Everything we were originally told about the Coronavirus has turned out to be wrong. In fact, it’s not a “novel” one-of-a-kind infection at all, but a member of a larger family of which there have been many iterations in the recent past. It’s also not the most contagious or most lethal virus we’ve ever seen, but a fairly-mild infection that has no impact on the majority of people and that only kills somewhere between 1 in every 200 to 1 in every 1,000 people. (CDC-IFR- 0.26%) Also, there was no real danger that our public health system was going to collapse, because the projected number of potential deaths (1 to 2 million in the US) never approached the estimates of the flawed computer models that were used to decide the policy. In short, just about everything we were told from the very beginning turned out to be demonstrably wrong. Why is that? Why do you think that the people who provided us with the information –many of them supposedly “experts” in their field– were so wrong about everything? And why haven’t they made any effort to publicly correct their mistakes when they realize how much confusion they’ve caused?
It’s politics, right? What other explanation could there be? Our leaders and their behind-the-scenes puppet-masters are using science as a vehicle for achieving their own narrow political objectives. In broader terms, COVID–19 or, should we say, CODENAME: Operation Virus Identification 2019, is the plan to manipulate virus-hysteria “to drastically and irrevocably” change the “fundamental structure of society” to establish a totalitarian world order. (Quote: from CJ Hopkins) That’s what’s happening, and the Democrats, the media and the many infectious disease experts are playing key roles in this operation that’s bound to continue until its objectives are achieved.
But let’s forgo the political analysis for now and review what we actually know about the virus itself. This, of course, would not be necessary if the media had been doing its job by providing accurate information rather than fueling public hysteria. Sadly, the majority of people are just as misinformed now as they were 6 months ago when the outbreak began. How could that be if the media was actually doing its job? It couldn’t.
What we know for certain is that the doomsday scenarios never materialized. 2 million Americans did not die and the world did not come to an abrupt end. We also know that the computer model predictions from the Imperial College were bogus just as we know that the countries that ignored those absurd models did better than the others. As Nobel prize winner Michael Levitt points out in an article at Haaretz:
“The same type of models predicted that in Sweden, the number of deaths from COVID-19 would reach about 100,000 by June, if the Swedish government continues to refuse to impose lockdown measures. Sweden rejected these models and bravely adopted… a democratic policy that broadly enabled normal life to continue. Despite the large nursing homes in Sweden...the number of deaths turned out to be 6% of the one predicted, about 6,000 people, at an average age of 81. Half of the victims were nursing home residents who, in Sweden, have a median life expectancy of 9 months after admission.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)
Repeat: Sweden’s death toll turned out to be just 6% of the original estimate. By comparison, the US death toll (167,000) is not quite 10% of the original (Imperial College) estimate. Both estimates were catastrophically wrong, and yet, we shut down the economy, drove unemployment up to levels not seen since the Great Depression, and condemned the country to years of agonizing restructuring. And for what??
Well, to promote a ghastly, authoritarian political agenda, that’s why. And this just helps to underscore what Covid-19 is really all about. It’s politics masquerading as science.
The Haaretz article also sheds light on the issue of “herd immunity” which is routinely mischaracterized in the media as the point at which 60% (or more) of the population have been infected and therefore have developed antibodies to the virus. This is wrong, in fact, the threshold for herd immunity is much lower than that, perhaps 5 to 15% of the population.
But, how can that be, after all, we were told that this was an entirely new “novel” virus that our species had never before experienced and for which we had no built-up immunity?
That was another lie. Here’s Michael Levitt again:
“Widespread infection is not required for stopping the epidemic. The argument that 60% of the population must be infected and becomes immune before the infection spread is halted is based on an incorrect mathematical calculation….The most significant evidence – decidedly refuting the need for 60% infection rate – is pre-immunity. For example, COVID-19 has several relatives (other coronaviruses) to which the population had been exposed, and such prior exposure can provide immunity to a significant segment of the population. Back in April, two of us wrote an article about the postulated nature of this immunity and the statistical evidence that pointed to its existence. We noted that in several closed communities that underwent testing, the infection rate was always capped at 20%, which statistically aligns with maximal infection rate in these communities rather than recurring coincidences. About a month later, a group of researchers published corroborating evidence in Cell, one of the most prestigious journals in the life sciences. About 60% of people in California who had never been exposed to COVID-19, had immune memory cells that recognized the virus and are therefore likely to provide immunity.
Moreover, a study in Germany showed that such immunity could reach a level as high as 81% of the population. …This rate of pre-immunity to COVID-19 is also evident in the global rates of infection. The virus began infecting humans more than eight months ago, and the epidemic has already spread to most of the world. Yet in all countries, the infection rate remains below 20 percent of the general population. This limited rate of infection has remained unchanged regardless of social distancing measures (if any),such as quarantines, local or country-wide lockdown, mask-wearing, and so on. In Sweden, for example, the infection rate did not exceed 20% and the percentage of people who survived the epidemic exceeds 99.9% (!) of the population. Such is the case in Belgium as well, the country with the highest population mortality rate, where less than 20% were infected, and more than 99.9% of the population has survived the epidemic…The implications of these findings are of utmost importance. They call for immediate removal of most restrictions on the economy, immediate return to normal life of low-risk population while helping high-risk groups reduce the rate of social contacts.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)
This is not some minor point. Our policy and the policies adopted by countries around the world are based on assumptions that are both unscientific and false. Do you really think the people responsible for implementing these policies don’t know the science or don’t know about “pre-immunity” or that that “prior exposure can provide immunity” or that ” the infection rate was always capped at 20% in all countries” (which means that only 1 in every 5 people will contract the infection regardless of their exposure.) or that in all cases and all countries “more than 99.9% of the population has survived the epidemic”?
Admit it, most readers don’t know anything about any of this because none of it has appeared in the MSM. Why is that? What malicious, evil forces are at work here? Why do our leaders and our media want to keep us in the dark about issues that are critical to our decision-making, critical to our livelihoods, and critical to our very survival? Why?
Again, do you really think our leaders and infectious disease experts– like the affable Anthony Fauci– are unaware of these facts? Do you think they have dismissed them as too trivial or too superficial to tell the public or do you think they are deliberately withholding any information that might mitigate the prevailing atmosphere of hysteria that is keeping the American people afraid, isolated and abjectly submissive to the manipulations of their paymasters?
That’s what you call a “no-brainer”. We have entered a period in which wealthy, globalist oligarchs are using fake science, amplified through their assets in the media and Democrat party, to fundamentally restructure society in a way that enhances their material interests while strengthening their grip on power. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.
And there’s more too, because censorship, manipulation and politics have real costs, and the costs can be calculated in terms of the lives that are lost due to the imposition of a ruthless and thoroughly-counterproductive policy: Lockdown. Here’s Levitt again:
“The third argument – removing restrictions will result in a higher mortality than a policy of lockdowns and restrictions – is also incorrect. A virus spreads in the population until enough people become infected and immune, or until a vaccine is found. Lockdowns and restrictions may only slow down its spread (“flatten the curve”) but they do not lower the total number of infections or overall mortality. If there is a risk of overwhelming hospitals, there might be a need to slow the spread of the infection. Otherwise, flattening the curve can only be harmful since the infection returns once the restrictions are removed. Moreover, efficient protection of high-risk groups is possible only for a limited period of time: The longer the time, the harder it is to prevent their exposure to the virus. Therefore, paradoxically, it is precisely lockdowns and restrictions that slow the building of herd immunity, which in turn is needed to stop the epidemic and protect high-risk groups. In the long run, such policy can lead to excessive mortality.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)
In other words, lockdowns can postpone infections but cannot prevent them. A virus is going to do what a virus does. Period. Imposing lockdowns is as bound to fail as standing at the water’s edge and ordering the tide to stop coming in. It’s empty posturing that achieves nothing. As Levitt says, lockdowns are, in fact, a threat to older and vulnerable people because the longer they are in place, “the harder it is to prevent their exposure to the virus.” In short, the lockdowns actually kill the people they are supposed to save.
Do you think our leaders know this? Of course, they know it. Levitt is not the only scientist who’s able to think clearly and rationally. The others have merely shaped thier approach to the demands of their employers. Does the name “Bill Gates” ring a bell?
