A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!
Something to hold you over while we are waiting for the next high wind episode which will mean another black out here. Unsure how much more those ancient sagging electric lines can hold out.
She was amazing ! Too bad Phil Spector was a maniac.
You will probably hear this about a thousand times today...still, brings back memories of when we were innocents:
.............
~~~~
Well, we're not so innocent anymore, and he is right:
This finding underlines the way global heating is speeding up, as we put more and more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Global temperatures fluctuate with phenomena like the El Niño/ El Niña, caused by warming or cooling surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. So to get the kind of consistent high temperatures of the past seven years demonstrates that a more powerful “forcing” is overriding El Niño/ El Niña. That is green house gas emissions.
We typically measure increases of temperature over the late nineteenth-century baseline, sort of 1880-1900. We are now about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1- 1.2 degree Centigrade) above that marker. Climate scientists worry that if we go higher than 1.5C / 2.7F, the earth’s climate could go chaotic. Moreover, if we go on as we are, we will outrun our safety valve. All the extra CO2 we have spewed into the atmosphere so far will be absorbed by the oceans, so the earth will gradually cool back down.
But the oceans have a limit to what they can absorb, and we will go past that limit at our current rates by 2050. Any carbon dioxide we put up after that will be around for thousands, maybe 100,000 years. We are on the verge of radically changing the earth’s climate in a way that could last for as long as the human race has existed.
The long-lasting character of CO2 in the atmosphere is why I think it is the main threat. Methane is also a greenhouse gas, but it dissipates relatively quickly.
More bad news. Carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise in 2021, reaching an average of 414 parts per million. That is a truly scary statistic. Oliver Milman at The Guardian reports that greenhouse gas emissions were up 6.2% in 2021 over 2022, most of the increase coming from gasoline-driven cars and trucks.
Copernicus notes that we are already seeing Frankenstein’s Weather as a result of this massive concentration of heat trapping gases. There were severe floods in Germany and elsewhere in Europe last summer, wildfires in Greece and Turkey, and a heat wave in the southern Mediterranean beyond anything in the historical record. It reached just about 120 degrees F/ 48.8C in Sicily, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe.
In North America we saw global heating burn up whole towns in Canada and create record temperatures in usually temperate Seattle and Portland. The Dixie wildfire in California was the second worst on record.
Climate change is not a matter of a dystopian future. We are living it. Now. And it is an increasing challenge. It is a challenge we can overcome, but the longer we burn fossil fuels the steeper the task will be."
Something to hold you over while we are waiting for the next high wind episode which will mean another black out here. Unsure how much more those ancient sagging electric lines can hold out.
She was amazing ! Too bad Phil Spector was a maniac.
You will probably hear this about a thousand times today...still, brings back memories of when we were innocents:
.............
~~~~
Well, we're not so innocent anymore, and he is right:
This finding underlines the way global heating is speeding up, as we put
more and more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Global
temperatures fluctuate with phenomena like the El Niño/ El Niña, caused
by warming or cooling surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial
Pacific Ocean. So to get the kind of consistent high temperatures of
the past seven years demonstrates that a more powerful “forcing” is
overriding El Niño/ El Niña. That is green house gas emissions.
We typically measure increases of temperature over the late
nineteenth-century baseline, sort of 1880-1900. We are now about 2
degrees Fahrenheit (1.1- 1.2 degree Centigrade) above that marker.
Climate scientists worry that if we go higher than 1.5C / 2.7F, the
earth’s climate could go chaotic. Moreover, if we go on as we are, we
will outrun our safety valve. All the extra CO2 we have spewed into the
atmosphere so far will be absorbed by the oceans, so the earth will
gradually cool back down.
But the oceans have a limit to what they can absorb, and we will go
past that limit at our current rates by 2050. Any carbon dioxide we put
up after that will be around for thousands, maybe 100,000 years.
We are on the verge of radically changing the earth’s climate in a way
that could last for as long as the human race has existed.
The long-lasting character of CO2 in the atmosphere is why I think it
is the main threat. Methane is also a greenhouse gas, but it dissipates
relatively quickly.
More bad news. Carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise in 2021,
reaching an average of 414 parts per million. That is a truly scary
statistic. Oliver Milman at The Guardian
reports that greenhouse gas emissions were up 6.2% in 2021 over 2022,
most of the increase coming from gasoline-driven cars and trucks.
Copernicus notes that we are already seeing Frankenstein’s Weather as
a result of this massive concentration of heat trapping gases. There
were severe floods in Germany and elsewhere in Europe last summer,
wildfires in Greece and Turkey, and a heat wave in the southern
Mediterranean beyond anything in the historical record. It reached just
about 120 degrees F/ 48.8C in Sicily, the highest temperature ever
recorded in Europe.
In North America we saw global heating burn up whole towns in Canada
and create record temperatures in usually temperate Seattle and
Portland. The Dixie wildfire in California was the second worst on
record.
Climate change is not a matter of a dystopian future. We are living
it. Now. And it is an increasing challenge. It is a challenge we can
overcome, but the longer we burn fossil fuels the steeper the task will
be."
Although right now, the temperature is running 90 degrees with no shade, so I'm unsure how many folks would be off to camping on the beautiful Sea Of Cortez... but it didn't work out to good for these guys:
Destacados - Marco A. Flores- sábado, 14 agosto, 2021 10:22 AM
" ENSENADA.- Armed men stole approximately 2 million pesos from the Sonora Prime agricultural package in the town of Ojos Negros, Ensenada municipality; the money was from payroll to pay workers.
Authorities reported that the robbery occurred around 8:40 a.m. on Saturday, August 14, when two men arrived at the pumpkin packaging, threatened the employees and took the money.
The Municipal Public Security Directorate did not report detained persons.
THREE AMERICAN TRUCKS STOLE WITH VIOLENCE
Three American vehicles that were in Rancho Grande, San Luis Gonzaga , were violently stripped from their owners at gunpoint.
