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Debt Rattle July 12 2022

Jul 122022

July 12, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: China, defamation, ECB, Macron, Nordstream, Pfizer, Putin, Schroeder, Uber 40 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Portrait of woman in wheelchair 1936

• Defiant Schroeder Will Keep Talking To Putin (RT)

• Why Biden Is Putting Us In Danger (Shellenberger)

• July Shutdown Of Nord Stream Pipeline Has The EU Worried (ZH)

• U.S. China Policy Is Heading Towards Disaster (NI)

z • Macron Ordered To Resign, Faces Urgent Probe After ‘Betraying France’ (Exp.)

• Uber Paid Academics Six-figure Sums For Research To Feed To The Media (G.)

• The ECB Must Follow Its Mandate (Lacalle)

• Officials Pressured EU Regulators to Rush Authorization of Pfizer Vax (CHD)

• Doctor Files $5M Defamation Lawsuit Against News MedPage Today (AFN)

• It’s Not Working (Jim Kunstler)

Giant constrictor snake squeezing Copenhagen citybus as part of a campaign for the city zoo

SARs

Did Sen. Ron Johnson just CATCH Joe and Hunter Biden at center of MASSIVE human trafficking operation?! pic.twitter.com/NyqSpRY263

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 11, 2022

Wise man.

• Defiant Schroeder Will Keep Talking To Putin (RT)

A diplomatic solution to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is the only thing that can effectively alleviate the suffering of civilians, the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, has told Germany’s FAZ newspaper, adding that he would continue to use every opportunity to talk to the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The former chancellor, who was earlier forced to leave his position at the board of the Russian oil giant Rosneft amid pressure from the European Parliament lawmakers, is now facing potential expulsion from his Social Democratic Party (SPD) at home. His perceived close relations with Moscow are cited as one of the reasons why the party considers his behavior “damaging” to its image, according to FAZ.

Schroeder himself, however, believes that the idea of isolating Russia politically is flawed. “I will not give up on… opportunities to talk to President [Vladimir] Putin,” Schroeder told FAZ in an interview published on Sunday. Russia is “interested in a negotiated solution,”the former chancellor asserted as he blamed Kiev for the stalled talks with Moscow. Schroeder, who sought to act as a mediator between Kiev and Moscow in early March, said that Ukrainians did not want any commitments “written down.” Such a position made any “serious” talks impossible at that stage of the negotiations, he added. The former chancellor also demonstrated little understanding for the West’s focus on supplying Ukraine with arms. “I don’t believe in a military solution.

The war can only be ended through diplomatic negotiations,” he told FAZ, adding that lives of the military on both sides can be spared and the suffering of the civilian population in Ukraine alleviated only through a diplomatic solution. When asked if he thinks that the western weapons deliveries contribute to a stronger negotiating position for Ukraine, Schroeder reiterated that all the nations, including “those not directly involved in this conflict,” should “work together to find a diplomatic solution”instead. He also criticized Lithuania over restricting the movement of goods to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, again saying that “all sides” bear responsibility for ensuring that “this conflict does not escalate further.”

The interview comes ahead of an SPD committee meeting next week that will discuss the former chancellor’s potential expulsion from the party. The politician’s lawyer told FAZ, however, that there is no sufficient legal basis for such a move. In June, Schroeder said he would still remain a Social Democrat, even if kicked out of the SPD.

“U.S. oil refineries are operating at 94% capacity..”

• Why Biden Is Putting Us In Danger (Shellenberger)

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the Biden Administration’s policy of sending American oil to China and other nations. “When it comes to the oil, it is something that oil companies decide… The Department of Energy can’t dictate what oil companies do with the oil they purchase or where they ship it to sell.” But the United States Department of Energy (DOE) does decide to whom it will sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). “A total of 16 companies responded to this notice, submitting 126 bids for evaluation,” noted DOE. A dozen won contracts. One was Unipec America, the trading arm of Sinopec, the China Petrochemical Corporation, which is wholly owned by the Chinese government.

There is no evidence that DOE went out of its way to sell American oil to Unipec, and little reason to believe that the U.S. could have refined that oil into gasoline, diesel, and other products had it remained in the U.S. After all, U.S. oil refineries are operating at 94% capacity. The DOE sold the oil to the highest bidders. And it was a coordinated release with international partners, including China, which also released oil from it strategic reserves. Indeed, Bloomberg and others oil market analysts predicted back in November that some U.S. SPR oil would go to China and India. But the reason our refineries are at maximum capacity is because Biden revoked a permit for a massive refinery expansion in the U.S. Virgin Islands in March and halted its operations entirely in May.

And where the U.S. released 50 million barrels of oil in 2021 and 180 million barrels of oil in 2022 so far, China has only released 7.4 million barrels of oil, which is just a half day’s consumption. Is that because China is oil-poor? No. It has equal-sized petroleum reserves to the U.S. In fact, despite promises in November and again in January to release oil from its reserves, China has instead been increasing its reserves. And there is no evidence that any non-Chinese firms, much less American firms, bought any of its released reserve oil, which undercuts the Biden Administration’s claim that the SPR release was being reciprocated. But the real drama is about to start. Today, Russia cut off all natural gas flowing through the main pipeline to Europe as part of routine maintenance.

Russia is contractually committed to turning the gas back on 10 days later, but many analysts, heads of state, and government officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t turn the gas back on in 10 days. Why? So he can increase prices, increase Russia’s energy revenues, and pressure Europe to stop supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia. France’s economy minister yesterday called a complete cut-off “the most likely” scenario. The consequences of a full Russian gas embargo would be devastating. German industries are already “in danger of permanently collapsing,” warned the head of Germany’s trade unions. Britain has warned that, in order to protect its own citizens, it may cut off natural gas supplies to Europe. If Putin cuts off the gas, Europe would be forced to ration energy, and bail-out both electric utilities and energy-intensive companies.

A mess of its own making.

• July Shutdown Of Nord Stream Pipeline Has The EU Worried (ZH)

It’s a dynamic which some in the alternative media have been warning about for months – While the establishment claimed that Russia would be crushed under the weight of NATO sanctions, others have suggested that Russia could hurt the west more (specifically Europe) by implementing sanctions of their own. While mainstream governments and journalists argued about how fast NATO should implement restrictions on Russian oil and gas, none of them seemed to consider the possibility that Putin would cut off energy exports himself. This is the problem with instituting foreign policy and engaging in geopolitics using a “cancel culture” mentality; it leads to childish thinking and a lack of foresight. You can’t “cancel” a nation if you are dependent on them for 40% of your energy needs.

Anyone with moderate industry knowledge in oil and gas could have seen this coming. Europe is now on “high alert” as the Nordtream 1 pipeline to Germany has lost 60% of its natural gas transfers as Russia pressures Canada for the return of a massive turbine being held in Canada for repairs. Canada has lifted sanctions in response and allowed the shipment of the turbine back to Russia, showing that the Kremlin does indeed have economic leverage over NATO countries. Even more concerning is that the pipeline will be undergoing an extended shutdown due to “maintenance” until July 21st. Some officials in Europe believe this shutdown may be a precursor (a beta test) to a total block of Russian gas to the EU, and they are probably right.

Speaking at the economic forum Les Rencontres Économiques, French Minister Bruno Le Maire said: ‘Let’s get ready for a total shutdown of the Russian gas supply…This is the most likely event.’ He added ‘We should not take Vladimir Putin’s threats lightly.’ It’s important to remember that Europe is not only dependent on oil and gas imports for heating, it is also dependent on them for electricity and many other needs. The middle of summer does not seem like the worst time to face heating shortages, but the overall effect of energy loss would drag the EU economy down into panic. Will the gas supply return after July 21? Probably, but this shutdown indicates that the Kremlin may be sending a message that they could end Europe’s economic stability anytime they want. The closer we get to winter, the more pressure will be applied, no doubt.

Visible pipeline flows.

“Breaking China Apart”

• U.S. China Policy Is Heading Towards Disaster (NI)

The unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty of China are translated into the sanctity of its borders which includes “red lines” like Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea (out of fourteen neighbors, China has signed boundary agreements with twelve, barring India and Bhutan). Then, China’s “peaceful rise” is viewed as a natural evolution, even a sense of an historical entitlement, that China has finally “arrived” on the international stage. This was first publicly alluded to by President Xi, during his speech on October 18, 2017, at the 19th CCP Congress. Referring to “the world witnessing once in a century changes,” Xi remarked that China has become “a great power in the world,” playing “an important role in the history of humankind … it is time for us to take center stage in the world.”

Among “core interests” is the primacy of the CCP as China’s center of gravity pivotal to the country’s unity, stability, and prosperity, because, for Xi and his close associates, there is the conviction that anything like Gorbachev’s glasnost would be a recipe for disaster and could even lead to the breakup of China. As the inheritors of the “Middle Kingdom” which built a Great Wall to defend China from foreign intruders, the CCP leadership is well aware that existing fault lines can be susceptible to manipulation to China’s detriment. I was struck by the fact that, unlike Americans, who tend to have short memories and shifting relationships with foreign countries, Chinese take the long view, with a keen sense of history.

A few years ago, during a meeting with a top Chinese “thinking” policy maker, while discussing U.S. “designs against China,” he politely passed on an old op-ed of the New York Times written by Leslie Gelb on November 13, 1991, around the time when the Soviet Union was disintegrating. Interestingly titled, “Breaking China Apart,” Gelb’s piece matter-of-factly discussed the United States resorting to the “ultimate sanction — a threat to the territorial integrity of the Middle Kingdom — if Beijing leaders continue to defy new standards of world behavior…” Alarmingly, Gelb continued in the New York Times, if “Chinese actions go far beyond the pale. Americans and others may take extraordinary measures, including kindling separatism, to stop them. Beijing’s leaders will be making a terrible mistake to think otherwise.” It is thus no accident that China often views unrest in Xinjiang, Tibet, or Hong Kong or talk of Taiwan as some sort of a U.S.-supported state policy of “kindling separatism.”

“It is not a president who governs France but a lobby!”

• Macron Ordered To Resign, Faces Urgent Probe After ‘Betraying France’ (Exp.)

The French President backed the development of Uber in France singing a deal when he was economy minister between 2014 to 2016. The findings, leaked after an investigation based on 124,000 confidential internal Uber documents, prompted calls for Mr Macron to resign. Les Patriotes leader Florian Philippot said: “Macron must resign! He betrays France, its companies, the State, justice, the people! Out!” He added: “If after the #UberFiles the oppositions don’t vote ‘no confidence’ today, I don’t know what they need! “Be responsible and vote it! Put the Macronie down!” Echoing his comments, National Rally MEP Jordan Bardella said: “It was common knowledge, the #UberFiles demonstrate it once again.

“Despite the permanent ‘at the same time’, Emmanuel Macron’s career has a consistency, a common thread: to serve private interests, often foreign, before national interests.” Left MEP Manon Aubry also blasted the French leader. She said: “Revelations on a secret deal between Macron and Uber. “We also better understand the role played by France in blocking any European regulation of platforms! “It is not a president who governs France but a lobby!” Debout La France leader Nicolas Dupont-Aignan echoed: “Emmanuel Macron, loyal supporter of Uber. “Minister of the Economy, he was already betraying France by defending the interests of an American company!”

According to the investigation, the French leader signed a deal with Uber to “make France work for Uber so that Uber can work in and for France”. Mr Macron also promised “a drastic simplification of the legal requirements” to obtain a ride-sharing licence. Uber also secretly lobbied ministers to influence London’s transport policy, it has been reported. Leaked documents show lobbyists for the ride-sharing app company met then-chancellor George Osborne and other ministers, according to the BBC. The “undeclared” meetings took place after Boris Johnson, as Mayor of London, had promised to launch a review that could have limited Uber’s expansion in the capital. The meeting with Mr Osborne took place at a private dinner in the US state of California, where Uber is based.

An internal Uber email stated that this was better than a meeting in London because “this is a much more private affair with no hanger-on officials or staffers”, the BBC reported. Other meetings were held between Uber lobbyists and current or former ministers including Priti Patel, Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock and Michael Gove, according to the corporation. Mr Johnson ultimately abandoned his review, and Uber was able to increase its number of drivers in London.

It’s the Monsanto model.

• Uber Paid Academics Six-figure Sums For Research To Feed To The Media (G.)

Uber paid high-profile academics in Europe and the US hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce reports that could be used as part of the company’s lobbying campaign. The Uber files, a cache of thousands of confidential documents leaked to the Guardian, reveal lucrative deals with several leading academics who were paid to publish research on the benefits of its economic model. The reports were commissioned as Uber wrestled with regulators in key cities around the world. University economists were targeted in France and Germany where enforcement by the authorities was increasingly fierce in 2014-15. One report by a French academic, who asked for a €100,000 consultancy fee, was cited in a 2016 Financial Times report as evidence that Uber was a “route out of the French banlieues”, delighting Uber executives.

Using techniques common in party political campaigns, Uber targeted academics and thinktanks to help it construct a positive narrative, namely that it created well-paid jobs that drivers liked, delivered cheap transport to consumers and boosted productivity. Documents show how its lobbyists planned to use academic research as part of a production line of political ammunition that could be fed to politicians and the media. The aim was to use the research to increase pressure for changing the rules Uber was evading. While Uber’s involvement in reports was mentioned, leaked files expose how it wanted to use academics’ work and their reputations to further its aims, and how much it was prepared to pay them. In France, the €100,000 consultancy arrangement was negotiated with a rising star of university economics, Prof Augustin Landier of the Toulouse School of Economics.

Landier agreed to produce a report that he described in emails to Uber’s policy and communications team as “actionable for direct PR to prove Uber’s positive economic role”. Landier proposed collaborating with David Thesmar, another high-profile professor from France’s top business school, École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris (HEC). In discussions in February 2015, Uber executives noted that although the price was high, it was worth it, especially if they worked on the report’s messages “to ensure it’s not presented in a potentially negative light”.

“The balance of the ECB is 69.5% of the GDP of the eurozone, when that of the Federal Reserve is 37% of the GDP of the US and the Bank of England’s is 39% of the UK GDP.”

• The ECB Must Follow Its Mandate (Lacalle)

The European Central Bank should be hugely concerned about two pieces of news. The euro is on the verge of parity with the US dollar and has accumulated a drop of 17% since 2021, more than 35% since 2008. On the other hand, inflation in the eurozone reached 8.6% in June, 5% excluding the energy and food components. Inflation in more than six eurozone countries, including Spain, is already in double digits with core CPI at multi-decade highs. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, June inflation was 3.4% with core at 1.9%. Switzerland relies on imports for gas, commodities, and supply chains as much as its neighbors, but it has not engaged in massive printing of its currency.

The euro is the greatest monetary success of the last 150 years, and it cannot be jeopardized by risking the independence of the European Central Bank. It is an elevated risk and those of us who want it to remain a reserve currency and a success are concerned. The balance of the ECB is 69.5% of the GDP of the eurozone, when that of the Federal Reserve is 37% of the GDP of the US and the Bank of England’s is 39% of the UK GDP. However, the euro is not the world’s reserve currency. The US Federal Reserve is the only central bank that pays attention to the global demand for US dollars and despite this, it has also made the enormous mistake of expanding money supply well above demand and, thereby, triggering inflation.

Let us not forget that prices do not go up all at once for the same amount of currency issued. One or two prices may rise for exogenous reasons, but not all rise unless the purchasing power of the currency is destroyed by printing without control. As Frank Shostak reminds, inflation is money supply growth, not prices denominated in money. A weak euro and rising inflation are extremely worrying factors because in June 2021 the increase in broad money supply (M3) in the eurozone was 8.3% annualized, with M1 (currency in circulation and overnight deposits) increasing by 11.8%. In other words, the increase in money supply (M3) was still 16% higher than during the so-called “Draghi bazooka”. In May 2022 it is still growing above 5.6% with GDP rebounding a mere 2.6% (consensus estimates).

“The political fall-out seems to be too high, even if the ‘technical level’ … could defend such a delay..”

• Officials Pressured EU Regulators to Rush Authorization of Pfizer Vax (CHD)

A Nov. 16, 2020, email from Marco Cavaleri, then head of the EMA’s biological health threats and vaccines strategy, stated that “[Alex] Azar and US GOV [sic]” had “pushed hard” to “rush into EUA [Emergency Use Authorization].” Azar at the time was secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA. In a Nov. 19, 2020, email, Noel Wathion, then deputy executive director of the EMA, referenced a “TC” — shorthand for teleconference — “with the commissioner,” referring to European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen. During the call, which Wathion described as “rather tense, at times even a bit unpleasant,” von der Leyen warned the EMA what might happen “if the expectations are not being met” to quickly issue a CMA [Conditional Marketing Authorization] for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, “irrespective if such expectations are realistic or not.”

In the same email, Wathion wrote: “The political fall-out seems to be too high, even if the ‘technical level’ … could defend such a delay in order to make the outcome of the scientific review as robust as possible. … “Although we know that whatever we do (speeding up the process to align as much as possible with the ‘approval’ timing by FDA/MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency] versus taking the time needed to have robust assurance in particular as regards CMC [Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls guidelines] and safety) EMA will have a very big challenge addressing questions and criticism from various parties … in case of a delay of several weeks.” The “various parties” Wathion referenced included the European Commission, the European Parliament, the media and the general public.

Wathion went on to argue that “CMC, responsibility and accountability are certainly elements to be considered in my view.” In a later email, dated Nov. 22, 2020, Wathion further revealed the pressure the agency was facing to issue a CMA for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, writing: “The likelihood that FDA (and also MHRA) will issue an EUA before a CMA is granted is extremely high. So we have to prepare for this.” However, Wathion expressed concerns in the same email that such preparation might come at the expense of a proper scientific assessment of the Pfizer vaccine. “We are speeding up as much as possible but we also need to make sure that our scientific assessment is as robust as possible,” Wathion wrote.

Nuremberg 2.0. A code, not a trial.

• Doctor Files $5M Defamation Lawsuit Against News MedPage Today (AFN)

America’s Frontline Doctors member Dr. Bret Barker, DNP, FNP, RN is suing MedPage Today and its Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting Kristina Fiore for defamation after Fiore wrote an article Dr. Barker says is riddled with disinformation. Dr. Barker is author of Sold Out Souls:Sars2-COVID-19, Simple Truths Ignored and CEO of Nuremberg 2.0, an organization dedicated to medical accountability and holding responsible medical professionals who harm the public in the name of COVID-19. In May, Fiore penned an article titled, “Should Doctors Worry About ‘Nuremberg 2.0?’ — It’s a ‘completely misleading application of the concepts of the Nuremberg trials.’”

Fiore first led readers to believe that Nuremberg 2.0 is about the Nuremberg trials and not the Nuremberg Code, which was developed in response to the medical experimentation perpetrated by the Nazis as revealed in the Nuremberg trials. The Code contains 10 tenets dedicated to human safety and dignity, the first of which is that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” In fact, Fiore writes about an individual who made a public comment at the California State Assembly against bill AB-2098, which would allow medical professionals to be punished for challenging the COVID-19 narrative. As Fiore wrote: “’I oppose this bill,’ he started, ‘and anybody who supports this bill will be held accountable under Nuremberg codes. Be warned.’”

But despite the outright reference to the Nuremberg Codes, Fiore said the word, which is “thrown around by the right wing,” refers to the Nuremberg trials. “These days, it’s mostly referred to as ‘Nuremberg 2.0,’ to invoke a second coming of the trials,” she wrote. Fiore then shared how one science professor in Canada said “he’s received many threats referencing Nuremberg 2.0” She proceeded to re-invoke the California State Assembly incident and name Dr. Bret Barker, making it seem as though Dr. Barker was the individual who made the public comment, when the doctor was not even there. She wrote that “the speaker at the California State Assembly hearing didn’t identify himself” and then went on to name Dr. Bret Barker as the CEO.

Third, Fiore led readers to believe that Nuremberg 2.0 is a medical terrorist organization “which essentially calls for doctors (and others) to be killed for providing COVID shots and other supposed pandemic crimes.” She also suggested that Nuremberg 2.0 members want to “execute” those who promote the COVID-19 vaccine, like in the Nuremberg trials. The week after Fiore wrote her piece, Dr. Barker filed a lawsuit against both MedPage Today and Fiore herself, seeking compensatory damages of $5 million for “long-term permanent damage to my personal life and reputation,” and punitive damages of $1 million. The complaint also mentions that Fiore did not reach out to Dr. Barker for a statement before publishing the story online and in emails to the publication’s 150,000 subscriber base. The story reached Dr. Barkers colleagues “and those who may have influence on my licensure and ability to work.”

Green ain’t cheap.

• It’s Not Working (Jim Kunstler)

Many people, I’m sure, assume that the more solar units feeding the grid, the better. Strangely, not so. Electric companies work much better when the production and flow of current is absolutely predictable and under their control — like, when they decide to fire up the natgas on generator number three or tune down the hydro turbines. It’s much harder to run the system with little dribs and drabs of electricity trickling in from hither and yon. But alt-energy is good PR for the government, so they do whatever they can to promote or even compel its use. I got a whopping folio of tax breaks and subsidies from the state and federal government when I decided to put solar electric on my house in 2013, though it finally still cost a lot: $35-K.

I had intimations of living through a chaotic period of history, and the decision was consistent with my general theory of history, which is that things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time. Getting a home solar electric rig seemed like a good idea. So, last week, after considerable hassle with my solar company setting up an appointment for a techie to visit and evaluate the problem here, the guy came up (at $150-an-hour) and informed me that my charge controller was shot. The charge controller processes all those chaotic watts coming from the solar panels on the roof into an orderly parade of electrons. He also told me that my back-up batteries — for running critical loads like the well-pump during grid outages — were at the end of their design life. Subtext: you have to get new batteries.

There are four big ones in a cabinet under the blown charge controller and the inverter (for turning direct current into alternating current that is the standard for running things). The techie had some bad news, though. New building codes forbid his company from replacing the kind of batteries I have, which are standard “sealed cell” lead-acid batteries. Some bullshit about off-gassing flammable fumes. Now the government requires lithium batteries, which would cost me sixteen-thousand dollars ($16-K) more to replace than new lead-acid batteries.

Hunter Gatherer

Wow! pic.twitter.com/K6qNzOjYdm

— Mr. Potato Head (@America1Scotty) July 11, 2022

AliKid

"If my mind can conceive it, if my
heart can believe it-then I can achieve
it.' ~ Muhammad Ali

pic.twitter.com/S3Oq9QbVCL

— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) July 10, 2022

Gervais

Probably @rickygervais’ greatest joke and most relevant to the world today.

pic.twitter.com/4I06b9SQto

— Daniel (@Clark1995Clark) July 10, 2022

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Debt Rattle July 11 2022

Jul 112022

July 11, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: Aegean, Biden, Hunter Biden, Jan 6, Macron, mental decay, proxy army, Rutte, Turkey, Uber 44 Responses »

Salvador Dali Remorse, or Sphinx Embedded In Sand 1931

• Destroying the “Mother of All Proxy Armies” in Ukraine (Will Schryver)

• The ‘Rape Russia’ Plan Backfires (VIlches)

• Ukraine Military Used Nursing Home Residents as Human Shields (CTH)

• Uber Broke Laws, Duped Police And Secretly Lobbied Governments (G.)

• Macron At Centre Of Uber Files Investigation (EurActiv)

• Former EU Digital Chief Secretly Helped Uber Lobby Rutte (G.)

• J6 Committee Member Says Cipollone “Did Not Contradict” Hutchinson (Turley)

• EU Climate Change Goals Will Reduce Farm Production (CTH)

• WaPo, NYT Go For Biden Blood In Scathing Moment Of Honesty (ZH)

• Biden’s Mental Decay (Techno Fog)

• 4chan Users Claim Hack of Hunter Biden’s iCloud Account (JTN)

• Towards a Theory of Corona Evolution (Eugyp)

• Turkey Eyes Half Of The Aegean Sea, The Islands And Crete (KTG)

Uninformed Consent

"Uninformed Consent" trailer Dr. Malone "we are in the midst of the largest human experiment in history." How can doctors be so sure they are safe over the long-term since they are novel EUA with no long-term followup studies? #getvaccinated? #vaccineswork? #VaccinesSaveLives? pic.twitter.com/2ZXT2kUSCk

— Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) July 10, 2022

Lincoln, Putin, von Clausewitz.

• Destroying the “Mother of All Proxy Armies” in Ukraine (Will Schryver)

Much as the vast majority of current western military “experts” have been fixated on conquering “territory” as a measure of progress, or the lack thereof, Lincoln’s early generals were illogically focused on the objective of “taking Richmond” – the capital of the Confederacy. This obsession dominated the strategic focus of the Union high command for most of the war. Lincoln, on the other hand – notwithstanding there is no evidence he ever read von Clausewitz – intuitively and correctly understood that it was not a city, nor any piece of territory, per se, that was the objective upon which his West Point-trained generals should focus. Rather, he repeatedly (and vainly) urged his generals to come to understand it was the destruction of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, that constituted the only valid objective of their actions.

Lincoln’s frustration with this lack of understanding on the part of his generals reached its zenith after the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg when, despite having Lee’s defeated and demoralized army trapped on the north side of the Potomac River, Union General George Meade permitted it to escape. Lincoln was beside himself when he learned Lee had effected a crossing of the river with all his troops, and was able to regroup once again. Fortunately, in March 1864 Lincoln finally found the general he had been looking for: Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was given supreme command of the Union armies, and from that point until the end of the war he made his sole objective the engagement and destruction of Lee’s army. The subsequent series of battles became known as the Overland Campaign, with both armies maneuvering southward from one bloody engagement to the next.

Grant made several tactical errors and suffered inordinate casualties on multiple occasions. He could have even finally “taken Richmond”, and thereby secured a strategically meaningless “victory”, but he ignored the opportunity to do so. Grant’s focus never varied from its singular objective: to destroy the enemy army. He sought every chance to engage it. If he lost a particular battle, he simply disengaged momentarily, and then moved to flank the Confederates yet again, forcing another engagement of forces. This relentless series of battles and maneuvers finally culminated in Lee’s army seeking refuge in a massive complex of field fortifications and earthworks outside Petersburg, Virginia. From that point, highly accurate Union rifled artillery systematically ripped them to pieces for months, ultimately forcing Lee’s surrender, and the end of the war.

This has been precisely the Russian mentality in Ukraine. Their foremost objective, from the very beginning, as explicitly articulated by President Vladimir Putin in his historic speech of February 24, 2022, was to “demilitarize” Ukraine – to destroy its army. When the war began, the most capable, experienced, well-armed, and well-positioned Ukrainian forces were NOT in Kiev, but in the Donbass and Mariupol. They had been positioning there for months, with the ultimate objective of retaking the Donbass and Crimea – a goal never far from the minds of Ukraine’s ideological and political leaders. Indeed, they spoke of it openly and without qualification.

They strongly believed the strength of their armed forces, after eight years of preparation, had reached a point where it was capable of actually achieving that objective. Their benefactors in NATO encouraged them to believe this – for it was also NATO’s fondest dream to raise its banners over the naval base at Sevastopol, and thereby wield dominance over the entire Black Sea and the Bosporus. Pursuant to this and many other geostrategic objectives – arresting Russian resurgence foremost among them – NATO had been providing arms to Ukraine for years, and those arms shipments were expanded and accelerated dramatically in late 2021.

“The war in the Ukraine will be short, not long.”

