Category Archives: World Hellhole Report

America’s Different Epidemics

Leave a reply

When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in America, we already had different views of the global event in our public consciousness. As it has spread, those views have multiplied. We have different views based upon regions, income levels, data sets, and whether or not we subscribe to a science-blind political ideology.

Regionally, the pandemic has hit urban areas the hardest. To the people of the major US cities, COVID-19 means overwhelmed hospitals, compromised police, fire, and emergency medical staff, and deeply-felt questions about a federal government that has so far been unresponsive to their pleas. In the cities, it is hardest to maintain the necessary distance required to keep the disease from spreading. The cities are also where the fight against the disease is the hardest, where self-protection measures are strictest and where we see the greatest benefit from those measures.

In rural areas, distancing is already part of the lifestyle. They have questioned the need for a government order to mandate pretty much what they’re already doing. Except… they’re not doing it, not completely. There’s enough contact going on in rural areas to where the disease spreads steadily. Not as rapidly as in the cities, but steadily. Given rural areas’ resistance to being ordered to shelter in place, I’d expect the spread in the countryside to persist longer and to peak higher than in the cities.

The urban/rural divide is further colored by how a governor or mayor may or may not be an ardent supporter of President Trump. Those who are least supportive of Trump are most likely to enact comprehensive measures. As support for Trump increases in a government official, so multiply the loopholes in the comprehensive measures, so increases the slowness in applying measures, and so increases the likelihood that the official not only refuse to apply measures, but may even overrule other officials and mandate that no restrictions be in place. This means that we have a range of pandemics from those experienced in the non-ardent urban areas, the ardent urban areas, the non-ardent rural areas, and the ardent rural areas. While most non-ardent officials are in urban areas and most ardent ones are rural, there are exceptions to those rules. Ardency itself is on a spectrum, but these four major divisions will suffice. Expect the ardent, rural areas to be where the disease lingers longest and where it can hide from view, only to strike again as immunity fades in the general population.

Economically, it is the nation’s poor who suffer the highest infection rates and the highest fatality rates, with Blacks and Hispanics suffering the most among the poor. When politicians such as Texas’ Lt. Governor Dan Patrick – white and rich – exclaimed his willingness to die for the economy in order to justify not placing any restrictions on Texas’ population, he was actually pushing the poor of all ages in front of him. Of course, the poor Blacks and Hispanics of Texas were the vanguard of Mr. Patrick’s meatshield. With his access to not just emergency but life-long health care, Mr. Patrick was in good shape to face COVID-19. He was not volunteering himself, but his state’s poor as an offering to the economy.

So there is an epidemic for the cities, there is an epidemic for the countryside, there is an epidemic for those who live under an ardent Trump supporter, there is an epidemic for those who do not, there is an epidemic for the rich, and there is an epidemic for the poor. Now to look at the epidemics’ portrayal in data.

There are states that have had a high rate of testing of their populations, levels on par with testing heroes South Korea and Japan. There are states that seem to throw up obstacles to testing, for whatever reason that such a strategy may serve. The declared rates of infection in each state are a function of that state’s own definition. With no federally-accepted standard, we do not know the reach of the epidemic in regions where the local or state government prefers such questions not be asked – suppression of uncomfortable information prior to its gathering.

But we also have states where there is a high rate of testing and where the local health care system has also been overwhelmed. At that point, the health care system simply cannot spare the time required to test every patient for COVID-19, and where they certainly have no time to spare for the testing of the dead. And so, the spread of the infection is under-counted in those places. The fatalities are under-counted, as well. We have what numbers we have for the moment, but we also have to know where the numbers are weak in reporting the full view.

At the end of the day, it may not be until the full analysis of vital statistics data for 2020 is completed in 2022 and we can compare the year-on-year increase in mortality between 2019 and 2020 to get an idea about how severe the epidemic has been. How many more patients die of causes attributed to pneumonia, but for whom a COVID-19 test was not administered postmortem? How many cancer patients succumb not to COVID-19, but to the cancers, after being weakened by COVID-19? The same question, this time for those with heart disease, diabetes, kidney problems, or other “underlying health conditions”, as we euphemistically lump them all together? How many will be answered in two years’ time, which will be yet another view of the pandemic.

The remaining views belong to the rational on one hand and the science-blind ideologues who are made up of President Trump and his most ardent supporters on the other. Granted, these are two opposing views with many grades in between, but they serve as anchors of the continuum. I use the adjective “science-blind” advisedly. In many cases, the ardent Trumpists are outright hostile to science, as well as reality. The reason has to do with their ideological stance.

