- Unsealed Court Docs Expose Spanish Spy Firm Dirty Tricks: Stealing Assange's Son's Dirty Diaper, Tracking Mom
Unsealed Court Docs Expose Spanish Spy Firm Dirty Tricks: Stealing Assange’s Son’s Dirty Diaper, Tracking Mom
Bombshell revelations via court documents this week reveal how a Spanish security firm tracked the mother of Julian Assange’s fiancée, illegally recorded hours of footage of Assange’s son, and also stole his son’s dirty diapers, reported RT News.
Stella Morris, a 37-year old South African-born lawyer, revealed herself as WikiLeaks founder’s fiancée on April 11, several days before a London court was about to lift a non-publication order on her name.
Morris had two children with Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London between 2012 and 2019.
Julian Assange’s newly revealed partner, mother of their 2 young children, urges UK government to bail him and other vulnerable prisoners as #coronavirus sweeps prisons#FreePress#DontExtraditeAssange #coronavirus #COVID19 https://t.co/UAe8eMESef
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 11, 2020
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Spanish court documents this week expose how Spanish security firm UC Global’s owner, David Morales, has been accused of privacy violation, bribery, and money laundering.
The Ecuadorian embassy in London contracted Morales’ company for security work, but it turns out Morales was surveilling Assange for US intelligence agencies.
The document shows that Morales sent an email to staff on September 21, 2017, requesting “special attention on Stella Morris.”
He ordered his team to follow Morris’ mother and found she was living in Catalonia.
“If necessary, I want a person fully dedicated to this activity, so if you have to hire someone to do it, let me know,” Morales wrote in an email.
“All this has to be considered top secret so the dissemination will be limited,” the email continued.
Morales also had staff videotape the child stored on computer hard drives were turned over to the Spanish courts by a former UC Global employee.
The former staff member gave a sworn statement to the Spanish courts indicating that Morales was overly obsessed in determining if Assange was the father of Morris’ child. The statement also said they were instructed to steal the baby’s dirty diapers to conduct DNA tests.
El Pais newspaper said earlier this week that DNA on the diaper wouldn’t be sufficient for a paternity test, which led Morales to devise a plan among staff members to steal the baby’s pacifier.
The former staff member eventually confronted Morris outside of the embassy and spilled the beans about the operation.
“I went to the child’s mother outside the embassy and asked her please indicate that you will no longer take the child to the embassy because they planned to steal his diapers to prove that he was the son of Julian Assange,” the statement said.
Assange’s lawyers indicate that Morales was working for US intelligence agencies at the time.
And the story gets more strange. At one point, Morales blackmailed Ecuador’s foreign intelligence agency SENAIN with nudes of a diplomat stolen from her computer after he found his contract with the embassy was going to be terminated.
“These extremely private photographs were allegedly in the possession of UC GLOBAL, were printed and were part of an extortion report that sought to prevent SENAIN from terminating the contract,” Assange’s lawyers wrote in a criminal complaint.
Morales faces 175 years’ imprisonment for the spy crimes he allegedly committed on Assange.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 02:45 - Global COVID-19 Lockdown – What You're Not Being Told, Part 2
Global COVID-19 Lockdown – What You’re Not Being Told, Part 2
Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,
In Part 1 we looked at the reasons why questioning the coronavirus lockdown, despite the ever present allegation, does not demonstrate a callous disregard for human life. We are going to expand on why it doesn’t in this article.
I am based in the UK so much of this discussion relates to the decisions of the British State, but this is a global policy agenda and similar policies are found across the developed world. Effectively a small group of policy decision makers have placed an estimated 3.5 billion people under house arrest. It is only possible for them to do so with our consent. Consent is carefully cultivated by controlling the information we are given.
For the vast majority their only source of information is the corporate mainstream media (MSM) and the public announcements of the State. This article is written, as ever, in the hope people will do their own research and make up their own minds.
We are going to look at the evidence which strongly suggests the State and the MSM, adhering to a globalist agenda, have colluded to mislead the public into believing the COVID 19 (C19) threat is far greater than it actually is.
C19 can be fatal for those with pre-existing comorbidities, and possibly even some without, as can other forms of pneumonia and influenza-like respiratory illness. However, while every C19 death has been reported, none of the far greater number of people who have died in the UK this year from other respiratory infections have even been mentioned.
Systems have been created to ensure the C19 statistics are as terrifying as possible. Their statistical product is so vague it borders upon meaningless. It seems we have been inculcated with misplaced fear to justify the lockdown regime, to convince us to accept it and prepare us for what is to come.
I apologise for the article’s length but I hope you will read it in its entirety. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so please grab a coffee before we begin.
LOCKDOWN ADVISED BY WHO?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is financed through a combination of assessed and voluntary contributions.
Assessed contributions are paid by nation states for WHO membership and figures are released quarterly.
Voluntary contributions are additional contributions from member states and “other partners.” For some reason these figures haven’t been reported for more than three years.
About 80% of the WHO’s finances come from voluntary contributions.
In its most recent 2017 voluntary contribution report the WHO accounted for the $2.1 billion it received from private foundations and global corporations.
This compared to just over $1 billion voluntarily provided by governments.
Contributors included GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer AG, Sanofi, Merck and Gilead Sciences whose drug remdesivir is currently being trialled, along side the off patent hydroxychloroquine, as a possible preventative treatment for COVID 19.
The remdesivir trial is part of the WHO’s SOLIDARITY trials.
The third-largest single contributor in 2017 was GAVI. Formerly called the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, they contributed nearly $134 million. GAVI are partnered with the WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank to sell vaccines globally.
The World Bank contributed nearly $146 million themselves and the largest individual payment, by some margin, at nearly $325 million came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Though like many other foundations and corporations, through their various networks of interlinked partnerships, their overall contribution was much higher.
Among other beneficiaries of the BMGF’s generosity are the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium (VIMC) led by Professor Neil Ferguson. They are based at Imperial College London and are directly funded by the BMGF and GAVI. Their objective is to provide statistical data analysis for the BMGF and GAVI in order for them to sell more vaccines.
Prof. Ferguson not only led the team who created the hopelessly inaccurate prediction which the U.S and UK governments based their lockdown regimes upon, he also co-founded the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling who worked with the WHO in 2009 to create ridiculous computer models predicting the H1N1 pandemic.
In 2009 the world went crazy after the WHO declared the H1N1 influenza pandemic. This resulted in billions being spent on very expensive H1N1 vaccines and antiviral treatments although it turned out the pandemic was indistinguishable from seasonal flu.
The only people who benefited from pointless vaccines and unnecessary medication were the manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Novartis. Each of these pharmaceutical corporations were among the largest voluntary contributors to the WHO in 2008/2009 financial year.
With an $84 million investment, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche were the largest single contributor into the WHO’s coffers that year. Luckily, as it turned out, they could afford it because sales of their unnecessary Tamiflu H1N1 medication rocketed to more than £3 billion following the WHO’s declared H1N1 pandemic. Which was just a coincidence.
The whole debacle resulted in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) launching an investigation into the WHO to look into the issue of a “falsified pandemic.” During the subsequent hearing the epidemiologist Dr Wolfgang Wodarg said:
The WHO basically held the trigger for the pandemic preparedness plans, they had a key role to play in deciding on the pandemic. Around 18 billion dollars was spent on this pandemic worldwide. Millions were vaccinated for no good reason. It is not even clear that the vaccine had a positive effect, because it was not clinically tested.”
At the same hearing Professor Dr Ulrich Keil, Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology at the University of Munster, said:
A number of scientists and others are questioning the decision of the WHO to declare an international pandemic. The H1N1 virus is not a new virus, but has been known to us for decades […] In Germany, about 10,000 deaths are attributed to seasonal ‘flu, especially among older and frail people. Only a very small number of deaths, namely 187, can be attributed to the H1N1 virus in Germany – and many of those are dubious.”
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Of course nothing came of it because PACE were making allegations against the World Health Organisation. The WHO don’t break the rules, they make the rules. Amazingly, probably because no one ever learns anything from history, we all believed the WHO this time.
To imagine these huge investments made by pharmaceutical corporations and private foundations don’t buy influence is so naive it barely warrants mention. The WHO is essentially a policy lobby group for the powerful globalists who own it. Why an organisation with such significant and clear conflicts of financial interests should be considered a global health authority is anyone’s guess.
On the 11th March the WHO declared the SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic. On 15th March 2020 UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated that vulnerable people would be required to quarantine themselves or self isolate.
The State issued a set of guidelines for avoiding the spread of infection. On the 16th March UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued a statement advising people to practice social distancing, avoid non essential travel and warned that drastic measures may be needed to protect the NHS and the most vulnerable.
On the 18th of March the Director General of the BMGF funded WHO Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave a virtual press conference. He stated:
WHO continues to call on all countries to implement a comprehensive approach with the aim of slowing down transmission and flattening the curve. This approach is saving lives and buying time for the development of vaccines and treatments. As you know, the first vaccine trial has begun……This virus is presenting us with an unprecedented threat”
We are about to discuss why COVID 19 is not an unprecedented threat. On the 20th of March Boris Johnson ordered the closure of all venues for social gathering, such as pubs, cafes and restaurants. On March 23rd the UK State legislated for the Coronavirus Act and placed the UK in lockdown. Just as the WHO and their other partners called on them to do.
LOCKDOWN TO PROTECT THE NHS
The NHS was created to protect us, that’s why we pay for it. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when this relationship flipped on its head.
After years of chronic underfunding by successive governments of all persuasions, interminable mismanagement, savage ideologically driven austerity cuts, crippling Private Finance Initiative debts and increasing privatisation for corporate profit, there is absolutely no reason to believe the State cares about either our health or the NHS.
Every single major health policy and legislative decision, made over the last few decades, clearly demonstrates that it doesn’t.
The basic premise, apparently believed by so many, that the State has now decided to act to keep us safe is tragically comical. For us to swallow this tripe we need to be sufficiently terrified to willingly accept the imagined protection of the State. The MSM has been doing its best to make sure we are and that we do. The 24 hour fear-porn cycle is a wonder to behold.
NHS dance routines are a sensation
Most of this is based upon claims about deaths and stories about desperately overloaded hospitals struggling to cope with the pressure. Meanwhile, as millions of British people remain under house arrest, glued to their TV’s and fondle pads, the data that has been released by official sources doesn’t back up any of the tales we have been spun.
This inconvenient truth has been reported by very few in the MSM print media and has been met with deafening silence on our TV’s. Rather, the data has been convincingly spun to tell a story that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Evidence of NHS overload is entirely absent. The State will claim this is thanks to the lockdown regime. Certainly the fact that people with other serious conditions haven’t been treated has alleviated pressure on the NHS. Unfortunately, the evidence also indicates the lockdown regime is probably killing them in increasing numbers. Though it seems unlikely the State will claim responsibility for that.
The Financial Times reported that close to half of the UK’s hospital beds were empty. With just 60% of acute beds occupied this is 30% less than this time last year.
In the same period last year the NHS was creaking under the pressure of demand, prompting then Prime Minister Theresa May to suggest scrapping NHS targets. Once again, the State was only concerned with how the figures looked not about people dying on trolleys in corridors. This year it cares, honest!
During a supposed global pandemic we’ve had the lowest ever national A&E attendance. Manchester hospitals report a 57% bed occupation rate compared to their average of 94%.
Most concerning is the huge drop in cardiology patients. With Heart disease killing more than 40,000 people under the age of 75 every year in the UK, and with a reported rise in fatalities last year, this prompted Professor John Howarth from North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust to express grave concern.
“I am really worried that people are not seeking the help they need for important conditions other than Covid-19.”
Nightingales – empty!
Indeed, if your world view is supplied by the MSM, deaths from anything other than C19 seem to have become practically irrelevant in the space of a few weeks. The Health Service journal (HSJ) reports that the NHS has four times as many empty beds as normal. Confirming that more than 40% of acute beds are unoccupied.
Even in London, the alleged epicentre of the C19 pandemic, that figure is still nearly 29%.
The much publicised Nightingale temporary hospitals, a mobilisation the MSM were keen to portray as putting the nation on a war footing, which were allegedly required to cope with the surge of C19 patients, aren’t necessary.
Of the 1,555 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds available in London 1,245 are occupied. So questions must be asked why 19 patients, who presumably needed intensive care, were seemingly moved unnecessarily into the 4,000 bed London Nightingale over the Easter weekend.
Contrary to the claimed justification for the lockdown, as many have repeatedly warned, the health consequences of the lockdown regime could far outweigh the risks presented by C19.
Excess mortality this year is higher than average but reported coronavirus deaths form a smaller part of that bigger picture.
The HSJ reported a senior NHS sources who stated:
There could be some very serious unintended consequences. While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.”
The deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust Sarah Scobie echoed this concern:
The PHE [Public Health England] data suggests there could be significant problems already developing for heart disease related conditions patients, for example. Attendances relating to myocardial infarction at emergency departments have dropped right down, whereas ambulance calls in relation to chest pain have gone right up.”
Not only is there no evidence that the NHS is even close to struggling to cope with a non-existent surge, the likely severe health consequences of the State’s lockdown policy are starting to emerge. When we look at the data on claimed COVID 19 deaths the picture only becomes more alarming.
LOCKDOWN & REPORTED DEATHS
Everyday, for weeks, the MSM has reported every single UK death which was supposedly due to COVID 19. This has been central to their effort to convince us of the severity of the pandemic. The reporting always supports the State’s narrative that the lockdown is necessary.
Under normal circumstances, when someone dies, a person who knows them well, such as a family member, or someone who was physically close to the person at the time of death, is the qualified informant who can notify the registrar of the circumstances and non medical details of the death.
That is not true for suspected C19 patients. For them a funeral director, who has almost certainly never met the deceased, can be the qualified informant. This places far more emphasis on the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) as registration can take place without any input from family or anyone else familiar with the circumstances of the death.
Prior to the Coronavirus Act, the last attending doctor to the deceased had the responsibility to register the death. However, in the case of suspected C19 deaths, that duty can be discharged by a doctor who has never met the patient.
The UK State guidance for C19 patients states:
A doctor who attended the deceased during their last illness has a legal responsibility to complete a MCCD….. this duty may be discharged through another doctor who may complete an MCCD in an emergency period….In an emergency period, any doctor can complete the MCCD….For the purposes of the emergency period, the attendance may be in person, via video/visual consultation, but not audio (e.g. via telephone)….Where the certifying doctor has not seen the deceased before death they should delete the words last seen alive by me on.
When an MCCD is completed the medical causes are listed sequentially with the immediate cause of death at the top and the underlying cause of death at the bottom of the list. For example, heart failure caused by pneumonia stemming from influenza would list the immediate cause of death as a heart attack and the underlying cause as influenza. That underlying cause is usually diagnosed through positive test results.
It is crucial to understand that for C19 to be recorded on the MCCD, as the underlying cause of death, there does not need to be any test based diagnosis of the syndrome. Diagnosis can simply be from observation of symptoms or CT scans. The guidance to medical practitioners states:
if before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID 19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death, tick Box B and then share the test result when it becomes available. In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.
Given this seeming lack of clarity, guidance from the Royal College of Pathologists (RCP) is also concerning.
