Jan 242020
 
 January 24, 2020  Posted by at 10:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


John Vachon Window in home of unemployed steelworker, Ambridge, PA 1941

 

Chinese Hospitals In Chaos As Lockdown Spreads To Affect 33m People (G.)
Four ‘Generations’ Of Spread Seen With Virus In China (STAT)
Cases of China’s Viral Pneumonia Surge Exponentially (ET)
Wuhan Virus Will Shape China’s Smart City Vision (R.)
Doomsday Clock Moves Within 100 Seconds Of Midnight (NPR)
The House Impeachment Case Vs The Law of Attempts (Turley)
Fed’s Repos Drop to Oct Level, T-Bills Surge, But MBS Fall (WS)
Turkey Demands Greece “Demilitarize” 16 Aegean Islands (ZH)
Assange May Not Get First Amendment Protection (AAP)
Go to Gaza and Cry ‘Never Again’ (Haaretz)
America’s Radioactive Secret (Rolling Stone)

 

 

Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year. 450 million Chinese plan to travel to see family. 41 million are now under lockdown. 850 cases of “coronavirus” have been confirmed. 26 people have died, the elderly and vulnerable. But there are many reports of actual numbers being much higher.

Only 23.8% of Chinese doctors have a bachelor degree or higher. There are 60,000 licensed general practitioners in a country of 1.3 billion people.

Meanwhile, the Chinese “eat everything on four legs except for the table”.

“..the race to build a new 1,000-bed hospital in just six days began on Thursday night..”

Chinese Hospitals In Chaos As Lockdown Spreads To Affect 33m People (G.)

Hospitals in the Chinese city of Wuhan have been thrown into chaos and the movement of about 33 million people has been restricted by an unprecedented and indefinite lockdown imposed to halt the spread of the deadly new coronavirus. At least ten cities in central Hubei province have been shut down in an effort to stop the virus, which by Friday had killed 26 people across China and affected more than 800. The World Health Organisation described the outbreak as an emergency for China, but stopped short of declaring it to be a public health emergency of international concern.

In the city of Wuhan, where most cases have occurred, the race to build a new 1,000-bed hospital in just six days began on Thursday night. Diggers and bulldozers beginning work on the site of a holiday complex once intended for local workers, according to Chinese media. The hospital, which is due to open next week, is similar to those established in Beijing in 2003, when the city faced a Sars outbreak that killed almost 800 people and reached nearly 30 countries. During that crisis, 7,000 workers in Beijing built the Xiaotangshan hospital in its northern suburbs in just a week. Within two months, it treated one-seventh of all the country’s Sars patients, the Changjiang Daily said.

“It created a miracle in the history of medical science,” the paper added. It said the new Wuhan hospital “is to solve the shortage of existing medical resources”. People who sought treatment in Wuhan this week told the Guardian they had been turned away from hospitals, which have been inundated with patients. Facilities are reportedly running out of beds and diagnostic kits for patients who present with fever-like symptoms. [..] A series of additional measures were announced on Friday to prevent the spread of the virus, including a call from The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist party’s main newspaper, for people who have recently been to Wuhan to isolate themselves at home, even if they don’t have symptoms. The cities of Wuhan, Ezhou, Huanggang, Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao have all been placed under lockdown.

Read more …

It’s advanced up to a point where it can no longer be ignored. That’s China for you.

Four ‘Generations’ Of Spread Seen With Virus In China (STAT)

Emerging data on the new virus circulating in China adds to evidence there is sustained human-to-human transmission in the city of Wuhan, and that a single case was able to ignite a chain of other infections. The World Health Organization reported Thursday that there have been at least four generations of spread of the new virus, provisionally called 2019-nCoV, meaning a person who contracted the virus from a non-human source — presumably an animal — has infected a person, who infected another person, who then infected another person. It’s not clear from a WHO statement whether transmission petered out after that point, or whether further generations of cases from those chains are still to come.

The WHO said the current estimate of the reproductive rate of the virus — the number of people, on average, that each infected person infects — is between 1.4 and 2.5. To stop an outbreak, the reproduction number has to be brought below one. “That gives me no comfort at all that anything that’s happening right now is going to bring this under control any time soon,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said of the data the WHO released. “And I think that as long as the virus is circulating in China as it appears to be, the rest of the world is going to be constantly pinged with it, as a result of people traveling to and from China in the near future,” he said.

To date, nine other countries, including the United States, have diagnosed cases of this new illness in tourists who traveled to Wuhan or residents who returned from there. Dr. Allison McGeer, who has firsthand experience with outbreaks caused by coronaviruses — the family to which 2019-nCoV belongs — also expressed concern about prospects for containing the outbreak. McGeer, a researcher at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, noted that the city’s SARS outbreak took off when fourth-generation cases were infected in the city’s hospitals. McGeer contracted SARS during that outbreak.

Read more …

No place in the hospital.

