The recent film by Agnieszka Holland, Mr. Jones, portrays the Soviet Russians’ attempt in the 1930s — with the assistance of sympathetic Western journalists like Walter Duranty — to cover up the famine caused by collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine. The film is a heart-wrenching and damning account of the Soviet experiment — and of the dishonesty that enabled it.
And yet, 87 years after Gareth Jones showed the world the crimes of socialism, there are still Western enablers who engage in a different kind of coverup of the same facts. As a result, a growing number of young people consider themselves socialists, and socialist politicians have risen in prominence. One was almost nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president of the United States.
It is only thirty years since socialist regimes collapsed economically around the globe, leaving in their wake a death toll of tens of millions. We have seen the same pattern repeated in Venezuela in only the last twenty years. How do today’s defenders of socialism try to cover up this history and justify the ideology that supported such murderous regimes?
One tactic that today’s socialists employ is to portray the lessons of history and world affairs as irrelevant to their cause. They claim that the Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist Cuba, and today’s regime in Venezuela are not real examples of socialism at all. Real socialism, you may have heard them say, has never been tried.
What makes people think this is true? What do they mean by “socialism” and is their view even plausible?
What is “socialism”?
Socialism, in a standard definition, means public ownership of the means of production, which implies the abolishing of private property and ending the capitalist system of free trade and free markets. This is often understood to mean state ownership of the means of production.
By that standard, the Soviet Union, Communist China, and other authoritarian regimes all count as “socialist”: in every case, insurgents seized control of governments which then expropriated private farms, factories and shops from their capitalist owners — many of whom lost not only their property, but their lives. What’s more, these insurgents were led by figures (Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc.) that were explicitly committed to socialist ideology.
The economic failure, famine, and bloodshed suffered by each of these countries flowed directly from the same policies advocated by today’s socialists. Just as socialists demand, businesses were torn from the hands of their creators, those who both knew how to produce and who had a personal financial stake in improving their ability to produce. These businesses were then managed by bureaucrats who lacked both of these qualifications, and who also lacked the tool of the free market pricing system to calculate how much of which goods to produce. Production decisions were determined not with an eye to creating value above cost, but to the demands of arbitrary edicts from central planners. It is no accident that this system created shortages and starvation, and that regimes had to crush the resulting dissent to retain power.
Socialists try to insulate the system they advocate from this evidence of failure by using a talking point that (as we shall see) they have used since the beginning of their movement. They put a spin on the “public ownership of the means of production” definition. Real socialism, they say, doesn’t mean state control of the economy; it means control by “the people,” especially by the workers.
For instance, Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto, claims that real socialism means “democratic” control of the workplace by worker collectives. He claims that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not a socialist society because it did not involve democratic control.1 Likewise, Nathan Robinson, editor of Current Affairs and author of Why You Should Be a Socialist, claims that, for similar reasons, none of the authoritarian socialist regimes of the twentieth century were socialist, and claims to “hate government and capitalism alike.”2 Richard Wolff, who has been described as “America’s most prominent Marxist economist,” agrees.3 He argues that the Soviet Union was really an example of “state capitalism”: while the nominally socialist party controlled the state, the state was “still capitalist in the employer-employee organization of its economy” because “a minority of persons . . . [the central planners] functioned as employers of an employee majority.”4
Using their definition of “socialism,” these thinkers would have us believe that since state control of the economy is not control by “the people,” no full-scale socialist political system has ever existed in history. If true, this would allow them to excuse their ideology from any responsibility for the murder and oppression of the brutal, allegedly “socialist” systems of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century. It also allows them to pose as the torchbearers of a noble ideal that has simply been corrupted by political operators of the past.
Is there any plausibility to the claim that “socialism” doesn’t really mean state control of the economy, but something else? Are today’s socialists really envisioning a wholly new system than what the revolutionaries of the past actually implemented? Or are they simply playing games with the word “socialism” to avoid the obvious facts?
Fantasy speculation about the role of the state
Not everyone proposing a novelty is indulging in fantasy. A newly envisioned invention, like an airplane, can be based on known facts about birds, kites, and gliders. But even then, experiments are needed to prove the efficacy of the idea. And if the proposal is, say, a perpetual motion machine, which has no experimental basis and goes against the laws of physics, the proposal is selling a fantasy.
