Michael K. Smith's Blog, page 13

Zoonotic Spillover, or Capitalist Viral Flood? The Deep Origins of Covid 19

 "This new age of plagues, like previous pandemic epochs, is directly the result of economic globalization. . . . Today, multinational capitalization has been the driver of disease evolution through the burning or logging out of tropical forests, the proliferation of factory farming, the explosive growth of slums and concomitantly of 'informal employment,' and the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to find profit in mass producing lifeline antivirals, new-generation antibiotics, and universal vaccines. 

"Forest destruction, whether by multinationals or desperate subsistence farmers, eliminates the barrier between human populations and the reclusive wild viruses endemic to birds, bats, and mammals. Factory farms and giant feedlots act as human incubators of novel viruses while appalling sanitary conditions in slums produce populations that are both densely packed and immune compromised. The inability of global capitalism to create jobs in the so-called 'developing world' means that a billion or more subsistence workers (the 'informal proletariat') lack an employer link to healthcare or the income to purchase treatment from the private sector, leaving them dependent upon collapsing public hospitals systems, if they even exist. Permanent bio-protection against new plagues, accordingly, would require more than vaccines. It would need the suppression of these 'structures of disease emergence' through revolutionary reforms in agriculture and urban living that no large capitalist or state-capitalist country would ever willingly undertake."

-------Mike Davis, The Monster Enters - Covid 19, The Avian Flu and the Plagues of Capitalism, pps. 16-18

It's Not Unvaccinated vs. Vaccinated, It's Capital vs. Community

"COVID has been a perfect illustration of how our government now works. In a crisis, it will provide benefits, but only the absolute minimum it determines necessary to protect the system from political upheaval. And then, as soon as stability is restored, it will take them away."

-------Union organizer Jack Califano

"Several lessons emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and frame our approach to planning for the next pandemic.  

"First, there are three 'partners' in this enterprise: the government, the public health establishment, and the communities.  Each partner has an important role to play in insuring that we learn these lessons and can meet the next challenge with a better chance at survival. But there is an underlying issue of excess power held by the American oligopoly and the politicians allied with them. They profit in power and wealth from the array of policies David Harvey (2019) labeled 'accumulation by dispossession.'

"Any serious examination of pandemic threat must confront the danger contained in such one-sided power. Part of the way in which the oligopoly has gained and maintained power is by undermining communities and destroying their organizations. While this is good for short-term profit, it poses an enormous threat to long-term survival. Rebuilding community power is an essential part of epidemic control." 

                    --------Pandemic Thinktank

Source: Rob Wallace, The Fault in Our SARS - COVID-19 in the Biden Era, Monthly Review, 2023, pps. 352-3 

TRANS CLASS MAJORITY DEMANDS RESPECT & PROCLAIMS PRIDE

Trans-Class Pride CelebrationPlanned

 

A spokesperson forTrans-Class-Pride said a massive parade and rally for the hundreds of millionsof working class and poor Americans who feel rich but are disrespectfully notallowed to be what they feel is planned for a weekend soon.

“ A day would be much tooshort for all our members to be able to participate and we may need a weekrather than a weekend’ said cis-working class member George Melissa Mulatto whodelivers for amazon but feels like the people he delivers to - a member of theupper middle class.

 

“We are sick, tired and fedup with being denied the American dream and forced to live the Americannightmare of the gig economy at best and street poverty at worst” said thepoorly dressed but academically rich even though only having been to college tomake deliveries and clean toilets spokesperson, whose pronouns are homeless/houseless.

 

‘When we march together wefeel stronger and at peace without seeing therapists which we cant afford orusing drugs which we cant afford either.”

 

“I have a good friend who isa woman with a penis and shim gets to use toilets of shims choosing, play onmen’s sports teams and is respectfully treated as trans female. If shim canhave their feelings acknowledged why cant we? Just because some of us have nobank accounts is no reason to deny us credit or because we are without shelterdeny us money for rent. After all, Americans spend billions on our animals andeven call them members of our families. Cant we give that much respect to themajority of us Americans who struggle to get by let alone the substantialminority of us who have no shelter and are forced to live under conditions manyof us would not tolerate for our pets. We may no more be middle class than myfriend with a penis is an actual female but we deserve at least the transrights being enjoyed by so many citizens. How about trans class Americans whoare possessed of testicles, vaginas, both or neither but nonetheless aremembers of the human race who deserve at the very least what a tiny minority ofus have: equality of transism!”

