Jan 172021
 
 January 17, 2021  Posted by at 10:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Salvador Dalí Cadaques 1923

 

Further Year Of Covid Curbs Needed – Irish Official (IT)
55 Americans Died Following COVID Vaccination, Norway Deaths Rise To 29 (ZH)
Second COVID Variant From Brazil ‘Likely’ Already In The UK (Sky)
UK Children’s Welfare Becoming A National Emergency (G.)
A Year Of Lockdowns Can’t Take The Shine Off Goldmans Sachs Profits (G.)
Trump Trial Pending, McConnell Calls It ‘Vote Of Conscience’ (AP)
Should Donald Trump Skip Out On The Senate Impeachment Trial? (Turley)
Biden Fills Out State Department Team With Obama Veterans (AP)
Silicon Valley Can No Longer Conceal Its Power (Ferguson)
Massive Inflation in Shipping Costs. And the Reasons (WS)
FBI, State Officials Aware Early Of Major Steele Mistake, Ignored It (JTN)
Democrats Still Serve Militarism And Corporatism – Glenn Greenwald (RT)

 

 

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.
– Confucius

 

 

 

 

No efforts to prevent infection, other than lockdowns and masks. But an entire year of it. Based on the illusion that mass mRNA vaccination can achieve herd immunity.

The “science” has stood still for a year.

Further Year Of Covid Curbs Needed – Irish Official (IT)

Another year of restrictions related to Covid-19 would be necessary before the number of people vaccinated would be sufficient to protect the public in general from the disease, a top health official has said. Meanwhile, close to 6,500 HSE staff are currently out sick with Covid-19, the HSE chief Paul Reid has stated. Dr Colm Henry, chief clinical officer at the HSE, said in radio comments that social distancing and restrictions in some form were likely for the rest of 2021 at least, until enough of the population could be vaccinated to grant general or herd immunity. “The answer, and not everyone likes it but it’s the truth… is that the public in general won’t have protection from Covid-19 for at least a year… In the meantime, it’s more important than ever to abide by the public health guidance so that we can stop the spread of the virus,” he told Máirín Ní Ghadhra on Raidió na Gaeltachta.


“We’re in the middle of the main wave now… and we can see the damage that has been wrought. The vaccine is coming, and we’ll come out of this if we can stick to the public health guidelines until everyone has been vaccinated.” Meanwhile, HSE chief executive Paul Reid said the hospital system is “completely tightening up” and has “formally gone into surge capacity”. The national critical care surge group had been mobilised and close to 6,500 HSE staff are currently out sick with Covid-19, with about 4,000 of those having been working in hospitals, he said.

Read more …

Not from the Pfizer PR squad.

55 Americans Died Following COVID Vaccination, Norway Deaths Rise To 29 (ZH)

Amid increasing calls for suspension of the use of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines produced by companies such as Pfizer, especially among elderly people, the situation in Norway has escalated significantly as the Scandi nation has now registered a total of 29 deaths among people over the age of 75 who’ve had their first COVID-19 vaccination shot. As Bloomberg reports, this adds six to the number of known fatalities in Norway, and also lowers the age group thought to be affected from 80. “Until Friday, Pfizer/BioNTech was the only vaccine available in Norway, and “all deaths are thus linked to this vaccine,” the Norwegian Medicines Agency said in a written response to Bloomberg on Saturday. “There are 13 deaths that have been assessed, and we are aware of another 16 deaths that are currently being assessed,” the agency said. All the reported deaths related to “elderly people with serious basic disorders,” it said.

[..] Norway’s experience has prompted the country to suggest that Covid-19 vaccines may be too risky for the very old and terminally ill… the exact group that ‘the science’ shows are actually at risk from this virus. Pfizer and BioNTech are working with the Norwegian regulator to investigate the deaths in Norway, Pfizer said in an e-mailed statement. The agency found that “the number of incidents so far is not alarming, and in line with expectations,” Pfizer said. However, it’s not just Norway as The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports that fifty-five people in the United States have died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, according to reports submitted to a federal system. Deaths have occurred among people receiving both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, according to the reports. In some cases, patients died within days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

“One man, a 66-year-old senior home resident in Colorado, was sleepy and stayed in bed a day after getting Moderna’s vaccine. Early the next morning, on Christmas Day, the resident “was observed in bed lying still, pale, eyes half open and foam coming from mouth and unresponsive,” the VAERS report states. “He was not breathing and with no pulse.” In another case, a 93-year-old South Dakota man was injected with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Jan. 4 around 11 a.m. About two hours later, he said he was tired and couldn’t continue with the physical therapy he was doing any longer. He was taken back to his room, where he said his legs felt heavy. Soon after, he stopped breathing. A nurse declared a do-not-resuscitate order.

In addition to the deaths, people have reported 96 life-threatening events following COVID-19 vaccinations, as well as 24 permanent disabilities, 225 hospitalizations, and 1,388 emergency room visits. It’s not just the old and frail, in Israel, which proudly lays claim to the greatest vaccination effort in the world (largest percentage of the population inoculated), As RT reports, at least 13 Israelis have experienced facial paralysis after being administered the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, a month after the US Food and Drug Administration reported similar issues but said they weren’t linked to the jab. Israeli outlet Ynet reported, citing the Health Ministry, that officials believe the number of such cases could be higher.

“For at least 28 hours I walked around with it [facial paralysis],” one person who had the side effect told Ynet. “I can’t say it was completely gone afterwards, but other than that I had no other pains, except a minor pain where the injection was, but there was nothing beyond that.” Ynet quoted Prof. Galia Rahav, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Sheba Medical Center, who said she did not feel “comfortable” with administering the second dose to someone who had received the first jab and subsequently suffered from paralysis. “No one knows if this is connected to the vaccine or not. That’s why I would refrain from giving a second dose to someone who suffered from paralysis after the first dose,” she told the outlet.

Read more …

Ever more variants popping up.

Second COVID Variant From Brazil ‘Likely’ Already In The UK (Sky)

The second of two new coronavirus variants from Brazil is likely to already be in the UK despite the government imposing a travel ban, a leading epidemiologist has warned. Eight cases of the first variant, which has a small number of mutations, have been identified in the UK. The second, which has been detected in the Brazilian city of Manaus and in travellers arriving in Japan, has not been detected in the UK so far. There are concerns that this variant could be more transmissible and reinfect those who have recovered from COVID, although such possibilities remain unproven. Professor John Edmunds has said he would it “unusual” if the second variant was not present here.

Professor Edmunds, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In terms of the South African one, we had imported cases already by the time we put in additional restrictions for South African travellers. “For the Brazilian one… I don’t think there is evidence that we’ve imported cases of the Manaus strain, as far as I’m aware at least, but it is likely that we probably have quite honestly. “We are one of the most connected countries in the world so I would find it unusual if we hadn’t imported some cases into the UK.” The government banned flights from South America, Portugal and Cape Verde on Thursday after the emergence of the new variants, having previously banned travel from South Africa because of a new coronavirus mutation.

