May 23

Today’s News 23rd May 2020

  • Buchanan: What Does Winning Mean In A Forever War?
    Buchanan: What Does Winning Mean In A Forever War?

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 23:45

    Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    When a Wall Street Journal editorial warned this week against any precipitous U.S. withdrawal that might imperil our gains in Afghanistan, an exasperated President Trump shot back:

    “Could someone please explain to them that we have been there for 19 years. … and except at the beginning, we never really fought to win.”

    Is that true? Did we “never really” fight to win during our 19-year war in Afghanistan, except when we first ousted the Taliban in 2001?

    At one point in this longest American war against al-Qaida and the Taliban, Barack Obama surged 100,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan.

    The issue here is with the terminology.

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    In the forever wars of the Middle East, what does “winning” mean?

    To those of us who grew up in the mid-20th century, victory was Gen. MacArthur standing on the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay as top-hatted Japanese diplomats signed the articles of surrender.

    Victory was unmistakable and irreversible.

    Five years after V-J day, however, came Korea, a war that lasted three years and ended in deadlock, stalemate and a truce along the 38th parallel, where the North-South war had begun in June of 1950.

    Vietnam also came to be called a “no-win war.”

    Though U.S. troops never lost a major battle, and every provincial capital was in Saigon’s hands when we departed in 1973, the United States is said to have “lost the war” when the North Vietnamese army overran the South and Saigon in the spring of 1975.

    That was a geostrategic defeat but not a military defeat.

    America’s problem, in this century, lies in our concept of “winning.”

    While U.S. military forces can crush any Middle East adversary, as we showed in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, we have been unable to realize the fruits of the victories our armed forces produced.

    We have failed to reorient the defeated nations to our way of thinking. We have failed to win the peace.

    While we can defeat our enemies in the air and on the seas and in cyberspace, we cannot persuade them to embrace secular democracy and its values any more than we can convert them to Christianity.

    John Locke means nothing to these people. As for our Bill of Rights, why would devout Muslims, who believe there is but one God, Allah, and that Muhammad is his only Prophet, tolerate the preaching of heresies in their countries that can cause Muslims to lose their souls?

    Millions of Muslims are familial, tribal, nationalistic, resistant to foreign intervention and proudly anti-Enlightenment.

    With our “democracy crusades,” we have been trying to conquer and convert people who do not wish to be converted. Moreover, we lack the patience and perseverance to change or convert them.

    As imperialists, we Americans are conspicuous failures.

    Moreover, with us, the national interest inevitably asserts itself.

    When it comes to spending lives and treasure indefinitely we find we have no vital interest in whether these lands we occupy are ruled by monarchs, democrats, dictators or demagogues, and we lack the staying power to occupy these countries until they accept our ideas and ideals.

    If they don’t attack us, why do we not just leave them be?

    Our enemies in the Middle East do not defeat our military. They outlast us. They apparently have an inexhaustible supply of volunteers willing to give up their lives in suicide attacks. They are willing to fight on and trade casualties endlessly. They do not subscribe to our rules of war.

    They tire us out, and, eventually, we give up and go home.

    They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not ours.

    They are not trying to change us. We are trying to change them. And they wish to remain who they are.

    Woodrow Wilson famously declared of our neighbors to the south, “I am going to teach the Latin American republics to elect good men!”

    Wilson forgot the kernel of truth in the ethnic slur of his era, that you cannot grow bananas and democracy on the same piece of land.

    If it is a contest between armed forces, America wins. We can impose our will on the country but cannot win their assent. They resist until we tire of trying to educate them.

    Historically, the Afghans are fundamentalist, tribal and impervious to foreign intervention.

    What will the Taliban do when we leave?

    They will not give up their dream of again ruling the Afghan nation and people. And they will fight until they have achieved that goal and their idea of victory: dominance.

    And if 100,000 Americans fighting beside the Afghan army could not force them to surrender, then why should they settle for half a loaf and accept a compromise now?

  • Khashoggi's Children 'Pardon' Father's Killers, Which Means All Could Get Off Free
    Khashoggi's Children 'Pardon' Father's Killers, Which Means All Could Get Off Free

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 23:25

    It’s being slammed as a “parody of justice” – but what should we really expect out of the ‘kingdom of horrors’ – whose leadership (which has all but admitted to the state-ordered murder and dismemberment of a well-known journalist) was long ago re-embraced with open arms by both Washington and Wall Street after a brief one year period of semi-isolation? 

    “The son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has released a statement via Twitter forgiving his father’s killers,” Al Jazeera reports. “In the statement, posted on Friday, Salah Khashoggi said his family pardons those who took the reporter’s life in 2018 when he visited Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.”

    And yes, in Saudi law this has significant and direct legal ramifications: “Under Islamic law, death sentences in Saudi Arabia can be commuted if the victim’s family pardons the perpetrator, but it is not clear whether that will happen in this case,” explains Al Jazeera further.

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    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meeting with Salah Khashoggi in October 2018, via AFP.

    It’s set off a firestorm of controversy both inside and outside the kingdom, after neither the deceased Khashoggi – a Washington Post columnist killed and dismembered on October 2, 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul – nor his surviving fiance, will never see any level of justice, apparently. Those ordering the hit, which subsequent CIA and UN investigations found went straight to the top – no less than MbS himself – have gotten off scot-free. 

    Needless to say this appears all too convenient, and all couched in religious garb:

    “In this blessed night of the blessed month (of Ramadan) we remember God’s saying: If a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah,” Khashoggi’s son Salah Khashoggi said Friday

    “Therefore, we the sons of the Martyr Jamal Khashoggi announce that we pardon those who killed our father, seeking reward God almighty” he added.

    Again this has legal ramifications, and can potentially ensure the higher-ups that ordered the murder are free from any future legal punishment (some lower-level operatives were previously scape-goated of course, and issued death sentences in what many considered a highly dubious “nothing to see here” court proceeding).

    Khashoggi’s fiance, Hatice Cengiz, didn’t buy the “forgiveness”: she responded on Twitter Friday, saying “nobody has the right to pardon the killers”.

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    A separate statement from activists and Saudi rights campaigners spelled out: “We reject the use of Saudi authorities of some of Khashoggi’s family members to whitewash the country’s judiciary and dwarfing Khashoggi’s case.”

    Given Salah Khashoggi and other family members reside in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, they were accused of not speaking freely. It certainly has the whiff of an orchestrated state-PR campaign with MbS as the ultimate beneficiary. Likely political leaders in the West, back in MbS’ pocket, will consider to “pardon” ultimately “good enough”.

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    As we underscored last year, it’ll be business as usual again: A year later we now know more about the Saudi state-sanctioned murder, with comprehensive investigative reports by the UN and CIA pointing the finger directly at MbS for ordering the grizzly hit and dismemberment, and though last year’s “Davos in the Desert” was boycotted by a number of high profile companies and CEOs, this year’s MbS-hosted investment forum in Riyadh appears business as usual once again, a mere one short year later. 

  • COVID-19 Has Replaced Osama Bin Laden As The Fall Guy For Lost Liberties
    COVID-19 Has Replaced Osama Bin Laden As The Fall Guy For Lost Liberties

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 23:05

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The government and media have dumped at the doorstep of the coronavirus many of the political, economic and social afflictions that are now ravaging much of the global population. In reality, they need to point the finger at themselves.

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    As the mainstream media saturates the airwaves with a daily overdose of coronavirus fear porn, the majority of journalists have given their governments a free pass to enact any draconian measure they see fit. From the closure of public beaches to forbidding power boats on waterways, the insanity seems to have no limits or logic. And as the media would have us believe, it was the coronavirus that enacted these measures, as opposed to living, breathing, unthinking humans.

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    What dirty deeds does the new and improved villain of our times stand accused of?

    First and foremost, the coronavirus singlehandedly destroyed the global economy as only ‘essential’ businesses may continue to operate. Thus, thousands of small businesses have been ordered shuttered, de facto destroyed, while countless numbers of people around the world have been ordered to ‘shelter-in-place’ with dwindling financial reserves.

    Again, this wanton destruction of a large swath of the economy is not due to bad government decision-making, at least according to the media, but Covid-19.

    “Jobless claims jump another 4.4 million — 26 million Americans have lost their jobs to the coronavirus,” reported MarketWatch.

    “It could take two years for the economy to recover from the coronavirus pandemic,” screamed another headline.

    Perhaps it was also the coronavirus that decided that it would make perfect sense to keep abortion clinics and state-owned liquor stores open during the pandemic, while shutting down houses of worship and gun shops. Clearly, the coronavirus is an equitable and non-partisan distributor of pain and suffering!

    As was the case when battling the evil forces of terrorism (which has been strangely quiet lately, by the way), simply uttering ‘coronavirus’ has the same numbing effect as reciting the name ‘Osama bin Laden.’ It justifies every means to an end – up to and including the destruction of civil liberties – without the need for any public debate on the matter. This is reminiscent of the hysteria, complete with mysterious anthrax attacks, which accompanied passage of the PATRIOT Act, the freedom-killing legislation that was rammed through Congress in the weeks following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 without a formal reading by lawmakers. And just like post-9/11, when people question the draconian coronavirus measures they are vilified and accused of being ‘conspiracy theorists’ and even ‘terrorists.’

    The result of millions of people struggling to survive without employment and amid ‘shelter-in-place’ orders is a huge spike in the number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide.

    “We see very troubling signs across the nation,” Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, assistant secretary at Department of Health and Human Services and head of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, told USAToday.

    “There’s more substance abuse, more overdoses, more domestic violence and neglect and abuse of children.

    In other words, the death and destruction from the draconian measures enacted to defeat the coronavirus, which never came remotely close to being as deadly as the experts predicted it would be, will prove deadlier than the disease itself.

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    And the asinine regulations are not just being implemented in glorious nation America. Across the pond, Germans, for example, have watched in horror as their beloved Oktoberfest, the annual beer-drinking festival that brings in an estimated 1 billion dollars to the local economy, has been cancelled for the first time since World War II. That is something that not even Al Qaeda in its heyday could accomplish. Now it is all kaput as some 1,600 breweries in Germany are forced to lay off workers and slashed production as dire economic conditions roll across the entire EU. Of course, all of this is the fault of the coronavirus.