Here’s Levitt again:
“In Sweden…there is no “second wave” because there was no lockdown. Thus, the policy of imposing and easing restrictions only prolongs the crisis, destroys the economy, and eventually leads to a larger number of victims. It may even continue for years as long as a vaccine is not available. The alternative to lockdowns and restrictions must be seriously considered.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)
Indeed, lockdowns cost lives, lockdowns cost money, and lockdowns are the wrong policy. Here’s Levitt one last time:
“It can be assumed that the handling of the COVID-19 crisis will be scrutinized – both in terms of health aspects, but also in light of public outrage over the state of the economy. So many people all over the world have lost their sources of income, livelihood, dignity and future. Poverty is a much more severe mortality risk factor than COVID-19, and it affects children as much as adults. One of the key questions that will surely be asked is whether the leadership in each country has ever seriously considered a worthy alternative to resolving the crisis, which will not cost so many human lives or destroy the economy. Countries such as Norway, Ireland, and Belgium have already declared that they will not impose further lockdowns as the obvious damage outweighs the doubtful benefit by a wide margin.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)
By any measure, the United States is in worse condition than ever before. We have destroyed our economy, closed our schools, obliterated our small and medium-sized businesses, increased suicides, depression, domestic abuse, poverty, homelessness, alienation and destitution. The American people have been plunged into a strange world of persistent fear and relentless manipulation by scheming elites who are resolutely committed to remaking society from the ground-up. COVID-19 is merely the vehicle they have chosen to achieve their nefarious objectives.
1– Prof. Udi Qimron is the (elected) Head of Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University 2– Dr. Uri Gavish is a Physicist, an expert in Algorithm Analysis and a Bio-medical consultant 3– Prof. (Emeritus) Eyal Shahar is an Epidemiologist, University of Arizona 4– Prof. Michael Levitt is a Nobel Prize-winning (Chemistry, 2013) Structural Biology professor, Stanford UniversityThe original article was published in Ha’aretz in Hebrew on July 20, 2020. The English text contains minor revisions.
The implications of the pandemic for US-China relations are relevant for global peace and prosperity, well beyond the Asia-Pacific. Rather than joining forces against the pandemic, COVID-19 is among the factors that have widened the rift between the United States and China, bringing bilateral relations to their lowest level since Nixon and Kissinger’s overtures in 1971. In fact, US-China zero-sum interactions across the geopolitical, economic, technological and political domains have spiralled towards a dangerous race to the bottom. While it is too early to declare a US-China “Cold War”, China’s assertiveness and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections.
***
The fight against COVID-19 and its aftermath poses one of the most pressing challenges confronting the international community since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, the coronavirus crisis coincides with momentous changes in world politics and seems to accelerate the decline of the so-called liberal international order, a misnomer for an era loosely defined by multilateral diplomacy, an open world economy and a degree of international stability buttressed by US military preponderance and a US-China entente that extended from geopolitics to economics, trade, technology and finance. Yet, China’s new-found assertiveness, global political involution, the fecklessness of international organizations, the growing allure of dirigisme, and the advent of a more isolationist, if not outright disruptive and protectionist United States posture, have dealt repeated blows − both exogenous and endogenous – to international stability.
The pandemic has accelerated these political and economic trends. For instance, international organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations, have been powerless in the face of COVID-19 because they’ve been playing second-fiddle to great power politics. China’s misreporting to and influence over the WHO contributed to an initial underestimation of the health risks and infectiousness associated with the novel coronavirus. Still, Washington’s populist decision to withdraw its funding and membership from the WHO – adding to growing frustrations of its European and Pacific allies – only exacerbated the problem of multilateral coordination during a pandemic. The emergency has allowed states to further centralize control over economic and social affairs – arguably also for good reasons – and has lent legitimacy to a recrudescence of nationalist and protectionist instincts, effectively empowering many of the world’s strongmen. Still, the ripple effects of a potential post-pandemic depression are hard to discern. As popular discontent mounts, populist strongmen and democratic leaders alike may exhaust the charisma acquired through COVID-19 crisis-responses, ushering the way to two broad scenarios. A pessimistic outlook suggests further political decay and deepening geopolitical tensions as national interests more easily clash, and leadership seeks to divert attention from socio-economic grievances. Alternatively, contemporary history has demonstrated that genuine political evolution, new social compacts, redistributive political economies and multilateral systems of governance may acquire a new shine following a major crisis (Both scenarios assessed by Fukuyama 2020).
The SHTF we all prep for is what folks 150 years ago called daily life: …no electrical power, norefrigerators, no Internet, no computers, no TV, no hyperactive law enforcement, and no Safeway or Walmart
This essay focuses on the geopolitical impact of the pandemic in the Asia-Pacific with an accent on US-China dynamics. I argue in favour of the first, pessimistic scenario because COVID-19 is cementing Sino-American strategic rivalry and crystallizing Washington’s maximalist pushback against Beijing, with implications that go well beyond the region. High-stake geopolitical manoeuvrings between the US and China are impacting economic, political and security dynamics globally. More importantly, the ongoing political warfare between the two – one that has been exacerbated by the pandemic – is cementing US-China enmity and reifying the new “Cold War”. Understanding the drivers of US-China strategic competition will help third parties better navigate the stormier geopolitical seas ahead. As the discussion below will demonstrate, US allies are well-advised to prepare for the challenges posed by a rising and aggressive China, but there is a concomitant need to manage and ameliorate the risks associated with a disruptive, and declining, hegemonic power – the United States of America. Given space limitations, this essay places special emphasis on the US pushback; the author recognizes China’s composite assertiveness, if not aggressiveness, that has fed into US behaviour (Small et alia 2020), but the radical pushback is arguably feeding the monster it has tried to tame.
US-China Power Politics During the Pandemic: Minds, Money and Might
Ever since the unveiling of the December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Trump administration has embarked on a steady crescendo of initiatives, both domestic and international in scope, aimed at curbing China’s influence. Following the demise of voices of moderation, such as former director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, security and economic hawks within the Trump administration have steered the American ship of state towards a maximalist pushback against Chinese assertiveness. For instance, the National Security Council has worked in tandem with Mike Pompeo’s State Department, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other relevant government agencies to craft a “whole-of-government” response that mobilized US leverage – from trade embargoes and military power to strategic communications and counterintelligence (Sutter 2019) – to contain China’s rise. The foreign policy pendulum had shifted substantially from the Obama presidency – an administration that was keener on transnational threats and diplomatic inducements over big-stick diplomacy – to usher in Trump’s highly transactional diplomacy, and contempt for global challenges – such as climate change –, multilateral cooperation, and international organizations. Thus, the US muscled up for an age of “great power competition” to pursue peace through strength and aimed at rectifying supposed security and economic imbalances with friends and foes alike, through an “America First” agenda.
Specific to the China challenge, the recent overhaul of the United States’ foreign and security policy is premised on a Manichean diagnosis of the nature of its main strategic competitor. Fieldwork in Washington DC in 2019 and 2020 suggested that key national security decisionmakers acted on the belief that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its influence are essentially malign. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, the CCP engaged in cultural and (through forced sterilization) effective genocide in Xinjiang, heavy-handed political repression as in Hong Kong, and a dystopic use of new technologies for surveillance purposes. While much of this assessment rings true, the US government translated the CCP’s pursuit of regime security and its regional assertiveness into a conspiratorial assessment of China’s global intentions, capabilities, and modus operandi (Johnston 2019, Barboza 2020, Spalding 2019, McMaster 2020). US decisionmakers believe that the CCP seeks to export its autocratic system of governance, ensnares developing countries into neo-colonial “debt trap” diplomacy under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative, infiltrates liberal democracies to meddle into their domestic politics, and leverages “whole-of-society” intelligence efforts to steal its competitors’ technological, military and economic secrets (White House 2020). In short, key US policymakers equated China with the Soviet Union and Xi Jinping with Joseph Stalin, to conclude that a capitalist, democratic United States was fundamentally incompatible and couldn’t co-exist with a Marxist-Leninist regime, that poses a long-term existential threat (Pompeo 2020, O’ Brien 2020).
