Bulletin N° 898
Destiny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkfnJuB6DLk&feature=youtu.be
by Fritz Lang
1921
(1:39:03)
+
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse – 1933
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ50CKM9DjA
with subtitles
by Fritz Lang
(1:54:27)
+
"How Fritz
Lang Trolled the Nazis"
with Tyler Knudsen
(11:06)
Subject : ‘Thought’ and ‘Vision’ : Why we must take possession of economic science.
Earth
Day 2020
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The burning question today is : Should we exist for the economic system or should the economic system exist for us?
History teaches us in no unmistakable fashion what happens when inequality meets the pathological lust for power, when the owners of society have naturally gravitated towards the "Malthusian" solutions (even before the writings of Thomas Malthus) with an ideology of population control. We've seen it applied to indigenous people colonized by the English in North America, Australia and in Africa; to people in Madagascar in the 1947 French massacres; in the Belgium Congo, from 1885 to 1908; in Rwanda with the German concentration camps after 1884; then in Fascist Europe, beginning in Dachau, on March 22, 1933; Palestine after 1948, and the list goes on . . . .
"Malthusians" existed before the letter and, like him, they sought to purify society in their own image and render it beautiful by purging the undesirables and making large profits in the process. Today, it is incumbent upon us to recognize the resurgence of this genocidal ideology, and to resist.
The power of states will not protect us, nor will the possession of a weapon of mass destruction. The only assurance we have of not being caught in a tsunami of proactive genocidal policy is organization at every level and openly expressing our disgust against the loathsome genocidal forces now at play in the world.
“Living In A Ghost Town”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNNPNweSbp8&feature=youtu.be
with The Rolling Stones
(3:59)
* * *
Fritjof Capra presents his comparative study of the “new physics” and Eastern Mysticism in a 325-page book, entitled The Tao of Physics (1975). Throughout this work, the author seems to be seeking the anthropological roots of science and culture. At the end of this book he states explicitly his belief that "science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science . . . " Nevertheless, he adds, humans need both.
Mystical experience is necessary to understand the deepest nature of things, and science is essential for modern life.
What we need, therefore, is not a synthesis but a dynamic interplay between mystical intuition and scientific analysis.(p.324)
In the past bulletin, we presented chapter 4 of this study, which
concludes his first section, “The Way of Physics.” In this part, Capara described developments in the science of physics
from classic Newtonian mechanics to the era of Einstein and quantum
field theory. The second section of this book, “The Way of Eastern
Mysticism,” is composed of five chapters describing, in summary fashion, five distinctly Asiatic cultural
traditions – Hinduism, Buddhism, “Chinese thought,” Taoism, and Zen. We will
now turn to the third and final section of this book, “The Parallels,” where
the author engages in a back and forth between essential characteristics of
scientific thought embodied in “the new physics” and similar qualities he has found to exist in traditional Eastern mysticism. Particularly
interesting in this section is his discussion found in chapter 12, entitled “Space-time”.
In
the first sentence of this chapter, Capra sets the tone of his controversial popularization
of “the new physics”: “Modern physics has confirmed most dramatically one of the
basic ideas of Eastern mysticism; that all the concepts we use to describe
nature are limited, that they are not features of reality, as we tend to
believe, but creations of the mind; parts of the map, not of the territory.” He, then, goes on to explain his view of
“modern science”.
Whenever we expand the realm of our
experience, the limitations of our rational mind become apparent and we have to
modify, or even abandon, some of our concepts.
Our notions of space and
time figure prominently on our map of reality. They serve to order
things and events in our environment and are therefore of paramount importance
not only in our everyday life, but also in our attempts to understand nature
through science and philosophy. There is no law of physics which does not
require the concepts of space and time for its formulation. The profound
modification of these basic concepts brought about by relativity theory was
therefore one of the greatest revolutions in the history of science.
Classical physics was based on the notion
both of an absolute, three-dimensional space, independent of the material objects
it contains, and obeying the laws of Euclidean geometry, and of time as a
separate dimension which again is absolute and flows at an even rate,
independent of the material world. In the West, these notions of space and time
were so deeply rooted in the minds of philosophers and scientists that they
were taken as true and unquestioned properties of nature.
The belief that geometry is inherent in
nature, rather than part of the framework we use to describe nature, has its
origin in Greek thought. Demonstrative geometry was the central feature of
Greek mathematics and had a profound influence on Greek philosophy. Its method
of starting from unquestioned axioms, and deriving theorems from those
by deductive reasoning became characteristic of Greek philosophical thought; geometry
was therefore at the very center of all intellectual activities and formed the
basis of philosophical training. The gate of Plato’s Academy in Athens is said
to have borne the inscription, ‘You are not allowed to enter here, unless you
know geometry.’ The Greeks believed that their mathematical theorems were
expressions of eternal and exact truths about the real world, and that geometrical
shapes were manifestations of absolute beauty. Geometry was considered to be
the perfect combination of logic and beauty and was thus believed to be of
divine origin. Hence Plato’s dictum, ‘God is a geometer.”
Since geometry was seen as the revelation
of God, it was obvious to the Greeks that the heavens should exhibit perfect geometrical
shapes. This meant that the heavenly bodies had to move in circles. To present
the picture as being even more geometrical they were thought to be fixed to a
series of concentric crystalline spheres which moved as a whole, with the Earth
at the centre.
In subsequent centuries, Greek geometry
continued to exert a strong influence on Western philosophy and science.
Euclid’s Elements was a standard textbook on European schools until the
beginning of …[the 20th] century and
Euclidean geometry was taken to be the
truce nature of space for more than two thousand years. It took an Einstein to
make scientists and philosophers realize that geometry is not inherent in
nature, but is imposed upon it by the mind. In the words of Henry Margenau,
‘The
central recognition of the theory of relativity is that geometry … is a
construct of the intellect. Only when this discovery is accepted can the mind
feel free to tamper with the time-honored notions of space and time, to survey
the range of possibilities available for defining them, and to select that
formulation which agrees with observation.’
Eastern
philosophy, unlike that of the Greeks, has always maintained that space and
time are constructs of the mind. The Eastern mystics treated them like all
other intellectual concepts; as relative, limited, and illusory. In a Buddhist
text, for example, we find the words,
‘It
was taught by the Buddha, oh Monks, that … the past, the future, physical
space, … and individuals are nothing but names, forms of thought, words of
common usage, merely superficial realities.’
Thus
in the Far East, geometry never attained the status it
had in ancient Greece, although this does not mean that the Indians and Chinese
had little knowledge of it. They used it extensively in building alters of
precise geometrical shapes, in measuring the land and mapping out the heavens,
but never to determine abstract and eternal truths. This philosophical attitude
is also reflected in the fact that ancient Eastern science generally did not
find it necessary to fit nature into a scheme of straight lines and perfect
circles. Joseph Needham’s remarks about Chinese astronomy are very interesting
in this connection:
‘The
Chinese [astronomers] did not feel the need for [geometrical] forms of explanation
– the component organisms in the universal organism followed their Tao each according
to its own nature, and their motions could be dealt with in the essentially
‘non-representational’ form of algebra. The Chinese were thus free from that
obsession of European astronomers for the circle as the most perfect figure …
nor did they experience the medieval prison of the crystalline spheres.’
Thus
the ancient Eastern philosophers and scientists already had the attitude which
is so basic to relativity theory – that our notions of geometry are not
absolute and unchangeable properties of nature, but intellectual construction.
In the words of Ashvaghosha,
‘Be
it clearly understood that space is nothing but a mode of particularization and
that it has not real existence of its own…. Space exists only in relations to
out particularising consciousness.’
The
same applies to our ideas to time. The Eastern mystics link the notions of both
space and time to particular states of consciousness. Being able to go beyond
the ordinary state through meditation, they have realized that the conventional
notions of space and time are not the ultimate truth. The refined notions of
space and time resulting from their mystical experiences appear to be in many
ways similar to the notions of modern physics, as exemplified by the theory of
relativity.
What,
then, is this new view of space and time which emerged from the relativity
theory? It is based on the discovery that all space and time measurements are
relative. The relativity of spatial specification was, of course, nothing new.
It was well known before Einstein that the position of an object in space can
only be defined relative to some other object. This is usually done with the
help of three coordinates, and the point from which the coordinates are
measured may be called the location of the ‘observer’.(pp.167-170)
Capra
continues his exposition on the subjectivity of the high priests of science by turning
his attention to “the fourth dimension,” as it is experienced both in science and by Eastern mystics; not in a
conventional sense, but rather as a transfer from one dimension to another,
like the projection of the shadow of a three-dimensional object onto a
two-dimensional surface. The common ground held by both modern physicists and
Eastern mystics is an understanding which is not aided by the self-evident
truths of everyday experience. We must set aside our intuitive understanding of
daily life if we are to come to grips with what is really going on around us.
The
unification of space and time entails . . . a unification of other basic
concepts, and this underlying aspect is the most characteristic feature of the
relativistic framework. Concepts which seemed totally unrelated in nonrelativistic physics are now seen to be but different
aspects of one and the same concept. This feature gives the relativistic
framework great mathematical elegance and beauty. Many years of work with
relativity theory have made us appreciate this elegance and become thoroughly
familiar with the mathematical formalism. However this has not helped our
intuition very much. We have no direct sensory experience of the four-dimensional
space-time, nor of the other relativistic concepts. Whenever
we study natural phenomena involving high velocities, we find it very hard to
deal with these concepts both at the level of intuition and ordinary language.(pp.176-177)
. . .
