Apr 182022
 


Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 1907

 

Zelensky’s Campaign of Assassination, Kidnapping And Torture of Opposition (GZ)
Zelenskiy Says Russia Wants To ‘Destroy’ Ukraine’s Entire Donbas Region (G.)
US, EU Sacrificing Ukraine To ‘Weaken Russia’: Jacques Baud (Maté)
Ukraine Conflict Marks End of Era Dominated by Western Power (SCF)
Chinese-Style Social Credit Comes To The Heart Of Europe (CP)
China’s Home Sales By Volume Down 25.6% Y-o-Y (DJ)
New EU Sanctions May Backfire and Benefit China (Lacalle)
5 Witnesses In Clinton Campaign’s False Russian Claims Take the 5th (Turley)
CIA Concluded Dems’ Trump-Russia Allegation ‘User Created’ (JT)
Elon Musk Slams Mark Zuckerberg’s Control Over Meta (NB)
‘Crazy Elon’ Musk Now Facing Federal Heat (Gasparino)

 

 

 

 

Is unexpected death the #1 cause of death for 2022?

 

 

Big differences.

 

Jimmy Dore WMD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1515957337462390784

 

 

 

 

“There is one less traitor in Ukraine..”

Zelensky’s Campaign of Assassination, Kidnapping And Torture of Opposition (GZ)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has framed his country’s war against Russia as a battle for democracy itself. In a carefully choreographed address to US Congress on March 16, Zelensky stated, “Right now, the destiny of our country is being decided. The destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.” US corporate media has responded by showering Zelensky with fawning press, driving a campaign for his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and inspiring a flamboyant musical tribute to himself and the Ukrainian military during the 2022 Grammy awards ceremony on April 3. Western media has looked the other way, however, as Zelensky and top officials in his administration have sanctioned a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of local Ukrainian lawmakers accused of collaborating with Russia.

Several mayors and other Ukrainian officials have been killed since the outbreak of war, many reportedly by Ukrainian state agents after engaging in de-escalation talks with Russia. “There is one less traitor in Ukraine,” Internal Affairs Ministry advisor Anton Geraschenko stated in endorsement of the murder of a Ukrainian mayor accused of collaborating with Russia. Zelensky has further exploited the atmosphere of war to outlaw an array of opposition parties and order the arrest of his leading rivals. His authoritarian decrees have triggered the disappearance, torture and even murder of an array of human rights activists, communist and leftist organizers, journalists and government officials accused of “pro-Russian” sympathies.

The Ukrainian SBU security services has served as the enforcement arm of the officially authorized campaign of repression. With training from the CIA and close coordination with Ukraine’s state-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries, the SBU has spent the past weeks filling its vast archipelago of torture dungeons with political dissidents. On the battlefield, meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has engaged in a series of atrocities against captured Russian troops and proudly exhibited its sadistic acts on social media. Here too, the perpetrators of human rights abuses appear to have received approval from the upper echelons of Ukrainian leadership.

While Zelensky spouts bromides about the defense of democracy before worshipful Western audiences, he is using the war as a theater for enacting a blood-drenched purge of political rivals, dissidents and critics. “The war is being used to kidnap, imprison and even kill opposition members who express themselves critical of the government,” a left-wing activist beaten and persecuted by Ukraine’s security services commented this April. “We must all fear for our freedom and our lives.”

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Yesh, the Russians want to kill all the Russians.

Zelenskiy Says Russia Wants To ‘Destroy’ Ukraine’s Entire Donbas Region (G.)

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of wanting to “destroy” the entire eastern region of Donbas, as the last remaining forces in the strategic port of Mariupol prepared on Monday for a final defence. While also shelling the capital Kyiv and second-city Kharkiv in the past 24 hours, Moscow is pushing for a major victory in the southern city as it works to wrest control of Donbas and forge a land corridor to already-annexed Crimea. But Ukraine has pledged to fight on and defend the city, defying a Russian ultimatum on Sunday that called on the remaining fighters inside the encircled Azovstal steel plant to lay down their arms and surrender. Ukrainian authorities have urged people in Donbas to move west to escape a large-scale Russian offensive to capture its composite regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

“Russian troops are preparing for an offensive operation in the east of our country in the near future. They want to literally finish off and destroy Donbas,” Zelenskiy said in an evening statement, in which he also repeated a plea for foreign governments to send weapons for his troops. Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukraine’s unexpectedly fierce resistance since Russian troops invaded the former Soviet state on 24 February. “The city still has not fallen,” the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said on Sunday. “There’s still our military forces, our soldiers. So they will fight to the end,” he told ABC’s This Week. “We will not surrender.” While several large cities were under siege, he said, not one – with the exception of Kherson in the south – had fallen, and more than 900 towns and cities had been recaptured.

Following Ukrainian fighters’ refusal to surrender Mariupol, Russian troops will reportedly close the city for entry and exit on Monday and issue “movement passes” to those who remain, an adviser to the mayor has said. [..] Meanwhile, Ukraine has completed a questionnaire that will form a starting point for the European Union to decide on its membership. “Today, I can say that the document has been completed by the Ukrainian side,” Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of Zelenskiy’s office, told the Ukrainian public broadcaster on Sunday. The European Commission would need to issue a recommendation on Ukraine’s compliance with the necessary membership criteria, he added “We expect the recommendation … to be positive, and then the ball will be on the side of the EU member states.”

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1515686972009893891

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“They were aware that an operation was to be launched against the Republics of the Donbas..”

US, EU Sacrificing Ukraine To ‘Weaken Russia’: Jacques Baud (Maté)

JACQUES BAUD: Well, I think we have to understand, as you know, that the war in fact hasn’t started on 24 February this year. It started already in 2014. But I think that the Russians always hoped that this conflict could be solved on a political level, in fact; I mean the Minsk agreements and all that. So, basically what led to the decision to launch an offensive in the Donbas was not what happened since 2014. There was a trigger for that, and the trigger is two things; I mean, it came in two phases, if you want.

The first is the decision and the law adopted by [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy in March 2021—that means last year—to reconquer Crimea by force, and that started a build-up of the Russian armored for…not the Russian, [rather] the Ukrainian armored forces in the southern parts of the country. And so, I think the Russians were perfectly aware of this build-up. They were aware that an operation was to be launched against the Republics of the Donbas, but they did not know when, and, of course, they were just observing that, and then came the real trigger.

You may remember that—I think it was on the 16th of February—Joe Biden, during a press conference, told that he knew that the Russians would attack. And how would he know that? Because I still have some contacts, and nobody actually thought that the Russians—before end of January, beginning of February—I think nobody thought that the Russians would attack Ukraine. So, there must have been something that made Biden aware that the Russians would attack.

And this something, in fact, is the intensification of the artillery shelling of the Donbas starting on the 16th of February, and this increase in the shelling was observed, in fact, by the [Border] Observer Mission of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe], and they recorded this increase of violation, and it’s a massive violation. I mean, we are talking about something that is about 30 times more than what it used to be, because the last eight years you had a lot of violations from both sides, by the way. But suddenly on the 16th of February you had a massive increase of violation on the Ukrainian side. So, for the Russians, Vladimir Putin in particular, that was the sign that the operation—the Ukrainian operation—was about to start.

And then everything started; I mean, all the events came very quickly. That means that if we look at the figures, you can see that there’s, as I said, a massive increase from the 16th-17th, and then it reached kind of a maximum on the 18th of February, and that was continuing.

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The bigger picture.

“..and the unacceptable assaults the Kiev regime was inflicting on the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass region..”

Ukraine Conflict Marks End of Era Dominated by Western Power (SCF)

A sure sign of the bigger dimensions is the way the U.S., NATO, and European allies have rapidly deployed a total hybrid war on Russia, in an attempt to destroy the latter’s economy. The Western claims about “defending democracy, sovereignty, and international law” are contemptible and fraudulent. By funneling weapons to a repressive, corrupt regime whose military is infested with Nazi regiments? No, the U.S. and its Western allies are using the conflict – one which Russia assiduously tried to avoid by making reasonable appeals for security treaties with NATO – as an opportunity to crush Russia. And it’s not simply about crushing Russia. It’s about crushing any challenge to the Western order. That inevitably involves confrontation with China and others who seek to defy the “Washington Consensus”.

The draconian censorship of Russia’s international media outlets and the blockade on Russia’s economy indicates a full-court campaign of hostility from Western powers that were ready to go. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine on February 24 – based on plausible principles of self-defense – provided the launchpad for pent-up Western hostility. But this hostility is not merely towards Russia. It is aimed at confronting the emergence of a multipolar world order that is beyond the control of U.S.-led dominance. That dominance – or hegemony – is based on U.S. control of the global financial system as well as on brute American military power, assisted by its NATO adjuncts.

Russia’s immediate concerns about Ukraine were based on the increasing threat that this western neighboring country posed from its treacherous involvement with NATO and the unacceptable assaults the Kiev regime was inflicting on the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass region over the past nearly eight years. But by defending those national concerns, the military intervention in Ukraine has also challenged the entire system of the U.S.-dominated Western order. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov remarked on this end-of-era development. He told Russian media this week: “Our special military operation aims to put an end to the unfettered expansions and unfettered course towards total domination of the U.S. and other Western states under it on the international arena.” It is worth reflecting on his reasoning of why the duplicity and hypocrisy of Western powers had become intolerable, and why such unipolar arrogance was, and is, destroying the international order.

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Google translation from French.

Chinese-Style Social Credit Comes To The Heart Of Europe (CP)

I am fully aware that when I mentioned the establishment in the medium term of a “compulsory citizen wallet” in the pipeline in Europe and in France, with all the possible inherent “improvements” (rewards and sanctions), this could naturally to be excessive for some: “A virtuous citizen rewarded versus a bad citizen stigmatized or penalized, none of that with us! Not in a democracy, land of free thought, freedom of conscience and free will (under cover of respect for the law!)” It does not please me at all to quote Lenin: “Facts are stubborn! Unfortunately, both for myself and for those who could rightly doubt the foresight of my remarks, the Chinese-style social credit that I was announcing will set a first foothold in our European democracies. The first Europeans to try the experiment were our Italian neighbors and cousins… The local Italian press is starting to talk about it. Social credit rewarding “the virtuous citizen” will soon be introduced in Bologna with the so-called smart citizen wallet .

Naturally it will initially be on a voluntary basis, of course it will initially be on an experimental basis… It is however mentioned that the proposed portfolio will aim to give maximum benefits to virtuous citizens … When we remember that the Chinese-style restrictions were introduced in Europe through Italy, as China continued to put pressure on one of the most dramatically affected European countries , is there no what to be a little more alarmed about? As reported by the Corriere newspaper in Bologna , the establishment of the Portfolio of the Virtuous Citizen is planned after the summer of 2022. Massimo Bugani who had worked on the project with the Raggi administration explains that the idea is similar to the mechanism of a collection of supermarket points:

“Citizens will be recognized if they sort waste, if they use public transport, if they manage energy well, if they do not take sanctions from the municipal authority, if they are active with the culture card” . These behaviors defined as virtuous will correspond to a score that the Bolognese can then spend in prizes, currently “being defined. » These facts are sad, they are there: the sorting by public authorities of the good and the bad citizen, according to their own criteria, is taking shape in Europe. As for defining what comes under virtue, this is a very audacious enterprise! Should we understand that those who do not comply with the criteria of the dominant ideologies, or of what will be considered virtuous by some politicians will first be penalized by the deprivation of advantages, before being marginalized? What will become of those who will not comply, those who persist in wanting to exercise their inalienable right to free will?

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That’s a lot.

China’s Home Sales By Volume Down 25.6% Y-o-Y (DJ)

Home sales in China continued to fall in March as Beijing’s easing policies failed to revive the property market and stimulate home buyer demand amid a fresh Omicron outbreak across the country. Home sales by volume, a key indicator of demand, fell 25.6% in the first three months of 2022 from a year earlier. This compared with a 22.1% decrease during the January-February period, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. New construction starts measured by floor area dropped 17.5% during January-March from a year earlier, widening from the 12.2% fall in the first two months of the year. Real-estate investment in China rose only 0.7% in the January-March period, slowing from the 3.7% increase for the first two months of the year, according to the statistics bureau.

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Blowback.

New EU Sanctions May Backfire and Benefit China (Lacalle)

The proposals of the European Union and the United States to implement a complete energy embargo on Russia must consider the reality: Asia is importing all that Russia can offer. China, India, and the main Asian economies will send Russian exports to a decade high, according to the Financial Times. In fact, Russia’s trade account surplus was expected to reach $28 billion in March, an all-time high, according to Reuters. That doesn’t mean that sanctions don’t work. Estimates of Russia’s GDP fall range between 10 and 15 percent for 2022 and inflation is close to 20 percent, according to Business Insider. However, the European Union and the United States must note that the sanctions will likely fade away, as Asian countries are purchasing all available Russian production at significant discounts.

The European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States must not make the mistake of thinking that they can bear 100 percent of the energy embargo when China is increasing its imports from Russia. The escape route from the sanctions is China, which maintains a neutral position and, although this doesn’t prevent Russia’s economic difficulties, without China’s collaboration there can’t be a successful embargo. In 2022, Russia’s exports to China, Asian, and emerging countries are estimated to exceed $170 billion, according to Goldman Sachs, significantly more than the 2021 figure for exports to the European Union of $158 billion. Russia is expected to export some $103 billion to China, well above the $79 billion figure for 2021.

The evidence is clear. Without China, there is no real energy embargo. China accounts for 15.4 percent of Russia’s total crude oil exports, with only Saudi Arabia selling more, according to Reuters. We’re talking about 1.6 million barrels per day last year that’s expected to reach 3 million barrels per day in 2022. As for coal, Russia was the second-largest supplier of coal to China in 2021, some 57 million tons last year or 17.6 percent of its total coal imports. Russia is also China’s third-largest gas supplier. The Asian giant accounted for 6.7 percent of Russian natural gas exports in 2021, 16.5 billion cubic meters (bcm), the equivalent of 5 percent of China’s demand.

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” The Alfa Bank hoax and Sussmann’s efforts paralleled the work of his partner Elias at the law firm Perkins Coie in pushing the Steele Dossier in a separate debunked collusion claim.”

5 Witnesses In Clinton Campaign’s False Russian Claims Take the 5th (Turley)

Special Counsel John Durham continues to drop bombshells in filings in the prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. Just last week, Durham defeated an effort by Sussmann to dismiss the charges. He is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as “not technically plausible” and “user created.” He also revealed that at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct. Finally, Durham offers further details on the involvement of Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias and former British spy Christopher Steele in the alleged false claims.

