April 30: Yes. It's worse.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/30/trump-executive-order-meat-processing-workers-coronavirus
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/brazil-manaus-coronavirus-mass-graves
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/trump-claims-china-will-do-anything-to-stop-his-re-election-as-coronavirus-row-escalates

Find people to blame and hate. That was Hitler's strategy behind his holocaust of Jews. That is Trump's strategy in dealing with Latin Americans and, almost certainly, with Chinese. Does that  mean a monster war?

Almost certainly.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/us-states-ban-abortions-coronavirus-leave-women-desperate

Oh, of course. Christians believe in "Thou  Shalt not kill" - except, of course, when it's necessary. That's why, since 1945, American Christians have supported the bombing, shooting, starvation of babies, children, civilian adults Nobody knows how many have been murdered in Asia, the middle east, Africa, Latin America......  A safe guess, just for the American murders, would be in the millions. That's another feature of the hypocrisy and maniacal madness of the British/American imperialism.

Both Empires were created largely by Christians. What a rare collection of hypocrites, liars and abusers Christians are! And the more fervently  religious the greater hypocrites they are!
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/cia-pushes-back-at-trump-efforts-to-link-coronavirus-to-chinese-laboratories

Hate! That 's it. We need more hatred in this world.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-brown-scary-coronavirus-1.5548593
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/oilpach-q1-earnings-billions-1.5549867

And our Liberals and Conservatives are both going put all of us into expensive trouble on this.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/road-ahead-opinion-trevor-tombe-alberta-fiscal-reckoning-1.5546481
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2020/04/canadas-she-cession-covid-19-care-work-and-decline-service
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/cathy-crowes-blog/2020/04/fifty-days-covid-19-pandemic-and-homeless-people-are-still
________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/columnists/2020/04/terrorism-stalking-and-futility-resilience________________________________________________________

https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2020/04/crisis-brings-out-our-best-we-must-remain-vigilant
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https://rabble.ca/columnists/2020/04/its-time-repurpose-dying-retail-spaces-community-housing
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https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/coronavirus-ice-detention-soap/

In Canada, much as in the U.S., all services are designed to benefit the very rich.
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And the world's pimps.
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/planet-humans-film-moore/
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When was the last time a billionaire died of hunger or fell in a war?

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/meatpacking-coronavirus-class-war/
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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gantz-netanyahu-deal/
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/29/poll-shows-tens-millions-americans-would-avoid-covid-19-treatment-over-cost-fears
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https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-covid-19-distracts-us-now-but-hey-more-global-heating-crises-will-come/

We aren't going to solve any of our problems so long as we tolerate dumb voters and, among Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, corrupt politicians.
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/29/covid-19-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-oil/

Well, maybe. So one can hope.

But to think that the super-rich will act intelligently and with our welfare in mind??? This would be a first in human history.
____________________________________________________________
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/27/patrick-lawrence-our-latest-sinophobia-fest/
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/27/us-drove-last-years-over-1-9-trillion-in-global-military-spending/

That kind of spending means the U.S., China, Russia and Saudi Arabia cannot possibly provide for the needs of their people. 1945 should have taught us that we had to create a new world. But it didn't.

It simply encouraged our wealthy to think even more of their own greed.
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The Russia of World War One was a nation that cared only for it's aristocracy. They lived well, and often did so on the backs of a population who were, essentially slaves.

Not surprisingly, the Russian army performed badly in World War One. Then, Lenin appeared on the scene. Lenin's determination, unlike that of the leaders of the western powers was to serve the people. (Most of the western leaders had no such aims. Much like today, the British and American and Canadian governments  had no interest in the needs of ordinary people. Even now, a hundred years later, the U.S., for example, has a health service designed to benefit the very rich - and to hell with the rest.)  Lenin was, I think, the first world leader to provide that essential service. And for that we labelled him as evil.

He also, late in the war, created an army which soon had the regular Russia army
on the run. So it was that countries like Canada, pressed by their capitalist leaders, sent troops to fight Lenin's army - which pretty soundly beat them.

(Think about that. Canada sent soldiers to fight against Lenin because he wanted to bring democracy to Russia.)

Alas, Lenin died well before his time. His eventual succesor was Stalin. Now, Stalin, unlike Lenin, was no democrat. He was dictatorial and brutal ----but -----
the Russia he led into war against Hitler was far superior to anything of the czarist years.

Without Hitler's decision to invade Russia, it is doubtful we could have won World War Two.
https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/the-many-debts-we-owe-to-lenin

Despite Stalin, Lenin's leadership had made Russia a real nation of the people - something that the western world had not even tried to achieve at that point.

Incidentally, modern China. for all it's faults, is far, far superior to the brutality and horror that China suffered under the years of British rule - and superior to what it would have been if American capitalists had got control of it in the Korean War years.

I spent some time in a China that was recovering from those years of capitalist plunder. I'm astonished now to see the huge improvement in it.

(Oh, you think American capitalism would have been good for China? Get real. Take a look at American plundering and mass murder in Latin America.)

A footnote - I am not a communist. The fact is I  have a very weak understanding of what Karl Marx tried to achieve. (I've often tried to improve on it but - I don't know - I fea I'm just dumb.)

I do know that Lenin was way ahead of the rest of the world in advocating government that would benefit the people. How far he might have gone, I  have no idea. As for Stalin, I see no reason to believe that he was a communist at all. He was just a standard, off the shelf political boss - rather like most of our capitalist politicians.
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/post-pandemic-global-concerns-geopolitics-not-global-cooperation-holds-sway

Global cooperation is something that was supposed to happen after 1935. But American  capitalists weren't interested in that. Like Hitler, they wanted to rule the world.  And that makes nuclear war inevitable.
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/30/why-did-the-world-health-organization-wait-until-march-to-declare-a-global-pandemic/
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/30/a-letter-from-viet-nam-on-the-occasion-of-the-45th-anniversary-of-the-end-of-the-war/
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https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/04/30/Wildfire-Season-Virus/
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55112.htm
_________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55119.htm
_________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55113.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55117.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55114.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55115.htm
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/28/us-backed-forces-killed-twice-many-children-taliban-and-isis-did-during-1st-quarter

Of course. The U.S. has been the world's biggest killer of babies, children, civilians in general for over 75 years. And it's all done by those nice, young men
who march in parades to show off their medals.
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/28/21239663/coronavirus-presidential-daily-intelligence-briefing
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/28/federal-reserve-bond-corporations/

And many, perhaps most, of Americans stand around with their faces hanging out.
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https://truthout.org/articles/the-pandemic-hasnt-stopped-aggressive-medical-debt-collection/
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The United States has it usual political candidates - one of them a dangerously mentally ill man, the other a dangerously corrupt man. But with their training in a largely mythical notion of what American history is all about, most Americans are simply a dead loss. (So, alas, are a great many Canadians.)

