"We don't have light"

[vt]

Re: "We don't have light"

The CBS 60 Minutes program tonight said that both China and Cuba were using some sort of microwave device to cause brain or other injuries to American
diplomats, their spouses, and children. This is more recent than the Intercept article. Two respected major media outlets now support what is being said.

Russia is suspected of numerous attacks on Russians that have fled the country and living, they thought successfully, in free nations.

The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and other journalistic achievements belie those that would believe that large corporations control our thoughts.
If anything it's the other way around with government agencies leaking info they want out there to these companies. Fortunately there are some
media doing their job to find out the truth. We still have free press.

[dcarrigg]

Re: "We don't have light"

This is a crap argument for why Americans don't deserve the same right to healthcare citizens of the rest of the developed world enjoy.

Besides which, the body count game is silly. Queen Victoria's capitalism certainly murdered more than Mao or Stalin. The potato famine was just practice. The East India Company was literally a for profit joint stock corporation than conquered and ran India, overseeing over 100 million starved under them and the Raj as they forced starving farmers to pay rent to absentee landlords and to export the crops they grew to markets elsewhere in the empire where they'd fetch a higher price. The list of Indian famines under British rule is a mile long.

And I didn't even get to mentioning Africa yet...Remember when free markets had families in chains on the auction block?

Pointing out the brutality of Invaders and dictators is easy. But it ain't like any one economic ideology has a monopoly on that. And in any event, I'm not terribly worried that universal healthcare or increased in state tuition subsidies or 1980 tax rates are gonna lead to an autocratic nightmare in America.

[Techdread]

Re: "We don't have light"

This is a crap argument for why Americans don't deserve the same right to healthcare citizens of the rest of the developed world enjoy.

Besides which, the body count game is silly. Queen Victoria's capitalism certainly murdered more than Mao or Stalin. The potato famine was just practice. The East India Company was literally a for profit joint stock corporation than conquered and ran India, overseeing over 100 million starved under them and the Raj as they forced starving farmers to pay rent to absentee landlords and to export the crops they grew to markets elsewhere in the empire where they'd fetch a higher price. The list of Indian famines under British rule is a mile long.

And I didn't even get to mentioning Africa yet...Remember when free markets had families in chains on the auction block?

Pointing out the brutality of Invaders and dictators is easy. But it ain't like any one economic ideology has a monopoly on that. And in any event, I'm not terribly worried that universal healthcare or increased in state tuition subsidies or 1980 tax rates are gonna lead to an autocratic nightmare in America.

Americans just seem crazy to the outside, look at that Public Healthcare spend and you don't have universal health care.

[Mega]

Re: "We don't have light"

[dcarrigg]

Re: "We don't have light"

You'd have better luck selling sand in a desert.

800 years. I wouldn't even be here talking to you now if my family didn't flee to Canada to dodge a civil war when grandad was young. And grandad taught dad to remember. Dad taught me. I'll teach the next generation.

Shoulda wiped us all out if they didn't want push back on that narrative. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

[llanlad2]

Re: "We don't have light"

The CBS 60 Minutes program tonight said that both China and Cuba were using some sort of microwave device to cause brain or other injuries to American
diplomats, their spouses, and children. This is more recent than the Intercept article. Two respected major media outlets now support what is being said.

Russia is suspected of numerous attacks on Russians that have fled the country and living, they thought successfully, in free nations.

The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and other journalistic achievements belie those that would believe that large corporations control our thoughts.
If anything it's the other way around with government agencies leaking info they want out there to these companies. Fortunately there are some
media doing their job to find out the truth. We still have free press.

The programme reports without question or evidence what the military tell them. The news agencies are stuffed with ex-military. You do remember that there were no WMD found in Iraq despite all the "evidence" the US and UK "intelligence agencies" found. It was a fiction supported by the free media.
If you read the Intercept article the supposed suspect noise was a "male cricket!!!!" . You couldn't make it up. The independent free press are only reporting what the military feed them. Has this free press checked the veracity of the claims? Or are they just repeating what they are told to without question?
And finally consider this....if the US system is so good them how come the poverty struck Chinese and Russians are producing these magical weapons when the US spends more on its military than the entire rest of the world put together.
If you seriously believe the Chinese and Russians have secret microwave weapons because 60 minutes says so then that proves the success of US propaganda in brainwashing its own population.
As for free press....it does what the owners tell it to do. I
Take Venezuala for example.....
https://fair.org/home/venezuela-cove...latin-america/

[dcarrigg]

Re: "We don't have light"

I mean, Raytheon does make the active denial system, but supposedly they never deployed it in combat.

Microwave kind of sucks for a lot of this stuff. Can lose wifi just by pulling the shade down. A good winter getup would probably mitigate a lot of the effects of a non lethal system like that, gotta figure. If you know it's microwave and it's persistent in a building not shouldn't be terribly complicated to deploy countermeasures, I'd think.

Not exactly an area I have any deep expertise in. But it's also not like people don't know how to stop rf signals...

[dcarrigg]

Re: "We don't have light"

I mean, it's obvious how they think of us, and it ain't highly...

