Nov 182020
 


Paul Klee Analysis of Various Perversities 1922

 

The Coronavirus Is Killing Westerners. Immigrants Are Saving Them. (Legrain)
PA Gov Announces New COVID rules, Including Wearing A Mask In Your House (Fox)
US Approves First Rapid Home COVID19 Test (Y!)
Chemicals Found In Everyday Products Could Hinder COVID Vaccine (G.)
US Govt Study Highlights COVID-19 Risk From Bars And Restaurants (MedE)
Why Trump Will Likely Win a Second Term (Phoenix)
Trump Fires Agency Head Who Vouched For 2020 Vote Security (AP)
Wayne County Fails To Certify Election Results, Then Reverses Course (JTN)
Biden’s First Climate Appointment Is A Fossil Fuel Industry Ally (DP)
1% Of People Cause Half Of Global Aviation Emissions (G.)
Obama: The Internet Is “The Single Biggest Threat To Our Democracy” (AP)

 

 

With regards to the top issues of COVID and the US elections, there’s definitively a Groundhog Day feeling about the news.

About the elections, let the process play out and land where it may, provided it’s done legally. The haste to declare Biden President-elect, by people who have no voice in the decision, feels eery. When it comes with warnings that “more people may die” if Trump doesn’t concede yesterday, it feels dishonest.

About COVID, as I said somewhere below: After 10 months, we can’t keep treating COVID as the only problem in town. That’s myopic. We need a bigger picture.

 

 

Sidney Powell Outlines Affidavit Showing Purpose of SmartMatic Voting System to Control Elections

 

 

 

 

Katie Porter New Proof On Why I Am CERTAIN Trump Will Win

 

 

And Big Pharma makes all the money.

The Coronavirus Is Killing Westerners. Immigrants Are Saving Them. (Legrain)

Early results suggest that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer is more than 90 percent effective. If it also proves safe and regulators approve it soon, it could save many lives, allow people to resume a normal life, and give struggling economies a shot in the arm. It is hard to think of any other invention that could provide such a huge immediate boost—and the world has Turkish immigrants to Germany to thank for it. Ugur Sahin, the co-founder and chief executive of BioNTech, a German biotech start-up, arrived in Germany as a child. He is the son of an auto worker who came to Germany as part of its postwar guest worker program. BioNTech’s chief medical officer, Ozlem Tureci, who is Sahin’s wife, is the daughter of a Turkish doctor who also moved to Germany. Both went on to become scientists.

Their start-up, which had previously focused on developing innovative cancer treatments, is now set to be the first to use the novel messenger RNA technology to develop a vaccine. Moreover, Moderna, the U.S. biotech company whose vaccine also looks promising, was co-founded by a group that includes two immigrants—Canadian biologist Derrick Rossi and Lebanese-born scientist and investor Noubar Afeyan—and its CEO is French. The achievements of Sahin and Tureci—which were celebrated even by outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump, who rarely has anything good to say about immigrants, let alone Muslim ones—have exposed the fallacy of anti-immigrant discourse in Europe and North America.

While many anti-immigration figures do look more favorably on highly skilled migrants than other foreigners, Sahin could hardly have been selected by the skills-based immigration policies that many governments in rich countries increasingly favor. Indeed, if he hadn’t moved to Germany as a child, the world might never have realized what it had missed out on. For all Sahin’s individual brilliance, he is unlikely to have achieved as much had he not moved to Germany, benefited from an excellent scientific education, and seized the greater research and business opportunities available there.

Read more …

Panic. Because “the science” has failed to paint a convincing and consistent picture. The science contradicts itself time and again. Just look at all the different measures various governments are taking. Lockdown is just an easy way out of failure.

After 10 months, we can’t keep treating COVID as the only problem in town.

PA Gov Announces New COVID rules, Including Wearing A Mask In Your House (Fox)

Pennsylvania is planning to take additional steps to address a sharp increase in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, including requiring masks to be worn indoors with limited exceptions, officials said Tuesday.In addition, starting Friday, anyone who enters Pennsylvania must be tested at least 72 hours before arrival, and if they can or do not get a test, they must quarantine for 14 days. The order does not apply to people who commute to neighboring states for work or health care, officials said, and will be largely self-enforced.Pennsylvania already has a statewide mask mandate, limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings and occupancy restrictions at bars and restaurants.

But the new rules go even further. Masks are required outside where it isn’t possible to maintain at least a six-foot distance from others, according to the order, and inside where people from multiple households are gathering, even if they can maintain a social distance. Like the rest of the nation, Pennsylvania has seen coronavirus infections explode in recent weeks. The state is reporting more than 5,000 new infections per day, up more than 115% in just two weeks, and hospitalizations and the percentage of tests coming back positive are up sharply. Deaths are on the rise, as well.Governors and mayors around the country have been tightening restrictions in response to the worsening pandemic.

On Monday, Philadelphia said it would ban indoor gatherings and indoor dining and shutter casinos, gyms, museums and libraries. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf imposed a state-at-home order and shuttered businesses deemed “non-life-sustaining” early in the pandemic. In September though, a judge ruled Wolf’s pandemic restrictions unconstitutional.

Read more …

The rapid test takes an awfully long time to be accepted.

US Approves First Rapid Home COVID19 Test (Y!)

