Month: May 2020
While some pundits extol the virtue of strong government (i.e., dictatorship) in fighting Covid-19, Middle Eastern activists are once again mobilizing to insist that democracy is not a luxury in a time of pandemic. “Systems of government that are more democratic and transparent will keep citizens safe,” argues Mai El-Sadany. Because the human rights of all citizens are at stake, not just those of a minority, she explains, “this is a unique movement of norms creation.”
It does strike me as a little premature for the Treasurer and others to start saying that whatever we spend now will have to be paid back. While we need a nuanced discussion about the best way to get the economy roaring along like the turtle it was pre-Coronavirus, to tweet something like that seems a bit premature. Like a doctor telling a family just before someone has surgery that the bill will need to be paid even if the patient dies.
It’s true, but it does make him sound as though the main thing on his mind is the health of his bank balance rather than the health of his patient.
The US attorney general seems determined to turn the DoJ into a fully fledged arm of the Trump re-election team
Trump doesn’t care because the DEAD DON’T VOTE (ODT)
The journal notes that “the USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic” and that the Trump administration “is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear.”
Esteemed medical journal The Lancet on Friday took an unusual step towards calling on American voters to remove President Donald Trump from office in November, condemning the Trump administration’s “incoherent” response to the coronavirus pandemic and expressing shock at the CDC’s inability to cope with the public health crisis.
The journal’s frustration with Trump centered on the president’s downplaying of the pandemic and his refusal to coordinate a robust national effort of social distancing, lockdown orders, and a testing regime to stem the Covid-19 outbreak.
The sceptics arguing for more rapid relaxation of containment measures point to the economic costs of lockdowns and appeal to the cold calculus of cost-benefit analysis to conclude that the lives saved by lockdowns don’t justify the economic costs incurred to do so.
Their numbers don’t stack up.
To be able to weigh the value of a life against the economic costs of forgone output from lost jobs and business closures, requires placing a dollar value on one person’s life. This number is called the value of a statistical life.
via The costs of the shutdown are overestimated — they’re outweighed by its $1 trillion benefit
people are not taught critical thinking. They accept authority without question and we have government policies which have been progressively removing our rights as individuals on the pretence of protecting us from terrorism!
Personally I would rank Peter Dutton high up on my list of terrorists and trouble stirrers!
Do you honestly support this?
Wake up, open up your mind, oppose the progress towards a total loss of our democracy – too much has already been taken away from us!
CLIMATE CHANGE IS A REALITY.
WE ARE UNLIKELY TO REVERSE IT BUT WE DO HAVE A FLEETING CHANCE TO SLOW IT IN ITS TRACKS!
I care deeply for the future of our young people – I have 3 great grandchildren – and that obliges me to fight for them to have a prospect of a viable life.
Terrorists killed fewer Americans over twenty years than coronavirus has in two months. Yet the Right, which insisted after 9/11 on the need to give up core civil liberties to “save lives,” is now demanding that we accept mass death for the sake of profit.
If you’re looking for investors’ verdict on who has won the bailout, consider these returns: Shares of Apollo Group, the giant private equity firm, have soared 80% from their lows. The stock of Blackstone, another private equity behemoth, has risen 50%.
The reason: Asset holders like Apollo and Blackstone—disproportionately the wealthiest and most influential—have been insured by the world’s most powerful central bank. This largess is boundless and without conditions. “Even if a second wave of outbreaks were to occur,” JPMorgan economists wrote in a celebratory note on Friday, “the Fed has explicitly indicated that there is no dollar limit and no danger of running out of ammunition.”
In this week’s farcical pared-down version of Parliament, the Press Gallery weren’t even allowed within breathing distance of the far more important Government. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, however, coughed and spluttered over everyone, and touched everything in sight with his undisinfected hands in an exemplary display of what not to do during a pandemic.
Like the shock jocks it encourages and applauds, there is always one rule for the Morrison Government and its allies and another for everyone else.
via Jones and Morrison: Doing right by our country’s double standards
via 
During Tuesday night’s prime-time Fox News schedule, hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham all bashed Dr. Anthony Fauci.
You knew this was coming after Dr. Fauci slapped around Sen. Rand Paul during yesterday’s Senate hearing.
It’s been a constant refrain from Fox News lately to make Dr. Fauci the fall guy for Donald Trump’s ineptitude and unconscionable lack of action when the outbreak was first discovered.
via Tucker, Hannity, Ingraham Bash Dr. Fauci In Scripted, Coordinated Attack | Crooks and Liars
Trump has already succeeded in his goal of running for president twice without disclosing basic financial information. He has already succeeded in using the office of the president to shield himself from potential prosecution of his suspected financial crimes. Trump has already won. The only question now is how much the rest of us will lose.