Recently, Durham revealed extremely damaging evidence against Sussmann. However, this is the first full description of the Clinton associates refusing to cooperate under the Fifth Amendment. Durham noted that he gave immunity to an individual identified only as “Research 2.” He then noted that this was made necessary by the refusal to cooperate by key Clinton associates: “The only witness currently immunized by the government, Researcher-2, was conferred with that status on July 28, 2021 – over a month prior to the defendant’s Indictment in this matter. And the Government immunized Researcher-2 because, among other reasons, at least five other witnesses who conducted work relating to the Russian Bank-1 allegations invoked (or indicated their intent to invoke) their right against self-incrimination. The Government therefore pursued Researcher-2’s immunity in order to uncover otherwise-unavailable facts underlying the opposition research project that Tech Executive-1 and others carried out in advance of the defendant’s meeting with the FBI.”

For his part, Sussmann and the Clinton associates have sought to use attorney-client privilege to keep evidence from Durham. Durham also detailed how the false Russian collusion claims related to Alfa Bank involved Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias and Christopher Steele. Indeed, the new requested immunized testimony would come from a Tech executive who allegedly can share information on meetings with Elias and Steele. The Alfa Bank hoax and Sussmann’s efforts paralleled the work of his partner Elias at the law firm Perkins Coie in pushing the Steele Dossier in a separate debunked collusion claim. The Federal Election Commission recently fined the Clinton Campaign and the DNC for hiding the funding of the dossier as a legal cost by Elias at Perkins Coie.

“Durham notes that both the CIA and FBI were sent on an effective wild goose chase by the Clinton campaign. He notes that the government found the allegations to be manufactured and not even technically possible. He refers to the CIA in the following passage: Agency-2 concluded in early 2017 that the Russian Bank-1 data and Russian Phone Provider-1 data was not “technically plausible,” did not “withstand technical scrutiny,” “contained gaps,” “conflicted with [itself],” and was “user created and not machine/tool generated.”

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“..data was not ‘technically plausible,’ did not ‘withstand technical scrutiny,’ ‘contained gaps,’ ‘conflicted with [itself],’ and was ‘user created and not machine/tool generated..'”

CIA Concluded Dems’ Trump-Russia Allegation ‘User Created’ (JT)

The CIA determined that data behind Trump-Russia collusion allegations from Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman was “not technically plausible” and was “user created,” according to the latest court filing from Special Counsel John Durham. The 35-page filing responded to Sussmann’s defense after they objected to some evidence as being admissible at their client’s trial. Sussman, whose trial is slated to begin next month, faces charges of lying to the FBI about the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which reportedly has ties to the Kremlin. Durham wrote in his most recent filling that “the FBI and Agency-2 concluded that the Russian Bank-1 allegations were untrue and unsupported.” “Agency-2” is the CIA.


“[W]hile the FBI did not reach an ultimate conclusion regarding the data’s accuracy or whether it might have been in whole or in part genuine, spoofed, altered, or fabricated, Agency-2 concluded in early 2017 that the Russian Bank-1 data and Russian Phone Provider-1 data was not ‘technically plausible,’ did not ‘withstand technical scrutiny,’ ‘contained gaps,’ ‘conflicted with [itself],’ and was ‘user created and not machine/tool generated,'” Durham wrote. “The Special Counsel’s Office has not reached a definitive conclusion in this regard,” he added. Durham stressed the importance of the evidence that the collusion was allegedly fabricated. He explained that “evidence concerning the steps the FBI and Agency-2 took to investigate these matters is critical to establishing materiality because it will enable the jury to evaluate those steps which, in turn, will inform their conclusions about whether the defendant’s alleged false statement was material and could tend to influence or impair government functions.”

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“I’m not saying that I have all the answers here, but I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things..”

Elon Musk Slams Mark Zuckerberg’s Control Over Meta (NB)

Elon Musk said that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has too much power over the platform. Business Insider on Friday reported that Musk, the richest man in the world, was asked if his influence was a conflict of interest for his offer to buy Twitter for $43 billion. He responded and said Twitter would be nothing like Facebook if he owned it. “As for media sort of ownership, I mean, you’ve got Mark Zuckerberg owning Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, and with a share ownership structure that will have Mark Zuckerberg the 14th still controlling those entities,” he said.


“Like, literally,” Musk added. “We won’t have that at Twitter.” He said that his offer to buy Twitter was “not a way to make money” but was instead about promoting freedom of speech. “I’m not saying that I have all the answers here, but I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things,” he noted, referring to biased content moderation and permanent bans. “And just be very cautious with permanent bans. Timeouts, I think, are better than permanent bans.”

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Predictable. Freedom is the new F word

‘Crazy Elon’ Musk Now Facing Federal Heat (Gasparino)

Now I get why he’s called “Crazy Elon.” Bankers who cover Elon Musk — the electric-car, space-travel and now, possibly, social-media impresario — tell me his own board members came up with that name a few years ago, long before he made a seemingly improbable $43 billion bid for Twitter. It was around the time he was juggling about 10 things at once, including opening new factories, fending off short sellers and regulators, and trying to keep his EV car company Tesla out of bankruptcy. As it turned out, Musk was going crazy in a visionary way. His bid to buy Twitter, the most powerful media platform in existence today, and take on the progressive social-media establishment will only enhance his reputation among his many admirers.

[..] Maybe that’s why, on the eve of Musk doing something even more outlandishly nonconformist (and maybe even crazier in his bid to buy Twitter, the seemingly ubiquitous social-media outfit that he calls the world’s “de facto town square”), the government overseers let it leak to me and Fox Business’s Eleanor Terrett that Musk is in their crosshairs. His old pals at the Securities and Exchange Commission and now the Justice Department have launched a joint investigation into Musk’s business activities, a source close to the matter says. Exactly what they’re looking at isn’t known, but here are some clues: Lawyers say he didn’t file the right paperwork when accumulating his 9%+ stake in Twitter; he may not have come clean early enough on his intentions to try taking over the entire company. (Remember how for a hot minute he was on the Twitter board, which would have prevented a takeover?)

He appears to continue to flout his settlement with the SEC over his tweeting and there have always been questions over the accuracy of his disclosures about EV production rates. These might make for a case against Musk. But he isn’t acting like a guy worried he’s guilty of something. He keeps taking on the woke corporate status quo (and the SEC, which he called “bastards” last week), something that I understand has riled up Dems who at least for now control Congress and thus the various federal regulatory agencies. Are they looking to derail Elon from owning maybe the most important social-media platform on the planet? Are they afraid he might reinstate Donald Trump on Twitter, the politician the left hates even more than Vladimir Putin? Are they worried conservative voices might get equal billing as those on the left with Elon running the show? You know the answers to those questions, so you shouldn’t be surprised Crazy Elon is in the crosshairs.

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IF PEOPLE SPOKE LIKE POLITICIANS

 

 

 

 

Cloud seeding

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

Aug 052021
 


Jacques-Louis David Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus’ Disease 1774

 

A Conversation with Dr. Fauci on the Antiviral Program for Pandemics (CSIS)
Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Linked To Rare Cases Of Eye Inflammation (JPost)
Israel’s Covid Cabinet Contemplating Lockdown In 2 Weeks (JPost)
Chinese Cities Enter Lockdown As Delta Variant Spreads (LS)
Biden Admin To Require All Foreign Travelers To US Be Vaccinated (JTN)
Boston Mayor Bashes NYC For Vaccine Mandate, Compares It To Slavery (JTN)
Biden Admin To Make Vaccination Mandatory For All Active Duty Soldiers (PM)
LA City Council To Consider Requiring Vaccinations To Enter Indoor Spaces (Kusi)
Biden’s ‘Independence From The Virus’: ‘Mission Accomplished’? (JTN)
China’s “Social Credit” System Has Arrived In America (Black)
Biden Pushes China-Style ‘Social Credit’ System (Ron Paul)

 

 

 

 

Joy Reid Cult

 

 

 

 

Think he was talking to someone he knows and let his guard down. Strange things come out.

A Conversation with Dr. Fauci on the Antiviral Program for Pandemics (CSIS)

[..] the approach that we are taking right now is really what we call a two-tiered approach, two fundamental pillars. And the fundamental pillars address what you had alluded to in that the drugs that are already out there, the molnupiravir, the protease inhibitor, the Atea-Roche product, and even others that have not gotten as much visibility but are still somewhere along the early pipeline. That falls into what we are referring to as the developmental pillar of the APP, which is the Antiviral Pandemic Preparedness Program. Those drugs have already gotten a head start with the companies that were involved – you know, Merck and Pfizer and Roche-Atea, and others. We will partner with those pharmaceutical companies to further the advanced development of those products, number one; number two, to be available for other companies, biotech as well as pharma, who might have similar products.

But the one part of the two-pillared approach that I think looks in the long term as part of – and I want to take the opportunity, Steve, to mention this – that this is all part of a comprehensive pandemic preparedness plan that is associated with an even broader and larger pandemic preparedness plan for vaccines, which I know we’ll get a chance to talk about at another time in another setting, namely the prototype pathogen approach for the development of vaccines rapidly against any pathogen of any family. That program, together with this antiviral program, together with an extension of the diagnostics program, is part of the broader comprehensive plan to prepare for pandemics. Just wanted to mention that it isn’t in a vacuum with antivirals.

But let’s get back to the antivirals. You know, because we’ve spoken about this over the years multiple times, Steve, of the extraordinary and, in fact, spectacular success of the targeted antiviral program that we have had with HIV, which we’ll get a chance to talk about a little bit later. But that same approach of developing molecules right from the beginning by using the replication cycle of, in this case, the SARS coronavirus to identify vulnerable targets, that program we’re putting FOAs out right now – funding opportunity announcements – to get people stimulated and interested in doing that from the ground-up development of molecules together and simultaneously with the developmental component of this two-pillared process. So we’re very excited about it.

And I think that we are going to get both, as you said, early wins easy on. Hopefully, one of the candidates that you mentioned will turn out to be as good if not better than the monoclonal antibodies in remdesivir, which are the two approaches that we have right now. And then, hopefully, as we go on into 2022, when we’ll start putting out some money for the discovery component of this two-pillared process, we’re going to start seeing some long-term action and results.

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Add up all the “rare” and what have you got?

Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Linked To Rare Cases Of Eye Inflammation (JPost)

The Pfizer coronavirus vaccine may be linked to a form of eye inflammation called uveitis, according to a multicenter Israeli study led by Prof. Zohar Habot-Wilner from Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center. The research was conducted at Rambam Health Care Campus, Galilee Medical Center, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Kaplan Medical Center and Sourasky. It was accepted for publication by the peer-reviewed ophthalmology journal Retina. Habot-Wilner, head of the Uveitis Service at the hospital, found that 21 people (23 eyes) who had received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine developed uveitis within one to 14 days after receiving their first shot or within one day to one month after the second.

Twenty-one people developed anterior uveitis, and two developed Multiple Evanescent White Dot Syndrome (MEWDS). “All the patients in the study met the World Health Organization and Naranjo criteria linking the onset of uveitis to the vaccination,” Habot-Wilner said. “This time frame is consistent with other reports of uveitis following various vaccines.” She said that any patients that had other systemic diseases that could have been related to uveitis were under control before vaccination. In addition, none of the patients had any changes in their systemic treatments for at least six months before getting the shots. Eight of the patients had a prior history of uveitis, but no less than one to 15 years prior.

Specifically, most cases were mild – only three were severe – and all anterior uveitis cases were able to be treated by topical corticosteroids and eye drops for pupil dilation. MEWDS cases, as accepted, were not addressed. “Only one case worsened after receiving the second dose,” according to Habot-Wilner, but she said that with appropriate treatment the disease also resolved for that individual.

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Clairvoyant.

Israel’s Covid Cabinet Contemplating Lockdown In 2 Weeks (JPost)

he possibility of imposing a lockdown in two weeks’ time was discussed in Israel’s corona cabinet, Channel 13 reported on Wednesday evening. Construction and Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin is reportedly in favor of the move, as infection models have predicted a lockdown will be necessary in any case by September. It is also reported that officials in the Health Ministry are supportive of a lockdown, in order to motivate Israelis who have not yet received a third vaccine dose to get the jab. Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz stated earlier on Wednesday that a lockdown is “a last resort” and described a fourth lockdown as a “dramatic move with dire consequences.”

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How often do the WH and Beijing talk about lockdowns?

Chinese Cities Enter Lockdown As Delta Variant Spreads (LS)

Amid China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak since the early days of the pandemic, officials have locked down several cities, ordering residents to stay in their homes until they can be tested or vaccinated, according to news reports. After subduing the initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan last year, China maintained strict border controls, as well as quarantining and physical distancing measures to squash new outbreaks before they could spread, The Associated Press (AP) reported. But now, the country is contending with a large outbreak linked to an international airport in Nanjing, located in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

On July 20, nine airport workers tested positive for COVID-19, and in the following two weeks, 360 new domestic cases cropped up across China, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. Upon detecting the cases in airport workers, the government immediately launched a testing campaign to screen the 9.2 million residents of Nanjing and instituted strict lockdowns in parts of the city, according to BBC News. However, new COVID-19 cases soon popped up in other provinces; as of now (Aug. 4), the outbreak has reached at least 17 provinces, the AP reported. After analyzing virus samples gathered from infected people, authorities reported that the outbreak is being driven by the highly transmissible delta variant, The Guardian reported.

In the city of Zhuzhou, located in central Hunan province, 1.2 million residents were ordered to remain in their homes starting Monday (Aug. 2) so that a mass testing and vaccination campaign could be organized, according to AFP. Similarly, Zhangjiajie, located in northwest Hunan, locked down residential communities over the weekend, the AP reported. As of Aug. 3, China reported that 1.71 billion vaccine doses have been distributed to its 1.4 billion residents, but it’s unclear exactly how many people are now fully vaccinated, according to the AP. Earlier reports suggest that at least 40% of the population has received two shots; that said, Chinese companies have not shared any real-world data about how their vaccines hold up against the delta variant, the AP noted.

Cases of infection in the country’s capital, Beijing, and the Sichuan, Liaoning and Jiangsu provinces have been traced back to Zhangjiajie through extensive contact tracing, according to The Global Times; and this entire chain of transmission seems to stem from the outbreak at Nanjing Lukou International Airport.

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Except at the southern border.

Biden Admin To Require All Foreign Travelers To US Be Vaccinated (JTN)

The Biden administration is planning to require almost all foreign travelers to the U.S. to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, a White House official reported said on Wednesday. The official, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said the requirement would be part of the administration’s easing up on travel restrictions for foreign citizens entering the United States. A timeline has not been determined yet, as working groups within federal agencies are studying how to best resume normal travel. But all foreign travelers, with a few exceptions, will be expected to have received the COVID-19 vaccine to enter the country, according to the AP.


