thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-03-17--Lessons From Coronavirus: In a Capitalist Society, the Most Expendable Thing is You

There ’ s a certain pattern at work in the world any thoughtful observer can ’ t help but be struck — maybe gobsmacked — by .
The world ’ s two nations with a uniquely terrible response to a global pandemic are also its two most capitalist societies .
The US and UK .
That , my friends , isn ’ t a coincidence — it ’ s a relationship .
How bad has the response of the UK and US been ?
Consider the fact that even a nation like Pakistan has been ranked as better by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , underdeveloped nation , which fights uncertainly for democracy .
And yet its response is near the top of the charts , while the US and UK ’ s response is near the bottom .
What the ?
America and Britain have a worse response than Pakistan ?
What ’ s really horrific , though — and maybe funny , in that way we use humor to cope — is that the US and UK ’ s response was so visibly indifferent and negligent .
The US ’ s response was…no response .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senator ’ s blocking a relief bill…while the UK ’ s one of the last few nations in the world not to have shut down public gatherings at all .
What on earth ?
What gives is that the US and UK are the world ’ s two most capitalist societies .
That ’ s not my opinion , its a fact .
Their ratio of public to private portions of the economy is firmly tilted towards capitalism .
Amongst rich nations , their imbalance is so extreme it ’ s off the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in society as America does .
And so it ’ s hardly a coincidence that the response of the world ’ s two most capitalist societies to a pandemic was : “ You ?
You ’ re expendable .
But we ’ ve got to save capitalism !
” Now , what ’ s funny , and horrific , again , is that this sentiment wasn ’ t veiled or hidden .
It was said right out loud and proud .
The UK sent a panel of “ experts ” — crackpot pseudoscientists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so-and-so — on the airwaves , to announce the fact that…there will be mass suffering and death on the scale of a genocide .
We need to become immune .
Never mind that no population in human history became immune to a virus by letting it run rampant — how else did polio and smallpox ravage lives since time began .
Nope .
None of this mattered .
The message was as explicit as it was nightmarish : “ you ’ re expendable.
” Soon enough , cynics began to talk of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Because the virus would obviously affect the poor , elderly , frail , and already ill the most — who of course are all considered “ burdens on society ” and “ parasites ” by extreme conservatives — what could be more convenient than merely letting a pandemic…kill them off ?
I ’ ve never been conspiratorially minded , but even I thought the cynics had a point .
When in history have you seen a government so insane and deluded that it wants its entire nation to fall ill ?
What drives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wasn ’ t all this mass eugenics , and if it wasn ’ t , what else could literally wanting everyone to fall ill with a deadly disease be sensibly and accurately described as ?
Meanwhile , in America , Trump…instead of actually doing anything…held a press conference .
One so surreal that no one could really process it .
Instead of a long series scientists and doctors and researchers educating Americans about the virus , orienting them in a disorienting moment , guiding them gently…he paraded…a long , long series of corporate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What the ?
The plan , apparently was that the private sector was going to suddenly build drive-thru testing centers with “ high throughput ” blah blah etc…to save everyone .
Nobody asked : who was going to pay for those tests ?
How long would it take ?
Would what passes for “ insurance ” [ in the USA ] even cover it ?
What happened if you tested positive ?
Why couldn ’ t people just go to their nearest doctor ’ s office…and get tested ?
Or their nearest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a bizarre coterie of corporations , mostly owned by hedge funds , to provide the public good of healthcare…during a literal global pandemic ?
What the ?
The answer , of course , to all those questions , is : capitalism .
The government couldn ’ t act because to do so would have violated capital ’ s stranglehold on not just the economy , but everything .
Thus , American society was unable to take any kind of real collective action at the national level…during a literal global pandemic .
Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can only be described as a tedious , bizarre , and preposterous infomercial for capitalism…during the genesis of a pandemic so worrisome it was bringing the entire world to a screeching halt .
But…capitalism was the very force that had rendered society unable to respond to that global pandemic in the first place .
The bizarre ironies and twisted logic of it all were almost impossible to unravel .
Capitalism was feeding on the very problem it had caused , in a twist even Marx would have found perverse .
In the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fact that the average prole was completely and utterly expendable was revealed with a kind of brutal , relentless perfection and precision by a global pandemic .
That message was — surreally — said out loud to applause and cheers from elites , announced from the podium by Presidents , spoken about with enthusiasm by pundits…and heard with jaw-dropped disbelief by the rest of the world .
People in American and Britain were expendable , the world wondered ?
And they largely seemed to be OK with that ?
What the ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Now let ’ s cover why it happened .
What ’ s the fundamental moral rule of a capitalist society ?
The strong should survive , and the weak should perish , because the weak are parasites and burdens on society .
I must never lend a hand or lift a finger to support you .
When I do that , I am only encouraging your weakness — your laziness , indolence , lack of enterprise and hard work and so on .
Every person must stand for themselves — and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ top , and as a result , everyone will be better off .
From the peaks they ’ ve climbed to , prosperity and fortune will shower down even on the lowly nobodies .
Does that make sense ?
If it doesn ’ t , think about why Americans don ’ t have healthcare , retirement , childcare , and so on — unique amongst nations across most of the world by now .
The reason is very simple : capitalism tells them they shouldn ’ t and mustn ’ t have such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just that capitalism can always provide them better — and yet doesn ’ t .
The inner logic , the deep logic , is that if you support anyone else , in any way , showing the smallest bit of care and concern , you are not acting like a good capitalist .
Your only job is to maximize your own advantage , profits , power — at everyone else ’ s expense .
That is the only point and purpose of any human thought , action , or endeavour in a capitalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it ’ s all too easy to see .
How did America respond , as a society , to booming a failed state ?
Through self-help , which told people to develop “ grit ” and “ resilience ” — instead of people simply becoming educated that they should invest in one another ’ s health , education , sanity , prosperity .
Why would anyone teach them that ?
There was no profit in it .
So nobody did .
Not CNN , certainly not Faux News , not your average @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times columnist .
And that is the problem .
There is no profit in me caring about you .
There never has been .
There is no profit in me investing in your education , medicine , childcare , healthcare .
And yet these are the best investments that we can make as societies — if we can take collective action .
They don ’ t yield individual profit — they yield something greater .
Me investing in your education makes me better off — maybe you will discover that vaccine to this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ investing in your childcare makes me better off — maybe now the ability to withstand this pandemic increases .
Me investing in your healthcare makes me better off — now my chances of contracting this terrible disease fall .
The fundamental values of capitalism are these : aggression , hostility , cruelty , selfishness , egotism , brutality .
That is why , in America and Britain , the pandemic was treated not just negligently and indifferently by government — but actually lauded as a good thing .
When Britain touted the crackpot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for us to develop ‘ herd immunity ’ !
” , it was really just reiterating capitalism ’ s Darwinist logic : here ’ s a chance for the weak to die off , and the strong survive , and society as a whole become fitter .
America ’ s government said as much in its infomercial sales pitch , too .
The really strange thing — or maybe predictable one — is that in America and Britain , the average prole cares deeply about capitalism , but to capitalism , the average @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life isn ’ t worth anything at all .
How could it be ?
Under the logic of capitalism , no life has any intrinsic or inherent worth , which is why nobody has any public goods .
So why would capitalism suddenly value your life during a pandemic ?
LOL — of course it wasn ’ t going to .
It was going to say that the proles were expendable .
And what ’ s amazing isn ’ t just that that sentiment was actually said out loud in the world ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the proles shrugged , and went back to being devoted to capitalism .
I often say that Americans and Brits are martyrs for capitalism at this point , just like the Muslim nations they so despise .
That strikes my fellow Anglos as a harsh , outlandish judgment .
But when Americans vote against better healthcare…during a literal global pandemic…as they ’ re serenaded by CEOs in the service of an idiot President….what am I to believe ?
When Brits shrug , and then cheer , a government ’ s crackpot pseudoscientific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ magically…what is any reasonable person to believe ?
It ’ s not a coincidence the world ’ s two most capitalist societies had among the world ’ s most dismal response to Coronavirus , even outdoing poor , shattered countries like Pakistan .
It ’ s a relationship .
One which reveals a great lesson of Coronavirus .
That lesson is this .
We now live in an age of accelerating catastrophe .
Climate change , mass extinction , eco- collapse , economic stagnation — all these are going to make Coronavirus look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maybe just at midnight .
They are going to be orders of magnitude more costly , risky , expensive , lethal , socially corrosive , and demoralizing .
Capitalist societies won ’ t survive them .
They are unable to even cope with the first real disaster of this age — a pandemic .
Cope with it ?
Capitalist societies are so twisted by this point in history that a literal global pandemic was used as a Darwinian tool to separate the weak from the strong — and let the weak perish , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of such societies were carefully , analytically revealed , with laser-like precision : the cruelty , vanity , aggression , hostility of capitalist society has rarely been on more spectacular display than during the last few weeks .
So what happens when ecosystems collapse and climate catastrophes begin to drown , burn , sink , and incinerate whole cities — as they surely will within the next decade ?
When collapsing ecosystems and failing economies render food , medicines , water and other basics suddenly scarce ?
Bang !
Capitalist societies are at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ age of catastrophe .
That ’ s not quite an accurate way to put it .
its better to say something like : capitalist societies like the US and UK have already begun to come undone .
This age of catastrophe will finish the job .
In sudden , terrible jolts .
One calamity at a time .
