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(To view a far more visually attractive, easily readable version of this report -- with essays dating back to 2009, and portfolios of relevant photographs -- all without the obvious, vexing, impossible-to-solve-in-less-than-two-hours formatting conflicts between Typepad and Blogger -- please go here.)
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What Ever-More-Censorsed U.S. Media Is Loathe to Tell Us:
Can
Government Halt Evictions and Foreclosures by the Defiantly Greedy
Scumlords and Banksters? If Not, We Face Unprecedented Homelessness,
Probable Societal Collapse, Possible Revolution, Secession and Civil War
THE NATION'S MOST VITAL report to-date on the projected ruin inflicted by COVID-19 -- predictably pay-walled from lower-income eyes by Jeff Bezos' Washington Post -- tells us "a massive wave of evictions is coming" and warns us "temporary bans won't help."
Assigned by WaPo
to a pair of uniquely qualified freelancers whose scoop-the-world story
was then ironically excluded from the material its Bezos-bedazzled
editors deemed fit for the multitudes of us who cannot afford its paid
subscriptions, it provides what any of us reasonably well versed in
world history should immediately recognize as authoritative,
unflinchingly reasoned acknowledgement of the inevitable.
Hence if you read nothing else today, please read the above-linked report in full.
***
SCHOOLED BY APOCALYPSE -- and "apocalypse" is precisely what this pandemic is becoming in the "shit-hole country" a half century of slow-motion Neoliberal ecogenocide has made of the United States -- most of us now ask three questions:
- How bad might this disaster get?
- What (if anything) might the nation's federal, state and local governments be willing to do to protect us?
- And what might we ourselves have to do to stay alive?
But
it took at least 18 hours of focused Internet searching -- this with
help from two younger friends I know to be far more adept at
search-phrasing than I -- before the Muse gifted me the right
combination of words to bring up the story linked above.
And
though I quickly discovered multiple links to it -- some paywalled,
some not -- most were to publications or websites of such limited
circulation I had no familiarity with them whatsoever-- with the story's
obvious minor-media marginalization yet another measure of the form and
increasing magnitude of U.S. censorship. Which in turn is further
underscored by the fact "massive wave of evictions" is the only such
report I could find anywhere on the English-language web.
***
EVENTUALLY I CONCLUDED the now-peripheral information I had gathered beforehand remains relevant.
I
had sought to ferret out any credible on-line reports that might
address the above three questions in ways specifically responsive to
the all-consuming fears afflicting tenants and mortgagees -- fears
proven entirely rational by the fact the planet's most fanatically
Neoliberal realm long ago criminalized poverty to the murderous extent
of officially and permanently defining U.S. healthcare as an exclusive
privilege of wealth rather than a human right.
Intending
to make my reporting on this question as useful as possible (and of
course secretly smirking at what initially seemed the distinct
possibility I might again at age 80 scoop the world as I had done so
many times in the past), I had cobbled together I have no-idea-how-many
combinations of words as I sought documentation of what despite the
tsunami of propaganda from the increasingly deceptive federal government
is fast becoming the looming potential homelessness of every Working
Family in the imperial homeland.
What
my purposefully constructed search-phrases seined up instead was a
plethora of indicative reports that -- in definitive contrast to the
knife-sharp edges of our opening document -- mostly seemed obnoxiously
blunted by euphemisms and then again carefully edited to accentuate the
positive and eliminate the negative.
Indeed
they seem so to such an obvious extent it feels to me as if their
diverse editors, however ideologically opposed to one another they might
pretend to be, nevertheless function from some eerie solidarity of
intent, whether conscious or unconscious it matters not.
And
I cannot stop wondering what might be their intent but to (again?) numb
us into avoidance of the very sorts of plans and preparations we are
now learning -- often at great pain -- are essential to the survival of
our families, our friends, our comrades, our communities and of course
ourselves.
