Jun 262020
 
 June 26, 2020  Posted by at 11:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Dorothea Lange Depression refugee family from Tulsa, Oklahoma 1936

 

US Coronavirus Cases ‘May Have Topped 20 Million’ (BBC)
Pompeo Says US, EU Working To Resume Trans-Atlantic Travel (R.)
House Defense Bill Targets Troop Drawdowns In Africa, South Korea (Hill)
No More Crossing Borders For Work (Salmon)
The Fed Said It Could Supply $2.3 Trillion. It Hasn’t Come Close So Far (CNBC)
Parents To Sue Trump, Meme Creator Carpe Donktum Over Manipulated Video Of Toddlers
Why Joe Biden Can Do No Wrong (Turley)
Bayer Wants To Resolve Future Roundup Liability In A Class Action (R.)
New Assange Indictment Only Adds ‘Window Dressing’ to ‘Continue Smear Campaign’ (Sp.)
Doctors for Assange: UK Officials May be Legally Culpable for His Torture (CN)

 

 

Say what you will, but that virus is not sitting still, got to give it that. And as for us, we’re either not sitting still enough, or we’re making the wrong moves.

And I still can’t decide what I find scarier, that or the fast deteriorating political and media climate stateside.

Worldometer reports new cases for June 25 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 179,718.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 41,317
• Brazil + 40,673
• India + 17,720

 

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is where you say all bets are off, I guess.

US Coronavirus Cases ‘May Have Topped 20 Million’ (BBC)

At least 20 million people in the US may already have been infected with Covid-19, according to the latest estimate by health officials. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says the true number of cases is likely to be 10 times higher than the reported figure. It comes as the state of Texas halted its reopening as infections and hospitalisations surged. The US has recorded 2.4m confirmed infections and 122,370 deaths. Some southern and western states have been reporting record numbers of cases in recent days. The University of Washington predicts 180,000 US deaths by October – or 146,000 if 95% of Americans wear masks.

“Our best estimate right now is that for every case that was reported, there actually were 10 other infections,” CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield told reporters. This was because testing was restricted to people with symptoms and asymptomatic carriers were not tested, he said. “We probably recognized about 10% of the outbreak by the methods that we use to diagnosis between the March, April and May,” he said. Dr Redfield said that between 5% and 8% of the population had been exposed to the virus and urged Americans to keep social distancing, wearing masks and washing hands. “As we go into the fall, in the winter, these are going to be really, really important defence mechanisms,” he said.

[Texas], which has been at the forefront of moves to end lockdown measures, has seen thousands of new cases, prompting Republican Governor Greg Abbott to call a temporary halt to its reopening. “This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread until we can safely enter the next phase of opening our state for business,” he said. Texas confirmed a record 5,996 new cases on Thursday. There were also 47 new deaths, the highest daily toll for a month. The state has also seen record number of people requiring hospital treatment for 13 days in a row. Elective surgery has been suspended in the Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio areas to free up beds. More than 10% of the tests carried out over the past week have come back positive. All but 12 of the state’s 254 counties have reported cases.

Read more …

Yeah, Europeans can’t wait to invite a bunch of infected Usaians to their homes.

Pompeo Says US, EU Working To Resume Trans-Atlantic Travel (R.)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played down concerns Thursday that the European Union might refuse to allow Americans into the 27-nation bloc as it considers lifting restrictions on overseas travelers starting next week, due to the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. “It’s a challenge for all of us to decide how and when to open up our economies and our societies. Everybody’s trying to figure that out,” Pompeo said during a videoconference organized by the German Marshall Fund think tank. “We’re working with our European counterparts to get that right.” European nations appear on track to reopen their borders between each other by July 1. Their envoys to Brussels are debating what virus-related criteria should apply when lifting entry restrictions on travelers from outside the EU that were imposed in March.

As the criteria are narrowed down, a list of countries whose citizens might be allowed in is being drawn up. The list would be updated every 14 days based on how the coronavirus is spreading around the world. The EU’s executive commission recommends that “travel restrictions should not be lifted as regards third countries where the situation is worse” than the average in the 27 EU member countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. That is likely to rule out people living in the United States, where new coronavirus infections have surged to the highest level in two months, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Beyond epidemiological concerns, any country being considered would first be expected to lift its own travel restrictions on visitors from all 31 European nations. This would also rule out the US. In a March 11 decree, President Donald Trump suspended the entry of all people from Europe’s ID check-free travel area. More than 10 million Europeans usually visit the United States each year.

Read more …

The war party has two wings.

House Defense Bill Targets Troop Drawdowns In Africa, South Korea (Hill)

The House Armed Services Committee’s version of the annual defense policy bill seeks to put roadblocks on withdrawing U.S. troops from Africa and South Korea. The so-called chairman’s mark of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – the version of the bill drafted by Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) – would require the Pentagon to report to Congress on the effects, implications and costs of a troop drawdown in Africa on military, diplomatic, development and humanitarian efforts. It would also require a report on the effects of a drawdown within 90 days if the number of troops dips below 80 percent of current force posture.

Reports first surfaced earlier this year that Defense Secretary Mark Esper was eying slashing the number of U.S. troops in Africa as part of a global review of U.S. force posture to redirect troops to counter Russia and China. He later confirmed he was considering a reduction but insisted it would not be a full withdrawal. The plan received bipartisan backlash from lawmakers who argued the troops are needed not only to fight terrorism, but also to serve as a buttress against Russian and Chinese efforts to increase their influence in Africa.

