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Thursday, June 4, 2020

Subjects Of Empire

Assigning Blame,

​  ​A full autopsy report on George Floyd, the man who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police last month, reveals that he was positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The 20-page report also indicates that Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death, although the drugs are not listed as the cause...
 ​  ​The autopsy report concludes the cause of death was "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression." That conclusion, death due to heart failure, differs from the one reached by an independent examiner hired by the Floyd family, which listed the cause of death as "asphyxiation from sustained pressure."

Agents Provocateurs: Police at Protests All Over the Country Caught Destroying Property
Police all over the world commonly use plants and undercover cops to undermine protests.

An undercover journalist with Project Veritas successfully infiltrated Portland's Rose City Antifa cell, capturing footage of a meeting in which members discussed how to "get out there and do dangerous things as safely as possible."  

The Revolution Won’t Be Televised ​  ​because this is not a revolution. At least not yet. ​  Pepe Escobar
​  ​Burning and/or looting Target or Macy’s is a minor diversion. No one is aiming at the Pentagon (or even the shops at the Pentagon Mall). The FBI. The NY Federal Reserve. The Treasury Department. The CIA in Langley. Wall Street houses.
​ The real looters – the ruling class – are comfortably surveying the show on their massive 4K Bravias, sipping single malt.​ ​This is a class war much more than a race war and should be approached as such. Yet it was hijacked from the start to unfold as a mere color revolution.​  ​https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-america-revolution-wont-televised/5714992
This ​distinguished MI-6 liar makes the standard case that SARS-CoV-2 is a lab virus, with no proof that it escaped from the Wuhan lab, as opposed to the Ft Detrick lab, which got shut down for breach-of-containment last summer.
(Please see my attempted comment below under "Vaccine Sovereignty" article.)
 Former MI6 Boss Says COVID-19 Manmade, Escaped From Chinese Lab
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/former-mi6-boss-says-covid-19-escaped-chinese-lab 

​"Surgisphere", the company with 5 (now 4) employees that had all the information in the world about hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and published the Lancet article that got hydroxychloroquine studies shut down, seems to have been a quick fabrication. "Some of the data was clearly wrong", say Australian hospitals.
Oops. Hit "UNDO"!​
https://justthenews.com/nation/science/concerns-mount-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-caused-who-halt-drug-trials  

This article is less polished. I am seeing a rumor, but no link so far, that another author "was previously associated with an adult content website" or "worked as a hostess".
​  ​Hydroxychloroquine is back in the news today after a major study, which was widely touted by the media a few weeks ago, has turned out to be a scam. The study was also used to change coronavirus treatment policies by the World Health Organization.
​  ​Now, we are learning that that the company that supposedly did the study, and has helped push others, is a front company of some kind. Further, the person who put the data together is not a scientist, but a science fiction author.

 Association of ​American ​Physicians and Surgeons sues FDA for unusually and harmfully restricting the use of hydroxychloroquine in non-hospital treatment of, and prophylaxis against, COVID-19​.
"It is shocking that medical workers in Brazil will have access to HCQ as a prophylaxis while Americans are blocked by the FDA from accessing the same medication for the same use," observes AAPS Executive Director Jane Orient, M.D.
"Vaccine Sovereignty" vs "People's Vaccine"​ assumes that vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 will save some lives.​
​  Sovereignty, in its most distilled form, is the power to decide who will live and who must die. Both U.S. and U.K. heads of state have increasingly invoked sovereignty as a dominant discourse in their economic and foreign policies. President Trump used the words “sovereign” or “sovereignty” 21 times in his inaugural address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017. More recently, Prime Minister Boris Johnson characterized Britain’s exit from the European Union as “recaptured sovereignty.”
​  ​These invocations of sovereign power reflect a form of American and British exceptionalism that are echoed in the University of Oxford’s exclusive deal with AstraZeneca to manufacture a potential Covid-19 vaccine developed by the university. The deal prioritizes British and American access to the vaccine following significant financial investments by both governments.​..
​While vaccine sovereignty is centered on how access to vaccines is shaped through wealth and power, it is also about recognizing those who are the subject of that power — those who must die.
I​ am waiting to see if I commented:
  ​Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview, your comment will be visible after it has been approved.
Yes, this is about the power of life and death over other people, their subjugation. This lab vaccine slipped out, seemingly from Ft Detrick, Maryland in June 2019, and was noticed in a retirement community near there. http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/answers.html
http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/origins-of-covid.html
It seems to have traveled to Wuhan via soldiers participating in The Wuhan Games in October, the same time Event 201 was being conducted to coordinate global governmental response to this accidentally released weapon. John Day MD

​Poorly designed study fails to show statistically significant benefit in decreased​ incidence pf SARS-CoV-2 infection rate (though it was lower) when hydroxychloroquine was given as post-exposure-prophylaxis to persons already exposed to it by close contact. Some also took zinc, but it was not integral to the study design. There is not a clear mention of relative severity of illness in various subgroups of study patients. This will be touted as proof-of-failure.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/03/hydroxychloroquine-does-not-prevent-covid-19-infection-in-people-who-have-been-exposed-study-says/comment-page-2/#comment-2996896 

The case for taking vitamin-D supplement daily is presented here, with links to scholarly articles and analysis. 
Take 5000 international units (1/8 of one milligram) per day, long term, and consider taking 10,000 IU/day for a month or two at the beginning, or get out in the sun, scantily clad, while being careful to avoid sunburn.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/sunny-months.html  

Moon of Alabama:
The U.S. Economy Is Down By 50% - Where Are the Job Programs It Needs?
​  ​The U.S. has a service economy. Some 70% of its gross domestic product is generated by personal consumption. The emergency measures taken to slow down the covid-19 pandemic decreased consumption by a huge margin. The GDPNow model by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows the slump:
​  ​The growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) is a key indicator of economic activity, but the official estimate is released with a delay. Our GDPNow forecasting model provides a "nowcast" of the official estimate prior to its release by estimating GDP growth using a methodology similar to the one used by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
...Latest estimate: -52.8 percent — June 1, 2020

Hubert Horan: What Will it Take to Save the Airlines? ​(It's a rhetorical question. Goose flew into jet intake, already.)
​ ​By Hubert Horan, who has 40 years of experience in the management and regulation of transportation companies (primarily airlines). Horan currently has no financial links with any airlines or other industry participants
​  ​Coronavirus has created the greatest challenge the airline industry has ever faced. For the large legacy carriers serving intercontinental markets, the threat is comparable to the meteor that caused massive climate change and drove dinosaurs into extinction. While the industry was clearly viable prior to coronavirus, it faced a number of serious competitive and financial issues that will impede efforts to deal with the impact of the coronavirus meteor.
​  ​The industry requires major, painful restructuring. Baring staggering increases in taxpayer subsidies (beyond the $60 billion already pledged in the US), it is unclear how most (perhaps any) of these carriers survive under current ownership in anything like their current form. None of the changes needed to ensure the long-term efficiency and competitiveness of the airline industry are even being discussed at this point, and the processes needed to manage the needed restructuring do not currently exist.