Although the proposal that “real” socialism doesn’t require the use of state power might sound new or innovative to the uninitiated, a few questions and a little knowledge of history are sufficient to show it is just as much a fantasy as a perpetual motion machine.
First, note that the socialists paper over the coercion and even violence that would obviously need to happen to expropriate private property from peaceful citizens to set up their system in the first place. (The mask drops when they start advocating “lawbreaking and sabotage” as worthy tactics in revolutionary social change.5) By itself this calls into question any assertion that socialism can be implemented without bloodshed: socialist ends cannot be detached from socialist means.
But even if we could imagine that private property holders were simply persuaded to give up their holdings peacefully, the notion that the ideal socialist system would work without coercion or oppression is hard to imagine, if it is even coherently meaningful to begin with. Consider Richard Wolff’s explanation for how a system of worker co-ops would gradually wean itself from the need for a state:
An economy based on worker co-ops would revolutionize the relationship between the state and the people. In their capacity as a self-employed collectivity, workers would occupy the spot traditionally held by the workplace in state-workplace relations and interactions. . . . The workers would collectively and democratically hold the purse strings to which the state would have to appeal. The state would thus depend on citizens and workers rather than the other way around. . . . The state would have fewer ways and means to impose its own momentum and goals upon citizens or workplaces. To that extent, the state’s “withering away” would become more immediately achievable than in any other variety of socialism known thus far.6
As I’ve argued elsewhere at greater length, the allegation that “democratic control” ensures freedom from coercion and oppression is an old fallacy that turns on an equivocation between a government with elected representatives and a society run by majority rule. The latter is what socialists advocate when they claim that factories should be run by workers, regardless of what the factory’s original creators have to say about it. This constitutes a direct violation of the rights of a minority of individuals. So if workers really do end up holding “the purse strings” of the factories and the power to make the state appeal to them, it makes little sense to say that the state would “wither away” as an entity independent of the workers.7 Rather, the workers would in effect be running a state.8
When Wolff is pressed to provide a real-world example of the system he envisions, he and other socialists often point to the Mondragon Corporation, a Spanish worker-owned manufacturer of a variety of industrial and consumer goods.9 But Mondragon is an international corporation that sells its products to private firms all over the globe, and employs an increasing number of foreign workers who are not members of the collective. At the same time, its workers increasingly depend on pensions from the Spanish state.10 Invoking the Mondragon example evades the question of whether a company like Mondragon could survive in the absence of a more general capitalist system that buys its products and provides market prices by which to calculate resource allocation, and the system of state-sanctioned private property rights that makes this possible.11 It also evades the question of whether a company run “democratically” (unlike most corporations) could exist in the absence of a coercive state that taxes capitalists to fund worker pensions.
The idea that real socialism involves social control of the economy without the state is not new, but you need to be aware of some history to realize this. It goes back at least as far as 1877, when Frederick Engels claimed in Anti-Dühring that after the proletariat seizes control of the state and thereby the means of production, the state would “wither away” or “die out.”12 Evading the important role of a state in protecting peaceful coexistence among individuals by protecting their rights, Marx and Engels held that the only role of a state is to enforce the exploitation of one class by another. Working from this fantastic premise, they deduced without evidence that once the state comes to represent the proletariat, class distinctions would disappear and, with them, the need for the state.13Lenin toed the same line in a lengthier work of no greater depth, but since he was himself a political operative who needed to rationalize his revolutionary actions, he argued that state control of the means of production was necessary as a transitional measure on the way to the achievement of real socialism.14 The same argument was then invoked for years by Stalin as he continued to starve and murder people in the name of eventually achieving the ideal of real socialism.15
All of this means that Lenin and Stalin and the other founders of the brutal Marxist regimes justified their actions using the exact same fantasy as today’s socialists do. They promised that the system they advocated would eventually eliminate state oppression as well. We saw what it actually delivered.
Why should we believe socialists today who also claim that their proposals to nationalize industries will take us further from and not closer to the specter of the Soviet catastrophe? They offer no better evidence than hucksters who sell perpetual motion machines. In fact what they’re doing is much worse, both because they actively evade the evidence, and because what they sell isn’t just dysfunctional — it’s deadly.
