liceo posted:the fact is that mass death and enhanced surveillance are not a result and catch-up of an incompetent government response but instead has been the plan from the outset in order to bolster imperialism internationally.
as far as i knew we were all on the same page about this from the outset.
as far as any unpleasantness goes, i reject the notion that a lack of politeness from some or any posters absolves anyone else of the need to argue their case in a principled way. i, for example, do not have to defer to toyot's unsupported assertions just because cars has been rude to them.
and finally, to be crystal clear, all the stuff about smartphone apps and vaccine certificates and whatnot, that's a perfectly good topic for discussion, but let's not conflate all that with the topic of the vaccines themselves.
liceo posted:is what kinch was referring to as being embarrassing
it's not obvious to me that that's per se what was troubling kinch; we should let kinch speak for kinch IMO
to be clear i have GRAVE PERSONAL STAKES in this question, because kinch is now responsible for half of my lifetime downvotes!!
Edited by Constantignoble ()
HOO HOOOOO
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:liceo posted:
the fact is that mass death and enhanced surveillance are not a result and catch-up of an incompetent government response but instead has been the plan from the outset in order to bolster imperialism internationally.
as far as i knew we were all on the same page about this from the outset.
I'm not on the same page here, unless I'm misunderstanding the position. Yes, the capitalist state is opportunistically using the pandemic to do a lot of different things, but "from the outset" and some of the previous posting in here makes it seem like they've engineered the pandemic. The logical conclusion of this line of thought is to claim that the virus was man-made and purposely spread by the usa, which is contrary to the evidence and conclusions of multi-national teams of scientists investigating its origin, as I understand them.
They didn't spend a decade building internet infrastructure, social media surveillance platforms, etc. just in case there was a random mutation of a gene in a zootropic virus or any kind of similar random calamity. The systems were built as the natural development of communications technology applied to all the spheres of life, mainly commerce and social control. They happened to be well suited to accommodate a pandemic and their growth accelerated as necessary in the situation, but that acceleration was not in a pre-planned, worked out direction. The changes we're seeing are based on the internal characteristics of the society but the pandemic is the external force which drives their dialectical development. That external force could have been something totally different, creating a different change in the society.
The pandemic being so convenient for the growth of technological surveillance and control seems too perfect to be coincidental, but if something else had happened giving the capitalist state some other kind of opportunity, it also would have seemed that way because that's just what would have happened. Every outcome seems like the only possible outcome after the fact.
I mentioned solar flares previously, because that's another catastrophic unpredictable event, but they would seriously set back technological surveillance and communication. Even so, the capitalist state would adapt to it and suddenly it would seem like they had been planning to take these tools away from us all along. Nevermind the thousands that died right in the belly of the beast as a result, the severe logistical disruptions, etc. because despite all that they would still come out on top just as they did in the pandemic. The dominant classes taking advantage of disturbances to strengthen their rule while the oppressed classes are crushed more rigorously than before is just a property of capitalism, not evidence for the bourgeoisie having infinite foresight and planning.
Those who argue in an absolute way for technology’s categorical social neutrality, especially from the left, forge one of the most dangerous, subtle, and effective instruments of ideological counterinsurgency: they accept the myth of progress and confuse opposition to the capitalist agenda. They suggest that every technology is exactly the same as the knife, the Kalashnikov repurposed by anti-colonial militia, or the printing press.2 They argue that the new engines, machine tools, and social media sites are not welded onto the hands of the ruling class. And this is dangerous, because capitalists do not choose technology willy-nilly, but in order to maximize power, as has been shown time and again by critical historians of technology. Former MIT historian David Noble proved machine tools were designed to deskill workers and concentrate power. Such deadly melees do not occur just on one shop floor or industry. Each technological edifice exists within a world-system of uneven accumulation. British textile production, access to cotton and wool, and markets for cloth and clothing, for example, were never merely a parochial British question. As the Indian economic historian Amiya Kumar Bagchi points out, cloth-making wove together social threads spanning the British slave trade, the underdevelopment of Africa, the deindustrialization of India, southern US cotton production, and British industrialization, into one piece of capitalist fabric. Coal-fueled industrial take-off in Victorian Britain was one side of a coin whose genocidal reverse-face was Britain’s late Victorian holocausts.
colddays posted:I'm not on the same page here, unless I'm misunderstanding the position. Yes, the capitalist state is opportunistically using the pandemic to do a lot of different things, but "from the outset" and some of the previous posting in here makes it seem like they've engineered the pandemic.
