Menu Icon

The Narrative of Loss

Sep 122021
 
 September 12, 2021  Posted by at 5:15 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  13 Responses »


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Savage State 1834

 

 

There is nothing wrong with people remembering their departed loved ones; mourning has a beneficial function for the human mind -and body. It’s a bit different when it becomes a group process, or even one of an entire nation, especially when a vast media complex gets involved to tell readers and viewers what to think.

And when one of the eulogists is the guy who used the deaths to inflict death upon millions of others, it has become real different. Mourning, in its optimal form, binds people together. And if you can’t, or don’t mourn all deaths, it has lost that form. It has become as divisive as the initial cause of all the dying.

Does any American think that whoever killed 3,000 people in New York, should want or expect 2-3-4 million people to die in retribution over the following 20 years? Do you even have a right to mourn your own lost innocent lives if you neglect all other lost innocent lives?

I remember watching a video with Larry Silverstein, who had bought all -or most- of the WTC complex just 3 months before 9/11 (always found that a weird detail), saying at some point during 9/11 the fire department decided to “pull the building”. The video is still up. And I thought: you can only “pull” a building if you loaded it up with explosives first, which for a building the size of WTC7 takes days. Why on earth would you have done that in early September or before??

That’s when I stopped reading 9/11 stories, and trying to figure out what really happened, because it was too clear that we would never find out. It is JFK’s murder all over again. Lots of speculation, but never an answer. Just an endless barrage of deceit.

 

And lo and behold, we appear to be walking into exactly the same kind of barrage again, eyes wide open. This one has made, at last count, some 655,000 victims in the US alone over the past 20 months. As the country mourns 3,000 victims from 20 years ago. And while the last great deceit led to revenge on people half a world away, this time the target is “our own people”.

Dr. Robert Malone yesterday said: “I have seen reliable estimates that there have been 450,000 excess US deaths attributable to USG blocking early use of ivermectin and HCQ.” Other sources claim some 200,000 have died from the vaccines (and many more will follow). You keeping track of the numbers? We’re at 650,000 out of 655,000 already. And there’s more (or less, if you want). “Covid cases in UK are 26 times higher than a year go. ”

Does the virus even really exist? 7 Laboratories in US Can’t Find COVID-19 in One of 1,500 Positive Tests. It doesn’t even appear to have been isolated either. Just people with influenza A or B jotted down as covid.

And even if the coronavirus exists, how dangerous is it? More and more claim that the Delta variant, which is said to be almost all virus left, is fictitious, and merely a term used as a way to cover up vaccine deaths.

Meanwhile, Moderna is rushing to get a vaccine approved for 5-11 year olds, and working on one for 6 months old and up. Because they might infect their grandparents, or something. Case fatality rates of these kids are infinitesimal, much lower than the risks of the vaccines for them, but The Science has been abandoned by those who claim to represent it. And the grandparents might think: better me dead than my grandchild, but octogenarian Fauci sure ain’t going to ask them what they think.

That the vaccinated are doing much better than the unvaccinated, either in infections or in transmission, is a long dead mantra. But the idea that the vaccines prevent severe disease or death, is also rapidly vanishing. You’ve been spritzed with something that will be a threat for the rest of your life, and your best defense is to get fit and spruce up your immune system as best you can. Take vit. D, zinc and ivermectin, if you can still get it.

What remains is the deceit, from 9/11 to Covid, the government lies that by now should be expected, and the media lies that.. well, should also. Maybe that’s why we have the interwebs, so we can go out and find a kernel of truth in between the deceit. Even if 95% of people use it to do the exact opposite.

 

Time to start mourning the people who die of or with Covid, and who die of the vaccines, once you’re done with 9/11. And see that they didn’t have to die, that it was a political choice. You may be able to use that grief, and your nascent understanding of why they died, to make sure not more others die of fully preventable causes. Any Americans -and Europeans- who die from now on in will be like the Afghans and Iraqis and Syrians etc. who died post-9/11. Victims of failed -or worse- policy.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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

 

The Lies Must Stop

Aug 252021
 
 August 25, 2021  Posted by at 4:03 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh The red tree house 1890

 

 

The FDA. the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, announced on Monday that it gave full approval to a vaccine. But it didn’t. Or rather, it did, but the approval is for a vaccine that doesn’t exist. Or rather, it exists, but it’s not being produced. Or rather, it’s being produced, but under different names and with different legal statuses.

The FDA is playing a game with Americans, in order to get them to submit to being vaccinated. And this has to stop. No more. The role of the FDA is to protect people, not cajole them into politically desired but illegal actions. Below are 3 -bullet points of- articles about the (non-) approval. One from Peter Doshi, senior editor at The BMJ, and a powerful foe to the FDA, one from Robert Kennedy jr, and one from Jill Malone, wife of Dr. Robert Malone.

But first, yet another lie -BIG, not noble- from Anthony Fauci, as told to Anderson Cooper. There is no approval for “the Pfizer product”, and Fauci knows that very well. Or rather, there is approval for a Pfizer product that is not available to anyone. And that should never have been approved the way it was in the first place, but that’s another story. Still, Fauci said it.

In theory, if he were called on it (but of course he won’t be by any reporter he talks to), he could say that the products are the same anyway. But he won’t say that, because he realizes full well that they have different legal statuses; they are “legally distinct” in the words of the FDA. So Fauci can’t say they are the same. Even if it’s just a matter of a different label on a vial.

Yes, it sounds crazy, but that’s the legal labyrinth the FDA and Pfizer have negotiated themselves into. Why? Kennedy says it best: Pfizer is unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product..

And: “If it says “Comirnaty,” it’s a licensed product. If it says “Pfizer-BioNTech,” it’s an experimental product, and under 21 U.S. Code 360bbb, you have the right to refuse. If it comes from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (marketed as Janssen), you have the right to refuse. [..] If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.”

Jill Malone: The vaccine that is likely to be supplied for some time, WILL BE THE Pfizer – EUA vaccine. So any mandates based on full approval are meaningless.

 

Fauci Dismisses “Freedom” In Call For Vaccine Mandates: “The Time Has Come. Enough Is Enough.”

“There was some poll that showed about 30% of people who are not anti-vax, they were just waiting to get what they felt was the real final stamp of approval, which we just got today with the Pfizer product.” He continued, “And those 30% are saying when that occurs, they will feel very, very comfortable about getting vaccinated. So right away, you’re talking about 30%. I hope they come through with what the survey said.”

[..] “They’re going to give a lot of incentive and backing for a lot of institutions and organizations and places of employment to mandate, and that could be colleges, university, the military, organizations that employ a lot of people, some of the big corporations are going to say if you want to work for us in person, you’ve got to be there and get vaccinated.”


[..] “I know I respect people’s freedom, but when you’re talking about a public health crisis that we’ve been going through for well over a year and a half, the time has come. Enough is enough. We’ve just got to get people vaccinated.” “If we keep lingering without getting those people vaccinated that should be vaccinated, this thing could linger on, leading to the development of another variant which could complicate things.”

Here’s Peter Doshi, senior editor at The BMJ.

Does The FDA Think These Data Justify The First Full Approval Of A Covid-19 Vaccine?

On 28 July 2021, Pfizer and BioNTech posted updated results for their ongoing phase 3 covid-19 vaccine trial. The preprint came almost a year to the day after the historical trial commenced, and nearly four months since the companies announced vaccine efficacy estimates “up to six months.” But you won’t find 10 month follow-up data here.

While the preprint is new, the results it contains aren’t particularly up to date. In fact, the paper is based on the same data cut-off date (13 March 2021) as the 1 April press release, and its topline efficacy result is identical: 91.3% (95% CI 89.0 to 93.2) vaccine efficacy against symptomatic covid-19 through “up to six months of follow-up.”

[..] the recent reports from Israel’s Ministry of Health caught my eye. In early July, they reported that efficacy against infection and symptomatic disease “fell to 64%.” By late July it had fallen to 39% where Delta is the dominant strain. This is very low. For context, the FDA’s expectation is of “at least 50%” efficacy for any approvable vaccine.

[..] evidence of waning immunity was already visible in the data by the 13 March 2021 data cut-off… And it’s hard to imagine how the Delta variant could play a real role here, for 77% of trial participants were from the United States, where Delta was not established until months after data cut-off.

[..] Despite the reference to “six month safety and efficacy” in the preprint’s title, the paper only reports on vaccine efficacy “up to six months,” but not from six months. This is not semantics, as it turns out only 7% of trial participants actually reached six months of blinded follow-up (“8% of BNT162b2 recipients and 6% of placebo recipients had ≥6 months follow-up post-dose 2.”) So despite this preprint appearing a year after the trial began, it provides no data on vaccine efficacy past six months, which is the period Israel says vaccine efficacy has dropped to 39%.

[..] —a total of three covid-19 related deaths (one on vaccine, two on placebo). There were 29 total deaths during blinded follow-up (15 in the vaccine arm; 14 in placebo). The crucial question, however, is whether the waning efficacy seen in the primary endpoint data also applies to the vaccine’s efficacy against severe disease.

[..] here we are, with FDA reportedly on the verge of granting a marketing license 13 months into the still ongoing, two year pivotal trial, with no reported data past 13 March 2021, unclear efficacy after six months due to unblinding, evidence of waning protection irrespective of the Delta variant, and limited reporting of safety data.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Meryl Nass, M.D. at childrenshealthdefense.org.

2 Things Mainstream Media Didn’t Tell You About FDA’s Approval of Pfizer Vaccine

Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a biologics license application for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine. The press reported that vaccine mandates are now legal for military, healthcare workers, college students and employees in many industries. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has now required the vaccine for all teachers and school staff. The Pentagon is proceeding with its mandate for all military service members.

[..] First, the FDA acknowledges that while Pfizer has “insufficient stocks” of the newly licensed Comirnaty vaccine available, there is “a significant amount” of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine — produced under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) — still available for use. The FDA decrees that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product. Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”

[..] EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines.

U.S. laws, however, permit employers and schools to require students and workers to take licensed vaccines. EUA-approved COVID vaccines have an extraordinary liability shield under the 2005 Public Readiness and Preparedness Act. [..] At least for the moment, the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine has no liability shield. Vials of the branded product, which say “Comirnaty” on the label, are subject to the same product liability laws as other U.S. products.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices places a vaccine on the mandatory schedule, a childhood vaccine benefits from a generous retinue of liability protections. But licensed adult vaccines, including the new Comirnaty, do not enjoy any liability shield. Just as with Ford’s exploding Pinto, or Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, people injured by the Comirnaty vaccine could potentially sue for damages. And because adults injured by the vaccine will be able to show that the manufacturer knew of the problems with the product, jury awards could be astronomical.

Pfizer is therefore unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product.

[..] the FDA’s acknowledgement in its approval letter that there are insufficient stocks of the licensed Comirnaty, but an abundant supply of the EUA Pfizer BioNTech jab, exposes the “approval” as a cynical scheme to encourage businesses and schools to impose illegal jab mandates. The FDA’s clear motivation is to enable Pfizer to quickly unload inventories of a vaccine that science and the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System have exposed as unreasonably dangerous, and that the Delta variant has rendered obsolete.

Americans, told that the Pfizer COVID vaccine is now licensed, will understandably assume COVID vaccine mandates are lawful. But only EUA-authorized vaccines, for which no one has any real liability, will be available during the next few weeks when many school mandate deadlines occur. [..] While the media has trumpeted that the FDA has approved COVID vaccines, the FDA has not approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccines, nor any COVID vaccines for the 12- to 15-year age group, nor any booster doses for anyone.

And the FDA has not licensed any Moderna vaccine, nor any vaccine from Johnson & Johnson — so the vast majority, if not all, of vaccines available in the U.S. remain unlicensed EUA products.

Here’s what you need to know when somebody orders you to get the vaccine: Ask to see the vial. If it says “Comirnaty,” it’s a licensed product. If it says “Pfizer-BioNTech,” it’s an experimental product, and under 21 U.S. Code 360bbb, you have the right to refuse. If it comes from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (marketed as Janssen), you have the right to refuse. The FDA is playing bait and switch with the American public — but we don’t have to play along. If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine..

And Jill Malone.

FDA Pfizer Authorization (Comirnaty): Key Points To Consider And Discuss

FDA Pfizer authorization (Comirnaty): Key points to consider and discuss.
These points are an aggregate of many minds, including Dr. Robert Malone. 23 Aug 2021
General talking points
• Why mandates if herd immunity isn’t possible?
• What happens 8 months after boosters?
• What’s the plan for the next variant?
• Why we’re messing with vaccine injury liability if the vaccines are safe and effective?

There are now TWO LEGALLY distinct (Pfizer vs. BionTech), but otherwise identical products, based on two FDA letters, as well as a press release. The analysis of these FDA products below is preliminary and subject to change.

Letter to Pfizer
https://www.fda.gov/media/150386/download
• DOES NOT GIVE FULL APPROVAL
• Extends EUA to allow supply of current Pfizer under EUA because limited supply of BioNTech version.
• “The products are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness. (page 2, Pfizer letter) [..] here FDA quietly admits that the licensed Pfizer vaccine and the authorized Pfizer vaccine are identical with regard to safety/efficacy, but they are “legally distinct.” That’s code for one has manufacturer liability, while the other doesn’t. It is also code for “we don’t want to impose a mandate on the EUA product cause it is illegal, but we can probably get away with a mandate on the licensed product.”

[..] yes, we licensed the vaccine, but…there is a lot of the old vaccine out there, actually “a significant amount” and this amount will be considered an EUA and will continue to be used. Now, why would they do that? Why specify that identical versions of the product will be legally different? Because they need the license to impose the mandates. But they need the EUA to evade liability.

Along with the license comes liability for the manufacturer. (While all EUA products were given a liability shield.) the feds want us to THINK the vaccine we are receiving is licensed, which will make people submit because they think it can now be mandated , but instead we are almost certain to receive the EUA vials instead, to save Pfizer’s behind.

Press release
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine

“On August 23, 2021, FDA approved the biologics license application (BLA) submitted by BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH for COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 in individuals 16 years of age and older.” The efficacy claims are based on outdated data. The press release indicates that the basis of the efficacy claims was as quoted below. However, those data are outdated, and captured with strains of virus (Alpha, Beta) that are no longer predominant. The efficacy claims are therefore invalid – it is quite clear that the vaccine is much less effective in preventing infection by the currently circulating strain (Delta)

In its letter to BioNTech, the FDA states “” We have determined that an analysis of spontaneous postmarketing adverse events reported under section 505(k)(1) of the FDCA will not be sufficient to assess known serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis and identify an unexpected serious risk of subclinical myocarditis. Furthermore, the pharmacovigilance system that FDA is required to maintain under section 505(k)(3) of the FDCA is not sufficient to assess these serious risks.” The first sentence says that VAERS will be incapable of assessing known serious risk The second sentence says that the other pharmacovigilance systems that by law FDA employs (supposedly about 20 different databases when they were bragging about them last October) are similarly incapable of assessing known serious risk.

• The risks in pregnancy remain unknown. “although not FDA requirements, the company has committed to additional post-marketing safety studies, including conducting a pregnancy registry study to evaluate pregnancy and infant outcomes after receipt of Comirnaty during pregnancy.” The prescribing info says: “There is a pregnancy exposure registry for COMIRNATY. Encourage individuals exposed to COMIRNATY around the time of conception or during pregnancy to register by visiting https://mothertobaby.org/ongoingstudy/covid19-vaccines/ .” WHY ARE THEY DOING A PREGNANCY STUDY?

