Monday, June 29, 2020

Not Sick, Just Busy

Mortal Humans,

After a long, busy Friday at clinic, and swabbing a lot of noses for virus, Jenny and I drove 4 hours to Dallas, arriving to help our son Steve pack and move the next day, which started early. The brown cloud of African dirt got worse and worse as we headed north from Austin. Saturday morning began early with a few hours of mowing the hayfield into a lawn, then packing and moving with sons Steve (movee) and Jim (mover). After an early dinner, Jenny and I drove another 6 hours down to Yoakum, noting the African sand fading as we made our way closer to the gulf of Mexico, arrived late at night again, and sacked-out. We had only Sunday to do the work, so only 4 hours of mowing and weeding got done, though we spent about 4 hours picking and shelling fresh blackeyed peas into freezer bags for a massive New Years Day luck -bolus project we're working on.
 Arising before dawn, we hit the road to Austin at 7AM today, to get Jenny to her doctor's appointment and me to cook some brunch and get to work. Those missions were accomplished. Lots more noses swabbed and human bodies examined. Lots of tasks performed, then got home to have some okra and blackeyed peas with Jenny.
It's our 35th wedding anniversary today. We have been training for our Machu Picchu trek since September, last 2 weeks of July... We're officially not doing it, because we had not counted on Texas COVID cases shooting up like this. Peru is doing ok, especially Cusco and mountain trails.
Instead, we're going to try to get 8 hours of sleep.
Bedtime.... Early work-day tomorrow.
See photo below in Austin garden before sunset.



Not-Quite-Newlyweds 


Thursday, June 25, 2020

No Individual Initiative

Problem Solvers,

I'm starting with a reply I made on The Automatic Earth Blog. 
Boscohorowitz said:
“Regarding the benefits of community: the inability of a deeply hypnotized populace to do anything but what they’re told (and as little of that as possible) precluded the inability of most people to adjust to covid in any but a bipolar way: run inside and hide from the Black Death! vs. Fuck that shit, I’m going swimming!”
​I said:
​This evokes the conundrum of what to do with people who have no gainful work to do, or what they may decide to do themselves, as well as what those who lose their employment may choose to do​,​ or whether they will remain idle and decay over time.
​ ​People don’t necessarily RETURN to productive work, nor do they necessarily make the transition from paid compliance tasks to innovative and creative production of real food, goods or services.
​ ​The pandemic of measles and smallpox, which destro​y​ed native populations of the Americas and the Pacific Islands opened the door for immigrants to fill the gap, and immigrants did.
If many people ​in ​North America are unable to make the transition to something like subsistence farming without air conditioning, then history says the neighbors who grew up like that will take their places.
​ ​It’s well underway in ​Austin, ​Texa​s. I did grunt work summer jobs in the 1970s, and there were other young college and high school students and young and middle aged b​l​ack guys doing basic warehouse, kitchen and construction work then, too​. There were a few native Spanish speakers in Austin, then.​
​ ​Not lately… Austin got a makeover. All of the producti​on​ and blue collar jobs have gone to Spanish speakers, who went through hell and high water to get here and work for less than Americans​. They​ work hard, and do good work. We’re putting a serious drain on Mexican talent.
​ ​In a little over 40 years, there has been a wholesale transition in the local labor force, and it has been pretty steady for the past 10 – 20 years, just some older backhoe operators retiring, and forement retiring, being replaced by native Spanish Speakers.
​ ​Is this “white fragility” or “black fragility”? The children of these immigrant workers are pretty similar in their work proclivities to the white and black kids they attend school with. Some work with Dad; not so many.
​ ​The demographic transition in the US was offshoring of productive work and blue-collar initiative, and it’s replacement with private prisons for the masses who had no work, and slipped into crime. (YOU, Out Of The Gene Pool!)
​ ​Those who could jump through more and more and more hoops, and keep complying with more and more and more detailed regulations, could maintain their employment, even in fields, such as medicine, which used to be dynamic, full of talent and initiative, and competition to find the new best cure, treatment or solution.
​ ​The way the AIDS pandemic was engaged was very innovative​ and​ fast moving​. T​he most talented doctors got big followings of patients by constantly advancing the “cutting edge” of diagnosis and treatment to keep the gays alive for a cure th​a​t would ​eventually ​come. It basically did come, and some of those guys from the 1980s are still alive on their highly effective antiretroviral treatments.
​ ​The difference today is that Dr Fauci is running the whole US response to this leaked bioweapon, which the US, China and Canada, so presumably the UK, too, all had.
​ ​No individual medical initiative will be systemically tolerated, even if treating doctors all across the world, even in the US, are ​breaking-ranks​, and there is substantial evidence of benefit.
We may just be subject to replacement if we can’t aggregate​-​our​-​collective​-​feces.

I​t's the end of an error... :-)​
The Depression Dominoes Are Topplin​g​, Charles Hugh Smith
​ ​Once you allow your economy to become dependent on extremes of debt, leverage, inequality, legalized looting, monopoly, pay-to-play politics and speculative asset bubbles, a depression is inevitable.
​ ​The pandemic lockdown will be blamed for the Greater Depression, but the lockdown only toppled all the dominoes that were already lined up. The lockdown would have been survivable if the economy hadn't been over-indebted, over-leveraged, burdened by insanely high costs, stripmined by greedy monopolies, dependent on stock market fraud, destabilized by extreme inequality, corrupted by political pay-to-play and addicted to speculation.​..

 It's worth recalling that every dollar of debt is someone else's asset and the source of their income. So when the defaults and bankruptcies sweep through the financial system, they'll obliterate all the "wealth" of those holding bundled student and auto loan securities, mortgage backed securities, corporate bonds, and destroy the income streams these trillions in debt generated.​..
 Once you allow your economy to become dependent on extremes of debt, leverage, inequality, legalized looting, monopoly, pay-to-play politics and speculative asset bubbles, a depression is inevitable. The only question is "when," and that's been answered, though nobody wants to hear it: 2020 and beyond.

​Defund the messenger:
COVID Testing Sites to Lose Federal Funding Even as Fauci Calls for More Testing
​This article fails to comprehend that needing a vaccine twice per year is twice as good for business!
Chinese study: Antibodies in COVID-19 patients fade quickly
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/chinese-study-antibodies-covid-19-patients-fade-quickly  

​File under: "All bleeding stops": 
(Governor Abbot is keeping bars and strip clubs open but advising hospitals to stop doing elective surgery because they are getting too full.)
Texas is on the verge of a Covid crisis: Houston's largest hospital's ICU is 97% full as daily cases surge to record highs and expert predicts 'herd immunity may be the only way to stop the virus'
​ ​Texas Medical Center in Houston said 97% of its ICU beds are occupied, and its normal occupancy rate is 70% to 80%
It has an emergency plan to increase the number of ICU beds from 1,462 to 2,649, but expect they will all fill up in just two weeks

​New York wants Texans to quarantine for 2 weeks, now.

