GOOD MORNING. (This replaces the original 5-6 April 2020 report, which was deleted by computer glitch or by my own compu-idiocy, I know not which. It is recovered from an earlier draft, which means it is not as well written -- not as well edited and revised -- as the destroyed version, the quality of which is impossible to duplicate simply because there is no way I can remember all the improvements I had made in the original posting.) As always, scan by scrolling down -- it'll take only minutes at most -- read whatever is relevant1 to you and yours, share it if appropriate and skip the rest:
Most revealing pandemic report thus far:
XRTV Interview: Chris Hedges on Coronavirus, Climate and What Next?
He tells us Covid-19 is the most obvious aspect of the apocalypse, warns us it will cause "profound social dislocation" and confirms what most of us already suspect – that the pandemic’s Neoliberal-inflicted consequences are already proving unimaginably worse than our murderously self-protective Capitalist overlords will ever dare admit.
Hedges' remarks begin at time-point 2:52.
I write and post the following report on his interview by a British TV channel both because of what he bravely reveals and because he remains – often at great cost to himself – one of the western world's most credible journalists.
That’s why he was purged from The New York Times and internationally blacklisted by all the Capitalist media many years ago.
Given that NYT is regarded as the U.S. national "newspaper of record" – given too the plutocrat-owned USian Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine is in fact and function the high-tech, for-profit copy of Josef Goebbels’ infamous Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda -- Hedges’ ouster from its editorial staff was obviously quasi-official retaliation.
More specifically it was Ruling Class vengeance for his of defiance of obey-or-else orders to silence his ever-more-outspoken humanitarian opposition to Capitalism, Neoliberal or otherwise, and to stop protesting the ecogenocidal dynamics – present-day slavery included – by which every form of Capitalism ever-more-violently extracts its ever-deadlier profits.
Since his purge by the Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine (MMPM) canceled forever his "working press" immunity, Hedges has been jailed at a number of labor and environmental protests.
Though he has long defined himself as a "socialist," he still maintains "I am not a Marxist." Yet in the response that begins at time-point 26:12 on the video tape he adds a pivotal qualification:
"But [...] I do think Marxist analysis of capitalism [...] is correct." Just as Marx reveals and as Engels proves with vast collections of irrefutable data, he continues, Capitalism "commodifies everything" including human beings, then exploits its human, societal and environmental victims until they collapse or die of exhaustion.
Hedges correctly notes the Capitalists long ago proved their genocidal white-supremacist racism by their extermination of First Nations peoples and by their deliberate perpetuation of its murderous imperialism even unto the allegedly post-colonial period.
"Imperialism,” he adds, is the expression of white supremacy beyond the borders of empire."
He again asserts his long-acknowledged awareness the seemingly ineradicable criminality and seductiveness of individual human greed necessitates all Capitalists be strictly regulated, much as was attempted in the New Deal.
More time-pointed highlights of Hedges’ interview follow, with my own editorial comment immediately afterward.
At 30:29, he describes West Virginia as a toxic wasteland that vividly reveals what’s in store for the entire United States now that Capitalism has exhausted its imperialist options abroad and has brought its ecogenocidal savagery home.
"Now there's nowhere else (for the Capitalists) to go. It's been four hundred years of pillage, looting, environmental destruction and the game's up" [...] "When industrial power goes down, the whole planet is going to go with it." [...] "We’re in a “period of mortal peril" [...] We're facing "profound social dislocation […] I look at this pandemic as [...] the beginning of the end."
At 41:49 Hedges reminds us we must do "everything within our power to obstruct and destroy the mechanisms of corporate power and their ability to garner profit" […] "that's it, that's our only hope."
But if we are to be at all effective, he adds, "the first thing we have to do is face the bleakness before us."
He again cautions us against the delusional optimism of "false hope," pointing out – as he did in what has (tellingly) become his most-censored essay in alternative media – that such delusion is invariably "disempowering."
He continues by citing a strictly censored horror of which most of us therefore remain unaware: that President Lyndon Johnson withdrew Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) protection from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. moments after King dared denounce the Vietnam War on 4 April 1967.
From then on, says Hedges, King knew he was doomed.