In circumstances where C19 is merely believed to be a factor they advise that there is no need for a post mortem.
If a death is believed to be due to confirmed COVID-19 infection, there is unlikely to be any need for a post-mortem examination to be conducted and the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death should be issued.”
Karry Mullis
Post-mortems are not standard procedure and are normally required only where the cause of death is unknown or where the circumstances appear suspicious. However, the recommendation of the RCP is another part of a systemic approach to C19 deaths which is inexplicably opaque.
Even when a sample test is undertaken to identify C19, questions remain. The RT-PCR test commonly used to test for C19 does not appear to be very reliable, nor is it designed as a diagnostic tool for identifying viruses.
A study from the Department of Microbiology, Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong found wild variations in RT-PCR accuracy. It was found to be between 22% – 80% reliable depending on how it was applied. This general unreliability has been confirmed by other studies. Further studies show clear discrepancies between RT-PCR test results and clinical indication from CT scans.
Most of these studies indicate RT-PCR failure to detect C19 in symptomatic patients, so-called “false negative” tests. When Chinese researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics School of Public Health conducted data analysis of the RT-PCR tests of asymptomatic patients they also found an 80% false positive rate.
Having passed peer review and publication the paper was subsequently withdrawn for what seem quite bizarre reasons. It was removed from the scientific literature because it “depended on theoretical deduction.” The paper was not testing an experimental hypothesis, it was an epidemiological analysis of the available statistical data. All such statistical analysis relies upon theoretical deduction. The claimed reason for withdrawal suggests that all data analysis is now considered to be completely useless.
It seems scientific claims that C19 numbers are underestimated are fine, claims they are overestimated are not. Either way, whether false negative or false positive, there is plenty of evidence to question the reliability of the RT-PCR test for diagnosing COVID 19.
The MSM has suggested that enhanced RT-PCR testing can detect the virus SARS-CoV-2 and, in particular, the amount of it in the patient’s system, the viral load. This is disinformation.
The Nobel winning scientist who devised PCR, Karry Mullis, speaking about the use of PCR to detect HIV stated:
Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron. PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers [viral load]…These tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all…The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.”
Reported C19 deaths can be registered without a test clearly diagnosing any coronavirus, let alone C19. The death can be signed off by a doctor who has never seen the patient and can then be registered by someone who has never met the deceased and was nowhere near them when they died.
Further provision in the Coronavirus Act then allows for the body to be cremated, potentially against the family’s wishes, ensuring a confirmatory autopsy is impossible, though it is unlikely one will be conducted anyway.
To say this raises questions about the official reported statistics is an understatement. Questions in no way allege either medical malpractice or negligence. Neither are required for significant confusion to occur because the potential for widespread misreporting of causes of death seems to be a core element of the C19 MCCD process the State has constructed.
LOCKDOWN THE DATA
At the time of writing The UK is said to have 93,873 cases with 12,107 deaths attributed to C19. Both the infection and mortality rates are showing a declining trend.
Given the apparent haphazard reliability of tests, strange reporting procedures and oddly relaxed registration requirements, the claimed attribution is pretty weak.
Coupled with the data which shows unusually low hospital admissions, with little to no evidence of the widely anticipated “surge,” justification for the State’s lockdown of society and the economy appears painfully thin. The evidence base does not improve when we look at the official data.
ONS Data
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) have released analysis of the C19 deaths that occurred during March 2020.
In total 3,912 deaths were recorded of which 3,372 (86%) listed C19 as the underlying cause of death. Of these, 38 (1%) were cases where C19 was only suspected as the underlying cause, meaning neither a test nor any clear clinical presentation was observed. The problem is that the RT-PCR test, supposedly confirming C19, doesn’t tell us much either.
Of the 3,372 deaths recorded with underlying C19, approximately 3,068 had at least one comorbidity with the majority having more than two. Not only does the RT-PCR test fail to provide any reliable proof that these people even had C19 the existence of other comorbidities provides further reason to question if the C19 was a contributory factor.
Of the 3,912 people who died, 540 of them merely mentioned C19 on the MCCG with no indication that it contributed to the deaths. With at least 91% of patients having comorbidities, there is very little evidence that the people who died with a C19 infection wouldn’t have died without.
The age profile of the deceased is practically identical to standard all cause mortality in the UK. If C19 is a viral pandemic it is one that behaves like normal mortality.
And yet, despite all this, the MSM reported every one of them to the public as confirmed C19 deaths.
Another, perhaps even more alarming possibility has arisen. While heart disease accounts for 14% of C19 comorbidities, reported deaths from heart disease have mysteriously dropped by the corresponding amount during the same period. This clearly indicates that patients dying from other causes, such as heart failure, are being recorded, and certainly reported by the MSM, as dying from C19.
This illustrates a far more complex picture than we have been given to believe. Why have the State and the MSM made so many alarming claims about people dying from C19 when the evidence supporting those claims is, at best, questionable?
None of this is the fault of medical practitioners or bodies like the Office Of National Statistics (ONS). The ONS system has been both reliable and informative for many years. Yet once again, in the case of C19 deaths, the State felt it was necessary to make some changes.
On the March 30th the MSM reported that the UK State had instructed the ONS to change the way they record C19 deaths. Explaining the change to recording “mentions” of COVID 19 an unnamed spokesperson for the ONS said:
It will be based on mentions of Covid-19 on death certificates. It will include suspected cases of Covid-19 where someone has not been tested positive for Covid-19.”
This habit of states deciding to change the C19 mortality data, by adding in people who are assumed to have died from it, appears to be a global policy. The China CDC did the same and the U.S have just added a significant number to their statistics.
In every case the revision increases and never decreases the fatality statistics. Why do states around the world feel the need to do this? Is it because they are concerned about statistical rigour or are they more concerned about justifying their lockdown regimes?
The ONS reported all cause mortality for week 14 ending April 3rd. They recorded 16,387 deaths which was 6,082 higher than the ONS 5 year average. They stated that 21.2% of total deaths “mentioned” Covid 19. The MSM immediately pounced on this claiming this meant COVID 19 had pushed up the death toll to unprecedented levels. This was outrageous disinformation. That is not what the data showed.
The ONS stated that of the 6,082 excess deaths 3,475 “mentioned” coronavirus. Of those 1,466 also mentioned influenza and pneumonia. Consequently, while registered deaths are 6,082 above the 5 year average, only 2009 of those solely mentioned C19 with 4,073 mentioning other underlying causes. It is worth remembering only C19 deaths can be “mentioned” without a clear positive test result.
Therefore, at least 67% of that excess mortality is being caused by other unknown factors that no one seems to care about. The MSM have absolutely no interests at all in this more severe health crisis. Why not? Once again they have completely misled the public and deny the existence of another, more significant reason for concern. Perhaps anticipating this the ONS stated:
“Influenza and Pneumonia” has been included for comparison, as a well-understood cause of death involving respiratory infection that is likely to have somewhat similar risk factors to COVID-19.”
Short of openly stating that C19 is no more deadly than any other pneumonia like illnesses, the ONS appear to be trying to get a message across. Perhaps they can’t say it directly.
ONS data showing mortality in 2020 comparing C19 to other respiratory illness
As the so called pandemic has progressed more in depth studies have begun to emerge. Initial findings from Chinese scientists indicate that SARS-CoV-2 has an infection fatality rate (IFR) of between 0.04% and 0.12%. which is comparable to flu pandemics with an estimated IFR of 0.1%. None of these have required a lockdown regime.
Further studies have highlighted the overestimated risk allegedly presented by SARS-CoV-2. [Including a new study released just yesterday – ed.]
For the year to date, the ONS showed a comparison of the deaths mentioning C19 and deaths mentioning pneumonia and Influenza. Deaths this year from pneumonia and influenza appear to stand at around 30,000.
Quite clearly, according to the ONS, other respiratory infections, like pneumonia and influenza, currently pose a significantly greater threat to life than COVID 19. Something is certainly pushing up mortality in the UK but, at the very most, only 33% of that increase is vaguely attributable to C19.
LOCKDOWN TO COVER A MYRIAD OF SINS
The MSM have recently started floating the idea that the lockdown regime could become the new normal.
According to the State it may be necessary to go in an out of various levels of the regime from time to time, depending on the State’s threat assessment. This is based on scientific research bought and paid for by pharmaceutical corporations and private foundations including GlaxoSmithKline (Wellcome Trust).
Immunity control citizen
Seeing as it is increasingly evident that the C19 threat has been massively over-hyped, why would the State and its globalist partners want the economic destruction to continue?
Firstly it delivers on a number of long held globalist objectives.
A cashless society, mandatory vaccination, universal basic income, a surveillance state, restricted freedom of movement and a complete restructuring of the global economy have already been touted as necessary following the “pandemic.” All of these ambitions and economic realities existed before the pandemic first emerged in China.
The State has already moved towards censoring anyone who questions vaccines. It is vital to understand that the canard of the antivaxxer is a meaningless trope.
It is entirely possible to accept that vaccines can contribute towards effective preventative public health programs while, at the same time, questioning the efficacy and purpose of some vaccines. Vaccines are not all the same.
The State’s and the MSM’s insistence that anyone who question any vaccines is some sort of whacked out, new age, science Luddite is total nonsense. No one will be permitted to question vaccines, and that fact alone should be sufficient to raise anyone’s suspicion.
From GAVI to the WHO and from the BMGF to Imperial College the response to the C19 pandemic has been driven by foundations and pharmaceutical corporations with considerable investments in vaccine development. Of course they would like to see global mandatory vaccination.
To just ignore this, because you’ve been told by the MSM that questioning any vaccine is a “conspiracy theory”, not only evidences a lack of critical thinking it demonstrates a degree of brainwashing.
Global financial institutions, such as the IMF, have been advocating the cashless society for years. A cashless society will allow central banks to control every aspect of your life.
Everything you buy can be tracked and your purchases could easily be limited to exclude certain items.
Although there is very little evidence that handling cash presents any increased threat of infection that hasn’t stopped the MSM from selling the idea.
The impact of the lockdown regime across the globe has already had a devastating economic impact. All the indicators are that the regime will throw the global economy into a deep depression. The longer it continues the worse it will get.
The tendency of some to claim this doesn’t matter because saving life is the only concern is hopelessly myopic. The link between poverty and significantly increased mortality is beyond dispute. The cure will definitely be far worse than the disease.
As millions are forced into unemployment the outlook isn’t good. However, while the State will undoubtedly claim that unemployment has been caused by the C19 crisis, in truth the imminent economic collapse was already driving up unemployment before the crisis began.
This has led to increasing calls for the State to provide a Universal Basic Income.
This will create mass dependency upon the State for huge swathes of the population. Affording the State immeasurable control over people’s lives. In a cashless society, people who don’t behave in accordance with State regulations, could be punished financially. Instant fines will be commonplace.
We are already seeing how that control can be deployed within a surveillance society as the State and its compliant MSM put the idea of immunity passports into the public imagination.
The link between this and mandatory vaccination is obvious. This proposed policy comes straight from the heart of the globalist think tanks.
ID2020 is a globalist initiative which intends to provide everyone on earth with an authorised identity. GAVI, Microsoft, BMGF and the Rockerfeller Foundation are among the happy ID2020 alliance who will decide who you are allowed to be.
Biometric ID controlled by your friendly ID2020 globalists – Because they care!
Comically they claim that proving who you are to the State is somehow a human right. This is utter bilge. I don’t know about you, but I know who I am and so do the people I care about. I couldn’t care less who the State thinks I am. Like everyone else on Earth you were born with inalienable human rights. The State doesn’t define what they are, they just choose to ignore them.
ID2020 is in no way objective. Your digital biometric ID can be “good” which means it can also be “bad.” Bill Gates and Rockerfellers are among those who state:
With a “good” digital identity you can enjoy your rights to privacy, security, and choice.”
Which means you can’t if its “bad.” As longs as you are a good citizen, do as you are told, get your mandatory vaccinations and don’t step out of line, you can have your rights because megalomaniacs think they are gods who have the power to allow or deny them.
Your digital ID will control the information you are allowed to access and your immunity passport will almost certainly be part of your State authorised identity as we move towards something indistinguishable from China’s social credit system.
It will be used to monitor your behaviour.
Your immunity passport status will depend upon where you go and who with. The State has decided that we all need contact tracing apps to regulate who we meet and limit our freedom of movement.
If you meet the wrong person or go to the wrong area, or perhaps fail to produce your authorisation Q-code on demand, then you will be locked down.
Perhaps the biggest deception of all is yet to come as the State manoeuvres to blame the C19 for the economic collapse.
Firstly, it isn’t C19 but rather the lockdown regime that has sped up destruction of the economy, but that destruction was inevitable anyway. The 2008 credit crunch was a failure of the banks. They speculated in the markets and lost.
As a result we have endured a decade of austerity to bail them out. Socialism only applies to those who can afford it. Austerity has reduced essential public services to rubble, and now, when we supposedly need them most, we’ve all been placed under house arrest to stop us using them while many of the most vulnerable have been ignored. The irony is laughable.
While we’ve all suffered austerity, the central banks have been printing funny money, blowing up the debt bubble to unimaginable proportions.
The result has been increasing consumer debt, staggering levels of corporate borrowing and, though government deficits have reduced, government debt is off the charts, even in comparison to 2010 levels.
This kind of debt-based economy was never sustainable and global financiers have known it for years.
What the globalists needed was a reason to reset the economy without losing power. Perhaps it is another coincidence that the C19 lockdown regime just happens to deliver both the mechanism and the excuse to press that global reset button. That it also ushers in all the globalist’s desires is just another in a very long line of remarkable coincidences.
Now that global terrorism is no longer a daily threat and global warming has been put on the back burner, the new normal of the ever shifting threat from pandemic seems to be the novel war on terror. Training, funding and equipping terrorist groups has served the State well in the first two decades of the 21st century but now it is ready to move on to the next phase by exploiting a terror closer to the heart of every home. Disease.
In their totality, for those willing to look, it is transparent that these response measures have coalesced to create the framework for a totalitarian dictatorship. One rolling out at pace in the UK. Similar draconian diktats have sprung up across the globe.
A coordinated global effort like this doesn’t just happen. It takes years of training and planning. The only people who can’t see it are those who, for whatever reason, choose not to.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 02:00 - Iran Hails First 'Successful' Military Satellite Launch, But US Intelligence Says 'Failure' To Orbit
Iran Hails First ‘Successful’ Military Satellite Launch, But US Intelligence Says ‘Failure’ To Orbit
Amid soaring tensions with the US and on the same day that President Trump issued a provocative tweet ordering the Navy to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian gunboats in the gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) announced the successful launch of the country’s first military satellite on Wednesday.
Calling the surprise satellite launch (to the West that is) a “great success,” the IRGC statement hailed that “The first satellite of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been successfully launched into orbit by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” State media and the elite guard further called it “a great success and a new development in the field of space for Islamic Iran.”
However, unnamed American defense sources are pouring cold water on the claim, with Fox News citing that “U.S. intelligence has not detected any new satellites orbiting Earth, indicating Iran’s satellite launch likely a failure, officials say.”
