As usual, use this for topics unrelated to recent posts. Since the blog has been all Covid, all the time this last week, this is a good place to discuss other issues.
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Chuck Mire
This is a great set of videos that really explains network theory for the lay person – especially Episode One which illustrates the good, the bad and the ugly of Facebook (“Fakebook”), Twitter and other social networks.
“A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes”
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 1 – “Disruption” | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnA3WS5iYN0
With the help of experts in network theory and precedents from history, Ferguson argues that the printing press had similar consequences for 16th-and 17th-century Europe as the personal computer and the Internet have for the world since the 20th century, leading to polarization and the dissemination of fake news.
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 2 – “Winner Takes All” | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMisW1JKjp0
Looking at the history of the Victorian telegraph pioneers and rival computer networks. Host Niall Ferguson tells the story of how a decentralized, not-for-profit worldwide web shape-shifted to become a highly profitable network controlled by a tiny elite selling our attention for billions of dollars to the world’s advertisers.
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 3 – “Networld War” | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYlBnmxMZcQ
Host Niall Ferguson focuses on the geopolitics of our interconnected world. Looking at the fight against terrorist networks in Iraq, Russian attempts to divide Americans through social media and the rise of an Internet-powered surveillance state in China, Ferguson shows how our democracies are under threat from outside forces that seek to weaponize the social networks that we invented. He warns of a coming “networld war” that the West may not win.
Chuck Mire
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/networld/
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 1 – “Disruption” | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnA3WS5iYN0
With the help of experts in network theory and precedents from history, Ferguson argues that the printing press had similar consequences for 16th-and 17th-century Europe as the personal computer and the Internet have for the world since the 20th century, leading to polarization and the dissemination of fake news.
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 2 – “Winner Takes All” | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMisW1JKjp0
Looking at the history of the Victorian telegraph pioneers and rival computer networks. Host Niall Ferguson tells the story of how a decentralized, not-for-profit worldwide web shape-shifted to become a highly profitable network controlled by a tiny elite selling our attention for billions of dollars to the world’s advertisers.
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 3 – “Networld War” | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYlBnmxMZcQ
Host Niall Ferguson focuses on the geopolitics of our interconnected world. Looking at the fight against terrorist networks in Iraq, Russian attempts to divide Americans through social media and the rise of an Internet-powered surveillance state in China, Ferguson shows how our democracies are under threat from outside forces that seek to weaponize the social networks that we invented. He warns of a coming “networld war” that the West may not win.
Barry Fay
The ZACHARIUS BRACISZEWICZ article about Trump being forced to leave is one of the most ridiculous posts that has ever appeared on this site. Predicting the future is always a fool´s game, and predicting a ridiculous scenario even moreso. Mr. BRACISZEWICZ, contact me if you have the nerve to make a wager on any of your predictions happening.
Ten Bears
Predicting the future is always a fool´s game …
I wish I could chuckle like Jabba the Hutt.
Tis’ why those cursed with The Gift, the niall, are loath to use it. On-the-other-hand, physics is everything, everything is physics: ‘wheels coming off’ implies momentum, momentum implying an anticipation as to where the wheels might go. Gambling too is a fool’s game, though right now I would be as willing to wager as not neither Sleepy Joe nor Our Very Own Tea Pot Dictator will be on the ticket. Or, for that matter, whither or no there will be a ticket.
Or laugh as uproariously as a drunken Woten.
Ché Pasa
To hell with the naysayers.
What comes after the pandemic? Would there be any significant change or will we be locked forever on the spiral of death and destruction we’ve been on for decades? Will it ever be possible to build a better future?
At this point, “politics” is all but irrelevant. The chaos has its own priority, and no one is in control. But that will change in due time, by no schedule we demand or set.
What will the US and the world look like afterwards?
Astrid
Hmmm, that’s pretty hard to do. All current events are now directly tied to CV.
I am curious about people’s long term survival strategy. The two big potential saviors from CV were warm weather and effective therapy, but neither looks likely to deliver anytime soon.
So how do you survived in a country in indefinite voluntary or involuntary lockdown, with an incompetent national government that think it’s only job is to safeguard Wall Street. What comes next in a country with extremely frayed social fabric, high gun ownership, and frankly high incidents of sociopathic behavior at the best of times?
Jace
We have a rifle, shotgun and pistol in our home, Astrid. It has never occurred to the three varying degrees of leftists who live here to rampage, harm our neighbors or strangers or murder anyone, in times of plague or otherwise.
It’s not weapons. It’s who; and why they have them. High gun ownership in NNE hasn’t translated to gun crime. High gun ownership by Black Panthers didn’t translate to gun crime.
The problem is poverty, on the one hand. And, racist religious nationalism on the other.
highrpm
@jace,
i’m a reasonably fair-mined person, like most. i.e., aware that nature has designed into the humanoids an instinctual ability to assess a situation and judge who’s the predator and who’s the prey. and i don’t live in the hollywood hills, although i appreciate those hills’ beauty and would love to camp there: too beautiful to wreck with civilization. so i live in the inner city. and like reading kunstler. and market-ticker. and i ride used bikes. and thieves have taken 3-1/2 of them from me in 3 years. all locked. now i walk. i’m a potential target of assault, walking regular routes, alone, with my signature empty backpack one way and full backpack on the return. hey, predators are observant. they note & catalog telltale signs. synchronicity is a strike factor. and i bought a 15 oz hammerless s&w that i can carry in my pants pocket. i’ve yet to carry the thing. maybe after suffering some mental & bodily injuries, i’ll change my mind.
scruff
This pandemic does not appear to me to be having enough of a dramatic effect to result in significant change. I don’t think that means that we’re “locked forever” into any particular behavioral pattern, but I do think it means we’d need a lot more pain to motivate the change.
