Jul 162021
 


Vincent van Gogh Bridge in the rain (after Hiroshige) 1887

 

Biden Admin ‘Flagging Problematic Social Media Posts’ (PM)
Question Everything (Ballan)
Spain’s Top Court Rules Lockdown Unconstitutional (BBC)
Long Covid Has Over 200 Symptoms And Leaves 1 In 5 Unable To Work
Huge Study Supporting Ivermectin For Covid Withdrawn Over Ethical Concerns (G.)
Top General Feared Trump Would Attempt A Coup After Losing The Election (DM)
Kremlin Papers Appear To Show Putin’s Plot To Put Trump In White House (G.)
Kremlin Says Guardian Claims Are ‘Fundamentally Untrue’ (RT)
Russia Accuses US Of ‘Staging’ Anti-Government Protests In Cuba (RT)
Illinois Becomes First State To Prohibit Police From Lying To Kids (JTN)
59 of 96 Phones Assigned To Mueller Probe Missing (JTN)
Bill Clinton Took Two More Trips On The Lolita Express (DM)
Capitol Police To Use Army Surveillance Gear To Monitor Americans (AMN)

 

 

Which country will recover faster?

 

 

Why am I getting the idea that we no longer comprehend just how bizarre this is? That our minds have become so blunted by censorship we do not recognize it as such any longer?

Biden Admin ‘Flagging Problematic Social Media Posts’ (PM)

After Biden administration Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued an advisory urging big tech companies to “impose clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki used it to call for big tech companies to crack down harder on social media users with “fact-checks” on “misinformation.” A reporter requested that Psaki expand a bit more on “the request for tech companies to be more aggressive” as regards “misinformation. Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies and are there any actions that the federal government can take to ensure their cooperation, because we’ve seen from the start there’s not a lot of action on some of these platforms.”

“Sure, well first, we are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team. Given as, Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic,” Psaki said. “In terms of actions… that we have taken or are working to take from the federal government. We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office. We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect two connected medical experts who are popular with their audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content.

“So we’re helping get trusted content out there. We also created the COVID Community Corps to get factual information into the hands of local messengers. And we’re also investing in the President’s, the Vice President’s and Dr. Fauci’s time in meeting with influencers who also have large reaches to a lot of these target audiences who can spread and share accurate information. “We saw an example of that yesterday, I believe that video will be out Friday,” Psaki said. “There are also proposed changes that we have made to social media platforms including Facebook, and those specifically four key steps:

“1) That they measure and publicly share the impact of misinformation on their platform. Facebook should provide publicly and transparently data on the reach of COVID-19, COVID vaccine misinformation. Not just engagement, but the reach of the misinformation and the audience that it’s reaching. That will make sure we’re getting accurate information to people. This should be provided not just to researchers but to the public so that public knows and understands what is accurate and inaccurate.
“2) We have recommended, proposed, that they create a robust and enforcement strategy that bridges their properties and provides transparency about the rules. So… there’s about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccination misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook despite some even being banned on other platforms, including ones that Facebook owns.
“3) It’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms. Sometimes it’s not accurate, and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts, posts that are within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information spreads to quickly.

“Finally,” Psaki said, “we have proposed they promote quality information sources in their feed algorithm. Facebook has repeatedly shown that they have the leverage to promote quality information, we’ve seen them effectively do this in their algorithm over low-quality information and they’ve chosen not to use it in this case. That’s certainly an area where we have an impact.” She said that Facebook “certainly understands what our asks are.”

Psaki
https://twitter.com/i/status/1415728046930268160

Read more …

“Fear is not good for us. It’s not good for our immunity, our health or our ability to think rationally. To calm the fear, we need to know that cases are meaningless, deaths are overestimated and immunity – whether natural or vaccine-induced – is long-lasting and can protect us from future variants.”

Question Everything (Ballan)

The WHO flip-flopped on the definition of herd immunity, which is the point at which an infectious disease stops being a cause for concern because most of the population is immune to it. They removed natural immunity from the definition and limited herd immunity to that reached via vaccination only. After this meddling caused an uproar, they went back again and included both forms of immunity as contributing to herd immunity. Furthermore, they changed their recommendations about the PCR test, first allowing very high cycle thresholds of 45 (which is the number of times the genetic material of the virus is multiplied until it is detected) and recommending that cases are diagnosed based on a positive PCR test, regardless of symptoms – previously unheard of in medicine.

Patients are usually diagnosed with a disease if they are sick. Later the WHO rectified their stance, clarifying that the diagnosis of cases requires clinical symptoms and that high cycle thresholds lead to false positives. Why did the WHO make recommendations contrary to established medical practice for infectious diseases? The PCR test was not designed to diagnose infectiousness. It merely detects viral genetic material, dead or alive. Studies indicate that 25 cycles are enough to detect an infectious virus. How much have the false positive results affected the number of cases and in turn the number of deaths? How many deaths were wrongly attributed to COVID instead of other diseases?

