Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "HasanAbi"
channel.
-
231
-
142
-
128
-
108
-
99
-
90
-
88
-
86
-
72
-
65
-
62
-
56
-
49
-
47
-
46
-
42
-
Also, like, gee, why wouldn't I let the pigs search my car after pulling me out, failing to state probable cause, gaslighting me on multiple laws and rights, holding me up for hours, and false alerting me with a K9 unit? Hmm, real chin scratcher that.
When interacting with the cops, everything can and will be used against you. The cops aren't trying to mete out justice or determine what's right. They're there to make an arrest if possible, even (or especially) if that means twisting your words, actions, and possessions (actual or planted).
36
-
32
-
27
-
26
-
25
-
22
-
20
-
19
-
19
-
18
-
18
-
5:00 For the longest time, "democracy" was synonymous with a chaotic, disorganized, unruly society. Some reactionaries still use it that way, eg the hyper pedantic types who insist well akshully we're not a democracy; we're a constitutional republic.
Republic also used to be a contentious word in the age of late feudalism and monarchy.
When people on the left uncritical accept the reactionary framing that socialism is a spooky word that scares normies away, they miss that reactionaries and the average indoctrinated person aren't bothered by the word. They're afraid of what the word represents—true democracy, worker control, the abolition of class. You have to change people's minds about the substance and associate the things they already like—free healthcare, college, workers' rights, etc—with the longterm socialist struggle.
17
-
16
-
16
-
16
-
16
-
16
-
15
-
15
-
15
-
15
-
14
-
14
-
@samuelmerkel2888 You think the government's negligence causing the deaths of 250k people isn't a dangerous precedent to set?
You keep acting like no one else figured out how to deal with covid better. Basically every other country did a better job than the US. Some places, like China, Vietnam, and New Zealand managed it very well. Vietnam has fewer cases and deaths than my county. —County. It took masks, a lockdown, quarantine for certain individuals. It's not a mystery.
You keep ignoring that the recovery is stalling out. Citing GDP (and only the half that sounds nice) doesn't mean dick when more people are entering poverty, wealth inequality is growing, there's a looming eviction crises, and we're entering the second wave, with massive increases in the infection rate. GDP isn't a good way to measure what the economy is like for the average person and it doesn't measure the health of the economy, as Simon Kuznets, the inventor of GDP, has argued.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-reopening/us-data-suggest-economic-recovery-may-be-weakening-idUSKBN27S2H1
14
-
14
-
13
-
13
-
13
-
12
-
12
-
12
-
12
-
11
-
11
-
@bobpope3656 I don't think you understand how economists classify middle class. Yes, someone with 5m net worth is way outside the middle class.
Here's BI estimating that a millionaire will he considered middle class by...2215 at best or 2609 at worst.
https://www.businessinsider.com/when-will-the-typical-american-be-a-millionaire-2019-8?amp
So much for that.
What you're noticing is that more wealth is held the higher up you go in society. The top 10% owns most of what the top 20% owns, the top 1% owns most of what the top 10% owns, the top 0.1% owns most of what the top 1% owns, etc.
Just because a millionaire owns less than Bill Gates doesn't ipso facto make them middle class (although that is certainly what they seem to think, according to polls). https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/30/70-percent-of-americans-consider-themselves-middle-class-but-only-50-percent-are.html
"We’re a well-behaved, flannel-suited crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists, mid-level investment bankers, M.B.A.s with opaque job titles, and assorted other professionals—the kind of people you might invite to dinner. In fact, we’re so self-effacing, we deny our own existence. We keep insisting that we’re “middle class."" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
According to the NYT, a net worth of 1m puts you around the top 10%. A net worth of 5m puts you in the top 5%. https://nyti.ms/2YUwEtr
It boggles my mind that I have to spell this out for all the out-of-touch bootlickers here thinking most Americans are millionaires. Pure ideology, man.