More recently, President Trump announced he plans to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany. Trump has framed the drawdown as a punitive measure in response to Germany not meeting NATO’s defense spending goal, while national security advisor Robert O’Brien argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed the forces are needed in the Indo-Pacific region.

Read more …

Picked this from Felix Salmon for this crazy stat:

“..pre-coronavirus Apple was buying 50 business class seats per day just from San Francisco to Shanghai…”

No More Crossing Borders For Work (Salmon)

Another area where there’s no sign of any recovery is in the movement of workers across borders, especially when it comes to movement in and out of the U.S. Why it matters: Multinational U.S. corporations are built on international travel. Apple spends $150 million a year on air travel, for instance, and pre-coronavirus was buying 50 business class seats per day just from San Francisco to Shanghai. That level of investment in cross-border ties helped to create a company that’s now worth $1.6 trillion. Driving the news: U.S. borders remain shut to travelers from China and Europe. There are only eight flights per week between the U.S. and China; the United Airlines SFO-SHA route where Apple used to spend $35 million a year currently has no flights at all. The EU is almost certain to ban U.S. travelers when it reopens on July 1. And Donald Trump has banned thousands of nonimmigrant workers from entering the country this year.

Read more …

Because it only supports member banks.

The program is too complicated on purpose: the banks all have legal departments that have no trouble deciphering it.

The Fed Said It Could Supply $2.3 Trillion. It Hasn’t Come Close So Far (CNBC)

When the coronavirus pandemic locked up capital markets and pulled the economy into recession, the Federal Reserve took aim with a $2.3 trillion bazooka to try to help. Thus far, though, the central bank has only fired off surprisingly few rounds. In the three months since a slew of programs were announced, the Fed has loaned out just $143 billion, or a mere 6.2% of its total firepower. The most ambitious initiative, the Main Street Lending Program, has yet to make a loan, according to the most recent Fed balance sheet data, though officials expect that to change in a matter of days.

As for the rest of the measures, from municipal lending to corporate credit to the Fed’s role in the Paycheck Protection Program, there are several likely explanations for why what was supposed to be an infusion of cash into the economy instead has been a comparative trickle. One is simply that the programs, particularly in the case of Main Street, are complicated and have proven difficult to launch as the Fed gathers feedback and works through logistics. Another is that there is simply less demand from entities that are finding other ways to make do. And on that same point, the notion that the U.S. economy is recovering more quickly than expected from a recession that began in February has negated the need for the arsenal that the Fed launched starting in March.

“The economy is getting better, so you’re not seeing as many firms short of cash as you’d seen in March and April,” said Yiming Ma, an assistant finance professor at Columbia University Business School. “Some of the terms are just not very attractive to firms who potentially do need the funds.”

Read more …

Newsflash: we don’t all have the same kind of humor. But this goes very far.

Parents To Sue Trump, Meme Creator Carpe Donktum Over Manipulated Video Of Toddlers

The parents of two toddlers featured in a manipulated video posted on social media by President Donald Trump plan to file a lawsuit against the president, his campaign and the creator of the video, pro-Trump meme creator Carpe Donktum, escalating the fallout from the doctored video, which was taken down by Facebook and Twitter. Lawyers representing the parents of the children featured in the video are drafting a lawsuit alleging the video was altered and shared as an “advertisement and political propaganda” without permission or parental consent. Logan Cook, who goes by the username Carpe Donktum, altered footage of the two children in which one, who is Black, is running away from the other, who is white, and added a fake CNN chyron reading “Terrified toddler runs away from racist baby.”

The original clip, which went viral last year, actually shows the two toddlers running up to each other and hugging. (The edited video appears to be a satirical attempt criticize how the media takes statements out of context and reports on race.) Both Facebook and Twitter took the video down after the parents of the children filed a copyright complaint, and before that Twitter labeled the video “manipulated media.” Twitter late Tuesday permanently banned Cook for repeated copyright violations.

“The fact that Twitter and Facebook disabled this fake video within 24 hours of President Trump and his campaign tweeting it, coupled with Twitter permanently banning Cook, is very strong evidence that a jury will likely find that all of these people broke the law by using this video as advertisement and political propaganda,” said Ven Johnson, one of the attorneys representing the parents. Cook’s work is frequently shared by Trump, and the president reportedly called him a “genius” when he visited the White House last year. Twitter previously suspended Cook for eight days after he posted an edited video showing Trump as a cowboy attacking CNN reporter Jim Acosta.

Facebook and Twitter usually leave controversial posts from world leaders online, though Twitter has taken to labeling tweets with misinformation or those that “glorify violence” in recent weeks. But there’s one rule even world leaders can’t break: copyright. In October last year, another video posted by Trump featuring a Nickelback song was taken down after a copyright notice was filed. And earlier that year Twitter took down another video that included music from the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises without permission.

Read more …

It’s going to be an absolutely crazy election.

Why Joe Biden Can Do No Wrong (Turley)

In the 11th century, Pope Urban II formalized the use of indulgences, which could be purchased to forgive sins. A papal bull of the Crusade accompanied those who fought in the Holy Land and committed atrocities in the name of a higher order. The practice was defended as essentially drawing from the “treasury of merit” created by Jesus Christ, the saints and the faithful. Now the 2020 election has become the ultimate crusade, and President Trump’s critics seem to be enjoying indulgences in tossing aside moral and ethical considerations. The freedom that is Biden is nowhere more evident than in a recent column by The Nation’s Katha Pollitt, who wrote about the allegations of sexual assault made by former Biden staffer Tara Reade.

