Berenice Abbott Broome Street, Nos. 504-506, Manhattan 1935
Two things happened over the past day other than the advancing virus numbers. Trump wore a mask to a hospital and Robert Mueller wrote in the WaPo that Roger Stone is still a convicted felon.
As for the mask: nobody saw it as a positive thing, it’s used only to dump on him. The MSM really wouldn’t have any copy if Trump was not there. What are they going to cover when he’s not re-elected? His pending trial, you say? Beware of Pavlov. Beware of conditioning.
As for Mueller’s WaPo piece, Aaron Maté said this:
“Mueller: Stone “lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks.”
False: Stone had no “intermediary to WikiLeaks,” as both of his suspected but fictional intermediaries, Credico & Corsi, told Mueller’s probe.
That really is the whole Mueller story right there, and the commutation one. Lying about a crime that never happened.
If they had nothing on Stone, and neither on Flynn, something Comey admitted in the Oval Office on Jan 4/5 2017, why was there a Special Counsel? Serious question. Oh, and Stone didn’t want a pardon, because that would have stopped him from fighting his case in court. It would have declared him guilty.
Meanwhile, the MSM/Dems/Intel are busy aiming at Bill Barr, but he’s on the record saying Trump shouldn’t have commuted the sentence. Misfire.
The real story lies elsewhere.
But it’s interesting to see it all unfold. Increasingly, I see this developing as a kind of Pavlovian effect, “conditioned reflex”. It’s too easy to predict when the dogs will start salivating. You don’t need to give them food, you just need to blow a whistle. Soon as they hear the name Trump, they can’t stop their watery mouths anymore.
Never new records in the weekend.
Yaneer Bar-Yam
Current epicenters of FL, CA, TX all increasing and around the peak level of NY. See below, the counties in the US with the most cases in the past two weeks. pic.twitter.com/i28XZ6J7wQ
— Yaneer Bar-Yam (@yaneerbaryam) July 12, 2020
Mississippi
US COVID-19 deaths up 20% over last week
Mississippi sees a 75% increase
Mississippi now has the most deaths on a per capita basis #CoronaVirusUpdate #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/cDAmyrQpUO
— Euro Maestro (@euromaestro) July 11, 2020
“The [outbreak] situation has gone back to almost the same level when we had not placed any surveillance measures on the disease at all”
– Professor Gabriel Leung
• Hong Kong Expert Leung: New Virus Strain 30% More Infectious (SCMP)
A top medical expert advising the Hong Kong government on Covid-19 has warned that each infected person could transmit the coronavirus to four others, as the virus has turned more infectious, while the city has now entered the most serious phase of the public health crisis. Professor Gabriel Leung, dean of the University of Hong Kong’s medical school, said he believed there were at least 50 to 60 hidden cases in the community as an international study indicated a strain of the virus had increased its infection rate by 30 per cent due to a DNA mutation. He highlighted Kowloon East and Sha Tin as two areas most at risk of an outbreak and urged the government to prioritise testing resources for the elderly.
“This is the start of a sustained massive local outbreak the likes of which we have never seen before,” Leung said on a radio programme on Sunday. On Saturday, health authorities warned that Hong Kong’s third wave of Covid-19 was by far the most serious of the public health crisis to date, as at least 61 people in the city were either confirmed as infected or had tested preliminary positive. The city reported 16 local infections among 28 cases officially confirmed on Saturday, while another 33 people were awaiting confirmation they had caught the deadly virus. The continued surge takes Hong Kong’s Covid-19 total to 1,431 with seven deaths.
On Sunday, Leung cited an international study which suggested there was a DNA mutation in the most widely circulating strain of the virus, which has changed from 614G from the previous 614D, making it more infectious by about 31 per cent.
He said another local study confirmed such a trend, as the number of people expected to be infected by each case increased in March from 2 1/2 to three, and had now risen to four. But there was no evidence to show that the virus had become more deadly. “Hong Kong is currently facing a real and continuous local outbreak. The situation has gone back to almost the same level when we had not placed any surveillance measures on the disease at all,” Leung said.
I wrote The Party and the Virus all the way back on February 2. It still tells this story 5+ months later.