But despite the fact these diluted texts exemplify our ever-more-deadly national curse of ever-more-forcibly delusional compulsory positivism,
they also provide strong supplemental confirmation of the factual
foundation of today's initial report -- that the real-estate profiteers
have been discussing at least since mid-March the best ways to (further)
victimize tenants and mortgagees even as (a few) state and local
governments try, too often begrudgingly, to provide what the federal
government so adamantly denies.
Here
then is a sampling of the 40-odd links I collected, the first to a
(deliberately?) visually distracting but nevertheless nationally useful
click-your-state guide to vital resources:
The remainder are pretty much the sorts of reports we've come to expect:
And
last but by no means least (offensively), we have this little
journalistic gem, with its far-more-explicit disclosure of what truly
obtains:
My
hope is at least some of these links -- especially those to
state-by-state anthologies of legal information -- will prove enduringly
useful.
Meanwhile we stand helplessly aghast as
the Trump-Pence Regime continues its relentless effort to diminish or
suppress entirely any aid that might reach the proverbial 99 percent of
us who are neither Neoliberal aristocrats nor part of their attendant
vassalage. The Regime's effort is obviously yet another sadistic
expression of its anti-Working-Family hatefulness rather than the Big
Lie of accidental incompetence behind which it so often -- and so
successfully -- hides its ultimately murderous malice.
As
a words-and-pictures journalist who has evolved into something of a
social historian, I cannot but wonder: does that malice represent
deliberate embrace of the ever-more-obvious Neoliberal campaign to
weaponize COVID-19 for maximum extermination of "surplus" Working
Families and Working Folk (i.e., ourselves)? Is it in service
to the "bring-on-the-Rapture" fanaticism of the Regime's ChristoNazi
minions? Or is it sociopathic ecstasy at some fiendish combination of
both brands of premeditated murder == a combination fostered by
Trumpanoid worship of Hitler and intended to soar (much as German Nazism
soared) -- toward some infinite height of hitherto-unimaginable Evil?
Whatever
the answer might be, it does not change the fact we of the 99 Percent
are in much the same position as a person attacked by some axe-wielding
lunatic in that attempting to understand our assailant's motive remains a
potentially fatal distraction until after we have turned back the
assault.
As
a consequence we are now in all probability beginning to ask ever-more
insistently just how we might develop the sort of mindfulness that may
prove essential to survive what is emerging from the pandemic fog as a
warp-speed repetition of the centuries-long collapse of the Western
Roman Empire, complete with Imperator Trump's stunning (but not really surprising) 21st Century reenactment
of Emperor Honorius' reply in 407C.E. to Britannia's final desperate
plea for the legions to return and help fend off the Saxon invasion:
"the cantons must see to their own defense."1
Verily,
if the federal government is as useless as Trump would have us believe,
the federal union is already broken beyond repair.
All
that remains for is for the diverse states to begin sorting themselves
into separate republics. The former states of the Northeastern and
Western coasts will undoubtedly lean toward social democracy -- but
without Marxist discipline and collectivist solidarity they will be
all-too-easily invaded, overrun and conquered by the vast ChristoNazi
theocracy which with its violently resurrected "whites only" ethos would
initially rule all the remaining former U.S. lands from the old
Confederacy to the Canadian border including most (if not all) the
erstwhile "flyover states" and would soon set out to conquer the entire
continent.
Thus
without intervention from abroad the former United States seems bound
to replicate post-Roman Europe by becoming an irremediably toxic miasma
of ignorance and sadism, its slave-plantation economy sustained by
zero-tolerance theocracy complete with public executions by fire or
lapidation.
What
then might we -- the involuntary latter-day equivalents of the
terminally abandoned Roman Britons -- do to avoid such horror?
As
Sun Tzu might have told us were we in China 2600 years ago to hear him
speak, we cannot win until we first acknowledge the true nature,
capabilities and intent of those who assault us.
(Yes
I have regretfully begun to consider as probable the unspeakably grave
notion this pandemic is part of that assault, whether accidental or
otherwise -- and not the least because of how so uncannily well it
serves the predatory Aristocracy's plutocratic purposes.)
That's
why I say again I can think of no better way to begin our long-term
preparation -- or to reinforce our resolve if we have already begun --
than reading the document that begins today's Dispatches. Please.