Science doesn’t flip-flop like that. Politics does. Science has become politicized. We need to decouple science from politics. It is being manipulated to serve corporate and political agendas. Anyone criticizing ‘The Science’ is silenced harshly. People are smart and if given accurate information they can make the right decisions for themselves and their communities. Unfortunately, people are being misinformed and fear-mongered with non-stop death reports, apparently vanishing immunity and the threat of new variants. Fear is not good for us. It’s not good for our immunity, our health or our ability to think rationally. To calm the fear, we need to know that cases are meaningless, deaths are overestimated and immunity – whether natural or vaccine-induced – is long-lasting and can protect us from future variants.

Variants are not unique to COVID. All respiratory viruses mutate. The variants are so minutely different from each other that our immune system will recognize them and protect us. It’s like your friend wearing a cap. Can you still recognize him? In the same way, your immune system also recognizes the variants. How much longer should we let those variants haunt us?

Read more …

After the flood.

Spain’s Top Court Rules Lockdown Unconstitutional (BBC)

Spain’s top court has ruled that last year’s strict coronavirus lockdown was unconstitutional. The ruling leaves the door open for people who were fined for breaking the rules to reclaim the money they paid. But the court said it would not accept lawsuits from people and businesses who want to sue the government because they lost money due to the lockdown. The government declared a state of emergency on 14 March 2020 to curb the first wave of Covid-19 infections. At the time, coronavirus cases and deaths were rising and hospitals were quickly becoming overwhelmed. Since then, more than 81,000 people in Spain have died with coronavirus.


Spain has three levels of emergency: state of emergency, state of exception, and the highest level, state of siege. Under the emergency rules almost all people in the country were ordered to stay at home, and were only permitted to leave for essential reasons. All but essential businesses were closed. The laws were in place until June 2020, though some restrictions were reinstated later in the year when the country faced a second wave. But Spain’s Constitutional Court said in a statement that it had voted, by a slim majority of six to five, to find that the state of emergency was not enough to give the restrictions constitutional backing. This is because the rules were equivalent to a suppression of fundamental rights, it said.

Read more …

There’s a stiff competition between long covid and vaccines for the number of symptoms.

Long Covid Has Over 200 Symptoms And Leaves 1 In 5 Unable To Work

There are more than 200 symptoms associated with long Covid spanning 10 organ systems—including memory loss, hallucinations, tremors and fatigue—according to a new study published Thursday, providing one of the most comprehensive insights yet into the lingering and debilitating illness that can affect patients for months or years after infection. Covid long haulers reported a total of 203 different symptoms in the seven months between Dec. 2019 and May 2020, ranging from rashes, peeling skin and digestive issues to muscle spasms, hearing loss and tinnitus, according to research published in the Lancet’s E Clinical Medicine journal.


The study, based on surveys from nearly 4,000 people from 56 countries, identified fatigue, brain fog and post-exertional malaise (where symptoms worsen after physical or mental effort) as the most common symptoms. On average, patients suffered from 56 different symptoms and those still suffering after six months—nearly two-thirds of participants taking the survey—were still experiencing an average of 14 symptoms. Almost half (45%) of the study’s participants reported needing a reduced work schedule on account of their illness and around one-fifth (22%) were unable to work at all. Dr. Athena Akrami, a neuroscientist at University College London and senior author of the study, said it highlights “a clear need to widen medical guidelines” to assess a wider range of symptoms than respiratory and cardiovascular issues for long Covid.”

Read more …

They take one study and use it to discredit 80 others. The Guardian for you.

Huge Study Supporting Ivermectin For Covid Withdrawn Over Ethical Concerns (G.)

The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”. The preprint study on the efficacy and safety of ivermectin – a drug used against parasites such as worms and headlice – in treating Covid-19, led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, was published on the Research Square website in November. It claimed to be a randomised control trial, a type of study crucial in medicine because it is considered to provide the most reliable evidence on the effectiveness of interventions due to the minimal risk of confounding factors influencing the results. Elgazzar is listed as chief editor of the Benha Medical Journal, and is an editorial board member.

The study found that patients with Covid-19 treated in hospital who “received ivermectin early reported substantial recovery” and that there was “a substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in ivermectin treated groups” by 90%. But the drug’s promise as a treatment for the virus is in serious doubt after the Elgazzar study was pulled from the Research Square website on Thursday “due to ethical concerns”. Research Square did not outline what those concerns were. A medical student in London, Jack Lawrence, was among the first to identify serious concerns about the paper, leading to the retraction. He first became aware of the Elgazzar preprint when it was assigned to him by one of his lecturers for an assignment that formed part of his master’s degree. He found the introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely plagiarised.

It appeared that the authors had run entire paragraphs from press releases and websites about ivermectin and Covid-19 through a thesaurus to change key words. “Humorously, this led to them changing ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’ to ‘extreme intense respiratory syndrome’ on one occasion,” Lawrence said. The data also looked suspicious to Lawrence, with the raw data apparently contradicting the study protocol on several occasions.

Read more …

Not sure what Trump did this time, but they want him again. Is it his lawsuit vs Big Tech?

