels on East Coast.
Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jul 9 2022 12:56 utc | 14
The Government in the West , esp. the US are not there for the People, - they are there for themselves - period. It's right in front of everybody's eyes - if it were any closer - you'd get a black eye - lol
Posted by: GMC | Jul 9 2022 12:56 utc | 15
Simple rule: Anything that's treated as a public service in sane countries, but privatized here in US - health, schools, transport, telecom ... ends up overpriced and barely functional.
Used to be ONLY in USA could private ownership of mineral rights be exercised. In most other countries Mineral Rights accrued to The State and could only be leased
Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jul 9 2022 12:57 utc | 16
Its time the USA had a comprehensive social/universal healthcare system and put the health of its people ahead of a profit.
On viruses and such I wasn't surprised by the possibility of where Covid might have come from.
"I chaired the commission for the Lancet for 2 years on Covid. I'm pretty convinced it came out of a US lab of biotechnology [...] We don't know for sure but there is enough evidence. [However] it's not being investigated, not in the US, not anywhere."
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1543259218995687424
Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jul 9 2022 13:04 utc | 17
Simple rule: Anything that's treated as a public service in sane countries, but privatized here in US - health, schools, transport, telecom ... ends up overpriced and barely functional.
Used to be ONLY in USA could private ownership of mineral rights be exercised. In most other countries Mineral Rights accrued to The State and could only be leased
Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jul 9 2022 12:57 utc | 21
the old debate about private and public is so passé.
What is bad is monopoly be it from private interests or public property. In the first case owners take advantage of the lack of competition to jack up prices o the poin people can no longer afford it. In the latter case monopoly things become bloated and improductive dens of arrogant freeloaders.
What needs to be fought are fecking MONOPOLIES as people used to know in the past century ...
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 13:11 utc | 18
Any government anywhere on the planet the pushed any aspect of the scamdemic on its people is dysfunctional and needs to be replaced.
Posted by: Martin | Jul 9 2022 13:11 utc | 19
For sure the USA is a world leader of dysfunction.
Not to be outdone though, its Europoodle in chief, Germany, is doing a fine job of mirroring such dysfunction.
Sergeant Scholz from Brandon's Heroes has managed to help start WW3, torpedo the German economy and undo 80 years of progress and diplomacy in just 6 months in office.
Come to think of it, this could paradoxically be the finest example of German efficiency...
Posted by: Et Tu | Jul 9 2022 13:27 utc | 20
@ Mark U #11
I've read the same - concerning Sputnik V from Dr. Lee and some others that say pretty much what you do , but every one of them said it was no where near the horror show as the mRNA.
I had covid here in Crimea { end of 2020} and it was a different type of flu and it lasted 2-3 weeks but I had the pensioner doctor from our hospital pay me a night visit and prescribed me some meds - mostly for pneumonia in the right lung but at no time did I think I was going to die. No one I know has had a problem but I'm sure there have been some serious problems - there always is. Russia's military looks OK, American commercial pilots are dropping like flies - unfortunately.
Most everyone of the older crowd I knew took Sput.V with no side effects, and I took Sput light 9 mos. after the bout with that flu. I moved over to Yalta for a couple mos thought I needed a flu shot for the winter coming up.By now the vax should be out of my system. My Brother in the States took Moderna and had a double bypass, a new valve job and finally told me he was down and out for 10 days after his second shot - I can't tell you how many times I told him and three other friends thru emails - Not to take that shit - and look at the word Experimental . All of them took the jab. MK Ultra and the TV works great on Americans and Ukies. I was 70 back then and I feel fine.
Posted by: GMC | Jul 9 2022 13:27 utc | 21
The US is undergoing Brazilianization: the process by which a country is divided into a small, wealthy ruling class and the rest, into 3rd world status. Favelas (slums) right next to fancy condominium towers.
San Francisco is rapidly approaching Sao Paulo in this regard.
Posted by: c1ue | Jul 9 2022 13:30 utc | 22
The US is "self-correcting" in the wrong direction.
The champions for Freedom of Speech now talk about fear of "Domestic Terrorists"
and how free speech can cause people to act violently. So many examples,
but simply look at the three-ring circus currently taking place in Washington,
the Jan 6th Stalinist Hearings.
Our freedom of speech, our ability to receive objective information rather than
controlled narrative, is under attack.
Bellingcat who?
Just as startling as its spooky staff is Bellingcat’s source of funding. In 2016 its founder, Eliot Higgins, dismissed the idea that his organization got money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as a ludicrous conspiracy theory. Yet, by the next year, he openly admitted the thing he had laughed off for so long was, in fact, true (Bellingcat’s latest available financial report confirms that they continue to receive financial assistance from the NED). As many MintPress readers will know, the NED was explicitly set up by the Reagan administration as a front for the CIA’s regime-change operations.
“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” said the organization’s co-founder Allen Weinstein, proudly.
- Mintpress
So, what happened on May 4th, 2022,
or thereabouts?
If you check Bellingcat's 'about' page there is no longer mention of the CIA's
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). On May 2nd, 2022 NED was credited with support for Bellingcat, on May 4th, 2022 NED has been dropped from the list.
What are they up to at the CIA and Bellingcat?
Lots is happening to free speech as you certainly know.
Who can you trust these days? You know for certain that the
entire legacy press is a narrative machine, but what of independent sites?
Controlled opposition - how do you know when you are engaging with it, even trusting it?
I, personally, have encountered disconcerting behavior from blog owners that many people, including myself, have long trusted. How would you know if your blog owner has received a knock on the door from the Gestapo (CIA, MI6, Mossad, FBI, etc, etc) and has now been pressured into being Controlled Opposition. How would you, a trusting reader, know?
One thing you can do is test the blog's Overton Window. Post certain things and see what happens.
And if you are taken aback at what you experience then say "farewell".
Farewell.
Posted by: librul | Jul 9 2022 13:33 utc | 23
The US is undergoing Brazilianization: the process by which a country is divided into a small, wealthy ruling class and the rest, into 3rd world status. Favelas (slums) right next to fancy condominium towers.
San Francisco is rapidly approaching Sao Paulo in this regard.
San Francisco California? I am not a fan of the city and left there for 35 miles north 20 years ago, but I still work there. There is nothing remotely similar to favelas in SF. Nothing. There is crappy, low-income housing in Oakland and Richmond, but as a percentage of people that live in these areas, the numbers are miniscule. And the standard of living in those areas is way way higher than any south american favela.
Posted by: Petaluma Jones | Jul 9 2022 13:39 utc | 24
@ Posted by: Petaluma Jones | Jul 9 2022 13:39 utc | 30
Give it time, my friend.
Just as Rome wasn't built in one day, it also wasn't demolished in one either.
Posted by: Et Tu | Jul 9 2022 13:42 utc | 25
As soon as covid hit here in the U.S., I started taking megadoses of Vitamin D. Now it's been well over 2 years that it has protected me against infectious disease, including covid. If only the authorities had recommended Vitamin D to people, many, many lives could have been saved. But there would have been no profit in that.