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    And much like the post 9/11 days, coronavirus has its own share of ‘covidiots,’ with people going to bizarre, even fascist lengths to enforce social-distancing guidelines. Back in the ‘sane’ days when the world was trembling at the mere sound of ‘Osama,’ some people actually sealed their homes in plastic and duct tape to protect against an anthrax attack that never materialized. Today, masked drivers are literally passing out behind the wheel, inside of locked cars, due to a lack of oxygen, if not brains.

    But unfortunately, those aren’t the sort of ‘lawbreakers’ that the ‘Karens’ of our days will be snitching on, exactly as they were doing as we were trying to ‘bend the curve’ on terrorism. These days, members of the citizen Gestapo are peering through closed blinds, counting whether or not the neighbors have more than 10 people in their homes, which is enough to justify the police entering your home in New Zealand without a warrant. The dawn of this ‘snitch state’ largely began in the aftermath of 9/11 psychosis.

    Now that the world is staring down the double-barrel of yet another economic depression and all of its attendant symptoms, fear and hysteria continues to be in the driver’s seat.

    Yet instead of being afraid of bad decisions by bad government officials, the same individuals who led the world on a wild goose chase known as the ‘war on terror,’ we continue to heed their advice, while believing that the coronavirus is responsible for the mayhem.

    It is not, no more than Osama bin Laden was ‘responsible’ for the destruction of our civil liberties post-9/11. We did that all by ourselves through our passive consent.

  • US Births Hit 35-Year Low; Corona-Pessimism Could Ensure Permanent Japanification
    US Births Hit 35-Year Low; Corona-Pessimism Could Ensure Permanent Japanification

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 22:45

    The number of children born in the United States has hit a 35-year low, new federal data presents, suggesting America could sink to Japan-level numbers not just in capital markets but in a baby bust. The fresh data points to the great likelihood the post-Great Recession decline in births is to stay permanent.

    “About 3.75 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2019, down 1% from the prior year,” WSJ summarizes of new stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics produced Wednesday. “The general fertility rate fell 2% to 58.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.” This is the “lowest level since the government began tracking the figure in 1909.”

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    Image via Healthline

    Birthrates were down for all ages and races, especially the teen birthrate which has fallen a whopping 73% since it peaked in 1991, with the exception of women in their early 40s – where there was an uptick – suggesting that couples are waiting longer to start families.

    “The total fertility rate — a snapshot of the average number of babies a woman would have over her lifetime — ticked down to 1.7 in 2019, a slight decline from the previous year [of 1.72] and another record low,” WSJ continues. 

    “In almost all years since 1971, that rate has been below the level of 2.1 needed for the population to replace itself, without accounting for immigration.”

    “Women are still having children,” study co-author and statistician Brady Hamilton said. “They’re just holding off until a later point in time until they establish their education and establish their career.”

    Given the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, predicted to last over at least the next few years, the WSJ report forecasts a declining national birthrate similar to the period of the Great Depression.

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    Via WSJ/CDC

    On that point, The Hill also underscores that— 

    Since the recession, the birth rate has risen year-over-year only once, in 2014. Now, demographers tracking the declining birth rate say the trend is beginning to look like a longer-term pattern.

    “The fact that births and fertility continued to decline in 2019 despite the booming economy suggests that this is a permanent shift to a lower fertility regime in the U.S.,” said Cheryl Russell, a demographer and contributing editor to the journal American Demographics.

    It appears millennials, generally less financially secure than generations before, are on the whole moving much slower in establishing families. 

    Recall that in 2008 when Japan’s birth rate fell to 1.34 average number children a woman had in her lifetime, drastic social policies were undertaken on the realization of the long-term economic stagnation or worse would result if the trend weren’t immediately reversed (combined with the “super-aged” nation having over 20% of its population older than 65). 

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    In the early weeks of much of America going into lockdown amid widespread state and local ‘stay at home’ orders, there was much public discourse, jokes, and media expectation of a ‘quarantine baby boom’.

    This is still a possibility of course, but most analysts predict the historic skyrocketing unemployment and negative long-term economic prospects will be the driving factor in continued low births.

  • Coronavirus Conspiracies
    Coronavirus Conspiracies

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 22:25

    Authored by Israel Shamir via The Unz Review,

    I like conspiracy theories; they attempt to inject meaning into otherwise meaningless sets of assorted facts. They bring Logos into our life, as our friend E. Michael Jones would say.

    An enemy of conspiracy theories would write in the New York Timesdenouncing Sir Isaac Newton as a notorious conspiracy theorist: out of totally disconnected facts (apple fall, water pumping, artillery shelling) he concocted the conspiracy theory of gravitation claiming that bodies are mutually attracted proportionally to their mass.

    This is obviously false, he would say, as you can observe at any beach; if there should be a formula, it is that of inverse proportionality. Slim girls and boys attract much more than obese body-positives, and mutuality does not come into this equation. Still the gravitation hoax of Newton has been taught in schools.

    In NYTimese, this is simply “spreading baseless lies and debunked nonsense about the false rumours”.

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    The great coronavirus panic of AD 2020 with its enormous consequences is an event that calls for a sensible explanation. How could a minor disease killing an infinitesimal part of population (0.000045) had caused the collapse of civilisation as we knew it? Why is a civilisation that robustly weathered the killing of the flower of its youth in its prime on the fields of Verdun and Stalingrad unable to survive the demise of a few superannuated men such that it withdrew into self-isolation, while giving up the faith, love of neighbour, opposition to old enemies and then destroying its economy, education and reproductivity?

    One wants to find a conspiracy to explain it away. Who did it? Who locked billions under house arrest; who caused men and women to view each other as a source of mortal danger instead of potential friends or even lovers; who turned churches, mosques and synagogues into empty and unneeded buildings? There are many forces that enjoyed the accompanying windfall, and quite a few were ready for it for a long time. But there is a non-conspiratorial explanation: perhaps we experience such a systemic shift that no single force would be able to achieve; a systemic shift of magnitude unseen for hundreds of years.

    We are still in an early stage of the ongoing transformation; we still hope it will be over in the summer, or at least at autumn, or next winter, but most probably our life as we knew is over. Can we blame it on the virus, even if it was manufactured in the evil labs of the US or China, as has been convincingly suggested by Ron Unz? There are millions of viruses, and mankind had managed to live with them all. There was no reason to freak out and destroy our civilisation for another virus.

    Imagine a man who received a Nigerian letter, promising him millions; and he sold his house, took a loan, sent his wife and children to beg on the street in order to collect the Nigerian millions. We wouldn’t say, “the Nigerian letter caused his downfall”, because so many people had received Nigerian letters, but only one man acted like he did. No doubt, the letter was a nasty attempt to defraud, but the problem was in him, not in the Nigerian letter.

    The previous shift of such magnitude occurred in late 18th century; it is called the Industrial Revolution. Then the factory owners had begun to replace their skilled labour with inexpensive machines, and the workers were losing their jobs, livelihoods and self-esteem. In 1811, the workers formed the Luddite movement. The Luddites would break into factories and smash textile machines. It lasted until 1816, when the movement ran out of steam. The workers were defeated, (a lot of them escaped to America), and the British bourgeoisie prospered. It took many years until the workers regained some of their previous positions in society, mainly due to the threat of Communist revolution.

    Now we are coming to the new Digital Revolution, with workers being replaced by smart computers and an AI future. Millions of office workers already function as a human interface to the computer. You may have noticed this as you talk with them: they are trained to avoid making decisions; they say sentences that were scripted for them, and the decisions are made by the computer that was programmed to do their master’s will. As lockdown had forced millions to communicate with computers directly, a lot of workers became superfluous.

    The process of shedding millions of workers in the existing economic system is likely to be painful for the unemployed. The virus-blamed lockdown and digital control allows the owners of the digital companies to carry out the revolution with minimal risks for them. What would need an army and police involvement against riotous unemployed workers, can be achieved with greater ease under threat of the pandemic. The economy will be modernized and made more efficient. Alas, for us this script presages the fate of highly qualified weavers in 18th century England, even if we shall avoid the total AI takeover Terminator-style.

    Probably the scariest piece of news is not about the numbers of “infected”. It is a meaningless word, for there are persistent carriers who do not succumb to disease; the vast majority of the “infected” are asymptomatic, meaning they aren’t sick and aren’t infectious; the number of “infected” is in direct proportion to the number of tests; the tests are dubious at best, and none is verified by the methods accepted in pre-corona medicine, while the methodology approved and enforced by the WHO can’t be described as scientific. It is not about deaths, for we do not experience more deaths than in 2018. Moreover, in many countries, notably in France and in Norway there are 30% fewer deaths in certain weeks of April and May in this year than in the last year.

    The scariest piece of news is that Zoom is worth more than the seven biggest airlines. These airlines with their accumulated labour (millions of working hours, hundreds of thousands of employees, highly trained pilots, masses of sophisticated equipment) just can’t be worth as much as a job done in a month by a few programmers and which can be done anew in a month. Money and stock market prices are useful tools if they measure human efforts; they do not that anymore. What began with bankers earning more money in a day than a hundred qualified workers and engineers in their lifetime, ended with the hi-tech lords earning more than a million workers in their lifetime. It means that Money had banked on the Digital Economy, a Union made in Hell, while the real economy came up for grabs. Money decided that we won’t fly anymore. They, the new masters, will fly in their private jets; the era of mass access is over. You will get satisfied with Zoom and PornHub, instead of the real thing.

    Added to this the negative oil future price and the emission centres issuing more and more money, trying to smother the fire with gasoline, and you will get a picture of the coming world. There is probably no place for you and me in this world.

    Is the great AI update of technology an objective need, and will it eventually bring good for mankind? Perhaps. But it does not mean the process should be drafted by Money and the Digital Economy, explained by MSM, justified by bio-horrors and carried on at public expense. It has to be done differently if we want to preserve the achievements of the long (1945-2020) peace stretch.

