Dec 192021
 


Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers 1887

 

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Pravda (CTH)
Netherlands To Enter Lockdown As Nations Across Europe Tighten Curbs (G.)
Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing (DS)
Ivermectin Prophylaxis For Covid-19 Reduces Infection, Mortality Rates (RG)
Pandemic Could Be Solved Quickly If Politics Thrown Out: Dr. Ben Carson (ET)
Ex-FDA Officials, Medical Experts Flog Feds For Politicizing Covid (JTN)
Pfizer Says Pandemic Could Extend Through 2023 (K.)
Fauci, Collins Colluded To Smear Experts Who Called For End To Lockdowns (DM)
Time To Take Away The Hall Pass We Gave Doctors And Scientists (Alexander)
The Scientists Hunting For The Next Variant Of Concern (ZH)
CDC Data Missed Millions Of Unvaccinated Americans (ZH)
CNN Doctor: Wear Masks At Home And Take Tests On Christmas Morning (SN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funniest video in a while.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Pravda (CTH)

Interesting short segment from Sky News interviewing the smiling U.K. Health Minister Gillian Keegan about the intense U.K. response to the Omicron variant and the new restrictions announced by government officials. Great Britain is preparing for hundreds-of-thousands of Omicron cases. Video prompted to 05:42 just watch for around 45 seconds. No commentary from me needed. WATCH:

Read more …

No omicron to speak of, infections falling fast, but let’s ruin Christmas regardless.

Netherlands To Enter Lockdown As Nations Across Europe Tighten Curbs (G.)

Nations across Europe moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of Covid infections spurred by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown. All non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until 14 January starting Sunday, caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte said at a hastily arranged press conference Saturday night. Schools and universities will shut until 9 January, he said. In what is surely to prove a major disappointment, the lockdown terms also rein in private holiday celebrations. Residents only will be permitted two visitors except for Christmas and New Year’s, when four will be allowed, according to Rutte.

“The Netherlands is going into lockdown again from tomorrow,” he said, adding that the move was “unavoidable because of the fifth wave caused by the Omicron variant that is bearing down on us.” It wasn’t just the Dutch seeking to slow the spread of Omicron. Alarmed ministers in France, Cyprus and Austria tightened travel restrictions. Paris canceled its New Year’s Eve fireworks. Denmark has closed theatres, concert halls, amusement parks and museums. Ireland imposed an 8 pm curfew on pubs and bars and limited attendance at indoor and outdoor events. London mayor Sadiq Khan underscored the official concern about the climbing cases and their potential to overwhelm the health care system by declaring a major incident Saturday, a move that allows local councils in Britain’s capital to coordinate work more closely with emergency services.

Irish prime minister Micheal Martin captured the sense of the continent in an address to the nation, saying the new restrictions were needed to protect lives and livelihoods from the resurgent virus. “None of this is easy,” Martin said Friday night. “We are all exhausted with Covid and the restrictions it requires. The twists and turns, the disappointments and the frustrations take a heavy toll on everyone. But it is the reality that we are dealing with.”

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Trick of the trade.

Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing (DS)

Reported infections in the U.K. have suddenly spiked in the last three days, up from 59,610 on Tuesday to 78,610 on Wednesday, 88,376 on Thursday and 93,045 on Friday. Looking at the data regionally, the spike is currently much more pronounced in London, the South East, the East of England, the East Midlands and the North West than it is in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West and the West Midlands. It’s not clear at this point if it is going to continue to rise, though the last three days’ counts don’t appear to indicate continued sharp growth. It is also so far largely an artefact of massively increased testing, as the graph below with data for the U.K. up to December 16th shows. Similar is true for Scotland. Positive tests have spiked.

But positivity is up only a little due to the large increase in testing. How significant is it that the spike began on Monday December 13th, the day after Boris Johnson’s Sunday press conference when he warned everyone about Omicron and told them to get their booster jab? There was a huge surge in demand for booster doses starting that Monday and continuing throughout the week. Could the fact that this surge coincided with a similar surge in both testing and positive tests be more than coincidence? Perhaps people got tested before getting their booster, or just because of the dire warning of a new threat.


We would normally expect a spike in winter viral illness at this point in December, so there is nothing particularly unusual about it. In this regard, it’s worth noting that the Covid deaths trend for the U.K. is currently very similar to normal winter flu deaths at this time of year. However, the recent announcement of the Omicron variant raises the question of the role it might be playing in the surge.

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Not if Twitter has any say in it…

Ivermectin Prophylaxis For Covid-19 Reduces Infection, Mortality Rates (RG)

Background: Ivermectin has demonstrated different mechanisms of actions that could potentially protect from both COVID-19 infection and COVID-19-related comorbidities. Based on the existing literature and safety profile of ivermectin, a citywide program of prophylactic use of ivermectin for COVID-19 was implemented in Itajai, a Southern city in Brazil in the state of Santa Catarina. The objective of this analysis is to evaluate the effects of the use of ivermectin for prevention of COVID-19 infection, risk of dying and mortality, compared to non-users.

Materials and methods: This is a retrospective analysis of registry data from the medical based citywide COVID-19 prevention with ivermectin program, between July 2020 to December of 2020. The whole population of Itajaí was invited for a medical visit to compile demographic and medical parameters. In the absence of contraindications, ivermectin was offered as an optional treatment for 2 days every 15 days at a dose of 0.2mg/kg/day. Patients’ preferences and medical autonomy were preserved. Ivermectin users were compared with the comorbidity-matched population of non-users for COVID-19 by age, sex, COVID-19 infection rate, and COVID-19 mortality rate. Results in terms of mortality were adjusted for all relevant variables and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was calculated.

Results: A total of 220,517 subjects were included in the analysis; 133,051 (60.3%) ivermectin users and 87,466 (39.7%) non-users. COVID-19 infection occurred in 4,311 (3.2%) treated subjects, and 3,034 (3.5%) non-treated subjects. This evidence showed a 7% reduction in COVID-19 infection rate with use of ivermectin: COVID-19 infection rate ratio (Risk ratio (RR) of 0.93; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.89 – 0.98; p = 0.003). A total of 62 deaths (1.4% mortality rate) occurred among users and 79 deaths (2.6% mortality rate) among non-users, showing a 48% reduction in mortality rate (RR, 0,52; 95%CI, 0.37 – 0.72; p = 0.0001). Risk of dying from COVID-19 among ivermectin users was 45% lower than non-users (RR, 0.55; 95%CI, 0.40 – 0.77; p = 0.0004).

Conclusion: Prophylactic use of ivermectin showed significantly reduced COVID-19 infection rate, mortality rate and chance of dying from COVID-19 on a calculated population-level analysis, which controlled for all relevant confounding variables.

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“..or we can take every little mutation and every little change and try to make it into a crisis so we can frighten people and control their lives more..”

Pandemic Could Be Solved Quickly If Politics Thrown Out: Dr. Ben Carson (ET)

“We’ve been having tunnel vision” dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ben Carson told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “Let’s throw the politics out. We could solve this problem pretty quickly,” he stated in an interview that will premiere on Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. New York time. “Let’s open this thing up to all the different mechanisms,” said Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian award in the nation—in 2008 for his work. He retired in 2013 and ran for the presidency in 2016, before serving as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration.

“Let’s look around the world at things that work. Let’s look at the fact that on the western coast of Africa, there’s almost no COVID. And let’s ask ourselves, why is that? And then you see, it’s because they take antimalarials, particularly hydroxychloroquine. Let’s study that. Let’s see what’s going on there. “Let’s listen to these physician groups who’ve had incredible success with ivermectin. Let’s look at the results with monoclonal antibodies. Let’s look at all of these things. Let’s put them all in our armamentarium so that we don’t have a one-size-fits-all system.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at one time had authorized hydroxychloroquine for treating certain COVID-19 patients but quickly revoked the emergency use authorization (EUA) in June 2020, claiming no data showed its effectiveness.

The FDA hasn’t approved or issued an EUA for ivermectin to treat COVID-19, citing the same reasons. Using hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients has been highly controversial. Some studies show, and some doctors claim, that hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin can effectively treat COVID-19 patients. A vaccine confidence insight report (pdf) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) labeled such claims as misinformation or disinformation. “COVID is a virus. Viruses mutate. That’s what they do. And they will continue to mutate,” Carson said. Carson pointed out that fortunately, most of the time, viruses become a little weaker with each mutation. “We can admit that and deal with it, or we can take every little mutation and every little change and try to make it into a crisis so we can frighten people and control their lives more,” Carson said.

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But there’s only one Science.

Ex-FDA Officials, Medical Experts Flog Feds For Politicizing Covid (JTN)

The federal agencies in charge of COVID-19 response are taking hits from former officials and high-profile medical professors for “sidelining experts,” not conducting basic research, and mischaracterizing evidence related to vaccines and masks for young people. The Biden administration is getting a pass for “extreme political pressure” that “appropriately” prompted outrage against its predecessor, two FDA alumni wrote in The Washington Post Thursday. Former Office of Vaccines Research and Review Deputy Director Philip Krause and former acting Chief Scientist Luciana Borio protested three recent actions authorizing boosters for people as young as 16.

“Before last month, the standard practice was for the agencies to convene standing outside advisory committees, whose members inspect the relevant data, debate it and vote,” they wrote. Earlier debates and votes suggest that “at least some experts would probably have voiced opposition,” and the refusal to hear them out “could hurt the credibility of these agencies.” They criticized the FDA’s “unpersuasive” explanation that authorizing boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds “does not raise questions that would benefit from additional discussion by committee members.” Exigency is “the exact circumstance when expert discussion and interpretation of the data can make the biggest difference,” the duo wrote.

Krause left the FDA in apparent protest of the White House sidestepping the agency to promise booster shots across the board. He soon joined a public letter warning “there could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently,” with implications for “vaccine acceptance.” The White House is “acting seriously reckless,” University of California San Francisco medical professor Vinay Prasad tweeted, echoing Krause’s argument. “If the last administration did this, all experts would be outraged. Principles only matter when they are inconvenient.”

Johns Hopkins University medical professor Marty Makary, who agrees boosters can harm low-risk groups, blasted the feds for too much “speculation” and too little research on the Omicron variant, just their latest pandemic failure. “In fact, most of our COVID findings have come from Israel and scientists abroad,” he wrote in a New York Post op-ed Dec. 8 decrying “turtle-speed bureaucracy.” It’s baffling that the National Institutes of Health or CDC has not “mobilize[d] any of their 7,000-plus scientists” to quickly answer how antibodies from vaccines and natural immunity respond to Omicron, said Makary, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today. There’s not even a “real-time data dashboard” on Omicron cases.

“Perhaps [Anthony] Fauci could have done fewer media interviews and university lectures … and instead personally overseen an NIH Omicron-antibody-binding experiment,” he said. Makary blasted the CDC for consistently releasing “tardy and incomplete data, missing key information on risk stratification, the role of obesity and a breakdown of child deaths by comorbidity as we imposed blanket restrictions on 72 million children.”

Read more …

Who cares what Pfizer says?

Pfizer Says Pandemic Could Extend Through 2023 (K.)

Pfizer Inc said on Friday the Covid-19 pandemic could extend through next year and announced plans to develop a three-dose vaccine regimen for children ages 2 to 16, a move that could delay its authorisation. The US pharmaceutical company made its comments as European countries geared up for further travel and social restrictions and a study warned that the rapidly spreading Omicron coronavirus variant was five times more likely to reinfect people than its predecessor, Delta. Pfizer executives said the company believed that by 2024, the disease should be endemic around the globe, meaning it would no longer be a pandemic. The company projected that “Covid will transition to an endemic state potentially by 2024.”

Prior to the Omicron variant, top US disease doctor Anthony Fauci forecast the pandemic would end in 2022 in the United States. Announcing plans to develop a three-dose regimen for ages 2 to 16, Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten told a conference call that results of three doses among people older than 16 showed that approach offered greater protection. “Therefore, we have decided to modify each of the pediatric studies to incorporate a third dose to the series and seek licensure for a three-dose series rather than a two-dose series as originally anticipated,” the company said.

Pfizer developed its Covid-19 vaccine with Germany’s BioNTech SE. The companies have been developing a version of their vaccine tailored to combat the Omicron variant, but have not decided whether it will be needed. They expect to start a clinical trial for the updated vaccine in January, the Pfizer executives said. The risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times higher and it shows no sign of being milder than the Delta variant, a study by Imperial College London found, as cases soar across Europe and threaten year-end festivities. Past infection may offer as little as 19% protection against reinfection by the new variant, Imperial College said, noting that the study of hundreds of thousands of cases, including 1,846 confirmed as Omicron, had not been peer reviewed.

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‘three fringe epidemiologists’

Fauci, Collins Colluded To Smear Experts Who Called For End To Lockdowns (DM)

Dr. Anthony Fauci and the head of the National Institute of Health (NIH) colluded on a way to discredit an alternative plan to deal with COVID from a group of experts, released emails reveal. The emails, some of which were tweeted out on Saturday by Phil Magness, senior research faculty and interim research and education director at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), show Fauci and Francis Collins attempting to coordinate a ‘devastating takedown’ of the Great Barrington Declaration. AIER, a libertarian think tank, sponsored the declaration, which largely abandons lockdowns in favor of a herd immunity strategy that allows life to return to normal.


In an October 8 email from Collins to Fauci, the head of the NIH calls the GBD the work of ‘three fringe epidemiologists’ that ‘seems to be getting a lot of attention.’ Collins adds that ‘there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?’ Later in the day, Fauci sends Collins a Wired op-ed that refutes the notion of herd immunity stopping the pandemic. Collins then sends Fauci an op-ed in The Nation also trashing the GBD.

A few days later, Collins emails Fauci a Washington Post op-ed he’s quoted in headlined ‘Proposal to hasten herd immunity to the coronavirus grabs White House attention but appalls top scientists.’ Collins – working under former President Donald Trump at the time – said ‘my quotes are accurate but will not be appreciated in the [White House].’ Fauci responds: ‘They are too busy with other things to worry about this. What you said was entirely correct.’ Later, Gregg Gonsalves – the writer of The Nation op-ed – sends Collins an email thanking him with a subject line that includes saying legendary AIDS activist Larry Kramer ‘would be proud.’ Collins responds with a smiley face.


The GBD – authored by previous DailyMail.com contributor Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, calls for individuals at significantly lower risk of dying from COVID-19 – as well as those at higher risk who so wish – to be allowed ‘to resume their normal lives.’ That would mean allowing people in low risk groups to go to offices, hang out in bars and restaurants and go to sporting and entertainment events. The centerpiece of the declaration, according to Dr. Bhattacharya, is a call for increased focused protection of the vulnerable older population, who are more than a thousand times more likely to die from COVID infection than the young. The declaration makes no mention of social distancing, masks, tracing, or long-term Covid cases but suggests that increased infection of those at lower risks would build herd immunity.

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Dr. Paul Alexander names a few more ‘fringe epidemiologists’.

Time To Take Away The Hall Pass We Gave Doctors And Scientists (Alexander)

Had it not been for the likes of McCullough, Fareed, Zelenko, Tenenbaum, Oskoui, Urso, Littell, Malone, Vanden Bossche, Yeadon, Ryan Cole, Kulvinder Gill, Francis Christian, Trozzi, Phillips, Palmer, Hodkinson, Bhattacharya, Heneghan, Kulldorff, Bridle, Mallard, Bernstein, Risch etc. to me, take the whole lot of the million doctors and fire them all…every one damn of them, they have caused this by being silent and being on the take…yes, I know many from CDC and NIH and even FDA who told me they cant speak out because of fear of losing their appointment and grant…yes, this be about money…grift and graft…they have all benefitted and of course the top dog Bourla of Pfizer with his buddy Fauci…imagine this grifter Bourla saying we are criminals because we question the efficacy and safety of the vaccines…this piece of untermensche s***….

The Canadian and UK and American doctor, yes Kuntsler, have shown themselves to be among the most dweeb, pusillanimous, weak, cowardly, craven, money hungry, grifters, stiff necked idiots and fools…money whores to the pharma…selling out the good populations for benefit to yourself…you sick twisted set of doctors…you dont see it yet but your gravitas id now DOA…and you did it to you. you had it all and now are worth nothing. you helped destroy your careers, your name, EBM, research, all of it…you did this…you joined a devious scheme and history will recall and remind you always of what you did. you are utterly corrupt and I tell you in your face here…corrupt untermensche.

Yes it the doctors we used to revere and admire, that have lost all credibility along with the entire research establishment, the medical publication process, the journal editors, all of them were and are on the take in some manner…their silence got them something and we will come to learn in time…fire these bastards, all of them. These losers oh I meant doctors and scientists in the US and Canada and UK etc…sucking on the teats of NIH grants and CIHR grants…losers the whole bunch of them should hang heads in shame…abject failures….it is their disastrous unscientific illogical and specious policies that have harmed populations…children hung themselves and it was this Trump was fighting against and Atlas…I know I was there. Atlas did many things to stem the tide of the massive deaths in the nursing homes and deserves big credit…I know, I was there.