In addition, all quarantine-free travel into the UK will be suspended on Monday in a bid to keep out other variants. The new policy means arrivals from every destination will need to self-isolate for 10 days, or receive a negative result from a coronavirus test taken at least five days after they enter the UK. Labour accused the government of “closing the door after the horse has bolted”, saying the announcement was too late to have stopped the arrival of “worrying” strains.

Read more …

Mental health.

UK Children’s Welfare Becoming A National Emergency (G.)

Boris Johnson is facing demands from doctors, senior politicians and charities for a wide-ranging commission to examine the pandemic’s “devastating effect” on children, amid growing concerns about its impact on their education, development and mental health. A major coalition of child health experts warns that many families are being “swept into poverty” by the pandemic, which is set to significantly add to the 4 million children living in deprivation before the Covid crisis. In a letter to the Observer, they also warn of a “yawning gap” in attainment between rich and poor due to school closures, while the number of children facing mental health issues and distress will rise “with every day that lockdown keeps them isolated and uncertain about their futures”.

“Children’s welfare has become a national emergency,” says the letter, whose signatories include the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the National Children’s Bureau and some of the country’s leading child health academics. “An independent commission, to inform a cross-government strategy to steer children and young people clear from the lingering effects of Covid-19, could avert this deepening crisis. At present we have piecemeal solutions and stop-gap measures. The next generation deserves better.” It warns that the challenges have been made harder by a decade of cuts to services families rely on. Some 1.5 million children under 18 will either need new or additional mental health support as a result of the pandemic.

A third of those are new cases, according to the Centre for Mental Health. Lee Hudson, a consultant paediatrician and chief of mental health at Great Ormond Street hospital, said: “We know from the data that children and young people’s mental health has been deteriorating in this pandemic. Clinicians are seeing the effects of that every day: for example, the numbers of children presenting with eating disorders have dramatically increased. For children living in poverty, the risks are even greater. We’ve never needed a long-term strategy for child mental health more.”

Read more …

Remember the $10 trillion stimulus in a $21 trillion economy.

A Year Of Lockdowns Can’t Take The Shine Off Goldmans Sachs Profits (G.)

What is $900m to a Wall Street giant like Goldman Sachs? Relatively little, when it counts the drop in profits for a year of record-setting market swings and economic turmoil, all sparked by a pandemic. The firm should regard itself as lucky to be poised for profits of about $7bn (£5bn) for the whole of 2020. That average analyst forecast, compiled by Refinitiv, is a mere 11% drop from the $7.9bn it made in 2019, a year when the phrase “Covid lockdown” had never been uttered. The projected decline is smaller than the $2.8bn it put aside to cover a potential jump in defaults within the first nine months of the year alone, a number estimates suggest could rise to $3.1bn for the 12 months to December.


Those provisions pale in comparison with those of European peers such as HSBC, which already put by $7.6bn to cover Covid-linked loan losses by the third quarter. The bank’s results will emerge unscathed from the $2.9bn settlement it reached in October with global regulators and the US Department of Justice, over its alleged role in the 1MDB corruption scandal. The announcement came just months after Goldman agreed to pay $3.9bn to the Malaysian government, amid claims it allegedly turned a blind eye while $4.5bn was looted from the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Goldman bosses, including chairman and chief executive David Solomon, will feel the pinch of a $31m cut to their combined 2020 pay over the scandal, but hefty provisions previously put aside for the 1MDB case will largely cover the settlements.

Read more …

The GOP is tempted to turn on Trump. Opportunism pur sang.

Trump Trial Pending, McConnell Calls It ‘Vote Of Conscience’ (AP)

President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is likely to start after Joe Biden’s inauguration, and the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, is telling senators their decision on whether to convict the outgoing president over the Capitol riot will be a “vote of conscience.” The timing for the trial, the first of a president no longer in office, has not yet been set. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear Friday that Democrats intend to move swiftly on Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID aid and economic recovery package to speed up vaccinations and send Americans relief. Biden is set to take the oath of office Wednesday. Pelosi called the recovery package a “matter of complete urgency.”

The uncertainty of the scheduling, despite the House’s swift impeachment of Trump just a week after the deadly Jan. 6 siege, reflects the fact that Democrats do not want the Senate trial to dominate the opening days of the Biden administration. With security forces on alert over the threat of more potential violence heading into the inauguration, the Senate is also moving quickly to prepare for confirming Biden’s nominee for national intelligence director, Avril Haines. A committee hearing is set for the day before the inauguration, signaling a confirmation vote could come swiftly once the new president is in office.

Many Democrats have pushed for an immediate impeachment trial to hold Trump accountable and prevent him from holding future office, and the proceedings could still begin by Inauguration Day. But others have urged a slower pace as the Senate considers Biden’s Cabinet nominees and the newly Democratic-led Congress considers priorities like the coronavirus plan. Biden’s incoming White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Friday the Senate can do both. “The Senate can do its constitutional duty while continuing to conduct the business of the people,” she said. Psaki noted that during Trump’s first impeachment trial last year, the Senate continued to hold hearings each day. “There is some precedent,” she said.

Read more …

“It was a reckless speech — but, in a court of law, it would constitute protected speech.”

Should Donald Trump Skip Out On The Senate Impeachment Trial? (Turley)

In a matter of days, this country will face an unprecedented Senate trial. The Senate not only will try a president for a second time but will do so after he has left office. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris assures us the Senate can politically “multitask” to deal with an impeachment, an incoming Biden administration and a pandemic. However, the threshold question is whether this is constitutionally one of those tasks — and for soon-to-be citizen Donald Trump, the best defense may be no defense at all. In fairness, people on both sides are struggling to deal with this novel impeachment. While I have stated that I do not wish to serve as the president’s counsel, I have spoken to members of Congress and the White House on the historical and constitutional backgrounds for a trial.

From a purely strategic perspective, I believe Trump may be wise to skip any trial. For a notorious counterpuncher, avoiding a fight might be the most difficult decision of all, particularly because he has obvious defenses. First, he was denied due process when the House held an unprecedented “snap impeachment” without a hearing or inquiry even though a trial likely would not occur immediately. Even a one-day hearing would have allowed evidence to be discussed as well as a formal request for a response. Second, the impeachment article is poorly crafted and poorly conceived, built around assertions that Trump’s Jan. 6 speech to supporters was an “incitement to insurrection.” His speech raised potentially impeachable grounds; I condemned it as he gave it and opposed his challenge of electoral votes from the outset.