Top General Feared Trump Would Attempt A Coup After Losing The Election (DM)

The country’s top military officer was so convinced that then-President Donald Trump would attempt a coup after his election loss to Joe Biden that he and other senior generals made plans to stop him, according to a new book. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his deputies reportedly pledged to resign en masse if they were given an order by Trump that was illegal or unconstitutional. ‘They may try, but they’re not going to f***ing succeed,’ Milley told his deputies. ‘You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. ‘We’re the guys with the guns.’ The dramatic quote excerpted by CNN was revealed in a new book authored by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig titled I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. The book is scheduled for release next week.

Days before the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, Milley warned confidantes of a ‘Reichstag moment’ facing the country. According to the book, his concern stemmed from the fact that Trump was preaching ‘the gospel of the Führer.’ Milly referred to Trump supporters at a march to protest the election as ‘brownshirts in the streets.’ In 1933, after Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany, the Nazis used a fire at the Reichstag building, home to Germany’s parliament, as a pretext to suspend civil liberties and consolidate power by claiming the country was under threat from communists. The brownshirts were Nazi paramilitaries who helped Hitler rise to power. ‘Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military,’ Rucker and Leonnig write.

The joint chiefs chairman was especially worried by the fact that Trump purged the Defense Department of those who raised objections to his ideas and replaced them with loyalists after the November election. Days after the election, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and replaced him with Christopher Miller. Other deputies to Esper were also fired and replaced with those who shared the then-president’s views. In December, Attorney General William Barr resigned after he refused to endorse Trump’s claims of rampant voter fraud. The departures of Barr and Esper left Milley concerned, according to the book. Milley reportedly told friends that he felt he needed to be ‘on guard’ in anticipation of what might happen.

Read more …

Luke Harding was one of the people at the Guardian working with Julian Assange on releases of WikiLeaks files back in 2009/10. He wanted to write Assange’s biography, but Julian declined. Then the revenge started. First, Harding and David Leigh published a secret password in a book, then a preposterous lying story of Paul Manafort visiting the Ecuador embassy multiple times followed, which conveniently combined anti-Assange with anti-Trump, and now there’s more hollow filth.

Kremlin Papers Appear To Show Putin’s Plot To Put Trump In White House (G.)

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents. The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present. They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.


Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature. By this point Trump was the frontrunner in the Republican party’s nomination race. A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use “all possible force” to ensure a Trump victory. Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin. The Guardian has shown the documents to independent experts who say they appear to be genuine. Incidental details come across as accurate. The overall tone and thrust is said to be consistent with Kremlin security thinking.

Read more …

Why on earth react?

Kremlin Says Guardian Claims Are ‘Fundamentally Untrue’ (RT)

Moscow has reacted furiously to a series of claims, backed up with anonymous and unverifiable sources, that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his security officials to support Donald Trump’s campaign to become US president. In comments made exclusively to RT on Thursday evening, Putin’s spokesman slammed the report, published in the UK’s Guardian newspaper earlier that day. “This is total fiction,” Dmitry Peskov remarked. “Strictly speaking, it is complete nonsense. Of course, this is the hallmark of an absolutely low-quality publication. Either the newspaper is trying to somehow increase its popularity or is sticking to a rabidly Russophobic line.”

The article, authored by British journalist Luke Harding and two other staffers at the outlet, claimed that Putin had “Personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, during a closed session of Russia’s national security council.” The bombshell revelations were purportedly based on “what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.” Harding has a history of publishing false stories related to the so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory, which became popular after Trump was elected to America’s highest office. In 2018, for instance, he published a completely fake tale about dissident publisher Julian Assange and the American lobbyist Paul Manafort supposedly having met in London.

The article was also based on anonymous ‘sources.’ Although the allegation has been thoroughly debunked, the Guardian has refused to correct the record. While working in Moscow in 2007, Harding was accused of plagiarism by The Exile, a small, independent and now defunct magazine. His employer issued an apology at the time.

Read more …

Duh!

Russia Accuses US Of ‘Staging’ Anti-Government Protests In Cuba (RT)

Wide-scale protests and rioting that have rocked the Caribbean nation of Cuba are, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, part of an orchestrated campaign by American officials to oust the country’s socialist government. In a statement issued on Thursday, one of Moscow’s top diplomatic representatives, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, blasted American “impudence” for suggesting that the demonstrations were a result of the Cuban government’s own mistakes. Instead, she described the approach a part of “yet another political staging.” “Washington’s cynicism is shown by the fact that throughout the entire period of the existence of revolutionary Cuba, it purposefully pursued a strategy of strangling the country, discriminating against its people and destroying the economy,” she went on.

“Their thinking here is simple – it has already been repeatedly deployed by Washington in different situations. But in every case, there is the same goal – sparking ‘color revolutions’ in response to unwanted regimes.” The approach, the official added, hinges on applying sanctions and provoking tensions by worsening the socio-economic situation in the country. Zakharova said that the idea authorities in Havana alone were to blame for fomenting discontent was patently false. “Despite all the measures taken by the central Cuban authorities to support the country’s economy and provide assistance to the population, it is they who are accused by Washington of the current crisis situation,” she said. “At the same time, the Americans, as always, keep silent about their own subversive actions and opportunistic aspirations.”

