Three months have passed since the lockdown began, and statistics indicate that the coronavirus death toll hasn’t risen as high as we might have supposed. Yet already we hear rhetoric of a “post-COVID world,” hauntingly reminiscent of the “post-9/11 world.” However, unlike the tangible event of 9/11, COVID is a threat of an entirely different nature, an “invisible enemy.”
The enemy isn’t “out there” to defeat in the old-fashioned way, with bombs and machine guns. But all the same, its pervasiveness renders us into a constant state of paranoia. Even our loved ones become potential threats; we all pose a risk to those around us, therefore perpetrating the omnipresent danger.
To use the post-9/11 term, we are all terrorists. That’s why we must stay under house arrest until a treatment is produced to save us from ourselves. The alphabet agencies even gave us a script: we’re supposed to play the part of Sleeping Beauty as we await Prince Charming’s cure for our mysterious ailment.
But the problem with fairytales is they fall apart under scrutiny; we struggle to believe in the knight in shining armor because experience has taught us again and again that he doesn’t exist.
So it is with tales spun by government officials. The real Sleeping Beauty still needs to pay the bills, and a check of $1200 simply won’t do. She doesn’t have time to wait around for Bill Gates to unveil the miracle vaccine.
And by the time he does, who will still believe the fairytale? As fatalities continue not to skyrocket and hospitals are underwhelmed, life goes on….Everyday events begin to overshadow media induced hysteria. The spell breaks; the masquerade ends.
Yet the question remains: will the sociopolitical climate restabilize after the invisible enemy’s defeat? We’ve entered a Brave New Normal, we are repeatedly told. Life so eerily resembles the flick Contagion that we might be tempted to fast-forward and spoil the ending.
Is the final solution portrayed there a realistic possibility? Imagine — a cashless economy (since cash is germ-ridden), centralized global government, and militarized police force guiding the frightened masses like shepherds watching over their flock! The CDC’s contribution to that particular film production suggests they think it could solve the problem. The cure therefore must not only be physical, but socioeconomic.
So, suddenly the government cares more intensely about citizen health than most citizens care about their own health. The TRACE Act permits contact tracers to keep an eye on whether we’ve crossed paths with the invisible enemy; with Operation Warp Speed, troops will administer vaccines door to door.
But all of this reveals the patronizing mindset of our benevolent shepherds. We are no longer to trust our own research and direct experience — after all, unlike other flus, this one has the curious tendency of manifesting no symptoms. Instead we are to place our wellbeing into the hands of contact tracers, the WHO, the military, anyone other than ourselves.
In other words, we’re allowing authority to dictate reality, and furthermore our every movement.
But if we ignore all of this and go about our business, aren’t we at risk of spreading The Virus? Doubtfully — but if we allow the Naziesque strategies of “flattening the curve” to escalate, we certainly put our liberties at risk. Our Constitutional rights — freedom of speech, religion, and assembly to name a few — have come under fire behind the veneer of “health and safety” measures against the seemingly almighty Virus.
Meanwhile, many of us suspect that if we defend our God-given rights, the invisible enemy will fade like smoke — or like any other virus.
I am no economist but you don’t have to be to realize that long before the Covid-19 Pandemic, the state of the global economy was already in disarray, now with viruses the economic problems to come are in general as serious as they have ever been.
To deal with the accumulated liabilities history suggests some radical alternatives, including a burst of inflation or an organized public default, one way or the other the economic fallout defies calculation.
It makes sense with everything happening at once to take a hard look at the coming economic depression. (which is going to be deep and long)
It will require not just governments to be more visionary to lead the way out of the crisis but new economic thinking to rethink the whole Globalisation of economies before they disappear into the world of digital data and become difficult to measure, or tax.
The question, of course, is what form that will take and which political forces will control it.
We all know that economic relationships are complicated and changeable. The influence of anyone variable in an economy is not easy to isolate even with the use of sophisticated data. This is why economists are unable to agree on any course of action when it comes to deciding how the economy actually works and how it ought to work.
Even if they could agree countries have different moral and political judgments.
What I see is that we entering an era of doing it yourself economics, based on people’s intuitions,but unfortunately macroeconomic is choosing between inflation or unemployment.
With countries trying to reopen their economies and given that economists can not agree or have sufficient knowledge to predict any direction one could be forgivin to ask are they performing a useful purpose in the first place.
The coming economic depression can only be diluted by the creation of a new interrelationship with the resources of the earth, their use against their value to the ecosystems as a whole not the continuation of profit for profit sake.
We must recognize that the civilizations of the world are entwined in a global economic system that is incapable of functioning for the common good of humanity, other species, and this planet, which is our home.
It is clear that serious reflection is in order.
Simply to stand back and question what has happened and why would be to compound failure with failure: failure of vision and failure of responsibility.
A sustainable and prosperous global economy needs to be grounded in the common good of all living species, not profit.
The failure of markets, institutions, and morality during the current coronavirus crisis has shown that the emergence of global capitalism brings with it a new set of risks that call for an ethical, moral change.
Leaders are now gambling with public health, safety, and the future of younger generations. They unapologetically prioritize serving themselves over the people they were elected to serve. We have to make them raise their game.
