Banksy Archives - The Automatic Earth

US govt warns: Do not, under any circumstances, come to Russia. pic.twitter.com/Jpl9luk8Ie

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) June 29, 2024

McAfee 2020 (!)

Russia's first time traveller has returned.

Guess what he said:

In September Biden is medically diagnosed as unfit for office and quits.

They discover that the DNC has legal power to choose a replacement without a National vote!

Weird huh?

You'll never guess who they chose.

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 18, 2020

https://twitter.com/i/status/1806945470566056163

“Washington is unhinged and depraved. A collection of psychopaths as are its minions in Brussels and other NATO capitals.”

• Imagine a Missile Massacre On a Florida Beach On the Fourth of July (SCF)

The scenario is not hyperbole. Imagine a sunny beach in Florida crowded with families enjoying a holiday weekend. In a split second, mayhem and murder are unleashed as crowds flee in panic from a foreign missile exploding over the beach. There is no doubt that the United States would go to war immediately against the perpetrator. Furious condemnations would ring out for days, weeks, and months among American politicians and their media. But what is also obvious from this hypothetical scenario is the egregious double standard and hypocrisy of American and Western responses. Last weekend, Russia was celebrating its annual Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. The day honors the dead of the Great Patriotic War instigated by Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. That weekend also combines Trinity Sunday, a prominent religious holiday in the Orthodox calendar.

As Russian families were enjoying the festive weekend, the Kiev regime fired five U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles at the Crimean city of Sevastopol. It was a deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. Four missiles were shot down by Russian air defenses, but a fifth exploded over a nearby beach, where hundreds of people were enjoying sun-splashed sand and the gentle lapping of waves. In the ensuing horror, four people including two children were killed. Over 150 were injured, dozens of them seriously, from the explosions caused by cluster bomblets released by the missile. Video footage clearly shows explosions and not merely ordnance shrapnel falling from the sky. This was an act of state-sponsored terrorism against civilians. The United States and its NATO partners bear responsibility for the massacre.

Only a week before the attack, U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders had signed off on supplying the Kiev regime with long-range (300 km) ATACMS weapons and a green light to use these missiles on Russian territory. Arguably, too, the atrocity was an unpardonable act of war against Russia. As the foreign ministry in Moscow noted, the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine has become a direct war against Russia. The situation has entered a most dangerous moment. The Kremlin has warned that retaliation is coming. There is no question that under international law, the Russian Federation has every right to respond to murderous aggression. It only remains to be seen what the form of retaliation will be. It is doubtful that Russia would take revenge on innocent American civilians. The Russian leadership and its people are far too moral and strategically intelligent to countenance such barbarity.

The scenario of bombing a beach in Florida is invoked to demonstrate the heinous reality of what occurred in Crimea last weekend. And it also demonstrates the rank moral bankruptcy of American and European leaders. Only days before the missile attack on Crimea, the American Senate introduced a bill to declare Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism”. The bill was a hysterical reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state visit to North Korea and the signing of a mutual defense pact with Chairman Kim Jong Un. The irony of the U.S. reaction in light of the subsequent attack on Crimea is not merely bitter. Washington is unhinged and depraved. A collection of psychopaths as are its minions in Brussels and other NATO capitals.

“We have a serious problem here, because we have a president who, by all appearances, is not up to the task..”

• Biden Should Be Removed As President – US House Speaker (RT)

Joe Biden should be replaced as US president, having shown he is “not up to the task” during his debate with Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson has said. The US president’s performance in his first election face-off with Trump on Thursday was widely viewed as a disaster. The 81-year-old appeared frail and confused, struggling to finish his sentences and mixing up words. According to media reports, Democrats were “panicking” after the debate, and some donors have demanded that the president be dropped from the party’s ticket for the November 5 election. “I would be panicking too if I were a Democrat today and that was my nominee. I think they know they have a serious problem,” Johnson told journalists on Thursday. The Republican politician argued that Biden should not only withdraw from the race, but also be immediately removed from office.

“It’s not just political. It’s not just the Democratic Party. It’s the entire country. We have a serious problem here, because we have a president who, by all appearances, is not up to the task,” he said. Johnson said Biden’s administration could force him to step down by invoking the 25th Amendment – which states that the vice president and cabinet members can vote to declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and the duties of his office,” making the VP the acting head of state. If the commander-in-chief refuses to comply, the final decision on the issue would be made by Congress. The amendment has never been used in US history. “There are a lot of people asking about the 25th Amendment, invoking the 25th Amendment right now because this is an alarming situation,” the House speaker stressed.

Due to Biden’s mental condition, “our adversaries see the weakness in this White House as we all do. I take no pleasure in saying that.” “I think this is a very dangerous situation… And it needs to be regarded and handled as such. And we hope that they will do their duty, as we all seek to do our duty to do best for the American people,” Johnson stated. “I would ask the Cabinet members to search their hearts.” The results of a poll by Morning Consult, published by the news website Axios on Friday, suggested that 60% of the voters believe Biden should “definitely” or “probably” be replaced as the Democratic presidential nominee following his disappointing performance in the debate.

“.. the plan threatens Ukraine with certain defeat, regime, and, possibly, even state disintegration; it threatens Moscow with a harder time – a type of threat that has no record of success.”

• Trump the Peacemaker? His Presidency Might Help End The War In Ukraine (RT)

The likely next president of the US, Donald Trump, has signaled that he has a plan for bringing the war in Ukraine to an end. Or, at least, two of his advisers have such a plan. More importantly, they have submitted it to Trump. And most importantly, they have said that he has responded positively. As one of the plan’s authors has put it, “I’m not claiming he agreed with it or agreed with every word of it, but we were pleased to get the feedback we did.” It is true that Trump has also let it be known that he is not officially endorsing the plan. However, it is obvious that this is a trial balloon which has been launched with his approval. Otherwise, we would have either not have heard about it or it would have been disavowed.

The two Trump advisers are Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general, and Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst. Both held significant positions on national security matters during Trump’s presidency. Currently, both play important roles at the Center for American Security: Kellogg serves as co-chair and Fleitz as vice chair. Both, finally, are clear about their belief in what is perhaps Trump’s single most defining foreign policy concept: America First. Fleitz recently published an article asserting that “only America First can reverse the global chaos caused by the Biden administration.” For Kellogg, the “America First approach is key to national security.” The Center for American Security, finally, is part of the America First Policy Institute, an influential think tank founded in 2022 by key Trump administration veterans to prepare policies for his comeback.

Clearly, this is a peace plan that has not come out of nowhere. On the contrary, it has not merely been submitted to Trump to receive his – unofficial – nod, it has also emerged from within Trumpism as a resurgent political force. In addition, as Reuters has pointed out, it is also the most elaborate plan yet from the Trump camp on how to get to peace in Ukraine. In effect, this is the first time that Trump’s promise to rapidly end this war, once he is back in the White House, has been fleshed out in detail. The adoption of the plan or any similar policy would obviously mark a massive change in US policy. Hence, this is something that deserves close attention.

What does the plan foresee? In essence, it is built on a simple premise: to use Washington’s leverage over Ukraine to force the country to accept a peace that will come with concessions, territorial and otherwise. In the words of Keith Kellogg, “We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up’.” Since Kiev is vitally dependent on American assistance, it is hard to see how it could resist such pressure. Perhaps to give an appearance of “balance” for the many Republicans still hawkish on Russia, the plan also includes a threat addressed to Moscow: “And you tell Putin,” again in Kellogg’s terms, “he’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.”

Yet it is obvious that, despite the tough rhetoric about Russia, the plan will cause great anxiety in Kiev, not Moscow, for two reasons. First, the threats addressed to Russia and Ukraine are not comparable: If the US were to withdraw its support from Ukraine, Kiev’s Zelensky regime would quickly not just lose the war but collapse. If the US were to, instead, increase its support for the Zelensky regime, then Moscow would respond by mobilizing additional resources, as it has done before. It might also, in that case, receive direct military assistance from China, which would not stand by and watch a potential Russian defeat unfold, because that would leave Beijing alone with an aggressive, emboldened West. In addition, Washington would, of course, have to weigh the risk of Russia engaging in counter-escalation. In sum, the plan threatens Ukraine with certain defeat, regime, and, possibly, even state disintegration; it threatens Moscow with a harder time – a type of threat that has no record of success.

The second reason the plan is bad news for Ukraine but not for Russia is that the peace it aims at is much closer to Moscow’s war aims than to those of Kiev. While the document that has been submitted to Trump has not been made public, American commentators believe that a paper published on the site of the Center for American Security under the title “America First, Russia, & Ukraine” is similar to what he – or his staff – got to see. Also authored by Kellogg and Fleitz, this paper, too, repeatedly stresses just how “tough” Trump used to be toward Russia. Plenty of strutting there for those who like that kind of stuff. These statements, however, are balanced by an emphasis on what used to be called diplomacy: “At the same time,” we read, “Trump was open to cooperation with Russia and dialogue with Putin. Trump expressed respect for Putin as a world leader and did not demonize him in public statements … This was a transactional approach to US-Russia relations … to find ways to coexist and lower tensions … while standing firm on American security interests.”

“..making no differentiation between conservatives and liberals, social democrats or Republicans and Democrats. All belong to the de facto Western War Party serving U.S.-led Western imperialism.”

• US and NATO Accomplices Play Terror Card Against Russia (Van den Ende)

Recently, two U.S. senators, Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, introduced a bill to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. “We will push for a vote, and the best thing we can do, I think, to shape the future is to label Putin as a terrorist leader, because that’s what he is,” said Graham. Graham can be compared to a (rather stupid) criminal cowboy. There are many senators with the same criminal mentality in the U.S. government. Graham is Republican, Blumenthal is a Democrat. It doesn’t matter who rules the U.S., both political parties are on the warpath and both are under the influence of the U.S. deep state (lobbies like the arms industry, military complex, etc.). Elections are a farce, just like in Europe. The U.S. together with its partners in the European Union and NATO, have instigated and prolonged all kinds of illegal wars for many years, with the reckless supply of weapons and money.

Recent wars include Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the bombing of Libya into the stone age, and now it is Russia’s turn. Since the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine in February 2022 (even before that going back to 2014), Russia has been the target of the entire West. European leaders have recently become even more radical than Uncle Sam and are using threatening war language – rabid rhetoric we have not heard since the Second World War. Now that Ukraine cannot win on the battlefield, the U.S. and the West are turning to other means, as they always do, namely terrorism. We see a pattern here over several decades. The worst manifestation perhaps were the bloody wars that culminated in terrorism in Syria and Iraq, where the U.S. and EU/NATO sponsored and still sponsor terrorism. ISIS or Daesh was created by the U.S. The deceased senator (a Republican) John McCain was one of the godfathers of ISIS, whose murderers were trained at the U.S. Camp Bucca in Iraq.

The same John McCain was in Kiev during the unfolding Maidan coup in December 2013 and told thousands of NeoNazi chanting demonstrators that Americans support their resistance to closer ties with Russia. The coup was executed in February 2014. Other senators and government officials from the U.S. and Europe were also present for the Kiev coup, such as Chris Murphy and Victoria Nuland from the U.S. From Europe, the Dutchman Hans van Baalen, the former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstad (now EU MEP) and other EU delegates were present and supported the neo-Nazi groups wreaking violence on the Maidan square, killing police officers and sacking public buildings. I must emphasize that the Western coup backers were from all kinds of political parties in the EU and the U.S., making no differentiation between conservatives and liberals, social democrats or Republicans and Democrats. All belong to the de facto Western War Party serving U.S.-led Western imperialism.

Victoria Nuland (now retired from the CIA-riddled U.S. State Department) followed in the footsteps of John McCain and emerged as the greatest Russia hater in the U.S. It was she who threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with “nasty surprises” only weeks before the terrorist attack in March this year on the Crocus City Hall shopping-theater complex just outside Moscow where 144 people were killed by a team of gunmen. The embassies (U.S. and EU) issued warnings for their fellow countrymen not to go to events or busy places in the near future, so they knew something was coming – because they planned it themselves.

Nuland has spoken vulgarly over the years. We all know her “fuck the EU” comment. But at her so-called farewell speech in February this year, she literally said: “The war in Ukraine is not to help Ukraine, but to thwart Russia.” Also revealing was Nuland’s explanation of the background of the war. Nothing about saving Ukraine, but all about her aversion to Russia. “We wanted a partner that was focused on the West, that wanted to be European. But that was not what Putin brought,” she said. So, in other words, Putin has to go and Russia needs a regime change that is pro-West, in other words a puppet regime.

So we make her our top ‘diplomat’?!

• ‘She Eats Russians For Breakfast’ (RT)

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has been nominated by the leaders of EU member states to become the next high representative for security and foreign policy. The politician – selected to speak for Brussels internationally and balance conflicting interests in the EU – has a reputation as an uncompromising hawk on Russia. Before beginning a five-year term, Kallas will need approval from the European Parliament, whose members are expected to vote on her appointment in July, a step widely seen as a formality. The 47-year-old’s attitude towards Moscow was summed up by an unnamed EU official, explaining why Western European nations were resisting her candidacy for another top job – the secretary general of NATO. “Are we really putting someone who likes to eat Russians for breakfast in this position?” the source told Politico in March. Kallas reacted by posting a picture of her breakfast, consisting of blueberries, muesli, a dairy product, and a drink.

Kallas has embraced the idea that at some point NATO countries may have to deploy troops in Ukraine to prevent Moscow from defeating Kiev, first put forward by French President Emmanuel Macron in February. “We shouldn’t be afraid of our own power. Russia is saying this or that step is escalation, but defense is not escalation,” the Estonian politician said of the proposal. Macron’s stated goal in voicing the idea publicly was to leave Russian President Vladimir Putin guessing as to how far the US-led military bloc might go in supporting Ukraine. After multiple member states, including the US, ruled out sending their soldiers to fight for Kiev, the suggestion was downgraded to a military training mission in Western Ukraine. Kallas has backed the new plan, saying it does not amount to an escalation – because a potential attack on the instructors would not trigger a mandatory joint NATO response. “If you send your people to help Ukrainians … you know the country is at war and you go to a risk zone. So you take the risk,” she explained in May.

According to Kallas, there should be no “Plan B” for Ukraine, because contemplating it would amount to undermining the primary goal of helping Ukraine prevail in the conflict. ”Victory in Ukraine is not just about territory,” she told the BBC in early June. “If Ukraine joins NATO, even without some territory, then that’s a victory because it will be placed under the NATO umbrella.” The Estonian politician believes the optimal scenario of a defeat for Russia would result in the country’s dissolution. Russia is composed of “many different nations” that could become independent, and “it is not a bad thing if the big power is actually [made] much smaller,” she argued last year. The Estonian daily Postimees argued earlier this month that leaving domestic politics behind may be the best thing the prime minister can do for her country. The Baltic nation is enduring a recession and severe budget deficit, and Kallas’ coalition government is unable to find common ground on tackling the problems, the editorial argued.

“She has earned the reputation of a strong voice of the eastern part of the EU and a convincing supporter of Ukrainian victory,” the newspaper said. “It’s all good, but the citizens of Estonia did not elect her based on her international image”. Her looming appointment has “paralyzed the government,” as the coalition is unable to function while everyone waits for Kallas to quit, Postimees said. Kallas is a vocal proponent of cutting all business ties with Russia as part of the Western response to the Ukraine conflict. However, last year Estonian media revealed that her Husband Arvo Hallik held a 25% stake in a logistics company that provides services in Russia. She has denied any wrongdoing and rejected calls to step down over the scandal, which she claimed to be a politically motivated hatchet job. But her reputation was severely damaged, at home and internationally. “This is hypocrisy in a cube,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said at the time. He was referring to Kallas’ criticisms of Budapest, which views the EU decision to decouple from the Russian economy as self-harming, while having no impact on the hostilities.

“Orban also accused the EU leadership of “imposing their own ideologies” on the populations of member states, instead of “looking after the interests of the people.”

• EU Bureaucrats ‘Want War With Russia’ – Orban (RT)

The EU leadership is pushing the bloc towards war with Russia, while neglecting the interests of their own people, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed. In an op-ed published in the Magyar Nemzet newspaper on Saturday, Orban warned that the EU is facing a series of crises, including economic challenges and the heightened threat of terrorism. “To make matters worse, the Brussels bureaucracy that lives in a bubble has made a number of bad political decisions in recent years,” the prime minister argued. “Europe is increasingly being dragged into a war, in which it has nothing to gain and everything to lose.” “The bureaucrats in Brussels want this war. They see it as their own, and they want to defeat Russia. They keep sending the money of the European people to Ukraine. They have shot European companies in their feet with sanctions. They have driven up inflation and they have made making a living difficult for millions of European citizens.

The Brussels bureaucrats want this war, they see it as their own, and they want to defeat Russia. They keep sending the money of the European people to Ukraine, they have shot European companies in the foot with sanctions, they have driven up inflation and they have made making a living difficult for millions of European citizens. Orban also accused the EU leadership of “imposing their own ideologies” on the populations of member states, instead of “looking after the interests of the people.” The Hungarian prime minister made his comments shortly after EU leaders nominated Ursula von der Leyen to serve for a third term as the president of the European Commission. At the same time, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was nominated to replace Josep Borrell as the bloc’s top diplomat. Known for her hawkish foreign policy, Kallas has been one of the key champions of tougher sanctions on Russia and more weapons shipments to Ukraine.

She is also an advocate of using frozen Russian assets for aid to Ukraine. Orban is an outspoken critic of the EU’s approach to the Ukraine conflict, favoring a diplomatic settlement through negotiations as opposed to more escalation. Unlike many other NATO members, Hungary has refused to send weapons to Kiev and lobbied against unconditional financial assistance. Orban previously claimed the US and the EU were “the sources” of the “war madness” sweeping the continent, and accused Brussels of dangerous brinkmanship with Russia.

Europe has all these women compensating for a lack of testicles.

• Ursula von der Leyen: Beyond Redemption (NC)

To be accused of impropriety on one occasion may be regarded as a misfortune but to be accused on four occasions looks like carelessness. (With apologies to Oscar Wilde) If there is one individual who, more than anyone else, symbolises the ineptitude of the European Commission then it is surely the Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen (hereafter, VDL). Questions about VDL’s lack of probity first surfaced in 2015 when she was accused of plagiarising her doctoral dissertation. She was eventually cleared of the accusations but as the BBC reported on 9 March 2016, the president of the Hannover Medical School, Christopher Baum, conceded that “Ms von der Leyen’s thesis did contain plagiarised material”, but he added “there had been no intent to deceive”. Her first lucky escape.

VDL’s lack of probity continued while she served as Germany’s Minister of Defence between 2013 and 2019. During her tenure at the ministry, she became embroiled in a scandal regarding payments of €250 million to consultants related to arms contracts. Germany’s Federal Audit Office found that, of the €250 million declared for consultancy fees, only €5.1 million had been spent. Furthermore, one of the consultants was McKinsey & Company, where VDL’s son was an associate, thus raising a possible conflict of interest. It also emerged that messages related to the contracts had been deleted from two of VDL’s mobile phones. Although she was eventually cleared of corruption allegations, questions over her probity during that period remain to this day.

Having survived two scandals, VDL couldn’t believe her luck when in July 2019 Macron, together with Merkel, bypassed the Spitzenkadidaten process and nominated her as Jean-Claude Junker’s successor as head of the European Commission. The Spitzenkadidaten process, through which the lead candidate emerges and is then ratified by the European Parliament, is itself somewhat arcane. In VDL’s case, she was fortunate that the EU couldn’t agree on either of the two lead candidates at the time, Martin Weber and Frans Timmermans. It was thus left to the consummate fixer, Macron, and VDL’s mentor, Merkel, to come to an agreement using that great democratic and transparent tool called the ‘backroom deal’. VDL’s nomination was accepted by the European Council and on 16 July the European Parliament voted to accept her appointment. But it was a close vote. Out of a total of 747 MEPs, only 383 voted for her, 327 voted against, 22 abstained, and one vote was invalid. Under the EU rules, the president of the Commission must be elected with more than 50% of the MEP votes. Thus, she received only 9 votes more than the threshold. Compare this to her predecessor, Juncker, who in 2014 received 422 votes.

After she was appointed president of the European Commission, VDL again became embroiled in controversy, this time involving the procurement of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer. The scandal, which the media dubbed Pfizergate, related to the purchase of 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer vaccine for use across the EU. It transpired that: a) the number of doses was far greater than was required, resulting in a significant number having to be either destroyed or donated; b) the excess doses cost the EU €4 billion; c) the total value of the contract, which Politico reported as being approximately €20 billion, was inflated; and d) the most damaging charge, the contract for the vaccines was negotiated directly between VDL and Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer. The negotiations were conducted using sms messages, which VDL later claimed to have deleted.

The New York Times, which initially carried out the investigation into Pfizergate, brought a lawsuit against the European Commission for failing to provide access to the sms conversations between VDL and Bourla. In Belgium, a lobbyist, Frederic Baldan, filed a criminal complaint citing corruption and the destruction of documents. The Belgian lawsuit was eventually taken over by the European Public Prosecutors Office, which opened a criminal investigation. The outcome of these legal proceedings/investigations is still pending.

“BRICS countries are home to 45.2% of the world’s population, compared to just 9.7% in the G7..”

“Data on oil reserves show that BRICS countries now hold 45.8% of global volumes, while the G7 holds only 3.7%..”

• Why Does Türkiye Want to Join BRICS? (RT)

At the beginning of this month, news of Türkiye’s desire to join BRICS drew global media attention. The announcement was made by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan during his visit to China. “Of course, we would like to become a member of BRICS. Let’s see what we can achieve this year,” said the minister, as quoted by the South China Morning Post. This issue was also discussed at the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in Nizhny Novgorod, attended by Türkiye’s chief diplomat, Hakan Fidan. Türkiye’s desire to join is not entirely new – during the BRICS summit of 2018, where Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a participant, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ankara could join in 2022. However, subsequent events on the world stage apparently delayed that ambition, and Ankara is only now showing renewed interest.

[..] With the confrontation between the countries of the global majority and the West growing, BRICS is considered to be emerging as an alternative to the G7. This is determined by several key reasons related to economic, political, and social aspects. The G7, comprising leading economically developed countries – the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan – has traditionally dominated the international arena, shaping the global economic and political agenda. However, the emergence and development of BRICS have changed this balance, offering an alternative view on global governance and cooperation. BRICS unites the largest developing economies in the world, which together account for a significant share of global GDP and population. Collectively, BRICS countries possess vast resources and potential for economic growth, making them important players on the global stage.

To provide a clearer understanding, let’s compare some indicators. With its five new members, BRICS now accounts for almost 34% of the world’s land area, while the G7 accounts for 16%. BRICS countries are home to 45.2% of the world’s population, compared to just 9.7% in the G7. The combined GDP based on purchasing power parity in BRICS countries is 36.7% of the global total as of 2024, compared to 29.6% for the G7. Data on oil reserves show that BRICS countries now hold 45.8% of global volumes, while the G7 holds only 3.7%. Thus, in many respects, BRICS surpasses the G7. The economic power of BRICS allows these countries to propose alternative models of development and economic cooperation, differing from the Western approaches represented by the G7.

Due to international contradictions and the destructive hegemony of Western countries led by Washington, questions about the need to transform the world order are actively arising. BRICS advocates for a multipolar world, where the balance of power is more evenly distributed among various regions and countries. While the G7 represents the interests of economically developed Western powers, BRICS focuses on the issues and interests of developing nations, which are often marginalized in global politics. This makes BRICS an important platform for countries seeking greater autonomy and independence from Western influence. Moreover, the creation of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) demonstrates the BRICS countries’ desire to establish alternative financial institutions capable of competing with traditional Western institutions, particularly the IMF and the World Bank.

[..] Türkiye shows significant interest in joining BRICS, seeing it as an important step toward enhancing its international influence and economic potential. This aspiration is driven by several key factors related to economic, political, and geostrategic aspects. Possessing one of the largest economies in the region, Türkiye aims to diversify its economic ties and strengthen cooperation with rapidly developing countries. Joining BRICS would give Ankara access to a vast market and opportunities to increase trade and investment with the leading economies of the developing world. This is especially important in the context of global economic challenges and uncertainties, where diversifying partners becomes a key factor for sustainable growth.

Türkiye has repeatedly faced financial difficulties and restrictions imposed by Western financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. Joining BRICS would provide Türkiye with access to the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, allowing it to secure funding on more favorable terms and with fewer political commitments. This is particularly relevant for Türkiye, which seeks to maintain its economic independence and minimize external pressure.

“Suddenly, it is not a cheap fake but reality.”

• The Art of Being Eternally Shocked (Turley)

No one would think of the Beltway as being a place of the naive innocents of our society. Washington is the only ecosystem composed entirely of apex predators. Yet, this week everyone seems to be eternally shocked by what has been obvious for years. The press and pundits are coming off an embarrassing couple of weeks where the Hunter Biden laptop was authenticated in federal court as real. This occurred in the trial of the president’s son almost on the anniversary of a debunked letter of intelligence officials claiming that the laptop appeared to be Russian disinformation. Biden then repeated the claim in the last presidential debates to avoid answering questions over the massive influence peddling scheme of this family revealed by the laptop. After the story was suppressed before the 2020 election, it took years for the media to admit that, oops, the laptop is surprisingly real.

For years, the press and pundits piled on experts who suggested that Covid 19 escaped from a Chinese lab. The New York Times reporter covering the area called it “racist” and implausible. Now, even W.H.O. accepts the lab theory as possible and federal agencies now believe it is the most likely explanation. The response: surprise and spin. This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Justice Department has unlawfully charged hundreds of people with obstruction of an official proceeding after the January 6th riot. For years, objections to the excessive treatment of these cases were dismissed as the view of the radical right. Now, even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson voted to toss out these convictions. Surprise. Whether it was the false story about agents whipping migrants in Texas or the photo op claim in Lafayette Park, false stories were disproven only to have a collective shrug from those who spread them.

For years, the press and pundits have repeated like gospel that Trump had called neo-Nazis “fine people.” At the time, most of us noted that Trump condemned the racists and neo-Nazis and made the statement about fine people on both sides of the controversy over the removal of historic statues. Six years later, Snopes finally decided to do a fact check and, surprise, found that Trump never praised neo-Nazis as fine people. The only person not surprised was Biden who repeated the false story on Friday as true. Heading into the presidential debate, the White House and the media attacked Fox News and other outlets for “cheap fake” videos designed to make the President look confused and feeble. For months, politicians and pundits have insisted that Biden is sharp and commanding in conversations even after Special Counsel Robert Hur cited his decline as a reason for not charging him criminally for the unlawful retention and mishandling of classified material.

On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough stated “start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And F— you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I have known him for years…If it weren’t the truth I wouldn’t say it.” Then the presidential debate happened and, after years of being protected by staff, tens of millions of people watched the president struggle to stay focused and responsive. After the debate, there was total surprise, if not shock, on CNN and MSNBC. Suddenly, it is not a cheap fake but reality.

“Given the multitude of errors at trial and the pending election, it is a near certainty that his request for a stay will be granted.”

“..federal statutes generally require that the highest court in a state rule before the Supreme Court intervenes..”

• Trump Sentencing Will Put Merchan’s Bias in Crosshairs (RCP)

On July 11, acting New York Judge Juan Merchan will sentence former President Donald Trump. Trump was convicted in a New York State court in Manhattan on a novel theory and on facts never before used to secure a conviction in New York. Disregarding at least a dozen reasons his conviction should be reversed, because Trump was convicted of falsifying records with the intent to commit a second crime – illegally interfering in the 2016 presidential election – the falsification was upgraded to a class E felony, comprising 34 counts, one for each entry. The maximum penalty is four years in jail on each count, not to exceed a total of 20 years. New York defendants sentenced to less than a year are usually jailed in notorious Rikers Island, known for its overcrowding, drug problems, and violence. The New York City Council voted to close the facility by 2026. New York Post photos from just a few years ago show the awful conditions there.

For sentences of a year or longer, Trump could be remanded to one of 41 state prisons for men, though most likely to one of the three minimum security facilities. It seems highly unlikely that the U.S. Secret Service would permit Trump to be held in a New York prison. While space might be made available in a federal prison, or a building converted for exclusive use by Trump, it is more likely that he would serve any sentence in home confinement, wearing an ankle monitor. Alternatives to incarceration include probation for up to 10 years, unconditional discharge, or discharge, without probation, conditioned on not committing a further crime during the following three years, and a fine of up to $5,000. Merchan could order that confinement be limited to weekends or nights, and could permit exceptions for political or business activities. He also could split the sentence, for example, requiring 30 days of home confinement followed by conditional discharge.

Even if Trump is conditionally discharged or given probation but is later convicted of another crime, he could be remanded to prison. In setting the sentence, Merchan will consider a mandatory Pre-Sentence Report and the nature of the crime in addition to Trump’s background, age, and health. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg follows a policy of not recommending incarceration for those convicted of non-violent class E felonies. During the trial, Merchan observed that he sees incarceration as a “last resort.”Trump’s indictment for numerous other crimes and his frequent violations of Merchan’s gag order will make unconditional release less likely. However, Trump’s evaluation also will suffer because of recent verdicts that he is liable for civil fraud and defamation, and for presumably refusing to accept guilt during the pre-sentence interview.

If Merchan properly considers the nature of the offense, that similar offenses have not been prosecuted in New York, the “false records” were internal Trump accounts, there was no monetary loss, and the so-called effort to interfere in the 2016 election failed in New York (where Clinton overwhelmingly won), and Trump has no prior record, there should be no jail time or home confinement.However, if Merchan approaches sentencing with the same antagonism to Trump’s rights he brought to the trial, he can be expected to cite a fraud on the national electorate to justify at least a brief period of home confinement. Even then, it would be shocking if Merchan did not stay the sentence until after the election, pending Trump’s appeal. Trump likely will appeal to New York’s intermediate appeals court and will seek to have any sentence stayed pending the outcome of the appeal. Given the multitude of errors at trial and the pending election, it is a near certainty that his request for a stay will be granted.