11
-
11
-
11
-
10
-
10
-
10
-
10
-
10
-
10
-
9
-
9
-
9
-
9
-
9
-
9
-
@Mintberrycrunch982 The complaint against JP is not that he's a recovered ideologue returning to warn all of us of its dangers. It's precisely that he is the exemplar of the ideologue, the man who claims to be speaking Truth untainted by ideology (like it or not, bucko!), but Peterson's views on life, sexuality, society, when they aren't just triviality gussied up as wisdom (pet cats, clean your room), are saturated with ideology, particularly a conservative, quasi-Christian, patriarchal, hierarchical ideology.
Ideology is not some great evil or confusion to be avoided. People who believe they've escaped ideology and only encounter reality "as it really is" are often the most prone to dogmatism and the more pernicious aspects of ideological thinking. Peterson seems to be one of those people. Instead of confronting his own ideological position, he says he's not ideological. His ideas are supported by a "nature" that he's carefully butchered to conform to his design while ignoring the abundance of evidence that falsified or at least complicates his antiquated worldview.
9
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
7
-
@levihuerta9393 Communism advocates for the free association of producers, so no one would be forced to make anything. A planned economy requires that demand is indicated through workers' federations and communities. It's important to recognize that what is called "demand" in capitalist economics is not actually a measure of demand as need but demand as possession of resources. A homeless man needs a house, but his need has no impact on the market demand for a house, nor can it stimulate the construction of new houses.
And of course communism intends to abolish money and the wage form, so no one is "paid" anything. It's also unlikely that people would take on single professions—one is a coal miner, another a poet. A major concern of classical Marxists and anarchists was to eliminate the division between manual and intellectual labor. In that sense, something like Parecon's balanced work profiles, where workers in an industry assume both menial and empowering tasks, might be desirable.
You can't understand communism by expecting it to behave like or meet the constraints of capitalism. Because then it wouldn't be communism; it would be capitalism. The point of proposing new paradigms, as Raymond Geuss says, is not to answer the questions of the old system but to dissolve them and pose new questions. Asking how people will be paid in a communist society is a bit like asking an 18th century capitalist how capitalism will address ownership of serfs or the divine right of kings.
It always strikes me as strange that when addressing the issue of providing necessities for everyone, so many balk at the idea that the currently well-off might not be able to own their own personal boat, fancy car, McMansion, etc. I'm sure these are not the concerns of Bangladeshi garment factory workers, Mexican farmworkers, African miners, or the average American pulling minimum wage. Even if communism precluded the production of boats for personal, recreational use, but could provide for human sustenance and culture, it would be worth it. To put more value or address more concern to the boatless seems immensely cruel, and exactly what the capitalist notion of "demand" instructs us to think: those with money have a greater innate value.
7
-
@coletrain546 They're pretending that we can erase values from political or social decisions and have "objective" ways of knowing and deciding what to do. They just follow data or science or common sense without acknowledging how those things still reflect our biases, priorities, commitments, and beliefs. What they don't say is what those "rational" things are for, who benefits, and why.
Graeber:
"Neoclassical economics is notorious for making this kind of move. When an economist attempts to prove that it is “irrational” to vote in national elections (because the effort expended outweighs the likely benefit to the individual voter), they use the term because they do not wish to say “irrational for actors for whom civic participation, political ideals, or the common good are not values in themselves, but who view public affairs only in terms of personal advantage.” There is absolutely no reason why one could not rationally calculate the best way to further one’s political ideals through voting. But according to the economists’ assumptions, anyone who takes this course might as well be out of their minds.
In other words, talking about rational efficiency becomes a way of avoiding talking about what the efficiency is actually for; that is, the ultimately irrational aims that are assumed to be the ultimate ends of human behavior."
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
@MrHammerman97 "The proximal origins of Sars-CoV-2," KG Anderson, Nature.
"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."
"Scientist opens up about his early email to Fauci on virus origind," NYT
"Over the past year, Dr. Andersen has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the theory that the coronavirus originated from a natural spillover from an animal to humans outside of a lab. But in the email to Dr. Fauci in January 2020, Dr. Andersen hadn’t yet come to that conclusion. He told Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, that some features of the virus made him wonder whether it had been engineered, and noted that he and his colleagues were planning to investigate further by analyzing the virus’s genome.
