Regular Fare:
IMF Blog: Confronting the
Hazards of Rising Leverage
FRBofNY: Did Dealers Fail
to Make Markets during the Pandemic?
Crescat Capital March Research Letter
Two diverging schools of macro thoughts are prevalent
today. One calls for a “Roaring 20s” redux while the other
believes in a forthcoming liquidity crisis. Both narratives have valid points
and flaws. To be clear, we find ourselves right in between the two. Let us elaborate.
The central argument of the reflationary thesis is that a pent-up demand
from consumers will likely cause explosive growth in the economy similar to the
early 1920s. To be fair, financial conditions for US households have
significantly improved. … The debt imbalances that restrain long-term economic
growth were never resolved. Instead, they were transferred from the private
sector to the government. In the wake of the pandemic, overall US debt to GDP
has soared to record levels at the same time as the stock and credit markets
have soared to new extremes. These are not the preconditions for a healthy
reflationary environment nor the typical signs of an economy in the early
stages of its business cycle.
We have yet to see a major reckoning for financial markets with asset
valuations at record levels across virtually all asset classes aside from
commodities. This brings us to the opposing bearish narrative. The dollar bull ‘deflationistas’, as they like to be called, have some
important points to consider. Throughout history, speculative bubbles have
always ended with brutal financial resets. Also, the dynamics behind “QE” are
much more complex than the idea that money printing must always lead to higher
consumer prices. In a deflationary reset, the debt burden tends to suck the
liquidity out of the financial system causing a stock market crash, rising
unemployment, and depressed consumer prices while money velocity collapses.
However, what we believe most, and what the deflationary camp fails to
comprehend today, is that the economic and social impact of the current fiscal
and monetary policies are completely different than what we experienced coming
out of the last recession, which indeed was a deflationary one.
….
Today’s deflationary debt imbalances are being met with a truly
unprecedented inflationary response. So, how do we bridge the reflation and
deflation narratives to find the appropriate middle ground? It is called the inflation camp. Yes, it is a bear camp, but it is not a
deflationary one for consumer prices. It is important to point out that world
history is full of inflationary financial market meltdowns as a consequence of
too much debt. These include both hyperinflationary and stagflationary episodes
where both stock and bond markets decline simultaneously, particularly when
outright debt monetization is involved like we effectively have today. It is
not all doom and gloom. We are bulls too. Bulls on commodities and basic
resource stocks. We are raging bulls on precious metals exploration companies.
…
Here Come The
Most Stunning Base-Effect Charts Since The Great Depression
James K. Galbraith: China Is Missing
from the Great Inflation Debate.
Once again, massive fiscal spending in the United States has invited
warnings of inflation and triggered dark memories of the 1970s. But these fears
are based on a model that has since been obliterated by economic realities –
not least the rise of China, which has fundamentally reshaped the US and global
economies.
Art Berman: Super-Cycle
Silliness: Why Oil Prices Will Not Increase Much Further
Monthly oil prices have nearly quadrupled since April 2020 and that has
some analysts talking about an oil super-cycle. That seems somewhere between
premature and stupid, at least for oil…. Commodity super-cycles are caused by
transformational periods of economic development and massive capital investment.
They are characterized by demand growth and high commodity prices that may last
for years… The present oil supply situation could not be more different than in
the early 2000s. World output today is low because there is too much supply for
existing demand. It is low because OPEC+ is withholding 8-10 mmb/d. It is
artificial. Global debt and unemployment have never been higher. This is not
the stuff of super-cycles.
Has The Era Of Ordinary Americans Thinking They Are “Pre-Rich” Ended?
Bubble Fare:
Zen and the Art
of Risk Management
… Many think life will go back to the way things were in February 2020. We disagree. Life has changed forever in America.
… About 19M workers collect continuing unemployment
… Policy Makers Are Missing Solid Economic Landmarks .. Many key economic
indicators do not actually measure what policymakers tell us they do
Tweets of the Week:
Thousands of jobs would have been added each month over the last year
without the pandemic. If we count how many jobs may have been created if the
recession hadn’t hit—consider average growth over the year before the
recession—we are now short 11.0
million jobs since February.
Danielle DiMartino Booth
interviewing Dr. Lacy Hunt: "Many people who remember Prof.
Friedman's words think we should have inflation, but they don't remember his
algebra…"
MMT? / ESG? Fare:
Monetary adaptation to planetary emergency: addressing
the monetary growth imperative
Conclusion: In any economy where money hoarding and accumulation is not
curtailed, and where most of the money in circulation is issued by private
banks as debt, with or without interest, there will be a system-wide scarcity
of money available to people and organisations to service their debts – unless,
that is, there is continual economic growth. To avoid the deleterious
implications of a shortfall of money in an economy, policies are used to
maintain economic growth, which is therefore a form of imperative on society.
This MGI may be accentuated, at a system-wide level, by the practice of
full-reserve re-lending of money. Interest is not the main driver of the
imperative, but because it increases the transfer of money to those who are
wealthy and more likely to hold that money in a stagnant form that is not
available for debt servicing by others, interest charges may indeed exacerbate
the MGI. We conclude that the debt-money system creates a
competition for money between debtors and savers which is resolved through
creation of more debt-money, which in turn drives growth and the resulting
ecological and climate emergency.
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
Identifying a Safe and Just Corridor for People and the Planet. Rockstrom, Lenton et al.
Plain Language Summary
For the first time in human history, we are now forced to consider the real risk of destabilizing our home, planet Earth. This is an existential risk, as we all need a planet that can sustain life and provide the basis for the well‐being of all people. Here, we outline a conceptual framework for a global‐scale “safe and just corridor” that delivers on these goals for people and the planet. The recently formed Earth Commission will use this framework to map key functions that regulate the state of the Earth system and provide life support to us humans, including processes such as biodiversity and nutrient cycling. It will also analyze the related justice components, for each of these Earth system target domains, in terms of how such ranges can be defined and how nature's contributions to people can be justly shared. Furthermore, social transformations that meet safe and just targets for all people and how the global‐scale targets can be translated to targets for actors at other scales will be explored.
Scientists need
to face both facts and feelings when dealing with the climate crisis.
Why asset
managers aren’t solving the climate crisis
The promises of sustainable investment from firms that manage trillions
of dollars ignore the inadequacies of the system in which they operate.
Haruhiko Kuroda: Addressing climate-related financial risks — from a
central bank’s perspective. BIS.
The biophysical
resource limits of the planet
It is remarkable that the development literature has given so little
attention to the “limits to growth” analysis of the global predicament.
Reflections and
projections on a decade of climate science
Charging
Stations Could Drive Electric Vehicles Into a Wall
ESG Tweets of the Week:
On climate carbon budgets, Sir David King says it
all: "Where we are today at just over 500 parts per million of carbon
dioxide, methane and NOx gases, we have already passed the tipping point, we
are already into a **negative** carbon budget.”