The US issued an emergency use authorization for the first self-administered rapid coronavirus test Tuesday, as more parts of the country increase restrictions in an attempt to halt a Covid-19 surge. The Food and Drug Administration approved a testing kit for people age 14 and older whom a doctor suspects to have Covid-19. The test, which is by prescription only, delivers results in 30 minutes. “We continue to demonstrate unprecedented speed in response to #COVID19,” tweeted FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn. “FDA authorized the first #COVID19 test that’s fully self-administered & provides results at home. It’s an important advancement, underscoring our commitment to expanding test access.” The authorization is for an at-home nasal sample kit developed by Lucira Health. Users collect a sample with the included nasal swab, then put the sample in a small vial.


The vial is inserted into a small device that tests the sample. A light-up display on the device shows a user’s result in 30 minutes or less. The test is designed to be affordable and is intended to cost less than $50, according to the Lucira Health website. The FDA had previously approved at-home Covid-19 tests, giving the green light in late April and early May to two nasal sample collection kits and one saliva sample collection kit. But samples from those kits had to be sent to a lab for processing, instead of delivering results at home. While the Lucira test provides results on the spot, it still isn’t the kind of cheap and rapid antigen test that some researchers have called to use for large-scale population screening.

Read more …

We are weak and poisoned cretaures.

Chemicals Found In Everyday Products Could Hinder COVID Vaccine (G.)

The successful uptake of any vaccine for Covid-19, a crucial step in returning a sense of normalcy after a year ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, could be hindered by widespread contamination from a range of chemicals used in everyday products. Small amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (or PFAS) chemicals are commonly found in the bodies of people in the US, as well as several other countries. These man-made chemicals, used in everything from non-stick pans to waterproof clothes to pizza boxes, have been linked to an elevated risk of liver damage, decreased fertility and even cancer. But scientists warn some of these chemicals can also cause another little-known but potentially significant defect by reducing the effectiveness of certain administered vaccines.

This impediment could cast a shadow over efforts to roll out a Covid-19 vaccine to enough people that restrictions on day-to-day life are eased. “At this stage we don’t know if it will impact a corona vaccination, but it’s a risk,” said Philippe Grandjean, an adjunct professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. “We would have to cross our fingers and hope for the best.” Research led by Grandjean has found that children exposed to PFAS had significantly reduced antibody concentrations after given tetanus and diphtheria vaccinations. A follow-up study of adult healthcare workers found similar results. Meanwhile, a certain type of PFAS, called perfluorobutyrate (or PFBA), accumulates in the lungs and can heighten the severity of illness suffered by people who are infected with Covid-19, separate research by Grandjean, yet to be peer-reviewed, has suggested.

German company BioNTech and the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer provoked a surge of optimism over an impending Covid vaccine after announcing a contender was 90% effective in preventing people from falling ill with the disease. The scientist behind the vaccine has predicted it will “bash the virus over the head” and help lift the pandemic that has crippled much of the world since the beginning of the year. The Pfizer vaccine is based on messenger RNA genetic material and it’s uncertain if PFAS contamination would disrupt its efficacy in patients. But there are several other vaccine contenders that are formulated around the protein spikes of the virus, similar to vaccines for tetanus and diphtheria, and they may well also have poor results in people who have ingested PFAS.

“People with high exposure to PFAS have a non-protective and very low antibody levels after four vaccinations for diphtheria and tetanus,” Grandjean said. “So if a vaccine for Covid is similar, the PFAS will likely inhibit the response from a vaccine. But it is an unknown at this stage.”

Read more …

Reminds me of something I quoted recently. But something definitively does not add up.

Howard Beckett tweeted on Sunday about the UK: “Governments own stats have 4% of cases arising from hospitality, 20% from the workplace and a whopping 36% from education. So we shut bars & restaurants and keep schools & universities open.”

US Govt Study Highlights COVID-19 Risk From Bars And Restaurants (MedE)

A new study by US health authorities published Thursday provided more data showing that, when it comes to catching COVID-19, visiting bars and restaurants is far more dangerous than going shopping, working from an office or using public transport. It was already suspected that this was the case, but few studies have sought to rigorously establish a hierarchy of risk in public activities. The new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) isn’t perfect: it can’t confirm definitively where people in the cases it studied were infected. CDC officials approached people who had gone for a test at 11 American hospitals in July and asked them to fill out a detailed questionnaire. Overall, about 300 participated, half of whom tested positive and the other half negative.


Participants were asked questions about possible community exposure over the previous 14 days, in settings including public transport, at private gatherings, offices, churches, salons, bars and restaurants. They realized that the participants who tested positive and those who tested negative reported similar mask-wearing behavior and similar levels of exposure in all the settings except bars and restaurants. “Adults with positive SARS-CoV-2 test results were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than were those with negative SARS-CoV-2 test results,” it found. The risk was even higher for bars when the analysis was restricted to participants who hadn’t reported exposure to a person with a known case of COVID-19. The analysis will need further validation, particularly since it did not distinguish between indoor and outdoor drinking and dining settings.

Read more …

The courts.

Why Trump Will Likely Win a Second Term (Phoenix)

The media wants you to believe the election is over. By law, it isn’t. Unless a candidate concedes, the election remains in play until December 14th when states cast their electoral college votes. So, unless President Trump concedes between now and then, Joe Biden hasn’t won anything, no matter what the media tells you. Indeed, the media has no say in this, anymore than they can decide what color the sky is; they’re simply trying to get you angry so you’ll continue to watch their awful shows so they can sell your eyeballs to advertisers. With that in mind, we need to take a step back and assess how this election is likely to play out based on the LAW, not public opinion or media propaganda. Based on the law, it is highly possible and in fact probable that Donald Trump will end up winning the 2020 Presidential election.