The real meaning of socialism
Socialism means public ownership of the means of production. But to understand what this means in practical reality — and why it cannot mean what the socialists propose — we must appreciate what “public ownership” actually refers to.
There is no magical entity called “the public.” A society is composed of individual human beings. In reality, the only mechanism by which the actions of an entire society can be coordinated is by means of a government. And so the only way for anything resembling “the public” to systematically deprive capitalists of private property and to abolish capitalist free trade is for the state to do it. Every socialist acknowledges this, whether they advocate violent revolution to establish a collectivist state or a majority vote to establish the same.
@Greg:
What about Joe Biden’s sexual assault of a USSS’s girlfriend? Why won’t you address that?
Do you deny that Joe Biden has been handsy with women, and even young girls, for years? Or do you tell yourself that your eyes are lying when you see him doing that on videos?
You have yet to tell me why anyone should vote for Biden. And don’t give me the “Trump is bad” routine. Give me what Biden has achieved that would make me want to vote for him.
@retire05: Could you imagine the backlash if these traitors started getting prosecuted, busted in rank or deprived of pension? Banned working for anyone holding a military contract?
@Greg:
We saw the run on TP, N95 dustmasks, bleach, hand sanitizer empty grocery shelves, that just from the media hype well after feb 7th.
Imagine if Trump would have added fuel to that fire. With the fact it is no more lethal than the flu a better than 98% chance of survival, unless you are in a democrat run area that put covid patients in with the very people most likely to be killed by the virus, frail elderly. Then said no investigation was needed cause it would end very badly for the serial murderer, Commie Cuomo.
That conversation with the shmuck took place over a week after there was a taskforce formed.
@kitt:
Yes, I dream of the day that those like Mattis/Powell are brought up on Article 88 charges. The loss of rank and retirement would certainly make them think about their turning coat.
If this was the 1930’s Comrade Greggie would be gritching because FDR said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” without painting a worse doomday picture to an already frightened citizenry.
@retire05:
I think the significance of that is mostly in your own head. It’s a perception has vigorously encouraged Trump’s propagandists and strategists, who actually have a man with a long history of documented sexual misconduct on their hands. Biden never crashed the dressing rooms at teen beauty pageants. He never employed a fixer to pay women off in return for signing non-disclosure agreements. Biden never relied on the sleazy publisher of a sleazy tabloid to obtain catch-and-kill contracts to keep scandalous stories from coming out. He isn’t known to have dated porn stars, or to have cheated on his wife.
@retire05: We know people who are panicked are very dangerous, instead of just hoarding we could have seen people being shot outside the Cosco for a roll of asswipe a case of canned goods or a gallon of bleach.
What would Woodenhead like? Semi trailers forced off the road for the goods inside? Totally empty stores cause delivery drivers to terrified to haul goods?
@kitt:
Trump knowingly and deliberately concealed the seriousness of a public health threat that has now killed over 190,000 Americans. Had he not, individual protective measures could have been taken much sooner. Even now, he doesn’t encourage people to take the simple step of wearing masks. He doesn’t seem to get that this was in any way improper. Neither do his supporters. More Americans died because of this, and more will continue to.
@Greg:
I wasn’t talking about Trump. I asked you about the actions of Biden that are clearly on multiple videos. So I guess your obfuscation about his actions mean you’re OK with them. If you lefties didn’t have double standards, you would have no standards at all.
Again, you have yet to tell me why anyone should vote for Biden. And don’t give me the “Trump is bad” routine. Give me what Biden has achieved that would make me want to vote for him.
@Greg:
Apparently Nancy Pelosi doesn’t think masks are all that important except when she’s wearing one for show.
@retire05, #358:
Yeah, and I pointed out that you’re comparing the imaginary in Biden’s case with what’s completely real and a long-standing feature in Trump’s. You’re basically comparing a gentleman with Mr. Grab-Em-By-The-Pussy, and finding the former wanton.
I’ll waste no more time on such absurd comparisons. More are made by Trump supporters than any right-thinking person can shake a stick at.