A deep dive into #ESG
investing: It's not pretty at all and we need to act. At the
moment, the ESG space is somewhere between a joke and a scam.
THREAD (1/30)
COVID Fare:
The coronavirus pandemic is far from over
UK faces 'Covid
decade' due to damage done by pandemic, says report
Britain faces a “Covid decade” of social and cultural upheaval marked by
growing inequality and deepening economic deprivation, a landmark review has
concluded. Major changes to the way society is run in the wake of the pandemic
are needed to mitigate the impact of the “long shadow” cast by the virus,
including declining public trust and an explosion in mental illness, the
British Academy report found. Published on the anniversary of the UK’s first
lockdown, the report brings together more than 200 academic social science and
humanities experts and hundreds of research projects.
We hate to play our regular role of being the (early) bearer of bad tidings. For some time, we’ve been pointing to information and developments that suggest that efforts to contain Covid are having only limited success. That means Covid will be with us a very long time. Yet there’s still a tremendous amount of wishful thinking and denial which has the potential to make this bad situation worse:
More detail on each of these bullet points at the article:
- Poor countries denied Covid vaccines until 2023. That means virus will keep circulating there.
- Only temporary immunity.
- We don’t know how much the vaccines reduce contagion.
- Uncertainty about what effectiveness of existing vaccines will be with new variants.
- Vaccination levels won’t be high enough to tamp down the disease.
- Lack of will to take stringent enough control measures.
- Inadequate official action compounded by optimism bias and compliance fatigue.
It’s not just that there are no easy answers. There are also no good answers. We live in a complex and highly interdependent society. We blew the chance to do a hard lockdown, restrict transportation, particularly internationally, unlock state by state, region by region, when infection rates got low with test and trace and possibly a resumption of restrictions as necessary. We ignored South Korea’s lesson to our peril.
Almost third of
UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months
Covid: new
vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists
The planet could have a year or less before first-generation Covid-19
vaccines are ineffective and modified formulations are needed, according to a
survey of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists.
‘I’m empty.’
Pandemic scientists are burning out—and don’t see an end in sight
Your Immune
System Evolves to Fight Coronavirus Variants
New York
Magazine Incorrectly-Headlined Piece (that I won’t include here)
Though the study is an impressive piece of evidence of the effectiveness
of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, some public-health experts pushed back on
Walensky’s pandemic-changing takeaway. “There cannot be any daylight between what the research shows — really impressive but incomplete protection — and how it is described,”
Dr. Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told the New York Times on Thursday.
“This opens the door to the skeptics who think the government is sugar-coating the science,” Bach added, “and
completely undermines any remaining argument why people should keep wearing
masks after being vaccinated.”
Even the Centers for Disease Control hedged on Walensky’s claims. “Dr.
Walensky spoke broadly during this interview,” a CDC spokesperson told the
Times. “It’s possible that some people who are fully
vaccinated could get Covid-19. The evidence isn’t clear
whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the
evidence.”
Big Thoughts:
Other Fare:
The Louvre Just
Put Its Entire Art Collection Online so You Can View It at Home for Free
Tweet Vid of the Week:
How Earth will look in 250
million years according to plate tectonics theory
Photos of the Week:
Heavy Rain
Brought Spectacular Waterfalls to Australia’s Most Famous Rock
Also:
EXTRA [controversial
or non-market-related] FARE:
Regular Fare:
Has The Era Of
Ordinary Americans Thinking They Are “Pre-Rich” Ended?
For most of my life, tax-cuts were the mantra of the generation and
tax-raises were automatically bad. These tax cuts went overwhelmingly to the
rich, but Americans and Canadians and Brits were all for it.
As many observed, it seemed they believed that one day they would be
rich, and therefore that high taxes on rich people were bad. Now that seems to
have changed, and I suspect it’s that American have finally got it thru their
thick heads that no, most of them will never be rich, and moreover the reason
they’ll never be rich is because the people who already are, are kneeling on
their neck
…. We aren’t all in together, and we never were. It’s been class warfare
for as long as humans have lived in “civilizations” (and often enough, before).
… Some people benefit by hurting other people.
… The modern rich are the richest-richest to have ever existed, richer
than in the Gilded Age.
… All while overseeing economies which have broken the backs of the poor
and middle class and are on track to kill half the world’s species and over a
billion humans.
Clarity having arrived at last, it’s time to break the rich even more
than the Great Crash, Great Depression and marginal tax rates of 94% did. Slap
on the wealth taxes
Introducing
the Spring 2021 special section, Global Economic Disorder.
ESG Fare:
$100 million
geoengineering project proposed, to dim the sun.
Geoengineering:
NAS Recommends “Really Dumb Idea” To Save Us From Ourselves
Is the World
Going Plant-Based? It’s Complicated.
… These are just a few of the trends that seem to skew in favor of
plant-based alternatives, but unfortunately, they only tell part of the story.
The story is much bleaker.
Sure, more people may be trying plant-based products (and boasting about
it), but turns out Meatless Mondays and weekly veggie burgers just aren’t
making much of a difference.
Not only has the status quo all but returned, but countries around the
world are ramping up production at faster rates to make up for lost time. The
same applies for animal exploitation.
…
Animal exploitation remains one of the greatest silent tragedies of our
time. And it continues unabated—in farms, labs, factories, slaughterhouses,
zoos, schools, and in the comfort of our own homes.
It’s an appealing fantasy,
of course… but the electric car thing ain’t a’gonna happen, not at the scale
envisioned,
… First, the whole mass
motoring racket is falling apart more on its financial model than on whether
the cars move by gasoline or electricity. .. Second, the decrepit US electric
grid can’t handle the charging needs of such a gigantic electric car fleet (and
fixing the grid alone would be a trillion-dollar project). Third, the
manufacturing of electric cars depends on scarce rare mineral resources that
are not readily available in the US, but controlled by foreign nations. Fourth,
car-making utterly depends on far-flung international supply lines for parts
and electronics in a time when the integrated global economy is cracking up
under the strain of desperate competition for dwindling resources and the
ill-will generated by that. There are yet more kinks in the electric car scheme
but those are enough.
Of course, this whole
initiative is in the service of preserving a set of living arrangements that is
going obsolete, namely, suburbia. The previous investment represented by all
the housing subdivisions, commercial highway strips, malls, office parks, and
super-highways pretty much drove the American economy since the Second World
War. It’s understandable that we would be desperate to keep it all running, and
fix the pieces that are falling apart, because it’s where we put most of our
national wealth. It’s the whole American Dream in one nifty package. And, it
sure seemed like a good idea at the time, in such a big country, with so much
cheap land, and all that oil. But now things have changed and reality is
sending us clear signals that we have to live differently. The effort to oppose
reality is apt to be ruinous for us.