At approximately 5:00 p.m. it was reported that armed individuals threatened the foreigners and took away a 4Runner truck, a black Tacoma pickup and a black Tahoe pickup.
Unofficially, it is believed that the robbery occurred after the thieves placed a false checkpoint .
Another robbery with similar violence occurred in the early morning of this Saturday, August 14, around 2:00 a.m.
Six men with long weapons beat the driver of a 2020 GMC Sierra pickup, who was stripped of the unit.
Also this morning, at around 9:30 a.m., a gas station in the Aguajito neighborhood was violently robbed; an armed man stole 3,000 pesos."
~~~~~
So beware of false checkpoints I would say anywhere south of Puertecitos, right ? Or for that matter, false checkpoints anywhere.
Meanwhile, we are still trying to find out if our health insurance covers alternative cortisone injections, if not I'm stuck. Also I have to lower my A1c by half of a point before they can do the knee surgery. The refrigerator turned into a bit of a drama but after living out of coolers filled with ice for several days all is now well. Horrible humid hot yesterday, today it was still warm but we had a slight breeze.
I'll be back, but to hold you over here are the AP Mexico headlines - note that Biden is sending millions more doses of vaccine to Mexico which hasn't really been reported by the local press; Mex wanted 3.5 million doses and the US is sending them 8.5 million doses. And jeez how about that lunatic who killed his kids down here in Rosarito ? My question is....what about the wife? Was she going to be the next victim or was she part of it ?I don't think that Mexicans fully grasp the power, sway and dangers of the Q-Anon and other conspiracy elements in the USA, notably that includes the anti-vaxxers.
Update/edit: Well this is going to make you sick...this is the second day of the so-called "Baja Beach Fest" in Rosarito with thousands in attendance and no one is even wearing a mask. Forget about the highway robbers over yonder, this is even more deadly. Yet, the people were basically given the go ahead by the Mayor of Rosarito and we were told that officials would shut the thing down if protocols were not observed...but they did not shut it down. According to Zeta, the majority of people in attendance are gringos. Mama Mia, check out the pictures:
"Yesterday afternoon, authorities of the Playas de Rosarito city council declared to verify the areas where the sanitary protocols proposed by organizers and reviewed by the State Secretary of Health, were failing during the realization of the Latin music event Baja Beach Fest 2021 on the beaches of Rosarito, which, on its second day, again gathered a strong crowd, and thousands of attendees could be observed without complying with the order of the strict use of face masks.
Despite the epidemiological yellow traffic light and with the increase in cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant emerging throughout the country, they still have not withdrawn the endorsement for the cancellation of the urban sound event, which has brought together more than 19 thousand people in its second day under the presentation of the artists Anuel AA, Myke Towers, Mariah, Guaynaa, Lenny Tavarez, Farruko, and where it was verified through stories and images shared through social networks the null healthy distance and lack of use of face masks in the festival, specific points marked by the State Secretary of Health to carry out massive shows.
In turn, the Secretary of Health of Baja California, Alonso Pérez Rico, in a morning conference on Saturday, pointed out a meeting with the Baja Beach Fest organizers and authorities to make a “team back” about what happened last Friday in the first day of the event and with areas where protocols were failing, in turn he stressed that if they followed the breach of sanitary regulations, they would choose to cancel said event.
“In Baja California we are going to protect the health of our citizens. If the protocols are not being followed, these events cannot take place. We are on trial. It is that simple, if the protocols of the Secretary of Health are not respected, the events cannot be carried out because we have to give priority to health before anything else, ”said Pérez Rico.
For his part, Marco Aurelio Gámez Servín, Coepris State Commissioner highlighted that revisions of the protocols would be carried out on the second day of the massive show, underlining that “as verifiers and with the powers granted to them by the General Health Law of the State , they would see that the protocols that the organizers presented to them to carry out Baja Beach Fest are fulfilled "
Likewise, he pointed out that the call for attention to organizers would come if a large percentage of the attendees do not comply with the use of face masks, a situation that, from what is observed in different media and social networks, was not fulfilled. It is worth mentioning that Baja Beach Fest 2021 is an outdoor event with 90% of its attendees already vaccinated, however, the massive crowding without healthy distance and the lack of use of a mask by those present once the health filters and security have caused the urban spectacle to be strongly criticized and put before the national focus, despite re-incurring the practice of a “cultural issue”, as described by the mayor of Rosarito Aracely Brown, today the municipality is preparing for the third day with the arrival of the Colombian J. Balvin.
On the other hand, La Feria Rosarito 2021 was another event which once again failed to comply with the rules on sanitation and health protocols with thousands of people crowded under the stage where Enigma Norteño will be presented. Faced with his first offense last week, Pérez Rico announced to the organizers of the following events that they would have to resubmit their "no inconvenience" letter, however, yesterday these protocols were again incurred.
Internationally, another massive spectacle that is in the eye of the hurricane is the 2021 Lollapalooza Music Festival, in Chicago, which was attended by around 395 thousand people during the 4 days of the festival. After its completion, it was recently announced that 203 attendees confirmed to the authorities that they had tested positive for COVID-19. Given the fact and criticism of the show, health authorities mentioned that "There is no evidence that Lollapalooza was a" super contagious "event, said Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health.
For the moment, Baja Beach Fest 2021 continues with its activities this day while doubts remain whether or not it will take place in its second week, which is scheduled from August 20 to 22."
~~~~~
Well, we all know that the white eyes are simply not coming to Rosarito anymore, the goose who laid the golden egg are the Mexican-Americans, and even though they certainly don't tip as well, they are the last ones the authorities want to to insult. The show must go on !
Which brings us to this report, borrowed from Juan Cole:
"You’d think that the whole world could unite against a deadly virus. COVID-19 has already sickened over 200 million people around the world and killed over 4 million. It has now mutated into more contagious forms that threaten to plunge the globe into another spin cycle of lockdown.