S Brennan
I think calling it a “lock-down” is counter productive, the government, national, state, local are asking people to stay at home to buy time. This is a test of subordinating one’s personal freedom for the good of society, not a attempt to restore prison control.
We should separate reasonable demands of the larger society from the unreasonable demands of Wall/K street and congress’s 2,000 Billion* dollar bipartisan 96-0 extortion bill that benefits [96%] corporate malefactors and will allow SSI to be gutted.
BTW, Bernie’s grandstanding in the senate was disgusting, the bill was already going to pass…sans any last minute extra-cruel amendments. But, our nation’s hopelessly ineffectual donkey just needed to bray loudly for the benifet of his cult followers, Bernie’s performance was worthy of Jim Jones in his Oakland days.
Dude #1: “oh did you see that…Bernie really stood up for US”
Dude #2: “yeah he did…smacked down an amendment with no chance…YEAH BERNIE[!!!]”
Dude #1: “Bernie’s so cool, always loses so gracefully, I’d vote for him over FDR, yeah I would”
Trinity
A little context always provides perspective.
History has shown that so-called Western Civ (no relation to civility) has endured repeated cycles of boom and bust, oligarchies and uprisings, cause and effect, since the Romans beat the Greeks for supremacy and ended debt jubilee forever.
Also, there are many more problems than COVID, which relatively speaking is a short term problem. The medium term problem is unrestrained capitalism and the oligarchy, and long term is climate change.
The best predictor of the future is the past, so our future is merely more of the same, boom and bust, oligarchies and uprisings, devastation from climate change. There are two options to end these cycles, as I see it. One is to identify and kill every narcissist and sociopath born. To me they aren\’t human, they are something else. I define a human as Homo sapiens with a conscience, and research has shown that sociopaths have no conscience and narcissists ignore theirs due to other pressing needs (for attention, etc.)
The other option is to create a culture that recognizes we are all dependent on each other and Mother Nature, that every life matters, present or future, which effectively reduces impacts from born narcissists. This culture doesn\’t have a supreme leader but instead leadership changes as the context/problem changes. The person in charge being the one best able to handle the problem at hand, abdicating when the problem or issue is resolved (see Vine Deloria Jr.). You can see how this would effectively prevent power concentrating in the hands of the few most of the time, which is really the main problem leading to all the other problems I\’ve mentioned.
Imagine if you will having local leadership that changes as the context changes. Not academics who have little to no practical experience, but real people trained and constantly preparing to lead when necessary. Imagine if you will your little community located at a mid-latitude having a winter leader and a summer leader, both excelling at handling the problems related to the changing of the seasons. Imagine a culture in which we don\’t pretend there isnt any difference.
For a peek at what the world would look like if the oligarchs find a way to live forever, see Altered Carbon on Amazon Prime.
Stirling S Newberry
30,299 deaths and we have not hit the inflection point.
StewartM
S Brennan
What other options did Bernie have, or is this just another one of your diatribes against him for not doing the impossible?
Z
The reason that the working class subjects won’t get any rent moratorium or any other such thing in the U.S. that other countries are providing for their citizens is that in the U.S. the working class’s finances aren’t strongly tied to our ownership class’s wealth. They aren’t worried about us making our monthly payments.
They got the Fed.
Z
bruce wilder
Host Niall Ferguson focuses on the geopolitics of our interconnected world. Looking at the fight against terrorist networks in Iraq, Russian attempts to divide Americans through social media and the rise of an Internet-powered surveillance state in China, Ferguson shows how our democracies are under threat from outside forces that seek to weaponize the social networks that we invented. He warns of a coming “networld war” that the West may not win.
“our democracies” — that Niall is a wit, he is. LOL
Jace
highrpm, we live in a state w/o carry or concealed carry licenses. If you can buy it, you can carry it. Schools, some public accoms, churches have recognized municipal/property bans but the local etiquette mitigates strongly against concealed carry.
All that as preface.
Cannot imagine taking weapons out of the house, or on the trail, though one of the weapons is specifically a last, worst case bear stopper.
Willy
I’ve found that born sociopaths (psychopaths) have one thing in common: the intrinsic enjoyment of ruining others.
Normal people have all the same power and control impulses. But they’re usually held in check by their own innate/learned “agreeableness” social emotions. Since normals can empathize what the other might experience they don’t do the dirty deed unless they can rationalize that the other deserves it somehow (like invading Iraq).
Born sociopaths have none of that. They just do the deed because the exercise of power feels good. Any public “rationalization“ is always a ruse to get out of the spotlight of the scrutiny of normals because sociopaths know that they’re vastly outnumbered. Most normals don’t know who or what they are, this jumbled confusion of sociopathic and empathic emotions and defense mechanisms. But in my experience sociopaths are fully aware. They don’t want the rest of us to know because just as guerrilla warfare is far more effective than honorable combat, hiding in plain sight is easier than running around wearing a black cape with a sinister snicker.
