This is why we don’t argue with the majority of Americans.
He truly is clueless. A man with no insight whatsoever.
Iran has suffered immensely from the virus, Stone noted in an op-ed published by the New York Daily News, but due to US sanctions the Islamic Republic isย โreportedly the only country in the worldย that cannot buy medicines needed to fight the pandemic.”
The outspoken Hollywood legend similarly condemned Washingtonโs decision to maintain โ and in some cases, increase โ its economic chokeholds on countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as coronavirus strains healthcare systems across the globe.
In the case of Venezuela, USย โcoercionโย led to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) denying the South American stateโs request for a $5 billion loan to help fight the pandemic, Stone contended.ย The US has ratcheted up its pressure on Caracas amid the global health crisis, accusing the government of drug trafficking and calling for aย โtransition governmentโย to replace President Nicolas Maduro.
The award-winning filmmaker and activist said that the health crisis has shown the inhumanity of Washingtonโs foreign policy.
The current pandemic is exposing not only our governmentโs utter failures to protect its own citizens, but also its profound lack of human decency in dealing with other nations
Stone called forย โserious moral self-reflectionโย in the US, warning that countless lives were at risk unless there is anย โimmediate change in course.โ
Iran has registered nearly 3,500 Covid-19 deaths, with 19,700 confirmed cases, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University. President Hassan Rouhani said last week that the crisis isย โa great opportunity for Americans to apologize… and to lift the unjust and unfair sanctions on Iran.โ
There is no hope for America, as most of its population is so dumbed down by ideology that they end up putting the likes of Trump at the helm. Most of these “educated” Americans cannot even spell Marxism without a spell check and yet they have opinions on it?
In a March 31 YouTubeย videoย titled โCapitalism is making a mess of the coronavirus crisis,โ he argued that โprivate companies have no incentive to produce test kits and store them in a warehouse for years before thereโs a crisis. Itโs not profitable.โ
Wolff toldย The College Fixย that economic systems have a duty to look after public health, something that would have occurred under socialism.
โA socialist system would much more likely have required production of all the needed supplies (tests, ventilators, beds, etc.) and stockpiling them around the country,โ he toldย The Fixย via email.
Asked whether China, a prime example of centralized government, had a role in instigating the pandemic, Wolff said that โwhatever the Chinese did or did not do, it is the job of all other societies โ their private sectors and their governments โ to prepare for and cope with viruses that can come from anywhere anytime.โ
โThe criminal blockade of the imperial government violates the human rights of the Cuban people,โย President Miguel Diaz-Canel tweeted on Wednesday.
Miguel Dรญaz-Canel Bermรบdez
โ@DiazCanelB
#NoMรกsBloqueo #CubaSalvaVidas The criminal blockade of the imperial government violates the human rights of the Cuban people.#SomosCuba #SomosContinuidad https://twitter.com/PresidenciaCuba/status/1245290570140004353ย โฆ
Presidencia Cuba@PresidenciaCubaCuba denuncia que donaciรณn de suministros mรฉdicos a #Cuba
para combatir la #COVID19, de la Fundaciรณn china
Alibabรก, no ha podido llegar por regulaciones del criminal bloqueo del gobierno de #EEUU
contra nuestro pueblo.#EsteVirusLoParamosEntreTodos http://www.granma.cu/cuba-covid-19/2020-04-01/por-que-las-cosas-para-cuba-siempre-son-mas-dificilesย โฆ
Cubaโs envoy to Beijing, Carlos Miguel Pereira, explained that an American firm was hired to deliver medical goods necessary to fight Covid-19, which were donated by a fund run by Jack Ma, Chinese philanthropist and owner of e-commerce giant Alibaba. However, the firm refused to deliver the shipmentย โat the last minute,โย Pereira said.
According to the Xinhua News Agency, the company had specifically worried about the possibility of violating the 1995 US Helms-Burton Act, which strengthened sanctions against Cuba.
Cuba has 212 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with six deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Ma announced last month that his foundation would donate emergency medical supplies to Cuba and 23 other Caribbean and South American nations. The donation was said to include 2 million masks, 400,000 test kits, and 104 ventilators.
The US has maintained a trade embargo against Cuba since 1960.