Avoiding global catastrophe from the more infectious delta variant of COVID-19 doesn’t require a huge commitment from people and governments. Richer countries just have to ensure more widespread availability of vaccines. And individuals have to get vaccinated.
COVID-19 is not an asteroid on a collision course with the planet. It’s not an imminent nuclear war. It’s an invisible enemy that humanity has demonstrated it can beat. It just requires a bit of cooperation.
So, what’s the problem?
Actually, there are three problems. The first has to do with supply, since the richest nations have cornered the market on the vaccines and have been criminally slow to get them to poorer countries. On the entire continent of Africa, for instance, less than 2 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
The second problem, on the demand side, is the commonplace resistance to the newfangled, in this case a vaccine that was developed very quickly, hasn’t yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and has some side effects that are harmful for a very small number of people. Hesitation is understandable. But not when placed against the obvious lethality of COVID-19 and the clear benefits of herd immunity.
The third problem is political. The far right has jumped on the anti-vaccination bandwagon, seized control of the wheel, and is driving the vehicle, al-Qaeda-style, straight into oncoming traffic.
Both in the United States and globally, the far right has long been infected by various harmful delusions—the superiority of white people, the fiction of climate change, the evils of government. As the far right has spread, thanks to vectors like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orbán and Narendra Modi, those delusions have mutated.
Now, with its anti-vaccine opportunism, the far right is circulating a new delta variant of global stupidity: virally through social media, in a shower of spit and invective on the street, and through top-down lunacy from politicians and political parties. COVID-19 and all of its variants will eventually burn themselves out, though at who knows what cost. The latest versions of global stupidity promoted by the far right, however, are proving far more resistant to science, reason, and just plain common sense.
Hijacking the Anti-Vax Movement
The Brothers of Italy is a neo-fascist formation that is now polling the highest of any political party today in Italy. With 21 percent support, this pro-Mussolini throwback is just ahead of the far-right Lega party. Throw in Silvio Berlusconi’s Forward Italy party at 7 percent and the hard right looks as if it could form the next government in Italy whenever the next elections are held.
How did the Brothers of Italy grow in several months from a few percent to the leading party in the polls?
Led by Giorgia Meloni, a woman who predictably decries Islam and immigrants, the Brothers of Italy started out as a booster of vaccines, which seemed like a pretty safe position in a country that has suffered so much at the hands of COVID-19.
But Meloni abruptly shifted the party’s stance when the Italian government, currently led by technocrat Mario Draghi, introduced a “green pass” that allows the vaccinated to eat in restaurants, go to bars, and enter various public places like museums. Meloni called the pass “the final step on the road to the creation of an Orwellian society,” which “limits the freedom of citizens, further devastates the economy and de facto introduces a vaccine mandate.”
Limits the freedom of citizens? The freedom to infect other people with a deadly virus?
Effectively, Meloni wants to grant all citizens the same right that James Bond famously possessed: the license to kill.
Unfortunately, such nonsense has support outside Italy as well.
In France, the government of Emmanuel Macron has instituted a similar health pass as well as mandating that all medical professionals get vaccinated. The response has been ferocious, with several demonstrations of over 100,000 people mobilizing around the country.
It might seem at first glance that the French protestors are just ordinary folks who are sick and tired of government intrusions in their lives, similar to the Yellow Vest protestors from 2018. But the organizers of these anti-vax protests are the usual suspects from the far right like Florian Philippot, a former top aide of the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen. National Rally and the equally rabid Debout La France have come out against Macron’s policies. Unfortunately, some leading members of the left-wing France Unbowed party have also endorsed the rallies. As in the United States, French anti-vaxxers are resorting to anti-system conspiracy theories up to and including QAnon.
Despite the size of these rallies, whipped up by the far right, a majority of French support the health pass and nearly 70 percent of the population has gotten at least one shot (compared to only 58 percent in the United States). But the far right sees the anti-vaccine movement as an opportunity to worm its way into the mainstream in France and elsewhere, such as the Querdenken movement in Germany, the anti-Semitic far right in Poland, and evangelical Christian organizations in the Philippines.
Toward this end, the far right has eagerly employed the services of such “useful idiots” as Robert Kennedy, Jr., perhaps the most famous face of the anti-vaccine movement. The Polish far-right party Konfederacja invited Kennedy to speak on-line to a Polish parliamentary group on vaccines. Kennedy also put his social media power behind a global day against vaccines that took place last October in 15 countries from Europe to Latin America, which a number of far-right parties helped to organize.
Originally in the United States, vaccine skepticism circulated mainly on the left, where suspicions of chemicals and corporations created a resistance to having just any substance injected into one’s arm. But then along came Donald Trump, the dark conspiracy theories of the alt-right, and ultimately QAnon, which focused latent anti-government sentiments against the medical establishment and its COVID-19 vaccines. Suddenly, videos like Plandemic were zipping around cyberspace, and prominent anti-vaxxers like “healthy lifestyle advocate” Larry D. Cook fell under the sway of QAnon.
Today, in a tired repeat of 2020, U.S. anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are again protesting in front of governors’ mansions, bringing their message to Disneyland, and shutting down school board meetings. If COVID-19 were a wealthy corporation that underwrote such disruptions, these actions would make at least some economic sense. If COVID-19 were a wildly popular musical group or a subversively attractive religious cult that governments were trying to suppress, the frenzy of crowds would be somewhat understandable.
But COVID-19 is a deadly virus. Why on earth would anyone go to bat for a pathogen?
The Far Right Has Its Reasons
Conservatives have traditionally supported the powerful pillars of society: the police, the army, the state. Today’s far right is not conservative. It detests the state. It prefers vigilante justice—everyone standing their ground with gun in hand—to the police and the army, since these latter are representatives of the state.