 

Congress is considering legislationto ban any public display of trans-classism unless it can be shown that alltrans classists are not inspired by Chinese or Russian or Socialist orCommunist or Catholic or Jewish or Agnostic or Atheistic propaganda and allhave testacles, vaginas, both or neither and firmly believe in the American constitutionand the right of people to spend trillions of social dollars on war, hundredsof billions on pets, while poverty, injustice and other marketable commoditiesremain available to all Americans without discrimination.

 

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Feudalism Returns

    "Everywhere you go . . . . in every town and city, the biggest, newest, most expensive and pretentious buildings are the banks: sure sign of social decay. . . . 

    "The working people live in plasterboard boxes, in fiberboard apartments, in mobile homes of tin, aluminum, and plastic; but the banks rise up in gleaming stone and glass and steel, dominating the surrounding mass of huddled hovels precisely as the medieval lord's castle brooded above his vassal village."

--------Edward Abbey, The Journey Home, 1977

1945: Alamagordo

               The Atomic Genie Escapes

Never have scientists so fervently prayed. Slumping against a wooden post, Robert Oppenheimer reminds himself not to weaken: "I must remain conscious!"

The countdown proceeds: "five . . . .. four . . . . three . . .  two . . . " Afraid it may electrocute him, the normally unflappable Sam Allison drops the microphone at the last second. At 5:29 a.m. he shouts, "Zero!" 

Interminable silence. . . . then suddenly the horizon ignites and a reddish-orange fireball infinitely brighter and ten-thousand times hotter than the sun rises majestically over the desert, turning darkness to light for hundreds of miles around. On this day, even a blind woman reports that she has seen the dawn. 

A New York Times reporter is reminded of Genesis: "Let there be light!" Physicist Isidor Rabi fears the fire will burn forever. Colleague Dick Feynman, momentarily blinded, turns away in pain. Oppenheimer recalls a line from the Bhagavad Gita: "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds!"

The boiling mushroom cloud swirls into the heavens, presaging catastrophe.

Under a curtain of radioactive fallout, jubilant scientists break into a jig on the desert floor.

 

-----Michael K. Smith, Portraits of Empire, pps. 12-13 

 

                        1945: Hiroshima

                                  A Sun Of Fire,

a violent light never before seen in the world, rises slowly, cracks the sky open, and collapses. Three days later a second sun of suns bursts over Japan. Beneath remain the cinders of two cities, a desert of rubble, tens of thousands dead and more thousands condemned to die little by little for years to come. 

The war was nearly over, Hitler and Mussolini gone, when President Harry Truman gave the order to drop atomic bombs on the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the United States it is the culmination of a national clamor for the prompt annihilation of the Yellow Peril. It is high time to finish off once and for all the imperial conceits of this arrogant Asian country, never colonized by anyone. The only good one is a dead one, says the press of these treacherous little monkeys. 

Now all doubt is dispelled. There is one great conqueror among the conquerors. The United States emerges from the war intact and more powerful than ever. It acts as if the whole world were its trophy.

      ------Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire, p. 126

WAR Is The Crime, Not How It Is Committed!

 

 

 

While the bluster aboutcluster bombs covers the subject of murder with liberal prattle about how it’scommitted, one of humanity’s oldest but ever more dangerous problems continuesas a major profit creator while adding to humanity’s losses. Hairs are splitover how skulls are shredded and bodies made unrecognizable as though its allokay if allegedly civilized people just obey “rules based societies” teachingabout how to maim, slaughter, destroy, reduce cities to wreckage and bodies topulp the proper way, in adherence to higher education taught forms of massmurder which can be performed in civilized ways, according to the teachings ofcreatures who might make lions and tigers vomit while eating their prey.