Capitalism is and always has been a viciously greedy and murderous system. And evil. It's probably worse in the U.S., but it's also bad news in Canada.

And, oh, we have very little time......

April 28: Yes. This is real....

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/25/psychologist-john-gartner-trump-is-a-sexual-sadist-who-is-actively-engaging-in-sabotage/

The American people have a choice - an insane president or the other political party --- both owned by billionaires who will plunder and starve them.

Anyway, the evangelical Christians will continue to support Trump. After all, he is Jesus come back to earth for these final days. And the evangelicals will go to heaven. But you won't. You'll go to hell.

Just in case we don't go to heaven on schedule, the next president, Trump or Biden, is  very likely to revive the old idea of making Canada a part of the U.S. The U.S. has invaded over seventy countries since 1945, murdering and plundering. Don't kid yourself that Canada is an exception to American greed and murder. Canada is now already the American puppet state just as it was for Britain from the Boer War to World War Two.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden don't give a damn for the American people. And they aren't going to give a damn for  Canadians.

And no. Don't depend on Britain coming to Canada's aid.
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https://ottawacitizen.com/news/world/coronavirus-pandemic-worldwide-news-and-todays-updates-about-covid-19-2/

Gee! more than 200,000 deaths around the world. Has the world ever seen anything so terrible?

Well, actually, it has - and recently. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, it killed something like one and a half million people, just in that small country. Indeed, the U.S. since 1945 has killed so many it can't be counted. It's now pouring it's money into nuclear   weapons that will kill at least hundreds of millions, perhaps billions.

There's a warning here. This world cannot possibly survive a nuclear war - though it has prepared for one - and projections are that we are on the edge of it.

War is no longer possible. That been true since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sorry. No matter how keen we are for it, we, all of us, cannot survive it.

The most important thing we can do now for our children (and us in the short time left), is to negotiate an end to all wars.

That was true back in 1945. And we didn't do it. Instead, we launched into so many wars that I doubt whether anybody knows how many.  Almost all of the wars have been American wars. Millions have been murdered, especially in Latin America and the middle east. Canada, which once fought wars for the British now fights them for the U.S. -  as in Korea, Afghanistan, Libya. And Canada now kisses up to  the many American puppet states - as Guatemala, and Brazil.
And it dutifly criticizes  those the U.S criticizes (for it's own greed) like Venezuela.

Will Britain now fight for Canada? No way. We learned that (or should have learned it) way back as early as 1904 when Britain refused to support Canada as the U.S. took over the Alaska panhandle, land that we said was ours.

But Canadians obediently went to war for Britain in 1914 and 1939 just as it now kisses up to  the U.S.

Will the U.S. now invade Canada? Quite possibly. It wants easy access to the probably great wealth of our far north. It probably also wants the vast area of Canada for its future wars and for huge regions that are becoming habitable and capable of producing food.

In short, the U.S. will use Canada as Britain used it in three wars.

There is not the slightest chance that a nuclear war could lead to victory for anybody. But a nuclear war is what our leaders are preparing for. And it's very, very close.

(If you still find it attractive to mass murder Chinese and Muslims and Russians, think of yourselves and your own children.)
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/27/meteorologists-say-2020-on-course-to-be-hottest-year-since-records-began
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https://www.hilltimes.com/2020/04/27/covid-19-death-rates-and-arrogance/245750
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/pentagon-releases-three-ufo-videos-taken-by-us-navy-pilots
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The good friend of Canada and the U.S. in Latin America.....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/jair-bolsonaro-faces-inquiry-into-claims-of-meddling-with-police
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/trump-is-unravelling-even-his-supporters-cant-ignore-it-now

Trump is mentally ill. He always has been. Watch for some insane and extremely dangerous act(s) in his final days of power. Watch for people like Trump to see nuclear war as their way out.

And no, we will not be saved by the Democrats.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/road-ahead-opinion-trevor-tombe-alberta-fiscal-reckoning-1.5546481
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https://rabble.ca/news/2020/04/liberals-heed-some-ndp-advice-still-fund-tax-haven-abusers
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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/coronavirus-us-china-response/
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/28/no-consequences-negligence-kills-mcconnell-wants-corporate-immunity-covid-19
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/28/us-backed-forces-killed-twice-many-children-taliban-and-isis-did-during-1st-quarter

Funny. Evangelical Christians and, in fact, most Christians have been ignoring their own killing of chidren for almost 2,000 years. There must be a clause in the Bible in which Jesus said that killing children was okay.
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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/28/beginning-end-oil
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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/27/no-were-not-all-together-how-super-rich-are-cheating-america
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/27/us-drove-last-years-over-1-9-trillion-in-global-military-spending/
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https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/04/28/Alberta-Government-Ignores-Workplace-Safety-During-Pandemic/
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https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/04/24/The-Emperor-Kenneys-New-Clothes
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https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2020/04/23/Big-Oil-Leaders-Indigenous-Rights/
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-doing-same-thing-greenland-accuses-china-doing-africa/5711136

Do American super-rich want Canada? You can bet they do. And Canadian super-rich will help them.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55107.htm

George Washington was a product of the British Empire- an empire designed to plunder, an empire ruled by it's wealthy, it's upper classes. The British Empire is over. But the British upper classes  still rule the rest of the British people.

Now, the American empire is in serious trouble. Like the old British empire, the U.S. empire is still ruled by it's "aristocracy" but, like their British ancestors, the American aristocrats (who rule through elected politicians) are heading for a crash.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv-F9pxUECc

Gee. Just like the American health system which long ago broke down.
But not to worry. Those who are rich enough will be able to get their companies to pay for them.

The chaos in the U.S. is a good example of what happens when you privatize health care.
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/27/rich-a27.html
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I really don't know what to think of  this next  item. Some of it I know to be true - and some? (Well, for a start, I know that George Washington was not an anti-imperialist, but an eager imperialist. That, after all, is what his Indian wars were about.