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Brought to you by Pfizer. Bought for you by Pfizer.

The Scientists Hunting For The Next Variant Of Concern (ZH)

America has some of the most advanced medical research capabilities in the world. So why is it that a small group of labs in South Africa seems to be a step ahead of everybody else when it comes to sniffing out new variants? The group first gained notoriety for discovering the beta variant and alerting the world to its presence. But most people probably became familiar with Alex Sigal, Tulio de Oliveira and their work at a gene-sequencing laboratory in the South African port city of Durban when they announced the discovery of the omicron variant, the latest “variant of concern” while Americans were enjoying their Thanksgiving dinner. What is it that makes their lab so successful? Well, it looks like Bloomberg has finally found the answer in a profile of the Africa Health Research Institute, as it’s formally known.

South African scientists became experts at combating viruses almost by necessity, They have been hard at work fighting AIDS, Turburculosis and other viruses – work that has made them a magnet for the world’s best epidemiologists. Because of this, Sigal’s lab has become a kind of training ground for scientists across the continent. It was the first to test omicron against blood plasma from people who’d received two doses of the Pfizer jab. They also developed a theory claiming that immunodepressed people might be breeding grounds for mutants since they’re so vulnerable. One reason for its success with finding new variants: South Africa has set up a network of seven genomic surveillance labs with one at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and six at academic institutions. Sigal works with Tulio de Oliveira, the Brazilian head of the gene-sequencing laboratory Krisp.

“There’s a lot of technical capacity in South Africa to do genomic sequencing of pathogens because we’ve built up that expertise over many years for HIV and TB,” said Richard Lessells, a Scottish infectious diseases specialist at Krisp. “Very early on in the pandemic, we recognized that genomic sequencing and genomic surveillance was going to be very important.” Since the discovery of omicron, many of the scientists working in the lab have been dealing with sleepless nights. “I’ve been working to get the Pfizer vaccine efficacy study ready,” said Sigal, who becomes animated when he watches a time-lapse video of the omicron variant attacking cells. “I worked through the night.” Put another way: the more variants they “discover”, the more prestige and funding they will be rewarded with.

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“..CDC data show 240MM people with at least one shot – about 72.5% of the population. But it also says only 203MM have been fully vaccinated, or 61.3%..”

CDC Data Missed Millions Of Unvaccinated Americans (ZH)

What a surprise – the CDC and states across the country have been over-counting the number of American adults who have been fully vaccinated. Here’s how Bloomberg explains this accident (because what kind of person would do this on purpose?): “in collating reams of data on vaccinations, the US has counted too many shots as first doses when they are instead second doses or booster shots.” Here’s the tell: CDC data show 240MM people with at least one shot – about 72.5% of the population. But it also says only 203MM have been fully vaccinated, or 61.3%, an 11-percentage-point difference that is far larger than in other developed countries. So, either Americans are so lazy – or perhaps don’t want to endure another series of adverse reactions – that they won’t show up to get their second dose, or there’s something wrong with these numbers.

And it might not surprise you to learn that a number of state and local officials believes it’s the latter. “State and local officials say it’s improbable that 37MM Americans got one shot without completing their inoculations. Instead, they say, the government has regularly and incorrectly counted booster shots and second doses as first doses.” Their conclusion is that both fully vaccinated and completely unvaccinated are officially undercounted. As for the precise number miscounted, that’s unknown, but revisions in data from three states – Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – found enough over-counting of first shots to suggest that there are plenty of unvaccinated people nationally who’ve mistakenly been counted as having received a dose.

One of the biggest gaps identified was in Pennsylvania, where CDC estimates of first doses for the elderly exceed the state of Pennsylvania’s estimate by about 850,000. If changes are made to the national data on the scale of Pennsylvania’s revisions, this would mean increasing the number of Americans who are unvaccinated by more than 10MM. “The truth is, we have no idea,” said Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s Covid czar.

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“..Schaffner took to CNN to express his horror at Americans having fun at football games, complaining that they were “breathing too vigorously.”

CNN Doctor: Wear Masks At Home And Take Tests On Christmas Morning (SN)

A resident doctor on CNN told viewers Thursday that they should all be wearing masks at home around other family members and everyone should wake up on Christmas morning and rather than open presents, take COVID tests. Dr. William Schaffner also said that these restrictions should apply to everyone, even those people who are double and triple vaccinated. “I recommend that we hang our stockings with care,” Schaffner stated, adding “We have to be careful because we are all going to get together, we should all be vaccinated and preferentially boosted. We should wear our masks if we are uncertain.”


“Another thing we could do is we could all get tested the morning of our getting together,” Schaffner further urged, before sharing a heartwarming story of how his own family did that for Thanksgiving. “We were all negative. It worked out just fine,” the doctor declared. Earlier in the year, Schaffner took to CNN to express his horror at Americans having fun at football games, complaining that they were “breathing too vigorously.” Schaffner declared “People are cheering and enthusiastic, exhaling with vigor; if there are people infected, they can infect people around them … Nobody was wearing a mask … I’d be very surprised if we didn’t have outbreaks.”

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London Dec 18

 

 

Paris Dec 18

 

 

 

 

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Apr 252021
 


Keith Haring Retrospect 1989

 

 

In 1884, Dr. Edwin Abbott Abbott published a book named Flatland. He appears to have meant it mainly as a social critique, but it became more famous as a mathematical “treatise”, when Einstein proposed the existence of a fourth dimension. Of course since then, physics has moved on to ideas, e.g. string theory, that suggest many more dimensions. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure I first came across Flatland in that context.

Recently I saw it mentioned somewhere and I connected it to my observation that the world appears to react to, and deal with, Covid in a one-dimensional setting -or two, if you will, since that is the main theme of Flatland-, but certainly not three. Abbott attempted to provide insight into what it means to explain a fourth dimension to a creature living in a 3-dimensional world, by taking one step back, and explaining a third dimension to one living in 2 dimensions.

First the basic ideas of the book, from Wikipedia:

Flatland (a Romance of Many Dimensions)

The story describes a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, whereof women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a square, a member of the caste of gentlemen and professionals, who guides the readers through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. The first half of the story goes through the practicalities of existing in a two-dimensional universe as well as a history leading up to the year 1999 on the eve of the 3rd Millennium.

On New Year’s Eve, the Square dreams about a visit to a one-dimensional world (Lineland) inhabited by “lustrous points”. These points are unable to see the Square as anything other than a set of points on a line. Thus, the Square attempts to convince the realm’s monarch of a second dimension, but is unable to do so. In the end, the monarch of Lineland tries to kill A Square rather than tolerate his nonsense any further.

Following this vision, he is himself visited by a three-dimensional sphere. Similar to the “points” in Lineland, the Square is unable to see the sphere as anything other than a circle. The Sphere then levitates up and down through the Flatland, allowing Square to see the circle expand and contract.

[..] After the Square’s mind is opened to new dimensions, he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical possibility of the existence of a fourth and higher spatial dimensions, but the Sphere returns his student to Flatland in disgrace. The Square then has a dream in which the Sphere visits him again, this time to introduce him to Pointland, whereof the point (sole inhabitant, monarch, and universe in one) perceives any communication as a thought originating in his own mind (cf. Solipsism):

“You see,” said my Teacher, “how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own – for he cannot conceive of any other except himself – and plumes himself upon the variety of Its Thought as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this god of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.”

 

 

Although Flatland was not ignored when it was published, it did not obtain a great success. [..] The book was discovered again after Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity was published, which brought to prominence the concept of a fourth dimension. Flatland was mentioned in a “Letter to the Editor” by William Garnett entitled “Euclid, Newton and Einstein”, published in Nature on 12 February 1920. In this letter Abbott is depicted, in a sense, as a prophet due to his intuition of the importance of time to explain certain phenomena.

“Some thirty or more years ago a little jeu d’esprit was written by Dr. Edwin Abbott entitled Flatland. At the time of its publication it did not attract as much attention as it deserved… If there is motion of our three-dimensional space relative to the fourth dimension, all the changes we experience and assign to the flow of time will be due simply to this movement, the whole of the future as well as the past always existing in the fourth dimension.”

 

Just as we cannot afford to shut down dissenting voices -but we do-, we cannot afford to have only a limited response to Covid, but -again- we do. We should have, must have, a multi-pronged, multi-dimensional response to a crisis like this, but we do not. Instead, we revert back to one dimensional “answers”, because that’s all our “leaders” can cope with.

To make the rollout of the current vaccines possible in the first place, we had to do a lot of legal juggling. First, all other substances that might have worked, had to be discredited and discarded. That enabled an Emergency Authorization Use, for -almost- entirely untested substances. Today, proud voices claim 1 billion people globally have been vaccinated. But since the world population is 7.9 billion, that leaves 6.9 billion not vaccinated people. Do we see the problem?

The problem is the virus continues to exist, and mutate, in multiple dimensions. And there is zero chance of those remaining 6.9 billion being jabbed before, say, 2025. Zero. And no, it’s not about how bad the variants, mutations, are that we see so far, it’s always about the next mutations.

The vaccines don’t protect you from getting infected or infecting others. The best they can do is make you less sick. So we have 1 billion people jabbed, of which a significant number is prone to get infected regardless, which will push the virus to continue mutating, and especially into a form that hides from the vaccines. And then there are the 6.9 billion unvaccinated who can get infected with these new much more virulent strains.

Against which the vaccines offer even less protection than against the “original” virus. A recipe for a huge disaster. How huge? Take a look at India today.

 

India COVID Triple-Mutant May Be Much More Deadly, Resistant To Vaccines

Scientists found two triple-mutant varieties in patient samples in four states: Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh. Researchers in the country have dubbed it the “Bengal strain” and say it has the potential to be even more infectious than the double-mutant variant. This is because three COVID variants have merged to form a new, possibly deadlier variant. The Times of India spoke to Vinod Scaria, a researcher at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in India, who said that the triple mutant was also an “immune escape variant” – a strain that helps the virus attach to human cells and hide from the immune system.


He added that it could have evolved from the double-mutant variant – which experts say is likely behind the recent surge of COVID in the country . Sreedhar Chinnaswamy, a researcher from the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in India, told the Times of India that the variant also carried the E484K mutation, a characteristic found in both the South African and Brazilian variants. “In other words, you may not be safe from this variant even if you were previously infected by another strain, or even if you have been vaccinated,” said Chinnaswamy.

 

Let me stress again, it’s always about the next mutations, not these ones. But triple mutant, with immune escape, is pretty bad already. People are dying in the streets, in the parking lots of hospitals. And that’s just the beginning. If this graph from IHME (healthdata.org) is only half right, a full catastrophe is developing there. Yesterday there were some 350,000 new cases in one day, the graph predicts 4 times that many about 3 weeks from now.

 

 

Obviously, the US ban on exporting raw materials for vaccines is insane, as is Angela Merkel saying that “Of course, we have only allowed India to become such a large pharmaceutical producer in the first place, also from the European side, in the expectation that this should then also be complied with.” But that’s just the start of the insanity.

If we don’t get enormous amounts of oxygen, beds, PPE, vaccines, HCQ, ivermectin, doctors, nurses etc. etc. over there from our own countries right now, we will be able to see live on TV and the interwebs in mid-May how a completely preventable disaster, comparable only to the largest famines of the past century, will unfold. And India will not forget that; nor will the rest of Asia. And neither should we. India is merely yet another dimension that we elect not to see.

 

I published Dr. Geert VanDenBossche’s open letter about the risk of mass vaccinations on March 11. In it, he said:

[..] when the pressure exerted by the army’s (read: population’s) immune defense starts to threaten viral replication and transmission, the virus will take on another coat so that it can no longer be easily recognized and, therefore, attacked by the host immune system. The virus is now able to escape immunity (so-called: ‘immune escape’). However, the virus can only rely on this strategy provided it stlll has room enough to replicate.

Well, it is happening as we speak.

 

The day after, March 12, 2021, I wrote in Only:

• ONLY doctors are experts.

• We use ONLY vaccines to fight Covid, no prophylactics. No vitamin D, HCQ or ivermectin.

• We have ONLY Emergency Use Authorization vaccines.

• We can soon ONLY travel after having been inoculated with such vaccines.

• We can ONLY express officially approved opinions.

I could add: we can apparently ONLY exist in one dimension. That’s what made me think back of Flatland. But instead, we must move on to as many dimensions as we can. Because if we don’t, and we thereby limit our responses, we invite the endemic Sars-COV-2 virus to occupy those dimensions.

It is criminally insane to not try to boost everyone’s immune systems with something as simple as vitamin D, or to take HCQ and ivermection more serious, or dexamethasone, or any other repurposable drugs. We simply need to move in as many dimensions as we can, because the virus does, too.

Problem is, if ivermectin would be proven to be effective as a prophylactic or treatment, even it were just 50%, the Emergency Authorization Use for the mRNA vaccines would be in shaky legal territory.

 

It was hilarious to see Jeffrey Tucker at AIER yesterday repost this March 2020 article (but not so hilarious when you think about the consequences):

The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea

But what is this mention of the high-school daughter of 14? Her name is Laura M. Glass, and she recently declined to be interviewed when the Albuquerque Journal did a deep dive of this history. Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people – family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations – interact.

What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than any other group. Based on that finding, her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed. Laura’s name appears on the foundational paper arguing for lockdowns and forced human separation.

That paper is Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza (2006). It set out a model for forced separation and applied it with good results backwards in time to 1957. They conclude with a chilling call for what amounts to a totalitarian lockdown, all stated very matter-of-factly.

[..] In other words, it was a high-school science experiment that eventually became law of the land, and through a circuitous route propelled not by science but politics. The primary author of this paper was Robert J. Glass, a complex-systems analyst with Sandia National Laboratories. He had no medical training, much less an expertise in immunology or epidemiology.

But this is also oh-so typical of how the entire western world deals with this issue. Myopic, self-obsessed, profit-oriented, and lying through their teeth. The problem is not whether the present vaccines are somewhat effective or not, the problem is that we don’t know but run with them anyway. And leave a country like India to fend for itself, while complaining they don’t give us enough vaccines while their own people die in the streets.

There are many stories about side effects, blood clots in particular, which were predicted but ignored, for Chrissake. The problem is that in order to “live” in the one dimension of the present vaccines, we had to close ourselves off from all other dimensions. And that we cannot afford. This will not end well.

Lockdowns are not a one-dimensional thing either. They have a great effect on people’s mental – and physical- health, but nobody seems to care. Covid is the only dimension we recognize. And that’s also funny: Einstein suggested time -or space-time, more accurately- as a fourth dimension, but your Flatland politicians have no qualms about locking you down for an infinite amount of time, as if that is inconsequential.

We better inject some actual science into this whole discussion, or else. Then again, so far, there isn’t even a discussion at all. Dissenting voices are banned. Just one of many things we cannot afford. Science? It’s nothing to do with science. Just politics. Presently, people in the west are told that is they get “fully vaccinated”, they will be able to get back to “normal”. But that is a lie, or at least even Pfizer et al themselves give no guarantee that transmission will stop.

EU countries see similar numbers of infections, hospitalizations etc. today that they did 2-3-4 months ago. Then, the numbers were used to justify more restrictions. Now, the same numbers are used to justify “opening up”. Ergo, the politicians and their “science” advisors failed spectacularly, but their PR people phrase it as a success story. It would be funny if it weren’t so…

 

 

 

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Feb 192020
 


Arthur Siegel Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore, Maryland. Liberty ship construction. Welding on a hatch assembly at night. 1943

 

Elderly Guests Leave First As Diamond Princess Quarantine Ends In Japan (SCMP)
Japan Releases First 500 ‘Diamond Princess’ Passengers (ZH)
Coronavirus Up To 20 Times More Likely Than Sars To Bind To Human Cells (SCMP)
Russia To Ban Entry Of Chinese Nationals To Halt Virus (AP)
Foreign Pilots At Chinese Airlines Return Home On Unpaid Leave (R.)
Xi Jinping, Under Fire From Virus Outbreak, Also Faces Economic Crisis (CNBC)
Trump Commutes Prison Sentence Of Rod Blagojevich (AP)
Fox Has Been “More Fair”: Why Bernie’s Team Has Had It With MSNBC (VF)
The Magic Of Retirement Is Gone (Alhambra)
Boeing Finds Debris In Fuel Tanks Of Undelivered 737 MAX Planes (CNBC)
After Learning Of Whitey Bulger LSD Tests, Juror Has Regrets (AP)
EU To Unveil Plans To Boost European Firms, Rein In US Tech Giants (R.)
Britain’s Row With Greece Over Treasures Spills Into Brexit Tensions (R.)
Religion is a Repeating Chapter in the History of Politics (CP)

 

 

• Cases 73,433 75,197 (+ 1,764 from yesterday)

• Deaths 2,010 (+ 137 from yesterday)

• Second death in Hong Kong

 

 

 

How old do you have to be to count among the “elderly” on a cruise ship?