Trump could also bring an action in federal district court asserting that Bragg and Merchan lacked jurisdiction to accuse him of interfering in a federal election, and he was not given adequate notice of the alleged crimes. It is unlikely a federal judge would get involved prior to a state appeals court. Trump could seek intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court, but federal statutes generally require that the highest court in a state rule before the Supreme Court intervenes. In the end, it seems likely that Trump’s conviction will be overturned. Whether the sentence is harsh or a slap on the wrist, the entire process has been a political prosecution intended to keep Trump off the campaign trail and give Biden the talking point that Trump is a convicted felon. That flagrant abuse of due process is not how our justice or electoral systems are supposed to work.

“Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has told Israel and its allies that a war with no limits will ensue if Israel attempts to invade southern Lebanon..”

• Iran Threatens Israel With ‘Obliterating War’ If It Attacks Lebanon (ZH)

Iran’s mission to the United Nations has put Israel and the world on notice, saying that if Israel launches an all-out war against Hezbollah in Lebanon the whole region will burn. A Friday statement from Iran’s ambassador warned the UN that any “full-scale military aggression” in Lebanon against Hezbollah will mean that “an obliterating war will ensue.” The Iranian statement continued by emphasizing that “all options, including the full involvement of all resistance fronts, are on the table” in a statement posted to X. By “resistance fronts” Tehran means the militias it supports in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen will also ramp up their military activities. On a few occasions, Iraqi Shia militias have launched missiles and drones against southern Israel, as have the Houthis, with limited effect.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged this week that a “seven front war” could open up, in reference to all of Iran’s proxies across the region. For years already, Israeli jets have been regularly attacking ‘Iranian assets’ inside Damascus, also in a continued effort to weaken Assad, despite the presence of Russia’s military primarily in the northwest coastal region. Israel has meanwhile continued to pound Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon, amid continued fears of a bigger war at any moment. The US has even sent amphibious military ships closer to Israel and Lebanon in the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to evacuate Americans if a bigger conflict ensues.

The Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper wrote Saturday, “In the past few hours, warplanes attacked several Hezbollah targets, including a military site for the organisation in the Zabqin area, two operational infrastructure sites in the Khiam area, and a Hezbollah building in the al-Adissa [Odaisseh] area.” Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has told Israel and its allies that a war with no limits will ensue if Israel attempts to invade southern Lebanon. Some Israeli officials fear that the IDF could be stretched too thin if this happens, considering it’s still in the thick of anti-Hamas Gaza operations in the south. Most analysts agree that Hezbollah is far more capable a paramilitary and guerilla force than Hamas, or any other Iran-linked group in the region for that matter. In the 2006 Lebanon war, there were reports that IRGC operatives were on the ground in Lebanon assisting Hezbollah.

“..the Cypriot government has become part of the war and the resistance [Hezbollah] will deal with it as part of the war..”

• Over 80 UK War Planes Deployed From Cyprus To Lebanon Since 7 Oct (Cradle)

The UK has sent over 80 military transport planes to the Lebanese capital of Beirut since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza nine months ago, Declassified UK reported on 28 June. All the flights have gone from the UK’s massive Akrotiri airbase on the nearby island of Cyprus, long a staging post for UK bombing missions in West Asia. Declassified UK notes that the number of UK military flights to Beirut has risen dramatically in recent months. The group tracked 25 flights in April and May and 14 so far in June. Flights from the UK base take around 45 minutes to reach Beirut, which Israel has increasingly threatened to bomb in a possible full-scale war with the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah. The Ministry of Defense declined to disclose the number of UK military flights to Lebanon since the start of the war on 7 October or their purpose. A defense source told Declassified UK that the flights “have been primarily for the purpose of facilitating senior military engagement” with the Lebanese army.

But it is widely assumed the planes are carrying weapons to Beirut to arm anti-Hezbollah militias. The US, UK, and Israel would presumably use these militias to attack Hezbollah from within the country in the case of an Israeli invasion from the south. Declassified UK notes that nearly every Royal Air Force flight to Lebanon has been the Voyager KC mark 2, which can carry a payload of 45 tons and 291 personnel or provide air-to-air refueling. Another flight involved a vast C-17 cargo plane. Israeli threats to invade Lebanon have accelerated in tandem with the increase in flights. Israeli military leaders have increasingly warned of a Lebanon campaign to push Hezbollah away from the border and past the Litani River. Last week, the Israeli army approved “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon,” and the US pledged to support Israel with weapons if a full-scale war breaks out.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned the resistance movement will use its massive rocket and missile arsenal to hit targets across Israel in a “total war” if Tel Aviv decides to launch an invasion. Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus, noting its role as a US, UK, and Israeli staging ground. “The Cypriot government must be warned that opening Cypriot airports and bases for the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon means that the Cypriot government has become part of the war and the resistance [Hezbollah] will deal with it as part of the war,” he said. Nasrallah’s threat appeared to include the Akrotiri base, which lies in territory retained by the UK when Cyprus gained independence in 1960. The territory now hosts vast military and intelligence hubs for Britain and the US, Declassified UK notes.

“With the Chevron doctrine overturned, any future regulatory attempts to impose such burdens will require explicit and unambiguous congressional authorization..”

• Chevron and Bitcoin (Crossman)

Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, delivered a decisive opinion that dismantles Chevron deference. The Court held that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires courts to exercise independent judgment when interpreting statutes, rejecting the notion that ambiguities in law should default to agency interpretations. “Chevron defies the command of the APA that ‘the reviewing court’—not the agency whose action it reviews—is to ‘decide all relevant questions of law’ and ‘interpret . . . statutory provisions,’” Roberts wrote. “It requires a court to ignore, not follow, ‘the reading the court would have reached’ had it exercised its independent judgment. … Chevron cannot be reconciled with the APA… .” Slip Op., at 21 (emphasis added).

The ruling emphasizes that statutory ambiguities do not automatically delegate interpretive authority to agencies. Instead, courts must use traditional tools of statutory construction to determine the best reading of a statute, ensuring that agencies do not exceed their conferred powers. The implications of this ruling extend far beyond administrative law, reaching into the heart of the Bitcoin mining industry. Much like the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA, which curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s overreach, this ruling reinforces the need for clear congressional authorization before agencies can impose significant regulatory burdens. For the Bitcoin mining industry, this decision is a clear win. Regulatory uncertainty has long been a thorn in the side of Bitcoin miners, who rely on predictable and stable access to power and other resources. By curbing the ability of agencies to unilaterally expand their regulatory reach, the Court has created a more favorable environment for Bitcoin mining operations.

Bitcoin miners have often been at the mercy of shifting regulatory landscapes, which can dramatically impact their operations. For instance, stringent environmental regulations targeting power consumption could have severely constrained the industry. With the Chevron doctrine overturned, any future regulatory attempts to impose such burdens will require explicit and unambiguous congressional authorization, followed by detailed judicial scrutiny. This decision also invigorates the major question doctrine, which posits that significant regulatory actions with vast economic and political implications require clear congressional authorization. This doctrine can be a powerful tool for Bitcoin miners and other industries to challenge regulatory overreach, ensuring that agencies cannot impose wide-ranging policies without clear legislative backing.

CHEVRON GOES DOWN!

This is a great clip on the Chevron Doctrine. pic.twitter.com/4nkhbeA6GK

— eve (@eveforamerica) June 29, 2024

“Admittance is only granted to the select few who pay the massively extortionate ticket price..”

• Banksy ‘Launches’ Migrant Boat Stunt At Glastonbury Festival (MN)

The ‘street’ artist Banksy carried out a stunt at the now uber trendy Glastonbury Festival Friday night by launching a mock-up small boat complete with dummy migrants into the crowd. The Guardian reports that many in the crowd thought it was part of the band Idles’ set given that their songs are all about lefty political positions such as the idea that limiting mass illegal immigration is right wing and evil. The report notes, however, that Banksy was behind the stunt stating “The raft, a reference to the small boats carrying migrants across the Channel that have been such a high-profile target of Rishi Sunak’s immigration policy, was crowdsurfed through the thousands-strong Other stage crowd, which Idles were headlining on Friday night.” Given that Sunak has done practically nothing to prevent the boats and the Conservative government has actively incentivised mass illegal immigration for years now, you’d be forgiven for thinking the stunt was some sort of endorsement.

One of the most cringe, out of touch and middle class things I’ve seen at
Glastonbury. Crowdsurfing a lifeboat representing illegal migrants.

Being open borders at a music festival which has a gigantic fence & very high security. So edgy. pic.twitter.com/pJxwTUNnww

— Chris Rose (@ArchRose90) June 29, 2024

Indeed, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what the point of it was. What is the crowd cheering about here? The report further notes that the boat was ‘launched’ during a song called Danny Nedelko, which contains the following lyrics: “My blood brother is an immigrant, a beautiful immigrant. My blood brother’s Freddie Mercury. A Nigerian mother of three. He’s made of bones, he’s made of blood. He’s made of flesh, he’s made of love. He’s made of you, he’s made of me. Unity. Fear leads to panic, panic leads to pain. Pain leads to anger, anger leads to hate.” The report also notes that “Migration is a major theme at this year’s Glastonbury festival, with a new area dedicated to the topic.” Mega cringe. It continues, “Entrants to ‘Terminal 1’ must answer a question from the UK government’s citizenship test for prospective migrants.”

The message being that having some form of secure border and vetting system is oppressive… or something. If people manage to pass the test they’re then treated to “music by representatives from Notting Hill carnival and Bristol’s St Paul’s carnival, alongside visual art by global artists including Love Watts, Yoshi Sodeoka and the Turner prize winner Mark Wallinger.” No thanks then. Admittance is only granted to the select few who pay the massively extortionate ticket price and can afford to spend more than the majority of people earn in an entire month once inside. It’s basically full of metropolitan shitlib ‘creatives’ and influencers with trust funds and disposable incomes. So it’s the perfect venue to engage in empty virtue signalling stunts.

CO2

"It's just total nonsense."

Energy expert Alex Epstein debunks the bare-faced lie that we're living through the hottest period in Earth's history.

"They're trying to make our CO2 levels today, and our temperatures today, seem unprecedented… We're one tenth the CO2 that we've… pic.twitter.com/PU9szvqwCO

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) June 29, 2024

Whale

Not enough people are talking about how magnificent and terrifying this is pic.twitter.com/Z6zYVlvdyJ

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 29, 2024

Cracks

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade…or art

David Zinn has been creating original artwork in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, since 1987.

Armed with a box of sidewalk chalk, he turns cracks into works of art.pic.twitter.com/T3CdMxNgNY

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 29, 2024

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Debt Rattle December 12 2020

Dec 122020

December 12, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: AstraZeneca, Banksy, FDA, Hunter Biden, indoor dining, ivermectin, M4A, Pfizer, SCOTUS, Sputnik V, YouTube 26 Responses »

Laura Gilpin The Rio Grande Yields Its Surplus to the Sea 1947

• UK Scientists Identify Drugs That May Help Severe COVID Cases (G.)

• AstraZeneca To Collaborate With Russia’s Sputnik V On COVID19 Vaccine (RT)

• FDA Authorizes Pfizer’s Coronavirus Vaccine For Emergency Use (JTN)

• More Than Half Of New York’s Restaurants Are In Danger Of Closing (Eater)

• Gov. Cuomo Suspends Indoor Dining In New York City (Fox)

• US Supreme Court Rejects Texas Challenge To Election (JTN)

• Sometimes Life Really is Like a Bad Dream (Kunstler)

• Media, Big Tech Hunter Biden Laptop Story Not A Bug, But A Feature (Malic)

• The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire (Taibbi)

• Pandemic Exposes Global Fault Lines And How Australia Rose Above Them (SMH)

• CBO: Medicare for All Could Cover Everyone for $650 Billion Less Per Year (CD)

• Email To Hunter Biden Raises Fresh Questions About His Tax Dealings (NBC)

• £350,000 House Taken Off Market After Banksy Paints Mural On It (ArtN)

Promising. But I would focus on drugs that prevent infection. Ivermectin.

• UK Scientists Identify Drugs That May Help Severe COVID Cases (G.)

The research, by the global Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care (GenOMICC) consortium, compared the DNA of 2,244 critically ill Covid patients from 208 UK intensive care units with the genetic make-up of healthy individuals in a control group. The analysis revealed key differences in five genes, named IFNAR2, TYK2, OAS1, DPP9 and CCR2, which partially explained why the sick patients became critically ill. Having identified the troublesome genes, the team was able to predict what drug treatments were likely to help. One drug that holds promise for future Covid treatment is a rheumatoid arthritis medicine called baricitinib. This reduces the activity of TYK2, which the research suggests will help reduce dangerous levels of inflammation in the lungs. Another is an antibody-based medicine that blocks CCR2 and is in clinical trials for psoriasis.

Beyond calming down the immune system, drugs may help invigorate the body’s ability to fight the virus. Some compounds are known to boost the activity of Ifnar2 and are likely to protect people from serious infections by mimicking proteins released by the immune system to fight viruses. However, these would probably need to be given early on to have a substantial impact, the scientists said. “This is a wonderful breakthrough, really, in understanding what causes the severe disease,” said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London and a co-author on the study. The findings have been shared with groups around the world who are running clinical trials to assess whether drugs that are already in use for other conditions can help save patients with severe Covid-19 disease.

Baillie said that drugs highlighted by the research should now become the top priority for inclusion in clinical trials. “Making those choices really matters,” he said. “If we choose the right intervention to try next in clinical trials then we’ll find out that it works sooner and that could save tens of thousands of lives.” The study is published in Nature. People with Covid-19 tend to develop symptoms as the virus multiplies in their body, but those who die often succumb to excessive lung inflammation which is driven by the immune system. Doctors running Oxford University’s Recovery trial discovered in the summer that the cheap steroid dexamethasone slashed deaths among patients needing supplemental oxygen by up to a third, by damping down the immune system.

But more drugs are needed to help patients who do not respond to the steroid, Baillie said. “Two-thirds of them are still dying even treated with dexamethasone, so there’s a long way to go in preventing that inflammation, and we really urgently need new targets,” he said.

“It remains to be seen how the Western media will cover the news that the UK’s flagship formula is turning to the East in a bid to improve its efficacy.”

• AstraZeneca To Collaborate With Russia’s Sputnik V On COVID19 Vaccine (RT)

British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has announced a partnership with the team behind the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine to explore the potential of combining its own experimental formula with the pioneering Russian product. The agreement, revealed on Friday morning, came after the Russian scientists took to Twitter to propose that AstraZeneca try the combination. They said it was worth experimenting with the model preferred by Moscow researchers and using two different types of injection, rather than relying on the same one twice, as AstraZeneca has done previously. In a statement to the press, the British company unveiled “a clinical trial programme to assess the safety and immunogenicity of a combination of AZD1222, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and Sputnik V, developed by the Russian Gamaleya Research institute.”

They added that “combinations of different Covid-19 vaccines may be an important step in generating wider protection through a stronger immune response and better accessibility.” Responding to the news, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which financed the Gamaleya Institute’s research, wrote that it was “an example of Russia’s proactive approach: it has not only created one of the world’s most effective vaccines to date against the coronavirus, but is ready to share Sputnik V vectors with those willing to produce vaccines using the two-vector technology.” “This unique example of cooperation between scientists from different countries in jointly fighting coronavirus will play a decisive role in achieving a final victory over the pandemic globally,” Kirill Dmitriev, the fund’s CEO added, saying that Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is already saving people’s lives in Russia today through a large-scale vaccination programme.

“The decision by AstraZeneca to carry out clinical trials using one of two vectors of Sputnik V in order to increase its own vaccine’s efficacy is an important step towards uniting efforts in the fight against the pandemic.” [..] The UK media has previously drawn criticism for its coverage of Sputnik V. Earlier this week, the BBC reported that it had been “rushed out to wary Russians,” while remaining far more positive about the start of immunizations in the country using US pharma giant Pfizer’s vaccine. It remains to be seen how the Western media will cover the news that the UK’s flagship formula is turning to the East in a bid to improve its efficacy.

Warp speed approval. But more research needs to be done on vitamin D?

• FDA Authorizes Pfizer’s Coronavirus Vaccine For Emergency Use (JTN)

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and authorized it for emergency use in the United States. It is the first vaccine to be approved for use in the U.S., and it followed an FDA advisory committee’s endorsement of the shot for people age 16 and older. The vaccine was found to be 95% effective, with only mild side effects. Earlier Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had said that people could be receiving the vaccine as early as next Monday. It was previously approved for use in the United Kingdom and Canada. President Trump announced the approval on Twitter, thanking all the scientists and medical professionals who participated in the Operation Warp Speed project that gave rise to the fastest vaccine development in history.

Remember yesterday’s quote:

“..communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”

• More Than Half Of New York’s Restaurants Are In Danger Of Closing (Eater)

Across the country, restaurants have been decimated by the pandemic. But according to a new survey conducted by the New York State Restaurant Association, in partnership with the National Restaurant Association, New York restaurants are hurting more from the economic crisis in comparison to the industry nationwide. According to the survey — which polled 6,000 restaurant operators, including 238 in New York, over the last two weeks of November – 54 percent of NY restauranteurs say it is likely that they will close in the next six months if another federal relief package does not come through, compared to 37 percent nationwide. Nearly 60 percent of NY operators say they are considering going into hibernation until the pandemic is over, compared to 36 percent nationwide.

The operating landscape has been extremely tough for NYC restaurateurs throughout the pandemic. Restaurants in the city are currently operating at 25 percent indoor capacity with a 10 p.m. nightly curfew, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo has warned that indoor dining could be completely banned starting next week. Overall, the National Restaurant Association estimates that one in six restaurants across the country have already permanently shuttered due to the economic crisis amid the pandemic. If the estimate is accurate, that would mean that 8,333 restaurants, including 4,500 establishments in NYC, have permanently shut down so far, according to the New York State Restaurant Association. However, the true number of restaurant closures during the pandemic may not be fully known for years.

Warped logic:

“Just 1.43% of cases were traced to bars and restaurants. Cuomo said he opted to shutter indoor dining despite the relatively low proportion of cases because it was an area where officials “can actually make a difference..”

• Gov. Cuomo Suspends Indoor Dining In New York City (Fox)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday announced that indoor dining would be shut down again in New York City, even as the state released contract-tracing data which showed bars and restaurants accounted for just 1.43% of COVID-19 cases in the three months ending in November. “Indoor dining will close in New York City starting Monday,” Cuomo announced, citing an increase in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. “Hospitalizations have not stabilized, and with a rising infection rate and NYC’s density, this means that indoor dining is too high of a risk,” he said. “Takeout, delivery and outdoor dining will continue.” Cuomo released a detailed breakdown of sources of COVID-19 exposure during a press briefing on Friday. The contact-tracing data was derived from a statewide analysis of 46,000 COVID-19 cases from September through November.

Private household and social gatherings were responsible for 73.84% of the cases statewide, while health care delivery accounted for 7.81% of cases and higher education accounted for slight more than 2%. Just 1.43% of cases were traced to bars and restaurants. Cuomo said he opted to shutter indoor dining despite the relatively low proportion of cases because it was an area where officials “can actually make a difference” in reducing COVID-19’s spread. But the decision drew immediate criticism from NYC restaurant groups, who have warned for months that Cuomo’s restrictions would cripple the industry. “While public health and safety must be paramount, Governor Cuomo’s announcement to once again shut down indoor dining in New York City is at odds with the State’s own data that’s been presented as driving these decisions, and it will be the last straw for countless more restaurants and jobs,” the NYC Hospitality Alliance said in a statement.

New York City was one of the hardest-hit areas of the country by the virus, and saw strict lockdowns that shuttered businesses, schools and restaurants. But in recent months the city has been taking baby-step attempts at reopening, with limited indoor dining and a few days of in-person schooling a week at some of the city’s public schools. New York City restaurants, which make up a key pillar of the city’s economy, were permitted to resume indoor dining at 25% capacity on Sept. 30 after months of being shut down, while schools have partially reopened this week after being shut down at the end of November.

The sides are growing further apart, as the inevitable process continues. Curious. The 18 AGs who signed with Texas are now accused of sedition.

• US Supreme Court Rejects Texas Challenge To Election (JTN)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday evening rejected the state of Texas’ challenge to the 2020 election results in four battleground states, extinguishing one of the last remaining hopes for President Trump’s campaign to reverse Joe Biden’s lead in those states. “The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution,” the justices ruled. “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.” Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissenting statement, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. “In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction,” Alito wrote. “…I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.”

“..yet another seditious conspiracy among the swamplings..”

• Sometimes Life Really is Like a Bad Dream (Kunstler)

If you were President DJ Trump, would you suspect that the CIA might be playing dangerous games with you (and by extension, the nation)? Are you aware that China has a 75 percent investment stake in the holding company that now owns Dominion? Are there grounds to suppose that China somehow interfered in the election? With assistance from an eager Democratic Party and the CIA?Would Mr. Trump, of all people, let such a thing stand? Especially considering the evidence that the putative “winner” of the election, Joe Biden, the kid from Scranton, PA, was up to his eyeballs, with the rest of his family, in Chinese funny-money? (Not to mention money from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, and other lands?)

Note: information about this evidence gleaned from Hunter Biden’s forgotten laptop was deliberately suppressed in October by the major newspapers and cable news stations, with help from Facebook, Twitter, and Google, along with a claque of “fifty former and current intel officials” led John Brennan, who denounced the reports from The New York Post in a public letter as “Russian disinformation” — yet another seditious conspiracy among the swamplings. Are you aware that in the weeks since the election there have been unusual movements of US military aircraft around the country, including C-130 “Hercules” troop carrier planes? And that the navy has two carrier groups out along the Pacific Coast and three strung along the Atlantic coast? That’s what I hear. Remember, the president cleaned house at the top of the Pentagon this fall, and probably not for nothing.

Sounds like preparation for something… some extraordinary executive action to prevent the national security risk known as Joe Biden from being sworn-in as president — in the absence of anything else in a strictly constitutional way that would keep that from happening, like a Supreme Court decision that would order the rare passing on of the disputed 2020 election to the House of Representatives for resolution, with a strong statistical likelihood that the body would re-elect Mr. Trump. These are the sorts of things I imagine the Supreme Court justices might be palavering about and weighing over their sherry in the comfortable back room of their august clubhouse. There is, of course, the likelihood that such a momentous decision to send the vote to the House would provoke a violent, batshit crazy response from the Democratic Party’s street warriors, BLM and Antifa — thus the C-130 flights perhaps deploying troops around the country. This time, expect the Black Blocs to get their asses kicked, and swiftly. Expect also a mind-blowing raft of arrests of political celebrities on charges like treason. Does it sound like a bad dream? Yeah, kind of does. But there it is.

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action,” as James Bond author Ian Fleming famously wrote. What would the 1600th time be?”

• Media, Big Tech Hunter Biden Laptop Story Not A Bug, But A Feature (Malic)

For the past four years, the mainstream media has pushed the baseless ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory with absolute impunity, because it catered to the narrative by the Democrats about why they lost the 2016 election and served to delegitimize Trump. Every anonymous accusation, from the Steele Dossier and “Russian bounties” in Afghanistan to the Atlantic smear piece about Trump insulting US troops, was treated as gospel truth. Meanwhile, any attempt by the president to push back was denounced as an “attack” on free press. Yet these very same paladins of “our democracy” cheered when the New York Post was censored by Twitter, in an actual attack on free speech.

Never mind that the paper was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton – whom Democrats now worship as some sort of hero, because of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s musical retcon of history – there was zero collegial solidarity on display. Less than that, even: you had Jake Tapper of CNN “helpfully” advising the Post to delete their “offending” tweet in order to “end the whole thing [in] 15 seconds.” Another CNN megastar, Christiane Amanpour, had once infamously attacked Trump for “delegitimizing the press” and insisted that “an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” But when it came to the Hunter Biden story, Amanpour was perfectly happy to let the New York Post rot in Big Tech jail.

Asked by a Republican guest why she wasn’t actually doing journalism when it came to the Biden laptop, Amanpour indignantly responded “we’re not going to do your work for you.” The Freudian slip suggested Amanpour and CNN were busy doing someone else’s work – and it should be obvious at this point who that is. If you’re still expecting an apology, explanation of soul-searching from the Big Tech and mainstream media, you’re either terminally naive or simply not paying attention. Look at how they’re covering the Hunter Biden story, now that they have no choice. The documents were “made public – but went largely unnoticed” prior to the election, says the Daily Beast, that most mainstream of tabloids.

Notice the passive voice, as if the documents didn’t go “unnoticed” only by their readers, because the Beast and its fellow-travelers deliberately refused to notice them. Mind you, the suppression of the Hunter Biden story is just the most blatant example of media misbehavior. The partisan slant, selective reporting and “fact-checking,” and downright lies by omission are legion at this point. “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action,” as James Bond author Ian Fleming famously wrote. What would the 1600th time be? Now consider that these are the very same media and Big Tech who declared Biden won the election fair and square, while dealing with any claims otherwise in the exact same manner as they did with the Hunter laptop story: label as “disinformation,” facetiously “fact-check” or censor outright.

They apparently believe they can dictate what Americans are allowed to say or think, and even determine reality itself. They believe they can get away with it because most people, even Republicans whining about how this is unfair, continue to implicitly accept this arrangement. After all, it’s one of those“forms to which they are accustomed.” I wouldn’t count on that being the state of affairs much longer, though. There appears to be a growing realization among Trump supporters that “if only the truth is told, everything will sort itself out” is a trope of 1980s Hollywood, and that the axis of mainstream media and Silicon Valley has no ethics beyond power. The end justifies the means, and the only morality is who/whom wields it. What happens to America if this realization reaches critical mass is anybody’s guess. God willing, there won’t be blood. Either way, the Axis of Deceit will have only itself to blame. Newton’s Third Law is as implacable in politics as it is in physics; the longer you trespass against reality, the harder it will push back.

“..it will start to make sense that Trump voters in Guy Fawkes masks are now roaming the continent like buffalo.”

• The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire (Taibbi)

Start with the headline: Supporting the 2020 U.S. Election. YouTube in its company blog can’t even say, “Banning Election Conspiracy Theories.” They have to employ the Orwellian language of politicians — Healthy Forests, Clear Skies, “Supported” Elections — because Google and YouTube are now political actors, who can’t speak plainly any more than a drunk can walk in a straight line. The company wrote Wednesday: “Yesterday was the safe-harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election… For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors.”

This announcement came down at roughly the same time Hunter Biden was announcing that his “tax affairs” were under investigation by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware. Part of that investigation concerned whether or not he had violated tax and money laundering laws in, as CNN put it, “foreign countries, principally China.” Information suggestive of money-laundering and tax issues in China and other countries was in the cache of emails reported in the New York Post story blocked by Twitter and Facebook. [..] How important was that Hunter Biden story? That’s debatable, but the fact that tech companies blocked it, and professional journalists gleefully lied about it, has a direct bearing on YouTube’s decision now to bar Trumpist freakouts over the election results.

If you want a population of people to stop thinking an election was stolen from them, it’s hard to think of a worse method than ordering a news blackout after it’s just been demonstrated that the last major blackout was a fraud. Close your eyes and imagine what would have happened if Facebook and Google had banned 9/11 Truth on the advice of intelligence officials in the Bush years, and it will start to make sense that Trump voters in Guy Fawkes masks are now roaming the continent like buffalo.

“America will emerge from this coronavirus to discover what its national security experts already know. It has lost its power advantage over China.”

• Pandemic Exposes Global Fault Lines And How Australia Rose Above Them (SMH)

Instead of the official projection of a worst-case scenario of 150,000 dead, Australia has suffered 908 deaths in the pandemic to date. Every country, every state faced the same fateful moment of awesome responsibility and awful choice. The pandemic struck the countries of the world like an avenging angel, wreaking havoc on the unready and the uncaring, the slothful and the prideful, and re-ordered the world. After an uncertain start, Australia ultimately made the right choices. Its leaders, yes, but also its people. The pandemic was a severe test of leadership, and of nation-state capability, but also of social cohesion and public culture. The whole of the people had to accept some personal inconvenience for the common good. In successful countries they did; in failed ones they did not.

And the countries that met the public health test had a much better chance of meeting the economic test. Australia’s responses have elevated it into a small elite of competent countries. “Our system has performed impressively and that puts a spring in your step and makes other countries interested in you,” says the director of the Lowy Institute, Michael Fullilove. “And that’s a positive. The prestige of smaller, well governed countries has risen, mainly in our part of the world – Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand, South Korea, Australia.” The most dramatic effects have been in the biggest powers. “Nations cohere and flourish on the belief that their institutions can foresee calamity, arrest its impact and restore stability,” Henry Kissinger said in April. “When the COVID-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed.”

One of the foremost, shockingly, is the United States itself. The virus exposed its divided political system as not just an entertaining foible but as a deep national liability. Political division paralysed policy. In many countries politics is regarded as a sport, a game. In a crisis, we now learn, politics literally is a matter of life and death for the people and of national destiny for the country. Even today, nine months on, the US cannot agree to stop the needless mass death nor agree on fiscal policy. With the daily death toll outstripping the 9/11 count, the US Congress remains deadlocked in negotiations for a second economic stimulus. It negotiates, sometimes month to month, sometimes week to week, the funding to “keep the government open”. The asinine has become the norm.

The US President is surrounded by men with guns for his protection. But they cannot defend against bovine stupidity and political obduracy. The President caught the virus. Donald Trump bears responsibility for his negligence. The pandemic spelt the end of his presidency. But he is the inheritor of America’s deepening crisis of overpoliticisation, not its author. America will emerge from this coronavirus to discover what its national security experts already know. It has lost its power advantage over China. They are not equal in every way, but China is now America’s peer. And its rival. The US is a much diminished power.

Problem solved?!

• CBO: Medicare for All Could Cover Everyone for $650 Billion Less Per Year (CD)

The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday released a report examining the costs associated with universal healthcare proposals that are based on Medicare’s fee-for-service program and found that implementing a single-payer health insurance program in the United States would not only guarantee coverage for every person in the country but would also reduce overall healthcare spending nationwide. In the words of researcher Matt Bruenig—founder and president of the progressive think tank People’s Policy Project who called the CBO’s working paper (pdf) on the topic “more exhaustive than any other recent study on the subject”—the new analysis shows that administrative costs under a single-payer healthcare system “will be lower than what even the most rabid Medicare for All supporters have traditionally claimed.”

