Aug 222021
 
 August 22, 2021  Posted by at 9:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  76 Responses »


Salvador Dali Elephants 1948

 

Dr Reveals Stunning Truth About Covid Vaccine (RAV)
Simply Put: **** YOU (Denninger)
Moderna Knows Their Vaccine Has Caused Over 300,000 Injuries, Hides Info (DE)
No Test, Just Get Vax Card (RAV)
We Have ‘Leaky Vaccines’ (RAV)
Why Are Regulatory Agencies Hiding COVID Vaccine Safety Signals? (CHD)
There’s An Alternative And Ethical Strategy To The Jab (RAV)
What’s The Best Way To Top Up Our Immunity? (BBC)
Why Testing COVID Immunity is as Important as Vaccination (WA)
Bill Gates Has Major Shares In Pfizer, BioNTech, Is Primary Funder Of MHRA (DE)
Police Say Melbourne Anti-lockdown Protest ‘Most Violent In Nearly 20 Years’ (G.)

 

 

 

 

Karl Denninger, from his comments section:

There are two mechanisms for ADE, both related but distinct. The first is where the antibodies simply are all binding either due to mutational mismatch or simply the nature of the virus in question. This was what derailed attempts to produce both RSV and coronavirus vaccines in the past, and has bedeviled attempts at Dengue as well. The reason the vax makers used only the “S” protein was their BELIEF that this would evade the problem. They had no proof of that and in fact scant animal and in-vitro evidence, but that’s what they went with and then looked for signals in the (short) trials. That part looked good at the time.

But there’s a second, nasty way that ADE happens. As antibody titers wane they may not do so evenly. Mutational mismatch makes this dangerous because the neutralizing portion may wane faster than the binding portion. At some point there’s enough binding antibody remaining that you get ****ed because the neutralizing titer is too low to help, but the binding enhances the infection. This is almost as bad as the first form but it’s very hard to detect without extensive trials over time against the wild virus, and challenge trials in humans are never approved because if you do them and get hit with this you will kill a huge percentage of the subjects, thus you’ll never get ethical approval to do them.

There is ANECDOTAL evidence that this is showing up RIGHT NOW in a small percentage of people who got jabbed. It’s not conclusive but the signal is there, and it’s alarming as Hell. Figuring out WHO is in that bucket and potentially at risk, and whether there is stratification we can predictively use, had better be done — FAST — because there are over 150 million Americans who are potentially at risk of this happening to them.

 

 

Yes, good question:

What happens when the FDA approves Pfizer on Monday? Is that the end for all the other vaccines?

A series of short clips of Robert Malone on Bannon’s show.

Dr Reveals Stunning Truth About Covid Vaccine (RAV)

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“If it turns out that said person did in fact build a proper immune response then these cases are either OAS or ADE-enhanced disease..”

Simply Put: **** YOU (Denninger)

I believed I might have had Covid-19 in January of 2020, even though I tested negative for antibodies several months later. As it turns out my later antibody testing (negative) was correct and not a defective test; whatever I had in January of 2020 it was not Covid-19. But now having had Covid-19 (almost-certainly Delta too) and knowing damn well it was Covid-19, and surviving it, it is a clearly-distinct infection that I could not possibly mistake for anything else. Having had the infection and now having found IgG antibodies by test I am now known robustly immune to any and all variants; the immunity built from natural infection is conserved across the various epitopes of the virus in all cases because the “N” portion of the virus, which has to remain more-or-less intact for it to be able to be a virus, forms the backbone and bulk of the immune response built following natural infection.

This is not true for any of the vaccines, it was a critical error in what we did and it is why we are now seeing escape. It is not breakthrough folks, it is escape due to mismatch between the coded antibodies and circulating virus and it will both continue and accelerate as the match inexorably continues to degrade between what circulates and the original “wild type” out of Wuhan, which is what’s coded in ALL the jabs and which is long extinct. What’s worse is that if OAS or ADE really come out to play on top of it then if you have not been naturally infected and have been jabbed you are in for a world of **** if you get challenged by the virus in the wild. Even very, very small enhancement percentages from ADE-style reactions can completely overwhelm any sort of treatment possibility at all.

We do not yet know if this is happening as we are deliberately not autopsying and investigating cases where someone was vaccinated, got infected anyway and then rapidly crashed going from being moderately ill to in an ICU or dead within 72 hours. There are multiple reports of this happening already. If this was someone who had a defective immune response then that’s very unfortunate but it does happen. We had damned well better prove that, however, and we’re not going the pathology work to do so. If it turns out that said person did in fact build a proper immune response then these cases are either OAS or ADE-enhanced disease and while this outcome is clearly not universal in those who got jabbed if it is happening even once in a while we had better figure it out right ****ing now or there is going to be a pile of dead bodies this fall and winter and it will be the direct responsibility of those who advocated for and in fact are trying to, in many cases, FORCE mass-jabbing of the population that caused it.

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They have a special service to do it for them.

Moderna Knows Their Vaccine Has Caused Over 300,000 Injuries, Hides Info (DE)

A leaked report from Moderna’s data collection company reveals that the Moderna Covid-19 vaccines have caused upwards of 300,000 vaccine injuries in a three-month time span – dwarfing the number of vaccine injuries Moderna actually reported to VAERS in that time frame. Moderna is new to the vaccine industry, and they are part of a global effort to introduce new mRNA spike protein replication technology to the field of vaccination. The company is also new to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), a government reporting database that collects incidences of vaccine injury and death. The CDC and the FDA manage VAERS and are well aware of the widespread injuries and deaths caused by these vaccines.


VAERS is required to make these injuries public each and every week, even as the medical establishment continues to yawn and turn the other way. The VAERS database has published hundreds of thousands of vaccine injury reports in 2021, but the CDC and the FDA haven’t done anything significant to address the wide-scale medical malpractice and wrongful death perpetuated by this experimental gene gtherapy. The CDC and the FDA refuse to take the vaccines off the market, and only warn young adults that the vaccines “rarely” cause heart problems, anaphylactic shock, and blood clots. Moderna is legally required to forward all vaccine injury reports directly to VAERS, but they apparently aren’t doing their part and are concealing massive amounts of vaccine injury data.

If this data was shared in a timely and transparent manner, it would further corroborate the numerous, wide-scale injuries already being reported to VAERS. According to the most recent data from VAERS, Moderna has only reported 110,500 adverse events reports from January through March for their SpikeVax COVID-19 vaccine. Most of these injuries occurred in the United States. VAERS also reports another 78,000 reports of vaccine injury from SpikeVax from April through June, with 71,400 of those injuries coming from the United States. Of these 188,500 vaccine injuries reported to VAERS, Moderna themselves only reported a fraction of them. Most of the reports came from patients, physicians, and other health care providers, who documented the adverse events in a medical report filed with VAERS.


Most shocking yet, a data collection service that works for Moderna sent out an internal memo highlighting up to 300,000 adverse events that occurred in a three-month span in 2021. Moderna’s data collection company is called IQVIA. This company helps drug-makers manage clinical trials. IQVIA employs 74,000 people and grossed $ 11 billion in sales last year. The company’s President for Research and Development Solutions sent out a Quarter Two update that was labeled “Confidential – for internal distribution only.” The report includes upwards of 300,000 incidences of vaccine injury reported directly from injured consumers. The memo states that IQVIA applied more than 12 automation’s to drive greater efficiencies and quality “to ensure regulatory compliance for the Moderna pharmacovigilance program.”

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Homer the pathologist.

No Test, Just Get Vax Card (RAV)

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And leaky vessels.

We Have ‘Leaky Vaccines’ (RAV)

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“..more and more people recognize that the premise that vaccine adverse events are “one in a million” is an utter fiction.”

Why Are Regulatory Agencies Hiding COVID Vaccine Safety Signals? (CHD)

A few months before the first COVID-19 vaccines received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in late 2020, a global vaccine safety expert cautioned the rushed circumstances made it essential to “get [safety monitoring] right” by “intensively” and “robustly” scrutinizing adverse events following the experimental rollout. As this expert stated, “Deploying any new vaccine based on data from expedited clinical trials into a population without a functioning safety monitoring system in place is reckless and irresponsible given the tools that are available.” Moreover, she added, any investments needed to beef up safety monitoring would be “inexpensive in comparison” to the massive funding allocated to COVID-19 vaccine development and scale-up.

In theory, the U.S. has had a national vaccine safety monitoring system in place since 1990 — the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — intended to function as an “early warning system.” VAERS and its U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) counterpart FAERS (FDA Adverse Event Reporting System) constitute the principal data sources that regulators rely on when pulling drugs or vaccines from the market for safety reasons. Not only has VAERS never lived up to its promise, but there can be little doubt its glaring failures are largely, and malignantly, by design.

For example, when a government-commissioned study highlighted VAERS inadequacies in 2010 — estimating more than 99% of vaccine adverse reactions were going unreported and that one of every 39 doses of vaccine administered was linked to adverse events corroborated in vaccine package inserts — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) simply shut the project down. Now, in less than a year, more than half a million reports of injuries have flooded into VAERS following experimental COVID jabs, including thousands of deaths. Yet a deafening regulatory silence has greeted this record-setting volume of adverse reactions, which accounts for nearly a third of all reports accumulated by VAERS over its entire three-decade lifespan.

Statistical tricks (and conflicts of interest) are not new to the vaccine or pharmaceutical industries, which have used them for decades to successfully mask the “chasm between vaccine rhetoric and reality.” Even when drug warning systems seem to “work,” the lag time between reports of harm and regulatory action is, on average, 20 years. In that light — with FDA speeding toward full approval of the Pfizer injection, Moderna gaining fast-track designation to test other experimental mRNA vaccines in children and adults and CDC benignly maintaining that the results of COVID vaccine safety monitoring are “reassuring” — it is not hard to be discouraged about the agencies’ continued ability to get away with misusing and abusing safety data from VAERS and other sources.

However, the safety narrative started imploding in a big way in late 2019, when the world’s top vaccine experts gathered at the World Health Organization and admitted, almost to a person, that vaccines are sometimes fatal and that safety monitoring is failing to capture the dangers. COVID may have provided these worried experts with a temporary and convenient reprieve, but more and more people recognize that the premise that vaccine adverse events are “one in a million” is an utter fiction. With injuries from COVID vaccines occurring on an unprecedented scale — and credible doctors and scientists issuing urgent warnings about short-term and longer-term damage — it may become increasingly difficult for the vaccine establishment to shove its problems under the statistical carpet.

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IVM.

There’s An Alternative And Ethical Strategy To The Jab (RAV)

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The BBC can’t say “Stop Mass Vaccination”. So they try a way around it. And get lost.

What’s The Best Way To Top Up Our Immunity? (BBC)

There are marked differences in your immune system after a natural infection with coronavirus and after vaccination. Which is better? Even asking the question bordered on heresy a year ago, when catching Covid for the first time could be deadly, especially for the elderly or people already in poor health. Now, we’re no longer starting with zero immunity as the overwhelming majority of people have either been vaccinated or have already caught the virus. It is now a serious question that has implications for whether children should ever be vaccinated. And whether we use the virus or booster shots to top up immunity in adults. Both have become contentious issues. “We could be digging ourselves into a hole, for a very long time, where we think we can only keep Covid away by boosting every year,” Prof Eleanor Riley, an immunologist from the University of Edinburgh, told me.

Prof Adam Finn, a government vaccine adviser, said over-vaccinating people, when other parts of the world had none, was “a bit insane, it’s not just inequitable, it’s stupid”. We need to understand a little bit about the key building blocks of both our immune system and the virus it is attacking. The power-couple of the immune system that clears the body of infection are antibodies and T-cells. Antibodies stick to the surface of the virus and mark it for destruction. T-cells can spot which of our own cells have been hijacked by the virus and destroy them. For all the trouble the virus has caused, it is spectacularly simple. It has the famous spike protein, which is the key it uses to unlock the doorway into our body’s cells. And 28 other proteins that it needs to hijack our cells and make thousands of copies of itself. (For comparison it takes about 20,000 proteins to run the human body).

[..] There is clear evidence that adults who have not had any vaccine dose will have stronger immune defences if they do get vaccinated, even if they have caught Covid before. But there are two big questions: 1/ do vaccinated adults need to be boosted, or is exposure to the virus enough? 2/ do children need vaccinating at all, or does a lifetime of encountering build a good immune defence? The idea of regularly topping up immunity throughout life is not radical in other infections, such as RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) or the four other coronaviruses that infect people and cause common cold symptoms. Each time you’re exposed, the immune system gets a little bit stronger, and this continues until old age, when the immune system starts to fail and the infections become a problem again.

“This isn’t proven, but it could be a lot cheaper and simpler to let that happen than spend the whole time immunising people,” said Prof Finn, who warns we could end up “locked into a cycle of boosting” without seeing if it was necessary. However, he said the argument in children had “already been won” as “40-50% have already been infected and most weren’t ill or particularly ill”. There are counter-arguments. Prof Riley points to long-Covid in children, and Prof Openshaw to nervousness around the long-term effects of a virus that can affect many of the body’s organs. But Prof Riley said there was potential in using vaccines to “take the edge off” Covid, followed by infection, to broaden the immune response.

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“..we’re not testing antibodies, because they’re worried that a substantial number of people are going to find out that the vaccine didn’t work for them.” – Dr. Holman Noorchashm”

Why Testing COVID Immunity is as Important as Vaccination (WA)

Antibody testing is the gold standard for determining immunity, says immunologist and physician, Dr. Hooman Norchashm. Yet, the CDC and FDA are actively deterring people from testing their immunity. Why? Dr. Noorchashm suggests that the answer to this could lie partly in the phenomena of vaccine spoilage. “It’s a medicine, just like any other medicine. It’s got a failure rate…, and we should accept that.” “They’re worried that a substantial number of people are not going to find out that the vaccine didn’t work for them.” Currently, the delta variant of COVID-19 is being used by the Government to explain the high occurrence of breakthrough infections. However, Dr. Noorchashm suggests, vaccine spoilage is a more likely explanation. While a strong believer in vaccination, Dr. Noorchashm argues that determining individual immunity rather than blanket vaccination is the ‘Achilles heel’ to overcoming COVID-19.

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Owning shares is one thing, but funding the goverment?!

Bill Gates Has Major Shares In Pfizer, BioNTech, Is Primary Funder Of MHRA (DE)

An investigation has revealed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are the primary funders of the UK’s Medicine & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and that the Foundation also owns major shares in both Pfizer and BioNTech. The Medicine & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) extended the emergency authorisation of the Pfizer / BioNTech mRNA jab in the UK to allow it to be given to children between the ages of 12 – 15 on the 4th June 2021. At the time, the Chief Executive of the MHRA, Dr June Raine said the MHRA had “carefully reviewed clinical trial data in children aged 12 to 15 years and have concluded that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective in this age group and that the benefits outweigh any risk”.

We are left wondering if Dr June Raine and the MHRA have even read the results of the extremely short and small study. If they have then they would have seen that 86% of children in the study suffered an adverse reaction ranging from mild to extremely serious. Just 1,127 children took part of the trial, however only 1,097 children completed the trial, with 30 of them not participating after being given the first dose of the Pfizer jab. The results do not state why the 30 children did not go on to complete the trial. The information is publicly available and contained within an FDA fact sheet which can be viewed here (see page 25, table 5 on-wards).

There was never any doubt that the MHRA would give emergency authorisation for the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine to be used in children when you consider that a certain Mr Bill Gates owns shares in both Pfizer and BioNTech and is the primary funder of the MHRA. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation bought shares in Pfizer back in 2002, and back in September 2020 Bill Gates ensured the value of his shares went up by announcing to the mainstream media in a CNBC interview that he viewed the Pfizer jab as the leader in the Covid-19 vaccine race.

“The only vaccine that, if everything went perfectly, might seek the emergency use license by the end of October, would be Pfizer.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also “coincidentally” bought $55 million worth of shares in BioNTech in September 2019, just before the alleged Covid-19 pandemic struck. The MHRA received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2017 to the tune of £980,000 for a “collaboration” with the foundation. However, a Freedom of Information request which the MHRA responded to in May 2021 revealed that the current level of grant funding received from the Gates Foundation amounts to $3 million and covers “a number of projects”.

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“They don’t care about their freedom, they’re just looking for trouble…”

Police Say Melbourne Anti-lockdown Protest ‘Most Violent In Nearly 20 Years’ (G.)

An anti-lockdown protest held in Melbourne on Saturday was one of the most violent the city has seen in 20 years, Victoria’s top police officer says. Chief commissioner Shane Patton said his officers had no choice but to use non-lethal weapons to defend themselves from an angry mob that came armed and appeared intent on attacking them. It is the first time during a lockdown protest, police have used such tactics that included rounds of pepper spray projectiles and canisters. At least nine officers ended up in hospital after being pelted with projectiles, punched and kicked by some members of a 4,000 strong crowd who turned out to protest the city’s Covid-19 lockdown. The mostly unmasked protesters let off flares, yelled slogans and blasted music as they moved through the CBD.

More than 700 extra Victorian police officers were deployed to contain the lockdown protest. Patton said he was nothing short of disgusted with the conduct of some in the crowd. “What we saw yesterday … was probably one of the most violent protests we’ve seen in nearly 20 years,” he told reporters on Sunday. More than 200 people were arrested including some on remand for previous crimes. At least 19 will be taken to court rather than issued with fines in excess of $5,000. Two people will face assault charges. He said many in the crowd came armed with projectiles that were hurled at police and it was clear they were there not to protest for personal freedom but to “confront and attack”.

[..] “I just hope it doesn’t result in the mass spread of Covid-19. The risk that those people have now posed to the rest of the community, by their conduct yesterday, was disgraceful and selfish.” Patton also revealed 48 people have been fined almost $5,500 each over an illegal engagement party in Caulfield North, including the future bride and groom. That number is expected to rise with eight other attendees yet to be interviewed. The rest of the people at that party were children. They’ve been warned and won’t receive fines..

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Golden oldie.

 

 

 

 

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Jul 232021
 


Edward Hopper Cape Cod morning 1950

 

Data From India Continues To Blow Up The ‘Delta’ Fear Narrative (Blaze)
Here It Comes (Denninger)
‘Pingdemic’ Triggers Widespread Panic Hoarding At UK Supermarkets (ZH)
List Of UK Venues That Could Mandate “Vaccine Passports” Already Expanding (SN)
Italy Will Start Requiring Covid Vaccine Passes For Many Activities (JTN)
Thousands Protest as Italy Mandates Health Pass (GP)
49 Fully Vaccinated People In New Jersey Have Died From Covid-19 (Blaze)
42 People Quarantined At San Antonio Assisted Living Facility (Ksat)
Toka, the Most Dangerous Israeli Spyware Firm You’ve Never Heard Of (Webb)
The Trillion-Dollar Lie (Taibbi)
Facebook Cracks Down On Discussing ‘Hoes’ In Gardening Group (NYP)

 

 

 

 

Vaccine safety McCullough

 

 

Santorini

 

 

Big Pharma: 25% of US economy

 

 

“About the whole “vaccines don’t stop transmission but they stop severe disease thing”:
Number of new severe cases in Israel (where 95% of the population over 60 and 80+% over 20 is fully vaccinated):
Week of 6/22-6/29: 3
Week of 7/15-7/21: 81
That’s a mere 2600% increase.”

Data From India Continues To Blow Up The ‘Delta’ Fear Narrative (Blaze)

The prevailing narrative from Fauci, Walensky, and company is that Delta is more serious than anything before, and even though vaccines are even less effective against it, its spread proves the need to vaccinate even more people. Unless we do that, we must return to the very effective lockdowns and masks. In reality, India’s experience proves the opposite true; namely: • Delta is largely an attenuated version, with a much lower fatality rate, that for most people is akin to a cold. • Masks failed to stop the spread there. • The country has come close to the herd immunity threshold with just 3% vaccinated. • Most people are now getting cold-like symptoms from Delta, but to the extent countries hit by Delta suffered some deaths and serious illness, they could have been avoided not with vaccines and masks, but with early and preventive treatment like ivermectin.

In other words, our government is learning all the wrong lessons from India, and now Israel and the U.K. Let’s unpack what we know occurred in India and now in some of the other countries experiencing a surge in cases of the Indian “Delta” variant. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) recently conducted a fourth nationwide serological test and found that 67.6% of those over 6 years old in June and July had antibodies, including 85% of health care workers. This is a sharp increase from the 24.1% level detected during the December-January study. What we can conclude definitively is that strict mask-wearing (especially among health care workers) failed to stop the spread one bit. Yet now they have achieved herd immunity and burned out the virus with just 3% vaccination (now up to 6%) with roughly one-sixth the death rate of the U.S. and the U.K. and less than one-half that of Israel.