The
slowing down of clocks in motion, unbelievable as it sounds, is well tested in
particle physics. Most of the subatomic particles are unstable, i.e. they
disintegrate after a certain time into other particles. Numerous experiments
have confirmed the fact that the lifetime of such an unstable particle depends
on its state of motion. It increases with the speed of the particle. Particles
moving with 80 per cent of the speed of light live about 1.7 times as long as
they're slow 'twin brothers', and at 99 per cent of the speed of light they
live about 7 times as long. This, again, does not mean that the intrinsic
lifetime of the particle changes. From the particles point of view its life
time is always the same but from the point of view of the laboratory observer
the particles internal clock has slowed down, and therefore it lives longer.
All
these relativistic effects only seem strange because we cannot experience the
four-dimensional space-time world with our senses, but can only observe its
three-dimensional ‘images’. These images have different aspects of different
frames of reference; moving objects look different from objects at rest, and
moving clocks run at a different rate. These effects will seem paradoxical if
we do not realize that they are only the projections of four-dimensional
phenomena just as shadows are projections of three-dimensional objects., if we could visualize the four dimensional
space-time reality there would be nothing paradoxical at all.
The
Eastern mystics . . . seem to be able to attain non-ordinary states of
consciousness in which they transcend the three-dimensional world of everyday
life to experience a higher multidimensional reality. Thus Aurobindo
speaks about 'a subtle change which makes the sight see
in a sort of fourth dimension'. The dimensions of these states of consciousness
may not be the same as the ones we are dealing with in relativistic physics,
but it is striking that they have led the mystics towards notions of space and
time which are very similar to those employed by relativity theory.
Throughout
Eastern mysticism, there seems to be a strong intuition for the space-time
character of reality. The fact that space and time are inseparably linked,
which is so characteristic of relativistic physics, is stressed again and again.
This intuitively notion of space and time has perhaps found its clearest
expression and its most far-reaching elaboration in
Buddhism and in particular in the Avatamsaka
school of Mahahana Buddhism. The Avatamsaka
Sutra, on which the school is based, gives a vivid description of how the
world is experienced in the state of enlightenment. The awareness of an ‘interpenetration
of space and time’ - a perfect expression to describe space-time - is
repeatedly emphasized in the sutra and is seen as an essential characteristic
of the enlightened state of mind.
In
the words of the D. T. Suzuki,
‘the
significance of the Avatamsaka and its
philosophy is unintelligible unless we once experience ... a state of complete
dissolution where there is no more distinction between mind and body, subject
and object .... We look around and perceive that ... every object is related to
every other object ... not only spatially, but temporally…. As a factor pure
experience, there is no space without time, no time without space; they are
interpenetrating.’
One
could hardly find a better way of describing the relativistic concept of
space-time. In comparing Suzuki's statement to the one … by Minkowski,
it is also interesting to note that both the physicist and the Buddhist emphasize
the fact that their notions of space-time are based on experience ; on
scientific experiments in one case, and on mystical experience in the other.
In
my opinion, the time minded intuition of Eastern mysticism is one of the main
reasons why its views of nature seem to correspond, in general, much better to
modern scientific views than do those of most Greek philosophers. Greek natural
philosophy was, on the whole, essentially static and largely based on
geometrical considerations. It was, one could say, extremely ‘non-relativistic’,
and its strong influence on Western thought may well be one of the reasons why
we have such great conceptual difficulties with relativistic models in modern
physics. Eastern
philosophies, on the other hand, are ‘space-time’ philosophies, and thus their
intuition often comes very close to the views of nature implied by our modern
relativistic theories.
Because
of the awareness that space and time are intimately connected and
interpenetrating, the world views of modern physics and of Eastern mysticism
are both intrinsically dynamic views which contain time and change as essential
elements. This point will be discussed in detail in the following chapter, and
constitutes the second main theme recurring throughout this comparison of
physics and Eastern mysticism, the first being the unity of all things and
events. As we study the relativistic models and theories of modern physics, we
shall see that all of them are impressive illustrations of the two basic
elements of the Eastern world view - the basic oneness of the universe and it's
intrinsically dynamic character.
The
theory of relativity discussed so far is known as the ‘special theory of
relativity’. It provides a common framework for the description of the
phenomena associated with electricity and magnetism, the basic features of this
framework being the relativity of space and time and their unification into
four-dimensional space-time.
In the ‘general theory of relativity’, the
framework of the special theory is extended to include gravity. The effect of gravity,
according to general relativity, is to make space-time curved. This, again, is
“extremely hard to imagine. We can easily imagine a two-dimensional curved
surface, such as the surface of an egg, because we can see such curved surfaces
lying in three-dimensional space. The meaning of the word curvature for
two-dimensional curved surfaces is thus quite clear; but when it comes to
three-dimensional space – let alone four-dimensional space-time – our
imagination abandons us. Since we cannot look at three-dimensional space ‘from
outside’, we cannot imagine how it can be ‘bent in some direction’.
To understand the meaning of curved space-time,
we have to use curved two-dimensional surfaces as analogies. Imagine, for
example, the surface of a sphere. The crucial fact which makes the analogy to
space-time possible is that the curvature is an intrinsic property of that
surface and can be measured without going into three-dimensional space. A
two-dimensional insect confined to the surface of a sphere and unable to
experience three-dimensional space could nevertheless find out that the surface
on which he is living is curved, provided that he can make geometrical
measurements.
To see how this works, we have to compare
the geometry of our bug on the sphere with that of a similar insect living on a
flat surface. Suppose the two bugs begin their study of geometry by drawing a
straight line, defined as the shortest connection between two points. . . . [Illustrations on page 182.] We see that the bug on the flat
surface drew a very nice straight line; but what did the bug on the sphere do?
For him, the line he drew is the shortest connection between two points A and
B, since any other line he may draw will be longer; but from our point of view
we recognize it as a curve (the arc of a great circle, to be precise). Now
suppose that the two bugs study triangles. The bug on the plane will find that
the three angles of any triangle add up to two right angles, i.e. to 180°; but
the bug on the sphere will discover that the sum of the angles in his triangles
is always greater than 180°. For small triangles the excess is small, but it
increases as the triangles become larger; and as an extreme case, our bug on the
sphere will even be able to draw triangles with three right angles. Finally,
let the two bugs draw circles and measure their circumference. The bug on the
plane will find that the circumference is always equal to 2π times the radius. As
can be seen in the figure [on page 183] … , our three-dimensional point of view
allows us to see what the bug calls a radius of his circle is in fact a curve
which is always longer than the true radius of the circle.
As the two insects continue to study geometry,
the one on the plane should discover the axioms and laws of Euclidean geometry,
but his colleague on the sphere will discover different laws. The difference
will be small for small geometrical figures, but will increase as the figures
become larger. The example of the two bugs shows that we can always determine
whether a surface is curved or not, just by making geometrical measurements on
the surface, and by comparing the results with those predicted by Euclidean geometry.
If there is a discrepancy, the surface is curved; and the larger the
discrepancy is – for a given size of figures – the stronger the curvature.
In the same way, we can define a curved
three-dimensional space to be one in which Euclidean geometry is no longer
valid. The laws of geometry in such a space will be of a different,
‘non-Euclidean’ type. Such a non-Euclidean geometry was introduced as a purely
abstract mathematical idea in the nineteenth century by the mathematician Georg
Riemann, and it was not considered to be more than that, until Einstein made
the revolutionary suggestion that the three-dimensional space in which we live
is actually curved. According to Einstein’s theory the curvature of space is
caused by the gravitational fields of massive bodies. Wherever there is a
massive object, the space around it is curved, and the degree of curvature, that
is, the degree to which the geometry deviates from that of Euclid, depends on
the mass of the object.
The equations relating the curvature of space
to the distribution of matter in that space are called Einstein’s field of
equations. They can be applied not only to determine the local variations of curvature
in the neighborhood of stars and planets, but also to find out whether there is
an overall curvature of space on a large scale. In other words, Einstein’s
equations can be used to determine the structure of the universe as a whole. Unfortunately,
they do not give a unique answer. Several mathematical solutions of the equations
are possible, and these solutions constitute the various models of the universe
studied in cosmology . . . . To
determine which of them corresponds to the actual structure of our universe is
the main task of present-day cosmology.(pp.178-184)
. . .
This,
then, is the full meaning of space-time in relativistic physics. Space and time
are fully equivalent; they are unified into a four-dimensional continuum in
which the particle interactions can stretch in any direction. If we want to
picture these interactions, we have to picture them in one ‘four-dimensional
snap shot’ covering the whole span of time as well as the whole region of
space. To get the right feeling for the relativistic world of particles, we
must ‘forget the lapse of time’, as Chuang Tzu says, and this is why the
space-time diagrams of field theory can be a useful analogy to the space-time
experience of the Eastern mystic. The relevance of the analogy is made evident
by the following remarks by Lama Govinda concerning
Buddhist meditation:
‘If
we speak of the space-experience in meditation, we are dealing with an entirely
different dimension…. In this space-experience the temporal sequence is
converted into a simultaneous co-existence, the side by side existence of
things . . . and this again does not remain static but becomes a living
continuum in which time and space are integrated.’
Although the physicists use their
mathematical formalism and their diagrams to picture interactions “en bloc’ in
four-dimensional space-time, they say that in the actual world each observer
can only experience the phenomena in a succession of space-time sections, that
is, in a temporal sequence.
The mystics, on the other hand, maintain that they can actually experience the full
span of space-time where time does not flow any longer. Thus the Zen master Dogen:
‘It
is believed by most that time passes; in actual fact, it stays where it is.
This idea of passing may be called time, but it is an incorrect idea, for since
one sees it only as passing, one cannot understand that it stays just where it
is.’
Many
of the Eastern teachers emphasize that thought must take place in time,
but that vision can transcend it. ‘Vision’, says Govinda,
‘is bound up with a space of a higher dimension, and therefore timeless.’ The
space-time of relativistic physics is a similar timeless space of a higher
dimension. All events in it are interconnected, but the connections are not
causal. Particle interactions can be interpreted in terms of cause and effect
only when the space-time diagrams are read in a definite direction, e.g. for
the bottom to the top. When they are taken as four-dimensional patterns without
any definite direction of time attached to them, there is no ‘before’ and no
‘after’, and thus no causation.