    And now we can return to conspiracy theories. If the virus is the great destroyer as presented, why didn’t poor countries with little value and no hi-tech suffer? Why is poor Cambodia not devastated by Covid? Cambodians have little medical care, and they accepted a whole boat-load of “infected” passengers from The Diamond Princess. They also have thousands of Chinese tourists. And they have no Covid in their poor country. Why does Mongolia, China’s neighbour with its very strong connections with China, have no Covid?

    Why do only rich countries suffer? Why is it only the countries with a powerful liberal press, with a positive connection to the WHO, with developed hi-tech infrastructure and their own digital lords? Could it be simply that they have something to loot? It makes sense to loot Belgium, and Belgians have a lot of Covid. But it makes no sense to loot Mongolia or Cambodia. If you follow me thus far, you will also see that such things can’t happen by themselves. GAFAM is the prime mover and the beneficiary, while Gates is the link between them and the WHO.

    Without the WHO’s blessing, no country would entertain the idea of lockdown. The WHO has learned much since 2009, and eventually decided to play Covid as hard as it could. President Trump has good instincts, even if he provides wrong explanations. The WHO is indeed a central player in the conspiracy. They even had to kill their own top executive in January 2020, who notably objected to classifying Covid as a pandemic. The WHO offered a $60 million bribe to Belarus President Lukashenko for locking down his nation, but the president refused the bribe as he felt responsible for the wellbeing of Belarus. And indeed, free Belarus has roughly the same share of Covid infections and deaths as its locked down neighbours Ukraine and Poland. Poland is a bit worse off because it is a fatter prey than lean Belarus. The WHO even tried to bribe Madagascar which developed its own medical low-tech treatment for Covid sufferers with surprisingly good results. The WHO offered a bribe to their president to say that people died of the treatment. (Not that Madagascar, being poor, had much to worry about it.)

    President Trump has had reason to be unhappy about China, as this great country invented lockdown as a tool to fight epidemics in 2009, when the world was worried about the swine flu H1N1. Then China began to practice massive lockdowns, quarantining whole cities, declaring that hundreds of thousands are infected, restricting air travel and producing a vaccine. The measures were taken when only 30 persons succumbed to the flu, and the WHO objected to the Chinese actions. Eventually 3,000 died in the US, and 800 in China. The profits from marketing the vaccine were enormous. “Windfall for the Big Pharma”, reported Reuters. WHO also profited, and did not report about their own involvement. Thus the partnership of Big Pharma – China – WHO had been formed, and they were willing to repeat the old script on a larger scale. They did it in 2020.

    The Chinese didn’t hesitate to lock down Wuhan in 2020, and this time, their example has been followed by other countries. Enemies of China say that by spreading their model the Chinese wanted to attack the economies of other states in order to buy their assets on the cheap. Others add that China locked down troublesome cities like Wuhan, which were seen as likely to rebel following Hong Kong model. Friends of China say that the critique of China is connected with the US desire to default on its $1.3 trillion debt to China. And besides, China had been attacked many times by US bioweapons, so it had to be careful.

    Let us say that China didn’t and couldn’t force any state to use its model. On the other hand, the WHO and assorted forces in other countries were quick to recognise the advantages of lockdown for them, and it was not for any epidemiological reasons. Some wanted to profit like they did in 2009, but on a bigger scale; some had political reasons, elections, civil unrest; some wanted to put ordinary people down under their control. They succeed, at our expense and at the expense of the Real World.

    The present lockdown had brought the world to the brink of a grim totalitarian dystopia. Even though the actual disease had been contained, and the perpetrators of the scheme need more and more crude falsifications to prove the opposite; their drive for control has just increased.

    In Israel, everyone has to install and use the Mossad-prepared app tracing all your contacts. The app can send you a text message saying “You passed by a corona-infected person; you have to immediately proceed to your home and stay there in seclusion for a fortnight”. You can’t argue with the app, and the app won’t pay your mortgage and your grocery bills.

    In Moscow the regime of control is also by an app. A person who visited hospital or even a doctor, has to install the app, and send a selfie whenever the app demands, even in the middle of the night. An omission to comply within one minute is punished by a 4000 roubles (US$55) fine. If you sleep soundly, you’ll wake up in the morning with a heap of these fines.

    The Moscow regime of surveillance and control is exceedingly strict. You have to apply for a QR pass to leave your home, marking your destination and the reason. Churches and parks are not listed as permitted destinations. Only a few people disagree with the arrangement. People in general take it easy. They share on Facebook their satisfaction with the system, enthusing that it was easy to apply and receive the pass. Is it Stalin’s training of their parents, or slavery (until 1861) of their more remote ancestors that installed this compliance and obedience, I mused, but then I noticed the report from the freedom-loving State of Washington:

    “Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D) indicated that people who refuse to cooperate with contact tracers won’t be allowed to leave their homes, even to go to the grocery store or pharmacy”.

    Alas, people all over the world are easily bendable to the will of the authorities, especially if they are scared by medical jargon. Latin Americans, supposedly hot-tempered folk, placidly complied with Covid regulations; but before that, they obeyed their tyrants and dictators. In democratic New Zealand, a bill passed giving police sweeping powers to potentially enter homes without warrants to enforce Covid rules despite opposition objections, though the Human Rights Commission said it was “a great failure of our democratic process”. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the book and the film, remind us there aren’t many rebels. The Majority agrees even to the most awful regimes. I am against lockdown because I value freedom more than I value life, but it is just a personal preference.

    In order to convince people, the Covid enforcers say they do it “to save the old and vulnerable”. This is a pathetic lie. Actually they created an extremely uncomfortable regime for old people. In Israel, there is a plan (yet to materialise) to issue a ‘green patch’ to people over 60. Only persons displaying the green patch are allowed to go into public space. An elderly person is liable to arrest and fine if he fails to display the patch. The patch will be issued by police after a medical check-up, and will be valid for a year. Even green patch bearers will be forbidden to fly. It does not sound like protection of the elderly. Israel is not alone: in American Samoa, people over 60 must stay at home, imprisoned. You can view the limitations of natural freedom in various countries to see how they compete over who will make their citizens more miserable. It makes for depressing reading.

    Was the lockdown necessary at all for purely medical reasons? Did it save lives? I do not think so, but the jury is still out. We shall know the exact answer in a year’s time. If Covid-19 will be gone like its predecessors Avian flu (2003) and swine flu (2009), the lockdown was not too bad an idea. Perhaps it was not really necessary, for it saved a few people at huge social cost, but it wasn’t not too bad. However, if Covid-19 has come to stay and will invade regularly, the lockdown makes no sense at all.

    Covid adepts tend to think we should expect the second wave, and more waves afterwards. Some of them preach to extend quarantine for a year or longer. It can’t be done – we shall not survive such a long house arrest as a species. What is annoying is that they insist on imposing the wearing of masks, even gloves and social distancing right now and forever. They also block international travel. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov predicted that our pre-Covid freedom of movement won’t come back.

    While we can’t possibly derail progress and stop the Digital Revolution, we can end the accompanying fraud and extra-legal restrictions on our freedom to move. We also should cherish the few remaining platforms like UR that allow us to express and share unorthodox views.

  • Earth's Magnetic Field Mysteriously Weakening In Specific Locations, Throwing Off Satellites And Spacecraft
    Earth's Magnetic Field Mysteriously Weakening In Specific Locations, Throwing Off Satellites And Spacecraft

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 22:05

    The Earth’s magnetic field, which protects life on our planet by blocking the majority of harmful solar radiation, is mysteriously weakening in specific locations.

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    Over the last two centuries, it has lost nearly 10% of its strength, leading some to speculate that a multi-century pole reversal has begun. What’s more, scientists have identified a large, localized region of weakness extending from Africa to South America, along with a second ‘center of minimum intensity’ southwest of Africa – both of which are allowing charged particles from the cosmos to penetrate lower altitudes of the atmosphere – throwing off satellites flying in low-Earth orbit, according to Sky.

    Known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, the field strength in this area has rapidly shrunk over the past 50 years just as the area itself has grown and moved westward.

    Over the past five years a second centre of minimum intensity has developed southwest of Africa, which researchers believe indicates the anomaly could split into two separate cells. –Sky

    According to scientists from the Swarm Data Innovation and Science Cluster (DISC) at the European Space Agency (ESA), measurements from their ‘swarm satellite constellation’ have shed tremendous light on the second anomaly.

    In fact, the anomaly had puzzled ESA researchers as their Swarm satellites would sometimes ‘black out‘ when flying through the affected region. Three years ago, they observed a link between the blackouts and Ionospheric thunderstorms.

    “The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously,” said Dr. Jurgen Matzka of the German Research Center for Geosciences. “We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly. The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth’s core driving these changes.“

    If this is the beginning of a pole reversal – which happens roughly every quarter-million years, it would result in multiple north and south magnetic poles all around the globe during the multi-century phenomenon.

    “Such events have occurred many times throughout the planet’s history,” said ESA, adding “we are long overdue by the average rate at which these reversals take place (roughly every 250,000 years)”

    Not to worry, in theory, as the space agency says that the South Atlantic dip which they’re still learning about was “well within what is considered normal levels of fluctuations.”

    For people on the surface the anomaly is unlikely to cause any alarm, but satellites and other spacecraft flying through the area are experiencing technical malfunctions.

    Because the magnetic field is weaker in the region, charged particles from the cosmos can penetrate through to the altitudes that low-Earth orbiting satellites fly at.

    “The mystery of the origin of the South Atlantic Anomaly has yet to be solved,” added ESA. –Sky

    “However, one thing is certain: magnetic field observations from Swarm are providing exciting new insights into the scarcely understood processes of Earth’s interior.”

  • The Rich In China Got Richer Thanks To COVID-19
    The Rich In China Got Richer Thanks To COVID-19

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 21:45

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    Not everyone was adversely impacted by COVID-19, especially in China.

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    A Tweet Thread by Michael Pettis explains.