A new approach to economics is required that puts values, compassion, generosity, kindness, people, planet, and the common good at the heart of our economic system.
Now is the Time for a Revolution in Economic thinking.
A new definition of the “Bottom Line.”
Given today’s global challenges, such as climate change, financial crises, oil depletion, renewable energy, inequality, and poverty, what kind of new economic theory is called for?
Therefore this post is an appeal to economists, academic colleagues in business, finance, management, political economy, philosophy, theology, ethics, environmental studies, sociology, anthropology, and others to come together, so that, all of us, collectively, can prescribe a working solution to our commonly shared challenges.
As we transition from a service-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, human capital will not be enough, the next generation will see large tax increases in order to pay off the national debts.
The work, of which we are a part, which is so needed, has barely begun.
The pandemic will continue to change the economic and financial order forever.
It will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in ways that will become apparent only later.
However, the coronavirus crisis has been a powerful reminder that the basic political and economic unit is still the nation-state. Countries will have to strive for a better balance between taking advantage of globalization and a necessary degree of self-reliance.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a wartime atmosphere in which such changes suddenly seem possible.
Perhaps the emergency payments to individuals that many governments have made are a path to a universal basic income and universal health insurance.
The pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of open borders.
Firms that are part of global supply chains have witnessed first-hand the risks inherent in their interdependencies and the large losses caused by disruption.
Supply chains will have to become more local and robust—but less global.
The real risk, however, is that this organic and self-interested shift away from globalization by people and firms will be compounded by some policymakers who exploit fears over open borders. They could impose protectionist restrictions on trade under the guise of self-sufficiency and restrict the movement of people under the pretext of public health.
It is now in the hands of global leaders to avert this outcome and to retain the spirit of international unity that has collectively sustained us for more than 50 years.
The rise of populism in many countries further tilts the balance toward home bias.
Even after the pandemic is brought under control (which may itself prove a lengthy process). The post-coronavirus financial architecture may not take us all the way back to the pre globalization era, and the damage to international trade and finance is likely to be extensive and lasting.
The gap between rich countries (along with a few emerging markets) and the rest of the world in their resilience to crises will widen further. Economic nationalism will increasingly lead governments to shut off their own economies from the rest of the world.
Now and for a long time to come, central banks will become entrenched as the first and main line of defense against economic and financial crises. They may come to rue this immense new role and the unrealistic burdens and expectations it will impose on them.
We urgently need more and deeper conversations, dialogue, and engagement at all levels and from a variety of perspectives to bring the different cultures, civilizations, and viewpoints together, in order to find common ground and agreement on joint action.
The pandemic and subsequent recovery will accelerate the ongoing digitalization and automation of work changing the future composition of GDP.
The share of services in the economy will continue to rise. But the share of in-person services will decline in retail, hospitality, travel, education, health care, and government as digitalization drives changes in the way these services are organized and delivered.
The downturn will accelerate the growth of nonstandard, precarious employment—part-time workers, gig workers, and workers with multiple employers—leading to new portable benefits systems that move with workers and broaden the definition of employer. New low-cost training programs, digitally delivered, will be required to provide the skills required in new jobs.
The sudden dependence of so many on the ability to work remotely reminds us that a significant and inclusive expansion of Wi-Fi, broadband, and other infrastructure will be necessary to enable the accelerating digitalization of economic activity.
We cannot achieve our hopes and dreams without such conversations and dialogue. Only then can we hope for the understanding between civilizations, peoples, and points of view necessary to construct an economy that truly works for the common good.
No country or economic activity is going to be impervious to the drastic impacts of climate change.
It is cuckoo land to think that we can continue to ignore the pending disasters, compounded by the social problems, highlighted by the epidemic that has brought all manner of issues to the surface. From the coronavirus pandemic and police brutality to the marginalization of minority communities around the world, leadership is broken.
For years we have listened to their rhetoric without action that has given full rein to self-harming market forces.
The Normal Economy is Never Coming Back.
This much is certain:
Just as this disease has shattered lives, disrupted markets and exposed the competence (or lack thereof) of governments, it will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in ways that will become apparent only later.
It would be fair to say that if we are to move to Green sustainable economies the first thing that is needs is green energy that is free of costs to the user.
The whole concept of economies becoming attached to the fundamental values required to protect and revitalize the fundamental resources of the earth that provide us all with life is idealistic and will remain so as no one wants to foot the bill to make it happen.
However, for the first time in human history, before profit disappears into the cloud we have the technology to apply a World Aid commission of 0.005% on all activities that are in existence for profit sake only.
One of humanity’s greatest weaknesses is greed.
One can see this throughout history, with the present-day examples personified by Wall Street and other world stock exchanges now run by high-frequency trading algorithms.
Such a commission would create a perpetual fund of billions almost invisibly to the markets. It would spread the cost of changing world economies fairly to achieve the desired outcome both the earth’s needs and our needs.
It would turn a begging United nation into a giving United nation.
No one country wants to foot the cost of change and it cannot be achieved if visible to Wall Street
Micro and Macro Economics are neither different subjects, nor they are contradictory, rather, they are complementary. The only important point which makes them different is the area of application.