Why? Because the election is now in the courts. And the courts have a clear precedent for how contested elections play out. When the courts get involved in an election, it becomes an issue of evidence. Specifically, what a given court decides is compelling versus non-compelling evidence, and how the court chooses to address the issue of voter fraud if indeed there is compelling evidence. For instance, if President Trump’s legal team goes to court and says, “we want to have a vote audit in Michigan because there was voter fraud” the first thing the court will ask them is, “what evidence do you have to support this claim?” If the President Trump’s legal team’s answer is “we saw some numbers that looked suspicious,” the court controls its urge to laugh, throws out the case, and that’s that.

However, if the President’s legal team responds, “we have sworn affidavits from 50 witnesses, video evidence, as well as three whistleblowers” then it’s a completely different story. Once evidence of fraud is introduced to the courts via a lawsuit, the court, NOT the voters and certainly NOT the media, is in charge of the election. The courts can demand a vote audit of every single vote counted in an election. If, during the vote audit, actual fraud is discovered, the court can rule that those votes are no longer valid, the formal vote counts can change, and it is possible that a given state ends up declaring a different winner. Even if fraud is not discovered by the audits, but there is a particular problem with vote cards (the wrong type of ink was used, the hole punch didn’t go all the way through the ballot as was the case in Florida in 2000, etc.), the courts can deem those problematic votes as illegitimate.

This again can mean the formal vote counts can change, and it is possible that a given state ends up declaring a different winner. This process is now underway in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona. Any one of those states could see Biden end up losing (remember, he only won these states by 0.5% for most of them). That means that if Biden loses even 10,000 votes due to fraud or some technicality (the ballots arrived after the deadline), Trump could be declared the winner. Again, I am NOT saying I want this to happen. I am simply outlining how this process works. If a court says “jump” you jump, no matter who you are.

Read more …

However this may be, it’s a weirdstatement to say these were the most secure elections ever.

Routing votes through Spain

Trump Fires Agency Head Who Vouched For 2020 Vote Security (AP)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired the nation’s top election security official, a widely respected member of his administration who had dared to refute the president’s unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud and vouch for the integrity of the vote. While abrupt, the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, was not a surprise. Since his loss, Trump has been ridding his administration of officials seen as insufficiently loyal and has been denouncing the conduct of an election that led to an embarrassing defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. That made Krebs a prime target.

He had used the imprimatur of Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, where his agency was based, to issue a stream of statements and tweets over the past week attesting to the proper conduct of the election and denouncing the falsehoods spread by the president and his supporters — without mentioning Trump by name. Krebs stood by those assertions after his ouster. “Honored to serve. We did it right,” he said in a brief statement on Twitter. “Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow.” He closed with the phrase “Protect 2020,” which had been his agency’s slogan ahead of the election.

The firing of Krebs, a Trump appointee, came the week after the dismissal of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, part of a broader shakeup that put Trump loyalists in senior Pentagon positions. A former Microsoft executive, Krebs ran the agency, known as CISA, from its creation in the wake of Russian interference with the 2016 election through the November election. He won bipartisan praise as CISA coordinated federal state and local efforts to defend electoral systems from foreign or domestic interference. Hours before being dismissed, Krebs tweeted out a report citing 59 election security experts saying there is no credible evidence of computer fraud in the 2020 election outcome.

Jim Jordan

Read more …

Tweet: “The total number of ballots cast in Wayne County was about 863,000. Without Wayne County, Biden’s lead in Michigan would flip to a 177,000 Trump lead. So yes, certifying Wayne County is a big deal. The State of Michigan will now be tasked with attempting certification.”

Wayne County Fails To Certify Election Results, Then Reverses Course (JTN)

The elections board in Wayne County, Michigan’s largest metropolis and home to the city of Detroit, initially refused Tuesday night to certify the results of its Nov. 3 election before an angry outcry led two Republican members to compromise and approve results showing Joe Biden won. The initial vote and then sudden reversal injected new drama into the legal fight waged by President Trump’s campaign in several battleground states. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers originally deadlocked 2-2, with both Republican members refusing to certify the results after discrepancies were discovered in absentee ballot poll books in a majority of Detroit’s precincts. Similar problems were discovered in the county’s summer primary and the November 2016 election but did not impact the board’s vote then.

But during a tense public comment meeting that followed, angry residents raised issues of race, suggesting majority black voters in Detroit were being disenfranchised. From the sidelines, Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib joined the protest, suggesting the GOP opposition to certification amounted to racism. “The Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers put politics above their duty to our residents,” Tlaib tweeted. “Suggesting that all of Wayne County can be certified, EXCEPT for Detroit, is horrifying racist and a subversion of our democracy. The two GOP board members then agreed to a compromise of certifying the results provided the count send a demand that Michigan’s Secretary of State conduct a “comprehensive audit” of “unexplained precincts.”

Under Michigan law, a county that fails to canvass within 14 days after the election must yield its documentation to the Secretary of State’s office and Board of State Canvassers to determine if the results should be accepted. The dramatic deadlock came just a week after a city of Detroit elections worker named Jessy Jacob submitted an affidavit saying she personally witnessed and was instructed by supervisors herself to back date absentee ballots the day after the election to make votes look like they had arrived on or before Nov. 3. Jacob testified she believed thousands of ballots had been altered.

Dooxed and threatened

Read more …

You made your bed.

