Right To Left

"China's evil in sabotaging the humans with this disease? WTF! Didn't this disease ravage China first, before it spread out around the world? And where do you get the notion that this disease was created? Did the USA 'sabotage' the world in 1918, when they kept a bunch of sick army recruits at Fort Riley, Kansas and then sent them over along with other troops in the final year of WWI, which turned into the Spanish Influenza outbreak that lasted through 1920, and killed 50 to 100 million around the world.

So, if we lived in a world where basic needs: food, shelter, healthcare were either free or cheap enough for the poorest people to afford.....that would be bad for people? Make them lose the incentive to work for something more or something better! I hate the rich/I don't resent them! They're pigs who are money-driven and don't give a shit about people....even the people in their own lives- family. Every relationship for the rich is monetized and transactional. So, they can't trust anyone around them, because they might fear they are just trying to steal their money!

By its very nature, an inheritance is NOT money or property you worked for! If it's a small inheritance, an inheritance tax after the first 100 or $200,000 that's progressive and takes higher percentages when we get to million and multimillion dollar inheritances is only fair! Because allowing the rich to pass on all of their ill-gotten accumulated wealth to their heirs is aristocracy/not democracy of any kind!

Complete nonsense in an age when many working people with low-paying jobs can't afford rent in large cities like Vancouver and Toronto. And that has a spill over effect on smaller cities further away from the urban core. Many longterm homeless men and women have ended up out on the streets after living in rooming houses for years, and can no longer afford to do so because the rising tide of real estate prices have caused all accommodations...even slum dwellings, to increase in price. I'm neutral on immigration because I don't follow the subject close enough, except that over the years I've noticed that crime rates among immigrants is lower than the general population (contrary to conservative narratives) and unemployment is lower also! Seems immigrants make a convenient scapegoat for anyone looking for a target: "they're living off our taxes/they're stealing our jobs" somehow can be spoken by the same people! Amazing how empty unsold condo units in NYC have been turned into homeless accommodations since the Covid crisis started; and the big solution for homelessness in my city lately is: FirstOntario Centre will become a shelter for Hamilton's homeless during COVID-19

IN what country are you paying inheritance taxes? We don't have/but should have an inheritance tax in Canada. And the US has been knocking back inheritance as well as earned income, business and investment taxes ever since Ronnie Rayguns came along in 1980...so who has an 80% inheritance tax today?

The only thing that stops a BIG war right now depends on how long this recent disease pandemic delays any such big, bold strategies like a big power war! The theorists about a peaceful and prosperous 21st century have a lot of back-tracking and excuse-making already. Most of what they do is ignoring some of the smaller wars and genocides going on that don't get barely reported in western media......Yemen being an obvious example! Look how peaceful everything is.....as long as we ignore the fighting and dying and mass migrations going on in places we don't care about! The main driver of the Big War is the US, because they've allowed their government to be taken over by weapons makers and contractors who profit directly from war, as well as the financiers of war who enrich themselves by financing the combatants and employing disaster capitalism to feed of the remains of nations ravaged by war....like vultures wearing three piece suits! The critics of Stephen Pinker...the primary philosopher and social theorist behind this notion that humans are savages by nature being tamed by civilization.....market driven-neoliberalism in our time, point out that anyone with a different or even contrary long view of human history can drive a truck through Pinker's optimistic futurism. Pinker conjures up a techno-driven free trading future by jerryrigging scattered deep history records of the distant past to present a prehistorical narrative of "killer apes." He's not the first to do this, but by building it into a story that tickles the ears and strokes the ego's of so many of today's billiionaires that attend Davos meetups every year (except this year maybe)....telling them that the system they've played a big role in creating, which heaps the multitude of rewards upon them, it's a story that will get repeated all across major media, while the contrarians are stuck in the shadows.