She went on to compare the incident to scenes in Washington in January, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump forced their way into the seat of government in protest of his election defeat. “Where were their concerns about humanitarian values, political pluralism and democratic freedoms,” she asked, “when those who stormed the Capitol… were detained across America, accused of ‘domestic terrorism’ and are now facing criminal charges?” Earlier this week, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the circumstances that led to tens of thousands of protesters taking to the streets were down to the “actions and inactions, mismanagement, corruption of the Cuban regime” and not because of “anything the United States has done.” “We are always considering options available to us that would allow us to support the Cuban people, to support their humanitarian needs, which are indeed profound,” Price told reporters.

Read more …

How about adults?

Illinois Becomes First State To Prohibit Police From Lying To Kids (JTN)

Illinois has become the first state to ban law enforcement officers from lying to juveniles during interrogations. The law was part of a package of criminal justice reform measures put forth by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker Thursday. Senate Bill 2122, which prohibits the use of deceptive tactics by all law enforcement when interrogating a minor, takes effect on Jan. 1, 2022. “It is time that we move towards a new era of public safety,” said state Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, a co-sponsor of the bill. “Public safety for all, public safety by the people, public safety that belongs to us.” Also attending the bill signing was Terrell Swift, one of the so-called “Englewood Four.” Swift served 15 years in prison for rape and murder before he was released in 2012 after it was ruled that his confession as a 17-year-old was coerced by Chicago police.

That confession led to his conviction despite no evidence tying him to the crime, and the city eventually paid Swift $7 million in a settlement after his release. “This bill, I truly believe, could have saved my life,” Swift said. Along with SB 2122, Pritzker signed three other bills: Senate Bill 64, which encourages the use of restorative justice practices by making statements during these practices privileged.Senate Bill 2129, which allows the State’s Attorney of a county in which a defendant was sentenced to petition for re-sentencing of the offender if the original sentence no long advances the interests of justice. Senate Bill 3587, which creates the Re-sentencing Task Force Act to study ways to reduce the state’s prison population through re-sentencing motions.

In February, Pritzker signed a criminal justice reform plan which eliminates cash bail within two years, makes it easier to decertify police officers by eliminating signed affidavits of complaint, and mandates the use of police body cameras for all officers by 2025. Law enforcement officials statewide condemned the reform plan as hindering police from preventing crime, ultimately emboldening criminals and threatening police officers.

Read more …

“..not all the phones were subject to record preservation.”

59 of 96 Phones Assigned To Mueller Probe Missing (JTN)

Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter to the Justice Department Wednesday asking for more information regarding missing phones used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the Russian collusion investigation. The senators sent the letter after finding out the Justice Department “could not locate 59 of the 96 phones used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team,” according to Grassley’s website. The two senators wrote to the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General in September 2020 regarding allegations that cell phones assigned to “multiple people on then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team were ‘wiped’ for various reasons during [the Russia investigation].”

In a response on May 11, 2021, the OIG reported that 59 of the 96 phones assigned the Special Counsel’s Office were unaccounted for. That report showed that in June 2019, the DOJ took possession of 79 of 96 phones that belonged to members of Muller’s team to be reviewed for official records. The records included notes and text messages, which were then sent to DOJ or FBI email systems for preservation. However, not all the phones were subject to record preservation. The two lawmakers are now following up with requests for further information including:

• the names of SCO employees whose cell phones were not reviewed for official records
• what, if any, actions are being taken by the DOJ to recover the 59 phones the department has been unable to locate
• whether the DOJ reviewed the phones to ascertain “whether they were used to leak sensitive or classified information.”

Read more …

Oh, how lovely.

Bill Clinton Took Two More Trips On The Lolita Express (DM)

Bill Clinton took two trips with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein – including one on the pedophile’s private jet – that have not been previously disclosed. A new podcast reveals that the former President flew on Epstein’s jet, which was dubbed the ‘Lolita Express’, in February 2005 while visiting Japan, Taiwan and China. Clinton also flew on a private jet owned by billionaire Ron Burkle with Maxwell as a passenger during a trip to India in November 2003. That visit was part of Clinton’s work with the Clinton Foundation, his philanthropic initiative, to lower the cost of AIDS drugs. According to journalist Vicky Ward, Maxwell was part of the official Clinton party and even stayed at the same hotel as him. Ward reveals the details in her new podcast ‘Chasing Ghislaine’, which is available from Thursday on Audible Originals.

The podcast claims that Maxwell used Clinton for her ‘escape’ from Epstein in the 2000s when her relationship with the financier was cooling. Maxwell was considered by Clinton’s personal staff to be ‘just as important’ as Epstein for raising money for the Clinton Foundation and was the ‘go-to person’ when it came to asking for donations from the pedophile. The claims put new focus on the friendship between the former President and Epstein, who hanged himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Flight logs showed that Clinton took at least 26 trips aboard the ‘Lolita Express’ — even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights between 2001 and 2003. The period where Epstein and Clinton were closest – the early 2000s – coincides with the period that Epstein was charged with running a sex trafficking ring.

