- The Digital 'Iron Curtain' Descends
The Digital ‘Iron Curtain’ Descends
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/02/2020 – 00:05Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
What is a ‘digital Iron Curtain’?
It is when Big Digital, as Professor Michael Rectenwald terms these western Tech Goliaths, become ‘governmentalities’, using a word originally coined by Michel Foucault to refer to the means by which the ‘governed’ (i.e. ‘we the people’) assimilate, and reflect outwardly, a mental attitude desired by the élites: “One might point to masking and social distancing as instances of what Foucault meant by his notion of governmentality”, Rectenwald suggests.
And what is that desired ‘mentality’?
It is to embrace the transfiguration of American and European identity and way-of-life. The presumptive U.S. President Elect, the European élites, and top ‘woke’ élites moreover, are publicly committed to such “transformation”: “Now we take Georgia, then we change the world,” (Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, declared, celebrating Joe Biden’s ‘victory’); “Trump’s defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of far-right populisms also in Europe”, claimed Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council.
In short, the ‘Iron Curtain’ descends when supposedly private enterprises (Big Digital) mutually inter-penetrate with – and then claim – the State: No longer the non-believer facing this coming metamorphosis is to be persuaded – he can be compelled. Regressive values held on identity, race and gender quickly slipped into a ‘heresy’ labelling. And as the BLM activists endlessly repeat: “Silence is no option: Silence is complicity”.
With the advent of Silicon Valley ideology’s ubiquitous ‘reach’, the diktat can be achieved through weaponising ‘Truth’ via AI, to achieve a ‘machine learning fairness’ that reflects only the values of the coming revolution – and through AI ‘learning’ mounting that version of binary ‘truth’, up and against an adversarial ‘non-truth’ (its polar opposite). How this inter-penetration came about is through a mix of early CIA start-up funding; connections and contracts with state agencies, particularly relating to defence; and in support for propaganda campaigns in service to ‘governmentalist’ narratives.
These U.S. Tech platforms have, for some time, become effectively fused into the ‘Blue State’ – particularly in the realms of intelligence and defence – to the extent that these CEOs no longer see themselves as state ‘partners’ or contractors, but rather, as some higher élite leadership, precisely shaping and directing the future of the U.S. Their objective however, is to advance beyond the American ‘sphere’, to a notion that such an élite oligarchy eventually would be directing a future ‘planetary governance’. One, in which their tech tools of AI, analytics, robotics and machine-learning, would become the mathematical and digital scaffold around whose structure, the globe in all its dimensions is administered. There would be no polity – only analytics.
The blatant attempt by Big Tech platforms and MSM to write the narrative of the 2020 Facebook and Twitter U.S. Election – coupled with their campaign to insist that dissent is either the intrusion of enemy disinformation, ‘lies’ coming from the U.S. President, or plain bullsh*t – is but the first step to re-defining ‘dissenters’ as security risks and enemies of the good.
The mention of ‘heresy and disinformation’ additionally plays the role of pushing attention away from the gulf of inequality between smug élites and skeptical swathes of ordinary citizenry. Party élites might be notoriously well-known for unfairly enriching themselves, but as fearless knights leading the faithful to battle, élites can become again objects of public and media veneration – heroes who can call believers ‘once more unto the breach!’.
The next step is already being prepared – as Whitney Webb notes:
A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UK’s signal intelligence agency, GCHQ, which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be “propaganda”, [and that] raise concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development – and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved.
Similar efforts are underway in the U.S., with the military recently funding a CIA-backed firm … to develop an AI algorithm aimed specifically at new websites promoting “suspected” disinformation related to the Covid-19 crisis, and the U.S. military–led Covid-19 vaccination effort known as Operation Warp Speed …
The Times reported that GCHQ “has begun an offensive cyber-operation to disrupt anti-vaccine propaganda being spread by hostile states” and “is using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic State” to do so … The GCHQ cyber war will not only take down “anti-vaccine propaganda”, but will also seek to “disrupt the operations of the cyberactors responsible for it, including encrypting their data so they cannot access it and blocking their communications with each other.”
The Times stated that “the government regards tackling false information about inoculation as a rising priority as the prospect of a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus draws closer,” suggesting that efforts will continue to ramp up as a vaccine candidate gets closer to approval.
This larger pivot toward treating alleged “anti-vaxxers” as “national security threats” has been ongoing for much of this year, spearheaded in part by Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, a member of the UK government’s Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force, which is part of the UK government’s Commission for Countering Extremism.