Elderly Guests Leave First As Diamond Princess Quarantine Ends In Japan (SCMP)

Passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship on Wednesday began disembarking after a controversial two-week quarantine period in Yokohama that raised questions about the Japanese government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. The disembarkation of nearly 3,000 people was expected to take three days at least, according to the government. In the first group, some 500 mainly elderly passengers who have tested negative for the virus will leave the ship after final check-ups with doctors. The cruise ship was initially carrying about 3,700 passengers and crew from more than 50 countries and regions. The number of cases confirmed on board increased day by day, reaching 542 on Tuesday.


Those found to be infected with the pneumonia-causing virus have been transported to medical facilities. Test samples have now been collected from all passengers, the health ministry said. Disembarking passengers will be transported to Yokohama and other train stations in the area. Those who have had close contact with infected people on the ship will be kept on board for the time being for further monitoring even though they have tested negative. The ship’s operator will decide when crew who have not been infected will leave the ship, according to the ministry. With some passengers planning to stay on the ship it was unclear when their quarantines would end.

Read more …

“..it was a mess on board, and the mess is now moving off board..”

Japan Releases First 500 ‘Diamond Princess’ Passengers (ZH)

Japanese health authorities are beginning the process of offloading the remaining 2,000+ passengers and crew aboard the ‘Diamond Princess’, a ship that has been under quarantine for 14 days. The offloading will take place in phases over three days, finally wrapping up on Friday. The first 500 people are set to leave at around 10:30 am Tokyo time on Wednesday. There will be no preference given to different nationalities, according to Japan’s Ministry of Health. Many who depart will be subject to another 14 days of quarantine, including any Americans who elected to stay on the ship instead of traveling back to the US on the evac flight. Roughly 40 Americans were also excluded from that flight because they were being treated for the virus in a Japanese hospital.

So far, 542 people – including at least 14 of the 300 or so Americans who traveled back to the US on Monday in Japan – have tested positive for the virus. And while Japan says it has tested everybody aboard, doctors and experts say there’s no way to certain that people being released won’t be carrying the virus – hence the quarantines when they return home. But where will they go between now and then? And with no immediate after-care plans – at least none that have been publicly disclosed, it looks like Japan is about to set thousands of people aboard the most infected environment outside China loose in Tokyo. Of course, Japanese authorities are so paranoid about the Olympics, one would think they would be doing everything in their power to stop an outbreak in Tokyo, especially at such a sensitive time.

About 500 people are set to leave the ship from around 10:30 a.m. Tokyo time on Wednesday, with no preference given to any particular nationality, Japan’s Health Ministry said. Hopefully, health officials will manage to convince the world that they successfully screened for the virus. The ship was first quarantined on Feb. 5 more than a week after a man who tested positive for the virus in Hong Kong disembarked. Journalists have shared stories of desperation and paranoia from those trapped on the ship, making it sound like such a nightmare that many who read those stories may never want to travel on a cruise.

In other news, Yonhap reported minutes ago that South Korea has another 15 cases, increasing the countries total by roughly one-third to 46 one day after the country’s president warned of an “economic emergency” as companies like Hyundai suffer from supply shortages from China. The South Korean government has already announced a fiscal stimulus package to help companies hurt by the virus.

Read more …

ACE2, the receptor much more common among Asian people.

Coronavirus Up To 20 Times More Likely Than Sars To Bind To Human Cells (SCMP)

The deadly new coronavirus is up to 20 times more likely to bind to human cell receptors and cause infection than severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), a new study by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin has found. The novel coronavirus and Sars share the same functional host-cell receptor, called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). The report, published on the website bioRxiv on Saturday, said the new coronavirus had around 10 to 20-fold higher affinity – the degree to which a substance tends to combine with another – for human ACE2 compared with Sars. But the researchers added that further studies were needed to explore the human host-cell receptor’s role in helping the new virus to spread from person to person.

“Compared with SARS-CoV, 2019-nCoV appears to be more readily transmitted from human to human,” the report of the study said. “The high affinity of 2019-nCoV S for human ACE2 may contribute to the apparent ease with which 2019-nCoV can spread from human to human.” The disease caused by the new coronavirus, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has named Covid-19, has killed more than 1,800 people and infected over 70,000 worldwide. The number of Covid-19 deaths is more than double the global figure of 813 attributed by the WHO to the Sars epidemic of 2002-03.

The new study found that although the novel coronavirus’ receptor-binding domain (RBD) had a relatively similar structure to that of Sars, it did not have appreciable binding to three published Sars RBD-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), which are copies of one type of antibody used to neutralise pathogens. The researchers said this suggested antibody cross-reactivity – the extent to which different antigens appear similar to the immune system – may be limited between the two virus RBDs, meaning Sars-directed mAbs will not necessarily work against the new virus.Instead, they identified the spike protein of coronaviruses, which is essential to gain entry into host cells during the infection process, as the most important target for vaccines, therapeutic antibodies and diagnostics.

Read more …

How long before the rest of the world follows?

Russia To Ban Entry Of Chinese Nationals To Halt Virus (AP)

Russia will temporarily ban Chinese nationals from entering the country due to the virus outbreak centered in China that has infected more than 73,000 people worldwide, Russian authorities said Tuesday. The entry ban goes into effect Thursday at midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT) for an indefinite period, according to a decree signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. The government said it took the move due to the “worsening epidemiological situation” in China. Russia already had cut off most Chinese visitors by closing the long land border with China and Mongolia and imposing other travel restrictions. The new entry ban won’t affect travelers who need to transfer flights at Russian airports, authorities said.


So far, Russia has had only three confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus — two Chinese citizens who were treated and released, and a Russian national infected on the Diamond Princess cruise ship now quarantined in Japan. However, Russian authorities have taken significant steps to try to keep the virus from spreading, including hospitalizing hundreds of people as a precaution after they returned from China. Russia halted most air traffic to China, suspended all trains to China and North Korea, and temporarily stopped issuing work visas to Chinese citizens. Chinese students studying in Russia were told not to return until March 1.

Read more …

Perspective: 1,500 foreign pilots in 2019, double from 2010. In next 20 years, 6,000 pilots needed every year. Guess they won’t be foreigners.

Foreign Pilots At Chinese Airlines Return Home On Unpaid Leave (R.)

Foreign pilots at some Chinese airlines have returned to their home countries and are considering other jobs after being placed on unpaid leave as demand falls because of the coronavirus, affected flight crew told Reuters. Meanwhile, Chinese pilots with greater job security said their income has been sharply reduced because most of their pay is based on flying hours. Data firm OAG estimates about 80% of scheduled airline capacity to, from and within China has been cut this week because of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has killed more than 2,000 people. Chinese airlines have been the hardest hit. Major employers of foreign pilots, including China Southern Airlines and HNA Group’s Hainan Airlines, have acted swiftly to cut their losses, according to pilots and industry experts.

“All the foreign pilots are on leave until the virus situation gets better,” said an expatriate captain at China Southern who, like all of those who spoke to Reuters, requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with media. “For the moment we are all in our home countries.” Expats are typically paid more than local staff and work on contracts, which means they are more expendable in a downturn, industry experts said. “We have seen pilots heading back to Australia in January and February due to the stand down and seeking new roles,” said Kirsty Ferguson, the head of Sydney-based airline interview coaching firm Pinstripe Solutions.

[..] the number of foreign pilots flying with Chinese airlines more than doubled to over 1,500 between 2010 and 2019, according the Civil Aviation Administration of China. China will need another 124,000 pilots in the next 20 years, according to Boeing, as an expanding middle class drives demand for air travel. But foreign pilots said being put on leave without pay makes it less likely they’ll return when demand recovers.

Read more …

Simple really: companies have a few weeks supplies and parts in stock. Then chains start to break.

Xi Jinping, Under Fire From Virus Outbreak, Also Faces Economic Crisis (CNBC)

Already under heavy fire as the coronavirus outbreak shutters factories, disrupts supply chains and is set to shock China’s already-slowing economy, Chinese President Xi Jinping, it seems, is also under pressure to still deliver the country’s promised growth. In a speech delivered Feb. 3 and released over the weekend, Xi said: “Currently, we still have to deliver this year’s economic and social targets.” Last year, China’s growth dropped to its slowest pace in nearly three decades. Xi, according to a translation of his remarks, said those tasks must still be “done well,” with a message for provinces — other than those most severely affected by the outbreak — to keep a balancing act: Control the epidemic, but make sure they are fulfilling reform and development goals.

The Chinese government could face an “economic crisis” if the outbreak doesn’t abate, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) wrote in a note last Friday, before the Xi speech was published. Public frustration could “escalate dangerously” if the outbreak proves to be uncontrollable by the end of March, EIU wrote. It said the economic costs of China’s shutdown as it seeks to contain the epidemic will be apparent at that point. “At that point, the central authorities will not have room to pin the blame on local officials, given that they will have been directing the crisis response for longer than two months,” the EIU note said, adding it could be why Xi is now taking “more personal control” over the crisis.

Earlier this month, over half of China extended shutdowns to contain the outbreak. Last year, those parts of China accounted for more than 80% of national GDP and 90% of exports. That disruption of the world’s manufacturing hub has severely hit supply chains globally, with companies still dealing with the fallout. As China struggles to get back on its feet, with factories starting to reopen and workers trickling back, progress is slow. Returning workers need to follow quarantine orders, meaning factories are still operating at limited capacity. “Many smaller companies have stated that they will not be able to survive beyond the first quarter of the year in the current business climate,” the EIU wrote. “Besides a health crisis, the authorities could face an economic crisis, with implications for incomes and jobs.”

Read more …

Throwing in Blagojevich with Stone, Flynn, Manafort. Hmmm.

Trump Commutes Prison Sentence Of Rod Blagojevich (AP)

U.S. President Donald Trump has gone on a clemency blitz, commuting what he called a “ridiculous” 14-year prison sentence for former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and pardoning former New York Police Department commissioner Bernie Kerik, among a long list of others. Others who got a break from Mr. Trump include financier Michael Milken, who served two years in prison in the early 1990s after pleading guilty to violating U.S. securities laws, and Edward DeBartolo Jr., the former San Francisco 49ers owner convicted in a gambling fraud scandal after building one of the most successful NFL teams in history.

In all, Mr. Trump took clemency actions related to 11 people, his latest interventions in the justice system as he is under growing fire for weighing in on the cases of former aides. Mr. Trump made clear that he saw similarities between efforts to investigate his own conduct and those who took down Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat who appeared on Mr. Trump’s reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice. “It was a prosecution by the same people – Comey, Fitzpatrick, the same group,” Mr. Trump said. He was referring to Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. lawyer who prosecuted Mr. Blagojevich and now represents former FBI Director James Comey, whom Mr. Trump fired from the agency in May, 2017.

[..] Mr. Trump said he had yet to think about pardoning his long-time confidant Roger Stone, who is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, or granting clemency to several former aides who have ended up in legal jeopardy, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn. “Somebody has to stick up for the people,” Mr. Trump said. As for Mr. Stone, in particular, he added: You’re going to see what happens. I think he’s treated unfairly.”

Read more …

Their approach to Bernie is similar to that of Trump. But Bernie picks their side when it comes to the latter. That’s his main blind spot: Trump and Russia.

Fox Has Been “More Fair”: Why Bernie’s Team Has Had It With MSNBC (VF)

Faiz Shakir had seen enough. As summer turned to fall, and the 2020 Democratic presidential race entered the stretch run before the first caucuses and primaries, Shakir, who manages Bernie Sanders’s campaign, approached MSNBC president Phil Griffin to discuss his concerns with the network’s treatment of the Vermont senator’s second White House bid. “We watched a ton of terrible coverage occurring and we thought we’d at least try to address it,” he recalled For months, the campaign bristled at slights from MSNBC’s stable of hosts and commentators. Jason Johnson, an MSNBC contributor, predicted in January 2019 that Sanders would drop out by August, and network analyst Mimi Rocah said in July that Sanders made her “skin crawl.”

On-screen graphics have omitted Sanders and misrepresented his poll numbers, a trend that inspired a sendup from the Onion. “It’s been a struggle to change the tone and the tenor of the coverage that we receive,” Shakir said in an interview. “They’ve been among the last to acknowledge that Bernie Sanders’s path to the nomination is real, and even when it’s become real, they frequently discount it.” (A study from progressive magazine In These Times buttresses Shakir’s critique). Sanders also attended the off-the-record discussion with Griffin; an MSNBC spokesperson said the network has hosted similar meetings with other Democratic candidates. Shakir said the 30 Rock chat was “open” and “cordial,” but now, months later, he’s “not sure it really changed anything.”

Sanders has long contended that the agenda of “corporate media” doesn’t necessarily reflect the people’s needs, and his 2020 campaign has doubled as a rolling media criticism shop. On Twitter, Sanders’s speechwriter David Sirota, a veteran reporter, has become a one-man rapid-response machine; last week, he chided a New York Times reporter for downplaying Sanders’s victory in the New Hampshire primary. Several key campaign figures hail from the media’s left flank: deputy campaign manager Ari Rabin-Havt (Media Matters), national press secretary Briahna Joy Gray (The Intercept), and Shakir (ThinkProgress). Sanders himself has suggested that the Washington Post “doesn’t write particularly good articles about” him because of his efforts to raise the minimum wage at Amazon, the company founded by the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos. He’s also railed against networks taking Big Pharma ads while on the debate stage.

Entering Wednesday’s debate in Las Vegas, which will be cohosted by MSNBC and NBC News, the ongoing tension between the titular liberal cable news network and the current Democratic front-runner has only intensified, and appears symptomatic of generational and ideological rifts within the party. It is at once a test of both MSNBC’s influence over the process and Sanders’s ability to withstand establishment resistance. Shakir said unflattering coverage on MSNBC has been “actively damaging” to the campaign. “The constant diminishment of Bernie Sanders on MSNBC,” he added, “hurts his case for electability.”

Read more …

1) “..medical costs for a couple are estimated to be $200,000 during their retirement years..”

2) 70-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

3) Nuff said.

The pension Ponzi will grind to a halt. And as these things go, that will happen sooner than you expect.

The Magic Of Retirement Is Gone (Alhambra)

Social Security hasn’t considered 65 as full retirement age for a long time. The last workers who received full Social Security benefits at that age were born in 1937. For people born in 1938 and beyond, full retirement age has been increasing by 2 months per year up to those born in 1960 and after, when full retirement age caps at 67. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, almost 27% of Americans between 65 and 74 were still working. That’s projected to exceed 30% by 2026. And the number of people 75 and older who continue to work has gone from 6.4% in 2006 to 8.4% in 2016, projected to hit almost 11% by 2026. Why is it happening? Some people continue working to have something to do. I’ve talked to people still in the workforce, and some who retired and went back to work.

They say, “There’s only so much golf you can plan and so many fish you can catch.” They were bored. They needed something to do. Some continue to work so they’ll have health insurance. But the majority of people still working are doing it because they have to. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that almost 29% of households age 55 and older don’t have anything saved for retirement and they don’t have a pension. The National Institute on Retirement Security calculated the number. That means 40 million U.S. households have no retirement savings at all. The Employee Research Institute estimates that all households with a head of household between 25 and 64 years old, cumulative, are $4.3 trillion short of what they need for retirement.

Among households that do have retirement accounts, The Federal Reserve found the median account balance was $60,000. When you consider medical costs for a couple are estimated to be $200,000 during their retirement years—Not Good. Numbers from the Social Security Administration (SSA) show 50% of retired couples and 70% of unmarried elderly receive 50% of their income from Social Security. Among all Social Security beneficiaries, 21% of married couples and 45% of unmarried persons rely on Social Security for 90% of their income.

Read more …

“Boeing produced some 400 MAX planes since the grounding..” Well, no more. Maybe the workers were thinking: those planes will never be delivered anyway.

Boeing Finds Debris In Fuel Tanks Of Undelivered 737 MAX Planes (CNBC)

Boeing has told employees that it discovered foreign-object debris in fuel tanks of “several” 737 Max planes the manufacturer has in storage, CNBC learned Tuesday. Foreign object debris “is absolutely unacceptable,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes executive Mark Jenks, a vice president and general manager of the 737 program and Renton production facility, according to the company’s website, said in a note to employees. “One escape is one too many. “With your help and focus, we will eliminate FOD from our production system,” he wrote. The company plans to investigate the foreign objects in the tanks and said that the discovery won’t impact the plane’s return to service.


“The success of this initiative is dependent on you. We need our entire team to make this a priority. Thank you for your commitment to put safety, quality and integrity into everything we do,” Jenks wrote. The Federal Aviation Administration said it was aware that Boeing “is conducting a voluntary” inspection for debris in the undelivered aircraft “as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to ensure manufacturing quality.” “The agency increased its surveillance based on initial inspection reports and will take further action based on the findings,” the agency said in a statement. Boeing also plans to inspect all undelivered 737 Max planes. Boeing produced some 400 Max planes since the grounding last year until it halted production last month. The company suspended delivery of the new planes after regulators grounded them worldwide ..