Biden’s First Climate Appointment Is A Fossil Fuel Industry Ally (DP)

Following a campaign promising bold climate action, president-elect Joe Biden’s transition team named one of the Democratic Party’s top recipients of fossil fuel industry money to a high-profile White House position focusing in part on climate issues. On Tuesday, Politico reported that Biden is appointing U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., to lead the White House Office of Public Engagement, where he is “expected to serve as a liaison with the business community and climate change activists.” During his 10 years in Congress, Richmond has received roughly $341,000 from donors in the oil and gas industry — the 5th highest total among House Democrats, according to previous reporting by Sludge.


That includes corporate political action committee donations of $50,000 from Entergy, an electric and natural gas utility; $40,000 from ExxonMobil; and $10,000 apiece from oil companies Chevron, Phillips 66 and Valero Energy. Richmond has raked in that money while representing a congressional district that is home to 7 of the 10 most air-polluted census tracts in the country. Richmond has repeatedly broken with his party on major climate and environmental votes. During the climate crisis that has battered his home state of Louisiana, Richmond has joined with Republicans to vote to increase fossil fuel exports and promote pipeline development. He also voted against Democratic legislation to place pollution limits on fracking — and he voted for GOP legislation to limit the Obama administration’s authority to more stringently regulate the practice.

Read more …

“US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined..”

1% Of People Cause Half Of Global Aviation Emissions (G.)

Frequent-flying “‘super emitters” who represent just 1% of the world’s population caused half of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study. Airlines produced a billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn (£75bn) subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, the researchers estimated. The analysis draws together data to give the clearest global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. Only 11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018 and 4% flew abroad. US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports.


The researchers said the study showed that an elite group enjoying frequent flights had a big impact on the climate crisis that affected everyone. They said the 50% drop in passenger numbers in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic should be an opportunity to make the aviation industry fairer and more sustainable. This could be done by putting green conditions on the huge bailouts governments were giving the industry, as had happened in France. Global aviation’s contribution to the climate crisis was growing fast before the Covid-19 pandemic, with emissions jumping by 32% from 2013-18. Flight numbers in 2020 have fallen by half but the industry expects to return to previous levels by 2024.

Read more …

They want the internet to have the same bias the MSM have.

Obama: The Internet Is “The Single Biggest Threat To Our Democracy” (AP)

Back in 2008, Barack Obama famously harnessed the internet and social media to help win the White House. He kept up the embrace once he got there. Now he worries that the internet and social media have helped create “the single biggest threat to our democracy.”Obama has been saying a version of this for four years — since he left the White House — but his words are getting steadily more pointed. He’s clearly sounding an alarm, but it’s not exactly clear what he thinks we should do about it. His latest critique comes in a new interview between Obama and Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, and before we go any further we should put it in full context: Obama was discussing a media landscape dominated not just by Facebook but by Fox News that allows Americans to choose their own distorted reality.

Which means, he says, we no longer have a shared set of facts. That assessment is now conventional wisdom among many critics of the TV and internet ecosystem. There’s almost no practical, constructive argument about how we should respond to that problem. Obama doesn’t offer one in his interview, either. And again, it’s incorrect to say that Obama is laying the problems of our broken information landscape solely at the feet of Facebook or any other particular tech company. But he is certainly lacing into them now in a way he didn’t do prior to leaving the White House.

Obama: “Now you have a situation in which large swaths of the country genuinely believe that the Democratic Party is a front for a pedophile ring…I was talking to a volunteer who was going door-to-door in Philadelphia in low-income African American communities, and was getting questions about QAnon conspiracy theories.” Goldberg: Is this new malevolent information architecture bending the moral arc away from justice? Obama: I think it is the single biggest threat to our democracy.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site.

Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime, election time, all the time. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle November 18 2020

Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #65734

    Paul Klee Analysis of Various Perversities 1922   • The Coronavirus Is Killing Westerners. Immigrants Are Saving Them. (Legrain) • PA Gov Announc
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 18 2020]

    #65735
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    Good morning Ilargi,

    The reference to Katie Porter above is incorrect. That piece should be attributed to Janet Porter. This “mistake” allows me an opportunity to share some of Katie’s recent work.

    Note: I am inspired by Congresswoman Katie Porter of Irvine CA. She has positive potential for shaping the future.

    Congresswoman Katie Porter Tells the Fed that It’s Got a “Big Problem”

    #65736
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    It’s all too little too late. But some like Katie Porter will chip chip chip away at it. Better to go down fighting for economic justice vs looking the other way.

    #65737
    Mr. House
    Participant

    @susmarie

    The system as is can not be changed from within, that has long been obvious. The real change will be a bottom up effort.

    #65738
    Mr. House
    Participant

    From another website with regards to QE:

    “I keep an eye on assets at the Fed, ECB, BoJ and BoE, and here are the monthly movements (in USD bn) in 2020:

    Jan -36bn
    Feb +49bn
    Mar +1,420bn
    Apr +2,232bn
    May +1,025bn
    Jun +884bn
    Jul +805bn
    Aug +410bn
    Sep +37bn
    Oct +576bn

    This totals $7.4 trillion over ten months.”

    Nope, its not a continuation of 2008, its all the virus. Who would have ever thought that a virus would need soooo much monetary juice. No new hospitals that i know, no N95 masks for the citizens to keep us safe from something that removes all blame from guilty parties. Anyways i’m shocked the numbers are so large. Makes 2008 look like a light drizzle.

    #65739
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    @Mr. House – And when Katie Porter shows us we are not WINNING what do we do about it?