Effectively, the far right embraces the old Hobbesian concept of a “war of all against all,” which was the status quo before the emergence of the state. To achieve this “golden age” of general mayhem, the far right pursues any means necessary. It supports home schooling to destroy public education, privatization of state assets to weaken the government, and deregulation to tilt the playing field in favor of corporations.
And now, in the age of COVID-19, the far right is even willing to support germ warfare. For that’s what the anti-mask and anti-vaccine ideology amounts to: siding with the novel coronavirus against the sensible policies of the state.
One wonders: if the state issued a mandate that required people not to jump off cliffs, would the far right suddenly launch a Lemming Crusade simply to spite the state?
I can well imagine the segment on Newsmax.
Reporter: I’m here with patriot James Q. Public. He and his family are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Tell me, James, why are you about to take a big step into the unknown?
James Q. Public: The government can’t tell me what to do. I believe in choice. And this is my choice.
Reporter: Do you think of yourself as a pioneer?
James Q. Public: Absolutely. This socialist government with its Five Year Plans sickens me. I take it one day at a time. One minute at a time.
Reporter: Your youngest child doesn’t look happy about your choice.
James Q. Public: Oh, he’s just a crybaby. He’ll get used to it.
Reporter: Get used to falling off a cliff?
James Q. Public: What makes you think we’ll fall?
Reporter: Well, uh, gravity –
James Q. Public: Come on, man, you believe in all that nonsense those scientists are trying to force down our throats? Vaccines? Climate change? Gravity? Okay, everyone, let’s go. One small step for the Public family, one large step for arrgghhh….!
It would all be grimly amusing, like some pandemic version of the Darwin Awards, if the far right’s Lemming Crusade wasn’t threatening to drag the rest of us off the cliff with it."
~~~~~
Executions are zooming along, I'll be back with those stats. Okay so the question is, would we go to the Baja Beach Fest if Carlos Santana were playing? Hell no, and I adore him. Truth is, Carlos Santana would never be stupid enough to appear at the Baja Beach Fest, he has too much character and sense, particularly during this horrible pandemic.
Although right now, the temperature is running 90 degrees with no shade, so I'm unsure how many folks would be off to camping on the beautiful Sea Of Cortez... but it didn't work out to good for these guys:
Destacados - Marco A. Flores- sábado, 14 agosto, 2021 10:22 AM
" ENSENADA.-
Armed men stole approximately 2 million pesos from the Sonora Prime
agricultural package in the town of Ojos Negros, Ensenada municipality; the money was from payroll to pay workers.
Authorities
reported that the robbery occurred around 8:40 a.m. on Saturday, August
14, when two men arrived at the pumpkin packaging, threatened the
employees and took the money.
The Municipal Public Security Directorate did not report detained persons.
THREE AMERICAN TRUCKS STOLE WITH VIOLENCE
Three American vehicles that were in Rancho Grande, San Luis Gonzaga , were violently stripped from their owners at gunpoint.
At
approximately 5:00 p.m. it was reported that armed individuals
threatened the foreigners and took away a 4Runner truck, a black Tacoma
pickup and a black Tahoe pickup.
Unofficially, it is believed that the robbery occurred after the thieves placed a false checkpoint .
Another robbery with similar violence occurred in the early morning of this Saturday, August 14, around 2:00 a.m.
Six men with long weapons beat the driver of a 2020 GMC Sierra pickup, who was stripped of the unit.
Also this morning, at around 9:30 a.m., a gas station in the Aguajito neighborhood was violently robbed; an armed man stole 3,000 pesos."
~~~~~
So beware of false checkpoints I would say anywhere south of Puertecitos, right ? Or for that matter, false checkpoints anywhere.
Meanwhile, we are still trying to find out if our health insurance covers alternative cortisone injections, if not I'm stuck. Also I have to lower my A1c by half of a point before they can do the knee surgery. The refrigerator turned into a bit of a drama but after living out of coolers filled with ice for several days all is now well. Horrible humid hot yesterday, today it was still warm but we had a slight breeze.
I'll be back, but to hold you over here are the AP Mexico headlines - note that Biden is sending millions more doses of vaccine to Mexico which hasn't really been reported by the local press; Mex wanted 3.5 million doses and the US is sending them 8.5 million doses. And jeez how about that lunatic who killed his kids down here in Rosarito ? My question is....what about the wife? Was she going to be the next victim or was she part of it ?I don't think that Mexicans fully grasp the power, sway and dangers of the Q-Anon and other conspiracy elements in the USA, notably that includes the anti-vaxxers.
Update/edit: Well this is going to make you sick...this is the second day of the so-called "Baja Beach Fest" in Rosarito with thousands in attendance and no one is even wearing a mask. Forget about the highway robbers over yonder, this is even more deadly. Yet, the people were basically given the go ahead by the Mayor of Rosarito and we were told that officials would shut the thing down if protocols were not observed...but they did not shut it down. According to Zeta, the majority of people in attendance are gringos. Mama Mia, check out the pictures:
"Yesterday
afternoon, authorities of the Playas de Rosarito city council declared
to verify the areas where the sanitary protocols proposed by organizers
and reviewed by the State Secretary of Health, were failing during the
realization of the Latin music event Baja Beach Fest 2021 on the beaches
of Rosarito, which, on its second day, again gathered a strong crowd,
and thousands of attendees could be observed without complying with the
order of the strict use of face masks.
Despite
the epidemiological yellow traffic light and with the increase in cases
of the COVID-19 Delta variant emerging throughout the country, they
still have not withdrawn the endorsement for the cancellation of the
urban sound event, which has brought together more than 19 thousand
people in its second day under the presentation of the artists Anuel AA,
Myke Towers, Mariah, Guaynaa, Lenny Tavarez, Farruko, and where it was
verified through stories and images shared through social networks the
null healthy distance and lack of use of face masks in the festival,
specific points marked by the State Secretary of Health to carry out
massive shows.