According to Bruenig, “Modeling the cost of a single-payer program is relatively straightforward. You begin with the status quo healthcare system and then make educated guesses about the following questions: • How many more units of healthcare services will be demanded and supplied when price barriers are removed? • How much more efficient will health insurance administration be after the enrollment and payment systems are radically simplified? • How much money will be saved by reducing the payment rates for healthcare providers and drug companies? In its analysis, the CBO looked at several distinct single-payer designs and determined that four such systems—fully implemented by 2030—would save anywhere from $42 billion to $743 billion that year alone.

Bruenig explained that the CBO option that most closely resembles current Medicare for All proposals is the one based on low payment rates and low cost sharing, which would generate $650 billion in savings in 2030. If one were to add long-term support and services to that option, as many current Medicare for All proposals do, savings would fall to about $300 billion, he noted.

First they all bury the story, and now even NBC is after Hunter? ¿Qué pasa?

• Email To Hunter Biden Raises Fresh Questions About His Tax Dealings (NBC)

Hunter Biden’s former business partner sent him an email in 2017 saying he did not disclose on his tax returns $400,000 in income from the Ukrainian natural gas company where he sat on the board, according to a copy of the email obtained by NBC News. The message from Eric Schwerin, then president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, says Hunter Biden would need to “amend” his 2014 returns to reflect the “unreported” income, according to the copy of the email. “In 2014 you joined the Burisma board and we still need to amend your 2014 returns to reflect the unreported Burisma income,” says the email dated Jan. 16, 2017. The email goes on to note that Hunter Biden, who is now the subject of a federal tax probe, netted more than $1.2 million for the year.

The earnings include the $400,000 from Burisma as well as income from Rosemont Seneca Advisors and a legal firm. The email was made available by Rudy Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello. Costello has said he was given a copy of one of Hunter Biden’s hard drives from the owner of a computer repair shop in Delaware. NBC News did not have access to the full drive. It is not known what, if any, action Hunter Biden took in response to the email. Federal prosecutors in Delaware are scrutinizing Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China as part of a tax probe that began in 2018, according to a source familiar with the inquiry. There’s no indication that his work for the Burisma national gas company is part of the investigation, but the email obtained by NBC News raises fresh questions about Hunter Biden’s tax affairs.

Was this the steepest street in Britain?

• £350,000 House Taken Off Market After Banksy Paints Mural On It (ArtN)

What do you do when your two-bed semi detached house that you are selling for £345,000 becomes the site of a world-famous work of art overnight? That is the conundrum now facing the Makin family whose Bristol home was adorned with a Banksy mural in the early hours of Thursday morning. Alex Makin, whose mother owns the house, tells The Art Newspaper the family is taking the property off the market while it considers its next steps. “The main thing is to try and protect the work because it’s such an iconic piece—a) because it’s Banksy and b) because of the year, it’s Covid-related,” Makin says of the work, which shows an older woman sneezing with such force her dentures have been catapulted out of her mouth. Within hours of the work being painted, Makin had the mural covered with a Perspex sheet.

He adds: “We’re not really sure what we’re going to do at the moment. It would be an amazing thing to keep in the family, but we also want to make sure it is properly protected. It’s been a fairly tough year for my mum, so this feels like a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.” Banksy’s pieces have been known to double the price of a property, while one art market specialist valued this latest piece at £3m-£5m in The Sun newspaper. However, Robert Pain, the client director of Bristol estate agents NEXA, offers a more cautionary valuation. “It’s a conundrum, though a wonderful conundrum to have: everyone wants a Banksy on their wall but does it alter what the bricks and mortar are worth?” he asks. “Ultimately, is it a work of art on brick, potentially worth a million. If so, do you remove it and spend £60,000 rebuilding the wall?”

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Street corner in Athens.

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Debt Rattle October 28 2020

Oct 282020

October 28, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: ACB, antibodies, Banksy, Bobulinski, Covid19, disinformation, FARA, Hunter Biden, immunity, Joe Biden, laptop 34 Responses »

Gustav Klimt Pine forest I 1901

• Last Round-up at the Wokester Corral (Jim Kunstler)

• Multi-Organ Impairment In Low-Risk Individuals With Long COVID (medrxiv)

• UK Study Finds Evidence Of Waning Antibody Immunity To COVID19 Over Time (R.)

• Spanish Doctors In First Walkout In 25 Years To Protest New COVID19 Order (ZH)

• White House Watch: Biden 49%, Trump 47% (Rasmussen)

• Don’t Believe The Polls – Trump Is Winning (Hill)

• Bobulinski Says He Met Joe Biden Twice In Connection With Chinese Venture (JTN)

• How The Authenticity of Hunter’s Laptop Became Immaterial (Turley)

• Biden Calls Russia #1 Threat But Slammed Romney For Saying It In 2012 (JTN)

• Senate Investigates Hunter Biden’s Failure to Register as Foreign Agent (RCI)

• The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich (CJ Hopkins)

• ‘Covid First’ China Is Trumping ‘America First’ In Economic Recovery (Roach)

• Banksy’s Foolproof Plan for Dealing With Anyone Who Steals His Art (Y!)

• Newly Sworn-In ACB Immediately Orders All Women To Wear Handmaid Outfit (BBee)

Kim Dotcom Joe Biden

In light of the @JoeBiden corruption scandal unfolding in the United States I have recorded a short message to the New Zealand government which raided my home and destroyed my business for @JoeBiden and his Hollywood donors. Background information: https://t.co/3X6XEAsyxK pic.twitter.com/YymZjZyVeV

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 28, 2020

“…a free society is obliged to tolerate the expression of disagreeable ideas up to the limit, as the Supreme Court put it, of “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

• Last Round-up at the Wokester Corral (Jim Kunstler)

I have some questions for former friends who have dumped me on account of my support for Mr. Trump’s re-election — which is mostly a vote to prevent the Democratic Party and its fellow travelers from running the government. On the whole, these former friends are college-educated, mature in experience, and cultured. Some of them are well-acquainted with history, which is to say, they ought to know better than to support the obviously illiberal motives of the political Left. Are you against the principle of free speech? The Democratic Party is. They used to be champions of the First Amendment; now they want to make it conditional on ideas and sentiments they support. Contrary ideas are to be labeled “hate speech,” and suppressed, along with anything that might hurt somebody’s feelings.

How did you come to such a complete misunderstanding of what free speech means? Namely, that a free society is obliged to tolerate the expression of disagreeable ideas up to the limit, as the Supreme Court put it, of “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” I will answer my own question partially by saying: you have been programmed against free speech by what used to be the very vehicles of it, the newspapers and TV News channels, which have, amazingly, come out against freedom of the press and turned into propaganda outlets for Woke Progressivism and its illiberal agenda — thereby inadvertently committing suicide of the entire profession. We’ve seen this acted-out most vividly just the past week in the social media companies’ efforts to suppress all news of the Biden family’s global business operations, along with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and other leading news organizations that Americans used to depend on to know what was happening in the nation.

This is especially unforgivable during a national election. Did you support the movement on campus in recent years to shut down events featuring speakers such as Charles Murray (The Bell Curve), Heather Mac Donald of City Journal, Dinesh D’Souza, and many others who represented not-so-Woke ideas that “offended” you? Since when are your feelings so special that they negate the open exchange of ideas in the places that used to be dedicated to it, the universities? Should higher education only entertain ideas that you and your cohorts approve of? What if, in some future, a different cohort gains control of higher education and seeks to exclude your ideas on the grounds that they’re “offensive” (i.e. they just don’t like them)?

Are you in favor of a politicized Department of Justice and CIA? That is what the Democratic Party’s Resistance League deliberately brought about during the 2016 election, and they continue to promote it. Is it okay for bureaucrats to break the law to disable their political adversaries? That was the essence of the RussiaGate ruse. Former employees of those agencies, such as ex-CIA chief John Brennan and Andrew Weissmann, who ran the Mueller investigation, to this day still hype “Russian collusion” falsehoods to deflect attention from their own misdeeds. You let them get away with that.

201 participants, median age 44, 70% women, large majority not high risk. Only 18% hospitalized. Median time 140 days from first symptom: 99% suffered at least four symptoms. 42% suffered at least ten. In 66%, injuries in at least one organ, in 25% in at least two organs.

• Multi-Organ Impairment In Low-Risk Individuals With Long COVID (medrxiv)

Background Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has disproportionately affected older individuals and those with underlying medical conditions. Research has focused on short-term outcomes in hospital, and single organ involvement. Consequently, impact of long COVID (persistent symptoms three months post-infection) across multiple organs in low-risk individuals is yet to be assessed.

Methods An ongoing prospective, longitudinal, two-centre, observational study was performed in individuals symptomatic after recovery from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Symptoms and organ function (heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas, spleen) were assessed by standardised questionnaires (EQ-5D-5L, Dyspnoea-12), blood investigations and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging, defining single and multi-organ impairment by consensus definitions.

Findings Between April and September 2020, 201 individuals (mean age 44 (SD 11.0) years, 70% female, 87% white, 31% healthcare workers) completed assessments following SARS-CoV-2 infection (median 140, IQR 105-160 days after initial symptoms). The prevalence of pre-existing conditions (obesity: 20%, hypertension: 6%; diabetes: 2%; heart disease: 4%) was low, and only 18% of individuals had been hospitalised with COVID-19. Fatigue (98%), muscle aches (88%), breathlessness (87%), and headaches (83%) were the most frequently reported symptoms. Ongoing cardiorespiratory (92%) and gastrointestinal (73%) symptoms were common, and 42% of individuals had ten or more symptoms.

There was evidence of mild organ impairment in heart (32%), lungs (33%), kidneys (12%), liver (10%), pancreas (17%), and spleen (6%). Single (66%) and multi-organ (25%) impairment was observed, and was significantly associated with risk of prior COVID-19 hospitalisation (p<0.05).

Interpretation In a young, low-risk population with ongoing symptoms, almost 70% of individuals have impairment in one or more organs four months after initial symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection. There are implications not only for burden of long COVID but also public health approaches which have assumed low risk in young people with no comorbidities.

It’s the combination of the article above, and this one, that has me thinking. Both talk about what happens in a 6 month period or longer.

• UK Study Finds Evidence Of Waning Antibody Immunity To COVID19 Over Time (R.)

Antibodies against the novel coronavirus declined rapidly in the British population during the summer, a study found on Tuesday, suggesting protection after infection may not be long lasting and raising the prospect of waning immunity in the community. Scientists at Imperial College London have tracked antibody levels in the British population following the first wave of COVID-19 infections in March and April. Their study found that antibody prevalence fell by a quarter, from 6% of the population around the end of June to just 4.4% in September. That raises the prospect of decreasing population immunity ahead of a second wave of infections in recent weeks that has forced local lockdowns and restrictions.

Although immunity to the novel coronavirus is a complex and murky area, and may be assisted by T cells, as well as B cells that can stimulate the quick production of antibodies following re-exposure to the virus, the researchers said the experience of other coronaviruses suggested immunity might not be enduring. “We can see the antibodies and we can see them declining and we know that antibodies on their own are quite protective,” Wendy Barclay, head of the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London told reporters. “On the balance of evidence I would say, with what we know for other coronaviruses, it would look as if immunity declines away at the same rate as antibodies decline away, and that this is an indication of waning immunity at the population level.”

Those for whom COVID-19 was confirmed with a gold standard PCR test had a less pronounced decline in antibodies, compared to people who had been asymptomatic and unaware of their original infection. There was no change in the levels of antibodies seen in healthcare workers, possibly due to repeated exposure to the virus. The study backs up findings from similar surveys in Germany which found the vast majority of people didn’t have COVID-19 antibodies, even in hotspots for the disease, and that antibodies might fade in those who do.

“The order requires doctors and nurses to report to any of a range of assignments that could be handed to them by the government during the state of emergency..”

• Spanish Doctors In First Walkout In 25 Years To Protest New COVID19 Order (ZH)

Doctors across Spain have walked out on Tuesday in what media outlets have called the first medical strike to rock the country in 25 years. As the coronavirus pandemic rages across Spain, where the Health Ministry reported another 18,418 new daily cases on Tuesday, doctors are beginning the strike, which was called in defiance of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s latest emergency order, which was implemented on Sunday. The order requires doctors and nurses to report to any of a range of assignments that could be handed to them by the government during the state of emergency, which could be in place for months. Doctors complained that the new law violated their rights, and compromised the standard of care for patients, as doctors would end up working in an area they weren’t specialized in.

The strike will continue indefinitely, with doctors set to continue striking on the last Tuesday of every month until a deal has been reached. For the first time, 200,000 new cases were confirmed in Spain over the previous two weeks, and cases on Tuesday were up 33% compared with the prior week. And over the last 24 hours, another 267 people have died. “The Health Ministry hasn’t even dignified us with a meeting to try and get us to call off the strike,” he told Spanish health journal iSanidad. Spain’s hospitals harbor nearly 16,700 active COVID-19 patients – up more than 600 compared to Monday, with one quarter of all the country’s ICU units used to treat those with an infectious disease.

The day before, Trump was ahead.

• White House Watch: Biden 49%, Trump 47% (Rasmussen)

Democrat Joe Biden has edged back ahead in Rasmussen Reports’ daily White House Watch survey. The latest national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows Biden earning 49% support to President Trump’s 47%. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, while two percent (2%) are still undecided. Yesterday, Trump was ahead for the first time since mid-September – by a minimal 48% to 47%. The race has been tightening since early in the month.

Rasmussen Reports has been releasing White House Watch weekly on Wednesdays since the beginning of July. But starting this week, White House Watch will be posted daily at 10:30 am Eastern. Trump earns 82% support among Republicans. Biden has 78% of the Democrat vote and leads by three among voters not affiliated with either major party. The survey of 1,500 Likely Voters was conducted October 22 and 25-26, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Trump: VOTE

pic.twitter.com/YGnjje9G4P

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2020

FYI.

• Don’t Believe The Polls – Trump Is Winning (Hill)

We predict that President Trump is going to win the 2020 presidential election — and win big. While the majority of the polls suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading, or at best that it’s close, those polls suffer from at least three problems. First, the tone of the questions. There is significant evidence from behavioral psychology that suggests that the way a question is framed predetermines the range of potential answers. In fact, Gallup has found that respondents can answer very differently to questions with the same topic even in the same survey based on the language that’s used. And the use of metaphors can even dwarf the importance of pre-existing differences between Republicans and Democrats.

One of the reasons respondents do that is because of a tendency to give socially desirable answers, which was the case especially during the 2016 election. Most people don’t like confrontation, so the easiest, albeit not necessarily the best, solution is to avoid it. Right now, saying that you’re voting for Trump/Pence is often not the socially desirable answer. In fact, a recent poll by the Cato Institute suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that the political climate is sufficiently harsh that they don’t want to give their genuine opinion about politics.

Second, the sample of respondents. Who responds depends on many factors, including the medium (e.g., landline versus cellphone), the location, the sample size and demographic factors. Moreover, the pool of respondents is not necessarily the same as the pool of likely voters. Even though election polls all contain a margin of error, that margin of error is unreliable if the underlying sample does not reflect the population. Researchers have also identified self-screening as the major contributing factor to the polling failures during the 2016 election cycle. For example, distrust of pollsters also leads to lower response rates for Trump supporters. Rasmussen finds that 17 percent of likely U.S. voters who “strongly approve” of the job President Trump is doing say they are less likely to let others know how they intend to vote in the upcoming election.

By comparison, only 8 percent of those who “strongly disapprove” of the president’s performance say the same. While proper sampling methodology matters more than the size, having a representative sample with enough people still helps considerably. Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar Group notes how their work to create minimum samples sizes of 1,000 voters, added to their work to doggedly pursue the “quiet Trump voter,” led to Trafalgar being one of the most successful battleground polling firms in the country in 2016. Cahaly explains that “we don’t do a state with less than a thousand. You see these polls, 400, 500, 600 people for a state. I don’t buy that. Your margin of error is far too high.”

Third, the content of the current news cycle. What’s going on in a particular moment in time can influence voter attitudes, particularly in swing states. For example, the recent revelation of Hunter Biden’s hidden emails on his laptop, coupled with the link to his father, has come at an opportune time for the president. Moreover, if the economic recovery continues, the good news may continue putting wind in Trump’s sails.

Leaflet left on reporters’ chairs in Airforce One.

Crickets in the MSM.

• Bobulinski Says He Met Joe Biden Twice In Connection With Chinese Venture (JTN)

In a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night, former Biden family business associate Tony Bobulinski accused Joe Biden of a “blatant lie” in denying any familiarity with his son Hunter’s business undertakings, claiming he himself met with Biden on two separate occasions to discuss prospective ventures into Chinese markets. Bobulinski painted a picture of the Democratic presidential nominee as actively aware in broad strokes of plans for the Biden family to enter into a business partnership with Chinese nationals closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army — yet with Biden himself maintaining enough distance from the operational details in face-to-face encounters to preserve what his brother Jim Biden would characterize as “plausible deniability.”

Biden’s family members, Bobuilnski claimed, were “putting their entire family legacy on the line” in their dealings with the Chinese. “They knew exactly what they were doing,” he said. They were dealing with a Chinese owned enterprise … that had strong financial support and political support from the Chinese Communist Party. That’s how it was presented to me. That’s not my own words. That’s how they presented it to me and read me in on it.” Bobulinski made headlines last week when he claimed to have firsthand evidence of Biden’s involvement in those deals. “I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business,” Bobulinski said in a statement. “I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true.”

Tucker Bobulinkski

A $5 million $ loan paid to the BD (Biden) family funded by a Chinese Government controlled entity? These election leaks are even more powerful than the Hillary Clinton emails. pic.twitter.com/XuOcT6GWXo

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 28, 2020

In a largely unbroken 45-minute interview with Carlson on Tuesday, Bobulinski further went on the record, telling the Fox host that he was approached by the Biden family and several associates in 2017 in order to help manage a business venture in China. Bobulinski said he met with Biden at the Milken Institute’s 2017 Global Conference in Los Angeles. “They were wining and dining me to get me more engaged,” he told Carlson. “I didn’t request to meet with Joe,” Bobulinski said. “They requested I meet with Joe.” Bobulinski, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant, said he met with Biden twice in the course of his association with the family. Biden reportedly told Bobulinski to “keep an eye on Hunter and [Biden’s brother] James” during their dealings.

Chinese officials, Bobulinski said, looked at him as “irrelevant,” seeing “the Biden family” as the main focus of their dealings. He claimed that the Bidens received a $5 million no-collateral, no-interest loan from Chinese officials. Bobulinski was motivated to come forward, he told Carlson, after California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff denounced recently leaked emails involving Hunter Biden as “Russian disinformation.” That allegation, Bobulinski told Carlson, also smeared his own family’s name. “I was at the end of the rope,” he said. “I called [Biden associate] Rob Walker. I told him if that statement wasn’t retracted by midnight on Sunday then I was going on record.”

Tucker Bobulinkski 8 Minutes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1321285423793131527

“It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat it as real information.”

• How The Authenticity of Hunter’s Laptop Became Immaterial (Turley)

Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal involving Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of that claim by the FBI. No mainstream reporter bothered to ask the simple question of whether this was his son’s laptop and emails, including emails clearly engaging in an influence peddling scheme and referring to Joe Biden’s knowledge. Instead, media has maintained a consistent and narrow focus. Indeed, in her interview, Leslie Stahl immediately dismissed any “scandal” involving Hunter in an interview with the President on 60 Minutes. It was an open example of what I previously noted in a column: “After all, an allegation is a scandal only if it is damaging. No coverage, no damage, no scandal.”

In her interview with Joe Biden, CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell did not push Biden to simply confirm that the emails were fake or whether he did in fact meet with Hunter’s associates (despite his prior denials). Instead O’Donnell asked: “Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter’s computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?” Biden responded with the same answer that has gone unchallenged dozens of times: “From what I’ve read and know the intelligence community warned the president that Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians. And we also know that Putin is trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden. And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it’s just what it is. It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?”

It did not matter that the answer omitted the key assertion that this was not Hunter’s laptop or emails or that he did not leave the computer with this store. Recently, Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid wrote said the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.” Let that sink in for a second. It does not matter if these are real emails and not Russian disinformation. They probably are real but should be treated as disinformation even though American intelligence has repeatedly rebutted that claim. It does not even matter that the FBI has seized the computer as evidence in a criminal fraud investigation or that a Biden confidant is now giving his allegations to the FBI under threat of criminal charges if he lies to investigators. It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat it as real information.

Times change. RussiaRussia has become indispensible.

• Biden Calls Russia #1 Threat But Slammed Romney For Saying It In 2012 (JTN)

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recently identified Russia as the number one threat to America but in 2012, when he was vice president, Biden called then-GOP presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney “out of touch” for taking the same position. Biden said Romney views the “world through a Cold War prism that is totally out of touch with the realities of the 21st century.” Biden slammed Romney for referring to Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe,” which was greeted with laughter from members of the audience watching Biden’s address in April 2012. “Governor Romney is mired in a Cold War mindset,” Biden said in a foreign policy speech at New York University in 2012.

Biden referred to Romney’s criticism of Obama’s handling of the New START treaty, which was a nuclear arms control treaty reached with Russia in 2010. “Governor Romney was part of a very small group of Cold War holdovers who never met an arms control treaty that he likes,” he said. “He was way out of the mainstream on this issue, unless you think that’s just political hyperbole.” “He acts like he thinks the Cold War is still on, Russia is still our major adversary,” Biden said in an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in 2012. “I don’t know where he has been. We have disagreements with Russia, but they’re united with us on Iran. One of only two ways we’re getting material into Afghanistan to our troops is through Russia … if there is an oil shutdown in any way in the Gulf, they’ll consider increasing oil supplies to Europe. This is not 1956.”

In October 2012, Obama mocked Romney’s position on Russia as the top threat to the U.S. during a presidential debate. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” Obama said. In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening, Biden said Russia is the greatest threat to the U.S. “The biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up our security and our alliances is Russia,” he said.

“The email indicates Hunter was familiar with the requirements of the law. It is a crime to knowingly violate FARA. Violations carry a maximum punishment of five years in prison.”

• Senate Investigates Hunter Biden’s Failure to Register as Foreign Agent (RCI)

A search of Justice Department databases reveals that Hunter Biden failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials, and RealClear Investigations has learned at least one Senate committee is investigating whether Joe Biden’s son violated federal laws requiring disclosure of such foreign contacts. The Obama administration did not prosecute Hunter Biden for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite its much more aggressive pursuit of FARA cases relative to other administrations — including its opening of criminal investigations on no fewer than six Trump campaign advisers in 2016.

One of them, Paul Manafort, ended up in prison in part for failing to publicly disclose his lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian clients and partners. Newly discovered April 2015 emails show Hunter Biden appeared to be helping a Ukrainian energy executive meet with and lobby his father, who was vice president at the time. Hunter, who held a lucrative seat on the board of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma at the time, also sought meetings with State Department officials. None of these contacts was publicly disclosed in government filings, according to a search of both FARA and Lobbying Disclosure Act records, which show Hunter registered as a federal lobbyist in 2001 and stopped filing disclosures in 2008. In contrast, Hunter’s former law partner and fellow lobbyist, William Oldaker, has registered as a foreign agent under FARA. Oldaker is Joe Biden’s longtime campaign lawyer and fundraiser.

At least one Senate committee is actively investigating Hunter’s compliance with the FARA law. Though it has not sent a criminal referral to Justice, RCI has also learned that a public-interest law firm is preparing a complaint to Justice regarding Hunter Biden’s arranging meetings between his foreign contacts and his father when he was vice president. Former investigators and prosecutors say the uneven enforcement of the federal statute smacks of politics. “It’s a double standard, 100%,” said former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker, who led public corruption cases out of Washington. Added Swecker, who also served as a prosecutor: “It’s strange how in this election there is no curiosity whatsoever about foreign influence on a potential president of the United States, especially from this country’s greatest threat — China.”

[..] In a May 2017 email, their mutual business partner, James Biden, sent his nephew Hunter, Bobulinski and other partners a list of friendly American political contacts whom they could exploit to advance the proposed joint venture with their Chinese partners. Among the “key domestic contacts” were: Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who is now Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. (FARA records show James Biden has not registered as a foreign agent, either.) In an earlier email that same month, Hunter sought to avoid registering as a foreign agent as part of the venture. “We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents,” he told Bobulinski on May 1, 2017, and suggested setting up a U.S. shell company to work around it. The email indicates Hunter was familiar with the requirements of the law. It is a crime to knowingly violate FARA. Violations carry a maximum punishment of five years in prison.

@RobertPLewis: “I didn’t think the audio from Hunter Biden’s laptop could be worse than the child endangerment pics, but it is. Verbal admission from Hunter that he knew he and his dad were in bed & business with Chinese intelligence. Bruh. That’s treason”

Hunter: F*cking spy chief of China

BREAKING: New audio of Hunter Biden talking about his partner “the f**king spy chief of China”

“I’m receiving calls from SDNY” @TheNatPulse https://t.co/vDYnxNTvo6

— Trunalimunumaprze Poso (@JackPosobiec) October 27, 2020

“Trump will face some sort of Nuremberg trial, where he will have to answer for mass-murdering six million people with the Coronavirus by taking off his mask on the White House balcony. Hillary Clinton will be appointed … something.”

• The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich (CJ Hopkins)

So, according to the corporate media, this is it for Russian-backed Hitler. Game over. The walls are closing in. It’s the last days of the Trumpian Reich. Get those vuvuzelas ready! Yes, apparently, the American people, who were all a bunch of Putin-worshipping, white-supremacist neo-Nazis when they elected Trump in 2016, have come to their senses and are going to deliver a landslide victory to “Slappy” Joe Biden and bring down the curtain on this “Age of Darkness,” or save the world from “racial Orwellianism” or the “bottomless pit of facsism,” or whatever. White supremacy will be defeated and globalization will rise from the ashes! Decency will be restored! Love will trump hate! Black lives will matter!

Slappy and Kamala will immediately fly down and liberate the concentration camps. Trump will face some sort of Nuremberg trial, where he will have to answer for mass-murdering six million people with the Coronavirus by taking off his mask on the White House balcony. Hillary Clinton will be appointed … something. Exuberant liberals will pour into the streets, chanting unintelligible slogans through their designer masks and plastic head bubbles. OK, sure, the global economy will be ruined, and millions of people will be unemployed, and homeless, or will have needlessly died, so that GloboCap could simulate an apocalyptic global plague, and foment racialized civil unrest, and just generally create an atmosphere of confusion, depression, and paranoia, but the War on Populism will finally be over … and GloboCap will start to “Build Back Better!”

OK, it won’t be “better” right away. As our friends at the World Economic Forum note: “Thanks to the ongoing pandemic, the world is off-balance – and it will remain so for years to come. Far from settling into a ‘new normal’, we should expect a Covid19 domino effect, triggering further disruptions – positive as well as negative – over the decade ahead. The wave of civil unrest that spread across America and beyond recently may be one example …” So, all right, maybe not quite the end of the War on Populism, but at least a new stage of it. A chaotic, destructive, violent stage of it, which will require a lot of “emergency measures” and will end up radically transforming the planet into one big pathologized-totalitarian marketplace.

Stephen Roach knows a thing or two.

• ‘Covid First’ China Is Trumping ‘America First’ In Economic Recovery (Roach)

Just as China led the world in economic recovery in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, it is playing a similar role today. Its post-Covid rebound is gathering momentum amid a developed world that remains on shaky ground. Unfortunately, this is a bitter pill for many to swallow – especially in the United States, where demonisation of China has reached epic proportions. The two crises are, of course, different. Wall Street was ground zero for the 2008 crisis, while the Covid-19 pandemic was spawned in the wet markets of Wuhan. But in both cases, China’s crisis-response strategy was far more effective than that deployed by the US. In the five years following the onset of the 2008 crisis, annual real GDP growth in China averaged 8.6 per cent (on a purchasing power parity basis).

While that was slower than the blistering (and unsustainable) 11.6 per cent average pace of the five previous years, it was four times the US economy’s anaemic 2.1 per cent average annual growth over the post-crisis 2010-14 period. China’s pandemic response hints at a comparable outcome in the years ahead. The GDP report for the third quarter of 2020 suggests a rapid return to the pre-Covid trend. The 4.9 per cent year-on-year figure for real GDP growth does not convey a full sense of the self-sustaining recovery that is now emerging in China. Measuring economic growth on a sequential quarterly basis and converting those comparisons to annual rates – the preferred construct of US statisticians and policymakers – provides a much cleaner sense of real-time shifts in the underlying momentum of any economy.

On that basis, China’s real GDP rose at an 11 per cent sequential annual rate in the third quarter, following a 55 per cent post-lockdown surge in the second quarter. The comparison with the US is noteworthy. Both economies experienced comparable contractions during their respective lockdowns, which came one quarter later for the US. China’s 33.8 per cent sequential (annualised) plunge in the first quarter was almost identical to the 31.2 per cent US contraction in the second quarter. Based on incoming high-frequency (monthly) data, the so-called GDPNow estimate of the Atlanta Federal Reserve puts third-quarter sequential real GDP growth in the US at around 35 per cent. While that is a welcome and marked turnaround from the record decline during the lockdown, it is about 20 percentage points short of China’s post-lockdown rebound and still leaves the US economy about 3 per cent below its peak of late 2019.

“The big problem I had with people removing my street work wasn’t that it was exploiting and stealing from the community — it was because the stolen stuff looked so much better than what I was making in the studio..”

• Banksy’s Foolproof Plan for Dealing With Anyone Who Steals His Art (Y!)

Contemporary art is a tricky business. If you’ve collected a painting or sculpture by a modern artist, odds are good that you’ll have some record of the transaction, and some method of verifying that the work you have is both genuine and genuinely obtained. That becomes a bit more complicated when the artist in question — though world-famous — has a penchant for anonymously leaving their work in urban spaces to create impromptu public art. Yes, we’re talking about Banksy, and one of his lesser-known practices which has recently come into sharp relief. Last week, a clip from Antiques Roadshow went viral. It features a man looking to get a small painting by Banksy evaluated. When asked how he’d come by it, the man admit he’d seen it while walking down a street in Brighton one night.