But as I wrote previously, it would have been far better to censure him for it in a bipartisan, bicameral resolution. While impeachment can be based on noncriminal grounds, Trump’s speech alone did not amount to criminal incitement. Absent direct evidence of intent, a criminal charge would likely collapse in an actual trial or on appeal on First Amendment grounds. Trump expressly called for his supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” He told them to go to the Capitol “to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” to “fight like hell” to challenge the election, and to remind unsupportive Republicans that their actions would not be forgotten. It was a reckless speech — but, in a court of law, it would constitute protected speech.

Read more …

Globalism wins.

Biden Fills Out State Department Team With Obama Veterans (AP)

President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday filled out his State Department team with a group of former career diplomats and veterans of the Obama administration, signaling his desire to return to a more traditional foreign policy after four years of uncertainty and unpredictability under President Donald Trump. Biden will nominate Wendy Sherman as deputy secretary of state and Victoria Nuland as undersecretary of state for political affairs — the second- and third-highest ranking posts, respectively. They were among the 11 officials announced to serve under the incoming secretary of state, Antony Blinken. The team “embodies my core belief that America is strongest when it works with our allies,” Biden said in a statement. He said he was confident “they will use their diplomatic experience and skill to restore America’s global and moral leadership. America is back.”


Among the others are: —longtime Biden Senate aide Brian McKeon, to be deputy secretary of state for management. That deputy position has been vacant for some time and McKeon and Sherman are expected to share duties as the department’s No. 3 official. —former senior diplomats Bonnie Jenkins and Uzra Zeya, to be under secretary of state for arms control and undersecretary of state of democracy and human rights, respectively. —Derek Chollet, a familiar Democratic foreign policy hand, to be State Department counselor. —former U.N. official Salman Ahmed, who also served as head of strategic planning in the Obama National Security Council, as director of policy planning. —Suzy George, who was a senior aide to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, will be Blinken’s chief of staff. —Ned Price, a former Obama NSC staffer and career CIA official who resigned in protest in the early days of the Trump administration, will serve as the public face of the department, taking on the role of spokesman.

Read more …

I’m not a fan of Niall Ferguson at all, but the topic demands attention.

Silicon Valley Can No Longer Conceal Its Power (Ferguson)

‘To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,’ George Orwell famously observed. He was talking not about everyday life but about politics, where it is ‘quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously’. The examples he gave in his 1946 essay included the paradox that ‘for years before the war, nearly all enlightened people were in favour of standing up to Germany: the majority of them were also against having enough armaments to make such a stand effective’. Last week provided a near-perfect analogy. For years before the 2020 election, nearly all American conservatives were in favour of standing up to big tech: the majority of them were also against changing the laws and regulations enough to make such a stand effective.

The difference is that, unlike the German threat, which was geographically remote, the threat from Silicon Valley was literally in front of our noses, day and night: on our mobile phones, our tablets and our laptops. Writing in this magazine more than three years ago, I warned of a coming collision between Donald Trump and Silicon Valley. ‘Social media helped Donald Trump take the White House,’ I wrote. ‘Silicon Valley won’t let it happen again.’ The conclusion of my book The Square and the Tower was that the new online network platforms represented a new kind of power that posed a fundamental challenge to the traditional hierarchical power of the state. By the network platforms, I mean Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Google and Apple, or FATGA for short — companies that have established a dominance over the public sphere not seen since the heyday of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church.

FATGA had humble enough origins in garages and dorm rooms. As recently as 2008, not one of them could be found among the world’s largest companies by market capitalisation. Today, they occupy first, third, fourth and fifth places in the market cap league table, just above their Chinese counterparts, Tencent and Alibaba. What happened was that the network platforms turned the originally decentralised worldwide web into an oligarchically organised and hierarchical public sphere from which they made money and to which they controlled access. That the original, superficially libertarian inclinations of these companies’ founders would rapidly crumble under political pressure from the left was also perfectly obvious, if one bothered to look a little beyond one’s proboscis.

Following the violent far-right rally at Charlottesville in August 2017, Matthew Prince, chief executive of the internet service provider Cloudflare, described how he had responded: ‘Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.’ On the basis that ‘the people behind the [white supremacist magazine] Daily Stormer are assholes’, he denied their website access to the internet. ‘No one should have that power,’ he admitted. ‘We need to have a discussion around this with clear rules and clear frameworks. My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and … Mark [Zuckerberg] shouldn’t be what determines what should be online.’

How the news works

Read more …

No, sorry, that is not inflation.

Massive Inflation in Shipping Costs. And the Reasons (WS)

The dollar-amount spent by shippers, such as manufacturers or retailers, on shipping their goods jumped by 13% in December from a year earlier, driving the Cass Freight Index of Expenditures to a new record (red line). The amount spent on freight is a function of shipment volume and freight rates:

The Cass Freight Index covers shipments by all modes of transportation, but is heavily concentrated on shipments by truck, with truckload accounting for over half of the expenditures, followed by less-than-truckload (LTL), rail, parcel services, etc. It does not cover commodities. The freight rates embedded in the index jumped by 6.0% in December compared to a year earlier. “Based in part on spot trends, the acceleration in freight rates is likely to persist in the coming months,” Cass said in the report. Shipment volume surged 6.7% year-over-year, given the Pandemic shift in consumer spending to goods that need to be shipped, from services that are not shipped. But shipment volume in December (red line in the chart below) remained below the levels of 2018 (black) and 2017 (brown) at this time of the year:

Read more …

To understand why, look no further than who organized and paid for the Steele dossier.

FBI, State Officials Aware Early Of Major Steele Mistake, Ignored It (JTN)

Shortly before the FBI used his dossier to secure a surveillance warrant targeting the Trump campaign, Christopher Steele met with State Department officials and relayed information suggesting Moscow was running an operation out of the Russian consulate in Miami. There was just one problem with his intelligence: The Russians didn’t have a consulate in Florida’s largest city. The anecdote, captured in contemporaneous memos and newly released testimony, illustrates just how bad some of Steele’s intelligence reporting was and how widely that was known inside the FBI, even as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was being assured by the bureau that Steele was deemed credible and there was no derogatory information about his work.

Kenneth Laycock, the FBI’s current Executive Assistant Director, was a section chief for Eurasian intelligence in fall 2016 when Steele made a visit to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec at the State Department. During the October 2016 meeting, Steele admitted he was leaking to the news media while working as an FBI informant, a violation of his confidential human source agreement. (He later was terminated for it.) And he also relayed the anecdote about the Russian operation out of the Miami consulate, which officials immediately flagged as false, according to Kavalec’s own notes of the meeting. “It is important to note that there is no Russian Consulate in Miami,” Kavalec wrote.