Read more …

He signed up for the trial.
The CIA “dosed” him over 50 times.
“He didn’t murder prior to the LSD. His brain may have been altered..”.
But his lawyers never brought up LSD in his trial.

After Learning Of Whitey Bulger LSD Tests, Juror Has Regrets (AP)

One of the jurors who convicted notorious crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger says she regrets her decision after learning that he was an unwitting participant in a covert CIA experiment with LSD. Bulger terrorized Boston from the 1970s into the 1990s with a campaign of murder, extortion, and drug trafficking, then spent 16 years on the lam after he was tipped to his pending arrest. In 2013, Janet Uhlar was one of 12 jurors who found Bulger guilty in a massive racketeering case, including involvement in 11 murders, even after hearing evidence that the mobster was helped by corrupt agents in the Boston office of the FBI. But now Uhlar says she regrets voting to convict Bulger on any of the murder charges.

Her regret stems from a cache of more than 70 letters Bulger wrote to her from prison. In some, he describes his unwitting participation in a secret CIA experiment with LSD. In a desperate search for a mind control drug in the late 1950s, the agency dosed Bulger with the powerful hallucinogen more than 50 times when he was serving his first stretch in prison — something his lawyers never brought up in his federal trial. “Had I known, I would have absolutely held off on the murder charges,” Uhlar told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “He didn’t murder prior to the LSD. His brain may have been altered, so how could you say he was really guilty?” At the same time, Uhlar says she would have voted to convict Bulger on the long list of other criminal counts, meaning he still would likely have died in prison.

Uhlar has spoken publicly about her regret before but says her belief that the gangster was wrongly convicted on the murder charges was reinforced after reading a new book by Brown University professor Stephen Kinzer: “Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.” The book digs into the dark tale of the CIA’s former chief chemist and his attempts to develop mind control techniques by giving LSD and other drugs to unsuspecting individuals, including colleagues, and observing the effects. [..] Gottlieb’s secret program, known as MK-ULTRA, enlisted doctors and other subcontractors to administer LSD in large doses to prisoners, addicts and others unlikely to complain. In Bulger’s case, the mobster and fellow inmates were offered reduced time for their participation and told they would be taking part in medical research into a cure for schizophrenia.

Read more …

I get the idea. But I don’t get which EU companies this is supposed to help.

EU To Unveil Plans To Boost European Firms, Rein In US Tech Giants (R.)

The European Commission will on Wednesday launch the first of a raft of proposals to help European companies exploit their rich trove of industrial data and at the same time rein in online giants Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Amazon.com Inc . The data strategy and artificial intelligence discussion papers are part of a bigger scheme to help European companies better compete with U.S. tech giants and state-aided Chinese companies in the digital world. European digital and antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager and European industry chief Thierry Breton will present the proposals around noon. They will come up with a final draft by the end of the year following feedback from interested parties.


The core of the EU’s data strategy is the creation of a single European data market and smaller data markets centered on key industries, according to a draft seen by Reuters last month. Other elements include new rules covering cross-border data use, data interoperability and standards related to manufacturing, climate change, the auto industry, healthcare, financial services, agriculture and energy. One of the possibly controversial proposals calls for doing away with EU competition rules against anti-competitive data sharing. In response to complaints about the power wielded by large online platforms, the Commission is also considering introducing rules to stop these companies from unilaterally imposing conditions for access and use of data or benefiting from this in a disproportionate manner.

Read more …

Twitter comment: “The Parthenon marbles don’t speak English so under the latest post-Brexit immigration guidelines they wouldn’t have been allowed into the UK from the EU anyway.”

But seriously, how do you defend buying stuff from the Nazis, or any occupying force, and then claim that’s legal?

Britain’s Row With Greece Over Treasures Spills Into Brexit Tensions (R.)

The British Museum in London has refused to return the Parthenon Marbles, 2,500-year-old sculptures that British diplomat Lord Elgin removed from Athens in the early 19th century when Greece was under Ottoman Turkish rule. A draft of the 27 EU nations’ position on negotiations with Britain on their future relationship, which was seen by Reuters on Tuesday, seeks the “return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin”. The document did not specify any cultural objects. However, an EU diplomat said the line was added at the request of Greece, with support from Italy.


Greece’s culture minister said last month that Athens would step up its campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from London and expected to win more support from European peers as Brexit diminishes Britain’s influence. The British Museum says the marbles, which are roughly half of a 160-metre frieze that adorned the fifth century BC Parthenon temple, were acquired by Elgin under a legal contract with the Ottoman empire. Greece says they were stolen. A British government spokeswoman, commenting on the draft EU document, said the UK’s position on the sculptures remained that they are “the legal responsibility of the British Museum”.


The Parthenon Marbles displayed at the British Museum in London October 16, 2014. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/

Read more …

John Gray begins his book, Black Mass (2007), with the sentence: “Politics Is A Chapter In The History Of Religion.”

Hazel Henderson Said In 2006: “Economics, Never A Science, Has Always Been Politics In Disguise.”

Religion is a Repeating Chapter in the History of Politics (CP)

In 1949 the German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term ‘the axial age’ in his book, ‘The Origin and Goal of History.’ He defined the Axial Age as the pivotal period in human moral and spiritual development that has conferred upon the world the political, cultural and philosophical shape it has today. It occurred, according to Jaspers, between 2 and 3 thousand years ago in various places around the world. This pivot point in history comes after the emergence of the State and civilization in these areas, which current anthropological and archaeological thinking sets at about 5 to 6 thousand years ago.

What Jaspers and other historians had noticed in studies of ancient history was that over a relatively short span of time all the great founding philosophies or systems of morality that we still refer to today – such as Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Platonism, the Abrahamic religions – appeared in parallel, with no obvious connection, in different civilizations.

Jaspers looked for reasons for this ancient ‘enlightenment’ in the political situations of the various civilizations he analysed and suggested the opportunity for new thinking was provided in each area by the destabilization of the previous, originary, monolithic, State and the formation of smaller, competing States that were in a process of navigating a new course for themselves and in relation to adjacent territories. Several of the founding philosophers, for example, are known to have wandered around their region, disseminating their ideas in the cities and districts of different States.

Read more …

 

If Martin Scorsese made horror movies…

 

 

 

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Jul 262019
 


Edward Hopper Sailing 1911

 

It’s a development that has long been evident in continental Europe, and that has now arrived on the shores of the US and UK. It is the somewhat slow but very certain dissolution of long-existing political parties, organizations and groups. That’s what I was seeing during the Robert Mueller clown horror show on Wednesday.

Mueller was not just the Democratic Party’s last hope, he was their identity. He was the anti-Trump. Well, he no longer is, he is not fit to play that role anymore. And there is nobody to take it over who is not going to be highly contested by at least some parts of the party. In other words: it’s falling apart.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a natural process, parties change as conditions do and if they don’t do it fast enough they disappear. Look at the candidates the Dems have. Can anyone imagine the party, post-Mueller, uniting behind Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris? And then for one of them to beat Donald Trump in 2020?

I was just watching a little clip from Sean Hannity, doing what Trump did last week, which is going after the Squad. Who he said are anti-Israel socialists and, most importantly, the de facto leaders of the party, not Nancy Pelosi. That is a follow-up consequence of Mueller’s tragic defeat, the right can now go on the chase. The Squad is the face of the Dems because Trump and Hannity have made them that.

The upcoming Horowitz and Durham reports on their respective probes into “meddling into the meddling” will target many people in the Democratic Party, US intelligence services, and the media. In that order. Can the Dems survive such a thing? It’s hard to see.

 

There’s Bernie and the Squad, the declared socialists, who will never be accepted as leaders by a party so evidently predicated upon support for the arms industry. And they in turn can’t credibly support candidates who do. The Democratic Party will never be socialist, they will have to leave the label behind in order to share that message and remain believable.

But without them, what will be left? Joe Biden, or perhaps Hillary silently waiting in the wings? I don’t see it. Not after Mueller, not after two-three years of gambling all on red anti-Trump. At least the Squad have an identity, got to give them that. Whether it will sell in 2019 America is another thing altogether.

I personally think the term socialist is too tainted, on top of being too misinterpreted, for it to be “electable”, but I also understand there are large swaths of the US population who are in dire straits already with a recession on the horizon, but 2020 seems too soon. And I would ditch the term regardless. It’s like painting a target on your back for Trump and Hannity to aim at.

If you remember the 2016 campaign and the clown parade on stage with the likes of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush glaring at the headlights, you know that the GOP has issues that are very similar to those of the Dems. But Trump came along.

The Dems have no Trump. They do have a DNC that will stifle any candidate they don’t like (Bernie!), though. Just think what they would have done if Trump had run as a Democrat (crazy, but not that crazy).

 

The UK’s issues are remarkably similar to those of the US. Only, in their case, the socialists have already taken over the left-wing party (if you can call the Dems left-wing). This has led to absolute stagnation. Tony Blair had moved Labour so far to the right (which he and his Blairites call center, because it sounds so much better), that injecting Jeremy Corbyn as leader was just too fast and furious.

So they labeled Corbyn an anti-semite, the most successful and equally empty smear campaign since Julian Assange was called a rapist. Corbyn never adequately responded, so he couldn’t profile himself and now the Blairites are again calling on him to leave. Oh, and he never gave a direct answer to the question of Brexit yes or no either. Pity. Corbyn’s support among the people is massive, but not in the party.

Which is why it’s now up to Boris Johnson to ‘deliver the will of the people’. And apparently the first thing the people want is 20,000 more policemen. Which were fired by the very party he at the time represented first as first mayor of London and then foreign minister, for goodness sake. His very own Tories closed 600 police stations since 2010 and will have to re-open many now.

Some survey must have told him it polled well. Just like polling was an essential part of pushing through Brexit. There’s a very revealing TV movie that came out 6 months ago called Brexit: The Uncivil War, that makes this very clear. The extent to which campaigns these days rely on data gathering and voter targeting will take a while yet to be understood, but they’re a future that is already here. Wikipedia in its description of the film puts it quite well:

 

After the opening credits, [Dominic] Cummings rejects an offer in 2015 by UKIP MP Douglas Carswell and political strategist Matthew Elliott to lead the Vote Leave campaign due to his contempt for “Westminister politics”, but accepts when Carswell promises Cummings full control.

The next sequences show Cummings outlining the core strategy on a whiteboard of narrow disciplined messaging delivered via algorithmic database-driven micro-targeting tools. Cummings rejects an approach by Nigel Farage and Arron Banks of Leave.EU to merge their campaigns, as his data shows Farage is an obstacle to winning an overall majority.

[..] In a eureka moment, Cummings refines the core message to “Take Back Control”, thus positioning Vote Leave as the historical status quo, and Remain as the “change” option. Cummings meets and hires Canadian Zack Massingham, co-founder of AggregateIQ, who offers to build a database using social media tools of [3 million] voters who are not on the UK electoral register but are inclined to vote to leave.

[..] In the final stages, high-profile senior Tory MPs Michael Gove and Boris Johnson join the Vote Leave campaign emphasising the need to “Take Back Control”, while Penny Mordaunt is shown on BBC raising concerns over the accession of Turkey. Gove and Johnson are shown as having some reticence over specific Vote Leave claims (e.g. £350 million for NHS, and 70 million potential Turkish emigrants) but are seen to overcome them.

 

Dominic Cummings, played in the movie by Benedict Cumberbatch, is an independent political adviser who belongs to no party. But guess what? He was the first adviser Boris Johnson hired after his nomination Wednesday. Cummings didn’t want Nigel Farage as the face of Brexit, because he polled poorly. He wanted Boris, because his numbers were better. Not because he didn’t think Boris was a bumbling fool, he did.

And now Cummings is back to finish the job. Far as I can see, that can only mean one thing: elections, and soon (it’s what Cummings does). A no-deal Brexit was voted down, in the same Parliament Boris Johnson now faces, 3 times, or was it 4? There is going to be a lot of opposition. Boris wants Brexit on October 31, and has practically bet his career on it. But there is going to be a lot of opposition.

He can’t have elections before September, because of the summer recess. So perhaps end of September?! But he has Dominic Cummings and his “algorithmic database-driven micro-targeting tools”. Without which Brexit would never have been voted in. So if you don’t want Brexit, you better come prepared.

Cummings and his techies weren’t -just- sending out mass mails or that kind of stuff. That’s already arcane. They were sending targeted personalized messages to individual voters, by the millions. Algorithms. AI. Tailor made. If you’re the opposition, and you don’t have those tools, then what do you have exactly?

Already thought before it all happened that it was funny that Boris Johnson’s ascension and Robert Mueller’s downfall were scheduled for the same day. There must be a pattern somewhere.

You can find the movie at HBO or Channel 4, I’m sure. Try this link for Channel 4. Seeing that movie, and thinking about the implications of the technology, the whole notion of Russian meddling becomes arcane as well. We just have no idea.

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 272019
 


Robert Frank Funeral, St. Helena, South Carolina 1955

 

 

Bit unusual, but why not. I was reading British press earlier, trying to figure out what the fcuk is going on in London two days before March 29, and in an article in the Guardian I saw this comment, and thought it should be saved for posterity.

Since the article is/was one of those live updates ones, which tend to get very long, and moreover at the point I read it it already had well over 11,000 other comments, posting it here seemed to be the way to go to achieve that.

It was posted by someone who named themselves Tintenfische (German for squid, octopus?!), and that’s all I know about this person(s), who imagines a speech someone should stand up and deliver in the house. I think it says exactly what needs to be said, what politicians should say, in Britain where civil unrest is much closer than anyone wants to see, in the US where very similar scenarios are playing out, and in many other countries.

The failure of party politics is everywhere to be seen.

 

 

Tintenfische: Speech I wish someone would have the courage to give.

 

As I stand in Parliament today I see the faces of friends and colleagues I’ve worked alongside, struggled alongside, triumphed and lost alongside. Good men and women all from both sides of the house.

We and the parties we represent have fought for our beliefs and battled for our constituents for centuries. We’ve done what we believed to be right, we’ve fought battles we believed should be fought and shown the people across the globe how democracy when at its best is the only route to freedom. In this place too I’m confronted with history. It was here that our predecessors decided to stand up to fascism, where we ended slavery and wrote into law that no man or woman, no matter their race, colour, who they fall in love with or who they pray to is less than any other of us. We declared as a house that injustice must be fought, that evil opposed and democracy triumphed. 

Great things have been done in this place, great things by great men, great women and even greater parties. However my friends that legacy is now at an end.

We have failed.

We have failed and our failure has broken this house and the institution we love. We have failed and with that too comes the failure of party politics.

None of us can run from that reality, none of us can hide, deny or challenge that reality. We have through partisan means on both sides of this house broken government of this once united nation. I could list the decisions, the politics, the loyalties which delivered this rupture. I could name names, point out lies and tell of moments when through advantage, greed or idiocy we decided to do what was best for our parties rather than our country, what was best for us rather than our constituents. I could list all those many many occasions when we as servants of the people failed the people, but what would be the point?

The truth is none of us are innocent, none of us escape blame. We as the leaders of this country could have stopped a collapse but we all chose this place and control over it as being more important than those outside. We chose ourselves and our parties ahead of our people.

But what else could we do? We could have stood up, we could have protested, we could have denied our own leaders but to what end? We all believe that we and the parties we represent are best placed to do what is right for this country. We all think that the shared policies, morals and ethics of ourselves and our parties are the right way for a country to be run. If we didn’t believe we knew best we wouldnt be here. But there’s the problem, circumstance has shown this not to be the case. Now we stand atop of a divided, fractured nation one which may never be able to be reformed and that has happened because of us. It is our fault. By following those certainties of righteousness and rightness both of ourselves and of our parties we have precipitated this collapse. We are now the problem.

 

So what’s to be done? We could just carry on, we could just continue down this same path which every day makes this country more divided, more ungovernable, more leaderless. We certainly could do that and looking around this room it’s easy to see so many of us already resigned to the path of destruction. Resigned to a rapid decline because we’re all too Cowed too timid to say no.

But we could also say no. We could as one house say to the country “I’m sorry but no. We can’t make these decisions, we’re not good enough. We can’t do anything but fail you or your future from here on in”. The people elected us to represent them it is true but we’re no longer capable of that, our parties are no longer capable of that. It is no longer in the national interest that we continue to represent the people when we can’t even govern ourselves.

We need to change ladies and gentlemen, we need to be better. We need to be greater than the sum of our parts. Each and everyone of us needs to decide who and what we our, who we represent. We need to turn away from the saftey and comradeship of party loyalty and act and vote on what we believe to be right, what we believe to be in the best interests of our nation, not what our leaders tell us is best because if we’ve failed then our leaders are double damned by their double failure. 

What I’m asking is extreme, I’m asking you my fellow members to destroy the parties you all represent. I’m asking you for the sake of the nation to walk away from rosette loyalty and remember your oaths. I’m asking you to do the right thing.