Currently, travel restrictions are still in place, as any residents from outside the U.S. who have visited Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, China, and the European Schengen area in two weeks prior to traveling to the United States are prevented from entering, the AP reported. All air travelers to the U.S. must provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within the prior three days, regardless of vaccination status, to enter the country.

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“Here we want to make sure that we are not doing anything that would further create a barrier..”

Boston Mayor Bashes NYC For Vaccine Mandate, Compares It To Slavery (JTN)

Acting Mayor of Boston Kim Janey compared New York City’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate to slavery, the Jim Crow era, and “birtherism,” but noted that she wants people to get the vaccine. Janey responded to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate for indoor venues, restaurants, and gyms, WCVB reported. “We want to make sure that we are giving every opportunity for folks to get vaccinated. When it comes to what businesses may choose to do, we know that those types of things are difficult to enforce when it comes to vaccine,” she told WCVB.

“There’s a long history in this country of people needing to show their papers,” Janey continued. “During slavery, post-slavery, as recent as you know what immigrant population has to go through here. We heard Trump with the birth certificate nonsense. Here we want to make sure that we are not doing anything that would further create a barrier for residents of Boston or disproportionally impact BIPOC [black, indigenous and people of color] communities.” She added: “Instead, you want to lean in heavily with partnering with community organizations, making sure that everyone has access to the lifesaving vaccine. As it relates to people who want to encourage their workforce to get vaccinated. We certainly support that.”

Janey, the first woman and first African American to serve as Boston’s mayor, received criticism from other mayoral candidates, who she is running against for a full term. “When we are combating a deadly virus & vaccine hesitancy, this kind of rhetoric is dangerous. Showing proof of vaccination is not slavery or birtherism. We are too close to give ground to COVID. Science is science. It’s pretty simple – Vax up and mask up,” City Councilor Andrea Campbell tweeted.

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Easy pickings.

Biden Admin To Make Vaccination Mandatory For All Active Duty Soldiers (PM)

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is likely to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for all active-duty troops this week. This comes after President Joe Biden asked the military to examine how and when to make that happen on July 29. The Pentagon decision on how to proceed could come this week, said several officials. The Pentagon said troops could be among the first to receive mandatory vaccines before upcoming deployments, according to CNN. They previously said they would like to wait for FDA approval despite Biden’s push for greater vaccination levels that could lead to them requesting a presidential waiver. Pending a presidential waiver, troops could receive the vaccine before full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.


A Justice Department memo dated July 6 said that, “because DOD has informed us that it understandably does not want to convey inaccurate or confusing information to service members —that is, telling them that they have the ‘option’ to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine if they effectively lack such an option because of a military order — DOD should seek a presidential waiver before it imposes a vaccination requirement.” Austin consulted with military medical authorities, said a defense official, who added he “[seeks] authorization to make it mandatory.” The decision comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a 64 percent spike in COVID-19 cases nationwide over the past week, reported Fox News. Austin said “we won’t let grass grow under our feet. The President directed us to do something and we’ll get after it.”

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They, too, have been propagandized for 20 months.

LA City Council To Consider Requiring Vaccinations To Enter Indoor Spaces (Kusi)

Proof of at least partial vaccination against COVID-19 would be required to enter public indoor spaces in the city of Los Angeles, including restaurants, bars, gyms, concert venues, movie theaters and even “retail establishments,” under a proposal introduced Wednesday by City Council President Nury Martinez. “Enough is enough already,” said Martinez, who co-introduced the motion with Councilman Mitch O’Farrell. “Hospital workers are exhausted, moms who have put aside their careers are tired, and our kids cannot afford the loss of another school year. We have three vaccines that work and are readily available, so what’s it going to take?”

The proposal is similar to a policy announced this week in New York City, but it would be more restrictive with the inclusion of retail establishments, potentially limiting access to some basic necessities. The New York policy restricts access only to more entertainment-oriented venues such as indoor restaurants, fitness centers and theaters. According to O’Farrell’s office, the exact businesses that would fall under the restrictions would be determined during the drafting of the ordinance by city attorneys. No determination has yet been made on whether such retail restrictions would extend to grocery stores. The motion, if passed by the City Council, would instruct the city attorney to prepare an ordinance requiring “eligible individuals” to have received at least one dose of the vaccine before entering indoor spaces in the city.

The motion would also instruct the Community Investment for Families Department to report immediately on how to expand the Vax UP L.A. campaign and what resources are needed for a citywide outreach and education program in an effort to expand vaccine coverage. If the motion is approved, the Chief Legislative Analyst would work with other city departments to create an implementation strategy for the requirement and the city attorney would report to council with a course of action for ensuring compliance. “Hard-working Angelenos, their customers and the general public deserve to be safe in public spaces,” O’Farrell said. “The vaccines are our most effective form of protection, and the time to act is now.”

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“It was a long winter, but the clouds have broken,” declared Jill Biden in Philadelphia on the 4th of July.”

Biden’s ‘Independence From The Virus’: ‘Mission Accomplished’? (JTN)

Little over a month ago, President Joe Biden was looking forward to an American celebration of the 4th of July with “independence from the virus” and, beyond, a “summer of joy and freedom.” No sooner had the administration begun taking bows for having effectively vaccinated its way to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic than reports began multiplying of surging case numbers of the Delta variant. Suddenly, mission accomplished became the mission continues for the Biden administration. “President Biden absolutely declared a victory too soon,” former Baltimore public health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen told Yahoo News recently.

Will the media and political elite hold Biden accountable for a premature end zone dance the way their predecessors a generation ago relentlessly needled President George W. Bush for celebrating “Mission Accomplished” in the Iraq War on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003? Or are the renewed COVID-related challenges mere speed bumps on Biden’s road to decisive ultimate victory over the mutating virus? “America is starting to look like American again,” read a White House fact sheet released in mid-June. Despite falling just shy of its goal to get 70% of adults at least partly vaccinated by Independence Day, the president maintained a sunny outlook as thousands of guests gathered on the South Lawn to celebrate the nation’s birthday.

“It was a long winter, but the clouds have broken,” declared Jill Biden in Philadelphia on the 4th of July. “We’re not at the finish let yet, but summer has never felt more full of possibility. And doesn’t the air smell so much sweeter without our masks?” A few short weeks later, the clouds are massing again. Just as the reality of the Iraq War set in after Bush’s famous speech, the new normal of the Delta variant is beginning to take shape in Biden’s America, and rules that were established just weeks ago are already obsolete.

Breakthrough cases of the coronavirus variant are surging — though among the vaccinated those numbers comprise mostly asymptomatic cases and cases with very mild symptoms. Hospitalization and fatality numbers are mere handfuls on the thousand compared to what last spring and summer brought. But mask mandates are also back (for vaxxed and unvaxxed alike) in so-called “substantial” risk COVID-19 spots. The president has made vaccines — or, failing that, regular testing — mandatory for all federal employees and contractors, and NIH Director Francis Collins is urging private sector employers to follow suit.

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Oh yes.

China’s “Social Credit” System Has Arrived In America (Black)

If you protest lockdowns, you are an extremist putting lives in danger. If you burn down police stations and flip cars in the name of social justice, you are a mostly peaceful protester. And these days, anything from the “Ok” hand gesture to cheese is considered racist. PayPal is not going to keep this research to itself. It intends to be the tip of the social justice warrior’s spear: “The intelligence gathered through this research initiative will be shared broadly across the financial industry and with policymakers and law enforcement.” So the Big Banks will be able to use this same intelligence to blacklist “extremists” peddling “hate speech.” Just last month Wells Fargo closed the accounts of two different conservative activists, without explanation. In 2019, JP Morgan Chase did the same thing.

And the CEO of the alternative social media website Gab had four banks in four weeks ban the company’s account, allegedly because the platform harbors “extremist content.” All of this looks eerily like a back door for a Chinese-style ‘social credit system’ in the United States. Vaccine passports are an obvious example. If certain people have their way, the unvaccinated will be unable to board an airplane and banned from restaurants. Some people even say the unvaccinated should lose their health insurance for making an unpopular personal health decision. During the pandemic, governments across the world set up reporting systems to rat out your neighbors for having family over for the holidays. Bad Citizen! Vermont’s governor even asked students to snitch on their own parents who might have invited extended family over for Thanksgiving 2020.

And now the US government is leading the charge— with the help of the Big Tech companies, of course— by providing new, easy ways to report your ‘radical’ friends and family to the government. What exactly constitutes radical? Anything they don’t want you to do, or believe. This is the problem when just a handful of powerful centralized institutions controlling society. And it is the reason a solid Plan B gives you options to ensure that you’re not entirely reliant on one country’s government, one country’s banking system, or one country’s public health policies. I’m actually an optimist, and I have strong hope that humanity will overcome authoritarianism, as it always has before. But hope is not a course of action. Optimism is not a viable strategy. To truly become more secure from threats like America’s version of the Chinese social credit system, it’s important to give deliberate consideration to Plan B options that will put you in a position of strength.

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How many Americans would recognize it for what it is? How many Europeans?

Biden Pushes China-Style ‘Social Credit’ System (Ron Paul)

In televised remarks yesterday, President Biden urged private businesses and universities to institute a China-style “social credit” system whereby some individuals are denied basic rights and privileges if they hold “wrong” views on matters such as health and medicine. How far will this go? Also today, NIH Director urges parents to wear masks in front of their children…in the home! And, major European newspaper editor apologized to readers over his publications of hysterical Covid coverage.

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Feb 232019
 


Henri Rousseau The sleeping gypsy 1897

 

A Fed Pivot, Born Of Volatility, Missteps, And New Economic Reality (R.)
Get Out Of The Bond And Stock Market, Put Your Money In Cash – Stockman (MW)
Global Sovereign Debt Will Top $50 Trillion This Year (ZH)
Mueller Won’t Deliver Report To DOJ Next Week (Hill)
Schiffting to Phase 2 of Collusion (Strassel)
‘Even Nixon Wasn’t Like Him’: Trump’s Bid To Upend Russia Inquiry (G.)
Great Investigations (Kunstler)
Theresa May Must Go In Three Months, Cabinet Ministers Say (G.)
UK Food Imports From EU Face ‘£9bn Tariff Bill’ Under No-Deal Brexit (G.)
Dianne Feinstein Snaps At Group Of Environmental Activist Children (ZH)
The Cold War in Tech (Barron’s)
Silicon Valley Wants In On It Pair Of Gene-Edited Chinese Twins (ZH)
China Blocks 17.5 Million Plane Tickets Due to Lack of ‘Social Credit’ (Ind.)

 

 

The folly of our times. The Fed has completely destroyed America’s market system, and thus its economy, and they are treated as wise men. There are no markets left, there are no pensions left, there’s only the Fed.

A Fed Pivot, Born Of Volatility, Missteps, And New Economic Reality (R.)

The Federal Reserve’s promise in January to be “patient” about further interest rate hikes, putting a three-year-old process of policy tightening on hold, calmed markets after weeks of turmoil that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth. But interviews with more than half a dozen policymakers and others close to the process suggest it also marked a more fundamental shift that could define Chairman Jerome Powell’s tenure as the point where the Fed first fully embraced a world of stubbornly weak inflation, perennially slower growth and permanently lower interest rates. Along with Powell’s public comments, Fed minutes, and other documents, the picture emerges of a central bank edging towards a period of potentially difficult change as it reviews how to do business in light of that new reality.

[..] Concern that years of solid economic growth and falling unemployment would inevitably rekindle inflation or threaten financial stability have been a staple of Fed debates, but had largely disappeared by the Fed’s Dec. 18-19 meeting, according to a review of Fed meeting minutes and officials’ public statements. It was a conclusion hiding in plain sight. After a year when the Trump administration pumped around $1.5 trillion of tax cuts and public spending into a full employment economy, the Fed in 2018 would miss its 2 percent inflation target yet again.

“I hate to say we were right,” Dallas Federal Reserve president Robert Kaplan told reporters on Jan. 15 in Dallas. “But we have been warning for quite some time that…the structure of the economy has changed dramatically.” Technological innovation, globalization, and the Fed’s commitment to its inflation target all held down prices, and “those forces are powerful and they are accelerating,” he said.

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Dave Stockman, too, keeps referring to markets. Stop it. A market has a definition, a function, based one-on-one on price discovery. And that simply ceased to exist.

Get Out Of The Bond And Stock Market, Put Your Money In Cash – Stockman (MW)

[..] thus far the market has bounded higher after shaking off a withering decline toward the end of 2018 that culminated in the worst Christmas Eve drop on record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 19.4% since that time, breaking above a psychologically significant at 26,000 level on Friday, while the S&P 500 has advanced 19.5%, the Nasdaq Composite has risen 22.4% and the small-capitalization focused Russell 2000 index has returned more than 25%, according to FactSet data. Much of that gain has been underpinned by a Fed that has signaled that it is likely to slow a reduction of its $4 trillion balance sheet as soon as this year and a willingness to wait before increasing borrowing costs further. Both of those plans had been cited as a source of friction for markets.

However, Stockman has said a yawning deficit and an economic expansion in the U.S. that is making history for its length are signs that a reckoning my be at hand. He says easy-money days cannot last and has ramifications for all, arguing that the Fed must normalize its policy, at some point: “My point is, it’s finally catching up with us. We’ve gotten by with this for 30 years ‘cause the Fed has been monetizing the debt — buying bonds hand over fist. When Greenspan arrived, the balance sheet of the Fed was $200 billion; at the peak it was $4.5 trillion,” he told Cavuto, referring to former Fed boss Alan Greenspan. “We need to wake up and smell the roses here. We’re in year 10 of the longest business expansion in history.

We’re increasing the deficit at the very wrong time. They say it’s $900 billion this year it’ll be $1.2 trillion of borrowing at the same time that the Fed is beginning to shrink its balance sheet, which means they’ll be dumping bonds into the market,” he said.

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All that new debt and still pension systems are being fully gutted.

Global Sovereign Debt Will Top $50 Trillion This Year (ZH)

It has been one week since the US Treasury revealed that the national debt had topped $22 trillion (only 11 months after it had topped the $21 trillion threshold). And as the US budget deficit shows no signs of shrinking thanks to the Trump tax cuts and the death of the Obama-era budget sequester that has allowed for an expansion of federal spending (with more presumably on the way once the Trump infrastructure plan comes into focus), S&P warned on Thursday that worldwide sovereign debt could reach $50 trillion this year. According to Reuters, S&P predicted that governments will borrow some $7.78 trillion this year, up 3.2% since 2018 (the US will constitute more than $1 trillion of that all by itself). That’s a 6% increase in the total debt pile from the year before.

