George Galloway and Craig Murray 20.01.2020

San Francisco Chronicle:

Americans have “moved on” from pandemic, poll finds

Concern about COVID-19 has hit a low point in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, even though hundreds of Americans are still dying every day from the virus, according to the latest and final Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index released Tuesday. While White House officials anticipate another fall and winter surge, “the latest results find a country that has largely — though not completely — moved on from the pandemic,” states the report which has been running regularly since mid-March 2020. Only 37% of the respondents in the latest poll said they still sometimes wear a mask in public spaces, compared to 71% in September 2021. Few are worried about the most severe or long-term outcomes of the disease. Only about 18% said they are concerned about the symptoms of long COVID; 12% are worried about hospitalization; and 11% about death. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said there is a small risk or no risk in returning to their normal, pre-COVID life — and nearly half said they already have.

Shall I go off and away to bright Andromeda?
Shall I sail my wooden ships to the sea?
Or stay in a cage of those in Amerika??
Or shall I be on the knee?
Wave goodbye to Amerika
Say hello to the garden

So I see – I see the way you feel
And I know that your life is real
Pioneer searcher refugee
I follow you and you follow me
Let’s go together
Let’s go together
Let’s go together right now

—Paul Kantner, Let’s Go Together

It amuses me to recall listening to this song forty-some years ago, imagining being part of a group of technically proficient political dissidents in some future dystopia. We’ve certainly got the dystopia. Where are my revolutionaries? Where is my starship?

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone ‘picked me out’. On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me, her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear (everyone whispered there) – ‘Could one ever describe this?’ And I answered – ‘I can.’ It was then that something like a smile slid across what had previously been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

—Анна Андреевна Ахматова

full text

I picked this up the other day. I first read it in English in 1975. Two very nice young men from Haverford College taught a class on Existential Literature at my alternative school where four students – only two of us regularly attended the class – read classics by Sarte, Camus, Dostoevsky. I remember being very affected by Solzhenitsyn. For one thing, I told the instructor that while in Pennsylvania it was autumn at the time and nights were cool, reading the book made me feel frozen cold. Yes, I remember he smiled in agreement. At that time the Soviet Gulag was far away. It was Communist, foreign. We were lucky to not be Soviet, luckier still to not have been sentenced to the Gulag. And in 2022 I think, well, here we are.

Apartment building of Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner

This image popped into my head this afternoon. To me this is like Dr. & Mrs. Evil. It is difficult to imagine Joe Biden and Liz Truss conjuring such emotion – I think more along the lines of Dumb and Dumber.

Craig Murray:

I witnessed her at very close quarters working on two state visits which I had a major part in organising, to Poland and to Ghana. She was very dutiful and serious, genuinely anxious to get everything right, and worried by it. She struck me as personally pleasant and kindly. She was not, to be frank, particularly bright and sharp. I was used to working with senior ministers both domestic and foreign and she was not at that level. But then somebody selected purely by accident of birth is unlikely to be so.

Key staff organising a state visit get by tradition a private, individual audience of thank you. They also get honours on the spot. I turned down a LVO (Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order) in Warsaw and a CVO (Commander of …) in Accra. Because of the unique circumstance, I am one of very few people, or possibly the only person, who has ever refused an honour from the Queen and then had a private audience at which she asked why! I must certainly be the only person that happened to twice.

(I had earlier in my career been asked if I would accept an OBE and said no. As with the vast majority of people who refused an honour, I very much doubt the Queen ever knew that had happened.)

Anyway, in my audiences I told the Queen I was both a republican and a Scottish nationalist. I should state in fairness that she was absolutely fine with that, replied very pleasantly and seemed vaguely amused. Instead of the honour, she gave me personal gifts each time – a letter rack made by Viscount Linley, and a silver Armada dish.

I later auctioned the letter rack to raise funds for Julian Assange.

Ω Ω Ω

Think seriously on this. 29% of the population want to abolish the monarchy. Think of all the BBC coverage of the monarchy you have seen over the last decade. What percentage do you estimate reflected or gave an airing to republican views? Less than 1%?

Now think of media coverage across all the broadcast and print media.

How often has the media reflected the republican viewpoint of a third of the population? Far, far less than a third of the time. Closer to 0% than 1%. Yes, there are bits of the media that dislike Meghan for being black or are willing to go after Andrew. But the institution of the monarchy itself?

There can be no clearer example than the monarchy of the unrelenting media propaganda by which the Establishment maintains its grip.

