Johnson’s lies.

Gaza Twitterstorm today.

Published by the Jewish Voice for peace:-

Power.

 The bourgeoisie will not be unseated – as it needs to be for humanity to survive – through the existing

constitutional and electoral channels. It just won’t. The western party and elections system broadly understood (to include the media, among other things) is owned and managed by and for the capitalist elite — and that elite doesn’t want anything to do with even mild social democracy or environmental sanity, even if both are required for human survival.

Behind the Curve - Lagging.

Today’s lockdown comes after weeks of  inactivity in February when the World Health Organisation warned us about what was coming down the track. During that month the government should have been stocking up on Personal Protection Equipment for the medics, testing kits, respirators and ventilators etc. The Prime Minister and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to GPs and hospitals and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security….the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.
 The New York Times has produced these brilliant graphics of how the whole thing spread around the world whilst WHO were saying, “test, test, test” and Boris looked away. They should never be forgiven. 

They should have left him stuck on that wire.

Keep Right On with Wiki

 A message to our readers about COVID-19

With the uncertainty surrounding the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, we want to reassure our readers across the globe that our volunteers are working to bring you a trusted source of unbiased information. Throughout these challenging times, knowledge must and will remain open for all.

We find ourselves in remarkable circumstances this year. The COVID-19 pandemic makes clear our global human interconnectedness and the responsibilities we have to one another. We have no precedent for its challenges, but we do know that our best response relies on the sort of global empathy, cooperation, and community building that sit at the heart of our movement.

I want to acknowledge the invaluable work of all the contributors on Wikipedia. Thank you for keeping a close watch and keeping misinformation at bay. Our coronavirus articles have received tens of thousands of edits by thousands of editors since the start of the pandemic. We are proving that, even in a time of social distancing, we can celebrate our human bond by coming together online to share facts and information.

We will keep working around the clock to bring you reliable and neutral information. Now, as ever, our priority is to remain worthy of your trust.

Take good care,

Katherine Maher,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Crisis - what crisis?

1. “At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth–in other words, to silence.” (Albert Camus, The Plague)”

 The  link contains some useful tips on household cleaning.

 Covid19 is the most serious epidemic to hit mankind since the plague when interestingly enough the measures put in place in London we’re not dissimilar to what is being put in place now, “Dig all the graves six feet deep,” one of the orders from the Mayor of London during the Plague of 1665, as reported in Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. This historical novel, written 45 years after the plague from oral histories and diaries,  is well worth re-reading, as it outlines in detail the extreme containment measures London imposed very quickly after the plague appeared (embargo, isolation, closure of pubs, Inns, tippling joints, lodging the infected in “pest-houses,” restrictions on travel, curfews, and the deployment of “watchers” to enforce the quarantine)”

 The cuts that the Tories and Liberals have forced upon us over the last ten years are having terrible consequences for us. Together with Johnson’s mate Trump, who closed down much of the research on virus testing as part of his making, “America great again” , it is both ironic and tragic that two of the richest countries in the world are amongst the worst in the developed world to have a ready stock of  the vitally important testing kits which reduce the spread of the disease as the graphic below shows.

 The importance of testing has been shown in Germany where their ability to quickly isolate those with early stage Covid19 plus those who are asymptomatic and their contacts has vastly reduced the infection rate there.

 Situation in Italy

UNITE AGAINST RACISM

MUST READ.

This is the first time that I have come across something of such importance as this. Truth or hypothesis is for you to decide. It is sounding the alarm bells for the future of mankind and I beg you to read it.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/13/four-reasons-civilization-wont-decline-it-will-collapse/

Fromm.

“His value as a person lies in his salability, not in his human qualities of love, reason, or in his artistic capacities. Happiness becomes identical with consumption of newer and better commodities, the drinking in of music, screen plays, fun, sex, liquor and cigarettes. Not having a sense of self except the one which conformity with the majority can give, he is insecure, anxious, depending on approval. He is alienated from himself, worships the product of his own hands, the leaders of his own making, as if they were above him, rather than made by him. He is in a sense back where he was before the great human evolution began in the second Millennium BC. He is incapable of love and to use his reason, to make decisions, in fact incapable to appreciate life and thus ready and even willing to destroy everything. The world is again fragmented, has lost its unity; he is again worshiping diversified things, with the only exception that now they are man-made, rather than part of nature.”

“The facts, however, are that the modern, alienated individual has opinions and prejudices but no convictions, has likes and dislikes, but no will. His opinions and prejudices, likes and dislikes, are manipulated in the same way as his tastes, by powerful propaganda machines—which might not be effective were he not already conditioned to such influences by advertising and by his whole alienated way of life.The average voter is poorly informed too. While he reads his newspaper regularly, the whole world is so alienated from him that nothing makes real sense or carries real meaning. He reads of billions of dollars being spent, of millions of people being killed; figures, abstractions, which are in no way interpreted in a concrete, meaningful picture of the world. The science fiction he reads is little different from the science news. Everything is unreal, unlimited, impersonal. Facts are so many lists of memory items, like puzzles in a game, not elements on which his life and that of his children depends. we come across a person who acts and feels like an automaton; who never experiences anything which is really his; who experiences himself entirely as the person he thinks he is supposed to be; whose artificial smile has replaced genuine laughter; whose meaning-less chatter has replaced communicative speech; whose dulled despair has taken the place of genuine pain.”

“Suppose that in our Western culture movies, radios, television, sports events and newspapers ceased to function for only four weeks. With these main avenues of escape closed, what would be the consequence for people thrown back upon own resources? I have no doubt that even in this short time thousands of nervous breakdowns would occur, and many more thousands of people would be thrown into a state of acute anxiety, not different from the picture which is diagnosed clinically as neurosis.”

– Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955

 What is a Democratic Socialist?

Fromm describes a Democratic Socialist as one who believes this:

“We cannot afford to lose any of the fundamental achievements of modern democracy–either the fundamental one of representative government, that is, government elected by the people and responsible to the people, or any of the rights which the Bill of Rights guarantees to every citizen. Nor can we compromise the newer democratic principle that no one shall be allowed to starve, that society is responsible for all its members, that no one shall be frightened into submission and lose his human pride through fear of unemployment and starvation.

These basic achievements must not only be preserved; they must be fortified and expanded. In spite of the fact that this measure of democracy has been realized–though far from completely–it is not enough. Progress for democracy lies in enhancing the actual freedom, initiative, and spontaneity of the individual, not only in certain private and spiritual matters, but above all in the activity fundamental to every man’s existence, his work. What are the general conditions for that? The irrational and plan-less character of society must be replaced by a planned economy that represents the planned and concerted effort of society as such. Society must master the social problem as rationally as it has mastered nature. One condition for this is the elimination of the secret rule of those who, though few in number, wield great economic power without any responsibility to those whose fate depends on their decisions. “

We may call this new order by the name of democratic socialism but the name does not matter; all that matters is that we establish a rational economic system serving the purposes of the people.”

Autumn 2019.

Richard Burgon