"The Despair Is Smoldering in Society"
​  ​Millions of Americans have seen their wages stagnate for decades, even as the wealthiest have grown fantastically rich. Economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case believe the health-care system is partly to blame, and the coronavirus is highlighting the broader dangers American society is facing.

​The Onion, ​ MENLO PARK, CA—In an effort to curtail the organization’s outsized influence, Facebook announced Monday that it would be implementing new steps to ensure the breakup of the U.S. government before it becomes too powerful. “It’s long past time for us to take concrete actions against this behemoth of governance that has gone essentially unchecked since its inception,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg  
https://www.theonion.com/facebook-announces-plan-to-break-up-u-s-government-bef-1844121902  

Iran is, somehow, not destroyed yet... Pepe Escobar
Islamic Republic has weathered the Covid-19 storm and is on the cusp of a US-defying manufacturing revolution  
https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/why-iran-wont-be-broken/  

​The Arctic Screams with Siberian peat fires and forest fires.
​  ​Guido Grosse, head of the Permafrost Research Unit at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, said the fires were stripping away peat and vegetation that normally would form a protective blanket over the permafrost.​..
​  And “as the peat burns … its neighbor next door gets warmer, and their neighbors get warmer,” McCarty said. “We’re burning up these ancient pools of carbon.”

​Emergency Blanket​

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Deep State Fixes Stuff

Vampire Squid Fodder,

 Ellen Brown calls the new, improved BlackRock Asset Management, which just got discreetly bailed out, and promoted to the "fourth branch of the federal government", "The New Giant Vampire Squid". It seems to have been placed above both the Treasury and the central bank.  "Must Support Retirement Valuations..."
  As Peter Ewart notes in a May 14 article on BlackRock titled “Foxes in the Henhouse,” today the economic system “is not classical capitalism but rather state monopoly capitalism, where giant enterprises are regularly backstopped with public funds and the boundaries between the state and the financial oligarchy are virtually non-existent.”
  If the corporate oligarchs are too big and strategically important to be broken up under the antitrust laws, rather than bailing them out they should be nationalized and put directly into the service of the public. At the very least, BlackRock should be regulated as a too-big-to-fail Systemically Important Financial Institution. Better yet would be to regulate it as a public utility. No private, unelected entity should have the power over the economy that BlackRock has, without a legally enforceable fiduciary duty to wield it in the public interest.

 Anthony Fauci, "bioweapons defense expert" is the third highest paid federal employee, in his position for 36 years (only matched by J. Edgar Hoover), directs massive money to friends, half a trillion in grants and contracts so far, and gets paid as much as half a million dollars by friends to talk at dinner. Don't displease him. You'll never work again.
Fauci helped bury the last 36 years of skeletons in public health, and he can turn a disaster like COVID into a gold mine for your company, especially if you make vaccines, but you're going to have to follow his lead. Even Trump does.

Fear in the JFK Assassination, Part 1 
(The mystery of how the USMC taught Lee Oswald Russian and Communism)
​  ​One of the fascinating phenomena in the JFK assassination is the fear of some Americans to consider the possibility that the assassination was actually a regime-change operation carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment rather than simply a murder carried out by a supposed lone-nut assassin.​..​
​  ​ Indeed, if you want a modern-day version of how the U.S. national-security state treats suspected traitors and betrayers of its secrets, reflect on Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning. That’s how we expect national-security state officials to behave toward those they consider traitors and betrayers of U.S. secrets.
​  ​Not so with Oswald. With him, we have what amounts to two separate parallel universes. One universe involves all the Cold War hoopla against communists. Another one is the one in which Oswald is sauntering across the world stage as one of America’s biggest self-proclaimed communists — a U.S. Marine communist — who isn’t touched by some congressional investigative committee, some federal grand jury, or some FBI agent. How is that possible?
  Later​, when Oswald ended up in Dallas, his friends were right-wingers, not left-wingers. He even got​ a​ job at a photographic facility that developed top-secret photographs for the U.S. government. How is that possible? Later, when he ended up in New Orleans, he got hired by a private company that was owned by a fierce anti-communist right-winger. ​  ​Why would he hire a supposed communist who supposedly had betrayed America by supposedly joining up with America’s avowed communist enemy, the Soviet Union, and to whom he had supposedly given U.S. national-security state secrets, just like Julian and Ethel Rosenberg had?

​ ​According to the latest Goldman state-level coronavirus tracker, the prevalence of coronavirus symptoms is rising, with the share of patients seeking care with symptoms of Covid-like illness at 3.5%, up 0.4% from 2 weeks ago. Daily confirmed new cases have risen steadily over the past several days to 86 per million, ending a 2-month decline. A big part of this is due to increased testing: indeed, the volume of daily coronavirus tests has risen 23% over the last two weeks, while the positive test rate has risen by 1.3pp to 6.2%. On the flipside, fatalities have declined over the last two weeks (-12% to 1.9 per million), although fatalities lag new cases by multiple weeks  

​Epidemiologists respond to a poll of when they might "get back to normal" with various activities, like fetching the mail without a mask. Interesting...​
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/coronavirus-covid19-life-social-distancing-noramlity-chart/ 

​It's hard to figure out some of these statistics, but higher-home-values probably relates to higher urban density, and high summer temperatures and low winter temperatures both make people congregate indoors. COVID-death-rate-Statistics:
​  ​Counties with higher home values, higher summer temperatures, and lower winter temperatures have higher death rates.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27391  

​ Texas, California and Floriduh all have rising coronavirus cases, especially in some big cities like Houston, and particularly among summer-frolicing-young-adults, like in San Marcos, home of party-school TSU. Texas focus here:

Siberia, one of the coldest places that humans have been able to live and grow some food, broke 100 degrees F on the first day after summer solstice. This has never happened before, and it follows a record hot winter.
​  ​On Saturday, the thermometer hit a likely record of 38C – or 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit – in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk in Russia’s Sakha Republic.  

​Egypt faces 2 wars at the same time. It needs to keep "friends"​ on the Libyan side of it's porous desert border, and it needs the Nile to have plenty of water for farmers, which it doesn't really have, already. 
Sudan, the Nile-next-door-neighbor is not going to block the flow of water, but Ethiopia, on the other side of Sudan, is about to start filling the vast area behind it's new dam, which will drastically reduce flow to Egypt for at least 7-10 years. Egypt just doesn't have the long term funding and it probably can't really prevent the flow reduction. Maybe Egypt and Ethiopia can work something out where both lose, but don't face the huge losses of a protracted war. 
Both already have a lot of bills to pay.