Most of this borrowing will be rolling over long-term debt. “Some 70 percent, or $5.5 trillion, of sovereigns’ gross borrowing will be to refinance maturing long-term debt, resulting in an estimated net borrowing requirement of about $2.3 trillion, or 2.6 percent of the GDP of rated sovereigns,” said S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Karen Vartapetov. Governments, like corporations and individuals, took advantage of low interest rates around the world to step up borrowing in the wake of the financial crisis. Now, with borrowing costs expected to rise, these long-term burdens will become more burdensome to service. And with central banks slowly beginning to allow their inflated balance sheets to run off…

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No collusion.

Mueller Won’t Deliver Report To DOJ Next Week (Hill)

Special counsel Robert Mueller will not deliver his report to the Justice Department on Friday or next week, a Justice Department official told The Hill. The news comes amid broad speculation that Mueller’s probe into Russia’s electoral interference is wrapping up, with several news outlets reporting Wednesday that newly confirmed Attorney General William Barr was preparing to receive Mueller’s final report as soon as next week. The highly anticipated report is expected to cap off a sprawling, nearly two-year investigation into Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, a probe that has ensnared multiple former Trump campaign officials and associates.

Next week is already slated to be a busy week in Washington, with former longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen appearing for testimony on Capitol Hill and several other major hearings and votes set to take place. President Trump is also slated to travel to Vietnam next week for his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. It remains unclear when Mueller will ultimately wrap up and submit his final documentation, though Friday’s news indicates the end of the investigation is at least a week away.

Mueller has been investigating Russian interference and potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow since May 2017, weathering constant attacks from Trump, who views the investigation as a “witch hunt” and has long denied allegations of collusion between his campaign and the Kremlin. In the course of his investigation, Mueller has unveiled charges against more than two dozen Russians for hacking Democratic emails and committing fraud in an elaborate plot to use social media to meddle in the election. The special counsel has also charged six Trump associates with making false statements, illegal foreign lobbying, financial violations and other crimes. However, none of the charges have alleged a conspiracy between the campaign and the Russians to interfere in the election.

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“No acknowledgment that Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. No relieved hope that the country might finally put this behind us. Just a smooth transition—using Russia as a hook—into Mr. Trump’s finances. Mueller who?”

Schiffting to Phase 2 of Collusion (Strassel)

There’s been no more reliable regurgitator of fantastical Trump-Russia collusion theories than Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. So when the House Intelligence Committee chairman sits down to describe a “new phase” of the Trump investigation, pay attention. These are the fever swamps into which we will descend after Robert Mueller’s probe. The collusionists need a “new phase” as signs grow that the special counsel won’t help realize their reveries of a Donald Trump takedown. They had said Mr. Mueller would provide all the answers. Now that it seems they won’t like his answers, Democrats and media insist that any report will likely prove “anticlimactic” and “inconclusive.” “This is merely the end of Chapter 1,” said Renato Mariotti, a CNN legal “analyst.”

Mr. Schiff turned this week to a dependable scribe—the Washington Post’s David Ignatius—to lay out the next chapter of the penny dreadful. Mr. Ignatius was the original conduit for the leak about former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s conversations with a Russian ambassador, and the far-fetched claims that Mr. Flynn had violated the Logan Act of 1799. Mr. Schiff has now dictated to Mr. Ignatius a whole new collusion theory. Forget Carter Page, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos—whoever. The real Trump-Russia canoodling rests in “Trump’s finances.” The future president was “doing business with Russia” and “seeking Kremlin help.”

So, no apologies. No acknowledgment that Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. No relieved hope that the country might finally put this behind us. Just a smooth transition—using Russia as a hook—into Mr. Trump’s finances. Mueller who? What’s mind-boggling is that reporters would continue to take Mr. Schiff seriously, given his extraordinary record of incorrect and misleading pronouncements. This is the man who, on March 22, 2017, helped launch full-blown hysteria when he said on “Meet the Press” that his committee already had the goods on Trump-Russia collusion. “I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,” Mr. Schiff declared then. Almost two years later, he’s provided no such evidence and stopped making the claim..

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Perhaps even more than politicians, it’s the media that will keep the collusion tale alive. They wouldn’t know how to make money anymore if they didn’t.

‘Even Nixon Wasn’t Like Him’: Trump’s Bid To Upend Russia Inquiry (G.)

It was yet another bombshell report for a president already ensnared in multiple investigations against his campaign, administration and family members. This time it had to do with hush money paid to women to silence them from speaking about alleged affairs they had with Donald Trump. According to a New York Times report published this week, Trump asked Matthew Whitaker, his controversial acting attorney general, if he could install a loyalist at the helm of the investigation into the hush money.

Although Whitaker declined Trump’s request, the story has raised fresh questions over whether the president was seeking to obstruct justice and how the reported move fits into a broad pattern of Trump attempting to interfere with an investigation concerning himself. Since taking office, Trump’s fixation on the federal inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election – and potential collusion between his campaign and Moscow – has spurred a series of actions that could now imperil his presidency and prospects of a second term.

From high-level firings to public misstatements, Trump’s repeated steps to undermine the investigations that have clouded his two years in office paint a picture of a president who is his own worst enemy, legal experts say. “It is quite clear from all the evidence that the president has had the intent to obstruct this investigation,” said Andy Wright, a former associate counsel to Barack Obama and the founding editor of the legal blog Just Security. “It’s been in plain sight.” “It’s a fundamental abuse of power for the president to be trying to shut down an investigation in which he has a personal stake – both as a potential target himself and his political allies and family members,” he added.

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Jim stays on message. I changed the headline from Great Expectations to Great Investigations.

Great Investigations (Kunstler)

Meanwhile, their antics may be eclipsed by the now inevitable inquiry around the misdeeds carried out by public officials in Act I of the show: the Russia Collusion Ruse. Based just on the current Andy McCabe book tour, there will be an awful lot to get to, and it is liable to be far more compelling than the nonsense conjured up by the Three Stooges. Mr. McCabe, in his quest to hand off the hot potato of culpability to his former colleagues, and to sell enough books to pay his lawyers’ retainers, has neatly laid out the case for his orchestrating a coup d’etat within the FBI. It’s an ugly story, and it’s all out there now, like so much spaghetti hurled against the wall, and it won’t be ignored.

There are many other spaghetti wads already plastered on that wall ranging from Hillary Clinton’s Fusion GPS hijinks, to Loretta Lynch’s written assurances to the Clinton campaign that the email server matter would be dropped, to the rather complete failure of the FISA process, and much much more that needs to be ventilated in a court of law. I suspect that Barack Obama and his White House confidents will enter the picture, too, sooner later, and to the great dismay of his partisans who do not want to see his legacy tarnished. Whatever your view of all these dark events, it would be pretty awful for the country to have to see him in a witness chair, but it may be unavoidable. Ditto Hillary, who is liable to go all Captain Queeg-y when she finally has to answer for her campaign’s turpitudes.

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Can both major parties in Britain dissolve in just 4 weeks time?

Theresa May Must Go In Three Months, Cabinet Ministers Say (G.)

Cabinet ministers will make it clear they believe Theresa May should step down after the local elections in May and allow a new leader to deliver the next phase of the Brexit negotiations, the Guardian understands.Senior figures in government have suggested they want the prime minister to leave shortly after the first phase of the Brexit negotiations finishes – or risk being defeated in a vote of no confidence at the end of the year. May wants to stay in place for long enough after Brexit to secure a political legacy beyond the fraught negotiations. But some ministers believe she should announce the timeline for her departure “on a high” after the local election results, paving the way for a Conservative leadership contest over the summer.

Brexiters in the cabinet are keen to see a new leader take over for the next stage of the negotiations with the EU, which May has already pledged will involve more active involvement for politicians rather than advisers. The hardening mood among cabinet ministers on the timeline for her departure will place further pressure on May before a critical week of Brexit talks and votes amid a febrile climate in Westminster. On Thursday the Guardian revealed that remainer ministers emboldened by the departure of three MPs to the Independent Group (TIG) were threatening to rebel against her leadership to prevent a no-deal outcome – daring her to sack them.

And in a fresh blow to May, three cabinet ministers publicly say they would back moves to delay Brexit if she fails to get her deal through parliament. In a joint newspaper article, Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, David Gauke, the justice minister, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, say they want to ensure the UK does not crash out of the EU without a deal on 29 March. And they insist they are prepared to defy the prime minister and join those MPs pushing for an extension to article 50 if there is no significant progress next week.

Writing for the Daily Mail on Saturday, they argue that a no-deal Brexit would wreck the country’s economy and put its security at risk. “If there is no breakthrough in the coming week, the balance of opinion in parliament is clear – that it would be better to seek to extend article 50 and delay our date of departure rather than crash out of the European Union on 29 March,” they write. “It is time that many of our Conservative parliamentary colleagues in the ERG recognised that parliament will stop a disastrous no-deal Brexit on 29 March. If that happens, they will have no one to blame but themselves for delaying Brexit.”

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Both May and Brussels appear to think they stand to gain from a no-deal Brexit. Maybe that makes it more likely than we think.

UK Food Imports From EU Face ‘£9bn Tariff Bill’ Under No-Deal Brexit (G.)

The government is expected next week to spell out its plan to mitigate a potential £9bn food-price shock from a no-deal Brexit, as analysts predict the cost of staples such as beef, cheddar cheese and tomatoes could soar. With just over a month until the Brexit deadline, the Department for International Trade is expected on Monday to publish a list of new import taxes, or tariffs, that will apply to 5200 products, including food and clothing, should the UK crash out of the EU without a deal. The relationship with the EU is key to the price of food because nearly one third of the food eaten in the UK comes from the bloc. At this time of year the situation is more acute because, with UK produce out of season, 90% of lettuces, 80% of tomatoes and 70% of soft fruit is sourced from, or via, the EU.

“Food and drink tariff rates will be higher than those in any other supply chain,” says Richard Lim, chief executive of consultancy firm Retail Economics. “All stages within the food supply chain will experience increased costs, with retailers hit disproportionately as processed goods attract higher duties than raw materials and semi-processed goods.” In 2017 the UK bought about £34bn of groceries from the EU, which arrived on supermarket shelves and at factory gates without being hit by customs duties or other trade costs. But if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, both will fall back on the World Trade Organisation’s “most favoured nation” tariffs, which means they must pay import duties on each other’s trade. On that basis the UK’s 2017 EU food imports would come with a hefty £9.3bn tariff bill on top, according to Retail Economics’s analysis.

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Having been there for 30 years is not exactly a positive thing, given how much things have deteriorated in that time. Hand it over to the kids, they couldn’t possibly do worse.

Dianne Feinstein Snaps At Group Of Environmental Activist Children (ZH)

Armed with an impassioned letter and memorized talking points, the children belonging to three Bay Area environmentalist groups (Sunrise Bay Area, Youth Versus the Apocalypse, and Earth Guardians San Francisco) implored Feinstein to support the Green New Deal. The Senator responded: “Ok, I’ll tell you what. We have our own Green New Deal.” The video skips forward to the children warning Feinstein that “some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around” – referring to a conclusion by a recent UN-backed report that man-made climate change will become irreversible if carbon emissions are not significantly reduced over the next 12 years (which Ocasio-Cortez turned into “the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change”).

“It’s not gonna get turned around in 10 years,” responded Feinstein – drawing a harsh rebuke from an angry chaperone. “Senator if this doesn’t get turned around in 10 years you’re looking at the faces of the people who are going to be living with these consequences,” said the adult – as one of the children chimed in “the government is supposed to be for the people and by the people and for all the people!” Feinstein was not amused. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say “it has to be my way or the highway.” “I don’t respond to that,” shot back Feinstein. “I’ve gotten elected. I just ran. I was elected by almost a million vote plurality. And, I know what I’m doing. So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit. -Dianne Feinstein

One kid shot back “I hear what you’re saying but we’re the people who voted you. You’re supposed to listen to us, that’s your job.” “How old are you?” challenged Feinstein. “I’m 16. I can’t vote,” said the girl. “Well you didn’t vote for me,” replied the Senator.

https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1099075460649107458

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The new fight for control of the world. Orwell International Inc.

The Cold War in Tech (Barron’s)

Cisco Systems, an early Silicon Valley success story, has become one of the nation’s top tech exporters. Today, roughly half of the networking giant’s sales come from outside the U.S. As foreign countries sought to catch up with U.S. connectivity, Cisco helped plug them in. But a wave of nationalist thinking has put Cisco—and most of its peers—in an uncomfortable position. Earlier this month, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins described the current climate as “one of the more complex macro, geopolitical environments that I think we’ve seen in quite a while with all the different moving parts.” It’s likely to get worse.

While investors are cheering indications of progress being made toward a resolution of trade issues between China and the U.S., the battle for tech supremacy between the two global superpowers shows few signs of abating. Even as the White House was negotiating on trade with Beijing, it was also contemplating a U.S. ban of telecommunications equipment from Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies, essentially China’s version of Cisco. As President Donald Trump was tweeting about the importance of 5G on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was pushing U.S. allies to ditch Huawei. This is a fight that is not going to end anytime soon. For years, U.S. officials have worried about Chinese equipment being used to infiltrate U.S. networks and businesses for possible espionage and theft of intellectual property.

Even a resolution of the trade war won’t quell those fears. “The perception is that too much of the information- and communication-technology supply chain is centered on China,” says Paul Triolo, who focuses on global technology policy issues for risk consulting firm Eurasia Group. “If we are in a conflict and using infrastructure built by China, they could theoretically hit a button and shut off everything.” “After 30 years of saying companies should optimize supply chains and move some abroad, now we are saying it’s a security concern,” he says. “Adjusting to that is jarring.”

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The sort of thing you know someone will always try, no matter what laws are invented. And it’s not about Silicon Valley, it’s about the CIA through big Tech.

Silicon Valley Wants In On It Pair Of Gene-Edited Chinese Twins (ZH)

A pair of Chinese twins who were gene-edited for resistance to HIV may also have ‘supercharged’ brains, along with possible resistance to age-related cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s. In a controversial experiment led by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, the embroys of seven couples had their genes “edited” using a tool known as CRISPR. By removing a gene called CCR5, Jiankui sought to create a natural immunity to HIV – which requires CCR5 to enter blood cells. Based on new research, however, Jiankui may have also left the twins, Lulu and Nana, with improved memory and enhanced cognition, according to MIT Technology Review. They may also enjoy some degree of protection from Alzheimer’s Disease and other maladies which are rapidly being linked to chronic inflammation, as some groups of mice without CCR5 – or who have been given CCR5 inhibitors, experience less severe dementia or Alzheimer’s symptoms.

