Never Again?

All this tariff talk is provoking a recession, which seems to be a feature, not a bug. As the economy falls, companies go bankrupt and are cheap to take over by the wealthy. The very rich will be able to take advantage of desperate times to buy businesses and property, and then are even further ahead when (or if) the economy rebounds. More power. More control. More stuff. The suffering of the citizens is not a concern. At all. 

This entire scheme was kick-started back in 1971 by the Powell Memorandum. Chomsky and Chris Hedges have been talking about this forever. And, of course, Ralph Nader. It's the precursor to disaster capitalism. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a memo attacking "extremists" like Nader who was doing things like trying to get cars to add seatbelts to improve traffic safety. The Memorandum is a push to allow unfettered capitalism without any regulations because, as far as Powell was concerned, businessmen really own the country. They pushed for more business involvement in colleges and universities way back then.  

A couple days ago, Senator Chris Murphy clearly outlined the corruption in the White House. It's all out in the open BECAUSE THEY CAN. Like in Russia, few in positions of power dare call them on it. 

"Trump and Elon Muck and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves, and their strategy is to do it all out in the open. ...  

Wading Through the Fetid Swamp

Charlie Angus is on a role. The NDP MP has a book excerpt in The Walrus explaining the rise of neoliberalism starting from Reaganomics.     

The rules of the neoliberal game advise to take advantage of or create a crisis in order to shrink governmental oversight, bust any strikes, lower marginal tax rates so the wealthiest pay very little, reduce or obliterate corporate regulation or allow dubious self-regulation, and privatize the shit out of public services. Naomi Klein did a great job explaining it all in The Shock Doctrine, which he mentions. 

Mr. Angus says, 

"The crisis of the 2020s is something different than a lingering cultural stasis. The reality is that the political, environmental, and economic forces unleashed in the 1980s have finally caught up to us. . . . Operation Break the Working Class has created a generation of billionaire oligarchs form the stolen wages of the American working class. . . . To find our way out of this mess, it is necessary to confront the false history of the 1980s. Historical amnesia is not accidental--it is a political construct. If you scratch the sheen of '80s nostalgia, the underlying socio-economic fractures are readily apparent. These contradictions in the popularized narrative constitute a dangerous memory."

Only When It is Darkest Out Can You See the Stars

These are my summary notes from this excellent podcast from Andrea Pitzer on Next Comes What, "How We Survive This Mess." 

Pitzer previous wrote a history of concentration camps, One Long Night, and she relates much of this new US admin regime to historical cases. Some similarities: first, Hitler rose to power through legitimate means, but laws were stretched to allow him to run. Pinochet's coup used similar rhetoric, and we need to be aware of the similar tactics already on display: terror, shock, making a show of force, and trying to seize more power than they have. And Putin, who was brought in as a useful stooge, then stepped out only to return to be more powerful by removing moderates. 

The benefits to the current situation include that we have a date. It's not coming unexpectedly, but in a couple months, which provides a window to play in. The US military is officially non-partisan, so won't necessarily follow Trump's orders. Governors in key states are standing up, and it's important to build that out of the gate. There's still a partially functional court system and civil bureaucracy that can slow down any legislation. And the odds of Congress being up for grabs in 2026 are still good as there will likely be a massive backlash. She also claims that "these people are not that bright" which can help anyone trying to subvert their agenda. They got in only because it's really easy to generate hate; "it's not a sign of genius but of money and the willingness to do tremendous harm," which provides an opening for resistance and a likelihood of infighting that could decimate their control. They ran on ideas, not on governance.

New and Improved Propaganda Machines

We carry propaganda machines in our pockets. Propaganda isn't just to misinform, but to distract us and exhaust the capacity for critical thinking. When you're struggling to decide between 25 types of cereal or what colour to paint the kitchen, you can miss the bigger picture. Chomsky's been saying that for years. Propaganda destroys the quest for truth, and it's worse than ever.