Similarly, the Eastern mystics assert that
in transcending time, they also transcend the world of cause and effect. Like
our ordinary notions of space and time, causation is an idea which is limited
to a certain experience of the world and had to be abandoned when this
experience is extended, in the words of Swami Vivekananda,
‘Time,
space, and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen . . .. In the Absolute there is neither
time, space, nor causation.’
The Eastern spiritual traditions show their
followers various ways of going beyond the ordinary experience of time and of
freeing themselves from the chain of cause and effect – from the bondage of karma,
as the Hindus and Buddhists say. It has therefore been said that Eastern
mysticism is a liberation from time. In a way, the
same may be said of relativistic physics.(pp.195 -197)
“The new science” as described in this book has, according to Capra, a potential healing effect on the way many western social theorists as well as physicists think.
To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today's physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories. Many of them actively support a society which is still based on the mechanistic fragmented world view, without seeing that science points beyond such a view, towards a oneness of the universe which includes not only our natural environment but also our fellow human beings. I believe that the world view implied by modern physics is inconsistent with our present society, which does not reflect the harmonious interrelatedness we observe in nature. To achieve such a state of dynamic balance, a radically different social and economic structure will be needed: a cultural revolution in the true sense of the word. The survival of our whole civilization may depend on whether we can bring about such a change. It will depend, ultimately, on our ability to adopt some of the yin attitudes of Eastern mysticism; to experience the wholeness of nature and the art of living with it in harmony.(pp.324-325)
This book presents the non-violent revolution in western scientific thought as the strategic fulcrum for social, political and economic change, to nurture a social movement that historically was disrupted by two world wars and the
so-called cold war, that came to an end only with the anti-Vietnam war
movement. The ‘new science” constitutes a rupture with the dominant ideology of the capitalist class and threatens an ideological
disturbance for the ruling class and their
high priests of social order. Our struggle since the counterrevolution
of the 1980’s has been to reclaim our class consciousness by identifying our true self-interests in the wider context of environmental catastophe and social class domination. Frantz Capra’s contribution has been to make this intellectual history comprehensible
and accessible to everyone, thereby restoring science to its rightful practitioners:
“Science for the People!”
The
21 + items below represent articles and essays conveying thoughts that,
far from offering a consensus, demand to be discussed publically. As in Plato’s
Allegory of the Cave,
we are asked to be content with watching shadows paraded before our eyes and, with
this limited experience, to be satiated with our impoverished understanding of
the world. There is a need today to boldly go out into the broad daylight, to experience for ourselves the sentient reality
of life, to discover the myths that are being perpetrated against us,
and to understand for whose benefit we have been blinded.
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professeur honoraire
de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur de
Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
a.
“The
Game is Rigged”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlhFMa4t28A
with Richard Wolff
(1:48:26)
+
Kissinger's
folly: The threat to world order is China
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/491507-kissingers-folly-the-threat-to-world-order-is-china
by Bradley A. Thayer and Lianchao Han
The old joke that doctors bury their mistakes should be
amended, because former statesmen sometimes try to do so as well. Claims
advanced by Henry
Kissinger, the doyen of the U.S. foreign policy community, that the coronavirus is a danger to the liberal international order
are correct, especially since the virus has killed tens
of thousands around the world.
But the specter that is haunting the world order is not the
virus that originated in Wuhan. It is the rise of dictatorial China. And
it was Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of State and national security
adviser, who contributed mightily to this threat as one of the major creators
and advocates of the decades-long U.S. strategy towards China emphasizing
cooperation, “bringing China in” to the international order, and fostering its
growth so that it could become a “responsible stakeholder.”
The expectation was that China would cooperate
with the West to preserve the present liberal order of global
politics. This approach was a profound mistake: In a historically
unprecedented act, the West actively contributed to the creation of its most
formidable peer competitor. China hid behind a false promise to
abide by Western rules and norms to forestall balancing against it, while it
rapidly developed economically and militarily — and was creating a new
international order to replace the one that is so rightly valued in the West.
+
"Is China an alternative to Western democracy?"
(13:42)
+
“Noam Chomsky on Outsourcing”
(6:06)
+
China rattles sabres as
world battles coronavirus pandemic
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-security-idUSKBN2230GC
by Yew Lun Tian,
Ben Blanchard
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020
Subject: [MCM] 2015 scientific paper proves US and Chinese scientists
collaborated on coronavirus that can infect humans
2015 Scientific Paper Proves US & Chinese
Scientists Collaborated to Create Coronavirus that
Can Infect Humans
A Special Report by Peter R. Breggin, MD
www.breggin.com
(607)-272-5328
April 15, 2020
https://breggin.com/us-chinese-scientists-collaborate-on-coronavirus/
In 2015, American
researchers and Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers collaborated to
transform an animal coronavirus into one that can
attack humans. Scientists from prestigious American
universities and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) worked directly with
the two coauthor researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology, Xing-Yi Ge and Zhengli-Li Shi.
Funding was provided by the Chinese and US governments. The team succeeded in
modifying a bat coronavirus to make it capable of
infecting humans.
The research was published in
December 2015 in the prestigious British journal, Nature Medicine (volume 21, pages1508–1513).
The paper by Vineet D. Menachery
et al., “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses
shows potential for human emergence” is available here as a PDF as
well as on-line.i
Footnotes to the scientific paper
disclose that the research was funded by both the Chinese and US Governments,
including grants from the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy & Infectious
Disease.
Footnotes also document that the two
Chinese researchers were active in their own laboratories as part of this coronavirus project.
At the bottom of the first page, the
affiliation of both Chinese coauthors is listed as “Key Laboratory of Special
Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.” The Chinese were being aided by the
American government, American universities and American researchers in
developing a potential military weapon with the capacity to cause a pandemic
intentionally or accidentally.
Multiple prestigious American researchers
and institutions were involved. One is from the FDA’s National Center for
Toxicological Research in Jefferson, Arkansas. The first author of the article,
Vineet Menachery, is from
the Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Several other authors are from the University of North Carolina and one is from
Harvard Medical School. There is also a Swiss researcher.
The researchers themselves note in the
text of the article that the risks associated with the creation of their human
pathogen were significant. They openly wondered if their research compromised
U.S. federal standards for research on dangerous pathogens.
The potential dangers of the
creation of new human coronavirus pathogens in the
American/Chinese Menachery research were discussed in
a commentary by Jef Akst
in The Scientist on November 16, 2015. However,
the danger of the Chinese collaboration went unmentioned.
Concluding Questions:
In 2015, US researchers in
collaboration with Chinese researchers from the now-infamous Wuhan Institute
jointly published a paper describing how they successfully modified a
bat coronavirus to make it capable of infecting
humans. Their project was funded by both the Chinese and the American
governments.
·
Who in the US government enabled this research? Why was it allowed
when it was enabling the Chinese to develop a military weapon or to
accidentally cause an epidemic?
·
Why was an FDA official involved as an author and why was NIH
funding the project?
·
The virus created in collaboration with the Chinese and the
current epidemic virus are both SARS-CoV with many shared characteristics. This writer has found
no scientific research that specifically compares the two viruses, a subject
that needs to be investigated.
·
How many more lab-created or manipulated viruses are in the
world’s laboratories and under the control of governments and the military?
·
Are potentially dangerous research projects continuing to go on
involving American and Chinese collaboration with or without funding from both
countries?
·
Why and how has this research project wholly escaped notice amid
the growing concern about China’s role in causing the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic?
·
Why have none of the American researchers come forward to draw
attention to this project which, at the least, enabled and promoted Chinese
efforts to weaponize viruses?
The Menachery et al. (2015) scientific paper was found by my
wife Ginger Breggin while following scientific
discussions on-line that led her to the critique in The Scientist and then to the article.
+
The New
Anti-China Campaign Is Built On Lies
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55078.htm
by Moon Of Alabama
The anti China
hawkishness is going to drown out progressive momentum for universal healthcare
and cancelling student debt. Like Russiagate, this
new yellow peril will lead to greater military spending and more war. Sad so
many who should know better can’t see that.
To avoid self-examination of the failures that let
the U.S. exceed the covid-19 casualty numbers of every other nation the powers
that be decided to blame someone else.
Trump's first attempt was to blame the World Health
Organization for not providing all information. But 16 U.S. administration
officials were
embedded with the WHO in Geneva. They relayed real time updates of all
information the WHO received.
As the Democrats and the media did
not join Trump in blaming the WHO another scapegoat was needed. Everyone
then agreed that it China would be the most convenient target.
The intensity of the current anti-China campaign
reminds one of the run up to the war on Iraq. The people who now claim that
'China lied, people died' are the
very same who ran the Iraq WMD campaign. But all the reports claiming Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction were just fantasy. The reports of Chinese culpability
are similar nonsense.
As this is an election year both parties try to associate
the other side with the new villain:
“Donald Trump sent critical medical supplies to
China as Americans continue to suffer. He needs to follow his supposed motto of
America First,” American Bridge President Bradley Beychok said in a statement. “We’re making sure that voters
across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin know full well not only how badly
Trump botched this crisis, but also how badly he bent the knee to China in the
midst of it as well.”
...
“We are more than happy to let the American public decide whom they trust,
President Trump or Beijing Joe Biden, to get tough on China,” said Brian O.
Walsh, president of America First, in response to the new ad campaign by
American Bridge. American Bridge said the ad is the first of
its new offensive campaign targeting Trump, his company, business associates
and adult children over their ties to China and other foreign investments.