Petra Pinzler, Die Zeit:

Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz wollte die Erhöhung des CO₂-Preises aussetzen und das, obwohl der im Jahr 2023 gerade mal 0,1 Cent pro Kilowattstunde ausmachen würde. Er setzte sich durch, im kommenden Jahr wird die Erhöhung nun auf jeden Fall nicht kommen. Der CO₂-Preis ist den Grünen aber sehr wichtig. Sie haben also an besagtem Wochenende mal eben so – und von außen betrachtet ohne Not – bei einer symbolischen Frage ihre Position aufgegeben. Die öffentliche Botschaft an klimabesorgte Bürgerinnen und Bürger lautet: Nicht mal mehr bei ihrem Kernthema – dem langsamen Anstieg eines höchst moderaten CO₂-Preises – können die Grünen sich durchsetzen.

Das allein wäre nicht so schlimm, aber mit dem CO₂-Preis rückt auch die grüne Idee eines Klimageldes, das aus steigenden CO₂-Preisen finanziert wird, vor allem arme Menschen entlasten und die Energiewende fairer machen sollte, in immer weitere Ferne. Und als ob das nicht schon traurig genug wäre, kann die Entscheidung auch noch eine fatale globale Wirkung entfalten – wenige Wochen vor der nächsten Klimakonferenz. Denn sie signalisiert anderen Regierungen: Wenn es kriselt, rückt selbst in Deutschland der Klimaschutz unter Beteiligung eines grünen Wirtschaftsministers in den Hintergrund.

Katharina Schuler, Die Zeit:

Der Auftritt offenbart nun ein weiteres Mal die tiefe Spaltung der Fraktion. Denn während die Wagenknecht-Getreuen ihrer Frontfrau im Bundestag Beifall spenden, sind all diejenigen, die ein kritisches Verhältnis zu ihr haben, gar nicht erst gekommen. Sie kommentieren den Auftritt dafür anschließend aus dem Twitter-Off: „Von einem ‚Wirtschaftskrieg gegen Russland‘ zu sprechen verdreht die Tatsachen. Die Abschaffung sämtlicher Sanktionen zu fordern, ist nicht unsere Position!“, schreibt etwa die baupolitische Sprecherin der Linken, Caren Lay. „Es gibt keinen ‚Wirtschaftskrieg gegen Russland‘ (…) Putin hat ein Gasembargo gegen Deutschland verhängt, nicht umgekehrt. Als soziale Opposition muss man das klar haben“, twittert ihre Fraktionskollegin Kathrin Vogler.

Wie groß der Ärger im Wagenknecht-kritischen Teil von Fraktion und Partei darüber ist, dass die Fraktionsführung diesen Aufritt nicht verhindert hat, zeigt auch ein Tweet von Jörg Schindler, bis Juni noch Bundesgeschäftsführer seiner Partei. „Meine Partei die Linke hat heute im Bundestag nicht den demokratisch beschlossenen Willen ihrer Mitglieder, Wähler*innen, Anhänger*innen und jenen, die diese Stimme brauchen, artikuliert. Sondern @Linksfraktion hat sich verhalten wie ein arroganter feudaler Hofschranzen-Staat“, schreibt er und meint damit wohl, dass Wagenknecht Beifall auch von den Fraktionsvorsitzenden bekam. „Ich kann nicht verstehen, wie man immer wieder den eigenen Laden anzünden kann“, sagt eine andere Abgeordnete mit Blick auf die Fraktionsführung.

…

Die Linke habe es geschafft, die Debatte auf die sozialen Proteste zu konzentrieren. Sogar in den Umfragen sah es nicht mehr ganz so finster aus, in einer lag man zuletzt immerhin wieder bei sechs Prozent. „Da haben wir jetzt ja wieder ein Prozent, das wir verspielen können“, heißt es ironisch. Der Streit, welche Schlussfolgerungen man aus der gegenwärtigen Gaskrise zieht und welche Position man dabei zu Russland einnimmt, dürfte die Linke jedenfalls auch in den kommenden Monaten beschäftigen.

I notice that increasingly mainstream news outlets carry articles which consist of some large fraction of quotes from social media, quite often screenshots in fact, of Twitter and Facebook posts.

Guardian:

Los Angeles county is home to more than 69,000 unhoused people, count finds

…rates that are significantly higher than other US cities with homelessness crises. The humanitarian disaster in the largest county in the US has pushed unhoused people to live outside in tents, encampments, cars, RVs and makeshift structures, scattered under freeways and bridges, in major city parks and beach communities, on streets and sidewalks, and in remote desert terrain. An average of five unhoused people now die every day in LA county,…

Serious question: semantically how long may a „crisis“ continue? A „disaster“? US cities that I pay attention to, Philadelphia, San Francisco, LA, regularly have media stories which mention the „crisis“ of drug overdose deaths, homelessness. I think of a crisis as

How many years is it semantically correct to speak of a crisis continuing?

Le vieux monde se meurt, le nouveau monde tarde à apparaître et dans ce clair-obscur surgissent les monstres.

—Gramsci, loose translation by Gustave Massiah