Pollitt dispensed with any struggle over feminist or moral qualms, declaring, “I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them.” As Pollitt explained, “We do not have the luxury of sitting out the election to feel morally pure or send a message about sexual assault and #BelieveWomen.” Otherwise, Pollitt would have to deal with her column during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, in which she denounced “some of his defenders [who] seem to be saying that even if the allegations are true, it shouldn’t really matter.” For years, critics have expressed disgust at Trump’s statement that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters.”

Yet they now afford Biden the same immunity even if he turns into the ancient god Cronus and starts snacking on boiled babies. The same indulgence has been claimed by politicians and commentators in dealing with other Biden allegations of sexual assault. Many of them demanded during the Kavanaugh controversy that all women must simply be believed when alleging sexual harassment. Those who questioned the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford were denounced for insensitivity, if not complicity, in the abuse of women. Today, some of us have said that Biden has the stronger case thus far, but we still support an investigation.

Yet many Kavanaugh critics quickly declared Biden to be innocent and opposed any search of his records — including those under lock and key at the University of Delaware — for any allegations of sexual abuse. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) simply cut off questions by testily declaring, “I don’t need a lecture” when confronted with her prior statements. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) declared she sees no need for an investigation because she knows Biden and believes him, adding that she resented being asked about it as a victim of sexual assault. She cut off questions from CNN’s Jake Tapper by saying, “And you know what? That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

Read more …

They sponsor a legal panel that absolves them from most future claims. How sick is that?

Bayer Wants To Resolve Future Roundup Liability In A Class Action (R.)

The headlines Wednesday in the mass tort litigation over Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller were all about the company’s decision to pay as much as $9.6 billion – a lot of money! – to settle about 94,000 suits alleging that Roundup is associated with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. But the bigger news, at least for this case’s impact on mass tort litigation, may be in a novel proposal to address all future claims against Bayer. If the mechanism – a class action to determine threshold issues of causation while preserving plaintiffs’ individual rights to sue – ends up winning court approval, it’s going to change the way defendants buy global peace in these sprawling cases.

The Roundup future claims settlement is via a newly-filed prospective class action on behalf of everyone who was exposed to Roundup but has not hired a lawyer to bring a tort claim. (There are subclasses for people who already have cancer and those who don’t.) In a simultaneously-filed motion for preliminary approval of the settlement of the new class action, Bayer and plaintiffs lawyers from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, Audet & Partners and The Dugan Law Firm agreed to establish a panel of five scientific experts to decide the threshold questions of whether Roundup can cause cancer and, if so, at what levels of exposure. (For the true class action nerds: The settlement calls for the certification of an issues class to resolve the predominant common question of causation.)

The panel, which Reuters described Wednesday as “a calculated gamble” for Bayer, has at least four years to reach a determination, which is binding on all class members. After the panel’s decision, class members will be free to bring individual tort claims, with the caveat that those threshold causation and exposure questions have already been decided.

In the meantime, Bayer will put up $1.1 billion for diagnostic services for the class and for assistance to class members who develop cancer during the years before the scientific panel’s decision. The proposed settlement features an incredibly elaborate notice program to get the word out to prospective class members, taking into account that the class includes agricultural workers who may not speak English or have permanent residences. Class members have 150 days from the launch of the notice program to opt out of the class. As part of the settlement, future claimants will give up the right to seek punitive damages and medical monitoring fees in individual suits following the scientific panel’s causation decision.

Read more …

The shame of our generation.

New Assange Indictment Only Adds ‘Window Dressing’ to ‘Continue Smear Campaign’ (Sp.)

A US federal grand jury has unveiled a new superseding indictment against WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. However, the filing brings no new charges. A journalist told Sputnik that what Assange does is no different from other reporters and the indictment is an attempt to sour Assange’s name in the media again. “It’s a continuation of the smear campaign against this man, to turn public opinion against him,” Joe Lauria, the editor in chief of Consortium News and author of the book “How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton,” told Radio Sputnik’s Loud and Clear Thursday. “It’s started to turn for him in certain instances recently, so the timing of this is interesting.” Lauria characterized the new accusations as “window dressing,” noting much of the document is simply a recapitulation of the previous charges against Assange.

According to the US Department of Justice’s Wednesday news release announcing the indictment, the new accusations “broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged,” alleging he worked with hacker groups like Anonymous and LulzSec to gain access to classified files that WikiLeaks then published. “This is new: they write negatively about him helping [former NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower Edward] Snowden to get out of Hong Kong and that Assange had booked various other flights for Snowden to provide a diversion, so that he could get out on the one he did,” Lauria noted. “But there’s no charge of ‘aiding a fugitive to get away’ or anything like that, so that’s just thrown in there. We don’t know why.”

“The real essence is, as you say, the details to broaden this first indictment against him, which was for computer intrusion. And, essentially, it says that Assange directed hackers to get material. For example, one example is the recordings of high-level NATO officials, telephone calls that he wanted; also members of parliament of a NATO nation that is apparently Iceland.” Lauria said that to understand if this is a crime or not, he turns to investigative journalist Robert Parry, who founded Consortium News. Lauria noted a piece Parry wrote in 2010, anticipating Washington’s line of attack against Assange, in which he said that what Assange had done was no different than what he did as an investigative reporter, including encouraging sources to give information, and even to commit a small crime in order to prevent a larger one.