The group said it plans on rolling out microtargeted digital ads on that theme as part of “an
all-out assault on Trump and his family over their corruption — in China and
other countries — involving foreign bribes, political favors, shady real estate
investments, and parties with dictators.”
This will be bad for other important political
issues:
Rania Khalek @RaniaKhalek - 19:27 UTC ·
Apr 17, 2020
The anti China hawkishness is going to drown out
progressive momentum for universal healthcare and cancelling student debt. Like
Russiagate, this new yellow peril will lead to greater
military spending and more war. Sad so many who should know better can’t see
that.
Some lawmakers want
to allow random people to sue China over the 'damage it caused'. Other seek
to default on the $1.2 trillion of debt the U.S. owns China.
"Is Cuba Better Prepared For Coronavirus Than The U.S.?"
(8:53)
+
What Did U.S. Intel Really Know About the ‘Chinese’ Virus?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55094.htm
by Pepe Escobar
Hybrid War 2.0 on China, a bipartisan U.S. operation, is already reaching fever pitch. Its 24/7 full spectrum infowar arm blames China for everything coronavirus-related – doubling as a diversionist tactic against any informed criticism of woeful American unpreparedness.
Hysteria predictably reigns. And this is just the beginning.
A deluge of lawsuits is imminent – such as the one in the Southern District of Florida entered by Berman Law Group (linked to the Democrats) and Lucas-Compton (linked to the Republicans). In a nutshell: China has to shell out tons of cash. To the tune of at least $1.2 trillion, which happens to be – by surrealist irony – the amount of U.S. Treasury bills held by Beijing, all the way to $20 trillion, claimed by a lawsuit in Texas.
The prosecution’s case, as Scott Ritter memorably reminded us, is straight out of Monty Python. It works exactly like this:
“If she weighs the same as a duck…
…she’s made of wood!”
“And therefore…”
“A witch!!!!!”
In Hybrid War 2.0 terms, the current CIA-style narrative translates as evil China never telling us, the civilized West, there was a terrible new virus around. If they did, we would have had time to prepare.
==========
b.
Presenting The
Federal Reserve Script for Totalitarianism
(12:57)
with John Titus
+
David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist
Chronicles - Collective Form of Action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySH1qEudr50
(28:23)
with David Harvey – Ap. 16, 2020
+
New
Online Course: Reading Marx’s Grundrisse
http://davidharvey.org/2020/01/new-online-course-reading-marxs-grundrisse/
(12 two-hour classes - Jan 28 – May 5,
2020)
with David Harvey
+
Closedown vs. No Closedown
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55083.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
Every country with the exception of Sweden found it
necessary to close down at least part of the economy in order to prevent the
highly infectious virus from overwhelming their medical care systems. The
exponential rate of infection together with a lack of sufficient health
resources obviously meant an overwhelmed system that would be unable to provide
care for those suffering from other illnesses and deadly conditions, such as
heart attacks.
The need to reduce the caseload was also influenced
by the uncertainty of treatment. It has been only through experimentation
that health care professionals have found some successful treatments and
learned that ventilators were causing deaths. Knowledge about the virus
and its attack on vital organs is still emerging. The long incubation period
and the fact that people can spread the virus without themselves having
symptoms makes the virus far more challenging than flu, with which it is often
mistakenly compared. The fact that people of all ages and health
conditions have died from the virus, or from inappropriate treatment and prior
conditions, and the impossibility of knowing in advance the severity of any
person’s case produces a situation that can easily explode out of control.
The policy of isolation and social distancing has
worked. It has reduced the infection rate to a manageable one in most
places. One consequence of this success is to increase the sense of
safety and the belief that the virus is a hoax being used to take away civil
liberties. There is no doubt that the deep state and other agendas will
make use of the virus for their purposes. But the virus is definitely
real and not a hoax.
The success of social isolation has produced a
belief that the virus was over-hyped, causing some people to call the policy
into question. Crowds in violation of the social distancing policy are
protesting against the policy, with some marching around with weapons.
How Bosses Are Making Coronavirus "Worse, for their Benefit"
with Noam Chomsky
(32:30)
c.
The Crimes of U.S. Presidents
(11:34)
with Noam Chomsky
+
Counter-Revolutionary
Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda. Accelerating
bloodbath in South Vietnam.
by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman – 1973
+
Coronavirus stimulus bill funds State Dept/USAID
operations that once helped trigger polio outbreak in Syria
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/16/coronavirus-stimulus-state-usaid-polio-syria/
by
Max Blumenthal
+
Bill Gates and the Depopulation Agenda. Robert F. Kennedy Junior Calls for an Investigation
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55082.htm
by
Peter Koenig
For
over twenty years Bill Gates and his Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
(BMGF) have been vaccinating foremost children by the millions in remote areas
of poor countries, mostly Africa and Asia. Most of their vaccination program
had disastrous results, causing the very illness (polio,
for example in India) and sterilizing young women (Kenya,
with modified tetanus vaccines). Many of the children died. Many of the
programs were carried out with the backing of the WHO and – yes – the UN Agency
responsible for the Protection of Children, UNICEF.
Most
of these vaccination campaigns were implemented without the informed-consent of
the children, parents, guardians or teachers, nor with the informed-consent, or
with forged consent, of the respective government authorities. In the
aftermath, The Gates Foundation was sued by governments around the world,
Kenya, India, the Philippines – and more.
Bill
Gates has a strange image of himself. He sees himself as The Messiah
who saves the world through vaccination – and through population
reduction.
Around
the time, when the 2010
Rockefeller Report was issued, with its even more infamous “Lock
Step” Scenario, precisely the scenario of which we are living the
beginning right now, Bill Gates talked on a TED show in California, “Innovating
to Zero” about the use of energy.
He
used this TED presentation to promote his vaccination programs, literally
saying, “If we are doing a real good job vaccinating children, we can reduce
the world population by 10% to 15%”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I
This
sounds very much like eugenics.
The
video, the first 6’45”, “The Truth about Bill Gates and his Disastrous
Vaccination Program”, will tell you all about it.
Robert
F Kennedy Jr, an avid Defender of Children’s Rights
and anti-vaccination activist, has launched a petition sent to the White House,
calling for
“Investigations into the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ for Medical
Malpractice & Crimes Against Humanity“
“At the forefront of this is Bill Gates,
who has publicly stated his interest in “reducing population growth” by 10-15%,
by means of vaccination. Gates, UNICEF & WHO have already been credibly
accused of intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a
hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines”. (Excerpt
from text of Petition)
If
you wish to Sign the Petition click Here
(At
the time of writing, the petition had over 265,000. It requires 100,000 for an
answer from the White House) . . .
“Bill Gates is continuing the work of Monsanto”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNM833K22LM&feature=youtu.be
with Vandana Shiva
(12:16)
==========
d.
Sweden Is
Right. The Economy Should be Left Open
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/sweden-is-right-the-economy-should-be-left-open/
by
Mike Whitney
+
|
Are You Prepared For The “Infodemic”?
https://steemit.com/coronavirus/@corbettreport/are-you-prepared-for-the-infodemic by James Corbett |
It's silent. It's deadly. It's spreading all around
the globe. And, if you're not careful, it'll get you next!
The viral pandemic? No, silly! The viral infodemic.
Haven't you heard? There's a tsunami of fake news
that's coming to get you! And if you plebs don't behave properly then your
rulers are just going to have to shut down the internet for your own good.
+
Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch lobbies for
lethal US sanctions on leftist governments as Covid
crisis rages
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/08/billionaire-human-rights-watch-sanctions-nicaragua-venezuela/
by Ben Norton
Regime change-hungry HRW is proudly taking credit
for crushing new US sanctions on Nicaragua while pushing to escalate
Washington’s economic war on Venezuela. The Grayzone
presents a deep dive into the “human rights” arm of US empire.
+
Colonialism & coronavirus:
800,000 Haitians may die of COVID-19 |
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/09/colonialism-coronavirus-haitians-covid/
by Anya Parampil
Gutted by US-allied, neoliberal governments which
have controlled the country since 2004, Haiti’s healthcare sector braces for a
potential catastrophe.
==========
e.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020
Subject: [MCM] Three pieces on the likelihood that the new coronavirus WAS concocted in a lab (3)
Meryl
Nass and Sam Husseini
interviewed by Dennis Bernstein on KPFA:
https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=332258
(The
interview begins at 16:05.)
Where
did COVID-19 come from?
by Josh Mitteldorf
Posted on April
17, 2020
https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/04/17/where-did-covid-19-come-from/
There
is genetic evidence suggestive of human tinkering in the genome, and there are
news stories suggesting the virus might have been developed either at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology or at the American virology lab at Fort Detrick. There are even some suggestions that the American
and Chinese bioweapons labs may be working together,
sharing samples and exchanging funding.
Part 1: The Genetic
Evidence
Preface
We rely on the scientific
community as a context for almost every public policy decision. People who want
to influence policy know this, and they don’t just lobby Congress, they also
buy scientists, scientific reporting, and placement in prominent journals. Most
scientists are honest, but they have to survive in a world where funding is
tighter than it should be. It’s not surprising that some of them succumb and
publish what powerful and corrupt institutions want them to.
The question of a laboratory
origin for COVID is politically explosive, so we expect a heavy hand
restraining the science establishment. Those of us seeking an honest answer, who have a little expertise, a little horse sense, and a lot
of patience, are left to sift through information, misinformation, and
disinformation in a politicized environment.
BIOTECHNOLOGY, COMMENTARIES, HEALTH APRIL 14, 2020
COVID-19: A wake-up call for biosafety
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/covid-19-a-wake-up-call-for-biosafety/
by Jonathan Matthews of GMWatch
Like many of our
readers, we may be sheltering-in-place, but please don’t think we’re taking our
eye off the ball. Although other issues may not seem so important at the
moment, the COVID-19 virus will subside one day, yet we will still be facing
huge threats such as the so-called “extinction crisis” (the collapse of
biodiversity) and the failure to take biosafety
seriously. Interestingly, the pandemic is making many people more alert to
exactly these kinds of issues.