Alas, the COVID-19 black swan has accelerated the international and domestic push factors towards a downward spiral in US-China relations. To be sure, the US-China Cold War trope already contained the seeds of a self-fulfilling prophecy (Wolf 2019), but the administration’s Cold Warriors did not have a free hand. For instance, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer were more interested in reaching a trade deal with Chinese counterparts rather than pursuing negotiations into an endless economic race to the bottom. More importantly, they were empowered by a US President, who prioritized his own re-election and, as long as the US economy roared and Trump could have spun the US-China phase-one trade deal as a “victory”, he was conspicuously uninterested in criticizing China’s gross human rights violations. In fact, the US president was enthralled by and envious of Xi Jinping’s autocratic powers and methods (Bolton 2020). Finally, while the US legislative branch pointed at a bipartisan consensus aimed at curbing Chinese influence the spirit remained largely reactive not least because US public opinion prioritized Islamic terrorism and Russia as international threats. On the contrary, the pandemic has empowered the US administration’s radical hawks, convinced Trump of the merits of demonizing China as key to a second term, thus abandoning his earlier restraint to make up for a failing economy and falling popularity. In turn, this informed a degree of reactive aggressiveness on China’s part and fed into spiralling US-China security dilemmas during an election year.
The pandemic has widened the international rift between the two great powers and accelerated the trend towards international instability. In the author’s view, the pandemic fed into mutual mistrust, deepening geopolitical tensions and mounting insecurity that were independent of each state’s strategic intent. The logic has been distinctively zero-sum. In fact, the US government explicitly aimed to prove that Beijing was more dependent on America than vice-versa (Pompeo 2020), while policymakers on both sides understood defensive or internally motivated initiatives as offensive ones. As a result, the US and China moved along a mix of reactive and assertive postures that betrayed a series of dangerous security dilemmas governing bilateral relations and the two governments have not shied from tapping all dimensions of power during the pandemic: military, economic and communication power. In fact, the Trump administration recalibrated its maximalist pushback on all of these dimensions in light of the security and economic hawks’ fixation with China’s “unrestricted warfare” (Barboza 2020, Spalding 2019). The pandemic presents a good window on the escalation of US-China power politics in the three-dimensional chessboard. The mutually reinforcing dangerous spirals in propaganda, techno-economic competition and military rivalry underpins the author’s pessimistic outlook.
Minds: An All-Out Information War
First and foremost, the US and China have been embroiled in an all-out communication war during the pandemic, replete with propaganda and disinformation. Domestic factors have been particularly salient in facilitating the vicious circle of US-China retaliatory tit-for-tat during the pandemic. Thomas Christensen has identified Trump’s and Xi’s preoccupation with the preservation of their own political legitimacy in the face of a major crisis as the driver of the US-China clash (Christensen 2020). Thus, China and the United States’ blame game on the origins of the pandemic, according to which government laboratories of either country were implicated in the creation of the virus, was aimed at diminishing the responsibilities of their own leaders. As the US economy entered into a recession, Trump and the Republican Party beat the “China/Wuhan virus” drums to: 1) demonize China for causing the pandemic and the economic crash, and 2) indict Joe Biden for being soft on China, for instance, because he did not support the administration’s early China travel ban and because he was traditionally in favour of a policy of engagement towards Beijing. These accusations would reach their nadir through heavy-handed ad campaigns, according to which Biden was complicit with China, a country responsible for “stealing our jobs” and “killing our people”.1 In the process, the government-backed narratives of victimhood at the hands of a malevolent China have led public opinion to prioritize the China threat, and cornered Biden and the Democratic Party into an equally resolute stance against Beijing.
International factors in the zero-sum logic of power politics have also been at play. The US government’s preoccupation with building a “coalition of the willing” to investigate the origins of the virus, and its denial of WHO analyses of its origins and progression, certainly aimed at facile scapegoating to account for its home-bred failures, but also stemmed from the ideological belief that the CCP was responsible, even if unwittingly, for the creation and spread of the virus (Rogin 2020). The Trump administration aimed at cornering the CCP for its negligence in allowing the virus to spread in order to score points in the US-China global battle for “hearts-and-minds” that has gathered momentum over the past few years. Along with an overhaul of the State Department that prioritized the China challenge, and the rallying of the CIA, Homeland Security and other branches, the Trump administration defunded traditional public diplomacy programs to refurbish and substantially empower the Global Engagement Center (GEC) – an interagency office aimed at coordinating, integrating, and synchronizing government-wide communications initiatives directed at foreign audiences with an original focus on ISIS and, eventually, Russian disinformation. Under the Trump administration, GEC would engage in data-driven and audience-focused strategic communications that countered especially China’s narratives, propaganda, and public diplomacy-writ large. By 2020 GEC’s base budget had ballooned to $ 138 million dollars from $ 20.2 million dollars in fiscal year 2016 (Department of State 2020). The zero-sum quality to US-China public diplomacy initiatives triggered action/reaction dynamics, no matter the intended audiences and effectiveness of such messaging. For instance, GEC had prioritized China’s “medical aid diplomacy” in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, especially its heavy-use of state-sponsored disinformation and coordinated inauthentic behaviour on social media (Gabrielle 2020).
GEC has grossly overestimated China’s efforts to subvert the US, hinting at an improbable coordination between Russia and China in the global propaganda wars and exaggerating the magnitude of China’s disinformation network on social media (CNN 2020). Alas, the US government apparently understood China’s propaganda efforts solely in terms of an offensive strategy that weaponized its public diplomacy to mimic Russian disinformation malpractice. According to this logic, China would spin its medical diplomacy and assistance for political advantage, thereby discrediting European and US governments’ actions, magnifying social tensions and driving a wedge between targeted states and their traditional allies.
In fact, China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomacy and manipulative social media engagement was essentially domestic-focused. The propaganda and retaliatory measures threatened against countries that criticized Beijing’s handling of the crisis, such as Australia, successfully alienated China’s counterparts. Similar to the Wolf Warrior movie franchise, China’s heavy-handed diplomacy and more active use of government-backed disinformation campaigns on Western social media were successful with the intended audiences: Chinese citizens – who vicariously participated in the Twitter battles through echoes in their own state-sanctioned media – Chinese expats and overseas Chinese. Authoritative China-watchers recognize that Beijing acted out of a feeling of deep insecurity over regime stability – in fact, real unemployment had already sky-rocketed ahead of the COVID-19 crisis (Interview 2019) – and preliminary evidence suggests that China’s overseas information operations were aimed at mobilizing and cementing a united front already by late 2019 (Etō 2020). The US government’s all-out communication offensive on the virus origins, on China’s mishandling of the coronavirus, and high-profile calls for political change (Pottinger 2020; Pompeo 2020) certainly hit a raw nerve in Zhongnanhai, because overseas Chinese communities, which have fuller access to information through Western media and social media platforms, are an important pressure group on regime stability in the mainland.
Above all, US efforts to demonize China across a wide range of issues from Covid to economic exploitation and technological espionage directed against the US were above all meant for domestic audiences to raise awareness of the long-term “existential threat” posed by China, in the words of Attorney General William Barr. The US counter-intelligence pushback under the banner of the DOJ’s “China Initiative” picked up momentum with high-profile indictments targeting Chinese espionage activities in the US climaxing during the pandemic. In July FBI director William Wray reported more than 2000 active counterintelligence investigations tied to China, and a new China-related counterintelligence investigation opened by the FBI every 10 hours (Wray 2020). Growing oversight and limitations on the activities of US-based Chinese diplomats and state-sanctioned media outlets, visa caps and bans on Chinese reporters, advanced STEM researchers and Chinese nationals with previous ties to the military apparatus, and threats of a visa freeze against the hundreds of thousands of foreign, especially Chinese, students in US high schools and universities were a prelude to the July 2020 closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston. These activities illustrate the US government’s maximalist agenda. The Chinese tit-for-tat response was closure of the US consulate in Chengdu, with little comparable fanfare and popular mobilization. The Chinese government walked a fine line between communicating resolve, while not escalating the situation.
Ahead of the pandemic, US officials suggested that prosecutors were going to come up with a flurry of indictments on China-related espionage matters (CSIS 2020), but the surprising escalation of events testified to the hawks’ growing shadow within the US administration. And in February 2020, for instance, the DOJ indicted Huawei on charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) that it stole intellectual property rights from six US companies; this unusual indictment, usually reserved for criminal organizations, is part of an effort to prevent Huawei from using the US financial system, including US dollars-based transactions, and discrediting it with other countries such as Britain which has succumbed to US pressures to cancel Huawei operations in that country.
in this short video I’ll tell you a life-changing story about how I figured out how to easily create an automatedsupply of the freshest, high-quality organic foods you’ve ever tasted for pennies on the dollar…
Money: Techno-Economic Decoupling Accelerates
The above initiatives were closely linked with US economic competition with China, especially Beijing’s quest for a technological edge at the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution. Following the advent of Trump, the US redoubled its efforts at economic statecraft. That is, the use of economic and tech policy to advance security and diplomatic goals. China’s dirigisme, its distorted market practices and its notorious intellectual property right infringements have prompted a series of defensive countermeasures – including the aforementioned DOJ’s China Initiative – to protect the US defense industrial base and its sensitive technologies, also through tighter screening of foreign direct investments, and export controls. This initiative prioritized foundational technologies, that could provide a military and economic edge to US firms. After all, the deployment of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, robotics and advanced information and communication components presented dual-use risks. These were especially evident under China’s “military-civil fusion” path to technological innovation.
