Today’s News 29th January 2020

  • How The U.S. Regime And Its Allies Enforce Their Smears And Their Other Lies
    How The U.S. Regime And Its Allies Enforce Their Smears And Their Other Lies

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Without enforced suppression of truth, there would be no way that the U.S. and its allied regimes could continue hiding the lies that were behind their invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Syria since 2012, and their coup against Ukraine in 2014, and also of their takeovers and attempted takeovers of other countries that had refused to be bullied by the U.S. regime into complying with its obsessive anti-Russian demands — America’s subterranean continuation of the Cold War, even after Russia had quit the Cold War in 1991.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    All of the lies are still being propounded by the U.S. regime and remain fully enforced by suppression of the truth about these matters.

    That’s being done in all news-media except a few of the non-mainstream ones.

    So: this is about an actual Western samizdat – the West’s equivalent to the former Soviet Union’s systematic, and equally pervasive, truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not.

    (The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will be “good,” even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political lies are heavily partisan.)

    Right now, Julian Assange is rotting to death inside Britain’s equivalent to the U.S. regime’s Guantanamo Bay prison, which is Belmarsh Prison, in London. As the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia’s article on Belmarsh Prison retrospectively admits, “Between 2001 and 2002, Belmarsh Prison was used to detain a number of people indefinitely without charge or trial under the provisions of the Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, leading it to be called the ‘British version of Guantanamo Bay’.” However, only because of the case of Julian Assange is it now publicly known that this characterization of that prison is — at least for him — equally true today. And Assange is, indeed, being held there “indefinitely without charge or trial,” even after his having previously been held in various other forms of confinement, ever since at least 12 April 2012, when — being then ‘temporarily’ under house-arrest in Norfolk England, while awaiting trial on a manufactured rape-charge against him which was reluctantly abandoned by the Government only when the alleged victim refused to testify against him — Assange broadcast an interview for RT, Russian Television, an interview of the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. The U.S.-and-allied regimes’ billionaires-owned-and-controlled ‘news’-media condemned Assange for this interview, because it enabled whomever still had an open mind, amongst the Western public, to hear from one of those billionares’ destruction-targets (Nasrallah), and for Assange’s doing this on the TV-news network of the main country that America’s billionaires are especially trying to conquer, which is (and since 26 July 1945 has consistently been) Russia. The great then-independent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald headlined about that interview, at Salon on 18 April 2012, “Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics: Those who pretend to engage in adversarial journalism will invariably hate those who actually do it.” How true that was, and unfortunately still is! And Assange himself is the best example of it. Greenwald wrote:

    Let’s examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it’s perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (Kaplan/The Washington Post), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it’s an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?

    But from ‘temporary’ house-arrest there, Assange was allowed asylum by Ecuador’s progressive President Rafael Correa on 20 June 2012, to stay in London’s Ecuadoran Embassy, so as not to be seized by the UK regime to be sent to prison and probable death-without-trial in the U.S. To Correa’s shock, it turned out that Correa’s successor, Vice President Lenin Moreno, was actually a U.S. agent, who promptly forced Assange out of the Embassy, into Belmarsh prison, to die there or else become extradited to die in a U.S. prison, also without trial.

    And, for what, then, is Assange being imprisoned, and perhaps murdered? He divulged government secrets that should never even have been secrets! He raised the blanket of lies, which covers over these actually dictatorial clandestine international operations. He exposed these evil imperialistic operations, which are hidden behind (and under) that blanket of imperialists’ lies. For this, he is being martyred — a martyr for democracy, where there is no actual democracy (but only those lies).

    Here is an example:

    On December 29th, I headlined “Further Proof: U.S., UK, & France Committed War-Crime on 14 April 2018” and reported highlights of the latest Wikileaks document-dumps regarding a U.S.-UK-French operation to cover-up (via their control over the OPCW) their having committed an international war-crime when they had fired 105 missiles against Syria on 14 April 2018, which was done allegedly to punish Syria for having perpetrated a gas-attack in Douma seven days before — except that there hadn’t been any such gas-attack, but the OPCW simply lied and said that there might have been one, and that the Syrian Government might have done it! That’s playing the public for suckers.

    Back on 3 November 2019, Fox News bannered “Fox News Poll: Bipartisan majorities want some U.S. troops to stay in Syria” and reported that when citing ISIS as America’s enemy that must be defeated, 69% of U.S. respondents wanted U.S. troops to stay in Syria. But when did ISIS ever constitute a threat to U.S. national security? And under what international law is any U.S. soldier, who is inside Syria, anything other than an invader there? The answer, to both of these questions, is obviously “never” and “none.” But if you are an investor in Lockheed Martin, don’t you want Americans to be suckers about both? And, so, they are. People such as Julian Assange don’t want the public anywhere to be lied-to. Anyone who is in the propaganda-business — serving companies such as Lockheed Martin — wants the public to be suckers.

    This is the way the free market actually works. It works by lying, and in such a country the Government serves the people who have the money, and not the people who don’t. The people who don’t have the money are supposed to be lied-to. And, so, they are. But this is not democracy.

    Democracy, in fact, is impossible if the public are predominantly deceived.

    If the public are predominantly deceived, then the people who do the deceiving will be the dictators there. And if a country has dictators, then it’s no democracy. In a totally free market, only the people with the most money will have any freedom at all; everyone else will be merely their suckers, who are fooled by the professionals at doing that — lying.

    The super-rich enforce their smears, and their other lies, by hiring people to do this.

    When Barack Obama said that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation” – so that each other nation is “dispensable” – he was merely exemplifying the view that only the most powerful is indispensable, and that therefore everyone else is dispensable. Of course, this is the way that he, and Donald Trump, both have governed in the U.S. And Americans overwhelmingly endorse this viewpoint. They’re fooled by both parties, because both parties serve only their respective billionaires — and billionaires are above the law; they are the law, in America and its allied regimes. That’s the way it is.

    This is the American gospel, and it is called “capitalism.” Oddly, after Russia switched to capitalism in 1991, the American gospel switched instead to pure global conquest — über-imperialism — and the American public didn’t even blink. So: nowadays, capitalism has come to mean über-imperialism. That’s today’s American gospel. Adolf Hitler would be smiling, upon today’s Amerika.

    And as far as whistleblowers — such as Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and other champions of honesty and of democracy — are concerned: Americans agree with the billionaires, who detest and destroy such whistleblowers. Champions of democracy are shunned here, where PR reigns and real journalism is almost non-existent.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 00:15

    Tags

  • Freeport-McMoRan CEO Fears "Global Black Swan" As "Devil"-Virus Sparks Record Copper Collapse
    Freeport-McMoRan CEO Fears “Global Black Swan” As “Devil”-Virus Sparks Record Copper Collapse

    Freeport-McMoRan’s shares are on the cusp of a bear market as the world’s largest copper producer warned about plunging copper prices on concerns coronavirus has severely impacted China’s economy, reported Reuters

    Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said in an interview on Tuesday that the outbreak of coronavirus in China is a “real black swan event” for the global economy.

    China is the largest buyer of the industrial metal in the world, and with large swaths of its industrial sector shut down because of the virus and holiday, demand has collapsed, sending prices lower for the past ten sessions, the longest losing streak since 1986.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    This is the worst 9-day drop since early 2015’s global growth scare…

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Copper is regarded by many in the investment community as a bellwether of the global economy. With dozens of Chinese cities locked down and tens of millions of people confined to their homes, the second-largest economy in the world has ground to a halt.

    “Chinese demand accounts for about 50% of the majority of base metals and looking at the latest data regarding the coronavirus, it’s now spread quite widely,” said analyst Timothy Wood-Dow at BMO Capital in London.

    Back in 2003, the SARS outbreak led to a 10% decline of Goldman Sachs Commodity Price index and fully recovered months later.

    Adkerson’s warning of a “black swan” event for the global economy is because China is one of the largest drivers of growth in the world. If, for whatever reason, their industries or consumers go offline, it would create a massive shock that could tilt the global economy into recession. 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Maybe Dr. Copper is suggesting what’s next for stocks… 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Paging Jay Powell!


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 23:55

  • Mercola: New Thought Police 'NewsGuard' Is Owned By Big Pharma
    Mercola: New Thought Police ‘NewsGuard’ Is Owned By Big Pharma

    Authored by Joseph Mercola via Mercola.com,

    The media is using a variety of tactics to restrict your access to the truth from websites like mine, including NewsGuard, a self-appointed internet watchdog that sells a browser plugin to rate websites on nine criteria of credibility and transparency. Before I delve further into NewsGuard and its underlying agenda, it’s important to look at who funds it.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    NewsGuard received much of its startup funds from Publicis Groupe, a giant global communications group with divisions that brand imaging, design of digital business platforms, media relations and health care.

    Publicis Groupe’s health subsidiary, Publicis Health, names Lilly, Abbot, Roche, Amgen, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Biogen, Astra Zeneca, Sanofi, Bayer and other Big Pharma giants as clients, which gives you an idea of where its loyalties lie.

    GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has also awarded Publicis Media a healthy piece of business, and the communications group responded by creating a custom “platformGSK” to run the drug giant’s media business.

    GSK Adds $400 Million to $1.5 Billion Publicis Collaboration

    In October 2018, following a five-month review, GSK sent its $1.5 billion media account to Publicis, which beat out other media agencies vying for the account, including Omnicom’s PHD and WPP’s Group M.

    According to FiercePharma, with the creation of the “platformGSK” model, the partnership gave “Publicis Media responsibility for all offline and digital paid media strategy and planning in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. In the U.S., that includes DTC [direct to consumer] pharma work.” Further, the news outlet reported:

    “Publicis Groupe client lead Laurent Ezekiel said the agency is ‘excited to partner with them to establish a transformative client-agency relationship that will enable GSK to deliver on its ambition to become the best data-driven marketer in the industry.’”

    In January 2020, GSK awarded Publicis Media with even more business, handing over the former Pfizer Consumer Healthcare brands to Publicis. The move was decided without a review and will add Advil, Centrum, Caltrate and other Pfizer brands to platformGSK, worth an estimated $400 million. GSK holds a 68% stake in the joint venture.

    “GSK has already announced its plans to spin off the joint venture within three years and list it as standalone company on the U.K. exchange as GSK Consumer Healthcare, leaving the pharma giant to focus on medicines and vaccines,” FiercePharma reported.

    Meanwhile, Publicis also handles other Big Pharma media accounts, including Novartis. In August 2019, Publicis created NovartisONE2 to manage the pharma giant’s global media account worth $600 million.

