Hey, It’s Not Just Corona Virus

Hey, It’s Not Just Corona Virus

By James Howard Kunstler
Lew Rockwell.com
February 29, 2020

Whatever the Democratic Party is infected with may be worse
than covid-19.

The symptoms presented point to a rare illness known as "Kuru."

By now, we all understand that diseases easily jump between
continents in this era of incessant air travel.

The National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus bulletin has this
to say about it:

Kuru is found among people from New Guinea who practiced a form
of cannibalism in which they ate the brains of dead people as part
of a funeral ritual.

This practice stopped [allegedly] in 1960, but cases of kuru were
reported for many years afterward because the disease has a long
incubation period….

Kuru causes brain and nervous system changes similar to
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease… bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), also called mad cow disease.

The main risk factor for kuru is eating human brain tissue,
which can contain the infectious particles.

Does this account for the public’s preoccupation with Zombies?

Is something deeply sinister roiling in the dark interstices
of American life?

The public still doesn’t know for sure what was going on in the
congressional SCIF chamber (Sensitive Compartmented Information
Facility) deep in the Capitol’s sub-basement back in January where
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was busy spirit-cooking impeachment
testimony.

Was something else bubbling away on his Coleman
stove down there?

Say, a fricassee of Jeffrey Epstein’s frontal lobes?

Did Nancy Pelosi come back for seconds?

Her subsequent behavior implicates acute kuru infection, the
inappropriate laughter, slurred speech, tardive dyskinesia,
paranoia.

Healthline.com reports:

The name kuru means ‘to shiver’ or ‘trembling in fear.’

The symptoms of the disease include muscle twitching
and loss of coordination.

Other symptoms include difficulty walking, involuntary movements,
behavioral and mood changes, dementia, and difficulty eating.

The latter can cause malnutrition.

Kuru has no known cure.

It’s usually fatal within one year of contraction.

See how this neatly corresponds to the 2020 campaign, nomination,
and election cycle.

That is, the symptoms will become more pronounced as the year
rolls out, culminating with a cluster of fatalities in early November.

Election fatalities, that is, and then perhaps the death of the old
party itself.

Signs and omens abound.

Note, for example, the op-ed column Thursday by New York Times
regular Gail Collins.

Take a close look at her photo.

Some analysts might simply see a pooch-faced old biddy exuding
the vapors of smuggery, but a trained diagnostician would detect
prodromes of kuru in the unnatural squint and the inappropriate
expression of mirth, considering the grave subject of the op-ed
is a high-order threat to global stability, surely no laughing
matter.

Manifestations of kuru were clearly evident in this week’s
Democratic candidates’ debate.

Joe Biden has been obviously ill for months — though I suspect he
remains in the contest solely to avoid being deposed for his money
laundering activities in Ukraine while vice-president.

Mr. Biden shocked the nation Tuesday night, declaring that roughly
half the US population, 150 million people, died as a result of gun
violence last year.

Wow, and nobody noticed?

That would be an event comparable to “the Rapture,” and yet
somehow the mainstream media missed the story — though, let’s
face it, they do miss an awful lot these days.

In another strange incident, Mr. Biden introduced himself
as a “candidate for the senate.”

Is there some law against running for two political offices
simultaneously?

Did The Washington Post check with the Delaware Board
of Elections?

Or is the former veep just hallucinating?

Judging by his utterances, Bernie Sanders appears to be another
advanced case. (Let’s be honest, he’s presented symptoms of
kuru for decades.)

This week, they were especially florid in the irrepressible
rhapsodizing over Fidel Castro and the achievements of
his regime in advancing Cuban literacy.

One wonders how many Cuban-American voters in Dade County,
Florida, read about that on their Apple news-feed.

Did Bernie’s campaign staff tell him that he didn’t need Florida
to win the election, or are they infected, too?

Advice to Bernie Bros and sundry supporters: if you attend any of
the Super Tuesday meet-and-greets for the candidate, avoid the
chopped liver canapes.