Recognizing it as Banksy’s handiwork, he then removed it from where it had been screwed into place. What follows is a brief and memorable lesson in morality. Pro tip: it’s generally considered poor form to admit to stealing something while being recorded for television. As the show’s host reveals, Banksy has established a virtual portal to authenticate whether specific works of his are both genuine and genuinely obtained — and, as the guy trying to get a painting valued admits, he’d visited the site and been told that the painting could not be validated because it was not obtained legally. Dubbed Pest Control, the service offers an easy-to-use interface to determine a particular work’s validity.

Elsewhere on Pest Control’s site, they offer a more extensive explanation of what they do — namely, issue certificates of authenticity. As for what that means, well — here’s what Pest Control themselves have to say: “The certificate of authenticity (COA) means you can buy, sell or insure a piece of art knowing it’s legitimate and the wheels won’t fall off,” they write. “Pest Control is the only source of COA’s for Banksy. We issue them for paintings, prints, sculptures and other attempts at creativity. We don’t issue them for things like stickers, posters, defaced currency or anything which wasn’t originally intended as a ‘work of art’.” Pest Control also offers a “Keeping It Real” service, which lets prospective buyers of a work by Banksy confirm that the work is, in fact, legitimate.

[..] “The big problem I had with people removing my street work wasn’t that it was exploiting and stealing from the community — it was because the stolen stuff looked so much better than what I was making in the studio,” he told artnet news.

“All women are now required to bear at least seventeen babies.”

• Newly Sworn-In ACB Immediately Orders All Women To Wear Handmaid Outfit (BBee)

After being sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett immediately issued a decree that all women are to wear red handmaid’s outfits for the rest of their lives. “Execute papal order 66,” she said, her eyes glowing red. “Implement the theocratic state.” Barrett sent out squads of soldiers to round up women and make sure they wear the garment at all times. All women are now required to bear at least seventeen babies. Attendance at Catholic Mass is also mandatory. Those who violate the order will be executed, “no exceptions,” said Barrett. “She can’t do this! This is unconstitutional!” screamed Rachel Maddow as enforcement squads kicked in the doors at MSNBC’s studios and grabbed her for reconditioning as a subservient handmaid. “I warned you! I WARNED ALL OF YOU!” The whole country turning into a Christofascist state seems to be a negative to many, but the nation is quite a bit more peaceful now.

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Debt Rattle August 30 2020

Aug 302020

August 30, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: Adam Schiff, Australia, Banksy, budget deficits, Civil War, collusion, Covid19, Fed, Flynn, PCR, Phillips curve, rapid tests, Ratcliffe, security briefings 14 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Girl Before A Mirror 1932

• Rapid Home COVID19 Tests Could Help Find People While They Are Contagious (NP)

• DNI Ratcliffe: Election Security Briefings Will Now Come In Written Form (JTN)

• 3/4 of Democratic Voters Still Believe Trump Campaign Colluded With Russia (JTN)

• Will Hillary And The Dems Get The Civil War They Are Trying To Provoke? (Saker)

• Michael Moore Warns That Donald Trump Is On Course To Repeat 2016 Win (G.)

• Steele Associate Offered To ‘Feed’ Michael Flynn Story To WaPo Columnist (DC)

• With New Monetary Policy Approach, Fed Lays Phillips Curve To Rest (R.)

• Ex-Australia PM Menzies Boasted Of Delivering Large Budget Deficits (ABC.au)

• Italy Evacuates Dozens From Overcrowded Banksy-Funded Migrant Rescue Boat (RT)

• Airlines Warn Flying Back 100,000 Stranded Australians Will Take 6 Months (G.)

We passed 25 million global cases.

Japan:
– Population: 126 Million
– COVID deaths: 1,255 (10/M)
– % Obese: 4%

USA:
– Population: 328 Million
– COVID deaths: 183,000 (558/M)
– % Obese: 40%

If the US had the same obesity as Japan, we would have only 3,280 COVID deaths. 179,720 lives would have been saved…

Anti Face Mask Issue Solved

I think he solved the anti-face mask issue pic.twitter.com/j18drLzWY1

— ok sis (@ChanceOfShade) August 27, 2020

There is so much wrong with PCR tests, yet the “experts” refuse to even discuss rapid tests. Time to change that, test people every day in 15 minutes, not let them wait for days or weeks.

• Rapid Home COVID19 Tests Could Help Find People While They Are Contagious (NP)

Cheap, rapid COVID-19 tests simple enough to use anywhere — home, school, the office — could help us climb out of the pandemic disaster, says infectious diseases specialist Dr. Andrew Morris. Just spit into a tube or swab your nose, wait a few minutes for the stripes to change colour — results available within minutes. With no vaccines or “fantastic therapies” for COVID, the best we can do is keep infected people out of buildings to prevent them from unknowingly spreading the virus, says Morris. Which is why he finds it “absurd” that Heath Canada says the risks of home or self-testing kits outweigh the benefits and that it will reject applications for such devices “without compelling new evidence to the contrary.”

The federal health agency worries that, “without the guidance of a health-care professional,” people would use the home test kit improperly or “misinterpret the results” and that it could be impossible to collect test results — information that’s key to “important health decisions involving disease control during an outbreak,” the department said in an emailed statement. “If it’s done in a haphazard way … you might actually create more problems, confusion than the actual benefits because you might get maybe a higher risk of false negative results,” Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer, said Tuesday during a COVID-19 briefing. Morris wants the government to seriously rethink its position on home testing. They’re not the solution to COVID, but they are part of it, he believes.

Cheap, rapid testing is the backbone of infectious disease management, says Morris, of the Sinai Health System and University Health Network in Toronto. “But if Health Canada says ‘we aren’t even interested in these tests,’ they are neither being open-minded nor strategic in understanding the potential of these tests.” It has echoes of earlier federal dismissals of face masks, when officials worried masks would lead to a “false sense of security” and more face-touching. “The current strategy is not to trust the public… and we need to change that,” Morris says. The gold standard of testing today is a workhorse called reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR, which amplifies SARS-CoV-2 from nasal swabs, so that minute amounts of RNA can be detected.

Anyone who is sick or showing symptoms of COVID-19, or who thinks he or she may have been exposed, can get PCR testing. But PCR testing isn’t designed around getting our lives back to normal, Morris says. It’s expensive, testing capacity is seriously limited and it can take days to get results. Vancouver has seen traffic gridlock at testing sites as B.C. battles with a surge in cases. Ottawa has had four-hour-long waits at its COVID testing sites. “The only way we can get our society back up and running is by having some better situational awareness than what we have,” Morris says.

[..] Rapid tests aren’t perfect. They aren’t as sensitive as PCR tests. But they don’t need to be perfect, argues Harvard Medical School epidemiologist Michael Mina. Mina says the tests can detect the virus when a person is most infectious, with high viral loads. “The vast majority of PCR positive tests we currently collect in this country are actually finding people long after they have ceased to be infectious,” Mina told Harvard Magazine. Paper-strip test could cost less than one or two U.S. dollars to produce, he says. Millions could take them daily or every other day. Frequent testing, with fast results, would help break chains of transmission, Mina tweeted this week. Morris has heard talk the FDA is expected to authorize several lateral flow assay tests for COVID-19 in the coming weeks. “And nothing by Health Canada. To me, this is a massive, massive blind spot.”

I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, because he provokes this gem from Adam Schiff (is this the 1950s?): “..the Trump administration “clearly does not want Congress or the country informed of what Russia is doing.”

• DNI Ratcliffe: Election Security Briefings Will Now Come In Written Form (JTN)

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe informed senators and representatives on Friday that election security briefings, previously given to Congress in person, will between now and the November elections be delivered in written form. The letter, which was sent on Friday and declassified on Saturday afternoon, notes that the intelligence community has given Congress dozens of briefings on election security over the past two years. “While many of these engagements and products have been successful and productive, others have been less so,” Ratcliffe wrote in the document.

“In order to ensure clarity and consistency across the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s … engagements with Congress on elections,” Ratcliffe continued, “the ODNI will primary meet its obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed leading into the Presidential election through written finished intelligence products.”

Ratcliffe said the move will help ensure that intelligence information is neither “misunderstood nor politicized,” and that the new protocol will “protect our sources and methods and most sensitive intelligence from additional unauthorized disclosures or misuse.” Democrats on Saturday evening slammed the decision. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wrote on Twitter that the move represented “a shocking abdication of [ODNI’s] responsibility to keep Congress informed.” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, meanwhile, claimed that the Trump administration “clearly does not want Congress or the country informed of what Russia is doing.”

Schiff can also claim a large role in this. Where’s that evidence, Adam? We’re still waiting.

• 3/4 of Democratic Voters Still Believe Trump Campaign Colluded With Russia (JTN)

Three-quarters of Democratic voters believe that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen. Asked whether it was more likely that Trump colluded with Russia in 2016 or that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign that year, 73% of Democrats said the Russia collusion theory was more likely to have occurred. In contrast, 67% of Republicans expressed more belief in the claim that the Obama administration spied on Trump during that election. Overall, 43% of voters put more stock in the Russia story.

The Russia collusion theory dominated headlines and politics for roughly the first three years of the Trump administration. A 22-month, special counsel probe led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller concluded without finding evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election. The survey of 1,200 Registered Voters was conducted by Rasmussen using a mixed-mode approach from August 20-22.

“The Dems won’t get their civil war – but they will suffer the blowback for their attempts to destroy the United States.”

• Will Hillary And The Dems Get The Civil War They Are Trying To Provoke? (Saker)

I don’t see a civil war happening in the US. But I do think that this country can, and probably will, break-up into different zones so to speak. In some regions, law and order will be maintained, by force is needed, while in others something new will appear: what the French call “des zones de non-droit“, meaning “areas of lawlessness” in which law enforcement will be absent (either because the political leaders will refuse to engage them, or because they will simply have to withdraw under fire). Typically, such zones have a parallel “black” economy which can make the gangs which control such zones very wealthy (think of Russia in the 1990s). Eventually, a lot of people will flee from such zones and seek refuge in the safer areas of the country (this process has already begun in New York).

Right now, there are a little over two months before the election, and I think that it is safe to say that the situation will deteriorate even faster and much worse. By November 2nd the country will be “ready” (so to speak) for a massive explosion of violence followed by months of chaos. Many will probably vote Trump just because they will (mistakenly) believe that he is the only politician who will stand against what the Dems promise to unleash against the majority of “deplorables” who want to keep their country and traditions. At the core, the conflict we are now witnessing is a conflict about identity, something which most people deeply care about. Sooner or later, there will be push-back against the Dems attempt to turn the USA into some kind of obese transgender liberal Wakanda run by crooks, freaks and thugs. The Dems won’t get their civil war – but they will suffer the blowback for their attempts to destroy the United States.

Michael Moore’s winning slogan and strategy: the Democrats are terrible, but you DO have to vote for them.

• Michael Moore Warns That Donald Trump Is On Course To Repeat 2016 Win (G.)

The documentary film-maker Michael Moore has warned that Donald Trump appears to have such momentum in some battleground states that liberals risk a repeat of 2016 when so many wrote off Trump only to see him grab the White House. “Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,” he said. Moore, who was one of few political observers to predict Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, said that “enthusiasm for Trump is off the charts” in key areas compared with the Democratic party nominee, Joe Biden. “Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to pull this off?” Moore posted on Facebook late on Friday.

Moore identified opinion polling in battleground states such as Minnesota and Michigan to make a case that the sitting president is running alongside or ahead of his rival. “The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states – but not Michigan. Sound familiar?” Moore wrote, presumably indicating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race when she made the error of avoiding some states that then swung to Trump. “I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much,” he later added. He continued to voters: “Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!”

Moore, a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders’s leftwing candidacy, warned in October 2016 that “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘f*** you’ ever recorded in human history – and it will feel good,” even as Clinton appeared to be sailing to victory. “Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump,” Moore warned at that time.

A lot of people in that camp were actively working on this. There are new names just about every day.

• Steele Associate Offered To ‘Feed’ Michael Flynn Story To WaPo Columnist (DC)

A former associate of Sen. John McCain served as a key conduit between journalists and dossier author Christopher Steele in early 2017, going so far as offering to “feed” stories about Trump associates to a Washington Post columnist, according to documents from a British court proceeding. David Kramer, a former State Department official who worked at the McCain Institute, kept Steele apprised of his contacts in January 2017 with journalists from BuzzFeed News, CNN, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post regarding aspects of the dossier. Kramer relayed information he learned from reporters at ABC News and the Journal regarding the dossier’s allegation that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague, according to text messages read at a defamation trial against Steele in London last month.

The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a transcript of the closed-door court proceedings, which were held in London from July 20-24. Steele, a former MI6 officer, is being sued by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian businessman who Steele’s dossier accuses of hacking Democrats’ computer systems in 2016. Kramer was already known to have met with reporters to discuss the dossier. He has acknowledged providing the dossier to a reporter for BuzzFeed News, which published the salacious document on Jan. 10, 2017. But the Steele messages suggest Kramer played a more proactive role in trying to put negative stories in the media about Trump associates. Kramer’s most eye-catching references are to David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist who writes about national security issues.

“The Flynn calls story is picking up legs,” Kramer wrote to Steele, seemingly referring to a Jan. 12, 2017, column by Ignatius that revealed that Flynn spoke by phone weeks earlier with Sergey Kislyak. According to text messages read at the trial, Kramer suggested to Steele that he would provide dirt on Trump associates to Ignatius. “I think it’s time to get that other [Manafort] story out there,” Kramer wrote in a message to Steele, referring to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. “And Ignatius is the one I’ll feed it to,” he also wrote. Steele insisted during his testimony that Kramer was suggesting feeding a story to Ignatius about Flynn rather than Manafort. “It’s a Michael Flynn story, isn’t it?” Steele asked during the cross-examination.

He went on to say that the information regarding Flynn he discussed with Kramer was not found in the dossier. “Any story here about Michael Flynn is completely independent of anything in the dossier,” said Steele. The former spy did not describe the Flynn story, but Kramer told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that Steele told him that he believed that Flynn had an affair with a Russian-British researcher in the United Kingdom. The unverified allegation matches closely with stories that appeared in the media in March 2017 that alleged that Flynn had improper contacts with former Cambridge researcher Svetlana Lokhova in 2014, when Flynn visited the historic university as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“Decades of thought at the Fed are now being pushed aside.”

In most other jobs, if you’ve been wrong for decades, you get fired or resign. But when you’re handling trillions of dollars, there are different standards.

• With New Monetary Policy Approach, Fed Lays Phillips Curve To Rest (R.)

One of the fundamental theories of modern economics may have finally been put to rest. In the several years before the coronavirus pandemic took hold of the global economy, Federal Reserve policymakers watched as the U.S. unemployment rate fell lower and lower and waited for the jump in inflation typically associated with such a tight labor market. The expectations were based on a rule that has shaped decades of monetary policy decisions: the Phillips curve, or the concept that inflation tends to rise when the unemployment rate falls, and vice versa. But the inflation that Fed officials anticipated never arrived, and in a monumental speech delivered on Thursday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced that the U.S. central bank’s policymakers are done waiting.

The Fed chief, speaking during the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference, unveiled the central bank’s new approach to monetary policy, which puts more emphasis on shortfalls in employment, and less weight on the fear that low unemployment could spark higher inflation. “The conditions in the economy have changed to such an extent that this upwardly sloped relationship between inflation and employment has now changed,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist for RSM. “Decades of thought at the Fed are now being pushed aside.” With its landmark policy shift, the Fed is putting new weight on bolstering the labor market and less on inflation, promising to aim for 2% inflation on average over a period of time rather than using that figure as a hard annual target, as it had done since 2012.

With their new approach, Fed officials are essentially saying they are no longer worried about the unemployment rate falling too low. Now that inflation expectations are anchored at low levels, the economy has room to keep adding jobs. Policymakers can also wait a little longer for the gains to reach the workers on the margins – including Black, Hispanic and low-income workers – who are often the last to reap the benefits of a tight labor market, Powell said. “It is hard to overstate the benefits of sustaining a strong labor market, a key national goal that will require a range of policies in addition to supportive monetary policy,” Powell said on Thursday, reflecting on the strong U.S. labor market that existed before the pandemic.

h/t Steve Keen.

• Ex-Australia PM Menzies Boasted Of Delivering Large Budget Deficits (ABC.au)

There’s a lot we’ve forgotten about Robert Menzies. Take his name, for example. Younger Australians may not know it, but our country’s longest-serving prime minister, one of the founders of the Liberal Party, was nicknamed “Ming”. He was our first prime minister to have two Australian-born parents, but his paternal grandfather was Scottish and he was proud of that heritage. He preferred his surname to be pronounced the way the Scots pronounce it — Ming-iss — but his attempts to convince his countrymen to do so were in vain. He received the nickname “Ming” instead. Then there was his time as prime minister, when he boasted about delivering a bigger budget deficit than Labor would have, for the good of the country. That’s right.

The father of Australia’s Liberal Party was proud of spending whatever was necessary to ensure full employment, even when the economy wasn’t in recession. A speech Mr Menzies gave in August 1962 about his budget that year is worth reading. He’d won the federal election eight months earlier, defeating the Labor opposition led by Arthur Calwell. During the campaign, Mr Calwell promised to deliver a deficit large enough to eradicate unemployment, and he figured that meant a deficit of 100 million pounds. Here’s Mr Menzies explaining why he was spending more than Labor pledged. “Too few people realise that a cash deficit of 120 million [pounds] … will of itself have a most expansionary effect,” he said.

“We shall pay out to the citizens 120 million [pounds] more than will be collected from them. “So, far from being timorous — I think that was another of the words used by the deputy leader of the opposition — this is adventurous finance. “Add to the deficit the tax refunds now being made, and it is clear that purchasing power in Australia this financial year will be uncommonly high. “The real task of any government today, as well as of the business community and all sensible citizens, is to get that purchasing power exercised.” It was uncomplicated Keynesian logic. As John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1933: “Look after the unemployment, and the budget will look after itself.”

[..] Mr Menzies’ second stint as prime minister lasted from 1949 to 1966. For his last nine budgets he delivered deficits, and the size of his last deficit, at 3.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), was 0.3 per cent larger than the deficit in Wayne Swan’s last budget in 2013. So why wasn’t the public angry? Because Australia’s economy, like economies in other western nations, grew strongly in the post-war period. In the 1940s, its average growth rate was 3.8 per cent. In the 1950s, it was 4.2 per cent. In the 1960s, it was 5.3 per cent. And that constant growth meant the size of Australia’s government debt relative to the size of the economy (the ratio of debt-to-GDP) shrank dramatically, too. All while the government was handing down budget deficits.

How much extra attention because of Banksy’s involvement?

• Italy Evacuates Dozens From Overcrowded Banksy-Funded Migrant Rescue Boat (RT)

Some 50 people were evacuated from the migrant rescue boat Louise Michel that got stranded off Malta’s coast after taking more than 200 people aboard. After one person died, the crew accused Europe of ignoring its pleas for help. The vessel, which reported rescuing a total of 219 people from the sea over the past few days, including “many women and children,” had become so “overcrowded” that a life raft was attached to its side, and it lost its ability to maneuver. The crew’s Twitter feed suggests they have been desperately sending distress signals and making calls to various European maritime authorities to no avail. To make the matters worse, one of the migrants died on the ship as conditions deteriorated.

“Louise Michel is unable to move … above all due to Europe ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance,” a tweet from the crew read. Following about a day of pleas for help, Italy’s coast guard arrived at the scene and took 49 of “the most vulnerable” migrants in. While describing the development as “great,” the Louise Michel crew said it leaves the majority “still waiting.” It added that another NGO migrant rescue ship, Sea Watch 4, arrived to “do what Europe falters to do.” Photos and videos apparently taken on board the vessel – a 31-meter motor yacht once owned by French customs authorities, now named after a French anarchist – show it is extremely crowded with people who are cooped up literally everywhere, from the foredeck to the aft and even on top of the captain’s bridge.

[..] Painted in white and bright pink and featuring a Banksy artwork of a girl in a life vest holding a heart-shaped flotation device, Louise Michel is said to have set sail in secrecy from a Spanish port of Burriana, near Valencia. The first post in its Twitter account appeared about a week after what was called its first successful mission. The ship, flying a German flag, is captained by Pia Klemp, a controversial German boat captain credited with rescuing more than 1,000 North African migrants between 2011 and 2017. The woman was charged with colluding with human smugglers by the Italian authorities in 2019 and defiantly snubbed Paris’ highest civilian award months later.

[..] Reports claim that Klemp was personally contacted by the artist as early as in September 2019 and was offered assistance with buying a new boat. She told the Guardian that she sees the effort as “part of anti-fascist fight,” while adding that Banksy’s involvement in the project is limited to financial support. “Banksy won’t pretend that he knows better than us how to run a ship, and we won’t pretend to be artists,” she said.

And you thought your “leaders” were incompetent.

• Airlines Warn Flying Back 100,000 Stranded Australians Will Take 6 Months (G.)

Frustrated airlines continuing to fly into Australia are warning it will take six months to repatriate more than 100,000 Australians stuck overseas if the country’s strict arrival caps are not eased. Pressure is also mounting within government ranks to address the growing number of Australians stranded by the caps, with Coalition MPs complaining the limits are “probably the biggest area of concern” raised with them by constituents currently, who claim airlines are repeatedly bumping them off flights to prioritise more expensive tickets and remain profitable under the caps. Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, on Friday criticised the government’s position of recommending those affected by the caps rely on early super withdrawals to fund what could be an indefinite period away from their jobs, families and secure accommodation.

“The government should be offering financial support to stranded Australians who need it. People shouldn’t be forced to raid their super or launch a GoFundMe fundraiser in order to return home,” she said, noting earlier reports that consular staff had told Australians to start crowdfunding sites to sustain living costs and business class flights. Wong said she had been contacted by a pensioner forced to sleep in a car in France because his flight had been cancelled and he couldn’t get a refund. Wong also criticised the government for recent travel exit exemptions – including allowing Tony Abbott to fly to the UK, and an entrepreneur to collect a yacht in Italy – calling it “special treatment for the privileged few” with “everyone else being left behind”.

Qatar Airways on Friday announced it had suspended sales of tickets into Australia until the caps are lifted, and said it will have to cancel the tickets of “thousands” more Australian citizens who are currently scheduled to fly home with the carrier in the coming months. The airline has acknowledged it has been forced to prioritise customers who pay more for tickets after reports its aircraft were landing in Sydney with as few as four economy passengers. The Guardian has been inundated by stories of Australians who have been forced to live in caravans for months, exhaust all their paid leave, and forgo seeing dying parents in Australia while they wait for airlines to honour their economy flights home.

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If Greece and Turkey go to war, it’s over this:

Long time favorite. Possibly the ultimate Calvin and Hobbes:

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Debt Rattle July 16 2020

Jul 162020

July 16, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: Banksy, blacklist, coronavirus, Covid19, Delta, hack, Moderna, obesity, Rio Tinto, Roger Stone, Schiff, Twitter, vaccine 16 Responses »

Irving Underhill Irving Trust Building, Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York 1931

• ‘Over Half’ Of Trial Participants Had Adverse Reactions To Moderna Vaccine (JTN)

• Obesity May Stack the Deck for COVID-19 Risk (WebMD)

• Victoria Gov’t Refuses To Say How Many Health Workers Have COVID19 (G.)

• Italy’s Call For Urgent Help Was Ignored As Virus Swept Through Europe (G.)

• Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts

• Twitter Silences Some Top Accounts After Internal Systems Hacked (R.)

• Twitter Hack Is A Nightmare Not Just For Twitter (BV)

• Delta’s Passenger Revenue -94%. How it Plans to Stay Alive (WS)

• Adam Schiff Just Can’t Stop Lying (Roger Stone)

• “They Always Do It Within 24 to 48 Hours” – Sidney Powell (GP)

• Ghislaine Maxwell Is Married, Refuses To Name Spouse (G.)

• Cleaners Remove Banksy Artwork From London Tube Train (BBC)

• Indigenous Group Accidentally Blows Up Rio Tinto’s Headquarters (Chaser)

The most disturbing thing about the Twitter hacks may not even be how easy it is to break into the company and take control over many things, but that, as screenshots show, Twitter very much DOES appear to have the power to shadow ban etc. accounts. And that is not what @jack told Congress.

Both the US and the world come up just short of new records. But there are rumblings about manipulated and inflated Florida numbers.

Moderna

#COVID19 A few thoughts on $MRNA data

1) No data for the most vulnerable older (>55) population
2) Second dose absolutely necessary
3) Safety profile less than desirable
4) Durability of neutralizing Ab not so encouraging (decline from day 43~57)
5) Very low CD8 T-cell responses pic.twitter.com/Gl45zvEd1C

— Andy Biotech (@AndyBiotech) July 15, 2020

So much for a rapid vaccine: “..they intend to follow participants “for 1 year after the second vaccination..”

• ‘Over Half’ Of Trial Participants Had Adverse Reactions To Moderna Vaccine (JTN)

A highly anticipated clinical trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine managed in part by the American drug company Moderna has resulted in some adverse effects in more than half of the trial’s participants, with one test group reporting “severe” symptoms. The trial, which is also being sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, administered the vaccine “as a 0.5-ml injection in the deltoid muscle” in two shots spaced about one month apart. Two separate groups received 25-microgram and 100-microgram doses, respectively. A third group with a 250-microgram dose was subsequently added. The vaccine “induced anti–SARS-CoV-2 immune responses in all participants,” the research team reported Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers said that “no trial-limiting safety concerns were identified.” Yet a majority of participants still reported at least one side effect. “Solicited adverse events that occurred in more than half the participants included fatigue, chills, headache, myalgia, and pain at the injection site,” the report states. Fever, joint pain and nausea were also reported. Side effects grew more common with more (and larger) injections, the scientists write: “Systemic adverse events were more common after the second vaccination, particularly with the highest dose, and three participants (21%) in the 250 microgram dose group reported one or more severe adverse events.”

Notably, every participant in the two larger-dose groups reported adverse reactions after their second injections. One study participant in the smallest-dose group, meanwhile, was removed due to having developed hives after the first round of injections. The scientists said that due to the ongoing status of the project, they are not yet “able to assess the durability of the immune responses” generated by the vaccine, but that they intend to follow participants “for 1 year after the second vaccination” and examine regular blood samples to monitor the vaccine’s effects.

Overall big risk. As is smoking, which also returns as a major COVID risk.

• Obesity May Stack the Deck for COVID-19 Risk (WebMD)

Stephen O’Rahilly recently spent a week in a hospital, sick with COVID-19 and struggling to breathe. “My lungs were quite badly affected,” says O’Rahilly, 62, who spent almost a week getting extra oxygen in what’s known as a high-intensity care unit in the U.K. The experience got him thinking: While about 80% of cases of COVID-19 can be treated at home, why do some people, including him, wind up with more severe infections? Besides his age, O’Rahilly knew he had another strike against him when it comes to COVID-19 infection: his weight. His BMI, or body mass index, is over 30. O’Rahilly, who directs the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit at Cambridge University, is considered one of the world’s leading obesity researchers.

He was knighted in 2013 by Queen Elizabeth II for his work, which includes the discovery of a genetic condition that robs the body of the hormone leptin, which controls appetite and weight. And so after his brush with the coronavirus, he started digging into exactly what it is about obesity that makes it so risky for a COVID-19 infection. It has become clearer that people who are obese are one of the groups at highest risk from the disease, regardless of their age. The CDC recently refined its risk categories for COVID-19, stating that obesity was as big a risk for COVID as having a suppressed immune system or chronic lung or kidney disease. The agency also lowered the bar for where that risk starts — from a BMI of 40 to a BMI of 30. Roughly 40% of Americans have a BMI over 30.

The CDC’s change in BMI risk comes after a British study of more than 17 million people found that people living with severe obesity were about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as people who were not obese. That was true even after other things like their age and sex were taken into account. The study also found that risk rises with the degree of obesity. The bigger a person, the higher their risk of a COVID-19 death. [O’Rahilly] he thinks the risk comes from the fact that fat makes and regulates hormones. For example, people who are obese make more of something called “complement” proteins. These proteins can trigger out-of-control blood clotting, which is a problem in patients with severe COVID-19.

People with obesity also have lower blood levels of a hormone called adiponectin. Recent studies in mice show that adiponectin protects the lungs. O’Rahilly thinks that if you have lower levels to begin with, you may be more likely to have lung inflammation during an infection like COVID-19. Adiponectin also helps keep blood vessels clean and open. So if the insides of your blood vessels are sticky, and a virus causes your immune system to go haywire and create more blood clots, that sets the stage for blockages. These blockages can cause heart attacks, strokes, and lung damage — all problems seen in COVID-19 patients. To compound the problem, people with obesity appear to have more ACE2 receptors on their cells than others. ACE2 receptors are the doors the virus uses to infect cells and then make more copies of itself.

Oh, why not, you’re at the other end of the world anyway.

• Victoria Gov’t Refuses To Say How Many Health Workers Have COVID19 (G.)

The Victorian government has refused to answer questions about hospital surge capacity or the number of healthcare workers and medical institutions coping with outbreaks of Covid-19, with hundreds of health staff now in precautionary quarantine due to potential exposure to the virus. An email from the chief executive of Victoria’s largest public health service, Monash Health, said 77 staff across the service were in precautionary quarantine following three potential sources of exposure. Infections have been found in five employees. Monash Health services a quarter of the state. “We must use this opportunity to reinforce processes, to make sure that we all understand them, and are doing what we need to do to stay safe,” the email said, urging staff to use protective gear properly and undertake frequent infection risk assessments.

Meanwhile, 14 staff from St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne are recovering from the virus, an email sent from the chief executive to staff on Thursday said. The emergency and general medical departments of the hospital are undergoing deep cleaning following “potential exposures,” the email said. All emergency staff have undergone testing. There are 10 inpatients with Covid-19 at the hospital. The email said “a small number of emergency department staff” had contracted the virus, so precautions were being taken. There had also been a potential exposure in the intensive care ward, the email said. Contact tracing is underway and several intensive care and general medical team staff are now in isolation. As of Thursday, 70 staff associated with the Royal Melbourne Hospital were also in precautionary quarantine, with 12 positive staff and 48 inpatients with the virus. The ABC has confirmed Melbourne’s Northern Health has 142 staff in self-isolation.