'Most couples
may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045'
The professor of
environmental medicine explains how chemicals in plastics are causing our
fertility to decline – and what we can do about it
Phthalates, used to make
plastic soft and flexible, are of paramount concern.
Bisphenol A (BPA), used to
harden plastic and found in cash-register receipts and the lining of some
canned-food containers, is another.
COVID Quotes and Tweets of the Week:
“It is important to remember
that every vaccine on the market right now prevents severe disease and death in
most cases,” said Dr. Umair A. Shah, [Washington] state’s health secretary.
“Finding evidence of vaccine breakthrough cases reminds us that, even if you
have been vaccinated, you still need to wear a mask, practice socially
distancing, and wash your hands to prevent spreading COVID-19 to others who
have not been vaccinated.”
IM Doc: The most fascinating problem that has no
obvious explanation is a surprisingly large number of patients that get sick
and are COVID positive within hours/days of their first injection. I have heard
all kinds of lame excuses why this may be happening – but none of them really
ring true for the numbers that are occurring. I would predict this is going to
be an interesting story when the full story of COVID comes out in a few years.
By the way, they tend to be WAAAAY more sick than a regular COVID patient. No hospitalizations
yet.
Ron Paul: Even the establishment experts seem to be in
total disagreement with each other – and often with themselves – over the
experimental Covid “vaccine.” Does it prevent the illness? Lessen the illness?
Provide lasting immunity? Temporary immunity? Is it safe for all? So many
questions, but so few reliable answers.
Ilargi: There are so many clowns out there that tell
you they base their measures and restrictions on “the science”, but have no
idea what that is. Injecting millions with untested substances is not science,
it’s the opposite of science. Science would require evidence that such
substances do not do harm (Hippocrates), and there is no such evidence.
Koen: Problem with Emergency Use Authorization is that said approval ceases to be valid if:
- there are adequate, approved & available alternatives for treatment/prevention
- there's no emergency anymore
- keep alternatives off market
- keep emergency going
We are no longer appealing to the @WHO, @CDCgov, @NIH, @US_FDA to recommend #ivermectin. They have been compromised & have failed all of humanity for reasons that have nothing to do with saving lives. Now we are appealing to doctors to be brave, save patients & #FollowWhatWorks.
British former Supreme Court
judge Lord Sumption
has warned that “social controls” brought about by the coronavirus pandemic may
be kept in place by governments for up to a decade. “It’s politically
unrealistic to expect the Government to backtrack now,” commented Sumption, who
has been highly critical of the government’s ‘totalitarian’ lockdown policies.
There's a part of me that suspects that a principal aim of the
pandemic is to cultivate learned helplessness on a truly global scale. We are
just so many (not so very) wild stallions that must be broken, before our
masters feel we are fit to be ridden
COVID Fare:
4,000 in Europe
died after adverse reactions to vaccines
Another 162,610 have been
injured.
Do doctors have to have the covid-19 vaccine?
Dear Editor
I have had more vaccines in my life than most people and come from a place of significant personal and professional experience in relation to this pandemic, having managed a service during the first 2 waves and all the contingencies that go with that.
Nevertheless, what I am currently struggling with is the failure to report the reality of the morbidity caused by our current vaccination program within the health service and staff population. The levels of sickness after vaccination is unprecedented and staff are getting very sick and some with neurological symptoms which is having a huge impact on the health service function. Even the young and healthy are off for days, some for weeks, and some requiring medical treatment. Whole teams are being taken out as they went to get vaccinated together.
Mandatory vaccination in this instance is stupid, unethical and irresponsible when it comes to protecting our staff and public health. We are in the voluntary phase of vaccination, and encouraging staff to take an unlicensed product that is impacting on their immediate health, and I have direct experience of staff contracting Covid AFTER vaccination and probably transmitting it. In fact, it is clearly stated that these vaccine products do not offer immunity or stop transmission. In which case why are we doing it? There is no longitudinal safety data (a couple of months of trial data at best) available and these products are only under emergency licensing. What is to say that there are no longitudinal adverse effects that we may face that may put the entire health sector at risk?
First things first: none of
the “vaccines” that are being injected as we speak into 100s of millions of
people have been approved by “medical authorities”. The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA
ones, as well as the AstraZeneca and in some places Johnson & Johnson
“substances” have only, best case, gotten a permit for Emergency Use
Authorization (EUA).
This is needed because none
of these things have ever been properly tested. The “logic” behind this is that
we are in an emergency, so there’s no time for testing.
Somehow, this “logic” is
combined with claims about “listening to the science”. While not testing is the
direct opposite of science.
In order to get the
Emergency Use Authorizations, you need to show that there are no other
substances available that could perform the job that the “vaccines” do.
I put “Vaccines” in
quotation marks because mRNA are not vaccines in the traditional sense, they
are, at least potentially, much more invasive. A factor that has… never been
properly tested.
The other substances that
might work vs the coronavirus, repurposed drugs such as ivermectin and
(hydroxy) chloroquine --- about which many doctors have written very positive
reviews --- if the (EUA) label is to be put on the new “vaccines”, must also
remain untested, just like the “vaccines” themselves.
So there are a few “tests”
out there that applied HCQ and ivermectin, but in the wrong environment. See,
if you give them only to 80+ year-olds who are already on an intubator and have
multiple co-morbidities, you may well end up with the verdict that they did not
prevent that person from dying. The thing is, the same would be true if you
gave that person an mRNA “vaccine”. But that last bit, we don’t hear about.
…
There’s an entire library by
now of ivermectin vs Covid 19 studies. But the health board in Holland says
:“There is also no scientific basis for the use of ivermectin.”. Yeah, sure.
Look, what there is no scientific basis for is the use of the newfangled
untested “vaccines”. Not testing equals not scientific. You could label it
“technology” if you will, but not science.
…
So that’s experiment number
1. 100s of millions of people injected with untested substances. For which
there seems to be some evidence that they make a person less sick. But that’s
all the evidence there is. They can still be infected, and there’s still no
evidence that they can’t infect others. So by all means, let’s bet the house on
that, shall we? And if we have to kill drugs that might do a much better job to
get there, we will.
It’s Time To
Talk About Ivermectin
Covid-19 vaccines are
reaching most emerging and developing economies in only drips and drabs, with a
few notable exceptions such as Chile. In many countries, locking down entire
cities or regions and paying millions of non-essential workers not to work
while front-line doctors and nurses battle to contain the virus is not an
option. There simply isn’t enough money available. This has left doctors and
health authorities with little choice but to try out cheap, widely available
generic medicines. Those drugs include ivermectin, a “well-studied, well
tolerated,” (in the words of a 2013 FT article) off-patent anti-parasitical. The
results have been extremely promising, according to almost all of the clinical
studies conducted thus far.
