Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 66

Another shooting.

At some point, we have to hold cops accountable.  Another shooting. Here in Seattle I see BLM protestors marching on the streets downtown. Protected by cars, luckily. Again, the police union involved screams that people shouldn't make too many conclusions. We always here this if a black person (man woman or child) is involved. Seriously, if the cops shot people from Wall Street when dealing with them, I would have more sympathy for their stance "Hey we're just trigger happy AF, so what are you going to do?" But they don't and it's for a plethora of reasons. The only one that matters is that BLM and not only do we have to say it, but we have to help and try to change things. It won't be easy. 
 To that end, look at what happened in Portland. Police stood by when the right attacked. They always do this. Is it a random mistake? Unfortunately it isn't, as I reported once from a March Against Hate peaceful protest here in Seattle [1]. Why do they find it so easy not to attack the right? Because many are in league with white supremacists and want to use them to attack anti-racist protestors. Sad statement on the uphill battle we have, but there you have it. 
Meanwhile, for the evil clown show, Trump is screaming about never allowing socialism in America. In reality, he only wants it for the rich.  Edit: Also, the FBI had a report saying there was a great amount of white supremacists infiltrating the cops. But that doesn't mean that the FBI is all good (who knows? I do hope some have some sort of moral compass). Read this to understand that while we could have prepared for a pandemic we were wasting money on enemies that don't exist.

Add your thoughts when you can.




[1] Police basically attacked the entire crowd, launching flashbangs in the middle of the crowd. I looked later as what could have possibly set things off, and it was one person spraying silly string on a cop. So that violates the entire 10000+ group? Right, that makes no sense, even assuming that person wasn't an undercover cop.
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Shoot the virus in the Head.

One reason that we've failed to control the virus is because of the language and lack of imagination among many people. Partially, we're ever preparing for a post apocalyptic situation as we think, I assume, we will have a chance to remake the world in our own shitty image. But, look at the graphs here. And below:
Yeah, so I'm guessing people don't think that things have gone well or are going well since covid started. Or they sense that our institutions are so worthless that one can only assume a basic coronavirus will take down this republic (unlike most other competent countries out there). Crazy times coming up, I suppose. Be safe out there. 

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Good stuff over at Brad DeLong's Blog

 Mainly, the commentator, Graydon with the following:

Graydon said...

Logistics.

Focus on the logistics.

Russia is a petrostate, and Putin's personal security and odds of dying of his age rather than artistically depend on his control of fossil carbon revenues and ability to apply those as patronage. (Russian GDP was falling, as a long term trend, ante plaga. Not the best thing for the supreme sole autocrat.)

That sucks, because the more people look, the better the case for decarbonisation gets.

Big data sets allow statistical certainty that air pollution is in fact about twice as bad for you as previously thought; lots of "what's the mechanism?" to go, but there isn't much question about the effects. China has a BAD air pollution problem; they've also got quantified decision making about a lot of things, and given air pollution doing that much harm, decarbonizing purely for the health benefits, to stop paying the cost in sick and dead people, is worth it. That's why solar panels got cheaper quicker than expected; that's why an American administration run by someone numerate and non-evil (Warren!) would have a really good case for setting such a policy, Oil Empire or no Oil Empire.

So the petro-aligned power structures -- American, Russian, and Saudi -- have, as their core job, keeping people from noticing that AND keeping people from noticing that, hey, we're walking right up to the line on agriculture here, all these philosophical differences about how to organise society implode into nothingness if there's no reliable food supply. This is a terrible position; it's the position of weakness. But it's the position they've got. Their personal everything depends on not carbonising. (You figure that when the kids conclude that, yeah, everything is irrecoverably ruined that the oil executives are going to survive? Nah. It's going to be artistic.)

If you're in a terrible position you do stupid things.

The mammonite position is that you want all the money. You don't understand what money is -- you think it's the material love of God -- and see no reason not to steal it; the idea that money is the emergent property of an economy sufficiently complex to support a sovereign and thus a consequence of political legitimacy is entirely lost on mammonites, and theft is quick.