This one will cause their health to fail , that one , their food supplies to run short , that one , their financial systems to break , that one , their basic social functions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s great lessons is that capitalism is obsolete .
It has outlived its usefulness .
The future is social democracy .
Anglo societies probably aren ’ t capable of learning that lesson .
But the rest of us , who are interested in not just the survival , but the expansion of human civilization and progress ?
We should be imbibing this lesson , with eyes wide open .

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here’s a certain pattern at work in the world any thoughtful observer can’t help but be struck — maybe gobsmacked — by. The world’s two nations with a uniquely terrible response to a global pandemic are also its two most capitalist societies. The US and UK. That, my friends, isn’t a coincidence — it's a relationship.
How bad has the response of the UK and US been? Consider the fact that even a nation like Pakistan has been ranked as better by the WHO. Pakistan — a perpetually broke, underdeveloped nation, which fights uncertainly for democracy. And yet its response is near the top of the charts, while the US and UK’s response is near the bottom. What the? America and Britain have a worse response than Pakistan?
What’s really horrific, though — and maybe funny, in that way we use humor to cope — is that the US and UK’s response was so visibly indifferent and negligent. The US’s response was…no response. Even at this point, a GOP Senator’s blocking a relief bill…while the UK’s one of the last few nations in the world not to have shut down public gatherings at all. What on earth?
What gives?
What gives is that the US and UK are the world’s two most capitalist societies. That’s not my opinion, its a fact. Their ratio of public to private portions of the economy is firmly tilted towards capitalism. Amongst rich nations, their imbalance is so extreme it's off the charts. Europe invests twice as much in society as America does. And so it's hardly a coincidence that the response of the world’s two most capitalist societies to a pandemic was: “You? You’re expendable. But we’ve got to save capitalism!”
Now, what’s funny, and horrific, again, is that this sentiment wasn’t veiled or hidden. It was said right out loud and proud. The UK sent a panel of “experts” — crackpot pseudoscientists, even if their titles were Professor so-and-so — on the airwaves, to announce the fact that…there will be mass suffering and death on the scale of a genocide. We need to become immune. Never mind that no population in human history became immune to a virus by letting it run rampant — how else did polio and smallpox ravage lives since time began. Nope. None of this mattered.
The message was as explicit as it was nightmarish: “you’re expendable.”
Soon enough, cynics began to talk of this strategy as a kind of cull. Because the virus would obviously affect the poor, elderly, frail, and already ill the most — who of course are all considered “burdens on society” and “parasites” by extreme conservatives — what could be more convenient than merely letting a pandemic…kill them off? I’ve never been conspiratorially minded, but even I thought the cynics had a point. When in history have you seen a government so insane and deluded that it wants its entire nation to fall ill? What drives that level of delusion and insanity? Wasn’t all this mass eugenics, and if it wasn’t, what else could literally wanting everyone to fall ill with a deadly disease be sensibly and accurately described as?
Meanwhile, in America, Trump…instead of actually doing anything…held a press conference. One so surreal that no one could really process it. Instead of a long series scientists and doctors and researchers educating Americans about the virus, orienting them in a disorienting moment, guiding them gently…he paraded…a long, long series of corporate CEOs. Target. Labcorp. Walgreens. What the?
The plan, apparently was that the private sector was going to suddenly build drive-thru testing centers with “high throughput” blah blah etc…to save everyone.
Nobody asked: who was going to pay for those tests? How long would it take? Would what passes for “insurance” [in the USA] even cover it? What happened if you tested positive? Why couldn’t people just go to their nearest doctor’s office…and get tested? Or their nearest hospital? For free? Why rely on a bizarre coterie of corporations, mostly owned by hedge funds, to provide the public good of healthcare…during a literal global pandemic? What the? The answer, of course, to all those questions, is: capitalism. The government couldn’t act because to do so would have violated capital’s stranglehold on not just the economy, but everything. Thus, American society was unable to take any kind of real collective action at the national level…during a literal global pandemic.
Americans were on the receiving end of what can only be described as a tedious, bizarre, and preposterous infomercial for capitalism…during the genesis of a pandemic so worrisome it was bringing the entire world to a screeching halt. But…capitalism was the very force that had rendered society unable to respond to that global pandemic in the first place. The bizarre ironies and twisted logic of it all were almost impossible to unravel. Capitalism was feeding on the very problem it had caused, in a twist even Marx would have found perverse.
Then, adding insult to injury, the “relief bill” exempted most corporations from having to provide sick leave…so the vast majority of Americans would have to go right on working…not to mention still not being provided any real support or protection at all. Meanwhile, “markets” had already gotten more than a trillion dollars in bailouts. Could the message that you were expendable be any clearer?
In the world’s two most capitalist societies, the fact that the average prole was completely and utterly expendable was revealed with a kind of brutal, relentless perfection and precision by a global pandemic. That message was — surreally — said out loud to applause and cheers from elites, announced from the podium by Presidents, spoken about with enthusiasm by pundits…and heard with jaw-dropped disbelief by the rest of the world. People in American and Britain were expendable, the world wondered? And they largely seemed to be OK with that? What the?
So. That’s what happened. Now let’s cover why it happened.
What’s the fundamental moral rule of a capitalist society? The strong should survive, and the weak should perish, because the weak are parasites and burdens on society. I must never lend a hand or lift a finger to support you. When I do that, I am only encouraging your weakness — your laziness, indolence, lack of enterprise and hard work and so on. Every person must stand for themselves — and the strong will claw their ways to the top, and as a result, everyone will be better off. From the peaks they’ve climbed to, prosperity and fortune will shower down even on the lowly nobodies.
Does that make sense? If it doesn’t, think about why Americans don’t have healthcare, retirement, childcare, and so on — unique amongst nations across most of the world by now. The reason is very simple: capitalism tells them they shouldn’t and mustn’t have such things. The logic isn’t just that capitalism can always provide them better — and yet doesn’t. The inner logic, the deep logic, is that if you support anyone else, in any way, showing the smallest bit of care and concern, you are not acting like a good capitalist. Your only job is to maximize your own advantage, profits, power — at everyone else’s expense. That is the only point and purpose of any human thought, action, or endeavour in a capitalist society.
You might question that, but it's all too easy to see. How did America respond, as a society, to booming a failed state? Through self-help, which told people to develop “grit” and “resilience” — instead of people simply becoming educated that they should invest in one another’s health, education, sanity, prosperity. Why would anyone teach them that? There was no profit in it. So nobody did. Not CNN, certainly not Faux News, not your average pundit, not your august New York Times columnist.
And that is the problem. There is no profit in me caring about you. There never has been. There is no profit in me investing in your education, medicine, childcare, healthcare. And yet these are the best investments that we can make as societies — if we can take collective action. They don’t yield individual profit — they yield something greater.
Me investing in your education makes me better off — maybe you will discover that vaccine to this pandemic I am now suffering. Me investing in your childcare makes me better off — maybe now the ability to withstand this pandemic increases. Me investing in your healthcare makes me better off — now my chances of contracting this terrible disease fall.
The fundamental values of capitalism are these: aggression, hostility, cruelty, selfishness, egotism, brutality. That is why, in America and Britain, the pandemic was treated not just negligently and indifferently by government — but actually lauded as a good thing. When Britain touted the crackpot theory, “this is a chance for us to develop ‘herd immunity’!”, it was really just reiterating capitalism’s Darwinist logic: here’s a chance for the weak to die off, and the strong survive, and society as a whole become fitter. America’s government said as much in its infomercial sales pitch, too.
The really strange thing — or maybe predictable one — is that in America and Britain, the average prole cares deeply about capitalism, but to capitalism, the average prole is expendable. His or her life isn’t worth anything at all. How could it be? Under the logic of capitalism, no life has any intrinsic or inherent worth, which is why nobody has any public goods. So why would capitalism suddenly value your life during a pandemic? LOL — of course it wasn’t going to. It was going to say that the proles were expendable. And what’s amazing isn’t just that that sentiment was actually said out loud in the world’s two most capitalist societies — but that the proles shrugged, and went back to being devoted to capitalism.
I often say that Americans and Brits are martyrs for capitalism at this point, just like the Muslim nations they so despise. That strikes my fellow Anglos as a harsh, outlandish judgment. But when Americans vote against better healthcare…during a literal global pandemic…as they’re serenaded by CEOs in the service of an idiot President….what am I to believe? When Brits shrug, and then cheer, a government’s crackpot pseudoscientific theory of ‘herd immunity’ emerging magically…what is any reasonable person to believe?
It's not a coincidence the world’s two most capitalist societies had among the world’s most dismal response to Coronavirus, even outdoing poor, shattered countries like Pakistan. It's a relationship. One which reveals a great lesson of Coronavirus. That lesson is this.
We now live in an age of accelerating catastrophe. Climate change, mass extinction, eco- collapse, economic stagnation — all these are going to make Coronavirus look like a walk in the park, maybe just at midnight. They are going to be orders of magnitude more costly, risky, expensive, lethal, socially corrosive, and demoralizing.
Capitalist societies won’t survive them. They are unable to even cope with the first real disaster of this age — a pandemic. Cope with it? Capitalist societies are so twisted by this point in history that a literal global pandemic was used as a Darwinian tool to separate the weak from the strong — and let the weak perish, through negligence and indifference. The values of such societies were carefully, analytically revealed, with laser-like precision: the cruelty, vanity, aggression, hostility of capitalist society has rarely been on more spectacular display than during the last few weeks.
