Re: <nettime> The Communist Manifesto 2015 WTF

[Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com>]

I blocked Morlock long ago, sometimes I see gross quotes from his racist, side-of-the-van-conspiracy nonsense quoted in replies and Iâ??m happy I kill-filed him.

Which proves Iâ??m a deep state socialist!!

The cynical anti-authoritarians are the wrong people to listen to in a crisis like this one.  Health authorities are not fascists.  They are experts, and with our individual executive authorities, we must choose collective responsibility, obedience to the science and duty to our neighbours.  If the police start giving tickets to Covidiots, I hope they put that money into isolation facilities for sick homeless folks, such as those that are popping up around Vancouver.

 like the idea of Disaster Socialism at times like these, Universal Basic Income popping up as a solution, Health Care as a collective responsibility, human biomes taking care of one another.

I donâ??t like corporate bailouts or power-grabs.  Itâ??s not the â??elitist PhD epidemiologists" and the public works people who threaten the people - itâ??s the greedy hoarders at the transnational corporate and the individual level.

BUT weâ??re all in this together.  Iâ??m staying inside, washing my hands, and trying to stay in touch with my loved ones and colleagues.  We (luckily) have these kooky tech monopolies who are unable to squeeze us at times like these - the general foolish consensus that Facebook etc belong to us - â??This is MY Facebook page,â?? people sometimes declare when debating - has fortunately created an expectation of care, which the tech monopolies would be very foolish to abuse when push comes to shove.  

Pity any social media giant who tried to leverage this moment to their advantage - we have enough choices now to slip out of their grasp.  Even Skype has lost its monopoly on video chat; Zoom has suddenly seized that space with better features, despite some unknown privacy and other issues under the hood.

Anyway, China, certainly has a share of the blame for clamping down on information in the early days of this.  Spiking that Lancet article by the Wuhan nurse was a sinister case of exporting their information monopoly (and centralist patriarchy) but itâ??s not like they are behaving less reprehensibly than the US leadership right now.  At least as far as my massive news addiction tells me.

-Flick





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