Political beliefs are one thing: they color how we view facts, but we still view the same facts as those of opposing political beliefs. One may see an economically-underdeveloped area and decide the solution is to have federal or state funds boost commerce there. Another may see the same economic underdevelopment and argue instead for a suspension of government regulations to allow commerce to flourish. The argument there is not whether or not the area is economically underdeveloped. The argument is how best to improve the area, and the solution may very well wind up being a combination of the two factors. In this case, the solution to the problem is more important than *how* the problem was solved.

But with a political ideology, facts and solutions take second place to the rightfulness of the ideology and the wrongness of anything that competes with it in the public mindspace. To the ideological Nazis, the Will of the German people could have pensioners with rocket grenades defeat armored divisions. To the ideological Stalinists, corn could be made to grow in the frozen wastes of Siberia, provided it was planted with socialist ardor often enough – it would figure out on its own how to take root in permafrost. To the ideological Maoists, steel production could be increased dramatically by melting down iron tools and cookware in backyard forges that produced nothing more than slag. To the ideological Khmer Rouges, Cambodia could be purified by murdering anyone with glasses, soft hands, or knowledge of the French language. This list is long – the Juche philosophy of North Korea, the Baathist ideology of Iraq and Syria, the hardline beliefs of the Iranian Revolution, and so on.

Finally, we come to the Trumpists, whose ideology allows them to stare at two photographs of the same place and state unflinchingly that the one with fewer people in it is actually the one with more people in it. When President Trump stared directly into the sun, his ardent supporter Tucker Carlson of Fox News called it “the most impressive thing a president has ever done” in spite of the fact that scientists globally throughout generations have warned us to never, ever look directly at the sun. The Trumpist ideology places prime importance on their leaders being in power in order to do two things: eradicate legal abortions and to obstruct any limitation of Americans’ ownership of arms. If those leaders stare at the sun like fools – or promote white supremacist groups and their policies – it is of no consequence. The Trumpists do not elect leaders to be sane or sensible or to care about facts. They are elected to eradicate abortion and to obstruct limitations on access to arms. Whatever else they do, the Trumpists either care not or actively support, as in the case of promoting white supremacist movements.

If there is any fact that threatens to unseat their leaders from their abortion-banning, weapon-loving bully pulpits, then the Trumpist will lie, cheat, and shout it down. This is why the photograph with fewer people actually has more in it. This is why staring into the sun is impressive. This is why they refuse to admit that their ranks are shot through with white supremacists, antisemites, and authoritarians. That is why they are proud to the point of public boasting to disobey any law they do not like, but scream in powerful fervor when others debate the wisdom of the laws they wish to impose on others.

And this is why the COVID-19 pandemic is such a threat to them: it threatens to add so much calumny to the pile already accrued by Donald Trump and his most fervent followers so as to make it nearly impossible for them to repeat their hair’s breadth win of 2016. The pandemic threatens to display Trump and his ardent followers for what they are – incompetent, science-blind, and unable to actually govern. Therefore, the pandemic was at first belittled. Then it was completely dealt with via a ban on Chinese travel. Then it was a conspiracy of some Chinese or American Deep State cabal. Then it was not worth shutting down the economy for. Now, Trump and his ardent supporters have the ghoulish chutzpah to claim that, should the USA have *only* 100,000 deaths, that it would be a good thing.

Already, as I write this, the USA has the 11th greatest per-capita loss of life among major nations. With 12,805 deaths out of roughly 330 million people, the USA has 39 known and recorded COVID-19 deaths per 1 million population. Yes, this is much less than Spain’s 300 per 1 million, but I expect the nation to bypass Ireland’s 43, Iran’s 46, and quite possibly most of the others. If we *do* arrive at only 100,000 deaths, that would be a mortality rate in excess of Spain’s 300 per 1 million, and Spain is considered one of the worst of the worst-hit nations.

Trump is presiding over what may be the worst response to COVID-19, and his abject failure as a leader in that capacity threatens the Trumpist agenda’s twin policy pillars. And this is why none of the other ways of viewing the pandemic have any meaning to them. The only way they can see it is through a blindfold.

Market Failure

Leave a reply

In Economics, “Market Failure” is a term that refers to when the free market isn’t able to provide a proper allocation of resources necessary to resolve a problem. Neoliberal economists say that there’s no such thing, that a proper market, without government interference, can solve any issue of resource allocation. I disagree. Neoliberal economists are great for when there are no disasters, but their models fail the instant the expected rain turns out to be a hurricane. Or a blizzard. Or a tornado spawns. Or an earthquake hits. Or a war is declared. Or a pandemic enters the scene.