• The ‘Rape Russia’ Plan Backfires (Vilches)

The war in the Ukraine will be short, not long. Contrary to what today´s Western casino politicians and MSM talking heads tell us to expect, come 2023 — or even before – Europeans will no longer withstand the tremendous burden that their ´Russian sanctions´ bear upon themselves, not Russia. European public opinion has become ever louder and impatient in this respect and EU politicians are getting cold feet without any solution at hand, just babble. No plan, none, no foresight… only incongruent foolish G-7 ideas such as establishing a buyer´s price cap cartel for oil & gas in a seller´s market which will never get to see the light of day. And despite some minor losses, these sanctions will continue to leave the Russian Federation basically unscathed and just collecting ever-larger revenues – due to higher induced prices — for smaller volumes of exports delivered.

This benefits Russia in two ways (a) getting paid more by producing less while saving the difference for future sales (b) it allows to finance Russia´s attrition-war strategy forever while Europeans will very soon crawl and beg for a solution to their own unbearable “Russian sanctions”. NATO knows this. So another possibility is that the necessarily short Ukraine war goes nuclear, be it because there is no other way for NATO to possibly win or because Russia is once again forced to attack due to constantly-repeated large-caliber direct NATO-orchestrated threats. More on both possibilities later, and even a third regarding Europe´s further vassalization and possible rape. Either way, any way – it´s worth repeating – the Ukraine war will be short. And even the Davos crowd – after dragging its feet for way too long — has finally accepted that the West is now losing and that Russia is winning in all fronts.

Be it militarily, geo-politically, strategically, financially, economics or logistics… despite all forecasts and plans made, Russia was better at it and today is obviously defeating NATO all around. True enough, today Russia does not fully control world food supplies nor all of the world´s energy, but in that respect, Russia does hold a “unique, essential and indispensable” role – sounds familiar, doesn´t it? – better than anyone around, surely regarding Europe today, correct? And concerning the control of the very last factor of this essential trifecta, namely money, well it’s definitely a Russian + Chinese + BRICS “work-in-progress” project with a complete 180 degrees re-definition of what “real money” shall be while de-throning today´s be-all and end-all petro-dollar. This would plain do away with SWIFT + Bretton Nothing + the all-American softie jazz such as the Federal Reserve which is as “Federal” as Federal Express and has zero “reserves” of anything, just legions of un-funded liabilities and un-payable debts plus piles of worthless electronic bits and bytes.

“The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.”

• Ukraine Military Used Nursing Home Residents as Human Shields (CTH)

A quietly released study from the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner [See Here pdf] looking into allegations of war crimes conducted during the Ukraine -vs- Russia conflict, specifically looked into allegations of Russian military targeting a nursing home facility in the eastern region of Luhansk. What the UN investigation revealed was that Ukraine military soldiers had intentionally used the nursing home as an active base to launch military strikes against Russian forces. The Associated Press was forced to reveal, “Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.”

The issue of the Ukraine military, intentionally and with purposeful forethought, using civilian locations to embed their military units, highlights the inherent dangers associated with western propaganda during the conflict. In fact, the effort to create civilian casualties seems more purposeful as a strategy to gain western media support and create stories that can be used to advance sympathy toward Ukraine, even if it means putting their own civilians in harm’s way. (Via AP) […] ” The report by the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights doesn’t conclude the Ukrainian soldiers or the Russian troops committed a war crime. But it said the battle at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home is emblematic of the human rights office’s concerns over the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas.

The aftermath of the attack on the Stara Krasnyanka home also provides a window into how both Russia and Ukraine move quickly to set the narrative for how events are unfolding on the ground — even when those events may still be shrouded by the fog of war. For Ukraine, maintaining the upper hand in the fight for hearts and minds helps to ensure the continued flow of billions of dollars in Western military and humanitarian aid. […] David Crane, a former Defense Department official and a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations, said the Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by not evacuating the nursing home’s residents and staff. “The bottom-line rule is that civilians cannot intentionally be targeted. Period. For whatever reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.”

It’s a crying shame that these leaked files come through the Guardian, since this is what Julian Assange does best. But even then. This should be the end of the careers of Macron, Rutte and lots of others. Thing is, it won’t be. Because the system has rotted along with these people.

• Uber Broke Laws, Duped Police And Secretly Lobbied Governments (G.)

A leaked trove of confidential files has revealed the inside story of how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion. The unprecedented leak to the Guardian of more than 124,000 documents – known as the Uber files – lays bare the ethically questionable practices that fuelled the company’s transformation into one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports. The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick, who tried to force the cab-hailing service into cities around the world, even if that meant breaching laws and taxi regulations. During the fierce global backlash, the data shows how Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons.

Leaked messages suggest Uber executives were at the same time under no illusions about the company’s law-breaking, with one executive joking they had become “pirates” and another conceding: “We’re just fucking illegal.” The cache of files, which span 2013 to 2017, includes more than 83,000 emails, iMessages and WhatsApp messages, including often frank and unvarnished communications between Kalanick and his top team of executives. In one exchange, Kalanick dismissed concerns from other executives that sending Uber drivers to a protest in France put them at risk of violence from angry opponents in the taxi industry. “I think it’s worth it,” he shot back. “Violence guarantee[s] success.” In a statement, Kalanick’s spokesperson said he “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion he was involved in such activity would be completely false.

The leak also contains texts between Kalanick and Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was economy minister, allowing Uber frequent and direct access to him and his staff. Macron, the French president, appears to have gone to extraordinary lengths to help Uber, even telling the company he had brokered a secret “deal” with its opponents in the French cabinet. Privately, Uber executives expressed barely disguised disdain for other elected officials who were who were less receptive to the company’s business model. After the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who was mayor of Hamburg at the time, pushed back against Uber lobbyists and insisted on paying drivers a minimum wage, an executive told colleagues he was “a real comedian”.

When the then US vice-president, Joe Biden, a supporter of Uber at the time, was late to a meeting with the company at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Kalanick texted a colleague: “I’ve had my people let him know that every minute late he is, is one less minute he will have with me.”

It smells of WEF here.

• Macron At Centre Of Uber Files Investigation (EurActiv)

French President Emmanuel Macron backed the economic development of US company Uber in France and signed a secret “deal” when he was economy minister between 2014 to 2016, an international media investigation known as the “Uber Files” published on Sunday reveals. The investigation is based on 124,000 confidential internal Uber documents leaked to the UK newspaper The Guardian. Forty other international newspapers, including French newspaper Le Monde and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), also took part in the analysis of documents. According to the investigation, Macron signed a secret “deal” with Uber to “make France work for Uber so that Uber can work in and for France,” which Le Monde called a “simple exchange”.

He did so when tensions between taxi and ride-sharing companies were at an all-time high in the country. Macron promised “a drastic simplification of the legal requirements” to obtain a ride-sharing licence following French courts’ decision to deem UberPop, one of the car-hailing company’s European brands, illegal in 2015 after lawmakers adopted the so-called Taxi Law, Le Monde reported. Macron went so far as to “almost apologise” to Uber after lawmakers adopted the bill, according to an internal Uber memo seen by Le Monde. According to the international investigation, Macron intervened on behalf of Uber while the French anti-fraud authority investigated Uber’s business practices and model. Macron is also said to have suggested to Uber “to prepare bill amendments ahead of time” that he would then transfer to MP allies.

The EU should sue her. It won’t.

• Former EU Digital Chief Secretly Helped Uber Lobby Rutte (G.)

The European Commission is facing calls to launch an inquiry into its former vice-president Neelie Kroes, after leaked files suggested she secretly helped Uber lobby the Netherlands prime minister, Mark Rutte, and a string of other national Dutch politicians. Uber considered its relationship with Kroes so sensitive that the company’s top European lobbyist repeatedly instructed colleagues to keep it hidden, warning in 2015 that it was “highly confidential and should not be discussed outside this group”. Kroes says she did nothing wrong, adding that her role as a special envoy for tech companies meant it was her job to speak to politicians about nascent firms in the sector. But transparency experts said the covert help Kroes seemingly provided the cab-hailing app – which was under criminal investigation in the Netherlands at that time – may have breached EU ethics rules.

“This case should be urgently investigated so that lessons can be learned,” said Vicky Cann, at the Corporate Europe Observatory, a Brussels NGO that monitors lobbying. The details of Kroes secretly assisting the California tech group are contained within the Uber files, a hoard of 124,000 records leaked to the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and media partners in 30 countries. The data appears to show Kroes, who had been the EU’s top official on internet policy, offering to arrange a series of meetings for Uber during her 18-month “cooling-off period” after leaving the commission. The cooling-off period aims to reduce conflicts of interest by restricting the jobs commissioners can take once they have stepped down. In Kroes’s case it ran from November 2014 until May 2016, when it was announced she was joining Uber’s public policy advisory board.

For this, she was paid $200,000 a year, the documents suggest. Despite a commission ban on taking that role before May 2016, Kroes spoke to Dutch government ministers about Uber and offered to set up talks with senior EU officials, according to the leaked files. And when Uber’s Amsterdam headquarters were raided by police in the spring of 2015, Kroes called Dutch government ministers to get regulators to “back off” as she “harassed” a top civil servant, internal Uber emails claim. Uber’s desire to have Kroes onboard was understandable. She was one of the EU’s most powerful policymakers, and a fan of the cab-hailing service. As a serving commissioner in April 2014, Kroes put her name to a strident blogpost attacking a decision by a Brussels court to ban the app, describing the move as “crazy” and designed to protect “a taxi cartel”.

But the head of the Oath Keepers is even more interesting. He “has offered to testify, an extraordinary move since he is facing criminal charges.”

• J6 Committee Member Says Cipollone “Did Not Contradict” Hutchinson (Turley)

There is a new controversy over the alleged bias of the J6 Committee and the extreme measures used to avoid alternative or conflicting accounts. On Friday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House select committee, declared that former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone “did not contradict” the testimony of previous witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson. However, the New York Times is reporting that he was not asked about statements that the Committee knew he would contradict. The controversy comes at a time when the head of the Oath Keepers has offered to testify, an extraordinary move since he is facing criminal charges.

However, he has one big demand: it must be live and in public. In other words, it cannot be edited or tailored by the Committee. Lofgren told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer “Mr. Cipollone did appear voluntarily and answer a whole variety of questions. He did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses. And I think we did learn a few things, which we will be rolling out in the hearings to come.” The contradictions with Hutchinson are important after other witnesses contesting her account on the most sensational points. This brings us back to the offer of Stewart Rhodes to testify live. That is an extraordinary offer for a criminal defendant. No(w) defense lawyer (including this one) would support such an appearance before a criminal trial.

If the Committee is truly interested in getting to the truth, why wouldn’t it hold an open hearing. It has suggested that Trump was in collusion or a conspiracy with this group. It also alleged that the Oath Keepers came to Washington to commit an armed insurrection. We could now, for the first time, hear from one of the leaders of the two groups on that very subject. It would ideally allow him to make an opening statement and offer a full account on whether he coordinated with anyone in the White House on January 6th. If Rhodes is willing to take this risk, the Committee should be willing to give up control over what the public can see and hear in the J6 investigation.

“Supposed massive protest action in the Netherlands today turned out to be a hoax, to pull police officers out all across the country and further demoralize them. Meanwhile, farmers were able to stay home and maintain their farms so that they can continue through the week.”

• EU Climate Change Goals Will Reduce Farm Production (CTH)

It’s not just Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte pushing the agenda, in 2020 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave an identical outline, with an identical timeline, for the exact same process [SEE HERE]. The collective WEF political leaders are all singing from the same hymnal. In this discussion and interview segment, the spokesperson for Netherlands, Agricultural and Horticultural Organization Wytse Sonnema, outlines why there is such a broad sense of “frustration, anger, even despair” amongst farmers amid proposals for nitrogen reduction target plans. This will be coming to North America soon.

[..] It is a simple matter of math that if North American and European farmers are forced by climate policy to reduce their food production, there will be a shortage of food. There will be a significant gap between the food needed and the new climate driven limits on commercial food production. This intentional curtailing of food production, that creates the purposeful shortage of food, is where Bill Gates, the WEF and the synthetic meat and bugs for food advocates enter the picture. It appears the plan is to replace the missing global calories by changing the food supply. Changing what and how people eat. Lab grown (synthetic) meat, nut/soy milk to replace dairy and bugs being used as replacements for protein sources are three approaches advocated by the climate change advocates that you are likely familiar with.

However, as we saw in the pandemic response to food consumption, there is going to be a massive problem as the WEF attempts to shift food delivery within their Great Reset. Think of the United States like a massive global farm and in this context the parallels between the U.S. and the Netherlands are quite remarkable. Specifically, because of advancements in farming over the past two decades the United States food production has increased massively. The same is true for North America as a whole with Mexico and Canada included. Industrial farming advancements have made it possible to export billions of tons of food every year from our farms in North America to the rest of the world.

The Dutch farmers are like the U.S. farmers in their high productivity. In fact, the Netherlands is the second biggest agriculture and food exporter in the world. Even with a small population of 17 million people, the Netherlands has consistently been among the top contenders in the food export market {LINK}. The reason is simple, they are good at it. Dutch farmers, like American farmers, are excellent at producing food. The Netherlands is one of the largest countries in the world when it comes to the export of agricultural goods such as meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables, and fruit. Unfortunately, this is why the climate change activists in the World Economic Forum have targeted them.

“The New York Times and Washington Post suddenly discover that Biden is old and frail on the exact same day.”

• WaPo, NYT Go For Biden Blood In Scathing Moment Of Honesty (ZH)

Over the past month or so, mainstream media has overtly abandoned President Biden – the man they relentlessly shilled for during the 2020 election as the establishment went to extreme measures to unseat Donald Trump. After months of gentile distancing, the media’s come-to-Jesus finally happened after the White House ‘botched’ the response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. CNN published an article last Wednesday titled: “After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands.” Ouch! “Rudderless, aimless and hopeless” is how one member of Congress described the White House. Two dozen leading Democratic politicians and operatives, as well as several within the West Wing, tell CNN they feel this goes deeper than questions of ideology and posture. Instead, they say, it gets to questions of basic management.” -CNN

Fast forward to Saturday, and both the New York Times and the Washington Post have taken serious shots at Biden. The Post built on CNN’s article – slamming the White House’s “struggle to respond” to the abortion ruling, writing that “Many Democrats were dismayed by his slow-footed response.” ” For many Democrats, however, it was too little and too late — just one more example over the two weeks in which Biden and his team struggled to come up with a muscular plan of action on abortion rights, even though the Supreme Court ruling had been presaged two months earlier with the leak of a draft opinion.” -WaPo The New York Times straight-up suggested Biden is too old to govern – writing that his team ‘delayed his Middle East trip so the 79-year-old president would have more time to rest’ following last month’s Europe/NATO meetings.

Some excerpts: “managing the schedule of the oldest president in American history presents distinct challenges.” “Polls show many Americans consider Mr. Biden too old, and some Democratic strategists do not think he should run again.” “They acknowledged Mr. Biden looks older than just a few years ago…” “His energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, is not what it was, and some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe.” “His speeches can be flat and listless. He sometimes loses his train of thought, has trouble summoning names or appears momentarily confused. More than once, he has promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “President Harris.””

“The New York Times has found experts that “put Mr. Biden in a category of ‘super-agers’ who remain unusually fit as they advance in years.”

• Biden’s Mental Decay (Techno Fog)

One can imagine the emergency meeting of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, et al. They’re already dealing with record inflation, a tanking stock market, and the economy on a verge of a recession. What do they say to that? They claim the US is “stronger economically than we have been in history,” And now they’re left with this mess to clean up. They’re probably thankful, in a way. Another Biden public screw-up is a welcome relief compared to addressing formula shortages. They’ve handled his gaffes before. To the rescue was Assistant White House Press Secretary Emilie Simons to cover for her boss. She falsified Biden’s statement, begging the public to ignore the words from Biden’s mouth. @EmilieSimons46: “No. He said, “let me repeat that line.”

The official White House website has doubled-down on the denial of reality, making up words that were never said to protect a President who may not be able to remember what he had for breakfast. This isn’t Biden’s first public embarrassment, and it certainly won’t be his last. Those who have been paying close attention know they’re a regular occurrence. There will be another one in a few days. His public appearances are, for the most part, heavily scripted and before a friendly audience. Say a few words and talk to some folks before making an exit. And President Biden isn’t up to the challenge, vanquished by the easiest parts of his presidency.

[..] The troubling thing is that most of the presidency is off-script. How do you address inflation and families being priced-out of groceries when you struggle through a press conference? How do you formulate a strategy about China or Russia when you rely on a cheat sheet for a 5-minute meeting? Make no mistake, Biden’s senility is one of the biggest stories in the world. The media’s silence on this matter is telling. Never before has the press tried to so hard to ignore so big a story (I venture this is bigger than Hunter’s laptop), as they’re afraid of what a correct assessment of Biden’s facilities might reveal. Ask whether Dementia-in-Chief is a threat to national security or economic recovery.

Also revealing is the media’s attempts to explain-away or otherwise repackage Biden’s mental and physical deficiencies. Peter Baker, writing for The New York Times, says Biden’s “age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party.” Of course, Biden’s age isn’t the issue per se – it’s Biden’s mind. “Age” is just The New York Times’ way of being polite, of serving the Biden Administration. [..] But – if you have any concerns about Biden’s health or acuity – don’t worry. The New York Times has found experts that “put Mr. Biden in a category of ‘super-agers’ who remain unusually fit as they advance in years.”

How much longer does Joe have?

• 4chan Users Claim Hack of Hunter Biden’s iCloud Account (JTN)

A trove of alleged messages and photos from Hunter Biden’s phone was posted by users of the website 4chan on Saturday night after they claimed to have hacked the first son’s iCloud account. Moderators on 4chan quickly removed the content, The Washington Examiner reported, but users keep reposting the materials on the anonymous image board. The content could not be verified by Just the News, but 4chan users posted alleged images of text messages involving drug use, money transfers, guns and even a screenshot of what appears to be President Joe Biden’s personal phone number, under the contact “Pedo Peter.” One user even posted Hunter Biden’s allegedly inappropriate search history. “4chan has already created torrents for the Hunter Biden iPhone and iCloud backups and are now seeding them.

That means even if 4chan gets shut down the copies will still be out there,” Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec wrote on Twitter shortly after the reported leak. “The Anarchist Handbook” author Michael Malice wrote: “The #4chan Hunter Biden dox sure reminds me, a dinosaur, of how @DRUDGE became a household name reporting on Monica Lewinsky while the corporate press was trying to look the other way (and then twisted themselves in pretzels wondering whether and how to acknowledge him). “I dont know how the corporate press, which reduces Pride month to mimosas, kissing and walking around shirtless, is going to report on Hunter having his Dad stored in his contacts as Pedo Peter. There’s too much there for them to integrate it into their narrative,” he said.

“Can we talk about how Biden is polling as the least popular president of all time and also that his son refers to him as Pedo Peter?” The Post Millennial’s Ian Miles Cheong said on Twitter. The alleged nickname “Pedo Peter” comes after Joe Biden asked his son to call him using the pseudonym “Peter Henderson,” a fictional KGB spy in Tom Clancy novels, The New York Post reported. The leak comes shortly after a leaked video from Hunter Biden’s laptop allegedly shows him smoking and drinking naked at a detox program after asking his father for money to help him pay for rehab.

“As soon as we imposed lockdowns and started testing everybody, though, mortality spiked.”

• Towards a Theory of Corona Evolution (Eugyp)

Remember that SARS-2 arrived in Europe no later than November 2019, and in America no later than December 2019. The West saw multiple months of community Corona transmission, in other words, without anybody noticing that anything was amiss. Hospitals remained as empty or as full as ever. As soon as we imposed lockdowns and started testing everybody, though, mortality spiked. These containment procedures involved nothing so much as identifying Corona patients and putting as many of them as possible in environments favouring attendant-borne transmission – from Corona testing centres to hospitals. And as the mass containment regime continued through 2021, SARS-2 began evolving towards greater virulence, as nosocomial and nursing home infections came to dominate the case statistics almost everywhere.

Omicron, whatever its origins, broke this dynamic. Unlike prior SARS-2 lineages, this is a classic direct-contact respiratory pathogen. With the advent of Omicron, Corona no longer spreads preferentially in healthcare institutions, and behaves much more like a mild flu or the common cold, with an emphasis on keeping its hosts healthy and mobile. The worst thing we could do, from an evolutionary perspective, is continue the mass containment regime. We want to keep SARS-2 circulating via direct contact in the community. All such respiratory viruses, despite their stark differences, have been subject to the same convergent evolution, with remarkably similar effects on their human hosts. We must stop intervening in matters we don’t understand, or we’ll just continue our recent history, of always making everything worse.

Time for NATO to act.

• Turkey Eyes Half Of The Aegean Sea, The Islands And Crete (KTG)

Talking about state extremism: Turkey wants half of the Aegean Sea including all islands in the East, the whole Dodecanese as well as the island of Crete. Erdogan’s government partner, far-right nationalist Devlet Bahceli (MHP) presented on Saturday a map of Turkey’s revisionist plan called “Blue Motherland” extended to a new extreme. The presentation took place at the headquarters of terrorist, neo-fascist organization “Grey Wolves“, the militant wing of Behceli’s “Nationalist Movemnt Party” (MHP). The map was presented to the party leader by the Grey Wolves president Ahmet Yigit Yildirim as a …gift.. Islands of the North, Eastern and South Aegean such as Lesvos, Chios all of the Dodecanese including Rhodes as well as the whole island of Crete are marked ‘red’ as the whole of Turkey.

The President of the fascist Grey Wolves org Yildirim presents to his leader ultranationalist Bahceli partner of Erdogan’s Govt, a new map expanding further the claims of Turkey on Greece’ s land & seas It presents eastern Aegean islands, sea & Crete as Turkish!

It should be noted that Bahceli has often threatened to go to the extreme regarding Greece. It should also recall that president Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented Turkey’s plan called “Blue Motherland” in September 2019. [..] Commenting on the map, Greece’s diplomatic sources said that “the public presentation of a map by top officials of the party that is a government ally in Turkey and which depicts Greek territory as Turkish, is a particularly aggressive and provocative action and is absolutely condemnable.” “Unfortunately, it is part of the escalation of extreme rhetoric from Turkey that we witness on a daily basis. We expect the immediate categorical and public disapproval of this unacceptable act of questioning the territorial sovereignty of our country,”. the diplomatic sources stressed.

A few hours earlier, Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar had fired new threats against Greece saying that “Ankara has a plan to defend its rights and interests in the Aegean, the Eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus, which it will implement in different phases and stages.” “We will not allow our rights to be trampled upon, nor will we allow them to be done away with. We repeat this. This is what our president said. We’re not kidding. Do not attempt any adventure like spoiled brats, relying on others. Come like people let’s sit down and talk,” Akar said.

George Webb “We told you Ukraine, #Kolomoisky, and puppet #Zelensky were going to go Bank of International Settlements on the west for the shakedown for “reconstruction” funds. Now the proof. $750B!”

We have predicted the Kolomoisky Azov War in Ukraine for six years. And we were lucky enough to be at all the keys spots in Europe to watch the $750 Billion Dollar Deal go down real time. Right down to being in front of BIS when the final deal popped. pic.twitter.com/TQwaKRpbYD

— George Webb – Investigative Journalist (@RealGeorgeWebb1) July 10, 2022

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Debt Rattle November 6 2021

Nov 062021

November 6, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: G. Edward Griffin, morals, NFL, OSHA, Pfizer, Rogan, Uber, woke 44 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Baigneuses 1918

• Drastic Drop In Covid Vaccine Effectiveness (RT)

• Dramatic Decline In Effectiveness Of All Three Covid-19 Vaccines Over Time (LAT)

• Pfizer Shares Surge After Release Of ‘Miracle’ COVID Pill (ZH)

• Woke Gets Whacked — But Hold the Victory Lap (Kunstler)

• No, It’s Not Legal (Denninger)

• Unvaccinated Troops Now Threatened With Losing All Their Veterans Benefits (ZH)

• UKHSA Efficacy Stats Death Watch: Week 44 (eugyppius)

• De Blasio To Pay Kids $100 To Get The Covid-19 Vaccine (Fox)

• Florida Court Reinstates Governor’s Ban on Masking in Schools (ET)

• A Review and Autopsy of Two COVID Immunity Studies (Kulldorff)

• NFL Star Aaron Rodgers Responds To ‘Fake’ Vaccine Controversy (RT)

• The Man Who Called Bullshit on Uber (MJ)

• “The Fed Is Our Master And ‘We The People’, Its Puppet” – G. Edward Griffin (ZH)

Doshi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1456482148089794560

Door-to-Door vaxxinations in QLD!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1456552719188176900

In a normal world, this would be the nail in the coffin. This is not a normal world.

• Drastic Drop In Covid Vaccine Effectiveness (RT)

Three different coronavirus shots – those mainly available in the US and Europe – have shown a dramatic decline in efficacy over time, a study of nearly 800,000 Americans reveals. Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness against both infection and death was studied in three US approved jabs – the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA shots, and the Janssen viral vector vaccine. Having analyzed data from 780,225 US veterans of different ages and sexes between February and October, researchers came to a disturbing conclusion. Vaccine protection against Covid-19 infection dropped from 89.2% at its highest to a low of 13.1%, according to a joint study by the Public Health Institute, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the University of Texas Health Science Center, published in the Science journal on Thursday.

While effectiveness against infection in March was 89.2% for Moderna, 86.9% for Pfizer, and 86.4% for Janssen, by September there were massive declines to 58%, 43%, and 13% respectively. The emergence and dominance of the Delta strain of the virus during the time of the study may have played a role, researchers said, adding that vaccine protection waned across all studied age groups. More than 26,000 positive PCR tests occurred in some 498,000 fully vaccinated veterans. The authors said the pattern of breakthrough infections shows a “worrisome temporal trend.” While the analysis covers 2.7 percent of the US population, other domestic and international studies have shown significantly waning efficacy.

On a brighter note, vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization and death remained high. As breakthrough infections, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to emerge in fully vaccinated people, there is “an urgent need to reinstate multiple layers of protection, such as masking and physical distancing – even among vaccinated persons,” the scientists warn.

About the same report, with added benefits: 1/ LA Times manages to turn the utter failure of the vaccines into a promo for the same vaccines and 2/ a booster after 28 days. Soon coming to your town.

• Dramatic Decline In Effectiveness Of All Three Covid-19 Vaccines Over Time (LAT)

As the Delta variant became the dominant strain of the coronavirus across the United States, all three COVID-19 vaccines available to Americans lost some of their protective power, with vaccine efficacy among a large group of veterans dropping between 35% and 85%, according to a new study. Researchers who scoured the records of nearly 800,000 U.S. veterans found that in early March, just as the Delta variant was gaining a toehold across American communities, the three vaccines were roughly equal in their ability to prevent infections. But over the next six months, that changed dramatically. By the end of September, Moderna’s two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, measured as 89% effective in March, was only 58% effective. The effectiveness of shots made by Pfizer and BioNTech, which also employed two doses, fell from 87% to 45% in the same period.

And most strikingly, the protective power of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine plunged from 86% to just 13% over those six months. The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science. The three vaccines held up better in their ability to prevent COVID-19 deaths, but by July — as the Delta variant began to drive a three-month surge of infections and deaths — the shots’ effectiveness on that score also revealed wide gaps. Among veterans 65 and older who were inoculated with the Moderna vaccine, those who developed a so-called breakthrough infection were 76% less likely to die of COVID-19 compared with unvaccinated veterans of the same age. Older veterans who got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and subsequently experienced a breakthrough infection were 70% less likely to die than were their unvaccinated peers.