A fund like this could give grants, not loans. It could buy the sunshine and turn it into energy, buy the protection of forests, freshwater, fresh air, remove the need for mass farming, reduce inequality, afford education, change our lives for the better.
The US ruling class bears full responsibility for the economy’s unprecedented dysfunctional state. What was unimaginable long ago is reality today, redefining what house of cards economic conditions are all about.
It’s an unsustainable situation certain to implode ahead with longterm devastating consequences for ordinary Americans — paying the price so privileged ones can benefit.
Since March, unprecedented numbers of US workers applied for unemployment benefits, around 46 million so far, according to Labor Department data.
It’s an undercount as applications of many filers haven’t been processed, more coming as layoff announcements continue.
According to Bloomberg News, about one-third of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits received nothing so far.
A Bloomberg analysis showed that unemployed US workers should have received $214 billion in benefits through May.
As of early June, they’ve only gotten $146 billion — benefits for recipients to expire at end of July if not renewed, what’s likely because of GOP leadership opposition to continue them.
An earlier McKinsey research analysis said up to one-third of US workers could be unemployed by 2030 because robots are replacing humans, adding:
Around “60 percent of occupations have at least 30 percent of constituent work activities that could be automated.”
Who’ll buy what industry produces if mass unemployment as the new normal greatly reduces personal income overall?
The extraordinary disconnect between equity prices and economic reality in the US is unprecedented.
According to economist David Rosenberg, “(w)hat we have now is nothing short of market manipulation.”
“Reducing the cost of overnight funds is one thing.”
“Extending the intervention to Treasuries or high-quality securities is something we became accustomed to in the aftermath of the last Great Recession.”
“That’s when the (Wall Street owned) Fed became a duration bond manager.”
“But the central bank is now becoming a hedge fund.”
“Adding low-quality corporate credits to its balance sheet is a whole different game.”
Fed market manipulation is “keeping zombie companies alive, rendering fundamental analysis and price discovery obsolete, and leading to a complete misallocation of resources.”
“Capitalism has taken a semi-permanent vacation. AWOL.”
“And what it means for the future of society, to be running such reckless and feckless fiscal and monetary policies, is troublesome to say the least.”
“There is zero chance this ends well…The market is rigged pure and simple.”
“(R)emember that (earlier) bubble(s) came crashing down, and there was nothing the Fed could do about it.”
“Societies that run their policies on such guilt truly are doomed, and that is what historians will be writing about in the future.”
By going all out to benefit corporate favorites and investors through unprecedented and reckless casino capitalism, US policymakers and the Fed sacrificed the economy and ordinary Americans.
A Thursday Wall Street Journal article reflected a key aspect of the US economy’s dismal state, saying:
“Americans have skipped payments on more than 100 million student loans, auto loans and other forms of debt since the coronavirus hit the US, the latest sign of the toll the pandemic is taking on people’s finances,” adding:
“The surge in missed payments suggests that the flood of layoffs related to the coronavirus has left many Americans without the means to keep up with their debts.”
“Many people have used up their stimulus checks, and unemployment benefits in high-cost areas aren’t enough to replace paychecks or to help debt-laden borrowers pay down their bills.”
An unfolding situation in Kentucky is happening elsewhere nationwide.
Numbers filing for unemployment benefits are so large and backed up that state police said individuals at the end of a Frankfort queue will wait up to eight hours to speak to a representative to get their claim processed.
A queue at the Kentucky Career Center had people waiting 10 hours for unemployment claim help.
All of the above is on top of growing US food insecurity, hunger, and homelessness in the world’s richest nation.
Its ruling class under both right wings of the one-party state proved it’s dismissive of public health and welfare even during unprecedented hard times, likely to be protracted.
There’s no economic recovery in prospect, only the illusion of improvement at a time of unprecedented widespread deprivation and continuing layoffs.
Increasing numbers of COVID-19 outbreaks in many US states are part of the first wave.
A second, potentially much larger, one may come this fall and winter, making economic collapse worse if happens.
It’s why self-protection caution is essential to maintain, what’s likely to be the case for some time.
Economic collapse caused far greater harm to millions of Americans than coronavirus outbreaks.
Manufactured main street Depression begun in 2008 was deepened this year by its ruling class.
It’s all about the greatest ever wealth transfer from ordinary people to privileged US interests, along with enabling corporate favorites to reduce competition.
Ordinary Americans are paying the price, exploited so privileged ones can benefit.
That’s the disturbing reality of today’s new normal.
Manufactured current conditions made the US more unsafe and unfit to live in than at any previous time in modern memory — with no end of harder than ever hard times for ordinary Americans in prospect.
Longterm harm caused by US policies at home and abroad are far removed from a Panglossian best of all possible worlds view.
What’s going on has echoes of Orwell’s dystopian 1984.
Both right wings of the US war party wage forever wars against invented enemies.
Mass surveillance, controlling the message, and countering resistance are what police state rule is all about, how the US operates domestically, what it wants imposed on other nations worldwide.
The disparity between super-wealth and growing poverty in the US is greater than any time since the 19th century gilded age.
The nation’s economic policy elevates all yachts to unprecedented levels while protracted main street Depression harms ordinary Americans with nothing ongoing to change things.