    Publicis Funds NewsGuard

    While Publicis has been busy solidifying its strong ties with Big Pharma, it was also the lead investor among a group of 18 that helped make NewsGuard a reality.

    As of March 2018, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, the “media entrepreneurs” behind NewsGuard, had raised $6 million to launch the company, which was slated to “address the fake news crisis by hiring dozens of trained journalists as analysts to review the 7,500 news and information websites most accessed and shared in the United States … These sites account for 98% of the news articles read and shared in the English language online in the United States.”

    Once installed on your browser, NewsGuard assigns a color coded “Nutrition Label” to sites, rating them green or red in a process they said would be “completely transparent and accountable.” While first launching in the U.S., NewsGuard expanded internationally, launching in the U.K. in 2019 and rating more than 200 websites.

    The startup created controversy in January 2019 after giving Mail Online – the most read news website in the U.K. – a failing grade, stating it failed to uphold even basic standards of accuracy or accountability.

    Following backlash and apparent “discussions” with a Daily Mail executive, NewsGuard changed the rating to green, stating the site “generally maintains basic standards of accuracy and accountability” and said they were wrong.

    It was an early indication of what can go wrong when you trust a conflicted startup company to dictate what’s truth and what’s not. In January 2020, NewsGuard announced it would adopt a subscription service in the U.K. and will start charging for the service.

    At the same time, NewsGuard issued a notice to subscribers in the U.S. with an offer to sign up early for $1.95 a month to “help keep NewsGuard free for the hundreds of libraries and schools that use NewsGuard.”

    NewsGuard Is the Latest ‘Truth Arbiter’ to Deceive You

    In other words, NewsGuard is setting itself up as the self-appointed global arbiter of what information is “trustworthy” – based on nine, self-described “credibility and transparency” factors – not only for information viewed for pay on private electronic devices, but also for information accessible for free in public libraries and schools.

    Librarians will even provide instructions to patrons on how to install the NewsGuard extension on their personal computers, tablets and cell phones. If you install the plugin on your computer or cellphone, it will display its rating next to Google, Bing and other web searches as well as on articles displayed on social media. What are the nine criteria NewsGuard is using to “protect” you from fake news?

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    A score lower than 60 points gets a red rating, while higher scores get more favorable results, which is intended to provide readers with a “signal if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.”

    These icons are meant to influence readers, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. While the warnings may be enough to prevent someone from clicking these links, I believe the true intent is to bury this content entirely from search results and social media feeds.

    It is very likely GoogleFacebook, Twitter and other platforms will use these ratings to lower the visibility of content — making nonconformist views disappear entirely.

    NewsGuard Lacks Transparency

    It’s ironic, too, that NewsGuard is citing the importance of transparency in verifying independent online news outlets and vetting online media for conflicts of interest. But who is going to verify the credibility and transparency of the verifiers, i.e., NewsGuard?

    On NewsGuard’s United States Securities and Exchange Commission Form D filed March 5, 2018, there is an option for disclosing the size of its revenue, but that box was checked, “Decline to disclose.” That’s far from the 100% transparency they’re expecting from others.

    NewsGuard also claims a Rule 506(b) exemption, which among its benefits allows for an unlimited amount of money to be raised from an unlimited number of accredited investors. In doing some digging of our own, it appears NewsGuard is backed by companies that are presently involved in, or have been in the past, advertising and marketing of pharmaceutical products, cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids.

    As noted, Publicis, NewsGuard’s lead investor, made a name for itself by promoting and strengthening big industries, including tobacco. For instance, Leo Burnett, the ad company famous for creating the Marlboro man ad campaigns that made Marlboro the best-selling cigarette in the world and led to the nicotine addiction of millions, many of whom died from smoking, is also part of Publicis.

    Are we to believe that the profit preferences of such entities will have no influence on NewsGuard’s ratings of individuals, organizations and companies that criticize the safety or effectiveness of those products? If this conflict of interest and lack of transparency concerns you I urge you to contact NewsGuard now and let your voice be heard. Click on the button below to send NewsGuard a message today.

    Overall, it appears NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competition, which likely includes yours truly and many others who empower you with information that helps you take control of your health.

    Indebted to Big Industry through its funding, it appears that NewsGuard is being positioned as a “competition eradicator” that will allow Publicis and Big Industry to maintain their undisputed reign as shapers of public opinion about health-related issues, including the safety of food, air and water, medical devices and products, prescription drugs and vaccines, as well as public health policies that endorse the use of those products. You can read more on this full-circle plan to censor media truth here.

    Watching the ‘Watchdogs’

    Some people also use Snopes as their go-to source for online fact-checking, believing it to give the unbiased and credible final word on all those widely circulated stories.

    Yet, Snopes engages in massive censorship of natural health and general promotion of industry talking points. What started as a tool to investigate urban legends, hoaxes and folklore has manifested into a self-proclaimed “definitive fact-checking resource” that’s taking on topics like whether or not vaccines can cause autism.

    Case in point: In their purported fact-checking of a “Full Measure” report by award-winning investigative reporter and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, Snopes simply spewed propaganda, not real facts, in an attempt to discredit the report and the potential vaccines-autism link.

    In the end, though, they actually ended up confirming the main point of Attkisson’s report. For this, Attkisson wrote, “Snopes gets an ‘F’ for predictable propaganda in [the] vaccine-autism debate.”

    It’s dangerous to rely on any one source or group of individuals as authorities on truth, as it sets up the path for inevitable censorship. Even under the best circumstances, everyone is subject to their own biases, but in the case of Snopes, it was founded on fabrications from the start.

    Snopes was created in 1995 by Barbara and David Mikkelson, who posed as “The San Fernardo Valley Folklore Society” in the beginning in order to gain credibility. Such a society does not exist as a legal entity, according to an investigation by the Daily Mail19 — the same Daily Mail that NewsGuard originally gave a failing ranking, only to later reverse it.

    Seventy-three percent believe the proliferation of “fake news” on the internet is a major problem, and only half feel confident that readers can get to the facts by sorting through bias. And the fact is, fake news is a real problem.

    But it’s important to do your own research before believing even “fact checked” sources like Snopes or “Internet Trust Tools” like NewsGuard, which are in fact backed and supported by industry giants.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 23:35

  • US Halts All Weapons Deliveries To Iraq As Local Demands For Troop Exit Grow
    US Halts All Weapons Deliveries To Iraq As Local Demands For Troop Exit Grow

    Upping the ante and further threatening downward spiraling US-Iraq relations, the Trump administration has now suspended all weapons deliveries to Iraqincluding missile systems promised as part a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2016.

    Department of Defense officials cited security concerns over the arms deliveries, also amid recent White House threats to actually impose sanctions on the country while completely severing military ties. However, most analysts see these latest threats – which also have been tied with demands the country pay back the “billions” spent on an air base should US forces be made to leave – as but an attempt to leverage greater Baghdad dependency on Washington (and not Tehran).

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Iraqi F-16 fighter jet file image.

    The late Monday announcement also said US training and support for Iraq’s F-16 fleet will pause. Air Force spokesman Brian Brackens said the US will begin shipments again “when the environment in Iraq is safe enough to resume.”

    The past week in Baghdad has been extremely volatile, also with multiple deaths throughout the country as protests grip major cities, following both last week’s “million man protests” demanding an immediate US troop withdrawal, as well as anti-government protests which have raged on-and-off since October. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Thousands of US troops are still stationed throughout the country, but mostly concentrated in the north, in an “advise and assist” capacity. The US has made Iraq’s military completely dependent on US aid since being essentially recreated after the 2003 invasion disastrous ‘de-Baathification’ policy under Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremmer.

    Following the defeat of the ISIS ‘territorial caliphate’ however, US justification for remaining in the region has evolved.

    Though officially the mission is still defined in the name ‘anti-ISIL coalition forces,’ the reality is that the administration and Pentagon have of late emphasized a ‘counter Iran’ mission, especially following the Jan.3 assassination by drone of the IRGC’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani.  

    Many pundits have predicted the obvious: that the brazen strike on Soleimani and the commander of Iraq’s Shia paramilitary forces (PMF) Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes has only served to hastened an inevitable future American departure from the country. Some even speculate that’s what Trump may have secretly calculated all along in a “take major action” (against Iran’s top elite commander) and “get out” kind of way.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 23:15

  • The Economics Of Pandemics And Quarantines
    The Economics Of Pandemics And Quarantines

    Authored by Vincent Geloso via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    News out of Wuhan in China generated a wave of fears regarding the spread of the coronavirus. Public health organizations issued guidelines on how to minimize risks of infection and China’s government took the drastic step of sealing off Wuhan. 

    The story is unfolding in a manner very similar to the Ebola outbreak a few years back. Authorities react with strong measures such as quarantines and travel bans to restrict contagion. On its face, such measures appear – purely from the vantage point of public health issues – reasonable. However, economic theory suggests the possibility that extreme measures such as sealing off a city, a travel ban or quarantines may actually make things worse.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    First, it is necessary to point that pandemics have, since the 19th century, fallen in importance. For example, a 2006 article in Emerging Infectious Diseases compared the influenza epidemics of 1918, 1951, 1957 and 1968 in England, Wales, Canada and the United States and found that death rates at each outbreak kept falling relative to the previous one. 

    Using a longer time horizon that has some uncertainties about case fatalities, a 2001 article in the Journal of Applied Microbiology documents a rapid collapse in influenza-related deaths (which when combined with population figures suggests a faster collapse in death rates). Other articles find that, since the 1950s, death rates from different strains of influenza have stabilized at historically low levels in spite of the fact that we live in a world with more travel, more exchange and more social connections (i.e. more chances to transmit infectious diseases). 

    And these numbers speak only to influenza. Deaths from other forms of infectious diseases are at historically low levels if they have not disappeared entirely. Thus, it is necessary to place the current situation in a historical context. This does not invalidate the idea that there are serious costs from currently observed pandemics: estimates place this figure at 0.6% of global income which is not a trivial figure especially in lower-income countries where the costs are more than twice as high.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    But why could quarantines and travel bans be problematic?

    The answer is that it all boils down to how people affected by the public health policy responses perceive costs.

    Consider the following thought experiment constructed by Alice Mesnard and Paul Seabright in the Journal of Public EconomicsPeople who live in areas with high prevalence of infectious diseases face costs in the form of higher risks of infection. Thus, the uninfected who understand accurately their own infection status stand to gain from migrating away. As a result, they implicitly quarantine the disease and reduce the potential for contagion. This is what Mesnard and Seabright call “first best.” 