@Greg: It would not have mattered the MSM fought him every step, poo pooed his travel restrictions. Technocrat “experts” flip flopping on everything from it was not transmitted from human to human to wearing masks. Ninny Nancy tearing up the SOTU speech wherehe said he would try to protect us from the virus, China refusing entry of our experts and on and on. The team did a bang up job up hill both ways.
Its a virus that has already mutated more than 6 times. There will be no savior vaccine we must be allowed to gain some herd immunity and save the economy by opening up. The dead we cant even bury with dignity and mourn with our loved ones. NYT reported 90% false positives on some test. We have no idea how many died of the virus vs with the virus. 180 thousand means nothing when the data is intentionally polluted.
@kitt, #361:
The data isn’t “intentionally polluted”. It isn’t polluted at all. When COVID-19 is listed as the cause of death, it’s the proximate reason that a person died. There may be preexisting conditions mentioned, or details specifying what COVID-19 caused to happen—heart failure, respiratory arrest, etc—but if COVID-19 is listed as the primary cause, that’s what killed them. There’s no conspiracy to inflate the numbers. The causes of death on 180,000 death certificates (and counting) represent the independent, individual assessments of thousands of different doctors, coroners, and medical examiners, with a far higher proportion than usual being medically trained individuals because a far higher proportion of the deaths than usual are taking place in hospitals or medically supervised care facilities.
If anything the numbers are low, owing to many people who have died outside of hospitals or care facilities without having sought medical treatment.
From Scientific American, May 19, 2020 – How COVID-19 Deaths Are Counted – Assigning a cause of death is never straightforward, but data on excess deaths suggest coronavirus death tolls are likely an underestimate
@Greg:
Did you miss this?
Bob Woodward: General James Mattis Plotted Overthrow of U.S. Government…
According to a pre-release excerpt from the Washington Post Bob Woodward writes about a discussion between General James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats about a plot to overthrow the elected government of the United States.
From the book…
Mattis quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats, “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” since Trump is “dangerous. He’s unfit.”
NOVEMBER 2019 – […] For emphasis let me repeat a current fact that is being entirely overlooked. Despite his admitted usurpation of President Trump policy, Vindman was sent back to his post in the NSC with the full support of the United States Department of Defense.
The onus of action to remove Vindman from the NSC does not just lay simply at the feet of the White House and National Security advisor Robert O’Brien; and upon whose action the removal of Vindman could be positioned as political; the necessary, albeit difficult or perhaps challenging, obligation to remove Lt. Col Vindman also resides purposefully with the Dept. of Defense.
The Pentagon could easily withdraw Vindman from his position at the National Security Council; yet, it does not…. and it has not. WHY?
There is a code within the military whereby you never put your leadership into a position of compromise; ie. “never compromise your leadership”. In this example, President Trump cannot remove Vindman from the White House NSC advisory group due to political ramifications and appearances…
The Joint Chiefs certainly recognize this issue; it is the very type of compromise they are trained to remove. Yet they do nothing to remove the compromise. They do nothing to assist.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was the majority (#1) source for the material CIA operative Eric Ciaramella used in a collaborative effort to remove President Trump from office. Let me make this implication crystal clear:
The United States Military is collaborating with the CIA to remove a U.S. President from office.
Do you see the issue now?
The Pentagon has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to countermand this implication/reality.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to diminish the appearance of, nor deconstruct the agenda toward, the removal of President Trump.
Mr. President, do I have your attention?
(Full Outline)
Between 2013 & 2016, James Mattis was on the board of Therano, a healthcare tech startup that provided fraudulent blood testing that swindled $10B from investors.
The now-défunt Therano founder & CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been indicted with 11 counts.https://t.co/K7q0ph306d
— BenTallmadge (@BenKTallmadge) June 4, 2020
Another retired General slams Trump: Stink tank Brookings President John Allen warns of ‘descent into illiberalism’-
Trillions of dollars had been pissed away in third world hellholes, had these generals ever won a war before?https://t.co/jGeDzsaOHb
— BenTallmadge (@BenKTallmadge) June 4, 2020
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/09/09/bob-woodward-general-james-mattis-plotted-overthrow-of-u-s-government/#more-199289
@Greg:
Well, there are a lot of whiny crybabies.