I am living through a pandemic right now. I assume that most of my readers are contemporary and are living through it, as well. We are all witness to how governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have fallen into one of several categories:

  1. Quick response, firm response – nations like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore had experience from SARS and MERS and knew what to do. As soon as the reports started to trickle out of China in January about a possible new coronavirus outbreak, they got their plans together.
  2. Slow response, firm response – Germany did not react as quickly as the nations cited above. As a consequence, the number of per-capita cases in Germany is much higher than in the nations cited above. But because the Germans had a firm response to the pandemic, they have been able to keep the fatality rate remarkably low, relative to other nations that responded late.
  3. Slow response, lax response – Italy was the first, but the USA (so far) is the worst. Both high case numbers as well as high fatality rates, this clearly wasn’t the right way to go.

So, what were factors in the USA’s response being incoherent and uncoordinated? Alas, there are many, including those stemming from a leadership focused more on its own status and media perception than on the actual pandemic, as well as those that originated about that same leadership encouraging talking points that downplayed the severity of the pandemic or which promoted unproven claims of various stripes – all to distract from the failures of that leadership. In a full report on the failure of the USA to deal as appropriately with COVID-19 as did South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore – or even Germany – those reasons must be explored in greater detail. For this article, I want to focus on the market failures.

As it became clear that we were entering into a public health emergency, stocks of personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks, gowns, gloves, and eye protection, began to move sharply up in price. In a pure market, this is to be expected. Demand for the widget is higher and supply is at present inelastic, so the price of the widget must go up. Simple exercise, time to move on to the next textbook section… except, in this case, the widget is needed to save lives and the limits on production of said widgets means that the producers can engage in competition against the customers, in this case, the states and their hospitals.

Competition against a customer is when the makers of a product all raise their prices, one after the other. They need not communicate such a plan in so many words. That would be illegal collusion if they did. Rather, all one has to do is raise prices and the others follow that “price leadership” to match. The customer has nowhere else to turn and has to pay a profiteer’s premium in order to purchase that good. Competition against customers also takes the form of a bidding war. In that, a producer doesn’t treat each transaction as contractually binding, but makes a deal with one state that is conditional that no other state offers a higher price. When a higher price is offered, the original deal is off the table. When the federal government shows up to bid, it invariably offers the highest price and the states are left in a quandry. Not only do they not have their desired goods, but the market-clearing price is now magnitudes above what it once was.

So far, the federal government has yet to truly put the provisions of the Defense Provisioning Act (DPA) into motion in order to provide for more PPE at cheaper, fixed prices to the state and federal buyers. The federal government has also not been transparent about how it plans to use its stockpile – but that is for another, more in-depth analysis of the USA’s failures in responding to COVID-19. The DPA exists precisely for conditions such as we are experiencing, where price leadership and bidding wars are driving up prices for scarce goods. We could have a federal response that dictates a fixed price and that also instructs manufacturers of PPE to expand capacity.

Had the DPA been invoked in January – right around the time we could all sense this was going to be a huge thing – capacity would be expanded as of now and we would not be dealing with PPE shortages of the sort we see now. We see far too many cases of medical professionals unable to procure their own PPE, let alone get it issued from their hospital, so they have to make do with second-rate supplies that go against all best practices for proper use and disposal. This places their lives in needless jeopardy and, by extension, the lives of their patients.

The next market failure is the matter of the USA’s health system being dependent upon employer-provided private insurance, with zero transparency or consistency regarding pricing. While the President has declared that certain areas of care will be either covered by insurers or paid for by the federal government, we have only those declarations and no actual, actionable law or executive order to point to as a reference when dealing with insurance companies. Consequently, as a matter of corporate survival in a pandemic, insurance companies are invoking every loophole possible in a rearguard action to avoid breaking themselves over COVID-19 claims.

At which point, we must all ask, why do we have health insurance companies in the first place if they’re unable to properly lay out in times of catastrophe? We’re depending upon them to pay the bills – that’s why we pay our premiums – but if they up sticks and disappear when things are really, REALLY bad, then what use are they?

Given that many insurance companies already have a massive deductible and next to zero coverage only underlines my question – what use are they? The properly-funded public health systems in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Germany provided and continue to provide life-saving care for all their citizens. Meanwhile, the morgues and even cemeteries are overwhelmed in New York City, where some of America’s finest hospitals are overwhelmed. And, at those overwhelmed hospitals, there are patients who are going to be told that the care they thought was going to be 100% covered actually won’t be covered to that extent… and they will be looking at bankruptcy-inducing expenses as a consequence.