Michael McCaffrey lives in Los Angeles where he works as an acting coach, screenwriter and consultant. He is also a freelance film and cultural critic whose work can be read at RT, Counterpunch and at his websiteย mpmacting.com/blog.
Coronavirus is a terrible malady that is killing people and the global economy, but it isnโt the most pernicious pandemic afflicting the globe right now. No, the most diabolical disease currently in circulation is the dreaded Celebrivirus.
The onset of the Celebrivirus starts with a steady stream of verbal diarrhea gushing forth from empty-headed, self-absorbed, attention-starved celebrities, which is quickly followed by convulsive puking and rage headaches from the rest of us.
The most recent outbreak of Celebrivirus began with a plethora of Covid-19-related videos from a cavalcade of self-aggrandizing stars.
For instance,ย Matthew McConaugheyย thought that now was a good time to espouse his incoherent optimism regarding coronavirus.
The Typhoid Mary of Celebrivirus, Madonna, rose from the grave that is her moribund career so that she could, in the nude of course, benevolently inform us that Covid-19 has, in fact, made us all equal.
ALSO ON RT.COMNude Madonna calls coronavirus the โgreat equalizerโ in bizarre video, inspires instant mockerySerena Williams
publicly lamented that she was โstressedโ over the coronavirus.ย Not havingย to worry about losing her job, or being evicted, sheโs struggling with her stress while safely tucked away in her mansion with her husband, daughter and her gobs of money.
Serena explained, โI don’t hang out with anyone, and when I say anyone I mean my daughter. She coughed, I got angry and gave her a side-eye. I gave her that โangry Serenaโ and then I got sad.โ
Shock of shocks that Serenaโs number one priority is the well-being of Serena, and not the health of her toddler daughter. Serena has a boatload of tennis championships, but it seems like the title that will forever elude her is Mother of the Year.
The Celebrivirus that forced McConaughey, Madonna and Serena to compulsively share their idiocy, has also mutated into song version.
Self-adoring U2 frontmanย Bonoย caught the Celebrivirus bug and decided to share with humanity an original song he conjured related to Covid-19. Yikesโฆ this song is pretentious, even for Bono, the Crown Prince of Pretension. Note to aging restless rockstars recording shelter-in-place mediocrity: At least make it remotely decent before you drown us in pompous indulgence.
The most egregious of all the Celebrivirus videos came fromย Gal Gadotย of Wonder Woman fame, who recruited a bunch of her patronizing and condescending celebrity friends like Kristen Wiig, Jamie Dornan, Mark Ruffalo, Amy Adams, Sarah Silverman, James Marsden, Natalie Portman, Sia, Labrinth, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Kravitz and Will Ferrell, who looked like he had just ingested his body weight in cocaine, to sing a truly nauseating version of John Lennonโs iconic kumbaya knock-off โImagine.โ
On the best of days, โImagineโ is a cringe-worthy number, but in the hands of these smug and self-satisfied jackasses it rockets into the stratosphere of saccharine dreadfulness.
If John Lennon were alive to see this cloying, celebrity-fueled monstrosity he would beat Mark David Chapman to the punch and shoot himself in front of the Dakota Building just to end his own mortification and misery.
The fact that these filthy-rich stars, not a single one of which is not a multi-millionaire, chose to un-ironically sing the lyric, โImagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man,โ when there are millions of people potentially facing evictions from their apartments, foreclosures on their homes, losing their jobs and life savings, not to mention the fear of getting sick and dying, is a staggering testament to their delusional fanaticism and fatuousness.
Yes, Wonder Woman and friends, people can imagine life with no possessions because most of them live a life with few or no possessionsโฆespecially now, since the ranks of the unemployed are swelling from the coronavirus depression.
It is easy to sing about a world of no greed or hunger when you are rich and nourished. I wonder if they hum โImagineโ to themselves as they drive past the filthy hordes living in cardboard boxes on the street?
It would have been less offensive if Gal and her cornucopia of celebrity clowns started a band named The Marie Antoinettes, then wrote and performed their new song, titled โLet Them Eat Cake.โ
They are so in the thrall of the Celebrivirus they actually thought their syrupy crooning from the security of their golden-gated castles would ingratiate them to the masses rather than inflame hatred.