    1. During my Sunday seminar a student made a presentation with preliminary data on how Covid-19 has affected the wealth and the income of different households in China, ranked by income. I sort of expected a broadly linear relationship in which the rich and very rich would have…

    2. …been unaffected or slightly worse off, the middle worse off, and the poor a lot worse off.   According to her data, however, the rich and very rich were actually better off in terms of both income and wealth (the latter, we think, mainly because they owned “better” real…

    3. …estate), while the middle were worse off in both, and the poor were much worse off (in wealth mainly, we think, because of a depletion in savings). I expected Covid-19 to worsen income inequality, but I was surprised both by the extent to which it did and by the fact that…

    4. …the wealthy actually continued advancing while only the middle and the poor were worse off – at least according to preliminary data. What happened in China won’t necessarily happen elsewhere, but, still, I suspect we will see similar patterns in other countries affected by…

    5. …Covid-19. The net economic effect of the pandemic, in other words, is likely to be a very substantial transfer of wealth up the income scale. It seems to me that any fiscal or monetary response that doesn’t take this into consideration is likely to be ineffective and maybe…

    6. …even harmful (if it worsens income inequality).

    The US will see similar things but not to the same degree. 

    Many successful US businesses had far too much leverage and will go under as the economic data has been nothing but grim.

    1. May 8: Over 20 Million Jobs Lost As Unemployment Rises Most In History

    2. May 15: Retail Sales Plunge Way More Than Expected

    3. May 15: Industrial Production Declines Most in 101 Years

    Fed Promotes More Free Money

    Things are so bad in the US, The Fed asked Congress to step in with fiscal recommendations, especially more deficit increasing measures.

    I commented on May 14, Panic Sets In: Fed Promotes More Free Money.

    The Fed wants the asset holders to be bailed out and the Fed will try, but the US rich “in general” will not as a class all do better.

    Yet, I agree with this key statement: “The net economic effect of the pandemic, in other words, is likely to be a very substantial transfer of wealth up the income scale.”

  • "We've Never Seen Numbers Like This" – Trauma Doc Sees Post-Lockdown Suicide Wave Starting
    "We've Never Seen Numbers Like This" – Trauma Doc Sees Post-Lockdown Suicide Wave Starting

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 21:25

    We suggested, at the beginning of April, that a “suicide wave” was imminent considering the economic devastation sparked by COVID-19 lockdowns. In the last nine weeks, 38.6 million Americans have lost their jobs and were thrown into instant poverty. Many were already skating on thin financial ice even before the pandemic, and now they’ve fallen through, drowning in insurmountable debts, no savings, and limited lifelines. 

    The first signs of a suicide wave could be originating in California. ABC7 News reports doctors and nurses at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, are reporting deaths by suicide far exceed COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic. 

    The hospital’s top trauma doctor, Dr. Mike deBoisblanc, told ABC7 that mental health has become a major problem during the shelter-in-place order. 

     

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    Dr. Mike deBoisblanc speaking with ABC7

    “Personally I think it’s time,” said deBoisblanc. “I think, originally, this (the shelter-in-place order) was put in place to flatten the curve and to make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients. We have the current resources to do that and our other community health is suffering.”

    DeBoisblanc said the numbers are unprecedented: 

    “We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time,” he said. “I mean we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”

    Kacey Hansen, a trauma nurse at the hospital for over three decades, said the volume of suicide attempts has dramatically increased during the lockdowns, noting the pandemic has stretched resources, which means there are fewer tools to save as many patients as usual.

    “What I have seen recently, I have never seen before,” Hansen said. “I have never seen so much intentional injury.”

    As we’ve noted in the past, hospital systems do not let doctors and nurses speak out about internal affairs and or what’s happening in the community unless cleared by officials. It appears the outreach of hospital staff to the local news outlet is a move to address the mental health public crisis sparked by lockdowns in the Bay Area. The hospital released this statement: 

    “John Muir Health has been, and continues to be, supportive of the Shelter-in-Place order put in place by Contra Costa County Health Services to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We realize there are a number of opinions on this topic, including within our medical staff, and John Muir Health encourages our physicians and staff to participate constructively in these discussions. We all share a concern for the health of our community whether that is COVID-19, mental health, intentional violence or other issues. We continue to actively work with our Behavioral Health Center, County Health and community organizations to increase awareness of mental health issues and provide resources to anyone in need. If you are in a crisis and need help immediately, please call 211 or 800-833-2900 or text ‘HOPE’ to 20121 now. We are all in this together, and ask the community to please reach out to anyone who you think might be in need during this challenging time. Thank you.”

    In addition to the +90,000 and counting virus-related deaths, Well Being Trust recently outlined how 75,000 people could die of drug or alcohol misuse and or suicide during the pandemic. 

    President Trump warned in March that nationwide lockdowns must be reversed to prevent “tremendous death” from the economic depression, referring to the likely increase of suicides. 

    “People get tremendous anxiety and depression and you have suicide over things like this, when you have a terrible economy, you have death,” President Trump said.

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    And with any recession and or depression, high unemployment results in financial distress for people and eventually triggers mental health problems. 

    “The 2008 Great Recession resulted in more than 10,000 suicides. The Great Depression resulted in tens of thousands of people taking their own lives. If the economy continues to be shuttered through April and or even May, then the depression will deepen, and suicides will increase. That is just the nature of the beast,” we noted in early April. 

    As a second virus wave lingers, threats of additional lockdowns in the coming months, and no signs the economy with experience a V-shaped recovery this year — it appears the suicide wave has already begun. 

  • Worst Unemployment Spike In History – 1 In 4 American Workers Has Filed For Unemployment Benefits In 2020
    Worst Unemployment Spike In History – 1 In 4 American Workers Has Filed For Unemployment Benefits In 2020

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 21:05

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    Even though most U.S. states have begun the process of “reopening” their economies, the unprecedented tsunami of job losses that we have been experiencing just continues to roll on.  On Thursday, we learned that another 2.4 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits during the previous week, and that brings the grand total for this pandemic to a whopping 38.6 million.  To get an idea of just how badly this swamps what we witnessed during the last recession, take a look at this chart.  This is the biggest spike in unemployment in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin, and analysts are expecting another huge number once again next week.

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    After my father got out of the U.S. Navy, he worked as a math teacher for many years, and throughout my life I have always had a deep appreciation for numbers.

    And in this case, the numbers are telling us that we are facing something truly horrific.

    During the month of February, the number of Americans that were currently employed peaked at 152,463,000.

    If you take the 38.6 million workers that have filed for unemployment benefits during this crisis and divide it by 152,463,000, you will find that it gives you a figure of more than 25 percent.

    In other words, more than one out of every four jobs in the United States is already gone, and more job losses will be coming week after week.

    And of course not everyone that loses a job actually files a claim for unemployment benefits.  So the true percentage of Americans that have lost a job would be even higher.

    It had been hoped that the unemployment numbers would begin to normalize once states began “reopening” their economies, but so far that is not really materializing.

    For example, Georgia was one of the first states to begin lifting restrictions, but that state also “now leads the country in terms of the proportion of its workforce applying for unemployment assistance”…

    Georgia’s early move to start easing stay-at-home restrictions nearly a month ago has done little to stem the state’s flood of unemployment claims — illustrating how hard it is to bring jobs back while consumers are still afraid to go outside.

    Weekly applications for jobless benefits have remained so elevated that Georgia now leads the country in terms of the proportion of its workforce applying for unemployment assistance. A staggering 40.3 percent of the state’s workers — two out of every five — has filed for unemployment insurance payments since the coronavirus pandemic led to widespread shutdowns in mid-March, a POLITICO review of Labor Department data shows.

    Our politicians really didn’t understand what they were doing when they started locking down state after state.  Coming into 2020, the U.S. economy was in an extremely fragile state and was already moving rapidly toward recession territory, and now fear of COVID-19 has burst all of our economic bubbles.

    The U.S. economy is now in a death spiral, and a survey that was just conducted by the Census Bureau came up with some numbers that are simply eye-popping…

    Nearly half of Americans say that either their incomes have declined or they live with another adult who has lost pay through a job loss or reduced hours, the Census Bureau said in survey data released Wednesday.

    More than one-fifth of Americans said they had little or no confidence in their ability to pay the next month´s rent or mortgage on time, the survey found.

    Already, we are beginning to see mortgage delinquencies rise to very alarming levels.

    In fact, in April we witnessed the largest single month jump that has ever been recorded…

    Mortgage delinquencies surged by 1.6 million in April, the largest single-month jump in history, according to a report from Black Knight, a mortgage technology and data provider. The data includes both homeowners past due on mortgage payments who aren’t in forbearance, along with those in forbearance plans and who didn’t make a mortgage payment in April.

    At 6.45%, the national delinquency rate nearly doubled from 3.06% in March, the largest single-month increase recorded, and nearly three times the prior record for a single month during the height of the financial crisis in late 2008, Black Knight said.

    Sadly, the truth is that this is only going to get worse.

    The “enhanced unemployment benefits” that Congress recently passed have been helping many unemployed Americans to pay their mortgages, but now it appears that President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell do not intend to extend those benefits past the July deadline.  They are concerned that those benefits have been so generous that they have been discouraging many Americans from going back to work, and they are quite right about that.

    Unfortunately, it isn’t just homeowners that have been missing payments.

    At this point, the entire commercial real estate industry is on the precipice of a meltdown as rent payments and mortgage payments are being “skipped” all over the nation on a widespread basis.  On Thursday, we learned that even the owners of The Mall of America have been skipping their mortgage payments…

    The biggest shopping center in the country, The Mall of America, has missed two months of payments on its $1.4 billion mortgage, a sign of just how much retail real estate owners are reeling during the coronavirus pandemic.

    The mall, operated by private developers Triple Five Group, skipped mortgage payments in April and May, according to Trepp, a New York-based research firm that tracks the commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS, market.

    Unless Congress steps in and showers the entire commercial real estate industry with giant mountains of cash, I don’t see how an unprecedented meltdown can be averted.

    It is going to be horrifying to watch, and it is going to absolutely dwarf anything that we witnessed in 2008.

    Of course similar things can be said about the economy as a whole.  At this point, Bank of America is projecting that U.S. GDP will fall 40 percent on an annualized basis during the second quarter of this year…

    Now that banks have had a chance to evaluate the collapse in the economy in the post-covid world, a new round of GDP forecast revisions is coming, and it’s a doozy, with Bank of America spearheading the latest effort by slashing its Q2 GDP forecast from -30% to -40%.

