- UK College Orders Students To Wait In Room, 'Let Others Out First' If Fire Breaks Out
UK College Orders Students To Wait In Room, ‘Let Others Out First’ If Fire Breaks Out
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/16/2020 – 02:45Self-isolating students at the University of York, located in the city of York, England, have been instructed by school officials to wait at least one minute in their rooms in the event of a fire and let others out first, reported BBC.
York University’s guidance is absolutely insane, which reads: “If you are self-isolating and the fire system in your accommodation building is activated, please follow these procedures to ensure your safety:”
“When the alarm sounds; stay in your room for one minute then make your way to the nearest refuge (this will allow non-isolating individuals to exit the building).”
York University’s New Guidance:
The new guidance comes as 288 students at the university have tested positive for coronavirus. The surge in virus cases prompted the university to “updated and changed” its policies.
The instructions were distributed to students via email. It said the “additional guidance” had been developed to “maintain social-distancing from non-isolating residents.”
Blue checkmark Twitter user Stephen Canning tweeted:
“The University of York’s fire alarm advice – that those self-isolating wait a bit before leaving a potentially burning building – surely can’t be safety compliant?”
York University’s official Twitter account responded to Canning’s tweet by saying:
“Hi Stephen, this was reviewed earlier this week, and new guidance will be issued today. In the event of a fire alarm, all students should evacuate as normal. Where possible, they should wear a mask and keep a safe distance from others.”
Canning responded:
“It’s good to hear new guidance is coming, but I think it’s fair to be shocked that you ever advised students to stay put during a fire!”
Some Twitter users said whoever on the campus “devised that policy should be sacked!”
Another Twitter user said: “That is shocking that you would put students lives at risk – whoever wrote that should be prosecuted.”
Here are some of the Twitter comments that responded to York University’s absurd new fire policy:
As for the hundreds of self-isolating students at York University – well – in the event of a fire, they must allow all healthy people to evacuate a burning building first before they can exit.
- Nearly 4,000 Syrian & Libyan Militants Are Fighting With Azerbaijan: Armenian Official
Nearly 4,000 Syrian & Libyan Militants Are Fighting With Azerbaijan: Armenian Official
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/16/2020 – 02:00An Armenian diplomat said that about 4,000 militants loyal to Turkey from Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (formerly Jabhat Al-Nusra, or al-Qaeda in Syria) and the Sultan Murad Brigade arrived in Karabakh from Libya and Syria to fight alongside the Azerbaijani forces.
The former Armenian ambassador to Italy, Sarkis Gazaryan, made the public statements while present with 100 people at the sit-in organized by the Armenian community in front of the House of Representatives’ headquarters in Rome to demand an end to the “Turkish-Azerbaijani aggression”.
Turkish-backed Syrian militants, via Reuters “The presence of these anti-Armenian jihadists is dangerous, and even more so if we take into account what the UN Secretary-General called for to stop the fighting to prevent the Covid epidemic,” the former Armenian ambassador confirmed in statements to the Italian AKI news agency.
He asked, “Where is the credibility of the policies of some European countries?”
Turkey has been accused of recruiting Syrian militants to fight against the Armenian forces in Karabakh, following their campaign in Libya.
In rare confirmation, The Wall Street Journal reported this week that “Hundreds of fighters from Syrian militias allied with Turkey have joined the fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, and hundreds more are preparing to go, according to two Syrians involved in the effort.”
SOHR on Syrian fighters (mercenaries, mujahideen, jihadi freelancers, pick a noun) fighting in Artsakh. These unemployed Syrian militias are going to ricochet around the world for decades yet…https://t.co/i7GCdDsJj4 pic.twitter.com/c11xfZCgtJ
— The War Nerd (@TheWarNerd) October 11, 2020
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The reported cited “A Syrian rebel involved in deployments said fighters had been traveling there since mid-September—before the latest round of clashes—in groups of up to 100 at a time.”
The fighting has been so fierce that Syrian militants have already begun returning home after being shocked at the battle’s intensity: “Another Syrian with ties to the rebel groups also estimated hundreds had gone. Dozens have also returned, alarmed by the fierce fighting, that person said,” according to the WSJ.
- The 2020 Election Bamboozle: We Are All Victims Of The Deep State's Con Game
The 2020 Election Bamboozle: We Are All Victims Of The Deep State’s Con Game
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 23:40Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“We’re run by the Pentagon, we’re run by Madison Avenue, we’re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche… As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people’s Villages, but we are all prisoners.”
– Patrick McGoohan
This is not an election.
This is a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle.
In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.
We are victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.
Every confidence game has six essential stages:
1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion;
2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted;
3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome;
4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up;
5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and
6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.
In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Joe Biden—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.
In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.
Terrorist attacks, pandemics, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.
No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.
We just haven’t learned to recognize our prison walls as such.
It’s like that old British television series The Prisoner, which takes place in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village.
Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in The Village, a beautiful resort with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.
While luxurious, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, all of their movements tracked. Residents of the Village are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.
First broadcast in Great Britain 50-some years ago, The Prisoner dystopian television series —described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the loss of freedom, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of human beings to meekly accept their lot in life as prisoners in a prison of their own making.
The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan is Number Six.
Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.
“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by Patrick McGoohan, who also played the title role.
In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”
Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.
Number Six refuses to comply.
In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors.
“I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two.
“I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”
Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.
Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s attempts to escape are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up.
“Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”
Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog’s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.
As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man’s body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”
The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.
As Thill noted, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”
The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.
The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.
Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be while funding its existence.
Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the Deep State and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Instagram, etc.).
Government eyes are watching you.
They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.
When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.
However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.
Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984—where “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”—has now become our reality.
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.
Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.
As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, “Visibility is a trap.”
This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.
It is a prison from which there will be no escape. Certainly not if the government and its corporate allies have anything to say about it.
As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
None of this will change, no matter who wins this upcoming presidential election.
And that’s the hustle, you see: because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, the day after a new president is sworn in, we’ll still find ourselves prisoners of the Village.
This should come as no surprise to those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior: we never stopped being prisoners.
So how do you escape? For starters, resist the urge to conform to a group mind and the tyranny of mob-think as controlled by the Deep State.
Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”
You want to be free? Remove the blindfold that blinds you to the Deep State’s con game, stop doping yourself with government propaganda, and break free of the political chokehold that has got you marching in lockstep with tyrants and dictators.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, until you come to terms with the fact that the government is the problem (no matter which party dominates), you’ll never be free.
- Air Force Boasts New Hypersonic Missile Will Hit 1,000 Mile Target In Under 12 Minutes
Air Force Boasts New Hypersonic Missile Will Hit 1,000 Mile Target In Under 12 Minutes
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 23:20The US Air Force is moving forward with a new hypersonic missile that it says can strike a target 1,000 miles away in under 12 minutes, reported Air Force Magazine (AFM).
Such a bold claim would mean the hypersonic missile would need to fly between 5,000 and 6,000 mph, or roughly between Mach 6.5 and Mach 8, to strike a target at that distance.
Air Force Major General Andrew Gebara, Air Force Global Strike Command’s Director of Strategic Plans, Programs, and Requirements, recently told AFM that Lockheed Martin’s AGM-183A air-launched rapid-response weapon, also known as ARRW, is “amazing.”
Readers may recall, our coverage on ARRW’s progression from development to testing suggests it could soon become the US’ first operational hypersonic weapon:
- National (In)Security: The Hypersonic Road To Hell
- Lockheed Martin Awarded Second Contract Worth $480mn For Hypersonic Missile Weapons
- Watch: Lockheed Martin Successfully Flies Its Newest Hypersonic Missile On B-52 Bomber
- Air Force Eyes Hypersonic Weapons For B1 Bomber
“This thing is going to be able to go, in 10-12 minutes, almost 1,000 miles,” Gebara said in a September AFM interview. “It’s amazing.”
The hypersonic missile is powered by a solid-fuel rocket booster with an unpowered boost-glide vehicle. The rocket propels the hypersonic missile to hypersonic speeds. After that, the glide vehicle is released and continues to its target. The boost-glide vehicle can carry nuclear warheads and outmaneuver the world’s most advanced missile defense shields.
ARRW is expected to reach operational capability in the second half of 2022, with possible fielding shortly after. The Air Force plans to purchase at least eight prototype ARRWs.
We’re not sure if President Trump referred to Lockheed’s ARRW in July, but he touted a new hypersonic weapon as “super-duper.”
The US has been increasing its efforts on hypersonic development in recent years as Russia and China power ahead in their developments.
- The FBI, Militias, Truth, And Comey's Legacy
The FBI, Militias, Truth, And Comey’s Legacy
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 23:00Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,
In the past few days, news reports have alerted us to an FBI claim that a militia group was planning to kidnap the governor of Michigan. The Detroit Free Press wrote:
“Thirteen members of an anti-government group bent on igniting a civil war are charged in a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who the group targeted in a possible commando raid on the state capitol, according to newly unsealed court records.
“Authorities said Thursday that the Wolverine Watchmen group planned on storming either the capitol or Whitmer’s vacation home as part of a broader mission to instigate a civil war.”
Half of the country does not believe the FBI. Is it possible that the militia story is another contrived, anti-Trump, smear job by elements within the FBI? If the FBI headquarters can run a coup against the president, can Michigan FBI agents phony-up some charges against fringe characters with sketchy criminal information?
It would not be the first time. Back on March 29, 2010, the Department of Justice announced the following:
“Michigan residents, along with two residents of Ohio and a resident of Indiana, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit on charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials, and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Barbara L. McQuade and FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew Arena announced today.”
The 2010 Michigan militia group called themselves the “Hutarees.” The case did not end well for the FBI. Charges were dropped. Others from the Hutarees faced lesser charges. Some of the Hutarees ended up suing the government over the investigation and prosecution. It seems the FBI went too far on too little.
“Militia” is a news media certified code-word for Trump-supporter. FBI-doubters know the bureau launched a sophisticated operation against the Trump campaign, Trump transition, and finally the Trump administration. Even the New York Times admits it. It was a soft coup. The entire criminal conspiracy is being documented now in movies.
The FBI’s reputation has been destroyed through blatant politicization. Here are the corrupt political police: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith, Pientka, Brower, Baker, et al. That is a collection of various dirty cops, oath-breakers, coup-plotters, and persons “lacking candor” in FBI parlance. Those are just some of the FBI “headliners” — no Justice Department names on that list.
Current FBI Director Christopher Wray hardly engenders confidence as a strong leader bent on cleaning house and reforming a corrupt agency that attempted a soft coup against the presidency. Wray is all about damage control and institutional preservation. When it comes to honesty, Wray does not have a tough act to follow. That is why he is comfortable making the demonstrably false claim that Antifa is more of an ideology than a group.