Their real nature emerges when they have consolidated enough power that limits consequences for their behaviors. Power doesn’t necessarily always corrupt. Sometimes it may have always been corrupt. But in the meantime, sociopaths lie. A lot. Sociopaths are driven to live life as they please. And as one doesn’t have to imagine, real problems happen when they acquire power.
Karl Marx theorized that since humans successfully evolved in communistic tribal societies that we must therefore be a communistic species. But IMHO, he ignored the part where born sociopaths are far more easily and quickly identified within small communistic tribal societies to be removed or disempowered so that the successful tribe survives to carry their genetics forward. It’s much harder to do this in massive population and technological societies.
As a side note, virtually every conservative of whatever stripe who I’ve ever met seems either completely oblivious to this reality, or believes that God will guide the sociopath, or that nothing can ever be done about sociopaths without ruining civil society.
Z
The Jewish Financial Underworld, through all of their maneuverings last week, cut the ties between the working class’ ability to pay their rent/mortgages and the financial stability of the real estate ownership class and the markets.
Through that bill and the Fed they broke that. Schumer, Mnuchin, and Fink. Better to paper over it with their Fed and take care of their own than spoil their subjects into thinking that they might have any collective power over them.
Here’s your 1200. Work it out. Shut door in face.
Z
jump
I do not think that I have read such absolute gibberish in a comment thread on this site before.
Get a grip on yourselves. It is going to be nasty but we do not have to be nasty to each other (not just on this site). Alone you will not survive.
Everyone is feeling the stress (domestic violence is up) but we need to reach out to ask or give help to anyone. This is not partisan.
Stirling S Newberry
Actually they are connected through rent. They need liquidity coming in to balance out the liquidity that they send out. Rent is one of the few ways to do that.
Stirling S Newberry
It will be interesting to know the real numbers. Several nations are lying. We can see it from orbit.
Chiron
Dear Z, there is no “Jewish financial underworld” like there is no Deep State, everything is happening in YOUR FACE. Trump is a creature of the “NY establishment” and we all know what that means, who the Trump family serves, who Ivanka is married to, who is giving orders in the White House is Jared Kushner and the Evangelicals are the new useful idiots for the Tribe since they throwed the Left under the bus for thinking Palestinians are humans too.
The Dems will do their best for re-elect Trump since most of their donor money comes from the Tribe who still likes some milquetoast Liberalism in the USA but the most brutal tribal fascism back in their true homeland.
highrpm
@jump,
really? interesting this gibberish should be spewing today, as you read it. i was sitting down for a nice early evening dinner with a fellow tenant, and a guy passes by in front of her living room window. uncommon as our co-op has sidewalks. she gets up from the table and looks out her bedroom window and he’s pulling up decorative trellises that we entrwined with clemantis vines. gee, kiss $20+/trellis goodbye, along with the greater cost and value of years of growth of the poor victim clemantis he broke and yanked out of the ground. (their sentient beings, too. they have feelings.) i take my life in my hands and go outside and confront him. he’s holding an 8′ metal shepards staff flower pot hanger in his hand. i must make a quick call. order him to put my property down and leave, at risk of him swinging the metal staff at me. or try to kindly deflect the confrontation, as best i can, and hope for the best. i choose to confront with a voice a authority, my personal safety be damned.
well, here i am reporting the confrontation. he backed off. nonsense, gibberish, comments, uh? rather be kind to the poor? @jump, i’ll sell you my stock in this co-op at a good price. the hoa’s here are only $200/mon. of course, buyers must pass the vetting process.
you live comfortably in the dream world inside you head. religious dogma. not hard empirical facts.
Mark Pontin
Re. Niall Ferguson, let me echo Bruce Wilder.
Take Ferguson with a large much salt. He’s British, and he was and remains a zealous Thatcherite such as you won’t even find in the current government over there in Borislavia. Yes, he’s smart (or used to be) and interesting, but he himself has said he’s “a fully paid-up member of the neo-imperialist gang”
Early in his career, Ferguson did two books on the history of the Rothschilds that used then-novel analytical techniques with computer databases — alongside the fact that he was the first historian allowed access to the Rothschilds’ records! — to do some remarkable work that established his career. The two books — published as one 12,00 page volume in the UK — were something I had to plow through for a paid review for a magazine, and they opened my mind to a lot of historical facts about the relationship between capital, power, and technology in the West.
That big Rothschilds’ history then earned Ferguson positions at fancy universities — Ivy League here, Oxbridge level back home — and at Rightist think tanks. When I last looked at what he was doing, it was jingoistic stuff like EMPIRE: HOW BRITAIN MADE THE MODERN WORLD and CIVILISATION: THE WEST AND THE REST.
His Rothschild history is absolutely worth looking at, however.
The elevator pitch on that is, essentially, the Rothschilds were Wellington’s paymasters and intelligence service during the Napoleonic Wars. Then, once Britain had won and dominated the European powers, then the Rothschilds swung into action to underwrite the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the modern world was created.
The two books are THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD: VOLUME 1: MONEY’S PROPHETS: 1798-1848 and THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD: VOLUME 2: THE WORLD’S BANKER, 1849-1999.
Mark Pontin
Willy wrote: “Born sociopaths are far more easily and quickly identified within small communistic tribal societies to be removed or disempowered so that the successful tribe survives to carry their genetics forward. It’s much harder to do this in massive population and technological societies.”
Interesting thesis, but probably naive.