Posted by: Lysias | Jul 9 2022 13:43 utc | 26
We need 'truth commissions' about several things - and the 'pandemic' is definitely one of them.
Posted by: gottlieb | Jul 9 2022 13:45 utc | 27
We are seeing the results of decades of neoliberal economic policies- multiple tax cuts for the wealthy, financial deregulation and job outsourcing to Mexico, China and other low-wage platforms) and spending astronomical sums of taxpayer money on military debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine (Taiwan next?). As a result, the US does not have 1 mile of high-speed rail, inflation has gone up, deficits have exploded and the average American family has watched their standard of living progressively decline for over 2 decades. At the same time, the wealth of the financial elite, aka proverbial ‘1%’ has gone way up. Joe Biden and the ruling elite he represents have no solution to the Immense structural economic and social problems confronting US society, except more austerity and war. As the economic/political crisis continues, expect the government to respond with increasingly repressive/fascistic methods, similar to those being employed by the Akron police department in the US.
Just look at china's highspeed trains and compare that to the US or Europe incl. the prices for a 1st class 1000km ride.
https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/chinas-high-speed-trains-america-where-are-you/
What does the west have? Ok, Apple and some other hightech unicorns but the rest is just show and millions of unproductive influencers...
(And yes, I hate that racist unz.com but sometimes it has pretty good articles like the one above)
Posted by: Zet | Jul 9 2022 13:52 utc | 30
We ve seen many pretty good, acute vision articles from B. But for a South American observer this one been surgical. We had in fact felt the bile of its nature from the blatant falsities and coordinated MSM crusades all over.
The core is: the end comes straight from the unfeasibility/inabilty to correct itself.
Collapse will only depend on the thrust of an outer force. Or of a combined cicumstancial timing of force & crisis.
@Petaluma Jones #30
You clearly haven't been around the Tenderloin, or the non-hip parts of the Mission, or even the Sunset these days.
The homeless cities migrate - that's the only difference between the San Francisco ones and the Sao Paulo ones.
There definitely is less human poop on the streets of Sao Paulo - favela or otherwise - than San Francisco.
Posted by: c1ue | Jul 9 2022 13:56 utc | 32
You people do realize that there is no such thing as a private monopoly? Each and every one that seems to be such has to be daily protected by the government. As Nock wrote long ago you have to realize that the state is our enemy.
Posted by: RichardCantillon | Jul 9 2022 14:01 utc | 33
Bernard,
Very true observation, regarding moral authority. It’s been a long long time since US embassy cultural centers were hotspots of the cool and hip. A wag once noted the Cold War was won with blue jeans, rock an’ roll, and bikinis. A very good example of this positive moral authority is Udo’s remake of the liberating Chattanooga Choo Choo in his big hit Sonderzug Nach Pankow.
Posted by: Exile | Jul 9 2022 14:03 utc | 34
Posted by: VtObserver | Jul 9 2022 12:02 utc | 8
... and neither nearly qualifies for being called "vaccine", not having gone thru the needed processes and steps required for deserving that name.
Instead an "emergency procedure", or rather lack of there of gave birth to the awful misnomer.
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 14:04 utc | 35
Your last part, B, is imho the most important factor of the current foreign relations mess in the Ukrainian war. The West has basically lost all its softpower in the last months, and hasn't yet realized it. The double standards of caring about White Europeans and welcoming them as refugees, of wanting to help White country fight "evil invaders", meanwhile it's ok when White Westerners bomb and invade the rest of the world, be it Iraq, Libya or whatever else, without even any *call* to sanctions, not even actual sanctions against the USA. Western countries and banks seizing bank accounts, gold deposits and downright stealing stuff from other countries and from foreigners who deposited them in good faith. Western countries pressuring the rest of the world, with threats if they don't comply, so that they condemn Russia and sanction it. Then the West concer-trolling about world hunger, when food shortages and grain exports would be quickly sorted out if both sides actually negotiated, but same "concerned about world hunger" West pushing Ukraine to fight as long as possible, as if to ensure world hunger.
Global South isn't fooled and is taking note of all this. Sure, some of their leaders are corrupt idiots or opportunistic scumbags, they're not all like Khan, but other local leaders and people see what's going on, and they're utterly disgusted. It's no wonder that Indonesia still invites Russia to G20.
People in "the South" might not like China, they don't need to, they just need to dislike the West more, and it is all over. And we've been giving them and are right now giving them even more reasons to dislike us more. It will just take some more years to become obvious and for the Western leaders to actually notice they've lost the rest of the world, for good.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jul 9 2022 14:05 utc | 36
Posted by: RichardCantillon | Jul 9 2022 14:01 utc | 39
how would you call the state of the media then?
May be an oligopole?
All the aim of capitalism is in constituting monopolies ...
Killing competitors is the name of the game, be it in the mafia or in regular business ...
As people understood when they devised anti-trust legal body ...
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 14:07 utc | 37
Posted by: Lysias | Jul 9 2022 13:43 utc | 32
True
As well a staking !vermect!n / hydr0xychl0r0qu!ne / azithr0myc!n ...
Notice !vermect!n the miracle Japanese official treatment for C0v!d kills C0v!d fever with the first tablet intake ..
Don't you ever tell anybody ...
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 14:12 utc | 38
San Francisco California? I am not a fan of the city and left there for 35 miles north 20 years ago, but I still work there. There is nothing remotely similar to favelas in SF. Nothing. There is crappy, low-income housing in Oakland and Richmond, but as a percentage of people that live in these areas, the numbers are miniscule. And the standard of living in those areas is way way higher than any south american favela.
Posted by: Petaluma Jones | Jul 9 2022 13:39 utc | 30
Doesn't change the fact that what's already gone on in SF and other big cities is unacceptable.
One way or another, the Leftist scum (and some of their RINO friends) must be put down if there's any chance of recovering.
Posted by: Michigan Dude | Jul 9 2022 14:12 utc | 39
Yes, the US is in massive denial. The country is run by old men and old women. The only grease is money. The problem that no one here will admit is that our Constitution needs to be replaced by a Parliamentary System but no one will go there. It would take a revolution or losing a major war.
Posted by: Uncle Jim | Jul 9 2022 14:13 utc | 40
Putin (excerpt from speech to members of the Russian Federal Assembly on July 8, MoA blocks link):
"The West, which once proclaimed the principles of democracy such as freedom of speech, pluralism and respect for other opinions, is now degenerating into the exact opposite - totalitarianism. These include censorship, media closures and arbitrary treatment of journalists and public figures.
This prohibition practice extends not only to the information space, but also to politics, culture, education, art - to all areas of public life in western countries. And this model - the model of totalitarian liberalism, including the infamous cancel culture, the ubiquitous prohibitions - they want to impose on the whole world, try to impose it on them.
But the truth and the reality is that people in most countries do not want such a life . . . Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. What can I say? Let them try . . . They should understand that they have already lost with the beginning of our military operation, because its beginning also means the beginning of the fundamental collapse of the American-style world order."
Posted by: Perimetr | Jul 9 2022 14:30 utc | 41
Hey B!
