This also tells us a bit about Tutu — perhaps.

He doesn’t seem to be in their plans. Not now, or tomorrow. Obviously, they won it all, so it’s kinda sorta moot. Snead’s T-shirt, etc. But that was a truly very bad no good awful 2nd round pick.

Can he play slot corner?

;>)

Btw, folks: Amazon Music has an excellent channel for Saint Patrick’s Day. Enjoying meself ever so much with the rowdy tunes. Just finished a fine Irish Coffee to go along with them. Saving the Guinness for later tonight, and the viewing of Once. Not in the same league as the Irish coffee I had in Ireland,  of course, along the profoundly beautiful Ring of Kerry. But it was still refreshing!

Zooey wrote:

The American mind is fascinating

Who thinks 20% of people are transgender? Or that 30% of Americans are Jewish?

Most likely, people who watch Fox News, read Breitbart, listen to Steve Bannon podcasts, etc.

Right-wing media is very effective at creating hysteria over absolutely nothing. And it’s a double hit of stupid. As in, no one should care if the percentages of this or that minority were that high . . . plus, they obviously aren’t.

Zooey,

Good definition of the right’s version of libertarian. It’s a shame they hijacked the term.

I know you know this . . . but the left’s version predates the right’s by a coupla centuries. William Morris, Petr Kropotkin, Oscar Wilde, Kafka, James C. Scott, and Noam Chomsky fall into that left-libertarian, libertarian socialist, libertarian communist camp, as do I. In another forum, some time ago, I ID’d as such and was told there is no such thing. Had to point them to the relevant literature, etc.

The right’s version is pretty much astroturfed by the Koch brothers, with assists from Milton Friedman, the Austrian School, and Ayn Rand . . . though the latter claimed not to be one. Most Americans assume that’s the only kind. Ron Paul, Tyler Cowen, etc. etc.

Oh, well.

Say I own a bake-shop. I just made 20 brownies, and usually have 25 customers for those wonders of nature. I always sell them and then eat the 5 left over. But today is different, for some reason. There’s a rumor that I’m using a secret ingredient, which I may or may not have started meself. So I have a line out the door and around the block.

I could raise my prices. Or, I could even lower them. Nothing forces me to raise, lower, or keep them the same. It’s my choice. I might even be able to expand my business by lowering the prices, bake more secret recipe brownies, and lose weight, because I won’t have as many leftovers

My call, etc.

Oil companies could lower prices and likely bring in new customers. But they won’t, of course, because they’re greedy-ass planet-killers, and capitalism makes it legal to screw over workers, consumers, taxpayers, and the earth.

Oh, and another part of our conditioning: We tend to blame government, not the folks who actually set the prices, wages, and create artificial crises, etc. etc.

No economic system in the history of the world has evolved such an effective gaslighting complex. It’s not close.

wv wrote:

I’m waiting for the capitalist-media to tell me Putin is murdering babies in incubators. w v

Tragically, (as you know) virtually all the world’s media are capitalist, though it would actually be easier than many believe to change that**.

The key for me is just tell the truth, be accurate, no matter who pulls the strings. IMO, however, it’s not helpful to answer one cartoonish portrayal with another. As in, if Putin is being portrayed as a Marvel super-villain, it’s not productive to paint the US and the West in the same way. No cartoons, period, is better.

___

**Took a look at Caitlin Johnstone’s About page, after your h/t. Found it interesting, but I think she’s a bit confused as to what “capitalism” actually is and isn’t. She could actually receive direct payment for her craft and remain non-capitalist. She doesn’t have to ask for donations only to stay clean.

Long before capitalism existed, writers, craftsmen, artists, artisans, small farmers, etc. etc. took payment for their work. It’s not “money for work” that makes one a capitalist. It’s buying labor (as a commodity) to produce a commodity for money that does it. M-C-M and exchange value, with the capitalist appropriating the surplus value of his or her workforce as if he or she did all the work. The larger picture adding competitive laws of motion, Grow or Die, etc. That endless trap of production for profit, growth, pollution, waste, more, more, and more. All of that creates neck-breaking hierarchies and guarantees horrific levels of inequality too.