Will Italy be the next country to leave EU?  
 Italians remember that Lagarde announced on March 13, just as coronavirus was truly beginning to overwhelm hospitals, that the pandemic was an Italian problem only. This was the catalyst that saw ordinary Italians begin to remove EU flags from public display and replace them with Russian and Chinese flags in gratitude to the significant assistance that these two countries gave to Italy when it was abandoned by Brussels and Berlin.

W​ithout Alternatives​
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Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Just Different Marketing

Bag Holders,

The western financial regime has entered a period of resetting, which is being negotiated through acts of political speech, such as recent protests and recent insertion of paid instigators, agents provocateur to make the protests against police brutality look bad, and justify martial law. 
This is in the interests of the sitting financial elites, of course. 
The biggest threat to elite control is when police forces take-a-knee in solidarity with peaceful demonstrators. 
Elites need to keep the enforcers on their side. 
Regimes change when enforcers and middle managers change sides.

Michael Hudson has the clarifying view. 
Financial/power elites intend for all losses to be born by workers and especially retirees. 
Loot the retirement plans to pay the bondholders!
Power elites will double down, and their threat is utter chaos; economic destruction at street level, if they don't get everything that's "theirs". 
All of the trillions of dollars recently created bolster their claims to "what is theirs", diluting and eventually abolishing all other claims to groceries, apartments and electricity. 
They hold a very strong hand in this game. Very strong hand.
Hudson:
...Now, when it’s putting this money into the stock market, it’s buying stocks that are already issued and have long since —the proceeds have been spent on building factories or enterprises or as means of making money. So none of this bailout money, none of this 10 trillion going into the stock market has any effect at all on the real economy of production and consumption. It’s solely to support the assets that are held almost eighty five percent by the wealthiest 10 percent of the economy....  
...Almost all the financial markets these days are manipulated by high finance in cahoots with the Central Bank. And if you don’t have that central bank backing, then there’s not going to be the flow of funds going into the markets....
...Obviously, the stock market isn’t the economy. The real fiction and what the Federal Reserve, Powell was saying, was that somehow a recovery in the stock market means a recovery in the economy. And all it means is that the wealthy investors are bailing out of the market and moving into their gated communities and, essentially, they’re pulling out. The whole stock buyback program of the last 10 years has been disin​v​esting. All of the insiders and the big investors know that the game is over. That’s why there’s so much talk of moving to New Zealand. But the Coronavirus has, all of a sudden, provided a wonderful opportunity for the 10 percent. It’s enabled them to have an excuse for a huge bailout and an excuse to essentially make, enable them to get out of stocks, get out of bonds and avoid the crisis that’s coming, lea​vi​ng the Federal Reserve and the suckers, as they would say, holding the bag when the economy collapses.​Obviously, there’s going to be a collapse, and there was going to be a collapse even before the Coronavirus...
...You’re going to have, basically, the financial centers buying up real estate and turning the economy into a landlord ridden economy, rather than an economy that is of home ownership, which is what made America’s middle class wealthy by giving it most of the net worth that it had...
...Wall Street was way ahead of you there. They knew that there would be pressure for just what you’re suggesting. The reasonable thing, if you really want to restore prosperity, is to develop an infrastructure for public spending programs, public transportation, to rebuild the roads and transports that have fallen apart, the parks. ​  Look at how big the deficit is. And this is exactly what Mitch McConnell said to the states. He said the states have a tax shortfall. Well, let them take the money that’s in their pension funds. Let them lose the pension funds. Let them not pay any of the public sector workers that have agreed to get pensions in exchange for decade after decade of slow wage growth, saying, “Yes, we’d rather have a pension than a slow wage growth.
​  ​Now that that you tricked them into taking a long term promise, do what Donald Trump does, break the promise, break the deal and say, „I’m sorry, you’re not going to get anything. We’re broke. And we gave all the money to the 10 percent. And if you don’t like it, vote for the other party.“ When you have the same donor class behind each party. So basically, there’s not going to be any money to spend into the real economy. It’s all been spent on the financial sector.​..
... But the Democrats agreed with the Republicans to basically throw the workers under the bus, throw the retirees under the bus, throw the pensioners under the bus and focus on their donor class, the financial sector, the bondholders and the stockholders.​..​  
​... A lot of banks—-it’s very much like when the Greek bonds were collapsing and Greece was going to default five years ago under Syriza. Obama and Tim Geithner went to Europe and told the European banks. „Well, you know, we know that the biggest bondholders are the German and the French banks, but they’re not going to lose a penny because they bought credit default insurance from the American banks. And the American banks and especially Citibank, are going to go under. And if they go under, we are going to retaliate against you in Europe, and we’re going to drive you under.“ So the threats they made them was, they forced Europe to essentially tear Greece apart and impose a chronic depression on it. Well, right now, you have the same thing... 
..The banks, basically the financial model of getting rich, purely financial engineering instead of industrial engineering hasn’t worked. The idea that the economy can grow and give all of the growth in GDP since 2008 only to the top five percent of the population. For 95 percent of the population the economy is already shrinking. Well if it’s already shrinking for 12 years, imagine the plunge that it’s going to take now. There is no way that an economy can grow when you’re doing to the American population what Europe and US diplomacy, did to Greece...
...Well, China can recover for two reasons. Number one, most debts ultimately are owned to the public, to the government. The government runs the banks. They’re not upright, private banks, except to decide what to do. The banks are owned by the governments or the government. When a corporation in China is unable to pay the debt, the government doesn’t say, „OK, we’re going to have to close you down and sell you to the cheapest bidder and let some American buy you out at a distressed price.
​  ​The government will simply say,“ We’re going to write down the debt that we’ve given you so that we want to keep you in business. And we want to keep your employees in business so others not see the debt problem in China because the debts are forgiven when they can’t pay...
...  And there is no way that the United States here can replicate Chinese industry without spending on rebuilding a generation of rebuilding, without higher living standards, without essentially any kind of political acquiescence by the people. So the America’s disinvested physically in its factories and in the industry and also financially by the stock buybacks that have left companies up without the cash.
​  ​ So American industry is all debt ridden and pyramided. And China’s isn’t because the government can always write down the debt and keep its industry going. So you essentially have a conflict between a productive financial system in China, very much like the Germans before World War One and an unproductive, predatory financial system in the United States. That’s added the cost and overhead and enormous wealth for one percent of the population by impoverishing the 99 percent and preventing its living standards from rising. And by forcing labor to survive only by going deeper and deeper into debt, leading ultimately to a grand default.  
​  ​It is disturbing to hear people who should know better describe the George Floyd riots as anarchism. The riots are not anarchistic, they are nihilistic. The people engaged in looting, arson, and widespread assault have zero comprehension of political philosophy.
​  ​There are, of course, a whole lot of people demonstrating who are not involved in crime and violence. However, these are the dupes, the idealists routinely exploited by the state and its propaganda media.
​  ​Rampaging “anarchists”—many undoubtedly agent provocateurs—are not interested in justice, fairness, nonviolence, and peaceful dialogue. They are providing a pretext to usher in a fascist police state.
​  ​The George Floyd riots are problem-reaction-solution exemplified. After Ronald Reagan initiated his “zero tolerance” drug war, the Pentagon began the process of converting local police departments into “thin blue line” paramilitary gangs paid for by know-nothing taxpayers.
​  ​Black-clad militarized American cops—many veterans of the illegal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—view citizens as the enemy. This is drilled into them at the academy and every day on the job. It is a gang mentality.