Pat Loller has a quick explainer about how we're ignoring the huge shift in how propaganda operates now:

"Go make a new account or reset your algorithm on any app and see how many swipes it takes to get right-wing propaganda. . . . There are all these studies coming out saying Americans are functionally illiterate . . . you don't read, you don't get critical thinking skills, and then the propaganda that you're consuming, you don't think about. You just go, 'Oh, okay, I guess that's true,' especially if you've been consuming it since you were 15 years old. . . . These kids congregate around these figures and they play video games together. Go and look at any popular video game, and Control F search for 'woke' or 'DEI', and you'll see that the gaming sphere has been a cesspool for decades. . . .  There's all these angry young men with no critical thinking skills who are being fed a constant diet of propaganda that is literally dished up to them on their phones the moment they open an account. Is it any wonder that they're going to fall Pied Piper behind this guy who's just like, 'Hey, all of those complex challenges in your life? It's this guy's fault. Stop centering you as the protagonist in every single video game and every single movie and TV show ever made?? Girls say they'd rather meet a bear in the woods than you?? Get mad and vote for the guy who is going to hurt those people.' 

Propaganda vs Real Risk Scenarios: Sickness is health.

Arijit Chakravarty is a biologist who uses biotech and math to understand and write about Covid. He wrote a very long thread that I'll abridge here:  

"Over the last five years, we as a society have developed a set of norms about Covid. As someone who's been actively publishing on the subject, I notice it very strongly. People will ask, 'Why are you still masking?', then wince when they hear my reply. . . . My reply is obviously not what they want to hear, so I often get the 'that was too much' look from my wife and kids. This plays out in the public sphere as well. 'Expert' opinion that's soothing or reassuring is platformed, even if it's repeatedly wrong. This is a form of propaganda (calm-mongering) and distracts us from the reality. 

Calm-mongering serves to form an Overton Window about what futures are - and are not - discussable in polite conversation when it comes to The Virus That Must Not Be Named. 'Experts' have debated seasonality, herd immunity, hybrid immunity, and viral attenuation for years. Much of this is closer to fantasy in the context of Covid. The chance this virus will attenuate (evolve to become milder), to pick one example, is very low. . . . But still, the oft-baffled experts wax (and wane) lyrical about these possibilities.

Masks or Longterm Illness in Children - It Shouldn't be a Difficult Decision

Sara Novak recently wrote about the study that found 20% of children have Long Covid, aka PASC (Post Acute Sequelae of Covid) that I discussed in August, but Novak brought in further backing from additional studies:

“In the most expansive study of its kind, researchers have for the first time shown serious and prevalent symptoms of Long Covid in kids and teens. The August study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association . . . which followed 5367 children, found that 20% of kids (ages 6-11) and 14% of teens met researchers' threshold for Long Covid. . . . By enrolling children who had been infected with acute COVID-19, as well as those who had not, researchers were able to isolate Long Covid symptoms in kids and teens. 'It allowed us to separate symptoms related to Long Covid with those that may have resulted from changes in a child's environment during the pandemic.' . . . For example, learning loss and mental health changes that were caused by the pandemic vs those that were caused by prolonged symptoms associated with Long Covid. . . . The new research found Long Covid affected nearly every organ system in kids and teens. And experts contend that pediatricians need to be on the lookout for GI complaints in kids as well as complaints of extreme fatigue and cognitive deficits or perceived changes in mental acuity in teenagers. . . . 