    Not without a trace of irony, BofA’s chief economist Michelle Meyer writes that “words cannot describe” the loss in economic output, which is “unlike anything we have seen in modern history.”

    When Bank of America starts sounding like The Economic Collapse Blog, that is a clear sign that things are really starting to fall apart in a major way.

    Now that restrictions are being lifted all over the nation, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is starting to rise again, and fear of this virus is going to paralyze economic activity for the foreseeable future.

    And what most Americans still don’t understand is that what we have experienced so far is just the beginning…

  • The Remdesivir Study Is Finally Out: Drug Only Helped Those On Oxygen, Finds Mortality Too High For Standalone Treatment
    The Remdesivir Study Is Finally Out: Drug Only Helped Those On Oxygen, Finds Mortality Too High For Standalone Treatment

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 20:45

    Remember when the market soared on several days in April on the Facui-touted Remdesivir study which, according to StatNews and various other unofficial sources of rumors, was a smashing success only for the optimism to fizzle as many questions emerged, and as the Gilead drug quietly faded from the public’s consciousness and was replaced by various coronavirus vaccine candidates such as those made by the greatly hyped Moderna (whose insiders just can’t stop selling company stock).

    Meanwhile, those who were waiting for the official version of Remdesivir’s effectiveness had to do so until 6pm on a Friday before a long holiday, and for good reason…

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    … According to a pivotal study published in the New England Journal of Medicine late on Friday, Remdesivir, which was authorized to treat Covid-19 in a group of 1063 adults and children (split into two groups, one receiving placebo instead of remdesivir) who need i) supplemental oxygen, ii) a ventilator or iii) extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), only significantly helped those on supplemental oxygen.

    Meanwhile, and explaining the 6pm release on a Friday, the study also found no marked benefit from remdesivir for those who were healthier and didn’t need oxygen or those who were sicker, requiring a ventilator or a heart-lung bypass machine.

    The NEJM, almost apologetically, stated that “the lack of benefit seen in the other groups might have stemmed from a smaller number of patients in each group.”

    Still, as a result of the partial benefit for patients in the supplemental oxygen group, the study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was evaluated early and led to the authorization of remdesivir before the full trial was completed.

    Our findings highlight the need to identify Covid-19 cases and start antiviral treatment before the pulmonary disease progresses to require mechanical ventilation.

    Some more details on the study, which was a “rank test of the time to recovery with remdesivir as compared with placebo, with stratification by disease severity”:

    The primary outcome measure was the time to recovery, defined as the first day, during the 28 days after enrollment, on which a patient satisfied categories 1, 2, or 3 on the eight-category ordinal scale. The categories are as follows:

    1. not hospitalized, no limitations of activities;
    2. not hospitalized, limitation of activities, home oxygen requirement, or both;
    3. hospitalized, not requiring supplemental oxygen and no longer requiring ongoing medical care (used if hospitalization was extended for infection-control reasons);
    4. hospitalized, not requiring supplemental oxygen but requiring ongoing medical care (Covid-19–related or other medical conditions);
    5. 5, hospitalized, requiring any supplemental oxygen;
    6. hospitalized, requiring noninvasive ventilation or use of high-flow oxygen devices;
    7. hospitalized, receiving invasive mechanical ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO); and
    8. death.

    The results are summarized below, highlighting the only group that showed a statistically significant improvement in outcomes as a result of taking the drug vs placebo.

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    A visual representation of the outcomes is below; it shows that whereas there was a modest benefit only to patients who were receiving oxygen, the results were statistically insignificant vs placebo for patients not receiving oxygen, while in a surprising twist patients on high-flow oxygen or mechanical ventilator/ECMO did modestly better in the placebo group than those taking remdesivir. Also, the overall results showed a very modest, but not statistically significant improvement in the remdesivir group vs placebo (box A).

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    Another disappointment: the study found that overall “mortality was numerically lower in the remdesivir group than in the placebo group, but the difference was not significant“, in other words the alleged “miracle drug” has largely the same effect as a placebo in terms of overall disease mortality.

    The study authors also note that the “findings in our trial should be compared with those observed in a randomized trial from China in which 237 patients were enrolled (158 assigned to remdesivir and 79 to placebo)…. That trial failed to complete full enrollment (owing to the end of the outbreak), had lower power than the present trial (owing to the smaller sample size and a 2:1 randomization), and was unable to demonstrate any statistically significant clinical benefits of remdesivir.“

    Finally, the study found that while mortality was modestly lower for the remdesivir arm, it was not significantly so, at 7.1% at 14 days on drug versus 11.9% on placebo.

    In conclusion, while the “preliminary findings support the use of remdesivir for patients who are hospitalized with Covid-19 and require supplemental oxygen therapy” the study goes on to warn that “given high mortality despite the use of remdesivir, it is clear that treatment with an antiviral drug alone is not likely to be sufficient.”

    The study’s recommendation:

    Future strategies should evaluate antiviral agents in combination with other therapeutic approaches or combinations of antiviral agents to continue to improve patient outcomes in Covid-19.

    So a generally disappointing outcome, one which would lead to a drop in the market. Nonsense: think of all the spin, and why this is in fact great news for stocks: Remdesivir may be a dud as a “silver bullet” to curing covid, leading to statistically significant improvement in only a very limited subset of infected patients and “high mortality” for those taking it, but at least the algos will have a whole lot of other “miracle drugs” to levitate them as optimism that the next remdesivir is just around the corner. In short: rinse, rumor, and repeat… and then save the bad news for 6pm on a Friday.

    Oh, and for those asking about the “official” reason why the NE Journal of Medicine waited until just the right time to make sure nobody reads the results, here it is:

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    The full study is available here.

  • Biden Apologizes For 'Cavalier' Racism During Damage Control Call With Black Leaders
    Biden Apologizes For 'Cavalier' Racism During Damage Control Call With Black Leaders

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 20:40

    Update (1625ET): Hours after insulting black voters, Biden said he regrets telling radio host Charlamagne Tha God that black Trump supporters and undecideds “ain’t black.”

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    “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy. I shouldn’t have been so cavalier,” said Biden, speaking on a damage control call with black business leaders.

    “I don’t take it for granted at all and no one should have to vote for any party based on their race, religion or background. There are African Americans who think Trump is worth voting for. I don’t think so and I’m prepared to put my record against his, that was the bottom line and it was really unfortunate, I shouldn’t have been so cavalier.“

    No word on whether he thinks the black business leaders are “the first mainstream African-American(s) who is articulate and bright and clean” like he said of Obama in 2007.

    *  *  *

    Joe Biden just massively insulted black voters – telling a popular black radio host on Friday that he ‘ain’t black’ if he was still weighing whether to support Biden or Trump in the November election.

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    Biden’s comment came during an interview with “The Breakfast Club” host Charlamagne tha God, who challenged the former VP over his decades-long record on racial issues and asked him about possibly choosing a black, female running mate, according to Politico.

    “I’m not acknowledging anybody who is being considered, but I guarantee you, there are multiple black women being considered. Multiple,” said Biden of his (handlers’) search for a VP nominee.

    It was then that an aide to the Biden campaign could be heard interjecting into the conversation, attempting to cut short the interview. “Thank you so much. That’s really our time. I apologize,” the aide said.

    “You can’t do that to black media!” Charlamagne retored.

    “I do that to white media and black media because my wife has to go on at 6 o’clock,” Biden shot back, apparently referring to a subsequent media appearance by Dr. Jill Biden, before adding: “Uh oh. I’m in trouble.”

    “Listen, you’ve got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden,” Charlamagne said. “It’s a long way until November. We’ve got more questions.”

    “You’ve got more questions?” Biden replied. “Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

    Charlamagne explained that “it don’t have nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with the fact [that] I want something for my community.” But Biden remained adamant in promoting what he described as a career of public service devoted to advancing civil rights. –Politico

    Needless to say, while Biden’s comment will probably go unnoticed by his MSM surrogates, it hasn’t slipped past Twitter users:

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    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsFull interview here:

    No word on whether Biden thinks black Trump supporters’ kids are as bright as white kids.

  • YouTube Censors Doctor Knut Wittkowski For Opposing The Tyrannical Lockdowns
    YouTube Censors Doctor Knut Wittkowski For Opposing The Tyrannical Lockdowns

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 20:25

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Freedom of speech is quickly going extinct along with pretty much every other basic human right that we are born with. YouTube has now censored Dr. Knut Wittowski, for daring to question the government’s tyranny.

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    Back at the beginning of April, SHTFPlan highlighted this censored doctor’s take on the lockdowns, and why he says they will not work. More than a month later, he’s been proven correct while some Americans still can’t see what’s right in front of them: this whole thing was planned for domination and control of humanity by the very select few elitists.

    Epidemiologist: Coronavirus Could Be “EXTERMINATED” If Lockdowns Are Lifted

    Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski, former head of biostatistics, epidemiology, and research design at Rockefeller University, says YouTube removed a video of him talking about the virus that had racked up more than 1.3 million views.

    Wittkowski, 65, is a ferocious critic of the nation’s current steps to fight the coronavirus. He has derided social distancing, saying it only prolongs the virus’ existence and has attacked the current lockdown as mostly unnecessary.

    Wittkowski, who holds two doctorates in computer science and medical biometry, believes the coronavirus should be allowed to create “herd immunity,” and that short of a vaccine, the pandemic will only end after it has sufficiently spread through the population.

    “With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected,” he says in the now-deleted video. –New York Post

    More of Wittkowskit’s exact quotes about the coronavirus plandemic can be found in our article, although the video, which we linked, will not be available thanks to YouTube “protecting us” from information.

    People all over the world continue to bow to tyranny under the false illusion that they’ll be “safe” and the suffering will be immense if we do not stop it.  Anyone who speaks out against their enslavement will be punished, terrorized, harassed, and censored by Big Tech all with the approval of the mainstream media and the government. While we are being enslaved, the politicians are daring to call ALL OF US the terrorists.  You can’t make this up!