U.S. intelligence has not detected any new satellites orbiting Earth, indicating Iran’s satellite launch likely a failure, officials say
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) April 22, 2020
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The United States has long countered that the Islamic Republic’s satellite and space program is actually cover the further development of banned ballistic missiles. Western leaders as well as Israel have charged that Tehran desires to achieve nuclear warhead delivery capability through the program.
Wednesday’s successful launch, via Iranian state media. Undeterred by the fact that two recent satellite launch attempts in August of last year and in February of this year were spectacular failures (with a US or Israeli cyberattack allegedly involved in sabotaging the latter), Iran pushed forward with the launch which has apparently caught Washington by surprise.
This also explains in part Trump’s seemingly ‘random’ lashing out at Iran Wednesday morning: “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” the president tweeted early morning.
Iranian state TV covered the launch, further details of which are described by AFP as follows:
The satellite dubbed the Nour — meaning “light” in Persian — had been launched from the Markazi desert, a vast expanse in Iran’s central plateau.
The satellite “orbited the Earth at 425 kilometres (264 miles)” above sea level, said Sepahnews.
The rocket itself was named Qassed, meaning “messenger”, and contained a Koranic inscription that read: “Glory be to God who made this available to us, otherwise we could not have done it.”
The milestone unleashed national celebrations at a moment Iran’s leaders needed to show their population a positive achievement, given the multiple disasters of the past months.
Photos from launch of #Iran Noor-1 satellite by IRGC. pic.twitter.com/8Npyzo5kUE
— Aldin 🇧🇦 (@aldin_ww) April 22, 2020
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This includes losing Gen. Qassem Soleimani to a US assassination by drone, and the subsequent Ukrainian airline disaster which the IRGC belatedly owned up to, but mostly the more recent coronavirus pandemic which has sent the economy plunging further amid the state of national emergency.
Meanwhile, the real question remains whether the satellite is actually now orbiting the earth, which early US intelligence statements appear to dispute.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 01:00 - Human Lab Rats: The US Government's Secret History Of Grisly Experiments
Human Lab Rats: The US Government’s Secret History Of Grisly Experiments
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“They were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.”
– Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.
Now this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. Such crises can—and are—manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers. As such, it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom.
Yet we can’t afford to overlook the fact that governments the world over, including the U.S. government, have unleashed untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.
While the U.S. government is currently looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market, the virus could just as easily have been created by the U.S. government or one of its allies.
After all, grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions have become synonymous with the U.S. government, which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike.
For instance, did you know that the U.S. government has been buying hundreds of dogs and cats from “Asian meat markets” as part of a gruesome experiment into food-borne illnesses?
The cannibalistic experiments involve killing cats and dogs purchased from Colombia, Brazil, Vietnam, China and Ethiopia, and then feeding the dead remains to laboratory kittens, bred in government laboratories for the express purpose of being infected with a disease and then killed.
It gets more gruesome.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been removing parts of dogs’ brains to see how it affects their breathing; applying electrodes to dogs’ spinal cords (before and after severing them) to see how it impacts their cough reflexes; and implanting pacemakers in dogs’ hearts and then inducing them to have heart attacks (before draining their blood). All of the laboratory dogs are killed during the course of these experiments.
It’s not just animals that are being treated like lab rats by government agencies.
“We the people” have also become the police state’s guinea pigs: to be caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.
Back in 2017, FEMA “inadvertently” exposed nearly 10,000 firefighters, paramedics and other responders to a deadly form of ricin during simulated bioterrorism response sessions. In 2015, it was discovered that an Army lab had been “mistakenly” shipping deadly anthrax to labs and defense contractors for a decade.
While these particular incidents have been dismissed as “accidents,” you don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.
At the time, the government reasoned that it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society such as prisoners, mental patients, and poor blacks.
In Alabama, for example, 600 black men with syphilis were allowed to suffer without proper medical treatment in order to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis. In California, older prisoners had testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts implanted in them to test their virility. In Connecticut, mental patients were injected with hepatitis.
In Maryland, sleeping prisoners had a pandemic flu virus sprayed up their noses. In Georgia, two dozen “volunteering” prison inmates had gonorrhea bacteria pumped directly into their urinary tracts through the penis. In Michigan, male patients at an insane asylum were exposed to the flu after first being injected with an experimental flu vaccine. In Minnesota, 11 public service employee “volunteers” were injected with malaria, then starved for five days.
In New York, dying patients had cancer cells introduced into their systems. In Ohio, over 100 inmates were injected with live cancer cells. Also in New York, prisoners at a reformatory prison were also split into two groups to determine how a deadly stomach virus was spread: the first group was made to swallow an unfiltered stool suspension, while the second group merely breathed in germs sprayed into the air. And in Staten Island, children with mental retardation were given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured.
As the Associated Press reports, “The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries, accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical guinea pigs … because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.”
Moreover, “Some of these studies, mostly from the 1940s to the ’60s, apparently were never covered by news media. Others were reported at the time, but the focus was on the promise of enduring new cures, while glossing over how test subjects were treated.”
Media blackouts, propaganda, spin. Sound familiar?
How many government incursions into our freedoms have been blacked out, buried under “entertainment” news headlines, or spun in such a way as to suggest that anyone voicing a word of caution is paranoid or conspiratorial?
Unfortunately, these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities the government has inflicted on an unsuspecting populace in the name of secret experimentation.
For instance, there was the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men. As NPR reports, “All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren’t recorded on the subjects’ official military records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn’t tell doctors what happened to them.”
And then there was the CIA’s MKULTRA program in which hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel were dosed with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped into their drinks at the beach, in city bars, at restaurants. As Time reports, “before the documentation and other facts of the program were made public, those who talked of it were frequently dismissed as being psychotic.”
Now one might argue that this is all ancient history and that the government today is different from the government of yesteryear, but has the U.S. government really changed?
Has the government become any more humane, any more respectful of the rights of the citizenry?
Has it become any more transparent or willing to abide by the rule of law? Has it become any more truthful about its activities? Has it become any more cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights?
Or has the government simply hunkered down and hidden its nefarious acts and dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy, legalism and obfuscations? Has it not become wilier, more slippery, more difficult to pin down?
Having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan blueprint for distraction and diversion, are we not dealing with a government that is simply craftier and more conniving that it used to be?
Consider this: after revelations about the government’s experiments spanning the 20th century spawned outrage, the government began looking for human guinea pigs in other countries, where “clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules.”
In Guatemala, prisoners and patients at a mental hospital were infected with syphilis, “apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease.” In Uganda, U.S.-funded doctors “failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study… even though it would have protected their newborns.” Meanwhile, in Nigeria, children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan. Eleven children died and many others were left disabled.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Case in point: back in 2016, it was announced that scientists working for the Department of Homeland Security would begin releasing various gases and particles on crowded subway platforms as part of an experiment aimed at testing bioterror airflow in New York subways.
The government insisted that the gases released into the subways by the DHS were nontoxic and did not pose a health risk. It’s in our best interests, they said, to understand how quickly a chemical or biological terrorist attack might spread. And look how cool the technology is—said the government cheerleaders—that scientists can use something called DNATrax to track the movement of microscopic substances in air and food. (Imagine the kinds of surveillance that could be carried out by the government using trackable airborne microscopic substances you breathe in or ingest.)
Mind you, this is the same government that in 1949 sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon’s air handling system, then the world’s largest office building. In 1950, special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco, in the latter case exposing all of the city’s 800,000 residents.
In 1953, government operatives staged “mock” anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars. Local governments were reportedly told that “‘invisible smokescreen[s]’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.” Later experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas.
In 1965, the government’s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington’s National Airport, followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC passengers to airborne bacteria that causes food poisoning.
And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.
So, no, I don’t think the government’s ethics have changed much over the years. It’s just taken its nefarious programs undercover.
The question remains: why is the government doing this? The answer is always the same: money, power and total domination.
It’s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power.
The mindset driving these programs has, appropriately, been likened to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews. As the Holocaust Museum recounts, Nazi physicians “conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.”
The Nazi’s unethical experiments ran the gamut from freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia, tests to determine the maximum altitude for parachuting out of a plane, injecting prisoners with malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis, exposing prisoners to phosgene and mustard gas, and mass sterilization experiments.
The horrors being meted out against the American people can be traced back, in a direct line, to the horrors meted out in Nazi laboratories. In fact, following the second World War, the U.S. government recruited many of Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order and experimentation, and implemented his tactics in incremental steps.
Sounds far-fetched, you say? Read on. It’s all documented.
As historian Robert Gellately recounts, the Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police, the Gestapo.
The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the New York Times, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.
All told, thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp, among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip. Subsequently, they were hired on as spies, informants and scientific advisers, and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. All the while, thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national securi
Adding further insult to injury, American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government’s payroll ever since. And in true Gestapo fashion, anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.
As if the government’s covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have since fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.
It’s certainly easy to denounce the full-frontal horrors carried out by the scientific and medical community within a despotic regime such as Nazi Germany, but what do you do when it’s your own government that claims to be a champion of human rights all the while allowing its agents to engage in the foulest, bases and most despicable acts of torture, abuse and experimentation?
When all is said and done, this is not a government that has our best interests at heart.
This is not a government that values us.
Perhaps the answer lies in The Third Man, Carol Reed’s influential 1949 film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. In the film, set in a post-WW II Vienna, rogue war profiteer Harry Lime has come to view human carnage with a callous indifference, unconcerned that the diluted penicillin he’s been trafficking underground has resulted in the tortured deaths of young children.
Challenged by his old friend Holly Martins to consider the consequences of his actions, Lime responds, “In these days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, so why should we?”
“Have you ever seen any of your victims?” asks Martins.
“Victims?” responds Limes, as he looks down from the top of a Ferris wheel onto a populace reduced to mere dots on the ground. “Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax — the only way you can save money nowadays.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is how the U.S. government sees us, too, when it looks down upon us from its lofty perch.
To the powers-that-be, the rest of us are insignificant specks, faceless dots on the ground.
To the architects of the American police state, we are not worthy or vested with inherent rights. This is how the government can justify treating us like economic units to be bought and sold and traded, or caged rats to be experimented upon and discarded when we’ve outgrown our usefulness.
To those who call the shots in the halls of government, “we the people” are merely the means to an end.
“We the people”—who think, who reason, who take a stand, who resist, who demand to be treated with dignity and care, who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become obsolete, undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that, in the words of Rod Serling, “has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom.”
In this sense, we are all Romney Wordsworth, the condemned man in Serling’s Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man.”
“The Obsolete Man” speaks to the dangers of a government that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State. Yet—and here’s the kicker—this is where the government through its monstrous inhumanity also becomes obsolete. As Serling noted in his original script for “The Obsolete Man,” “Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man…that state is obsolete.”
How do you defeat a monster? You start by recognizing the monster for what it is.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 00:00 - Visualizing How Oil Prices Went Sub-Zero: Explaining The COVID-19 Oil Crash
Visualizing How Oil Prices Went Sub-Zero: Explaining The COVID-19 Oil Crash
The Great Lockdown continues to turn markets on their head.
Last week, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins dug into the unprecedented number of initial jobless claims coming out of the United States, which topped 22 million in a period of four weeks.
It’s just days later, and we already have our next market abnormality: this time, traders were baffled by West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude — the U.S. benchmark oil price — which somehow flipped negative for the first time in history.
How is that possible? And how does it tie into the COVID-19 oil price crash in general?
Setting the Geopolitical Stage
Oil is a geopolitical game, and big price swings always come with a geopolitical undercurrent.
This particular story picked up steam in February as OPEC+ producers tried to negotiate a production cut, amid concerns that COVID-19 could impact demand. Russia walked out on these meetings, and Saudi Arabia responded by undercutting oil prices by $6-8 per barrel.
The world went into lockdown, energy demand dissipated, and oil producers continued to pump at will. Then on April 9th, nearly a full month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Russia and Saudi Arabia finally settled their differences.
However, this truce came too late — prices had already fell about 60% from February highs.
How Prices Went Subzero
Up until recently, this was a fairly run-of-the-mill oil price crash — but then prices suddenly sunk below zero, with May futures for WTI oil closing at -$37.63 on April 20th.
For the first time in history, producers were willing to pay traders to take oil off their hands. This oddity is partially a function of the particularities of futures contracts:
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Buyers Wanted (At Any Cost!)
Futures contracts normally rollover to the next month without much happening, but in this case traders saw the May contract as a “hot potato”. No one wanted to be stuck taking delivery of oil when the world is awash in it and the country is in lockdown. -
A Time and a Place
Oil futures contracts specify a time and place for delivery. For WTI oil, that specific place is Cushing, Oklahoma. With most storage capacity booked already, taking physical delivery wasn’t even an option for many players.
In other words, sellers outnumbered buyers by a crazy margin — and because oil is a physical commodity, someone has to ultimately take the contract.
At time of publishing, the May contract and spot prices have “rebounded” to about $10. The June contract is slightly higher, at $13.
“Never before has the oil industry come this close to testing its logistics capacity to the limit.”
– International Energy Agency (IEA), Oil Market Report for April
Overcoming the Supply Glut
What do you do when oil is practically free?
You store as much of it as you can, and hope that at some point you can sell it for more.
Unfortunately, everyone has the exact same idea, and as a result there is a historic glut that is filling up the world’s storage capacity both on land and at sea:
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In March, it was estimated that 76% of the world’s available oil storage capacity was already full.
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A record-setting 160 million barrels of oil is being stored on tankers at sea, according to Reuters.
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The cost of renting an oil supertanker has gone through the roof. It’s jumped from $20,000 per day to $200,000-$300,000 per day, according to Rystad Energy.
It remains to be seen how fast the transportation industry will recover in a post-COVID-19 world, but for now the outlook for all oil producers is grim. The continued fallout will not only affect industry, but also the countries that rely on oil exports to balance their budgets.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 23:40 -
- YouTube Sides With World Health Organization On Coronavirus
YouTube Sides With World Health Organization On Coronavirus
Submitted by ValueWalk
YouTube says it will take down any videos that contradict what the World Health Organization says about the coronavirus. As the WHO finds itself in the middle of controversy over China’s handling of COVID-19, it sounds like any videos even criticizing the agency could be removed.
Of course, the issue of censorship by the world’s biggest tech firms isn’t new, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
YouTube backs World Health Organization on coronavirus
In an interview with CNN, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said they’ve seen a 75% increase in video views for news from “authoritative sources” since the beginning of 2020. She also said they’ve been busy removing “problematic information” like anything that is “medically unsubstantiated.”
Susan gave examples of videos advising people to take vitamin C or turmeric as content that violates YouTube’s policies. She also said YouTube will remove anything that goes against World Health Organization recommendations.
Another example of a topic the video platform cracked down on is the conspiracy theory claiming 5G towers cause coronavirus symptoms. She added that even during non-pandemic times, they’ve been removing information that is a violation of their policy. She also said YouTube has made “numerous policy changes” to stay ahead of the rapid changes
WHO says coronavirus didn’t come from a lab
One of the most widespread theories about the coronavirus is that it originated in a lab in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the virus. The theory has picked up so much steam that the U.S. has reportedly launched an official investigation into it.
