Nov 012020
 
 November 1, 2020  Posted by at 9:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Getty Images Sean Connery RIP

 

Going Full Orwell (Jim Kunstler)
National Security Nightmare Of Hunter Biden’s Abandoned Laptop (DM)
Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden By 7 Points Among Iowa Voters (MSN)
Arizona Polls: Trump vs. Biden (RCP)
Democrats Uneasy About Higher Republican Turnout In Miami-Dade (CNN)
A Biden Presidency Means The Return Of The Blob (Escobar)
Fauci Praises Biden’s Covid Precautions, Says He Avoids West Wing Due (F.)
Study: 20% Of Grocery Store Workers Had COVID19, Most Asymptomatic (CNN)
A Second National Lockdown Would Be Catastrophic (Sun)
Anti-Lockdown Protests Grip Spain (RT)
Europe Increasingly Toughens COVID19 Restrictions Amid Fierce Protests (RT)
Netherlands Puts KLM Bailout On Hold After Pilots Reject Wage Freeze (R.)
Why China’s Official Data Don’t Add Up (ATF)
The Great Reset for Dummies (Tessa)

 

 

BADAKATHCARE! Biden’s a one-man meme machine

 

 

“Mr. Trump has overcome every adversity thrown in his path for four years, and I believe he will get through this final tribulation, beep-beep. And then the games can begin in earnest.”

Going Full Orwell (Jim Kunstler)

The now infamous “Laptop from Hell” left behind brainlessly by Hunter in a Delaware repair shop apparently contains a parallel trove of photos and videos self-chronicling the scion’s sordid private life — sex, drugs, etc. — suggesting that he has set himself up as the perfect target for blackmailing operations. And goodness knows what Chinese intel on its own initiative recorded him doing in the hotels there (with amenities supplied) on his many visits to their land. Said laptop was also, it turns out, in the possession of the FBI as far back as the impeachment preliminaries in Adam Schiff’s House Intel Committee, fall of 2019. Since it was full of material counter-evidence about the issue at hand — the president’s phone call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky vis-a-vis the Biden family’s shady doings in that country — the question arises of how deep was the FBI’s complicity in the impeachment ruse?

Could FBI Director Christopher Wray not have known of the laptop’s existence when it came into the agency? I doubt it. Could Mr. Wray have concealed the information from Attorney General Barr? Yes, quite possibly. In the meantime, Mr. Barr has not said a word about the entire Biden pay-for-play / laptop extravaganza. I imagine he’s chewing the office furniture at Main Justice in a fury over it with the election pending, and his duty to avoid influencing the outcome. Mr. Trump has felt a little freer to share the wicked business with the public in his campaign appearances, setting the table for a banquet of consequences when the election is over.

If it can be gotten over, since the Democrats have made no secret of their elaborate plan to confound the results with post November 3 ballot harvesting and Lawfare shenanigans in the swing states — to be accompanied by riots staged by their Antifa and BLM shock troops. I think the idea is to provoke Mr. Trump to call out US troops to quell the riots, thereby opening him up to accusations of being a tyrant. I suspect the Dems will overplay their hand on that trick, since a sizable portion of the public that has not collectively lost its mind is good and goddam sick of riots, arson, destruction of property, and the looting capers that go with them. Mr. Trump has overcome every adversity thrown in his path for four years, and I believe he will get through this final tribulation, beep-beep. And then the games can begin in earnest.

Read more …

Hunter02.

National Security Nightmare Of Hunter Biden’s Abandoned Laptop (DM)

The son of the man expected by many to be America’s next President abandoned a laptop containing a treasure trove of top-secret material, including his father’s private emails and mobile phone numbers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. In an astonishing lapse, Hunter Biden chose to protect his MacBook Pro computer – crammed with what an IT expert last night described as a ‘national security nightmare’ and ‘classic blackmail material’ – with a single, simple password: Hunter02. Remarkably, the 50-year-old businessman and self-confessed drug addict took the machine to a back-street IT store in Delaware in April 2019 to get it repaired – yet never returned to collect it. Its existence was revealed by the New York Post last month, but the staggering scale and sensitivity of its contents – easily accessible to a hacker with a modicum of skill – is only revealed for the first time today.

The material, none of which was encrypted or protected by anything as basic as two-factor authentication, includes:
• Joe Biden’s personal mobile number and three private email addresses as well as the names of his Secret Service agents;
• Mobile numbers for former President Bill Clinton, his wife Hillary and almost every member of former President Barack Obama’s cabinet;
• A contact database of 1,500 people including actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, former Presidential candidate John Kerry and ex-FBI boss Louis Freeh;
• Personal documents including Hunter’s passport, driver’s licence, social security card, credit cards and bank statements;
• Details of Hunter’s drug and sex problems, including $21,000 spent on one ‘live cam’ porn website and ‘selfies’ of him engaging in sex acts and smoking crack cocaine;

While Hunter has been accused of using his family name to help with deals with Ukrainian and Chinese firms, there is nothing on the laptop to implicate Joe Biden in any wrongdoing. One email relating to a failed Chinese deal refers to a payment of ten per cent to ‘the Big Guy’, which some have suggested is the presidential hopeful. However, Mr Biden has insisted: ‘I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.’ Last night, IT expert Chris Greany said it was ‘staggering’ the laptop had not been encrypted.

Read more …

Will the shift be strong enough?

Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden By 7 Points Among Iowa Voters (MSN)

Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden has faded, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows just days before Election Day.The president now leads by 7 percentage points over Biden, 48% to 41%. Three percent say they will vote for someone else, 2% aren’t sure and 5% don’t want to say for whom they will vote. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, all eyes are on Iowa. Get updates of all things Iowa politics delivered to your inbox. In September’s Iowa Poll, the candidates were tied at 47% to 47%.The poll of 814 likely Iowa voters was conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines from Oct. 26-29. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.


J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., said while men are more likely to support Trump and women to support Biden, the gender gap has narrowed, and independents have returned to supporting the president, a group he won in 2016. “The president is holding demographic groups that he won in Iowa four years ago, and that would give someone a certain level of comfort with their standing,” she said. “There’s a consistent story in 2020 to what happened in 2016.” But, she said, “Neither candidate hits 50%, so there’s still some play here.” Trump carried Iowa by 9.4 percentage points in 2016, but his chances at a repeat 2020 win here appeared to be in doubt in recent polling. The June Iowa Poll showed Trump leading by just 1 percentage point before Biden climbed into the September tie.