[..] If you look at any chart from Scotland, which is now mainly over the curve, there is a complete decoupling of deaths from cases. The same thing is being observed in Israel, which is slightly behind the curve. The country has had just 20 deaths so far in July, but again, 15 of them were of vaccinated individuals. However, to the extent that there are cases, and the relatively rare serious cases, the vaccines have proven to be a bust in preventing them. The Western countries are relying on an exponentially higher vaccination rate than India with a much lower seroprevalence rate from infection. It’s simply not working. According to Israel’s Ministry of Health, the Pfizer vaccine efficacy against infection dropped 42% since the start of the inoculation drive in Israel, and efficacy against severe illness has dropped 60% among those vaccinated early on. Ditto for the United Kingdom.<

[..] the experience from India and the Delta variant teaches us the exact opposite of what the panic-mongers are pushing. Natural immunity, not vaccination, is king.

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“This was not an “accident” since the studies were published and known — it was deliberate blindness undertaken in the interest of speed and money before human safety and indeed human life.”

Here It Comes (Denninger)

The “spike unit” that the jabs are all constructed around, it has developed, something known to the NIH and the pharmaceutical companies before Covid-19 was claimed to exist in January of 2020. There is a transfer agreement from the NIH to a university dated prior to that time, and some evidence that the exact spike configuration found in Covid-19 was being discussed in scientific papers long before that. How can you have a scientific discussion, write papers on and transfer technology related to something that isn’t known to exist yet? Fauci was grilled on this the other day by Congress, asked directly if the spike in Covid-19 was identical to that in said paper, and refused to answer with a yes or no. He knows damn well what the answer is and if he lied that would be proved 4perjury and a criminal offense.

If he tells the truth then the etiology of Covid-19 is conclusively known to wildly pre-date the so-called “discovery” and now we must start asking all sorts of other questions; said questions degenerate very rapidly into criminal culpability on the part of many including a whole bunch of people right here in the US. Fauci looked very nervous in that hearing — exactly like a man who has been caught bull****ting since the start, there’s a half-million bodies piled up as a result and his neck is itching. When the jab trials started, in short, we knew that severe disease from Covid-19 was primarily a thrombotic event. We also knew that roughly 80% of the population had decent if not excellent resistance and would get nothing more than a mild or moderate cold or flu from it. That proof goes all the way back to Diamond Princess.

Hell, a couple reasonably well-known to me got hit by the ‘Ro in the early months, both elderly and quite morbid. He was dead in five days while she never even sneezed, a flat impossibility for two people who are married and sleeping with each other if everyone is susceptible as we were told. We investigated and learned why that has repeatedly happened; the science was published in June, peer-reviewed by September and published in Nature — long before the first jab went into the first arm. These are facts. We also knew, from decades of trying, that coronavirus vaccines had always failed in the past. We deliberately did not look at the thrombotic profile of the trial participants in the vaccines; specifically, we did not pull d-Dimer and troponin tests (both cheap) on the participants before the jab, and then sequentially on intervals (e.g. 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks) to detect whether we were in fact inducing damage similar to the disease.

The drugmakers did not look because quite-obviously they did not want to know; if that showed up in the trials in any sort of statistically relevant percentage of the enrollees it would have instantly shut down the trials and freaked out the thousands in said trials who put themselves at risk. I remind you that in September of 2020 the first scientific paper was published indicating that the “Spike” was quite possibly the direct cause of the serious damage and virtually all Covid-19 deaths. Several papers followed starting in December of 2020, prior to mass-distribution of the jabs, confirming that the spike was directly capable of causing pathology — that is, severe damage — without the rest of the virus being present at all. Failing to halt the roll-out to prove that the vaccines, which all cause production of said spike in your body, would not cause the same effects was criminally insane and grossly negligent given the science at the time. This was not an “accident” since the studies were published and known — it was deliberate blindness undertaken in the interest of speed and money before human safety and indeed human life.

Antibodies
https://twitter.com/i/status/1418191279578656771

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The NHS app goes Ping when you’ve been close to a “case”: you need to self-isolate for ten days. Last week, it did that half a million times. Entire industries come to a halt.

‘Pingdemic’ Triggers Widespread Panic Hoarding At UK Supermarkets (ZH)

Britain’s supermarkets are struggling to ensure adequate food supply after reports of panic hoarding due to what the British press calls “ping-demic” – a reference to being “pinged” by the NHS test-and-trace system. We noted on Monday that ping-demic was likely to “lead to food shortages,” and that is precisely what is happening today. The Independent reports UK’s largest supermarkets are experiencing shortages after the number of people getting “pinged” on the NHS Test and triggered mass confusion. The NHS app sent a half-million alerts last week, notifying users they have to quarantine for ten days because of possible close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. This has caused a supply chain shock and disruptions as hundreds of thousands of people panic buy food and fuel to survive the quarantine.

British newspapers and social media users published pictures of empty supermarket shelves. “We’re very concerned about the situation,” Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told Sky News when asked about panic hoarding at supermarkets. “We’re monitoring the situation.” Sainsbury’s, Britain’s second-largest supermarket group, warned about supply shortages: “We are working hard to ensure customers can find what they need. “While we might not always have the exact product a customer is looking for in every store, large quantities of products are being delivered to stores daily and our colleagues are focused on getting them onto the shelves as quickly as they can,” a Sainsbury’s spokesperson told Reuters.

The ping-demic comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson lifted the remaining COVID-linked restrictions on movement and business at midnight on Monday, finally allowing people to move about more or less freely, even as new COVID cases are climbing in the UK and much of the EU. A meat industry body warned that Britain’s food supply chains are on the cusp of “failing” due to labor shortages. British supermarket Iceland had to close several stores in recent weeks due to staff shortages. Rabobank’s Michal Every points out that ping-demic is hugely disruptive to businesses as crucial staff suddenly don’t turn up to work when there are already labor shortages.

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ha ha ha

List Of UK Venues That Could Mandate “Vaccine Passports” Already Expanding (SN)

The list of attractions that could be forced to mandate vaccine passports as a condition of entry is already growing, with minister Nadhim Zahawi listing other “crowded venues” that may have to ban the unvaccinated. On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a mockery of ‘freedom day’ – when all coronavirus restrictions were supposed to be lifted – by announcing that nightclubs would be made to check for vaccine status on the door. Despite widespread backlash to the idea and the potential for a defeat when it comes to a vote in Parliament, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi indicated today that the program could be extended further. During a speech to the Commons, Zahawi said sporting and business events, churches, music venues and festivals would also be subject to the rules, which are expected to come into force at the end of September. “We reserve the right to mandate its use in the future,” he said.


Zahawi also asked venues to make providing evidence of taking the jab or a negative test a condition of entry before September despite the fact that it’s not the law. “Although we don’t encourage its use in essential settings like supermarkets, other businesses and organisations in England can adopt the pass as a means of entry where it is suitable for their venue or premises when they can see its potential to keep their clients or their customers safe,” he said. As we previously highlighted, some nightclub owners are already saying they will refuse to follow the law because the system will be unworkable and wipe out profit margins. It remains to be seen whether the entire issue is just a PR stunt to bully younger people into taking the vaccine or whether it will actually be implemented. The government previously assured the public that vaccine passports would not be introduced for domestic purposes, even going so far as to label the practice “discriminatory.”

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“to keep economic activity open.”

Italy Will Start Requiring Covid Vaccine Passes For Many Activities (JTN)

Italian officials approved a decree Thursday that would require Italians to carry passes that reflect their vaccination status to access various public places. Premier Mario Draghi approved the system called “green pass.” The system will start being implemented on Aug. 6, according to the Associated Press. The passes will start being required if Italians want to go to gyms, museums, movie theaters, and the inside of businesses such as restaurants. Draghi said that the passes are needed so that people can enjoy activities “with the assurance they won’t be next to contagious people.” The premier argued that the passes, which people can get if they can prove they received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine within the last nine months, are needed “to keep economic activity open.” Health Minister Roberto Speranza noted that approximately 40 million Italians have already downloaded a “green pass.”

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Thousands is not enough. Big protest weekend coming up in many places.

Thousands Protest as Italy Mandates Health Pass (GP)

Italy mandated their version of a vaccine passport today, called the ‘green pass.’ This gross violation of freedom sparked a wave of massive protests across the country. Just like the tens of thousands of French citizens who have been demonstrating in the streets for the past week, the Italian people were immediately outraged. Large crowds stayed well into the night and chants for freedom and “no green pass” rang out loudly. Protesters plan to continue the demonstrations throughout the weekend. The new measure forces people to show proof of vaccination if they want to engage in any of a wide range of day to day activities like eating indoors at restaurants. It also makes getting the jab compulsory for healthcare workers.


The Italian government issued the authoritarian mandates despite recent reports out of the UK and Israel that show the vaccinated account for 47% and 84% of all new covid cases, respectively. Democrats and their drooling media sycophants love to claim that America’s vaccine hesitancy is because of ‘wild right wing conservative disinformation’ that is ‘literally killing people.’ In reality, there is a worldwide resistance to this experimental vaccine. The mass uprisings in France, UK, Taiwan, Italy, Cuba, and many other countries, have sent that message loud and clear.

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That’s just the official number.

49 Fully Vaccinated People In New Jersey Have Died From Covid-19 (Blaze)

Forty-nine fully vaccinated individuals in New Jersey have passed away from COVID-19 through July 12, Garden State health officials informed NJ Advance Media on Wednesday. The outlet reported that according to New Jersey Department of Health spokesperson Donna Leusner, over half of the people who passed away had at least one underlying medical issue. “Of the 27 deaths of people with underlying conditions, 17 had cardiovascular disease, seven had diabetes and nine had cancer or other immunocompromised conditions, she said,” according to the outlet. “Five had chronic lung conditions, three had chronic kidney disease, one had chronic liver disease and five others are listed as ‘other chronic diseases,'” the outlet reported, noting that some individuals who passed away suffered from more than one underlying issue.


“All of the deaths were people over age 50, with 30 of them over age 80,” the outlet reported. “Thirteen of the deaths were people between the ages of 65 and 79, and six were between the ages of 50 and 64, Leusner said,” according to NJ Advance Media. The CDC reports that 48.8% of the total U.S. population have been fully vaccinated, while 56.3% have received at least one dose. [..] The CDC says that a small proportion of people who have been fully vaccinated will still become ill. “Vaccine breakthrough cases are expected,” according to the CDC. “COVID-19 vaccines are effective and are a critical tool to bring the pandemic under control. However, no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness in vaccinated people. There will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19.”

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Here, the fully vaccinated drag some innocent unvaccinated down with them.

42 People Quarantined At San Antonio Assisted Living Facility (Ksat)

Forty-two people are now in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 at a San Antonio assisted living facility, a management company for the facility confirms. The positive cases were reported among 31 residents and 11 staff members last week at Heartis San Antonio Assisted Living and Memory Care on the far North Side. All 31 residents are fully vaccinated; four staff members are fully vaccinated, three have their first doses and four have not been vaccinated, officials said. In Bexar County, as of Wednesday, July 21, city COVID-19 records show the seven-day average of new cases is at 363.


Although the hospital stress locally is deemed “mild,” the city website also indicates that the risk level of contracting the virus is “worsening.” Heartis San Antonio said it is testing all staff and residents weekly, and they are also conducting health screenings on a daily basis. The first employees that tested positive for COVID-19 were “exhibiting symptoms at work and were immediately sent home,” according to officials. All of those who tested positive for COVID-19 are out of the assisting living facility and were relocated to a nearby partnered facility, officials said.

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No politician will put a halt to this. They’d be run out of town.

Toka, the Most Dangerous Israeli Spyware Firm You’ve Never Heard Of (Webb)

This past Sunday, an investigation into the global abuse of spyware developed by veterans of Israeli intelligence Unit 8200 gained widespread attention, as it was revealed that the software – sold to democratic and authoritarian governments alike – had been used to illegally spy on an estimated 50,000 individuals. Among those who had their communications and devices spied on by the software, known as Pegasus, were journalists, human rights activists, business executives, academics and prominent political leaders. Among those targeted political leaders, per reports, were the current leaders of France, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Iraq. [..] While the NSO Group has become infamous, other Israeli companies with even deeper ties to Israel’s intelligence apparatus have been selling software that not only provides the exact same services to governments and intelligence agencies but purports to go even farther.

Originally founded by former Israeli Prime Minister and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ehud Barak, one of these companies’ wares are being used by countries around the world, including in developing countries with the direct facilitation of global financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank. In addition, the software is only made available to governments that are “trusted” by Israel’s government, which “works closely” with the company. Despite the fact that this firm has been around since 2018 and was covered in detail by this author for MintPress News in January 2020, no mainstream outlet – including those that have extensively covered the NSO Group – has bothered to examine the implications of this story.

Toka was launched in 2018 with the explicit purpose of selling a “tailored ecosystem of cyber capabilities and software products for governmental, law enforcement, and security agencies.” According to a profile of the company published in Forbes shortly after it launched, Toka advertised itself as “a one-stop hacking shop for governments that require extra capability to fight terrorists and other threats to national security in the digital domain.” Toka launched with plans to “provide spy tools for whatever device its clients require,” including not only smartphones but a “special focus on the so-called Internet of Things (IoT).” Per the company, this includes devices like Amazon Echo, Google Nest-connected home products, as well as connected fridges, thermostats and alarms.

Exploits in these products discovered by Toka, the company said at the time, would not be disclosed to vendors, meaning those flaws would continue to remain vulnerable to any hacker, whether a client of Toka or not. Today, Toka’s software suite claims to offer its customers in law enforcement, government and intelligence the ability to obtain “targeted intelligence” and to conduct “forensic investigations” as well as “covert operations.” In addition, Toka offers governments its “Cyber Designers” service, which provides “agencies with the full-spectrum strategies, customized projects and technologies needed to keep critical infrastructure, the digital landscape and government institutions secure and durable.”


Julian Assange

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Good story telling.

The Trillion-Dollar Lie (Taibbi)

Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college. “I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.” She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says. This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off. “My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I’m a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I’m just taking out this money to put my ass through school.” Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices. Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in underwater basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn’t even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I’ll do your housekeeping. I don’t give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.” The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures. She personally delivered those to the offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000 — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.” Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight. When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

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The Onion and Babylon Bee need to take a serious look at their business model. What was crazy yesterday no longer is today.

Facebook Cracks Down On Discussing ‘Hoes’ In Gardening Group (NYP)

Facebook’s censors are digging deep — flagging the word “hoe” in a western New York gardening group because they apparently confused the tool for a disparaging term for women. A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than 7,500 members discussed the long-handled bladed implement, which is spelled with an “e,” unlike the offensive term. When one member commented “Push pull hoe!” on a post about preferred weeding tools, Facebook sent a notification that read, “We reviewed this comment and found it goes against our standards for harassment and bullying,” a moderator said.

“And so I contacted Facebook, which was useless. How do you do that?,” Elizabeth Licata said. “You know, I said this is a gardening group, a hoe is gardening tool.” Licata said she never a response from the company, but a Facebook representative told The Associated Press that some of the enforcements had been corrected, and an actual person will check supposedly offensive posts in the future before the group is sanctioned or deleted. “We have plans to build out better customer support for our products and to provide the public with even more information about our policies and how we enforce them,” Facebook said in an emailed statement.

The extra set of eyes did not prevent a subsequent post in the group from being automatically disabled because of “possible violence, incitement, or hate in multiple comments,” Licata said. “Kill them all. Drown them in soapy water,” and “Japanese beetles are jerks,” were some comments Facebook deemed offensive, according to the moderator. The gardening group snafu was not Facebook’s first hoe faux pas. This winter, the social network apologized to residents of Plymouth Hoe, an area of the coastal city of Plymouth in England, for repeatedly flagging posts that referenced the seaside attraction. “These posts were removed in error and we apologize to those who were affected. We’re looking into what happened and will take steps to rectify the error,” Facebook said at the time.

Read more …

 

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Conditioned

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seneff spleen

 

 

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Mar 212021
 


“Flora” (Roman Goddess of Spring), Villa di Arianna 1st Century A.D.

 

 

 

[..] the rifleman’s stalking the sick and the lame
Preacherman seeks the same, who’ll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks, water cannons, tear gas, padlocks
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain
False-hearted judges, dying in the webs that they spin
Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in

Bob Dylan, Jokerman

 

I’ve seen huge amounts of riot police in many cities this weekend, in Holland, Germany, UK, Sweden, Canada, Florida and money more places (Miami Beach declared a state of emergency), using water cannons, horses, dogs, in some cases tear gas, to disperse relatively small and peaceful crowds. These things are normally used in case of serious rioting. But now the “justification” is that people are standing and walking too close together, and not obeying the “measures” and restrictions.

But that is exactly what they’re protesting. If you protest the measures, and they say you can only do that if you comply with those same measures, which includes asking permission beforehand, that is not a protest, that is theater. And the right to protest is not something that can just arbitrarily be taken away in a democratic country. Until now. Until Covid came along.

Here’s a clip of 14 countries with protests. They don’t include the water cannons etc. footage, which is fine by me.

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1373384307474100225

 

Almost all countries have rising numbers of Covid cases again, so their only response will be re-activated: lockdown. Well, yes, the response now also includes vaccines as our only hope out of this, but those will take a long time to arrive everywhere, and both their efficacy and adverse effects remain major and untested questions.

So we’ll need another 130 billion facemasks per month in the world, and we won’t do vitamin D or ivermectin or HCQ, not even zinc. How much longer will that work, though? What will the protests look like next weekend? Hard to imagine they’ll get smaller. Easy to imagine they’ll get bigger and more widespread. And then what? More dogs and horses and water cannons, more tear gas? Or are we going to use live ammo next time around?

It’s been a year since the pandemic started, and in many places 5 months since the lockdowns did. Meanwhile, we’ve sold our souls to Big Pharma. Or they’ve been sold for us, if you will. Technology is now the only thing that can save us, and it must be brand new; the newer and more expensive, the better.

 

In Israel there was a 20,000 strong mass protest, but not really against lockdown, against PM Netanyahu. Given that Israel has run a faster vaccine rollout than anyone else, some political leaders must now think the people are never satisfied.

 

I liked this from Eva Bartlett in Canada, at least some people still have a semblance of a functioning brain. What editor comes up with that kind of headline, though?

Vive La Lockdown Révolution! Growing Rebellion Against Draconian Covid Restrictions By Easygoing Canadians Shows The World The Way

Some Canadians, armed with knowledge of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, aren’t complying with the draconian and absurd measures, and instead are walking out of airports instead of being incarcerated in quarantine hotels. In March, nurse Jessica Faraone made headlines for doing just that and walking out of Toronto’s Pearson airport instead of subjecting herself to a costly $2,000-plus quarantine hotel stay.

In a later interview, Faraone said a border guard had attempted to intimidate and shut her up, but she knew her rights. She added: “I have worked in the hospitals and more than ever I’m seeing suicide, depression, strokes, heart attacks, addiction issues. Masking people and children, oppressing health-care workers’ opinions that go against the grain, socially isolating people, and instilling fear into Canadians… is not how we solve this problem.”

And it’s not just well-informed individuals who are contesting the drastic measures. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has been active in challenging the government both on quarantine hotels and on tickets issued to citizens for alleged violations of public health orders. The centre is also disseminating resources for Canadians to know their rights regarding Covid measures.

Liberty Coalition Canada was formed after Covid restrictions were brought in. The coalition is a “national network of clergymen, elected officials, small business owners, legal experts and other concerned citizens” that now has a number of sub-groups addressing specific aspects of the measures Canada has taken. These include the social media campaign Save Our Youth, Reopen Ontario Churches, and the End the Lockdowns Caucus.

The latter comprises a number of current and former elected representatives who came together in February “resolved to ensure there is open, honest, and public debate regarding the Covid government response.” This body espouses what many ordinary Canadians have been feeling: “After careful examination and scrutiny of mitigation measures undertaken by all levels of government, it is now evident that the lockdowns cause more harm than the virus and must be brought to an end.”

Likewise, the newly-formed Professionals Against Lockdowns – already listing over 100 professionals, including doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, legal experts, police and teachers – aims to provide “evidence-based, scientific research that will educate and empower the public.”

Noting the widespread censorship of any dissenting voices on issues Covid, its statement reads: “It is our professional duty to protect the public, our communities, and our children. We will advocate for what is right and speak up against harm. Together, we will continue to be the voice for the voiceless to ensure that the truth about these lockdowns is heard. “The government’s response has lacked a risk variant analysis on all our populations. We are seeing the harm being done first-hand. We know lockdowns, isolation of healthy individuals, and the violation of our rights are causing more harm than good.”