 

Rules of war are drawn up bypeople taught to think of it as some natural way of resolving difference amongpeople and the righteous way for murderous brute force to be exercised to solveproblems. The ruling war makers are people who could not play touch footballwithout their bodies breaking apart but anxious and even seemingly to the pointof being sexually gratified by creating and teaching ways to murder other humans,in great numbers, and thereby make a killing at the market. While earlier timesassured that warriors faced opponents and frequently murdered them face toface, modern “civilization” allows most to be distant observers of war, exceptfor when they are its direct victims not in long-range terms of paying a pricefor social breakdown at home but actually dying in warfare.

 

The ridiculous notion thatonly warriors suffer in wars- as though that was some excuse for individualacts of brutality always social in nature but dependent on nearly helplessparticipants under the ownership and control of ruling minorities – may havebeen true at least in part until the second world war. That historic slaughtersaw the destruction of cities and their un-informed masses in numbers to makestrong people weep if they only saw and understood them. But consciousnesscontrollers operate in far more powerful ways than ever and continue to sellthe lie that there is a moral, legal, correct way to blast human bodies apart, crushskulls and reduce humans to unrecognizable pulp and that is practiced byhumanitarian, democratic degeneracy in contrast to enemies who do the samething and are thus deemed evil, monstrous “war criminals”. This is like makingrape legal as long as rapists wear gloves!

 

The deepening mentalinstability of fading western power has Putin accused of “war crimes” by globalassassins who make him look like a pacifist by comparison to their ongoing massmurders all over the world, whether by bloody military, bloody economics orbloody politics, all the result of language murder by something calling itselfdemocracy when practiced by Americans, Europeans and their once faithfulservants from Africa, Asia, Latin America and other formerly colonizedpossessions who are becoming far less inclined to scrape and bow at the behestof fake western capitalists head quartered in the USA.

 

As the imperial power thathas dominated the world since the end of WW2 diminishes, thus offering humanitya chance at survival with global rather than simply local attempts at democracy– and these usually becoming market products available like all others to thosewith the most money – the narrow numbers in control of governments andespecially humanity destroying weapons become more desperate and dangerous. Thepresent proxy U.S. and its Nato lapdogs war in the Ukraine has seen the forcesof mass murder “donate” tens of billions of dollars in weaponry and so farindirect murder while loudly proclaiming the cause of peace, democracy andother meaningless words to cover the reality. Most of the world does notbelieve that story nor offer cooperation in the global deceit stretching fromAmerican TV studios to the killing fields in the Ukraine. Worse is thepotential provocation of a nuclear war which will quickly destroy many if notmost busily being subjected to fairy tales and myths about reality. Murder ismurder and the murder of great numbers of victims simultaneously is called war,but whether we kill one another in fits of local distemper or internationallyorganized mass murders, the weapons used and techniques employed are secondaryto the bloody crimes committed. Whether tens of thousands are stabbed, beaten,bombed, burned, they/we wind up dead. That is the organized political economicproblem, not how we are bludgeoned or drowned in blood. War is the crimegreater than any other and humanity needs to put a stop to it in a trulydemocratic action that can create real peace now and assure it for futuregenerations.

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Mass Murder Inc

 

 

Mass Murder Inc.

 

 

 

 

Early in the 20thcentury a gang of New York based American Italians and Jews, most of them theoffspring of immigrants, initiated a criminal organization called Murder Inc.They were paid to kill people, which they did for a great deal of money andbecame the stuff of criminal legends. These two groups, eastern European Jewsand southern European Italians, were overwhelmingly working class people of nocriminal intent or experience, but they encountered bigotry to such an extentthat legislation was passed limiting their numbers allowed to enter the countrywith accompanying identification of them by social leaders as humanoid scum notworthy of living in our supposed suburb of heaven. One can only imagine the screamingliberal identity group anger and booming therapy business were such to occurnow about any group of immigrants though many are still treated dreadfully.Immigrant encounters with economic hardship sometimes brings out criminalelements many find necessary to survive. But that minority descent into murderas a financial pursuit and even the Italian Mafia that followed wouldeventually seem like a corner grocery store when placed up against the incredibleglobal homicide business machine developed by the nation.

 

Sometime later in thatcentury the United States became the most tremendous mass murderer in history,beginning with the massive bloodbath of world war two and continuing up to thepresent moment. The profits available via weapons of military and political dominationenabled American capitalism to rule the world. President Eisenhower warned,upon leaving office in the 1950s, that we were in danger of being owned andoperated by a military industrial complex that would bring violence on a scalepreviously beyond imagination. Even he would be shocked at the incredible humanbutchers and war marketeers we have become.