Trunalimunumaprzure Mary Poppins
https://twitter.com/i/status/1322386786916749312

Read more …

Look at some of the leads Biden had recently.

Arizona Polls: Trump vs. Biden (RCP)

Key 2020 Races: Senate | AZ-1 | AZ-2 | AZ-6 President: 2016: Trump +3.5 | 2012: Romney +9.1


Final 2016 RCP Average: Trump +4.0, Results: Trump +3.5 (Trump -0.5 Behind the Polls)

Read more …

“..the county is seen by Democrats as a region former Vice President Joe Biden must win by wide margins..”

Democrats Uneasy About Higher Republican Turnout In Miami-Dade (CNN)

Republicans in Florida’s most populous county, Miami-Dade, are turning out to vote at a somewhat higher percentage than Democrats — causing uneasiness among some Democratic operatives. Nearly 63% of the 428,000 registered Republicans in the county have voted so far, whereas about 56% of the county’s 634,000 registered Democrats have voted to date, according to state data. About 225,000 people with no party affiliation have also already voted in the county. While more Democrats than Republicans have voted overall in Miami-Dade, the county is seen by Democrats as a region former Vice President Joe Biden must win by wide margins in order to offset voting in the state’s predominantly red regions.


Democratic worries come as both President Donald Trump and Biden vie for Florida’s 29 electoral votes, with each candidate holding a rally there Thursday as CNN’s Poll of Polls shows Trump lagging in the state at 46% to Biden’s 49%. Politico was first to report the concerns among Democrats. Steve Schale, a veteran Democratic Florida strategist who runs a pro-Biden PAC, said, “I’d love to see Dade County jump up this weekend and I’ll feel better if it does.” But Schale added that Black voters in the county tend to vote in-person closer to Election Day, so he expects a bump in turnout over the coming weekend. He added that Democrats have had strong turnout in neighboring Broward County. State data show about 61% of registered Democrats in Broward have voted so far compared to about 56% of registered Republicans in the county.

Read more …

“Taking a cue from TIP, let’s game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later.”

A Biden Presidency Means The Return Of The Blob (Escobar)

The Dem strategy is crystal clear, spawned by the gaming of election scenarios embedded in the Transition Integrity Project and made even more explicit by one of TIP’s co-founders, a law professor at Georgetown University. Hillary Clinton, bluntly, has already called it: Dems must re-take the White House by any and all means and under any and all circumstances. And just in case, with a 5,000-word opus, she already positioned herself for a plum job. As much as Dems have made it very clear they will never accept a Trump victory, the counterpunch was vintage Trump: he told the Proud Boys to “stand back” – as in no violence, for now – but crucially to “stand by”, as in “get ready”. The stage is set for Kill Bill mayhem on November 3rd and beyond.

Taking a cue from TIP, let’s game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later. That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob. President Trump calls it “the swamp”. Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier “Blob”, applied to the incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs magazine. A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror), renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.

Biden became the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1997 and was the chair in 2001-2003 and again in 2007-2009. He paraded as total Iraq War cheerleader – necessary, he maintained, as part of GWOT – and even defended a “soft partition” of Iraq, something that fierce nationalists, Sunni and Shi’ite, from Baghdad to Basra will never forget. Obama-Biden’s geopolitical accomplishments include a drone war, or Hellfire missile diplomacy, complete with “kill lists”; the failed Afghan surge; the “liberation” of Libya from behind, turning it into a militia wasteland; the proxy war in Syria fought with “moderate rebels”; and once again leading from behind, the Saudi-orchestrated destruction of Yemen.

Tens of millions of Brazilians also will never forget that Obama-Biden legitimized the NSA spying and Hybrid War tactics that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff ,the neutralization of former President Lula, and the evisceration of the Brazilian economy by comprador elites. Among his former, select interlocutors, Biden counts warmonger former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen – who supervised the destruction of Libya – and John Negroponte, who “organized” the contras in Nicaragua and then “supervised” ISIS/Daesh in Iraq – the crucial element of the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy of instrumentalizing jihadis to do the empire’s dirty work.

Read more …

Fauci the politician. No credibility left.

Fauci Praises Biden’s Covid Precautions, Says He Avoids West Wing Due (F.)

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top figure in the federal government’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic, offered praise for the Biden campaign and a mix of criticism and plaudits for President Donald Trump and his administration in an interview with the Washington Post. Fauci told the Post that the Biden campaign “is taking it seriously from a public health perspective,” while Trump is “looking at it from a different perspective” focused on “the economy and reopening the country.” While the comments are some of Fauci’s most political yet on the pandemic, they are not entirely shocking given Fauci and Biden’s relative alignment on issues like mask mandates, and Biden has committed to listening to scientists and keeping Fauci in his role if he wins the presidential election.

By contrast, Trump and Fauci have frequently clashed, with Fauci warning earlier this month that Trump’s tightly packed rallies pose a coronavirus risk and Trump calling Fauci a “disaster” and stating he would oust him if it didn’t cause a media frenzy. Taking aim at the administration, Fauci told the Post “the public health aspect of the [White House coronavirus] task force has diminished greatly,” and he said he avoids the West Wing of the White House due to “all the infections there.” Fauci claimed neuroradiologist Dr. Scott Atlas – who he said “doesn’t have any real insight” into the virus – is the only medical expert Trump meets with on a regular basis, but he praised White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for saying the administration is “not going to control the virus,” stating “I tip my hat to him for admitting the strategy.”

Fauci has been increasingly vocal in recent weeks as cases have risen rapidly across the country moving into the winter. His outspokenness also comes against the backdrop of an executive order Trump signed earlier this month reducing protections for government civil servants, like Fauci, and in effect making it easier to fire them. Trump and Fauci have disagreed on the severity of the pandemic, with Trump claiming the U.S. is “rounding the turn” on the virus on 43 of the last 61 days – including every day since Oct. 12 – as Fauci warns the U.S. may not return to normal until 2022. “At one point during the interview, Fauci said he needed to be careful with his words because he would be blocked from doing appearances in the future,” wrote Post reporters Josh Dawsey and Yasmeen Abutaleb.