We are no longer able to govern, we cannot lead and we cannot decide. We must return the question of our place in the world back to the people and once that’s done we must dissolve this house and our parties and a new slate be mined because right now not one of us is fit to stand in this place and claim leadership of this disunited kingdom.

 

 

Dec 112018
 
 December 11, 2018  Posted by at 8:45 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Wilhelm Trübner A Gorgon‘s head 1891

 

The news still isn’t the news, and I’m getting afraid it never will be again, because not the news just simply sells so much better than plain old real events. Maria Butina suddenly popped back into the public eye, because she was either charged with something or confessed to it. And I’m thinking, excuse me, but that poor girl has been kept in isolation for how long now? And for what reason exactly?

I vividly remember thinking that when she first became ‘news’ for ‘infiltrating’ the NRA, for which there were plenty cute pictures taken, I remember thinking she would have been 22 or 23 years old when as a super- devious Russian redhead she allegedly penetrated the trillion dollar NRA, and the trillion dollar Republican Party, and the Trump campaign, which according to some people is now worth negative $1 trillion.

If any of said organizations allow for a 22-year old to take all of their most secret and damning secrets and send them to her alleged puppet master Vladimir Vladimirovich, I say they deserve everything they’re getting. But it IS the sort of thing that if you want to report it like it’s actual news, you sure need to be convincing, you need proof, that sort of thing, not the anti-Putin innuendo US media rely on as their main standard today. Butina with no proof is just a nice by now 30-year old girl who happens to be Russian.

As for the Trump campaign having a negative $1 trillion value, I derive that from all the people who’ve once again, after a handful Mueller tidbits, started saying the Donald will be impeached any moment now, and many around him will go to jail for decades. You know, I can read too, and that’s not what I see. Much of what I see comes down to the reasoning that Trump has not yet been impeached as President because .. he is the President.

Yes, that is pretty funny, but it’s not humor beyond my abilities, and I’m not a comedian by trade. We’re still, even after those Mueller bits, stuck with Papadopoulos who’s been framed and went to jail for 2 weeks for it (shame on Mueller for that, deep deep shame!), there’s Cohen who lost his tracks in between lying for Trump and lying about Trump, and Manafort, a thirteenth wheel on a wagon of which there are dozens in DC, fixers and handlers.

You tell me why Manafort faces years in jail while Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago. But if you’d actually want to explain, I suggest you prepare well, maybe talk to a few lawyers in the process. Washington attracts shady characters like dung beetles to horse shit and honey bees to Mountain Dew, and only a special counsel would ever think of picking them off one by one if he can’t find any of the actual crimes that he was appointed for to find. Cue: Rahm Emanuel.

 

Meantime my pal in arms Jim Kunstler thinks Michael Flynn is laying low as Mueller whoops his ass because he can, only to hit back at Mueller as soon as he’s freed from what are at best shaky allegations. Talking to a Russian is not a crime, not even, or even especially, when you’re the security adviser to the next president.

Michael Flynn’s real suspicious job was advising Turkey on security issues, but then that’s not what Mueller targeted him for. So yeah, let Flynn rise. And once again, don’t let’s forget that he said when the whole circus began, that he saw no way he could defend himself against anything Mueller might have thrown at him, that his entire family was on the verge of bankruptcy.

“But you talked to a Russian!” say the news media. Cue mushroom clouds in the remote background. But don’t you see, Trump is a criminal with decades of crimes under his belt, and all of his family are too! Look, I don’t know these people, and I’m fine not knowing them, not my cup of tea, but how much time did any of them spend behind bars so far?

And now they would have to go to jail just because Donald was elected president and the DOJ appointed a friendly ex-FBI head special counsel on the basis of a dossier paid for by his political opponents? To what extent does that spell justice to you? Yes, feel free to cue Rahm Emanuel again.

See, if certain people can be sent to jail because they rise too high in certain circles that don’t want them to disturb the power inherent in their sphere, while other operatives from the exact same mold though perhaps another political affiliation, are nominated to lofty and lucrative careers and positions, isn’t there something awry?

Are any of them perfectly innocent? Hell no, but then if they were, they wouldn’t be in the positions they’re in, the very positions that allow Robert Mueller to target them. From that point of view, it obvious it’s just a little power game played out in front of your eyes, you who have nothing to do with it but think you’re supposed to have an opinion on it.

Is Donald Trump a worse and bigger criminal than George H.W. Bush was? One half of America can answer that in no time flat. The other is thinking they wouldn’t be so sure. How many people has the Donald condemned to death so far? And he’s already about half way through the time Bush41 spent in the White House.

Perhaps it’s not about who’s a criminal, but about who’s the prosecutor. And with Mueller’s role in the sordid Whitey Bulger tale, and his even more sordid testimony in the Iraq WMD fantasies that led to millions of legalized murders celebrated as victory by both Washington and the US media, which kettle is blaming which pot here?

 

But hey, I’m ready to be corrected. And it’s by no means just the US that feels twisted these days, either. How about French president Emmanuel Macron, who hadn’t addressed his people live for 10-12 days as the Yellow Vests protests just got worse and more violent by the day, and then yesterday decided to make his long awaited response to them through a pre-recorded video? Honestly, how far removed from reality can one be?

The only answer Macron has to the thousands of people who want him out, and who have been willing to express that opinion in 4 consecutive weekends, is money. He thinks if he gives them €100 a month extra, and some tax breaks, they’ll let them continue on his little Napoleon trip. Well, if they do, we’ll know who they are. But are they? I don’t think Macron counts on that.

And then, as Macron increasingly retreats into his little palace(s), cue Marie Antoinette, only to communicate with the unwashed masses who want him gone through pre-scripted and recorded promises of crumbs off his table in exchange for no power at all, British PM Theresa May reacts to her latest and ostensibly worst -though it’s hard to keep track- defeat by … fleeing the country.

That’s how its ‘leaders’ rule Europe these days. Angela Merkel says she’s gone, though she wants to be Chancellor until 2021 (that way no-one can hold her responsible for anything), Theresa May hops on a plane to Europe to grovel some hopelessly more in her already defeated stance.

And Macron has his servants shove crumbs off his table, a gesture that still costs him more than everything Salvini and Di Maio wanted to do in Italy which got them whistled down by Brussels. C’mon, who still believes in the EU? Everyone’s running away from it.

If Macron must hide from his own French people, how can he reform the EU? If May must flee the UK and go to the EU to get a Brexit deal, what’s her authority back home where 50% voted against that same EU?

And if Merkel can only remain in charge by relinquishing her power, who exactly’s going to run Europe? It’s kind of like the same question as for the US. Who’s going to run it? Not Trump, if Mueller and the Democrats have any say although they lost the election. Not Hillary, says about everyone else.

 

We all tend to think that these things are normal and eternal. Just politics. But all the usual suspects appear to be under siege. In Europe, France, UK, Germany are shaking heavily. Italy’s already overboard. That’s the biggest 4 EU members. That’s the EU. No certainties, no future, though the EU itself will never admit it, and instead just push for more EU.

And what’s certain politically in the US anymore? Trump has eviscerated the entire GOP, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. The Democrats killed off Bernie Sanders to allow Hillary to continue her dead before arrival power grab. She came she saw she lost.

My point, I think, is that political strongholds are being defeated everywhere at the same time. And when that happens, there’s always a reason for it. I think that reason can be found in the fact that the global economy is rumbling and crumbling as we speak, with politics and economics acting as precursors for one and other.

Like, Macron can only save his political ass by violating the EU budget terms he just chided Italy for. Merkel can only save her legacy by creating a situation she’s no longer responsible for. And Theresa May would be well advised, now that she’s on the continent, to simply stay there and let Britain figure things out without her.

The US won’t and can’t be so lucky. We’re still up for much more, marathon more, of Trump vs Mueller, and there will be many more courts and judges who have to speak on all of it before there’s anything even remotely resembling a conclusion. Because the whole Mueller circus -reluctantly- threatens to open up a Pandora swamp that’s been DC’s lifeblood forever.

Yeah, you got your Flynn and Manafort, but you also got your Podesta brothers. Yeah, there’s the Trump Foundation, but there’s also the Clinton Foundation, and Uranium One. Who’s worse? Good one!

Both things should be investigated, it shouldn’t just be Trump and Mueller, Hillary and the DNC and Comey etc etc also must be under the microscope. Or America will forever lose its faith in democracy. Not that there’s much of it left, mind you, but hey, at the very least it’s the thought that counts.

Bottom line: it all appears to be about local, domestic, national politics, but don’t be deceived: the global economy is tanking, and all of the political mayhem on all these levels is just a derivative of that. The dinosaurs want to live another day.

None of which is going to make your situation any better, but who knows, you just might feel better about it for a bit. Until you don’t.

 

 

Mar 172018
 


Jacobello Alberegno The Beast of the Apocalypse 1360-90

 

The Guardian ran an article yesterday by one of its editors, David Shariatmadari, that both proves and disproves its own theme at the same time: “An Information Apocalypse Is Coming”. Now, I don’t fancy the term apocalypse in a setting like this, it feels too much like going for a cheap thrill, but since he used it, why not.

My first reaction to the headline, and the article, is: what do you mean it’s ‘coming’? Don’t you think we have such an apocalypse already, that we’re living it, we’re smack in the middle of such a thing? If you don’t think so, would that have anything to do with you working at a major newspaper? Or with your views of the world, political and other, that shape how you experience ‘information’?

Shariatmadari starts out convincingly and honestly enough with a description of a speech that JFK was supposed to give in Dallas right after he was murdered, a speech that has been ‘resurrected’ using technology that enables one to make it seem like he did deliver it.

 

An Information Apocalypse Is Coming. How Can We Protect Ourselves?

“In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality, and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.”

John F Kennedy’s last speech reads like a warning from history, as relevant today as it was when it was delivered in 1963 at the Dallas Trade Mart. His rich, Boston Brahmin accent reassures us even as he delivers the uncomfortable message. The contrast between his eloquence and the swagger of Donald Trump is almost painful to hear.

Yes, Kennedy’s words are lofty ones, and they do possess at least some predictive qualities. But history does play a part too. Would we have read the same in them that we do now, had Kennedy not been shot right before he could deliver them? Hard to tell.

What’s more, not long before JFK was elected president America had been in the tight and severe grip of J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign, in which lots of reality was replaced with rhetoric, something Kennedy undoubtedly had in mind while writing the speech. JFK was not just addressing future threats, he was talking about the past as well.

But the writer slips into a much bigger faux pas right after: injecting Trump into the picture. It’s fine if someone doesn’t like Trump, but naming him there and then, in an article about ‘information apocalypse’, also means confusing objectivity with regards to your topic with subjectivity concerning your political ideas. While the Kennedy speech item relates to -advancing(?)- technology, a valid part of the apocalypse, mentioning Trump has nothing to do with that apocalypse, at least not objectively. Back to David Shariatmadari:

The problem is, Kennedy never spoke these words. He was killed before he made it to the Trade Mart. You can only hear them now thanks to audio technology developed by a British company, CereProc. Fragments of his voice have been taken from other speeches and public appearances, spliced and put back together, with neural networks employed to mimic his natural intonation. The result is pretty convincing, although there’s a machine-like ring to some of the syllables, a synthetic stutter. Enough to recognise, if you already know, that this is a feat of technology, not oratory.

We like to think of innovation as morally neutral. We empower scientists and engineers to range freely in the hope they might discover things that save labour and lives. The ends to which these are put aren’t the responsibility of the researchers. The agile robots produced by Boston Dynamics might look like they could cheerfully pin you up against a wall and snap your neck, but do we really want to close off this avenue of research? After all, they might equally be capable of performing life-saving surgery. The methods used to resurrect JFK can also help people with illnesses such as motor neurone disease – like the late Stephen Hawking – that affect their ability to speak.

It’s certainly true that we are so ‘geared’ towards progress, we ‘conveniently’ forget and ignore that every next step carries its own shadow side, every yin comes with its yang. ‘Progress’ and ‘innovation’ – and related terms- ring so positive in our eyes and ears it borders on -wilful- blindness. That blindness is set to play a major role in our future, and in our acceptance as gospel of a lot of ‘information’.

“Dual use” of technology is not a new problem. Nuclear physics gave us both energy and bombs. What is new is the democratisation of advanced IT, the fact that anyone with a computer can now engage in the weaponisation of information; 2016 was the year we woke up to the power of fake news, with internet conspiracy theories and lies used to bolster the case for both Brexit and Donald Trump.

Ouch! See, he does it again. This is not an objective discourse on ‘information disinformation’, but a way to make people think -through a method he’s supposed to be exposing- that ‘fake news’ led to Brexit and Trump. That’s a political view, not a neutral one. Yes, there are many voices out there who connect ‘fake news’ directly to things they don’t like, but that’s just a trap.

And as I said, it may have to do with the fact that the writer works for a major newspaper, which of course he wants to, and wishes to, see as some kind of beacon against fake news, but if he lets his own personal views slip into an objective treatment of a topic this easily, it automatically becomes self-defeating.

There is no proof that Trump and Brexit’s success are down to fake news more than their opposite sides, ‘fake news’ is everywhere, and that very much includes the Guardian. The coverage of the UK government accusations against Russia in the poisoning case proves that more than ever.

You can be anti-Trump, anti-Brexit and anti-Putin all you want, but they don’t define fake news or an information apocalypse, any more than ‘commies’ did in the days of Hoover and McCarthy.

We may, however, look back on it as a kind of phoney war, when photoshopping and video manipulation were still easily detectable. That window is closing fast. A program developed at Stanford University allows users to convincingly put words into politicians’ mouths. Celebrities can be inserted into porn videos. Quite soon it will be all but impossible for ordinary people to tell what’s real and what’s not.

That is am almost bewildering line. Does the writer really think ‘ordinary people’ can today tell apart what’s real and what’s not? If his paper had honestly covered his country’s, and his government’s, involvement in the wars all over the Middle East and North Africa over the past decades, would his readers still be supportive of the politicians that today inhabit Westminster?

Or does the paper prefer supporting the incumbents over Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, because it owes its reputation and position and revenues to supporting the likes of Theresa May and Tony Blair? Yeah, I know, with a critical view, yada yada, but when has the Guardian labeled any UK politician a war criminal? Much easier to go after Farage, isn’t it? The question is: what part of this is fake, and what is not?

What will the effects of this be? When a public figure claims the racist or sexist audio of them is simply fake, will we believe them? How will political campaigns work when millions of voters have the power to engage in dirty tricks? What about health messages on the dangers of diesel or the safety of vaccines? Will vested interests or conspiracy theorists attempt to manipulate them?

This appears to make sense, but it does not really. We are way past that. ‘Ordinary people’ have already lost their capacity to tell truth from fiction. Newspapers and TV stations have long disseminated the views of their owners, it’s just that they now have -newfound- competition from a million other sources: the blessings of social media.

The core issue here is that 1984 is not some point in the future, as we for some reason prefer to think. We are living 1984. Perhaps the fact that we are now 34 years past it should give us a clue about that? People tend to think that perhaps Orwell was right, but his predictions were way early. Were they, though?

Also: Orwell may not have foreseen the blessings and trappings of social media, but he did foresee how governments and their media sympathizers would react to them: with more disinformation.

Unable to trust what they see or hear, will people retreat into lives of non-engagement, ceding the public sphere to the already powerful or the unscrupulous? The potential for an “information apocalypse” is beginning to be taken seriously.

This is a full-blown time warp. If it is true that people only now take the potential for an “information apocalypse” seriously, they are so far behind the curve ball that one must question the role of the media in that. Why didn’t people know about that potential when it was an actual issue? Why did nobody tell them?

The problem is we have no idea what a world in which all words and images are suspect will look like, so it’s hard to come up with solutions.

Yes, we do have an idea about that, because we see it around us 24/7. Maybe not with images as fully fabricated as the JFK speech, but the essence is manipulation itself, not the means by which it’s delivered.

Perhaps not very much will change – perhaps we will develop a sixth sense for bullshit and propaganda, in the same way that it has become easy to distinguish sales calls from genuine inquiries, and scam emails with fake bank logos from the real thing.

David, we ARE all bullshitters, we all lie all the time, for a myriad of reasons, to look better, to feel better, to seem better, to get rich, to get laid. It’s who we are. We lie to ourselves most of all. A sixth sense against bullshit and propaganda is the very last thing we will ever develop, because it would force us to face our own bullshit.

But there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to defend ourselves from the onslaught, and society could start to change in unpredictable ways as a result. Like the generation JFK was addressing in his speech, we are on the cusp of a new and scary age. Rhetoric and reality, the plausible and the possible, are becoming difficult to separate. We await a figure of Kennedy’s stature to help us find a way through. Until then, we must at the very least face up to the scale of the coming challenge.

We are not “on the cusp of a new and scary age”, we are in the smack middle of it. We haven’t been able to separate rhetoric and reality, the plausible and the possible, for ages. What’s different from 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, is that now we are faced with an information overload so severe that this in itself makes us less capable of separating chaff from wheat.