So what happens when ecosystems collapse and climate catastrophes begin to drown, burn, sink, and incinerate whole cities — as they surely will within the next decade? When collapsing ecosystems and failing economies render food, medicines, water and other basics suddenly scarce? Bang!
Capitalist societies are at the greatest risk of implosion during this age of catastrophe. That’s not quite an accurate way to put it. its better to say something like: capitalist societies like the US and UK have already begun to come undone. This age of catastrophe will finish the job. In sudden, terrible jolts. One calamity at a time. This one will cause their health to fail, that one, their food supplies to run short, that one, their financial systems to break, that one, their basic social functions to cease.
One of Coronavirus’s great lessons is that capitalism is obsolete. It has outlived its usefulness. The future is social democracy. Anglo societies probably aren’t capable of learning that lesson. But the rest of us, who are interested in not just the survival, but the expansion of human civilization and progress? We should be imbibing this lesson, with eyes wide open.
Umair Haque
March 2020


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-03-19--Jimmy Dore proves it: Both Biden and Trump Spreading Misinformation on Corona Virus

^5000The mainstream imperialist media lie CONSTANTLY .
Literally 24/7 .
And it 's getting worse .
All of them do @ @ @ @ @ , the newspapers , the movies .
The internet .
No exceptions .
The corporate @ @ @ @ @ totalitarian .
CBS does it .
NBC does it .
ABC does it .
CNN @ @ @ @ @ it .
NPR does it .
And of course the NYTimes and WaPo do it @ @ @ @ @ '' voices telling you the same lies .
Enough to convince anyone .

Up to You.
^3000US citizens have no real political representation.
We don't live in a democracy. And our freedom is disappearing fast.
I don't want to be ruled by hypocrites, whores, and war criminals.
What about you? Time to push back against the corporate oligarchy.
And its multitude of minions and lackeys.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-03-18--12 Ways the U.S. Invasion of Iraq Lives on in Infamy

hile the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic , on March 19 the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there .
After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11 , the U.S. military carried out retaliatory strikes against five of the militia ’ s weapons factories and announced it is sending two more aircraft carriers to the region , as well as new Patriot missile systems and hundreds more troops to operate them .
This contradicts the January vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. troops to leave the country .
It also goes against the sentiment of most Americans , who think the Iraq war was not worth fighting , and against the campaign promise of Donald Trump to end the endless wars .
Seventeen years ago , the U.S. armed forces attacked and invaded Iraq with a force of over 460,000 troops from all its armed services , supported by 46,000 UK troops , 2,000 from Australia and a few hundred from Poland , Spain , Portugal and Denmark .
The “ shock and awe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ missiles on Iraq in the first five weeks of the war .
The U.S. invasion was a crime of aggression under international law , and was actively opposed by people and countries all over the world , including 30 million people who took to the streets in 60 countries on February 15 , 2003 , to express their horror that this could really be happening at the dawn of the 21st century .
American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. , who was a speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy , compared the U.S. invasion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and wrote , “ Today , it is we Americans who live in infamy.
” Seventeen years later , the consequences of the invasion have lived up to the fears of all who opposed it .
Wars and hostilities rage across the region , and divisions over war and peace in the U.S. and Western countries challenge our highly selective view of ourselves as advanced , civilized societies .
Here is a look at 12 of the most serious consequences of the U.S. war in Iraq .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the invasion and occupation of Iraq vary widely , but even the most conservative estimates based on fragmentary reporting of minimum confirmed deaths are in the hundreds of thousands .
Serious scientific studiesestimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died in the first three years of war , and about a million by September 2007 .
The violence of the U.S. escalation or “ surge ” continued into 2008 , and sporadic conflict continued from 2009 until 2014 .
Then in its new campaign against Islamic State , the U.S. and its allies bombarded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than 118,000 bombs and the heaviest artillery bombardments since the Vietnam War .
They reduced much of Mosul and other Iraqi cities to rubble , and a preliminary Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report found that more than 40,000 civilians were killed in Mosul alone .
There are no comprehensive mortality studies for this latest deadly phase of the war .
In addition to all the lives lost , even more people have been wounded .
The Iraqi government ’ s Central Statistical Organization says that 2 million Iraqis have been left disabled .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Refugees ( UNHCR ) reported that nearly 2 million Iraqis had fled the violence and chaos of occupied Iraq , mostly to Jordan and Syria , while another 1.7 million were displaced within the country .
The U.S. war on the Islamic State relied even more on bombing and artillery bombardment , destroying even more homes and displacing an astounding 6 million Iraqis from 2014 to 2017 .
According to the UNHCR , 4.35 million people have returned to their homes as the war on IS has wound down , but many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ non-existent infrastructure and the lack of livelihood opportunities and financial resources , which at times [ has ] led to secondary displacement.
” Iraq ’ s internally displaced children represent “ a generation traumatized by violence , deprived of education and opportunities , ” according to UN Special Rapporteur Cecilia Jimenez-Damary .
3 .
Thousands of American , British and Other Foreign Troops Killed and Wounded While the U.S. military downplays Iraqi casualties , it precisely tracks and publishes its own .
As of February 2020 , 4,576 U.S. troops and 181 British @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well as 142 other foreign occupation troops .
Over 93 percent of the foreign occupation troops killed in Iraq have been Americans .
In Afghanistan , where the U.S. has had more support from NATO and other allies , only 68 percent of occupation troops killed have been Americans .
The greater share of U.S. casualties in Iraq is one of the prices Americans have paid for the unilateral , illegal nature of the U.S. invasion .
By the time U.S. forces temporarily withdrew from Iraq in 2011 , 32,200 U.S. troops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tried to outsource and privatize its occupation , at least 917 civilian contractors and mercenaries were also killed and 10,569 wounded in Iraq , but not all of them were U.S. nationals .
4 .
Even More Veterans Have Committed Suicide More than 20 U.S. veterans kill themselves every day—that ’ s more deaths each year than the total U.S. military deaths in Iraq .
Those with the highest rates of suicide are young veterans with combat exposure , who commit suicide at rates “ 4-10 times higher than their civilian peers.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Peace explains , many veterans “ struggle to reintegrate into society , ” are ashamed to ask for help , are burdened by what they saw and did in the military , are trained in shooting and own guns , and carry mental and physical wounds that make their lives difficult .
On March 16 , 2003 , just days before the U.S. invasion , Vice President Dick Cheney projected that the war would cost the U.S. about $ 100 billion and that the U.S. involvement would last for two years .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ still mounting .
The Congressional Budget Office ( CBO ) estimated a cost of $ 2.4 trillion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 .
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University ’ s Linda Bilmes estimated the cost of the Iraq war at more than $ 3 trillion , “ based on conservative assumptions , ” in 2008 .
The UK government spent at least 9 billion pounds in direct costs through 2010 .
What the U.S. did not spend money on , contrary to what many Americans believe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country our war destroyed .
Most of the men ( no women ! )
running Iraq today are still former exiles who flew into Baghdad in 2003 on the heels of the U.S. and British invasion forces .
Iraq is finally once again exporting 3.8 millionbarrels of oil per day and earning $ 80 billion a year in oil exports , but little of this money trickles down to rebuild destroyed and damaged homes or provide jobs , health care or education for Iraqis , only 36 percent of whom even have jobs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken to the streets to demand an end to the corrupt post-2003 Iraqi political regime and U.S. and Iranian influence over Iraqi politics .
More than 600 protesters were killed by government forces , but the protests forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign .
Another former Western-based exile , Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi , the cousin of former U.S.-appointed interim prime minister Ayad Allawi , was chosen to replace him , but he resigned within weeks after the National Assembly failed to approve his cabinet choices .
The popular protest movement celebrated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mahdi agreed to remain as prime minister , but only as a “ caretaker ” to carry out essential functions until new elections can be held .
He has called for new elections in December .
Until then , Iraq remains in political limbo , still occupied by about 5,000 U.S. troops .
7 .
Illegal War on Iraq Has Undermined the Rule of International Law When the U.S. invaded Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council , the first victim was the United Nations Charter , the foundation of peace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which prohibits the threat or use of force by any country against another .
International law only permits military action as a necessary and proportionate defense against an attack or imminent threat .
The illegal 2002 Bush doctrine of preemption was universally rejectedbecause it went beyond this narrow principle and claimed an exceptional U.S. right to use unilateral military force “ to preempt emerging threats , ” undermining the authority of the UN Security Council to decide whether a specific threat requires a military response or not .
Kofi Annan , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the invasion was illegal and would lead to a breakdown in international order , and that is exactly what has happened .
When the U.S. trampled the UN Charter , others were bound to follow .
Today we are watching Turkey and Israel follow in the U.S. ’ s footsteps , attacking and invading Syria at will as if it were not even a sovereign country , using the people of Syria as pawns in their political games .
The second victim of the invasion was American democracy .
Congress voted for war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a National Intelligence Estimate ( NIE ) that was nothing of the kind .
The Washington Postreported that only six out of 100 senators and a few House members read the actual NIE .
The 25-page “ summary ” that other members of Congress based their votes on was a document produced months earlier “ to make the public case for war , ” as one of its authors , the CIA ’ s Paul Pillar , later confessed to PBS Frontline .
It contained astounding claims that were nowhere to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as that the CIA knew of 550 sites where Iraq was storing chemical and biological weapons .
Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated many of these lies in his shameful performance at the UN Security Council in February 2003 , while Bush and Cheney used them in major speeches , including Bush ’ s 2003 State of the Union address .