Covering Up a Pandemic

Earlier today, Salvatore Mattera wrote this piece about the media silence -- or censorship -- around Covid. Otherwise known as propaganda by omission. This rest of this post is entirely from that thread:  

The 1918 flu is called the "Spanish flu" because in most places, the media censored it. Except Spain, where they reported honestly. This isn't a conspiracy theory - it's a historical fact. And I think it is occurring right now again with COVID: 

This article in The New Republic - "How America’s Newspapers Covered Up a Pandemic" - provides an overview of what happened in 1918. In short, the media either avoided talking about the flu altogether, or they blamed something else for the damage the flu was causing:

"the big-city newspapers...sugarcoated the truth, practicing an alarming level of self-censorship. Any article or headline suggesting more than casual concern about the disease would be open to attack. . . . Only by putting together the tiny headlines on page 11 of the Boston Post could a dutiful newspaper reader get a sense of the full extent of the epidemic"

Is this happening again right now with COVID? I think for the first few years of the pandemic, most of the press covered it honestly (indeed, some articles at the time noted the contrast between the media's early coverage of COVID and the censorship of 1918). But as time has passed, there's been a shift towards censorship. Articles that should obviously mention COVID now rarely do. In some cases, this is debatable, like a story on student absences. But for coverage of health trends, this is inexcusable. 

Living in a False Reality

Without testing or wastewater data warning us of rising cases of viruses in our regions ahead of time, we can only look to excess deaths after the fact. Bleak times.

This is a graph of Finland's excess deaths relative to pre-pandemic levels. Pay attention to that blue line.  It's the excess deaths of children aged 5-9. The dip in 2021 is when kids all wore masks and fewer died of  RSV and the flu. The current excess death rate for kids is 2.4 times pre-pandemic levels. More than twice as many kids are dying, and we're still not acting on this. 

Schools are the number one vector of infection. If we can halt transmission there, it will make a huge difference. We could have CO2 monitors in every room that beep at 500 ppm to alert the teacher to open doors and windows. And we could have super quiet and super cool CR boxes that run on computer fans. The CO2 monitor is a one-time buy at about $200 - likely far less in bulk, and the CR boxes are under $300 fully assembled or under $200 if you make them yourself - again, far less if in bulk. Those changes would be cheap and doable today, except opening windows and having CR boxes in class will get you in trouble in my neck of the woods. If we actually wanted to spend money protecting kids - and the rest of us by extension - we could add upper room UV!!

The Boiling Frogs Timeline

Globally, Covid cases rose by over 50% in the past month! 

This article that reported the stats, mistakenly says the WHO "officially declared the end of the coronavirus pandemic worldwide in May 2023." Here's what the WHO actually said last May: 

"I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency. That does NOT mean Covid-19 is over as a global health threat. Last week, Covid-19 claimed a life every three minutes, and that's just the deaths we know about." 

It was no longer emergent, but they were very clear that it's by no means over. At this point, over 7 million people have died of it. These organizations and the media have a lot of responsibility for how horribly things have gone, but we have to acknowledge when we misread their actual words. 

Sometimes they make accurate claims but just look at it in the most positive light, like 7 million deaths is less than a tenth of the number of deaths from WW2! Things could be worse! 

But we are creating an untenable number of people disabled by allowing Long Covid to flourish, perpetuated by disingenuous or outright dishonest media. One honest article reported, 

Supporting Atrocities

This is an excellent 7 minute video explaining WHY the U.S. and U.K. and other wealthy nations so strongly support Israel's current atrocities. No spoilers. Just watch it!  (h/t Adlie)

ETA: Yianis Varoufakis explains that, 

"apartheid, whether practiced in South Africa or Palestine or Israel, is always going to procure violence because it's a violent, misanthropic system. . . . The criminals are Europeans, us, every single member of our German society, our French society, our Greek society, United States society. We have participated in this crime against humanity over the decades by keeping our mouths shut. . . . Collectively we must take the first decisive steps towards peace, and that is the destruction of the state of apartheid, just like we did in South Africa."

Fraud Fest in Waterloo Region

Catherine Fife and Debbie Chapman speaking to protesters.

It feels like we turned a dark corner in Ontario. In my hometown in particular. 