Sociopaths can clearly flourish in small groups that are the size of Charles Manson’s family, too.
Still, there must be differences between the options and constraints for sociopaths in small societies and those in big ones. Beyond the obvious fact that a sociopath heading an empire can do far more harm than one heading a biker gang.
Zachary Smith
At the Naked Capitalism site today was a link which was somewhat troubling.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035421
Short story: back when researchers were examining vaccines developed for another coronavirus (SARS) they found that while these gave protection against the disease, they caused really ugly side effects from the mere exposure to the virus within the vaccinated patients. A more recent survey of that experience in somewhat easier to read language is here:
https://www.contagionlive.com/news/can-we-beat-sarscov2-lessons-from-other-coronaviruses
I’d guess there are many efforts going on in the race to discover a useful vaccine. Caveat 1 suggest it had best be a “cocktail” like the current flu vaccines – a blend to catch as many mutations of the virus as possible. The second part says every single one of them had better be carefully checked for that “kickback” effect. That would be kind of like putting on a bulletproof vest, but one which caused you to become very sick from an allergy to the materials they made it from.
I think we’d better plan to hunker down for a longer than expected time. If they can ever get us a very cheap and fast virus test, we could sort out the “clean” from the “infected” individual by testing everybody. Often! Let the “cleans” go about their business, and keep the sickies in a treatment facility for the time needed. IMO there is no other realistic prospect for getting things up and running again.
Stirling S Newberry
I second The House of Rothschild, both volumes are good.
I also second that the author is a Thatcherite, which is trying, to say the least.
Zachary Smith
It Is A Time Of Crisis And U.S. Foreign Policy Is Becoming Unhinged
Trump is lazy, and in addition to that, has the attention span of a fruit fly. So all indications are that he has given Foreign Policy to the fat **** Pompeo. Pompeo is going to see this as the chance of a lifetime, and as the link says, the US is in a terrible way these days in terms of the Military Forces. Two aircraft carriers are infested with coronavirus, and won’t be a bit useful for a good while. So if the End Timer Pompeo can stir something up, Trump would either back down, or resort to nuclear weapons. Don’t forget those tiny nukes they made especially for President Hillary. Kicking Jesus in the heinie and getting that Second Coming started means starting some kind of conflagration in the Middle East. Har Megiddo, the hill at Megiddo gets the English name of Armageddon. Blow That Trumpet!
The First of the Four Horsemen is already here. Pestilence = coronavirus.
The Second is the necessary War. Rocket attack on the pissant state? Some kind of false flag on a US base? I’m sure the Fat One will think of something.
The Third is Famine. Maybe some more Pestilence directed at the food supply. (China! Russia! Iran!) Or another bad weather year. Possibly social breakdown from cornavirus causing failure of harvesting and crop collection. Or it could be as simple as the dumb*** Trumpies screwing up yet another important matter.
The Fourth is Death – a massive die-off resulting from the other three.
Who is going to stop Pompeo? The man who hired and retains him? I suspect the Secretary of State has pretty much of a free rein to do whatever he pleases.
This might be a good year to try to plant what used to be called a “Victory Garden”.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/in-a-time-of-crisis-us-foreign-policy-gets-worse.html
Z
Poll: What percentage of likelihood do you place on the possibility that the coronavirus was created and deployed by Israel?
Z
Mojave Wolf
Re: Z’s poll — extremely close to absolute zero. WTF w/all the people trying to put this as a bioweapon of whatever country they don’t like?
Mojave Wolf
Re: the corporate giveaway bill w/some good for some workers: Okay, seriously, why is almost no one outraged that grocery store worker and hospital worker hazard pay (I mean, real, absolute hazard pay, not an extra 1-2 $ an hr w/many strings attached) wasn’t included in this? (I am leaving out my own thing, though it should have it too; but I am obviously at less risk than the people in those groups). At least the majority of hospital workers are probably getting decent pay to go w/their highest risk factor (hospital workers correct me if I’m wrong). Grocery store workers typically don’t make much unless they have seniority, and they mostly just got their hours cut. Companies aren’t providing adequate (or, so far, for the most part, any) protective gear, it’s up to people to by this themselves. It is ridiculous that people getting potential mass exposure to the disease are getting less than people sitting at home, and worse so if those people are getting their hours cut (again, see grocery store workers as the prime example). And you can’t just quit so you can get paid better to be safer w/the unemployment, and you can’t goad them into firing you for cause. You have to somehow get laid off. No essential business is laying off people.
This SHOULD be an easy fix, but absolutely no one in Congress seems to care. Or the media. Hell, most of them don’t seem to have even thought of it.
Meanwhile, Cuomo seems to be the MSM’s preferred replacement for Biden when/if he drops out; they should have heard this dude at the Bronx Public Hospital go off on how Cuomo’s policies helped screw over the NY medical system and is in great part responsible for the inability of NY to keep up w/the escalating crisis there (he went off on Trump too, my point is that it’s not “Trump bad, Dems good”, it is that they really do all suck, and the media just lies for one side over the other because that is the suck they prefer to suck off)
My SO agrees w/S Brennan about Bernie and the pointless grandstanding and thinks he did nothing good w/this bill; I don’t know enough about who did what to have an opinion; I just know that it sucks. Seems short term better than nothing (a lot better for the majority of people who will get something, if they really get it); long term it help the oligarchs consolidate power and leaves most of us much worse off than we were before. Unless of course most of the oligarchs wind up dead, which we can hope for.