 

You’re going to have to take this to the courts, I’ve been saying it for ages now. Or your government, wherever you are, will usurp all the powers they desire. Still, unless there are enemy bombers targeting you, there’s no such thing as a year long emergency.

 

Another tidbit I noticed today: In Holland, from 6 million people who were actively exercising in Jan 2020, only 2 million remained in Jan 2021. So everyone’s immune systems are seriously compromised by the lockdowns, and now also by the closure of gyms and other sports facilities. We’re on a roll. All we need is a jab, we don’t need to be healthy, we don’t need exercise, or vitamins, or repurposed drugs. If you just remember to inoculate your 6-month old as well, we will all be fine by 2024.

I’ve seen claims that Covid affects the brain too, but I never imagined that it would do so in this way.

 

This fine gym bro got it right a whole year ago:

 

 

 

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

 

Mar 212021
 


Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) German artist, philosopher, composer, mystic Cosmic Tree

 

Europe’s Covid-19 Setbacks Risk Another Summer Travel Washout (R.)
Massive Anti-Lockdown Protests Rage Worldwide (ZH)
How Chicago Avoided A Second Wave Of Spanish Flu (Orla Hegarty)
Printing Money in Times of Corona (AC)
FBI Investigating If Cuomo, Aides Lied To DOJ About Nursing Deaths (SAC)
UK Prepares Antitrust Probe Into Facebook (ZH)
Liberals Blame Rightwing ‘Misinformation’ For Our Problems. Get Real (Frank)
How The Censors Won (Michael Tracey)
Federal Judge Alleges Democrats Control Almost All Major News Outlets (ZH)
NYT Used ‘Deceptive Disinformation’ To Smear Project Veritas – Judge (RT)
The IRS Is Letting Rich People Fleece Everyone Else (DP)
Russia Set For Showdown With International Law Over Yukos & Navalny (RT)

 

 

 

 

Germany Deaths
https://twitter.com/i/status/1373207960420253697

 

 

UK has already said: forget about summer travel abroad.

Europe’s Covid-19 Setbacks Risk Another Summer Travel Washout (R.)

Europe’s airlines and travel sector are bracing for a second lost summer, with rebound hopes increasingly challenged by a hobbled Covid-19 vaccine rollout, resurgent infections and new lockdowns. Airline and travel stocks fell on Friday after Paris and much of northern France shut down for a month, days after Italy introduced stiff business and movement curbs for most of the country including Rome and Milan. The setbacks hit recovery prospects for the crucial peak season, whose profits typically tide airlines through winter, when most carriers lose money even in good times. “If there’s no confidence there, demand just doesn’t come back,” said Dublin-based Alton Aviation consultant Leah Ryan, who expects the bad news on vaccines and lockdowns to hurt already weak bookings.

The summer outlook also has been dented by rising infections in Greece and elsewhere, and a suspension of AstraZeneca’s vaccine by a number of European countries over health fears. Several countries announced resumption of use of the AstraZeneca shot this week after the European Medicines Agency said the benefits clearly outweigh its risks. Airlines that have already racked up billions in debt face further strain that some may not survive without fresh funds. British Airways owner IAG raised 1.2 billion euros ($1.43 billion) in a bond issue on Thursday, saying the cushion would protect it from a drawn-out slump. A patchy stop-start summer may pose fewer difficulties for low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and Wizz Air, which can redeploy planes quickly between routes.

But Ryanair’s home market expects to keep strict travel curbs in place at least throughout June, Irish health official Ronan Glynn said on Thursday, citing the “deteriorating situation internationally” and emerging more contagious virus variants. Ryanair shares traded 4.2% lower on Friday, with IAG down 4% and easyJet and Wizz both down 3.5%. Rebound hopes had driven travel stocks higher over the past month, led by IAG’s 25% gain. While ultra-low cost carriers can take the pain of another summer washout, analysts say, rivals such as easyJet and Virgin Atlantic could face renewed balance-sheet pressures. Air France-KLM is also seeking to raise capital and reduce debt from last year’s 10.4 billion-euro bailout. The Franco-Dutch airline group aims to fly more than 50% of pre-crisis capacity this year, compared with 40%-50% for Lufthansa – targets that could still prove ambitious.

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Much of this stuff is brutal. Police state material.

Massive Anti-Lockdown Protests Rage Worldwide (ZH)

Thousands, and possibly tens-of-thousands of protesters across Europe marched on Saturday against continued government lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions based on questionable science – which have resulted in mass unemployment, destroyed small businesses, stoked widespread depression and mental illness, and cost taxpayers trillions to keep the whole ship from sinking. Protesters in London, Germany, France, Sweden, The Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Japan, Vienna and elsewhere came out for the Worldwide Rally for Freedom. In central London, thousands of anti-lockdown activists were seen walking through Hyde Park, chanting “stand up, take our freedom back!”


In Germany, police used pepper spray on protesters in the city of Kassel, where 15,000 – 20,000 demonstrators showed up, according to the Daily Mail. Some 1,800 officers were placed on standby in Berlin. “Several thousand people gathered at the main protest site on a square in Kessel’s city centre, packed closely together without wearing face masks, an AFP reporter saw. Scuffles erupted when a group of demonstrators tried to break through a police cordon to join up with other protesters, resulting in shoving and prompting officers to use pepper spray.” -Daily Mail.

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Fascinating. Orla Hegarty in Ireland focuses on cleaning the air inside buildings to prevent transmission. Chicago, after a massive campaign, in 1918 re-opened in 6 weeks, no vaccine. Lots of pics from that time here.

Where is the focus on clean air these days?

How Chicago Avoided A Second Wave Of Spanish Flu (Orla Hegarty)

[Thread] Chicago didn’t have a second wave of Spanish Flu.. so what did they do, & how did the city re-open when there was no vaccine? #Ventilation #COVID19 1/ ..here are the public health measures that Chicago took on the autumn of 1918 ‘open window ventilation in all school rooms.. pupils warmly dressed.. daily check on pupils & absentees in schools.. use of masks.. landlords required to heat homes.. ’ 2/ documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri… ..’isolation & quarantine.. home nursing provided (see my thread on home nursing).. churches required to improve ventilation.. 150 city health officers on full time service’ 3/ ..’closure of dance halls, theatres, restaurants in order to keep schools open .. ventilation of public transport.. public health doctors & nurses’ 4/

& then by late October/early November (just 6 weeks into the outbreak) theatres were allowed to reopen, social functions & public meetings resumed 5/ So what was happening to make this re-opening possible? The Chicago Bureau of Sanitation (1911-18 report) 6/ ..who understood airborne disease & spread in buildings ‘the most important factor in prevention is the air that we breath’ ‘buildings merit earnest study & attention in a program of real & effective work in preventing the spread of disease’ 7/ they had boots on the ground, ‘one man for every 100,000 of population’ & a regime of regulating, inspecting, investigating & enforcing ventilation standards in buildings for public health 8/ ..they had very detailed ventilation standards & buildings were inspected.. including measuring air temperature, humidity, velocity, dust particles &.. CO2 (carbon dioxide) monitoring was used to catch inadequate ventilation 9/

& Chicago had a head start on other cities, having been the first to regulate in 1911, & then having targeted improvements every year in picture-houses, street-cars, restaurants, garages etc .. then in September 1918 the Spanish Flu epidemic arrived /10 Chicago had 1,700 street-cars, so ventilation on public transport received a lot of attention.. there were concerns about the cost of improving poor ventilation /11 but The Chicago Bureau of Sanitation prevailed.. 12/ so the Spanish Flu epidemic in Chicago pandemic was fought on the ground with building inspectors.. who measured, targeted & eliminated actual public health risks in actual buildings ‘while the work involved was enormous, the results obtained outweighed the difficulties’ /13

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“Just as there are epidemiological factors to consider in this crisis, there are also economic, social, cultural, political and other health factors at play.”

Printing Money in Times of Corona (AC)

The coronavirus has dominated all of our lives in recent months. Radical paths were taken by politicians in the form of lockdowns to contain the pandemic. But we should recognize that even if the coronavirus is a (major) challenge for us, we always have to keep a holistic view of world events. Just as there are epidemiological factors to consider in this crisis, there are also economic, social, cultural, political and other health factors at play. It is precisely these other factors that are so often forgotten in the panicky reporting, in the constant, manic tracking of the current infection numbers, that we want to take a look at in our series “The Costs of Coronavirus Lockdowns” in the coming weeks.

Monetary policy is the second primary tool, alongside fiscal policy, used by governments to influence economic activity. When a crisis hits, an economy is stimulated either by the state budget – which arises from the taxpayers – or silently through monetary expansion. By either lowering interest rates, issuing government-backed securities, or even purchasing corporate bonds the central banks increase the money supply in the economy. Ever since the beginning of the crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve has done all of the above. One of the most popular measures of the money supply used by economists is M1. It consists of the most highly liquid assets. In other words, the most easily exchangeable assets are used as payment for goods and services.

As Trading Economics data shows, the Fed has created 39% of all the “dollars” in the economy in 2020. To put it on its head, in 2020 the Fed has created more money than in almost a hundred years of its existence. Monetary policy effectiveness has its boundaries. As good as it might seem at first glance, creating money “out of thin air” doesn’t bring prosperity. It is true, inflation still hasn’t start banging on our doors. But looking no further than the asset prices, we can see that the low inflation rate is masked by the asset price inflation. Even with the sharp drop of the GDP and an unemployment rate that stands more than double the rate before the crisis started, the S&P 500 is more than 10% higher than on the day the pandemic rolled around. This also shows who profits from the economic response to the COVID-19 crisis: those with assets, i.e. those already wealthy anyway.

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We know they did. His aid literally said so.

FBI Investigating If Cuomo, Aides Lied To DOJ About Nursing Deaths (SAC)

The FBI is investigating whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his aides gave false numbers to the DOJ on nursing home deaths in New York state. Lawyers for the aides have been contacted by the FBI and his office has been subpoenaed, as first reported in the New York Times. According to the Times, interviews with aides have included questions on the reporting of COVID deaths in the state. The FBI traveled to some aides’ homes and interviewed others over the phone. A lawyer for Cuomo’s office said the original numbers submitted to the FBI months ago are factual.


“The submission in response to D.O.J.’s August request was truthful and accurate and any suggestion otherwise is demonstrably false,” lawyer Elkan Abramowitz said. The news comes as Cuomo’s first accuser, Lindsey Boylan, told the New Yorker former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is no longer her “hero” because of her reaction to the Cuomo accusations. “These stories are difficult to read,” the former secretary of state said in a March 1 statement, “and the allegations brought forth raise serious questions that the women who have come forward and all New Yorkers deserve answers to.”

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Lots of lawsuits, but…

UK Prepares Antitrust Probe Into Facebook (ZH)

Earlier this week, Rep. Ken Buck, the top Republican on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, said during an antitrust hearing that “Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have reached monopoly status, and their behavior won’t change until Congress acts, the enforcement agencies do their job, and the courts move quickly to rein in their predatory conduct.” On Friday, sources told FT that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is preparing an antitrust investigation into Facebook within the coming months, which is the latest crackdown on Silicon Valley’s big tech dominance. Similar probes were launched into Apple and Google earlier this year. Sources said CMA “would take a sweeping look at the way Facebook allegedly uses customer data to squash rivals in social media and online advertising.”

CMA’s potential investigation into Facebook comes as the government agency recently announced inquiries into Apple’s App Store fees and Google’s privacy settings. CMA expects to follow European Union’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s investigation into Facebook, launched in December. She told lawmakers in Brussels how big tech is increasingly facing more stringent scrutiny around the world. “It’s a sign that the debate on tech dominance has been shifting over the last couple of years,” Vestager said of the US antitrust move. A person close to the CMA said the focus of the upcoming investigation would be on the social media platform’s digital advertising.

Andrea Coscelli, the CMA’s chief executive, vowed to take on Facebook and other big tech companies with a series of antitrust cases. He’ll be working with lawmakers in Brussels to combat big tech. Meanwhile, in the US, Facebook requested a federal judge earlier this month to dismiss landmark antitrust suits against it, claiming that its “innovative free products deliver value” is helpful to users, adding there’s no evidence whatsoever of anti-competitively. The Federal Trade Commission and almost every state have filed lawsuits against the social media platform for its market power abuse after acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp.

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Thomas Frank.

Liberals Blame Rightwing ‘Misinformation’ For Our Problems. Get Real (Frank)

The Republicans didn’t suffer the landslide defeat they deserved last November; the right is still as potent as ever; therefore Trumpist untruth is responsible for the malfunctioning public mind. Under no circumstances was it the result of the Democrats’ own lackluster performance, their refusal to reach out to the alienated millions with some kind of FDR-style vision of social solidarity. Or perhaps this new taste for censorship is an indication of Democratic healthiness. This is a party that has courted professional-managerial elites for decades, and now they have succeeded in winning them over, along with most of the wealthy areas where such people live. Liberals scold and supervise like an offended ruling class because to a certain extent that’s who they are.

More and more, they represent the well-credentialed people who monitor us in the workplace, and more and more do they act like it. What all this censorship talk really is, though, is a declaration of defeat – defeat before the Biden administration has really begun. To give up on free speech is to despair of reason itself. (Misinformation, we read in the New York Times, is impervious to critical thinking.) The people simply cannot be persuaded; something more forceful is in order; they must be guided by we, the enlightened; and the first step in such a program is to shut off America’s many burbling fountains of bad takes.

Let me confess: every time I read one of these stories calling on us to get over free speech or calling on Mark Zuckerberg to press that big red “mute” button on our political opponents, I feel a wave of incredulity sweep over me. Liberals believe in liberty, I tell myself. This can’t really be happening here in the USA. But, folks, it is happening. And the folly of it all is beyond belief. To say that this will give the right an issue to campaign on is almost too obvious. To point out that it will play straight into the right’s class-based grievance-fantasies requires only a little more sophistication. To say that it is a betrayal of everything we were taught liberalism stood for – a betrayal that we will spend years living down – may be too complex a thought for our punditburo to consider, but it is nevertheless true.

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“..journalism which unduly inflames domestic divisions and/or undermines confidence in institutions ipso facto helps Russia..”

How The Censors Won (Michael Tracey)

[..] The star witness in that 2017 hearing, appearing right alongside former National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander, was Thomas Rid. Impressively presented by C-SPAN as a “War Studies Professor” at King’s College London, Rid made a passionate case that the US body politic had been woefully unprepared to contend with an onslaught of what he called “the dark art of disinformation.” [..] the three entities that Rid singled out for condemnation in the testimony — WikiLeaks, Twitter, and “over-eager journalists” — either capitulated to varying degrees in the ensuing years to his demands, or were otherwise neutralized. The founder of WikiLeaks was prosecuted by the US government and currently languishes in UK prison, which removed one of the central threats that so troubled Rid.

Twitter, whose founder once espoused a relatively maximalist conception of free speech (at least compared to other social media companies) drastically changed its philosophy on such issues — embarking on repeat banning sprees, suppressing newsworthy materials falsely classified as “Russian disinformation” just weeks before the 2020 election, and eventually purging the sitting president from the platform. Even more excitingly for Rid, elite journalists’ attitude toward the alleged menace of “disinformation” became increasingly indistinguishable from his own. In the years since that 2017 testimony, it was more and more the journalists themselves who led the charge in demanding censorship to curtail supposed “disinformation,” especially if they could somehow speciously link such “disinformation” to “harassment” and/or “violence.”

And the “over-eagerness” of journalists to report newsworthy information that Rid had condemned was replaced by journalists instead harboring extreme paranoia about being accused of aiding scary foreign influence campaigns — and thereby turning into “unwitting agents” of those scary foreigners. That created a new industry-wide taboo against doing anything which may be perceived as assisting in the dissemination of unjustly “hacked” materials, even if those materials are authentic and expose the malfeasant conduct of powerful officials.

[..] The most telling part of the “Intelligence Community Assessment” was its contention that a key tactic of Russia is “exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.” Variations on this Rid-adjacent theme have frequently percolated in elite discussions of the horrors of “Russian interference” since 2016: the idea that Russia seeks to gain world domination by inflaming domestic divisions in the US and undermining confidence in US institutions, and so journalism which unduly inflames domestic divisions and/or undermines confidence in institutions ipso facto helps Russia.

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“Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet..”

Federal Judge Alleges Democrats Control Almost All Major News Outlets (ZH)

A federal judge this week said that the Democrat Party is close to controlling the press as he detailed what he described as shocking bias against Republicans. D.C. Circuit Court Judge Laurence Silberman outlined his opposition to the Supreme Court’s key decision in 1964 in New York Times v. Sullivan, which has since protected many media outlets from lawsuits. Silberman, a Reagan appointee, wrote that the ruling is “a threat to American Democracy” and must be overturned. “The increased power of the press is so dangerous today because we are very close to one-party control of these institutions. Our court was once concerned about the institutional consolidation of the press leading to a ‘bland and homogenous’ marketplace of ideas. It turns out that ideological consolidation of the press (helped along by economic consolidation) is the far greater threat,” he continued.


“Although the bias against the Republican Party—not just controversial individuals—is rather shocking today, this is not new; it is a long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ’70s. (I do not mean to defend or criticize the behavior of any particular politician). Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction. The orientation of these three papers is followed by The Associated Press and most large papers across the country (such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe). Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet. Even the government-supported National Public Radio follows along,” he added.

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Project Veritas hardly ever loses a suit.

NYT Used ‘Deceptive Disinformation’ To Smear Project Veritas – Judge (RT)

A defamation suit from Project Veritas against the New York Times is moving forward, as a judge has ruled the newspaper posed opinion as fact in their coverage of the conservative news outlet. A New York Supreme Court judge handed Veritas, known for its undercover and whistleblowing videos, a big “win” this week, allowing a defamation suit against the paper and two reporters to proceed forward. In the ruling denying a motion to dismiss the suit, the Times was accused of acting with “actual malice” and “reckless disregard” in multiple articles covering a 2020 video report from Veritas on alleged illegal voting practices taking place in Minnesota. It was not the only voter fraud allegation Veritas covered in 2020, with one video expose actually leading to the arrest of a Texas political consultant on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.


In the Minnesota video, multiple people are seen taking part in or discussing ballot harvesting and linking the act to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). The report alleged ballots were being paid for and even filled out for voters to favor certain candidates. One ballot harvester featured in the video, Liban Osman, has since claimed footage of him was heavily edited and that he was offered money to connect the alleged fraud to Omar – an allegation Project Veritas denied. The five Times articles in question called Veritas’ Minnesota videos deceptive, but Justice Charles Wood determined this was not fact, but rather opinion from reporters Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu. “The Articles that are the subject of this action called the Video ‘deceptive,’ but the dictionary definitions of ‘disinformation’ and ‘deceptive’ provided by defendants’ counsel certainly apply to Astor’s and Hsu’s failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles, as they now claim,” he wrote in his decision.

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“..a 72-percent drop in the number of audits of those making more than $1 million. In all, 98 percent of those making more than $1 million did not face an audit last year.”

The IRS Is Letting Rich People Fleece Everyone Else (DP)

By some estimates, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans manage to avoid paying about a quarter trillion dollars of owed taxes every single year. Now, new government data show that audits of the super-rich and large corporations have hit a new low, leaving billions of dollars of uncollected taxes at precisely a moment when lawmakers say new revenue is needed to fund infrastructure and climate investments. In response, two progressive Democratic lawmakers have authored legislation cracking down on tax evasion. The new Internal Revenue Service figures compiled by Syracuse University researchers show that in the last eight years, there has been a 72-percent drop in the number of audits of those making more than $1 million. In all, 98 percent of those making more than $1 million did not face an audit last year.


Source: Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Similarly, there has also been a 55-percent drop in the number of audits of America’s largest corporations. In 2012, almost all corporate giants were audited. In 2020, however, almost two thirds of those corporations were not subjected to audits. Amid this decline in scrutiny of the rich, a letter to the Biden administration from 88 progressive groups pointed out: “Since 2011, audit rates for millionaires, who are disproportionately white, have dropped more than twice as much as for taxpayers claiming the (Earned Income Tax Credit), who are disproportionately people of color. Audit coverage is now the heaviest in many low-income majority-Black counties.” The sharp reduction in audits of the rich contributes to the tax gap between the amount of taxes owed and paid.


In 2012, audits of wealthy individuals and large corporations recovered roughly $29 billion of revenue. Eight years later, the far fewer audits recovered less than $7 billion. IRS referrals for criminal prosecution and Justice Department tax convictions have both hit an all-time low. “At a time when Americans face growing economic inequality and financial hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the IRS is letting billions of dollars in tax revenue slip through its fingers,” wrote Syracuse researchers. “As public attention focuses on how the country can restore faith in our democratic institutions, one area that should not be overlooked is how the nation can better ensure that our income tax laws are fairly and effectively administered.”