So yes, that perhaps is new. But bullshit and propaganda are not. And labeling Trump and Brexit the main threats misses your own topic by miles. You could make an equally valid point that they are the results of many years of bullshit and propaganda by old-style politics and old-style media.

Maybe they’re what happens when ‘ordinary people’ switch off from an overload of bullshit and propaganda forced upon them by people and institutions they grew up to trust. And then feel they were betrayed by. A sixth sense after all.

 

 

Dec 242017
 
 December 24, 2017  Posted by at 5:47 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Walter Hege Caryatid overlooking the city of Athens 1930

 

Christmas is the time when the western world makes a doomed attempt to remember a story whose meaning it has long forgotten, and still claim the story as its own every single time, every single year, claim it as its foundation, the foundation of the principles that guide its societies, its politics and its religion.

Western countries, whether they’re predominantly Catholic or Protestant, label themselves Christian, after Jesus Christ, a man their holy scriptures say is/was the Son of their God, and after his teachings, his sermons and the example his own life is supposed to have been for all his followers. Turn the other cheek, help those in need, don’t judge.

But as we celebrate Jesus’ birth at the time of winter solstice, and we acknowledge that he and his parents, Joseph and Maria, were refugees driven into exile, and the only place the birth could take place was a manger far away from their home, we lose out on the connection to our savior from the very first moment.

Because we sit in our warm and cosy homes, surrounded by meals worthy of kings, and presents worthy of princes and princesses, while frail forms and emaciated children are fainting at our doors. While we are quite aware that whatever Jesus meant to say 2000 years ago, and some of that may have been lost over time, one thing we do know is that he didn’t mean this.

There’s no way he meant for us to, two millennia down the road, to look at present day refugees driven into exile far away from home, just like he and his parents were, and not lift a finger to help them. So when politicians like UK PM Theresa May say in their Christmas messages to their nations that they should “take pride in their Christian heritage”, that’s not just empty rhetoric, it’s hollow.

But as long as religion still sells, and there are many countries where it does, perhaps nowhere more than the US, politicians will quote Jesus and do the opposite of what he actually said according to the bible, and all without blinking once. The thirst for power over others does strange things to people, and our societies are still fully unprepared for that, and we still hear them say one thing and do another, and we still believe what they say. We’re suckers for snake oil.

 

Actual clergymen and other people of real faith may be somewhat different from politicians and their flocks, but as long as the Vatican remains opulently rich and clad in gold while Catholics and others around the world live in die in misery, perhaps we should question the link between Jesus and the church, the very link the latter base their entire authority on.

Perhaps, as well, we should question any and all claims of being ‘God’s own country’ made by any and all nations who send their best and bravest to go and kill the best and bravest of other nations for the sake of religion, resources or empire. Nothing of that has anything to do with Jesus.

And perhaps we should look for Jesus not in the people who talk about him, but in those who act like him, and like he told his contemporaries to act. And yeah, that takes me to Greece, and the Automatic Earth for Athens fund.

 

Not in any kind of presumptuous way, mind you, certainly not when it comes to me, but I have met quite a few people who seem to understand Jesus much better than most politicians and church leaders do, they just don’t talk about it, they do it. That much must have become clear through the past 2,5 years and 13-14 articles (for links, see bottom of this article) that I’ve written about them.

The reason I haven’t written much on the topic over the past 9 months or so comes down pretty much to growing pains, for lack of a better term. In my view, my friend Konstantinos and his social kitchen project, O Allos Anthropos (the Other Human), had become too dependent on Automatic Earth readers for donations, which is not a healthy situation for anyone involved.

I didn’t want to continually ask our readers for more money, and O Allos Anthropos needed to find other sources for fund-raising. The problem is that is easier said than done, for multiple reasons. If you have no experience when it comes to fund-raising, it’s hard to know where to start, and it’s hard to organize yourselves to do it. And then you end up broke, as O Allos Anthropos is right now.

Still, I think they could have tried a bit harder, but then, it’s not about me. It’s about the people we help, the refugees and homeless. If you follow my essays at the Automatic Earth a little, you will know that the situation for both groups (and sometimes they’re the same people) is still deteriorating at a rapid pace. And as much as the Greek people are willing to help, most of them are getting poorer fast as well.

Between ever more and higher taxes on the one hand, and ever more cuts to wages and pensions on the other, a recovery of the Greek economy slips further away and out of view by the day, taking people’s ability to take care of the very poorest out with it. And in this case, too, politicians are not going to lend a helping hand unless they see political gain in it.

 

Greek Minister for Migration Yiannis Mouzalas recently said he could not exclude the possibility that refugees would die on the Greek islands this winter. He’s had two years to do just that, though. That’s enough time to run out of excuses to blame the situation on anyone else. But he’s right: people will probably die there this winter.

There are thousands living in summer tents with no heating, surrounded by wet mud and sheer misery, and with sanitation facilities that provide no privacy and are dirtier than many a manger in a stable could be. If anything, they make one think of Joseph and Mary all over again; just worse, probably. The EU reportedly has spent $1.4 billion on the situation so far, and this is the result.

Mouzalas was nominated for the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, and it was no big surprise he didn’t get the job. Though with the example of Saudi Arabia chosen to head a key UN human rights panel, anything is possible.

 

There is no way that it’s impossible to build adequate facilities for some 20,000 refugees and migrants with $1.4 billion. If that doesn’t work, and it hasn’t, one can only conclude that various parties involved, the EU, the Greek government, and the alphabet soup of NGOs operating in Greece, don’t see these facilities as their no. 1 priority. Thing is, who’s going to call them on it, and what good would that do?

The only priority the EU has when it comes to refugees is to keep them out; the politicians in power in member states read the polls and see their voters don’t want refugees in their countries. So they fund armies and detention camps in Libya etc., where people are sold for $400 or so in open slave markets. And then they talk about Christian values.

Greece has been completely swamped and torn apart by the issue, granted, but that doesn’t mean Mouzalas and Tsipras et al couldn’t have done -and do- a lot more to guarantee at least minimal human dignity to those stuck, if not incarcerated, on the islands. There are hundreds if not thousands of underage children, women, sick people, elderly, stuck in conditions not even the ass and the oxen were in 2,000 years ago.

There’s no way that’s the best we can do. It’s an utter disgrace that shames any and all Christian values, and the man they were named after.

O Allos Anthropos cannot solve these issues, all it can so is help where it can. First, feed the homeless Greeks and refugees in the cities, especially Athens. Then, make life more bearable for those hardest hit by both their circumstances and the way the political classes and the humanitarian-industrial complex deal with them.

And in the end that’s perhaps the only thing we can do: not try and launch huge movements and sweep away a status quo, but work on a small scale, a human scale, human-to-human. Work on a Jesus scale, rather than a Church scale. I know, there are many churches that do help where they can, but that too is most effective where the scale is smallest.

 

 

Konstantinos has taken O Allos Anthropos to Bodrum in Turkey this summer, a place where many thousands of Syrians and other refugees are now held up instead of sailing to the Greek islands. These people have nowhere to go, Greece is largely off limits – though the numbers crossing are increasing again- while in the countries they fled, the west is fighting for prominence instead of helping them rebuild.

We will not solve this problem, or at least it will take many years, and the needs of the worst-off, both Greeks and refugees, are immediate. The only way we have to save the world, or make it a better place, is one person at a time. Everyone who tries to do anything on a larger scale fails miserably.

So that’s what we’ll do. Konstantinos and I, and all the other people involved. One person at a time. We can only do that with your help tough. So once again, please be generous this Christmas. Do that spirit honor. Let’s make 2018 a good year for everyone who needs help to make it one.

 

 

For donations to Konstantinos and O Allos Anthropos, the Automatic Earth has a Paypal widget on our front page, top left hand corner. On our Sales and Donations page, there is an address to send money orders and checks if you don’t like Paypal. Our Bitcoin address is 1HYLLUR2JFs24X1zTS4XbNJidGo2XNHiTT. For other forms of payment, drop us a line at Contact • at • TheAutomaticEarth • com.

To tell donations for Kostantinos apart from those for the Automatic Earth (which badly needs them too!), any amounts that come in ending in either $0.99 or $0.37, will go to O Allos Anthropos. Every penny goes where it belongs, no overhead. Guaranteed. It’s a matter of honor.

 

Please give generously.

 

 

A list of the articles I wrote so far about Konstantinos and Athens.

June 16 2015

The Automatic Earth Moves To Athens

June 19 2015

Update: Automatic Earth for Athens Fund

June 25 2015

Off to Greece, and an Update on our Athens Fund

July 8 2015

Automatic Earth Fund for Athens Makes First Donation

July 11 2015

AE for Athens Fund 2nd Donation: The Man Who Cooks In The Street

July 22 2015

AE Fund for Athens: Update no. 3: Peristeri

Nov 24 2015

The Automatic Earth -Finally- Returns To Athens

Dec 25 2015

Help the Automatic Earth Help the Poorest Greeks and Refugees

Feb 1 2016

The Automatic Earth is Back in Athens, Again

Mar 2 2016

The Automatic Earth for Athens Fund Feeds Refugees (Too)

Aug 9 2016

Meanwhile in Greece..

Nov 28 2016

The Other Human Needs Your Help This Christmas

Dec 21 2016

The Automatic Earth in Greece: Big Dreams for 2017

Mar 23 2017

The Automatic Earth Still Helps Greeks and Refugees

 

 


Konstantinos and a happy refugee

 

 

May 122015
 
 May 12, 2015  Posted by at 10:06 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Arthur Rothstein Bank that failed. Kansas 1936

Greece paid off the IMF yesterday with its IMF reserves. Is that a big deal? Whatever you may want to read into this, it’s been obvious for years that Greece needs major debt restructuring if it wants to move forward and have a future as a country -let alone a member of the eurozone-. Instead, the EU/troika anno 2010 decided to bail out German and French and Wall Street banks (I know there’s an overlap)- instead of restructuring the debts they incurred with insane bets on Greece and its EU membership- and put the costs squarely on the shoulders of the Greek population.

This, as I said many times before, was not an economic decision; it was always entirely political. It’s also, by the way, therefore a decision the ECB should have fiercely protested, since it’s independent and a-political and it can’t afford to be dragged into such situations. But the ECB didn’t protest. And ever since the deed was done, Brussels presents it as if it were as unavoidable as Noah building the Ark. It’s not. It’s still just another decision to put banks before people.

And in this case the people have come out on the very short end of a very long stick. That’s what the Greek discussions have been about ever since Syriza was elected, with a substantial majority, to be the government in Athens. And no matter how many times how many people may claim Greece lived above its means for years, it’s obvious that the unemployed and the hungry children and the elderly without health care did not.

The troika says they bailed out the Greek people. The Greek people say only 8-9% of that bailout ever went to them, with the rest going to cover the losses of international systemic banks, and to the utterly corrupt previous Greek political and economic elites, which, coincidentally, the troika was only too happy to strike deals with, so much so that on the eve of the election Greeks were urged to vote the same elites into power once more, even if they were demonstrably to blame for the downfall of the Greek economy.

The troika wants the Syriza government to execute things that run counter to their election promises. No matter how many people point out the failures of austerity measures as they are currently being implemented in various countries, the troika insists on more austerity. Even as they know full well Syriza can’t give them that because of its mandate. Let alone its morals.

It’s a power game. It’s a political game. It always was. But still it has invariably been presented by both the – international- press and the troika as an economic problem. Which has us wondering why this statement by ECB member and Austrian central bank head Ewald Nowotny yesterday, hasn’t invited more attention and scrutiny:

ECB’s Nowotny: Greece’s problem isn’t economic

The Greek problem is more a political question than an economic one, a member of the European Central Bank said Monday. Discussions with political parties such as Greece’s left-wing Syriza and Spain’s Podemos may be refreshing by bringing in new ideas, “but at the end of the day, they must [end in] results,” ECB member Ewald Nowotny said, adding discussions are “not about playing games.”

The central banker declined to speculate on how to solve Greece’s financial problem saying the issue “is much more a political question than an economic question.” Mr. Nowotny also doesn’t see the ECB’s role as creating a federalized financial government inside the euro zone. “We cannot substitute the political sphere,” he said.

That seems, from where we’re located, to change the discussion quite a bit. Starting with the role of the ECB itself. Because, for one thing, and this doesn’t seem to be clear yet, if the Greek problem is all politics, as the central bank member himself says, there is no role for a central bank in the discussions. If Greece is a political question, the ECB should take its hands off the whole Greek issue, because as a central bank, it’s independent and that means it’s a-political.

The ECB should provide money for Greece when it asks for it, since there is no other central bank to provide the lender of last resort function for the country. Until perhaps Brussels calls a stop to this, but that in itself is problematic because it would be a political decision forced on an independent central bank once again. It would be better if the ‘union’, i.e. the other members, would make available what Greece needs, but they -seem to- think they’re just not that much of a union.

In their view, they’re a union only when times are good. And/or when all major banks have been bailed out; the people can then fight over the leftover scraps.

The IMF has stated they don’t want to be part of a third Greek bailout. Hardly anyone seems to notice anymore, but that makes the IMF a party to political decisions too. Lagarde et al claim they can’t loan to countries that don’t take the ‘right’ measures, but who decides which measures are the right ones? What’s more, how does the IMF, in that vein, explain the recent loans to Ukraine? Is Kiev doing better than Athens from an economic point of view? Or is this just us sinking into a deepening political quagmire?

Moreover, if we take Mr. Nowotny on his word, why are there still finance ministers and economists involved in the Greek issue negotiations? Doesn’t that only simply lead to confusion and delay? Every single news outlet in the world has taken over German FinMin Schäuble’s comment that Greece should have a referendum if they want, and that maybe that would clarify matters.

But that is not something for Schäuble to comment on, no more than it would be for Greek FinMin Varoufakis to suggest a referendum in Germany. While everyone would consider the latter preposterous, the same everyone takes the former serious. That’s power politics for you, and a press that’s lost track of its position in the world. A press that’s turned into a propaganda mechanism for whoever’s in charge at any given moment in time.

If the Greek issue is now, or perhaps has always been, an overwhelmingly political one, as Nowotny suggests, why do we still have Varoufakis and Dijsselbloem (who only has a degree in agricultural economics, whatever that may be) and former German secret service head Schäuble, discussing matters? After all, why would you leave political issues up to your finance ministers to discuss? That’s not their field.

If it’s all political, shouldn’t it be the political leaders, Merkel and Juncker and Tsipras, talking instead? Something tells us that might not be such a bad idea in any case. Certainly by now. If the ECB itself already says it’s not about money…

May 112015
 
 May 11, 2015  Posted by at 10:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  2 Responses »


Unknown Wharf, Federal artillery, and schooners, City Point, Virginia 1865

ECB’s Nowotny: Greece Much More Political Than Economic Question (Reuters)
Greece’s ‘War Cabinet’ Prepares To Battle EU Creditors As Anger Mounts (AEP)
IMF and ECB Loom Large Over Greece’s Debt Talks (NY Times)
How The ECB Became The Real Villain Of Greece’s Debt Drama (Telegraph)
No Solution In Sight For Greek Crisis – Tsipras’ Impossible Dilemma (Guardian)
EU’s Unraveling Plans For Greek Debt Risks Split Among Creditors (Bloomberg)
IMF Works With Greece’s Neighbors to Contain Default Risks (WSJ)
It’s Not Just Greece, China’s Retreat Threatens European Bonds (Bloomberg)
Farewell To The United Kingdom- Let It Bleed (Tariq Ali)
Cameron Must Accept SNP’s Anti-Austerity Mandate, Or The UK Is Finished (IBT)
Sturgeon Says SNP Is Real Opposition in Commons Amid Labour Woes (Bloomberg)
Anti-Austerity Group Plans Major Protest Outside Bank Of England (Guardian)
The Economist’s Racist Headline Must be Retracted Immediately (Bill Black)
Goldilocks Unemployment: A Disgusting Bowl Of Porridge (Mark St.Cyr)
Italy Must Become A Civilised Country With A Citizen’s Income (Grillo)
The Killing of Osama bin Laden (Seymour Hersh)
Inequality: How Rich Countries Can Make A Difference (Ken Rogoff)
EU Plans Refugee Quotas Forcing States To ‘Share’ Burden (Guardian)

It was always just politics.

ECB’s Nowotny: Greece More Political Than Economic Question (Reuters)

Any solution to Greece’s financial woes is much more of a political than an economic question, European Central Bank policymaker Ewald Nowotny said on Monday, as eurozone finance ministers meet to continue Greek debt talks. Top officials have voiced little optimism about a breakthrough at the meeting. Nowotny declined to suggest a way out of the impasse, reiterating that the ECB’s role was to ensure price and financial stability. Referring to Monday’s Eurogroup meeting he said: “It would be premature to give any details.”

Read more …

“We have agreed on a tougher strategy to stop making compromises. We were unified and we have a spring our step once again..”