Maybe a policy here requires two positive test results to confirm COVID-19 and a patient received only one or none and was a presumed COVID-19 patient. Maybe the patient died before being tested and the cause of death was just “pneumonia” and not actually connected to COVID-19. Maybe the treatment specific to COVID-19 is covered, but not the ambulance, anesthesia, X-ray or other imaging analysis, or the final care arrangements. There are all kinds of ways to think of loopholes, and I’m sure the experts have already come up with others.

Back to the employer-provided insurance. What of the mounting wave of unemployed Americans? While possibly a huge save for insurance companies that no longer have to pay out for people they *used* to cover, who pays for the care they receive? Do they even go in to get tested or treated, out of fear over how much it will cost? Maybe something comes along to guarantee the federal payment for COVID-19 treatments other than the words of a pathological liar, but until then, there’s nothing to promise a free treatment for COVID-19 victims that don’t have insurance. And even with that federal guarantee, should it materialize, what happens when a person is brought to the emergency room for trouble breathing, but it’s only common-or-garden emphysema? We’re back to the bankruptcy gamble.

We can’t even post a price list for treatments because such a list does not exist. That’s why it’s a bankruptcy gamble. What if you have COVID-19, your insurer promises to cover it 100%, and you go to an in-network hospital and see an in-network physician? So far, so good. Now enter a specialist who assists that physician who’s not in-network. All bets are off, now, and it’s likely this patient is going to pay dearly for the fact that nobody knows exactly what combination of specialists is going to be in-network or out.

The President and his most ardent supporters have made much noise about “getting America back to work again.” Their fears are real – if Americans can’t pay the rent, then they go bankrupt when they can’t service their loans that depend upon those rent payments. But sick Americans can’t work and dead Americans can’t pay the rent, so they’re really unable to get America back to work again in the midst of a pandemic and come out all right. Without some sort of government fiat ruling, they face the market’s failure to accommodate some slack for times of extreme duress. On a side note, bankrupt Americans also don’t pay the rent and are more likely to try and fight out their squatters’ rights in costly court proceedings, so maybe those ardent supporters might want to take a look at actually fixing the health care system and not breaking out in a rash whenever the topic comes up. But a president empowered with the DPA can also take it upon the nation’s best interests to suspend loans, mortgages, and rents for the duration of the crisis. Other nations have done so, but the USA lacks a leader with the fortitude or foresight to enact such a policy – and the banking system hangs all the more precariously without such a policy to support it.

The markets have failed. PPE, health coverage, and rents/mortgages/loans are all in a quandry in the USA and the President and his most ardent supporters have failed to address these issues in a timely or realistic fashion. There have been multiple calls to address the issues from a very early date, but the President and his most ardent supporters rejected those calls. Because of the failures of the President and his most ardent supporters, the USA faces a disproportionate toll in terms of persons infected with COVID-19, with persons who died because of COVID-19, and with economic impact from the COVID-19 outbreak.

Save Lives, Not Costs: A Christian Philosophy

Leave a reply

I am heartened by leaders who talk about saving lives, regardless of cost.

I am dismayed by leaders who talk about saving costs, regardless of lives.

Christ taught that one cannot serve both God and mammon. Serving God means loving my neighbor as myself, healing the sick, and caring for the poor and needy. Serving mammon means putting matters of money and finance ahead of other concerns.

This is why I am dismayed by the leadership from President Trump and leading Republicans. Yes, they want to save lives. But they want to save hedge funds, stock dividends, and corporate earnings first. I will pass over their too-comfortable association with white supremacists and major polluters. I will pass over profiteering from tragedy. I will pass over separating children from parents in cruel applications of the law. When leaders speak of sacrificing the people to prop up the economy – and it is the poor people, the needy people who are sacrificed, not the rich, make no mistake there – they show that though they may draw near to God with their lips, they are far from Him in heart. They do not serve God. Their master is mammon, and their judgment awaits. They will have the world with all its power and fortune, but they lose their eternal lives in the transaction.

Know that there are a few Democrats who shame themselves with service to mammon and a few Republicans doing God’s work in saving lives without concern for the costs. But when considered as a whole, it is the Republican Party whose leadership on local, state, and national levels that has been brutal in its willingness to sacrifice the poor to save the rich. Shame on them for such practices and shame on any American who supports them.