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“The requirements of international law and treaties, as well as decisions of international bodies, can act on the territory of Russia only to the extent that they do not entail restrictions on the rights and liberties of man and citizen, and do not contradict our constitution../”

Russia Set For Showdown With International Law Over Yukos & Navalny (RT)

What matters more: Rulings from overseas courts, or laws made by politicians back home? That’s the question Russian officials are weighing up, after a string of court orders they say are at odds with the country’s own principles. An international legal battle over the collapsed Yukos oil empire has been raging for more than a decade in courts across the world, most notably in the Netherlands and the US. A record-breaking $57 billion legal bill now hangs in the balance. Former shareholders in the now-defunct company accuse the Russian government, which regards them as oligarchs acting in bad faith, of “appropriating” its assets and causing it to go bankrupt. Appealing initial decisions by a Dutch tribunal in favor of the claimants, the country’s lawyers have said that judges had failed to take into account Russian laws against corruption and fraud.

According to Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko, the case is part of a “legal war” being waged against the country in international courts. “The situation is very difficult and serious,” he said. “Russia must adequately defend itself, and sometimes even attack back.” Quite how the state might strike back became clear in December, when the Constitutional Court, one of its highest judicial bodies, ruled that Moscow should refuse to pay the colossal sum if it loses the latest ongoing appeal over Yukos. The case is being litigated under the terms of the Energy Charter Treaty, which Russia signed up to but never ratified, with foreign courts insisting they still have jurisdiction. The Russian judges claim that entering into the pact and supposedly agreeing to foreign mediation broke a fundamental provision of the country’s constitution.

Specifically, judges said, subjugating national laws to international rulings is against those principles, and therefore, when Boris Yeltsin’s government entered into the treaty in 1994, it did so on an invalid basis. No leader, the court claimed, has the right to trade away the sovereign right of self-determination, or to “challenge the competence” of Russian courts. If the judges in The Hague eventually uphold the decision to hand the multibillion-dollar sum to those who lost cash after the collapse of Yukos, stumping up the funds would therefore be optional, the ruling insists. This decision would effectively cut Moscow free from any obligations to foreign courts under the terms of treaties it might have signed, and acting on it would put the country on a collision course with the West, which could look to take unilateral action to enforce any settlement.

[..] Speaking ahead of a national vote on the constitution last year, President Vladimir Putin set out in no uncertain terms that he views domestic laws as more important than overseas rulings, a position that he shares at times with leaders in the US and China. “I believe that the time has come to make some changes,” he said, “which directly guarantees the priority of the Russian constitution in our legal environment.” “The requirements of international law and treaties, as well as decisions of international bodies, can act on the territory of Russia only to the extent that they do not entail restrictions on the rights and liberties of man and citizen, and do not contradict our constitution,” Putin added.

[..] Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered the country to release jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny. The anti-corruption activist is serving time in prison after being found guilty of breaching the terms of a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence for fraud. In a statement, the Strasbourg-based court said “a Chamber of Seven judges of the Court decided… to indicate to the Government of Russia… to release the applicant. This measure shall apply with immediate effect.” However, the country’s Justice Ministry rejected the calls outright, saying that they were “unenforceable” and unprecedented for a number of reasons. “Firstly, this is a clear and gross interference in the activities of the judiciary of a sovereign state. Secondly, this demand is unreasonable and unlawful, since… it does not include a single rule of law that would allow the court to make such a decision.”

Read more …

 

 

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Mar 142021
 
 March 14, 2021  Posted by at 9:44 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Woman sitting in a armchair 1910

 

One Year Into ‘15 Days To Flatten The Curve’ (Marsden)
Will Kids Ever Forgive Us For Depriving Them Of Their Childhood? (Bridge)
Lockdown Ending Could Trigger Anxiety For Many, Say UK Charities (G.)
Study: Vaccines DO Help To Stop Coronavirus Transmission – By 30% (RT)
Free Speech: And… It’s Gone (Luongo)
Police Round Up Women Mourning London Kidnapping-murder Victim (RT)
If You Thought The Right To Protest Was Inalienable, Then Think Again (Malik)
100+ People To Be Charged In Storming Of US Capitol (RT)
Prosecutors Find No Evidence Of Wide-Ranging Conspiracy To Storm Capitol (RT)
Bandaging The Corpse (Chris Hedges)
The Cannibalization Is Complete: Only Inedible Zombies Remain (CHS)
Cuomo Staffers Have Stopped Showing Up To Work (NYP)
The War In Ukraine May Soon Resume (MoA)
Children Packed Into Border Patrol Tent For Days On End (AP)
CNN Hemorrhages Viewers Post-Trump (RT)
The ‘American Dream’ Of Upward Mobility Is Broken (G.)

 

 

The US goes to Daylight Saving Time today, but Europe not until March 28. I know they do this only to confuse me, and it works. Every single time.

 

 

I am not vaccinated, but I do identify as vaccinated.

 

 

 

 

“The handiwork of government bureaucrats, the form aimed to fit each allowable activity in our daily lives into a neat little box.”

One Year Into ‘15 Days To Flatten The Curve’ (Marsden)

In the 12 months since states first started ordering citizens to stay at home under the pretext of Covid, we’ve come a long way. Particularly in our understanding of how illiberal our politicians can be and how supine we are.
One year ago, at noon on Tuesday, March 17, France went into total lockdown for the first time. Until then, Covid-19 was something of which we were faintly aware – background noise in our daily lives that was mostly relegated to Wuhan, China. But we all had that one moment when we realized that it was about to hit home hard. In my case, that instant came two days before the lockdown, when the local outdoor pool posted a sign on the door drastically reducing the total user capacity to just 100, right before closing entirely the following day.

On March 16, French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation to announce what he described as temporary measures, to be implemented for at least 15 days. Only essential trips outside the home would be allowed. Period. Case closed. All in the interests of protecting the French healthcare system, the long-suffering victim of perennial government cutbacks, from being forced onto life-support as it tends to be nearly every year during flu season. The government’s drastic actions successfully convinced many citizens at the outset of the lockdown that the coronavirus must be on par with the plague. Macron opened the first few paragraphs of his national address with the phrase, “We are at war.” Yet even the government didn’t really know what it was dealing with at that point or how to handle it.

The fear mongering was, however, sufficient for people to panic and to accept whatever restrictions the authorities wanted to impose on them. “Stay home, save lives” and “15 days to flatten the curve” became the primary propaganda catchphrases. Then emerged the now-infamous French self-authorization form, mocked around the world. (It wasn’t until the second lockdown or the first or second nightly curfew that more people realized that they could really just tick off anything that they wanted since there was no real way for the authorities to verify claims, and that, in practice, police weren’t too interested in policing people for the “crime” of simply being on the streets.) The handiwork of government bureaucrats, the form aimed to fit each allowable activity in our daily lives into a neat little box.

One box for an hour of exercise, once a day, within a 1km radius from the home. One for a grocery run. One for a doctor’s visit. Public transport was reduced to a trickle as everyone was ordered to work from home with the exception of a limited list of workers that the government defined as essential. The term “essential worker” itself is offensive, particularly coming from government authorities whose income is a direct result of taxes imposed on the hard work of those it apparently considers unessential. The other irony is that when only the most essential workers as defined by the government were permitted by the state to do their jobs – the grocery store clerks, the maintenance workers and repairmen, the nurses and caregivers – it became clear how little their pay reflected their true value to society as defined by the government.

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Will they know the difference?

Will Kids Ever Forgive Us For Depriving Them Of Their Childhood? (Bridge)

Critics of lockdowns & school closures to halt Covid-19 have compared the effects to child abuse. And now that new data points to some deeply disturbing long-term psychological damage, it looks like they were right. Abiding by the new age medical maxim that commands ‘everyone stop living so that you don’t die’ is no way to live. Yet that is exactly how millions of youngsters have been forced to cope with a disease that poses, in the overwhelming majority of cases, no more of a health risk to them than riding a bicycle or crossing an intersection. And while socially isolating the youth may have spared a minuscule fraction from contracting coronavirus, the total impact such measures have had on the mental wellbeing of this demographic has been a disastrous tradeoff.

The results from the most inhumane experiment ever conducted on human beings are in, and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for letting it happen. In a white paper published by the nonprofit FAIR Health, the consequences of lockdowns on the mental health of American students reveal what many people already know: “School closures, having to learn remotely and isolating from friends due to social distancing have been sources of stress and loneliness.” The real shocker, however, is how that statement plays out in real life. In March and April 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, mental health claims among this young demographic exploded 97.0 percent and 103.5 percent, respectively, compared to the same months in 2019.

To break it down even further, there was a dramatic surge in cases involving “intentional self-harm” using a handgun, sharp object and even smashing a vehicle, as the more popular examples. The rate of incidence for such destructive behaviors amid 13-18 year olds jumped 90.71 percent in March 2020 compared to March 2019. The increase was even greater when comparing April 2020 to April 2019, almost doubling (99.83 percent). August 2020 was particularly active in the northeast sector of the country, showing a surge of 333.93 percent. Similarly major increases were found among the 19-22 age category, although not quite as pronounced as the 13-18 group.

Another sign that young Americans have suffered undue psychological distress during the pandemic is observable from the rate of overdoses and substance abuse. For those between the ages of 13-18, overdoses increased 94.91 percent in March 2020 and 119.31 percent in April 2020 over the same periods the year before. Meanwhile, substance use disorders surged in March (64.64 percent) and April (62.69 percent) 2020, compared to 2019.

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Growacet.

Lockdown Ending Could Trigger Anxiety For Many, Say UK Charities (G.)

The lifting of lockdown restrictions and the subsequent return to schools, workplaces and social events could trigger heightened levels of stress and anxiety for many people, UK mental health charities and experts have said. They say some, particularly those with mental health concerns, will be worried or anxious about the readjustment required by the lifting of lockdown restrictions as set out in the government’s gradual roadmap for reopening England. Dr Tine Van Bortel, a senior research associate in public health at the University of Cambridge, said: “Lockdown has given people with mental health conditions like anxiety and PTSD permission to stay at home, and knowing that at some point you’ll have to go out again can actually trigger stress and anxiety.”

Rosie Weatherley, an information content manager at Mind, said: “Some of us might have found there were some unexpected plus points to lockdown – and therefore feel uneasy or anxious at the prospect of it being lifted. For example, we may be worried about ‘normality’ resuming, or not wanting to return to a faster pace with busier daily lives, and less downtime to ourselves.” She said it was “really important” for government and employers to provide empathy and support for those who need it “beyond lockdown lifting”. From 29 March, outdoor gatherings of up to six people, or two households if this is larger, will be able to meet in parks or gardens, and 21 June is the prospective date on which all legal limits on mixing could be removed.


Laura Peters, the head of advice and information at Rethink Mental Illness, welcomed the relaxing of restrictions and the subsequent reduction in social isolation, but said: “It’s important not to assume that everyone’s in the same boat. Everyone will have a different set of circumstances to navigate as restrictions start to ease, and it’s a natural human response to feel anxious in certain situations or during times of uncertainty.” Even among groups such as young people who are broadly optimistic about lockdown ending, concerns remain. A YoungMinds survey conducted in January found that while 79% of young people agreed that their mental health would start to improve when most restrictions were lifted, some were concerned that the end of the lockdown would happen too quickly and result in further lockdowns in future. “Again and again, young people said they felt like they were experiencing ‘Groundhog Day’, and above all they wish for an end to a cycle of freedoms followed by restrictions,” says the report.

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That’s less than vitamin D?!

Study: Vaccines DO Help To Stop Coronavirus Transmission – By 30% (RT)

A new study has found that Covid-19 vaccines stop people passing the virus on to others. The study is one of several with similar findings, and may pave the way for scientists to support the introduction of ‘vaccine passports.’ A preprint study posted on Friday has found that family members of vaccinated British healthcare workers were around 30 percent less likely to catch Covid-19 than those of unvaccinated workers. Though a reduction of 30 percent may seem minor, the study pointed out that these family members were also at risk of catching the virus outside the home, making the figure an “underestimate of the ‘true’ effect of vaccination on transmission.” We provide the first direct evidence that vaccinating individuals working in high-exposure settings reduces the risk to their close contacts – members of their households.

The study was carried out by researchers at a number of top UK universities and institutions, including the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Imperial College NHS Trust and the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine of University of Edinburgh. Elsewhere, Israeli researchers have also found that US drugmaker Pfizer’s vaccine is 94 percent effective against asymptomatic transmission of the virus, while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently loosened its guidelines for people who’ve taken the jab, returning what the press termed “limited freedoms” to this group. However, health officials in the US have insisted that masking and social distancing are here for the long term, regardless of the efficacy of vaccines.


White House adviser Anthony Fauci last month stated that face coverings may be required until 2022, declaring that “there are things, even if you’re vaccinated, that you’re not going to be able to do in society.” The World Health Organization declared last month that “there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in reducing transmission,” in a statement advising against the introduction of so-called ‘vaccine passports’ for air travel. This advice is set to be revised in May, and the latest findings from the UK and Israel could bolster the argument for proof of vaccination as a prerequisite for international travel. Devi Sridhar, a professor of public health at Edinburgh University, predicted that the UK study will pave the way for “aviation & international mobility [safely opening] up with testing & vaccine passports,” but added that doing so would raise “major ethical issues.”

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It’s become a joke.

Free Speech: And… It’s Gone (Luongo)

It’s no surprise to me that the war against speech is accelerating. There’s desperation in the air everywhere. From the barricading of the U.S. Capitol since January 6th to the shrill calls for continued lockdowns over a virus mostly behind us, we see those with power lashing out trying to hold on to it. And it’s no more obvious than in the lockdowns on speech. In the past week we’ve seen another major assault on Twitter-alternative Gab. A massive attack on its security architecture handing out the passwords and information of millions of users to the dark web. Then Texas Governor Greg Abbott, you know the guy who let millions of Texans freeze last month rather than order the coal-fired plants brought online in defiance of the DoE, piles on calling Gab “anti-semetic.”

Abbott’s just doing what he’s paid to do, serve everyone but Texas. Gab CEO Andrew Torba then informed us that the attacks on Gab are far deeper than even a putz like Abbott’s. The relentless pressure to cut his company off from the doing business continues, with bank after bank refusing to do business with them. Torba’s invoking Operation Chokepoint is important here. It reminds us that Biden is a cypher put in place to restore Obama to the White House as functional president. Honestly, taking a step back, is this at all rational? All Torba and Gab want to do is operate a social media platform that conforms, ruthlessly, to the first amendment. Nothing more, nothing less.


It’s not like Gab is funded by foreign intelligence services spreading obvious agitprop and propaganda. No, sorry, that’s the job of the mainstream media and Twitter. I thought if we didn’t like the treatment we got on Twitter we could go ‘build our own’ and that would be fine. Separate but equal, freedom of and from association and all that. But, no, any competition that doesn’t adhere to the current orthodoxy of what constitutes ‘acceptable speech’ is now no longer tolerated. Free Speech is not an option. It’s an obvious coordinated assault from every angle to extend ‘cancel culture’ into a cultural revolution. Because it’s not enough to hound people whose opinions you don’t like from the public square, they have to be beaten out of society entirely, even if the means employed to do so are patently hypocritical.

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“The irony of it is so explicit – are you going to drag women off the street for protesting about a woman being dragged off the street?”

Police Round Up Women Mourning London Kidnapping-murder Victim (RT)

A London vigil for murder victim Sarah Everard — held in defiance of a police order amid the Covid-19 pandemic – turned ugly after large numbers of officers arrived and tried to clear people from the area.
Several organizers of Saturday’s vigil at Clapham Common were reportedly arrested, and footage from the scene showed clashes with police. One clip posted on Twitter shows several women standing on the edge of a bandstand where police congregated, including one holding a sign that says, “We aren’t safe in our homes.” Four women are then grabbed from behind by officers, pulled back and arrested after several people in the crowd try unsuccessfully to pull them back.


One of those women was shown face down on the ground being handcuffed by police in a photo posted by actor and political activist Guillaume Rivaud. Talk show host George Galloway, a former member of Parliament, called the shot a “fatal photograph” for Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick. Home Secretary Priti Patel said she has asked Metropolitan Police for a “full report” on what happened at the vigil, according to Sky News. One clip from the scene shows police being booed and shouted at by the crowd after they stepped onto the bandstand around 6:30 p.m. The March 3 kidnapping and murder of Everard, allegedly by a London police constable, became a rallying cry over the dangers to women on UK streets. Green Party politician Baroness Jenny Jones went so far as to suggest imposing a 6 p.m. curfew on all men.

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“There is a specific section on “imposing conditions on one-person protests…”

If You Thought The Right To Protest Was Inalienable, Then Think Again (Malik)

The next time you take part in protest, don’t shout too loudly, don’t get in anybody’s way and don’t cause a commotion. Best to sit quietly in a corner and whisper your grievances. That certainly would be what many governments would like. Authoritarian regimes, from Myanmar to Saudi Arabia and from Belarus to China, try to impose such curbs by brute force. Democratic nations rely more on “consent”. Consent, however, is a slippery beast, spawned from a process of constant negotiation and renegotiation between the authorities and a multitude of public voices. The pandemic has created a public health emergency requiring constraints on our rights and unprecedented levels of policing. By and large, the authorities have gained the consent of the British public to impose such restrictions.

The question now is how far an exceptional year has shifted our sense of what is acceptable and to what we will consent. One straw in the wind was the attempt by the Metropolitan police to shut down the Reclaim These Streets march on Saturday evening following the death of Sarah Everard. The police stance felt not just astonishingly ham-fisted in the wake of her death, given the public mood and the debate about the right of women to walk the streets safely and without restrictions. It also felt like the latest attempt by the authorities to take advantage of the pandemic to reset the balance of what is acceptable policing. Another straw in the wind is the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, published last week, to no fanfare, and about which there has been little discussion.

It’s a monstrosity of a bill. Its 296 pages cover everything from making it harder to prosecute police for dangerous driving to new regulations about unauthorised encampments (which appear to be aimed at the Traveller community), from setting minimum sentences for drug trafficking to encouraging the use of British sign language interpreters in courts. At the heart of it, though, is an assault on the ability of people to protest. The government has made clear that the proposed law is the product of a desire to curtail the kinds of protests we saw last summer with Black Lives Matter, on the one hand, and Extinction Rebellion, on the other. The home secretary, Priti Patel, has long expressed her distaste for the Black Lives Matter protests.

The official policy paper on the new bill begins with quotes from Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, on how the Extinction Rebellion actions demonstrated the need for new laws “to deal with protests where people are not primarily violent or seriously disorderly” but do cause disruption. The 1986 Public Order Act already allows police to impose restrictions on a demonstration if they believe it could create “serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community”. The new bill extends these reasons for curbing protests: the police can curtail a demonstration if they believe “the noise” it makes is disrupting the “activities of an organisation” or has a “relevant impact on persons in the vicinity”. It does not matter how small or large a protest is. There is a specific section on “imposing conditions on one-person protests”.

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Not one firearm was confiscated. Not one shot was fired.

100+ People To Be Charged In Storming Of US Capitol (RT)

At least another hundred people connected to the January 6 storming of the US Capitol are expected to be charged with a variety of crimes, according to prosecutors. “The investigation continues and the government expects that at least one hundred additional individuals will be charged,” claimed the prosecutors in court filings first reported by Fox News on Friday, noting that 300 people have already been charged and that the Justice Department is also “investigating conspiratorial activity” that may have taken place before the riot. They added that the investigation and subsequent prosecution “will likely be one of the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of the evidence.”

Crimes being investigated allegedly include trespassing, violent conduct, assault against police officers, the theft and destruction of government property, civil disorder, conspiracy, and “firearms offenses,” among others. The court filings also claimed that over 900 search warrants have been conducted around the country since the incident, and that over 15,000 hours of footage has been compiled as evidence. Supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol on January 6, just two weeks before the inauguration of President Joe Biden, to protest Trump’s electoral defeat. One Capitol Police officer and four protesters died during the incident, and many others were injured.


The Biden administration used the storming of the Capitol to post thousands of National Guard soldiers in Washington, DC – where they have been positioned for over two months, despite a lack of violent activity in the area – and have requested to keep the soldiers there through late May, despite the National Guard Association calling it “completely inappropriate at best” and “illegal at worst.”

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“..the plan envisaged fending off possible left-wing violence, not storming the Capitol, his defense said.”