Greece’s ‘War Cabinet’ Prepares To Battle EU Creditors As Anger Mounts (AEP)

Greece’s “war cabinet” has resolved to defy the European creditor powers after a nine-hour meeting on Sunday, ensuring a crescendo of brinkmanship as the increasingly bitter fight comes to a head this month. Premier Alexis Tsipras and the leading figures of his Syriza movement agreed to defend their “red lines” on pensions and collective bargaining and prepare for battle whatever the consequences, deeming the olive-branch policy of recent weeks to have reached a dead end. “We have agreed on a tougher strategy to stop making compromises. We were unified and we have a spring our step once again,” said one participant. The Syriza government knows that this an extremely high-risk strategy. The Greek treasury is already empty and emergency funds seized from local authorities and state entities will soon run out.

Greece’s mayors warned over the weekend that they would not release any more funds to the central government. The Greek finance ministry must pay the International Monetary Fund €750m (£544m) on Tuesday, the first of an escalating set of deadlines running into August. “We have enough money to pay the IMF this week but not enough to get through to the end of the month. We all know that,” said one minister, speaking to The Telegraph immediately after the emotional conclave. The war council came a day before Greece’s three-headed team – deputy premier Giannis Dragasakis, finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and deputy foreign minister Euclid Tsakalotos – are due to go to Brussels for a crucial meeting with Eurogroup ministers Time is running out for a deal opening the way for the disbursement of €7.2bn under an interim agreement, due to expire in June.

It is even harder to see how the two sides can narrow their enormous differences on a new bail-out programme, which must be intricately negotiated and then approved by the parliaments of the creditor states. German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said over the weekend that Greece risked spinning into default unless there was a breakthrough soon. “Such processes also have irrational elements. Experiences elsewhere in the world have shown that a country can suddenly slide into insolvency,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Greek officials retort that this is a conceptual misunderstanding by the German and North European authorities. Syriza officials say they may trigger the biggest sovereign default deliberately if pushed too far, concluding that it is a better outcome than national humiliation and the betrayal of their electoral vows to the Greek people.

“If it comes to the crunch, Greece must default and go its way,” said Costas Lapavitzas, a Syriza MP and member of the party’s standing committee. “There is no point raiding pension funds to buy time. We just exhaust ourselves for no purpose.” “We went up and down Greece in the elections urging the voters to throw out the old government. The question now is whether we mean what we say, and whether we have the courage of our convictions.”

Read more …

“At some point, you have to give up this orthodoxy of saying, ‘This is the right way of doing things.’ This is an unusual case.”

IMF and ECB Loom Large Over Greece’s Debt Talks (NY Times)

Greek leaders have fought fiercely in recent months with politicians from other European countries over relief on Greece’s vast debt load. Yet the power to decide the fate of Greece lies not just in the hands of these national governments, but also with unelected officials at two powerful institutions: the ECB and the IMF. Each is a creditor to Greece, and each is expecting the country to repay it billions of dollars of debt in the coming weeks. The influence of the ECB and the IMF will be felt behind the scenes on Monday, when finance ministers from Greece and other European nations meet in their latest effort to break an impasse that is paralyzing the Greek economy and frightening global markets. Greece is expected to repay €750 million to the monetary fund on Tuesday as scheduled.

For the rest of the year, however, its debt repayments to the fund and the central bank total nearly €12 billion. The politicians at the meeting are racing against the clock to forge a deal that would give Greece enough money to repay both this summer. In theory, both institutions could greatly ease the situation by agreeing to delay repayment, or even forgiving some of their Greek debt. But they see themselves as a special class of creditors — so-called lenders of last resort — that should not write off the money they lend. Still, some sovereign debt specialists say that there is a case for the monetary fund to take a hit on its Greek loans. The institution, they assert, backed the policies that deflated Greece’s economy, making it harder for Greece to service its debt.

“There is no question in my mind that the I.M.F. needs to be part of the debt forgiveness,” said Ashoka Mody, a visiting professor at Princeton and formerly a senior official at the fund. “At some point, you have to give up this orthodoxy of saying, ‘This is the right way of doing things.’ This is an unusual case.” Debt forgiveness from the central bank has even broader support from outside investors and economists because the bank avoided taking a loss on €27 billion worth of Greek bonds in its portfolio while private sector investors lost more than half of their money in the 2012 Greek debt restructuring. Still, there has been no sign that either institution is considering yielding on its payment schedule.

If there are no concrete signs of progress in the talks Monday, a majority of the central bank’s governing council would be in favor of placing additional restrictions on lending to Greek banks as early as this week, people briefed on the council’s discussions said. “Their interest is to get their money back,” said Zsolt Darvas, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels. Greek officials, meanwhile, have contemplated steps that would test the institutions’ hard-line stance. Discussions in the Greek government have included assessing the pros and cons of not paying the central bank and the monetary fund. In such a case, which was described as a last-ditch option and not a plan for action, Greece would keep paying debts owed to private sector bondholders and other European governments.

Read more …

“In their attempt to respect their duties, the ECB’s policymakers have made themselves political..”

How The ECB Became The Real Villain Of Greece’s Debt Drama (Telegraph)

When a rogue protester scaled the platform occupied by European Central Bank president Mario Draghi at his monthly press conference in April, the usually unruffled Italian could be forgiven for being paralysed by fear. Confronted with female activist shouting “end the ECB dictatorship”, Mr Draghi was showered with pamphlets bearing a list of inchoate threats, accusing the central bank of “autocratic hegemony” and Mr Draghi of being an evil “master of the universe”. As she was swiftly whisked away by ECB henchman, the Twittersphere was soon abuzz with rumours of the identity and possible motivation behind Mr Draghi’s “confetti-bomber.” As it turned out, 21-year old German Josephine Witt, was not a disgruntled Greek citizen demanding answers from the ECB chief.

But the feminist agitator was a stark reminder that technocratic central bankers are not immune from public anger over eurozone economic policy. In the last three months, the Frankfurt-based ECB has become the target of vociferous criticism for its handling of the Greek crisis. Weeks before the confetti attack, Mr Draghi was heckled by a Greek journalist at a press conference in Nicosia. Before that, he was the subject of a tirade from a Greek MEP during an address at the European Parliament. On both occasions, the Italian was shouted down as he was forced to defend his institution’s role in Greece’s debt drama. “In their attempt to respect their duties, the ECB’s policymakers have made themselves political,” Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis told an audience of academics and economists in Paris last month.

The refrain strikes at the heart of his government’s complaints against the notionally independent ECB. As one of Greece’s three main creditors – alongside the IMF and the European Commission – the central bank is unique in wielding the power that can ultimately force the country out of the single currency. Despite not officially being party to the political negotiations over extending Greece’s bail-out, the ECB has made a number of discretionary moves since the Syriza government was elected just over 100 days ago. When he first swept into power, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to Mr Draghi to provide some form of bridging finance to keep the country afloat as he sought to re-write the terms of Greece’s rescue programme. It soon became clear the Italian would not be playing ball. Not only has the ECB rebuffed requests for temporary financial relief, but its disciplinarian stance has led to accusations that it is acting ‘ultra vires’ – taking politically motivated action outside of its legal remit to ensure financial stability in the eurozone.

Read more …

“It’s not in anyone’s interests to have a crisis now..”

No Solution In Sight For Greek Crisis – Tsipras’ Impossible Dilemma (Guardian)

“Nothing will change this week,” said Aris Karnachoritis confidently as the waitress handed out bottles of beer and frosted glasses to him and his friends. Constantinos Neocleous, sitting beside him at a table on the beach at Vouliagmeni near Athens, nodded in agreement. “It’s not in anyone’s interests to have a crisis now,” he said. Beyond the beach lay shallow waters of radiant turquoise. Children paddled. Teenagers romped. And from nearby, where a group of young men were playing beach tennis, came the comforting “plock-plock” sound of bat on ball. The talks between Alexis Tsipras’s government and its creditors have dragged on for so long that it has become hard to believe there will ever be a decisive make-or-break juncture.

And never has that been harder to believe than now, with the arrival of summer and the entrancing distractions it brings to a country like Greece. There is a striking disconnection in Athens between the blithe lack of concern that the government evinces, and which it has successfully communicated to much of the public, and the objective seriousness of Greece’s plight. This week Greece and the eurozone face a week of fresh nail-biting uncertainty as the single currency area’s finance ministers prepare to report on progress towards an agreement with Tsipras’s government. On Tuesday Greece is due to repay €770m (£560m) to the IMF. A deal with its creditors on moves to liberalise the economy would give it access to the remaining €7.2bn from a €240bn bailout.

But it has refused to budge on two “red-line” demands – for pension cuts and looser rules on hiring and firing – and hopes of reaching an agreement in time for a meeting of the finance ministers on Monday have gradually seeped away. On Thursday Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, promised that the IMF would nevertheless get its money. Armageddon – a Greek default on its borrowings followed in all likelihood by exit from the eurozone – may once again have been postponed. But for how long?

Beyond the IMF deadline loom far bigger repayments the government has to make to the ECB in the summer. Yet it is already so desperately short of funds that it has ordered local authorities and public bodies to turn over their cash reserves to the central bank. “We have only the money to pay for this month,” conceded Karnachoritis, a young civil engineer, as he sipped his beer. “But that has been the situation for the past two months.” Like his companions, he thought it would take several more months to reach an agreement. “I don’t believe anything will happen before September,” he said.

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“The uneasy relationship with the Eurogroup, which wanted IMF rigor in bailout reviews but not its debt sustainability and financing criteria, is looking increasingly unsustainable..” “Just like the Greek debt.”

EU’s Unraveling Plans For Greek Debt Risks Split Among Creditors (Bloomberg)

Greece’s ballooning debt load is casting doubt over the IMF’s role in future bailouts. The IMF typically needs debt to be sustainable to provide more funds and, with the economy faltering, Greece is heading in the wrong direction. Creditors preparing for talks on Greece this week have just one positive scenario and three negative ones, the most extreme of which is that the government starts paying employees in IOUs, German newspaper Die Welt reported. The European Commission forecast last week that the country’s debt will be 174% of gross domestic product next year, 15 percentage points above the level projected in February. And even that assumes Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reaches a deal to get previously agreed aid flowing.

The projection means that if there’s an agreement, the Greek leader is still going to hit bureaucratic and political resistance to longer-term support. While the euro area has denied debt relief to Greece and insisted Tsipras observe the terms of the existing bailout, the IMF has signaled its concern over the deterioration in the country’s finances. “The uneasy relationship with the Eurogroup, which wanted IMF rigor in bailout reviews but not its debt sustainability and financing criteria, is looking increasingly unsustainable,” said Michael Michaelides a rates strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Plc. “Just like the Greek debt.” Asked about the implications of the Commission’s forecasts for Greece, IMF spokeswoman Angela Gaviria referred to a November 2012 statement in which Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Greece’s debt was expected to decrease to 124% of GDP by 2020.

As Greece’s chances of hitting the target recede, it makes it more difficult for the IMF to justify extending additional funds because the Washington-based lender is prohibited by its own rules from lending to countries with unsustainable debts. If the euro area concedes that the debt burden is not sustainable, that would add weight to Greece’s appeal for more debt relief, an offer that its creditors have dangled since 2012 as an incentive to make good on the terms of its bailout. Greece could win a cut in its interest payment and an extension of its repayment period if it sticks to the deal and delivers a primary budget surplus.

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How the IMF grabs more control.

IMF Works With Greece’s Neighbors to Contain Default Risks (WSJ)

The IMF is working with national authorities in southeastern Europe on contingency plans for a Greek default, a senior fund official said—a rare public admission that regulators are preparing for the potential failure to agree on continued aid for Athens. Greek banks are big players in some of its neighbors’ financial systems. In Bulgaria, subsidiaries of National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank, Piraeus Bank and Eurobank Ergasias own around 22% of banking assets, roughly the same as Greek banks own in Macedonia. Greek banks are also active in Romania, Albania and Serbia. “We are in a dialogue with all of these countries,” said Jörg Decressin, deputy director of the IMF’s Europe department. “We are talking with them about the contingency plans they have, what measures they can take.”

As part of the discussions, the IMF has asked national supervisors to ensure that subsidiaries of Greek banks have enough assets that they can exchange for emergency financing at their own central banks—in case financing from their parent institutions is suddenly cut off—and that deposit-insurance funds are at sufficient levels, he said. Negotiations between Greece and its international creditors—the other eurozone countries and the IMF—have been advancing slowly, despite warnings from Greek officials that the government is close to running out of money. “It would be foolish for anyone in the policy world not to be worried at this stage,” Mr. Decressin said.

European officials expect no breakthroughs at a meeting of the currency union’s finance ministers on Monday. That means Greek lenders will remain under pressure, dependent on relatively expensive liquidity from the Greek central bank and at risk of bank runs in case doubts emerge over their ability to pay out deposits. Overall, the IMF believes that subsidiaries of Greek banks in southeastern Europe should be able to withstand the failure of their parent companies. “Our assessment of the Greek banks in that region is that they are fairly liquid; we have not seen major deposit outflow,” Mr. Decressin said. Because they are subsidiaries, rather than branches, the lenders have to hold their own capital buffers and can refinance themselves at national central banks. That would make it easier to split them off from their parent banks if necessary.

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Elephant, meet room.

It’s Not Just Greece, China’s Retreat Threatens European Bonds (Bloomberg)

European policy makers will be focused on Greek aid talks in Brussels on Monday. Investors may need to look further afield to fully explain the sell-off in the continent’s sovereign debt market. China’s foreign currency reserves had their biggest quarterly drop on record in the first three months of the year and the yuan is trading at the closest to fair value since 2010, according to Goldman Sachs. That means less demand for assets in dollars and euros from the world’s biggest creditor. The Chinese central bank has amassed $3.73 trillion in currency reserves over the past decade in a bid to hold down the value of the yuan and underpin the competitiveness of its exporters.

As the government in Beijing changes gear, cultivating domestic demand to sustain economic growth, it may affect European bond markets just as much as the Greek efforts to win better terms from creditors. “It’s quite clear that China’s foreign exchange reserves can’t grow like before,” said Li Jie, head of the foreign-exchange reserve research center at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing. “There will be fewer and fewer funds available from China for European treasury bonds.” The People’s Bank of China said Sunday it will reduce the one-year lending rate by a quarter of a%age point to 5.1%, in a further sign of the shift in focus.

Germany’s 10-year borrowing costs almost quadrupled over the past three weeks as investors turned against negative yields and those on Italian and Spanish securities breached 2% for the first time this year on May 7. Bonds fell even as the European Central Bank pressed ahead with its €1.1 trillion program of government debt purchases. Euro-area finance ministers are meeting in Brussels on Monday to assess Greece’s plans to meet the terms of its bailout and obtain the aid it needs to stave off a default.

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View from the left.

Farewell To The United Kingdom- Let It Bleed (Tariq Ali)

In England the third party in terms of number of votes cast is UKIP. It gained votes from both Labour and Conservatives, but its 4 million votes (12.6%) obtained just a single seat in Parliament. The Greens with over a million also have a single MP. The absurdity of an electoral system that gives the Conservatives an overall majority (331 seats) with 36.9% of the votes cast, Labour (232 seats) with 30.4% reducing the other English parties to nothingness is clearly long past its sell by date. A serious campaign for a proportional system is needed. The first-past-the-post, winner-takes all system is a malignant cancer that needs to be extracted from the body politic.

What of English radicalism? It’s not a pure accident that a right-wing party like UKIP has become the third force. The effective collaboration between the major trades unions and the Labour leadership meant that building social movements to challenge privatizations and demanding public ownership for utilities, more public housing, local democracy, and the renationalization of the railways fell by the wayside. No other force was capable of organizing an extra-parliamentary base for a rejection and reversal of extreme centre policies. This is the challenge that now confronts all those who want a strategic break with the Thatcher-Blair consensus in England. Not an easy task. Possibilities, however, exist but they require forces on the ground to help create a new movement that speaks for the oppressed and exploited.

The Labour leadership contest is a no-hoper for the Left. The names being touted are worse than useless. What would help a great deal is if early in the new parliament, the handful of left MPs effectively broke from Labour and established a new, radical caucus to link up with forces outside. I doubt that they will and here the Bennite tradition is, to put it at its mildest, unhelpful. Its attachment to Labour at a time when the party broke with its own social-democratic past and opted for a full-blown capitalism was wrong-headed and led to an impasse.

We need an alliance of all radical forces to build an anti-capitalist movement in England. A movement that is both new but also prepared to search the past for help: the Grand Remonstrance of the 17th century, the Chartist rebellions of the 19th century, the more recent developments in South America, Greece and Spain also offer a way forward. As for the Labour Party, I think we should let it bleed. Here the Scottish route offers hope.

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More or less what I was saying yesterday.