I include it because  the world news is a little short today.
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https://thesaker.is/americas-enemy-is-england-not-russia-historically-russia-has-been-perhaps-americas-main-ally-england-remains-americas-top-enemy-just-as-during-the-american-revolution/
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https://www.voltairenet.org/article209678.html
There. Doesn't that make you feel secure?
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I really don't know what to think about today's news. The American people who live, one would think, in a world of luxury. actually live in desperate poverty while their government shovels money at the super rich. It's leading presidential candidates represent only the super rich Both lead parties based on corruption. Both are severely ill, with Trump quite insane, and Biden corrupt and stupid.

Both resemble a British government with  the same defects. And the whole world is in such a turmoil that nuclear war seems almost certain, a nuclear war that nobody can win.

Oh, a thought for the Canadian Legion. This organization made up of Canadian military veterans has consistently glorified war. If they really want to serve Canadians, they should be looking at wars more critically.

Why did Canada send Canadians to die and to kill for the U.S. in Korea, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria? Why did we send them to Haiti to fight for a viciously evil American government that wanted Haiti's elected democracy destroyed?

Surely, that isn't the sort of thing the Legionnaires had been created for. Surely, the purpose of the Legion, over drafts of beer, was not be be a cheer leaders for more wars and, in particular, for wars as evil as anything Hitler had in mind.

Alas! The truth is that the Legion has been nothing more than a cheerleader for war no matter how vicious and greedy and evil our role in it might be.
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April 25: An old, old story of human greed.

At the end of world war two, we immediately began to prepare for World War Three.

The United Nations was not created for that purpose. It was intended for the far more intelligent purpose of uniting the world to put an end to war. The whole world, in effect, would become united, with the UN assembly as it's focal point.

That made a great deal of sense. The war had not only been dreadfully murderous. It was now dominated by the most terrible weapon ever devised - the nuclear bomb. The world had to unite - and this was it's LAST chance. It would keep it's governments - whether capitalist, socialist or communist. But all would treat the UN as a sort of world government.

But not all were prepared to do that.

The U.S. effectively destroyed the UN from it's day of founding. (and it is not a coincidence that the UN location would be in New York.)

The American super rich had no intention of creating a world of peace and cooperation. They saw all this as a wonderful opportunity for the U.S. to rule the world - and it's been working on that since 1945. That's why it encouraged the creation of a European union. It would unite the west for war with - Russia. (The U.S. super rich also used this early period to take over what had been British oil fields - as in the middle east.)

Then it set up the UN for a war with North Korea. So it was that the organization intended to end war became an organization to create war as western nations, including Canada,    rushed to obey their American masters. And so it launched a war against North Korea.

Was North Korea a war mongering nation? Well, no... In fact, South Korea was very evil. It's government at the time was made up of collaborators with the Japanese occupation forces of World War Two. It was as brutal and murderous as they come. And it would remain so for many years after the Korean war. So why did the U.S. turn the United Nations into a war nation - the very thing the UN had been formed to put an end to?

It had nothing to do wiith evil North Koreans. The U.S. super rich wanted a war with China. America's puppet in China, the extremely corrupt and world champion  drug dealer that the U.S. supported, Chiang Kai Shek had been defeated by a communist revolution. The U.S. super rich wanted to attack China so they could plunder and murder all over it just as the British super rich had. And North Korea would be an excellent base for such an attack. That's why Canadians and British and French and many others died in Korea. And that's when the UN became an American tool for aggression.

And so the UN, founded to end wars, became a device to supply the American super rich with killers.    (The British, who had just lost their empire, one of the most murderous and savage in history, happily became military servants for the U.S., even as the U.S. was stealing bits and pieces of the old British Empire.

So it was that the UN, founded to end war, became a tool to create it.

And that takes us to the war we don't hear much about. We live in a world so heavily and dangerously armed that nuclear war is closer than it ever has been. Far from reducing the threat of a nuclear war that would rain tens of thousands of nuclear bombs on us, all of them more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are closer than we ever have been for this war.

And it's all to help American super-rich (and their friends in Canada and Britain and others).

We are a long way from the ideals of 1945. We're a million years from them. And we're inches from a nuclear war.
__________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/24/billionaires-coronavirus-not-in-the-same-boat
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/revealed-leader-group-peddling-bleach-cure-lobbied-trump-coronavirus

And Joe Biden is no better.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/25/coronavirus-exposed-china-history-racism-africans-guangzhou

I didn't notice this during my  time in China. But I should have. Racism runs wild in most of the world, maybe all of it.
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Like I said.....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/us-native-americans-left-out-coronavirus-data
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https://rabble.ca/news/2020/04/liberals-heed-some-ndp-advice-still-fund-tax-haven-abusers
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Wow!
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/04/new-management-now-required-aimco-restore-trust-after-4-billion
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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/coronavirus-vietnam-quarantine-mobilization/
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/25/poll-show-nearly-90-democratic-support-biden-told-hostility-medicare-all-no-longer

Will a Democrat government enact health care? I doubt it. I doubt it very much. It lives on the money it gets from billionaires.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/24/calling-us-postal-service-joke-trump-demands-four-fold-price-hike-customers-amid
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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/23/us-billionaire-wealth-surges-covid-19-pandemic-worsens

Canadian Liberals and Conservatives as well as America's Republicans and Democrats - and all going back as early as George Washington who was, get used to it, an Englishman whose values came straight from the British upper classes, - all were and are believers in the right of the very rich to rule.

In no sense were any of them fans of democracy. They believed in rule by the rich and for the rich. That's why they gave us a form of "democracy"  that had nothing democratic about it.  It was and is a system dominated by the power of the super rich. (Indeed, George Washington's constitution gave a president the right to exclude the very poor from the right to vote.)
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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/23/cuba-rescue-dont-tell-american-people
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-how-to-destroy-america-from-the-top-down/
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/24/two-mentally-challenged-candidates-to-choose-between-for-us-president/
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https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/04/23/Andre-Picard-Interview/
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-harassing-us-trump-threatens-war/5710562
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55104.htm
_________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55099.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55103.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55100.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55097.htm

And how would he react to a Muslim leader preaching to him?
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https://mondoweiss.net/2020/04/ny-times-and-washington-post-botch-coverage-of-trumps-anti-iran-saber-rattling/

Both of those papers - yes,  including the prestigious New York Times - have a long record of dishonesty. Both of them, for example, never reported the American butchery of 200,000 Guatemalans - almost all of them Christians - and including clergy and nuns.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/04/24/news/alberta-premier-calls-energy-transition-ideological-scheme
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/04/24/news/alberta-premier-calls-energy-transition-ideological-scheme
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https://theintercept.com/2020/04/22/trump-heshmat-alavi-twitter-mek/
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https://www.voltairenet.org/article209718.html
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We, in the western world, call our western world "capitalist". Well, yeah,, sort of.
In fact, capitalism is not very different from  the way we governed several thousand years ago. (In the late days of the Roman Empire, the imperial guards murdered the emperor and sold the title by auction to the wealthiest applicant. And that's very much like the way western governments rule to this day.