“This is key, because here we have in this expanded, superseding indictment, that Assange somehow committed a conspiracy with these hackers to get this information,” Lauria said. “Now, first of all, he’s not being accused of doing the hacking himself; he is accused of encouraging or directing – but not for money, by the way – these hackers to get documents and other materials that he wanted. So maybe two crimes are being committed there: one being the hack, and two, the unauthorized release of information. But Assange is not directly involved, so he’s doing what Bob Parry said he did as a reporter, and that was to get your source to commit a small crime [in order] to prevent a larger one. An example of that is Assange getting from [former US Army analyst Chelsea] Manning the ‘Collateral Murder’ video … the idea being to try to end the illegal war in Iraq,” Lauria told Sputnik.

Read more …

But doctors are not lawyers.

Doctors for Assange: UK Officials May be Legally Culpable for His Torture (CN)

Doctors have warned that UK officials could be held accountable for the torture of Julian Assange in an open letter published in The Lancet on International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The 216 undersigned physicians and psychologists from 33 countries have accused UK and U.S. government officials of intensifying Julian Assange’s psychological torture in spite of the world’s leading authorities on human rights and international law calling for his immediate release from prison. Clinical Psychologist and Australian co-author of the publication, ‘The ongoing torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange’, Dr Lissa Johnson said the failure to properly treat Mr Assange may amount to an act of torture in which state officials, from parliament to court to prison, risk being judged complicit.

“Our letter is published just two days after the US Department of Justice announced a new superseding indictment against Assange representing yet another escalation in psychological torture tactics,” said Dr Johnson. “Introducing extra charges at this late stage, right before the defence evidence deadline and over a year after the indictment deadline, when documents given to the prison generally take two weeks to be passed on, when he has not been supplied with a computer and when he is unable to meet with lawyers under Coronavirus lockdown, serves to ramp up his helplessness jn the face of threat and is a key psychological torture tactic,” she said.

The doctors note that torture is prohibited under UK law, warning that UK officials could be judged “complicit”, including for their “silent acquiescence and consent”. They write that Assange at medical risk due to escalating abuses of his “fundamental human and legal rights at the hands of judicial, prison, and contracted security authorities”. The letter follows Julian Assange’s failure to attend four court hearings in a row on medical grounds. The authors charge UK and US authorities with “collective persecution and judicial harassment” in which “Mr Assange has been unable to engage in his own defence or even participate in his own hearings.”

A copy of the Lancet letter has been sent to the UK Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland. It coincides with two open letters to Buckland from 36 members of the European Parliament and 11 current and former politicians from 9 nations, calling for Julian Assange’s immediate release on bail in light of Covid-19, which places him “at grave medical risk” given his medical history, including persistent respiratory issues, the doctors warn. In a 60 Minutes Australia interview on Sunday night, Julian Assange’s fiancé, Stella Moris, stressed that Julian Assange is “very unwell”, expressing her fears that he may not survive.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle June 26 2020

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 48 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #60487

    Dorothea Lange Depression refugee family from Tulsa, Oklahoma 1936   • US Coronavirus Cases ‘May Have Topped 20 Million’ (BBC) • Pompeo Says US,
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 26 2020]

    #60491
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    Raul, I’m disappointed in you… The boy at Dorothea Lange’s pic is eating Betsy Ross sliced bread? I’m afraid the woke commissars would not let this slip up go.

    #60492
    Dr. D
    Participant

    What’s keeping the market up?

    Could it be $1 Trillion per month bailouts, that started back in September at $400B, then $700B, and now $1,000B. But they have gotten better at hiding it in the Fed books.

    Large systems have large explosions. Remember the Star Trek episode where time stopped as their starship was exploding? Just because it’s slow doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

    Why do you think they’re doing more stimulus, more stimulus? Oh and yes: Jubilee for the rich, Capitalism for the poor. For now. But without a system, there is no system of power for the rich. Their only asset is the debt of poor people who won’t pay. That’s not rich, that’s poor; that’s not strong, it’s weak. Like Germany, who then cuts off tourism as Greece’s only source of income. While selling their ports to China, the other source of income.

    Amid bad news, certain good news: bumper crop in corn perhaps. In the U.S. Panic! Disaster! Will this help fill the locusts happening throughout the Old World? And therefore find a market? Because we are nearly the last remaining food exporter? Which do you prefer? iPhones? Or food?

    The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says the true number of cases is likely to be 10 times higher than the reported figure.”

    Huh? Then 200M people have it and we’re done. Yay! Drinks all ’round! Also who are the “health officials” that are NOT the CDC? The Bakersfield school nurse? …Nevermind, the WHO and CDC have been totally, completely wrong about everything so far and will be wrong about this too. More than 20M are surely affected – there’s that many in NY Metro – but we’re probably not at 200M either. Wrong and wrong. Because: experts. Because: adult American opened mouth. Because: Printed in media. Guarantees no skepticism, no fact checking.

    UK Officials May Be Legally Culpable for His Torture (CN)”

    So they’re going to put the UK in jail? Or like CHAZ, they make the innocent taxpayers fund all your criminal malfeasance so they can do it again tomorrow?

    On Cambodia: they’re still doing this, and we’re still applauding them. Open-air slave markets in Libya, constant warfare in Africa, and criminal investigations if you withdraw, while we ring-fence Russia with first-strike nukes and embargo Syria and Venezuela. Parties love it. All officials are protected and adored at the highest levels. Heck, we could find out you and your fundraisers were serial rapists of underage girls from Minnesota at the highest level and still fight FOR the criminals FOR the media that covered it up, and AGAINST the victims and prosecutors.
    But it’s different from Cambodia. We’re for slavery, but that’s different from when Jefferson was for it. The difference is we’re perfect! We’re the good guys!