When I watched these various vacuous and vapid Celebrivirus videos, I didnโt have the insipid โImagineโ playing in my mind. No, my soundtrack was Radioheadโs โParanoid Androidโ with its wishful lyric, โwhen I am king, you will be first against the wall, with your opinion which is of no consequence at allโ.
On the bright side, at least the Celebrivirus is bringing ordinary people together out of common animosity toward these narcissists. I know hate is supposed to be bad, but I think in this case it is healthy and helps to keep our collective immune system robust.
As for a cure for the dreaded Celebrivirus, scientists have found only oneโฆand that is for celebrities to simply keep their moronic mouths shut. In other wordsโฆthere is no cure.
The world is messed up because powerful people think in terms of narrative control, and ordinary people donโt. Change that and you change the world.
~
Hot tip: Dump all stocks and invest in becoming the kind of decent human being who people will want to help in chaotic times.
~
Letโs go humans! The sooner we can put aside our differences all around the world and unite to beat this virus the sooner we can get back to exploiting each other over an imaginary monetary system and murdering each other with bombs!
~
FYI if your government is pushing the suspension of civil libertiesย beforeย coming up with a healthcare plan or providing you with financial security in an unprecedented economic crisis, then their desire to suspend civil liberties has nothing to do with fighting the pandemic.
~
Protecting the citizenry in situations like this isย theย thing governments are supposed to be for. Itโs the single most compelling argument for their existence, by a very wide margin. Any government which doesnโt take good care of its people right now does not deserve to exist.
~
If this virus hasnโt yet caused you to seriously re-evaluate your priorities in life, it should. For better or worse we appear to be standing on the brink of some very significant worldwide paradigm shifts. Where you choose to put your mental energy right now should reflect this.
~
Powerful people will work to advance authoritarian agendas which they have no intention of reversing during this pandemic. They are working on it right now. This is not a possibility, this is a certainty.
~
I love that so many people are pleading with the Trump administration to end Iran sanctions during the pandemic because itโs killing civilians, but it wonโt work. Theyย knowย itโs killing civilians, and they know it will kill a lot more. That has always been the objective.ย Pompeoย has openly admittedย that Iran is being sanctioned no so that its government will change its behavior, but so that the Iranian people will get so desperate from all the suffering and devastation that they rise up and overthrow their government.
Sanctions are the only form of warfare where it is considered legal and acceptable to deliberately target a civilian population with deadly force. Thatโs what theyโve been doing this whole time. Itโs what they want. The pandemic only helps them.
Every single Iranian who is dying because of these sanctions is on Trump. The MAGA narrative that heโs better on war than Obama has been thoroughly invalidated by every metric.
~
Humanity is uniting against this common crisis. Weโre uniting in our desire to beat this virus and protect our more vulnerable populations, and in a shared awareness that this thing could technically kill any of us. If ever there was a catalyst for a shift in consciousness, this is it.
~
We appear to be watching a confluence of factors on a trajectory to push the world toward vast changes which may leave it unrecognizable in some ways within a matter of months. Maybe we donโt need to pour as much mental energy as we used to into sectarian infighting and petty social media spats.
~
Nothingโs the same and it never will be again.ย Fuck seizing the means of production. Seize this moment. Take back everything they took from us and refuse to give it back.
Also seize the means of production because you can and why not.
~
Every time thereโs a major mainstream narrative shift half my mentions are people going โCaitlin Iโm so disappointed in you for saying something I disagree with. Normally I agree with you but now here you are not agreeing with me, like youโre an independent person or something.โ
~
Imagine being such a bleating, brainwashed NPC cuck that you believe China is your enemy.
~
The nation that is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and engaging in countless undeclared military operations around the world is the belligerent rogue nation. Everyone else is, at worst, acting in self-defense in response to this belligerence.
Governments using force to dominate the planet put every human being on a trajectory toward extinction via nuclear armageddon, and should be vehemently opposed. One government is the worst offender in this area, by a very, very, very wide margin. And it ainโt China.
~
Every few weeks, depending on who the empire is targeting at a given moment, I swing from arguing with liberals about a nation liberals hate to arguing with conservatives about a nation conservatives hate, or vice versa. And they always think theyโre different from the others.