Yet, Washington also embarked on a more offensive set of measures to slow down China’s transformation into a global powerhouse able to compete with the US. Import tariffs, blanket bans and threats against the rollout of Chinese 5G networks at home and abroad, and the imposition of export controls on US technology to major competitors, such as Huawei, would have led to a US-China technological and economic decoupling, with major ruptures to global supply chains. By the time China and the US had agreed on a “phase one” trade deal, overall tariffs on Chinese imports into the US market had sky-rocketed to 19.3%. China also agreed to buy $ 200 billion-worth of US exports to freeze the trade war and deter Trump from more restrictive executive orders against its national champions, but the pandemic broke the US-China economic truce. As the coronavirus hit China, implementation of the US-China trade deal became unlikely; and as the coronavirus hit the United States and the global economy, the prospects of a Trump’s re-election dimmed.
For these reasons, Trump jumped embraced the China hawks’ maximalist agenda to engage in markedly more destructive economic statecraft. In May 2020 Trump renewed an earlier executive order concerned with embargoing exports of US technology and components to Chinese powerhouses, including Huawei. More importantly, he agreed – following earlier vacillations – to block US semiconductors and foreign chips with US tech component from reaching Huawei. The US government did explore inducements and alternatives to China’s 5G dominance; at different points, government officials suggested buying up or providing export credits to Nokia and Ericsson, Huawei’s largest competitors on 5G components, or providing export credits to cloud-based alternatives hailing from Japan. But the government was now clearly acting in ways to slow Huawei down, through heavy-handed US high-tech embargoes and restricting market access (FitzGerald et al 2020).
Finally, OECD countries’ — indeed much of the world — heavy reliance on China for the supply of medical products and active ingredients of most generic drugs has translated into cool-headed calls to (partly) readjust their economies’ supply chains. Yet US tariffs and its technological offensive aimed at slowing down China’s catch-up, also included negative inducements for US and multinational enterprises to more fully decouple from China’s market and tech-providers. Essentially, these countermeasures heighten the risk of doing business with China’s multinational enterprise, and will drive away customers from suboptimal Chinese products, especially in high income economies. The US government certainly demonized the risks associated with Chinese technology, from 5G components to social media platforms, to convince allies and third countries from shunning these products. The bad press China received during the pandemic –also due to Beijing’s own heavy-handed tactics and self-serving behaviour – facilitated this process and became hostage to political grandstanding. After all, European public opinion polls registered a marked worsening of perceptions towards China (Oertel 2020). Finally, what direct US pressure on allied governments couldn’t achieve, was effectively reached through US tech embargoes. The UK’s surprising backtracking and ban on Huawei owes much to heavy-handed pressure from Washington. (Helm 2020).
Conclusion
The military and harder-security component of the Trump administration’s China pushback deserve an essay of its own. But suffice to say that under Trump the US government increased the number of freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs), while more actively enlisting the participation of likeminded partners in the deterrence mix towards China. In recent years the US government deployed its military and Coast Guard vessels and has mulled introducing tactical nuclear weapons in Northeast Asia. The scrapping of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement in 2019 also points to a US-China missile race. The pandemic has accelerated these dynamics as evidenced by the increased tempos of military exercises in waters surrounding China, from the Indian Ocean to the South and East China Seas. This military signalling was a response to China’s growing assertiveness in its neighbourhood during the pandemic, as evidenced by the India-China standoff and its mounting pressure in and around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. This signalling culminated in two recent major exercises led by US aircraft carrier battlegroups with, respectively, the Indian navy off the Andaman Coast and with Australia and Japan in the Philippines Sea. The US government’s decision to take a sterner stance on China’s illegal maritime claims in the South China Sea has also been a notable development during the pandemic. But US salami-slicing tactics across the Taiwan Straits, while certainly reacting to earlier Chinese encroachment and maximalism, seriously risk propelling the world’s two largest economies into a hot confrontation.
This essay has made clear that the power political offensive waged by the United States has a distinctively zero-sum nature that encompasses the information and economic domains. But, to date, these initiatives have hardly exacted meaningful change in Chinese behaviour, not least because the end goal of the government’s “strategic approach” is unclear and its modus operandi is wholly premised on negative inducements. In fact, Washington’s propaganda, economic coercion and strategic narratives that suggest support for regime change may be understood as political warfare. Arguably, the US government’s own brand of “unrestricted warfare” may get under the skin of the Chinese leadership and open rifts between the CCP and wider society, or open rifts within the CCP elite. In the author’s view, however, Xi Jinping is benefitting from anti-US nationalism and a rally round the flag effect that, in return, feeds US intransigence. The pandemic is one factor that has exacerbated the maximalist diagnosis of China’s malign intentions (and growing capabilities) feeding into an exaggerated pushback that, in turn, kindles the insecurity of the counterpart. The downward spiral in US-China economic, strategic and propaganda interaction risks crystallizing enmity, as public opinion in both countries becomes convinced by the facile demonization.
Recently, Pompeo made a speech at the Nixon Presidential Library that marks the official end of US engagement of China. The Manichean tones and the stark choices between Freedom and Tyranny betray a resemblance with one of the speeches that marked the beginning of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine. Still, most US allies will not buy into Pompeo’s most radical prescriptions and the pandemic has demonstrated just as much, as evidenced by the EU and major European players’ careful stance (Pugliese 2020), not least because China is not the Soviet Union nor is Xi Joseph Stalin. Moreover, US multinational enterprises and the rest of the world will likely continue doing business with China.
As Pompeo observes, Nixon’s feared that the United States might create a “Frankenstein” (monster) by opening the world to the CCP (Pompeo 2020). The very opposite logic – a Manichean China policy premised entirely on sticks and with no carrots to allow the counterpart to de-escalate – may actually be closer to the truth. As mutual antagonism, mistrust and suspicion deepen in the public opinion of both states, a potential Biden presidency or Democratic-led Congress will become warier of undoing some of the anti-China legacy of the Trump administration. While it is too early to declare a US-China “Cold War”, China’s assertiveness and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections.
The physical book has 300 pages, with 3 colored pictures for every plant and for every medicine.It was written by Claude Davis, whose grandfather was one of the greatest healers in America. Claude took his grandfather’s lifelong plant journal, which he used to treat thousands of people, and adapted it into this book.
Apparently, that mean old Putin is stealing our magic vaccine to fight the “deadly virus”.
The Guardian, and all the other predictable voices, are currently reporting that Russian “state sponsored hackers” have been attempting to steal “medical secrets” from British pharmaceutical researchers.
At this stage they offer no substantiation, but it does serve as good teaching exercise in the techniques of modern propagandists.
First the lack of evidence. Observe the Guardian article, note the complete absence of sources or references. There’s not a link in sight. There’s no content there beyond the parroted words of UK government officials, whose honesty and/or competence is never interrogated.
Second, the lies by omission. They don’t mention, for example, the Vault 7 revelations from Wikileaks that the CIA/Pentagon have developed technology to make one of their own cyber-attacks appear to come from anywhere in the world, Russia obviously included. This is clearly vital information.
Third, the multitasking. When you splash a huge red lie on your front pages, it’s always best to make it serve several agendas at once. In fact, an unsupported statement which serves multiple state-backed narratives at the same time is one of the telltale signs of propaganda.
With this one completely unverified claim, the Guardian – or rather the people who tell the Guardian what to say – back up three narratives:
The further demonisation of an “enemy”. Russia is portrayed as pursuing “selfish interests with reckless behaviour”, whilst we (and our allies) are “getting on with the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health.”
Promoting the vaccine. The vaccine is coming. It will likely be mandatory, it will certainly have been insufficiently tested, if tested at all. They need some pro-vaccine advertising, and nothing sells better than “our vaccine is so good, people are trying to steal it”.
