Jul 22

Today’s News 22nd July 2020

  • Africa Has A Huge Advantage Over The US When It Comes To Fighting Coronavirus
    Africa Has A Huge Advantage Over The US When It Comes To Fighting Coronavirus

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/22/2020 – 02:45

    As SARS-CoV-2 sweeps across India, Latin America and – of course – the US, epidemiologists are looking toward Africa, which has seen cases surge higher in recent weeks, due to outbreaks in South Africa, Egypt and a few other countries that comprise the majority of the continent’s confirmed cases.

    According to the WHO, 47 of Africa’s 54 member states are affected, with 701,807 total cases…

    …and 14,946 deaths. South Africa, the worst-hit country, is now reporting more than 10k new cases a day, surpassing 300k cases late last week.

    We mentioned earlier that more than half of the cases confirmed on the continent can be traced to five countries: South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria and Ghana. Although higher testing capacity is a factor, those countries also have more international ties than other relatively more isolated countries on the continent.

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    But as Africa’s daily totals move higher, the question of whether the continent is on the verge of a major outbreak is certainly worth considering. In a recent piece, the FT lays out the risks, as well as evidence to suggest that the worst might already be over.

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    Despite having far fewer public health resources, when facing down the coronavirus, Africa has one huge advantage over the US: the age of its population.

    This fact alone makes the average African up to 6x more likely to survive infection by the coronavirus than the average American. In Africa, the median age is 19.4, while in the US it’s 38.

    All the ventilators in the world couldn’t compensate for the tremendous age difference. This is just one more reason to wonder: Is it possible the level of ‘silent’ community spread is even larger than authorities understand?

    Sema Sgaier, executive director of Surgo Foundation, a non-profit organisation, agrees that the pandemic has much further to run in Africa. Her foundation has compiled an index from open source data of regions most vulnerable to the social, economic and health impacts of Covid-19. Among those highlighted are Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Ethiopia and Uganda — all countries where the pandemic is yet to really take hold. There remains some cause for cautious optimism, Ms Sgaier says. Even if the virus ends up spreading as widely in Africa as in Europe and the Americas, it is likely to kill fewer people, she says, because of the continent’s more youthful population. Africa has a median age of 19.4 years against 38 in the US and 43 in Europe. Based on age and gender distribution, the Surgo Foundation estimates Africa’s infection fatality rate — the proportion of deaths among those infected — at 0.1 to 0.15 per cent. Adjusting for the poor quality of health services with a lack of oxygen and ventilators as well as for co-morbidities, such as HIV/Aids, it puts the infection fatality rate at an average 0.55 per cent, with the best countries in Africa at 0.22 and the worst at 0.76 per cent. That compares with 1.3 per cent in the US, meaning that an African infected with Covid-19 is between twice and six times more likely to survive than an American.

    An FT illustration contrasts the average age of Africa’s population not only with the west, but with Asia as well.

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    Several studies have suggested that Africans, due to their young age, may see up to 2/3rds of cases as asymptomatic.

    There is also tentative evidence emerging that African countries may have a high prevalence of asymptomatic cases thanks to its young population. An antibody study conducted by the Mozambican government in the northern city of Nampula with a population of 750,000 found that some two-thirds of people infected had suffered only very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.  In addition, the study found that 5 per cent of people in the community and 10 per cent of market vendors had been infected with coronavirus. Yet only four Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Nampula province out of nine in the country as a whole. Even Mr Nkengasong at the Africa CDC, who has strongly cautioned against complacency, acknowledges that the continent’s young population means the death rate is likely to be lower. “We see these young people running around with Covid, just living their lives normally,” he says. “But we need to back this up with appropriate studies.”

    But even if the lower-end estimates prove correct, if 60% of the continent’s population is infected, more than 4 million could die. Even half that number would be a catastrophe. Complicating things is Africa’s endemic poverty, which often means lockdowns are an impossibility, since people would effectively be doomed to starve.

  • New Kosovo Indictment Is A Reminder Of Bill Clinton's Serbian War Atrocities
    New Kosovo Indictment Is A Reminder Of Bill Clinton’s Serbian War Atrocities

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/22/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

    President Bill Clinton’s favorite freedom fighter just got indicted for mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and other crimes against humanity. In 1999, the Clinton administration launched a 78-day bombing campaign that killed up to fifteen hundred civilians in Serbia and Kosovo in what the American media proudly portrayed as a crusade against ethnic bias. That war, like most of the pretenses of US foreign policy, was always a sham.

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    Kosovo president Hashim Thaci was charged with ten counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity by an international tribunal in The Hague, in the Netherlands. It charged Thaci and nine other men with “war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture.” Thaci and the other charged suspects were accused of being “criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders” and the indictment involved “hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities and include political opponents.”

    Hashim Thaci’s tawdry career illustrates how antiterrorism is a flag of convenience for Washington policymakers. Prior to becoming Kosovo’s president, Thaci was the head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), fighting to force Serbs out of Kosovo. In 1999, the Clinton administration designated the KLA as “freedom fighters” despite their horrific past and gave them massive aid. The previous year, the State Department condemned “terrorist action by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army.” The KLA was heavily involved in drug trafficking and had close to ties to Osama bin Laden.

    But arming the KLA and bombing Serbia helped Clinton portray himself as a crusader against injustice and shift public attention after his impeachment trial. Clinton was aided by many shameless members of Congress anxious to sanctify US killing. Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CN) whooped that the United States and the KLA “stand for the same values and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.” And since Clinton administration officials publicly compared Serb leader Slobodan Milošević to Hitler, every decent person was obliged to applaud the bombing campaign.

    Both the Serbs and ethnic Albanians committed atrocities in the bitter strife in Kosovo. But to sanctify its bombing campaign, the Clinton administration waved a magic wand and made the KLA’s atrocities disappear. British professor Philip Hammond noted that the 78-day bombing campaign “was not a purely military operation: NATO also destroyed what it called ‘dual-use’ targets, such as factories, city bridges, and even the main television building in downtown Belgrade, in an attempt to terrorize the country into surrender.”

    NATO repeatedly dropped cluster bombs into marketplaces, hospitals, and other civilian areas. Cluster bombs are antipersonnel devices designed to be scattered across enemy troop formations. NATO dropped more than thirteen hundred cluster bombs on Serbia and Kosovo, and each bomb contained 208 separate bomblets that floated to earth by parachute. Bomb experts estimated that more than ten thousand unexploded bomblets were scattered around the landscape when the bombing ended and maimed children long after the ceasefire.

    In the final days of the bombing campaign, the Washington Post reported that “some presidential aides and friends are describing Kosovo in Churchillian tones, as Clinton’s ‘finest hour.’” The Post also reported that according to one Clinton friend “what Clinton believes were the unambiguously moral motives for NATO’s intervention represented a chance to soothe regrets harbored in Clinton’s own conscience….The friend said Clinton has at times lamented that the generation before him was able to serve in a war with a plainly noble purpose, and he feels ‘almost cheated’ that ‘when it was his turn he didn’t have the chance to be part of a moral cause.’” By Clinton’s standard, slaughtering Serbs was “close enough for government work” to a “moral cause.”

    Shortly after the end of the 1999 bombing campaign, Clinton enunciated what his aides labeled the Clinton doctrine: “Whether within or beyond the borders of a country, if the world community has the power to stop it, we ought to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing.” In reality, the Clinton doctrine was that presidents are entitled to commence bombing foreign lands based on any brazen lie that the American media will regurgitate. In reality, the lesson from bombing Serbia is that American politicians merely need to publicly recite the word “genocide” to get a license to kill.

    After the bombing ended, Clinton assured the Serbian people that the United States and NATO agreed to be peacekeepers only “with the understanding that they would protect Serbs as well as ethnic Albanians and that they would leave when peace took hold.” In the subsequent months and years, American and NATO forces stood by as the KLA resumed its ethnic cleansing, slaughtering Serb civilians, bombing Serbian churches and oppressing any non-Muslims. Almost a quarter million Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, and other minorities fled Kosovo after Mr. Clinton promised to protect them. By 2003, almost 70 percent of the Serbs living in Kosovo in 1999 had fled and Kosovo was 95 percent ethnic Albanian.

    But Thaci remained useful for US policymakers. Even though he was widely condemned for oppression and corruption after taking power in Kosovo, Vice President Joe Biden hailed Thaci in 2010 as the “George Washington of Kosovo.” A few months later, a Council of Europe report accused Thaci and KLA operatives of human organ trafficking. The Guardian noted that the report alleged that Thaci’s inner circle “took captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.” The report stated that when “transplant surgeons” were “ready to operate, the [Serbian] captives were brought out of the ‘safe house’ individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.”

    Despite the organ trafficking charge, Thaci was a star attendee at the annual Global Initiative conference by the Clinton Foundation in 2011, 2012, and 2013, where he posed for photos with Bill Clinton. Maybe that was a perk from the $50,000 a month lobbying contract that Thaci’s regime signed with the Podesta Group, comanaged by future Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, as the Daily Caller reported.

    Clinton remains a hero in Kosovo, where a statue of him was erected in the capital, Pristina. The Guardian newspaper noted that the statue showed Clinton “with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999.” It would have been a more accurate representation to depict Clinton standing on a pile of corpses of the women, children, and others killed in the US bombing campaign.

    In 2019, Bill Clinton and his fanatically pro-bombing former secretary of state, Madeline Albright, visited Pristina, where they were “treated like rock stars” as they posed for photos with Thaci. Clinton declared, “I love this country and it will always be one of the greatest honors of my life to have stood with you against ethnic cleansing (by Serbian forces) and for freedom.” Thaci awarded Clinton and Albright medals of freedom “for the liberty he brought to us and the peace to entire region.” Albright has reinvented herself as a visionary warning against fascism in the Trump era. Actually, the only honorific that Albright deserves is “butcher of Belgrade.”

