Jun 16

Today’s News 16th June 2020

  • Global Sugar Consumption Declines For First Time In Forty Years 
    Global Sugar Consumption Declines For First Time In Forty Years 

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/16/2020 – 02:45

    The pandemic has thrust the global economy into a crippling recession. It could take several years for the world to return to either its long-term linear or exponential growth trends, resulting in diminishing demand for certain commodities. 

    According to research firm Czarnikow Group, the virus-induced economic downturn has led to the first year-on-year decline in global sugar consumption since 1980, when sugar prices hit a high of 45c/lb. 

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    The global closure of the travel and tourism industries has been one of the most significant contributing factors behind sliding demand for sugary food products. Czarnikow wrote lockdowns have led to reduced consumption out-of-home and at-home:

    “There has been a reversal of this recent trend of 1% growth each year. Due to this fall, we have reduced our consumption estimates for locations that are still under lockdown by 5%. Under lockdown, there are associated reductions in at-home-consumption due to shortages in stockists, supply chain delays, and the closure of the entertainment industry.

    “This final factor is particularly important when estimating consumption patterns. This is because we believe that out-of-home sugar consumption is likely to be even more reduced than in-home sugar consumption. When people can’t go to the shops, cinema, sports events, and bars, the amount of sugar – mostly in the form of sugary drinks, fast food, and treat foods – is also reduced. We can verify this by looking at soft drinks sales, which have been particularly affected by lockdowns and the reduction of social gatherings.” – Czarnikow 

    “Consumption out of home is normally more than what you would now substitute and have at home,” Ben Seed, an analyst at Czarnikow in London, told Bloomberg. 

    “If you go to the cinema, you would probably quite happily have a liter or maybe more of soda while you watch the film, whereas we just don’t think people would drink a whole liter of soda while watching Netflix,” Seed said. 

    Coca-Cola’s sales volumes were down 25% during the month of April, and the company warned the economic downturn will weigh heavily in the second quarter. PepsiCo Inc was another that expects second-quarter revenue to slide.

    Czarnikow said global sugar consumption will decline 1.2% to 169.9 million tons this year. 

    ICE-US Sugar July contracts plunged from $15.9 to $9.05, or about 43% decline in 52 sessions, bottoming out in late April. Since the bottom, contracts have soared 35% into mid-June — have hit resistance just shy of the 50% Fibonacci retracement level ($12.47). 

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    John Stansfield, an analyst at trader Group Sopex, told Bloomberg that falling demand could result in large sugar surpluses this year and next. 

    “The bigger picture of falling sugar consumption comes from sales data of Coke and Pepsi, which is terrible,” Stansfield said, adding that, “but what I fear more is falling global GDP. Unemployed people won’t be going to restaurants and bars. As GDP stalls, so will sugar consumption.”

    To sum up, with no V-shaped recovery in the global economy this year — the road to recovery will be slow and long — suggesting the sugar industry is about to go bust.

    If you’re wondering about the latest data on the type of recovery ahead, read our latest piece titled “OECD Warns Of Deepest Global Downturn In Century, Second Virus Wave.” 

  • EU Farmers Fear The 'European Green New Deal'
    EU Farmers Fear The ‘European Green New Deal’

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/16/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Marcus Holtkoetter viaAGWeb.com,

    The European Commission has a plan to eliminate modern farming in Europe.

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    The details emerged last month, as part of a “European Green Deal” announced late last year that calls for the continent to become “climate neutral” by 2050.

    The commission speaks of “turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities.” It also talks about “making the transition just and inclusive for all.”

    It should have added three words: “except for farmers.”

    That’s because the EU Commission just released its “Farm to Fork” strategy, which is the agricultural portion of the European Green Deal. It announces a series of unrealistic goals: In the next decade, farmers like me are supposed to slash our use of crop-protection products by half, cut our application of fertilizer by 20 percent, and transform a quarter of total farmland into organic production.

    None of this, of course, is supposed to disrupt anybody’s dinner.

    Europeans are blessed to live in a well-fed society. We have stable governments, reliable infrastructure, and advanced economies. We also have some of the best farmland in the world, with good soil and strong yields, year after year. Through intensive farming, we achieve excellent results—and we don’t face the problems of hunger and malnutrition that plague less fortunate people in other societies.

    What the European Commission now proposes, essentially, is smaller harvests. For consumers, this will lead directly to one thing: Higher prices. Food will cost more.

    There’s also a deeper problem. How are farmers supposed to make a living when we’re growing fewer crops and selling less food? The commission fails to consider one of the most likely results of its misbegotten approach to agriculture: When farmers can’t turn a profit, they’ll quit farming.

    If that happens, the smaller harvests will shrink even further.

    This defies what the commission says is its major goal, which is to make “the EU’s economy sustainable.” It needs to understand that there is no such thing as economic sustainability without a sustainable economy.

    It also raises the question of where our food will come from, if it doesn’t come from our own farms. We could always import more food from other places. Global trade already is an essential feature of food production. We should encourage more of it.

    Yet the European Green Deal will lead to substandard farming in places with less productive farmland. This may help fill bellies in a Europe that has fewer farmers. It may even salve the consciences of activists and bureaucrats in Brussels. It certainly won’t help the climate.

    Our goal should be to grow more food on less land. Yet the EU’s present approach, driven by ideology rather than science, will lead to growing less food on more land.

    What’s “green” about that?

    This is all supposed to happen, by the way, at a time of worldwide population growth. Demographers expect that an additional 2 billion people will inhabit our planet by 2050. We need to feed them, too. Figuring out how to do this over the next 30 years is farming’s major challenge—and the solution, if we find one, lies in the creative use of innovative technologies, products and strategies, especially in the developing world.

    What we don’t need are the additional burden of restrictions that will make it harder for Europeans to feed themselves.

    Worst of all, however, the European Green Deal seems to assume that farmers are the foes of conservation. It treats us as a problem to be solved rather than allies in a common cause.

    We’re already working hard to be as “green” as possible. On my farm, we produce a portion of our electricity with solar panels. We use GPS and other technologies to reduce waste when we apply manure and fight weeds. We plant cover crops to protect soil erosion. We grow flower strips to attract pollinating insects and improve biodiversity.

    As time and technology allow, we’ll do even more of this. The surest way to prevent positive innovation, however, is to threaten the ability of farmers to make a living.

    For farmers – and everybody – the European Green Deal is a rotten deal.

  • Three NYPD Officers "Intentionally Poisoned" With Bleach At Manhattan Shake Shack; Company Responds
    Three NYPD Officers “Intentionally Poisoned” With Bleach At Manhattan Shake Shack; Company Responds

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/16/2020 – 00:10

    Update (0146ET): Shake Shack has responded to the incident, Tweeting early Tuesday morning: “We are horrified by the reports of police officers injured at our 200 Broadway Shack in Manhattan. We are working with the police in their investigation right now.”

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    Three NYPD officers were poisoned at a Shake Shack on Broadway in Manhattan Monday night, according to New York Benevolent Police Association (PBA) and confirmed by the Detectives’ Endowment Association.

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    “At some point during their meal period, the MOS discovered that a toxic substance, believed to be bleach, had been placed in their beverages,” reads a statement from PBA President Patrick Lynch, who added that the contamination was not discovered until the officers had already consumed some of their beverages.

    The NYPD Detectives’ Endowment Association tweeted on Monday that three officers were “intentionally poisoned by one or more workers at the Shake Shack at 200 Broadway in Manhattan” are responsible, adding that none of the officers were seriously harmed. 

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  • Whitney: Do Deep State Elements Operate Within The Protest Movement?
    Whitney: Do Deep State Elements Operate Within The Protest Movement?

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 23:50

    Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

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    “Revolutions are often seen as spontaneous. It looks like people just went into the street. But it’s the result of months or years of preparation. It is very boring until you reach a certain point, where you can organize mass demonstrations or strikes. If it is carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks.” Foreign Policy Journal

    Does anyone believe the nationwide riots and looting are a spontaneous reaction to the killing of George Floyd?

    It’s all too coordinated, too widespread, and too much in-sync with the media narrative that applauds the “mainly peaceful protests” while ignoring the vast destruction to cities across the country. What’s that all about? Do the instigators of these demonstrations want to see our cities reduced to urban wastelands where street gangs and Antifa thugs impose their own harsh justice? That’s where this is headed, isn’t it?