    Yes, bottom up: Years back (2011-13) I supported the Occupy Wall Street movement nationally and locally with funding, strategy, infrastructure, communications, and supplies. It was an exciting time as “the people” at a grassroots level were taking a stand. Occupy was a force that had an impact – until the banks understood its potential and the corporatists + state rolled us over. There is no doubt in my mind that the oligarchy instigated the chaos that ended the camps. OWS had trouble clarifying its messaging over time; there was really only one voice in the media (FireDogLake blog) that translated the action on the ground into tangible/real-world impact on/for the people.

    Like many here I understand that the total collapse of these corrupt systems is the only Way to reform.

    I guess that is why Charles Hugh Smith and his POV works for me – as all of the power to make change STARTS WITH ME and is in my hands/Heart.

    #65740
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    OK, … perhaps significant?
    Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us
    https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037
    Best,
    F.S.

    #65741
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “It was an exciting time as “the people” at a grassroots level were taking a stand. Occupy was a force that had an impact – until the banks understood its potential and the corporatists + state rolled us over. ”

    Which is why i was always suspicious about all of the protests this year, along with the fact that we’ve got a pandemic going on dontcha know

    #65742
    John Day
    Participant

    I have been considering this overnight and pre-dawn, so as to give my best explanation.
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/11/not-our-internet.html

