Coronavirus
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I guess it depends how one reads it.
Most will see it as “we are being stupid like monkeys”, I fear, rather than “us monkeys.”
Monkeys suffer because of capitalism, but capitalism is a human creation.
Are monkeys as stupid as we are?
Remember the experiment when monkeys refused to electrocute monkeys on human command, and preferred to renounce a nutty reward, whereas humans pulled the switch on other humans with no hesitation!
it is a matter of cultural acclimatisation. When monkeys are capable of building bicycles as well as riding them, they may be fascinated by the switch pulling outcomes.
Crass speciesism, as always.
Why should monkeys need to build bicycles?
And the switch-pulling was deliberately refused, once they saw one of their own being electrocuted (for real), whereas the human subjects had no such qualms when they thought fake electrocutions of their own species were real.
Speciesist humans always point to what humans do, to paint other animals as inferior, in their rank-obsessed prejudiced minds.
It is the difference between an hierarchical view of nature (scientifically outdated), and a kaleidoscopic view (that of modern ethology).
I ask you, which one is worthy of socialists?
Both at the same time. I really can’t be arsed with nit picking arguments over someone’s throw away remark in a thread about coronavirus.
It would seem that John Oswald is happy with insults directed towards his own species but not with those directed at other species. Is that called ‘inverted speciesism’?
While Trump and others blame China for holding back information about the Wuhan outbreak, it seems the irony that Trump has banned Dr Fauci from testifying to Congress, has not dawned upon his supporters as yet.
To keep this monkey business on theme, in the search for a vaccine it seems scientists will be experimenting on monkeys. Ideally they should experiment on humans but this is regarded as “unethical” but J O’s point will be that it is unethical, perhaps more so, to experiment on other animals.
What makes it “unethical” to experiment on humans is not just an ethical question. It is also a legal one as humans have legal rights and if anything goes wrong the experimenter can be sued. In fact the whole testing procedure for vaccines and drugs, which requires testing on animals first, is designed precisely to lessen the risk of people suing the drug company. And so is a direct consequence of capitalism.
In socialism there would be nothing in the way of experiments directly on humans, volunteers of course.
I know we haven’t got a socialist society, and perhaps he’s not a volunteer, but Piers Morgan has got the virus, can we make a start by experimenting on him?
“When monkeys are capable of building bicycles …”
I marvel at the Socialist Standard having often recommended Gould’s books, when party members are so unworthy of him. Reading him would be an idea!
Descent through modification was explained originally by a man named Charles Darwin. Socialists should read him too.
Crassness and ignorance are unworthy of you.
Revealing interview in today’s Times with one of Trump’s top military advisers, which shows that he is as more stupid than that king in the Ivory Coast who at least didn’t believe that the present pandemic and resulting slump is the result of a conspiracy:
“The fact is China knew it had an epidemic but continued to allow international flights out of the country, even from Wuhan, after they had closed the city down,” General Jack Keane, an influential military adviser to President Trump, said in an interview with The Times.
He added: “The Chinese Communist Party did a good job protecting their political and financial power centres but they consciously let those flights [abroad] continue, knowing that it would spread the virus. They wanted other economies to suffer.
“They didn’t want their economy to be the only one to suffer. That was a conscious decision. I think they wanted to make certain that countries around the world would suffer ecnomic retraction.”
I don’t suppose that Trump, the politician, really believes that China really took action to try to deliberately provoke a world slump (though, as they say, all is fair in love and war). He is just giving the impression that he does as this election year for him. But it is quite possible that some bonehead general does.
This is just another 9/11 for a sector of the USA ruling class looking for a weapon of mass destruction in China, and a pretext to detain the economic push of China which is going to initiate the New Silk Road thru Europe, Asia, Middle East and Latin America and the USA is going to become a small mouse in the world market. Fighting between bandits of capitalism. They have 780 billion investment in the war machines, but they do not any money and resources invested in medical services, scientific investigations and medical schools, the so-called Make America Great Again it is just bullshit, in the Caribbean, they say: Ripen plantain can not be green again
They know that the virus came from an animal and infected humans and since they were in the middle of a re-election campaign they did want to affect the only winning ticket that they had which was low unemployment, and would have shown ( like it did ) that the USA medical system is crap and that all the cuts and agencies closed were needed to combat the epidemic, and all the funds robbed from those agencies to build the wall were wrong expenses, but the situation got out of their hands, and now they have a hot potato that they can not handle
This article is the Review of the Month for the May 2020 issue. The print version will carry the same date at the end of the article the day it was first published, March 27, 2020. That we are publishing the Review of the Month online more than a month ahead of the publication of the issue as a whole is unprecedented for us and is testimony to the present emergency. We anticipate that minor updates will be added to the article when the entire magazine is posted online on May 1.
Monthly Review
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