However, YouTube could theoretically remove videos that talk about this theory because the World Health Organization officially said on Tuesday that COVID-19 did not come from any lab. A spokesperson for the WHO said on Tuesday that the virus is likely of animal origin.
USA Today and Reuters report that a spokesperson for the agency said it’s unclear how the novel coronavirus made the leap from bats to humans. They believe an intermediate animal served as a bridge.
This isn’t the first time public health experts have said that COVID-19 wasn’t engineered in a lab. However, that doesn’t seem to be the big issue where theories about the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s possible involvement are concerned.
Reuters specifically asked the WHO spokesperson to elaborate on whether the coronavirus may have accidentally escaped from a lab, but she declined. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has repeatedly dismissed theories that lax safety protocols allowed the virus to escape accidentally.
Trump and others take aim at the WHO
President Donald Trump wants to halt funding for the WHO due to its handling of the coronavirus, but he’s not the only one calling into question the agency’s efforts. The WHO has accepted China’s statements of the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 without questioning the accuracy of the data. Meanwhile, numerous reports out of China have suggested that Beijing isn’t being totally transparent about the severity of the illness within its borders.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has landed in the crosshairs amid calls for him to step down. Some are calling him a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party. He was Beijing’s choice for the position of WHO director general, Rep. Michael McCaul of the House Foreign Affairs Committee told USA Today. He said Tedros “used the WHO to trumpet their [China’s] lies about the virus.”
Lawrence Gostin of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, told The New York Times in May 2017 that while Tedros was Ethiopia’s health minister, the government covered up three cholera outbreaks. Tedros denies the claim, and he became director general of the WHO due to his track record of fighting malaria and other serious diseases while serving as Ethiopia’s health minister.
Lawsuit filed against the World Health Organization
Trump isn’t the only one taking aim at the World Health Organization. Three Westchester, New York men are suing the agency, alleging that it mishandled the pandemic response. The lawsuit demands that the WHO pay “incalculable” damagers for the “injury, damage and loss” they suffered due to the pandemic.
According to USA Today, the attorney who represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit said in the lawsuit that the agency didn’t do enough to make sure the Chinese government was open and honest about the safeguards it was taken to protect against COVID-19.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 23:20 - Liquidity Crisis Over? In Drastic Reversal, Companies Issue Bonds To Repay Revolvers
Liquidity Crisis Over? In Drastic Reversal, Companies Issue Bonds To Repay Revolvers
Starting one month ago, hit by a dramatic flashback to events from the global financial crisis, US corporations panicked and rushed to obtain as much funding as they possibly could – especially since such key short-term funding markets such as Commercial Paper were effectively frozen – ahead of what would soon become an unprecedented shutdown of the US economy, or as Bank of America puts it, there were fears that the US economy would be hit by a liquidity crisis on top of a deep recession.
Companies responded by drawing over $300 billion in revolvers…
… and from February until about two weeks ago C&I loans on bank balance sheets – which include revolvers and most other secured loans – grew more than $500bn.
Then, in late March, the Fed came to the rescue and announced primary and secondary market corporate credit facilities about a month ago, which was followed by a period where companies both drew credit lines and were able to issue record volumes of IG rated corporate bonds.
Indeed, as BofA shows, more than 170 US companies have announced over $120bn credit line drawdowns over the past few weeks. That includes 77 IG-rated names, of which 22 issued corporate bonds shortly thereafter.
With the primary market wide open – and backstopped by the Fed no less – more will follow. In addition, companies have also increased the sizes of their revolver/credit facilities without actually drawing. Revolver utilization ratio for US IG companies was around 12% as of 4Q19 and 30% during the financial crisis.
But now, as BofA’s Hans Mikkelsen writes, in a stark reversal of the liquidity drawdown dynamics of the past month, we are seeing the clearest signs that some companies have confidence they can get to the other side because they are now issuing corporate bonds to pay down credit lines, with roughly $7 billion in IG bonds issued to repay revolvers.
Of course, as even Bank of America admits, the main if not only reason behind this striking reversal in liquidity dynamics, is the Fed and the record policy response, now that the US central banks is explicitly backstopping an even bigger corporate bond bubble.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 23:17 - China Sends US "Contaminated" COVID Test-Kits
China Sends US “Contaminated” COVID Test-Kits
It’s bad enough that China has frozen exports of medical equipment to the US during the pandemic. Now a new report sheds light on some COVID-19 test kits from the country that were sent “contaminated.”
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) said the University of Washington School of Medicine (UW Medicine) “went to extraordinary lengths to airlift tens of thousands of Covid-19 testing kits” during the start of the US outbreak to only discover last week that some of the tests are tainted.
“I’ve just recommended everyone who has these things pause and not use them at all,” said Geoff Baird, the interim chair of the UW Department of Laboratory Medicine, who led the group to secure the tests. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed.”
Baird told SCMP that a colleague informed him on April 16 that some of the “liquid in vials he had sent appeared to have changed in color.” In shock, he said he stormed out of his office down to the UW Medicine storage facility where the test kits were being held and started to “tear through boxes.”
COVID-19 testing vial. (Photo: AFP) He said many of the vials looked “fine,” but a “small percentage of them had turned to an orange or yellow color, rather than hot pink,” which indicated bacterial growth and, ultimately, contamination.
Baird also had scientists add novel coronavirus to the contaminated vials and compared to uncontaminated liquid.
The conclusions, he said: “There’s absolutely no difference.”
After that, Baird immediately suspended future orders with the Chinese manufacturer.
Anita Nadelson, the Seattle businesswoman who helped the university secure the tests, said the Chinese firm would refund their money.
“They’re working diligently to identify and cure the issue,” Nadelson said. “We vetted these as best we could. It’s an unexpected turn on both sides.”
Baird said the contamination is concentrated in the specimen-preserving liquid, which makes no contact with patients, adding that “we don’t expect there’s any real mechanism of harm to patients.”
A scientist runs a clinical test at UW Virology’s lab. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images) He said S. maltophilia was the bacterium found in the contaminated vials:
“It lives on surfaces and it lives on factory things and tubing,” he said. “I would think it’s in your home, my home, it’s on everything.”
Baird said the university gave 20,000 test kits to Public Health–Seattle & King County and another 15,000 to the state.
“I don’t know how many they’ve distributed yet,” he said.
On Sunday, the state recalled 12,000 kits it handed out to counties.
“We are working with our partners to have them discard the product and will work to replace them as quickly as we can,” said John Wiesman, the state secretary of health, in a statement.
“About 5,000 of the 20,000 they gave us had been distributed by us, and approximately 300 had been used,” said James Apa, a Public Health–Seattle & King County spokesman, adding that “the problem with the kit itself shouldn’t present any health risk to patients.”
Baird said while the contaminated test kits are a setback – there appears to be a national shortage of kits.
“We should be doing more, but we’ve not seen our volume go up,” Baird said of testing at the UW Medicine facility. “There’s a cap on the amount of testing that can be done globally, and certainly nationally, there aren’t enough kits for swabs and VTM (viral transport media) for testing.”
Defective tests from China were not limited to the US. We noted earlier this month Spain received 640,000 tests that were later considered useless.
While China attempts to restore its image as a global leader and focus on distributing humanitarian relief to countries in need, the latest snafu of contaminated or defective COVID-19 testing kits is a public relations disaster.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 23:00 - Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using COVID-19 To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision
Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using COVID-19 To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision
Authored by Whitney Webb via TheLastAmericanVagabond.com,
LAST YEAR, A GOVERNMENT COMMISSION CALLED FOR THE US TO ADOPT AN AI-DRIVEN MASS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM FAR BEYOND THAT USED IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN ORDER TO ENSURE AMERICAN HEGEMONY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. NOW, MANY OF THE “OBSTACLES” THEY HAD CITED AS PREVENTING ITS IMPLEMENTATION ARE RAPIDLY BEING REMOVED UNDER THE GUISE OF COMBATING THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS.
Last year, a U.S. government body dedicated to examining how artificial intelligence can “address the national security and defense needs of the United States” discussed in detail the “structural” changes that the American economy and society must undergo in order to ensure a technological advantage over China, according to a recent document acquired through a FOIA request. This document suggests that the U.S. follow China’s lead and even surpass them in many aspects related to AI-driven technologies, particularly their use of mass surveillance. This perspective clearly clashes with the public rhetoric of prominent U.S. government officials and politicians on China, who have labeled the Chinese government’s technology investments and export of its surveillance systems and other technologies as a major “threat” to Americans’ “way of life.”
In addition, many of the steps for the implementation of such a program in the U.S., as laid out in this newly available document, are currently being promoted and implemented as part of the government’s response to the current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. This likely due to the fact that many members of this same body have considerable overlap with the taskforces and advisors currently guiding the government’s plans to “re-open the economy” and efforts to use technology to respond to the current crisis.
The FOIA document, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), was produced by a little-known U.S. government organization called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). It was created by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its official purpose is “to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”
The NSCAI is a key part of the government’s response to what is often referred to as the coming “fourth industrial revolution,” which has been described as “a revolution characterized by discontinuous technological development in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, fifth-generation telecommunications networking (5G), nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and quantum computing.”
However, their main focus is ensuring that “the United States … maintain a technological advantage in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other associated technologies related to national security and defense.” The vice-chair of NSCAI, Robert Work – former Deputy Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS), described the commission’s purpose as determining “how the U.S. national security apparatus should approach artificial intelligence, including a focus on how the government can work with industry to compete with China’s ‘civil-military fusion’ concept.”
The recently released NSCAI document is a May 2019 presentation entitled “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview.” Throughout the presentation, the NSCAI promotes the overhaul of the U.S. economy and way of life as necessary for allowing the U.S. to ensure it holds a considerable technological advantage over China, as losing this advantage is currently deemed a major “national security” issue by the U.S. national security apparatus. This concern about maintaining a technological advantage can be seen in several other U.S. military documents and think tank reports, several of which have warned that the U.S.’ technological advantage is quickly eroding.
The U.S. government and establishment media outlets often blame alleged Chinese espionage or the Chinese government’s more explicit partnerships with private technology companies in support of their claim that the U.S. is losing this advantage over China. For instance, Chris Darby, the current CEO of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, who is also on the NSCAI, told CBS News last year that China is the U.S.’ main competitor in terms of technology and that U.S. privacy laws were hampering the U.S.’ capacity to counter China in this regard, stating that:
“[D]ata is the new oil. And China is just awash with data. And they don’t have the same restraints that we do around collecting it and using it, because of the privacy difference between our countries. This notion that they have the largest labeled data set in the world is going to be a huge strength for them.”
In another example, Michael Dempsey – former acting Director of National Intelligence and currently a government-funded fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – argued in The Hill that:
“It’s quite clear, though, that China is determined to erase our technological advantage, and is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to this effort. In particular, China is determined to be a world leader in such areas as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and synthetic biology. These are the industries that will shape life on the planet and the military balance of power for the next several decades.”
In fact, the national security apparatus of the United States is so concerned about losing a technological edge over China that the Pentagon recently decided to join forces directly with the U.S. intelligence community in order “to get in front of Chinese advances in artificial intelligence.” This union resulted in the creation of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), which ties together “the military’s efforts with those of the Intelligence Community, allowing them to combine efforts in a breakneck push to move government’s AI initiatives forward.” It also coordinates with other government agencies, industry, academics, and U.S. allies. Robert Work, who subsequently became the NSCAI vice-chair, said at the time that JAIC’s creation was a “welcome first step in response to Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian, plans to dominate these technologies.”
Similar concerns about “losing” technological advantage to China have also been voiced by the NSCAI chairman, Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet – Google’s parent company, who argued in February in the New York Times that Silicon Valley could soon lose “the technology wars” to China if the U.S. government doesn’t take action. Thus, the three main groups represented within the NSCAI – the intelligence community, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley – all view China’s advancements in AI as a major national security threat (and in Silicon Valley’s case, threat to their bottom lines and market shares) that must be tackled quickly.
TARGETING CHINA’S “ADOPTION ADVANTAGE”
In the May 2019 “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview” presentation, the NSCAI discusses that, while the U.S. still leads in the “creation” stage of AI and related technologies, it lags behind China in the “adoption” stage due to “structural factors.” It says that “creation”, followed by “adoption” and “iteration” are the three phases of the “life cycle of new tech” and asserts that failing to dominate in the “adoption” stage will allow China to “leapfrog” the U.S. and dominate AI for the foreseeable future.
The presentation also argues that, in order to “leapfrog” competitors in emerging markets, what is needed is not “individual brilliance” but instead specific “structural conditions that exist within certain markets.” It cites several case studies where China is considered to be “leapfrogging” the U.S. due to major differences in these “structural factors.” Thus, the insinuation of the document (though not directly stated) is that the U.S. must alter the “structural factors” that are currently responsible for its lagging behind China in the “adoption” phase of AI-driven technologies.
Chief among the troublesome “structural factors” highlighted in this presentation are so-called “legacy systems” that are common in the U.S. but much less so in China. The NSCAI document states that examples of “legacy systems” include a financial system that still utilizes cash and card payments, individual car ownership and even receiving medical attention from a human doctor. It states that, while these “legacy systems” in the US are “good enough,” too many “good enough” systems “hinder the adoption of new things,” specifically AI-driven systems.
Another structural factor deemed by the NSCAI to be an obstacle to the U.S.’ ability to maintain a technological advantage over China is the “scale of the consumer market,” arguing that “extreme urban density = on-demand service adoption.” In other words, extreme urbanization results in more people using online or mobile-based “on-demand” services, ranging from ride-sharing to online shopping. It also cites the use of mass surveillance on China’s “huge population base” is an example of how China’s “scale of consumer market” advantage allowing “China to leap ahead” in the fields of related technologies, like facial recognition.
In addition to the alleged shortcomings of the U.S.’ “legacy systems” and lack of “extreme urban density,” the NSCAI also calls for more “explicit government support and involvement” as a means to speed up the adoption of these systems in the U.S. This includes the government lending its stores of data on civilians to train AI, specifically citing facial recognition databases, and mandating that cities be “re-architected around AVs [autonomous vehicles],” among others. Other examples given include the government investing large amounts of money in AI start-ups and adding tech behemoths to a national, public-private AI taskforce focused on smart city-implementation (among other things).
With regards to the latter, the document says “this level of public-private cooperation” in China is “outwardly embraced” by the parties involved, with this “serving as a stark contrast to the controversy around Silicon Valley selling to the U.S. government.” Examples of such controversy, from the NSCAI’s perspective, likely include Google employees petitioning to end the Google-Pentagon “Project Maven,” which uses Google’s AI software to analyze footage captured by drones. Google eventually chose not to renew its Maven contract as a result of the controversy, even though top Google executives viewed the project as a “golden opportunity” to collaborate more closely with the military and intelligence communities.
The document also defines another aspect of government support as the “clearing of regulatory barriers.” This term is used in the document specifically with respect to U.S. privacy laws, despite the fact that the U.S. national security state has long violated these laws with near complete impunity. However, the document seems to suggest that privacy laws in the U.S. should be altered so that what the U.S. government has done “in secret” with private citizen data can be done more openly and more extensively. The NSCAI document also discusses the removal of “regulatory barriers” in order to speed up the adoption of self-driving cars, even though autonomous driving technology has resulted in several deadly and horrific car accidents and presents other safety concerns.
