Please do not delete this

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

8 minutes ago, Dano Seale said:

They're also not throwing the Uighir's into camps nor are they killing prisoners for their organs...….right?

I kind of gave up on humanity and this virus after reading how some (yes, American sorry) Teen's were arrested for going around supermarkets, purposely coughing and sneezing on all the fruit & veg', filming it and putting it on YouTube! No doubt it'll become the new "ice bucket challenge" for millions of d1ckheads the world over!

That is not just American teens but they should be arrested and put in jail.  My daughter was showing me a video of some teens also going around licking doorknobs and licking toilet seats...  These kids are just *****ing stupid and it frightens me the fate of humanity when the people with the sense are all gone and there is nothing left but these toilet seat lickers..

[Amina Sopwith]

31 minutes ago, Tarina Sewell said:

 the fkin 20 somethings who think it is cool to hashtag boomerremover and go around infecting people because they think it is their right as Americans to do what they want and to hell with the rest of the population and they want to take out as many people as they can. 

 

11 minutes ago, Dano Seale said:

I kind of gave up on humanity and this virus after reading how some (yes, American sorry) Teen's were arrested for going around supermarkets, purposely coughing and sneezing on all the fruit & veg', filming it and putting it on YouTube! 

What the actual f***. 

Horrendous as this is, I do believe they're a minority. I've been very heartened by all the activity on my local supportive Facebook and WhatsApp groups. There may be too many arsewipes out there, but there are also a lot of very kind, generous and selfless people.

[Pussycat Catnap]

3 hours ago, Dano Seale said:

They're also not throwing the Uighir's into camps nor are they killing prisoners for their organs...….right?

Two different issues. Which I made clear in my post.

For most people here, opinions on the Reds are an intellectual point of curiosity mixed with the propaganda you were raised with.

For some few of us, it's personal. I view the Reds the same way a Catholic in Ireland might see the UK or a Palestinian American would see Israel - for similar reasons.

On this one issue though - they are presently doing it right. They started with the usual communist screw up, but right now - they've got the right response to the virus.

You can learn something, even from bitter enemies.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Prokofy Neva]

On 3/20/2020 at 10:42 PM, Madelaine McMasters said:

I've mentioned this before, and I think I've linked to the page, too.

I've been following the UN World Happiness Report for years. It's a look into that thing which freedom loving Americans are guaranteed the right, but not the ability, to pursue. There's a ranking chart 2/3rd's down the following webpage. It shows overall happiness and several of the components that make up that metric. Click on the "Freedom to make life choices" column until it's in descending order. Then go find China and the US.

No freedom = 0, full freedom = 1. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

For those who're too busy to look:

• China 0.521 (33rd)
• US      0.454 (63rd)

I'm not sure what to make of that, but I find it interesting.

Er, what you make of it is that statistics and reporting to the UN in a country like China controlled by the Communist Party are cooked.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

6 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Er, what you make of it is that statistics and reporting to the UN in a country like China controlled by the Communist Party are cooked

lol.. and you think it's a lot different in, for example, the EU? .. if a local law doesn't force you we have a great back up from the EU monster waiting for you to keep you to another law with the same content ..
See the regulation, or try, from the EU to force members into a green deal that distroys more than it builds..., the wish for a EU army that cán be send to other EU contries without their consent .. total control about finances, borders, immigration ... and so on...
we'r so free that we'r locked in our own spiderweb.

[Prokofy Neva]

15 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

lol.. and you think it's a lot different in, for example, the EU? .. if a local law doesn't force you we have a great back up from the EU monster waiting for you to keep you to another law with the same content ..
See the regulation, or try, from the EU to force members into a green deal that distroys more than it builds..., the wish for a EU army that cán be send to other EU contries without their consent .. total control about finances, borders, immigration ... and so on...
we'r so free that we'r locked in our own spiderweb.

I guess you don't appreciate the value of your free press in the EU, which is available to question, correct, and independently check things like UN statistics. As for your other extreme libertarianism and hatred and suspicion of multilateral institutions -- which itself becomes a kind of totalitarianism -- no bandwidth no, sorry.

[Qie Niangao]

I'm sorry I didn't see this thread before I independently cited "The Hammer and The Dance" in another thread.