All those EU poodles have the same level of global private finance dysfunction as the US. It is interesting how in one posting you cast the West as one ideology but in ones like this, us Americans are all to blame for being bought out by the same money mafia that owns all the West.
The dysfunction is having a system of social organization/government structured to discriminate on the basis of inheritance and accumulation of private property and assigning ownership of money creation to a cult of private individuals instead of sovereign nations like China.
Why do we keep talking around reality? That is a serious social dysfunction in itself, eh?
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 9 2022 14:44 utc | 42
I do know people who died of COVID. We have two daughters in ERs who watched people die of COVID. Idiots.
Posted by: Richard | Jul 9 2022 14:46 utc | 43
San Francisco? But the weather?
I have spent some time in San Francisco of late, and I’m at a complete loss as to the attraction. It may be a bit like New York, where you develop a kind of snobbery about anywhere else, while in fact, it’s more like a lack of imagination. Or it’s this desire to own a house ever higher up a hill? And how much is it worth? Instead of living. . .you willing sit in traffic, in your new Tesla, gazing at tents by the side of the highway pondering, “they should really clean this place up, what a shame!”
I was born in San Francisco, so for me it’s one of those places where you can’t help but wonder, “look what they’ve done to the place!” Like a dystopian Miranda.
But when I see the images of Newsome, and I experience many of the folks there, and how their fear of covid has been guided and nursed along, they’re still basically cowering in fear about their lives. I can’t help but think of Newsome as a snarling guard dog protecting profiteering, while you party it up oblivious to your personal hypocrisy.
Making money indicates one’s place in this life here in the US. Which I think has been given so much credence here, that the ruling class really believes that’s the determining factor as to anyone’s worth not just in your local slums, but everywhere else on earth.
But in all aspects of these subjects, covid, Ukraine, the collapse of the educational institutions in the US has been a crime. Independent thought has been effectively eliminated. The sense of all the world being reduced to “me, my importance, my life,” all related to commercial interests, to materialism, and the domination of corporations. And everyone is subservient. We are ruled by our anxieties and fears, carefully manipulated.
Speaking of posters here who have given up the ghost, I still mourn the departure of chipnk. And there was a really funny poster who used to swear all the time who got banned, but was amusing. Nevertheless, the door stays open, and the host lets bar criticism roll off his back.
Posted by: Geoff | Jul 9 2022 14:54 utc | 44
About all we are good for now is being punching bags as this former elite fighter is rapidly morphing into just another tomato can. We are staring down into the proverbial shit chute and it ain't a pretty future for dear old Uncle Sam.
Posted by: morongobill | Jul 9 2022 14:55 utc | 45
A very important debate-on US imperialism, soft power and the current situation geopolitically- and it is all about to be dissolved in a fog of conjecture regarding the pandemic.
To those who insist on this I have two questions.
If the pandemic was a false alarm, who raised it? Was there an international conspiracy broad enough to embrace the Chinese Communist Party, the Koch Bros, Bolsonaro, Johnson and Trump, Cuba, Venezuela and and the WHO, and if so what was their motivation?
But please don't answer here.
Posted by: bevin | Jul 9 2022 15:00 utc | 46
I don't know anyone who has had Covid, but I do know someone who
had the lower brain bleeding after the J&J vaccine (now discontinued it was so bad) and spent 5 days in the hospital a year ago....ME!
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Jul 9 2022 15:00 utc | 47
MarkU | Jul 9 2022 12:08 utc | 11
Sputnik is adenovirus vector vaccine, it is NOT mRNA. I got two doses and after six months of the second I got delta COVID variant that lasted few days with very mild symptoms. I thought it was the safest vaccine and very efficient (San Marino residents can confirm this). Unfortunately viscous media attacks made this excellent vaccine off limits for most in the West.
Posted by: Milos | Jul 9 2022 15:02 utc | 48
At age 15 I was for one year enrolled as a senior student in a US high school(last year before college). I had a very good impression of its academic, sports and vocational standards. Late on i found out that the school was the one that had produced the largest number of "Presidential Scholars" of all public high schools in the US of North A. So my impression was misleading.
What amazed me was how all courses had five (five) hours a week and lasted equally long. And everything came piece-meal. In math, for instance, algebra, geometry, analytic geometry and infinitesimal calculus were tought in separate courses in different terms (semesters) and not integrated with each other, That is not the way to develop an al-round training or insight in mathematics. The same was true of English language teaching and the social scienses of history, psychology, and social studies. Not at all integrated and taught by very narrowly specialized teachers. THis worked out all right at my top.notch school -- but what about real country bumpkin aor inner city slum schools? (Here in Oslo, Norway, the hardest high schoul to get into is a vocational school in a very poor part of the City -- the future queen of Norway gained entrance only the second year she had applied. Same goes for some high schools in semi-rural parts of CHina that heve also become exceptionally good.
Remember thet the "top-notch" Mainland China students you meet at good US of North A ubiversities are those who scored too low to get into their preferred studies and Schools in Mainland China!
Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐/טלפ וש | Jul 9 2022 15:03 utc | 49
MarkU | Jul 9 2022 12:08 utc | 11
Agreed. Vector vaccines are NOT mRNA vaccines, that simple. It is tiring when covid deniers spread nonsense.
What strikes me, is that they practically introduced compulsory mRNA vaccination all over the West. At the moment, only the newer Novavax (single spike protein similar to vector vaccines) is available, and not easily, moreover, not admitted to "booster" vaccicanions which one might need after 6 mounths if wanting to travel (I am aware that the limitations are lifted atm) but nobody knows for how long.
Astrazeneca has widely beed retracted outside the UK and third world, Sputnik never was acknowledged, Valneva, after hard fights, got a limited admission below 61 years old. There is practically a Pfizer/Moderna monopoly in the West, no chance to get chinese inactivated virus vaccines like Sinopharm or Sinovac. Instead, Western "scientists" aggressively rally for admission of mRNA vaccices to China.
It seemes to me - should I add another conspiracy ;) - that there is an international campaign to erase the control group. No longterm effects can be reliably proven if there is none.
Posted by: aquadraht | Jul 9 2022 15:07 utc | 50
Petuluma Jones@ 30:
I would really interested to know if in Sao Paolo, people there publicly defecate on the streets and sidewalks, or are passed out or freaked out due to drugs, things that are part and parcel of San Francisco public life now.
Posted by: morongobill | Jul 9 2022 15:08 utc | 51
@ Milos
"viscous media attacks "
Use honey if you want to attract flies
Posted by: Platero | Jul 9 2022 15:10 utc | 52
As to monkeypox, that is just a smallpox variant, and the old smallpox vaccination is still effective. I just fail to see the problem. Has the Pharma complexd forgotten about how to produce, maybe even improve (there were side effects back then) the vaccines? And is it so inacceptable for gay communities to monitor infections?
Posted by: aquadraht | Jul 9 2022 15:13 utc | 53
Dysfunction
A 2019 study found that the U.S. is the country that is best prepared for a pandemic.
