04 Thursday Jun 2020
Tags
Candace Owens, Critical Empirical Reason, Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Honesty Integrity Perception Reason, medieval v modern
Early in this video, Candace Owens mentions the propensity in the black community for turning criminals into heroes, and she notes that whites are not on the march for George Floyd’s (alleged) murderer Derek Chauvin.
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02 Tuesday Jun 2020
Just a note to the side: the murder of George Floyd has not been investigated. The two men knew one another as bouncers at the same club. There may have been other business between them, Whether or not, the image conveyed of Floyd’s killing involved more than white cop and black victim.
In addition, Derek Chauvin, the cop, had developed a reputation for the use of excessive force both in the club and in the police force. Whatever he did, it was enough to draw notice and reprimand but apparently not enough for taking punitive action against him.
Finally, Chauvin’s wife was Laotian or brown, so for some mere color-based racist act . . . the story just doesn’t hold up.
More likely, this guy was a bully who enjoyed dominance in his work, at least.
The court will follow through with due process in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin; however, the street and the mob have done their work like dynamite touched off by a blasting cap.
However weak the premise – a compelling image; not yet a compelling truth – the damage done cannot be recalled.
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01 Monday Jun 2020
We are sitting ducks for either external aggression or continued self-immolation.
More than 41 million Americans are jobless. In the coming weeks temporary eviction moratoriums are set to end in half of the states. One-fifth of Americans missed rent payments this month. Extra unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of July.
What is Trump’s response? Like Herbert Hoover, who in 1930 said “the worst is behind us” as thousands starved, Trump says the economy will improve and does nothing about the growing hardship. The Democratic-led House passed a $3TN relief package on 15 May. Mitch McConnell has recessed the Senate without taking action and Trump calls the bill dead on arrival.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/31/donald-trump-coronavirus-pandemic-george-floyd-minneapolis-tweets
It’s an unpleasant reminder but let’s go with it: you are looking at policeman Derek Chauvin methodically, professionally even, take a knee to the life of small time criminal George Floyd. The world would interpret this image in racial terms–just like that, we’re in South Africa when power was white and slavish labor was black.
However, these two knew one another as bouncers in the same bar. Could something else have been taking place?
Also, Floyd’s wife, now divorcing him, was not white but Asian from Laos. Might we be witnessing an expression of sadistic dominance on the part of a bouncer and cop with a track record involving the applying of excessive force?
Call that 2020 hindsight and in philosophical rather than political sense, conservative (forensic) reason.
Oh, the accusations — and each the reflection of the other!
Biden & the Socialist Far Out Left Democrats: everybody stay home (unless your importance and wealth justifies the hop to a good dinner somewhere else). We’ll shutter your business, put your employees out of their jobs, and worry about repairs later.
Sure they will.
Trump & the Fascist and Strident Far (White) Right: everybody back to work, but we’re not going to cover your losses (why should we? We’re wealthy and comfortable and take care of ourselves: what the hell happened to you? And sorry to hear it. Tough luck).
And the colored girls sing . . . .
So, white girls, black girls, transvestites, LGBTs in general and all other Americans who might wish to be as God made them — or they chose to make themselves — what has happened to muscular Christianity in the U.S.A. Is it running the show? Is it losing the show? Has it found the secular humanist design of American democracy overrated and in need of a good strong power fix? America’s fear of America’s Old Money and its Puritan and other of the nation’s Christian cultural pillars seems at times in the mix as well.
Has the Great Society failed?
Regarding Biden : China and Trump : Russia, there should be no question that each has both a posture and relationship opposite the other on China and Russia. For the skinny on Trump and Russian entanglement, one may pick up Craig Unger’s findings here: https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian/dp/152474350X . Both China and Russia have made perhaps superficial moves toward the west in recent decades but have also reverted to their civilizational souls in regard to governance, power, and pride plus vanity.
China’s Communist Totalitarianism may be linked by the American Right to the latest edition of the nation’s Far Out Left (those socialist, communist, weirdo rebels!).
It doesn’t make much sense but suits for demonizing the Left.