• Chinese Virologist Flees Hong Kong, Accuses Beijing Of COVID-19 Cover-Up (ZH)
A highly respected Chinese virologist has fled Hong Kong and says that the Chinese government knew about COVID-19 long before they claim they did, and that her supervisors – some of the top experts in the field – ignored research she was conducting at the onset of the pandemic which she says could have saved lives, according to an exclusive interview with Fox News. Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who specialized in virology and immunology at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, fled Hong Kong on April 28 on a Cathay Pacific flight to the United States, knowing that if she were caught she could be jailed or “disappeared.”
“She adds that they likely had an obligation to tell the world, given their status as a World Health Organization reference laboratory specializing in influenza viruses and pandemics, especially as the virus began spreading in the early days of 2020. Yan, now in hiding, claims the government in the country where she was born is trying to shred her reputation and accuses government goons of choreographing a cyber-attack against her in hopes of keeping her quiet. Yan believes her life is in danger. She fears she can never go back to her home and lives with the hard truth that she’ll likely never see her friends or family there again. Still, she says, the risk is worth it. -Fox News
“The reason I came to the U.S. is because I deliver the message of the truth of COVID,” Yan told Fox from an undisclosed location. Yan says she was one of the first scientists in the world to study COVID-19 (aside from Wuhan researchers, perhaps) after he supervisor, Dr. Leo Poon, asked her to look into “the odd cluster of SARS-like cases coming out of mainland China at the end of December 2019,” according to the report. “The China government refused to let overseas experts, including ones in Hong Kong, do research in China,” she said. “So I turned to my friends to get more information.”
Yan’s mainland colleagues – one of whom worked at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, allegedly told Yan on December 31 that the virus was transmissible between humans long before the CCP or the WHO reversed course and admitted this was possible. After she told her boss of this, “he just nodded,” she says. Days after her CCP contacts told her about human-to-human transmission, the WHO put out a statement on January 9 saying: “According to Chinese authorities, the virus in question can cause severe illness in some patients and does not transmit readily between people… There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster.”
Something I’ve been saying all along. And I don’t need the flowery language to know why.
The vast majority of westerners has never experienced a war anywhere near them. But it’s still the only language they understand. What does that tell us?
• How Talking About The Coronavirus As An Enemy Combatant Can Backfire (Conv.)
Sometimes war involves battling other countries; other times, it’s the metaphorical kind, like our current “war” against the coronavirus. We see this war reflected in the language that gets used by politicians, policymakers, journalists and healthcare workers. As the “invisible enemy” rolled in, entire economies halted as populations “sheltered in place.” We were told to “hunker down” for the long battle ahead and to “support our troops,” the health care workers, fighting on the “front lines.” These military-inspired metaphors serve a purpose. Unlike the dense linguistic landscape of science and medicine, their messages are clear: Danger. Buckle Down. Cooperate. In fact, studies have shown that sometimes military metaphors can help unite people against a common enemy.
They can convey a sense of urgency so that people drop what they’re doing and start paying attention. However, as someone who has studied the way language influences behavior, I know that this kind of rhetoric can have long-term effects that are less positive, particularly within health and medicine. In fact, research has shown that these metaphors can cause people to make decisions that go against sound medical advice. Militarized rhetoric was popularized with the “War on Drugs,” a term coined by President Richard Nixon in an effort to reduce illicit drug use in the U.S. Since then, the language of war has seeped into our collective lexicon. We’re currently engaged in a war against climate change. Some argue there’s a war on Christmas, while others say there’s a war against truth.
So it’s only natural that when a new, deadly virus emerges, the warspeak persists. Military metaphors aren’t new to medicine; they’ve long played a role in shaping patients’ relationships with illness. Cancer is a key example of this. The cancer is an enemy, invading the patient’s body. Patients are told they must fight, that they are at war, and they must be strong while they receive treatments that target those enemy cells for destruction. The fact they are used so often indicates that these metaphors serve a purpose. They’re simple and straightforward, helping us comprehend and categorize something that’s complex and unpredictable. But this framing contains a potentially dangerous undercurrent.
Language affects cognition, and cognition affects our behaviors. Wartime language has been shown to alter our behavior – and not always for the better. In war, opposing sides are engaged in a struggle. Whoever survives longest and fights hardest wins. Strength and confidence are commended, while fearful behaviors are viewed with contempt. The World War II poster “Keep calm and carry on” exemplifies this mindset. The underlying message of the so-called “War on Terror” was to not allow fear to disrupt our lives. There was a major focus on returning to “life as normal,” and the return to national pastimes, like baseball, was thought to play a huge role in helping the country heal.