“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” says UCLA neurobiologist Alcino J. Silva, whose lap discovered a link between CCR5 and the brain’s ability to form new connections. “The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins,” says Silva, adding that the exact effect on the girls’ cognition cannot be predicted, which is “why it should not be done.” Jiankui’s human experiments drew harsh rebuke after news of Lulu and Nana’s birth in late October or early November, and has reportedly been fired from his position at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China. Jiankui says there are more gene-edited babies on the way.

Silva tells the MIT Technology Review that “because of his research, he sometimes interacts with figures in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who have, in his opinion, an unhealthy interest in designer babies with better brains.” When word of Jiankui’s experiment went public, Silva says he immediately questioned whether enhanced cognition was the real goal of the experiment. “I suddenly realized—Oh, holy shit, they are really serious about this bullshit,” said Silva. “My reaction was visceral repulsion and sadness.” He Jiankui acknowledged that he knew about the potential cognitive benefits of removing the CCR5 gene discovered by the UCLA team during a Q&A session, though he said “I am against using genome editing for enhancement.”

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Brave new world: gene-edited superhumans controlled through embedded technology. That Orwell guy appears smarter by the day.

China Blocks 17.5 Million Plane Tickets Due to Lack of ‘Social Credit’ (Ind.)

The Chinese government blocked 17.5 million would-be plane passengers from buying tickets last year as a punishment for offences including the failure to pay fines, it emerged. Some 5.5 million people were also barred from travelling by train under a controversial “social credit” system which the ruling Communist Party claims will improve public behaviour. The penalties are part of efforts by president Xi Jinping‘s government to use data-processing and other technology to tighten control on society. Human rights activists warn the system is too rigid and may lead to people being unfairly blacklisted without their knowledge, while US vice-president Mike Pence last year denounced it as “an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life”.

Authorities have experimented with social credit in parts of China since 2014. Points are deducted for breaking the law, but also, in some areas, for offences as minor as walking a dog without a lead. Offences punished last year also included false advertising and violating drug safety rules, said China’s National Public Credit Information Centre. It gave no details of how many people live in areas with social credit systems. [..] The ruling party is spending heavily to roll out facial recognition systems, and human rights activists say people in Muslim and other areas with high ethnic minority populations have been compelled to give blood samples for a genetic database. Those systems rely heavily on foreign technology, which has prompted criticism of US and European suppliers for enabling human rights abuses.

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Nov 232018
 


René Magritte Golconda 1953

 

438 Stocks on the NYSE Plunged 40%-94% from 52-Week Highs (WS)
Margin Debt Plunges, Next Up: Margin Calls (WS)
QE Created Dangerous Financial Dependence, Italy Hooked, Withdrawal Next (DQ)
Bitcoin Price Crash Causes Bankruptcy And Mass Mine Closures (Ind.)
UK’s Poorest Dying Nearly 10 Years Younger Than Rich (Ind.)
MPs Unite To Condemn May’s ‘Blindfold Brexit’ (Ind.)
Yanis Varoufakis: “The EU Declared War And Theresa May Played Along” (NS)
China Bans Millions From Flights As ‘Social Credit’ System Introduced (Ind.)
Google Wants To Data Mine Your Home And Kids’ Bedroom (ZH)
How Do You Give Thanks For Freedoms That Are Constantly Being Eroded? (RI)
CIA Holds ‘Smoking Gun Phone Call’ Of MbS On Khashoggi Murder (Hurriyet)
Comey, Loretta Lynch Subpoenaed To Testify Before Congress (AFP)
Hillary Clinton: Europe Must Curb Immigration To Stop Rightwing Populists (G.)
Clinton, Blair, Renzi: Why We Lost, And How To Fight Back (G.)
Elephant-Sized Mammal Cousin Lived Alongside Dinosaurs (R.)

 

 

“It’s barely a correction, technically speaking..”

438 Stocks on the NYSE Plunged 40%-94% from 52-Week Highs (WS)

It’s barely a correction, technically speaking, with the S&P 500 down 9.9% from its all-time closing high, the Dow down 9.2%, the Nasdaq down 14%, and the Russell 2000 small-caps index down 15%. But beneath the surface, there has been some serious bloodletting for many stocks. For example, 438 stocks among the 2,051 or so stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) have plunged between 40% and 94% from their 52-week highs. This does not include any stocks traded on the Nasdaq. They have their own blacklist.

Those 438 plungers on the NYSE include a bunch of foreign companies trading on the NYSE (some are trading as ADRs). They include lots of companies in the oil-and-gas sector, homebuilders, gold miners, retailers, aluminum and steel makers, a weed company (other NYSE-listed weed companies are only down 30% to 40% and didn’t make this blacklist), financial services firms and banks, including some of the biggest in the world. Here is a brief rundown. Below is the complete list. Note that some of these stocks – such as GE, which is also on this blacklist – have plunged far more from their all-time highs established in prior years.

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Tempting to bring up Lehman, but if anything it’s starting to feel like Lehman cubed.

Margin Debt Plunges, Next Up: Margin Calls (WS)

There are many ways to use leverage to fund stock holdings, including credit card loans, HELOCs, loans at the institutional level, loans by companies to its executives to buy the company’s shares, or the super-hot category of SBLs, where brokers lend to their clients. None of them are reported on an overall basis. The only form of stock market leverage that is reported monthly is “margin debt” – the amount individual and institutional investors borrow from their brokers against their portfolios. Margin debt is subject to well-rehearsed margin calls. And apparently, they have kicked off. In the ugliest stock-market October anyone can remember, margin debt plunged by $40.5 billion, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) reported this morning – the biggest plunge since November 2008, weeks after Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy:

During the stock market boom since the Financial Crisis, this measure of margin debt has surged from high to high, reaching a peak in May 2018 of $669 billion, up 60% from the pre-Financial Crisis peak in July 2007, and up 117% since January 2012. Since the peak in May, margin debt has dropped by $62 billion (-9.2%). Note the $40.5-billion plunge in October:

In the two-decade scheme of things, the relationship between stock market surges and crashes and margin debt becomes obvious. Back during the dot-com bubble, dot-com stocks, traded mostly on the Nasdaq, included what today are booming survivors like Amazon, barely hangers-on like RealNetworks, or goners like eToys. At the time, these stocks soared by stunning amounts, and people, such as myself, used margin debt, to enhance their returns. When stocks plunged, the margin calls came, and these people had to sell their holdings into an illiquid and plunging market. They ended up selling their best and most liquid stuff first and watched their trash get trashed further. When it was over by October 2002, the Nasdaq had plunged 78%. Over the same period, margin debt plunged 54%.

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“..who will purchase the roughly €275 billion of government securities Italy is forecast to issue in 2019?”

QE Created Dangerous Financial Dependence, Italy Hooked, Withdrawal Next (DQ)

The Bank of Italy, on behalf of the ECB, has bought up more than €360 billion of multiyear treasury bonds (BTPs) since the QE program was first launched in March 2015. In fact, the ECB is now virtually the only significant net buyer of Italian bonds left standing. This raises a key question, Nowotny said: With the ECB scheduled to exit the bond market in roughly six weeks time, “who will purchase the roughly €275 billion of government securities Italy is forecast to issue in 2019?”

With foreigners shedding a net €69 billion of Italian government bonds since May, when the right-wing League and anti-establishment 5-Star Movement took the reins of government, and Italian banks in no financial position to expand their already bloated holdings, it is indeed an important question (and one we’ve been asking for well over a year). According to former Irish central bank governor and ex-member of the ECB’s Governing Council Patrick Honohan, speaking at an event in London, when the ECB’s support is removed, “the yield on Italian government bonds will be much more vulnerable.”

[..] Perhaps the biggest risk the ECB runs in this latest escalation of tensions with Italy’s populist government is in reminding investors just how much governments in the Eurozone have come to depend on the ECB’s QE program. But it’s not just Italian bonds that are hooked on QE. In the past three years the ECB has spent €512 billion gobbling up German bonds (current 10-year yield: 0.35%); €416 billion on French bonds (10-year yield: 0.76%); €256 billion on Spanish bonds (1.62%); €114 billion on Dutch bonds (0.52%); €72 billion on Belgian bonds (0.83%); €57 billion on Austrian bonds (0.61%), and €36 billion on Portuguese bonds (1.98%).

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So far, crypto fails to replace whatever it is that is failing.

Bitcoin Price Crash Causes Bankruptcy And Mass Mine Closures (Ind.)

Bitcoin mining operations in the US and China are facing closures after the plummeting price of bitcoin means they may no longer be profitable. The world’s most valuable cryptocurrency is currently trading at around $4,500, having lost almost a third of its value in the space of a week. Bitcoin mining – the process of generating new units of the cryptocurrency by solving complex puzzles – requires vast amounts of electricity to power the computers performing the calculations. This means that the profitability of mining falls when bitcoin’s price drops, and if the price falls too far then operations may no longer be economically viable.

The biggest casualty so far may be the US-based mining firm Giga Watt, which was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week after it was unable to pay debts of around $7 million. “The corporation is insolvent and unable to pay its debts when due,” the filing stated, according to CoinDesk. The majority of bitcoin mining operations are based in China, where electricity costs are some of the lowest in the world. Yet despite the cheap electricity, images and videos of mining operations shutting down in the country have been spreading across social media. Hong Kong-based mining platform Suanlitou announced this week that it was unable to cover electricity fees for a 10-day period in November, according to the South China Morning Post.

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This is Theresa May’s prime achievement, and it’s hard to see why nobody calls her on it. The application of austerity and the Hostile Environment on Britain is her baby.

UK’s Poorest Dying Nearly 10 Years Younger Than Rich (Ind.)

The poorest groups in society are dying almost a decade earlier than the richest, new research shows, prompting concern that welfare cuts and a rising cost of living are leaving the most vulnerable “out of the collective gain”. The study by academics at Imperial College London revealed the life expectancy gap between the most affluent and most deprived sections of society increased from six years in 2001 to eight years in 2016 for women, and from nine to 10 years for men. Women in the most deprived communities in 2016 lived until an average 79 years old, compared with 87 years in the most affluent group, while for men, the life expectancy was 74 years among the poorest, compared with 84 years among the richest.

The findings, published in the journal Lancet Public Health, also reveals that the life expectancy of England’s poorest women has fallen in the last seven years – having dropped by three months since 2011. Child mortality rates were also considerably higher among deprived communities, with poorer children two-and-a-half times more likely to die before they reach adulthood than their peers from affluent families. The findings show that people in the poorest sectors died at a higher rate from all illnesses – but that a number of diseases showed a particularly stark difference between rich and poor, notably respiratory diseases, heart disease, lung and digestive cancers and dementias.

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One step up and two steps back every step of the way.

MPs Unite To Condemn May’s ‘Blindfold Brexit’ (Ind.)

MPs of all parties accused Theresa May of delivering a “blindfold Brexit” after she admitted her deal left the public in the dark on a range of vital questions about Britain’s future. Decisions about future trade, the Irish border backstop, fisheries and whether the UK will remain tied to EU rules until after the next general election have all been shelved, a 26-page “political declaration” struck with the EU revealed. The admission came as the deal still looked doomed to defeat in a landmark vote next month – as both pro- and anti-EU Tories attacked it during feisty Commons exchanges in which few supporters spoke up.

Significantly, two leading Brexiteers praised by Ms May for working with her on the document – Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson – said they could not back it unless the backstop was stripped out. More than 80 Tories have criticised the package, pointing to a heavy defeat and a constitutional crisis, unless most can be talked around in the next few weeks of frantic arm-twisting.

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Merkel is a disaster “..but we’re going to miss her because whatever comes next will be worse.“

Yanis Varoufakis: “The EU Declared War And Theresa May Played Along” (NS)

In 2016, shortly before the EU referendum, Yanis Varoufakis warned that the UK was destined for a “Hotel California Brexit”: it could check out but it could never leave. The former Greek finance minister spoke from experience. In 2015, his efforts to end austerity – “fiscal waterboarding” – were thwarted by the EU. Theresa May’s draft Brexit deal confirmed Varoufakis’s prophecy: the UK would be condemned to purgatory. With fortuitous timing, on the evening that May’s agreement was published, Varoufakis delivered an Oxford Union lecture on Europe’s future. The 57-year-old Marxist and game theorist wryly remarked that Conservative cabinet ministers praised his analysis in private.

“The UK should never have entered the negotiations,” he told me when we met afterwards. “You do not negotiate with the EU because the EU does not negotiate with you. It sends a bureaucrat, in this case it was Mr Barnier…they could have sent an android, or an algorithm.” May’s fatal error, Varoufakis said, was to accept a two-phase negotiation: a divorce agreement followed by a new trade deal. “This was a declaration of war because Barnier said: ‘You will give us everything we want: money, people, Ireland. And only then will we discuss what you want.’ Well, that isn’t a negotiation, that’s a travesty. And Theresa May agreed to play along.” But Varoufakis, who helped persuade Jeremy Corbyn to support Remain in 2016, has little sympathy for the “People’s Vote” movement.

“It’s offensive. What was the first vote? Wasn’t it a people’s vote? To call it a people’s vote is to try and delegitimise the original vote – to say it was dictatorial, it was rigged.” He added: “You have to explain two things: first, how are you going to get the referendum completed before the Article 50 period is over? Secondly, how can you have a binary choice between five or six options? Explain those things and I’m with you.” [..] I asked Varoufakis how he viewed the liberal adulation of [Angela Merkel]. “I’m a dialectician: she has been a disaster and we’re going to miss her. She is a disaster because she squandered immense political capital that could have been used to reshape Europe. But we’re going to miss her because whatever comes next will be worse.”

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“Punishments [..] are also believed to include slowing internet speeds, reducing access to good schools for individuals or their children, banning people from certain jobs, preventing booking at certain hotels and losing the right to own pets.

China Bans Millions From Flights As ‘Social Credit’ System Introduced (Ind.)

Millions of Chinese nationals have been blocked from booking flights or trains as Beijing seeks to implement its controversial “social credit” system, which allows the government to closely monitor and judge each of its 1.3 billion citizens based on their behaviour and activity. The system, to be rolled out by 2020, aims to make it “difficult to move” for those deemed “untrustworthy”, according to a detailed plan published by the government this week. It will be used to reward or punish people and organisations for “trustworthiness” across a range of measures. A key part of the plan not only involves blacklisting people with low social credibility scores, but also “publicly disclosing the records of enterprises and individuals’ untrustworthiness on a regular basis”.

The plan stated: “We will improve the credit blacklist system, publicly disclose the records of enterprises and individuals’ untrustworthiness on a regular basis, and form a pattern of distrust and punishment.” For those deemed untrustworthy, “everywhere is limited, and it is difficult to move, so that those who violate the law and lose the trust will pay a heavy price.” The credit system is already being rolled out in some areas and in recent months the Chinese state has blocked millions of people from booking flights and high-speed trains. According to the state-run news outlet Global Times, as of May this year, the government had blocked 11.14 million people from flights and 4.25 million from taking high-speed train trips.