    Clinton’s war on Serbia was a Pandora’s box from which the world still suffers. Because politicians and most of the media portrayed the war against Serbia as a moral triumph, it was easier for the Bush administration to justify attacking Iraq, for the Obama administration to bomb Libya, and for the Trump administration to repeatedly bomb Syria. All of those interventions sowed chaos that continues cursing the purported beneficiaries.

    Bill Clinton’s 1999 bombing of Serbia was as big a fraud as George W. Bush’s conning this nation into attacking Iraq. The fact that Clinton and other top US government officials continued to glorify Hashim Thaci despite accusations of mass murder, torture, and organ trafficking is another reminder of the venality of much of America’s political elite. Will Americans again be gullible the next time that Washington policymakers and their media allies concoct bullshit pretexts to blow the hell out of some hapless foreign land?

  • GloboCap Über Alles
    GloboCap Über Alles

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 23:45

    Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins via ConsentFactory.org,

    So, how are you enjoying the “New Normal” so far? Is it paranoid and totalitarian enough for you? If not … well, hold on, because it’s just getting started. There is plenty more totalitarianism and paranoia still to come.

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    I know, it feels like forever already, but, in fact, it has only been a few months since GloboCap started rolling out the new official narrative. We’re still in the early stages of it. The phase we’re in now is kind of like where we were back in February of 2002, a few months after the 9/11 attacks, when everyone was still in shock, the Patriot Act was just a few months old, and the Department of Homeland Security hadn’t even been created yet.

    You remember how it was back then, when GloboCap was introducing the official “War on Terror” narrative, don’t you?

    OK, maybe you do and maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re too young to remember, or you were caught up in the excitement of the moment and weren’t paying attention to the details. But some of us remember it clearly. We remember watching (and futilely protesting) as GloboCap prepared to invade, destabilize, and restructure the entire Middle East, as countries throughout the global capitalist empire implemented “emergency security measures” (which, 18 years later, are still in effect), as the corporate media bombarded us with official propaganda, jacked up The Fear, and otherwise prepared us for the previous “New Normal” … some of us remember all that clearly.

    Personally, I remember listening to a liberal academic on NPR calmly speculating that, just hypothetically, at some point in the not-too-distant future, we might need to sacrifice our principles a bit, and torture some people, to “keep America safe.” I recounted this to other Americans at the time, among my many other concerns about where the post-9/11 mass hysteria was heading. Most of them told me I was just being paranoid, or that they didn’t really care, because we needed to do whatever was “necessary” to protect Americans, and, in any event, “the terrorists deserved it.” Shortly thereafter, I started making plans to get the hell out of the country.

    I mention that, not to signal my virtue — leaving the U.S.A. didn’t achieve anything, except for improving my standard of living — but to jog your memory, and maybe prompt you to compare that period to the one we are in now. The parallels are overwhelming. The “state of emergency.” The propaganda. The mass hysteria. The mob mentality. The exaggeration of the actual threat. The police-state atmosphere. The suppression of dissent. The constant repetition of the new official narrative. The exhortative catchphrases and meaningless slogans. The confusion. The chaos. The existential fear. And so on. It is all so very familiar.

    I’m referring to the simulated pandemic, of course, but also to the racialized civil unrest and identitarian polarization that GloboCap has fomented throughout the United States, and, to varying degrees, the rest of the empire. I’ve been covering the War on Populism and GloboCap’s “Trump-is-literally-Hitler” propaganda since 2016, so the civil unrest isn’t terribly surprising. But, I confess, I did not see the fake plague coming. Running the two psy-ops together was brilliant. The effect on people has been devastating. Everyone is either depressed or enraged, or in some stage of paranoid paralysis. Some have been so thoroughly terrorized that they are literally refusing to leave their houses. Others are lining up at gun shops. White people are getting down on their knees and publicly washing Black people’s feet in “symbolic demonstrations of forgiveness.” Condiments are changing their names. It’s like we’re all trapped in a gratuitously didactic Netflix zombie-apocalypse series set in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, written, directed, and produced by Spike Lee.

    The official propaganda could not be more Orwellian, nor could people’s willingness to go along with it. It doesn’t even have to appear to make sense. Doublethink has taken over. For example, most of the developed world has been in some form of totalitarian lockdown, and subjected to other police-state measures (like being beaten and arrested for not wearing a mask), for no justifiable reason whatsoever, for going on the last five months, but, according to the corporate media (and the millions of people they have apparently brainwashed), it’s only now that Trump has sent his Homeland Security goons into Portland that, suddenly, “democracy is under attack!”

    But wait … no, I take it back, the Orwellianism gets even more Orwellian. According to GloboCap and its sanctimonious minions, that sentence I just wrote about Portland is racist, because nearly everything you can imagine is racist, or is a potential threat to the public health. Calling riots “riots” is racist. Silence is racist. Free speech is racist. Refusing to wear a mask is racist. The BLM protesters are immune to the virus, but other large gatherings (which, it goes without saying, are probably racist) all have to be banned. Normality, as Americans knew it, is over, and it is never, ever, coming back, because white supremacy caused the pandemic. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland (where life has been going on without mass hysteria) do not exist. They have never existed (and, if they ever did, they were probably racist). Talking on public transportation is deadly. Interacting with children is potentially deadly, as are most other forms of human interaction … unless you’re tearing down a racist statue, or burning down a local family business, while wearing a designer anti-racism mask.

    Seriously, though, just like in 2002, when GloboCap was still rolling out the “War on Terror” narrative, the facts are all available for anyone who cares. The falsification of Covid statistics and hospital capacity figures, the unreliability of the tests, and so on … it has all been repeatedly documented. Anyone with a positive test result who later dies of any cause (including a fatal motorcycle accident) is counted as a “Covid death.” Anyone admitted to a hospital for anything who tests positive for the virus is a “Covid hospitalization.” And, I’m sorry to disappoint my liberal friends (assuming I have any left at this point), but systematic racism and police brutality did not suddenly begin in 2016.

    What suddenly began in 2016 was a concerted effort on the part of GloboCap to put down a growing populist backlash against global capitalism and its soulless ideology. Yes, most of that backlash is neo-nationalist in character, but it also includes a significant number of old-fashioned lefty-types like myself, and a lot of other un-woke folks who aren’t quite ready to embrace their new identities as interchangeable human commodities.

    We are experiencing the culmination of that effort (or what they hope is the culmination of that effort) to put down this motley populist insurgency, and ensure that it never happens again. GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. The lesson is:

    “This is what you get when you fuck around with GloboCap. This is what voting for Trump, Brexit, and all the rest of that ‘populist’ nonsense gets you … global pandemics, civil race wars, riots, lockdowns, economic depression, societal collapse, chaos, fear. Go ahead, fuck around with us some more. We will make you wear ridiculous face masks forever. We will paint little arrows and boxes on the floor to show you where to walk and stand. We will bankrupt your businesses, shut down your schools, psychologically torture your children. We’ll inject them with any fucking thing we want. There is nothing you can do about it. We will make you get down on your knees and apologize for fucking with us, or we will stigmatize you as a ‘racist,’ sic our mobs of fanatics on you, and ‘cancel’ you and your entire family.”

    This, essentially, is the message that GloboCap is delivering to disobedient populists (left or right, it makes no difference; GloboCap doesn’t care which political labels we cling to or slap on each other). It is our final warning to quit playing grab-ass, get with the global capitalist program, and start behaving and thinking as we’re told … unless we want to get locked down again, and ordered to wear things on our faces, and be otherwise ritually humiliated.

    See, the so-called “New Normal” (i.e., the new ideological narrative that GloboCap is rolling out) is actually not that new at all … or, OK, the pathologization part is (and I’ll be paying close attention to that aspect of it), but, basically, it’s just plain old totalitarianism. It isn’t state-totalitarianism, because our world isn’t ruled by nation-states. It is ruled by global capitalism. We are being reminded of that fact at the moment … and being shown what happens if we start to forget it.

    Where we go from here is anyone’s guess. My hunch is, it is only going to get worse until they can get Trump out of office, which Americans are liable to help them do, simply to make the whole nightmare stop. Once he’s gone, they’ll probably retire the fake pandemic, call off the riots, and stage some sort of international celebration of the Rebirth of Democracy, after which they can get finally back to the business of ruthlessly destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the planet, sanitizing history, curing humanity of racism, hate, and other pathologies, and otherwise enforcing rigid conformity to global capitalist ideology.

    Maybe they could get the Hamilton composer to write them a hip hop Deutschlandlied to use as a supranational anthem. They could call it GloboCap Über Alles … it kind of has a ring to it, doesn’t it?

  • Sun Belt States Choose "Third Path" To Confront COVID-19 Without Destroying Economy
    Sun Belt States Choose “Third Path” To Confront COVID-19 Without Destroying Economy

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 23:25

    In a research note published yesterday, a team of Goldman Sachs analysts spotted an ominous potential inflection point for the struggling US labor market: If the nascent ‘recovery’ achieved over the last 2 months loses steam as states reverse their plans to reopen the economy, it could do lasting harm to the labor market, as many of the jobs that disappear won’t ever return.

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    Also included in that note is a level-headed assessment of the current situation in the US. As we wait to see if any other states will follow in California’s footsteps by drastically rolling back its reopening plan, Goldman notes that most of the states in the Sun Belt are opting for a “third path” that differs from the established methods that worked in Europe and parts of Asia (mainland China, and, until recently, Hong Kong).

    In Europe, the most successful countries opted for strict economy crushing lockdowns While In Asia, countries like Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore acted swiftly to snuff out the initial wave of the virus.

    Here’s Goldman:

    “Some of the states that now have major virus problems are taking a third path, using limited measures to confront severe virus spread, with the hope that better-targeted measures can solve the problem at much lower cost. Coming weeks will reveal how well this works. The lower starting growth rate of virus spread means that more incremental measures might be sufficient to stabilize the situation, though they might also take longer to reduce spread to a rate that justifies resuming steps toward reopening.”