How is democracy—the rule of the people—even possible if the people we elect to represent us in Congress can be manipulated into voting for a catastrophic war by such a web of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Iraq was the presumption that U.S. presidents and policy are subject to the rule of law .
Seventeen years later , most Americans assume that the president can conduct war and assassinate foreign leaders and terrorism suspects as he pleases , with no accountability whatsoever—like a dictator .
When President Obamasaid he wanted to look forward instead of backward , and held no one from the Bush administration accountable for their crimes , it was as if they ceased to be crimes and became normalized as U.S. policy .
That includes crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mass killing of civilians in U.S. airstrikes and drone strikes ; and the unrestricted surveillance of every American ’ s phone calls , emails , browsing history and opinions .
But these are crimes and violations of the U.S. Constitution , and refusing to hold accountable those who committed these crimes has made it easier for them to be repeated .
During the first Gulf War , the U.S. dropped 340 tons of warheads and explosives made with depleted uranium , which poisoned the soil and water and led to skyrocketing levels of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ ecocide , ” Iraq has been plagued by the burning of dozens of oil wells ; the pollution of water sources from the dumping of oil , sewage and chemicals ; millions of tons of rubble from destroyed cities and towns ; and the burning of huge volumes of military waste in open air “ burn pits ” during the war .
The pollution caused by war is linked to the high levels of congenital birth defects , premature births , miscarriages and cancer ( including leukemia ) in Iraq .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ More than 85,000 U.S. Iraq war veterans… have been diagnosed with respiratory and breathing problems , cancers , neurological diseases , depression and emphysema since returning from Iraq , ” as the Guardianreports .
And parts of Iraq may never recover from the environmental devastation .
11 .
The U.S. ’ s Sectarian “ Divide and Rule ” Policy in Iraq Spawned Havoc Across the Region In secular 20th-century Iraq , the Sunni minority was more powerful than the Shia majority , but for the most part , the different ethnic groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intermarried .
Friends with mixed Shia/Sunni parents tell us that before the U.S. invasion , they didn ’ t even know which parent was Shia and which was Sunni .
After the invasion , the U.S. empowered a new Shiite ruling class led by former exiles allied with the U.S. and Iran , as well as the Kurds in their semi-autonomous region in the north .
The upending of the balance of power and deliberate U.S. “ divide and rule ” policies led to waves of horrific sectarian violence , including the ethnic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ squadsunder U.S. command .
The sectarian divisions the U.S. unleashed in Iraq led to the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the emergence of ISIS , which have wreaked havoc throughout the entire region .
12 .
The New Cold War Between the U.S. and the Emerging Multilateral World When President Bush declared his “ doctrine of preemption ” in 2002 , Senator Edward Kennedy called it “ a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept.
” But the world has so far failed to either persuade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unite in diplomatic opposition to its militarism and imperialism .
France and Germany bravely stood with Russia and most of the Global South to oppose the invasion of Iraq in the UN Security Council in 2003 .
But Western governments embraced Obama ’ s superficial charm offensive as cover for reinforcing their traditional ties with the U.S. China was busy expanding its peaceful economic development and its role as the economic hub of Asia , while Russia was still rebuilding its economy from the neoliberal chaos and poverty of the 1990s .
Neither @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until the U.S. , NATO and their Arab monarchist allies launched proxy wars against Libya and Syria in 2011 .
After the fall of Libya , Russia appears to have decided it must either stand up to U.S. regime change operations or eventually fall victim itself .
The economic tides have shifted , a multipolar world is emerging , and the world is hoping against hope that the American people and new American leaders will act to rein in this 21st-century American imperialism before it leads to an even more catastrophic U.S. war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As Americans , we must hope that the world ’ s faith in the possibility that we can democratically bring sanity and peace to U.S. policy is not misplaced .
A good place to start would be to join the call by the Iraqi Parliament for U.S. troops to leave Iraq .
This article was produced by Local Peace Economy , a project of the Independent Media Institute .

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, on March 19 the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there. After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11, the U.S. military carried out retaliatory strikes against five of the militia’s weapons factories and announced it is sending two more aircraft carriers to the region, as well as new Patriot missile systems and hundreds more troops to operate them. This contradicts the January vote of the Iraqi Parliament that called for U.S. troops to leave the country. It also goes against the sentiment of most Americans, who think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, and against the campaign promise of Donald Trump to end the endless wars.
Seventeen years ago, the U.S. armed forces attacked and invaded Iraq with a force of over 460,000 troops from all its armed services, supported by 46,000 UK troops, 2,000 from Australia and a few hundred from Poland, Spain, Portugal and Denmark. The “shock and awe” aerial bombardment unleashed 29,200 bombs and missiles on Iraq in the first five weeks of the war.
The U.S. invasion was a crime of aggression under international law, and was actively opposed by people and countries all over the world, including 30 million people who took to the streets in 60 countries on February 15, 2003, to express their horror that this could really be happening at the dawn of the 21st century. American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was a speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, compared the U.S. invasion of Iraq to Japan’s preemptive attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and wrote, “Today, it is we Americans who live in infamy.”
Seventeen years later, the consequences of the invasion have lived up to the fears of all who opposed it. Wars and hostilities rage across the region, and divisions over war and peace in the U.S. and Western countries challenge our highly selective view of ourselves as advanced, civilized societies. Here is a look at 12 of the most serious consequences of the U.S. war in Iraq.
1. Millions of Iraqis Killed and Wounded
Estimates on the number of people killed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq vary widely, but even the most conservative estimates based on fragmentary reporting of minimum confirmed deaths are in the hundreds of thousands. Serious scientific studiesestimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died in the first three years of war, and about a million by September 2007. The violence of the U.S. escalation or “surge” continued into 2008, and sporadic conflict continued from 2009 until 2014. Then in its new campaign against Islamic State, the U.S. and its allies bombarded major cities in Iraq and Syria with more than 118,000 bombs and the heaviest artillery bombardments since the Vietnam War. They reduced much of Mosul and other Iraqi cities to rubble, and a preliminary Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report found that more than 40,000 civilians were killed in Mosul alone. There are no comprehensive mortality studies for this latest deadly phase of the war. In addition to all the lives lost, even more people have been wounded. The Iraqi government’s Central Statistical Organization says that 2 million Iraqis have been left disabled.
2. Millions More Iraqis Displaced
By 2007, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that nearly 2 million Iraqis had fled the violence and chaos of occupied Iraq, mostly to Jordan and Syria, while another 1.7 million were displaced within the country. The U.S. war on the Islamic State relied even more on bombing and artillery bombardment, destroying even more homes and displacing an astounding 6 million Iraqis from 2014 to 2017. According to the UNHCR, 4.35 million people have returned to their homes as the war on IS has wound down, but many face “destroyed properties, damaged or non-existent infrastructure and the lack of livelihood opportunities and financial resources, which at times [has] led to secondary displacement.” Iraq’s internally displaced children represent “a generation traumatized by violence, deprived of education and opportunities,” according to UN Special Rapporteur Cecilia Jimenez-Damary.
3. Thousands of American, British and Other Foreign Troops Killed and Wounded
While the U.S. military downplays Iraqi casualties, it precisely tracks and publishes its own. As of February 2020, 4,576 U.S. troops and 181 British troops have been killed in Iraq, as well as 142 other foreign occupation troops. Over 93 percent of the foreign occupation troops killed in Iraq have been Americans. In Afghanistan, where the U.S. has had more support from NATO and other allies, only 68 percent of occupation troops killed have been Americans. The greater share of U.S. casualties in Iraq is one of the prices Americans have paid for the unilateral, illegal nature of the U.S. invasion. By the time U.S. forces temporarily withdrew from Iraq in 2011, 32,200 U.S. troops had been wounded. As the U.S. tried to outsource and privatize its occupation, at least 917 civilian contractors and mercenaries were also killed and 10,569 wounded in Iraq, but not all of them were U.S. nationals.
4. Even More Veterans Have Committed Suicide
More than 20 U.S. veterans kill themselves every day—that’s more deaths each year than the total U.S. military deaths in Iraq. Those with the highest rates of suicide are young veterans with combat exposure, who commit suicide at rates “4-10 times higher than their civilian peers.” Why? As Matthew Hoh of Veterans for Peace explains, many veterans “struggle to reintegrate into society,” are ashamed to ask for help, are burdened by what they saw and did in the military, are trained in shooting and own guns, and carry mental and physical wounds that make their lives difficult.
5. Trillions of Dollars Wasted
On March 16, 2003, just days before the U.S. invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney projected that the war would cost the U.S. about $100 billion and that the U.S. involvement would last for two years. Seventeen years on, the costs are still mounting. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated a cost of $2.4 trillion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University’s Linda Bilmes estimated the cost of the Iraq war at more than $3 trillion, “based on conservative assumptions,” in 2008. The UK government spent at least 9 billion pounds in direct costs through 2010. What the U.S. did not spend money on, contrary to what many Americans believe, was to rebuild Iraq, the country our war destroyed.