Ms. Johnstone could write for payment and stay clean, and leftist media could do the same, scale up, share ownership, share the fruits, and stay clean. Flatten hierarchies to the extent possible. Logically, that flattens inequality too — at least when and where this is applied.

https://www.salon.com/2022/03/10/conservatives-duped-by-disinformation-campaign-claim-us-is-holding-bioweapons-in-ukraine/

Conservatives duped by Russia disinformation campaign, claim U.S. is holding bioweapons in Ukraine
Russia appears to be planting false stories about U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine – and conservatives are falling for it
By Jon Skolnik
Published March 10, 2022 5:14PM (EST)

Right-wing personalities are spreading baseless notion that the U.S. is producing bioweapons in Ukraine, a Kremlin-backed conspiracy theory apparently used to justify Russia’s devastating invasion of Ukraine.

The theory, reported by Media Matters, was publicly presented during a Tuesday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in which Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland whether Ukraine has access to “chemical or biological weapons.”

Nuance responded that Ukraine has “biological research facilities” that the State Department is concerned might fall into Russian hands.

Later, Rubio noted that “Russian propaganda groups” are spreading “information about how they have uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to unleash biological weapons in the country.”
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To that point, Nuance acknowledged that “it is a classic Russian technique to blame the other guy for what they are planning to do themselves.”

While U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly denied possessing bioweapons in Ukraine, members of QAnon have spread the theory near and far – and now, it’s getting validation from mainstream conservatives with massive followings.

On Wednesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that Nuland, who suggested that Russia might be using disinformation tactics, was in fact the one waging a propaganda campaign against Russia.

“So what you are saying, Victoria Nuland, if, for example, you were funding secret bio-labs in Ukraine but wanted to hide that fact from the people who were paying for it in whose name you are doing it, then you might lie about it by claiming the Russians were lying about it,” Carlson ranted. “In other words, you might mount a disinformation campaign by claiming the other guy was mounting a disinformation campaign. Is that what you are saying, Victoria Nuland?”

Ex-Trump advisor Steve Bannon echoed a similarly meandering line of thinking that same day, instructing Florida residents to ask Rubio whether the CIA and Defense Department gave him specific questions to stick to in the hearing.

“What are they creating?” Bannon asked of the agencies. “Are we involved in any way? Have we financed it? Are we partners? Do we actually know what’s going on?”

Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn was even more to the point, declaring that the U.S. had somehow admitted to developing bioweapons in Ukraine.

“I was told that biolabs in Ukraine was a conspiracy theory yet here we are,” Flynn wrote over Telegram. “They are now admitting it openly.”

While it is true that the U.S. has biolabs in Ukraine, there is no evidence that the U.S. is building bioweapons with them. In fact, the U.S. operation of these labs stems from a 2005 agreement between Ukraine and the U.S. to secure old Soviet-era weapons that were left behind in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, CNN noted.

“The US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program works with the Ukrainian government to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities, while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development,” the U.S. embassy explained back in 2020.
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According to CNN, the theory that the U.S. is holding bioweapons in Ukraine typically flares up during times in which Russia is under intense international scrutiny. Kremlin agents have been known to plant pro-Russia stories in fringe media outlets, which results in conspiracy theories percolating to more mainstream personalities with larger audiences

Jon Skolnik

Jon Skolnik is a staff writer at Salon. His work has appeared in Current Affairs, The Baffler, and The New York Daily News.
MORE FROM Jon Skolnik • FOLLOW jonsskolnik

nittany ram wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

‘Which do you think best describes Russia?’ Communist: 42% Socialist: 13% Capitalist: 11% Something Else: 17% YouGov / March 1, 2022 / n=1495 / Online https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/aa58ig9d3b/econTabReport.pdf

2:40 PM · Mar 2, 2022·Twitter Web App

That poll is depressing. The USSR was never communist, at least not beyond small enclaves. Communism being the absence of the state, you can’t have a communist nation-state. Nor was it socialist. It was state capitalist, as Lenin said. He said he had to yank Russia into the 20th century, establish capitalism to do so, and socialism could wait. And they waited, and waited, and waited, and it never happened. After 1991, of course, it went hyper-ultra-capitalist, outdoing even the US on those grounds. Pretty absurd that such a large number of people think post-USSR Russia is communist or socialist. Emma Goldman wrote this back in 1936: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-is-no-communism-in-russia

Well, that’s depressing, but not surprising. US citizens know nothing about the world beyond our borders. And as the world grows smaller, it seems like we become more and more disconnected with it. We The People are willfully invested in not wanting to know about anything outside of the US. Climate change, habitat destruction, war – the world is on fire, and we’re relying on a population that doesn’t know or care what a fire hose is to somehow muster the political will to extinguish it.