They may be somebody’s medulla oblongata.

Even Mike Bloomberg seemed to have something wrong with him,
as when he virtually bragged to a national TV audience that he paid
$50 million to “buy” the 2018 Democratic Party midterm election
victory.

There’s a sound-bite he’ll never recover from!

But my diagnostician’s eye suspects another little known
and exotic disorder: latah, defined in Wikipedia as follows:

Latah…. [A] condition in which abnormal behaviors result from
a person experiencing a sudden shock…. Latah is considered a
culture-specific startle disorder….

Similar conditions have been recorded within other cultures
and locations.

For example, there are the so-called Jumping Frenchmen of Maine,
imu among women of the Ainu people of Japan, mali-mali or silok
among Filipinos, and bat-schi among Thais.

Persons with latah make movements reminiscent of behaviors
normally peculiar to certain childhood developmental stages.

The person is unlikely to remember anything occurring during
the episode.

Having to suffer the aspersions of all those kuru sufferers lined
up against him behind their podiums, Mr. Bloomberg apparently snapped.

Washington DC is a hot zone for many poorly understood diseases
of the mind.

Perhaps the White House corona virus team can spare a few NIH
clinicians to look into these troubling matters.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/james-howard-kunstler/
hey-its-not-just-corona-virus

Wall Street Falls As Coronavirus Spreads

Wall Street Falls As Coronavirus Spreads

By Nick Beams
WSWS.org
February 26, 2020

Wall Street fell sharply for the second day in a row yesterday,
with the Dow dropping by around 1,900 points so far this week
on the back of the spread of the coronavirus.

The index fell more than 1,000 points on Monday, only the third
1,000-point drop in its history, in response to news of significant
outbreaks in Italy, Iran and South Korea and warnings from Japan
that it was on the brink of a rapid expansion in coronavirus cases.

Yesterday’s fall took place after a leading public health official
said there was the potential for “severe” disruption in the US in
the event of a large outbreak.

Nancy Messonnier, the director of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, said, “Ultimately, we expect we will see
community spread in this country. It’s not so much a question of
if this will happen any more, but rather more a question of exactly
when this will happen and how many people in this country will
be infected.”

Wall Street opened yesterday with a recovery of some of the
losses it incurred on Monday, but then started to fall rapidly.

The Dow finished down 879 points, or 3.1 percent; the S&P 500
dropped 3 percent; and the Nasdaq fell 2.8 percent.

After reaching record highs last week, the major indexes have lost
all of their gains for the year, wiping out around $2.1 trillion from
share values, with the stock market suffering its largest two-day
fall since February 2018.

The market had been sustained by the belief that the effects of
the coronavirus would rapidly pass through the economy and any
adverse consequences would be countered by the injection of still
more money into the financial system by the Fed and other major
central banks.

But there is a growing realisation that the effect of the coronavirus
may be far larger than originally thought. “The size of this
economic shock is looking increasingly large on a global scale,”
James Athey, a senior investment manager at Aberdeen Standard
Investments, told the Wall Street Journal.

One indication is the sharp sell-off of high-yield junk bonds,
particularly those issued by energy companies.

They have been hit by the fall in commodity prices and the
15 percent fall in oil since start of the year because of fears
of a slowdown in the world economy.

A pithy comment by Financial Times journalist Katie Martin
punctured the scenario of a central bank rescue operation.

“The expectation alone of monetary assistance may already be
softening the blow,” she wrote. “But anyone who can clearly
articulate how easier policy can fix an economic pullback based
on deaths, grounded flights, closed factories and ghost cities is
very welcome to get in touch.”

The virus outbreaks in Italy and South Korea are particularly
significant.

At least 10 Italian towns, located in the northern region that
accounts for around half of the country’s economic output,
have been quarantined.

The country’s financial capital, Milan, has shut down schools,
offices and tourist attractions.

Before the outbreak, the Italian economy was already struggling,
having recorded a 0.3 percent contraction in the last three months
of 2019.