The Left’s case against the Far Right and President Trump’s temporarily phantom (off-stage) relationship with Russia has more meat to it in blood-and-soil (white) nationalism planted in Christian conservatism and flag waving militarism. The formula established in Russia by Putin that has had a resurgent Russian Orthodox Church (funded by alcohol and tobacco revenue) beside an active military (capable of bombing undefended Syrian hospitals to smithereens) hasn’t really worked for Russians in any broad and modern sense: the might of church and state power may serve for some superficial pride in earlier grandeur and spirit, but the same, on the whole, would seem to serve Putin and his preferred company and not general and national economic redevelopment.
A “New Nationalist” United States may work differently by way of the long-term managing of the nation’s development in ways that have been over time culturally and geographically comprehensive and inclusive. One might say the pork barrel distribution of defense and development funds worked, and as long as tax revenues recycled through the nation’s economy, people worked too — and in both civilian and defense industries and downstream enterprise.
In any case, the return to feudal political absolutism in the three superpowers is something BackChannels will have to tackle in the future. For now, the felt insult of an authoritarian handling of Americans seems to be producing both the impression of a magically-thinking Left and a boot-in-the-face American Right, neither of which seem very American at the moment.
I cannot remember a day — never! — in which American police, any, took aim at the faces — or cameras — of journalists, well marked, to inflict harm in the crowd control process.
CPJ is investigating reports of attacks and arrests in recent days in Louisville, Kentucky; Las Vegas, Nevada; Atlanta; and Washington, D.C. Journalists can consult CPJ’s safety notes for covering civil unrest for advice on how to minimize the risks of reporting on protests.
https://cpj.org/2020/05/cpj-condemns-targeting-of-journalists-covering-protests-across-the-u-s/
Related in The New York Times, May 30, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-protests-press.html
What do YOU make of it?
What’s that like, being shot at by your own fellow Americans?
This infamous event involved the Ohio National Guard and produced a national conscience and passion opposite intentions to quell protests. Unknown to the students, the Soviet Union had put $1 billion dollars into funding their anti-war efforts.
How all of the above looks today, a part of the plastering of culture-altering dramas — “The Pandemic!” — Remember that one from, like, you know, a week ago? and now “Race Riots!” How long before the Next Big Thing sweeps this latest news into dimming (and crowded) memory?
The police appear to be taking and following orders.
However, given the glimpse of the above violence shown an accredited reporter and photographer, however casually dressed, are they defending America’s Constitution — or making the first small violent motions in the process of killing it?
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28 Thursday May 2020
We wouldn’t be here sick — and sick about being sick — as well as dependent on our government for bailouts and tide-me-overs and driven apart, largely by drivel, were it not for the mediocrity of some of our most powerful politicians.
On Facebook, I just ran a series of Trump Authoritarian pieces from the Mainstream Media that also informs us about Trump’s popular — or not so popular — image. These were the URLs (in order of posting):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/28/trump-has-told-16000-lies-now-hes-trying-silence-those-who-correct-him/ – 5/28/2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/28/trump-social-media-executive-order/ – 5/28/2020
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/libel-trump-new-york-times/ – 2/27/2020
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/donald-trump-vs-the-first-amendment/ – 1/18/2017
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/26/trump-is-an-authoritarian-weakman-149573 – 3/26/2020
Like no other President in history, Trump has so inspired quintessential American passion in his own opposition that even when he strives to do the right thing and speak honestly (as I believe he has with COVID-19), he’s neither believed nor trusted. 😦
HE (Caps intentional) has brought this on himself, and we — all of us who are part of the American constituency and who have lived beneath the umbrella of our extraordinary humanist and secular Constitution all of our lives — deserve much, much better.
BC’s Note:
Of course I scan and cherry pick these pieces for whoever may be around to glimpse history as it passes from the present.
IMHO, Americans — all of US — need a new class of earnest, high-integrity, honest local and state leaders and statesmen. This bouncing between peacocks – some criminal and shady; some living between The People and the upper stratosphere of power and wealth – where does that leave us?
Today we have a Far Out Left apparently incapable of digesting and independently analyzing CDC data, and as consequence we have the hijab of health fascism with few to zero lives saved in a pandemic that largely mirrors our own popular contempt for our common fate — death is immutable — and to some extent our own health (as we drink and eat too much and stay up too late). 🙂 COVID-19 takes advantage of our vulnerabilities and, perhaps, our passivity. (Do you want to fight back for real: pay attention to diet and go jogging, and, toward the end, accept ageing and increasing frailty as part of your humanity).