    The analysts elaborate on that theme in a section of the note entitled “A Targeted Approach To Virus Control”.

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    Continued rapid virus spread has made the US a notable outlier among advanced economies. The US is performing poorly on most key measures: new cases have risen to an average of 66,000 per day over the last week, nearly every state is reporting rising prevalence of COVID-19 symptoms, and twelve states are below the CDC-recommended threshold for available hospital capacity. We report these and other data daily in our state-level coronavirus tracker to monitor the risk of further reopening reversals.

    State governments see a return to an economically painful full lockdown as only a last resort. The current US strategy to suppress the virus instead emphasizes lower-cost behavioral and policy changes that are targeted to achieve maximum virus reduction at minimum economic cost. So far states have relied on two key policies: mandating mask wearing and restricting high-risk economic activity.

    The first pillar of the current US response is increasing the use of face masks, which we recently showed have a large impact on virus spread. Despite some initial reluctance, a growing number of state and local authorities have imposed mask mandates over the last month. We estimate that the share of the US population subject to a mask mandate has risen from 40% to over 70% over the last month, as shown on the left of Exhibit 1. In the Sun Belt, the share of the population who report wearing a mask in public has risen as the outbreak has grown, as shown on the right of Exhibit 1.

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    The second pillar of the current US response is restricting or shutting down high-risk economic activity. We and other researchers have shown that activities such as indoor dining are highly correlated with virus spread. This suggests that well-targeted restrictions can achieve much of the virus suppression achieved by full lockdowns, but at much lower cost. Exhibit 2 shows that over the last few weeks, states representing about 40% of the US population have put reopening of higher-risk activities on hold, and states representing another 40% of the population have tightened restrictions.

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    Specifically, many states have closed bars and closed or tightened restrictions on indoor dining, and several have also banned or limited public gatherings. Some states including Arizona and California went somewhat further, as Exhibit 3 describes, and other states.

    including New Mexico and Pennsylvania added tighter restrictions just last week. Florida, the state that currently has the highest number of daily new cases per capita in the US, has taken only the limited step of closing bars so far.

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    In many states the new mask mandates and the latest round of reopening reversals are only days to weeks old, and it is too early to know how effective these policies will be. Exhibit 4 shows the latest virus figures for several key states. So far the data show a stabilization of daily new cases in Arizona and a very preliminary stabilization at a high level in California, both of which made policy changes 2-3 weeks ago, but a further rise in cases in Florida, which has made fewer changes, and in Texas, which has not yet seen as much benefit as hoped from measures taken 2-3 weeks ago. The estimated effective reproductive rate remains above 1 in all but Arizona. Overall, we see signs of progress as still tentative and incomplete, though the full impact of the latest round of restrictions has not yet been felt.

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    Can the targeted strategy that these states are relying on succeed? While there is strong evidence that these measures work, it is hard to know if they will be sufficient. The left side of Exhibit 5 shows that countries that successfully suppressed the virus took one of two paths. Some, mostly in Asia, used limited measures to confront a limited problem by acting early. Others, mostly in Europe, acted later but used severe lockdowns to confront a severe problem. US states that successfully combatted the first wave of virus outbreaks also took this second path, as shown on the right of Exhibit 5.

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    Some of the states that now have major virus problems are taking a third path, using limited measures to confront severe virus spread, with the hope that better-targeted measures can solve the problem at much lower cost. Coming weeks will reveal how well this works. The lower starting growth rate of virus spread means that more incremental measures might be sufficient to stabilize the situation, though they might also take longer to reduce spread to a rate that justifies resuming steps toward reopening.

    * * *

    Source: Goldman Sachs

  • Houston Police Respond To Suspected Document Burning At Chinese Consulate
    Houston Police Respond To Suspected Document Burning At Chinese Consulate

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 23:11

    The Houston police and fire departments responded Tuesday night to a reported document fire at the Chinese Consulate.

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    Footage from next door shows what appears to be barrels with burning material inside of them:

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    Via Click2Houston:

    Houston police say they began receiving the reports that documents were being burned just after 8 p.m. at 3417 Montrose Boulevard where the Consulate General of China is located.

    Houston fire officials confirmed they are responding to the scene and HPD officials were needed for traffic control in the area.

    A small amount of smoke could be seen and smelled from outside. Dozens of Houston first responders are at the scene.

    Theories are naturally flying:

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  • Ohio House Speaker Arrested In $60M Bribery Scheme Which Added New Fee To Every Electricity Bill In State
    Ohio House Speaker Arrested In $60M Bribery Scheme Which Added New Fee To Every Electricity Bill In State

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 23:05

    A massive corruption scandal being described as the “largest bribery, money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio” — to the tune of $60 million, has just rocked the Buckeye state.

    On Tuesday the Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder along with four others were arrested for being allegedly part of a scheme to pass legislation for a billion dollar bailout of two failed Ohio nuclear plants which were on the brink of permanent closure. Householder is widely looked upon as Ohio’s third most powerful and influential lawmaker. 

    Federal agents raided his farm Tuesday morning and made the arrest. The AP has described the top Ohio lawmaker as a “driving force” behind the uphill battle to controversially bail out the state’s two nuclear power plants at a significant expense to taxpayers.

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    Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, via AP

    Householder’s adviser Jeffrey Longstreth was also arrested, as well as lobbyist Neil Clark, and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matthew Borges and Juan Cespedes of Columbus-based consulting firm The Oxley Group.

    It appears a classic pay-to-play scandal, but in this case so vast that it is sure to enrage every single Ohioan that pays an electricity bill, considering, according to Axios that—

    “Householder was one of the driving forces behind the nuclear plants’ financial rescue, which added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the plants near Cleveland and Toledo.”

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has called on Householder to resign immediately given the enormity of the charges against him. The linchpin in the government’s case against the five is incriminating statements made during a sting while meeting with undercover agents. 

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    An 80-page criminal complain involving a large-scale FBI investigation details the schemers were engaged in an enterprise which shuffled millions into Householder’s pockets to assist in his bid to secure his position as Ohio House speaker.

    In turn he helped push through “House Bill 6, a billion-dollar bailout that saved two failed, Ohio nuclear power plants from closing,” according to the criminal filing.

    Tens of millions were funneled via the “dark money enterprise” over a total of at least three years, from March 2017 to March 2020.

    Given that much money and the significant length of time, it’s clear it must have involved many more players; indeed, the FBI says more arrests are coming as part of the probe.

    The reality is this: Ohioans will not see this as somehow “remote” – given that not only through state taxes, but especially through the “added fee” to each electricity bill as a result of House Bill 6’s passage, they’ll be on the hook for this for years to come.

  • Tom DeMark Sees The S&P Hitting 3,486 Before The Rally Ends
    Tom DeMark Sees The S&P Hitting 3,486 Before The Rally Ends

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 22:45

    In a world where fundamentals no longer matter to the market, there is still some hope that at least the voodoo that is “chart analysis” perhaps works. If so, the best source of forecasting the future by looking at the past is the man who an icon among technicians: Tom DeMark. And with good reason: while it could certainly could have been a lucky guess, in March, DeMark whose D-Wave strategy is a favorite of such trading legends as Steve Cohen, predicted that a market bottom was forming on the day the S&P 500 ended a 34% plunge (although his projection for the index to drop below 2,100 was off, as the bottom – so far – was 2,191.86, and his call for an 11% rally followed by a range trading proved too conservative).

    So what does DeMark think will happen next? According to Bloomberg, the famous technician sees the rally accelerating from here, and according to his D-Wave forecast the S&P will climb to 3,486 – a new all time high – in the next few weeks as the rally that has gripped the tech sector spills over to the broader market. As a reminder, since the end of Q1, all of the market upside has been thanks to just 10 mega-cap stocks. The other 490 stocks in the S&P500 have gone nowhere as shown in the chart below.

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    DeMark’s target is 7% higher from the current levels and would be 100 points above the all-time high reached in February.

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    “The catch-up will be fast,” DeMark told Bloomberg, adding that “it’s going to catch people off guard”, although one look at the overnight moves, DeMark should probably have been talking about gold and silver which are exploding at this moment. 

    As Bloomberg notes, the prediction was based on DeMark’s “countdown” study that involves comparing a security’s closing price to its highest or lowest levels two days earlier. Cycles of “exhaustion” develop when a pattern continues 13 times. The S&P 500 just produced its sixth count Monday and the Nasdaq 100 was on count 12.

    Looking at the recent surge in stocks, DeMark notes that while Monday’s advance was led by tech darlings, Tuesday resumed a recent trend in which investors seek out laggards, a process of widening market participation that to DeMark usually coincides with the final phase of a rally. Last week, in a rare inversion of the trend observed since the March 23 low, the Nasdaq 100 fell for the first time in three weeks while the S&P 500 advanced, bolstered by industrial and commodity shares.

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    DeMark was less optimistic on the Nasdaq which has soared 19% YTD and is hitting daily record highs: “The Nasdaq is going to struggle,” DeMark said. “It may wait for the S&P 500 to record its high” before a meaningful selloff.

    And there you have it: that said, if DeMark is indicative of the other trends that dominate this bizarro, insane “market” the best trade here may be to fade everything the famed technician is recommending and just go long the Nasdaq while shorting everything else. After all, that’s the trade that has become synonymous with central bank takeover of capital markets, and there is nothing that suggests this creeping Sovietization of “markets” will ever end.

  • Will The Cultural Marxists Succeed In Cancelling The Biden-Trump Debates?
    Will The Cultural Marxists Succeed In Cancelling The Biden-Trump Debates?

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 22:25

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Reminiscent of its desire to cancel all uncomfortable discussion on college campuses across the nation, the Democrats are determined to ax a series of scheduled debates between the apparent Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, and the Republican incumbent, Donald Trump. If they succeed, this would be the crowning achievement of the radical left.