I was really just referring to the sentiment that capitalist governments, especially the US, have been quite happy to let this thing kill a lot of people. There have definitely been many aspects of the covid response which bear that out. But no, not that they engineered the pandemic.
liceo posted:the fact is that mass death and enhanced surveillance are not a result and catch-up of an incompetent government response but instead has been the plan from the outset in order to bolster imperialism internationally.
cannot disagree with this more. the pandemic has been an unmitigated disaster for the NATO gang, and doubly so for the US.
the global capitalist economy has been held together by Elmer's glue and balsa wood since the 2009 crisis. the Federal Reserve has had virtually negative interest rates for over a decade, practically begging corporations "please, take our money" and they still sit on cash reserves instead of investing it because The Rate of Profit Continues to Fall. and the last crisis lead to OWS, to Bernie Sanders coming close to winning the nomination. Real communists may laugh at obvious socdem sheepdogging, but the bourgeois is definitely not laughing, they're scared, and the fact that they have not even thrown the burgeoning left a bone like student loan relief only shows how precarious the situation is.
now you have a pandemic that nobody saw coming, that disrupted supply chains the world over, that saw millions of consumers stay home for months, millions more lose their jobs, entire industries shut down overnight. if the capitalist economy were in a boom period, maybe it would be different, but oh boy. the tipping point of the last crisis was the housing bubble bursting, which caused a downstream meltdown in the credit derivative swap market, a speculative commodity so opaque that many financial professionals would struggle to explain it. it's almost impossible to imagine there not being shockwaves from this pandemic that lead to their own crises. the ruling class was so scared that a Republican Party that controlled all 3 branches of government frantically voted to massively expand unemployment benefits -- absolutely unthinkable even just months earlier -- just in an attempt to prevent it all from crashing down.
and imperialism isn't doing much better! it is arguable that NATO imperialism has not had a clear, unmitigated victory since Libya. Assad is still running Syria, Venezuela is holding on, it looked like they had Bolivia for a minute but was quickly reversed, Russia embarrassed them by grabbing Crimea and daring them to do something about it, Iran made it painfully clear that they could turn the gulf states into a giant salt field if it came down to it, and now Afghanistan fell in about 5 minutes. the United $nakes cannot project power like it used to. the ruling class is terrified of China, unilaterally agrees that it's their greatest threat. but you can tell that crisis is creeping in, because they no longer agree _how_ to deal with that threat anymore. do they keep NATO together, and get all the rogue states in line, like they've been trying to do since the fall of the USSR? or do they say "to hell with NATO" and seek out an alliance with Russia as a way to contain China (the Bannon/Trump plan)?
so yes, imperialism is not doing so hot lately either. and you know what does not help them? 600K+ people dying, the economy going belly up, the most powerful country in the world stepping on every rake in the driveway. not when China has 4x the population and a fraction of the deaths, their economy barely skips a beat, and still supply vaccines to a huge chunk of the third world. meanwhile, US Congress cannot get out of their own way long enough to pass an infrastructure bill to spend over ten years on what China spends in 1.