(In other words, though Hedges did not say it outright, a Southron Democratic (sic) president with a known racist taint but superficially posing as a civil-rights advocate cleared the way for a government death squad to murder a human being who had spent his adult life trying to save us from our Moron Nation follies. Which strongly suggests Rev. King’s murder exactly one year later – 4 April 1968 – was scripted to include the implicit message that anyone else who dared become an anti-war advocate of such national prominence would also be slain – precisely as was Sen. Robert Francis Kennedy two months and two days later.)
Questions from the on-line audience begin at 55:37.
In response Hedges explains the ultimate reason for the extermination of First Nations people was "...to destroy a competing communal ethic which was completely opposed to the ethic of Capitalism." […] "In indigenous culture people who hoarded things for themselves were despised." […] "Either everyone ate or no one ate" […] "And I think that ethic was [...] most threatening to capitalism."
"So we have to -- as most indigenous communities around the world have reminded us -- recover that communal ethic where everyone eats or no one eats, where those who hoard material possessions and power for themselves and their own are thrown out and despised."
He cites Sitting Bull’s scathing rejection of the white Christian notion of “owning” land as exemplary of "where we have to go" if we are to evolve "a kind of ethic that might make it possible for human societies to sustain themselves, at least for a while."
At 1:06:30, Hedges urges us "to fight fascists because they are fascists," exactly as we "fight evil because it is evil."
Pointing out the history of "a yearning for fascism" evident in the U.S. and Britain even before the term itself existed, he notes that "fascists are more advanced in the U.S. because the Christian Right has years of building infrastructures" (including) "stacking the courts" and unleashing "the equivalent of the Brownshirts" to suppress dissent.
Hedges also provides us with a working definition of "inverted totalitarianism" as a system that finds its identity “not through a dictator but through a corporate state [...] (in which) corporations control all levels of power (and) profit always takes precedent over human life." Which, he adds, is being demonstrated now by the Capitalist response to this pandemic: "The system responded the way it did because we don't count."
At 1:16:29, he assures us that although "legalized bribery has replaced democracy," what we do have on our side is our vast number – hence, despite our poverty, the ability to organize effective resistance and cripple our oppressors.
Though we must now also contend with the fact the compulsory isolation mandated by Covid-19 is "a gift to the state" that allows our oppressors "to consolidate power without mass resistance."
The "great mistake" on the part of liberal elites, he says, is their refusal to admit the Democratic Party is merely one-half of the single corporate party that rules the U.S. at every level, federal, state or local. As to Obama, he is no more than "a black mascot for Wall Street"
Hedges describes resistance as the "nurture of life" in defiance of the omnipresent "culture of death."
"I don’t know if I'm going to succeed," he says, "but I at least want my kids to look back and say that I tried."
***
MY CRITIQUE, negative comments first:
Though it does seem Hedges (like so many of us) is thrust ever closer to Marxism as our circumstances worsen, he remains in denial about the fact the New Deal (and every other such effort at ameliorating Capitalist moral imbecility with humanitarian regulation) have been bribed (or murdered) to failure.
Hence he has yet to admit – at least publicly – that reform has proven itself to be nothing more than a hopelessly fragile, therefore doomed defense against the Capitalists themselves. Or that Marxism has repeatedly proven itself the only enduring countermeasure against these ecogenocidal predators.
Though I have but one positive comment about the interview, it is nevertheless definitive: here Hedges has given us the most honest explanation I have yet encountered of our present circumstances, which is precisely why I have linked it here and written this summary of its highlights.
It is, apart from the foregoing Marxian criticisms, a lucid and uniquely accurate explanation of our plight – so outspokenly truthful I doubt the (oppressively optimistic) USian alternative press will ever dare run it. It is therefore a courageous act for which I salute and applaud Hedges even as I dearly hope my reporting honors his message by accurately conveying the essence of the hour-and-22-minute video./LB
Other Informative reports:
General news:
Coronavirus death toll: Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count
Propagandamaster Bezos' WaPo but nevertheless probably true. Note too those who are not dying are also left out, which -- oh how conveniently for the plutocrats -- makes it impossible to calculate an accurate U.S. death rate.
Workers Walk Out, Building Momentum Toward General Strike
Trump Sent the Guard to the Coronavirus Front Line But Denied Them Military Care
Thanks to Willam Boardman for sending me this link.
Amazon Fired a Warehouse Organizer Attempting to Draw Attention to a Dangerous Workplace. Then They Tried to Smear Him.