Oh, so let me get this straight. Trump was LYING to the American people, keeping secret how deadly the virus was… for some reason… and to keep his secret, he only told Bob Woodward and his tape recorder. Sure. That makes far more sense that what Trump actually told Woodward, than he didn’t promote the worst-case scenario to avoid undue panic and worry.
You DID see the other FA article showing the contrasting WaPo articles, one accusing Trump of OVERemphasizing the threat and then, when it was more useful, accusing him of UNDERemphasizing the threat? CAN’T YOU SEE THE LYING BULLSHIT YOU ARE FED BY THE LIBERAL MEDIA AND THEIR PARTNERS, THE DEMOCRATS?
You know, it’s kind of funny, but I have gotten my information on the progress of the epidemic mostly from Trump’s briefings and, looking back, I have NEVER had an erroneous concept of the risk, the threat or the virility of the virus. Base on your arguments, YOU cannot make the same claim.
No, actually he didn’t.
That is pure, unadulterated BULLSHIT and you know it.
Well, it may be in the heads of Tara Reade and 9 others who have CREDIBLY accused Biden of everything from groping to RAPE.
If it hadn’t been for Trump, the teams he put together and his actions, hospitals would have been swamped with critical patients, we would have run out of PPE and would have had a shortage of ventilators. Trump saved MILLIONS of lives, despite the efforts of Democrats to do all they could to increase the body count purely for their own political gain.
@kitt: Oh, and don’t forget that the very people who think the virus is rapidly spread whenever people congregate in groups larger than one are the very same people who promote massed riots for reasons totally non-existent every day and night. THAT’S how much they believe social distancing is the key to preventing the further spread of this virus.
@Deplorable Me:
greg is lying, he knows he is lying and everyone here knows he is lying. greg is a leftist and lies repeatedly with impunity…
@Greg:
. “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”
So the man that Democrats look at as the finest president this nation has ever had, tells Americans to not give in to fear during the worst economic downturn this nation ever experienced and you want to rail on Trump for trying to bring calm and common sense to a crisis? Again, if it wasn’t for double standards, you lefties would have no standards at all.
Bullshit. I gave you the CDC guidelines a long time ago. If a person, with comorbidities, dies but tests positive for the Chi-Com flu, or is just suspected of having the Chi-Com flu, doctors were instructed to use the Chi-Com flue as the reason for their death. But as with all information you don’t like, you ignored the CDC directive provided to you. Why? The thing we must not speak about; i.e. hospitals were paid more for Chi-Com flu deaths than other morbidities.
Money, Comrade Greggie, it is all about money.
@retire05: You mean, the only thing we have to fear is the only thing Democrats have to offer?
@Deplorable Me: Technocracy.news / “CDC CONFIRMS EXTREMELY LOW COVID-19 DEATH,” by Horowitz 05/26/20 “The CDC now independently confirms recent research by Stanford University that COVID-19 has an extremely low death rate. Those without [symptoms] are more likely to die in a car accident and schoolchildren, whose lives we are destroying, are more likely to get struck by lightning.”
This is a ruse to bring us all to Agenda 2030 the Democrats failed in Agenda 2020 by putting up the most corrupt woman that ever polluted our planet as their candidate. Now a filmed pedophile.
@Greg: As we’ve proven, MARXISM DOESN’T WORK. THE MARXIST GOALS OF THE DEMOCRATS ARE BEING DEFEATED AND DISMANTLED, AND TRUMP IS UPHOLDING THE CONSTITUTION AND RULE OF LAW WHILE DEMOCRATS ATTACK OUR FUNDAMENTAL FOUNDATIONS.
Voters can and will put an end to the violence and hypocrisy of the Democrat Party.
@retire05, #366:
Rather than informing the public that COVID-19 was deadly, highly contagious, and airborne, Trump knowingly and deliberately withheld that critical information “to avoid panic”. As a consequence, there was a significant delay before the general public saw any need for simple protective measures. We were assured that we could about our routine business here as the rest of the world masked up and locked down to moderate a predicted wave of contagion.