Laycock said Kavalec relayed her concerns to the FBI and that others working on the now-discredited Russia collusion investigation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane were also aware of Steele’s mistake. “Do you recall — just trying to jog your memory here in case you do recall — Ms. Kavalec conveying information to you that Steele conveyed to her information about a Russian consulate being located in Miami and that was an inaccurate assessment on Steele’s part?” a Senate investigator asked Laycock in testimony taken last year but made public on Friday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I recall a conversation about a consulate in Miami independent of what she had mentioned regarding what Mr. Steele said to her,” Laycock answered.

He added: “It came up in some other discussion regarding if there was a consulate in Miami, which we both knew is not true because we know where all the consulates and embassies are around the country. That’s where I would handle normally in my purview as the section chief of the Eurasia program. So when it came up in a discussion, it was like, we don’t have a consulate in Miami.” He said FBI headquarters was aware of Steele’s mistaken claim outside of Kavalec’s report as well. “Yes, independent of the Mr. Steele piece in here, it came up through other discussions,” he testified.

Read more …

“The Democrats are very good at creating a brand that is radically different from their reality.”

Democrats Still Serve Militarism And Corporatism – Glenn Greenwald (RT)

Democrats are cheering for censorship as a means to root out “fascism,” even as they serve corporate interests that continue to exacerbate the social and economic issues that gave rise to Donald Trump, Glenn Greenwald told RT. The acclaimed American journalist issued a scathing critique of the American Left during a conversation with Chris Hedges, host of RT’s On Contact. The interview will air in full on Sunday. Pointing to Donald Trump’s indefinite Twitter suspension, Greenwald accused Democrats of appealing to Big Tech to police speech that could undermine their hold on power, using the pretext of fighting far-right extremism to quash dissent. “They’re on their knees pleading with billionaires and oligarchs and monopolists and Silicon Valley to censor in a way that they believe is politically advantageous.”

He added that the crackdown on free speech was particularly egregious because it was being carried out by a “tiny number of Silicon Valley oligarchs” who operate outside of the realm of democratic accountability. Greenwald argued that the profoundly illiberal cheerleading for corporate speech-policing should come as no surprise to anyone, noting that the Democratic Party is funded by and “believes in” corporate power, despite whatever claims it makes to the contrary. “The Democrats are very good at creating a brand that is radically different from their reality. But essentially the Democratic Party serves militarism, imperialism, and corporatism.”

There should also be no illusions about whether the incoming Biden administration will be able to mend the deep political divide in the country, the American journalist warned. He agreed with Hedges’ premise that Trump won the White House in 2016 by capitalizing on widespread frustration over Barack Obama, and his VP Joe Biden’s, ineffectual eight years in office.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle January 17 2021

Viewing 28 posts - 1 through 28 (of 28 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #68476

    Salvador Dalí Cadaques 1923   • Further Year Of Covid Curbs Needed – Irish Official (IT) • 55 Americans Died Following COVID Vaccination, Norway
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 17 2021]

    #68477
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Salvador Dalí Cadaques 1923

    Whatever; chasing Cadaques 1923 all over the place nets no meaningful results…
    Maybe you’ve got some stuff, Ilargi?
    I like it bunches; it just resonates with me………
    The rest? Who cares?……….

    #68478
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    The Fahreheit/Celsius/Kelvin relative scales are telling…
    We live in a womb; not cognisant of the world around us….

    #68479

    Maybe you’ve got some stuff, Ilargi?

    Not really, it’s a town near where he was born in Catalunya that he loved a lot. Painted when he was 21-22.

    #68480
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I suspect the corona virus is not, has never been, under control.
    Further, I suspect it never will be “under control”, and we’ll spend an untowards amount of money chasing ghosts of our percieved reality…in persuit of a cure; which will never happen……..

    Not really, it’s a town near where he was born in Catalunya that he loved a lot. Painted when he was 21-22.

    Thanks; that’s helpful. It is just lovely regardless…

    #68481
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is likely to start after Joe Biden’s inauguration…The timing for the trial, the first of a president no longer in office…”

    Dum dum dum dum… There’s a reason why. BECAUSE YOU IMPEACH TO REMOVE FROM OFFICE. ONLY. Then you have the person open to a normal, legal trial, NOT a political one. Not new. Not rocket science. Goes back centuries. You might have heard. There’s this thing called “google” where you can look it up.

    So you’re impeaching to remove a man from office who is not in office? In order to hold a trial in which you have no authority or standing? Well, what can I say? In #OppositeLand, once all reason and logic, all order and all definitions have been erased, this makes about as much sense as any other. Joe can then make a horse a Senator and go whip Posiden and steal his seashells on a banks of the Potomac.

    And the AP, being not reporters, too stupid to pass community college so they went to Yale, go ahead and print this nonsense as if it were real. The people, having read Common Core and assuming Yale reporters must know more than the town retard, believe them. Can they hold the trial? Probably. He was impeached before he left. No one’s ever been that dumb before, but we’re looking for new frontiers. But there would be no purpose to it.

    Democrats intend to move swiftly on Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID aid”

    Huh. Totally weird. So after 6 months of stalling, and Joe saying he was opposed, SUDDENLY they want to give the $2,000 Trump asked for all along? As part of their personal compassion and genius, of course. No nothin’ to do with any dates passing here.

    Meanwhile, back in kill-all-Americans-Land, Cuomo says we must open up Election Day +1, and now Chicago agrees. But, but, the CHILDREN! (Who don’t get it.) But you’re killing grandma!
    Taint
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Di4afrbUYAEU5dp?format=jpg&name=medium

    Yeah, don’t you know who I am? This is only the authoritarian race-obsessed panopticon merger of monopoly corporation and state, focused outward on a world-wide war machine that’s killed more than 6 million people, not like fascism at all.

    “It was a reckless speech”

    Really? Point to the reckless part. Also everyone who says the Capitol was “Breached” or that it was “attacked” or under “seige.” Used to be words had meaning. You should try it some time, it’s the basis of reason, intelligence, knowledge, and science. Strange thing about it is that it leads to good outcomes, not random and bad ones.

    CNN/NBC using a Time/NYT reporter already admitted there was nothing reckless in the speech. …And because “reporter” and “no logic” then said they should impeach anyway.

    Niall Ferguson” …Well, he did work for Harvard, so clearly he’s a total ignoramus and an enemy to all logic. You couldn’t get in there if you weren’t.

    “Social media helped Donald Trump take the White House,’ I wrote. ‘Silicon Valley won’t let it happen again.’

    Clear statement: Less than 10 social media billionaires pick presidents and feel entitled to, over all the American people. You do not. Doesn’t matter what you want. You are not allowed. That’s Democracy!

    The Left:
    TheEnd
    https://pics.me.me/lm-sure-glad-the-hole-isnt-in-our-end-29167485.png

    Celsius reminds me of brook trout, which must have a very specific oxygen concentration requiring cool water, and can only be found in the few parts of the stream that provide it. That’s how fragile they are, although being 100 million years old.