[..] People are awarded credit points for activities such as undertaking volunteer work and giving blood donations while those who violate traffic laws and charge “under-the-table” fees are punished. Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online. Punishments are not clearly detailed in the government plan, but beyond making travel difficult, are also believed to include slowing internet speeds, reducing access to good schools for individuals or their children, banning people from certain jobs, preventing booking at certain hotels and losing the right to own pets.

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Admit it or not, but it’s a very small step from China to Google.

Google Wants To Data Mine Your Home And Kids’ Bedroom (ZH)

New patents show Google is quietly developing a smart-home automated system that will routinely eavesdrop on your daily life. The patents describe how cameras and sensors will be mounted in almost every room of the house, scanning and analyzing every movement a human makes. According to the patent description, the smart cameras could recognize Will Smith’s face on a T-shirt. After cross-referencing this data against the human’s browser history, the smart-home might announce or send them a message, “You seem to like Will Smith. His new movie is playing in a theater near you.”

By blending that with an in-depth analysis of other electronic devices in the home, and audio signatures to determine gender, Google will have enough data to create a corporate profile on the human and even their family. The system will then calculate “fashion tastes” by scanning the human’s outfit, and could even determine their income or social class based on any “expensive mechanical and/or electronic devices” it detects. Even creepier, the smart-home will track audio signatures too, could be used to identify users, but also determine gender and age. With a treasure trove of data mined from every room of the home, the smart-home will then tell the human what to watch, what to eat, where to go, and what to buy.

If this all seems invasive, it is essential to understand that tech companies are already data mining you, it just happens to be online: “Google and Facebook both record and analyze user behavior, use it to sort people into categories, and then target them with ads and other content. Facebook likely knows your race and religion, while Google uses your emails and search history to sort you into ad-ready brackets. Netflix infers all types of data on users based on what they watch, then serves back hyper-specific movie and TV categories. This patent simply expands the areas in which your behavior is already mined and recorded from your phone and laptop to your bedroom,” wrote The Atlantic.

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“Washington didn’t intend Thanksgiving to be a day for offering up glib platitudes that require no thought, no effort and no sacrifice.”

How Do You Give Thanks For Freedoms That Are Constantly Being Eroded? (RI)

Listen: I know it’s been a hard, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning kind of year. It’s been a year of hotheads and blowhards and killing sprees and bloodshed and takedowns. It’s been a year in which tyranny took a few more steps forward and freedom got knocked down a few more notches. It’s been a year with an abundance of bad news and a shortage of good news. It’s been a year of too much hate and too little kindness. It’s been a year in which politics and profit margins took precedence over decency, compassion and human-kindness. We’ve been operating in this soul-sucking, topsy-turvy, inside-out, upside-down state for so long that it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by all that is wrong in the world in order to reflect and give thanks for what is good.

And now we find ourselves at this present moment, more than 200 years after George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation as a time to give thanks for a government whose purpose was to ensure the safety and happiness of its people and for a Constitution designed to safeguard civil and religious liberty. But how do you give thanks for freedoms that are constantly being eroded? How do you express gratitude for one’s safety when the perils posed by the American police state grow more treacherous by the day? How do you come together as a nation in thanksgiving when the powers-that-be continue to polarize and divide us into warring factions?

Washington didn’t intend Thanksgiving to be a day for offering up glib platitudes that require no thought, no effort and no sacrifice. He wanted it to be a day of contemplation, in which we frankly assessed our shortcomings, acknowledged our wrongdoings, and resolved to be a better, more peaceable nation in the year to come.

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Nice new tidbits every single day. “CIA has more wiretapped phone calls at hand than the public knows about.”, “Khashoggi was barred from media appearances after criticizing Trump in late 2016..”

CIA Holds ‘Smoking Gun Phone Call’ Of MbS On Khashoggi Murder (Hurriyet)

The CIA is in possession of a phone call recording of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he is heard giving an instruction to “silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible,” Hürriyet columnist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote on Nov. 22. According to Selvi, CIA Director Gina Haspel “signalled” during her trip to Ankara last month the existence of the wiretapped phone call between Crown Prince Mohammed and his brother Khaled bin Salman, who is Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. Citing unidentified sources, the Turkish columnist wrote that the two Saudi officials are heard in the CIA recording discussing the “discomfort” created by Khashoggi’s public criticism of the kingdom’s administration.

[..] “It is said that the crown prince gave an instruction to silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible and this instruction was captured during the CIA wiretapping. The subsequent murder is the ultimate confirmation of this instruction,” Selvi added, stressing that an international investigation into the murder, if opened, “can reveal more jaw-dropping evidence, as CIA has more wiretapped phone calls at hand than the public knows about.” [..] Trump declared on Nov. 20 that he will not further punish Saudi Arabia for the murder, making clear in an exclamation-filled statement that the benefits of good relations with the kingdom outweigh the possibility its crown prince ordered the killing. Khashoggi was barred from media appearances after criticizing Trump in late 2016, according to the U.S. State Department.

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There may not be enough time before the new Congress is sworn in. It may become up to the Senate.

Comey, Loretta Lynch Subpoenaed To Testify Before Congress (AFP)

Former FBI director James Comey and former attorney general Loretta Lynch have been subpoenaed to testify before Congress next month before Republicans relinquish control of the House, documents showed Thursday. Comey confirmed he had received a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee but said he would resist if made to answer questions behind closed doors. “I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions,” he said on his Twitter account. “But I will resist a ‘closed door’ thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.”

Lynch, who served under former president Barack Obama, did not immediately comment, but copies of the subpoenas made public Thursday show she was summoned to testify on December 4. Comey was ordered to appear before the committee on December 3. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Comey and Lynch of covering for Hillary Clinton in an investigation into her use of a private server for emails while she was secretary of state. He has often leveled charges of bias in countering a probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether the Trump campaign colluded with a Russian effort to sway the 2016 elections in the Republican’s favor.

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This is not just revisionist hypocrisy, this is Orwell.

Hillary Clinton: Europe Must Curb Immigration To Stop Rightwing Populists (G.)

Europe must get a handle on immigration to combat a growing threat from rightwing populists, Hillary Clinton has said, calling on the continent’s leaders to send out a stronger signal showing they are “not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support”. In an interview with the Guardian, the former Democratic presidential candidate praised the generosity shown by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, but suggested immigration was inflaming voters and contributed to the election of Donald Trump and Britain’s vote to leave the EU. “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame,” Clinton said, speaking as part of a series of interviews with senior centrist political figures about the rise of populists, particularly on the right, in Europe and the Americas.

“I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.” [..] “The use of immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of attacks on one’s heritage, one’s identity, one’s national unity has been very much exploited by the current administration here,” she said.

“There are solutions to migration that do not require clamping down on the press, on your political opponents and trying to suborn the judiciary, or seeking financial and political help from Russia to support your political parties and movements.” Brexit, described by Clinton as the biggest act of national economic self-harm in modern history, “was largely about immigration”, she said.

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There are many more in this list, the former left sold out everywhere.

We came, we saw, we became irrelevant.

And Hillary is still entirely clueless about Trump’s appeal.

Clinton, Blair, Renzi: Why We Lost, And How To Fight Back (G.)

Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, Matteo Renzi: three of rightwing populism’s greatest scalps. Clinton admits she was left dumbfounded by her 2016 election defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. Renzi’s centre-left party was defeated this year after a surge in the anti-establishment vote in Italy, a country he calls “the incubator” of populism. Blair may not have lost at the ballot box, but his legacy, particularly on Europe, was upended in the Brexit referendum. All three are shunned by sections of their own party that accuse them of being responsible for the failure of the centre-left to offer a sufficiently radical alternative.

But all three are still thinking deeply about rightwing populism – its causes and the threat it poses – the mistakes of the centre left, including their own, and how modern politics appears to be mobilising resentment towards a perceived elite. [..] All three interviewees argue that one significant problem for mainstream politicians is that detailed, reasoned arguments stand little chance against the antics of the populist, whose simplified, amplified rhetoric is apt to drown out costed healthcare programmes or earnest paeans to liberal values. And politicians are no longer held to their promises. “The press does not know how to cover these candidates who are setting themselves on fire every day, who are masters of diversion and distraction,” Clinton said. “That is new.

“I always believed in the [2016 US presidential] campaign … the moderators would ask the hard questions, they would force us to respond and they would draw out the differences. That never happened. Because the guy I was running against is a master at just waving his hands and tweeting and insulting, and dominating the news cycles.”

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Mammals lost out for about 150 million years, came back only when the dinosaurs were wiped out. Mammals would need to rule for another 100 million years or so to match the dinosaur rule.

Elephant-Sized Mammal Cousin Lived Alongside Dinosaurs (R.)

A stoutly built mammal cousin the size of an elephant that munched on plants with its horny beak roamed the European landscape alongside dinosaurs during the Triassic Period about 205 million to 210 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday. Scientists announced the surprising discovery in Poland of fossils of a four-legged beast called Lisowicia bojani that demonstrated that dinosaurs were not the only behemoths on Earth at that time and that the group of mammal-like reptiles to which Lisowicia belonged, called dicynodonts, did not die out as long ago as previously believed. “We think it’s one of the most unexpected fossil discoveries from the Triassic of Europe,” said paleontologist Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki of Uppsala University in Sweden.


A comparison of the Lisowicia bojani with a recent elephant. Tomasz Sulej and Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki/Handout via REUTERS

Lisowicia, the largest-known non-dinosaur land animal alive at its time, was about 15 feet (4.5 meters) long, 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) tall and weighed 9 tons. The only other giants around at the time were early members of the dinosaur group called sauropods that had four legs, long necks and long tails. “The Lisowicia skull and jaws were highly specialized: toothless and the mouth was equipped with a horny beak, as in turtles and horned dinosaurs,” Niedzwiedzki said, adding that it was unclear whether it had tusks as some of its relatives did. The Triassic was the opening chapter in the age of dinosaurs, followed by the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The first dinosaurs appeared roughly 230 million years ago. Many of the earliest dinosaurs were modest in size, overshadowed by big land reptiles including fearsome predators called rauisuchians and crocodile-like phytosaurs.

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Mar 312018
 


Giotto Lamentation 1306

 

What Could Dethrone the Dollar as Top Reserve Currency? (WS)
How Many Trillions In Debt Are Linked To Soaring LIBOR? (ZH)
Bitcoin Is On Track For Its Worst First Quarter Ever (CNBC)
Tesla’s ‘Day Of Reckoning’ Is Near (CNBC)
ECB To Buy More German Bank Bonds To Keep Stimulus Flowing (R.)
UK Must Bring Home ‘Just Over 50’ Of Its Diplomats From Russia (R.)
Jammers Stop Assange From Using Internet (PA)
China’s Social Credit System Punishes Untrustworthy Citizens (ABC.au)
China ‘Environment Census’ Reveals 50% Rise In Pollution Sources (G.)
Overfishing Turns Mediterranean Dolphins Into Thieves (Ind.)

 

 

Again: look at dollar-denominated debt in the world. And then check interest rates. The dollar will be in great demand.

What Could Dethrone the Dollar as Top Reserve Currency? (WS)

What will finally pull the rug out from under the dollar’s hegemony? The euro? The Chinese yuan? Cryptocurrencies? The Greek drachma? Whatever it will be, and however fervently the death-of-the-dollar folks might wish for it, it’s not happening at the moment, according to the most recent data. The IMF just released its report, Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) for the fourth quarter 2017. It should be said that the IMF is very economical with what it discloses. The COFER data for the individual countries – the total level of their reserve currencies and what currencies they hold – is “strictly confidential.” But we get to look at the global allocation by currency.

In Q4 2017, total global foreign exchange reserves, including all currencies, rose 6.6% year-over-year, or by $709 billion, to $11.42 trillion, right in the range of the past three years (from $10.7 trillion in Q4 2016 to $11.8 trillion in Q3, 2014). For reporting purposes, the IMF converts all currency balances into dollars. Dollar-denominated assets among foreign exchange reserves rose 14% year-over-year in Q4 to $6.28 trillion, and are up 42% from Q4 2014. There is no indication that global central banks have lost interest in the dollar; on the contrary:

Over the decades, there have been some efforts to topple the dollar’s hegemony as a global reserve currency, which it has maintained since World War II. The creation of the euro was the most successful such effort. Back in the day, the euro was supposed to reach “parity” with the dollar on the hegemony scale. And it edged up for a while until the euro debt crisis derailed those dreams. And now there’s the ballyhooed Chinese yuan. Effective October 1, 2016, the IMF added it to its currency basket, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR). This anointed the yuan as a global reserve currency. But not all central banks disclose to the IMF how their foreign exchange reserves are allocated. In Q4, the allocation of 12.3% of the reserves hadn’t been disclosed.

These “unallocated reserves” have been plunging. Back in Q4 2014, they still accounted for 41% of total reserves. They’re plunging because more central banks report to the IMF their allocation of foreign exchange reserves, and the COFER data is getting more detailed. So among the 87.7% of the “allocated” reserve currencies in Q4 2017, the pie was split up this way, with changes since 2014: Disappointingly for many folks, the Chinese yuan – the thin red sliver in the pie chart above — didn’t exactly soar since its inclusion in the SDR basket. Its share ticked up by a minuscule amount to a minuscule share of 1.2% of allocated foreign exchange reserves in Q4. In other words, central banks seem to lack a certain eagerness, if you will, to hold yuan-denominated assets.

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Nobody has a clue why LIBOR rises, including whoever wrote this. A wild guess: $200 trillion?! It’s that dollar-denominated debt problem again.

How Many Trillions In Debt Are Linked To Soaring LIBOR? (ZH)

[..] we have commented extensively on what may (or may not) be behind the Libor blow out: if as many claim, the move is a benign technicality and a temporary imbalance in money market supply and demand, largely a function of tax reform (including the Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax) or alternatively of the $300BN surge in T-Bill supply in the past month, the Libor move should start fading. If it doesn’t, it will be time to get nervous. But no matter what the reason is behind the Libor move, the reality is that financial conditions are far tighter as a result of the sharp move higher in short-term rates in general, and Libor in particular, which for at least a few more years, remains the benchmark rate referenced by trillions in fixed income instruments.

Which brings us to a logical follow up question: ignoring the reasons behind the move, how does a higher Libor rate spread throughout the financial system, and related to that, how much notional debt is at risk of paying far higher interest expense, if only temporarily, resulting in even tighter financial conditions. For the answer, we look at the various ways that Libor, and short-term rates in general “channel” into the economy. Here, as JPMorgan explains, the key driver is and always has been monetary policy, which controls short-term rates, which affect the economy via various channels and pathways.