Clinton has always denied any involvement in any criminality and has claimed that has never visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean as some reports have suggested. But the connections between the two appear to have been strong and there were financial as well as social links lasting many years. Maxwell is currently awaiting a November trial for allegedly procuring and trafficking underage girls for Epstein, charges she denies. Ward has reported on the Epstein case for nearly two decades, first for Vanity Fair and now in her role as a CNN journalist. She wrote a profile of Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2003 but the details of his alleged abuse of two young sisters was left out after Epstein contacted her editor, Graydon Carter, she claims.

According to ‘Chasing Ghislaine’, during the 2000s Maxwell was trying to escape the ‘sick partnership’ she had built with Epstein, who she dated during the early 1990s and allegedly abused underage girls with. In the podcast, Ward says: ‘Ghislaine used former President Bill Clinton for her escape. ‘Remember, Clinton’s post-presidency was an exciting, very attractive place to be. He and an entourage went on fascinating trips to Europe, to Asia, to Africa and he met with extremely interesting people. ‘Now, records I’ve seen recently show that in 2003, Ghislaine visited the Taj Mahal with Bill Clinton and a group of around 20 others. This trip has not previously been reported. Jeffrey wasn’t on it. And that was key in cementing Ghislaine’s rise as a VIP in her own right in Clinton World, according to sources close to Bill Clinton’.

Read more …

J6 has turned them into a national force. But why exactly?

Capitol Police To Use Army Surveillance Gear To Monitor Americans (AMN)

U.S. Capitol Police will start using Army surveillance equipment to monitor Americans as part of a larger effort to improve security and turn the force into “an intelligence-based protective agency” in the wake of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Last week, the USCP took possession of eight Persistent Surveillance Systems Ground – Medium (PSSG-M) units, fulfilling a request that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved on June 2. The units capture high-definition video and include night vision, but do not feature facial recognition capabilities. “This technology will be integrated with existing USCP camera infrastructure, providing greater high definition surveillance capacity to meet steady-state mission requirements and help identify emerging threats,” the Pentagon said.

The same technology was used by troops during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to observe large areas day and night. The Army will install the units and train Capitol Police on how to operate the systems, the Pentagon said. In a statement last week, the USCP called the technology “state-of-the-art campus surveillance technology, which will enhance the ability to detect and monitor threat activity.” The Capitol Police did not provide further details regarding how or where the surveillance equipment would be used, and didn’t provide information on whether data collected would be stored or distributed. These latest efforts by the Capitol Police have raised some concerns relating to Americans’ privacy rights.

Last month, a federal appeals court found similar surveillance technology used by the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) violated the constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. A New York University School of Law independent audit of the systems used by the BPD found the technology allowed the department to track individuals for multiple days. William Owen, a member of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said the Capitol Police’s new technology is cause for concern. “These so-called improvements that the Capitol Police have implemented after the insurrection represent an expansion of police power and surveillance that STOP cautioned against in January,” he said, according to The Washington Times.

Read more …

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

Highlights of journalism.

 

 

Assange

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Nov 282018
 


Yasuhiro Ishimoto Chicago 1959

 

Stock Market Selloff Only Half-done, Final Leg In 2019 – Morgan Stanley (MW)
Home Prices Have Surged, Government’s Share Of Mortgages Will Too (MW)
Trump Says ‘Not Even A Little Bit Happy’ With Fed’s Powell (R.)
Manafort’s Lawyer Repeatedly Briefed Trump Attorneys On Mueller Talks (ZH)
If Manafort Visited Assange There Should Be Ample Evidence (Greenwald)
Manafort Plans To Explore “All Legal Options” Against The Guardian (ZH)
Poroshenko Claims Ukraine Offered ‘Military Assistance’ By US (Ind.)
‘Put Putin In His Place’, Ukrainian Ambassador Tells Germany (R.)
Ukraine Digests What Martial Law Will Mean (Ind.)
Chancellor Admits UK Will Be Worse Off Under All Brexit Scenarios (G.)
Murphy to the Rescue (Kunstler)

 

 

Sorry, useless predictions. MS knows no more than you do.

Stock Market Selloff Only Half-done, Final Leg In 2019 – Morgan Stanley (MW)

Elon Musk’s cringe-inducing Twitter meltdown, the rise and fall of bitcoin, and the record-breaking oil plunge — for some 2018 can’t end soon enough. But be careful for what you wish for as the bear that has rampaged through the stock market is expected to return in the new year, according to one Wall Street strategist. “The Rolling Bear market is now better understood by the consensus; and more importantly, it is better priced, with forward price/earnings falling 18% from peak to trough. In short, while 90% of the price damage has been done by this bear, we’ve likely only served 50% of the time,” said Mike Wilson, an equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, in a note to clients.