"The researchers published those results in a paper in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, concluding that a laboratory origin was very unlikely. Dr. Andersen has reiterated this point of view in interviews and on Twitter over the past year, putting him at the center of the continuing controversy over whether the virus could have leaked from a Chinese lab."
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
Nobby Heads For one, DPRK's position as socialist is theoretically dubious. More concretely, basically no socialist in America is proposing to implement a DPRK style siege socialist, military dictatorship. Again, when people bring shit like that up, they're deflecting from substance to aesthetics. Your job is to bring them back to issues of substance where they might agree.
The other example I sometimes use is LGBT rights, like marriage equality. Would changing words like "homosexual" or "LGBT" have made reactionaries any more receptive to gay marriage? Even shit libs like Bill Maher made lame ass jokes about the LGBTQALMNOP, as if the "ridiculous" name was to blame for oppression and inequality.
But attitudes about homosexuals have changed a lot in the past decade. It didn't come from changing the names of things, like some vapid PR stunt, or by making being gay more aesthetically normie friendly. It came through struggle, protest, legal battles, consciousness raising, friends and family members sharing painful or joyful coming out stories.
Much the same could be said of virtually ever major struggle of the past few centuries, women's rights, civil rights, labor rights.
If you get people to talk about the substance of socialism, of a more just, more democratic society, they won't give a shit about the DPRK.
6
-
6
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
@floopsiemcsoops6008 It's like you didn't even bother reading my comment. Conservatives believe in leftist concepts like abolishing private property, dismantling the state, having a commitment to equal protections for social minorities, and reorganizing society on a non-hierarchical basis? Really? Which poll showed that? I must've missed it.
Politics isn't merely a matter of shuffling around some signifiers until people's beliefs match their material needs. One has to attend to the meaning behind the word and the long-inculcated, highly propagandized notions of what is necessary for society—competition, hierarchy, ownership, use of force. The people who reject socialism reject it for particular reasons. They may not be good reasons, but they must be grappled with. If anyone's underestimating "the average voter" (not sure why "voter" is the unit of analysis) it's you.
That you think some conservatives agreeing with a modicum of social democracy (built on third world exploitation) speaks less to their willingness to budge left as it does to the lengths to which you had to go to put the left within their reach—not by making an appeal to the meaning of "socialism," not by overturning fundamental assumptions, not by dispelling double consciousness,but by bringing socialism more in line with capitalism.
Thinking that politics is primarily a matter of branding is a peculiarly liberal way of looking at things, as if we were trying to sell soda or launder a reputation. It doesn't require action. It doesn't require a transformation of personal and social consciousness.
Imagine that you had said to people in the black or gay rights movements that their real problem was branding, and if only they used different language and different tactics, the public would be on their side. In fact, people did just that, and they were wrong. People didn't change their minds about these groups because of a change of label. They changed because of repeated, provocative, enduring exposure, violent repression, and because of association with people in their own lives. They had to change the way they thought and related to black and LGBT people.
If you start calling socialism "workplace democracy," you're either not really being true to the aims and commitments of socialism, or you're just being dishonest with people. And what's to stop reactionaries from simply associating "workplace democracy" with socialism, just as they've done with countless other terms and subjects regardless of their connection to socialism?
If you're not aware of the (by now) centuries of conservative propaganda against democracy, I don't know what to tell you. Just about any Republican would be thrilled to inform you that we have a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
5
-
5
-
5
-
@cereszin The authoritarian deviations like Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism (maybe to a lesser extent), Social Democracy, Shining Path, etc. All demand arrogation of power to some hierarchical structure which substitutes itself for "the people" or "the workers," usually in the name of some combination of security, efficiency, or historical necessity. Lenin and Trotsky, for instance, were quite explicit that workers were not to be entrusted with managing production themselves.