At least I hope for. If this makes me a bad person in some of your eyes, so be it.
Zachary Smith
https://www.ianwelsh.net/open-thread-49/#comment-112121
I wish somebody would specify the evil Sanders has done/is doing with his “grandstanding”. I must have missed it all, and none of the searches I just made specified anything notable.
As a matter of fact, I’ve got to wonder if this isn’t an issue of shouting him down every time he opens his mouth, unless of course his statement was pre-approved by the DNC.
Mojave Wolf
@Zachary — I voted for Bernie 3 out of the 3 times I had a chance, and for all my (admittedly many) complaints would still prefer him to Biden or Cuomo or Trump, and it wouldn’t be a close call. No interest in shouting him down.
Cannot speak for S Brennan, but I believe my SO is simply incredibly pissed at the bill (and was already pissed at Bernie’s campaign for a multitude of reasons), and equally pissed that Bernie is getting praised for heroics when she believes that (A) he didn’t stand up for people still working or those so poor they didn’t file tax returns and (B) he didn’t even try to eliminate a lot of stupid hoops & delays that could keep the people from ever getting their money or not getting it in a timely fashion and (C) he is taking credit for a provision introduced by someone else, and credit for keeping it in when it was going to be in anyway. Combination of things.
I have no idea if this is true, but a lot of people seem down on S Brennan lately when his point of view seems understandable to me even if I don’t share it. Yes, Bernie got cheated and yes, Bernie was clearly light years better than Biden in ideas, as a potential president and as a human being. And likewise light years superior to Cuomo. Ditto to Trump. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been a bitter disappointment compared to what a lot of us thought he would be and what he used to be.
My wife’s p.o.v. was greatly informed by watching an interview of Matt Stoller on Jimmy Dore; it probably isn’t hard to find if you want to make the time. She was already ticked off before she saw it so that is worth taking into account; otoh, Stoller has a fair amount of credibility despite having initially supported Warren; again, I haven’t seen it, or read transcripts, and he did initially support Warren which indicates staggeringly awful judgement of character, so take it as you see fit.
metamars
If there’s no substantial blocks to hydroxychloroquine + zpak to treat CV, then accumulating evidence suggests that intubations and deaths will plummet (when administered early enough). One source of “substantial blocks” is that some producing countries have banned the export of HQ, such as India.
The French researcher Raoult has weighed in with a new study :
The French physician & microbiologist who conducted the original study showcasing the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine & Azithromycin has just completed another clinical trial with 80 patients.
RESULTS:
-93% tested negative in 8 days
-97.5% had no virus in lungs after 5 days
====================
Also, a NY doctor named Vladimir Zelenko has had zero deaths and zero intubations from hundreds of patients assumed to have CV (about 130 tested positive for CV, so in these instances, were known to have CV). He also administered zinc sulfate.
=============
The twitter account of Michael Coudrey has posted recent info, such as the above. I’m loathe to post links since another of my recent posts has never appeared, which had a few links in it.
Ten Bears
Israel? Israel who? Never heard of ’em.
Oh, wait, isn’t that some mythological place, like Shangri-la?
Better than fifty (50) percent (%).
Stirling S Newberry
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html
“The stalled efforts to create a new class of cheap, easy-to-use ventilators highlight the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis.”
Ten Bears
This graphic (no commentary) just got me kicked off Zuckerberg’s Famous Pig for a week.
jump
@highrpm
My point stands.
People are afraid and stressed. Sounds like you ran into someone who reached his breaking point. His bank account may be in over-draft; maybe he received word of his mother’s death from covid-19. What triggers someone to go over the edge is unpredictable but isolation is likely a contributing factor. I am not excusing his behavior and I am glad that the confrontation ended without bodily harm to you or him.
Lashing out is a predictable response to fear and stress. I am sure we will see many more situations like you had in the coming weeks. A little perspective and understanding will be required to get through this. Destruction of property, even sentient vines, though unfortunate and perhaps costly is better than physical harm or human death. Property can be replaced. All the more reason to reach out to people.
Hard empirical facts? Reality seems to have a heavy overlay of societal constructs colored with emotion. At times of stress those may not be reliable filters.
I am afraid of what anger responses will do to what shreds may be left of a sense of community.
Chiron
@Mark Pontin
“The elevator pitch on that is, essentially, the Rothschilds were Wellington’s paymasters and intelligence service during the Napoleonic Wars. Then, once Britain had won and dominated the European powers, then the Rothschilds swung into action to underwrite the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the modern world was created.”
The fact that this books made Niall Ferguson “a fully paid-up member of the neo-imperialist gang” in his own words pretty much confirms that every “conspiracy” about Zionist bankers and the Anglo-American system is true, but isn’t really a secret conspiracy, everything is out in the open and the real Master Race is the Yahweh money changers.
John
A common affliction of our debased celebrity culture is confusing the celebrity actors with the parts they play. Same is true with politicans.This confusion will ultimately make liars of them all. Matt Stollers wonderful rant about Bernie and Warren exemplifies this. On the one hand Bernies 10 point program is full of empathy and would greatly benefit the whole society. On the other hand, Stoller deeply criticizes him for not being a knife wielding, street fighting sociopath in the promotion of those programs. Stoller called him lazy. I say he’s probably just a kindly old man with an average amount of human foibles in his high 70’s and probably needs his afternoon nap.
