Ukraine

THE ABSURD TIMES

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT UKRAINE

BY

HONEST CHARLIE

 

 

 

This (ABOVE ILLUSTRATION is the man for 4 Seasons – Trump's next victim who doesn't know it yet. How someone could not realize by this time he is screwed, say little for his Law School (which has tried to keep it quiet, but his Bar Association has told him "don't even try it" and these people have to go through so much to get barred in the first place, they don't want to be disbarred, but that is what happened, sort of – they never make these things clear because if anyone understood it, there would be issues). 

 

 

Ukraine and more crap

 

I don't mind using the name Donald Trump anymore. I mean, his bank fired him, the people fired him, and his accountants fired him. We don't know anyone who is coming next, but there will be more. Who am I to hold out?  From what I've been able to see, even Republicans are starting to run away, but at the same time pretending not to by screaming about wearing facemasks and needing freedom.  Praise for trucks blocking the Canadian border, by Canadians, who are about 90% vaccinated anyway are applauded. In other words, Trump without Trump. I mean, who needs Hitler? The Trumpnicks fly swastika flags all the time and they don't need Adolf to do that. In fact, Adolf might sue them for copyright violations.

 

Oh, yeah, overthrow the Capital as well. Who needs it? I don't. Maybe we can move it to New Mexico or someplace safe. Or Kiev (a City nobody pronounces correctly, but it always used to be two syllables and sounding like Key Yev but now often pronounced KEEV.  I am not sanguine about moving our Capitol to a place sounding like somebody's corner bar.

 

But still, why does everyone complain about Donald Trump taking 12 boxes of top-secret documents, crushing them into spitballs, and trying to flush them down the toilets. Has anybody tried to compare his past water bills to those today, or the janitorial problems? I don't.

 

But, what has this to do with KEEV'S KORNER BAR?  Well, Nobody has said, so we just have to wait. Of course, we are all hoping for peace, and Russia needs peace with honor, no? Or is that us?

 

Well, frankly, I'm very tired of all this crap, Really tired. 

 

Nobody said anything about Chris Cuomo. Why not?  CNN is finally being taken over by the phone company.  Gun sales have increased in KEEV so much as to rival those in the United States.  So, we are not alone!

 

Meanwhile, I've been pointing out all the bullshit that has been going on since Ronnie RayGun and George Bush promised not to move an inch further than NAYO was back in 1998, making the promise to Gorbechev.

 

Anyway, for years this has been a strange spiral. You know, people think we are more enlightened because we don't carve up and dismember criminals before we execute them. Well, people showed up, enjoyed their selves, and marveled at the courage and bravery of the executed so they became the heroes and the state to be the bullies. That could not stand. So, instead, we locked them up, the criminals, and put them away where we could not admire them.

 

This just goes on too long and there is no end to it. So, I'm including a discussion with someone who was there at the time of this agreement. It will probably fall on deaf ears. I really don't care. It is the same thing with some social media platforms with girls or women either not eating or then eating and then throwing up even though there is plenty of information available to them, somehow they will not figure out anything. They would rather die and be slim that live and be seen as deviating from the proper, as defined by pixels on a screen, figure or bodily image or form for them. Yes, better dead than be laughed at.

U.S. officials are accusing Russia of sending more forces to the Ukrainian border just days after Moscow announced it was pulling some troops back. This comes as Ukrainian authorities and Russian-backed separatists are both accusing the other side of violating a ceasefire in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. For more on the history behind the present crisis in Ukraine, we speak with one of the last U.S. ambassadors to the Soviet Union prior to the collapse of the USSR, Ambassador Jack Matlock, who says the U.S.-led expansion of NATO following the end of the Cold War helped lay the groundwork for the current standoff over Ukraine. He argues continued escalation could stoke another nuclear arms race, and lays out some of the parallels with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

---

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Tension over Ukraine remains high between Russia, the U.S. and NATO. U.S. officials are accusing Russia of sending more troops to the Ukrainian border, just days after Moscow claimed it's pulling some troops back. Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities and Russian-backed separatists are both accusing the other side of violating a ceasefire in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.

We begin today's show looking at the roots of the crisis with a former American diplomat who served as the last [sic] U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union prior to the collapse of the USSR. Ambassador Jack Matlock held the post from 1987 to 1991. He was first stationed in Moscow in the early 1960s and was there during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Matlock has written extensively about U.S.-Russian relations. His books include Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended and Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray. His latest article is headlined "I was there: NATO and the origins of the Ukraine crisis."

In the article, Ambassador Matlock writes about testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a quarter of a century ago and about the possible expansion of NATO. He told the Senate, quote, "I consider the administration's recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed." Ambassador Matlock's words. And Ambassador Jack Matlock joins us now.

Ambassador, that was you speaking a quarter of a century ago. Why is this so important and relevant today?

JACK MATLOCK: Well, thanks for the question. And first of all, I should make one correction: I was not the last ambassador to the Soviet Union; Robert Strauss was. Now, he lasted only about three months of the last in the Soviet Union, and some people have forgotten that, but I should correct that, to start with.

But the reason that I testified, along with a number of other people — many of them had been influential in bringing the Cold War to the end. The reason I testified against expanding NATO expansion — against expanding NATO, in the beginning, in the late '90s, was because we had — at the end of the Cold War, we had removed the Iron Curtain. We had created what we had aimed for: a Europe whole and free. And it was obvious, if you start piecemeal expanding NATO, you are going to — without including Russia — you are going to once again precipitate a buildup of arms and a competition, an armed competition, then. But there was no reason to do it at that time. Russia was not threatening any East European country. Actually, the Soviet Union in its last years was not, because Gorbachev had accepted the democratization of the East European countries. And actually, one of the last acts of the Soviet parliament was to recognize the freedom and independence of the three Baltic countries, so that we had a Europe whole and free. The task was to build a security architecture that would include them all. And the reason I testified against it was that I saw that a process that we started then, if continued, and if continued up to the borders of the Soviet Union — I mean, to the borders of Russia and included former parts of the Soviet Union that were recognized as part of the Soviet Union at that time, such as, most importantly, Ukraine and Georgia, that this would bring about a confrontation.

And I would say my experience and the experience of others during the Cuban Missile Crisis brought home to us the dangers of a military confrontation between countries that have nuclear weapons. At the time, those of us involved — I was in Moscow at the American Embassy — that was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, did not understand how close we came to a nuclear exchange. We learned that only later. But it would have been a disaster for both sides. And so, I had hoped, and I advised, that we not start this process of expanding NATO for that reason.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ambassador Matlock, could you explain what at the time, following the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union — what was the justification at all for the continuation of NATO, especially following the end of the Warsaw Pact, the dissolution of that defense agreement?

JACK MATLOCK: Well, to put it bluntly, there were three purposes of NATO to begin with. As the first secretary general, British Lord Ismay, stated, NATO was to keep the Russians out, to keep the Germans down, to keep the Americans in. So, when it was no longer necessary to keep the Russians out, many of us thought that it was important to keep the German military integrated, and so that in the future you wouldn't risk some breakout, as had happened earlier. And we thought it important to keep the United States as a part of European security to ensure the stability. So, I certainly approved at the time the continuation of the NATO that existed at the end of the Cold War; however, I thought it should be integrated into an overall European security organization that included Russia, the East Europeans and the other states that had been in the Soviet Union. And we actually had plans for that at the time through a proposal called the Partnership for Peace, which could include them all. And we also had an organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which included all the European countries, and it could have been beefed up in many respects. And in that case, we could have kept the old NATO but built other security arrangements.