It turned out that assessment, like so many others, had been wrong.
Of course the US was the best prepared for a pandemic, as far as the elites were concerned. Just not in the aspect you or I would agree with. I think they viewed it as a highly successful and profitable operation - population reduction (especially elderly and unfit), training for a more autocratic society, excuse to push in more autocratic laws, massively profitable pseudo-"vaccines", defaulting millions of mortgages (benefits to the banks and elites), elimination of the middle classes, ramped up pressure on the workers, ... etc.
Posted by: BM | Jul 9 2022 15:17 utc | 54
All of the Russophobe countries are somewhat unhappy that Elena Rybakina won the Wimbledon Ladies Championship. Many MSM say she's born in Moscow, but a Kazakh. She lives in Moscow and is a Russian!
What UK and Wimbledon tried to prevent didn't work, a Russian won the championship.
Posted by: ostro | Jul 9 2022 15:19 utc | 55
If you haven't heard David E Martin describe the history of the patents for Coronavirus, you should listen to these two short videos. His company was contracted in 1999 to follow all information related to bioweapons research. He has a remarkable memory and speaks clearly on the subject. His company, M-CAM, was contracted in 1999 to monitor all research and patents that related to bioweapons research.
Watch first this 7-minute video and next watch this 9-minute video, which is actually the introduction to a 92 minute video (you can easily find the longer video if interested).
Martin's first invention was a laser integrated system to target and treat inoperable tumors. His mathematics helped unravel the way the human body processes hormones and led to the detection and treatment of many diseases. His observation of human behavior led to his development of technology which deciphers the intention and motivation of communication – a technology that has impacted and saved the lives of billions. His global business activities served to develop the world’s top-performing global equity index (including the CNBC IQ100 powered by M·CAM). BIO
Posted by: Perimetr | Jul 9 2022 15:19 utc | 56
Because the Western MSM is controlled by the elite, most of society "lives" in a Plato's cave of the elite's creation and ongoing evolution....think Wag The Dog crossed with Groundhog Day
Current Covid numbers being reported at the Worldometer site show over 100K new cases in the US yesterday and 40+ deaths. This is without all states reporting anymore. I have been watching Oregon and Washington state numbers and they are as high as when we all wore masks and such but masks required mostly just in medical facilities now. So the response is changing but the truth about what happened and is still ongoing is obfuscated on ongoing basis....serious dysfunction
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 9 2022 15:22 utc | 57
2 days ago Craig Murray’s article “Boris Johnson & the UK Decline” was published by CN. There are parallels to the USA and other Western societies. In the introduction, Murray gets the root cause absolutely right: ”…Chinese books … will be written on the crisis of neoliberalism and how Western society reached unsustainable levels of concentration of capital and wealth inequality…” [my emphasis]. - That books of this subject have yet to come, is wrong, however. Thomas Piketty wrote the book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. It told us all we need to know about capital concentration/accumulation and its universal importance/implications already back in 2013.
Example: Here in Germany, the accumulated capital now exceeds the 7-fold of our BIP. At an ROI rate of 7 %, this means that our national income consists to 50 % of income from work and to 50 % income from capital (7 % x 7 = 49 %) - (based on equity-capital profit rates of mid-size companies after taxes, which varies between 3 % in flat- and 30 % in boom- times; 7 % is a conservative average).
More accumulation means more disadvantages for the working people, as ROI is kept up BY FORCE of market/negotiation powers. (It is e.g. virtually impossible to dictate the banks terms of a credit, the fees for ATM withdrawal or overdraft, etc…, a landlord the rent, an employer individual tariffs,… etc. They almost always dictate the terms and conditions alone. – Yet, with continued accumulation, capital owners face increasing difficulties/resistance at stabilizing income from their heaped-up wealth. It is impossible, to appropriate 100 % of the fruits of work of a nation and leave the working masses with 0%. Yet the tendency points in this direction. There must be “red lines” of "sustainability" for that as well, and the current situation indicates that we come closer.
In reaction, the capital grows increasingly aggressive (1) towards the working people (precarization of working conditions: keep wages and compensations low, working hours high, reduce worker’s rights,…) and (2) towards each other (trade war (even between partner countries), corruption, fraud, hostile takeovers, formation of monopolies,…).
Piketty identifies two ways out: (1) Re-distribution top-down, i.e. from the top wealth quantiles to the bottom ones; including public investment, and (2) based on data from after both WWs: Destruction of capital by wars, which were always followed by periods of flattened income-distribution curves. (Periodical and deliberately triggered recessions being (besides serving the distribution from the bottom to the top) a "moderate" instance of “war” in their capacity of capital destruction; Lower and Middle classes always suffer there above average; I may add).
So that’s what it is: WAR IS THE ULTIMATE OUTCOME of neoliberal systems / parasitic financial capitalism (as opposed to productive industrial capitalism we saw during the last two centuries and which we see in China right now). The mighty and rich won’t return the robbed wealth voluntarily. On the home front, we therefore move towards civil war, between nations/blocs towards hot war (“eternal war”, ”cultural war”) with an increasing risk of nuclear annihilation. All local/national phenomena of "losing something" / decline / deterioration of society are just individual nuances on the road to these wars.
-----
@ b: ”…International soft power is acquired by being a good example. By being the one that others will strive to be. To get there and to be that requires the ability of the whole society to self correct its mistakes…”
Good examples are feared/hated/fought against like hell & purgatory by the West. E.g., the aggressiveness of the Baltic States is based on the unfortunate example of Russia. They (Russia) simply don’t break down and dissolve in poverty and chaos as many times predicted/promised. Therefore, an artificial threat scenario is carefully maintained and cultivated. 4000 NATO troops from Germany are easier to “make” than 2 million meaningful jobs… Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela,… plenty more of corroborating examples.
Posted by: OttoE | Jul 9 2022 15:23 utc | 58
Posted by: aquadraht | Jul 9 2022 15:13 utc | 64
There is no need to produce "vaccine" for smallpox.
It's the cowpox virus which is freely available on many cow breasts for harvesting.
The reason for the current hype about monkey pox is just that there is some "new smallpox vaccine" produced by pharma firm with patent while the cow pox cannot be patented since it's widely available for free. SInce there is no disease to protect against with, they have to promote some (naturally?) occuring related sickness in order to boost sales ... basic marketing.
The easy part is to convince the press: these know-nothings print and sing whatever they're paid to ...
Once the scared public asks for the remedy, politicians come for the grift and vote for spending a huge chunk of (mostly un-existing yet) public money on the hopeful solution.
No worry, grandchildren of the suckers will foot the bill...
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 15:25 utc | 59
Re: Posted by: ostro | Jul 9 2022 15:19 utc | 67
So glad Elena won Wimbledon.
Serves those morons in the UK right.
Let's be factual. Elena is RUSSIAN. She was born and lives in RUSSIA.
Does anyone want to seriously argue she's a Kazakh? lmao.
