alanjjohnstone
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Is the DSA Leninist? Or is it really an aspiring labor party clone?
The SA is certainly trotskyist adhering to the Leninist democratic centralism principle but should we ascribe to the DSA the same?
As an afterthought, I see that the apparent centre of this movement to become a more formal political party is Seattle.
Is it a coincidence that the city is where the Trots of Socialist Alternative and city councillor Kshama Sawant is based?
Perhaps someone closer acquainted could say whether DSA and SA over-lap in Seattle.
I found this
What’s the Difference Between Socialist Alternative and DSA?
But being my cynical self, I suspect there are going-ons behind the scenes and under-the-table deals being made.
“The only saving grace of this is that in bringing the word into prominence it gives us a foot in the door to say what socialism really means.”
A convenient cue to remind us of these websites we can link to.
http://www.whatissocialism.net/
Even during a pandemic the threat of war rarely disappears with Trump telling his navy to blow Iranians out of the water.
https://news.sky.com/story/trump-us-will-shoot-iranian-gunboats-out-of-the-water-11977339
And in the South China Sea oil fields
As been said by others here we simply don’t have the whole picture as yet.
More than 232,000 people may have been infected in the first wave of Covid-19 in mainland China, four times the official figures, according to a study by Hong Kong researchers…
China’s national health commission issued seven versions of a case definition for Covid-19 between 15 January and 3 March, and the study found these changes had a “substantial effect” on how many infections which were detected as cases. It estimated that each of the first four changes increased the proportion of cases detected and counted, by between 2.8 and 7.1 times.
“If the fifth version of the case definition had been applied throughout the outbreak with sufficient testing capacity, we estimated that by 20 February 2020, there would have been 232,000 … confirmed cases in China as opposed to the 55,508 confirmed cases reported,” the study said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52303739
New York City’s death count has spiked to more than 10,000 after it reported 3,778 people who likely had Covid-19, but died without being tested. The new figures, from the city’s Health Department, mark a 60% rise in deaths. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had changed guidelines for how coronavirus deaths were to be recorded. He added that people who passed away outside of a hospital or nursing home may have been missed in previous counts.
Mark Levine, chair of the city’s Heath Council that even these adjusted numbers were likely an undercount.
A Democratic Socialist Party.
After Bernie: It’s Time to Start Talking About a Democratic Socialist Party
The effective tax rate for the wealthiest 10% of the population – once income and wealth were combined – was 18%, less than half the 42% effective tax rate for the bottom 10%.
The government has the potential to raise up to £174bn a year to help cope with the Covid-19 crisis if it taxed wealth at the same rate as income, a UK tax expert has said.
Richard Murphy, a professor in political economy at City University in London, said income was being taxed at almost 10 times the rate of wealth – and that the disparity should be central to any debate about who should pay for the pandemic.
In an analysis of the period from 2011 to 2018, Murphy said income had been taxed on average at 29.4% while wealth – generated mostly from rising house prices and the increased value of personal pensions – had been taxed at 3.4%.
Britain’s overall tax system highly regressive because the gains from rising wealth tended to be concentrated among the better off while council tax, VAT, the BBC licence fee and duties on alcohol and tobacco took up a bigger slice of the incomes of the poorest households.
Greta Thunberg has urged people around the world to take a new path after the coronavirus pandemic, which she said proved “our society is not sustainable”.
She said the strong global response to Covid-19 demonstrated how quickly change could happen when humanity came together and acted on the advice of scientists. She said the same principles should be applied to the climate crisis.
“Whether we like it or not, the world has changed. It looks completely different now from how it did a few months ago. It may never look the same again. We have to choose a new way forward. If the coronavirus crisis has shown us one thing, it is that our society is not sustainable. If one single virus can destroy economies in a couple of weeks, it shows we are not thinking long-term and taking risks into account.”
“During a crisis like this there is a big risk that people try to use this emergency to push their own agenda or their own interests. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said. “I cannot stress enough how important it is that we are active democratic citizens so a crisis like this doesn’t slide in the wrong direction.”
“We have to adapt. That is what you have to do in a crisis,” she said. “People are thinking we will get out of this and then we will push even harder.”
An interesting article on Greece’s response and the success of lockdown
I’m curious to know why this debate is taking place on whether lockdowns or not are effective counter-meaures to COVID-19.
So far, DaveB has not suggested any ulterior motive for them such as to increase the authoritarian police state which I believe the other lockdown sceptic Ozy has done (correct me if I am wrong, Dave and Ozy)
So Dave can you offer an explanation to why compulsory lockdowns and not voluntary self-isolation has been overwhelmingly adopted by governments and their advisors.
Is it really down to a scientific dispute between statisticians and epidemiologists and conflicting models?
If so then what actual importance is it to ourselves as socialists other than of academic interest? What is the political relevance?
My position is an easy one to understand.
I’ll go along with those who are better qualified and know more than myself. As with climate change, i accept the scientific consensus of the 97% and not the dissenting 3% scientists. (And as a “critical worker” it took me longer than others to accept the arguments.)