6. Dysfunctional and Corrupt Iraqi Government
Most of the men (no women!) running Iraq today are still former exiles who flew into Baghdad in 2003 on the heels of the U.S. and British invasion forces. Iraq is finally once again exporting 3.8 millionbarrels of oil per day and earning $80 billion a year in oil exports, but little of this money trickles down to rebuild destroyed and damaged homes or provide jobs, health care or education for Iraqis, only 36 percent of whom even have jobs. Iraq’s young people have taken to the streets to demand an end to the corrupt post-2003 Iraqi political regime and U.S. and Iranian influence over Iraqi politics. More than 600 protesters were killed by government forces, but the protests forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign. Another former Western-based exile, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, the cousin of former U.S.-appointed interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, was chosen to replace him, but he resigned within weeks after the National Assembly failed to approve his cabinet choices. The popular protest movement celebrated Allawi’s resignation, and Abdul Mahdi agreed to remain as prime minister, but only as a “caretaker” to carry out essential functions until new elections can be held. He has called for new elections in December. Until then, Iraq remains in political limbo, still occupied by about 5,000 U.S. troops.
7. Illegal War on Iraq Has Undermined the Rule of International Law
When the U.S. invaded Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council, the first victim was the United Nations Charter, the foundation of peace and international law since World War II, which prohibits the threat or use of force by any country against another. International law only permits military action as a necessary and proportionate defense against an attack or imminent threat. The illegal 2002 Bush doctrine of preemption was universally rejectedbecause it went beyond this narrow principle and claimed an exceptional U.S. right to use unilateral military force “to preempt emerging threats,” undermining the authority of the UN Security Council to decide whether a specific threat requires a military response or not. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general at the time, said the invasion was illegal and would lead to a breakdown in international order, and that is exactly what has happened. When the U.S. trampled the UN Charter, others were bound to follow. Today we are watching Turkey and Israel follow in the U.S.’s footsteps, attacking and invading Syria at will as if it were not even a sovereign country, using the people of Syria as pawns in their political games.
8. Iraq War Lies Corrupted U.S. Democracy
The second victim of the invasion was American democracy. Congress voted for war based on a so-called “summary” of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was nothing of the kind. The Washington Postreported that only six out of 100 senators and a few House members read the actual NIE. The 25-page “summary” that other members of Congress based their votes on was a document produced months earlier “to make the public case for war,” as one of its authors, the CIA’s Paul Pillar, later confessed to PBS Frontline. It contained astounding claims that were nowhere to be found in the real NIE, such as that the CIA knew of 550 sites where Iraq was storing chemical and biological weapons. Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated many of these lies in his shameful performance at the UN Security Council in February 2003, while Bush and Cheney used them in major speeches, including Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. How is democracy—the rule of the people—even possible if the people we elect to represent us in Congress can be manipulated into voting for a catastrophic war by such a web of lies?
9. Impunity for Systematic War Crimes
Another victim of the invasion of Iraq was the presumption that U.S. presidents and policy are subject to the rule of law. Seventeen years later, most Americans assume that the president can conduct war and assassinate foreign leaders and terrorism suspects as he pleases, with no accountability whatsoever—like a dictator. When President Obamasaid he wanted to look forward instead of backward, and held no one from the Bush administration accountable for their crimes, it was as if they ceased to be crimes and became normalized as U.S. policy. That includes crimes of aggression against other countries; the mass killing of civilians in U.S. airstrikes and drone strikes; and the unrestricted surveillance of every American’s phone calls, emails, browsing history and opinions. But these are crimes and violations of the U.S. Constitution, and refusing to hold accountable those who committed these crimes has made it easier for them to be repeated.
10. Destruction of the Environment
During the first Gulf War, the U.S. dropped 340 tons of warheads and explosives made with depleted uranium, which poisoned the soil and water and led to skyrocketing levels of cancer. In the following decades of “ecocide,” Iraq has been plagued by the burning of dozens of oil wells; the pollution of water sources from the dumping of oil, sewage and chemicals; millions of tons of rubble from destroyed cities and towns; and the burning of huge volumes of military waste in open air “burn pits” during the war. The pollution caused by war is linked to the high levels of congenital birth defects, premature births, miscarriages and cancer (including leukemia) in Iraq. The pollution has also affected U.S. soldiers. “More than 85,000 U.S. Iraq war veterans… have been diagnosed with respiratory and breathing problems, cancers, neurological diseases, depression and emphysema since returning from Iraq,” as the Guardianreports. And parts of Iraq may never recover from the environmental devastation.
11. The U.S.’s Sectarian “Divide and Rule” Policy in Iraq Spawned Havoc Across the Region
In secular 20th-century Iraq, the Sunni minority was more powerful than the Shia majority, but for the most part, the different ethnic groups lived side-by-side in mixed neighborhoods and even intermarried. Friends with mixed Shia/Sunni parents tell us that before the U.S. invasion, they didn’t even know which parent was Shia and which was Sunni. After the invasion, the U.S. empowered a new Shiite ruling class led by former exiles allied with the U.S. and Iran, as well as the Kurds in their semi-autonomous region in the north. The upending of the balance of power and deliberate U.S. “divide and rule” policies led to waves of horrific sectarian violence, including the ethnic cleansing of communities by Interior Ministry death squadsunder U.S. command. The sectarian divisions the U.S. unleashed in Iraq led to the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the emergence of ISIS, which have wreaked havoc throughout the entire region.
12. The New Cold War Between the U.S. and the Emerging Multilateral World
When President Bush declared his “doctrine of preemption” in 2002, Senator Edward Kennedy called it “a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept.” But the world has so far failed to either persuade the U.S. to change course or to unite in diplomatic opposition to its militarism and imperialism. France and Germany bravely stood with Russia and most of the Global South to oppose the invasion of Iraq in the UN Security Council in 2003. But Western governments embraced Obama’s superficial charm offensive as cover for reinforcing their traditional ties with the U.S. China was busy expanding its peaceful economic development and its role as the economic hub of Asia, while Russia was still rebuilding its economy from the neoliberal chaos and poverty of the 1990s. Neither was ready to actively challenge U.S. aggression until the U.S., NATO and their Arab monarchist allies launched proxy wars against Libya and Syria in 2011. After the fall of Libya, Russia appears to have decided it must either stand up to U.S. regime change operations or eventually fall victim itself.
The economic tides have shifted, a multipolar world is emerging, and the world is hoping against hope that the American people and new American leaders will act to rein in this 21st-century American imperialism before it leads to an even more catastrophic U.S. war with Iran, Russia or China. As Americans, we must hope that the world’s faith in the possibility that we can democratically bring sanity and peace to U.S. policy is not misplaced. A good place to start would be to join the call by the Iraqi Parliament for U.S. troops to leave Iraq.
This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-03-18--Corona Chronicles: Telegrams from Gotham

itting in the East Village , drinking a coffee and trying to read a book , it was hard to ignore the rollicking conversation of liberal Boomers sitting an empty table or two behind me .
What surprised me , but shouldn ’ t have , was the pedestrian character of the conversation .
You might have scripted it for a Broadway show , had not the theater district been shuttered out of “ an overabundance of caution.
” We may soon find abundance wanting .
Still the unceasing conversation roars ahead , unstoppable even as a malign pathogen thunders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there is the usual disdain for Trump .
The standard detestations enunciated and agreed to by all and sundry .
The ego !
The self-interest !
The unpreparedness !
And , last but never least , the vulgarity !
Then , of course , one of their number decides to speak up enthusiastically , even urgently , for Bernie .
Why can ’ t he win ?
she asks plaintively .
The others shift uneasily in their chairs .
One of them , evidently the political savant , seems to speak for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sad sigh , a cheeky grimace and a perfunctory raising of the eyebrows .
Then he imparts the dark truth : America just isn ’ t ready yet for socialism .
Others concur .
The Sanders enthusiast tries a few more pointed remarks , with which everyone naturally agrees .
Oh , yes , no doubt .
System is corrupt .
Democrats leave a lot to be desired .
The corporate capture of Congress is criminal .
But none of this penetrates the singular judgement of the bunch : we just aren ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the group declares that his real fear is that Trump will use the pandemic as an excuse to call off the election , provoking a fearful rumble at the table .
One of the women hastily caveats this by noting that there are quite a lot of conspiracies floating around these days .
Alarmed by the vision of Trumpian tyranny , they rapidly turn to reasons why Biden is a pragmatic and sensible choice , among them the lurid surmise that they ’ ll surround him with smart people , and so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last turns to the shocking spectacle of Italy… To be sure , Boomers have turned out en masse for Joe Biden during the primaries , crushing Bernie Sanders among older cohorts .
They even outweigh , by virtue of their civic mindedness in showing up at the polling stations , the huge percentages by which Sanders wins younger voters , who flee from Biden as from a political pestilence .
Much contradictory and confusing data has emerged from the primaries .
Like Boomers , a superabundance of African-Americans , from South Carolina to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ author of the Clinton crime bill .
According to some black commentators , this is because they have decided once again to vote Democrat regardless of the candidate , simply to stave off another four years of leaving the “ White Man ’ s Party ” in charge .
This is their quadrennial calculus .
At the same time , exit polls in twenty states showed , by huge margins , that voters support Medicare for All .
Weigh this in the balance against exit polls that show discrepancies with the final tally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact Biden .
Then add to that exit-polled voters in Michigan , Missouri , and Washington state who said they trusted Biden to handle a major crisis better than Sanders .
When it comes to the Biden-Sanders split in psychographic support , it would likely be impossible to separate this age-related disparity from the economic status of the voters .
Boomers have the most wealth of any age bracket , Millennials the least .
And what these well-intentioned but blase liberals appear to miss is what one CounterPuncher M.G .
Piety nicely noted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in the sense of angry , the average American voter is .
Epstiein writes that , ‘ if you include those who have left the workforce altogether , the U.S. employment rate is almost as high as it was in 1931.