    Of course there are millions of protesters who honestly believe they’re fighting racial injustice and police brutality. And more power to them. But that certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t hidden agendas driving these outbursts. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that the protest movement is actually the perfect vehicle for affecting dramatic social changes that only serve the interests of elites. For example, who benefits from defunding the police? Not African Americans, that’s for sure. Black neighborhoods need more security not less. And yet, the New York Times lead editorial on Saturday proudly announces, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won’t happen.” Check it out:

    “We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police….There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

    So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job…” (“Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won’t happen”, New York Times)

    So, according to the Times, the problem isn’t single parent families, or underfunded education or limited job opportunities or fractured neighborhoods, it’s the cops who have nothing to do with any of these problems. Are we supposed to take this seriously, because the editors of the Times certainly do. They’d like us to believe that there is groundswell support for this loony idea, but there isn’t. In a recent poll, more than 60% of those surveyed, oppose the idea of defunding the police. So why would such an unpopular, wacko idea wind up as the headline op-ed in the Saturday edition? Well, because the Times is doing what it always does, advancing the political agenda of the elites who hold the purse-strings and dictate which ideas are promoted and which end up on the cutting room floor. That’s how the system works. Check out this excerpt from an article by Paul Craig Roberts:

    “The extraordinary destruction of white and Asian businesses in many instances wiping out a family’s lifetime work, the looting of national businesses whose dumbshit CEOs support the looters, the merciless gang beatings of whites and Asians who attempted to defend their persons and their property, the egging on of the violence by politicians in both parties and by the entirely of the media including many alternative media websites, shows a country undergoing collapse. This is why it is not shown in national media. Some local media show an indication of the violent destruction in their community, but it is not accumulated and presented to a national audience. Consequently, Americans think the looting and destruction is only a local occurance… I just checked CNN and the BBC and there is nothing about the extraordinary economic destruction and massive thefts.” (“The Real Racists”, Paul Craig Roberts, Unz Review)

    Roberts makes a good point, and one that’s worth mulling over. Why has the media failed to show the vast destruction of businesses and private property? Why have they minimized the effects of vandalism, looting and arson? Why have they fanned the flames of social unrest from the very beginning, shrugging off the ruin and devastation while cheerleading the demonstrations as a heroic struggle for racial justice? Is this is the same media that supported every bloody war, every foreign intervention, and every color-revolution for the last 5 decades? Are we really expected to believe that they’ve changed their stripes and become an energized proponent of social justice?

    Nonsense. The media’s role in concealing the damage should only convince skeptics that the protests are just one part of a much larger operation. What we’re seeing play out in over 400 cities across the US, has more to do with toppling Trump and sowing racial division than it does with the killing of George Floyd. The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably involved. We know from evidence uncovered during the Russiagate probe, that the media works hand-in-glove with the Intel agencies and FBI while–at the same time– serving as a mouthpiece for elites. That hasn’t changed, in fact, it’s gotten even worse. The uniformity of the coverage suggests that that same perception management strategy is being employed here as well. Even at this late date, the determination to remove Trump from office is as strong as ever even though, in the present case, it has been combined with the broader political strategy of inciting fratricidal violence, obliterating urban areas, and spreading anarchy across the country. This isn’t about racial justice or police brutality, it’s about regime change, internal destabilization, and martial law. Take a look at this article at The Herland Report:

    “What the Black Lives Matter movement does not understand is that they are being used by the billionaire white capitalists who are fighting to push the working class even lower and end the national sovereignty principles that president Trump stands for in America….

    The rightful grievance over racism against blacks is now used to get Trump since Russia Gate, Impeachment, the corona scandal and nothing else has worked. The aim is to end democracy in the United States, control Congress and politics and assemble the power into the hands of the very few…

    It is all about who will own the United States and have free access to its revenues: Either the American people under democracy or globalist billionaire individuals.” (“Politicized USA Gene Sharp riots is another attempted coup d’etat – New Left Tyranny” The Herland Report

    That sounds about right to me. The protests are merely a fig leaf for a “color revolution” that bears a striking resemblance to the more than 50 CIA-backed coups launched on foreign governments in the last 70 years. Have the chickens have come home to roost? It certainly looks like it. Here’s more from the same article:

    “Use a grievance that the local population has against the system, identify and support those who oppose the current government, infiltrate and strengthen opposition movements, fund them with millions of dollars, organize protests that seem legitimate and have paid political instigators dress up in regular clothes to blend in.”

    So, yes, the grievances are real, but that doesn’t mean that someone else is not steering the action. And just as the media is shaping the narrative for its own purposes, so too, there are agents within the movement that are inciting the violence. All of this suggests the existence of some form of command-control that provides logistical support and assists in communications. Check out this excerpt from a post at Colonel Pat Lang’s website Sic Semper Tyrannis:

    “The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates these plans and gives “execute orders?”

    Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present meme of “Defund the Police” is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force. Gutting the civil police forces has long been a major goal of the far left, but now, they have the ability to create mass hysteria over it when they have an excuse.” (“My take on the present situation”, Sic Semper Tyrannis)

    Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa’s “logistical capabilities”. The United States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the same time. It’s beyond suspicious, it points to extensive coordination with groups across the country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem.

    None of this has anything to do with racial justice or police brutality. America is being destabilized and sacked for other purposes altogether. This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA’s color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose “shock therapy” on the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans into homelessness and destitution, and leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country easily controlled by Federal shock troops and wealthy globalist mandarins. Here’s a short excerpt from an article by Kurt Nimmo at his excellent blog “Another Day in the Empire”:

    “The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder….

    It is sad to say BLM serves the elite by ignoring or remaining ignorant of the main problem—boundless predation by a neoliberal criminal project that considers all—black, white, yellow, brown—as expliotable and dispensable serfs.” (“2 Million Arab Lives Don’t Matter“, Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire)

    The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having succeeded in using the Lockdown to push the economy into severe recession, the globalists are now inciting a fratricidal war that will weaken the opposition and prepare the country for a new authoritarian order.

  • Woke Mobs Now Destroying Statues Of Leading Anti-Slavery Figures
    Woke Mobs Now Destroying Statues Of Leading Anti-Slavery Figures

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 23:30

    Police in various American cities especially on the East and West coasts have stood down while fanatical mobs of leftists unilaterally determine which public monuments and statues should be toppled, destroyed, and in some cases beheaded — as in the recent “beheading” of a Christopher Columbus statue at a public park in Boston.

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    It didn’t take long for the woke mobs to target statues of the founding fathers and American Constitutional framers in the past days.

    In Portland over the weekend, a large bronze Thomas Jefferson statue that was a central feature of Jefferson High School campus was pulled down after Black Lives Matter protests there.

    Like others across the nation, the Jefferson statue was further defaced with the words “slave owner” and “George Floyd” spray-painted across the base.

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    Via local affiliate news station OPB: “A local hip hop artist named Spazz sits on the Thomas Jefferson statue that was torn down from its pedestal at Jefferson High School in Northeast Portland.”

    But given that increasingly even Abraham Lincoln statues are being targeted, it reveals that neither the Confederacy nor early colonial and American slaveholders are the targets, but all symbols of US history itself. 

    As The Federalist astutely observes: 

    They make no distinction between Confederate and Union, abolitionist and pro-slavery, 15th-century figures and 20th. They don’t care when a monument was erected, who built it, or why. They have not come to debate or persuade their fellow citizens to relocate these statues to museums or private property. They believe the debate is over and that they have won.

    Their target is not the Confederacy. It is the United States. They mean to destroy symbols of American history writ large, because to them all of American history is racist and genocidal. Their goal is not to cleanse a nation they love of monuments to Confederate traitors who tried to secede, but to cleanse their consciences of ever having loved such an evil and irredeemably racist country in the first place.

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    Even leading abolitionist figures from history are targeted, astoundingly: 

    That is why you see mobs defacing statues of abolitionists like Matthias Baldwin and Union war heroes like Adm. David Farragut and Gen. George Thomas. That is why the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution in Philadelphia was vandalized this past weekend with the words “committed genocide.” That is why statues of Christopher Columbus were torn down or beheaded in three cities last week.

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    Simply put, it now appears any white male historical figure is now “tainted” with a “racist” and “genocidal” legacy, no matter the historical record. 

    As another case in point from this past weekend: 

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    A “peaceful” protest took place at Central Park in Whittier on Sunday, or so we are told. It appears that initially the statue was safe, but by the end of it the Quaker abolitionist considered key in the 19th century movement for equal rights wasn’t spared by the ‘woke’ mob.