Is coronavirus better or worse if you drink RoundUp out of your faucet? Just askin':
Bayer Pays $10BN To Settle Thousands Of Monsanto Glyphosate Lawsuits

Monday, June 22, 2020

Nobody's In Charge

Living Beings,

  Abstractions are completely different from living experiences. 
I'm sorry to print something so mundane and obvious as that, but "we" collectively are not making physical investments in our own futures for a world with rapidly declining oil and other forms of energy. This energy decline is already evident as less of everything we assume our environment will supply. 
Less order, less transportation of ourselves and things we need, less medical back-up, less income, less electricity, less reliable communication and news, more desperation, more sudden changes.
  Current politics in America are identitarian, and there are sharp divides over wearing masks, or being forced to wear masks, but that is more symbolic, and it does not provide a basis for feeding ourselves in the future, or keeping the desperation levels low enough for people to rationally cooperate to meet common needs.
  Where did the rational cooperation go, which brought our species to this point? I'll put forward that it works against the power of our elite owners for us to rationally cooperate with each other. They need us to pay tribute, follow their orders and hate each other, though mostly passively.
  That sweet spot for our owners, which we see around us, cannot last very long, but how can we cooperate? 
  I propose just working together to grow food. That's why I'm growing 3 gardens, canning some food, cooking fresh food, and giving it away, or encouraging coworkers to harvest things, explaining what they are. At least some more interest has developed as everybody who works at the North Clinic has to enter through the vegetable garden in the break area, now. Human flows have been rerouted for social distancing, but it has conversely increased vegetable-proximity.
   I've included a photograph in the clinic garen from last October, a long time ago, a different moment in history.
It's a good time to make the same point that I learned in early 1974, about stuff running out after we learn to live off it.

I last posted this annotated graph from The Limits To Growth, 1972, in September 2017. Put a straight edge on 2020, and see if you feel like we went over the cliff of human material wealth per capita a few years ago, or at least that we are in some kind of rapid decline already.
I sure do.   
  Please allow me to direct your consciousness back to MIT 1972, where the third iteration of the most advanced systems-analysis computer model, World-3, produced the projected graphs below, of what our species would achieve on our planet, if we kept doing things about the same, without a concerted and global redirection of our efforts, "Business as Usual". Notice the red line on this graph, marking peak industrial output and food per person. It looks like it falls right about 2014 or 2015. This was not a "prediction", as the authors stated many times, but a forward projection of historical trends, with the interactions of the trends correlated into each other, rather than being projected in isolation, as if everything else would remain the same. World-1 and World-2 programs had been tested and retested, then further refined to develop World-3. Running the data with a start date of 1900 predicted the 20th century pretty well, including the part that had not yet happened. Limits to growth was a hot topic in 1971, the year that US oil production peaked, just as M. King Hubbert had predicted in the 1950s. We were feeling a lot of change then. I remember. We were surprised, and didn't want to be surprised again. Remember? 
Move your gaze about halfway between that red line and the marker for 2020, down on the x-axis. 
That's where Wile-E-Coyote looked down. Do you think it was 2016 or 2017?

This just in!
NATO slowly imploding because it lacks a credible enemy: Serious people in Paris & Berlin know Russia isn’t a real threat

A massive fall off in US shale oil "production" is baked in by the huge decline in drilling rig count. Shale production falls off fast, depends on lots of ongoing drilling rigs drilling and drilling, with supply coming a year or more later. Rig counts are way down, cannot be brought up quickly, are not financially profitable now, and are not preparing the industry to pump in 2021 and 2022. This is already baked-in. There will be some rise in output this summer, but it will fall in the fall.

Nearly Half Of Americans Consider Selling Home As COVID Crushes Finances

They could not settle this amicably 20 years ago, and the moment is now arriving. Water is life.
Egypt and Ethiopia are on the verge of war over water
“The Ethiopians are building on the Blue Nile, Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant, surpassing the Sayano Shushenskaya Hydropower Station,” the author said, pointing out that Ethiopia would become the second largest generator of electricity in Africa.
The Blue Nile is the main artery that feeds the Grand Nile, and the construction of the dam will lead to severe decay in the valley waters, where up to 90% of the Egyptian population lives.

British tabloids discover vitamin-D, which was first described in England, as a treatment for "English Children's Disease", Rickets. Thanks Ilargi.
Covid-19 patients who end up in hospital may be almost certain to die if they have a vitamin D deficiency
Indonesian experts analysed hospital records of 780 people who tested positive
98.9% of Covid patients defined as vitamin D deficient — below 20ng/ml — died
Yet this fell to just 4.1% for patients who had enough of the nutrient, data showed
SACN will review existing scientific evidence on whether vitamin D lowers risk
Public Health England and NHS regulator NICE are doing a separate review

Texas coronavirus cases are rising hard, but hospital capacity is not yet threatened with overload, and that is what the governor is watching. The economy is open. Consider voluntarily wearing a mask when you shop, dine and visit.

We saw a big and increasing rise in cases, and a lot of people with symptoms are reporting sick family members with COVID. Our tests took a full week to come back, which is no service to anybody being tested. It thwarts the whole purpose. For the past 2 weeks, cases diagnosed in Travis county have doubled every 4 days on average. They are up by 15 times (35-506) in 14 days. When tests take a week to come back, what does that mean? 
I've agreed to work more shifts.

This essay from January 2016 remains extremely important. Debt is the structure of our economy. 
Current debts cannot be paid, but we must all die trying, except the 1%; they got bailed out again.
How Debt Conquered America ,​ By Jada Thacker
​  ​Since its center-stage debut during the Occupy Wall Street movement, “the 99%” a term emblematic of extreme economic inequality confronting the vast majority   has become common place. The term was coined by sociology professor David Graeber, an Occupy leader and author of the encyclopedic Debt: The First 5,000 Years, published just as the Occupy movement captured headlines.
​  ​What Graeber’s monumental work did not emphasize specifically, and what most Americans still do not appreciate, is how debt was wielded as the weapon of choice to subjugate the 99% in the centuries before the Occupy protesters popularized the term. Like so many aspects of our Lost History, the legacy of debt has been airbrushed from our history texts, but not from our lives.

Gavin O'Reilly (in Ireland) asks: Topple the Statues, But Ignore the Modern-Day Oppressors?
​  ​Following last month’s murder in the United States of George Floyd, an unarmed black man suffocated by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin during what should have been a routine stop, what would initially begin as protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the US state of Minneapolis would soon spread nationwide before developing into an international phenomenon... 
​  ​However, despite the litany of war crimes this modern-day imperialist foreign policy has resulted in, from the Donbass to the Middle East, the Pentagon, the Ministry of Defence and the factories of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and BAE Systems have so far remained untouched by the current protesters - their anger seemingly reserved for imperialists and oppressors who passed away generations ago instead.  

​People will see whatever they are determined to see this fall.
Biden Commits To Three Debates With Trump

The Illusion of Control: What If Nobody's in Charge?  Charles Hugh Smith  June 22, 2020
The last shred of power the elites hold is the belief of the masses that the elites are still in control.