You know, I thought that when we ended the Cold War, one of the most profound, I would say, principles was one that President Gorbachev, then the president of the Soviet Union, expounded. He said, you know, security must be security for all. And that was precisely how he justified reduction in the Soviet military. And even before the Soviet Union broke up, we were living in peace, and we had a united Europe. Many people seem to feel that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the end of the Cold War. That's wrong. It had ended two years before that. And the breakup of the Soviet Union did not occur because of Western pressure; it occurred because of internal pressures within the Soviet Union. And it was something that President Bush did not wish. As a matter of fact, one of his last speeches, when there was a Soviet Union, was in Kyiv, when he advised Ukrainians to join Gorbachev's voluntary federation, that he was proposing, and actually warned against suicidal nationalism. Those words, you know, are not remembered much now. People seem to think that Ukraine is free because of the end of the Cold War and the pressure of the West as one of the fruits of victory in the Cold War. This is simply incorrect. It turns history upside down.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ambassador Matlock, could you elaborate on some of the initial agreements that were reached between NATO and Russia? In the same year in which you testified against NATO expansion to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 1997, the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed, in which NATO and Russia — which said explicitly NATO and Russia do not consider each other adversaries. Was that agreement significant? And explain why so many Eastern European states, including former Soviet republics, have wanted over the decades to join NATO.

JACK MATLOCK: I think that the — it is true that those, the countries, beginning with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, they wanted to join NATO because they feared that there would be another attempt to — you might say, to bring pressure to bear on them or to occupy them. There's no question that some of them wanted that, but the — seems to me what was important is we should have tried to convince them that that was not likely and that if there was to be a division of Europe again, arming part of it would bring about a rearmament of the other. That is just, I think, almost common sense. But, however, the — yes, the incentive came from there, and, I must say, domestically, the pressure came domestically, because there were many voters in key states, often, you know, children of immigrants from Eastern Europe, who were pressing for this. But at the time, we thought that that was unnecessary.

I would add, however, that the problems with Russia are not just NATO expansion. There were also a process that began with the second Bush administration of withdrawing from all of the arms control — almost all of the arms control agreements that we had concluded with the Soviet Union, the very agreements that had brought the first Cold War to an end. There was a step-by-step withdrawal of those. And there was a decided direct intrusion into the domestic politics of these newly independent countries, attempts to — directly to change the government. This gets, I would say, very complicated in a way, for one who hasn't been able to follow it step by step. But, you know, in effect, what the United States did after the end of the Cold War was they reversed the diplomacy that we had used to end the Cold War, and started sort of doing anything, everything the opposite way. We started, in effect, trying to control other countries, to bring them into what we called the "new world order," but it was not very orderly. And we also sort of asserted the right to use military whenever we wished. We bombed Serbia in the '90s without the approval of the U.N. Later, we invaded Iraq, citing false evidence and without any U.N. approval and against the advice not only of Russia but of Germany and France, our allies. So, the United States — I could name a number of others — itself was not careful in abiding by the international laws that we had supported. So —

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Matlock, I wanted to go back in time. It's very interesting, as you take us forward. But 30 years before you testified, you write in your recent piece about how, quote, "in my lifetime, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis — something I remember vividly since I was at the American Embassy in Moscow and translated some of Khrushchev's messages to Kennedy." You continue, quote, "At the end of the week of messages back and forth — I translated Khrushchev's longest — it was agreed that Khrushchev would remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba. What was not announced was that Kennedy also agreed that he would remove the U.S. missiles from Turkey but that this commitment must not be made public," unquote. This is President Kennedy's address November 2nd, 1962, announcing the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: My fellow citizens, I want to take this opportunity to report on the conclusions which this government has reached on the basis of yesterday's aerial photographs, which will be made available tomorrow, as well as other indications, namely that the Soviet missile bases in Cuba are being dismantled. Their missiles and related equipment are being crated, and the fixed installations at these sites are being destroyed.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that's President John F. Kennedy in 1962. How relevant that is today. I'm looking at the front page of The New York Times, and one of the headlines is "Ukraine? Putin's Bigger Fear May Lie in Poland," with a sub-headline, "New U.S. Military Base Is a Mere 100 Miles From Russia." That's about how far Cuba is from the coast of Florida, right? About 90 miles. If you could address this? And I also just want to comment. I mean, you are 93 years old. Your experience through — you're 92. Your experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis, being the ambassador to the Soviet Union under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, we would think you would be plastering the airwaves, and everyone would be inviting you on. But I dare say I wonder if it's your antiwar point of view, even with this wealth of experience, they are simply not inviting you. But I want to ask that question about the comparison of the weapons that are being poured in right now, encircling Russia, and this point about Poland, with what happened with Cuba and why the U.S. felt it was critical for those missiles of Russia to be removed, even though Cuba was an independent nation, could do what it wanted.

JACK MATLOCK: Well, obviously, we saw it as a threat to put nuclear weapons close to the United States. At the time, we didn't admit publicly that we had placed nuclear weapons that could reach the Soviet Union. And that's one of the reasons Kennedy kept it secret that he had agreed to remove the weapons in Turkey. Yes, and at the time, most of us who were involved were not only pleased at the outcome; we Americans felt that, well, it really made no difference how we took them out, it was necessary to remove them.

But we learned later, with conferences we had with people involved on their side, that, actually, if we had bombed the missile sites in Cuba, as the joint chiefs had advised Kennedy, but he refused, those officers in charge could have launched the missiles if they were under attack. So we could have lost Miami and maybe other cities right at the start. And if that had happened, how would the U.S. react? How could we politically do anything except strike the Soviet Union in some fashion? And when that sort of thing starts, there was no theoretical way — we ran a number of war games — that you could be sure that this process would stop. Now, we also learned later that when a U.S. destroyer was keeping a submarine, a Soviet submarine, submerged, that the commander of the submarine actually at one point ordered an attack on the destroyer with a nuclear torpedo. He was overruled by a superior officer. We came very close, though we did not know it at the time, to a nuclear exchange during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That's one of the reasons now — now I'm not saying that we have a precisely comparable situation. You know, moving the 82nd Airborne to Poland is not like moving nuclear weapons. I think it is totally unnecessary, and I don't know how we're going to use them. But what the Russians have objected to was deployment of anti-ballistic missiles sites. And they say that — in Eastern Europe, they say that, although these are anti-ballistic missiles, the same sites can be used actually for short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles, just by a change of the software. Now, again, I am not technically competent, but I think there is an issue here that we have refused to address, and that is, obviously, since we pulled out of the ABM Treaty and a number of other arms control treaties that had brought the end of the Cold War, I think that it is maybe understandable that the Russians would have fears here. I would also add that it's not just a matter that one side or the other might suddenly launch a nuclear attack. I don't see that happening. But the thing is, as the Cuban Missile Crisis explained to us, accidents can happen when you put yourself in this position. And when they happen, how do you keep it from escalating?

A second thing is that maybe the greatest threat that nuclear weapons possess today is that though it may be irrational for any government actually to use them because it could bring about a suicidal effect, if they get into the hands of terrorists, of nonstate actors, they can be used with perhaps impunity. And at the end of the Cold War, we had cooperative agreements with the Russians to secure their nuclear weapons, in what we call the Nunn — Sam Nunn and other senators sponsored this. These have all broken down now.

And what worries me is there could be a creeping up of another nuclear arms race, because if the Russian government, if President Putin feels he is being pressed and his security threatened — rightly or wrongly, because it's perceptions that count — then what's to keep him, since we have walked out of most of the other agreements, from putting, say, intermediate-range missiles in Kaliningrad or bringing them close to the border? Then what are we going to do? So, to get into another insane arms race, when we have so many other common problems we need to deal with, I think, is extraordinarily unwise.

AMY GOODMAN: Jack Matlock, we want to thank you so much for being with us, served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991 under Reagan and George H.W. Bush. His latest piece, that we'll link to, "I was there: NATO and the origins of the Ukraine crisis." His books include Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended and Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray.