Cases of China’s Viral Pneumonia Surge Exponentially (ET)

It started with a light cough. He burped constantly, and complained of shortness of breath. Family members thought it was no big deal. The doctor said he seemed to have heart problems and suggested him to stay in the hospital. He appeared healthy except for a minor infection in one lung area. Two weeks later, he was dead, with both lungs infected and organ failure. His doctors at the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital determined the cause of death as “unknown pneumonia.” It was days before Chinese health authorities identified the cause of the new viral pneumonia as 2019-nCoV, a coronavirus that first emerged in December in the commercial city of Wuhan, his home city.

As of press time, the virus has since sickened more than 540 people across China and around the world, with confirmed cases in South Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States. Much remains unclear about the virus that has sparked fear around the world and cast a cloud over the upcoming Lunar New Year festivities, a major traditional holiday when millions of Chinese travel to their hometowns or go on vacations abroad. Experts say the mass movement of people could accelerate the disease’s spread. The virus has already spread across the country to 17 provinces and regions.

To the man’s family, his death is far from the end of their sorrows. Among his relatives, five have fallen ill: one is under emergency rescue at a Wuhan hospital; his niece and nephew-in-law also have lung infections but doctors turned them away, saying there’s no space for them at the hospital; two others are also experiencing pneumonia-like symptoms. Buying one dose of medicine means waiting for hours in line. His sister, currently in Norway, told The Epoch Times that she was being “silenced” by Chinese authorities and not allowed to post anything about his death. The man is not listed on the authorities’ official death toll, because he did not show any signs of fever, his sister said. She has requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

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Never let a good crisis go to waste. Surveillance is good for you!

Wuhan Virus Will Shape China’s Smart City Vision (R.)

An epidemic will shape China’s vision of intelligent cities. The metropolis of Wuhan, with a population of 11 million, is under unprecedented quarantine as a deadly virus, believed to have originated there, spreads around the world ahead of the Lunar New Year when hundreds of millions of Chinese travel. Big investments in healthcare, artificial intelligence, and even surveillance could help curb future pandemics and cushion some institutional weaknesses. [..] The future may be less grim: President Xi Jinping has pushed to upgrade the country’s rickety healthcare system, enlisting technology giants including $474 billion Tencent and insurance group Ping An.

A unit of the latter has partnered with local governments in Shenzhen and Chongqing to develop an algorithm it claims can predict the transmission of influenza and other infectious diseases with 90%-plus accuracy. Elsewhere, the likes of $50 billion video-surveillance specialist, Hikvision, are helping Beijing develop high-tech, digitally-connected urban areas. More than 500 so-called smart cities are already being built across China, according to government figures, equipped with sensors, cameras, and other gadgets that can crunch data on everything from traffic and pollution, to public health and security.

That market could top 103 billion yuan ($15 billion) in revenue by 2023, according to research commissioned by facial-recognition startup Megvii. Until now the push has focused on automating political surveillance, including ugly applications in restive ethnic minority regions like Xinjiang, with little regard to human rights or privacy concerns. But there’s a potential public good if the tech can be re-deployed to detect unusual numbers of feverish people in train stations, for example, while simultaneously cross-referencing healthcare history, travel records and weather patterns. After Wuhan, the pressure to deliver health security, not just political security, will be higher.

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Meat for sale in China (without the bats used for soup):



Doesn’t feel like that for me.

Doomsday Clock Moves Within 100 Seconds Of Midnight (NPR)

In 1953, months after the U.S. tested its first hydrogen bomb and as the Soviet Union was about to do the same, the Doomsday Clock was also set within two minutes of midnight. The minute hand was moved back gradually as nuclear arms control agreements reduced the threat of global catastrophe. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended in 1991, the clock was set at an unprecedented 17 minutes to midnight. It has moved closer ever since. “What you’re hearing,” said former California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who appeared at the event as the Bulletin’s new executive chairman, “is really the voices of the prophets of doom. Speaking of danger and destruction is never very easy — if you speak the truth, people will not want to listen, because it’s too awful and it makes you sound like a crackpot.”

The clock’s minute hand was moved forward after the August 2019 collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the U.S. and Russia. The demise of the pact frees both nations to deploy land-based missiles over ranges that leave little time for a response. There were also growing signs in 2019 that the Trump administration was aiming to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, which allows the U.S. and Russia to observe one another’s military installations through closely monitored overflights. And Iran increased its stockpile of low-enriched uranium and added new and improved centrifuges last year in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawing from a multination nuclear pact with Iran that was forged during the Obama administration.

“I have to admit [that] we set the clock in November,” said George Washington University research professor Sharon Squassoni. “This was before recent military actions by the U.S. and Iran, Iran’s statement or threat that it might leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and North Korea’s abandonment of talks with the United States.” A growing number of disasters linked to global climate change resulting from the continued consumption of fossil fuels was another factor cited for moving the clock even closer to midnight. “We’re in it, it’s dire, but we’re not there yet,” said Brown. “We can still pull back from the brink, but we have to do what we’re not doing. Whatever we’ve done to date, it is totally inadequate.”