โCaitlin I normally agree with you, but I donโt know whatโs gotten into you supporting Evil Nation X like this!โ they say, firmly believing that theyโre doing something original and unique.
โThisย Official Bad Guy is different from all the others, Caitlin!โ they say. โThis oneโsย real!โ Itโs like listening to a serial loser-dater explain that her new boyfriend with the neck tattoo is actually a really great guy.
~
I oppose warmongering against Venezuela and China and they say itโs because I love communism.
I oppose warmongering against Iran and they say itโs because I love theocracy.
I oppose warmongering against Russia and Syria and they say itโs because I love autocracy.
Maybe I just oppose warmongering.
~
Rank-and-file Dems unwittingly consented to cold war escalations against Russia out of concern for election interference. Rank-and-file Republicans are now doing the same with China out of concern for a virus outbreak. But both escalations were pre-planned by government agencies.
~
The only reason people donโt worry about cold war escalations against China and Russia like they do about hot wars with non-nuclear powers is because we got lucky in the last cold war. But thatโs all it was: sheer, dumb luck. No one was ever in control during that time. Not once.
Nobody likes to think about the fact that weย came within a hairโs breadthย of total annihilationย on multiple occasionsย during the last cold war due to communication breakdowns and tech malfunctions. That can easily happen again, but without getting lucky.ย People have a tendency to believe they succeeded because they were in control and lost because they lost control, but nobody was ever in control. We survived by sheer, dumb luck.
With hot wars they take a few lives here, a few lives there. With cold war itโs an all-or-nothing dice roll that nothing goes wrong; no tech glitches, no miscommunications, even when things get very tense. And you roll those dice every single day. And with every escalation you add more dice.
~
All arguments the US government makes against any โregimeโ it dislikes are completely invalidated by its alliance with Saudi Arabiaย alone, to say nothing of all the other tyrannical governments itโs allied with.
~
If you find yourself thinking more thoughts about Chinaโs authoritarian government than about the abusive authoritarian governments of US allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines etc, itโs because youโve been propagandized to align you with US interests.
~
Establishment narrative managers aim their publications not at their followers but at other establishment narrative managers, seeking their approval. Alternative media should always do the opposite and address the people; too many also engage in upward-looking approval-seeking.
~
Everythingโs been in a steadily accelerating pattern of unpatterning for a good while now, since well before the virus. There are people who think theyโll be able to shore up control through this thing, but you have no control in a tornado. Nature, which includes homo sapiens, wins out.
_________________________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for myย website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work isย entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me onย Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on eitherย Youtube,ย soundcloud,ย Apple podcastsย orย Spotify, following me onย Steemit, throwing some money into my hat onย Patreonย orย Paypal,ย purchasing some of myย sweet merchandise, buying my booksย Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstoneย andย Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what Iโm trying to do with this platform,ย click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,ย has my permissionย to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else Iโve written) in any way they like free of charge.
The president has repeatedly defended his administrationโs coronavirus response by saying that no one could have seen the pandemic coming.ย As usual, thatโs not true.ย The presidentย receivedย intelligence reports in January and February that warned him of how bad the outbreak could be:
Intelligence agencies โhave been warning on this since January,โ said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information.
โDonald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were โ they just couldnโt get him to do anything about it,โ this official said.ย โThe system was blinking red.โ
The president was told about how severe the outbreak might be, but he did not believe what he was being told.ย We have often seen how the president dismisses the findings of intelligence agencies when their reports conflict with his ignorant preconceived notions or his short-term self-interest.ย If they tell him that Iran is complying with the JCPOA, he ignores the information and insists that Iran has been cheating.ย When they tell him that Mohamed bin Salman was responsible for ordering Khashoggiโs murder, he dismisses the conclusion and helps cover up for the crown prince.ย More generally, Trump makes a habit of denying facts when they are inconvenient or embarrassing to acknowledge, and he makes things up that never happened to make it seem as if his failures are actually successes.ย He insists against all evidence that North Korea has committed to disarm because it flatters him to pretend that this happened.ย A president who is constantly at war with the truth and engaged in shameless self-promotion at every turn is not going to respond well to reports of an impending disaster, and then when the disaster strikes he will respond by misleading the public about what is happening.