Next up, we speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Atlantic reporter Ed Yong about the millions of people stuck in pandemic limbo. What does society owe immunocompromised people? Stay with us.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

 

QANON IN Tongues

 

THE ABSURD TIMES

 

 

 

 

 

         

 Illustration: Guy Fawks mask wearing demonstrator. The V sign stands for "victory" and "vendetta". During WWII, Churchill used it to help reassure the British people in the war against fascism, especially Hitler. The BBC would start its news programs with the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the first four notes of it which are Morse code for the letter V.

 

 

OCCUPY INSANITY

BY

TSAR X

 

 

This is going to be a bit longer than usual. I'm trying to keep it short, but there are a few items that should be pointed out. You may want to bookmark this or download it – as you will.

 

Well, I've picked up a few items from QANON, but it isn't always easy to be sure what he is saying now that he is talking in tongues. I'm practicing listening in tongues, however, and have made enough regress to pass on a few important items, some of which have made it onto the news of certain outlets.

         

The first is an important public service announcement that has been covered a bit by Swanson Mcnear. [Middle names of Tucker Carlson]. If you do happen to see a mother with her child and the child is wearing a face mask, immediately report her to the police or Family Services. We can't let masks get out of hand.

 

THE EVIL GREEEN NEW DEAL: it will take away hamburgers and any other beef products.  Beware of it. [Now actually, that bit of Twilight Zone madness has its origin in some study that theorizes that without beef products, climate goals could be achieved in 25 years. The fact is that other approaches are being  proposed. I can not imagine any sort of bill being passed in any country that has so many McDonald's franchises in it.]

 

Finally, and I'm putting this in last, mainly because it makes me laugh so much that it is difficult to type – still, here it is: in Arizona, some group called the Cyber Ninjas has been enlisted to audit the votes again. This would be the fourth audit. The problem seems to be a bunch of ballots that were flown in from somewhere in Southwest Asia. They can be identified as false if they have bamboo in them. So, the hunt is on for bamboo in the ballots which led the the horrid pun that the GQP thought the election had been bamboozled from Mr. Fat Head. Well, I'm tired and that is enough of this crap. It is time for the Democrats to simply take over, pass bill s1 and get that crap over with.

 

 

Breaking from that

 

Lately, there has been a great deal of pity blathered about on India. Now, a great deal of pity and faux concern has been expressed on the situation, and everyone is free to feel as sad as they choose about the situation. However, I have not seen much repeat of the footage concerning perhaps millions of them, in all states of undress (as if it mattered) wading together in the Ganges river. The water seemed rather foul at the time, but it was made clear that this was some some of holy religious ritual. Fine. Also, their leader is one of the most right-wing nuts to come along in a long time (but who are we to boast with our GQP showing us up as idiots world-wide?).

 

At any rate, if this was not a so-called "Super-Spreader" event, it was a holy sacrament and I suppose that makes it ok. To me, it gives superstition a bad name.  At any rate, lots of Covid there now, people dying by the thousands a day. Frankly, I thought the U.S. orgy festivals were bad enough, and stupid enough, yet this transcends them. At least those could be attributed to raging hormones. Well, perhaps the Ganges will be permitted to regain its pre-Covid level of pollution.

 

Back to the Absurd

 

Gladys Retweeted

Robert J. DeNault

@robertjdenault

·

2h

Jim Jordan accused of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse, Matt Gaetz under investigation for sex with a minor, Marjorie Taylor Greene harassed school shooting survivors and spewed anti-Semitic venom, but House GOP chooses to go after Liz Cheney for calling out the Big Lie. [And you expected what?]

 

Does anybody have any idea as to what the GQP platform is? What is it for? I know quite well that it is against anything Democrats try to pass. In fact, Moscow Mitch has said quite clearly that his entire purpose is to block anything the Biden administration is for. Quite clearly, it wants to support anything Donald Trump favors, but that can be elusive since the only question he has about anything is "What's in it for me?" It always has been.

 

The latest breaking news before mother's day is the defense argument for one of the insurrectionists on January 6, the day a bunch of frenzied morons tried to take over the Congress in order to keep Donald Trump in office, despite his overwhelming defeat by the Democrats. The guy's attorney says that his client is suffering from Foxitis and Foxmania.

 

Now, I do have some background in the DSM, sort of the official rulebook of the Psychological Association and can tell you that there is no such recognized condition. The best that can be said of his condition is feelings of inadequacy, a need to belong, and overactive hormones.  Perhaps stupidity would be more likely, but then that condition is incurable. Fox itself has successfully defended itself in the past by saying "no reasonable individual could possibly interpret what the Fox evening commentators say is anything other than entertainment."

 

Now, GQP states are running like mad to stop this horrible trend of voting. Just recently, the Governor of Florida signed a bill making all sorts of voting more difficult. It was televised, but coverage of the non-event was allowed to be covered only by Fox News. I personally do not feel left out, as it were, by this fact because I would have little interest in watching such a vile event. However, since it is a public event, featuring the elected Governor of a State, one would think there is some sort of violation of the First Amendment at play. Even local stations were prohibited from witnessing the event. It is our opinion, that this is a butchering of free speech as well as voter discrimination. It is quite likely that GQP voters will be affected as much as Democratic voters, but it makes little sense.

 

There is a bill in Congress, passed by the House and known as HR1, that would ensure fairer elections. Fairer elections, clearly, would be detrimental to the GQP at this stage. It is now in the Senate, known as S1, and needs to be passed. However, the most often used term, filibuster, more accurately cloture, makes a 60 vote majority for anything to pass in the Senate unless it is sent through another process called "reconciliation".

 

No member of the GQP is willing to cross the idiotic Trump wing of the party, so there will be no cloture unless reconciliation is used. The current parliamentarian would rule against using that process because it is not related to the budget. However, it is. The lead party, the majority party, appoints the parliamentarian. All that needs to be done is to appoint a different parliamentarian. The GQP has done this in the past, so there is precedent.

 

Some other issues: the bill that did go through reconciliation, the one that gave you the extra $1,200 and made so many other economic benefits, and was opposed by every GQP member, is now being boasted of by the same members of the GQP as if they had passed it and that their voters or constituents should take advantage of it: "I am pleased to announce that the Federal money is now available to you, he said." [Of course, he voted against it. Hypocrisy is rampant. And, Moscow Mitch stated openly that he is 100% against anything that the Democrats try to pass. He then tried to walk it back, but the point was obvious.

 

Now there is a reason this is so completely disgusting to me: I grew up in Chicago when Dick Daley became Mayor. I am also somehow related to the late Mike Royko, but even as I matured and he had moved to the right-wing Tribune because "at least it was a newspaper" after Rupert Murdock bought the liberal paper he worked for, we could never pin down how we were related, exactly, but both accepted the fact, deciding what difference did it make anyway?

 

In fact his generation saw things quite differently than mine, but our goals were similar. He once published a book titled BOSS, a collection of his past articles. At the time, he did anger Daley several times and as Daley's wife saw the book on the shelves at the local A&P (grocery store) she raised hell with the manager. In fear, the manager had to keep the book off of his shelves. Mike's reaction ran something like this, I quote from memory as best I can: "I wish she had done more. I mean, the phrase BANNED IN BOSTON certainly helped sales of a book, Ulysses by James Joyce the first example, but banned at the A&P just doesn't have the same ring to it." But I digress. I will just say that you can find him in conversation with Studs Terkel on You Tube, and also get a flavor for his real personality. Studs had a radio program every day at 10 am on WFMT. I think there is still and archive of both his programs and Mike's columns available on WFMT and the Tribune, respectively.

 

Some years ago, I was on social media swinging away at Obama when someone asked "What did Obama lack?" I said "Spine".  Daley, for all his faults and eventual slide into autocracy, at least made things happened. The same can be said of Lyndon Johnson. I hated the bastard at the time because I was of draft age and thought the war in Vietnam was both wrong and a mistake. I was working part-time at the library at the University of Illinois and had easy access to browse all sorts of shelves. Upon looking up the history of the country, it became clear that they had been defending their land for at least 1,000 years. The French did not last there, and China finally gave up. It was a stupid idea and I had the impression that John Kennedy thought so as well. Naturally, he was assassinated.