Read more …

Close to thought crime.

The House Impeachment Case Vs The Law of Attempts (Turley)

With the start of the impeachment trial, the Senate (and the country) will soon be faced with what the late Yale professor Arthur Leff described as one of the law’s most “lovely, knotty problems.” Leff was speaking of what is loosely called “the law of attempts,” a category of crimes where someone is accused of contemplating, but not actually carrying out, an unlawful act. The Trump trial could be the first time the Senate considers charges that amount to allegedly conceiving, but then abandoning, an abuse of power. While it is certainly true that there was a temporary act of “nonfeasance” in withholding the aid to Ukraine, it was ultimately released over two weeks before the deadline under federal law.

The Trump administration will argue that there was no quid pro quo between the president of the United States and the president of Ukraine; that the military aid to Kyiv, though authorized by Congress, was never withheld; and that the White House always intended to release the aid by the end of September. (It was released on Sept. 11, two days after a whistleblower complaint about the alleged bargain sparked congressional inquiries and, according to critics, was the reason that Trump decided to release the aid.) The question for the Senate is whether an attempt to cut the deal qualifies as a high crime or misdemeanor. The law of attempts has long been debated, and has often favored defendants in securing lesser punishments or outright acquittals.

When, in 1879, an Alaska man sent an order for 100 gallons of whiskey from California, he was charged with illegally attempting to “introduce spirituous liquors” into Alaska. A court dismissed the charge, writing, “There are a class of acts which may be fairly said to be done in pursuance of or in combination with an intent to commit a crime, but are not, in a legal sense, a part of it, and therefore do not, with such intent, constitute an indictable attempt.” That helps explain why such attempted crimes are generally punished less severely. The California Penal Code Section 664 stipulates, for example, that most attempted offenses are punishable, at most, at a level half that for a completed offense. Of course, the Senate cannot “half-remove” a president. But one of the more knotty problems facing the Senate is whether a president can be saved by what Leff called the “luck” of an alleged plan that never actually played out.

Read more …

Can be restarted in a heartbeat. By killing the markets, the Fed has made itself a prisoner.

Fed’s Repos Drop to Oct Level, T-Bills Surge, But MBS Fall (WS)

The Fed had doused the market with $410 billion in liquidity between September and January 1 through its repo operations and its T-bill purchases. Market hype had expected this blistering pace of money-printing to continue, but wait… While T-bill purchases continue, the repos on the Fed’s balance sheet are getting unwound, its mortgage-backed securities (MBS) continue to fall, and total assets on its balance sheet fell to the lowest level since mid-December. Under these repurchase agreements, the Fed offers to buy Treasury securities, MBS, and agency securities from counterparties with an agreement to sell those securities back to the counterparties at a set price on a specific date, such as the next day (overnight repos) or in 14 days or some other period (term repos).

When a repurchase agreement matures, the Fed takes back the money it had handed out and returns the securities to the counterparties. This zeros out that particular repo on the Fed’s balance sheet. When the Fed buys securities under a repurchase agreement, the amount it pays adds liquidity to the market. When that repo unwinds, and the Fed gets its cash back and returns the securities, it drains this liquidity from the market. Every day, old repos unwind. And every day, the Fed offers new repos. This is a constant in-and-out. The balance changes every day, but it has been on an uneven decline since the peak on January 1.

The total amount of repos on the Fed’s weekly balance sheet as of January 22, released this afternoon, has now fallen by $70 billion from the peak on January 1 ($256 billion), to $186 billion. This is below where it had first been on October 16. The $43-billion drop in repos over the past seven days was largely due to a 32-day $50-billion repo, dating from December 16, that unwound on January 17. It was not replaced by another 30-day repo, and there are no more 30-day repos on the Fed’s repo schedule or balance sheet.

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Erdogan wants to redo the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. He has little to lose, and much to gain domestically. But he has Putin against him.

Turkey Demands Greece “Demilitarize” 16 Aegean Islands (ZH)

At a moment tensions are soaring over Turkey’s expansive East Mediterranean claims, and after starting early last summer it began sending oil and gas exploration and drilling ships off Cyprus’ coast, Ankara is demanding that Greece “demilitarize” its islands in the Aegean Sea, reports Bloomberg. The demand from Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, who formally requested Greece move to withdraw armed forces and weaponry from 16 Aegean islands near Turkey on Wednesday, is rich given it’s Turkey that’s been provocatively sending warships and military jets to accompany illegal gas drilling in the area, something lately condemned by the EU.

“Greece, arming 16 out of 23 islands with non-military status, in violation of agreements in the Aegean sea, should act in accordance with international law,” said Defense Minister Akar, cited in state-run Anadolu Agency. “We expect Greece to act in line with international law and the agreements it has signed,” he added. Though becoming increasingly internationally isolated over the drilling issue in EU-member Cyrpus’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Turkey has remained unmoved and at times is positively boastful about it.