[vt]

Re: "We don't have light"

The programme reports without question or evidence what the military tell them. The news agencies are stuffed with ex-military. You do remember that there were no WMD found in Iraq despite all the "evidence" the US and UK "intelligence agencies" found. It was a fiction supported by the free media.
If you read the Intercept article the supposed suspect noise was a "male cricket!!!!" . You couldn't make it up. The independent free press are only reporting what the military feed them. Has this free press checked the veracity of the claims? Or are they just repeating what they are told to without question?
And finally consider this....if the US system is so good them how come the poverty struck Chinese and Russians are producing these magical weapons when the US spends more on its military than the entire rest of the world put together.
If you seriously believe the Chinese and Russians have secret microwave weapons because 60 minutes says so then that proves the success of US propaganda in brainwashing its own population.
As for free press....it does what the owners tell it to do. I
Take Venezuala for example.....
https://fair.org/home/venezuela-cove...latin-america/

I don't know what you are smoking but that's so far off the charts of even left wing lies that it boggles the mind.

Guaido is a socialist, not a right winger. And the American press has been no friend of the military since the Pentagon Papers and Vietnam.

FAIR appeals to be a left wing rag to create lies to support tyranny.

Over 3 million have fled Venezuela:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...united-nations

The liberal press has many articles pointing to microwave weapons from China and Russia:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...in-cuba-china/

[Chris Coles]

Re: "We don't have light"

Once I traveled up to London for an evening meeting at the Institute of Economic Affairs, IEA, "Meet the author" evening and during the post book presentation discussion and questions asked: We live in either a right wing economy or a left wing economy; neither of which has succeeded, so why not take the best from the right and the same from the left and put them together to form a new way forward. You could have heard a pin drop. All the economics professors, (of which there were quite a few), wandered off and got into huddles with what I had to assume were their students. No one spoke, no further questions. Very shortly afterwards, the meeting was called to a halt and I set off back home.

My view is that the primary problem is a lack of available equity capital, within the base, grass roots economy, to permit constant competition; allowing a massive increase in very small start-ups to constantly refresh competition under what I describe as free enterprise.

Modern capitalism denies access to that equity capital unless the investee is prepared to be immediately taken over and used as a slave company to be sold on to the highest bidder. Socialism leads to massive corruption within a nation's administration, which in turn allows all the protections of the socialist economy against anyone competing against the "greater good". Then add that it is not just my viewpoint; that communism is just another form of religion; with all the same teaching structures and rigid rules to keep the masses in line.

Neither way has worked. Neither will work. Both eventually lead to one form or another of classic feudalism; autocratic or bureaucratic; where absolute power always leads to absolute corruption. Time for change, but who can lead us out of the present dilemma?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: "We don't have light"

...FAIR appeals to be a left wing rag to create lies to support tyranny...

"create lies to support tyranny." Hmmm. " to support tyranny."

Maybe shoulda stopped at "left wing rag".
.
.
.

[vt]

Re: "We don't have light"

Both left and right wing radicals create lies to promote their outrageous ideas. The internet enables them.

Even mainstream politicians lie at times.

We need to discuss issues and respect differences of opinion. But also call out obvious falsehoods.

[vt]

Re: "We don't have light"

Good observations Chris

[dcarrigg]

Re: "We don't have light"

I guess what I was trying to explain earlier, vt, is that we can't even agree on what words mean. Never mind differences of opinion about what to do. We can't even agree on the basic definitions of language anymore. We're locked in a battle of essentially contested concepts, where one side thinks pre Reagan tax rates are socialism and the other side thinks that makes no sense to say. One side says we need tax cuts for growth. The other side says growth's slower over the past 30 tax cut heavy years than any other 30 year period in American history.

What's the compromise there? How could anyone possibly satisfy both visions?

It would seem to be a factual question: Have the tax Trump/bush/Reagan tax cuts significantly improved the material wealth of the American people?

This has to be a yes or no, true of false question. It cannot be opinion based. Either they did or they did not.

But we can't agree on that.

And that's why the center does not hold and there are fewer centrists all the time.

It's not that we agree on the facts, but not ideology, and so we can maybe split the difference and address the factual problems on the ground.

It's that we fundamentally don't agree on what the facts are, what the problems are on the ground, or even what words mean any more.

You can't compromise out of an impasse like that. One side has to win. Either climate change is a real and present danger, or it is not. Either income inequality is threatening to subvert the republic and usher in an oligarchy, or it is not. Either 30+ million people without health insurance and 60 million more in danger of bankruptcy from medical bills is a crisis, or it is not. Either the lowest homeownership rates in generations are caused by sky high student debt, or they are not. Either attempts to recognize these problems and solve them are socialism, or they are not. Either the fact there have been zero antitrust cases under sec 2 of the Sherman Act begun by the justice department since HW Bush is a problem, or it is not. More basically, either monopolies and oligopolies are a problem, or they are not. Heard Disney bought Fox today, speaking of which...also heard Rupert's putting Paul Ryan on as chairman of the board on the other side. I guess going from Speaker of the House to Minister of Propaganda is a promotion...

I would love to come to an agreement on an answer to these questions. I really would. But how on Earth would we ever get past our hugely diverging views on what the facts are?

[vt]

Re: "We don't have light"

Understood DC and certainly we both want the middle and lower classes treated better and income inequality to be reduced.

The public now supports single payer by a majority. However when other facts are added they reverse to a majority not in favor with conditions.

The major roadblocks are too much control by government and higher taxes.

People fear too much government control for goodreasons. Too much red tape; though not any more than insurance companies. Too much chance of denial
of covering certain things, as we've seen in the British and other systems of National Health Care.

Yes single payer should have higher income and net worth individuals paying more. But are the middle and lower class willing to pay 50% of their incomes for all government benefits. Norway has great benefits everyone pays at least 50% in taxes with the rich paying 70% to 80%.

I'm doubtful the diverse society we have would be willing to pay the necessary taxes.

https://www.kff.org/health-reform/po...r-health-care/