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    The Democratic strategy for getting Joe Biden into the White House without ever emerging from his basement bunker is a stroke of evil genius. Here’s how it works: With the unconditional support of the mainstream media, the left has promoted the narrative, constructed on the back of arguably biased opinion polls (here, here and here, for example), that the heir apparent for the Democratic presidential nomination enjoys an insurmountable lead over Trump.

    This allows the Biden camp to argue that it would be more reasonable for their 77-year-old candidate to outright snub the debates, which have been a formal part of the U.S. election process since the 1960 epic showdown between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Only in the current PC climate, when cancel culture has hijacked rational thought, is it possible to imagine a scenario when the public might be denied the right to weigh the results of a formal clash of ideas between two veteran statesmen, one of whom will go on to lead a nation of over 300 million souls.

    And then there is the manipulation of Covid-19 to make the case that Trump has proven himself to be unfit to hold office due to his handling of the outbreak. Such one-sided articles have become standard fare around the country, as the media never stops reminding the public that the number of Covid cases is on the rise. What the media almost never mentions, however, is that death rates from the virus have been steadily falling – over 75 percent – since its peak in April. Instead, they cynically declare that the positive results are being “weaponized by the right to claim a hollow victory in the face of shameless failure.”

    So what is it? A “hollow victory” or a “shameless failure”? It certainly can’t be both. While the victory against Covid, however temporary, might be seen as “hollow” to the Liberal camp, a victory is still a victory, and should be duly reported as such. But of course nobody should anticipate such candor in a major election season.

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    The next step in the Democratic seek-and-destroy campaign is to portray the ‘Orange man’ as unhinged to the point of not being capable of admitting defeat in the event he should lose in November. In other words, Trump might respond in the same way that the Democrats responded to Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, i.e. not very sportsmanlike. Or, alternatively, the Biden-Trump showdown will never be resolved because the Republican base will become so demoralized by the poll numbers that Trump will simply toss in the proverbial towel before Election Day. That preposterous, unimaginable notion was posited by none other than Fox News, which is considered to be the last major media company not overtly hostile to Trump.

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    This sort of warped rationale is the same type that led New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to argue that Biden should not debate Trump until, first, the U.S. president releases his tax returns, and, second, a “real-time fact-checking team” can correct any “misleading statements, phony numbers or outright lies” that either candidate may tell. Perhaps that government ‘ministry of truth’ will operate in much the same manner that Twitter’s internal watchdog monitors user comments. Should the question of mail-in ballots, for example, come up in the debates, we can predict with near certainty how the line judges will call the shot.

    Speaking of mail-in ballots, the Covid-19 pandemic has proven to be yet another blessing without disguise to the Biden campaign (in addition to Russiagate, impeachment and race riots), in that it provides a compelling reason to keep Biden locked in his basement and out of the spotlight, where his gaffe-prone media appearances put to task his suspiciously high poll numbers. It also offers the possibility for states to organize mail-in ballots, which, despite whatever Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey believes, are severely open to the risk of manipulation.

    Finally, the Cultural Marxists, formally known as the Democratic Party, by exaggerating the full extent of the coronavirus, are able to affect Trump’s ability for attracting massive crowds at his political rallies – a charm Biden has never possessed – thus dampening overall enthusiasm for his message.

    All in all, the Cultural Marxists enjoy an array of methods for continuing with their cancel tactics, to the point of possibly cancelling Trump’s ability to prove once and for all Biden’s cognitive abilities, as well as his own presidential qualities. It is an even the American people deserve to witness, yet one that may fall the wayside of cancel culture’s traveling circus.

    Joe Biden and Donald Trump are scheduled to have three debates, the first on Sept. 29 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., Oct. 15 in Miami, and a final debate on Oct. 22 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. The vice presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

  • "Bodies Everywhere": 14 Shot In Chicago Funeral Home During Memorial For Shooting Victimg
    “Bodies Everywhere”: 14 Shot In Chicago Funeral Home During Memorial For Shooting Victimg

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 22:10

    While US progressive leaders and the mainstream media hypocritically decided many years ago to avert their eyes from the constant deadly violence in the liberal bastion of Chicago, pretending instead that the daily murders in this “gun free” mecca don’t really happen…

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    … tonight’s events are just too gruesome to be ignore: as CBS Chicago reports,  no less than 14 people have been shot and wounded near a funeral home in the Auburn Gresham community. Ironically, the funeral was a memorial service for a homicide victim.

    “All we saw was just bodies laying everywhere,” witness Arnita Gerder told NBC Chicago.  “Shot up everywhere, all over. Legs, stomach, back, all over the place. We thought it was a war out here.”

    At least 60 shell casings were located at the scene of the shooting.

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    The shooting took place at 79th & Carpenter streets while a funeral service was taking place. “There was some kind of planned ambush outside the funeral home, where a memorial service was going on for a homicide victim,” the report said. 

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    Officials had previously said that 9 people were transported to hospitals from the scene. The fire department confirmed 2 additional victims were found blocks away, near 63rd Street, getting themselves to the hospital.  One woman was reportedly “shot multiple times”. 

    People at the scene said that they were inside the funeral home when the shooting started – some were covered in blood after the incident. 

    CBS 2’s Charlie De Mar spoke to a woman who was part of the funeral and had blood on her jeans; she did not know whose blood it was.

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    De Mar is told some victims walked into hospitals, and officers even took some victims to hospitals.

    One person of interest was being interviewed Tuesday night.

    Some law enforcement personnel in military fatigues were also seen according to CBS 2.

    Crime statistics indicated there were 13 murders last month in the area, compared with just three in June 2019. There were five murders in the area just last week.  For the broader Chicago area, earlier today CPD revealed the following YTD crime stats:

    • 417 murders in 2020 vs. 275 in 2019.
    • 1654 shootings in 2020 vs. 1125 in 2019.
    • 6 murder victims were ages 1-4 in ‘20.

  • Yale Epidemiologist: Hydroxychloroquine Could Save 100,000 Lives If Widely Deployed
    Yale Epidemiologist: Hydroxychloroquine Could Save 100,000 Lives If Widely Deployed

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 21:45

    Yale epidemiology professor Dr. Harvey Risch told Fox News‘s “Ingraham Angle” that he thinks hydroxychloroquine could save 75,000 to 100,000 lives if widely used to treat COVID-19, and that it’s unfortunate that a “propaganda war” has been waged on the commonly prescribed drug which is not based on “medical facts.”

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    “There are many doctors that I’ve gotten hostile remarks about saying that all the evidence is bad for it and, in fact, that is not true at all,” Risch said on Monday, adding that he believes the drug should be used as a prophylactic for front-line healthcare workers, as has been done in India.

    Researchers at the Henry Ford Health System in Southeast Michigan have found that early administration of hydroxychloroquine makes hospitalized patients substantially less likely to die.

    The study, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, determined that hydroxychloroquine provided a “66 percent hazard ratio reduction,” and hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin a 71 percent reduction, compared with neither treatment.

    In-hospital mortality was 18.1 percent overall; 13.5 percent with just hydroxychloroquine, 22.4 percent with azithromycin alone, and 26.4 percent with neither drug. “Prospective trials are needed” for further review, the researchers note, even as they concluded: “In this multi-hospital assessment, when controlling for COVID-19 risk factors, treatment with hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality.” –Fox News

    “All the evidence is actually good for it when it is used in outpatient uses. Nevertheless, the only people who actually say that are a whole pile of doctors who are on the front lines treating those patients across the country and they are the ones who are at risk being forced not to do it,” Risch added, arguing that the MSM refuses to cover the benefits of the drug, and is actively silencing those trying to address the efficacy of HCQ.

    Imagine how many people have died thanks to the media’s ‘propaganda war.’

    “Our results do differ from some other studies,” said Dr. Marcus Zervos, head of the Henry Ford Health System’s infectious diseases unit. “What we think was important in ours … is that patients were treated early. For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with COVID.”

  • Twitter Targets QAnon: Nukes 7,000 Accounts, Restricts 150,000 More
    Twitter Targets QAnon: Nukes 7,000 Accounts, Restricts 150,000 More

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 21:25

    Twitter has decided the latest threat to society are QAnon followers – with the social media giant banning 7,000 accounts and limiting the reach of 150,000 more in a widespread crackdown against people who believe President Trump is part of a plan to take down the Deep State.

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    According to NBC News, the 7,000 QAnon account bans were in response to “breaking its rules on targeted harassment,” while the 150,000 other accounts will no longer appear in ‘recommended follows,’ nor will any of their content be included in ‘trends’ and search.

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    NBC News‘ Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny point to the recent harassment of “TV personality and author Chrissy Teigen,” who deleted 60,000 tweets after her history of sexualizing children, frequent pizza references, and an unsupported rumor that she flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘lolita express’ resulted in QAnon followers and others suggesting she’s a pedophile.

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    While her strange tweets were real, evidence that she flew on Epstein’s infamous pedo plane appears to have been fabricated. While several articles have been written about QAnon followers harassing Teigen over the Epstein connection, somehow they glossed over her tweets about children.

    This type of harassment campaign is known as “swarming” or “brigading,” and Twitter said those swarms will no longer be allowed on the platform. Twitter will ban users who threaten users during QAnon-related swarms, and limit the reach and search visibility of those who participate in them.

    A Twitter spokesperson said this sort of anti-harassment policy could apply to other groups that are primarily motivated by targeted harassment in the future. –NBC News

    So, given the recent media attention we’re guessing Teigen’s ‘targeted harassment’ is what prompted Twitter’s QAnon crackdown – a move which might backfire and make people more inclined to follow the movement, according to journalist Paul Joseph Watson.

    What is QAnon?

    According to Deborah Franklin via AmericanThinker.com:

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    Q and the ever-growing worldwide movement it’s inspired have been the objects of fascination, mockery and hatred, but of surprisingly little serious analysis.