    Sitting in an air-conditioned house it’s hard to imagine we are barely less fragile than they are and the slightest disruption in cosmic terms would freeze, fry, dehydrate, drown us all in a few short days. And thus the real world we live in is the forest, the grass, the waters that protect us, feed us, moderate life to be possible and even enjoyable.

    Nah, let’s pave them all until they are 0f and 100f, with no food, no water, and no temperatures in between. #ReligionofProgress. Go GDP!

    #68483
    Dr. D
    Participant

    * Words having meaning is also the basis of Law. Sad times when I have to say that, in the face to slackjawed stares worthy of “Idiocracy.”

    #68484
    zerosum
    Participant

    Changes that I have read about onTAE

    1. The social/economic system was changed because of Covid-19. The vaccines may be too risky for the very old and terminally ill… the exact group that ‘the science’ shows are actually at risk from this virus.
    2. The military has spent, in a few days, due to the elected politicians being paranoid of being attacked by the civilians, (protecting the inauguration of a new president), enough money to have taken care of the homeless problem in every town.
    3. The news media is controlling, diverting, and hiding the truth. (Hunter, Steele dossier, and who is doing the manipulating and controlling,)
    4. The medical establishment has succeeded in seizing and unbelievable amount of money
    5. The bankers have a win – win business model that proved itself during the pandemic.
    6. Biden and the boys are attempting to go to the future by going to the past.
    7. Print more dollars faster then the drop in the value of the dollar
    8. Refugee caravans, (destitute and hungry people), are on the move looking for a better life.
    9. Bodies are hidden, not left to rot in the streets.
    10. Soon, there won’t be as many people left to die ….. from covid19, from starvation, from opioids
    11. The wealth of a nation will be inherited/belong to the survivors

    #68485
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Earlier this month, more data about the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccine trials was made public. The British Medical Journal BMJ addressed some sketchy aspects of this data by publishing an opinion piece by their associate editor Peter Doshi.

    The biggest unknown seems to involve all the “suspected covid-19” cases in the trial participants, “20 times more suspected than confirmed cases,” which didn’t count against the vaccine’s effectiveness estimation. The “95% effective” vaccines could actually have a much lower “effectiveness” (down from 95% to only 19% or 29%) if all those “suspected covid-19” cases were actual covid-19 infections.


    All attention has focused on the dramatic efficacy results: Pfizer reported 170 PCR confirmed covid-19 cases, split 8 to 162 between vaccine and placebo groups. But these numbers were dwarfed by a category of disease called “suspected covid-19”—those with symptomatic covid-19 that were not PCR confirmed. According to FDA’s report on Pfizer’s vaccine, there were “3410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed covid-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group.”

    With 20 times more suspected than confirmed cases, this category of disease cannot be ignored simply because there was no positive PCR test result. Indeed this makes it all the more urgent to understand. A rough estimate of vaccine efficacy against developing covid-19 symptoms, with or without a positive PCR test result, would be a relative risk reduction of 19% (see footnote)—far below the 50% effectiveness threshold for authorization set by regulators. Even after removing cases occurring within 7 days of vaccination (409 on Pfizer’s vaccine vs. 287 on placebo), which should include the majority of symptoms due to short-term vaccine reactogenicity, vaccine efficacy remains low: 29% (see footnote).

    If many or most of these suspected cases were in people who had a false negative PCR test result, this would dramatically decrease vaccine efficacy.

    Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data
    January 4, 2021
    https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/

    #68486
    Dr. D
    Participant

    This is beyond even my fevered imagination to hypothesize:

    How on God’s earth could a mRNA vaccine, that has no virus in it at all, give people the virus? The cases where this appears to be true are piling up fast. No wonder the (non)scientists discarded it: it’s impossible.

    …Just like every other time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

    #68488
    John Day
    Participant

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bIeKj7fZ8U Sunday essay:

    We humans are now in a phase of our history as a life form where we have to change paradigms to survive going forward, or at least for most of us to have a chance to survive. This is not a shaming thing at all, as some would apply it.
    Shame is an instrument used to force compliance upon others, and forced compliance is the paradigm we have already overgrown..
    We can easily see physical threats and threats of homelessness and starvation coming our way. We are acutely alert to them.
    People don’t do their best work under those threats. It is grudging, inefficient and poor quality work.

    We do our best work when we are cooperating in small to medium groups to achieve a common goal, like growing and preserving food, building a barn or engaging spiritually. We do best at the kinds of work that let us sing together.

    Coal drove the industrial revolution as iron machines wove cotton cloth and mined coal, powered by coal and steam. Humans did not do good work, but the raw power of machines was able to apply forces at a great scale, even with poor human effort, and sick workers. This industrial revolution made sick, short-lived wage slaves of English workers, who were getting evicted from their ancestral farms. The American Revolution also came at this crux of history. Americans saw and feared the subjugation and clearly saw the promise of local industry, as opposed to colonialism extracting their wealth.

    For people to risk their current livelihoods and lives, and to willingly undergo great hardship and travail, there must be either complete desperation, or some likely hope of a big improvement in their lives. Usually, there must already be a societal stress, a deep and broad unease that something is terribly wrong, and then it must focus upon a culprit. The culprit will be raised as an effigy, denounced in public gatherings, and judged. Public consensus will be created that this culprit must be vanquished for the deserved good to come to the society.

    Once a consensus of blame has been accepted, a casus belli, or immediate justification for war is required. The powerful few, who stand to increase their power and wealth most from the war, will then need to arrange and publicize such an event. When we look back at history, we find that most of these events were either created as false-flags, with hired agents impersonating “the culprit”, or were secretly provoked, so that when “the culprit” responded with force, it was declared to be an unprovoked attack, obviously the first strike of an onslaught.

    9/11 comes to mind as a false flag casus belli for the Global-War-On-Anybody-No-Matter-What.

    Within this contextual framework, we have considered peoples, nations, and the power elites within nations to be the actors, making power alliances and social contracts, but that framework is now too constrained to be useful. It has been superseded by transnational global powers.
    The Roman Catholic Church outlived the Roman Empire and was a framework of coordination of power throughout Europe for more than a thousand years after the final fall of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church had widely established itself as the ultimate arbiter of God’s Will, of Divine Judgment. That was a powerful currency among the peoples of Europe, and kings had to negotiate with the Pope to have a divine Right, which the people would accept and follow to their deaths. The printing press gradually changed that. Moral authority was removed from the Pope.

    Moral Authority became a ball in play again. The Founding Fathers of the American Revolution certainly called upon a higher moral authority than kings, stating that moral authority was bestowed by God upon the people, each person, all of the people. The king was trying to violate that moral authority over here, and God was clearly on the side of the people. The people would make their own choices about how to seek and worship the divine, and they would be free to do so. The people would be free to meet, to talk, to share letters and publications, free to organize politically (against the king) and free to keep and bear firearms (to oppose tyranny from the king, but also future tyranny arising domestically).
    The people would be free to do business, and to be taxed only with their broad consent, for the common good.