    John Greenleaf, whose statue now sits damaged and vandalized, including with the spray-painted letters “BLM”, was among the most prominent literary voices leading the fight to end slavery even decades before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

    If even memorials to famous abolitionists won’t be spared, what will? 

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    Many commentators have noticed that the statue-destroying leftist mobs in both the US and UK have something in common with a certain Mideast terror group…

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    Before and after: the 6th century Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban using dynamite in 2001.

  • Manipulating The Masses: Edward Bernays & Why The System Needs Your Compliance
    Manipulating The Masses: Edward Bernays & Why The System Needs Your Compliance

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 23:10

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    You are being controlled. You are being manipulated. You are being brainwashed. If you are still stuck believing that your vote counts and choosing sides is “moral”  in a system set up against you from day one, the propaganda has worked.

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    In this video, we look at the ideas of Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and a pioneering mind behind the field of public relations and modern propaganda – particularly his ideas on how group psychology, and the illusion of choice, can be used to manipulate the masses.

    This is all about dividing and conquering. While we argue about which political puppet is less evil than the other, they wreak havoc on us and destroy everything in their path for power, fame, and wealth.

    If you want to make the best change, reject the system, the entire system, and refuse to vote. The task of any control system, therefore, is to maintain the facade of political choice and central to this is “the people’s right to vote,” writes Ben O’Hanlon for Medium.

    The easiest way to divide people is through political theater. This is going to be a tough red pill for people to swallow…

    It literally doesn’t matter who you vote for. If your vote actually mattered, it would have already been made illegal.

     “Let us control the money of a nation, and we care not who makes its laws.”

    – A “maxim” of the House of Rothschilds.

    This isn’t an astonishing or groundbreaking statement.  On some visceral level, we all understand this.  So why then, is it so easy to divide people into political groups so a small handful of other people can rule over them? Basically, propaganda – the illusion of choice keeps people stuck believing they are free to decide when it really doesn’t matter much anyway. You don’t get to vote for the people behind the scenes that make all the decisions anyway, only the puppet whose face will be attached to those decisions.

    Voting provides a corrupt system with legitimacy, regardless of who you vote for. It implies that you consent to the outcome because you participated even if you wanted the other guy to win.  The use of dividing people into political parties is not new, but the desire to break free from them and the ruling class. in general, is.

    There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

    Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware. –John W. Whitehead

    Voting is nothing more than an illusion of choice. It’s akin to slave putting a piece of paper in a box that asks the master to be free. It doesn’t work that way. Figure out the difference between right and wrong, and one of the first things that happen is a refusal to vote for the lesser of two evils…which is still evil, by the way. Because any master who thinks they own anyone else is evil and all politicians think they own you to some degree.

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    Besides, how do you know who won? The mainstream media tells you, right? And they are so honest, just, and trustworthy, and would NEVER do what they are told…oh, wait. Yeah, it’s that insane.

    Trump bent immediately to the will of the deep state. Like a twig in the wind.

    It’s time to be honest about that. The people never had a champion in the ring.

    Let us talk no more of “democracy,” or of “voting”. Of course, that is hard to accept and acknowledge, because it is so devastating to the delusions that hold individuals together from day to day.

    Many people may not even be capable of holding the thought or notion that they might oppose or stop it. Most Americans are now literally numb to the actions of its own government, the lives it is destroying and the lies it is working for.

    The candidates and the creatures of the state who have willingly lied and deceived the people while looking them in the eye (and pretending to have good reasons) are recklessly and wantonly jeopardizing the world in a way that that hasn’t been seen since the cold war. –SHTFPlan, April 13, 2017

    “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

    – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    If you are being honest with yourself, you would surely know by now that you don’t require a ruler, a master, or an authoritarian to make decisions for you. It’s time we begin to own ourselves and reject the power-hungry politicians will to rule over us all. People seem to be getting increasingly angry at those who are trying to wake them up and free them from the mental chains they’ve put on themselves. I see this as a sign that the system’s propaganda has worked, but only on those easy to control from the start.

  • Stocks Soar On Report Trump Planning Trillion-Dollar Infrastructure Stimulus
    Stocks Soar On Report Trump Planning Trillion-Dollar Infrastructure Stimulus

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 22:56

    Ten days ago, stocks soared on talk of a $1 trillion-dollar fiscal stimulus bill being “mulled” by the Trump administration.

    Mitch McConnell told White House officials behind closed doors that “another round of fiscal stimulus from Congress could be just under $1 trillion”, a figure that administration officials are reportedly comfortable with.

    Tonight, stocks are soaring once again after Bloomberg reports that a $1 trillion infrastructure stimulus bill is being “mulled” by the Trump administration (why infrastructure this time instead of just a fiscal one? Because it still has to go through the Dem-controlled House, but if it is spun as infrastructure, it has far greater chance of passage).

    “Since he took office, President Trump has been serious about a bipartisan infrastructure package that rebuilds our crumbling roads and bridges, invests in future industries, and promotes permitting efficiency,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

    Sound familiar? It should. But hey, as long is wards off fears of a second global wave of COVID-19, who cares right?

    Indeed, it’s like deja vu all over again!

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    Dow futures are up over 500 points tonight…

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    Additionally, the dollar is extending its fall…

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    And Treasury yields are rising as this means yet more supply…

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    But gold’s spike has been erased…

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    Bloomberg reports that, according to people familiar with the plan, a preliminary version of the proposal being prepared by the Department of Transportation would reserve most of the money for traditional infrastructure work, like roads and bridges, but would also set aside funds for 5G wireless infrastructure and rural broadband.

    The regurgitated headlines come after San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly said in a speech this afternoon:

    “We need to focus on investments that leverage the talent of everyone and contribute to the economy’s long-term growth prospects.”

    She cited health, education and digital infrastructure, such as internet access.

    “Now is an especially good time to take on this type of debt,” Daly said.

    “Even before the crisis, we were in an environment of low interest rates – and that is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. This makes public spending relatively cheap and easy to finance.”

    And what is stopping them? (Apart from getting it through Congress without a massive layer of pork and defunding all of the nation’s police forces) Since with The Fed monetizing all the Treasury issuance, MMT is well and truly here.

  • Rich People Flock To Aspen, Park City As America's Inner Cities Burn 
    Rich People Flock To Aspen, Park City As America’s Inner Cities Burn 

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 22:50

    Demand for luxury properties in Aspen, Colorado, and Park City, Utah, is “through the roof,” explained Mauricio Umansky, CEO of real estate firm The Agency, who recently spoke with Fox Business. 

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    918 Castle Creek Road, Aspen, CO, Aspen. h/t Coldwell Banker

    Umansky said the pandemic had accelerated the trend of wealthy vacationers staying year-round in rural, resort communities. 

    “A lot of traveling to Europe this year is probably nonexistent … And so I think a lot of Americans are looking where to enjoy the summer,” he said.

    As we’ve previously noted, “there’s a mad rush” of wealthy folks leaving big cities due to the virus pandemic, economic crash, and social unrest. It was noted by Sotheby’s relators that people in the San Francisco Bay Area are fleeing the city for rural communities, such as Marin County, Napa wine country, and south to Monterey’s Carmel Valley. 

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    4227 Big Ranch Road in Napa, California was listed for $10.85 million. h/t Bloomberg

    Some rich people have also fled to their luxury doomsday bunkers — but it seems, for the mainstream household with a couple million dollars in the bank, they’re fleeing to rural communities, no matter if it’s the outskirts of the Bay area, or as we now find out now, Aspen and Park City. 

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    Luxury shelter under construction by Rising S Co, via Bloomberg.

    According to the Park City Board of Realtors, the market was hot during 1Q20 as it outpaced last year, despite a pandemic and economic crash. The number of homes sold rose by 11%, and the median sale price was up 5% YoY. The median sale price is about $2 million, which means the area is an exclusive retreat for the rich as they attempt to isolate themselves from the implosion of American cities. 

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    Park City mansion. h/t The Fisher Group

    In Aspen, median sales prices increased 6.7% to $6.4 million for single-family homes compared to 2019, according to Aspen Board of Realtors. Supply was tight in the first half of 2020 as the number of days home set on the market was reduced by 30%. 

    Umansky said people from New York City are fleeing to Aspen, while Park City is seeing folks from Los Angeles or San Francisco. All of these cities have witnessed strict lockdowns, high unemployment, crashed services economies, and now social unrest — that makes city life unbearable to raise a family. 