Now we are dealing with reports of the “Wolverine Watchmen.” Here is the interesting part of one of the news reports where we should pay close attention. (It is also the operational part of the FBI’s activities wherein things have a tendency to legally fall apart):
“Members of the group bought weapons, conducted surveillance and held training and planning meetings, but they were foiled in part because the FBI infiltrated the group with informants, according to a criminal complaint. Six were charged with federal kidnapping offenses, and at least seven others face state charges.” [Emphasis added]
Also pay attention to this excerpt from the news report:
“The FBI used confidential informants as part of the investigation and has paid one of them more than $14,000 and paid $8,600 to another, according to the affidavit.”
While the anti-Trump media codeword “militia” is used to describe the alleged plotters — video evidence from Twitter and YouTube reveals that one of the leaders is an anarchist, certainly not a “right wing Trumpster.”
This is a video of Brandon Caserta, one of the ringleaders of the group of men arrested for a plot where the group planned to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Caserta has an anarchist flag behind him and in YouTube videos trashes police. He’s not a Republican, he’s an anarchist. pic.twitter.com/J1vE2qGYL7
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 8, 2020
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Likewise, more questions are raised about the plotters, their affiliations, and motives with this news report:
“One of alleged plotters, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, attended a Black Lives Matter protest in June, telling the Oakland County Times he was upset about the killing of George Floyd and police violence.”
Perhaps the FBI’s case is 100% true? Perhaps the kidnapping story is legitimate? Perhaps this is not a piece of agitation propaganda? Would a governor cooperate or be complicit in the phony smear? Would the news media blow the anti-Trump dog whistle and blame the president for a kidnapping that never actually happened?
Of course, the presumption of innocence is foundational to our system of justice. Comey’s living legacy, and the permanent institutional stain on the FBI more generally, is that we cannot take the Bureau’s claims as truthful. We used to give due credence to sworn Special Agents of the FBI. No more.
- As Manhattan Commercial Real Estate Slumps, Big Tech Sees Golden Opportunity
As Manhattan Commercial Real Estate Slumps, Big Tech Sees Golden Opportunity
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 22:40The COVID-19 pandemic has seen hundreds of thousands of white-collar Manhattanites engage in working from home – one that appears to be a permanent trend, and something many could’ve not predicted earlier this year. Days ago, Microsoft allowed some of its employees to work remotely on a “permanent” basis, setting a precedent for other technology companies to follow.
However, four technology companies – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google – who have told employees to work remotely until the first half of 2021, are also acquiring office space in Manhattan as the commercial real estate market sags.
NYT reports these four tech companies “are all significantly expanding their footprint in the city, giving it a badly needed vote of confidence.” This is happening as new coronavirus cases in the US are nearing 60,000 again, driven by infections in the Midwest and other areas of the country – and many office workers in Manhattan have yet to be called back to their workstations.
After Amazon abandoned plans for a new headquarters in Queens, the e-commerce giant has acquired nearly 2 million square feet of office space for corporate employees in the city, along with warehouse space in Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx.
In March, just weeks after nationwide lockdowns, Amazon purchased the Lord & Taylor building for around 1 billion dollars, enough space to hold 2,000 employees. In total, the company has eight office properties scattered across the city, with many situated in Midtown.
Here are the areas where Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have recently bought or leased commercial space in NYC.
h/t NYT Big tech is making a risky bet on NYC commercial estate amid the virus-induced downturn that has crushed the city’s local economy. Many offices across Manhattan are deserted and likely not to return workers until sometime in 2021. Commercial real estate firm CBRE, who manages roughly 20 million square feet in the city, said approximately 12% of office workers in Manhattan had returned back to work.
As some say, “strike while the iron is hot” – and that is precisely what big tech companies are doing – they’re acquiring some of the highest quality office spaces on the market for a fraction of the price. As we noted in August, top property owners in the city are begging companies to return their employees to work because remote working has stalled the recovery.
NYT points out, while NYC commercial real estate sours, “Apple, Amazon, and Facebook have gobbled up more than 1.6 million square feet of office space since the start of the year, most of which was leased or bought during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, Google added about 1.7 million square feet of office space as part of a corporate campus rising along the Hudson River in Manhattan.”
This year alone, the four big tech companies have hired 2,600 employees in the city, bringing their total to 22,000. Facebook has added 1,100 workers, with nearly a 4,000 workforce in the town.
All of this new office space added this year supports more than 15,000 new employees that could be added over the next couple of years.
“The big takeaway here is that New York will always be a tech hub,” said William Floyd, director of external affairs for Google’s New York offices, which has about 9,000 workers, more than half of whom are engineers.
For big tech executives, their expansion into NYC is happening at the city’s darkest periods for commercial real estate.
- Pepe Escobar: POTUS Punk Vs. Dem Dementia
Pepe Escobar: POTUS Punk Vs. Dem Dementia
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 22:20Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Epoch Times,
The whole planet is enthralled, appalled, shocked and awed by the spectacle of democracy as enacted under the shadow of messianic imperialism – complete with a slew of slimy, smoking gun October Surprises.
We’re in total Frank Underwood territory. And as befits the ultimate “society of the simulacrum” pictured by Baudrillard back in the swingin’ 1980s, all those similarities with a Wrestlemania spectacular are obviously not mere coincidence.
Let’s start with the polls.
All manner of polls are circulating like whirling dervishes. Most highlight myriad Dem paths to victory and an inexorable Highway to Hell for Trump. A poll by The Economist gives Joe “Walking Dead” Biden a whopping 91% chance – remember Hillary in 2016? – of winning the Electoral College.
A Dem-fueled consensus is emerging that Trump – relentlessly depicted as a deranged, lunatic proto-fascist who’s bad for business worldwide – will dispute results in any Republican-led state which he may narrowly lose, as in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Yet on the campaign trail, it’s a completely different story. Evidence shows that on The Walking Dead’s rallies, there are more people from the Biden bus and reporters than flesh-and-blood Dem voters. The Biden-Harris campaign, demonstrating its matchless P.R. skills, spins these rallies as campaign secrets.
Team Trump’s long-shot strategy seems to have been unveiled by the President himself: “We are going to be counting ballots for the next two years (…) We have the advantage if we go back to Congress. I think it’s 26 to 22 or something because it’s counted one vote per state.”
That was a reference to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution: if state electors can’t agree on a president, the decision goes to the House. And then each of the 50 states gets one vote. So picture small GOP-controlled states such as Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming (each with one Republican in the House) having the same weight as California (52 members in the House, 45 of them Democrats.)
Advantage Trump: as it stands, it’s indeed 26 to 22, with two – Pennsylvania and Michigan – basically tied.
Ask the quant
Internal GOP polls show that while the Biden-Harris campaign is not knocking on any doors, Trump volunteers have actually swarmed no less than 20 million homes in swing states.
Combine it with a new Gallup Poll showing that 56% of Americans state they are better off now under Trump than four years ago under Obama/Biden. Call it the return of “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The Trafalgar Group – which correctly called the 2106 election – bets that Trump narrowly wins the Electoral College with 275 votes.
JPMorgan’s top quant Marko Kolanovic has exhaustively mapped changes in voter registration to dismiss virtually every poll showing a Dem sweep. This implies that Trump may well end up winning the Holy Trinity: Pennsylvania (20 votes), Florida (29 votes) and North Carolina (15 votes).
And to top it off, something more exotic than a black hole eating a star has happened in this October Surprise-laden week: CNN decided to practice real journalism and eviscerated Nancy Pelosi on camera.
That may be quite a bad omen for President-in-Waiting Kamala Harris, who very few remember was forged as the heir to the Obama-Pelosi axis in a secret meeting in the Hamptons way back in the summer of 2017.
Follow the money
Now let’s Follow The Money.
That’s a slam dunk. For Republicans, the top bagman is casino schemer Sheldon Adelson – who literally bought Congress for a paltry $150 million. For Democrats, it’s Haim Saban – who owns his own think tank and is Hillary’s go-to moneyman. The Dem dementia is essentially a bagman op.
To make it even more digestible, both Adelson and Saban are rabid Israeli-firsters. A dissident Beltway intel op cuts all corners: “The Mafia front man Sheldon Adelson financed Trump for Israeli insurance even though Israel was for Hillary.”
Four years ago, selected New York sources I was in touch with correctly called the election result at least 10 days before the fact.
One of these, a New York business tycoon intimate with assorted Masters of the Universe in control of Wall Street, once again goes to the jugular:
“The Deep State governs both Republicans and Democrats. Trump has to work within the system. He knows it. I am a friend of Donald and I know he wants to do the right thing. But he is not in charge. He certainly wants to be friends with Russia and China. He is a businessman. He wants to make deals with countries not fight them. We were among those who set the main campaign features for him in 2016: stop rigged currencies destroying domestic industries, stop unlimited immigration destroying the lower classes wages and encourage detente with Russia and China. Largely nothing has happened in four years.”
Still, adds another New York player, “Trump does 90% of what they want anyway. Better to keep a villain at the top to blame and keep the proles running in circles.”
On the financial front, that will never be admitted publicly: but Wall Street, while projecting a mere pro-Dem façade, is not interested in a Democrat “sweep”, because that would tank Wall Street stocks. A contested/protracted election would go the same way – with Goldman Sachs projecting a nightmare scenario of the S&P down to only 3,100 points.
Thus the preferred, hush hush, Wall Street scenario: a Trump win and more juicy tax cuts – in parallel with the sentiment that Wall Street’s priority is for the Fed to keep showering trillions of dollars in helicopter money whatever happens. After all the only “policy” in town is that Wall Street turned the Fed into a hedge fund.
For its part, what Team Trump certainly does not want is the Great Reset – to be officially “launched” at a virtual Davos in January 2021.
And all this while Goldman Sachs, once again, is adamant that the only way to “save” the nation from it humongous, ever-exploding debt is to devalue the U.S. dollar.
Hillary wants a new job
In the shadow play – or Wrestlemania plot – of Trump’s face-off against the Deep State, another of those New York players confirms that, “Trump was not allowed to do much of his agenda. That shows you where the real power is. The military-industrial complex wants Trump in as he is giving them everything they want for a giant military buildup. But Biden will not make that commitment.”
Clapper, Brennan, Comey and Mueller “were just following orders and are being protected.” As for warmongering narcissistic hyena Hillary Clinton, she needs a Biden/Harris win essentially to stay out of jail, a follow-up to a “secret” deal struck with Obama which had her bow out to the former President as the de facto leader of the vast DNC machinery.