Agreed. Leaning into despair far too often these days. I think the US reaction to the pandemic sealed the deal for me, once and for all.

We live in a country with a very large percentage of idiots, and those idiots tend all too often to be the loudest, most aggressive, and often the most violent among us, almost as if they’re proud of their idiocy. Climate Change, inequality, the pandemic . . . support for a fascist coup, support for the most overtly sadistic, mendacious, bigoted conman in our history . . . Far too many Americans think night is day, black is white, right is left, and so on.

We live in strange times, constantly shaking up our assumptions and moral compasses. Testing my own view of humanity, as I’ve long believed in the fundamental goodness of people . . . that it’s just a tiny percentage at the top causing our woes. The sociopath 1%, basically. Lately, I’ve been doubting my own theories more and more, and that depresses the hell out of me.

Zooey wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Just saw your “retweet” of the Trevor Noah clip.

I was unaware that you follow me on Twitter. I must follow you, too, without realizing it.

I don’t have an account. Just went directly to your twitter feed via links you and others have left here. I’m guessing that means I can’t respond. Just look on from afar, etc. In horror and amazement.

WV has mentioned in the past that’s he’s been doing anthropological studies of Left Twitter, but I don’t know his “handle.” Given that you’re both Seahawks fans, you must talk a lot about Seattle? I suppose I could always duckduckgo “leftist Seahawk fans.”

;>)

nittany ram wrote:

Donald is more dominant than any DT ever of any era. Entire offensive game plans are constructed with Aaron Donald in mind. What DT ever garnered the attention Donald does? He routinely has to fight through double and triple teams. The 60’s and 70’s could probably be considered the golden age of DTs. Olsen, Joe Greene, Alan Page, Randy White, even Larry Brooks (John Hannah called him the best DT he ever faced) but none of them from an individual standpoint impacted the game like Aaron Donald. It’s hard to even know which one of that group was the best, whereas Donald is head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Sapp and Suh at their best aren’t in the same class.

.

Randy White’s an interesting case. Fear the Turtle!

Even in that era of lower player weights, comparatively speaking, he was considered way too small to play DT. Just 250. But very fast, very quick, and crazy strong. He was a 4.6 guy and could bench press close to 500 pounds. He might be the closest “type” to Donald.

Oh, and you’re forgetting Bob Lilly. As much as I’ve always detested the Cowpokes, I’d say Lilly is the only other DT from that era who could go toe to toe with Olsen. I still give the nod to Merlin, with room to spare. But Lilly was up there.

IMO, the key in comparing players from different eras is to transpose them completely. If you take someone out of the 1960s and play him today, update the whole kit and caboodle.

As in, that player trains 365 days a year now, instead of half of that time, or none of it. He’s now able to exploit new tech, bio-feedback, AI-assistants, video, personal dieticians trained to work with athletes, etc. etc. Whether or not he takes advantage of all of that is a different matter. But it doesn’t make any sense to drop the 6’5″, 275-285 pound Olsen, say, into today’s game, and keep him at that weight, deny him all the tech, weight-training, and AI stuff, etc.

In short, it really only makes sense to compare people from the same era. How dominant were they compared with their peers? Yeah, it can be interesting to theorize about time travel, but you have to assume the player inhabits that new time in all ways, or it’s really not a fair fight.

I echo WV’s take here:

Merlin couldnt pass-rush the way Donald can, but Donald couldnt stuff the run as consistently as Merlin did.

And I still don’t think there’s ever been a more dominant DE than Deacon. It’s not even really close for me.

Plus: I think a lot of Steelers were elevated (rep-wise) because of those Super Bowl wins. Aside from Greene and Lambert, perhaps, I think the rest of their HOF guys are overrated. If the Rams had won a coupla back then, they would have had far more in the Hall, especially on Defense. Not winning basically doomed too many of them to second fiddle status, or obscurity.

Zooey wrote:

It’s not a good look to call for somebody’s assassination publicly, especially if one is a prominent politician oneself.

Agreed. As mentioned in my follow-up. American politicians need to shut up about that and anything remotely like it.

The problem/dynamic Marquez had, as laid out in that vid, fascinates me.