 

At any rate, he had promised to implement all the policies JFK supported. At the same time, Mr. Koch, father of the tea party guys, supported Barry Goldwater, a
Republican, who promised to "bomb Hanoi into the stone age". The choice seemed clear. LBJ was elected and promptly escalated the war.

 

However, at the same time, he did push through the Voting Rights Act that the south hated because it allowed Blacks to vote – it became a federal law. Additionally, he created Medicare, something FDR wanted but was never able to implement. Johnson, therefore, threatened or cajoled both Republicans and Southern Democrats on both of these bills and several more. At the time, he pointed out that the Democratic party has lost the South as a result for at least a generation, the only exception being Jimmie Carter from Georgia who had a habit of listening to Bob Dylan songs and reading sane articles. That was all stopped by Ronald Reagen, a spokesman for corporate America and eagerly supported by right wing nuts, including ex-Democrats who had become Republicans.

 

The point is that both Johnson and Daley managed to do things that, on the whole, were good for the American people. Daley during the protests that gathered around the Democratic convention at the time had actually, as some people from his circle said disparagingly, "Ah, duh old guy started ta believe what he been sayin fer so long. Dat means he's gone off his rocker. I quit"! Hubert Humphrey had backed Johnson (as if he had any choice) and therefore lost the election to, of all people, Richard Nixon! Whatever one says about Nixon, it is often overlooked that he created the EPA which could have helped stop the current climate crises the planet faces. Ronnie Ray Gun would have none of that.

 

Now the GQP is intimidated by Donald Trump, a racist demagogue and a con man. It is unpopular by a clear majority of the American people, but it will try to remain in power by reversing all these "Socialist" voting laws. Especially, keep those black folk from voting because they are inferior, white people, actually white men, are supreme and God wants them to have control over this great "Democracy". Well, right now the Democrats do have a majority in both houses. They can manage to get voting rights passed, S1, which will rule over all these mass efforts in various states to keep the GQP in control.

 

The real question is will they? I can assure them that if the GQP takes over in the next 19 months, they will not allow any niceties to inhibit them. They are even displacing one of the most right-wing ideologues in their own party in favor of someone with a much less right-wing bias because the right-wing one actually acknowledges that Trump lost the last election. They need to act now, and ruthlessly. That's enough.

 

 

 

 

Hard to Believe

THE ABSURD TIMES

This is Hard to Believe

By

Czar Donic

(Or why one more edition.)

This was put out by Move On, and is probably underestimating the problem. However, it is a good place to start. Politicians have been telling us that we do not need the "Medicare for All" type healthcare because most people prefer the healthcare benefits they get with their jobs. Once fired (or we use the term "laid off"), they loose that healthcare. Still, we are also told that such healthcare is SOCIALIST and Pol Pot was a socialist.  People believe that.

Now, what they do not know is that the original leader of Cambodia, Prince Sianook (or however it's spelt), would not let us into his country to continue with Viet Nam. Nixon's "plan" to end the war included invading Cambodia and, with the help of Henry Kissinger, depose the guy. Eventually, this Pol Pot took over, so a Republican administration put him into power.

I had a patient once who eventually told me about his activities in Cambodia. He also told me that if he did tell me, he would be killed and so would I. He was captured and tortured. He said that the pulling out of his toenails and fingernails was the worse, but not the only part. Obviously, he suffered from PTSD and he used drinking to deal with it. He eventually shot himself in the head.  I have not yet been killed, but if they want to kill me, I'm available. Just so everyone remembers that it was a Republican administration.

Still, rest easy. Universal healthcare will not require your nails to be pulled. (Not even in the South.)

These are from Carlos Latuff, inspired by the fact that he noticed both Google and Apple have eliminated Palestine from their maps.  I once had fun with the fact that some Israeli lobby ranked him the third most "anti-Semitic" entity in the world. I thought he should be proud as ranking fourth was "European Football Fans". Now imagine how many European football fans there are. The number is in the millions, yet Latuff managed to beat all of them! In other world, one of the top three in the world, and being in the top three of anything is quite a

These are from Carlos Latuff, inspired by the fact that he noticed both Google and Apple have eliminated Palestine from their maps.  I once had fun with the fact that some Israeli lobby ranked him the third most "anti-Semitic" entity in the world. I thought he should be proud as ranking fourth was "European Football Fans". Now imagine how many European football fans there are. The number is in the millions, yet Latuff managed to beat all of them! In other world,  one of the top three in the world, and being in the top three of anything is quite an achievement. (No, I do not remember the organization, but who cares?)

Now, why did I announce that I had nothing more to say?

n achievement. (No, I do not remember the organization, but who cares?)
 

Now, why did I announce that I had nothing more to say?

It got too easy. Where is the challenge in finding the absurd in Trump's actions?

For example, Trump has talked to Roger Stone more in the last few months than to Dr. Fauci.  Why? Easy, Fauci lacks a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. Ask a silly question, … .

In the UK people carry signs saying: ALL AMERICANS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT. 

Bill Kristol and George Will have been making sense lately. That is how low we have sunk. I must admit, however, that George Will was always correct in his pronouncements concerning Baseball, especially Chicago baseball. 

A poll result recently revealed that 3 our of every 4 Americans trusted Fauci rather than Trump on pandemics. That scared me because I wondered where they found the fourth guy. Under some rocks, I suppose? How is that possible? It doesn't make any sense to me.

Remember Trump announced that he was the "Least racist person in the world" and also a "very stable genius." He took a cognitive test and said that the doctors were amazed. At what?

The new rule is that all facts about the pandemic be sent to the government, and bypass the CDC. The CDC publishes it's data.

Florida had more deaths in one day from the disease than Germany, the UK, and Japan, collectively, all in one day. Of course the Governor is a Republican.

The Mayor of Atlanta made mask wearing mandatory and the governor is suing her for that. He is a Republican.

And where is Antifa when we need them? Trump has invaded Portland Oregon with soldiers wearing camouflage outfits and they are well armed. Is this the work of the Secretary of Education's brother? Or is he using federal troops? Sieg Heil, Trump.

Well, I suppose there is nothing more to say, but I am reminded of an exchange in the movie Casablanca.  Some Nazis are questioning the saloon owner Rick about the German advances. Finally, they get to the point of Germany invading the United States. At that point, Rick warns that there are "a few neighborhoods in New York" that they might be advised to avoid. When Trump was talking about perhaps invading Chicago, that exchange immediately came to mind as there are some areas of Chicago even I was careful to avoid. In fact, one seemed to develop a sixth sense about even crossing certain streets into what would be an entirely different neighborhood. Now, I am sure that the exact neighborhoods have not remained the same geographically, but they certainly do exist. Then there are the Chicago Cops to contend with as well. They will take their lead from the Mayor (whether they like her or not) and if she orders, as did Dick Daley once "To shoot to maim or kill," you can count on them to so. 

To be sure, Barack Obama or any other member of past administrations would give the same opinion. Still, Donald, if you are ready to Rumble, there is a place that will give you a good contest.

A Couple of Viruses

THE ABSURD TIMES

The Decameron by Boccaio.   I hope I'm not violating anyone's copyright privileges.  If I am, sue me.  Actually, the stories in the book (I assume you've at least heard of it) are written during the great plague of the 14^th Century but which lasted, more or less, until the 18th (and the virus still exists) in England (see Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year) and which Nostradamus managed to help contain.  It is a collection of stories that supposedly were told by a group of well off citizens who shut themselves off from the city at large (we adroitly call this "social distancing" when it is really physical distancing) and told one another stories to pass the time.  In the Monty Python movie you hear the chant "BRING OUT YOUR DEAD, BRING OUT YOUR DEAD".  Well, That was part of the same plague.  We had a more recent one called the "Spanish Flu" which killed 2 million back in 1919, but that one started in our Midwest at some army base (Kansas or Nebraska, I think).  The difference then was a lack of mass communication.  It did take place after the first Chicago Cubs World Series win, but still even before radio.  Well, on with the show!  