    “People have realized that you can work from home,” he said. “And the big question has become: where do you want to sequester with your family if this ever happens again? And so I think people are looking for space and looking for areas where there’s a lot less density.”

    The collapse of American cities is set to spark a massive revival of rural communities in the early 2020s. A combination of social unrest, economic crash, and virus pandemic could result in a plunge of real estate in major metros, with slow recovery time as the crisis as the socio-economic crisis worsens. 

    The trend is your trend — smart money is dumping real estate in major cities — they’re getting the hell out of dodge as radical leftist attempt to defund or disband police departments across the country and turn metros into a world of chaos. 

  • US Restaurant Traffic Suddenly Craters Amid Second Wave Fears
    US Restaurant Traffic Suddenly Craters Amid Second Wave Fears

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 22:46

    After three months of slow but consistent improvement in restaurant dining data in the US and across the globe, in its latest update on “the state of the restaurant industry”, OpenTable today reported the biggest drop in seated restaurant diners (from online, phone and walk-in reservations) since the depth of the global shutdown in March.

    As shown in the OpenTable graphic below, on Sunday, June 14, restaurant traffic suddenly tumbled, sliding from a -66.5% y/y decline as of June 13 to -78.8% globally.

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    This was mostly due to a sharp drop in US restaurant diners, which plunged by 13% – from -65% to -78% – the biggest one day drop since the start of the shutdown in the US, and the second biggest one day drop on record.

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    The drop was uniform across most US states, which saw a traffic dip between 10% and 25% overnight.

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    While the upward trend in dining was barely impacted by the roughly 3 weeks of protests across the US, the most likely catalyst was the widespread media coverage of spiking coronavirus cases across several states including California, Florida and Arizona. And while not necessarily surprising, the speed and severity of the decline demonstrates just how quickly any V-shaped recovery can collapse under its own weight if enough people become convinced that the pandemic is making a comeback.

  • Mike Krieger: "Trust No One!"
    Mike Krieger: “Trust No One!”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 22:30

    Authored by Michael Krieger via LibertyBlitzkrieg.com,

    The title of today’s post is not meant to be taken literally. I trust plenty of people. I trust friends who’ve demonstrated their trustworthiness over the years. I trust my family. Having people in my life I love and trust makes everything far more meaningful and pleasant. I hope people reading this likewise have a circle of trust they’ve built over the years.

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    On the other hand, you should never trust anyone or anything that hasn’t given you good reason to do so, and if someone or something gives you good reason not to trust them, you should never forget that. The more power a person or institution has in society, the less trustworthy they tend to be. I don’t say this because it’s fun to be cynical, I say this because my life experience has demonstrated its accuracy.

    In the 21st century alone, I’ve been given good reason to distrust all sorts of things around me, including the U.S. government (all governments really), intelligence agencies, politicians, mass media, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, to name a few. These power centers make up “society” as we know it in 2020, which is really just massive concentrations of lawless financial and political power obfuscating rampant criminality behind the cover various ostensibly venerable institutions. What’s most remarkable is how many people still maintain trust in so many of these provably untrustworthy organizations and industries, which speaks to the power of propaganda as well as the comfort of denial.

    That said, the ground is clearly beginning to shift on this front. As more and more people recognize that the system’s designed to work against them, increased numbers will reject conventional wisdom and search for an alternative framework. Unfortunately, this next step can be equally treacherous and it’s important not to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

    This is where social media comes into play. It offers an endless array of opinions and analysis that you don’t get from mass media, but it’s also filled with bad actors, professional propagandists and con artists. At this point, everyone knows that social media is the new information battleground, so every character or institution with malicious intent is aggressively playing in this arena and often with boatloads of money. The charlatans at MSNBC will have you believe it’s just the Russians or Chinese, but every government and every single special interest on the planet is now involved. They’re all on social media in one form or another, trying to push you in a specific direction that’s usually not in your best interests.

    It took me a while, but I’ve finally recognized how unthoughtful and treacherous social media is whenever some big news event hits. Important arguments quickly lose all nuance and devolve into binary talking points and agendas. People split into teams in a way that feels very much akin to the traditional, and now largely discredited, red/blue political theater. For covid-19, it felt like half of Twitter thought it was an extinction-level event, while the other half was convinced the whole thing was a hoax. In the aftermath of George Floyd, you were either cheering on the civil unrest, or wanted to send in the military. Increasingly, if you aren’t in one of two manufactured camps on any issue you’ll be shouted down and ostracized.  That’s not the kind of discussion I’m here for.

    As someone who’s found great value in Twitter over the years, I’ve become far more careful in how I use it and where to direct my attention and energy. It reminds me of Mos Eisley in Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but simultaneously a place you can connect with Han Solo and get a spaceship.

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    As we move forward, it’s going to feel like the world’s ending, and in some ways it will be. No the world isn’t literally ending, but a specific kind of world is ending, and it’ll be extremely difficult for many people to tell the difference as it’s happening. This will likely lead to many more episodes of mass insanity as professional manipulators take advantage of millions upon millions of disoriented people. Priority number one should be to stand guard at the gate of your mind during this time so as not to become a victim.

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    The best thing you can do from here on out is use your time and energy as productively as possible. We’re going to need builders, creators and inventors more than ever before, because we’re past the point of putting this thing back together. We’ll need to recreate, reimagine and rebuild, and all of this must spring from a point of consciousness in order to bring forth something that is both better and sustainable. Become more beautiful and resilient as others become ugly and unhinged. Focus on what’s within your capacity to control and always remember to resist the crazy.

    *  *  *

    Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.

  • MLB Commissioner Says 2020 Baseball Season Will Likely Be Canceled Amid Labor Dispute
    MLB Commissioner Says 2020 Baseball Season Will Likely Be Canceled Amid Labor Dispute

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 22:12

    Talk about a bitter irony. During an ESPN program entitled “the Return of Sports”, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced on Monday evening that the league is on the verge of scrapping the 2020 MLB season, a 180-degree reversal from his promise made last Wednesday that a season would “100%” happen, even if players had to perform in empty stadiums to TV-only audiences.

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    WSJ explains that an increasingly fraught labor dispute between the league, the owners and the player’s union has jeopardized an abbreviated 50-game season that had been set to start as soon as July 4th Weekend, getting a jump on other American sports. That jump could have maybe helped baseball recapture the interest of fans who have started to abandon the sport. Instead, the problem of how owners can profitably run a business without a critical pillar of revenue – ie ticket sales and sales of food, beverages and merchandise from live game attendfance – has reared its ugly head.

    “The owners are 100% committed to getting baseball back on the field,” Manfred said. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that I’m 100% certain that’s going to happen.”

    Restaurant owners across the US are shutting their doors en masse as millions find that the “COVID-19-friendly” arrangement of dining rooms at 50% capacity simply isn’t workable for most restaurants, though some have made it work by expanding their dining rooms to the surrounding street and parking lots.

    The problem with the MLB is that owners have been demanding more wage concessions from players. The players union has insisted that players won’t accept pay reductions that amount to more than 100% of the per-game pro-rated figure (ie a share of their salary that directly corresponds to the number of games played in 2020 vs. a normal season).

    But owners insist that they can’t profitably run the business and meet player’s salary demands, which the owners have characterized as unreasonable. In recent days, the player’s union has asked to see proof that the owners truly are facing economic hardship. Before asking for further pay reductions from the players, owners had settled on the 50-game figure, the shortest of several proposed scenarios, to try and maximize the more lucrative post-season and minimize losses from what will likely be a loss-leader of a regular season. The player’s union cut off talks after rejecting the league’s third payroll reduction offer. Now, Manfred is accusing the players of negotiating in bad faith.

    Then the players union accused the league of negotiating in bad faith “since the beginning”. The resulting acrimonious stalemate is threatening to cause ructions that could resonate beyond the 2020 season. The WSJ says both sides are now gearing up for a “prolonged labor battle” that could take years to resolve.

    And the two sides haven’t even started serious talks in safety protocols.

  • 18 Atlanta Cops Quit, LAPD Can't Pay $40 Million Overtime As Police Morale Hits "Rock Bottom"
    18 Atlanta Cops Quit, LAPD Can’t Pay $40 Million Overtime As Police Morale Hits “Rock Bottom”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 22:10

    As protests against police brutality continue to rage across major US cities, cops across the country have reached their breaking point.