Prosecutors Find No Evidence Of Wide-Ranging Conspiracy To Storm Capitol (RT)

A US judge has ordered the release of retired Navy officer Kenneth Caldwell, accused of being part of an Oath Keepers militia plot to invade the Capitol, pending trial, as no evidence to back the conspiracy claims has turned up. Judge Amit Mehta said that Caldwell did not enter the Capitol building, nor was there direct evidence of him trying to force his way in. “There are no text messages, communications by him, that speak to entering a building or trying to enter the building. And ultimately, he did not enter the building,” Mehta said, as he ordered the 65-year-old’s release from jail. Because he did not breach the Capitol grounds, he was “differently situated” from his alleged co-conspirators, the judge said, ordering Caldwell to remain at his Berryville, Virginia home under GPS monitoring.

This conspiracy case is so far the biggest in the investigation into the January 6 riot, in which a crowd of Trump supporters breached the Capitol building and disrupted the counting of electoral votes cast in the presidential election. The conspiracy charges against Caldwell were among the first to be brought in connection with the events in Washington, DC. At Friday’s hearing, Caldwell’s attorney, David Fischer, pointed out that the prosecutors still have to provide evidence that the alleged sinister plan to infiltrate the Capitol actually existed. While admitting that no evidence was unearthed to support the conspiracy charges, federal prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy insisted that the militia was prepared to resort to violence.

“The bottom line from the government’s perspective is they were prepared to do violence in whatever ways they needed to,” Rakoczy, who was part of the Mueller probe into the debunked theory that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia, said, according to Politico. Nevertheless, she admitted that prosecutors “do not have, at this point, someone explicitly saying, ‘Our plan is to storm the Capitol to stop certification,’” referring to nine alleged Oath Keepers who had been charged in February with a wide-ranging conspiracy “to commit an offense against the United States, namely, to corruptly obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding” as well as entering the Capitol to that effect.

Caldwell was initially described by the media as the leader of the militia. His attorney later argued that Caldwell had never been a member of the group, and although he was involved in the Oath Keepers’ preparations for January 6, the plan envisaged fending off possible left-wing violence, not storming the Capitol, his defense said.

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”Much of this money will be instantly gobbled up by landlords, lenders, medical providers, and credit card companies.”

Bandaging The Corpse (Chris Hedges)

The established ruling elites know there is a crisis. They agreed, at least temporarily, to throw money at it with the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 bill known as the American Rescue Plan (ARP). But the ARP will not alter the structural inequities, either by raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour or imposing taxes and regulations on corporations or the billionaire class that has seen its wealth increase by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic. The health system will remain privatized, meaning the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations will reap a windfall of tens of billions of dollars with the ARP – and this when they are already making record profits. The endless wars in the Middle East, and the bloated military budget that funds them, will remain sacrosanct.

Wall Street and the predatory global speculators that profit from the massive levels of debt peonage imposed on an underpaid working class and loot the US Treasury in our casino capitalism will continue to funnel money upwards into the hands of a tiny, oligarchic cabal. There will be no campaign finance reform to end our system of legalized bribery. The giant tech monopolies will remain intact. The fossil fuel companies will continue to ravage the ecosystem. The militarized police, censorship imposed by digital media platforms, vast prison system, harsher and harsher laws aimed at curbing domestic terrorism and dissent, and wholesale government surveillance will be, as they were before, the primary instruments of state control.


This act will, at best, provide a momentary respite from the country’s death spiral, sending out one-time checks of $1,400 to 280 million Americans, extending $300 weekly unemployment benefits until the end of August, and distributing $3,600 through a tax credit for children under the age of six and $3,000 per child aged six to 17 starting on July 1. Much of this money will be instantly gobbled up by landlords, lenders, medical providers, and credit card companies. The act does, to its credit, bail out some one million unionized workers poised to lose their pensions, and hands $31.2 billion in aid to Native communities, some of the poorest in the nation. But what happens to the majority of Americans, who get government support for only a few months? What are they supposed to do when the checks stop arriving at the end of the year? Will the federal government orchestrate another massive relief package? I doubt it. We will be back where we started.

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“..a starving cannibal grabs a staggering zombie corporation to devour and the zombie instantly turns to dust.”

The Cannibalization Is Complete: Only Inedible Zombies Remain (CHS)

Setting aside the fictional flood of zombie movies for a moment, we find the real-world horror is the cannibalization of our economy, a cannibalization that is now complete. Every organic source of prosperity and productivity has been captured and consumed, hidden behind the convenient curtains of central bank intervention, “market forces” (hahaha), financialization and fiscal stimulus. All that’s left now are zombies feeding off the offal of stimulus. Sadly for the cannibals who’ve feasted so well for decades, zombies are inedible. So now the cannibals are starving. Poor cannibals! Once the stimulus runs out, no more zombies. Poor zombies!

The cannibals feasted on $50 trillion in earnings stripped from the bones of the workforce (Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018, RAND Corporation) and trillions more in fraud and financial gimmickry. And when the cannibals had consumed the bottom 90%, they moved on and devoured the next 5%. That left only the top 5%, which they needed to keep alive to maintain the curtains masking their ghoulish destruction. But after gorging on trillions for so long, the cannibals appetites can never be sated, so they ambushed their loyal toadies, apologists, lackeys, apparatchiks and sycophants of the top 4.9% and ate them, too, but a bit more stealthily because they still needed an army of toadies to do their dirty work.


The top 4.9% have been transformed into zombies so stealthily they still believe they’re in charge and wealthy–hahaha, the jokes on you! With nobody left to devour, the cannibals turned to their last resort: the Federal Reserve. Please print us up some more bodies to feast on, Federal Reserve. We demand it. We want it, we need it, we’re starving. Alas, the Fed can print currency to inflate speculative bubbles, but it can’t print real flesh for the cannibals. All the Fed can do is finance stimulus offal to feed the zombies. Sorry, cannibals, there’s nothing left to consume. There’s only inedible zombies kept alive by the Fed. There’s some sort of karmic irony in this, it seems: a starving cannibal grabs a staggering zombie corporation to devour and the zombie instantly turns to dust.

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Drip every day drip.

Cuomo Staffers Have Stopped Showing Up To Work (NYP)

Disillusioned staffers are abandoning embattled Gov. Cuomo, sources said. “I hear that most people aren’t even coming into work, and the offices at the Capitol are empty,” said one well-placed insider in touch with staffers in recent days.“He’ll fight and fight and fight, but the staffers I’ve talked to are ready for him to hang up the gloves. Everyone feels like there is an inevitable conclusion — I mean at some point will Biden call on him to step down? They [staffers] just want this torture to stop.”Rebellion in the ranks deepened as Cuomo on Friday defiantly refused to step aside and blamed “cancel culture” for his downfall.


“I feel a level of rage toward this fake tough guy,” seethed a second source, an ex-aide. “The guy thinks he’s the toughest, the hardest working, he’s the smartest. The truth is, he’s anything but. He’s the weakest, he’s the dumbest, and he’s the most shallow of them all. He is genuinely a very small man who pretends to be big.” The former aide said many staffers are not coming into the executive offices, but choosing to work remotely or at vaccine sites instead. They are increasingly worried their careers are in jeopardy, just as they were beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel after working around the clock for months during the pandemic. “Sometimes you have an ability to claim to be out in the field,” the ex-aide said.

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What job did they give Victoria Nuland in the end?

The War In Ukraine May Soon Resume (MoA)

Several Russia watchers – Patrick Armstrong, Andrei Martyanov and Andrei Raevsky – are musing about a renewed attack by the government of Ukraine on its eastern Donbass region. The Donbass separated in 2014 after the U.S. driven coup in Kiev installed an anti-Russian government which then waged a war on its ethnic Russian east. There have been a number of reports about heavy Ukrainian equipment moving east and other hints of military preparations. Russia has seen enough such signs to issue a strong warning: “I would like to warn the Kiev regime and the hotheads that are serving it or manipulating it against further de-escalation and attempts to implement a forceful scenario in Donbass,” [Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova] said, commenting on the statement of head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Contact Group for settlement in Donbass Leonid Kravchuk on some “radical steps” of Kiev if Russia refuses to recognize itself as a conflict side in eastern Ukraine.”

Zakharova recalled that the Minsk Agreements clearly outline the conflict sides in Donbass as Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk. “The unwillingness of Ukrainian negotiators to recognize this fact and their refusal to find agreements with Donbass is the reason that hinders the establishment of long-lasting peace in the region,” the diplomat noted.” The main catalyst for such a war is the sorry state of the government in Kiev. The country is in in the midst of a constitutional crisis: “[T]he Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) recently plunged the country into one of its deepest crises in its 30-year history. Specifically, on October 27, 2020, the Court declared that the main elements of Ukraine’s anti-corruption legislation, adopted between 2014 and 2020, were unconstitutional. In response, President Zelensky introduced legislation calling for the early termination of all Constitutional Court judges. Later, in December, he suspended the chairman of the Court for two months.”


“The result was widespread chaos in Ukraine’s political system. Zelensky’s actions were of questionable legality and provoked harsh criticism from all political sides. The ramifications of the Court’s decision include the cancellation of over 100 pending corruption investigations, a development that potentially could endanger future EU-Ukraine trade and economic cooperation Ukraine under the 2014 Association Agreement.” After the 2014 Euromaidan coup an ‘independent’ National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) was created to oversee the investigation and prosecution of corrupt state officials. The NABU has since been used by the U.S. embassy to bring criminal cases against those oligarchs it dislikes and to cover for those it likes. The constitutional court found that NABU is a criminal investigation agency outside the control of the executive branch which is a contradiction to the Ukrainian constitution.

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AOC!

Children Packed Into Border Patrol Tent For Days On End (AP)

Hundreds of immigrant children and teenagers have been detained at a Border Patrol tent facility in packed conditions, with some sleeping on the floor because there aren’t enough mats, according to nonprofit lawyers who conduct oversight of immigrant detention centers. The lawyers interviewed more than a dozen children Thursday in Donna, Texas, where the Border Patrol is holding more than 1,000 people. Some of the youths told the lawyers they had been at the facility for a week or longer, despite the agency’s three-day limit for detaining children. Many said they haven’t been allowed to phone their parents or other relatives who may be wondering where they are. Despite concerns about the coronavirus, the children are kept so closely together that they can touch the person next to them, the lawyers said.


Some have to wait five days or more to shower, and there isn’t always soap available, just shampoo, according to the lawyers. President Joe Biden’s administration denied the lawyers access to the tent facility. During the administration of former President Donald Trump, attorney visits to Border Patrol stations revealed severe problems, including dozens of children held at one rural station without adequate food, water, or soap. “It is pretty surprising that the administration talks about the importance of transparency and then won’t let the attorneys for children set eyes on where they’re staying,” said Leecia Welch of the National Center for Youth Law, one of the lawyers. “I find that very disappointing.” Although none of the children reported situations as severe as during the Trump era, Welch said the lawyers “weren’t able to lay eyes on any of it to see for ourselves, so we’re just piecing together what they said.”

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This must worry them. Cuomo will get some viewers, but they need more.

CNN Hemorrhages Viewers Post-Trump (RT)

CNN host Brian Stelter has analyzed the ratings losses of niche network Newsmax in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s exit from office, but his own team is taking the biggest viewership hit among major cable outlets. A report this week by Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP) showed that three of CNN’s primetime shows were the biggest ratings losers between November 30-December 4, when Trump was still in office, and March 1-5. Programs hosted by Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, and Don Lemon posted declines in viewership of 29%, 32%, and 33% respectively between the two periods, VIP’s data showed. As Stelter acknowledged in his article on the post-election ratings decline at Newsmax, “news ratings rise and fall like tides.”

But among mainstream media outlets, CNN is clearly falling the hardest after losing the so-called ‘Trump Bump’ in ratings. The fourth- and fifth-biggest decliners measured by VIP were both MSNBC shows – hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Hayes – which lost 18% and 17% of their audiences, respectively. Lemon’s CNN show nearly doubled their losses with a 33% drop. In contrast, no other primetime show lost more than 12%, and Fox’s Tucker Carlson posted a ratings decline of just 4.8%. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was second-best in minimizing losses, at 9.1%. The final days of Trump’s presidency were perhaps the best of times for CNN. From the November 3 election through President Joe Biden’s January 20 inauguration, CNN was the most-watched cable news network, with an average of 1.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings.


Fox, the long-time leader, dropped behind both CNN and MSNBC, averaging 1.5 million viewers. But the ranks quickly changed with Trump safely removed to Florida and the public’s appetite for Orange Man Bad conspiracies waning. Fox said it returned to No. 1 in primetime in February, while CNN lost nearly half of its audience. The losses grew after Trump’s impeachment trial ended in acquittal on February 13. When Biden gave a primetime speech on Thursday, nearly 4.1 million viewers watched it on Fox, compared with 2.9 million on MSNBC and 2.6 million on CNN. CNN is averaging 897,000 viewers in March, which Stelter pointed out is way more than Newsmax’s 152,000. But it’s about half the audience that CNN had between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Fox is once again far ahead, at 1.32 million.

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It’s been turned into a joke.

The ‘American Dream’ Of Upward Mobility Is Broken (G.)

The US has long prided itself as being an exceptionally fluid society with respect to social class and economic mobility. The American Dream holds that anyone who works hard can achieve economic success – perhaps even rise from rags to riches. Underlying this belief is the assumption of abundant opportunity and meritocracy. Arriving immigrants often believe they have come to a land of opportunity, with a level playing field allowing for advancement and success. Those who fail to do so tend to blame themselves. Yet according to recent research, the United States has far less mobility and equality of opportunity today than the European Union or other OECD countries.

First, the amount of economic advantage passed down from one generation to the next is much higher in the US. Approximately 50% of a father’s income position is inherited by his son. In contrast, the amount in Norway or Canada is less than 20%. What about rising from rags to riches? In the US, 8% of children raised in the bottom 20% of the income distribution are able to climb to the top 20% as adults, while the figure in Denmark is nearly double at 15%. Equality of opportunity is also much less viable in the US than in other OECD countries. American life expectancy varies by up to 20 years depending on the zip code of residence. Quality of education also differs widely depending on the wealth of the neighborhood that families reside in.


And the chances of being victimized by a crime, exposed to environmental toxins or having unmet healthcare needs is far greater for America’s poor than those impoverished in all other OECD countries. One of the reasons for lower US mobility is that the ladder of opportunity has become much harder to climb – because the rungs of the ladder have grown further apart. This is evidenced by the rising levels of income and wealth inequality. Currently, those in the top 20% of the income distribution earn nearly nine times more than those in the bottom 20%. This difference is far greater than in the European Union or the United Kingdom. Wealth inequality is even more skewed. In the United States, the top 5% of the population own three-quarters of the entire financial wealth of the country, while the bottom 60% possess less than 1%.

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May 302020
 


Edward Hopper Folly Beach, Charleston, South Carolina 1929

 

Protests Spread Nationwide: Minnesota Curfew, White House Locks Down (JTN)
Unsanitized: Social Unrest When There’s Nothing to Lose (Dayen)
Trump Orders His Administration To Begin Eliminating Hong Kong Privileges (R.)
Trump Says US To Withdraw From WHO. Does He Have The Authority To Do It? (NPR)
Twitter Targets Trump Again, Flagging Tweet After Executive Order (SAC)
Coronavirus Sinks US Consumer Spending As Savings Hit Record High (R.)
Investors Eye Consumer Discretionary Stocks As US Reopens (R.)
A Chronicle of a Lost Decade Foretold (Varoufakis )
Malaria Drug And Zinc, The Missing Link (Berry)
Australian Anti-Vaxxers Label COVID19 a ‘Scam’ At Anti-5G Protests (AAP)
States Are Copying & Pasting Immunity Laws For Nursing Home Execs (Sirota)
De Blasio Ramps Up Destruction Of Homeless Encampments (Gothamist)
No One Knows Where Ghislaine Maxwell Is (Esq.)

 

 

The conversation has shifted away from corona for now. Is that a good thing?

Total global cases pass 6 million as daily new cases set another record at 125,511.

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 25,069
• Brazil + 30,739
• Russia + 8,952
• UK 4,938
• India + 8,105
• Peru + 6,506
• Chile + 4,654

 

 

 

Cases 6,054,777 (+ 122,597 from yesterday’s 5,932,180)

Deaths 367,288 (+ 4,674 from yesterday’s 362,614)

 

 

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-:

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two sides prone to violence.

Protests Spread Nationwide: Minnesota Curfew, White House Locks Down (JTN)

The anger over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody fueled intense protests coast to coast Friday night, as activists ignored a Minnesota curfew to set new fires while the White House temporarily locked down over security concerns just outside its gates. The arrest and murder charges filed earlier in the day against the police officer who allegedly knelt on Floyd’s neck did little to quell a swelling rage that drove protests in cities as diverse as New York and San Jose. In Atlanta, protesters spray-painted sayings and broke windows at CNN’s headquarters while tense officers in Brooklyn borough lined up to keep angry, chanting protesters from straying from street protests toward business.


The Secret Service on Friday evening put the White House on brief lockdown, sheltering reporters inside the press room, as several videos on social media showed unruly protesters outside of the Treasury Department, adjacent to the heavily fortified White House, and large groups of protesters walking from the city’s historically black U Street neighborhood chanting, “No peace, no justice.” The protests started Tuesday in Minneapolis, where weary residents and officers faced a fourth night of violence, rioting and fire setting. The Minnesota governor activated the national guard and a strict curfew for 8 p.m. was imposed in the Twin Cities, but it failed to keep large numbers of protesters from taking to the streets anew.

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“..that’s the same brutality..”

Unsanitized: Social Unrest When There’s Nothing to Lose (Dayen)

There’s a reason that Spike Lee set Do the Right Thing on the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn. The pressure from the heat simmered through the community and created sparks that ignited existing tensions. There was a triggering event, which led to a police chokehold and the death of Radio Raheem, and the destruction of Sal’s Pizzeria. The weather was the backdrop as events played out. That was 1989 and it couldn’t be more relevant right now. The death of George Floyd is obviously unforgivable on its own terms. There doesn’t need to be any context. Unreformed police murder in communities of color has been part of America since well before I was born. I have nothing to comment on about looters—at least eight people sent me this Onion headline, “Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First.” (I guess my reputation precedes me.)

I can’t say anything about the burning of the 3rd police precinct. And I have a lot to say about the great misfortune of having Donald J. Trump in a leadership position during this moment, but most of it would be curse words. Decades of disinvestment and routinized brutality and structural racism created these conditions. The officer who killed George Floyd had enough history of violence alone to contribute mightily to this rage. (And yes, Amy Klobuchar declined to prosecute him and many others for these crimes.) But you cannot separate this outpouring of anger from two months of death, economic collapse, and the disproportionate pain raining down right now on communities of color.

Decades of environmental racism have created toxic vectors for spreading the virus; that’s the same brutality. Minority small business owners have had a harder time securing federal aid, owing to more distant relationships with local banks; that’s the same brutality. African Americans are more likely to be in “essential” jobs and unable to work from home and protect themselves; that’s the same brutality. They’re more likely to be in prisons under perhaps the worst conditions of this crisis; that’s definitely the same brutality. “Black Americans are 80 percent more likely than white people to have diabetes,” which puts them at higher risk from COVID-19; that’s the same brutality. Lack of decent food in communities of color, and access to healthcare, and the ability to rent enough space in shelter to physically distance—this is all brutality against a people, manifested today but going back 400 years.

When you are either out of work or on a hair trigger because you know you’re risking your life by going to work; when your business can’t get a bridge loan and you know everything you worked for is about to be extinguished; when you’re cut off from your friends and neighbors; when your source of sustenance is the food bank; when you have nothing to lose, and then on television you see a black man with his neck wedged between a police officer’s knee and the pavement until he chokes, and you hear he died in police custody after pleading “I can’t breathe,” and you remember how those words were spoken by Eric Garner, and you hear that the man was in custody for using counterfeit money and you don’t think that’s a sufficient reason to kill somebody, and you recall that the Minneapolis Police Department has had a really ugly history with the black community for a long time, and when you exhale a little because the cops involved were fired but then the local prosecutor says this murder of a black man doesn’t merit prosecution… what results from this injustice should meet your expectations.

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It boils down to: how big of a threat is China? Opinionsvary.

Trump Orders His Administration To Begin Eliminating Hong Kong Privileges (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was directing his administration to begin the process of eliminating special treatment for Hong Kong, in response to China’s plans to impose new security legislation in the territory. Trump made the announcement at a White House news conference, saying China had broken its word over Hong Kong’s autonomy. He said its move against Hong Kong was a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, China and the world. “We will take action to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment,” he said, adding that the United States would also impose sanctions on individuals seen as responsible for smothering Hong Kong’s autonomy.