Even now that the pandemic is here and spreading throughout the country, the president isย reluctant to take necessary actionsย to combat it:
President Trump and his advisers have resisted calls from congressional Democrats and a growing number of governors to use a federal law that would mobilize industry and provide badly needed resources against the coronavirus spread, days after the president said he would consider using that authority.
Mr. Trump has given conflicting signals about the Defense Production Act since he first said on Wednesday that he was prepared to invoke the law, which was passed by Congress at the outset of the Korean War and grants presidents extraordinary powers to force American industries to ensure the availability of critical equipment.
Despite Trumpโs desire to portray himself as a โwartime president,โ his response remains as dilatory as ever.ย It is not surprising that the president who has routinely invoked non-existent national security emergencies to impose tariffs or evade Congressional scrutiny on arms sales is completely useless when it comes to a real emergency.
A pandemic like this one was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen.ย There were many earlier warnings that the U.S. was ill-prepared for it.ย Just last year, the Department of Health and Human Servicesย conductedย an exercise to simulate how a pandemic might spread across the country, and their scenario was uncannily prescient:
That scenario, code-named โCrimson Contagionโ and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administrationโs Department of Health and Human Services in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
The simulationโs sobering results โ contained in a draft report dated October 2019 that has not previously been reported โ drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.
The draft report, marked โnot to be disclosed,โ laid out in stark detail repeated cases of โconfusionโ in the exercise.ย Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge.ย State officials and hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment was stockpiled or available.ย Cities and states went their own ways on school closings.
The findings of the report did not lead to any major changes or improvements to the governmentโs preparedness.ย In addition to this administrationโs specific failings, the governmentโs lack of readiness to cope with a pandemic is a systemic failure that comes from devoting too few resources and paying too little attention to a serious threat.ย There were plenty of warnings, but no one in a position to make necessary changes was taking those warnings seriously:
But the planning and thinking happened many layers down in the bureaucracy. The knowledge and sense of urgency about the peril appear never to have gotten sufficient attention at the highest level of the executive branch or from Congress, leaving the nation with funding shortfalls, equipment shortages and disorganization within and among various branches and levels of government.
The shortage of protective equipment across the country is the most obvious and alarming example of how the governmentโs unpreparedness is putting our doctors and nurses at great risk. The failure to build up a sufficient stockpile of N95 masks is an indictment of our governmentโs priorities. Our government has wasted trillions on unnecessary wars and hundreds of billions on boondoggles that serve no purpose, but somehow it could not be bothered to spend a relative pittance to ensure that there were enough respirators in the event of a pandemic. Tyler Rogowayย comments:
The defense budget for the 2020 Fiscal Year is $738 billion. Funding the larger intelligence and national security ecosystem costs many billions of dollars in addition to this sum. This is money being spent in the name of protecting the American people. For a country that can spend that type of treasure on weapons and warfighting infrastructure, it is downright astonishing that it canโt keep a stockpile of cheap respirators around, or at least guarantee the domestic production base to rapidly build more, in order to fight a pandemic that was not only far from unthinkable, it was inevitable.ย This simple fact alone should make you furious and question the priorities of the U.S. government and those who are tasked with presiding over it.
The N95 respirator is not a high-tech piece of equipment. Far from it. They are disposable masks that, when fitted and worn properly, offer a reliable barrier against a number of things, including viruses. They are considered as essential for healthcare workers who treat patients with infectious diseases that can be transmitted through droplets of bodily fluids, offering them some certainty that they themselves will not end up contracting the patientโs illness. As such, they are absolutely critical to fighting a pandemic just like the one we are experiencing.ย In other words, they are just as important to keeping the American public safe as combat aircraft or a fighting ship.
In a very real sense, essential medical equipment like this is far more important to the safety and security of Americans than this expensive military hardware. The U.S. is very good at being able to project power and inflict death and destruction on distant lands, but when it comes to investing in the most basic preparations to protect the health and lives of its own citizens at home it comes up woefully short.
Stephen Wertheim
โ@stephenwertheim
It is as if the United States has the wrong national security priorities. https://twitter.com/karenattiah/status/1241510049136218114ย โฆ
Karen Attiah
โ@KarenAttiah
Seeing the news about distilleries, fashion designers stepping up and offering to make sanitizers and masks to fight against #COVID19
But where are our *actual* weapons and defense manufacturers? Can’t the likes of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon help to manufacture medical tech?