EU has zero power, and zero decision-making process.

• Italy’s Call For Urgent Help Was Ignored As Virus Swept Through Europe (G.)

It was a moment of chilling clarity. On 26 February, with the numbers of Italians known to be infected by coronavirus tripling every 48 hours, the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, appealed to fellow EU member states for help. His hospitals were overwhelmed. Italian doctors and nurses had run out of the masks, gloves and aprons they needed to keep themselves safe, and medics were being forced to play God with the lives of the critically-ill due to an acute lack of ventilators. An urgent message was passed from Rome to the European commission’s Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels. The specifications of Italy’s needs were uploaded into the EU’s Common Emergency Communication and Information System (CECIS). But what happened next came as a shock. The distress call was met with silence.

“No member state responded to Italy’s request and to the commission’s call for help,” said Janez Lenarcic, the European commissioner responsible for crisis management. “Which meant that not only is Italy is not prepared … Nobody is prepared … The lack of response to the Italian request was not so much a lack of solidarity. It was a lack of equipment.” It was as millions of Europeans prepared for their New Year’s Eve celebrations that officials in the Stockholm office of the EU public health agency, the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), first received notice of a cluster of pneumonia cases in China of unknown origin. Established in 2005 in reaction to the Sars outbreak two years before, the ECDC offers scientific advice. It can do no more.

Responsibility for health remains entirely with the national governments of the EU, and not in the European commission or its agencies. Despite its limitations, the ECDC’s job is to look to the full European horizon, and call the alarm whether capitals listen or not. The agency gave its first threat assessment on 9 January, the body’s director Dr Andrea Ammon recalled. “At that time, the notion [was] most of the cases were linked to this live animal market [in the Chinese city of Wuhan]”, she told the Guardian. “Roughly two weeks later it turned out it is human to human transmission which of course changes what you need to do”. The initial concern was how to keep the disease outside the EU’s borders. On 17 January a first coronavirus conference call was held by another EU body born out of previous health crises – but again lacking the powers retained by the national governments.

[..] The stark reality was that in the months and years before coronavirus arrived in Europe, stocks of personal protective equipment (PPE) had dwindled. Emergency supplies of masks had expired, been destroyed and never replaced. Pandemic preparedness plans were out of date. “Several European countries had a strategic stock of masks that were outdated … Most of them were just destroyed,” said one scientific adviser. France held 1.7bn protective masks in 2011, but now had only 117m. Between January and March this year it incinerated 1.5m. In 2017, Belgium ordered the destruction of 38m masks and they were never replaced. No one, it appeared, had a hold on what was out there. Up until 23 February, flights carrying donations of PPE were leaving Europe for China in the hope of containing the virus there. But the unpalatable truth was that Europe itself was exposed.

Hmmm…looks like@jack lied to Congress.

“Alleged leaked pictures from the Twitter admin control panel that was compromised showcase the buttons ‘Trends Blacklist’ and ‘Search Blacklist’, indicating Twitter DOES have the ability to shadowban its users.”

What is Congress going to do about that?

• Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts

A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts. On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack. “We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.

The accounts were taken over using an internal tool at Twitter, according to the sources, as well as screenshots of the tool obtained by Motherboard. One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool. In all, four sources close to or inside the underground hacking community provided Motherboard with screenshots of the user tool. Two sources said the Twitter panel was also used to change ownership of some so-called OG accounts—accounts that have a handle consisting of only one or two characters—as well as facilitating the tweeting of the cryptocurrency scams from the high profile accounts.

Twitter has been deleting some screenshots of the panel and has suspended users who have tweeted them, claiming that the tweets violate its rules. The panel is a stark example of the issue of insider data access at tech companies. Whereas in other cases hackers have bribed workers to leverage tools over individual users, in this case the access has led to takeovers of some of the biggest accounts on the social media platform and tweeted bitcoin related scams in an effort to generate income. The screenshots show details about the target user’s account, such as whether it has been suspended, is permanently suspended, or has protected status. One of the screenshots is a Twitter user posting images of the panel themselves. At the time of writing that account has been suspended.

Data breach monitoring and prevention service Under The Breach obtained a similar screenshot and tweeted it as the worker hijacked several accounts. The person in control of the Under The Breach account told Motherboard Twitter then removed the tweet with the screenshot and suspended them for 12 hours. A message replacing the tweet now says it violated the Twitter rules.

Most are back up.

• Twitter Silences Some Top Accounts After Internal Systems Hacked (R.)

Twitter said hackers accessed its internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk and used them to solicit digital currency. Twitter said employees with access to its internal systems had been successfully targeted by hackers who “used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.” “We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it,” the company said.

Twitter temporarily took the extraordinary step of preventing for several hours at least some verified accounts from publishing messages altogether. It said it would restore access only when it was certain it could do so securely. Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey earlier said the company was diagnosing the problem and pledged to share “everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.” “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened,” he said in a tweet. Shares in the social media company tumbled almost 5% in trading after the market close before paring their losses.

Right about now @Twitter and @NSACyber / @NSAGov are discussing how to spin today’s events. Twitter will be reminded of their secrecy obligation under current National security legislation. Journalists however should drill into the issue of Govt backdoors and how secure they are.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) July 16, 2020

“Twitter’s average monetizable daily active users hit 166 million in the first quarter, an almost 25% increase.”

• Twitter Hack Is A Nightmare Not Just For Twitter (BV)

A hack of prominent Twitter accounts is a nightmare for more than just the social network itself. Fake tweets soliciting digital currency on Wednesday from figures like Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden mean Twitter’s cybersecurity costs will rise. But if that’s all that happens, founder Jack Dorsey can count himself lucky. Posts on the social network have the potential to move markets, or worse. The intrusion was severe enough that Twitter locked down so-called verified accounts – its label for those owned by high-profile people. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former President Barack Obama and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos were among those that had appeared to solicit bitcoins from other users – saying that whatever was given would be doubled by them and returned. It sent Twitter’s stock down by almost 4% in after-market trading.

For investors in tech companies, a major hacking incident usually means one thing: higher costs. Twitter’s expenses already rose nearly 20% in the first quarter of the year, resulting in an operating loss of $7 million compared to a profit of $94 million a year earlier. Ideally, that’s offset by a reduced risk of future embarrassing events. The scam, though, could have been worse. Tweets from business leaders can move markets. Then there’s President Donald Trump, who uses the platform to announce new policies – and communicate with, or about, other world leaders. It’s not hard to see how a fake tweet could send markets reeling, or even pose a national security risk.

So what can be done? Users with public profiles could start behaving differently online, even if Trump doesn’t. The company, like other social media networks, benefits from having highly active celebrity users, and Covid-19 has actually proved good for business. Twitter’s average monetizable daily active users hit 166 million in the first quarter, an almost 25% increase. Fewer prominent tweeters could impact that trend, and hurt ad revenue. And if users don’t proceed with caution, regulators could also step in. Expect law enforcement agencies, and Congress, to want to know more about Twitter’s security processes. The social network could even emerge stronger for the scrutiny. The world, as well as the company’s investors, should hope it does.

There go the jobs.

• Delta’s Passenger Revenue -94%. How it Plans to Stay Alive (WS)

Delta Airlines confirmed today why Warren Buffett dumped his huge stake in mid-crash: Airlines are in an existential crisis, and there is no V-shaped recovery, according to Delta’s earnings report for the second quarter this morning, which was beyond dismal. There were the huge losses. In the quarter ended June 30, Delta booked a pretax loss of $7.01 billion and an after-tax net loss of $5.72 billion. That translates into a loss of $9.01 a share. These losses include $2.1 billion in write-downs of its stakes in Latam Airlines and Aeromexico, both of which filed for bankruptcy in the US recently, and in Virgin Atlantic Airways, which may go into “administration” in the UK.

Then there were the revenues, with a breath-taking plunge:
• Passenger revenue – which last year was 90% of total revenues – collapsed by 94% year-over-year to just $678 million.
• Its highly profitable business cabin and other premium sales (usually over 1/3 of total revenues): -95%.
• Revenues, domestic flights -93%; Atlantic -97%; Latin America -98%; Pacific -95%.
• Cargo revenue: -42% to just $108 million.
• “Other revenues” (loyalty programs, its own refinery, etc.): -31% to $682 million.
• Total revenues: -88%, to $1.47 billion, from $12.5 billion a year ago

So Delta is shrinking into “a smaller, more efficient airline,” and is shedding its older less efficient planes this year, including all of its ancient MD-88, MD-90, plus its 777 and 737-700 fleets, and portions of its 767-300ER and A320 fleets. Shedding these planes comes with shedding the people that fly them and take care of them. Today, Delta said it would “proactively manage headcount and rescale operations” via “voluntary separation and early retirement programs.” In late June, Delta said it would send WARN notices to nearly 20% of its pilots, notifying them of potential furloughs. On October 1, the layoff restrictions attached to the bailout funds expire, and then the involuntary layoffs can commence.

Let Stone talk for a minute. He has as much right as anyone else.

• Adam Schiff Just Can’t Stop Lying (Roger Stone)

On Dec. 10, 2017 Schiff once again stated, “We have all of these facts in chronology, you’d have to believe that these were all isolated incidents, not connected to each other — just doesn’t make rational sense … We do know this: the Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help, the Russians gave help and the president made full use of that help. That is pretty damning, whether it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy or not.” Again, the Trump campaign accepted and made use of nothing. But don’t interrupt little Adam Schiff when he’s on a rhetorical roll. Schiff stated on Feb. 7, 2018 that there was “certainly a lot of evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He added, “In terms of ethical violations and acting against the interest of the United States, that evidence is already ample and in the public view.”

Again, the congressman from West Hollywood has produced evidence of no such thing. In what appeared to be a direct reversal, Schiff appeared on ABC’s “The View” on March 1, 2018. He refused to cite any specific evidence the panel he co-chaired had found that proved that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Yet on April 15, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Schiff made a point to say that it was “simply not true” that there had been no evidence the 2016 presidential campaign for Donald Trump colluded with Russia. Schiff, the ever-hopeful wannabe star, continued making headlines such as this one on April 27, 2018: “ADAM SCHIFF ANNOUNCES DEMOCRATS HAVE EVIDENCE OF TRUMP/RUSSIA COLLUSION.” The story quoted Schiff: “In fact, we found evidence of collusion in the abundant secret meetings and communications between Trump campaign officials and associates.”

None of this of course even touches on his ridiculous antics during the Ukrainian impeachment hoax where Schiff once again got caught lying about contact with the so-called “whistleblower.” Now, incredibly, Schiff is trying to fan the embers of the Russian collusion delusion one more time. One thing is abundantly clear. If Robert Mueller and his minions had any proof whatsoever that I worked with Russian intelligence to steal and disseminate data from the democrats, they most certainly would have charged me with it. If Mueller and his henchmen had any evidence that I had received documents from WikiLeaks and passed them on to the Trump campaign, they would have charged me with that. In fact, if Mueller and his 12 angry Democrats had any proof beyond the plea bargain-induced uncorroborated claims of convicted liars Michael Cohen and Rick Gates that I ever even spoke to Donald Trump about WikiLeaks, they surely would have indicted me on that charge and would have used it to impeach the president.

It’s not Bill Barr, it’s her.

• “They Always Do It Within 24 to 48 Hours” – Sidney Powell (GP)

General Michael Flynn was lied to, set up multiple times before and after the Trump inauguration, excessively and to the point of illegally unmasked, targeted, ambushed in the White House, falsely accused, threatened with his son being indicted, provided corrupt legal counsel (the same firm where corrupt Obama former AG Eric Holder works), harassed for 3 years, belittled, slandered, besmirched by the judge, harassed by the judge, and then the attorneys going after him were the same attorneys who represented the corrupt Sally Yates who lied and told President Trump General Flynn lied.

The government reviewed General Flynn’s case and determined it never should have occurred. When the government and Flynn’s attorneys, including Sidney Powell, went to the court to have the case thrown out, the judge overseeing the case wouldn’t do it. Next the government and Powell went to the DC Circuit court to have the case thrown out and the Circuit Court two weeks ago ordered Judge Sullivan to do so. This interview discusses the entire case from Sidney Powell’s perspective and the current status of this corrupt case not being thrown out by this corrupted judge. At the 1:30 mark in the video the following exchange occurs:

Jan Jekielek: The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has basically said, has ordered Judge Sullivan to close the case and I think he had 24 hours to do so and he didn’t do it, so what’s going on? Where we at here?

Sidney Powell: Well they don’t really put a time limit on the order but I can’t say in my decades of practice, and we’re not going to number those, that I’ve ever seen a judge not do what he was told to do by what’s called a ‘writ of mandamus’ or extraordinary writ order directly from the Circuit Court of Appeals to do something. They always do it within 24 to 48 hours. I just haven’t seen that happen with the possible exception of one case way back when I had to get a writ of mandamus against a Federal District Judge twice in the same case. Now we are certainly hoping that doesn’t have to happen here and that the order will be signed shortly. Because he’s not party to the case. That doesn’t mean the full court can’t review the case on its own but it would be unprecedented to do so in these circumstances.

Let’s go crazier. Anyway, no bail for her, which would have set up a storm.

• Ghislaine Maxwell Is Married, Refuses To Name Spouse (G.)

The British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who faces federal charges in Manhattan for allegedly enabling Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls, is married, prosecutors said during a court proceeding. Prosecutors made the revelation on Tuesday when arguing that Maxwell should be detained pending trial. Maxwell, who had asked for release on a $5m bond co-signed by six people, was ultimately denied bail. Maxwell pleaded not guilty to the charges. They also said Maxwell had “declined” to identify her spouse to court officials. “In addition to failing to describe in any way the absence of proposed co-signers of a bond, the defendant also makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse whose … identity she declined to provide to pretrial services,” assistant US attorney Alison Moe told Judge Alison Nathan.

“There is no information about who will be co-signing this bond or their assets and no details whatsoever.” News of Maxwell’s purported marriage surfaced in earnest on Wednesday morning. Maxwell’s arraignment and bail proceeding was conducted via video, and audio repeatedly cut out for those observing from the courthouse; transcripts that became available late last night filled in some of these gaps. However, many details of Maxwell’s secretive personal life were audible – including information on how she wound up living on the 156-acre Bradford, New Hampshire, estate where she was arrested on 2 July. A real estate agent involved with the property’s sale told an FBI agent that the buyers introduced themselves as “Scott and Janet Marshall, who both have British accents”.

“Scott Marshall told her that the … that he was retired from the British military and he was currently working on writing a book. Janet Marshall described herself as a journalist who wants privacy. They told the agent they wanted to purchase the property quickly through a wire and that they were setting up an LLC,” Moe said, noting that this conversation took place in November 2019. “Following [Maxwell’s] arrest, the real estate agent saw a photograph of [Maxwell] in the media and realized that the person who had introduced herself as Janet Marshall … was the defendant, Ghislaine Maxwell.”

Love it. This is why he made the video. But it’s still a few million pounds they cleaned off.

• Cleaners Remove Banksy Artwork From London Tube Train (BBC)

It was a smudge on a cleaning cloth long before the artist revealed on social media he’d done it. In the current climate, it is perhaps reassuring that the cleaners on the Tube did their job quickly and efficiently and cleaned off the work so quickly. Graffiti is regarded – certainly in the transport world and by many commuters – as something that contributes to a threatening, unwelcoming atmosphere. Of course there will be those who say it should have been kept or protected as art but that is somewhat academic. You get the feeling Banksy, who has previously destroyed his art on purpose, knew exactly what would happen to his work by putting it inside a carriage.

This was perhaps all part of the plan. An official statement said the art was removed “some days ago” in line with the London Underground’s “strict anti-graffiti policy”. All public transport users in London must wear a face covering, and TfL said it appreciated “the sentiment of encouraging people” to do so. “We’d like to offer Banksy the chance to do a new version of his message for our customers in a suitable location,” it added.

Bit of Australian humor.

• Indigenous Group Accidentally Blows Up Rio Tinto’s Headquarters (Chaser)

The Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation have today apologised to the traditional owners of the Rio Tinto headquarters located in urban-Australia after learning that the site held special importance to the group who hold claim over the land. “We apologize to the traditional owners of the site,” explained a representative for the indigenous group, “and we hope that we can work together in the future to ensure that other mining-related artifacts aren’t destroyed without consultation with the corporation’s elders.” However, critics have pointed out that Rio Tinto was simply getting in the way of progress, with the P.A.C. acting well within their rights to explore for minerals underneath the skyscraper.

“We can’t seriously expect to just waste such precious resources because of some group that superstitiously believes that some rocks are valuable and are a source of power,” explained one Aboriginal expert with a degree in White Studies. “The reality is that at the end of the day, if we lost a few accounting books tracing the history of the company, that’s a small price to pay for progress.” Asked what they will be doing to make amends, the Aboriginal group said it all happened in the past, so instead of any meaningful action they will simply put up a plaque explaining why blowing up a building might be considered bad in hindsight, but also pointing out that people three hours ago held different views around these things so we shouldn’t judge them by the standards of the current time.

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Debt Rattle June 11 2020

Jun 112020

June 11, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:08 am Finance Tagged with: Aboriginal, Amazon, apocalypse, Banksy, Columbus, coronavirus, Covid19, elevators, FBI, Latin America, Pelosi, Seattle, slavery, statues, Steele, Walmart 15 Responses »

Banksy Bataclan emergency door 2018 (was stolen in 2019, recovered yesterday)

• Pelosi Urges Confederate Statues Be Removed From Capitol (AP)

• Statues of Christopher Columbus Toppled Across The US (CNN)

• Walmart To Stop Keeping ‘Multicutural’ Beauty Products In Locked Displays (R.)

• Latin America Hits 70,000 Pandemic Deaths, Daily Record In Mexico (R.)

• BHP To Destroy At Least 40 Aboriginal Sites, Up To 15,000 Years Old (G.)

• Rio Tinto Destroys 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Site: ‘Misunderstanding’ (G.)

• Arrival Of Million By Sea Adds To UK Quarantine Doubts (Times)

• UK Economy Likely To Suffer Worst COVID19 Damage – OECD (G.)

• Fed Vows To Support US Economy’s ‘Long Road’ To Recovery After Dire 2020 (R.)

• US Housing ‘Apocalypse’ Coming As Coronavirus Protections Expire (CNBC)

• Amazon Bans Police Use Of Facial Recognition Tech – For A Year (BBC)

• The Elevator Arises As The Latest Logjam In Getting Back To Work (KHN)

• Lilly COVID19 Treatment Could Be Authorized For Use As Soon As September (R.)

• Germany Takes In Another 249 Refugee Children From Greece (K.)

• FBI Knew Steele Dossier Linked To Clinton, Dems From The Start (JTN)

Worldometer reports new cases for June 9 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 134,705. A new record.

My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is about + 138,341 cases.

New deaths also rose from + 5,032 to + 5,165 (my count + 5,348)

US passed 2,000,000 cases.

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 20,852
• Brazil + 33,100
• Russia + 8,779
• India + 12,375
• Pakistan + 5,834
• Chile + 5,737

• Cases 7,482,561 (+ 138,341 from yesterday’s 7,344,220)

• Deaths 419,488 (+ 5,348 from yesterday’s 414,140)

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

From Worldometer:

From COVID19Info.live:

Pelosi’s Box. She has no idea. She’s only focused on beating Trump.

• Pelosi Urges Confederate Statues Be Removed From Capitol (AP)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is demanding that [11] statues of Confederate figures such as Jefferson Davis be removed from the U.S. Capitol. In a letter, Pelosi told a House-Senate committee with jurisdiction over the controversial topic that Confederate statues “pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed.” The California Democrat made the announcement on the very day President Donald Trump vowed on Twitter that he would not rename military bases honoring Confederate generals. Only a short time before Pelosi’s statement, NASCAR announced it would ban displays of the Confederate flag at its races. Confederate monuments have reemerged as a national flash point since the death of George Floyd [..]

Protesters decrying racism have targeted Confederate monuments in multiple cities, and some state officials are considering taking them down. Pelosi lacks the authority to order the removal of the 11 Capitol statues honoring Confederates but is urging the little-noticed Joint Committee on the Library to vote to remove them. Senate Republicans share jurisdiction. “The statues in the Capitol should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation,” Pelosi wrote. “Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals.” The presence of statues of generals and other figures of the Confederacy in Capitol locations such as Statuary Hall — the original House chamber — has been offensive to African American lawmakers for many years.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1270150850380521475

Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., was known to give tours pointing out the numerous statues. But it’s up to the states to determine which of their historical figures to display. Jefferson Davis, a former U.S. senator from Mississippi who was president of the Confederate States of America, is represented by one of two statues from that state. Pelosi noted that Davis and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, whose statue comes from Georgia, “were charged with treason against the United States.” “Several states have moved toward replacing statues and others appear headed in the same direction. This process is ongoing and encouraging,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairman of the Library Committee. “As Speaker Pelosi is undoubtedly aware, the law does not permit the Architect of the Capitol or the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library to remove a statue from the Capitol once it has been received.”

Well, let’s see…who’s uncomfortably like Columbus?

• Statues of Christopher Columbus Toppled Across The US (CNN)

As racial reckoning occurs across the country following the death of George Floyd, many Confederate statues — which some consider racist symbols of America’s dark legacy of slavery — have been removed. Now, statues of Christopher Columbus, another controversial figure in US history, are also being taken down. There have been three reports of Christopher Columbus statues being tampered with — one thrown into a lake, one beheaded, and another pulled to the ground. Columbus has long been a contentious figure in history for his treatment of the Indigenous communities he encountered and for his role in the violent colonization at their expense. In recent years, many cities and states have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, in recognition of the pain and terror caused by Columbus and other European explorers.

[..] Elsewhere in the US, about 1,000 people gathered at Byrd Park in Richmond, Virginia on Tuesday, according to CNN affiliate WTVR. The Richmond Indigenous Society said in a tweet ahead of the rally that “we are gathering at Byrd Park to protest yet another racist monument. Christopher Columbus was a murderer of Indigenous people, mainstreaming the genocidal culture against Indigenous people that we still see today. Bring your sage, drum, jingle dress, and mask!”

[..] in Boston, officials removed the Columbus statue located in the city’s North End after it was beheaded Tuesday evening. The statue, which was erected in 1979, had been previously vandalized in 2015, when it was doused in red paint and the words “Black Lives Matter” were spray-painted on the back, CNN affiliate WBZ reported “This particular statue has been subject to repeated vandalism here in Boston, and given the conversations that we’re certainly having right now in our city of Boston and throughout the country, we’re also going to take time to assess the historic meaning of this action,” Mayor Marty Walsh said, according to WBZ.

Oh, the webs we weave: “Many companies have issued statements in support of the black community..”

• Walmart To Stop Keeping ‘Multicutural’ Beauty Products In Locked Displays (R.)

Walmart Inc will stop keeping personal care products designed for people of color in locked display cases, the retailer said, after the practice drew flak online with many saying it suggested customers for these products cannot be trusted. “We have made the decision to discontinue placing multicultural hair care and beauty products in locked cases,” the company said in an email statement on Wednesday. Walmart said the practice was in place in about a dozen of its 4,700 stores in the United States and the cases were in place to deter shoplifters from products such as electronics, automotive, cosmetics and other personal care products.

[..] The change in Walmart’s policy was prompted by a June 8 CBS News report cbsloc.al/37iJZxv that a Walmart customer had complained of the practice being discriminatory against people of color, while visiting a store in the city of Denver. “The multi-cultural hair care is all locked behind the glass. That’s so ridiculous,” Lauren Epps, a black woman was quoted as saying in the report. Many companies have issued statements in support of the black community, in addition to setting up funds to fight systematic racism. Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon has said the company, along with Walmart Foundation, will commit $100 million to create a new center on racial equity.

Columbus opened the doors for the conquistadores. 500+ years later, the population still lives that.

• Latin America Hits 70,000 Pandemic Deaths, Daily Record In Mexico (R.)

Latin America’s coronavirus crisis reached a grim new milestone on Wednesday with total deaths exceeding 70,000, according to a Reuters count, as Mexico hit a daily record for confirmed infections. Brazil, with the largest economy in the region, remains Latin America’s most affected country as total fatalities are just shy of 40,000, the world’s third highest death toll after the United States and Britain. In the region’s second biggest country Mexico, a new daily record of 4,883 confirmed cases was reported by the health ministry, along with 708 additional fatalities.

The daily totals bring Mexico’s overall official count to 129,184 infections and 15,357 deaths. The World Health Organization has determined that Latin America is the new hotspot for the pandemic, which began around the beginning of the year in China and quickly spread to Europe and beyond. Governments across the globe acknowledge that the real number of infected people is significantly higher than the official counts. Latin American fatalities attributed to the highly-contagious Covid-19 respiratory illness caused by the virus stand at 70,972, while total infections are at 1.45 million.

And talking about slavery and the mistreatment of indigenous people…

• BHP To Destroy At Least 40 Aboriginal Sites, Up To 15,000 Years Old (G.)

Mining giant BHP Billiton is poised to destroy at least 40 – and possibly as many as 86 – significant Aboriginal sites in the central Pilbara to expand its $4.5bn South Flank iron ore mining operation, even though its own reports show it is aware that the traditional owners are deeply opposed to the move. In documents seen by Guardian Australia, a BHP archaeological survey identified rock shelters that were occupied between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago and noted that evidence in the broader area showed “occupation of the surrounding landscape has been ongoing for approximately 40,000 years”. BHP’s report in September 2019 identified 22 sites of artefacts scatters, culturally modified trees, rock shelters with painted rock art, stone arrangements, and 40 “built structures … believed to be potential archaeological sites”.

Under section 18 of the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act, the traditional owners – in this case the Banjima people – are unable to lodge objections or to prevent their sacred sites from being damaged. They are also unable to raise concerns publicly about the expansion, having signed comprehensive agreements with BHP as part of a native title settlement. BHP agreed to financial and other benefits for the Banjima people, while the Banjima made commitments to support the South Flank project. But the Banjima native title holders told the WA government in April they did not want any of the 86 archaeological sites within the project area to be damaged, saying the “impending harm” to the area “is a further significant cumulative loss to the cultural values of the Banjima people”.

“There was no slavery in Australia.” Scott Morrison, 11.06.2020.

What would you call this, then ? pic.twitter.com/gUfFnQbskj

— Mike Carlton (@MikeCarlton01) June 11, 2020

Autralia is built on its own unique legacy of destruction.

• Rio Tinto Destroys 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Site: ‘Misunderstanding’ (G.)

The head of Rio Tinto’s iron ore division said he has “taken accountability” for the destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site but refused to give a direct answer when asked if the company knew traditional owners did not want the rock shelter destroyed, saying: “clearly, there was a misunderstanding”. In an interview on Radio National on Friday, the chief executive of Rio Tinto iron ore, Chris Salisbury, said it it had “taken accountability” for the destruction of the site, which was one of two destroyed in a blast to expand the Brockman 4 iron ore mine last month. The two sites were located in Juukan Gorge in the Hamersley Ranges, about 300km inland from Karratha in Western Australia’s iron ore rich Pilbara region.

Traditional owners the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people only learned of the planned detonation on 15 May, nine days before it took place. They said the loss was “soul destroying”. Salisbury said the company “regrettably … thought we had a shared understanding with the PKKP about the future of the sites” and would conduct a review to learn “how did this go wrong from our point of view”. He also refused to provide a direct answer when asked if a statement released by the company last week, which suggested the PKKP had only “recently expressed concerns” about the site, was incorrect. It released another statement apologising “for the distress we caused” but not the destruction, on Sunday.

No testing, no quarantines. More people than this arrived by air. No testing. Now that they’ve all landed and had the chance to infect Britons, there’s a quarentine.

• Arrival Of Million By Sea Adds To UK Quarantine Doubts (Times)

More than 1.1 million people have arrived in the UK by sea since the start of the year without being forced to self-isolate as concerns mount over the government’s quarantine policy. Official figures show that there were 346,000 arrivals in the UK in March and April alone despite concerns over the transmission of coronavirus, casting further doubt over the government’s quarantine policy which was introduced for arrivals this week. The figures include HGV drivers, who are exempt from the quarantine measures, although it is not known how many fell into the category. Since Monday, anyone arriving in the UK by air, sea and through the Channel Tunnel rail link has been forced to spend two weeks in isolation. This includes Britons returning from abroad. The scheme does not apply to people from Ireland.

The quarantine is part of measures aimed at avoiding a second outbreak of Covid-19 but critics have questioned its value months after such curbs were introduced elsewhere. Giving evidence to MPs yesterday, Sir David Skeggs, 72, emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, told the home affairs committee: “These border measures would be most effective if they were done very early.” Scientists also told MPs that summer holidays abroad risked a fresh wave of coronavirus infections across Europe. Gabriel Leung, 47, a dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said it would be safest if mass-market tourism was discouraged. “I can’t imagine anybody going on holiday in any kind of destination where you go to enjoy the sun and actually doing very good hand hygiene and putting on a mask,” he said.

Forget these predictions. Nobody has a single clue.

• UK Economy Likely To Suffer Worst COVID19 Damage – OECD (G.)

Britain’s economy is likely to suffer the worst damage from the Covid-19 crisis of any country in the developed world, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. A slump in the UK’s national income of 11.5% during 2020 will outstrip the falls in France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the US, the Paris-based thinktank said. Germany’s decline in GDP is forecast to be 6.6% this year while Spain’s GDP will fall by 11.1%, Italy’s by 11.3 and France’s by 11.4%. The US, the world’s largest economy, is expected to take a hit of 7.3%. Highlighting the task awaiting the UK government as it seeks to ease the lockdown, the OECD warned that countries forced to impose the most draconian restrictions faced a long haul back to previous levels of activity.

Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s shadow chancellor, blamed the “deeply worrying” OECD forecast on the government’s “failure to get on top of the health crisis, delay going into lockdown and chaotic mismanagement of the exit from lockdown”, which she argued made the economic impact of the crisis worse. Responding to the report, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said the UK was suffering “in common with many other economies around the world” and the priority was to “support people, jobs and businesses through this crisis – and this is what we’ve done”.

Britain, which is forecast to post an increase in unemployment to around 9%, could make its situation more difficult if it failed to secure a lasting agreement with the EU on trade and access to the single market, the OECD said. “The failure to conclude a trade deal with the European Union by the end of 2020 or put in place alternative arrangements would have a strongly negative effect on trade and jobs,” it said. Adding to pressure on No 10 to agree concessions with Brussels to secure a Brexit deal amid the economic damage caused by the pandemic, the credit ratings agency Moody’s warned that a no-deal Brexit would “significantly damage the UK’s potentially fragile recovery from its deepest recession in almost a century”.

OECD says the global economy will suffer the deepest peace-time slump in a century, urges governments not to shy away from debt-financed spending to support low-paid workers and investment https://t.co/V28WLFA8nu pic.twitter.com/S7wS3uwLEs

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 11, 2020

The Fed supports only banks. But Powell can still spout this insulting nonsense. No journalist ever openly disagrees.

• Fed Vows To Support US Economy’s ‘Long Road’ To Recovery After Dire 2020 (R.)

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday signaled it plans years of extraordinary support for an economy facing a torturous slog back from the coronavirus pandemic, with policymakers projecting the economy to shrink 6.5% in 2020 and the unemployment rate to be 9.3% at year’s end. In the first economic projections of the pandemic era, U.S. central bank policymakers put into numbers what has been an emerging narrative: that the shutdowns, restrictions and other measures used to battle a health crisis will echo through the economy for years to come rather than be quickly reversed as commerce reopens.

Fed's Powell: Many differences between now and the great depression. pic.twitter.com/2gcXUNhO96

— Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) June 10, 2020

Some 20 million or more people have been thrown out of work since February, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged it could take years for them to all reacquire jobs – an economic blow that is falling heaviest on minority communities at a time when mass protests over police brutality have thrown a new spotlight on racial inequality in the United States. Powell, acknowledging the nationwide demonstrations in his opening remarks at a news briefing, said it was now the Fed’s single-minded mission to bring the job market back to where it was at the end of last year, with the unemployment rate at a record low 3.5% and wage gains accumulating for some of the very same lower-paid workers in the service sector that have suffered most during the recent collapse.

[..] At the median, officials see the unemployment rate falling to 6.5% at the end of 2021 and 5.5% at the end of 2022 – still a full 2 percentage points above where it was at the end of last year, representing millions of lost years of work and wages. “The ongoing public health crisis will weigh heavily on economic activity, employment and inflation in the near term and poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term,” the Fed said in its policy statement. The response has been an unparalleled level of unanimity in the outlook for monetary policy. All 17 current Fed policymakers see the key overnight interest rate, or federal funds rate, remaining near zero through next year, and 15 of 17 see no change through 2022.

'We're not thinking about raising rates. We're not even thinking about thinking about raising rates,' Fed Chair Jerome Powell said https://t.co/PLbXkBYujf pic.twitter.com/PlWQZOQscw

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 11, 2020

2 million evictions in the pipeline even before COVID19.

• US Housing ‘Apocalypse’ Coming As Coronavirus Protections Expire (CNBC)

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. was experiencing what housing experts and advocates deemed an eviction crisis. More than 2 million people face eviction each year, far more than the number of people who faced foreclosure at the height of the 2008 mortgage crisis. Experts expect the eviction crisis to get far worse in the coming months. The Covid-19 economic recession has hit renters especially hard. They make up a disproportionate share of service sector jobs, an industry that has been decimated as a result of the coronavirus shutdowns. In fact, between March 25 and April 10 of this year, nearly half of renters aged 18 to 64 reported that they were having trouble paying their rent or utilities, were food insecure or couldn’t afford needed medical care, according to the Urban Institute.

Thousands of tenants have been missing rent payments over the past few months. People of color have fared worse than white renters due to the disproportionate job loss in their communities, the Urban Institute reports. About 25% of black and Latino renters reported not paying or deferring rent in May, compared to 14% of white renters. To keep people in their homes, the federal government banned evictions in federally assisted properties through July 25, and some cities and states, including Massachusetts, New York and Michigan, put their own temporary eviction moratoriums in place. But many of those bans begin expiring this month depending on the state, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions across the country.

Plus, the extra $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits is set to expire at the end of July. That extra money is “what has been allowing many people who have lost their jobs to continue paying rent,” Solomon Greene, a senior fellow in housing policy at the Urban Institute, tells CNBC Make It. Coupled with the end of eviction moratoriums, the U.S. is likely to experience an uptick in evictions nationwide in the coming weeks. Evicting people in the middle of a global health crisis puts them at greater risk of contracting and spreading Covid-19, turning “a catastrophe into an apocalypse,” Aaron Carr, founder and executive director of the Housing Rights Initiative, tells CNBC Make It. “A lot of people could be on the streets,” says Carr. “Especially in places like New York City that already have a homeless problem, it could turn into a homeless nightmare.”

For a year. That’s all you need to know. About a company that has rich contracts with US intelligence,

• Amazon Bans Police Use Of Facial Recognition Tech – For A Year (BBC)

Technology giant Amazon has banned the police from using its controversial facial recognition software for a year. It comes after civil rights advocates raised concerns about potential racial bias in surveillance technology. This week IBM also said it would stop offering its facial recognition software for “mass surveillance or racial profiling”. The decisions follow growing pressure on firms to respond to the death in police custody of George Floyd. Amazon said the suspension of law enforcement use of its Rekognition software was to give US lawmakers the opportunity to enact legislation to regulate how the technology is employed.

“We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge,” Amazon said in a statement. “We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.” However, the company said that it would still allow organisations that deal with human trafficking to use the technology. Like other facial recognition products, Amazon’s Rekognition can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to very quickly compare a picture from, for example, an officer’s phone camera and try to match it with mugshots held on police databases that can hold hundreds of thousands of photos.

You mean, that wasn’t obvious yet? Sometimes you guys surprise me.

• The Elevator Arises As The Latest Logjam In Getting Back To Work (KHN)

When the American Medical Association moved its headquarters to a famous Chicago skyscraper in 2013, the floor-to-ceiling views from the 47th-floor conference space were a spectacular selling point. But now, those glimpses of the Chicago River at the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed landmark, now known as AMA Plaza, come with a trade-off: navigating the elevator in the time of COVID-19. Once the epitome of efficiency for moving masses of people quickly to where they needed to go, the elevator is the antithesis of social distancing and a risk-multiplying bottleneck. As America begins to open up, the newest conundrum for employers in cities is how to safely transport people in elevators and manage the crowd of people waiting for them.

If office tower workers want to stay safe, elevator experts think they have advice, some practical, some not: Stay in your corner, face the walls and carry toothpicks (for pushing the buttons). Not only have those experts gone back to studying mathematical models for moving people, but they are also creating technology like ultraviolet-light disinfection tools and voice-activated panels. “When there is risk of disease spreading from human to human, continuing to maintain a clean and safe vertical transportation system is critical to help people return to work and safe living,” said Jon Clarine, head of digital services at Thyssenkrupp Elevator, in an email.

After all, most elevators are inherently cramped, enclosed spaces that can barely fit two people safely spaced 6 feet apart, much less the dozen or more that elevators in commercial and residential buildings were designed to hold. They’re a minefield of buttons and surfaces tempting to touch. Air circulation is limited to what a few vents and the opening doors can manage. Plus, they’re usually mobbed during the morning, lunchtime and evening rushes.

If news agencies write this sort of thing, while there are hundreds such products being touted, how is that not stealth advertizing and promotion?

• Lilly COVID19 Treatment Could Be Authorized For Use As Soon As September (R.)

Eli Lilly and Co could have a drug specifically designed to treat COVID-19 authorized for use as early as September if all goes well with either of two antibody therapies it is testing, its chief scientist told Reuters on Wednesday. Lilly is also doing preclinical studies of a third antibody treatment for the illness caused by the new coronavirus that could enter human clinical trials in the coming weeks, Chief Scientific Officer Daniel Skovronsky said in an interview. Lilly has already launched human trials with two of the experimental therapies. The drugs belong to a class of biotech medicines called monoclonal antibodies widely used to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and many other conditions. A monoclonal antibody drug developed against COVID-19 is likely to be more effective than repurposed medicines currently being tested against the virus.

Skovronsky said the therapies – which may also be used to prevent the disease – could beat a vaccine to widespread use as a COVID-19 treatment, if they prove effective. “For the treatment indication, particularly, this could go pretty fast,” he said in an interview. “If in August or September we’re seeing the people who got treated are not progressing to hospitalization, that would be powerful data and could lead to emergency use authorization.” “So that puts you in the fall time: September, October, November is not unreasonable,” he said. Coronavirus vaccines being developed and tested at unprecedented speed are not likely to be ready before the end of the year at the earliest.

Out of over 5,000, most of whom have been in Greece for much of their entire lives.

• Germany Takes In Another 249 Refugee Children From Greece (K.)

Germany has taken in an additional 249 refugee children from Greece, the country’s interior minister Horst Seehofer said Wednesday, noting that most of the minors are sick or the siblings of migrants that are already in Germany. “As the rates of coronavirus are currently at this low level, we decided as the Interior Ministry… to take in more children from Greece,” Seehofer said, noting that Germany had already received 47 refugee children in April. Seehofer said that some of his associates visited Greece last week to arrange the transfer of the children.

Six of the youngsters who were too sick to travel last week will be transferred on a subsequent trip, he said. “I always said that my migration policy includes order but also humanity,” the German minister said. Luxembourg, Switzerland, Portugal and France are among the countries that have also taken in child refugees from Greece. Many of the children being relocated belong to the ranks of unaccompanied refugee minors in Greece, who number over 5,000.

Tomorrow’s the DC Appeals Court Michael Flynn hearing. Fireworks.

• FBI Knew Steele Dossier Linked To Clinton, Dems From The Start (JTN)

Notes and emails that have been kept so far from Senate investigators show the FBI knew from its earliest interactions with Christopher Steele in July 2016 that his Russia research project on Donald Trump was connected to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. The information, so far mentioned only glancingly and in footnotes of a Justice Department report, could provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with the most powerful evidence yet to confront witnesses about why the bureau concealed the political origins of Steele’s work from the FISA court. “So far the bureau is slow-walking this stuff,” a source familiar with senators’ frustrations told Just the News. “We need to see these sort of documents before we question key witnesses.”

Chairman Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) is seeking a vote later this week to authorize subpoenas that would compel the Christopher Wray-led FBI to produce witnesses and outstanding documents for the committee’s investigation of the Russia investigators. The effort to acquire the original source materials began last December after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his explosive report blaming the FBI for 17 mistakes, omissions and acts of misconduct in seeking a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. While the headlines since that report have mostly focused on FISA abuses, Senate investigators have also zeroed in on a handful of little-noticed passages in Horowitz’s narrative that reference original FBI source documents showing what agents and supervisors knew about Steele, the former MI6 agent, and the firm that hired him, Fusion GPS.

It wasn’t until late October 2017 that the public and Congress first learned that the law firm Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, hired Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS research firm to have Steele delve into Trump’s Russia connections. And FBI officials have been vague in their explanations about when they knew Steele’s research was tied to Clinton and the DNC and why they did not explicitly inform the FISA court that the Steele dossier used to secure the warrant was funded by Trump’s election opponent. But one passage and two footnotes in Horowitz’s report that have largely escaped public attention suggest the FBI agent who first interviewed Steele about his anti-Trump research in London on July 5, 2016 was aware immediately of a connection to Clinton and that a separate office of the FBI passed along information from an informant by Aug. 2, 2016 that Simpson’s Fusion GPS was connected to the DNC.

[..] The FBI notes and emails from summer 2016 are consistent with recent testimony that Steele gave in a civil case in London, where he testified he told the bureau his research and the Fusion GPS project was connected to Clinton. “I presumed it was the Clinton campaign, and Glenn Simpson had indicated that. But I was not aware of the technicality of it being the DNC that was actually the client of Perkins Coie,” Steele testified in March under questioning from lawyers for Russian bankers suing over his research. Steele confirmed during that testimony that his notes of a 2016 FBI meeting showed he told agents about the Clinton connection.

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Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize then dropped more bombs than all his predecessors, and barely anyone batted an eyelash because he looked and sounded classy while doing it. https://t.co/v4jaxYMbz0

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) June 11, 2020

Little ones relate

pic.twitter.com/q9oZqQJfOD

— James Hirsen (@thejimjams) June 10, 2020

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

Debt Rattle June 10 2020

Jun 102020

June 10, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:28 am Finance Tagged with: Arizona, bad bank, Banksy, California, chlorinated, collapse, coronavirus, Covid19, Mexico, military coup, misfortune, Pakistan, recovery, WHO 28 Responses »

Banksy June 2020

• WHO Walks Back Claim On Asymptomatic Transmission Of Coronavirus (RT)

• Coronavirus Patients Most Infectious When They First Feel Unwell: WHO (R.)

• WHO Urges Pakistan To Return To Lockdown As Hospitals Struggle (GH.)

• California, Southwest Face New Coronavirus Woes As US Economy Reopens (R.)

• Mexico’s Coronavirus Peak Still Weeks Off, 600 New Deaths In One Day (R.)

• Widespread Mask-Wearing Could Prevent COVID19 Second Waves (R.)

• DC National Guard Members Test Positive After Protests Response (McC)

• Chicago Professor Removes Post That Appeared To Call For A Military Coup (Turley)

• Tory Minister Says Eating Chlorinated Chicken Should Be Up To Consumer (Ind.)

• World Faces Worst Food Crisis For At Least 50 Years – UN (G.)

• ECB Prepares ‘Bad Bank’ Plan For Wave Of Coronavirus Toxic Debt (R.)

• The Illusion of a Rapid US Recovery (Galbraith)

• Misfortune vs. Carelessness (Ben Hunt)

• Banksy Reveals Plan For Bristol’s Toppled Colston Statue (CB)

Worldometer has global new cases for June 8 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 121,751.

My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is about + 125,033 cases.

The decrease we saw for a few days did not last. New deaths also rose from 2,599 yesterday back up to 5,032.

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 19,056
• Brazil + 30,197
• Russia + 8,595
• India + 9,548
• Pakistan + 5,385

• Cases 7,344,220 (+ 125,033 from yesterday’s 7,219,187)

• Deaths 414,140 (+ 5,032 from yesterday’s 409,108)

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

From Worldometer:

From COVID19Info.live:

Stock of 5 biggest companies
Amazon: record high
Apple: record high
Facebook: record high
Microsoft: record high
Google: 5% below record high

Small businesses this year
22% have closed
Revenue is down 40%

We're seeing a massive wealth transfer from small biz to conglomerates

— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) June 10, 2020

Plausible. That makes it the MABU – Mother of all Bubbles#Winning https://t.co/axf2kNOlDq

— Danielle DiMartino Booth (@DiMartinoBooth) June 10, 2020

The WHO keeps on piling on “mistakes”. If it isn’t China, it’s HCQ, and if not that, it’s asymptomatic patients.

• WHO Walks Back Claim On Asymptomatic Transmission Of Coronavirus (RT)

The World Health Organization has qualified its bombshell claim that asymptomatic people rarely infect others with Covid-19, scrambling to explain how its earlier statement was misinterpreted and based on a “misunderstanding.” WHO coronavirus lead Maria Van Kerkhove attempted on Tuesday to clear up controversy around her previous claim that asymptomatic transmission was “very rare,” insisting she had been speaking based on the results of just “two or three” studies. To claim asymptomatic transmission is rare globally would be a “misunderstanding,” she explained.

“I was just responding to a question, I wasn’t stating a policy of WHO or anything like that,” she backpedaled, explaining that asymptomatic transmission estimates come from dubiously-accurate models. “That’s a big open question, and that remains an open question.” Some 16 percent of infected people may be asymptomatic, she said, citing studies – while some scientific models claim as much as 40 percent of global transmission may come from asymptomatic individuals. Given that sloppy disease modeling has been responsible for some of the most disastrous overreactions to the pandemic, Van Kerkhove’s reluctance to include these supposedly scientific speculations in the previous day’s briefing could be forgiven, but WHO emergency director Mike Ryan acknowledged his colleague’s words were likely “misinterpreted.”

[..] Harvard Global Health Institute had flat-out refused to accept Van Kerkhove’s claim, declaring “all of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV-2” in a statement on Tuesday. The institute warned that “communicating preliminary data…without much context can have tremendous negative impact” on public and government responses to the pandemic, and indeed, Van Kerkhove’s comments had touched off a chain-reaction of second-guessing, pearl-clutching, and general existential crises among lockdown proponents as the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases continues to climb.

A.k.a. the exact moment they should start taking hydroxychloroquine.

• Coronavirus Patients Most Infectious When They First Feel Unwell: WHO (R.)

Studies show people with the coronavirus are most infectious just at the point when they first begin to feel unwell, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said on Tuesday. This feature has made it so hard to control spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, but it can be done through rigorous testing and social distancing, they said. “It appears from very limited information we have right now that people have more virus in their body at or around the time that they develop symptoms, so very early on,” Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist and technical lead on the pandemic, told a live session on social media. Preliminary studies from Germany and the United States suggest that people with mild symptoms can be infectious for up to 8-9 days, and “it can be a lot longer for people who are more severely ill”, she said.

Earlier, some disease experts questioned her statement on Monday that transmission of COVID-19 by people with no symptoms is “very rare”, saying this guidance could pose problems for governments as they seek to lift lockdowns. Van Kerkhove, citing disease-modelling studies, clarified on Tuesday that some people do not develop symptoms, but can still infect others. “Some estimates of around 40 percent of transmission may be due to asymptomatic (cases), but those are from models. So I didn’t include that in my answer yesterday but wanted to make sure that I made that clear,” she said.

Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergencies expert, said that the novel coronavirus lodges in the upper respiratory tract, making it easier to transmit by droplets than related viruses such as SARS or MERS, which are in the lower tract. “Now as we look at COVID-19, we have an infectious pathogen that is present in the upper airway for which the viral loads are peaking at the time you are just beginning to get sick,” he said. “That means you could be in the restaurant feeling perfectly well and start to get a fever, you are feeling ok, you didn’t think to stay home, but that’s the moment at which your viral load could be actually quite high,” he said.

You try getting 212 million people on a second lockdown.

• WHO Urges Pakistan To Return To Lockdown As Hospitals Struggle (GH.)

The World Health Organization has taken the unusual step of urging Pakistan to return to lockdown, suggesting the country implement restrictions in a cycle of two weeks on, two weeks off. While Pakistan has relatively low testing rates, one in four people who are tested return a positive result, the WHO said in a letter to Punjab’s provincial health minister, Yasmin Rashid. Prime Minister Imran Khan has resisted a national lockdown, arguing the country cannot afford it, and provinces have instead introduced patchwork lockdowns. Last week Khan said these would be lifted. But, with 108,317 known cases and 2,172 confirmed deaths, hospitals across the south Asian country say they are at or near capacity, with some turning Covid-19 patients away. Globally, the WHO confirmed the biggest ever one-day rise in confirmed cases this week, with 136,000 cases in 24 hours, according to director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Most were from south Asia and the Americas.

[..] Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, warned on Tuesday the pandemic was “far from over,” and that he was surprised at how “rapidly it just took over the planet”. Speaking in a videotaped discussion at a Biotechnology Innovation Organization conference, Fauci said: “I mean, Ebola was scary. But Ebola would never be easily transmitted in a global way.” He added: “HIV, as important as it is, was drawn out over an extended period of time.” He warned that the world was still at the start of seeing the coronavirus pandemic’s effects. “Oh my goodness,” Fauci said. “Where is it going to end? We’re still at the beginning of it.” On Tuesday, 21 US states reported weekly increases in new cases. Arizona, Utah and New Mexico all posted rises of 40% or higher for the week ending Sunday, compared with the prior seven days, according to a Reuters analysis.

“21 U.S. states reported weekly increases [..] Arizona, Utah and New Mexico all posted rises of 40% or higher for the week..”

• California, Southwest Face New Coronavirus Woes As US Economy Reopens (R.)

Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are spiking in parts of California and the U.S. Southwest, prompting Arizona to reactivate its emergency plan for medical facilities and California to place counties where half its population lives on a watch list. The uptick in cases, which could lead authorities to reimpose or tighten public health restrictions aimed at slowing the virus’ spread, complicates efforts to reopen the U.S. economy, which has been devastated by shelter-at-home rules. New Jersey, one of the states hit hardest by the pandemic, with over 12,000 deaths, lifted its stay-at-home order on Tuesday. More than 18 million of California’s 39 million residents live in counties now on the watch list, which includes Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Fresno, a Reuters analysis showed.

“Many of the cases that are showing up in hospitals are linked to gatherings that are taking place in homes – birthday parties and funerals,” said Olivia Kasirye, public health director of Sacramento County, one of the nine counties on the state watch list that may eventually require them to roll back reopening efforts. Arizona was among the first states to reopen in mid-May and its cases have increased 115% since then, leading a former state health chief to warn that a new stay-at-home order or field hospitals may be needed. According to a Reuters tally, there were 1,983,825 coronavirus cases in the United States and 111,747 deaths as of Tuesday. On Tuesday, 21 U.S. states reported weekly increases in new cases of COVID-19.

[..] Arizona, Utah and New Mexico all posted rises of 40% or higher for the week ended Sunday, compared with the prior seven days, according to a Reuters analysis. Some of the new cases are linked to better testing. But many stem from loosened public health restrictions that have allowed people to gather in groups and go inside stores to shop, said public health officers in two California counties. Health officials believe other cases have been passed along by people not following social-distancing recommendations. It is too soon to see whether cases will also spike after protests swept the country [..]

“The government previously predicted the pandemic would peak in early May, and under U.S. pressure, has begun reopening its carmaking industry..”

• Mexico’s Coronavirus Peak Still Weeks Off, 600 New Deaths In One Day (R.)

New coronavirus cases in Mexico are expected to keep rising, a top health official said on Tuesday, even as the government pushes a gradual reopening of the economy launched at the beginning of this month. “We still haven’t reached the maximum point,” Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell told a morning news conference. “For several more weeks, we will keep announcing there are more cases today than yesterday.” His assessment was largely echoed by officials from the World Health Organization and its Pan American Health Organization during a webcast news conference later in the day. While Mexico has yet to reach peak infections, they said, officials should boost testing before any wide-scale economic reopening and stick to safety measures, including social distancing.

Government figures released on Tuesday night showed nearly 600 deaths added to the official count as total infections rose to 124,301. Overall, reported deaths stood at 14,649. In recent weeks, Latin America has emerged as the epicenter of the pandemic, with a spike in cases even as the tide of infection recedes elsewhere. Mexican officials have gradually raised the projections of total fatalities and now forecast up to 35,000 deaths through October. A study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington last week forecast up to 75,516 deaths by August. The government previously predicted the pandemic would peak in early May, and under U.S. pressure, has begun reopening its carmaking industry, which has since been deemed essential. But plans to further relax social-distancing measures were put on hold as infection rates continued to rise.

That this is studied at all tells you how insane the west is. Asians don’t waste money on that, they just wear them.

• Widespread Mask-Wearing Could Prevent COVID19 Second Waves (R.)

Population-wide facemask use could push COVID-19 transmission down to controllable levels for national epidemics and could prevent further waves of the pandemic disease when combined with lockdowns, according to a UK study published Wednesday. The research, led by scientists at the Britain’s Cambridge and Greenwich Universities, suggests lockdowns alone will not stop the resurgence of the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, but that even homemade masks can dramatically reduce transmission rates if enough people wear them in public. “Our analyses support the immediate and universal adoption of facemasks by the public,” said Richard Stutt, who co-led the study at Cambridge.

He said the findings showed that if widespread mask use were combined with social distancing and some lockdown measures, this could be “an acceptable way of managing the pandemic and re-opening economic activity” long before the development and public availability of an effective vaccine against COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus. The study’s findings were published in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society A” scientific journal. The World Health Organization updated its guidance on Friday to recommend that governments ask everyone to wear fabric face masks in public areas where there is a risk to reduce the spread of the disease.

In this study, researchers linked the dynamics of spread between people with population-level models to assess the effect on the disease’s reproduction rate, or R value, of different scenarios of mask adoption combined with periods of lockdown. The R value measures the average number of people that one infected person will pass the disease on to. An R value above 1 can lead to exponential growth. The study found that if people wear masks whenever they are in public it is twice as effective at reducing the R value than if masks are only worn after symptoms appear. In all scenarios the study looked at, routine facemask use by 50% or more of the population reduced COVID-19 spread to an R of less than 1.0, flattening future disease waves and allowing for less stringent lockdowns.

But the Dems like the protests! Stopping them would be interfering with the election!

• DC National Guard Members Test Positive After Protests Response (McC)

Members of the D.C. National Guard who were responding to protests in the nation’s capital over the death of George Floyd have tested positive for COVID-19, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The service members were part of the 1,300 D.C. National Guard members called up to help law enforcement respond initially to rioting on May 31, that was followed by days of peaceful protests. A Guard spokeswoman did not identify how many positive tests the unit has recorded. “We can confirm that we have had COVID-19 positive tests with the DCNG,” said D.C. National Guard spokeswoman Air Force Lt. Col. Brooke Davis. “The safety and security of our personnel is always a concern, especially in light of the COVID-19 era.”

The news follows reports that two members of the Nebraska National Guard who were activated in response to protests in Lincoln, Neb., have also tested positive. The D.C. National Guard was supported by approximately 3,900 additional Guardsmen from Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah to protect national monuments and ensure peaceful demonstrations as tens of thousands of protesters took to district streets last week. In the largest protest Saturday, participants squeezed past each other, some with masks, some not, as they chanted and sang near the White House.

“Trump is Hitler” died about 3 years ago. The MSM have brought it back.

• Chicago Professor Removes Post That Appeared To Call For A Military Coup (Turley)

Figures from Glenn Greenwald to Tucker Carlson have raised the recent posting by University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter saying that military leaders should “depose” President Donald Trump and jail him. The posting was either a poor attempt at a coup or comedy. The real problem is that in today’s environment it was unclear and, worse yet, unremarkable. On Reddit, readers were directed to “Brian Leiter (UoC professor) calls for a military coup: “Trump should be deposed and jailed” Leiter removed the statement and blamed the lack of a sense of humor on those who objected. He was not calling for a coup d’état, just musing about the possibility of a coup d’état.

On his site, Leiter discussed the criticism of Trump by General Mattis and stated that Mattis now “needs to encourage his military colleagues who share his respect for American democracy and the rule of law to do what he should have done while in office: Trump should be deposed and jailed.” Leiter later removed the statement with an addendum reading: “I’ve removed my little joke about a military coup in favor of VP Pence. I have, it appears, more faith in the U.S. military, and its commitment to the rule of law, than most readers.” The incident however raises a more concerning problem. Many could not tell. It is now routine for academics to make sweeping and irresponsible statements about how to deal with Trump and his Administration.

This is not a reference to the distortion of the criminal code to declare a host of criminal acts that are unsupportable under controlling case law. It is superheated rhetoric of professors denouncing the Trump Administration as a fascist regime and even endorsing violent protests as a form of speech. Harvard Professor Lawrence Tribe retweeted a comparison of Trump to Hitler engaging in similar gestures and calling it “horrifying,” He later took done the tweet and said “I’m not saying Trump is becoming Hitler, so don’t bother tweeting the distinctions.” Many are still making the comparison. Indeed, I have had other professors make the same comparison in conversations.

A professor who said that he teaches a course on fascism insisted that the comparison to fascism is apt and that violence is warranted, including the attack on journalist Andy Ngo: “I don’t have a problem with it. There are children dying of lack of medication in concentration camps in the U.S. If one fascist gets a milkshake thrown at him… And beaten up. I don’t have a problem with it.” This is why people do not get the joke because many academics are not joking. Indeed, we have discussed cases where faculty have been physically attacked and intimidated.

Let them eat shit.

• Tory Minister Says Eating Chlorinated Chicken Should Be Up To Consumer (Ind.)

A minister has stoked fears that low-welfare American meat could soon be on its way to British supermarkets and cafeterias after suggesting that the government would “trust the consumer” on whether to buy it or not. In the latest exchange in parliament on the issue, Cabinet Office minister Penny Mordaunt refused to say a ban would remain on chlorinated chicken, hormone-fed beef and other US imports after an upcoming trade deal with Donald Trump. The minister said she believed “we should be trusting the consumer” on the issue and suggested some people did not want to “put their faith in government” regulations. Despite the talk of consumer choice, in reality many meat products, such as in restaurants, hospitals, and school cafeterias, do not have a country of origin label, making it impossible for consumers to differentiate.

Where such labelling does currently exist, the US also regards it as an illegitimate barrier to its exports and pushes to have the practice banned as part of trade agreements it signs with other countries. US negotiators have made clear that opening the door to American agricultural exports, which are produced to much lower welfare standards than their European counterparts, is their primary demand in talks with the UK. While the government’s own best-case scenario shows an agreement with the US would lead to a tiny boost to the UK economy of just 0.16 per cent of GDP, failing to sign such a deal would be highly politically embarrassing for Boris Johnson, who has presented such an arrangement as part of the alternative to EU membership.

[..] As recently as January, Theresa Villiers, then environment secretary, reiterated that “we will not be importing chlorinated chicken” – but since then US trade chiefs have put pressure on the UK to change its position, leading the government to change tack. American meat factories use chlorine to wash chickens so that they can operate a less sanitary production environment otherwise, an approach which saves money and allows them to undercut other producers. [..] If US food exports do make it to the UK, British consumers may be denied information about which products are American to help them get a foothold in the market. The US government’s “Foreign Trade Barriers” document for 2019 catalogues policies in countries around the world the US wants ended.

We now blame the virus for everything. Next up: corona causes climate change.

• World Faces Worst Food Crisis For At Least 50 Years – UN (G.)