    There were always holes in the moral authority argument, mainly managed by declaring some people to be “people” and others not to be people, or “citizens”. Slavery was in the process of transitioning from indentured servitude, the common slavery of Europe, which largely populated North America, and permanent, hereditary slavery of captured Africans. About 20% of indentured “white” slaves lived through their period of slavery-to-pay- debt, and they had certain rights to some land and money if they did. Those were often ignored. They were whipped for disobedience, as were black slaves. Black Slavery was an open contradiction to moral authority inAmerica, and a lot of moral people always objected.
    Native Americans were largely excluded from personhood by declaring them to be other-nationals, managed by broached treaties and genocidal wars. They were portrayed as “savages”, attacking good farming families. That justified their slaughter.
    Savage threats to good people. (I was morally offended when Grandmother Day explained that the cowboys stole the Indian’s land.)

    So all of that work of nations was carried out within the paradigm of dominance and submission, justified by Moral Authority, to whatever degree such justification was useful to the dominant elites, in order to gain the willing-enough-to-work consent of the 99% of societies. In the early 1800s some English Elites communicated to their American counterparts that wage slavery, carried out upon those who thought themselves to be “free”, was way more effective than chattel-slavery, because the “free” slaves were more productive and enterprising and motivated to solve problems “for themselves”, which got a lot of problems worked out at ground level, before they became problems higher up in the wealth chain.

    Owing one’s soul to the company story sidesteps the issue of moral authority. All players get to remain moral.
    It’s just a system, and it makes sense. It is completely justified by arguments of individual autonomy (you borrowed) and responsibility (you owe). In fact, there is a class which owns all of the debts-at-interest and a vast class which is paying out interest their whole lives, trapped in the payday-loan debt cycle, or at least mortgages and credit cards. This imbalance naturally worsens over time until it creates a systemic crisis. The financial system breaks.

    The rich being so rich and the poor being unable to give any more blood at all to the rich halts the exponential growth of the compound interest money, or even reverses it. The usual solution is a huge war, especially a war of conquest. The spoils of war will pay the interest, and the rich can get richer. World War 2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War explored the limits of that financial solution. Massive war could not include opposing nuclear-armed countries. The threat of annihilation extended to elites as well as commoners.

    Global Financial Capitalism, as opposed to Industrial Capitalism, is a system of wealth extraction, with “money” as the solvent, because “money” is interest-bearing-loans, not fixed-value gold, silver or commodity (salt, wheat, oil). The “wealth”, interest bearing debt, concentrates in the control of the few, with great efficiency, until the many have no income beyond what they need to survive and pay debt service. They take out more credit card debt for anything beyond that. Interest rates have been lowered for a dozen years to forestall the crisis, even made negative. Massive government debt is created, pushing fresh money into the system to prevent collapse, but the system keeps getting more and more mismatched against physical reality, now that the mismatch between rich and poor has long been at saturation.

    Global Financial Capitalism, Neoliberalism is due for a reset, overdue. The novel coronavirus pandemic is such a shock, and it has been met by both massive increase in governmental debts (owed by impoverished citizens) and destruction of demand for products and commodities such as gasoline and vacations. The model of industrial capitalism supports the overlay of global neolibreal financial capitalism in the “free” countries, like the USA.
    The fictions are all extremely strained. The “real economy” is broken in so many ways. You can always listen to another robot and be transferred through a looping robot phone message chain, but you cannot get what you need, what you are contractually “entitled to”.
    All service fallouts are accidental and all fallouts occur to the benefit of the financial institution.

    A new social contract is required, because the western postwar social contract is gamed-out. It’s a hopeless game over for 90% of people in liberal western democracies. The upper managers, with stock portfolios becoming more valuable far beyond what could be imagined when they reflected dividend income, are both giddy and uneasy about this grand valuation bubble. They will all get out before the crash.

    There is a growing bubble in real assets, because people want the security of owning a home.
    What are the other options for most people?
    What is “ownership” if you must pay taxes on a $15 million home?

    There is always a reluctance among the powerful, the financial elites, to renegotiate a social contract. If they are constrained within one country, then they must renegotiate at some point, as they did in the Great Depression in the US, though there were something like 8 people killed in assassination attempts on FDR before he was even inaugurated. There was the military coup that USMC Ret. General Smedley Butler outed, after that. Transnational financial capitalists can just be where the danger is not. They can let countries collapse, or make them collapse, which is often a better time to extract profit. This includes the USA, now. We have seen this model of extraction from civil war carried out in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, the remnants of the USSR, Syria and now Lebanon. It also destroys the productive base, the engine of wealth.

    Countries/empires like Russia and China have established industrial capitalist economies, despite convenient fictions like the “Chinese Communist Party”. They have growth engines, and do not want their wealth extracted by the banking remnants of the British Empire.
    Global Financial Capitalism is analogous to the Roman Catholic Church at this historical juncture. Not only do social contracts need revising in “free” countries, but global finance needs to be renegotiated in this multipolar world. To my perception, global financial elites have been happy enough to hitch a ride on the Chinese Industrial Engine, and might well be happy to further formalize that relationship, as the $US approaches the inevitable end of it’s reign as global reserve currency. The Saudi oil which could only be bought in $US is no longer the deciding factor in global oil prices. US shale oil is too expensive to be that any more, either. Russian oil now decides the global price of oil. Iran and Venezuela are excluded from the game, to keep the dollar predominant. Iraq sells oil in dollars, having mended it’s errant ways after invasion.

    The final consideration in my argument for a new, cooperative human paradigm is not global warming per se, though it is an outcome of burning the coal and oil that feed the billions of us through factory farming and refrigerated groceries. Global warming is a vague threat, but the more easily understood threat is that of the end of cheap oil. Britain had a crisis during WW-1, which led to WW-2, when their good coal production ran low. Italy had to get good coal from Germany after that. Alliances changed. That’s gross oversimplification. We know that control of global oil is the lynchpin of power, and that economy can’t grow without cheap oil, and that only a few places still pump oil cheaply. Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran pump oil cheaply, while it lasts. It only seems like plenty of oil because COVID has suppressed global economy.

    #68489
    John Day
    Participant

    https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/01/we-humans-are-now-in-phase-of-our.html Part 2 of essay

    We are at the point of the dream where we need to awaken, together, or die. In our individual dreams we awaken before fate befalls us, but can we practice spirituality enough to awaken together, now that our ast, share dream calls for it?