(Besides which, clicking on the The Houston Chronicle's curiously defiant open-to-the-public link is a great way to give The Washington Post
the electronic finger it deserves for [again] breaking its already
oft-broken promise to un-paywall all its own COVID-19 reports.)
__________________1An
unforgettable, translated-from-the-original-Latin phrase from an
academic source I read so many years ago I am sorry to say I remember
neither its name nor its author.
*****
General news:(Scan by scrolling down -- it'll take only minutes at most -- read whatever is relevant1 to you and yours, share it if appropriate and skip the rest.)
Jobless and Without Benefits, the Undocumented Community Is "Completely Out of Luck"
Nathalie Graham gives us the most courageous reporting I've seen thus far about how the federal government is weaponizing the pandemic to exterminate the greatest possible number of undocumented refugees in the United States -- though given the fatal reality of the increasingly submissive Moronic Majority, I doubt anything short of revolution can stop der Trumpenführer's euphemism-protected but nevertheless deadly domestic holocaust. Note too that before the 2016 elections I repeatedly pointed out how our Masters had impaled us on the proverbial horns of a dilemma. Yes of course we were given a choice; nothing less would sustain the imperial charade of democratic process. We could either vote for World War III (Hillary's fanatical Goldwater-Girl delusion she could nuke Russia into surrender without reducing our Mother Earth to a bug planet), or we could vote for a New Holocaust (Trump's fanatical hatred of all people of color and his intent to "purify" the United States only a bit more euphemistically than Germany's Hitler intended in Europe). Or of course we could also do as I did precisely because I could not abide the rejection and abandonment of humanitarian morality either of those choices would have required; hence I cast my ballot for minor-party candidates, thereby nullifying my vote as anything more than an affirmation of the franchise. Returning to the far more interesting subject of Ms. Graham, she is at present a staff writer with The Stranger, a Seattle entertainment paper the pandemic has stripped of its former relevance. If she is the real journalist I suspect she is, she (and maybe her colleagues too) are attempting to move the publication toward the potential new relevance of the investigative potency pioneered locally by the long-ago Seattle Sun, the Village-Voice-caliber weekly of which I was the founding photographer and sometime reporter and photo critic. (Ominously for The Stranger's post-pandemic prospects, The Sun was forced to set forever by the advertising boycott inflicted by the city's banksters and plutocrats in retaliation tor our repeated disclosures of outrages and scandals they insisted be kept secret.) Thus I dearly hope Ms. Graham survives the pandemic and finds stable -- and thoroughly fulfilling -- employment whether in her present job or elsewhere.
Nathalie Graham gives us the most courageous reporting I've seen thus far about how the federal government is weaponizing the pandemic to exterminate the greatest possible number of undocumented refugees in the United States -- though given the fatal reality of the increasingly submissive Moronic Majority, I doubt anything short of revolution can stop der Trumpenführer's euphemism-protected but nevertheless deadly domestic holocaust. Note too that before the 2016 elections I repeatedly pointed out how our Masters had impaled us on the proverbial horns of a dilemma. Yes of course we were given a choice; nothing less would sustain the imperial charade of democratic process. We could either vote for World War III (Hillary's fanatical Goldwater-Girl delusion she could nuke Russia into surrender without reducing our Mother Earth to a bug planet), or we could vote for a New Holocaust (Trump's fanatical hatred of all people of color and his intent to "purify" the United States only a bit more euphemistically than Germany's Hitler intended in Europe). Or of course we could also do as I did precisely because I could not abide the rejection and abandonment of humanitarian morality either of those choices would have required; hence I cast my ballot for minor-party candidates, thereby nullifying my vote as anything more than an affirmation of the franchise. Returning to the far more interesting subject of Ms. Graham, she is at present a staff writer with The Stranger, a Seattle entertainment paper the pandemic has stripped of its former relevance. If she is the real journalist I suspect she is, she (and maybe her colleagues too) are attempting to move the publication toward the potential new relevance of the investigative potency pioneered locally by the long-ago Seattle Sun, the Village-Voice-caliber weekly of which I was the founding photographer and sometime reporter and photo critic. (Ominously for The Stranger's post-pandemic prospects, The Sun was forced to set forever by the advertising boycott inflicted by the city's banksters and plutocrats in retaliation tor our repeated disclosures of outrages and scandals they insisted be kept secret.) Thus I dearly hope Ms. Graham survives the pandemic and finds stable -- and thoroughly fulfilling -- employment whether in her present job or elsewhere.