’ ” Piety goes on to quote Anne Case and Angus Deaton from Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism , that “ ‘ the amount Americans spend unnecessarily on health care weighs more heavily on our economy..than the Versailles Treaty reparations did on Germans in the 1920s.
’ ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and rage , they are chided as Bernie Bros who must learn to practice a more civil discourse with their wealthier , more comfortable elders .
This feels more like the height of condescension than some principled appeal to decorum .
In this milieu of rage and complacency jousting for supremacy , we are struck by the breathtakingly fast invasion of the coronavirus , or COVID19 , whose epicenter is Washington state , but which crossed to clobber New York with forbidding speed .
As if this wasn ’ t unsettling enough , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one bizarre salvo after another over the fence into the public consciousness , raising the already surreal character of the last month .
A few of these tales , set side by side , begin to baffle the clarifying capacities of the mind : * Rather than attempt to settle fears , the American Hospital Association decides to issue a “ Best Guess ” that 480,000 Americans would or could die from COVID19 .
How many read ‘ million ’ into that guestimate before having to recalculate ?
Now that estimate has reached @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CDC ’ s latest worst case scenario .
For a society that receives daily infusions of sunny consumerism , such revelations are particularly disquieting .
* On the heels of this announcement , the Federal Reserve announcesit plans to inject $ 1.5 trillion into the market to ameliorate investor fears .
This eventually balloons to more than four trillion .
Leftists instantly take to social media to remind us that homelessness could be eradicated with a tenth of that money .
Scurrilous and defamatory exchanges immediately ensue .
* Trump declares a national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ billion to leverage against the virus .
After making the announcement , the press conference rather speedily devolves into a celebration of the president ’ s swift action in resolving another emergency , that of the American oil industry .
Having instructed the government to buy oil from American energy companies , Trump hopes to stabilize the industry after Russia cut its legs out from beneath it by refusing to slash production as supply surges .
Trump ’ s priorities–pleasing fellow billionaires over caring for the rabble–is visceral .
Behind him a snow-haired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Climate action groups go ballistic .
* Democrat John Delaney tweets that now is not the time to argue about Medicare for All , but rather to focus on free universal testing and treatment for the virus .
( Delaney fails to note that such extraordinary measures would be standard operating procedure under M4A . )
He is immediately savaged by the twitterati , leaving the skeletal remains of his credibility to be picked over by vultures on the grassy plain of the web .
* In a show of magnanimous ignorance , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Foods , owned by the world ’ s richest man in Jeff Bezos , writes a tone-deaf letter to employees cheerfully announcing they can donate their unused sick days to virus-struck colleagues .
Although he didn ’ t say it , he might have just added , “ This ingenious little plan of mine will keep the company from shedding profits as your sacrifice will ensure all our wealthy shareholders are kept happily frozen in their cryogenic tanks.
” Bezos , perhaps cognizant of Mackey ’ s folly , stays silent .
* @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passes a new resolution demanding new sanctions and punitive measures against the “ Ortega regime ” of Nicaragua ( which handily won certified elections ) .
No Democrat even lifts a hand in protest , such is the bipartisan accord on American imperialism .
This is rank and file groupthink .
* Later , the House refuses to pass a comprehensive sick pay bill , since rabidly laissez-faire Republicans don ’ t want it to apply to large companies , meaning only about 20 percent of workers will likely be covered by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bill and shaming the Republicans in the public eye , Democrats complacently revise it to meet Republican demands and vote it through .
Pelosi celebrates , then later assures the country that should a theoretical vaccine be produced , it should , theoretically , be “ affordable ” for stricken citizens .
* The spinelessness of House Democrats reflects the economic status of their patrons and their professional-class supporters .
These are not the ones who must use credit cards to meet their deductibles when they attempt to actually use their healthcare–if they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There is little concern among them that a Biden presidency would fail to even consider pressing for Medicare for All , a Green New Deal , tuition-free college , debt forgiveness , a wealth tax , drug legalization , or any sensible pullback on foreign wars .
Likely that last would be ramped up significantly under Biden , whose interventionist instincts are nearly the opposite of Trump ’ s hesitancy to engage in foreign wars unless pressured by the military and intelligence community .
One gets the feeling that crisis management will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
* Word spreads that Trump was asked to step up preparations and testing for COVID19 in January but declined because it might harm his reelection chances .
This rings true .
He has also been in close contact with Brazilians who have tested positive for the virus , but declined to agree to get tested himself when asked by a brave reporter , soon to be banished from the White House press corps .
Referring to himself in the third person , perhaps as a trinity , he says , “ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at all.
” * The U.S. drops bombs on Iraq after holding Iranians responsible for attacking one of our occupation outposts north of Baghdad , which killed two Americans and a British soldier .
This after the U.S. refused the Iraqi government ’ s demand that it quit the country , not unlike demands by Havana that the U.S. exit Guantanamo , also duly ignored .
Meanwhile , Cubans send doctors to China and Chinese send health experts to Iraq to assist with virus prevention and treatment .
No distinctions are drawn .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , several East Village bars appear to be full of rollicking revelers despite the city ’ s state of emergency .
Like witless Romans frolicking just before the sacking .
One might laud their joie de vivre in the face of the pandemic , were it not equally witless .
* In Tompkins Square Park a quartet plays John Coltraine while a medley of Boomers and Xers and Millennials sit on the benches , lazing and gazing at the pigeons and the crisp teal skies , soothed by the saxophone melodies .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ park .
Life , one hopes , rolls on .
* This stands in contrast to the ransacked shelves in Trader Joes and D ’ Agostino ’ s and CVS and Duane Reade , which look as if a human hurricane had swept through the aisles , as perhaps it had .
A stray box of tissues lays on its side on an empty shelf , an aftermath still life .
Dazed consumers , late to the party , stare at the emptied shelves , reading scotch-taped notices that begin , “ Due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York Times , the bible of the bourgeoisie , publishes a story about a super-hoarder .
The man is shown standing in his garage : middle aged , gaunt , a day ’ s growth on his wan cheeks , a glum expression on his face , clad in baggy workout clothes , the standard-issue attire of men who have given up on their public appearance .
His garage has been cleared of vehicles and crammed with storage shelves on which he has piled some 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Amazon ’ s having banned him for price gouging .
Now what would he do , now that his ingenious plan to get over on panicking Americans had been stopped in its tracks ?
( There was something wry in the fact that Amazon , the death-knell for a generation of neighborhood bookstores , was now taking punitive measures against a profiteering entrepreneur for having ruthlessly undercut the competition . )
* Meanwhile , six Democrats oppose a war powers resolution that the House passed and sent to the president ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
The party ’ s alliance with the intelligence community and ‘ reformed ’ neocons only betokens more of this kind of behavior from its ‘ liberal ’ members .
* Low-income minorities with little or no college education tend to stay away from the polls , undeceived by the tsunami of propaganda that slides over them weekly .
It is the degreed professional class that are most vulnerable to the nattily attired arguments of the Paul Krugmans and David Brooks ’ of the world .
This gives the lie to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smear # NeverBiden supporters as merely delusional bourgeoisie expressing their white privilege .
* To that end , a video of a once-candid Lawrence O ’ Donnell has been making the circuit of social media .
The former Democratic consultant and current host of MSNBC ’ s ‘ The Last Word ’ is captured in a documentary declaring , quite vociferously , that the only way to force a party to move to the left is by denying them your vote , or at least making it clear you can and will deny @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is dismissed out of hand by Biden liberals , for whom O ’ Donnell is now a foot servant .
* Tulsi Gabbard , owner of a single delegate but banned from debates , continues to level clear-eyed critiques at the establishment , which it dutifully ignores .
Gabbard is left like a woman on the Titanic shouting something about icebergs but drowned out by the tinkling piano and the high spirits of the drunken bacchanalia before her .
She bravely accuses the intelligence community of interfering in elections when it claims Russian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apparently unnoticed by tens of millions .
She also calls for UBI to combat the economic effects of the coronavirus , a sad coda to Andrew Yang ’ s once-inspired campaign that has finally petered out on the front steps of Biden Mansion .
* Bernie Sanders , once again moving into movement-crushing mode , declares that he believes Joe Biden– ” a friend of mine ” –could defeat Donald Trump in the general .
He likewise refuses to discuss the former VP ’ s evident cognitive decline in a weak pantomime of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fealty to a party of which he is not a member will likely derail his momentum , as supporters see the outlines of another bitter fall materializing in their minds .
For the Democratic establishment , Sanders must seem like a petulant child who acts out for months on end , only to hastily rehabilitate his behavior just as Christmas season arrives .
Too many paradoxes to reckon with .
And yet one more occurs .
The nation is struck by a pandemic just as one of its presidential candidates is barnstorming around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ healthcare proposal .
And doubly so that as that same candidate fulminates about billionaires , reaching a bellowing crescendo , those selfsame elites blithely leverage the crisis to their advantage , occasionally even appealing to the destitute to become the mini-philanthropists of their own recovery .
One could say it is ironic but , as a Julian Barnes character muses in one of his novels about such things , “ as for coincidences in books–there ’ s something cheap and sentimental about the device ; it can ’ t help always seeming aesthetically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
All one can do in nonfiction is identify coincidences ; in fiction one can create them .
The ones above seem especially unsatisfying , always arrived at to the detriment of some voiceless majority .
There is no justice in them , just a miscellany of abuse .
I have heard whispers of how delicious an irony it would be for our blunderer-in-chief to be done in by his own incompetence , evicted from office by the electorate ’ s roaring disapproval of his handling of the pandemic .