    However, if individuals at risk are uncertain of their infection status (i.e. they either contracted the disease but are still unaware of it or they are uninfected), their decision to migrate can allow the disease to spread. The hiccup comes from these individuals in that setting of imperfect information.

    If a quarantine is applied, those at-risk individuals are stuck with the already infected. This increases their perception of costs and, by definition, lead to investing more in trying to migrate. If they are unaware that they are already sick but manage to escape the quarantine area, they spread the disease. Thus, a quarantine that is too extreme induces a behavioral response to more aggressively attempt to escape the quarantine.

    In the end, this may increase infection rates. 

    This potential backfire of public health measures suggests the possibility that milder measures might be cheaper and more effective in containing infectious diseases. For example, one article in PlosOne studied purchased flights that were missed by passengers in relation to news trends regarding infectious diseases. 

    In other words, the people who missed their flights because they feared infections. This defensive move on the part of private individuals came at a cost of $50 million over two years. The same study found however that news sources were highly inaccurate in depicting actual infectious cases, but people still responded to media reactions. 

    The authors of the paper point out that had passengers responded to actual cases of infections rather than news scares, the cost of $50 million could have been reduced to half that figure. This suggests that clearer risk communication could improve people’s understanding of their constraints. As such, individuals self-quarantine themselves and reduce the risks of contracting the disease.  

    The contrast provided above suggests that soft-handed measures are cheaper and more effective in diminishing contagion than heavy-handed measures. This is something worth bearing in mind as news keeps unfolding about the reaction of authorities in China to the outbreak of the coronavirus.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 22:55

  • Pentagon To Pursue "Very Aggressive" Expansion Of Hypersonic Weapons Testing
    Pentagon To Pursue “Very Aggressive” Expansion Of Hypersonic Weapons Testing

    Over the past couple of years Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry have greatly hyped their hypersonic weapons program, even semi-frequently releasing images and videos of hypersonic missiles prototypes in action. China too has over the past months touted that it’s testing hypersonic surface-to-surface missiles which US officials fear could significantly shift the balance of power in the Pacific region.

    And now the Pentagon has announced its own classified hypersonics program will undergo a “very aggressive” expansion over the course of the next year.

    Citing defense officials in a new report, Bloomberg reports this includes plans for at least “four initial flight tests of prototypes for glide bombs that can fly five times the speed of sound and maneuver en route,” and further extra funding and research under the newly established Hypersonics Transition Office.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Rendering of DARPA’s Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon Concept, via Raytheon/Defense News

    In official statements last Friday Defense Secretary Mark Esper appeared to peripherally reference the program while previewing that the next Pentagon budget proposal will be aimed at drastically increasing funding for experimental and cutting edge defense technology, surpassing the already bloated current 5-year $5 billion budget. He referenced a developing “great-power competition” with China.

    “We have significantly ramped up flight testing and other experimentation so that we can accelerate the delivery of this capability in all its forms to our warfighters years earlier than previously planned,” Esper said.

    Among the few specifics that Bloomberg was able to glean from top officials, include the following plans

    • Frequent testing efforts: Mike White, the Defense Department’s assistant director for hypersonics, said “We have plans to fly prototypes for land-, sea- and air-launched concepts being developed across our portfolio.”
    • The Navy, Army and Air Force, along with the Pentagon’s special advanced research agency, are all developing hypersonics.
    • Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are deeply involved as the prime contractors.
    • The Army is working on a “Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon”.
    • Schools like Purdue, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, and the University of Minnesota are set to receive major Congressional funding grants to pursue research into hypersonics. 

    White said this year will mark a significant transition where design and weapons concepts will “have been matured” as actual testing ramps up past the mere development phase, much of which was set in place in 2017 and 2018.

    The Pentagon is clearly reacting to the advancing programs of China and Russia, given that alarmingly these weapons “are hard to stop, they can maneuver, they’re unpredictable” and “hard to detect” so “you don’t have a lot of time” to respond — as White explained further, according to the report. 

    It must be remembered that a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that the current ballistic missile defense system in the US is powerless against hypersonic missiles from China and Russia.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 22:35

  • Mizzou Students 'Required' To Install Location-Traking App So College Can "Pinpoint" Them
    Mizzou Students ‘Required’ To Install Location-Traking App So College Can “Pinpoint” Them

    Authored by Blair Nelson and Jon Street via Campus Reform,

    New students at the University of Missouri will be required to participate in a tracking program designed to measure and enforce class attendance, according to a new report from The Kansas City Star

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Despite privacy concerns, officials defended the decision as one to the benefit of students, as the school’s athletics department has already been using the same app, SpotterEdu, to track certain student-athletes.

    “A student will have to participate in this recording of attendance,” Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies at MU, said in a statement to The Kansas City Star

    Individual professors have to opt-in to using the app, but once they do, students in those professors’ classes will not be able to opt-out. 

    SpotterEDU, developed by a former basketball coach, is designed to monitor a user’s attendance by “pinpoint[ing] students within a classroom until they leave, providing continuous, reliable and non-invasive attendance,” according to the app’s website. While the app ensures that students are in the classroom during class times, it claims it does not track students’ locations anywhere else. 

    “We only care if students are in class during class; no GPS tracking means we can’t locate them anywhere else,” the app’s website states. 

    However, the app is not incapable of tracking students’ locations outside the classroom.

    “From labs to auditoriums our technology can expand to cover any size of space accurately and precisely,” the app’s website adds. 

    In a statement to The Washington Post, SpotterEDU chief Rick Carter said that his company works with nearly 40 schools, including major schools such as Auburn, Central Florida, Indiana, and Missouri. Most schools only use SpotterEDU to track their student-athletes; however, many colleges are starting to use the app with their student bodies, like Missouri. 

    According to the Post, colleges use the data to ensure that student-athletes who are receiving scholarships are attending classes regularly. The program emails professors automatically if a student is not in a class, or shows up more than a few minutes late. Carter told the Post that professors can look specifically at attendance patterns for “students of color” or “out of state students” for retention purposes. 

    Some in academia, though, have reservations about colleges using this technology. 

    Indiana University assistant professor Kyle M. L. Jones told the Washington Post, “These administrators have made a justification for surveilling a student population because it serves their interests, in terms of the scholarships that come out of their budget, the reputation of their programs, the statistics for the school.”

    “What’s to say that the institution doesn’t change their eye of surveillance and start focusing on minority populations, or anyone else. [Students] should have all the rights, responsibilities and privileges that an adult has. So why do we treat them so differently?”Jones said. 

    Robby Pfeifer, a  Virginia Commonwealth University student, echoed Jones’ sentiment. 

    “We’re adults,” he told the Washington Post.

    “Do we really need to be tracked? Why is this necessary? How does this benefit us? And is it just going to keep progressing until we’re micromanaged every second of the day?”

    “It embodies a very cynical view of education, that it’s something we need to enforce on students, almost against their will,” Erin Rose Glass, digital scholarship librarian at the University of California-San Diego, said, according to the Post.

    “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness…when we could be asking harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”

    Sara Baker of the ACLU of Missouri told the Kansas City Star the group has “deep privacy concerns about this.”

    “Any time you use surveillance technology, the question always is who is watching the watcher,” Baker said, adding that such technology could be used for abusive purposes “like monitoring which students are participating in protests.”


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 22:15

    Tags

  • "It's Like A Sinking Ship" – American In Wuhan Refuses Evacuation To Stay Behind With Girlfriend
    “It’s Like A Sinking Ship” – American In Wuhan Refuses Evacuation To Stay Behind With Girlfriend

    Cue the “Arrested Development” clips of Gob admitting he’s “made a huge mistake.”

    As the US prepares to begin the emergency evacuation of more than 200 Americans living in Wuhan, several Americans have refused seats on the flight to stay behind and stick out the “devil virus” outbreak with loved ones, family and friends.

    As we reported yesterday, the Boeing 767, with about 230 seats, is preparing to depart from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Tuesday (though ironically it’s set to land in California, the state with the most confirmed coronavirus cases in the US). It’s expected to be the first of several evacuation flights as the US government moves to get all of its citizens out of the virus-plagued city.

    However, there are a handful of Americans who are refusing the evacuation, mostly because they have Chinese spouses or children who wouldn’t be allowed on the flight, or because they’re reporters covering the situation on the ground.

    But the AP found one American in Wuhan who, despite not having a family or any professional reason to stay, has decided to hunker down and stick it out with his Chinese girlfriend.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Doug Perez

    As the death toll in the city surpasses 100, San Francisco native Doug Perez says he’s staying behind, despite harboring serious concerns for his safety. Over the past week, Perez, 28, and his girlfriend have hunkered down in their apartment, only leaving to pick up supplies.

    Recently, Perez and his gf got into a heated argument about whether they should visit a local supermarket, or just order food. She won, but unfortunately it appears that food deliveries have been cut off.

    When he tried to leave his apartment compound last week, Perez said a guard stopped him and made him turn back, making him feel like a prisoner in his own home.

    “It’s like a sinking ship,” Perez said.

    The day the lockdown was announced, Perez and his girlfriend got in a fight – “a plate was destroyed” – over whether to venture to a supermarket to buy food. His girlfriend, who doesn’t want to be named, won the argument, and the couple began ordering food online.

    The streets went quiet. They stay in every night, spending hours a day on social media checking up on the latest news and fielding calls from worried relatives.

    On Monday evening, guards barred him from leaving his apartment compound, leaving him wondering what’s next.

    “That’s kind of dawned on me, like how bad this could get,” Perez said. “Who knows what will be next week. Will it be police, will it be soldiers? Will we physically not be able to leave our building?”

    Japan, South Korea and France are also planning evacuations. A report in a UK tabloid claimed that Beijing has “blocked” the UK from airlifting its citizens out of Wuhan as the UK government comes under increasing pressure to get them out.

    Another American – a woman who declined to be identified for fear of harassment – said she has chosen to hunker down and stick it out because she has a cough and believes she would be quarantined by Chinese authorities if she even enters the airport.

    Even those Americans who have accepted the offer of a ride out of the country are struggling to figure out how they’re going to make it to the airport amid the lockdown, which has suspended all public transit and even private cars traveling on city streets.

    One American woman with an eight-year-old daughter managed to find a ride. But others might not be so lucky.