Ahmed told the UK newspaper The Independent in July that “I would go beyond calling anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists to say they are an extremist group that pose a national security risk.” He then stated that “once someone has been exposed to one type of conspiracy it’s easy to lead them down a path where they embrace more radical world views that can lead to violent extremism … Similarly, a think tank tied to U.S. intelligence argued in a research paper published just months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis that “the U.S. ‘anti-vaxxer’ movement would pose a threat to national security in the event of a ‘pandemic with a novel organism.’”
Just to be clear, it is not just the ‘Five Eyes’ Intelligence Community at work – YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided this week to remove a Ludwig von Mises Institute video, with more than 1.5 million views, for challenging aspects of U.S. policy on the Coronavirus.
What on earth is going on? The Mises Institute as ‘extremist’, or purveyor of enemy disinformation? (Of course, there are countless other examples.)
Well, in a word, it is ‘China’. Maybe it is about fears that China will surpass the U.S. economically and in Tech quite shortly. It is no secret that the U.S., the UK and Europe, more generally, have botched their handling of Covid, and may stand at the brink of recession and financial crisis.
China, and Asia more generally, has Covid under much better control. Indeed, China may prove to be the one state likely to grow economically over the year ahead.
Here’s the rub: The pandemic persists. Western governments largely have eschewed full lockdowns, whilst hoping to toggle between partial social-distancing, and keeping the economy open – oscillating between turning the dials up or down on both. But they are achieving neither the one (pandemic under control), nor the other (saving themselves from looming economic breakdown). The only exit from this conundrum that the élites can see is to vaccinate everyone as soon as possible, so that they can go full-steam on the economy – and thus stop China stealing a march on the West.
But 40%-50% of Americans say they would refuse vaccination. They are concerned about the long term safety for humans of the new mRNA technique – concerns, it seems, that are destined to be rigorously de-platformed to make way for the “required” saturation of pro-vaccine messaging across the English-speaking media landscape.
There is no evidence, yet, that either the Moderna or the Pfizer experimental vaccine prevented any hospitalizations or any deaths. If there were, the public has not been told. There is no information about how long any protective benefit from the vaccine would persist. There is no information about safety. Not surprisingly there is public caution, which GCHQ and Big Digital intend to squash.
The digital Iron Curtain is not just about America. U.S. algorithms, and social media, saturate Europe too. And Europe has its ‘populists’ and state ‘deplorables’ (currently Hungary and Poland), on which Brussels would like to see the digital ‘Curtain’ of denigration and political ostracism descend.
This month, Hungary and Poland vetoed the EU bloc’s €1.8 trillion budget and recovery package in retaliation for Brussel’s plan effectively to fine them for violating the EU’s ‘rule of law’ principles. As the Telegraph notes, “Many European businesses are depending on the cash and, given the ‘second wave’ of coronavirus hitting the continent, Brussels fears that the Visegrád Group allies” could hold a recovery hostage to their objections to the EU ‘rule-of-law’ ‘fines’).
What’s this all about? Well, Orbán’s justice minister has introduced a series of constitutional changes. Each of them triggering ‘rule-of-law’ disputes with the EU. The most contentious amendment is an anti-LGBT one, stating explicitly that the mother is a woman, the father is a man. It will add further restrictions for singles and gay couples adopting children, and it will confine gender transition to adults.
Orbán’s veto is yet more evidence of a new Iron Curtain descending down the spine of – this time – Europe. The ‘Curtain’ again is cultural, and has nothing to do with ‘law’. Brussels makes no secret of its displeasure that many Central and Eastern European member-states will not sign up to ‘progressive’ (i.e. woke) values. At its root lies the tension that “whilst Western Europe is de-Christianising, Europe’s central and eastern states are re-Christianising – the faith having been earlier a rallying point against communism”, and now serving as the well-spring to these states’ post-Cold War emerging identity. (It is not so dissimilar to some ‘Red’ American conservative constituencies that also are reaching back to their Christian roots, in the face of America’s political polarisation.)
These combined events point to a key point of inflection occurring in the western polity: A constellation of state and state-extended apparatuses has openly declared war on dissent (‘untruths’), foreign ‘disinformation’ and opinion unsupported by their own ‘fact-checking’.