Read more …

The study is from May. Fill in the blanks.

Study: 20% Of Grocery Store Workers Had COVID19, Most Asymptomatic (CNN)

Grocery store work puts employees at serious risk for infection, a new study found, particularly those who have to interact with customers. These workers likely became a “significant transmission source” for Covid-19 without even knowing it because most in the study were asymptomatic. The analysis, published Thursday in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, is the first to demonstrate the significant asymptomatic infection rate, exposure risks and psychological distress grocery workers have felt during the pandemic. In the study, 20% of the 104 grocery workers tested at a store in Boston in May had positive nasal swab tests. This was a significantly higher rate of infection than what was seen in the surrounding communities, the researchers said.


Workers who dealt with customers were five times as likely to test positive for Covid-19 as colleagues in other positions. But three out of four of those who tested positive had no symptoms. “We were definitely surprised to see that there were that many people that were asymptomatic,” said Dr. Justin Yang, an assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine and a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health who worked on the study. “This is definitely very alarming as it means that retail grocery store employees are exposed to customers and sort of serve as a middleman for the virus – like a super spreader almost.” Workers in the study had tried to take precautions. Nearly all, 91%, said they wore a face mask at work and 77% said they also wore masks outside of work. Yet only about 66% said they were able to practice social distancing consistently on the job.

Read more …

“We see why government scientists want a five-week lockdown: they’re up to their eyes in grim Covid predictions.”

A Second National Lockdown Would Be Catastrophic (Sun)

A second national lockdown would be catastrophic. Thousands of cancer sufferers have died since the start of the pandemic as a direct result of missed surgeries and screenings. London ambulance crews now attend an average of 37 suicides or attempted suicides per day, compared with 22 this time last year. And it’s beyond reasonable doubt that the Stay At Home messaging led to a rise in heart attack deaths between March and July. That’s before we get to the long-term health effects of plunging thousands into unemployment.


And what would it be for? Yes, Sage modelling paints a stark picture. But real, current data from the ONS suggests Covid cases have NOT “spiralled out of control” — and deaths remain normal for this time of year. We see why government scientists want a five-week lockdown: they’re up to their eyes in grim Covid predictions. But we worry that, in their panic, they’ve lost sight of the bigger picture. The virus is dangerous. But lockdowns are too.

Read more …

“This is Spain’s third extension to the state of emergency during the pandemic and will be in force until May 9..”

Anti-Lockdown Protests Grip Spain (RT)

Spain has been gripped by violence as anti-lockdown protesters clash with police in multiple cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, over the state and regional governments’ move to toughen Covid-19 restrictions. Protesters torched garbage containers and erected makeshift barricades on Gran Via, and reportedly smashed several store fronts elsewhere in central Madrid on Saturday night. When police moved in to clear the unruly gathering, they were pelted with stones and flares, and reportedly fired blank bullets, forcing the protesters to disperse into nearby streets. Meanwhile in Barcelona, police officers were pelted with stones and other projectiles, as they tried to disperse a smaller-scale anti-lockdown protest for the second consecutive night.

The regional government of Catalonia approved a new package of measures this week, including the perimeter confinement of each municipality, limiting people to their own district on weekends. Clashes also took place in the Spanish city of Logrono, where protesters burned trash containers, smashed windows and looted several shops. Heated protests were also reported in Granada, Malaga and Bilbao. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged Spaniards in a Saturday night tweet to show patience and demonstrate “responsibility, unity and sacrifice” to defeat the global pandemic, while condemning the “violent and irrational behavior” by a “small minority” of the population.

Spain’s parliament approved a six-month extension of the national state of emergency last week, granting regional authorities more power to tackle the country’s second wave of Covid-19. This is Spain’s third extension to the state of emergency during the pandemic and will be in force until May 9, but with an option for it to be lifted on March 9.

Read more …

Politicians don’t act, they re-act.

Europe Increasingly Toughens COVID19 Restrictions Amid Fierce Protests (RT)

Portugal has become the latest European state to announce new coronavirus restrictions, as Austria and England also prepare for lockdown, amid public backlash in other states forced into quarantines by the second wave of Covid-19. In Portugal, people were ordered to stay home except for work, school or essential shopping, while companies will switch to remote working wherever possible. New lockdown measures are set to take effect on November 4 and will immediately impact nearly 70 percent of the population in 121 municipalities. Prime Minister Antonio Costa, however, warned that even more areas could be added to the list if the rate of coronavirus infections continues to soar. “We have a very tough month ahead of us. It is more likely we will add more municipalities than we drop from that list next time.”

While Portugal has recorded a relatively low 2,507 deaths so far, the daily number of new infections soared over 4,000 in the recent days, with a total of 1,972 people hospitalized and the country slowly running out of intensive care units. “If nothing is done, the rise in infections will inevitably lead us to a situation of failure of our health system,” Costa added, echoing the reasoning behind the lockdown in England that was announced by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson just hours earlier. In England, from November 5 to at least December 2, people will only be allowed to go outside for specific reasons, including education, work, exercise, shopping for essentials or caring for the vulnerable.

Pubs and restaurants will be shut down and only allowed to sell takeaway. All non-essential trade will also stop. However, essential shops, schools, and universities will remain open. In Austria, a mass lockdown kicks off on November 3, with a curfew in place from 8pm to 6am every night until December. All restaurants, bars and cafes will be closed except for the delivery and takeaway services. Theaters, museums and gyms, as well as kindergartens and primary schools, will also close, while high schools and universities will switch to distance learning.

Read more …

The future of travel.

Netherlands Puts KLM Bailout On Hold After Pilots Reject Wage Freeze (R.)

The Dutch government on Saturday put on hold its plan to bail out KLM, the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM, after pilots rejected a wage-freeze until 2025, Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said. KLM had been due to receive a 3.4 billion euro ($4.0 billion) package, including 1 billion euros in direct loans. from the government to help it cope with the damage from the coronavirus pandemic.”I find it very disappointing, but this way we cannot move forward with the loan now,” Hoekstra told journalists. The pilots’ union argued that it had already agreed to a freeze until March 2022, and could not now change that agreement at the last minute.