More news links, most -- I promise -- without comments:
Jerry Falwell Jr. Says Warrants Are Out for 2 Journalists After Critical Stories on Coronavirus Decision
The Real Conspiracy: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
From Caitlin Johnstone's text: "Almost everything in the news is empty/irrelevant narrative. The only relevant information is where the money is moving, where the resources are moving, where the weapons are moving, and where the people are moving. Everything else is narrative meant to justify, manipulate or distract from those movements."
From Caitlin Johnstone's text: "Almost everything in the news is empty/irrelevant narrative. The only relevant information is where the money is moving, where the resources are moving, where the weapons are moving, and where the people are moving. Everything else is narrative meant to justify, manipulate or distract from those movements."
Reliable anthologies of pandemic reports (scroll for whatever you deem relevant):
Virus Outbreak
Updated constantly by the Associated Press.
Updated constantly by the Associated Press.
Black Agenda Report
Updated regularly. In my opinion, the best, most informative, most relevant political website on the U.S. Internet.
Updated regularly. In my opinion, the best, most informative, most relevant political website on the U.S. Internet.
RT - Breaking news, shows, podcasts
Democratic (sic) Party Big Lies and Republican censorship not withstanding, this site provides what is often the most truthful reporting available to us in the United States. Updated often.
Democratic (sic) Party Big Lies and Republican censorship not withstanding, this site provides what is often the most truthful reporting available to us in the United States. Updated often.
TASS Russian News Agency
Just as Propagandamaster Bezos' WaPo gives us the Predatory Plutocrats' perspective, so does this site -- formerly Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Телегра́фное аге́нтство Сове́тского Сою́за, Telegrafnoye agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza) -- give us, in English, the often-radically different Russian government's perspective. (It's history, dating from 1904, makes interesting reading for mediaphyles.) Updated often.
Just as Propagandamaster Bezos' WaPo gives us the Predatory Plutocrats' perspective, so does this site -- formerly Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Телегра́фное аге́нтство Сове́тского Сою́за, Telegrafnoye agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza) -- give us, in English, the often-radically different Russian government's perspective. (It's history, dating from 1904, makes interesting reading for mediaphyles.) Updated often.
Xinhua
Ditto for the news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua's reports are regularly updates and its history is here.
Ditto for the news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua's reports are regularly updates and its history is here.
Coronavirus live updates: New York suffers highest single-day death toll; WHO pushes back at Trump over threat
Probably not "fake news" and updated often -- but listed last because Propagandamaster Bezos's corporate crown jewel is nevertheless best known for its censorship1 and warmongering lies.
Probably not "fake news" and updated often -- but listed last because Propagandamaster Bezos's corporate crown jewel is nevertheless best known for its censorship1 and warmongering lies.
Indications of the pandemic's true magnitude and consequences:
(A Few) States (Now) Offering Affordable Care Act Open EnrollmentsVital news for those of us eligible for the coverage and (somehow) able to afford it.
Other pandemic-related indications and/or questions:
LA Mayor Garcetti encourages residents to report violators of stay-at-home order: 'Snitches get rewards'Entirely believable despite the always-questionable source.
Especially for Washingtonians:
Home | Washington Healthplanfinder
From the text: "Get coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Free or low-cost Apple Health is available year-round and a special enrollment is available to the uninsured who have life changes as a result of COVID-19." (Residents of other states please see "Affordable Care Act Open Enrollments" above.)