    Q first appeared in October 2017 on an anonymous online forum called 4Chan, posting messages that implied top-clearance knowledge of upcoming events. More than 3,000 messages later, Q has created a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity. Q’s followers in the QAnon community faithfully analyze every detail of Q’s drops, which are compiled here and here.

    The mainstream media has published hundreds of articles attacking Q as an insane rightwing conspiracy, particularly after President Trump seemed to publicly confirm his connection to it.  At a North Carolina rally in 2019, Trump made a point of drawing attention to a baby wearing a onesie with a big Q.

    In recent weeks, the tempo of Trump’s spotlighting of Q has accelerated, with the President retweeting Q followers twenty times in one day. Trump has featured Q fans in his ads and deployed one of Q’s signature phrases (“These people are sick”) at his rallies. The President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has also retweeted Q followers.

    Q has noted that the media never asks Trump the obvious question: What do you think of Q? To Q followers, the reason they don’t ask is obvious. They’re afraid of the answer.

    In the meantime, Q’s influence continues to spread. Protestors in Hong Kong, Iran, and France have held up Q signs and chanted Q quotes. Q’s revelations are uniting people all over the world who want freedom.

    If you’re unfamiliar with Q or only know it through the media’s attacks, I’d like to provide a brief introduction to this extraordinary phenomenon. I’ve followed Q since the first drop, and I’ve grown increasingly impressed by the accuracy, breadth and depth of Q’s messages. Q followers were prepared long in advance for the easing of hostilities with North Korea, the deflation of the mullahs of Iran, and the discovery of Ukraine as a hotbed of corruption for American politicians. They knew a great deal about Jeffrey Epstein’s activities before the public did and anticipate even more shocking revelations to come. As Q likes to say, “Future proves past.” As Q’s predictions come true, they lend retroactive credibility to the entire enterprise.

    Q’s followers believe that Q is a military intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide the public with secret information. Many Q followers think the Q team was founded by Admiral Michael Rogers, the former Director of the National Security Agency and former Commander of US Cyber Command.  Some suspect that Dan Scavino, White House Director of Social Media, is part of the team, because the high quality of Q’s writing has the luster of a communications expert.

    Q is a new weapon in the game of information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to communicate directly with the public. Think of Q as a companion to Trump’s twitter. Whereas Trump communicates bluntly and directly, Q is cryptic, sly and subtle, offering only clues that beg for context and connection.

    Here’s the way it works: Q posts messages (also known as “drops” or “crumbs”) on an anonymous online forum, which are discussed, analyzed, and critiqued by the board’s inhabitants. (The forum has changed a few times after massive online attacks.) Hundreds of social media accounts then spread Q’s latest posting to worldwide followers who share their research, analysis, and interpretations of Q’s latest information.

    I’ve compiled a list of Q’s most famous catch phrases and tried to put them into context.

    The Great Awakening: We’re living in a unique time in which ordinary citizens around the world are collaborating to understand and expose the corrupt system that rules us. The system thrives on deception, and the overwhelming task of The Great Awakening is to penetrate its lies and reveal the truth.

    • The first phase of The Great Awakening is heightened awareness of the Deep State – the interlocking governmental entities that operate outside the law to expand their own power. Elections and popular opinion don’t impact the ability of the Deep State to enforce its agenda.

    • The second phase of The Great Awakening investigates the Deep State’s alliance with other powerful sectors: the media, Hollywood, charities and non-profits, public schools and universities, religious organizations, medical, scientific and financial institutions, and multinational corporations. This phase can be painful, as you discover that “those you trust the most” (in Q’s phrase) are deceiving you. Beloved celebrities, religious leaders, doctors, educators, innovators, and do-gooders are all in on the hoax.

    • The third phase of The Great Awakening is perhaps the most painful of all. The people who rule us are not merely amoral creatures who view us as collateral damage in their drive for money and power. It’s scarier than that. The potentates we serve are actively trying to harm us. That’s their goal. We’re under coordinated attack.

    Dark To Light: Q tells us that what our rulers fear the most is exposure. Bringing their crimes out of protected darkness into the light of public scrutiny destroys their power to deceive. And as their power fades, the darkness of our divided, violent world will yield to the light of freedom, cooperation, and peace.

    Where We Go One We Go All (WWG1WGA): Q’s most famous phrase expresses the worldwide egalitarian nature of the movement.  Every country is suffering from the system’s oppression, and the whole world will benefit from a rebirth of freedom. In this unique movement, anonymous citizens work in collaboration with the highest-ranking military leaders and the president, and everyone’s contributions are valued. When commenters on the board have thanked Q for his service, Q has replied that no one is above and no one is below. “We work for you.”

    These people are sick. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of The Great Awakening is coming to terms with the depravity of our rulers, whom Q has called The Cult. Jeffrey Epstein’s story has helped to awaken people to some of the elite’s crimes. The mysterious temple on Epstein’s island hints at possible future revelations that are frightening in their scope. Q followers believe that The Cult engages in ritual practices that enshrine the shedding of blood and which prey on the innocence of children. The sickness in their souls thrives on brutality, war, and terror. These disclosures will be tough for the public to take.

    Trust the plan. The presumed military leaders who created Q and who protected Trump throughout the election and presidency have created a precise path to victory. Despite the seeming chaos of daily events, a steady progression of victories is taking place. The plan includes offensive maneuvers against the Cult’s financial power, legal standing, human supply chains, and military capacity. And, of crucial importance, the plan attacks the Cult’s ability to control the narrative that shapes what the public believes. In this high-stakes game of information warfare, Q plays a vital role by empowering ordinary citizens (like me) to spread the truth.

    They want you divided. The hatred that’s growing between races, classes, age groups, religions, and political parties is purposely fomented by the Cult. The more we’re divided and focused on attacking each other, the weaker we become. Q urges us to stay together and to fight the Cult, not each other.

    They think you’re sheep. The Cult believes, as Q says, “you’ll follow the stars” – the celebrities in media, Hollywood, and academia who tell you, in coordinated fashion, what you’re supposed to think. Their contempt for you makes them confident they can control you and ensure your surrender to any agenda. Q, on the other hand, offers only clues and can only be understood by high-grade critical thinking, spurred by constant crowd-sourced criticism and reassessment. The essence of the Q movement is to think for yourself.

    Bigger than you can imagine. Expand your thinking. Q encourages us to reevaluate everything we think we know.  The Cult may date back to ancient times, and through its powerful families, it might have manipulated historical events in ways that we haven’t suspected. The Cult may also possess advanced technology and medical cures that have not been released to the public. One aspect that may be “bigger than you can imagine” is the unfathomable scale of theft from our national coffers, as funds for foreign aid and wars wind up in the Cult’s pockets.

    Track resignations. Beneath the surface, a broad and deep cleansing of corrupt players is taking place. Q asked us to track resignations to understand the scope of activity. (Here’s a website that took him up on his request: www.resignation.info) Resignations, retirements, and unexpected deaths from major players in politics, media, charities, and corporations all point to possible deals being made quietly without the public fanfare of arrests. For me, a notable resignation is Eric Schmidt’s abrupt exit from Google, which received little media attention. Schmidt resigned on December 21st, 2017, the same day that President Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency related to “serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world.” Further context for Schmidt’s resignation may be inferred from this photo of him in North Korea, apparently in an advisory role. Standing next to him is Bill Richardson, former Governor of New Mexico, the state in which Epstein had a secret ranch. Richardson has been accused by one of Epstein’s victims.

    Their need for symbols will be their downfall.  The Cult uses certain symbols over and over again, which may serve some ritualistic need, but makes them vulnerable to detection. Q followers are familiar with Y-shaped horns that mimic those of the goat deity Baphomet, owls, pyramids, one eye encased within a pyramid, red shoes, bandaged fingers, and other repeating symbols, including the mysterious black eye that afflicts so many famous people. The Q Army also knows the coded pedophile symbols listed by the FBI. When Q drew attention to the design of Epstein’s temple, alert Q followers noticed how similar it is to the set design of a famous talk show. And the red ring on the hand of dead terrorist Qassam Soleimani prompted Q followers to compile images of similar rings on the hands of powerful people.  An excellent source for understanding how these symbols are incorporated into pop culture targeting the young through music videos, TV shows and movies can be found at vigilantcitizen.com.

    Nothing can stop what is coming. Nothing. Now comes the pain.  The headlines on any given day may sound discouraging for those who want justice to prevail. But these setbacks are temporary, as a juggernaut of justice heads our way. As Q likes to say: We have it all. Massive amounts of irrefutable evidence await the criminals who try to evade their reckoning in court. For those who worry about Trump’s ability to overcome impeachment, election fraud, and assassination attempts, Q assures us: Patriots in control. And no legal tricks can help the criminals escape the ultimate judgment of public disgust.  Q promises us that the day is coming when they can’t walk down the street.

    You are the news now.  The “fake news” decried by President Trump is losing credibility and audience by the day. Q has exposed the 4 A.M. drops that provide the daily talking points to media personnel, so they can all parrot the same propaganda. Q has also named various journalists whom he says take bribes. The media is concentrated within six powerful companies; on the other hand, the Q army is vast, voluntary, and anonymous. Q assures us that our efforts to disseminate the truth through social media and conversations with family and friends are having a huge impact. We are the news now.

    We know what happens in the end. God wins. Many times, Q has asked us to pray. He’s quoted the famous Biblical lines of Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” We’re living through monumental times. It’s comforting that Q believes that if we work together, God wins.

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    A follow-up can be read here.

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    Will Twitter’s recent crackdowns eventually drive people off the platform?