 

The slaughters we haveconducted since the end of WW2 in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, LatinAmerica and Europe have killed millions, all in alleged pursuit of peace, loveand democracy but far more truthfully in pursuit of world domination and makingtremendous amounts of profits out of the process.

 

At present we perpetuate aproxy war in which we arm Ukrainians to kill allegedly invading Russians whoare actually defending their nation from an American armed and organizedattempt at further destruction of a competitive world power. The status of thepolice state control of public thought is approaching what might make theruling powers of old Nazi Germany blush if not vomit. Americans remain blissfullyunaware of the trillions that we spend on the mass murder business and how wehave dominated the world with violence all the while publicly extolling ourseeking of peace on earth and good will to all unless they disobey in whichcase we destroy their nations and murder their people. Slowly but surely theworld is beginning to turn away from western imperial domination emanating fromthe USA but the American public needs to catch up before we start a nuclearwar.

 

As we edge closer to economiccollapse our bi-partisan bi-polar bi-species bi-gendered bi-genital bi-human congresshas saved retired America from financial ruin by agreeing to send out socialinsecurity checks for at least a few more more months while assuring that MassMurder Inc. receives even more billions of working class tax payer dollars thanusual. We can be sure that the imperial threat to humanity will not onlycontinue but get much worse until the still remaining lap dogs of the Nato westjoin the rest of humanity and work to create a global democracy that ends thedictatorship of the minority rich capitalists and the bloodbath it conducts onhumanity and nature.

 

The American majority stillconvinced it lives in a democracy despite all material evidence indicatingthere is more evidence that Santa Claus is a disabled Polish-American gay Jewof color needs to turn off anti-social media that speaks for ruling minoritiesand begin adhering to truly majority global attempts at warning us against thethreat of nuclear war in the short term and the longer term political economicassault on nature that threatens all of humanity’s future. While we hear buzzwords about allegedly fighting what marketers have product labeled as climatechange, the problem grows more serious under market forces creating new blightson nature with supposed safer products in pursuit of the private profits thatare the roots of social destruction.

 

 According to the Institute for EuropeanEnvironmental Policy, more than half the CO2 emissions since the 18thcentury start of the industrial revolution have happened in the last 30 years!Progress? “Green” economics? Meanwhile our anti-social corporate media isassaulting the public mind with intellectual sewage claiming that Trump shouldgo to jail and thus solve all our crumbling political economic problems. Hisfollowers are all called un-educated Christian fascists by semi-educated anti-Christianfascists but both groups are seen and treated as identity groups called dumband dumber by the minority owners who pay their political and media servants tokeep them/us squabbling amongst ourselves about who is responsible for theleaking ship of state that is making the titanic look like the safest boat thatever sailed. The longer we accept the socially hemorrhaging status of our nation,which is

the logical outcome ofgenerations of leadership from Mass Murder Inc. the shorter the remaininghistory of not only the USA but the planet itself.

 

 

Given the increasingly insaneand bloody moves by what passes for leadership of something called the freeworld, at least according to its owners and their lackeys, it’s almostimpossible to overstate or underrate present fictional reality. A nationpresently engaged in a proxy war sacrificing thousands of Ukrainian and Russianlives in pursuit of further domination of Europe in keeping with its role sincethe second word war also increases its warrior position surrounding China inits alleged love and admiration for Taiwan – an actual part of China – whilebellowing about the warlike posture of the Chinese. We surround that nation, aswell as Russia, with masses of military while screeching about the threat theyrepresent to all that Americans supposedly hold dear which may be high fashionand low morals. An individual acting like this nation would be placed in astraitjacket by a health care worker or more likely shot dead by a policeofficer as that group frequently is forced into action dealing with homicidalmadness that is the most important national byproduct of Mass Murder Inc., themost incredible killing machine in the history of humanity.