Anyone with a brain across the Beltway knows The Walking Dead was chosen because he does not even qualify as a place mat. Assuming he would be elected president, the real power behind the throne will be the Obama-Pelosi axis – and their usual suspect masters. Welcome to the reign of President Kamala.
Hillary though is leaving nothing to chance, doubling down and taking no prisoners. She has just released a 5,000-word manifesto which reads as an application to become head of the Pentagon.
The fact that with all the plot twists key vectors of the Deep State continue to be untouchable should be read as the proverbial D.C. swamp protecting their flock. More than the possibility that Trump is unqualified when it comes to picking minions, more realistically he was never given any decent options: so he was stuck with nefarious specimens such as Gina “Queen of Torture” Haspel, The Warring Mustache John Bolton, and Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo.
Which bring us to Attorney General William Barr – and a persistent question across many Beltway corridors: how come there have been no indictments as evidence piles up of interlocking Deep State-related shenanigans.
Simple: Barr is CIA, part of the old Daddy Bush gang, recruited when he was still in high school, in 1971. When Daddy Bush became CIA director in 1976, Barr stepped into the CIA’s legal office and started his steady climb, culminating in 1991 as Chief Legal Counsel to Daddy Bush’s presidency.
Needless to add, Barr subsequently squashed every possible investigation on Bush, Clinton and assorted CIA ops, from BCCI to the theft of PROMIS software.
No one will volunteer to be on the record showing how Trump selected Barr – or how the Deep State made it happen. The fact is Barr was appointed shortly after the death of Daddy Bush. It’s unlikely that Team Trump have “turned” CIA asset Barr away from the swamp – with or without Hillary’s 33,000 deleted emails.
And that’s what leads those New York players to bet that Barr won’t go after any star in the Deep State galaxy.
Still the fact remains that the NSA has stored every possible call, chat or email on its massive server farms. Trump has the power to order everything to be released – as he did. Yet, as it stands, the proles have only been offered a WWF-themed sitcom.
“I’m back” on steroids
The total balkanization of culture in the U.S. into bulletproof containers of irrationality is precluding any possibility of civilized debate. What’s left is an endless proliferation of fake actors, paid troll armies, bots, mob outrage packaged as chocolate bars, all out hysteria.
Whatever happens, get ready for some major Kill Bill mayhem ahead.
And into this shooting war – not only metaphorical – steps John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, Sex Pistol legend and a millionaire resident of the tony parts of Venice beach in L.A. He’s voting Trump.
That’s the ultimate crowning of POTUS Punk – except that Trump is more Village People (“Young man/ there’s no nee to feel down”) than the Sex Pistols in Holidays in the Sun or the Dead Kennedys in Holiday in Cambodia.
Cue to POTUS Punk in Florida, “I’m back” on steroids, working an excited crowd of thousands like a pro, complete with YMCA dance moves at the end: “I’ll kiss the guys, and the beautiful women…”
Now compare it to “Sleepy Joe” in Ohio, in front of, well, nobody really: “I’m running as a proud Democrat…for the Senate”.
Last week an astonishing eight people showed up for a Biden-Harris rally in Arizona.
And the racket goes on while a pandemic with an Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of roughly 0.14% – according to the WHO’s own estimate – has cost the global economy no less than a whopping $28 trillion, according to the IMF.
Oh yes: it ain’t over till slim Britney “I Did It Again” sings.
- Austin Challenges Seattle For Title Of "Hottest City For Millennial Renters"
Austin Challenges Seattle For Title Of “Hottest City For Millennial Renters”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 22:00Like San Francisco and Portland, Seattle is on the list of American cities that have been emiserated by pandering Democratic politicians who have allowed, even encouraged, deadly bouts of anarchy, with the right to peacably assembl used as a pretext.
With all that has happened this year, it’s hardly surprising that a survey from RentCafe found that Seattle, San Francisco and Austin are the hottest cities in the US for millennial renters over the past five years, though this trend had started to shift even before the coronavirus hit the US.
In the survey, RentCafe looked at 13 million rental applications from cities across the country to put together a list of top cities based on the percentage of applicants who were millennials (those born between 1980 and 1996, or thereabouts).
While Seattle still remains the most millennial friendly city, three cities in Texas are now in the top 5.
Here’s the rest of the report courtesy of RentCafe:
One thing is certain about Millennials: If they flock to a particular city, that area will explode both economically and culturally. This generation has different views than its predecessors, preferring flexible jobs and experience-driven lifestyles that they seek out and develop in the cities they choose. At the same time, most Millennials are renters and are shifting away from the two-kid, white-picket-fence American dream — making them less likely to get tied down to a specific city. And, now that they officially overtook Baby Boomers as the largest U.S. generation to date and make up the majority of the workforce, Millennials have become the most instrumental group in shaping the future of America’s urban cores.
So, which cities attract the most Millennial renters? To find out, we looked at 13 million actual renter applications nationwide to identify the cities where Millennials represent the highest share of those who applied for apartments. Specifically, we focused on large and mid-sized cities — where Millennials represent 38.5% of applications — and ranked them based on each city’s share. Finally, we looked at the hottest cities for Millennial renters in 2020 to get a snapshot of the emerging hubs where this trend-setting generation is heading next.
Seattle has been the Capital of Millennial Nation of the past five years
In the last five years, Seattle has been the top magnet city for Millennial renters, who represent half of those who applied for an apartment in the largest job hub in the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle was the fastest-growing big city in the past decade, so its presence on the list is to be expected. What’s more, the massive job hub boasts homegrown tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft, as well as satellite offices for other big-name employers, such as Facebook, Google, Nintendo and Costco. Clearly, a city with a strong tech sector is an attractive setting for a generation that dominates the tech world today. Plus, salaries in Seattle experienced the fourth-fastest rise among the nation’s big cities in the past decade (up 55.2%), which can also be a big incentive to draw young talent.
San Francisco has been the second hottest city for Millennials in the last half-decade, with a 48.7% share of Millennials who applied for rent in SF. The epicenter of the U.S. tech boom, the Bay Area city had the second-fastest-growing incomes in the nation in the last 10 years (up 56.6%), so it continues to attract young professionals looking for prosperous employment and upscale living — despite being one of the priciest markets in the U.S.
The Texas Triangle rounds up the top five
Austin, Houston and San Antonio follow as the third, fourth and fifth Millennial favorites. The Lone Star State’s lucrative oil sector, its booming health industry and zero state income tax have turned Texas into the decade’s biggest winner in terms of overall growth.
Austin — the prime Southern hub for high-tech and culture — is the third-hottest city for Millennial renters in the U.S., with a 48.1% share of renters in this age group applying to move within or to the Texas capital. The rapidly developing area saw both its employment offer and its residents’ incomes swell in recent years, while still maintaining a lower cost of living than other major business centers.
Houston (45.6%) follows, with a varied employment landscape that is firmly rooted in the health, research and oil industries. Meanwhile, military hub San Antonio takes the fifth spot in the ranking, boasting a diverse economy, below-average unemployment rates and an affordable housing market.
Both New York and Los Angeles are notably missing from the top 15. The two biggest cities in the U.S. are also the top two cities which lost the most residents in the past decade, as renters and homeowners alike have been moving to less pricey areas.
The largest share of Gen Ys moving to San Francisco is from New York
To find out where the hottest cities for Millennial renters are attracting residents from, we excluded same-city moves and looked at the cities which contributed the largest share of Millennial rental applications to each hotspot.
The hottest city for Millennials, Seattle, attracted its most significant share of Millennial applications from neighboring boomburg Bellevue (6.4%). However, fellow hotspot Chicago contributed the second most Gen Y renters to the city (3.6%), while Los Angeles (3.5%) came in third.
San Francisco is at its most popular by far among New York Millennial renters (8.2%), likely because New York is the only city in the nation with a higher cost of living than the tech boomtown. San Francisco attracted its second and third largest shares of Gen Ys from fellow Bay Area hubs Mountain View (6.9%) and San Jose (5.9%).
Southern Millennial hubs attract residents on a regional level
Austin, the definitive Southern tech hub, has been attracting residents on a more regional level. Houston is its most significant contributor (7.7%), as Austin has been catching up economically with the in-state energy hub. Super suburb Round Rock (7.6%) and neighbor San Antonio (5.8%) follow.
Houston is most popular among Gen Y renters from its own suburbs. Katy contributed the largest share of Millennials to the city, 12.3%, followed by Spring (8.3%) and Humble (4.7%). San Antonio, meanwhile, has been catching up from behind. Although its most significant contributor is Converse (7.5%), the city is also popular among both Houston (6.5%) and Austin (6.2%) Gen Y renters.
Charlotte, Louisville, Memphis and Dallas also attract Millennial renters mostly from in-state cities or nearby towns — these places are still developing as economic and cultural Gen Y hubs, so they still have a ways to go before competing with the nation’s largest urban cores.
Austin set to dethrone Seattle, to become the next No. 1 Millennial City
Finally, we looked at the most sought-after cities by Millennial renters in 2020, to see which places are set to become the Gen Y hubs of the future. To that end, Austin’s rise in popularity puts it at no. 1 in 2020, as the top Millennial favorite. Half of the total rental applicants from and to the Texas capital are Millennials who want to live here.
In tight competition, the next three cities have very similar shares. San Francisco maintains its second spot in 2020 with a 48.6% share, in spite of its high cost of living. However, many Millennials have begun choosing the tech hub’s more affordable neighbor, Oakland, as their home in the Bay Area, as San Francisco’s rents drove them to seek less pricey housing in this emerging hotspot. As such, Oakland made an astounding entrance into the top 15, shooting straight up to third place with a 48.4% share of Millennials choosing to live in the city.
Seattle drops to the fourth place in 2020, with a 48.1% share of Millennials applying for apartments — hinting that its popularity among renters from this generation might be dwindling. The Northwestern city’s average rent rose the second-fastest among the largest cities in the past decade, so an increasing number of Millennial renters may begin choosing more affordable areas. Houston, meanwhile, is holding steady (47.7%). While the oil industry has had its challenges in the last year, the city’s energy industry infrastructure, world-class port, and continued boom in healthcare and research have kept it among the top five hottest cities for Millennial renters in 2020 as well.
Philadelphia, San Jose, Virginia Beach, and Los Angeles are new additions to the top 15. At the same time, Denver, Louisville, Atlanta, Dallas and Portland dropped from the ranking. Whether these disruptions will continue into the new decade remains to be seen. For now, the map of prime hubs for Millennial renters is continually evolving, and it seems as thought the country’s established boomtowns might just be overtaken by up-and-coming players.