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    Let’s make one thing clear: WE ARE NOT THE TERRORISTS! The government is terrorizing every single human being on the globe right now.  Here’s the proof…the definition of terrorism is as follows: the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Americas have no political aims, we want only to live our lives in freedom and to be left alone to take life’s risks upon ourselves.  The political ruling class are the terrorists based on their own definition!

    Wake up! Meanwhile, those who speak out are subjected to dictatorial censorship by the terroristic politicians.

    “It’s the kind of totalitarian thinking and conduct that has cost millions of lives in recent world history. The fact that it’s being done by private companies and not government doesn’t change that,” Ron Coleman, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, told The Post.

    YouTube fails to censor flat earth videos, so that “misinformation” is allowed, however, you cannot speak against the authorities.

  • Wray's Review Of FBI's Flynn Probe "Is The Fox Guarding The Hen House"
    Wray's Review Of FBI's Flynn Probe "Is The Fox Guarding The Hen House"

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 20:05

    Authored by Sara Carter,

    FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Friday that he has ordered the bureau to conduct an internal review of its handling of the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, which has led to his years long battle in federal court.

    It’s like the fox guarding the hen house.

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    Wray’s decision to investigate also comes late. The bureau’s probe only comes after numerous revelations that former senior FBI officials and agents involved in Flynn’s case allegedly engaged in misconduct to target the three star general, who became President Donald Trump’s most trusted campaign advisor.

    Despite all these revelations, Wray has promised that the bureau will examine whether any employees engaged in misconduct during the court of the investigation and “evaluate whether any improvements in FBI policies and procedures need to be made.” Based on what we know, how can we trust an unbiased investigation from the very bureau that targeted Flynn.

    Let me put it to you this way, over the past year Wray has failed to cooperate with congressional investigations. In fact, many Republican lawmakers have called him out publicly on the lack of cooperation saying, he cares more about protecting the bureaucracy than exposing and resolving the culture of corruption within the bureau.

    Wray’s Friday announcement, is in my opinion, a ruse to get lawmakers off his back.

    How can we trust that Wray’s internal investigation will expose what actually happened in the case of Flynn, or any of the other Trump campaign officials that were targeted by the former Obama administration’s intelligence and law enforcement apparatus.

    It’s Wray’s FBI that continues to battle all the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the investigation into Flynn, along with any requests that would expose  information on the Russia hoax investigation. One in particular, is the request to obtain all the text messages and emails sent and received by former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

    The FBI defended itself in its Friday announcement saying that in addition to its own internal review, it has already cooperated with other inquiries assigned by Attorney General William Barr. But still Wray has not approved subpoena’s for employees and others that lawmakers want to interview behind closed doors in Congress.

    The recent documented discoveries by the Department of Justice make it all the more imperative that an outside review of the FBI’s handling of Flynn’s case is required. Those documents, which shed light on the actions by the bureau against Flynn, led to the DOJ’s decision to drop all charges against him. It was, after all, DOJ Attorney Jeffery Jensen who discovered the FBI documents regarding Flynn that have aided his defense attorney Sidney Powell in getting the truth out to they American people.

    Powell, like me, doesn’t believe an internal review is appropriate.

    “Wow? And how is he going to investigate himself,” she questioned in a Tweet. “And how could anyone trust it? FBI Director Wray opens internal review into how bureau handled Michael Flynn case.”

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    Last week, this reporter published the growing divide between Congressional Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and Wray. The lawmakers have accused Wray of failing to respond to numerous requests to speak with FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka, who along with former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, conducted the now infamous White House interview with Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017.

    Further, the lawmakers have also requested to speak with the FBI’s former head of the Counterintelligence Division, Bill Priestap, whose unsealed handwritten notes revealed the possible ‘nefarious’ motivations behind the FBI’s investigation of Flynn.

    “Michael Flynn was wronged by the FBI,” said a senior Republican official last week, with direct knowledge of the Flynn investigation.

    “Sadly Director Wray has shown little interest in getting to the bottom of what actually happened with the Flynn case. Wray’s lackadaisical attitude is an embarrassment to the rank and file agents at the bureau, whose names have been dragged through the mud time and time again throughout the Russia-gate investigation. Wray needs to wake up and work with Congress. If he doesn’t maybe it’s time for him to go.”

    Powell argued that Flynn had pleaded guilty because his former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, along with his prosecutors, threatened to target his son. Those prosecutors also coerced Flynn, whose finances were depleted by his previous defense team. Mueller’s team got Flynn to plead guilty to lying to the FBI about a phone conversation he had with the former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period. However, the agents who interviewed him did not believe he was lying.

    Currently the DOJ’s request to dismiss the case is now pending before federal Judge Emmet Sullivan. Sullivan has failed to grant the DOJ’s request to dismiss the case and because of that Powell has filed a writ of mandamus to the U.S. D.C. Court of Appeals seeking the immediate removal of Sullivan, or to dismiss the prosecution as requested by the DOJ.

  • Nursing Home Abuser Made Video Asserting "Black People Are Supposed To Rule The Earth"
    Nursing Home Abuser Made Video Asserting "Black People Are Supposed To Rule The Earth"

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 19:45

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    The culprit behind the horrific beating of an elderly man at a nursing home in Detroit made a YouTube video in which he asserted that “black people are supposed to rule the earth.”

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    Footage emerged yesterday of a man later identified as 20-year-old Jadon Hayden beating up a defenseless elderly white man by repeatedly punching him in the face.

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    Another clip shows him beating an elderly white woman.

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    Hayden uploaded the videos to his social media accounts but after the clips started to go viral on Twitter he was quickly arrested by police.

    Content Hayden had previously uploaded to his YouTube channel suggested he holds black supremacist beliefs.

    “The black race is the chosen race, the black race was supposed to rule the earth, but now…they have to go to the white man for everything and that’s not good,” Hayden says in one video.

    “Black people are supposed to rule the earth,” he emphasizes.

    Hayden also posted a video called “drugging ppl prank” that shows a white man convulsing in what appears to be the same nursing home, suggesting that he may have been responsible for the drugging.

    Many have questioned why the story isn’t being covered by major news networks like CNN, arguing that if the roles were reversed and the culprit was white, there’d be a mass uproar.

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    President Trump has tweeted about the issue and Tucker Carlson vowed last night to cover it fully on his show tonight.

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    Hayden was a patient in the nursing home, which as Chris Menahan documents, has a very shady recent history.

    *  *  *

    My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

  • $650 Billion Facebook To Cut Pay Of Remote Workers Moving To Lower Cost-Of-Living Areas
    $650 Billion Facebook To Cut Pay Of Remote Workers Moving To Lower Cost-Of-Living Areas

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 19:25

    Want to work at home? It’s going to cost you…

    While the headline this week was mostly that Facebook is encouraging its workers to stay home and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted more than 50% of the company’s employees could be working from home within the next 5 to 10 years, another headline slipped through the cracks.

    The company could be cutting pay – or “adjusting compensations” as CNBC so lovingly put it – based on the cost of living of where people will be working from. 

    “We’ll adjust salary to your location at that point. There’ll be severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this,” Zuckerberg said, hilariously saying that the adjustments were necessary for “taxes and accounting”. 

    The company said it aims to “aggressively” ramp up its hiring of remote workers and that they will take a measured approach to opening up permanent remote work positions for existing employees.

    In addition to combating the effects of the coronavirus, Zuckerberg predicted that the new initiative could help employee retention and will allow the company to hire from talent pools that it previously wouldn’t have access to geographically…

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    …and of course, he also obligatorily said it’ll allow Facebook to “improve the diversity of its workforce”. 

    “When you limit hiring to people who either live in a small number of big cities or are willing to move there, that cuts out a lot of people who live in different communities, different backgrounds or may have different perspectives,” Zuckerberg said. 

    About 95% of the company’s employees are now working remotely. A survey the company did found that 50% of employees said they were as productive at home as they were in the office. 75% of employees said they would potentially move to a different city if they were able to work from home. 

    The company will start by allowing existing employees to request permanent remote work if their job qualifies. This group doesn’t include recent graduates or inexperienced employees. 

    “It’s somewhat of an unfortunate and unsustainable setup for people to have a lot of these jobs they have to move to a small number of big cities,” Zuckerberg said. “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale.”

    But we’ll still cut your pay if you move to middle America. 

  • Is This Controlled Demolition All Over Again?
    Is This Controlled Demolition All Over Again?

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 19:05

    Authored by Gilad Atzmon,

    For years Eco-Enthusiasts, both activists and scientists, have been telling us that the ‘party’ will come to an end. The planet we are stuck on can’t take it for much longer, it is getting too crowded and unbearably warm. Most people didn’t take any real notice of the situation and for a reason. This planet, we tend to think, isn’t really ‘ours,’ we were thrown onto it and for a limited time. Once we grasp the true meaning of our temporality, we begin to acknowledge our terminality. ‘Being in the world’ as such is often the attempt to make our ‘life-time’ into a meaningful event.

    Most of us who haven’t been overly concerned with the ecological activists and their plans to slow us down knew that as long as Big Money runs the world, nothing of a dramatic nature would really happen. In the eyes of Big Money, we tended to think, we, the people, are mere consumers. We understood ourselves as the means that make the rich richer.

    Rather unexpectedly, life has undergone a dramatic change. In the present age of Corona, Big Money ‘let’ the world lock itself down. Economies have been sentenced to imminent death. Our significance as consumers somehow evaporated. The emerging alliance we have been detecting between the new leaders of the world economy (knowledge companies) and those who carry the flag of ‘progress’ ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ has evolved into an authoritarian dystopian condition in which robots and algorithms police our speech and elementary freedoms.