It takes concrete form through Big Digital’s quiet sanctioning and punitive policing of online platforms, under the guise of tackling abuse; through nation-wide mandatory re-education and training programmes in anti-racism and critical social theory in schools and places of work; by embedding passive obedience and acquiescence amongst the public through casting anti-vaxxers as extremists, or as security risks; and finally, by mounting a series of public spectacles and theatre by ‘calling out’ and shaming sovereigntists and cultural ‘regressives’, who merit being ‘cancelled’.
In turn, it advances an entire canon of progressivism rooted in critical social theory, anti-racism and gender studies. It has too its own revisionist history (narratives such as the 1619 Project) and progressive jurisprudence for translation into concrete law.
But what if half of America rejects the next President? What if Brussels persists with imposing its separate progressive cannon? Then the Iron Curtain will descend with the ring of metal falling onto stone. Why? Precisely because those adhering to their transformative mission see ‘calling out’ transgressors as their path to power – a state in which dissent and cultural heresy can be met with enforcement (euphemistically called the ‘rule of law’ in Brussels). Its’ intent is to permanently keep dissenters passive, and on the defensive, fearing being labelled ‘extremist’, and through panicking fence-sitters into acquiescence.
Maintaining a unified western polity may no longer be possible under such conditions. Should the losers in this struggle (whomsoever that may be), come to fear being culturally overwhelmed by forces that see their way-of-being as a heresy which must be purged, we may witness a powerful turn towards political self-determination.
When political differences become irreconcilable, the only (non-violent) alternative might come to be seen to lie with the fissuring of political union.
- New NATO Strategy Deems China #2 Enemy Behind Russia Over Next Decade
New NATO Strategy Deems China #2 Enemy Behind Russia Over Next Decade
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 23:45NATO has previewed a new study that calls for major reform and provides a proposed outline for its future long term strategy entitled “NATO 2030 – United for a New Era”. The report is raising eyebrows given its focus on the rise of China, which it says should be considered the Atlantic military alliance’s number two enemy and rival over the next decade.
The report compiled by a committee of NATO exports advances 138 proposals to reform NATO along these lines. According to one NATO diplomat cited in Reuters, “China is no longer the benign trading partner that the West had hoped for. It is the rising power of our century and NATO must adapt.”
Specifically it calls for NATO maintaining a decisive technological edge over China, which itself has been undergoing a major reform of its military and intelligence capabilities, rapidly modernizing both under a long term plan of President Xi Jinping.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said just ahead of the report’s publication, “China is investing massively in new weapons. It is coming closer to us, from the Arctic to Africa. China does not share our values… and tries to intimidate other countries,” according to statements at a Monday news conference.
Yet Stoltenberg also tried to temper what Beijing will no doubt see as a hostile posture, also saying at the briefing, “China is not our adversary. Its rise presents an important opportunity for our economies and trade. We need to engage with China on issues such as arms control and climate change. But there are also important challenges to our security.”
An unnamed official source in Brussels was further cited in Russia’s TASS as saying, “The report recommends establishing special structures, which must guarantee NATO’s technical dominance over China and protect the member states from China establishing an economic control over their strategic sectors of economy.”
The report also “notes the necessity to prevent China from establishing control over the key commodity sources, including new-generation ones, in the third countries, in Africa in particular,” according to the TASS source. Lithium was offered was one prime example as essential to development of advanced electronics and communications in the future.
Chinese PLA Army during joint exercises in Russia, 2018. Via AP Meanwhile on Tuesday China responded preemptively to the much anticipated report, with the Foreign Ministry saying Europe and America’s “coercive diplomacy” are damaging good relations. The statement underscored that China’s defense spending per capita is actually lower than many countries within NATO.
“The common values of all mankind that China advocates and adheres to are peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom. I don’t know if these six words can also be recognized by NATO member states. Is this a value that we should hold together?” FM spokesperson Hua Chunying asserted.
- Politics, Positivism, & The Science Of Tyranny
Politics, Positivism, & The Science Of Tyranny
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 23:25Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
– Philip K. Dick
There is nothing worse than the politicization of science. If there is one thing that 2020 has taught us it is that we live within this basic framework.
Science is nothing today if not political.
But it’s beyond even that. This is a framework of experts in all major intellectual arenas, be it economics, psychology, diet or health. And they have all been tied in some basic way to public safety and the role of government in administering that goal, supposedly for the betterment of all of us.
Now, the use of science and the scientific method is perfectly applicable when illuminating underlying physical laws of the universe. But it is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
And politics is nothing if not obsessed with ends rather than means.