Methodology
Renter application data, which was sourced from RentGrow, was provided after being completely anonymized and aggregated. No personally identifiable or other confidential information was disclosed or used in conjunction with this article.
A total of 13.2 million renter applications in 4,000 cities were analyzed overall, out of which 5.6 million were included in the final ranking analysis.
For best statistical relevance, only cities with a minimum of 5,000 renter applications between 2015 and 2020 and a minimum of 1,000 applications in 2020 were taken into account for the ranking. The top 15 ranking is out of 61 cities.
Demographic data on population, income, and employment was sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The analysis was limited to large and mid-sized cities with a population over 300,000 residents.
Cities of all sizes were included in the migration pattern analysis to determine the largest contributors.
Millennials are defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996. Millennials are sometimes referred to as Gen Y.
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Source: RentCafe
- The Wildfire West: Where Housing Sprawl And Wildfire-Prone Areas Collide
The Wildfire West: Where Housing Sprawl And Wildfire-Prone Areas Collide
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 21:40Via Priceonomics,
As the world is still in the midst of a global pandemic, we are now entering fire season in the American West. After years of elevated global temperatures and drought, by the end of each summer, smoke-filled skies seem to be the norm across the West.
Though we would love a respite from calamity, there is no reason to believe that we’ll be spared from wildfires this year. With scientific certainty, we know which areas are prone to wildfires, though home construction continues in those areas.
At Cape Analytics, we use artificial intelligence to analyze vast quantities of geospatial imagery to help insurers and other companies better understand properties and property risk. Along with our partner HazardHub, we wanted to explore exactly how much sprawl there has been in the West’s high-risk fire zones. From the standpoint of insurance and danger to human life, these homes and adjacent communities are especially risky. Quantifying the risk can help homeowners and agencies such as CAL FIRE take more proactive and focused measures to protect lives and property.
The Hot Spots
To create this report, we analyzed new homes built over the last decade and found that California leads the West when it comes to the most builds in high-risk areas. Given that California is the most populous state in the country, we can expect a lot of new construction. When adjusting for population size, Utah leads the West by a significant margin in building homes in places with high fire risks.
When looking at specific cities with the most new home construction in high-risk zones in the West, El Dorado Hills, California tops the list, followed by St. George, Utah. In addition, as the pandemic has precipitated an urban exodus, many residents are fleeing into higher-risk fire zones.
Research Strategy
Before diving into the analysis, it’s worth spending a moment on the data and methodology. In this project, we identified new home construction over the last decade in Western states prone to wildfires. Specifically, we focused on areas in or near the Wildland Urban Interface — areas designated by the U.S. Forest Service, where human development and fire-prone wilderness meet. Our hazard data partner, HazardHub, then provided us with a wildfire risk score for each locality. This risk score takes weather, wildfire history, and many other factors into account. Finally, we narrowed down our analysis to new homes built in those high wildfire risk zones.
Findings by State
First, let’s look at the raw number of new homes built in the last decade in high wildfire risk zones out West:
Over the last decade, California has built over 10,000 homes in areas deemed as high wildfire risk. High land prices and stringent zoning requirements in the California urban core have pushed builders further into rural areas, where the fire risk is much higher. Over the last few years, we have seen how dangerous wildfires can be in these areas of California, as places like Paradise and Santa Rosa have been devastated by fires. Among Western states, Utah ranks second in terms of high fire risk building, followed by Colorado.
However, it’s important to remember that California is the largest state in the United States by population and the third-largest by landmass. Given its size, we can expect more home construction in California compared to other states.
To account for this size question, we’ve adjusted by population, to see where states are building more homes in wildfire zones at the highest per capita rate (per 100,000 residents):
After adjusting for population size, it becomes clear that Utah has the most home building activity in high fire risk zones in the West. For every 100,000 citizens, 191.6 homes are built, a figure that is approximately 5x higher than Idaho, which ranks second in this metric. Utah, an arid state with large swathes of flammable vegetation, has actively developed a number of communities in high wildfire risk zones.
City by City
To break it down even further, let’s look at the cities out West with the most new homes built in high wildfire risk zones. The chart below shows all cities in our analysis with at least 100 new builds in fire zones:
El Dorado Hills, California, a town in the picturesque Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, has the most new home building, with 1,415 new builds recorded over the last decade. Experts have identified this area as part of the “rural sprawl” increasing fire risk. Autumn Berstein of the Sierra Nevada Alliance comments on the area:
“There is a tremendous amount of population growth going on in these extreme fire danger areas…Unless Sierra counties can start to change the way they are growing, we are going to have a much bigger fire problem on our hands.”
A similar dynamic is taking place in Utah, as large amounts of housing development are taking place in naturally beautiful, but highly combustible areas. For example, St. George, Utah, the second-ranked city in this analysis, is a mecca for retirees and vacationers near Zion National Park. The area, however, is filled with new developments plunked in the middle of high fire risk zones where water is brought in via pipeline from far away.
By looking at the increase in home building on a relative basis (comparing the number of new homes to the size of the city), we can bring smaller towns into focus. The chart below further demonstrates how Utah’s sprawl has accelerated over the last decade, with small towns like Stockton, Hurricane, and Santaquin expanding into high-risk areas. St. George again ranks high on this list as well.
Additional HazardHub analyses of these towns in Utah’s high desert paint a more detailed picture: St. George has been in a state of drought for 72 percent of the last 20 years, while Hurricane has been in drought for 68 percent of the previous 20 years. These bone-dry conditions are interspersed with short periods of rain, which allow scrub brush to grow…and then dry out again, creating excellent fuel for wildfires. These areas may not be ringed by dense forest, but they are still at very high risk of destructive fires driven by desert winds.
Insights and Mitigation Strategies
As a company that works with home insurers, each property’s fire risk is a metric we monitor over time. As this analysis shows, a tremendous number of new homes are being built in the highest wildfire risk areas. While they may be naturally beautiful, they are also naturally combustible. Our analysis suggests places like California and Utah contribute to rural sprawl and do so at considerable risk for more destruction of homes and loss of life wrought by wildfires. Moreover, as the climate gets hotter and drier, the risk in these areas will only grow, as stronger, wind-driven wildfires impact even some lower-risk regions.
What can residents do to protect themselves as wildfire risk increases in the coming decades? Luckily, some actions are proven to mitigate risk for individual properties.
One of the most effective deterrents is defensible space — a fancy word for clearing vegetation and flammable debris around your house. CAL FIRE, for example, recommends residents trim tree branches at least 10 feet away from buildings and other trees, and remove dead plants, branches, and shrubs up to 30 feet away from the structure. When implemented across entire neighborhoods, maintaining defensible space can insulate communities from the worst damage. For many of the areas named in this report, mitigation measures like these could be the difference between a neighborhood withstanding a wildfire and a community being destroyed.
- Singapore Airlines Transforms Grounded Planes Into Pop-Up Restaurants
Singapore Airlines Transforms Grounded Planes Into Pop-Up Restaurants
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 21:20The virus pandemic and the resulting plunge in air travel have caused airlines to park fleets of planes on tarmacs across major airports worldwide. Airlines are losing billions of dollars per quarter as planes sit dormant. Still, fast-thinking Singapore Airlines is transforming two double-decker Airbus A380s, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, into pop-up restaurants, Bloomberg reports.
Singapore Airlines sold out of restaurants seats on the two A380s on Monday, within 30 minutes of listing the restaurant offers online, which is a novel way for the struggling airline to raise money while its jets are parked. The temporary restaurants will only be open from Oct. 24-25.
Meal ranges cost anywhere from $474 for a business class meal to $39 for an economy class experience. Around half the planes’ seats will be available for dining to allow for social distancing.
Vice President of Commercial Operations Lee Lik Hsin said the airline will study the waitlist and see how it can “potentially accommodate some of those who are still interested in this unique dining experience.”
Singapore Airlines suffered a record $827 million net loss in the third quarter of 2020 and is laying off 20% of its workforce. The airline has already burned through half of the $6.4 billion of cash it raised via the equity market earlier in the summer.
With hundreds of flights grounded worldwide, the financially battered airline is attempting to raise cash in an unorthodox means as passenger traffic worldwide is not expected to return to 2019 levels until 2024.
- America Is Divided Over Class Not Race In 2020
America Is Divided Over Class Not Race In 2020
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 21:00Authored by Charlie Kirk via HumanEvents.com,
It’s ‘Skype-Zoom’ v. ‘Muscular’ in today’s 2020 political cage match…
We all know about the voice within the choir that stands out from the others with a distinct and superior sound. Such is the voice of Professor Victor Davis Hanson (VDH) when he decides to make himself heard among the monotone crowd of established political punditry. VDH stole the microphone this past week in an appearance with Tucker Carlson where, during a roughly six-minute interview, he made more sense of the current political landscape in America than any other “expert” in the past six months.
VDH is not a political analyst by trade. His background is that of being a classicist in philosophy, while at the same time being a leading military historian, especially with regard to WWII (his brief but thorough history course on the “Great War” is a must for those interested). What he has brought to the world of political analysis since his very recent entry are a fresh perspective and a very disciplined and rational mind. In short, he is thoughtful, not reflexive.
In his interview with Tucker, VDH explained what the real source of division in America is today. It is not, despite what Democrats and the mainstream media (MSM) try to force on you, a division that is primarily about race. It is a division about class. While the idea of class struggle is not new to political science, the current iteration of it is, and it has sprung up aggressively during the past six months. According to Hanson, it is the division between the Skype-Zoom class and the muscular class.
VDH argues that there is a class of people that have found refuge in their home offices and basements since the onset of the Chinese coronavirus. They are the traders, the telemarketers, and those who can make their living through the softer professions of the mind. The “Skype-Zoom class” also includes the ruling class: those at the highest levels of society that pull the strings, and control the means to power and production.
In author Tom Wolfe’s terms, they are the masters of the universe.
While the Skype-Zoom class sits safely in their homes and uses their MacBook to make bank, outside their walls, out in the real world of production, lives the muscular class. These are the people who are delivering the food you order from Grubhub, or the disinfectants and hand sanitizers you order from Amazon, both of which might be ordered by Skype-Zoom types in order to save them the risk of leaving their home and becoming infected with the virus. Best to leave that risk for someone else, someone in the muscular class.
The muscular class people are also the ones out there nine hours a day cooking the food Skype-Zoomers ordered and manufacturing and packing the hand sanitizers.
If this talk of “musculature” and “class” brings thoughts of Marx to mind, it should. These are very much Marxian terms. Marx talked about man’s natural inclination to work and produce, and also man’s natural tendency to try to control the work and production of other men. In his first phase of history, post-primitive, Marx pointed to the need to control musculature because physical strength was required to make almost everything. The need for control led to the development of slavery, where the masters could own the source of labor. I have previously shared my thoughts on Human Events regarding the current relevance of Karl Marx.
