Some Covid-19 thoughts
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Monday, September 29, 2025 18:59
VIEWED: 301579
PAGE 308 of 384
Quote:This was written February 25, 2002:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
So here we are 21 TRILLION dollars later, gone with only bad results from all that spending, and oh, let's not forget death and destruction and ongoing costs as a result.
We did that to ourselves.
We weakened ourselves.
And that's only one example of the damage we've done to ourselves as a country.
Bin Laden’s secret strategy is to prod the United States into bankruptcy. This is not a short-term strategy. Osama bin Laden and his supporters around the world are digging in for the long haul, waiting for the day when the United States can no longer afford the war on terrorism and begins to wilt under the weight of unilateralism.
Bin Laden has spoken of his successful campaign against the Soviet Union. The mujahedin kicked the Soviet army out of Afghanistan and, they believe, caused the demise of the empire. In those days, bin Laden and Ronald Reagan were strategic bedfellows. They expected the Soviets to be defeated militarily. The mujahedin tested this theory on the ground. While the Reagan administration contributed to this effort with weapons and training, it was also simultaneously waging a campaign of economic warfare. Ronald Reagan engaged the Soviet Union in a budget-busting arms race designed to bankrupt its rival superpower.
Bin Laden has apparently absorbed the Reagan strategy. It is difficult to know whether he really thought that a handful of terrorist acts would hobble the United States or that al Qaeda and the Taliban could defeat the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. What he must have anticipated, however, was the predictable U.S. response: to throw money at the Pentagon.
The Bush administration has obliged by lifting defense spending into the stratosphere.
More at https://ips-dc.org/osama_bin_ladens_secret_strategy/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I've read that before. Since no one can interview bin Laden, and he left no writings behind, and no statements about his secret heart, all thoughts on his intentions are speculation.
What the mujaheddin had v the USSR was lots covert US help. But it would have no help v the US. Tactically, that makes the 2 situations unlike each other. And it would all depend on the US getting into Afghanistan and staying in Afghanistan, despite the country having no resource or strategic value. And that makes any hypothetically intended future 'victory' tenuous.
But the US did blunder into Afghanistan (btw with the yea votes of a majority of democratic* Senators) ... and stay in (with the agreement of a majority of democratic* Senators) ... and expand to Iraq (with the agreement of a majority of democratic* Senators) ... and that probably wasn't on bin Laden's radar at all.
If the US had limited itself to Afghanistan, I think we'd be in far better shape economically.
But Afghanistan and Iraq aren't the only 2 US policy pieces of crap that hurt the country. There are plenty of others.
So, to tie this back in to COVID-19 - the US has taken plenty of self-inflicted hits that have weakened it deeply. That makes it less likely the US will comes out of COVID-19 in reasonable shape.
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The US will be fine.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:You are incorrect:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I've read that before. Since no one can interview bin Laden, and he left no writings behind, and no statements about his secret heart, all thoughts on his intentions are speculation.
Bin Laden’s worldview and the thinking behind the 9/11 attack are laid bare in a trove of internal communications that were recovered in May 2011, when U.S. special operations forces killed bin Laden during a raid on the compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad where he had spent his final years hiding.
More at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-08-13/osama-b
in-ladens-911-catastrophic-success
Bin Laden’s Letter to the American People
I would like to say that your war with us is the longest war in your history and the most expensive for you financially. As for us, we see it as being only halfway finished. If you were to ask your wise thinkers, they would tell you that there is no way to win it because the indications are against it. How will you win a war whose leaders are pessimistic and whose soldiers are committing suicide? If fear enters the hearts of men, winning the war becomes impossible. How will you win a war whose cost is like a hurricane blowing violently at your economy and weakening your dollar?
The Bush administration got you into these wars on the premise that they were vital to your security. He promised that it would be a quick war, won within six days or six weeks; however, six years have passed, and they are still promising you victory and not achieving it. Then Obama came and delayed the withdrawal that he had promised you by 16 more months. He promised you victory in Afghanistan and set a date for withdrawal from there. Six months later, Petraeus came to you once again with the number six, requesting that the withdrawal be delayed six months beyond the date that had been set. All the while you continue to bleed in Iraq and Afghanistan. You are wading into a war with no end in sight on the horizon and which has no connection to your security . . .
More at https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/20/heres-osama-bin-ladens-letter-to-
the-american-people/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Bin Laden was just a photoshop job of Scottie Pippen.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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You claimed that bin Laden's intent for September 11, 2001 was to
Quote:And then you posted a link that debunked your claim.
prod the United States into bankruptcy.
Quote:Thanks for proving yourself wrong and doing my job for me.
The 9/11 attack was intended to “break the fear of this false god and destroy the myth of American invincibility.”
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Quote:True. Coronaviruses, being single-stranded, have a high mutation rate. And since the most infectious viruses outcompete others, evolutionary pressures will ensure a drift towards greater infectiousness. But infectiousness doesn't mean deadliness.