Most importantly – Enhancing the idea that Sars-Cov-2 is a unique global threat which puts us all in danger. The unspoken assumption is that Russia needs to steal our research because the virus is so dangerous we all need to be afraid of it…despite it being harmless to the vast majority of people.
Nothing shows just how much the Guardian has become the voice of the Deep State more than its coverage of anything Russia-related. And nothing serves as a better exemplar of how modern propaganda works.
For those wondering what will come after the Covid19 pandemic has successfully all but shut down the entire world economy, spreading the worst depression since the 1930s, the leaders of the premier globalization NGO, Davos World Economic Forum, have just unveiled the outlines of what we can expect next. These people have decided to use this crisis as an opportunity.
On June 3 via their website, the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) unveiled the outlines of their upcoming January 2021 forum. They call it “The Great Reset.” It entails taking advantage of the staggering impact of the coronavirus to advance a very specific agenda. Notably enough, that agenda dovetails perfectly with another specific agenda, namely the 2015 UN Agenda 2030. The irony of the world’s leading big business forum, the one that has advanced the corporate globalization agenda since the 1990s, now embracing what they call sustainable development ,is huge. That gives us a hint that this agenda is not quite about what WEF and partners claim.
The Great Reset
On June 3 WEF chairman Klaus Schwab released a video announcing the annual theme for 2021, The Great Reset. It seems to be nothing less than promoting a global agenda of restructuring the world economy along very specific lines, not surprisingly much like that advocated by the IPCC, by Greta from Sweden and her corporate friends such as Al Gore or Blackwater’s Larry Fink.
Interesting is that WEF spokespeople frame the “reset” of the world economy in the context of the coronavirus and the ensuing collapse of the world industrial economy. The WEF website states, “There are many reasons to pursue a Great Reset, but the most urgent is COVID-19.” So the Great Reset of the global economy flows from covid19 and the “opportunity” it presents.
In announcing the 2021 theme, WEF founder Schwab then said, cleverly shifting the agenda:
“We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind.”
The implication is that climate change is the underlying reason for the coronavirus pandemic catastrophe.
To underscore their green “sustainable” agenda, WEF then has an appearance by the would-be King of England, Prince Charles. Referring to the global covid19 catastrophe, the Prince of Wales says,
“If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time.”
On board with Schwab and the Prince is the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres. He states,
“We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face.”
Note his talk of “sustainable economies and societies”—more on that later. The new head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, also endorsed The Great Reset. Other WEF resetters included Ma Jun, the chairman of the Green Finance Committee at the China Society for Finance and Banking and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China; Bernard Looney, CEO of BP; Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard; Bradford Smith, president of Microsoft.
Make no mistake, the Great Reset is no spur-of-the moment idea of Schwab and friends. The WEF website states, “COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.” The WEF sponsors have big plans:”…the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.” This is big stuff.
Radical changes
Schwab reveals more of the coming agenda: “…one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.” These are supposed to be silver linings?
He suggests that those radical changes be extended: “The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination… and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy…” It would include “changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.”
The second component of the Great Reset agenda would ensure that, “investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Here the WEF head states that the recent huge economic stimulus budgets from the EU, USA, China and elsewhere be used to create a new economy, “more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”
Finally the third leg of this Great Reset will be implementing one of Schwab’s pet projects, the Fourth Industrial Revolution: “The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. During the COVID-19 crisis, companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine. Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution includes gene-editing biotech, 5G telecommunications, Artificial Intelligence and the like.
UN Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset
If we compare the details of the 2015 UN Agenda 2030 with the WEF Great Reset we find both dovetail very neatly. The theme of Agenda2030 is a “sustainable world” which is defined as one with income equality, gender equality, vaccines for all under the WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) which was launched in 2017 by the WEF along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In 2015 the UN issued a document, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” The Obama Administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification knowing it would fail. Yet it is being advanced globally. It includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals, extending an earlier Agenda21. The 17 include “to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions… to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change…“ It calls for sustainable economic growth, sustainable agriculture (GMO), sustainable and modern energy (wind, solar), sustainable cities, sustainable industrialization… The word sustainable is the key word. If we dig deeper it is clear it is code-word for a reorganization of world wealth via means such as punitive carbon taxes that will dramatically reduce air and vehicle travel. The less-developed world will not rise to the developed, rather the other way, the advanced civilizations must go down in their living standards to become “sustainable.”
Maurice Strong
To understand the double-speak use of sustainable, we need to go back to Maurice Strong, a billionaire Canadian oilman and close friend of David Rockefeller, the man who played a central role back in the 1970s for the idea that man-made CO2 emissions were making the world unsustainable. Strong created the UN Environment Program, and in 1988, the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) to exclusively study manmade CO2.
In 1992 Strong stated,
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” At the Rio Earth Summit Strong that same year he added, “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
The decision to demonize CO2, one of the most essential compounds to sustain all life, human and plant, is not random. As Prof. Richard Lindzen an MIT atmospheric physicist puts it,
“CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? – it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.”
Lest we forget, the curiously well-timed New York pandemic exercise, Event 201 on October 18, 2019 was co-sponsored by the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation. It was based on the idea that, ”it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.” The Event201 Scenario posited, “outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.”
The declaration by the World Economic Forum to make a Great Reset is to all indications a thinly-veiled attempt to advance the Agenda 2030 “sustainable” dystopian model, a global “Green New Deal” in the wake of the covid19 pandemic measures. Their close ties with Gates Foundation projects, with the WHO, and with the UN suggest we may soon face a far more sinister world after the covid19 pandemic fades.
Racism refers to a variety of practices, beliefs, social relations, and phenomena that work to reproduce a racial hierarchy and social structure that yield superiority, power, and privilege for some, and discrimination and oppression for others.
It can take several forms, including representational, ideological, discursive, interactional, institutional, structural, and systemic
Racism exists when ideas and assumptions about racial categories are used to justify and reproduce a racial hierarchy and racially structured society that unjustly limits access to resources, rights, and privileges on the basis of race. Racism also occurs when this kind of unjust social structure is produced by the failure to account for race and its historical and contemporary roles in society.
It is about much more than race-based prejudice it exists when an imbalance in power and social status is generated by how we understand and act upon race.
So let’s look at its forms starting with representational racism which to mind is both the foundation and the root cause of its existence.
Depictions of racial stereotypes are common in popular culture and media, like the historical tendency to cast people of color as criminals and as victims of crime rather than in other roles, or as background characters rather than as leads in film and television.
This form encapsulates a whole range of racist ideas that imply inferiority, and often stupidity and untrustworthiness, in images that circulate society and permeate our culture.
The presence of such images and our interaction with them on a near-constant basis helps to keep alive the racist ideas attached to them.
Then you have ideological Racism.
This is a totally different kettle of fish.
Historically, this particular form of ideological racism supported and justified the building of European colonial empires and the U.S. imperialism through the unjust acquisition of land, people, and resources around the world. This form of racism has a negative impact on people of color as a whole because it works to deny them access to and/or success within education and the professional world, and subjects them to heightened police surveillance, harassment, and violence among other negative outcomes.
Next, you have Racial language. The actual words we use to describe people and places.
This kind of racism is expressed as racial slurs and hate speech, but also as code words that have racialized meanings embedded in them, like “ghetto,” “thug,” or “gangsta.”
Unfortunately using words like these rely on stereotypical racial differences to communicate explicit or implicit hierarchies perpetuates the racist inequalities that exist in society.
Next, we have Institutional Racism. Practice through society’s institutions.
This takes the form of everything from laws to Stop and search. Institutional racism preserves and fuels the racial gaps in wealth education, and social status, and serves to perpetuate white supremacy and privilege.
One more form. International racism.
When a person of color is verbally or physically assaulted because of their race, this is interactional racism.
Not forgetting Structural Racism.
Structural racism results in large-scale, society-wide inequalities on the basis of race. Its a combination of all of the above forms.
And that leaves us with Systemic Racism.
This means that racism was built into the very foundation of our society, and because of this, it has influenced the development of social institutions, laws, policies, beliefs, media representations, and behaviors and interactions, among many other things. By this definition, the system itself is racist, so effectively addressing racism requires a system-wide approach that leaves nothing unexamined.
To sum up.
While something may not appear obviously racist at first glance, it may, in fact, prove to be racist when one examines the implications of it through a sociological lens. If it relies on stereotypical notions of race and reproduces a racially structured society, then it is racist.
In the end, describing someone using race, is racist and all of us do that.