people here are rightfully skeptical that AmeriKKKa is vaccinating citizens out of the goodness of their hearts. and you are correct. they are pushing people to get vaccinated because, in a country where 4000 people are dying DAILY, from a disease that can be spread through the air, everyone is terrified to go outside and consume, spend money, or generally keep the wheels of the capitalist system spinning. we saw this back in the winter, when many states didn't go back into lockdown in the face of rising cases, but economic activity still ground to a half. you don't have to go the University of Chicago Milton Friedman School of Economics to realize that many of the rational actors that make up our free market are not going to risk eating at Denny's when a 9/11's worth of deaths are happening every single day. the marginal utility of the Grand Slam Breakfast is just not worth drowning in your own lung's virus ridden fluids
the plan from the outset? they still don't have a plan! from the beginning, the federal government has punted all responsibility to the states. 50 different responses and approaches -- everyone from the rotund Pritzker fortune heir of Illinois to My Nepotistic Paranoid Cousin Vinny of NY to Wannabe Bautista Gusanos of Florida to Death KKKult Armageddon of the Lt. Governor of Texas. NY is requiring proof of vaccination for all indoor dining. Texas, on the other hand, passes a law *explicitly banning* any sort of vaccine passport. the Florida state government is filing lawsuits against its own counties who mandate masks for children in public schools. there is absolutely no plan, they are wining it every step of the way, entirely reactionary decision making. and if the vaccines hadn't arrived, the US would be looking at 1MM+ deaths and the complete collapse of its healthcare system.
are they trying to come up with a plan so that these turn of events benefit imperialism and increase surveillance? i'm sure they are. one time in 6th grade, i left the gym locker room and forgot to put on pants. i, too, realized i needed a plan to get back sight unseen. this does not mean that was my ORIGINAL plan, nor does the creation of a new plan mean that the initial incidence was not a disaster, far outweighing whatever meager benefits i derive from the new plan.
what, exactly, are the new benefits they get from it they don't already have? increased surveillance, for a country where every email, phone call, and most internet traffic is already intercepted by the NSA? if you think the bourgeois will trade people carrying around a little white card for the virtual collapse of the commercial real estate market, then buddy...
the two biggest reasons you know the vaccines are effective are that the ruling class was lining up to get them when they first came out (my spouse works at a hospital in NYC, and the rich were making calls to see if they could trade donations to cut the line) and that the US refused to export any vaccines, hoarding them all for their citizens, until they realized that 50% would rather go to the Great Respirator In the Sky than get the Judeo-Bolshevik microchip vaccine, and huge chunks of them were going rancid in fridges across the country
Acdtrux posted:who cares about surveillance lol. I care about workers and stuff like, neo nazis and landlords, and also class conflict
what if surveillance could be used by the state to keep an eye on potential sources of class conflict.. just something to think about
Acdtrux posted:who cares about surveillance lol. I care about workers and stuff like, neo nazis and landlords, and also class conflict
this post brought to you by the DSA
karphead posted:who cares about the surveillance cost in the face of a worldwide pandemic
Communists
lolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
cars posted:lolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
dr malone was quoted as saying that rna vaccines are 'epoch fail'
cars posted:I want to make it clear ahead of time that i am not in FAVOR of how, nor do i even like how, those who disagree with me on this forum are going to die of a disease they could have kept themselves from getting, in part because some of them may have children whomst shall never get to post even once.
liceo posted:shapes posted:he two biggest reasons you know the vaccines are effective
you are really obsessed with this, aren't you?
lmao what?? hey dude youre really obsessed with this global pandemic... have you tried just like, vibing.....
liceo posted:i explicitly said in multiple posts that talking about the effectiveness of any of the vaccines is not a productive conversation because while they are helping people, there are still objective unknowns.
okay so we're just going full granola dumbshit on this forum now
cars posted:lolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
cmon dawg logically.ai is as clear a CIA website as i've seen, i'm not "anti-vax" or whatever idiotic abstraction you're gonna whip out next but seeing all the stops pulled to destroy this guy's reputation because he voiced basically mild concerns about the regulatory process is more worrisome than funny i think, irrespective of what you think of him. the objection they have to him being called the inventor of mrna tech boils down to 1) other people were working on similar things at the same time and 2) that he didn't literally bring it to the market, as if every other existing therapy had the billions of dollars in necessary R&D shouldered by research labs who can barely afford to pay their assistants. from what i've seen he's not a crackpot libertarian type, he's just not politically savvy enough to understand why the only media outlets willing to speak to him are, like the epoch times, reactionary intelligence cutouts. anyway the only really embarrassing things in this thread are your appeals to vulgar scientism and repeated attempts to draw people into the mud for no reason, i dont recall anyone saying anything close to resembling "vaccine-mutated humantids and how their minds are being invaded by microwave clairaudience", stop being dense