Not shying away from admitting Turkish maritime claims now stretch from Cypriot waters all the way to Libya (based on a controversial recent maritime boundary ‘deal’ signed with the Tripoli Government of National Accord), Akar further had this to say according to state media: In addition to the fight against terrorism, Turkey’s activities are ongoing in the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean, off Cyprus, and Libya, Akar said, adding that they are carried out in accordance with international law and the territorial integrity of the countries. Turkey is a guarantor country for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and is committed to fulfilling its responsibilities, he said.

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Let’s see a few countries apply this to Americans.

Assange May Not Get First Amendment Protection (AAP)

Julian Assange faces the prospect of being denied press protections under US law if he goes to trial there, WikiLeaks says, citing evidence submitted for his London extradition case. The 48-year-old WikiLeaks founder is set to face trial in the UK next month to determine whether he should be extradited to the US, where he has been charged with 17 counts of spying and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The charges related to allegations Assange tried to help former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning protect her digital identity as she accessed classified Pentagon files on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. WikiLeaks helped publish thousands of those files, including some that revealed US war crimes in both countries.

His case is widely viewed as a litmus test for the protection of journalists’ sources. WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson says a new affidavit provided by US government lawyers this week for Assange’s upcoming extradition trial states that foreign nationals, like Assange, are not entitled to press protections under the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Mr Hrafnsson revealed the development outside Assange’s case management hearing at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday. “On the one hand they have decided that they can go after journalists wherever they are residing in the world, they have universal jurisdiction, and demand extradition like they are doing by trying to get an Australian national from the UK for publishing that took place outside US borders,” he told AAP.

“But then at the same time they are not granting any foreign journalist the protection of the First Amendment. “That’s extremely serious. That’s of grave concern to all journalists. “We are seeing this incremental approach, a darkness flowing over journalism from that country, and it’s about time that journalists really united in resisting this.” Assange appeared by video link from prison at Thursday’s hearing, and did not speak except to say his name and birthdate for the court. Judge Vanessa Baraitser reluctantly agreed to split his trial into two segments with the first week to begin on February 24 and the final three weeks to be held from May 18.

Her ruling came after prosecutors flagged timetabling issues and the defence pleaded for more time to deal with an ever-expanding pile of evidence coming from the US. Mr Hrafnsson says the delay may give Assange and his legal team more time to review mounting evidence, as they have only been permitted four hours together since his arrest on April 11. But he admitted it would also further extend Assange’s time behind bars. “A maximum security prison for a non-violent person like Julian, who is a free man basically, who is on remand, is outrageous,” Mr Hrafnsson told AAP. “It’s totally unacceptable.”

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Commemorations vs political games.

Go to Gaza and Cry ‘Never Again’ (Haaretz)

It’s very important to remember the past; no less important is to be cognizant of the present without shutting one’s eyes. The dozens of statesmen who arrived in Israel yesterday may remember the past, but they’re blurring the present. In their silence, in their disregard of reality while lining up unconditionally alongside Israel, they not only betray their roles, they also betray the memory of the past in the name of which they came here. To be the guests of Israel without mentioning its crimes; to commemorate the Holocaust while ignoring its lessons; to visit Jerusalem without traveling to the Gaza ghetto on International Holocaust Remembrance Day – one can barely think of any greater hypocrisy.

It’s good that kings, presidents and other notables came here in honor of this remembrance day. It’s deplorable that they’re ignoring what the victims of the Holocaust are inflicting on another nation. The city of Yerevan will never witness such an impressive gathering to commemorate the Armenian holocaust. World leaders will never come to Kigali to mark the genocide that happened in Rwanda. The Holocaust was indeed the greatest crime ever against humanity, but it was not the only one. But Jews and the state of Israel know well how to sanctify its memory as well as using it for their own purposes.

On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, world leaders are the guests of an Israeli prime minister who, on the eve of their visit, called for sanctions – believe it or not – on the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is a legacy of the courts that were set up to judge the crimes of World War II. On this Remembrance Day, world leaders are coming to a prime minister who is trying to incite them against the court in The Hague. It’s hard to think of a more galling use of the Holocaust, it’s hard to conceive of a bigger betrayal of its memory than the attempt to undermine the court in The Hague only because it wishes to fulfill its role and investigate Jerusalem. The guests will hold their silence on this issue as well. Some of them may be persuaded that the problem is in The Hague, not in Jerusalem. Sanctions on the court instead of on the occupying state.

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“Ten or 15 years down the road, if I get sick, I want to be able to prove this.”

America’s Radioactive Secret (Rolling Stone)

In 2014, a muscular, middle-aged Ohio man named Peter took a job trucking waste for the oil-and-gas industry. The hours were long — he was out the door by 3 a.m. every morning and not home until well after dark — but the steady $16-an-hour pay was appealing, says Peter, who asked to use a pseudonym. “This is a poverty area,” he says of his home in the state’s rural southeast corner. “Throw a little money at us and by God we’ll jump and take it.” In a squat rig fitted with a 5,000-gallon tank, Peter crisscrosses the expanse of farms and woods near the Ohio/West Virginia/Pennsylvania border, the heart of a region that produces close to one-third of America’s natural gas.