In short, they tend to favor utilizing the state, maximizing production along a rational, Western basis (speaking historically here), and limiting direct control of social and material production by society itself.
The youtuber Anark has a series called "The State is Counterrevolutionary" which has plenty of insightful citations in the description.
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
@Jeff Belding Your own critical thinking is irrelevant when it goes against the data.
"The left," by which I assume you mean liberals, aren't refusing the vaccine because of spurious connections to Trump. I don't know where you got that idea.
Doctors and other experts aren't changing their minds on "a whim." It may look that way, but, aside from some really stupid policies, like the CDC's early discouragement of masking, opinions change when new data provokes a revision. Early in the pandemic, there was less data; now there's more. Nothing to date has shown the vaccines to be unsafe (beyond the normal risks of any medication) or ineffective, exactly the opposite, and the more data has come in, the more confident we are that is the case.
Covid is deadly. It's killed 600k+ in the US alone and 4m+ worldwide. It's not a "mild flu," as many conservatives claim. You personally might be okay, but consider the ramifications. Every person who gets sick risks infecting others, must take time off work, and in severe cases, which can occur in otherwise young, healthy people, using up hospital resources. Not to mention that unvaccinated populations are driving virus mutation, leading to new strains which are more contagious, could be more virulent, and reduce vaccine efficacy.
If there's another dominate strain after Delta, but worse, the vaccines may not work. We may need new ones, and we're going to have to go through this over and over, never getting to herd immunity because some boomers are on facebook too much. Let's just be done with this shit.
The number of people who absolutely cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons is vanishingly small, and of course accommodations have to be made for them. Your typical white evangelical anti-vaxxer is not that person.
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
@floopsiemcsoops6008 Framing is sort of irrelevant. What needs to be changed is the way people think. Changing a word won't do that, and most people aren't so stupid as to not notice the bait-and-switch. If you've talk to normal people about how work is organized, you'll find that many have deep-seated suspicions about "workplace democracy" and even their fellow workers (not unexpected in a heavily surveilled, restricted, and competitive society), that work can be productively carried out absent a managerial hierarchy, and that people will want to work without coercion. Opposition to socialism isn't built on a word which people associate with vague, negative connotations; it's built on a deep distrust of people and a faith in hierarchy.
Malatesta recognized the hollowness of the PR approach to the label anarchism:
"Nor is the phenomenon without parallel in the history of words. In times and in countries where the people believed in the need for government by one man (monarchy), the word republic, which is government by many, was in fact used in the sense of disorder and confusion — and this meaning is still to be found in the popular language of almost all countries.
"Change opinion, convince the public that government is not only unnecessary, but extremely harmful, and then the word anarchy, just because it means absence of government, will come to mean for everybody: natural order, unity of human needs and the interests of all, complete freedom within complete solidarity.
"Those who say therefore that the anarchists have badly chosen their name because it is wrongly interpreted by the masses and lends itself to wrong interpretations, are mistaken. The error does not come from the word but from the thing; and the difficulties anarchists face in their propaganda do not depend on the name they have taken, but on the fact that their concept clashes with all the public’s long established prejudices on the function of government, or the State as it is also called."
David Graeber also points out that even today, there's a prevailing distrust of democracy as something fragile, not to be trusted to certain groups, or liable to lapse into ochlocracy.
4
-
@floopsiemcsoops6008 You can go ahead with "packaging" and branding and selling socialism, like it's another commodity. Good luck with that liberal wordgame.
You've had no substantive response to any criticism I've had except to reiterate that the left doesn't understand branding. For instance, if the problem is that "socialism" is a tainted word (despite a resurgence of popularity and interest), what prevents conservatives from associating whatever new term you introduce with socialism, and the next term, and the next? Look at how conservatives regard "postmodernism," "critical race theory," "nationalized medicine," "welfare,"and so on, some of which have only a marginal if any relation to socialism. You can't nullify the effects of ideology by changing a label—for reasons that I explained at length and to which you gave no reply.