It could slow further in the first three months of this year, pushing
the economy into a technical recession, defined as two consecutive
quarters of contraction, for the first time since 2008.

South Korea, one of the world’s leading manufacturing centers had
already been significantly affected by the outbreak of the virus in
China, and its spread within the country will deliver a further blow
to the economy.

Global trade is one of the channels through which the economic
effects are being spread.

Data from the CPB World Trade Monitor, reported by Bloomberg,
reveals that trade volumes contracted by 0.4 percent last year,
largely as a result of the Trump administration’s trade war
measures.

This was the first such decline since 2009 in the wake of the global
financial crisis.

The contraction is already deepening.

There are reports that container shipments from China have
“collapsed,” with almost half of planned sailings from Asia to
Northern Europe cancelled in the past four weeks—a reduction
of 300,000 container shipments per week.

The longer-term outlook for the world economy is indicated
by the bond market.

Yesterday the yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds fell to a record
intra-day low of 1.306 percent, as investors from the US and around
the world sought a safe haven.

The US yield curve has again inverted, as the return on long-term
debt falls below that in short-term markets.

An inverted yield curve is widely regarded as an indicator of
recession, because such an event has preceded every recession
in the past 50 years.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist for the Leuthold Group,
told the Financial Times the situation was “scary” and hard to
ignore. “A lot of investors have been worried for a while that the
bond market knows something that stocks don’t,” he said. “Stocks
have been foolishly rising, while bonds have been suggesting a
more sinister outcome.”

There are estimates that the Chinese economy will suffer at least
a two percent fall in growth in the first quarter—some put the
downturn even higher—as large sections of the economy either
remain in lockdown or are unable to resume production at previous
levels because of worker shortages and constrictions on transport
within the country.

If the China contraction continues Oxford Economics has estimated
that the world economy will record a reduction in global output of
around $1.1 trillion.

But the impact could be even greater as the virus spreads.

The International Monetary Fund is struggling to provide
an estimate of the effect on the global economy, saying
only that it will downgrade its forecast for growth.

In an address at the weekend to the meeting of G20 finance
ministers held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, IMF Managing Director
Kristalina Georgieva said that under the current baseline scenario,
China’s economy would return to normal in the second quarter and
“as a result the impact on the world economy would be relatively
minor and short-lived.”

It is the measure of the speed with which the economic effects of
the spread of the coronavirus are making themselves felt that in a
matter of just four days those remarks appear to be outdated.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/02/26/coro-f26.html

Mike Bloomberg Is A Russian Asset

Mike Bloomberg Is A Russian Asset

By Moon Of Alabama
Information Clearing House
February 24, 2020

A careful reading of the news provides that Mike Bloomberg,
who had two Russian grandfathers, is Putin's asset.

Consider:

Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump
- New York Times, February 20 2020

Rather than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian
operatives are working to get Americans to repeat disinformation,
the officials said.

That strategy gets around social media companies’ rules that
prohibit “inauthentic speech.”

It is Bloomberg, working as a Russian operative, who pays the trolls
that repeat disinformation.

Twitter suspends 70 pro-Bloomberg 'spam' accounts - The Hill,
February 21, 2020

The temporary employees recruited by Bloomberg’s camp are given
the title “deputy field organizer” and make $2,500 a month to
promote his White House bid among their followers.

The employees can choose to use campaign-approved language
in their posts.

Twitter said the practice violated its “Platform Manipulation and
Spam Policy,” which was established in 2019 to respond to Russia’s
expansive troll network that was tapped in 2016 to meddle in the
U.S. elections.

And this:

Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help
his presidential campaign - Washington Post, February 21 2020

In that closed hearing for the House Intelligence Committee,
lawmakers were also told that Sanders had been informed
about Russia’s interference.

The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from
Moscow appears to reflect what intelligence officials have
previously described as Russia’s broader interest in sowing division
in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American
elections.

Here are Bloomberg's behind the scene machinations which are
sowing division and uncertainty about the validity of American elections.

