US officials have been playing very loose with the truth about these things.
>U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams even told Americans in a late February tweet that they need to “STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
As time went on, the tone changed, and Americans were encouraged to wear face masks, with many places requiring them.
Now Fauci has admitted that the reason Americans were initially discouraged from using them is because there was a shortage, as Adams acknowledged in the second part of his February tweet.
“We were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci told The Street. "We wanted to make sure the people, namely, the healthcare workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in harm's way to take care of people who you know were infected with coronavirus, and the danger of them getting infected. We did not want them to be without the equipment they needed."
It’s really unfortunate that these authorities have already sacrificed their respectability by being dishonest with the American people in the mask debacle.
It’s a propaganda piece. The point is to instill poor people with a fear of inflation to promote sentiment against redistribution, which is done by relating it with their everyday lives. Quality reporting is not the priority.
Gas is up because of the recent pipeline shutdown.
Grocery prices have been rising since the start of the pandemic. Far more people are now accustomed to cooking at home. Anecdotally, I am one of them. I buy at least twice as many groceries as I did pre-pandemic and that is not going to change. Also the pandemic is still in full force internationally, especially in places where the US sources major food imports.
Clothing is up because commerce with the Chinese textile industry was shut down during the pandemic. It will take at least another year before clothing prices are restored.
Notice that the massive spikes in real estate prices are not even mentioned in the article. This is a propaganda piece. It cherrypicks items that poor people depend on in order to promote backlash against redistribution.
Most of those trillions were delivered to the ruling/corporate class who has used it to secure assets instead of create value. That is the source of this inflation.
“Researchers could have gotten infected during their collecting trips, or while working with the new viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The virus that escaped from the lab would have been a natural virus, not one cooked up by gain of function.”
Your explanation doesn’t check out. First of all, construction hasn’t necessarily slowed down. Second, jobs were always in cities. That hasn’t changed. Third, new construction trends follow economic trends[0] and that has always been the case, since the dawn of the industrial era. It would be one thing if you were arguing that rising wealth inequality is a result of no new homes being built, but you’d still have to account for all the people who live in homes but don’t own them.
The U.S. almost certainly does this, but the U.S. would be able to wield its dominance to achieve a far more covert operation.
The U.S. has grounded and delayed flights of foreign government officials numerous times. What makes you think the U.S. would consider a commercial flight off limits?
“On 20 September, Evo Morales announced a lawsuit against the U.S. government for "crimes against humanity" for repeatedly blocking presidential flights, after an incident in which authorization for an overflight of Puerto Rico by President Maduro of Venezuela was delayed, although U.S. authorities said that they were entitled to three days' advance notice. Maduro had been en route to arrive in Beijing for bilaterial talks with the People's Republic of China.[14]”
The core critique Marxists make have of liberal politics is that liberalism is not democratic enough. Specifically, Marxists argue for democracy in the workplace whereas liberals are comfortable centralizing power over the means of production to a select few capitalists.
Marxists are for organizing society to serve the needs of the working class which reproduces society.
Marxists are progressive as they don’t deny the progress of history, which moves in one direction and cannot be turned back. Marxists understand capitalism as a necessary stage in the development of society but one that can only be temporary.
That is simply not true. You are partially correct on Marx’s use of the term, but by Marx’s standards, nothing about the USSR could conceivably be considered communism. Marx was starkly against pursuing revolution without first achieving capitalism. He was against Russian revolution because Russia was not a capitalist society.
That said, Marx was also less consistent on the definitions than some suggest.
Regardless, “communism” was the term decided on shortly after the civil war ended. It was confusing and a poor choice but there was certainly no confusion as to how well it correlated with the idea that communism was a final stage. Nobody believed the USSR had reached a final stage of anything.
That is the question! But it would be mistaken to presume Marxists believe they have all the answers. Marxists have only determined that the working class has no choice but to find the answer. This is why Engels called for a scientific socialism rather than a utopian socialism. Marxism is distinctly concerned with the scientific tradition.