Private Equity Baron Sitting on Empty Hospital in Line for Stimulus Tax Break
Australian state will install home surveillance hardware to make sure if you're in virus isolation, you stay there
What Wall Street Doesn’t Want You to Know About Hospital Emergency Rooms
Reliable anthologies of pandemic reports (scroll for whatever is relevant):
Virus Outbreak
Updated constantly by the Associated Press.
Black Agenda Report
Updated regularly. In my opinion, the best, most informative, most relevant political website on the U.S. Internet.
RT - Breaking news, shows, podcasts
Democratic (sic) Party Big Lies and Republican censorship not withstanding, this site provides what is often the most truthful reporting available to us in the United States. Updated often.
TASS Russian News Agency
Just as Propagandamaster Bezos' WaPo gives us the Predatory Plutocrats' perspective, so does this site -- formerly Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Телегра́фное аге́нтство Сове́тского Сою́за, Telegrafnoye agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza) -- give us, in English, the often-radically different Russian government's perspective. (It's history, dating from 1904, makes interesting reading for mediaphyles.) Updated often.
Xinhua
Ditto for the news agency of the People's Republic of China. It's history is here.
Coronavirus live updates - The Washington Post
Probably not "fake news" and updated often -- but listed last because Propagandamaster Bezos's corporate crown jewel is nevertheless best known for its censorship2 and warmongering lies.
On the pandemic's most obviously dire consequences:
America's Emergency Medical Stockpile Is Almost Empty. Nobody Knows What Happens Next.
Washington sending back ventilators from national stockpile to help other states
Gov. Jay Inslee again demonstrating his world-class crisis leadership -- and, no, I am not suddenly dropping my opposition to his Neoliberal economic policies -- especially his ongoing refusal, like that of every other Washington state Democratic (sic) or Republican politician, to even consider ameliorating the most viciously regressive tax structure in the entire United States.
Boeing extends suspension of Puget Sound operations until further notice
Very bad news for thousands of Seattle-area residents; though Boeing has surely had its ups and downs, I don't know of anything even remotely like this closure.
US jobless numbers head toward Depression levels
FOCUS: Americans Can't Sign Up for Health Insurance During a Global Pandemic, Trump Decides
Malevolently maximizing the COVID-19 death rate (I)
Trump Sent Them to the Coronavirus Front Line but Denied Them Health Care
Malevolently maximizing the COVID-19 death rate (II)
The Coming Red-State Coronavirus Catastrophe
But will someone please at long last acknowledge the maliciously twisty little mind-warp inplicit in co-opting the color red to designate its diametrical political opposite?
COVID-19 threatens to rip apart Southern states in a way that isn't happening anywhere else
How Republicans Are Using the Pandemic to Suppress the Vote
Other indications of the pandemic's true magnitude:
Russian model says if Covid-19 wipes out half of humanity, the planet will benefit
Might this be initial psychological preparation of the masses for some probability our masters yet refuse to acknowledge?
TIGER tests positive for Covid-19 at Bronx Zoo as 5 more big cats develop ‘dry cough’
First evidence COVID-19 might jeopardize the planet's entire mammalian population.
Shooting the messenger? US Navy SACKS captain for ‘causing alarm’ with plea to save lives of Covid-19-stricken carrier crew
In other words, for so much as intimating the deadly danger to the people and the planet. Transcending MMPM censorship on a previously published report.
US Medical Staff Threatened with Firing for Going Public on Unacceptable Working Conditions
In other words, for daring acknowled just how fatally -- how truly apocalyptically -- the Capitalists have raped us.
Censorship and disinformation (includes countermeasures):
Senators Accused Of Insider Trading, Dumping Stocks After Coronavirus Briefing
Note how MMPM -- absolute proof it is the exact copy of Goebbels ministry and is thus to NEVER be trusted -- methodically suppressed the fact the perpe-traitors included at least one Democratic (sic) politician, the Republican-enabling multi-millionaire Sen. Diane Feinstein.
Democrats Attempt to Gut the Insider Trading Bill
An Obama Regime story brought again to spear-point relevance by the newest insider-trading outrage.