People who are kind and want a world where everyone gets along and has enough and so on, are not generally the ones who carry the knife to shiv the sociopath who needs it. First of all, they have to be skilled with the knife.
We want Captain America heroes who have all the necessary attributes to come and save us. Not even Chris Evans has that IRL….he’s got it only in the movies. Bernie and Liz even less likely.
BTW, the best part of Stoller and Jimmy’s interview was the bit about Americans being Adult Children of Alcoholics. Tru dat.
nihil obstet
On Niall Ferguson — I enjoyed The Pity of War, but I pretty much lost all interest in Ferguson when he praised Pinochet for imposing market reforms on Chile in his PBS series on money. He did allow that some people might find the human rights violations not to be worth it, but overall, he thought they were.
On Sanders and the bailout bill — it is mostly a horrible bill. But what do you do about the people who need groceries and rent now who were being held hostage to the corporate candy? I think that’s a hard question. How do you fight hostage-holding? My income hasn’t suffered from the corona virus, so I don’t know if I’d feel differently if I was laid off from a low-income job, but I would have preferred for him to have voted against it. An outraged speech against outrageous action is appropriate. It’s not “grandstanding”.
Z
Mojave Wolfe:
Mojave Wolf,
You’re an intelligent individual, but that’s very likely the stupidest thing you’ve ever wrote on this board.
You seem to be making the haughty assumption that the only reason one would suspect that Israel was behind it is because they don’t like Israel. And I don’t like Israel, that’s a fact, and for good reason, but there’s plenty of other reasons revolving around motivations, outcomes, and timing that one would suspect that Israel was involved in the coronavirus outbreak that have nothing to do with whether or not one likes Israel. I didn’t immediately even consider that they may be involved until certain facts started coming in and I started thinking about the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of the virus.
I’d place the likelihood that Israel is behind the coronavirus as far above zero.
Z
Z
The cynical take on the bill is this: the corporate handouts to Wall Street and corporate America were going to be engineered by the Federal Reserve anyway. They are already handing Blackrock trillions of dollars to support Wall Street and would keep pumping until they got what they wanted. There’s no accountability in that either. So, now it’s just Mnuchin feeding it into corporations in a different way. Woop-dee-doo.
Z
Z
Chiron,
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. I’d say the greatest trick that the Jewish Mafia ever pulled is that if you even speak of its existence you are smeared as a hater of all Jewish people and somehow psychicly responsible for the Holocaust even though there’s probably not a handful of people left on earth, if any, who had anything to do with it.
So the Jewish Mafia openly wields power over us, raping the wealth and personal freedoms of the U.S. working class via the financial markets and the Fed, in which they have a controlling interest, manipulating our government to get involved in foreign misadventures that only benefit Israel, and corrupting our politics so that we can’t get political representation. And it is all studiously ignored.
Z
nihil obstet
Z, I’m sure some of your best friends are Jews. Your comments on this website are nonetheless anti-Semitic.
Willy
I know a guy who says that it’s a Chinese bioweapon that got out. I asked for proof and he got pissed. But then he’s a MAGA. But I know for certain that Mr. Ground Zero was a Chinese guy who licks his animals before cooking them. Others may ask for proof but I don’t need any stinkin proof. Because it’s so obvious.
Ten Bears
Exhibit A as to why, whatever your good intent, you never, never mention the Rothschilds in a blog comment. Or the Warburgs, Bilderbergers, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission; Iron Mountain, Jekyll Island, Freemasonry, Knights Templar or those who fell from the sky.
Z
Nihil Obstet,
You’re either being small-minded on this particular subject or are an oversensitive Jewish person yourself.
I very much wanted Bernie Sanders to be president.
Again, just like pointing out that there is an Italian Mafia doesn’t mean that you think that every Italian is a goon, noting the obviousness that a Jewish Mafia has a controlling interest in the U.S. doesn’t mean that you think that every Jewish person is part of it or responsible for it. I’ve stated many times that all of us have many Jewish brothers and sisters and that the Jewish Mafia is the enemy of us all, all as in the working class and/or people who want to have a more equitable society that gets the heavy boot of capital off of our neck.
That should be easy for someone of your intelligence to understand, but for some reason you seem to be purposely obtuse about it.
Z
Mark Pontin
Chiron wrote: ‘The fact that this books made Niall Ferguson “a fully paid-up member of the neo-imperialist gang” in his own words pretty much confirms that every “conspiracy” about Zionist bankers and the Anglo-American system is true, but isn’t really a secret conspiracy, everything is out in the open and the real Master Race is the Yahweh money changers.’
Yes, basically, excepting maybe the last part. There’ve been plenty of goys in that conspiracy, too, from Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, to Hank Paulson, Christian Scientist and former GS chief.
Also, Barings Bank was practically as big as the Rothschilds during most of the 19th century — Barings set up the Louisiana Purchase, for example, which doubled the size of the USA at the time — and the Barings were not Jewish.
None of this was un-noted at the time. Here’s Lord Byron writing in his DON JUAN in the period betweeen 1818 and 1824–
Who hold the balance of the World? Who reign
O’er congress, whether royalist or liberal?
Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain?
(That make old Europe’s journals “squeak and gibber” all)
Who keep the World, both old and new, in pain
Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all?
The shade of Buonaparte’s noble daring?–
Jew Rothschild, and his fellow-Christian, Baring.