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    On Monday, the Atlanta Police Foundation some 19 Atlanta police officers have resigned amid the growing civil unrest. And according to Foundation CEO Dave Wilkinson, “Morale is at an all-time low.“

    “We are now going into the third consecutive week of unabated protests in which officers have worked 12-hour shifts seven days per week. As you can imagine, their stress levels are exacerbated by physical and emotional exhaustion,” Wilkinson told CBS46.

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    The resignations come after an officer involved in the shooting death of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks was fired, another was placed on administrative leave, and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced that she would be stepping down following the incident.

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    Atlanta police chief Erika Shields, who announced her resignation following the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks

    “The morale is bad right now. A lot of anger and frustration directed at our police officers,” said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

    As we noted over the weekend, Tulsa, Oklahoma police major Travis Yates told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that police morale is at an all-time low, and that “Every department, every officer you talk to is looking to leave.” Yates published a column last Friday on the website LawOfficer.com titled “America, We Are Leaving,” in which he says “I wouldn’t wish this job on my worst enemy,” adding “I would never send anyone I cared about into the hell that this profession has become … I used to talk cops out of leaving the job. Now I’m encouraging them. It’s over, America. You finally did it You aren’t going to have to abolish the police, we won’t be around for it.”

    Making matters worse, Los Angeles Police Department officers have racked up to $40 million in overtime during the recent protests, according to FoxLA‘s Bill Melugin, whose sources tell him morale is at “rock bottom.”

    The officers will instead be given comp time.

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  • Democrats (Accidentally) Make The Case Against Teachers' Unions
    Democrats (Accidentally) Make The Case Against Teachers’ Unions

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 21:50

    Via IssuesInsights.com,

    In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests/riots calling for “defunding the police,” Democrats have started targeting police unions, saying they are obstacles to accountability and reform. Do they realize that the same can be said of teachers’ unions?

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    In a recent interview about reforming the police in his city, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that:

    “The elephant in the room with regard to police reform is the police union… We do not have the ability to get rid of many of these officers that we know have done wrong in the past due to issues with both the contract and the arbitration associated with the union.”

    He said that it “sets up a system where we have difficulty both disciplining and terminating officers who have done wrong.”

    Minneapolis City Councilman Steve Fletcher said the police union “operates a little bit like a protection racket.”

    Frey and Fletcher won’t get an argument from us. Like other public-sector unions, police unions serve mainly to fatten salaries and benefits at taxpayer expense, make it harder to fire bad employees, and then dump campaign cash on the same people they are “negotiating” with.

    It was Franklin Roosevelt, of all people, who understood the inherent problem this arrangement poses, warning back in 1937 that “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

    A Duke Law Journal study looked at 178 police union contracts and found that “a substantial number … unreasonably interfere with or otherwise limit the effectiveness of mechanisms designed to hold police officers accountable for their actions.”

    The New York Times reports how police union membership has been climbing even as private-sector union membership has plunged, and that this gives unions “resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.”

    “The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition,” the Times reports.

    No kidding.

    All this applies equally, if not more so, to teachers’ unions. Through the collective bargaining process, they’ve made it nearly impossible to fire a teacher, unless the school wants to spend roughly two years and $200,000 doing it, according to Stanford Professor Terry Moe.

    Teachers themselves admit that this is a problem. A survey by NPR and Ipsos looked at the views of K-12 teachers across America, with roughly half members of teachers’ unions and half non-unionized. Among the findings: 62% of organized teachers and 64% of non-unionized teachers agreed that the unions make it harder to fire bad teachers.

    A study by the Fordham Institute looking at what it takes to fire bad teachers found that “For the most part, state and local policies create a tortuous maze of paperwork, regulations, and directives. Teachers who receive years’ worth of ineffective ratings are given multiple chances for improvement and reevaluation, and a single procedural violation by the administration starts the process over again.”

    Teachers’ unions are the biggest and most relentless obstacle to education reforms such as charter schools and education savings accounts that would put more control in the hands of parents and break the union stranglehold over public education.

    But don’t expect Democrats to ever extend their reasons for hating police unions over to teachers, for the simple reason that teachers’ unions dump far more money on Democrats than police unions.

    While police unions give heavily to Democrats, they also support Republican candidates.

    As one House Democratic leadership aide told Axios,

    “Police unions are very different. They’re very conservative, a lot of them are even Republican. They don’t have the same progressive beliefs.”

    But teachers’ unions? In the past 28 years, they gave 96% of their campaign contributions to Democratic candidates. And they are huge contributors. In 2016, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association gave $64 million in political donations.

    The result: student test scores have stagnated while per-pupil costs continue to climb. Millions of children remain stuck in failing schools. But hey, it’s mainly a real problem only for those in poor, minority neighborhoods. Why would Democrats care about that?

    Now that the public is opening its eyes to the harm done by one public-sector union, perhaps it will start to realize that being anti-teachers’ unions isn’t the same as being anti-education.

  • SoftBank Used 'Circular Financing' Scheme To Prop Up Struggling Vision Fund Companies
    SoftBank Used ‘Circular Financing’ Scheme To Prop Up Struggling Vision Fund Companies

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 21:30

    Just imagine for a second that you’re the treasurer or CFO of a mid-sized corporation, and your looking for somewhere to park money where you can earn a decent return without taking too much risk. One of the Credit Suisse corporate bankers comes to you one day with an idea. They call it “supply-chain financing”.

    The new strategy is essentially just another tool to help companies more “flexibility” in managing their short-term financing needs. It’s a fool-proof idea, the banker explains, because even if the companies default, there are all kinds of insurance policies and other safeguards in place to help make the lenders whole. You’re a

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    So you invest. A few years later, your banker calls with some bad news. Four of the 10 companies to which the fund was most heavily exposed imploded, and are likely headed for liquidation. It could be years before the lenders are made whole – if ever – and you and your fellow unlucky investors are simply along for the ride, but you can probably kiss that money goodbye.

    Several months later, you open the FT, only to discover that many of the other investors in the fund, as well as the advisor managing the fund, were all financially linked to the companies in which the fund was investing. The circular flow of money from the funds to the companies’ suppliers means that, for these other investors, any losses stemming from loan defaults have already been offset, since they’re basically paying themselves…with your money.

    Well, that appears to be what happened to some investors who weren’t too happy when they found out that several Credit Suisse ‘supply chain finance’ funds were essentially part of an elaborate shell game orchestrated by SoftBank to help inflate the value of Vision Fund portfolio companies by making them look more financially healthy than they actually were.

    Here’s more from the FT:

    SoftBank has quietly poured more than $500m into Credit Suisse investment funds that in turn made big bets on the debt of struggling start-ups backed by the Japanese technology conglomerate’s Vision Fund. SoftBank made the investment into the Swiss bank’s $7.5bn range of supply-chain finance funds, said three people familiar with the matter. Credit Suisse touts these funds to professional investors, such as corporate treasurers, as a safe place to park their cash in the short-term debts of seemingly diversified companies. Marketing documents sent to investors show that these funds have ramped up their exposure to several start-ups in the Japanese group’s $100bn Vision Fund over the past year. This has coincided with a disastrous stretch in which $18bn was wiped off the equity value of these technology bets. At the centre of the circular flow of funding is Greensill Capital, a Vision Fund-backed company that says it is “making finance fairer”. The London-based firm, which employs former British prime minister David Cameron as an adviser, selects all of the assets that go into the Credit Suisse funds under an agreement dating back to 2017.

    SoftBank effectively used these Credit Suisse funds – which were administered by Greensill Capital, an investment firm that, bizarrely, received a $1.5 billion slug of cash from VF. Aside from being run by an Aussie “paper billionaire” and advised by former Tory PM David Cameron, it’s not clear exactly what Greensill is supposed to be doing with all that money. But the company has managed to find itself enmeshed in all sorts of skullduggery uncovered by the intrepid reporters at the FT.

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    Four of the CS’s supply chain finance funds’ top investments were tied to Vision Fund portfolio companies.

    Marketing documents for Credit Suisse’s main supply-chain finance fund show that, at the end of March, four of its top 10 largest exposures were to Vision Fund companies, accounting for 15 per cent of its $5.2bn assets. This included companies hit hard in the coronavirus crisis, such as Indian hotel business Oyo and struggling car subscription start-up Fair. A separate document shows that Santa Monica-based Fair was also the second-largest exposure in Credit Suisse’s “high income” supply-chain finance fund at the end of last year.  In October, the car subscription company’s founder and chief executive resigned shortly after announcing plans to cut 40 per cent of its workforce. Audited accounts for both funds show they had no exposure to Fair at the end of that month, suggesting that they only began financing the company after its difficulties came to the fore.

