Coronavirus/COVID-19

[Norm De Guerre]

Not sure where your energy comes from LG , I don’t have enough life left to debate with someone so blinkered.
The claptrap Under the cover of some self perceived intellect is amusing.

For sure some good points , some even I agree with , but the bs he gets called out for is never addressed .

I don't know King. Im kinda enjoying seeing what I Imagine a 1950's era letters to the editor page of The Bulletin would look like if it had survived Into the internet age.

 

[D Mitchell]

On the other hand, talk to any Chilean or Indonesian who managed to live through the Pinochet and Suharto slaughters of people who only wanted to live in a democratic country. Or, the Filipinos who had to suffer the Marcos regime, or the Greeks who lived through military dictatorship -- all with the rubber stamp of the good ol' USA.

As for Vietnam: ever heard of the Pentagon Papers?

You sentimentally hark back to an apple pie America when there was relatively full employment, when the economy was regulated, when unions had real power in the workplace, when the average young person could get a decent and affordable university which no longer exists. Once the military/industrial complex (remember Eisenhower's parting speech?) and the Republican right and its idealogues got its claws into the US economy and really stripped it bare, especially with the rise of neocons from Reagan onward, what is left? Industrial graveyards all around the nation, a generation of young people indebted for decades to come, a bloated private health system unable to serve tens of millions of people and a rapacious financial sector hardly accountable for its insidious greed which nearly brought down the whole world economy in 2008 and shows no signs reform or even culpability. Meanwhile, the country has the highest per capita numbers of people in prison.

The platform the Eisenhower government, if promulgated today, would no doubt be seen by Fox News et al, as dangerous left wing treachery.

Of the 4 countries that you raise, the US backed the anti communist forces against Communist insurgents in 3 of them, consistent post WW11 US behaviour, In the ‘60s and early ‘70s, it was fashionable at Universities to support Communist insurgents on the romantic notion that they represented the People against nasty Tyranny. That’s fine for students in their late teens and early 20s with no responsibilities but adults have and had responsibilities. By the way, the '60s saw the construction of Monash and Latrobe to accommodate the baby boomer surge. Back then, as now, fees were paid by students, unless they earned Commonwealth Scholarships or Education Department Studentships. Around 6 % of the demography went to Uni, not 40 % plus as now. A lot couldn't go because of affordability. The US had been dragged into 2 World Wars by warring European Nations. It didn’t want to be dragged into another so it sought stability, Communist Regimes destabalised World Order. It supported stable governments against communist insurgency, as did Australia, particularly Indonesia. The CIA specifically denied participation in the Coup that overthrew Allende. The US preferred a non Socialist/Communist Government for World Stability. Allende was only President for 3 or so years before being ousted by Pinochet. In that time he nationalised industries then formed alliances with Cuba, USSR and China, that should tell you something. In the early ‘70s, the US was happier with a non Communist or non Communist oriented government.

Eisenhower was regarded as a bit of a do nothing President at the time. He’s now lauded for having kept the US out of Wars. That’s what the US fundamentally wanted after WW11 ie it didn’t want to be dragged into major wars. Others blame his Presidency for the Cold War. History is constantly being revised.

 

[LittleG]

Not sure where your energy comes from LG , I don’t have enough life left to debate with someone so blinkered.
The claptrap Under the cover of some self perceived intellect is amusing.

For sure some good points , some even I agree with , but the bs he gets called out for is never addressed .

It was like arguing with my grandfather. He would keep spouting off examples and things to support his argument. After a while I learnt to listen & write down the key points.... then, one day when he was being particularly understanding, I got out the note book and went through the notes with him. He got angry a couple of times but listened to the end. A few months later, he told me he would follow his Christian Values and change. He couldn’t justify living the way he had.

I think I am wasting my time here, as the responses are not addressing the issues raised. But one can do naught but try.

 

[maddog37]

Pretty sure some Russian bots have taken over the forum.