Trump’s move follows Chinese plans to impose new national security legislation on the former British colony. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the territory no longer warrants special treatment under U.S. law that has enabled it to remain a global financial center. Trump said he was directing his administration to begin the process of eliminating policy agreements on Hong Kong, ranging from extradition treatment to export controls. He said he would also issue a proclamation on Friday to better safeguard vital university research by suspending the entry of foreign nationals from China identified as potential security risks.

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The WHO has failed/refused to reform the way Trump asked them to.

Trump Says US To Withdraw From WHO. Does He Have The Authority To Do It? (NPR)

President Trump has announced that he is immediately halting the decades-long U.S. membership in the World Health Organization over its response to China’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic. In a press briefing Friday at the White House, Trump said, “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs.” Trump said the decision came because WHO has “failed to make” reforms the U.S. requested. Last week, Trump sent a letter to WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, outlining his views on how the agency favors China and asking the organization to “commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days.”

It’s not clear what specific reforms the U.S. has requested, because those discussions have not been made public. Nor did Trump say why he acted on the threat after one week rather than waiting a month. The U.S. was a major force in founding WHO in 1948 and is the organization’s top funder, providing around $450 million a year, according to Trump. The level of funding the U.S. provides to WHO has been a sore spot for Trump, who complained at the briefing that the U.S. pays significantly more than China but does not wield more power in the agency. Global health experts said the president’s choice to leave the global health governing body during a pandemic is a dangerous call.

“This decision is really so short-sighted and ill-advised, and all it does is put American lives at risk,” said Dr. Howard Koh, former assistant secretary for health in the Obama administration and now a professor at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health. “I disagree with the president’s decision,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, in a statement after the announcement. “Withdrawing U.S. membership could, among other things, interfere with clinical trials that are essential to the development of vaccines, which citizens of the United States as well as others in the world need. And withdrawing could make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses before they get to the United States.”

It’s questionable whether the president can make a unilateral decision to withdraw from WHO. “It is an overreach of his constitutional powers,” said Larry Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. Gostin said he believes that the president may need congressional approval to terminate U.S. membership in the U.N. agency. “The only situation where he can do this is if Congress had agreed beforehand to give these powers to the president,” said Kelley Lee, a professor of public health at Simon Fraser University. “It is the role of legal advisers to inform the president on what authority he can exert. He is either not receiving good advice or not listening to it.”

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Thugs, huh?

Twitter Targets Trump Again, Flagging Tweet After Executive Order (SAC)

Twitter flagged and hid a tweet posted by President Donald Trump’s early Friday morning after the president signed an Executive Order challenging the growing political bias in tech companies, whose platforms are meant to be neutral. Trump’s tweet was in response to the growing unrest and rioting in Minnesota, in response to the horrific death of George Floyd while in police custody. Thursday night the situation in Minneapolis escalated again when rioters overran a police precinct, forcing police officers, who were told not to respond by city officials, to evacuate before it was burned to the ground.

Trump signed the Executive Order Thursday aimed at social media giants he says, have been operating as biased publishers rather than platforms for free speech. Trump tweeted that these “THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

The National Guard was sent to assist local authorities in containing the rioting. Earlier the president criticized the city’s mayor, who ordered the evacuation of the precinct saying, “the very weak radical left mayor Jacob Frey” if he didn’t bring the city under control. In response, Twitter flagged the President’s tweet and attached a notice saying “we have placed a public interest notice on this Tweet from @realDonaldTrump.” The tweet is actually hidden from public view but can be viewed if the reader so chooses to click on it. “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence,” said Twitter. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

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Consumer spending is way down. Therefore, savings must be way up? is that so?

Coronavirus Sinks US Consumer Spending As Savings Hit Record High (R.)

U.S. consumers cut spending by the most on record for the second straight month in April while boosting savings to an all-time high, and the growing frugality reinforced expectations the economy could take years to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report from the Commerce Department on Friday also showed an economy highly reliant on the government, with financial aid checks from a historic fiscal package worth nearly $3 trillion driving a record surge in personal income. Together with news that monthly exports collapsed, the report left economists anticipating the largest contraction in gross domestic product in the second quarter since the Great Depression. Data has also been dismal this month on the labor market, manufacturing production and homebuilding.

“Right now, the economy is totally dependent upon the largesse of the government,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics in Holland, Pennsylvania. “Will the federal government keep sending out checks or will the household and business welfare payments dry up?” The Commerce Department said consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, plunged 13.6% last month, the biggest drop since the government started tracking the series in 1959. It eclipsed the previous all-time decrease of 6.9% in March.

[..] Personal income surged a record 10.5% last month. Without the government money, income would have declined 6.3% with business closures pushing wages down 8.0%. The unprecedented economic upheaval saw the saving rate hitting a record 33%. “If the economy reopens quickly without consequence, the millions who lost jobs are hired back and have no reason to fear they will lose their jobs again, these savings represent considerable spending power in the second half,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FHN in New York. “If it takes longer to reopen the economy, these savings will be used for sustenance over the next few months. They will limit the decline, but not fuel a sharp rebound.”

[..] In a second report on Friday, the Commerce Department said goods exports tumbled 25.2% to $95.4 billion in April, a 10-year low. The broad decline in exports was led by a 65.9% collapse in shipments of motor vehicles and parts. That outpaced a 14.3% tumble in imports. As a result, the goods trade deficit widened 7.2% to 69.7 billion last month. The larger goods trade deficit is likely a drag on second GDP, which economists expect could drop at as much as a 40% rate, a pace not seen since the 1930s. The economy contracted at a 5.0% annualized rate last quarter, the deepest pace of decline in GDP since the 2007-09 recession. Consumer spending tumbled at a 6.8% rate, the sharpest drop since the second quarter of 1980.

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Everyone buys Amazon, consumers and investors.

Investors Eye Consumer Discretionary Stocks As US Reopens (R.)

Investors are taking a closer look at the market’s consumer discretionary companies as a reopening U.S. economy fuels hopes of a turnaround for some of the sector’s hardest-hit names. Many companies in the sector have been battered by the country-wide coronavirus-fueled lockdowns that have weighed on growth and damaged retail spending over the last several months, though the stocks of a few, like Amazon, have soared. A gradual lifting of lockdowns in some states has stirred hopes for a bounce back for the retailers that make up much of the sector.Some investors, however, say it may be months before consumers return to their previous shopping habits, making it unlikely that the companies will see a pickup in revenues in the near term.

Firms ranging from middle-income retailers such as Gap Iand American Eagle Outfitters to high-end destinations like Tiffany & Co and Vail Resorts Inc are expected to report results in the week ahead. “This particular group is full of landmines,” said Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group. “There is not going to be a lot of investor follow-through until we get some certainty with what future revenue prospects are going to be.” Shares of the Gap, for instance, are down 43% for the year to date. A recession that persists through the fourth quarter of this year would reduce the company’s revenues by 40%, according to a note by research firm Trefis.

Next Friday’s U.S. jobs report is expected to show that the unemployment rate rose to 19.8% in May, smashing April’s record 14.7%, according to a Reuters poll. Non-farm payrolls are expected to drop by 7.4 million, adding to the 20.5 million jobs lost the previous month. Cox is focusing on dominant players such as Amazon.com Inc, Walmart Inc and Target Corp, which have a mix of essential items such as groceries as well as electronics and games that can appeal to customers who may face extended lockdowns during a potential second wave of the virus. Overall, retail companies in the S&P 500 are up 12.9% for the year to date, a gain powered largely by Amazon’s 31% rally. Apparel companies, by comparison, are down 16.2% over the same time.

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Yanis doesn’t want separate countries, though they are likely the best format in a pandemic. No, he wants globalization, just not the one we know. How practical is that?

A Chronicle of a Lost Decade Foretold (Varoufakis )

To exorcise my worst fears about the coming decade, I chose to write a bleak chronicle of it. If, by December 2030, developments have invalidated it, I hope such dreary prognoses will have played a part by spurring us to appropriate action. Before our pandemic-induced lockdowns, politics seemed to be a game. Political parties behaved like sports teams having good or bad days, scoring points that propelled them up a league table that, at season’s end, determined who would form a government and then do next to nothing. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic stripped away the veneer of indifference to reveal the political reality: some people do have the power to tell the rest of us what to do. Lenin’s description of politics as “who does what to whom” seemed more apt than ever.

By June 2020, as lockdowns began to ease, left-wing optimism that the pandemic would revive state power on behalf of the powerless remained, leading friends to fantasize about a renaissance of the commons and a capacious definition of public goods. Margaret Thatcher, I would remind them, left the British state larger, more powerful, and more concentrated than she had found it. An authoritarian state was necessary to support markets controlled by corporations and banks. Those in authority have never hesitated to harness massive government intervention to the preservation of oligarchic power. Why should a pandemic change that? As a result of COVID-19, the grim reaper almost claimed both the British prime minister and the Prince of Wales, and even Hollywood’s nicest star. But it was the poorer and the browner that the reaper actually did claim. They were easy pickings.

[..] Just as cathedrals were the Middle Ages’ architectural legacy, the 2020s left us tall walls, electrified fences, and flocks of surveillance drones. The nation-state’s revival made the world less open, less prosperous, and less free precisely for those who had always found it hard to travel, to make ends meet, and to speak their minds. For the oligarchs and functionaries of Big Tech, Big Pharma, and other megafirms, who got on famously with the strongmen in authority, globalization proceeded apace.

The myth of the global village gave way to an equilibrium between great-power blocs, each sporting burgeoning militaries, separate supply chains, idiosyncratic autocracies, and class divisions reinforced by new forms of nativism. The new socioeconomic cleavages threw the prevailing features of each country’s politics into sharp relief. Like people who become caricatures of themselves in a crisis, whole countries focused on their collective illusions, exaggerating and cementing pre-existing prejudices.

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Your daily dose of anti-remdesivir.

Malaria Drug And Zinc, The Missing Link (Berry)

Mystery surrounds why an anti-malaria drug is not being tested as a Covid-19 treatment in combination with zinc, which doctors say is crucial for efficacy. As we reported recently, President Trump revealed he was taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) alongside zinc after reports that many doctors are doing the same to help ward off Covid-19. Criticism of the President rose sharply after a non-randomised study published in the Lancet said that HCQ provided no benefit to hospitalised Covid-19 patients while being linked to increased deaths. What the mainstream media did not point out is that the Lancet study failed to test HCQ with zinc. Other experts have found zinc to be vital for efficacy in this context.

Zinc, available as an over-the-counter supplement, has long been seen as an immune-system booster that helps develop immune cells, or antibodies, and can strengthen the body’s response to a virus. American infectious disease specialist Joseph Rahimian explained that, in relation to Covid-19, zinc ‘does the heavy lifting and is the primary substance attacking the pathogen’. HCQ is said to work as a delivery systemfor zinc in fighting coronavirus. Ironically, the Lancet study came out at the same time as it was reported that India’s premier health body had expanded use of HCQ as a preventive for key workers following three studies showing positive results.

[..] ..a study by the New York University Grossman School of Medicine published this month [..] found that those receiving the triple-drug combination (HCQ, with azithromycin and, crucially, zinc) ‘were 44 per cent less likely to die, compared with the double-drug combination (i.e. without zinc)’. As the study notes:‘This study provides the first in vivo evidence that zinc sulfate in combination with hydroxychloroquine may play a role in therapeutic management for Covid-19.’ The above makes the question of why zinc was not used in the Lancet study more baffling. And why don’t the media note that the combination of zinc and HCQ is crucial?

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This sounds quite confused. “5G = communism”? Where do we start?

Yeah, 5G should be researched much more before it’s lanuched. But how can it turn COVID19 into a scam?

Australian Anti-Vaxxers Label COVID19 a ‘Scam’ At Anti-5G Protests (AAP)

Hundreds of anti-vaccination protesters have defied social distancing measures at rallies in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. Protesters claiming the Covid-19 pandemic was a “scam” gathered at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne on Saturday, and carried signs declaring they were against vaccines and 5G technology. Their placards claimed “5G = communism”, “Covid 1984” and “our ignorance is their strength”. They booed police – clad in gloves and face masks – who warned the crowd that they were breaching social distancing rules designed to slow the spread of coronavirus. In a statement, police said those found in breach of Covid-19 directions faced fines of $1,652 each.


In Sydney, up to 500 protesters voiced conspiracy theories regarding not only vaccination but also 5G telecommunication networks, fluoride and large pharmaceutical corporations. The group convened at Hyde Park in the CBD before holding a singalong of anti-vaccination songs and walking to NSW Parliament House. They chanted “freedom of choice” and “my body, my choice” on the march, with some attempting to raise the spectre of a “new world order”. The walk passed without incident or police intervention. When asked about the protest, Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, said “there’s no message that can get through to people who have no belief in science”. “There’s probably no reaching them,” he earlier told reporters.

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Hey, you wanted a for-profit medical system.

States Are Copying & Pasting Immunity Laws For Nursing Home Execs (Sirota)

To date, 19 states have enacted some form of immunity for the hospital and nursing home industries during the pandemic. In general, these new policies shield nurses, doctors and other frontline health care workers from liability when they are treating COVID patients. However, New York, Massachusetts and North Carolina go further: unlike other states, the identical language added to their laws explicitly define health care providers as including “a health care facility administrator, executive, supervisor, board member, trustee” or other corporate managers. That exact word-for-word clause appears in emergency legislation in all three states. In practice, it extends immunity to corporate officials who are not on the medical frontlines, but who are making life-and-death decisions across their companies.


“The new measures granting immunity to health care providers and professionals go well beyond protecting front-line workers from lawsuits — many also provide immunity to administrators who make unreasonable and dangerous, even lethal, decisions,” said Syracuse University law professor Nina Kohn. “New York, Massachusetts, and North Carolina take protection for corporate owners and executives to a whole new level by explicitly granting immunity to board members, trustees, and directors.” “This is extraordinary protection which is in no way in the public interest,” Kohn said. “These states are explicitly and unabashedly giving for-profit corporations and corporate executives the green light to make unreasonable decisions that put vulnerable people in imminent danger, and letting them know that they don’t have to worry about being held legally accountable for the avoidable human damage that results.”

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Teaching the poor another lesson will always trump the pandemic.

De Blasio Ramps Up Destruction Of Homeless Encampments (Gothamist)

Trudi and Rickey Reppi live in a tent on a triangular stretch of sidewalk between three lanes of traffic by the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. The tent serves as a headquarters of sorts for a community of homeless people and panhandlers. Dave, Rob, Richard, Russia, and Seven all often sleep outside, some on mattresses or chairs, some on cardboard and bundled-up clothing. Others drop by frequently throughout the day, accepting packaged meals Trudi and Rickey had picked up from an aid organization (“Homeless people help each other way more than anyone in these hundred thousand dollar cars ever help us,” Trudi says) or fanning out, cardboard signs in hand, to ask passing drivers for money for hours on end.

The police arrive at about 9 a.m, flanked by outreach and Sanitation workers forming a team of around a dozen city employees. Trudi and Rickey wearily begin the weekly routine of taking down their tent, bundling up all the possessions they can carry, and leaving everything else on the side of the street for the Sanitation workers to throw away. For years, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has been sending joint teams of NYPD officers, Sanitation workers, and Department of Homeless Services staff to require that homeless people move from locations where they’ve set up shelter. The number of sweeps (also called “clean-ups”) per week has risen dramatically in the last six months, according to homeless people, advocates and case workers.

A DHS employee, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the team implementing the sweeps had increased last November from about 3 to about 40. The employee said that the clean-ups would be increasing to twice a week at most encampments; eventually, he suggested, homeless people would give in and accept shelter. Trudi says that she’s been subject to ten to fifteen sweeps in just the last three months. This count doesn’t include the nightly visits the NYPD has paid her in May, sending as many as nine police officers at 3 a.m. to demand that she take down her tent. “In my administration, we made a decision that from our point of view, it was unacceptable to have [a] single encampment anywhere in New York City and they had to be dismantled anytime they’re identified,” Mayor de Blasio said at a press conference earlier this month.

“And we’ve been doing that now for years and it’s really caused the encampments to become a rarity, but whenever we see a new one, we immediately take it down.” But the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has explicitly recommended against clearing encampments or displacing unsheltered homeless people during the pandemic. “If individual housing options are not available, allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are,” the guidelines read. “Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers. This increases the potential for infectious disease spread.”

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The Netflix series on Epstein brings her to our attention again.

Still No One Knows Where Ghislaine Maxwell Is (Esq.)

Though multiple survivors have alleged that Maxwell participated in Epstein’s alleged crimes, she’s never been criminally charged. One thing that could stymie potential efforts to level charges against Maxwell is the infamous 2008 plea deal that Epstein struck with the US Attorney for Miami, Alexander Acosta, which found him serving just 13 months in prison after initially facing charges that could have garnered him a life sentence. Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich producer Joe Berlinger described the deal to Esquire as “unprecedented, unheard of sweetheart deal” that “included a non-prosecution agreement for named and unnamed co-conspirators.”

In April, an appeals court upheld the 2007 deal, writing in its opinion that the decision was “not a result we like, but it’s the result we think the law requires.” Maxwell is currently suing Epstein’s estate for money for her legal fees, and for the price of private security, alleging that her “prior employment relationship” with Epstein has caused to her be subjected to death threats. Though once a fixture of the global high-society, Maxwell has been spotted rarely in recent years. Last summer, she was photographed at a Los Angeles In-N-Out Burger, though the authenticity of the photo has been disputed. Her New York townhouse was sold in 2016.

This month, it was reported that lawyers for accusers seeking to file a civil suit against Maxwell have been unable to locate her. According to ABC news, one alleged victim’s “legal team dispatched process servers to five addresses previously connected to Maxwell, including a multi-million dollar brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, an apartment building in Miami Beach and Epstein’s mansion on Palm Beach Island.” Maxwell is also contending with other civil lawsuits filed by alleged survivors. Just this month, she won the right to delay her questioning in a suit filed by Annie Farmer, the sister of fellow Epstein accuser Maria Farmer, on the grounds that her testimony could be used against her in a current criminal investigation. But with the FBI allegedly investigating Maxwell, her story could be far from over.

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Mar 202019
 


Johannes Vermeer The lacemaker 1669-71

 

You could probably say I’m sympathetic to the schoolchildren protesting against climate change, and I’m sympathetic to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her call for a Green New Deal. Young people are the future, and they deserve a voice about that future. At the same time, I’m also deeply skeptical about their understanding of the issues they talk about.

In fact, I don’t see much understanding at all. I think that’s because they base their comprehension of the world they’ve been born into on information provided by the very people they’re now protesting against. Look kids, your education system sucks, it was designed by those destroying your planet, you need to shake it off and get something better.

But I know what you will do instead: you’re going to get the ‘proper’ education to get a nice-paying job, with a nice car (green, of course) and a nice house etc etc. In other words, you will, at least most of you, be the problem, not solve it. And no shift towards wind or solar will make one iota of difference in that. Want to improve the world? Improve the education system first.

 

Climate change is just one of an entire array of problems the world faces, and in the same way the use of fossil fuels is just one of many causes of these problems. And focusing on only one aspect of a much broader challenge simply doesn’t appear to be a wise approach, if only because you risk exacerbating some problems while trying to fix others.

In order to fix what’s broken, you’re first going to have to find out what broke it. The impression I get is that fossil fuels have been named the designated culprit, and people think that if only we have access to some other form(s) of energy we’ll be fine. But species extinction appears to be at least as large an issue as climate change, and the loss of 60% of all vertebrates, and 90% of flying insects in some places, since 1970 is linked to climate change only sideways.

 

 

It’s one thing to run into problems you could not have foreseen. It’s quite another to run into them because you elected to ignore readily available knowledge. But it’s the latter issue that’s behind by far most of the problems we’re running into. Because, again, our education system is broken.

And perhaps we should try to be forgiving when well-meaning children and young politicians don’t have a full grasp of political and economic issues heaped upon them by older generations. But physics? That you can only and always ignore at your own peril.

The First Law of Thermodynamics says energy cannot be created or destroyed; the total quantity of energy in the universe stays the same. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the use of energy produces waste (because entropy tends to increase). Neither law talks about fossil fuels.

This brings me once more to one of my favorite quotes of all time (because it explains so much):

“Erwin Schrodinger (1945) has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment – that is, by exchanging high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same statement would hold verbatium as a physical description of our economic process. A corollary of this statement is that an organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products.”
– Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend

And unfortunately, as I’ve said before in Mass Extinction and Mass Insanity:

What drives our economies is waste. Not need, or even demand. Waste. 2nd law of thermodynamics. It drives our lives, period.