Vegetable Powered Human 

Thursday, June 18, 2020

A Hard Fall

Down for the Count,

Martin Gugino, the 75 year old man, protesting in Buffalo week before last, who was shoved in the chest by riot police, took steps back and fell (off camera) DID have a basilar skull fracture from that fall. I was dubious, since the steps back, as he lowered himself, looked fairly controlled. A statement Tuesday by his lawyer makes it clear that he did have a skull fracture and cannot walk properly as a result. This confirms my initial impression when apparent blood came from his right ear. I had reconsidered that impression, looking at how he lay still and calm, with smartphone in hand, and considering how mild the fall looked. Others had also questioned whether this was a real injury. It was. This has been brought up by a couple of correspondents, and may have been an unvoiced concern to others.
I do not want to be a partisan. I want to find out the truth, and share useful information, so that we can cooperatively rebuild our human economy, in a way that respects our place in nature. I think we can be good stewards of life on Earth.
​  ​In a recent statement to CNN, Gugino’s attorney Kelly Zarcone revealed that Gugino suffered a skull fracture due to the unnecessary violence of the police officers that day, and Gugino is currently unable to walk. According to Zarcone, Gugino remains in rehabilitation.
“I am not at liberty to elaborate at this time other than to confirm that his skull was fractured,” Zarcone said. “While he is not able to walk yet, we were able to have a short conversation before he became too tired. He is appreciative of all of the concern about him but he is still focused on the issues rather than himself.”


​Ranking of places to catch coronavirus by likelihood puts bars and big indoor concerts first, followed by sports stadiums, gyms, amusement parks, churches and buffets. 
It's reducing tiers of risk from there. 
Libraries/museums, grocery stores, hotels and golf courses are just above self-serve gas stations.

How likely are kids to get COVID-19? Still no answer except "somewhat less and usually milder". 
We'll know for sure by Thanksgiving, won't we?

For the Immunologically inclined, here is a good summary of immune system responses and stages of response to coronavirus. The innate immune response is the first line of defense, and may stop the virus in the nose for many people, sometimes without even developing an antibody response. If the virus gets into the system, like lungs or gut, then the adaptive immune response has to protect the body, mounting an antibody response in time. There is a lot of complex activity by the white blood cells, too. Sometimes it can't find the elusive virus, and other times, it may go too far, attack too widely, and cause death by "cytokine storm".

Closing Time, an essay by an English Mom who came through coronavirus infection in the same part of town where her grandparents and great grandparents walked, and survived the 1918 flu. Reflections upon humanity.

 Engaged in Life

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Taking Personal Responsibility

Constructive Citizens,

When we stop taking sides in a squabble, and start working together to build some way of life that can function in our own communities, then we will be acting as citizens, and can build a country. 
We are divided and ruled by Facebook memes.

The Systemic Collapse of the US Society Has Begun, The Saker. Thanks Eleni in Athens.
​  ​For a society, any society, to function a number of factors that make up the social contract need to be present.  The exact list that make up these factors will depend on each individual country, but they would typically include some kind of social consensus, the acceptance by most people of the legitimacy of the government and its institutions, often a unifying ideology or, at least, common values, the presence of a stable middle-class, the reasonable hope for a functioning “social life”, educational institutions etc.  Finally, and cynically, it always helps the ruling elites if they can provide enough circuses (TV) and bread (food) to most citizens.  This is even true of so-called authoritarian/totalitarian societies which, contrary to the liberal myth, typically do enjoy the support of a large segment of the population (if only because these regimes are often more capable of providing for the basic needs of society).
​  ​Right now, I would argue that the US government has almost completely lost its ability to deliver any of those factors, or act to repair the broken social contract.  In fact, what we can observe is the exact opposite: the US society is highly divided, as is the US ruling class (which is even more important).  Not only that, but ever since the election of Trump, all the vociferous Trump-haters have been undermining the legitimacy not only of Trump himself, but of the political system which made his election possible.  I have been saying that for years: by saying “not my President” the Trump-haters have de-legitimized not only Trump personally, but also de-legitimized the Executive branch as such...

​  ​For a civil war to take place you need a​t​ least two sides, each with a clearly identifiable political agenda.  Since the real power in the USA is hidden from the public awareness, there is no potential for a “the people vs the rulers” kind of civil war in the US.  A “Right/Conservative vs Left/Liberal” civil war is also not possible, because both the US Right and the US Left are, in reality controlled by a deep state which is neither liberal nor conservative.  Finally, a “rematch” between North and South is not possible either because the modern USA is not really split along North/South lines anymore.​...
  I call what is happening today an insurrection: a violent revolt or rebellion against the authorities as such.  When you burn a police precinct you do not “protest” against the actions of a few cops, no, what you are doing is expelling the cops from your neighborhood (I know that personally.  In Argentina I lived in a suburb of Buenos-Aires in which the police station was attacked so often that it closed and was never rebuilt).  And since in a civilized society the state should have the monopoly on the (legal) use of force, you are basically rejecting the authority and legitimacy of the state which operates the police force.  This insurrection is most unlikely to remove Trump from office (hence it is not a coup or a revolution), but the anti-Trump faction of the ruling elites have now clearly adopted the strategy of “worse is better” simply because they realize that these riots are probably their last chance to blame it all on Trump (and Russia, why not?!) and maybe, just maybe, defeat him in November.​..
​  ​Irrespective of whether either faction will succeed in instrumentalizing the riots, what we are seeing today is a systemic collapse of the US society.  That is not to say that the USA will disappear, not at all.  But just like it took the Soviet Union a decade or more to fully collapse (roughly from 1983-1993), it will take the US many years to fully crash.  And just like a New Russia eventually began taking form in 1999, there will be a New USA coming out of the current collapse.  Total and final collapses are very rare, mostly they just initiate a lengthy and potentially very dangerous transformation process, the outcome of which is almost impossible to predict.
​  ​However, just as the Russian people had to stop kidding themselves with silly dreams about “democracy” and had to tackle the real problems of Russia, so will the people of the USA have to find the courage to deal with their real problems, frontally and deliberately


​That was a Russian political and military analyst, who has lived in various parts of the US for 24 years. Here is analysis from a Serb. Analysis from those who have recently experienced systemic upheaval is useful, I think.​
The Color Revolution Is Finally Home
...American democracy is their undisputed model and should be implemented everywhere. However, nothing is going well there anymore as democracy has just exploded in America. In the literal sense of the word. That does not make me happy at all. I know that the American establishment, in addition to bombing half the world - including my country - has destroyed its own state. And all this under the slogan of the so-called struggle for human rights.