The virus is targeting those who are most completely ruled by capitalism and capitalist values! That's why it's hitting the US so hard now....and as little as I care for JT and his cautious fence-sitting ways, at least we don't have that goddammed Harper still running the Country and trying to turn us into an even more America North! I had an argument 3-4 weeks ago with one of my brothers about postponing a family get-together! I argued that the beginning of March was going to be as good a chance as we would have for at least 6 months/he insisted that it would all blow over in 2 or 3 weeks for some reason.......look where we are now!

This paragraph could describe the US now more than China! They have apparently been successful in dealing with their disease pandemic, over here it's just beginning! And, America is steeped in debt.....$23 Trillion without adding up all of the most recent promises to Wall Street and other bailouts of the super-rich! The US economy was already headed for a steep downturn because it has so much debt at all levels of society, and the only ones who will get bailed out......once again, are the ones who caused and profited most from financial recklessness.

Well, now that news has leaked out about two carriers with Covid outbreaks on board, and suspected outbreaks on some military bases, maybe USA now is going to be too busy trying to figure out what to do with lots of sick soldiers and seamen to be invading anywhere...even their long-hoped for excuse to invade Venezuela now.

And how does that prove your incendiary theory OR would recent evidence that CSIS and the big eye of the 'five eyes' to our south were studying the Coronovirus outbreak in Wuhan Province as far back in January and November respectively, indicate that our spooks knew far in advance about what was coming our way but did nothing or said nothing about it till late February, could be regarded as criminal negligence at best, or go as far as deliberately assisting a population dieoff of the old, sick and poor?

You don't think inheritance should be taxed?

I find it peculiar you don't seem to be aware of publicly available data that the BRICs nations have much lower numbers of Covid infections and fewer deaths than the US and Europe. Compare them with US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

I have never bought into this neoliberal argument that trade and economic integration makes the world more peaceful. It sure as hell doesn't explain how World War One blew up in 1914, between the number one empire and the rising empire of the time - Germany, who were large and major trading partners at the time. Aside from that, this warmongering against China today, which is based on made up disease transmission and other narratives, it owes more to Trump and his Administration's need to shift blame and attention from their spectacular failure to deal with the pandemic and the damage to their credibility they face as quarantining and other efforts to deal with the crisis take their toll on the US economy. Starting a major war both-- shifts attention somewhere else and provides the opportunity for instant economic growth .....for the arms industries if nothing else! Would they risk it? All bets are off. But, considering that Fox News and especially Tucker Carlson's show are influences on Trump and his primary source of information, I'd be prepared for the next big war!

Any city I'm aware of: how much money do they have to raise to "get them off the street" today? I covered this in a previous post, but if what I've seen growing in the US over the past five years is our future also, it's third world with huge numbers of low class working people unable to afford a home.

The "floor" as I recall used to be that, even someone who was likely having some sort of psychological breakdown and couldn't function effectively because of depression, anxiety disorder or some other combination (agoraphobia), and couldn't work for whatever reasons, would still be provided enough money to have a room or a small apartment and enough food to live on. I can tell you point of fact, that this is not the case anymore! And social services and overtaxed volunteer groups face a quandary already dealing with more and more people who can work and are still not able to earn enough to keep themselves from ending up out on the streets because of today's high rents and absurdly valued houses....though that might be changing very soon now...who knows! Mostly agreed here! Taxes on investment income needs to match earned income more closely after decades of whining and threatened blackmail by business interests left the most common sources of income for the rich mostly untaxed. This also might change next year, depending on how all this shakes out in the Covid aftermath of the world's central banks creating Trillions in dollars out of thin air. A simple understanding of banking and money/debt creation tells us that new loans and all instant money are borrowed from the future. Will the future provide enough in economic growth to absorb all of the new money created? Open answer to that question!