Where did policing go wrong?​  ​ Matt Taibbi  
​(He does not mention all that US police-training by Israel, where they practice every day on Palestinian families.)​
Crime has been down for decades, but incarceration is still sky-high and brutality cases keep tearing the country apart. Does policing in America need a fundamental re-think?
​  ​The early American police forces evolved out of slave patrols in the South, and “progressed” to enforce the Black Codes from the Civil War period and beyond, on to Jim Crow through the late sixties if not longer...
 This idea of high-engagement policing was born in the mind of a Midwestern academic/corrections official named George Kelling. Kelling conducted a number of studies for think tanks like the Police Foundation and eventually co-authored a hugely influential 1982 article in the Atlantic called Broken Windows.
​  ​Kelling in his research found that while people may not actually be safer, they feel safer when there is less visible “disorder” in their neighborhoods, e.g. panhandling, litter, graffiti, etc. Also, research suggested such disorder was incentive to further disorder: as Stanford researcher Philip Zimbardo put it, “If a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all of the rest of the windows will soon be broken.”
​  ​“Broken Windows” revolutionized policing, changing it from a business of fighting crime to doing what Kelling described as “order maintenance.” If earlier police theorists like Orlando “O.W.” Wilson hoped to defeat crime by putting officers in squad cars and giving them advanced tools to react more quickly to offenses, the new strategy stressed stopping crime before it got started, by building and maintaining something not defined in law books – “order.”

​Pepe Escobar: ​  Our Grim Future: Restored Neoliberalism or Hybrid Neofascism?  (Spiritual awakening, anybody?)
​  ​Western ruling elites will be deploying myriad tactics to perpetuate the passivity of populations barely emerging from de facto house arrest, including a massive disciplinary – in a Foucault sense – drive by states and business/finance circles​..​.. The bottom line: we may be facing a mere cosmetic approach, in which the deep structural crisis of zombie capitalism – barely moving under unpopular “reforms” and infinite debt – still is not addressed.
​  ​Meanwhile, what is going to happen to assorted fascisms? Eric Hobsbawm showed us in Age of Extremes how the key to the fascist right was always mass mobilization: “Fascists were the revolutionaries of the counter-revolution”.​.
..And that brings us to the direct link between the Anthropocene and what has been conceptualized by French economist Benjamin Coriat as the Capitalocene.
​  ​Capitalocene means that our current state of appalling planetary degradation should not be linked to an undefined “humanity” but “to a very defined humanity organized by a predatory economic system.”
​  ​The state of the planet under the Anthropocene must be imperatively linked to the hegemonic economic system of the past two centuries: the way we developed our system of production and legitimized indiscriminate predatory practices.​..
​..Covid-19 laid bare the necessity of the commons and the incapacity of neoliberalism to address​ ​it.
But how to build eco-socialism?​...
​...How to change the WTO’s free market rules, according to which buying palm oil and transgenic soya contributes to the de facto deforestation of large tracts of Africa, Asia and South America? This is a state of affairs that allows wealthy nations to actually buy the destruction of ecosystems.​..
​...And even as a triple catastrophe – sanitary, social and climatic – is now unequivocal, the ruling matrix – starring the Masters of the Universe managing the financial casino – won’t stop resisting any drive towards change.​..​
​...​Financial capitalism is an expert in adapting to  – and profiting from – the serial crises it provokes or unleashes.​..
​...So this is our choice: it’s either Neoliberal Restoration or a revolutionary rupture. And nothing in between. It takes someone of Marx’s caliber to build a full-fledged, 21st century eco-socialist ideology, and capable of long-term, sustained mobilization. Aux armes, citoyens.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/29/our-grim-future-restored-neoliberalism-or-hybrid-neofascism/  


 Poll Finds Clear Majority of Americans Want Military to Help Police Deal With Riots​  (58% on 6/2/20)

​James Kunstler: That Change You Requested…?
​  Change? We’re getting it good and hard, and not at a rate we were prepared for. It’s hugely disorienting. It produces friction, heat, and light, which easily becomes violence. There’s, for sure, plenty we can do to make new arrangements for American life without becoming communists or Nazis, but a lot of activities have to fail before we see how that could work. The overburden of obsolete complexity is crushing us, like Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. They were both, in their way, common men, caught in the maelstrom of metaphor. That proverbial long, hot summer we’ve heard about for so long…? It’s here.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/that-change-you-requested/

Charles Hugh Smith, Truth Is What We Hide, Cover Stories Are What We Sell
The fact that self-serving cover stories are now the norm is making it difficult to love our servitude with the slavish devotion demanded of us.
​  ​The need to suppress the truth and competing narratives arose with the emergence of urban elites whose power and wealth were threatened by any exposure of the self-serving nature of their rule.​..​
​  ​With the decay of the social contract and the emergence of monopolistic search and social media platforms, the suppression of competing narratives has accelerated as ruling elites tighten their grip in response to the unraveling of the social order.