Also discussed is how China’s “adoption advantage” will “allow it to leapfrog the U.S.” in several new fields, including “AI medical diagnosis” and “smart cities.” It then asserts that “the future will be decided at the intersection of private enterprise and policy leaders between China and the U.S.” If this coordination over the global AI market does not occur, the document warns that “we [the U.S.] risk being left out of the discussions where norms around AI are set for the rest of our lifetimes.”
The presentation also dwells considerably on how “the main battleground [in technology] are not the domestic Chinese and US markets,” but what it refers to as the NBU (next billion users) markets, where it states that “Chinese players will aggressively challenge Silicon Valley.” In order to challenge them more successfully, the presentation argues that, “just like we [view] the market of teenagers as a harbinger for new trends, we should look at China.”
The document also expresses concerns about China exporting AI more extensively and intensively than the U.S., saying that China is “already crossing borders” by helping to build facial databases in Zimbabwe and selling image recognition and smart city systems to Malaysia. If allowed to become “the unambiguous leader in AI,” it says that “China could end up writing much of the rulebook of international norms around the deployment of AI” and that it would “broaden China’s sphere of influence amongst an international community that increasingly looks to the pragmatic authoritarianism of China and Singapore as an alternative to Western liberal democracy.”
WHAT WILL REPLACE THE US’ “LEGACY SYSTEMS”?
Given that the document makes it quite clear that “legacy systems” in the U.S. are impeding its ability to prevent China from “leapfrogging” ahead in AI and then dominating it for the foreseeable future, it is also important to examine what the document suggests should replace these “legacy systems” in the U.S.
As previously mentioned, one “legacy system” cited early on in the presentation is the main means of payment for most Americans, cash and credit/debit cards. The presentation asserts, in contrast to these “legacy systems” that the best and most advanced system is moving entirely to smartphone-based digital wallets.
It notes specifically the main mobile wallet provider in India, PayTM, is majority owned by Chinese companies. It quotes an article, which states that “a big break came [in 2016] when India canceled 86% of currency in circulation in an effort to cut corruption and bring more people into the tax net by forcing them to use less cash.” At the time, claims that India’s 2016 “currency reform” would be used as a stepping stone towards a cashless society were dismissed by some as “conspiracy theory.” However, last year, a committee convened by India’s central bank (and led by an Indian tech oligarch who also created India’s massive civilian biometric database) resulted in the Indian government’s “Cashless India” program.
Regarding India’s 2016 “currency reform,” the NSCAI document then asserts that “this would be unfathomable in the West. And unsurprisingly, when 86% of the cash got cancelled and nobody had a credit card, mobile wallets in India exploded, laying the groundwork for a far more advanced payments ecosystem in India than the US.” However, it has become increasingly less unfathomable in light of the current coronavirus crisis, which has seen efforts to reduce the amount of cash used because paper bills may carry the virus as well as efforts to introduce a Federal Reserve-backed “digital dollar.”
In addition, the NSCAI document from last May calls for the end of in-person shopping and promotes moving towards all shopping being performed online. It argues that “American companies have a lot to gain by adopting ideas from Chinese companies” by shifting towards exclusive e-commerce purchasing options. It states that only shopping online provides a “great experience” and also adds that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”
Another “legacy system” that the NSCAI seeks to overhaul is car ownership, as it promotes autonomous, or self-driving vehicles and further asserts that “fleet ownership > individual ownership.” It specifically points to a need for “a centralized ride-sharing network,” which it says “is needed to coordinate cars to achieve near 100% utilization rates.” However, it warns against ride-sharing networks that “need a human operator paired with each vehicle” and also asserts that “fleet ownership makes more sense” than individual car ownership. It also specifically calls for these fleets to not only be composed of self-driving cars, but electric cars and cites reports that China “has the world’s most aggressive electric vehicle goals….and seek[s] the lead in an emerging industry.”
The document states that China leads in ride-sharing today even though ride-sharing was pioneered first in the U.S. It asserts once again that the U.S. “legacy system” of individual car ownership and lack of “extreme urban density” are responsible for China’s dominance in this area. It also predicts that China will “achieve mass autonomous [vehicle] adoption before the U.S.,” largely because “the lack of mass car ownership [in China] leads to far more consumer receptiveness to AVs [autonomous vehicles].” It then notes that “earlier mass adoption leads to a virtuous cycle that allows Chinese core self-driving tech to accelerate beyond [its] Western counterparts.”
In addition to their vision for a future financial system and future self-driving transport system, the NSCAI has a similarly dystopian vision for surveillance. The document calls mass surveillance “one of the ‘first-and-best customers’ for AI” and “a killer application for deep learning.” It also states that “having streets carpeted with cameras is good infrastructure.”
It then discusses how “an entire generation of AI unicorn” companies are “collecting the bulk of their early revenue from government security contracts” and praises the use of AI in facilitating policing activities. For instance, it lauds reports that “police are making convictions based on phone calls monitored with iFlyTek’s voice-recognition technology” and that “police departments are using [AI] facial recognition tech to assist in everything from catching traffic law violators to resolving murder cases.”
On the point of facial recognition technology specifically, the NSCAI document asserts that China has “leapt ahead” of the US on facial recognition, even though “breakthroughs in using machine learning for image recognition initially occurred in the US.” It claims that China’s advantage in this instance is because they have government-implemented mass surveillance (“clearing of regulatory barriers”), enormous government-provided stores of data (“explicit government support”) combined with private sector databases on a huge population base (“scale of consumer market”). As a consequence of this, the NSCAI argues, China is also set to leap ahead of the U.S. in both image/facial recognition and biometrics.
The document also points to another glaring difference between the U.S. and its rival, stating that: “In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”
The NSCAI document also touches on the area of healthcare, calling for the implementation of a system that seems to be becoming reality thanks to the current coronavirus crisis. In discussing the use of AI in healthcare (almost a year before the current crisis began), it states that “China could lead the world in this sector” and “this could lead to them exporting their tech and setting international norms.” One reason for this is also that China has “far too few doctors for the population” and calls having enough doctors for in-person visits a “legacy system.” It also cited U.S. regulatory measures such as “HIPPA compliance and FDA approval” as obstacles that don’t constrain Chinese authorities.
More troubling, it argues that “the potential impact of government supplied data is even more significant in biology and healthcare,” and says it is likely that “the Chinese government [will] require every single citizen to have their DNA sequenced and stored in government databases, something nearly impossible to imagine in places as privacy conscious as the U.S. and Europe.” It continues by saying that “the Chinese apparatus is well-equipped to take advantage” and calls these civilian DNA databases a “logical next step.”
WHO ARE THE NSCAI?
Given the sweeping changes to the U.S. that the NSCAI promoted in this presentation last May, it becomes important to examine who makes up the commission and to consider their influence over U.S. policy on these matters, particularly during the current crisis. As previously mentioned, the chairman of the NSCAI is Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) who has also invested heavily in Israeli intelligence-linked tech companies including the controversial start-up “incubator” Team8. In addition, the committee’s vice-chair is Robert Work, is not only a former top Pentagon official, but is currently working with the think tank CNAS, which is run by John McCain’s long-time foreign policy adviser and Joe Biden’s former national security adviser.
Other members of the NSCAI are as follows:
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Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, with close ties to Trump’s top donor Sheldon Adelson
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Steve Chien, supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab
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Mignon Clyburn, Open Society Foundation fellow and former FCC commissioner
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Chris Darby, CEO of In-Q-Tel (CIA’s venture capital arm)
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Ken Ford, CEO of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
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Jose-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University and former National Science Board member
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Eric Horvitz, director of Microsoft Research Labs
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Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services (CIA contractor)
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Gilman Louie, partner at Alsop Louie Partners and former CEO of In-Q-Tel
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William Mark, director of SRI International and former Lockheed Martin director
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Jason Matheny, director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, former Assistant director of National Intelligence and former director of IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency)
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Katharina McFarland, consultant at Cypress International and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition
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Andrew Moore, head of Google Cloud AI
As can be seen in the list above, there is a considerable amount of overlap between the NSCAI and the companies currently advising the White House on “re-opening” the economy (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Lockheed Martin, Oracle) and one NSCAI member, Oracle’s Safra Katz, is on the White House’s “economic revival” taskforce. Also, there is also overlap between the NSCAI and the companies that are intimately involved in the implementation of the “contact tracing” “coronavirus surveillance system,” a mass surveillance system promoted by the Jared Kushner-led, private-sector coronavirus task force. That surveillance system is set to be constructed by companies with deep ties to Google and the U.S. national security state, and both Google and Apple, who create the operating systems for the vast majority of smartphones used in the U.S., have said they will now build that surveillance system directly into their smartphone operating systems.
Also notable is the fact that In-Q-Tel and the U.S. intelligence community has considerable representation on the NSCAI and that they also boast close ties with Google, Palantir and other Silicon Valley giants, having been early investors in those companies. Both Google and Palantir, as well as Amazon (also on the NSCAI) are also major contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies. In-Q-Tel’s involvement on the NSCAI is also significant because they have been heavily promoting mass surveillance of consumer electronic devices for use in pandemics for the past several years. Much of that push has come from In-Q-Tel’s current Executive Vice President Tara O’Toole, who was previously the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and also co-authored several controversial biowarfare/pandemic simulations, such as Dark Winter.
In addition, since at least January, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon have been at the forefront of developing the U.S. government’s still-classified “9/11-style” response plans for the coronavirus crisis, alongside the National Security Council. Few news organizations have noted that these classified response plans, which are set to be triggered if and when the U.S. reaches a certain number of coronavirus cases, has been created largely by elements of the national security state (i.e. the NSC, Pentagon, and intelligence), as opposed to civilian agencies or those focused on public health issues.
Furthermore, it has been reported that the U.S. intelligence community as well as U.S. military intelligence knew by at least January (though recent reports have said as early as last November) that the coronavirus crisis would reach “pandemic proportions” by March. The American public were not warned, but elite members of the business and political classes were apparently informed, given the record numbers of CEO resignations in January and several high-profile insider trading allegations that preceded the current crisis by a matter of weeks.
Perhaps even more disconcerting is the added fact that the U.S. government not only participated in the eerily prescient pandemic simulation last October known as Event 201, it also led a series of pandemic response simulations last year. Crimson Contagion was a series of four simulations that involved 19 U.S. federal agencies, including intelligence and the military, as well as 12 different states and a host of private sector companies that simulated a devastating pandemic influenza outbreak that had originated in China. It was led by the current HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Robert Kadlec, who is a former lobbyist for military and intelligence contractors and a Bush-era homeland security “bioterrorism” advisor.
In addition, both Kadlec and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which was intimately involved in Event 201, have direct ties to the controversial June 2001 biowarfare exercise “Dark Winter,” which predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks that transpired just months later in disturbing ways. Though efforts by media and government were made to blame the anthrax attacks on a foreign source, the anthrax was later found to have originated at a U.S. bioweapons lab and the FBI investigation into the case has been widely regarded as a cover-up, including by the FBI’s once-lead investigator on that case.
Given the above, it is worth asking if those who share the NSCAI’s vision saw the coronavirus pandemic early on as an opportunity to make the “structural changes” it had deemed essential to countering China’s lead in the mass adoption of AI-driven technologies, especially considering that many of the changes in the May 2019 document are now quickly taking place under the guise of combatting the coronavirus crisis.
THE NSCAI’S VISION TAKES SHAPE
Though the May 2019 NSCAI document was authored nearly a year ago, the coronavirus crisis has resulted in the implementation of many of the changes and the removal of many of the “structural” obstacles that the commission argued needed to be drastically altered in order to ensure a technological advantage over China in the field of AI. The aforementioned move away from cash, which is taking place not just in the U.S. but internationally, is just one example of many.
For instance, earlier this week CNN reported that grocery stores are now considering banning in-person shopping and that the U.S. Department of Labor has recommended that retailers nationwide start “‘using a drive-through window or offering curbside pick-up’ to protect workers for exposure to coronavirus.” In addition, last week, the state of Florida approved an online-purchase plan for low income families using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Other reports have argued that social distancing inside grocery stores is ineffective and endangering people’s lives. As previously mentioned, the May 2019 NSCAI document argues that moving away from in-person shopping is necessary to mitigate China’s “adoption advantage” and also argued that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”
Reports have also argued that these changes in shopping will last far beyond coronavirus, such as an article by Business Insider entitled “The coronavirus pandemic is pushing more people online and will forever change how Americans shop for groceries, experts say.” Those cited in the piece argue that this shift away from in-person shopping will be “permanent” and also states that “More people are trying these services than otherwise would have without this catalyst and gives online players a greater chance to acquire and keep a new customer base.” A similar article in Yahoo! News argues that, thanks to the current crisis, “our dependence on online shopping will only rise because no one wants to catch a virus at a shop.”
In addition, the push towards the mass use of self-driving cars has also gotten a boost thanks to coronavirus, with driverless cars now making on-demand deliveries in California. Two companies, one Chinese-owned and the other backed by Japan’s SoftBank, have since been approved to have their self-driving cars used on California roads and that approval was expedited due to the coronavirus crisis. The CPO of Nuro Inc., the SoftBank-backed company, was quoted in Bloomberg as saying that “The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited the public need for contactless delivery services. Our R2 fleet is custom-designed to change the very nature of driving and the movement of goods by allowing people to remain safely at home while their groceries, medicines, and packages are brought to them.” Notably, the May 2019 NSCAI document references the inter-connected web of SoftBank-backed companies, particularly those backed by its largely Saudi-funded “Vision Fund,” as forming “the connective tissue for a global federation of tech companies” set to dominate AI.
California isn’t the only state to start using self-driving cars, as the Mayo Clinic of Florida is now also using them. “Using artificial intelligence enables us to protect staff from exposure to this contagious virus by using cutting-edge autonomous vehicle technology and frees up staff time that can be dedicated to direct treatment and care for patients,” Kent Thielen, M.D., CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida stated in a recent press release cited by Mic.
Like the changes to in-person shopping in the age of coronavirus, other reports assert that self-driving vehicles are here to stay. One report published by Mashable is entitled “It took a coronavirus outbreak for self-driving cars to become more appealing,” and opens by stating “Suddenly, a future full of self-driving cars isn’t just a sci-fi pipe dream. What used to be considered a scary, uncertain technology for many Americans looks more like an effective tool to protect ourselves from a fast-spreading, infectious disease.” It further argues that this is hardly a “fleeting shift” in driving habits and one tech CEO cited in the piece, Anuja Sonalker of Steer Tech, claims that “There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology. Humans are biohazards, machines are not.”
Another focus of the NSCAI presentation, AI medicine, has also seen its star rise in recent weeks. For instance, several reports have touted how AI-driven drug discovery platforms have been able to identify potential treatments for coronavirus. Microsoft, whose research lab director is on the NSCAI, recently put $20 million into its “AI for health” program to speed up the use of AI in analyzing coronavirus data. In addition, “telemedicine”– a form of remote medical care – has also become widely adopted due to the coronavirus crisis.