…
Dr. Omura himself believes
there’s already enough evidence of the benefits of ivermectin against Covid-19
for it to be granted approval as a therapeutic. One of its biggest benefits is
that it appears to work in the early stages of the disease
…
Another major ivermectin
proponent is the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which has
been trying to repurpose medicines already on the market for the treatment of
Covid-19. In October it created the I-MASK+ protocol for prevention and early
outpatient treatment, which includes ivermectin, vitamin D3, vitamin C, zinc,
melatonin and quercetin. The FLCCC believes that ivermectin is not only “one of
the world’s safest, cheapest and most widely available drugs,” it is also the
most effective against Covid.
…
Another recent convert to
the cause is Dr Alessandro Santin, a renowned cancer researcher who runs a
large laboratory at Yale. Santin believes that ivermectin is a game-changer
that could significantly reduce Covid’s toll on human health.
…
According to a WHO-sponsored
review and meta-analysis of 18 clinical studies, the drug could cut the number
of deaths from Covid-19 by as much as 75%. Crucially, some of the studies
suggest that it is effective not only as a treatment in the early and later
stages of the virus but also as a prophylactic.
Ivermectin: Game
changer vs Covid-19? What’s the controversy?
High fine for
doctors who incorrectly prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin
Doctors who prescribe
(hydroxy) chloroquine or ivermectin against covid-19 will now receive a fine of
up to 150,000 euros imposed by the inspection. This may also include other
medications that are prescribed outside of the guidelines.
VA Study: How
Long Does COVID-19 Vaccine Immunity Last?
Among the great unknowns of
the COVID-19 vaccines now in use against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is how long
immunity lasts and whether booster shots will be needed over time.
Scientists at the VA’s
Office of Research and Development in White River Junction, Vermont, have found
that the vaccines can provide immunity for at least seven to nine months, a
time frame similar to the immune response generated in people who have had
COVID-19.
Coronapocalypse;
Big Pharma's Doomsday Vaccine #666
….
Let’s summarize:
·
You could get sick and die.
(Quote– “Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) creates the “potential to amplify
the infection or trigger harmful immunopathology.”)
·
We don’t know what we don’t
know. (Quote–“…ADE of disease cannot be reliably predicted after either
vaccination or treatment with antibodies… it will be essential to depend on
careful analysis of safety in humans as immune interventions for COVID-19 move
forward….”)
·
We are flying blind and
hoping for the best. (Quote– “Additional mechanism-focused studies are needed
to determine whether small-animal and NHP models of virus infection, including
for SARS-CoV-2, can predict the probable benefits or risks of vaccines or
passive-antibody interventions in humans….”)
·
Let’s keep testing because
we have no idea if what we are doing is safe. (Quote– “In the meantime, it will
be necessary to directly test safety and define correlates of protection
conferred by vaccines and antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and other viral
pathogens in human clinical trials.”)
So, while Shaw sees one set
of potential problems, Kennedy sees others altogether different. But these are
just the tip of the iceberg because Dr. J. Patrick Whelan, a pediatric
rheumatologist, believes the mRNA vaccines could cause microvascular injury to
the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in ways not assessed in safety trials. In
fact, he even wrote a detailed letter to the FDA in December warning them
explicitly about these potential dangers.
…
These are just a few of the
many warnings that medical professionals have issued publicly. They reflect the
growing concerns about this new regime of dodgy vaccines. Needless to say,
their warnings have either fallen on deaf ears or been lost in the celebratory
din surrounding the new wonder drug. As we speak, millions of people around the
world are being injected with an experimental nanoparticle that may-or-may-not
impact their health and well-being for the rest of their lives. They have based
their decision not on sound science and long-term outcomes, but on relentless
fearmongering followed by a garish and overpowering media blitz. This crass
manipulation of public perceptions precludes what any reasonable person would
call “informed consent”.
So, here’s the
million-dollar question: Are the Covid vaccines safe or not?
How could they be? They were
not sufficiently tested, the technology is new and experimental, Phase 3 Trials
have not been completed, thorough animal trials were never conducted, there is
no data on long-term adverse side effects, and the final product was ramrodded
through the “rubber stamp” FDA under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)
provision. On top of that, medical professionals are now warning us that the
vaccines could “cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and
kidneys.”
If there is anything all
Americans agree on, it is that good government is about having the right
ideology. So when government governs badly, it is because the wrong people, who
have the wrong ideology, won the election.
Covid threw two fat
monkeywrenches into this model of ideology. First, although the Covid response
rapidly developed its own ideologies, Covid ideology did not “settle” quite
properly into the left-right framework, especially not across the Western
world.
Trump voters wound up
admiring Sweden. New Zealand tried fascism, and it worked. It is interesting to
wonder what the West would have done if Trump had decided to be a Covid
hardliner. Probably every Western country would have gone full Sweden. And, to
be honest—that might even have been a better result. Or not, of course.
One of the fundamental
axioms of democracy is that perspectives are deterministic. Your position on
any issue must be a pure function of your ideological principles. Yet the
ideology of New Zealand is quite indistinguishable from that of Sweden; and the
Covid position of Sweden was the position of all progressives well into March
2020. It was only once Trump became a Covid denier that this position became
unacceptable. The Swedes, it seems, were just too stubborn to follow the
U-turn, and then got stuck.
The second monkeywrench was
that no living Western ideology seemed to work. The Western countries that did
the best were more isolated and had stronger governments with more homogeneous
populations. Sweden, with its ultra-soft voluntary lockdown, even had a lower
death rate than the United States—though much higher than Norway and Finland.
(But let’s not forget that Sweden is a serious country with a real history,
whereas Norway and Finland are no more than its backward ex-provinces.)
We could conclude
empirically by looking at China, Taiwan and Korea that competent, unlimited
authoritarianism could control Covid. We decided that 500,000 deaths was not as
bad as competent, unlimited authoritarianism. (Cope: they were mostly old, sick
people anyway.)
We could conclude
theoretically by looking at the general success of all vaccine designs that
unrestrained, unlimited libertarianism could control Covid. We decided that
500,000 deaths was not as bad as unrestrained, unlimited libertarianism. (Cope:
maybe even more people would have been killed by unsafe scam vaccines.)
We could even conclude
empirically by our own state-to-state comparisons that there was little strong
evidence that any state’s American-style lockdown did all that much to
discourage viral transmission. It certainly did plenty to discourage human
existence.
Nothing on our political
menu was good.
...
The relative strategic
spectrum
If there is one general
lesson from this shitshow, what is it? When we pull the camera way back and
look at the Western response to Covid, what do we see? What we see is something
quite amazing, I feel.
Since we are looking at the
West from the West, our eyes are pointed forward. We start by looking at the
center of legitimate, moderate opinion in Western Covid ideology—with the right
edge of the windowframe as Sweden, and the left edge as NZ/Australia. (Or maybe
left/right is the other way around lol.)