The world stands on the brink of a food crisis worse than any seen for at least 50 years, the UN has warned as it urged governments to act swiftly to avoid disaster. Better social protections for poor people are urgently needed as the looming recession following the coronavirus pandemic may put basic nutrition beyond their reach, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday. “Unless immediate action is taken, it is increasingly clear that there is an impending global food emergency that could have long-term impacts on hundreds of millions of children and adults,” he said. “We need to act now to avoid the worst impacts of our efforts to control the pandemic.”

Although harvests of staple crops are holding up, and the export bans and protectionism that experts feared have so far been largely avoided, the worst of the impacts of the pandemic and ensuing recession are yet to be felt. Guterres warned: “Even in countries with abundant food, we see risks of disruption in the food supply chain.” About 50 million people risk falling into extreme poverty this year owing to the pandemic, but the long-term effects will be even worse, as poor nutrition in childhood causes lifelong suffering. Already, one in five children around the world are stunted in their growth by the age of five, and millions more are likely to suffer the same fate if poverty rates soar.

Guterres laid out a three-point plan to repair the world’s ailing food systems and prevent further harm. These are: to focus aid on the worst-stricken regions to stave off immediate disaster, and for governments to prioritise food supply chains; to strengthen social protections so that young children, pregnant and breastfeeding women and other at-risk groups – including children who are not receiving school meals in lockdown – receive adequate nutrition; and to invest in the future, by building a global recovery from the pandemic that prioritises healthy and environmentally sustainable food systems.

The ECB is there ONLY for the banks, not at all for anyone else. The bad bank issues bonds with bad loans as collateral, banks buy those, and hand them to the ECB as … collateral. Circle jerk.

“The bad bank would then issue bonds which commercial banks would buy in exchange for portfolios of unpaid loans, neutralising the virus shock for Europe’s lenders. The banks could then lodge those bonds with the ECB as collateral for central bank funding.. “

• ECB Prepares ‘Bad Bank’ Plan For Wave Of Coronavirus Toxic Debt (R.)

European Central Bank officials are drawing up a scheme to cope with potentially hundreds of billions of euros of unpaid loans in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The project, which comes as Europe mobilises trillions of euros to bolster the region’s economy, is aimed at shielding commercial banks from any second fallout from the crisis, if rising unemployment chokes off the income needed to repay loans. One of the people familiar with the plan said the ECB had set up a task force to look at the idea of a “bad bank” to warehouse unpaid euro debt and that work on the scheme had accelerated in recent weeks. The amount of debt in the euro zone that is considered unlikely to ever be fully repaid already stands at more than half a trillion euros, including credit cards, car loans and mortgages, according to official statistics.

That is set to rise as the COVID-19 outbreak squeezes borrowers and could even double to one trillion euros, weighing on already fragile banks and hindering new lending, the people familiar with the ECB plans said. While the idea for a euro zone bad bank was discussed and shelved over two years ago, the ECB, under its new President Christine Lagarde, has consulted banks and EU officials about a scheme in recent weeks, one of the people said. As the euro zone’s most powerful institution, ECB backing for the project is critical but it would also require the blessing of Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy. Berlin has long opposed schemes that accept shared responsibility for debts in other countries although it recently had an unexpected change of heart, agreeing to pool EU borrowing for a coronavirus recovery fund.

One blueprint under discussion would involve the European Stability Mechanism, an EU institution which can provide financial assistance to euro zone countries or lenders, standing in as guarantor for the bad bank, the people said. The bad bank would then issue bonds which commercial banks would buy in exchange for portfolios of unpaid loans, neutralising the virus shock for Europe’s lenders. The banks could then lodge those bonds with the ECB as collateral for central bank funding, one of the people said. Major European commercial banks could be called on to join forces to underpin the scheme, the second person said.

There are calls for Jay Powell to stop supporting the stock markets, because he’s helping Trump.

• The Illusion of a Rapid US Recovery (Galbraith)

Furman, Krugman, and the CBO share a mental model. They regard the pandemic as an economic shock, like an earthquake or the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is a disruption to a solid structure, a deviation from normal growth. To get America moving again, what is mainly needed is confidence, perhaps aided by stimulus. If consumers channel their pent-up demand into new spending, this “shock-stimulus” model dictates, then businesses will revive investment, and soon enough, all will be well once again.This is how mainstream center-left economists and policymakers have thought about recessions and recoveries since at least the 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, pushed through tax cuts. But it ignores three major changes in the US economy since then: globalization, the rise of services in consumption and employment, and the impact of personal and corporate debts.

In the 1960s, the US had a balanced economy that produced goods for both businesses and households, at all levels of technology, with a fairly small (and tightly regulated) financial sector. It produced largely for itself, importing mainly commodities. Today, the US produces for the world, mainly advanced investment goods and services, in sectors such as aerospace, information technology, arms, oilfield services, and finance. And it imports far more consumer goods, such as clothing, electronics, cars, and car parts, than it did a half-century ago. And whereas cars, televisions, and household appliances drove US consumer demand in the 1960s, a much larger share of domestic spending today goes (or went) to restaurants, bars, hotels, resorts, gyms, salons, coffee shops, and tattoo parlors, as well as college tuition and doctor’s visits.

Tens of millions of Americans work in these sectors.Finally, American household spending in the 1960s was powered by rising wages and growing home equity. But wages have been largely stagnant since at least 2000, and spending increases since 2010 were powered by rising personal and corporate debts. House values are now stagnant at best, and will likely fall in the months ahead. Mainstream economics pays little attention to such structural questions. Instead, it assumes that business investment responds mostly to the consumer, whose spending is dictated equally by income and desire. The distinction between “essential” and “superfluous” does not exist. Debt burdens are largely ignored.

But demand for many US-made capital goods now depends on global conditions. Orders for new aircraft will not recover while half of all existing planes are grounded. At current prices, the global oil industry is not drilling new wells. Even at home, though existing construction projects may be completed, plans for new office towers or retail outlets won’t be launched soon. And as people commute less, cars will last longer, so demand for them (and gasoline) will suffer.Faced with radical uncertainty, US consumers will save more and spend less. Even if the government replaces their lost incomes for a time, people know that stimulus is short term. What they do not know is when the next job offer – or layoff – will come along.

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
-Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest”

• Misfortune vs. Carelessness (Ben Hunt)

Back in 2013 – in some of my very first Epsilon Theory notes – I wrote about how unemployment data was chronically misreported during Barack Obama’s first term, with an outrageous bias towards making the employment news flow in the United States look much better in narrative than it was in fact. [..] the skinny is this: for a period of some years in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, initial unemployment claims were systematically undercounted. Amazingly enough, this systematic misreporting in unemployment data stopped after Obama was re-elected for a second term.

Was this an intentional act of malfeasance and corruption by the Obama-era Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), who at the time weren’t even responsible for collecting the weekly initial unemployment claims data? Nope. Did the Obama-era BLS recognize the systematic error and direction of bias in the initial unemployment claims data? Absolutely. Could the Obama-era BLS have fixed the systematic error and direction of bias in the initial unemployment claims data if they had wanted to? In a heartbeat.

It’s exactly the same thing with the Trump-era Bureau of Labor Statistics and the reporting of weekly and monthly employment data. The measurement error we’ve seen in the monthly jobs report – and keep in mind that it is exactly the SAME ERROR being made for the past THREE MONTHS – is not an intentional mistake. But the failure to correct these errors – the conscious effort required to allow known and obvious errors to persist and create a market-moving and election-moving cartoon – well, I think that IS intentional.

Accidents happen. Misfortune occurs. Mistakes are made. But when the same accident happens over and over again, in exactly the same way and with exactly the same bias … What’s happening with the Bureau of Labor Statistics – and of course it’s not only the Bureau of Labor Statistics – is an intentional carelessness. It is an intentional, political carelessness that supports status quo cartoons of control, regardless of which political party happens to be championing the status quo today. It’s not a Democrat thing and it’s not a Republican thing. It’s a power thing.

I see a global industry emerging.

• Banksy Reveals Plan For Bristol’s Toppled Colston Statue (CB)

Protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement have been taking place across the world over the last few weeks, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. In one of the most symbolic images from this weekend’s protests, the statue of 18th century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol, and pushed into the harbour. As debate rages over whether the statue should be reinstated, left in the harbour, or pulled out and put in the city’s museum, the mysterious Bristol-based street artist Banksy has proposed a solution (below) to keep “everyone happy”. He suggests putting the statue back on its plinth, but with the addition of other life-size statues of the protestors pulling it down.

“What should we do with the empty plinth in the middle of Bristol? Here’s an idea that caters for both those who miss the Colston statue and those who don’t. We drag him out the water, put him back on the plinth, tie cable round his neck and commission some life size bronze statues of protestors in the act of pulling him down. Everyone happy. A famous day commemorated.”

These people are certifiably nuts. The first Black woman to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel for Gone With The Wind. Now her work is removed from view in the name of being anti racist? https://t.co/HjQTQT1eJK

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 10, 2020

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The amazing changing world of Dr. Fauci. NO Asymptomatic transmission of COVID…

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— James Hirsen (@thejimjams) June 10, 2020

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Debt Rattle June 7 2020

Jun 072020

June 7, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:19 am Finance Tagged with: Banksy, BLM, Brazil, censorship, coronavirus, Covid19, Cuba, Elmer Fudd, Epstein, Facebook, FBI, Google, jobs report, Trump, vaccine, Walmart 10 Responses »

Banksy June 2020

• Coronavirus Shows Global Consequences Of China’s Local Censorship (SCMP)

• More Than 140 Zuckerberg-Funded Scientists Want Facebook To Censor Trump (G.)

• Cuba Sets Example With Successful Program To Contain Coronavirus (G.)

• Brazil Govt Yanks Virus Death Toll As Data Befuddles Experts (AP)

• China Would Make A Coronavirus Vaccine A ‘Global Public Good’ (R.)

• FBI Pledge Allegiance to Black Lives Matter, Antifa (CTH)

• Banksy: “It’s Not Their Problem, It’s Mine” (PA)

• Walmart CEO Pledges $100 Million To Address Systemic Racism (Hill)

• For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic (ZH)

• ‘Never Say Never’ On ECB Buying Shares: Governing Council Member (R.)

• Elmer Fudd Will Not Have A Gun In ‘Looney Tunes’ Reboot (Hill)

• Mexico To Sit Out Extension Of OPEC+ Oil Output Cuts (R.)

• DOJ, 50 State AGs Inn Push To Breakup Google’s Ad-Tech Dominance (ZH)

• Judge In Epstein Grand Jury Case Has Ties To People Involved (Julie K. Brown)

The entire world increasingly retreats into echo chambers deeply buried in trenches, goaded onwards by mass value signaling and gaslighting. It is scary.

Total global cases surpassed 7,000,000.

Total global deaths surpassed 400,000.

Worldometer puts global new cases for June 5 at + 128,039.

My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is+ 132,816 cases.

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 22,836
• Brazil + 30,488
• Russia + 8,984
• India + 10,086
• Pakistan + 4,960
• Chile + 5,246

• Cases 7,004,814 (+ 132,816 from yesterday’s 6,871,728)

• Deaths 402,665 (+ 4,002 from yesterday’s 398,663)

Note: Italy, Spain, France stripped out. They combine for 90,000 deaths.

UK: "No more than 10 people can attend a funeral."

Also UK: pic.twitter.com/LrnJRuMwQt

— Chris Rose (@ArchRose90) June 6, 2020

Las Vegas is a superspreader hub: crowds redistribute germs across the country, with maximal efficiency.
Crowds in less connected cities keep germs largely local. https://t.co/5f8Y2X7pYz

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 7, 2020

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

From Worldometer:

From COVID19Info.live:

Interesting: other than in purely moral terms, to what degree does censorship hinder the world in finding a response to disasters like pandemics?

• Coronavirus Shows Global Consequences Of China’s Local Censorship (SCMP)

China has the world’s highest number of internet users at over 854 million in 2019 according to the country’s Cyberspace Administration. However, its online world is confined within the so-called “Great Firewall”, and everything from criticism of the government to pornography is censored. Technology companies that run China’s social media platforms employ thousands of content moderators as censors and develop algorithms to prevent anything sensitive from being published or to quickly remove it, while foreign websites and social media platforms such Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are blocked.

[..] About 19 posts per 1,000 were removed – almost 700 from 37,226 – when China’s Centres for Disease Control published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 29 that indicated officials knew of human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 earlier than admitted. The authorities had previously claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human spread of the disease “so that’s why this was the top grievance”, Fu said. “There were a lot of people complaining and reacting to that paper.” News of the coronavirus became public on December 30, 2019, after screenshots from doctors’ chat groups warning about an unknown respiratory illness spread online. But police reprimanded some of the doctors who tried to raise the alarm, including Li Wenliang who later died from the disease, prompting a huge outpouring of public grief and anger.

Li’s death on February 7 prompted another spike in censorship with three posts per 1,000 – 117 out of 40,232 – relating to the topic being censored that day. Again, Fu said, what seemed like a low number was explained by the huge amount of posts and the fact that many would not have been detected by Weiboscope because they did not mention Li’s name to avoid the censors. Independent journalists have also been targeted, and two citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin are still missing after they disappeared in February after reporting from Wuhan, the city at the centre of the initial Covid-19 outbreak in China.

Research published in the journal Nature last month estimated that if strong intervention had been taken against Covid-19 in China a week earlier, cases could have been “dramatically reduced” by 66 per cent. Acting three weeks earlier, at the start of January, would have reduced the number of cases by 95 per cent, according to the paper by scientists from China, the United States and Britain. “Early warnings allow governments to take early action,” Fu said. “We find evidence that social media posts including early warnings to the public were censored especially in the early stage of the pandemic.”

Would they like their own work censored as well? Or just the people they don’t agree with?

• More Than 140 Zuckerberg-Funded Scientists Want Facebook To Censor Trump (G.)

More than 140 scientists funded by Mark Zuckerberg have said Facebook should not be letting Donald Trump use the social media platform to “spread both misinformation and incendiary statements”. The researchers, who include more than 60 professors at leading US research institutions and one Nobel laureate, sent the Facebook CEO a letter on Saturday asking him to “consider stricter policies on misinformation and incendiary language that harms people”, especially during the current turmoil over racial injustice. The letter calls the spread of “deliberate misinformation and divisive language” contrary to the researchers’ goals of using technology to prevent and eradicate disease, improve childhood education and reform the criminal justice system.

Their mission “is antithetical to some of the stances that Facebook has been taking, so we’re encouraging them to be more on the side of truth and on the right side of history, as we’ve said in the letter”, said Debora Marks of Harvard Medical School, one of three professors who organized it. The others are Martin Kampmann of the University of California, San Francisco, and Jason Shepherd of the University of Utah. All have grants from a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative program working to prevent, cure and treat neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. They said the letter had more than 160 signatories. Shepherd said about 10% were employees of foundations run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

The letter objects specifically to Zuckerberg’s decision not to act on a post by Trump that stated “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The letter’s authors called the post “a clear statement of inciting violence”.

“..tens of thousands of family doctors, nurses and medical students to “actively screen” all homes on the island for cases of Covid-19 – every single day.”

• Cuba Sets Example With Successful Program To Contain Coronavirus (G.)

The World Health Organization has identified Latin America as the new centre for coronavirus pandemic, but over the last two months, cases in Cuba have fallen. Cubans are now 24 times less likely to catch the virus than Dominicans, 27 times less likely to catch it than Mexicans, and more than 70 times less likely to be infected than Brazilians. Desperate for tourist revenue, Cuba closed its border later than most other countries in the region. But ever since the communist-ruled island shut out the outside world in late March, it has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the virus. The state has commanded tens of thousands of family doctors, nurses and medical students to “actively screen” all homes on the island for cases of Covid-19 – every single day.

That means that from Monday to Sunday, Dr Caballero and her medical students must walk for miles, monitoring the 328 families on her beat. “There’s no other country in the hemisphere that does anything approaching this,” said William Leogrande, professor of government at American University in Washington DC. “The whole organization of their healthcare system is to be in close touch with the population, identify health problems as they emerge, and deal with them immediately. “We know scientifically that quick identification of cases, contact tracing and quarantine are the only way to contain the virus in the absence of a vaccine – and because it begins with prevention, the Cuban health system is perfectly suited to carry out that containment strategy.”

Johns Hopkins depended on those numbers. Don’t know about Worldometer.

• Brazil Govt Yanks Virus Death Toll As Data Befuddles Experts (AP)

Brazil’s government has stopped publishing a running total of coronavirus deaths and infections in an extraordinary move that critics call an attempt to hide the true toll of the disease in Latin America’s largest nation. The Saturday move came after months of criticism from experts saying Brazil’s statistics are woefully deficient, and in some cases manipulated, so it may never be possible to gain a real understanding of the depth of the pandemic in the country. Brazil’s last official numbers showed it had recorded over 34,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, the third-highest number in the world, just ahead of Italy. It reported nearly 615,000 infections, putting it at the second-highest, behind the United States. Brazil, with about 210 million people, is the globe’s seventh most populous nation.

On Friday, the federal Health Ministry took down a website that had showed daily, weekly and monthly figures on infections and deaths in Brazilian states. On Saturday, the site returned but the total numbers of infections for states and the nation were no longer there. The site now shows only the numbers for the previous 24 hours. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tweeted Saturday that disease totals are “not representative” of the country’s current situation. A Bolsonaro ally contended to the newspaper O Globo that at least some states providing figures to the Health Ministry had sent falsified data, implying that they were exaggerating the toll. Carlos Wizard, a businessman expected to assume a high-level post in the Health Ministry, said the federal government would be conducting a review intended to determine a “more accurate” toll.

[..] A council of state health secretaries said it would fight the changes by Bolsonaro, who has dismissed the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic and tried to thwart attempts to impose quarantines, curfews and social distancing, arguing those steps are causing more damage to the economy than the pandemic. “The authoritarian, insensitive, inhumane and unethical attempt to make the COVID-19 deaths invisible will not prosper,” the health secretaries council said Saturday.

US Senator Scott says they’ll do the opposite, even hinder western attempts at a vaccine.

• China Would Make A Coronavirus Vaccine A ‘Global Public Good’ (R.)

China will increase international cooperation if it succeeds in developing a novel coronavirus vaccine, the science and technology minister said on Sunday. China would make a vaccine a “global public good” when it is ready, the minister, Wang Zhigang, told a news conference in Beijing.

[..] China is expending great efforts in the global scramble to develop a vaccine for the new coronaries epidemic that began in its central city of Wuhan, with Chinese researchers conducting five separate clinical trials on humans, or half of all such trials globally, according to the data compiled by the World Health Organization. President Xi Jinping vowed last month at the World Heath Assembly, the WHO’s governing body, that vaccines China’s develops will become a “global public good” once they are ready for use, and it will be China’s contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.

Developing “a vaccine is still the fundamental strategy in our effort to overcome the new coronavirus,” Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang told a news conference in Beijing. But vaccine development is very difficult and takes time, he said, when asked how China would initially prioritise shots by country when a vaccine is found. “The rigour of vaccine development has been compared by some scientists to a dance involving precise steps and rehearsals,” Wang said.

How right wing America views the issue. They feel betrayed by the FBI because of Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Lisa Page, Russiagate and the impeachment fiasco.

• FBI Pledge Allegiance to Black Lives Matter, Antifa (CTH)

In a display of public unity with ‘The Movement’ writ large, FBI officials took a knee to declare their woke allegiance with the protesting mobs. With that visible display we now have a better understanding of the motives behind a history of FBI failures. Setting aside the optic that some members of the FBI looking more like ‘meal-team-6’, there was always a suspicion the FBI were more concerned about political correctness than actually doing the work of a federal investigative agency. Historically the FBI has failed miserably to stop domestic terror threats; and when the investigative failures are researched there’s usually a prior connection between the attackers and the FBI.

The father of the Orlando Pulse nightclub terrorist, Omar Mateen, was a guy named Seddique Mateen (you might remember seeing him at the Hillary Clinton rally). After Omar killed 49 people it was discovered that Seddique had been an FBI informant for over eleven years (2005 to 2016). Similarly, after the Parkland school shooting, it was discovered the FBI was fully aware of Nikolas Cruz, yet again they had taken no action. The exact same scenario had played out several years earlier when the FBI was warned about the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston Marathon Bombing 2013 and yet they did nothing to stop it.

The FBI is now a political agency with police powers within the federal government. The activity of Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and a host of very familiar names has shown just how important politics is within the institution. Indeed, as we saw in the ridiculous Hillary Clinton investigation, politics was the prism for every decision; and protecting their ideological tribe was the biggest concern within the agency. Understanding the sensitivity behind the FBI to the Muslim community; a sensitivity almost identical to the expressed position of the democrat party apparatus; it should not come as a big surprise to see FBI agents ignoring terror threats and simultaneously taking a knee to show their allegiance with Black Lives Matter.

The headline the Guardian used for this PA Media piece is “Banksy Supports Black Lives Matter With Latest Artwork”. But he doesn’t, or we don’t know if he does, not from his words. He supports black people, not some movement.

• Banksy: “It’s Not Their Problem, It’s Mine” (PA)

Banksy has shown his support for the Black Lives Matter movement, saying “people of colour are being failed by the system”. The graffiti artist wrote in an Instagram post: “At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue. But why would I do that? It’s not their problem, it’s mine. “People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. The faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t, no one will let them in the apartment upstairs. “This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.”

Walmart supports black people. What a joke that is.

A single Tweet says it all: “Walmart is the largest private employer of Black people in the US, is viciously anti-union, and pays poverty wages..”

• Walmart CEO Pledges $100 Million To Address Systemic Racism (Hill)

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon is pledging to donate $100 million over five years to create a new center on racial equity following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died as a result of an arrest by Minneapolis police. In an email to employees Friday, McMillon condemned racial violence and said the company plans to make changes to fight for greater racial equity inside and outside of Walmart. “The global health crisis has tested all of us in recent months, and the racial violence in the U.S.— in particular, the murder of George Floyd — is tragic, painful and unacceptable,” McMillon wrote in the email. The Walmart CEO laid out several initiatives the company will undertake, including making the recruitment, development and support of African Americans inside the company “even more of a priority.”

The company will also invest in improving fairness, equity and justice in society broadly. “We will find the natural overlaps between Walmart’s core business and society’s larger needs that perpetuate racism and discrimination,” McMillon wrote. “Specifically, we’re going to focus the power of Walmart on our nation’s financial, healthcare, education and criminal justice systems.” McMillon said the center focused on racial equity “will seek to advance economic opportunity and healthier living, including issues surrounding the social determinants of health, strengthening workforce development and related educational systems, and support criminal justice reform with an emphasis on examining barriers to opportunity faced by those exiting the system.”

Trump is so eager to praise the headline numbers that he forgets they are nonsense, and misses the opportunity to tell people to try harder.

• For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic (ZH)

There were clear problems with Friday’s “incredible” – as Trump put it – jobs report. First and foremost the BLS’ own admission there was a “survey error” which may have reduced the real unemployment rate by up to 3% as survey-takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million temporarily laid-off people as employed, then moving through some very aggressive statistical assumption revisions to boost the “birth/death” model, the curious case of millions of “jobs” resurrected temporarily thanks to the PPP program: as recruitment firm LaSalle Network head Tom Gimbel said, today’s jobs report may offer a “false ray of light” because almost all job gains stemmed from furloughed employees kept on the books due to PPP loans (he said he was seeing real weakness in new hiring).

But even if one accepts the report at its face, if one digs beneath the glossy veneer, the details are anything but “incredible” as described by the president. Start with Trump’s “incredible” V-shaped rebound: after the 2.5mm new jobs added, total US employment is basically where it was at the depth of the financial crisis, while 21 million workers find themselves unemployed – this number was 6 million just two months ago. Putting that number in context, with roughly 133 million employed workers, there are a record 102 million Americans who are not in the labor force, of whom 92.7 million don’t even want a job.

Among those who were lucky enough to remain in the work force, millions were shifted from full to part-time.

[..] And here is the catalyst for the next round of social discontent: women unemployment is now far higher than that of men after being roughly the same before covid: how long before accusation of rampant employer sexism are the next big thing?

Dangerous because clueless. Trying to revive the past, because that’s what got him his job.

• ‘Never Say Never’ On ECB Buying Shares: Governing Council Member (R.)

“Never say never” on the European Central Bank one day buying shares rather than government or corporate bonds, but it has not discussed the idea yet, ECB Governing Council member Robert Holzmann said in comments published on Sunday. The ECB on Thursday announced a bigger-than-expected expansion of its stimulus package to prop up an economy plunged by the coronavirus pandemic into its worst recession since World War Two. Holzmann took over as head of the Austrian National Bank just last year but has already been outspoken on various issues, calling for the ECB to lower its often-undershot inflation target and warning against negative rates. He also says he initially suggested that Thursday’s decision be put off.

“Never say never. If the need is there, this discussion will definitely have to take place. But currently that discussion does not exist,” Holzmann told newspaper Die Presse when asked if the ECB could start buying shares. On lowering the inflation target from just under 2%, Holzmann said he could still change his stance in a discussion that the ECB has pushed back because of the pandemic. “If it is difficult to get from 1.5% to 1.9%, then in a time of low inflation expectations one can also set oneself a different target, although I myself have not yet formed a final opinion here,” Holzmann said. “The fundamental discussion on ECB strategy has been postponed because of the crisis and should be taken up again as of the summer,” he added.

How to make guns magically disappear.

• Elmer Fudd Will Not Have A Gun In ‘Looney Tunes’ Reboot (Hill)

In a new series based on the beloved “Looney Tunes” cartoons, the classic character Elmer Fudd will no longer carry a gun. The new series “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” which premiered last week on the streaming service HBO Max, will feature the cartoon’s characteristic violence – using sticks of dynamite, booby traps and the iconic anvils and bank safes dropped onto characters, The New York Times reported last week. However, Peter Browngardt, the series executive producer and showrunner, told the outlet, “We’re not doing guns.” “But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in,” Browngardt told the outlet.

Elmer Fudd is regularly foiled trying to hunt Bugs Bunny on the show. In the new series, the character will carry a scythe. However, comics artist Johnny Ryan, who worked on the show, noted to the Times that he believes “We’re going through this wave of anti-bullying, everybody needs to be friends, everybody needs to get along.” “‘Looney Tunes’ is pretty much the antithesis of that,” he said. “It’s two characters in conflict, sometimes getting pretty violent.”

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1269487929463898112

OPEC+ meets COVID19. That was nnever going to be smooth.

• Mexico To Sit Out Extension Of OPEC+ Oil Output Cuts (R.)

Mexico will not join other top oil producers in extending through July output cuts aimed at propping up the price of crude, Energy Minister Rocio Nahle said on Saturday. Made up of OPEC members and allies led by Russia, the group known as OPEC+ agreed in April to cut oil supply by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in May and June to support prices. Under that deal, Mexico pledged to reduce its crude output by 100,000 bpd in May and June, after resisting pressure from other oil producers to make cuts of 400,000 bpd. The cuts had been due to taper to 7.7 million bpd from July to December, but on Saturday, OPEC+ agreed to extend the production cuts until the end of July.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has vowed to ramp up the country’s crude oil production, said on Friday that Mexico was not in a position to make additional cuts on top of what it had agreed in April. His energy minister Rocio Nahle confirmed Mexico would not participate in the fresh cuts agreed on Saturday. “There are other countries that extended their cuts to July, in this case we said no, we’ll stick to the agreement that we signed in April,” she told reporters in the eastern state of Veracruz. “There’s no problem.”

They’re going to frustrate the CIA? I’ll believe it when I see it.

• DOJ, 50 State AGs Inn Push To Breakup Google’s Ad-Tech Dominance (ZH)

In what would be a monumental move — and we might ad good for independent media breaking the shackles of the mainstream’s ongoing attempts to police content and punish dissent — Google’s total dominance over online advertising could soon come to an end. CNBC revealed Friday that no less than 50 sate attorneys general have been investigating Google’s business practices as part of a months long probe alongside a parallel DOJ effort, and momentum is gaining toward a looming major antitrust lawsuit against the internet giant. Leading the probe among the states is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who did not comment in Friday’s CNBC report.

Google, however, did respond, with a Google spokesperson rebutting with, “The facts are clear, our digital advertising products compete across a crowded industry with hundreds of rivals and technologies, and have helped lower costs for advertisers and consumers.” President Trump has lately put big tech in the spotlight over allegations of targeted censorship of conservative content, lately signing an executive order which seeks to reduce liability protections of major internet companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Independent and alternative voices have also long complained of being demonetized or unfairly targeted for analysis and commentary falling outside of accepted ‘groupthink’.

It remains that the bulk of Google’s some $161 billion in revenue comes via ad sales, with a far smaller amount coming through products the tech giant and its parent company Alphabet Inc. are traditionally known for: software and technology. CNBC summarizes what’s at stake as follows: “Critics have said that Google bundles its ad tools so that rivals can’t afford to match its offerings and that its operation of search results, YouTube, Gmail and other services to hinder ad competition. They also say that Google owns all sides of the “auction exchange” through which ads are sold and bought, giving it an unfair advantage.” But a key legal obstacle the courts would have to consider is the fact that Google’s ad group doesn’t function as a stand alone business, but is made up of Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.

Julie K. Brown at the Miami herald is back. Worse than any fantasy, or book, or movie.

• Judge In Epstein Grand Jury Case Has Ties To People Involved (Julie K. Brown)

The Palm Beach judge who has thus far refused to release grand jury records in the Jeffrey Epstein case has both professional and family ties to three of the politicians who have a stake in keeping those records secret, the Miami Herald has learned. Krista Marx, the Palm Beach chief judge who also heads a panel that polices judicial conduct, has potential conflicts of interest involving three prominent players embroiled in the Epstein sex-trafficking saga: State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who has been sued by the Palm Beach Post to release the grand jury records; Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, whose department’s favored treatment of Epstein while he was in the Palm Beach County jail is part of an ongoing state criminal investigation; and ex-State Attorney Barry Krischer, part of the same investigation in connection with his decision not to prosecute Epstein on child-sex charges.