So ends my Jeremiad. And, like Jeremiah, I expect that the targets of my criticism will denounce me and say that it is sinful to criticize the leaders of this proud nation, that they are doing nothing wrong, or not much wrong. Jeremiah had the destruction of Jerusalem as his justification and I fully expect the United States to have one of the highest per capita mortality rates from this pandemic as my justification. These are not happy things – would that men would change so that these things need not be the future.

I wish all good health and that your sorrows be swallowed up in joy. May we all ask of our leaders to remember that lives are more important than monies.

Getting Good Information About the Recent Pandemic

Leave a reply

Is it safe to use ibuprofen to treat a fever? Is it safe to use marijuana during this outbreak? These are just some of the questions going around and we should all know how to find answers for them. There’s conflicting information from various sources, so we all have to learn how to hit multiple sources to see what’s going on. Right now, studies are going to be limited due to the recent nature of the outbreak. That being said, health professionals globally are going to share ideas with each other and some of that chatter may spill over into the media reports – and not all reporters know how to report science.

What we *do* know is that anything that stresses the lungs will leave a person more susceptible to damage from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. Right there are two good keywords to use in searches. Everyone’s calling it “coronavirus” in the popular media, while scientific communities are using SARS-CoV-2 to identify the virus and COVID-19 to identify the disease. Using those keywords gives a better shot at getting quality results.

Next, when we see the site providing the information, examine the website itself to evaluate its accuracy of information. Local news stations, those are good for reporting things like what’s open and what’s closed and how many people locally are in the hospital, but not much more. National news outlets will have a higher degree of accuracy, but can still get a few things wrong. Websites with a strong political bias may be victim to Russian trolling – yes, the Russians are taking rumors and amplifying them on various websites that are much more political than they are scientific – so disregard those entirely as providers of scientific information. Entirely. Their information may actually prove harmful, which is why I say to disregard them entirely.

Websites affiliated with medical institutions, particularly medical research, will have the best quality information. Learn how to read their information carefully and patiently, as the more technical sites will use specialized terms and expressions to convey meanings. The specialized definitions themselves are not hard to learn – but they must be learned, so part of your reading of specialized articles will involve looking up words you don’t quite understand. Once you get the meanings, though, you’re able to better understand the next article.

As regards ibuprofen, the WHO has walked back an earlier statement cautioning against using that drug as a fever suppressant. That’s another thing to mind – conditions can change, so we need to be ready to change with them.

For marijuana use, the cautions are as regards to impact on the respiratory system and any activity that involves communal sharing of drugs or their delivery apparatus.

What about other questions? I just apply the above methodology to get the answers. In particular, I use those keywords SARS-CoV-19 and COVID-19 to deliver better results in my searches.

Why We Need Health Care Reform in the USA

Leave a reply

Here is a case of why the USA needs serious health care reform. This case is around a person who suspected that he might have coronavirus. He went to the emergency room, got tested, and was released after determining he only had the flu. He then got a bill for $3270 – the cost of the tests. His insurance company would cover all but $1400 if he could provide records from the last 3 years that prove he did not have the flu as a pre-existing condition. His insurance company informs him that if, or more realistically, *when* he does not provide the requested proof, he will be on the hook for the full $3500.

To me, this just adds to the culture of “better to pay the undertaker than the doctor” that is in existence in many American families, and I’ve been there myself. When we face a possible pandemic and people hesitate to get treatment because of prohibitive costs, our nation is at risk for higher death rates from the pandemic due to delays in containing and treating the disease.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-test-medical-bill-china-us-miami-osmel-martinez-azcue-a9358146.html

Racist Words

Leave a reply

Not all racist words have to specifically invoke racist terms. They can be simple, everyday words, but used in a context and with a tone that makes them hateful. If a large group of people takes offense at simple, everyday words, then those words were racist. If you don’t think those words were racist, then you will want to check yourself.

BlacKKKlansman Reaction

Leave a reply
Saw “BlacKKKlansman” last night. Very powerful drama, very timely film. Spike Lee’s script takes the right-wing white-supremacist wink-wink phrases and places them in their full context. When someone buys into one or two of the lines they use, it’s easier to start going with the rest of their hateful flow.
 
If you think you’re not a racist, and you don’t see where Donald Trump is being a racist, then you need to re-think about whether or not you’re a racist. Why? Because I plan to call it out even more so than I’ve done in the past. I don’t care if it makes you uncomfortable. Racism should not be a comfortable position.
 
I think there is a place for conservative views in America. I’m very sympathetic towards many of them. But I’m not going to stand on the same side as racists. I’m going to call them out and denounce them. If you want to speak out against the excesses of liberals, please do. But first, denounce the racism that has infected so much of the conservative movement in the USA. Conservatives have needed to clean house since 1964, when the racists began to move like roaches from the Democratic party to the Republican one. Instead of accepting those votes, they need to turn them away.
 
