Cultural War by Juan Carlos Girauta

 In its modern sense, the culture war does not come from the United States but from Italy, specifically from a man who elaborated his theories in prison almost a century ago: Antonio Gramsci.  If one conquers literalist laziness, he will find out that the culture war, or the cultural battle, does not mean being a warrior all day but in gaining hegemony in institutions, the media, the University, the school, the publishing world, etc.  .  That is why Gramsci's is a "passive revolution" and gradual.

 Of course a communist, Gramsci is the most alive thing that Marxism has.  What is Marxian (the work of Karl Marx) is no longer bought by anyone serious and endowed with good intellectual faith once its central theories, such as that of labor value, have been demolished and crushed;  once milked by the Frankfurt School (in the United States and in Germany) and by Sartre, Althusser, or Deleuze in France, a series of superstitions with scientific overtones: "reification," "commodity fetishism," and other quibbles.  Bad vinegar gave the milking.  The exception, Gramsci

 Because he is the highest and most attractive point of the Marxist paradox: it turns out that the active agent of historical change is political and intellectual.  Areas that, for Marxism, belong to the superstructure, smoke that does not change history.  Well, no!  If Marx turned Hegel around like a sock, Gramsci did the same with Marx.  Of course, there is no paradox but contradiction.  Or not even that.  As Scruton, the great British conservative theorist, wants, Gramsci simply disproved Marx's theory of history, although neither he ever said it nor did his countless followers mention it.  The reasons have to do with the prestige of the intellectual within the "bourgeois society" that he wants to destroy.

 And now let's look back at the Spain of today.  If someone other than Jon Juaristi announced the funeral of our liberal democracy, it would be considered literary license.  But he just did it on these pages.  You have to take it very seriously.  If it is not dead, the Spanish liberal democracy is dying.  It is the result of a process started long ago in the University and the school, in the arts and in publishing houses.  And, with more resistance, in the institutions.  We can affirm that this process has followed the guidelines of Gramsci's Theory of Hegemony.  It has followed them within a larger trend, western in scope.  Locally, the path has been walked without awareness of the purpose.  Except in the case of Podemos, which has successfully precipitated events by consciously following the teachings of the Italian communist.

 Look if we will be kaffir, bellicose and sectarian those in favor of undoing the operation following those same guidelines, after public signaling of the precise mechanisms used, that in reality we are recognizing the undeniable effectiveness of Antonio Gramsci's ideas.

Kamala Harris the Antivaxxer

As it turns out, Kamala Harris isn't satisfied with the results of the Democrats' riot and vandalism campaign.  Now she wants to undermine public health by sowing distrust in the Wuhan virus vaccine...

DANA BASH: As you know, President Trump has promised a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year or maybe sooner. Would you trust that vaccine?

HARRIS: I think that we have learned since this pandemic started, but really before that, that there’s very little that we can trust that can comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth. From the beginning of this pandemic, he has called it a hoax. He has muzzled the public health experts. He has minimized the seriousness of it. He has created false expectations for the American people and American families, even though, if he had listened to the scientists and the experts, he would have understood the gravity of it and the power that he, as president of the United States, has to actually save lives. And none of those were his priorities. His priority was to do whatever he thought was politically expedient. And so, no, I would not trust his word. I would trust the word of public health experts and scientists, but not Donald Trump.

BASH: But do you trust that, in the situation where we’re in now, that the public health experts and the scientists will get the last word on the efficacy of a vaccine?

HARRIS: If past is prologue, that they will not, that will be muzzled, they will be suppressed, they will be sidelined, because he’s looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days, and he’s grasping for whatever he can get to pretend that he has been a leader on this issue, when he has not.

BASH: So, let’s just say there is a vaccine that is approved and even distributed before the election. Would you get it?

HARRIS: Well, I think that’s going to be an issue for all of us. I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump. And it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about.

November 2020 US elections

 I will be voting Republican. I understand the Democrats' identitarian (aka racist) ideology classifies me as "person of color" (POC), which entitles me to privileges, and, if the Democrat Green New Deal gets passed, I will benefit from reparations paid by pale skinned male adults between 18 and 65 (go read House Resolution 109 and you will find this included in the text, although it's worded in a subtle fashion). So even though I will benefit from those handouts, things look grimmer for my grandchildren, because my family is integrated into US society quite well, and some of them are too pale skinned and too Texas Bible belt to sell themselves as POC. So they will become part of the abused and discriminated against population because their skin is too pale, and they will suffer all sorts of indignities because supposedly they were born privileged and are racists. And I definitely don't want that future for them. 