The window of American
policy runs roughly between Florida/Texas and NY/CA. A beautiful test case is
North Dakota/South Dakota, though bear in mind that neither of these states is
at all culturally independent. But they have chosen opposite Covid ideologies,
despite being almost identical in nearly every agricultural way.
When people send me hatemail
for a hardline Covid take, it is because they have taken a side in this
domestic conflict—the West’s cold Covid civil war. Doesn’t our system of
government have to turn every problem into a cold civil war?
On the substance, I am
generally agnostic. The statistical similarity between North and South
Dakota—whose epidemic curves are almost identical—is strong. But isn’t less
transmission better than more? But wouldn’t it be better to just pay waitresses
for not waitressing? But have we demonstrated our capacity to do even that? And
so on…
And there is an impressive
statistical difference between Sweden and Norway—two countries that are
culturally independent, but still culturally similar… the bottom line is that
if God himself came down and told me that either of the moderate sides was
right, in an impressive, high-production-values way that admitted no doubt
whatsoever, I would simply not be shocked at all.
The absolute strategic
spectrum
The most libertarian Covid
response in the West was Sweden, which managed to muddle through without any
rules but is full of prudent Scandinavians. The most authoritarian response was
Victoria (Melbourne), whose Premier managed to sharply suppress a severe spike
by absurdly-draconian measures which earned him the well-deserved nickname of
“Chairman Dan.” (Of course, maybe it was a coincidence. You really never know
with this damned disease.)
Sweden and Melbourne are the
frame of the moderate Western window. But the trouble is: when we look outside
the window, everything we see works even better.
“Chairman Dan” is strictly
milquetoast by real Chinese standards; there was a bit of policing in
Melbourne, but no Orwellian digital population control; and indeed, it is
almost impossible to imagine suppressing an event like the initial Wuhan
outbreak by any kind of mild Australian standards.
In China today, Covid is a
memory. How again am I more free, when I’m basically under house arrest? If I
give up a little freedom, so as to obtain way more freedom, is this some incorrect
freedom math? Am I somehow not earning a freedom profit?
Sadly, there is no Asia on
the libertarian side of the window. Asian countries have an enormous
opportunity to leapfrog the West by going full libertarian; Western pundits
(even those of Asian descent) who expect them to take it are just fooling
themselves. Libertarianism is not how normal people think; and especially not
how Asia thinks.
And yet: though nothing is
murkier than whether to prefer moderate libertarian or modern authoritarian Covid
policies (except at near-zero levels, like New Zealand’s), nothing is clearer
than the superiority of both extremes to the whole moderate window….
Policymakers use
panic to shift blame for Covid-19 onto us, the people.
this expansion of risk is a
common tactic in public health messaging. While risks tend to be patterned,
officials find it politically useful to play down patterns and ‘democratise
risks’: Take a risk specific to some people and generalise it to everyone so
everyone feels equally afraid. … for policymakers, anxiety is useful…. For all
the attempts by government officials to claim that ‘the virus does not
discriminate’, it was difficult to deny that, in terms of deaths, it clearly
did. But behavioural scientists viewed people’s level-headed appraisals of
risks as another problem to be overcome. In a report by the Scientific Pandemic
Influenza Group on Behaviour (with the fittingly dystopian acronym ‘SPI-B’),
the authors bemoaned the fact that people were comforted by low death rates in
their own age groups. “A substantial number of people still do not feel
sufficiently personally threatened,” they lamented. In response, they advised
governments to ramp up fears.
Twitter Censors
Famed Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff
We’ve been witness to
Twitter censorship for more than a year, beginning with obviously objectionable
extremists then gradually moving to silence people based on merely having an
opinion that contradicts lockdown orthodoxy. There have been days when I
wondered whether I would cross the invisible line and even whether AIER would
itself be silenced. Stanford public health expert Scott Atlas has been
censored, and Naomi Wolf, visiting senior fellow at AIER, was put in Twitter
jail for a week for landing on the wrong side of the high priests of allowable
content. Well, a new line has been crossed. Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff and co-creator of
the Great Barrington Declaration, one of the most cited epidemiologists and
infectious -disease experts in the world (latest count of citations: 25,290) has been censored by Twitter. His tweet on
how not everyone needs a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was not taken down. He had
a warning slapped on it and users have been prevented from liking or retweeting
the post.
Keep in mind, too, that Dr.
Kulldorff serves on the Covid-19 vaccine safety subgroup that the CDC, NIH, and
FDA rely upon for technical expertise on this very subject. So here we have
some geeks at Twitter curating science, in areas totally outside the
specialization of web nerds, in a way that skews public understanding of the
scientific debate. … This attempt to silence accredited experts completely
distorts the process of scientific inquiry, discovery, and public opinion. … To
be sure, Dr. Kulldorff is not an anti-vaxxer (why should I have to say that?)
but instead has a nuanced position in light of his professional understanding
of the demographics of risk of this virus.
The Lockdowners
Have Their Own Conspiracy Theories
We Cannot Afford
to Censor Dissenting Voices During a Pandemic – Prof Martin Kulldorff
Why Is Everyone
in Texas Not Dying?
The “test” of whether and to
what extent lockdowns control the virus or “suppress outbreaks” (in Anthony
Fauci’s words) has been tried all over the world. Every serious empirical
examination has shown that the answer is no.
The US has many examples of
open states that have generally had better performance in managing the disease
than those states that are closed.
The Texas
Neanderthals were right
But is the data trustworthy?
New research
questions Florida's COVID-19 death toll
DeSantis lied--
Floridians Died... And So Did Visitors To The Sunshine State
Emergence Of
Dominant Selective Immune Escape Variants (Vanden Bossche)
Deaths in Vaccine Adverse Event
Reporting System (VAERS)
The Cheapest Covid-19 Therapy in the World (That Big Pharma Doesn't Want)
Last-Minute Trump
Rule Would Let Vaccine Makers Hike Prices Unchecked
New analytical
tool reveals massive DNA damage caused by CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing
CJ Hopkins: The
“Unvaccinated” Question
Totalitarian movements, when
they reach this stage, do not simply stop on their own. They continue to
advance toward their full expressions, ultimately transforming entire societies
into monstrous mirror-images of themselves, unless they are opposed by serious
resistance. There is a window at the beginning when such resistance has a
chance. That window is still open, but it is closing, fast. I can’t tell you
how best to resist, but I can tell you it starts with seeing things clearly,
and calling things, and people, exactly what they are.
COVID-Conspiracy Fare:
Whitney Webb: US Intel
Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified and “9/11-like” Coronavirus
Response Plan
As Coronavirus panic grips
the world, concern over government overreach is growing given the involvement
of US intelligence agencies in classified meetings for planning the U.S.’
coronavirus response.