Cameron Must Accept SNP’s Anti-Austerity Mandate, Or The UK Is Finished (IBT)

The electoral divergence between Scotland and England is, of course, even more extreme this time. The Tory government has just one seat in Scotland, compared to the 10 Thatcher was left with after the 1987 rout. The other seats are not dominated by a Labour party content to bide its time until it can build a UK-wide majority, but by a pro-independence party that will not accept the legitimacy of Tory rule unless the “vow” which secured the No vote in last year’s referendum is implemented in full. That perhaps wouldn’t pose such a problem for Cameron if the policies that he has received a clear English mandate to implement weren’t so utterly irreconcilable with the policies that the SNP have won an even clearer (in fact much, much clearer) Scottish mandate for.

In Scotland, the democratic will is for an end for austerity, in England it is for swingeing cuts. The ‘One Nation’ rule that Cameron rather oddly promises is almost a contradiction in terms when the nation in question has just spoken with two distinct voices. If London rule is to be maintained, the only way of respecting the Scottish people’s wishes is to exempt them from the austerity imposed on everyone else. That is surely inconceivable. Ironically, a compromise to cover the whole UK probably could have been reached if a Labour minority government had taken office with the support of the SNP.

Cameron chose to whip up irrational fear about that possibility in England, and now he must live with the consequences. In the light of Thursday’s result, the circle can only be squared by constitutional change. Any previous distinction between Nicola Sturgeon’s demands for an end to austerity and for more powers to be transferred to the Scottish Parliament has suddenly vanished, because under a Tory majority government the first is literally impossible without the second.

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But can she speak for all Britons?

Sturgeon Says SNP Is Real Opposition in Commons Amid Labour Woes (Bloomberg)

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon staked a claim for her nationalists to be seen as the effective opposition to David Cameron’s Tories in the U.K. Parliament as Labour seeks a new leader in the wake of its election defeat. “Given that Labour are entering a period of introspection, questioning their very purpose in life, the SNP is going to be the principal opposition to the Conservatives,” Sturgeon said on BBC Television’s “Andrew Marr Show” Sunday. “There are people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who will be as disappointed as people in Scotland that we’re looking at a majority Conservative government. We can be a voice for them.”

Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party took 50% of the vote and 56 of the 59 House of Commons seats in Scotland in Thursday’s election, in which the Tories unexpectedly won a parliamentary majority. Labour leader Ed Miliband resigned after the party’s defeat, which saw it lose 40 seats in Scotland. SNP support surged after the failure to achieve a majority for independence from the U.K. in September’s referendum. Cameron “cannot act now as if it’s business as usual in Scotland” and will have to offer the semi-autonomous Scottish government and the Parliament in Edinburgh more additional powers than have already been promised in the wake of the referendum, Sturgeon said.

The prime minister said in a victory speech on Friday that he intends to implement his devolution plans for Scotland as quickly as possible, “to create the strongest devolved government anywhere in the world with important powers over taxation.” “Scotland voted overwhelmingly for change and I think that has to be heeded,” she said, repeating calls for “priority devolution of powers over business taxes, employment, the minimum wage, welfare.” Another independence referendum is not “on the immediate horizon,” Sturgeon said. “What we have to do now is make sure we get the best deal for Scotland within the Westminster system.”

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The Guardian conveniently focuses on ‘disorder’.

Anti-Austerity Group Plans Major Protest Outside Bank Of England (Guardian)

The anti-austerity group behind a protest that escalated into violent clashes with riot police outside Downing Street on Saturday is planning another demonstration outside the Bank of England next month. The People’s Assembly has told campaigners to assemble “right on the doorstep of the very people who created the crisis in the first place” in central London on 20 June, sparking what could become a summer of anti-austerity protests across the UK. Hundreds of people attended the group’s impromptu demonstration outside Downing Street on Saturday after David Cameron was returned to No 10 with a Conservative majority. The protest quickly turned ugly, with green smoke bombs and tomato ketchup thrown at riot police officers in clashes that led to 15 arrests for violent disorder or assaulting police.[..]

In a Facebook post announcing its 20 June march, the People’s Assembly said it was arranging travel for supporters from across the country to the Bank of England for a demonstration that would be “bigger and bolder than ever we have done before”. More than 32,000 people on Facebook have said they will attend the rally, which would draw significant resources from both City of London police and the Metropolitan police if it is on the same scale as a 50,000-strong protest organised by the group last summer. The group says in its invitation to supporters: “With the Tories going it alone in government we know exactly what to expect. More nasty, destructive cuts to the things ordinary people care about – the NHS, the welfare state, education and public services.

“We’ll be assembling the demonstration in the heart of the City of London right on the doorstep of the very people who created the crisis in the first place, the banks and their friends in Westminster. We demand that the bankers and elite should pay for the crisis and not the vast majority who had nothing to do with it. “Now is the time to get organizing, to mobilize our communities, to prepare transport and spread the word. We need to do all that we can to make this demonstration bigger and bolder than ever we have done before.”

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English media exposed as bigots.

The Economist’s Racist Headline Must be Retracted Immediately (Bill Black)

It took exactly one day for the Tory election victory in the UK to produce the confidence among the Conservatives only remaining media organ with even a semblance of journalistic professionalism to reveal its true racism against the Scots. The Economist felt empowered to headline its article about the other electoral triumph, by the Scots, as “Ajockalypse now.” Wow, that is such a clever title. One can only imagine the back-slapping among the staff in the magazine’s halls at the ability to go full-racist given the election results. (The English have historically treated the Celts as separate “races.”) Here is a translation of the headline for a non-UK audience. “Jock” is defined in the Urban Dictionary (with a helpful example of usage after the definition):

A term used by English people to generally describe Scottish people in a derogatory fashion (was once a common male nickname within Scotland). It is now considered to verge on racism when used by a non-Scot. The Scottish equivalent for the Irish “Paddy” or “Bog-trotter”. “Those bloody Jocks are at it again with their whinging over the Barnett Formula and North Sea oil revenues.” Another major dictionary’s definition is similar. British Informal: a Scottish soldier or a soldier in a Scottish regiment. Usually Offensive. a term used to refer to or address a Scot”. The Oxford Dictionary agrees. “noun, informal , chiefly derogatory A Scotsman (often as a form of address).”

So the “cleverness” is that the once-respected magazine managed to use an ethnic slur and add an ending to it suggesting that the rise of the Scots as a political power in the House of Commons represents an “apocalypse” – a catastrophe of biblical proportions. Such fun! Let’s see what analogous fun we can have using slurs about other ethnic groups that the English have long despised. Jews, blacks, Catholics, Muslims, and Asians all have such endearing slurs that rhyme with so many words and allow “clever” word play in headlines. Oh, except if the Economist chose any of those groups it would result within the day in a retraction and apology. Celts, however, are fair game and the Scots are the Celtic target of choice today for the Tories. Indeed, Prime Minister Cameron’s paramount election strategy was demonizing the Scots as a “threat” to the English – a fact that the Economist chose to omit in favor of the myth that the Scots were on the “warpath” against the English.

The English papers were littered with other forms of “clever” ethnic slurs in the run-up to the election. “Sweaty sock” rhymes with “jock” and insults Scots as “sweaty” because they are more likely to be industrial laborers. The deliberately doubly offensive “Jockestan” – insulting the Scots and Muslims simultaneously – is a favorite of one of the UK’s prominent “journalists.” A Tory media troll whose claim to “fame” was not being chosen by the Donald as his “Apprentice” uses these slurs. She attacks the SNP leader as a “terrorist” and denounces her because she has red hair. Yes, red hair. Calling someone with red hair “ginger” is a common ad hominem insult in the UK. [..] I confess to a wicked wish that the Donald had picked her as his “Apprentice” – they richly deserve each other.

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“We now have the lowest participation rate since 1977 [..] I will tell you this: one of the words never bandied about during that period when it came to describe any jobs or employment report was “Goldilocks.”

Goldilocks Unemployment: A Disgusting Bowl Of Porridge (Mark St.Cyr)

It’s no wonder we find ourselves in this collective business environment of malaise and atrophy when people who are supposed to be informed, or anything else relating to business, use terms to describe the most recent jobs report as a “Goldilocks” print: i.e., “Not too bad – Not too good.” This term was the moniker de jure of Friday’s cadre of financial media economists, analysts, and next in rotation fund manager. Nothing more than cheerleaders to stagflation is what they’ve all proven themselves to be in my opinion than anything else. The actual print was that the economy created 223K new jobs vs expectations of 228K. Where the overall jobless rate now stands at 5.4 vs 5.5. The kicker? Not in the labor force: 93,194,000 up from 93,175,000. Let that last number sink in a moment.

We currently have over 93 Million able-bodied people without jobs – and growing. This is why it’s near incomprehensible, as well as outright disgusting to me that such a dismal showing in both the headline number as well as the onerous implications of such a downward revision to the month prior, coupled with the outright fallacy of suggesting the rate of unemployment has moved closer still to statistical “full employment” came with near giddiness and if not outright back slapping. i.e., “This is a Goldilocks print. Not too hot – not too cold. With a report like this – The Federal Reserve won’t dare raise rates and might actually have to contemplate instituting another round of QE if not outright QE4ever!” And yes; that was the reaction paraphrased across the financial media outlets. Again, personally – I found it all repulsive.

We now have the lowest participation rate since 1977 when Jimmy Carter was president. Although I was young during that period, I was around and working. (and when I wasn’t working, I was out looking daily) I will tell you this: one of the words never bandied about during that period when it came to describe any jobs or employment report was “Goldilocks.” As a matter of fact it was during that period of time the term “stagflation” came into prominence. The difference? It was used to describe an abysmal economy while hoping at some point the winds would change and we could regain our bearings to move out from under such stifling economic conditions. Today?

As these conditions have once again reared their ugly head the difference is today: these conditions are celebrated by the so-called “smart crowd” as reason to JBTFD! (just buy the dip) For this malaise sends the “right” signals to the Federal Reserve they should dare not raise interest rates off the zero bound anytime soon, and instead prolong this economic atrophy with the possible infusion of yet another round of QE. After all with economic malaise like this – NASDAQ™ 10K here we come!

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All EU countries except Italy, Greece and Hungary have one.

Italy Must Become A Civilised Country With A Citizen’s Income (Grillo)

“There are those that have said that it cannot be done, that the money’s not there, that it’s a gift to lazy people. And yet it’s enough to go round all the European capital cities to see that that’s not true. The Citizen’s Income exists in 25 of the 28 European countries (everywhere except in Italy, Greece and Hungary), even in countries with a GDP that’s just a tenth of what we have in Italy. In Spain the citizen’s income came into existence in 2008, right in the middle of the economic crisis, and it provides €532 a month to anyone with an income less than €5,000 a year. In the Netherlands people get €1,400 a month. In Ireland and Romania there’s no time limit and it keeps going until the person finds a job. In Estonia the law says that the national parliament must adjust the sum each year to allow for alterations in the cost of living.

In Finland the amount is doubled for families. In Lithuania as well as the Citizen’s Income people get their heating costs paid back by the State. In France anyone getting the Citizen’s Income has to sign an agreement that they will cooperate with the social services. In Denmark the citizen’s income is also given to those people under the age of 30 who are living with their parents. In all these countries, anyone who is underhand or who is working without declaring it, is severely punished. In Europe, the laws differ in their content. The requirements and the duration vary from country to country, but the lowest common denominator is there and it’s called the Citizen’s Income. The economic crisis has created a sea of desperation. In Italy, with the bonds brought in by Tremonti and Monti, the world of politics saved the banks, and they gave the financiers shields to protect them against the weapons that they themselves had created. The citizens were abandoned and left to their own devices.

In Europe there’s no such thing as “exited” people because they would have the Citizen’s Income. In Europe, fathers separated from their wives are not sleeping in their cars because they would have the Citizen’s Income. In Europe there are no “bamboccioni” {adult men living off their parents} because, thanks to the Citizen’s Income, they can shop for themselves without waiting for pocket money from mother. In Europe, unemployed people are not committing suicide, because after unemployment benefit ends, they get the Citizen’s Income. Are graduates sending off thousands of CVs to get their first job? While waiting for a response, those in Europe have the Citizen’s Income.

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Great, as Hersh always is.

The Killing of Osama bin Laden (Seymour Hersh)

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said. [..]

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

‘When your version comes out – if you do it – people in Pakistan will be tremendously grateful,’ Durrani told me. ‘For a long time people have stopped trusting what comes out about bin Laden from the official mouths. There will be some negative political comment and some anger, but people like to be told the truth, and what you’ve told me is essentially what I have heard from former colleagues who have been on a fact-finding mission since this episode.’ As a former ISI head, he said, he had been told shortly after the raid by ‘people in the “strategic community” who would know’ that there had been an informant who had alerted the US to bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, and that after his killing the US’s betrayed promises left Kayani and Pasha exposed.

The major US source for the account that follows is a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. He also was privy to many aspects of the Seals’ training for the raid, and to the various after-action reports. Two other US sources, who had access to corroborating information, have been longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command. I also received information from inside Pakistan about widespread dismay among the senior ISI and military leadership – echoed later by Durrani – over Obama’s decision to go public immediately with news of bin Laden’s death.

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Rogoff sounds confused here.

Inequality: How Rich Countries Can Make A Difference (Ken Rogoff)

Europe’s migration crisis exposes a fundamental flaw, if not towering hypocrisy, in the ongoing debate about economic inequality. Wouldn’t a true progressive support equal opportunity for all people on the planet, rather than just for those of us lucky enough to have been born and raised in rich countries? Many thought leaders in advanced economies advocate an entitlement mentality. But the entitlement stops at the border: though they regard greater redistribution within individual countries as an absolute imperative, people who live in emerging markets or developing countries are left out. If current concerns about inequality were cast entirely in political terms, this inward-looking focus would be understandable; after all, citizens of poor countries cannot vote in rich ones.

But the rhetoric of the inequality debate in rich countries betrays a moral certitude that conveniently ignores the billions of people elsewhere who are far worse off. One must not forget that even after a period of stagnation, the middle class in rich countries remains an upper class from a global perspective. Only about 15% of the world’s population lives in developed economies. Yet advanced countries still account for more than 40% of global consumption and resource depletion. Yes, higher taxes on the wealthy make sense as a way to alleviate inequality within a country. But that will not solve the problem of deep poverty in the developing world. Nor will it do to appeal to moral superiority to justify why someone born in the west enjoys so many advantages.

Yes, sound political and social institutions are the bedrock of sustained economic growth; indeed, they are the sine qua non of all cases of successful development. But Europe’s long history of exploitative colonialism makes it hard to guess how Asian and African institutions would have evolved in a parallel universe where Europeans came only to trade, not to conquer. Many broad policy issues are distorted when viewed through a lens that focuses only on domestic inequality and ignores global inequality. Thomas Piketty’s Marxian claim that capitalism is failing because domestic inequality is rising has it exactly backwards. When one weights all of the world’s citizens equally, things look very different. In particular, the same forces of globalization that have contributed to stagnant middle-class wages in rich countries have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty elsewhere.

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The media still talk about migrants, whereas Brussels says: “The EU needs a permanent system for sharing the responsibility for large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers among member states.”

EU Plans Refugee Quotas Forcing States To ‘Share’ Burden (Guardian)

The EU’s executive body is to unveil radical new proposals on immigration, imposing migrant quotas on the 28 countries of the union under a distribution “key” system set by Brussels. The plan, which is supported by Germany and will be fiercely resisted by the new Conservative government, will be launched by the European commission on Wednesday in response to migrant boat crisis in the Mediterranean. The bold move by Brussels comes as the EU draws up plans for military attacks in Libya to try to curb the flow of people across the Mediterranean by targeting the trafficking networks. The EU’s top diplomat is to unveil an attempt on Monday to secure a UN mandate for armed action in Libya’s territorial waters.

Britain is drafting the UN security council resolution that would authorise the mission, senior officials in Brussels said. It would come under Italian command, have the participation of about 10 EU countries – including Britain, France, Spain and Italy – and could also drag in Nato, although there are no plans for the initial involvement of the alliance. While there is broad support within the EU for the military plans, the proposals for sharing the immigration burden are highly controversial and divisive. On Sunday night the Home Office said the plans were unacceptable to the UK, putting Cameron on a collision course with German chancellor Angela Merkel and other EU leaders as he begins attempts to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Brussels ahead of a promised in/out referendum in 2017.

“The UK has a proud history of offering asylum to those who need it most, but we do not believe that a mandatory system of resettlement is the answer. We will oppose any EU commission proposals to introduce a non-voluntary quota,” a spokesman said. The policy document, obtained by the Guardian, demands new and binding rules establishing a quota system of sharing refugees among the member states. The migration agenda declares: “The EU needs a permanent system for sharing the responsibility for large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers among member states.” By the end of the year, Brussels is to table new legislation “for a mandatory and automatically triggered relocation system to distribute those in clear need of international protection within the EU when a mass influx emerges”.

The proposals will lay bare deep divisions between national governments over immigration, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, backing the scheme and Britain leading the resistance. Germany and Sweden between them take almost half the asylum seekers in the EU, and Berlin is predicting that the numbers this year could almost double to about 400,000 in Germany, two-thirds of the total number in the EU last year.

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