Countless millions of US households face unacceptable choices between paying rent or servicing mortgages, seeking increasingly unaffordable medical care when needed, heating homes in winter, and feeding family members.
The struggle to survive in the US gets harder because of indifference toward public health and welfare by its ruling class.
A massive disconnect exists between soaring equity prices and dismal main street economic conditions gone largely unaddressed — Depression conditions exceeding the worst of the 1930s.
Before economic collapse, economist David Rosenberg explained fundamental structural weakness in the US economy, saying:
There’s been a decade of “very little productivity growth, very little capital spending, a recession in nonresidential construction.”
Consumer spending that accounts for around 70% of GDP alone “ke(pt) the glue together” — the underpinning it provided now gone from economic collapse producing record-high unemployment.
As for the roaring bull market in recent weeks, it’s from “financial engineering,” an ocean of liquidity fueling speculation, a “Potemkin bull market.”
Economic fragility is so profound that things are unable to keep from cratering further if interest rate rise to low 1930s levels.
Likely to remain at near-zero for the foreseeable future in the US “tells you that we have a very weak longterm economic outlook,” Rosenberg explained, adding:
There’s no precedent for shutting down the US and global economy for a considerable time that caused record-high unemployment and GDP collapse.
Rosenberg expects a 40 – 50% Q II decline, followed by a Q III bounce off the bottom, calling it “a square root sort of a recovery.”
“There’ll be some activity. But there is no return to normality” for an unknown period of time ahead.
“We’re not going to get a perpetual increase in production and hiring and get the unemployment rate back down without demand.”
“There’s no playbook” to explain how things got to the present dismal state.
Millions of US jobs have been “eliminated permanently.” Ones available are “low skilled, low value-added” ones.
“We don’t produce anything anymore. (We’re) a society and economy (based on financialization), entertainment and leisure and restaurants and retail.”
Long ago industrial America with high-pay/good benefits jobs is largely gone, offshored to low-wage countries by corporate America with acquiescence from Washington.
Given unprecedented things going on, Rosenberg said “the confidence intervals around any (economic) forecast are as wide as I’ve ever seen, and in 35 years in this business, I’ve seen a lot.”
Economist John Williams calls the US economic system “bankrupt.”
Unlimited amounts of money are being spent “to prevent an immediate (house of cards) collapse,” adding:
“We have about 40 million unemployed (in the US) which is about a 40% unemployment rate and not 13% claimed by the government.”
US inflation as it was calculated pre-1990 is around “9 per cent,” not the phony official number.
Along with protracted main street Depression, no end of it in prospect, US anti-China, anti-Russia, anti-Iran, anti-Venezuela, anti-North Korea, anti-other nations free from its control risks possible global war ahead by accident or design — no matter which wing of the one-party state is in power.
US rage to control other nations, their resources and populations makes the unthinkable possible.
Aware of the threat posed by Washington, Russia’s updated nuclear containment policy includes use of these weapons if its homeland is attacked by a foreign power, stating:
“The Russian Federation views nuclear weapons solely as a means of deterrence whose employment is a last resort and forced measure, and (after) taking all necessary efforts for reducing the nuclear threat and preventing the escalation of inter-state relations that can provoke military, including nuclear, conflicts.”
Moscow’s nuclear deterrence policy sent a message to Washington that harsh retaliation will follow a Pentagon attack on its territory if occurs.
China is preparing for possible confrontation with the US. So is Iran.
Weeks earlier, Trump regime war secretary Mark Esper said an “era of great power competition…means we need to focus more on high intensity warfare going forward.”
“(O)ur long-term challenges are China, No. 1, and Russia, No. 2.”
“(W)hat we see happening out there is a China that continues to grow its military strength, its economic power, its commercial activity, and it’s doing so, in many ways, illicitly, or it’s using the international rules-based order against us to continue this growth, to acquire technology, and to do the things that really undermine (US-led Western) sovereign (and) the rule of law (sic).”
Esper barely stopped short of a declaration of war. China and Russia won’t subordinate their sovereign rights to US interests.
Nor will Iran, Venezuela or North Korea. Nor should any nation.
Washington’s permanent war policy risks eventual use of thermo-nukes able to destroy planet earth and all its life forms if used in enough numbers.
All sovereign independent nations on the US target list for regime change threaten no one.
Yet preemptive US war on them is possible because imperial USA tolerates no challengers to its rage for absolute control.
War is never the answer. Yet time and again it’s the US option of choice to advance its imperium — an agenda posing an unprecedented threat to everyone everywhere.
The year 2020 is one that will go down in history. It has proven itself to be “the shambolic year.”
If you’re not familiar with that word, I just encountered it myself. It means, “Chaotic, disorganized or mismanaged.” Even leaving the part about whether or not it has been mismanaged aside for now, it has clearly been chaotic and disorganized; and we’re not even halfway through the year yet.
From a survival point of view, so far we’ve been hit with a pandemic, food shortages, being taken to the brink of a financial collapse, and now, social unrest and rioting. While none of these problems have been so severe as they could have been and none have put us in extreme danger, each of them could have. All of them are things that are normally looked at as serious events within the realm of preparedness and survival.