Wilson was among the handful of market watchers to predict the recent market wipeout even as stocks were trading at record levels. “The Rolling Bear is tired from all the mauling he has done this year. However, he is likely just resting rather than hibernating,” he said. ”The final leg of this bear likely won’t come until numbers are reduced for 2019, although that should feel a lot less painful than the multiple compression stage we experienced in 2018.” The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are poised to close out November in the red as worries about tighter liquidity resulting from the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes and a trade war with China triggered an exodus from stocks.

Read more …

Why do Fannie and Freddie atill guarantee $700,000+ loans? If they didn’t, homes would become much more affordable.

Home Prices Have Surged, Government’s Share Of Mortgages Will Too (MW)

A federal regulator has raised the dollar amount of home loans that qualify for backing by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant government-sponsored enterprises. In 2019, the maximum conforming loan limit will be $484,350, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Tuesday. That’s up 6.9% from the 2018 maximum of $453,100. The change is based on the rate of change in home prices between the third quarter of 2017 and third quarter of 2018, as measured by FHFA’s House Price Index. But in higher-priced areas, loan limits are capped at 150% of the baseline $484,350. That means Fannie and Freddie will guarantee loans up to $726,525 in roughly 100 higher-cost counties.

Raising the dollar limit on Fannie- and Freddie-backed loans is one way of lubricating the mortgage market. If banks or other lenders can sell bigger mortgages to the enterprises, that makes it easier for them to keep lending. In turn, that makes it easier for would-be buyers to find financing that is generally more advantageous than other types of mortgages, like those backed by the Federal Housing Administration. But it also increases the risk to taxpayers. Fannie and Freddie operate with only a slim capital reserve, as the result of a 2012 directive from Congress that was patched over late in 2017. The update was owed to an agreement between FHFA Director Mel Watt and the U.S. Treasury even as they continue to guarantee between 40%-50% of new mortgages. That means that in any given quarter, either company is at risk of having to take taxpayer money.

Read more …

Trump senses the danger, and then ridicules himself.

Trump Says ‘Not Even A Little Bit Happy’ With Fed’s Powell (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday kept up his criticism of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, saying rising interest rates and other Fed policies were damaging the U.S. economy, the Washington Post said. “So far, I’m not even a little bit happy with my selection of Jay,” the Post quoted Trump as saying in an interview, referring to the man he picked last year to lead the Fed. “Not even a little bit. And I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing.”

In recent months, the Republican president has repeatedly criticized Powell and the Fed’s interest rate increases that he said was making it more expensive for his administration to finance its escalating deficits. Trump has called the Fed “crazy” and “ridiculous.” “I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” Trump told the Post on Tuesday. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

Read more …

Joint defense agreements are common and fully legal, but the NY Times labels this one “highly unusual”. Summarized: Mueller was outflanked, though he could/should have known, and Manafort may be relying on a pardon.

Manafort’s Lawyer Repeatedly Briefed Trump Attorneys On Mueller Talks (ZH)

One day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller said that Paul Manafort had lied and violated his plea agreement with Federal prosecutors, and as a result should be sentenced immediately, the NYT has reported that in a “highly unusual” arrangement, a lawyer for Paul Manafort had repeatedly briefed president Trump’s lawyer on what he told Mueller and other federal investigators after he agreed to cooperate with the special counsel. While the arrangement is not illegal, it reportedly inflamed tensions with the special counsel’s office when prosecutors discovered it after Mr. Manafort began “cooperating” two months ago, with some legal experts speculating that Manafort’s backdoor cooperation with Trump’s legal team was a bid by Trump’s former campaign chair for a presidential pardon even as he worked with Mueller in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani acknowledged the arrangement to the NYT, and “defended it as a source of valuable insights into the special counsel’s inquiry and where it was headed.” Such information could help shape a legal defense strategy, and it also appeared to give Mr. Trump and his legal advisers ammunition in their public relations campaign against Mr. Mueller’s office. As an example of what Manafort told the Trump legal team, Giuliani said, Manafort’s lawyer Kevin Downing told him that prosecutors hammered away at whether the president knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Russians promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton to his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, although this line of investigation is hardly a surprise. Trump has long denied knowing about the meeting in advance, with Giuliani saying that Mueller “wants Manafort to incriminate Trump.”

What is notable is that this kind of joint defense agreement is legal, and while Downing’s discussions with the president’s team violated no laws, they helped contribute to a deteriorating relationship between lawyers for Manafort and Mueller’s prosecutors, who on Monday accused Manafort of holding out on them and even lying, despite his pledge to assist them in any matter they deemed relevant. As a result of the collapse of the plea deal, Manafort will now face sentencing on two conspiracy charges and eight counts of financial fraud — crimes that could put him behind bars for at least 10 years. Just as importantly, Manafort’s frequent updates helped reassure Trump’s legal team that Manafort had not implicated the president in any possible wrongdoing, which begs the question just how was Manafort “cooperating” with Mueller for two whole months.