The saying “Make America Great Again” applies only if you think a Black president was a disaster. It logically equates with turning back the clock on Civil Rights. If you believe that all people are created equal and that every adult in the USA deserves the right to vote, and to have those votes fairly counted and not gerrymandered, then you need to step away from that racist MAGA falsehood.
 
America’s greatness is in its principles of equality, rights, and freedoms. Racism, intolerance, and authoritarianism take away from our greatness as a nation. Trump and his most dedicated supporters promote racism, intolerance, and authoritarianism. If you’re not a racist, not intolerant, and not a jackbooted authoritarian, I don’t see how you can maintain those positions with an uncritical support of Trump.
 
And if you think you can maintain those positions with an uncritical support of Trump, then what is keeping you from joining the Klan? Or the American Nazi Party? The Aryan Nation? The League of the South? The Holocaust Deniers? What keeps you from joining with them? Ask carefully, because *they* have joined *you*.

Insecure Social Media, Russians, and US Elections

Leave a reply

For social media companies, insecurity is an integral part of their business model. It’s all down to how they work. They want to sell advertising and their rates are determined by the popularity of the pages where the ads run. More popular pages means higher ad rates, so anything that boosts popularity also boosts revenue for the social media companies.

Of course, when accounts that are liking and following are found to be fraudulent, advertisers cry foul and demand a purging of those fake accounts and also a reduction in their ad rates. This creates an incentive for social media companies to obscure account ownership so that fake accounts are less likely to be discovered. There’s also an incentive to engage in clickfraud, but I’ll pass over that for now. Instead, I’d like to focus in on how those fraudulent accounts can do more than just hike up revenues.

The Russian intelligence agency Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации (ФСБ) – FSB to English-speakers – has made use of misinformation and agitprop since it was the FSK, and before that the KGB, and before that the MGB, and before that the NKVD, and before that the NKGB, and before that the Cheka, and before that the Okhrana. One could say that misinformation and agitprop have been hobbies of Russian intelligence agencies for about 130 years. What is new for this age are the avenues available to the FSB to spread its poison messages.

Before social media concerns, Russians wishing to whip up extremist political movements and create internal discord in Western democracies had to buy their own presses and pay for their own mouthpieces, which could be quite expensive. If one of those were unmasked, then the expensive operation would be compromised and that expense and effort would go to waste.

But with FaceBook and Twitter and blogs, the FSB now has drastically reduced costs and much higher levels of cover. It’s Agitprop as a Service! Consider how easy it is to run multiple fake online accounts, compared to hiring multiple agents. These accounts generate interest and activity on social media, so they drive up ad rates – the firms that would be policing them in an authoritarian regime are protecting them in a capitalist system.

Even better for the FSB, the ability of extremist groups – particularly the far right – to sequester themselves from other news sources means that, once a message is injected into their media echo chambers, it will be repeated often enough so that, in the observation of Josef Goebbels, it will be held up as a truth. What shows up on RT.com will be tweeted and retweeted by FSB accounts active in far-right forums and will soon be heralded as non-fake news in outlets such as Fox, ZeroHedge, and Breitbart.

Back when ZeroHedge was more focused on the financial misdeeds of large banks in the wake of the Panic of 2008, I was an avid reader of stories posted there. But something changed over time, particularly in the run-up to the 2016 election in the USA. It went from examining financial issues as its primary focus and slid deep, really deep into pro-Trump positions with lots of posters on its boards echoing comments that could be classified as pro-Russian, anti-Semitic, racist, neo-fascist, and/or a combination of the previous.

The slide in bias was obvious to me. I’ve been a follower of non-corporate media since the 1980s, and I know the difference between an investigative journalism piece and a partisan propaganda paper. ZeroHedge had definitely lost a lot of the former and had gained a lot of the latter. As the onslaught of Russophilism, antisemitism, racism, and neofascism increased, I felt a need to get out of that news source and seek out alternatives. In so doing, I did a lot of searching. In those searches, I was stunned to see how many other outlets were parroting the sludge from ZeroHedge, like they were sheep from Animal Farm bleating out “four legs good, two legs better!”

From all this agitation in stirring up the far right, Russia knows it is destabilizing America. The heads of the FSB know that the American far right will prove Pushkin right at every turn: it will reject ten thousand truths in order to cling to the lie that justifies itself. This is how I know Judge Moore is highly likely to win the Senate election in Alabama. The Russian Twitter choir is singing his praises and millions of far-right users of social media are echoing those sentiments, actively and belligerently.