But! Putin is the head of the faction that got very, very rich by stealing the public infrastructure of the USSR. The total take gets estimated up to Trillion-with-T USD, and that several hundred billion of that stuck to Putin personally; that he is, in fact, significantly richer than Bezos. Observing this happen was an illuminating moment for mammonites; you don't have to steal from the proles, you can do meta-colonialism and steal the public infrastructure, and the richer the city or country, the better.

So what's happening in the UK is a mammonite takeover; the idea is to steal the entire public infrastructure and get very very rich. Putin supports that because his tier 1 goal is get all the nukes pointed at Russia to go away. (Tier 0 remains "do not die artistically".) Owning enough shares in Tories means he can get rid of the (unpopular!) sole remaining leg of the UK deterrent via exchange of favours. He can already be sure Trump won't launch; what he wants is a sufficient US collapse to mirror the post-Soviet state where the Russian nuclear deterrent was nominal, not actual. Then it's just the Force de dissuasion and the PLA he has to worry about.

In the US, the GOP is already in the habit of stealing public infrastructure (taxes; health care is one example, but fundamentally it's using the power to tax as a direct means of personal enrichment) and of viewing the federal government -- which tells them things they hate, like you can't murder people for not conforming and you have to view women as human -- as illegitimate. And they're certainly mammonite.

And old, and rich, and authoritarian; change is bad. Change decreases your relative social power, which is intolerable, and change will be in the direction of increased cosmopolitanism, which is more intolerable. White supremacy is the ghastly great god of the sunk cost fallacy, and they're not going to admit they're wrong now.

So now we get back to the stupid thing; the general peace and the general prosperity sit on the notion of the legitimacy of government and authority. Elections are how you create legitimacy. What's going on in the US is "no non-white-supremacist answer can be legitimate, and if elections don't give us white supremacy we stop having elections". What's going on in the UK is nakedly "money creates legitimacy", and incipient/not fully realised parliamentary dictatorship. What's going in in Russia is to push both of those things, because the resulting collapse in legitimacy isn't going to happen in Russia. They've had that, they haven't recovered from it, and from Putin's point of view the damage is completely desirable in the Anglosphere. (Don't ever fool yourself into believing mammonites are smart. Their core position -- that money is a thing inherent in the world -- is some serious nonsense.)

So what you've got is a willingness to trade political legitimacy -- the reason people grumble and go along with the rules -- for white supremacy on the part of a mammonite faction who are too stupid to recognise that what they're doing is deicide. Kill the legitimacy, kill the money. And who have demonstrated for generations that the only things they value are the mammonism and the white supremacy; the United States, the notions of democracy and human rights and a civilisation of laws are things they wipe their ass with. What they want is an aristocratic slave state with a very high Ginni coefficient even among the slave-holding class.

AND, because prosperity hasn't been shared since Reagan, the existing legitimacy of the public institutions does not suffice to withstand this; too many people prefer being rich to the public peace, because they think wealth better guarantees their rights. (They are not, on an observational basis, wrong; that's the problem.)

So, well, duh, there's already an awful lot of blood in the streets; being called out on that is why the cops are rioting. If you look at the excess mortality stats from homelessness and starvation, well, that might be informative in the "blood" column, too. And now we've got a complete public failure with respect to the plague. (Collapse of the old legitimacy serves Trump's faction; he's the figurehead of several men so weak they desire a king, and to get one, they need to have some other mechanism of legitimacy working than the ostensibly democratic one. Step Zero is to destroy the legitimacy of what presently exists.)

So, yes, of course there will be blood. You're looking at choice between blood and acceding to the furnace.