     I studied intelligence and national security for a year , my third and final senior year at UT Austin in 1981-1982.The teacher had worked at the US embassy in Moscow for some years. Interesting guy. Wouldn’t spill beans.
    Most signals intelligence analyzed is open-source. In those days TV, newspapers, newsletters and books.
     Radio feeds from behind enemy lines in a war zone, and hacking the NSA are different; unavailable to me.
     Knowing the interests and intentions of “adversaries” or “competitors” is important. Everything we see was paid for by somebody, for some reason, usually self interest, but not always. I try to find and post information in the interests of other humans and our living ecosystem (yes, that does serve me, too). I’m at some disadvantage,
    The disadvantages shift with the tides of struggle between powerful parties and factions.
     I see the western financial empire as being overdue for a “correction”, a correction that will recognize that exponential growth of economy is over, due to planetary limits of all sorts, and that energy inputs into economy will rapidly decrease, then keep decreasing as we go forward into less and less oil, coal and natural gas. This is not a new story. One counter to it is that it hasn’t happened yet. It is clearly inevitable that fossil fuel use will fall off.
    That won’t happen for altruistic reasons of saving the planet.
    The capitalist economic system cannot act altruistically. Digging and burning and killing faster wins every time.
      I do not have a ready replacement at hand. It has not been worked out at scale, only in much smaller groups of humans.
    I took a political self analysis test online a few years ago; I’m not sure how to find it again. A friend sent it. I came out as “Left Libertarian” on  left-right, libertarian-authoritarian axes.
    That’s not a thing these days, is it?
    It HAS been a thing in history, and almost certainly still is a thing in a few small rural communities in the world. The early Christians seem to have practiced left libertarianism, each giving what was possible and each receiving necessities of life. It does not scale up, because the next level of organization up from the proles takes a skim, and every level up from there also skims, and it is the prerogative of the upper levels to skim, which translates to “ownership”, which is antithetical to the purpose of the communal organizing system.
     One comment I have seen, and I forget who said it, is that the commenter favored socialism/communism in the family, Democracy in the community, Republican government at the state level and Libertarianism at the national level.
     The flows of wealth and power work towards the absolute power of elites in the system, the “owners” increasing, until the system breaks from oppression, and there is revolution by the people who feel that the time has come to live free or die.
     The owners have a new tool, powered by electricity, connected to humans by laptops and smartphones, and with intelligence of its own. This tool allows the owners to program the system to show each human a certain picture, no matter where the human looks within the vast system. That picture becomes the model of reality for that human.  This tool has extended the current financial and economic regime by a lot, at least since 2008, right?
     The initial promise of the internet was that you could find anything you wanted to know, pretty quickly, for free, or the usual monthly subscription fee. A lot of content got uploaded all over the world, and there it was. In 2000 I had a eureka moment when I was able to find the phone number for the Yokosuka , Japan US Naval Hospital, and dial it directly from Austin Texas, when my Dad got admitted there. That had never been possible before. It is mundane now. 
    Not too long after that my friend Joe’s hi-fi hobbyist magazine, Sound Practices went bust. “Nobody wants to pay for content any more;
    “I can’t sell subscriptions”, quoth Joe. Everybody who knew his mag missed it. You can find the issues online now, but no new content can be created.
     Amazon is booming.
    Google and Facebook rule.
     The internet appeared libertarian at first, but the hierarchy has tamed that impulse so that all information that used to travel laterally now goes to the very top, to be amplified, edited or deleted by artificial intelligence, before it comes back down to peer-to-peer-level. It appears to be a lateral share, but it is edited by AI based on algorithms which serve the top tier owners.
    The editing and shaping is invisible, so we assume things are still as they were in the early 2000s. Everywhere we look we see variations on the same story, so that must be pretty close to what’s really happening, right?
     That is how I come to be posting news about vote rigging in the 2020 election from various “right wing” sites, some with the look of low production value. All of the money at the top says that there is “nothing to see in this story; Biden won”.  To me this looks like 9/11. No story at a, except some rumors at the fringes, the laws of physics suspended for a day, reporting a building fallen while it stood in the background out the window (WTC-7). Still, even in the earlier days of creating artificial reality it mostly worked.  
    By now, everybody has heard some version of the story that the World Trade Center was brought down by explosives in a controlled demolition, and that the attack on the Pentagon, which killed only the people investigating the missing trillions of dollars from the DoD budget was by a cruise missile, not a passenger plane.
     But the overarching narrative to justify the “Global War on Terror” had been established and the war had been prosecuted without much political resistance at home. Brown people in countries with easy to pump oil are mostly “terrorists”. Their economies have to be destroyed so they won’t use up the oil that free enterprise needs to promote democracy.
     What I assume about the elite power struggle now underway in the US, the seat of empire (more or less) is that at least two major factions are vying for control of the narrative and the political-economic levers of control as the system careens into collapse. There are “losses to assign”. It’s important to all participants how those losses get assigned from the almost-empty cookie jar.
    I’m a participant. I know the cookie jar has mostly IOUs in it, and that the youth and economy of 2030 will not be able to supply to me the retirement which my generation has supplied to my parents. Retirement was predicated on something like 7% economic growth every year forever. The lack of growth has long been made up for by cannibalizing savings, and putting more IOUs in the cookie jar as cookies were removed and eaten. Still, I have a claim on “my” Social Security retirement benefits. I could exercise that option now, and get something today, under the current system, or I can keep working as long as it is possible for me to work.  Jeff Bezos has a lot of claims on global wealth now and going forward. In a reset of political-economy on a global scale, my modest claim competes with the claims of Jeff Bezos. Jeff directly works the levers of political power. He gets to be at the table which assigns losses in the world.
    I am not at that table. While I still work, I am a small part of a productive economic system.  When I retire, I become a “useless eater” to Jeff and the others deciders at the table.
    I will deplete systemic wealth  in my retirement, which will leave less for Jeff’s competing claims on real wealth. It is in the interest of Jeff Bezos to keep his wealth-draw hidden, and point out to younger working people that they are supporting older retirees lavishly, while they, themselves, almost starve, saddled with debt.
     I expect Jeff Bezos to be doing exactly what benefits his interests, which is carving out as much of global wealth for himself, for him to control and expand, as possible. I expect him to keep doing this. I expect Jeff to use the internet to further his interests, and The Washington Post.  
    I expect Jeff to have AI-driven PR and buy politicians.
     I’m a peaceful guy. What does Jeff expect me to do to further my interests, in competition with his interests, when I am old and can no longer keep a job? I’m not much of a threat, but Jeff does need the economy to keep going, and recognizing his claims on wealth. Without the economy, Jeff has no wealth.
     Losses still need to be assigned in such a way that there is broad participation in political-economy, or the goose will be dead, and will lay no golden eggs at all. Those who currently control the workings of western global economy will continue to simulate reality for us through AI, and to limit our unfiltered lateral communications with each other, when AI sees that we are joining together in our own (“populist”) interests, against their elite interests. The flaw in their control strategy is their own compulsive drive to always get more at the expense of every other participant in the system. Their inability to relinquish any personal wealth in the interest of systemic health kills the system, same as last time. 
     FDR dealt with this. Many of his class (Bushes, Harrimans, Dulles family) saw him as a class traitor. They tried twice to kill him before he was inaugurated. Then there was the military coup that Smedly Butler outed when they asked him to lead it.
    Fascism was a right-totalitarian movement of the day and communism was a left totalitarian movement in competition. Labor unions started as more communitarian, but became more authoritarian as they grew larger and less local.
     Is Trump a class-traitor in the same way FDR was?
    I can’t say whether he is or isn’t yet, but I don’t see any other candidates auditioning for that role, either.
    Bernie Sanders is still trying to play a supporting role, but he has twice accepted DNC vote-rigging without a whimper.
    Bernie would have twice been the popular Democratic Party candidate for POTUS, and would likely have won.
     Why is Donald Trump still drawing breath? It’s pretty easy for the powerful to kill somebody these days, and even make it look like somebody else did the deed. 
    Does anybody who has studied the “science” believe that Lee Oswald killed JFK with a “magic bullet”?
     President Donald must also have powerful backers, with the ability to protect him. That’s a lot of power. It has to include some faction within the military industrial (spook) complex. That faction appears to be nationalist, not globalist. We get a lot of propaganda against “nationalism” and “populism”, generally calling them “fascism” and “racism”.
     The “left” was the driving moral force against the Vietnam war, but it lost that energy, lost it somewhere in the 1980s, I think.
    Now we have this weird pro-war left that doesn’t want to see the burned babies, but will sign off on it as long as they don’t see it.
    As long as the paychecks keep coming, we will all keep complying with the directives in our inboxes. We are not prepared at all for anything else. We have no backup plan for economic collapse. We are well trained to comply.
    How will we survive if compliance no longer feeds us? That’s a hypothetical question I’ve asked myself a lot in recent years.
    Maybe you can help. I’m just trying to get information for us to use, and the most important stuff is often the hardest to get, because it’s not “our” internet.

    #65744
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ John Day
    Agree
    What you said is what I was going to say but didn’t know how to say it. 🙂
    Changing the existing systems is very hard to do for the very reasons that you outlined.
    Also, as you noted, creating a new system that will last multi generational is even harder.
    Creating a new system that is satisfactory for those that have the most to loose will only be achieved if they think that they will have the most to gain.
    Heh, you said that too.
    Success depends on secrets and lies.
    (synonyms: lie · falsehood · fib · fabrication · deception · made-up story · trumped-up story · fake news · invention · fiction · piece of fiction · falsification · falsity · cock and bull story ·)

    #65745
    Geppetto
    Participant

    Dr.Day ( I call you that ‘cuz I know you are prob switching your ‘modes’ and peddling your way to *work*! Ha!) Man o man I wish I could tap my stream of consciousness as eloquently as you do!. Beautiful word flow.