Special prosecutors appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went to court in January to unseal records of Krischer’s secret 2006 state grand jury presentment in the case. Prosecutors wanted to examine whether Krischer’s office told the panel the full scope of Epstein’s crimes, or whether state prosecutors kept key evidence from the grand jury. The grand jury returned a minor charge of solicitation of prostitution against Epstein, who later managed to negotiate a lenient plea deal, resulting in him serving 13 months in the Palm Beach County Jail, much of at his lavish office in West Palm Beach, thanks to generous work-release provisions.

Last year, following a series of stories in the Miami Herald detailing the machinations behind Epstein’s plea deal, DeSantis ordered a state criminal probe focusing on Krischer’s decision not to prosecute and on Bradshaw’s role in helping Epstein maintain an opulent lifestyle — including having sex with women — while subject to sheriff’s custody on sex charges. But Marx in January rejected the criminal prosecutors’ effort to unseal the grand jury records, calling it a “fishing expedition.’’ Then on Wednesday, she rebuffed a similar request by attorneys representing the Post, who sued Aronberg, and the county clerk, Sharon Bock, for release of the records.

Marx was dismissive of the Post’s lawsuit against Aronberg, who has denied he has custody of the grand jury records; and Bock, who has custody of the records but won’t release them without a court order. Marx, however, did not disclose from the bench that Krischer was her former boss, that her daughter works for Aronberg as an assistant state attorney and that her son works for Bradshaw as a sheriff’s deputy. Marx’s husband, Palm Beach County Judge Joe Marx, has a disclosure on his county web page stating he would recuse himself from any cases that involve his two stepchildren. Krista Marx’s county web page does not have such a disclosure.

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EVIDENCE BASED SCIENCE IS NOT SCIENCE
Clearer version, with examples. pic.twitter.com/zDt7AXIpuP

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 6, 2020

White Americans kneeling for blacks???

I'm sorry, this is disgusting!
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Debt Rattle April 27 2019

Apr 272019

April 27, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:56 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Banksy, Brazil, Butina, declassify, dollar, Ecuador, FISA, GDP, Lula, Not In Labor Force, Trump, yuan 13 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh Pietà (after Delacroix) 1889

• The Big Mystery In The GDP Report – Where Did The Inventories Come From? (MW)

• China Finds Dollar Hegemony Is A Tough Nut To Crack (WS)

• Nearly 102 Million Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now (Snyder)

• Trump Makes Post-Mueller Vow To Release “Devastating” FISA Docs (ZH)

• Blowback Is a Harsh Mistress (Kunstler)

• Marina Butina Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison (ZH)

• Labour Party In ‘Complete Meltdown’ Over Final Say (Ind.)

• London Extinction Rebellion Mural is a Banksy (G.)

• Greeks The Most Stressed People Worldwide – Gallup (K.)

• Brazil Governed By ‘Lunatics’ And US ‘Lackeys’ – Lula (G.)

Industrial production and imports are both down. But inventories rise.

• The Big Mystery In The GDP Report – Where Did The Inventories Come From? (MW)

It is a case that would make Sherlock Holmes proud. Growth in the first quarter smashed expectations, fueled in part by strong inventory building. According to the government, $32 billion of goods were added to inventories this quarter, or $128 billion annualized. This stockpiling of goods boosted first-quarter GDP growth by about 70 basis points and helped propel growth to a 3.2% annual rate, well above forecasts. The problem is that it is not at all obvious where these inventories came from. Goods have to come from somewhere, either produced by domestic firms or imported from abroad. The mystery is that both production and imports fell in the first three months of the year, according to government data.

“You can’t stockpile what you do not import or do not produce,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics. The Fed reported last week that industrial output slipped at a 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter. And the government’s GDP report estimates that imports fell 3.7% in the first three months of the year. The one other explanation — that consumption fell sharply enough to leave businesses with unexpected unsold goods — also doesn’t fit the evidence, Brusca said. Consumption did not fall faster than industrial production or imports to generate any surplus, he said. To be sure, spending on consumer durable goods fell 5.3%, the biggest drop in 10 years. Business spending on equipment was also weak. “Any way you slice it, this GDP report…is an apparent mess,” he said.

Nobody will want the yuan as long as Beijing decides what it’s worth.

• China Finds Dollar Hegemony Is A Tough Nut To Crack (WS)

In terms of global reserve currency, the renminbi (RMB) has a share of only 1.9%, in fifth place, and barely ahead of the Canadian dollar, but miles behind the US dollar (61.7%) and the euro (20.7%). Over the past two years, the RMB has made only microscopic headway as a reserve currency. And as an international payments currency, the RMB has failed similarly to crack the co-hegemony of the dollar and the euro. “With more than 1,900 financial institutions now using the RMB for payments with China and Hong Kong, the internationalization of RMB carries great strategic significance” for banks and financial institutions, gushes SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), which tracks the progress of the RMB as payment currency.

But in March 2019, the RMB had a minuscule share of merely 1.22% for international cross-border payments by value (cross-border payments from one Eurozone country to another Eurozone country are excluded). This minuscule share put the RMB in 8th position, just behind the Swiss franc:

Civilian labor force participation rate lingers around 63%.

• Nearly 102 Million Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now (Snyder)

At this moment, we are told that only 6.2 million Americans are officially “unemployed”, and that sounds really, really good. But that is only half the story. What the mainstream media rarely mentions is the fact that the number of Americans categorized as “not in the labor force” has absolutely exploded since the last recession. Right now, that number is sitting at 95.577 million. When you add 6.2 million “officially unemployed” Americans to 95.577 million Americans that are categorized as “not in the labor force”, you get a grand total of almost 102 million Americans that do not have a job right now. If that sounds terrible to you, that is because it is terrible.

Yes, the U.S. population has been growing over the last decade, and that is part of the reason why the number of Americans “not in the labor force” has been growing. But overall, the truth is that the level of unemployment in this country is not that much different than it was during the last recession. John Williams of shadowstats.com tracks what the real employment figure would be if honest numbers were being used, and according to him the real rate of unemployment in the United States at the moment is 21.2 percent.

Just before the last recession, the civilian labor force participation rate was sitting at about 66 percent, and that was pretty good. But then the recession hit, and the civilian labor force participation rate fell below 63 percent, and it stayed between 62 percent and 63 percent for an extended period of time. So where are we today? At this moment, we are sitting at just 63.0 percent. Does that look like a recovery to you? Of course not.

“I’m glad I waited because i thought that maybe they would obstruct if I did it early..”

• Trump Makes Post-Mueller Vow To Release “Devastating” FISA Docs (ZH)

President Trump on Thursday renewed his vow to declassify a wide swath of “devastating” documents related to the Russia probe “and much more” – adding that he’s glad he waited until the Mueller investigation was complete. In a Thursday night phone interview on Fox News, host Sean Hannity asked “will you declassify the FISA applications, gang of 8 material, those 302s – what we call on this program ‘the bucket of five’?” To which Trump replied: “Yes, everything is going to be declassified – and more, much more than what you just mentioned. It will all be declassified, and I’m glad I waited because i thought that maybe they would obstruct if I did it early – and I think I was right. So I’m glad I waited, and now the Attorney General can take a look – a very strong look at whatever it is, but it will be declassified and more than what you just mentioned.”

Last September 17th, Trump vowed to release all text messages related to the Russia investigation with no redactions, as well as specific pages from the FBI’s FISA surveillance warrant application on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, and interviews with the DOJ’s Bruce Ohr. nFour days later, however, Trump said over Twitter that the Justice Department – then headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (while the Russia investigation was headed up by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein) – told him that it might have a negative impact on the Russia probe, and that key US allies had asked him not to release the documents.

“I met with the DOJ concerning the declassification of various UNREDACTED documents,” Trump tweeted. “They agreed to release them but stated that so doing may have a perceived negative impact on the Russia probe. Also, key Allies’ called to ask not to release. Therefore, the Inspector General has been asked to review these documents on an expedited basis. I believe he will move quickly on this (and hopefully other things which he is looking at). In the end I can always declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me – and everyone!”

That key ally turns out to have been the UK, according to the New York Times., which reported last September that their concern was over material which “includes direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele,” the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous “Steele Dossier.” We now know, of course, that Steele had extensive contact with Bruce and Nellie Ohr in 2016, while Bruce was the #4 official at the Obama DOJ, and Nellie was working for Fusion GPS – the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton and the DNC to produce the infamous Steele Dossier.

“Mr. Mueller himself may well be subject to prosecution for destroying evidence and, yes, obstruction of justice…”

• Blowback Is a Harsh Mistress (Kunstler)

The Thinking Class behind the bad faith Resistance is about to be beaten within an inch of its place in history with an ugly-stick of reality as The Narrative finally comes to be fairly adjudicated. The Mueller Report was much more than just disappointing; it was a comically inept performance insofar as it managed to overlook the only incidence of collusion that actually took place: namely, the disinfo operation sponsored by the Hillary Clinton campaign in concert with the highest officials of the FBI, the Department of Justice, State Department personnel, the various Intel agencies, and the Obama White house for the purpose of interfering in the 2016 election.

It will turn out that the Mueller Investigation was just an extension of that felonious op, and Mr. Mueller himself may well be subject to prosecution for destroying evidence and, yes, obstruction of justice. John F. Kennedy once observed that “life is unfair.” It is unfair, perhaps, that a TV Reality Show huckster, clown, and rank outsider beat a highly credentialed veteran of the political establishment and that he flaunts his lack of decorum in the Oval Office. But it happens that he was on the side of the truth in the RussiaGate farrago and that happens to place him in a position of advantage going forward.

The empire destroying lives to uphold a narrative. It no longer matters what these crazies say, and they know it. The public swallows anything thrown at them. Collusion, Assange, Butina, these are all fictional stories, but today they dictate the headlines and dominate the airwaves. Butina is accused of “Ambitious conspiracy”. When she was 22.

• Marina Butina Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison (ZH)

Accused Russian spy Marina Butina has been sentenced to 18 months in prison on Friday after pleading guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, the Hill reports. Butina, who was arrested in 2018, pled guilty to the charges in late. 2018. She will only serve nine months, as the judge knocked nine months off her sentence for time served. Prosecutors had recommended that she serve an additional 18 months, while her lawyers had asked for no prison time and her immediate deportation. Butina wasn’t mentioned in the Mueller report. Before her sentencing hearing on Friday, Butina pleaded with the judge for leniency, RT reports.

“My parents discovered my arrest on the morning news they watch in their rural house in a Siberian village,” she told the court. “I love them dearly, but I harmed them morally and financially. They are suffering from all of that. I destroyed my own life as well. I came to the United States not under any orders, but with hope, and now nothing remains but penitence.” Butina arrived in the US on a student visa in 2016 and became active in pro-gun circles. During the investigation into Russian interference that followed Trump’s electoral triumph, she was accused of working with the Russian government to infiltrate the Republican Party and National Rifle Association. Moscow and President Putin have denied any connection with her.

Corbyn still clings to his dreams of an independent left-wing Britain. But matters haven’t stood still for the past 3 years.

• Labour Party In ‘Complete Meltdown’ Over Final Say (Ind.)

Jeremy Corbyn is under growing pressure over his party’s position on a second Brexit referendum after a leaked draft of a campaign leaflet included no mention of a Final Say vote. The Labour leader faced an angry backlash over the flyer, with MPs saying it had triggered “complete meltdown” in the party and left pro-EU MPs “utterly furious”. As the row deepened, 75 MPs and 14 MEPs wrote to Labour’s governing body to demand that “a clear commitment” to another referendum be included in the party’s manifesto for next month’s European parliament elections. Mr Corbyn’s top team is split on whether Labour should support a second referendum. Several senior shadow cabinet ministers want the party to support a public vote on any Brexit deal passed by parliament, but Mr Corbyn’s inner circle say he only supports a referendum on the government’s deal or to avoid a no-deal outcome.

Other shadow ministers oppose another public poll entirely. In their letter to the National Executive Committee (NEC), the MPs and MEPs said Labour had “a clear opportunity to win these elections” if it fully supports a Final Say vote. They wrote: “These elections are about the kind of Europe we want to live in, and we can’t make a convincing case in them without being clear about Brexit. Labour has already, rightly, backed a confirmatory public vote. The overwhelming majority of our members and voters support this, and it is the democratically established policy of the party. “Our members need to feel supported on doorsteps by a clear manifesto that marks us out as the only viable alternative to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

First, you just have a wall. The next day, you have a wall worth a million dollars.

• London Extinction Rebellion Mural is a Banksy (G.)

A Banksy collector and expert believes a mural that appeared at Extinction Rebellion’s Marble Arch base overnight is an authentic piece by the Bristolian street artist. John Brandler, who owns a dozen pieces by Banksy is convinced the artwork – which features the slogan “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin” next to a young girl sitting on the ground holding an Extinction Rebellion logo – is an original because of its execution and theme. The art dealer and gallerist said: “I’m convinced about the one in London for two reasons: it’s a topic that he would support, and it’s a continuation of the Port Talbot piece that appeared in December 2018.

“The name in the corner is not important, the signature is the work. And this is a Banksy. It’s a wonderful statement and a beautiful piece.” The work appeared at the site which had been occupied by climate activists since protests began in the capital almost two weeks ago. A spokesperson for Westminster council confirmed the work was being investigated but had not been authenticated yet. “We’re aware of the possible Banksy which appeared in Marble Arch overnight. Our officers are looking into this,” he said. Banksy has not confirmed whether the painting is legitimate, and his press team did not respond to a request for comment.

Gallup does really bad surveys.

• Greeks The Most Stressed People Worldwide – Gallup (K.)

Greeks are the most stressed people in the world, according to the results of the Gallup 2019 Global Emotions report conducted on a sample of 150,000 people in 140 countries. According to the poll, which was conducted last year, 59 percent of Greeks said they “experienced a lot of stress yesterday,” putting Greece at the top of the chart for the third consecutive year. After Greece on the list are the Philippines, Tanzania and Albania. The same poll asked respondents about their negative experiences and participants from Chad, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Iran polled the highest. The survey also polled anger levels with Armenians topping the chart, followd by Iraqis, Iranians and Palestinians. The five countries recording the most positive experiences are Paraguay, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador.

“Does anyone really think the US is going to favour Brazil?” Lula asked. “Americans think of themselves first, second, third, fourth, fifth – and if there’s any time left over they think about Americans.”

• Brazil Governed By ‘Lunatics’ And US ‘Lackeys’ – Lula (G.)

Brazil is being governed by “a bunch of lunatics” and United States “lackeys” who have shattered its international reputation, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has claimed in his first interview since being jailed one year ago. Lula, Brazil’s president from 2003 and 2011, surrendered himself to police last April after being convicted on corruption charges he disputes. The 73-year-old leftist had been forbidden from giving face-to-face interviews until Friday, when two Brazilian journalists were allowed to visit him at his prison in southern Brazil following a lengthy legal battle.

Lula told them Brazil needed to undergo period of “self-reflection” after what he described as the “crazy” fake news and hate-filled election of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro last year. “What we can’t have is this country being run governed by a bunch of lunatics. The country doesn’t deserve this and above all the people do not deserve this.” “Brazil is adrift – so far he doesn’t know what to do,” he added of Bolsonaro, who took office in January and has suffered a turbulent opening act in power. Lula said he profoundly regretted “the disaster that is taking place in this country” and criticised Brazil’s dramatic tack towards Washington under Bolsonaro.

“I’ve never seen a [Brazilian] president salute the American flag. I’ve never seen a president go around saying, ‘I love the United States, I love it!’” Lula said of Bolsonaro, who paints himself as a “tropical Trump” and last month travelled to the United States to tout his close relations with the US president. “You should love your mother, you should love your country. What’s all this about loving the United States? “Does anyone really think the US is going to favour Brazil?” Lula asked. “Americans think of themselves first, second, third, fourth, fifth – and if there’s any time left over they think about Americans. And these Brazilian lackeys go around thinking the Americans will do anything for us.”

Debt Rattle October 6 2018

Oct 062018

October 6, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:26 am Finance Tagged with: Banksy, Brexit, forfeiture, jobs, Juncker, Kavanaugh, Manafort, May, Mueller, Russia 10 Responses »

M. C. Escher Day and Night 1938

• Collins, Manchin Vote “Yes”, Ensuring Kavanaugh Confirmation (ZH)

• US Unemployment Rate Falls To Lowest Level Since 1969 (G.)

• Mueller Moves For Forfeiture Order To Seize Manafort Assets (Hill)

• Storm Clouds on Robert Mueller’s Horizon (LaRouche)

• May Secretly Woos Labour MP’s To Back Her Brexit Deal (G.)

• Juncker: Brexit Deal Could Be Reached Within Weeks (Sky)

• UK House Prices Fall Sharply In September (G.)

• Fishtailing into the Future (Jim Kunstler)

• Russia Announces Plan To Disentangle Its Economy From US Dollar (RT)

• Banksy Artwork Shreds Itself After £1m Sale At Sotheby’s (BBC)

This ain’t over.

• Collins, Manchin Vote “Yes”, Ensuring Kavanaugh Confirmation (ZH)

Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh now has the 50 votes required to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, after both GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced that they would be voting yes. GOP holdout Jeff Flake of Arizona also said that he would vote to confirm Kavanaugh “unless something big changed.” Earlier in the day, the Senate completed a cloture vote to advance Kavanaugh to final confirmation, which Manchin broke ranks and voted in favor of.

“Most senators sat at their desk as the dramatic roll call unfolded, with major suspense over where Murkowski, Manchin and Flake would land. Collins was the first swing vote to support Kavanaugh on the procedural roll call, quickly followed by Flake. Murkowski then inaudibly voted no, a jarring defection that left Republicans with no room for error. After it was clear that Kavanaugh had the 50 votes needed to advance, Manchin became Kavanaugh’s only Democratic supporter. Manchin, who left the chamber when the clerk called his name, came back into the chamber and voted in favor of Kavanaugh. His phone could be seen ringing and Manchin stared at it as the vote continued.” -Politico

“This is a difficult decision for everybody,” Flake said to reporters, who added that he thinks Kavanaugh will be confirmed on Saturday. Meanwhile, Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) is set to fly to Montana to attend his daughter’s Saturday wedding. If the vote is too close without Daines, he will be forced to fly back to Washington D.C. to cast the deciding vote. “We’ll wait and see how this all unfolds,” Daines said. “We have transportation arranged and we’ll wait and see what happens.” He added that Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-MT) offered him the use of his private plane. President Trump has taken a largely hands-off approach to Kavanaugh’s confirmation – instead communicating in private with his political allies, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), according to Politico, which adds that the White House is “cautiously opimistic” that Kavanaugh will be confirmed.

How many Americans have multiple jobs?

• US Unemployment Rate Falls To Lowest Level Since 1969 (G.)

US figures have shown the lowest jobless rate since the year of the first moon landings, keeping the world’s largest economy on course for further interest rate rises. Eagerly awaited figures for jobs and wages showed less inflationary pressure in the world’s biggest economy than had been feared, but still pointed to more hikes by the Federal Reserve. Financial markets had been braced for a sharp sell off had the latest monthly payroll numbers indicated faster employment growth and pay increases in September, which could have paved the way for faster-than-expected monetary tightening by the US central bank. As a result of the figures undershooting the most optimistic expectations, losses were smaller than feared in early trading in New York but all the major US markets ended down with the biggest losses on the tech heavy Nasdaq exchange.

Data from the Bureau for Labour Statistics (BLS) reported an increase in non-farm payrolls of 134,000 in September, well below the 180,000 predicted by Wall Street analysts. A 0.3% in pay left annual earnings 2.8% higher than a year earlier, a slightly weaker rate of increase than the 2.9% posted the previous month. Most economists said the jobs market remained strong, pointing to the drop in unemployment from 3.9% to 3.7% – its lowest since 1969 – and upward revisions to employment in July and August. Last month, the Fed raised short-term interest rates for the eighth time since 2015, to a range of 2%-2.25%, and indicated that there would be further increases “consistent with sustained expansion of economic activity”.

Don’t have a collusion to investigate?

• Mueller Moves For Forfeiture Order To Seize Manafort Assets (Hill)

Attorneys for special counsel Robert Mueller moved on Friday for an order to seize assets that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort purchased with funds he hid from U.S. authorities in foreign bank accounts. Mueller’s attorneys submitted a court document as part of Manafort’s plea agreement asking Judge Amy Berman Jackson to grant a request to seize five properties in New York owned by Manafort as well as a life insurance policy and three bank accounts. Forfeiture of the assets identified as part of Manafort’s scheme to hide millions of dollars made lobbying for pro-Russia parties in Ukraine was agreed upon in a plea agreement Manafort signed with Mueller’s team last month.

Manafort signed the deal and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team to avoid a second trial in Washington, D.C., after a jury found him guilty on eight counts in a separate trial in northern Virginia in August. “[T]he defendant admitted to the forfeiture allegations in the Information and agreed that the following property constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to the offense alleged in Count One,” the court document states, while noting that two of the New York properties were substitutes for assets unable to be seized by the government.

“..the entire Russiagate investigation was a ginned up operation research/information warfare campaign..”

• Storm Clouds on Robert Mueller’s Horizon (LaRouche)

On October 3rd, the House Committees investigating the Department of Justice Russiagate insurrection against Donald Trump took testimony from behind closed doors from former FBI General Counsel James Baker, a close confidant of fired FBI Director James Comey. According to widespread leaks Thursday, October 4th, Baker’s testimony included the fact that he, Baker, met directly with Perkins, Coie, the lawyers for the DNC and Hillary Clinton, receiving directly materials which went into the FBI’s FISA warrant against Carter Page and characterized this process has “highly abnormal.” The Perkins, Coie, lawyer involved, Michael Sussman, is also the guy who orchestrated the fake information warfare story that the Russians hacked the DNC on behalf of Donald Trump.

Coming out of the testimony, one of the sources for the story spoke plainly: Baker’s testimony shows that the entire Russiagate investigation was a ginned up operation research/information warfare campaign, involving the FBI and Hillary’s Clinton’s campaign rather than any “conspiracy” involving the Trump Campaign and Russia. October 4th was the deadline for Andrew McCabe’s memos about meetings occurring in the wake of James Comey’s firing May, 2017, in which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and others discussed wearing wires and recording the President and also invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the President.

In a discussion with Hill TV on Wednesday, Congressman Mark Meadows, who is leading this investigation, said that he has seen evidence that “confidential human sources” used by the FBI “actually taped members within the Trump campaign.” “There is strong suggestions in that some of the text messages, emails, and so forth who was involved, that extraordinary measures were used to surveil,” Meadows said. There is now a major national outcry for the President to declassify all of the relevant documents concerning Russiagate. Speculation on his failure, thus far, to do so, centers on both the Kavanaugh nomination fight and forcing his hand on Rosenstein before the Midterm elections.

Looking for Blairite traitors.

• May Secretly Woos Labour MP’s To Back Her Brexit Deal (G.)

Theresa May has drawn up plans for a secret charm offensive aimed at persuading dozens of Labour MPs to back her Brexit deal even if it costs Jeremy Corbyn the chance to be prime minister, the Guardian has learned. Senior Conservatives say they have already been in private contact with a number of Labour MPs over a period of several months, making the case that the national interest in avoiding a no-deal outcome is more important than forcing a general election by defeating the government on May’s Brexit deal. Now, with talks in Brussels entering their frantic final phase, the prime minister and her party whips are stepping up efforts to win backing for a compromise deal that one minister described as a “British blancmange”.

They are convinced they will need Labour votes to win, after a fractious Tory conference in Birmingham, at which determined opponents of the prime minister’s approach, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, won plaudits for saying they would vote against it. One Tory source compared the challenge of striking a deal with the EU27 that would satisfy both sides of his own party to “landing a jumbo jet on the penalty spot”. Labour MPs will thus be the focus of intense lobbying, in the period between May returning from Brussels with a Brexit deal and the meaningful vote, which is expected to come about a fortnight later.

If May gives enough, yes…

• Juncker: Brexit Deal Could Be Reached Within Weeks (Sky)

The president of the European Commission has said he is sure a Brexit agreement could be reached in November, if not sooner. Jean-Claude Juncker told three Austrian newspapers that Brexit without a deal “would not be good for the UK, as it is for the rest of the union”. He added: “I assume that we will reach agreement on the terms of the withdrawal agreement. “We also need to agree on a political statement that accompanies this withdrawal agreement – we are not that far yet.” He said: “I have reason to think that the rapprochement potential between both sides has increased in recent days, but it can not be foreseen whether we will finish in October. “If not, we’ll do it in November.”

Britain and the EU are trying to agree a divorce deal as well as one for a post-Brexit relationship in time for leaders’ summits scheduled for 17-18 October and 17-18 November. Mr Juncker insisted that the EU’s “will is unbroken to reach agreement” with Britain but spoke of his regret that the European Commission had not been involved in the 2016 referendum campaign. He said that the then-government of David Cameron had asked him “not to interfere”. “If the commission intervened, perhaps the right questions would have entered the debate,” he added. “Now you discover new problems almost daily, on both sides. “At that time it was already clear to us to what trials and tribulations this pitiful vote of the British would lead.”

They’re bloated.

• UK House Prices Fall Sharply In September (G.)

UK house prices unexpectedly dropped at the fastest pace for almost six months in September, according to Halifax, as the number of homes for sale in 2018 fell to a decade low. Britain’s biggest mortgage lender said the average price of a home in Britain dropped to £225,995 last month, down 1.4% from the level recorded in August. The price of a home remained 2.5% higher than a year ago. City economists had forecast month-on-month growth of 0.2% in September. The latest snapshot of the housing market a little more than six months before Britain leaves the EU suggests sluggish levels of demand for home buying amid the political uncertainty of Brexit.

Economists said the national picture painted by Halifax obscured some regional differences. London house prices are falling for the first time since 2009, yet prices elsewhere are rising. They also cautioned that the Halifax house price index can be more changeable than other industry barometers of residential property because it is on a monthly basis. Earlier this week Theresa May announced the government would lift a cap on the amount councils can borrow to build housing, potentially helping to increase the number of homes built by local authorities.

“..I’ve never seen a political fiasco as demented as the Kavanaugh confirmation process..”

• Fishtailing into the Future (Jim Kunstler)

[..] at the macro level, this system and its subsystems are out-of-control and shaking themselves loose. Government has attempted to prop them up by schemes that amount to racketeering of one kind or another — the dishonest manipulation and representation of money — and now money itself is in revolt, as can be seen in the sudden rise of interest rates, especially the ten-year US Treasury Bond above 3.2 percent just before today’s market open

The US government can’t handle interest rates at this level, after decades of debt accumulation. Other nations can’t pay back their dollar-denominated loans either, and that has produced havoc at the so-called margins of the global economy — as currencies crash, and companies go under, and sovereign debt instruments melt down. You can be sure that this disorder will eventually spread from the margins to the center, which is the USA. It’s already up-and-running in our politics, which might be considered the early warning system of the larger picture. In my long life of three-score and ten, I’ve never seen a political fiasco as demented as the Kavanaugh confirmation process, with its harking back to Medieval social hysterias and stunning exercises in bad faith.

This riveting horror show has also distracted the nation — and a media fully invested in compounding the psychodrama — from the momentous tectonic movements in the world’s money system, now shaking apart. Among other things, it will blow up the fantasy that Mr. Trump has magically orchestrated a new miracle economy. But it will also bring to an abrupt close the pornographic machinations of his adversaries in Swamptown. And then we will get on in earnest with the true business of the long emergency — making new arrangements, however difficult — to escape the deadly clutter of our own constructed hyper-complex hyper-reality.

The US will fight back.

• Russia Announces Plan To Disentangle Its Economy From US Dollar (RT)

The Russian Finance Ministry has announced a plan to wean the country of dollar dependence. It is expected to be a long and painful process. RT has asked analysts to explain how this could be done. According to the plan published this week, Russia seeks to de-dollarize the economy by 2024. The program is long and complicated, but its key point is that Russian exporters who use rubles instead of dollars would get huge taxation benefits including quicker VAT returns and other stimulus to ditch the greenback. But there are also other ways to strengthen the role of the ruble in Russia.

“It is necessary to gradually switch to such a system of international payments, which implies payment in rubles for Russia’s best and most popular goods on the world market like oil, gas and arms exclusively,” Andrey Perekalsky, analyst at insurance brokerage FinIst, told RT. Russia should also unite with China and the European Union in creating a payment channel that can’t be controlled by the United States. The alternative to the SWIFT interbank settlement network that could bypass Iranian sanctions could be seen as a first step in that direction, the analyst notes. Petr Pushkarev, chief analyst at TeleTrade, says that Russia with its almost $500 billion in foreign reserves, could keep the ruble stable despite US sanctions pressure. The current period of high oil prices could also help.

However, Russia should diversify not only into rubles, but also use the Chinese yuan, Vietnamese dong, Indian rupee, and even the euro, the analyst says. “The euro shouldn’t be feared. The dollar is pretty much overvalued against the euro; the IMF forecasts a gradual devaluation of the dollar by 10-15 percent,” Pushkarev said. “American policy is disliked not only in Russia. EU officials have already openly announced that they are starting to create their own system of settlements with Iran, in which transactions will not be transparent to the US authorities and therefore will not be subject to sanctions,” he added.

Funny.

• Banksy Artwork Shreds Itself After £1m Sale At Sotheby’s (BBC)

A stencil spray painting by elusive artist Banksy shredded itself after it was sold for more than £1m. Girl With Balloon, one of Banksy’s most widely recognised works, was auctioned by Sotheby’s in London. The framed piece shows a girl reaching towards a heart-shaped balloon and was the final work sold at the auction. However, in a twist to be expected from street art’s most subversive character, the canvas suddenly passed through a shredder installed in the frame. Posting a picture of the moment on Instagram, Banksy wrote: “Going, going, gone…”

The 2006 piece was shown dangling in pieces from the bottom of the frame, after it sold for £1.042m on Friday night. “It appears we just got Banksy-ed,” said Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s senior director and head of contemporary art in Europe. Banksy is a Bristol-born artist whose true identity – despite rampant speculation – has never been officially revealed. He came to prominence through a series of graffiti pieces that appeared on buildings across the country, marked by deeply satirical undertones. Friday’s self-destruction was the latest in a long history of anti-establishment statements by the street artist.

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