This is exactly what Russia wants.

Bloomberg quietly plotting brokered convention strategy
- Politico, February 20, 2020

Mike Bloomberg is privately lobbying Democratic Party officials and
donors allied with his moderate opponents to flip their allegiance to
him — and block Bernie Sanders — in the event of a brokered
national convention.

...

It’s a presumptuous play for a candidate who hasn’t yet won
a delegate or even appeared on a ballot.

And it could also bring havoc to the convention, raising the
prospect of party insiders delivering the nomination to a billionaire
over a progressive populist.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53024.htm

Dear Michael Bloomberg

Dear Michael Bloomberg

By The Last Boy In lIne
February 20, 2020

Dear Michael Bloomberg:

Sincerely,

Dear Presidents Day

Dear President Day

By The Last Boy In Line
Monday, February 17, 2020

Dear Presidents Day:

Sincerely,

A Step Towards Nuclear Doomsday

A Step Towards Nuclear Doomsday

US Puts Low-Yield Nukes on Submarines in Response to Made-up
Russian ‘Escalate to Deescalate’ Strategy

By Scott Ritter
Information Clearing House
February 14, 2020

The US has deployed “low-yield” nuclear missiles on submarines,
saying it’s to discourage nuclear conflict with Russia.

The move is based on a “Russian strategy” made up in Washington
and will only bring mass annihilation closer.

In a statement released earlier this week, US Under Secretary of
Defense for Policy John Rood announced that “the US Navy has
fielded the W76-2 low-yield submarine launched ballistic missile
(SLBM) warhead.”

This new operational capability, Rood declared, “demonstrates to
potential adversaries that there is no advantage to limited nuclear
employment because the United States can credibly and decisively
respond to any threat scenario.”

The threat underpinning justification for this new US nuclear
deterrent had its roots in testimony delivered to the House Armed
Services Committee in June 2015 by US Deputy Secretary of Defense
Robert Work, who declared that “Russian military doctrine includes
what some have called an ‘escalate to deescalate strategy’
– a strategy that purportedly seeks to deescalate a conventional
conflict through coercive threats, including limited nuclear use.”

However, any review of actual Russian nuclear doctrine
would have shown this to be a false premise.

Provision 27 of the 2014 edition of ‘Russian Military Doctrine’ states
that Russia “shall reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in
response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass
destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event
of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of
conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in
jeopardy. The decision to use nuclear weapons shall be taken by
the President of the Russian Federation.”

Russian Threat, Made In America

Despite this, the concept of ‘escalate to deescalate’ as official
Russian military doctrine had become ingrained in official
US nuclear doctrine by 2018, with the publication of the
US Defense Department’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

Moscow, the 2018 NPR claimed, “threatens and exercises limited
nuclear first use, suggesting a mistaken expectation that coercive
nuclear threats or limited first use could paralyze the United States
and NATO and thereby end a conflict on terms favorable to Russia.
Some in the United States refer to this as Russia’s ‘escalate to
deescalate’ doctrine.”

In response to this “Made In America” Russian threat, the 2018 NPR
identified a requirement to modify a number of submarine-
launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with low-yield nuclear warheads
to strengthen US nuclear deterrence by providing US military
commanders with a weapon that addresses “the conclusion that
potential adversaries, like Russia, believe that employment of low-
yield nuclear weapons will give them an advantage over the United
States and its allies and partners.”

As was the case with Robert Work’s 2015 congressional testimony,
the 2018 NPR did not provide the source for the existence of a
Russian ‘escalate to deescalate’ doctrine, except to note that it
originated in the US – not Russia.

Nonetheless, based upon the 2018 NPR, President Donald Trump
requested that the Defense Department acquire a new low-yield
nuclear warhead for the Trident SLBM, setting in motion a process
which culminated in the recent announcement that this new
warhead had reached operational capacity.