These approaches can appear helpful, but in the case of the coronavirus medical advice suggests physical distancing and mask wearing. Unfortunately, this guidance requires disruption. To stay home is to change your routine, to wear a mask is to appear weak and afraid and to avoid everything that makes up our daily routine is to let the enemy win.
Color me surprised.
• £5 Billion Of UK Coronavirus Bailouts Go To Firms Based In Tax Havens (LE)
Almost a third of companies receiving coronavirus bailouts from the Bank of England are based in a tax haven or owned by someone living there, shocking research has revealed. Analysis by TaxWatch UK, a thinktank, found that £4.79 billion in bailout cash has been handed to companies with links to tax havens, or that have been embroiled in financial controversy – close to 30 per cent of the money loaned out under the government’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility. One company – Baker Hughes, a subsidiary of American giant General Electric – was granted a £600 million loan, despite the fact that its parent company has been sued by HMRC over unpaid taxes dating back 16 years.
Luxury fashion brand Chanel – whose ultimate parent company is based in the Cayman Islands – also received £600 million, as did EasyJet – which is part-owned by a trust based in the Caribbean territory. A further £25 million went to cruise operator Carnival, whose ships were registered in Panama. Dozens of people have died and over 1,500 confirmed cases of Covid-19 have so far been recorded in connection with the company’s cruises, after major outbreaks on ships like the Diamond Princess earlier this year. Machine manufacturer JCB – whose parent company is located in the Netherlands – received a £600 million bailout. The company donated more than £50,000 to Boris Johnson in 2019 and its chairman, Lord Bamford, contributed a further £20,000 to the prime minister’s leadership campaign.
[..] France was one of the first countries to block offshore firms from claiming state aid, banning companies domiciled in tax havens from accessing its 110 billion euro rescue package. Announcing the ban Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, said that “it goes without saying” that “if your head office is located in a tax haven, you cannot benefit from public support.”
When presented with a chance to make the EU relevant, all they exhibited was incompetence. They should have issued coronabonds, sold on the same solidarity basis that US warbonds were. Solidarity with your neighbor and your neighbor states. But solidarity with fellow EU citizens is a bridge too far. Why then have an EU?
• EU Leaders Are Split Over Coronavirus Recovery (O.)
With the continent heading into a recession not seen since the 1930s, the EU’s institutional heads, the presidents of the European commission and council, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, have struggled to find consensus between sparring member states over both a long-term budget and a huge one-off economic stimulus. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, Emmanuel Macron, have given their backing to a €750bn (£675bn) pandemic recovery fund. But “frugal” northern states have raised issues. Efforts to placate them have angered Hungary’s nationalist prime minister and the European parliament.
“It became obvious deals weren’t going to be made online,” said one EU official. “You need the work in the margins, bilaterals and discussions between advisers to find the common ground. It needed a physical meeting.” But the set-up will be far from normal this weekend. The usual back-slapping and cheek-kissing will be replaced by social distancing in the presence of mask-wearing aides. The army of reporters that flock to the summits has also been banned from taking the usual seats in the expansive foyer of the Justus Lipsius building next door to the Europa.
The European commission forecasts an 8.3% drop in economic activity across the EU this year followed by a 5.8% rebound in 2021 but countries are expected to emerge from the crisis at starkly different speeds, risking a breakdown in the bloc’s single market as the disparity between Europe’s haves and have-nots is exacerbated In Brussels’ latest proposal, Michel, a former Belgian prime minister said to have had a lacklustre first year in his role chairing leaders’ debates, only appeared to stir up new problems. In response to the unapologetically “frugal” positions taken by Mark Rutte, the Netherlands’ prime minister, Michel tabled a €25bn smaller seven-year budget than last proposed, through which day-to-day programmes including the common agricultural policy are funded.
Let the mass evictions begin.
• 32% Of US Households Missed Their July Housing Payments (CNBC)
As the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic continues, almost one-third of U.S. households, 32%, have not made their full housing payments for July yet, according to a survey by Apartment List, an online rental platform. About 19% of Americans made no housing payment at all during the first week of the month, and 13% paid only a portion of their rent or mortgage. That’s the fourth month in a row that a “historically high” number of households were unable to pay their housing bill on time and in full, up from 30% in June and 31% in May. Renters, low-income and younger households were most likely to miss their payments, Apartment List found.