Paul Craig Roberts: Good-bye
American Liberty
Yesterday I pointed out that no facts known at this time support a
Covid passport.
The Establishment is not
interested in facts and has no need of them. The Establishment has the
presstitute lie machine. It creates
whatever reality the Establishment wants us to live in.
Nevertheless, some facts are
just overwhelming. Consider
Florida. Long a retirement state, it is
a state with a large proportion of elderly and overweight people. For the past year Florida has not been under
lockdown or a mask mandate. The state is wide open. Consequently, one would think that Florida
would have the highest number of Covid deaths per 100,000 population.
But that is not the
case. Florida’s 154 Covid deaths per
100,000 is in the middle of the 50 states ranking. New Jersey, a lockdown state, has a deaths rate
per 100,000 almost twice Florida’s at 1.78 times. Locked-down New York’s deaths are 1.66 times
higher than Floridas. Locked-down Massachusetts
and Rhode Island Covid deaths are 1.60 times higher than Florida’s.
These numbers are from the official data. The conclusion is that Florida, an open state
with an elderly and overweight population without lockdown and mask
mandates—conditions that according to the medical bureaucrats should have
produced the leading high death rate—is in the middle of the pack.
We can safely conclude that
lockdowns and mask mandates are pointless.
And this conclusion does not take into account the many expert and
suppressed opinions that the lockdowns and the masks do more harm than good.
Despite the facts, the
corrupt Biden regime, a stolen presidency, is working with private companies
who smell the profits to develop vaccine passport systems, which they allege is
the only way to return to normalcy. In
other words, if you want to get out of jail, you will have to give up your privacy.
Scared people are likely to
fall for the propaganda that the
passport is a public health measure that will liberate us from lockdowns. But Florida doesn’t have lockdowns or a
vaccine passport. Naomi Wolf warns:
“I am not overstating this. I can’t say it forcefully enough. This is
literally the end of human liberty in the west if this plan unfolds as planned.
Vaccine passports sound like a fine thing if you don’t understand what these
platforms can do …
“It’s not about the vaccine. It’s not about the virus. It’s about your
data. And once this rolls out you don’t have a choice about being part of the
system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be
loaded onto that platform with no problem at all. What that means is that it
can be merged with your Paypal account, with your digital currency, Microsoft
is already talking about merging it with payment plans. Your networks can be
sucked up. It geolocates you wherever you go. Your credit history can be
included. All of your medical history can be included.”
Orwellian Fare:
Joe Biden’s ‘horrible’ regime is ‘way more racialised’
than before
President Joe Biden’s
administration is keeping the “racial narrative” going because it is the
“biggest smoke screen” to all its policies, according to US political
commentator Benji Irby.
Geo-Political Fare:
“The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World”
Tanzania’s Late
President Magufuli: ‘Science Denier’ or Threat to Empire?
While his COVID-19 policies
have dominated media coverage regarding his disappearance and suspicious death,
Tanzania’s John Magufuli was hated by the Western elites for much more than his
rebuke of lockdowns and mask mandates. In particular, his efforts towards
nationalizing the country’s mineral wealth threatened to deprive the West of
control over resources deemed essential to the new green economy.
I love this paragraph in
particular:
However, such nuance
regarding the safety of “vaccine aid” was absent from the now ubiquitous
mainstream narrative of Magufuli being “anti-science.” That narrative was first
established as early as May 2020, when Magufuli exposed the inaccuracy of
imported PCR testing kits after a goat, a piece of fruit, and motor oil all
received ‘positive’ test results from the supplied kits. “There is something
happening … we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this
nation,” he proclaimed in a national address.
Escobar: US-NATO vs
Russia-China in a hybrid war to the finish
The unipolar moment is six
feet under, the hegemon will try to break Eurasian integration and there’s no
grownup in the room to counsel restraint
In Quest of a
Multi-Polar World
Michael Hudson and Pepe
Escobar resume their conversation about a global monetary system that appears
headed for divorce. Or via youtube
Kremlin says
that any NATO troop deployment to Ukraine would raise tensions
Russian Foreign
Ministry on Western Sanctions, Ukraine, US Aggression, and Other Issues
The 'Russian
Military Build-Up'
As Russian Tanks
Move Toward Ukraine, The Globe Braces For World War 3
So what made the Russians suddenly move a massive invasion force toward
Ukraine? Well, it turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
essentially signed a declaration of war against Russia on March 24th. The document that he signed is known as
Decree No. 117/2021, and you won’t read anything about it in the corporate
media.
what the defense
ministers of Ukraine and the United States talked about
"The US Sec Def stressed that in the event of escalation of Russian
aggression, the US will not leave Ukraine alone and will not allow the
realization of aggressive aspirations of the Russian Federation towards Ukraine."
Crucial
interview of Foreign Minister Lavrov (MUST READ!)
Sergey Lavrov: I will not go into analysing the lexicon of “opponent,”
“enemy,” “competitor” or “rival.” All these words are juggled in both official
and unofficial statements. I read the other day that US Secretary of State
Antony Blinken said that for all the differences with Russia and China, the US
does not have anything against these countries. As for what the US is doing, it
is simply “promoting democracy” and “upholding human rights.” I don’t know how
seriously one can take this description of US policy towards Moscow and
Beijing. However, if they are promoting democracy, practice must justify
theory.
George W. Bush announced that democracy was established in Iraq in May
2003. Aboard an aircraft carrier, he declared that Iraq’s liberation from its
totalitarian regime was completed and democracy was established in the country.
There is no point in elaborating. It is enough to mention the toll of the
US-unleashed war – hundreds of thousands of people. We should also remember
that the “rule” of the notorious Paul Bremer resulted in the birth of ISIS,
which was rapidly joined by members of the Baath Party, employees of Saddam
Hussein’s secret services, who had lost their jobs. They simply needed to
provide for their families. ISIS emerged not because of ideological
differences. Relying on US mistakes, the radicals actively used this fact. This
is what democracy in Iraq is all about.
“Democracy” in Libya was established by bombs, strikes and the murder of
Muammar Gaddafi which was accompanied by Hillary Clinton’s cry of admiration.
This is the result: Libya is a black hole; refugee flows bound for the north
are creating problems for the EU that does not know what to do about them;
illegal arms and terrorists are being smuggled through Libya to the south, bringing
suffering to the Sahara-Sahel Region.
I do not wish to describe what the Americans feel towards the Russian
Federation. If their statements about us being their “opponent,” “enemy,”
“rival” or “competitor” are based on the desire to accuse us of the consequences
of their reckless policy, we can hardly have a serious conversation with them.
….