He hauls a salty substance called “brine,” a naturally occurring waste product that gushes out of America’s oil-and-gas wells to the tune of nearly 1 trillion gallons a year, enough to flood Manhattan, almost shin-high, every single day. At most wells, far more brine is produced than oil or gas, as much as 10 times more. It collects in tanks, and like an oil-and-gas garbage man, Peter picks it up and hauls it off to treatment plants or injection wells, where it’s disposed of by being shot back into the earth. One day in 2017, Peter pulled up to an injection well in Cambridge, Ohio. A worker walked around his truck with a hand-held radiation detector, he says, and told him he was carrying one of the “hottest loads” he’d ever seen. It was the first time Peter had heard any mention of the brine being radioactive.

The Earth’s crust is in fact peppered with radioactive elements that concentrate deep underground in oil-and-gas-bearing layers. This radioactivity is often pulled to the surface when oil and gas is extracted — carried largely in the brine. In the popular imagination, radioactivity conjures images of nuclear meltdowns, but radiation is emitted from many common natural substances, usually presenting a fairly minor risk. Many industry representatives like to say the radioactivity in brine is so insignificant as to be on par with what would be found in a banana or a granite countertop, so when Peter demanded his supervisor tell him what he was being exposed to, his concerns were brushed off; the liquid in his truck was no more radioactive than “any room of your home,” he was told. But Peter wasn’t so sure. “A lot of guys are coming up with cancer, or sores and skin lesions that take months to heal,” he says. Peter experiences regular headaches and nausea, numbness in his fingertips and face, and “joint pain like fire.”

He says he wasn’t given any safety instructions on radioactivity, and while he is required to wear steel-toe boots, safety glasses, a hard hat, and clothes with a flash-resistant coating, he isn’t required to wear a respirator or a dosimeter to measure his radioactivity exposure — and the rest of the uniform hardly offers protection from brine. “It’s all over your hands, and inside your boots, and on the cuticles of your toes, and any cuts you have — you’re soaked,” he says. So Peter started quietly taking samples of the brine he hauled, filling up old antifreeze containers or soda bottles. Eventually, he packed a shed in his backyard with more than 40 samples. He worried about further contamination but says, for him, “the damage is already done.” He wanted answers. “I cover my ass,” he says. “Ten or 15 years down the road, if I get sick, I want to be able to prove this.”

Read more …

 

From Suzie Dawson:

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle January 24 2020

Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)
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  • #52968

    John Vachon Window in home of unemployed steelworker, Ambridge, PA 1941   • Chinese Hospitals In Chaos As Lockdown Spreads To Affect 33m People (
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 24 2020]

    #52969
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    The depth of the manure today exceeds the height of my boots; oh wow, I hate that squishy sound/feeling… 😉

    #52970
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Am I crazy here, or does China have a different health perspective based on Chinese medicine and therefore not “General Practitioners” who are Western? Not sure what that means, but sounds similar to complaining there are only 27,000 TCM doctors in the U.S. Well, yes. We’re not China, China’s not us. We’re different.

    That’s not to say Western medicine isn’t better in a crisis or epidemic, it may be; it’s to say I don’t know and those numbers won’t tell me.

    In death tolls, when it was a dozen, apparently 8 were over 80, 5 were over 70, and three had serious underlying health conditions. Like usual, that ain’t much of a death toll, hardly greater than the common cold. Yet they are reacting very seriously and not blaming us, and I don’t know why. Isn’t it legally REQUIRED to blame America for everything? Also didn’t entirely grasp that sure, a dozen people at first, but 0.01% of 1.38 Billion is 13 million people, as we’re rapidly realizing.

    So, to commenters, given some weird elements here, a test run for plausible lockdowns? Why? For upcoming food shortages? How many journalists have gotten sick and “disappeared” compared to the general population, as set by a few years of their social-credit scores?

    Wuhan Virus Will Shape China’s Smart City Vision (R.)” Aha.

    Take a peep at the U.S. system: so everyone is catastrophically sick with completely voluntary diseases and the hospitals are full. Well-stocked, sure, but dizzying consumers of all supplies under our present procedures. So you think we can absorb 10,000 new patients per city? And what, kick all the heart patients and diabetics out on the street? Profit says you have to run at 100% capacity though, and with no cost or consequence to your bad lifestyle choices, it’s somebody else’s cost, somebody else’s fault.