Later in history (phase three for Marx), the masters of the universe would discover, under capitalism, that it was cheaper to just “rent” the labor of men. They pay rent in the form of wages. Wanting to maximize their profit, they exploit that labor as much as they can by suppressing wages. A class struggle develops, ultimately leading to revolution.
What VDH is pointing out relates to something that I have been trying to share with audiences of late. While Marx might be dead, Marxism isn’t, and in 21st Century America, it is taking on compelling and dangerous forms. VDH’s observation shows us that what we are witnessing right before our eyes is a mixture of Marx’s first phase of history (ownership of musculature) with his third phase (exploitation of paid workers).
Dismiss Marx if you’d like because you think his conclusions are immoral. You do so at your own peril in terms of addressing what is happening in America.
VDH goes on to identify what this class conflict means in terms of the presidential election and how President Trump can use the current climate to make an appeal to a group of roughly 100 million largely denigrated workers.
In terms of the two new classes, Joe Biden clearly fits the prototype for the Skype-Zoom class. In conducting a campaign from his basement and hiding from both voters and the virus—all the while criticizing every move President Trump makes demonstrating bold leadership. Biden presents as someone fearful. He is far more likely to criticize the delivery person bringing toilet tissue to his front door because his mask isn’t tight around his nose than he is to be willing to help him take the delivery off the truck.
On the other hand, President Trump has been willing to lead and take risks during this crisis. He has met with foreign leaders, and he has met with voters. He placed himself at risk of catching the Chinese coronavirus, and when he did catch it, he was willing to take experimental drugs to test them for the rest of us. While the MSM, Democrats, and the Skype-Zoom class have been critical of such risk taking, they forget that without the risk taking of others, they would not have the luxury of sitting in their basements in their $2,000 ergonomic office chairs to level their hate at the real men and women who make America work: the musculature class of America.
President Trump needs to appeal to these workers and let them know that he is the candidate that respects and honors their work effort. He needs to appeal to the muscular class. While conservatives may find class conflict distasteful, they need to recognize the reality that the country is currently awash in it. To ignore it is to risk succumbing to it.
Right now, three very distinct economic philosophies are alive in this country.
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The first can be found in the ideas of “Bolshevik” Bernie Sanders and his complete collectivist notions of central government controlling everything.
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The second is the corporate class mentality of Biden and Harris: they favor a partnership between very big government and very big business. It is fascist in nature and allows for greater and greater class division and exploitation.
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The third is the President Trump model of patriotic free enterprise. This is where the free market is allowed to work, and the government makes sure that American business and worker interests are placed at the forefront of all policy-making considerations.
That third model is the one that can appeal to the muscular class regardless of their current political party affiliation. If they continue to be exploited, they are eventually going to rebel.
Marx taught us that. History itself teaches us that.
There is a myth that the Marxist movements that have arisen over the past 120 years are ideological in origin. They are not. In all cases, from Russia to China and everywhere else, the Marxist revolution took place because the workers who make up the middle class, the essential middle class, have lost faith in the system. They lose faith in those who lead it.
Right now, the system is too often being led by Barack Obama types: elitists who have a general disdain for ordinary working people. They use power to exploit others and are disrespectful of the muscular class. They are Skype-Zoomers. They are also weak.
It is my firm belief that the arc of civilization has three distinct phases.
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In its ascent, a society is evidenced by the strong exploiting the weak. This may be an unfortunate necessity in order to build.
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In its perfected stage, the same strong people—who once were exploiters—now protect the weak.
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Finally, in its decline, society will show evidence of the weak controlling the strong. Increasingly in today’s America, this is what we see. It is the Skype-Zoom class exploiting and attempting to control the muscular class.
President Trump, the muscular President, has a chance to use this dynamic to his advantage. Those 100 million or so out there wearing masks, taking risks, and carrying our country on their shoulders like Atlas, might just about be ready to shrug. They need a candidate to tell them he supports them and not the basement-dwelling masters of the universe who critique them.
When the time comes that they have had enough, they are going to fight back. It is important to remember that when they decide to fight, they are the muscular ones.
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- Greenwich Housing Market Just Had Its Best Quarter In A Decade Thanks To The Coronavirus
Greenwich Housing Market Just Had Its Best Quarter In A Decade Thanks To The Coronavirus
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 20:40Over the past three years, we have routinely chronicled the falling demand for opulent mansions in Greenwich, Conn., a town in Fairfield County which embodies wealth and privilege. In the spring of 2019, we reported that Greenwich’s “upscale” market (typically homes in the $10 million-plus range) had seen sales evaporate, leaving prices to tumble 25%. Many sellers pulled listings off the market, deciding to wait for a better market.
Just one year later, the coronavirus pandemic precipitated a dramatic change in fortunes. Demand soared for Greenwich mansions in the spring. And what many believed would be a “short-term” surge in demand has persisted.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported on the latest batch of data released by local real estate brokerages.
According to a report from appraiser MIller Samuel, deals involving single-family homes jumped 70% during the third quarter from a year earlier. In total, 311 sales were counted – the largest number dating back to 2010 – and the median price on those deals surged 18% to $2.13 million.
Realtors have been particualrly impressed by sales in a part of town known to real estate agents as “Back Country”. North of the Merrit Parkway, Back Country is known for large estates with many acres and amenities.
“We couldn’t give Back Country away, it was too far away from downtown,” said Scott Durkin, president of Douglas Elliman. Now, its homes have become “the most-requested property.”
But during Q3, it was the best-selling part of town.
“With bigger homes, you’ve got the opportunity to have extended family with you, but also more amenities on-site,” said David Haffenreffer, manager of brokerage Houlihan Lawrence’s Greenwich office. “You can spread out and live that quarantine life in a more-liberated way.”
Discounts in Q3 averaged 4.4%, the smallest in a decade, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said. Properties spent an average of 139 days on the market, 25% less time than a year ago. There were 172 homes, under contract as of Sept. 30, the end of the quarter.
The turnaround in the Greenwich real estate market is just one more way wealthy Wall Street executives have benefited, or at least been shielded from, the worst affects of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, a new nonprofit newsroom called “The City” dedicated to covering NYC published a piece about the surging demand for food banks and social services in the Bronx.
The Bronx has always been poor, its author contends. But this time, it’s different. The official unemployment rate in the Bronx is now 21%, the worst in the city, and near the highs from the Great Depression era. Many of its residents are struggling, and depend on charities like BronxWorks for food. When the moratorium on evictions ends, many fear they will be kicked out by desperate landlords.
- Election War Games: "A New America Waits In The Wings" After Pre-Planned Chaos
Election War Games: “A New America Waits In The Wings” After Pre-Planned Chaos
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 20:20You may initially read this article and find that it is partisan and unfairly targets the Democratic Party. We urge you to look beyond that initial reaction at the facts, not the emotions. Chaos is inevitable after this election, regardless of who is declared the winner. This gives you a glimpse at a powerful group that has been “war-gaming” the situation and their predicted outcomes. As a person who wishes to be prepared, it’s important to know these things so that you can be ready for something that seems to be a planned event.
~ Daisy
Authored by Robert Wheeler,
The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) was launched to identify potential risks to the integrity of the November 3, 2020 election process. TIP conducted a series of war games in the summer of 2020, exploring what could possibly go wrong regarding the election. Once risks were identified, the group conducting these war games hoped to find solutions to mitigate those risks.
These simulated “war games” were conducted by a group of Democratic Party insiders, former Obama and Clinton officials, and a number of “Never Trumpers”. TIP justified these exercises as preparation for a Trump loss, and a subsequent refusal by Trump to concede the election.
However, TIP’s report published on August 3, 2020, shows a different story.
In light of this and other studies, no matter where you live, we suggest getting your home ready for the potential of civil unrest and riots and stocking up on emergency food and supplies.
Are these simulations actually manipulating the outcome of the elections?
On the TIP site, it states the goal of the project was to ensure that the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election was legitimate. However, the ties with the Obama administration and pro-Biden groups raises concern that the group is actually planning to ensure the crisis they claim to be attempting to prevent with the simulations.
Whitney Webb writes in an article published on Unlimited Hangout:
…according to TIP’s own documents, even their simulations involving a “clear win” for Trump in the upcoming election resulted in a constitutional crisis, as they predicted that the Biden campaign would make bold moves aimed at securing the presidency, regardless of the election result.
Whitney’s article goes on to explain that the organizers of TIP have ties to the Obama administration, several pro-Biden groups, and the Biden campaign and that this is particularly troubling. Whitney writes:
…the fact that a group of openly pro-Biden Washington insiders and former government officials have gamed out scenarios for possible election outcomes and their aftermath, all of which either ended with Biden becoming president or a constitutional crisis, suggest that powerful forces influencing the Biden campaign are pushing the former Vice President to refuse to concede the election even if he loses.
Such concerns are only magnified by the recent claims made by Hillary Clinton, that Biden “should not concede under any circumstances.” Clinton continued during an interview with Showtime,“I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is.”
What are some examples of these simulated war games?
Game 3 “Clear Trump Win”, simulated not only how Republicans could use every option at their disposal to “hold onto power”, but also how Democrats could do so if the 2020 election result is not in their favor.
Joe Biden – played by John Podesta, retracted his election night concession and convinced “three states with Democratic governors – North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan – to ask for recounts.” Then, the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan “sent separate slates of electors to counter those sent by the state legislature” to the Electoral College, which Trump had won, in an attempt to undermine that win.
Then, the Biden campaign encouraged Western states to secede from the Union unless the Congressional Republicans agreed to a set of structural reforms. With advice from former President Obama, the Biden campaign listed the reforms as follows:
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Give statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico
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Divide California into five states “to more accurately represent its population in the Senate”
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Require Supreme Court justices to retire at 70
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Eliminate the Electoral College
These structural reforms will lead to the U.S. having 6 additional states. These six new states will ensure a perpetual majority for Democrats because only Democrat-majority areas are given statehood. Notably, in other scenarios where Biden won the Electoral College, Democrats did not support its elimination.
The TIP claimed that the Trump campaign would seek to paint these “provocative, unprecedented actions” as “the Democrats attempting to orchestrate an illegal coup,” despite the fact that that is essentially what those actions entail.
The Biden campaign “provoked a breakdown in the joint session of Congress by getting the House of Representatives to agree to award the presidency to Biden. The Republican party did not consent, noting that Trump had won the election through the electoral college victory.
This simulation ended with no president-elect being inaugurated on January 20.