From the text: "Get coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Free or low-cost Apple Health is available year-round and a special enrollment is available to the uninsured who have life changes as a result of COVID-19." (Residents of other states please see "Affordable Care Act Open Enrollments" above.)
United Way program to help King County renters who’ve lost their incomeCheck with other United Way organizations elsewhere to learn if they have similar programs.
A New World Is Being Born: What Will It Be?
A trustworthy source -- a vehemently anti-Trump conservative who ever-more-frequently seems to lean Leftward -- speculates on our probable futures.
A trustworthy source -- a vehemently anti-Trump conservative who ever-more-frequently seems to lean Leftward -- speculates on our probable futures.
Lives Lost: A mismatched pair's love story ends with virus
Held over because it is fine unusually sensitive reporting, the sort of work that proves AP still hires real journalists -- those of us for whom it is a way of life rather than just another job.
Held over because it is fine unusually sensitive reporting, the sort of work that proves AP still hires real journalists -- those of us for whom it is a way of life rather than just another job.
A Family’s Fetid Week With CoronavirusHeld
over because it is the most outspoken, most emotionally honest, most
implicitly life-supportive and by far the best reporting I have read in many
years. Indeed, Reyhan Harmanci is a writer whose talent I'd have
recognized with a full-time general-assignment staff-job (way, way) back
when "editor" was the key part of my job-title. (For more of her work,
click on her "Family's Fetid Week" byline.)
Important stuff to bear in mind:(All
of which helps us understand more about what the PluPreds are doing to
us now and what they might intend to do to us in the future.)
How a Network of Ukrainian Ultra-Nationalists Penetrated Canada’s Conservative Party to Lobby for Military ConflictNew: Glimpses of the re-emergent international Nazi Axis: is Mitch the Malignant's NeoConfederacy already a secret member?
‘Collateral Murder’ and the My Lai MassacreRLS. Vital to understanding why the U.S. government's response to the deadly Covid-19 pandemic is genocidal rather than protective.
Contrasting the U.S. population's long-ago outage at Vietnam war crimes
with its present-day enthusiasm for atrocities against Muslims (and all
other peoples of color) reveals how decades of Ayn Rand indoctrination
purged the United States of any pretense of humanitarianism and reduced
it to a thoroughly Nazified white-racist realm in which self-obsessed
moral imbecility is the ruling ethos and revolution (or even effective
resistance) is thus rendered psychologically impossible. Additional
details here.
FOCUS: This White House Doesn't Give Two Shits About You
I am no fan of Michael Moore, but in this short piece he speaks bitter truth for us all.
I am no fan of Michael Moore, but in this short piece he speaks bitter truth for us all.
Trump Admits Easy Voting Would Defeat Republicans
How gerrymandering and methodical voter-suppression have reduced our elections to meaningless charades.
How gerrymandering and methodical voter-suppression have reduced our elections to meaningless charades.
Goldman Sachs warns that curing patients may not be 'sustainable'
Outright acknowledgment from the deadliest Neoliberal predators that curing disease with a single treatment is bad for profits. A report from 2018 that explains what's being done to us today, hence given knife-edged relevance by the pandemic.
Outright acknowledgment from the deadliest Neoliberal predators that curing disease with a single treatment is bad for profits. A report from 2018 that explains what's being done to us today, hence given knife-edged relevance by the pandemic.
Average U.S. Citizens Have “Little Or No” Influence On Government Policy
Another "old" report given new relevance by what's being done to us today.
Another "old" report given new relevance by what's being done to us today.
The Truth About the United States' "Continuity of Government" Plans & The Coronavirus Perfect StormScroll
down to the 12th graf to learn how at least eight million U.S. citizens
are on the PPs' enemies lists and will be disappeared.
Military, Trump administration ready plans for domestic crackdown as virus spreads across US
From the report: "'a senior military planner working on coronavirus but not authorized to speak on sensitive planning matters [...] says that deployment of federal troops in support roles is being prepared,' including to conduct traffic stops, home searches and seizures and arrests." Scroll to Footnote2 to learn what atrocities could thus be inflicted on us.