Ahead of the government announcement, KLM CEO Pieter Elbers had said that “without this loan, KLM will not make it through these challenging times”. In a statement, he said KLM would not immediately go bankrupt but that its reserves “cannot last more than a few months”. In a letter to parliament, Hoekstra left the door open for the bailout if all KLM employees agreed to the five-year wage freeze. “It is up to KLM and the unions to ensure that they meet the government’s demands after all,” he said, adding that the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic had changed expectations about how soon airlines could bounce back. “The outlook is sombre, that makes it all the more important to have a good restructuring programme in place to work towards KLM’s long-term recovery,” he wrote.

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Creative bookkeeping.

Why China’s Official Data Don’t Add Up (ATF)

Last week China released it’s much anticipated third quarter GDP, and along with it came fresh concerns of data accuracy. While the 4.9% print missed rather exuberant market expectations of over 5% growth, the real head-turner was Beijing’s announced revisions to its fixed asset investment (FAI) data for September 2019. The revised numbers depressed last September’s FAI by 2.8 trillion yuan, thereby boosting this year’s growth figures as well as the Q3 GDP. China’s National Bureau of Statistics explained away the change in a short footnote, stating that historical data were adjusted on the basis of the “fourth national economic census unit inventory.” In August, China had reported its first positive retail sales growth of 2020 on the basis of a similar adjustment, which depressed year-ago figures by 50 billion yuan.

Predictably, this latest revision came under immediate scrutiny. The core statistical problem here is the sample’s changing characteristics and size. The NBS has a longstanding practice of only surveying firms above a minimum annual revenue. Any firm that falls below the threshold is dropped from future surveys and its results removed from past data. Alternatively, if the number of firms meeting the revenue threshold rises in a given year, the sample then becomes larger than last year’s by thousands of firms. This cherry-picking approach — which can produce trillions of yuan worth of adjustments — invalidates any claims of random, representative sampling. Furthermore, it creates a constant stream of revisions to official statistics without details on methods or the release of underlying numbers. The more fundamental challenge it underscores is that investors cannot rely on official data to reliably capture economic conditions, especially when the economy is under pressure.

[..] First, despite the announced on-year rebound in official GDP growth, CBB’s recent third-quarter data show no part of the economy registering growth anywhere near year-ago levels. Despite sequential quarterly improvement since the Chinese economy emerged from its Covid lockdown, every sector, sub-sector, region, and growth metric remains in contraction year-on-year. Second, our surveys of over 3,300 firms showed a two-track recovery in Q3. For large firms and companies based in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangdong the economy is accelerating. This is the recovery much of the West sees and what has become the public-face of Beijing’s rebound narrative. In the rest of country, however, the climb back is far more uneven and beset with reversals.

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“The king’s world feels far more predictable and relaxed when the chaos of human subjectivity is contained for good.”

The Great Reset for Dummies (Tessa)

The Great Reset is a massively funded, desperately ambitious, internationally coordinated project led by some of the biggest multinational corporations and financial players on the planet and carried out by cooperating state bodies and NGOs. Its soul is a combination of early 20th century science fiction, idyllic Soviet posters, the obsessiveness of a deranged accountant with a gambling addiction—and an upgraded, digital version of “Manifest Destiny.” The mathematical reason for the Great Reset is that thanks to technology, the planet has gotten small, and the infinite expansion economic model is bust—but obviously, the super wealthy want to continue staying super wealthy, and so they need a miracle, another bubble, plus a surgically precise system for managing what they perceive as “their limited resources.”

Thus, they desperately want a bubble providing new growth out of thin air—literally—while simultaneously they seek to tighten the peasants’ belts, an effort that starts with “behavioral modification,” a.k.a. resetting the western peasants’ sense of entitlement to high life standards and liberties (see awful “privilege”). The psychological reason for the Great Reset is the fear of losing control of property, the planet. I suppose, if you own billions and move trillions, your perception of reality gets funky, and everything down below looks like an ant hill that exists for you. Just ants and numbers, your assets.


Thus, the practical aim of the Great Reset is to fundamentally restructure the world’s economy and geopolitical relations based on two assumptions: one, that every element of nature and every life form is a part of the global inventory (managed by the allegedly benevolent state, which, in turn, is owned by several suddenly benevolent wealthy people, via technology)—and two, that all inventory needs to be strictly accounted for: be registered in a central database, be readable by a scanner and easily ID’ed, and be managed by AI, using the latest “science.” The goal is to count and then efficiently manage and control all resources, including people, on an unprecedented scale, with unprecedented digital anxiety and precision—all while the masters keep indulging, enjoying vast patches of conserved nature, free of unnecessary sovereign peasants and their unpredictability. The king’s world feels far more predictable and relaxed when the chaos of human subjectivity is contained for good.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 1 2020

Viewing 24 posts - 1 through 24 (of 24 total)
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  • #65056

    Getty Images Sean Connery RIP   • Going Full Orwell (Jim Kunstler) • National Security Nightmare Of Hunter Biden’s Abandoned Laptop (DM) • Donald
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 1 2020]

    #65057
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I liked Red October a lot; his Bond was the archtype; but I think I loved him most in Finding Forrester…
    RIP Sean…

    #65058
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Badakathcare to mobilize the truinnerashuvaduprezure”

    …And half the country has reason to believe this is NOT the worst candidate.

    Speaking of Magritte: “This is not a mask”
    https://media.wusa9.com/assets/CCT/images/415abc93-737d-45e9-abff-cce373b54f17/415abc93-737d-45e9-abff-cce373b54f17_1140x641.jpg US

    “stand back” – as in no violence, for now – but crucially to “stand by”, as in “get ready”.