This series of disasters or near-disasters has brought up a very valid concern. We all tend to look at disasters as stand-alone events, where they come after us one at a time, with nothing else interfering. As such, we can deal with the various problems caused by that particular disaster. While there may often be some overlap from one problem to another, such as a financial collapse causing social unrest and violence, by and large, we look at these problems as separate events.
But as we’ve all seen over the last few months, the real world isn’t that polite and organized. It’s even become a joke, with memes showing up online, asking if it is still Coronavirus season or is it now riot season so that the person asking the question will know whether to take their mask or their rifle with them to work.
What’s to say they shouldn’t take both?
I know, that destroys the joke. But the meme clearly illustrates the confusion that’s going on in our country today. It’s just about reached the point of becoming difficult to know exactly what the disaster de jour is. What we were mostly concerned about yesterday isn’t the problem that we’re facing today. At least, it isn’t if you pay attention to what the media says.
This is dangerous. We all depend on the media for information, to one extent or another. But as the media has shown us, time and time again, their attention span is incredibly short. That’s especially true in this “never Trump” era, where they are suffering from TDS. If they can’t make it into a story to attack the president in some way, it’s as if they aren’t interested in it at all. Basically, if it isn’t the outrage of the week, they’re just not interested.
We’ve seen this time and time again, but now we’re seeing it in a new and dangerous light. Days before George Floyd’s tragic murder, the mainstream media was fixated on how dangerous it was for churches to reopen, ignoring public safety. But once the protests started, it was apparently no longer dangerous to ignore the need to wear masks and practice social distancing. As many others have pointed out, protesting obviously makes one immune to the ‘Rona.
Concurrent Disasters do Happen
As we’ve all seen, concurrent disasters can and do happen. Just because a new one comes along, doesn’t mean that we can forget about the old one, as the media does. Rather, it means that we now have to manage more than one problem at a time. So just how do we do that?
In order to figure out how to deal with this, let’s start with a simpler example than the problems we’re facing now. A problem which combat medics are trained to deal with, each and every day they are deployed. That is, dealing with a wounded soldier in a hot zone.
The normal rule of thumb with anyone who is wounded is to control the bleeding. Depending on the injury, a person can bleed out, or at least bleed out enough to cause irreversible damage, in minutes. So it makes sense to stop bleeding before going on to anything else. But if the patient that the medic is working on isn’t breathing, that takes higher priority. So, even though they might slap a compress on the wound or even put on a combat tourniquet, they’ll get to working on the airway and getting that soldier breathing as quickly as possible.
But even while getting that patient breathing is the highest possible medical priority that medic might encounter in treating that patient, that may not be the highest priority they have to deal with. If someone is shooting at their patient or at them, while treating that patient, they may have to defend that patient’s life, before they can save it, especially if they don’t have adequate infantry support.
So here we have three different emergency priorities that the medic has to balance:
Protect the patient’s life
Get the patient breathing
Control the bleeding
Everything else comes after that; and there’s plenty of other “after that” for the medic to deal with. But if they can’t take care of those three things, then none of the rest of it will matter. How quickly they deal with those other things may depend on a variety of factors, such as how quickly medieval comes in, whether there are other casualties to deal with, and whether they are under fire. In some circumstances, they may not get to deal with the “after that,” because of having to care for other casualties.
It all boils down to priorities and the priorities boil down to saving a life. Just like that combat medic, you and I need to prioritize our efforts on those things which will save lives, especially those of ourselves and our families.
We’re used to thinking of this in a wilderness survival situation, where we are taught that we need to stop traveling two hours before sundown so that we can gather fuel, start a fire and set up a shelter for the night. Why those things? Because they are necessary to complete our number one survival priority, that of maintaining our body’s core temperature.
But how about the current situation?
How do we apply this to the risk of COVID-19, as opposed to the risk of violent rioting?
Clearly we have to be prepared to protect ourselves from both. The risk of catching the disease hasn’t been diminished in any way by the more recent problems. All that’s happened is that another danger has been added on top of it. We need to be prepared to deal with both.
But if push comes to shove, the riots are a bigger risk to those who get in their way, than COVID is. While only a very small percentage of people are attacked and beaten in the rioting, in the cases that people are, the results are serious; they are either killed or seriously injured.
On the other hand, the chances of catching the Coronavirus are clearly higher than that of being beaten during a riot, unless you are a business owner trying to protect your business. The revised RO rate out of the CDC is much lower than it was before. So is the mortality rate, bringing COVID-19 almost down to the level of the flu. While it might still kill you, it probably won’t, unless you have underlying health problems. Even then, it will take it a few weeks to put you under.
See the difference? What makes the riots a greater risk is the chance of dying and how soon death would occur. This is the standard we must apply, whenever we’re looking at multiple risks. We have to focus on the thing that has the greatest chances of killing us, dealing with that thing first.
This isn’t to say that we should totally ignore other risks. By no means. It means we allow the greatest risk to become the framework that we use in determining our reaction plan. Everything else then gets fitted into it, in such a way as to ensure that every risk is covered, as reasonably well as possible.
In other words, take your rifle to protect yourself with, but make sure you wear a mask as well.