Do people have no understanding of how critically important an appropriate public response was during those initial weeks? It’s a simple matter of the geometric progression that’s behind the spread of any highly contagious, potentially fatal disease. If you don’t understand how a geometric progression words, you won’t understand how most of our control over the course of an epidemic or pandemic exists at the earliest stages.
If you cut the number of new infections from 20 to only 10 at the earliest stage, months down the road you have potentially reduced the total number of fatalities from 200,000 to 100,000. The negative consequences of every day of delay at the beginning becomes enormously magnified at the far end.
It’s been over seven months since the first COVID-19 fatality in the United States, and we’re still not getting a clear message from the President on so obvious a measure as wearing protective masks in public and avoiding crowded settings. He has actually mocked his political opponents for publicly taking such measures.
THAT’S A LIE. It’s right-wing propaganda. If you want to see what the CDC guidelines actually say, you only have to go to the CDC website and read them for yourself:
Reporting and Coding Deaths Due to COVID-19
If you don’t want to continue to be led around like a flock of pathetic, hypnotized sheep, you’ve got to stop taking the damn hypnotists at their word and look for yourself to check the truth of what they’re saying.
@Greg: We were assured that we could about our routine business here
What a fantasy you have been directed to spread.
You must forget we lived through the pandemic/epidemic we watched the briefings, that your media cut short. This is already a day old and stale as F.
You do not save lives by panic ever, never, doesnt happen in any realm of reality. Its screaming Fire in a crowded theater. Its firing a gun behind a herd of cattle with kids ahead of the herd.
It was the asshole Democrats that said live as if nothing was happening go out eat chinese food go celebrate. Dont panic blah blah from every direction. You are a nutjob.
This carpet bombing of non issues is a distraction of Joes serious mental decline.
Poor guy cant even read answers from a teleprompter.
A black guy invented the lightbulb? I know you had to mainline MNBC and CNN before you came here with your idiot logic.
We heard him in April saying he did not want panic before the 15 day to slow the spread campaign.
The whole woodward thing is a nothingburger. Expect these fake stories everyday until President Trump wins re-election.
How about the time joe biden caused panic during h1n1 as vp?
@July 4th American: Yup no subway or plane travel the barry admin had a fit over that.
@kitt, #371:
This is complete Trumpian nonsense. What sort of panic would providing timely and accurate information have caused? It was a virus, not an invasion from Mars.
It was a situation where an earlier appropriate public response would have produced a far better later outcome. Earlier simple precautions would have resulted in far fewer deaths and far less economic losses later. It’s as obvious and simple as that. The critically important information was there, but it wasn’t shared.
@Greg:
I hate to break this to you, since you are having such a great time fueling your own hatred, but Trump and his team DID tell everyone that COVID-19 was deadly, highly contagious, and airborne. Right from the beginning. It was DEMOCRATS who advised to ignore all that… until it was too late. Then, they began lying by saying Trump didn’t take it seriously. Are you ignorant, stupid or just a liar?
@kitt:
Isn’t that amazing? Liberals can simply forget what was fact just a few weeks or months back as though it has been decades, it was never reported and everyone with direct knowledge is dead. I guess I listened to the wrong sources, but I never saw Trump mislead or “downplay” a single aspect of the epidemic. I saw LEADERSHIP, not politics. Greg prefers never letting a crisis go to waste, but wasting lives instead.
greg is lying his ass off again
@Greg: Bullshit the run on TP, paper toweling, bleach, hand sanitizer, dust masks, flour, canned goods, and all emergency food companys went to back order, multiply that. We knew it was serious already, how many task forces had he made before?
Meanwhile we find the so prepared NY(per the mayor) had auctioned off all its back up ventilators.
It would serve no purpose none zip nada zilch you are insane and dont have to report the MSM gaslighting propaganda to us.
It was April 2009 and the 3-month-old Obama administration was desperately grappling with the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression when homeland security adviser John Brennan arrived at the Oval Office to warn the president and Vice President Joe Biden of a new crisis: H1N1, the swine flu virus, was showing signs of rapid spread in Mexico, while cases were popping up in California and Texas.
Brennan pointed out that the Spanish flu — the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history — was an H1N1 strain. “It made their eyebrows go up,” Brennan says now, recalling Biden’s reaction in particular.