    YayUs
    http://www.subversify.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/2009/10/Its-Not-Fascism-When-We-Do-It.PNG

    #60493
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    Anthony Bourdain is very much missed. And his twit is 100 % on point. But at the source of the tweet there’s also a pic of him with Nobel Peace laureate president Obomber which shows how contradictory we humans are. He didn’t have a issues at all sitting with Barry “I’m good at killing” Obama. The uniquely responsible figure for bringing open air slave markets to Lybia. A country that to this day remains a dystopian hell hole, its former wealth gone like the Sahara dust plume now overtaking the American South. Ditto Somalia, Pakistan, Syria, “Bashar al-Assad must go”, Ukraine with Maidan square killings to boot, “Tuesday’s Killing” was a thing during Obongo’s presidency. When his W.H. spokesman was confronted with the fact that a 15 y.o. American born citizen, Abdulraman Awl Awlaki and his cousins were blown to pieces in a drone attack while having a BBQ, he said: “well, his parents should be more responsible.” By all means Bob Dylan’s Masters or War fits every bit of the scumbag that Kissinger is but it does as well rObama, because there’s hardly anyone better than a charismatic House Negro to do the bidding of the Plantation owners.

    #60495
    lasttwo
    Participant

    Not to mention Dick fucking Cheney–

    #60496
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Uh, Doc, the 20 million figure is the ten times number: “The US has recorded 2.4m confirmed infections and 122,370 deaths.”

    Carlos, maybe ten years ago, when I still did Facebook, I made a House Negro remark. Man, did I get pilloried.

    Being an unrepentant bastard, I called ’em all a buncha lousy wiggers… er, I mean, wegroes.

    #60497
    zerosum
    Participant

    Dorothea Lange Depression refugee family from Tulsa, Oklahoma 1936
    (Those refugees have a lot of possessions. They are not destitute)
    ———
    that virus is not sitting still, got to give it that.
    Our rich powerful leaders are enabling the virus to do the only thing that all living things knows how to do.
    Reproduce. Replicate. Consume. Convert. Recycle. Evolve. Overcome. Dominate. Survive.
    ——-
    • House Defense Bill Targets Troop Drawdowns In Africa, South Korea (Hill)
    Ancient Solution:
    Only send troops who expect to be stranded and to become expats as the empire is in decline
    —–
    • No More Crossing Borders For Work (Salmon)
    Will the saving, by doing virtual work, be passed on as price reduction for the consumers or as increased profits for the 10%.
    ——-
    • The Fed Said It Could Supply $2.3 Trillion. It Hasn’t Come Close So Far (CNBC)
    Promises, Promises, does not put bread on the table.
    The 10% will be forced to do something about the 90% to put bread on the table before they die and become a piece of coal. Many fortunate enablers are expecting to resolve “problem”, with the usual past solution, elimination with war.
    —–
    Julian Assange
    Our rich, powerful enablers are grudge holders demonstrating their pettiness behavior that is not fit for their position of leadership. They don’t care what we, the rifraf, think.

    #60498
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    A picture tells a 1,000 words. WHat this one is saying, and in what language, is unknown to me, but it says something, I’m sure:

    bnb

    #60499
    zerosum
    Participant

    Sanctions: Modern weapons of war
    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/18-Million-Barrels-Of-Sanctioned-Venezuelan-Oil-Are-Stuck-At-Sea.html

    18 Million Barrels Of Sanctioned Venezuelan Oil Are Stuck At Sea
    By Tsvetana Paraskova – Jun 24, 2020,

    Oil tankers carrying at least 18.1 million barrels of Venezuelan oil are currently idling at sea across the world unable to find buyers – some for as long as six months – as many potential and previous customers of Venezuela’s crude are not taking chances with delivery for fear of incurring secondary U.S. sanctions.

    #60500
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trans-atlantic-slave-trade-uprooted-millions
    The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Uprooted Millions
    It is estimated that close to 20 million people were forced to leave the African continent enslaved. By 1800, this had decimated the African population to half the size it would have been had slavery not occurred.

    Had the “Europeans” not de-populated the Americas with bio weapons they would have had more residential slave laborers and therefore not needed to enslave people from other places.

    #60501
    zerosum
    Participant
    #60502
    zerosum
    Participant

    Safer reopening will require millions more Covid-19 tests per day. One solution: ‘pool testing’ 


    Safer reopening will require millions more Covid-19 tests per day. One solution: ‘pool testing’
    By ANDREW JOSEPH @DrewQJosephJUNE 26, 2020
    ( see article ….)

    #60503
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    Bosco, that pic of the future president and First Lady? conveys a lot of hard to grasp discomfort and dread, to me. kind of like the reverse of Whitman’s line in Song of the Open Road “I didn’t know I held so much goodness”. Make that *evil* written all over their faces.

    I quit Fartbook about 3 years ago. It’s also part of the social media plantation and not a place for free discourse.
    I did use the term “house negro” all the time while we were under #44 for whom I voted in ’08, so mightily pissed was I. Nobody dared to shoot it up.
    I think it’s a very appropriate term even now. Malcom X used it. I feel free to use it. It conveys best the nature of this very sophisticated and sleek operator.

    #60504
    zerosum
    Participant

    Another war tool used against Canada
    Enbridge ordered to shut Line 5 pipeline in victory for Michigan officials
    Line 5 runs along a 645-mile (1,040-kilometre) route from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario, transporting as much as 540,000 barrels a day of light crude and synthetic crude, and natural gas liquids that are refined into propane. The pipeline was built in 1953 and consists mostly of 30-inch diameter pipe. It splits into two 20-inch diameter lines for the 4.5-mile section that runs under the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
    (read more ….)