 

But not to worry.Consciousness Control and Mind Management are not just cramming our heads withmental proctologist’s latest discoveries. Now we’re to be thrilled, excited,ecstatic and orgasmic over the ex-president being charged with crimes thatcould set him up to be the first president re-elected from prison while furtherdriving Americans into ever narrower identity groups that make broaderdemocracy impossible. If we continue to act as people without truly sociallives and remain subject to a homicidal thought control environment, we’llcontinue not noticing foul air on both coasts of America as a result of firesnot set by enemy invaders but by our political economy. But of course we mustprepare for the monstrous problem represented by China, a capitalist economybut run by communists and a head of state who represents the following ideas inthis quote that should strike fear into the hearts and minds of all Americanswho believe that rape is a form of love, homeless people deserve to freeze outin the cold and if you cant afford health care you should just drop dead.

 

In 2018, Chinesepremiere Xi Jinping outlined plans to create a social society of equality bythe year 2035, but warned:

 

 “We won’t get there unless we replace moneyworship with traditional morality and leave no one behind, weed out politicalcorruption, implement social justice and equitability and provide everyone withtheir own homes, good wages, a beautiful environment, safe streets, fineschools, guaranteed incomes, free health care, and enough time for art andcontemplation.”

The presentbumbling bipartisan residing at the white house called him a dictator in a breathlesslyclear example that he is as mentally as physically unbalanced and while fillingout his term seated he might also keep his mouth shut.

 

The minorityrich owners and controllers of Mass Murder Inc. cannot stand by and allow suchdreadful thinking as expressed by Xi to persevere. The world must see to it,under the leadership of freedom loving Americans, that China be stopped!

The  truly AI -Artificial Intelligence - createdAmerican foreign policy with educated leadership bearing graduate degrees inglobal homicide and doctoral degrees in universal mass murder will see to itthat China is not allowed to prevail. If we let them. And by finally performingas a truly democratic people we can join China and the rest of humanity in creatingthe material reality Xi speaks of for all humanity.

 

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Malcolm X - Happy Birthday!

He thought like a prosecutor and walked like a Prince.

As a boy he dreamed of being a lawyer, but a teacher told him it "was no realistic goal for a nigger." So he got his education in the Roxbury ghetto, the streets of Harlem, and Federal prison. Asked what his alma mater was, he once answered: "Books!"

Taught to be humble and submissive, his eyes burned defiance. Told to moderate his politics, he retorted that "an extreme illness cannot be cured by a moderate medicine," and demanded revolution "by any means necessary." Advised to imitate "responsible" civil rights leaders, he brought huge black audiences roaring to their feat icily recounting the racist brutality of which they were the constant victims.

No adversary could take him in debate. What looked like loopholes in his arguments were actually hangman's knots, noted writer James Baldwin, as his strangled critics quickly discovered when they foolishly rushed for the openings.

Accused of fomenting violence and hate, Malcolm was as gentle as a lamb with those he sought to liberate. When a young black man insisted his U.S. birth made him an American, Malcolm smiled affectionately and chided him in his softest voice:  "Now brother, if a cat has kittens in the oven, does that make them biscuits?"

 

Post-Fox Tucker Carlson Speaks, And Says Something

 "Good evening, it's Tucker Carlson. One of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country, kind and decent people, people who really care about what's true. And a bunch of hilarious people also. A lot of those, it's got to be the majority of the population, even now.  So that's heartening. The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They're completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years we won't even remember that we had them. Trust me as someone who's participated. And yet at the same time - and this is the amazing thing - the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It's been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state. That's a depressing realization, but it's not permanent. Our current orthodoxies won't last. They're brain dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone's life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so it won't. The people in charge know this, that's why they're hysterical and aggressive. They're afraid. They've given up persuasion; they're resorting to force. But it won't work. When honest people say what's true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who've been trying to silence them, shrink, and they become weaker. That's the iron law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren't many places left, but there are some, and that's enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon."

 

Source: "Tucker Carlson BREAKS SILENCE After Parting With Fox News," Rising, The Hill, April 26, 2023

Kamala Harris Speaks, And Says . . . ?

"So, I think it's very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders, for us at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist in our present. And to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history, and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future."

-------Vice President Kamala Harris, First Speech on the 2024 Campaign Trail

See "Biden Aides WORRIED Kamala Could Sink Ticket," Rising, The Hill, April 26, 2023