The problem, however, is that positivism, of which the scientific method is the implementation of said philosophy, ultimately has limited application in the real world.
This is because it rejects the illumination of truth through the use of intellect and logic, relying solely on experience.
Because positivism cannot create hypotheses, only test them. The process of generating hypotheses is known as a priori — the deriving of knowledge from that which has come before, some but not all of which derived from the results of positivist methodology, i.e. experiment and experience.
A priori arguments rely on intellectual rigor and logic to produce hypotheses based on what is known. Experimentation, via positivism, i.e. the scientific method, is then used to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ said hypothesis.
From Theory to Theorem
To give an example. The Gibbs Free Energy equation was derived from an a priori set of postulates built on the proven theorems through which mathematics were derived.
In short, we built math through logic and reason, a priori, and men like Gibbs used those mathematical tools to derive their equations which govern the way matter interacts.
Where positivism comes in is in testing Gibbs’ equation to see if it, indeed, holds up to scrutiny. And under very specific boundary conditions it does.
Theory? A priori. Practice and application? Positivism.
This distinction is truly the most important thing that needs to be interjected back into our political discourse. Hell, I’d like it to come back into our scientific discourse, c.f. the nonsense about dark matter, global warming etc.
The problem we have today with modern liberalism, especially those in the sciences, is this misapplication of positivism to subjects where variables are explicitly beyond its ability to control for.
This is why appeals to ‘believe all scientists’ and ‘science has spoken’ are, at best, specious, even if they have the veneer of truth to them. Because when you set up an experiment without proper controls none of the conclusions you draw from it are defensible.
They may point you to inquire further, certainly, and that is an unqualified good thing in the search for truth. But it cannot be a bludgeon by which that search for truth ends simply because someone got their intellectual cookie either.
In the down and dirty world of politics hastily drawn conclusions from poorly-controlled ‘science’ can be used to write really provocative headlines capable of swaying public opinion.
Again, I point you to both theories about dark matter and global warming.
Because we live in an age of experts it is easy to do this and create both mass hysteria as well as arm marginally if not wholly untrained people with bad arguments about how to craft policy.
Worse, now we’ve unleashed them on Twitter to ensure no real conversation is possible.
Manufacturing Consent
Listen very carefully to most political arguments that start with, “the data suggests” or “experts say” and what you most likely will hear is someone talking out of their ass but appearing to have facts on their side.
Because using positivism in the social sciences is just inappropriate. In medicine it’s the great frontier and by definition is difficult to get any kind of definitive answer from.
Once you’ve done real science, like I have, and have had your ass kicked by simple systems like an electroplating bath or a groundwater sample you realize that our knowledge of the subtle chemistry of human beings is at best, hubris.
So, undergirding any policy discussion with “what the science says” isn’t just dishonest it’s dangerous.
Because, in essence, it’s all a giant appeal to authority logical fallacy. My argument is right because He said so. The whole of ‘science as policy’ industry is nothing more than that.
And when you factor in the corrupting nature of government funding of science picking winners and losers for grant money, you really have to question what it is you think you know about just about everything you’ve ever been told.
Now, I’m not being reductionist here in saying we shouldn’t use ‘science’ no matter how specious to inform policy.
Quite the contrary. I accept that politics has to deal with time pressures after all, certainly in a fluid situation like a pandemic. But, at the same time, we have to be cognizant of its limitations and use it only to support basic human rights principles.
Conversely, that means we explicitly don’t use them as an excuse to trample human rights out of fear, ignorance or good ol’ fashioned opportunity.
Politics is where the philosophy and science meet and, at times, explode.
For more than 100 years Progressives and ‘leftists’ of various stripes have appealed to science to engineer a better society through the misapplication of the scientific method to build their arguments.
They have pursued this to the exclusion of all other considerations to ‘prove’ to the world that the community as a whole is always bettered by the suppression of the individual through shared policy goals and ill-defined/ever expanding definitions of human rights.
And because they are driven ideologically and not intellectually they ignore any and all failures of the policies adopted in the name of their stated goals.
Black Communist Swans
The former U.S.S.R. was the original ‘technocracy’ built on these ideas. Today’s leftists still think it got a bad rap. It’s pathetic.
But they can’t give it up because they just know that if they run just one more experiment with slightly different rules, controlling these variables this time, the outcome will be different.
Welcome to the arguments of the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It’s no different than the Cultural one or the Bolshevik one or the French one.