VI.
Those, and the truly liberal Lafitte,
Are the true Lords of Europe. Every loan
Is not a merely speculative hit,
But seats a Nation or upsets a Throne.
Republics also get involved a bit;
Columbia’s stock hath holders not unknown
On ‘Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru,
Must get itself discounted by a Jew.
Mark Pontin
nihil obstet wrote: ‘On Niall Ferguson — I enjoyed The Pity of War, but I pretty much lost all interest in Ferguson when he praised Pinochet for imposing market reforms on Chile in his PBS series on money.’
Pretty fucking repulsive, yeah.
But recall that Thatcher brought Pinochet to the UK during his final days and made sure the old monster was well cared for. And Ferguson remains a Thatcherite, to an extent you’d be hard put to find among the present-day Tories — maybe even Jeremy Rees-Mogg, Count Moggula, doesn’t reach the bar — for whom Thatcher is essentially just a historical figure now.
Z
The Schumer, Mnuchin, and Fink firm of Financial Specialists
“We’re here for all your market needs”
High End Clients only
Z
Mark Pontin
‘High End Clients only,’ sure. Nonetheless, interesting times: how ever will they get the cat back in the bag now? Forex —
https://twitter.com/stephaniekelton/status/1243674759201796098
‘Well, there’s that. Trump: “It’s our money. It’s our currency.” We can do whatever it takes’
Jace
Z
Italian is an ethnicity. A historically recent, sort-of catch-all, in no way related to hundreds and hundreds of years of expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, murders and industrial exterminations.
Jew, on the other hand, in every European tongue, has meant ‘satanic Other’, ‘enemy’ and ‘subhuman deserving of death’.
You know what you are doing.
Z
Stanley Fischer was Governor of the Bank of Israel for eight years until shortly into Obama’s second term, which included the 2008-2009 world financial crisis. A year later named vice chair of the Federal Reserve. Serves there three and a half years until 8 months after Obama’s second term ended. Year and a half later, February 2019, joins Blackrock where he remains today. The Federal Reserve hires Blackrock last week to invest several trillion dollars, with little or no oversight, that the Fed created on their own whim, which was separate and outside of the congressional bill.
Interesting career path the man took.
Outspoken proponent for free trade. Stanley Fischer, a made man who “understands” the markets.
Z
Z
Jace,
Matter of fact, Jace I didn’t even know that. So that goes to show what you know.
Z
Z
Jace,
Of course, any Jew hater would want a Jewish man to be president, right?
That makes sense, right … sort of … no …
Z
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
😛
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5yuCwmf2fk
nihil obstet
Is there any evil in the world that is not created by those we choose to demonize — Russians, Jews, Chinese, Catholics, blacks, socialists? Undesired election results, diseases of obscure origins, overpopulation and spread of VD, a welfare state on the backs of hardworking people, gulags — it’s all there for the initiated to see. You just have to keep repeating it and repeating it and finding new evidence of the dastardliness of your chosen collective foe.
Jack Parsons
I am deeply indebted to Z for alerting me to the horror of the perfidious Dutch.
Mojave Wolf
I have no evidence to prove the negative, CV19 is not a bioweapon, any more than I have evidence that AIDS isn’t a bioweapon, or Ebola, but I see no good reason to think any of them are, either.
But how & why did someone go to the streets of a Chinese province to release a bioweapon whose spread could probably have been contained very early had China not lied about it or had they quickly instituted masks & a quarantine? I can actually come up w/arguments about how it could be the Chinese cleverly concealing their own creation of said bioweapon by releasing it in their own country, but I’m not buying that one either.
And why this particular kind of bioweapon? Low enough fatality rate that doesn’t do too much damage, but high enough to give all the non-totalitarian states reason to exercise totalitarian control, but in a way that screws up everyone’s economy? Again, not seeing it.
Question about bioweapons and illogic in general (not related to CV19): I think these things are horrible and shouldn’t exist, and were stupid to create in the first place, but no real question that us, Russia and China all have them, and I suppose quite possible that lots of other people do too. But . . . what was ever the logic do you have something whose release could wipe out your own side as easily as your opposition? Do they have (reliable) cures and vaccines for all these things hidden away as well? If anyone knows how that works, and what the thinking was for the people who came up w/the idea for such, I would love to hear it.
Z
Nihil Obstet,
What a bland, shallow argument. You’re basically resorting to a form of intellectual nihilism: since anyone can say anything that nothing means nothing. That all patterns, statistics, and outcomes should be dutifully ignored because the fact that someone could say anything negates the possibility of their relations. You are also nonsensically dismissing the possibility that groups of people who share common beliefs and a culture can ever work together in what they see as their collective self-interests, which is willfully turning a blind eye to human history, which in adherence to your missive is just a jumble of unrelated events, individual atoms in random collision with one another.
Sure, no groups of people have ever collectively effectuated any evil. Do you sincerely believe that? If not, then what?
In regards to the Jewish Mafia*, I won’t ignore what I see, especially since I was never inclined to look for it to begin with but it keeps continually showing up.
Jewish people in the United States comprise less than 2% of the population: statistically one card in a deck of 52, but damn if you don’t blindly pull one card from that deck and well over 50% of the time a subset of that 2% doesn’t show up playing a pivotal role in the financial underworld economy of this country in which the other 51 cards consistently lose.