Judge Moore, of course, is a hand grenade being lobbed directly at the US Senate. The man has shown a pattern of serial sexual predation against minors. If he wasn’t running as a Republican for the Senate, he’d be the focus of a true crime show right now. Russian tweets and far right echoes claim falsely that his accusers have either forged evidence against him or recanted their claims. Those lies allow his supporters to push hard for his election. If Moore is elected, it will roil the Senate as many senators will demand that he not be seated and that Alabama send a different favorite son to the Capitol. Each house of Congress can do just that, accept or reject the people sent to it – and Moore is ripe for rejection.

If Moore is rejected, it will split the Republican party even deeper. The Republicans are already incapable of putting together a coherent legislative agenda. With a Moore rejection, it will be practically open war between the different halves of the Republican party.

If Moore is not rejected, it will split the Republican party even deeper, but in a different way. Instead of Moore’s supporters repeating Russian propaganda that they were robbed, it will be outraged moderates, unable to stomach being in the same political caucus as a sexual predator. Bear in mind that the stalking of multiple daughters of single women, all around the same age, all in roughly similar ways, is an actual pattern of sexual predation. We have documentation of this. We have multiple testimonies to this effect. This is a sexual predator that the Russians, through insecure social media, are helping to force down the GOP’s throat.

When we look back to what happened in Georgia and Estonia in the decade prior to 2016, we see exactly the same thing. We see the social media misinformation. We see the political manipulation of extremists. When we look at Ukraine after the USA toppled a pro-Russian government there, we see even Russia providing armed assistance to extremists there. That fact chills me, especially in light of how many on the far right hinted at taking up arms if Trump wasn’t elected in 2016.

I doubt if they actually would have taken up arms on their own, but if they were whipped up by their social media echo chamber and shipped a few thousand AK-15s, maybe they would cross over that tipping point. If that were to happen, I have no doubt that a US Army would crush that insurrection… and then spend decades dealing with low-level guerrilla warfare, all fueled by continued echoing of Russian lies in social media echo chambers.

While there is increasing agitation on the left in the form of the antifa movement, there just isn’t as much militancy in the American left, especially after the legacy of peaceful, antiwar protests. These are not minds that will have much fertile soil for violent rhetoric. They’re also more likely to turn out one of their own if he or she is found to have feet of clay. Witness their abandonment of big donors found to be serial sexual harassers. Witness their pressure on their own political caucus to resign from office, rather than persist in running for it or remaining in place.

No, the fertile ground is in the neofascist mind. The Russians make those pushes in Greece, in Germany, and in the USA. And while I find Steve Bannon to be more of an Austrofascist than a Nazi (the strong affinity for Catholicism is a dead giveaway for Austrofascists), I don’t think such fine details matter either to the Russians or to the minds the Russians poison every day with their lies.

So how do we solve this problem? The market won’t solve it. In fact, the free market will fan these flames because the business model of Twitter and other outlets is to spread misinformation if that means more ad revenue. But in a world of multiple email addresses, how do we limit a person to just one Twitter account? In a world of VPNs and TOR exit nodes, how do we keep too many FSB-driven accounts from affecting social media? When these fake accounts actually started out years ago with softer agendas, and have loads of historical content, how do we build an algorithm that can identify a friend from a foe? Or a friend from a foe yet to reveal itself?

Hamilton 68 http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ is a project that, instead of looking for the artillery shells of propaganda, seeks out the guns. While it does not claim to have discovered all sources of Russian disinformation on social media, it has found some significant signals amidst the noise. There’s some hope yet in the intel they are able to derive from extensive signals analysis. This is what any good intel agency does: read all the news to see where stories originated and how they are disseminated.

Right now, the Russian social media barrage is striving to elect Roy Moore to the US Senate. But, merely by getting the Republicans to cling to him like a piece of driftwood in a shipwreck, they’ve already demonstrated their control over that political faction. In the days and weeks to come, be certain that the Russians will continue to tug on that leash and the far right will follow every jerk and tug.

Insecure Social Media, Russians, and US Elections: Agitprop as a Service.

How Could Things Get Worse for the USA?

Leave a reply

I’m glad you asked that question. As I read over the news today, which includes reports of massive feuding between Trump and GOP Senators, I thought to myself that Trump’s behavior is no different from that of a Russian spy whose mission was to infiltrate as deeply as possible into the US Government and then commence to sabotage everything. The endgame for this mission is to eventually get fired from the role, but in such a way as to question the legitimacy of the firing and to leave a question mark in the minds of many if the firing actually happened, thereby plunging American politics into chaos.