This is a fundamental misapplication of positivist thinking: asserting your hypothesis is correct when the ‘data’ tells you it’s wrong. You don’t get to keep back-fitting the data to fit the hypothesis and call that proof.
That’s the absolute antithesis of ‘science.’
And even then, the data is clear. Communism doesn’t work.
But I know that because Mises rigorously deconstructed all forms of collectivism a priori in his seminal work, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis published in 1922.
The 20th century experiments in communism and other flavors of socialism all support Mises’ conclusions, again derived a priori from first principles of human behavior. Do we really need another one?
Communism — and all forms of collectivism — destroys capital, wastes time and its adherents kill millions in their quest to find the perfect system. But they are chasing their own tails begging a question that was already answered a priori.
There really was a black swan on the horizon.
If not for the vast mineral wealth in the form of oil and gas the U.S.S.R. wouldn’t have lasted half as long as it did. And even then all it took was an oil price war in the 1980’s to bring it down.
FYI, there’s a lesson in there for other nakedly tyrannical petrostates, including those enlightened ones in Scandinavia. When the oil runs out Norwegians I hope you have something else to export other than lutefisk.
While here in the U.S. a similar technocracy was built slowly through the corruption of the institutions of education, politics and culture, all using the same positivist arguments.
But ‘Science’ Says…
Modern leftists pride themselves on believing in the rationality of science. Many going so far as to discount all religion and culture as nothing more than quaint customs of the mouth-breathing rubes in flyover country.
And with COVID-19 we’ve reached the height of this practice of imbuing scientists with a god-like knowledge of what we should do given any thorny political problem.
That’s why pseudo-intellectuals and midwits in white suburbia bought into the lies of Anthony Fauci, while ignoring the flip-flopping of him, the CDC, the WHO, and every other ‘expert.’
This science worship neatly bypasses politicians you don’t like to support whatever argument you want to believe. It doesn’t matter that it’s now just as much a religion as Christianity or Islam.
If the high priest of ‘science’ says masks are necessary on Tuesdays but not Thursdays then they simply go along with it because the alternative is admitting that your priests are just hucksters with fancy government titles.
It also absolves people of the responsibility of making the hard decisions. The experts have all that worked out.
Which brings me to what actually started this blog post.
One of these true high priests of ‘scientism,’ the straight-out-of-central-casting Neil Degrasse Tyson opined recently on RT about how disappointed he was with humanity over not coming together over COVID-19.
“I thought that when the coronavirus landed that we would’ve all banded together and say: ‘We’re all human and that’s a common enemy, like an alien invasion. We’ve all seen it in the movies. We got to be together on this one.’ But it didn’t happen to my great disappointment in our species.”
At this late date for a guy like Mr. Tyson to go on thinking COVID-19 was such an existential threat to humanity as an alien invasion is really stunning.
I thought this guy was supposed to be smart? Like really smart?
It’s like he’s forgotten that Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which I’m sure he read, wasn’t an operating manual for society but rather a warning of where this fetishization of official smart people leads.
I may just be some ‘deplorable’ boob living in the sticks of N. Florida, but last I checked more people are alive today than there were at the beginning of this pandemic.
Or maybe my understanding of math isn’t sufficient to handle a number as big as 7.7 billion.
Or that, according to the U.S. government’s population clock, a baby is born every 8 seconds on this planet and a person dies every 10. Now, with my admittedly only 3 years of college level calculus, I may not be as qualified as Mr. Tyson to judge the validity of 10 being greater than 8, so forgive my arrogance in thinking this.
But this seems like pretty strong evidence that COVID-19 isn’t a threat to humanity as a whole.
Further, I’m just a lowly degreed chemist and not an ‘astrophysicist’ like Mr. Tyson so maybe there’s something else I’m missing here.
The Reality Bomb
This false equivalence of an alien invasion we would all willingly fight is not the same as a virus with a slightly elevated risk of death versus the annual flu. This is the very definition of ‘not intellectually rigorous.’
In fact it’s the opposite. It is purposefully deceptive and manipulative emotional blackmail that should be beneath the contempt of a ‘scientist’ of Mr. Tyson’s stature.
He goes on further:
“I don’t mind political fights. Political fights are fine when you’re talking about policy and legislation. But you should never have a political fight about…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals,” Tyson said, adding that doing so is a “recipe for disaster.”
Now this I agree somewhat with, which is why I consider this more like Coronapocalypse: The Movie and not a true existential threat to humanity which required any kind of policy decision which sparked this political fight he’s crying crocodile tears over.