Not only do we produce waste with every calorie of energy we burn, our economic systems depend on us burning as much as we can. We ‘optimized’ them for it. Energy efficiency is the enemy of our economies. We transport ourselves in vehicles that are 20 times our own weight, and that use only 10% of the fuel we put in them for the purpose of transporting us. That’s what keep the economic engine going. It’s also what destroys the planet.

 

There’s probably no moment of deeper despair for the world than when I see a Swedish schoolgirl and a Dutch historian pop up at Davos to tell the billionaires and power hungry ‘the truth’. Davos is the last place to be when you have good intentions. All those people owe their money and power to the system you say you’re protesting. You think they’re going to give it up, or even risk it?

What those people will tell you, and what many of you are already parroting (check the Green New Deal), is that ‘going green’ will be a very profitable undertaking. Get the best of both worlds and eat it too. Tempting, for sure, but also incredibly stupid.

I covered that before as well in Heal the Planet for Profit, in which I cited an article by Michael Bloomberg and Mark Carney literally called How To Make A Profit From Defeating Climate Change.

That epitomizes the Davos crowd. Stay away from that. There’s nothing for you there. They just want you to be inefficient in the use of another form of energy, only more this time. “We’re going to use a huge sh*tload of fossil fuels to build an infrastructure that allows us to use less fossil fuels.” Darn, that makes a lot of sense. “We’re saved!”.

See, saving the planet, and all the species we’re eradicating as we speak, will at the very least require an enormous decline in energy use. Because that’s the only way to reduce waste production. But that in turn will mean a huge hit to the current economic system, which cannot continue without the principle of maximizing waste production that it’s based on.

There appears to be a principle in nature that says when you hand a species an X amount of ‘free’ energy, that species will burn through it as fast as it can. Perhaps that’s simply a move towards equilibrium. The species will maximize energy use per individual, and proliferate, create more individuals, it’s a very predictable process, from bacteria in a petri-dish to the human species.

So maybe it cannot be helped, or stopped. But you can try. It’s just that, if you want to do that, you’re not going to achieve it by insulting your own, and my, intelligence through the complete disregard for the laws of physics, the most reliable gauges we have when it comes to understanding our world and the impact we have on it.

That goes for the schoolchildren, and it goes for Ocasio-Cortez and other Green New Deal proponents too: ask yourself what physics says about it. Ask yourself what will happen to the economy. Never presume it will be easy or even profitable. You’re not going to save the planet for profit; you’ll have to find a different incentive.

And get educated. But forget about universities, they’re one of the leading drivers behind the mess you find yourselves in.

 

 

 

 

Jan 142019
 
 January 14, 2019  Posted by at 7:41 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer The soldier and the laughing girl 1657

 

There will be elections for the European Parliament on May 23-26 2019. They will likely change the face of Europe more than anything has done since the EU was founded. That is not some wild prediction. Many European countries have held elections since the last European elections in 2014, and just about all had outcomes that shook up domestic political ratios.

In most cases, countries went from traditional parties to newly founded ones. France erased the Socialists and center-right in 2017, and the final round of the presidential elections was between Marine Le Pen’s Front National and Emmanuel Macron’s brand-new En Marche. Macron won sort of by default, because France as a country would never have voted for Le Pen.

In Italy, M5S and Lega have taken over. In Germany, Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition lost bigly though it remained the biggest party, but Angela lost her ‘socialist’ SPD partner which gave up so much it didn’t want to be in government anymore. In Spain, Mariano Rajoy’s center right lost enough to cede power to the Socialists who came up tops because they played a smart game, not because the Spanish wanted it to rule.

We don’t have to go through all 27/28 different countries to establish that there are almost tectonic shifts happening all over, away from traditional parties and towards whoever showed up without insanely extreme views. And if you think this move is now completed, you may want to think again.

It’s amusing to realize that the country with the biggest political shift, the UK, is the only one that still hangs on to its traditional parties, and seeks its protest voice in a different way, namely through Brexit. That is, Britain shows it can get no satisfaction from the EU, whereas in the other major EU nations the dissatisfaction is projected onto domestic parties.

The underlying thought is the same: people are fed up with incumbent politicians and their affiliation with the European project. And nobody in Brussels really appears to be willing to realize this: the only thing they talk about is more Europe. But all these changes will now be reflected in the power politics of the European parliament.

And they do know that. They just hope they can limit the damage through the model in which power is divided in Europe. And to get any of that power, national parties need to find partners from other countries to form European parties (blocks) with. You need parties from at least 7 other nations to run for the European Parliament.

 

There are really only two parties in that parliament that really matter: the center right European People’s Party (EPP) which has 217 MEPs (members of European Parliament), and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats (S&D) which has 190 MEPs. Then there are the European Conservatives and Reformists – 74 MEPs, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) – 70 MEPs, the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE) – 52 MEPs, and the European Greens/European Free Alliance – 50 MEPs.

These numbers, like the national ones, are set to change, a lot. How exactly is hard to predict, because it’s not clear which block which -relatively- new party will be part of. But it’s not a wild guess to think that at the end of May the division of powers will not be left vs right (both of which are pretty much fake anyway), but pro-EU and anti-EU. Or rather, More Europe vs Less Europe.

Germany’s up-and-coming real right-wing AfD at their conference this weekend voted in a resolution that calls for getting rid of the European Parliament itself, calling it undemocratic, and claiming the “competence to make laws is exclusively for nation states.” Similar sentiments play out in Italy, Poland, Hungary and many other member states.

Given the changes in vote ratios mentioned before, it’s hard to see the More Europe model survive the elections. But that of course doesn’t keep the main parties (blocks) from running outspoken pro-Europe candidates to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as head chief after the elections. The EPP has German Europe stalwart Manfred Weber as ‘Spitzenkandidat’, the so-called Socialists/Democrats have Dutch Frans Timmermans, Juncker’s right-hand man.

They think they will be able to continue business as usual, and accumulate more power and sovereignty in the process, while support for the EU crumbles more by the day. But that’s all in the far far future, that is a whole 4 months away. And who knows what Europe will look like by then? Brussels sure doesn’t seem to know, or want to.

 

In Germany, the entire political system will have to reinvent itself after Merkel. And as said before, with an entire new look as far as vote numbers go. Far right and the Greens are on their way to becoming new power blocks, the Christian center right CDU/CSU and the formerly left SPD are on their way to much less support.

This is a pattern that plays out all over Europe, but what happens in Germany is, because of the way the EU is set up, crucial for all EU member states. Nothing happens in Europe without approval from Berlin. And what will the other 26 remaining members do when that level of power moves towards the AfD?

Of even more immediate concern may be Germany’s economic performance. Because the latest signs are not encouraging. Germany and Holland have done very well, but that is because they have all the others as their ‘domestic’ market. And now not even that turns out to be enough. Germany’s numbers are going down fast:

 

 

Then again, for now, worries about Germany will be trumped by those about France and Britain. The numbers of Yellow Vests in the streets of France was much larger again the past weekend than the last few ones. Macron keeps on making ever bigger mistakes. This Saturday, his riot police was filmed carrying semi-automatic weapons with live ammo. As he claimed that many of his people want to get things without making any effort.

Macron all along has tried to drive a wedge between the protesters and the people. But a large majority of the people support the protests, even if they don’t don a yellow vest. Still, Paris claims that the protesters are not the Republic, and they’re trying to overthrow democracy. When the Yellow vests approached government buildings last weekend, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux fled, saying: “It wasn’t me who was attacked, it was the Republic.” Ergo: Not the people are the Republic, the government is. That should sell well.

For a very large number of French this sounds like they are not actually considered French by their own government. And now Macron insists on holding a national debate, in which everyone can have their say, but at the same time he insists he will not change his policies, which are what the Yellow Vests are protesting in the first place.

What they see is that Little Napoleon hasn’t hardly appeared in public for a very long time (big no-no!), but he does try to dictate to them what democracy is, and then in the same breath that they only have the choices he gives them. Protests are only allowed if the government gives permission, Paris proclaims.

Macron has cancelled his spot in the upcoming Davos spectacle for the wealthy and powerful, and I bet you the thought has crossed his mind that if he went he wouldn’t be allowed back in to his country. Not decisive, but that thought surely counts. He’s seen the whole Let Them Eat Cake scenario play out in his mind’s eye. Before putting his hand over his heart while looking in the mirror.

Macron does everything wrong than he can. And in that France has a lot in common with our for now last topic, subject, victim, take your pick, the UK.

 

Tomorrow Theresa May is going to lose another vote, and even if she doesn’t, chaos is still guaranteed. Both the Leave and the Remain camps, opposites as they are, are divided into countless other camps, and there is no way there will ever be an agreement. You’d have a hard time finding even just two people who think Brexit means the same, let alone millions.

I wrote earlier today I wondered how come Britain is so quiet in the face of that, with the Yellow Vests example just a few miles away. And I really don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow. The EU has hinted Brexit may not happen until the summer, not on March 29. But that’s the EU, and that’s what the Brexit vote was meant to move away from, not let them dictate even more.

Theresa May basically sat on her hands for two years, and wanted to do the work in 6 months, but that was always going to be a pipedream. The UK, in 40-odd years of EU membership, signed up to thousands of pieces of legislation, which contain hundreds of thousands of pages of legalese. All that must be checked, if need be changed, negotiated about, voted on, etc.

Not something anyone can do in half a year, and that has nothing to do with liking the EU or not. May has held her country hostage for the entire time she’s been PM, and she does that even more now, as she’s saying it’s either her deal or no Brexit at all. She’s decided No Deal is not an option. Which may be wise in view of all those documents, but who is she to decide eth entire nation future for decades to come? She wasn’t even elected as PM.

We’ll know more tomorrow after that Parliament vote, which May will lose. Or will we? If Brussels accepts a major delay in Brexit, chances are May will stay in office, and we’ll have 4-5-6 more months of the same road to nowhere. Second referendum, general election? Poisoned chalices all of them.

Even if May wins the vote Tuesday, because she’s scared a sufficient number of MPs into a catatonic state, nothing will change either. All possible outcomes are guaranteed to have a large group of people standing against them. All options will create the appearance of a small group of people dictating life-changing events for everyone else.

Where are the British Yellow Vests? The mayor of Poland’s second-biggest city, Gdansk, was stabbed to death in public on a stage where he held a speech, Is that where we’re going?

And lest we forget, what happens in Europe is not very different from what happens in the US; things merely play out slightly differently in different locations. In the US, as in the UK, there are no whole new parties taking over, no AfD and Macron and Yellow Vests and Salvini, but there is Trump and Brexit.

The common denominator is people’s anger with the economic models that leave them scrambling to make do, all the while seeing their lives being taken away from them bit by bit while whoever’s in power keeps bankers and other rich folk contented.

It’s not much use seeing all this as separate incidents or developments. It’s a big wave that will reshape the world as we know it. Let Them Eat Cake has gone global, and there’s not nearly enough cake to go round.

 

 

Apr 282018
 
 April 28, 2018  Posted by at 12:20 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  14 Responses »


Alberto Giacometti Tête Noire 1957

 

Trump Can Come. But Let Him Know Britain Won’t Stand For His Bigotry, is the headline of an article for the Guardian by Owen Jones. It’s just one of many articles, and one of many ways, I could use to point out what’s wrong in our world. In a TV appearance on ITV he apparently added:

“At the end of the day, if he comes – no one is saying he should be barred from the country by legal means – we’re saying we will take to the streets and say we reject racism, bigotry and will stand for the values most people in this country believe in.” Jones went on to insist “most” of the United Kingdom are against President Trump so it was in the country’s best interest to stand up for their beliefs.

That got him a lot of flack from right wing viewers, who see him as ‘far left’. But it doesn’t matter if he’s left or right, he’s just terribly wrong. Because his own country, Britain, is as we speak exposing itself ever more as the racism and bigotry capital of the world. Who then are Britons to protest perceived racism and bigotry in someone who’s not British?

Jones should focus on cleaning up his own pig sty before speaking out about Trump, because if he doesn’t, he himself is a bigot. As are all his fellow countrymen and women who are planning to protest with him on Friday July 13 when Trump visits. You really think you don’t have enough to do at home? Or are you just trying to divert attention away from that?

 

I don’t want to read Jones’s article, because I already know what’s in it. Jones is part of the echo chamber that feeds off itself on a 24/7 basis with every word Trump speaks and every move he makes. Why read any of it anymore? The problem of course is that the chamber has made any and all constructive discussion impossible about all things Trump that badly do need such discussion.

And not only do they increasingly lose the fake discussion they try to energize all the time, they are giving birth to a whole new development that expresses a deep fatigue with the echo chamber and its machinery. Not based on left vs right, but on echoes vs thinking.

We find that the Democrats routinely rig their own primaries, and Nancy Pelosi isn’t even trying to deny it. Upcoming lawsuits, discovery and investigations will reveal ever more not-so-fine details about the Dems. And then they will end up in the same position as Owen Jones: clean up after your own pigs first, and then perhaps you can speak.

 

So what do we -predictably- get on the heels of this? We get people who are ‘supposed’ to be in the echo chamber, but escape from it. Too deafening, too blinding to think for one’s own. We get Candace Owens and Kanye West, who only have to cast a sliver of doubt on their supposed roles of “every black person must vote for Hillary, and denounce Trump”. Or else.

We get writers like Caitlin Johnstone and Jim Kunstler, themselves miles removed from anything right-wing, expressing the hope they derive from Kanye et al. Simply because what he says doesn’t emanate from the NYT-WaPo-CNN cacophony. People who like me would much rather address where Trump goes wrong, but find that as soon as they do, their words are sucked up by, and lost within, that same cacophony.

Which has monopolized the discussion, and thereby made it impossible. There is no space for our voices, no space for nuance, no space for questions. They’ll come after Kanye with all they got, but they must be careful. If the Dems lose the black vote, they’re done and toast, and going after Kanye will look a lot like going after all blacks. They can try and channel Obama, but would he dare go after Kanye?

Whose message, in no more than few handfuls of words, is simple: love conquers all. Or in old Jamaican: Live it Up and Love it Up. How do you credibly attack that? Even if he uses those words to support Trump? It won’t be easy. And then they will see more prominent black voices sound sympathetic to Kanye, and thereby to Trump. Ain’t life a bitch?

Caitlin Johnstone really got stung by the happy fever:

 

Happy New Universe Day

Could something big be in the works? Something which transcends all our little echo chamber walls and ideological boundaries, which comes not from the repetitive thought loops in our minds but from our deep evolutionary drive to survive? I hope so. And call me naive and deluded if you like, but right now I’m seeing plenty of reasons to hope.

 

And Kunstler is not that far behind:

 

Counter-#Resistance?

Speaking as a white cis-hetero mammal, I’m not quite as dazzled by the president, but it’s a relief to see, at last, some small rebellion against the American Stasi who have turned the public arena into a giant holding pen for identity offenders — though it is but one corner of the triad-of-hysteria that also includes the Hate Russia campaign and the crusade against men.

This nonsense has been going on long enough, while the country hurtles heedlessly into a long emergency of economic disarray. Next in line after Kanye and Candace, a popular Twitter critter name of Chance the Rapper endorsed Kanye endorsing Candace, more or less, by tweeting “black people don’t have to be Democrats.”

[..] Of course, the whole Kanye / Candace dust-up may be forgotten by the middle of next week, and the country can go back to gaslighting itself into either a new civil war or world war three. Candace seems to have drive, guts, and stamina and there’s no sign that she’s going to shut up. Won’t some Ivy League university please invite her to speak, just to see what happens?

 

That’s right, resistance against the resistance, and not from some right-wing bunch of nuts. But from people who are fed up with being told what to think and do and write. Kanye and Candace have now become the voices for everyone who’s not completely deaf yet. And it’s in the nick of time.

Did Trump start WWIII? No, the US bombed a few sheds in the desert. Did Trump bring Kim and Moon around the table? He certainly played a major role in that. Should he get a Nobel Peace Prize for that? Hell, why not, they gave one to Henry Kissinger, and Barack Obama. So why not Trump and Xi and Kim Jong-Un?

A new world, a new universe even? Do we need those? But it won’t be “forgotten by the middle of next week” either. There are far too many people who don’t want any steenking echo chamber to tell them what to think anymore. Who see them for the pig sties they are, trampling in their own filth.

 

For Britain to hit the streets to protest Trump’s alleged bigotry, racism, misogyny is so completely nuts it’s hard to find what to say, in view of their own government’s treatment of their own fellow citizens, let alone ‘foreigners’ like the Yemeni’s bombed to shreds with weaponry that same government sells to Saudi Arabia.

If you live in that kind of climate and you think protesting Trump is the thing to do, you probably deserve the government you got. But yes, Britain has a long history of longing to be held superior to other people(s), and the more than longing is shattered, the more they seem to want it. The US is not much different, if at all. The French suffer from it too. A superiority complex born of fear.

That’s what a ‘journalist’ like Owen Jones should be writing about. About how his own people can solve their own problems. Until then, not another word about Trump.

As for America? They have Kanye and Candace and Scott Adams now. That should suffice to help them along on the path to smashing up the echo chambers that cause so much physical and mental damage. Think for yourself. Don’t let a newspaper or TV channel think for you.

As for Trump, you can’t read or watch any story that’s negative about him anymore and think it has credibility. And they did that to themselves, the overpaid NYT/CNN/MSNBC crews. They didn’t need any help.

Meanwhile, all politicians on all sides in both the UK and US are the very people you should least want in their positions. It’s what our political systems determine: sh*t floats to the top. And until we separate politics from money altogether, that’s not going to change.

I’ve always steered clear of that whole Kardashian clan, they make me shiver, and all they stand for. But wouldn’t it be simple logic for them to wind up in the White House? First a game-show host, then a Facebook family? When it comes to that, Britain is far behind.

 

 

Jan 242017
 
 January 24, 2017  Posted by at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Jack Delano Cars being precooled at the ice plant, San Bernardino, CA 1943

UK Supreme Court Rules Parliament Must Have Vote On Triggering Article 50 (G.)
Global Markets Turn Back On Euro As Economic Woes Reinforce Dollar (Tel.)
Trump Withdraws From TPP Amid Flurry Of Orders (G.)
Beppe Grillo Agrees With ‘Moderate’ Trump, Blasts EU ‘Total Failure’ (Exp.)
Trump is the start of Global Regime Change (Artemis)
Protest In The Era Of Trump (Krieger)
The White House Can’t Easily Repair Its Relationship With The Media (Atl.)
Congressman Introduces Bill To Withdraw The US From The United Nations (MU)
He Is Risen… But For How Long? (Jim Kunstler)
Fed Debate Over $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet Looms In 2017 (BBG)
Greek Island Mayors Ask PM To Transfer Refugees To Mainland (Kath.)
Thousands Of Refugee Children Sleeping Rough In Sub-Zero Serbia (G.)

 

 

A country well on its way to irrelevance.

UK Supreme Court Rules Parliament Must Have Vote On Triggering Article 50 (G.)

Parliament’s approval is needed before the government can trigger article 50 and formally initiate the UK’s departure from the European Union, the supreme court has ruled. The government’s executive powers, inherited through the royal prerogative, are not sufficient to uproot citizens’ rights gained through parliamentary legislation such as the 1972 European Communities Act, the justices have declared. The justices ruled against the government by a majority of eight to three. The eagerly awaited decision by the largest panel of judges ever assembled in Britain’s highest court routes the protracted Brexit process through parliament, handing over to MPs and peers the authority to sanction the UK’s withdrawal. A summary of the decision, which has far-reaching constitutional implications, was delivered by the president of the supreme court, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury.

Read more …

So much for the overvalued dollar.

Global Markets Turn Back On Euro As Economic Woes Reinforce Dollar (Tel.)

Banks are using the euro less and less in international transactions, with financiers preferring to use dollars – indicating the euro’s declining importance in the global economy. Economists believe sustained political risk in the eurozone, fears that the currency area could fall apart, and the continuing hangover from the sovereign debt crisis have all contributed to the currency’s relative decline. Figures from the Bank of International Settlements show that the euro is being used less in international banking, while the US dollar continues to grow in importance. At the end of September, the BIS figures show, outstanding cross-border business in US dollars amounted to $13.9 trillion (£11.1 trillion), a rise of almost $60bn over previous three months.

By contrast, outstanding cross-border claims in euros fell by almost $160bn to a total of $8.1 trillion. Overall claims globally amount to $28.2 trillion, meaning the US dollar accounts for almost 50pc of the total. The euro is next with 29pc, while the yen is in third place – its $1.7 trillion of claims is 6pc of the total. Sterling is fourth at $1.3 trillion, or a 5pc share. By contrast, in 2012, the euro was a bigger player, with around $11 trillion of cross-border claims, but has faded sharply since then. Around half of the decline in recent years is due to the euro’s fall in value relative to the dollar, making the euro transactions appear smaller when they are compared in a common currency. But the other half is made up in large part by the eurozone’s own problems.