*Again, just like pointing out that there is an Italian Mafia doesn’t mean that you think that every Italian is a goon, noting the obviousness that a Jewish Mafia has a controlling interest in the U.S. doesn’t mean that you think that every Jewish person is part of it or responsible for it. I’ve stated many times that all of us have many Jewish brothers and sisters and that the Jewish Mafia is the enemy of us all, all as in the working class and/or people who want to have a more equitable society that gets the heavy boot of capital off of our neck.
Z
Mojave Wolf
@Z — how bout we all agree that there are a lot of evil rich people, and that people without a conscious generally have an easier time (and are more likely to prioritize) amassing great wealth?
I view the various oligarchic factions, to the extent te ahere are such, as very loosely aligned and each primarily concerned w/their own self interest, with all of them willing to pull together to maintain and increase their collective power relative to everyone else (a few outliers notwithstanding).
And I don’t see why it is in the interest of ANY of these oligarchs, most of whom aren’t young, to release a virus into the world that is the most deadly to people in their age group (or the age group they are heading towards, in some cases).
nihil obstet
Z, you’re projecting. The examples I gave are not only the anythings that can be said, but the anythings that rather large groups of people have said, all convinced of their own perspicuity.
OK, I’ll give you some fodder that I’m sure you’ll fold into your Jewish mafia nonsense. Let’s take AIPAC. It’s an outrageous organization that wields enormous influence in U.S. politics. It is very largely Jewish. But who or what gives it power and who or what does it serve? After WWII, the U.S. establishment decided to control the Middle East which had oil supplies. The powerful oil companies wanted to profit from them. Remember, the U.S. overthrew the democratic government of Iran because Iran wasn’t giving Esso a sweet enough deal.
The U.S. therefore enthusiastically supported the establishment and expansion of a state of transplanted Europeans onto the land of those shifty “sand n*ggers” as a permanent military base, like an onshore aircraft carrier. It also adopted the Holocaust as a propaganda point for a permanent massive military. For Jews, of course, the Holocaust is more than propaganda. It’s a legitimate source of sorrow and terror. But then the genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of kidnapped Africans followed by a century of lynching give other groups legitimate sources of sorrow and terror. What’s different is that the plight of other groups is not useful to the non-Jewish power structure as the whole “Hitler of the month” club is to the military-industrial complex. So now we have a Holocaust museum on the Washington mall, holocaust museums around the country, and requirements to teach the holocaust in the public schools in something like twelve states.
Is all of this evidence of a “Jewish mafia” that has its boot on our necks? No. Again, no. You do have a powerful organization, one dominated by and for some Jews, that no doubt draws some emotional affinity from many more Jews. But it’s not really about Jews. It’s about maintaining power for people who were powerful long before the Holocaust or the state of Israel. It is about class, not ethnic identity.
As for places in the power structure, Jews immigrated primarily into New York City in the late 19th, early 20th c. at a time when the country was expanding and industrializing and fortunes were being made. So yes, they have more places in the power structure than people whose ancestors at that time lived in West Virginia or North Dakota or most of the rest of the U.S. You have to be looking really hard for an ethnic explanation to keep coming up with “Jewish mafia”.
I kept trying to give you the benefit of the doubt about your continual raising of a Jewish oppression of the rest of us, but it finally became undeniable antisemitism. There have been other genocides, but we have the historic record of how the Nazis developed and sold theirs. Your language and statements would fit in too well.9
Mojave Wolf
Oh, re: Metamars posting on possible effective treatment against the virus: this treatment may for real have some merit. Definitely worth investigating, and hopefully this and anything that looks promising gets put on some sort of ultra-fast-track.
Mojave Wolf
Final for the next few hours: @Astrid — don’t remember seeing you before but lots of interesting posts over the past week! Welcome!
bruce wilder
Re: bioweapon
1.) It is possible now to engineer, somewhat clumsily to be sure, a virus that is both highly contagious and highly lethal. Scientists have been studying what makes a virus contagious and/or lethal and the technical capacity to recombine genetic elements into novel virii certainly exists in potentia.
2.) Nature acts at random, without intention, but in general evolution would not seem to favor the combination of consciousness and lethal. Lethal diseases tend to be self-limiting, ceteris paribus. One really needs an incubating environment or an interesting lifecycle or some kind of complementary relation between differing strains to explain the emergence of a novel virus which is both commonly lethal and highly contagious. Or the dead hand of man.
Z
Nihil Obstet,
Wow, a lot of words to say so little.
Your accusations of “undeniable antisemitism” aren’t supported by the statistics that show a very prominent, out-sized presence by the Jewish mafia* in the power positions in the U.S. financial and monetary economy in relation to Jewish population percentage in the U.S.. That’s as plain as day. As is the fact that that Jewish power structure is interconnected and particularly tightly tied into the democratic party. You don’t have to look for it, all you have to do is notice it.
And people like you who spend so much time intellectually dishonestly defending it are the ones who see it clearest IMO.
*Again, just like pointing out that there is an Italian Mafia doesn’t mean that you think that every Italian is a goon, noting the obviousness that a Jewish Mafia has a controlling interest in the U.S. doesn’t mean that you think that every Jewish person is part of it or responsible for it. I’ve stated many times that all of us have many Jewish brothers and sisters and that the Jewish Mafia is the enemy of us all, all as in the working class and/or people who want to have a more equitable society that gets the heavy boot of capital off of our neck.
Z