The fact that you think socialism being conflated with communism is a problem (when the two had long been synonymous and are treated that way today among many socialists) speaks volumes, as does your fixation on appealing to a minority of reactionaries rather than unorganized people who could have more radical politics given enough exposure and conditions, not a mere name change.
4
-
4
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@jaw-knee771 Moreover, if you look at the sources your article provides, they don't mention a ban on GOF. They say,
"Today, the National Institutes of Health announced that it is lifting a funding pause dating back to October 2014 on gain-of-function (GOF) experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses. GOF research is important in helping us identify, understand, and develop strategies and effective countermeasures against rapidly evolving pathogens that pose a threat to public health."
"By October 2014, the Obama administration halted federal funding for such research. A statement from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy suggested an oversight framework that would allow them to resume, but the turnover from the Obama administration to the Trump administration meant the status of this type of research was in flux."
And if you read past the headline of the article you linked, you'll find that the ban wasn't on GOF research, as you surmised, but on federal funding.
"The decision follows a three-year ban on such funding."
As the WH press release from 2014 shows, it was never intended as a ban but rather as a pause on federal funding pending review, and half-way competent journalism reflected that.
And again, genomic studies have shown the virus evolved naturally, not as a product of GOF research.
So your pet theory collapses on all points.
1) Obama didn't ban GOF.
2) Trump didn't renew GOF to spark a pandemic; federal funding resumed per new guidelines after a scientific review.
3) SARS-CoV-2 wasn't created through GOF research but evolved naturally.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@vxxiii4160 The mistake with this kind of reasoning is that it assumes that some political entity, some economic arrangement called communism can exist alongside capitalism, for a long time now a hegemonic, global system.
The Marxist view has always been that societies are organic wholes, and they cannot be totally changed in a short period nor exist abstracted from their environment. Economic transformation is a process.
Capitalism didn't emerge fully formed from the calf of feudalism; and for centuries after it made its first tremulous steps in the world, it bore the traces of its ancestor.
The accusation of "abused to the point of mass murder" shouldn't be brushed aside, but it is a strange defense for the status quo given the incalculable lives blithely squandered, trampled, and suffocated in the name of capitalism's juggernaut, "progress."
That said, if you want a picture of what a society evolving toward communism can look like, there are examples, though not widely known to the public—Spain in the 30s, Chiapas under the Zapatistas, the AANES in Rojava.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
There's a difference, but I don't think that difference should be overstated. In reality, fascism and neoliberalism share many important, conspicuous features on their political, economic, and social structure, as writers like Raphaele Chappe and Ajay Singh Chaudhary have pointed out.
I think describing neoliberalism as "policies that halfway work" is without merit. As with questions of that sort, one must always ask, work for whom, how, at the expense of what else?
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
There was a recentish Citations Needed episode on MIC lobbying, and one of the examples they adduce is of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank funded by the defense department and contractors, publishing a report setting off the alarm about an ice cutter gap between Russia and the US. Russia has 7 ice cutters; we have only 2. (But Russia also has 14x the Arctic coastline we do, so if anything, we have a relative surplus.)
Well, that study got picked up in the news. The NYT reported it, as did Politico. Congress swung into action and passed a bill to fund the construction of 6 new ice cutters (giving us 1 more than Russia). The contract for those vessels landed in the lap of Lockheed Martin, one of the top donors to CSIS.
So you have this circular dynamic whereby these arms manufacturers—who cannot, for political reasons, simply come out and say, We need to build more weapons!—launder their marketing through an ostensibly disinterested think tank, which cycles through the media, through public alarm and calls for action, through Congress, and ends up back at the arms manufacturer in the form of a lucrative contract.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@scotaloo77g73 That's weird, youtube deleted your links to peer-reviewed studies too. Why is it only doing that for you and the other guy?