    #60505
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I only went on FB (around ’09, I think?) because it was the only handle of contact I could find for a childhood friend who I’d learned through a google search had gotten in a jam.

    FB of course sucked up all my email and bookmarks, etc.

    That connected me to a wonderful vast social world based on the sucked-up pesonal data. For awhile I was hanging with Hopllywood insiders and journalists etc. FB algorithms brought us together. It was awesome even though I knew my underwear was being scrutinized by NSA et al.

    Over time I sadly learned how morally flaccid and intellectually hidebound these so-called liberal cognoscenti were. I went from having a maxed-out follower base to almost none per my own excisions.

    I hung on during 2016 simply to give Bernie a boost. One day I used the word nigger, placing it in the mouth of a Simon Legree type of public personality. FB suspended me for a few days. I closed my account. Search Robin Morrison Spokane and you should find my FB account. I was as much a blabber mowf there as you see here.

    The guy who wrote the articles that inspired the Mister Rogers movie spoke sagely of how social media has let us discover what our neighbors really believe and endorse, and how we are horrified by what we’ve learned about each other.

    While I think a hostile foreign entiry would be shrewd to, say, crash our cellphone GPS or something similarly surgical and strategic, it would be foolish to shut down our internet.

    We’d then have to talk to our neighbors, find out how horrifying (or delightful) we are to each other, but be forced to deal with it like socially responsible adults and practice something like egalitarian democratic solution-seeking.

    While I personally have been immeasurably enriched by the internet, which made me not as isolated and alienated as I was before, and expanded my already broad cognitive horizons, it’s like tv: great potential for a species enlightened enough to employ it wisely, otherwise, just another mind-control advertizement for Pharaoh.

    zerosum: I suppose that by next winter, burkhaism will beging making its early mainstream foray.

    covid burkha

    #60506
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #60507
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    btw, anyone here following Dmitry Orlov’s blog? Is it worth re-subscribing to finish his articles? He’s a brilliant analyst/thinker, but in person I’d probably wanna pound sand up his nose. Still, an amazing thinker with a shrewd perspective. Is he still earning his keep? Should I add to his pay sheet?

    That reminds me: time to send Raul money for his Save the Goldfish campaign. Sorry, I have to joke about starving people. It hurts me.

    #60508
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Well, Patreon of course immediately made it fucky-dumb to do a monthly sub: “You already have a goodle account”. Well, then, apply it here, fuckwits. But no option avails. But I did get to see a picture of Raul, and he would be a good co-conspirator in a drinking binge back in the day, I suspect. 😉

    Oh well. I’ll fill in the fields manually and see if it works.

    Stupid robots.

    #60509
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Nope. “This email already has a Patreon account.”

    We are so screwed. Even our payment methods are vapor.

    I’ll go find the TAE “store” and do it that way.

    #60510
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    FUck it. YOu’re stuck with a check in Brooklynn, Raul. I managed to do it online last time, but not now.

    #60511
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    There. I canceled my paypal account and now it let’s me use paypal.

    That’s logical, right?

    Digidollars sent.

    And online sales are booming. Godamighty.

    #60512
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    When Hillary was running against Trump in 2016, I called it ratshit (Hillary) vs batshit (Trump).

    This time, I call it dumbnuts vs numbnuts… and am not sure if I can tell the difference enough to knoiw where to stick the labels.

    a

    b

    And, just for fun:

    c

    There’s Something Wrong With You

    #60513
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “I think that there has never existed so many people that has had such a good life.”

    Hail Atlantis!

    Atlantis live by Wayne Shorter’s 4tet

    #60514
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Ere I leave to be a responsible monkeyshine, I feel compelled to show here why Miles Davis was such a star, not to mention Cannonball Adderly. Coltrane is a tad off on this session, which is probably why it didn’t make the original album cut. Evans is at his best, uncommonly spare, more rhythmically than harmonically adventurous, painting on rice paper rather than dense canvas.

    Love for Sale

    ccc

    #60515
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    P.S.:

    vx

    Tastes like chickenshit.

    #60516
    zerosum
    Participant

    Tastes like chickenshit.
    That’s why people should wear burka/face masks

    #60517

    Bosco,

    I’m truly sorry to read about the trials and tribulations involving your heartfelt desire to send us those thousands of dollars. For the Automatic Earth, the set up is quite simple, though: you can support us through Paypal AND/OR Patreon, and neither will refuse all those thousands. OR you can send a check or money order to my very longtime and very trusted friend Danny in NY. You see, them checks and money order things don’t exist in Europe, they’re North American. Can’t do a thing with them here.

    I’m happily and eagerly awaiting what’s left of your pension plans to be transferred to TAE’s accounts. Because, you know, what more do you need?

    #60518
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I just canceled my patreon acct with Medium (I wasn’t hardly using them anymore; only went there for a certain science writer), and then it all behaved proper like.

    Yeah, a friend told me that checques have been ex-chancellored over there.

    I have zero retirement except the tiniest SSI you can imagine because I worked so little, and so often under the table, in my wayward life. Was briefly redneck rich but not no moah.

    True story: when I was briefly redneck rich I intended to send you $1K. But things were really chaotic at the time. I was kinda beset on all sides, and money evaporated before I got to you. But I did manage to give away quite a few $K stateside, and it was great fun. I still manage to get a few $20 bills out the window to homeless souls every month.