Posted by: Julian | Jul 9 2022 15:34 utc | 60
And everything came piece-meal. In math, for instance, algebra, geometry, analytic geometry and infinitesimal calculus were tought in separate courses in different terms (semesters) and not integrated with each other, That is not the way to develop an al-round training or insight in mathematics. The same was true of English language teaching and the social scienses of history, psychology, and social studies. Not at all integrated and taught by very narrowly specialized teachers.Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐/טלפ וש | Jul 9 2022 15:03 utc | 60
In the book Kon-Tiki, there's a passage on page 22 (blockquoted below) in which the author, Thor Heyerdahl, is describing to a friend his difficulty getting scholars to consider his theory that Polynesia was populated long ago by people arriving by raft from Peru.
"And there's another thing," I went on."Yes," said he. "Your way of approaching the problem. They're
specialists, the whole lot of them, and they don't believe in a method of work which cuts into every field of science from botany to archaeology. They limit their own scope in order to be able to dig in the depths with more concentration for details. Modern research demands that every special branch shall dig in its own hole. It's not usual for anyone to sort out what comes up out of the holes and try to put it all together."He rose and reached for a heavy manuscript.
"Look here," he said. "My last work on bird designs in Chinese peasant embroidery. Took me seven years, but it was accepted for publication at once. They want specialized research nowadays."
Carl was right. But to solve the problems of the Pacific without throwing light on them from all sides was, it seemed to me, like doing a puzzle and only using the pieces of one color.
This incident occurred in 1946, which hardly begins to convey how longstanding the problem of fragmentation of knowledge (or what passes for knowledge) has been.
Posted by: David Levin | Jul 9 2022 15:35 utc | 61
Thirty months and a million excess death later I am sorry to see that no lessons have been learned from this catastrophe.
It deeply re-enforced many things for me. Do not trust the medical establishment, do not trust the pharmaceutical companies, do not trust the media, do not trust the government bureaucrats, do not trust medical statistics, coroners, or death certificates, do not trust the political establishment, and so on.
I am interviewing doctors looking for a new one. One main question, what do you think about Covid. If he parrots Fauci and the AMA I am out the door never to return.
Posted by: circumspect | Jul 9 2022 15:36 utc | 62
I have a question.
This is a Reuters article on a meeting between Putin, Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.
Where would you guys look for a transcript?
best,
Posted by: Passerby | Jul 9 2022 15:39 utc | 63
Really astonishing how many people believe, after over 6 million deaths worldwide, that Covid does not exist (not, please note, that it is over-hyped, or not as serious as some people think, or frequently mis-diagnosed or whatever. But people arguing with a straight face that it does not exist).
This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the dumbest conspiracy theories of all time. People who believe this should really invest their intellectual energies in a conspiracy theory with a certain amount of intellectual rigour. Why not deny the Holocaust, for example? Compared to covid denialism, Holocaust denialism is a model of intellectual rigour and coherence.
This is, after all, the theory that the scientists of all countries on planet Earth, including the scientists of Syria, North Korea, Israel, Iran, China, Cuba, the United States, France, DRC and so on (I could go on), states which in many cases loathe and despise each other, worked together to help capitalism or something by destroying economies round the world, thereby boosting the stock market (again, or something), and no one has talked. Not one scientist has talked out of the millions and millions who must have been involved in what is unarguably the greatest conspiracy of all time.
The reality is, of course, that the whole 'Covid doesn't exist or is not serious or something blah blah' was thought up (presumably by the CIA or other, similar, sources) to smear China and, by implication, Marxism/Leninism.
As the people at Naked Capitalism have continuously pointed out (some of the very few people, except b. on this blog, who have not lost their mind about this topic) the only 'good' Covid is no Covid.
And the only state on Planet Earth which currently aims at the only solution to this problem is Communist China. Which is why millions have died in the US (and millions more will die) whereas in Communist China, it's a few thousand.
Because communism works, and capitalism doesn't.
And it's that simple. And everything you see hear and read (apart from a few samizdat sources like this blog) are an attempt to get you to not see that.
If the Soviet Government had not been destroyed by the Americans, I am absolutely certain that the many many deaths that have occurred in Russia and what was the 'Eastern Bloc' could also have been avoided.
Because communism is the path of the future, and capitalism is the road to the past.
In communist countries, you live, in capitalist countries you die. And it's that simple. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
Posted by: Hidari | Jul 9 2022 15:43 utc | 64
Soft power? You must be joking. Karlofi's 'Outlaw Empire' is much closer to the mark
It is criminality on a scale hitherto only dreamed of which established US imperial power in the last seventy years. A criminality slowly developed from the domestic political crimes of Urban Bosses, the Mafia, Jim Crow segregation and lynch law and the Paxton Boys. Andrew Jackson was a moderate constitutionalist among these types.
A lot of people have denied the idea, which the more perceptive among the loyalist Tories understood, that the two root causes of the US 'Revolution" were the threat of slave emancipation after the Sommerset case in 1771 and the Royal Proclamation of 1763 banning settlers from crossing the Alleghenies, but it was from such affronts to legality that the USA originated.
And that was way back before the state had developed momentum.
In the last seventy years there has been a crime wave, directed from Washington, on a scale which is still unimaginable. To give any instances only trivialises the continual process, notorious moments like the Phoenix Program, Indonesia or the overthrow of Allende tend to obscure the reality which was that there was nothing unusual in any of these incidents.
As Vladimir Danilov writes in the NEO
"...in recent decades it hasn’t only been the intelligence services and the political elite of the United States strengthening their ties with terrorist groups in order to achieve their own selfish goals. For instance, in order to seize vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Caspian basin, a consortium of American and British oil companies during the presidency of Bill Clinton organized support for international terrorism in Chechnya (1995-2009). To eliminate the transportation of Caspian energy through Russia, in 1991, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense General Richard Secord created MEGA Oil in Azerbaijan and eventually turned it into a base of operations for mujahideen terrorists throughout the Caucasus. The CIA was ardently involved in this “activity,” organizing a land route for the secret transfer of hundreds of Osama bin Laden’s “al-Qaeda” mujahideen from Afghanistan to Azerbaijan. By 1993, MEGA Oil had 2,000 well-armed and trained militants, and the CIA sent Afghan and other mujahideen to the Caucasus on their planes, and from there they were illegally transferred across the Georgian border to Chechnya..."
https://journal-neo.org/2022/07/09/the-us-has-confirmed-its-inextricable-link-to-terrorists/
Posted by: bevin | Jul 9 2022 15:44 utc | 65
a German business colleague ( naturally a mechanical engineer ) did a 1 year high school exchange at a suburban High school outside Pittsburgh. He told me he learned only 3 things during his year there:
1) how to drive and pass the driving test
2) the words to every AC/DC song
3) how to roll a tight joint one handed while steering with other hand
Posted by: Exile | Jul 9 2022 15:55 utc | 66
Oh boy B, this topic really does tend to flush out the sub literate ‘COVID?, what COVID?’ knuckle draggers doesn’t it? It’d be funny if it wasn’t so boring…
Posted by: Peter Fenton | Jul 9 2022 15:56 utc | 67
@31
'Rome wasn't burnt in a day' (Douglas Adams).