Several other AI-driven technologies have similarly become more widely adopted thanks to coronavirus, including the use of mass surveillance for “contact tracing” as well as facial recognition technology and biometrics. A recent Wall Street Journal report stated that the government is seriously considering both contact tracing via phone geolocation data and facial recognition technology in order to track those who might have coronavirus. In addition, private businesses – like grocery stores and restaurants – are using sensors and facial recognition to see how many people and which people are entering their stores.
As far as biometrics go, university researchers are now working to determine if “smartphones and biometric wearables already contain the data we need to know if we have become infected with the novel coronavirus.” Those efforts seek to detect coronavirus infections early by analyzing “sleep schedules, oxygen levels, activity levels and heart rate” based on smartphone apps like FitBit and smartwatches. In countries outside the U.S., biometric IDs are being touted as a way to track those who have and lack immunity to coronavirus.
In addition, one report in The Edge argued that the current crisis is changing what types of biometrics should be used, asserting that a shift towards thermal scanning and facial recognition is necessary:
“At this critical juncture of the crisis, any integrated facial recognition and thermal scanning solution must be implemented easily, rapidly and in a cost-effective manner. Workers returning to offices or factories must not have to scramble to learn a new process or fumble with declaration forms. They must feel safe and healthy for them to work productively. They just have to look at the camera and smile. Cameras and thermal scanners, supported by a cloud-based solution and the appropriate software protocols, will do the rest.”
Also benefiting from the coronavirus crisis is the concept of “smart cities,” with Forbes recently writing that “Smart cities can help us combat the coronavirus pandemic.” That article states that “Governments and local authorities are using smart city technology, sensors and data to trace the contacts of people infected with the coronavirus. At the same time, smart cities are also helping in efforts to determine whether social distancing rules are being followed.”
That article in Forbes also contains the following passage:
“…[T]he use of masses of connected sensors makes it clear that the coronavirus pandemic is–intentionally or not–being used as a testbed for new surveillance technologies that may threaten privacy and civil liberties. So aside from being a global health crisis, the coronavirus has effectively become an experiment in how to monitor and control people at scale.”
Another report in The Guardian states that “If one of the government takeaways from coronavirus is that ‘smart cities’ including Songdo or Shenzhen are safer cities from a public health perspective, then we can expect greater efforts to digitally capture and record our behaviour in urban areas – and fiercer debates over the power such surveillance hands to corporations and states.” There have also been reports that assert that typical cities are “woefully unprepared” to face pandemics compared to “smart cities.”
Yet, beyond many of the NSCAI’s specific concerns regarding mass AI adoption being conveniently resolved by the current crisis, there has also been a concerted effort to change the public’s perception of AI in general. As previously mentioned, the NSCAI had pointed out last year that:
“In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”
Now, less than a year later, the coronavirus crisis has helped spawn a slew of headlines in just the last few weeks that paint AI very differently, including “How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Fight Coronavirus,” “How AI May Prevent the Next Coronavirus Outbreak,” “AI Becomes an Ally in the Fight Against COVID-19,” “Coronavirus: AI steps up in battle against COVID-19,” and “Here’s How AI Can Help Africa Fight the Coronavirus,” among numerous others.
It is indeed striking how the coronavirus crisis has seemingly fulfilled the NSCAI’s entire wishlist and removed many of the obstacles to the mass adoption of AI technologies in the United States. Like major crises of the past, the national security state appears to be using the chaos and fear to promote and implement initiatives that would be normally rejected by Americans and, if history is any indicator, these new changes will remain long after the coronavirus crisis fades from the news cycle. It is essential that these so-called “solutions” be recognized for what they are and that we consider what type of world they will end up creating – an authoritarian technocracy. We ignore the rapid advance of these NSCAI-promoted initiatives and the phasing out of so-called “legacy systems” (and with them, many long-cherished freedoms) at our own peril.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 22:40 -
- Jerusalem's City Hall Complex Goes Up In Flames After Molotov Cocktail Attack
Jerusalem’s City Hall Complex Goes Up In Flames After Molotov Cocktail Attack
Police in Jerusalem are investigating a possible terror attack after a massive fire broke out at Jerusalem’s City Hall on Wednesday afternoon.
Given multiple building at the sprawling complex were shown in local media reports set ablaze, it appears the result of an arson attack.
Unconfirmed Israeli media reports say a suspect was seen hurling molotov cocktails at the buildings before fleeing on foot.
Fire in the Jerusalem City Hall, unknown if anyone is trapped inside. pic.twitter.com/akN8Wm3FAj
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 22, 2020
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The Jerusalem Post reports that a 40-year-old man from East Jerusalem has been apprehended, even as firefighters at the scene continue battling the blaze.
A second fire was started in another building in the Jerusalem City Hall complex. pic.twitter.com/xrlzAOLc5O
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 22, 2020
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JPost reports the following:
The Jerusalem City Hall spokesperson said that once the fire was detected emergency procedures were activated and police and firefighters were called to the scene. The cause of the fire is still unknown.
Eight teams of firefighters are currently at work putting out the fire and searching for anyone who might be trapped in the building.
Police arrested a 40-year-old man for allegedly starting the fire. The man is reportedly a resident of East Jerusalem.
Staff from Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion’s office were seen evacuating, as well as other city hall employees, though it’s as yet unknown if anyone is trapped inside the burning complex.
Any potential casualties or injuries are also unknown, but early reports suggest everyone escaped uninjured.
“Multiple reports state that an eyewitness has told police that he witnessed someone throwing a molotov cocktail into the building,” a separate local Israeli media report indicated.
“A spokesperson for City Hall tells the media in a written statement that Police have arrested a suspect,” the report said.
By the evening hours (local time) the blaze was reportedly subdued, however, damage to the building appeared substantial and far-reaching.
Firefighters have put out a fire in Jerusalem’s City Hall. A man was arrested on suspicion of arson.
(Photos by TPS) pic.twitter.com/k7I1FZDHD9— TPS – Israel’s News Agency (@TPS_News_co_il) April 22, 2020
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The attacker’s motive is also as yet unclear. It may be related to the ongoing Arab Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has led to continually tense situations in East Jerusalem.
Fire department says no danger of building collapse
Photos from inside the Jerusalem City Hall after the arson attack. pic.twitter.com/BJ15MASndy
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 22, 2020
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Or the attack was possibly connected with Israel’s draconian coronavirus lockdown – seen as among the most aggressive police-enforced ‘stay at home’ mandates in the world, itself recently driving local protests and even riots among both Arab residents of Jerusalem and ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 22:20 - Watch: John Pilger's "The Coming War On China"
Watch: John Pilger’s “The Coming War On China”
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,
“The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable,” Pilger says in his 2016 documentary The Coming War on China, which you can watch free on Youtube here or on Vimeo here.
“In a few years China has become the world’s second-biggest economic power,” Pilger’s introduction continues.
“The United States is the world’s biggest military power, with bases and missiles and ships covering every continent and every ocean. China is a threat to this dominance, says Washington. But who is the threat? This film is about shifting power, and great danger.”
As we’ve been discussing for years now, the relentless quest of the US-centralized empire-like power alliance for total world domination has put it on a collision course with the surging economic powerhouse of China which refuses to be absorbed into the imperial blob. The empire’s continued existence depends upon its ability to undermine China before it grows too powerful or the empire grows too weak to stop its ascent, at which point global hegemony becomes impossible and we are living in a truly multipolar world.
Watch the full documentary below:
China has therefore always been the final boss fight in the global campaign of violence and domination by what Pilger calls the “empire which never speaks its name”. And the ramping up of anti-China narrative management by the US government indicates that we are being psychologically primed to accept this world-threatening confrontation, just as Pilger warned in 2016.
“The danger of confrontation grows by the day,” Pilger says.
The powerful film breaks down the way the USA has been encircling China with a “noose” of military bases since the Korean War, which all have massive amounts of military firepower, including nuclear firepower, pointed right at China’s cities. Pilger shows the psychopathic toll this has inflicted upon the people who live in the areas where the US war machine has set up shop in the Pacific, including an especially enraging segment on the use of Bikini Atoll natives as human guinea pigs to test the effects of nuclear radiation on people. Also deeply disturbing is the revelation of just how close the US came to launching nuclear warheads at China due to a miscommunication during the Cuban missile crisis.
The film describes China’s recent history and explains its climb in economic power which led us to this point, and the USA’s generations-long history of provocation and hostility toward its government. It also addresses the silly projection so many westerners harbor that if the US wasn’t bullying and slaughtering the world into compliance, China would take over doing the same.
The White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” & creating a global pandemic, according to two US officials & a government cable obtained by The Daily Beast https://t.co/3Xjm08G2Mw
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 21, 2020
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Back in 2016 it was harder for people to see this escalation on the horizon, but now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic we’re hearing a frantic, disproportionate amount of anti-China sentiment from the Trump administration and its supporters, in the same way we heard Russia hysteria amplified over the last three years by Trump’s enemies. Trump was politically pressured to dangerously escalate cold war tensions with Russia, and he’s now being politically incentivized to pass the blame for his administration’s spectacular failures in addressing this pandemic on to the Chinese government in a way which manufactures support for escalations on that front as well. Two different narratives, same agenda.
“The new president, Donald Trump, has a problem with China,” Pilger says at the end of the documentary.
“The urgent question now is will Trump continue with the provocations revealed in this film and take us all to the edge of war?”
The answer to that question appears to be coalescing. It’s a good time for us all to watch this film.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 22:00 - Lululemon Fires Art Director Over 'Bat Fried Rice' Shirt
Lululemon Fires Art Director Over ‘Bat Fried Rice’ Shirt
Lulumemon has issued an apology and fired its art director, Trevor Fleming, after he shared an Instagram link on Sunday to a shirt created by artist Jess Sluder featuring a Chinese take-out box decorated with bat wings and the words “no thank you” on the sleeves and back.
The shirt, titled “Bat Fried Rice” was listed for sale at $60 until it was taken down. Meanwhile, Fleming’s Instagram account has since been deleted, according to USA Today.
There have been 100+ daily attacks on Asian Americans since the start of #COVID19. To see people adding to the hurt & racism hurts my heart. I hope someone picks up this story and these individuals take responsibility. I am more proud than ever to be part of the AA community. ✊🏼 pic.twitter.com/nWy9WJeMVE
— Kamauri Yeh (@yehwho) April 19, 2020
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The shirt was criticized as racist, as the coronavirus pandemic originated in Wuhan, China – where researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were studying coronavirus from horseshoe bat samples they had collected in caves 1,000 miles away in Yunnan, which is genetically identical to the original virus that causes COVID-19.
“At lululemon, our culture and values are core to who we are, and we take matters like this extremely seriously,” said Lululemon spokeswoman Erin Hankinson in a statement to USA Today. “We apologize that an employee was affiliated with promoting an offensive t-shirt… The image and the post were inappropriate and inexcusable and we do not tolerate this behaviour.”
“We acted immediately, and the person involved is no longer an employee of lululemon,” the statement continues.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 21:40 - Cluster Of Coronavirus Cases Reported Aboard Italian Cruise Ship Docked In Nagasaki: Live Updates
Cluster Of Coronavirus Cases Reported Aboard Italian Cruise Ship Docked In Nagasaki: Live Updates
Summary:
- German biotech company begins clinical trials for vaccine
- Oxford U. begins human testing for vaccine
- FT says UK coronavirus deaths 2x+ official number
- NY death toll passes 15k
- Trump: “Our Country is starting to OPEN FOR BUSINESS”
- Outbreak reported aboard Italian cruise ship docked in Japan
- Middle East coronavirus cases continue to climb everywhere except Iran
- Texas drops controversial temporary abortion ban
- FDA director “clarifies” WaPo story
- WHO’s Dr. Tedros asks US to reconsider cutting funding
- 2 cats become first pets in US to catch the virus
- Chinese scientist finds deadly new coronavirus mutations
- Cali officials reveal first US coronavirus death occurred weeks earlier than realized
- Dominic Raab says at least 69 health-care workers have died in the UK
- South Korea unveils ‘New Deal’-style stimulus
* * *
Update (2130ET): Here we go again…
Outbreaks aboard cruise ships have become a tiresome cliche since the novel coronavirus first left Wuhan back in December, and amazingly, despite the fact that most major cruise operators have had their operations suspended for going on six weeks, shipboard outbreaks are still happening.
A Japanese television station reported Thursday morning that an outbreak has been reported aboard a ship that has been docked for repairs since January. Apparently, hundreds of crew members were still living aboard the ship, despite the fact that it has been docked all this time.
NHK reports that 48 crew members on an Italian cruise ship docked in Nagasaki have tested positive for coronavirus, NHK reports, citing an unidentified local official. The Italy-owned Costa Atlantica has been docked at Mitsubishi Heavy’s Koyagi shipyard for repairs since Jan. 29; 623 crew members were apparently still living on board the ship. No passengers have been present during the outbreak.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday that the Health Ministry sent officials and experts to the ship after a request from the Italian government.
Japan of course was home to the original cruise ship “nightmare at sea” when the “Diamond Princess” docked in Yokohama with thousands of passengers and crew aboard. Hundreds were sickened and nearly 2 dozen died.
Since then, there have been a handful of outbreaks involving cruise ships, including one aboard the “Ruby Princess” in Sydney that has triggered a criminal investigation down under.
Given the wave of repatriations and evacuations that have taken place since the outbreak began, once can’t help but wonder: Why are these 600+ sailors still living on this ship in presumably cramped crewmen’s quarters?
In a rare win for abortion-rights advocates, Texas has reportedly dropped its order banning abortions while the pandemic is ongoing.
JUST FILED
Texas says its abortion ban is over.
The state’s AG office in a new legal filing says the new Executive Order suspends some medical procedures, but abortion is exempt and can resume.
— Kate Smith (@byKateSmith) April 23, 2020
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Finally, some good news for liberals to enjoy.
* * *
Update (1900ET): We imagine FDA Director Dr. Stephen Hahn found himself on the ass-end of a classic President Trump rage-fueled shitstorm earlier when the Washington Post quoted him in a story warning that the second wave of the virus would be “even more devastating”.
CDC Director was totally misquoted by Fake News @CNN on Covid 19. He will be putting out a statement.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2020
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Trump tweeted earlier that the article was “false,” however, in a statement during Wednesday evening’s press conference, Dr. Hahn walked all that back, admitted that his quote was accurate, but accused the Washington Post of omitting some context – namely that he had clarified the reason it would be deadlier is because it would coincide with the entirety of the next flu season.
* * *
Update (1850ET): Now that President Trump has done pretty much everything possible to convince the public to blame him for the coronavirus fallout, despite having delegated all genuine authority to the states, he is moving to ensure the public understands that, if he had his druthers, the whole country would be reopened by now, by reopening the only pieces of land for which he has retained the authority to reopen: the National Parks.
President @realDonaldTrump announces that he will begin to reopen national parks!
Get out and enjoy all the beauty we have and get some fresh. God bless America. #KAG2020 pic.twitter.com/SbUOcWUR16
— BRIAN FRASER (@bfraser747) April 22, 2020
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He added during tonight’s press caution that the reopening would be done “as we take reasonable precaution.”