Vyacheslav Nikonov: The US and Western diplomacy have definitely
accomplished one thing: they put Russia and China in one boat. Indeed, we have
already become strategic partners in deeds not just in words. …
Sergey Lavrov: Like Russians, the Chinese are a proud nation. They may be
more patient historically. The Chinese nation’s national and genetic code is
all about being focused on a historical future. They are never limited to 4 or
5- year electoral cycles. They look further: “a big journey begins with a small
step” and many other maxims coined by Chinese leaders go to show that they
appreciate a goal that is not just on the horizon, but beyond the horizon.
Geo-Political Tweets of the Week:
My experience with those still subscribed to
the Syria regime-change narrative is that with very few exceptions, they suffer
from any or a combination of poor comprehension, immaturity, dismal analytical
ability, lack of diligence, confirmation bias, or an unwillingness to learn.
(that description sadly applies not just to geopolitics but oh, so many
things)
Memo from Reality. People aren’t going to
“wake up.” Once someone has bought into the lie, it just gets deeper. They
don’t “wake up.” They “dig in.” After being duped into empowering monstrous
evil, admitting it seems like fatal self destruction. They can’t.
Big Thoughts:
Living in a
World Without Stars
This great reset offers little hope for the future of humanity.
One would have to be a nihilist, of course, not to wish for an end to a
pandemic that has claimed well over two and a half million lives. But for those
of us interested in ‘interesting times’, and in the opportunities they open up,
the global response to COVID-19 has not been without its political excitements.
For the second time in twelve years governments around the world moved to
underwrite a system that claims to need no government underwriting, with the
result that many of the irrationalities of capitalism were thrown into relief.
Kunstler: Do You Believe
in Magic?
The people pretending to run the world’s financial affairs do. The more
layers of abstract game-playing they add to the existing armatures of unreality
they’ve already constructed, the more certain it becomes that they will blow up
all the support systems of a sunsetting hyper-tech economy that now has no safe
lane to continue running in.
Virtually all the big nations are doing this now in desperation because
they don’t understand that the hyper-tech economy is hostage to the
deteriorating economics of energy, basically fossil fuels, and oil especially.
The macro mega-system can’t grow anymore. We’re now in the de-growth phase of a
dynamic that pulsates through history, as everything in the universe pulsates.
We attempted to compensate for de-growth with debt, borrowing from the future.
But debt only works in the youthful growth phases of economic pulsation,
when the prospect of being paid back is statistically favorable. Now in the
elder de-growth phase, the prospect of paying back debts, or even servicing the
interest, is statistically dismal. The amount of racked-up debt worldwide has
entered the realm of the laughable. So, the roughly twenty-year experiment in
Central Bank credit magic, as a replacement for true capital formation, has
come to its grievous end.
Hence, America under the pretend leadership of Joe Biden ventures into
the final act of this melodrama, which will end badly and probably pretty
quickly. They are about to call in the financial four horsemen of apocalypse:
1) Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), 2) a command economy, 3) Universal Basic
Income (UBI, “helicopter” money for the people), and 4) the “Build Back Better”
infrastructure scheme.
…
UBI is the primary feature of that because, in a command economy,
production is mostly pretend, so you just have to give people money (for
nothing). Remember the old basic operating system of the Soviet Union, stated
succinctly as: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. Got that?
The idea behind “Build Back Better” is to renovate the infrastructure of
a hyper-tech economy that actually no longer exists because we are in the
contraction phase of an historic pulsation or cycle, leaving us with lots of
tech and less production, tending toward zero. Nobody flogging this slogan
actually knows what it ought to mean under the circumstances, which is to go
with the flow of the reality of this contraction: to downsize, downscale, and
re-localize all our activities to bring them back into sync with actual
productivity — that is, raising food, making real stuff, and trading it.
Again, it’s the energy dynamic, stupid.
To get to that point, we’re going to shed the massive over-burden of
financial game-playing that has pretended to represent our economy. That means
stock valuations and bond prices will vaporize along with the derivative
activities concocted for trading gainfully in these now-phantom representations
of capital. If that happens sooner rather than later, we won’t even be able to
pretend to Build Back Better the interstate highways, the electric grid,
airports, and all the other stuff in the “infrastructure” folder. Indeed, a lot
of that would be malinvestment folly now because we’re nearing the end of mass
motoring and commercial aviation as we’ve known them.
If we even have electricity twenty-five years from now, it will come from
much-reduced grids on a much more regional basis. The bottom line for all this
is that pretty soon every corner of the country will be on its own amid quite a
bit of social disorder and financial wreckage. So, whatever energy you actually
can marshal to Build Back Better, save it for your town or your local
community.
A doctor and
medical ethicist argues life after 75 is not worth living
Must Read:
…In a sociopathic society such as the US, the most important sociopaths
are powerful institutions such as giant corporations and the military. Economic sociopathic acts by large
corporations are a crucially important form, illustrated not just by the Wall
Street banks that crashed the economy but by Walmart, Disney, and other huge
retail enterprises that exploit not just Americans but people around the world
for the products that keep their profits up.
We now see sociopathy on a grand scale, both legal and illegal, by other major institutions, including
spectacular examples in religion (e.g., sexual crimes of Catholic priests),
exploitation of violence against women by the entertainment industry) and the
devolution of all sports into multimillion dollar ‘business deals.’ The most widespread and
corrosive US sociopathy—much of it legal—is perpetrated by the biggest
corporations not just on Wall Street but in every major economic sector. For example, global pharmaceutical companies
such as Merck, giant for-profit hospital chains, such as Humana, profit by
using patents and lobbying to restrict access to essential generic medicines
for epidemics that could save thousands of lives. The large gun manufacturers,
such as Freedom Group, and tobacco companies, such as Philip Morris, hook young
people globally on their lethal high-profit products and block regulation vital
to saving hundreds of thousands of lives. For-profit universities recruit
students they know will not graduate but will be strapped for life with special
high-interest loans that must be paid back in full, even if you are a dropout
after one semester. This corporate sociopathy should not be surprising since it
reflects the sociopathic programming of capitalist corporate charters,
mandating profits at the expense of harm to workers or the environment, defined
as “externalites,” costs on society that the companies do not have to pay.
Corporations that do not pursue profit in this way can be sued for violation of
their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. The welfare of society and
its citizens be damned. In this pursuit, giant retailers such as Walmart pay
wretchedly low minimum wage salaries and provide no benefits to part-time
workers—often desperate women, minorities, or older people at the edge of
hunger or homelessness. The food and beverage companies, such as McDonald’s and
Coca-Cola, sell unhealthy products dished out by low-paid workers or school
vending machines, targeting low-income and young consumers. The big
agricultural companies, such as ADL, take huge government subsidies as they
produce monoculture industrialized crops that destroy the soil and spread
fossil fuel toxins into the water and air. The giant oil companies, such as
Exxon and Shell, engage in sociopathic climate denial and greenwashing while
fighting climate control treaties and law to protect their profits. Most of
this sociopathic behavior conforms to the expectations of investors who seek
and are legally entitled to profit maximization despite the high social costs
just specified.