Some Cures and Viruses

By

Czar Donic

Before I start: some of this was put together before the so-called "Memorial Day" (during which nobody remembered anything) vacation, so I have to make it clear that none of it is to justify the hormone-driven, hyper-orgiastic, communal bathing and air-sharing activities that took place, things performed by morons with no idea of what contagion means.  I seriously doubt that such moronic fools even read this, so this is done simply to absolve myself of any association with any of these low-life morons.

Damn it, it's a matter of being pro-or anti-Trump whether or not you wear a mask? Come off it. I'm not playing that game.

Back when we had one of our profitable wars, I went back and buried myself in reading, starting from the Norman invasion (1060). Even memorized the Lords prayer in one of the dialects of the period, but it never came up in conversation. Now I think I'll go back to Bach and work myself up.  That does get on the dance floor much these days either, but who cares?

All these riots take me back to Chicago 68. Lot of the cops were friend/gang members I got along with. One asked me "Whose side youse on?"

Since he had to slip into his vernacular, I went into mine: "Man, like whadya think? I'm gonna wear a uniform like you and you wanna see me carry a stick? You seen me with a bat. Wanna give me a small bat? You nuts. "Sides, the chick over here look a lot better than your hairy friends. Wanna talk logarithms, base ten, make it easy?"

No problem, he says and I had my own bodyguards then. I also did him a favor, told him "Now stay away from the hairy guys with the tear gas 'cause it's coming right back at cha."

          Then I had to talk to one of the organizers and try to find one of them who could listen to logic. Tom Hayden was the most likely, but he laid back most of the time. Everyone knew Abbie, but who was he going to be at any particular time? No way to tell. A could of Northwestern Grad Students, but they were out of the city – Evanston. Finally, I get someone and let him know that first make sure you have some thick gloves because those things are hot and second, it's best to try to throw it like a discus, but if you have time to handle it like a baseball, go ahead. 

So, am I stuck in the old days? Seems not as we got MN right now and the Orange man fighting it out with Twitter. A real macho guy, eh? Well, MN is not Chicago, but you have the same things going on – only difference is that the MN mayor fired the cops and Daley ordered them to "shoot to main or kill."  We had the same right wing asses saying "Looting brings firepower," as if he was real macho. We got the same old shit.  Only thing was we had a division of labor.

          See, in order to cover everything, we got together and all decided that the civil rights were the black peoples fight and Viet Name was for the White Boys to fight. We all knew what happened to any black leader who spoke up about foreign policy, so we went along.

          Today things are different. Over 40 cities are seeing demonstrations and there is nobody to speak out. There is no JFK to speak about "when peaceful change is stopped, violent change is inevitable" (words to that effect). No MLK to say "Riots are the language of the unheard".  When MLK was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy spoke to his campaign rally in Indianapolis and it was the only city that didn't go up in flames.  Even Bill Clinton spoke well about listening and calmed a national crowd.  Forget about finding an FDR. We have a Donald Trump telling Governors not to be so weak and then placed in a bunker (where he should have been kept).

          When we talk about and see the violence, we don't see the white nationalists or white neo-nazis, but they are there, and are armed with spray cans   Showing their historical and literary good taste one faction calls itself "The Boogaloo Boys," kind of a Charles Manson agenda.  What do we get from Billy Barr? Easy, go after Antifa. Some progressives claim their lives were saved by such a group, but there are only individuals who act on an intermittent basis.

          Anyway, much is going on, and the longer I'm doing this, the further behind I get.  So I'm uploading it now:

         

          In Minneapolis, the curfew started well. There were no police to be seen and it seemed as though Mayor Frey had settled things in a very smooth way. As soon as the murder took place, he fired all four cops that were involved and eventually murder charges were filed against the main cop who had his knee of the handcuffed guy's neck for almost 10 minutes, and for the last three minutes the guy was already dead! It took awhile for these charges to be filed, however, and some were disappointed to find they were only 3rd degree. 

Well, you have to look at what you need to prove for a charge to stick and 2nd and 1^st degree involves convincing a jury of what was going on in the cops hard, if anything. Even proving that thought was a part of it would be tricky. Still, he was in charge of training, TRAINING, for field operations. Maybe he thought, THOUGHT, that some sort of immunity applied to him?

          Well, things got going in other cities. This was NOT Grant Park. This was the entire United States with, in a favorite phrase, chickens come home to roost, although I never personally witnessed that particular phenomenon.  Because of the ranting of the neo-fascist Trump, this was to spread. Now, this Trump guy, leader of the MAGA party, opened his ugly mouth and shouted "MAGA LOVES AFRICAN AMERICAN AND BLACK PEOPLE," COME HOME TO US!  Well, he has 3% approval there and his followers march around with confederate and Nazi flags, carrying guns, and storm trooping the capital of the Governor of Michigan. Why is he kidding?

          Of course, New York had to be included, as well as Pennsylvania, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, and dozens of places around the country. His lawyer, Billy Barr, decided it was a left wing anarchist group and inspired by Putin. Whatever you want to say about Putin, he is NOT capable of organizing riots in all of those cities. CNN was attacked in Atlanta, a town mainly black in the middle with a ring of whitish suburbs around it. The mayor talked about being a mother and the first thing she did was call her son and ask him where he was because it was no place for a black child to be, no way. All the cops were white as far as we could see. She mentioned the great Ted Turner as well, and why not? Trump chose to go after CNN and a CNN reported was arrested live on CNN in Minneapolis just that morning, of course with a first name like Jose, what do you expect?

          When they talk about "outside agitators," it sounds suspicious, but almost all of those arrested were from out of state. They were also pretty stupid. First, they started looting stores in the 'hood, and second, even the Dollar Store! If you want to be a thief, do some thinking first.

          So, this is not all about George Floyd, the guy what who was slowly and methodically murdered. That was just the spark that set it off. No, he was like the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria who was assassinated in 1914.  And in that case, it was probably an excuse for something waiting to happen.  Well, George Floyd's execution, all 10 minutes of it, was recorded and appeared on television set across the United States.  If it was a mass rebellion against anything, it was against racist neo-fascism.

          And mass is the right word for it. One network put up a map of the U.S. where such demonstrations took place and the map was spotted, north and south, east and west, and there was no time to even start counting. Will this get anything done? All we know is that warm weather is in the country now and will be for some time, certainly until the election. Many people, maybe 40 million, are "laid off" and fired and many supposed to work from home. Right now, things do not look good for Republicans, but there is serious uncertainty about structural, let alone cultural, change – and this applies to all involved. It is a great deal to expect in a matter of six or seven months, and we should all know it.

                  

Well, back to the other virus:

Now, Vietnam was bad, but Trump managed to kill as many as Vietnam and Korea combined in 3 months. I really didn't think we could get more fucked up than we already were, but we underestimated his incompetence, and incontinence. 

You know why the blond chick from New York went after Franken, don't you? It's because of the way Franken deconstructed Zuckerberg at the Senate hearing. Check it out at You tube.

As a sample, D.C., Brooklyn, rest of New York, Louisville (birth of Hunter Thompson and Mohammed Ali), Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, LA, Oakland all went up. That's a hell of a lot of "outside agitators" for Putin to muster and organize. Putin doesn't care about American Cops – he's just glad to have a free hand on his continent.

Yes, we are getting tired of it. Maybe there are some things that would help.

Donald Trump says he has never taken a mind-altering drug in his life. Well, maybe he should start. It might be just the thing he needs to help put things right. Slip him a large dose of acid and send him on a trip. He's been on trips before, so why not? Maybe being without an ego for 12 hours or so will help clear things up for him. Once he puts himself back together, if he can figure out how to do it, maybe he will make sense? 