We call it capitalism. Okay. But a more useful title would be greed. And all of our wars have been fought to benefit our greediest citizens. George Washington fought Indian wars murdering huge numbers of men,  women and children to steal their land for greedy land owners - like George Washington. The British Empire murdered at least 400 million people who were no threat to Britain but could readily be plundered.

Both World Wars One and Two were fought by the greedy against the greedy to steal the wealth of the other side. The First World war was fought by nations in which capitalism was rapidly growing.   The various powers, therefore, fought to destroy the other side, also capitalist, and to capture their markets.

So why did Canada go to war in 1914? Canada was suckered in, starting with the Boer War,   by an appeal to its brotherhood with Britain and it's devotion to  the royal family.

And World War 2? It was the same. The capitalists of Europe and of Japan and of Canada didn't give a damn about Hitler's murder of Jews. Hitler, as he faced Russia, was their kinda guy. They were very late in changing their minds - but they did change them when it became obvious Hitler's capitalism was a threat to the capitalism of countries like Britain and France.

(This is not a criticism of the people who fought in these wars. All of them, on both sides, were convinced that they were fighting in a just cause. Our politicians, capitalists, and news media made sure of  that. - and they still do.)

Why did U.S. capitalists want to enter World War Two in Europe? It was to steal resources like the British owned oil fields of the middle east. And, if possible, to steal European plunderlands like China, Vietnam....

Over the years, Canadian, American and other capitalists have learned how to keep their money and to avoid taxes. This is made even more damaging by their ownership of many political parties (such as Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives...) This latter is also what enables capitalists to demand and get unearned billions of dollars from governments - while ordinary people starve - as is happening today.

And the great Empire of our time that may equal the ravages and brutalities of the British Empire, is the American empire -as in Latin America and the Middle East.

Are we prepared to deal with all this?


I see little sign of it.

April 23: The final days?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/europe-had-hottest-year-on-record-in-2019-new-report-shows

Don't tell this to anybody in Alberta. It annoys them.  fashion-trump-is-blaming-immigrants-for-us-problems

This is exactly why and how Hitler gained power by murdering Jews.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/23/coronavirus-unity-global-crisis-generation-x
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/23/coronavirus-fight-to-vote-us-voters
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/23/pepsi-coke-bottled-water-consumer-reports
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/iran-us-satellite-navy-boats-trump

Trump is quite right. The U.S. has built the world's most expensive military so it can attack other countries to steal their resources. So it has a right to expect those countries not to defend themselves.
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/21/millions-hang-by-a-thread-extreme-global-hunger-compounded-by-covid-19-coronavirus
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pandemic-shootings-usa-1.5541773
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid-19-quebec-april-23-1.5542121

At the beginning of coronavirus attacks in Quebec, workers at one residence for the elderly simply walked out, leaving the elderly to die of starvation. And so they did. All of them.
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This next item is a self indulgent one. I have three children in university.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-student-benefit-covid-cesb-1.5541522
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Here's a rare case of a country beating coronavirus.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1728368707842
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/04/alberta-safety-inspection-cargill-slaughterhouse-done-facetime
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https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/case-deaton-deaths-of-despair-book-review/

Capitalism is simply a variation of the old  practice of a small and privileged group using it's power to steal most of the nation's wealth - by impoverishing everybody else. That's what kings and knights and Roman armies were all about. And, in  the  western world, it may have reached it's greatest point in history.
And we let it happen. In both Canada and the U.S. we elect governments that are servants of the super rich. In both Canada and the U.S., we fight and die to serve the super rich. That's what  two world wars and Korea and Afghanistan and Vietnam and Iraq were all about. That's what the British Empire was about, and what the American Empire is about. That's what American mass murder and very cheap labour in Latin America are  about. That's why Trump wants a war with Iran. That's why the Middle East is torn apart by conflict.

Europeans came to Canada and the U.S. because Columbus showed them the way to murder the native peoples and steal their land. Hitler, alas,  was not an unusual figure in world history. He was easily matched by generations of Roman Emperors, British kings, and American presidents.

In the last 40 years or so, the share of national wealth in the hands of the super rich in Canada and the U.S. has actually multiplied.

Capitalism is not the answer to our current crisis. It's the cause of it. Until we deal with that cause, we are headed for extinction.
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https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-double-whammy-has-big-oil-staring-down-barrel-of-inexorable-decline/
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https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/04/23/new-report-finds-billionaire-wealth-still-surging-compared-median-wealth

You keep backing up, and they'll keep on punching you.
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https://www.commondreams.org/further/2020/04/21/first-do-no-harm-or-wait-maybe-just-little-if-its-good-our-ratings

Donald Trump is a very stupid man. He's also a liar. (take a look at some of his press conferences on youtube.)
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/22/humanity-must-tackle-two-crises-once-says-greta-thunberg-climate-and-covid-19-50th

She's only a young girl? Hey! She has more brains, honesty and integrity than Donald Trump and most of the U.S. congress.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/22/coronavirus-crisis-makes-clear-pentagon-should-get-no-more-money-year-its-wasteful

The enourmous spending on weapons is the major reason why the super-rich are getting wealthier while more Americans starve. Not only does  the U.S. spend at a world-record rate for its weapons, it also spends so the very rich can sell weapons to countries all over the world. Canada, too, plays this game.
Why do Americans (and Canadians) pour all this money on their super-rich? Nobody has attacked Canada since the U.S. did after its civil war. And the U.S.?
Far from being under constant attack, the U.S. is the one that's been attacking others almost every year since the British landed at Plymouth Rock.
________________________________________________________________
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-how-to-destroy-america-from-the-top-down/
_________________________________________________________________
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-how-to-destroy-america-from-the-top-down/

Don't believe most of your news media. Most of them were founded, going back about 150 years, by the super-rich of the time who used them as propaganda.
And that is still true of most of the major ones in Canada and the U.S.