“‘Listen, we need to be aggressive early on this,’” Biden announced, according to Brennan.
The next week, Biden made good on his pledge — and set off a deluge of criticism. In an interview on NBC’s “Today,” Biden said he wouldn’t advise his family to fly on planes or ride the subway.
“I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now,” Biden said. “It’s not that it’s going to Mexico, it’s that you are in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft.”
Airlines angrily accused Biden of fearmongering. Media reports noted that Biden’s pessimism contrasted sharply with the reassurances President Barack Obama had given a day earlier, when he said there was no need to panic even as he declared a national health emergency. In a matter of hours, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew were summoned to the White House and assigned to clean up the mess Biden made: “Nip it in the bud,” LaHood said, recalling their instructions.
By 4 p.m., the three officials were hosting a news conference and backing away from the
Uh huh. Trump told Bob Woodward on February 7th that COVID-19 was worse than the flu; that it deadly, and airborne. That sure as hell wasn’t what the public was being told. On March 19 he explained to Woodward why he was playing the threat down.
It’s all on tape. Trump knew the conversation was being recorded.
What President Trump said about the coronavirus versus what Bob Woodward recorded in interviews: Timeline
greg is like a dog chasing it’s tail with this woodward bullshit. It is so thing story. Go to bed greg
@Greg:
You’re the f**king liar, Comrade Greggie. Here is what I provided to you.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf
Now, since you seem to be able to control what your eyes see and what your mind registers, I am sure you will claim that even if severe co-morbidity issues are present, that the Chi-Com flu should be used as the reason of death. But, in the real world of medicine (which you now present yourself as an expert in science) dying FROM the Chi-Com flu is a hellofa lot different than dying WITH the Chi-Com flu.
And tell us, Comrade Greggie, why in these lo’ long months of the Chinese plague have you refused to lay blame for it where it should be; on the damn Chinese?
I just don’t have my brain plugged directly into FOX News.
The latest spin is “If Woodward knew what Trump was withholding was so important, why didn’t he go public with it then and save lives?”
@retire05:
Are you so damn stupid that you don’t understand the CDC document you linked doesn’t actually say what you’re claiming it says? It was introducing a new ICD code because COVID-19 was a new virus producing a new type of illness, and explaining how to determine if use of that reporting code applied.
Reading your posts is becoming as tiresome as listening to Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, or Sean Hannity turning reality upside down.
@Greg: Just go watch the cognitive decline of the pervert your Party put up, this is a Yuge nothing burger.
Now the news is heartless tax payer paid Democrats denying aid to the unemployed.
@Greg:
Not as damn stupid as you are since I haven’t bought into the Socialist Democratic Party b/s for decades.
Exactly how I feel about the propaganda you come here every day to push. Of course, according to brain dead ship channel hooker that you think like, you FEAR anyone who is honestly reporting the news
Sean Hannity earns around $25 million per year from FOX News for filling people’s heads with nonsense. Laura Ingraham earns $15 million, and Carlson Tucker $6 million. That’s good money for a political shill. Plus you’ve got good benefits and a really great work environment…
@Greg: Good for them they have done well for themselves. I bet they pay a good amount in taxes as well.
How has the Pervert Joe earned 19 million in less than 4 years after tax?
How much are the Obamas worth now? Both are just political shills for a proven failed Socialist system. Seems Pervy Joe has gone full commie. Who is setting the fires in the NW? There have been arrests someone shooting at firemen. MSM Media silent must be Joes lil antifa protest pukes.
@Greg:
Rachel Maddow earns $7M a year
Joe Scarborough earns $8M a year
Anderson Cooper earns $12M a year
Seems lying pays well.
REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, UNITED STATES SENATE, ON RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES CAMPAIGNS AND INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 U.S. ELECTION, VOLUME 5 : COUNTERINTELLIGENCE THREATS AND
VULNERABILITIES
This was released on August 18th. It’s the product of a republican-led investigation. Anyone who reads the findings on the first few pages and doesn’t understand that the man presently in the White House is there because Vladimir Putin wanted him there and helped to put him there needs to have one of Donald’s cognitive assessments.