    4 election cycles ago my friend Stan was telling me that Obama *gets* us. He’s our man!
    Then he let all the wall street snakes slither away and I was sad. I wonder this morn when ANTIFA will turn on Biden and how the media won’t cover it?

    You wrote,” We have no backup plan for economic collapse”. Why did you say we? Based on what I see in your thought *you* do have a backup plan…correct me if I’m wrong?

    @Susiemarie108 said in the end of her post, ” ….as all of the power to make change STARTS WITH ME and is in my hands/Heart.” That wins the AE so far this morn for me. I know she resonates with CHS but is she sure of what came first, chicken or the egg sort of deal, he’s he just confirming her subjective solution to the dilemma of reality or has her thought evolved and emerged into what it is at this moment? She’s a smart woman, she seems forthright and honest and I like her alot. Complexity and emergence theory is fun. Stuart Kauffman will challenge what you think is your intellect!

    Quick story then off to work, something that came to mind on this morns dog walkie:

    About 50 years ago one of the fellows at our local surf spot had relatives on the border of New Mexico. He would make an annual trek to visit them and would bring back a couple burlap sacks of peyote, For sure it was a black economy deal for him but all the in group could, if the wished, partake in some mind expanding fun, Eating raw peyote is not a pleasant thing, the degree of the depth of the dive is pretty much limited by how much you can stand to eat. I don’t remember any of us ever really going around the bend. Just open hearted loving fun. One particularly beautiful winter morning we arrived at the beach, I had a few hours before my first class at the local JC. Peyote Bob coerced me into joining the fun( never made to school that day!). Through out the day the swell built and wind conditions improved, by late afternoon the waves were what we call ‘perfect’. Nature manifesting in all it’s glory. Of course riding large powerful waves has some consequence, but that afternoon, together, our small band shared in the risk and the reward. I will never forget. So, as the sun was setting there were four diehards, myself include, that were taking this day to its end. We were huddling around our small beach fire, not saying much. I had an orange in my jacket, I peeled it and divided it into four section and passed one to each. No words. The sun was reaching zenith as we huddled close, my gaze dropped for a moment and I noticed a daddy longlegs spider climbing up the leg of my friend Richards sweat pants. I said, ” Richard, there is a spider crawling up your leg”. He looked at it, did nothing and turned his gaze back to the sun. I wish I could take those words back now so many years latter.

    Peace

    #65746
    straightwalker
    Participant

    @geppetto
    “I wish I could take those words back…”
    You just did. For all of us.

    #65747
    a kullervo
    Participant

    Greetings,

    Humans are not the commander-in-chief of reality; they are cells in the Universal body. The Universe relates to us in the same way we relate with each and every cell in our bodies.
    Take some time to ponder this, if you really care about your sanity.

    #65748
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Geppetto
    Instead of taking them back, you could repurpose them.
    The scene you evoke is a rather nice metaphor for John Day’s exposition.
    In the big picture, Capitalism is as much a spider crawling up our leg as it is an omni-devouring monster.
    And sometimes we do just need to keep our gaze on the sun a little more.

    #65749
    a kullervo
    Participant

    How much time have you spent today showing each and every cell in your body how merciful a God you are?

    #65750
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Constitutional Convention?

    #65751
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ a kullervo
    “How much time have you spent today showing each and every cell in your body how merciful a God you are?”
    You forgot all your cell helpers

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome#Viruses
    Humans are colonized by many microorganisms; the traditional estimate is that the average human body is inhabited by ten times as many non-human cells as human cells, but more recent studies estimate that ratio as 3:1 or even 1:1.

    https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=90&ContentID=P02019
    Viruses, Bacteria, and Parasites in the Digestive Tract

    #65752
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @JohnDay
    Thank you for putting in the thought-work and the writing-work to articulate so clearly the big picture composite of what so many of us have been thinking and saying in small pieces. It is a very very good summary of where things presently stand, insofar as we are aware with a reasonable degree of certainty.

    Obtaining more ( or better) information under current internet circumstances is unlikely because our sources and channels of communication are so compromised. There is so much lyin’, cheatin’ and stealin’ going on that is ( as we all know) very VERY difficult to winnow the wheat from the chaff.

    My suggestion, therefore, is to process and reprocess the information that we already have, looking for new patterns, reaffirming (or changing) previous conclusions, and perhaps discovering those important details which we have certainly missed. Perhaps Battle Plans can be improved thereby. That’s what Generals do on the eve of battles. And in my opinion the fight of our lives is about to shake the earth.

    For starters, I’m going to re-read your essay three or four times to see if there is more there than immediately meets the eye. I think it was Paul Dirac who said “My formula is smarter than I am.” Well, I can’t shake this feeling that there’s something in your essay that’s even righter than you thought it was.

    #65753
    teri
    Participant

    John Day;
    “Is Trump a class-traitor in the same way FDR was? I can’t say whether he is or isn’t yet, but I don’t see any other candidates auditioning for that role, either.”

    I would think that plenty of evidence is in. Trump = Tax cuts for the wealthy/big corporations, later bragged about openly at Mar-a-Lago. Cuts to food stamps, unemployment insurance, medicare, medicaid. Zealously carried out deregulation of the banking sector, deregulation of environmental protections, massive selling off of public lands to oil companies, fracking everywhere, fast-tracking the expanded use of toxic pesticides/herbicides, installation of right-wing judges that are anti-union, anti-worker, and anti-women’s health.

    Meaningless executive orders that are so poorly written and toothless that even Jared Kushner is openly ignoring them and has started eviction proceedings against tenants in his buildings already.