So, here’s how I see a potential nightmare scenario playing out:

1. Trump stays in office and alienates everyone, and I mean everyone. So much so that his own party is ready to cut bait on him and seek his removal from office.
2. Mueller eventually releases his report and/or Congress decides to impeach and/or Congress decides to invoke the removal from power clause of the 25th Amendment.
3. Trump pardons himself and everyone else named on Mueller’s rap sheet.
4. Trump goes on a state visit to some European country.
5. Congress removes Trump from power in absentia.
6. Trump shows up in Moscow and immediately starts propaganda that he is a victim of an elitist coup and that he is still the POTUS.
7. The 27% of Americans that are basically going to support Trump until you pry their MAGA hats off of their cold, dead bodies constantly throw a wrench into the political works with declarations that whoever is in the White House is “not their president”.
8. These deplorable nutjobs all in “safe” GOP districts, so they elect representatives with similar deplorable nutjob views, who then go on to undermine everything done by either party.
9. Eventually, Putin’s doctors become so concerned about his popcorn intake that they put him on a low-sodium diet.

We’re then left with Trump spewing Russian propaganda from Moscow instead of from Washington DC, where he currently spews Russian propaganda. And if anyone wants to debate with me whether or not Trump is spewing Russian propaganda, try me. Trump’s response to the Russians kicking out hundreds of diplomats is classic “Radio Yerevan” stuff.

The politics of safe districts coupled with legal corporate lobbying – corporate lobbying was illegal prior to the 14th Amendment – has left us with politicians who are mostly beholden to extremist primary voters and huge campaign donors. That, in turn, left the USA highly vulnerable to what the Russians set up in 2016. I was skeptical at first, but now I am convinced that the Russians picked Donald Trump as their winner and the GOP took that bait. They took it all, hook, line, and sinker.

What we have right now is pretty bad, I’ll admit. But it could be much, much worse, as I’ve noted, above. Given the pace of the current spread of this gangrene, I figure something like this will have happened by this time next year. That’s a realistic assumption, so I’ll cut that in half and give it six months to play out. Which means this all goes down in the next two weeks, possibly…

The American ISIS

1 Reply

On 12 August 2017, a white supremacist showed us all that his movement is basically the same as ISIS when he drove his car into a crowd of people. I would rather be writing about something else on a Sunday morning, but I feel compelled to call out the alt-right for what it is: the American version of ISIS.

Its history goes much further back in time than ISIS’, but we can see when they had a caliphate of sorts during the time of segregation. People who opposed them were beaten and murdered as they sought to preserve their regime through violence. As segregation fell apart, they struggled on, even when the police forces they once controlled now started to investigate their crimes.

These segregationists, Nazis, and other groups collectively labeled the alt-right are emboldened in the wake of the election of a president who has always winked and nodded in their direction. This same president refused to disavow them or to condemn them specifically after this act of terror. This president is one of them.

His basis for survival depends upon the American ISIS and, as a result, he has become their imam, their fearless leader, their führer. If he abandons them, he has no support of consequence in any other group. With them and their threats of violence if the polls do not go their way, he can keep a grip on power.

Senator Flake of Arizona recently pointed out the Pyrrhic, Faustian bargain that the Republican party has made in his recent book. In the wake of this tragedy, I hope that other Republicans join with Senator Flake in denouncing the violence of the alt-right and specifically setting themselves up as enemies of that movement. We do not see that courage or conviction in our spineless, pandering president. Let us at least see that in the Republican party itself, if it is not to go down in history as the gate that opened to let these deplorables into power.

I’m disappointed by many of Ted Cruz’ positions, but I do applaud him for taking a stand: https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=3280 What disappoints me now is that I do not see a similar statement on John Cornyn’s page. Mr. Cornyn, where is your stand against terrorism?

I ask that question out of genuine concern. If a politician is not going to stand up and declare he is the enemy of the American ISIS, we have to ask why. We have to ask so that we know where our leaders stand. We have to know if our leaders will actually show courage or if they are nothing more than craven vote-counters.

Where do your representatives stand?

Where do you stand?

It’s not just enough to condemn the violence, the movement that spawned and justified the violence has to be condemned. A failure to even say a word is enough to give these murderers strength. We don’t have to engage them in arguments. We simply have to say that we do not agree with them and that we oppose and condemn the destruction of the American ideal.

We must condemn the American ISIS for what it is. Dignity demands it of us.