    Terrible speaker as always, my take was “stand by”, because after 4 years of taking punches, the President’s circle was about to counterattack for a change. …Thus no need for the street people to get involved, possibly ever. This is also what the prospective Q says, who is almost certainly the Trump military intel propaganda wing. To waylay exactly these people and keep them stupid so they don’t start a civil war that could be forestalled. Next thing that happens after said quote? Hunter laptop. Discrediting Wray. Demanding special counsel. Attacking Dorsey, etc, with good cause to cancel or re-write Sec230. So, was my interpretation correct, or Escobar’s? We can’t fully tell but mine is definitely gathering some legs. Because “Orange Man Bad” all things that are said, however vague, must be interpreted in the most violent, inhuman, and conspiratorial way. Saying a guy who escalated violence, removed treaties, armed enemies, cut off pipelines, attacked allies, and continued sanctions is a “Putin puppet”, and has been since 1987, WHEN THERE WAS A SOVIET UNION, well, that’s just common sense. We always attack ourselves, you see, and aid our enemies. Tricky tricky.

    Will there be violence? Sure. But right now the Right is just sitting by patiently taking it. When they don’t, their own side censures them immediately, like the tire-rub in Texas when Chee-tos surrounded Biden’s bus and escorted them out of the state. No you can’t do that. We expect charges. And charges against such events are constantly placed and enforced when they happen. When it’s NOT “my side right or wrong,” but “a nation of laws, not men” – is that the good side or the bad side?

    January Fauci: Aha! See how Trump flip-flops? He’s a bad orange man. Why doesn’t he follow the doctors and the science? Ah, we’ve got facts for all. We print all the facts, and all the opposites, and you can a la carte pick and choose. That’s journalism! That’s what happens when you’re #AntiLogos, and do not believe there even IS an objective truth to find. But what’s YOUR truth, little Ashley? What’s YOUR lived experience? That 2+2=5? Welcome to Fauci’s world.

    “Study: 20% Of Grocery Store Workers Had COVID19, Most Asymptomatic (CNN)

    Everybody’s going to get it, everybody’s had it. Hospitalizations suggest herd immunity since July. But we’ve got some folks to kill and we’re in a hurry. Can’t stop now.

    “We see why government scientists want a five-week lockdown: they’re up to their eyes in grim Covid predictions.”

    …Aaaaaaaand shows nobody learns nothin’. They’re incapable of learning. NewsFact: we’re 25 MILLION SHORT of your LAST terrible, totally wrong prediction. And your last terrible, totally false advice: 15 days. And that was only 6 months ago. What did I say yesterday? IT’S IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY LEVEL OF WRONG OR CORRUPTION TO HAVE CONSEQUENCES. Because WE won’t stop obeying and discredit, de-fund, dismiss, and indict some folks. Why won’t you start not believing known criminals? Couldn’t be worse than what do now.

    This is Spain’s third extension to the state of emergency during the pandemic and will be in force until May 9..”

    It will be in force a LEAST until the EU currency reset, and probably forever if history of governments is any guide. How long was Franco in? 50 years? So it will be in place until YOU stop cowering and stop it.

    Europe Increasingly Toughens COVID19 Restrictions Amid Fierce Protests (RT)”

    What a coincidence: whenever they have dissidents and protests, suddenly they need to “lock down”? Do tell. I’m sure the “science” from the exact same governments and institutions is totally honest.

    In honor of the explosion of tested cases in Europe:

    “PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless”

    COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless

    “How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.html

    “Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this. In her paper “Interpreting a COVID-19 test result”, published recently in The British Medical Journal, she writes that there is a “lack of such a clear-cut ‘gold-standard’ for COVID-19 testing.”

    But instead of classifying the tests as unsuitable for SARS-CoV-2 detection and COVID-19 diagnosis, or instead of pointing out that only a virus, proven through isolation and purification, can be a solid gold standard, Watson claims in all seriousness that, “pragmatically” COVID-19 diagnosis itself, remarkably including PCR testing itself, “may be the best available ‘gold standard’.” But this is not scientifically sound.

    Apart from the fact that it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test, there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19…”

    Sounds like a tautology.
    Leading to:

    “it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results.
    For example, already in February the health authority in China’s Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19, started to test “negative,” and then tested “positive” again.”

    “tests were carried out almost daily on 18 patients and the majority went from “positive” to “negative” back to “positive” at least once, and up to five times in one patient.”

    the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory sent a letter to the WHO’s coronavirus response team and to Anthony S. Fauci on March 22, 2020, saying that:

    It has been widely reported in the social media that the RT-qPCR [Reverse Transcriptase quantitative PCR] test kits used to detect SARSCoV-2 RNA in human specimens are generating many false positive results and are not sensitive enough to detect some real positive cases.”
    In other words, even if we theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really detect a viral infection, the tests would be practically worthless, and would only cause an unfounded scare among the “positive” people tested.

    Are they aware? Probably:

    “Remarkably, in the instruction manuals of PCR tests we can also read that they are not intended as a diagnostic test, as for instance in those by Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics[5].

    To quote another one, in the product announcement of the LightMix Modular Assays produced by TIB Molbiol — which were developed using the Corman et al. protocol — and distributed by Roche we can read:

    These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection”
    And:
    For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.”

    “Furthermore, the “Drosten PCR test” uses the unspecific E-gene assay as preliminary assay, while the Institut Pasteur uses the same assay as confirmatory assay.

    According to Corman et al., the E-gene assay is likely to detect all Asian viruses, while the other assays in both tests are supposed to be more specific for sequences labelled “SARS-CoV-2”.
    Besides the questionable purpose of having either a preliminary or a confirmatory test that is likely to detect all Asian viruses, at the beginning of April the WHO changed the algorithm, recommending that from then on a test can be regarded as “positive” even if just the E-gene assay (which is likely to detect all Asian viruses!) gives a “positive” result.

    This means that a confirmed unspecific test result is officially sold as specific.

    That change of algorithm increased the “case” numbers. Tests using the E-gene assay are produced for example by Roche, TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm. “

    “Another essential problem is that many PCR tests have a “cycle quantification” (Cq) value of over 35, and some, including the “Drosten PCR test”, even have a Cq of 45.

    “…If the Cq value gets too high, it becomes difficult to distinguish real signal from background,”
    The Cq value specifies how many cycles of DNA replication are required to detect a real signal from biological samples….The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, agreed, when he stated:

    If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR.”