This is honestly getting ridiculous, so I'll just leave one further bit of information.  It really isn't anything new, and it will probably go nowhere since it is difficult to capitalize on.  You know how ever so often a network or wire service will release a bit of information and then suppress it forever?  It just slipped though, that's all.

Well, the last one came from a cable news outlet concerning New York's subway system.  To disinfect the damn thing, they've installed some lights that flash some ultraviolet light on the whole train while it is empty.  Kills every germ and virus exposed.  Now, people have known this a long time. At one time, long ago, I would sometimes get something on my left arm, curious in itself, that the Dr. said was growing.  Shit! Something growing on my left arm?  What is this world coming to? I want out. Where's the next planet?

He told me not to worry. He took out a lamp he had used for years, ultraviolet, and placed a piece of paper on my arm, but with a hole in it so only that growing stuff on my arm was exposed, and zapped it for a minute or so. The stuff just died.  Later on, some company found some sort of cream that would kill the same stuff and they could charge for it and that was the end of the lamp.  I never had the problem again either. It must have had something to do with Lake Michigan, but never mind.

Later on I came across a remark in some forward or afterward by Bernard Shaw written in the late 19^th or early 20^th century. He mentioned that rivers usually were much cleaner downstream, even from filthy cities like London; say 20 or 30 miles downstream.  The reason, of course, even in England which is not know as the land of sunshine, did have sunny days and the sun, with its ultraviolet light, would kill and disinfect the river along the way.  Surely, we can figure out a way to get into the sun?  Or maybe flood areas with ultraviolet light every so often?

I've noticed now that doctors are talking about how this stuff doesn't stay around as long as they have been saying.  I wonder if there is some connection? 

Anyway, Memorial Day comes wherein we supposedly honor and remember all those we induced to die shooting and bombing one another for the mutual benefit of the tycoons of all countries involved.  And then it goes.  And everyone returns to work, resolved to despise any members of some other readily identifiable group. 

See, it doesn't matter as long as we can get people to hate other people rather than figure out that corporations and big money are screwing them. 

So long for now.

* * *

We add the history of epidemics.  It has some facts you may find surprising and useful.  This is one program that still reports what's going on.  At one time, a group of corporations tried to take over the show, in fact the entire Pacifica Network. Well, enough people got together and stopped it from happening, but it was close.  9/11 came along and other opportunities presented themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! Democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Forty-eight states are at least partially reopening this week, even as more than a dozen states are seeing an uptick in cases, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns the U.S. death toll will pass 100,000 by the beginning of June. Last week, ousted U.S. vaccine chief Rick Bright testified that if the U.S. fails to improve its response to the virus, COVID-19 could resurge after summer and lead to the "darkest winter in modern history." Coronavirus hot spots Italy and United Kingdom are both also slowly reopening businesses.

This comes as the World Health Organization will meet virtually today with all 194 member states, and the global coronavirus death count passes 315,000 with more than 4.7 million confirmed infections. This is Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organization's Emergencies Programme, speaking at a recent briefing.

DR. MICHAEL RYAN: To put this on the table, this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities. And this virus may never go away. HIV has not gone away, but we've come to terms with the virus.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, as global leaders prepare to discuss what to expect in the months and years to come, we're going to look back today at the history of pandemics and how they end, with the renowned historian Frank Snowden. He's a professor emeritus of the history of medicine at Yale University and author of the new book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. Professor Snowden is joining us from Rome, Italy, where he traveled for research before the coronavirus outbreak and has remained under quarantine since. He has recently recovered from COVID-19 himself. He also lived through a cholera outbreak in Rome while conducting research there almost half a century ago.

In his book, Professor Snowden writes, quote, "Epidemic diseases are not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning. On the contrary, every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities. To study them is to understand that society's structure, its standard of living, and its political priorities."

Professor Frank Snowden, it's wonderful to have you with us, albeit from Rome, where you're under lockdown. What an amazing history yourself, as you are an expert in pandemics. In Italy, you survived the cholera outbreak half a century ago, and now, though getting COVID-19, you have survived this coronavirus pandemic. Can you talk about those two experiences?

FRANK SNOWDEN: Oh, certainly. Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you.

And the cholera outbreak was in 1973. It's one of the reasons that I was — I took up an interest in the field, because the sorts of events that I was witnessing as a young man were quite extraordinary. They included such things as — Naples was the epicenter. Rome was nonetheless affected, but Naples was the center. And cars with Naples license plates were being stoned in the center of Rome. And there are open-air markets in Rome, and the vendors there were having their stalls overturned, and they were being attacked by crowds as being guilty of spreading the disease.

At the same time, Italy, at this time, let's remember, was the seventh industrial power in the world, in the 1970s. And the minister of health of this power went on television. And what he did was to say that the microbe that causes the cholera is exquisitely sensitive to acid, so all you need to do is to take a lemon and squeeze just a bit of it on your raw muscles, and then you'll be perfectly safe. And, of course, if you believe that, you're likely to believe just about anything. And so, it was this sort of event that caught my attention.

And later on, when I was studying something else entirely, there was a cholera outbreak in Italy, and I began thinking, in my studies, that actually this showed more conclusively what values were in Italy, in Italian society, what living standards were, and so on, than any other kind of work that I might do. And so I moved into studying the history of epidemic diseases, and I've been doing that alongside an interest in modern Italian history, those two things ever since. So, that's the cholera story.

With the coronavirus story is that I finished a book, my book that you mentioned, kindly, in October. It was published then. And I had been quite concerned about the possibility of a major pandemic disease — not just myself, but many people were — and I wrote that in the book. And so, I was stunned, though. I didn't know when it was likely to happen; I thought one day in the future. And so I was stunned that in December the epidemic started.

And then, by the time I came to Italy in January, it really began to ramp up. And very soon, I was living in the epicenter of the coronavirus at that time. So, that was a very important experience for me. I was not able to do the research I came to do, and I've devoted myself ever since to doing that. And I guess you might say that I had a little bit too much enthusiasm for my work and caught the disease myself — fortunately, a mild case, and I'm here to tell the tale, and so I was lucky in that regard. But I certainly have had a close look at this event, this series of events, in Italy, and I've been reading intensively about it and talking to people about it around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And our condolences on the death of your sister just a few weeks ago.

FRANK SNOWDEN: Oh, aren't you kind? Yes, that was not a result of coronavirus, but, yes, and I wasn't able to go back. And that's, you know, another part of the times we're living in. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, your family history is so fascinating, your father the first African American envoy to Italy in the 1950s. He goes on to write Blacks in Antiquity and Before Color Prejudice. And your connection, all of these years, to studying Italy, until now — you are locked down there for months. Can you talk about the comparison of the lockdown there and what you're viewing, your country here, the United States? You joked about — not really joked, but talked about lemon as a cure. Do you see comparisons to the president of the United States, President Trump, telling people to inject themselves with disinfectants?

FRANK SNOWDEN: I'm glad you asked that question. And I would say that what I've observed here, I've heard a lot of discussion across — in the States, about Italy's terrible response to the coronavirus. And I find that surprising, because it seems to me quite the opposite.

First thing has to do with compliance. And there, I think a lot has to do with the messaging. That is to say that in this country, you have a single health authority, and it acted — it acted quickly and responsibly, and it imposed social distancing. And as it did so, there wasn't a cacophony of noise from a president speaking differently from his advisers, differently from the governments of 50 states, from local school boards, local mayors, different members of Congress. No, there was one policy. It was announced. It was explained very clearly to the population that until we have a vaccine, that we have exactly one weapon to deal with this emergency, and that's social distancing. And therefore, if we — Italians were told, if we Italians want to save our country, we have to do it together. We're all in the same boat. This is the only means available to save the country, to save our families, to protect our communities, to protect ourselves.