Read more …

Greenwald: “The Guardian itself “obtained the Embassy’s visitors logs in May,” and made no mention of Manafort’s visits at the time..”

Excuse me, but Greenwald and others do Luke Harding and the Guardian far too much honor by going into the details. The guy wrote a book called ‘Collusion’ for Pete’s sake. he does smear and hit pieces on Assange for a living. WikiLeaks is dead on when it says “Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper’s reputation..”

Only, Harding and Guardian have published at least a dozen other stories of the same ‘level’. That reputation should be long gone. It’s not. Matrix.

If Manafort Visited Assange There Should Be Ample Evidence (Greenwald)

The Guardian today published a blockbuster, instantly viral story claiming that anonymous sources told the newspaper that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange at least three times in the Ecuadorian Embassy, “in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016.” The article – from lead reporter Luke Harding, who has a long-standing and vicious personal feud with WikiLeaks and is still promoting his book titled “Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House” – presents no evidence, documents or other tangible proof to substantiate its claim, and it is deliberately vague on a key point: whether any of these alleged visits happened once Manafort was managing Trump’s campaign.

For its part, WikiLeaks vehemently and unambiguously denies the claim. “Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper’s reputation,” the organization tweeted, adding: “WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange.” The group also predicted: “This is going to be one of the most infamous news disasters since Stern published the ‘Hitler Diaries.’ [..] Of course it is possible that Manafort visited Assange – either on the dates the Guardian claims or at other times – but since the Guardian presents literally no evidence for the reader to evaluate, relying instead on a combination of an anonymous source and a secret and bizarrely vague intelligence document it claims it reviewed (but does not publish), no rational person would assume this story to be true.

But the main point is this one: London itself is one of the world’s most surveilled, if not the most surveilled, cities. And the Ecuadorian Embassy in that city – for obvious reasons – is one of the most scrutinized, surveilled, monitored and filmed locations on the planet.

Read more …

Entirely in the vein of my article yesterday about people living in the Matrix, we need to ponder that outlets like the Guardian no longer care about their credibility, but instead rely on people swallowing whole anything they say, today about Manafort, Assange and Russian aggression, tomorrow about other topics. That is plenty scary.

Manafort Plans To Explore “All Legal Options” Against The Guardian (ZH)

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has responded to a “totally false and deliberately libelous” report in The Guardian that he had several meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In a Tuesday afternoon statement through a spokesman, Manafort said: “This story is totally false and deliberately libelous. I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to Wikileaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or Wikileaks on any matter. We are considering all legal options against the Guardian who proceeded with this story even after being notified by my representatives that it was false.”

The Guardian reported on Tuesday – based on unnamed sources – that Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, right around the time he joined Trump’s campaign. “Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House. It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.” -The Guardian

Read more …

If the US find someone else who obeys them, they’ll drop Poroshenko.

Poroshenko Claims Ukraine Offered ‘Military Assistance’ By US (Ind.)

Ukraine has been offered “military assistance” by the US amid rising tension with Russia, the country’s president Petro Poroshenko has claimed. America’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo, had assured him in a phone call that his country, had the “full support, full assistance, including military assistance, full coordination, what we [need] to do to protect Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity”, Mr Poroshenko said. Addressing a suggestion that Donald Trump had been slow to back Ukraine over the stand-off, the Ukrainian leader told CNN host Christiane Amanpour, that the president “in his speech, also supported Ukrainian territorial integrity and [has] been on our side” The US president had earlier said: “We do not like what’s happening either way. We don’t like what’s happening, and hopefully it will get straightened out.”

Read more …

A bit overlooked perhaps. How much of a factor in the Russia aggression narrative is Nordstream 2? It would bankrupt Ukraine.

‘Put Putin In His Place’, Ukrainian Ambassador Tells Germany (R.)

Ukraine’s top diplomat in Germany urged Berlin and other Western states to punish Russia by extending sanctions, banning energy imports and putting the NordStream 2 gas pipeline on hold after Moscow seized three Ukrainian ships near Crimea. The ambassador even raised the possibility of sending German marines to the region. Several senior European politicians have raised the possibility of new sanctions against Russia after the incident on Sunday, which the West fears could ignite a wider conflict near Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. “Germany must take a clear line … and put (Russian President Vladimir) Putin in his place,” ambassador Andrij Melnyk told German radio on Wednesday. “Everything is at stake.”

“The club of sanctions should be wielded quickly …. There should be a complete ban on gas and oil imports from Russia, NordStream 2 must be put on ice,” he said, adding only such measures could stop Putin’s “brutal, hoooligan-like” behavior. Ukraine is already nervous about the prospect of the NordStream 2 pipeline which increases Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, fearing it will lose out on transit revenues. “In military terms, what can you do? Sending German marines to the coast of Crimea … could help stop an escalation. If you are there, Russians have fewer possibilities to act so brutally,” he said.

Read more …

Anything that smells of Russia will be thrown in dungeons. That’s what it means. And Poroshenko means to stay in power.

Ukraine Digests What Martial Law Will Mean (Ind.)