 

[LittleG]

Antifa came up earlier in this thread, here a new article about them from a decent source:

Trump calls them terrorists but in 2017, most of the Antifa I met were pretty ordinary

Trump calls them terrorists but in 2017, most of the Antifa I met were pretty ordinary

Antifa is hard to describe. It's a loose collective of individuals and groups who in various ways believe they are doing their part to stand up for the oppressed — be it racial minorities or immigrants.

www.abc.net.au

Some of you labeled them thugs and as bad as those they oppose, eg. KKK, Neo-Nazis, etc. Better to post a good journalists view, rather than my own.

 

[NBates]

"Coloured? Coloured?" What is this, 1968? If so, I'd better get ready for prom.

Great movie actually.....

 

[King Harold]

Check out this guys past .
This is a relatively old clip , but gives you an idea where this regime want to get to.
Sad thing is the Republicans are now complicit with everything this corrupt administration is up to.

 

[footscray1973]

The CIA specifically denied participation in the Coup that overthrew Allende. The US preferred a non Socialist/Communist Government for World Stability. Allende was only President for 3 or so years before being ousted by Pinochet. In that time he nationalised industries then formed alliances with Cuba, USSR and China, that should tell you something. In the early ‘70s, the US was happier with a non Communist or non Communist oriented government.

Seems history, their own records and FACTS make that claim irrelevant.

United States intervention in Chile - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[BEaston]

"fake news"

 

[The Buck]

Relevant read here:

​

June 2, 2020​

Demonstrators protest the death of George Floyd on Sunday, May 31, near the White House in Washington.Alex Brandon/Associated Press​

[TD valign="middle"]

[TD valign="middle"]By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist[/TD]

[/TD]

These are times of grief for those of us who love America and its promise; I know people who have been spontaneously breaking into tears, and the rest of us are walking around in a kind of stupor.​

Every day, it seems, brings another indicator of our decline: the can-do nation has become a land that can’t deal with a pandemic, the leader of the free world has become a destroyer of international institutions, the birthplace of modern democracy is ruled by would-be authoritarians. How can everything be going so wrong, so fast?​

Well, we know the answer. As Joe Biden put it, “the original sin of slavery stains our country today.”​

Non-American friends sometimes ask me why the world’s richest major nation doesn’t have universal health care. The answer is race: we almost got universal coverage in 1947, but segregationists blocked it out of fear that it would lead to integrated hospitals (which Medicare actually did do in the 1960s.) Most of the states that have refused to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal government would bear the great bulk of the cost, are former slave states.​

The Italian-American economist Alberto Alesina suddenly died on March 23; among his best work was a joint paper that examined the reasons America doesn’t have a European-style welfare state. The answer, documented at length, was racial division: in America, too many of us think of the beneficiaries of support as Those People, not like us.​

Continue reading the main story

Now, America is actually a far less racist society than it used to be. In 1969 only 17 percent of white Americans approved of black-white marriage. Even during Ronald Reagan’s first term that number was only up to 38 percent. As of 2013 it was 84 percent. (As it happens, my wife is African-American.)​

But as George Floyd could tell you, if he were still alive, racism is far from gone. And while Americans are increasingly tolerant as individuals, racial tensions continue to be exacerbated by cynical politicians, who exploit white racism to sell policies that actually hurt workers, whatever their skin color.​

And racial antagonism is, of course, what made it possible for Donald Trump to become president. It’s hard to imagine someone less suited for the job, intellectually and morally. But he’s a very good hater, who has conjured up many demons — there are far more anti-Semitic insults and threats in my inbox than ever before. And his appeal to prejudice has given him a devoted base.​

So now we’re at a moment of crisis, when all the good things America stands for are endangered by the poisonous legacy of our original sin. Will we make it through? Honestly, I’m not at all sure that we will.​

 

[D Mitchell]

That’s a good get, Buck, an interesting analysis of the source of one of the great imponderables of US society, continued resistance to implementing a public health system. Racism. I’d concluded that it was a freedom/self reliance issue. I’d never thought of Racism. I think that Biden’s Original Sin analogy is nonsense, on the verge of psycho-babble. The Harvard paper approaches Racism origin far more convincingly because they set out their methodology and canvas a range of other factors. To be fair, Krugman’s is a newspaper column, the Harvard Paper is a lengthy scholarly work. Good Reading.