    If he cared about the working class, why isn’t Trump using this time to push Congress for more stimulus? Why isn’t he talking about the loss of jobs, or the way the big companies took all that Covid money and used it to buy back stocks and give CEOs some bonuses – while still laying off employees? Why isn’t he looking into that? (Hint: because he doesn’t care. Mnuchin handed out the money with Trump’s approval, let us remember.) As a matter of fact, if he actually wants to continue being the president, why isn’t he talking about Covid at all? I’m not suggesting what, exactly, he should do about it, but he isn’t even addressing it at all. No remarks on economic relief, no calls for Congress to start testing and tracing and let’s find out what the hell is happening here. He hasn’t even attended a Covid task-force meeting in over 5 months. Hasn’t attended a security briefing since Oct 1, for that matter. So what does Trump want to do with his time should he remain in office? It’s obvious he isn’t all that interested in being president right now, while he is still in power. And sure not interested in being president for those of modest means, much less the poor.

    I suspect it would be 4 more years of deregulation and catering to the big banks and big businesses, more QE 4ever, all the while screaming at the “commie, socialist Democrats” and urging his base to rise up against their local officials who happen to be wearing the wrong color hats. 4 more years of building more nukes (including in space), selling more weapons to countries like Saudi Arabia, more sanctions on more countries, etc. Enough time to finally get rid of social security altogether, after making a good run at it already.

    He has done nothing for the little guys. I know they don’t believe that, because they believe whatever he says, and he says he “helped” them. But he has done nothing to improve their lives at all, and did not fulfill any of his promises to them. He has shown us who he wants to impress – the big money guys. My view is that there is no point in trying to pretend Trump is better than he is just because we want SOMEONE to be better. They all suck and don’t give a shit.

    And, no, there is nobody else who is going to be FDR for now, either. FDR had Wallace for a VP, let’s remember, who was a member of the Progressive Party (that was an actual party back then), and he had his wife, Eleanor, who was a fierce advocate for civil rights, womens’ rights and the working class. They both really pushed him to be a “class traitor”. We, however, are on our own.

    Hey, on a positive note, Trump did NOT nuke Iran last week like he wanted to (God help us if he decides to go ahead with that nifty idea), and a group has nominated the doctors of Cuba, collectively, for a Nobel Peace Prize for their tireless work helping with the Covid outbreaks around the world.

    You might be interested in this website, which is looking for ways of becoming self-sustaining:

    http://stormcloudsgathering.com/

    They started publishing around the time of the economic collapse in ’08, then went silent for awhile, but have a new post up now regarding going forward from 2020 on.

    #65754
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    @John Day – and night. Appreciate your insight. Do you sleep?

    @a kullervo – “the Universe relates to us in the same way we relate with each and every cell in our bodies”. True. This Way forward is a road rarely traveled. Imagine the impact of being open to Universal body – an idea so accessible and magnificent! When we come to KNOW that we are the Soul makers/masters of our lives then there is only ONE CHOICE – we choose to make it peaceful, loving and kind.


    @Geppetto
    – a great immersion in the exquisite moments of ONE day at the beach with dear friends. Thanks for inviting us along. Taking that day to its end was really a beginning. Root causes and all that! Swami’s or Trestles?

    #65755
    Geppetto
    Participant

    @ Susiemarie

    North Jetty, Moss Landing Cali

    🙂

    #65756
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    @teri – well said top to bottom. It’s not over yet..I think he’s gonna pull off another 4 years.

    “Hey, on a positive note, Trump did NOT nuke Iran last week like he wanted to (God help us if he decides to go ahead with that nifty idea)”. No doubt this nifty idea is still on his bucket list.

    #65757
    ezlxa1949
    Participant

    John Day wrote, “I took a political self analysis test online a few years ago; I’m not sure how to find it again. A friend sent it. I came out as “Left Libertarian” on left-right, libertarian-authoritarian axes.”

    Go to politicalcompass.org

    Some of the questions are defective IMO, but overall they’re quite good. In spite of the instructions, don’t rush to answer. Think a little.
    BTW, I’m in the same quadrant as you are.

    #65758
    a kullervo
    Participant

    @Susmarie108

    When we come to KNOW that we are the Soul makers/masters of our lives then there is only ONE CHOICE – we choose to make it peaceful, loving and kind.

    It seems you didn’t quite thought this thing through: there will always be people at war with themselves and their bodies – alcohol and drug abuse, over-eating, self-indulgence, etc.; likewise, there will always be those waging war against Reality and the Universe.
    Some people can run faster, some don’t; some people are chess masters, some can’t be so; some people can learn, some will never do. Know yourself and you will be fine.

    Cheers

    #65759
    a kullervo
    Participant

    Some bugs can’t help themselves but to turn into butterflies;
    some bugs will remain as bugs as long as they live.

    It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing
    It don’t mean a thing all you got to do is sing
    It makes no difference
    If it’s sweet or hot
    Just give that rhythm
    Everything you’ve got

    Irving Mills

    #65839
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    “How much time have you spent today showing each and every cell in your body how merciful a God you are?”

    Someone’s been reading my mind, it feels.

    #65841
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    “As long as the paychecks keep coming, we will all keep complying with the directives in our inboxes. We are not prepared at all for anything else. We have no backup plan for economic collapse. We are well trained to comply. How will we survive if compliance no longer feeds us? That’s a hypothetical question I’ve asked myself a lot in recent years.”

    A people who’ve insisted on being told what to do for food is not likely to deal with figuring things out for itself.

    I know this: the nmumber of homeless people is mushrooming. And that’s in a city with high property values and low vacancy.

Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.