Take, for
instance, biosafety. While some experts have stated that
COVID-19 has not been deliberately genetically engineered and released as a bioweapon, the possibility that it emerged from a research
laboratory has not been ruled out.
Coronavirus in the blood
For instance, Rutgers University’s Prof Richard Ebright,
a biosecurity expert who has been speaking out on biosafety issues for nearly 20 years, thinks that the
COVID-19 pandemic could have started as an accidental release from a lab, such
as one of the two known to have been studying bat coronaviruses
in Wuhan, China, where the new coronavirus first
emerged.
And Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York
Medical College in Valhalla, New York, editor-in-chief of the journal Biological Theory,
and co-author of Biotech Juggernaut,
adds crucial historical context that shows exploring whether COVID-19 could
have been genetically engineered should not be dismissed as a subject fit only
for conspiracy theorists.
+
[MCM] Lockdowns are "superfluous and
ineffective," concludes new study from Leibniz University
:
Effectiveness of Corona Lockdowns: Evidence for a
Number of Countries
http://diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de/pdf_bib/dp-671.pdf
by Stefan Homburg
Discussion
Paper No. 671 ISSN 0949-9962
13. April
2020
School of Economics and Management, Leibniz University of Hannover,
Germany. Phone: +49 511 762-5633. Email: homburg@fiwi.uni-hannover.de.
Abstract :
The paper assesses the effectiveness
of the large-scale lockdowns that took place during the SARS-CoV-2 (corona)
pandemic. Countries considered include the United States, South Korea, Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. Our re-search strategy utilizes
the fact that fatal outcomes follow infec-tions with
a delay of 23 days. Therefore, the dates of the actual infections can be
inferred from the data. The results suggest that lockdowns were superfluous and
ineffective.
+
[MCM] This Great Fear—now bringing on a second Great Depression—is based on CRAP statistics (MUST-SEE edition of "The Corbett Report") :
Lies, Damned Lies, and Coronavirus
Statistics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1trzdmwR2M&feature=youtu.be
with James Corbett
(1:07:33)
+
British
Police During Quarantine - April 17, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSfxg9LVmY0&feature=youtu.be
(5:05)
==========
f.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020
Subject: [MCM] What's really happening bears NO relation
to the bogus numbers trotted out about it
Some sharp analysis from David Stockman (just one of
many conservatives who haven't
drunk the Kool-Aid
that's more lethal than this new coronavirus).
MCM
The CNN/Cuomo
Brothers Inquisition,
CovidGate And The Folly Of Lockdown Nation
http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/april/17/the-cnncuomo-brothers-inquisition-covidgate-and-the-folly-of-lockdown-nation/
April 17,
2020
We are getting sick and tired of the CNN/Cuomo Brothers
inquisition and the Coviddeath Cavalcade. Their
relentless, morose, partisan coverage of the coronavirus
pandemic is the single greatest campaign of misinformation, disinformation,
propaganda, scaremongering and elitist prattle we can recall in our entire
lifetime.
Indeed, Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare was a Sunday School
picnic compared to CovidGate. And just as there were
no commies secretly subverting America 66 years ago, there is no deathly
contagion stalking the American people today and no public health emergency
that remotely justifies the Lockdown Nation regime that the CNN/Cuomo Brothers
and infectious disease lobby have foisted on the country with virtually no
public debate or democratic accountability.
By every measure, New York is the aberrant epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak.
So what you find in the New York stats has got to be definitive, but what
they’re conclusive about is the very opposite of the hysteria being propagated
by the Cuomos & friends.
The New York data, in fact, show that Covid-19 almost pinpointedly
attacks the old, the frail, and the medically vulnerable, not the general
population.
In turn, that means that public health measures should be focused on
identifying, isolating, protecting, treating and supporting the very small
sub-population that is bearing the brunt of the illness and deaths, while
allowing the vast bulk of the population to get back to normal social and
economic life forthwith.
As we document below, the peak of new cases and deaths is now in the rear-view
mirror. So what we can glean from the New York stats through April 13th
reporting is definitive and will only get even more definitive in the weeks
ahead.
As of 1PM today, the nationwide death count “WITH” Covid-19 was 23,529. And we
go full monte with CAPs, quotes, bolds and italics
for the reason that it is self-evident the virus per se didn’t kill
many or most of these people: It triggered organ and function failures that
were already embedded in pre-existing morbidities. And that truth is validated
in spades by the New York data. As of this afternoon, New York had reported
10,834 corona deaths or 45% of the national total.
But when you look at the break-out by age categories and rates relative to
population, the numbers are simply stunning:
· Under
50 years: 642 deaths or 4.9 per 100,000;
· 50-69 years: 3,174 deaths or 65 per 100,00;
· 70-79 years: 2,888 deaths or 272 per 100,000;
· 80 years+: 4,130 deaths or 1,086 per 100,000.
In short, 18%
of all the Covid-19 nationwide deaths crawling across the CNN screen today have
been among New Yorkers 80 years and older; and 7,018 or 30% of national deaths
and 65% of New York Covid-19 deaths have been among those 70 years and older.
To be sure, as a member of the 70+ class of New York residents, we don’t
begrudge anyone the longest and happiest life possible. But we are here talking
about the appropriate public policy response to a bad winter flu and suggest
that when the mortality ratio for the over 80 population is 222 times higher
than for those under 50 years old, then one size surely does not fit all.
Andrew Cuomo is
NOT bae: exposing the governor's thuggish record with
Randy Credico
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/16/andrew-cuomo-governors-randy-credico/
by Anya Parampil with Randy Credico
(1:00:32)
Millions of
dollars of free earned advertising from his brother on CNN can
not cover up the real record of the politician
known by average New
Yorkers as “Governor 1%.”
==========
g.
Coronavirus: Why France has 4 times as many deaths as Germany
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/17/21223915/coronavirus-germany-france-cases-death-rate
by Alex Ward
+
BREAKING:
COVID-19 DEATH RATE EQUIVALENT
TO SEASONAL
FLU – April 18, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_Z9AC9-oyg
(3:07)
+
NEW: Early results from coronavirus antibody tests in general population
(April 19, 2020)
https://sharylattkisson.com/2020/04/new-early-results-from-coronavirus-antibody-tests-in-general-population/
by Sharyl Attkisson
==========
h.
The World After…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJk8kKcbKMM&feature=youtu.be
with Richard Wolff
(36:31)
+
Military
preparing to lock down US capital
(Full show)
(26:06)
As DC officials brace for a potential surge in coronavirus cases, a secretive military force called the
Joint Task Force National Capital Region (JTF-NCR) has been activated for the
purpose of securing the nation’s capital and surrounding areas, quelling unrest,
evacuating leaders and ensuring continuity of government if civil government
breaks down. RT America’s Michele Greenstein reports. But first, the White
House has proposed a three-tiered plan for returning to normal business. RT
America's Natasha Sweatte reports. Then former UK MP
George Galloway joins Rick Sanchez to discuss ongoing coronavirus
situation in Europe. RT America's Trinity Chavez reports on New York's fight
against the pandemic. Plus, Steve Gruber, host of “the Steve Gruber Show” and “News.Views.Hughes” host Scottie Nell Hughes discuss the
possibility of a lockdown-fueled baby boom.
+
COVID-19: The
City in a Time of Plague
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/20/covid-19-the-city-in-a-time-of-plague/
by Pepe Escobar
“The
plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance,
observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive
power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies – this is the
utopia of the perfectly governed city.” – Michel
Foucault, Discipline
and Punish
==========
i.
ASSANGE
EXTRADITION
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/17/watch-assange-extradition-john-pilger-stefania-maurizi-and-charles-glass/
with John Pilger, Stefania Maurizi and Charles
Glass
(1:02:06)
With imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange
facing the twin dangers of extradition to the U.S. and Coronavirus
in Belmarsh prison, watch a panel discussion on the
state of Assange’s legal process, the state of his
health and the health of press freedom with legendary filmmaker and journalist John
Pilger, Italian reporter and WikiLeaks partner Stefania Maurizi and journalist
and author Charles Glass
+
“The youth
and the mass media's false reality and history”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUCYoJ8KSF8
with Noam Chomsky
(7:34)
Interview
with Noam Chomsky on May 22, 2012, at M.I.T. Cambridge, MA conducted by Chris
Steele (Filmed/Edited by Dan Banta and Trenton Cotten,
translated by Christina Castaneda).
==========
j.
On Biden vs. Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39902cn5lX8
with Mehdi Hansan and Noam Chomsky
(30:49)
The
Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan speaks with world-renowned
political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky on the 2020 presidential election
between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Now that Bernie Sanders has dropped out and
endorsed Biden, does the progressive left have a moral obligation to hold their
noses and vote for the former vice president, despite his many sins?
+
“On Noam
Chomsky Favouring Biden Over
Trump
& Voting
for Lesser of Two Evils”
with Glenn Greenwald
(10:20)
+
Episode N° 70:
“Vote for Biden, But Don’t Lie
About Who He Really Is”
(featuring Dr. Cornel West)
https://rumble.media/episode/episode-70-vote-for-biden-but-dont-lie-about-who-he-really-is-featuring-dr-cornel-west/
+
If Trump
Declares Martial Law Due to Coronavirus,
Can He
Suspend the Election?
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/if-trump-declares-martial-law-due-to-coronavirus-can-he-suspend-the-election/
by Martina Moneke
+
On Contact:
“The End of Public Education”
with Noliwe Rooks
(26:38)
==========
k.