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    How is it that the Left, that had been devoted to opposition to the rich, has so changed its tune? In fact, nothing has happened suddenly. The Left and the Progressive universe have, for some time, been sustained financially by the rich. The Guardian is an illustrative case of the above. Once a left -leaning paper with a progressive orientation, the Guardian is now openly funded by Bill & Melinda Gates. It shamelessly operates as a mouthpiece for George Soros: it even allowed Soros to disseminate his apocalyptic pre-Brexit view at the time he himself gambled on Brits’ anti- Brexit vote. By now it is close to impossible to regard the Guardian as a news outlet – a propaganda outlet for the rich is a more suitable description. But the Guardian is far from alone. Our networks of progressive activists fall into the same trap. Not many of us were surprised to see Momentum, Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign support group within the Labour Party, rallying for the ‘Holocaust Survivor’ and ‘philanthropist’ George Soros. When Corbyn led the Labour Party, I learned to accept that ‘socialists’  putting themselves on the line of fire defending oligarchs, bankers and Wall Street brokers must be the new ‘Left’ reality.

    We are now inured to the fact that in the name of ‘progress’ Google has demoted itself from a great search engine into a hasbara outlet. We are accustomed to Facebook and Twitter dictating their worldview in the name of community standards. The only question is what community they have in mind. Certainty not a tolerant and pluralist western one.

    One may wonder what drives this new alliance that divides nearly every Western society? The left’s betrayal is hardly a surprise, yet, the crucial question is why, and out of the blue, did those who had been so successful in locating their filthy hands in our pockets go along with the current destruction of the economy? Surely, suicidal they aren’t.

    It occurs to me that what we may be seeing is a controlled demolition all over again. This time it isn’t a building in NYC. It isn’t the destruction of a single industry or even a single class as we have seen before. This time, our understanding of Being as a productive and meaningful adventure is embattled. As things stand, our entire sense of livelihood is at risk.

    It doesn’t take a financial expert to realise that in the last few years the world economy in general and western economies in particular have become a fat bubble ready to burst. When economic bubbles burst the outcome is unexpected even though often the culprit or trigger for the crash can be identified. What is unique in the current controlled demolition is the willingness of our compromised political class, the media and in particular Left/Progressive networks to participate in the destruction.

    The alliance is wide and inclusive. The WHO, greatly funded by Bill Gates, sets the measures by which we are locked down, the Left and the Progressives fuel the apocalyptic phantasies to keep us hiding in our global attics, Dershowitz tries to rewrite the constitution , big Pharma’s agenda shapes our future and we also hear that Moderna and its leading Israeli doctor is ready to “fix” our genes. Meanwhile we learn that our governments are gearing up to stick a needle in our arms. Throughout this time, the Dow Jones has continued to rise. Maybe in this final stage of capitalism, we the people aren’t needed even as consumers. We can be left to rot at home, our governments seemingly willing to fund this new form of detention.

    I believe that it was me who ten years ago coined the popular adage “We Are all Palestinians” – like the Palestinians, I thought at the time, we aren’t even allowed to name our oppressor…

  • "The Latest Stage In Our Descent To The Bottom": Deutsche Bank Asks Top Managers To Skip Month's Salary In Act Of "Solidarity"
    "The Latest Stage In Our Descent To The Bottom": Deutsche Bank Asks Top Managers To Skip Month's Salary In Act Of "Solidarity"

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 18:59

    Last week we reported that Wall Street bonuses are expected to drop by up to 30% this year due to the deep cuts to revenues recorded by banks and hedge funds earlier this year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. For some (still employed) Deutsche Bank traders the news is even worse: they may have to go without a monthly paycheck too.

    According to the FT, the German bank which has teetered on the verge of failure since 2016, has asked hundreds of its top managers to waive a month’s salary in an act of “solidarity” to help “share the pain” as coronavirus wreaks historic damage on the German economy. The bank is reportedly conscious of the optics of large pay packets at a time when millions are losing their jobs or being furloughed.

    In a conference call on Thursday, several hundred of the bank’s designated “leaders”, including many of those one level below the senior management committee, were urged to take the voluntary pay cut, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

    “As our restructuring plans progress, the management board and the group management committee have decided to lead by example and give a broader group of senior managers the opportunity to be part of this initiative,” said Deutsche in a statement as it “volunteered” senior managers to agree (not that they have any choice once singled out) to a one month pay cut. “This is a voluntary measure in the entrepreneurial spirit and discipline [with which] we are running our company.”

    So far the bank does not know how many will participate in the voluntary program; and since there is practically no reward besides some truly pointless “virtue signaling” for any workers who agree to skip a month’s wage – especially since all DB employees are unlikely to get any material bonus this year again – we doubt the uptake will be significant.

    Which is not to say there will be no volunteers at all: the nine members of Deutsche’s management board, as well as those on the group management committee, have already agreed to forgo one month of their fixed pay. Of course, they are doing so purely for optical reasons so they have some ammunition for the time when Deutsche Bank requests a bailout and the bank can demonstrate its “solidarity” with the suffering German people.

    Chief executive Christian Sewing told investors at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday that the decision was part of an acceleration of its cost-cutting programme. “We act in this way because we in the management . . . see ourselves as responsible business owners,” he said. What he really meant is that the voluntary wage cuts will soon be involuntary…  and far more widespread as the German lender proceeds with another round of mass layoffs in the coming months.

    Germany’s largest bank is in the middle of a historic restructuring that began last summer and will cut 18,000 jobs by 2022 as it shrinks investment banking and trims its domestic retail branch network. One can now safely assume that that 18,000 number will be substantially higher.

    In the first quarter, Deutsche recorded yet another loss after tripling reserves for bad loans, as Europe’s economy entereed a deep recession amid the lockdown to slow the pandemic. It won’t be the last. Despite a one-time jump in investment bank trading revenue, executives admitted their ambition to finally reach a pre-tax profit this year would be difficult to achieve.

    One of the managing directors asked to take a pay cut summarized it best: “Staff are unhappy at this latest stage in our steady descent to the bottom,” while a second person familiar with the internal discussions said that such a voluntary move would be “akin to a gift to the bank.”

  • MSNBC Suggests Trump Has Just 3% Support Among Blacks: Here's How They Got That Result
    MSNBC Suggests Trump Has Just 3% Support Among Blacks: Here's How They Got That Result

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 18:45

    Following Joe Biden’s latest racial gaffe on Friday – in which he said black Trump supporters or undecided voters “ain’t black” – MSNBC went to bat for ol Joe, with a ‘yeah, but…’ poll showing that Trump has just 3% support among African Americans.

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    However when one digs into the poll, conducted by Quinnipiac (and which found Biden to have an 11 point lead over Trump, and Trump’s job approval falling to 42%) we find that it surveyed just 1,323 registered voters with a 10% oversample of Democrats.

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    (h/t Mark K.)

    Twitter, by the way, is doing their best to help racist Joe as well.

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  • Michigan Gov Extends 'Stay At Home' Order 2 Weeks; Brazil Overtakes Russia As World's 2nd-Largest COVID-19 Outbreak: Live Updates
    Michigan Gov Extends 'Stay At Home' Order 2 Weeks; Brazil Overtakes Russia As World's 2nd-Largest COVID-19 Outbreak: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 05/22/2020 – 18:33

    Summary:

    • Michigan Gov extends stay at home order
    • Brazil overtakes Russia
    • Cali reports slight jump in new cases
    • US cases climb 1.8%, compared with 1.5% last week
    • Italy’s does 75k+ tests in a single day for first time
    • Dr. Birx offers update on state of US outbreak
    • Chinese vaccine deemed “safe” by the Lancet
    • NY lowest case count since early days of outbreak
    • NJ raises gathering limit to 25
    • Italy says vaccine won’t be ready until next year
    • NY launches program allowing pharmacists to administer COVID tests
    • GM delays plan to ramp up production
    • Spain lifts lockdown conditions in Madrid
    • Chinese airline to restart flights from US next month
    • India reports record jump in cases as lockdown eases
    • Russia reports record jump in deaths
    • Russian ‘hot nurse’ punished for accidentally exposing underwear due to ‘see-through’ PPE
    • UN warns of looming collapse of Yemen’s health-care system
    • Bulgaria allows EU residents to enter country
    • Brazil becomes sixth country to hit 20k COVID deaths
    • Thailand extends state of emergency even as no new cases reported
    • Russia, Brazil drive largest daily jump in new cases
    • Australia’s largest state, New South Wales, allows up to 50 people in restaurants and bars

    * * *

    Update (1800ET): Get ready for another round of “reopen now” protests in Lansing.

    Roughly 24 hours after announcing a relaxation of the state’s stay at home order to permit appointment-only shopping and gatherings of under 10 people, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extended the state’s stay at home order for another two weeks, giving the stock market something to panic about when it reopens on Tuesday.

    Many had expected Whitmer to extend the order, albeit with fewer restrictions. During a press briefing, she insisted that while the data are moving in the right direction, “We are not out of the woods yet.” The order, which was set to expire on May 28, will instead expire on June 12.

    Notably, Whitmer is making this decision – which will lead to more economic devastation and destroyed livelihoods in a critical midwestern swing state that President Trump narrowly won in 2016 – one day after President Trump, who has repeatedly lambasted the governor on twitter, paid a visit to a Ford Factory in the state, where he again refused to wear a mask (something he insists would be “un-presidential”), arousing the anger of the state’s attorney general.

    The order has been partially relaxed in the northern part of the state, and manufacturing has also been allowed to resume on a limited basis.

    Here’s more from the Detroit Free Press:

    Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday extended her stay-at-home order past its scheduled May 28 expiration to June 12, adding that public venues such as theaters, gyms and casinos would remain closed.

    She said while coronavirus cases and deaths are clearly declining, “we are not out of the woods yet.”

    “If we’re going to lower the chance of a second wave and continue to protect our neighbors and loved ones from the spread of this virus, we must continue to do our part by staying safer at home,” she said in a statement first reported by the Free Press.

    Whitmer’s announcement comes a day after she made several changes to further relax a sweeping stay-at-home order that has been in place since March, allowing social gatherings of 10 people or less immediately and telling retail businesses that sell goods they can reopen to customers for appointment-only shopping Tuesday.

    That change also allows for nonemergency dental and doctor services to resume next Friday and Whitmer said Thursday that she would continue to relax the order as warranted by the data. She had previously allowed some retail businesses, such as garden stores and bicycle repair shops to reopen, and at 12:01 a.m. Friday, bars, restaurants and other businesses and offices on the Upper Peninsula and in northern Michigan around Traverse City, could open to customers, provided they limited their customers, made sure people stayed 6 feet apart and required masks.