  • Fed Policy Simplified: Lower, Longer, And ZIRP Until Something (Or Everything) Breaks
    Fed Policy Simplified: Lower, Longer, And ZIRP Until Something (Or Everything) Breaks

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 21:05

    Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

    The current interest rate cycle began in August of 2019 when the Fed cut rates from a cycle high of 2.4% to 2.1%.  The Fed was then fighting the “repo-crisis” in which the Fed was incapable of setting interest rates…and gasp…free-market based interest rates were the result.  And, shocker, they were not “lower for longer”.  So, just thought put interest rate cycles in perspective and detail why I anticipate this will be the longest and lowest interest rate cycle with likely zero recovery of those rate cuts.

    To begin, the chart below shows interest rate cycles from 1981 through 2020 (and likely through 2040)…and note they grow progressively longer, starting and ending lower, and with less interest rate recovery.  Based on this pattern and the macro’s driving this, this current cycle is likely to be decades at zero (or more likely moving to NIRP) with no rate hikes.

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    To gauge the changing dynamics of the interest rate cycles, the chart below details the DEPTH of the cut (the percentage from starting rate to cycle low rate), the DURATION (the number of months from initial rate cut to initial rate cut of the next cycle), and the RECOVERY (how much rates are hiked in the hiking phase from the cycle low rate).  Again, the depth of cuts moves progressively greater (essentially 100% for last two cycles), duration stretching from less than a year to over a decade, and recovery moving from outright rate hikes to less than 50% recovery of previous cuts.  Again, this the current cycle, we already have 100% cuts and I anticipate something on the order of twenty years of zero rates meaning zero recovery.

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    To put this into perspective, below I show the change per interest rate cycle in full time employees, working age population (15 to 64 year-olds), and federal debt.  Obviously, the cycles are of differing years, but still note the symmetry in the inverse relationships of rising interest rates/minimal debt during periods of high working age population growth…and falling rates to allow reliance on debt during minimal working age population growth.  In just eleven months of the current interest rate cycle, federal debt has already risen by $4.4 trillion (more than any entire cycle prior to ’07) while working age population is declining (not due to Covid-19 but decades of negative fertility coupled with fast declining immigration since 2008, essentially hitting zero in 2020).  The ZIRP policy coupled with minimal working age population growth (resulting in minimal to no jobs growth over this cycle) will mean a blow-out of federal debt unlike anything nations outside of Zimbabwe or Venezuela have ever seen.

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    To quantify the situation, the chart below shows the parabolic rise in the growth in federal debt per the net growth per full time employee.  I anticipate this current period will see something like a ten fold increase in the growth of federal debt per full time job net gained as debt soars and the US struggles to simply re-employ those who have lost their positions.

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    Usually I’d wrap it up by showing the change per interest rate cycle…but it’s late and you don’t pay me enuf to get that kind of service…so, below are the changes per presidential term since Reagan took office in January of 1981 (under Trump, I assume by inauguration day, January 2021 federal debt will be sitting at $28.2 T, GDP of $20.6 T, Fed BS of $7.8 T).  And I assume all three of the trend arrows below will be continuing their path regardless a Trump or Biden victory.

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    Invest accordingly.

    Bonus Chart – Demographic driven interest rates incenting ever more debt / asset inflation, supported by unlimited Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion. 

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    Regardless Trump or Biden, MMT and basic universal income are here to stay…unless somebody notices we’re broke, the markets are a farce, the dollar is garbage, and debt in a depopulationary/deflationary/depressionary world is toxic!?!

  • US Blacklists 11 Chinese Firms For Uighur Forced Labor, DNA & Human Hair Collection
    US Blacklists 11 Chinese Firms For Uighur Forced Labor, DNA & Human Hair Collection

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 20:45

    Washington has its sights set on China’s long-rumored ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority Uighur population amid the continued Trump administration sanctions pile on.

    Early this week the US Commerce Department added eleven Chinese companies to its economic black list, citing human rights violations in the Uighur-dominant region of western Xinjiang.

    Specifically the ban on US companies doing business with the eleven Chinese firms arises from allegations they are using Chinese Muslims in forced labor situations.

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    The announcement of the new economic blacklist followed a weekend New York Times report which detailed Uighurs being used as essentially slave labor to make Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

    The Times report detailed that “several Chinese companies are using Uighur labor from a contentious government program to produce P.P.E. during the pandemic.”

    Some of the equipment even made it to the United States, as well as other buyers around the globe.

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    Recent Reuters photo of what China’s government calls a “vocational skills education center” in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, via FOX/Reuters.

    In addition to widespread allegations of forced labor, in some instanced Uighurs are being allegedly used as unwilling human subjects in genetic research, as Reuters reports:

    Among them are numerous textile companies and two firms the government said were conducting genetic analyses used to further the repression of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.

    It was the third group of companies and institutions in China added to the U.S. blacklist, after two rounds in which the Trump administration cited 37 entities it said were involved in China’s repression in Xinjiang.

    “Beijing actively promotes the reprehensible practice of forced labor and abusive DNA collection and analysis schemes to repress its citizens,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.

    In another ghastly example, one company is said to be mass collecting human hair from Uighur prisoners to use in wig products:

    Also on the banned roster is Hetian Haolin Hair Accessories Co. On May 1, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it was halting imports of the company’s hair products, citing evidence of forced labor.

    On July 1, CBP seized in Newark a shipment of almost 13 tons of hair products worth over $800,000 with human hair that it said originated in Xinjiang.

    The NYT story was released just as newly resurfaced footage allegedly showing bound and blindfolded Chinese Muslims being loaded onto train cars went viral.

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    China’s foreign ministry rejected the allegations and urged the US to “correct its mistakes” alongside similar calls to the UK, which is increasingly lockstep in waging a pressure campaign against Beijing. 

  • US Suffers Biggest Jump In COVID-19 Deaths Since May 29: Live Updates
    US Suffers Biggest Jump In COVID-19 Deaths Since May 29: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 20:36

    Summary:

    • US suffers biggest daily death toll since May 29
    • Texas deaths increase by 131
    • California reports another 9,231 cases
    • Americas saw 900k+ new cases last week
    • Vermont lowest case count in the country
    • Arizona hospitalizations fall for 4th day
    • Fla daily cases below 10k for first time in a week
    • Florida suffers another 134 deaths, ICU capacity hits 130%
    • Victoria reports 374 new cases
    • Russia reports just 5,842 new cases
    • Beijing requires all foreign travelers to show negative COVID-19 test results
    • India’s Delhi region confirms fewest new cases in 6 weeks
    • US reports roughly 62k new cases yesterday
    • Iran suffers record death toll
    • The EU has reportedly reached a deal on rescue fund

    * * *

    Update (2000ET): For the first time since May 29, the US suffered more than 1,000 deaths in a single day yesterday, according to the COVID-19 Tracking Project.

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    While deaths haven’t surged to new highs like daily cases, just the fact that we’re now seeing more than 1,000 deaths a day is enough to validate the doomsayers.

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    While the trend in the South is still not very encouraging, the Midwest is showing some promising progress.

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    Arizona is suffering more deaths even as new cases and hospitalizations decline. In Georgia, a surge in new deaths has intensified anxieties as Gov Kemp is embroiled in a legal battle with the Mayor of Atlanta over mandatory mask orders.

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    Nevada, Oregon and Tennessee also reported their highest daily death tolls yet, per the NYT. We won’t know the final tally until tomorrow, but it’s doubtful Tuesday’s tally will overtake the 2,752 deaths reported on April 15, which remains the single-day record for the US.

    While the decline in hospitalizations is certainly encouraging, the surge in deaths might be enough to push California and other states back into full-on lockdowns.

    * * *

    Update (1655ET): Texas reported its latest numbers, with 9,305 new cases, and 131 new deaths, according to the latest numbers from the state’s department of health

    * * *

    Update (1415ET): California just reported another 9,231 new cases, compared with 6,846 yesterday, bringing the statewide total to 400,769 COVID-19 cases.

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    And the state’s biggest hot spot remains: LA.

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    Update (1324ET): Almost 900,000 new cases and nearly 22,000 deaths were reported last week in the Americas, with Brazil, Mexico and the US reporting most of the new cases and deaths.

    That;s according to data from the Pan American Health Organization and Dr. Carissa Etienne, its director, who routinely shares her analysis with reporters.

    “The Covid-19 pandemic is showing no signs of slowing down in our region,” Etienne said. The region has reported 7.7 million cases and more than 311,000 deaths since July 20. .

    * * *

    Update (1300ET): Vermont Gov. Phil Scott reported today that Vermont now has the lowest coronavirus case count in the country, surpassing even Hawaii, which defied early fears about vulnerability to the virus and ended up seeing almost no cases.

    Gov Scott said Vermont’s positivity rate is among the lowest – if not the lowest – in the country. The state has seen almost no hospitalizations.

    The state’s most recent COVID-19 linked death occurred on June 16, more than 30 days ago.

    The state has confirmed only 1,366 cases.

    * * *

    Update (1120ET): Arizona reported another 3,500 new cases on Tuesday (numbers are reported with a 24 hour delay), bringing its total to 148,683.The state reported 134 additional deaths on Tuesday morning. The fatalities included 77 older deaths added to the rolls, and 57 newly reported deaths.

    They brought the state’s totals to 148,683 COVID-19 cases and 2,918 deaths.

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    Hospitals and ICU units have seen the number of occupied beds fall. Arizona’s 7-day average for new cases has been under 3,100 for the past four days after peaking at 3,844 on July 6.

    The positive rate for last week has fallen to 16%, which is higher than health officials would like but still the lowest level in more than a month.

    The number of Arizona’s confirmed or suspected COVID-19 inpatients decreased Monday to 3,041, the lowest level since July 2, declining for the 4th consecutive day.

    * * *

    Update (1034ET): A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee focused on investigations is holding a hearing with the CEOs of five pharmaceutical companies about the race to find a vaccine.

    Meanwhile, Florida just reported its latest COVID-19 daily numbers. New cases came to 9,373 (+2.6%), which is below the 7-day average of +3.5%. Another 134 deaths were reported across the state, which is the second-largest daily death toll yet. Notably, it marked the first time in a week that Florida saw fewer than 10k new cases in a day.