It may be that we're past the point where it can work, especially in large US population centers. As is evident in New York City, the virus has silently spread to an astonishing percentage of the population who will be getting sick and dying over the next week or so, and staying at that level of death or worse for the foreseeable future. Never mind the healthcare system, there won't be mortuary facilities to handle the volume of corpses. Given the current approach, the global loss of life will be many times larger than the Second World War.

Western democracies have to decide if we're capable of following instructions and accepting temporary impositions in our "free" lifestyle, or if we opt to cull a large percentage of our senior population.

Either way, the economy is already collapsed; if we take draconian measures now, we may get to gradually restart the economy in a couple months as is already happening in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. If on the other hand we don't accept those restrictions (or they don't work here, or it's just too late), it will likely be a year and a half before there's a vaccine and business starts to very slowly revive in most sectors of the economy. Very few businesses will survive that long without revenue. (The stock market collapse reflects the expected loss of revenue; the bond market collapse reflects the expected loss of whole businesses.)

This is not an inconvenience, it is a global catastrophe of proportions as bad or worse than a world war. The next ruling superpower will be the one who comes out ahead from this -- and so far, it's not the west. Not even close.

[Anna Nova]

12 hours ago, Tarina Sewell said:

I hate how people from other countries just lump everyone in the states into one nice neat "you all suck" pile.  You sound stupid with your remark...

You are completely missing my point.  Most Americans, like most Russians, and most Chinese, like ... (using the words for politico-national, and not racial, identification) are great, and I love them deeply, my best friend ever is an American.  But people send posts to these forums assuming everyone is American, and that we all have American values, and understand things like having a Written Constitution and rule of law.  It's a false assumption.

The 'Kentuckiy' was a reference to a Russian pronunciation of the great state's name.  It was used as a term of endearment in its context.  Actually a yearning for the speaker to go there.

I apologise profusely to anyone my post offended.

[kali Wylder]

On 3/23/2020 at 1:54 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

I guess you don't appreciate the value of your free press in the EU, which is available to question, correct, and independently check things like UN statistics. As for your other extreme libertarianism and hatred and suspicion of multilateral institutions -- which itself becomes a kind of totalitarianism -- no bandwidth no, sorry.

not sure where you live Prok, but our press isn't free anymore, it's owned by the Oligarchy that is pretending the US of A is still a democracy.

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, kali Wylder said:

not sure where you live Prok, but our press isn't free anymore, it's owned by the Oligarchy that is pretending the US of A is still a democracy.

I'm in NYC, and I simply can't take a wild statement like that seriously, especially as I work in journalism. We have an enormously diverse, wild and free media, including even "oligarch" owned. There are enormous numbers of totally scrappy independent outlets that exist either on volunteer contributions or meager subscriptions. There are Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands -- millions -- of viewers that function like media, like radio used to.

That you can write something like that lets me know that you cannot read anything except perhaps the Noam Chomsky books on your college reading list or perhaps you only read The Intercept. But if you even read just the Intercept, funded by an oligarch who used to be on the board of Linden Lab (Pierre Omidyaar), you'd grasp that your claim that we need to "pretend" USA is "still" a democracy is a wild exaggeration. 

But Good Lord on a crutch, you could at least listen to Amy Goodmann on "Democracy Now". 

[LittleMe Jewell]

The US was never a democracy.  We have always been a democratic republic.  There is a difference.

[kali Wylder]

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm in NYC, and I simply can't take a wild statement like that seriously, especially as I work in journalism. We have an enormously diverse, wild and free media, including even "oligarch" owned. There are enormous numbers of totally scrappy independent outlets that exist either on volunteer contributions or meager subscriptions. There are Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands -- millions -- of viewers that function like media, like radio used to.

That you can write something like that lets me know that you cannot read anything except perhaps the Noam Chomsky books on your college reading list or perhaps you only read The Intercept. But if you even read just the Intercept, funded by an oligarch who used to be on the board of Linden Lab (Pierre Omidyaar), you'd grasp that your claim that we need to "pretend" USA is "still" a democracy is a wild exaggeration. 

But Good Lord on a crutch, you could at least listen to Amy Goodmann on "Democracy Now". 