    As the FT explains, investors (well, the investors who aren’t SoftBank) have pulled $1.5 billion from the Greensill-managed Credit Suisse funds as several of Greensill’s investments went sideways. Another interesting thing about Greensill: former British PM David Cameron is a paid advisor.

    But now, the firm has hit upon a new strategy that just might revive the sagging fortunes of the SoftBank-backed lender.

    Clients have withdrawn more than $1.5bn from these supply-chain finance funds this year, after a string of Greensill Capital’s clients defaulted on their debts in high-profile corporate collapses and accounting scandals, such as former FTSE 100 company NMC Health. Credit Suisse has told investors that a group of insurers and Greensill itself are covering losses in the funds. Australian financier Lex Greensill founded the company in 2011 and cemented his status as a paper billionaire last year when SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested $1.5bn into his eponymous firm. Greensill Capital specialises in supply-chain finance, where businesses borrow money to pay their suppliers. This week the British Business Bank approved Greensill to provide so-called “invoice finance” through the UK’s Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan scheme. “Making sure capital reaches the real economy, where it is needed most, is integral to Britain’s broader economic recovery,” Mr Greensill said of the decision.

    There’s nothing like extracting rents from government capital intended for the “real economy” to help keep a small, politically connected lender afloat.

  • A Tip For The "CHAZ Republic": Start Thinking Like Conservatives
    A Tip For The “CHAZ Republic”: Start Thinking Like Conservatives

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 21:10

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    Building a society is hard. Though people have a tendency to naturally adapt to forms of social order, these systems usually function best as small tribes, not massive collectives. Even when everyone agrees on particular goals, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they still often have conflicts over how to achieve those goals. Small groups have better chances, small voluntary groups are even more successful, as long as they follow a certain set of guidelines. Tribalism is the natural state of mankind, yet these days it’s treated like a taboo concept, especially by the political left.

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    Then, there is the ever present outlier, the 1%-5% percent of any given population that has inherent narcissistic and sociopathic qualities. These people make coming to an agreement on anything almost impossible. They hold the world hostage by sabotaging peace and resolution until they get exactly what they want. Sometimes what they want is nothing more that total chaos and destruction. In other cases they dream big, with notions of dominance and godhood.

    If you want to know what a society based on narcopathy actually looks like, that’s easy; just look at the communist movements in Stalinist Russia or Mao’s China, or how about the social justice crucibles within Facebook and Twitter? And, let’s not forget the latest narcopathic experiment in the “CHAZ Republic” autonomous region in Seattle.

    The mainstream media would have you believe that CHAZ is a burgeoning progressive Utopia where people live in harmony and free from the police. However, It did not take long before the “self sustaining” SJW nation of CHAZ became a laughing stock among web denizens, who have been tracking their bumbling exploits with equal parts glee and horror.

    When your society is immediately taken over by low budget weak talent rapper “warlords”, when you run out of food and have to order Dominos pizza delivered to your southern border daily and citizens beg for soy based vegan products to to be donated, and when people are attacked by a mob for “unauthorized graffiti” on the wrong turf after that mob already tore up the neighborhood, there’s certainly room for improvement.

    There are already some amazing hypocrisies flowing from CHAZ, including the fact that protesters quickly placed barriers and fencing all around the six block area to keep people they don’t like out. Apparently, Antifa and BLM are now proud advocates of building walls. But two of my favorite examples have happened in the past couple of days, including the man who slipped into CHAZ and started preaching biblical verses at them on the street. This incident should tell you half of what you need to now about the social justice cult.

    The man was immediately set upon by a crowd of angry leftists, had his life threatened, was attacked, robbed of his phone and beaten. In the video of the attack, you can clearly see one of the CHAZ citizens trying to put the man in a choke hold; I guess “I can’t breath…” was a temporary motto.

    What is so interesting about this situation to me is that the preacher was doing to them exactly what they do to others. Getting in their faces, arguing a message of belief, refusing to leave even though no one wants him there, and their reaction was to silence the man using violence. The puritanical fraud of Antifa and BLM has never been more obvious. When your mob resides in the media and on Twitter you can use cancel culture to terrorize people into silence. But, in the real world that stuff is meaningless, and so in order to deal with persistent people you either have to let them speak or use force.

    Welcome to the real world, CHAZ…

    The second incident was their attempt at planting a CHAZ food garden. I’ll let a photo of the garden speak for itself:

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    Now, this garden tells us the other half of the story about the types of people we are dealing with here. I was not present during the planning and formation of this garden, but I can imagine exactly what happened:

    The community met in a huge and largely disorganized herd to discuss plans and grievances. Being intellectuals through and through, they enjoy talking endlessly about what should be done while having no expertise in how to make things happen. Someone brought up the issue of food, realizing that if they are going to be “autonomous”, they will have to start producing necessities somehow. With no one among the hundreds or perhaps thousands of people at the meeting with any knowledge of how to grow food, they listened to the first person who claimed he or she could make it happen.

    That person then proceeded to the nearest Home Depot where they purchased 50 or so pre-grown plants, because growing from seed leaves more room for failure and they have no clue how to do it anyway. Then, they went to the park with a vision, a grand image in their minds of a vast garden of plenty that would feed the community for years.

    They then went to plant that garden and quickly realized the grass in the park would overwhelm and steal all the nutrients from their plants. So, they ask a handful of people to dig up the sod to get to the soil underneath. The young men, weak and pasty from years of soy-based products, tried with all their might to wrestle the sod from the ground, but to no avail. They realize digging up and tilling the ground is difficult.

    One of them chimes in “This blows, why do we have to do this? Isn’t this supposed to be anarchy? I don’t feel liberated right now, I feel sweaty and annoyed…”

    Another worker nods “Yeah, there must be an easier way. Let’s watch YouTube for some ideas….”

    They go forth and do so. And low, they discover an endless variety of instructional videos, half of which are made by idiots just like them. The video tells them to lay paper on top of the grass and then soil on top of the paper. They immediately take all the boxes they can find on the street, stealing the homes of many hobos. They lay out the boxes on top of the grass. They venture forth into the neighboring country of America, where potting soil is plentiful.

    They purchase the bounty with money borrowed from their parents and then spread 3 inches of soil over the cardboard, set the potted plants on top and viola! A garden any homesteader would be envious of! And then the homeless population shows up to demand their boxes back and reality sets in.

    I’m reminded of the book ‘Defiance’ by Nechama Tec, about the partisans that fled to the Belarussian forests to hide from the Nazi occupation during WWII (the movie ‘Defiance’ is based on the same book). The book describes how many of the partisans and Jewish people in the community were college students, professors and academics. These people realized after a few days that they had no useful skill sets and no knowledge of anything to do with survival. Once at the top of society, during the crisis they found themselves at the bottom of the totem pole. They were essentially useless, while working class farmers and mechanics took over as the leaders.

    I am also reminded of the fact that after the Bolshevik revolution, the communists ran off or killed most of the engineers, mechanics, farmers, and other producers within Russian society. The Bolsheviks only survived because Western corporations sent them experts to help them rebuild their manufacturing base (but that is a discussion for another time).

    The point is, if you do not know how to produce, you cannot build a society. It’s as simple as that. The residents of CHAZ appear to me to be iPhone entranced yuppies, mostly from upper-middle class families. When all you have done in your life is talk theory in college and all your knowledge comes from Reddit the idea of application must be highly alien. The thought of actually building a thing must be intergalactic in origin to them.

    When people have no understanding of how necessities work or how they are made, when they have no understanding of how food gets onto their plates, they usually have no respect for the people that make these things possible. And I have to warn you, people of CHAZ, most of the folks that make your lives possible have homes in so-called “fly-over country”, and they are conservative.

    Interestingly, I find that when people choose to live in a more self sufficient fashion or are forced to by circumstance, they have a habit of also shifting away from socialist fantasies. They abandon their first-world problems and notions of identity politics when they realize what REAL struggle actually looks like. And, they start to care about concepts like merit, and retaining the value of their work instead of giving away that value to people who don’t deserve it. They start acting like conservatives.

