Patrick's Notebook

By NationAction
Support frontline workers, fight for climate justice, and demand a bailout that works for all of us.

Hundreds of Amazon workers called in sick Friday to protest working conditions they argue are unsafe and unethical amid the pandemic. They join frontline workers from grocery stores to poultry plants to emergency rooms who’ve demanded safety protections, pay increases, and paid sick leave as they confront some of the greatest risks of contracting the virus. As these fights continue across the country, it’s crucial that we fight for the policies that workers need to be safe in the workplace and beyond.

This week’s Take Action Now gives you ways to support frontline workers, keep up the pressure after Earth Day last week, and demand a bailout for people, not companies.

Take Action Now gives you three meaningful actions you can take each week whatever your schedule. You can sign up here to get these actions and more in your inbox every Tuesday. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Arthur Berman

It’s game-over for most of the U.S. oil industry.

Prices have collapsed and storage is nearly full. The only option for many producers is to shut in their wells. That means no income. Most have considerable debt so bankruptcy is next.

Peggy Noonan wrote in her column recently that “this is a never-before-seen level of national economic calamity; history doesn’t get bigger than this.” That is the superficial view.

Coronavirus has changed everything. The longer it lasts, the less the future will look anything like the past.

Most people, policy makers and economists are energy blind and cannot, therefore, fully grasp the gravity or the consequences of what is happening.

Energy is the economy and oil is the most important and productive portion of energy. U.S. oil consumption is at its lowest level since 1971 when production was only about 78% of what it was in 2019. As goes oil, so goes the economy…down.

The old oil industry and the old economy are gone. The energy mix that underlies the economy will be different now. Oil production and prices are unlikely to regain late 2018 levels. Renewable sources will fall behind along with efforts to mitigate climate change. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Paul Joseph Watson
Deleted after racking up over 5 million views.
YouTube has censored a viral video in which two doctors criticized the logic of whether California’s stay-at-home coronavirus order is necessary.

The video, which had racked up over 5 million views, featured Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, Calif.

In the clip, Erickson asserts that there is only a “0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California,” prompting him to ask, “Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work?”

Erickson also asked why fatalities were being counted as COVID-19 deaths when other ailments were actually more to blame.

“When someone dies in this country right now, they’re not talking about the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the stroke. They’re saying ‘Did they die from COVID?’” Erickson said. “We’ve been to hundreds of autopsies. You don’t talk about one thing, you talk about comorbidities. ER doctors now [say] ‘It’s interesting when I’m writing about my death report, I’m being pressured to add COVID. Why is that?”

The video was deleted late last night (27 Apr 2020) for “violating YouTube’s terms of service.” » Read the rest of this entry «

by Caitlin Johnstone

The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.Not the oligarchic class in your own country that has been exploiting, propagandizing, deceiving, oppressing and robbing you every moment of your life since you were born.
The Russians and the Chinese.

The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.Not the people who have been engineering and advancing endless bloodbaths around the world at no benefit to you using your money and your resources and your political energy.
The Russians and the Chinese.

The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.Not the political/media class and their plutocratic puppeteers who’ve been manipulating your mind to accept omnicide, ecocide, austerity and increasingly Orwellian dystopia as normal and not to be opposed.
The Russians and the Chinese.

The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.Not the sociopathic manipulators who give you two thieving, warmongering, power-worshipping sock puppets to choose from in fake election after fake election to give you the illusion of control.
The Russians and the Chinese. » Read the rest of this entry «

By John Tamny
“I want to be back in business right this second. But we’ve got to be smart about it. What happens if we open too soon and contribute to an outbreak? Traced to the Plaza Theater! You know what that would do to my business? I wouldn’t have one.” Those are the words of Atlanta-based Plaza Theater owner Chris Escobar, in a phone interview conducted by New York Times reporters Nicole Sperling and Brooks Barnes.

Georgia is set to “re-open” its economy, and Escobar’s comment vividly explains why the state should re-open, why it’s more than safe to, and also why the shutdowns should never have happened in the first place. His response is a reminder that people and businesses don’t need a law.

They don’t because it’s generally not their style to do that which might kill them. That the coronavirus unknowns are many means that with or without lockdowns, Americans would have been quite a bit more than cautious. And they still will be. In a free society, there’s no such thing as a “do nothing” response to anything that has the potential to kill.

Free Americans are constantly responding to challenges, and organizing ways to address the challenges. To pretend that absent political guidance that they would have sat listless in response to the new coronavirus isn’t realistic. They would have mobilized. Crucial is that they always have. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it about the Americans he observed in the 19th century: » Read the rest of this entry «

by Edward Peter Stringham

Dr. Daniel W. Erickson of Bakersfield, California, is a former emergency-room physician who co-owns, with his partner Dr. Artin Massih, Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield. They are experienced medical professionals who have 40 years of hands-on experience in dealing with viruses and respiratory infections. Watching the news in China in January, they knew the virus was on its way. They ordered many COVID-19 tests because they knew they would need them. They tested many thousands of people, and discovered for themselves what epidemiologists around the world are saying: COVID-19 came here earlier than previously believed, is more ubiquitous, and ultimately for the general population less deadly than we thought.

While this realization is gradually dawning on people around the world, they went public with their findings, which are not generated out of a predictive model but rather the actual facts of the case. In the course of their press conference, they addressed the question of whether or not California should have shut down much of its economy. Their answer is no. They conclude with the need to open up immediately, on grounds of health and human rights.

“If you’re going to dance on someone’s constitutional rights you better have a good reason, you better have a really good reason, not just a theory,” he said. “The data is showing us it’s time to lift (the stay-at-home orders) so if we don’t lift, what is the reason?” » Read the rest of this entry «

by Finian Cunningham
Concocting intel to fit a conclusion is a precarious pursuit that has disturbing resonance with the Iraqi WMD intel manufacturing and media indulgence which led to disastrous war. Is U.S. power so shameless that it would prefer war rather than face public accountability for its own criminal complacency and neglect? You better believe it.

China’s communist leaders have blood on their hands, so say U.S. hawks. Chinaphobes in Congress and a battalion of media pundits are demanding compensation from Beijing for the spiraling death toll and economic destruction incurred by the United States.

Already U.S. states have begun litigation to sue China. Rightwing think-tanks like the Hudson Institute are projecting that China is liable to pay out trillions of dollars for American losses over the Covid-19 pandemic.

The chorus of “Yellow Peril” fever goes beyond financial retribution right up to creating a casus belli against China. It is no coincidence that U.S. warships have stepped up provocative maneuvers in the South China Sea this week. » Read the rest of this entry «