​John Pilger revisits a critical day in Australian history, the day Australia lost the independent voice it had just found.
​ On Nov. 11, 1975 – the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister.
  The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/01/john-pilger-the-forgotten-coup-against-the-most-loyal-ally/  

Italy is on the verge of a political reset, or maybe it is underway, as coronavirus retreats from the sun and warmth.
​  ​Hundreds of Italian demonstrators gathered in Rome's Piazza del Popolo on Tuesday, ditching their masks in a protest against the Italian government's lockdown restrictions aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19.​..
​ ​ ​ Elsewhere in Rome, opposition leaders, including League Party chief Matteo Salvini, marched on Tuesday to demand that the government resign.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/enraged-italians-abandon-masks-denounce-pandemic-scam  


More Pepe Escobar: Beijing Sees Trump’s Hand and Won’t Fold
...Domestically, the absolute focus – 70% of the available new funding – will be on employment, support for small and medium enterprises and measures to encourage consumption rather than investment in infrastructure building​..​..Confirming steady rumors emanating from Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels and Paris, China and East Asia are taking precedence as the EU’s top trading partner. This is something that will be extensively discussed at the upcoming EU-China summit next autumn in Germany. The EU is going Eurasia. Team Trump won’t be amused.​..
... Xi, Li and the Politburo very well know that Covid-19 hugely affected migrants, farmers and small-scale family entrepreneurs. The risk of social unrest is very high. Unemployment protection is far from Scandinavian levels. So back to business, fast, has to be the top priority...
...Whatever Team Trump thinks, Beijing has no interest whatsoever in disturbing the Hong Kong financial system or collapsing the Hang Seng index. That’s exactly what the black block protesters last year were accomplishing.​..​
​..​The sources of financing for the hardcore black blocks have reputedly been cut. The local 5th columnist “leaders” have been isolated. Beijing was being very patient tackling the whole mess. Then along came Covid-19.
​  ​The economic consensus in Beijing is that this will be an L-shaped recovery – actually very slow on the bottom of the L. So the West will buy much less from and invest much less in China.
​  ​This implies that Hong Kong is not going to be very useful.​..
...​whatever Beijing does, the Sinophobic hysteria in the US – and in this case also the UK – is unabated. So now is the right moment to go for the national security law, which of course is against subversion, against British-era “wigs” (judges) acting as 5th columnists and, most of all, against money laundering.
​  ​A Global Times editorial cut to the chase: the national security law is the “death knell” for US intervention in Hong Kong.​..
...the fact is the Trump administration’s hybrid war on China – or Cold War 2.0 – is now fully established.
​  ​US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is openly threatening Five Eyes allies and vassals, as well as Israel, with consequences if they fail to ditch any projects linked to Belt and Road.​..
...Once again, the gloves are off. And Beijing won’t stop counterpunching in kind.
​  ​It’s as if Beijing had so far serially underestimated the Deep State and Beltway’s larger than life obsession with always remaining the undisputed hegemon, geopolitically and geo-economically. Every “conflict” erupting across the chessboard is and will continue to be directly linked to the twin objectives of containment of Russia and disruption of the Belt and Road.

​Acting Independently Now
(Jenny pictured a few days ago in Yoakum vegetable garden)


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Monday, June 1, 2020

A Fresh Crisis

Activating Plan C,

Forgive the format of this news flash. It looks tacky. Thanks anyway, Tom. 
  The WHO, what may remain of it, is sort of disavowing a second coronavirus wave. 
This will fill out their portfolio of sequentially taking every side of a controversial issue in such a way as to be consistently worse than a coin toss. 
  They say they can't talk about it, but hint that it's the nice sunny weather that will prevent a second wave. 
(As we now know, it will continue to be nice and sunny forever. It's the new normal. The days will never again shorten.)
Vitamin-D, from sunlight on skin, is very important for normal function of the immune system. 
There has been very good correlation between lower vitamin-D levels in hospitalized patients, and worse disease. 
Very few hospitalized patients have been found to have normal vitamin-D levels. 
Those were low normal, not mid normal, and they fared the best.
(Do take 5000 units of vitamin-D per day, won't you?)
https://www.fort-russ.com/2020/05/major-who-makes-about-face-and-rules-out-second-corona-wave-breaks-with-bill-gates-predictive-model/  
 
My Fellow Transnational Elites, we are going to need another crisis to tide us through the long summer of discontent. 
Let's have race riots!
Everybody has been cooped up for months, feeling really restless and insecure, and the weather is great.
All we need is the right spark, and enough encouragement.
Then we can institute martial law, the next logical step, since self-quarantine is starting to fail.
We can maintain order as our global economy goes through the biggest reset since the Great-Depression/WW-2.
Did you make sure the bricks got sent to the protest sites, and the agents-provocateur got paid?
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-setup-mysteriously-staged-bricks-appear-throughout-major-protest-cities  

Trump did not (yet) invoke The Insurrection Act. His voice sounded tired and deeply troubled during his address.
​  ​President Trump announced from the White House Rose Garden Monday evening that he planned to mobilize "all available federal resources, civilian and military" to put an end to violent protests across the country, while blaming the outbursts on "professional anarchists, looters, criminals, antifa" whom he described as "domestic terrorists" bringing widespread harm to the nation.
​  ​As expected following remarks from Press Sec McEnany earlier, President Trump insisted during a brief speech that he would send in military personnel to quell violence and looting if governors failed to act. He also insisted that his administration was committed to justice for Floyd and his family, and that Trump's administration is "an ally" of peaceful protesters.
​  ​"I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers,” Trump said Monday at the White House, clearly seeking to reassure terrified business owners and members of the community in areas hard-hit by the coronavirus and the riots that he would uphold his duty to maintain order.

​20 unanswered questions about the George Floyd Protests (​could be more refined, but at least it's asking)
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/31/the-george-floyd-protests-20-unanswered-questions/ 

It looks like the Congressional Budget Office is saying that it will take a full decade for the US economy to rejoin the track they were predicting in January, which is to say "never"...
 Comparing its interim, May 2020 projections to the last official forecast made in January 2020, the CBO said that the level of nominal GDP in the second quarter of 2020 would be $790 billion (or 14.2%) lower than the agency had previously forecast in January 2020 (a number which unfortunately will only grow larger with time especially if the Atlanta Fed's 52% GDP drop forecast is accurate). Subsequently, the difference between those projections of nominal GDP narrows from $533 billion (9.4% lower in the latest projection) ) by the end of 2020 to $181 billion (2.2 percent lower) by 2030.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/budget-office-finds-us-economy-wont-return-normal-until-2030  

Here is a Libertarian (Ayn Rand type) view, with stuff I like and don't like. It's that kind of a day:
​  ​At the same time, there is much more going on here than police abuse of power. Floyd became such a powerful symbol for people of all races and classes. He could have been any one of us. The boot on the neck smacks of Orwell’s chilling prediction of life under government plans: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
​  ​Americans of all classes, races, and political affiliations refuse to acquiesce to that future. Enough is enough.
The fires that burn in our cities today were born long ago with government impositions in every aspect of our lives. The impositions date back many generations. In the course of three months, the lockdowns stacked the wood; Floyd’s murder was the match.