Actually, better than taking your rifle is to avoid the areas where demonstrators are likely to gather and riots are likely to occur. If you happen to be somewhere and a crowd starts gathering, then make sure you get out of there. I don’t care how many rounds you carry, taking on an angry mob by yourself is a sure recipe for disaster, and it’s one where you’re the main dish.
Going forward, we all need to reevaluate our disaster planning, from the viewpoint of seeing if we are truly ready to deal with multiple disasters at one time. As part of that, we need to have a good enough understanding of the various survival requirements of each of the various scenarios we might face. That’s needed, in order to create an integrated list of everything you have to do, in the combined situation.
Of course, that’s going to be something you can’t really do in advance; because there’s no real way of knowing what combination of disasters any of us are going to face. However, it’s not something any of us can afford to ignore, especially at the point of time when that second or third disaster shows up. It is at that time, we need to evaluate how the two disaster scenarios fit together so that we can ensure that we don’t miss an important element of protecting ourselves.
That’s the risk we all face right now. We have yet to see if the masses of people out demonstrating and rioting are going to cause an uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases. It will be two weeks before we know that. If the disease is as deadly as the mainstream media was preaching as recently as last week, a lot of those protesters are going to soon be sick. We’ll just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, it only makes sense for us to prepare for a second wave of the virus, while we do everything we can to ensure that we don’t get caught in the midst of any riots.
Indeed police killings, brutality, and its other unacceptable practices against America’s most disadvantaged are a major societal problem needing correction.
Cutting its funding or even replacing it with an alternate societal control system won’t fix things.
The problem isn’t cops. It’s power elites controlling them.
It’s state-sponsored inequity and injustice, privileged interests served exclusively at the expense of exploiting most others domestically and abroad.
US instruments of control go way beyond state and local police.
The Wall Street owned and controlled Fed has supreme power over all others by controlling the nation’s money, credit, debt, and ability to manipulate markets for private enrichment.
In his book titled “Tragedy and Hope,” historian Carroll Quigley explained the following:
“(T)he powers of financial capitalism (can) create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” adding:
“This system (is) controlled…by the central banks of the world, acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”
Former Bank of England director Josiah Stamp said “(b)anking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin,” adding:
“The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again.”
The Fed is a privately owned banking cartel by its major banks, able to create limitless amounts of money digitally.
The 16th Amendment let Congress levy an income tax so bankers given control of the nation’s money by the 1913 Federal Reserve Act could be paid interest on the federal debt.
If money power was returned to public hands where it belongs, and swords were beaten into plowshares, creating a new era of peace, the federal income tax could be eliminated for most Americans, greatly reduced for others.
Government debt would be interest free or eliminated altogether.
Publicly controlled money used for economic growth could produce sustained inflation-free prosperity, what colonial America accomplished. So did Lincoln.
Why not now? Because powerful bankers would lose what they value most.
The power to create money lets them rule the world unchallenged. If returned to public hands, they’d be powerless.
Politicians serve their interests. US money-controlled elections maintain dirty business as usual, the unacceptable status quo.
Funded by countless trillions of dollars poured down a black hole of unaccountable waste, fraud, and abuse, the Pentagon’s global empire of bases involved in waging endless war on humanity is a far greater problem than police wrongdoing.
So is the CIA-led US intelligence community, a force for pure evil, not good.
It’s hired guns killed JFK, RFK and MLK for opposing US militarism, warmaking, and related state-sponsored wrongdoing.
JFK notably ordered all US military forces out of Vietnam by end of 1963, eliminated for wanting peace over aggression against a nation threatening no one.
He despised the CIA, wanting it “splinter(red) into a thousand pieces and scatter(ed) into the wind.”
His transformation from warrior to peacemaker cost him his life. It cost the lives of millions of Southeast Asians and thousands of Americans from a decade of US aggression — ongoing endlessly today in multiple theaters.
Ironically, ground-breaking for Pentagon construction began on another 9/11 in 1944 — what became headquarters for orchestrating endless wars on humanity worldwide, resulting in tens of millions of lost lives.
Cops in the US terrorize society’s most disadvantaged of all races.
The US gulag prison system, the world’s largest by far, symbolizes systemic injustice.
Most inmates are poor Blacks and Latinos, mostly for nonviolent crimes, illicit drug possession the most common one.
Countless numbers behind bars are for what amounts to misdemeanor offenses, many wrongfully blamed for things they had nothing to do with, including on death row.
America’s obsession to incarcerate targets society’s most vulnerable and others for supporting ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and political, economic and social equality across gender and color lines — political prisoners languishing behind bars.
Immigrants from the “wrong countries” of the wrong faith are hunted down, rounded up, denied bail, dehumanized, and unjustly punished with no right of appeal.
What should be a national scandal and denounced gets scant public attention.
The same goes for US torture prisons, operating globally, at home and abroad — filled with political prisoners of the wrong faith, color and nationality, unjustly considered terrorists.
What’s gone on for time immemorial, torture became official US policy under Bush/Cheney, continued under the radar to this day with no end of it in prospect, a high crime against humanity getting no public attention.
Calling Trump “the fire devil, German publication Der Spiegel missed the point.