There is no democracy in the USA. American politics is a farce of epic proportions:
By Daniel Patrick Welch
I have to start by saying that I really find it depressing and almost embarrassing to find myself back in this time frame of commenting on the quadrennial farce the Americans call an โelection process.โ It really is terrible. And what the Iowa debacle shows to the world is that there is no limit to the hypocrisy of the American consciousness or the American ruling class when it comes to accusing everyone else of having rigged elections, bad systems, not democracy etc etc.
The latest twistโof there being a neck-and-neck battle for New Hampshire, which is tomorrow (today)โis just the latest stint in this show, which is all about stopping Sanders. There is only one story in this whole election cycle, and that is stopping Sanders. The Democrat Party has been working on it not just for the last four years, but the very idea going back to at least 1980, with the Democratic Leadership Council. What they always want is just a new neoliberal with a twist. A fresh young face: Obama was the โblackโ one; Mayor Pete is the โgayโ one. And that is new and fresh enough for the Democrats as long as you never say anything about class, or actually threaten the status quo in any real way.
It is designed to create a certain narrative. Theyโre making it up out of whole cloth. โThere are no results.โ This is 2020. Everyone has a cell phone, everyone has devices. They had results. But they relied on this app that was a sort of DNC front group called โStealthโ or โShadowโ or some other creepy name. Theyโre hiding the fact that this is an oligarchy. And the way the parties pick their nomineeโnot only do they produce two virtually identical candidates. But the process is repulsive; itโs completely opaque.
The real threat (or what they perceive as a threat) is this idea of a Sanders. And Sandersโ supporters call him a โmovementโ politician. I reject that, because I donโt think that the US voting populace has enough of a developed political consciousness to spawn a movement politician. But I would say that he is a moment politician.
As terrible as he is, especially on foreign policy, he has captured this moment on all these issues that he has been working on for decades. And at a time when people are very, very angry. Trump exploited it as a sort of faux populism that was based partly on a racial, xenophobic appeal. But there is a popular anger: people are unbelievably angry in this country. They donโt yet understand imperialism, and they have been bred not to ask questions about the wider picture.
But they know when somebody tells them that the economy is doing well they look around and they say โWhat are you talking about?โ And these are normal people. The statisticians can say well, the US created 225,000 jobs in January. And some poor schmuck in the pub sharing a drink with you will say โYeah I know there are a lot of jobsโI have three of them!โ The question is why does it take 3 or 4 jobs to have the living you used to be able to have with one job.
The sad part is that Sanders is anything but an anti-imperialist, especially on foreign policy. The way he speaks about Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Russia โhe comes down full force on the wrong side of history. Itโs absolutely terrible. But, that said, he does reach into the anger in the vast majority of Americans, who are living paycheck to paycheck, who are scared about tomorrow, scared about health care, scared about the safety of their children, theyโre scared about the future of the job market. Theyโre scared about education, and costs, and money, and working all the time and not being able to retire.
And what I think is that this idea is powerful. And if allowed to continue, it would have a solid chance of beating Trump. It would beat anybody: the people united, you knowโฆ But the Democrats are determined to divide people along all lines but class, so that they keep this non discussion [in place].
And I think that even from the perspective of the leftโI mean, Iโm not a Sanders supporterโbut I think it is reasonable to try to organize on the outskirts of this moment. I think itโs silly not to engage. This is like the Superbowl; everybody is talking about it. So why not join the conversation? Itโs a chance for a thousandโfor millions of conversationsโwhere you can talk to people who ordinarily would not be able to discuss anything like this. And say โWhat do you mean? Whatโs wrong with universal health care? The whole world has universal health care.โ
Or โWhatโs wrong with universal free education? The entire developed world has this. What is wrong with questioning the idea that billionaires donโt need to be restricted in what they can say and buy and do?โ And the ability to have that [discussion] is exceedingly rare. What foreigners donโt realize is how terrible the system is in this country in terms of restricting thought. They constantly use the term โautocratโ or โauthoritarianโ to describe Iran, or Russia, or anyplace that they donโt like, and then they say itโs not democratic, itโs this or that.