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    The new cases brought Florida’s total to 369,834. Hospitalizations declined by 11 on Tuesday, falling to 9,443. Though in Miami-Dade, ICU capacity continued to climb, hitting 130.2%, roughly even with yesterday’s total.

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    With 77,160 tests run, the percentage positive is 13.62%, the latest sign that the number of new cases has peaked, even though the 7-day average for deaths has climbed to a new record.

    * * *

    As we begin our COVID-19 news rundown for Tuesday, the Australian state of Victoria reported 374 new cases of coronavirus and three deaths on Tuesday as mask wearing will become mandatory in the state, a large swath of which (the city of Melbourne) is already under lockdown.

    Yesterday, BBG reported that many Russian elites have  been injected with an experimental COVID-19 vaccine as early as April, a story that, if accurate, would appear to undermine the UK’s claims that Russia-backed hackers stole British vaccine research.

    On Tuesday, Russia reported 5,842 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its total infection tally to 783,328, still the fourth largest tally in the world, although the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 countries – the US, Brazil and India – are pulling further and further ahead.

    Russia’s coronavirus response center said 153 people had died in the past 24 hours, pushing Russia’s death toll to 12,580.

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    In the first sign that India’s outbreak may have finally peaked after the country reported a record 40k+ new cases in  one day, the Indian Union territory of Delhi has registered fewer than 1,000 new cases in a day for the first time in 6 weeks. The chief minister of the region reported Monday night that the region reported just 954 cases the prior day.

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    Though markets seesawed briefly after the news was released, the Lancet’s publication of the results from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine candidate’s Phase 1/2 trial predictably sent stocks ripping higher.

    In China, after moving to reopen international air travel more quickly than the US had anticipated, officials imposed new rules on Tuesday for foreign passengers arriving in the country: All will now be required to provide negative COVID-19 test results before they board any China-bound flights. The tests must be from 5 days before the flight, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement.

    Beijing has also announced plans to provide free COVID-19 tests to residents of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang which is experiencing an outbreak.

    The EU has reportedly managed to reach a deal to boost the bloc’s post-pandemic economies after Charles Michel, president of the European Council and chair of the summit, offered compromises over the €750 billion ($860 billion) recovery fund that will be the first fiscal vehicle jointly funded by the EU27 members. The “Frugal Four” have apparently shown a willingness to accept the following adjustments: Outright non-repayable grants will account for just €390 billion ($446 billion) compared with the €500 billion originally proposed. Disbursements will also be linked to governments observing the rule of law.

    Around the world, more than 14.7 million people have been diagnosed with the virus. Nearly 610,000 of these have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The US has recorded nearly 141,000 deaths, the most in the world.

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    Worldometer counter roughly 62,000 new cases in the US reported yesterday, as the daily totals continue to slow.

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    In Japan, five new novel coronavirus patients have been identified at US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa.

    In Iran, public health authorities have recorded yet another record death toll with 229 deaths from the new coronavirus in the past 24 hours, health ministry figures showed. Iran, the Middle East country hardest hit by the pandemic, started relaxing its lockdown back in April.

  • Smithsonian Institution Explains That 'Rationality' & 'Hard Work' Are Racist
    Smithsonian Institution Explains That ‘Rationality’ & ‘Hard Work’ Are Racist

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 20:25

    Submitted by Frederick Hess and RJ Martin, via Real Clear

    In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests over police brutality, interest in “anti-racist” education has exploded among educators and advocates. The case that educators should seek to combat racism seems self-evident. What’s less clear is how the admirable cause of “anti-racism” is fueling, in some corners, the inclination to denounce universal virtues and useful skills as the product of “white culture.”

    Witness last week’s contretemps at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum, which bills itself as “the only national museum devoted exclusively” to educating the public on these topics, recently debuted the online guide “Talking about Race.” The guide included a chart cataloguing the “aspects and assumptions” of “white culture” that “have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States.”

    What are these sinister aspects of “white culture,” you ask? Well, according to the Smithsonian, values like “hard work,” “self-reliance,” “be[ing] polite,” and timeliness are all a product of the “white dominant culture.” Indeed, it turns out that conventional grammar, Christianity, the notion that “intent counts” in courts of law, and the scientific method and its emphasis on “objective, rational linear thinking” are all proprietary to “white culture.”

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    There are several things that might be said about all this. But the place to start may be by observing just how insidious it is to teach black children to reject intellectual and personal traits that promote personal and civic success — in the U.S. or anywhere else. After all, in what land are students well-served when they’re encouraged not to work hard, make decisions, think rationally, or be polite and on time? Among the extraordinarily accomplished people honored by the museum, those such as Frederick Douglass; Harriet Tubman; Jackie Robinson; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Toni Morrison; John Lewis; Oprah Winfrey; Michael Jordan; Condoleezza Rice; and Barack Obama might be surprised to learn that hard work and rational thinking are somehow alien to black culture.

    A 2020 National Association of Colleges and Employers poll found that four in five employers expected job applicants to exhibit a strong work ethic, the ability to work in a team, and analytical thinking skills. If one asks parents — of any race — what values they want their kids to learn, more than four out of five will similarly name concepts like “hard work,” “being well-mannered,” and “being responsible.” In fact, black parents are one to three percent more likely than white parents to think traits like “hard work,” “being well-mannered,” and “persistence” are “important to teach children.”

    This all makes obvious sense. These are the traits that make for good neighbors and colleagues, and support strong communities. Perhaps we’ve blinkered vision, but we’re still looking for the culture, anywhere, where parents say that they’d like their children to slack off, be rude, and shirk responsibility.

    After an online outcry, the Smithsonian removed the chart on Thursday night — but not with any denunciation of the chart’s content, only the bland understatement that the chart turned out to “not contribute to the productive discussion” they had wished for. Of course, the lack of “productive discussion” shouldn’t have surprised, given the shoddy scholarship it reflected. The original chart contained a single footnote linking to a one-page PDF asserting, sans evidence, that traits such as “hard work,” “self-reliance,” and politeness “are common characteristics of most U.S. White people most of the time.”

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    Not surprisingly given this foundation, the Smithsonian’s chart was rife with dubious claims and questionable assumptions. The idea that Christianity belongs to white culture could come as a surprise to the 72 percent of black Americans who identify as Christian, especially when only 65 percent of white Americans do so. The idea that timeliness and objectivity are the province of white culture would probably come as a surprise to air traffic controllers or cardiovascular surgeons in Cambodia and Cameroon, as it turns out that these traits are crucial to their professional competence and success — whatever the practitioner’s race or culture.  

    While it might be tempting to laugh off the Smithsonian’s chart as political correctness run amok, that would be a mistake. The troubling conviction that admirable, useful, universal values like hard work and politeness are somehow the product of “white supremacy” has been gaining increasing currency in education circles. Just this month, the influential KIPP charter network announced it was abolishing its motto “Work Hard. Be Nice.” as part of its push to “dismantle systemic racism.” As educators rush to act upon the admirable impulse captured by “anti-racism,” the lesson is that they need to be extraordinarily deliberate about what that means in practice.

    When all is said and done, in 2020, the Smithsonian’s caretakers chose to tell our children that values like hard work and rationality are part of the “white” inheritance—and don’t come naturally to those raised in other cultures. If this demeaning caricature was offered up by drawling good ol’ boys defending Jim Crow in some grainy newsreel footage, we’d spot it for the unapologetic racism that it is. The question of the hour, though, is what we call it when educators offer it up in the name of “anti-racism.”

  • Gold Joins Silver In Surge Higher As Asian Markets Open
    Gold Joins Silver In Surge Higher As Asian Markets Open

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 20:19

    Update (2100ET): Japan’s open appeared to trigger silver’s surge tonight and China’s open sent gold futures lurching higher…

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    What is the message about the USDollar from the precious metals market relative to its worth versus fiat…

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    We wonder what happens when the barbarous relic really breaks out…

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    After two strong days, silver is not stopping its charge as futures smash above $22 for the first time since October 2013…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Up over 90% from its March 2020 lows…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    As Peter Schiff notes, silver’s current run follows on the heels of its best quarter since 2010.

    Safe-haven demand is driving silver prices higher, along with supply concerns. There are also expectations of increasing industrial demand, particularly in the solar energy sector.  Even if the global economy is slow to recover, silver may get a boost from government stimulus as various programs funnel money into “green energy” projects.

    “Silver-intensive areas such as 5G and solar technology could well benefit from any fiscal impulse,” BMO analysts said in a research note cited by Bloomberg.

    “More than $50 billion of green stimulus has been approved by governments thus far this year, over which roughly three-quarters has been in Europe. But perhaps more impactful has been the recent Biden campaign Clean Energy plan, most notably a zero-carbon power grid by 2035 which would see new wind and solar capacity built to displace thermal generation.”

    While silver is much more sensitive to industrial demand than gold, at its core, silver is a monetary metal and it tends to track with gold over time. The white metal should continue to benefit from the inflationary pressure of government money-printing and stimulus programs. A Morgan Stanley note quoted by Bloomberg said, “Silver will continue to be pulled higher by the strong gold price and supportive financial conditions.”

    Additionally, global central bank money-printing is starting to drive more investors to question their ‘forever’ faith in fiat, and as Deutsche’s Jim Reid notes, The Fed for one, has a lot more room to run…

    Some believe this is already a huge amount, but as the second graph shows, the Fed’s balance sheet as a % of GDP is notably lower than the ECB and BoJ’s. If they were aligned, the Fed balance sheet would now be around $11tn and $25tn, respectively.With

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    DB’s Matt Luzzetti expecting that US debt to GDP will be above 100% in 2020 and near 140% by 2030 from just shy of 80% at the start of this year, it seems inconceivable to me that the Fed and other central bank balance sheets will do anything other than explode over the next decade and perhaps beyond.