    So the test does nothing except produce the false positives the UK Pharma Doctor already reported last month, AND you can either give more tests (for more profit) or tune the test higher to get positives any time, any place, and people you need a lockdown for? I’m sure that’s all just one big honest mistake, and the 40 different ways test-doctors admitted in the article they didn’t do any real science, they have no procedures or internal controls, nobody is objecting and challenging them, I’m sure that’s all just an accident and nobody in the Whooooooooooole scientific and medical community ever noticed this before. Just this one reporter, just now, first time.

    They are corrupt.

    They are not Science.

    They are not Doctors.

    They are committing open malpractice worldwide, killing 20,000 nursing home patients on-camera, then getting accolades from Science at the WHO and CDC.

    Goldfish. Squirrel. What was I saying? January Fauci forgot what July Fauci was saying about #Logos, that is, objective reality.

    “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities”

    Stop studying their abuse of you, killing everyone, ending human rights, and open your mouth, tell the truth, and object.

    #65059
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    Does anyone want to wade in on the deaths per capita chart from yesterday, the one showing that Sweden had about double the death rate of the EU until August, at which time the EU went into an exponential rise, exceeding even the US, while now Sweden’s rate is about one fifth that of the US and EU? Sweden is also a northern country, not benefiting from vitamin D provided by sun exposure, yet somehow by the end of October their rate is very low. Numbers like these beg for explanation, especially since the policy response was so different in Sweden. Here’s a theory, based on the analysis made by my health guru Jon Barron at the outset of the pandemic: if people restrict exposure to pathogens, their immune systems will become weaker, like a muscle that has not been exercised. This is the downside of lockdowns. I understand that Swedes voluntarily reduced some activities, but the stark differences in the data between the EU and Sweden seem to suggest that the unique policy response (much less restrictive lockdown) played a role.

    #65060
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    Dr. D that info on testing is astounding. The testing testing testing strategy looks like it goes out the window – essentially it appears that we have no valid tests for covid. Therefore, we are navigating this disease based on garbage data. This of course will impact validity of covid death counts (which also felt on tests). My comment above on covid rates comparison between Sweden, the EU and the US kind of goes out the window too – who knows what those numbers mean?
    In my neck of the woods you could get whiplash following the instructions to the public on testing. Initially, the public was told to go get tested, and we were admonished for not being tested. Next we learned that there was a backlog in the processing of tens of thousands of tests, resulting in some tests being sent to California to be analyzed. I have been deemed an essential visitor to my mother who lives in a retirement home and I am not high enough on the priority list to get tested at this point, because testing capacity is so limited. I used to feel guilty about not being tested. Not anymore.

    #65061
    zerosum
    Participant

    the perfect target for blackmailing operations.
    Who is doing the blackmailing of who?
    Insiders?
    Foreigners?

    WHY?
    For money
    For power
    For sex
    For drugs
    For love
    For fear
    ——-
    “a ‘national security nightmare’ and ‘classic blackmail material’ ”
    Who told the dailymail?

    Sunday, Nov 1st 2020

    EXCLUSIVE: National security nightmare of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop containing phone numbers for the Clintons, Secret Service officers and most of the Obama cabinet plus his sex and drug addictions – all secured by the password Hunter02

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8901193/National-security-nightmare-Hunter-Bidens-laptop.html
    By CAROLINE GRAHAM IN LOS ANGELES and IAN GALLAGHER IN LONDON FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

    PUBLISHED: 18:00 EST, 31 October 2020 | UPDATED: 04:46 EST, 1 November 2020
    ——

    Plausible deniability is a condition under which a person or persons’ culpability might be denied, or at least mitigated, by pointing to a situation that either leads them to take the action they took, or to deny that they were responsible in the first place.
    Time for the 10% undecided to go and vote
    —–
    Must read. It’s not science fiction.

    https://tessa.substack.com/p/great-reset-dummies

    The Great Reset for Dummies
    Where do we go from here?
    Tessa Lena
    Oct 27
    ——
    Great find. Testing the testing!!!!
    Now, can we find the truth.

    The only data that appears to make sense, to me, ….. are seniors + care workers + flue shots + death

    #65062

    ..it appears that we have no valid tests for covid..

    I think we do, but PCR is not it. There are easily 5 different types of rapid tests out there that I’ve read about -saliva, nose swaps etc.-, but the medical community insists they must first test the tests, and then that they -doctors, nurses- do the testing. Which will make delays a feature, not a flaw. While everyone could just test themselves, every day, every week, whatever,

    PCR is flawed because it is too sensitive for this kind of situation, which leads to too many false positives. And we”re talking, off the top of my head, 93% vs 87% accuracy. That’s what’s holding all this up. All these people saying: but 93 is much better than 87, without looking at any other factors, like price, ease of use etc. Blind. Qui bono?

    #65063
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-are-americans-catching-the-virus-increasingly-they-have-no-idea/ar-BB1azq1G?ocid=msedgntp

    Gone are the days when Americans could easily understand the virus by tracking rising case numbers back to discrete sources — the crowded factory, the troubled nursing home, the rowdy bar. Now, there are so many cases, in so many places, that many people are coming to a frightening conclusion: They have no idea where the virus is spreading.

    #65064
    generic
    Participant

    Individuals like Hunter Biden, with high placed relatives or friends, are often referred to a “princelings.” (Peter Schweitzer, “Secret Empires”) Corporations, countries, or wealthy persons may give these princelings money as a means of influencing those high placed friends. This is legal.

    What is illegal is for those prominent individuals, like Joe Biden, to be influenced by the money to provide US government favors to the payer. That sounds simple enough, but it turns out to be very difficult to prove such influence, and the burden of proof must clear a very high bar.

    An objective voter might very reasonably guess that Joe Biden has been aiding Hunter to sell influence in a way that is illegal. Proof of that has been very hard to obtain. The Republican Senate has been looking at this for a while without finding proof of illegal activity:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/09/26/the-truth-about-hunter-biden—and-why-republicans-are-so-disappointed/#637918155b79

    Perhaps new evidence will eventually provide that proof. What we are waiting for is a document signed by Joe saying that for X dollars, he will provide, quid pro quo, some valuable US government service. Even that may not be enough to pass muster in the courts. Selling access or influence is a big part of what goes on in Washington.