Who are the people involved in TIP and who are they associated with?
TIP was co-founded by Rosa Brooks and Nils Gilman and its current director is Zoe Hudson.
The article written by Webb reveals that Brooks was an advisor to the Pentagon and the Hillary Clinton-led State Department during the Obama administration. She was also previously the general counsel to the President of the Open Society Institute, which is affiliated with the Open Society Foundations (OSF). Zoe Hudson also has ties to OSF, serving as senior policy analyst and liaison between the foundations and the U.S. government for 11 years.
Webb writes:
OSF ties to the TIP are a red flag for a number of reasons, namely due to the fact that OSF and other Soros-funded organizations played a critical role in fomenting so-called “color revolutions” to overthrow non-aligned governments, particularly during the Obama administration. Examples of OSF’s ties to these manufactured “revolutions” include Ukraine in 2014 and the “Arab Spring,” which began in 2011 and saw several governments in the Middle East and North Africa that were troublesome to Western interests conveniently removed from power.
As reported by Webb, Nils Gilman, co-founder of TIP and the current VP of Programs at the Berggruen Institute, is particularly focused on artificial intelligence and transhumanism. Gilman recently told the New York Times that his work at the Berggruen Institute is focused on “building [a] transnational networks of philosophers + technologists + policy-makers + artists who are thinking about how A.I. and gene-editing are transfiguring what it means to be human.”
Is there a list of TIP participants?
This question is taken directly from the TIP website. Here is the answer given:
To ensure candid contributions, the Transition Integrity Project’s exercises were conducted under Chatham House Rules, under which participants were free to talk about their own role in the exercises and their general observations, but were asked to respect the confidentiality of other participants. Some of our participants have chosen to write or give interviews about their experiences during the exercise, however. You can see some examples below:
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Ed Luce, “How America could fail its democracy test” Financial Times
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Max Boot, “What if Trump loses but insists he won?” Washington Post
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Jennifer Granholm talks to CNN
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David Frum, “Where the System May Break,” The Atlantic
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Rosa Brooks, “Trump Could Refuse to Concede,” The Washington Post
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Nils Gilman, “Getting from November to January,” The American Interest
Unofficial TIP spokesperson claims there is reason to be worried.
Though he is not mentioned in the list, Lawrence Wilkerson has been the most outspoken of all the participants. He has done most of the media interviews promoting TIP and its “War Games”. Wilkerson said in an interview in June with Paul Jay that aside from their “war games,” the other TIP activities are confidential.
Wilkerson specifically stated: “There is some confidentiality about what we agreed to, and what we’ve put out publicly, and who’s responsible for that, and other aspects of our doing that. The Transition Integrity Project is to this point very, very close, whole, and confidential.”
In that same interview, Wilkerson also noted that the current “combination of events” involving the recent unrest in several U.S. cities, the coronavirus crisis, the national debate over the future of policing, the economic recession and the 2020 election was the foundation for a revolution in the U.S. He told Jay:
“I want to say this is how things like 1917 and Russia, like 1979 and Tehran, and like 1789 in France. This is how these sorts of things get started. So we’ve got to be very careful about how we deal with these things. And that worries me because we don’t have a very careful individual in the White House.”
That last quote is chilling because America is indeed heading in the direction of Russia in 1917. That revolution saw the death of 70 million people.
Where is all this headed, and who benefits from these scenarios?
Webb hazards a guess when she states:
The question then becomes, who benefits from complete chaos on and following the 2020 election? As the TIP suggested in several of their simulations, the post-election role of the military in terms of domestic policing, incidentally the exact expertise of the TIP’s co-founder Rosa Brooks, looms large, as most of the aforementioned doomsday election simulations ended with the imposition of martial law or the military “stepping in” to resolve order and oversee the transition.
The domestic framework for imposing martial law in the U.S., via “continuity of government” protocols, was activated earlier this year under the guise of the coronavirus crisis and it remains in effect. Now, a series of groups deeply tied to the Washington establishment and domestic and foreign intelligence agencies have predicted the exact ways in which to engineer a failed election and manipulate its aftermath.
Who would stand to benefit the most from the imposition of martial law in the United States? I would argue that one need look no further than the battle within Washington power factions over the future of AI…
The last line of Webb’s article states: “By keeping Americans angry and distracted by the partisan divide through pre-planned election chaos, a “New America” waits in the wings – one that is coming regardless of what happens on election day. That is, of course, unless Americans quickly wake up to the ruse.” The media is great at inciting division, both here and in other countries.
This grim vision of the future has been warned about by other researchers in the past. November 3 is approaching quickly and so is the technological control grid and all the chaos that will bring it to pass. Being prepared for civil unrest is essential.
I don’t personally have much hope for the future. But one thing is for certain – it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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- Watch Live: Trump & Biden Hold Dueling Townhalls In Lieu Of 2nd Debate
Watch Live: Trump & Biden Hold Dueling Townhalls In Lieu Of 2nd Debate
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 19:55While many had longed for the Rumble In The Jungle 2.0 as Trump and Biden “debated” god knows what; thanks to the virtual decision of the ‘completely non-partisan’ Commission (and the ‘unquestionably independent’ moderator), tonight’s Presidential Debate will not take place.
Instead, we are treated to dueling ‘Townhall’ meetings as Trump and Biden face-off across the airwaves tonight at 8pmET with Trump on NBC and Biden on ABC.
The ‘Outrage Mob’ was, well, outraged, that NBC News (two weeks after airing a Biden Townhall) would denigrate themselves to giving ‘Hitler’ airtime. Twitter came alive with angry libtards signaling how virtuously upset they were…
Shame on @NBC. Y’all sign my checks as of late but I‘m disgusted by my home network giving Trump a platform for fear mongering, bigotry & disinformation. Don’t praise yourselves for putting a trans woman on primetime then give a platform to someone who wants to abolish my rights.
— Shakina (@Shakeenz) October 14, 2020
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Know this @NBC: This isn’t just a #NBCBlackout during your ass kissing Trump town hall. I’ve blocked your network on my TV. Next I’m deleting my @peacockTV account. PS: PLEASE #FireChuckTodd!
I will watch @ABC‘s townhall with Biden.
— Deb Vermaas (@debv219) October 15, 2020
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He refuses to debate and then NBC gives him his own Townhall? Shame on them.
— Sally.Reid.Dixon (@SRDixon_RN) October 14, 2020
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He refuses to debate and then NBC gives him his own Townhall? Shame on them.
— Sally.Reid.Dixon (@SRDixon_RN) October 14, 2020
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Donald Trump made a lot of money for NBC.
He’s about to have a lot of free time on his hands. Enough time to do a new show.
Don’t think that played no role in NBC’s decision to run his townhall when he wanted.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) October 15, 2020
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CNN is blaming Pelosi for stimulus deal
NYT is reporting a Joe Biden But his emails story provided by Steve Bannon
NBC is giving trump a townhall the same exact night as Biden’s town hall
We already know about Fox
Its up to us alone to remove trump
— BlackWomenAreKryptoniteToGOP (@battletested5) October 14, 2020
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Even Barbara Streisand chimed in, ensuring a few extra points of virtue were signaled…
NBC has now decided that after he cowardly backed out of a debate to give Donald Trump an hour townhall opposite Joe Biden. All Trumps wants to do is win the ratings game. He is more a game show host than a President.
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) October 14, 2020
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Not to be left out of the virtue-signaling, more than 100 top NBCUniversal producers and stars have sent a letter to executives at NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast protesting the timing of the town hall event, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Of course, all this outrage was put in context by Ben Shapiro…
And yes, idiots, it’s for no reason. They did it a week in advance, they did it without talking with any medical professionals, and Trump has now had multiple negative covid tests.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 14, 2020
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Both candidates have (for now) agreed to participate in the third debate, which is scheduled for Oct. 22 and will be moderated by Kristen Welker of NBC News.
Here’s a quick cheatsheet on what the main policy differences are, in case you needed reminding…
Amid all the outrage, media bias, and “polls”, it is worth considering that Trump is performing slightly better against Biden than he did against Hillary in the Battleground states…
But for tonight, you choose America:
George Stephanopoulos of ABC News will moderate the Biden town hall, while Savannah Guthrie of NBC News will moderate the Trump town hall.
The Trump town hall is taking place at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. The Biden town hall will take place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
The big question is – will either of the Townhall events discuss CPAN’s suspension of Debate Moderator Steve Scully or the NYPost’s expose of Joe Biden’s son’s dirty dealing with Ukraine and China?
Watch Trump Townhall Live here:
Or the Biden Townhall Live here:
Enjoy!
- Venezuela's COVID-19 Battle Is Badly Hamstrung By The 31 Tons Of Gold Stolen From Its Treasury
Venezuela’s COVID-19 Battle Is Badly Hamstrung By The 31 Tons Of Gold Stolen From Its Treasury
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 19:40Authored by Vijay Prashad and Carmen Navas Reyes via Counterpunch.org,
On October 5, 2020, the England and Wales Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision from July that denied the Venezuelan government access to 31 metric tons of its gold stored in the Bank of London.
No one denies that the gold belongs to the Venezuelan government. However, the bank refused to give the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro access to the gold; following the UK Foreign Office’s example, the bank said that the actual president of Venezuela was Juan Guaidó.
Mr. Guaidó, unlike President Maduro, has not won an election to the presidency, nor is he in the line of succession to become president in any eventuality. The anointing of Mr. Guaidó came from the United States government, not the Venezuelan people; the UK Foreign Office and the lower courts agreed with Washington, while the England and Wales Court of Appeal relied for its decision on fact and logic.
The main finding of the Court of Appeal is that while the UK Foreign Office has stated that it does not recognize the government of President Maduro, it continues to conduct diplomatic affairs with the representatives of that government. Ambassador Rocío Del Valle Maneiro González presented her credentials to the Queen of England in 2015 and has for these past five years represented the government of President Maduro in the UK. The current British ambassador to Venezuela—Andrew Soper—presented his credentials to President Maduro on February 5, 2018; he remains in office in Caracas. Such basic diplomatic relations indicated to the Court of Appeal that President Maduro—in the eyes of the UK government—“does in fact exercise some or all of the powers of the President of Venezuela.”
Mr. Guaidó’s lawyer—Vanessa Neumann—said that the Venezuelan government wanted the $1.95 billion (in today’s gold prices) so that it could “illicitly finance itself.” But the Venezuelan government’s lawyer—Sarosh Zaiwalla—argued that these funds would be used by the government to break the chain of infection of COVID-19 and provide relief to a population struck by the U.S. unilateral sanctions and by the disruptions caused by the pandemic. The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) said that it wants to sell the gold, to have the funds paid to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and to allow the UNDP to assist in the government’s response to the pandemic. Even this channel via the UNDP has been rejected by Mr. Guaidó, by the UK government, and by Washington; there is no likely reason they would do this outside of a desire to punish the Venezuelan people in the midst of this pandemic.