The erosion of American Democracy goes back to Harry Truman, and involves the CIA? Are you sure? 
Imperialism. We have become subjects of an empire, whose owners are invisible.
​...​JIC-502 claimed the Soviets would achieve military superiority and be able to launch war against the U.S. This proposed military buildup would increase the defense budget from $10 billion to $40 billion from 1950-53.
​  ​During this same period another security doctrine was drafted, titled “NSC-75: A Report to the NSC by the Executive Secretary on British Military Commitments”. The report concluded that if the British Empire collapsed, and Britain could no longer carry out these deployments, in defending the “free world” against the Soviets, the U.S. would not be able to carry out its current foreign policy, including NSC-68.
​  ​It was thus concluded in the report that it would be more cost-effective to aid Britain in saving its Empire!
If you were ever wondering why the CIA was constantly found paired with British Intelligence, starting from its very inception, in a series of coups in countries they had no reason to be in, now you know why.
​  ​The U.S. had gone from an explicit mission to end imperialism worldwide under Roosevelt, to actively supporting and upholding British colonies and vassal states under Truman!​ 
...
​  ​In summary, since the death of FDR there was a somewhat open battle between members of the intelligence community, which could be categorised as FDR loyalists vs Churchill loyalists (1). ...
​  ​From the moment Kissinger assumed the post of National Security Advisor to Nixon, he set out to centralize all intelligence estimates, diplomatic initiatives, and covert operations over figuratively and sometimes literal dead bodies of members of the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State Department and Congress.
According to John Ranelagh in his book The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA:
​  ​“Very early in the Nixon administration, it became clear that the President wanted Henry Kissinger to run intelligence for him and that the NSC staff in the White House under Kissinger would control the intelligence community. This was the beginning of a shift of power away from the CIA to a new center: the growing NSC staff.”
​  Kissinger would use the Watergate scandal, where the CIA was caught by Congress directly implicated in treasonous activities, as the impetus needed to form a new CIA, a secret branch away from the scrutiny of Congress.​..
​  ​In 1982, under the direction of Kissinger, President Reagan would sign NSDD 77 under Cold War duress, which would launch Project Democracy, a sardonic name for a Trojan Horse.​..​  
​  ​The structure of the NED ​(National Endowment forDemocracy) ​essentially functions as a private CIA political operations arm of an invisible, secret government beyond accountability and beyond the reach of the law.
​  ​Those who still had a degree of humanity as members of the intelligence community, and had survived the Kissinger purge, were simply kept in the dark about the cloak and dagger operations of the secret government branch​..​.
​  ​In a 1991 interview, then NED President David Ignatius arrogantly stated “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA…The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection”. ​...
 The Trilateral Commission was founded in the wake of Watergate and oil crisis of 1973. It was formed under the pretence of addressing the “crisis of democracy” and calling for a reshaping of political systems in order to form a more “stable” international order and “cooperative” relations among regions.
​  ​Its formation would be organised by Britain’s hand in America, the Council on Foreign Relations, (aka: the offspring of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the leading think tank for the British Crown).​..
​  ​It would mark the beginning of the end, introducing the policy, or more aptly “ideology”, for the need to instigate a “controlled disintegration of society.”
​  ​The Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental body, its members include elected and non-elected officials scattered throughout the world, ironically coming together to discuss how to address the “crisis of democracy” in the most undemocratic process possible. It is an organisation meant to uphold the “interests” of its members, regardless of who the people voted in.​..
 By the time of Jimmy Carter’s Administration, the majority of the government was being run by members of the Trilateral Commission. But who runs the Trilateral Commission?  ​...
​... In May 1981, Henry Kissinger who replaced Brzezinski as the head of the Trilateral Commission gave a speech at Chatham House describing his term as Secretary of State:
​ “[The British] became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never practiced between sovereign nations…In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American Department…It was symptomatic.” (emphasis added).
​  ​In his speech, Kissinger outlined the conflicting ideologies between Churchill and Roosevelt, and concluded with his support for the British worldview as the more superior of the two.​..​
​  ​In 1975 the CFR launched a public study of global policy titled the 1980’s Project. The general theme was “controlled disintegration” of the world economy, and the report did not attempt to hide the famine, social chaos, and death its policy would bring upon most of the world’s population.
​  ​The study explained that the world financial and economic system needed a complete overhaul according to which key sectors such as energy, credit allocation and food would be placed under the direction of a single global administration. The objective of this reorganization would be the replacement of nation states.
​  ​However, before this could occur, nation states would have to falter, or at least give off the impression of faltering.​..
​  Among the most effective strategies towards this end has been color revolutions, which just so happens to be the NED’s specialty practice and has included, to name a few, the nations of Yugoslavia, Georgia, Iraq, Lebanon, Burma, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Ukraine and the ongoing Hong Kong protests.

  CHAZ Occupier Suggests ‘Rounding Up All the White People’ into Work Brigades
“Keeping the white menace under control.”
https://summit.news/2020/06/15/chaz-occupier-suggests-rounding-up-all-the-white-people-into-work-brigades/  

​  ​Joe Biden, the presumptive presidential candidate for the United States 2020 election has declared that he does not support the call for defunding the police. Meanwhile, in an investigation it has been found that 99.64% of the Black Lives Matter’s ‘Defund the Police’ donations go to Joe Biden via ActBlue, a Democrat fundraising platform that is the top donor to ​the ​Biden​-​for​-​President campaign.  

Senile Joe Biden is a short-term placeholder. Kamala Harris ​has the look​ they want to ​command​ the new police state.
Amid George Floyd Protests, Democrats Are Choosing a “Tough on Crime” Ticket
Despite national demands for sweeping police reform, Biden appears likely to choose Kamala Harris, famous for her conservative, “lock them up” stance on crime, as his running mate.​ 
https://www.mintpressnews.com/police-reform-protests-biden-democrats-choosing-tough-on-crime-harris-running-mate/268552/

Don't pay any attention to American War Crimes! That's not the point we're making here.
Julian Assange indictment fails to mention WikiLeaks video that exposed US 'war crimes' in Iraq‘Shameful’ Collateral Murder footage shows Apache helicopter mowing down 11 civilians – including two Reuters journalists – in Baghdad 

Do Palestinians’ Lives Matter?
Not according to the UK Government which continues to cuddle and slobber over the rogue regime that terrorizes, dispossesses and slaughters them.

B​rother's Keeper​

Monday, June 15, 2020

Widespread Collaboration

Collaborators,

  If we are conquered and ruled when we are divided, might we be able to have some freedom in a unity born of cooperation and negotiation? 
  What are the relative costs of a negotiated cooperation compared to a subservient division under autocracy?
"Freedom isn't free", of course, but what might be the costs to us?
How would we begin the process of negotiating a cooperative society?
  Is it possible to revive social structures described in our laws as actually functioning entities?
Can they function at current scales, or would social groups need to be vastly smaller?
  Are there any gross disparities feeding the owners at the expense of citizens, which might be ended to free up resources for a cooperative social project?
  The "exorbitant privilege" of creation of currency, devolved to banks, private banks, but the system of fractional reserve lending, is the major support for the system of elite control which we now "enjoy". Not corrupt enough in it's very essence, it has had to become more corrupt through layering and leveraging of debts to keep flows of wealth open to the elite class, even as actual wealth has dried up throughout the "real economy".
  As the real economy involutes with the shove of coronavirus wave #1, there are competing-elite scrambles to take control of the physical levers of power, the military and police, as well as controlling food, fuel, water, electricity and information flows. The battles are mainly on Facebook, Twitter, radio and TV so far.
  I propose Public Banking in the public interest in this coming reset, but I got it from Ellen Brown. 
Here is Ellen Brown explaining banking-in -the-public-interest last November, before we were aware of the current crisis (which arguably began in September). "Green New Deal" was trending then.
  The Bank of North Dakota has helped keep the wealth local, rather than being extracted by globalists. Whoever first uses created money gains the most benefit. Whoever gets the interest from created money will inevitably own everything, if the system does not reset. We are entering another reset. It's important to stimulate local economies this time, not extract wealth and life from communities. If the interest goes to the public, to the local commons, supporting schools and infrastructure, then economy can thrive, rather than be bled dry by parasitism. 
  We would not need a whole lot of cooperation to make the move to public banking, with profits going to local and state governments. Reducing bonded debt on cities, counties and states would benefit their economic health and reduce their tax rates.