 

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SPD

Working on the new style. Not even sure if ya'll will enjoy it. Think of something like this & this, but with some more disjointed narratives thrown in... will it work? I'm not actually sure. If you can, give me your thoughts on those, please. Meanwhile, I'll continue to share my things elsewhere. 
Also, about Seattle, since many people here and friends from elsewhere have wondered what the hell is happening here. That the news can make it seem like everything is going to hell when it isn't (like this) but also downplay how we have actual concentration camps here in the US, well, it's not surprising that people either come up with conspiracies or are at best just reading propaganda. 
To that end, this article seems solid. And this (the infighting here in Seattle, never mind that it's GOP and Trump who are cutting budgets of police everywhere, given how they don't want to pass aid for the states). 
More?
Here:
List of complaints for the SPD. I actually know of a person, veteran, who was shot with rubber bullets for no real on (also the taking down of a medic tent etc etc). one needs to remember that the cops have a full on siege mentality and since many don't come from the city, they actually see people here as the enemy. So why do they do the job? I'm still looking for an answer. And will continue looking for it and what happened over the past few months. 
Sick times, and yet we still hav more people who think that Trump did better with the economy than Biden. Guess all that screaming like a carnival barker really does work. 


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The Right is Crying. Again.

And so it goes. Kemp is asking why the media doesn't print the good news. This, coming from the right, which, for most of this century and a good part of the last quarter of the last one, have been screaming about everything that makes them wet the bed. Oh, and they're in bed with Qanon right now. I'm guessing this is all going to get more batshit. You think the whole Obama thing made them angry? well, hold on.
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The OGs of Cancel Culture

 Well, given that Trump, and the rest of the right, are the main purveyors of Cancel Culture, seeing them be directly become hypocrites should not be a shock to anyone paying attention. But I just read this piece where the OG of cancel culture, the Puritans, take down a person and his maypole because they were sensitive snowflakes... Well, sensitive snowflakes with a militia. And that, ultimately, is the right's issue with anyone on the left trying to cancel something: how dare they do what we do best?

Your thoughts?

 

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Steve Bannon taken down by the Post Office.

Well, as you all must have heard, Steve Bannon has been arrested. By the USPS, which is quite the good news, especially given that Trump and his cronies are trying to hamstring the USPS. 
Did I mention that I should be having a short story out soon? I'll share the link as soon as I can.  I know I have told you about Al Jazeera's docs, they're really good. Check this one out. Meanwhile, be safe. 
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Cali fires: Needs MOAR Rake

Cali doesn't have the resources to fight the amount of fires they have. And, worse of all, this is because the prison population has covid. This is truly some end state capitalism shit. Covid has shown us what the republic truly was all along. Also a reason why if Biden gets voted in, it doesn't mean that we can relax. Things will have improved from previous incompetent, Trump, but you should know that is merely a tourniquet. 



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Taliban

Solid article here on the Taliban and their grievances against the States.  Now, we can argue about many things, but the overall analysis is solid. I think the OBL part (at the time of 9-11) needs more. Your thoughts?

 

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China

When it comes to China it seems that there's agreement on most sides that we should "push back on China.". Yet again I see the rich (after selling out most Americans, and I don't just mean manufacturing things in China, but failing to make sure something else was in place, and I'm talking about everything from infrastructure investment to R&D investment to Public health.. you know just make us the leader in ideas) using the foreign bogeyman as a way to get off scot-free. 
To that end this video is a good starter on the differences between the propaganda and the truth. One, that this is democracy versus communism[1] ala the US vs USSR (Cold War part 2) is touted by many people on the center left as well as the right and is more unthinking that I've grown weary of. The video discusses how we're really not a democracy (the civil rights movement and its resulting laws that expanded democracy have been beat back quite a bit over the past few decades) and are more a plutocracy that has failed its people. And China has actually helped its people. 
In fact, unlike the previous face-off between US and the USSR, we now have a plutocracy versus a meritocracy (that's the statement made in the video, I'm not sure I agree on the meritocracy part, but I will agree on the plutocracy). And we also have one that has worked for its people and another that hasn't. They also make the point that the US is more like the USSR in terms of a rigid domestic system which can't seem to do the right thing no matter what (Covid being another example). 
The video makes the case for less geopolitical rivalry and more cooperation.
I agree. 
But the video does not mention how important it is. Not just for the face-off and possible tensions that could result in nuclear war (there are no agreements right now), but for the coming crisis we will need to face together: Climate Change. 
But both sides are enjoying the chanting. Let's hope that they stop to think. 


[1] If you're going to call China's 21st century Marxism "communism", which it very much isn't. 
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