    Doomsday Clock Moves within 100 Seconds of Midnight (NPR)

    So after being wrong for 60 years, they move the clock again? It’s been a second to midnight my whole life. Nothing’s happened but they sure scared the heck out of me and caused a lot of child suicides over the years. That was before I realized if a adult human said it, it’s a bat-s—t, fabricated, self-serving bald-faced lie. Children lie only half the time, a pleasant relief. So the clock is run by adults? It’s a lie. It’s run by schmarty-guyz, in the media? It’s definitely and COMPLETELY a lie, and almost certainly a knowing one. Known because smart people can’t say it’s two minutes to midnight for 60 years without failing statistics 120 semesters in a row. Lookin’ at you NPR, Yale graduates and the dumbest guys in the room.

    More productively? It’s political. Propaganda. Theatre. Now just look for the stage director and the script.

    ““the law of attempts,” a category of crimes”

    It cannot be a crime if it wasn’t committed. Even if you had a brain-intent recording machine on tape – which you don’t — it still wouldn’t be a crime. We don’t arrest people for wanting to swear and not, or thinking about not paying their rent. But isn’t this a caution about the problems of “Thoughtcrime”, which is not a joke to these people but actually believed and actually prosecuted? Just had this in a Danish interview with Facebook about a certain British Mr. Robinson. The Dane said, “Oh yes, I totally, totally believe everything you say about Robinson, of course! So…can you point me to the quotes where he said anything bad, incited or promoted ay violence?”

    Facebook say: “…Er…he has, that is…der…we all know…it’s more a contextual that WE at Facebook know what he MEANT by what he’s never even once said…”

    O RLY? So you know and bann people – forever, without trial or appeal – not even on what they’ve DONE, but on what YOU THINK THEY MIGHT SAY, BUT NEVER HAVE? = Thoughtcrime. Coming to your town, but it’s already there, planetwide, down to the tiniest Boy Scout meeting.

    Since y’all like fascism and tyranny so much and won’t lift a finger, You’re Next. Might what to brush up on your Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, it’ll come in handy in ‘Bernie’s’ education camps.

    Am I kidding? Germany just outlawed, “Climate Hysteria” as a plausible word yesterday. A French author was just jailed for having the opinion that a few million sudden immigrants could plausibly be characterized as an “Invasion”. Invasion /ɪnˈveɪ·ʒən The entering or taking over of a place, or being entered by force.

    Opinions are treason. When I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.

    “Fed’s Repos Drop to Oct Level, T-Bills Surge, But MBS Fall (WS)”

    Finally to something important, the number hasn’t dropped, it’s $730B, what they’re doing is hiding it, but only a little since everybody loves fraud and nobody cares. For instance, FICC has now bought $60B. Who’s the FICC? Funny you should as: it’s an empty shell corporation, a clearinghouse with no assets run by the DTCC. Whos the DTCC? Since they’re the nexus of all stocks in the U.S. of $34 Trillion, maybe should look it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation
    They’re a shell corporation that’s owned by Cede and Co. (as in, surrender, give up), a shell entity that keeps bookwork on who owes what stocks to whom among EVERY bank, Hedge Fund, and Person on earth. –And owning paper copies are now illegal. That’s odd, why dat? So…when you have a “flash-crash” sale and Fargo doesn’t like taking a loss? DTCC reverses the trade so they win. When you have a stock vote in Taser and 130% more people vote than shares exist? That’s DTCC having so completely lost track of stock certificates that there are double, triple, quadruple more shares in Morgan and Citi slush than were ever issued: that is to say, they’re counterfeited. At will. Any time they like. For any reason. How to you think Sachs make 400 winning trading days in a row? With ONLY insider trading? And stock is now issued like with Overstock.com, at 2x, 5x, 25x multiples created out of thin air – because nobody’s watching the books – and used to short troublemakers like Overstock, or Blackberry, or whoever Tesla’s or Amazon’s enemies are today, and run them out of business.
    Every day of the year. It’s called “failures to deliver” and it’s been going on almost 20 years in numbers that beggar the imagination.

    So FICC, like the DTCC, has no assets and no oversight and no accountants. So they just say, “I have a used pack of Wrigley’s gum, and I can now borrow against that chewing gum to the tune of $60B, and $6,000 Billion tomorrow if I want”, and nobody says anything. And they did so earlier this month.

    Okay, so what’s the problem here, aside from the obvious one: money if worthless and everybody (that’s you) loves fraud more than air?

    We can be almost completely sure that, like Taser and Overstock, EVERY SINGLE SIFI BANK – all of them, UBS, Santander, Sumitomo, DeutscheBank, Morgan – has for historic reasons, to rig that price, to win that extra trade, 25 years ago, has COUNTERFEITED U.S. Treasury bonds in the system. …Because nobody’s checking the system. Nobody cares, so long as it expands and not contracts, so long as it wins and not loses. So we have a case where, if you check the serial numbers, SOME HUGE NUMBER OF BONDS ARE DUPLICATES, triplicates, googleplexacates. —Hey, just like all those MBS mortgages, back in the ’08 crisis, Docktor? Yes, Virginia, just like that. Like selling the same house 20x to Norwegian pensions, owned by Fargo, owned by 20 other funds in the MERS system, owned by YOU too – because they’re trying to foreclose and you have no mortgage at all —

    “...until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew
    whether this one was that one… or that one was this one…
    or which one was what one… or what one was who
    !”