And as a result, there's been — and I've observed this even in the neighborhood where I'm living, that the compliance has been extraordinary. There haven't been protests against it as in the States. And I would say that it's interesting that the local newspaper — it's called Il Messaggero, which means "The Messenger" — had an article in which it said this is the first time in 3,000 years of Rome's history that the population of Romans has ever been obedient. And I think that's because people were — the government was very clear. Vans went through the neighborhoods. There were posters everywhere. The regulations were explained to everyone. They were very severe, more severe than in the States. But people were justifiably afraid. The government explained why this was a danger, and people were afraid, and they wanted to do something.

I myself heard the kinds of conversations that people had when they were waiting outside grocery stores, were wearing their masks, and they were conversing with each other and saying things like "I wonder if this was like the way it was during World War II. Is this maybe the way it was during the Blitz in London, that everyone is in this together, it's a terrible sacrifice, but this is what we have to do?" This was the attitude that I observed.

And now that I'm able to go outside again the last few days, I've observed on the streets again that this compliance is continuing. People have been well educated in the dangers of the coronavirus. And quite frankly, no one wants it to surge up again. I would say that's the basis of it.

The opposite is happening and has happened in the United States, where we had, as I said, this cacophony of fragmented authorities all saying different things in an extraordinarily confusing way, and our great CDC, the world sort of model, the gold standard for emergency response, being underfunded and almost invisible throughout this crisis. So, it's been staggering, a country that has extraordinary medical centers, has this extraordinary CDC, wonderful doctors, an extraordinary tradition of scientific research in universities, national labs like the NIH, and yet — and yet, when this virus approaches, it has been unable to respond — unwilling to respond, in a scientific, coherent way with a single message to the American public. And so the public is confused.

AMY GOODMAN: And you have the president also defunding the World Health Organization, an organization you have studied for years. You quote Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization upon his return from China. Can you tell us what he said, Professor Snowden?

FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes. He said that the world — China has had a model response, and the world will soon realize that it owes China a debt of gratitude for the long window of opportunity it provided by delaying the further onset of this virus, which gave the world a chance to prepare to meet it. That's essentially what he said on return.

AMY GOODMAN: Did he also talk about people having to change their hearts and minds to deal with this global catastrophe?

FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes. That was the second thing he said, that he said we must be prepared. And people said, "Well, how do we prepare?" And he said, "The first thing that happens is that we need to change our hearts and minds, because that's the premise for everything else that we need to do."

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Frank Snowden, you have long studied epidemics, and I was wondering if, in the brief time we have together, though we do have the whole show — if you can go back in time to the bubonic plague and very briefly talk about the Black Death, caused by a bacteria, then move on to smallpox, how it wiped out Indigenous people, from Haiti to the United States, and its connection to — this caused by a virus — its connection to colonization, to colonialism. Start with the Black Death.

FRANK SNOWDEN: Oh, absolutely. The Black Death reached Western Europe in 1347. It broke out first in the city of Messina in Sicily and spread through the whole continent. And it lasted until, in Western Europe — the story to the east is rather different, but in Western Europe, the last case was once again in Messina in 1734. So, that makes, unless I have my math wrong, 400 years in which it ravaged Europe and killed extraordinary numbers of people.

Now, this is a disease that's spread by fleas, also by — and they're carried by rats. It also can be spread through the air in a pulmonary form. And it's extraordinarily lethal. It's something like 50% of those who get the disease from being bitten by fleas perish. Nowadays we have antibiotics, but at the time of the Black Death, we didn't, of course, and so 50% of those afflicted died. And the pneumonic version of the disease is 100% lethal. Even today, it's almost 100% lethal.

And so, this is an extraordinarily dangerous disease. Its symptoms are also extremely powerful, painful and dehumanizing, and patients die in agony. And this can — it strikes very quickly, and so people can also be struck down in public. And so this becomes a terrifying public spectacle as people collapse in the streets. So, this —

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Snowden, the people suffered from what? Buboes, these massive inflammations of the lymph nodes?

FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes. That's as the disease spreads from the flea bite to the lymph node. There's a massive inflammation, and you have a swelling, let us say, in your thigh or under your armpit or in your neck, that's maybe the size of an orange, a large navel orange, under your skin. And it was said to be so painful that people even jumped into the — in London, into the Thames, into the Arno in Florence, to escape from the agony of this terrible pain they were suffering.

But there were other symptoms, as well: terrible fevers and also hallucinations, as people — it has neurological effects. That's part of the dehumanizing side of it. There are these skin discolorations. There are many symptoms, and it's an entirely dreadful and horrible disease.

It still exists, by the way. There are people who think that it's just a medieval disease. No, there are something like 3,000 people around the world who die of bubonic plague every year, and some — a trickle in the United States, in the Southwest in particular, where there is a reservoir of it. So, it's still there.

AMY GOODMAN: You knew a woman in Arizona who had bubonic plague?

FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes, I knew someone in Arizona who got the bubonic plague, because they're a disease — endemic disease of prairie dogs in the Southwest of the United States. And if pet dogs are taken out into areas where the prairie dogs live, they can have an exchange of fleas, and the fleas can be brought back to a hotel or motel. And that's what happened to my friend. There were contaminated fleas in the room where she slept, and therefore she became a — she survived but was a victim of bubonic plague in the 21st century. So, we could be —

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Snowden, you talk about the bubonic plague, the responses to it, being quarantined, the sanitary cordons, mass surveillance and other forms of state power. And I also want to follow that through with these pandemics, is you have — you also are a scholar of fascism and the direction countries can go when such a crisis happens.

FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes. Well, one of the things, I think, if a 15th century Florentine were to come back in a time machine today to look at what we as a society are doing, he or she would find it a rather familiar landscape. That is to say, the things that you're saying were adopted and devised as self-protection by the Italian city-states that were at the center of the trade in the Mediterranean, and so were repeatedly scourged.

So, yes, there was this terrible disease, and they dealt with it by creating health magistrates — we call them boards of health — by creating the first forms of personal protective equipment, PPE, the masks, the long gowns, social distancing, hospital systems for dealing with this one single disease, the measure of quarantine — "quarantine" even being an Italian word, "quaranta," for 40 days, because people were locked down for 40 days before they were released. It had sanitary cordons. All of this was part of the defensive measures that we see today and that were also present during the Spanish influenza.

Public health was a legacy of the bubonic plague. So, while we look at these terrible events, we also need to remember that human beings are inventive and that there have been silver linings. The development of public health, the development of science and scientific medicine are also gifts of these terrible events. And indeed, I would say that the modern state is also part of — it was molded in part by the need for a centralized authority as part of our life protective system. So, yes, the bubonic plague does that, and it affected every area of society.

It's not true to say that pandemics all do the same things. There are some things that have been repeated again and again. During the bubonic plague, the Black Death, the first years of it, there was this horrible surge of anti-Semitism across Europe, in France, in the Rhineland, in northern Italy, elsewhere. And this was, in a way, the first Holocaust, when Jews were persecuted and put to death, not just in spontaneous ways by crowds, but the bureaucratic apparatuses of political authorities were used to torture Jews into submission, to confessing crimes that of course they had never committed, and then they were judged and burned. The Holy Roman Empire did this, and local authorities and leaders of city-states. So this was a systematic purging and killing of Jews, who were thought to have — or so the case against them was that they were trying to put an end to Christendom and were poisoning the wells of Christians. And so, you have Jews tortured, broken on the wheel, burned alive, run through by the sword, and so on.

So, this xenophobia is — this blame, scapegoating, we see that today with the coronavirus. It's something that can happen, has repeatedly happened, with the idea that this is a Chinese disease. It's a foreign disease, we're told, and therefore shutting borders against "Chinamen." And we see that Chinese Americans, children being attacked in schools, Chinese Americans afraid to ride alone on the New York subway and arranging to travel in groups so they won't do that. This is part of a long-term legacy of these diseases. And we see it in Europe, as well. Chinatowns were deserted long before the coronavirus actually arrived. And the right-wing nationalist politicians of Europe have been using that, saying it's been imported by immigrants. So, that's one of the false stories that's followed in the wake of this. So that's another really terrible recurring feature of these pandemic diseases.