    So, I don’t necessarily want the CHAZ Republic to fail. In fact, I would love for these people to go through the struggles of trying to set up a real world self sustaining community or “tribe”. Why? Because there is a chance they will come out the other side appreciating the accomplishments of the conservative communities and individuals that already do these things on a regular basis. Maybe they will even convert to “right wing extremism”; that’s where all the real men are, and we have more fun. The left sucks at building things because their mentality is one of theory and never one of application. All they know is how to tear things down; they have no ability to create.

    And to show the people of CHAZ that I’m not all talk like they are, I’ll give them some tips on how to get started as producers. For example, the image below is what a REAL garden looks like:

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    I carved this new garden plot out of the woods this spring. It took about a month to do everything. Trees had to be cut and I had to remove the stumps by exposing the roots with a shovel and then cutting the tap roots with a reciprocating saw. The ground was leveled as best as possible using a bobcat, which I had to learn how to drive beforehand. I then built the raised garden beds, set them into the ground, and dug up and turned all the soil in the beds. Eight inches of fresh soil, a mixture of potting soil and topsoil, was then placed in the beds.

    The beds were surrounded by wood chips to help prevent weed growth. I planted seeds which I know from years of experience grow very well in the cooler climate of Montana. I also built a tall fence around the garden and then sprayed the area with garlic based deer repellent to prevent animals from trying to jump the fence and destroy the plants as they grow. Staple crops in my region are root based, such as potatoes, onions, carrots, etc.

    I plant using some seed and potatoes I saved from my crop the year before, but I still have to dip into seeds I purchased, too. Eventually I would like to plant completely from seed I save from my own crops.

    This process requires many seasons of experience to become proficient. It is not easy. It is not simple. It requires hard work, and sometimes you fail anyway. This means you need backup strategies. I have also become an avid hunter and I feel I have finally mastered tracking and stalking. Here is an image of the buck I harvested last hunting season:

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    And, while gardening and hunting can put food on the table, you may also need to produce items that people are willing to barter for to get products and services you can’t provide for yourself. Below is a cedar chest I just built by hand last week.  Products like this could be traded in an open market:

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    You see, a community is only as successful as the individuals within it. Each person should bring with them as many unique skill sets as they can that add to the strength of the tribe. Trade is vital, and the free market of barter must be allowed to thrive, otherwise there is no incentive for people to put in any effort and your society will die.

    I read today that the Republic of CHAZ is thinking about changing their name to “CHOP” in an effort to clarify that they do not intend to secede from the US. I suspect that this change of heart may be due to the fact that the residents and activists there are starting to realize how difficult this self sufficiency business is. When you declare you are building an autonomous zone, that is a lifetime commitment and one rife with struggle. When you declare you are merely protesting, you can walk away anytime you like and pretend you won the day.

    I hope the people of CHAZ don’t quit their goal of establishing a sufficient society, at least not yet. They’ve only been at it about a week, and that’s not enough time for them to really get a sense of the effort and skill that’s needed to become productive. Maybe they’ll exit the CHAZ with a newfound respect for the conservative ideal? Who knows…

    *  *  *

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  • Wealthy Chinese Rushing To Move Cash Abroad Ahead Of Yuan Weakness
    Wealthy Chinese Rushing To Move Cash Abroad Ahead Of Yuan Weakness

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 20:50

    Wealthy Chinese citizens are going to great lengths to move money out of the country amid worries over a weakening Yuan and growing trade tensions with the United States, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

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    China caps foreign exchange to $50,000 per year, per person. For overseas investments, buyers typically use multi-member families to pool their funds and exceed the limit, or they will bring cash while traveling abroad – a strategy which has been put on hold during the pandemic travel bans.

    “There is no room for negotiation today,” a black-market currency dealer said when approached on West Nanjing Road, a bustling commercial strip in Shanghai, last week. “It’s going to be 7.2 yuan to the dollar.“

    The official rate was 7.06 that day, but the man, who was a little past his prime, was defiant. At one point late last month, the yuan had sunk to 7.19 in overseas trading. He was confident in the direction of the weakening currency. 

    “Oh, I can help you send money overseas too. I have a friend who can do that,” he said, before quickly leaving the scene. Police in the area are said to have become a bit stricter of late. –Nikkei Asian Review

    Not only are affluent Chinese setting up more dollar accounts in Hong Kong to send money overseas, interest in foreign real estate and insurance products are making a resurgence as the coronavirus pandemic has abated – or paused.

    One investment company is pitching real estate in Ireland – touting it as immune to deteriorating relations with the West. Returns? ” At the end, the executive showed a 1.32 million euro ($1.5 million) home with an expected return of nearly 3%,” according to the report.

    The talk was the latest of a series of webinars hosted since May by Juwai, a Chinese brokerage specializing in emigration, real estate and education opportunities abroad. Malaysian and Japanese properties have also been featured.

    Such locations as Malta and Cyprus are growing popular, according to another brokerage. –Nikkei Asian Review

    According to French bank Natixis, Chinese capital outflows amounted to just $1 billion in the first quarter of 2020 due to travel bans putting the brakes on the outbound movement of funds. Once the borders reopen, that is likely to increase.

    “The yuan weakened more than 10% in two years,” said one insurance broker in Hong Kong whose products are denominated in foreign currencies. “You need foreign currencies to protect your assets.”

    Meanwhile, rich Hong Kong residents are similarly beginning to shuffle cash overseas – opening offshore accounts, applying for new passports, and reducing their exposure to Hong Kong in a way that allows them to tap into their assets at a moment’s notice, according to Bloomberg.

    Private bankers say their clients accelerated contingency planning efforts after China announced last month it would impose controversial national security laws on Hong Kong. The legislation threatens to erode the former British colony’s judicial independence, provoke sanctions from the U.S. and revive street protests that battered the tourism and retail industries even before the coronavirus outbreak plunged the economy into its deepest recession on record. –Bloomberg

    “What we’re basically seeing is a bit like a slow-moving train wreck,” said Richard Harris, CEO of Hong Kong-based Port Shelter Investment Management. “People who haven’t moved their money out may be tempted to think: ‘Well, maybe I should be moving my money out.’ That process is likely to continue.”

    That said, Bloomberg and Nikkei both acknowledge that we’re not seeing ‘widespread capital flight’ just yet – but the ground is being laid, and money is beginning to move. Bloomberg notes that Hong Kong bank deposits increased to a record in April, while the city’s currency has remained robust against the dollar, a sign of ‘persistent inflows.’

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    That said, Bloomberg also points out that “many Hong Kong entrepreneurs and high-earning professionals are sounding a more pessimistic note.”

    Sam, a senior investment banker in Hong Kong, has decided to leave the city. The 43-year-old is emigrating to Australia with his wife and two young boys in about three months, the second time he will have left Hong Kong during a period of political turmoil. Sam grew up in the city, but moved to Brisbane when he was 12 after his parents got spooked by China’s crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. He came back to Hong Kong 20 years ago for his career but now sees no upside to staying.

    “Things are looking bad and deteriorating,” he said. “We may as well pack our bags and move to Australia so that the kids can have a better environment growing up.”

    * * *

    Margaret Chau, a Hong Kong-based immigration program director for Goldmax Immigration Consulting Co., said inquiries at her firm have jumped about five-fold after news of the national security legislation. For now, most of her wealthy customers are more interested setting up an escape route than leaving right away.

    “They see this as a backup plan,” Chau said.

    Kerry Goh, chief executive officer of multi-family office Kamet Capital in Singapore, said his clients have shifted from asking generic questions about moving out of Hong Kong to making detailed inquiries about everything from schools to visas and bank accounts.

    “What’s happened in Hong Kong has really sped up the timing of 2047,” Goh said, referring to the expiration date of China’s 50-year pledge to preserve Hong Kong’s autonomy after the handover from Britain. “As Hong Kong’s troubles shoot up, the benefits of Singapore have become more self-explanatory.” –Bloomberg

    “I could buy a much bigger flat in London, so why not?” said 34-year old Hong Kong executive, ‘Dennis,’ who says his family and many of their friends have begun moving cash out of the city. “I’m just trying to protect my money against any uncertainty.”

  • Bridgewater's Assets Plunged By $25 Billion During March, April Rout
    Bridgewater’s Assets Plunged By $25 Billion During March, April Rout

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 20:29

    At the end of January, when the news media was reporting of the first cases of an odd pneumonia-like diseases spreading in Wuhan, Ray Dalio appeared on CNBC during the annual billionaire pilgrimage to Davos, where he made a comment that would soon come back to haunt him: “You can’t jump into cash. Cash is trash.”