I think Marcus Bontempelli will end up being a fair footballer (footy content, to keep maddog37 happy)

 

[TMoney22]

Has anyone actually stated what they specifically want to happen?

No matter the president unfortunately there have been many incidents to get their ass into gear and do something significant to help fix this issue. What would it take, I mean there has to be a point of acceptance otherwise this will never go away.

 

[DelRe]

That’s a good get, Buck, an interesting analysis of the source of one of the great imponderables of US society, continued resistance to implementing a public health system. Racism. I’d concluded that it was a freedom/self reliance issue. I’d never thought of Racism. I think that Biden’s Original Sin analogy is nonsense, on the verge of psycho-babble. The Harvard paper approaches Racism origin far more convincingly because they set out their methodology and canvas a range of other factors. To be fair, Krugman’s is a newspaper column, the Harvard Paper is a lengthy scholarly work. Good Reading.

I think Marcus Bontempelli will end up being a fair footballer (footy content, to keep maddog37 happy)

That’s twice in the last two pages. You’ve referred to racism as a source of issues in the US as nonsense and the BLM movement itself at nonsense. Can I just say please stop making such downright ignorant and offensive posts.

 

[ScragCity]

That’s twice in the last two pages. You’ve referred to racism as a source of issues in the US as nonsense and the BLM movement itself at nonsense. Can I just say please stop making such downright ignorant and offensive posts.

I don't agree with him DelRe but we do allow dissenting opinions in this thread.

 

[DelRe]

I don't agree with him DelRe but we do allow dissenting opinions in this thread.

Don’t waste the opportunity to highlight an ignorant post on worrying about the semantics of whether the response should be ‘stop doing it’ versus ‘I disagree’.

 

[King Harold]

Biden’s apology is not babble , makes total sense.
A country built with slavery and then almost imploded over this very issue. And here we are today still battling with Some institutionalised racism.

Some may remember this quote on here
“ don’t listen to what Trump says , watch what he does “

Yep not hard to work out who and what Trump really is.

side note , interesting our poster accuses someone else of “ babble “ when they are the current world champ !
I would put our man up against anyone.

 

[LittleG]

Biden’s apology is not babble , makes total sense.
A country built with slavery and then almost imploded over this very issue. And here we are today still battling with Some institutionalised racism.

Some may remember this quote on here
“ don’t listen to what Trump says , watch what he does “

Yep not hard to work out who and what Trump really is.

side note , interesting our poster accuses someone else of “ babble “ when they are the current world champ !
I would put our man up against anyone.

Trump got protested cleared, so he could walk to outside a church and hold up a bible.

Never went inside, never talked to a priest or anyone there, never opened the bible.... Just used the church & bible as photo props, which is completely disrespectful to ALL Christians.

 

[LittleG]

That’s twice in the last two pages. You’ve referred to racism as a source of issues in the US as nonsense and the BLM movement itself at nonsense. Can I just say please stop making such downright ignorant and offensive posts.

Glad to see I am not the only one who has pointed out Racism in this thread.



Please keep doing it!!!!

 

[ScragCity]

Don’t waste the opportunity to highlight an ignorant post on worrying about the semantics of whether the response should be ‘stop doing it’ versus ‘I disagree’.

It's more than semantics. If he is wrong about something then go ahead and explain why. You don't get to tell people to stop posting without providing a more substantial argument to what they've said than "you're ignorant and I'm offended."

To be fair I do understand that it's hard to present a logical argument against the poorly formatted drivel he posts.

 

[footscray1973]

It's more than semantics. If he is wrong about something then go ahead and explain why. You don't get to tell people to stop posting without providing a more substantial argument to what they've said than "you're ignorant and I'm offended."

To be fair I do understand that it's hard to present a logical argument against the poorly formatted drivel he posts.

Not to mention the selective replies, because the poster ignores the ones they can't mount an argument against, and other replies are waffle designed to sound knowledgeable. Agree with both of you though, I'm almost tempted to put them on ignore as they add nothing to the discussion in most instances... but I need a chuckle every now and then.

 

[footscray1973]

Biden’s apology is not babble , makes total sense.
A country built with slavery and then almost imploded over this very issue. And here we are today still battling with Some institutionalised racism.