    Manufacturing and construction have resumed as well, under strict regulations. But many parts of Whitmer’s rules — which have been challenged in court and led to protests at the state Capitol — continue to disrupt the lives of Michiganders.

    In other news, Brazil has finally overtaken Russia as the country with the world’s second-largest outbreak (note: as of 1830ET, the latest data haven’t yet been incorporated into the chart below, but it should update shortly), after only the US.

    * * *

    Update (1540ET): AfricaNews reports that the number of confirmed cases in Africa has passed 100,000 as epidemiologists and scientists on the Continent and elsewhere have marveled at the coronavirus’s relatively slow spread across Africa, which has largely avoided the full-scale collapse of countries’ health-care systems – or anything even close to that scenario.

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    Africa’s five worst-hit nations are as follows:

    South Africa: 19,137

    Egypt: 15,003

    Algeria: 7,728

    Morocco: 7,300

    Nigeria: 7,016

    South Africa has been the worst-hit across the continent despite a restrictive lockdown that was initially ordered back in March. It’s also by far worst-hit country across the southern African region. In Northern Africa, Egypt has the most cases, while in West Africa, Nigeria has the biggest outbreak. Cameroon is the leader in Central Africa, with 4,288 cases while Sudan leads the Horn of Africa region with 3,138 cases.

    The global total, meanwhile, is rapidly closing in on 5.25 million.

    Back in the US, the CDC said that US cases have ticked higher over the past day as cases climb 1.8%, compared with last week’s 1.5%.

    * * *

    Update (1440ET): California has released its latest numbers, revealing a slight uptick in cases over the past day.

    • CALIFORNIA VIRUS CASES RISE 2.6%, ABOVE 7-DAY AVERAGE OF 2.37%

    Meanwhile, earlier this afternoon, Dr Birx offered an assessment on where the US stands in terms of the virus.

    * * *

    Update (1430ET): The past week has seen more than its fair share of vaccine-related announcements, with a team of scientists from Oxford announcing plans to speed up human trials, while Dr. Fauci offered some more market-pumping positivity during a lunchtime interview with CNBC (notably, when asked about states pushing ahead with reopening, he noted that so long as people follow social distancing recommendations, everything should be fine).

    Adding another headline to the list: The Lancet has declared a Chinese vaccine candidate “safe” for human consumption.

    Remember, establishing safety was touted as the key triumph of the Moderna-NIH study that the company issued a statement about earlier this week (after its CEO inadvertently referenced the trial results publicly on Friday).

    Italy achieved a notable milestone today: conducting more than 75k+ COVID-19 tests in a single day.

    And today’s numbers from the UK…

    * * *

    Update (1225ET): In New Jersey, Gov Phil Murphy reported a 0.9% jump in new cases Friday, in-line with the 7-day average.

    Hospitalizations and ICU admissions also continued to decline.

    * * *

    Update (1140ET): As the AP reveals that NY leads the nation in nursing home deaths (with some 5,300 recorded), Cuomo just expertly deflected from a burgeoning controversy over his decision to send COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes, helping to kickstart or aggravate some of the deadliest outbreaks. Cuomo has defended the decision as intended to ensure nursing home residents wouldn’t left to just hang around hospitals, when, in hindsight, they probably should have been admitted.

    • CUOMO: SUPPORTS LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA PASSAGE

    After dragging his feet on marijuana legalization for years (one of the biggest complaints of Cuomo’s progressive critics is that after becoming one of the first states to approve medical marijuana, NY has basically given up on reform in that area), it looks like legalization is back on the agenda.

    New COVID-19 cases in New York State reported Friday  climbed by another 0.4% as the number of infections reported continued to slow, Cuomo added. “This is a level now that is lower than when we first began,” he said.

    Cuomo also announced his state would adopt the CDC guidance on HQX.

    In another milestone: NYC has recorded 58 days without a pedestrian traffic death, the longest stretch since the city started tracking the numbers in 1983.

    In Italy, meanwhile, the head of the Italian Medicines Agency, the national authority responsible for drug regulation in Italy, said Friday that a vaccine for the virus likely wouldn’t be ready until next year.

    AIFA director-general Nicola Magrini told reporters that studies of five or six vaccines are showing promise but “the reasonable time to think about a vaccine is next spring, next summer.”

    “I don’t think there will be any vaccine for September available,” Magrini said. “Let’s hope they are developed by next year and let’s hope there’s more than one, and the production capacities are adequate.”

    * * *

    Update (1115ET): Just in time for MDW, New Jersey Gov Phil Murphy just decided to raise the limit on public gatherings to 25 people, while his colleague, NY Gov Andrew Cuomo announced the start of a previously announced pilot program that allows pharmacists to administer coronavirus tests.

    Watch Cuomo live:

    * * *

    Update (0955ET): GM has reportedly delayed plans to ramp up production at one of its Michigan plants next week due to a shortage of critical components from Mexico.

    Instead of introducing another shift or two this week, GM will need to delay the production ramp until next week. Meanwhile, across the US, finding new American-made cars remains difficult as dealerships in some states have only just begun to reopen.

    * * *

    Update (0935ET): After a weeks-long delay, the Spanish government has finally started lifting lockdown conditions in the capital, Madrid.

    Here’s more on that from Al Jazeera:

    Spanish authorities will lift part of the lockdown restrictions in Madrid on Monday after the pace of the coronavirus contagion in the region slowed down, the Madrid regional health department said.

    The restrictions in Madrid are now the same as in most of the country that started phasing out the lockdown in early May.

    Bars and restaurants in the capital will be allowed to reopen terraces and groups of up to 10 people will be allowed to meet.

    Spain has seen daily COVID-19-linked deaths drop to ~100 a day or fewer over the past week as the country’s strict lockdown has clearly helped quash what was once one of Europe’s deadliest outbreaks.

    * * *

    Update (0920ET): Local press has reported that a major Chinese airline will re-start some flights from the US next month, the first stirring of what some expect will be a mini-revival in passenger travel in the coming months, even as most analysts believe it will take years for air traffic to return to pre-COVID-19 levels.

    • CHINA CAAC TO ALLOW SOME FLIGHTS FROM U.S. IN JUNE: 21ST HERALD

    * * *

    One of the most frustrating aspects of the coronavirus is how it seems to respond differently to the same basic strategies imposed by different governments. For example, in China, and across the US and Europe, lockdowns have coincided with sharp reductions in the spread of the outbreak.

    But despite what has been repeatedly described as one of the most strict in the world, the rate at which new coronavirus infections are being confirmed has shown no sign of slowing after nearly 2 months (the lockdown started March 25). As we reported on Tuesday, the number of reported coronavirus cases in India crossed 100,000 earlier in the week, even as most parts of the country began to reopen businesses as India’s lockdown entered a new phase.

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    Three days later, India registered its biggest jump in coronavirus cases since the start of the outbreak, with 6,000 new cases as the country loosens a nationwide lockdown.

    Additionally, India relaxed some of its travel restrictions on Friday to permit members of the Indian diaspora to reenter the country.

    Meanwhile, in Russia, which is now home to the world’s second-largest outbreak (behind only the US) has reported 150 new deaths, a record daily rise, taking the country’s official national death toll from the virus to 3,249.

    In another somewhat more lighthearted story from the world’s second-worst-hit country, a nurse working at a hospital in Russia’s central Tula region was suspended from her job for the mishap, which she says she didn’t realize until it was pointed out by a colleague. Several high-ranking government officials have weighed in, arguing that the hospital should reverse the punishment, according to multiple media reports.

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    The UN warned on Friday that as the coronavirus spreads across Yemen, the country’s health care system has, in effect, collapsed. Yemen will need emergency support from the international community to prevent yet another humanitarian crisis in  country that, after Syria, has been among the most war-torn places in the world for a large chunk of the last decade.

    Using data from Johns Hopkins, Al Jazeera developed a chart showing how the coronavirus pandemic reached the 5 million mark.

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    The number of new cases reported globally remained well above recent levels as Russia, Brazil and India pushed the number of new cases to a daily record, as outbreaks in the US and Europe slow while Russia and Brazil report unprecedented growth.

    Additionally, Brazil has become the 6th country in the world to report more than 20,000 deaths from the coronavirus as interim Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello warned that while the level of infection had decreased in certain areas in capital cities, its spread across the rest of the country was “inevitable.”

    As EU member states slowly lift travel restrictions on neighbors, while the UK devises new quarantine restrictions for foreign travelers, Bulgaria has scrapped its ban on visitors from the EU, according to the country’s health ministry.

    Overly optimistic reports about preliminary vaccine trials have set off a handful of biotech pumps in recent days, to the delight of hedge funds that have piled into the sector, Oxford researchers, who have been among the most bullish in the world about the prospects for a vaccine in the near term, reported Friday that they have already immunized 1,000 people during the first phase of the trial, and that the research would be accelerated to begin recruiting the 10k volunteers they will need for the second stage of the study.

    Despite reporting zero new coronavirus cases and deaths on Friday, Thailand’s Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration proposed an extension of the country’s state of emergency measures until June to allow more time for new easing measures to be adopted.

    In the UK, BoJo’s government has extended its mortgage payment holiday scheme for homeowners in financial distress for another 3 months. In Panama, health officials say 59 migrants stranded at the Panamanian Migration Center have tested positive for the virus.

    Finally, Australia’s largest state, New South Wales, has said restrictions imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus will be eased to allow cafes, restaurants and pubs to have up to 50 seated patrons, which should allow many smaller restaurants to move back to 100% capacity. The country also extended its ban on cruise ships for another 3 months, until Sept. 17.

    And before we go, during his visit to a Ford factory in Michigan last night (where he infuriated the state’s AG by refusing to wear a mask after repeatedly clashing with the state’s Democratic governor), President Trump said that he wouldn’t be closing down the country again if a “second wave” of the virus does hit.

    The FDA on Friday announced plans to crack down on faulty antibody tests, publicly listed dozens of antibody tests that have not yet been proved to work, a major step in its efforts to regulate these exams.

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