Not only are there crappy non-democratic elections here, where itโs just about how much power rich people can buyโthe atmosphere here is so scared. There is no secret policeโwell of course there is, but I mean theyโre not sitting in the bar listening to your conversations. Everybody is their own censor. Itโs shocking. Foreigners are constantly shocked at the range of things that are just off the table, that you cannot discuss in American society. And because itโs kind of self imposed, or purchasedโi.e. the idea of manufactured consentโpeople think theyโre free.
So the Democratic National Committee, the Leadership Council, the GOP, the Deep State, all the powers that be, the oligarchsโare absolutely petrifiedโscared to death of these conversations taking place. But they are the key to getting rid of the US empire, of not only Trump but in the long term, beyond Trump: The Forever Wars, the permanent war machine, the oppression of black and brown people at home and abroad. All of this has to start with those conversations. And Americans are just not allowed to participate in it. So we have to fight for the very idea of talking, which is kind of strange. Wish us luck!
Daniel Patrick Welchย is a writer of political commentary and analysis. Also a singer and songwriter, he lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts with his wife. Together they run The Greenhouse School. He has traveled widely, speaks five languages and studied Russian History and Literature at Harvard University. Welch has also appeared as a guest on several TV and radio channels to speak on topics of foreign affairs and political analysis–around his day job. He can be available for interview requests as time and scheduling permit. Despite the price of being outspoken against US foreign policy and military adventurism — which can be steep in today’s circumstances — he believes firmly as did Rosa Luxemburg that “It will always be the most revolutionary act to tell the truth out loud.”
Welch wrote this article for Press TV website.
Jan 31, 2020
YouTuber Josh Pieters has revealed that he pranked far-right British commentator Katie Hopkins by flying her to Prague and presenting her with a fake award. Hopkins, who is frequently retweeted by President Trump and was recently suspended on Twitter, was awarded the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy, abbreviated as C.U.N.T. And if you think thatโs mean, just wait until you hear her hate-filled acceptance speech for the award.
The 26-year-old Pieters explained the prank in a new video on hisย YouTubeย channel, which has over 1.2 million subscribers. And it was a surprisingly large undertaking to convince Hopkins that she was getting a real award. Pieters organized flights, hotels, a dinner at the Four Seasons, and even hired actors to play members of his fake advocacy group, the Cape Town Collective For the Freedom of Speech.
Pieters, whoโs originally from South Africa but lives in the UK, set up aย fake websiteย to make his organization appear more authentic, though there are some clear hints it might be fake. The photo of the founder that appears on his website is the current leader of the Ku Klux Klan, as just one example.
Pieters flew from his home in London to Prague and set up hidden cameras to capture the prank from a number of angles before Hopkins got there. Hopkins, who has previously echoed Nazi language by tweeting about the need for a โfinal solutionโ to the problem of terrorism, never seems to understand that the YouTuberโs banquet is a joke.
โWe made Katie Hopkins fly 1,600 miles and accept a fake award and put the word โcuntโ behind her without her noticing,โ Pieters says in the video. โYou might wonder if this is a bit mean. For a moment I did too. But then she made her speech and told us what she really thought.โ
The video delivers a rapid fire assault of Hopkins saying hateful things during her acceptance speech like, โIf you call Mohammad in a school playground, 2,000 fucking kids come running and you donโt want any of them,โ and โEpileptics are all weirdos. Theyโre up there with the Asians.โ
Hopkins can also be heard repeatedly saying that Muslims are โraping their own motherโ and she also mocks Arabic names, calling them โretards.โ Hopkins can also be heard referring to 17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg as an โautistic fucking wench.โ
Interestingly, if you look closely at the video, Pieters shows one of Hopkinsโ emails from when they were setting up the trip, which includes her suggestion that the fake group meet with Dominik Tarczynski, a member of Polandโs Law and Justice Party.
โHe is more South African than many South Africans and I think an excellent contact for your group!,โ Hopkins writes.
Whoโs Tarczynski and why is he โmore South African than many South Africansโ in Hopkinsโ estimation? Heโs a far-right politician who says he doesnโt want Poland to be โtaken over by Muslims, Buddhists, or someone else,โ as he toldย Al Jazeera. Apparently, Hopkins believes that all white South Africans must be as racist as Tarczynski.
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