Some may remember this quote on here
“ don’t listen to what Trump says , watch what he does “

Yep not hard to work out who and what Trump really is.

side note , interesting our poster accuses someone else of “ babble “ when they are the current world champ !
I would put our man up against anyone.

That's a great post - give him a (deserved) whack, but temper it with possibly his only redeeming 'feature'!

 

[LittleG]

COVID-19 related post.

Dear Prime Minister,

My business has gone under. My rent is due, my kids will get hungry soon and I have been an actual tax payer (rather than a tax dodger). I am reasonably well off.... but I don’t have a spare $150k lying around to renovate my house.

Ain fact, why are we giving a subsidy to those who have the spare cash and keeping the tradies working in those well to do suburbs, rather than fix the region towns like Malacoota where they can’t get any tradies to rebuild their houses.

Shame on you for ignoring the suffering of the fires by making it harder for them to get the Tradies they need to fix their houses.

No kind regards,

LittleG

 

[D Mitchell]

I imagine that the 2 instances Delre refers to are

(a) post 2752 where I supported Mattdougie’s view that the riots in the US are beyond support for Floyd and are participants causing trouble. I doubted that this was a genuine Black Lives Matter protest and questioned the basis of that movement. I supported my position with statistics. Nobody took issue with that until Delre bobbed up with his ‘ignorant and offended’ line;

(b) post 2786. Bidens’ ‘original sin of this country stills stains our country today’. It’s nonsense. Had I been asked to expand I would have said and do say that it’s a cop out. Slavery was abolished in 1865, that’s 155 years ago. What racism there is in the US is the fault of current Americans, not their forbears.

I don’t want to be hard on Delre but I doubt he read either post carefully or even watched the Video of Biden giving the usual ‘our hearts go out to you’ American politicians’ line which they trot out whenever there is a mass shooting, especially at Schools, but do nothing about it. I imagine Delre feels very virtuous.

I hadn’t intended responding to Delre’s post. This post is in appreciation of Scragcity, he’s dead right, you shouldn’t tolerate the shut down of opinior or debate by pulling out the woke ‘offended’.

I’ve just spotted your addition, Scragcity. If by ‘formatted’ you intend the usual meaning, set out, I do the best I can, it’d be better if the software recognised Excel or Word formatting. If you mean content, that’s fine, you don’t have to agree with me, drivel's a bit harsh but at least you didn't write 'dribble'.

 

[maddog37]

What a load of dribble.

 

[DelRe]

I imagine that the 2 instances Delre refers to are

(a) post 2752 where I supported Mattdougie’s view that the riots in the US are beyond support for Floyd and are participants causing trouble. I doubted that this was a genuine Black Lives Matter protest and questioned the basis of that movement. I supported my position with statistics. Nobody took issue with that until Delre bobbed up with his ‘ignorant and offended’ line;

(b) post 2786. Bidens’ ‘original sin of this country stills stains our country today’. It’s nonsense. Had I been asked to expand I would have said and do say that it’s a cop out. Slavery was abolished in 1865, that’s 155 years ago. What racism there is in the US is the fault of current Americans, not their forbears.

I don’t want to be hard on Delre but I doubt he read either post carefully or even watched the Video of Biden giving the usual ‘our hearts go out to you’ American politicians’ line which they trot out whenever there is a mass shooting, especially at Schools, but do nothing about it. I imagine Delre feels very virtuous.

I hadn’t intended responding to Delre’s post. This post is in appreciation of Scragcity, he’s dead right, you shouldn’t tolerate the shut down of opinior or debate by pulling out the woke ‘offended’.

I’ve just spotted your addition, Scragcity. If by ‘formatted’ you intend the usual meaning, set out, I do the best I can, it’d be better if the software recognised Excel or Word formatting. If you mean content, that’s fine, you don’t have to agree with me, drivel's a bit harsh but at least you didn't write 'dribble'.

You said BLM is nonsense and now you double down to imply that it has nothing to with slavery because it ended 150 years ago.

I don’t need to explain racism or why your post is stupid, offensive and racist. It’s self evident.

I’m here under curfew and what you’re saying is just wrong. Just stop.