Not that they weren't big, bloody wars, but where are they mentioned in the Vox article you linked? The only one I see on the chart is the Cambodia Genocide, which certainly was significant, but you're telling me that there's no chance of similar large scale slaughter today! A time when the US has unleashed Saudi Arabia to kill and starve out as many Yemenis as they like....without any notice by the western world's media! Aside from a few independent cranks, nobody is reporting on what goes on in Yemen today....except for when they claim to have carried out a major missile attack that disabled a crucial Saudi refinery and oil terminal. Aside from that, war crimes today don't make the news if they don't conflict with American geopolicy interests....only when they threaten the "exceptional" nation. If you do any more than casually glossing over Vox's puff piece for neoliberal global expansionism, you might notice that even Vox has to hedge their bets during a time when world order and its absurdly indebted armed enforcer are teetering on the brink of collapse! I'm thankful that Vox had the good sense to include a rebuttal that many of us would have been looking for anyway: an embedded link is for an earlier Vox article: This fascinating academic debate has huge implications for the future of world peace which features research by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan) and Pasquale Cirillo...who are able to drive trucks through the selective inclusions and categorizations of statistical data by today's most renowned (and most richly rewarded) spokesman for the New Order - Stephen Pinker. Pinker's other research on earlier civilizations and especially pre-modern hunter-gatherer communities is nothing short of racist and totally deplorable! But even dealing with modern history, accepting Pinker's theories means accepting his measurements of peaks and valleys and what should be and what should not be important. One thing never found in irrationally optimistic tomes like Pinker's is any acknowledgment of modern day sanctions warfare that the US...especially under Trump are applying more and more frequently and excluding more and more products...including medicines, in a time of pandemic! Still barely makes the news that the US has ramped up sanctions including medicine against Venezuela, Iran, Cuba and other targets for eventual US invasion. I don't expect to see anything resembling a 'peaceful world' as long as there is a global empire and a supporting global business and finance community which are desperate to keep the present system functioning and able to maintain control of global trade and business. Doesn't matter whether or not they're 'popular' as long as western mainstream media and information sources refrain from doing much reporting on the size and continued rapid growth of weapons and arms manufacturing industries....which Canada plays a smaller though not insignificant part in also! It would stand to reason that 'if the world is getting more peaceful and less warlike' the US Government wouldn't be spending increasing amounts of money on its war budgets! But that's the costs of empire. Russia apparently considered Syria important enough to risk being drawn in to the proxy war to overthrow Assad. I don't know if there is anything to the story beyond rumors...but supposedly, Vlad Putin was outraged when his close friend and expected heir - Medvedev, signed on to supporting the NATO air war against Gaddaffi in Libya in 2011. And after their ground forces - a ragtag collection of competing Islamist mercenaries( sponsored by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE) were flown in to Libya ended up creating a bloodbath that led to the mass exodus of Libyans and foreign workers in small boats trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe...Vlad wasn't about to let the same thing happen again to the only remaining Russian ally in the Middle East. So, where are we now in the Global War On Terror? One trend that has become very real today is that when possible US targets start finding themselves loaded up with more and more sanctions and may have already experienced attempted military coups and instant rebel attacks, they are much better prepared for the inevitable final push by the US regime change industry and not surprising the targets of regime change now are still hanging on! And that of course means the fighting and dying doesn't end! Yes, though I wanted to scrutinize the Greta Thunberg phenomena when it all started, since there is no way anyone can become the world's biggest celebrity and appear all across international media without vested interests working behind the scenes. What I gather about Greta is that some of the corporate sponsored foundations really wanted Greta as their mascot, but that would require her toning down her environment message which is not corporate-friendly or even warm to the notion many big green groups have that new "green" technologies are the key to a better future. If Greta can't be turned to someone important's economic advantage, her star will fade and she will appear less and less in the headlines...which is what seems to be happening already! But, as best I can guess, I don't think becoming a star was ever one of her goals or dreams! I try

Let's get beyond the dry political theory: do you or do you not believe it's okay for a "functional society" to tolerate homelessness or should there be a floor in the economic pyramid that nobody will fall through for whatever reasons? On the flipside, should the economic rules be changed back that have allowed the rich to become superrich....stock options and buybacks used to inflate share values far beyond any price per share ratio could justify? Should ridiculously low investment tax standards be changed to mirror taxes on earned income?