FDA has licensed the BioNTech vaccine for 16 and up
• All of the authorized vaccine on shelves and in freezers will remain only authorized, until the new product with Cominaty labelling arrives.
• 3d or booster doses and vaccine for 12-15 year olds remains under EUA
• Why not also approve the Pfizer version? Why leave it under EUA?
• When the press says the “Pfizer vaccine is fully approved.” It is not. The vaccine that is likely to be supplied for some time, WILL BE THE Pfizer – EUA vaccine. So any mandates based on full approval are meaningless.

THE BLA acknowledges LONG term myocardial issues with a 5 year follow up consistent with the lower range for LTFU for Gene Therapy Products. Is FDA quietly acknowledging the Gene Therapy classification? These products have been classified by FDA as Gene Therapy Products which require UP to 15 years long term follow up in studies. This was acknowledged by Moderna in their 2Q 2020 filing.

Using superior CDC published methods, normalizing for people vaccinated, Children’s Health Defense estimates 176x reports of VAERS deaths associated with C19 vaccines compared with flu vaccines. 35x the number for H1N1 (where stimulated reporting is speculated) Using CDC published methods we estimate under-reporting of VAERS deaths to be 5- 15x. for a total of 30,000-90,000 deaths, mostly non-C19. Underreporting for lifethreatening events may be 24-64x. IN ADDITION – (Israel MOH, combined with Dagan study), we have estimated between 35-86,000 EXCESS USA deaths due to Covid in those vaccinated (>=1 dose)

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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

 

Biden IS the Swamp

Nov 082020
 
 November 8, 2020  Posted by at 4:22 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  14 Responses »


Jasper Johns Three flags 1958

 

 

Since the US has no official institution to call an election soon after the polls have closed, and people want a result fast, it has befallen on the media to make the announcement. And by and large, this hasn’t been that big a deal. But when those same media have for 4 years relentlessly hounded one of the two candidates, it should be obvious that this “system” should not be applied. If only because it has no legal status whatsoever.

However, people both in the US and abroad don’t appear to be aware of this. So when the New York Times et al declare a winner, this is seen as an “official” announcement. It is not. That won’t come until the Electoral College gathers in December (8-14th?!). And at least until then, Trump will have every right to contest the election in court. Still, “world leaders” are congratulating the “next president”. Do they really not know how this works?

The idea behind it all is obvious, of course: to make Trump look like a sore loser, and Biden the president-elect, a title the media claim they can bestow upon him. Do remember that both Biden’s and Kamala’s campaign were considered dead in the water at one point, before they were magically resurrected by the party machine, which ensured that =two people very unpopular in their own party now lead the ticket. Be careful what you wish for.

In that light. I found this intriguing. Twitter adds a warning to this Trump tweet: “Official sources may not have called the race when this was Tweeted”. I haven’t seen one instance where they attached the same warning to tweets about Biden winning and being President Elect. But wouldn’t that be the same thing?

 

 

No, I don’t particularly mind Biden winning, Washington is a shit hole whoever occupies the White House and other posts, but this is not about Biden. It’s about the people behind him. About the people who elected him to be a candidate, and that’s not his voters; it’s the DNC, the FBI and media that made him possible.

Everyone in the MSM is talking about Trump’s alleged lies, as they have for 5 screeching years, main news networks on Thursday even cut off/short a speech by the President of the United States -that must be a first-, but nobody reflects on the 5-year neverending constant lies they have all told ABOUT Trump, on the entire Russiagate episode, the Mueller report based on only lies, the whole shebang.

The DNC that paid for the Steele dossier without which there would never have been a Mueller special counsel, commissioned by Rod Rosenstein when he was Deputy Attorney General, which was based on lies, exclusively, the FBI that used the Dossier to falsify FISA applications, people like Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi who kept on lying about having evidence of Russian collusion.

And still these are the people accusing Trump of lying. And they feel they can get away with it, because their media also incessantly repeated their lies, and is still doing that. Forget for a moment about what you think about Donald Trump, and tell me how you feel about an attempt to unseat an elected American president with nothing but lies.

Do you think that will be a one-off? If so, you’re blind. If Joe Biden and his handlers ever get into the White House, respect for the Office of the Presidency will still be gone, and it will be for a long time, decades. That’s the price the American people pay for the attempt to unseat Trump based on lies only. Do you really feel that’s a price worth paying? I suggest you give that some serious thought.

 

 

With Biden you don’t get Biden, you get the entire cabal that went after Trump, the Democratic Party, the media, the intelligence agencies. And yes, Biden was and is very much part of that cabal. How people do not find that a whole lot scarier than Donald Trump is beyond me.

If -and no that is not when- Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20 2021, that cabal will take over the country. And we’ve seen plenty indications that they intend to make it impossible for the Republicans to ever get one of their own elected as president again. Moreover they will not be investigated for what they concocted over the past 4-5 years.

How the Hillary campaign and the DNC leaked things to the FBI, and the FBI to the MSM, how they lied in courtrooms to get FISA applications on Trump campaign people like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. How they set up Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn so he wouldn’t be Trump’s National Security Adviser, because Flynn knew too much.

It’s a scheme so full of illegal actions that it will be devastating for the entire American political system if it is never investigated, or even if it isn’t investigated very very thoroughly, by an impartial party. And it won’t be if Biden becomes president.

The cabal wants you to think this is about Trump, and any given way to get rid of him is justifiable no matter what, but that is a very dangerous way of thinking. If crimes have been committed, they must be brought into daylight and before a court.

Problem is, of course, that at least half the nation has no idea of what’s been going on. Because they get their news and information from those media that are in on the whole deal. They won’t know that the DNC paid for the Steele Dossier, or that is was just a bunch of lies, or that the FBI knew this even before Rosenstein appointed Mueller as Special Counsel. All that has been kept away from them.

 

 

And yes, 4 years ago Trump said he would fight the swamp, but landed right in the middle of it. Early in his presidency he found himself surrounded by the likes of McMaster, John Kelly, Tillerson, and many other swamp creatures, and today he still has people like Mike Pompeo. But at least Trump is an outsider, and if anything can ever be done to drain the swamp, it will have to come from an outsider. That it may take more than 4 years is something we have to take for granted.

The swamp has fought back, and they may yet win. Joe Biden is the face of that. But people who celebrate that victory should think again, whether they like Trump or not. The swamp is not good for you, and it’s not good for your country, your rights, your freedoms. Its entire MO is to take all these away from you. This is not a partisan thing; the fat ass of the swamp easily fits and sits across the divide.

Joe Biden is not Joe Biden, the man doesn’t stand for anything other than holding on to power while getting richer off that power. He’s done it for 47 years. Term limits are desperately needed in Washington, but the only people who can make that decision are those who profit most from not having term limits. If there’s one area where McConnell and Schumer and Pelosi and Lindsey Graham agree, it’s that.

And meanwhile, Trump, unlike Joe Biden, is just Trump. He doesn’t represent a cabal, or a swamp. Even if he’s surrounded by them. Trump is not the biggest threat to America, that’s just something they’ve been wanting you to think for the past 4 years. Successfully, too, for millions of Americans.

The swamp is the biggest threat, whether their handpuppets come in a Democratic or Republican disguise. But to recognize that, you would have to be able to think for yourself, and if you read or watch the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, you simply can’t do that. You just think you can.

 

 

 

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.

Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

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

 

A Society of Emasculated Liars

Aug 242020
 
 August 24, 2020  Posted by at 1:08 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  21 Responses »


Edward Hopper Tables for ladies 1930

 

 

Haven’t heard from Dr. D in a while, other than in the Comments section here at the Automatic Earth. Where I stopped reading his comments after the umpteenth time he said the COVID fatality rate was only 0.000001%. I find that only repetitious, annoying and more importantly, entirely irrelevant.

But of course over the past 8 months, since I first started to address the virus problem, many things have changed. We have a ton more information on the disease, even if we still don’t appear to know much about it. But one thing we still do know: there is not a government on the planet that has a mandate to kill off its own citizens. And so measures will continue to be taken, no matter how misguided they may be, as long as the virus spreads and people die.

For the media, or what’s left of them by now, COVID is identical to a presidential election: an opportunity to generate clickbait dollars. The priority is not to get the most relevant information to readers and viewers in the best possible way, it’s to present things in those ways that cause the most scandal and anger, because that is what sells.

More specifically about Dr. D’s article below: It’s absurd to claim that Andrew Cuomo killed 20,000 people, just like it’s insane to claim Trump killed 170,000, something I nevertheless read multiple times every single day. What’s neither absurd nor insane is to acknowledge that the US health care system is a giant black hole where money goes in and very little returns. But neither man built that system, it was a society-wide effort.

Fix that and you won’t have to rely on politicians to deal with matters they don’t know the first thing about. “But we listen to the scientists”, they all say. That doesn’t help if you don’t know which scientists to listen to, and to find that out you need to know more about the topic. Catch 22.

There are many many things wrong with both Trump and Cuomo, but in the end they merely epitomize the American political system as a whole, just like their COVID-related actions epitomize the failures of the health care system. Neither system was at all prepared for a pandemic, despite decades of warnings that it would come at some point.

Nor is this just an American problem. European countries, though they often have very differently structured health care systems, were caught just as unawares and unprepared. And you can think and hope that this won’t happen again, that they all will have their blueprints ready for the next one, but I wouldn’t be so sure. There’s not enough money, or power, to be gained from such things.

And no, lockdowns and face masks are not in and of themselves useless or oppressive, but you always need to weigh when to use them, and when not to. And since nobody seems to know that either, we most often see them used for all the wrong reasons and at all the wrong places.And yes, that does get to be oppressive.

But none of this is a reason for me not to let Dr. D speak.

 

 

 

Dr. D: NY’s Governor Andrew Cuomo bans dancing. When are we going to realize they are the lemon-sucking church ladies? He does this AFTER he killed 20,000 people, AFTER the ICUs are long empty, AFTER there are no deaths in NY at all. They’re already intentionally killed 20,000 elderly citizens with their ‘helping’ in a nod to the old eugenics programs. Isn’t that enough?

They always said, growing up, “How could Germany happen?” Didn’t seem that hard to understand to me: men are men. We are not immune. But here watching such madness universally lauded as the best outcome, an example to all, is certainly not what I most expected.

So…crime up 400% in NYC, muggers are beating police and murdering people in the streets. Since this is generally a response to the lockdowns, it won’t be a minute until the bad economy kills more people and ruins more lives than the virus. …Like I said. But beyond that, it has ruined more lives by actually removing all fun, all humor, all discussion, all discovery, all ‘humanity’ from society toward each other. Mask-Nazis are beating fellow shoppers for non-compliance. In what seems to be a competition to show that they don’t believe either in Covid, or in masks at all. If a guy was a leper, would you run up and jump on him to hang his bells on? Clearly they do not believe – in any way – that this is real. That this is dangerous. They just are ze rules. And ze rules are ze rules. Papers please, citizen. Except when it’s US, we’re the good people and we ourselves don’t follow ze rules…you understand. Astonishing.

Even if it were dangerous, wouldn’t there be a human approach to this: Oh do you have a condition? Did you forget? Did you know our policy? Can I help you? In my experience so far, the PoA, Person of Authority, comes up with their mask below their nose, gets 2 feet away, then proceeds to order you about while having not the faintest idea what the actual law – that is, non-law, never passed, doesn’t exist — policy, is. Then I have to quote their policy TO them, they having never even THOUGHT to read it themselves, while they protest ignorance of the law…to me. Ain’t rocket science folks. I’m only literate and can read the little black lines. Their city, state, corporation posted it publicly. Not genius level.

The compliant and fully participating people, quaran-teaming, staying home, wearing masks, also then have people over if it’s their mother/brother/friend…who is then in their own quarantine…which you just broke completely…with not the slightest self-awareness of science, while spending time complaining about “stupid red people who won’t wear masks”…while the parties doing the complaining are themselves medical professionals and the medically compromised. If it’s “us” it’s not dangerous, the ‘Rona is our god, the ‘Rona can tell. …Oh wait: just like I said. Any quarantine will be quarantine theater, and the worst of all worlds.

We’ll BOTH destroy the economy – by which I mean the jobs and dreams of all who work, leaving the traders, insiders and oligarchs stronger than ever – AND have no reduction in transmission. Which exactly happened. Killing TWICE as many, because of YOUR choices, not the virus at all, which has killed hardly anyone not on death’s door, and still counting. But that’s okay: we saw the same “camera off, mask off” behavior by Birx, Fauci, and every reporter at the White House. Again, they don’t believe a word. Because again, if this was a Black Plague, coughing up blood with a black neck, they wouldn’t act this way.

 

This is what happens when you tell lies, especially universal lies: your brain takes it in, it can follow, but your heart and body know better and stand aside. They are not “integrated.” Which means you are a person lacking “integrity.” Worse, when everything is a lie, soon you stop even examining data as it arrives, putting it in its proper place (e.g. that Covid CAN hurt you, but the numbers are different) and resisting or pushing back on the lies, so that there is a) open discussion and b) logical, practical, worked-out agreement on size, scale, and approach. Universal lies here lead to universal obedience despite all science, math, statistics, and personal experience, as we see; but also universal disobedience, yes as we see that some resist, but most just don’t follow the rules and claim they are, then justify themselves while attacking the “other” on the thinnest pretenses, the worst of both worlds.

Just like the lemon-sucking church ladies. “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Well, it’s a good thing masks don’t work against viruses at all, or I’d be annoyed about this stuff. As it is, it’s simply compliance theatre, and having a lifetime of that already, I have a wealth of experience in how to navigate our oppressive, hypocritical, insane, unscientific, and self-defeating our culture, which will spare no expense to use a helicopter to track you down in the Outback, in the most solitary outreaches, and demand irrational compliance to a law that was never passed and doesn’t exist. Every day. With every person. Because of the lies no one will address, and the self-evident right and order no one will remedy. Like Assange.

But don’t worry, with our world-wide slave markets, human trafficking, organ harvesting, family-killing, property-destroying, mis-reporting, slanderous, self-serving ways, we’re everso much more enlightened than 1950, before the civil rights they trot out all day, having done not a single other Good Thing™ they can point to in the last 50 years. They also are now all so young, they mis-remember everything it actually was, and just invent, make up, fabricate, whatever-they-want-it-to-be. Reality-as-democracy, the mob, the majority, decide what’s reality, and then it is so! Reviving MLK’s peace torches and peace bricks, I’m sure. The Southern Democrats manning the front lines for Integrated schools against evil Republican Governors from Ohio, while openly communist JFK joined hands with Khrushchev and re-distributed property and set up social justice re-education camps, just like Bernie’s organizers said. I mean, that’s how I remember it, right?

This is where lies get you. This is why people warn not to use them, you know, right before they use them on you. It’s because “People who can get you to believe absurdities, can get you to commit atrocities.” As we see very clearly today. This is the one motto of Cuomo and the rest: We must never, ever, leave people alone. To their own actions and their own consequences. Their own discovery. Their own lives. The only ways are my ways. The only opinions are my opinions. The One True Party UniOpinion™. Submit or die.