Essential or Expendable? Gig Workers
at Instacart & Grocery Stores Demand Safety Gear
& Hazard Pay
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/20/matthew_telles_instacart_gig_workers
with Matthew Telles
(16:00)
==========
l.
Palestinian
Prisoners Day: Remembering Palestine’s Organic Intellectuals
by Ramzy Baroud
To mark
Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, MintPress brings you the
introduction to Dr. Ramzy Baroud’s
“These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in
Israeli Prisons.”
+
The Virus of
Occupation: Israelis Have Taken To Spitting on Palestinians During
Coronavirus
https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-soldiers-settlers-spitting-palestinians-amid-coronavirus/266684/
by Ramzy Baroud
Spitting at
someone is a universal insult. In Israel, however, spitting at Palestinians is
an entirely different story.
==========
m.
Labour report reveals how Jeremy Corbyn
was sabotaged from within
by Aaron Maté, with Asa Winstanley, journalist with
The Electronic Intifada.
(39:54)
+
Boris Johnson must
resign now.
His lousy
leadership has cost us thousands of lives
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/486331-boris-johnson-covid-19-resign/
by Chris Sweeney
+
The End of
Sanders, and Maybe the Beginning of a Mass Independent Left
https://www.blackagendareport.com/end-sanders-and-maybe-beginning-mass-independent-left
by Glen Ford
==========
n.
We're All In
Donald Trump's Cartoon,
with Dan Perkins, aka
Tom Tomorrow
with Michael Moore
(1:17:25)
==========
o.
“Saber-rattling
may force China to dump US debt”
with George Galloway
(5:17)
+
Ralph Nader
interviews Noam Chomsky: Foreign Policy and Activism
==========
p.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020
Subject: [MCM] Say it ain't so: Consortium News uses
"conspiracy theory" to dismiss concerns about vaccine safety and
state crackdowns on civil liberties
The late, great Robert Parry founded Consortium News in 1995, in response to "a crisis building in
the U.S. news media," whose allergy to inconvenient information he knew all too well from having
worked for Newsweek and AP. "The mainstream media was falling into a pattern of groupthink on
issue after issue, often ignoring important factual information because it didn't fit with what all the
Important People knew to be true," wrote Parry in 2015.
"Looking back over the past two decades," he continued, "I wish I could say that the media trend
that we detected in the mid-1990s had been reversed. But, if anything, it's grown worse. The major
Western news outlets now conflate the discrete difficulties from made-up 'fake news' and baseless
'conspiracy theories' with responsible dissenting analyses. All get thrown into the same pot and
subjected to disdain and ridicule."
https://consortiumnews.com/about/
Such was the tactic used to make Parry himself look like a kook, when he shed light on Iran/contra
and the "October surprise," just as it was used in the mid-Nineties to demolish Gary Webb, the
investigative journalist who broke the story of the CIA's drug smuggling out of Nicaragua. By then
the tactic had been used successfully for roughly thirty years, after the CIA, in its Memo #1035-960,
first weaponized the phrase "conspiracy theory" to discredit critics of the Warren Report. By the
time Parry founded Consortium News—as George Seldes (in 1940) and I.F. Stone (in 1953) had
founded their respective antidotes to the propaganda gushing from the US press—"conspiracy
theory" had been absorbed into the hearts and minds of everybody in the US and beyond, so
that most people felt—and feel—that they must distrust their own quite rational suspicions of
elite attempts to rob them of their rights and freedoms, as if the very notion of such covert class
warfare, waged by Them against the rest of us, is absolutely crazy on its face.
That is a very dangerous idea, as it has largely incapacitated We the People, by giving them
a sentimental misimpression of executive authority, so that they often can't believe our
government would do the things it's actually, demonstrably, been doing to the rest of us,
and peoples all over the world, for decades, from the assassinations of our most beloved
leaders, to the initiation, and protraction, of gratuitous wars and rightist coups abroad, to
the orchestration of horrific terrorist attacks on our own soil, to the stealing of elections
everywhere (including here), to the harassment and imprisonment of whistle-blowers and
other activists, to the shattering experiments in mind control inflicted on prisoners, mental
patients, students and other helpless people, to the routine approval of drugs and vaccines
that do lasting harm, and even kill; and so on.
Those independent outlets bold enough to tell the awful truths that all the other media
ridicule as lunacy are few and far between; and Robert Parry's was among the best of
them. I say "was" because Consortium News has just gone over to the enemy, by
publishing a solemn editorial highlighting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres'
recent diatribe against the "dangerous epidemic of misinformation" about COVID-19.
"Wild conspiracy theories are infecting the Internet," raved the UN chief, casting all
such dissident material as itself a plague that—clearly—must be "cured," which is to
say, wiped out, just like that apocalyptic virus.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-un-chief-decries-dangerous-epidemic-of-misinformation-about-coronavirus/
And what, exactly, would those "wild conspiracy theories" urge us to believe? "Social
media has been inundated by opposition to vaccines, promotion of the idea that
Covid-19 is just like a normal flu, that hospitals are empty and that enforced self-
isolation based on medical advice is a plot to impose a permanent police state."
Guterres, or his speechwriter (or handler), did his best to make what Parry called
some quite "responsible dissenting analyses" sound as unhinged—and dangerous
—as possible. All four of what the Secretary-General "decries" as "wild conspiracy
theories" are obfuscations of important facts that everybody needs to know, in order
to protect ourselves from real "misinformation" that's more dangerous than COVID-19.
1) "Social media has been inundated by opposition to vaccines." Thus Guterres,
following Big Pharma's script, casts advocates of vaccine safety as "anti-vaxxers,"
which is like calling critics of Vioxx, or opioids, "anti-drug," or critics of GMO's,
glyphosate, or refined sugar, "anti-food."
While there are arguments against all vaccination, and some pop up online,
what's "inundating" social media, and what Guterres actually deplores, is
wholly valid information—scientific studies, records of the US Vaccine Court,
product inserts from the vaccine manufacturers themselves, as well as
harrowing personal accounts of vaccine injury—on the dangers of particular
vaccines, such as the MMR, Gardasil and flu shots, among other proven
toxins. Also "inundating" social media are reports on scientific studies of
the various drug therapies—hydroxychloroquine (in combination with
azithromycin and/or high-dose Vitamin C), remdesevir, Ivermectin, Interferon
Alfa 2B (from Cuba), Avigen (a Japanese flu drug), a placenta-based cell
therapy from Israel, and so on—that would obviate the need for a new
COVID-19 vaccine.
Such is the solid and important information that's "infecting the Internet,"
according to the UN Secretary-General—and the editors of Consortium News,
who, apparently, would also like to see the Internet "disinfected."
2) "Social media has been inundated by ... promotion of the idea that
Covid-19 is just like a normal flu." While that "idea" is clearly ludicrous
—"a normal flu" does not entail acute hypoxemia, nor is it fatally
exacerbated by the use of ventilators—Guterres' blanket charge would
necessarily include an "idea" that's not ludicrous at all: that the death
rate among COVID-19 patients is comparable to that of influenza. Such
is the important finding of Dr. John Ioannidis's team, from their study of
COVID-19 antibody seroprevalence in Santa Clara County: "True infection
rate fatality is in the ballpark of seasonal influenza," they conclude. We
find much the same rough equivalence in a Dutch study, suggesting that
3% of Holland's population may have the coronavirus antibodies, with a
case fatality rate of 0.7%.
Such numbers offer us a very healthy antidote to the terroristic coverage
of this crisis by the media, whose "wild" exaggeration of the danger facing
us—exaggeration that's now proving far more lethal than that virus—is
based wholly on the shrieking prophecies of doom that we've been hearing
from Bill Gates, WHO's Tedros Adhonam, and now the UN Secretary-General,
who seems to want us to be paralyzed with fear—and, evidently, so does
Consortium News.
3) "Social media has been inundated by ... the idea ... that hospitals are empty."
While some hospitals are overwhelmed, as their workers have been saying
(or would say, if their bosses hadn't gagged them), a lot of hospitals are empty—
too empty, as fear of COVID-19 has kept all too many people far away, with
grave conditions (strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, appendicitis) that would
ordinarily have them in the hospital. As for the field hospitals set up last month
to handle the expected mobs of COVID-19 patients (at the Javits Center in New
York, the CenturyLink Field Event Center in Seattle, and on the USNS Comfort
and USNS Mercy), they've now been closed down for lack of business, while
others (at McCormick Place in Chicago, and in New York's Central Park) appear
to have few patients, if the many photos of them in the local press failed
somehow to exclude the suffering masses there.
To call this a "conspiracy theory" is to contradict what people the world over
(myself included) have seen with their own eyes—and, again, to stoke the panic
that is killing off the world economy, and, with it, countless people, mostly poor.
4) "Social media has been inundated by ... the idea .... that enforced self-isolation
based on medical advice is a plot to impose a permanent police state." This last
of Guterres' charges of "conspiracy theory" is his craziest. Leaving aside the fact
that there's much expert "medical advice" against the policy of "enforced self-isolation"
(a consensus that's been growing steadily), the signs of the police state are as
blatant as a rubber bullet in the eye, as governments have sicced the cops on
people the world over, dictating day-to-day behavior with the zeal and vigilance
of any Nazi Governor or Soviet commissar.
Perhaps the Secretary-General of the United Nations could devote some resources
to tracking the abuse of power by national, state and city governments worldwide,
as cops now use surveillance drones to badger people taking walks in Paris,
Britain, Spain, California and Elizabeth, New Jersey, as well as in the UAE and
(of course) China; and as "governments in Italy, Germany, Austria, China, South
Korea and Taiwan have begun analysing smartphone data so as to determine
to what extent populations are really locking themselves down at home," as
Forbes reported a few weeks ago (noting that the US and UK were close to doing
the same); and as the cops in Colorado handcuffed a man (a former cop) for playing
catch with his daughter in a park, and the cops are fining residents of Beverly,
Massachusetts, a Boston suburb, $100 for walking the wrong way on the township's
one-way sidewalks, and thirty cops raided a child's birthday party in Los Angeles,
and the governor of Michigan has banned travel between two residences in the state;
and so on.