Back to the divisions that keep us controlled, today featuring Antifa agitators and the expected blowback. Thanks Eleni.
​  ​Antifa and its institutional allies are encouraging the aforementioned crime wave and urban terrorism in order to provoke a lethal response from the security services that could then increase the likelihood of a “race war” breaking out so as to destabilize the US government. The envisioned end game is to replace the country’s current capitalist system with an economic leftist one, even if the social fascists and many of their allies aren’t aware of it.  

​A National Guard Reservist describes his 12 days on the streets of Seattle, what was happening. This is important.
​  When I came home, I was exhausted, angry, and saddened by what I had experienced. I said I needed to share what happened, but I also said I needed some time to rest and reflect. My unit was activated for 12 days. We worked long hours but we continued to stay dedicated to the state and the mission. I can’t stop that now. I’ve been up all night, trying my best to put into words what I experienced and observed.

Torching Wendy's at night for race-war. Who did it?  ($10,000 to you, if you know and can tell police.)
 ​ ​"Look at the white girl trying to set s*** on fire...look at that white girl trying to burn down a Wendy's," the anonymous camera man can be heard saying.
"This wasn't us," he added, referring to BLM. "This wasn't us!".
​  ​As the fire grew, fears mounted that it could ignite a neighboring gas station, but by midnight the fire had burned out without spreading further.


​View of American riots from France, Thanks Eleni:​ (Who is funding Antifa and other agitators? Who profits? How?)
​  ​Anti-racism protests in the United States have rapidly evolved into a promotion of the ideas championed by the Democratic Party. It was no longer a question of fighting for equality in law for all or challenging the prejudices of certain police officers, but of reopening a cultural conflict at the risk of a new Civil War.​..​  
​  ​Let us go back to the history of the United States to see where the sides are. Populist President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) vetoed the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) established by Alexander Hamilton, one of the fathers of the Constitution, who favoured federalism because he was violently opposed to democracy. Just as Jackson’s disciple, Donald Trump, is today in opposition to the Fed.
​  Twenty years after Jackson, came the "Civil War" to which today’s protesters all refer. According to them, it pitted a slave South against a humanist North. The movement that began with a racist news item (the lynching of black George Flyod by a white policeman from Minneapolis) continues today with the destruction of statues of southern generals, including Robert Lee. Actions of this type had already taken place in 2017 [4], but this time they are gaining momentum and governors from the Democratic Party are participating.
​  ​However, this narrative does not correspond at all to reality: at the beginning of the Civil War, both sides were slavers, and at the end, both sides were anti-slavers. The end of slavery owes nothing to the abolitionists and everything to the need for both sides to enlist new soldiers.​  ​The Civil War pitted a rich, Catholic, agricultural South against a Protestant, industrial North aspiring to make a fortune. It crystallized around the issue of customs duties which the South believed should be set by the federal states, but which the North intended to abolish between the federal states and have the federal government determine.
​  ​Therefore, in debunking the Southern symbols, the current demonstrators are not attacking the remnants of slavery, but denouncing the Southern vision of the Union. It was particularly unfair to attack General Lee, who had put an end to the Civil War by refusing to pursue it with guerrilla warfare from the mountains and by choosing national unity. In any case, these degradations effectively pave the way for a fourth Anglo-Saxon civil war.
​  ​Today the notions of South and North no longer correspond to geographical realities: it would rather be Dallas against New York and Los Angeles.


​Veterans Today​ claims to have intel that Donald Trump had a stroke, or maybe Parkinson's disease. 
(Yeah, maybe he drank too damned much Diet Coke, too.) 
They claim that he lost it, and has been compartmentalized within his own administration.  
(I have to discount this as politically motivated, since they assert elsewhere that Joe Biden is not senile, because he can jog a block in a video.) 
Unsteadiness descending a long ramp and using left hand to steady right hand and water glass could be from various neurological disorders, which we all don't want.

Neil Howe: "Our system is near the breaking point"
​ ​"Institutions are not in control, political leaders are not in control, and remember one essential dynamic that I talk about in The Fourth Turning was how senior generations of leaders having had no experience of crisis, no experience of building and maintaining authority and strong institutions, are going to be completely at sea...
...and eventually what you need is an end-run by an entirely new group, or new movement to take control and be energized by a young generation moving in... and I see that happening early in this decade."

The real economic catastrophe hasn't hit yet. Just wait for August (when all those short term measures end and all those debts are suddenly due, and unpayable, and it all has to be dealt with.)

We can pay for Medicare for All by eliminating private health insurance. Sure, but it's also going to destroy a massive middle class compliance-jobs program. Who will employ those workers? I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I agree with it, but huge displacements are destabilizing, and this country is politically unstable, already. Let's have a good plan.

Finally, some good news:
 Jay Townley, who analyzes cycling industry trends at Human Powered Solutions, said: “People quite frankly have panicked, and they’re buying bikes like toilet paper.”

About 10 years late the European Court of Human Rights declares that French people DO have the right to bo​y​cott Israel for illegal, genocidal policies against Palestinian people in their native (​illegally-​occupie​d-by-Israel​) land.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that France violated the rights of 11 pro-Palestinian activists when it convicted them for campaigning against Israeli goods, and has ordered the government to pay damages.  

​This is eminently reasonable, and gives up a lot that has long been agreed by the UN.
Palestine says to declare statehood on 1967 borders if Israel annexes West Bank lands

Proper analysis of widespread mask use reveals flaws in arguments against it. Public masking is cheap, helps dramatically reduce viral spread, and gives great bang-for-the-buck in public health. 
  I like this point: ignoring the Non-Aggression Principle by pseudolibertarians (masks are also to protect others from you; it’s a multiplicative process: every person you infect will infect others).

Coronavirus Update: 
Vitamin-D: still good. High Fructose Corn Syrup: very bad. Thanks Marjorie. 