Regarding too many politicians, their narcissism and related nepotism and complete loss of personal and public ethics and principles: shame on them — and shame on us for letting them get away with what they do!
The arch note has come to mind: “Democracies elect the governments they deserve.”
Is all of this — from the “Helsinki Moment” to so riven a society it seems unable to remember its own mission in the world, its sense of itself, its better expression of the western civilizational ethos — what we — all of us — have come to deserve?
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/02/united-states-of-america-basic-training/ (Timeless)
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/05/19/covid-19-enslavement-through-peonage/ – 5/19/2020
Is it too much to ask to want to walk the streets in freedom, generally good security, and some pizza money for family or self?
Thank back on feudalism and the unquestionable character of the powerful and powerfully greedy and thoughtless.
I don’t want to live “back there”.
I hope you don’t either.
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28 Thursday May 2020
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, COVID-19
I hope we understand our age and ageing, our frailties as Homo Sapiens sapiens, the dangers we pose to ourselves —
COVID-19: Two Dueling Origin Stories & Overtones
FTAC: COVID-19: On the Hijab of Health Fascists
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/05/19/covid-19-enslavement-through-peonage/ !
We have a lot of fights (coming) on our plate.
This one, “C19”, as I call it, that has so distracted and obsessed the world, needs to be handled with nonpartisan reason and some love for our fellow travelers — and some love of living unmasked, unbridled, untamed, and unchained as well.
We should have been prepared for this pandemic.
Our governments — around the world — have put hundreds of millions of dollars into consideration of CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear) Warfare — and not a few on the wrong side of it! — and should have had an expansion capability for dealing with an upsurge in illness and death. Let’s have that capacity now — and let’s move on.
Let’s save our economy and our neighbors.
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19 Tuesday May 2020
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, COVID-19
Inspiration for this post —
Well, Mary Papenfuss, this old liberal too will call the protesters Great People, for they have been long the backbone of this Great Nation, the builders in the workplace, the fixer uppers at home, the great energy and muscle that builds America and renews her every day. Start with Whitman and wind it down in the vicinity of Studs Terkel: wherefore your contempt for the hard working men and women of the United States?
I’m aware of potentials for class resentment once involving education, income, and shoe polish (perhaps) and the general demeanor and plumage of the wealthy, but who are you talking about — and to whom are you speaking — these days?
These very fine people who have worked their asses off to hold their place in America, specifically to keep a roof over their heads and their families safe, and own some part of what their labor built in freedom — or investments acquired — have suddenly been introduced to absolute power of the sort that may shutter their businesses by edict and throw employees out of their jobs without debate.
Perhaps they want their country returned to them.
My fear for America is the enslavement of Americans through peonage and the cultural, political, and spiritual degradation of ordinary Americans who may find themselves at the mercy of an economy that may not have much in store for them but addiction, crime, desperation, exhaustion, stress, and suicide.
While President Trump’s demeanor, history, and track record well reflect the interests of the most selfish among the wealthy, his intent to get America back to work (and into economic recovery) would seem agreeable even to old liberals.
Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/04/26/ftac-covid-19-on-the-hijab-of-health-fascists/
The raging public debate over statewide coronavirus lockdowns is running parallel to a series of legal battles in state capitals — and the lockdown skeptics got a big boost this week.
The decision by Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to toss Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide shelter-in-place order set off a scramble in cities across the state to impose their own local restrictions. Elsewhere, bars and restaurants shut down by the order declared themselves open for business.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/17/democratic-governors-coronavirus-lockdown-legal-challenges-261428 (5/17/2020)
President Trump told governors on a conference call Monday that he “will step in” if the federal government disagrees with state reopening plans, as he largely expressed satisfaction with how the governors are moving to lift coronavirus restrictions in their individual states, according to a report.