The point of the OP (in case anyone doesn't get it) is that increasing globalisation makes things much much worse in terms of virus spread (George Stewart's novel Earth Abides begins with a quote about this, although rising living standards meant that the impact of this was not felt until the 21st century).
The world has been coming more and more and more unhealthy and unsafe as far as public health since WW2. But this effect wasn't visible for many decades because of the explosion of wealth caused by the social democracy of the '30 Golden Years' of capitalism, and then, the (much shorter and more dubiously based) explosion of wealth caused by neoliberalism, which lasted through the 1980s and 1990s.
But now the wheels are starting to come off the neoliberal bus. People are increasingly fat, unhealthy, stressed, not getting enough exercise, bored, depressed, prone to dabbling in drug abuse, alcohol abuse etc. etc. etc. Which means that, amongst other things, their immune system suffers.
And so Covid was kicking open an already open door. And now there is Monkeypox. And after that there will be something else. And after that there will be something else. And after that there will be something else. And so on.
Neoliberalism cannot solve this problem because the most obvious and basic response to any new pandemic is (as any science fiction movie will tell you) is...shut the borders. Which China did.
But neoliberalism with its obsession with the free movement of capital and (to a lesser extent) labour (insofar as its cheap labour) means that this option (the only one that works) can't be chosen.
So in the West we are going to get increasingly unhealthy, which means that we are going to be increasingly prey to bugs and viruses and bacteria, which means we get increasingly unhealthy, which means that we are going to be increasingly prey to...well you get the idea.
Once this process gets started, it's very hard to stop, and because of ideology, it won't be.
The US, with its flatlining (now declining) life expectancy, as usual, shows the way forward.
Posted by: Hidari | Jul 9 2022 15:59 utc | 68
Btw I feel like coining the expression :
"The Unexpected 2022 Catastrophe".*
Think it's a good idea?
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 16:04 utc | 69
Post 43. It’s hard to believe anyone in this day and age thinks that anti-trust acts were brought in to prevent monopolies. Or that the Assange case ( and the Sullivan case) is for anything other than to protect established media. Or that section 230 is there for anything other than to protect internet monopolies. It’s impossible to speak of dysfunction without first noting what proper functioning is. As the kids say, it’s not a bug we’re looking at, it’s a feature.
Posted by: JohnSherman | Jul 9 2022 16:07 utc | 70
Geoff | Jul 9 2022 14:54 utc | 52
and morongobill | Jul 9 2022 15:08 utc | 62
I have been invited by an internet friend to California, about 20 years ago, and really wanted to go, but other family commitments got in the way, though I did reciprocate the invitation. She didn't turn up either, but I think that was more about worries are going through airport security.
My sister regularly travelled to the USA, cos her daughter and family live there. My son travelled to the USA when he was 12, with his local scout group in the year 2000. He was not impressed. I got the impression from him, that it was the equivalent of sending an English schoolboy to Nazi Germany in 1936.
Recently the UK has been getting a very bad press from almost everywhere, and I do not necessarily disagree..but most people, I have met over the last 68 years of my existence (and my wife and I - do a lot of camping and travelling in foreign lands), have never seen any evidence of humans shitting in the streets.
We did have a problem with dogs, about 25 years ago, shitting in the streets in South London, so the local council employed pooper scooters. The British Government / and Media, then issued a propaganda campaign which I approved of. Put your dogshit in a bag, which has been exceedingly successful. Cats bury their shit, usually in next doors garden.
The main problem now, in England is the Foxes.
They shit wherever they want. The cats largely ignore them, unless they try and get through the catflap. Most are far too big.
Tony
Posted by: Tony_0pmoc | Jul 9 2022 16:10 utc | 71
San Francisco California? I am not a fan of the city and left there for 35 miles north 20 years ago, but I still work there. There is nothing remotely similar to favelas in SF. Nothing. There is crappy, low-income housing in Oakland and Richmond, but as a percentage of people that live in these areas, the numbers are miniscule. And the standard of living in those areas is way way higher than any south american favela.
Posted by: Petaluma Jones | Jul 9 2022
the urban configuration of the united states is different, the center is impoverished before the suburbs, in brazil it is the opposite, the rich people live in the center of city.
Posted by: Mathaus | Jul 9 2022 16:33 utc | 73
And lets not forget the recently deleted UN article that said starvation is a good thing.
Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jul 9 2022 16:37 utc | 74
It's worse when you brag about it.
This was Feb 2020
Posted by: awaiting approval | Jul 9 2022 16:39 utc | 75
What needs to be fought are fecking MONOPOLIES as people used to know in the past century ...
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 13:11 utc | 24
Great point but IMO doesn't address root problem which has to do with the underlying morality and wisdom of the entire population including elites, leaders and all other classes. That sort of thing doesn't come from systems alone. All systems are vulnerable to corruption, weakness, confusion, hubris, self or other destructiveness and so forth and no system alone can prevent them.
It takes some sort of religion or equivalent. Ethos if you prefer. Or high culture. (Religio = I bind, so a binding principle, in this case a positive, sane, compassionate one.) The belief in systems comes from materialist views because to explain the amazing living dream we all share they have to attribute it all to mechanical unintelligent processes, aka systems.
Most interesting posting by B., and many commentators as well.
Two observations of mine. First is, of course we learned nothing from COVID, and the million deaths. Did the US learn anything from Vietnam? We've had plenty of time to, and plenty of opportunities for scholars to work a most interesting field, and for political and moral leaders to push for looking hard into why we did what we did, and urge us to do better. Any of that ever happen? I certainly am not expecting one lick of it from our recent decades-long glorious military adventures/failures.
Second observation is if there isn't some sort of sickness afoot in the American people and society. Here in Austin, TX, the neighborhood next to my somewhat fancy one, had its HOA get bent out of shape about an elder male resident with known mental and physical and financial health problems not mowing his lawn. Nobody in the neighborhood, least of all the HOA officer-reptiles, just manned up and went with their mower and mowed the old man's lawn for him. Instead, after numerous nastygrams of legal threat to the old man, they had the City send a crew out to do it for them. This led to an altercation with the old man that resulted in the old man being murdered by the Austin Police, who like all police in this country nowadays, are always on the prowl for an opportunity to shoot someone, especially old men with mental problems holed up in their own homes. Naturally enough, the story was reported on and then dropped like a hot rock by the local newsmedia.
People turn generally to socioeconomic explanations for events, but the sociological/cultural side matters a lot, sometimes more, and is generally ignored. HOA's are the lowest governmental body in the USA, and here their officers were perfectly happy to do no physical labor and have a minor appearance-problem 'solved' by having the police murder someone. And think that nothing of their doing that was at all untoward.
As is inscribed above the pillars of the Jefferson Memorial: "Indeed, I tremble for my country, when I realize that God is Just".
https://contraryperspective.com/2017/12/15/my-bernard-b-fall-moment/
Posted by: Daniel N. White | Jul 9 2022 16:59 utc | 77
What needs to be fought are fecking MONOPOLIES as people used to know in the past century ...