Well, I hope you make out okay when a REAL bloody, chaotic revolution starts! Cause you never know which way it's going to go once enough people decide they can't trust or can't change government by any peaceful mean! Interesting that right now....your hero....Donald is busy on his Twitter count confirming the conclusions so many would be reformers and progressives have come to with the sudden implosion of the Sanders Campaign about the entrenched power and corruption within Democrat leadership, and their unyielding opposition to key basic demands of progressives: starting with M4A! Something that should be a no-brainer right now in a time when for-profit medicine is the prime driver behind the richest nation in the world's dismal capacity to deal with a pandemic that much poorer nations have been much more successfully dealing with!

I prefer stuff I can read over stuff I have to listen through. Your first 2 minute video clip, the female presenter states in English: "rising SPECULATION that it (the virus) MAY HAVE originated at a research facility NOT FAR from the Wuhan fish market." And that's what you call EVIDENCE? Second video is a 13 minute clip from a 60 Minutes Australia report ....I didn't know such a thing existed. The woman scientist...I presume, claims that local Chinese authorities knew for six weeks that the virus was spreading, but assumed it would not get out of control....and whistleblowers were suppressed. And this was different than Trump 3 months later denying that Covid was a problem and until 2 weeks ago was only concerned about falling stock market prices. And to hide his incompetence he and Pompeo start making noises about demanding billions from China in compensation. Nothing mentioned about information provided internationally from February on. Nor is it mentioned in this CBS report blaming China for not stopping 5 million Wuhan residents from leaving to other Chinese provinces and foreign nations in January that the US Government waited weeks to place travel restrictions on travel in and out of the US. No mention on the US Government taking weeks to stop people on flights in and out of the US either. She also loses cred whatever her credentials are for the claim that Australians will be at risk in July and August....the winter months of the southern hemisphere, because the progression of this disease so far does not track the typical spread of flu epidemics, since Covid-19 spread faster at first in southern Europe and is only now rapidly growing in England. In South America, he virus has spread much faster on the west coast of the continent, rather than the east - Brazil and Argentina. No one has an answer why at the moment. But shit that would be disregarded as fake news if it wasn't MSM are going to find an angle to work on!

Equality of opportunity is a bogus scam in economies that are increasingly captured by the biggest fish who write the rules and buy the politicians! What a surprise that generations of trust fund babies are the ones who succeed the most and must be the hardest workers....since they're accumulating the most wealth!

There is a saying that has its origins in one of the English statesmen who was a critic of the ..new at the time - industrial revolution that was sweeping England....paraphrasing "our nation''s anti-vagrancy laws apply equally to all, so neither the rich man nor the beggar are allowed to sleep underneath bridges." It was a sarcastic attempt to demonstrate how disparities in wealth and social class make application of many laws unequal. At a time now when we're all being told to "shelter in place," a lot of Hollywood clowns have been shocked by the anger and vitriol coming their way on social media for their public service messages showing them 'sheltering' in their large, luxurious mansions. Imagine someone living in a tiny one bedroom apartment, or shared accommodations....especially if they have young children watching empty-headed Hollywood stars like Gal Gadot thinking they understand the plight the covid pandemic presents to common people today.