And when older vets who got a single jab of the J&J vaccine suffered a breakthrough infection, they were 52% less likely to die than their peers who didn’t get any shots. For veterans younger than 65, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines provided the best protection against a fatal case of COVID-19, at 84% and 82%, respectively. When younger veterans inoculated with the J&J vaccine suffered a breakthrough infection, they were 73% less likely to die of COVID-19 than were their unvaccinated peers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended booster shots for everyone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months earlier.

Boosters are also recommended six months after a second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines for everyone 65 and older; those with medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to a serious case of COVID-19; those who live in nursing homes or other group settings; and those who live or work in high-risk settings such as hospitals or prisons. In addition, all people with compromised immune systems are advised to get a booster shot if it’s been at least 28 days since their vaccine took full effect.

Not long ago, Pfizer “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported..” Now that’s a come back.

• Pfizer Shares Surge After Release Of ‘Miracle’ COVID Pill (ZH)

Thursday was a rough day for Moderna shares after the company released revenue figures and FY guidance that deeply disappointed Wall Street expectations (potentially destroying the reputation of financier Steve Weiss, arguably Moderna’s biggest promoter on Wall Street, in the process). But on Friday, Pfizer – Moderna’s biggest rival – rubbed Moderna’s nose in it by announcing a revolutionary new oral COVID antiviral similar to the Merck ‘miracle pill’ that won approval from UK regulators yesterday. The news sent Pfizer’s stock surging, while Moderna and Merck shares tumbled, during premarket trade. Pfizer shares were trading up 11%+:

The key takeaway from the Pfizer announcement is this: Pfizer said studies showed its COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients by 89%. That’s even higher than the 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths shown by the Merck pill. Again, like Merck, Pfizer said that it was no longer taking new patients in a clinical trial of the treatment “due to the overwhelming efficacy” of the drug, which it now plans to submit its findings to the FDA for emergency authorization (just like Merck is doing). Yesterday, Merck won approval for its new COVID antiviral, molnupiravir, from regulators in the UK, and it’s pushing to wrack up as many EUAs as possible from regulators from all over.

Pfizer is already planning to seek approval emergency approval from the US government because, according to the numbers, its drug is even more effective than molnuiravir. According to the headline numbers, Pfizer’s new antiviral is even more effective than the rival pill from Merck. Pfizer’s pill, which will be sold under the brand name Paxlovid, cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% when taken within three days after symptoms emerge (the number for Merck’s drug was it needed to be taken within 5 days of infection). “The results are really beyond our wildest dreams,” said Annaliesa Anderson, a Pfizer executive who led the drug’s development. She expressed hope that Paxlovid “can have a big impact on helping all our lives go back to normal again and seeing the end of the pandemic.”

“Citizens have a right to object to this, and to the illegal vaccine “mandate” invoked by the pugnaciously stupid “Joe Biden” regime..”

• Woke Gets Whacked — But Hold the Victory Lap (Kunstler)

The CDC and the FDA have unleashed a set of untested vaccines on the public that have been shown to produce alarmingly high rates of adverse reactions, both disabling and leading to death. The CDC’s VAERS system for reporting all that is so janky that doctors can barely use it and the CDC refuses to fix it; meanwhile doctors are being punished for even attempting to report adverse reactions. The whole of medical officialdom has militated aggressively against early treatments of Covid-19 with cheap and easily available drugs, even firing doctors who attempt to use the protocols.

The entire approval process of the various vaccines has been rife with fraud, gamed statistics, sabotaged trials, bait-and-switch scams, and unaccountable manufacturing screw-ups — all immersed in a stench of moneygrubbing. The drug companies have refused to fully reveal the contents of the vaccines. Now they are ramping up an urgent campaign to vaccinate children following rushed and falsified clinical trials, with the statistical certainty that many more kids will be injured or will die from the vax than they would from Covid-19 itself.

Citizens have a right to object to this, and to the illegal vaccine “mandate” invoked by the pugnaciously stupid “Joe Biden” regime. There is an awful creeping suspicion in the USA and in other countries that people who have received vaccinations are beginning to present fatal cardiovascular and neurological illness in large numbers, and that an attempt is underway to cover all this up. There is likewise a growing body of evidence that the vaccines and “boosters” incrementally disable the human immune system so that later in the winter of 2021-2022 millions of people will be at risk of dying from Covid variants and virtually any other disease that comes along, including cancers. How many of us are prepared for that?

In Greece yesterday, the police were using water cannon against protesting firemen.

• No, It’s Not Legal (Denninger)

OSHA claims this is an “Emergency” and requires immediate action. However, it wasn’t an emergency 11 months ago. Nor was it one in September, when there were many, many more cases and deaths than there are today. It also isn’t one now until January 2nd, directly after a number of industry groups complained about the impact of it on the holidays. Note that the alleged “authority” that OSHA has to deal with workplace insults and risks when it comes to an ETS depends on it being an actual emergency. OSHA cannot deliberately decide to sacrifice employees “up to a specific date because its inconvenient for their employers.” Indeed that act alone invalidates the ETS as it makes clear there is no emergency at all and the claim of one is a pretext.

OSHA’s regulatory authority is limited to workplaces. A risk that is diffuse and beyond the workplace in at least equal quality and severity is beyond their mandate. A respiratory virus is in that category. Can OSHA mandate asbestos regulations or concentrations of chemicals in the factory or other working environment? Sure. Can they mandate that which is in the outside air in the ordinary environment at the same level of risk? No. There is no specific and articulable risk within general employment that is not present everywhere else in ordinary life.

OSHA is required to back up their findings and claims with actual science. They can’t. Specifically there is no evidence that being jabbed is superior to being infected — in fact, its the other way around. Even if it is superior at some point in time the alleged “rule” does not differentiate and, in the instant case, the evidence is that those who were jabbed in January of last year either lost all protection or actually have negative protection .vs. someone who was never vaccinated at all. This, incidentally, makes their entire argument pretextual (and which the administration has admitted.)

OSHA is required to use the least-invasive means to address whatever it claims needs addressing. Demanding an invasive and permanent medical procedure is not the least-invasive means. For example they might be able to get away with a mask rule provided those medically-contraindicated are exempted or moved to other jobs and provided the employer pays for the masks; there are protocols for safe use of same which are in fact required in other industries and certain atmospheres. That’s reasonable and carries no negative risk of temporary, permanent or catastrophic harm.

OSHA has admitted that a less-invasive means exists through their “mask and test” option and thus is required to issue that, if they issue anything. The Civil Rights Act does not give you the right to put murder others. As such OSHA cannot mandate a jab if an alternative that is less-intrusive, which they admit to, is deemed acceptable. They deemed it reasonable, acceptable and effective. Their mandate thus falls by their own hand.

OSHA further cannot mandate you play Russian Roulette in order to keep a job nor can they mandate your employer force you to playing Russian Roulette, even if they assert there is some other risk they’re mitigating by doing so. They can put in place a standard that carries no identifiable risk, and do — for example there is no identifiable risk to mandating guards on a punch press, hard hats on a construction site, air circulation standards in a factory where potential dust or other contamination is present, and similar. This mandate is for an invasive medical procedure that carries risk and it does not matter how small the risk is. OSHA simply has no authority to issue a rule that your employer must demand you risk grievous injury or death under penalty of fining them if you refuse.

In short OSHA must demonstrate that (1) the risk is unique to or concentrated in the workplace, (2) the requirement for an ETS is emergent and exigent, not one of convenience or pretextual, (3) the risk mitigated is of great bodily harm or death and (4) it is the least-invasive means of doing so. OSHA has repeatedly had their ETS issued standards thrown out because one or more of those requirements is not met. They rarely use this mechanism for this reason — and their record of success on challenge is poor.

This will go up in smoke folks — it’s just another threat by Biden and his pals, this time aimed at employers with the threat of huge fines if they push back. But you, as an employee, have all the power. No hospital runs without nurses. Garbage is not picked up without garbagemen and women. Fires are not put out without firefighters, nor are traffic accidents attended to and the “Jaws of Life” don’t operate themselves. Water and sewer systems don’t run themselves either.

The end of morals.

• Unvaccinated Troops Now Threatened With Losing All Their Veterans Benefits (ZH)

We detailed Thursday that many thousands of active duty Air Force personnel have still remained unvaccinated even after the Tuesday deadline has come and gone for the Air Force’s mandate to receive both Covid jabs, which was the earliest set deadline among US military branches. Already some branches like the Navy and Marines have clarified that members who refuse the mandate will be relieved of duty and separated from the service. After Tuesday’s deadline at least 8,500 active-duty members of the Air Force and Space Force are in non-compliance and now risk being kicked out. However, there’s no indication as of yet that commanders have booted anyone at this early point.

But now the Department of Defense (DoD) taking its threat of punitive action a big step further, saying unvaccinated service members could see their veterans’ benefits taken away. This would be based on personnel receiving other-than-honorable discharge, which will reportedly be determined by a base’s local command. The Pentagon is saying such a drastic penalty, which would result in individual veterans potentially losing everything from education benefits such as the GI Bill, to eligibility for a veterans home lone, is necessary as lack of vaccination impacts “readiness”. A new report in the Military Times quotes Gil Cisneros, Department of Defense (DoD) undersecretary for personnel, who told Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, “We see the vaccines as a readiness issue. Any discharge decision is up to the individual service as to how they proceed with that.”

The report describes that “Individuals with honorable discharges will be eligible for things like GI Bill benefits, VA home loans and transition assistance programs. Individuals with other-than-honorable discharges are still guaranteed mental health care services through VA, but may be blocked from most other benefits.” An honorable discharge would guarantee all of these benefits, while anything less throws them into doubt in terms of eligibility. Other branches have their deadlines for all personnel to get vaccinated coming in the next weeks. As for the Air Force, what might happen next is a mass expulsion of non-vaxxed service members. There was no word on what career fields the un-vaxxed were in. If some are pilots, especially ones operating stealth jets and bombers, the overreaching vaxx mandate could much more directly jeopardize America’s readiness for war.

Managing expectations.

• UKHSA Efficacy Stats Death Watch: Week 44 (eugyppius)

Vaccinated vs. unvaccinated case rates in the United Kingdom, from the latest UK Health Security Agency vaccine surveillance report

Yet again I had to draw this graph myself, and yet again, the UK Health Security Agency wants you to know that these rates are extremely, totally, absolutely unadjusted. They just don’t know precisely why or how. As I noted on Twitter, it’s emerged that UKHSA inserted all of their ill-advised disclaimers after coming under fire from the Office of Statistics Regulation, a regulatory body which periodically complains about statistics published by the British government. OSR director Ed Humpherson met with UKHSA hours before they published their Week 43 report, demanding they do something about these awkward graphs. They responded by ditching the graphs altogether and calling every last number unadjusted. This failed to satisfy him, so in the days afterwards he issued this unbelievable open letter.

“Dear Jenny, COVID-19 vaccine surveillance statistics
Thank you for the constructive meeting on Thursday 28 October to discuss the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) COVID-19 vaccine surveillance statistics. We focused on the risk that the data presented on rates of positive cases for those who are vaccinated and those who are unvaccinated have the potential to mislead – and indeed we noted that these data have been used to argue that vaccines are ineffective. We welcome the changes you have made to the Week 43 surveillance report, published on 28 October. It is also very good that you are working closely with my team and with the relevant teams in the Office for National Statistics (ONS).”

The UK has backed itself into publishing some less-than-useful numbers. Now the office responsible for this publishing will have to work closely with a gaggle of political commissars, responsible for cleansing official discourse of anything that might be “used to argue that vaccines are ineffective.” Because he appears to be a genuinely stupid man, Humpherson spells this point out explicitly: “It remains the case that the surveillance report includes rates per 100,000 which can be used to argue that vaccines are not effective. I know that this is not the intention of the surveillance report, but the potential for misuse remains. In publishing these data, you need to address more comprehensively the risk that it misleads people into thinking that it says something about vaccine effectiveness.”

The end of morals.

• De Blasio To Pay Kids $100 To Get The Covid-19 Vaccine (Fox)

New York City will begin offering $100 to incentivize COVID-19 vaccines for kids ages 5-11. “Everyone can use a little more money around the holidays but most importantly we want our kids and our families to be safe,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. The new policy will apply to New York City-run vaccine sites and comes two days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use for children 5-11-years-old. The mayor said that getting the vaccine now will allow children to be fully vaccinated before Christmas, hoping that the $100 incentive will drive people to show up and get extra money for holidays.

The city is hoping to speed its effort to get kids vaccinated before they travel for the holidays, noting that the updated CDC guidance says that children have to wait three weeks between Pfizer doses, even though the dosage is smaller than the adult dose. The mayor also said that every public school in the city that serves children in the targeted age range will hold a dedicated vaccination day for those students beginning next week, which will cover about 1,070 sites over the course of the week by hitting roughly 200 schools per day. The city stressed that parents should be present to give verbal consent, whether at a school site or a city-run site, for their children to receive the shot, though de Blasio noted that parents and guardians can also give verbal consent over the phone.

“All choices are good choices, but we want to make it available and easy for parents who prefer just to go to their local school building,” de Blasio said. While millions of doses of the Pfizer vaccine have already been shipped around the country in advance of the guidance, pediatricians in the city say they have not been overwhelmed by calls for appointments for kids to get the shot. “We do NOT yet have the vaccine in our office. We placed an order last week and are awaiting confirmation about when the vaccine will be delivered. We will NOT schedule appointments until we have it,” a letter from Uptown Pediatrics in Manhattan sent to families Wednesday said. But city Health Commissioner David Chokshi stressed that parents can choose from multiple sites to get their children vaccinated. “There’s no wrong door here. We just wanna get as many kids vaccinated as quickly as we can,” Chokshi said.

“Florida now has the lowest COVID-19 case rate in the entire country..”

• Florida Court Reinstates Governor’s Ban on Masking in Schools (ET)

In Florida’s ongoing battle over masking mandates in schools, the First District Court of Appeal (DCA) overruled the decision of a Leon County circuit court judge on Wednesday, reinstating the governor’s ban on forced masking in schools. Some Leon County parents are cheering the ruling as a big win for parents’ rights and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In August, Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper ruled that DeSantis exceeded his authority in banning forced masking in public schools. In September, the First DCA overruled Cooper. But the following week, Cooper ruled that his order to prevent the state from enforcing school mask mandates should take immediate effect. On Oct. 27, the First DCA again overruled Cooper and emphasized three reasons why his ruling was wrong.

To begin, the First DCA ruled that the case never should have gone to trial because the plaintiffs did not have standing. The plaintiffs, a group of parents and students, could not sue to protect the institutional authority of local school districts and the Florida Department of Health. “Those entities alone must advance their own institutional rights,” the First DCA wrote. Second, the plaintiffs were not harmed by DeSantis’ order because the order took no action against them. In fact, all the governor did was direct other state agencies to protect parental rights. Third, the plaintiffs’ claim of receiving injury because they were exposed to COVID-19 by unmasked students was not “concrete” or “palpable” enough to warrant judicial intervention in public health policy.

Most notable was how the First DCA admonished Cooper for inventing his own legal theory to ultimately rule against the governor’s school mask policy by saying DeSantis somehow violated the Parents’ Bill of Rights by giving parents more rights. “While the Parents’ Bill of Rights undoubtedly played a role in the governor’s issuance of the executive order—and was even pleaded as an affirmative defense—the [Plaintiffs] never sought relief in their complaint based on an alleged violation of the Parents’ Bill of Rights,” the First DCA wrote. “They certainly never requested an injunction against a state administrative actor proceeding in some way in contravention of the Parents’ Bill of Rights.”

Similar court battles are playing out in other Florida counties. While the full appeal in the Leon County case is still pending, Christina Pushaw, executive press secretary for DeSantis said “the preliminary ruling shows that the Plaintiffs have little chance of saving the trial court’s ruling, so this is a win for Governor DeSantis and parents’ rights in Florida!” “Florida now has the lowest COVID-19 case rate in the entire country,” Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “Infections statewide have declined more than 90 percent since schools in Florida opened. The rate of decline was the same for districts that had mask mandates and districts that followed state law by allowing parents to choose whether their kids wore masks or not.”

“..the vaccinated were 191/8=23 times more likely to have subsequent symptomatic disease than the Covid recovered.”

• A Review and Autopsy of Two COVID Immunity Studies (Kulldorff)

In the Israeli study, the researchers tracked 673,676 vaccinated people who they knew not to have had Covid and 62,833 unvaccinated Covid-recovered individuals. A simple comparison of the rates of subsequent Covid in these two groups would be misleading. The vaccinated are likely older and, hence, more prone to have symptomatic disease, giving the Covid recovered group an unfair advantage. At the same time, the typical vaccinated patient received the vaccine long after the typical Covid-recovered patient got sick. Most Covid recovered patients got the infection before the vaccine was even available. Because immunity wanes over time, this fact would give an unfair advantage to the vaccinated group. To make a fair and unbiased comparison, researchers must match patients from the two groups on age and time since vaccination/disease.

That is precisely what the study authors did, matching also on gender and geographical location. For the primary analysis, the study authors identified a cohort with 16,215 individuals who had recovered from Covid and 16,215 matched individuals who were vaccinated. The authors followed these cohorts over time to determine how many had a subsequent symptomatic Covid disease diagnosis. Ultimately, 191 patients in the vaccinated group and 8 in the Covid recovered group got symptomatic Covid disease. These numbers mean that the vaccinated were 191/8=23 times more likely to have subsequent symptomatic disease than the Covid recovered. After adjusting the statistical analysis for comorbidities in a logistic regression analysis, the authors measured a relative risk of 27 with a 95% confidence interval between 13 and 57 times more likely for the vaccinated.

The study also looked at Covid hospitalizations; eight were in the vaccinated group, and one among the Covid recovered. These numbers imply a relative risk of 8 (95% CI: 1-65). There were no deaths in either group, showing that both the vaccine and natural immunity provide excellent protection against mortality. This is a straightforward and well-conducted epidemiological cohort study that is easy to understand and interpret. The authors addressed the major source of bias through matching. One potential bias they did not address (as it is challenging to do) is that those with prior Covid may have been more likely to be exposed in the past through work or other activities. Since they were more likely to be exposed in the past, they may also have been more likely exposed during the follow-up period. That would lead to an underestimate of the relative risks in favor of vaccination. There may also be misclassification if some of the vaccinated unknowingly had Covid. That would also lead to an underestimate.

Reigning NFL MVP, treated like a five year old.

• NFL Star Aaron Rodgers Responds To ‘Fake’ Vaccine Controversy (RT)

NFL star Aaron Rodgers has hit out at reports that he ‘lied’ about his vaccination status as he reveals that he has been taking advice on alternative Covid therapies from podcast host Joe Rogan, including the use of Ivermectin. Reigning NFL MVP Rodgers, 37, was the source of a media frenzy this week when he was accused of lying about his vaccination status against Covid-19 after telling the media in August that he had been “immunized” against the virus. That was despite it emerging this week that he was unvaccinated after contracting the illness, forcing him out of the Green Bay Packers’ crunch showdown with Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs this weekend.

Rodgers’ vaccination status comes amid strict rules within the NFL designed to compel players to receive one of the various vaccines, with harsh financial penalties imposed on players who fall foul of the league’s vaccine protocols. It emerged that, despite Rodgers not having received a vaccine, he appeared without a face-mask at various press events – a situation strictly disallowed for unvaccinated players. By contrast, the Packers had made a host of their unvaccinated players available to the media only by teleconference. Addressing the firestorm for the first time on former NFL player Pat McAfee’s radio show, Rodgers said that he was aware that he had enflamed tensions with the ‘woke’ mob and that he had become the darling ‘cancel culture’ brigade.

He outlined that he had sought alternative methods to protect himself from the potentially fatal virus – including following podcast host and UFC presenter Joe Rogan’s alternative theories by taking the controversial Ivermectin medication. “I realize I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now, so before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket I think I’d like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies that are out there about myself right now,” said Rodgers. “I didn’t lie in the initial press conference. During that time there was a very… a ‘witch hunt’ that was going on across the league where everybody in the media was so concerned about who was vaccinated and who wasn’t, and what that meant and who was being selfish and who would talk about it.

“[It was about] what they meant when they said it was a ‘personal decision’, [and that] they shouldn’t have to disclose their own medical information… “And at the time, my plan was to say that I had been immunized. It wasn’t some sort of ruse or lie, it was the truth. “Had there been a follow-up to my statement that I’d been immunized, I would have responded with this: look, I’m not some sort of anti-vax flat-earther. I am somebody who is a critical thinker. You guys know me, I march to the beat of my own drum. “I believe strongly in bodily autonomy and the ability to make choices for your body, not to have to acquiesce to some sort of ‘woke’ culture or crazed group of individuals who say you have to do something.”

Profitable destruction.

• The Man Who Called Bullshit on Uber (MJ)

In December 2016, Forbes put Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick on its cover. “Super Uber,” a headline declared. “The most valuable startup ever isn’t content to be the Uber of Uber. How the $68 billion juggernaut is about to change the way everything moves.” bThe story opened with Kalanick pacing about a conference room. He was not just some “bro” or “douche.” As “jam sessions” like this one revealed, he had a “special sauce.” This was Uber’s actual genius: A PR machine that could transform six men listening to a boss in gray chinos into something almost mystical.bTwo weeks before, Hubert Horan, a little-known expert on the airline industry, wrote a blog post for an equally little-known website, called Naked Capitalism, that went in a different direction.

Horan’s thesis was that Uber was a tremendously unprofitable, inefficient, and not particularly innovative company that would make money only if it bought its way to an unregulated monopoly. Compared to the Forbes piece and many others like it, Horan’s article was a fiduciary root canal. (“There is no simple relationship between EBITAR contribution and GAAP profitability,” reads part of one sentence.) The goal was to show that Uber was hugely unprofitable and how, in the event that it did succeed, profit would come from hurting consumers and overall economic welfare by cornering the taxi market. Horan, who started consulting in the airline industry after getting his MBA at Yale in 1980, has now written 26 more installments of his Uber series. When combined as PDFs, the posts run 193 pages.

They reveal him to be much more a Cassandra than a crank. Uber has lost in the neighborhood of $28 billion since it launched in 2009. Its rides now cost far more than cabs in many major cities, its workers are as exploited as ever, and taxi drivers face massive debts, partly as a result of its business practices. Consumers, meanwhile, are shocked to learn what the rides investors have been subsidizing actually cost. =bIn Uber’s telling, the dynamic is about to change. In a late September SEC filing, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced that the company was reaching an “important milestone” after running “more profitably than ever before” in the third quarter of 2021, which ended in September. As the beginning of another Forbes headline put it: “Uber Poised To Turn A Quarterly Profit.” It will likely officially announce this newfound profitability during its quarterly earnings call on Thursday.

But Uber has not actually become profitable. Instead, as the company stated in its September SEC filing, it believes it will be profitable based on its own “adjusted” formula, which excludes 13 categories the company does not like to count, such as stock-based compensation and the money it’s spending to respond to the pandemic.

“The government doesn’t control the banks; the banks control the government..”

• “The Fed Is Our Master And ‘We The People’, Its Puppet” – G. Edward Griffin (ZH)

The Federal Reserve has become so powerful over the years that its intended roles have entirely reversed and gone haywire, according to G. Edward Griffin, author of the book, many claim a financial bible – The Creature from Jekyll Island. In a rare and exclusive interview, Griffin joined anchor Daniela Cambone on Stansberry Research to discuss the true nature of the Federal Reserve and its place in American society, foreshadowing a world without the institution as we know it. As Cambone points out, the controversial yet influential voice Griffin promulgates would be argued as necessary, among former Congressman Ron Paul and Robert Kiyosaki. Griffin presents a stark reality that dives into the Fed’s foundational structure and how its practices are that of a “banking cartel.” On the surface, one might find it extreme to say that a private institution working in cohesion with the government is playing the role of “masters” to citizens.

Griffin presents his argument accurately by pointing out how Chairman Powell and the Federal Reserve swiftly implemented economic policies contributing to the greatest wealth transfer in human history. “The government doesn’t control the banks; the banks control the government,” he says to round out this servant-master metaphor. In a world where central bank digital currencies will inevitably be the new form of money, Griffin warns, people could lose control of their money because the banks could “just throw a switch and shut you out of your account if they don’t like you.” He then says it’s crucial to hold “marketable assets” outside of what the banking cartel cannot control, such as valuable physical objects – to the likes of precious metals, noting that gold is only one of the few safe places to hide.

Vaxxism
https://twitter.com/i/status/1456435096190341123

Weird.

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Debt Rattle August 13 2020

Aug 132020

August 13, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:18 am Finance Tagged with: 5G, AOC, Biden, bleed, coronavirus, Covid19, rapid test, Romney, smart money, Trump, Uber, vaccine, Very Fine People 12 Responses »

Joel Meyerowitz Florida 1967

• COVID-19 Rapid Tests Demo (MedCram)

• Puzzling New Zealand Virus Outbreak Grows To 17 Cases (AP)

• Russian Vaccine CEO: US Waging “Major Information Warfare” (ZH)

• When COVID Closed The Library, Staff Called Every Member Over 70 (G.)

• Smart Money On Trump To Win In November, Stocks Could Crash – Gundlach (MW)

• AOC Only Gets 60 Seconds At DNC To Deliver Pre-Recorded Message (F.)

• Romney Blocks Sen. Ron Johnson From Subpoenaing Comey, Brennan (GP)

• China State-Run Banks Quietly Complying With Trump’s Hong Kong Sanctions (ZH)

• Uber May Shut Down In California If Forced To Call Drivers Employees (V.)

• Pentagon Gives Up Huge Slice Of Spectrum For 5G (BD)

• We Didn’t Bleed Him Enough (CP)

I get quite a few of my entries in the Debt Rattles from my Twitter feed; I follow 193 accounts, let, right, and everything in between.

Now I clearly see the attention in there shifting away from COVID to US politics. Not surprisingly, of course. But what happens in that shift sometimes is. Joe Biden tweeted yesterday that Trump three years ago called neonazis in Charlottesville “very fine people”.

Now, we know that Trump did not do that, it’s a blatant lie, and one which has been well documented, because we know what he did say, word for word. How and why then can Biden make that claim?

Easy: he knows -and his handlers do- that his supporters don’t read or view anything in which this is explained to them. They simply believe Trump said that, because CNN and the NYT say so.

That’s how far the US media landscape – and journalism in general- has sunken. Biden’s tweet:

Three years ago today, white supremacists descended on Charlottesville with torches in hand and hate in their hearts. Our president said they were “very fine people.”

It was clear then, and it’s clear now: We are in a battle for the soul of our nation, and we must win.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 12, 2020

But here’s what Trump actually said:

And a clip of that:

After Charlottesville, President Trump said, "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally."pic.twitter.com/fJfS6wOZpR

— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) August 12, 2020

Even CNN’s Jake Tapper said so. Maybe he can tell his colleagues the truth, refresh their memories?!

C’mon, get a grip on the numbers already!

Apparently this has been available for months. Let’s start ASAP.

• COVID-19 Rapid Tests Demo (MedCram)

We’ve received your requests for a brief summary video (to share!) of Dr. Mina’s research and how inexpensive (approx. $1), at-home, COVID-19 tests (results in 15 minutes) could be utilized to dramatically slow the spread of this pandemic (and open up schools etc. in a faster and safer way). Dr. Mina is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and a core member of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. Dr. Mina’s research has demonstrated that the sensitivity (accuracy) of these simple saliva or swab paper antigen tests (the technology already exists) is high enough to detect the vast majority of infectious #COVID19 and could be utilized frequently at home.

At-Home, Rapid Result Testing: 5 Min. Summary with Dr. Mina

Frozen food? Isn’t that a bit far out?