    Our financial masters seek to keep us, in America, divided and conquered. This is the same battle being fought again, as it was in the Revolution, as it was in the Civil War, when the bank of England backed the Confederate States, and Lincoln printed “greenbacks”. It revisits the war that FDR quietly waged against the financial predominance of the Bank of England, and their global “bankster’ confederates. FDR died at an unfortunate moment. Stalin was absolutely convinced that “Churchill’s gang” poisoned him.

    Here are 2 videos, which I recently posted, which portray in words and video the acts of agents provocateur, which were carried out at the US Capital on January 6, and portrayed as savage-threats against good Americans by the billionaire-owned media, with cancellation of contrary voices on social media, the new “press”.

    Masako Ganaha shows the work of 2 agents provocateur at the capital, breaking the windows, calling people up the stairs to them, urging them to dive in, then immediately spreading the word that police had killed an unarmed young woman Trump supporter, as they changed clothes on the way out. The BLM activist who recorded the majority of this video was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN later. No questions asked.

    Veteran American War Correspondent, Michael Yon stayed outside the Capital, observing and recording the actions of agents provocateur, which is an ancient profession. (Agents provocateur were paid by Ross Perot to direct a crowd of angry Iranians to perform a prison break, which released some Americans, when that was never the intention of the revolutionary fervor at all.)

    I have been meditating on this and will continue to do so. We cannot strike out at others when provoked, when attacked by others, who may have been told that we are violent-savages, threatening them, the good people.
    This went terribly for Libyans, who recently had a standard of living higher than any other in Africa, on par with liberal western democracies, and now have open slave markets and the horrors of war.

    We need to have compassion for those who have been manipulated by fear and false images. We need to be stable, and demonstrate our healthy and cooperative nature to them. We must turn our cheeks sometimes, knowing that our greatest existential threat comes from being set against each other, to destroy America internally.
    We should, at this moment, stop our national support for global financial imperialism. Americans have been the war machine enforcers of the financial empire. It is not our nature as a people. We should live and let live at home, not get pushed into fights over race or gender identification, when we are all being exsanguinated by the same global financial machine.
    This is already changing dramatically, but we are told that it will go back to normal if we comly and wait patiently.
    It will never go back to what has collapsed. We must cooperatively build a new economic paradigm, in the common interest.
    We must hold fast, do our best, and not be provoked to violence against our neighbors.

    #68490
    John Day
    Participant

    Ooops, “our vast shared dream calls for it”

    #68491
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Brilliant observation by Orwell, however every day life paradox, which is really a fear of loosing everything that you got, is more beneficial to power entity. Stock holders, ordinary workers in MIC, mountain top removal mining or fracking, service workers forced to up sell by employers. etc are really not in favor of sudden change that would be “morally right” or closure of business. “Lucky” are the ones who see no problem or God forbid paradox.
    Inauguration where newly elected candidates will be accompanied by the family members. Hunter will be standing there, eight foot tall, laughing into the face of USA while “insurrectionists” are being persecuted. Right after the anthem they may play, electronically enhanced from scratchy WWII records, an “Erika”.
    There is a growing cautionary voice in Europe buy the leading medical academics about Covid trap that we are being led to. One of them is Mira Aleckovic, with doctorate from Sorbona. She was sounding an alarm bells as early as March of
    last year, together with her Serbian colleague Jovana Stojkovic in studio surrounded with masked and gloved “voice of reason”. Unfortunately there is no YouTube video with translation that I can link. Almost forgotten world where academics speak half a dozen languages, compared to bought and paid American one language academic cattle.

    #68492
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ John Day
    Its unfortunate that +90% of working poor do not take the time off from trying to put food on the table to read your blog, and that the enablers, 10%, are too busy laughing all the way to the bank.
    (paraphrasing)

    #68493
    Noirette
    Participant

    France. A comparison of all deaths often today called ‘excess deaths’ as compared to other years. The nos. are all available on Gvmt. sites and they are correct (afaik.) Note, we are not dealing with cause of death -> Covid, car crash, heart, other.

    ALL deaths – in 2020 (the stats are in) to 2017 are compared. 2017 was a bad flu year: all over Europe, worse than 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019. (Euromomo has nos. for some EU countries that are clear and simple to see. link below.) So, a ‘bad flu year’ vs. the first ‘Covid year.’

    132,xxx ppl died in 2017, and 134,xxx in 2020. (1.3% more for 2020.)

    More ppl died in 2020 vs 2017 – surely the population was larger?

    Yes, the pop. grew about .5 %. (Only 3 years, after all.)

    However, the proportion of ppl aged over 65 was v. different.

    In 2017, 11,853,xxx and in 2020, 12,680,xxx. Plus 7% in 3 years, this is the baby boomers growing older. Other age categories were reduced in %, including babies, young children, obviously, as the birth rate continues to collapse, and there are overall less ‘young ppl.’

    So, in 2020 more older ppl died, as there were more of them, as compared to 2017.

    (The rest shows that if one applies mortality rates for over 65’s from 2017 to 2020, the bad flu year was -imho- roughly equivalent to the 2020 Covid year, but with a different pattern: high spikes and lows for 2020, with a more steady death curve for 2017 – this is the case in Switzerland also.)

    you tube https://bit.ly/2Y1IkIZ

    https://www.euromomo.eu

    I am not trying to argue that Covid is a ‘hoax’, merely that it is hyped and exagerated for pol. purposes. It seems to be the case (Swiss stats) that sars-cov-2 has killed off the flu, another topic.

    #68494
    zerosum
    Participant

    Crowd Invasion of Capitol Hill with smart phones taking selfies
    Hysterical Outrage response with +25,000 troops and lockdown.

    #68495
    Glennda
    Participant

    @ Noirette
    Your discussion of the over all death rate of Covid 19 being like a bad flu year is good.

    My main problem with Covid is the evidence of Long Covid symptoms that can follow it that are Not like any usual flu. I know people who are dealing with long covid symptoms.

    #68496
    Glennda
    Participant

    @ John Day
    That’s a great thumb nail history.
    Thanks for your blog. I read it regularly now.

    #68497
    a kullervo
    Participant

    Confucius
    – 100 years scope: teach the people? For the most part, people have short-term learning skills; only a few are able to effectively learn during the span of the regular studying years, and even less are capable to learn during a full lifetime. The effort and resources spent on “mass education” were never meant to elevate the people or to shape the future beyond the scope of a mere few foreseeable years: its main purpose was to create short-term specialized cogs for the “ism” du jour. Currently it also serves to mask the unemployment figures/tone down general discontent by delaying for as long as possible the incorporation of the young into the labour force. The populace mind control side of it, the “prolonged kindergartism”, are just side effects welcomed by TPTB.

    Martin Luther King Jr.
    – Apples and oranges: love and justice – unlike power – are nothing but personal concepts, not Universal principles. Mixing “love & justice” with power is just fancy wordplay suited to entertain the pseudo-learned populace.