I see that issue play out all the time among leftists all over the internet.

I had a short exchange with Caitlin Johnstone on twitter about this topic.

And i got booted off an old british message board (the Lifeboat) because

of this ‘issue’ — Ie., do you refrain from criticizing Castro, Hugo Chavez, Lenin etc (or in my case Assad)

because ‘any’ criticism will just be used by the Capitalist-West to further its biosphere-killing-agenda. In the case of Marquez, he genuinely liked Castro as a friend, but he didnt like the authoritarian stuff. But he chose NOT to criticize Castro because, as he noted it would be used by the West against socialism. The other approach is just to ‘tell the truth’ however you see it.

I go back and forth on this. Its not an easy answer for me. Used to be easy, but I’m not sure anymore. I used to think “just call it like you see it” — but now, I think that may be similar to people saying “I’m color-blind” etc.

I dunno.

 

wv

Orwell was pretty consistent on just telling the truth. Camus as well. I know you know all of this . . . but, they both were lifelong leftists, who often directed their critique at the left. I admire the hell out of both of them for their willingness to suffer ostracism in the service of the truth. But, as you mention, it does come with a ton of drawbacks.

For instance, to this day, conservatives try to use Orwell as a sword and a wedge against the left, most of them, no doubt, not knowing he was a diehard socialist. They assume he wrote Animal Farm, for instance, as a blast against socialism. Nope. He wrote that parable as a description and warning of its betrayal, and the perversely powerful lure of capitalism. Orwell, like Chomsky, consistently said the USSR was never socialist . . .

Anyway, I think today’s context is far more complicated than the WWII era, and the pre- and early post-war years. More stuff is flying at us, from all angles, and it’s tougher to sift through the fog. Navigating this, I imagine, is far more difficult than it was for Garcia Marquez, and I suspect he had it easier than Orwell, Camus, Malraux, and leftists from around the globe in that time frame.

wv wrote:

Cal wrote:

…Isn’t it natural that they want to move away from Russian influence? …”

… Well we just see it differently, and I’m pretty sure its simply because we come at things from a different point on the political-compass, and we view capitalism differently. But that question you ask is a good one. But it brings up so many deep political issues involving ANY nation-state. Who is the ‘they’ that want to move away from Russian influence? What are the Ukranians’ options? Maybe ‘they’ prefer neutrality? What if the percentages are all over the place and depend on the amount and level of information the Ukranians have? What if ‘X’ group of Ukranians prefers russian influence, ‘Y’ group prefers Nato, and ‘Z’ group prefers neutrality, and ‘W’ group has no idea? There’s a gazillion questions and I would never trust the US/Western media or ‘academics’ or ‘experts’ (or the Russians) to ask those questions, or answer those questions. w v

All of that’s moot now, of course. Pre-war, most Ukrainians didn’t think Putin would invade. Almost until the actual day of the invasion. So any preference they may have once had is now forever colored by Putin’s attack on their nation. It’s going to be based now on Putin’s slaughter of civilians, his destruction of residential areas, hospitals, schools, dorms, etc. A million people have fled the onslaught. It’s pretty clear Putin wants the entire country for himself and his legacy, and will install a puppet regime to control it.

Last night, there was almost a nuclear catastrophe, as Putin’s forces seized a nuclear facility, and Putin is saber-rattling about using nukes as well. If any Ukrainians were on the fence, one way or another, they’re now going to rush headlong into the waiting arms of the EU and NATO, and they’re going to hate Russia for generations.

‘Which do you think best describes Russia?’

Communist: 42%
Socialist: 13%
Capitalist: 11%
Something Else: 17%

YouGov / March 1, 2022 / n=1495 / Online https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/aa58ig9d3b/econTabReport.pdf

That poll is depressing. The USSR was never communist, at least not beyond small enclaves. Communism being the absence of the state, you can’t have a communist nation-state.

Nor was it socialist. It was state capitalist, as Lenin said. He said he had to yank Russia into the 20th century, establish capitalism to do so, and socialism could wait. And they waited, and waited, and waited, and it never happened.

After 1991, of course, it went hyper-ultra-capitalist, outdoing even the US on those grounds.

Pretty absurd that such a large number of people think post-USSR Russia is communist or socialist.

Emma Goldman wrote this back in 1936:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-is-no-communism-in-russia