• Puzzling New Zealand Virus Outbreak Grows To 17 Cases (AP)

A puzzling new outbreak of the coronavirus in New Zealand’s largest city grew to 17 cases on Thursday, with officials saying the number will likely increase further. And a lockdown in Auckland designed to extinguish the outbreak could be extended well beyond an initial three days. It was a turnabout from Sunday, when the South Pacific nation of 5 million marked 100 days without any cases of local transmission. For most people, life had long returned to normal as they sat down in packed sports stadiums and restaurants or went to school without the fear of getting infected. The only cases for months had been a handful of returning travelers who have been quarantined at the border. But then earlier this week, health workers discovered four infections in one Auckland household.

The source of the new infections continues to stump officials. Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said genome testing has not yet matched the new cluster with any infections that have been caught at the border, although the testing has indicated the strain of the virus may have come from Australia or Britain. Auckland was moved to Alert Level 3 on Wednesday, meaning that non-essential workers are required to stay home and bars, restaurants and most businesses are shut. The rest of the country has moved to Level 2, requiring social distancing. The government is due to make a decision Friday on whether to extend Auckland’s lockdown, which seems increasingly likely given the new cases. The good news for health officials about the latest 13 cases is that they could all be linked through work and family to the initial four cases, meaning there is no evidence yet of a wider community outbreak. Officials say they tested just over 6,000 people on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the outbreak was a reminder of the trickiness of the virus and how easily it can spread. “As with our first outbreak, we do have an expectation that things will get worse before they get better,” Ardern said. “Modeling suggests that we will still see more positive cases. At this stage, though, it’s heartening to see them in one cluster.” Bloomfield said he expected that sooner or later the new cases would be linked to somebody who had arrived in the country with an infection or a worker at a quarantine facility, airport or maritime port. “At the moment we haven’t established a direct connection,” Bloomfield said. “But as we find each case and do that thorough interview and investigation, that will help.” Some of those infected work at an Auckland refrigerated food facility, leading to speculation the virus could have survived from abroad on chilled or frozen food.

In the US, this will always be about money. The government buys billions worth of “maybe vaccines” whose research it has already paid for. Big Pharma sees the pandemic as a major profit opportunity. And both don’t want some Russian vaccine to spoil their schemes.

• Russian Vaccine CEO: US Waging “Major Information Warfare” (ZH)

The global race among multiple nations to be the first to produce a coronavirus vaccine – especially the US, China, and Russia – has sparked not just competition to see who’ll be first, but an information war in the wake of Moscow’s announced breakthrough COVID-19 vaccine this week. The announcement of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya research institute with help from the Russian defense ministry and expected to be available to the Russian public by October almost immediately drew widespread scorn and mockery in the West based on allegations Russia is skipping large-scale clinical trials. One Russian official told CNBC this week the US is waging “major information warfare” against the possibility of a successful Russia-produced vaccine.

Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund – which is backing the Sputnik V vaccine – said in comments Wednesday, “It really divided the world into those countries that think it’s great news … and some of the U.S. media and some U.S. people who actually wage major information warfare on the Russian vaccine.” “We were not expecting anything else, we are not trying to convince the U.S. Our point to the world is that we have this technology, it can be available in your country in November/December if that works with your regulator … [while] people who are very skeptical will not have this vaccine and we wish them good luck in developing theirs,” he added.

Dmitriev claimed further that Russia does plan on sharing its data from the vaccine with the rest of the world, also at a moment World Health Organization officals said they wil move to review the COVID-19 vaccine candidate approved by Russian regulators on Tuesday. The WHO said it will require “a rigorous safety data review” before being available for use among citizens.

Brilliant. Solves much of the loneliness problem, makes sure peole get books, keeps them in touch. It’s often in the little things that we find most value. Localize. Such approaches simply don’t work nationwide, unless you have a real small nation.

• When COVID Closed The Library, Staff Called Every Member Over 70 (G.)

When Melbourne’s Yarra Plenty regional libraries first went into lockdown in March, shut the doors and left the remaining unborrowed books on their shelves, staff were sent home with a phone. “One of the hardest things about lockdown was people being separated from their community,” said Lisa Dempster, Yarra Plenty’s executive manager of public participation. “The library is often a hub for the community, and we identified the most vulnerable cohort of our community would be the elderly.” So the library staff pulled from their database the phone number of every library member over the age of 70 – a total of 8,000 records. Then the librarians started calling those members. All of them.

“We called them to say hi, see how they were doing, and then see if there was anything they needed help with, such as access to services, counselling support, tech help, that kind of thing. We would then refer them to a service that would help them,” said Dempster. “What we’ve found mostly is that people are really up for the chat and love getting that call from the librarian. Some calls go for five minutes and some go for half an hour or more.” Yarra Plenty’s “caring calls” are just one of the ways that libraries around the state have been servicing community needs since the onset of Covid-19 shutdowns. From fine amnesties, to boosting the prominence of digital offerings, to simply putting books in the post, libraries have drastically changed the way they operate to accommodate the massive social changes imposed by governments during the pandemic, often with heartwarming results.

Gundlach was right: Biden WAS unelectable in March. But then a miracle happened.

• Smart Money On Trump To Win In November, Stocks Could Crash – Gundlach (MW)

Joe Biden/Kamala Harris in 2020? Not so fast, according to DoubleLine Capital’s billionaire boss Jeffrey Gundlach, who predicted Donald Trump’s win the 2016 election. ‘Will Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in November? I don’t think so. I’d bet against that. I think the polls are very, very squishy because of the highly toxic political environment in which we live. That’s the so-called “Bond King,” sharing his thoughts on the upcoming election in a webcast this week for DoubleLine’s closed-end funds cited by Bloomberg News.

Harris, he said, won’t likely change that because she’s “a little too charismatic” and her personality “might be a little bit dominant.” Then again, Gundlach didn’t think Biden would win the Democratic nomination, having called him “unelectable” in March. Regardless, there are still “a lot of twists and turns” to come, he added. Biden is still the favorite, according to a RealClear Politics average showing a 7.3-point margin in the polls. His lead is narrower in key battleground states, where he’s up an average of 4.3 points. As for the market, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if stocks revisited their March lows, and, as Bloomberg reported, he forecast gold to keep moving higher.

They want her voters, not her ideas. And people are surprised at that? Wake up! This thing lasts for 4 days, and she gets one minute of that. What will Kasich get, half an hour? Look at who’s in charge at the DNC. Same old same old.

• AOC Only Gets 60 Seconds At DNC To Deliver Pre-Recorded Message (F.)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will only have one minute to speak at the Democratic National Convention next week, Business Insider first reported Wednesday, prompting complaints the party was out of touch with young voters. The DNC will air a 60 second pre-recorded message filmed by AOC in her home. The convention is being held virtually because of the coronavirus, and speakers include former first lady Michelle Obama, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, who will deliver a live speech on Thursday, according to Business Insider. Other progressive leaders such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are also slated to speak.

It’s unclear if any other speakers are subject to the same time limits [..] Some slammed the Democratic Party for being out-of-touch with young voters, especially considering AOC’s national profile. In addition to AOC’s minute, the DNC speaker lineup has been widely panned by left-leaning activists for including former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, while not giving enough time to Latino, progressive and LGBT politicians. Former candidate Andrew Yang said he expected to speak and was disappointed he was not chosen.

You need to buy just one vote, it must be unanimous.

• Romney Blocks Sen. Ron Johnson From Subpoenaing Comey, Brennan (GP)

A Senior Republican Senate source has confirmed to Gateway Pundit that Senator Mitt Romney is leading an effort to block Senator Ron Johnson from subpoenaing James Comey and John Brennan. Johnson, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair, said during a radio appearance on Wednesday that fellow Republicans were blocking him from subpoenaing the former FBI Director and former CIA Director, among other figures involved in the scandal. “We had a number of my committee members that were highly concerned about how this looks politically,” Johnson told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who pressed the Senator to name the Republicans blocking him. Johnson declined to name names.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports that Johnson’s committee said no one is blocking any subpoenas for Comey or Brennan, rather there’s just a desire to exhaust all options to get them to testify voluntarily. However, shortly after Johnson made his claims, a senate source reached out to Gateway Pundit and confirmed that Romney is leading the obstruction. “Romney was for impeachment. He has been against Trump every step of the way. Now he is obstructing going after the leakers and liars who went after Trump,” the senior senate source said. The obstruction claims come despite the fact that the committee gave him the unilateral power to subpoena people earlier this year.

China doesn’t have a huge amount of dollars left.

• China State-Run Banks Quietly Complying With Trump’s Hong Kong Sanctions (ZH)

On the surface, there is a non-stop tide of daily diplomatic drama and escalating jawboning between the US and China which – quite theatrically – will be at each other’s throat at least until the conclusion of the Nov 3 election. However, behind the scenes, one can discern just who has the upper hand. According to Bloomberg, China’s largest state-run banks operating in Hong Kong have taken “tentative steps” to comply with US sanctions imposed on officials in the city, seeking to safeguard their access to crucial dollar funding and overseas networks, and putting their financial future above their patriotic duty to defend questionable Hong Kongers who have fallen in the crossfire.

As a reminder, last week Trump sanctioned Chinese and Hong Kong officials including Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of China’s State Council, and Chris Tang, commissioner of the city’s police for their role in implementing a security law in Hong Kong. The officials will have property and assets in the U.S. frozen; they also will be increasingly frozen by their own financial institutions. China’s bank giants, most of which have operations in the U.S. including Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and China Merchants Bank have turned cautious on opening new accounts for the 11 recently sanctioned HK officials, including Lam, and at least one bank has suspended such activity. To avoid Trump’s ire, at some banks transactions via the U.S. are banned, while compliance must now review and sign off on others that would previously have been immediately processed, Bloomberg sources said.

At the same time, foreign banks operating in Hong Kong such as Citigroup have already taken aggressive steps to suspend accounts or are increasing scrutiny of Hong Kong clients. The quick capitulation by China’s biggest lenders once again underscores how Trump has weaponized the greenback and the ability of the U.S. to use the dollar’s dominance in international transactions as a critical pressure point in the standoff with China. And since China’s state-owned lenders need to preserve their access to global financial markets – with the Yuan years if not decades from even thinking about thinking about becoming a global reserve currency – they have quietly bent the knee to Trump to preserve dollar access at a time when Beijing has leaned on them to prop up the economy from the fallout of the coronavirus.

WHen your business model falls apart as soon as you must pay decent wages.

• Uber May Shut Down In California If Forced To Call Drivers Employees (V.)

Uber may shut down its operations in California, one of its largest markets in the US, if it is forced to classify drivers as employees, the company’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on MSNBC Wednesday. Earlier this week, Uber and Lyft were ordered by a California superior court judge to classify their drivers as employees. At issue is the classification of ride-hailing drivers as independent contractors, which Uber and Lyft say most drivers prefer because of the flexibility and ability to set their own hours. But labor unions and elected officials contend this deprives them of traditional benefits like health insurance and workers’ compensation. Both companies have said they would appeal the ruling, which was stayed for 10 days.

But if their appeal fails, Uber may have to close up shop in California, Khosrowshahi said. “If the court doesn’t reconsider, then in California, it’s hard to believe we’ll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly,” he told MSNBC. In May, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with city attorneys of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, sued Uber and Lyft, arguing that their drivers were misclassified as independent contractors when they should be employees under the state’s AB5 law that went into effect on January 1st. Becerra later filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that could compel the ride-hailing companies to classify drivers as employees immediately. AB5, which was signed into law last September, enshrines the so-called “ABC test” to determine if someone is a contractor or an employee.

In his ruling in favor of Becerra’s preliminary injunction, Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman said Uber and Lyft’s arguments — that drivers’ work is outside the companies’ usual course of business — “flies in the face of economic reality and common sense.”

There are valid reasons to investigate 5G, and when the Pentagon surrenders bandwidth at record speed, there are even more such reasons. It’s being treated the same way as glyphosate currently, with people saying there’s no evidence of harm. No, that comes later, which is why you need research now. Precautionary principle.

And no, comments like this don’t help: “Those are precisely the frequencies they used to pull in the ‘virus’ from outer space ! And now they’re selling them off to cover it all up! Or maybe they’ve embedded even worse viruses IN THOSE WAVELENGTHS & will now use apps to infect EVERYONE IN THE WORLD “

• Pentagon Gives Up Huge Slice Of Spectrum For 5G (BD)

After a remarkably fast interagency review, the White House today announced a massive transfer of electromagnetic spectrum from military use to commercial 5G. It will be the “fastest transfer of federal spectrum to commercial use in history,” US Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios told reporters proudly this afternoon. But, Kratsios and Pentagon CIO Dana Deasy assured reporters ahead of the announcement, the rush won’t compromise military readiness or operations. The 100 megahertz of spectrum runs from 3450 MHz to 3550, so-called mid-band frequencies prized by 5G developers because they allow longer-ranged transmissions than the millimeter-wave spectrum that makes up most of what’s been available in the US so far.

Kratsios and other officials told reporters shortly before this afternoon’s announcement that the move would dramatically expand 5G access for all Americans – fulling a congressional mandate in the 2018 MOBILE NOW Act – and strengthen potential competitors to Chinese giant Huawei in the global market. Currently, Deasy said, “the 3450-3550 mHZ band supports critical DoD radar operations, including high-powered defense radar systems on fixed, mobile, shipboard, and airborne platforms, [including] air defense, missile and gun fire control, counter mortar, bomb scoring [during training exercises], battlefield weapon locations, air traffic control, and range safety.” That’s a wide range of military functions, many with life-or-death significance for either training safety or outright combat. Deasy and other officials didn’t detail how the Defense Department would work this massive transfer.

Their remarks, however, suggested a mix of migrating military radars to other frequencies – a complex and costly process typically funded from a share of the FCC auction – and sharing frequencies with commercial users in specific times and places. The White House formally made the request in April. Roughly 200 technical experts from all four armed services, the Office of Secretary of Defense, and the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy studied the problem for 15 weeks. The FCC, which has already endorsed the plan, will start auctioning the spectrum off in December 2021, Kratsios said, with commercial use beginning “as soon as mid-2022.” That’s as fast as the transfer can possibly go through the FCC’s public rule-making process, officials said. Historically transferring spectrum takes six years or more. ““The timeline that we’re working with is absolutely unprecedented,” one senior administration official told reporters, “and I cannot underscore that enough.”

I like the line of thinking. Ideas that once were mainstream start to look crazy.

• We Didn’t Bleed Him Enough (CP)

Bloodletting was a common medical treatment for nearly 3,000 years. It developed around an idea, originating with Hippocrates and later wildly popular in Europe of the Middle Ages: that an imbalance of the four humours of the body – blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile – caused illness. Around 500 years after Hippocrates, Galen declared blood to be the most important humour. These and other ideas driven by surgical experimentation and, often, superstition, led to bleeding the body, ridding it of bad blood, if you like, to save the patient. Leeches were used for bloodletting, including the medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis. We will never know how many people lost their lives across 3,000 years to this treatment, how many humans turned corpses, bled to death by the medico-ideological delusions of their doctors.

We do know that King Charles II of England had some 24 ounces of blood taken from him before he died. George Washington’s three doctors drained him of copious amounts of blood (on his own request) to cure him of a throat infection – he died soon after. Covid-19 has given us a brilliant, thorough autopsy of neoliberalism, indeed of capitalism itself. The corpse is on the table, in glaring light, every vein, artery, organ and bone staring us in the face. You can see all the leeches – privatisation, corporate globalism, extreme concentration of wealth, levels of inequality unseen in living memory. The bloodletting approach to social and economic ills that has seen societies drain working people of the basics of decent and dignified human existence.

The 3,000-year-old medical practice reached its peak in Europe in the 19th century. Its discrediting came only with the late 19th and 20th centuries – but the doctrine and practice are still dominant in the disciplines of economics, philosophy, business and society. Some of the most powerful social and economic doctors around the corpse before us, analyse it much the way doctors in say, medieval Europe, did. As the late Alexander Cockburn, founder editor of CounterPunch, once said, when the Middle Ages medicos lost their patient, they probably shook their heads sadly and said: “We didn’t bleed him enough.” Precisely as the World Bank and the IMF have whined for decades that the horrific damage of their shock and awe treatment, of sometimes near-genocidal structural adjustment – was not because their ‘reforms’ went too far, but because their reforms, alas, did not go far enough, indeed were not allowed to, by the rowdy and great unwashed.

Inequality, the ideologically insane argued, was not such a dreadful thing. It promoted competitiveness and individual initiative. And we needed more of those. Inequality is now central to any debate we have on the future of humanity. The rulers know this. For over 20 years now, they’ve been savaging the suggestion that inequality has anything to do with humanity’s problems. Early this millennium, the Brookings Institute warned against this debilitating discussion on inequality. Less than 90 days before Covid-19 swept the world, The Economist magazine, neoliberalism’s Oracle of Delphi, read the chicken entrails before it and ran a bitter cover story: “Inequality Illusions: Why wealth and income gaps are not what they appear.” Could turn out the most famous last words since Tarzan’s – “who greased the grapevine?”

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Debt Rattle February 2 2020

Feb 022020

February 2, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:00 am Finance Tagged with: 2019nCOV, Assange, Cassandra, coronavirus, DNC, Fukushima, Hillary, Pelosi, Tulsi, Uber 12 Responses »

NPC “Georgetown-Marines game” 1923

• US Confirms Its Eighth Case Of Coronavirus (R.)

• Uber Suspends 240 Accounts In Mexico To Prevent Coronavirus Spreading (R.)

• US Senator Shreds China’s Official Virus Story, Warns Of “Super Laboratory” (ZH)

• Pelosi Questions Why The President’s Lawyers Are Not Disbarred (Turley)

• CNN’s Blatant And Bizarre Tulsi Gabbard Snub (Hill)

• Is Hillary Clinton Angling To Become Vice President? (Hill)

• DNC Members Planning Move To Block Bernie Sanders . . . Again (Turley)

• NPR Demands Cassandra Fairbanks’s Conversations with Julian Assange (CC)

• Fukushima Radioactive Water Should Be Released Into Ocean – Japan Experts (G.)

• Kremlin Warns Chemical Provocation Coming Near Aleppo (ZH)

Are we truly leveling off? There are a few voices out there who like the idea. But perhaps it’s a bit early to say. First today’s numbers:

• Confirmed cases: 14,562 in China, 140 abroad (from 11,945, up 2617) yesterday up 2124

• Deaths: 305 (up 46, yesterday also 46)
(deaths over past 9 days: 15, 15, 25, 25, 26, 38, 43, 46, 46)

• Recovered: 328

• First death outside China (Philippines, patient from Wuhan)

• 8 cases in US

What gives me pause still in the leveling off ‘debate’ is the January 31 2020 report by Gabriel Leung and his team at HKU which states: “In our baseline scenario, we estimated 75,185 infections as of Jan 25.” On Jan 25 there were 1,200-1,300 confirmed cases. Today there are 14,500. Would their infection estimate also have risen tenfold?

Also, this updated BBC graph brings home once again the speed at which the infections have increased: less than two weeks ago, there were less than 300 vs today’s 14,550. Let’s hope the worst is over, but let’s not jump to conclusions. It’s one thing to look at numbers day-to-day, it’s another to look at longer term developments.

And this one doesn’t make me feel much better either for some reason:

Looks doable for now.

• US Confirms Its Eighth Case Of Coronavirus (R.)

U.S. health officials on Saturday confirmed an eighth case of the fast-spreading new coronavirus in the United States and the Pentagon said it would provide housing for people arriving from overseas who might need to be quarantined. The latest U.S. patient, who is in Massachusetts, recently returned from Hubei province in central China, the epicenter of the outbreak, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an emailed statement. The person was not identified and no other details were provided. The flu-like coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in a market that traded illegally in wildlife in Hubei’s provincial capital Wuhan, has so far resulted in 304 deaths in China, state broadcaster CCTV said early on Sunday in China.

Confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in 27 other nations, according to the CDC. All but one of the patients in the United States was believed to have contracted the disease while they were traveling in the Wuhan area. U.S. officials this week reported the first human-to-human transmission of the disease in the United States in Illinois. Concerns about the virus spurred the Trump administration to declare a public health emergency and bar entry to the United States for foreign nationals who have recently visited China. In addition, U.S. citizens who have traveled within the past two weeks to Hubei will be subject to a mandatory quarantine of 14 days, believed to be the incubation period of the virus, officials said.

I include this because I don’t understand it. 2 drivers “may” have transported one user, and that suspends 240 accounts?

• Uber Suspends 240 Accounts In Mexico To Prevent Coronavirus Spreading (R.)

U.S. ride-hailing application Uber Technologies Inc. said on Saturday that it suspended 240 accounts of users in Mexico who may recently have come in contact with someone possibly infected with the new coronavirus. The newly identified coronavirus, which is believed to have originated late last year from illegally traded wildlife at an animal market in Wuhan, China, has created alarm because it spreads quickly and there are still important unknowns surrounding it. There are no confirmed cases in Mexico and all nine suspected cases were later declared negative.

Uber said in a statement posted on its Twitter account that two drivers may have transported a user who is possibly infected with the new coronavirus. It added the suspended users should contact health authorities if they develop symptoms. [..] Mexican state news agency Notimex reported on Saturday that 18 of the 52 Mexican students who are studying in China had returned. Notimex did not specify whether the students are in quarantine.

Time for China to come clean about the lab?! Yeah, right. Reminds me of the novichok affair, that also had a bioweapon lab nearby. And gee, were the UK eager to open up about it.

• US Senator Shreds China’s Official Virus Story, Warns Of “Super Laboratory” (ZH)

Cotton referenced a Lancet study which showed that many of the first cases of the novel coronavirus, including patient zero, had no connection to the wet market — devastatingly undermining China’s claim. “As one epidemiologist said: ‘That virus went into the seafood market before it came out of the seafood market.’ We still don’t know where it originated,” Cotton said. “I would note that Wuhan also has China’s only bio-safety level four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.” [..] Cotton appears to be referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the country’s foremost virus research facility.

The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, which is part of the institute, is located only 20 miles from the Wuhan wet market, the “official” source of the outbreak according to China. Snakes, bats and other animals were identified as possible originators for the coronavirus in early investigations. The rapid spread of the virus, which makes previous contagions like SARS and swine flu look benign by comparison, seems to lend weight to the theory that the novel coronavirus is a tailored bioweapon. Ten days ago, China reported less than 300 had the virus. The country’s latest update now numbers the infected at over 11,000. An additional 15,000 in China are suspected of having the virus, but a reported lack of test kits prevents the government from giving an accurate number.

When the number of infected was still low, China instituted a wide-reaching quarantine, sealing over 40 million inside cities. Now, the world appears to be sealing China in. Russia, Nepal, Mongolia and North Korea have all closed their borders with China. Even more countries are refusing Chinese nationals, including an unprecedented announcement from the administration of President Donald Trump barring entry into America for foreign nationals who have traveled to China. While the virus has been found in several countries around the world including America, all eyes are now on China as the outbreak there shows no signs of slowing.

“Pelosi added that Trump “will not be acquitted” even if he is acquitted..”

• Pelosi Questions Why The President’s Lawyers Are Not Disbarred (Turley)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Cal.) made an extraordinary statement yesterday that suggests that lawyers representing President Donald Trump should be disbarred: “I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making.” Just as I have been highly critical of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Adam Schiff and others, this is a truly outrageous suggestion. These lawyers are performing a key function in our constitutional system in not just representing an accused person but fulfilling a vital role in an impeachment trial. Because Pelosi disagrees with their legal arguments, she insinuates that they should not be licensed attorneys. It is precisely the type of ad hominem attack that Democrats criticize with the President.

Pelosi added that Trump “will not be acquitted” even if he is acquitted — entirely decoupling the Democratic position from either constitutional or ethical norms. She is not the only person engaging in such low-grade, personal attacks. Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe denounced Alan Dershowitz as a “charlatan” for his views. Dershowitz denounced another Harvard professor as a “coward” for his criticism. These are good-faith disagreements over the scope and meaning of the constitutional standard. Moreover, the White House counsel has done an able job in responding to the House, including landing a couple of haymakers on the record. Both sides have had brilliant and not-so-brilliant moments. However, they have all conducted themselves will professionalism and civility for the most part.

The DNC does the exact same thing again that lost them the 2016 election. It’s like a comedy act.

• CNN’s Blatant And Bizarre Tulsi Gabbard Snub (Hill)

CNN has held more town hall events than any of the three cable news networks over the past few years and continues that programming strategy as we head into the meat of the 2020 campaign. For the most part, the network has made an effort to provide every candidate on the Democratic side during the primary season with an hour-long stage to answer questions from moderators and voters alike. And that’s what makes CNN’s decision to snub Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) from a series of town halls just days before the New Hampshire primary not only odd, but optically nonsensical. Note: Gabbard is currently polling at 4.8 percent in the RealClearPolitics index of polls in New Hampshire. That puts her ahead of tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang (4.0 percent), businessman Tom Steyer (1.8 percent) and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (no polling available).

So what do these low-polling candidates all have in common? They all received invites to the CNN New Hampshire town hall. The most recent poll from America Research Group released out of the state even has Gabbard ahead of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), with the Hawaii congresswoman clocking in at 8 percent to Klobuchar’s 7 percent. And if we’re just talking CNN/UNH polling, Gabbard is at 5 percent, which places her 3 points higher than Steyer and 5 points higher than Patrick, who clocks in a 0.0 percent. “We have reached out, I think, more than once, and we received no explanation,” Gabbard told Fox News on Tuesday regarding the non-invite. “I don’t even think we’ve gotten a response to date about why they’re excluding the first female combat veteran ever to run for president, the only woman of color in the race,” she added.

[..] The last time Gabbard appeared on CNN during one of its special events was at a Democratic debate in Ohio last October. It was then that the Iraq War veteran addressed allegations made by the New York Times and a CNN commentator that she was an asset of the Russian government, an allegation launched (and unchallenged) by 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. “Just two days ago The New York Times put out an article saying that I’m a Russian asset and an [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad apologist and all these different smears,” she said. “This morning a CNN commentator [Bakari Sellers] said on national television that I’m an asset of Russia. Completely despicable.”

Sellers actually called Gabbard a “puppet for the Russian government” without presenting any evidence to back up the claim. “There is no question, there is no question that Tulsi Gabbard, of all the 12, is a puppet for the Russian government,” alleged Sellers, a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives. “There is a chance that Tulsi is not just working for the United States,” he added. “That’s not just an allegation.”

The impechment trial defeat seemed like a good time to reorganize the party. Instead, it’s doubling down.

• Is Hillary Clinton Angling To Become Vice President? (Hill)

A number of people in politics, the media and elsewhere are openly speculating that if Democrats wind up with a “brokered convention,” with no strong or viable nominee evident, Hillary Clinton might enter the arena as the “savior” who could unite the delegates and go on to defeat President Donald Trump. Clinton herself seemed to throw shade at that theory during an interview with Variety at the Sundance Film Festival. When asked about the “urge” to beat Trump, the former Democratic nominee said, “Yeah. I certainly feel the urge because I feel the 2016 election was a really odd time and an odd outcome. And the more we learn, the more that seems to be the case. But I’m going to support the people who are running now and do everything I can to help elect the Democratic nominee.”

Several politically savvy Democrats have told me that “everything” may be a much more plausible and powerful scenario. That is, Clinton and/or her team could be negotiating with former Vice President Joe Biden, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg or the last candidate standing to join the ticket as vice president. She would add the gravitas, delegates and, eventually, millions of votes needed to get them over the finish line on Nov. 5. I am assured that Clinton is on every shortlist for that position. If I were in Trump’s world, this scenario would send chills down my spine. There is no doubt that the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of State once again is raising her profile and stepping back into the spotlight to reengage in political discussions.