Money for Medicines
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Instituto Simón Bolívar have been studying the social impact of these very harsh sanctions imposed by the U.S. administration since 2017. They have found that the primary and secondary sanctions have starved the Venezuelan people of the means to conduct basic commerce: to sell their oil and to buy food, medicines, and educational materials (primary sanctions directly prevent citizens and firms of the sanctioning country from having any dealings with the country being sanctioned; secondary sanctions prevent a third party—either a country or a firm—from dealing with the sanctioned country). Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have died unnecessary deaths because of the denial of trade in medicines and medical equipment; this has challenged the already fragile system during the pandemic. To allow these unilateral sanctions by the United States, and its pursuit of regime change in Venezuela, to define the way Venezuela can fight the virus and the disease is shocking. “Collective penalties,” says the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), “are prohibited.”
What does the Venezuelan government wish to buy with the $1.95 billion that would be turned over to the UNDP? According to research by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Instituto Simón Bolívar, the bulk of the funds—$600 million—is planned to go toward the purchase of medicines for 400,000 people in hospitals, for obstetric medicines for 550,000 pregnant women, and medicines for the 243 community pharmacies. Then, $450 million is planned to go toward disposable medical supplies for 400,000 surgeries, for 245 health centers, and for 3,000 pacemakers. Finally, $250,000 has been planned for the supply of reagents for laboratories (for hematology and serology), and for spare parts for various kinds of medical equipment (including radiation therapy equipment). This is how the Venezuelan government—in collusion with the UNDP—would like to “illicitly finance itself.”
In May, three UN special rapporteurs wrote that in Venezuela, “hospitals are reporting a shortage of medical supplies, protective equipment and medicine.” These are exactly the materials on the list from the Venezuelan government to buy from the proceeds of the sale of the 31 metric tons of gold. These experts—Olivier De Schutter (extreme poverty and human rights), Léo Heller (water and sanitation), and Kombou Boly Barry (education)—said, “especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the United States should immediately lift blanket sanctions, which are having a severe impact on the human rights of the Venezuelan people.”
The independent research from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Instituto Simón Bolívar concurs with the opinions of these UN experts; the U.S.-driven sanctions have negatively impacted the capacity of the Venezuelan people to thrive and exercise their human rights. The unilateral sanctions must be lifted. Short of that, we believe that Venezuela’s 31 metric tons of gold in the Bank of London must be sold, the proceeds delivered to the UNDP, and the medical supplies urgently shipped to Venezuela. Anything other than that is a crime against the Venezuelan people.
- "The Next Bernie Madoff": Baltimore Man Sentenced To 22 Years For Maryland's Largest-Ever Ponzi Scheme
“The Next Bernie Madoff”: Baltimore Man Sentenced To 22 Years For Maryland’s Largest-Ever Ponzi Scheme
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 19:20Readers may recall that we have followed the federal government’s case against Kevin Merrill (see: here & here), a Baltimore resident indicted by the SEC and DoJ in late 2018 for operating the largest-ever Ponzi scheme in Maryland’s history.
Merrill swindled family offices and investors around the country for more than $345 million. The scheme worked by buying “consumer debt portfolios,” tranches of credit card debt, car loans, and student loans. However, very little of that was done, instead, he shifted the money from new investors to old investors. Here’s how the Ponzi worked:
Merrill has been in jail for at least a year – the house of cards crashed down last week when a federal judge sentenced him to 22 years in prison for defrauding investors, mainly hedge funds and family offices.
“You were on your way to becoming the next Bernie Madoff,” U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett told Merrill, who was quoted by The Baltimore Sun. “Another 11 years, and you would have been.”
“The level of obscene greed is absolutely astonishing… How much is enough?,” Bennett said.
The sentencing hearing last Thursday (Oct. 8) was at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore brought an end to the biggest Ponzi scheme in Maryland history.
At the time of the sentencing, Merrill was crying as he spoke:
“Your honor, I ask for your mercy and compassion,” he said. “People trusted me … I’ll carry that anguish and guilt with me forever.”
The judge ordered him to pay back the $189 million in lost money – an impossible task, the judge noted.
“You had the audacity – the audacity! – to go in and talk to the FBI, and think you are going to talk your way out of it.”
The Sun points out smaller investors spoke of their “financial ruins” at the sentencing hearing:
A 74-year-old retiree in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, spoke of losing $2 million. A 36-year-old from South Carolina said he and his wife lost $50,000, a majority of their savings. Merrill’s longtime friend, David Price, said he took out home equity loans to invest $70,000 and lost it all.
John Paradise, of New Jersey, told the court he invested $250,000, his savings and his wife’s inheritance. The money was intended to send his three daughters to college. He told the court of his crushing anxiety and worry.
“I was a basket case yesterday — a basket case! My daughter couldn’t make it to school and know what I had for her? Nothing!” he said. “You stole from me! You lied to me!”
Merrill bowed his head. Paradise looked right at him.
“My heart, my soul, my conscience is clear,” Paradise said. “I’m going to flush this out … You’re not going to steal that part of me.”
As for the hedge funds and family offices that lost out in the Ponzi, well, they’ll be fine; it’s the mom and pop investors who have been financially devastated.
- Social Media's Role in Democracy: More Harmful Than Helpful?
Social Media’s Role in Democracy: More Harmful Than Helpful?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 19:00Submitted by Kalev Leetaru, senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. His past roles include fellow in residence at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government. Via RealClearPolitics.
Last week something extraordinary happened: Twitter briefly suspended the official account of the president of the United States, preventing him from posting until he deleted a tweet it said violated its rules. From merely hiding the president’s tweets, as it had done before, the company briefly stopped him from tweeting altogether.
Then, three days later, Yelp announced it would start formally flagging businesses accused of racism based solely on media reports.
Those two developments crystallized once again a key question that increasingly shadows our age: How can the growing power of social media companies coexist with the foundations of democracy? A democratic society rests upon an informed citizenry free to openly debate their shared future. The First Amendment guarantees this, enshrining both the right of the press to cover the unvarnished reality of daily events and the right of the public to consider all ideas, even those possibly deemed harmful by the majority of society. Pundits who laud social-media censorship would do well to remember that calls for the rights we hold dear today, including universal suffrage and civil rights, were once deemed the same kind of “harmful” speech that in today’s world would likely be banned by social media.
Social platforms were once viewed as a way to promote democracy to the world, granting unfettered freedom of expression and unfiltered access to information. Today they enforce ever-changing opaque rules of “acceptable speech” and define “truth.” Even more troubling, the journalism world is increasingly embracing Silicon Valley’s new role as Ministry of Truth rather than condemning it.
Emboldened by the media’s support for muzzling a president many news outlets despise, Silicon Valley companies have ramped up their censorship of elected officials. It was just five months ago that Twitter first visibly flagged an official statement of the U.S. government as “misleading.” With such censoring becoming almost routine now, it becomes front page news only when a social platform doesn’t censor the president.
Yet Twitter’s suspension of President Trump’s Twitter account last week crossed a new line. What would have happened if a national emergency such as an earthquake or coordinated terrorist or cyberattack had struck during this period, with the president ability to communicate with the American public compromised? Such disasters could have impaired Twitter’s ability to quickly restore his access, and it is unclear if they would have done so even in a national disaster.
The courts have ruled that “Twitter is not just an official channel of communication for the president; it is his most important channel of communication.” How is it, then, that a private company has the right to disable an official government communications channel from posting and Facebook has the right to delete an official government announcement? Unsurprisingly, neither company responded when this question was posed to them.
How do social media companies reconcile this censorship with the traditional norms of democratic societies? In 2018, a Facebook spokesperson offered only that “they’re definitely important questions, but I don’t have anything else to share right now.” Asked again in light of their increasing action against the president, neither Twitter nor Facebook responded. Nor did either company respond when asked what would stop them from banning users or politicians calling for them to be broken up as monopolies.
Not content merely to rule the digital world, social platforms have increasingly stretched their reach over the physical domain. This past April, Facebook banned the use of its platform to organize protests that did not require social distancing. It subsequently quietly relaxed this ban for the George Floyd protests and has remained silent when asked whether it still enforces those rules regarding other such demonstrations.
Yelp continued this trend last week with its announcement that it would begin appending a “Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert” warning label to reviews. Rather than rely on the due process of police reports, forensic media analysis and court rulings, the company’s sole verification source will be news reporting. Given that media coverage itself can be misled by viral social campaigns, it is unclear how, precisely, the company will ensure its new effort is not manipulated. And given the #MeToo movement’s split over the sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden, it is further unclear how Yelp will adjudicate the inevitable dual standards that will emerge and evolve.
Yelp’s reliance on news reports for “verification” points to the larger problem confronting social platforms today: How to arbitrate truth? Take the example of conflicting guidance from public health authorities regarding spread of the coronavirus. Asked whether a post recommending masks would have been removed back in February for violating then-current CDC guidelines, a Facebook spokesperson acknowledged the difficulty of determining “truth” amidst the fast-changing scientific understanding of COVID-19 and suggested that government should step in rather than having private companies decide what to delete and what to permit.
Beyond their more overt actions of banning users, deleting posts, and setting “acceptable speech” rules, there lurks an even more powerful force impacting American democracy: the algorithms that increasingly customize what we see online.
The media once served as a bulwark against the narrowing of our national understanding of key issues. While the coastal elites of legacy news outlets were always given outsized influence on the news cycle and national conversation, local journalists would spotlight the events and concerns of their own communities, ensuring their voices could be heard in the national debate. But with the collapse of small-town journalism, the increasingly dominant coastal media often dismiss those concerns as the uneducated ramblings of “flyover country.” Once-sacrosanct media ideals like “both sides” reporting are facing calls for elimination in order to stop promoting “nonsense” and “conspiracy” theories and Republicans’ lies.
In their heyday, broadcast and print journalism exposed us to a cross-section of the day’s events, broadening our horizons with the sometimes-serendipitous discovery of news and ideas we would not otherwise have encountered. In contrast, the algorithms that underlie our social platforms are designed to channel us towards content that provokes the emotional extremes most likely to engage us. Facebook’s own internal research concluded in 2018 that “our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness” and will feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”
This can lead to almost parallel worlds of information awareness. In 2014, for example, Facebook users famously enjoyed lighthearted videos of friends and celebrities dumping buckets of ice over their heads for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, perhaps blissfully unaware there was anything amiss in America. Twitter users, meanwhile, saw endless livestreams of social turmoil as police and protesters clashed in Ferguson, Mo. Invisible algorithms steered their respective user communities towards two starkly different views of our nation.