 

“When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”
– Dalrymple

 

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, your support is now an integral part of the process.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

 

Debt Rattle February 26 2020

Feb 262020
 
 February 26, 2020  Posted by at 10:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


‘Daly’ Somewhere in the South, possibly Miami 1941

 

• First US Soldier Stationed In South Korea Tests Positive For Coronavirus (CNN)
• China Outbreak Could Cause Critical Shortages Of Medical Products In US (CNN)
• Larry Kudlow: US Has Contained Coronavirus, Economy Holding Up Nicely (CNBC)
• Coronavirus Wipes Out $1.7 Trillion In US Stock Market Value In 2 Days (CNBC)
• US Could See A Similar Death Rate To China If The Virus Spreads – Fauci (CNN)
• Japan Now Aims to Limit, Not Prevent Virus Deaths (ZH)
• UK Schools Close Doors Over Coronavirus Threat As NHS Steps Up Testing (Ind.)
• EU Keeps Borders Open As Virus Spreads Across Continent (RT)
• How The British Invented The Syrian “Opposition” (MEE)
• Assange Tried To Call White House, Hillary Over Data Dump – Lawyer (R.)
• Julian Assange Handcuffed 11 Times And Stripped Naked After 1st Court Day (G.)
• US Mulled ‘Kidnapping, Poisoning, Killing’ Assange – Lawyer (RT)
• Acting DNI Chief Grenell ‘Was Taking Orders’ From Trump On Assange Arrest (RT)
• Thread For Day 2 Of Julian Assange’s Week-Long Extradition Hearing (Gosztola)
• Trump’s Betrayal of Julian Assange (Ron Paul)

 

 

• Cases 81,229 (+ 901 from yesterday’s 80,328).

• Deaths 2,769 (+ 62 from yesterday’s 2,707)

 

• China has fewer deaths today, but many more new cases, + 901 from yesterday’s +621

• Japan gives up on defeating virus., moves to mitigation, With “only” 171 cases and one death.
– That does not include the Diamond Princess’s 691 cases and four deaths.
– Tokyo Olympics still supposedly on

• First US soldier stationed In South Korea tests positive, 18 South Korean soldiers infected

• One week ago 51 people were reported infected in South Korea. Today, there are 1,146. 169 new cases today.

• Italy 322 cases, 11 deaths. The new infections include three in southern Sicily, 1,200km from Milan
– one of the victims is just 4 years old

• EU borders stay open despite Italy cluster(s)

• Spain has 7 confirmed cases

• Taiwan 32 cases

• Thailand 40 cases

• Neighboring countries try to close borders with Iran

• Brazil reports first case in South America

• Large international gatherings in Vatican for Ash Wednesday

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From Worldometer (Note: mortality rate is down to 8%)

 

 

 

 

This is the military. They live in barracks. All you need to know.18 South Korean soldiers infected

• First US Soldier Stationed In South Korea Tests Positive For Coronavirus (CNN)

Public health officials warned Wednesday that the spread of the novel coronavirus is inching closer toward meeting the definition of a global pandemic, as the number of cases outside mainland China continues to grow, including in South Korea where a US soldier has tested positive for the virus. [..] a top official from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that the United States could see the virus spread within its borders. “Ultimately we expect we will see community spread in this country. It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

South Korean authorities are attempting to contain an outbreak that has gone from just 51 people infected last week to at least 1,146 as of Wednesday. The outbreak began in the southern city of Daegu and was centered around the Shincheonji religious group, but the virus appears to have spread now beyond practitioners. Eighteen South Korean soldiers have been confirmed infected, and the country’s defense ministry has placed significant restrictions on soldiers leaving their bases due to fears surrounding the virus. On Wednesday, it was announced that a US service member stationed in South Korea tested positive for the virus, according to US Forces Korea statement.

The soldier, who is stationed at Camp Carroll which is approximately 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the city of Daegu, is the first US service member to test positive for the novel coronavirus. “The patient, a 23-year old male, is currently in self quarantine at his off-base residence. He visited Camp Walker on 24 February and Camp Carroll 21-25 February. KCDC and USFK health professionals are actively conducting contact tracing to determine whether any others may have been exposed,” the statement said. The virus’ spread also prompted South Korea and the United States to scale back joint military drills, according to three US officials.

The three officials said this would be the first major impact of coronavirus on US military readiness, according to the officials. Without the full exercise, the US could lose ground in being able to quickly conduct future operations in a coordinated and highly synchronized manner with South Korea against North Korea in the event of a crisis, one of the officials said.

Read more …

Pretty much a sure thing by now. Question is how bad it will get.

• China Outbreak Could Cause Critical Shortages Of Medical Products In US (CNN)

No drug manufacturers have reported that they anticipate shortages of particular drugs due to the novel coronavirus, according to the US Food and Drug Administration, but the agency and experts in the pharmaceutical industry are paying close attention to the potential challenges the virus might pose. “FDA is keenly aware that the outbreak will likely affect the medical product supply chain, including potential disruptions to suppliers [and] shortages of critical medical products in the US,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn told reporters Tuesday. The US relies heavily on Chinese-made medical devices, drug ingredients and drugs for humans and animals, and, with heavy Chinese investment in the industry in recent years, its share of the global market has steadily grown.


As of 2018, China ranked second among countries that exported drugs and biologics to the United States, and first for medical devices, according to the FDA. The FDA said Monday it has been in touch with 180 drug manufacturers to remind them of their regulatory obligation to notify the FDA if they do anticipate any disruption in drugs supplies. The agency asked companies to evaluate their supply chain in light of the coronavirus outbreak and what potential challenge the virus may pose to the global drug supply, the agency said. The FDA said it has identified about 20 drugs that either solely source their active pharmaceutical ingredients or produce finished drug products from or in China.

Read more …

Oh Larry, why say such things when you don’t have to?

• Larry Kudlow: US Has Contained Coronavirus, Economy Holding Up Nicely (CNBC)

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow tried on Tuesday to assuage concerns over the cornavirus and its impact on the U.S. economy. “We have contained this. I won’t say [it’s] airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight,” Kudlow told CNBC’s Kelly Evans on “The Exchange.” He added that, while the outbreak is a “human tragedy,” it will likely not be an “economic tragedy.” “There will be some stumbles. We’re looking at numbers; it’s a little iffy,” Kudlow said. “But at the moment … there’s no supply disruptions out there yet.” Kudlow’s comments came as the stock market tanked for a second straight day amid worries that the coronavirus outbreak would lead to a prolonged global economic slowdown.


The Dow Jones Industrial Average was more than 700 points lower Tuesday, down 2.7%. On Monday, the 30-stock average had its worst day in two years, dropping more than 1,000 points. Investors dumped equities in favor of U.S. Treasurys, which are traditionally seen as a safe haven during volatile stretches for the stock market. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield dropped to 1.32% to reach an all-time low. The 30-year also traded at a record low. Yields move inversely to prices. Still, Kudlow said the U.S. is “holding up nicely,” adding, “All I can do is look at the numbers.”

Read more …

European markets are falling again today. US futures down as well.

• Coronavirus Wipes Out $1.7 Trillion In US Stock Market Value In 2 Days (CNBC)

The S&P 500 just wiped out about $1.737 trillion of its value during its two-day market sell-off, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The equity benchmark lost $810 billion in value on Tuesday, adding to its $927 billion loss on Monday, according to the firm s Senior Index Analyst Howard Silverblatt. It s down $2.138 trillion since last Wednesday s high, according to S&P Dow Jones. Stocks cratered again on Tuesday as investors fled riskier assets amid intense fears about a slowdown in global growth caused by the deadly coronavirus. The S&P 5002 s two-day loss of 6.3% was the largest for the benchmark since August 2015, when the Chinese government devalued the yuan amid the U.S.-China trade war. Tuesday’s 900 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average added to Monday’s stunning 1,000 point plunge.


The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.8% on Tuesday and joined the S&P 500 and Dow in turning negative for the year. Bond yields also plunged as investor sought safer havens. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to a record low of 1.32%. The spreading deadly virus, that has infected more than 80,000 and killed more than 2,700, has sent shock waves through the markets. Companies like Apple, Nike, United Airlines and Mastercard have all raised flags about the coronavirus and its impact on their earnings. Chip stocks, which rely heavily on revenues from China, are being abandoned by Wall Street as it becomes more apparent supply chain disruption will persist until the epidemic is contained.

Read more …

Anthony Fauci is director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Wonder if he means the real or the “official” rate.

• US Could See A Similar Death Rate To China If The Virus Spreads – Fauci (CNN)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN the US needed more resources to fight the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected 53 people in the US. “We’ve had a pandemic preparedness plan that we really developed in preparation for pandemic influenza, that we can extrapolate to this. We certainly need more resources, and that’s what you heard today with the supplemental request. Because we can only go a certain way with the resources we have,” Fauci said.


Death rate: Fauci added that the fatality rate of the outbreak could reach the same levels in the US as in China because there is no vaccine or cure available. “I mean, the people who are dying who require intensive care, for example in an intensive care unit – maybe even intubation for respiratory assistance in breathing – the Chinese have that. They have a pretty good system, and yet you’re still seeing the 2% mortality. So it isn’t a question of, ‘they don’t have as good care as we have.’ So if, in fact, we do get a pandemic that does impact us in this country, I think you’re going to see comparable types of morbidity and mortality,” he said.

Read more …

I think this is a milestone. Japan admits they can’t handle it. With just 171 cases and one death. That, admittedly, does not include the Diamond Princess’s 691 cases and four deaths.

• Japan Now Aims to Limit, Not Prevent Virus Deaths (ZH)

Overwhelmed by a flurry of ‘unsolved’ cases (that is, cases with no obvious connection to the outbreak in China, or anywhere else), Japanese health authorities announced on Tuesday a new plan intended to focus the country’s precious medical resources on the most serious cases, while advising those with mild symptoms to treat themselves at home. The approach differs markedly from the heavy handed tactics employed by Beijing, which at its peak had 760 million – roughly half the country – under some form of lockdown restriction. According to the Washington Post, the “basic premise” of the Japanese plan is that the virus can’t be stopped. That’s right: The Japanese are essentially acknowledging that the thesis proposed by Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch – ie that 70% of the world’s population might someday contract the virus – has at least some legitimacy.


Japan has at least 160 confirmed cases of the virus outside the ~700 people who caught it aboard the ‘Diamond Princess’. Japanese health officials claim that a large-scale outbreak hasn’t taken hold; rather, small clusters of the disease have broken out around the country. One senior advisor who spoke with WaPo put it the starkest of terms: We can’t stop it, so the best we can do is keep the body count as low as possible. “We shouldn’t have illusions,” said Shigeru Omi, a senior government adviser. “We can’t stop this, but we can try to reduce the speed of expansion and reduce mortality.” In keeping with this maxim, hospital space will be reserved for patients with the most serious symptoms, while those with simple colds and fevers have been asked to rest at home. They’re only to contact health authorities if a fever persists for four days. Or two for the elderly, people with chronic diseases or pregnant women .

Read more …

In certain areas.

• UK Schools Close Doors Over Coronavirus Threat As NHS Steps Up Testing (Ind.)

Schools across the UK have closed their doors to students at risk of coronavirus while all patients are to be routinely tested for the disease in a dramatic escalation of screening by health officials Cransley School in Cheshire and Trinity Catholic College in Teeside have both closed while Brine Leas School in Cheshire has shut its sixth form unit after pupils and staff returned from a ski trip in the Lombardy region of Italy, which has been badly hit by coronavirus. Elsewhere at least 10 schools in Cornwall, Yorkshire, Pembrokeshire, Guernsey, Co Antrim, Co Derry and Co Down have sent pupils home to self-quarantine after returning from similar trips.

It comes as England’s top doctor warned the UK could be forced to quarantine families and reduce transport if the virus becomes a global pandemic. NHS bosses have also expressed concerns about the impact any surge in cases could have on an already under pressure health system. Public Health England said flu patients in intensive care units and respiratory wards at eight NHS hospitals would be tested for coronavirus as well as at 100 primary care centre such as GP surgeries. Up to now tests have only been carried out on those suspected of being infected but this new regime is designed to identify whether the virus, which originated in China, is spreading throughout the country without being detected.

PHE said it did not believe this was currently happening but widening the testing would allow it to spot any circulation and act immediately to prevent it spreading further. Medical director Professor Yvonne Doyle said this was about taking a “belt-and-braces approach”, adding: “There is no change in risk for the public but taking this preparatory step now will enable us to better detect and contain the spread of the virus.”

Read more …

To keep the EU idea alive. And the economy.

• EU Keeps Borders Open As Virus Spreads Across Continent (RT)

Italy’s health minister has said that neighboring countries will not close their borders, amid an outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus. It comes as Rome confirmed 11 people dead in the epidemic, with hundreds infected. “We agreed to keep borders open, closing borders would be a disproportionate and ineffective measure at this time,” Health Minister Roberto Speranza told reporters in Rome on Tuesday. Four more people infected with the deadly virus died in northern Italy on Tuesday, bringing the death toll in the Mediterranean country to 11. Three of the dead were in their eighties and came from Lombardy, the worst affected region of Italy, Civil Protection agency chief Angelo Borrelli told reporters. The fourth was from the Veneto region.

Alongside the three fatalities, Italian authorities confirmed more than 90 new cases of the illness on Tuesday, bringing the total number of cases in Italy to 322. Nearly a dozen towns have been quarantined across the northern Italian regions of Lombardy and Veneto, and supplies across the north have run low. Public events have been cancelled, and panicked shoppers have stripped supermarket shelves of provisions. Though Speranza insisted that Italy’s international borders will remain open, the disease has already begun to spread into mainland Europe. A hotel in Spain’s Canary Islands remains locked down after a guest and his wife were found to be infected, and mainland Spain reported its first case – an Italian woman living in Barcelona – on Tuesday.

Since then, another two people have been diagnosed with the virus in mainland Spain – a man from the city of Villarreal in the east of the country and a 24-year-old man in Madrid who travelled to Italy. This brings the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Spain to 7. Before that, a German tourist and a British man tested positive for the virus on the Canary Islands and in Mallorca, respectively, but both have since been discharged from hospital.

Read more …

What Putin is up against.

• How The British Invented The Syrian “Opposition” (MEE)

The British government covertly established a network of citizen journalists across Syria during the early years of the country’s civil war in an attempt to shape perceptions of the conflict, frequently recruiting people who were unaware that they were being directed from London. A number of leaked documents seen by Middle East Eye show how the propaganda initiative began in 2012 and gathered pace the following year, shortly after the UK parliament refused to authorise British military action in Syria. Drawing upon British, American and Canadian funding, UK government contractors set up offices in Istanbul and Amman, where they hired members of the Syrian diaspora, who in turn recruited citizen journalists inside Syria.

These journalists, many of them young, were commissioned to produce TV footage, radio programmes, social media, posters, magazines and even children’s comics. While many Syrians turned spontaneously to media activism from the start of the war, the documents describe the way in which the British government sought to guide some of their output, seeing citizen journalism as a way of covertly influencing Syrian audiences. The papers also make clear that those people who were recruited were often unaware that they were part of a British propaganda initiative.

Read more …

The Guardian denies everything. It even claims: “The Guardian has made clear it is opposed to the extradition of Julian Assange.” The paper that published a fully fake piece on Manafort repeatedly visiting Assange, without ever retracting it. Their people knew exactly what they did, and forced Assange into late night redacting of names. Now HE stabns accused of what THEY did.

• Assange Tried To Call White House, Hillary Over Data Dump – Lawyer (R.)

Julian Assange tried to contact Hillary Clinton and the White House when he realised that unredacted U.S. diplomatic cables given to WikiLeaks were about to be dumped on the internet, his lawyer told his London extradition hearing on Tuesday. On Monday, the lawyer representing the United States told the hearing that Assange, 48, was wanted for crimes that had endangered people in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan who had helped the West, some of whom later disappeared. U.S. authorities say his actions in recklessly publishing unredacted classified diplomatic cables put informants, dissidents, journalists and human rights activists at risk of torture, abuse or death.