One such spotlight was provided by the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. There, aside from commenting on her presidential “urge,” Clinton not only promoted the incredibly flattering four-part Hulu documentary about her, titled “Hillary” — which premiered, coincidently, just 10 days before the Iowa caucus — but she also attended the debut of a documentary about the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The first event was tailor-made to allow her to shine. The other gave her a timely platform to bash President Trump on a number of topics.

They don’t want to win.

• DNC Members Planning Move To Block Bernie Sanders . . . Again (Turley)

In 2016, many of us objected to the concerted effect of the Democratic establishment and the Democratic National Committee to rig the primary for Hillary Clinton. Later it was revealed that the Clinton has largely taken over the DNC by taking over its debt and the DNC openly harassed and hampered Sanders at every stage. Despite this effort, Sanders came close to beating Clinton, who has never forgiven him for contesting a primary that she literally bought and paid for with the DNC. The simmering rage was still evident recently in Clinton’s attack on Sanders and suggestion that she might not support him if he were the nominee (a suggestion that she later took back). She continued her attacks this week and it has served to remind voters, particularly younger voters, of the DNC interference with the primary election.

After the scandal, the DNC pledged to reform itself and reduce the power of establishment figures and superdelegates at the convention. Now, however, Politico is reporting that DNC members are again discussing changing the rules to stop Sanders. This follows the selection of Clinton allies to control the convention and a shocking level of anti-Sanders bias shown by CNN at the last debate. In the meantime, the DNC has been criticized for clearing the way for Michael Bloomberg by changing its rules to help him make the debates. Reportedly, a group of Democratic National Committee members are discussing ways to undermine Sanders and allow for a convention stop on his candidacy. The plan centers around the superdelegates to reverse reforms and allow them to vote on the first ballot. In other words, the supers would be brought back in to keep Sanders out.

[..] The fear is that Sanders could win Iowa and come to the convention with the most votes. It would challenge the view that Biden is the unassailable nominee — just as he challenged the same view with Clinton. These moves are likely to only strengthen the resolve of the surging Sanders supporters. Sanders is receiving the most support among young voters — an extraordinary accomplishment given his age and mainstream opposition. The Democratic Party is clearly not willing to move beyond the control and fealty extended to the Clintons. That could easily force a final reckoning at the convention over who controls the Democratic party.

Not sure what she’s talking about. Post the subpoena perhaps?

Yves Smith says: “NPR cannot subpoena you. Only an attorney acting on behalf of a court or admin law judge can. If an NPR lawyer has anything to do with this, you should file a bar complaint v. him.”

• NPR Demands Cassandra Fairbanks’s Conversations with Julian Assange (CC)

In 2018, National Public Radio (NPR), the publicly funded radio organization, was forced to retract a false claim that Donald Trump Jr. lied to the Senate about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, Now, NPR is now demanding journalist Cassandra Fairbanks give them records of her conversations with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. NPR has published salacious allegations that WikiLeaks is “a mouthpiece of the Russian government.”

https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/1223799010940669959

In a subpoena, NPR also demanded Fairbanks’s conversations with dozens of people, including deceased DNC staffer Seth Rich, long-rumored to be the leaker who passed Democrat emails to Assange. Fairbanks is well known supporter of Assange, and is already declaring she will not hand over her conversations with Assange. “NPR lawyers are on 90 different drugs if they think I would ever give up a single sentence of a convo I’ve had with him,” wrote Fairbanks.

https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/1223804978734813186

Calling Greta!

• Fukushima Radioactive Water Should Be Released Into Ocean – Japan Experts (G.)

A panel of experts advising Japan’s government on a disposal method for radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant has recommended releasing it into the ocean, a move likely to alarm neighbouring countries. The panel, under the industry ministry, came to the conclusion after narrowing the choice to either releasing the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean or letting it evaporate – and opted for the former. Based on past practice, it is likely the government will accept the recommendation. The build-up of contaminated water at Fukushima has been a sticking point in the clean-up, which is likely to last decades, especially as the Olympics are due to be held in Tokyo this year with some events less than 60km (35 miles) from the wrecked plant.

Neighbouring South Korea has retained a ban on imports of seafood from Japan’s Fukushima region imposed after the nuclear disaster and summoned a senior Japanese embassy official last year to explain how the Fukushima water would be dealt with. Its athletes are planning to bring their own radiation detectors and food to the Games. In 2018, Tokyo Electric apologised after admitting its filtration systems had not removed all dangerous material from the water, and the site is running out of room for storage tanks. But it plans to remove all radioactive particles from the water except tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is hard to separate and is considered to be relatively harmless. “Compared to evaporation, ocean release can be done more securely,” the committee said, pointing to common practice around the world where normally operating nuclear stations release water that contains tritium into the sea.

More repetition. Call Bellingcat and the OPCW!

• Kremlin Warns Chemical Provocation Coming Near Aleppo (ZH)

Amid the ongoing Russian-Syrian military offensive to liberate Idlib province from the al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, suburbs near Aleppo have been scene of intense fighting in recent days, despite government forces liberating the major northern city in December 2016, which marked a turning point in the war. Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have in recent days and weeks mounted new insurgent attacks on the outskirts of the provincial capital city at a moment the Syrian Army has made huge gains into neighboring Idlib. A key reason Damascus has vowed to retake every inch of Idlib is that for years al-Qaeda has launched terrorist attacks on suburbs of Aleppo from there as civilians and the government attempt to rebuild the largely destroyed urban center.

This latest renewed fighting in Aleppo appears a concerted effort by Turkey to use its proxy forces to repel and distract the brunt of the Syrian Army offensive on Idlib, considering on Friday President Erdogan warned he’s ready to use military force if Assad doesn’t halt Idlib operations. “Syrian insurgents carried out at least three car bomb attacks against government forces west of Aleppo on Saturday and opened a new front northeast of the city, an attempted fight back after territorial advances by Damascus.” — Jerusalem Post “We will not allow the regime’s cruelty towards its own people, with attacks and causing bloodshed,” Erdogan said. Ankara has been alarmed that hundreds of thousands of civilians are now trying to flee the embattled province toward the Turkish border.

“Turkey with complete sincerity wants Syria’s stability and security, and to this end, we will not shy away from doing whatever is necessary, including using military force.” Erdogan has also accused Russia of violating key agreements for a reduction in fighting in Idlib, while Moscow has cited ongoing attacks against its nearby Hmeimim airbase launched by HTS insurgents based in Idlib. Over the past years HTS and affiliate jihadist groups have also attacked civilian areas of western Aleppo. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Erdogan’s charge by pointing out Idlib is a haven for terrorists who launch attacks on civilians as well as Russian and Syrian forces. Erdogan has also recently threatened to “open the gates” of millions of refugees on Europe if it doesn’t received political support. Needless to say, we are headed toward the final Syrian war showdown over Idlib.

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Debt Rattle December 5 2019

Dec 052019

December 5, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, China, constitution, donations, experts, Fed, FISA, impeachment, Macron, pensions, quants, Uber 9 Responses »

Arthur Rothstein Interior of migratory fruit worker’s tent, Yakima, Washington Jul 1936

• The Market Will Need The Fed Again In 2020 (Axios)

• The Repo Market Is Broken And Fed Injections Are Not A Lasting Solution (MW)

• Is Something Broken? Quants Running “Scared” As Nothing Makes Sense (ZH)

• Legal Experts Called By Democrats Say Trump’s Actions Are Impeachable (R.)

• Gaetz Grills Impeachment Witnesses Over Democratic Donations (Fox)

• Judiciary Committee Member: Unfair, Politically Biased Ordeal (USAT)

• The 10 Most Important Revelations From The Russia Probe FISA Report (Solomon)

• Illinois’ Unfunded Pension Liability Rises To $137.3 Billion (R.)

• China Set To Make History With Record Number Of Bond Defaults In 2019 (ZH)

• France Braces For Biggest Strikes Of Macron’s Presidency (G.)

• Uber Faces £1,500,000,000 Bill For Unpaid VAT (Metro)

• Julian Assange in Videoconference: The Spanish Case Takes a Turn (IPD)

The Fed will never be able to get out. That was clear the moment they stepped in.

• The Market Will Need The Fed Again In 2020 (Axios)

The No.1 risk to the stock market continuing its outperformance next year is not President Trump or consistently weak U.S. economic data or even China, senior analysts at John Hancock Investment Management say, but whether or not the Fed continues to stimulate the economy through what they call “not QE.” What it means: Fed chair Jerome Powell has insisted the central bank’s bond buying program — initiated after rates in the systemically important repo market spiked to five times their normal level in September — is not quantitative easing. But “it walks and talks” like QE, analysts say, and has injected close to $1 trillion of liquidity into the repo market and added more than $260 billion to the Fed’s balance sheet.

The intrigue: The new “not QE” program was “like a fourth rate cut this year,” John Hancock co-chief investment strategist Matthew Miskin said during a media briefing Tuesday in New York. And it has given a boost to the stock market. The big picture: “The equity market has benefited from a super aggressive Fed,” Ethan Harris, head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told Axios during a separate event Tuesday at BAML headquarters. “I mean the Fed basically anesthetized the markets to the trade war escalation this summer.”

Because the Fed was able to mask the economy’s pain from the market, a strong sell-off may be needed to motivate the Trump administration to secure what Harris calls a “skinny” trade deal with China and avert the Dec. 15 tariffs that will hit billions of dollars worth of consumer goods. The converse is also true, Miskin argued. “If things turn more sour because we’re not getting a trade deal or the tariffs go on Dec. 15, the stress underpinning … the market will re-emerge and the Fed’s definitely going to have to be there,” he told Axios.

End the Fed.

• The Repo Market Is Broken And Fed Injections Are Not A Lasting Solution (MW)

The Federal Reserve’s ongoing efforts to shore up the short-term “repo” lending markets have begun to rattle some market experts. The New York Federal Reserve has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to keep credit flowing through short term money markets since mid-September when a shortage of liquidity caused a spike in overnight borrowing rates. But as the Fed’s interventions have entered a third month, concerns about the market’s dependence on its daily doses of liquidity have grown. “The big picture answer is that the repo market is broken,” said James Bianco, founder of Bianco Research in Chicago, in an interview with MarketWatch. “They are essentially medicating the market into submission,” he said. “But this is not a long-term solution.”

This chart shows the more than $320 billion of total repo market support from the Fed since Sept. 17, when for the central bank began pumping in daily liquidity after overnight lending rates jumped to almost 10% from nearly 2%. Initially, the central bank rolled out roughly $75 billion in daily lending facilities to arm Wall Street’s core set of primary dealers with low-cost overnight loans to keep the roughly $1 trillion daily U.S. Treasury repo market running. The facilities allow banks to snap up loans by pledging safe-haven U.S. Treasurys or agency mortgage-backed securities with the New York Fed, but crucially without the typical risk-based pricing that lenders regularly charge when funding each other.

“..the answer is yes: the market is broken, and you can thank central banks for that.”

• Is Something Broken? Quants Running “Scared” As Nothing Makes Sense (ZH)

It was a year where the S&P put the mini bear market of December 2018 in the dust, and after a dramatic reversal which saw most central banks flip from hawkish to dovish throughout the year…

… the MSCI World index is just shy of its January 2018 highs, and the S&P has returned an impressive 24% (despite the jittery start to December), and stands at all time record highs, despite, paradoxically, a year of record equity fund outflow. On paper, this should have been a great year for investors after a dismal 2018. In reality, however, 2019 has been just as painful for not just for hedge funds, which have substantially underperformed the S&P again and in October saw a record 8 consecutive months of outflows, the most since the financial crisis…

… but especially for quants, which after a relatively solid year, suffered the September quant crash that destroyed most of their YTD gains, and have generally been unable to find their bearings in a year in which nothing seemed to work. It’s also Georg Elsaesser, a Frankfurt-based fund manager at Invesco, is trying to calm down his newbie quant clients as choppy stock moves make life difficult for anyone trading factors, which wire up all those systematic portfolios on Wall Street. “Some of them are kind of scared,” Elsaesser told Bloomberg. “They’re asking the questions: Is something going wrong? Is something broken?” Well actually, the answer is yes: the market is broken, and you can thank central banks for that.

All three are Democrat donors who have a deep dislike of Trump. They couldn’t hide that, didn’t even try, instead went on RussiaRussia rants.

But this was supposed to be about the Constitution, not about their opinions. Turley was the only one who stuck to what was on the table.

• Legal Experts Called By Democrats Say Trump’s Actions Are Impeachable (R.)

The hearing on Wednesday was the committee’s first to examine whether Trump’s actions qualify as “high crimes and misdemeanors” punishable by impeachment under the U.S. Constitution. Three law professors chosen by the Democrats made clear during the lengthy session that they believed Trump’s actions constituted impeachable offenses. “If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable,” said University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt. But George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who was invited by the Republicans, said he did not see clear evidence of illegal conduct. He said the inquiry was moving too quickly and lacked testimony from people with direct knowledge of the relevant events.

“One can oppose President Trump’s policies or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment of an American president,” said Turley, who added that he did not vote for Trump. [..] Republicans focused their questions on Turley, who largely backed up their view that Democrats had not made the case for impeachment – although he did say that leveraging U.S. military aid to investigate a political opponent “if proven, can be an impeachable offense.” Democrats sought to buttress their case by focusing their questions on the other three experts – Gerhardt, Harvard University law professor Noah Feldman and Stanford University law professor Pam Karlan – who said impeachment was justified.

Karlan drew a sharp response from Republicans for a remark about how Trump did not enjoy the unlimited power of a king. “While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron,” she said. White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham on Twitter called Karlan “classless,” and first lady Melania Trump said Karlan should be “ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering” for mentioning her 13-year-old son.

Jonathan Turley: "The problem is not that abuse of power can never be an impeachable offense, you just have to prove it, and you haven’t." pic.twitter.com/EXxkHfAXmN

— The Hill (@thehill) December 5, 2019

Thanks to Pamela Karlan for so aptly capturing Democratic elites’ delusional, Reaganite, jingoistic Cold Warrior mindset in your claim that we need to arm Ukraine “so they fight the Russians there and we don’t have to fight them here” & we remain “that shining city on the hill.” pic.twitter.com/C78aNThnUk

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 4, 2019

Matt Taibbi: “We laughed at this logic when George W. Bush used it to justify his Mideast wars: “We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”

Michael Tracey: “This woman was ostensibly called to testify about the legal and Constitutional questions around impeachment and instead ends up going on a bizarre Cold Warrior rant implying that Russia plans to invade the United States”

• Gaetz Grills Impeachment Witnesses Over Democratic Donations (Fox)

Turning to the professors, he asked UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Michael Gerhardt to confirm that he donated to President Barack Obama. “My family did, yes,” Gerhardt responded. Shifting his attention to Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, Gaetz noted the educator has written several articles that portray Trump in a negative light. “Mar-a-Lago ad belongs in impeachment file,” Gaetz said, repeating the title of an April 2017 piece Feldman wrote for Bloomberg Opinion. Gaetz further pressed Feldman, asking him: “Do you believe you’re outside of the political mainstream on the question of impeachment?” Responding to Gaetz, Feldman said impeachment is warranted whenever a president abuses their power for personal gain or when they “corrupt the democratic process.”

The professor added he was an “impeachment skeptic” until the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. After the exchange, Gaetz turned to Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan and challenged her on reported four-figure donations to Clinton, Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Why so much more for Hillary than the other two?” he added, smiling. The Florida lawmaker went on to criticize Karlan for a remark she made while answering an earlier question by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. Karlan had told Jackson Lee that there is a difference between what Trump can do as president and the powers of a medieval king. “The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son ‘Barron’, he can’t make him a baron.”

Gaetz fumed at the remark, saying it does not lend “credibility” to her argument. “When you invoke the president’s son’s name here, when you try to make a little joke out of referencing Barron Trump… it makes you look mean, it makes you look like you are attacking someone’s family: the minor child of the president of the United States.”

"America is not just 'the last best hope,' as Mr. Jefferies said, but it's also the shining city on a hill. We can't be the shining city on a hill and promote democracy around the world if we're not promoting it here at home."

— Prof. Pamela S. Karlan #ImpeachmentPBS pic.twitter.com/75l6fcRcWR

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) December 4, 2019

Professor Turley, who voted against Trump in 2016, confirmed under oath today from a legal perspective that there was no bribery, no extortion, no obstruction of justice and no abuse of power. What false charge can Democrats possibly pursue next? pic.twitter.com/pxSazjKFyA

— John Ratcliffe (@RepRatcliffe) December 4, 2019

Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., serves on the House Judiciary Committee.

• Judiciary Committee Member: Unfair, Politically Biased Ordeal (USAT)

By now we have all heard the news that President Donald Trump’s counsel will not be participating in the House Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing Wednesday. As a member of the committee, I believe President Trump has made the right decision. In their obsession and rush to impeach the president by the end of the year, Democrats have rigged the process from the start. I wouldn’t blame anyone, let alone the president, for being skeptical about this unfair process. Closed door secret meetings, selectively leaked details, refusing to allow Republican witnesses, and releasing the Schiff report and witness list right before the hearing all indicate an unfair, politically biased ordeal.

With little to no information provided by Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, right now it appears anything goes. The president was provided little notice and no indication of who would be the witnesses or if there would be additional hearings. This leaves more questions than answers as we head into the next phase of an already tainted process. House Democrats do not seem to grasp that they cannot legitimize such an illegitimate process halfway through. This process has been unfair for the president and the Republicans from the start, with Democrats ignoring the historical precedents outlined in the Clinton and Nixon impeachments. When it comes to Trump, Democrats have created a whole new set of rules. For them, the end justifies the means, no matter how devoid of due process and fairness those means are.

I don’t have space for all 10, but Solomon is a must read.

• The 10 Most Important Revelations From The Russia Probe FISA Report (Solomon)

Derogatory information about informant Christopher Steele The FBI stated to the court in a footnote that it was unaware of any derogatory information about the former MI6 agent it was using as “confidential human source 1” in the Russia case. This claim could face a withering analysis in the report. Congressional sources have reported to me that during a recent unclassified meeting they were told the British government flagged concerns about Steele and his reliance on “sub-sources” of intelligence as early as 2015. Bruce Ohr testified he told FBI and DOJ officials early on that he suspected Steele’s intelligence was mostly raw and needed vetting, that Steele was working with Hillary Clinton’s campaign in some capacity and appeared desperate to defeat Trump in the 2016 election.

And documents show State Department official Kathleen Kavalec alerted the FBI eight days before the first FISA warrant was obtained that Steele may have been peddling a now-debunked rumor that Trump and Vladimir Putin were secretly communicating through a Russian bank’s computer server. Most experts I talked with say each of these revelations might constitute derogatory information that should be disclosed to the court. On a related note, Horowitz just released a separate report that concluded the FBI is doing a poor job of vetting informants like Steele, suggesting there was a culture of withholding derogatory information from informants’ reliability and credibility validation reports.

News leaks as evidence One of Horowitz’s earlier investigative reports that recommended fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for possible prosecution put an uncomfortable spotlight on the bureau’s culture of news leaks. Since then, a handful of other cases unrelated to Russia have raised additional questions about whether the FBI uses news leaks to create or cite evidence in courts. One key to watch in the Horowitz report is the analysis of whether it was appropriate for the FBI to use a Yahoo News article as validating evidence to support Steele’s dossier. We now know from testimony and court filings that Steele, his dossier and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson played a role in that Yahoo News story.

It’s not just the Fed, but they haven’t exactly helped.

• Illinois’ Unfunded Pension Liability Rises To $137.3 Billion (R.)

Illinois’ growing unfunded pension liability, which increased by $3.8 billion to $137.3 billion at the end of fiscal 2019, underscores the need for state action to boost funding or cut costs, analysts said on Wednesday. The increase was fueled by actuarially insufficient state contributions and lower-than-expected investment returns, according to a new state legislative report. Illinois has the lowest credit ratings among U.S. states at a notch or two above the junk level due to its huge unfunded pension liability and chronic structural budget deficit.

Eric Kim, a Fitch Ratings analyst, said growth in the unfunded liability is expected to continue as long as contributions lag actuarial requirements and pension benefits are protected under the Illinois Constitution. “For us, what this all speaks to is the state addressing fundamental structural budget challenges,” he said. Earlier this year, Governor J.B. Pritzker created pension task forces, including one to explore asset sales to boost pension funding. Laurence Msall, president of Chicago-based government finance watchdog the Civic Federation, said the state has not effectively attacked core pension problems, including unsustainable costs. “At best Illinois is running in place, while trying to avoid sliding downhill,” he said.

A normal market phenomenon?

• China Set To Make History With Record Number Of Bond Defaults In 2019 (ZH)

While China is bracing for what may be a historic D-Day event on December 9, when the “unprecedented” default of state-owned, commodity-trading conglomerate Tewoo with $38 billion in assets may take place, it has already been a banner year for Chinese bankruptcies. According to Bloomberg data, China is set to hit another dismal milestone in 2019 when a record amount of onshore bonds are set to default, confirming that something is indeed cracking in China’s financial system and “testing the government’s ability to keep financial markets stable as the economy slows and companies struggle to cope with unprecedented levels of debt.”

After a brief lull in the third quarter, a burst of at least 15 new defaults since the start of November have sent the year’s total to 120.4 billion yuan ($17.1 billion), and set to eclipse the 121.9 billion yuan annual record in 2018. The good news is that this number still represents a tiny fraction of China’s $4.4 trillion onshore corporate bond market; the bad news is that the rapidly rising number is approaching a tipping point that could unleash a default cascade, and in the process fueling concerns of potential contagion as investors struggle to gauge which companies have Beijing’s support. As Bloomberg notes, policy makers have been walking a tightrope as they try to roll back the implicit guarantees that have long distorted Chinese debt markets, without dragging down an economy already weakened by the trade war and tepid global growth.

The French know how to strike.

• France Braces For Biggest Strikes Of Macron’s Presidency (G.)

Emmanuel Macron is braced for the biggest strikes of his presidency as French rail workers, air-traffic controllers, teachers and public sector staff take to the streets on Thursday against proposed changes to the pension system. French rail transport is expected to almost completely grind to a halt with 82% of drivers on strike and at least 90% of regional trains cancelled, amid fears that the transport disruption could continue for days. In Paris, 11 out of 16 metro lines will shut completely, with commuters scrambling to hire bikes and scooters. Many schools will close and even some police unions have even warned of “symbolic” closures of certain police stations. Shops along the route of a march in Paris have been advised to close in case of violence on the edges of the demonstration. About half of the scheduled Eurostar trains between Paris and London have been cancelled.

The standoff is a crucial test for the centrist French president, whose planned overhaul of the pensions system was a key election promise. The government argues that unifying the pensions system – and getting rid of the 42 “special” regimes for sectors ranging from rail and energy workers to lawyers and Paris Opera staff – is crucial to keep the system financially viable as the French population ages. But unions say introducing a “universal” system for all will mean millions of workers in both the public and private sectors must work beyond the legal retirement age of 62 or face a severe drop in the value of their pensions. The row cuts to the heart of Macron’s presidential project and his promise to deliver the biggest transformation of the French social model and welfare system since the postwar era.

Does Uber have more lawyers than drivers?

• Uber Faces £1,500,000,000 Bill For Unpaid VAT (Metro)

Car-sharing giant Uber is a step closer to being liable for an estimated £1.5 billion in unpaid UK tax. Campaigners have won an important legal step that could pave the way for the taxman to come knocking on the beleaguered firm’s door. The move is on top of another legal challenge to stop Uber operating in London. Uber has long-argued that it is a platform that brings drivers and riders together, rather than a transport business. This means that it falls to individual drivers to pay VAT on any rides instead of the company itself. But as the threshold for VAT is only for individuals earning more than £85,000 a year, none of the drivers need to charge it. Campaigners from the Good Law Project calculates this has cost the public £1.5 billion in lost revenue so far.

The law team initially attempted to take Uber to court to force them to disclose their tax affairs but the case looked like being too expensive. Instead, they challenged HM Revenues and Customs and demanded the taxman assess Uber for VAT liabilities. HMRC objected, saying its dealings with Uber were commercially sensitive and it should not have to disclose whether or not it is investigating. Today the Court of Appeal rejected HMRC’s arguments and Mrs Justice Lieven said HMRC now had to disclose whether or not they had made an assessment over Uber’s payment of VAT. The case for the Good Law Project is being led by anti-Brexit campaigner Jolyon Maugham QC who said: ‘The more time passes without an assessment being raised the more VAT is lost – forever.’

Again, Assange -with his aides- is the only person who has abided by the law. All other parties involved have not. That should have a huge bearing on the case.

• Julian Assange in Videoconference: The Spanish Case Takes a Turn (IPD)

The UK Central Authority has had a change of heart. On December 20, Assange is set to be transferred from his current maximum-security abode, Belmarsh, to Westminster Magistrates Court to answer questions that will be posed by De la Mata. To date, the evidence on Morales and the conduct of his organisation is bulking and burgeoning. It is said that the company refurbished the security equipment of the London Ecuadorean embassy in 2017, during which Morales installed surveillance cameras equipped with microphone facilities. While Ecuadorean embassy officials sought to reassure Assange that no recordings of his private conversations with journalists or legal officials were taking place, the opposite proved true.

An unconvinced Assange sought to counter such measures with his own methods. He spoke to guests in the women’s bathroom. He deployed a “squelch box” designed to emit sounds of disruption. These were treated as the measures of a crank rather than those of justifiable concern. The stance taken by Ecuador has not shifted, despite claims by Morales that any recordings of Assange were done at the behest of the Ecuadorean secret service. Instead, Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno has used the unconvincing argument that Assange, not Ecuador, posed the espionage threat. “It is unfortunate that, from our territory and with the permission of authorities of the previous government, facilities have been provided within the Ecuadorean embassy in London to interfere in the processes of other states.” The embassy, he argued, had been converted into a makeshift “centre for spying.”

German broadcasters NDR and WDR have also viewed documents discussing a boastful Morales keen to praise his employees for playing “in the first league…We are now working for the dark side.” The dark side, it transpires, were those “American friends,” members of the “US Secret Service” that Morales was more than happy to feed samples to. NDR has added its name to those filing charges against UC Global for allegations that its own journalists were spied upon in visiting the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

The allegations have the potential to furnish a case Assange’s lawyers are hoping to make: that attaining a fair trial in the United States should he be extradited to face 18 charges mostly relating to espionage would be nigh impossible. The link between UC Global, the US intelligence services, and the breach of attorney-client privilege, is the sort of heady mix bound to sabotage any quaint notions of due process. The publisher is well and truly damned.

Simon Kuestenmacher: Map shows that #lightning follows shipping lanes: As it turns out particles in ship exhaust increase the likelihood and intensity of thunderstorms. Really cool fact that I had never considered! Source: https://buff.ly/2B0tcOV

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Debt Rattle November 26 2019

Nov 262019

November 26, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: Epstein, Hong Kong, impeachment, Leonard Cohen, Magnitsky, mind control, neocons, resistance, Uber, Ukraine 29 Responses »

Paul Gauguin Landscape with black pigs and a crouching Tahitian 1891

• The Real Bombshell of the Impeachment Hearings (Ron Paul)

• Neocon Uses Impeachment To Push Russophobic Agenda (Stockman)

• 12 Document Troves That Could Change The Ukraine Scandal (Solomon)

• The Resistance Digs Their Hole Deeper (Kunstler)

• CNN: Trump Is Leader Of ‘Destructive Cult’ , Uses ‘Mind-Control’ (SN)

• Spiegel Finds Browder’s Magnitsky Narrative Is Riddled With Lies (RT)

• Hong Kong Part Of China and No One Can Mess It Up – Chinese FM (RT)

• Record-Breaking Dollar Bond Offering From China Imminent (ZH)

• UK Chief Rabbi Attacks Labour Party (BBC)

• Uber Loses Licence To Operate In London (BBC)

• Tim Berners-Lee Wants To Stop Internet Turning Into ‘Digital Dystopia’ (Ind.)

• Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell And Very Young Girls On ‘Pedo Island’ (ZH)

• Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Again Break Records (BBC)

• Listen To The Hummingbird. Never Listen To Me (GTD)

“Vindman was concerned over “influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.”

• The Real Bombshell of the Impeachment Hearings (Ron Paul)

The most shocking thing about the House impeachment hearings to this point is not a “smoking gun” witness providing irrefutable evidence of quid pro quo. It’s not that President Trump may or may not have asked the Ukrainians to look into business deals between then-Vice President Biden’s son and a Ukrainian oligarch. The most shocking thing to come out of the hearings thus far is confirmation that no matter who is elected President of the United States, the permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia. Even more shocking is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered in the slightest!

Take Lt. Colonel Vindman, who earned high praise in the mainstream media. He did not come forth with first-hand evidence that President Trump had committed any “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.” He brought a complaint against the President because he was worried that Trump was shifting US policy away from providing offensive weapons to the Ukrainian government! He didn’t think the US president had the right to suspend aid to Ukraine because he supported providing aid to Ukraine. According to his testimony, Vindman’s was concerned over “influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.” “Consensus views of the interagency” is another word for “deep state.”

Vindman continued, “While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined US government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.” Let that sink in for a moment: Vindman did not witness any crimes, he just didn’t think the elected President of the United States had any right to change US policy toward Ukraine or Russia! Likewise, his boss on the National Security Council Staff, Fiona Hill, sounded more like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with her heated Cold War rhetoric. Citing the controversial 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” put together by then-CIA director John Brennan’s “hand-picked” analysts, she asserted that, “President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter US foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine.”

David Stockman throws in a highly needed history lesson for free.

• Neocon Uses Impeachment To Push Russophobic Agenda (Stockman)

For want of doubt that the Poroshenko government was in the tank for Hillary Clinton, the liberal rag called Politico spilled the beans a few months later. In a January 11, 2017 story it revealed that the Ukrainian government had pulled out all the stops attempting to help Clinton, whose protégés at the State Department had been the masterminds of the coup which put them in office. Thus, Politico concluded,

“Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country. Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election.

And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found. …President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race….. But Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections. While it’s not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign – and certainly for Manafort – can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.

Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency – and publicized by a parliamentarian – appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych. The New York Times, in the August story revealing the ledgers’ existence, reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were “a focus” of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an overlapping inquiry.”

Yet Fiona Hill sat before a House committee and under oath insisted that all of the above was a Trumpian conspiracy theory, thereby reminding us that the neocon Russophobes are so unhinged that they are prepared to lie at the drop of a hat to keep their false narrative about the Russian Threat and Putin’s “invasion” of Ukraine alive. Needless to say, Fiona Hill is among the worst of the neocon warmongers, and has made a specialty of demonizing Russia and propagating over and over flat out lies about what happened in Kiev during 2014 and after.

John Solomon identifies 12 document troves that he thinks Trump should order released. Here are the first three.

• 12 Document Troves That Could Change The Ukraine Scandal (Solomon)

As House Democrats mull whether to pursue impeachment articles and the GOP-led Senate braces for a possible trial, here are 12 tranches of government documents that could benefit the public if President Trump ordered them released, and the questions these memos might answer.

1) Daily intelligence reports from March through August 2019 on Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his relationship with oligarchs and other key figures. What was the CIA, FBI and U.S. Treasury Department telling Trump and other agencies about Zelensky’s ties to oligarchs like Igor Kolomoisky, the former head of Privatbank, and any concerns the International Monetary Fund might have? Did any of these concerns reach the president’s daily brief (PDB) or come up in the debate around resolving Ukraine corruption and U.S. foreign aid? CNBC, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal all have done recent reporting suggesting there might have been intelligence and IMF concerns that have not been fully considered during the impeachment proceedings.

2) State Department memos detailing conversations between former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. He says Yovanovitch raised the names of Ukrainians she did not want to see prosecuted during their first meeting in 2016. She calls Lutsenko’s account fiction. But State Department officials admit the U.S. embassy in Kiev did pressure Ukrainian prosecutors not to target certain activists. Are there contemporaneous State Department memos detailing these conversations and might they illuminate the dispute between Lutsenko and Yovanovitch that has become key to the impeachment hearings?

3) State Department memos on U.S. funding given to the George Soros-backed group the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. There is documentary evidence that State provided funding to this group, that Ukrainian prosecutor sought to investigate whether that aid was spent properly and that the U.S. embassy pressured Ukraine to stand down on that investigation. How much total did State give to this group? Why was a federal agency giving money to a Soros-backed group? What did taxpayers get for their money and were they any audits to ensure the money was spent properly? Were any of Ukrainian prosecutors’ concerns legitimate?

“Perhaps The New York Times has hooked up to a direct line of Burisma’s product as they flood the darkened arena with eerie blue gaslight.”

• The Resistance Digs Their Hole Deeper (Kunstler)

“No, you don’t understand. It was the Russians, I tell you, the Russians!” And so, with a holiday recess for Adam Schiff’s impeachment soap opera, and news that DOJ Inspector General Horowitz will unload in early December, the media vassals of the Deep State are giving you their own turkey gristle to chew on: “The Russians did it! Yes, really, they did! Believe us!” Perhaps The New York Times has hooked up to a direct line of Burisma’s product as they flood the darkened arena with eerie blue gaslight. Friday, they featured a story — Russia Inquiry Review Is Said to Criticize F.B.I. but Rebuff Claims of Biased Acts — geared to make readers think that the entire FBI FISA warrant hair-ball came down to one lowly lawyer chump named Kevin Clinesmith messing with an email. Later, Times reporter Adam Goldman, posted this howler on Twitter.

These truthless assertions are meant to let both the CIA and the FBI off-the-hook for opening the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation on bogus evidence they furnished to the FISA judges. Both Goldman’s news story and his tweet omit the name of the company that packaged and retailed the Russia Collusion narrative: Fusion GPS — the company that Robert Mueller testified to having no knowledge of in his July House appearance. That oafish attempt to get out ahead of the IG’s report was followed by, whaddaya know, a Times op-ed penned by none other than Glenn Simpson, the impresario of Fusion GPS (and his partner Peter Fritsch), The Double-Barreled Dream World of Trump and His Enablers, aimed at re-selling their shopworn Russia collusion story to distract from any attention that voters might be paying to Ukraine’s collusion in the scheme to overthrow the 2016 US election and the Bidens’ grifting operation following the 2014 CIA / State Department sponsored overthrow of Ukraine’s government.

CBS 60-Minutes joined the gaslighting rotation Sunday night with a reality-optional Russia Hacked Our Election story. This was another obvious attempt to deflect attention from the actual story, which is how the company named Crowdstrike, owned by Ukrainian oligarch Dmitri Alperovitch, cooked up the Russian hacking story in the first place. Crowdstrike, you see, had been hired by the Democratic National Committee, and their nominee, Hillary Clinton, to interfere in the 2016 election. Crowdstrike later became the sole entity that was allowed to perform a forensic inquiry on the DNC’s server. Somehow, they persuaded the FBI to not look into the matter. In other words, the DNC’s contractor investigated its own mischief. Does anyone wonder how that worked?

I know this is too easy and too cheap for me to use, but at the same time, these folk are actually saying such things. And there is a actual US network that broadcasts this stuff. “Trump is mind-controlling the deplorables.” And people go: wow, that’s some serious sh*t…

• CNN: Trump Is Leader Of ‘Destructive Cult’ , Uses ‘Mind-Control’ (SN)

Stelter and guest say Trump supporters need ‘deprogramming’ CNN’s resident lunatic Brian Stelter went above and beyond his regular whackery Sunday, wheeling out a ‘cult expert’ on his “Reliable Sources” show, who claimed that President Trump is a “destructive cult” leader, a la Jim Jones, and that he is using “mind control” to direct supporters. Stelter introduced Steven Hassan, author of a book titled The Cult of Trump, claiming that many prominent figures (read ‘CNN talking heads’) have been suggesting recently that Trump’s America first movement is ‘cultish’. Hassan claimed that Trump supporters are “not being encouraged to really explore and look at the details and arrive at their own conclusion.”

“Much of what they’re hearing is emotionally driven, loaded words, thought-stopping, and thought-terminating-type clichés.” he added, citing “fake news,” “build the wall,” “make America great again.” Stelter then brought up mind control, asking “You say the President is using mind control, but how is that provable?” “So, we can start with the pathological lying, which is characteristic of destructive cult leaders.” Hassan claimed, again without providing any evidence.

“Saying things in a very confident way that have nothing to do with facts or truthfulness. The blaming others and never taking responsibility for his own failures and faults. Shunning and kicking out anyone who raises questions or concerns about his own behavior. His use of fearmongering, immigration is a horrible thing.” the guest continued. Stelter then chimed in with the stunning insight that “It is frightening to hear a cult expert say that you see all of these signs right now today in American politics.” The pair then remarkably suggested that Trump supporters need to be ‘deprogrammed’ by breaking them out of their ‘bubbles’.

The reason there is the Magnitsky act is not that people believed Browder, but that it’s convenient.

• Spiegel Finds Browder’s Magnitsky Narrative Is Riddled With Lies (RT)

British investor Bill Browder has made a name for himself in the West through blaming Moscow for the death of his auditor, Sergey Magnitsky. Der Spiegel has picked apart his story and uncovers it has major credibility problems. For years Browder – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s self-proclaimed “enemy number one” and head of the Hermitage Capital Management fund – has been waging what can only be described as his personal anti-Russian campaign. The passionate Kremlin critic relentlessly lobbied for sanctions against Russian officials everywhere from the US to Europe – all under the premise of seeking justice for his deceased employee, who died in Russia, while in pre-trial detention, where he’d been placed while accused of complicity in a major tax evasion scheme.

Browder, who was himself sentenced in absentia by a Russian court to nine years in prison for tax evasion, and was later found guilty of embezzlement as well, presented Magnitsky as a fearless whistleblower who exposed a grand corruption scheme within the Russian law enforcement system, and who was then mercilessly killed out of revenge. [..] the businessman, who has over the years donned the mantle of a human rights campaigner, does not plan to stop at that and is now lobbying for an EU-wide equivalent of the Magnitsky Act, which would allow the banning of Russian officials from the bloc’s countries and the freezing of their accounts.

On the tenth anniversary of the auditor’s death, the German weekly Der Spiegel has decided to take a closer look at Browder’s story about Magnitsky. And the paper found out that the narrative doesn’t quite flow as smoothly as Western politicians and the MSM would like it to.

18 long years to go before HK becomes Chinese.

• Hong Kong Part Of China and No One Can Mess It Up – Chinese FM (RT)

Beijing has said that the outcome of the municipal vote that saw opposition taking nearly 90% of the seats won’t change Hong Kong status, while warning against any attempts to disrupt the situation. Preliminary results of the election reported by local broadcaster RTHK suggest that about 390 seats out of 452 that were up for grabs in 18 district councils have been claimed by the anti-government candidates. Asked to comment while the vote count was ongoing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that regardless of the outcome, Hong Kong will remain an unalienable part of the Chinese state. “It’s not the final result yet. Let’s wait for the final result, OK? However, it is clear that no matter what happens, Hong Kong is a part of China and a special administrative region of China,” he said.

Any attempt to mess up Hong Kong, or even damage its prosperity and stability, will not succeed. Hong Kong administrator Carrie Lam, meanwhile, said that the semi-autonomous city’s government would respect the results of the district poll. “The government will certainly listen humbly to citizens’ opinions and reflect on them seriously,” Lam said, expressing hope that the peace and security would prevail, and the city won’t plunge into chaos again. The landslide victory by the opposition has been attributed to the record-high turnout of 71% (versus only 47% back in 2015) that saw many young voters taking to the polls for the first time. Speaking to SCMP, pro-Beijing lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-su, who lost his seat at the Tsuen Wan District Council, said that while he gained the same number of votes as in the previous elections, it was not enough this time – all because of the first-time voters, he suspected. “If that’s true, it means young people are no longer insensitive to politics,” he said…

China needs dollars very badly.

• Record-Breaking Dollar Bond Offering From China Imminent (ZH)

China is set to expand its bond market through a record sale of sovereign bonds in dollars, according to Bloomberg sources. The bond offering could raise up to $6 billion, would be one of the largest dollar bond offerings on record. The offering could be seen as soon as Tuesday. Sources said the Ministry of Finance is considering tenors of three years, five years, 10 years and 20 years: “It reaffirms China’s determination to develop an orderly offshore dollar bond market for Chinese issuers,” Anne Zhang, head of fixed income for JPMorgan Private Bank in Asia, told Bloomberg. “The new deal will further complete a sovereign curve,” she said. The size of the issuance would be more than double last year’s size, and triple the amount from 2017.

“The size is twice what it was last year, that just speaks to the fact that the past two years have been perceived as successful by the Ministry of Finance,” a banker working on one of the dollar bond deals told The Financial Times. He added that previous offers were “not enough to match demand.” The Chinse dollar bond market is valued at around $740 billion, according to Bloomberg data, and is an important funding source for domestic borrowers. Dollar bond issuances slid in 2018 following the escalation of the trade war. Despite the further escalation of the trade war in 2019, dollar bond issuances have increased as US treasury yields have fallen. Dollar bond demand from Chinese borrowers has been elevated in 2019, so far there has been $195 billion in recorded issuances, already surpassing levels seen in 2017 at $211 billion.

Corbyn should have spoken out loud and clear a long time ago. He’s the right wing’s toy now.

• UK Chief Rabbi Attacks Labour Party (BBC)

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

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

He writes: “The way in which the leadership of the Labour Party has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud – of dignity and respect for all people. “It has left many decent Labour members and parliamentarians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, ashamed of what has transpired.” He adds that it was “not my place to tell any person how they should vote” but he urged the public to “vote with their conscience”. [..] Jenny Manson, the co-chair of the Jewish Voice for Labour group which is not officially affiliated to the party, told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight programme she was “horrified” by the Chief Rabbi’s intervention. She added that there was no threat to Jews in the Labour Party but there was a threat from the far-right.

No, really, they have secret software that blocks regulators. Just for that I would ban them forever. “But it’s never been used in the UK!” That’s not the point, is it? BTW, where did you use it?

• Uber Loses Licence To Operate In London (BBC)

Uber will not be granted a new licence to operate in London after repeated safety failures, Transport for London (TfL) has said. The regulator said the taxi app was not “fit and proper” as a licence holder, despite having made a number of positive changes to its operations. Uber initially lost its licence in 2017 but was granted two extensions, the most recent of which expired on Sunday. The firm will appeal and can continue to operate during that process. About 45,000 drivers work for Uber in London, which is one of its top five markets globally. TfL said it had identified a “pattern of failures” that placed passenger safety and security at risk. These included a change to Uber’s systems which allowed unauthorised drivers to upload their photos to other Uber driver accounts.

It meant there were at least 14,000 fraudulent trips in London in late 2018 and early 2019, TfL said. The regulator also found dismissed or suspended drivers had been able to create Uber accounts and carry passengers. [..] TfL first declined to renew Uber’s licence in September 2017, again over safety concerns. Back then it cited Uber’s approach to carrying out background checks on drivers and reporting serious criminal offences. Uber’s use of secret software, called “Greyball”, which could be used to block regulators from monitoring the app, was another factor, although Uber said it had never been used in the UK.

Dead on arrival: “It has already been backed by companies including Google and Facebook..”

• Tim Berners-Lee Wants To Stop Internet Turning Into ‘Digital Dystopia’ (Ind.)

Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web, has launched a plan to stop the world falling into a “digital dystopia”. Sir Tim unveiled a set of standards that good internet companies should abide by, in the hope of preserving the promise of the internet and stopping it being misused. It comes amid a variety of online threats that look to damage everything from elections to personal privacy. The new plan, named the Contract For The Web, was unveiled by Sir Tim’s World Wide Web Foundation in Berlin and calls on governments, companies and the public to ensure the web is a safe, free and open platform for all.

The commitment sets out nine key principles. It has already been backed by companies including Google and Facebook, both of which have been at the centre of controversies over the way the internet is used. “The power of the web to transform people’s lives, enrich society and reduce inequality is one of the defining opportunities of our time,” Sir Tim explained. “But if we don’t act now, and act together, to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering that potential. “The Contract for the Web gives us a roadmap to build a better web. But it will not happen unless we all commit to the challenge.

“Governments need to strengthen laws and regulations for the digital age. Companies must do more to ensure pursuit of profit is not at the expense of human rights and democracy. “And citizens must hold those in power accountable, demand their digital rights be respected and help foster healthy conversation online. It’s up to all of us to fight for the web we want.” The plan tells governments to ensure everyone can connect to the internet, that access is not deliberately denied and to respect and protect people’s fundamental online privacy and data rights.

When will Andrew be arrested?

• Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell And Very Young Girls On ‘Pedo Island’ (ZH)

A former masseuse for Jeffrey Epstein who says he raped her on his private island, has provided photos of his secretive Caribbean compound to The Sun. Chaunte Davies says she was raped by Epstein over the course of several years before finally parting ways with him in 2005. She told the Sun that the wealthy pedophile was arrested just five days after she gave the FBI and New Mexico Assistant Attorney General evidence against him. Now 40, Chaunte says the ex-Wall Street banker performed a sex act on himself during their first massage session – and that she was “manipulated” into staying in their circle by Epstein’s alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. “Within weeks she was jetting round the world on his private jet and on to his island of Little Saint James,” according to the report.

Davies also revealed how Epstein bragged about his friendship with Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, and how Epstein used his relationship with the Duke of York to lure young girls into his orbit – at one point, allegedly having an orgy with Andrew and several young girls. “In 2015 court testimony, she wrote: “I was around 18 at the time. Epstein, Andy, approximately eight other young girls and I had sex together.” She said the other girls seemed to be under 18 and “didn’t really speak English”. This seemed to amuse Epstein, she claimed, who said “they are the ‘easiest’ girls to get along with”. The duke has repeatedly denied the claims, which were later struck from the 2015 case. In his Newsnight interview he said he had “no recollection” of meeting Virginia and has denied any wrongdoing. -The Sun “I was very aware of Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship with Prince Andrew and Fergie right away,” she said, adding “It was one of several bragging tactics he used to further induce his power and privilege. He bragged a lot.”

And we just keep talking…

• Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Again Break Records (BBC)

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases once again reached new highs in 2018. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says the increase in CO2 was just above the average rise recorded over the last decade.vLevels of other warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, have also surged by above average amounts. Since 1990 there’s been an increase of 43% in the warming effect on the climate of long lived greenhouse gases. The WMO report looks at concentrations of warming gases in the atmosphere rather than just emissions. The difference between the two is that emissions refer to the amount of gases that go up into the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels, such as burning coal for electricity and from deforestation.

Concentrations are what’s left in the air after a complex series of interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, the forests and the land. About a quarter of all carbon emissions are absorbed by the seas, and a similar amount by land and trees. Using data from monitoring stations in the Arctic and all over the world, researchers say that in 2018 concentrations of CO2 reached 407.8 parts per million (ppm), up from 405.5ppm a year previously. This increase was above the average for the last 10 years and is 147% of the “pre-industrial” level in 1750. The WMO also records concentrations of other warming gases, including methane and nitrous oxide.

About 40% of the methane emitted into the air comes from natural sources, such as wetlands, with 60% from human activities, including cattle farming, rice cultivation and landfill dumps. Methane is now at 259% of the pre-industrial level and the increase seen over the past year was higher than both the previous annual rate and the average over the past 10 years. Nitrous oxide is emitted from natural and human sources, including from the oceans and from fertiliser-use in farming. According to the WMO, it is now at 123% of the levels that existed in 1750.

Adam Cohen put together a last album of his father Leonard’s songs.

“I have tried to write Paradise/Do not move/Let the wind speak/that is Paradise”

“You were born to judge the world / Forgive me but I wasn’t.”

“When he took his hat off at the end of shows, he had this look of humility and bewilderment and gratitude – this was not an act. And he would say, ‘Thank you for keeping my songs alive’. ”

• Listen To The Hummingbird. Never Listen To Me (GTD)

Many thanks for the Dance opens with a track referred to as Transpires to the Heart and the 1st of several startling lyrics: “I was operating constant but I hardly ever termed it art/ I bought my shit together, conference Christ and reading through Marx…” It seems like a defiant statement of intent, but the mood, as on the previous album, soon turns darker. The Objective, a small, sombre spoken-term piece, starts “I simply cannot go away my house, or solution the phone” and consists of the poignant self-observation: “I sit in my chair, I glimpse at the road, the neighbour returns my smile of defeat.” The infirmities of old age are broached once again on The Hills, on which he sings, “I’m residing on products, for which I thank God”, delivering the past 3 phrases with heartfelt emphasis.

During, dying is a specified, its looming existence articulated with a attribute diploma of Buddhist acceptance. Below and there, although, there are glimpses of the sensuality that characterised several of his early tracks and poems. On The Night of Santiago he sings: “Her thighs they slipped away from me/ Like educational institutions of startled fish”. The track is basically an adaptation of a poem by Federico García Lorca, 1 of Leonard’s literary touchstones. “It’s just one of my favourite poems and I begged him to go through it,” says Adam.

Tucker Carlson on the 2018 chemical attack in #Syria: “America almost attacked a country and killed thousands of people over an attack that may never have happened in the first place.”

“We’ve been lied to. We’ve been manipulated. We knew it at the time.” pic.twitter.com/hCd87sJ3Su

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) November 26, 2019

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Debt Rattle April 13 2019

Apr 132019

April 13, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Brexit, Chelsea Manning, conspiracy, Correa, Ecuador, extradition, Labour, Moreno, pensions, Sweden, Uber 4 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Standing nude 1928

• The Assange Arrest Is a Warning From History (John Pilger)

• The 7 Years Of Lies About Assange Won’t Stop Now (Cook)

• UK MPs Want Assange Extradited To Sweden (G.)

• Labour Urges PM To Block Julian Assange Extradition To US (G.)

• Assange’s ‘Conspiracy’ to Expose War Crimes Has Already Been Punished (Fair)

• Cascading Cat Litter (Jim Kunstler)

• Is Julian Assange Another Pentagon Papers case? (Alan Dershowitz)

• Facebook Removes Page of Rafael Correa on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest (MU)

• Second Brexit Referendum Vote ‘Very Likely’ – Philip Hammond (Ind.)

• What Went Wrong With Pensions And Why The Whole World Must Be Worried (Rubino)

• Italy’s Fiscal Health Is Once Again In Serious Decline (DQ)

• Uber Discloses 3-Yr $10-Billion Loss from Operations (WS)

“Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs [..] Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis.”

• The Assange Arrest Is a Warning From History (John Pilger)

The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years. That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.

But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice. Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange’s crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with truth.

The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilisation”. The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you running a podcast. Assange’s principal media tormentor, the Guardian, a collaborator with the secret state, displayed its nervousness this week with an editorial that scaled new weasel heights. The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called “the greatest scoop of the last 30 years”. The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.

With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding joined the police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”. The Guardian has since published a series of falsehoods about Assange, not least a discredited claim that a group of Russians and Trump’s man, Paul Manafort, had visited Assange in the embassy. The meetings never happened; it was fake.

We just get more. But it’s what NOT being said that reveals more.

• The 7 Years Of Lies About Assange Won’t Stop Now (Cook)

For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations. For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and “experts” telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a “mainstream” voice was raised in his defence in all that time.

From the moment he sought asylum, Assange was cast as an outlaw. His work as the founder of Wikileaks – a digital platform that for the first time in history gave ordinary people a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the most secure vaults in the deepest of Deep States – was erased from the record. Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books – to nothing more than a sex pest, and a scruffy bail-skipper. The political and media class crafted a narrative of half-truths about the sex charges Assange was under investigation for in Sweden.

They overlooked the fact that Assange had been allowed to leave Sweden by the original investigator, who dropped the inquiry, only for it to be revived by another investigator with a well-documented political agenda. They failed to mention that Assange was always willing to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London, as had occurred in dozens of other cases involving extradition proceedings to Sweden. It was almost as if Swedish officials did not want to test the evidence they claimed to have in their possession. [..] It was a freedom of information request by an ally of Assange, not a media outlet, that unearthed documents showing that Swedish investigators had, in fact, wanted to drop the case against Assange back in 2013. The UK, however, insisted that they carry on with the charade so that Assange could remain locked up. A British official emailed the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

There’s some confusion here. Some say because Sweden dropped charges, the US is now first in line. Others deny this.

• UK MPs Want Assange Extradited To Sweden (G.)

Political pressure is mounting on Sajid Javid to prioritise action that would allow Julian Assange to be extradited to Sweden, amid concerns that US charges relating to Wikileaks’ activities risked overshadowing longstanding allegations of rape. More than 70 MPs and peers have written to Javid and the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, urging them to focus attention on the earlier Swedish investigations that Assange would face should the case be resumed at the alleged victim’s request.

In a letter coordinated by Labour’s Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips and seen by the Guardian, the MPs declare: “We do not presume guilt, of course, but we believe due process should be followed and the [Swedish] complainant should see justice be done.” They call on Javid and Abbott to “champion action” to ensure that extradition is a possibility should Swedish authorities choose to pursue it. Assange first entered the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 in order to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied. While the statute of limitations on one of the allegations has expired, the other will not be reached until August 2020.

May did it before in 2012, but I understand laws have changed since. Labour better make sure that block counts.

• Labour Urges PM To Block Julian Assange Extradition To US (G.)

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, has urged Theresa May to block the extradition of Julian Assange to the US in the same way she intervened in the case of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon. In 2012, as home secretary, May halted McKinnon’s extradition on human rights grounds after doctors warned he was at risk of suicide if sent to face trial in the US. Abbott said similar grounds should be used to block Assange’s extradition. On Thursday, the Wikileaks founder was arrested on behalf of the US authorities, who have charged him with involvement in a computer hacking conspiracy.

The 47-year-old faces up to 12 months in a British prison after he was found guilty of breaching his bail conditions. The US charge could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, according to the US Department of Justice. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, Abbott said: “If you remember the Gary McKinnon case, the Americans insisted on extraditing him. He had done this massive computer hack, but his real crime was to have embarrassed the American military and security service. “In the end the then home secretary, Theresa May, blocked his extradition on what she said were human rights grounds. We think there may be human rights grounds in relation to Assange.”

Abbott described the allegations facing Assange from two women in Sweden as “serious”, but said charges were never brought. She said: “If the Swedish government wants to come forward with those charges I believe that Assange should face the criminal justice system.” But she added: “It is not the rape charges, serious as they are, it is about WikiLeaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public. “He is at the very least a whistleblower and much of the information that he brought into the public domain, it could be argued, was very much in the public interest.”

[..] “It is this whistleblowing into illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand scale, that has put Julian Assange in the crosshairs of the US administration. “It is for this reason that they have once more issued an extradition warrant against Mr Assange.” In response, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “Why is it whenever someone has a track record of undermining the UK and our allies and the values we stand for, you can almost guarantee that the leadership of the party opposite will support those who intend to do us harm? You can always guarantee that from the party opposite.”

“The point of journalism is to expose horrific crimes like this so that the powerful people who order them pay legal consequences, not the ones who expose them.”