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45% feels like a lot.

Bitcoin Is On Track For Its Worst First Quarter Ever (CNBC)

Bitcoin is having a terrible first quarter, in fact the worst its ever seen. The price of the cryptocurrency has fallen from $13,412.44 on January 1 to $7,266.07 on March 30, marking a more than 45% decline, according to data from CoinDesk, a site which tracks the price of different digital coins. The quarter ends on Saturday. So far this quarter, $114.9 billion of market capitalization or value has been wiped off of bitcoin. The price decline this quarter is the biggest first quarter decline in bitcoin’s history. The previous biggest decline was a near 38% fall in the price in the first quarter of 2014, according to data from CoinDesk. It tracks the price of bitcoin back to the middle of 2010.

CNBC looked at bitcoin’s price performance in the first quarters of each year beginning in 2011. Bitcoin has recorded a decline in 5 of the 8 first quarters tracked, which includes the current 2018 Q1. The biggest price rise was a 599% surge in the price of bitcoin in the first quarter of 2013. Bitcoin saw a huge run up in price in 2017 and hit a record high above $19,000 towards the end of last year. But it has faced tougher regulatory scrutiny in 2018 and some of the air has come out of the market. At a G-20 meeting this month, Argentina’s central bank governor outlined a summer deadline for members to have “specific recommendations on what to do” and said task forces are working to submit proposals by July. Italy’s central bank leader told reporters after the meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that cryptocurrencies pose risks but should not be banned, according to Reuters.

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What’s the recall of 123,000 cars going to cost?

Tesla’s ‘Day Of Reckoning’ Is Near (CNBC)

Tesla’s big stock drop this month will have negative implications for its ability to raise critically-needed funds, according to Wall Street analysts. The company’s shares declined 22% in March on concerns over a fatal car crash in California last week and worries over its Model 3 production rate. Tesla’s 5.3% bond, issued last August and maturing in 2025, also fell 4% to 87.25 cents Wednesday with a yield of 7.6%, according to FactSet. The bond’s price declined 8% this month. Morgan Stanley on Wednesday warned Tesla shareholders the stock’s fall could be a “self-fulfilling” prophecy for further declines.

“A lower share price begets a lower share price … For a company widely expected to continue to fund its strategy through external capital raises, a fall in the share price can take on a self-fulfilling nature that further exacerbates the volatility of the share price,” analyst Adam Jonas wrote. Jonas said the company needs to accelerate its rate of Model 3 production if it wants to raise funds at an attractive price for the company. “The precise timing of when Tesla can achieve a 2,500/week and then a 5,000/week production run-rate for its mass market sedan can make the difference between whether Tesla is potentially raising capital from a position of weakness at a price near our $175 bear case or whether it can access capital from a position of strength with a stock price near our $561 bull case,” he wrote.

Another financial firm is already pessimistic over Telsa’s Model 3 manufacturing capability. Moody’s downgraded Tesla’s credit ratings after the close Tuesday and changed the outlook to negative from stable, citing the “significant shortfall” in the Model 3 production rate and its tight financial situation. Tesla had $3.4 billion in cash or cash equivalents at year end 2017. The company lost nearly $2 billion last year and burned about $3.4 billion in cash after capital investments. Given the company’s cash burn rate and how it has $230 million of debt due in Nov. 2018 and another $920 million in Mar. 2019, Moody’s believes the company has to raise new capital soon.

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This is a week old, but we can’t repeat often enough how insane this is. Germany’s economy is supposedly soaring, but Draghi keeps saving its banks. “To boost inflation..” Bigger nonsense was never heard. Those banks are simply not doing well. But even then, let Germany solve the mess.

ECB To Buy More German Bank Bonds To Keep Stimulus Flowing (R.)

The European Central Bank will start buying bonds from a further seven state-owned German banks under its stimulus program, it said on Thursday, in a bid to avoid running out of debt to buy after three years of massive purchases. The seven regional banks, which include the Investitionsbank Berlin and Bavaria’s LFA Förderbank Bayern, join a small group of German development lenders whose debt the ECB has already been buying as part of its efforts to boost inflation. The move slightly enlarges the pool of German debt which the ECB can tap as part of its 2.55 trillion euro ($3.14 trillion) quantitative easing scheme, thereby pushing back a looming cap on owning more than a third of any one country’s public debt.

With euro zone inflation now comfortably above 1%, the ECB is widely expected to wind down its bond purchases this year and even start raising interest rates towards the middle of 2019. With Germany running a fiscal surplus, however, finding enough German bonds to buy has already become harder for the ECB, which has reduced its purchases of debt from Europe’s largest economy more than for other large countries in recent months. The ECB has set out to buy government bonds in proportion to the amount of capital that each country has paid into the central bank, which in turn depends on the size of its economy. Deviations from this so called “capital key”, however, have been substantial, with France, Italy and Spain enjoying oversized purchases while smaller countries such as Estonia and Portugal have fallen behind.

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And the whole time I’m thinking: why do they have so many people out there? What do they do all day long?

UK Must Bring Home ‘Just Over 50’ Of Its Diplomats From Russia (R.)

Russia has told Britain it must send home “just over 50” more of its diplomats in a worsening standoff with the West over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. Russia has already retaliated in kind against Britain and ejected 23 British diplomats over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. London says Moscow stood behind the attack, something Russia denies. British Ambassador Laurie Bristow was summoned again on Friday and told London had one month to cut its diplomatic contingent in Russia to the same size as the Russian mission in Britain.

On Saturday, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Reuters that meant Britain would have to cut “a little over 50” of its diplomats in Russia. “We asked for parity. The Brits have 50 diplomats more than the Russians,” said Zakharova. When asked if that meant London would have to bring home exactly 50 diplomats, she said: “A little over 50.”

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It doesn’t feel as if demanding internet access for Julian quite cuts it. He could be in much bigger trouble.

Jammers Stop Assange From Using Internet (PA)

Electronic jammers have been placed inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London to prevent WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange having access to the internet or social media, sources say. The Ecuadorian government took the measure on Tuesday evening, stopping Assange from tweeting, using the internet or phone. He has also been refused any visitors to the embassy, where he has been living since June 2012, believing he will be extradited to the US for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks if he leaves. The measures follow the publication of an article in the Ecuadorian press concerning Assange’s tweets about the arrest of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont in Germany earlier this week.

In a phone call to Assange’s lawyer on Tuesday, an adviser to Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa said the WikiLeaks founder must stop tweeting about the Catalan issue. He was also asked to erase a tweet which said: “In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluis Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited.” Assange did not erase the tweet. His lawyer was told that a decision had been taken to isolate Assange by preventing him from communicating with the outside world and that this was “by order of the president”, say sources.

The serving Ecuadorian ambassador to Washington DC Francisco Carrion tweeted on Thursday: “The decision of the government of Ecuador to prevent Assange from tweeting is correct.” The Ecuador government said in a statement: “The government of Ecuador has suspended the systems that allow Julian Assange to communicate to the outside of the Ecuador embassy in London. “The measure was adopted due to Assange not complying with a written promise which he made with the government in late 2017, by which he was obliged not to send messages which entailed interference in relation to other states.” WikiLeaks sources said there was no such agreement.

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Who needs Orwell? Or Facebook, for that matter?! Only difference is China does it openly.

China’s Social Credit System Punishes Untrustworthy Citizens (ABC.au)

Chinese authorities claim they have banned more than 7 million people deemed “untrustworthy” from boarding flights, and nearly 3 million others from riding on high-speed trains, according to a report by the country’s National Development and Reform Commission. The announcements offer a glimpse into Beijing’s ambitious attempt to create a Social Credit System (SCS) by 2020 — that is, a proposed national system designed to value and engineer better individual behaviour by establishing the scores of 1.4 billion citizens and “awarding the trustworthy” and “punishing the disobedient”.

Liu Hu, a 43-year-old journalist who lives in China’s Chongqing municipality, told the ABC he was “dumbstruck” to find himself caught up in the system and banned by airlines when he tried to book a flight last year. Mr Liu is on a “dishonest personnel” list — a pilot scheme of the SCS — because he lost a defamation lawsuit in 2015 and was asked by the court to pay a fine that is still outstanding according to the court record. “No one ever notified me,” Mr Liu, who claims he paid the fine, said. Like the other 7 million citizens deemed to be “dishonest” and mired in the blacklist, Mr Liu has also been banned from staying in a star-rated hotel, buying a house, taking a holiday, and even sending his nine-year-old daughter to a private school. And just last Monday, Chinese authorities announced they would also seek to freeze the assets of those deemed “dishonest people”.

As the national system is still being fully realised, dozens of pilot social credit systems have already been tested by local governments at provincial and city levels. For example, Suzhou, a city in eastern China, uses a point system where every resident is rated on a scale between 0 and 200 points — every resident starts from the baseline of 100 points. One can earn bonus points for benevolent acts and lose points for disobeying laws, regulations, and social norms. According to a 2016 report by local police, the top-rated Suzhou citizen had 134 points for donating more than one litre of blood and doing more than 500 hours of volunteer work. The city said the next step was to use the credit system to punish people for transgressions such as dodging transport fares, cheating in video games, and restaurant no-shows.

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Tried to make sense of this, several times. Still sounds entirely hollow.

China ‘Environment Census’ Reveals 50% Rise In Pollution Sources (G.)

China’s environment ministry has said the number of sources of pollution in the country has increased by more than half in less than a decade. Releasing preliminary results of an ongoing “environmental census”, China’s ministry of ecology and environment said the number of sources of pollution in the country stands at about 9m, compared to 5.9m in its first census, in 2010. “The objectives and scope of the second census is different from those of the first one,” said Hong Yaxiong, head of the pollution survey at the ministry, Thursday. “But overall, there are more pollution sources.” The census did not say whether pollution had increased but declines in airborne pollution in major cities have been recorded in other studies.

Hong said factories flouting emissions standards were the main problem. The ministry found 7.4m sources of industrial pollution, compared to a million in rural areas and 500,000 in urban locations. Five years ago, China declared a “war against pollution.” Since then, new coal plants have been barred from opening and existing ones have been ordered to cut emissions. Major cities restrict the number of cars allowed on the roads. This past winter, residents in Beijing were left without heat after their coal boilers were removed. As part of the campaign, officials this month expanded the powers of the country’s 10-year-old ministry of environmental protection to include water management, emissions reductions, agricultural pollution, and other duties previously managed by half a dozen other ministries.

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No, it’s not just the birds and the bees. Fish are gone too.

Overfishing Turns Mediterranean Dolphins Into Thieves (Ind.)

Dolphins short on prey are resorting to underhand tactics to find a meal – tearing into nets to access the fish inside. Researchers studying interactions between dolphins and fishermen in northern Cyprus found nets were six times more prone to damage when dolphins were in the vicinity. They concluded that the marauding marine mammals were therefore the most likely culprits. “It seems that some dolphins may be actively seeking nets as a way to get food,” said Dr Robin Snape, an ecologist at the University of Exeter, who led the study. Net damage is irritating for the fishermen themselves, and can cost individuals thousands of euros every year. This is particularly problematic as most operations in the region are small scale.

However, the scientists suggested the fishermen must take some share of the blame, as overfishing in the region is a likely driver for the dolphins’ unusual behaviour. Dr Snape highlighted a “vicious cycle” that is “probably driven by falling fish stocks, which also result in low catches – meaning more nets are needed and higher costs for fishers”. “Effective management of fish stocks is urgently needed to address the overexploitation that is causing this vicious cycle,” he said.

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Mar 172018
 


Times Square NYC ca. 1909

 

Higher Interest Rates To Spell Private Debt Trouble in Many Countries (BBG)
The US Economy Is Not Really Growing (RIA)
US Gross National Debt Spikes $1.2 Trillion in 6 Months, Hits $21 Trillion (WS)
Russia Expels 23 British Diplomats In Retaliation (Ind.)
EU Ready To Hit Big US Tech Firms With 3% Turnover Tax (R.)
Goldilocks, R. I. P. – Part 2 (Stockman)
School Daze (Jim Kunstler)
‘America’s New Vietnam’: The Homelessness Crisis Seems Unsolvable (G.)
An Information Apocalypse Is Coming. How Can We Protect Ourselves? (G.)
China To Bar People With Bad ‘Social Credit’ From Planes, Trains (R.)
Global Biodiversity Crisis Puts Mankind At Risk (AFP)

 

 

What’s kept us alive will kill us off.

Higher Interest Rates To Spell Private Debt Trouble in Many Countries (BBG)

Hong Kong, Sweden, China and Australia could all find themselves in hot water over private-sector debt if borrowing costs rise, according to research by Oxford Economics. That’s because those countries all have a particularly high share of floating-rate debt in relation to economic output. If interest rates increase, households and companies are likely to feel the pinch, the study of 16 economies found. With global economic momentum picking up, several major central banks are weighing steps to tighten policy, though the pace of movement varies significantly. The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again next week and economists also predict that Sweden’s Riksbank will tighten policy later this year.

Oxford Economics estimated that an interest rate rise of 100 basis points would raise Hong Kong’s debt service ratio by around 2.5% of GDP after a year, while Sweden, China and Australia would experience increases of between 1.5% and 1.7% of GDP. By contrast, Germany, where debt levels are moderate, as well as France and the U.S. are less likely to suffer. For the latter two, that’s because mortgages are typically of fixed rate.

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It’s embarrassing that we need this to be pointed out.

The US Economy Is Not Really Growing (RIA)

Most people are aware that GDP growth has been lower than expected in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 (GFC). For example, real GDP growth for the past decade has been closer to 1.5% than the 3% experienced in the 50 years prior to 2008. As a result of the combination of slow economic growth and deficit spending, most people are also aware that the debt/GDP ratio has been rising. However, what most people don’t know is that, over the past ten years, the dollar amount of cumulative government deficit spending exceeded the dollar amount of GDP growth. Put another way, in the absence of deficit spending, GDP growth would have been less than zero for the past decade. Could that be true?

Let’s begin with a shocking chart that confirms the statements above, and begins to answer the question. The black line shows the difference between quarterly GDP growth and the quarterly increase in Treasury debt outstanding (TDO). When the black line is above zero (red dotted line), the dollar amount is GDP is growing faster than the increase in TDO. From 1971 to 2008, the amount of GDP typically grew at a faster rate than the increase in TDO, which is why the black line is generally above the red dotted line.