In
turn, the Secretary of Health of Baja California, Alonso Pérez Rico, in
a morning conference on Saturday, pointed out a meeting with the Baja
Beach Fest organizers and authorities to make a “team back” about what
happened last Friday in the first day of the event and with areas where
protocols were failing, in turn he stressed that if they followed the
breach of sanitary regulations, they would choose to cancel said event.
“In Baja California we are going to protect the health of our citizens. If the protocols are not being followed, these events cannot take place. We are on trial. It
is that simple, if the protocols of the Secretary of Health are not
respected, the events cannot be carried out because we have to give
priority to health before anything else, ”said Pérez Rico.
For
his part, Marco Aurelio Gámez Servín, Coepris State Commissioner
highlighted that revisions of the protocols would be carried out on the
second day of the massive show, underlining that “as verifiers and with
the powers granted to them by the General Health Law of the State , they
would see that the protocols that the organizers presented to them to
carry out Baja Beach Fest are fulfilled "
Likewise,
he pointed out that the call for attention to organizers would come if a
large percentage of the attendees do not comply with the use of face
masks, a situation that, from what is observed in different media and
social networks, was not fulfilled. It is worth mentioning that Baja
Beach Fest 2021 is an outdoor event with 90% of its attendees already
vaccinated, however, the massive crowding without healthy distance and
the lack of use of a mask by those present once the health filters and
security have caused the urban spectacle to be strongly criticized and
put before the national focus, despite re-incurring the practice of a
“cultural issue”, as described by the mayor of Rosarito Aracely Brown,
today the municipality is preparing for the third day with the arrival
of the Colombian J. Balvin.
On
the other hand, La Feria Rosarito 2021 was another event which once
again failed to comply with the rules on sanitation and health protocols
with thousands of people crowded under the stage where Enigma Norteño
will be presented. Faced with his first offense last week, Pérez Rico
announced to the organizers of the following events that they would have
to resubmit their "no inconvenience" letter, however, yesterday these
protocols were again incurred.
Internationally,
another massive spectacle that is in the eye of the hurricane is the
2021 Lollapalooza Music Festival, in Chicago, which was attended by
around 395 thousand people during the 4 days of the festival. After
its completion, it was recently announced that 203 attendees confirmed
to the authorities that they had tested positive for COVID-19. Given
the fact and criticism of the show, health authorities mentioned that
"There is no evidence that Lollapalooza was a" super contagious "event,
said Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public
Health.
For
the moment, Baja Beach Fest 2021 continues with its activities this day
while doubts remain whether or not it will take place in its second
week, which is scheduled from August 20 to 22."
~~~~~
Well, we all know that the white eyes are simply not coming to Rosarito anymore, the goose who laid the golden egg are the Mexican-Americans, and even though they certainly don't tip as well, they are the last ones the authorities want to to insult. The show must go on !
Which brings us to this report, borrowed from Juan Cole:
"You’d think that the whole world could unite against a deadly virus.
COVID-19 has already sickened over 200 million people around the world
and killed over 4 million. It has now mutated into more contagious forms
that threaten to plunge the globe into another spin cycle of lockdown.
Avoiding global catastrophe from the more infectious delta variant of
COVID-19 doesn’t require a huge commitment from people and governments.
Richer countries just have to ensure more widespread availability of
vaccines. And individuals have to get vaccinated.
COVID-19 is not an asteroid on a collision course with the planet.
It’s not an imminent nuclear war. It’s an invisible enemy that humanity
has demonstrated it can beat. It just requires a bit of cooperation.
So, what’s the problem?
Actually, there are three problems. The first has to do with supply,
since the richest nations have cornered the market on the vaccines and
have been criminally slow to get them to poorer countries. On the entire
continent of Africa, for instance, less than 2 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
The second problem, on the demand side, is the commonplace resistance
to the newfangled, in this case a vaccine that was developed very
quickly, hasn’t yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration,
and has some side effects that are harmful for a very small number of
people. Hesitation is understandable. But not when placed against the
obvious lethality of COVID-19 and the clear benefits of herd immunity.
The third problem is political. The far right has jumped on the
anti-vaccination bandwagon, seized control of the wheel, and is driving
the vehicle, al-Qaeda-style, straight into oncoming traffic.
Both in the United States and globally, the far right has long been
infected by various harmful delusions—the superiority of white people,
the fiction of climate change, the evils of government. As the far right
has spread, thanks to vectors like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and
Viktor Orbán and Narendra Modi, those delusions have mutated.
Now, with its anti-vaccine opportunism, the far right is circulating a
new delta variant of global stupidity: virally through social media, in
a shower of spit and invective on the street, and through top-down
lunacy from politicians and political parties. COVID-19 and all of its
variants will eventually burn themselves out, though at who knows what
cost. The latest versions of global stupidity promoted by the far right,
however, are proving far more resistant to science, reason, and just
plain common sense.
Hijacking the Anti-Vax Movement
The Brothers of Italy is a neo-fascist formation that is now polling the highest
of any political party today in Italy. With 21 percent support, this
pro-Mussolini throwback is just ahead of the far-right Lega party. Throw
in Silvio Berlusconi’s Forward Italy party at 7 percent and the hard
right looks as if it could form the next government in Italy whenever
the next elections are held.
How did the Brothers of Italy grow in several months from a few percent to the leading party in the polls?
Led by Giorgia Meloni, a woman who predictably decries Islam and
immigrants, the Brothers of Italy started out as a booster of vaccines,
which seemed like a pretty safe position in a country that has suffered
so much at the hands of COVID-19.
But Meloni abruptly shifted the party’s stance when the Italian
government, currently led by technocrat Mario Draghi, introduced a
“green pass” that allows the vaccinated to eat in restaurants, go to
bars, and enter various public places like museums. Meloni called
the pass “the final step on the road to the creation of an Orwellian
society,” which “limits the freedom of citizens, further devastates the
economy and de facto introduces a vaccine mandate.”
Limits the freedom of citizens? The freedom to infect other people with a deadly virus?