For some , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the runaway injustice of his presidency .
But this can only be hoped for , not invented .
Should we then leave irony to the Biden liberals ?
They certainly have the right mise en scene for it : tablesful of emptying wine bottles , glimmering cutlery forking singed scallops and bruised tenderloins between their polished ivories .
Irony is , in some ways , a witty way to tie a bow on a conundrum , declare a riddle unsolvable , as it were , and forge ahead , conscience neatly salved with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of cognitive dissonance .
And why not ?
Is not “ CD ” –as a frustrated friend finally labeled it in order to quit having to rewrite it every three sentences in his monograph on liberal failures–is not CD the real virus in this country , one we ’ ve long overlooked but that is , coincidentally , becoming painfully more obvious thanks to the advent of another nasty and menacing infection ?
Well , we ’ ll leave that to the wine cave enthusiasts .
Time to sanitize the keyboard .

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]itting in the East Village, drinking a coffee and trying to read a book, it was hard to ignore the rollicking conversation of liberal Boomers sitting an empty table or two behind me. What surprised me, but shouldn’t have, was the pedestrian character of the conversation. You might have scripted it for a Broadway show, had not the theater district been shuttered out of “an overabundance of caution.” We may soon find abundance wanting. Still the unceasing conversation roars ahead, unstoppable even as a malign pathogen thunders its way across the heartland.
First, there is the usual disdain for Trump. The standard detestations enunciated and agreed to by all and sundry. The ego! The self-interest! The unpreparedness! And, last but never least, the vulgarity! Then, of course, one of their number decides to speak up enthusiastically, even urgently, for Bernie. Why can’t he win? she asks plaintively. The others shift uneasily in their chairs. One of them, evidently the political savant, seems to speak for the rest with his reaction: a sad sigh, a cheeky grimace and a perfunctory raising of the eyebrows. Then he imparts the dark truth: America just isn’t ready yet for socialism. Others concur. The Sanders enthusiast tries a few more pointed remarks, with which everyone naturally agrees. Oh, yes, no doubt. System is corrupt. Democrats leave a lot to be desired. The corporate capture of Congress is criminal. But none of this penetrates the singular judgement of the bunch: we just aren’t there yet. Inevitably, one of the group declares that his real fear is that Trump will use the pandemic as an excuse to call off the election, provoking a fearful rumble at the table. One of the women hastily caveats this by noting that there are quite a lot of conspiracies floating around these days. Alarmed by the vision of Trumpian tyranny, they rapidly turn to reasons why Biden is a pragmatic and sensible choice, among them the lurid surmise that they’ll surround him with smart people, and so on. Mercifully, the conversation at last turns to the shocking spectacle of Italy…
Clash of the Cohorts
To be sure, Boomers have turned out en masse for Joe Biden during the primaries, crushing Bernie Sanders among older cohorts. They even outweigh, by virtue of their civic mindedness in showing up at the polling stations, the huge percentages by which Sanders wins younger voters, who flee from Biden as from a political pestilence.
Much contradictory and confusing data has emerged from the primaries. Like Boomers, a superabundance of African-Americans, from South Carolina to Detroit, voted for Biden, the author of the Clinton crime bill. According to some black commentators, this is because they have decided once again to vote Democrat regardless of the candidate, simply to stave off another four years of leaving the “White Man’s Party” in charge. This is their quadrennial calculus. At the same time, exit polls in twenty states showed, by huge margins, that voters support Medicare for All. Weigh this in the balance against exit polls that show discrepancies with the final tally that consistently negatively impact Sanders and positively impact Biden. Then add to that exit-polled voters in Michigan, Missouri, and Washington state who said they trusted Biden to handle a major crisis better than Sanders.
When it comes to the Biden-Sanders split in psychographic support, it would likely be impossible to separate this age-related disparity from the economic status of the voters. Boomers have the most wealth of any age bracket, Millennials the least. And what these well-intentioned but blase liberals appear to miss is what one CounterPuncher M.G. Piety nicely noted, namely, “…just how mad, in the sense of angry, the average American voter is. Epstiein writes that, ‘if you include those who have left the workforce altogether, the U.S. employment rate is almost as high as it was in 1931.’”
Piety goes on to quote Anne Case and Angus Deaton from Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, that “‘the amount Americans spend unnecessarily on health care weighs more heavily on our economy..than the Versailles Treaty reparations did on Germans in the 1920s.’”
Yet when the young express their anger and rage, they are chided as Bernie Bros who must learn to practice a more civil discourse with their wealthier, more comfortable elders. This feels more like the height of condescension than some principled appeal to decorum. In this milieu of rage and complacency jousting for supremacy, we are struck by the breathtakingly fast invasion of the coronavirus, or COVID19, whose epicenter is Washington state, but which crossed to clobber New York with forbidding speed.
Taking Advantage
As if this wasn’t unsettling enough, the news media seems to be launching one bizarre salvo after another over the fence into the public consciousness, raising the already surreal character of the last month. A few of these tales, set side by side, begin to baffle the clarifying capacities of the mind:
* Rather than attempt to settle fears, the American Hospital Association decides to issue a “Best Guess” that 480,000 Americans would or could die from COVID19. How many read ‘million’ into that guestimate before having to recalculate? Now that estimate has reached a million, 1.7M according to the CDC’s latest worst case scenario. For a society that receives daily infusions of sunny consumerism, such revelations are particularly disquieting.
* On the heels of this announcement, the Federal Reserve announcesit plans to inject $1.5 trillion into the market to ameliorate investor fears. This eventually balloons to more than four trillion. Leftists instantly take to social media to remind us that homelessness could be eradicated with a tenth of that money. Scurrilous and defamatory exchanges immediately ensue.
* Trump declares a national emergency, opening up some $50 billion to leverage against the virus. After making the announcement, the press conference rather speedily devolves into a celebration of the president’s swift action in resolving another emergency, that of the American oil industry. Having instructed the government to buy oil from American energy companies, Trump hopes to stabilize the industry after Russia cut its legs out from beneath it by refusing to slash production as supply surges. Trump’s priorities–pleasing fellow billionaires over caring for the rabble–is visceral. Behind him a snow-haired, stone-faced Mike Pence nods assuringly. Climate action groups go ballistic.
* Democrat John Delaney tweets that now is not the time to argue about Medicare for All, but rather to focus on free universal testing and treatment for the virus. (Delaney fails to note that such extraordinary measures would be standard operating procedure under M4A.) He is immediately savaged by the twitterati, leaving the skeletal remains of his credibility to be picked over by vultures on the grassy plain of the web.
* In a show of magnanimous ignorance, John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, owned by the world’s richest man in Jeff Bezos, writes a tone-deaf letter to employees cheerfully announcing they can donate their unused sick days to virus-struck colleagues. Although he didn’t say it, he might have just added, “This ingenious little plan of mine will keep the company from shedding profits as your sacrifice will ensure all our wealthy shareholders are kept happily frozen in their cryogenic tanks.” Bezos, perhaps cognizant of Mackey’s folly, stays silent.
* With a voice vote, the House passes a new resolution demanding new sanctions and punitive measures against the “Ortega regime” of Nicaragua (which handily won certified elections). No Democrat even lifts a hand in protest, such is the bipartisan accord on American imperialism. This is rank and file groupthink.
* Later, the House refuses to pass a comprehensive sick pay bill, since rabidly laissez-faire Republicans don’t want it to apply to large companies, meaning only about 20 percent of workers will likely be covered by the legislation. Rather than passing the comprehensive bill and shaming the Republicans in the public eye, Democrats complacently revise it to meet Republican demands and vote it through. Pelosi celebrates, then later assures the country that should a theoretical vaccine be produced, it should, theoretically, be “affordable” for stricken citizens.
* The spinelessness of House Democrats reflects the economic status of their patrons and their professional-class supporters. These are not the ones who must use credit cards to meet their deductibles when they attempt to actually use their healthcare–if they are fortunate enough to have it. There is little concern among them that a Biden presidency would fail to even consider pressing for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, tuition-free college, debt forgiveness, a wealth tax, drug legalization, or any sensible pullback on foreign wars. Likely that last would be ramped up significantly under Biden, whose interventionist instincts are nearly the opposite of Trump’s hesitancy to engage in foreign wars unless pressured by the military and intelligence community. One gets the feeling that crisis management will be a large portfolio in a Biden administration.
* Word spreads that Trump was asked to step up preparations and testing for COVID19 in January but declined because it might harm his reelection chances. This rings true. He has also been in close contact with Brazilians who have tested positive for the virus, but declined to agree to get tested himself when asked by a brave reporter, soon to be banished from the White House press corps. Referring to himself in the third person, perhaps as a trinity, he says, “We are showing no symptoms, no symptoms at all.”
* The U.S. drops bombs on Iraq after holding Iranians responsible for attacking one of our occupation outposts north of Baghdad, which killed two Americans and a British soldier. This after the U.S. refused the Iraqi government’s demand that it quit the country, not unlike demands by Havana that the U.S. exit Guantanamo, also duly ignored. Meanwhile, Cubans send doctors to China and Chinese send health experts to Iraq to assist with virus prevention and treatment. No distinctions are drawn.
* During a pause in the action, several East Village bars appear to be full of rollicking revelers despite the city’s state of emergency. Like witless Romans frolicking just before the sacking. One might laud their joie de vivre in the face of the pandemic, were it not equally witless.