Doug Ford came to K-W to be greeted by tons of protesters including overt representation from ETFO, OSSTF, OECTA, CUPE, OBSCU, Liberals, Greens, and, of course, the NDP, which is very strong in the region. Faculty from UW, Laurier, and Conestoga College were all there, along with tons of educators. The Ontario Health Coalition the Waterloo Region Labour Council and the Environmental Defence all played a part in organizing it or advertising it. Tons of healthcare professionals were there and environmental groups and housing groups and ODSP advocates. 

Premier Ford had this exchange (0:55-1:28) with educator Ramzi Abdi,

Ford: I look at all the supporters in here. I don't worry about people being bussed in all over the place to demonstrate. [as if his opposition doesn't come from the region]

Abdi: All Ontarians too.

Ford: Absolutely, and I'll take care of them. [vaguely threatening?]

Abdi: You should do a better job of taking care of Ontarians.

Ford: We're doing a good job

Abdi: You're not doing a good job, my friend. Our schools are underfunded. Our hospitals are underfunded. You need to do a better job.

Ford: Guess what, we do, my friend. 

Abdi: I understand you think you're trying to do your best, but I know there are people in Ontario who are suffering. There are students in Ontario who are suffering.

Ford: There are people that need homes, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm building homes.

Lost Counterculture

Henry Madison, just some random dude on twitter, wrote an interesting bit on concerts and the enmeshment of generations. I disagree with several of his claims below:

Blondie

"Imagine a 77-year old favourite of the boomers’ parents, playing at Woodstock in the 1960s. The oldest performer at Woodstock was Ravi Shankar, who was 49. (He didn’t like hippies and never did it again.) There’s a serious point here. A 77-year old artist playing at Woodstock would have been born in 1892. That would be the equivalent of Louis Armstrong or Jelly Roll Morton playing there. We have artists at Glastonbury this week approaching 80 years of age. None of this is ageism, I should add. If people want to keep playing into their 80s, good luck to them. But we’re talking about headlining music festivals, festivals predominantly (like Woodstock) designed for the young. To me this means unhealthy things.

What’s said about the counterculture movement of the 1960s was that it was profoundly anti-establishment. Today the closest beliefs are labelled neoliberalism. It’s strange the bedfellows beliefs keep. And who invented neoliberalism? The same boomers. That was the same movement, as it morphed into a highly profitable middle and old age. The richest generation in all of history, by a mile. Anti-establishment beliefs were great business: the boomers dismantled many of society’s institutions, and then privatised them. Most of the corporate behemoths that now dominate our lives in our ‘neoliberal’ societies were set up by boomers, who also profited the most from them. They monetised the wreckage of their earlier anti-establishment assault. 

I don’t think people see this clearly at all. 

We're Back to Rhetoric of Welfare Cheaters

An old one, but the agenda still fits!

According to Queen's Park reporter Jack Hauen, on Monday Premier Ford said:

"What drives me crazy, is people on Ontario Works--probably 3-400,000--that are healthy. . . . It really bothers me that we have healthy people sitting at home collecting your hard-earned dollars. . . . We need to encourage them to contribute back to the province and find gainful employment. I'll support anyone that's having a tough time. I have no problem with that. But eventually you have to go out there and start working and contributing back." 

This is the old, but not yet worn out, trick of pitting people against one another. Don't hate the wealthy premier pretending to be looking out for you while sitting on $22 billion and often absent from parliament; the real enemy is all those fakers on the dole!! 

Don't fall for it - especially now with Long Covid creating more disabilities, more people who struggle just to get to the bathroom and back to bed. The last thing they need is someone hounding them to get back to work! We need more supports than ever before. We need a guaranteed basic income!

This is @lifeofa_fashiongirl after she got Long Covid. The only job she can do right now is, maybe, being a Conservative premier!