It would take a full-time staff to keep track of such police-state measures, now
commonplace throughout the "democratic" West just as in Dubai, Colombia and
the Philippines. However, the prospect of "a permanent police state"—singular—
is obviously looming not just in the crackdowns by those disparate governments,
but also, or especially, in the clear agenda of the globalist cabal in which the UN
Secretary-General serves so prominent a role. It's no "conspiracy theory," but an
established fact, that the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation (WHO's
most lavish funder), the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Foundation, UNICEF
and the component giants of Big Pharma have joined forces in "Gavi, the Vaccine
Alliance," a "public-private partnership" that is explicitly intent on vaccinating
every human being on Earth, through house-to-house campaigns by goon squads
(personnel with "minimal training") ready to confront and overcome resistance.
Nor is it a "conspiracy theory," but a matter of public record, that Gates intends,
through those mass vaccinations, to micro-chip the entire human race, so that
one's vaccine history may be read instantly by cell phones; and it is also not a
"theory" but a fact that, in the meantime, Gates et al. plan to require everyone
who wants to leave the house to carry "immunity certificates"—a concept first
proposed in Germany two weeks ago, and one that Dr. Fauci says is "being
discussed" for roll-out here in the US.
Even if this dystopian scenario were groundless, as the UN Secretary-General
has charged, it's no "conspiracy theory" to point out that this crisis has been
most convenient for the powers that be, as it has instantly and totally snuffed
out vigorous protest movements that were growing all around the world, from
the un-silent majority supporting Bernie Sanders here in the US, to the Yellow
Vests in France, to the robust protests of state corruption and/or neoliberal
economic policies in Chile, Argentina, Honduras, Ecuador, Brazil, and Haiti,
Indonesia, Lebanon and Cameroon, to the feminist uprisings in Mexico and
all over South America; and so on. "2019 may be remembered as the year of
the protests, as demonstrations are engulfing the world," FAIR noted in
December (in an article spotlighting the Western media's exclusive focus on
Hong Kong). The COVID-19 crisis has extinguished all that fire, and blocked
all public memory that it was burning—just as World War I stamped out the
rich political ferment of the Progressive Era in the US, and like developments
in Europe; and just as 9/11 put an end to the growing grass-roots pushback
against "free trade," and the mass refusal to accept Bush/Cheney as
legitimate, after the theft of the election in 2000. As effective as those prior
crises were at ending mass resistance and dissent, they were as nothing
by comparison with this crisis, which has not just silenced everyone, but
has us all cut off from one another, locked up under quasi-voluntary
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Thus this crisis has not only radically empowered governments throughout
the world, and granted international authority to a gigantic "public-private
partnership" intent on exercising full control over our very bodies, and our
children's bodies—and, as well, the world economy, and global food supply
(two "conspiracy theories" that I don't have space for here). While thus
exalting those authorities, the COVID-19 crisis has also disabled actual
mass protest of that empowerment—the only kind of protest that our
masters fear—by terrorizing people into staying home, and keeping far
apart when we skulk out, to go buy groceries (if any) and medicine (if we
can afford it).
Maybe the snuffing out of all that protest was deliberate, or maybe it was
just an inadvertent benefit of this apocalyptic crisis. Either way, it's really
happened—just as some vaccines are toxic, unnecessary and/or
ineffective; and the number of COVID-19 deaths is comparable to that of
influenza; and many hospitals are standing empty, even in the places that,
reportedly, are hardest hit; and the prospect of a "permanent police state"
is very real, its signs quite clear to anyone who's half-awake, and not
gone blind from having drunk the Kool-Aid gushing endlessly from "our
free press." To warn us not to heed those dismal facts by calling them
"wild conspiracy theories" is not only a Big Lie, and a form of gaslighting,
but—in light of what will happen if we don't face up to them—a crime
against humanity.
We would expect that "wild" Big Lie from the UN Secretary-General, just
as we'd expect it from Bill Gates, or Dr. Fauci, or—especially—the New
York Times. What we would not expect is that Consortium News would
echo that Big Lie instead of blowing it to smithereens, as Robert Parry
always did as a reporter of forbidden truths, and as he clearly meant
Consortium News to do. That even his dissenting forum has now joined
the thunderous propaganda chorus drowning out the truth about
this lethal crisis—along with "Democracy Now!" and other outlets on
"the left"—tells us that we're in even bigger trouble than we thought,
and that we must fight all the more intrepidly to honor Robert Parry's
name, by following his great example.
MCM
p.s. I will send the links to all my sources separately.
COVID-19, INTERNATIONAL, UNITED NATIONS
COVID-19: UN Chief Decries ‘Dangerous Epidemic of Misinformation’ About Coronavirus
April 15, 2020
Antonio Guterres warned against poisonous misinformation on social media that is putting more lives at risk.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday blasted a “dangerous epidemic of misinformation” about the Coronavirus and urged people around the world to “trust in science” against a “poison that is putting even more lives at risk.”
Social media has been inundated by opposition to vaccines, promotion of the idea that Covid-19 is just like a normal flu, that hospitals are empty and that enforced self-isolation based on medical advice is a plot to impose a permanent police state.
“Harmful health advice and snake-oil solutions are proliferating,” Guterres said in a video message. “Falsehoods are filling the airwaves. Wild conspiracy theories are infecting the Internet. Hatred is going viral, stigmatizing and vilifying people and groups.”
+
From: Perspectives on the Pandemic
Dr. John Ioannidis announces the results of his serology study in Santa Clara, California. The study is attached below. "Our Santa Clara seroprevalence study is now out. It shows 50-85 times underestimated number of infections, therefore 50-85 times overestimated infection rate fatality. True infection rate fatality is in the ballpark of seasonal influenza." https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.11... Dr. Ioannidis is Professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS). Dr. Ioannidis' article: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a... Full interview from March 25, 2020: https://youtu.be/ZEr4rmjwd0g Full Transcript: https://www.thepressandthepublic.com/... Twitter: https://twitter.com/on_pandemic
+
From Dr. Emanuel Garcia, a citizen of both the US and New Zealand:
Dear Prime Minister Ardern,
I am a psychiatrist employed by the Hutt Valley DHB, with whom I have worked for over 14 years, and I am writing to express my concerns
about the effects of the lockdown and isolation imposed by your emergency decrees on people generally, particularly those with mental illness.
I also believe that any extended lockdown will be medically unsound from an infectious disease perspective, as it will prevent the development
of natural group immunity.
People must be people: we cannot live for very long without the sustaining glow of human companionship, or the productive cooperation
that employment affords. Businesses are going under, workers are losing jobs they will never recover, anxiety and depression are worsening,
and for what? While we may make a daily ritual of counting Covid-related deaths and Covid carriers, the vast majority of whom are asyptomatic,
will there be a similar toll of the misery that is unfolding as a result of depression, isolation, unemployment and the interruption of religious
celebrations? In summary, how many people are we actually saving from an infectious disease that is turning out according to the most reliable
statistics to be no worse than an ordinary flu, and at what cost to our mental, emotional, economic and spiritual well-being?
Please allow me to refer you to the superb interview with a medical expert from the United States (see below), as well as the article in which
other experts weigh in on COVID.
I am a dual citizen of the United States and New Zealand, by the way, and I am doing my bit during this difficult time to sustain the health
of my fellow New Zealanders, as a doctor.
Sincerely,
Emanuel E. Garcia, MD
12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic
Off-Guardian, 24 Mar 2020
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic
Perspectives on the Pandemic Episode 3:
A Conversation with Dr. David L Katz concerning “Total Harm Minimization”
The Press & The Public Project, 9 Apr 2020
https://ratical.org/PerspectivesOnPandemic-III.html
==========
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 1:40 AM
Subject: [MCM] Gates Foundation's seed agenda in Africa is "another form of colonialism"
Stop him before he kills more.
MCM
Published on
Monday, March 23, 2015
byCommon Dreams
Gates Foundation's Seed Agenda in Africa 'Another Form of Colonialism,' Warns Protesters
by Lauren McCauley, staff writer
Food sovereignty activists are shining a light on a closed-door meeting between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which are meeting in London on Monday with representatives of the biotechnology industry to discuss how to privatize the seed and agricultural markets of Africa.
Early Monday, protesters picketed outside the Gates Foundation's London offices holding signs that called on the foundation to "free the seeds." Some demonstrators handed out packets of open-pollinated seeds, which served as symbol of the "alternative to the corporate model promoted by USAID and BMGF." Others smashed a piñata, which they said represented the "commercial control of seed systems;" thousands of the seeds which filled the pinata spilled across the office steps. A similar protest is expected later Monday in Seattle, Washington, where BMGF is headquartered.
The meeting was convened to discuss a report put forth by Monitor-Deloitte, which was commissioned by BMGF and USAID to develop models for the commercialization of seed production in Africa, especially "early generation seed," and to identify ways in which the African governmental sectors could facilitate private involvement in African seed systems. The study was conducted in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia on maize, rice, sorghum, cowpea, common beans, cassava and sweet potato.
However, food sovereignty activists are sounding the alarm over the secret meeting. Heidi Chow, food sovereignty campaigner with Global Justice Now, which organized Monday's protest, warned that the agenda being promoted by these stakeholders will only increase corporate control over seeds.
==========
r.