Outlining part of his defence, Assange’s lawyer Mark Summers said allegations that he had helped Manning to break a government password, had encouraged the theft of secret data and knowingly put lives in danger were “lies, lies and more lies”. He told London’s Woolwich Crown Court that WikiLeaks had received documents from Manning in April 2010. He then made a deal with a number of newspapers, including the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian and Germany’s Der Spiegel, to begin releasing redacted parts of the 250,000 cables in November that year. A witness from Der Spiegel said the U.S. State Department had been involved in suggesting redactions in conference calls, Summers said.

However, a password that allowed access to the full unredacted material was published in a book by Guardian reporters about WikiLeaks in February 2011. In August, another German newspaper reported it had discovered the password and it had access to the archive. A spokesman for The Guardian said the authors were told the password was temporary and the book contained no details about the whereabouts of the files. Summers said Assange attempted to warn the U.S. government, calling the White House and attempting to speak to then- Secretary of State Clinton, saying “unless we do something, people’s lives are put at risk”. Summers said the State Department had responded by suggesting that Assange call back “in a couple of hours”.

Read more …

Beyond shame.

• Julian Assange Handcuffed 11 Times And Stripped Naked After 1st Court Day (G.)

Julian Assange was handcuffed 11 times, stripped naked twice and had his case files confiscated after the first day of his extradition hearing, according to his lawyers, who complained of interference in his ability to take part. Their appeal to the judge overseeing the trial at Woolwich crown court in south-east London was also supported by legal counsel for the US government, who said it was essential the WikiLeaks founder be given a fair trial. Edward Fitzgerald QC, acting for Assange, said the case files, which the prisoner was reading in court on Monday, were confiscated by guards when he returned to prison later that night and that he was put in five cells.


The judge, Vanessa Baraitser, replied that she did not have the legal power to comment or rule on Assange’s conditions but encouraged the defence team to formally raise the matter with the prison. The details emerged on the second day of Assange’s extradition hearing, during which his legal team denied that he had “knowingly placed lives at risk” by publishing unredacted US government files. The court was told Wikileaks had entered into a collaboration with the Guardian, El País, the New York Times and other media outlets to make redactions to 250,000 leaked cables secret cables in 2010 and publish them. Mark Summers, QC, claimed the unredacted files had been published because a password to this material had appeared in a Guardian book on the affair. “The gates got opened not by Assange or WikiLeaks but by another member of tha partnership,” he said.

Read more …

Make it look like an accident.

• US Mulled ‘Kidnapping, Poisoning, Killing’ Assange – Lawyer (RT)

The US government plotted to kidnap or kill Julian Assange while he was holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a UK court was told yesterday during the WikiLeaks publisher’s extradition hearing. Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told Judge Vanessa Baraitser that the US wanted to make the WikiLeaks founder’s death look like an accident and that US intelligence agencies worked with Spanish company UC Global to extensively spy on Assange inside the embassy. Fitzgerald claimed that recordings were collected every 14 days and handed over to US intelligence services. The surveillance even included footage of Assange meeting with his legal team, breaching attorney-client privilege, he said.

“There were conversations about whether there should be more extreme measures contemplated, such as kidnapping or poisoning Assange in the embassy,” Fitzgerald told the court. Assange’s lawyers have long-warned that kidnapping or extraordinary rendition could be on the table for Washington if the US could not get to him any other way. The source of the claim heard in court on Monday is a whistleblower known only as ‘witness two’, responsible for exposing UC Global owner David Morales and his role in the surveillance operation for “the dark side” — meaning the US government. The witness described the Americans as “desperate.”

One suggestion was that the embassy door could be left open, which could make a kidnapping look like an “accident.” There wasn’t as much information given about the poisoning claim. This was not the first time claims had been made that the US considered such extreme measures for dealing with Assange. In a 2019 presentation on the technical aspects of the surveillance operation, German hacker Andy Muller-Maguhn, who had visited Assange inside the embassy, claimed that kidnapping and poisoning were options for the US government and that all doors and windows in the embassy were documented so various options could be explored. The surveillance was so intense that bugs were even implanted in a fire extinguisher and in a bathroom that Assange used, he said.

Read more …

Cassandra to the rescue.

• Acting DNI Chief Grenell ‘Was Taking Orders’ From Trump On Assange Arrest (RT)

A GOP operative, known as the Trump family ‘fixer,’ appears to have admitted in a recorded call that the new US spy chief acted on the president’s orders when he allegedly secured the arrest of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The contents of the call between GOP operative Arthur Schwartz and journalist Cassandra Fairbanks – which could turn Julian Assange’s UK extradition trial upside down – were reported on Tuesday by several US media outlets citing nonprofit transparency group Property of the People. The recording itself was later released by Fairbanks on Twitter. In the call, dated September 2019, Schwartz pleads with Fairbanks to delete a September 10 tweet in which she says that Richard Grenell, then a controversial US envoy to Germany, “was the one who worked out the deal for Julian Assange’s arrest.”

Initially, Fairbanks refused to budge, arguing that her tweet was based on an ABC News report from last April alleging that Grenell was instrumental in persuading Ecuador to let British police into its London embassy, where Assange spent some seven years under political asylum. The report suggested that Grenell promised Quito that the US would not pursue the death penalty for the self-exiled publisher if it gave the go-ahead for the raid. Schwartz, however, insisted that Fairbanks must scrub the tweet, accusing her of publishing “classified information.” Schwartz, however, insisted that Fairbanks must scrub the tweet, accusing her of publishing “classified information.” Sounding increasingly frustrated with Fairbank’s unwillingness to pull the post, the Trump fixer says he could go to jail over the information he had apparently shared with her.

“Rick’s role is classified… You can’t do that… you are posting things that are classified, that no one knows, that has not been reported… I know what’s been reported, I see what you’re tweeting, what you’re tweeting is not what was reported. Someone’s going to go to jail. You need to stop this.” Fairbanks then reminded him that it is Assange who was imprisoned due to his work to expose US war crimes, but Schwartz only doubled down on his request. At the same time, Schwartz appears to confirm that Trump himself had pulled strings behind the covert diplomatic op to nab Assange, reportedly orchestrated by Grenell. “Please. I’m begging you… They look at you, they see that we speak, that’s bad. He’s [Grenell] is taking orders from the president. OK? So you’re going to punish me because he took orders from the president? I’m begging you, I’m begging you, please.”

https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/1232466714098466816

A source privy to the Assange defense team’s strategy told Politico the call would be only “one piece of the argument,” part of a larger trove of evidence to be unveiled in court on Wednesday. The materials are intended to prove that the request for the publisher’s extradition was based on a desire for vengeance, rather than on any legal basis. Schwartz himself attempted to dismiss the bombshell as a nothingburger, telling the outlet that he “highly doubts” he would have told the journalist anything of substance, describing her as “not someone that I trust.”

Read more …

Thread of Kevin Gosztola tweets from the courtroom.

• Thread For Day 2 Of Julian Assange’s Week-Long Extradition Hearing (Gosztola)

Defense raises issue of alleged mistreatment of Assange. He was handcuffed 11 times, strip searched multiple times, and moved between cells yesterday. Judge is, once again, insisting no authority to do anything about it. “Powers are very limited in this respect.” Prosecutor won’t speak into the microphone. Keeps it off to the side, and we in the press annex cannot hear a word. #Assange Defense is going over what they claim are examples of Zakrzewski abuse, which means offenses in extradition request are false or outlined inaccurately as proffered by the prosecution #Assange Defense: “False allegation” “Provably wrong.”


That Assange enabled Manning to log on to secret network with databases of information known as SIPRnet Defense also says it is “provably false” that “Assange knowingly put people’s lives at risk.” He mentions this is what US argues to get around First Amendment issues implicated in “pure publication counts.” Defense: “The case has lies, lies, and more lies.” #Assange Defense refers to Chelsea Manning’s plea statement. This is the key statement she made about her disclosures, which prosecutors desperately want to undermine. This is part of why she was subpoenaed to appear before grand jury and is still in jail. #Assange

Read more …

No kidding: “The deep state Trump is serving by persecuting Assange is the same deep state that continues to plot Trump’s own ouster.”

• Trump’s Betrayal of Julian Assange (Ron Paul)

Donald Trump upset the Washington apple cart as presidential candidate and in so doing he set elements of the deep state in motion against him. One of the things candidate Donald Trump did to paint a deep state target on his back was his repeated praise of Wikileaks, the pro-transparency media organization headed up by Australian journalist Julian Assange. More than 100 times candidate Trump said “I love Wikileaks” on the campaign trail. Trump loved it when Wikileaks exposed the criminality of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, as it cheated to deprive Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party nomination. Wikileaks’ release of the DNC emails exposed the deep corruption at the heart of US politics, and as a candidate Trump loved the transparency. Then Trump got elected.

The real tragedy of the Trump presidency is nowhere better demonstrated than in Trump’s 180 degree turn away from Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange. “I know nothing about Wikileaks,” he said as president. “It’s really not my thing.” US pressure and bribes to the Ecuadorian government ended Assange’s asylum and his seven years in a room at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. After his dramatic arrest by London’s Metropolitan Police last April, he has been effectively tortured in British jails at the behest of the US deep state. Today, Monday the 24th of February, Assange faces an extradition hearing in a UK courthouse. The Trump Administration – led by a man who praised Assange’s work – seeks a show trial of Assange worthy of the worst of the Soviet era. The US is seeking a 175 year prison sentence.

The Trump Administration argues that the Australian Assange should be tried and convicted of espionage against a country of which he is not a citizen. At the same time the Trump Administration argues that the First Amendment does not apply to Assange because he is not an American citizen! So Assange is subject to US law when it comes to publishing information embarrassing to the US deep state but he is not subject to the law of the land – the US Constitution – which protects all journalists and is the backbone of our system of government. It is ironic that a President Trump who has been victim of so much deep state meddling has done the deep state’s bidding when it comes to Assange and Wikileaks.

President Trump should preempt the inevitable US show trial of Assange by granting the journalist blanket pardon under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The deep state Trump is serving by persecuting Assange is the same deep state that continues to plot Trump’s own ouster. Free Assange!

Read more …

 

20 years of Pluto:

 

 

 

If you read us, please support us. It’s the only way the Automatic Earth can survive. Donate on Paypal and Patreon.

 

Debt Rattle December 2 2019

Dec 022019
 
 December 2, 2019  Posted by at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  23 Responses »


Russell Lee Migrant family in trailer home near Edinburg, Texas Feb 1939

 

• White House Says It Will Not Participate In Wednesday Impeachment Hearing (R.)
• Political Affiliation Bias: We’re Embracing It Fervently (RT)
• Could America Survive a Truth Commission? (CHS)
• Why a Second American Revolution Is Necessary for the Entire World (Zuesse)
• US Digs Deeper Into Deutsche Role In Danske Money Laundering Scandal (R.)
• Albert Edwards Is Watching To Decide When The US Becomes “Japanified” (ZH)
• Prince Andrew ‘Has Kept In Constant Touch With Ghislaine Maxwell (DM)
• Serbia, Slovakia Join Sudden Eastern European Gold Repatriation Push
• Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? (Marçal)
• What Is COP25 And Can It Save The World? (G.)

 

 

“We may consider participating in future Judiciary Committee proceedings if you afford the administration the ability to do so meaningfully..”

• White House Says It Will Not Participate In Wednesday Impeachment Hearing (R.)

The White House told Democratic lawmakers on Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump and his lawyers would not participate in a congressional impeachment hearing this week, citing a lack of “fundamental fairness.” Trump’s aides responded defiantly to the first of two crucial deadlines he faces in Congress this week as Democrats prepare to shift the focus of their impeachment inquiry from fact-finding to the consideration of possible charges of misconduct over his dealings with Ukraine. The Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, tasked with considering charges known as articles of impeachment, had given Trump until 6 p.m. on Sunday to say whether he would dispatch a lawyer to take part in the judiciary panel’s proceedings on Wednesday.

“We cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, according to a copy of a letter seen by Reuters. Cipollone – while citing a “complete lack of due process and fundamental fairness afforded the president” in the impeachment process – did not rule out participation in further proceedings. But he signaled that Democrats would first have to make major procedural concessions.


[..] “We may consider participating in future Judiciary Committee proceedings if you afford the administration the ability to do so meaningfully,” Cipollone wrote, laying out a list of demands, including allowing Trump’s Republicans to call additional witnesses. Cipollone also complained that Democrats had scheduled Wednesday’s hearing – “no doubt purposely” – to overlap with Trump’s absence from the United States to attend a NATO summit in London.

Read more …

Next year: can Republicans still marry Democrats?

• Political Affiliation Bias: We’re Embracing It Fervently (RT)

In an ultra-PC society where even the suggestion of racial, ethnic or gender bias can get a person fired or ostracized, another type of discrimination – a political affiliation-based one – is thriving, according to a new study. Discrimination may have become taboo in US society, but it hasn’t gone away. A new study shows discriminatory behavior thrives in the one area where it remains socially acceptable to judge people based on shared attributes: political affiliation. Politics remains one of the few personal characteristics not protected by equal opportunity hiring laws, and if this study is any indication, lawmakers will want to get on top of that quickly.

Shared political ideology outweighs seemingly more important factors like professional qualifications in hiring decisions, researchers from Clemson University and the University of Kansas confirmed in a study published this month in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Unchecked, this kind of discrimination is liable to produce powerful echo chambers, in which groupthink eventually becomes a prerequisite for employment. Study participants readily picked a job candidate with whom they shared a political affiliation over a more qualified candidate without that affiliation when presented with Facebook profiles containing clear indicators of the prospective hire’s political alignment. These might include statements about leading a campus Democrat or Republican group, or party symbols like the Democratic donkey or GOP elephant.


The closer the participant, acting as a recruiter, identified with a party, the higher ratings they gave to candidates who touted their membership in that party – qualifications were nigh on irrelevant. The effect held true even when candidate profiles didn’t include explicit statements of political loyalty. Recruiter participants still picked candidates who agreed with them based on profiles sporting either a pro-choice or pro-life statement; pro-Second Amendment or pro-gun control material; or support of Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, a second experiment revealed.

Read more …

Maybe we should ask: Can Americans still recognize the truth?

• Could America Survive a Truth Commission? (CHS)

You’ve probably heard of the Truth Commissions held in disastrously corrupt and oppressive regimes after the sociopath/kleptocrat Oligarchs are deposed. The goal is not revenge, as well-deserved as that might be; the goal is national reconciliation via the only possible path to healing: name names and tell the plain, unadorned truth, stripped of self-serving artifice, spin, propaganda and PR. Is such a stripped-of-spin truthful account of names and events even possible in the U.S.? Sadly, there is precious little evidence that a Truth Commission in the U.S. would be anything more than a travesty of a mockery of a sham, a parade of half-truths, misdirections, falsehoods and fabrications, all aimed at one goal: protecting the powerful from the consequences of their decisions and actions.

Sadly, we’ve lost the capacity to simply tell the truth: everything, and I mean everything, is crafted to protect the guilty, polish the putrid decay of legalized looting, defraud the unwary, ease the most venal, power-mad sociopaths into positions of unparalleled power, sell low-quality goods and services nobody needs or would even want if the marketing weren’t so Orwellian, persuade debt-serfs to borrow more and bamboozle voters into further enriching the few at the expense of the many. The truth is no match for greed is good and don’t be evil, unless it’s incredibly profitable, in which case, go for it but cover your tracks (here’s looking at you, Big Tech). Outrage is reserved for whistleblowers who name names and reveal the sordid truths that the status quo has expended the nation’s treasure to protect from the light of day.


This is the pathetic state of America: our outrage is reserved for those telling the truth, not for the legions who lie, cheat, steal and prevaricate to conceal the truth at all costs.

Read more …

“All of these invasions and coups are based on nothing but lies, and the media are a necessary part of that.”