@lifeofa_fashiongirl Long Covid Awareness Day #longcovid #longcovidawareness #longcovidrecovery #chronicillnessawareness #chronicillnesswarrior #bittersweetsymphony #nhsuk #fyp #fyphealth ♬ Bittersweet Symphony

ETA: This eye-opening article on the blowback caused by Ford's comment. There are only 393,886 people using Ontario Works, so Ford essentially thinks all of them should be working. A former caseworker describes the incredibly invasive program that monitors every aspect of people's lives once on OW. Lots are single mother fleeing an abusive relationship. OW provides just $733/month; "Nobody has a good life on Ontario Works. Period."

Climate Conspiracy

Journalist and activist George Monbiot wrote on why we can't actually explain the problems with certain arguments anymore:

Conspiracy fictions have succeeded, as Steve Bannon hoped, in "flooding the zone with shit". It is almost impossible now to have a rational conversation about the real sources of oppression, destruction and injustice, as so many have been so badly misled. Climate science denial has come roaring back, though the evidence of climate breakdown is now all around us. 

It's a tragedy: we need to unite around the greatest predicament humanity has ever faced, but millions have been persuaded that it isn't happening. 

Bannon was one of Trump's advisors. There was a conversation between them (that I'll never find now), from early on in Trump's first run, with Bannon decidedly convincing Trump of the benefits to his campaign if he's openly racist. I'm almost positive it happened, but it was possibly a nightmare.

I wrote about Bannon's propaganda efforts over six years ago. Now we can see it all come to fruition as nothing makes sense.

Sweden's Pandemic Experiment

This book, Sweden's Pandemic Experiment, is online for free. I just read chapter 5 so far, as it was shared directly by Emil J. Bergholtz, a professor of theoretical physics: "The Swedish Covid-19 response: From poorly judged utilitarianism to history revisionism and the tragedy of the commons."

He starts by comparing the Swedish response to something we might see on the 1980s British political satire, Yes, Prime Minister. It's the stuff of comedy, except it's all too real. Like Ontario now, their state medical advisor is largely in denial and "downplayed the risks  in spite of the overwhelming evidence." He points to a "lack of relevant competence, normalcy bias, and an inability to admit errors" as possible causes of this behaviour. 

When we were locking down and wearing masks, Sweden was still pretty confident that the virus wouldn't spread much between people, and anticipated the peak of cases to be just around the corner with far too much optimism given the data. Then they flipped from expecting no infections to a strategy of everyone being infected for the hopes of herd immunity that failed to materialize. They expected it to take ten years to get to a 60% infection rate. But they couldn't keep up with the rate of illness, and "many elderly were routinely directed to palliative care and provided, for example, morphine instead of life-saving care and oxygen." After just the first wave, they had over 5,000 dead and "many more long-term ill with unclear future prospects, many of whom still suffer terribly."

Pandemic Amnesia

Someone told me that we need to adapt to Covid faster, and get used to masks and checking air quality much faster for our own survival. They think our problem is our inability to adapt to this new environment. I said that I think we have adapted quickly, but we've done it in the other direction: we've acclimatized to accept that we will know people who have died at a young age or who haven't been able to get out of bed in months. We've adapted to the turmoil instead of the preventative measures. 

Then I came across a thread by Professor Debra Caplan in the U.S. She commented on the lack of films and books on the Spanish flu relative to all that was written about World War I despite the flu taking about six times as many lives in the United States. There are a couple episodes in Downton Abbey. Then there's this 24 min. NFB film, The Last Days of Okak, but she's got a point: so many post-WWI movies that discuss the ravages of war don't mention a thing about the devastation caused by the flu. 

The Greatest Propaganda Machine in History

Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G. and Borat, among others) won an award from the Anti-Defamation League. Here's his 25 minute acceptance speech. It's in writing, abridged a bit, below the video if you'd rather skim than watch. (Emphasis is mine.)



"Today, around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories, once confined to the fringe, are going mainstream. It's as if the age of reason, the era of evidential argument is ending and now knowledge is increasing delegitimized, and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging . . .  What do these dangerous trends have in common? . . . All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history. . . .