And now sociopathic values, norms, and institutions are common in all
aspects of American culture.
In the US, the extent and depth of sociopathy varies by institutional sector,
region, and economic status, with strong sociopathic tendencies in parts of the
system—such as the financial, prison, or military sectors—but more benign and
democratic possibilities in other parts, from low-income, urban community
development organizations to the local or community agricultural sector to
numerous altruistic nonprofits and grassroots social movements for justice and
environmental sustainability. In contrast to prevailing wisdom in the United
States, we shall see that sociopathy is most prevalent and dangerous at the
top, in the corporate suites, rather than on the streets below. As the Sicilian
adage goes, ‘The fish rots from the head first.’ But all US strata—from top to
bottom—have long been plagued by sociopathic invasion, which constitutes the
real ‘trickle down’ from the top. Thus, the sociopathic behavior of gangs and
drug-dealers on the street often mirrors the business strategies of the more
respected sociopaths in the suites.
Who are the targets in such
a society? These can be vulnerable individuals—disproportionately African
American or other minorities in the United States—who are dispatched to unemployment,
prison, or death. Other major targets are foreign countries the US claims it
can rightfully attack (which can be any country in the world since any person
in any country may after all be an anti-US terrorist) or the core
infrastructure of one’s own society. In the US, all three targets are under
assault, reflected in mass surplus triaged populations, endless wars around the
world waged in the name of a highly moralistic militarism, and a particularly
devastating new assault on the social and environmental infrastructure of the
US itself.
In his best-seller, Collapse, Jared Diamond examines factors leading
earlier societies to collapse, concluding that environmental variables often
play a leading role, along with adverse military, trade and economic forces,
and overpopulation. Americans in a
fossil-fuel-driven capitalist system committed to unlimited growth and
consumption need to look closely at the history of such extinct societies.
Anti-environmental government and corporate practices, along with mass
consumerism by the general population, now threaten the long-term survival of
civil society and are undoubtedly the most dangerous sociopathy in the world
today.
Finally, we need to look at
the extent to which the sociopathy can be healed. Some sociopathic societies cannot self-correct,
because of the depth and scale of the problem. In the US, the prognosis is less
gloomy; we can lead ourselves out of our structural crisis if we—the mass of
ordinary citizens—open our eyes and imagination, think clearly about our
collective survival, and mobilize to force ‘leaders’ to change course. Yet some
elements of the sociopathic crisis, such as climate change, are already so
severe that even in the most positive scenario, great damage will be done, and
mitigation rather than total solution may be our best hope.
Tweets (/Thread) of the Week:
Corey Doctorow: It's a zombie economy. For 40 years, we've eroded
the wages of workers and transfered their share of profit and productivity to
owners of capital. …. That's the zombie part: all the unpayable debt, which has
been turned into bonds that enrich debt-holders. As Michael Hudson has told us
again and again, debt that can't be paid, won't be paid. Our debt-based economy
is the walking dead, a zombie.
Chris Hedges tells Extinction Rebellion that the configurations of global power mean that only mass civil disobedience, with the aim of overthrowing the ruling elites, can save us from extinction.
Quotes of the Week:
Kunstler: A nation literally falling
apart certainly might want to Build Back Better, but it also might want to
consider building back differently, consistent with the signals that reality is
sending to humankind these days. For instance, the signals that the old industrial
paradigm is coming to an end, and that the furnishings and accessories of it
may not be the ones that humankind actually requires going forward.
Johnstone: Biden changing virtually
nothing after all that shrieking about Trump seems surprising until you
remember that Trump also changed virtually nothing during all that shrieking
about Trump. If you take all the behavior of the entire US empire into account,
the changes in that empire’s behavior from presidential administration to
presidential administration are differences of a fraction of a percentage
point.
It’s so stupid and undignified how everyone pretends the important
decisions of the US empire’s operation are actually being made by that empty
dried up husk of a man..
Johnstone again: People often tell me “You
don’t oppose imperialism, you only criticize US imperialism!” And to them I
always reply, well, show me the other government that’s circling the planet
with hundreds of military bases, waging nonstop wars and orchestrating the
destruction of any nation which disobeys it. I’ll criticize that one too.
And again: Nothing of significance
has changed since Trump left office, apart from the narratives about how much
things have changed. The wars are still going. Washington is still the hub of
an oligarchic globe-spanning empire. Americans are still being impoverished and
propagandized into political impotence by an unfathomably wealthy plutocracy.
Sanctions are still squeezing people to death in Venezuela, Syria, Iran and
North Korea. The world’s worst mass atrocity is still continuing in Yemen. The
kids are still in cages. Authoritarian creep continues to metastasize. All the
old abuses roll on completely uninterrupted, along the same trajectories they
were on before.
About resource depletion, but could be about anything, including vaccines
as solution for pandemic:
Ugo Bardi: Thomas Huxley said that
"it is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end
as superstitions." It is a sentence that describes the cycle of ideas, --
call them memes -- which tend to have a life-cycle similar to that of living
creatures. They are born, grow, and disappear. The popularity of ideas is not necessarily linked to them being true or
not. The virtual world of ideas (the memesphere) may well be completely
disconnected from the real world. So, the fact that an idea is forgotten or
rejected doesn't mean it is false or wrong -- it is just the effect of memes
going in cycles.
Satirical (April 1st) Fare:
In a surprise move, President Biden
live-streamed himself taking a cognitive test with a White House physician
today in order to silence speculation that he is suffering from any type of
degenerative neurological disease.
…
Speaking for myself though, this is one thing I’m happy to have been
conclusively proven wrong about. Can you imagine if the most powerful
government on earth was headed by someone whose brain doesn’t work properly?
That would be nutty, and would effectively prove that America’s official
elected government is just a performative illusion which has no bearing on the
actual functioning of America’s behavior on the world stage.
…
It would make the act of voting a meaningless sideshow distraction
designed to give people the illusion of control while the most powerful
government on earth wages wars and exploits people internationally and
domestically guided by nothing but profit motive and geostrategic control
agendas, effectively meaning that the world is ruled by an unaccountable
oligarchy of greedy sociopaths.
So it’s a good thing it’s not true.
New Gun Control
Measure Would Put Firearms In Difficult-To-Open Hard Plastic Packaging
Other Fare:
Should a
self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you’re from.
The infamous “trolley problem” was put to millions of people in a global
study, revealing how much ethics diverge across cultures.
The End of TV’s
Lumpenproletariat
Videos of the Week:
Bear Relaxes in
Tennessee Hot Tub.
Listening to the homeowner’s voice as he relates this experience is well
worth the price of admission.
Pics of the Week:
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