However, if lockdowns are doing more harm than good to fellow-workers that they are desperate enough to feel the need to rebel against confinement, then my sympathies are towards them – the poor, the job-less, the slum-dwellers, the migrants, who can’t work online from home if they even actually have one and don’t have the luxury of Netflix or a well-stocked freezer.
(But of course this could all be settled according to LBird by a simple thing as a democratic vote and the victor is the one who holds the scientific truth.)
It seems as if Sweden is the main focus of differing approaches.
“…we’re already seeing the effect of herd immunity and in a few weeks’ time we’ll see even more of the effects of that. And in the rest of the country, the situation is stable,” Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, told CNBC. Tegnell said sampling and modeling data indicated that 20% of Stockholm’s population is already immune to the virus, and that “in a few weeks’ time we might reach herd immunity and we believe that is why we’re seeing a slow decline in cases, in spite of sampling (testing for the coronavirus) more and more.”
Why the high number of deaths?
“Unfortunately the mortality rate is high due to the introduction (of the virus) in elderly care homes ”
Sweden has recorded 1,765 deaths, however, and that number is far higher than its neighbors that imposed far stricter lockdowns. The number of cases in Sweden is almost double that seen in neighboring Denmark (it has 8,108 cases and has reported 370 deaths) and Finland (with just over 4,000 cases and 141 deaths) that imposed strict lockdown measures.
https://www.ft.com/content/79eaad5d-73d0-4b1f-b02c-adf1fd8e8868
Only about 6 per cent of the French population will have been infected with coronavirus when the country’s lockdown is relaxed next month, a scientific report has concluded…the report by Institut Pasteur, France’s leading biomedical research body, Public Health France and the country’s national scientific research centre concluded that the predicted infection rate was “very much below the level needed to avoid a second wave if all control measures were to be lifted”…. the French report continued: “The collective immunity level required is currently estimated to be 70 per cent. Therefore, major efforts will need to be maintained beyond May 11 to avoid a resurgence of the epidemic.”
Estimates from other hard-hit countries are of the same order as those in France. Researchers at Imperial College London estimated this month that 1.2 per cent to 5.4 per cent of the UK population may have been infected by March 28. In Los Angeles, 2.8 per cent to 5.6 per cent of adults were estimated to have coronavirus antibodies, according to preliminary results from the University of Southern California and the LA County Department of Public Health.
In contrast
The statistical model used by Sweden’s public health agency suggested that as many as a third of people in Stockholm will have been infected with the virus by May 1. Swedish health officials said the same model estimated that for every one confirmed case, there were 99 unconfirmed ones. In total, about 600,000 people in Stockholm would have had the virus by next week, according to the model which was based on infections up to April 10.
Anders Wallensten, Sweden’s deputy state epidemiologist, said France’s much lower infection rate could be due to a different way of measuring.
So who is right, Sweden has many clever health experts, as do other countries who disagree with the course Sweden has taken.
I would be curious to know what other nations have followed Sweden’s example and what has been the result for them. I imagine a lot of undeveloped countries have not imposed lockdowns, but problem is they aren’t known for their accuracy in facts and figures.
What we do know is that when lockdowns are imposed, the State has to step very strongly in to provide social security. If not, then I think I agree with Trump – the cure is worse than the illness. The outcome in many places has been civil unrest and the application of force by the State.
The pandemic is not an exact science as yet and there will be a whole new industry of scholarly academics studying the pandemic with better access to more accurate statistics
“This is part of the deflation process,” said Murray Gunn, head of global research at market forecasting firm Elliott Wave International. “At this juncture, our analysis suggests that this is very probably the second wave of a much bigger fall…over the next two or three years we will be in a deflationary environment. Survival will be paramount. And cash is king.”
“What we’re seeing here is this fast-forward recession,” said Patrick Perret-Green, head of research at AdMacro. “Then the question is do they then start re-evaluating other things? So, all commodities trading, copper, the whole shebang…we’re reading the fundamental collapse as something not just for oil but for everything.”
U.S shale producers who depend on U.S. crude futures in the low $40s per barrel to break even, are deleterious and could weigh on growth if their usually huge capex spending vanishes.
“At these prices, the entire industry is underwater,” said David Winans, a credit analyst at global money manager PGIM.
“The math is pretty simple. Current oil production is about 90 million barrels per day, but demand is only 75 million barrels per day,” said Gregory Leo, chief investment officer and head of global wealth management at IDB Bank.
I noted the language in this media report
https://www.dw.com/en/anti-israel-activists-crash-online-holocaust-survivor-talk/a-53199946
It was not anti-semites and anti-jews but “anti-Israel activists” according to Israel’s German ambassador.
So were these leftist pro-Palestinians or neo-nazis?
I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether the choice of description is meant to smear all those with criticisms of Israeli policies
Sacrificing the health of the old for the well-being of the young?
Each nation’s demographic make-up is different and the spread of COVID-19 will be differently centred on a variety of hot-spots. Sweden is not the same make-up in age as Italy.
Even within a country it is not all the same. I’m not in lockdown where I live but some cities here are.
Horses for courses
But what is being noticed in the herd immunity theory, is the rate of antibodies that offers resistance to future infection is rather low. The science is still out on re-infection rates if (when) another wave of COVID-19.
NYT reports that Biden will be a progressive president, defending workers and their unions among other things