It’s not Black lives that matter its all lives matter.
We are witnessing glimmers of the full insurrection the far-left has been working toward for decades. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was merely a pre-text for radicals to push their ambitious insurgency. In a matter of hours, after the video of Floyd began circulating the internet, militant antifa cells across the country mobilized to Minnesota to aid Black Lives Matter rioters. Law enforcement and even the state National Guard have struggled to respond in Minnesota.
Portland, Oakland, Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta are just some of the other cities waking up and finding smoldering ruins where businesses once operated. Nearly 30 other cities experienced some form of mass protest or violent rioting. At least three people have been killed so far.
Antifa, the extreme anarchist-communist movement, has rioting down to an art. The first broken window is the blood in the water for looters to move in. When the looting is done, those carrying flammable chemicals start fires to finish the job. Footage recorded in Minneapolis and other cities show militants dressed in black bloc— the antifa uniform — wielding weapons like hammers or sticks to smash windows. You see their graffiti daubed on smashed up buildings: FTP means ‘Fuck the Police’; ACAB stands for ‘All Cops Are Bastards’; 1312 is the numerical code for ACAB.
Last night, rioters reached the gates of the White House, possibly the most secure location on Earth. There, they chipped away at the barriers piece-by-piece while law enforcement struggled to respond. One Secret Service officer reportedly had a brick thrown at his head. Footage recorded at the scene showed him blood-soaked. Police were eventually able to repel masked rioters by using pepper spray and tear gas. That worked, for now.
The militants uprising across the country want a revolution and they don’t care who or what has to be destroyed in the process. If their comrades die, they are elevated as martyrs in propaganda. Death is celebrated.
At its core, BLM is a revolutionary Marxist ideology. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, BLM’s founders, are self-identified Marxists who make no secret of their worship of communist terrorists and fugitives, like Assata Shakur. They want the abolishment of law enforcement and capitalism. They want regime change and the end of the rule of law. Antifa has partnered with Black Lives Matter, for now, to help accelerate the break down of society.
The US is getting a small preview of the anarchy antifa has been agitating, training and preparing for. Ending law enforcement is a pre-condition for antifa and BLM’s success in monopolizing violence. Those who are harmed first are the weak and vulnerable, the people who cannot protect themselves. Small business owners in Minnesota pleaded for mercy, even putting up signs and messages in support of the rioters, but to no avail.
The destruction of businesses we’re witnessing across the US is not mere opportunism by looters. It plays a critical role in antifa and BLM ideology. Their stated goal is to abolish capitalism. To do that, they have to make economic recovery impossible. Antifa sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to exploit an economically weakened America during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s Going Down, one of the most popular antifa blogs in North America, tweeted on Friday:
’10 years from now, people won’t look back and ask: “Why did it explode in 2020?” Massive unemployment while the rich rake in billions from tax-cuts + bailouts, the earth on the brink of collapse + police murdering people daily. Instead they’ll ask: “Why didn’t it happen sooner?”‘
Antifa are taking actions considered extreme even among their own ranks. On Thursday night in Portland, rioters surrounded a vehicle filled with passengers and shot at it, hitting one person inside. The driver was able to escape but the injured passenger had to go to hospital for treatment. In Oakland, two federal police officers guarding a government building were shot in an ambush drive-by. One was killed and the other has critical injuries. The following day in Seattle, masked antifa militants stole a rifle from a police vehicle before setting it ablaze.
Media, politicians, the public — all of us — have underestimated the training and capability of left-wing extremists, who are united in purpose. All the parts of rioting serve a purpose. Looting and fires destroy local economies. Riots can overwhelm the police and even the military. All of this leads to a destabilized state. America is brave and beautiful. She is not invincible.
Protracted main street depression conditions have existed in the US since 2008 with no relief for ordinary Americans in prospect.
Before economic collapse this year, unemployment exceeded 20%, Labor Department numbers rigged to pretend otherwise.
The so-called U-3 BLS number omits working-age Americans without jobs who want them, including many longterm unemployed individuals not looking after months of failure to find employment.
Monthly BLS jobs report conceal what should be headline news, including that most US jobs created are poverty-wage, poor-or-no benefit temporary or part-time service industry ones.
Most households need two or more to survive. Living on the edge, they’re one or a few missed paydays from homelessness, hunger, despair and overall deprivation.
Record numbers of Americans are food insecure, the specter of hunger haunting the world’s richest country because its ruling class serves privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the public welfare.
It’s what the scourge of neoliberal harshness is all about, supported by both right wings of the one-party state.
It’s not a pretty picture. “America the beautiful” is a mirage in a nation where poverty is the leading growth industry — disturbing reality concealed by establishment media.
Michal Harrington explained the problem in 1962, things far worse today than what he described in his book titled “The Other America,” saying:
“In morality and in justice, every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering.”
“But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America, we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.”
Food insecurity, hunger, and unemployment haunted America at higher levels than at any time since the Great Depression before 2020 economic collapse began.
Now they’re off the charts with no near-or-longer-term plan for turning things around — just continued governance of, by, and for the privileged few alone at a time of a growing permanent underclass.
During the Great Depression, FDR explained that “one-third of (the US was) ill-housed, ill-clad (and) ill-nourished” — the problem far greater today than then.
It’s because unemployment is far greater now than in the 1930s, the highest in US history by far.
FDR’s “New Deal for the American people” was polar opposite today’s bipartisan conspiracy against public health and welfare.
He called “vast unemployment (of his time) the greatest menace to our social order,” calling for “social justice” that’s fast eroding today at a time when boosting it greatly is needed.
Friday’s jobs report concealed reality. Economist John Williams said BLS numbers are “not particularly credible.”
“Prior period downside revisions” weren’t explained, nor “revised methodologies and seasonal adjustments” that distorted reality.
Nearly 5 million unemployed Americans were counted as “employed, the third (consecutive) month of acknowledged misreporting.”
Last month’s reporting period was at a time of US lockdown nationwide.
Yet the BLS claimed 2.5 million new jobs were created — when millions of new weekly unemployment claims continue to be filed.
The report noted that hundreds of thousands more workers were permanently laid off because lost business isn’t coming back soon.
Hundreds of thousands of public workers continue to be let go, mostly at the state and local levels because of severe budget constraints, revenues falling way short of the ability to maintain public services at pre-economic crisis levels.
Through May into early June, data show the US economy contracting, far from expanding.
Key economic metrics contracted to record-low levels. Q II GDP is estimated to show around a 50% contraction, a number far exceeding anything during the Great Depression or any previous time in US history.
Based on how US unemployment was calculated pre-1990, Williams now puts it at 35%, over one-third of US workers without jobs.
Along with the vast majority of others underemployed, the US is a nation of paupers while its privileged class never had things better.
Notably the wealth of super-rich Americans is increasing during hard times while food banks are hard-pressed to feed millions of hungry Americans.
The USA is a nation in decline, a surging stock market concealing reality.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said nationwide “economic pain” continues, stressing it’ll “be longstanding without” considerable federal aid — that’s not forthcoming.
California, the state with the nation’s largest economy, teeters on bankruptcy, needing $54 billion in federal aid to provide basic services.
Many are being slashed, including for health, education, and other vital programs.
New York, Illinois and other US states are face similar hard choices.
Instead of federal aid to states in need and to stimulate economic growth and jobs creation, trillions of federal dollars went to Wall Street and other corporate America favorites.
Crumbs alone have gone to the unemployed, the impoverished underemployed, the “ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.”
While most US states ended lockdowns, others likely to end them in short order, mass unemployment remains at a record high.
Over 40 million Americans employed in January were fired, laid off, or furloughed, record numbers over a short period.
Small and medium-sized businesses were most affected, the backbone of the nation.
Around half of lost jobs are permanent because countless numbers of shut down companies face bankruptcy.
The Wall Street Journal reported that 722 US firms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May alone, a near-50% year-over-year increase, much more of the same ahead.
Many reopening won’t operate at previous levels, notably restaurants, hotels, airlines, shopping malls, retail stores, commercial real estate, enterprises related to tourism, and others relying on large gatherings like sports.
According to US bankruptcy attorney James Conlan, “we’re going to see an extraordinary number of large corporate bankruptcies, not just in the US but across the globe.”
The effects of unprecedented US economic collapse won’t magically turn around any time soon — especially with no federal economic stimulus and jobs creation programs planned.