Trump, whose administration last month revealed guidelines for when states should begin lifting stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures meant to slow the spread of the virus, has vocally pushed for the rapid reopening of the economy. The president said in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo last week that his critics want the economy to remain shuttered until the November election, calling Democrats’ reluctance to lift the coronavirus measures “a political thing.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-tells-governors-feds-will-step-in-if-government-disagrees-with-state-reopening-plans (5/19/2020)
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23 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, COVID-19
Lopez, Clare. “Made in China.” Citizens Commission on National Security (CCNS), April 20, 2020.
Above the two stories, one representing the research of American conservatives gathered beneath the umbrella of the Citizens Commission on National Security and authored by former CIA operations officer Clare M. Lopez, the other by a shadowy anti-western publication founded in 2010 and once self-described as “an independent Moscow-based Internet journal” — which mention has since been removed (as reported by Kevin Paulsen, “Alleged Russian Operatives Spreading Fake News Sneak Back Onto Facebook”, Daily Beast, September 5, 2018). The author of the piece, M. K. Bhadrakumar, is a former diplomat of the Indian Foreign Service and has described himself as the son of a father “who was a prolific writer, author, and Marxist intellectual and thinker who introduced me at a young age to dialectics as a matchless intellectual tool to analyse the material world and decode politics” — “About Me (M. K. BHADRAKUMAR)”, Indian Punchline, n.d.
As tens of millions of Americans now struggle to make ends meet — the government’s “stimulus checks” are hardly reimbursements for car, credit, insurance, mortgage, rent costs, not to mention groceries and utility bills — the business of blame may heat at this juncture. At the core of all: ambiguous and mysterious “black labs” and “dual use” scientific research programs. While BackChannels favors the hypothesis that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it remains in deliberation. America’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) note four “patient zero” without a known locus of transmission:
Differences in the timing of introduction and early transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) across jurisdictions might explain some of the observed geographic variation. The first documented U.S. cases of COVID-19 were among travelers returning from China and their immediate household contacts (4). During the third week of February, California, Oregon, and Washington reported the first U.S. cases with no known travel to China or exposure to a person with confirmed COVID-19. Case investigations indicated community transmission in these jurisdictions. Although one case of COVID-19 with an unknown exposure was reported during the fourth week of February in Florida, other cases with unknown exposure (i.e., community transmission) were not widely reported elsewhere until early March.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). “Geographic Differences in COVID-19 Cases, Deaths, and Incidence — United States, February 12–April 7, 2020.” Weekly / April 17, 2020 / 69(15);465–471
Curious?
American conservatives, the GOP, and President Trump have pointed the cocked finger at China, and China has obliged in its reflexive totalitarian manner by silencing its internal critics and whistle blowers. Then again, and in the cooperative ways of international science and its funding, Washington itself has put money — $3.7 million — into Wuhan’s Level-4 Lab research in the same intellectual region.
BackChannels provides the links as starters not representative of its own opinion.
China’s espionage real or potential built into electronics from phones to drones.
China’s interest in “G5” and the Pentagon’s related interest in “mid-band” radio frequency control.
COVID-19, Biological Warfare, China Related with Short Reference List, BackChannels, April 2, 2020.
Lipson, Charles. “A China-U.S. Cold War?” Real Clear Politics, April 27, 2020.
Lobosco, Katie. “What the China trade deal means for American farmers.” CNN, January 15, 2020.
Wikipedia. “Chinese espionage in the United States”.
Zhan, Shing Hei, Benjamin E. Deverman, Yujia Alina Chan. “SARS-CoV-2 is well adapted for humans. What does this mean for re-emergence?” bioRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, May 2, 2020. Related: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
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13 Monday Apr 2020
Tags
Our nation really panicked and blundered on C19, a briefly alien presence for which neither our public nor private sectors were evidently ready with emergency treatment or burial facilities and services. We’re paying a high price for public (and partisan) responses to it. In defense language, “reflexive control” — I don’t want to ask whether the virus has been a blasting cap, the thing that sets off the greater explosion, but the results would seem to point that way.
Fast correspondence aids brevity.
Time to get back to work?
In 2020 hindsight, of course, the hours, days, weeks, and months should not have been lost in the first place but voluntarily as the degrees of risk became known.
We’re Americans.
Americans have been braving the Devil a long time.
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BackChannels 