    So when you have a REPO crisis, and somebody’s going down, maybe the real problem is that the banks are aware that 10%, 1/3, HALF of all bonds they are posting for overnight are FAKE? And they could get caught with the counterfeit? The whole system is essentially a fake? And being system-wide and going back to the 90’s, it literally can’t BE unfaked? No method on earth can possibly un-f—k the system this corrupt?

    What does the Fed do? Well the “Fed” is merely the SIFI banks and the banks are the Fed. So what do the banks do for themselves? They say, “We’re in a crisis. You just have to buy EVERYTHING, with NO QUESTIONS asked, FOREVER,” and therefore LAUNDER all the money, all the fraud, and make it money-good.

    Hey, Herr Docktor, is that like when the Fed bought AIG and the MBS at 100c on the $ when they were worth 15c? You know, making the banks whole at the taxpayers’ expense, and not only not PROSECUTING crime, but actually REWARDING it with multi-billion in bonuses, THAT YEAR and every years since? Yes, Virginia.

    So…this could be that kind of problem trader Armstrong was saying: a problem that is SO bad, SO systemic, SO insolvable, that no one will even TALK about it? Verboten, does not exist?
    Uh, yeah, something like that. Just a theory though. You can suggest it’s the trillions in negative Euro interest rates finally contaminating the Repo, or that it’s a generic bailout, but although those probably exist, from the actions I have to guess isn’t and is a lot bigger.

    “Tis a tangled web we weave / when first we practice to deceive.” The only way out is to come clean, stop lying. That will never happen, because the system itself is a lie and the system itself and all its power brokers will vanish and fail if truth returns. That’s why the only enemy, the only crime, is telling the truth. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum. Because they will. Right now.

    America’s Radioactive Secret (Rolling Stone)”

    Oh if only it were this. In our area, a load costs, say, $10,000. However, if someone were to loosen the petcock on the back of the truck and it leaked out on the roads on the way there, well, you and the company would just have to split the $10,000, wouldn’t you? Accidents happen. Shucks, Gomer, I won. And then I took my daughter to get chemo. Was it all worthwhile? You can’t prove nothin’. “No evidence was published.”

    And you wonder why Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum. The only way to make it stop.

    “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”

    #52972
    zerosum
    Participant

    How to become wealthy and powerful
    – use printed money/liquidity

    “The whole system is essentially a fake? And being system-wide and going back to the 90’s, it literally can’t BE unfaked?”

    “nobody’s checking the system. Nobody cares, so long as it expands and not contracts, so long as it wins and not loses. “

    Impeachment Gonna backfire. Even if innocent or – guilty
    Say bye-bye to Yesterday.
    Say hello to a diferent tomorrow.

    #52973
    zerosum
    Participant

    The Coronavirus

    Didn’t you hear it?
    FLAP – FLAP -flap – flap
    Was it a butterfly or a black swan or a diversion or an excuse/exaggeration to do a drill/test of the response system
    Say bye-bye to Yesterday.
    Say hello to a different tomorrow.

    #52974
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Damn, Dr. D!
    You got your finger on the pulse today.
    Ponzi schemes and pyramids all around.

    #52975

    Am I crazy here, or does China have a different health perspective based on Chinese medicine and therefore not “General Practitioners” who are Western? Not sure what that means, but sounds similar to complaining there are only 27,000 TCM doctors in the U.S. Well, yes. We’re not China, China’s not us. We’re different.

    Looks like China’s “health care model” works in isolated rural settings, not in the sort of concentrated and connected ones the country ended in post-Deng Xiao Ping.

    It’s easily a little bit strange that Xi Jinping and people like Hu Jintao before him haven’t addressed that issue. because these are bombs waiting to be ignited. It’s not just the lack of doctors and communication between them, it’s also the entire food system. “Eat everything on four legs except for the table” is an age-old idea that works only when a community has little connection with others. Deaths remain local and limited.

    Does Xi want to return to that? No. So there’s one choice only: sanitize it all. China’s also still the recipient for most rhino horns etc. They’re a major reason why many African species are under threat. “Chinese medicine”. F*ck that. Must also stop. Why do we still import any Chinese products while they refuse to solve that crime? Just say no more until it’s taken care of.

    it’s not about Chinese vs western medicine, but about organizational levels updated for increasing contact levels. They should have started this update 30 years ago. What happens when lots of people die and unrest breaks out? Xi’s going to kill them all?

    #52976
    PlanetaryCitizen
    Participant

    Jonathan Turley at his yet again lawyerly disingenuous best. First of all, the GAO has stated that what Trump did by withholding the aid was a violation of the Impoundment Control Act. The “law of attempt” consideration has been pretty well ruled out of existence for centuries. Attempted crimes such as extortion, murder, rape, robbery, etc, are crimes. Actions were taken to be fully successful in the commission of the “crime” in question by Trump and his cohorts. Well beyond the so called “thought crime” defense being offered to confuse the issue.