For an example of the real stinkers, check out Canada's The Moncton Times and Transcript - or any newspaper associated with Conrad Black.
________________________________________________________________
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-how-to-destroy-america-from-the-top-down/

Yes. It's quite likely that Trump will destroy (and privatize) the U.S. postal service. It will be just like the U.S. privatization of health care. It will become much more expensive so it can produce bigger profits for it's new, capitalist owners.
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/earth-day
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Hey! If we can't trust our American friends, who can we trust?

https://www.globalresearch.ca/reflecting-on-canadas-sovereignty-americas-plan-to-annex-and-invade-canada/5341097

It's true. The U.S. has been invading us since the days of New France. The most recent invasions came just after the U.S. civil war. The most recent openly threatened invasion was 1904. And the planning in the 1920s and 30s was quite genuine.

The U.S. has happily invaded all over the Americas, dooming millions in Latin America to poverty and to short and miserable lives. Capitalism kills whenever it can.

Will the U.S. attack Canada again? You can bet on it.
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-harassing-us-trump-threatens-war/5710562
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55095.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55089.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55090.htm
_________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55096.htm
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https://truthout.org/articles/it-took-a-pandemic-for-the-us-to-have-its-first-march-since-2002-without-a-school-shooting/
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https://theintercept.com/2020/04/22/coronavirus-and-the-radical-religious-rights-bumbling-messiah/

The evangelicals who support Trump are people who are interested only in themselves. In their bizarre brand of Christianity, the whole point of living is to get into heaven. To them, that is what faith is all about - and it is all that faith is about. And they support Trump not just because he agrees with them but because he has come from God (perhaps is God) to destroy this evil world with only them, no others, being saved for heaven.

(What will happen to all those who wrongly have been going to heaven for thousands of years? (I don't know. Presumably they will be reassigned to hell.)

I have been to many of their services. These are people who are not playing with a full deck.
________________________________________________________________

April 20/04: 75 years After World War 2...

......we have created 75 years of the world that Hitler failed to achieve.
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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/alberta-canadas-tar-sands-is-growing-but-indigenous-people-fight-back/

https://globalnews.ca/news/6832608/coronavirus-trudeau-alberta-bc-saskatchewan-energy-industry-orphan-well-cleanup/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-orphan-wells-cleanup-bill-12-1.5528257

Some of our news media are gushing about how a clean-up of a few oil wells full of destructive and poisonous water will create of vast paradise of clean water that will attract visitors from all over the world.

Yeah, sure.

What will really happen is that one of the oil companies that created this horror will get the government contract to do the cleanup. It will also do what it has always done, to demand a contract that sets up a huge payment to company executives and stockholders for being so generous as to  accept the contract. It will also, as always, demand more money and concessions along the way.

This contract should be hanled to an agency created by by the Canadian government, not by an oil company which is going to demand very high profits for doing the job and which, as usual, is going to require even more of our money along the way.

Trudeau is setting up all of us to get ripped off by a greedy private company. Meanwhile, the existing companies will continue, as always, to demand ever more money from Ottawa and Alberta. Watch for Canada's Irving Oil to come up with even more demands. And watch for Ottawa to grant them.

We are all going to be hurt and hurt badly by this. That is the long history of the world's oil industries. Their billionaire owners have plundered, impoverished, sickened and murdered all over the world.

And Mr. Trudeau is going to shake hands with them. Our enemies are and always have been the Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. I hope the NDP will oppose all this - but I fear it won't.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/global-hunger-could-be-next-big-impact-of-coronavirus-pandemic
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/21/south-dakota-covid-19-coronavirus-freedom
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Then there's Bolsonaro of Brazil, the dictator that American and Canadian governments never criticize.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/20/jair-bolsonaro-dictatorship-rally-protest-brazil-president-denounced

(In fairness, the U.S. is too busy starving Latin American children to death. And Trudeau just does what Trump tells him to do.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/20/jair-bolsonaro-dictatorship-rally-protest-brazil-president-denounced
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/who-coronavirus-origin-1.5539401

So much for Trump's often stated belief that China created coronovirus.
_________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/columnists/2020/04/rejecting-death-instinct-pandemic-age
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https://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/talking-radical-radio/2020/04/covid-19-shines-light-relationship-between-work-and
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2020/04/how-do-we-pay-pandemic-debt-tax-rich
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https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/coronavirus-argentina-humane-response-to-covid-19-look-like/
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https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-beleaguered-fauci-must-stay-steer-trump-away-from-covid-19-cliff
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https://www.thetelegram.com/opinion/local-perspectives/gwynne-dyer-covid-19-lives-vs-livelihoods-439112/
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/21/covid-19-trump-weaponizing-virus-by-intensifying-sanctions-on-iran-venezuela/
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/20/climate-change-worsening-historic-drought-in-western-us-rivaling-worst-in-1200-years/
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/u-s-oil-market-crashes-hundreds-of-u-s-oil-companies-could-go-bankrupt

Weep not for the super rich. I was born a very working class kid of the dirty thirties. As we lived in vile poverty, we also wept for the billionaires who were jumping out of windows on Wall St. Only years later did I learn that any such jumping was extremely rare - if it happened at all. The billionaires then - much like those of today - had their money hidden in overseas bank accounts. Families like the liquor smuggling Bronfmans could still build a stunning mansion in Montreal's most expensive district.

That's even  truer today as big money now legally escapes paying taxes the rest of us have to pay. (nor did the slum housing where I lived have windows high enough to jump out of.)  Funny thing, though. In 1939, there was no lack of money to hand out jobs in the military and to spend billions on factories that made weapons.

It's also been that way. While the kings and aristocracy of England lived in comfort and wealth, most of the population barely survived. In Ancient Rome, the very wealthy lived in luxury. The rest were so poor they didn't even get the final ceremonies of death. Their bodies, by the thousands, were simply thrown into great pits much as we use garbage dumps.

To keep the population quiet, the rich entertained them with free games of murder in the  Coliseum.