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 13:11 utc | 24
Yes, private ownership of the public domain (government government contracts, copyright, patents, and + trademarks)
basically these ting remove ownership from the government and public domain to private ownership and because they are the assets that produce revenues, they have made certain greedy persons very very wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
Worse that wealth came from the pockets of the people, not from the work effort of the person made wealthy by these monopoly powers.
Posted by: snake | Jul 9 2022 17:00 utc | 78
Opport Knocks @ 87
Covid was real, people died of covid but you are correct in that it was exacerbated by age, unhealthy living, and other primary conditions of death like pneumonia and flue. It was a contributing factor in many deaths and a primary factor in some deaths. A million primary covid deaths? Bullshit
I got covid, got hella sick and stayed out of the hospital and recovered. I know people who died of covid and I know people who dropped dead within a few days of the vaccine.
My daughter dropped off a bunch of ivermectin she obtained for free from a hospital contractor. They were taking it and believed it worked all in private of course. I let my wife take as it was not enough for two people. She recovered quickly. I suffered and recovered.
It is still running around but the variants are always weaker than the original virus.
My wife was working in a hospital at the time. I had her retire rather than taking the shot. From her perspective, it was overblown but real. Natural immunity is best.
Posted by: circumspect | Jul 9 2022 17:05 utc | 79
Posted by: Tony_0pmoc | Jul 9 2022 16:10
My sister regularly travelled to the USA, cos her daughter and family live there. My son travelled to the USA when he was 12, with his local scout group in the year 2000. He was not impressed. I got the impression from him, that it was the equivalent of sending an English schoolboy to Nazi Germany in 1936.
You really have no idea about what Germany in 1936 was like, except from your Hollywood movies.
Check out a rare book called "Look to Germany: The Heart of Europe" by Stanley McClatchie published in 1937. The quality of life the Germans had exceeded that of their American cousins. They even had a proto-Skype video calling device for a few households.
Posted by: Sam Smith | Jul 9 2022 17:13 utc | 80
"You people do realize that there is no such thing as a private monopoly? Each and every one that seems to be such has to be daily protected by the government. As Nock wrote long ago you have to realize that the state is our enemy".
A- this is what Marxists call the "bourgeois state", it brings legitimacy to private property, without it property would be compulsorily communal or.... "Comunist".
Posted by: Mathaus | Jul 9 2022 17:16 utc | 81
This is a bummer of a post.
I have 3 basic requirements in the bloggers I read: (1) they must be pro-Russia in this conflict vs Ukraine, (2) they must believe the 2020 election in the US was stolen, and (3) they must believe that the COVID-19 narrative was a scam.
You blew #3 with this thread, so I cannot continue reading you. Per John Hopkins, 2020 mortality was flat compared to 2019. Mortality only spiked in 2021 with the release of the heart attack jabs. The fact that you still, 2.5 years later, believe in this scam shows there is a severe defect in your discernment abilities.
As such, I cannot continue reading you. It's a pity as I've enjoyed your Ukraine analysis. See ya.
Posted by: JR | Jul 9 2022 17:17 utc | 82
If corona had been as dangerous as the hype machine wanted us to believe, then statistically we should have been so lucky as to see a few of the disgusting pigs, the ones running our nations into the ground, be felled by it. Alas, the war criminals, the propagandists, the professional thieves somehow all managed to come through unscathed. Will monkeypox ever appear on a politician or a fakenews presenter?
Posted by: rockstar | Jul 9 2022 17:26 utc | 83
For all the ink spilled on Covid by far the biggest difference in controlling it was the movement of people. We pretend it's otherwise but this isn't so. In the US the expanding scale of college education means people are flung all over the country more than ever and states have far more movement between each other and a culture of doing so. In Europe for all the language of European unity, states continue to have very minimal movement of people between them outside people holidaying and continue to act like independent countries.
I said at the time that the US should have a policy of shutting down travel in and out it as much as possible since outbreaks inside the US were much harder to deal with.
During the first wave in Europe they waited too long to restrict movement between countries but at the time they did it was clear the virus hadn't become too common in 'New Europe', Eastern countries that were in the EU but which had minimal large-scale movement for holidays and outside Ireland and Britain, minimal diasporas.
When the lockdowns came all over Europe they were in much better shape and benefited enormously from their neighbours cutting themselves off from each other and them. People were wracking their brains trying to come up with the explanation. People suggested some kinds of vaccination campaigns that continued longer in the former Warsaw Pact etc. But then the border restrictions were lifted late that summer, lots of Hungarians say went to Croatia for a holiday and came back to begin that country's first major outbreak.
Similarly Ireland was the only Western European country outside Iceland to have it's case numbers go to near zero during that summer lockdown. And elsewhere the biggest survivors of all this were Australia and New Zealand. There were long stretches of the rest of the West having huge outbreaks and strict lockdowns and they operated as normal a lot of the time. Again because they were isolated from the main endemic zones. Australia had the added ability to seal parts of itself off from each other due to the arid landscapes and low to near zero population densities between it's major cities. It was actually feasible to lock Sydney off from Melbourne.
So it may be that the US is better prepared than any other country in terms of what it has done but it's own social and spatial geography make those preparations insufficient.
Ultimately geography and population density and geographic continuity of population density (See Belgium and the Netherlands who had massive caseloads due to a lack of much low population density between it's urban cores) were and are of huge importance, the US isn't able to do anything about that no matter how much money or attention you throw at the problem, people move around and between US states too much.
Posted by: Altai | Jul 9 2022 17:37 utc | 84
https://www.globalresearch.ca/united-nations-scrubbed-article-heralding-benefits-world-hunger-from-website-after-it-went-viral/5786053
Republicofscotland@91
Good link. The point that Kent * is making was made repeatedly in the UK as an excuse for lowering wages and making the Poor Law worse than poverty. It is what William Cobbett called the 'Scotch Feelosophy' though the most notorious exponents tended to be English. Like Arthur Young, for example, who said that without hunger the poor would never work.
And there is some truth in the theory too: poor cottagers and crofters given access to a couple of cares to grow grain or (better still) potatoes on, plus grazing rights for a cow or two, a pig once a year and nature's bounty, in the form of edibles, including the odd rabbit or pigeon, not to mention fish could get by happily with a month or two harvest work and some labouring here and there. Which is why the Enclosure laws, the Poor Law and anti-Poaching regulations all came in together to help found Professor Kent's beloved Capitalism. (Wouldn't you just like to get him in a field with a hoe or a scythe for a day? I bet there are hardworking Haitians who would?)
*(a Professor in Haiti! Talk about obscenities- a neo-liberal University in one of the primary victims of the plague)
Posted by: bevin | Jul 9 2022 18:01 utc | 85
Isabelle McEwen @15
"It has to do with the elites but not only with them. I live in Germany. The "normal people" too think they are better than the people of the global south. They don't say it but they act as such."
How many persons all in all your know? ...and how many of them you know by name? 100? 200? (I don't mean the names that you saw in social media, but actual people)? How many of them you classify as "normal people"? What is your qualitative method of differentiating "normal people" from er... who (non-normal?)? What makes you qualified to claim such nonsense over anyone?