Voices Of Reason Fall On Deaf Ears

In response to President Trump’s request, a letter, signed by a
laundry list of notable American statesmen, politicians and military
officers, including former Secretary of State George Schultz, former
Secretary of Defense William Perry and the former Vice Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, General James Cartwright, was sent to the Senate
Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, stating that there was no need
for this new “low yield” warhead.

The letter furthermore noted that the premise of this warhead
— the so called ‘escalate to deescalate’ Russian doctrine — was
derived from a “false narrative” combining non-existent Russian
intent with an equally fictitious “deterrence gap” that could only
be filled by the new nuclear weapon.

This letter fell on deaf ears.

At a meeting of the Valdai Club in October 2018, Russian President
Vladimir Putin addressed the issue of Russian nuclear doctrine,
prompted by questions raised by the publication of the 2018 NPR.

“There is no provision for a pre-emptive strike in our nuclear
weapons doctrine,” Putin declared. “Our concept is based on
a reciprocal counter strike. There is no need to explain what
this is to those who understand, as for those who do not, I
would like to say it again: this means that we are prepared
and will use nuclear weapons only when we know for certain
that some potential aggressor is attacking Russia, our territory…
[o]nly when we know for certain — and this takes a few seconds
to understand — that Russia is being attacked we will deliver
a counter strike. This would be a reciprocal counter strike.
Why do I say ‘counter’? Because we will counter missiles flying
towards us by sending a missile in the direction of an aggressor.”

There’s No Such Thing As ‘Limited’ Nuke Use

In a 1982 article published in Foreign Affairs entitled ‘Nuclear
Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance’, four senior American statesmen
(McGeorge Bundy, George F. Kennan, Robert S. McNamara and
Gerard C. Smith) who had a hand in crafting US nuclear policy
declared that “No one has ever succeeded in advancing any
persuasive reason to believe that any use of nuclear weapons,
even on the smallest scale, could reliably be expected to remain
limited.”

This fact holds as true today as it did when the article was written.

Perhaps there is no better voice to emphasize this point than
Russian President Vladimir Putin, again addressing the 2018
Valdai Conference.

“Of course, [the decision to launch nuclear weapons in defense of
Russia] amounts to a global catastrophe, but I would like to repeat
that we cannot be the initiators of such a catastrophe because we
have no provision for a pre-emptive strike. Yes, it looks like we
are sitting on our hands and waiting until someone uses nuclear
weapons against us. Well, yes, this is what it is. But then any
aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable, and they will
be annihilated.”

And we as the victims of an aggression, we as martyrs would go to
paradise while they will simply perish because they won’t even
have time to repent their sins.

The Trump administration would do well to ponder these words as
they embrace the false deterrence of the new “low yield” nuclear-
armed Trident SLBM.

The fact of the matter is it deters nothing, and only invites global
annihilation.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52982.htm

We The People vs. US Elites

We The People vs. US Elites

By Finian Cunningham
Information Clearing House
February 11, 2020

The double-debacle of President Trump’s impeachment and the
Democratic Party’s presidential candidate race shows the limit
of an American article of faith: that its democracy is founded
on the principle of, “We The People”.

“We The People” is more an aspiration, even a myth,
rather than the existing reality.

The reality is that citizens’ votes are not the primary
driver of democratic rule.

The nature of ruling power is determined by the elites: the tiny
minority of ruling class that comprises super-rich political donors,
corporate executives, Wall Street banks and highly concentrated
news media.

America is not a democracy – at least not yet anyway – despite
nearly 244 years of history as a modern state.

It is a plutocracy run by an oligarchy.

Such an observation is not a radical criticism.

Former President Jimmy Carter came to the same conclusion.

So did a study conducted by researchers from the prestigious
US universities, Princeton and Northwestern.

Thus, the four-year exercise of citizens voting for president or
members of Congress is more accurately a, “Selection” not an
election.

The selection being made, largely, by the ruling elites and the
mass media controlled by a handful of corporations.

Before a candidate’s name gets on the ballot paper, there’s a huge
filtering process which whittles down the final list presented to
voters for their nominal, “X”.