Redredging Ross Perot's 3rd party attempt, doesn't it show how much the US system has been corrupted and is rotting out from the inside when a radical libertarian anti-globalization billionaire like Perot (nevermind the original grassroots populist campaigner - Ralph Nader) can't get on the same debate stage anymore with the duopoly candidates? It was Perot's debate performances that really gathered public interest in his message and campaign. As I recall, it was two debates hosted by the League of Women Voters who gave Perot his brief political career! He was just a single digit obscure also-ran until he got up on the stage and showed that Bush One and Clinton understood nothing about the trade arrangements they wanted to sign on to, and the results would be a rapid outsourcing of most heavy industry in America --- except for what's needed for military contractors..who make sure they have small manufacturers in almost every state as leverage in Congress to keep their share of tax dollars coming in! Aside from that, over the years as NAFTA terms re-organized three economies, the US AND Canada lost more and more non-military related industry to cheaper Asian producers, while Mexico's small gains as a serf labour market did not come close to making up for the losses suffered by small Mexican farmers who were forced out of business by the end of import restrictions and tariffs that allowed US Big AG producers to flood their food markets with cheap chemically produced corn, wheat, soybeans etc...... and that gradually flight from the farms in Mexico is how you guys got your "southern border" problems you like to bitch about so much.....when you're not hiring cheap undocumented laborers of course! In retrospect, the guilt-driven "splitting the vote" narrative has mostly been used by corporate-backed "NEW" Democrats that came into office in the 80's and had their real breakthrough putting Billy in the White House! The corporate rightwingers had no strategies and solutions for what hit them. So, every afternoon on my car radio I would hear jowly Rush Limbaugh using the new word he learned that year ... Clinton Democrats are "triangulating" and taking ground from the GOP. All the Repubs could do is just run further and further to the right as more and more Democrats crossed over to become business-friendly collectors of big dollar donations. And it's taken a long time ....after many people lost their jobs and ended up working for Walmart or driving Uber taxis before enough Americans could coalesce into a significant movement on the left. All they need now is a real leader who believes in the message and wants to do more than lead a debating society!

Since you couldn't be bothered to try to read the research paper I posted yesterday, and instead posted two more evidence-free blameshifting videos in response, I'm going back to the evidence provided by real scientists, rather than American and their Chinese lackies in Hong Kong who've been trying to goad a US invasion since Trump took over, and are just looking for an excuse...any excuse! Ultimately, it doesn't matter a crap whether or not the Chinese Government tried to put a lid on it and hide early evidence of a developing pandemic from its own citizens as well as enemies bent on damaging and even destroying them! The US Government knew what was coming by means of CIA informants first, and then watching how the epidemic spread in the Far East and across Central Asia. Yet, the CDC, hospitals, DHS wasn't ready for some reason, and bastards who follow Trump and think and talk like him, immediately started looking for scapegoats for their failure! So, instead of trying to pretend that the US and the west haven't failed spectacularly to gain control of the virus, and instead say it's all the fault of a foreign government that will be our biggest regime change project yet! So, in conclusion, the real experts, who are not politically motivated and understand the subject material determine that what is known of the development and progression of this virus indicates that IT WAS NOT LIKELY to have been created in a lab! Unless Mother Nature is the genetic engineer....seeking ways to eliminate a troublesome species that over-extends and over-consumes its share of resources!

'Failed' in the sense of backing a theorist who doesn't have what it takes to lead! I'm not even sure why Sanders or his supporters went to the well again last year, after being cheated in 2016! That's the election that Bernie almost won, because Clinton and her force of flying monkeys did not think old Bernie had a snowball's chance in hell of presenting a challenge to her, so they didn't have everything set in place to rig an election! Which is what was done according to those untimely Clinton email and Podesta email leaks, that provided the details of how they fixed primaries and even debate formats -- CNN and MSNBC gave Clinton staffers a list of questions the panel would be asking at the debates. Add in the usual skullduggery of party organizers and............................ If you hadn't heard about it (cause it was immediately buried in the mainstream news) a group of Florida Bernie delegates launched a class action lawsuit after the Election declaring that the DNC did not provide a fair process. The defense by the Democratic Party's legal team was "the Party is a private/not a public organization, and therefore under no obligations to provide a fair selection process, and could go back to closed door nominations like they did in the past, if they chose to do so. The judge agreed with them and dismissed the case. So, why are Bernie and his supporters still trying to reform and put forth their policy goals through a corrupt system? Why not join a third party or create one? Since you can't win or get attention any better than a third party attempt could do!

NO, it's the flight to the (for now) global reserve currency that is creating trillions of new dollars out of thin air and using them to buy bonds and other crap to artificially inflate stock market values today! Even if it's just a dead-cat bounce, how else does two days of 5 and 7% increasing stock index averages make any sense? But, the more America forces the world to invest in their inflationary devaluing currency, the more serious they are getting about applying workaround strategies to bypass the Dollar.