In April, May and June, the majority of missed housing payments were made by the end of month, Apartment List reports. Almost 90% of households had paid some or all of their rent or mortgage payment by the end of June. But with late fees tacked on, those households may be more likely to miss their next housing bill, perpetuating a vicious cycle. “Delayed payments in one month are a strong predictor for missed payments in the next,” Apartment List says. While 83% of households who paid their May housing in full and on-time also did so in June, only 30% of households who were late in May did so in June.
[..] Renters are especially vulnerable. About 36% of renters, who are more likely to work in industries devastated by the coronavirus, missed their July housing bill, compared to 30% of homeowners. The federal eviction moratorium, which covers around one-fourth of renters in the U.S., put in place at the beginning of the pandemic has been extended to the end of August. But many people are still worried about an imminent wave of evictions across the country, as tenant protections vary greatly depending on the state and even city. Many — though not all — states and cities have instituted their own eviction bans; some have already expired, leaving tenants vulnerable at a time when coronavirus cases are increasing in many spots in the U.S.
Pretty sudden 180 by Boris.
• Huawei To Request UK To Delay 5G Network Removal (R.)
China’s Huawei Technologies has requested a meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to work out a deal to delay its potential removal from the country’s 5G phone network, the Sunday Times newspaper reported on Sunday (July 12). The Chinese telecoms equipment maker is seeking to delay its removal from the country’s 5G telecoms networks until after elections in June 2025, in the expectation that the new government may reverse the decision, the newspaper reported. Huawei will in return pledge to maintain its equipment in Britain, which is also used in the 2G, 3G and 4G networks, the report added.
Britain granted Huawei a limited role in its future 5G networks in January, but ministers have since said the introduction of US sanctions on the company means it may no longer be a reliable supplier. Mr Johnson has faced intense pressure from the United States and some British lawmakers to ban the telecommunications equipment maker on security grounds. China’s ambassador to London, Mr Liu Xiaoming, warned last week that getting rid of Huawei would send a “very bad message” to Chinese business. A government update on the Chinese company is expected to be published before July 22, according to a government minister and official.
Taking price discovery out of the equation means you have no markets anymore. You have a casino.
• Tesla Appears Poised To Electrify S&P 500 (R.)
Wall Street’s most controversial stock may be about to go mainstream. Tesla Inc appears on the verge of joining the S&P 500, a major accomplishment for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk that would unleash a flood of new demand for the electric car maker’s shares, which have already surged 500% over the past year. Higher-than-expected second-quarter vehicle deliveries, announced last week, have analysts increasingly confident the company will show a profit in its quarterly report on July 22. That would mark Tesla’s first cumulative four-quarter profit, a key hurdle to be added to the S&P 500.
With a market capitalization of about $250 billion, Tesla would be among the most valuable companies ever added to the S&P 500, larger than 95% of the index’s existing components. It would have a major impact on investment funds that track the index. [..] Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones, had to look back to the dot-com era to recall a comparable situation. In 1999, Yahoo surged 64% in five trading days between the announcement that it would be added to the index on Nov. 30 and its inclusion after the close of trading on Dec. 7. Yahoo’s market capitalization at the time was about $56 billion.
Tesla makes 500,000 cars a year. Yet Musk is set to surpass Buffett in the Fortune 500.
• Elon Musk About To Get Another $1.8 Billion Payday From Tesla (CNN)
At the end of May Tesla granted CEO Elon Musk stock options worth $1.8 billion today. Now, it’s about to do that again — for a second time in just over two months. Musk’s pay package, approved by Tesla shareholders in 2018, doesn’t pay him any salary or cash bonuses. Instead, it laid out a plan that could eventually give him 20.3 million stock options over the course of 10 years, in 12 equal blocks of 1.7 million options, as long as the company hits a series of operational and market value goals. The package could eventually make him the world’s richest man. With its stock rising more than 500% over the past 12 months, Musk qualified for the first block of options on May 28, when the company achieved an average $100 billion market cap over the previous six months.
Those options were worth an estimated $770 million at that time, after factoring in Tesla’s share price and the $350.02 cost of exercising each option. Musk would qualify for the next block of stock once Tesla had a six-month average of value of $150 billion. The company’s share price has continued to climb steadily, rising more than 70% since Musk received the previous options grant. That gives the company a current market value of $258.6 billion, and a six-month average of $138.6 billion. That new market value is closer to the next target than it might appear. Tesla shares need only to stay at this level for the next two weeks to hit the six-month average of $150 billion.