Dennis Prager: Even on COVID-19, left and right are divided
Specifically for Washington state readers:
Washington DSHS Basic Food benefits added due to coronavirus
Posted here because -- though this undeniably vital story broke last Thursday (2 April) -- it was ignored or downplayed by local MMPM outlets -- most of which as a matter of policy are loathe to publish or broadcast anything that might be construed as uniquely useful to lower-income people. Hence neither most of my 39 neighbors here at the senior apartments nor I who spend hours scanning the news for relevant stories knew anything about it until yesterday, when a couple of those neighbors phoned me for confirmation after someone posted notice of it in the elevator.
WA education superintendent doubtful that classes will return this school year
Also relevant:
Capitalism in America Has Dropped the Mask—Its Face Is Cruel and Selfish
A report that adds additional dimensions to what Chris Hedges says in the video link that opens today's report.
When The Invisible Hand Gives You The Finger
Review: Christian nationalism's insidious hold on America is not an overnight phenomenon
Politics of a Plague
Interesting, thought-provoking perspective, with thanks to William Boardman for sending me the link.
Hidden suffering of coronavirus: Stigma, blaming, shaming
Opinion - Draconian Lockdown Powers: It’s a Slippery Slope from Handwashing to House Arrest
How Will the Coronavirus End?
A Family’s Fetid Week With Coronavirus
Held over because it is the most outspoken, most emotionally honest, most implicitly life-supportive and by far the best reporting I have read in many years. Indeed, Reyhan Harmanci is a writer whose talent I'd have recognized with a full-time general-assignment staff-job (way, way) back when "editor" was the key part of my job-title. (For more of her work, click on her "Family's Fetid Week" byline.)
What Endures of the Romance of American Communism
A uniquely self-corrective and otherwise revealing essay by the author of the aforementioned romance.
Important stuff to bear in mind:
(Archived material that helps us understand what the PPs -- plutocratic predators -- are doing to us now and what they might do to us in the future.)
Trump Admits That Easy Voting Would Defeat Republicans
New: how gerrymandering and methodical voter-suppression have reduced our elections to meaningless charades.
Goldman Sachs warns that curing patients may not be 'sustainable'
Outright acknowledgment from the deadliest Neoliberal predators that curing disease with a single treatment is bad for profits. A report from 2018 that explains what's being done to us today, hence given knife-edged relevance by the pandemic
Average U.S. Citizens Have “Little Or No” Influence On Government Policy
Another "old" report given new relevance by what's being done to us today.
The Truth About the United States' "Continuity of Government" Plans & The Coronavirus Perfect Storm
Scroll down to the 12th graf to learn how at least eight million U.S. citizens are on the PPs' enemies lists and will be disappeared.
Military, Trump administration ready plans for domestic crackdown as virus spreads across US
From the report: "'a senior military planner working on coronavirus but not authorized to speak on sensitive planning matters [...] says that deployment of federal troops in support roles is being prepared,' including to conduct traffic stops, home searches and seizures and arrests." Scroll to Footnote3 to learn what atrocities could thus be inflicted on us.
Avenger Planet: Is the Covid-19 Pandemic Mother Nature's Response to Human Transgression?
Excellent question -- though as a (solitary-practice) Gaian Pagan, I would cite the scientific hypothesis that bears the Earth Goddess' name and answer "almost certainly yes." (One of the innumerable reasons the ChristoNazis so despise us is the majority of our beliefs are based on science -- the ultimate terminator of all patriarchal religion.)
Useful references:
(No snake-oil sales or medicine-show huckstering allowed.)
What you should know about DIY masks and ventilators
From National Geographic.
CARES Act Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for Freelancers
New: specifically for writers and editors. (Disclosure: I am a longtime National Writers Union member and co-chaired one of their local writers' workshops c. 2009-2011.)
COVID-19 Relief by industry
Parents On Childcare And Challenges In Coronavirus Isolation
How to wash your hands to prevent coronavirus — because you're probably doing it wrong
Loss of smell, taste, might signal pandemic virus infection
Tests show new virus lives on some surfaces for up to 3 days
How to clean the bundle of germs that is your phone
Food Safety and Coronavirus: A Comprehensive Guide
How to Properly Make Sanitizers from Household Ingredients
Handling mail amid coronavirus: Low risk but wash your hands
My practice is to assume everything from outside is potentially contaminated, hence I wash my hands thoroughly after handling any incoming packages and sanitize any surface upon which they might have rested or been unwrapped.