    Historically, silver tends to outperform gold in a gold bull market, and we’re seeing that dynamic play out in the midst of gold’s current run up. The yellow metal is fast-approaching its all-time high in dollars.  But silver futures have climbed more than 40% since the end of the first quarter, surpassing the 14% gain for gold futures during that same period.

    Silver coin and bar sales have also helped drive investment demand for silver. Retail bullion coin sales jumped by an estimated 60% year-on-year. Strong demand led to shortages of many silver bullion products, resulting in extended delivery time and higher premiums.

    Meanwhile, silver mine output was already trending downward and it has been further squeezed by mine shutdowns due to COVID-19. Analysts at the Silver Institute say they expect mine supply to continue its four-year slide this year. Even with most mines back online, the institute projects a 7% decline in mine output in 2020. Global mine production fell by 1.3% in 2019.

    The gold-to-silver plunged to 81x tonight, breaking its recent multi-year uptrend…

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    …but that is still high by historical standards…

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    That tells us silver remains undervalued compared to gold. In the modern era, the silver-gold ratio has historically been around 50 to 60-1. At some point, the ratio will likely return closer to its historical norm. Given the economic dynamics, it seems far more likely silver will climb to close the gap rather than the price of gold dropping.

  • US Joins India In Large Naval Drills On Heels Of Last Month's Deadly Border Clash With China
    US Joins India In Large Naval Drills On Heels Of Last Month’s Deadly Border Clash With China

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 20:05

    Following last month’s rare border clashes between the Indian and Chinese armies along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh which led to an unprecedented scores of casualties on both sides (at least 20 Indian troops were confirmed killed), the United States has joined India’s military in conducting large-scale naval exercises in the region. 

    Specifically the US aircraft carrier Nimitz carrier strike group carried out the joint drills in the Indian Ocean in what reports describe as “a sign of growing cooperation between the two naval forces in the region” as well as in support of “a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

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    Regional US navy drills with allies in years past, file image: Planet Pix/Zuma Press via WSJ.

    “While operating together, the US and Indian naval forces conducted high-end exercises designed to maximize training and interoperability, including air defence,” the US navy said in a statement. 

    “Naval engagements such as these exercises improve the cooperation of U.S. and Indian maritime forces and contribute to both sides’ ability to counter threats at sea, from piracy to violent extremism,” it added.

    It’s as yet unclear how long the ongoing joint drills will last, but it’s a clear message to Beijing after soaring tensions in the region. The USS Ronald Reagan is also in the area of the South China Sea, but is currently conducting separate ‘freedom of navigation’ related missions.

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    Nimitz carrier, US Navy file image

    The US side includes the carrier USS Nimitz, the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton, and guided-missile destroyers USS Sterett and USS Ralph Johnson, according to military publications. The Indian Navy has the destroyer Rana, the frigates Sahyadri and Shivalik, as well as the anti-submarine corvette Kamorta participating.

    Reuters notes of the location: “The drills were carried out near India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands which sits near the Melaka Straits, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes for trade and fuel, an Indian source said.”

  • A Nation Falling Apart
    A Nation Falling Apart

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 19:45

    Authored by Philip Giraldi,

    First they came for the toilet paper and kitchen towels, then they came for flour and now they are taking your coins. Yes, the American public sitting out the COVID-19 virus is now having to deal with what is referred as a “small change shortage.”caused apparently by hoarding. Coffee shops and other retail outlets that deal in cash have been hit hard by the shortage, finding themselves unable to make change. Apparently, people have decided spontaneously and in large numbers that nickels, dimes and quarters, as they have value as being made of metal, will somehow maintain their worth better than the pieces of paper being printed in Washington.

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    The government has acted decisively to meet the threat by having the Federal Reserve convene a 22 strong U.S. Coin Task Force to “mitigate the effects of low coin inventories caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Ironically, of course, the Fed is the source of America’s long suffering backed-by-nothing currency. As several of the major private banks, including JP Morgan and Bank of America, are represented on the Task Force as well as a swarm of government bureaucrats, one can assume that nothing will happen except possibly a decision to change the design of the coins to eliminate Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. Sacagawea can stay on the funny looking dollar coin, which no one has actually seen in years as she represents an approved ethnic minority.

    There are a lot of indications that the American stratocruiser is about to crash. My wife and I went to a local gun range last week for a refresher course. I knew how to shoot from my time in the Army and CIA but have not actually fired a weapon since 1978 and my wife learned how to use a handgun about fifteen years ago when we made the decision to have one available in the house “just in case.” To be sure, the current situation with deranged radical groups unrestrained by feckless politicians and a complicit media, our decision to re-arm as it were was based on the assumption that we can no longer rely on a demoralized and passive police force to protect either us or our property, particularly if there are any racial overtones to who is doing what to whom. So, we might have to be prepared to defend ourselves.

    The first thing we learned was that it was hard to get an appointment with a trainer at a licensed range. It took us weeks to make an appointment and we only got one when there was a cancellation. It seems large numbers of ordinary Americans are looking to defend themselves because they, like us, are shocked when they see politicians ignore looting, beatings and arson even as they kneel before thugs. Meanwhile, the media endorses the process, also throwing in a blanket condemnation of the white race, which suggests that there is nothing good that will come out the other end of what it taking place.

    We did our shooting training but the next hurdle was upgrading our weapons. We had a venerable 9mm automatic and an even older 38 caliber revolver. Modern handguns have better safety features and their mechanisms work more smoothly for ageing hands. We were looking for a new 9mm automatic and an AR-15 so-called assault rifle for greater reach if that should become necessary but the man at the sales desk shook his head and said “No, everything is back ordered for six months or more. Everyone is buying new weapons. Give me a deposit and I will call you when something comes available.”

    So “everyone” is training to shoot and buying new weapons, and it is even being reported that break-ins to steal guns from sporting goods shops are increasing dramatically. Weapons are a hot commodity, which just might mean that the confidence among people that the state will keep them safe is at the vanishing point. Even the mainstream media has noticed the spike in gun sales, but they predictably use that fact to explain the surge in gun homicides across the country in the past several months. More weapons, per The Washington Post, means more armed racist white people are out on the streets raising hell, but it ignores the fact that the gun deaths have been overwhelmingly black-on-black, as has always been the case.

    I would also suggest that at least part of the explanation lies elsewhere, in less policing as cops have figured out that they have no one on their side and are best served by doing as little as possible when the shooting starts. Policemen have, in fact, been on the receiving end of much of the recent violence. Instead of seeking help from a cop, violent crime victims should call 911 and ask the operator to have Mayor Bill de Blasio send out a social worker whenever they get attacked by irate gang bangers. The NYPD cops are apparently too busy in any event as they are guardingthe black lives matter paintwork covering Fifth Avenue in front of the Trump Tower.

    Another thing one is now having difficulty in buying is alcohol. People are depressed and are drinking a hell of a lot more than normal, which can, of course, result in impulsive behavior. I live in Virginia and our state store is constantly running out of everything. A cashier told me that they are selling 300% more booze than normal for this time of year. Last week I went into a large and well-known liquor store in Washington D.C. and bought the last few bottles of our favorite scotch The Famous Grouse. They had run out and didn’t know when they would get more. My wife and I are anticipating a Famous Grouse crisis and we have discussed setting up a still in the basement.

    Finally, a family member owns a construction company. He recently said that business is unexpectedly booming, in part because people are building panic rooms, safe havens and even 1960s style fallout shelters in and behind their houses. But unlike the threat of nuclear war in the sixties, the current fear is that with the wreckers being given a free hand by the authorities, organized home invasions penetrating prosperous neighborhoods cannot be that far away. Most of the construction work is being done as unobtrusively as possible because the clients don’t want their neighbors to know how scared they are.

    So, there we are.

    The United States is troubled by a pandemic that the government seems unable to respond to which has produced record unemployment and bankruptcies. Meanwhile, guns and liquor and even coins are in demand while frightened citizens are building home defenses. And much of the government at all levels acts like it is either on the side of or afraid of the destroyers. America certainly has always had flaws but it was once a land of opportunity where people could prosper and enjoy more freedom than nearly anywhere else. Those days are gone so just relax and turn on the evening news. Watch a once proud country with a resilient and hard-working people come apart before your very eyes.

  • More People Contract COVID-19 From Family Members Than Outside Contacts: CDC
    More People Contract COVID-19 From Family Members Than Outside Contacts: CDC

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 07/21/2020 – 19:25

    A study published by the US Centers for Disease Control found that people are more likely to contract COVID-19 from members of their own households than from those outside the house.

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    The study, published July 16, looked in detail at 5,706 South Korean “index patients” who tested positive for the virus, and took into account over 59,000 people who came into contact with them, according to Reuters.

    The findings showed just two out of 100 infected people had caught the virus from non-household contacts, while one in 10 had contracted the disease from their own families.

    By age group, the infection rate within the household was higher when the first confirmed cases were teenagers or people in their 60s and 70s. –Reuters

    “This is probably because these age groups are more likely to be in close contact with family members as the group is in more need of protection or support,” said South Korea CDC (KCDC) Director Jeong Eun-kyeong, an author of the study.

    Notably, South Korea has been militant about contact tracing – using apps to track and publish the routes of confirmed patients, as well as demographics such as patients’ age, gender, neighborhood, businesses and apartment complexes they’ve visited and other metrics.

    According to the study, children under the age of 10 were least likely to be the “index patient” – though children with the virus were also more likely to be asymptomatic than adults, making it harder to identify index cases within the group.

    “The difference in age group has no huge significance when it comes to contracting COVID-19. Children could be less likely to transmit the virus, but our data is not enough to confirm this hypothesis,” said Dr. Choe Young-june, a co-author of the study and assistant professor at Hallyum University College of Medicine.

    South Korea has had 13,816 cases of coronavirus and 296 deaths.

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