Big-money donors (billions of dollars), as well as withering and
warping media coverage, usually determines who gets selected
for voters to, “Choose”.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 was
something of an upset for the usual process.

His then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was supposed to be
the winner back then, as preconceived by the US elite.

A populist insurgency against the establishment politics favouring
the outsider

Trump overturned the usual predetermined outcome.

Trump’s personal wealth also helped him ride out the selection
process which would have weeded out a financially disadvantaged
candidate.

Like him or loathe him, Trump got elected.

But ever since he took office more than three years ago, the ruling
elite has never accepted the, “Democratic Result”.

The never-ending but now defunct scandal of alleged, “Russia
Collusion” was meant to oust Trump from the White House.

That didn’t work, so the recent impeachment circus was then
invoked as the next means to eject Trump.

This constitutes in effect a, "Soft Coup" against the electoral rights
of the citizens who voted for Trump in 2016.

They dared to vote the, “Wrong Way” according to the ruling
oligarchy, which favoured Clinton.

Trump has been acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate
of impeachment charges concerning his communications with
the Ukrainian president.

Nevertheless, most of his presidency has been dominated by
relentless political and media efforts to abort his presidency
and the democratic process which managed to somehow get
him into office against the usual odds determined by the elite.

We see this same elitist selection process at work in the current
contest among Democratic candidates for their party’s 2020
presidential nomination.

The anti-war candidate Tulsi Gabbard is being denied equal media
coverage by the corporate media which prefers someone more,
“Centrist” like former Vice President Joe Biden.

Despite a strong showing in some polls, Gabbard’s supporters
accuse CNN of gagging the Hawaii congresswoman by not
permitting her participation in televised town-hall debates.

Tulsi is calling out a stitch-up by the Democratic Party leadership.

She accuses Tom Perez, the chair of the Democratic National
Convention, of, “Kowtowing to Billionaires” by not allowing
more radical contenders to have a fair crack at the presidential
nomination.

Bernie Sanders an avowed, “Socialist Candidate" is surging ahead
in the polls among ordinary Democratic Party voters due to his
policies of ending billionaire tax privileges and introducing free
education and healthcare for all citizens.

Yet, by and large, the US media are hostile to Bernie and his
policies.

CNN has even run dirty tricks to portray the 78-year-old
Vermont Senator as, “sexist” or “too old”.

This is while it gives endless favourable coverage to Joe Biden
whose mental faculties have been lacklustre or worse.

This week, Biden demeaned a female student who asked him
tough questions about why he failed to gain votes in the recent
Iowa caucuses.

Snarky Biden called her a, “Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldier”.

CNN played down his verbal abuse by saying that’s a,
“pretty normal thing to say – for Joe Biden”.

Can you imagine the hue and cry if, say, Sanders had said that?

On Bernie Sanders, CNN editorialised this week: “History suggests
Sanders is unelectable… socialism has never established a foothold
in American politics.”

It added that the, “Washington’s Elite” fear, “his budget-busting
plans for revolution will scare moderates away in November
[presidential election]. And if Sanders is nominated, Donald Trump
will delight in branding him a Fidel Castro-loving radical
antithetical to the US mainstream.”

So there you have it.

CNN and the Washington elite are deciding who voters can vote
for based on their prejudices and predilections. Not on what
voters actually want (according to various polls out there.)

Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard would make a formidable pairing
as Democratic candidates for President and Vice President.

But that assumes, “We The People” rule.

The reality, however, is that elite rule in US politics and is trying
to prevent this eminently democratic choice being made.

The irony is that the anti-democratic machinations of the
Democratic Party and the political-media establishment will
backfire big time – again – resulting in four more years of
Donald Trump.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52970.htm

Dear Impeachment

Dear Impeachment

By The Last Boy In Line
Friday, February 7, 2020

Dear Impeachment:

Sincerely,

Dear State Of The Union

Dear State Of The Union

By The Last Boy In Line
Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Dear State Of The Union:

Sincerely,