Trump’s phony Friday claim about the US economy ready to take off like a “rocket ship” belies the dismal state of main street America — his regime and Congress doing nothing to turn things around.
What happens when millions of unemployed Americans can’t pay mortgage, car loans, or credit card bills.
Are mass evictions coming, numbers of homeless to increase exponentially, along with growing hunger?
The notion that Friday’s jobs report showed the beginning of economic recovery is belied by reality in US cities and towns nationwide.
Ongoing protests against institutionalized racism, inequality and injustice met by police violence reflect America’s dismal state.
It’s not about to change by the nation’s ruling class without sustained public activism in the streets for redress of longstanding grievances.
It’s the only way change ever comes. There’s no other way.
Power yields nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.
Protracted main street depression conditions have existed in the US since 2008 with no relief for ordinary Americans in prospect.
Before economic collapse this year, unemployment exceeded 20%, Labor Department numbers rigged to pretend otherwise.
The so-called U-3 BLS number omits working-age Americans without jobs who want them, including many longterm unemployed individuals not looking after months of failure to find employment.
Monthly BLS jobs report conceal what should be headline news, including that most US jobs created are poverty-wage, poor-or-no benefit temporary or part-time service industry ones.
Most households need two or more to survive. Living on the edge, they’re one or a few missed paydays from homelessness, hunger, despair and overall deprivation.
Record numbers of Americans are food insecure, the specter of hunger haunting the world’s richest country because its ruling class serves privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the public welfare.
It’s what the scourge of neoliberal harshness is all about, supported by both right wings of the one-party state.
It’s not a pretty picture. “America the beautiful” is a mirage in a nation where poverty is the leading growth industry — disturbing reality concealed by establishment media.
Michal Harrington explained the problem in 1962, things far worse today than what he described in his book titled “The Other America,” saying:
“In morality and in justice, every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering.”
“But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America, we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.”
Food insecurity, hunger, and unemployment haunted America at higher levels than at any time since the Great Depression before 2020 economic collapse began.
Now they’re off the charts with no near-or-longer-term plan for turning things around — just continued governance of, by, and for the privileged few alone at a time of a growing permanent underclass.
During the Great Depression, FDR explained that “one-third of (the US was) ill-housed, ill-clad (and) ill-nourished” — the problem far greater today than then.
It’s because unemployment is far greater now than in the 1930s, the highest in US history by far.
FDR’s “New Deal for the American people” was polar opposite today’s bipartisan conspiracy against public health and welfare.
He called “vast unemployment (of his time) the greatest menace to our social order,” calling for “social justice” that’s fast eroding today at a time when boosting it greatly is needed.
Friday’s jobs report concealed reality. Economist John Williams said BLS numbers are “not particularly credible.”
“Prior period downside revisions” weren’t explained, nor “revised methodologies and seasonal adjustments” that distorted reality.
Nearly 5 million unemployed Americans were counted as “employed, the third (consecutive) month of acknowledged misreporting.”
Last month’s reporting period was at a time of US lockdown nationwide.
Yet the BLS claimed 2.5 million new jobs were created — when millions of new weekly unemployment claims continue to be filed.
The report noted that hundreds of thousands more workers were permanently laid off because lost business isn’t coming back soon.
Hundreds of thousands of public workers continue to be let go, mostly at the state and local levels because of severe budget constraints, revenues falling way short of the ability to maintain public services at pre-economic crisis levels.
Through May into early June, data show the US economy contracting, far from expanding.
Key economic metrics contracted to record-low levels. Q II GDP is estimated to show around a 50% contraction, a number far exceeding anything during the Great Depression or any previous time in US history.
Based on how US unemployment was calculated pre-1990, Williams now puts it at 35%, over one-third of US workers without jobs.
Along with the vast majority of others underemployed, the US is a nation of paupers while its privileged class never had things better.
Notably the wealth of super-rich Americans is increasing during hard times while food banks are hard-pressed to feed millions of hungry Americans.
The USA is a nation in decline, a surging stock market concealing reality.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said nationwide “economic pain” continues, stressing it’ll “be longstanding without” considerable federal aid — that’s not forthcoming.
California, the state with the nation’s largest economy, teeters on bankruptcy, needing $54 billion in federal aid to provide basic services.
Many are being slashed, including for health, education, and other vital programs.
New York, Illinois and other US states are face similar hard choices.
Instead of federal aid to states in need and to stimulate economic growth and jobs creation, trillions of federal dollars went to Wall Street and other corporate America favorites.
Crumbs alone have gone to the unemployed, the impoverished underemployed, the “ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.”
While most US states ended lockdowns, others likely to end them in short order, mass unemployment remains at a record high.
Over 40 million Americans employed in January were fired, laid off, or furloughed, record numbers over a short period.
Small and medium-sized businesses were most affected, the backbone of the nation.
Around half of lost jobs are permanent because countless numbers of shut down companies face bankruptcy.
The Wall Street Journal reported that 722 US firms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May alone, a near-50% year-over-year increase, much more of the same ahead.
Many reopening won’t operate at previous levels, notably restaurants, hotels, airlines, shopping malls, retail stores, commercial real estate, enterprises related to tourism, and others relying on large gatherings like sports.
According to US bankruptcy attorney James Conlan, “we’re going to see an extraordinary number of large corporate bankruptcies, not just in the US but across the globe.”
The effects of unprecedented US economic collapse won’t magically turn around any time soon — especially with no federal economic stimulus and jobs creation programs planned.
Trump’s phony Friday claim about the US economy ready to take off like a “rocket ship” belies the dismal state of main street America — his regime and Congress doing nothing to turn things around.
What happens when millions of unemployed Americans can’t pay mortgage, car loans, or credit card bills.
Are mass evictions coming, numbers of homeless to increase exponentially, along with growing hunger?
The notion that Friday’s jobs report showed the beginning of economic recovery is belied by reality in US cities and towns nationwide.
Ongoing protests against institutionalized racism, inequality and injustice met by police violence reflect America’s dismal state.
It’s not about to change by the nation’s ruling class without sustained public activism in the streets for redress of longstanding grievances.
It’s the only way change ever comes. There’s no other way.
Power yields nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.
This year marks 250 years since the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel was born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany. In light of this anniversary I reassess what Hegel’s philosophy of nature can contribute to our contemporary understanding – what it has to say to us as we face a time of unprecedented environmental degradation.
We are in the midst of a mass extinction; losing species – plants and animals – somewhere between 100 and 1,000 times the naturally occurring background rate of extinction. Clearly, estimates vary widely – but there is a general consensus that anthropogenic climate change “at least ranks alongside other recognized threats to global biodiversity,” and is in all likelihood the “greatest threat in many if not most regions.”
What can Hegel’s philosophy teach us given this unfolding catastrophe? For most philosophers and scholars (not to mention scientists), if there is any area of Hegel’s thought that is antiquated and irrelevant it is his Naturphilosophie. Indeed, even in Hegel’s own day this part of his philosophy was ridiculed if not ignored, mainly because of his reliance upon a priori (as opposed to empirical) reasoning in constructing an account of the natural world. Consequently, it receives relatively little scholarly attention compared to his other monumental contributions to modern thought. This is unfortunate; for Hegel’s approach to nature is anything but a mere curiosity in the museum of ideas, even if parts of it seem dated or worse. Rather, what he has to say is centrally relevant to environmental concerns today.
The root causes of anthropogenic climate change – which has led to the endangering of countless species across the globe – cannot be adequately grasped in isolation from the technological application of modern science. While Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was certainly justified in calling upon American legislators to “unite behind the science,” neither can we overlook the culpability of science in bringing about the environmental crisis.
Alison Stone’s Petrified Intelligence (2004) offers one of the few sustained and sympathetic studies of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. She points out that the problem with the scientific approach is that it rests on inadequate metaphysical assumptions: “Empirical scientists work from a metaphysical assumption according to which natural forms cannot in any sense be considered agents whose behavior has meaning, but rather are bare things whose behavior makes up a mass of intrinsically meaningless events.”
In the Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel writes that “The wealth of natural forms, in all their infinitely manifold configuration, is impoverished by the all-pervading power of thought, their vernal life and glowing colours die and fade away.”
This draining of nature of its inherent richness, its intrinsic qualities occurs paradigmatically in René Descartes’ famous analysis of the piece of wax in his Mediations on First Philosophy. Descartes effectively dissolves the “sensuously resplendent piece of wax into properties (extension and malleability) graspable by the mind’s eye alone.” Qualitative distinctions are replaced by quantitative ones; so that what we witness is indeed nothing less than the dematerialization of nature and its reduction to a mechanical system which can be fully articulated through the immaterial forms of theoretical mathematics.