From the report: "'a senior military planner working on coronavirus but not authorized to speak on sensitive planning matters [...] says that deployment of federal troops in support roles is being prepared,' including to conduct traffic stops, home searches and seizures and arrests." Scroll to Footnote2 to learn what atrocities could thus be inflicted on us.
Avenger Planet: Is the Covid-19 Pandemic Mother Nature's Response to Human Transgression?
Excellent question -- though as a (solitary-practice) Gaian Pagan, I would cite the scientific hypothesis that bears the Earth Goddess' name and answer "almost certainly yes." (One of the innumerable reasons the ChristoNazis so despise us is the majority of our beliefs are based on science -- the ultimate terminator of all patriarchal religion.)
Excellent question -- though as a (solitary-practice) Gaian Pagan, I would cite the scientific hypothesis that bears the Earth Goddess' name and answer "almost certainly yes." (One of the innumerable reasons the ChristoNazis so despise us is the majority of our beliefs are based on science -- the ultimate terminator of all patriarchal religion.)
How to Make a DIY Mask From a T-Shirt or BandannaNew; hopefully useful; have not tried it myself.
From National Geographic.
CARES Act Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for FreelancersUseful, potentially lifesaving economic information.
(Disclosure: I am a longtime National Writers Union member and
co-chaired one of their local writers' workshops c. 2009-2011.)
Handling mail amid coronavirus: Low risk but wash your handsMy
practice is to assume everything from outside is potentially
contaminated, hence I wash my hands thoroughly after handling any
incoming packages and sanitize any surface upon which they might have
rested or been unwrapped.
_________________
1As to what prompts my sudden skepticism of virus coverage by The Washington Post, note how quickly Bezos or one of his zero-tolerance subordinates imposed paywall censorship on this pivotally important 20 March story (scroll down to "U.S. intelligence reports"), which for only a very few short minutes appeared as part of WaPo's
non-paywalled daily virus report. Pretending to be real journalists
rather than the Regime's scribes -- a mental downgrading inflicted as
much by the clerical drudgery necessitated by computers as by the chief
Josef-Goebbels-wannabee Bezos himself -- is a form of moral imbecility I
cannot abide.
2Be aware that "home searches and seizures"
could include not only confiscation of all real or potential weapons
but -- given the ChristoNazi Regime's anti-marijuana fanaticism --
confiscation of, and arrest for possession of, all the (still federally
illegal) medical marijuana upon which such a huge number of
opiate-denied chronic-pain victims are now forced to depend. Too --
given the Regime's even more fanatical hatred of women and female
sexuality -- such raids might also be used to confiscate all
birth-control devices and criminalize all unwed women who possess them,
thereby fulfilling still more of the PPs' ChristoNazis objectives. Thus
-- by such mass arrests -- could the Regime give its plutocratic owners
the ultimate "gift" of permanently enslaving millions of U.S. citizens
for brutally hard, typically deadly labor, thereby granting our Masters'
wish of exterminating "surplus workers" while following the German
Nazis' model of amassing unlimited profits from mass murder.
(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)
*****
YES
VERY LATE AGAIN even as I thankfully rediscover via
research-to-completion production of these daily updates how to think
and intuit as if I were once more an award-winning investigative
reporter or an award-winning editor with an award-winning staff -- even
if doing this work on a computer seems to take multiple eternities
longer than ever it did by teletype, typewriter and pencil.
Again
too my apology. As I said before, better late and right than rushed and
wrong. But I must also apologize for the fact that -- having been
working nonstop on this edition (save for meals and bathroom breaks)
since about 2 p.m. yesterday -- I have also undoubtedly missed some
typos (and otherwise mis-edited) this entire piece. Hence though I'm
posting it now I'll return to it after I get some sleep and proofread it
again. In any case I'm doing the best I can, and I extend special
thanks to those of you who reassure me these Dispatches are vital enough I should keep at them as long as I am able.
May all of us have the best weekend possible under the circumstances.
LB/10 April 2020 10:44PDT; revised and re-Tweeted 10 April 19:13PDT.
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