​America is Drowning in Problems, Paul Craig Roberts
​  ​It is as difficult to understand the liberal and progressive belief in government as it is to understand the libertarian belief in the efficacy of the invisible hand that allegedly causes private greed to serve the public’s interest.  Humans are a built-in failure machine.  Their time perspective is short term.  They are always surprised by the unintended consequences of their own thoughtless actions and inactions.
​  ​Throughout America, state, local, and federal government  epitomize  failure. Trillions of dollars have been poured into weapons systems that cannot be used without destroying the United States along with the rest of the world, while dams fail, bridges collapse, communities deteriorate, and homelessness grows. The government in Washington spends time, effort, and money manufacturing enemies to justify the budget of the military/security complex, while  jobs and the US economy are offshored, the environment is degraded, and health care needs go unaddressed.   The US rivals third world countries in terms of the percentage of its population that has no savings, no access to health care, and no prospects for advancement in life.

​Italian doctor says the coronavirus is losing potency, that it's not the same as what they were fighting in March and April.​
​  ​“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion.
​  ​“The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-virus/new-coronavirus-losing-potency-top-italian-doctor-says-idUSKBN2370OQ  

Russia is rolling out favipiravir, which was the first drug approved for treatment of novel-coronavirus, back in mid February  by China. Favipiravir has long been in regular use in Japan against another RNA virus, Influenza. RNA is made up of replicating chains of 4 nucleosides. Favipiravir and remdesivir both act by impersonating a nucleoside, getting incorporated into viral RNA chains, but then blocking further chain replication. That stops the virus. 
Favipiravir is a pill, not an IV infusion. It can be taken early, the point at which blocking viral replication works best. The high viral loads are never reached. Early testing and treating needs to be possible. 
This medicine was tested by the FDA in the USA in 2015, but never marketed here.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-russia-exclusive/exclusive-russia-after-approving-japanese-covid-19-drug-to-roll-out-game-changer-next-week-idUSKBN2381FR  

​  ​Iranian tankers were 2200 km from the US coast when the Iranian-flagged “Fortune”, followed by “Forest”, entered Venezuelan waters, challenging the US embargo and the US’s threats. The Islamic Republic was broadcasting loud and clear a strong message.
​  ​The first message was dispatched to the US administration after Gulf and Arab Leaders conveyed a direct message to the Iranian leaders: “Washington is determined to stop the Iranian tankers sailing to Venezuela”. Iran responded to all messages received that “its five tankers will sail to Venezuela and if any of these tankers is intercepted, Iran will respond in the Straits of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman or anywhere else it sees fit.”
​  ​“These five tankers – the Clavel, Fortune, Petunia, Forest and Faxul- are only the beginning of the supply to Venezuela. Iran has the right to send any of its tankers anywhere in the world and any US interception will be considered an act of piracy and will trigger a direct response,” said an Iranian decision-maker who revealed the Iranian response to the US administration via message-carriers.
​  ​“Iran had decided to avoid the horn of Africa because the plan was for the first tanker to reach the Venezuelan waters on the first day of Eid el-Fitr. The aim was to share an important day of the Islamic Republic’s defiance to the US in its backyard and to break the sanctions imposed on one of Iran’s main allies. It is a message for the “Axis of the Resistance” that Iran will not abandon its friends and allies anywhere in the world whatever the challenges. It is directly confronting the US by imposing a new rule of engagement”, said the source.
​  ​Iran shut its ears to all threatening messages from the US menace and instructed its five tankers to go not round the horn of Africa but through the Gulf of Aden via Bab al-Mandab strait, the Suez Canal and Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean- where the US has a strong presence and influence. This shortens the distance and it tested the intentions of the American Navy. Simultaneously, Iran informed its allies of its readiness to confront the US if ever an escalation should loom on the horizon so that these allies within the “Axis of the Resistance” are ready for a wider confrontation if needed.  
​  ​The first Iranian tanker, “Fortune”, reached the Caribbean Sea on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, on Sunday 24th of May, with US Navy ships in the vicinity. The tankers are carrying over 10 million barrels of oil but also Alkylate and spare parts to start repairing any of the eight “out of order” refineries, to enable oil-rich Venezuela to be self-sufficient in the future. The US sanctions on Venezuela had paralyzed Venezuelan refineries and caused gasoline shortages, with the aim of overthrowing the legitimately elected President, Nicolas Maduro.  

​Doing The Right Thing​

(blogger pictured pointing at the biggest melon, which ended up being not quite ripe, but we ate it anyway)

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Sunday, May 31, 2020

Showdown On The Titanic

Dueling With Narratives,

Paul Craig Roberts on coronavirus as a sort of probe into the political realities of the USA in 2020. 
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/05/26/the-campaign-against-hcq/  
​  ​At a time when accurate information is essential, the waters are instead muddied by disinformation in the service of political, ideological, and profit agendas.  The irresponsibility of those putting their self-interests first is extraordinary.  It indicates that the social bond between people that made America a country has been dissolved by greed, multiculturalism, and Identity Politics.  America has become a country without a common interest. It is a narcissistic state.
​  ​This article is limited to the campaign against HCQ.  HCQ—hydroxychloroquine—has been in use for 65 years for the prevention or treatment of malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.  It is officially labeled a safe drug.  Many doctors treating Covid patients have found and reported HCQ, when used early enough together with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin to be an effective and safe treatment.
  I have reported and made available many of the reports of HCQ’s efficacy and safety.  See for example:

​  ​MYSTERY surrounds why an anti-malaria drug is not being tested as a Covid-19 treatment in combination with zinc, which doctors say is crucial for efficacy.
​  ​As we reported recently, President Trump revealed he was taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) alongside zinc after reports that many doctors are doing the same to help ward off Covid-19.
​  ​Criticism of the President rose sharply after a non-randomised study published in the Lancet said that HCQ provided no benefit to hospitalised Covid-19 patients while being linked to increased deaths.
​  ​What the mainstream media did not point out is that the Lancet study failed to test HCQ with zinc. Other experts have found zinc to be vital for efficacy in this context.
​  ​Zinc, available as an over-the-counter supplement, has long been seen as an immune-system booster that helps develop immune cells, or antibodies, and can strengthen the body’s response to a virus.
​  ​American infectious disease specialist Joseph Rahimian explained that, in relation to Covid-19, zinc ‘does the heavy lifting and is the primary substance attacking the pathogen’. HCQ is said to work as a delivery system​ ​for zinc in fighting coronavirus.
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/malaria-drug-and-zinc-the-missing-link/  