The most fundamental is the fear that the currency area will be stuck in permanent low growth, making investments risky. With the rise of anti-EU politicians such as Marine Le Pen in France there is also the worry that, in extreme circumstances, the euro could break up. “Partly as a result of the sovereign debt crisis, we know from investors outside Europe that they have a lot of question marks about the viability of the eurozone,” said David Owen, chief European economist at Jefferies. He was joined by Alastair Winter at Daniel Stewart, who said: “It may not be politically correct but there is a case that the euro may not survive much beyond this year. The dollar is popular because it offers a standard for value, a bit like the old gold standard. All of the other major currencies present problems.”

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Why not so the same with TISA etc. at the same time?

Trump Withdraws From TPP Amid Flurry Of Orders (G.)

Donald Trump has begun his effort to dismantle Barack Obama’s legacy, formally scrapping a flagship trade deal with 11 countries in the Pacific rim. The new president also signed executive orders to ban funding for international groups that provide abortions, and placing a hiring freeze on non-military federal workers. Trump’s decision not to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) came as little surprise. During his election campaign he railed against international trade deals, blaming them for job losses and focusing anger in the industrial heartland. Obama had argued that this deal would provide an effective counterweight to China in the region. “Everyone knows what that means, right?” Trump said at Monday’s signing ceremony in the White House. “We’ve been talking about this for a long time. It’s a great thing for the American worker.”

The TPP was never ratified by the Republican-controlled Congress, but several Asian leaders had invested substantial political capital in it. Their countries represent roughly 13.5% of the global economy, according to the World Bank. Trump’s election opponent, the Democrat Hillary Clinton, had also spoken out against the TPP. The move also intensified speculation over the future of the 17-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). There were reports that Trump would sign an executive order on Monday to begin renegotiating terms with Canada and Mexico. He did move to reinstate a ban on providing federal money to international non-government organizations that perform abortions or provide information about them. The policy also prohibits taxpayer funding for groups that lobby to legalize abortion or promote it as a family planning method.

Republican administrations have tended to institute such a ban while Democrats have reversed it, most recently President Obama in 2009. Trump signed it one day after the anniversary of the supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion in the US. Activists fear that the precedent is now under threat. The administration was criticized after footage appeared to show only one woman in the room as this executive order, along with the other two, were signed. Only four of Trump’s cabinet picks are women.

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Beppe knows the importance for Italy of ‘protectionism’. It’s the only way to keep Italian (small) business alive.

Beppe Grillo Agrees With ‘Moderate’ Trump, Blasts EU ‘Total Failure’ (Exp.)

Italy’s populist Five Star Movement leader Beppe Grillo has welcomed Donald Trump’s extraordinary rise to power and dismissed the European Union (EU) as a total failure. Mr Grillo described the controversial new US President as a “moderate whose image has been distorted”. He declared he was “very optimistic” about the Trump presidency which he said would reignite the US economy and stop it from playing world police enforcer. In an interview with French magazine Journal du Dimanche, the former stand-up comic expressed his fundamental agreement with Mr Trump’s populist presidential platform. He said: “I read one of his books in which he says some really sensible things on the need, for example, to bring economic activity back to the United States.

“He said what he had to say about Chinese protectionism as well.” Mr Grillo said Mr Trump would use fiscal policy to entice large companies to keep their business in the US instead of taking it south of the border to Mexico and that he would also “relaunch small and medium enterprises”. He said: “Mr Trump will also recall the US Army stationed at the four corners of the world and I agree with all this.” The Italian nationalist accused the media of twisting the “moderate message” of Mr Trump who then “simply adapted to what was being said about him”. He said: “We consequently have a deformed perception of him.” Looking closer to home, M Grillo described the EU as “a total failure” that needed to be re-imagined.

He said: “It is an enormous apparatus, with two parliaments, in Brussels and Strasbourg, to please the French. “Europe was born with Jean Monnet but then was progressively transformed. “I liked the word ‘community’ but then it was called union for the currency, which was to be common and not unique.” He continued: “I am in favour of a different Europe, where each state can adopt its fiscal and monetary system. “I want the Eurobond, a 20% devalued euro for southern European countries, protecting our products against those arriving from abroad, and a revision of the 3% deficit budgetary rule. “I no longer feel the spirit of Europe.”

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From a much longer article on volatility trading.

Trump is the start of Global Regime Change (Artemis)

Trump is the first “populist” US president since Andrew Jackson in 1829 and takes office with a mandate to reverse the course of globalization. Denial is not a strategy and it’s time to face the reality that is coming… the good, the bad, and the ugly. First off, stop underestimating this man – you don’t become leader of the free world through stupidity and luck. The rants and twitter storms are part of a strategy of media control and distraction. Trump knows that if you can’t win, then you change the rules of the game – this is what he has already done with American politics – and what he is about to do to the entire Post-Bretton Woods World Order. If you really want to know a person, watch what they do, and not what they say… or what they tweet. Trump’s business career was largely comprised of three core strategies 1) Leverage 2) Restructure 3) Brand… in that order.

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s Trump rode a generational decline in interest rates and debt binge to purchase a range of high profile real estate projects including the Grand Hyatt (1978). Trump Tower (1983), the Plaza Hotel (1988) and the Taj Mahal (1988). In the 1990s he went through a total of 6 bankruptcies due to over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York. In the 2000s he pivoted to move away from debt-driven property investments to building a global brand through the “Apprentice” TV show. Trump will run the country as he ran his businesses…. He will lever, and lever, and lever, and lever… and lever… and then restructure his way to success, or whatever success is defined as by the broadest measure of popularity at any given time. Trumponomics, if it delivers, will be a supply side free for all: massive tax cuts, deficit spending to create jobs, financial and energy deregulation, business creation, and trade protectionism all driving inflation.

More importantly, Trump sees bankruptcy as a tool and not an obligation and will have no problem pushing the US to the limits of debt expansion. “I do play with bankruptcy laws, they’re very good to me!” he once said. Trump may be willing to bring the US to the brink of default if it produces middle class jobs and popularity, and what he understands is that nobody can stop him, not Europe, not China. In a Trump mindset, the US national debt and deficits, or prior commitments (e.g. NATO), are not to be taken seriously as long as we hold all the cards… namely the biggest military in the world, energy independence, world reserve currency, and the world’s largest buyer of consumer goods. He is dangerously right, these geo-political solvency tools are far more powerful than the bankruptcy laws he used to protect his casino assets… the US is just another, bigger, badder, more bankrupt casino with air craft carriers.

The media doesn’t seem to understand that Trump’s overtures to Russia and Taiwan are not diplomatic gaffes but rather forms of economic leverage. He is reminding Europe that NATO is nothing without the US, and reminding China that creditor nations lose trade wars. As a negotiating tactic, it may work … or may drive the world to a hot war… or both. Like it or not – the old rules are gone. Diplomacy has been replaced by Twitter, and the unexpected is now to be expected. Trump’s world is a zero-sum game – and this means a shock doctrine of US centric re-positioning in trade in a dramatic change from the post-World War II order. The US has the largest military, the best geography, best technology innovation, the largest economy, best demographics in the developed world, and shale-driven energy independence to boot.

Read more …

A discussion that makes a lot of sense. What is being protested? If this is unclear, isn’t that perhaps counterproductive? Can you effectively protest some of Trump’s measures after having demonized him in a wide and general fashion for a long time? Shouldn’t there be millions in the streets right NOW to protest the medieval Golden Gag Rule? Where are they?

Protest In The Era Of Trump (Krieger)

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.

[..] I’d say the most common sign seems to have been some derivative of “Women’s Rights = Human Rights.” I unquestionably agree with this statement, which begs the question, who doesn’t? Well many of the barbaric, feudalist monarchies in the Middle East for starters. Saudi Arabia being a prime example, a place where women are not permitted to drive. Fortunately for them, their money is still green and the Clinton Foundation took plenty of it (between $10 million and $25 million to be exact). Democrats protested that by rigging the primary for her. I didn’t personally attend any of the protests, so I asked my followers on Twitter who did attend to reach out to me and tell me about what they saw. I received lengthy responses from three people. One was a Gary Johnson voter, one a Hillary voter and one didn’t vote at all.

They all pretty much confirmed what you could deduct from the signs. It was a message of “women power,” seemingly focused on women’s rights, specifically abortion and contraception. This brings me to another observation, which will serve as a segue to the final thrust of this article. It appears the emotional driver of the protest was two fold — a serious concern that certain women’s rights will be rolled back, and a form of catharsis for people still reeling from the election loss. This is interesting, because the focal point appears to be not just driven by identify politics, but on preserving already existing rights. Ok, fine, but what about all the ills currently at play? The destruction of the middle class, the surveillance state, the fact that Wall Street owns every single administration no matter who wins. What about the wars and the rapidly metastasizing military-industrial-intelligence complex.

These are things that are currently happening, and have been getting worse under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Does it make sense for all this energy to be focused on a potential threat, as opposed to all of the many ongoing unethical, destructive aspects of American life in 2017? Which brings us to the most important point of this entire article. I don’t want to be too judgmental here. While much of the messaging from the Women’s March seems to have been pretty unserious and divorced from the reality of the many serious issues plaguing the nation, I want to see a silver lining here. I think there’s little doubt that Trump’s election resulted in a certain percentage of the population finally waking up to how much trouble this country is in.

The problem is that many of these people see Trump as the problem to be eliminated, as opposed to the symptom of a sick, destructive society that he actually is. This is where the entire “resistance” can be easily co-opted by the DNC and the rapidly emerging neocon/neoliberal alliance rooted in identity politics, which poses no actual threat to the people actually in power. In this sense, all of this potentially productive energy could tragically be redirected into simply bringing back the same Democratic types that were forcefully rejected during the 2016 election.

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The Trump White House couldn’t care less. “The Media” means the Old Media, and they get that.

The White House Can’t Easily Repair Its Relationship With The Media (Atl.)

After harshly condemning the media over the weekend for its coverage of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer struck a less combative tone during a press conference on Monday. But he nevertheless continued to argue that the media is trying to undermine the president, and stood by a debunked statement that the inauguration drew the “largest audience” of all time. “I believe we have to be honest with the American people,” Spicer said at the briefing, responding to a reporter’s question about his commitment to truth-telling. He added: “I’m going to come out here and tell you the facts as I know them, and if we make a mistake I’ll do our best to correct it.”

Later, however, he lamented that there is a “constant theme to undercut the enormous support” he said Trump has. “There’s an overall frustration when you turn on the television over and over again and get told that there’s this narrative.” The press secretary’s pledge to tell the truth may indicate that the administration hopes to improve its relationship with the media, or at least the appearance of it, following criticism and mockery of Spicer’s hostile interaction with reporters over the weekend. At the same time, his insistence that the media treats Trump with a double standard, and his complaints that the media has created an anti-Trump narrative, highlights how difficult it will be to repair the relationship between the administration and the media.

Read more …

Shake the cage.

Congressman Introduces Bill To Withdraw The US From The United Nations (MU)

A new bill has been introduced which would allow the United States to withdraw from the United Nations, and is now beginning to turns heads.

Representative Mike Rogers from Alabama introduced H.R. 193 American Sovereignty Act of 2017 in early January but is just now getting media exposure. The full bill can be seen here on congress.gov. The bill requires: (1) the President to terminate U.S. membership in the United Nations (U.N.), including any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body; and (2) closure of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

The bill prohibits: (1) the authorization of funds for the U.S. assessed or voluntary contribution to the U.N., (2) the authorization of funds for any U.S. contribution to any U.N. military or peacekeeping operation, (3) the expenditure of funds to support the participation of U.S. Armed Forces as part of any U.N. military or peacekeeping operation, (4) U.S. Armed Forces from serving under U.N. command, and (5) diplomatic immunity for U.N. officers or employees.

Clearly, many people would be in favor of such a move and many would oppose it. Many who would support the move believe that the United Nations Agenda 30 is a blueprint for a unipolar world order with a destructive agenda, as Zerohedge reported last year. Regardless of one’s beliefs or opinions on the UN being a front for  a new world order, this bill is a direct and bold move against the elite’s plans. For any nation to reclaim true sovereignty from the United Nations is setting a powerful example for the rest of the world. It sends a message that a country does not need a global governing body, but instead can run itself without global oversight.

Essentially, if the U.S. reclaimed sovereignty from the United Nations, it would be the equivalent of what Britain did by reclaiming it’s sovereignty from the European Union…times 10. Perhaps the biggest revelations to come from such news would be the eventual exposure of the level of theft, deception and criminal activity done by the registered corporation known as The United Nations (yes it is a registered corporation).

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“..the ruins of industry stand like tombstones on the landscape.”

He Is Risen… But For How Long? (Jim Kunstler)

Returning to the first forty-eight hours of the new regime, first the ceremony itself: there was, to my mind, the disturbing sight of Donald Trump, deep in the Capitol in the grim runway leading out onto the inaugural dais. He lumbered along, so conspicuously alone between the praetorian ranks front and back, overcoat open, that long red slash of necktie dangling ominously, with a mad gleam in his eyes like an old bull being led out to a sacrificial altar. His speech to the multitudes was not exactly what had once passed for presidential oratory. It was not an “address.” It was blunt, direct, unadorned, and simple, a warning to the assembled luminaries meant to prepare them for disempowerment. Surely it was received by many as a threat.

Indeed an awful lot of official behavior has to change if this country expects to carry on as a civilized polity, and Trump’s plain statement was at face value consistent with that idea. But the disassembly of such a vast matrix of rackets is unlikely to be managed without generating a lot of dangerous friction. Such a tall order would require, at least, some finesse. Virtually all the powers of the Deep State are arrayed against him, and he can’t resist taunting them, a dangerous game. Despite the show of an orderly transition, a state of war exists between them. Anyway, given Trump’s cabinet appointments, his “swamp draining” campaign looks like one set of rackets is due to be replaced by a new and perhaps worse set.

Trump was correct that the ruins of industry stand like tombstones on the landscape. The reality may be that an industrial economy is a one-shot deal. When it’s gone, it’s over. Even assuming the money exists to rebuild the factories of the 20th century, how would things be produced in them? By robotics or by brawny men paid $15-an-hour? If it’s robotics, who will the customers be? If it’s low-wage workers, how are they going to pay for the cars and washing machines? If the brawny men are paid $40 an hour, how would we sell our cars and washing machines in foreign markets that pay their workers the equivalent of $1.50 an hour. How can American industry stay afloat with no export market? If we don’t let foreign products into the US, how will Americans buy cars that are far more costly to make here than the products we’ve been getting? There’s no indication that Trump and his people have thought through any of this.

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Eric Rosengren, stop it, you’re killing me: “If you think the economy is growing more rapidly then you want..”

Fed Debate Over $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet Looms In 2017 (BBG)

It’s time to talk about the balance sheet. Eight years after the Federal Reserve launched the first of three controversial bond-buying campaigns to help save the U.S. economy, its holdings are stuck at $4.5 trillion, and the question of when to let them shrink is beginning to simmer. Several policy makers have pushed publicly to get the debate started. How the discussion plays out could have big implications for the pace of future interest-rate hikes and for the dollar. “They should start framing this for the market,” said Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Plc. Investors need to hear what the “balance of policy” will be between the balance sheet and the central bank’s main tool, the federal funds rate, he said.

The sheer weight of the balance sheet helps hold down long-term U.S. borrowing costs, which is why the Fed bought bonds in the first place. If officials allow holdings to mature without continuing their current practice of reinvesting the principal, they could push yields higher by reducing demand in the bond market. The topic has shot to renewed prominence as the outlook for the U.S. economy has brightened. The Fed has raised rates twice in the last 13 months and penciled in three quarter-point moves this year. Moreover, newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump has put expansionary fiscal policy on the horizon. If fiscal stimulus begins to overheat the economy, the Fed might tighten policy more sharply. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said he’d prefer to use the balance sheet to do some of that lifting, echoing remarks by his Boston colleague Eric Rosengren.

“If you think the economy is growing more rapidly then you want, you can either continue to raise short-term rates, or you can also do balance sheet in conjunction with that,” Rosengren said in a Jan. 9 interview. At the very least, he said, the Fed should be talking about the issue soon. San Francisco Fed President John Williams, Atlanta’s Dennis Lockhart, Philadelphia’s Patrick Harker and Dallas chief Robert Kaplan have all agreed. None of them has expressed urgency, and the topic may not be on the agenda when the Federal Open Market Committee convenes again on Jan. 31. But each knows it can take the FOMC several meetings to make big decisions, and they are likely eyeing where rates will be a year from now. Rosengren is thought by Fed watchers to favor four hikes this year. “I don’t think it’s something they’ll do in 2017,” said Mark Zandi at Moody’s. “My guess is they view this as a 2018 project.”

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It’s not in Tsipras’ hands. The EU demands the refugees stay on the islands so they cannot move further north. The EU also makes sure conditions on the islands are miserable with the idea that this keeps others from coming to Europe. And thirdly, they claim moving refugees to the mainland would violate the treaty with Turkey.

Greek Island Mayors Ask PM To Transfer Refugees To Mainland (Kath.)

The mayors of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros on Monday jointly presented their demands for measures to ease severe overcrowding at migrant reception centers on their islands during a meeting in Athens with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. According to government sources, the meeting was held in a cordial climate and both sides agreed it remained imperative that an agreement between Ankara and the EU to curb human smuggling across the Aegean must not be allowed to collapse. However, though the sources described the mayors’ demands as “logical,” it remained unclear what action, if any, the government plans to respond with. In the meeting with Tsipras, which was also attended by senior officials of the Central Union of Municipalities and Communities of Greece (KEDKE), the mayors emphasized that the situation on the islands was very tense and required immediate action.

They called for the transfer of hundreds of migrants to facilities on the Greek mainland, the improvement of the asylum process so that migrants can leave islands without delay, and measures to boost local economies which have been hit hard by the refugee crisis on top of the country’s financial crisis. Separately, in comments to the News247.gr website, Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas remarked that the mass transfer of migrants to the Greek mainland would lead the EU-Turkey deal “to collapse.” He added that while in 2015 refugees accounted for 70 to 80% of arrivals, now 70% of arrivals are economic migrants. According to a report by the Athens-Macedonian News Agency, the interior and defense ministers of several Balkan and Central European countries are planning to meet in Vienna on February 8 to discuss ways of bolstering their borders against illegal immigration.

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Europe’s shameful disgrace deepens and widens.

Thousands Of Refugee Children Sleeping Rough In Sub-Zero Serbia (G.)

Hundreds of new refugees and migrants, many of them children, are arriving in Serbia every day despite the prospect of sleeping rough in sub-zero temperatures and reports of violent treatment, Save the Children has said, as it calls on the EU to do more to help. The EU-Turkey deal, which was supposed to stem the flow of refugees arriving in Europe by boat, has meant many refugees are being forced to take a deadlier land route to cross the Balkans, with children as young as eight experiencing harsh weather conditions, dog bites and violent treatment by police and smugglers. Although Serbia is not part of the European Union, it borders Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and has become a transit point for those hoping to reach western Europe. About 6,000 people are stuck in Serbia not able to cross the border into Hungary, which is the direction of travel most would like to take.

Serbia does have asylum centres but when space becomes available, many migrants and refugees are too anxious to go to them, fearing that they will be detained indefinitely or deported illegally. Many of them are turning to smugglers for help instead, charities claim. In the past two months, Save the Children estimates that 1,600 cases of illegal push-backs from Hungary and Croatia have been alleged by refugees and migrants, who have been forced – often violently – back into Serbia, despite already having crossed its border. The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) confirmed in its weekly briefing that it was continuing to receive hundreds of reports of foreign nationals being expelled from EU countries in the Balkans and sent back to Serbia.

An average of 30 cases a day of “unlawful and clandestine push-backs” highlights a disregard for the human right to an individual assessment of the need for international protection, according to Save the Children. Belgrade “risks becoming a dumping zone, a new Calais where people are stranded and stuck” the humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières has warned.

[..] Save the Children estimates that there are up to 100 refugees and migrants arriving in Serbia every day and is supporting the government to refurbish safe spaces and support services prioritising lone children. About 46% of refugee and migrant arrivals in Serbia are children and 20% are unaccompanied. The UNHCR said at least five refugees had died of cold since the start of the year. “Saving lives must be a priority and we urge state authorities across Europe to do more to assist and protect refugees and migrants,” a UNHCR spokeswoman, Cecile Pouilly, told a press briefing in Geneva on Friday. This week, the Serbian authorities made additional temporary space available to get people off the snowy streets and into shelters. The charities have warned, however, that it still far from enough to meet the needs of people who are sleeping rough.

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