* In Tompkins Square Park a quartet plays John Coltraine while a medley of Boomers and Xers and Millennials sit on the benches, lazing and gazing at the pigeons and the crisp teal skies, soothed by the saxophone melodies. It feels like any other day in the park. Life, one hopes, rolls on.
* This stands in contrast to the ransacked shelves in Trader Joes and D’Agostino’s and CVS and Duane Reade, which look as if a human hurricane had swept through the aisles, as perhaps it had. A stray box of tissues lays on its side on an empty shelf, an aftermath still life. Dazed consumers, late to the party, stare at the emptied shelves, reading scotch-taped notices that begin, “Due to unprecedented demand…”
* The New York Times, the bible of the bourgeoisie, publishes a story about a super-hoarder. The man is shown standing in his garage: middle aged, gaunt, a day’s growth on his wan cheeks, a glum expression on his face, clad in baggy workout clothes, the standard-issue attire of men who have given up on their public appearance. His garage has been cleared of vehicles and crammed with storage shelves on which he has piled some 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. His gloomy demeanor is evidently owing to Amazon’s having banned him for price gouging. Now what would he do, now that his ingenious plan to get over on panicking Americans had been stopped in its tracks? (There was something wry in the fact that Amazon, the death-knell for a generation of neighborhood bookstores, was now taking punitive measures against a profiteering entrepreneur for having ruthlessly undercut the competition.)
* Meanwhile, six Democrats oppose a war powers resolution that the House passed and sent to the president’s desk, where he will obviously veto it. The party’s alliance with the intelligence community and ‘reformed’ neocons only betokens more of this kind of behavior from its ‘liberal’ members.
* Low-income minorities with little or no college education tend to stay away from the polls, undeceived by the tsunami of propaganda that slides over them weekly. It is the degreed professional class that are most vulnerable to the nattily attired arguments of the Paul Krugmans and David Brooks’ of the world. This gives the lie to the ceaseless vote shaming by livid liberals who smear #NeverBiden supporters as merely delusional bourgeoisie expressing their white privilege.
* To that end, a video of a once-candid Lawrence O’Donnell has been making the circuit of social media. The former Democratic consultant and current host of MSNBC’s ‘The Last Word’ is captured in a documentary declaring, quite vociferously, that the only way to force a party to move to the left is by denying them your vote, or at least making it clear you can and will deny them your vote. This elementary strategy is dismissed out of hand by Biden liberals, for whom O’Donnell is now a foot servant.
* Tulsi Gabbard, owner of a single delegate but banned from debates, continues to level clear-eyed critiques at the establishment, which it dutifully ignores. Gabbard is left like a woman on the Titanic shouting something about icebergs but drowned out by the tinkling piano and the high spirits of the drunken bacchanalia before her. She bravely accuses the intelligence community of interfering in elections when it claims Russian interference sans evidence, another elementary truth apparently unnoticed by tens of millions. She also calls for UBI to combat the economic effects of the coronavirus, a sad coda to Andrew Yang’s once-inspired campaign that has finally petered out on the front steps of Biden Mansion.
* Bernie Sanders, once again moving into movement-crushing mode, declares that he believes Joe Biden–”a friend of mine”–could defeat Donald Trump in the general. He likewise refuses to discuss the former VP’s evident cognitive decline in a weak pantomime of ‘taking the high road.’ This fealty to a party of which he is not a member will likely derail his momentum, as supporters see the outlines of another bitter fall materializing in their minds. For the Democratic establishment, Sanders must seem like a petulant child who acts out for months on end, only to hastily rehabilitate his behavior just as Christmas season arrives.
The Last Irony
Too many paradoxes to reckon with. And yet one more occurs. The nation is struck by a pandemic just as one of its presidential candidates is barnstorming around the country gathering steam for his universal healthcare proposal. And doubly so that as that same candidate fulminates about billionaires, reaching a bellowing crescendo, those selfsame elites blithely leverage the crisis to their advantage, occasionally even appealing to the destitute to become the mini-philanthropists of their own recovery. One could say it is ironic but, as a Julian Barnes character muses in one of his novels about such things, “as for coincidences in books–there’s something cheap and sentimental about the device; it can’t help always seeming aesthetically gimcrack.” Which is the problem here. All one can do in nonfiction is identify coincidences; in fiction one can create them. The ones above seem especially unsatisfying, always arrived at to the detriment of some voiceless majority. There is no justice in them, just a miscellany of abuse. I have heard whispers of how delicious an irony it would be for our blunderer-in-chief to be done in by his own incompetence, evicted from office by the electorate’s roaring disapproval of his handling of the pandemic. For some, that would apply a moral fix to the runaway injustice of his presidency. But this can only be hoped for, not invented.
Should we then leave irony to the Biden liberals? They certainly have the right mise en scene for it: tablesful of emptying wine bottles, glimmering cutlery forking singed scallops and bruised tenderloins between their polished ivories. Irony is, in some ways, a witty way to tie a bow on a conundrum, declare a riddle unsolvable, as it were, and forge ahead, conscience neatly salved with a political sanitizer that eliminates 99 percent of cognitive dissonance. And why not? Is not “CD”–as a frustrated friend finally labeled it in order to quit having to rewrite it every three sentences in his monograph on liberal failures–is not CD the real virus in this country, one we’ve long overlooked but that is, coincidentally, becoming painfully more obvious thanks to the advent of another nasty and menacing infection? Well, we’ll leave that to the wine cave enthusiasts. Time to sanitize the keyboard.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-03-18--Let’s not lose our heads!

Let’s not lose our heads!

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible .
Share with kin , friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise .
et ’ s not lose our heads !
In all its seriousness , the coronavirus is nothing compared to the “ Spanish flu ” of 1918 , which killed 50 million people worldwide during World War I .
To date , SARS-CoV-2 ( the virus that causes Covid-19 ) has infected more than 200,000 people with almost 8,000 deaths .
However , the “ Spanish flu ” killed 50 million infecting one in five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can not be said that it affected the course of the bloody First World War .
Let us remember the hysteria when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was discovered in the 80s and how today we have learned to live with that disease even though no vaccine has been made .
It took 96 years to discover that the origin of the Spanish flu was a variety of # H1N1 .
It took 3 years to discover the HIV virus .
It took only 7 days to discover the Covid-19 virus !
Let ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hygiene that we all know ( especially , wash our hands well and be careful when we cough or sneeze ) and don ’ t believe the first thing we read or hear : look for reliable sources .
Let ’ s also think about some of the positive effects that the emergency brings to us in the face of this dangerous virus : – All over the world , and especially in our region , people are learning to respect basic hygiene rules , especially hand washing , which will have an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions of people .
– Just three months after the emergency began , two vaccines are already being tested .
In record time , China managed to control the Covid-19 outbreak by closing all the temporary hospitals it had to set up because of the drop in cases .
In the case of Latin America , we should not forget to acknowledge the huge contribution of Cuban medicine in the fight against the disease .
– The general shutdown of economic activity all over the industrialized world has caused a drop in emissions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dioxide and fine particles , leaving clearer skies , as indicated by satellite photographs .
– The pandemic has provoked a serious debate about the importance of public health around the world and the unworkability of the “ every-man-for-himself ” society .
– The pandemic , once the worst is over , will most certainly have a positive economic effect on China , which is being forced to make a series of investments that will boost the global economy .
Indeed , China ’ s role in the world will be strengthened while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weakened , which will have a beneficial effect on international relations .

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
By Jorge Capelán
Opinions
[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et's not lose our heads! In all its seriousness, the coronavirus is nothing compared to the "Spanish flu" of 1918, which killed 50 million people worldwide during World War I.
To date, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) has infected more than 200,000 people with almost 8,000 deaths. However, the "Spanish flu" killed 50 million infecting one in five people in the world, yet it cannot be said that it affected the course of the bloody First World War.
Let us remember the hysteria when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was discovered in the 80s and how today we have learned to live with that disease even though no vaccine has been made.
It took 96 years to discover that the origin of the Spanish flu was a variety of #H1N1. It took 3 years to discover the HIV virus. It took only 7 days to discover the Covid-19 virus!
Let's be calm, keep the rules of hygiene that we all know (especially, wash our hands well and be careful when we cough or sneeze) and don't believe the first thing we read or hear: look for reliable sources.
Let's also think about some of the positive effects that the emergency brings to us in the face of this dangerous virus:
- All over the world, and especially in our region, people are learning to respect basic hygiene rules, especially hand washing, which will have an impact on many other diseases that kill millions of people.
- Just three months after the emergency began, two vaccines are already being tested. In record time, China managed to control the Covid-19 outbreak by closing all the temporary hospitals it had to set up because of the drop in cases. In the case of Latin America, we should not forget to acknowledge the huge contribution of Cuban medicine in the fight against the disease.
- The general shutdown of economic activity all over the industrialized world has caused a drop in emissions, both of CO2 and of nitrogen dioxide and fine particles, leaving clearer skies, as indicated by satellite photographs.
- The pandemic has provoked a serious debate about the importance of public health around the world and the unworkability of the "every-man-for-himself" society.
- The pandemic, once the worst is over, will most certainly have a positive economic effect on China, which is being forced to make a series of investments that will boost the global economy. Indeed, China's role in the world will be strengthened while that of the United States will be weakened, which will have a beneficial effect on international relations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jorge Capelán is a veteran Nicaraguan journaist, active (among other things) in the struggle to defeat Washington's criminal sanctions against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as well a the lifting of the decades-old American blockade against Cuba.