    But for Priscilla Dickey, 35, from South Burlington, Vermont, trying to get on the plane was a no-brainer because of her 8-year-old daughter, Hermione, who she worries could be vulnerable to the virus. On Monday afternoon, the consulate phoned Dickey and told her she and her daughter had seats.

    After packing a bag with three shirts and a pair of pants, Dickey stayed up until two in the morning trying to figure out how she would get to the airport amid a transportation shutdown. She “stress cleaned” her apartment in the morning, she said, before getting in an airport-bound car, waves of emotion washing over her.

    “I was feeling guilt,” Dickey said, speaking by phone on her way to the airport. “Excitement, guilt, stress — all of it.”

    But even amid a terrible crisis, there can be moments of levity, as Perez explained.

    But despite the worsening conditions, Perez says there are moments of hope. On Monday evening, residents set off fireworks, and cries of “Go Wuhan!” echoed around his apartment compound.

    Perez joined in, shouting “We are all Wuhan people!” His girlfriend cheered and his dog barked, making them feel they were “all in this together.”

    “We needed that,” Perez said. “It lifted us up a bit and gave us some hope.”

    Afterward, he and his gf presumably went back to assiduously avoid contact with other humans for fear of being infected.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 21:55

  • Top GOP Senators Say Horowitz Report "Misled Public", Demand AG Barr Declassify Some Footnotes
    Top GOP Senators Say Horowitz Report “Misled Public”, Demand AG Barr Declassify Some Footnotes

    Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

    Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee have formerly requested that Attorney General William Barr declassify four footnotes in Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s FISA abuse investigation. The letter states that the classified footnotes contradict information in Horowitz’s report that appears to have misled the public.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent the classified letter Tuesday evening and questioned the contradiction between the footnotes and what was made public by Horowitz’s team regarding the bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. 

    However, the Senator’s did not disclose what section of the December FISA report contradicts the footnotes in their findings.

    The Senator’s state in their letter to Barr that certain sections of Horowitz’s report on the FBI are misleading the public.

    Part of the classified letter, which was obtained by SaraACarter.com states:

    “We have reviewed the findings of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with regard to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and we are deeply concerned about certain information that remains classified,” the letter states.

    “Specifically, we are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes.

    This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements in a section of the report, but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.

    The American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

    Johnson and Grassley’s office noted that “for maximum public transparency, the senators wrote a separate unclassified cover letter to describe their request.”

    Full text of the unclassified letter to Barr below:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 21:35

    Tags

  • Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?
    Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?

    In light of growing speculation, most of it within less than official circles, that the official theory for the spread of the Coronavirus epidemic, namely because someone ate bat soup at a Wuhan seafood and animal market…

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    … is a fabricated farce, and that the real reason behind the viral spread is because a weaponized version of the coronavirus (one which may have originally been obtained from Canada), was released by Wuhan’s Institute of Virology (accidentally or not), a top, level-4 biohazard lab which was studying “the world’s most dangerous pathogens“, perhaps it would be a good idea for the same Wuhan Institute of Virology to remove the following “help wanted” notice, posted on November 18, 2019, according to which the institute is seeking to hire one or two post-doc fellows, who will use “bats to research the molecular mechanism that allows Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses to lie dormant for a long time without causing diseases.”

    The right candidate will:

    • Have obtained or is about to obtain a PhD in life science/biomedical related fields;
    • Have a reliable and rigorous work style, with strong independent scientific research ability and teamwork spirit;
    • Have strong English communication and writing skills, have research papers published in the international mainstream academic journals
    • Have a cell biology, immunology, genomics and other relevant background experience is preferred;

    The full job posting, which can still be found on the Wuhan Institute of Virology website can be found here (and screengrabbed below as it will be gone within a few hours).

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    And google translated:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Why is this notable? Because as it turns out, this is a job posting for the lab of Dr. Peng Zhou (周鹏), Ph.D., a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group. Some more on Zhou’s background from the Institute (google translated):

    He received his PhD in Wuhan Virus Research Institute in 2010 and has worked on bat virus and immunology in Australia and Singapore. In 2009 , he took the lead in starting the research on the immune mechanism of bat long-term carrying and transmitting virus in the world. So far, he has published more than 30 SCI articles, including the first and corresponding author’s Nature , Cell Host Microbe and PNAS . At present, research on bat virus and immunology is continuing, and it has received support from the National “You Qing” Fund, the pilot project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the major project of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

    Below is a list of several recent papers published by Dr. Zhou

    Which brings us to the punchline: courtesy of the Wuhan institute of virology, here is a press release from Dr. Zhou’s lab titled “How bats carry viruses without getting sick”:

    Bats are known to harbor highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola, Marburg, Hendra, Nipah, and SARS-CoV, and yet they do not show clinical signs of disease. In a paper published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe on February 22, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China find that in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, and bats can maintain just enough defense against illness without triggering a heightened immune reaction.

    “We believe there is a balance between bats and the pathogens they carry,” says senior author Peng Zhou. “This work demonstrated that in order to maintain a balance with viruses, bats may have evolved to dampen certain pathways.”

    In humans and other mammals, an immune-based over-response to one of these and other pathogenic viruses can trigger severe illness. For example, in humans, an activated STING pathway is linked with severe autoimmune diseases.

    “In human history, we have been chasing infectious diseases one after another,” says Zhou, “but bats appear to be a ‘super-mammal’ to these deadly viruses.” By identifying a weakened but not defunct STING pathway, researchers have some new insight into how bats fine-tune antiviral defenses to balance an effective, but not an overt, response against viruses.

    The authors hypothesize that this defense strategy evolved as part of three interconnected features of bat biology: they are flying mammals, have a long lifespan, and host a large viral reservoir.

    “Adaptation to flight likely caused positive selection of multiple bat innate immune and DNA damage repair genes,” Zhou says. These adaptations may have shaped certain antiviral pathways (STING, interferon, and others) to make them good viral reservoir hosts and achieve a tolerable balance.”

    And just in case, here is a google-translated press release from Jan 18, 2019 describing the achievements of Dr. Peng Zhou:

    Wuhan has the first person in the global bat immunity research: “I rushed forward with a sword”

    Changjiang Daily Financial Media May 4 hearing last month as they tied for first author made a “natural”, in recent years, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Wuhan virus after 80 young researchers Zhou Peng has been in the “natural”, “American Academy of Sciences ”And other international authoritative magazines published 28 papers, becoming academic stars. In an interview with reporters recently, he introduced that young scientists do not rely on genius to hold, but rely on “super confident”.

    It is understood that Zhou Peng is the pioneer of global bat immune system research. “Bats carry viruses but do not get sick. They have not been researched by scientists before, and certainly have specificity different from other species, but this is like you know the beginning and Ending without knowing how the story happened. “ After more than 10 years of research, Zhou Peng discovered that an antiviral immune channel called “interferon gene-stimulating protein-interferon” in the bat’s body was inhibited, so that the bat could just resist the disease without triggering a strong immune response. The results were published in Cells, Hosts and Microorganisms, which aroused the attention of the academic community.

    Zhou Peng, a student of undergraduate bioengineering, experienced SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in his junior year, which made him interested in the virus: “A small virus makes the world mess.” He was admitted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the postgraduate level, and studied under Shi Zhengli, a bat expert. Focusing on the virus carried by the bat, then I was wondering if the bat’s immune system is special.

    After graduating from the PhD, he entered the Australian Animal Health Laboratory and became the first person in the global bat immunity research. “I went through 4 years of trial and error, groped in the dark, and hit the South Wall numerous times. I still remember a ‘darkest moment’ ‘In the local cold winter, I was holding the frostbite knee, sitting at the beach, and asking myself why this was the case.’

    He began to learn Australian jokes and inspired himself. In 2016, during postdoctoral studies at Duke University-National University of Singapore Medical School, he was concerned that a certain interferon in bats is always maintained at a high level. This paper became the cover article of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Bat Immunity “This door was opened, and more and more people in the world are paying attention to this field.” Our generation, when we were in college, watched “The Forrest Gump” and “Redemption of Shawshank” and taught us stupidity and perseverance. I I feel like I am carrying a sword and rushing forward. “

    After returning to China in 2016, Zhou Peng returned to his alma mater to become a little-known young researcher. “In the long run, bats carry the virus without getting sick. It is hoped that humans can learn how to fight the virus, but this is still far from industrialization. Far, the road ahead is long, and we must remain ‘super confident’ and continue to move forward. “(Reporter Li Jia correspondent Chen teased Li Li intern Luo Yameng)

    And here is the man, the myth, the bat-god himself: Peng Zhou.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Peng Zhou

    His bio (source):

    Peng Zhou, Ph.D., researcher, team leader of bat virus infection and immunity. He successively obtained bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Henan University (2004) and Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2010). During his doctorate, he was sent to the Australian Animal Health Laboratory for study. He then carried out research work at Duke-Nus Medical College in Australia and Singapore. He has long been engaged in the research of new virus epidemiology and bat antiviral immunity, revealing that bats carry SARS, MERS, and Ebola for a long time but do not have their own immune mechanisms.

    Currently he is hosting and undertaking 3 projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Special project and a major national science and technology project – a major project for the prevention and control of infectious diseases. Currently published 28 SCI papers, including Nature, Cell Host Microbe, PNAS and other articles SCI papers, including Nature, Cell Host Microbe, PNAS and other articles published by the first or corresponding author. It is at the forefront of the world in the field of bat and virus research.

    So to summarize:

    1. One of China’s top virology and immunology experts was and still works at China’s top-rated biohazard lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which some have affectionately called the real Umbrella Corp.
    2. Since 2009, Peng has been the leading Chinese scientist researching the immune mechanism of bats carrying and transmitting lethal viruses in the world.
    3. His primary field of study is researching how and why bats can be infected with some of the most nightmarish viruses in the world including Ebola, SARS and Coronavirus, and not get sick.
    4. He was genetically engineering various immune pathways (such as the STING pathway in bats) to make the bats more or less susceptible to infection, in the process potentially creating a highly resistant mutant superbug.
    5. As part of his studies, Peng also researched mutant Coronavirus strains that overcame the natural immunity of some bats; these are “superbug” Coronavirus strains, which are not resistant to any natural immune pathway, and now appear to be out in the wild.
    6. As of mid-November, his lab was actively hiring inexperienced post-docs to help conduct his research into super-Coronaviruses and bat infections.
    7. Peng’s work on virology and bat immunology has received support from the National “You Qing” Fund, the pilot project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the major project of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

    * * *

    Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay Dr. Peng a visit.