* * *
Update (1805ET): With the CDC remaining mostly tight-lipped about the breakdown of coronavirus patients in the US (a ploy that critics say began as an effort to conceal the lack of testing in the US), more states are releasing breakdowns of COVID-19 patients including those who died in hospital settings, and those who died in managed-care facilities like nursing homes, clusters of vicious disease.
And a recent analysis of these data by WSJ found that facilities that primarily house older people who are often in frail health have been the source of roughly 25% of the deaths linked to the coronavirus in the US. A WSJ survey has found at least 10,783 fatalities among more than 35 states that either report data online, or responded to requests for information.
And that’s only with 70% of states (and zero territories) reporting.
States including Massachusetts, West Virginia are trying to ramp up testing in nursing homes in their states, and while Cuomo has tried to do the same in NY, he did say earlier that “it’s not our job” to provide PPE to nursing homes” – meaning Americans private and public corporations, entities that, despite their tremendous economic power, have proved just as impotent as the federal government in helping alleviate the crisis. In fact, as we explained earlier, one could argue that corporations are actively hurting the rest of the economy by sucking up resources that should be flowing to small business owners who are in danger of shutting down.
* * *
Update (1550ET): Earlier in the afternoon, remarks made by WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus drew the attention of the international press as he asked the US to “reconsider” cutting funding to the organization, insisting that the organization acts to combat discrimination and fight for human rights everywhere (except China). The organization also released a list of six conditions that should be met before countries begin to reopen.
Earlier, Saudi Arabia reported 1,141 new cases of coronavirus and 5 new deaths for a total of 12,772 cases and 114 deaths, while the UAE reported 483 new cases of coronavirus and 6 new deaths for a total of 8,238 cases and 52 deaths.
Meanwhile, the state of California said it recorded 86 new COVID-19-linked deaths since yesterday, an increase of 6.8% to nearly 1,300 deaths.
Earlier, two cats in the US tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the first household pets in the country to be confirmed positive for the virus after at least one tiger at the Bronx Zoo was found to be carrying strains of the virus. At least one of the cats was experiencing mild symptoms, per the CDC.
* * *
Update (1330ET): New York has reached another grim milestone: the state’s death toll has surpassed 15k on Wednesday, though the pace of deaths continued to slow. Deaths climbed to 15,302.
Texas, meanwhile, reported another 18% jump in new cases. France reported 3,201 new cases on Wednesday, the highest number in four days, to right around 160k cases. The WHO noted that in the Middle East, cases are rising everywhere except Iran.
* * *
Update (1205ET): Though it sounded almost as if he was speaking to his fellow governors, Cuomo urged local officials in his state to “resist political pressure” to reopen their towns too early, warning that they might risk ruining all the hard work of the American people. “We make a bad move, it’s going to set us back…Frankly, this is no time to act stupidly. Period. I don’t know how else to say it,” Cuomo said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo implores local officials to resist “political pressure to open.”
“We make a bad move, it’s going to set us back…Frankly, this is no time to act stupidly. Period. I don’t know how else to say it.” https://t.co/Zv6MGE4GDW pic.twitter.com/UHVHiH3dwX
— ABC News (@ABC) April 22, 2020
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Cuomo added: “This is not the time for confusion or disagreement among government…”local laws can’t counteract state laws, anyway.”
“We can’t have people lose their life because we acted imprudently.”
In other news, Italy reported a jump in new cases, while the pace of new deaths continued to slow. 3,370 new patients tested positive yesterday, said Italy’s Civil Protection Service, compared with an increase of 2,729 the day before (Italy’s countrywide total is 187,327). Deaths continued to slow, with another 437 new deaths reported, compared with 534 new deaths a day ago, as the curve continues to slow at a rate that’s even surprising some of Italy’s leading scientists. In total, 25,085 Italians have died – with deaths in the country moving above 25k, becoming only the second country to hit this number after the US.
Another 54,543 Italians have recovered, including another 2,943 declared “recovered” over the last day, an increase of +5.7% as more patients finally recover from the illness. Of course, as we’ve noted, many patients who struggle in serious condition for days or weeks have a higher likelihood of suffering long-term consequences. Finally, the number of tests run in the country has surpassed 1.5 million.
* * *
Update (1130ET): One day after Singapore extended its lockdown until the end of June amid a stunning resurgence in coronavirus infections involving the city’s migrant workers, the city-state has reported another record jump in new cases.
The Health Ministry reported 1,016 new cases of coronavirus, bringing its total to 10,141 cases in total. Of the new cases confirmed over the last day, 1,001 of them were foreigners, likely mostly migrant workers.
Meanwhile, during Wednesday’s press conference, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned “what we do today, we will see the results in 3, or 4, or 5 days”, since most of the worst viral cases tend to manifest within 10 or 11 days, tops, though some cases have taken far longer.
Holding a briefing with updates on #Coronavirus. Watch Live: https://t.co/pWIbMR0Jmk
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) April 22, 2020
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His big theme is that New Yorkers have arrived at a “profound moment” in history, where everybody will be judged for their actions during the reopening. “If we get reckless today, we’ll suffer the consequences tomorrow.”
* * *
Update (0810ET): President Trump is starting the day by once again encouraging the ‘reopen now’ protesters and courting even more responsibility for the eventual outcome of the reopening – something that we’ve repeatedly argued is a boneheaded political strategy.
States are safely coming back. Our Country is starting to OPEN FOR BUSINESS again. Special care is, and always will be, given to our beloved seniors (except me!). Their lives will be better than ever…WE LOVE YOU ALL!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2020
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I will be signing my Executive Order prohibiting immigration into our Country today. In the meantime, even without this order, our Southern Border, aided substantially by the 170 miles of new Border Wall & 27,000 Mexican soldiers, is very tight – including for human trafficking!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2020
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The president also affirmed plans to sign his executive order prohibiting immigration into the US for 60 days.
* * *
Now that the Senate has passed the $484 billion relief bill to top off the ‘Paycheck Protection Program’ (which hasn’t been able to make any new loans in five days), Washington reporters claim that the House should follow that up with a vote on Thursday, before hopefully sending it to the president’s desk.
Last night, we reported on a new study out of China authored by the same scientist who first proposed Beijing’s lockdown plan that highlighted some troubling new discoveries that might complicate the quest for a vaccine. The researchers isolated and analyzed new mutant strains of the virus that appeared to be much more ‘aggressive’ (i.e. likely deadlier) than earlier strains. Furthermore, these deadlier strains were not only found to carry higher viral loads – making them much more infectious – but they were also found to have genetic similarities to strains isolated in New York and Europe, potentially explaining the strikingly high mortality rates.
During the early days of the US response, Dr. Fauci and others insisted that there was “no evidence” of any significant mutations in the virus that might impede research into a possible vaccine. While that might have been true given the evidence at the time, clearly, it no longer is.
Whether this leads to a revision in vaccine timeline targets remains to be seen, but we would be surprised to see any such information released through official channels.
Curiously, the only vaccine-related news we’re seeing on Wednesday are reports about two companies, one German, one British, that have just received a ‘green light’ to move on to the next phase of vaccine-related study.
German biotech company BioNTech will become the first European company to proceed to clinical trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine after receiving regulatory approval to accelerate the firm’s testing. Presumably, the firm’s experimental vaccine has already shown some success in preliminary human studies – typically a prerequisite before moving on to clinical trials. The German Federal Institute for Vaccines was responsible for issuing the approval.
The Times of London reported last night that the first British human trials of a coronavirus vaccine will start on Wednesday as Britain ‘throws everything it has’ at developing a vaccine, according to Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Scientists in Oxford are expected to begin to test the safety of their experimental vaccine. Hancock also announcing another £20 million in funding to speed the quasi-public project through larger-scale human trials over the summer, as well as £22.5 million for a parallel vaccine project at Imperial College London.
For anybody hoping that these early-stage triumphs might herald an even earlier time-frame for a vaccine, try not to get too excited: Remember the words of Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, who once warned that every vaccine is a “long shot”.
However, the biggest bombshell to drop overnight was probably a statement from health authorities in California that the first coronavirus deaths in the US likely occurred weeks earlier than initially thought. Officials told the local press that forensic scientists in Santa Clara had discovered two autopsies on people who had died undiagnosed at home on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17 that showed signs of COVID-19.
A third death on March 6 was also found to be caused by COVID-19. The first virus-related death in the US was reported in California on Feb. 26.
“These three people died at home at a time when testing was very limited and only possible to get via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the forensics department said. Tests at that time were only available to people who returned from high-risk areas, or those who went to a doctor with serious and obvious coronavirus symptoms. Notably, a recent study in Santa Clara County also found that the viral penetration in the area was “50-80x higher” than official statistics suggested.
As India begins the process of reopening its economy, a new issue is arising: Indian doctors and nurses report that they have been subjected to horrifying treatment at the hands of their fellow townspeople and community members, as family members of dead patients have, in some cases, attacked doctors for failing to save their family member. The situation has gotten so bad that a funeral procession for a doctor who died fighting the virus was attacked by an angry mob, forcing the doctor’s family and colleagues to flee. A colleague returned later to dig a grave for his friend.
To try and stop doctors from simply walking off the job as India’s rate of confirmed infections climbs above 20k and the bodies continue to pile up, the Indian government has, at the behest of the Indian Medical Association, issued an emergency order making violence against health-care professionals a serious crime. Doctors around the country have said they will observe a “Black Day” on Friday, with any opting to wear black armbands to identify themselves as health-care workers.
Spain announced a slight relaxation of its five-week lockdown earlier this week when the government caved to popular demands that children under the age of 14 be allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied by an adult.
And now, as Spain’s rate of deaths ticks higher, PM Pedro Sanchez is pushing ahead with his plan to extend the lockdown until May 9, asking his country’s parliament to approve the extension, which he first announced days ago. Sanchez said that the lifting of the quarantine order must be “slow and gradual” to save lives.
“The general requirement to stay at home will not be lifted until we are prepared,” he said, although he added that in future the conditions of the lockdown “will not be the same as up to now,” with shifts in the rules in the second half of May.
Finally, an FT analysis of data released by the ONS has determined that the actual death toll from COVID-19 across the UK might be as high as 41k, more than double the roughly 17.5k ‘official’ death toll according to the Department of Health and Social Care. Here’s more on that from FT reporter Chris Giles.
NEW: The excess UK deaths linked to coronavirus are likely to be around
41,000
as of yesterday, not the 17,337 of the hospital deaths announcements
Here is the explanation for that estimate, which I will update daily
1/
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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The article explaining the calculations is here
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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The methods are simple and involve no forecasting of how the Covid-19 pandemic will progress.
It is just an updating model – taking the best data from @ONS, the best concept (all cause mortality), and removing the delays in producing that data in a conservative way
3/
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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The methods are simple and involve no forecasting of how the Covid-19 pandemic will progress.
It is just an updating model – taking the best data from @ONS, the best concept (all cause mortality), and removing the delays in producing that data in a conservative way
3/
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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It is easily checked and every week, when the ONS data is published, will be a test to see whether it is on track or not.
So far, it has proved remarkably accurate and we haven’t published until now so we could check it was not giving a false steer
4/
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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We know that linked to Coronavirus there have been many excess deaths since mid-March – In England and Wales, there have been 15,161 cumulatively in the ONS data already published.
Excess deaths is death registrations compared with the recent five year average.
5/
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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The England and Wales chart, compared with the previous 50 years shows this is not a normal seasonal flu
Carl Henegan, professor of evidence based medicine at Oxford university, says: “I don’t think we’ve ever seen such a sharp upturn in deaths at that rate” pic.twitter.com/Wg18u9Oxcy
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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But the excess deaths are just as pronounced in Scotland – figures from the National Records of Scotland pic.twitter.com/uTEhPR6FeR
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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And for Northern Ireland pic.twitter.com/pb4wQebNxP
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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But these data come with big delays. In England & Wales, the data published on April 21, refers to death registrations in the week ending April 10 and there is an average delay between death and registration of 4 days.
So it relates to deaths in week to 6 April
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
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Following the report’s release, UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab announced that the death toll of UK health care workers has climbed to 69, significantly higher than the previous number.
And in South Korea, while the world waits to learn more about what’s going on with KJU, South Korean President Moon Jae-in unveiled a $32.4 billion relief package for hard-hit businesses, while pushing for a New Deal-style program that would put out-of-work South Koreans to work building new national projects.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 21:33 - Mankind's Best Friend: Dogs Being Trained To Detect COVID-19 Odors Could Test 750 People Per Hour
Mankind’s Best Friend: Dogs Being Trained To Detect COVID-19 Odors Could Test 750 People Per Hour
Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
There’s plenty of reason why dogs have historically been considered man’s best friend. For at least the past 15,000 years, dogs have served human societies in myriad ways. Whether by hunting pray, helping to herd sheep and cattle, or simply providing us with unconditional love, they have proved themselves to be indispensable companions.
In modern times, dogs have also provided crucial help sniffing out pests such as bedbugs, narcotics, trapped humans or broken gas mains after earthquakes, improvised explosive devices in war zones, and even ailments such as migraine headaches, malaria Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. After all, with some 200 to 300 million sense receptors in dogs’ noses—versus 5 million in human noses—our trusty canine comrades have olfactory abilities that can sense odors we have no ability to perceive.
And now, an ambitious project hopes to wield dogs’ uncanny sense of smell to train them to detect CoViD-19, the infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-COV-2.
British charity Medical Detection Dogs has partnered with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Durham University to begin efforts to train their elite sniffing dogs for the task. According to behavioral psychologist Dr. Claire Guest, CEO of Medical Detection Dogs, there is no reason to doubt that the canines are up to the task.
***CV-19 SUPER SIX***
Norman, Digby, Storm, Star, Jasper and Asher could be trained to detect if someone has #COVID19 and play a vital role in preventing further spread of the pandemic in future. @LSHTM@durham_unihttps://t.co/xuheY7OOz6 pic.twitter.com/vOdTuekdaW
— Medical Detection Dogs (@MedDetectDogs) April 18, 2020
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Guest told CTV News:
“We already train dogs in the past… [there is] absolutely no reason why a dog can’t detect the virus.”
And it’s not just a matter of confidence—it’s also an approach that is rooted in the rigorous science of over a dozen peer-reviewed papers that Medical Detection Dogs has produced in the course of training dogs to detect serious illnesses.
Head of the disease control department at LSHTM Prof. James Logan explained:
“Our previous work demonstrated that dogs can detect odors from humans with a malaria infection with extremely high accuracy – above the World Health Organization standards for a diagnostic.”
After six weeks of intensive training we could see a brigade of dogs who are capable of providing a speedy and non-invasive diagnosis at the tail end of the pandemic. The dogs would undergo some of the same training they received to detect bacterial infections, prostate cancer, and Parkinson’s—mainly through sniffing samples, indicating when they found it, and being able to detect the subtle changes in skin temperature indicating a fever, according to a statement from the group.
Logan cautioned that it still remains early for detecting any specific odor belonging to CoViD-19. However, because other respiratory diseases cause body odor changes, it is quite likely that CoViD-19 does as well, which means that dogs would definitely be able to detect it. Such a new diagnostic tool has the potential to provide a revolutionary new method to help curb the pandemic.