"Researchers from the WIV collected hundreds of samples from bats roosting in a mine between 2012 and 2015, after several miners working there had gotten sick with an unknown respiratory disease. (Last year, researchers reported that blood samples taken from the miners tested negative for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, meaning that the sickness was probably not COVID-199.) Back at the lab, WIV researchers detected nearly 300 coronaviruses in the bat samples, but they were able to get whole or partial genomic sequences from fewer than a dozen , and none of those that were reported were SARS-CoV-29,10. During the WHO-led origins probe earlier this year, WIV researchers told investigators that they cultured only three coronaviruses at the lab, and none were closely related to SARS-CoV-2.
"Although the investigators didn’t sift through freezers at the WIV to confirm this information, the low number of genomes and cultures doesn’t surprise virologists. Munster says it’s exceedingly difficult to extract intact coronaviruses from bat samples. Virus levels tend to be low in the animals, and viruses are often degraded in faeces, saliva and droplets of blood. Additionally, when researchers want to study or genetically alter viruses, they need to keep them (or synthetic mimics of them) alive, by finding the appropriate live animal cells for the viruses to inhabit in the lab, which can be a challenge.
"So, for SARS-CoV-2 to have come from this mine in China, WIV researchers would have had to overcome some serious technical challenges — and they would have kept the information secret for a number of years and misled investigators on the WHO-led mission, scientists point out. There's no evidence of this, but it can't be ruled out." (Nature)
So, cautiously, the mine theory can't be ruled out, but it also seems unlikely and relies on a shaky conspiracy, like all the other theories you've thrown out as "evidence."
1
-
@scotaloo77g73 No, I cited an article from a major science journal explaining the relevance of the mine to the lab leak theory.
You repeatedly invoke generic "scientists," but what you're really referring to is a letter that 18 scientists signed and general calls for more investigation. But, awkwardly for you, virtually all reporting on this topic (aside from places like Sky News, granted) includes some version of 'Scientists agree natural transmission is the most likely scenario."
Moreover, even some of the signers of that letter don't buy the lab leak theory.
"The organizer of the letter, David Relman of Stanford, told Nature’s Amy Maxmen, “I am not saying I believe the virus came from a laboratory.” Another signatory, Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina, told the New Yorker, “The genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2 really points to a natural-origin event from wildlife.”" (LA Times)
In other words, the investigation is a way to put lab leak theories to rest.
So I have to wonder why you're so eager to invoke "scientists" when 1) there's no scientific evidence to support a lab leak, 2) genetic evidence points to natural transmission (cf Andersen), 3) scientists in general believe the most likely origin is natural transmission, 4) except in the land of conspiracy crankery, calls for investigation aren't proof of potential outcomes of that investigation, especially the least likely outcomes.
This article does a good job explaining why your suspicions (what you think are proof) have plausible explanations and don't prove a lab leak. For instance, why would China resist calls for transparency? For one, because that's what they usually do. (Plenty of authoritarian regimes have resisted inspections even when they had nothing to hide, eg Saddam and WMD.) Two, the calls for inspection and transparency are being made by hostile governments. The whole argument that China's opacity proves a lab leak is a version of "the innocent have nothing to hide," which of course isn't true. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-revisited/
1
-
1
-
1
-
@scotaloo77g73 And Roizman is basing that on zero evidence, just like you. I'm glad you found one scientist who's convinced of a lab leak. For someone who disdains appeals to authority, citing him as evidence seems odd. You can't seem to disambiguate between an investigation and its (unreached) conclusions, and also don't understand that citing actual data and studies isn't "an appeal to authority"; it's an appeal to evidence. How cringey of me to uh cite evidence. I should be more like you and make baseless speculations and insist that trust me bro, bro trust me, all these coincidences are PROOF I'm right. That's the noncringe way to argue.
You've yet to produce any credible, verified, peer-reviewed evidence for your theory, and if you keep avoiding it, I'm going to have to assume it's because you don't know of any.
And unless I'm mistaken, that WSJ article is basically just repeating information from the State Department, hence why I keep referring to your theory about 3 sick WIV researchers as unverified State Department info. Because that's what it is. You are conveniently pretending that the unverified claim about 3 sick WIV researchers refers to something broader, but that specific claim comes from the State Department. Maybe you didn't know that.