Oh Come now Prok, there’s no need to denigrate college students in defense of your perceptions of the free press.  I admit it. I went to college. It was over 30 years ago, but I went, and even got a BA. But I never took a survey course that included Chomsky, and I’ve never read The Intercept.

I’m very glad to hear that you think there is so much wild and free media.  But when I speak of  “The Press” I’m talking about the ones that everyone knows.  It doesn’t count as “The Press” if nobody sees it.  I am constantly searching for unbiased sources of news and they are hard to come by. 

And lets be honest, Twitter feeds are really just vanity press.

You don't really think that each person who hit follow once upon a time is still poring over every word a person tweets, do you?

[Aethelwine]

On 3/23/2020 at 8:27 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

Er, what you make of it is that statistics and reporting to the UN in a country like China controlled by the Communist Party are cooked.

 

China is 93rd in the list, how do come to the conclusion that the statistics are cooked? is that obviously too low?

[Qie Niangao]

4 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

China is 93rd in the list, how do come to the conclusion that the statistics are cooked? is that obviously too low?

It ranks better than that - and higher than the US - on the specific "Freedom to make life choices" component. China has a history of "cooking the books" on such things, but there's also a strong tendency for folks to self-report on the first time derivative of a metric, rather than the metric itself: a thing scores higher when it's improving than when its true value is already high but stagnant, or worse, slipping. So that's another possible explanation of how they'd outrank the US on some metric -- god knows China's record of "freedom" was egregious, so it doesn't have to be very good to be a whole lot better than it was.

[Alwin Alcott]

On 3/23/2020 at 9:54 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

I guess you don't appreciate the value of your free press in the EU, which is available to question, correct, and independently check things like UN statistics.

yeah.. thats why there is a special office in Brussels that measures all news and decides for us what is fake or not .. just sad it got the rules dictated by the EU commision itself, and defines all critical newspapers and organisations as misinformed unless proven wrong, and a EU organisation testing their own made rules.. of course not working.
And thats not fake news, they openly had to admit past year they did this to several respectable newspapers and channels during several years. Now they are more at the background, but only means they don't publish it .. reporting to the commission still has place.

 

[Pamela Galli]

On 3/22/2020 at 5:57 PM, Selene Gregoire said:

I'm sorry but I don't care to starve to death before dying from Covid-19. 

Not everyone has the room to store a lot of food and supplies, much less have the extra cash to do so. We have to be able to get to the grocery stores if nothing else. 

If the US does go into a full lockdown... well... if there is an afterlife, I'll see you all there. I probably should warn you, I'm going to be so angry you'll think the devil has invaded heaven. And I'm going to haunt whoever is left alive forever. 😈

Seriously? You and the ones who liked this post are under the impression that grocery and other essential stores are closed during Shelter in Place orders?  Where did you get the idea that you can’t buy food during lockdown?

Edited March 25, 2020 by Pamela Galli

[Pamela Galli]

On 3/23/2020 at 3:58 AM, Qie Niangao said:

I'm sorry I didn't see this thread before I independently cited "The Hammer and The Dance" in another thread.

It may be that we're past the point where it can work, especially in large US population centers. As is evident in New York City, the virus has silently spread to an astonishing percentage of the population who will be getting sick and dying over the next week or so, and staying at that level of death or worse for the foreseeable future. Never mind the healthcare system, there won't be mortuary facilities to handle the volume of corpses. Given the current approach, the global loss of life will be many times larger than the Second World War.

Western democracies have to decide if we're capable of following instructions and accepting temporary impositions in our "free" lifestyle, or if we opt to cull a large percentage of our senior population.

Either way, the economy is already collapsed; if we take draconian measures now, we may get to gradually restart the economy in a couple months as is already happening in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. If on the other hand we don't accept those restrictions (or they don't work here, or it's just too late), it will likely be a year and a half before there's a vaccine and business starts to very slowly revive in most sectors of the economy. Very few businesses will survive that long without revenue. (The stock market collapse reflects the expected loss of revenue; the bond market collapse reflects the expected loss of whole businesses.)

This is not an inconvenience, it is a global catastrophe of proportions as bad or worse than a world war. The next ruling superpower will be the one who comes out ahead from this -- and so far, it's not the west. Not even close.