    Or at least start with an email: Dr Peng can be reached at peng.zhou@wh.iov.cn, and his phone# is 87197311.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 21:25

  • "Truth" Becomes Major Casualty In Impeachment Hearings
    “Truth” Becomes Major Casualty In Impeachment Hearings

    Authored by Jeremy Kuzmarov via Counterpunch.org,

    As in any political battle, truth has been one of the major casualties of the impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    While the Democratic impeachment managers have accused Trump repeatedly of dishonesty – often with good reason – they themselves have twisted the truth to serve their own political agenda.

    Impeachment manager Adam Schiff, for example, claimed that “more than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies” and that the military aid [which Trump subverted] was for “such essentials as sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, radar… and other support for the war effort.”

    While the military aid may have assisted the war effort, Schiff’s comments are misleading because the majority of those killed have been Eastern Ukrainians who died at the hands of the Ukrainian military that the U.S. has armed – not the Russians.

    The UN Monitoring Mission on Human Rights determined that of the approximately 13,000 people killed between April 2014 and December 2018, 3,300 of the victims were civilians, 4,000 were Ukrainian military and 5,500 “Russian-backed armed militants.”

    Thus, according to Schiff, Russia is responsible for killing 5,500 of its own men!

    Human Rights Watch found that the Ukrainian military actually caused many of the civilian deaths by “us[ing] explosive weapons with wide-area effect in populated areas, including near school buildings, in violation of international humanitarian law.”

    But this doesn’t fit with Schiff’s alarmist views about Russia, which are straight out of the 1950s McCarthy era.

    At the hearings, Schiff frequently referenced the danger of “Russian expansion” and its efforts to “remake the map of Europe” and quoted a witness who stated that “the U.S. aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

    Sounding like Ronald Reagan or any one of the most hawkish of cold warriors, this assessment has no basis in reality.

    Among other things, it ignores that Russia under Putin was the first country to offer sympathy to the U.S. following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has repeatedly pushed for better diplomatic relations.

    Schiff’s misinformation extends to his defense of Joe Biden.

    In his opening statement, Schiff claimed that Biden never wanted the “corrupt prosecutor removed in order to stop an investigation into Burisma Holdings, on whose board Biden’s son Hunter sat.”

    However, Biden has been filmed in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations bragging about his efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian government by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan if that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was not removed.

    Shokin had never actually been censured or indicted for corruption, although his successor, Yuriy Lutsenko was.

    The latter settled the case with Burisma and its chief executive Mykola Zlochevsky by allowing it to pay a $7 million fine when the company stood accused of evading $40 million in taxes – a clear victory for Burisma.

    Lutsenko did not even have a law degree and has been characterized by Ukrainian officials as a crooked political appointee of Ukraine’s former Prime-Minister Petro Poroshenko, whom Biden had cultivated close ties with.

    (For more information on this see Olivier Berrayer’s documentary, Ukraine-Gate- Inconvenient Facts.)

    Schiff and other Democratic Impeachment Managers such as Sylvia Garcia of Texas claimed that under Shokin the investigation against Burisma had lain “dormant.”

    However, Shokin told ABC News in an interview – which was conveniently never aired – that this was not true and that the case was proceeding prior to his removal in February 2016.

    The Ukraine-Gate saga has commanded a huge amount of attention and contributed to the rising fame of Schiff who has been praised in some circles for his magnificent performance.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    By spreading misleading or outright false information about Russia and Ukraine, and drumming up anti-Russian sentiment, the consequences of the hearings, however, could be even more damaging than the Trump presidency.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 20:55

    Tags

  • FICO Changes To Dramatically Affect Credit Scores In Effort To Reduce Defaults
    FICO Changes To Dramatically Affect Credit Scores In Effort To Reduce Defaults

    Fair Isaac, the company behind FICO credit scores, announced the rollout of a new scoring method that will dramatically shift credit scores for millions of Americans in either direction.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    In a nutshell – ‘FICO Score 10 Suite’ is supposedly better at identifying potential deadbeats from those who can pay, and claims to be able to reduce defaults by as much as 10% among new credit cards, and nine percent on new auto loans.

    Around 40 million people with already ‘high’ scores (above 680) are likely to see their credit rise, while those with scores at or below 600 could see a dramatic drop.

    According to Fair Isaac, around 110 million people will see their scores swing an average of 20 points in either direction.

    “Consumers that have been managing their credit well … paying bills on time, keeping their balances in check are likely going to see a gain in score,” said Dave Shellenberger, VP of product management scores.

    The changes come as consumers are accumulating record levels of debt that has worried some economists but has shown no sign of slowing amid a strong economy. Consumers are putting more on their credit cards and taking out more personal loans. Personal loan balances over $30,000 have jumped 15 percent in the past five years, Experian recently  found. –Washington Post

    That said, according to WalletHub, delinquency rates are in much better shape than they were a decade ago, with 6% of consumers late on a payment in 2019 vs. around 15% in 2009. Meanwhile, the average FICO score went from bottoming out at 686 in October of 2009 to an average of 706 in September of 2019.

    As we noted in October, FICO has been talking about recalculating credit scores for some time now. According to the Wall Street Journal, anyone with “at least several hundred dollars” in their bank account and who don’t overdraw are also likely to see their scores rise. Specifically, anybody with an average balance of $400 in their bank accounts without an overdraft history over the last three months would likely get a boost. 

    And with non-revolving debt such as student and auto loans recently rising by $14.9 billion, identifying potential deadbeats is more important than ever.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 20:35

  • The Establishment Doesn't Fear Trump, And It Doesn't Fear Bernie… It Fears You
    The Establishment Doesn’t Fear Trump, And It Doesn’t Fear Bernie… It Fears You

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    During the George W Bush administration it was popular in conspiracy circles to speculate that events might be orchestrated which would allow the Bush family to complete a coup against the US Constitution and hold on to power indefinitely.

    Such paranoia and suspicion of government power in the wake of the extraordinary post-9/11 advancements in Orwellian surveillance programs and unprecedented military expansionism were perfectly understandable, but predictions that the younger Bush would not cede power at the end of his second term proved incorrect. In today’s hysterical Trump-centric political environment we now see mainstream voices in mainstream outlets openly advancing the same conspiratorial speculations about the current administration, and those will prove incorrect as well.

    What these paranoid presidential prognostications get wrong is not their extreme suspicion of government, but their assumption that America’s real power structures require a certain president to be in place in order to advance depraved totalitarian agendas. As anyone paying attention knows, intense suspicion of the US government is the only sane position that anyone can possibly have; the error is in assuming that there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the same agendas carry forward from one presidential administration to the next.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In a sense, the conspiracy theories about a Bush coup were actually correct: the Bush administration didn’t truly end. All of its imperialist, power-serving agendas remained in place and were expanded under the apparent oversight of the following administration. The same thing happened after the Obama administration, and the same thing — whether in 2021 or 2025 — will happen after the Trump administration. The disturbing fact of the matter is that if you ignore election dates and just look at the numbers and raw data of US government behavior over the years, you can’t really tell who is president or which political party is in power at any given point in time.

    The mechanism which ensures the perpetuation of the same policies from administration to administration used to be referred to by analysts as the “deep state”, back before Trump and his supporters hijacked that term and began using it to essentially mean something like “Democrats and anyone who doesn’t like Trump”. Originally the term deep state referred not to one political party, nor to some shadowy cabal of Illuminati or Satanists or reptilians, but to the simple and undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist and tend to influence America’s official elected government. It wasn’t a conspiracy theory, it was a concept used in political analysis to describe how US government agencies and plutocrats form loose alliances with each other and with official Washington to influence government policy and behavior.

    It is inevitable that such a permanent second government would exist in the current iteration of the United States, if you think about it. It’s impossible to have a globe-spanning empire of the sort America now has without long-term plans spanning years or decades for securing control of world resources, undermining rivals, securing more compliant allies, and ensuring military and economic hegemony. If the US were a normal nation which simply minded its own affairs, a permanent government wouldn’t be necessary. But because it isn’t, one is.

    I very seldom use the term deep state anymore, because its meaning in mainstream discourse has been completely corrupted. Now when I want to point to America’s permanent unelected power structures I usually use the word “oligarchy” or “empire”, or simply “establishment”.

    This is why I haven’t been especially focused on the US presidential race, despite the Democratic primaries hitting fever pitch intensity. While I believe the race can be a useful tool for forcing establishment propagandists to expose themselves (virulent “never Trump” neocon Bret Stephens just came out in support of Trump if the Democratic nominee is anyone to the left of Pete Buttigeig, for example), the result of the 2020 election isn’t going to change a whole hell of a lot.

    This might be a bit offensive to both Trump supporters and Sanders supporters, but it’s true.

    Whenever I point out that the current administration has been advancing many longstanding agendas of the CIA and neoconservative war pigs — agendas like military expansionism, imprisoning Assange, regime change interventionism in Iran and Venezuela, and reigniting the Cold War — his supporters always come in saying “If he’s working for the establishment how come the establishment is working so hard to get rid of him, huh?”

    Well, for starters, they’re not. Nobody who can count Senate seats believes Trump will be removed from office in the current impeachment sideshow, and everyone who understood Russiagate knew it was going to dead-end at nothing. If they really wanted Trump gone they wouldn’t be pussyfooting around with a bunch of kayfabe combat that they know will never hurt him. Obviously he wasn’t the preferred 2016 choice of certain factions within the establishment, but there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the empire can tick right along with a less-than-ideal president in the White House.

    This will also hold true if Sanders miraculously makes his way through another rigged primary, and then through whatever sabotage gets thrown his way in the general election. Sure he might be able to sign a few somewhat beneficial executive orders and we probably wouldn’t see him flirting with an Iran war, but US imperialism will march on more or less unimpeded and his popular progressive domestic policies would require congress to successfully implement. At best he’d be a mild reformer who uses the bully pulpit to help spread awareness while being narrative managed on all sides by the billionaire media, and any changes he manages to squeak through which inconvenience the establishment at all will be reversed by a subsequent administration.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Obviously the establishment would rather have someone in the White House who doesn’t constantly put an ugly face on the empire by accidentally exposing its mechanics all the time as Trump does, and obviously it would rather have an incompetent oaf like Trump in office than someone who actively points out the evils of oligarchy and imperialism like Sanders. But the establishment which runs the US-centralized empire is not afraid of Trump, and it is not afraid of Sanders. It’s afraid of you.

    The unelected power establishment has ways of ensuring its dominance amid the comings and goings of America’s official elected government; they are perfectly capable of dealing with one man being a less than ideal steward of the empire. What they absolutely cannot deal with, at all, is the prospect of ordinary people finally rising up and using the power of their numbers to force real change. That is what they are really fighting against when they try to sabotage populist candidates: not the candidates themselves, but populism itself.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    You wouldn’t know it from reading the billionaire media, but the Yellow Vests protests in France are still going on and have remained widespread for more than a year now. This lack of coverage is partially due to the fact that establishment narrative managers are responsible for conveying the idea that the only governments whose citizens dislike them are those which haven’t been absorbed into the imperial blob like China and Iran. But it’s also because the propagandists don’t want us getting any ideas.

    The reason the propagandists work so hard to manufacture the consent of the governed is because they absolutely do require that consent. If enough people decide that the status quo isn’t working for them and begin rising up to force it to change, there’s not really anything the establishment can do to stop them. Right now the only thing keeping people from rising up in this way is the fact that they’ve been successfully propagandized not to, and the propagandists intend to keep it that way.

    But eyes are beginning to open. If real change is coming, it will come from there. Not from electing anyone president, but from a large-scale awakening to the reality of our situation. The only thing standing in the way is a thin layer of narrative fluff.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either YoutubesoundcloudApple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypalpurchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 20:15

    Tags

  • Coronavirus Could Shock World Into Recession, Stephen Roach Warns
    Coronavirus Could Shock World Into Recession, Stephen Roach Warns

    Former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach published an op-ed on Monday (Jan. 27) via Project Syndicate and also appeared on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” to warn about how the global economy could already be in a period of vulnerability, where an exogenous shock, such as the coronavirus, could be the trigger for the next worldwide recession.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Roch reminds us that a shock of some sort is usually the cause of most recessions that propagates through the economy. For several years, the Federal Reserve’s tightening, which started in late 2017 and ended in the summer of 2019, slowed the global economy. Then the trade war blew up complex supply chains and weakened developed and emerging economies even more, from 1Q18 through 3Q19. These two forces opened a cycle of vulnerability for the global economy that would make it susceptible to a shock. However, it was anyone’s guess what that shock would be until now.  

    “With the world economy operating dangerously close to stall speed, the confluence of ever-present shocks and a sharply diminished trade cushion raises serious questions about financial markets’ increasingly optimistic view of global economic prospects,” Roach said via his op-ed in Project Syndicate.

    On Trading Nation, Roach said, “big shocks for weak economies” could trigger a recession.

    He cautioned that coronavirus could remain a problem in the months ahead.

    “It’s a frightening outbreak, especially when it spreads this rapidly,” he said.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    So far, more than a dozen Chinese cities are locked down, tens of millions of people are confined to their homes, and factories and businesses are closed, as the world’s second-largest economy grinds to a halt. 

    And perhaps Roach has found the root cause of the next global recession: coronavirus.

    As he ominously concludes, it won’t take much to knock this over the edge:

    Historically, the rapid expansion of cross-border trade has been an important part of the global growth cushion that shields the world economy from all-too-frequent shocks. From 1990 to 2008, annual growth in world trade was fully 82% faster than world GDP growth.

    Now, however, reflecting the unusually sharp post-crisis slowdown in global trade growth, this cushion has shrunk dramatically, to just 13% over the 2010-19 period. With the world economy operating dangerously close to stall speed, the confluence of ever-present shocks and a sharply diminished trade cushion raises serious questions about financial markets’ increasingly optimistic view of global economic prospects.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:55

  • Impeachment: The Left's Ultimate Weapon
    Impeachment: The Left’s Ultimate Weapon

    Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    In 1868, President Andrew Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act that had been enacted by Congress over his veto in 1867. Defying the law, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, without getting Senate approval, as the act required him to do.

    In his 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, John F. Kennedy made Edmund Ross one of the Senate’s “Profiles in Courage” for his decisive and heroic vote not to convict and remove Johnson.

    Repealed in 1887, the Tenure of Office Act was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

    But while the act was the lethal instrument to be used in the political assassination of a president whom the Radical Republicans meant to terminate, Stanton’s ouster was not the primary cause of their fury.

    What truly enraged the Radical Republicans was Johnson’s resolve to be more magnanimous toward the defeated South than they meant to be. Johnson had in mind an earlier end to the military occupation of the South and a more rapid return of the seceded states to the Union.

    The story is told in the 1942 Hollywood film “Tennessee Johnson,” starring Van Heflin, which has since gone down the memory hole along with Woodrow Wilson’s White House favorite, “Birth of a Nation.”

    As historians concede, the impeachment of Johnson was about Reconstruction and who would remake the South. Would it be the Southern majority that fought and lost the war, or the victorious Yankees and the “scalawags” and “carpetbaggers” laboring alongside them?

    The triumphant Radical Republicans were not about conciliation. So severe were aspects of the occupation that Gen. Robert E. Lee reportedly said if he had known what was coming, he might not have quit fighting.

    So, too, the impeachment of Donald Trump is not really about his 10-week delay in shipping arms to Ukraine or his postponing of a visit by Ukraine’s president until he announced an investigation of Burisma Holdings and Joe and Hunter Biden.

    Even before the 2016 election, Democrats, collaborating with a like-minded media, were using the instruments of power they possess, to first prevent and then to overturn the election results of 2016.

    Russiagate, the James Comey FBI investigation, the Mueller probe — aborting a Trump presidency has always been the goal.

    Saturday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone succinctly described to the Senate the bottom line:

    “They’re asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot in an election that’s occurring in approximately nine months… They’re asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative, take that decision away from the American people.”

    To save “our democracy,” to which they pay tireless tribute, the impeachers want to ensure that the people, in a supposedly free election in 2020, are not allowed to make the same mistake they made in 2016.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    To save our democracy, the House and half the Senate want to deny the America electorate one of the most important roles the people play in this republic — the exercise of their right to choose the head of state and commander in chief of the United States.

    Disqualifying presidential candidates whom populists favor but elites abhor is a quite common practice — in Third World countries.

    Over the weekend, we learned that John Bolton, who has offered to testify in the Senate trial, claims in his coming book that Trump made a direct link between sending military aid to Ukraine and Ukraine’s opening an investigation of the Bidens.

    This has caused some Republican senators to reconsider calling witnesses, particularly Bolton, in the impeachment trial.

    If four Republicans vote for witnesses, they will be doing the work Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi’s House failed to do in their haste to get Trump impeached by Christmas. They will be prolonging a trial set up to burn and bury their president.

    The Senate should let Trump’s defenders complete their case, as the House managers and impeachers have already done. Then allow 16 hours of questioning. Then call for the verdict.

    There is no treason, no bribery and no high crime in what the House managers allege. There is nothing in the articles of impeachment voted that rises to a level to justify removing a president.

    Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on defenseless cities and sent 2 million POWs back to the tender mercies of Stalin in Operation Keelhaul after World War II.

    JFK greenlighted the overthrow of an ally, President Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, in a coup that ended in the murder of Diem.

    LBJ ordered the wiretapping of Martin Luther King, and his White House shared the fruits of that FBI surveillance with a friendly press.

    No one was impeached.

    Why? Because Truman, JFK and LBJ were establishment favorites.

    For Trump, a phone call with a Ukrainian president saying, “Send us your Biden file and we will have a meeting,” is a political capital crime justifying democracy’s version of a death penalty.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:35

    Tags

  • Number Of Coronavirus Cases Surpasses SARS As China Holds 60k Under 'Observation'
    Number Of Coronavirus Cases Surpasses SARS As China Holds 60k Under ‘Observation’

    Summary:

    • Japan, Germany confirm human-to-human transmission
    • US, UK warn citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to China
    • 6,049 cases confirmed; 131 deaths
    • President Xi said China is taking the “devil virus” very seriously and will contain it
    • Governors and mayors across US bracing for viral outbreaks
    • Reports that China has refused US offer of assistance, and that Beijing is withholding data from CDC
    • Thailand reports 6 new cases, bringing total number to 14

    * * *

    Update (1915ET): It’s only 8:15 am in Beijing and health officials have already confirmed more than 840 new cases in Hubei Province.

    That brings the toll to  6,049, including 263 cases deemed “severe.” The death toll has climbed to 132, according to SCMP.

    Those who have been closely comparing this outbreak with the 2003 SARS outbreak may notice that the coronavirus has achieved an important milestone. Barely a week into global response to the outbreak, the number of confirmed cases has already passed the number of SARS cases reported during the entire monthslong ordeal.

    Sars infected 5,327 people in mainland China in nine months and killed 349 people, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Another 60k people are said to be under observation across China, with 20k in Hubei alone.

    Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory diseases expert who spoke with the SCMP on Tuesday, the outbreak hasn’t yet reached its peak, though he thinks the number of new cases will plateau within the next ten days.

    Back in the US, the Trump Administration is denying reports that it’s considering a total ban on passenger travel between the US and China.

    Will the fact that the coronavirus has already surpassed SARS – and is on track to achieve some of the more dire projections shared by epidemiologists – shake the market’s confidence?

    Or will a few soothing words from Jerome Powell save the day?

    * * *

    Update (1824ET): Adding additional pressure to American airlines, CNBC just reported that the White House warned airline executives that it’s considering suspending all flights between China and the US.

    This comes on the heels of United Airlines, the US carrier with the most exposure to China, which has about a dozen daily flights to Hong Kong and the mainland, said it was cancelling dozens of flights. The Chicago-based airline said it has experienced a “significant decline in demand for travel to China.”

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Administration officials warned that this could impact flights into and out of China.

    Several countries, including the US, have been expanding airport screenings for possible virus-carrying travelers. But a complete shutdown of passenger plane traffic would be even more draconian than Hong Kong’s strict border controls implemented Tuesday.

    In a sign that the Communist Party may have overplayed its hand, more videos depicting violent clashes between Chinese citizens and police have surfaced on social media.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    One video, likely taken somewhere in Hubei Province (where the most strict travel bans are being enforced), shows a car ramming a roadblock.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

     

    * * *

    Update (1750ET): Reuters just reported that Thailand has confirmed another six cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total to 14. All six are under observation in a hospital. Five of the six are members of the same CHinese family who traveled from Hubei provine to Thailand for the LNY holiday together.

    No. 6 is also a Chinese tourist.

    * * *

    Update (1710ET): Minutes ago, as dawn nears in China, state-controlled TV station CCTV reported 25 new deaths in Hubei, and another 840 new confirmed cases (and this time only 315 were in Wuhan). Of the dead, 19 died in Wuhan, 2 in Xiaogan, and 1 each in Jingmen, Ezhou, Huanggang, and Tianmen.

    Per CCTV, 3349 patients have been hospitalized in the province. More than 20,000 are still under medical observation.

    When we look back on the coronavirus outbreak, Tuesday might be the day people remember as the jumping off point for the pandemic. more than 1,000 new cases were confirmed today. And today, the death toll jumped above 100 for the first time, and possibly featured the first death from the virus outside China.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Across China, the tensions of the LNY cancellations, the holiday extension and the travel bans, and lockdowns, combined with a general sense of hysteria, are leading to civil unrest in some areas.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    American officials confirmed that the first flight evacuating about 240 diplomats and other Americans from Wuhan took off without a hitch. There are still roughly 800 Americans in Wuhan, and more flights are expected – though some have elected to stay behind with family. Tuesday is also the day that officials confirmed, without a doubt, that the virus is spreading from human to human outside of China. We imagine we’ll get another dump of confirmed cases out of China around midnight, or around midday in Asia.

    In the meantime, we leave you with another disturbing video taken in a Wuhan hospital: this time, an angry patient can be seen destroying a room with a chair.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And if that wasn’t unsettling enough, we present…the birds…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And there’s plenty more where that came from.

    Meanwhile, as twitter users debate whether jokes about “bat soup” constitute a display of racism, the New York Times would like to remind readers that this virus is unequivocally humanity’s fault.

    * * *

    Update (1515ET): Virus-related newsflow slowed Tuesday afternoon, though there have been one or two interesting developments. 

    SCMP said US HHS Secretary Alex Azar (don’t get him confused with Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, the one who cut Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal) said Tuesday that he hoped the Chinese government “will take us up” on an offer of aid.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier said it was seeking information from China about the transmission rates for the virus, and the US government asked Beijing if the CDC could send a team of experts after President Trump offered China unfettered access to America’s top-notch “experts.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Azar said that he had personally extended “the offer…which we do hope that the Chinese government will take us up on that CDC experts are standing by ready, willing, able to go immediately to China either on a bilateral basis or under the auspices of the World Health Organisation.”

    Reports earlier claimed that Beijing had rejected American help. While it’s not entirely clear what’s going on, it’s worth noting that the US arrested three suspected Chinese spies on Tuesday, while China accused the American Navy of more “deliberate provocations” in the South China Sea,” per SCMP.

    In other news, a few new cases of the virus have been confirmed. Three more coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the southern German state of Bavaria. Notably, it’s believed that all three cases contracted the virus from the first case discovered in Germany, more evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China. Canada confirmed another case in Vancouver after an earlier cases was treated in Toronto.

    China kept evidence of human to human transmission under wraps until last week, allowing the virus to spread unfettered for weeks before doing anything to confront it.

    Now, the CDC is asking for more information about how the virus spreads, but Beijing is being somewhat less than “transparent.”

    “The Chinese have reported evidence of transmission in the asymptomatic phase, based on data that they have reviewed. The CDC has not been given an opportunity to review that data,” Redfield said. “What we say is that we have not been able to confirm by data the impact of transmission during the asymptomatic phase.”

    The case count hasn’t budged in a few hours, though we imagine the new cases in Germany and Canada will soon be included.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Oddly enough, even though local authorities claimed they were shutting down air traffic out of Wuhan (except for emergency evacuations and deliveries of supplies and personnel).

    Still, a flight tracker is showing that a handful of flights departed from the Wuhan international airport on Tuesday.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    * * *

    Update (1450ET): Governors and mayors across the US are bracing for containing any possible outbreaks of coronavirus. Earlier today, the NYC Department of Public Health warned residents that it expected the virus to eventually make its way to the largest city in America.

    In the Greater New York area, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said that the state is “continuing to closely monitor the outbreak of coronavirus in China” after the CDC confirmed several cases in the US.

    Lamont added that two suspected cases of the virus have been found in Connecticut, one in Middlesex County and one in New Haven County. Both cases are  under observation.

    Lamont urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to declare a public health emergency to guarantee that the CDC is able to access the money it needs to combat outbreaks.

    Read the full statement below:

    (HARTFORD, CT) – Governor Ned Lamont today said that the State of Connecticut is continuing to closely monitor the outbreak of coronavirus in China after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced several confirmed cases in the United States, none of which are in Connecticut.

    The Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) has two persons under investigation for the new coronavirus, one in Middlesex County who is a student at Wesleyan University and the other in New Haven County. The Wesleyan student has tested negative for corona virus. Both persons have tested positive for influenza type A and the cause of their illness is most likely the flu. As a precaution, both persons remain in isolation. DPH is awaiting final testing results for coronavirus at the CDC for the New Haven County patient. At the present time, testing for this new coronavirus strain is only available at the CDC.

    “The state is closely monitoring reported cases and remaining cautious on behalf of the public,” Governor Lamont said. “We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to provide updated information on these developments to the people of our state. We ask that the public not panic but take possible symptoms seriously and consult a healthcare professional.”

    “I want to assure all residents of Connecticut that we are taking this new virus very seriously and have been closely coordinating our response with local health departments and medical providers throughout the state,” DPH Commissioner Renée D. Coleman-Mitchell said. “So far, we have no confirmed cases of this coronavirus in Connecticut. It is also the height of the flu season, and hundreds of Connecticut residents have already been hospitalized for influenza. I want to make sure everyone takes precautions to keep themselves healthy during this season, and if you experience any symptoms such as sneezing, coughing, fever or others, please contact your doctor and get treated sooner rather than later.”

    “I urge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency so we can ensure that the Center for Disease Control is able to access the additional funding it may need to expedite the development of a vaccine and to prepare to contain any outbreak in our country,” Senator Richard Blumenthal said. “The recent coronavirus strain exploding in China has resulted in many deaths and therefore proactive steps must be taken at the federal and state levels. My office is in constant contact with Connecticut state public health officials and I stand ready to assist state officials to protect the health of Connecticut residents.”

    Connecticut is at the height of respiratory virus season. Influenza activity in Connecticut is widespread. A total of 784 influenza-associated hospitalizations have been reported since the beginning of the 2019-20 season. Seven new influenza-associated deaths were reported last week, resulting in a total of 20 influenza-associated deaths reported since the beginning of the 2019-20 season.

    CDC believes at this time that symptoms of the coronavirus may appear in as few as two days or as long as 14 days after exposure. No vaccine or specific treatment for the infection is available, however care is supportive. When person-to-person spread has occurred with MERS and SARS, it is thought to have happened via respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes, like how influenza and other respiratory pathogens spread. Spread of SARS and MERS between people has generally occurred between close contacts.

    * * *

    Update (1400ET): The UK has jumped on the bandwagon of nations that are advising their citizens to avoid traveling to China at all costs until this epidemic passes.

    According to the BBC, the UK Foreign Office has warned Britons to avoid all non-essential travel to mainland China. It also warned against all travel to Hubei Province, saying any Britons who are there should leave ASAP.

    * * *

    Update (1245ET): France has confirmed the fourth case of novel coronavirus, according to French news station BFM TV. Although the confirmation of yet another case in Europe sounds like it would add to the market’s anxieties, stocks have been drifting higher since researchers in Hong Kong announced that they had developed a vaccine for the new virus – but with one critical catch.

    They expect it will take about a year until its ready to use on humans.

    * * *

    Update (0900ET): In what might be the first coronavirus death recorded outside China and a major development in the ongoing epidemic – which the WHO has refused to label a pandemic for fear of spooking the market –  Indian health officials reportedly said Tuesday that a Thai woman who was living in Kolkata may have succumbed to the coronavirus.

    Authorities said she was hospitalized on Jan. 21 for fever, nausea and stomach problems. No cases of the virus have been confirmed, but three suspected cases in Delhi have been reported, according to News18.

    So far, the evidence that nCoV was responsible for her death is pretty slim. We now await confirmation from India’s top health officials.

    But if it’s true, it will become extremely difficult for the WHO to avoid declaring a global pandemic emergency.

    * * *

    Update (0700ET): Minutes ago, CNBC reported that the White House has held multiple meetings about the coronavirus led by Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The consensus: The problem is getting worse, though the true extent is unclear.

    Are we about to learn about a new rash of infections inside the US? Considering that more than 100 people were under observation as recently as yesterday, we wouldn’t be surprised.

    * * *

    On Tuesday morning, China’s top health officials shared some grim statistics essentially confirming that the novel coronavirus believed to have emerged from a shady food market in Wuhan is on track to confirm some of the more dire projections shared by epidemiologists.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    As we reported late yesterday, the death toll in China has soared past 100 while the number of confirmed cases doubled overnight. Health officials around the world have confirmed more than 4,500 cases, more than triple the number from Friday. All but a few of the deaths recorded so far have been in Wuhan or the surrounding Hubei province, per the SCMP.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Panic has swept across the region as border closures appear to be the overarching theme of Tuesday’s sessions. Even North Korea, which relies on China for 90% of its foreign trade, has closed the border with its patron. More than 50 million remain on lockdown in Hubei, and transit restrictions have been imposed by cities and regions around the country. An ‘extension’ of the Lunar New Year holiday is threatening GDP growth, as economists try to size up the knock-on potential impact on the global economy. The virus has now spread across China and another 17 countries/autonomous territories globally, according to BBG.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    But the most important announcement made overnight – at least as far as global markets are concerned – was Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s decision to suspend high-speed rail and ferry service, while halving the number of flights between HK and the mainland. This news helped send US stock futures higher in early trade, after health experts yesterday urged Lam to use ‘draconian’ measures to curb the spread, for fear of a repeat of the SARS epidemic, which killed some 300 people, according to the BBC.

    “The flow of people between the two places needs to be drastically reduced” amid the outbreak, Ms Lam told the South China Morning Post.

    China, meanwhile, said it would stop individuals from traveling to Hong Kong to try and curb the virus.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Jiao Yahui, deputy head of the NHC’s medical administration bureau, said during a press conference Tuesday that shortages of medical supplies in Wuhan were still a serious problem.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    CDC has issued new travel recommendations urging people to avoid all non-essential trips. Still, the WHO remained reluctant to declare the outbreak a global emergency. Instead, the international health organization’s director-general insisted that this is merely an emergency “in China”. But after yesterday’s brutal pullback in US stocks, the WHO can’t risk spooking the market.

    The big piece of evidence that the WHO is purportedly looking for is human-to-human transmission outside China. However, while several cases of H2H transmission outside China have been documented in Vietnam, Japan, as well as possibly Canada and Germany, the WHO so far has only recognized the Vietnam case.

    Zhong Nanshan, a leading expert on SARS and other communicable diseases in China, confirmed human-to-human transmission in at least one case in Wuhan and two cases in Guangdong Province.

    During a meeting in Beijing, President Xi told World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the safety of the people is his government’s first priority, and that he recognizes the situation is “very serious,” but that he’s confident his government will defeat the “devil virus,” Reuters reports.

    “This was supposed to be a time for rest, but because of the pneumonia outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus, the Chinese people right now are faced with a very serious battle,” Xi said. “This is something we take very seriously because in our view nothing matters more than people’s safety and health. That is why I myself have been personally deploying, planning, and guiding all the efforts related to containment and mitigation of the outbreak.”

    That’s ironic, considering Beijing’s sluggish response after the first cases were discovered in December. After all, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang on Tuesday spoke out against the deluge of criticism he has faced to accuse Beijing of tying his hands. This comes after President Xi and the party tried to scapegoat him and other local party officials for the crisis.

    This was supposed to be a time for rest, but because of the pneumonia outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus, the Chinese people right now are faced with a very serious battle,” Chinese President Xi Jinping tells in Beijing.

    Speaking at a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Jiao Yahui, deputy head of the NHC’s medical administration bureau, said shortage of medical supplies was a major constraint in China’s efforts to contain the outbreak and treat infected people.

    Tens of thousands of patients are under observation in China after displaying one or more symptoms of the virus. In the US, roughly 100 people are in isolation. But former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that China is obscuring the true number of cases – a suspicion that’s widely held among American infectous-disease experts.

    According to some projections, there might be up to 300,000 cases in China, and there are likely dozens of people who have died of pneumonia who in reality died from nCoV – but those deaths will never be recorded. Although China is “behaving better” than it did during the SARS outbreak, they’re still concealing information from the international community.

    “They’re still not behaving well. They’re concealing information, including the spread to health care workers, which we didn’t know until last week” Gottlieb said.

    China is already in a “full-blown epidemic.” The US will likely face some limited outbreaks, but Gottlieb said we have the tools to suppress the virus and prevent the same thing from happening in the US. The FDA, meanwhile, announced plans to advance development of “medical countermeasures” against the virus.

    Jiao said China was sending about 6,000 medical personnel to Hubei from around the country – with more than 4,000 already there and 1,800 more due to arrive by Tuesday evening – to work in Wuhan and seven other cities in the province. In Wuhan, more than 10,000 hospital beds have been made available for patients, he said, while another 100,000 are being prepared.

    In Beijing, CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported that the local government is strongly encouraging the wearing of facemasks in public. Police guarding Beijing’s public transit are wearing full hazmat suits, and anybody hoping to board a train must be wearing a mask, and must submit to a temperature check via infrared thermometer. If an individual is found to have a fever, they’re sent to a hospital to be quarantined.

    As Beijing tries to telegraph to the world that it has the situation under control, health experts have raised new questions about the government’s response. One infectious disease specialist told the NYT that they were skeptical about the Wuhan quarantine’s ability contain the virus (unsurprising considering that 5 million left the city before the lockdown began). Beijing and Guangzhou, a port city northwest of Hong Kong, have broken ground on new hospitals, mimicking the speedy construction of not one but two new hospitals in Wuhan to treat patients infected with the virus. Beijing is also reopening a hospital used to fight the SARS outbreak in 2003, while 6,000 medical staff have been sent to Hubei.

    “At this stage of the outbreak, the things that make the most difference are finding people, diagnosing people, and getting them isolated,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, an infectious diseases specialist and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “If you isolate the city, then my question and my concern is that you’re making it harder in a number of ways to do those things you need to do,” including ferrying critical supplies and ensuring that infected victims receive adequate treatment.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:33

  • California County Sticks Homeowners With $22K Bill To Clean Up Homeless Encampment
    California County Sticks Homeowners With $22K Bill To Clean Up Homeless Encampment

    A Northern California housing community will be hit with more than $22,000 in cleanup costs after the county refused to pick up the tab, according to KPIX.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    The cleanup at the Lakewood community in Castro Valley comes more than two years after the encampment was first reported to Alameda County in October 2017, as it was unclear whether the land belonged too the County, East Bay Regional Parks or the Lakewood Home Owner’s Association.

    Turns out, it was HOA land.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    As such, Walsh Property Management, which oversees the homeowners association, will hit each homeowner in the 75-house development with a $300 charge to cover the cleanup. Its owner, Ed Walsh, told KPIX: “There are no fences and such that would mark where the property line ended, so we were kind of hoping that it was someone else’s responsibility.”

    Walsh said Alameda County told the HOA the encampment was in fact on their property in August of 2019, almost two years after the encampment first appeared.

    The county also said the HOA is responsible to pay for the $20,000 cleanup.

    Homeowners say the delay over property lines caused more waste to pile up, making it more expensive – so the county or Walsh Property Management should pay the bill. –KPIX

    “Unfortunately this one happened to be on the association’s property,” says Walsh.

    The cleanup is expected to be done by mid-February, according to the report.

    Homeowner Cece Adams, who has lived in the Lakewood community for 16 years, is none too happy.

    “We didn’t even know it was part of our HOA,” she said, adding “No one knew it was their responsibility. I think everyone assumed it was county’s responsibility.”

    “They should have known that this was our property, and they should have taken care of it a long time ago.”


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:15

  • Many Planes Actually Made It Out Of Wuhan Yesterday And Today
    Many Planes Actually Made It Out Of Wuhan Yesterday And Today

    Update (1300ET): The Toronto Sun reports Coronavirus control at airports is pretty much a leap of faith.

    Just like that, more than 1,000 people on three flights from China walked into Canada without medical screening.

    If the coronavirus happens to be incubating in any one of those passengers who arrived at Pearson International Airport’s Terminal 3 on Monday, they are now mingling with Canadian residents.

    “I was asked when we got to the Canada Custom’s inspection point if I had been in Wuhan in the past 14 days or if I had a fever,” said Jerry, who with his wife, travelled from Shanghai.

    “I said no.”

    That one-word answer got him through.

    *  *  *

    As MishTalk’s Mike Shedlock detailed earlier, many planes managed to get out of Wuhan over the past few days. Let’s take a look as to where.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Wuhan to San Francisco Today

    Wuhan to San Francisco 00:00-06:00 – No Flights

    Wuhan to San Francisco 06:00-12:00 – No Flights

    Wuhan to San Francisco 12:00-18:00 – Three Flights to San Francisco (China South, American, Delta) are listed as “Scheduled“.

    Wuhan to San Francisco 18:00-00:00 – No Flights

    The huge problem with Flightstats is you have to click on every flight to see if it is scheduled, cancelled, unknown, landed, or in the air. There are thousands of flights per day from some Chinese cities.

    I do not believe those SFO scheduled flight left or ever will. See Addendum.

    All Departures from Wuhan Monday, January 27

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    I pieced that together from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport WUH Departures for 2020-01-27.

    I only showed confirmed landings.

    All Departures from Wuhan Tuesday, January 28

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Escape From Wuhan

    This post is an update to Hundreds of Virus Carrying Planes Headed for US, London, Paris, Vancouver

    In that article I commented “Wuhan may be locked down. The rest of China isn’t yet.”

    This update shows it is indeed still possible to escape Wuhan, then depart from some other city to the US, Japan, Europe, or elsewhere.

    Please note that Scientists Estimate 44,000 Virus Cases, Doubling Every 6 Days

    This is confirmation that the US should have halted all planes from China long ago.

    Addendum

    This Tweet From SFO Airport Official

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “The flight tracking app you are looking at has not updated with the correct origin city. That flight came from Guangzhou (CAN) and not Wuhan (WUH). Flights originally were from CAN-WUH and then WUH-SFO. However flights are not stopping in WUH and going direct from CAN-SFO.”

    So SFO landing was really from CAN. The rest of the departures do seem to be from WUH.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 18:55

  • Apartment Rents Plateau As Debt-Laden Millennials Reach The Limits Of What They Can Afford
    Apartment Rents Plateau As Debt-Laden Millennials Reach The Limits Of What They Can Afford

    Generation rent is showing no signs of changing its ways.

    According to RentCafe’s year-end rent report for 2019, the national average rent capped off another year of strong growth by leveling off in December. But all evidence suggests that the average national rent will continue moving higher – despite all official gauges of inflation reflecting little or no inflation – as popular sun-belt cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas take over from Brooklyn and California as the biggest drivers of higher rents.

    This comes as more Americans are leaving places like California and New York for the sun belt, where rents are relatively inexpensive, jobs are plentiful and the weather is far more temperate.

    Nationally, the average apartment rent climbed to $1,474 in December, a 3% YoY increase (the slowest in 17 months). Dollar-for-dollar, renters are currently paying, on average, $43 a more per month than they were at the end of 2019. By comparison, the average rent increased by $45 between 2017 and 2018. After years of torrid growth, it’s no surprise the pace of rising rents has slowed: with wages still stagnant, many renters are reaching the upper bounds of what they can afford.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    That rents are still climbing is remarkable, in part because developers building rental-focused buildings added 2.4 million apartments to the national inventory over the last decade. This, despite a shortage of single-family homes, as homeownership rates among millennials remain ten percentage points lower than Gen X, or even more.

    As we mentioned above, rents in the sun belt saw the biggest gains last year, led by Phoenix ($1,123), where rents increased by 9.6%, or $98. Second was Las Vegas ($1,107), which notched a 6% gain. In third place came Austin ($1,436), where rents tacked on another 5%, or roughly $68.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Unsurprisingly, Manhattan remained the priciest rental market in the country in 2019, with an average rent at year end of $4,211. San Francisco came in second at $3,688 and Boston third at $3,438.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    On the other end of the spectrum, Toledo, Ohio, displaced Brownsville, Texas, as the most affordable small city for renters. Average rent in Toledo is just $729 a month.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    A plurality of renters last year searched for a 2-bedroom apartment, as many millennials remain unmarried and childless heading into their 30s.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    If you’re curious to see what the average rent was last year in your city, RentCafe maintains an average price interactive on its site.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 18:35

Digest powered by RSS Digest