    The Kushner Companies are equivalent to another princeling. If Qatar wants to loan the Kushner companies $1 billion as a way of influencing Donald Trump, that is legal so long as Trump is not influenced to give something to Qatar. An objective voter might reasonably guess that Trump has been manipulating US foreign policy to encourage Qatar to provide that loan to the Kushner Companies. That is difficult to prove.

    Donald Trump, Jr is another princeling. If he is managing the Trump organization without direction from Donald Sr, then he can receive all kinds of payments (emoluments?) from companies or countries without running afoul of the law. An objective voter might reasonably guess that Donald Sr is both directing the organization and being influenced by the sources of revenue coming into the companies. Proving that is another matter.

    Zephyr Teachout, in her book “Corruption in America,” discusses how bribery has been a continuing stumbling block since the earliest days of nation. Bribery is now institutionalized. Bribes, once laundered through K Street, are legal. In fact, much of the corruption in Washington, if not most, is entirely legal.

    Trump seems to have set a record in expanding “the swamp” by appointing industry lobbyists, corporate executives, Wall Street operators, and rich friends to important government positions. I consider that massively corrupt. But Trump, as president, is allowed to appoint anyone the Senate doesn’t block.

    Biden is proud of changes he brought to the bankruptcy law that now allows credit card companies to engage in predatory lending to people with low credit scores, and which turns many of those people into debt slaves. I consider that to be seriously corrupt and an injury to the nation. But this was legally passed into law by the Congress.

    Sarah Chayes, in her book “On Corruption in America and What Is at Stake,” starts out with a story of a Virginia Governor convicted of receiving bribes from a businessman to use state agencies for the benefit of the businessman. This case went to the US Supreme Court which unanimously overturned the conviction in McDonnell vs United States. The US Supreme Court has rendered itself nearly blind to the corruption of elected officials. Chief Justice John Roberts prefers to avoid the word “corrupt” and uses the word “distasteful” instead. The Supreme Court believes that elected officials must be given the widest possible latitude in providing constituent services and negotiating with businesses and nations.

    Some experts claim that the only way one of these politicians can now be convicted of corruption is if they are very very incompetent at corruption. If you remember the Abscam investigation, that may be the only way to get at the corruption in Washington, but Congress told the FBI not to ever do that again. I would find it humorous if Joe Biden, after decades of practicing corruption according to the rules, were to not know how to do it properly enough to avoid illegality.

    I’m not a lawyer or an expert in these matters. But Glenn Greenwald is a lawyer and has years of experience as a journalist. He should be able to clearly lay out the law as well as how Joe Biden has violated the law and the expected consequences so that the rest of us can understand. Instead, he wrote a lazy article filled with the same innuendos we have already seen, and then he asks Biden to respond.

    As I recall, Lyndon Johnson once told his campaign manager that he wanted to spread a story that his opponent has sex with sheep. His campaign manager said that he doubted the story was true. Johnson replied, “Aw hell, I know that. I just want him to deny it.”

    That’s the level to which Greenwald has sunk. If Joe Biden has committed illegal and prosecutable acts, the evidence is out there. It’s Greenwald’s job to go find the evidence and deliver it. Other big news organizations have looked for it and so far have come up empty. That’s why they say that there is no story there. Joe Biden responds to inquiries by saying, “Buzz off,” which is what he should say in polite company. The problem with celebrity journalists like Greenwald is that they so often learn to love their celebrity so much that they lose the capacity for introspection.

    If Trump is reelected, a big part of his ability to play catch-up will likely be due to his claim that Joe Biden is the head of a crime family. This has to be taken seriously because Trump, as a sitting president, has access to information from the Secret Service, State Department, CIA, Justice Department, FBI, and other federal agencies while the Congress and the people are in the dark. The crime family statement could be interpreted as an official judgment of the US Government. Trump would have an obligation to the nation to convict and imprison Joe Biden for his illegal acts as the head of a crime family. If Trump were unable to get Biden hauled off to prison, Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office as a result of electoral fraud.

    #65065
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ generic
    I interpret what you said as,
    “Rule of law should not be bent or fashioned to allow the elites to be able to getting off “scott free” “

    #65066
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    VP Joe Briben

    #65067
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    Will Lockdowns cause a Systemic Banking Failure?

    It looks like next week most of Western Europe will be under lockdowns. It almost seems coordinated!

    Although these lockdowns are treated as if they have no consequences there is some potentially drastic fallout. One recent article suggested the strong possibility of a systemic banking failure for Europe, and possibly beyond. As businesses go broke non-performing loans accumulate and they may reach a tipping point and banks begin to fail, causing others to fail in a chain reaction.

    Some years ago it was established that any money you put in a bank becomes the property of the bank, and will be used to pay off any debts if the bank fails.

    Also, because derivatives involve collateral they are regarded as senior debt. Debts related to derivatives have to be paid before the customers. The last estimate I have seen is that there is 1.5 quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives, many times the annual global GDP!

    Another area of concern is re-hypothecation related to mortgages. If you have, say, a mortgage at 4.5% the lender may wrap up many mortgages and borrow the money say at 3.5%. your house will be used as collateral. This second company may also group even more mortgages and borrow the money at a lower rate, a and so on. You can end up with a daisy chain. The question is if the primary lender goes bust who owns the houses?

    https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/the-destruction-of-the-euro

    #65068
    zerosum
    Participant

    “The question is if the primary lender goes bust who owns the houses?”

    1. If rule of law is irrelevant then possession and defending with gun.

    #65070
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @anticlimactic re: mortgage bundling

    This was found to be illegal, as it breaks the chain of custody on the mortgage. This allows the debtor to challenge the validity of the contract. If your mortgage was thusly bundled, and you now find yourself staring into the ‘foreclosure barrel’ you might do well to squat and challenge.

    #65071
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Oh, that Tessa just cracked my egg! Got some ruminating to do.

    As a hint of what was stirred…

    Galactic Center – Gregory Benford. Biological life in the cosmos usually ends itself by inventing AI and machines that rebel, exterminate.