    #52977
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Meh, I dunno. He thought about not paying his rent, but eventually paid it. On time.

    …And that’s even if he ever thought about not paying, it, which I can’t prove.

    #52978
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Besides, the GAO is the House. Yeah, we know they dinna’ like: big surprise. There’s a parallel inspector that also saw it and did NOT care, showing it’s debatable. But in any case we already KNOW the House and Congress disagree with the GAO and didn’t care since THEY WATCHED IT, saw it, recorded it, marked it, AND SAID NOTHING. So if they — the House — were concerned why isn’t his –still potential — withholding of aid in front of the Supreme Court? Why? Because the House never brought suit to compel. …Which they never had to, because he provided all that aid, plus naughty Javelin missiles that Obama wouldn’t.

    Which shows they never cared a bit. They just make stuff up, like everybody else. My side, right or wrong. I thought it, now it’s real.

    #52979
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/associated-press-sees-hundreds-where-pictures-show-millions.html#more
    Muqtada al-Sadr, who had called for the protests but is hardly a ‘radical’, demanded that the U.S. follows the decision of the Iraqi parliament and ends its occupation. All U.S. bases in Iraq must be closed, all security agreements with the U.S. and with U.S. security companies must be ended and a schedule for the exit of all U.S. forces must be announced.

    Who is going to serve, mop, cook and not leave The Coronavirus polluting the Americans with phlegm..

    #52980
    zerosum
    Participant

    http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2020/01/23/Indian-nurse-in-Saudi-Arabia-diagnosed-with-coronavirus.html

    Thursday, 23 January 2020

    India’s minister of state for external affairs said on Thursday an Indian nurse working at a hospital in southern Saudi Arabia had been infected by the coronavirus amid an outbreak that has killed 17 people in China.
    However hours later the Saudi Center For Disease Prevention and Control said that there were “no cases of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Saudi Arabia so far.”
    “About 100 Indian nurses mostly from Kerala working at Al-Hayat hospital have been tested and none except one nurse was found infected by Corona virus,” said Vellamvelly Muraleedharan, Indian Minister of State for External Affairs.
    The nurse is being treated at Aseer National Hospital and “is recovering well,” he added.

    My observation.
    Are all the servants going to be sent home?
    More USA troop on the way.
    Who is going to serve, mop, cook and not leave The Coronavirus polluting the Americans with phlegm..

    #52981
    zerosum
    Participant
    #52982
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Shakes head in dis-belief; the liar nation, U.S., now admits 34 soldiers suffered brain injuries from Iran missile counter attack…
    Surprise, surprise…NOT!

    #52983
    WES
    Participant

    Raul:. China’s health care system reflects it’s ridgid communist past. The communists promised free health care for all.

    However implementing such a massive and “expensive” scheme suddenly required training new health care workers.

    The only way to produce the required number of needed health care workers and “keep costs down” was to reduce the standards of what was called a doctor! The same for nurses! Pay was kept at levels similar to average workers!

    The fallicy of this system is self evident! Why would any bright person to go to all the trouble of working extra hard in school to excell, then take on more years of schooling just to be a lowly paid doctor?

    Now let this disfunctional system fester for 7 decades and what do you think you get? A functioning system?

    I worked for 6 months in a Siberian coal mine back in 1983.

    A co-worker and room mate, Ken, suddenly developed accute appendicitus and was operated upon that very night. Everything went fine according to Ken, an experienced 3rd world traveler. They gave him the best of what they had.

    However the regional health authority, not trusting the locals, none-the-less sent out one of their doctors to check up on Ken to make sure everything was O.K. I remember Ken joking about this!

    This illustrates a key point. Even the real good Russian doctors did not think very highly of their community health care doctors!

    I suspect many of China’s so called comminity doctors are not trained to the level of what we call nurses. Their best doctors all reside in the big cities just like our doctors do!

    One of the take a ways I learned about communists, is they do not like anyone rocking their boat! Trust me I rocked their boat many times!

    #52984
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    This is interesting:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-researcher-predicts-over-250000-people-china-will-have-coronavirus-ten-days

    True? I do not know. But certainly worth a thought, no?
    Here in LOS we went from 4 cases, to 5 this morning.
    We’ll see…

    #52985
    WES
    Participant

    V.Arnold:. It is simply the power of compounding!

    The only variables are the timing between compounding (i.e. the time interval between catching the virus and becoming infectious) and how many people you infect.

    With 400 million Chinese traveling this week, what better conditions could you ask for to spread this virus far and wide?

    #52986
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    With 400 million Chinese traveling this week, what better conditions could you ask for to spread this virus far and wide?

    Yes indeed; ripe for an epidemic.
    The potential for a 1918 repeat is certainly there…
    We’ll see…and that’s a certainty…

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