    Raised a Mormon (I survived), I grew up on the flowwing musical nugget. The performance here has a tad too much saccharine around the edges despite obvious talent by both performers, but it’s still a lovely evocation.

    Give Said the Little Stream

    I love how the seams on the sliding mirror doors kinda look like a stripper pole.

    Give, I say. The bastards are gonna come and get you one way or another no matter what. Don’t leave ’em nothing left to steal but a fat happy conscience.

    “Tastes like chickenshit.<>That’s why people should wear burka/face masks.”

    *snicker*

    I set ’em up, zero knocks ’em down. Hey, Abbott!

    #60519
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “goggle the quote and take a nine minute acid trip”

    Mongo see stars!

    #60522
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Well only one number then. 20M is NY Metro, and now we’re in all 50 states. So any common-sense estimate? 120M? When the tests don’t work, who can tell?

    #60523
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    DoIng kitchen work (I am der hawss buttler, I iz, and a well-known racial steroetype to boot despite being all white and shit), I saw that the new bottle of Mrs. Butterworth was looking uncomfortable about being so dark, seeing as how her good friend Aunt Jemimah got ousted from her lifelong home for being same.

    So I poured half of her out into the vintage syrup dispenser what our Aunt Ruthie dun give us, and now she’s as white as me… from the waist up.

    aas

    Stealing the melody from Come On In My Kitchen (most of us know it as the acapella intro to 49 Bye-Byes by CSN):

    I was born-n-n-n
    A po black child
    But my skin’s all white now…

    But Mrs. Butterworth is a little too white. She’s gone transparent. I better pour some milk in and top the bottle off.

    49

    Racial Harmony in Action

    #60524
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Well only one number then. 20M is NY Metro, and now we’re in all 50 states. So any common-sense estimate? 120M?”

    Mongo no understand. 2.4 mill is total USA reported figures, using tests whose accuracy I do not know. We’ve been in all 50 states for awhile, and the 2.4 fig comes from whatever reports we get from whatever states. Some experts, whose expertize I cannot vouch for, guess the real number could be ten times as much, for whatever that’s worth.

    What the hell a “common sense estimate” is in such a GIGO environment is literally beyond my conception to imagine except as some guy burping stale beer while throwing darts at a bingo board with numbers like 10 mill, 500 mill, 77.3 mill, pi squared yo mama.

    We don’t know, see? We only know how such pathogens studied to date tend to replicate under various circumstances, and what methods have reliably worked in the past to curb their spread.

    That’s about all we know statistically, other than the uncontestable fact that Fauci is a dickweed, and the undisputable truth that our government is a lobotomized magic schoolbus turned on its back to have its belly rubbed, both of which can be precisely measured as Ick 3,000 and poopoo gazillion.

    #60525
    Arttua
    Participant

    Bosco, My double grammy winning teacher, Harry Leahey grew up with Bill Evans, He studied with Dennis Sandole, who also taught Coltrane. Here’s me playing So What by Miles Davis.

    #60526
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    WHoa. I gotta get back to Mrs. Butterworth and friends, but this is an honor and a treat, Arttua D-2. (Sorry. I play with names. I have Dubya disease.) I will isten later. I love the real thing: people giving it their best.

    #60527
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    So, when does ther singing start? 😉

    Srsly: pretty good, Holding the vamp while simultaneously thinking on soloing is much harder than it sounds, especially on guitar compared to piano. Once a person learns to use their hands separately on a piano, well, then, they’re separate, and since most of the work neatly splits between left/right hand, with a little overlap here and there, you can think as bicamerally as you can play, and your brain can more easily separate comping from soloing and therefore (and maybe ironically) interweave them better.

    On a guitar, it’s more of a 4-way split because both pick and fret hands have to work together just to make a sound. Both hands have to bring their comp/lead voices together with the other hands comp/lead voices.

    I remember seeing Emily Remler holding forth on this in a youtube video.

    #60528
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    There seems to be some confusion (or obtuseness) here regarding things like pos/neg-entropy and how they factor into the human will to live. It’s not a thing for political sermons or Sunday school lessons (for that, see song about a little stream).

    1) ‘The tragedy of existence,’ explained some eskimo to his son in a book long ago, ‘is that souls live by eating souls.’ I call this the most essential existential fact of conscious will. It can be ignored but not escaped. It is conjecturally possible that we could learn to nourish ourselves by synthesizing food without killing animals or plants, but that’s a helluva development curve, tech-wise, and would require huge energy reserves to do so. And we kinda burned through them awreddy.

    2) There’s only so much of everything, period, per the current Standard Model of Physics. There may be a secret cornor of the galaxy where God secretly pours more stuff into the cosmos, hence the dark matter/energy quest to keep the Standard Model from falling apart as conflicting data accrues. But most everybody here knows entropy so enough on that.

    3) Putting aside the horrors of how we extract and process ‘resources’ these days, let’s note that even if Point # 1 were not true and no one got hurt in order for someone else to live, Point # 2 highlights a tragically insane aspect of modern civilization: it is extremely wasteful.

    I will use just one example to illustrate what most of us here already, or soon will, know.