As news is increasingly consumed through these digital platforms, the media landscape has begun to drift back toward the narrow parallel views of America that haunted the party-paper model. Viewers of CNN and MSNBC could be forgiven for believing that Portland, Ore., has been at peace the last four months and that Seattle’s CHOP zone enjoyed a “summer of love.” Fox viewers saw video of violent looters rampaging nightly in the streets, while the news channel’s peers praised “peaceful demonstrations.” Their only overlap was a fixation on imagery of law enforcement.
How can a democracy function when half the nation turns on the television, opens a newspaper or reads social media and sees an entirely different America than the other half? How can we reach consensus on issues ranging from policing to pandemic response when we’re exposed to such different views of our nation?
In these partisan times, it can be all too easy to embrace Silicon Valley’s censorship as a necessary evil to curb the flow of hateful speech and misinformation. The problem is that, by definition, a democracy represents the collective will of an informed people, not the arbitrary decisions of unaccountable corporations to determine what is allowed and disallowed.
To see where this path inevitably takes us, ask your helpful Amazon Alexa device, “Is Amazon a monopoly?” — and try running an ad campaign on Facebook questioning its answer.
- Portland Protests Have Been "Hijacked By Criminals" And Downtown Residents Are Now Pleading For Law And Order
Portland Protests Have Been “Hijacked By Criminals” And Downtown Residents Are Now Pleading For Law And Order
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 18:40Downtown Portland residents appear to be at their wits end, pleading for a respite from what has been nightly violence and chaos that started as “peaceful protests” months ago.
Those protests have now been “hijacked by criminals” causing “violence and destruction”, according to local CBS affiliate KOIN.
The Portland residents continue to support the Black Lives Matter message, the report says, but have been speaking out about attacks on the city, saying they “harm progress made by the racial justice movement”.
Over the weekend, statues of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln (you know, of the Emancipation Proclamation) were overturned during an event called “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage.”
The event led to damage at “the Oregon Historical Society building, the Portland State University campus public safety office, a jewelry store, multiple restaurants, a coffee shop, a bank and a phone store,” according to KOIN.
A local deli owner showed KOIN the damage and shattered windows at his store. He said: “It’s the strangest thing to be quite honest. I’ve been here about ten years, I could’ve never have imagined that we’d be where we are today in Portland.”
Portland’s Mayor, Ted Wheeler, continues to sit idly by and allow the city to be torn to shreds. And we’re sure when tax revenue falls off a cliff and property values crash over the next year or two amidst and exodus from the city, Wheeler will blame President Trump and white supremacy for the problems.
Wheeler told KOIN he is “committed to doing what it takes to make people who are downtown feel safe…” before tacking on a qualifier to the end of that statement: “…while still listening to those fighting for equality and police accountability.”
Portland has cut $15 million from its police budget since May, which resulted in the loss of a gun violence team and transit police.
Resident John Toran, despite Wheeler’s obvious incompetence, concluded: “America has a dirty past but we’ve evolved quite a bit and to me that’s a lesson to the rest of the world, that we can evolve. I believe that’s part of our system. Are we a perfect country? No. But I wake up hoping we can be better and better every day.”
Sure, John. Talk to us after the “peaceful protesters” show up on your front lawn and shatter your windows.
You can watch the station’s report here:
- Yes, Take '1619' To Task, But Problem Goes Beyond One Story
Yes, Take ‘1619’ To Task, But Problem Goes Beyond One Story
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 18:20Submitted By J. Peder Zane, via RealClearInvestigations,
I’ll join the chorus calling New York Times columnist Bret Stephens “brave” for last week’s takedown of his newspaper’s “1619 Project.” But I’d also like to ask him: What took you so long?
The 100-page collection of 18 articles that infamously claimed America’s “true founding” date is not 1776, but 1619 – the year enslaved Africans were first brought to these shores – has received withering criticism since it was published in August 2019.
Ten months ago some of the nation’s leading historians – including Pulitzer Prize winners Gordon Wood and James McPherson – wrote the Times to challenge a wide array of its claims, which the newspaper and its partner, The Pulitzer Center, were disseminating free of charge in the nation’s classrooms. The historians were especially troubled by its assertion that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and the project’s near total erasure of the contributions of whites to dismantling slavery and working for freedom. Their letter described these failings as “a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.”
Their criticisms were echoed and extended by others including Leslie M. Harris, an African American professor of history at Northwestern University, who said she “vigorously disputed” some central claims of the project when she helped fact-check it before publication. “Despite my advice,” she wrote in Politico seven months ago, “the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway.”
Stephens’ sharply written broadside breaks no new ground. What it does provide is a skillful synthesis and endorsement of these voluminous critiques in the Times – by a Timesman. That is significant. But his decision to write the essay so long after the project’s mistruths have been laid bare – and months after it was honored with a George Polk Award and a Pulitzer Prize – suggests more rot at the Gray Lady and in American journalism.
As Stephens (pictured) himself suggests, the precipitating event was Phillip W. Magness’ Sept. 19 article in Quillette, which revealed that the Times has “taken to quietly altering the published text of the project itself after one of its claims came under intense criticism.” Most significant, the paper had scrubbed the claim that 1619 was “our true founding” from the online text without acknowledgment.
This is not mere editing, but stealthy expurgation intended to cover up the paper’s journalistic malpractice.
This sketchy conduct, presumably approved by New York Times Magazine Editor Jake Silverstein and others, warrants far more than a column. It demands a published response from the paper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, that acknowledges the misdeed and states whether Baquet knew of and/or approved the secret changes. Baquet must also detail the paper’s response and explain why the Times still stands by the project, given the need for such major corrections.
In this context, a column by someone with no authority at the Times beyond his opinion seems part of a strategy to acknowledge a problem without fixing it. For all his bravery in writing this piece, Stephens is the perfect foil for the Times, one that creates an escape hatch for 1619 acolytes.
It is relevant that Stephens – a conservative who came to the Times after a Pulitzer Prize-winning stint at the Wall Street Journal – is the columnist whom so many liberal Times subscribers love to hate. One of the few scribes at the paper who does not incessantly preach to its woke choir, he has generated strong pushback from colleagues and readers for his opinions on climate change and the Middle East. This may explain why the New York Times Guild initially felt comfortable sending a now deleted Tweet criticizing the editors for running Stephens’ 1619 piece, which, it said, “reeks.”
Stephens’ standing makes it easier for many Times readers to dismiss or ignore his devastating critique. Imagine the impact a similar piece might have had if it been written by David Brooks or Nicholas Kristof.
Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger appears to be unconcerned by the allegations. The man who forced editorial page editor James Bennet to resign because he ran a controversial op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, issued a brief statement Sunday that ignored the journalistic and factual issues raised by Stephens and others, and instead insisted that the 1619 Project was “a journalistic triumph” whose publication is “the proudest accomplishment of my tenure as publisher.”
[Baquet echoed Sulzberger’s comments in a note to his staff on Oct. 13, when this column was posted. Without directly addressing the ethical and factual issues raised, he asserted that “the project fell fully within our standards as a news organization” and that it “fill(s) me with pride.”]
The deeper issue raised by Stephens’ column is that the 1619 Project is just one example of the degree to which the Times and other mainstream news outlets have displaced traditional journalistic practice with ideology. Informed by the tenets of social justice and critical race theory that have long dominated the humanities departments at leading universities, journalists have abandoned a commitment to the elusive ideal of objectivity for a naked embrace of results-oriented activism masquerading as reportage. In this regard, journalism is a symptom, rather than cause, of the deep-seated cultural relativism that pervades American culture.
The essence of the 1619 Project is the idea that America is a permanently racist nation whose founding ideals were lies. This is the capital T truth it seeks to advance. It dismisses facts that undermine that narrative, distorting the historical record because they are seen as roadblocks in the arc that bends toward justice. This approach relies on one of the most dangerous engines of dishonesty in human history: the notion that the means justify the ends.
That the Pulitzer board would bestow its prize for commentary to the lead writer of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, despite damning scholarly critiques, suggests how deeply this activist approach has infected journalism.
This impulse now drives much of the coverage in the Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, NPR, and other prestigious news organizations. The clearest example is reporting on Donald Trump, whom the left sees as an existential threat. This is the capital T truth they advance through stories that insistently eschew nuance to portray the president as a monster.
From climate change to identity politics, examples of their tendentious coverage are legion. But none is more thoroughgoing and dishonest than the years-long coverage claiming Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
My RealClearInvestigations colleagues are among those who followed the leads and dug up the facts mainstream outlets refused to and, so, got the story right. Tom Kuntz, a former Times editor who leads RCI, detailed how the Times and the Post relied on untrustworthy anonymous sources, unfair innuendo and cherry-picked facts to advance this narrative in a series of stories that won both papers a Pulitzer Prize in 2018.
This effort to distort the truth continues unbowed and unabated. Last week, New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins wrote that Christopher Steele’s dossier – opposition research paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign that claimed the Russians had been cultivating Trump as an asset for decades – “has been neither proved nor disproved.”
In fact, much of it has been debunked and the key parts of it that haven’t been probably never will because you can’t prove a negative – one can’t ever prove that there is no videotape showing Trump paid Russian prostitutes to pee on a Moscow hotel bed the Obamas had slept in.
Shane Harris of the Washington Post encapsulated the ongoing dishonesty in an article last week acknowledging, after a fashion, damning new intelligence tying the Clinton campaign to Russiagate. In a single paragraph he both denied overwhelming evidence that the Clinton campaign helped generate that now debunked scandal while also insisting that the conspiracy theory was legitimate. Harris wrote:
“Trump allies have seized on the intelligence as evidence that Clinton was in some way involved in ginning up an investigation of Trump to tie his campaign to Russia. The president has consistently denied the charge as a ‘hoax,’ even though multiple investigations have documented numerous instances in which his campaign sought Russian assistance in damaging Clinton.”
There is hardly any evidence that the Trump campaign “sought” such assistance. The most that can be said is that it was receptive to offers of dirt on Clinton at the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Her campaign, by contrast, used people like Steele to actively seek compromising material on Trump, which appears to have included Russian disinformation.
Such reporting is so brazen that it suggests a far deeper problem than any one story. Indeed, the deeply misleading Trump/Russia coverage and the 1619 Project are not deviations from the norm. They are the new standard at prestigious outlets that are committed to pursuing their notion of the capital T truth – inconvenient facts be damned.
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