A day after the Ukrainian parliament voted to introduce martial law across 10 border regions, there was little clarity about what it would actually mean in practice. With parts of the government on different pages, and the introduction of measures that could cover most aspects of life, even family, some areas of the country bordered on panic mode. In the southern city of Odessa, there were rumours of forced mobilisation, though these turned out to be false. In other cities across the region, shortages of foreign currency were reported. The text of the law eventually voted on was considerably watered down from the edict originally presented by President Petro Poroshenko on Monday afternoon.

That contained provisions for a state of martial law lasting 60 days across the whole country. By logical extension, that would have meant delaying next March’s presidential elections, a point that caused uproar among the opposition. The eventual compromise saw a commitment to fix the date of the elections, the duration reduced to 30 days, and the zone of coverage reduced to 10 border regions. The Independent understands that these concessions were made only at the last moment, and the vote would not have passed without them. In the text agreed by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, the state of martial law was due to start on Wednesday morning at 9am local time.

But on Tuesday morning, the secretary of the national security council, Oleksandr Turchynov, said that a state of martial law was already in effect. To make matters even more complicated, the Government Courier, the state newspaper where all laws are published, printed a version of the original law, including provisions for 60 days of restrictions across all of Ukraine. [..] in the 10 border regions at least, the law potentially has a very wide scope. The presidential amendments introduce few restrictions on the overarching 2015 legislation covering martial law. In other words, it allows for extrajudicial searches of property, travel bans, closing media deemed against national interests, bans on rallies and demonstrations, limitations on private correspondence and communications, and even introducing limitations on education, private and family life.

Read more …

But that’s exactly what the people voted for, they want to be worse off, and you can’t deny them their vote, that’s bad for democracy.

Chancellor Admits UK Will Be Worse Off Under All Brexit Scenarios (G.)

Philip Hammond has admitted that the UK will be worse off “in pure economic terms” under all possible Brexit outcomes – including the prime minister’s own deal. Speaking on Wednesday morning, the chancellor gave strong hints the government had begun its contingency planning should it lose the vote in parliament on Theresa May’s Brexit deal negotiated with the EU. The latest Guardian analysis suggests 94 Tory MPs have confirmed they will vote against the deal, with numbers likely to tip into three figures in the coming days. Hammond suggested the economic hit would be mitigated if the deal was clinched, rather than the UK leaving with no deal.

Asked if all scenarios would have a cost, Hammond said: “If you look at this purely from an economic point of view, yes there will be a cost to leaving the European Union because there will be impediments to our trade.” Hammond said the deal would “absolutely minimise those costs” and would offer political benefits of being able to sign new trade deals and having new controls over fishing waters. “The economy will be slightly smaller in the prime minister’s preferred version,” he said. He said if the government loses the vote in parliament on 11 December, it would be in “uncharted political territory”. More than half of backbench Tory MPs who are not on the government payroll have committed to voting down the deal.

Read more …

Monday Morning I Want My Quarter Back

Murphy to the Rescue (Kunstler)

Ukraine verges on martial law after a naval incident with Russian ships in the waters off Crimea. Say what? Martial Law? They might as well declare a Chinese Fire Drill. Details of the actual incident around the Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov remain murky besides the fact that two Ukrainian gunships and a tug disobeyed orders from Russian ships to stand down in Russian maritime waters and shots were fired. Who knew that Ukraine even had a navy, and how can they possibly pay for it? But now NATO is trying to get into the act, meaning the USA will get dragged into just the sort unnecessary and idiotic dispute that kicks off world wars.

Note to the Golden Golem of Greatness (aka Mr. Trump): this dog-fight is none of our goddam business. Russia, meanwhile, asked the UN Security Council to convene over this, which is the correct response. What could go wrong? Late Monday update: I’ve heard reports this afternoon that Russia had intel Ukrainian ships were transporting an explosive device supplied by NATO which they suspected was intended to be deployed to blow up the strategic bridge across the Kerch Strait. Still unconfirmed chatter. Developing story….

Yesterday, about five hundred Central American migrants rushed the border at Tijuana. The US Border Patrol tear-gassed them and they backed off. Bad optics for those trying to make the case for open borders. Naturally, The New York Times portrayed this as an assault on families, defaulting to their stock sob story, though the mob assembling down there is overwhelmingly composed of young men. Complicating matters, a new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, takes over next Saturday, a Left-wing populist and enemy of Trumpismo. Tijuana is now choking on the thousands of wanderers who were induced to march north to test America’s broken immigration policies. What could go wrong?

The engine pulling that choo-choo train of grievance is Robert Mueller’s Russian Collusion investigation. I expect him to produce mighty rafts of charges against Mr. Trump, his family and associates, and anyone who ever received so much as a souvenir mug from his 2016 campaign. But I doubt that any of it will have a bearing on Russian election “meddling.” And in that case, the charges will be met by counter-charges of an illegitimate investigation, meaning welcome to that constitutional crisis we’ve been hearing about for two years. That’s a mild way of describing anything from a disorderly impeachment to troops in the American streets. What could go wrong there?

Read more …