We're a lot like that. And our rich would happily let us starve just as they did in the dirty thirties.
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-the-church-debate

In the U.S., there is a growing movement arguing against staying home, saying it is a right for Americans to go out and to go anywhere they want to at any time. They refuse to accept a lockdown. Yes. They believe it is a sacred right to spread disease.  Donald Trump fully supports them.
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/who-and-china-a-case-of-geo-political-misdirection-whos-at-fault
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-blames-china-his-own-failings/5710331
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55078.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55076.htm
The U.S. has surely become the world's wackiest country.
_________________________________________________________________
https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/20/protest-showdowns-coronavirus-guns-block-traffic-pennsylvania-kansas-city/
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/04/21/opinion/canadas-murky-bailout-deal-oil-and-gas-will-cost-us-all
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/04/17/news/david-suzuki-applying-covid-19s-lessons-climate-change
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/02/12/features/noam-chomsky-couple-generations-organized-human-society-may-not-survive-has-be
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/24/news/covid-19-crisis-tells-world-what-indigenous-peoples-have-been-saying-thousands-year
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https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-inaction-on-the-covid-19-crisis-seems-more-deliberate-each-day/
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https://truthout.org/articles/declaring-war-on-a-virus-ignores-the-neoliberal-policies-that-put-us-here/
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I just read a book. Bad idea. Books make one think. And thinking is depressing.
The book, on it's own, is really quite good. It's "Out of  the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. " It's by George Monbiot, published in London and Brooklyn. The website is versobooks.com

Monbiot looks at the politics of our modern world - and sees dreadful failure. Most people have no clear idea of what they are voting for, and we have in general become horribly destructive.

It's not an easy read. Monbiot sees the world using a complex of many scholarly disciplines, traces the impact of what they have accomplished and can accomplish - and sees this world now has become monstrouly destructive and operating beyond any control.

That got me thinking of where we are, where we're going, and where this is taking us.

Let's take the example of Canada's oil fields in Alberta. They have been highly profitable for a tiny group of the super wealthy. But it is now becoming obvious that they are also highly destructive for all of us.

Oil made Alberta a wealthy province. But tapping that wealth is all the oil barons care about. As the oil plays out - well - they simply move out and on - and, of course, taking all the money with them. And that leaves us with the tremendous bill to clean up abandoned wells. Alberta needed a system which the people of Alberta could control. Now, the people of Alberta - and Canada - face a monster challenge.They have to clean up the poisonous lands that were oil fields.

Drilling for oil was an act of destruction. Not cleaning it will make much of Alberta dangerous and poisonous. And at best, the cleaning of that poison will take centuries, and many, many billions, even trillions of dollars.

The practice of capitalism has always been to make money - nothing else. It comes. It destroys. The local people, for a time, have decent-paying jobs (maybe). Then, suddenly, they have nothing - and will have nothing for centuries. Capitalism's whole purpose is to produce wealth for the capitalists. And if the source comes to an end, capitalism moves on. And we are left with the rubble and filth and decay.

This is true for oil all over the world - Canada, U.S., Russia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia.... It's also true for mining all over the world. When a mine no longer produces profits, capitalists move on, leaving the people of the nation poor and in great, great danger from filth and pollution and collapsing soil and rock. Meanwhile, the local agriculture is ruined. Indeed, the world we live in is daily being destroyed   with many countries that were once productive now going hungry.

Oh, and add to all that the destruction, especially of food that our world will face as climate change is happening.

All over this world rising water levels are already destroying agricultural land as our tampering  (and the even greater tampering) of nature is melting the ice which will destroy millions of us.

In George Monbiot's careful analysis we have very little time to deal with all this.
He does not suggest a move to socialism. (or to capitalism.) He sees a need to bring politics down to a society made up of social and community groups, acting out of mutual concerns and interests.

I won't pretend that I understand how all this would work. (I have never lived in such a society.) But Monbiot is making me think. and that, I hope, is a good start.
___________________________________________________________

The code of capitalism is to take as much as it can - then to get out, leaving destruction and poverty and misery. We have, for a long time, accepted an economic system that destroys us.

Take a look at the world since 1945. Does it strike you as a place of progress and participation? Do you think that the U.S. political chaos (or the Canadian one) is a road to a better future - or to a future at all?
________________________________________________________________

Oh, the U.S. is now blaming migrants (like the ones from Latin America) for the trouble the U.S. is facing. Let's think. Who else blamed a group in order to stir up hatreds?

Oh. Of course. That would be Adolph Hitler who murdered millions of Jews.

And, like Hitler, Trump is using this for the great dream of almost every president in U.S. history - to conquer and rule the whole world. Sigh Heil, America.
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April 18: Back in the saddle again....

An interesting development is the way so many world leaders are dumping on China, blaming it for the slowness in dealing with the spread of coronavirus.
I really don't know whether China did a good job or a bad one - but I do know that most of the major powers have done lousy jobs, despite having known about
the Chinese crisis from the start - and doing nothing whatever about it. Trump and Britain's prime minister know all about it from the start - and did nothing. In fact, even as Americans began to die, Trump insisted nothing was happening. He's still sitting on the fence - pretending it could be over any minute.

One of the worst offenders is Bolsanaro of Brazil who seems to be deliberately leading his people into the worst disaster in the world. (He insists the whole crisis is a fake.) And, in everything, Bolsonaro has had the complete support of Canada and the U.S.

Also remarkable is a series of Trump press conferences on youtube. Unlike traditional presidential press conferences, these are daily; they are commonly extremely long (up to three or four hours so that one wonders when Trump can find the time to be president.) And they are presidential hate speeches on the part of Trump who constantly attacks the reporters as being fake news journalists and liars. He also uses the time to blame everybody except himself for the clumsy handling of coronavirus. And the greatest blame always goes to those he can make American hate - countries like China that he actually threatens with war.
In effect, these are election campaign speeches - of the sort that appeal to American hatreds.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/world-health-organization-why-has-trump-suspended-funding
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-americans-protest-stay-at-home#maincontent

Some people are not very bright.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/us-aid-palestinians-coronavirus-trump-cut
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https://environmentaldefence.ca/report/the-elephant-in-the-room-canadas-fossil-fuel-subsidies/

I found surprisingly little news at the site for the CBC. In particular, I was astonished at the lack of mention of a gift of 2.7 billion dollars for Canada's oil industry. Why is there such a gift? It's because Canada's oil industry is dying. A result of this is the pollution of large areas of oil fields that have to be cleaned up to 'unpoison' the land.  But wait.......
Why are us tax payers being hit with the bill? It's the oil companies that caused that damage. So why to we have to pay for it?