Non-aggressor

(pictured with Mrs. Non-aggressor at Yoakum vegetable and avocado estate)

Saturday, June 13, 2020

Wallowing In Outrage

Friendly Collaborators​,​

​  ​A former advisor to Steve Jobs warns that Facebook is “destroying the very fabric of human relationships” by making its users become addicted to anger.
​  ​During a question and answer session at the 2020 CogX conference, Joanna Hoffman was asked about the cult of leadership within Silicon Valley.
​  ​“As I look at Facebook, for example, I keep thinking are they really that ignorant or is this motivated by something … darker than what appears?” she said.
​  ​Hoffman went on to accuse Facebook of “destroying the very fabric of democracy, destroying the very fabric of human relationships and peddling in an addictive drug called anger.”
​  ​“You know it’s just like tobacco, it’s no different than the opioids,” she added. “We know anger is addictive, we know we can attract people to our platform and get engagement if we get them pissed off enough. So therefore what, we should capitalize on that each and every time?”


​Layer after layer of proof-of-origin exists in the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2. It's a lab creation. 
Numerous "gain of function" mechanisms give this virus enhanced infectivity.
COVID-19 virus has properties that have never been found in nature before

Will protests spread the coronavirus more than beach parties? Bars are still more effective, I suspect.
​  ​Trevor Bedford, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, publicly provided his rough estimate on the impact of protests. In a series of tweets, Bedford said he expects the protests to increase the number of infections in the United States by 3 percent to 6 percent per day. At this point in the pandemic, that would likely mean adding more than 10, but less than 100, deaths per day, he estimated.
​  ​Complicating matters is the fact that the unique elements of protests—shouting, tear gas, pepper spray, and closely packed jails—will also increase transmission potential, disease modelers say. COVID-19 disproportionately affects people of color.


​Dennis Meadows, an original Author of The Limits To Growth, points out that pandemics happen regularly, but the economic system growing exponentially continues to impair resilience of natural support systems (like oceans, forests, soil microbes and our bodies)​ as resource depletion requires higher production efficiencies. Higher efficiency systems are inherently more fragile to shocks.
Limits to Growth and the COVID-19 epidemic

Coronavirus - How A German City Proved That Wearing Masks Works​   (Note: Germans , YMMV)
​  ​On April 6 the German city of Jena with a population of 110,000 people ordered everyone to wear a mask in all publicsettings. The announcement of the order was made a week earlier and was followed by a local awareness campaign - "Jena wears mask!"
​  ​No other city in Germany did this at the time. The states of Germany only ordered mandatory mask wearing between April 22 and 26.
​  ​For 20 days Jena was different than the rest of the country but experienced the same epidemic. That made it possible to test the effect the mask order had on the number of new cases in Jena.​..

​  At the beginning of the pandemic in Germany the synthetic city and Jena had similar developments. But ten days after the announcement of the order and four days after its mandatory implementation the case numbers in Jena dropped away from those of the comparison city.

​More support for universal face mask use​. 
(This would be most important in public indoor venues, not open spaces with low population density. It's the standing clouds of viral particles building up in the air that a lot of people breathe, which really put a multiplier on the super-spreader events, which are so important.)

Most Americans, including Republicans, support sweeping Democratic police reform proposals
Some states have embraced online voting. It's a huge risk.
People’s phones, tablets and computers are vulnerable to hackers. Securing the internet could take a decade or more. But some states are plowing ahead anyway.

​Ban of highest tech chips, including those made outside the US, with American equipment, is a short term battle in a long trade war.​ There are so many moving parts, and the future will not match any one model.
​  ​“Some question whether the U.S. can enforce the sale ban in a complex industry scattered worldwide. Yet the success of U.S. sanctions against Iran highlights Washington’s ability to monitor global transactions when it is a high priority. Thanks to America’s leading position in semiconductors going back to the 20th century, U.S. law is still a gatekeeper to the most sophisticated microchips, and Washington can likely block China from achieving technological parity with the U.S. – for now.”
​  ​Earlier this year the Defense Department intervened to block the same Commerce Department proposal that the administration adopted in May. The risks to American pre-eminence are enormous. American leadership in semiconductor manufacturing is already a thing of the past in lithography, the most difficult part of the production process, and it is slipping elsewhere.
​  ​The chip ban gives the world an enormous incentive to circumvent the US, raising the risk that the US rather than China will be left without a chair when the music stops.

https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/how-huawei-can-work-around-us-chip-ban/ 

​When corporate interests control the commons, and the political system, they destroy the commons, and the commoners, and their communities. Case in point, forests in Washington State.
​Commoner​

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Pandemic In Sunlight

Taking Routine Precautions,

Vitamin-D Deficiency, Race and Coronavirus Mortality.
Marjorie sends this 20 minute medical lecture from Roger Seheult MD.
Just take 5000 units per day of vitamin-D3, or 10,000 unite a day for a month or two if you don't already take it and don't get much sun. 

Gil Tverberg at Our Finite World looks at links between declining-cheap-energy, human mass violence and coronavirus. She also advocates vitamin-D (NOT politically correct!)
[6] The violent demonstrations represent an effort to try to push the problems related to the shortfall in energy, and the goods and services that energy can provide, away from the protest groups, toward other segments of the economy.
In an ideal world:
(a) Jobs that pay well would be available to all.
(b) Governments would be able to afford to provide a wide range of services to all, including free health care for all and reimbursement for time off from work for being sick. They would also be able to provide adequate pensions for the elderly and low cost public transit.
(c) Police would treat all citizens well. No group would be so poor that a life of crime would seem to be a solution.
As indicated in Section [2], back in 2019, before COVID-19 hit, protests were already starting because of low commodity prices and the indirect impacts of low commodity prices. One reason why governments were so eager to adopt shutdowns is the fact that when people were required to stay inside because of COVID-19, the problem of protests could be stopped.


​CHAZ, Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, has existed as such since Tuesday.​ Birth pangs...

Somebody steps up to stop the graffitti:
Soundcloud rapper Raz Simone and his entourage have claimed the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) as their territory - and have already been filmed regulating when a man wouldn't stop spraying graffiti over an urban art installation, telling him "We are the police of this community now!"

​Improvising Arrangements​

Two little fawns born on our front yard Saturday just before dawn


Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Hanging Together

Members of Society,

  The economic crisis now underway is a seemingly infinite string of stressful moments, chained forever into the future, without apparent end. We instinctively recoil from each moment, wanting it to go away, but more stressful moments just keep being there, without respite.
  Everybody had some lockdown, which was completely rejected by many, but that rejection cannot likely withstand the massive second-wave. I expect the massive second wave of infections will come this winter, after virus spreads its seeds throughout populations in the sunny summer months, when viruses don't usually hit people as hard. 
  That is my speculation. I may well be wrong. My speculation won't be exactly right, in any case, and I will live with cognitive dissonance stress night and day. I'll have plenty of company.
  Our owners and masters are in their own power struggle against each other, disagreeing who gets to own what, and how society will proceed into times of less oil, less copper, less lithium, less well-water and so on. They are not just in two groups, I think, but many selfish sides, and none is desperate end exhausted enough to capitulate in the struggle for ownership and power. They are the most insulated from effects of the power struggle caused by expanding debts and contracting real wealth and resources. NONE of them is considering class-capitulation, redistributing most of the "assets" to lower classes, like workers, managers and beggars. Rent collection from "assets" is Their Wealth, Their Power.
 We have to build and work our own support systems. We will soon need them for our survival.