_________________
1I select these stories on the basis of my news judgment as it evolved during my 64 years as a writer, photographer and editor, three decades of which were in the working press. (Despite an on-and-off involvement with the alternative press that began in 1963, all but about three of those first 30 earning-years were primarily in the Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine, at least half in decide-what's-news jobs ranging from sports editor and associate editor to city editor, news-and-picture editor and editor-in-chief. (Though as my colleagues moved stealthily Rightward, so did I move ever-more-openly Leftward, until eventually I was Left...outside.) Beyond that -- and in keeping with today's (unequivocally apocalyptic) context -- it is a matter of relevance plus probability of censorship. I ask myself three questions: firstly, is a given story useful – a term in this context I use as synonymous with relevant. If the answer is yes, I than ask, secondly, how likely is it to be suppressed by the MMPM, the PPs’ first ever privately owned, for-maximum-profit copy of Josef Goebbels’ infamous Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. And here my rule is one of inverse returns: the less likely I think I am to see the story disseminated via the National Daily Wipe and Audiovisual Psychodemonic Zombification Monopoly, (NDWAAZPM, with apology to Henry Miller for the Psychodemonics), the more likely I am to include it in these summaries. Reports that pass the first two tests are each then subjected to the third and final test: do they include indications from which we might evolve estimates of our situations accurate enough to facilitate effective response? If the answer here is also affirmative, the report in question will always be included in the daily update. Meanwhile the first two criteria generate a lengthy list of possibles I winnow down to probables and thence to musts, a process that takes approximately seven or eight hours each day.
2As to what prompts my sudden skepticism of virus coverage by The Washington Post, note how quickly Bezos or one of his zero-tolerance subordinates imposed paywall censorship on this pivotally important 20 March story (scroll down to "U.S. intelligence reports"), which for only a very few short minutes appeared as part of WaPo's non-paywalled daily virus report. Pretending to be real journalists rather than the Regime's scribes -- a mental downgrading inflicted as much by the clerical drudgery necessitated by computers as by the chief Josef-Goebbels-wannabee Bezos himself -- is a form of moral imbecility I cannot abide.
3Be aware that "home searches and seizures" could include not only confiscation of all real or potential weapons but -- given the ChristoNazi Regime's anti-marijuana fanaticism -- confiscation of, and arrest for possession of, all the (still federally illegal) medical marijuana upon which such a huge number of opiate-denied chronic-pain victims are now forced to depend. Too -- given the Regime's even more fanatical hatred of women and female sexuality -- such raids might also be used to confiscate all birth-control devices and criminalize all unwed women who possess them, thereby fulfilling still more of the PPs' ChristoNazis objectives. Thus -- by such mass arrests -- could the Regime give its plutocratic owners the ultimate "gift" of permanently enslaving millions of U.S. citizens for brutally hard, typically deadly labor, thereby granting our Masters' wish of exterminating "surplus workers" while following the German Nazis' model of amassing unlimited profits from mass murder.
(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)
*****
THIS IS SO EMBARRASSINGLY LATE -- for which my most profuse apologies -- because I did not discover the Chris Hedges interview until about 7 p.m., as I was for searching for possible companion stories to "Politics of a Plague," an excellent piece to which William Boardman so thoughtfully sent me the link.
I first played the interview from start to finish. Then because of its length I realized I had to summarize it for those of us without the time or the luxury of uninterrupted attention to watch the entire video presentation. But reporting from a video -- this as opposed to critiquing it -- is something I had never done before. And it is so radically different from covering a live event, so unexpectedly more difficult (and therefore so oppressively time consuming), it is damn well something I dearly hope I never have to do again.
Meanwhile please remember after today, Monday 6 April, this Update series will be published as if it were a (West Coast) early morning Monday-Friday daily; hence, like this issue, it will be dated the day it is published rather than by the previous day's date, when much of the news was actually gathered.
Barring problems of the sort I encountered with the Hedges tape, this should enable me to publish these link-lists at a time (2-3 a.m.) that makes them reliably available as morning reading on both coasts; it will also broaden the news-cycle -- that is, lengthen the time spanned by links to stories available for inclusion on a given day's date. I apologize for any inconvenience this may impose.
May we all remain healthy and unshackled by despair amidst the humanitarian challenges and Neoliberal outrages of this sickest and most frustrating of all human times.
LB/6 April 2020 08:58 PDT
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