• Assange’s ‘Conspiracy’ to Expose War Crimes Has Already Been Punished (Fair)

In 2010, the Guardian, like the New York Times and a few other corporate newspapers, briefly partnered with WikiLeaks to publish the contents of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables, known as Cablegate. That year, WikiLeaks released other confidential US government information as well: the Afghanistan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs, the infamous “Collateral Murder” video. The material exposed atrocities perpetrated by the US military, as well as other disgraceful acts—like US diplomats strategizing on how to undermine elected governments out of favor with Washington, spying on official US allies and bullying poor countries into paying wildly exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs.

One US soldier involved in the “collateral murder” airstrike that Manning and Assange exposed, Ethan McCord, was threatened and reprimanded by a superior officer for requesting psychiatric help after the atrocity. (“Get the sand out of your vagina,” he was reportedly told.) McCord had tended to wounded children during the massacre. He was soon expelled from the military, apparently now “unsuited” for it. The point of journalism is to expose horrific crimes like this so that the powerful people who order them pay legal consequences, not the ones who expose them. Presumably that is why “press freedom” is considered important, and why it’s guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The law should have protected Manning from punishment, the same way it protects somebody who uses violence in justifiable self-defense or in defense of others. In Manning’s case, that was especially true, because she exposed grave crimes while stationed in Iraq, as the US perpetrated an even higher-level crime—a war of aggression based on a fraudulent pretext. If the law should have protected Manning, who was at the very heart of the “conspiracy” to expose gruesome crimes, then it obviously should protect Assange, and any of the outlets that worked with him.

“I’d like to see The New York Times’s front page headline on that story: Russian Colluder Wins Nobel Prize, Put on Trial in Federal Court.”

• Cascading Cat Litter (Jim Kunstler)

And so now Julian Assange of Wikileaks has been dragged out of his sanctuary in the London embassy of Ecuador for failing to clean his cat’s litter box. Have you ever cleaned a litter box? The way we always did it was to spread some newspaper — say, The New York Times — on the floor, transfer the used cat litter onto it, wrap it into a compact package, and put it in the trash. It was interesting to scan the Comments section of The Times’s stories about the Assange arrest: Times readers uniformly presented themselves as a lynch mob out for Mr. Assange’s blood. So much for the spirit of liberalism and The Old Gray Lady who had published The Pentagon Papers purloined by Daniel Ellsberg lo so many years ago.

Reading between the lines in that once-venerable newspaper — by which I mean gleaning their slant on the news — one surmises that The Times has actually come out against freedom of the press, a curious attitude, but consistent with the neo-Jacobin zeitgeist in “blue” America these days. Anyway, how could anyone expect Mr. Assange to clean his cat’s litter box when he was unable to go outside his sanctuary to buy a fresh bag of litter, and was denied newspapers this past year, as well as any other contact with the outside world? US government prosecutors had better tread lightly in bringing Mr. Assange to the sort of justice demanded by readers of The New York Times — which is to say: lock him up in some SuperMax solitary hellhole and throw away the key. The show trial of Julian Assange on US soil, when it comes to pass, may end up being the straw that stirs America’s Mickey Finn as a legitimate republic.

The bloodthirsty hysteria among New York Times readers is a symptom of the mass confusion sown by agencies of the US government itself when its own agents ventured to meddle in the national election of 2016 and then blame it on “the Russians.” As you will learn in the months ahead, it was The Times itself, and other corporate news organizations, who colluded with officers of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, and the Obama White House to concoct a phony narrative about Mr. Trump being in cahoots with Vladimir Putin, thus depriving Hillary Clinton of her “turn” in the White House; and then to join those agencies, and the grotesquely dishonest two-year investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in a cover-your-ass operation to hide their nefarious and criminal acts.

In the meantime, Mr. Assange may receive a Nobel Prize as a symbol of a lone conscience standing up against the despotic deceits of the world’s deep states. Wouldn’t that gum up the works nicely? I’d like to see The New York Times’s front page headline on that story: Russian Colluder Wins Nobel Prize, Put on Trial in Federal Court. By then, the United States of America will be so completely gaslighted that it will pulsate in the darkness like a death star about to explode.

Michael Malice on Twitter: “Let’s be clear: Julian Assange is not a journalist.
He uncovered and released information that the political establishment and government wanted to stay hidden.
Does that sound like the work of a journalist?”

• Is Julian Assange Another Pentagon Papers case? (Alan Dershowitz)

Before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gained asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, he and his British legal team asked me to fly to London to provide legal advice about United States law relating to espionage and press freedom. I cannot disclose what advice I gave them, but I can say that I believed then, and still believe now, that there is no constitutional difference between WikiLeaks and the New York Times. If the New York Times, in 1971, could lawfully publish the Pentagon Papers knowing they included classified documents stolen by Rand Corporation military analyst Daniel Ellsberg from our federal government, then indeed WikiLeaks was entitled, under the First Amendment, to publish classified material that Assange knew was stolen by former United States Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning from our federal government.

So if prosecutors were to charge Assange with espionage or any other crime for merely publishing the Manning material, this would be another Pentagon Papers case with the same likely outcome. Many people have misunderstood the actual Supreme Court ruling in 1971. It did not say that the newspapers planning to publish the Pentagon Papers could not be prosecuted if they published classified material. It only said that they could not be restrained, or stopped in advance, from publishing them. Well, they did publish, and they were not prosecuted.

[..] the problem with the current effort is that, while it might be legally strong, it seems on the face of the indictment to be factually weak. It alleges that “Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records” from federal government agencies, that “Manning provided Assange with part of a password,” and that “Assange requested more information.” It goes on to say that Assange was “trying to crack the password” but had “no luck so far.” Not the strongest set of facts here!

Nice going, Zuck.

• Facebook Removes Page of Rafael Correa on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest (MU)

Facebook has unpublished the page of Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa, the social media giant confirmed on Thursday, claiming that the popular leftist leader violated the company’s security policies.[..] In March, WikiLeaks published a tranche of documents dubbed the INA Papers linking President Lenin Moreno to the INA Investment Corporation, an offshore shell company used by Moreno to procure furniture, property, and various luxury items. The account number for the offshore account allegedly used by the president to launder money was shared across Ecuadorean social networks by netizens of all political stripes, including by Correa – who had about 1.5 million followers and whose Facebook page enjoyed more interactions and attention than that of President Moreno himself.

[..] The removal of Correa’s page for violating Facebook’s “community standards” is an unprecedented move, and the former statesman is the most high-profile public political figure to ever be removed from the social platform–placing the economist and icon of Latin American “socialism of the 21st century” in the same unlikely category as right-wing conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones.

What would that solve?

• Second Brexit Referendum Vote ‘Very Likely’ – Philip Hammond (Ind.)

A second referendum on Brexit is “very likely” to be put before parliament, Philip Hammond has said. Speaking in Washington on Friday, the chancellor said a fresh public vote was a “proposition that could and, on all the evidence, is very likely to be put to parliament at some stage”. However, he also said about six months would be needed to hold a referendum, and that there would not be enough time before Britain is due to leave the EU on the new deadline of 31 October. Mr Hammond also stressed that the government was still opposed to a second referendum, although he said other Labour demands – such as a customs union with the EU – were up for debate.

“The government’s position has not changed,” he said. “The government is opposed to a confirmatory referendum and therefore we would not be supporting it.” The idea of a new referendum was among several Brexit alternatives to Theresa May’s deal that were put to lawmakers in the last month – but which all fell short of a majority in parliament. The prime minister has so far failed to get her own party behind the Brexit divorce deal she agreed with other European Union leaders last year. She was forced to ask the bloc for a delay and to start talks with Labour about how to break the impasse in parliament.

It says a lot about the human attention span that this doesn’t receive a lot more scrutiny.

This is where Fed policies will be found to have hurt people most.

• What Went Wrong With Pensions And Why The Whole World Must Be Worried (Rubino)

As baby boomer teachers, police and firefighters retire, the required pension payouts are soaring. Combine this with inadequate contributions, and the liabilities of major U.S. public pensions are up 64% since 2007 while assets are up only 30%. This math is simple enough for even a politician or fund trustee to grasp, but because there’s no immediate penalty for underfunding a pension system, it has become normal practice in a long list of places. Another, related problem is also mathematical, but it’s harder to manage in a boom-and-bust world: When pension plans suffer a big loss, as they tend to do in bear markets, the next few years’ returns have to go towards making up that loss before plan assets can start growing again. The following chart, from a recent Wall Street Journal article, shows pension fund assets falling behind in the past two bear markets and having increasing trouble catching up with steadily-growing liabilities.

In some cases this puts funds permanently behind the curve and can only be fixed with massive infusions of taxpayer cash or draconian benefit cuts, neither of which are feasible in a system that punishes hard choices. The next chart shows how much more the worst offenders would have to contribute to their plans to get by with honest future return assumptions. For Illinois, Kentucky and New Jersey this will never happen.

What does all this mean? A few things: In the next bear market the pension funds that are already wildly underfunded will fall into a financial black hole from which they’ll never be able to escape. Those states and cities – many of which are issuing bonds to cover their day-to-day expenses – will be exposed as junk credits (as Chicago was recently) and will have to either pay way up to borrow or enact some combination of tax increases (politically almost impossible) or pension benefit cuts (legally impossible in many places) which will cause chaos without fixing the underlying problem. The weakest cities and the states in which they reside will be forced to default on some of their obligations, stiffing suppliers, creditors, and/or employees.

This will throw the municipal bond market into chaos as investors, worried that the next Chicago is lurking in their portfolios, dump the whole muni sector. Faced with a cascade failure of a crucial part of the fixed income universe, the federal government will react the way it did when the mortgage market imploded in 2008, with a massive taxpayer funded bailout. At which point there’s a good chance of the crisis spreading from pensions to currencies, as the world finally realizes that the bailouts are just beginning, with US states and cities soon to be followed by student loans, emerging markets, and European failed states.

Drip. Drip.

• Italy’s Fiscal Health Is Once Again In Serious Decline (DQ)

On Wednesday, Italy’s coalition government slashed its growth forecast for the Italian economy in 2019 to 0.2% – the weakest forecast in the Eurozone – from a previous forecast of 1%. Italy is already in a technical recession after chalking up two straight quarters of negative GDP growth in the second half of 2018. The government’s budget for this year was based on the assumption that the economy would expand by 1% this year. Now, it seems the economy may not grow at all; it could even shrink. One direct result of this is that Italy’s current account deficit for 2019 will be substantially higher than the 2.04% of GDP Italy’s government pledged to stick to late last year. And that can mean only thing: another standoff between Rome and Brussels over the direction of fiscal policy is in the offing.

Italy already boasts the largest public debt pile in Europe in nominal terms, clocking in at €2.14 trillion, as well as the second largest in relative terms after Greece’s twice bailed out economy. Rome just forecast that public debt would hit a new record high of 132.6% of GDP this year. That record is unlikely to last very long given Italy’s stagnating economy and the government’s determination to cut taxes, reduce the retirement age and introduce a citizens’ basic income.

The biggest problem with Italy’s economy is that many of its problems are chronic and deep seated. Many of them date back to the adoption of the euro, in 2000, or in the case of Rome’s massive addiction to public debt, to the 1980s. As the OECD points out, real GDP in Italy is still well below its pre-crisis peak. Italy is also the only OECD country where incomes (as measured by GDP per capita) are no higher than in 2000. By contrast, in France, Spain, the UK and Germany they have risen during the same period by 13%, 17%, 21% and 23 respectively.

Now imagine this WITHOUT interest rates at record lows. What was once a market has now turned into a slot machine.

• Uber Discloses 3-Yr $10-Billion Loss from Operations (WS)

Uber Technologies’ IPO filing was made public today. The 330-page or so S-1 filing disclosed all kinds of goodies, including detailed but still unaudited pro-forma financial statements as of December 31, 2018, huge losses from operations, big tax benefits, large gains from the sale of some operations, stagnating rideshare revenues, and an enormous list of chilling “Risk Factors” that go beyond the usual CYA. The filing, however, didn’t disclose the share price, the IPO valuation, and how much money the IPO will raise for Uber. On Tuesday, “people familiar with the matter” had told Reuters that Uber plans to raise $10 billion in the IPO. Most of the IPO shares would be sold by the company to raise funds, and a smaller amount would be sold by investors cashing out, the sources said.

The filing did not confirm this and instead left blanks or used placeholder amounts. But if true, $10 billion in shares sold would make this IPO one of the biggest tech IPOs. And the rumored $90 billion to $100 billion valuation would make it the biggest since Alibaba’s $169 billion IPO. Uber will need every dime it raises in the IPO going forward because it’s got a little cash-burn situation in its operations that persists going forward, as it admitted in its “Risk Factors,” and it will need to raise more money, and if it cannot raise more money, it might not make it. Uber is upfront about this. The company has already raised – and mostly burned through – over $20 billion so far in its 10 years of existence. This includes $15 billion in equity funding and over $6 billion in debt.

Debt Rattle December 8 2018

Dec 082018

December 8, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:34 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, austerity, Brexit, Death Cross, Doonesbury, Huawei, IPO, Macron, monarchs, Trump, Uber, wimp, yellow vests 8 Responses »

Getty Vigil in front of White House on the evening after Pearl Harbor attack Dec. 7 1941

• France Braced For ‘Ultra-Violent’ Protests (BBC)

• S&P 500 Closes In An Official ‘Death Cross’ (CNBC)

• A Death Cross For The S&P 500 Highlights A Stock Market In Tatters (MW)

• Dow Down Over 500 Points, Wipes Out 2018 Gains In Wild Week On Wall Street (CNBC)

• George H. W. Bush, Wimp (Matt Taibbi)

• Five Eyes Against Huawei (Voltaire)

• Russia Ready To Switch Off Visa & Mastercard Ahead Of Tougher Sanctions (RT)

• UK Ministers Warn No-Deal Brexit Chaos May Last Six Months (Ind.)

• EU Support For Austerity Opens Door To Far Right – Corbyn (G.)

• Capture the Flag (Kunstler)

• Uber Files Confidential IPO Paperwork (R.)

• The Column I Didn’t Want To Write About Julian Assange (SMH)

• Media Is Giving The US Cover To Extradite Assange (Hrafnsson)

• 97% Decline In Monarch Butterflies (G.)

The French government goes about this so wrong you’d think they want the violence. Macron hasn’t been seen in many days, he left public displays up to his PM and left his country alone. Now they say there will be only 10,000 protesters, a ridiculously low number, and solemnly proclaim “10,000 is not the people, it’s not France.”

In fact, a large majority of people support the protests. Not the violence, but that’s not the core of this. Moreover, the students, who were not taking part last week, have now joined the yellow vests. And the government’s suggesting they -and the other protesters- are not really French.

Tear gas is being employed already on Saturday morning. Paris is under siege. And not from the protesters.

• France Braced For ‘Ultra-Violent’ Protests (BBC)

France is braced for renewed anti-government protests, with nearly 90,000 security personnel on the streets. Some 8,000 officers and 12 armoured vehicles will be deployed in Paris alone, where shops have been boarded up and sites like the Eiffel Tower closed. The “yellow vest” movement began three weeks ago in opposition to a rise in fuel tax but ministers say it has been hijacked by “ultra-violent” protesters. Last week saw hundreds arrested and scores injured in violence in Paris. They were some of the worst street clashes seen in the capital for decades. The authorities are certainly not underestimating the threat. There were 65,000 security officers across the country last weekend and that has been increased to 89,000, even though Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said he expected fewer protesters than last weekend, perhaps about 10,000 nationwide. He said: “10,000 is not the people, it’s not France.”

The security forces will want to prevent a repeat in the capital, where the Arc de Triomphe was vandalised, police were attacked and cars overturned and burned last weekend. Mr Castaner has vowed “zero tolerance” towards violence. He said: “According to the information we have, some radicalised and rebellious people will try to get mobilised. Some ultra-violent people want to take part.” The barricade-smashing armoured vehicles have not been seen in the Paris area since riots erupted in poor suburbs in 2005. Mr Castaner added: “These past three weeks have seen the birth of a monster that has escaped its creators.”

[..] The government has said it is scrapping the unpopular fuel tax increases in its budget and has frozen electricity and gas prices for 2019. The problem is that protests have erupted over other issues. Granting concessions in some areas may not placate all the protesters, some of whom are calling for higher wages, lower taxes, better pensions, easier university requirements and even the resignation of the president. He has been called by some “the president of the rich”.

“It’s almost confirming what could be a change in trend to the downside.”

• S&P 500 Closes In An Official ‘Death Cross’ (CNBC)

The chart of the S&P 500 Index is flashing a warning of more selling ahead. A pattern, called the ‘death cross,’ appeared on the chart on Friday as stocks plunged. The S&P 500’s average price of the last 50 days, dropped below the 200-day moving average, a sign of negative momentum and possible change in trend, according to technical analysts. “It just means you’re lower for longer, meaning there’s no real bounce, which is a sign of real selling.” said Scott Redler, partner with T3Live.com. “Sometimes you break moving averages and you get some kind of quick fast recovery…but when you stay down longer, all of a sudden it’s showing real selling. That’s why people don’t like the death cross. It’s almost confirming what could be a change in trend to the downside.”

It highlights a stock market that doesn’t exist.

• A Death Cross For The S&P 500 Highlights A Stock Market In Tatters (MW)

The S&P 500 index on Friday has joined the ranks of market benchmarks forming that dreaded Wall Street chart pattern: the death cross. A death cross has materialized in the S&P 500 with the 50-day moving average at 2,759.28.02, below the 200-day moving average of 2,762.02, according to FactSet data. A death cross is what chart watchers refer to as the point where the 50-day — a short-term trend tracker — crosses below the 200-day, which is used to define the longer-term trend. Many believe the cross marks the point where a shorter-term decline graduates to a longer-term downtrend.

S&P 500’s Thursday action— falling in tandem with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and briefly with the Nasdaq Composite)— helped deliver a breach for the large-cap index’s short-term trend line beneath the 200-day. The formation marks the first time the 50-day MA was below the 200-day for the S&P 500 since April 22, 2016, according to Dow Jones Market Data. However, the last time that a death cross formed was in January of 2016. The move for the benchmark comes amid a series of bearish patterns that have cropped up in equities and fixed-income markets, highlighting growing concerns about the durability of a bull run in stocks that has lasted about a decade as the economy’s vital signs have also been strong, in a long-running, if measured, rebound from the 2007-09 financial crisis.

[..] the ominous formation also is a sign of how viciously equity markets have unraveled in the past several weeks. More than half of the S&P 500’s 11 sectors have seen death crosses, and a chunk of the index’s constituents are in bear markets, having declined at least 20% from a recent peak. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are in correction, usually defined as a 10% drop from a peak, while the Russell 2000 is 15% beneath its recent peak.

Without functioning markets, wild swings are guaranteed.

• Dow Down Over 500 Points, Wipes Out 2018 Gains In Wild Week On Wall Street (CNBC)

Stocks dropped sharply on Friday, concluding what has been a wild week for Wall Street. A weaker-than-expected jobs report and China-U.S. trade tensions sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average lower by 558.72 points to 24,388.95 and erased its gains for the year. At one point, the Dow was up more than 8 percent for 2018. The S&P 500 pulled back 2.3 percent to 2,633.08 and also turned negative for the year. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 3.05 percent to close at 6,969.25. Shares of large-cap tech companies led the way lower. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google-parent Alphabet all traded lower. Apple’s stock also fell 3.6 percent — erasing its gains for the year — after Morgan Stanley cut its price target on the tech giant’s shares, citing weakening iPhone sales.

For the week, the major indexes all dropped more than 4 percent. Thursday’s session included a violent drop of nearly 800 points, followed by a strong rebound from those levels. This week was also the worst for the indexes since March. Indexes fell to their lows of the day after the Wall Street Journal reported federal prosecutors are expected to bring charges against Chinese hackers allegedly trying to break into technology service providers in the U.S., another negative headline amid tense trade talks between the two countries. [..] “You’ve gone from a period of zero sensitivity to headlines to a period of hypersensitivity,” said James Athey, senior investment manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “We’re now in a world where no one knows which way is up and which way is down.”

Delightful from Taibbi on among other things the years-long feud between HW and Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau. Do read¡

I’ve left the HW story alone, overkill. But I was thinking all the time: if there’s one thing HW was not, it was a leader. I’m not the only one.

• George H. W. Bush, Wimp (Matt Taibbi)

For most of his political life, George Herbert Walker Bush was basically the unimaginative proxy for other powerful interests. He was always the front man for the fellas at the club, be it Skull and Bones or the CIA (he retains the dubious distinction of being the only spy head to become president). He excelled in this brute-behind-the-scenes role. But once fashioning himself as something other than Ronald Reagan’s wingman, politics demanded he offer the national public glimpses of his personality. Sadly, he was president before he found out he didn’t really have one. This would have been fine, if he’d been a more confident person.

But Bush was not satisfied to be remembered as a dull imperial steward, and his flailing efforts to carve out a macho personal myth on par with Reagan or Kennedy marred both his presidency and large swaths of the planet. Unable to let insults stand, he dreamed up stunt after stunt in an attempt to counter Heathers-style media taunts that grew out of inside jokes circulated in Washington during the Reagan years. His presidency turned into an endless cycle: Bush would do something goofy/out of touch, the press would bash his brains in for it and he’d overreact, often by having someone bombed or jailed.

[..] In December 1989, Bush invaded Panama, ostensibly to capture former American client/human rights monster Manuel Noriega. The New York Times cheered Bush for going through the “rite of passage” of the presidency, which involved “a need to demonstrate the willingness to shed blood.” The paper was one of many to describe the invasion as a triumph over both Newsweek and Doonesbury: “For President Bush… a man still portrayed in the Doonesbury comic strip as the invisible President – showing his steel had a particular significance.”

Encryption. Wonder how many people will get a Huawei phone now, and be safe from spying.

• Five Eyes Against Huawei (Voltaire)

Washington has asked Ottawa to arrest Meng Wanzhou and to extradite her. This young woman is the financial director and daughter of the founder of Huawei, the Chinese Telecom Giant. She was arrested on 6 December in Canada. The motive for the war undertaken by Washington against Huawei is deep-rooted and spurious are the justifications. The heart of the problem is that the Chinese firm uses a system of encryption that prevents the NSA from intercepting its communications. A number of governments and secret services in the non-Western world have begun to equip themselves exclusively with Huawei materials, and are doing so to protect the confidentiality of their communications.

The covers/excuses for this war are theft of intellectual property or in the alternative, trade with Iran and North Korea, and violating rules of competition by benefitting from national subsidies. The Five Eyes is a system of electronic espionage by Australia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. They have begun to exclude Huawei from their auctions.

Sure, it’s uncomfortable, but Russia is well prepared.

• Russia Ready To Switch Off Visa & Mastercard Ahead Of Tougher Sanctions (RT)

Moscow faces prospects of harsher sanctions this coming January as the US Congress is set to discuss a new package of anti-Russian penalties. The Russian central bank has warned the country’s lenders over potential risks.
The regulator has recommended that Russian financial institutions take the necessary preventive steps in case their partner-banks are forced to stop providing connection to services by the world’s two most used payment systems – Visa and Mastercard, reports Russian business daily Vedomosti. The list of Russia’s banking majors that are currently working as an intermediary include Credit Union “Payment Center,” one of Russia’s largest private lenders Uralsib, Rosbank that operates as a Russian subsidiary of the international financial group Societe Generale, Russia’s second biggest bank VTB and privately owned Promsvyazbank.

VTB and Promsvyazbank have already been included in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), approved by US Congress last summer. The legislation allows Washington to introduce penalties against enterprises and individuals that are seen as hostile towards the US or loyal to regimes that are hostile to the US. The Central Bank of Russia advises that Russian banks should look for an alternative sponsor that will be able substitute a current provider of Visa and MasterCard services, seal a maintenance service contract and test an opportunity of integrating.

May’s cabinet now warns of chaos unless her Brexit plan is executed. Ignoring that if such chaos erupts, it’s their own fault; the government must prepare. So essentially they’re saying: we haven’t prepared the country, so you must support us.

• UK Ministers Warn No-Deal Brexit Chaos May Last Six Months (Ind.)

Emergency plans to fly in medical supplies have been laid to ensure hospitals remain stocked amid six months of expected chaos at Britain’s channel ports after a no-deal Brexit. Critical supplies could also be diverted away from channel routes and some drugs may even be rationed to ensure stocks do not run out. The plans were published as a government assessment suggested a no-deal departure from the EU could mean severe disruption until the end of September 2019 to shipping between Dover and Calais and traffic using the Channel Tunnel.

Ministers continued to put up a defiant front on Friday, saying they were determined to push ahead with the House of Commons vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal, though Downing Street insiders indicated it could still be pulled if efforts to turn rebels fall flat at the weekend. While MPs secured measures this week that make a no-deal scenario less likely, it is still possible if Ms May’s deal is rejected and parliament fails to opt for any alternative course before 29 March. Ministers had already told drug manufacturers to build six-week stockpiles in anticipation of Brexit customs disruption, but after the new assessment indicated Brexit disorder could last six months, further measures were deemed necessary.

In a letter to pharmaceutical firms, health secretary Matt Hancock said: “The revised cross-government planning assumptions show that there will be significantly reduced access across the short straits, for up to six months. “This is very much a worst-case scenario; however, as a responsible government, we have a duty to plan for all scenarios. “Whilst the six-week medicines stockpiling activities remain a critical part of our UK-wide contingency plan, it is clear that in light of the changed border assumptions described above this will now need to be supplemented with additional action.”

True enough, but declaring yourself ‘internationalist’ and ‘socialist’ may not be the smartest meassage at this point.

• EU Support For Austerity Opens Door To Far Right – Corbyn (G.)

Jeremy Corbyn has told an audience of European socialists that EU support for austerity has caused hardship for ordinary people, and that unless something changes there is a risk that “the fake populists of the far right will fill the vacuum”. Speaking at the Congress of European Socialists in Lisbon, the Labour leader also said his party respected the result of the Brexit referendum and it was the duty of the left in the UK to “shape what comes next”. Corbyn argued that Labour would be internationalist whether the UK was inside or outside the EU, and promised that the party would “work together to help build a real social Europe” by protecting workers’ and consumers’ rights. He said: “EU support for austerity and failed neoliberal policies have caused serious hardship for working people across Europe.”

It had “damaged the credibility of European social democratic parties and played a significant role in the vote for Brexit”. However, he promised that under his leadership Labour would take a different approach, and he added a stark warning: “If the European political establishment carries on with business as usual, the fake populists of the far right will fill the vacuum. European socialists have to fight for a different kind of Europe.” In a speech on the first day of the two-day event attended by Labour’s sister parties around Europe, Corbyn said of Brexit: “In a country where a million families are using food banks, over 4 million children are living in poverty, and real wages are lower today than they were in 2010, the British people voted to leave the EU. We respect that decision; it’s our job to shape what comes next.”

What’s the difference between analysis and propaganda? It’s very unclear in America these days.

• Capture the Flag (Kunstler)

It’s obvious that the Obama White House, along with CIA director John Brennan, and Director of National intel James Clapper, used the FBI and the DOJ (with support from the nation’s two leading newspapers), and help from Britain’s MI6 intel shop, to run illegal operations against Mr. Trump during the 2016 election, and then persisted in acts to delegitimize him after Jan 20, 2017. All this, of course, is apart from whether you like Mr. Trump or approve of his policies. It’s well documented elsewhere that Robert Mueller’s mission to detect election “collusion” between Russia and Mr. Trump was a bust, and that all he has to show for it is a roll of contrived convictions for lying to federal prosecutors and the FBI.