Scientific and classical enlightenment views of nature represent it as lacking the qualities – including value qualities – which we generally understand to be present within it. Sensibility embodies a basic understanding of nature as intrinsically valuable, as having its own right and its own voice. The metaphysics of empirical science, by contrast, assumes that the behavior of natural forms is inherently meaningless and exhaustively explained by external causal factors.
Hegel wants to reenchant nature, but not by retrieving an outdated and unacceptable medievalism – rather, the approach that he favors is distinctly modern; and involves reasserting nature’s interiority or inwardness: “Matter interiorizes itself to become life,” as Hegel puts it. In terms of ethics Hegel’s conception of nature is preferable to the rival scientific metaphysics because he recognizes and insists upon the intrinsic value of every natural form. Nature’s forms and entities are intrinsically good – which is to say, they are good regardless of any human interests in or feelings regarding them. Indeed, Hegel postulates goodness everywhere in nature – not only in sounds and colors, but in chemical and electrical processes, elemental qualities, and even the passage of time and the immensity of space.
While individual natural forms have intrinsic value, they do so to varying degrees: nature is structured hierarchically, according to Hegel – and the organic is privileged over the non-organic. Hegel is also prepared to say that this hierarchy culminates in the appearance of human beings; so that one criticism of Hegel that environmental thinkers are likely to make is that he adopts a narrowly anthropocentric viewpoint. What this charge fails to appreciate however is that while humanity may represent the highest realization of Spirit (Geist), spirit is already there implicitly in the animal organism.
Animal life is, for Hegel, the truth of the organic sphere: the plant is a subordinate organism whose destiny is to sacrifice itself to the higher organisms and be consumed by them. The animal organism is the microcosm which has achieved an existence for itself, and in which the whole of inorganic nature is ‘recapitulated and idealized.’ What distinguishes the animal organism is its subjectivity – the animal is ensouled, “having a feeling of itself, whereby it acquires enjoyment of itself as an individual.” The plant lacks precisely this feeling of itself, this soulfulness.
To consider this more concretely, look at what Hegel has to say about voice, which he describes as “a high privilege of the animal which can appear wonderful… The animal makes manifest that it is inwardly for-itself, and this manifestation is voice.” Hegel draws special attention, in fact, to birdsong – for “the voice of the bird when it launches forth in song is of a higher kind; and this must be reckoned as a special manifestation in birds over and above that of voice generally in animals… birds utter their self-feeling in their own particular element… Voice is the spiritualized mechanism which thus utters itself.”
It is noteworthy that what Hegel has to say about birdsong has in fact been reiterated by more recent ornitho-musicology. Charles Hartshorne – one of the twentieth century’s great philosopher-theologians – was also an expert in birdsong. In his book, Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Birdsong, he observes that the song “conveys no single crude emotion but something like what life is to that bird at that season.” In fact, birdsong expresses feeling, “according to principles partly common to the higher animals… That a bird sings because it is happy is not entirely foolish.”
As our knowledge of living Nature grows, we will likely find that those aspects of ourselves which we take to be most distinctly human – such as aesthetic appreciation – may be regarded as an extension and refinement of abilities already present among nonhuman animals. Hegel’s philosophy of nature may provide the basis for a more environmentally sustainable way of life, in part by helping us to see how it is our intellectual duty to view living things “within the widest of intellectual and spiritual horizons,” as the great Swiss zoologist Adolf Portmann put it.
To treat the natural world – and especially living beings – as a mere aggregate of things to be ruthlessly exploited according to our narrow interests cannot but entirely miss the deeper, genuine and philosophical comprehension which views Nature as “in itself, a living Whole.” This implies that we must view and treat the animal organism as an irreducible way of being in the world, which cannot be understood solely through the physio-chemical or molecular analysis of life.
The loss of biodiversity is not only an environmental crisis, but an ontological crisis as well – for with the extinction of a species the very interiority of Nature has been diminished, as the world is no longer experienced in the way specific to the life form in question. To avoid this catastrophe we must be prepared to draw on all the resources at our disposal, and that may well include the philosophy of nature.
Months of violence and vandalism in Hong Kong last year were orchestrated.
Any pretext will do for the US to wage wars on other nations by hot and/or other means — directly by terror-bombing and/or use of proxies, financed and trained to do Washington’s bidding.
Last August during US orchestrated violence and vandalism in Hong Kong, commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Hong Kong garrison, Chen Daoxiang, warned that PLA forces in the city are prepared to protect and defend it against hostile actions that threaten its stability.
At the time, he noted “a series of extremely violent incidents happening in Hong Kong” — US dirty hands all over them, my comment, not his, adding:
“This has damaged the prosperity and stability of the city, and challenged the rule of law and social order.”
“The incidents have seriously threatened the life and safety of Hong Kong citizens, and violated the bottom line of ‘one country, two systems.’ ”
“This should not be tolerated and we express our strong condemnation.”
“We resolutely support the action to maintain Hong Kong’s rule of law by the people who love the nation and the city, and we are determined to protect national sovereignty, security, stability and the prosperity of Hong Kong.”
If PLA intervention is needed to restore order, actions taken will adhere to the city’s Basic Law and Hong Kong Garrison Law, Chen stressed.
China won’t let the city be transformed into a US nerve center for undermining the mainland.
In response to China’s announced new national security law, Chen expressed support for the measure, saying:
It “will contribute to containing and punishing any attempt to sabotage the national unity or split the country…”
It will “help deter all kinds of secessionist forces and foreign forces attempting to interfere (in China’s internal affairs), and demonstrates our resolute will in safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
A statement by China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong warned that elements engaged in violence and vandalism, along with dark forces from abroad backing them, “not to underestimate the central government’s rock-firm determination to uphold national sovereignty, security and development interests and to safeguard Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability and Hong Kong compatriots’ fundamental interests.”
Without changing China’s one country, two systems policy, its new national security law aims to prevent pro-US 5th column elements from controlling Hong Kong and using the city as a platform for undermining mainland development and aims.
US war on China by other means rages, a country the Trump regime considers a “strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea (sic).”
Beijing is responding to its hostile agenda. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) said President Xi Jinping is focusing more on domestic over export-led growth.
His “strategic shift” includes preparing for a “worst case scenario.”
Xinhua quoted him saying “(f)or the future, we must treat domestic demand as the starting point and foothold as we accelerate the building of a complete domestic consumption system, and greatly promote innovation in science, technology and other areas.”
According to economist Hu Xingdou, he’s preparing for possible “decoupling with the United States and even the whole Western world” if East-West hostility reaches boils over.
China seeks self-sufficiency in a changing world, triggered by COVID-19, economic collapse, disrupted international trade and investments, and hostile US actions that aim to undermine its development.
By no means will Beijing close itself off from the outside world it’s a major part of for its imports and exports.
It seeks multilateralism, “openness and inclusiveness,” said Xi.
Economist Raymond Yeung believes his strategic shift is over concern that export demand won’t recover for several years.
According to China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet, Beijing will counter Trump regime sanctions when imposed, including because of its new national security law.
A statement by China’s Foreign Ministry said
“(i)f the US insists on hurting China’s interests, China will definitely take all necessary measures to firmly fight back.”
Last weekend, White House national security advisor Robert O’Brien said the US will likely impose sanctions on China if it enacts its national security law.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian stressed that “Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs. What legislation the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region makes, and how and when (it’s implemented) are entirely within China’s sovereignty.”
“The US has no qualification to point fingers and interfere.”
Under core UN Charter and other international law that’s also US constitutional law, no nation may interfere in the internal affairs of others for any reasons other than self-defense if attacked.
Even then, the Security Council has sole authority over this issue — not nations on their own, their leadership, legislators or courts.
It’s unclear how far the Trump regime may go to challenge China’s authority over its own territory.
It’s increasingly likely that Beijing will respond appropriately to hostile US actions if and when they occur.
A Final Comment
According to an SCMP article published by Global Research.ca, the US “slapped sanctions on 33 Chinese companies and institutions, putting them on two so-called entity lists as it dials up the hostility during the lowest point in US-China relations in decades.”
Clearly, China will respond in its own way at a time of its choosing.
All nations should refuse to tolerate what the scourge of US imperialism is all about.
SURVIVAL BLOG 