    There’s a lot to this, and it’s closely tied to the digital currency ‘event horizon’ problem. To seriously do bitcoin right, you need ever more processing power for each transaction. After a (short) while, there’s not enough energy on the planet to get rich anymore. In space, near a star, you have unlimited solar power. Put the bitcoin farms in space! Combine this greed with a pathological need to kill more efficiently, and you get violations of Asmiov’s 3 Laws (!!!), and we’re off to the races.

    Now, for the cyborg angle, The Eyes Of Heisenberg – Frank Herbert. OptiMen run the show, peasants die en masse at a whim, cyborgs battle them from the shadows. Are we at that juncture where the ‘transhumanists’ are trying to break away? Should we let them? Are we already in an existential struggle with eachother?

    Now, before I go off to ride my bike and digest some stuff, here’s Kurt Vonnegut Jr on The Future of The United States. I have not watched this one yet myself, but I’ve seen several of his other interviews, and read a fair number of his books.

    This whole schmeer is beginning to feel bigger than WWII.

    Oh, that Tessa!!!! (stomps away muttering to self)

    #65072
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Dr. D: “This is also what the prospective Q says, who is almost certainly the Trump military intel propaganda wing.”

    The latest Honest Government Ad is about Q, and how QAnon is a PsyOp.

    “What’s that? When do we take down the Deep State? Oh, honey, the guy who exposed the real Deep State is being tortured by it right now. And where are you? Oh, that’s right. Q told you to trust the plan.”

    [Photo of Julian Assange holding The Guardian newspaper with headline “Massive Leak of Secret Files Exposes True Afghan War.]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SoJI_KNV0Q

    #65073
    Dr. D
    Participant

    I believe there are good tests, and some countries are using them. That leads the question: THEIR doctors are competent at distinguishing a good, actionable test vs a false, late one, but we are not. This is one of the big differences in nations I think, along with HCQ, size, and cooperation of the public gestalt.

    But like all experts, they know this but won’t say anything to rock the boat. That is: intellectuals are self-serving cowards. They mostly leave it to the Americans to shout and then take it in the teeth. Probably our Irish heritage. It leaves the same questions of against WHAT do you calibrate the test against, but I think we — as in “any idiot” — can see the stats pouring off THIS test is essentially random bulls–t expressed randomly across the prairie.

    There is a virus but you won’t identify and fix it this way, and I believe they know it. Because if a dummy outsider like me can know it without even calling German pharma on the phone, then doctors and researchers know it. And therefore should have their licenses pulled, because their failure-to-act is allowing both halves of this nonsense to continue. But they think they’re special and won’t get the boot when Stalin takes over, but Kodratieff and Solzhenitsyn say they’re wrong.

    My take is that Kushner is the payoff for Addelson and the lobby. Since it is 100% pro-Israel, all side like it more than life and will do anything at all against T except mention it. T has other problems right now and needs at least one major power bloc off his back. I think he’s doing what you do to all unassailable powers: feed them rope to hang themselves, but that time, and the time of double-crossing them is not yet. So if we get some peace deals out of it for a while I understand the trade. Kusher is an idiot son, and so he lets him go over there and be scooped up and led around like a toddler and kept out of trouble, since being the children of Orange Hitler of course they are super-kabbalah-Jewish, and give Jared the mushroom treatment as to the real Trump play. I don’t like it but you’re not allowed to criticize God’s chosen people, even when they sink your ships and fit you into wars for 50 years while selling your tech to NoKo and Pakistan. To report facts and dislike bribery, corruption, and illegal murder from a outside-funded double-crossing apartheid state is racist, and their directed personal violence makes BLM look like creampuffs.

    I was being more generous in characterizing Q, as they have been constantly pushing the envelope of truth forward. Epstein, Hunter, others. As well as attempting to indicate the public how the are approaching the corruption problem without blowing their plans. But you can’t trust someone with an agenda who’s been leading you down the garden path for 3 years. Stand and deliver.

    #65074
    Bill7
    Participant

    That ‘Tessa Lena’ piece gave me *quite* an odd feeling: well-composed (exceptionally, even) and argued;
    copious links and endnotes; but ends with a little whimper, saying we need to “listen to our heart™”, WRT any
    actions one might take. Yeah, that’ll do it.
    Reminded me a bit of Ms. Johnstone, who often says what we need is “a revolution in consciousness™”, and Stuff Like That.. No, the only possible answer to my mind is Class Solidarity, but the digital nature of our present
    connections makes that most prone to, um, counter-action, if you will..

    Top to bottom, “Left” to “Right”, it’s all gotten-to, is my present take. YMMV.

    -Bill7

    #65075
    generic
    Participant

    @ zerosum

    I mostly express my frustration:

    Frustration that everything is corrupt.
    Frustration that so much corruption is legal.
    Frustration that no commentators or web sites are reliable.
    Frustration that we swim in a sea of lies, distortions, and fraud.
    Frustration that the great majority are on the take and they are destroying the future.

    #65076
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Bill7
    saying we need to “listen to our heart™”, WRT any
    actions one might take. Yeah, that’ll do it.
    Reminded me a bit of Ms. Johnstone, who often says what we need is “a revolution in consciousness™”, and Stuff Like That..

    I second (and third and fourth) that sentiment.
    I used to enjoy reading CJ. Then they turned Victoria where she lives into a police state and she kept writing about international politics..
    Yeah… followers are sure going to “rise like lions” to your prose when you raise nary a whimper about tyranny right on the back doorstep..! lol
    It was then I applied one of her favourite maxims “watch what they do, not what they say”. Not very flattering to say the least..

    #65077
    Huskynut
    Participant

    And on a different note – RIP Robert Fisk.
    Hot on the heels of Stephen Cohen recently, we seem to losing much the old guard that we can ill afford to lose right.
    Hopefully Taibbi, Greenwald et al are stepping up to fill the void.

    #65078
    Bill7
    Participant

    > I used to enjoy reading CJ. Then they turned Victoria where she lives into a police state and she kept writing about international politics..

    Johnstone has said that the Few’s coroni-takeover is “boring and irrelevant”; Jonathan Cook has recently said similar things. Alignments taking shape.. interesting.

    #65090
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Bill7
    It’s impossible to get a man (woman) to understand that which their paycheck is dependent on them not understanding..

    #65117
    Arttua
    Participant

    generic, thank you.

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