• Why a Second American Revolution Is Necessary for the Entire World (Zuesse)

On November 11th, the very disturbing but clearly true “Lessons To Learn From The Coup In Bolivia” was posted to the Web. That anonymous author (a German intelligence analyst) documented the evilness of the overthrow of Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the threat now clearly posed to the world by the US regime — a spreading cancer of expansionist fascism, led from Washington. But, even more than this, he indicated that unless the individuals who are responsible for the advancing fascism are executed, there won’t be any real hope for democracy anywhere in the world.

Either this impunity will stop, or else the spread of the US international dictatorship — not only by CIA coups such as this, but by illegal international invasions such as of Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-, and Yemen 2015-, — will continue and will engulf in misery ultimately the entire world. He makes clear the complicity of US ‘news’-media in the lies that ‘justify’ this coup (and ‘justified’ those invasions). It’s, by now, clearly the way the US regime functions. Of course, none of those media will publish any such truth; they all cover-up constantly for the regime, because they actually are an essential part of it. (All of these invasions and coups are based on nothing but lies, and the media are a necessary part of that.) Censorship in America is thus actually extreme, and constant.


For example: how many US-and-allied media have even reported that fascists took over in Bolivia? Instead, we’ve got newspaper editorials such as the New York Times blaming the extraordinarily successful and popular democratically elected President of Bolivia for the coup which overthrew him and replaced him by fascists (and never using the word “coup,” except once derisively, by saying that “British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, cried ‘coup’” — as if it weren’t a coup — and making no mention whatsoever that it had been done by committed fascists).

Read more …

It’s been 5 years since the first whistleblower stepped forward. Who’s in jail?

• US Digs Deeper Into Deutsche Role In Danske Money Laundering Scandal (R.)

The U.S. Department of Justice has in recent weeks stepped up its investigation into Deutsche Bank’s role in the 200 billion euro ($220 billion) Danske Bank money laundering scandal, four people familiar with the inquiry told Reuters. One source said the DoJ’s new line of inquiry is whether Deutsche helped move tainted money from Danske, Denmark’s largest lender, into the United States. If proven, that could lead to steep financial penalties. Officials from the DoJ, who have been working closely with Estonian prosecutors for around a year, have also begun cooperating with Frankfurt state prosecutors, the sources said. The Frankfurt prosecutors have been exploring Deutsche’s role in processing payments for the Danish bank.


The DoJ’s focus on Germany’s largest bank and its work with Frankfurt prosecutors have not previously been reported. A Danske spokesman said it continued to cooperate with the authorities in Estonia, Denmark, France and the United States. [..] Although the Justice Department requested information from Deutsche last year relating to Danske transactions, at the time its executives believed that the investigation was focused onDanske and that the German bank itself was not a target. However, Deutsche officials were made aware in recent months that the scope of the DoJ probe had broadened to the bank’s role in facilitating the Danske trades and its possible failure to report suspicious transactions quickly enough, one of the people said.

Read more …

No inflation.

• Albert Edwards Is Watching To Decide When The US Becomes “Japanified” (ZH)

There is another reason why Edwards dismisses any incipient signs of inflation in the US: his latest piece is titled “Japanification of the US beckons”, in which he writes that despite the Fed’s recent announcement of a halt to further rate cuts, “GDP growth looks fragile and there is good evidence to suggest that core CPI inflation is set to collapse towards zero. In fact, a resumption of Fed easing on the back of recessionary data and sliding inflation is likely to accelerate the convergence of US yields towards negative eurozone and Japanese yields.” Hence, the Japanification of the US, and as he further notes, if the US economy slides into recession, it is clear that “inflation will likely fall ever closer toward Japanese-style deflation.

But a rapid decline in key inflation measures, like core CPI, may be beginning to unfold already, irrespective of whether a recession is about to start or not.” To make his point, Edwards points out the October CPI data which “shocked” him, but not for the surprisingly high 0.4% headline rise M/M, but because of a specific data set that he will now be watching very closely to determine if US inflation is indeed converging with that of Japan: shelter CPI. it was this key component of the CPI basket that last month collapsed to almost zero. And since shelter has a very heavy 33% weighting in the overall CPI and an overwhelmingly dominant 42% weighting in the closely watched core CPI (ie ex food and energy), it’s only a matter of time before the decline in shelter hits the broader inflation basket.

Read more …

Not what he said in the interview.

• Prince Andrew ‘Has Kept In Constant Touch With Ghislaine Maxwell (DM)

Prince Andrew has kept in constant contact with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, it has been claimed today. The Duke of York, 59, invited Maxwell, 57, to Buckingham Palace in June, just a month before Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. But a source has now claimed the pair have been in touch by phone and email throughout the scandal over the prince’s links to the convicted sex offender. They claim there is an ‘unswerving loyalty’ between the pair, who both deny any wrongdoing despite their close relationships with Epstein. The source told the Sun: ‘They have remained constantly in touch by phone and email. The Duke has an unswerving loyalty to Ghislaine and she is also very loyal to him.


‘Ghislaine will do anything to protect the Duke and the feeling is mutual. They both share the same view they have done nothing wrong.’ There is no indication of how the source knows about Andrew and Maxwell’s communications. In his car crash Newsnight interview Andrew claimed he had not spoken about Epstein when he was last in contact with Maxwell because he ‘wasn’t in the news’. [..] Ms Guiffre Roberts will give a tell-all interview to BBC Panorama tomorrow night in a programme that will also probe Maxwell’s involvement in Epstein’s criminal activity.

Read more …

They don’t have very much, do they? But yeah, why keep your gold stored abroad?

• Serbia, Slovakia Join Sudden Eastern European Gold Repatriation Push

Just a few short days after Poland’s government touted its economic might after completing the repatriation of 100 tons of the barbarous relic; and with Hungary’s anti-immigrant Prime Minister Viktor Orban also ramping up holdings of the safe-haven asset to boost the security of his reserves, more Eastern European nationalist leaders are demanding their country’s gold back on home soil. As Bloomberg reports, former Slovak Premier Robert Fico, whose odds of returning to power are rising quickly, urged parliament to compel the central bank into repatriating the nation’s gold stocks, which are currently stored in the U.K.. Perhaps most vocally reflecting what many other nations also believe – sometimes your international partners can betray you.

Citing a 1938 pact by France, Britain, Italy and Germany allowing Adolf Hitler to annex a chunk what was then Czechoslovakia, Fico told reporters: “You can hardly trust even the closest allies after the Munich Agreement. I guarantee that if something happens, we won’t see a single gram of this gold. Let’s do it as quickly as possible.” Additionally, Serbia’s strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic took note, ordering the central bank to boost reserves and prompting the purchase of nine tons in October. Vucic said last week that more should be bought because “we see in which direction the crisis in the world is moving.”


The various leaders have a recent example to prove their fears right as the Bank of England refused to return Venezuela’s gold stock over political differences. “Gold is a symbol,” said Vuk Vukovic, a political economist in Zagreb. “When states purchase it, people everywhere see it as a sign of economic sovereignty.” The gold rush mirrors steps by Russia and China to diversify reserves exceeding $3 trillion away from the dollar amid flaring geopolitical tensions with the U.S.

Read more …

Interesting topic, and women need more say, but still, in many societies, women do a lot of things besides cooking and cleaning. That’s more of a western thing, and not even a modern one.

• Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? (Marçal)

Men have always been allowed to act out of self-interest – as in economics, so in sex. For women, this freedom has been taboo. If not flat-out forbidden. Woman has been assigned the task of caring for others, not of maximizing her own gain. Society has told her that she cannot be rational because childbirth and menstruation tie her to the body, and the body has been identified as the opposite of reason. In women, lust and greed has always been criticized more harshly than it has in men. It has been viewed as something threatening, destructive, dangerous and unnatural. ‘People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute,’ wrote Rebecca West. Women have never been allowed to be as selfish as men.

And if economics is the science of self-interest, how does woman fit in? The answer is that man has been allowed to stand for self- interest and woman has stood for the fragile love that must be conserved. By being excluded. Even though the word ‘economy’ comes from the Greek oikos, which means home, economists have long been uninterested in what exactly happens at home. Woman’s self-sacrificing nature was said to tie her to the private sphere, and thus she was not economically relevant. Activities like raising children, cleaning, washing or ironing for her family – these don’t create tangible goods that can be bought, traded or sold. So they also didn’t contribute to prosperity, thought economists in the 1800s.


Prosperity was everything that could be transported, that had a limited supply, and that either directly or indirectly gave pleasure or prevented pain. This definition meant that everything that women were expected to dedicate themselves to went unseen. The fruits of male labour could be stacked in piles and measured in money. The results of women’s work were intangible. Dust that is swept away collects again. Mouths that have been fed grow hungry. Children who sleep, wake. And after lunch it’s time to do the dishes. After the dishes comes dinner. And more dirty dishes.

Read more …

In December 2015, when COP21 was held in Paris, I wrote in CON 21:

“COP21 is not a major event, that’s only what politicians and media make of it. In reality, it’s a mere showcase in which the protesters have been co-opted. They’re not in the director’s chair, they’re not even actors, they’re just extras.”

4 years later, nothing has changed. It’s still just theater.

• What Is COP25 And Can It Save The World? (G.)

[..] There are far bigger issues hanging over COP, but they will not be decided this year, just hinted at. The biggest alarm is that the aspiration set in Paris to constrain temperature rises will require unprecedented efforts to achieve. But individual country commitments to steer the world towards that best-case scenario were not part of the binding Paris deal, but contained in a non-binding addition. So emissions are increasing again, temperatures are higher than ever, countries are not mandated by law to act – and time is running out: the IPCC concluded that on current rates we have little over a decade to halt emissions growth and bring down carbon rapidly to keep warming within the 1.5C threshold.


Current commitments made by national governments under the Paris agreement fall far short of what is required – taken together, they would still condemn the world to an estimated temperature rise of more than 3C by the end of the century. According to the UN’s latest “emissions gap” report, published a few days before the start of this year’s talks, countries must reduce their greenhouse gases by about 7.6% a year for the next 10 years, to stay within the 1.5C limit. Closing that gap will be COP26’s biggest task.

Read more …

 

 

 

Please support the Automatic Earth on Paypal and Patreon so we can continue to publish.

Top of the page, left and right sidebars. Thank you.

 

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn Hates All Jews

Nov 272019
 
 November 27, 2019  Posted by at 7:23 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Female bust R 1943

 

For political, but, much more, monetary reasons, the media makes their mark, and therefore Jeremy Corbyn hates Jews, Julian Assange is an unwashed rapist and Donald Trump is Putin’s handpuppet. And if you object, you’re a suspect human being. In order to make money, and retain or gain power, the media and intelligence services, along with the political powers friendly to them, inject opinions into the populace. How Orwellian do you want it?

And I get it, depending on where people lean politically, they will think these are entirely separate stories. The right will be against Corbyn, the left against Trump. And all of them together against Assange.

I was starting to write about Jeremy Corbyn yesterday, about the innuendo and allegations concerning his alleged antisemitism, and then I thought: wait, Corbyn and Trump is the same story. And Assange. They are very different people, and their stories may appear to be very very different too, but they are not really.

My personal opinion is that Assange has far too little support, and that worries me a lot every single day, while Corbyn and Trump just drown in social media and MSM nonsense. The problem is, that nonsense poses as truth today. That is what Corbyn has failed to understand, what Trump made his own to the extent that he could, and what Assange, who saw all of this better and earlier than anyone, has been entirely isolated from. But it’s still the same thing in all three cases. It’s about the media. They have become the story, instead of reporting it.

I’ve already said that I don’t think the time is right -and ripe- for Corbyn’s radical plans for Britain -if it will ever be-, but I sure don’t think Brexit should be decided on a pack of lies and smears. Still, it very much looks like it will be. “Social” media, don’t you know.

Jeremy Corbyn has long sympathized with the Palestinian people. It appears that this stance will now decide the Brexit issue. Because it allows for his detractors to label him an antisemite. Throw in an editorial once every two days or so which states that even if Corbyn himself is not an antisemite (press insurance policy), he’s guilty by association because he didn’t root out antisemitism in his party strongly enough, and you’re free to go.

But apparently the right wing is not convinced it’ll be enough, so the UK Chief Rabbi throws some more oil on the flames, and so does his close friend, the leader of the Church of England. Corbyn should have spoken out loud and clear a long time ago. He’s the right wing’s toy now. I saw this very long list of things Corbyn said and did to support the British Jewish population, but it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s got a swastika painted on his forehead now.

Corbyn keeps reasoning something like: it’s not true, so I have nothing to fear, but that’s old world thinking. Today things become reality by the grace of being endlessly repeated and, thereby, amplified. He didn’t catch the spirit of the time. He should perhaps have had a Twitter feed like Trump’s, and denounced the allegations from there. Never had a chance in the traditional media anyway.

But Corbyn does not appear to get it. Still, imagine Trump without Twitter, or Corbyn with it.

The Guardian runs a handy guide:

Antisemitism and Labour: Everything You Need To Know

• Critics of Corbyn say that criticism of Israel among some of his supporters, for example about the treatment of the Palestinian people, can too readily tip over into a generalised condemnation which becomes antisemitic. They say also that those within Labour who challenge this can face abuse and persecution. Labour says that while such incidents must be dealt with robustly, the context is that complaints connected to antisemitism amount to 0.1% of party membership, while prejudice in the Conservative party is more widespread.

• Aside from internal Labour investigations, in May the Equality and Human Rights Commission said it had placed Labour under formal investigation over whether the party had unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they were Jewish.

• Labour faced criticism from some Jewish groups after it adopted a working definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, but left out one of the 11 examples given in the definition, which said it would be antisemitic to claim “that Israel’s existence as a state is a racist endeavour”. Labour later adopted all 11 examples.

Yeah, no, you don’t fight these things by directly addressing them. It’s like “when did you stop beating your wife” or “does this dress make me look fat”, there are no correct answers. Corbyn lost 2-3 years framing his response, and now it’s too late. That Chief Rabbi:

UK Chief Rabbi Attacks Labour Party

The Chief Rabbi has strongly criticised Labour, claiming the party is not doing enough to root out anti-Jewish racism – and asked people to “vote with their conscience” in the general election. In the Times, Ephraim Mirvis said “a new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root” in the party. Labour’s claim it had investigated all cases of anti-Semitism in its ranks was a “mendacious fiction”, he added. Jeremy Corbyn says Labour is tackling anti-Semitism by expelling members. It comes as Labour launches a “race and faith manifesto”, which aims to improve protections for all faiths and tackle prejudice.

Labour has been beset by allegations of anti-Semitism for more than three years, leading to the suspension of a number of high-profile figures such as Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson, and an unprecedented investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In his article, the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – who is the spiritual leader of the United Synagogue, the largest umbrella group of Jewish communities in the country – says raising his concerns “ranks among the most painful moments I have experienced since taking office”. But he claims “the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety” at the prospect of a Labour victory in 12 December’s general election.

He writes: “The way in which the leadership of the Labour Party has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud – of dignity and respect for all people. “It has left many decent Labour members and parliamentarians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, ashamed of what has transpired.” He adds that it was “not my place to tell any person how they should vote” but he urged the public to “vote with their conscience”.

[..] Jenny Manson, the co-chair of the Jewish Voice for Labour group which is not officially affiliated to the party, told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight programme she was “horrified” by the Chief Rabbi’s intervention. She added that there was no threat to Jews in the Labour Party but there was a threat from the far-right.

And his Christian friend:

Justin Welby Backs Chief Rabbi After Labour Antisemitism Remarks

The archbishop of Canterbury has in effect backed the chief rabbi’s comments on the Labour leadership’s record on antisemitism with a tweet highlighting the “deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews”. Justin Welby does not explicitly refer to the Labour party, but his intervention a few hours after the chief rabbi’s excoriating public criticism of Jeremy Corbyn is significant.