Most people are aware that GDP growth has been lower than expected in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 (GFC). For example, real GDP growth for the past decade has been closer to 1.5% than the 3% During the 1971-2008 period, inflation, budget deficits, and trade deficits varied widely, meaning that the relationship between GDP growth and TDO was stable even in the face of changes in other economic variables. Regardless of those changing economic variables, the US economy tended to grow at a pace faster than TDO for four decades. The only interruptions to the pattern occurred during recessions of the early 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s when GDP fell while budget deficits did not.

[..] From 2008-2017, GDP grew by $5.051 trillion, from $14.55 trillion to $19.74 trillion. During that same period, the increase in TDO totaled $11.26 trillion. In other words, for each dollar of deficit spending, the economy grew by less than 50 cents. Or, put another way, had the federal government not borrowed and spent the $11.263 trillion, GDP today would be significantly smaller than it is. It is possible to transform Chart 1, which shows annual changes in TDO and GDP from 1970-2017, into Chart 3 below, which shows the cumulative difference between the growth of TDO and GDP over the entire period from 1970-2017. The graph below clearly shows the abrupt regime change that occurred in the aftermath of the GFC. A period in which growth in GDP growth exceeded increases in TDO has been replaced by a period in which increases in TDO exceeded GDP growth.

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“These dang trillions are flying by so fast, they’re hard to see.”

US Gross National Debt Spikes $1.2 Trillion in 6 Months, Hits $21 Trillion (WS)

The US gross national debt jumped by $72.8 billion in one day, on Thursday, the Treasury Department reported Friday afternoon. This March 16 is a historic date of gloomy proportions, because on this date, the US gross national debt punched through the $21 trillion mark and reached $21.03 trillion. Here’s the thing: On September 7, 2017, a little over six months ago, just before Congress suspended the debt ceiling, the gross national debt stood at $19.84 trillion. In those six-plus months – 132 reporting days, to be precise – the gross national debt spiked by $1.186 trillion. I tell you, these dang trillions are flying by so fast, they’re hard to see. And we wonder: What was that? Where did it go?

Whatever it was and wherever it went, it added 6% to the gross national debt in just 6 months. And with 2017 GDP at $19.74 trillion in current dollars, the gross national debt now amounts to 106.4% of GDP. In the chart below, the flat spots are the various debt-ceiling periods. This is a uniquely American phenomenon when Congress forbids the Administration to borrow the money that it needs to borrow in order to spend it on the things that Congress told the Administration to spend it on via the appropriation bills. So that’s where we are, on this glorious day of March 16, 2018:

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So many holes have been pointed out in ‘the official story’ that not much of it remains standing.

Russia Expels 23 British Diplomats In Retaliation (Ind.)

Russia has announced it will expel 23 British diplomats in response to the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats from Britain. The move marks the latest development in the diplomatic spat over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury on 4 March. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday morning that the 23 diplomatic representatives of the British Embassy in Moscow should leave Russia within a week. The ministry also said all activities by the British Council, the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations, would cease in Russia and that the planned reopening of the British consulate in St Petersburg would no longer go ahead. The ministry warned that Russia could take further measures if Britain takes any more “unfriendly actions” against the country.

Shortly before the announcement, British ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow, was summoned to the foreign ministry for talks, where he learned of the retaliation measures. As he left the ministry, Mr Bristow said: “This crisis has arisen as a result of an appalling attack in the UK, the attempted murder of two people using a chemical weapon developed in Russia and not declared by Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as Russia is obliged to do under the Chemical Weapons Act.” The retaliation from Russia comes four days after Theresa May announced that 23 Russian diplomats would be expelled from Britain after Russia missed a deadline to provide an explanation for the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Both remain critically ill in hospital.

Russia has continued to dismiss accusations of Russian culpability for the attack and to deny possessing Novichok, the nerve agent used in the incident. On Friday, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering the poisoning, saying it was “overwhelmingly likely” Mr Putin personally ordered the assassination attempt. Dmitry Peskov, Russian presidential press secretary, responded to the verbal escalation with a further denial of the state’s involvement. “Any reference or mention of our President in this connection is nothing but a shocking and unforgivable violation of the diplomatic rules of propriety,” Mr Peskov said.

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Once Europe does this, will other ‘entities’ follow?

EU Ready To Hit Big US Tech Firms With 3% Turnover Tax (R.)

Large companies with significant digital revenues in the European Union such as Google and Facebook could face a 3% tax on their turnover under a draft proposal by the European Commission seen by Reuters. The proposal, expected to be adopted next week and still subject to changes, updates an earlier draft which envisaged a tax rate of between 1 and 5%. The tax, if backed by EU states and lawmakers, would only apply to large firms with annual worldwide revenues above 750 million euros (£662.2 million) and annual “taxable” revenues above 50 million euros in the EU. The threshold for EU revenues has been raised from 10 million euros initially foreseen to exempt smaller companies and emerging start-ups from the tax.

Large U.S. firms such as Uber, Airbnb and Amazon could also be hit by the new levy, which would apply across the 28 EU countries. Big tech firms have been accused by large EU states of paying too little tax in the bloc by re-routing some of their profits to low-tax member states like Ireland and Luxembourg. Services that will be taxed are digital advertising, which would capture both providers of users’ data like Google, and companies offering ad space on their websites, like popular social media such as Facebook. The tax would be also be levied on online platforms offering “intermediation services,” a concept under which the Commission includes gig economy firms such as Airbnb and Uber. Digital market places, including Amazon, would also be within the scope of the levy.

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True enough: Kudlow was by no means the only one to get it all awfully wrong.

Goldilocks, R. I. P. – Part 2 (Stockman)

Goldilocks is a conceit of monetary central planning and its erroneous predicate that falsifying financial asset prices is the route to prosperity. In fact, it only leads to immense and unstable financial bubbles which eventually crash – monkey-hammering the purported Goldilocks Economy as they do. It also leads to a complete corruption of the economic and financial narrative on both ends of the Acela Corridor. To wit, the Fed’s serial financial bubbles on Wall Street are falsely celebrated as arising from a booming main street economy. In fact, they are an economic dagger that bleeds it of investment and cash and exposes it to “restructuring” mayhem from the C-suites when the egregious inflation of share prices and stock option values finally gets crushed by another financial meltdown.

In this context, the Washington Post (WaPo) is out this morning with brutal takedown of our friend Larry Kudlow for his ebullient whistling past the graveyard on the eve of the financial crisis and Great Recession. It would be an understatement to say he didn’t see it coming, but it’s also completely unfair not to acknowledge that 95% of Wall Street and 100% of the FOMC were equally bubble-blind. In fact, when Larry Kudlow waxed eloquently in a piece in the National Review about the awesome economy the George Bush Administration had produced in December 2007, he was just delivering the Wall Street consensus forecast for the coming year:

“There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that’s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told…….In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.”

Well, not exactly. The worst recession since the 1930s actually incepted that very month and 10 months latter came Washington’s hair-on-fire moment when the monetary and fiscal spigots were opened far wider than ever before – bailing out everything that was collapsing, tottering, moving or even standing still.

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Our education system serves uniquely to create pawns in games.

School Daze (Jim Kunstler)

Sunday night was Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s turn through the CBS 60-Minutes wringer of censure with a visibly frustrated inquisitor Lesley Stahl trying to hector her into self-incrimination. The sad truth about American schools is that they’re a mirror for the painful collapse of the society they supposedly serve — a process ongoing for decades before Ms. DeVos came on the scene. The expectation that some uber-regent can or ought to fix public education is bound to disappoint a news media searching for saviors. The further we leave the 20th century behind, the more anomalous its organizing principles look, especially the idea of preparing masses of young people for mass, regimented work at the giant corporate scale.

There’s a big divergence underway between the promises of schooling and the kind of future that the 21st century is actually presenting — of no plausible careers or vocations besides providing “therapy” and policing for the discontented masses stewing in anomie and compensatory pleasure-seeking, with all its nasty side effects. In the meantime, we’re stuck with wildly expensive, out-of-scale, giant centralized schools where the worst tendencies of human status competition are amplified by smart phones and social media to all but eclipse classroom learning.

Education in the years to come is destined to become more of a privilege than a right, and it will probably depend more on how much an individual young person really desires an education than just compelling masses of uninterested or indisposed kids to show up everyday for an elaborate and rather poorly supervised form of day-care. But it’s difficult to let go of old habits and obsolete arrangements, especially when we’ve spent countless billions of dollars on them. I call the future a World Made By Hand because it is going to be entirely unlike the sci-fi robotic fantasy that currently preoccupies the thought-leaders in this culture. A lot of what will be required in this time-to-come will be physical labor and small-scale skilled work in traditional crafts. There never were that many job openings for astronauts, not even in the 1960s, but in the decades ahead there will be none — notwithstanding Elon Musk’s wish to colonize Mars.

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In New York, 111,000 students in the public school system are homeless.

‘America’s New Vietnam’: The Homelessness Crisis Seems Unsolvable (G.)

In Los Angeles, the more the politicians push to solve the city’s festering homelessness crisis, the worse it seems to get. The city leadership has taken one bold step after another: restructuring the budget to free more than $100m a year in homelessness funding, sponsoring one voter-approved initiative to raise more than $1bn for housing and backing another regional proposal to raise the sales tax and generate an estimated $3.5bn for support services over the next decade. And yet the tent cities continue to proliferate, in rich neighborhoods and poor, by the beach, the airport, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and within view of City Hall itself. It’s the sorriest urban scene anywhere in America, and the same voters who not so long ago opened their hearts and their wallets to put an end to it are growing increasingly impatient.

As the numbers of homeless people continue to rise – the latest figures put the countywide number at 58,000, up more than 20% in a single year – and new encampments spring up on sidewalks, under freeways, and along stretches of river and rail lines, the politicians who not so long ago were earning praise for their courage are facing the beginnings of an angry backlash. “How many people have we housed?” the Los Angeles Times asked impatiently in a blistering series of editorials late last month. “How many are we on track toward housing? Is Los Angeles setting the national standard for rapid and effective response to a vexing problem? Or are its leaders merely mastering the art of appearances while passing the buck and hoping things turn around? … Who’s in charge here?”

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Sorry, but that apocalypse is already very much here. ‘Ordinary people’ already have no idea what’s true or real or not.

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

John F Kennedy’s last speech reads like a warning from history, as relevant today as it was when it was delivered in 1963 at the Dallas Trade Mart. His rich, Boston Brahmin accent reassures us even as he delivers the uncomfortable message. The contrast between his eloquence and the swagger of Donald Trump is almost painful to hear. The problem is, Kennedy never spoke these words. He was killed before he made it to the Trade Mart. You can only hear them now thanks to audio technology developed by a British company, CereProc. Fragments of his voice have been taken from other speeches and public appearances, spliced and put back together, with neural networks employed to mimic his natural intonation.

[..] “Dual use” of technology is not a new problem. Nuclear physics gave us both energy and bombs. What is new is the democratisation of advanced IT, the fact that anyone with a computer can now engage in the weaponisation of information; 2016 was the year we woke up to the power of fake news, with internet conspiracy theories and lies used to bolster the case for both Brexit and Donald Trump. We may, however, look back on it as a kind of phoney war, when photoshopping and video manipulation were still easily detectable. That window is closing fast. A program developed at Stanford University allows users to convincingly put words into politicians’ mouths. Celebrities can be inserted into porn videos. Quite soon it will be all but impossible for ordinary people to tell what’s real and what’s not.

What will the effects of this be? When a public figure claims the racist or sexist audio of them is simply fake, will we believe them? How will political campaigns work when millions of voters have the power to engage in dirty tricks? What about health messages on the dangers of diesel or the safety of vaccines? Will vested interests or conspiracy theorists attempt to manipulate them? Unable to trust what they see or hear, will people retreat into lives of non-engagement, ceding the public sphere to the already powerful or the unscrupulous? The potential for an “information apocalypse” is beginning to be taken seriously. The problem is we have no idea what a world in which all words and images are suspect will look like, so it’s hard to come up with solutions.

Perhaps not very much will change – perhaps we will develop a sixth sense for bullshit and propaganda, in the same way that it has become easy to distinguish sales calls from genuine inquiries, and scam emails with fake bank logos from the real thing. But there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to defend ourselves from the onslaught, and society could start to change in unpredictable ways as a result. Like the generation JFK was addressing in his speech, we are on the cusp of a new and scary age. Rhetoric and reality, the plausible and the possible, are becoming difficult to separate. We await a figure of Kennedy’s stature to help us find a way through. Until then, we must at the very least face up to the scale of the coming challenge.

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Would have been nice to see Orwell comment on this.

China To Bar People With Bad ‘Social Credit’ From Planes, Trains (R.)

China said it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year. People who would be put on the restricted lists included those found to have committed acts like spreading false information about terrorism and causing trouble on flights, as well as those who used expired tickets or smoked on trains, according to two statements issued on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website on Friday. Those found to have committed financial wrongdoings, such as employers who failed to pay social insurance or people who have failed to pay fines, would also face these restrictions, said the statements which were dated March 2.

It added that the rules would come into effect on May 1. The move is in line with President’s Xi Jinping’s plan to construct a social credit system based on the principle of “once untrustworthy, always restricted”, said one of the notices which was signed by eight ministries, including the country’s aviation regulator and the Supreme People’s Court. China has flagged plans to roll out a system that will allow government bodies to share information on its citizens’ trustworthiness and issue penalties based on a so-called social credit score.

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We’re going to figure this one out way too late. The time to stop this is now, not at some future point down the line. But we’re not doing anything at all. We blindly parrot claims about clean energy and electric cars that will allegedly ‘save’ us, because we want to do the saving without paying a price for it that makes our lives one iota less comfy.

Global Biodiversity Crisis Puts Mankind At Risk (AFP)

Earth is enduring a mass species extinction, scientists say – the first since the demise of the dinosaurs and only the sixth in half-a-billion years. The reason? Humanity’s voracious consumption, and wanton destruction, of the very gifts of nature that keep us alive. Starting Saturday, a comprehensive, global appraisal of the damage, and what can be done to reverse it, will be conducted in Colombia. “The science is clear: biodiversity is in crisis globally,” WWF director general Marco Lambertini told AFP ahead of a crucial meeting of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). “We depend on biodiversity for the food we eat, the water we drink, the clean air we breathe, the stability of weather patterns, and yet our actions are pushing nature’s ability to sustain us to the brink.”

Scientists and government envoys will gather as the 128-member IPBES to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on five monumental assessment reports designed to inform global policymaking into the future. Compiled over the last three years, the reports will provide the most up-to-date picture of the health of the world’s plants, animals and soil. [..] Meeting host Colombia claims to boast the world’s largest variety of birds and orchids and is second only to Brazil in terms of overall species diversity. Paradoxically, decades of conflict have preserved fragile habitats in no-go zones in the country, whose mountainous topography supports 311 different ecosystems.

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