Then there's foreign policy. Trump has performed much better than previous presidents, avoided getting soldiers into stupid wars, and is trying to disengage from foreign entanglements. This gets me on a personal level because I have a grandson in the military and he already served in South Korea and the Middle East, and I hate the idea that a Democrat like Obama or a neocon Republican like Bush will make more mistakes. Obama in particular made many serious mistakes, such as helping Libya become a failed state, igniting civil wars in Iraq and Syria, wrecking relations with Russia by encouraging Ukraine to make moves to join the EU and eventually NATO, looking the other way as the Chinese began imperial expansion, and throwing the Cuban and Venezuelan people under a bus. 

Trump's push to reduce unemployment and emphasize US made was wise, as shown by the inability to respond to the pandemic properly because so much is imported from abroad. He made a mistake listening to WHO and Fauci wgen they said wearing masks didn't help the general population, but he has done very well accelerating the use of medicines and palliatives such as convalescent plasma. And the super fast vaccine development would never have been possible with a Clinton or a Biden in charge. 

I dont like Trump's big mouth, he tweets too much BS, probably because he's an amateur and not a politician, and he has taken a lot of time to learn to pick decent secretaries and advisors, but he's settling down, and his team is gradually improving to a B+. 

On the other hand his firm stance against riots and vandalism are a huge plus versus the Democrats, who in many cases are encouraging it.  The Democrats' kneeling and the pro BLM song and dance at their convention are nauseating. I have photos of BLM leader and cofounder Opal Tometi with Maduro and wearing a Venezuelan government uniform vest and ID tag. 

We know BLM are self declared Marxists, and their ideology is destructive if not downright evil. So my advice to family and friends is to vote GOP across the board, because a political party that encourages BLM is going to take the US into a very dark period. 

I want to mention that to me some Democrats have gone over the line defending late term abortions, which I see as putting babies in a large blender and turning the ON button. And I despise their emerging worship of science, which they use to justify skipping over common sense, engineering and economics. 

And that's all I have to say about this topic. 

Wuhan virus convalescent patient plasma is a cure

This is the Google translation of an article in ABC, a Spanish newspaper. ABC has adopted a very focused anti Trump editorial line, therefore its articles always include a fuzzy or subtle attack against anything Trump may have done or said. ABC is read by a large Hispanic audience in the US, therefore the anti Trump slant is a clear attempt to influence US elections. 

The bottom line of the article, if we strip away the bullshit, is that Wuhan hospitalized patients treated with the blood plasma from recovering or recovered patients don't die. The key is to give them the plasma during the first week after the onset of symptoms. 

Article follows: 

"It is not conclusive yet, but the plasma of those of the patients recovered from Covid could be a good ally to avoid deaths and admissions to ICUs.  The first clinical trial, carried out in 20 hospitals and blood transfusion centers throughout Spain, reveals encouraging results for the treatment of the pandemic.  Transfusing the blood with the antibodies of convalescent people who have overcome the virus could slow the cascading worsening of the sick, the researchers conclude.

 The study, coordinated by the Puerta de Hierro Majadahonda Hospital in Madrid, offers a small but revealing sample of 81 patients during the first wave of the virus.  At random, half were given plasma plus a standard treatment (remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, dexamethasone ...) and the rest (the control group) medication without plasma.  All were treated with a single dose of plasma and received medical aids for respiratory support.  Six of the 43 patients in the control group - who did not receive the transfusion with the antibodies - worsened, needed to be admitted to the intensive care unit and received assisted respiration.  Fourteen percent died, but none of the 38 patients treated with plasma lost their lives.  The survival rate of these patients was one hundred percent.

 Works in the early stage

 “We believe that the therapy has worked because we treat our patients in an early stage of the disease, when they had just been hospitalized and it had only been 7-8 days since the onset of the first symptoms.  At that time, there is a viral peak, but the disease has not yet triggered an inflammatory storm.  The plasma provides new antibodies that reinforce the immune system and help the patient to fight against the infection ", explains Rafael Duarte, coordinator of the Spanish study together with the researcher Cristina Avendaño.

 Duarte's analysis agrees with the results of two other studies conducted in China and the Netherlands, which included hospitalized patients with more severe forms of Covid-19, some admitted to ICUs.  In both studies, the conclusion is different from the Spanish study.  Plasma was not helpful, probably because the patients treated were more severe cases in which transfusions did not appear to be the best option.

 Who benefits?

Who can benefit from transfusions, at what time, at what age or with what complication of Covid, are questions that still have no answer.  Spanish research wants to answer them in a new phase of the study that will include more patients.

 The results of the Spanish studies will be added to an international scientific initiative that aims to add several clinical trials, "like the pieces of a great puzzle," says Duarte.  Only then can it be offered as a non-experimental treatment, he says, referring to the accelerated approval that the United States has already done.  "Now the available scientific evidence does not advise it, although the United States Drug Administration may have information that is not in the public domain," he says. If it worked, there would be an apparently safe and inexpensive treatment that would not depend on the production of the pharmaceutical industry in the absence of other alternatives.  And most importantly, capable of saving lives.

link https://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-transfusiones-plasma-evitan-ingresos-y-muertes-202009030132_noticia.html