The case of General Flynn lies at the center because he served as Mr. Obama’s Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and he knew too much about US shenanigans around the notorious Iran nuclear deal and other shady doings. They were alarmed when he went over to Mr. Trump’s campaign, and determined to disable him. Once Mr. Trump appointed Gen. Flynn Director of National Security, Mr. Obama engineered an “incident” in late December of 2016 (confiscating Russian properties in Maryland over alleged election meddling and laying down new sanctions), that prompted Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to phone Gen. Flynn, the incoming DNS. US Intel was prepared for that set-up and recorded the call, which required the illegal “unmasking” of Flynn, a nicety of spycraft.

Thus, the FBI had a transcript of the phone call and were easily able to entrap Flynn in mis-remembering the particulars of the call. Where is that transcript? The predicate for this operation was completely dishonest: that incoming senior government officials are forbidden to speak to foreign ambassadors. In fact it is their duty to consult with foreign officials, especially in Mr. Flynn’s job, and a long-established tradition of every presidential transition. The coup cadres of the Deep State used The New York Times and The Washington Post to persuade the public that Gen. Flynn had done something treasonous, when it was nothing more than routine transition business.

The IPO to end all IPO’s?!

• Uber Files Confidential IPO Paperwork (R.)

Uber Technologies Inc has filed paperwork for an initial public offering, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, taking a step closer to a key milestone for one of the most closely watched and controversial companies in Silicon Valley. The ride-hailing company filed the confidential paperwork on Thursday, in lock-step with its smaller U.S. rival, Lyft Inc, which also announced on Thursday it had filed for an IPO, setting the stage for one of the biggest technology listings ever. The simultaneous filings extend the protracted battle between Uber and Lyft, which as fierce competitors have often rolled out identical services and matched each other’s prices.

Uber’s most recent valuation was $76 billion, and could be worth $120 billion in an IPO. Its listing next year would be the largest in what is expected to be a string of public debuts by highly valued Silicon Valley companies, including apartment-renting company Airbnb and workplace messaging firm Slack. Uber’s debut will be a test of investor tolerance for legal and workplace controversies, which embroiled Uber for most of last year..

For some reason, people think it’s very normal to hate Assange. They don’t explain why, though, it’s presented as a given.

• The Column I Didn’t Want To Write About Julian Assange (SMH)

We don’t like Julian Assange. That much is clear. Back in 2010, after the original Iraq leak, he seemed a reasonable imitation of a public-spirited whistleblower. By the time I met him in 2012 he was already obsessed by how the leftist media had abandoned him, blaming a conspiracy among Oxbridge PPE (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) graduates. That struck me as narcissistic paranoia although it is, I suppose, remotely possible that such a cabal existed. Now, the question of why the left “hates” Assange occupies his few remaining supporters almost exclusively. Personally I think hate is too strong. Most people just consider Assange a spoilt-brat egomaniac with murky motives, a limelight habit and some profoundly questionable political affiliations.

As further allegations emerge (from Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigations) as to his working with Russia to destabilise Clinton, perhaps in return for being rescued from London (allegations which Assange denies), many hold Assange responsible for Trump. So yes, the dislike is legit. But if egomania and dumb politics were a crime half the population would be in porridge. You don’t abandon someone to a system of revenge indictments, secret trials and solitary confinement because they’re arrogant, or even arrogant and wrong. So it’s not the emotion we need to analyse but the leap from “I’m no longer sympathetic” to “throw away the key”.

[..] Back in 2011 a grand jury was convened in Virginia to determine whether Assange was indictable. Grand jury proceedings are inherently secret. Involving neither judge nor jury they are prosecutor-led, with no defendant right to a defence, attendance or even knowledge. Their findings too are secret. Thus, despite years of enduring rumours of a “sealed indictment” against Assange we know only that last month, US prosecutors inadvertently revealed that secret charges had been laid against Assange. Put it together. An old arrest warrant for skipping bail on a charge that was always feeble and has since been dropped, a refusal to deny extradition intentions, secret charges emerging from a secret court over an act that may not even be illegal and for which the principal culprit has already been pardoned. Does anyone really think such a system could produce a fair trial?

The Guardian piece is way overexposed, but okay, here’s WikiLeaks new editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson.

• Media Is Giving The US Cover To Extradite Assange (Hrafnsson)

The Guardian’s attack on Assange came only days after it was confirmed that he has been indicted some time ago, under seal, and that the U.S. will seek his extradition from the U.K. The story was published just hours before a hearing brought by media groups trying to stop the U.S. government from keeping its attempts to extradite Assange secret. The story went viral, repeated uncritically by many media outlets around the world, including Newsweek. This falsely cast Assange into the center of a conspiracy between Putin and Trump. The Guardian even had the gall to post a call to its readers to donate to protect “independent journalism when factual, trustworthy reporting is under threat.”

[..] This is part of a series of stories from The Guardian, such as its recent claim of a “Russia escape plot” to enable Assange to flee the embassy, which is not true. What do these stories have in common? They all give the U.K. and Ecuador political cover to arrest Assange and for the U.S. to extradite him. Any journalists worth their salt should be investigating who is involved in these plots.

[..] Numerous commentators have criticized The Guardian for its coverage of Assange. Glenn Greenwald, former columnist for The Guardian, writes that the paper has “…such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him.” Another former Guardian journalist, Jonathan Cook, writes: “The propaganda function of the piece is patent. It is intended to provide evidence for long-standing allegations that Assange conspired with Trump, and Trump’s supposed backers in the Kremlin, to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.”

Hours before The Guardian published its article, WikiLeaks received knowledge of the story and “outed” it, with a denial, to its 5.4 million Twitter followers. The story then made the front page, and The Guardian asserted they had not received a denial prior to publication—as they had failed to contact the correct person. A simple retraction and apology will not be enough. This persecution of Assange is one of the most serious attacks on journalism in recent times.

Really, guys? Blame it all on climate change? I wouldn’t.

• 97% Decline In Monarch Butterflies (G.)

In the 1980s, roughly 4.5 million monarchs wintered in California, but at last count, there may be as few as 30,000. The hillside groves of eucalyptus trees that tower over the Santa Cruz shoreline would, not so long ago, be teeming with monarch butterflies at this time of year. Boughs would be bent under the weight of black and orange clusters, as hundreds of thousands of the magical invertebrates nestled into the leaves, waiting out the frost on the California coast before returning north. Now, on a sunny December afternoon the boardwalk that weaves through the monarch preserve, at Natural Bridges State Beach, is filled with school children craning necks and straining eyes to catch a glimpse. The monarchs are there – but they are harder to spot.

Just two years ago, 8,000 overwintered here, but these days, just more than a thousand are fluttering amidst the Santa Cruz trees. It’s part of a troubling trend: over the last two decades monarch numbers in the West have declined by roughly 97%. “It is a sad reality of climate change,” said Anthony Dutierrez, a volunteer guide at the park and biology student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as he takes a break from guiding school children through a tour. “For every little thing that changes there’s not just one consequence – it’s a whole chain reaction.” According to the Xerces Society, a conservation organization, in the 1980s between 10 million and 4.5 million monarchs spent the winter in California. The last count, conducted annually by volunteers each November, showed that in 2018 there may be as few as 30,000 across the state – a number that’s 87% lower than just the year before.

“We had a lot of reason to suspect that it was going to be a bad year, but we were shocked at just how bad,” said Xerces Society Conservation biologist Emma Pelton. She said that year-to-year fluctuations can be expected, but this kind of continuous drop-off is cause for concern. “It is in the context that the population has already declined 97%. So, it’s OK if you have millions of butterflies and they drop down a little bit – that’s not a huge deal. But if you have 200,000 butterflies to begin with and you have a bad year? Now we only have 30,000 left.”

Photograph: Michael Yang / Rex Features

Debt Rattle June 3 2018

Jun 032018

June 3, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: Conte, debt relief, Dolce Vita, Erdogan, Italy, Juncker, Merkel, Mnuchin, plastics, Sánchez, trade war, Uber, whale 3 Responses »

Andrew Wyeth Christina’s world 1948

• Why Italy Had To Say Goodbye To The Dolce Vita (David McWilliams)

• An Italian Exit May Be Rome’s Best Option – JPMorgan (ZH)

• Angela Merkel Rules Out Debt Relief For Italy (CNBC)

• New Italy PM Starts Off In Shadow Of His Powerful Deputies (AFP)

• Juncker: EU Won’t ‘Meddle’ In Italy’s Affairs (O.)

• Political Bruiser Sánchez Stuns Spain To Become PM (Spain Report)

• Europe: Confront Trump or Avoid a Costly Trade War (NYT)

• US Wants Structural Changes To China’s Economy: Mnuchin

• Uber’s ‘Business Is Finished’ In Turkey, Erdogan Says (R.)

• Britain’s Low-Paid Face Decade Of Wage Squeeze (O.)

• UK Universal Credit Change To Bar 2.6m Children From Free School Meals (Ind.)

• Whale Dies From Eating More Than 80 Plastic Bags (AFP)

Excellent from David McWilliams on what the euro has done to Italy.

• Why Italy Had To Say Goodbye To The Dolce Vita (David McWilliams)

Sometimes it is not appreciated quite how industrial Italy is. It has long been Europe’s second-biggest manufacturing power, beaten only by Germany. Italy is far more industrial than France or the UK. In some areas of design and high-quality manufacturing, Italy is still without peer. However, since it gave up the lira and adopted the euro – in effect Germany’s currency – things have gone pear-shaped. This economic calamity is driving Italian politics, leading many to question the euro and Italy’s membership of it. From 1945 to 1995 there was an understanding that Italy would devalue the lira. This is what Italy did. Traditionally, it devalued the lira every few years. This kept Italian industry competitive.

For example, when Italy joined the European Monetary System, in 1979, the exchange rate was 443 lire per Deutschmark. By 1990, the year of German reunification, the rate was 750 lire to the Deutschmark. By 1995 it was 1,000 lire to the Deutschmark. In the 1992 currency crisis the lira fell to a low of 1,250 against the Deutschmark before recovering a bit. The gradual fall in the value of the lira was a price that the Italians were prepared to pay for industrial success. Contrary to the dogma spouted by Europe’s central bankers, Italian devaluations worked particularly well. From 1979 to 1998, Italian industrial production outpaced that of Germany by more than 10%. Italian equities outperformed German equivalents by 16% – after having taken into account the devaluations.

So not only was Italian industry growing faster than German industry, aided by lira devaluations, but also the return on capital in Italy was higher than in Germany. This is because if the stock market of a country is outperforming another country’s, it implies that the capital that is deployed in the faster-growing country is being deployed more efficiently. Therefore, not only was Italy growing more quickly than Germany, but it was more efficient too. Then came the euro. Since Italy joined the single currency, almost to the day, its industry has gone backwards. Having outperformed German stocks during the period of the lira, Italian stocks have underperformed German stocks by a whopping, bankruptcy-inducing 65%.

During the half-century when Fellini was writing the story of postwar Italian success, the Italian stock market almost always returned more than the German stock market. Once Italy joined the euro that stopped almost overnight. Deep in the economy, the strictures imposed by the euro have destroyed much of Italian industry. For example, having outgrown Germany’s industrial output in the 1980s and 1990s by 10%, Italian factory output since Italy joined the euro has lagged Germany’s by 40%.

Hard to summarize this long Zero Hedge piece. Depending on where you look, Italy may not be all that weak.

“If you owe the ECB €10 billion, you have no leverage. If you owe the ECB €426 billion, you have all the leverage.”

• An Italian Exit May Be Rome’s Best Option – JPMorgan (ZH)

[..] with €426BN, Italy has the highest Target2 deficit with the Eurosystem (Spain is a close second with €377BN) any discussion about an Italian euro exit raises concerns about costs. [..] due to QE induced cross border flows since 2015, Target2 balances have exploded since the launch of the ECB’s QE (and third Greek bailout in 2015), and surpassed the previous extremes from the depths of the euro debt crisis in the summer of 2012.

[..] a euro exit by a debtor country would represent more of a cost to creditor countries such as Germany rather than to the exiting country itself. And, as shown in the chart above, Germany sure has a lot of implicit accumulated costs, roughly €1 trillion to be precise, as a result of preserving a currency union that allowed German exporters to benefit from a euro dragged lower by the periphery, relative to where the Deutsche Mark would be trading today. But here the analysis gets slightly more complex, as Target2 does not provide the full picture of potential costs (or benefits, assuming a scorched earth approach). As JPMorgan writes, the Target2 liabilities of a debtor country give only a partial picture of the cost to creditor nations from that debtor country exiting.

This is because Target2 balances represent only one component of the Net International Investment Position of a country, i.e. the difference between a country’s total external financial assets vs. liabilities. The broader metric that one must use, is of the Net International Investment Position for euro area countries and is shown in the chart below. It shows that contrary to the Target2 imbalance, Italy leaving the euro would inflict a lot less damage to creditor nations than Spain leaving the euro. This is because Spain’s net international investment liabilities stood at close to €1tr as of the end of last year, almost three times as large as its Target2 liabilities. In contrast Italy’s net international investment liabilities were much smaller and stood at only €115bn at the end of last year, around a quarter of its €426bn Target2 liabilities. This, as JPM explains, is because Italy has accumulated over the years more external assets than Spain and should thus be overall more able to repay its external liabilities.

[..] Ironically, the surprisingly low net international investment liabilities of Italy are the result of the persistent current account surpluses the country has been running since the euro debt crisis of 2012, and smaller current account deficits compared to Spain before the crisis. The flipside is that the current account surplus – in theory – also makes it easier for a country like Italy to exit the euro relative to a current account deficit country. This is because the higher the current account deficit of a debtor country, the higher the cost of an exit for this country as the current account deficit would have to be closed abruptly following an exit. Most importantly, this means that as a result of Italy’s decent current account surplus, from a narrow current account adjustment point of view, its own cost of a euro exit should be relatively small.

Merkel has weakened a lot. Italy knows it.

• Angela Merkel Rules Out Debt Relief For Italy (CNBC)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared on Saturday to rule out debt relief for Italy, saying in a newspaper interview that the principle of solidarity among members of the euro zone should not turn the single currency bloc into a debt-sharing union. “I will approach the new Italian government openly and work with it instead of speculating about it intentions,” Merkel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in an interview to be published on Sunday.

On Friday, Italy swore a populist coalition into power, ending months of political uncertainty that hit global markets in the last week. Newly designated Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte will lead Western Europe’s first anti-establishment government with the aim of cutting taxes, boosting spending on welfare and overhauling EU rules on budgets and immigration. Italy accounts for 23.4 percent of the euro zone’s public debt and 15.4 percent of the bloc’s GDP, according to Eurostat.

Conte has a full agenda.

• New Italy PM Starts Off In Shadow Of His Powerful Deputies (AFP)

Italy’s new prime minister Giuseppe Conte mostly kept quiet on his full first day in office Saturday, while his two powerful deputies took centre stage in setting the tone of the populist government’s policy. Conte, a political novice, was finally sworn in on Friday as the head of a government of ministers from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League, ending months of uncertainty since elections in March. But Conte was a compromise candidate between Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio and the League’s Matteo Salvini – both of whom are now his deputy prime ministers – and he will have to walk a delicate line to push through the anti-austerity and pro-security promises their populist parties campaigned on.

The 53-year-old academic also inherited a daunting list of issues from his predecessor Paolo Gentiloni, including the financial travails of companies such as Ilva and Alitalia, a Group of Seven summit in Canada and a key EU summit at the end of the month, as well as the thorny question of immigration. Immigration is the bugbear of Conte’s interior minister, Salvini, the 45-year-old leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam League. Salvini announced Friday that he would visit Sicily to see the situation for himself at one of the main landing points for refugees fleeing war, persecution and famine across North Africa and the Middle East. “The good times for illegals is over – get ready to pack your bags,” Salvini said at a rally in Italy’s north on Saturday, adding however that he wants to economically assist migrants’ countries of origin.

His comments come after more than 150 migrants, including nine children, disembarked from a rescue ship late Friday in Sicily. Conte attended a military parade alongside President Sergio Mattarella on Saturday, marking Republic Day for the foundation of the Italian Republic in 1946. However the new prime minister has issued few public statements since being appointed. On Saturday he did post on Facebook that he had spoken with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron and would meet the two leaders at the G7 summit, where he will be a “spokesman for the interests of Italian citizens”. Conte has also opted to keep the country’s intelligence services under his personal control.

Deputy premier Di Maio, who is serving as economic development minister, also took to Facebook, calling for “entrepreneurs to be left alone”. “Employers and employees in Italy must not be enemies,” he said, promising “I will not disappoint you”. On Saturday evening Five Star held a rally in the centre of Rome with thousands of supporters and all its ministers to celebrate “the government of change”. Di Maio told the crowd that “from today, the state is us”. Five Star’s founder, former comic Beppe Grillo, rang a bell in front of the crowd, saying the sound “marks the fracture between a world that is going away and a new one that is arriving”.

Right. Sure.

• Juncker: EU Won’t ‘Meddle’ In Italy’s Affairs (O.)

Italy, the third-largest economy in the eurozone, has a public debt second only to Greece’s and there was a negative reaction from the financial markets to the League-M5S coalition, which plans to significantly raise public spending. Juncker offered a more placatory tone, suggesting that Brussels and Berlin had learned the lessons of the Greek crisis. He also denied that the eurozone was set on a course for another economic downturn: “The Italians cannot really complain about austerity measures from Brussels. However, I do not now want to lecture Rome. We must treat Italy with respect. Too many lectures were given to Greece in the past, in particular from German-speaking countries. This dealt a blow to the dignity of the Greek people. The same thing must not be allowed to happen to Italy.”

Juncker said that the financial markets’ reaction was “irrational”: “People should not draw political conclusions from every fluctuation in the stock market. Investors have been wrong on so many occasions.” Neither of the coalition parties in the new Italian government campaigned on leaving the euro or the EU, but both have backed such calls in the past and are scathing about the rules that underpin the eurozone. Mujtaba Rahman, a former European commission and UK Treasury official who now works for consultancy the Eurasia Group, warned that as the cornerstone of the coalition government’s platform was fiscal expansion, it was liable to clash with the commission this autumn.

“Though no official estimates have been produced, independent estimates suggest the proposed measures would cost, combined, upwards of €100bn per annum, around 6% of GDP.“If the government were to propose a very expansionary budget, the commission – which provides its opinions and recommendations on member states’ draft budgetary plans – would have to reject it in September. This would be a first, and would set the stage for a real confrontation with Rome,” he said. “A significant deviation from EU-mandated fiscal targets may prompt the commission to open a new Excessive Deficit Procedure, a process designed to give the EU more power to enforce austerity on Rome. Yet the symbolism of this move would only strengthen the Italian government’s domestic standing.”

Poker player?!

• Political Bruiser Sánchez Stuns Spain To Become PM (Spain Report)

Forget about what the new socialist government’s policies are going to be, because no one really knows yet. Forget about who the new ministers are going to be, because no one really knows yet. And forget about how long this government is going to last. No one has a clue right now. What is worthy of note is how Pedro Sánchez has just crushed all of his political opponents in a week. Last Friday, the PSOE had slowly slumped to less than 20% in the polls and he was being written off by columnists and commentators. This Saturday, he will be driven to Zarzuela Palace to be sworn in as the new socialist Prime Minister of Spain [..]

Mr. Rajoy is likely not the only political leader who needs a stiff drink this weekend. Pedro Sánchez has just left Pablo Iglesias—who nine days ago thought his biggest problem was an absurd internal ballot about his new luxury home—sitting in the dust in the fight for the Spanish left. Two years ago, with the sudden appearance and meteoric rise of Podemos, Mr. Iglesias’s stated strategic goal was not to win the election but to dominate the Spanish left. He just lost that race. Pedro Sánchez has just left Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera rabbiting on incessantly about wanting a new general election instead of the socialists “unfairly” grabbing power, because Mr. Rivera is—or was—doing rather better in the polls than the rest.

But rabbit on is all he can do for now because, just like nine days ago, in the real world Ciudadanos still only has 32 seats in Congress. And Pedro Sánchez has just left the powerful leader of the Socialist Party in Andalusia, Susana Diaz, well, in Andalusia. This might be the sweetest victory of all for the new Prime Minister, because it was she who wielded her considerable internal and establishment influence in October 2016 to oust Mr. Sánchez as leader of the PSOE, allowing Mariano Rajoy to be reappointed Prime Minister after a year of national stalemate unbroken by two general elections.

Again: Pedro Sánchez, written off by some as being too handsome to have any interesting ideas, has, somewhere along the way, learnt to execute political hit jobs that have left all of his major political opponents staggering, and sent what was a confident conservative party that had only just passed a new budget—two days previously—scurrying into opposition, wounded. In a week. Whatever happens next in Spanish politics, do not underestimate Pedro Sánchez.

More division.

• Europe: Confront Trump or Avoid a Costly Trade War (NYT)

Despite its name, the European Union is not generally a model of unity. If Mr. Trump was banking on internal division stymieing the European response, he picked an opportune moment. Britain is consumed with domestic sniping over its pending departure from the European Union, making it a bit player in these proceedings. Italy has been immersed in the operatic political drama at which it excels, only Friday swearing in a new government after inconclusive elections in March. The incoming government presents a coalition of two populist parties that have expressed disdain for the European Union and the shared euro currency, stoking fears that the bloc will be presented with a new challenge to its cohesion.

Spain just swapped governments. Germany is headed by a chastened chancellor Angela Merkel following her own lengthy struggles to form a government after elections last fall. The French president has been frustrated in his attempts to forge greater political unity within the bloc. “Europe is in disarray,” said Nicola Borri, a finance professor at Luiss, a university in Rome. “It’s even difficult to understand who is in power in Europe.” In deliberating how to respond to Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the key schism appears to run between Germany and the rest of the bloc. “I don’t think there is a unified consensus for how to deal with the Americans,” said Meredith Crowley, an expert on international trade at the University of Cambridge in England. “The Germans benefit from open markets globally, so they don’t want to throw up more barriers to free trade.”

That’s quite the statement. What if Beijing said the same about the US?

• US Wants Structural Changes To China’s Economy: Mnuchin

The United States wants trade talks in Beijing this weekend to result in structural changes to China’s economy, in addition to increased Chinese purchases of American goods, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Saturday. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross arrived in Beijing on Saturday with an interagency team of U.S. officials for talks on long-term purchases of U.S. farm and energy commodities, just days after Washington renewed its threats to impose tariffs on Chinese goods.

The purchases are partly aimed at shrinking the $375 billion U.S. goods trade deficit with China. Mnuchin, speaking at a G7 finance leaders meeting in Canada where he was the target of U.S. allies’ anger over steel and aluminum tariffs, said the China talks would cover other issues, including the Trump administration’s desire to eliminate Chinese joint venture requirements and other policies that effectively force technology transfers.

It’s election time.

• Uber’s ‘Business Is Finished’ In Turkey, Erdogan Says (R.)

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan has said ride hailing app Uber is finished in Turkey, following pressure from Istanbul taxi drivers who said it was providing an illegal service and called for it to be banned. About 17,400 taxis operate in Istanbul, home to about a fifth of Turkey’s population of 81 million people, and since Uber entered the country in 2014 tensions have risen sharply. Erdogan’s statement came after new regulations were announced in recent weeks tightening transport licensing requirements, making it more difficult for drivers to register with Uber and threatening a two-year ban for violations.

“This thing called Uber emerged. That business is finished. That does not exist anymore,” he said in a speech in Istanbul late on Friday. “We have our taxi system. Where does this (Uber) come from? It is used in Europe, I do not care about that. We will decide by ourselves,” added Erdogan, who is running for re-election in three weeks. [..] Uber said that about 2,000 yellow cab drivers use its app to find customers, while another 5,000 work for UberXL, using large vans to transport groups to parties, or take people with bulky luggage to Istanbul’s airports.

The Tories can’t wait to return to Dickens.

• Britain’s Low-Paid Face Decade Of Wage Squeeze (O.)

The wages of 10 million low-paid workers have stalled for two decades and face pressure for a decade to come, according to a bleak assessment of Britain’s future jobs market. Global economic competition, automation, the shift to the gig economy and a widening regional divide will see further pressure placed on the incomes of those earning between £10,000 and £15,000, it warns. The analysis by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) thinktank, which is on the political right and chaired by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, also blamed a chronic national failure to boost skills and education. It will be seen as another warning to Theresa May from Conservative figures to kickstart her domestic agenda.

There have been concerns within the party that the focus on Brexit has led to inaction in other crucial areas that could hold Britain back after its exit from the European Union. The analysis, co-written by Boris Johnson’s former economic adviser and Brexit supporter Gerard Lyons, concludes that wages of those on the lowest salaries stalled long before the 2008 financial crash. It warns that the current evidence shows that most never escape a life on low pay. The centre’s support for action on low pay shows that it is now an issue of concern across the political spectrum, with automation expected to place further pressure on jobs in some low-paid sectors unless new skills and opportunities are developed.

The CSJ report states that 20% of Britain’s 33 million workers earn £15,000 a year or less, and that 50% earn no more than £23,200. Only 10% of employees, or about 3 million people, earn above £53,000 a year. Britain does not compare well with other developed nations when it comes to low pay, it states. Taking data from manufacturing, and giving the US a score of 100, Switzerland topped the table with a pay rate of 155, followed by Norway on 126, Germany on 111 and France on 97. However, the UK was much further behind, on 73.

These people would be better off moving to Poland.

• UK Universal Credit Change To Bar 2.6m Children From Free School Meals (Ind.)

Up to 2.6 million children whose parents are on benefits could be missing out on free school meals by 2022, the shadow education minister will warn. Angela Rayner will tell a GMB union conference on Sunday that the Government’s claims on school meals are “falling apart” after changes to eligibility under Universal Credit (UC). When the system was first introduced in 2013, all children of recipients – who were all unemployed – were eligible for free school meals (FSM), as they would have been under the old system. But in April the criteria was tightened based on income. In England, the net earnings threshold will be £7,400 whereas in Northern Ireland it will be £14,000.

A government technical note published in May said that if the change had not been made, “around half of all (state school) children would become eligible for FSM and the meals would no longer be targeted at those who need them the most”. It said that in 2017 around 1.1 million disadvantaged children were eligible and received a free school meal, some 14 per cent of all state-school pupils. But if the change had not been made the number of additional children who would have been eligible was between 2,300,000 and 2,600,000 by 2022.

And that’s just one animal that we could see.

• Whale Dies From Eating More Than 80 Plastic Bags (AFP)

A whale has died in southern Thailand after swallowing more than 80 plastic bags, with rescuers failing to nurse the mammal back to health. The small male pilot whale was found barely alive in a canal near the border with Malaysia, the country’s department of marine and coastal resources said. A veterinary team tried “to help stabilise its illness but finally the whale died” on Friday afternoon. An autopsy revealed 80 plastic bags weighing up to 8kg (18lb) in the creature’s stomach, the department added. People used buoys to keep the whale afloat after it was first spotted on Monday and an umbrella to shield it from the sun. The whale vomited up five bags during the rescue attempt.

Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine biologist and lecturer at Kasetsart University, said the bags had made it impossible for the whale to eat any nutritional food. “If you have 80 plastic bags in your stomach, you die,” he said. Thailand is one of the world’s largest users of plastic bags. Thon said at least 300 marine animals including pilot whales, sea turtles and dolphins, perished each year in Thai waters after ingesting plastic. “It’s a huge problem,” he said. “We use a lot of plastic.” The pilot whale’s plight generated sympathy and anger among Thai netizens. “I feel sorry for the animal that didn’t do anything wrong, but has to bear the brunt of human actions,” wrote one Twitter user.

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