At the risk of being accused of "appealing to authority" and "copy pasting," here's the fact sheet and relevant section: https://ge.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/
"The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses."
I for one love uncritically taking the US intelligence community at its word when it says it has "reason to believe" something without producing evidence. I know you do, too, big ol' skeptic, you.
I'll reply if actual evidence is adduced, but I don't see the point in continuing to entertain the same wild speculations as if they were true.
I don't think you even bothered to read the study on early spread. More posturing on your side; no evidence.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@scotaloo77g73 Yes, they are very recent statements. I know you have an allergy to reading sources, but I've provided them above.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/15/lab-leak-theory-doesnt-hold-up-covid-china/
"When those independent experts got a look at the State Department’s analysis, he wrote in an email at the time, they found it rested on a single statistical analysis prepared by one scientist “a pathologist, rather than a virologist, epidemiologist, or infectious disease modeler” without expertise in that type of modeling. The “statistical case seems notably weak,” Ford wrote."
'And what about RaTG13, the virus that Wade and Baker argue is so similar to COVID-19 that it would only need some tuneups? In a statement from April 2020, Edward Holmes—an evolutionary biologist and virologist at the University of Sydney—noted that “the level of genome sequence divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 is equivalent to an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change.”
“Hence, SARS-CoV-2 was not derived from RaTG13,” Holmes said. Backing up what numerous other researchers have found, Holmes added that “the abundance, diversity and evolution of coronaviruses in wildlife strongly suggests that this virus is of natural origin.”
"I asked him about the lab leak theory. “This ‘growing body of evidence’—we haven’t seen it,” Ben Embarek said."
"In a Feb. 9 press conference, after several weeks on the ground, Ben Embarek and his colleagues announced that they had seen enough to conclude that the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely.”
“There had been no publication, no reports of this virus, of another virus extremely linked or closely linked to this, being worked with in any other laboratory in the world,” Ben Embarek noted then."
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@SeraphsWitness Except we had multiple trained and respected medical experts testify that positional asphyxiation was the cause of death and clearly explained how that can happen.
We also had police officers, including the chief of police, testify that leaning on someone's neck for 9 minutes was not in keeping with policy or training and represented a gross disregard for life and safety.
To be absolutely clear: Chauvin's use of force was so extreme and malicious that even the police could recognize that. Why can't you?
So even if Floyd had conditions which made him more vulnerable to respiratory distress, Chauvin went far beyond what he was trained to do, disregarded Floyd's health, and was therefore the direct cause of his death EVEN IF in some other reality some other combination of factors could have killed him later. As I've already had to point out before, much to my amazement, the police don't have justification to kill you just because there's a chance you could die from something else. If anything, we should expect the opposite to be the case: they should be expected to help you avoid that end, especially when your infraction was as petty as a counterfeit $20.
The conversation may have been different had Chauvin shown restraint, exercised only the force that was needed to arrest Floyd, made every attempt to preserve his life, and followed protocol to the letter; but that simply was not the case, and the overwhelming number of experts and witnesses testified to that, and the jury agreed. Like them, I'm going to trust a world-renowned pulmonologist before I trust some guy in the YouTube comments with a PhD in common sense, intuition, and feels.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@lias.1280 I think you're right. It probably has to do with declines in education, the necessity to reach more people, and the expanded diversity of the constituency. Van Buren could deliver an FK grade 20 speech because his audience was mostly wealthy, white, Anglo-Saxon, and educated. A modern president speaks to people of all cultural backgrounds, ESLs, high school dropouts and PhDs.
On top of that there's a more recent cultural suspicion of education, particularly the liberal arts, which are seen as useless and elitist (a far cry from the working-class culture described by Jonathan Rose).