Like most of his predecessors, notably the Clintons, Bush/Cheney and Obama, he fronts for systemic dirty business as usual at home and abroad — the same to be true for whoever succeeds him in 2021 or 2025.
One-party rule with two anti-peace, equity, and justice right wings assures it — mirror images of each other on issues mattering most, serving privileged interests exclusively.
It’s been the American way from inception with brief moments of positive change along the way — notably by New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs.
They greatly eroded since the neoliberal 90s, heading for elimination altogether to free up maximum funds for war on humanity at home and abroad, along with handouts to corporate America.
All of the above issues and related ones made the US a pariah state, a fantasy democracy, a notion it tolerates nowhere, especially not domestically.
Cops in America serve and protect powerful interests at the expense of vitally needed beneficial social change.
They’re symbolic of societal injustice, not the root cause.
Defunding or disbanding police in one, a few, or larger numbers of US cities won’t stop state-sponsored war on humanity, inequity, injustice, or institutionalized racism.
Only revolutionary change can transform a deeply corrupted system too debauched to fix any other way.
Positive change never comes top down, never by elections assuring continuity, only bottom up.
There’s no other way, never been one before or looking ahead.
A Final Comment
I’ve stressed many times that no nation historically caused more harm to more people over a longer duration than the US.
Throughout its history from inception, governance of, by, and for the privileged few has been and continues to be core US policy.
That’s what the American way is all about — democracy for the privileged few by exploiting most others and plundering planet earth for maximum profit-making, the human toll ignored.
Humanity is held hostage to what Orwell called “a boot stamping on a human face — for ever!”
The plain truth can often be so obvious as to be invisible.
There are so many obstacles to change on the scale we so desperately need.
We are fast reaching a point that no humans can or will be able to understand the world we live in.
We pass this way just once.
Artificial algorithms are taking over.
Yuval Noah Harari in his latest book ( 21 lessons for the 21st Century) puts his finger on the problem.
” In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don’t understand our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might brake down.
Surely its time we stop being the free fodder that feds big data. It’s much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.
What will be the point to education if algorithms make us redundant?
It is difficult to discern world-wise whether there is any sincere conversation on AI Ethics.
Is it being addressed by any of the big tech companies or are they just giving token nods to what is right or wrong, while taking advantage of all human beings out there?
Are there just pushback from the outside organisations.
What we are witnessing is their profit growth with economic disparity worldwide increases at a starting rate. This certainly rings true if one looks at the state of the world with people judged by their wealth.
So what is the ethics of creating a sentient life form on a planet that is burning?
Perhaps it will be for the best if we continue not to understand the planet we all live on and leave it to AI to sort us out.
Or can we now start contributing to better governance solutions?
If we don’t grasp the nettle soon there will be no coming back.
To have any relevance now and in the future, we need billions to take to the streets to demand the sustainability of our planet (Human vote with their feet, not Social media) before profit-making goes underground.
When it comes to making the world a better place, corporations are often accused of apathy (the flip-side of blind self-interest). But if consumers are truly committed to social change, they must answer the same challenge.
If we can get consumers to make mindful shopping choices, to support brands that act responsibly and to purchase goods from those that dedicate a portion of the sale proceeds to causes, we are well on our way to re-purposing everyday purchases.
We are the first generation to know we’re destroying the world, and we could be the last that can do anything about it.
SO AS IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE HERE IS YOUR CHANCE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
We need to recognize that everything we do, every step we take, every sentence we write, every word we speak—or don’t speak—counts. Nothing is trivial.
Take personal responsibility.
We need to use social media – this is one of the most effective ways to get brands to listen to you, so tell them that you want a change.
Why?
Because, unfortunately, the politicians who dominate the world stage are, depressingly, mostly cut from the old cloth, and the leadership challenges they face, are particularly complex and will require different skills — notably a clearer vision among leaders of organisation’s shared purpose.
Because the digital revolution is far from over the pace of change only seems to be quickening when in fact it is causing isolation.
Because, we are allowing non-regulated large technology platforms to become too powerful, using their size to dominate markets and we are not paying enough attention to how the tools they create can be used for ill – like device addictions, as we drown in notifications and false news feed posts.
Because there is an increasing imperative for all of us to respond to climate change. Which will and is challenging our lives developing on a daily bases right in front of our eyes into our biggest need to act as one.
United States president Donald Trump is proud of the US effort against COVID-19. In his 1 May remarks on protecting America’s seniors, he said,
Through aggressive actions and the devotion of our doctors and nurses, however, we have held our fatality rate far below hard-hit other countries such as Spain and Italy and United Kingdom and Sweden. We’re way below other countries.
Trump employs the logical fallacy of the confirmation bias. In this case, he selectively chooses from among the most ravaged world nations suffering from COVID-19 to compare the US. There are 190 or so other countries where the US does not fare so well in comparison. Why doesn’t Trump compare the US to his designated enemies of the US? Why not compare the US to Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and especially China? Maybe Trump won’t do that, but the rest of us can look at the data and compare.
One should regard the data with some skepticism. There may well be underreporting or misreporting of the number of cases. There may be misdiagnoses. Countries may also be in different stages of fighting the pandemic. Nonetheless, what jumps out from the data is that the US is being ravaged by the coronavirus far worse than Trump’s designated adversaries.