The current market value has made the company the most valuable automaker in the world, topping No. 2 Toyota, which is worth about $200 billion. In fact, Tesla is now worth more than the third most valuable automaker – Volkswagen – as well as General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler and Honda – combined.
Jonnathan Turley has a long list of worse commutations.
• Roger Stone Commutation Is Not As Controversial As Some Think (Turley)
Washington was sent into vapors of shock and disgust with news of the commutation of Roger Stone. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin declared it to be “the most corrupt and cronyistic act in all of recent history.” Despite my disagreement with the commutation, that claim is almost quaint. The sordid history of pardons makes it look positively chaste in comparison. Many presidents have found the power of pardons to be an irresistible temptation when it involves family, friends, and political allies. I have maintained that Stone deserved another trial but not a pardon. As Attorney General William Barr has said, this was a “righteous prosecution” and Stone was correctly convicted and correctly sentenced to 40 months in prison.
President Trump did not give his confidant a pardon but rather a commutation, so Stone is still a convicted felon. However, Trump should have left this decision to his attorney general. In addition to Stone being a friend and political ally, Trump was implicated in those allegations against Stone. While there was never any evidence linking Trump to the leaking of hacked emails, he has an obvious conflict of interest in the case. The White House issued a statement that Stone is “a victim of the Russia hoax.” The fact is that Stone is a victim of himself. Years of what he called his “performance art” finally caught up with him when he realized federal prosecutors who were not amused by his antics. Stone defines himself as an “agent provocateur.” He crossed the line when he called witnesses to influence their testimony and gave false answers to investigators.
But criticism of this commutation immediately seemed to be decoupled from any foundation in history or in the Constitution. Indeed, Toobin also declared, “This is simply not done by American presidents. They do not pardon or commute sentences of people who are close to them or about to go to prison. It just does not happen until this president.” In reality, the commutation of Stone barely stands out in the old gallery of White House pardons, which are the most consistently and openly abused power in the Constitution. This authority under Article Two is stated in absolute terms, and some presidents have wielded it with absolute abandon.
If they had nothing on Flynn, something Comey admitted in the Oval Office on Jan 4/5 2017, why was there a Special Counsel? Serious question.
• Flynn Lawyer Says New DOJ Docs Contain ‘Shocking Exculpatory Evidence’ (Fox)
Newly released documents about the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn show additional “exculpatory evidence” linked to a Justice Department review of the case investigators built against him shortly after President Trump’s election, his lawyers argued in a court filing Friday. “These documents establish that on January 25, 2017 – the day after the agents ambushed him at the White House – the agents and DOJ officials knew General Flynn’s statements were not material to any investigation, that he was ‘open and forthcoming’ with the agents, that he had no intent to deceive them, and that he believed he was fully truthful with them,” Flynn’s attorneys wrote. “In short, there was no crime for many reasons.”
Flynn’s lawyers said that top Justice Department officials and the special counsel’s office knew about the documents for three years before they were able to obtain them, following U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri Jeffrey Jensen’s review of the case. That review was ordered by Attorney General Bill Barr and eventually led the DOJ to drop the charges that former special counsel Robert Mueller had filed against Flynn. And the documents echo statements that former FBI Director James Comey made to lawmakers about Flynn’s FBI interview as early as 2017, Politico reported. Portions of the documents are redacted, but one paragraph, pertaining to an early FBI interview of Flynn, states that “FBI advised that based on this interview, they did not believe General Flynn was acting as an agent of Russia.”
The report acknowledged that some of what Flynn said during the interview was “inconsistent” with surveillance records of his calls – but that investigators “believed that Flynn believed what he was telling them.” Another section of handwritten notes draws similar conclusions. “These disclosures evince … even more reasons requiring dismissal of the case against General Flynn,” his legal team wrote. Just two weeks ago, Flynn’s team received former FBI agent Peter Strzok’s notes as part of the review, which the defense lawyers also said provided evidence to “further exonerate” him. [..] the federal judge who has the authority to make the final decision over whether to dismiss the case refused to do so this week even after being ordered to by an appeals court. Instead, he filed a petition for the entire D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case – a move that could drag the proceedings on beyond Election Day.
We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, your support is now an integral part of the process.
Thank you.
he knows his talent pic.twitter.com/RN2Heucw8a
— Life on Earth (@planetpng) June 29, 2020
Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.