Effectively, Meloni wants to grant all citizens the same right that James Bond famously possessed: the license to kill.
Unfortunately, such nonsense has support outside Italy as well.
In France, the government of Emmanuel Macron has instituted a similar
health pass as well as mandating that all medical professionals get
vaccinated. The response has been ferocious, with several demonstrations
of over 100,000 people mobilizing around the country.
It might seem at first glance that the French protestors are just
ordinary folks who are sick and tired of government intrusions in their
lives, similar to the Yellow Vest protestors from 2018. But the
organizers of these anti-vax protests are the usual suspects from the
far right like Florian Philippot, a former top aide of the National
Rally’s Marine Le Pen. National Rally and the equally rabid Debout La
France have come out against Macron’s policies. Unfortunately, some
leading members of the left-wing France Unbowed party have also endorsed
the rallies. As in the United States, French anti-vaxxers are resorting
to anti-system conspiracy theories up to and including QAnon.
Despite the size of these rallies, whipped up by the far right, a majority of French support the health pass and nearly 70 percent of the population
has gotten at least one shot (compared to only 58 percent in the United
States). But the far right sees the anti-vaccine movement as an
opportunity to worm its way into the mainstream in France and elsewhere,
such as the Querdenken movement in Germany, the anti-Semitic far right in Poland, and evangelical Christian organizations in the Philippines.
Toward this end, the far right has eagerly employed the services of
such “useful idiots” as Robert Kennedy, Jr., perhaps the most famous
face of the anti-vaccine movement. The Polish far-right party
Konfederacja invited Kennedy to speak on-line to a Polish parliamentary
group on vaccines. Kennedy also put his social media power
behind a global day against vaccines that took place last October in 15
countries from Europe to Latin America, which a number of far-right
parties helped to organize.
Originally in the United States, vaccine skepticism circulated mainly
on the left, where suspicions of chemicals and corporations created a
resistance to having just any substance injected into one’s arm. But
then along came Donald Trump, the dark conspiracy theories of the
alt-right, and ultimately QAnon, which focused latent anti-government
sentiments against the medical establishment and its COVID-19 vaccines.
Suddenly, videos like Plandemic were zipping around cyberspace, and prominent anti-vaxxers like “healthy lifestyle advocate” Larry D. Cook fell under the sway of QAnon.
Today, in a tired repeat of 2020, U.S. anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are again protesting in front of governors’ mansions, bringing their message to Disneyland, and shutting down school board meetings.
If COVID-19 were a wealthy corporation that underwrote such
disruptions, these actions would make at least some economic sense. If
COVID-19 were a wildly popular musical group or a subversively
attractive religious cult that governments were trying to suppress, the
frenzy of crowds would be somewhat understandable.
But COVID-19 is a deadly virus. Why on earth would anyone go to bat for a pathogen?
The Far Right Has Its Reasons
Conservatives have traditionally supported the powerful pillars of
society: the police, the army, the state. Today’s far right is not
conservative. It detests the state. It prefers vigilante
justice—everyone standing their ground with gun in hand—to the police
and the army, since these latter are representatives of the state.
Effectively, the far right embraces the old Hobbesian concept of a
“war of all against all,” which was the status quo before the emergence
of the state. To achieve this “golden age” of general mayhem, the far
right pursues any means necessary. It supports home schooling to destroy
public education, privatization of state assets to weaken the
government, and deregulation to tilt the playing field in favor of
corporations.
And now, in the age of COVID-19, the far right is even willing to
support germ warfare. For that’s what the anti-mask and anti-vaccine
ideology amounts to: siding with the novel coronavirus against the
sensible policies of the state.
One wonders: if the state issued a mandate that required people not
to jump off cliffs, would the far right suddenly launch a Lemming
Crusade simply to spite the state?
I can well imagine the segment on Newsmax.
Reporter: I’m here with patriot James Q. Public. He and
his family are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Tell me, James,
why are you about to take a big step into the unknown?
James Q. Public: The government can’t tell me what to do. I believe in choice. And this is my choice.
Reporter: Do you think of yourself as a pioneer?
James Q. Public: Absolutely. This socialist government with its Five
Year Plans sickens me. I take it one day at a time. One minute at a
time.
Reporter: Your youngest child doesn’t look happy about your choice.
James Q. Public: Oh, he’s just a crybaby. He’ll get used to it.
Reporter: Get used to falling off a cliff?
James Q. Public: What makes you think we’ll fall?
Reporter: Well, uh, gravity –
James Q. Public: Come on, man, you believe in all that nonsense those
scientists are trying to force down our throats? Vaccines? Climate
change? Gravity? Okay, everyone, let’s go. One small step for the Public family, one large step for arrgghhh….!
It would all be grimly amusing, like some pandemic version of the
Darwin Awards, if the far right’s Lemming Crusade wasn’t threatening to
drag the rest of us off the cliff with it."
~~~~~
Executions are zooming along, I'll be back with those stats. Okay so the question is, would we go to the Baja Beach Fest if Carlos Santana were playing? Hell no, and I adore him. Truth is, Carlos Santana would never be stupid enough to appear at the Baja Beach Fest, he has too much character and sense, particularly during this horrible pandemic.
Of course we all know Trump will deny everything and claim it was Anti-Fa & BLM who created hell in the Capitol, not him and his innocent White Supremacists. Doesn't matter, history has marked and noted - Trump's name is mud.
I know, what many of us wanted was the invocation of Article 25 and it didn't happen, but here is the latest:
~ From The New York Times:
And, let's hope and pray that "...two thirds or more members present (in the Senate) vote to convict. Trump is guilty. Separate votes would be needed to prohibit Trump from receiving benefits given to ex-presidents and to bar him from future political office."
Have to run, another litter of kittens showed up yesterday, what a disaster and need to make dinner - Callendars' Chicken which is yummy on these cold nights although a bit fattening. However, I have some excellent reports coming up on the ratboy McConnell & our amigo from Truthout. Until then....