This. All of it. I know it’s not what anyone wants to hear, but it’s what the experts say. The fact is, sheltering in place WORKS, and it’s all we have that does work, until there is a vaccine or medication. The idea that it is not an option because not everyone can conveniently store weeks of food and toilet paper is just a little myopic when the alternative is millions of deaths. 
 

If one prefers to deal with fantasy, go ahead and fill the churches at Easter like our “president” advises, or if over 60 just follow the advice of his supporters and kill yourself to save the economy. 

 

Edited March 25, 2020 by Pamela Galli

[Selene Gregoire]

3 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Seriously? You and the ones who liked this post are under the impression that grocery and other essential stores are closed during Shelter in Place orders?  Where did you get the idea that you can’t buy food during lockdown?

I never said you couldn't. I'm saying they can NOT prevent people from buying food. If they do (and yes the Repugs would, if they could get away with it) they'll have more than riots to worry about.

I swear, people neither really read what I type nor listen to the words I speak. It all goes in one ear and out the other if it even goes in one ear.

Fug it. Not worth the hassle.

[Solar Legion]

Quote

lockdown

 noun

lock·down | \ ˈläk-ˌdau̇n  \

Definition of lockdown

1: the confinement of prisoners to their cells for all or most of the day as a temporary security measure

2: an emergency measure or condition in which people are temporarily prevented from entering or leaving a restricted area or building (such as a school) during a threat of danger

Perhaps stop calling it a "lockdown" to stat with.

Stay at Home/Shelter in Place is not a lockdown.

[Pamela Galli]

3 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Perhaps stop calling it a "lockdown" to stat with.

Stay at Home/Shelter in Place is not a lockdown.

Yes it is, in this context, which anyone who pays more than glancing attention to the news is well aware of. No one in any party has ever suggested locking people in their shelters, either physically or legally, so they cannot get food, and it ridiculous to suggest otherwise. Stop it. Stop spreading any false narratives about what we are being asked to do to save millions of lives.

Disgraceful.

[Solar Legion]

2 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Yes it is, in this context, which anyone who pays more than glancing attention to the news is well aware of. No one in any party has ever suggested locking people in their shelters, either physically or legally, so they cannot get food, and it ridiculous to suggest otherwise. Stop it. Stop spreading any false narratives about what we are being asked to do to save millions of lives.

Disgraceful.

Ah yes, because chastising others for pointing out the wrong words have been slung around is going to change anything.

It is not a lockdown - period.

The only "disgraceful" bit here is that there are those who cannot be bothered to accurately describe what they mean.

Stop using the wrong words to describe what you're suggesting and perhaps more people will agree/understand.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Solar Legion

[Pamela Galli]

49 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

I never said you couldn't. I'm saying they can NOT prevent people from buying food. If they do (and yes the Repugs would, if they could get away with it) they'll have more than riots to worry about.

I swear, people neither really read what I type nor listen to the words I speak. It all goes in one ear and out the other if it even goes in one ear.

Fug it. Not worth the hassle.

That’s not what you said Selene. Not at all. We have enough people at the highest levels make stuff up, giving people reasons not to comply, we don’t need more.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Pamela Galli

[Pamela Galli]

19 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Ah yes, because chastising others for pointing out the wrong words have been slung around is going to change anything.

It is not a lockdown - period.

The only "disgraceful" bit here is that there are those who cannot be bothered to accurately describe what they mean.

Stop using the wrong words to describe what you're suggesting and perhaps more people will agree/understand.

Oh so all along what you have been objecting to us not the procedure of staying in your home except for essentials, but the terminology, which is widely used interchangeably IN THIS CONTEXT?  You don’t really have a problem with staying home, just with it not called by your preferred use? Because NO ONE has suggested that any of the terms mean preventing anyone from leaving their homes. You are trying to make people believe that is what is being proposed, while no one has done that.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Pamela Galli

[Solar Legion]

5 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Oh so all along what you have been objecting to us not the procedure of staying in your home except for essentials, but the terminology, which is widely used interchangeably IN THIS CONTEXT?  You don’t really have a problem with staying home, just with it not called by your preferred use? Because NO ONE has suggested that any of the terms mean preventing anyone from leaving their homes. You are trying to make people believe that is what is being proposed, while no one has done that.

I've outlined quite clearly what my issues/concerns have been - stop misrepresenting them.

[Pamela Galli]