Listen to yourself. You are classifying millions of people, including 7 million Turkish living in Germany, about a million former Balkan people, just to name some, into your sick-minded categories of just as you please?! You try to pose yourself as righteous person, but in truth, you are just one of the persons that were so easily drafted as guardians of Auschwitz, Gulag, or Sufan, poisonous snakes, trying to inflict conflict, not being capable to build anything good.
Stop spreading hatred towards millions of people that you have not even ever met, who you clearly do not even know. If you want to choose sides, stand up, join army, meet fighter against fighter, gain victory or defeat, do something where you put your arse into fire, but stop spreading hatred while conveniently sloughing on your armchair. Shame on you.
Posted by: Tigger | Jul 9 2022 18:02 utc | 86
cares = acres
My computer is convinced it can finish off my words better than I can.
Posted by: bevin | Jul 9 2022 18:03 utc | 87
@ Scorpion | Jul 9 2022 17:49 utc | 101
yeah.. scorpion.. i like what you say in the post.. we have no way of knowing about a lot of this... good comment..
Posted by: james | Jul 9 2022 18:15 utc | 88
Altai@101
Good point. From the beginning the challenge was to quarantine the few centres of infection. The capitalist countries refused to do that- it took months before the British did anything to impose quarantines at Heathrow- for fear that the economy would suffer. The result was that the pandemic grew and grew.
Having abandoned Public Health measures(except too late and too loosely carried out) the capitalists turned to their friends in Pharma and asked them to produce a commodity that could mitigate the problem, a profitable item that could be sold and at which the public could gaze in wonder. Hence the vaccine roll outs. For the capitalist class it was the solution: it could be sold and made profitable (largely by transferring taxes to corporations) and it would allow the restaurants to re-open, the factories to go back to full production and there would be some bonus side effects in terms of social discipline.
Meanwhile in China no more than 5000 people have died. And yes in the USA at least a million have died from Covid, probably a lot more. Were most of them elderly and vulnerable and already not in the best of health? Yes. But that doesn't mean that Covid did not kill them. Nor, neo-liberals out there, does it mean that their deaths are not to be greatly lamented as is every death where it is preventable.
Posted by: bevin | Jul 9 2022 18:16 utc | 89
@ Scorpion | Jul 9 2022 18:10 utc | 102
ditto your comment to dale as well... thanks...
looks like a lot of posts are being deleted by b...................
Posted by: james | Jul 9 2022 18:19 utc | 90
@bevin | Jul 9 2022 18:16 utc | 101
---
The significant finding is that Captalists can't quarantine. Naturally this extends to disciplines beyond health.
Posted by: too scents | Jul 9 2022 18:20 utc | 91
b
you can't expect folks to not comment on covid on a thread like this!
Posted by: james | Jul 9 2022 18:21 utc | 92
As I pointed out above, Monkeypox WILL get replaced by something else. Which will get replaced by something else. Which will get replaced by something else. Which will get replaced by something else. Not in the sense of a 'narrative' but because capitalism, which used to expand, and keep us healthy (to an extent) is now (at least in the global north) flatlining and globalisation (the headless chicken which is mentally dead, but which keeps on running) will keep on forbidding us to use the key way to deal with viral outbreaks, which is to shut borders.
Also global warming will start to kick in (it already has, to a very limited extent) preventing crops from being grown, preventing people from travelling, increasing the numbers of refugees and so on.
So many people on this thread simply cannot face the reality, which is, that in the global north at least, the 'good times' are simply over. Instead they insist that it's all a conspiracy and that nothing bad is happening and that everything will be fine.
It won't.
Posted by: HIdari | Jul 9 2022 18:42 utc | 93
@ Scorpion | Jul 9 2022 18:10 utc | 102
ditto your comment to dale as well... thanks...
looks like a lot of posts are being deleted by b...................
Posted by: james | Jul 9 2022 18:19 utc | 90
Ha ha! I could still see my earlier posts after your comment above and was chuffed that mine hadn't been snuffed, but then I hit next page because the count was at 100 and they were all gone!!
I don't mind since b has to do what b has to do, but it would be nice to know what the policy is, if anything. I suspect though that this is something to do with his terms of service so he probably won't want to spell it out.
Whatever your opinion about it, covid is a nasty business!
@95 james | Jul 9 2022 19:01 utc
What could he possibly tell us that wasn't rendered crystal clear by the comments now missing from the page we just read?
For a brief shining moment, a real conversation was underway.
Posted by: Grieved | Jul 9 2022 19:13 utc | 95
Jesus, even the innocuous #95 is now missing.
From surreal to funny. Or as an old English bloke I knew once said , "from the sublime to the oh gor blimey!"
Posted by: Grieved | Jul 9 2022 19:16 utc | 96
The right and libertarian circles have fallen hard for disinformation on COVID. Hard. Disinformation isn’t to convince you you’re wrong. It’s to make your correct side of the story swing so far to it’s unreasonable extreme and then trap you there through dialectical thinking so you’re permanently discredited and unreasonable.
I actually think Southern Oligarchs paid Mises types to go hard, to protect their Gulf Shores resort revenues.
But seriously? COVID is fake? No, viruses are fake apparently. I’m happy for the Mises CAUCUS and all but the movement is still playing ten years ago’s game. Whatever changes and innovations the movement needed to adapt to the Post-American, Information Age paradigm, the chance was squandered by the moral cowardice and NIMBYism in the reaction to COVID.
Posted by: Zachary Sorenson | Jul 9 2022 19:18 utc | 97
What Americans should have learned from the lessons of the last two years is that ALL bioweapon research labs should immediately be shut down.
All else is secondary.
Posted by: wagelaborer | Jul 9 2022 19:23 utc | 98
@ Wobblie | Jul 9 2022 12:49 utc | 13
You’re a stuck record.
Posted by: Leuk | Jul 9 2022 19:24 utc | 99
Dealing with a "public health crisis" in a nominally liberal society is a "Drahtseilakt". It never properly worked, the fact that the US vaccine push was at the forefront of their strategy is just another reminder that it's a state whose own administrative machinery is unaware of it's supposed modus operandi while more covert interests push their will on it for their own gain, be it profit, division or whatever. One only had to look back at the smallpox eradication campaign and it's decrepit speed to understand that mass vaccination in a liberal society is a process of decades, not months or even years, but nobody did and nobody wanted to in the face of a solution that seemed so simple on paper. The nonsense of inefficient containment (as if a single country could truly contain a respiratory virus long term in a globalist world without turning into an open air prison) is preposterous and naive. From the first spread of covid it was clear it was here to stay, and something to be endured and adapted to instead of defeated, and amusingly enough that was the opinion of the level headed public health professionals before the political action fanatics managed to turn it into a societal crusade for their own gain
Posted by: dh | Jul 9 2022 19:37 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
It is always embarassing to shoot at an ambulance.
Let the USA RIP.
Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jul 9 2022 11:47 utc | 1