Stay Safe Y'all.
~~~~~
Update/edit: About Ratboy McConnell that guy...I know what he said but he is so slick that with him, you never know what to believe :
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Chapter 7 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the enormously wealthy Jay Gatsby becomes concerned about word getting out that he is having an affair with Daisy, who is married to Tom, and abruptly stops having the big parties he had been throwing, to which assorted society flotsam and jetsam had come, people he had barely known. Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle. Then Gatsby lets Daisy drive his car and she accidentally runs over and kills Myrtle, her husband’s mistress. By chapter 9 Tom, wrongly convinced that Gatsby had struck and killed with his car Tom’s own mistress, murdered the millionaire in his pool. Virtually no one comes to his funeral.
Gatsby was always fated to be a parable for the Trump presidency. I think we’re now at that point in the story where nobody is coming to his parties any more and his paramour (the militias) has run over her rival (Congress).
Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos at the NYT got the scoop that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is done with Donald Trump, furious at him, and pleased that the Democrats are impeaching him. He is clearly releasing Republicans in Congress to vote to impeach, as well, if that is what they want.
The immediate trigger for this epochal blow-up between the two GOP leaders is Trump’s having sicced the white supremacists and Nazis on McConnell and other congressional representatives and senators on 1/6 (the date of the Capitol Insurrection), endangering their lives.
Trump has been siccing supremacists and Nazis on people for four years, however, and McConnell never batted an eyelash.
When ICE agents were tearing babies out of their mothers’ arms, Mitch wasn’t breaking with Trump over that.
In fact, for all of the last four years McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao has been Trump’s secretary of transportation. She initially did not divest from her investments in road building materials, and she is alleged to have pursued policies at Transportation that would benefit her family’s Chinese shipping business.
She came home from the office stinking of Trump after having been at cabinet meetings with him where he went on white supremacist rants (which must have offended her). But the McConnell-Chao gravy train did not stop running for an instant.
McConnell was never a Trumpist, but he was perfectly willing to use Trump to get what he wanted. McConnell is a servant of the billionaire class and the big corporations. He does not actually represent Kentucky so much as he represents Charles Koch and others in the Fortune 500. His job was to bend the Senate and thus the country to the will of the plutocrats, and say what you like about him, he was very good at his job.
He wanted to install a steady stream of deeply conservative and youngish federal judges, some of them obviously unqualified, so as to ensure the GOP control of the Federal judiciary for decades. McConnell had shot down Obama’s nominees for Federal circuit judges and refused to allow vacancies to be filled. He then filled all the vacancies. McConnell’s 200 judicial appointments were 85 percent white and 75 percent male. This wasn’t a judicial approval process, it was a fourth “Back to the Future Movie” where he transported us all to 1955. A third of all federal circuit court judges were appointed by Trump, and not one is Black, even though their decisions will dictate the parameters of the lives of the some 43 million African-Americans. That’s like conspiring to ensure that Spain (pop. 46.9 mn.) had no Spanish judges.
McConnell wanted a Republican-controlled Supreme Court that would help corporations further de-unionize American workers and would strike down government regulation, including environmental regulation, as well as supporting the GOP campaign of voter suppression waged against minorities and the less well-off. Again, mission accomplished.
But Trump went to Georgia and told his initiates that the election was rigged and they could not expect justice, which likely depressed the vote as his base did not come out in the numbers the GOP needed. Why should they bother to vote in a corrupt election where, he told them, Dominion voting machines would just erase their vote (they wouldn’t).
By his crazy conspiracy theories and insistence that he won a second term (he didn’t), Trump handed the senate to the Democrats for at least two years (and very possibly for many more) and demoted Mitch from Master of the Universe to bored little boy whose teacher is making him sit in the corner and not breathe a word.
Then on top of that Trump sent Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and that guy with the horns and face paint to kidnap or kill McConnell and his colleagues.
McConnell’s goal (and that of Charles Koch and his other billionaire donors) is to take back the House and the Senate in 2022 and emasculate Biden the way he stopped Obama from accomplishing almost anything. Then he wants back the White House in 2024.
Trump had taken over the Republican Party and clearly intended to run in 2024, though. Since Trump is so popular among the Republican base, with a majority supporting the Capitol Insurrection, there will be no peace in the party for the next few years if Trump remains viable. He can prevent Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and other would-be presidential contenders from plausibly getting in the ring and from attracting the big campaign money from donors. Why bet against Trump when he has a lock?
But Trump has already demonstrated that he is too dysfunctional to win a second term, whether in 2020 or 2024, which may mean the Republicans are facing long years in the wilderness. Trump could even make them so unpopular with his Mussolini schitck that the suburbs are spooked again in 2022 and the GOP can’t get back the House.
The Democrats in the meantime can undo the 2017 tax cut, can start filling the federal judgeships of retiring GOP appointees, replacing them with Democrats, and can perhaps convince Breyer to retire so as to avoid losing another SCOTUS seat. They can also back wind and solar and electric vehicles, effectively destroying the oil empire of Charles Koch and other big donors to the GOP over the next decade.
Trump was extremely useful to McConnell for four years, and McConnell swallowed the extreme right white supremacy promotion for all that time, because thereby he could serve the billionaire class.
Now, Trump is extremely inconvenient. It isn’t just about 1/6, though that is part of it. McConnell and his backers are far, far better off with Trump politically destroyed, now that he has outlived his usefulness.
Of course we all know Trump will deny everything and claim it was Anti-Fa & BLM who created hell in the Capitol, not him and his innocent White Supremacists. Doesn't matter, history has marked and noted - Trump's name is mud.
I know, what many of us wanted was the invocation of Article 25 and it didn't happen, but here is the latest:
~ From The New York Times:
And, let's hope and pray that "...two thirds or more members present (in the Senate) vote to convict. Trump is guilty. Separate votes would be needed to prohibit Trump from receiving benefits given to ex-presidents and to bar him from future political office."