They don't always lead to — you were asking about does this always increase state power. Well, certainly, the Black Death in Eastern Europe, there were authoritarian countries, and they used these draconian, violent measures. Yes, it was part of their assertion of power. Indeed, this is one reason that these draconian measures appealed, because rulers, not knowing what to do, this gave the impression that they did: They knew what they were doing, and they were taking decisive measures. And so, it was thought that these sorts of measures would possibly be effective, and would certainly be a display of power and resolution. So, we do see that happening.

But let's take the Spanish influenza of 1918, when, again, it's a good comparison to today, because it was the time — it's a respiratory disease. It was terribly much more contagious than this and deadly. Something like 100 million people are thought to have died around the world as a result of the Spanish influenza. And people practiced social distancing. Assemblies were banned. The wearing of masks was compulsory. Spitting in public, which was very popular at the time, was forbidden, and there were heavy fines in places like New York City for doing so. But it doesn't result — measures were taken, but they were revoked at the end of the emergency, and one doesn't find this leading, as it may in some countries, to a long-term reassertion of draconian power by political authorities.

With COVID-19, I think the message is mixed. And remember, anything anyone says about it, we have to remember that this is very early in this pandemic, and so we'll have to wait and see what the final results will be. But we know already that Hungary and Poland have witnessed rulers who use COVID-19 as a cover for ulterior motives of becoming prime minister for life, with the capacity to rule by decree, to censor and shut down the press, to put their political enemies under arrest and so on. And those aren't public health measures. So, I would say, yes, it has this potential, but it's not necessarily something that we'll see around the globe, although there is that danger, and we've seen those two countries where it clearly is leading to exactly those results.

AMY GOODMAN: Frank Snowden, we have to break. Then we're going to come back, and I want to ask you about smallpox, about Haiti, the island of Hispaniola, and about Native Americans. Frank Snowden, professor emeritus of history of medicine at Yale University, author of the new book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. He is speaking to us from the lockdown in Rome, Italy. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: "Killing Me Softly with His Song," performed by Marcella Bella. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. We're spending the hour with professor Frank Snowden, professor emeritus of history of medicine at Yale University, author of the book Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. He has devoted his life to looking at epidemics and teaching thousands of students. He is now in Rome, Italy, where he has been for months, coincidentally went there for another project but got caught in the lockdown, got COVID-19, has recovered from that, and we are lucky enough to have him as our guest for the hour.

Professor Snowden, take us to Hispaniola in 1492, a different version of history that we learn about Hernán Cortés and Pizarro, from the Incas in Peru to the Aztecs of Mexico, what happened in Haiti and in the United States when it came to smallpox.

FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes. Well, Columbus landed at Hispaniola, the first place. His idea — the Arawaks were the Native population, and there were a couple of million inhabiting the island when he arrived. His idea was that he would be able to reduce them to slavery. He wrote about how friendly the Arawaks were and how welcoming to him, his ships and his men. But I'm afraid that the hospitality wasn't reciprocal. And Columbus's view was this was a money-making expedition, and here it would be wonderful to have the Native population as mines in slaves, and mines to cultivate the fields.

The problem was that there was a differential mortality. This has come to be called the Columbian exchange. That is to say that Native populations in the New World didn't have the same history of exposure to various diseases, and therefore not the same herd immunity to them. The most dramatic example is smallpox. Measles was another. That is to say that Native Americans had never experienced those diseases. Columbus and his men, on the other hand, had, because it was rife in Europe. And so, unintentionally, for the most part, the Arawaks simply died off as they were exposed to these new diseases, smallpox and measles, and by 15, 20 years later, there were just a couple thousand left.

And it was at this time that in Hispaniola there was the beginning — this is one of the reasons for the beginning of the African slave trade. The Native population of the United States died from these diseases, and so the Europeans turned instead to importing people from Africa, because they shared many of the same bacterial histories, and therefore immunities, and could survive being enslaved in the Caribbean and then in the New World, on North America and also in South America. So, we get the beginning of the slave trade in part as a result to this differential immunity.

This, then, on the wider scale of the New World, this was something that was — devastated the Native population. When the Spaniards, the British, the French came, the Native population contracted their diseases and just was destroyed. This destroyed the Inca and Aztec empires. In fact, they were so devastated, that they lost their religion. They thought the White man had much more powerful gods than they did, and so this drove the missionary and conversion experience, as well, and cleared the land for European settlers across the whole of the continent. This was a tremendous impact of smallpox disease. It's called a virgin soil disease because they were so — the population had never experienced it and had no herd immunity.

There's an irony that we can see. Let's go back to Hispaniola, that is now the island divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And let's talk about Haiti. It was Saint-Domingue at the time, by the 18th century certainly. And let's remember that the French — this is now an island that had become, extraordinarily enough to think, the wealthiest colony in the world, the jewel of the French Empire. And that is because of its sugar plantations. And the sugar was exported to Europe and was the foundation of French wealth in this period. And slaves are continuing to be imported throughout the 18th century at breakneck speed to cultivate the fields of sugarcane.

During the French Revolution, French power was neutralized. The attitude of the French revolutionaries toward slavery was entirely different. And you got this upsurge of the slaves with the greatest slave revolt in history, led by the Haitian Spartacus, Toussaint Louverture. And the colony was functionally operating under Toussaint Louverture's control and was independent of France. Napoleon — there was regime change, however, by 1799, and Napoleon comes to power. And by 1803, he's thinking that he wishes to put an end to this rebellion, to restore the Haitian rebels, to reenslave them and to restore the colony to being this economic warehouse for France. So he sends a tremendous armada, led by a general who was married to his sister Pauline. And it was something like 60,000 troops and sailors who were sent to the former Hispaniola, now Saint-Domingue, to crush the revolt.

Once again, we see a difference in immunity to disease that proved decisive. That is to say that yellow fever was something to which the African slaves had a differential immunity, whereas Europeans had no immunity. They had no history of experience with yellow fever. And so, what happens is that the French soldiers in Saint-Domingue begin to die at a rapid rate of a terrible epidemic of yellow fever that sweeps through the Caribbean and especially through Saint-Domingue. And what happens, by — Toussaint Louverture was very aware of this and took advantage of it, luring the French troops, not fighting them in pitched battles but only small guerrilla campaigns, waiting for the summer months to come, and an upsurge of the disease, which happens. And pretty soon the French commander writes to Paris to say —

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Snowden, I'm only interrupting because we only have a minute. Of course, Haiti becomes the first country born of a slave rebellion, as you are so graphically describing with an alternative view of history, that many may not have understood, with the role of disease. But in this last minute we have, I wanted to ask you about how pandemics end and what you think will happen now.

FRANK SNOWDEN: I think there's not one answer to that. Pandemics are all different, and they end in different ways. Some die out because of sanitary measures that people take against them, so that we're not vulnerable in the industrial world to cholera or typhoid fever, that are spread through the oral-fecal group, because we have sewers and clean, safe drinking water. And other diseases end, like smallpox, because of vaccination, the development of a scientific tool. So it really depends. Some diseases are not very good candidates for vaccines.

And I would say that COVID-19, I'm sure that we will develop a vaccine, but I also fear that it may not be the — it won't be the magic bullet that people believe, that it will put this behind us, because the sort of features you want are, for an ideal candidate, like smallpox, a vaccine that doesn't have an animal reservoir so it can't return to us. A vaccine is an ideal candidate if in nature it produces a robust immunity in the human body, so people, having once had it, are totally immune for life. That doesn't seem to be the case with COVID-19. So I expect it to become long-term with us. We're going to have to learn to live with this disease. It's probably going to become an endemic disease, and so we're going to have to adjust to —

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to have to leave it there. And I want to thank you so much, Professor Frank Snowden, professor emeritus of history of medicine at Yale University, author of the new book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. I'm Amy Goodman. Stay safe.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately