- France & Italy Join Greece In Major Naval War Games 'Show Of Force' Against Turkey
France & Italy Join Greece In Major Naval War Games ‘Show Of Force’ Against Turkey
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 02:45President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to make “no concessions” with Greece amid the rapidly escalating eastern Mediterranian gas exploration dispute, declaring Turkey will “do whatever is necessary” to secure its territorial rights in Wednesday remarks commemorating an ancient battle which saw Seljuk Turks victorious during an engagement with the Byzantine empire in the 11th century.
“We don’t have our eye on someone else’s territory, sovereignty and interests, but we will make no concessions on that which is ours,” Erdogan said, while urging that Greece must “avoid wrongs that will be the path to ruin”. He underscored “We will not compromise what is ours… We are determined to do whatever is necessary.”
This even as Macron’s France has jumped fully onboard to defend Greece and Cyprus’ cause in preventing breach of their maritime territory and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ).
Joint military drills, via Ekathimerini Drills France has since confirmed deployment of its ‘Lafayette’ frigate and three Rafale fighter jets to Cyprus, also as what’s being described as a “massive maritime exercise” is underway in the eastern Mediterranean on Wednesday involving Greece, Cyprus, France and Italy.
Called the “Eunomia” military exercise, it’s a clear and firm signal to Turkey meant to – as Greece’s defense minister said, reinforce “the rule of law as part of the policy of de-escalating tensions.”
Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos spelled out specifically that—
“the initiative… aims to demonstrate the commitment of the four European Mediterranean countries to the rule of law as part of the policy of de-escalating tensions.”
The drills are set to run from Wednesday through Friday of this week.
Cyprus, Greece, France and Italy have agreed to enter into a joint presence in Eastern Mediterranean
Joint Military Exercise “EUNOMIA”
26-28 August 2020 pic.twitter.com/TblX6z88dE— IoannaDementiEU (@IoannaDementi) August 26, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Ironically enough this pits NATO allies against one another, with the EU recently firmly coming down on the side of defending Greek and Cypriot claims over and against an expansionist Turkey eager to gain hydrocarbon resources in the region, toward the goal of greater energy independence.
- Berlin Bans Protest Against Pandemic Restrictions, Deploys Thousands Of Police
Berlin Bans Protest Against Pandemic Restrictions, Deploys Thousands Of Police
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 02:30Authorities in Berlin have banned a series of planned demonstrations against the country’s COVID-19 lockdown measures – claiming they were organized by “right-wing extremists” and would lead to the spread of the virus. The city is deploying several thousand police around the German capital this weekend, citing threats.
The German city notably did not ban a June Black Lives Matter protest in which approximately 15,000 people turned out.
June BLM protest in Berlin Meanwhile, the Assembly for Freedom had 17,000 registered demonstrators for the August 29 event before Berlin shut it down.
“We are still in the middle of a pandemic with rising infection figures,” said Berlin Interior Minister, Andreas Geisel. “This is not a decision against freedom of assembly, but a decision in favor of infection protection,” he continued, adding that Berlin should not be “misused as a stage for corona deniers… and right-wing extremists.”
About 20,000 people, including libertarians, constitutional loyalists, far-right supporters and anti-vaccination activists, marched in Berlin on Aug. 1.
Geisel said the organisers of that protest had deliberately broken rules they had previously agreed with police, including wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.
“Such behaviour is not acceptable. The state cannot be given the runaround,” he said, adding he did not want Berlin to be a stage for conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists. –Reuters
Meanwhile, Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has called for a protest at the Brandenburg Gate against the ban.
“The Senate is trampling on fundamental rights,” AfD said in a statement.
- Child Trafficking Protesters Gathered Outside Buckingham Palace To Condemn "Pedophile" Prince
Child Trafficking Protesters Gathered Outside Buckingham Palace To Condemn “Pedophile” Prince
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 02:00Authored by John Vibes via TheMindUnleashed.com,
This Saturday in London, protesters gathered outside of Buckingham Palace as part of a demonstration against child exploitation. Protesters shouted accusations of “pedophile” outside the gates of the palace, in reference to Prince Andrew’s involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s child trafficking ring.
The protests were organized through a Facebook event page called, ‘Freedom For The Children Global Walk London.’
A post on the event page read:
“The purpose of this walk for change is to bring awareness to the current reality of child exploitation within our own communities and around the world. Let’s show our devotion and determination toward protecting these children, our communities most vulnerable, by requesting change and reformation within our government and law enforcement agencies to ensure that justice is brought in such a manner that it will significantly reduce instances of child exploitation while promoting awareness in order to end this ongoing issue.”
In footage later released of the protest, protesters can be seen waving banners with Prince Andrew’s face along with messages condemning his crimes.
Meanwhile, Prince Andrew has been dodging investigators that want to question him about the accusations made by some of Epstein’s victims.
New York prosecutors have said that the prince has “completely shut the door” on cooperating with authorities. They are now considering what further legal action can be taken.
Andrew continues to deny any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s many crimes, despite a growing body of evidence indicating that he was involved.
Manhattan Attorney Geoffrey Berman described the prince as a “co-conspirator.”
“Contrary to Prince Andrew’s very public offer to cooperate with our investigation into Epstein’s co-conspirators, an offer that was conveyed via press release, Prince Andrew has now completely shut the door on voluntary cooperation and our office is considering its options,” Berman said, according to the Guardian.
Andrew has previously promised to help investigators with the case, but has since removed himself from public life. He has also refused requests for interviews that investigators have sent him. He has stepped down from his official royal position and is now more than ever the black sheep of the royal family.
After the arrest of alleged Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is also said to be good friends with Andrew, the prince has canceled all of his travels and business trips outside of the UK, likely out of fears that he will be arrested as well.
According to a former member of the Royal guard who worked on Prince Andrew’s security detail, The London Metropolitan Police have destroyed evidence that could have revealed where Prince Andrew was on the night that he is accused of having sex with a teenager that was being trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell.
The night in question is March 10th, 2001, as well as the morning hours of March 11. Virginia Giuffre, who was known by the name Virginia Roberts at the time, says that she was taken to London by Epstein and Maxwell and was expected to have sex with Prince Andrew. Giuffre says that she was just 17-years-old at the time.
- Everything Changes After Kenosha… "Divided We Stand"
Everything Changes After Kenosha… “Divided We Stand”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 23:59Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
It would always come to this. At some point there would be a reckoning for BLM and Antifa.
The shootings in Kenosha, WI are a dividing line for America.
This is the moment where normal people finally said, “Enough. There will be consequences. “
This is a war between radicalized lunatics bathed in unquenchable envy and self-pity and those who refuse to act like victims.
But they are victims.
All of us are. On both sides of the divide.
We are victims of a vicious program to divide and conquer the U.S. through a culture war designed to dehumanize each other.
We fight among ourselves over scraps while the people who manipulated events to this point walk away laughing at the destruction.
They want the violence. They love it. They relish it. It brings them power and prestige.
To maintain their power, as the systems they’ve built fail, they have set us against each other: paid looters and rioters to become cannon fodder in their war against common decency, culture, communities and family.
All for control over the levers of political power.
In 2016 we tried to tell them, peacefully, enough was enough. We elected Donald Trump, of all people, to be our standard bearer. We did it the way we were taught was the right way, through the ballot box.
It was supposed to be the hallmark of our enlightenment, the peaceful transfer of power. It’s been anything but.
For four years we’ve endured a non-stop parade of political venality unmatched in modern history. The quest for regaining the power of the White House brooked no holds being barred.
And if Trump wouldn’t go willingly and we didn’t learn our lesson, then they would activate every cell to flood the streets with disaffected and nihilistic youths to loot and rob; using their outrageous sense of entitlement as fuel for their rage against a machine they are, unwittingly, the main cogs of.
But having watched one young man clear in his purpose to defend his town from roving thugs in Kenosha be forced (under clear conditions of self-defense) to kill two people is a dividing line we’re not coming back from.
Wars are only profitable for those that promote them. Those that fight the wars are the real victims. This kid, a hero by my personal reckoning, is also a victim and there’s no coming back from what he’s had to do.
Killing while justified is still killing. It scars you, no matter if you wear a blue uniform, fatigues or a green t-shirt.
The animals I see on the streets under the auspice of what the media calls ‘peaceful protests’ beating people to within inches of their lives for the crime of being white and defending their property have no humanity.
My livestock have more decency than these people.
And yet, in order for us to survive this dark period of history, we will still have to reach out to them and offer them peace and assistance back from the insanity that grips them now.
That will be the hardest thing for us to do, while also maintaining the resolve to do what we feel is necessary to preserve something of what we’ve built.
That is the dividing line for many of us.
Only you know where that limit is. There are a lot of people out there right now confronting that limit for the first time.
As my dad used to say, as NYPD, “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
We are up against people who brook no limit on their behavior. Everything is justified in the pursuit of their righteous cause. You can see in it all the video footage.
And they know it. They know that we’d rather not fight back. That, unfortunately, to people empowered by the mob and turned into bullies, is misinterpreted as weakness.
Having humanity is not weakness. It is strength.
And nothing bursts the bubble of false bravado on display by Anfita/BLM at this point than strength of character, which defines limits, creates boundaries and establishes consequences.
The sad truth is that this is only the beginning of what’s to come. The line is crossed and from town to town, that line will be more difficult to assess than ever before.
The myth of policing is failing. There aren’t enough cops to quell these riots. The State has been revealed as their enablers.
The law has been used against property owners told they shouldn’t defend themselves or their businesses.
They’ve been afraid of being the ones who cross the line while the looters overwhelm the streets. That impulse will continue to wither. This anarcho-tyranny will not stand for much longer.
That’s what we saw it on the streets of Kenosha.
We’ll see more of it, until a new form of order asserts itself.
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- The Totalitarian Future Globalists Want For The Entire World Is Being Revealed
The Totalitarian Future Globalists Want For The Entire World Is Being Revealed
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 23:45Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
All over the Western world ever since 9/11 there have been incremental steps towards what many liberty advocates would call a “police state”; a system in which governments are no longer restricted by the boundaries of civil liberties and are given the power to do just about anything they want in the name of public safety.
The use of “the law” as a tool for injecting tyranny into a culture is the first tactic of all totalitarians.
The idea is that by simply writing government criminality into the law books, that criminality somehow becomes justified by virtue of legal recognition. It’s all very circular. Whenever government abuse of the people is initiated, it’s always initiated in the name of what’s “best for society as a whole”. To save society, the individuals that make up a society must be sublimated or destroyed. This mentality is the complete opposite of what the Founding Fathers in America fought and died for, but as Thomas Jefferson once said:
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
In countries like Australia, which claim to value Western democratic principles of liberty and rule by the people, the perception is that civil rights are codified into the legal framework just as they are in the US. However, there are some glaring differences and issues; specifically, Australian citizens (like many European citizens) have absolutely no means to compel their government or the elites that influence their government to limit themselves. It is these nations, in which the populations have been mostly disarmed and pacified, that any agenda for tyranny will first be established. But we will get to that in a moment…
Make no mistake, there is a very OPEN and easily identifiable agenda on the part of globalists to establish a heavily centralized police state system in every country they are able. This is not “conspiracy theory”, this is conspiracy fact.
For many years now there have been numerous analysts, economists and geopolitical experts in the alternative media that have predicted and warned the public about the globalist strategy of “order out of chaos”. In other words, the ultra-wealthy power brokers that hold influence over most governments on Earth seek to “reshape” the existing social order through the creation of crisis and disaster. By engineering public desperation, they hope to lure us into accepting restrictions on our freedoms that we would have never considered otherwise.
The goal of a single global economy and government has been spoken of by elites time and time again, yet it is still to this day called “conspiracy theory” or “paranoid delusion”. I could quote these elites and their organizations all day long, but I’ll cite a few choice statements to make my point.
As former Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton and Council on Foreign Relations member Strobe Talbot wrote in an article for Time Magazine in 1992 titled ‘America Abroad: The Birth Of The Global Nation’:
“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
As elitist and Fabian Socialist HG Wells outlines in his non-fiction treatise titled ‘The New World Order’:
“…When the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.”
And how about one of my favorite revealing quotes from Trilateral Commission member Richard N. Gardner, former deputy assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations under Kennedy and Johnson? He wrote in the April, 1974 issue of the Council on Foreign Relation’s (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs (pg. 558) in an article titled ‘The Hard Road To World Order’:
“In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”
Members of globalist foundations and think-tanks like the CFR have inhabited nearly every US government office and presidential cabinet for the past several decades. This includes the two dozen or so CFR members in Donald Trump’s cabinet. Draining the swamp? Not going to happen.
As Harpers Magazine candidly revealed in a 1958 expose titled ‘School For Statesmen’:
“The most powerful clique in these (CFR) groups have one objective in common, they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the U.S. They want to end national boundaries and racial and ethnic loyalties supposedly to increase business and ensure world peace. What they strive for would inevitably lead to dictatorship and loss of freedoms by the people. The CFR was founded for “the purpose of promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all powerful one world government.”
The easiest method for the globalists to get what they openly say they want is to either conjure a crisis or exploit an existing crisis in order to “erode sovereignty”. The current pandemic fits this plan perfectly, but before sovereignty can be eliminated on a national level they need to undermine sovereignty on an individual level first.
Actions within the US and nations allied to the US suggest an accelerated attack on personal liberties is at hand.
There are sister foundations to the CFR in many other countries. For example, in Australia they have the highly embedded and influential Strategic Policy Institute, which has been consistently advocating for complete centralization of government power in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Their stated plan is to concentrate policy administration in the hands of a new “commission” or “department” made up of the “brightest minds”. This commission would not be tasked with getting Australia back to normal, but convincing the public to ACCEPT the “new normal” beyond the pandemic.
The ASPI enthusiastically heralds the idea in an article titled ‘Coronavirus Response A Chance To Reimagine Future For Australia’:
“The agenda of such a department now is not about getting Australia back to normal after the pandemic. It’s about re-imagining what Australia can be and how we can thrive and prosper in our future beyond the coronavirus and in light of drought, bushfires and climate change. Think about the kind of new economy we can have after the forced, rapid adoption of dispersed home working and schooling through digital means. We can be the leading digital economy the prime minister desired before the pandemic, not by 2030 but much earlier.”
This reminds me immediately of the post 9/11 push to rapidly remove constitutional protections while the public was blinded by fear and confusion. As US globalist Rahm Emanuel would say:
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
The ASPI reveals the true agenda, which is the complete federalization and unilateral implementation of law without public approval. The plan is to do this by exploiting the pandemic event to its full potential and then applying the rapid societal changes in government structure. This will then be carried on long after the coronavirus disappears in the name of the economy, welfare programs and so-called “global warming”. The pandemic response is just a means to an end, and the end game is total dominance of the population.
I focus on Australia and the surrounding regions in particular because this seems to be the place where globalists are enforcing technocratic policies first. Or at the very least, they are test-running their strategy and using Australians as guinea pigs. When the ASPI says they plan to keep the pandemic changes in place well after the virus is gone, they aren’t just talking about shifting into a digital economy.
Right now, Australia and New Zealand are slamming citizens with perhaps the most draconian measures yet in the Western world. These are policies that the elites want to introduce everywhere, but they are going full bore in Australia, and it just keeps getting worse.
In various areas of Australia “Level 4” response measures have been enforced for at least the next six weeks, including curfews, strict mask policies including people being forced to wear masks OUTSIDE (contrary to everything science and virology has to say about low possibility of transmission in sunlight and open air), residents are not allowed to travel more than 3 miles from their homes and only one person from a household is allowed to leave at any given time. Citizens violating these rules are subject to $10,000 fines or arrest. And yes, people are being arrested simply for not wearing mask or being too far from home.
In New Zealand, the situation has become exceedingly grim and I think it should be treated as a warning to Americans specifically as to our potential future is we allow the narrative of “public health security” to be turned into a vehicle for tyranny.
While Australia has been using quarantine facilities to force people considered high risk to isolate, NZ quarantine camps are now fully under the control of the military, and ALL citizens that test positive or are suspected to have Covid can be separated from their families and placed in the camps, which are hotels converted into prisons.
It is the complete erasure if personal liberties all because of an increase in cases which has amounted to a mere 525 deaths in Australia and 22 deaths in New Zealand.
I believe the reason Australia and New Zealand have been targeted with this level of restrictions first is because they have been almost fully disarmed and have no means to defend themselves from government overstep. That said, I see signs that similar measures will be attempted in the US as well. In states like New York, there are low key programs to set up Covid checkpoints stopping and checking vehicles coming into the state. This is where heavier restrictions start.
First, checkpoints will be established in the name of keeping infected people out of a state or city. Then, those same checkpoints will be used to keep people from leaving a state or city. Then, checkpoints will be set up at random to test people for fever or symptoms of illness. If allowed to continue, the natural progression of checkpoints is to terrify the population into not traveling anywhere for any reason. Like in Australia and NZ, people will effectively be imprisoned in their homes. At this stage, bringing in laws or executive orders punishing people for leaving home will be easier; they will have already acclimated to being trapped at home anyway.
Furthermore, elites and globalists within the US are calling for hard lockdowns for at least six weeks, just like the Level 4 lockdowns in Australia. Federal Reserve member Neel Kashkari recently asserted that Americans are saving more, thus they should be subjected to hard lockdowns “because they can afford it”.
Virginia is planning mandatory Covid vaccinations, even though vaccines for SARS like viruses have proven impossible to develop in the past, and rushed vaccines have a history of harming or killing people rather than protecting them. Set aside the issue that giving government the power to force citizens to inject anything into their bodies is immoral.
What’s next? Covid camps? Well, yes, unless Americans make a hard stand. Mainstream media outlets have been suggesting this strategy for months. The Washington Post applauded the use of forced isolation camps in other nations and asks why the US has not yet used them beyond ports for foreign travelers? The reason is this: Many Americans will not go along with such measures, and will use force in-kind against anyone trying to lock them up because of a virus that is a moderate threat at most to a small percentage of the population.
That said, don’t assume that the establishment will not eventually try it here. They will. Be ready when they do so. Look to the actions in places like Australia and NZ and ask yourself, am I willing to go along with that? And if so, for how long? Because the globalists intend for these restrictions to become the “new normal”. They intend for this nightmare to last forever.
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- 'Rush-In' Interference: An Asteroid Is Heading For Earth The Day Before The 2020 Election
‘Rush-In’ Interference: An Asteroid Is Heading For Earth The Day Before The 2020 Election
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 23:25In an event that is almost guaranteed to be called Russian meddling if President Trump wins re-election, an asteroid is expected to zoom “uncomfortably” close to the Earth the day before election day.
Celestial object 2018 VP1 is expected to fly past earth on November 2, 2020 according to the Center for Near Objects Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a new report from Fox.
The asteroid is “very small” and has an orbit that crosses the orbit of Earth. So far, computer simulations predict that there will be no collision.
Hopefully, these aren’t the same computers that predicted Hillary Clinton having a 90% chance of winning the 2016 election.
The asteroid orbits the sun every 731 days and is said to be roughly the “size of a school bus” or smaller. The Center for Near Objects Studies says there is just a 0.41% chance of it entering the Earth’s atmosphere “based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days.”
Even if it does enter the atmosphere, it’ll burn up due to its small size, the group says. But hey, we can still hold out hope!
Asteroid 2018VP1 is very small, approx. 6.5 feet, and poses no threat to Earth! It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet’s atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.
— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) August 23, 2020
- What Is Gilead's Role In The War On Hydroxychloroquine?
What Is Gilead’s Role In The War On Hydroxychloroquine?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 23:05Authored by Antonio Chaves via AmericanThinker.com,
Is Gilead, the maker of Remdesivir, waging war on HCQ (hydroxychloroquine)?
Attacks on the drug have been continuous ever since Dr. Didier Raoult used this quinine derivative to save the lives of COVID-19 patients last March.
The first attempt to discredit HCQ was a hastily compiled Veterans Administration hospital system study last April. Notably, one of the study’s authors had in the past received numerous grants from Gilead, with one grant in 2018 totaling nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
After deep flaws in the VA study were exposed, Surgisphere came to the rescue in May with a “15,000 patient” megastudy allegedly compiled from hospitals all over the world.
This strategy succeeded: Following its publication in the Lancet and the NEJM, all outpatient use of HCQ was severely restricted in the U.S., Australia, and most of Europe.
When the Surgisphere scam was exposed, both articles were quietly retracted and the editor-in-chief of the Lancet tried to wash his hands of this embarrassing incident by denouncing Surgisphere’s “monumental fraud.”
However only a few days earlier, Lancet editors played a major role in persuading WHO to suspend all trials for HCQ. Who put them up to it?
The study’s main author, Mandeep Mehra, also apologized for his reliance on a third party for the data. He may not have known the data was fabricated, but the hospital he directed was conducting two trials for Remdesivir. Was he under pressure from his sponsors?
These are the stakes:
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A five-day treatment with Remdesivir costs around $3,000.
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A five-day supply of generic HCQ costs around $10.
Drug companies have every right to recoup their cost of research and development, but lobbying to suppress access to a lifesaving treatment that is both cheaper and more effective is a crime against humanity.
Progressives mistakenly believe that socialized medicine protects patients from the abuses of big pharma, but the first nation to severely restrict access to HCQ was France.
This policy compelled Dr. Raoult to testify against Gilead’s disproportionate leverage over the medical community during a meeting of the French National Assembly last June.
Notably in the U.S., a third of the FDA’s budget comes from pharmaceutical user fees, and according to the NIH’s website, eight out of 55 members of the panel responsible for COVID-19 treatment guidelines are currently affiliated with Gilead. These government ties to Gilead more than triple when you include panel members with past associations.
Paradoxically, most opposition to HCQ in the U.S. comes from the left, but conservatives who know the ways of crony capitalism regard this as par for the course. After all, big pharma has given more to Democrats ever since the passage of Obamacare and up to now, Gilead employees donated three times more to the Biden campaign.
Sooner or later there will be a reckoning for everyone who colluded in this disinformation campaign. If you are among the policymakers or physicians participating in this charade, you may want to dissociate yourself while you can credibly plead ignorance for tens of thousands of preventable deaths.
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Access to HCQ varies by state. If you cannot get this drug from your doctor, America’s Frontline Doctors has kindly provided contact information for telemedicine physicians that are HCQ-knowledgeable. You can find these doctors by clicking on any state in their website and scrolling down to the bottom of the description.
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- Over Half Of San Francisco Storefronts Closed As Pandemic Downturn Rages
Over Half Of San Francisco Storefronts Closed As Pandemic Downturn Rages
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 22:45Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson warned a “growth scare” for markets could be imminent, if that is in the “next several weeks/months.” If so, then all the instabilities of a slowing recovery, deteriorating labor market, waning consumer sentiment, and small business massacre will come out of the woodwork and shock investors.
On a micro-level, we want to share with readers a genuinely shocking, and deep economic scarring story developing in San Francisco.
BREAKING: Most San Francisco @Gap stores close permanently, including Market Street flagship.@Shwanika has the details here: https://t.co/DRHJtEsc3s
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) August 17, 2020
According to CBS San Francisco, citing a new survey via the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, “more than half of all storefronts in San Francisco are no longer in business due to COVID-19.”
“The survey showed only 46 percent of storefront businesses in San Francisco that were open at the beginning of the pandemic are still operating,” said Jay Cheng, spokesman of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
Cheng said 1,300 stores have closed in recent months, with about 1,200 still open.
“There’s a lot of reasons for that. If you’re a fitness studio, you can’t open because of the pandemic. If you’re a retail space, you could open, but you might have decided that there isn’t enough foot traffic or enough customer base to make that worthwhile to reopen. So it’s become a very difficult situation,” he said.
Another San Francisco Covid causality, from my friend @markcerv
Richmond Dim Sum institution Tong Kiang to close. @lucchesi @hooleil @hknightsf pic.twitter.com/bjjk2OKiwJ
— Helmut the Schmidt (@sfhelmut) August 17, 2020
Cheng said business closures across the metro area have resulted in depressionary unemployment, with claims nearing 200,000, or four times then what was seen after the financial crash in 2008.
“And what’s really unique is that during the Great Recession, we knew what we had to do to get people back to work. We had to fix the housing market, and we had to get consumer confidence back up. Get people rehiring. Now, most of these 193,000 unemployment claims are unemployed because of the pandemic, said Cheng. “Until we get the public health crisis under control, we can’t get these folks back to work.”
Video: More Than Half of San Fran Storefronts Closed Due To Pandemic
When the growth scare strikes, sending markets into a panic, or mainly a blowoff of technology stocks, investors will search for evidence of deep economic scarring that has morphed the economic recovery from a “V-shaped” to one that resembles a “Nike Swoosh.” They will stumble upon the depressing situation in San Francisco of a business massacre.
- Trump And Pompeo Craft No-Win Solutions For The World
Trump And Pompeo Craft No-Win Solutions For The World
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 22:25Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
You have to hand it to the sociopaths running U.S. foreign policy, they are very adept at creating no-win scenarios for their opponents. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was just handed a major defeat at the United Nations Security Council, who voted down a resolution to extend the arms embargo against Iran.
That embargo is set to expire in October as part of the U.S. unilaterally pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known colloquially as the Iran Nuclear Deal.
But Pompeo and President Trump only wanted that vote, in my opinion, to force out into the open their ability to impose the ‘snapback’ sanctions on Iran which is a major component of the JCPOA.
Pompeo and Trump, with this vote, are now, disingenuously clawing their way back into the JCPOA by saying they have the right to invoke those sanctions on all signatories. This tact is unlikely to succeed so what’s the game plan then?
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif cuts to the heart of the matter in a recent article:
The U.S. administration’s disinformation campaign — including false and forged claims regarding a regional consensus … is a ruse to disguise its real, more malevolent motivations: having failed to collapse Resolution 2231 after over two years of the most brutal “maximum pressure” ever imposed on a nation…the U.S. now hopes to abuse its mal-interpretation of the provisions of the same resolution it abandoned in 2018 to finally destroy it. This deeply malicious U.S. behavior is evident throughout the UN, where it seeks to use the UN itself to effectively destroy the world body.
Trump wants the JCPOA gone and he’s willing to blackmail most of the U.N. Security Council to get it. Because if the arms embargo is lifted then he and Pompeo will then use their expanded sanctions capability under CAATSA to cut even more of the world out of the U.S. financial system.
And I’m not talking about little things like cutting Iran and/or Russia out of SWIFT.
Those are already on the table and game-planned for by both countries. He’s not stupid enough to cut China out of SWIFT no matter how badly relations deteriorate short of open, kinetic war.
I’m talking about harsh sanctions on European persons and companies akin to what they’ve already done over something as miniscule as the Nordstream 2 pipeline to get the results in the U.N.S.C. they want.
This feeds into Trump’s growing distrust of the EU and a resurgent Angela Merkel in Germany, who he knows is actively working against his re-election. There is zero love lost between these two, since Trump has clearly targeted Merkel as his biggest enemy in Europe.
Now I’m no fan of the U.N. or most of the other post-WWII transnational institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. but this push by Trump and Pompeo to break the U.N. now that it no longer acts as a rubber stamp agency on U.S. foreign adventurism is the height of duplicity.
The strategy employed by Trump and Pompeo here is so absurd even the U.N.’s harshest critic, madman John Bolton, thinks they are nuts to go this route.
The reason for this push to extend the arms embargo on Iran is simple, both Russia and China are deep in negotiations with Iran to upgrade both its air and air defense capabilities. China is ready to deploy over $400 billion in Iran while Russia stands ready to ‘sell’ the Iranians new Suhkois and S-400 missile defense systems.
And there’s no way to pressure Iran to the negotiating table and create a new JCPOA to Trump’s liking if it can credibly defend itself from Israeli and U.S. aggression. But this feeds into Trump’s re-election strategy of brokering an historic peace deal between the UAE and Israel while making headlines with troop withdrawals in Afghanistan and Germany.
Now at the same time, Trump and Pompeo have been very active across Europe rewriting the U.S. troop deployment map there to pressure Russia into signing new INF and START treaties under threat of U.S. expanded deployments in Poland.
Is this just more aggressive posturing by Trump? We’ll see. I remain convinced that a lot of his foreign policy ‘blundering,’ as Philip Giraldi called it recently (which I don’t disagree with), is part of his purposefully blowing up the old order between the U.S. and Europe now that it’s clear to me the globalists’ goal of a Great Reset involves destroying the U.S. and moving the center of western power to the European Union.
The recent upheaval in Belarus fits into this thesis perfectly.
While I’m sure the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko wasn’t as overwhelming as the official polls suggest, I don’t for a second believe he actually lost the election.
That said, what is happening in Minsk is similar to what happened in Kiev in 2014, Venezuela in 2019, and what’s happening in the U.S. against Trump himself, a manufactured color revolution that can only reach the levels we’ve seen if the government itself wasn’t fundamentally corrupt.
It’s a color revolution nonetheless and the hypocritical responses from the U.S., France and Germany over the ‘violence’ in Minsk verges on the cartoonish, especially given the level of civil unrest at home in all of those places.
Things have progressed to the point in Belarus where Russian President Vladimir Putin also has no good options in the near term. Opposition to Lukashenko is strong enough, because he is a terrible leader, that Putin can’t openly support him while at the same time he can’t wait too long to make a move lest Lukashenko be ousted from power, bringing a U.S. puppet, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, to power.
For his part, Lukashenko has finally seen the light. Caught trying, as The Saker so trenchantly put it, “to sit between two chairs.” Lukashenko has only himself to blame for this coup attempt.
He’s the one that courted the West, inviting Pompeo to reopen the U.S. embassy, thinking he could blackmail Putin into giving him more treasure from Russia’s coffers. And he has resisted for nearly two decades Putin’s offers of a Union State where Belarus and Russia would be far more integrated partners than they are now.
And now, after being set up by Pompeo, Lukashenko sees things clearly and is ready to cave to Putin immediately on everything because if he doesn’t Belarus will become another failed state just like Ukraine is today.
It’s touch and go right now as to whether Lukashenko can hold onto power long enough to get this done but he’s already offered to leave office and reform the constitution, which is the only path he has left. From a report at TASS:
Meanwhile the incumbent president vowed readiness to redistribute power through a constitutional process. “Of course, I will go away someday. In a year or two. But we can’t give up the constitution to some nobody. Because it will be a disaster. This is what I am afraid of the most,” Lukashenko pointed out, as cited by the BelTA news agency.
Reiterating readiness to “share” powers, the incumbent head of state was clear though that this would never happen under pressure. “We need a new constitution. I’ve been proposed two variants, but rejected both of them, because they barely differ from the current one. The work on the third variant is underway. Come, let’s sit and work on the constitution and put it to a referendum. And I will relegate my powers to you by the constitution. But not under pressure and not through the streets,” he said.
Trump will happily go along with this regime change operation in Belarus to get Russia to the bargaining table over energy, security and everything else. He won’t meet with Putin between now and the election because there is no upside to it for him politically.
Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron want the situation in Belarus because it feeds the narrative that NATO is still necessary to ‘contain Russian aggression’ and counter Trump’s criticisms. Poland and the Baltic whiners love this as well.
The EU would love to poach Belarus for the European Union.
NATO itself wants this conflict for the same reasons.
The problem is that Belarus is not Ukraine. There isn’t the same kind of ethnic division, there is a single language and long, historical ties to Russia. And this color revolution can be countered easily with swift negotiations of the Union State proposal and outlining a path for Lukashenko to leave office peacefully.
The longer he stays in power the more likely the situation will defuse itself. The same goes for Iran and the JCPOA. The longer Iran does nothing in the face of Israeli and U.S. aggression the more likely the outcome moves in their favor. Pushing Iran today carries no weight after the events surrounding the assassination of General Soleimani in January.
Everyone knows Trump is not going to war with Iran unless one of his rogue underlings, like Pompeo or a general, force his hand. This is not out of the question, especially if it looks like he’ll win re-election.
That’s why I see these moves in the U.N. as being more directed against the EU than Iran itself. Trump has a bigger problem on his hands, however. The chaos he’s unleashed in his quest to remake European and U.S. relations is something his State Dept. under Pompeo can’t control either. And he won’t be in any position to do anything more than what he’s doing now, win short-term victories and lose the long-term war while global capital abandons the U.S. and moves east.
- Traces Of COVID-19 Found In Abandoned Apartment Bathroom Offer New Clues About How It Spreads
Traces Of COVID-19 Found In Abandoned Apartment Bathroom Offer New Clues About How It Spreads
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 22:05Still haunted by the memory of SARS, contact tracers in Guangzhou, China, have worked diligently to monitor the outbreak in their community. So, when a group of researchers happened upon an unusual situation – a group of five family members who all tested positive living below an apartment that had been unoccupied for months.
Researchers decided to do some research, and have published their findings as a case study in Environmental International, which was picked up by Bloomberg.
In the latest research to support the notion that the virus coronavirus in the bathroom of an unoccupied apartment in Guangzhou, China, suggests the airborne pathogen may have wafted upwards through drain pipes, an echo of a large SARS outbreak in Hong Kong 17 years ago.
According to the research, traces of SARS-CoV-2 were detected on the sink, faucet and shower handle of a long-vacant apartment situated near the apartment of the family mentioned above. The contaminated bathroom was located directly above the home of five people confirmed a week earlier to have COVID-19. The study was carried out by researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The scientists conducted what they described as an “on-site tracer simulation experiment” to see whether the virus could be spread through waste pipes via tiny airborne particles created by the force of a toilet flushing.
They found evidence of these aerosols in bathrooms 10 and 12 levels above the infected family’s apartment. Two cases were confirmed on each of those floors in early February, raising concern that SARS-CoV-2-laden particles from the infected family’s stool had drifted into their homes via plumbing and managed to successfully infect others.
For those who don’t understand the physics behind aerosol particles, the study’s authors offered a visual guide.
Here’s an abstract from the report.
As public health teams respond to the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), containment and understanding of the modes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission is of utmost importance for policy making. During this time, governmental agencies have been instructing the community on handwashing and physical distancing measures. However, there is no agreement on the role of aerosol transmission for SARS-CoV-2. To this end, we aimed to review the evidence of aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Several studies support that aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is plausible, and the plausibility score (weight of combined evidence) is 8 out of 9. Precautionary control strategies should consider aerosol transmission for effective mitigation of SARS-CoV-2.
It’s just the latest piece of evidence suggesting that the coronavirus is indeed “airborne” – that is, it spreads via tiny particles called “aerosols”. Like the abstract reflects, the data collected in this experiment suggest that the chances of aerosols being a significant means of infection are 8 in 9.
At one point in the paper, the Chinese researchers take a swipe at organizations like the WHO, which has been slow to recognize the risks surrounding aerosol transmission. This is a dangerous assumption, especially considering the fact that transmission via surface contact and large-droplet transmission (which inspired the mandatory mask orders) has almost no actual evidence to back it up, but rather are the results of early assumptions that have endured for various and sundry reasons.
Current evidence on SARS-CoV-2 has limitations, but is strongly indicative of aerosols as one of several routes of COVID-19 transmission. It should be noted that the equivalent evidence for contact and large droplet transmission is not available, but has been an unproven assumption from the outset. Epidemiologic and experimental data continues to be obtained at a rapid pace, and the role of aerosols in COVID-19 transmission should be revisited in light of the emerging evidence.
The study also attacks another alleged misconception: the notion that SARS-CoV-2 spreads mainly through respiratory droplets, spatters of saliva or discharge from the nose.
But since the first weeks of the pandemic, scientists in China have warned that virus in an infected person’s stool can help spread it. Studies in Guangdong province have found evidence of the virus in the stool of the infected.
This means that bathrooms could be a key breeding ground for coronavirus transmission, because they “may promote fecal-derived aerosol transmission if used improperly, particularly in hospitals,” the China CDC researchers said. They cited a fluid-dynamics simulation that showed a “massive upward transport of virus aerosol particles” during flushing. This creates a “fecal plume” that could be particularly infectious.
Though, to be sure, the extent to which people are infected by these plumes isn’t known. But readers can find the study in its entirety here.
1-s2.0-S0160412020319942-main (1).pdf by Zerohedge on Scribd
- Robert Gore: Our Dystopia Is Their Utopia
Robert Gore: Our Dystopia Is Their Utopia
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 21:45Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,
No Lives Matter
The only way to control a substantial population is to murder enough that the rest are terrified into submission. But it isn’t really the control that’s the objective, it’s the murder. At root, murder stems from a grotesque hatred of one’s self, which animates a craven fear of anything and everything, particularly death, and paradoxically, a psychotic desire to kill one’s self and every other value. Only by understanding our enemies do we have any chance of defeating them.
The twentieth century and the two decades of this one offer ample material to study the psychology of evil.
In the nineteenth century, Fyodor Dostoyevsky masterfully plumbed those depths. In the barren desert that constitutes today’s intellectual life, the study of history has been discarded and great literature ignored or burned. They’re casualties in the war being waged on anything that helps us understand ourselves. In one sense Dostoyevsky couldn’t have anticipated the collectivist charnel houses of the century to follow, but in one sense he did. He knew charnel houses were the work of individual souls, and one couldn’t grasp the one without examining the other.
With many minority groups claiming historical injustices against them and demanding remedial recognition and reparation, with official endorsement by many institutions of those claims and demands, and with their propagation via all major channels of communication, no voices have been raised in support of the indisputably smallest and most persecuted minority group – the individual. “Individual” and “individual rights” are words that must not be spoken.
Any recognition of the individual draws attention to the fundamental and massive violation of individual rights stemming from coronavirus totalitarianism and governments’ encouragement of riots, vandalism, and violence. In a Peanuts cartoon, Linus exclaims, “I love mankind… it’s people I can’t stand.” The game is always the same. In the name of some collective greater good—safety, anti-racism, fill in the blank—the wealth, property, work, rights, freedom, and lives of individuals are stolen. Of course the alleged greater good is never realized, but that was never the point. The fountainhead of any collectivist ideology is the hatred these lovers of mankind have for people and their pursuit of happiness.
For coronavirus, the blueprint has been to test restrictive measures in one jurisdiction, see if they fly, and then move to universal implementation. China’s lockdown was the model for global lockdown.
Sweden was condemned and smeared for refusing to follow the crowd, but its condemners have no more concern for the Swedish population than they do for any other population.
Sweden has demonstrated that lockdowns are unnecessary. Its death rate is no higher than other European countries, and would have been substantially lower, perhaps cut by one-half to three-quarters, had it done a better job of protecting its elderly and nursing home patients. Unlike Andrew Cuomo and several other Democratic governors who made the same mistake, Swedish officials have admitted theirs.
Swedish openness is antithetical to coronavirus commissars bent on propagating propaganda and enforcing draconian dictates. However, the ultimate danger to their regime will come when a vaccine arrives. After almost five months of what were supposed to be two weeks of lockdowns ostensibly sold as necessary to “flatten the curve,” it’s obvious the lockdowns are meant to prevent herd immunity, keeping people away from sunlight and fresh air, both of which bolster the immune system, and enforcing isolation and loneliness, which impair it. In other words, they’re designed to make the outbreak worse. If you’re surprised—regular readers won’t be—welcome to reality.
When the vaccine arrives, the Swedish people will have achieved herd immunity (apparently they already have in urban centers), which traditionally has been the way humanity has dealt with viruses. An immune herd doesn’t need a vaccine and while the Swedish government probably won’t prevent anyone who wants one from getting one, it probably won’t be mandatory, unlike most of the rest of the world.
That will prompt unwelcome questions among the thinking remnant. If herd immunity works, why did we have to lockdown? Why can’t we just complete the herd immunization we’ve already started? Will a vaccine, like lockdowns, make the outbreak worse? Why are we running the risks and bearing the enormous expense of a vaccine that’s been rushed to market and inadequately tested, will be only partially effective, will be adulterated with unhealthy preservatives and adjuvants, and will undoubtedly have unanticipated side effects, some of which may be severe? What’s the rights-destructive, life-threatening agenda behind the vaccine?
While China was the beta test for lockdowns, apparently New Zealand and Australia serve as such for the next iteration of totalitarianism. China’s draconian measures were instituted in Wuhan, which actually had a serious coronavirus outbreak. New Zealand’s and Australia’s coronavirus death rates are infinitesimal: 4 per million in the former, 18 per million in the latter (Worldometers.info). Despite these scant numbers, New Zealand is under lockdown and has postponed an election (nobody has died of the coronavirus since May) and Melbourne has instituted, “the harshest lockdown conditions of all Western democracies” (“Letters From Melbourne, a ‘Ghost Town Police State’ Under Brutal Covid Lockdown,” Robert Bridge, strategic-culture.org). Here are Melbourne’s restrictions, the preview of coming attractions that will eventually be rolled out around the globe:
Despite the extremely low death rate, Melbourne residents – or shall we call them what they really are, prisoners – must adhere to the following rules:
– No traveling more than 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from their homes;
– No traveling to other states inside of the country;
– Those under house arrest are permitted to leave home for just one hour each day for exercise;
– Only one person is permitted to go shopping per family each day; shopping is to be done within 5 kilometers from home;
– Unlike traditional prisons, visitations are not permitted to house arrestees;
– All school activities are to be conducted online;
– All businesses, services and construction cancelled;
– Organized sport, forget it;
– In the case of funerals, try and delay your demise if at all possible, otherwise, expect just 10 guests;
– Ditto for weddings;
– Curfew in effect between 8 pm and 5 am.
These restrictions will be in place for (at least) six weeks.
“Letters From Melbourne, a ‘Ghost Town Police State’ Under Brutal Covid Lockdown,” Bridge
So much for pompous invocations of the “traditional Anglo-American protection of freedom and individual rights.” It also gives the lie to the desperate delusion to which millions still cling: that these measures have something to do with health and safety. They are all about power and control, which is why their proponents are uninterested in research that demonstrates their measures are ineffective or counterproductive (or demonstrate that the cheap, readily available drug hydroxychloroquine, used with an antibiotic and zinc, is an effective prophylactic and treatment), and censor such research. In the US, that hypocritical indifference was made clear when coronavirus totalitarianism was relaxed for politically approved George Floyd protests and riots.
The often unstated objective of power and control is death. It’s easier to see when rioters are allowed to loot, destroy, and murder with impunity. Coronavirus killers hide behind doctors, scientists, and public health officials making scary predictions and pronouncements, “greater good” justifications for bankruptcy, unemployment, and misery, cloying propaganda that turns professionals charged with caring for the afflicted into “heroes” for caring for the afflicted, and sheep-like compliance with draconian, ineffective, freedom-destructive edicts to combat tiny risks. It’s the difference between a quick execution and slow but deadly poisoning.
You see it on the Internet videos of once great cities—New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, St. Louis—in their death throes. Coronavirus totalitarianism and the riots should be listed as causes of death, but there is common underlying comorbidity: statist collectivism. The productive tax base is fleeing, but it’s been milked and extorted for years by profligate, corrupt Democrat politicians (all of the above cited cities have been run by Democrats for decades) to line their pockets and buy votes. From each according to his ability to each according to his vote.
The heretofore insulated elites who prattle about social justice and defunding the police are now beset by “social justice warriors” destroying their neighborhoods, looting their shopping districts, and brutalizing innocents as pleas for protection go unanswered. The police-maintained barrier between the ghettos and the high-rent districts has been breached by thugs who drive, cell phones, instant messaging, flash riots, random destruction and violence, and plenty of cash and firearms. It won’t be restored and the elites know it. They can hire private security and hunker down or they can flee. A substantial percentage are fleeing.
The rest of us watch the urban detritus videos in horror: homeless encampments stretching for blocks, boarded up stores and restaurants, beggars, food lines, thieves, random violence, impoverished mothers and children, people urinating, defecating, masturbating, and shooting up in full view, discarded needles, broken windows, abandoned and burnt-out buildings, decimated neighborhoods, and the ubiquitous cockroaches and rats. Only if you understand that this is what the collectivists had in mind can you understand the chaos and unfathomable evil enveloping the world. Our dystopia is their utopia.
The carnage, chaos, and collapse in full bloom in American cities are the sum and substance of what the statist collectivists want. Is this the prelude to the imposition of a totalitarian order? By whom and with what? The cities are technically bankrupt, burdened with medical and pension promises they couldn’t pay when they had economies and tax bases, and now both are withering. They could turn to their respective states, but the states are in no better shape. That leaves the federal government—the world’s biggest debtor—and its magic central bank. They can create debt and exchange it between themselves but neither can create a dime’s worth of real production or employment. Anybody see the flaws in this arrangement?
That supposedly leaves only a totalitarian global superstate, headed by statist collectivists, to impose its brand of order, which is just another brand of death. A totalitarian global superstate and its cash-abolishing, cryptocurrency-issuing, transaction-monitoring central bank will still have the same old problem: neither one can create a dime’s worth of real production or employment. A fiat cryptocurrency is still a fiat currency and will go the way of all fiat currencies—debasement to worthlessness (see “Doubling Down On Failed Policies With Central Bank Digital Currencies,” Alasdair Macleod, goldmoney.com).
They’ll have what they call a demand management problem, that is, a lot of desperate, hungry people. One way to manage demand is to eliminate it, so expect them to take up the sport of tyrants—killing people—in earnest. They may clear homeless encampments with bulldozers without bothering to move the inhabitants out of their tents and boxes. Their vaccines might have side effects that wipe out a few million or billion—sacrifices must be made for the greater good (the tyrants will of course be exempt from such sacrifices). Perhaps a war or two. Records set by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao will be in jeopardy. They could Soylent Green their victims to feed the rest of the population; they’ll have to keep some of the drones alive.
Free, self-interested, productive people in a capitalist economy will always figure out ways to feed themselves and make their lives better. Collectivist statism brings only poverty, starvation, horror, and death. Beneath their rhetoric that’s what its proponents want. It’s better to realize this before the boarding calls for the socially distanced cattle cars and the socially distanced line for the gas chambers.
Power, as they like to remind us, grows out of a barrel of a gun, but moral legitimacy ends when that gun is aimed at the innocent. Nothing good has or ever will come from such evil. Dostoyevsky knew that it’s not history, or a socioeconomic system, or a political ideology from which evil flows, it’s the human soul. Recognize the homicidal-suicidal souls among us for what they are.
- Xi's Fierce Anti-Graft Purge A Ploy To Enshrine Power As Restored "Chairman"
Xi’s Fierce Anti-Graft Purge A Ploy To Enshrine Power As Restored “Chairman”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 21:25Is China’s powerful president Xi Jinping laying the groundwork to resurrect Mao Zedong’s historic ‘Chairman’ title once again with himself more powerfully ensconced at the Communist Party helm?
Illustration: South China Morning Post, Henry Wong New analysis in FT, citing Beijing-based analysts, says yes concerning a title which hasn’t been used in decades, which like Mao would certainly grant Xi the prestige to permanently enshrine his power (well beyond his presidential mandate) and purge internal rivals and enemies with ease.
Explains FT, this is likely ultimately what’s behind his ongoing his multiyear, anti-corruption battle which has just last month became more intensified. At moment, he enjoys the slightly less impressive title of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s preparation to establish Xi’s total authority over the party,” independent commentator and expert on China’s inner-workings, Wu Qiang, said.
“We cannot rule out that there will be further changes to the party charter or that Xi will get a new title to further emphasize his status above other leaders on the politburo standing committee,” he added.
The report details further:
The anti-corruption campaign launched last month to target the party’s legal and domestic security apparatus kicked into a higher gear last week when the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced a probe into Gong Daoan, the Shanghai police chief and the highest-ranking official to fall since Mr Xi’s second term began in 2017.
At least thirty top party officials have already fallen in Xi’s anti-graft initiative, which some say is reminiscent of Mao’s infamous first major party purge in 1941, dubbed the “Yan’an rectification movement” which paved the way for the founding father of the People’s Republic of China being declared chairman.
Similar to what’s been speculated of his Russian counterpart Putin’s grand long-term ambitions – and it should be noted the two have been increasingly chummy over the past few years as they find a common enemy in the United States – Xi’s path to a resurrected chairmanship title would ensure his clinging to power far beyond a second term.
- Another "Oumuamua" Plot Twist: Leading Explanation For Interstellar Object Is Aliens Again
Another “Oumuamua” Plot Twist: Leading Explanation For Interstellar Object Is Aliens Again
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 21:05Authored by Jake Anderson via TheMindUnleashed.com,
Last year, an extraordinary thing happened: for the first time in recorded history, astronomers and astrophysicists observed an interstellar object enter and leave our solar system. Over the years, they’ve documented plenty of comets, asteroids, and other cosmic bodies but all have been gravitationally bound to an orbit within our star system.
This object, named ‘Oumuamua, came from outside our system, from a star or molecular cloud tens or even hundreds of millions of light-years away, and then left.
However, the most mysterious aspect of ‘Oumuamua’ was the fact that it seemed to be gaining momentum, as though it were being propelled by some kind of propulsion system. At first, astronomers tried to explain this anomaly away by contending the object was a comet, which is often naturally propelled by the burst of gas caused by melting ice. But ‘Oumuamua didn’t have the tail so common to comets that are outgassing.
So if it wasn’t a comet, how was it demonstrating non-gravitational acceleration through our cosmic neighborhood?
There were other anomalies and unusual characteristics associated with ‘Oumuamua. Why had it just been discovered so recently, when the Pan-STARRS system should have been able to spot it before? Why is its local standard of rest (LSR) frame of reference, motion, and speed so unusual? Why is its extremely elongated, cigar-like shape – with a length up to 10 times larger than its width – so rare and unlikely? Why is its surface so shiny that it reflects brightness 10 times higher than usual asteroids?
But by far, the biggest mystery was determining what was giving ‘Oumuamua that extra push of acceleration, which some scientists believed could indicate an artificial alien origin.
Finally, a new hypothesis emerged that seemed to satisfy all the criteria. Astrophysicists Darryl Seligman and Gregory Laughlin wrote a paper in which they proposed that ‘Oumuamua is a frozen comet comprised almost completely of molecular hydrogen’. This would explain, they argued, why its outgassing wasn’t producing a visible comet tail and, more importantly, it would also explain the bursts of acceleration, as “hydrogen icebergs” are theorized to behave in such ways.
“Even though the hydrogen iceberg thing is a little exotic, it explains every single mysterious thing about ‘Oumuamua,” said Seligman in an interview.
But this explanation didn’t sit right with everyone precisely because of this exotic nature: hydrogen icebergs are hypothesized to be extremely rare in the universe.
Now there’s a new twist in the mystery, as astrophysicist/cosmologist Avi Loeb is once again arguing that the hydrogen explanation is unlikely and that it’s just as possible that ‘Oumuamua really is a piece of advanced alien technology, such as a light sail-propelled spaceship. From the beginning, Loeb had argued that the object’s outlandishly rare characteristics made it seem artificial in nature
The chair of Harvard University’s Astronomy Department has co-written a new article in which he argues that ‘Oumuamua really may be humanity’s first encounter with advanced aliens, even if there are no living biological beings on-board. Loeb attempts to debunk the hydrogen iceberg theory by pointing out that such a large size would not be able to sustain chunks of frozen hydrogen, as starlight would prevent them from sticking together. More importantly, he argues, the journey from a “giant molecular cloud” – the only place where a hydrogen comet could form – would be too long for such an object to have arrived here intact.
Seligman and Laughlin countered by trying to find an origin for ‘Oumuamua, identifying relatively nearby molecular clouds formed 30 million to 45 million years ago.
But Loeb says that doesn’t work either.
“Shortening the distance that that H2 iceberg needs to travel does not solve the problems we outline in our paper, because the H2 iceberg would have formed when its parent planetary system formed, billions of years ago,” and in the time since then the comet would have fallen apart.
Loeb says that as incredible as it may seem, the leading explanation for ‘Oumuamua is that it was created as some kind of transport system or interstellar observatory for an advanced alien species. His forthcoming book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth,” will likely expand on his reasons for believing this.
- Watch Live: RNC Day 3 "Land Of Heroes" – Kellyanne, Crenshaw, & Pence
Watch Live: RNC Day 3 “Land Of Heroes” – Kellyanne, Crenshaw, & Pence
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 20:45After the media described (oddly universally) night 1 as having a “darker tone,” and night 2 full of racists and abuse of power, RNC begins night 3 with the theme “Land Of Heroes“:
Tomorrow history will be made by President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael R. Pence as they officially accept the Republican nomination for President and Vice President.
Today, though, we pause to celebrate another national milestone: on this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment became law, finally granting women the right to vote.
The first 100 years of women directly shaping our democratic system has fundamentally rewritten the American Dream to include women, which has proven critical to the prosperity of every American. And on this centennial, women continue to break barriers and shatter glass ceilings.
As a former New Yorker, I built my career in a time when I was often the only woman in the room — sometimes the only woman on the entire team. Now, we see a major shift in that dynamic with women empowered to make their voices heard in seats at the head of the table. During my time serving in the White House as the Director of Management and Administration, I saw this firsthand. Just as the administration did then, the Trump-Pence Administration continues to prioritize the representation and respect of women in all roles, especially leadership.
In the Republican Party, women are leading in historic ways. Our Republican women heroes, like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Staton and Lucy Stone, who spent their lives fighting for suffrage, would be so proud of where we stand today. As President and CEO of the Republican National Convention, I am humbled to be among the likes of Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Chairwoman for the Committee on Arrangements Toni Anne Dashiell. Together, we make up the leadership team for convention, and for the first time in history, this team is composed entirely of women. Ronna and Toni Anne have been instrumental in paving the path forward in the Republican Party, and I am proud to lead alongside them as we work with President Trump and Vice President Pence to continue winning for the next generation of women.
This president recognizes that women are action-oriented and results-driven. He knows that all issues are women’s issues. That is why the administration has negotiated trade deals to benefit all American workers, lifted countless Obama-Biden era burdensome regulations off small businesses and lowered drug costs to ensure all families can access the care they need. At the same time, the president has championed policies like paid family leave, passed landmark tax reform, which doubled the child tax credit, and has directed more than $200 million per year to technology education grants for women and programs that encourage participation in STEM careers. Leadership that produces results rather than pandering is what woman want, and that is what we have in President Trump and Vice President Pence.
As we honor 100 years of “votes for women” and recognize the fierce allies women have in President Trump and Vice President Pence, we celebrate the heroes, rising stars and the next generation of Republican women. We hope that you join us in commemorating all that has been accomplished in the last 100 years and all that is still to come as we – women nationwide – answer the call and continue the fight our heroes began for our ideas in this democracy and the prosperity of our nation.
Vice President Mike Pence is the headline speaker, joining the convention from Fort McHenry, the national monument in Baltimore best known as the site of a battle during the War of 1812 that inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Other scheduled speakers include:
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Second lady Karen Pence
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Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn
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Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst
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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem
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Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw
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New York Rep. Elise Stefanik
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New York Rep. Lee Zeldin
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Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell
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Kellyanne Conway, adviser to the president. Ms. Conway said late Sunday she was leaving the administration at the end of the month, and it wasn’t known whether she would keep her slot at the convention.
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Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the vice president’s national security adviser
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Madison Cawthorn, the Republican nominee for North Carolina’s 11th congressional district
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Clarence Henderson, a civil rights activist who participated in the 1960 Greensboro Woolworth’s sit-in
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Lara Trump, campaign adviser and wife of Eric Trump
Watch Live:
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- 'He Had A Knife': Wisconsin DOJ Releases Update On Jacob Blake Shooting
‘He Had A Knife’: Wisconsin DOJ Releases Update On Jacob Blake Shooting
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 20:38Update (2030ET): The Wisconsin Department of Justice has released a statement confirming that Jacob Blake had a knife in the driver’s side floorboard of his car, and that he was leaning into his car when he was shot seven times.
“During the incident, officers attempted to arrest Jacob S. Blake, age 29. Law enforcement deployed a taser to attempt to stop Mr. Blake, however the taser was not successful in stopping Mr. Blake,” reads the statement.
“During the investigation following the initial incident, Mr. Blake admitted that he had a knife in his possession. DCI agents recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of Mr. Blake’s vehicle.”
Jacob Blake was going for a weapon in the floorboard of his car, DOJ confirms. We’re done here. Completely justified shooting. The man had a death wish and is lucky to be alive today. If you’re turning this man into a martyr, youre a moron and a liar and beneath contempt. Period.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 27, 2020
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In 2015, Blake was charged with resisting arrest and “one misdemeanor count each of carrying a concealed weapon, carrying a firearm while intoxicated, endangering safety-use of a dangerous weapon, and disorderly conduct – and injuring a police officer” when he pulled a gun at a bar.
Update (1500ET): Kenosha Police Chief Dan Miskinis confirmed that a a teenager from Antioch Illinois was involved in last night’s incident, and that an “out of state” person is currently in custody. However, the investigation is still “very much ongoing”, he said. He wouldn’t confirm any names. “I will take complete ownership of the lack of media releases…in the past five days, I have slept 3 hours.”
The shootings are being investigated by the FBI and the city police department.
* * *
Update (1450ET): When he finally got around to last night’s shooting, Sheriff Beth asserted that people are coming all over “for the show”, and “aren’t coming to protest” – “come wear your black outfits, bring your black masks and bring your backpacks filled with molotov cocktails and rocks…and whatever else”.
Beth said that the man arrested in the shooting was part of a group that had been pressing the sheriff to “deputize” them. He said that the incident last night was a tragic example of why he wouldn’t deputize citizens with guns. He then explained that citizens walking around with guns creates opportunities for “conflict.”
Meanwhile, here’s an extended video of one of the shooting incidents that offers yet another perspective.
* *
Update (1430ET): The Mayor of Kenosha started the presser by insisting that we are “not going to allow this violence to continue”. He also clarified that the federal government hasn’t been sent in like in Portland, although the FBI and some other agents have been assisting local police.
“As a country, we are only as strong as the weakest city. We need to help stop the divide and the anger going on in this country,” Mayor Antaramian said.
The Kenosha sheriff is up next, he recounted the events, starting from the beginning of the riots on Sunday. He said that sheriffs from all around the state had volunteered to send help. While the police likely won’t be able to detain everybody, they will try their best to arrest anybody seen causing violence and throwing objects.
* * *
Update (1400ET): The Kenosha police are holding a press briefing that’s just starting. Watch live below:
As we await the start of the briefing, Gov Evers has authorized 500 more national guardsmen.
* * *
Update (1323ET): Just minutes after news of Rittenhouse’s arrest hit the web, President Trump tweeted that he had “just gotten off the phone” with governor Evers, who had finally agreed to accept federal help.
“We will NOT stand for looting, arson, violence, and lawlessness on American streets. My team just got off the phone with Governor Evers who agreed to accept federal assistance (Portland should do the same!)…TODAY, I will be sending federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER!”
We will NOT stand for looting, arson, violence, and lawlessness on American streets. My team just got off the phone with Governor Evers who agreed to accept federal assistance (Portland should do the same!)…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 26, 2020
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…TODAY, I will be sending federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 26, 2020
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We imagine this will be swiftly denied by Evers.
* * *
Update (1320ET): The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that an arrest has been made following an investigation into last night’s fatal shootings.
- MILWAUKEE J.S. SAYS ARREST MADE RELATED TO THE KENOSHA SHOOTING
Meanwhile, the Daily Dot has reportedly pulled court papers showing that 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with first degree murder and labeled a “fugitive from justice.” The complaint states that Rittenhouse “fled the state of Wisconsin with intent to avoid prosecution for that offense”
Already, conservatives are criticizing the severity of the charge.
You’re just supposed to let the mob beat you to death https://t.co/A38cpFLnLj
— Scott Greer 6’2” IQ 187 (@ScottMGreer) August 26, 2020
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According to the Milwaukee J-S, Rittenhouse is now jailed in Lake County, Illinois.
* * *
Update (1240ET): The Internet is scrambling to identify the young man who allegedly shot and killed two people during the mayhem in Kenosha last night, which was the third night of violence in the city where Jacob Blake was shot by a cop on Sunday.
The alleged shooter has been identified by the left-wing mob (who are trying to tarry him as a “mass shooter”) as Kyle Rittenhouse, a local teenager who reportedly has ties to local law enforcement. After the shooting, the shooter (allegedly Rittenhouse) put his hands in the air and walked over to police nearby, but what happened next isn’t exactly clear.
As of noon on Wednesday, nobody has been apprehended in the shootings, though the sheriff of Kenosha has said an arrest in the violence should be coming “soon.” Leftists are also trying to spread a “conspiracy theory” about the shooter accepting water from riot police, evidence that he was working with the local cops.
According to RT, some have tried to tie Rittenhouse to the “Boogaloo Movement” a group of alleged “white supremacists” trying to start a new American civil war. So far, there appears to be no evidence that he was affiliated with the movement, and in an interview which we shared below, but which has since gone viral, a man who appears to be the teenaged Rittenhouse can be heard saying he was there to protect property, not because of any militia affiliation.
* * *
Update (1030ET): A second cell phone video of the officer-involved shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake on Sunday has emerged, showing the incident in a slightly new light.
The footage showed Blake fighting with officers before he took off and ran to the driver’s door of his vehicle with police on his heels (video showed). The video suggests he may indeed have had a knife, and had ignored orders to drop it, before being shot.
It also suggested that Blake’s girlfriend lied to police when she claimed he hadn’t been hostile.
Another witness filmed part of the encounter between Kenosha police and Blake on his cell phone from across the street, but that video didn’t show any scuffle with police.
* * *
Update (0950ET): Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth held another press conference Wednesday morning to discuss the deadly shootings, and other crimes committed across the city during a third night of violence.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that police expect to make an arrest in a case stemming from the shootings “soon”, and that the FBI has been “assisting” local investigators, implying that the shooter will likely be taken into custody.
No one has been apprehended, but Beth said he believed at least one person would be taken into custody soon based on video footage police have reviewed.
“I feel very confident we’ll have him in a very short time,” Beth said.
Beth attributed the progress to the “resources” provided by the FBI.
The investigation of the latest shooting is being conducted by the Kenosha Police Department with the assistance of the FBI, Beth said.
“We’ve got a lot of resources that are helping us pull this stuff together,” Beth said of the shooting investigation.
Roughly 250 law enforcement officers and 250 National Guard members were on hand Tuesday night to try and quell the unrest, and property damage was much less intense during the third night of unrest – however, clashes between militia groups and hard-core progressive groups that resembled street violence appeared to play out in the streets of Kenosha.
The shooter
Two of the three men who were shot in one photo
The shooting took place right in the heart of the city, according to MJS.
The incident happened on Sheridan Road in the heart of Kenosha near the Froedert South hospital building. Many people were still on the streets in protest just before the shooting, walking up and down Sheridan Road, where protesters had been driven after being expelled from Civic Center Park.
Here are some more interesting tidbits from the report.
A Journal Sentinel reporter earlier in the evening observed a group of armed men with long guns standing guard at a dry cleaning business on Sheridan Road near 59th Street, some on the roof.
Police told them to get off the roof and a person shouted back: “Officer, this is our business.” Police did not ultimately order them off the roof. Police did not ultimately make them get off the roof.
[…]
It is unclear if the men seen by the reporter were members of the Kenosha Guard, or whether Beth, in his comments, was referring to that group, or similar groups of people.
Before the shooting, someone from Kenosha suggested to Beth that he deputize ordinary citizens to help contain the unrest. Beth said he refused.
“I said, ‘There’s no way I’m doing that,'” Beth said.
Meanwhile, GOP Senator Ron Johnson, who represents Wisconsin in the Senate alongside Democrat Tammy Baldwin (who hasn’t said much of anything), urged Democratic Gov Tony Evers to accept President Trump’s offer for federal reinforcements.
* * *
Already, the riots in Kenosha inspired by the police shooting of unarmed Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back while trying to enter a car with his children in the back seat (Blake was hit by 4 of the 7 shots, some reports said he had been armed at one point), have led to the deaths of at least 2 people.
Despite the governor’s decision to declare a state of emergency after a second night of violence, police and the national guard were once again largely absent in a stream of horrifying video from last night’s riots, which at times devolved into open street warfare between groups of rioters and armed people allegedly there to protect property.
Several videos of at least one of the fatal shootings flooded Twitter last night.
Also in the news Kenosha, WI
MAYOR AND GOV refuse National Guard help…Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) Tweeted:
Extended footage of the shooting in Kenosha. pic.twitter.com/ErI52KOgNQ— Kirsten W (@QTEAM1776) August 26, 2020
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Guy in Kenosha got his arm turned to Swiss cheese chasing down a dude with an AR-15 pic.twitter.com/cwlHtAoZUA
— Mike Roagreser (@BTogetherAlone) August 26, 2020
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While video of the other, allegedly involving the same shooter, who was confronted by several other armed citizens.
Extremely graphic: Someone at the #KenoshaRiots was just shot in the head. @livesmattershow was there to record it. pic.twitter.com/dH1t5M4AIK
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 26, 2020
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Police confirmed to the press that they responded to two fatal shootings and at least one non-fatal shooting during the third night of protests inspired by the shooting of Blake.
Evers said he authorized 250 Wisconsin National Guard troops to protect critical infrastructure and assist Kenosha authorities, but once again, these reinforcements stayed clear of local businesses and offered almost no assistance in the protection of private property.
Kenosha officials said another 100 law enforcement officers from surrounding areas were brought in to assist local police. An 8pm curfew was in effect for the area.
“We will continue to work with local, state and federal law enforcement in holding those criminals who are destroying our city responsible,” Kenosha Mayor John Antamarian said in a statement.
And former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani had a response.
Kenosha, Wisconsin another city governed by pandering Democrats is burning to the ground.
There are already two dead, many injured and innocent lives and productive businesses that are destroyed.
Biden in seclusion. @realDonaldTrump immediately pushes for National Guard.
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) August 26, 2020
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Kenosha police said early Wednesday that they had responded to a report of multiple gunshots just before midnight. Authorities said two people were killed in the shooting, and a third gunshot victim was transported to the hospital with serious, a story that is more or less consistent with the videos we shared above.
An investigation into the shooting is reportedly ongoing. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth told the NYT that police are investigating whether the shooting resulted from a conflict between demonstrators and a group of armed men there to protect local businesses. CNN reported that armed riot police fired tear gas and pepper spray into the crowd, while Blake’s family pleaded for calm on Tuesday.
One Twitter user shared what she alleged was an interview with the shooter (who can be seen above being chased by another man with a gun) from before the attack. In the interview he can be heard saying he is armed with live ammunition.
VIDEO: The alleged #Kenosha shooter was interviewed earlier in the night who stated he was there to protect property & was carrying live ammunition in his firearm. #KenoshaRiot#KenoshaUprising#KenoshaProtests#KenoshaShooting#KenoshaPolicepic.twitter.com/UJdBV5Uol4 https://t.co/MTrDMN086J
— Saint Patrick, CSP, CRME. (@tuanstpatrick) August 26, 2020
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The protests have triggered gatherings of armed citizens, some of whom said they were protecting property against looting. Videos shared widely on social media have shown storefront after storefront ablaze, along with dozens of cars – rampant, indefensible, mayhem. And if the government won’t stop it – for whatever reason – sometimes people take responsibility into their own hands, which is one of the reasons the second amendment was enshrined in the constitution via the Bill of Rights.
- Major Korean Crypto Exchange Seized After 99% Trading Volume Allegedly Faked
Major Korean Crypto Exchange Seized After 99% Trading Volume Allegedly Faked
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 20:25Submitted by CoinTelegraph,
South Korea’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbit, has been seized by police following fraud allegations. According to an Aug. 26 report by the Seoul Shinmun, 99% of transaction volume on the exchange was faked through wash trading. The Seoul Metropolitan Police searched and confiscated a number of properties, including Coinbit’s headquarters in the Gangnam district of Seoul.
image courtesy of CoinTelegraph
Coinbit’s owner, Chairman Choi Mo, and his management team are accused of inflating transaction volumes and manipulating token prices using a number of ghost accounts.
Police estimate that the fraudulent activities netted over 100 billion won ($84.26 million) in total.
The Seoul Shinmun was alerted to suspected wash trading on the exchange by an insider in May. Following an investigation, it found that, between August 2019 and May 2020, 99% of transactions on Exchange 1, where major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) were traded, had no corresponding deposit and withdrawal details.
In addition, it found that Exchange 2, which mainly listed smaller cryptocurrencies, blocked coin transactions with other exchanges, enabling Choi and his team to control the supply of coins. This allowed the management team to directly realize market margin by buying and selling large quantities of coins at certain times.
The publishing of the investigation findings was held back until after the police operation due to concerns about personal safety and destruction of evidence.
Wash trading on exchanges is a major problem for the cryptocurrency industry, with many legitimate traders lured into using low-liquidity exchanges based on fraudulent daily volume claims.
- Soy Boom? China Could Buy Record Amount of US Soybeans
Soy Boom? China Could Buy Record Amount of US Soybeans
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 20:05The prospects of strong Chinese demand has pushed Chicago soybean futures prices to a seven-month high this week.
In a throwback to 2019 optimism on the US-China trade deal, the Trump administration has shifted from vaccine pump headlines to trade. Bloomberg cites several sources who say after top U.S. and Chinese trade officials reaffirmed phase one trade deal commitments earlier in the week, that China is planning to purchase a record amount of soybeans.
The sources estimate total purchases could be around 40 million tons this year, an amount that would be 25% more than the levels seen in 2017.
“China has been stepping up purchases of American agricultural goods since the end of April, with soybean sales for delivery next season currently running at their highest level for this time of year since 2013,” Bloomberg notes.
China has been lagging behind purchase commitments laid out in phase one trade agreement. We outlined this in a piece titled “”Trade Deal” Farce Summarized In These Charts.”
Bloomberg estimates that China’s purchase commitments of farm goods for the first seven months of the year were at just 27% of the target value implied by the deal.
The USDA reported Tuesday that Chinese importers bought 408,000 tons of U.S. corn and 204,000 tons of U.S. soybeans. Then on Wednesday, China’s agriculture ministry said soybean imports were expected to rise into the late year.
USDA sales for next season. h/t Bloomberg However, China has been sourcing much of its soybeans from top supplier Brazil. The expectation is that more U.S. bean shipments to China will be seen in the fourth quarter.
Super Highway of Soybean Vessels from LatAm To Asia. h/t Zerohedge With all the optimism around trade in recent days, Darin Friedrichs, a senior analyst at StoneX Group Inc. in Shanghai, believes China meeting phase one targets this year will be a tough challenge.
“I think the math is pretty hard to get to 40 million,” Friedrichs said. “Peak monthly loadings during the fall have typically maxed out around 7.5 to 8 million tons per month from the U.S. to China. I think 35 million is probably more reasonable.”
He added that Chinese purchases of U.S. beans in the fourth quarter might not be as large as everyone thinks because a huge Brazilian crop is expected in 2021.
The sources said China would import 96 million to 98 million tons of beans this year, with 40% to 50% of it coming from the U.S.
- 5 COVID-19 Charts That Democrats Definitely Don't Want You To See
5 COVID-19 Charts That Democrats Definitely Don’t Want You To See
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 19:45Amid his confirmation that he “shut the nation down” if scientists told him too, Joe Biden explained just what the Trump admin had got wrong (and how to ‘fix’ it)…
“In order to keep the country running and moving and the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus.”
Well the good news is… as the following five charts from John Merline’s Issues & Insights blog show, the US is ‘beating’ the virus…
If the Democratic National Convention made anything clear, it is that Democrats are entirely invested in making the coronavirus pandemic look worse than it is in the United States.
Almost every speaker decried the response and blamed President Donald Trump for the scale of the disease in the country.
In his acceptance speech, Joe Biden said “Just judge this president on the facts. Five million Americans infected by COVID-19. More than 170,000 Americans have died. By far the worst performance of any nation on Earth.” Later he said, “We lead the world in confirmed cases. We lead the world in deaths.”
Fact checkers somehow missed Biden’s flagrant abuse of statistics. NPR’s “fact check” of Biden’s speech said only that, if anything, Biden undercounted the number of COVID-19 deaths.
But the number of infections and deaths is meaningless out of context. What matters is how many have died per capita, how many who’ve been infected have succumbed to the disease and where the trends are right now.
When you do that, the picture looks far less bleak.
The U.S. is far from the worst in the world in terms of the death rate per million population. The U.S. ranks 10th for per capita deaths worldwide, and notably better than the United Kingdom with its socialist health care scheme, and Sweden, which adopted a much more laissez-faire approach to the pandemic than the U.S.
On confirmed cases per million, the U.S. ranks 9th, but this is in part due to the extensive testing we’ve done.
In fact, despite what Biden and Co. will have you believe, we are in the top of the pack when it comes to COVID-19 tests per capita (19th out of 215 nations).
(Note also that only four of the other 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations do better than the U.S. on tests per capita.)
When it comes to the case fatality rate – the share of confirmed cases who have died – there is no comparison.
Not only does the U.S. outperform most countries – as well as the world overall – the case fatality rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining.
Finally, there’s the chart Democrats really don’t want you to see: The number of new COVID-19 cases peaked a month ago and has been trending downward ever since.
Source: Bloomberg
Not only is the epidemic becoming less deadly, but its spread has slowed.
Democrats don’t want you to know any of this, and neither does the Trump-hating press. Democrats can’t let you know if they hope to reclaim the White Hosue and take control of Congress based on fear and panic.
- US Cargo Thefts Erupt As Violent Crime Spreads Across America
US Cargo Thefts Erupt As Violent Crime Spreads Across America
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 19:25The latest trucking news from Overdrive is particularly disturbing, outlines how cargo theft across the US surged during the virus-induced downturn in the second quarter.
Overdrive, citing data from SensiGuard, a cargo theft recording firm aggregating data from transportation security councils, insurance companies and law enforcement organizations, said cargo theft surged 56% year-over-year in the quarter.
“One significant note is that April, which was at the height of the supply chain disruption caused by COVID-19, experienced more than double the volume of April 2019 (+109%). While both May (+31%) and June (+30%) also beat their 2019 totals, it was by a decreasing amount in each case,” SensiGuard noted in its 2Q20 cargo theft report.
The cargo theft monitoring firm recorded 227 thefts over the three months ending June, with 96 in April, 67 in May, and 64 in June. In dollar amount, the average theft was about a quarter-million dollars. It said 23% of all cargo thefts were miscellaneous products for retailers. Food and drinks made up about 20% of all thefts.
California, for the first time since 3Q17, was dethroned as the state with most cargo thefts. Texas became the epicenter of thefts in 2Q20, followed by California, Illinois, Florida, and Tennessee.
In a separate report, we noted truckers on a popular trucking app called “CDLLife” polled its user base. They found an overwhelming number of drivers wouldn’t “pickup/deliver to cities with defunded/disbanded police departments.”
A rapid increase in cargo thefts, robberies, and violent crime across US metros is not surprising whatsoever as a virus-induced recession has unleashed depressionary unemployment levels for the bottom 90% of Americans. Tens of millions of folks are still unemployed, and now, have not received Trump stimulus checks in three weeks as they go broke and hungry, also at risk of eviction.
The recession has transformed America into a dangerous country as any hope for a “V-shaped” economic rebound this year has been dashed.
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