You Wouldn’t Have To Knock People Off Their
Pedestal If You Didn’t Put Them There In The First Place
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55085.htm
by Caitlin
Johnstone
Whenever I
see someone online repeatedly gushing with enthusiastic praise about me and my
writing, I don’t get flattered by it. I don’t get any kind of ego tickle out of
it at all; I just quietly say to myself, “Ah shit. You’re gonna
get so pissed off when I inevitably say something you disagree with.”
And without
fail they always do. It happens over and over again; someone decides I’m the
greatest thing since sliced bread and decides to elevate me in their minds to
some kind of trustworthy authority figure over what they should be thinking,
then eventually I’ll say say something they disagree
with because I don’t fall neatly into any reliable ideological box they can
trust to remain predictable from day to day, and they have a catastrophic
meltdown about it online acting like I just betrayed them.
And in their
minds, I did betray them. They trusted me to always show up in their inbox
every day saying things that align with their worldview in an articulate and
interesting way, and then I betrayed that trust. It’s not a trust I ever wanted
and frequently advise against, but I haven’t been able to find an effective way
to deter it.
I see this
same kind of betrayal reaction from progressives today about Bernie Sanders and
Noam Chomsky, Sanders for dropping out and endorsing Biden without first
ensuring some “concessions” from his campaign and Chomsky for sharing the same
“lesser evil voting” policy he’s been voicing for decades.
I personally
don’t get this desire progressives feel to receive “concessions” from the Biden
campaign in the first place. Like, what is the motive here? You want Biden’s
handlers to lie to you and add some more fake progressive agendas to his
platform that have a zero percent chance of ever being enacted if he makes it
to the White House? It’s so undignified. It’s undignified for the progressives,
and in a sense it’s undignified for the Biden camp as well. Trying to make a
lifelong corporate whore do a fake leftist song and dance is like trying to
make a cat wear a dress. Stop trying to get Biden’s handlers to write down some
lefty talking points for him to struggle to read on camera and just let him
campaign honestly as the corporate whore he’s always been.
And of course the odious Mehdi Hasan trotted out Chomsky to have him recite his
famous “lesser of two evils” spiel (except of course in this case it’s the
lesser of two right wing dementia patients who’ve been credibly accused of
rape). What did you think was going to happen? They did it in 2016, they did it in 2012, of
course they’re going to do it
again. You’ll never see Noam Chomsky more visible than when the US political
establishment needs to keep national momentum from shifting toward actual
leftist movements.
And I mean I
get it. I get it that it’s annoying to never get to have any heroes who don’t
end up betraying the trust you put in them and advancing causes that you
oppose. Other people get to have heroes; liberals get to have Obama,
conservatives get to have Trump, why don’t people who want to see meaningful
healthy changes in US policy get to have any heroes?
==========
s.
Let the blame
games begin: Missouri sues China, including
WUHAN LAB,
over coronavirus outbreak
https://www.rt.com/usa/486511-missouri-sues-china-coronavirus-wuhan/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email
by Helen Buyniski
The state of
Missouri has sued China – plus its Communist Party and a handful of other
entities – for “causing a global pandemic that was unnecessary and
preventable.” It’s the first state to take the dubious accusation to court.
Missouri
Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed suit on Tuesday against the entire nation
of China, its national, provincial and city governments, and a smattering of
government agencies and research institutes, blaming the lot for allowing the coronavirus epidemic to go global. Laying the sum total of
suffering that has resulted from the epidemic at China’s feet might sound like
an overly ambitious gambit for little old Missouri, but the lawsuit reads less
like a legal document and more like a manifesto.
“Defendants are responsible for the enormous
death, suffering, and economic losses they inflicted on the world, including
Missourians, and they should be held accountable,” Schmitt declares in
the 47-page complaint. The specific parties being sued
are the People’s Republic of China; the Chinese Communist Party; the local
governments of Hubei Province and Wuhan; China’s National Health Commission,
Ministry of Emergency Management, and Ministry of Civil Affairs; the Wuhan
Institute of Virology; and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The lawsuit alleges that “during
the critical weeks of the initial outbreak,” Chinese authorities kept it
quiet by arresting whistleblowers, destroying research, “refusing cooperation with the global
community,” and lying about person-to-person transmission – supposedly
handicapping the global response. It’s a narrative that Americans have heard
repeatedly from the Trump administration and Western media – including the
dozens of articles from US outlets that Schmitt cites to make his case.
“Literally every Missourian”
was harmed physically and economically by China’s alleged actions and
inactions, Schmitt claims, insisting this gives him grounds to sue – along
with some legal gymnastics suggesting that China’s alleged “hoarding” of personal protective
equipment constitutes international commerce. A group of Republican senators
introduced a bill last week that would make it even easier to bleed China over coronavirus damages, potentially opening up a pressure
release valve for Americans upset about being laid off and looking for someone
to blame.
==========
t.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Subject: [MCM] How is Russia handling the coronavirus?
You cannot know from "our free press," which pumps out nothing but
Big Lies on that subject (among many others)
This piece is rich with further evidence that
"our free press" just makes shit up,
and so is simply
not to be believed, on any topic—any more than Donald Trump,
among whose few
true statements is his condemnation of the US media's routine
"fake news."
In this horrendous crisis, the New York Times et
al. are dedicated mainly to inciting
fear and hatred.
These days, it's feeling more and more like Berlin c. 1938—and not
because of Trump's
chest-thumping claims to absolute authority.
MCM
Better the virus than Putin? In the information war
against Russia, Covid-19 is just another weapon
March 24,
2020 © Sputnik / Alexey
Druzhinin / Kremlin
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/486483-russia-uk-us-media-coronavirus/
by Bryan MacDonald
Russian President Vladimir Putin wearing protective
gear at a hospital for Covid-19 patients, March 24.
We need to talk about the Western media’s coverage of Russia’s battle
with Covid-19. Rather depressingly, it seems many outlets, and hacks, are
rooting for the virus against “the Russians.”
You might think that during this sort of emergency, they’d have the good
grace to lay off the “info wars” for a while. But, sadly, that hasn’t happened.
Instead, coverage has become even more toxic.
Here’s what you got early on Tuesday morning if you entered “Russian response to Covid-19” into Google.
- Putin is distancing himself from Russia’s virus outbreak. But it could still damage him politically (CNBC)
- Coronavirus takes a serious turn in Russia, and Putin no longer radiates confidence (CNN)
- ‘All The Hospitals Are Full’: Russia's Healthcare System Scrambles as Covid-19 Cases Rise (US state-run RFE/RL)
- Ambulance jams, unprotected doctors, and mixed messages from Putin: Inside Russia’s chaotic response to the coronavirus pandemic
(from Business Insider)
There are more, but you’ve probably gotten the gist by now. What you have here is a collection of hokum, hogwash and hooey, Not so much failing to see the wood from the trees, as setting fire to the forest, lest a perceived opponent obtain use of the lumber.
Let’s be clear: Russia’s response to the coronavirus has not been perfect. But, so far, the country has been significantly less affected than Britain or America, and this appears to have deeply upset the US/UK media. Here are the Covid-19 stats, again as of Tuesday morning (according to data from Johns Hopkins University, Worldometer and UK reports).
- Total tests: USA 4.0 million, Russia 2.1 million, UK 0.33 million.
- Total cases: USA 788k, UK 125k, Russia, 52k.
- Total deaths: USA 42,518, UK 16,509, Russia 456.
It’s also worth pointing out that there is no evidence of a coronavirus cover-up in Russia. Needless to say, if there were one, the Anglo-American press would have found it by now and long since amplified it to the world.
==========
u.
From: alan haber
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2020
Subject: *Earth Day Week Downtown virtual Continues. THURSDAY...
REMINDER: Thursday and following schedule below
We had a beautiful Earth Day. The High Noon high point was an introduction to where we lived by a Native American woman who lives here now. We opened a space where the indigenous voice in this area made itself heard in the virtual commons . A good opening for the real commons to come. And the words and dance and songs and readings and reports, before and after, were each and all together beyond our expectations. The people did it. We intend a report of the whole Sunday to Sunday unfolding.
THURSDAY and the rest of Downtown Earth DaWeek continues
******************************************************************
10:00 am zoom Making Ann Arbor Downtown Earth Day
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/74857410069…
Meeting ID: 748 5741 0069
Password: 8f2s6m
*************************************
THURSDAY APRIL 23
10:00 AM Actions: what actions are underway and proposed. Climate Strike, Fracking Legislation,
May 22 one month proposal,...
11:00 -12:30 Euphrates Institute. RSVP "info@euphrates.org" to get the zoom meeting link
introspective reflection, compassionate conversation. rivers of connection to strengthen and uplift.
1:00 -3:00. City Sustainability programs Missy Stults, City Sustainability Staff, and discussion
Report on what Happening in the 2030 Zero Carbon plan, big visions and practical problems
3:00-5:00 pm. Commons Conversations
Center of the City Task Force recommendations: Council of the Commons
Library Green Conservancy
Design ideas
Rich Ahern legacy
Gardens and gardeners
FRIDAY APRIL 24
(provisional)
10AM. Conscious Cafe, Public Bank. Common Good, Next Economics
New Work New Culture
12pm. Election Integrity
2pm. Natural remedies: Cannabis and hempcrete:
5pm 5G Apocalypse. An eye openingly disturbing film
SATURDAY APRIL 25.
9 AM. Nuclear Weapons webinar
3-4 pm Global Teach-in 2: Kick Off Report and discussion
SUNDAY APRIL 26. 10AM zoom
to be determined, what more needs to be said going forward
*******************************************************
PLEASE PARTICIPATE WHERE YOU HAVE INTEREST>>. FORWARD THE INVITATION
Proliferate and Pollinate
*******************************************************
10:00 am zoom Making Ann Arbor Downtown Earth Day
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/74857410069…
Meeting ID: 748 5741 0069
Password: 8f2s6m
**************questions. 734 657 8083/ megiddo@umich.edu