In an article in the Times, Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s most senior Jewish leader, accused Corbyn of allowing a “poison sanctioned from the top” to take root in the party, saying the way the Labour leadership had dealt with anti-Jewish racism was “incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud – of dignity and respect for all people”.

Welby posted on Twitter: “That the chief rabbi should be compelled to make such an unprecedented statement at this time ought to alert us to the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews. They should be able to love in accordance with their beliefs and freely express their culture and faith.”

Acknowledging the Church of England’s own history of antisemitism – the subject of a major report last week – Welby continued: “None of us can afford to be complacent. Voicing words that commit to a stand against antisemitism requires a corresponding effort in visible action.”

The chief rabbi’s comments were also supported by Rabbi Julia Neuberger, a crossbench peer, who said the Jewish community had been gripped by anxiety. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lady Neuberger said that under Corbyn’s leadership “there has been this insidious antisemitic tone to quite a lot of what’s happened and an unwillingness to really face it.”

She added: “If they’re not willing to tackle that, if they’re not willing to apologise for it, if they’re not willing to sympathise, then something is going very wrong. “A political party where some of its members leave because of antisemitic taunting, which still cannot deal with it, makes people feel very uncomfortable.”

That same archbishop of Canterbury’s church was chided for, wait for it, antisemitism, but that’s safely in the past, or so they say. So now he gets to chide others for the exact same thing. No, it’s not in the church, and not in the Conservative party, let’s focus on Corbyn, just so he loses.

Church of England Says Christians Must Repent For Past Antisemitism

Christians must repent for centuries of antisemitism which ultimately led to the Holocaust, the Church of England has said in a document that seeks to promote a new Christian-Jewish relationship. However, the church’s move to take responsibility for its part in Jewish persecution was impaired by stinging criticism by the chief rabbi of the continued “specific targeting” of Jews for conversion to Christianity.

[..] The document acknowledged that two C of E cathedrals, Norwich and Lincoln, were associated with the spread of the “blood libel” in the late Middle Ages. Jewish communities were falsely accused of abducting and killing Christian children to use their blood in the making of Passover matzos (unleavened bread). “This allegation, originating in England, became the catalyst for the murder of many Jews in this country and across Europe, especially in pogroms at Eastertide.”

[..] In a foreword to the document, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury – known to be personally close to the chief rabbi – said Mirvis’s comments were “written as a friend, and they are received in a similar spirit, however tough they are to read”. He added: “The chief rabbi has opened, with characteristic honesty and affection, a challenge upon which we must reflect. We cannot do that reflection honestly until we have felt the cruelty of our history.”

Yes, boys and girls, it’s election time, and all is fair in love and war and elections. But please pay at least some attention, don’t let these idiots frame your opinions or shape your emotions. They’re doing it for their own gains, not yours. They don’t represent you, they’re using you and will spit you out at the first occasion they see as profitable.

OffGuardian had this nice graph on how big the Labour antisemitism problem really is:

 

 

That’s right, the problem doesn’t exist. At 0.08%, nothing is a problem, it’s a rounding error. Stop listening to these people. I know, I know, too late now, and Corbyn must take the blame for that. You can’t win in 2019 with only the tools and worldview of 1969. I’m neutral on Brexit, though I don’t think the Tories’ approach, doing nothing and then expecting everything to solve itself, is good for Britain. Feels like a scam to me. Britain hasn’t made its own laws in 40 years, and it’s fine if it wants to start doing that again, but it takes a real effort. But where is that effort?

Moreover, after decades of Maggie Thatcher, neocon Tony Blair and successive Tory governments, I’m not at all surprised to read that Parts Of England ‘Have Higher Mortality Rates Than Turkey’. And so I’m not surprised either that Corbyn is so much of a threat to Boris that they send the Chief Rabbi and the Archbishop of Canterbury to finish him off, on “out of hot air” grounds.

Summarized, the media have/has changed far more than people acknowledge. Corbyn can’t win with 1969 tools, but it appears that perhaps the press can. For me this is not about Trump or Corbyn, they are merely symbolic of what is happening, the main point is that our view of the world in increasingly being pre-cooked and pre-chewed, and far too few people see what’s going on with their opinions.

They still think they’re their own opinions. But the reason why they’re fed these stories is because the media make money of off selling these opinions to them, not because of some loftier ideal.

Nice point in case is this tweet from George Monbiot, environmental writer for the Guardian:

 

 

You see, Monbiot is employed by the Guardian, at a plush salary, and he pretends to stand up for Assange here. But his employer is one of the main reasons why Assange is where he is. The Guardian has run a concerted smear campaign against Assange like nobody else I’m aware of. The entirely false story about Paul Manafort visiting Assange in the Ecuador embassy is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

So you would think George mentions that, and tells you he despises his own mealticket. You would think Monbiot perhaps would say: I only had 140 characters in that tweet. And I would say: no, George, you have zero character.

 

 

Please support the Automatic Earth on Paypal and Patreon so we can continue to publish.

Top of the page, left and right sidebars. Thank you.

 

 

 

Assange, Attack, Guardian, Journalism

Aug 192019
 
 August 19, 2019  Posted by at 6:33 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan Self portrait 1918

 

Guardian columnist Owen Jones, a self-described left activist and socialist, was attacked in the streets of London at 2 am Saturday morning in what he himself describes as “a blatant premeditated assault” by a bunch of guys. He says he was kicked, punched, but then saved by the friends he was with, and nothing really happened to him. Or he would have taken photos and published them. Owen was fine, before and after. But his pride was not.

No pictures of black eyes or anything, but a brick load of indignation. No matter that in Britain, people are attacked all the time, certainly at that hour, in bar fights, in knife fights, people die every weekend. But for some reason Owen Jones thinks his role in this is special. That the incident happened because of his political views, and because the far right is getting more aggressive.

From Jones’s own Guardian:

 

Owen Jones Attacked Outside London Pub

The Guardian columnist and activist Owen Jones has been physically assaulted in London while celebrating his 35th birthday with friends. In an attack he called “a blatant premeditated assault”, Jones said he was kicked, punched and thrown to the ground by a group of men in the early hours of Saturday morning. He said that he and his friends went to a pub and left at 3am.

“We were about 30 metres away, saying goodbye to each other, when four men charged directly towards me: one of them karate kicked my back, threw me to the ground, started kicking me in the head and back, while my friends tried to drag them off, and were punched trying to defend me. “It was clearly a premeditated attack and I was their target. They all attacked me and only assaulted my friends when they tried to defend me.

“In the past year I’ve been repeatedly targeted in the street by far right activists, including attempts to use physical assault, and homophobic abuse. I’ve had a far-right activist taking pictures of me, and posting threatening messages and a video. “Because of this, and escalating threats of violence and death, I’ve had the police involved. My friends felt it was a matter of time until this happened. Give the context, it seems unthinkable that I was singled out for anything other than a politically motived premeditated attack.”

 

A second article in the same Guardian appeared on Sunday:

 

Owen Jones: Attackers Targeted Me For My Politics

Jones said: “I’m just a symptom of a wider phenomenon, an emboldened, increasingly violent far right.” He said he believed there had been a “dramatic escalation” in the level of threat faced by him and others in the last eight or nine months. He said far-right protesters were being radicalised by what he described as “hate preachers” in politics and in some parts of the media.

“We all know who the hate preachers are: one of them is the most powerful man on earth, the occupant of the White House. But there are also multiple politicians and people in the mainstream media who deliberately stoke tensions, who demonise minorities and who demonise the left,” he said.

[..] “The far right are trying to achieve political ends through coercion and violence, so there’s no way I’m going to change. Yes, I’ll take precautions, but I’ll be at my protests, fighting against racism, for socialism. What could I have done? Not had a birthday thing? Of course everybody should be vigilant, but I’m not going to be intimidated. I’m not changing my politics.”

 

I’m not sure (but of course I wasn’t there and I’m not in Jones’s shoes), but given the time of day, his ‘celebrity’ status and the fact that he’s openly gay, I could imagine this was not about politics. Not that that’s the crucial point in this, which is that everybody should be able to have a birthday party and be left in peace.

I must admit I smiled when I read that Jones said his attackers “charged out of the pub with military precision”, and then ostensibly failed to hurt him even a little bit. That sounds like either the most inept right wing militant unit ever, or they were all just piss drunk.

Still, calling Trump a hate preacher is also demonizing, and I do wonder why Jones feels that is appropriate while other comments are not. The Proud Boys vs Antifa ‘party’ this weekend in Portland, Oregon would seem to establish this, at least in the US, as a two-way street, but I’m not even going to try to convince both sides that there may be some blame in their camp too.

Because I think the following is much more important in the Owen Jones story. A few lines from the first article referenced above say:

 

Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian and Observer, said: “We deplore the outrageous attack on Owen Jones that took place late last night. Violent assaults on journalists or activists have no place in a democratic society.”


Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sent a message of “solidarity” to Jones. He said: “Owen believes it was politically motivated, and we know the far right is on the march in our country. “An attack on a journalist is an attack on free speech and our fundamental values.”

 

Look, neither Katharine Viner, nor Owen Jones, nor the Guardian as a company, nor Jeremy Corbyn, have any right whatsoever, none, zilch, to present themselves as defenders of journalism or journalists. The reason for that is dead simple, and it consists of only two words: Julian Assange.

Jeremy Corbyn sits in the British parliament, while Assange sits in a high-security prison designed for terrorists, and those two things should never happen at the same time, lest Corbyn loses the right to speak. Hereby lost. And pretending to be a defender of journalism while a man who has won dozens of international awards for … journalism, rots away a few miles from that same Parliament, is too ridiculous to even talk about.

Owen Jones writes for the Guardian, and knows exactly what his employer has done to Julian Assange. And he can whine about an ‘attack’ on him all he wants, but there’s a journalist who’s really under attack, life-changing, life-threatening, if not lethal, and I have never seen Jones speak up for him. So spare us the hollow talk about hate preachers. It’s your own employer and your own government who preach hate.

As for The Guardian, it has been engaged in a vile anti-Assange smear campaign for many years, perhaps culminating in, but by no means limited to, the article last November that claimed Trump’s one-time adviser Paul Manafort had visited Assange many times in the Ecuador embassy, which was thoroughly debunked but never withdrawn or corrected.

Publishing an article such as that while you know it to be a bag of lies, makes you unfit to talk about journalism, period, for the rest of your lives. Sure, many of your readers may believe in you, and in what you tell them, after you’ve fed them smear and falsehoods for so long. But even if they believe you, that still doesn’t make you a news organization, it makes you a propaganda outlet. It makes you a pitchblack stain on your profession.

 

Australian journalist Mark Davis worked with Assange and the Guardian on the publication of the Afghan war logs in 2010. He recently spoke out about those days. And added a nice little -legal- twist to the story.

 

Australian Investigative Journalist Exposes Guardian/New York Times Betrayal Of Assange

At a Sydney “Politics in the Pub” meeting on Thursday night, award-winning Australian journalist Mark Davis revealed new first-hand information exposing the extent of the betrayal of Julian Assange by the Guardian and the New York Times, and refuting the lies both publications have used to smear the WikiLeaks founder.

Davis recounted his experiences documenting Assange’s life in the first half of 2010 for programs screened on the Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). Using excerpts from the documentary “Inside WikiLeaks,” the journalist explained that he was present when WikiLeaks worked closely with media partners, including the Guardian and the New York Times, in the publication of the Afghan War logs.

[..] Davis said the assertions by Guardian journalists that Assange exhibited a callous attitude towards US informants and others who may have been harmed by the publication of the document were “lies.” David Leigh and Nick Davies, senior Guardian journalists, who worked closely with Assange in the publication of the logs, have repeatedly claimed that Assange was indifferent to the consequences of the publication.

Their statements have played a key role in the attempts by the corporate media to smear Assange, and dovetail with US government claims that the 2010 publications “aided the enemy.” In reality, the US and Australian militaries have been compelled to admit that release of the Afghan war logs did not result in a single individual coming to physical harm.

Davis explained that he was present in “the bunker,” a room established by the Guardian to prepare the publication of the documents. “Nick Davies made the most recurring, repetitive statement that Julian had a cavalier attitude to life. It’s a complete lie. If there was any cavalier attitude, it was the Guardian journalists. They had disdain for the impact of this material.”

[..] Davis explained that despite the vast technical resources of the Guardian and the New York Times (NYT), it was left to Assange to personally redact the names of informants and other individuals from the war logs, less than three days before scheduled publication. Davis said Assange was compelled to work through an entire night, during which he removed some 10,000 names from the documents.

“Julian wanted to take the names out,” Davis said. “He asked for the releases to be delayed.” The request was rejected by the Guardian, “so Julian was left with the task of cleansing the documents. Julian removed 10,000 names by himself, not the Guardian.”

Davis refuted the attempts by the Guardian and the Times to downplay their central role in the publication of the leaks. He stated that the relationship between the corporate reporters and Assange was not that between journalists and their source. Rather, both outlets were intimately involved in preparing the publication of the documents.

This included, Davis said, the Guardian assigning a technical division to prepare the entire set of logs in a publishable and searchable format on the WikiLeaks website. Davis explained that even in 2010, the Guardian and the NYT had employed “subterfuge” to shield them from any legal repercussions over the publication. Despite the explosive contents of the leaks, they had both insisted that WikiLeaks should publish first.

This, Davis stated, would allow them to claim that they were not primary publishers of the material, but were merely reporting material that had been released by WikiLeaks. This was the equivalent of the publications “pushing Julian out to walk the plank,” he said. “Julian’s in jail now because of that subterfuge.”

Tellingly, Davis stated that this plan was disrupted as a result of technical issues on the WikiLeaks website. The Guardian and the Times nevertheless ran their scheduled stories, reporting on WikiLeaks’ supposed publication of the logs, despite the fact that they had not yet been placed on the WikiLeaks website.

WikiLeaks published the documents two days after they had been reported by the corporate publications. “WikiLeaks did not publish for two days,” Davis said. The Guardian and the Times had “reported a lie. They set Julian up from the start.”

Davis’s claim potentially has significant legal implications. The espionage charges, under which the Trump administration is seeking to extradite Assange to the US and prosecute him, include among their offenses WikiLeaks’ publication of the Afghan war logs.

Davis’ timeline, however, indicates that the Guardian and the New York Times were in fact the initial and primary publishers of the material. These publications, which are pillars of the media and political establishment, are “in the frame” for the supposed offenses that the Trump administration is seeking to prosecute Assange for. As Davis bluntly declared, “If Julian’s in jail, they should be as well.”

 

I’m sure the fact that this last article was published on the World Socialist Web Site will only add to the fun, if not credibility, of it, for self-described socialist Owen Jones.

But -more- seriously, you can’t let the most decorated journalist of your time wither away in a concrete box designed for Hannibal Lecter, and at the same time preach about some threat to journalism and the freedom of speech. Because if you do, you ARE that threat.

 

 

 

 

The News About Fake News Is Fake

Jan 192019
 
 January 19, 2019  Posted by at 8:21 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window 1657-59

 

In the last few days I was looking around for stories that could illustrate what fake news actually is, and I had a nice collection, but then last night Robert Mueller of all people clarified what exactly fake news is better than I could have. At first the BuzzFeed crew that was caught staring straight into the headlights has a feeble response (what exactly was untrue in our article?), but was silenced by the WaPo of all publications: Mueller’s team said every bit of the article was false.