​Charles Hugh Smith: Social Media's Plantation of the Mind (explains PCR's observations above, maybe?)
In the classic Plantation, everything is managed by those in charge to benefit the owners. Workers are forced to buy their necessities at The Company Store, and since the entire town and plantation is owned by the corporation, there's no private ownership of land or housing; everyone is a serf, beholden to the owners, and since costs are artificially high at The Company Store (due to the lack of competition), the serfs have to go into debt to survive: they become debt-serfs...​
To perfect this colonization of the mind, social media has persuaded users that they no longer need unfettered access to the entire World Wide Web/Internet: we'll give you everything you want right here on our Plantation of the Mind... 
Once you control the politics of experience, the user isn't even aware that what they now consider "obvious" has been molded by the plantation owners to maximize their private profits. In social media's Plantation of the Mind, users are assured they have complete access to everything that is "fact" and "safe," when in reality everything they see has been filtered to the benefit of the Plantation owners and their political allies in the state hierarchy.  
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay20/social-media-plantation5-20.html  

​Indian Punchline looks at the effects of coronavirus on a crumbling global empire, which is losing face. Thanks Eleni.
​  ​The sluice gates have opened, as it were, on world politics after the ‘timeout’ through the past 2-3 months due to Covid-19. The spectacle of America’s epic war with Covid-19 under President Donald Trump’s watch creates a range of emotions in the world community — ranging from sympathy and pity to horror and derison. 
This will have consequences.
​  ​The pandemic has accelerated the main currents of international politics: the US’ national security strategy vis-a-vis Russia and China, the two ‘revisionist’ powers in Washington’s crosshairs; the Russia-China entente that has become an increasingly significant factor in global politics; the steady unraveling of the transatlantic alliance; and, most important, the decline of the US as a hegemonic superpower.
​  ​The most dramatic template is, unsurprisingly, the US-Russia-China triangle. The US-China tensions have increased and so is Washington’s prolonged standoff with Russia. This is driving Moscow and Beijing toward each other.​..
​  Clearly, against the backdrop of the reset of the Franco-German axis lately and taking into account Germany’s traditionally strong relations with China, the French move to harmonise with China over Hong Kong can be seen as a calculated move to differentiate Europe’s policies vis-a-vis rising China from those of the US.

​  ​Imposing this law means creating the structural basis for the national authorities to undertake unprecedented control and surveillance in Hong Kong. It will effectively eliminate the guaranteed rights and freedoms of Hong Kong’s more than seven million citizens. The fact that the central government in Beijing is now forcing through a law that legally should go through Hong Kong’s own legislative processes makes a full reversal of the decision virtually impossible. In 2019, a law on extradition to the mainland prompted millions to take to the streets, and was proposed by Hong Kong’s own authorities, which were eventually forced to completely withdraw it. A similar process is hard to imagine now, even with massive international support for protestors. Beijing has upped the ante – and seems to be calling the West’s bluff.  

 BEIJING (Reuters) - The head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Friday that “one country, two systems” and “peaceful reunification” is the best way to bring China and Taiwan together.
​  ​Outside attempts by foreign forces to interfere in “reunification” will fail, Liu Jieyi told an event at the Great Hall of the People marking 15 years since China signed into law its Anti-Secession Law.
Beijing passed the law in 2005 which authorises the use of force against Taiwan if China judges it to have seceded.

China will attack Taiwan if there is no other way of stopping it from becoming independent, one of the country’s most senior generals said on Friday​.

China Proposes A Law Allowing Citizens To Sue US For Starting Coronavirus Pandemic

​  ​The US has slammed what it's dubbed the "distraction" of five Iranian fuel tankers delivering gasoline to Maduro's Venezuela, after four total tankers have successfully reached the sanctions-hit country, with a fifth soon to follow.
​  ​A US State Department spokesman downplayed the whole ordeal, which included large Venezuelan military escorts of warships and fighter alongside the tankers for the final 200 miles to the coast, as an orchestrated distraction which will not stop Washington from continuing to "press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy."
​
Whose idea was this, really?
  BRITAIN is seeking an international alliance to supply Brits with 5G internet and break China's monopoly over the network.
  The Government is driving forward plans for 10 democratic countries to work together and find a new provider for the superfast internet.
 Ministers want the UK to form a club of nations, dubbed the ‘D10’, to fund technology companies and find a 5G supplier to replace Huawei.
​  ​The PM approved plans for the Chinese company to build part of the UK’s new internet network in January, despite pressure from MPs and the US government.
​  ​The D10 club would see G7 nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US – join forces with Australia, South Korea and India to find another company to build the 5G network.
​  ​The UK has already approached Washington with the plan, the Times has reported.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11734343/britain-seeking-alliance-10-democracies-break-chinas-5g-monopoly/ 

​Sister Caitlin in Oz:
Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, And Police Infiltration Of US Protests
​  ​A video has been circulating of a white man casually smashing the windows of a Minneapolis shop with a hammer during protests against the police murder of George Floyd. The man is clearly trying to hide his identity by wearing a gas mask, carrying a large umbrella, and wearing full-length black clothing.
​  ​Protesters can be seen intervening to stop his destructive behavior in the video.
“Are you a fucking cop?” one asks.
​  ​An officer with the Saint Paul Police Department has been publicly named by someone identified as the officer’s ex-wife, who said his voice, walk and gas mask made her “90% sure” it was him. The Saint Paul Police Department has denied this.
​  ​Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it is a very safe bet that it’s a law enforcement officer of some kind. Disruptive police infiltration of protest movements is a historical constant in America, after all. It is the norm, not the exception.

​  ​Former presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard dropped her defamation lawsuit against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, saying the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 presidential election are more important than her legal claims. In court papers filed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday, Gabbard wrote that, while her claims have merit, it’s better to “focus their time and attention on other priorities, including defeating Donald Trump in 2020, rather than righting the wrongs here.” (Excuses)​ ​​Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii, sued Clinton in January, claiming the former first lady defamed her by calling her a “Russian asset” during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. 

​  ​Mysterious pallets of bricks have been filmed throughout major riot hotspots across the country, in what appears to be more evidence that organized groups are using the George Floyd protests to incite chaos and terrorism throughout the US. 
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-setup-mysteriously-staged-bricks-appear-throughout-major-protest-cities 

 MINNEAPOLIS—Calling for a more measured way to express opposition to police brutality, critics slammed demonstrators Thursday for recklessly looting businesses without forming a private equity firm first. “Look, we all have the right to protest, but that doesn’t mean you can just rush in and destroy any business without gathering a group of clandestine investors to purchase it at a severely reduced price and slowly bleed it to death,”...   It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off. There’s a right way and wrong way to do this.” At press time, critics recommended that protestors hold law enforcement accountable by simply purchasing the Minneapolis police department from taxpayers.​ (The Onion)

​Injuring The Insulted​
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Thursday, May 28, 2020

Nothing To Trust

Considering Economy,

The "Political Economy" is our human life-support ecosystem within the larger life support system of global life.
The political economy is based on the harness of one way flows from higher to lower energy and order, like burning oil and coal, to power further extraction of fuel and ore from this fair planet. This particular iteration of political economy is the most successful ever and is eating up all the good stuff, which is now terminally depleted, while it fouls air and water that life forms need to survive. This needs to be redirected without killing us all. 
The directors are willing to sacrifice some of us, as they always do, but they are not willing to resign as directors, and give up their unique advantages as such.
It's an impasse. What would make them give up hope, capitulate, and let different people work out a different system that would not destroy all life, while supporting human lives?
Loss of the internet has come to mind, but that can never happen, right?