    #68498
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    So glad to see that the United States has shifted onto the firm and dependable policy of governance by Calvinball Rules. Much easier to work with, day to day, than that complicated ol’ Consitution.

    I don’t think that all this chaos swirling around is World War 3 at all. I’ve broadened my perspective. I think it is Global Civil War 1. We’ve been de facto Globalist for decades.

    The world has been steaming in the direction for quite awhile but invention of the Internet built a REAL fire under the boiler. We have been been predominantly Globalist ever since the net got a firm grip on the communication of ideas, money, espionage and machine control.

    Now Earth is arguing , heatedly, over who gets to be boss. The current chaotic and scary conflict is not a war ‘between nations’ over resources . (Hell, if you need or want any resources in any quantity, just buy them online and pay with digitized money using more internet gizmos. )

    This shifty dodgy dirty dog fight of truth, lies and betrayals isn’t nations fighting over the globe, it is a Civil war on the Global Scale, over who gets to be Chairman of the Board . It’s being fought by the same power coalitions who already own everything , to see who gets the inordinately generous perks of being the boss. Brothers and sisters, y’all are in this thing whether you like it or not. And if you don’t want to choose side don’t worry, someone will choose which side you’re on for you.
    It is a straight up raw power struggle, back alley rules ( i.e. no rules). Forget about law except in the Public Relations sense, the players will do what they can do. They know the risks, make their plays, and take their chances.
    I am extremely confidant that it’s going to get much much wilder and crazier, as in “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
    On most mornings you will awaken to news of some fresh outrage which far exceeds what you imagined possible. For examples : Beijing Biden won the Presidency. The Office of President of the United States is summarily banned from communicating to America’s citizenry. The Supreme Court declines to hear evidence about election fraud which has driven the Nation to the brink of open warfare. 25,000 combat ready troops have securely cordoned off a “Green Zone” around the capital in Washington to “celebrate” a “virtual” inauguration. The Congress “impeaches” a President who is gone. No doubt tomorrow’s news will have a newer, bigger wackier something.

    This the first instance that we know of in human history in which a single conflict simultaneously engaged every person every where in such an ‘immediate personal consequences’ sort of way.
    What I don’t know about the detailed mechanics of the struggle would fill volumes, but it sure is interesting to watch. And watching the action very very closely indeed is good advice if you want to keep your body and soul connected and under your own personal control over the next few weeks, months and years.

    #68499
    zerosum
    Participant

    All state capital have been surrounded by armed soldiers to make sure that the government in waiting will be able to take power on 20 jan 2021.

    #68500
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    The Biden/Harris Administration has itself in a straight jacket even before being sworn in.

    They will try to restore the Empire when the homeland is quarantined in a multi-polar world with China controlling coronavirus and its economy supplying the world. Impossible.

    The new Administration is completely subservient to multi-nationals and big pharma. No CEO will be jailed for their crimes for the next four years. The USA is solely dependent on the mRNA vaccine program to control the pandemic. But Americans were told a lie that there was a reserve for the second shots. There is none. Herd Immunity will be impossible if half of the population won’t or can’t get jabbed. Note the articles above on the elder deaths in Norway and USA don’t compare numbers to the normal death rate of 80-year-olds. My gut feeling is that the vaccines are more deadly to elders than stringent safe isolation to halt the transmission of the virus. But the Biden/Harris Administration is adamantly against healthcare for all and a functional national public health system. Someone should ask why is Vietnam controlling the coronavirus pandemic and the USA has the most deaths in the world? 407,202 Americans have died to date which is approaching WWII casualty levels in one year.

    As the comments here point out the haphazard lockdowns and the overwhelmed for-profit hospitals increase the number of deaths. Without vaccines, there must be daily antigen testing, isolation if positive, contact tracing, public health bubbles at school and work, safe quarantine locations and free healthcare. Nothing else will work. In an insurgency this is impossible.

    The only way to avoid a civil war, control the pandemic, and end the economic depression is to restore government by a for the people. The current system has failed. It will always fail. Rich getting the richer on the backs of everyone works for a while until it is overthrown or collapses. Aristocracy always loses. Except this time around, civilization may not comeback in a depleted finite world armed with nuclear weapons. No wonder the richest man on the world wants to be the First Martian.

    #68501
    Kimo
    Participant
    #68502
    HerrWerner
    Participant

    @Glennda – yes
    Long-Covid is my lingering concern about catching it as well. Impossible to know what the factors are – who will suffer long covid and who shrugs it off (sure would be nice to know that, sure would be nice to have some “research” by “experts” on that after 10 months) The drug that starts with an “I” that shall not be named and sort of rhymes with pectin appears to help people recover from it. But little or no research is being done in the industrialized west. “We” picked (well, our betters did) the Hail-Mary of a vaccine, and downplayed the need for developing treatments and preventatives as a way to buy time to get to herd-immunity. Fortunately some effective treatments and preventatives have been studied, mostly by heretical physicians and by nations which can’t afford the Big Pharma option.

    I’ve found it <<oddly>> comforting to read about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. I’m finishing the second of the two popular English-language books. There are many, many parallels between that pandemic and the present one, including the steady stream of lies and official missteps and fcukups. 1918 had its own variety of long-Covid. Many patients recovered the acute phase of the disease, only to suffer continuing symptoms like fatigue, foggy brain, loss of physical dexterity. Puzzling to scientists at the time, seeing effects linked to a disease that primarily attacked the respiratory system. Autopsies revealed that the immune system had attacked the disease not just in the lungs but chased it into circulatory and even the nervous system.

    The time course of the 1918 bug was astonishing, especially in its second wave. Some patients went from mildly symptomatic to dead in 12 hours. In a few documented cases people keeled over in the street as they were speaking, literally dropping dead. Studying 1918 has given me perspective on the disease itself and the societal and personal reactions to it.

    So many other parallels:
    – ineffective “vaccines” that targeted the wrong bug
    – the Great Mask Debate – 101 years ago, argued strenuously from both sides particularly in San Francisco – based on imperfect evidence with too many random variables to count
    – the great Lockdown Debate – again argued strenuously from both sides
    – gradual fading of the 1918 flu-bug into the background noise as a)herd immunity is achieved and b) bug “reverts to the mean” and mutates to become less deadly – which is in the virus’ and the host’s best interest

    #68503
    WES
    Participant

    HerrWerner:

    I think it is safe to say that viruses are smarter than cancer!

    Cancer always insists on killing it’s host!

    #68504
    WES
    Participant

    VietnamVet:

    In Thailand, you have one big thing going for you. Sunshine and temperatures that allow folks to be outdoors generating their own vitamin D.

    Here in the not so great white north, it is cave hibernation!

    #68505
    WES
    Participant

    Zerosum:

    The only reason you need so many soldiers around is because you stole the election!

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