Gilad Atzmon:
​  ​Federal data shows that the nation faces a 13.3 percent unemployment rate. The fortunes of U.S. billionaires increased by $565 billion between March 18 and June 4 while the same 11-week period also saw 42.6 million Americans filing jobless claims. The results are devastating, if hardly a news item: while the American people are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer.
  ​One would have thought that the American Left and progressive political institutions would be the first to be alarmed by these developments. We tend to believe that tempering the rich and their greed, caring for working people and fighting for equal opportunities and justice in general are the Left’s prime concerns.
​  ​The American reality,  however, suggests the opposite. Instead of uniting us in a fierce battle against Wall Street and its broad daylight robbery of what is left of American wealth, the American Left is investing its last drops of  political energy in a ‘race war.’ Instead of committing to the Left’s key ideological values, namely: class struggle that unites us into one angry fist of resistance against this theft and discrimination, and without regard to our race, gender, or sexual orientation, the American Left makes us fight each other.
  ​The  silence of the Left on the current Wall Street “wealth transfers” is hardly an accident.  American Left and Progressive institutions are supported financially and by Wall Street and global financiers. This funding means that, in practice, the American Left  operates as a controlled opposition. It maintains its relevance by sustaining social and racial tensions that draw attention away from Wall Street and its crimes. The so called ‘Left’ is also reluctant to point at  Wall Street and its current theft,  as such criticism, however legitimate,  would immediately be censured as ‘antisemitic’ by the Jewish institutions that have appointed themselves to police Western public discourse.


COVID-19, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter: The Battle for Control of the Internet, Professor Anthony Hall​
​  ​Many observers have noted that the time through which we are living now seems unprecedented. We are all experiencing an amazing convergence of so many monumental developments that combine into a fast-moving narrative. In recent days the focus suddenly shifted from COVID-19 and compulsory vaccines to insurrection and anarchy from within. Suddenly the vaccine czar, Bill Gates, has been swept from the center stage of current events. Suddenly multi-billionaire Gates has been upstaged by multi-billionaire George Soros.
​  ​What is going on? What are the themes of continuity and disjuncture that characterize the strange and consequential sequence of events? What lies up ahead as we leave behind, probably forever, many familiar patterns of life. It seems that everything entered a period of ultra flux beginning in the opening days of 2020 with a US drone strike that martyred General Soleimani.
​  ​One of the unifying themes I seek to emphasize here is the importance of the Internet and the many media that feed into it as the most influential shaper of current events. When are we being played by experts in psyops and deception and when are we dealing with spontaneous developments that could not have been planned or spun to advance predetermined political agendas? What is the role of the Internet?
​  ​Who if anyone is in charge of what does or doesn't get covered on the Internet? Whose version of events will be highlighted and corroborated and thus be allowed to prevail as authoritative? When does a whistleblower become a conspiracy theorist? How does it happen that narratives convenient to advance the agendas of the rich and powerful, of the status quo, so often become reified as if they are true?

​The Illusion of A Rapid US Recovery, James Galbreath​
​  ​The United States has built an economy based on global demand for advanced goods, consumer demand for frills, and ever-growing household and business debts. This economy was in many ways prosperous, and it provided jobs and incomes to many millions. Yet it was a house of cards, and COVID-19 has blown it down.​..​  
​  ​Today, the US produces for the world, mainly advanced investment goods and services, in sectors such as aerospace, information technology, arms, oilfield services, and finance. And it imports far more consumer goods, such as clothing, electronics, cars, and car parts, than it did a half-century ago.
​  ​And whereas cars, televisions, and household appliances drove US consumer demand in the 1960s, a much larger share of domestic spending today goes (or went) to restaurants, bars, hotels, resorts, gyms, salons, coffee shops, and tattoo parlors, as well as college tuition and doctor’s visits. Tens of millions of Americans work in these sectors.
​  ​Finally, American household spending in the 1960s was powered by rising wages and growing home equity. But wages have been largely stagnant since at least 2000, and spending increases since 2010 were powered by rising personal and corporate debts. House values are now stagnant at best, and will likely fall in the months ahead.​..
​  America’s economic plight is structural. It is not simply the consequence of Trump’s incompetence or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s poor political strategy. It reflects systemic changes over 50 years that have created an economy based on global demand for advanced goods, consumer demand for frills, and ever-growing household and business debts. This economy was in many ways prosperous, and it provided jobs and incomes to many millions. Yet it was a house of cards, and COVID-19 has blown it down.
​  ​“Reopen America” is therefore an economic and political fantasy. Incumbent politicians crave a cheery growth rebound, and the depth of the collapse makes possible some attractive short-term numbers. But taking them seriously will merely set the stage for a new round of disillusion. As nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality show, disillusion is America’s one big growth sector right now.  

​There's a Crisis in US Capitalism​  ("Capitalism" doesn't mean what it used to mean, either.)
​  ​Capitalism has always had business cycles. The capitalist enterprises that produce goods and services are distinctively organized around the conflicted relationship of employer and employees and the competitive relationship of markets. These central relationships of capitalism together generate cyclical instability. Wherever capitalism became a society’s economic system over the last three centuries, business cycles recurred every four to seven years. Capitalism has mechanisms to survive its cycles, but they are painful, especially when employers fire employees. Widespread pain (unemployment, bankruptcies, disrupted public finances, etc.) brought the label “crisis” to capitalism’s cyclical downturns. Only on special occasions, and rarely, did the cyclical crises in capitalism become crises of capitalism as a system. That has usually required other non-economic problems (political, cultural, and/or natural) to reach crescendo peaks around the same time as a cyclical economic downturn. Today is a time of crisis both in and of U.S. capitalism.
​  ​U.S. economic policy now focuses on what is already the worst business cycle downturn since the 1929 crash. As data accumulate, it may well prove to be the worst in global capitalism’s entire history. Forty million jobless U.S. workers find incomes lost, savings disappearing and over-indebted family finances worsening.
​  ​Today’s mass unemployment also threatens those still employed, the remaining 120 million members of the U.S. labor force. Mass unemployment always invites employers to cut wages, benefits and working conditions​.


Asymptomatic or minimally-symptomatic spread of coronavirus seems to be extremely common among young, healthy people.​ Most of these guys had not been "sick".​
​  ​A U.S. Navy investigation into the spread of the coronavirus aboard the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier has found that about 60 percent of the roughly 400 sailors tested had antibodies for the virus, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday. 

​That's my warning, but what is the alternative? Take vitamin-D, please; 5000 units per day.​ Prepare yourself.
​  ​Coronavirus cases in the United States have been slowly ticking up since the Memorial Day holiday, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The coronavirus has now infected nearly 2 million people in the U.S. and has killed at least 111,014, according to Hopkins data.
​  ​Public health specialists warn that a slow burn of infection through the summer could lead to a massive resurgence this fall.


​Public Health Guy​