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    Little did Dalio know that just one month later the global economy would grind to a halt, the US stock market would suffer the biggest drop since the financial crisis, the Fed would announce the biggest ever bailout of corporate America and Congress would unleash a fiscal stimulus program the likes of which have never before been seen.

    Which in retrospect was a mistake, because with Dalio clearly oblivious to the imminent risks (not that he was alone in failing to anticipate the shock that the covid pandemic would unleash on the world) his hedge fund – Bridgewater – was not properly positioned for what was about to come. And it cost him dearly: according to Bloomberg, assets under management at Bridgewater, the world’s formerly largest hedge fund until various central banks took over that title, “suffered a 15% drop in assets under management during March and April in the wake of heavy losses at its flagship trading strategy.”

    Assets fell by $25 billion to $138 billion at the end of April from $163 billion at the end of February, according to a May 29 filing first noticed by Bloomberg.

    There was a silver lining: almost all of the decline was due to a drop in asset values and was performance-driven rather than client withdrawals, which means that as stocks rebounded in May and eventually turned positive on the year before the recent turbulence, Brigdewater should have recovered most of its P&L. Only that may not be the case, because whereas retail investors flooded the market around the time of the March lows using billions in government handouts to buy stocks, risk-parity funds, such as Bridgewater’s All Weather strategy, have been notoriously slow to relever judging by their record low beta to equities, and as a result, it would not surprise us if the world’s biggest hedge fund failed to recoup most of its March/April losses.

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    Things may be different at the more discretionary Bridgewater Pure Alpha II, the firm’s largest fund, which was down 20% through the first four months of this year, but may have followed the recovery closer. In mid-March Dalio admitted the challenges faced by his hedge fund, saying the fund was hit by the coronavirus at “the worst possible moment,” explaining that the firm had positioned its portfolios to profit from rising markets. At the time, Dalio assured investors that the firm would provide them with “liquidity rather than prohibit” withdrawals, although it wasn’t immediately clear if the fund was hit with mass redemptions. According to Bloomberg, the firm which offers monthly liquidity to clients, suffered several defections this year, including a decision by the Virginia Retirement System to pull $178 million from Bridgewater Pure Alpha II effective at the end of April.

    A Bloomberg source characterized redemptions this year as modest and consistent with levels from previous periods. However, in an indication of just how serious the AUM drop is, Bloomberg adds that Bridgewater is again accepting capital from people who have been on a waiting list and from existing clients who want to add to their investments in order to fill the hole from the drop in assets. The firm reopened its Pure Alpha strategy to new investors at the end of March for the first time since 2007.

     

  • Chinese Scientist, Escorted Out Of Canadian Biolab, Sent Deadly Viruses To Wuhan
    Chinese Scientist, Escorted Out Of Canadian Biolab, Sent Deadly Viruses To Wuhan

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 20:11

    “We have a researcher who was removed by the RCMP from the highest security laboratory that Canada has for reasons that government is unwilling to disclose. The intelligence remains secret. But what we know is that before she was removed, she sent one of the deadliest viruses on Earth, and multiple varieties of it to maximize the genetic diversity and maximize what experimenters in China could do with it, to a laboratory in China that does dangerous gain of function experiments. And that has links to the Chinese military.” -Amir Attaran

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    A Chinese scientist who was escorted out of Canada’s only level-4 biolab over a possible “policy breach” shipped dealdy Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to the CBC, citing newly-released documents. The shipment is not related to COVID-19 or the pandemic.

    Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and her Chinese students were removed from the Canadian lab after the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) asked the RCMP to investigate several months earlier. According to PHAC, Qiu’s eviction from the lab is not connected to the shipment.

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    Dr. Xiangguo Qiu accepting an award at the Governor General’s Innovation Awards at a ceremony at Rideau Hall in 2018. Qiu is a prominent virologist who helped develop ZMapp, a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014-2016. (CBC)

    “The administrative investigation is not related to the shipment of virus samples to China, said PHAC chief of media relations, Eric Morrissette.”

    “In response to a request from the Wuhan Institute of Virology for viral samples of Ebola and Henipah viruses, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) sent samples for the purpose of scientific research in 2019.”

    To recap, a Chinese scientist, her husband and her Chinese students were escorted out of Canada’s only Level-4 lab for reasons unknown, and which are not related to her shipment of deadly viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

    “It is suspicious. It is alarming. It is potentially life-threatening,” said University of Ottawa law professor and epidemiologist, Amir Attaran.

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    Amir Attaran, professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa, is concerned about the shipment of dangerous viruses sent from Canada’s only level-4 lab to China. (CBC)

    While Canada doesn’t do ‘gain-of-function’ experiments – which are where natural pathogens are mutated in a lab and assessed to see if it has become more deadly or infectious, “The Wuhan lab does them and we have now supplied them with Ebola and Nipah viruses. It does not take a genius to understand that this is an unwise decision,” said Attaran.

    “I am extremely unhappy to see that the Canadian government shared that genetic material.“

    Attaran pointed to an Ebola study first published in December 2018, three months after Qiu began the process of exporting the viruses to China. The study involved researchers from the NML and University of Manitoba.

     

    The lead author, Hualei Wang, is involved with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, a Chinese military medical research institute in Beijing. 

     

    All of this has led to conspiracy theories linking the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, Canada’s microbiology lab, and the lab in Wuhan. –CBC

    According to the report, the RCMP and PHAC have repeatedly denied any connections between the virus shipments and COVID-19.

    According to the newly-released documents, the following virus strains were shipped to the WIV (approximately 15 ml):

    • Ebola Makona (three different varieties)
    • Mayinga.
    • Kikwit.
    • Ivory Coast.
    • Bundibugyo.
    • Sudan Boniface.
    • Sudan Gulu.
    • MA-Ebov.
    • GP-Ebov.
    • GP-Sudan.
    • Hendra.
    • Nipah Malaysia.
    • Nipah Bangladesh.

    The documents also shed light on communications from the months leading up to the shipment – including confusion on how to package the viruses, along with a lack of decontamination of the package prior to its shipment, as well as concerns expressed by NML Director-General Matthew Gilmour to his superiors in Ottawa – particularly over where the package was going, what was in it, and whether its paperwork was in order. 

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    CBC News received hundreds of pages of documents through an Access to Information request, detailing a shipment of Ebola and Henipah viruses sent from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, to the Wuhan virology lab in China. (Karen Pauls/CBC News)

    In one email, Gilmour said Material Transfer Agreements would be required, “not generic ‘guarantees’ on the storage and usage.”

    He also asked David Safronetz, chief of special pathogens: “Good to know that you trust this group. How did we get connected with them?”

    Safronetz replied: “They are requesting material from us due to collaboration with Dr. Qiu.” –CBC

    According to the report, the shipper of the viruses had originally planned to use inappropriate packaging, and only corrected the mistake when the WIV flagged the issue.

    “The only reason the correct packaging was used is because the Chinese wrote to them and said, ‘Aren’t you making a mistake here?’ If that had not happened, the scientists would have placed on an Air Canada flight, several of them actually, a deadly virus incorrectly packaged. That nearly happened,” said Attaran.

    Read the rest of the report here.

  • "Slave Owner": Thomas Jefferson Statue Torn Down, Defaced At Portland High School
    “Slave Owner”: Thomas Jefferson Statue Torn Down, Defaced At Portland High School

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/15/2020 – 20:10

    A statue of Thomas Jefferson – the third US president, author of Declaration of Independence, who thought banks “are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies,” and whose portrait graced the doors of Bear Stearns during its historic implosion – was torn down Sunday night at a Portland, Oregon high school by a group of mostly white kids using ropes.

    According to Oregon Live, vandals pulled down the Jefferson High School statue of its namesake founding father, the starting point for a Sunday march organized by Rose City Justice to protest the killing of George Floyd.

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    At about 7:15 p.m., a crowd of more than 1,000 left the high school grounds to march to the park. By the time they returned, a statue of Thomas Jefferson had been pulled from its pedestal, apparently by a smaller group. The statue fell on its side and a dent was visible in the concrete where it fell.

    Earlier in the day, the statue’s pedestal had been defaced with graffiti that, among other things, identified Jefferson as a slave owner.

    Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence that proclaimed “that all men are created equal,” publicly decried slavery — even as he enslaved hundreds of people and profited from their forced labor. –Oregon Live

    “We’re taking this city back,” said one organizer, adding “One school at a time. One racist statue at a time.”

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