But just because Obama COULD deliver a better speech, bud, pal, amigo, compadre, doesn't mean that the speeches he actually DOES deliver, my dude, mark him as a great orator, homie.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@floopsiemcsoops6008 Marx was a leftist and a communist. Again, that you're only capable of thinking in a narrow liberal/conservative dichotomy is revealing. Should I be surprised that you still haven't responded to the issues I raised?
How about just answering why, if the left can claim a political victory merely by reframing its demands in the terms of the status quo rather than by association with "socialism"—why can't conservatives turn around a similarly reframe the thing you're promoting, ostensibly socialism by a different name (but not really), as socialism and thereby wars away would-be converts? Why can't they take already existing, pervasive ideological suspicion of democracy—that is, direct control, not indirect control through representation—and demean socialism as mob rule?
Your idea sounds nice. It's a particularly attractive idea online. But once you actually talk to people, or try to think outside capitalism and the state for yourself, you realize that, while having a vocabulary can be helpful, words won't do your thinking for you, or for anyone else. If you want a radical critique of all that exists, falling back on common sense assumptions and biases won't cut it.
Socialism is not coterminous with workplace democracy; and while socialists do, contrary to what you seem to think, spend a lot of time talking about democratizing work, it's been long recognized that that is not enough; it's not enough to have co-op capitalism.
1
-
@floopsiemcsoops6008 More empty bluster from the lib lmfao
Do you think socialists don't already talk about democratizing work? Do you think you came up with that? Gee, we've never thought of talking to people about a core feature of our ideology. We just spew jargon at the initiated, but nothing seems to stick, and we're left scratching our heads. Thank god for you!
You can debate with conservatives about "sensible gun regulation" or whatever liberal policy you prefer—taxes on the rich, M4A, infrastructure bills. But we really don't need more people watering socialism down further as a flimsy ruse to encourage co-op capitalism.
Where's the science showing that conservatives agree with abolishing private property when you change a few words around? I've asked for it multiple times, and it hasn't materialized. Maybe YouTube is deleting your links?
Framing may be useful when some core assumptions or ideology are shared. But as I have already said many times, the task is TO CHANGE the underlying ideology. That is the task of socialism. And yes, it is difficult. It takes time. It requires talking with people over and over, addressing their particular circumstances in jargon-free terms. It can't be done with a linguistic legerdemain that attempts to bypass content by hijacking the status quo reactionary ideology.
"What is Marx, a liberal or a conservative????!?!?!"
""When did I ever operate from a liberal/conservative dichotomy???"
What an absolute clown.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@soundpalette2438 “Conspiracy theories” are attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors (Aaronovitch, 2010; Byford, 2011; Coady, 2006; Dentith & Orr, 2017; Keeley, 1999). While often thought of as addressing governments, conspiracy theories could accuse any group perceived as powerful and malevolent. Conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attacks accuse the Bush administration, the Saudi Government, corporations, the financial industry, and the Jews; conspiracy theories about climate change accuse scientists, communists, the United Nations, Democrats, the government, and the oil industry among others. While a conspiracy refers to a true causal chain of events, a conspiracy theory refers to an allegation of conspiracy that may or may not be true. For a history of the term, see McKenzie-McHarg (2018), and for a critique of its usage, see Walker (2018)
"Finally, the term “conspiracy theorist” refers to a variety of concepts in both popular usage and in the literature. For some, the term refers to a person who believes in a particular conspiracy theory or has a strong tendency toward conspiracy thinking. It is sometimes used more specifically to denote a person who propagates conspiracy theories professionally (e.g., Alex Jones, David Icke) or to people who advocate strongly for a conspiracy theory, such as former Florida Atlantic University Professor James Tracy who claims that the 2012 killings at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in the United States were a hoax, or Piers Corbyn—brother of UK Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn—who claims that climate science is a fraud. We avoid this term in this review in exchange for more precise language."
Karen Douglas, "Understanding Conspiracy Theories"
Personally, I think if you believe in a cite with some frequency conspiracy theories, it's fine to call you a conspiracy theorist. You don't have to self identify for the label to apply.
Believing in russiagate and JFK assassination theories would certainly fit.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1