The Committee’s recommendations at the end are also interesting. None of them are going to be undertaken on Trump’s watch, despite the fact that our Intelligence Community has warned in no uncertain terms that Putin will do the same thing in 2020, in all probability in an even more effective and sophisticated manner.
On this occasion, Russia’s favored candidate has a full range of official Executive powers to exercise to thwart any effective countermeasures.
@Greg:
Who knew shit could be stacked that high? It seems greg has been reduced to commenting about the china virus which is soon to disappear, and a senate Russia report that is a yawner. How about this one greg:
Records Show Weissmann Special Counsel Team Erased 15 Phones After IG Requested Review…
Continue reading →
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/page/2/
Your efforts here at FA greg, are futile and ineffective, a fools errand. I would compare you to your hero, child molester, joe biden. Both of you have failed and are failing.
Anyone claiming it’s irrelevant that Trump’s 2018 Campaign Chairman was secretly passing geographical specific polling information directly to a known Russian intelligence operative while Russia was conducting a geographically targeted social media campaign to get Trump elected needs to have their head examined.
The Senate Intelligence Committee previously established in July 2019 that Russian hackers had likely targeted election system databases in all 50 states. There’s no evidence that they changed any data; they just got their hands on it. So, with Manafort’s detailed geographical polling data they had the ability to determine the overlap between critical electoral college leverage points and their individual social media user databases.
Do people not understand what this means? This is how you can win a the electoral college election my manipulating a tiny number of individual voters, in spite of a popular election loss by nearly three million votes.
They’re going to attempt to do the same thing again, but this time most of the FBI and Intelligence Community watchdogs have been gotten out of the way. This is no conspiracy theory. It’s an actual conspiracy, much of which has happened in plain sight.
More conspiracy theories from a disgruntled tin hat wearing imbecile who is subjectively retarded.
President Trump has been nominated for two, that’s two Nobel Peace Prizes.
Has joe biden molested any children today greg
Trump was nominated by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a right-wing member of the Norwegian parliament, and by 18 members of the GOP.
Anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by any professor or associate professor of humanities or social sciences, or by any elected member of any of the world’s various parliamentary bodies. Adolf Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 by a member of the Swedish parliament. The nomination was apparently intended as an ironical gesture.
@Greg: A study done says google searches also swayed voters, in favor of Clinton.
Google hopes to rake in massive profits as the film industry has from a China market.
Obviously this is hampered by new policies dealing in technology.
We know Hillarys servers were sending everything to China in real time.
There remains no evidence Russia hacked the DNC from testimony by crowd strike.
The servers seem to be missing evidence, like the cell phone data wiped like a cloth from the Russia collusion investigators phones, who were paid tens of millions by tax payers. Reports indicate dozens of phones were wiped to obstruct IG inspection.
Iran Behind Hack Attacks, Online Disinformation Campaigns to Boost Biden
@July 4th American: Aug 17, 2020 – Trump brokers historic Israel-UAE deal for peace and prosperity , The United States White House announced on Friday that Bahrain had joined the United Arab Emirates in signing on to a peace agreement.
While the failed policies of regime change of Bush and Barry show only misery and loss of life.
@Greg: Back to the subject of the post: Marxism doesn’t work. It killed millions in the 20th Century, and has no place in the USA. As we help to reform China on their evil Communist government and values, we’ll see the spectre of “class-warfare” done away with…for the betterment of all Humanity.
China is a parasite that has been allowed to exist because it simply gives people money. Hard to argue with this one.
Trump is cutting off the bad trade deals, IP theft, and all-around economic war China is waging against the rest of the world.
MARXISM IS INFERIOR TO FREE MARKET CAPITALISM, AND WILL NOT TAKE ROOT IN AMERICA.
Corporatism IS NOT free market capitalism, nor are fascism, nepotism, plutocracy, or blatant cronyism parts of American democracy. There is no relevant Marxist candidate for the presidency.
@kitt:
President Trump is on the verge of a magnificent accomplishment that can and most likely will change the world. obama was such a failure. obama never intended on stabilizing the ME. In fact he mad matters in the ME much worse. obama was the worst President in US History.
@Nathan Blue:
gregs fall back when he has nothing is to resort to Russia Russia Russia or the China flu. Like his candidate, the child molester, there is nothing there.