Yanis Varoufakis set out to write a chronicle of the decade of the 2020s, as if looking back. 
He didn't get very far yet, but it's started.
​  ​By June 2020, as lockdowns began to ease, left-wing optimism that the pandemic would revive state power on behalf of the powerless remained, leading friends to fantasize about a renaissance of the commons and a capacious definition of public goods. Margaret Thatcher, I would remind them, left the British state larger, more powerful, and more concentrated than she had found it. An authoritarian state was necessary to support markets controlled by corporations and banks. Those in authority have never hesitated to harness massive government intervention to the preservation of oligarchic power. Why should a pandemic change that?  

​From the "right" side of the aisle, it's not really a different view, just different focal points.
​  Rubino explains, “Sooner or later you’ve got to pay your bills, and if you don’t have anybody paying your bills to you, then you go bankrupt. Commercial real estate could just be a blood bath, which take us back to all the bailouts. You can’t let a big sector go bust in this world because suddenly everything is too big to fail. There is not a major sector out there that can be allowed to go bust. Not the airlines, not commercial real estate, certainly not the banks, you name it and it has to be bailed out. That’s where the really crazy stuff starts. When people figure out we are basically bailing out everybody from home owners to student loan holders, to car loan holders and right down the line, and then we get state and local governments with this gigantic multi-trillion dollar problem . . . and the amount of debt is off the charts to bail all of these guys out, that is when the real fun starts.”
  How long will the bailouts go on? Rubino says, “We are heading into a Presidential election, which means we cannot let anything major fail. If you are the Trump Administration and Congress, you can’t let something big fail because it’s a crisis right before you need to get re-elected. So, you’ve got to bail people out. That’s what California, Illinois and Chicago, New York, Kentucky and all the bankrupt and badly run states have been hoping for all along. They have been hoping there would be a big crisis that would bail them out of their horrendous mismanagement of the past 20 or 30 years. There was no way that Illinois was not going to go bankrupt in normal times . . . or Chicago. . . . Now, they can go to the federal government and say we need a trillion dollars right now or we are going to lay off all the cops and all the teachers, and they think they have a pretty good chance of getting the bailout because the alternative is poison for the people running for office . . . . If you are the Trump Administration or Congress, I don’t see how you stop bailing people out before the election.”
https://usawatchdog.com/suddenly-everything-is-too-big-to-fail-john-rubino/ 

Across the pond, Brexit talks are back from COVID lockdown, but no different, as the UK now plays hardball with a tremendously weakened EU that really needs the British contribution to the budget.
Time is getting short, too. What will the Eurocrats give up for the funding they must have?
https://sputniknews.com/europe/202005271079435457-french-foreign-minister-jean-yves-le-drian-says-resumed-brexit-talks-are-going-badly/ 

Here is the story that the DNC are afraid of a V-shaped recovery that will re-elect Trump. 
(I think they should be more afraid of Joe Biden, and they probably have no real intention of running him.)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/26/2020-election-democrats-281470

India is using hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis for medical personnel. This is not the use that The Lancet looked at, giving it to sick hospital patients, already compromised by a disease that causes multi-organ failure, strokes and heart attacks.
The data is good for it's efficacy in prophylaxis. India has done a very large prospective study. That is how President Donald is using it, and he has been professionally advised in that course. 
Coronavirus: India invites scepticism as it sticks by hydroxychloroquine, Covid treatment backed by Trump
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3086389/coronavirus-india-invites-scepticism-it-sticks  

Meanwhile, The Lancet "study", claiming more cardiac deaths with hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients, can't show where it got it's numbers, who the contributing doctors were, and can't explain why nobody heard of the company that did the study, including the Australian hospitals, whose data it claims to use, but which does not match. 
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/28/questions-raised-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-which-caused-who-to-halt-trials-for-covid-19 

  Everybody has a predictive model of how the novel-coronavirus is going to spread, sicken and kill people. It's almost as if political interests can go to a model-store and pick the model which supports the actions that their backers want to happen. This model says that the COVID is well on it's way to saturating the UK population, so it's ok to just head back to the pubs and so on. Reminds me of Dirty Harry, "You've got to ask yourself, do I feel lucky, well, Do ya?"
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/leading-scientist-urges-faster-exit-from-uks-lockdown-39225900.html  

See how much virus shows up in the sewers. If you have the right kind of testing, this could be a pretty good real time measure of viral load in a city, and could guide the herd on it's way to herd immunity, without an excess of excess deaths. It's bound to get plenty of funding.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/28/wastewater-testing-gains-support-as-covid19-early-warning/ 

The US has a special trade relationship with Hong Kong, dating back to it being a UK colony. The State Department is declaring that Hong Kong is no longer "autonomous", leaving the White House with a very wide spectrum of trade war weapons to use against China. It's lot's of ammo for deal-making Donald. China really is cracking down on Hong Kong.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3086424/explainer-what-expect-now-us-deems-hong-kong-no-longer-autonomous 

Taiwan, which really IS independant of China, unless it gets invaded, lays out specific programs to welcome (well to do) Hong Kong residents and business to Taiwan as they flee Communist oppression. Good for business..
.https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3086374/taiwan-will-help-fleeing-hongkongers-move-island-tsai-ing

Nobody is talking about the death of the Chinese ambassador to Israel, of "natural causes", right after Mike Pompeo visited there to put a stop to Israeli big deals with China for 5g, Port of Haifa, and desalination plant project. 
The desalination contract has gone to an Israeli company. What about those 2 bigger issues?
 https://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/palestine/4192-herzliya-chinese-ambassador-du-wei.html

Russia is being very careful about Americans in and around Syria, like they don't trust us.
​  ​Asked why the American public should tolerate US involvement in Syria, Special Envoy James Jeffrey points out the small US footprint in the fight against ISIS. "This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."  
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-russian-jets-another-unsafe-intercept-us-spy-plane-near-syrian-airbase  
 