Trump reversed the normalization of ties, began under president Barack Obama, between Cuba and the US. Instead, Cuba has been targeted by the Trump administration policy of “maximum pressure.” This pressure included the US blocking of 100,000 face masks, 10 COVID-19 diagnostic kits, and other aid such as ventilators and gloves donated by Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma. Nonetheless, Cuba and its socialized medicine have a far lower fatality rate than the US. Cuba to its good reputation has sent medical personnel abroad to help fight COVID-19, and it has even been so magnanimous to offer aid to the US. Venezuela, another socialist nation, has been targeted for sanctions by the anti-socialist Trump. Venezuela also fares statistically better than the US with 0.4 deaths per 1 million people compared to the US’s 199 per 1 million people. The US’s weaponization of the pandemic is also being used to try and topple the goverment of Iran. These actions clearly evince that the US has little regard for the populace of the countries. Yet, even though hard hit, Iran fares much better than the US. Russia is fighting COVID-19, but the situation up to now is much less lethal than in the US.
China, being where the pandemic broke out, had to identify the virus, treat the people, and strategize how to contain COVID-19. Its tackling COVID-19 has been sterling in comparison to the US, especially given the many weeks the US had to prepare for the pandemic to hit US shores; knowing what the pathogen was; knowing the genetic profile, thanks to China; and knowing how China has been dealing with the contagion.
Trump boasts: “And other countries are asking us for help, and we’re helping other countries: allies and some that aren’t necessarily allies, but they’re in big trouble.”
A group of prominent economists maintain that the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration are “feeding the COVID-19 epidemic.” Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said,
This policy is unconscionable and flagrantly against international law. It is imperative that the U.S. lift these immoral and illegal sanctions to enable Iran and Venezuela to confront the epidemic as effectively and rapidly as possible.
Trump, notorious for his lack of diplomatic verve, threatens others in the time of a pandemic. Any iota of decorum should tell Trump not to kick an opponent when he is down. And, referring to the fatality table above, it is clear that the US is also in “big trouble.”
Polling neck-in-neck with a cognitively impaired presidential challenger, COVID-19 not abating, unemployment shooting upwards, the US economy sinking, Trump continues to deflect. He is quick to take credit when he considers the economy to be strong, but when the economy turns for the worse, he is quick to look elsewhere and point a finger:
It’s horrible that — what this country [the US] has gone through and what the world has gone through, frankly. This is something — it could have been contained at the original location, and I think it could have been contained relatively easily. China is a very sophisticated country, and they could have contained it. They were either unable to or they chose not to, and the world has suffered greatly.
As CGTN made clear:
China was the first to confront COVID-19, which has made its challenge much greater. But the point about China is that it’s not a talker, it’s a doer, and when it got hold of the problem, it gave an impressive performance!
Trump just can’t let up on deflecting blame from his government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic:
“The virus situation is just not acceptable…”
“It came out of China, and it could have been stopped, and I wish they stopped it. And so does the whole world — wish they stopped it….”
“But they could have stopped it. They are a very brilliant nation — scientifically and otherwise. It got loose, let’s say, and they could have capped it. They could have stopped it. But they didn’t.”
This prompted a media person to ask:
You praised China in the past, so what’s changed? When you tweeted, ‘China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The [U.S.] greatly appreciates their efforts on transparency. It will all work out well…’ What has changed between then, when you were saying these things about China, and now?
Trump:
Well, what’s changed is the following: We did a trade deal and everybody was very happy. There’s nobody ever been tough on China like I’ve been tough on China. I got elected, at least partially, because of borders and military and different things, but one of the things I’d say is how China and other countries are ripping us off.
So recently, we signed a trade deal with China, a number of months ago. China is buying billions of dollars’ worth of our product, our farm product and other product, manufacturing product, and it’s been a great deal. But then, we noticed a virus. And it’s not acceptable what happened. It came out of China, and it’s not acceptable what happened.
And now what we’re doing, Jim, is we’re finding out how it came out. Different forms — you know, you’ve heard all different things. You’ve heard three or four different concepts as to how it came out. We should have the answer to that in the not-too-distant future, and that will determine a lot how I feel about China.
The answer was a classic non sequitur. China while dealing with the early stages of a contagion still negotiated a trade deal with the US. A less callous trade partner might have insisted: let’s put things on hold while you deal with this epidemic. Still Trump’s reply is puzzling: how does a trade deal logically connect to Trump’s changed opinion of China’s handling of COVID-19? Moreover, who out there is saying the pandemic is acceptable?
A better question would have been: Mr President, you say China “could have stopped it” being “a very brilliant nation — scientifically and otherwise…. They could have stopped it. But they didn’t.” So you are
1) implying that China did this intentionally, that they exposed themselves to the virus and the shutting down of their economy; and
2) you also imply that America is not so brilliant because Americans have not stopped the pandemic within their borders. Even worse, given the time lag that the US had to prepare for the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 and given the far more deleterious impact on American lives and health as well as the vibrancy of economy, brilliance is not an apt adjective.
Nothing about this pandemic in the US points to America becoming great again.
Global Government 