And, since we do have to pay for it, why are we handing over our money to oil companies? And how much of that money, our money, is going to end up in the pockets of oil bosses?

In fact, we have been throwing money at the oil bosses for decades. Why? The reality is that this gift of 1.7 billion is just spare change as some estimates are that cleaning up the oil fields is going to cost many years - indeed, some estimates count it in hundreds of years.

We have also promised the oil bosses many , many billions so they can have a new pipeline. Aren't corporations supposed to build their own facilities? And this is an industry which has a very short term future - so much of the cost of a new pipeline is simply a waste of billions - of OUR billions. Why are making a gift of this to oil billionaires?

And why is CBC not telling us about this?

Get used to it. Canada's Liberals and Conservatives are corrupt - and always have been.
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/04/ucp-and-tzeporah-berman-both-praise-justin-trudeaus-oilpatch
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/pulpit-and-politics/2020/04/covid-19-exposes-gaps-profit-driven-long-term-care
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/brent-patterson/2020/04/canada-pension-plan-making-killing-war-production
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https://rabble.ca/columnists/2020/04/we-shouldnt-have-endure-covid-19-plus-trumps-ravings

Get a look at those Trump press conferences on Youtube. This is a very, very sick man.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/coronavirus-argentina-humane-response-to-covid-19-look-like/
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https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-testing-and-tracking-abilities-will-be-keys-to-reopening-economies
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/19/warren-says-backing-protests-trump-trying-turn-health-crisis-political-rally-himself

Too true.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/17/us-knew-report-says-american-intel-threat-coronavirus-was-shared-israel-and-nato
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/17/billionaire-backed-human-rights-watch-lobbies-for-lethal-us-sanctions-on-leftist-govts-as-covid-rages/
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This next item can be a little confusing. Roughly, researchers at Stanford university say that the death rate of coronovirus in the U.S. is not nearly so great as one might think from looking at the official figures because those figures greatly underestimate the total number of those who have contracted the illness.

The theme is an attack on researchers at MIT who are really puppets for wealthy Americans.  I think the general statement that researchers at Stanford are more honest than thost at MIT is true.
But I'm not sure what difference this makes.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/mit-tech-review-smears-study-proving-covid-19-overhyped/5710088
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-bashing-bipartisan-us-obsession/5710076
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/intensifying-sanctions-iran-venezuela-trump-weaponizing-coronavirus/5709831
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-the-unspoken-truth-the-most-serious-global-crisis-in-modern-history/5709304
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We have allowed the super wealthy to gain so much power that they become our governments. Actually, this goes back quite a while. It was very true of Britain in it's imperial days - which is why most British of the time lived in squalor and poverty while the super rich ran the country.

And we're watching this sort of thing in the U.S today when the super rich have more power than American governments do.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/bill-gates-and-the-depopulation-agenda-robert-f-kennedy-junior-calls-for-an-investigation/5710021
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55075.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55071.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55074.htm
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And ----not entirely true but true enough.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55073.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55060.htm
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https://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-worst-megadrought-in-centuries-emerging-in-u-s-scientists-warn-1.8770656

Haaretz is an Israeli paper always worth reading.
Will our governments take action to deal with this threat? Not likely. They haven't dealt with any of the others.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55061.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55059.htm
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Democrats and Republicans, like Canada's Liberals and Conservatives, just love giving enormous stacks of our money to the very wealthy.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/16/43k-us-millionaires-will-get-stimulus-averaging-1-6m-each/

Bastards.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/04/17/news/trudeau-pumps-17-billion-cleaning-orphan-and-inactive-wells

Yep. You and me and our children for thousands of years to come will be paying the cost of cleaning (and danger) of cleaning up Canada's oil fields.

Well, we don't want to bother the oil billionaires to clean up their mess.
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This is the most depressing blog I have ever written. The power and arrogance and greed, the indifference to the suffering they cause are - well they aren't new. This has been a feature of all our world's recorded history. With Democrats and Reupblicans in the U.S., and Liberals and Conservatives in Canada we have have allowed ourselves and and elected politicians to be bought with no regard for human dignity or needs. We murder and plunder people all over the world - as in Latin America and and the middle east, and including, in large numbers, children.
The old British Empire was just like that, too, murdering, starving, enslaving hundreds of millions Funny how much of that never makes our history books. And so the lives of all of us ordinary people are, as always, abused by the super rich and greedy. Capitalism is only the latest device for this. In principal, we, by the billions, have always been slaves going back  to the Kings of Europe, the Roman Empire, and earlier.

But this one looks like the final act as we fall in line to murder for our super rich - and to die for them.




















































































                                         

April 16 The Emmpire strikes back.

Those who read the April 14 edition of this blog will certainly have noticed the misspellings and even bizarre statements. I very much fear my computer has been hacked. (Indeed, I"m not even sure I'll be able to publish this.)

Accordingly, I'll be spending the next day or more trying to get back to normalcy - as much an anything can be normal in this world.

Graeme Decarie

April 14:: Hard /tunes at tthe cinoyter

The blog is late because I've been having quite a few obvious attackes on my computer. The most recent makes it impossible for me to send any mail. I hope to have this fixed by Wednesday.

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There's an aspect of  the world crisis that I have not seen mich (or any) discussion of.

American leadership since the beginning of coronavirus has been invisible/ The result is that China is looking at the possibility of world economic dominance. I spent some time in China about 30 years ago, and I'm amazed now to see it's progress as well as the rapid improvements in Chinese higher education, living standards and all the other signs of a strong economy.

The U.S., the world's dominant power since 1945, is in freefall. And it appears now to be in outlcassing U.S. performance, and what has been something close to world rule. Now, countries in the middle east, Africa and Latin America increasingly look to Chinese leadership. And, as China's ally, Russia is sharing this challenge to American world dominance.

The U.S. centuries long attempt to rule the world is in serious danger. And this has come at a time when much of the world has lost its enthusiam for American world leadership.

But the U.S. might have one arrow left in it's armoury. It has a massive nuclear arsenal - and, even more threatening, it has that arsenal very close to Russian borders, and to parts of China. Chinese and Russian arsenals are by no means with such an advantage.

The temptation for U.S. capitalists to use that weaponry while it has an advantage must be very strong. The catch is to act on this very soon before even more of the world can turn against the U.S.