Have to run, another litter of kittens showed up yesterday, what a disaster and need to make dinner - Callendars' Chicken which is yummy on these cold nights although a bit fattening. However, I have some excellent reports coming up on the ratboy McConnell & our amigo from Truthout. Until then....
Stay Safe Y'all.
~~~~~
Update/edit: About Ratboy McConnell that guy...I know what he said but he is so slick that with him, you never know what to believe :
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Chapter 7 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,
the enormously wealthy Jay Gatsby becomes concerned about word getting
out that he is having an affair with Daisy, who is married to Tom, and
abruptly stops having the big parties he had been throwing, to which
assorted society flotsam and jetsam had come, people he had barely
known. Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle. Then Gatsby lets Daisy drive his
car and she accidentally runs over and kills Myrtle, her husband’s
mistress. By chapter 9 Tom, wrongly convinced that Gatsby had struck
and killed with his car Tom’s own mistress, murdered the millionaire in
his pool. Virtually no one comes to his funeral.
Gatsby was always fated to be a parable for the Trump presidency. I
think we’re now at that point in the story where nobody is coming to his
parties any more and his paramour (the militias) has run over her rival
(Congress).
Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos at the NYT
got the scoop that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is done with
Donald Trump, furious at him, and pleased that the Democrats are
impeaching him. He is clearly releasing Republicans in Congress to vote
to impeach, as well, if that is what they want.
The immediate trigger for this epochal blow-up between the two GOP
leaders is Trump’s having sicced the white supremacists and Nazis on
McConnell and other congressional representatives and senators on 1/6
(the date of the Capitol Insurrection), endangering their lives.
Trump has been siccing supremacists and Nazis on people for four years, however, and McConnell never batted an eyelash.
When ICE agents were tearing babies out of their mothers’ arms, Mitch wasn’t breaking with Trump over that.
In fact, for all of the last four years McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao has been Trump’s secretary of transportation. She initially did not divest from her investments in road building materials, and she is alleged to have pursued policies at Transportation that would benefit her family’s Chinese shipping business.
She came home from the office stinking of Trump after having been at
cabinet meetings with him where he went on white supremacist rants
(which must have offended her). But the McConnell-Chao gravy train did
not stop running for an instant.
McConnell was never a Trumpist, but he was perfectly willing to use
Trump to get what he wanted. McConnell is a servant of the billionaire
class and the big corporations. He does not actually represent Kentucky
so much as he represents Charles Koch and others in the Fortune 500.
His job was to bend the Senate and thus the country to the will of the
plutocrats, and say what you like about him, he was very good at his
job.
He wanted to install a steady stream of deeply conservative and
youngish federal judges, some of them obviously unqualified, so as to
ensure the GOP control of the Federal judiciary for decades. McConnell
had shot down Obama’s nominees for Federal circuit judges and refused to
allow vacancies to be filled. He then filled all the vacancies.
McConnell’s 200 judicial appointments were 85 percent white and 75
percent male. This wasn’t a judicial approval process, it was a fourth
“Back to the Future Movie” where he transported us all to 1955. A third
of all federal circuit court judges were appointed by Trump, and not
one is Black, even though their decisions will dictate the parameters of
the lives of the some 43 million African-Americans. That’s like
conspiring to ensure that Spain (pop. 46.9 mn.) had no Spanish judges.
McConnell wanted a Republican-controlled Supreme Court that would
help corporations further de-unionize American workers and would strike
down government regulation, including environmental regulation, as well
as supporting the GOP campaign of voter suppression waged against
minorities and the less well-off. Again, mission accomplished.
But Trump went to Georgia and told his initiates that the election
was rigged and they could not expect justice, which likely depressed the
vote as his base did not come out in the numbers the GOP needed. Why
should they bother to vote in a corrupt election where, he told them,
Dominion voting machines would just erase their vote (they wouldn’t).
By his crazy conspiracy theories and insistence that he won a second
term (he didn’t), Trump handed the senate to the Democrats for at least
two years (and very possibly for many more)
and demoted Mitch from Master of the Universe to bored little boy whose
teacher is making him sit in the corner and not breathe a word.
Then on top of that Trump sent Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and that guy
with the horns and face paint to kidnap or kill McConnell and his
colleagues.
McConnell’s goal (and that of Charles Koch and his other billionaire
donors) is to take back the House and the Senate in 2022 and emasculate
Biden the way he stopped Obama from accomplishing almost anything. Then
he wants back the White House in 2024.
Trump had taken over the Republican Party and clearly intended to run
in 2024, though. Since Trump is so popular among the Republican base,
with a majority supporting the Capitol Insurrection, there will be no
peace in the party for the next few years if Trump remains viable. He
can prevent Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and other would-be presidential
contenders from plausibly getting in the ring and from attracting the
big campaign money from donors. Why bet against Trump when he has a
lock?
But Trump has already demonstrated that he is too dysfunctional to
win a second term, whether in 2020 or 2024, which may mean the
Republicans are facing long years in the wilderness. Trump could even
make them so unpopular with his Mussolini schitck that the suburbs are
spooked again in 2022 and the GOP can’t get back the House.
The Democrats in the meantime can undo the 2017 tax cut, can start
filling the federal judgeships of retiring GOP appointees, replacing
them with Democrats, and can perhaps convince Breyer to retire so as to
avoid losing another SCOTUS seat. They can also back wind and solar and
electric vehicles, effectively destroying the oil empire of Charles
Koch and other big donors to the GOP over the next decade.
Trump was extremely useful to McConnell for four years, and McConnell
swallowed the extreme right white supremacy promotion for all that
time, because thereby he could serve the billionaire class.
Now, Trump is extremely inconvenient. It isn’t just about 1/6,
though that is part of it. McConnell and his backers are far, far
better off with Trump politically destroyed, now that he has outlived
his usefulness.