On the Medical Detection Dogs website, Guest wrote:
“The aim is that dogs will be able to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic and tell us whether they need to be tested. This would be fast, effective and non-invasive and make sure the limited NHS testing resources are only used where they are really needed.
We know that other respiratory diseases like COVID-19, change our body odor so there is a very high chance that dogs will be able to detect it. This new diagnostic tool could revolutionize our response to COVID-19 in the short term, but particularly in the months to come, and could be profoundly impactful.”
Professor Steve Lindsay at Durham University says:
“If the research is successful, we could use COVID-19 detection dogs at airports at the end of the epidemic to rapidly identify people carrying the virus. This would help prevent the re-emergence of the disease after we have brought the present epidemic under control.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 21:20 - Trump Says He "Strongly Disagrees" With Gov Kemp's Decision To Reopen Georgia
Trump Says He “Strongly Disagrees” With Gov Kemp’s Decision To Reopen Georgia
After a week in which President Trump deliberately courted blame for the entire coronavirus pandemic response by egging on demonstrators, reopening the national parks and repeatedly made snide remarks about the risks of waiting too long, it appears the president is finally listening to his advisors – at least on the messaging front.
In his first major break with Republican governors since the beginning of the pandemic, President Trump said during Wednesday evening’s press briefing that he “strongly disagreed” with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to start reopening his state on Friday.
“I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities which are in violation of the phase one guidelines for the incredible people of Georgia,” the president said during his nightly press conference on Wednesday. “But at the same time, he must do what he thinks is right, I want him to do what he thinks is right.”
Specifically, Trump cited Georgia’s non-compliance with the standards laid out in the ‘Phase 1’ federal guidelines as his reason for disagreeing with the decision. Remember, qualifying for phase one requires seeing a 14-day decline in new infections, though cases have declined from record highs seen earlier this month.
Trump’s comment prompted a torrent of amazed tweets and more than a few jokes about what many imagine is Kemp’s utter shock at Trump’s decision to distance himself from the governors.
Kemp watching Trump’s presser today pic.twitter.com/v8lgcJ6wyh
— Jack Posobiec, IWO (@JackPosobiec) April 23, 2020
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Kemp might be disappointed, but this represents a critical turning point for the president, who appears to be listening to the advice of his closest advisors once again instead of almost pathological thirst for political confrontation. According to Kempe’s plan, The state would begin loosening some lockdown restrictions on Friday, and by Monday, gyms, beauty salons and even restaurants and bars would be allowed to reopen.
The governor’s decision, which he announced on Monday, was met with a hail of criticism from scientists, the press, Democrats and even some Republicans. Many small business owners have said they probably won’t reopen right away despite the decision, and the mayors of the state’s biggest cities – all of whom are Democrats – are telling residents to simply ignore the governor.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 21:04 - Mitch McConnell Says Struggling States Should File For Bankruptcy
Mitch McConnell Says Struggling States Should File For Bankruptcy
Over the past month, the economic shutdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic – which as we hear every day was “nobody’s fault” just to make sure there are no unpleasant mentions of moral hazard during the biggest bailout in history…
… has emerged as the perfect excuse for anyone and everyone in need of additional funds or a full-blown bailout to come begging for some generosity. Unfortunately for insolvent US states, they may be too late to get a piece of the bailout pie because as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said Wednesday, he is open to allowing states to declare bankruptcy – rather than sending governors more federal money to deal with their own ballooning deficits. Because after $10 trillion in fiscal and monetary funds was allocated to bailout mostly America’s rich in just the past month, somehow states don’t quite cut it.
McConnell made the comments on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” amid a growing chorus of state governors imploring the federal government for urgent fiscal help and congressional Democrats seeking to work with the Trump administration to provide it. McConnell, instead, said he “would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,” an option that is not currently available to them – as he called for a “pause” in such aid from Washington.
“I mean, we all represent states. We all have governors regardless of party who would love to have free money,” McConnell said in response to a question on what the federal government should do to help states in tricky financial situations. “And that’s why I said yesterday we’re going to push the pause button here, because I think this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments need[s] to be thoroughly evaluated.”
Audio/transcript of @senatemajldr on what comes next (and. @SpeakerPelosi and her ice cream): https://t.co/4uyxe7QZSy Bottom line: no giveaways to states, and perhaps pre-emption of tort liability by federal statutes. And, of course, judges.
— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) April 22, 2020
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McConnell also said that many states are struggling with funding pensions or similar programs, saying “[t]here’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.” And yet, when it comes to corporations, that’s precisely what the Republican side is doing, so who gets to decide where the line is drawn.
After Hewett weighed in, criticizing liberal states that racked up significant liabilities, McConnell said he favored letting states declare bankruptcy, as local governments are allowed to.
“Yeah, I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It saves some cities,” McConnell said. “And there’s no good reason for it not to be available.”
McConnell’s comments come one day after the Senate advanced an interim stimulus package to restock funds in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and address a handful of other priorities. He initially sought to have the bill include only funding for the PPP but Democrats held up the legislation until they could extract concessions from the majority leader. Though McConnell ceded to some of their requests, he kept funding for state governments out of the bill, which is expected to see a vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday.
Democrats, predictably, were not happy: “Democrats are disappointed that the Administration has not agreed to more funding for state, tribal, and local governments on the front lines of this crisis who desperately need an infusion of funds to pay the essential workers who keep us safe,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said in a joint statement Tuesday, quoted by Fox News.
“However, we are pleased that the President has committed to addressing this critical priority in CARES 2 and will work with urgency to see that this commitment is fulfilled,” they continued, indicating that the president was on their side of the issue rather than McConnell’s.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said in his daily coronavirus briefing Monday that Trump told him “he’s going to work very hard” to secure funding for states in what Pelosi referred to as CARES 2, another massive stimulus bill that many in Congress, along with Trump, hope to pass once legislators return to Washington, D.C., on May 4.
“We have to have state funding,” Cuomo said Wednesday. “The states have a role basically in a deficit situation. And we need funding from Washington.” It’s unclear whether fiscal concerns, though, could lead some in Congress to reconsider the scope of any additional aid packages.
Governors have been calling for federal help for over a week. Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, the chairman of the National Governors Association, issued a statement on April 11 pleading with Congress to appropriate $500 billion for state governments as they deal with the economic and fiscal consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
As chairman of the @NatlGovAssoc, today I issued the following statement with vice chair @NYGovCuomo to urge federal leaders to provide immediate fiscal relief for the states.
Our full statement: https://t.co/1ZqTCO7b0q
— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) April 11, 2020
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“In the absence of unrestricted fiscal support of at least $500 billion from the federal government, states will have to confront the prospect of significant reductions to critically important services all across this country, hampering public health, the economic recovery, and — in turn — our collective effort to get people back to work,” Hogan said in a statement that also touted the work of governors to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
McConnell’s comments Wednesday were not the first time allowing states to declare bankruptcy has been discussed. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, some advocated allowing hurting states to reorganize in bankruptcy. But Republicans at the time squashed the idea, even as they also panned the possibility of the federal government bailing states out.
“While bankruptcy for states may seem like an attractive alternative to state bailouts, there are significant constitutional concerns that should be addressed by congressional hearings,” former Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said at the time.
McConnell concluded that states are likely to agree that bankruptcy shouldn’t be the first option.
“My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that,” he said. “That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.”
Somehow we doubt that what McConnell is or is not in favor of will matter.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 21:03 - Japanese PMI Collapses To Record Low, Signals 10% Crash In GDP
Japanese PMI Collapses To Record Low, Signals 10% Crash In GDP
After China’s ugliest GDP print ever, and the collapse of US economic surprise index data, it should be no real surprise that Japan’s manufacturing and services industry PMIs would plunge (despite the “everything’s fine, the Olympics is imminent” narrative puked forth by the government for most of the month).
But, to crash to record lows is something else…
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Japan’s April flash manufacturing purchasing managers’ index falls to 43.7 from 44.8 in March – Lowest reading since April 2009
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Japan’s April flash services purchasing managers’ index falls to 22.8 from 33.8 in March – Lowest reading since series began
Which combined to leave Japan’s April flash composite purchasing managers’ index plunging to to 27.8 from 36.2 in March – the lowest reading since records began.
Across the indices everything was a disaster…
Commenting on the latest survey results, Joe Hayes, Economist at IHS Markit, said:
“PMI data for Japan tell us that the crippling economic impact from the global corona virus pandemic intensified in April. Furthermore, the data show us the initial impact of Japan’s lockdown. The survey was conducted between 7 and 21 April The 7th was the day Prime Minister Abe announced a state of emergency in some parts of Japan, although this was upgraded to a nationwide state of emergency on the 16th and extended the lockdown to the whole country. “
“The decline in combined output across both manufacturing and services was the strongest ever recorded by the survey in almost 13 years of data collection, surpassing declines seen during the global financial crisis and in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami.”
Overall, GDP looks set to decline at an annual rate in excess of 10% in the second quarter…
And it is not about to get better anytime soon:
“The current state of emergency will stay in place until 6May, although given Japan’s lagged response relative to other parts of the world, one would expect this to be extended, meaning the harsh economic effects are likely to drag out further.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 20:47 -
- Here's Why 2/3rds Of US Oil & Gas Companies May Not Exist A Year From Now
Here’s Why 2/3rds Of US Oil & Gas Companies May Not Exist A Year From Now
Authored by Bryce Coward via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,
Energy companies are facing a life or death moment in 2020 with the price of WTI crude oil falling to $13.64/barrel as of this writing. Indeed the collapse in energy prices combined with poor fundamentals leading into the COVID crisis make most of the oil and gas sector vulnerable to takeover or bankruptcy in the not too distant future.
For example, a simple analysis of the 96 companies in the US Integrated Oil & Gas companies, E&P companies, Drilling, Equipment & Services sub-industries shows that 67% of these firms have total liabilities in excess of equity as of their latest reporting period. That would be strike one in any situation, but with oil prices about 80% below the price that prevailed at the beginning of the year, the ability of these companies to meet debt payments or pay suppliers is further brought into question.
If that wasn’t enough, we ran a simple extrapolation to estimate how many of these companies will have enough cash on hand to pay current liabilities this year. We simply take 2019 EBITDA and estimate what 2020 EBITDA will be if WTI prices average $25/barrel in 2020 and assume total 2020 consumption will be 85% of 2019 consumption.
If this situation comes to pass, then 71% of these firms will have 2020 EBITDA + Cash that is less than 2020 Current Liabilities. Now, maybe these assumptions are wildly off the mark and WTI will average $35/barrel or higher. Maybe these businesses will be able to access vast sums of new capital to stay afloat. I suppose they could sell assets, too, if there were willing buyers. If that’s the case then it would certainly take some pressure off, but even then the bulk of these firms would be under severe distress.
Now, to be fair, even though oil prices have absolutely collapsed in recent days, the equities themselves as well as their credit risk seem to be hanging in there. For example, the energy sector has actually outperformed the S&P 500 by about 9% since March 16th.
High yield energy spreads also peaked in mid-March (blue line below) as the WTI near-term futures contract (red line, right inverted axis) traded in the $20 range. These credit spreads have backed off considerably since then even though they have turned back up modestly as WTI has collapsed.
So, the message from the fundamentals tells us that unless something changes and fast – like energy prices rise a lot and/or consumption rebounds to pre-crisis levels and/or these companies get a Federal bailout – much of the US energy sector is going to pursue restructuring in 2020 or get purchased by a stronger hand.
Yet, the price signals from the market are telling us it’s all good. You be the judge. We suppose the next several weeks will be telling.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 20:40 - What Rebound? Hedge Funds Have Been Selling For 8 Of Past 9 Days As "Global HF Heavyweights Remain Bearish"
What Rebound? Hedge Funds Have Been Selling For 8 Of Past 9 Days As “Global HF Heavyweights Remain Bearish”
Today’s market rebound was impressive, but after the first major sell-off in some time on Monday and Tuesday, it was not impressive enough for Nomura’s quant Masanari Takada who writes that what is going on in the market – i.e., the unprecedented arrival of negative WTI crude oil futures prices which seems to have dealt a blow to investor confidence – looks like the sort of shakeout from long positions that he has been expecting and “at almost precisely the timing we had expected.”
But while a gut feeling is one thing, a tangible reversal is something far more notable, and according to the Nomura quant, “it appears that CTAs have put a stop to their accumulation of long positions in NASDAQ 100 futures” and as a result, a key concern is whether the NASDAQ 100 manages to hold the line at around 8,180 that Nomura estimates is the average entry point for CTAs’ net buying of futures since the beginning of April.
In terms of technical patterns, CTAs may take another stab at chasing the market up starting around 29 April, provided that the index stays above this line. However, if such an upside attempt were to fail to squeeze some investors out of shorts or convince others to stake out fresh longs, Takada expects the buying pressure generated by these CTAs on their own in the US equity market to fizzle out on or around 8 May: “This would imply a need to brace for selling in tune with the “sell in May” adage.”
Recent reversal in the Nasdaq aside, CTAs still have outstanding net short positions in Russell 2000 futures and DJIA futures. However, their net short position in Russell 2000 futures is now 80% smaller than it was at its most recent peak, while their net short position in DJIA futures is similarly about 60% smaller than it was at its peak. So “what we are seeing now looks like a pause after a period of concentrated short-covering.”
One notable observation, and a continuation of a trend we discussed late last week when we discussed that “Record Human Hedge Fund Selling Meets Furious Robot CTAs Buying“, is that unlike CTAs, global macro hedge funds – i.e., those controlled by humans – appear to be targeting further downside in DM equities. Indeed, as Takada writes overnight, “that the risk-off mood arrived just when historical patterns suggested it might lends further support to the idea that the buying of DM equities in April thus far has been powered by CTAs and other short-term trend-followers along with fundamental value hedge funds and other such perma-contrarians. Meanwhile, the funds looking least interested in buying have been those that focus mostly on fundamentals.”
Most interesting, and yet another indication that humans are not buying this rally at all – literally – is that according to Nomura, “the global heavyweights among macro hedge funds are still bearish on equities” and their trades targeting the downside are snuffing out early attempts by some investors to feel out the upside. “We suspect that global macro hedge funds will remain bearish until there is some reason to believe that DM economies are on their way to finding a floor”, according to Nomura.
Of course, investors could quickly become more optimistic before economic indicators have had a chance to bottom out. Should that happen, global macro hedge funds might have to make an emergency rush for the exits from their short trades.
However, with equity sentiment stubbornly parked in negative territory, Nomura’s impression is that there is not much impetus among global macro hedge funds to rethink their current strategies just now.
All of this helps explain why as Morgan Stanley’s quants write, long/short hedge funds have sold longs for 8 of the past 9 days, and “were net sellers of equities again on Tues with selling led by L/S funds who were adding to shorts, and also selling on the long side.” As a result, net exposures fell further, down another 2% to 38%– a level which represents a near record low, or 2nd %-tile, over the last 12M and the 1st %-tile since 2010.
In other words, the ongoing war between human and machine investors wages with the former expecting the worst, while robots – who are obviously immune to the wu flu – understandably eager to push stocks back to all time highs.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/22/2020 – 20:25
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