SIGNYM: This particular airborne virus is not dangerous enuf to end society.
JO753: Too many variablez to say. It coud still mutate to be far dedlier. (The orijinal SARS had a 9% fatality rate!)
Also, note that I said THIS virus. THIS virus is not a society-killer, unless we shoot ourselves in the foot trying to kill it.
Quote:You bring up many good points. Our response to the virus is overly politicized, chaotic, and deeply dyfunctional on BOTH sides.
JO753:But it may not need to get dedlier. Az per my theory, the 2 virusez will conspire to bring us down by degrading the connective tissuez uv society.
Its happening now with all the trumptard antivax antimask antiany-defensiv-measure ijits helping C19 proliferate. The hospitalz are being overworked. shutdownz are hobbling the economy. returants and liesure companyz are going under. The goverments cant print fake money forever.
All C19 haz to do iz keep up this pase and eventually the accumulating damaj
will be too much uv a burden and the entire shebang will collapse.
Quote:
SIGNY: It's the unrealistic responses (like prolonged lockdowns and yet *more* disinformation from the M$M AND the reactive alt media) that's doing us in.
JO753: See?! Even relativly reazonable peepl can float that notion with a strate fase. It only helps the virus!
The defensiv action hurts, so you stop, but then the attacker gets to hit harder. Cach-22.
You can't rely on lockdowns forever. First of all, unless we have COMPLETE control of our borders (HA!) it simply WILL NOT WORK. And even if we had good border control, like Australia and New Zealand ... they've relied on lockdowns and they STILL pop up with the virus every now and again which causes another lockdown!
I support the use of lockdowns as a circuit-breaker, but certainly not to be used for more than a month or two, until we can get a better handle on how a virus behaves and how we can control its spread.
Quote:
JO753: If you must hav a 100 pound shield to defend yourself, the attakr only needz to wait till your armz get tired.
But we don't NEED a 100-lb shield. The infection fatality rate for THIS virus (even the delta version) is somewhere around 0.07% for people younger than 45. And the younger you get, the lower the IFR until it becomes vanishingly small.
It is a deadly disease for the young obese, and the older you get, the deadlier it becomes, until you reach an IFR of about 10% for males in the 80+ age group.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/11/18/covid-infection-fatality-rates-se
x-and-age-15163
So, fighting THIS virus means protecting a vulnerable subgroup, not the entire peopulaiton
This is not like an Ebola outbreak with an IFR of around 90pct.
IF we were fighting a virus that deadly, all kinds of measures would be necessary.
But as of now, the problem is that nobody trusts ANY government, either Dem or Rep in, to take practical,measured steps to combat the virus. And thanks to that well-deserved lack of trust in government and the media, all kinds of whacky conspiracy theories are rooting in the American blogosphere.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:Your logic is that bin Laden wrote several different times about America but each time wasn't a carbon copy of the previous times therefore all his writing is self-contradictory. Well, I find it impossible to argue with your airtight logic from your giant brain, 1kiki.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
You claimed that bin Laden's intent for September 11, 2001 was toQuote:And then you posted a link that debunked your claim.
prod the United States into bankruptcy.Quote:Thanks for proving yourself wrong and doing my job for me.
The 9/11 attack was intended to “break the fear of this false god and destroy the myth of American invincibility.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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You were addressing what bin Laden INTENDED with 9/11 by referring to some made up bullshit from 2002. It turns out that, when compared to his statements of what he actually INTENDED with 9/11, you and your bullshit were wrong.
What he INTENDED, as he clearly states in your link, was a global Muslim awakening to the possibility of global jihad.
That bin Laden later reflected on 9/11 with the experience of hindsight and came to a conclusion that what he INTENDED didn't work out (which he clearly states), but what happened was the economic weakening of the US (which he also clearly states), doesn't negate that his early intentions were not what your bullshit claimed they were.
Tap dance as fast as you can! ... while you keep shooting yourself in the foot.
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What Biden's vaccine mandate is really doing is giving cover to businesses that wanted to do this anyway. Until now, these businesses risked looking partisan if they mandated vaccines, but now they can simply say that it's the law and they have no choice. It lets them off the hook for making the decision.
And what will companies do to employees who refuse to get vaccinated or tested? I assume every company will decide for itself, but again, I think it's beside the point. What's important is that there are lots of people who will do something merely because it's "officially required." We saw the same thing with the Obamacare mandate: the fine didn't really matter. The mere fact that insurance became legally required was enough to make most people comply, even if they grumbled about it. It may not seem like it sometimes, but Americans really are mostly pretty law-abiding folks.
So that's that. The mandate gives cover to businesses and a quasi-legal mandate to individuals. But what's most important is that the message it sends—we're finally serious about this—should be enough to get a lot more people vaccinated regardless of its eventual legal status.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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