Such a leadership in destruction would destroy much of the world. But empires never have qualms about destruction no matter how savage.

Will American capitalists be greedy enough to unleash such carnage? Yes, Of course they will be. Like all empires in history - like the British, French, Roman and all the other empires, there are  no limits to greed and murder.

And they know it will have to be soon - before the Russians and Chinese can catch up.

(Oh, I know this is a crazy thing to say. It's vicious; it's inhuman, it's savage.
But so  all the empires in history have behaved. Yes, we should have used 1945 to begin a humane world order. But we didn't do it.)

We should be in a struggle to preserve our world. But we won't - and we never have.)
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/great-lockdown-coronavirus-to-rival-great-depression-with-3-hit-to-global-economy-says-imf

The great depression of the 1930s ended only with war in 1939. And that wouldn't work today. Any major war today would be too short to revive the economy. And too destructive for there to be anything to revive.
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Private medical care is for the profit of a very small number of the super wealthy. It's not for the health of a nation.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/14/healthcare-job-cuts-coronavirus-worker-layoffs
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/trump-us-coronavirus-briefing-latest-media

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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/04/canadas-universal-single-payer-health-care-system-our-best
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/brent-patterson/2020/04/canada-poised-export-more-arms-after-endorsing-un-call-global
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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/universal-health-care-italy-coronavirus/

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https://www.thenation.com/article/society/coronavirus-trump-racism-voting/
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/14/complete-abomination-mega-rich-hedge-funds-swoop-down-grab-covid-19-small-business
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https://www.commondreams.org/further/2020/04/13/best-people-trump-appoints-inept-band-morons-re-open-country-governors-say-not-so

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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/13/taxes-paid-billionaires-decreased-79-percent-1980-percentage-their-wealth

We haven't seen much about this mass theft of our money by our super-rich. What is has meant is mass poverty for very many of us. In the U.S., it has taken away to possibility of health care for the majority. It has meant enormous sacrfice of our needs to pay for wars   which benefit only the super rich.

In general, this is true of both Canada and the U.S. as well as mass suffering for those who live under the plundering and cruelty and mass murder of the American empire.

It has meant taking away money from our schools. It has meant that higher education becomes immensely and even prohibitvely expensive for out dhildren.

It has meant families that sleep on our sidewalks.

What we have been watching is the crash of civilization under the brutal force of the greed of the super rich.
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/13/patrick-lawrence-our-post-pandemic-future/
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/covid-19-is-a-sign-of-our-fate-if-we-do-not-take-radical-action-michael-d-yates

Capitalism has a long history of creating poverty. The British of their empire days saw the creation the wealthiest upper class in history - based on the creation of massive poverty in it's empire and in most of its own people. And that is exactly what is happening in the U.S. today. (And in Canada).
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/covid-19-is-a-sign-of-our-fate-if-we-do-not-take-radical-action-michael-d-yates

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https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/us-saudi-oil-clash-sets-stage-for-future-epic-battle
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Reader's should be warned. There are two site labelled countercurrentss.
There is the one I use, which is based in India.
There is another countercurrents in the U.S. It is dedicated to its editor's crusade to evict 'foreigners' from the U.S. - expecially blacks.
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A long one, but well worth the read.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/14/why-is-canada-refusing-cuban-doctors/

Will we really let Canadians die so we can please the U.S.?
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/illegal-united-states-allied-invasion-iraq-syria-reaches-crisis-point/5709595
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/sanders-formally-capitulates-corporatist-warmonger-biden/5709633

Well, this was inevitable. Sanders, though radical by American standards, was never all that radical by world standards. And the Democrat party? It's quite as corrupt and abusive as Republicans. So why should it matter which of them Americans would vote for?

You either stand for essential change or you don't. And Sanders doesn't. He might just as well have given his blessing to Trump.
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/venezuela-announces-6-month-rent-suspension-guarantees-workers-wages-bans-lay-offs/5709388

So far, the U.S. has done nothing for it's people - only for it's super rich.
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/cuban-missile-crisis-us-terrorist-campaigns-against-cuba/5709570

This was almost sixty years ago. Over those years, and despite constant American efforts to destroy it, Cuba , just off the the coast of the U.S. has sustained excellent living contitions for it's people, the best health care and, probably, the education in Latin America.

Before this, it was ruled by murderous dictators and American gangsters. It's workers were terribly exploited by American capitalists.

God bless America. Yeah!
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https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-pandemic-is-an-opening-for-the-once-unthinkables-like-basic-income
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55054.htm

The problem is that we have only rarely elected governments that placed a priority of meeting the needs of our whole society. Perhaps no countries, in this respect, have been more brutal in this han the British and American Empires.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55052.htm

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55058.htm
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India - where it's even worse....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55051.htm
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/02/12/features/noam-chomsky-couple-generations-organized-human-society-may-not-survive-has-be

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https://theintercept.com/2020/04/14/trump-pr-stunt-falls-flat-white-house-video-exposes-failure-prepare-pandemic/
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https://thesaker.is/pity-post-corona-millennials-if-they-dont-openly-push-socialism/
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So - what do we have to look forward to?

My guess is that America's constant wars of the past  seventy and more years have come to this crisis. The U.S. is increasingly losing it's hold militarily, and that's going to get worse very quickly. In particular, it is determined to hold onto it's dominance in world oil. But even Saudi Arabia is is getting sceptical about the joys of alliance with the U.S.

Add to that the fact that the U.S. is not and never has been democracy. As a true  descendent of the British empire, it has always been ruled by agents of it's wealthiest people. That dominance by the very rich has always meant that it's only two parties are really the same. Trump is a fool?  So is Biden.

So who will they help in it's time of political and economic chaos? That's already happening. There will be sprinklings, at best, for the poor. But all the lavish help will go to the very rich. That's already happening.

And the rich, like the rich of the days of British Empire, will demand wars to make themselves even richer. The first target might be something like Iran. But both the Russians and the Chinese would be sure to intervene. And such a war  would be nuclear with few survivors.

The American public (much like the Canadian one) is politically pretty hopeless with most people voting for the traditional parties that have always been the servants of the super rich. The U.S. is somewhat worse because it has only two parties, both sustained by the odd notion that God is on the side of the biggest natioanl killer of our time, a nation built on slaughter since it's earliest days.
(That idea has almost always been supported by a population that is fervently religious without having the slightest ideas of what religion is about.

None of the above is exaggerated.
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