    We bring homre stuff from the store. It involves excessive amounts of packaging because almost all of it is made elsewhere and shipped here, the packaging being necessary because:

    a) shipping wants transport, and transport needs goods to be bundled lest they not survive the trip,

    b) since human labor is expensive because slavery has briefly been mostly removed (thanx to oil providing 4.5 years of human labor per barrel, and how this can drive steam, intrernal combustion, and turbine engines in turn producing electricity which energy form can be sent 100s of miles with minimal energy loss thanx to that Tesla dude), all the portion-for-sale packaging is done at the factory where labor costs can be most cost-effectively controlled, and this discourages the use of recyclable packaging for all kinds of reasons. It’s not like they do with oil: one big tanker, one big pipeline, refinery time, then shipment by truck or rail in containers the size of small swimming pools before being pumped into large tanks and then directly in the car. (In that sense, petro-industry is extremely non-polluting.)

    c) since it costs money to recycle but people have to be convinced to do their part in getting recyclables to the recycling stream for recycling to be reasonably profitable, honest recycling doesn’t happen except in large dense slow-moving garbage streams like your typical junkyard. (Portland Recycles is practically a city motto but if you see it first-hand — and I’m only talking about how people put out their garbage and how that affects the collection and recycling thereof — you can see it’s costing an awful lot to pretend we’re recycling. The people don’t give a shit, don’t separate their stuff; and one can’t blame them because they’ve gotten so many conflicting signals. Garbage, btw, is another universal global problem that doesn’t get fixed because we can’t cooperate unviersally and globally. ) SO…

    d) this happens: all kinds of toxic packaging material from plastic to broken glass to whatevs, goes into the main garbage stream, where it may or may not be removed by sophisticated expensive and only semi-effective monster machinery. Somehow, mysteriously, it ends up in the environment, often 10k miles from its dump point, swirling in the ocean after previously being shipped another 10k miles from another dump point because we like to ship our garbage to third world nations desparate enough to call destroying their environment a way of making a living. All of this costing money that someone, maybe us, maybe Martians, pays for. Mongo no know.

    But (and this is the best part), the good stuff: urine & feces via toilet plumbing, much food waste via sink-drain garbage disposal units — the stuff we want to collect, properly fester, and then use to enrich soil depleted by the last resource extraction aka agricultural harvest, doing so that we may again harvest more resources, isn’t recycled. (Ain’t gonna talk here about pesticides, GMO, and our dependence on Haber process nitrogen fertilizer, but that elephant is also quite hefty.)

    What do we brilliant monkeys do?!?!? We dump it into the place we get our drinking water from. You know, the same place we dump so many toxins from manufacturing, mining, and other resource extraction/fabrication processes. Some cities have systems that collect some of this organic waste and treat it to make fertilizer of it, but basically, we just like to shit into our drinking well.

    MInd you, we consume 100 million barrels of oil a day to do this. 100 million A DAY. Each barrel is like having 1 slave work 365 days for 4.5 years. In one day. On the big screen, it’s 100 mill/brls/day equals 164,250,000,000 slave labor days. That can’t be right but it’s a simple linear equation with no variables and even I can do that math with a calculator. Still, that can’t be right.

    This, btw, is a sweet peek sideways into the global climate change thing: a common remark about anthropogenic climate change is that humanity, powerful as it is, can’t influence something as huge as the global climate machine. But this isn’t 7.7 billion homo saps. This is 164,250,00 (plus 7.7 billion if you insist) homo saps cranking away, energy-wise. As a rude analogy, imagine the CO2 output of 173 billion homo saps* working their tushies off every day for a few decades. Tell me that doesn’t have the power, yea, the likelihood, of bumping the global climate machine, which is a very delicate multi-compound gyroscope with leviathan inertia. Once you bump it, the shivers travel throughout the sytem. Kinda like how a suboceanic earthquake manages to bump the ocean, really give it a thwack. No biggie. The energy is hidden in size of the ocean, and would gradually dissipate if it didn’t run into anything. You can hardly see the thing. Until it runs into resistance, at which point all that inertia rears up and swallows a coastline.

    And then, and then… there’s the fact that we are running out of oil and can’t possibly sustain 7.7 billion people without it.

    Do I have resource extraction issues? No more than anyone else, just maybe more cognitively and conscientiously.

    King Harvest

    * yes, we’ve reduced wild megafauna doing so… and replaced them with massive livestock numbers in systems that make enormous amounts of greenhouse gases.

    #60529

    “Mongo see stars!”
    I take that to mean you liked it- so glad! If it was the only thing computers had ever been used for, I’d say it was worth it.
    For those who haven’t taken a peek, maybe “acid trip” was a poor simile. With more detail than the universe, I think it is a philosophical work…but is it art?

    Isn’t it grand that all the youngsters are now getting Covid in the summertime? Bring on the cases! The death numbers are dropping!
    After all, if immunity is not bestowed by getting it, A VACCINE CANNOT WORK.

    Re the elections in the US: they will be contentious, to say the least, and the people fighting each other to champion such “leadership” is low comedy, indeed.

    #60530
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    My parents: I fear the elections. Not even rationally. It’s like how animals feel pre-earthquake tremors that we don’t. Logically, as you well know, there is ample reason to fear them. But MOngo just wanna pee his pants. Like that real Wiley Coyote moment we’ve been talking about.

    Oh yeah, me like uber-deep fractals. NOt just pretty, not just hypnotic, but there’s something subconsciously semiotic about them. The medium is the message, said Marshall McLuhan in his terribly written book on media. Same with fractals. The fractality itself says something that my deeper intution understands but cannot report to the captain upstairs pretending to be in charge of me.

    #60532
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    The music and singing are pretty good for me, but… watch the video. See how foreign those people are to us. Can you imagine the crippled guys being shown that way today? Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s like a foreign language:

    A Little Jive

    #60533
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Willaim Gibson said the internet was the most perfect time waster ever invented, and that’s what was so great about it, but sometimes, you gotta wonder:

    Farting Matilda

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