And still I wonder if people now understand better what fake news is. Which I think has a lot to do whit the fact that the term was monopolized by a section of US media as meaning things that had to do with Trump, more or less exclusively. That way, when Trump accused these same media of publishing fake news, they knew their loyal readers wouldn’t believe him.

But in reality they’ve been at it ever since Trump entered US politics, and they dug in ever deeper into their anti-Donald trenches, first for political reasons, later for profit (nothing sells like Trump in America today). And in the process, especially since they published umpteen pieces a day on the topic, they had to use unproven and biased allegations and innuendo. There was never enough real news to go around to feed the monster they created. That’s how we got Russiagate.

Still, of course, like me, you want to know how fake news is recognized, how ‘experts’ tell it apart from real news. Well, despair no more. An actual professor researched it, and was quoted by the New York Times last week, which doesn’t publish fake news, it says. I got to say, personally, I found this highly enlightening.

 

Older People Shared Fake News on Facebook More Than Others in 2016 Race

The authors were careful in defining “fake news,” a term that has been weaponized by many, including President Trump, to dismiss real news they dislike. “Reasonable people disagree about where to draw the line and we were very conscious of those issues,” Professor Guess said.

As a result, they assembled a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content, based on various sources, including reporting from BuzzFeed News. As best the researchers could tell, the list did not include any websites associated with Russian disinformation efforts, according to Professor Guess. The Facebook and survey data came from a group of about 3,500 people whom the authors tracked during the 2016 election in order to better understand the role social media played in political discourse.

They found that Republicans and those who identified as “very conservative” tended to share the most news from questionable sources. But that tendency may have less to do with ideology and more to do with what those articles said: Users tend to share stories they agree with and the fake news sites were disproportionately pro-Trump, the authors said.

So the researchers distinguish fake news from real news, but they don’t tell us -or the NYT doesn’t- what methods they use to tell the two apart. They do tell us that what Trump calls fake news is merely real news he dislikes. It’s funny how people say that so easily, and never think they themselves might do just that.

“..a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content..” sounds intriguing, but not convincing. That this list partly comes from BuzzFeed is hilarious in view of Mueller’s indictment of BuzzFeed’s article about Trump instructing Michael Cohen to lie. Other than that, the article doesn’t really say much. But luckily Quentin Fottrell, personal finance editor at MarketWatch, elaborates (free advice: Quentin, stick to your trade!)

His article caught my eye because whereas the NYTimes piece talked about older people sharing more fake news, Quentin adds that it’s about Republican older people. And that I find hard to believe. At least without proof; I wouldn’t want to jump to such conclusions based on fake news. Let’s see how far I can get:

 

Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook

So why are Republican baby boomers more likely to share fake news on Facebook? One theory: As they didn’t grow up with technology, they may be more susceptible to being fooled.

That one sentence says a lot about this entire ‘study’. It even sounds fake to me. Because while I can see the “less exposed to tech” issue to an extent, I see no reason why Republican baby boomers would be fooled more easily by technology than their Democrat peers.

[..] Andrew Guess, an associate professor at Princeton University, and his colleagues disseminated an online survey to 3,500 people in three waves throughout the 2016 campaign. Of the respondents, 1,331 in the initial wave agreed to share their Facebook profile data, which allowed researchers to analyze the age and political affiliations of those people who were more likely to spread fake news.

The results showed that 90% of these users actually did not share misleading or fake articles and only 8.5% shared one or more fake news articles. A plurality, 18%, of the Facebook users who shared the fake stories were both self-identified Republicans and over the age of 65, the authors concluded, and these individuals shared nearly seven times as many fake news articles as respondents in the youngest age group, ranging in age from 18 to 29.

I had to look at this a few times. Here’s what I think it says:

• They ‘studied’ 3,500 people in 3 waves, of which the initial one was larger than 1,331 people, since that is the segment of the first wave who shared their Facebook data (we assume not all did).

• 90% of these 1,331, or 1,198 people, shared nothing at all (no fake news).

• 8.5% of the 1,331, or 114 people, did share fake news stories. 18% of those 114 (so 18% of 8.5%), or 20 people, were self-identified Republicans over the age of 65.

• Therefore 20 people out of 3,500, or 0.57%, were older Republicans who shared fake news (as it was defined by the survey). There are probably even more people in that target group suffering from dementia than the 0.57% who shared fake news. So what are we looking at here?

You could argue that it’s really 20 people out of 1,331, but that’s still only 1.5%. Meaningless.

• These 20 people shared 7 times as many fake news pieces as young people. That may be true, but they also shared more than 99.43% of people their own age. Does this still mean anything at all to you?

Quentin delights us with some more data;

Another possible explanation: Older Americans may have felt particularly passionate and entrenched in their political views and, therefore, ideological. For instance, the most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center study, which examined all official Facebook posts created by and for members of Congress in this period.

If you ask me, it’s peculiar to make statements about politics that heap ordinary Americans together with politicians, but at least that paragraph doesn’t say Republicans are more likely than others to [fill in your preference]. But then we’re off to the races again:

[..] What’s more, baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological, according to data crunched by Pew. “In both 2015 and 2016, about one in 10 baby boomers identified as conservative Republicans — the highest percentages dating back to 2000,” researchers Shiva Maniam and Samantha Smith wrote for Pew. “In both years, conservative Republicans made up the largest single partisan and ideological group among boomers.”

Wait. The logic here is that baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological because 1 in 10 baby boomers say they’re conservative Republicans. But that means 9 out of 10 does not. This doesn’t even make a single sliver of sense. Yo, Quentin (and professor Guess), we need some help here.

To be fair, older Republicans share more news in general, and fake news gets caught up in the mix. Members of Congress with very conservative or very liberal voting records both shared news links in about 14% of all their posts, but members with more moderate ideology scores shared links to news stories in just 6% of their posts, Pew found.

That starts out with older Republicans in general and then seamlessly veers into members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, with either very conservative or very liberal voting records. Not fully self-contradictory, but darn close.

There may also be a political explanation: A trickle-down effect from the president’s own remarks about the liberal media. Older Republicans could feel more emboldened by Trump’s comments and, as a result, assume stories that support their causes are accurate.

That’s the first time I explicitly read Quentin saying that fake news is linked to Trump. But other than that, there is no sign that older Democrats don’t feel ’emboldened’ by DNC or Hillary or Pelosi comments just as much as Republicans do by Trump. Quentin and professor Guess only pretend to make a point, but there’s nothing there.

The president has doubled down of late on the view that the mainstream media’s negative coverage of his administration is rooted in bias. “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and often times false attacks and stories,” Trump said last year.

“Confirmation bias” helps outlandish theories and reports gain traction on social media. And that, psychologists say, is where fake news comes in.

Since there is nothing that indicates one political side is more prone to confirmation bias than the other, fake news will necessarily also occur on both sides. Why you would have psychologists define fake news I don’t know. Oh, and I think that Trump comment makes a lot of sense.

With so much noise on social media, how can people distinguish between rumor and reality? Psychologists say people develop defense mechanisms to cope with an uncertain world early in life, but this also draws people to information that seems to confirm their own beliefs and world views and to ignore reports or opinions that contradict their perceptions.

“At its core is the need for the brain to receive confirming information that harmonizes with an individual’s existing views and beliefs,” said Mark Whitmore, an assistant professor of management and information systems in Kent State University’s business school. “In fact, one could say the brain is hard-wired to accept, reject, miss-remember or distort information based on whether it is viewed as accepting of or threatening to existing beliefs.”

Older Americans may be less likely to question authority

However, many people effectively rationalize the irrational in order to avoid going against values and ideas they were taught by their parents. “Children’s learning about make-believe and mastery becomes the basis for more complex forms of self-deception and illusion into adulthood,” Eve Whitmore said. When people are faced with absurd and conflicting messages, her husband added, “It becomes easier to cling to a simple fiction than a complicated reality.”

[..] Ultimately, however, it may come down to our trust in the internet, rather than institutions or belief systems. “People who have grown up with the internet have experienced things that are not necessarily truthful. They have had experiences on social media or they have witnessed friends dealing with false information, which has made them more skeptical about what they read versus the baby boomers who did not grow up with the internet and have, therefore, limited experience.”

Remember, the article’s headline is “Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook”. And then it does absolutely nothing to make that point, but instead goes a very long way to proving that ALL baby boomers do that. Either one of which, first of all, you don’t prove by talking 20 people out of a sample of 3,500, but moreover, secondly, your entire article -strongly- appears to deny.

And do we know what fake news is now, are we any closer to that? Not that I can see. And there’s no way I can say it all in one go, so I’ll get back to this topic. But not before thanking Robert Mueller for defining fake news in his own way. It must have cost him, and the FBI and DOJ, some genuine heartache, but in the end he couldn’t let the entire avalanche of media and Democrats run with such an overtly fake piece of ‘news’. There were calls for Congressional investigations based on it, for crying out loud.

Speaking of which, crying out loud might be what you expect BuzzFeed to do now, but don’t count on it: they got a ton of free publicity, and that’s all the entire fake news cycle has been based on from the start. And if it didn’t kill the New York Times or CNN, why would it kill BuzzFeed? It’s a growth industry. And credibility is overrated.

 

 

Debt Rattle April 30 2018

Apr 302018
 
 April 30, 2018  Posted by at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Jack Delano Chicago, Illinois 1942

 

• Ministers Rally Round Theresa May After Amber Rudd Resigns (G.)
• UK Home Office Charter Secret Removal Flight To Jamaica With Grandmothers (TLE)
• Amber Rudd: Felled By Claims, Counterclaims, Leaks And Denials (G.)
• Theresa May Has Lost Her Human Shield (G.)
• Why the Left Should Embrace Brexit (Jacobin)
• Tesla Doesn’t Burn Fuel, It Burns Cash (BBG)
• JPMorgan, National Bank Of Canada, Others Test Debt Issuance On Blockchain (R.)
• A T-Mobile-Sprint Merger Could Be ‘Devastating’ For Consumers (MW)
• Marathon To Purchase Rival Refiner Andeavor For More Than $20 Billion (WSJ)
• Facebook’s Censorship in Germany (Frank)
• Greece Reinforces Land Border With Turkey To Stem Flow Of Migrants (G.)
• Australia’s Ancient Language Shaped By Sharks (BBC)

 

 

What does it say about our times, our Zeitgeist even, when a new record for global revenue is set by a movie named Infinity War?

Doublespeak in action. Rudd left because she lied, but is now lauded for being honorable, acting on principle.

• Ministers Rally Round Theresa May After Amber Rudd Resigns (G.)

Ministers have moved swiftly to try to protect Theresa May after the resignation of Amber Rudd, insisting the home secretary only stood down because she inadvertently misled MPs, not because of the wider Windrush migration scandal. With the prime minister set to announce a replacement for Rudd later on Monday, amid another forced cabinet reshuffle, the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, rejected the idea that May was facing pressure over her own position. “This is about sorting out a problem,” he told Sky News. “The prime minister has apologised to these people, and we’re going to get on with the job of fixing it.”

[..] Rudd was facing a bruising appearance in the House of Commons on Monday, having to explain again why she told the home affairs select committee last week that she did not know of any deportation targets. Grayling said Rudd had spoken “in good faith” and had stepped down because “she had inadvertently misled parliament, that she should have known a bit more about the issue of targets”. He added: “It doesn’t often happen in politics, and people criticise when it doesn’t happen. What we’ve got here is a former home secretary who acted on principle.”

Grayling insisted her departure had nothing to do with the wider issue of members of the Windrush generation of arrivals from the Caribbean being wrongly targeted by immigration authorities, or with the hostile environment immigration policy initiated by May when she was home secretary. “The Windrush issue is something we all regret,” he said. “It’s a mistake, the government’s apologised, the prime minister has apologised, the former home secretary apologised for it. That isn’t the issue that led to her resignation. The issue is about her inadvertently misleading the house in good faith.”

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, disputed this, and said May also should come to the Commons to explain herself to MPs. “Fundamentally, the reason she had to resign was because of the Windrush fiasco,” Abbott told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Somebody had to take responsibility. It happened on her watch, therefore I think it’s right she has resigned.” On May addressing MPs, Abbott said: “In the first instance we’d like to know if she herself knew about the targets and would therefore be in a position to say whether Amber Rudd misled the house. “More fundamentally, we want to talk to her about the aspects of the so-called hostile environment, which she was responsible for, and led to the Windrush fiasco.”

Read more …

This is what this is about: indefinite detention for elderly ladies, taken from their families while awaiting deportation, in really bad conditions. It’s criminal.

• UK Home Office Charter Secret Removal Flight To Jamaica With Grandmothers (TLE)

After a week of repeated apologies to the victims of the Windrush scandal and assurances by Prime Minister Theresa May and Home Secretary Amber Rudd that they would not be facing any more deportations, we have discovered evidence of a special chartered removal flight to Jamaica next week. We know of at least three grandmothers with British families who were due to be removed on the secretive flight. One, Yvonne Williams, a 59-year old grandmother of seven, whose mother arrived from Jamaica in 1962, had been detained in the scandal-ridden Yarl’s Wood detention centre for OVER EIGHT MONTHS since last August. She had been given removal directions by the Home Office for next week’s flight despite all her family being based in Britain and having none in Jamaica.

Thankfully, on Friday, the Home Office told Yvonne after she had been incarcerated for months away from her elderly mother, 82, and from the grandchildren that she had been caring for, that she would not be removed on the flight and that she could finally be released from detention. [..] Another grandmother incarcerated at Yarl’s Wood detention centre has not been as fortunate. Yvonne Smith, 63, remembers waving to the Queen when she visited Jamaica. She was born a citizen of the UK and Colonies eight years before Jamaican independence. Yvonne’s father and mother came to the UK in the 1950’s. Yvonne stayed behind with her grandmother joining her British siblings and father in Birmingham after her mother and grandmother passed away.

Her brother, sisters, nephews, nieces, children, grandchildren are all British and she has no family left in Jamaica. Yvonne has been making attempts to regularise her stay since 2010 as the main carer for her 92 year old father. The Home Office insists that she has not got enough significant family ties and has incarcerated Yvonne since last August. She says it breaks her heart talking to her father on the phone: “He starts crying, he doesn’t want the NHS to look after him, he wants me, it’s too hard to hear him cry.” Being detained for over eight months has also taken its toll on Yvonne’s health. She has been diagnosed with Diabetes since being locked up, complains of pain and her eyes fading.

Read more …

No, by lies. Her own.

• Amber Rudd: Felled By Claims, Counterclaims, Leaks And Denials (G.)

When Amber Rudd agreed to appear in front of political journalists at a Westminster lunch last week, it was an opportunity to demonstrate her leadership credentials. But by the time the event actually came around the fallout from the Guardian’s reporting on the Windrush scandal was in full flow and she was, as she put it, “just thinking about staying in the game”. She had already had a hellish week involving several appearances at the dispatch box, a brutal session at the hands of the home affairs select committee and what felt like countless apologies.

But while much of the anger directed at the home secretary over the preceding days had been a result of the mishandling of the Windrush generation of migrants, it was her confusion over the rather more arcane matter of targets for deporting illegal immigrants that eventually brought her down. The key moment in Rudd’s dramatic fall from grace was when she was summoned to explain herself – and her department – in front of the committee last Wednesday. Almost as an afterthought, committee chair Yvette Cooper asked about earlier evidence from the immigration officers’ union about targets for the number of people who should be deported from the UK. “We don’t have targets for removals,” Rudd replied, kicking off the series of claims and counterclaims, leaks and denials, that eventually led to her departure.