Watching "Partners"

Yoakum avocado orchard and workshop projects pictured below with blogger

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Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Perspective

Understanding Empire,

I'm opening with a perspective piece about the short and tortured life of George Orwell. He was a British imperial officer in colonized Burma, apparently good at it, and they employed torture routinely there. Thanks Eleni.
​  ​The truth clearly was that Orwell never forgave himself for what he did as a young agent of empire in Burma. Even his literally suicidal decision to go to the most primitive, cold, wet and poverty-stricken corner of creation in a remote island off Scotland to finish “1984” in isolation before he died was consistent with the merciless punishments he had inflicted on himself all his life since leaving Burma.
​  ​The conclusion is clear: For all the intensity of George Orwell’s experiences in Spain, his passion for truth and integrity, his hatred of the abuse of power did not originate from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. They all flowed directly from his own actions as an agent of the British Empire in Burma in the 1920s: Just as his creation of the Ministry of Truth flowed directly from his experience of working in the Belly of the Beast of the BBC in the early 1940s.
​  ​George Orwell spent more than 20 years slowly committing suicide because of the terrible crimes he committed as a torturer for the British Empire in Burma.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/20/how-the-british-empire-created-and-killed-george-orwell/ 

US Senate Quietly Approves $38 Billion for Israel Amid Historic Economic Downturn
S.3176 was passed without being named, debated, or even discussed, even though it would set into law the largest such aid package in US history.

​Michael Hudson points out the pivotal change which must be embraced for survival of human civilization:
​  Western civilization distinguishes itself from its predecessors in the way it has responded to “acts of God” disrupting the means of support and leaving debts in their wake.
  The great question always has been who will lose under such conditions. Will it be debtors and renters at the bottom of the economic scale, or creditors and landlords at the top? This age-old confrontation between creditors and debtors, landlords and tenants over how to deal with the unpaid debts and back rents is at the economic heart of today’s 2020 coronavirus pandemic that has left large and small businesses, farms, restaurants and neighborhood stores – along with their employees who have been laid off – unable to pay the rents, mortgages, other debt service and taxes that have accrued.
  For thousands of years ancient economies operated on credit during the crop year, with payment falling due when the harvest was in – typically on the threshing floor. Normally this cycle provided a flow of crops and corvée labor to the palace and covered the cultivator’s spending during the crop year, with interest owed only when payment was late. But bad harvests, military conflict or simply the normal hardships of life occasionally prevented this buildup of debt from being paid, threatening citizens with bondage to their creditors or loss of their land rights.
  Mesopotamian palaces had to decide who would bear the loss when drought, flooding, infestation, disease or military attack disrupted economic activity and prevented the settlement of debts, rents and taxes. Recognizing that this was an unavoidable fact of life, rulers proclaimed amnesties for taxes and the various debts that were incurred during the crop year. These acts saved smallholders from having to work off their debts by personal bondage and ultimately to lose their land.
  Classical antiquity, and indeed subsequent Western civilization, rejected such Clean Slates to restore social balance. Since Roman times it has become normal for creditors to use social misfortune as an opportunity to gain property and income at the expense of families falling into debt. In the absence of kings or democratic civic regimes protecting debtor rights and liberty, pro-creditor laws obliged debtors to lose their land or other means of livelihood to foreclosing creditors, sell it under distress conditions and fall into bondage to work off their debts, becoming clients or quasi-serfs to their creditors without hope of recovering their former free status.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/05/michael-hudson-debt-liberty-and-acts-of-god.html 

Time for a Selective Debt Jubilee​  , Willem H. Buiter​ 
(Buiter works for global banking, so he does not go far enough.)​
​  ​Debt is a dangerous instrument. For far too long, the world has used it to avoid awkward but unavoidable decisions. In the midst of an unprecedented global crisis, something will have to give.

​The SARS-CoV-2 virus pulls a concealment trick, removing the Major Histocompatibility Complex markers from the surface of human cells it has infected, so the white blood cells of the immune system leave those cells, teeming with virus they are producing, intact, to later release it into the body.​ 
This is what HIV does, too. 
It was forbidden information, scrubbed from social media platforms, that SARS-CoV-2 shared genetic homology with HIV in some important sections. 
"Racist". (Just how would a section of HIV viral code get inserted, functionally intact into a coronavirus?) 
The South China Morning Post has this story.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3086177/coronavirus-uses-same-strategy-hiv-dodge-immune-response-chinese  

Medcram Covid-19 update 75 looks at pathological findings on autopsy of lungs of people dying from COVID, Influenza-linked-ARDS, and unrelated causes. The significant finding is high levels of inflammation of viral infected cells lining the tiny arteries and capillaries, and that many of these critical little capillaries are clotted off by the inflammatory response to the viral attack. This response is unique to the COVID infected lungs. 
The blood vessel lining, "endothelium", is the significant area of attack that determines the patterns of disease, distress and death which we are seeing. 
https://www.medcram.com/courses/take/coronavirus-outbreak-symptoms-treatment/lessons/13157197-update-75-covid-19-lung-autopsies-new-data 

In Brazil and other poor countries, lots of young and previously "healthy" people are dying from COVID. The factors leading to this are presumed in this article. I really want to know, myself, precisely what is happening in those people's bodies, and how to prevent and counter it. (What are their vitamin-D levels, please? For starters.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-brazil-killing-young-developing-world/2020/05/22/f76d83e8-99e9-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html

India completely bucks the WHO, which has just told Malyasia to stop using hydroxychloroquine, even though Malaysia started early and has used it tremendously for the past months. Zinc is not mentioned, yet again...
​  ​India will continue using hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a preventative measure against COVID-19, after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) declared on Tuesday that the drug was found to be very effective with minimal side effects for prophylaxis.
​  ​The ICMR's decision was based on three studies they conducted, which resulted in a Friday advisory to expand the drug's use, according to ThePrint.
​  ​Speaking at a Tuesday press conference, ICMR Director General Dr. Balram Bhargava said "COVID-19 is an evolving field. We don’t know which medicines are working and which are not. There are lots of drugs that have been repurposed for use in COVID whether prophylaxis or as treatment. HCQ is a very old anti-malarial drug that was being widely used and it continues to be widely used. It is safer."

​Remdesivir does not appear to "save lives", but may shorten hospital course by a few days in a subset of moderately ill patients who need oxygen​. It does not appear to reduce viral load. It does not reduce case fatality rate.
DESPITE THE HYPE, GILEAD’S REMDESIVIR WILL DO NOTHING TO END THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC  

​Taking Vitamin-D 5000 Units per day​
(pictured popping a sungold cherry tomato a couple of mornings ago at Yoakum garden)


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