We should expect decisions on these two cases in late June. The Supreme Court will then tell us how much more of our democracy must be sacrificed in the service of Donald Trump.
via SCOTUS May Have Just Decided to Exempt Trump From the Rule of Law | The Nation
Right now the US can still print enough dollars to maintain Israel afloat, but we already know that while throwing cheap money at a problem is often very tempting, this does not constitute a sustainable strategy, especially when the actual military capabilities of both the US and Israelis are rapidly degrading. Right now, nobody knows how much longer the last openly racist regime on the planet will last, but it is exceedingly unlikely that the Zionist entity will be able to survive without the Empire to prop it up. In other words, sooner rather than later, the “Jewish state of Israel” will have no better chances of survival than, say, the “Independent State of Kosovo” or, for that matter, the “Independent Ukraine”: they are all the ugly metastases of the Empire which by themselves are simply not viable.
via What does the Empire’s agony mean for the “Jewish state of Israel”?, by The Saker – The Unz Review
Sunday night, right-wing media misinformation about the coronavirus’s origins — the idea that it originated in an infectious disease research laboratory in Wuhan, China — has even resulted in the Trump administration shutting down funding for actual pandemic research.
President Donald Trump’s incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction caused by the virus in the US. It is also crippling the global response to the crisis, and the costs could be even deadlier.
Being a socialist won’t stop being hard anytime soon. But if we want to start winning, socialists need to study the recent defeats of Syriza in Greece, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and Bernie Sanders in the US, along with the failures of twentieth-century social democracy and the declining relevance of Leninism.
First, the United States has waged an unrelenting economic war against Venezuela through sanctions, designed to destroy the economy. No accounting of the current situation can be complete with pointing this out. As economist Jeffery Sachs said last year, “Venezuela’s economic crisis is routinely blamed all on Venezuela. But it is much more than that. American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela’s economy and thereby lead to regime change.” Second, it is up for the Venezuelan left and the Venezuelan people to determine the course of their future.
Whether Silvercorp USA got a green light from the US government to act as privateers or was just freelancing, this misadventure can only be understood in the context of Trump’s increased aggression towards Venezuela. While Trump may be escalating these tensions, he is acting within the longer tradition of US imperialism in the region. Ultimately, it is for Venezuelans, not the United States, to determine the course of the country.
Source: They’re Not Sending Their Best People to Stage a Coup in Venezuela
In the interests of length I have omitted Angus Taylor’s alleged Cayman Island company, Peter Dutton failing to register one of his companies, and George Christensen summoning the Chinese Ambassador before a Senate Committee.
via Please, won’t you just say it as it is? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
1) Why is there even a plea necessary?
2) Is Israel’s exceptionalism such a stand out they just might be as guilty as?
via ICC rejects Morrison Gov’t plea for Israeli exemption from war crimes prosecution
If there is one thing – and only one thing – that we can take out of the LNP’s win in the 2019 election is that conservative governments are a boon for independent media sites. Particularly so in Australia, where the mainstream media becomes more and more the mouthpiece for the conservatives.
To survive another year and beyond would only require a hundred people signing up to contribute $5 a month. That at least would cover our monthly web hosting and designer costs. More would give us the opportunity to take on a bit of help for our already flat-out team.
I know that The AIMN means a lot to many, many people, Carol and I included. And without the efforts of so many tireless authors we would not be one of the leading independents sites in this country. Carol and I are proud of our standing, and proud of every one of you – authors, admins, commenters and readers – who have been in the engine room of this great site.
via Is this the end of the road? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Pell’s offending against the surviving boy (Witness J) goes back to the 1990s. At his trial at the end of 2018, the judge advised the jury that, if they believed the victim, they must convict. After they did, a suppression order restricted reporting on Pell. But his intimidatory, bullying manners are recorded. While his defence before the High Court stressed the unreasonableness of his alleged behaviour in the busy Sunday sacristy, it is possible that such normalities could have been outweighed by his “staggering arrogance” and ‘sense of impunity’. The times are different, in Australia as in Ireland. The quest for justice is strengthened by the Commission’s findings.
via Cardinal George Pell and the Victims of Child Sexual Abuse in Victoria. – CounterPunch.org
No other nation has endured as much death from Covid-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.
With 4.25% of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for about 30% of pandemic deaths so far.
And it is the only advanced nation where the death rate is still climbing. Three thousand deaths per day are anticipated by 1 June.
via Under Trump, American Exceptionalism Means Poverty, Misery and Death | The Smirking Chimp
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