The next day it emerged that immigration officials in her own department had been given targets after all. She was summoned to the Commons to clarify. “I was not aware of them,” she insisted. By Friday, her claims were unravelling after a secret internal Home Office document boasting of the targets in 2017 was leaked to the Guardian. Damningly, Rudd had been copied in. More than eight hours after the Guardian approached the Home Office with details of the memo – as speculation swirled around Westminster about her future – she finally responded in a series of defiant late-night tweets. The home secretary insisted she had not seen the leaked memo, even though it had been sent to her office and that she wasn’t aware of the specific removal targets. “But I accept that I should have been and I’m sorry that I wasn’t.”

Read more …

The longer May stays on, the more of a joke she becomes. And her office too, which is much worse.

• Theresa May Has Lost Her Human Shield (G.)

Beleaguered, embattled, hapless – as the Windrush scandal worsened over recent days, these doom-laden adjectives had begun attaching themselves irresistibly to Amber Rudd’s name. To the last, she and her allies continued to insist that she didn’t know about deportation targets – they maintain the government’s “ambition” for boosting the number of people sent home is not a “target”. But crucially in her resignation letter, Rudd admitted “information provided to my office”did “make mention of numerical targets”. She didn’t see that information, shesaid – but admitted she should have done.

[..] The second reason Rudd remained in post was that with fresh Windrush injustices still emerging almost daily, she was a lightning rod for public anger, more of which may now be directed at the prime minister. Rudd loyally made repeated public apologies without allowing the blame to fall on the prime minister and the tone and policies that May set in her six years at the Home Office. Rudd had been deemed a potential leadership rival. Allowing her to continue to take incoming fire, particularly as it undermined her reputation for brisk, well-briefed competence, must have been highly tempting. On Sunday night, May was left to turn her thoughts to who should replace her.

She may feel obliged to appoint another remainer, to avoid upsetting the delicate balance at the top table. But in the key arguments inside Cabinet, a newbie may lack the power base to be influential for some time – and Britain’s Brexit negotiating position is being fought over right now.

Read more …

Thomas Fazi and Bill Mitchell.

• Why the Left Should Embrace Brexit (Jacobin)

Nothing better reflects the muddled thinking of the mainstream European left than its stance on Brexit. Each week seems to produce a new chapter for the Brexit scare story: withdrawing from the EU will be an economic disaster for the UK; tens of thousands of jobs will be lost; human rights will be eviscerated; the principles of fair trials, free speech, and decent labor standards will all be compromised. In short, Brexit will transform Britain into a dystopia, a failed state — or worse, an international pariah — cut off from the civilized world. Against this backdrop it’s easy to see why Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is often criticized for his unwillingness to adopt a pro-Remain agenda.

[..] In the months leading up to the referendum, the world was flooded with warnings — from the IMF, the OECD, and other bastions of contemporary economics — claiming that a Leave vote in the referendum would have immediate apocalyptic consequences for the UK, causing a financial meltdown and plunging the country into a deep recession. The most embarrassing forecast on “the immediate economic impact of a vote to leave the EU on the UK” was published by the Tory government. The aim of the “study” in question, released in May 2016 by the UK Treasury, was to quantify “the impact … over the immediate period of two years following a vote to leave.”

Within two years of a Leave vote, the Treasury predicted that GDP would be between 3.6 and 6 percent lower and the number of people unemployed would rise by as much as 820,000. The predictions in the May 2016 “study” sounded dire, and were clearly aimed at having the maximum impact on the vote, which would be held a month later. Just weeks before the referendum, the then-chancellor George Osborne cited the report to warn that “a vote to leave would represent an immediate and profound shock to our economy” and that “the shock would push our economy into recession and lead to an increase in unemployment of around 500,000.”

Nonetheless, the majority of voters opted for Brexit. In doing so, they proved economists wrong once again, since none of the catastrophic scenarios predicted in the run-up to the referendum have occurred. As Larry Elliott, Guardian economics editor, wrote: “Brexit Armageddon was a terrifying vision — but it simply hasn’t happened.” With almost two years having passed since the referendum, the economic data coming out of the UK makes a mockery of those doom-laden warnings — and of the aforementioned government report in particular. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), shows that by the end of 2017, British GDP was already higher by 3.2 percent relative to its level at the time of the Brexit vote — a far cry from the deep recession we were told to expect.

Read more …

How much longer?

• Tesla Doesn’t Burn Fuel, It Burns Cash (BBG)

The company that Elon Musk built to usher in the electric-car future might not have enough cash to make it through the calendar year. The anxieties that lurk beneath the tremendous ambition of Tesla Inc. moved into the forefront in recent weeks. The company again fell far short of its own production targets for the mass-market Model 3 sedan, another person died in a crash involving its assisted-driving feature and Musk entered into a public dispute with federal safety regulators. Tesla’s once high-flying stock, buffeted by a downgrade from credit analysts, has dropped 24 percent from its peak in September.

There’s a good reason to worry: No one has raised or spent money the way Elon Musk has. Nor has any other chief executive officer of a public company made a bankruptcy joke on Twitter at a time when so much seemed to be unraveling. Tesla is going through money so fast that, without additional financing, there is now a genuine risk that the 15-year-old company could run out of cash in 2018. The company burns through more than $6,500 every minute, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Free cash flow—the amount of cash a company generates after accounting for capital expenditures—has been negative for five consecutive quarters. That will be a key figure to watch when Tesla reports earnings May 2.

Tesla makes three cars—the Model S and Model 3 sedans and the Model X SUV—at its only auto assembly plant, located in Fremont, California. There are aggressive plans to add an electric semi truck, a new roadster sports car and crossover to the production lineup in the next few years. While Musk’s vision for the future once called for extreme automation, the present day is all about manpower. Back in 2010, Tesla had just 899 employees. Today, the company has nearly 40,000 workers. The ongoing hiring binge is probably contributing to Tesla’s financial straits. Tesla has added employees faster than it has boosted revenue in three of the last four years. This includes more than doubling the workforce in 2017, when the company was scaling up for Model 3 production and took on employees from SolarCity.

[..] Tesla ended 2017 with $3.4 billion in cash on hand and $9.4 billion in outstanding debt, a testament to Musk’s borrowing prowess. Many analysts believe that Tesla will need to raise money again—and soon. Bruce Clark of Moody’s Investors Service recently warned that Tesla will need an additional $2 billion this year, and he noted that $1.2 billion of existing debt will come due by 2019. Short sellers remain convinced that Tesla is on the verge of an epic meltdown. Famed investor Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates has predicted the company is headed for a “brick wall.”

Read more …

They want a piece of the action.

• JPMorgan, National Bank Of Canada, Others Test Debt Issuance On Blockchain (R.)

JPMorgan Chase has tested a new blockchain platform for issuing financial instruments with the National Bank of Canada and other large firms, they said on Friday, seeking to streamline origination, settlement, interest rate payments and other processes. The test on Wednesday mirrored the Canadian bank’s $150 million offering on the same day of a one-year floating-rate Yankee certificate of deposit, they said in a statement. The platform was built over more than a year using Quorum, a type of open-source blockchain that JPMorgan has developed inhouse and is in discussions to spin off. Participants in the experiment included Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the fund management arm of Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and Legg Mason’s Western Asset and other investors in the certificate of deposit.

Banks have poured millions of dollars to develop blockchain, the software first created to run cryptocurrency bitcoin, to streamline processes ranging from cross-border payments to securities settlement. “Blockchain-related technologies have the potential to bring about major change in the financial services industry,” David Furlong, senior vice president of artificial intelligence, venture capital and blockchain at National Bank of Canada, said in a statement.

Read more …

A $26 billion deal, but it results in “a telecom giant with a $146 billion enterprise value which will serve some 127 million customers.”

• A T-Mobile-Sprint Merger Could Be ‘Devastating’ For Consumers (MW)

A merger between Sprint and T-Mobile US has been officially announced—and for consumers that is certainly something to phone home about. The two companies agreed to an all-stock merger on Sunday that, if allowed by antitrust enforcers, would leave the U.S. wireless market dominated by three national players, and comes after the telecommunication companies renewed M&A discussions earlier in April after thrice failing to complete a tie-up. Speculation had previously mounted about a potential merger in September, months after Bloomberg originally reported “informal contact” between the two companies last May. But Japanese telecommunications firm SoftBank, which owns more than 80% of Sprint’s shares, announced back in October that it would cease its efforts to merge the wireless carrier with T-Mobile.

Before all that, discussions were on hold due to the government’s spectrum auction (where the government sells the rights for companies to transmit signals over certain bands of the electromagnetic spectrum). The combined company, if the proposed $26 billion dollar deal is consummated, would have more than 127 million customers. Consequently, a combined T-Mobile-Sprint likely could usher in industrywide changes that would affect consumers of various carriers across the country, telecom analysts said. “It would be devastating for consumers in the long run,” said Chris Mills, news editor at BGR, a news website focused on mobile technology and consumer electronics.

Read more …

It’s big merger time. While debt is still cheap.

• Marathon To Purchase Rival Refiner Andeavor For More Than $20 Billion (WSJ)

Marathon Petroleum plans to buy logistics and refining company Andeavor for more than $20 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The cash-and stock deal, which values Andeavor at about $150 a share, is expected to be announced Monday. That would be a roughly 23% premium over Andeavor’s closing price Friday after the stock surged about 50% in the past year. Marathon, based in Findlay, Ohio, is the second-largest refiner in the U.S., according to its website. Marathon-branded gasoline is sold in 20 states, and its Speedway unit owns the nation’s second-largest convenience-store chain.

It also owns a midstream master limited partnership with about 11,000 miles of crude oil and light-product pipelines. Andeavor, based in San Antonio, operates 10 refineries in the western U.S. with total capacity of more than 1.2 million barrels a day. Part of the rationale of the deal centers on the companies’ complementary footprints; with Marathon in the East and Andeavor in the West, regulatory approval could be easier to win.

Read more …

That should indeed be the question: who are these companies to censor us? Under what law is that possible?

• Facebook’s Censorship in Germany (Frank)

A court in Berlin has issued a temporary restraining order against Facebook. Under the threat of a fine of 250,000 euros (roughly $300,000 USD) or a jail term, Facebook was obliged to restore a user’s comment that it had deleted. Moreover, the ruling prohibited the company from banning the user because of this comment. This is the first time a German court has dealt with the consequences of Germany’s internet censorship law, which came into effect on October 1, 2017. The law stipulates that social media companies have to delete or block “apparent” criminal offenses, such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint.

As many critics pointed out, this state censorship makes freedom of speech subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities that are likely to censor more than absolutely necessary, rather than risk a crushing fine of up to 50 million euros ($65 million USD). According to a newspaper report, Facebook’s censors have just ten seconds to decide whether to delete a comment or not. The case with which the court in Berlin had to deal was that on January 8, 2018, the Swiss daily Basler Zeitung posted an article with the title “Viktor Orban speaks of Muslim ‘invasion'” on its Facebook site. The blurb read: “Viktor Orban wonders how in a country like Germany… chaos, anarchy and illegal crossing of borders can be celebrated as something good.”

Facebook user Gabor B. posted a comment: “Germans are becoming increasingly stupid. No wonder, since the left-wing media litters them every day with fake news about ‘skilled workers,’ declining unemployment figures or Trump.” This comment quickly received the most “likes”, until Facebook deleted it, due to an alleged infringement of Facebook’s “community standards.” In addition, Gabor B. was banned from Facebook for 30 days. “One may share the commenter’s opinion or may deem it polemic or unobjective”, Gabor B.’s attorney Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel told Gatestone. “The important thing is: The comment is covered by the right to freedom of speech.”

He added that before going to court, his law office had sent a written warning to Facebook. “Facebook partly gave in and lifted the ban but did not restore the comment. Facebook’s lawyers notified us that ‘a thorough reexamination came to the result that the community standards had been applied correctly and that therefore the content could not be restored’ – an assessment we cannot share.”

Read more …

The land border does not fall under the EU/Turkey agreement.

• Greece Reinforces Land Border With Turkey To Stem Flow Of Migrants (G.)

Greece has rushed to reinforce its land border with Turkey as fears mount over a sharp rise in the number of refugees and migrants crossing the frontier. Police patrols were augmented as local authorities said the increase in arrivals had become reminiscent of the influx of migrants on the Aegean islands close to the Turkish coast. About 2,900 people crossed the land border in April, by far surpassing the number who arrived by sea, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said. The figure represents half of the total number of crossings during the whole of 2017. Speaking from the frontier town of Orestiada, the local mayor, Dimitris Mavrides, told the Guardian: “Our reception facilities are overwhelmed and things are on the verge of spinning out of control. Far more are coming than are actually being registered.

“The government has just sent 120 extra police, but they are temporary and simply not enough. Frontex also has to intervene,” he added, referring to Europe’s border and coastguard agency. The area’s sole reception centre has capacity to process 240 people. In the absence of accommodation, authorities are placing newcomers, including children, in inappropriate police detention facilities where access to interpreters and other services are severely restricted. “Some of those in police detention have been held for more than three months,” UNHCR said in a statement. “Conditions are dismal … the hundreds of people kept include pregnant women, very young children and people in need of medical and psychosocial care.”

[..] The abrupt rise reflects a switch in tactics by people smugglers circumventing the controversial agreement the EU struck with Turkey in a bid to stem migration flows at the height of the crisis when more than a million people entered the bloc through Greece. [..] The land border does not fall under the agreement and is said to be easier to traverse. “In a boat it can take as little as three minutes to cross and is far cheaper,” said Mavrides. “They are coming precisely because it is not part of the deal and because word has got out the situation on the islands is dramatic. If they get here and are processed, they are free to go anywhere on the mainland. We have four buses a day to Athens and Thessaloniki and they are full.”

Read more …

What a delight to read.

“It’s especially unusual because men and women speak different dialects..”

“Although the shark may not be seen much in these waters anymore, it is still spoken of with respect, as the giver of life and creator of this land.”

• Australia’s Ancient Language Shaped By Sharks (BBC)

The tiger shark was having a really bad day. Other sharks and fish were picking on him and he was fed up. After fighting them, he met up with the hammerhead shark and some stingrays at Vanderlin Rocks in the waters of Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria to speak of their woes before they set out to find their own places to call home. This forms one of the oldest stories in the world, the tiger shark dreaming. The ‘dreaming’ is what Aboriginal people call their more than 40,000-year-old history and mythology; in this case, the dreaming describes how the Gulf of Carpentaria and rivers were created by the tiger shark. The story has been passed down by word of mouth through generations of the Aboriginal Yanyuwa people, who call themselves ‘li-antha wirriyara’ or ‘people of the salt water’.

As we sailed past the rocks and sandstone cliffs of Vanderlin Island, heading towards the mouth of the Wearyan River, dugongs and fish swam by. We were searching beneath the waves for a glimpse of shark fins, following in the path of the tiger shark in this creation story. The tiger shark’s journey was challenging as he forged his way through the Gulf, creating the water holes and rivers in the landscape. He was turned away by many other angry animals who did not want him to live with them. A wallaby even hurled rocks at him when he asked if he could stay with her. But as he swam, the dreaming story explains, the shark helped create the waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria that we see today.

“Tiger sharks are very important in our dreaming,” said Aboriginal elder Graham Friday, who is a sea ranger here and one of the few remaining speakers of Yanyuwa language. Some people here still believe the tiger shark is their ancestor, and the Yanyuwa are known for their ‘tiger shark language’, as they have so many words for the sea and shark. [..] today conservationists are concerned about tiger shark numbers, with them currently listed as ‘Near Threatened’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “Not many sharks any more. But this dreaming story shows there were once,” Friday said. [..] Although the shark may not be seen much in these waters anymore, it is still spoken of with respect, as the giver of life and creator of this land.

Read more …

 Older Entries