Because, and I’m sure Mr. Tyson would agree with this if he were a scientist, there is little “…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals…” about COVID-19 which has been properly discussed in the public sphere.
And yet very polarizing policies are in place depriving people of not only their rights, which he seems cavalier to, but also their future prosperity.
Since the ‘science’ has been used by governments assume a level of control over our movements and activities far beyond the scope of what the ‘science’ has shown. And since when the science isn’t settled shouldn’t we settle back on first principles to minimize human suffering along all vectors, not just the one variable, virus transmission, we think we’re controlling, especially for most people the survival rate is greater than 99.9%?
And even this position undermines the basic framework of human rights by placing some cost/benefit analytic overlay on society giving the social engineers more credit than they deserve.
On the best of days in the simplest physical systems, getting objectively true data from any experiment is a painstakingly difficult work. Reviewing it and assessing its validity in relation to known physical laws of the universe is even harder work. Thinking that somehow we can use this to craft global policy is frankly, prima facia evidence of psychosis devoid of empathy.
At best, this is the role commentators like Mr. Tyson are supposed to fill to keep us grounded in the humility of our ignorance.
But it’s clear from his positions Mr. Tyson has forgotten that basic point.
But what should I have expected from someone who continues to support scientifically unproven junk like dark matter, which we’ve never found any evidence of, and CO2-induced global warming, which openly denies the magnetic and electrical interplay between the earth and the sun on our climate.
And these are his chosen fields of study.
But this is what comes when one school of thought, positivism, corrupts both the science and the politics in a feedback loop of granted favors and the open suppression of a priori arguments.
Because that’s where we are today and it will get worse before it improves. Our society has become post-rational.
By that line of reasoning I was wrong in my opening thesis statement. There is something worse than the politicization of science, the denial that it’s even possible.
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Bill Gross’ Neighbor Calls Him “Angry Billionaire With Short Fuse”, Says Friends Offered “Condolences” When ‘Bond King’ Moved In
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 23:05Bill Gross’s civil court battle with his neighbor, tech entrepreneur Mark Towfiq – the two men are suing one another for alleged harassment after a feud over a garden sculpture spiraled out of control – continued this week, with Towfiq telling the jury (since that’s what this has come to) that he feared he was in for trouble as soon as he learned that Gross was interested in the home next door.
Describing Gross as an “angry billionaire with a short fuse,” Towfiq testified that an acquaintance working at Pimco had offered his “condolences” when Towfiq told him Gross might be his new neighbor, before regaling him with stories about Gross’s antics at PIMCO.
Gross’s lawyers cross-examined Towfiq as well as Patrick Boyd, identified in the Bloomberg report on the hearing only as the former owner of the home.
For those who haven’t been following the story, the two Laguna Beach neighbors are embroiled in a nasty feud with Towfiq suing Gross for harassment for allegedly blasting ear-splitting music from his state of the art sound system that reportedly drowned out the sound of the ocean and the Pacific Coast Highway.
Since being forced out of PIMCO, a firm he co-founded back in the 1970s, Gross has cultivated a reputation as a loose cannon who won’t hesitate to terrorize those whom he believes have wronged him. Court filings in his divorce told of the billionaire using fart spray and rotting fish to make a home he had shared with his ex-wife unlivable.
When Towfiq texted Gross to ask him to turn the music down, Gross reportedly replied that Towfiq must ‘drop the complaint’ about a yard sculpture Gross had installed, or else the nightly “concerts” would continue.
Gross’s lawyer, Jill Basinger, told Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knill that she aimed to prove Towfiq was “obsessed” with Gross and his girlfriend, Amy Schwartz, a former professional tennis player, “and has been stalking him at all hours.”
Basinger drew attention to the fact that Towfiq appeared to be ‘concerned’ about Gross moving in even before the billionaire had bought the property.
“I’d seen the news of how he’d treated his family, his employees,” Towfiq said, referring to the many reports about Gross (some of which were originally published by the Wall Street Journal). Basinger also brought up a lawsuit where another former neighbor had allegedly sued Towfiq, though apparently the neighbor had actually sued the city for granting Towfiq certain building permits. Towfig said when he notified Patrick Boyd, the previous owner of Gross’s home, about some construction related debris left behind, Boyd had warned him to clean it up because he didn’t want to piss off Gross.
“I had told him that he had left a bunch of pipes in the side yard and he said, ‘I don’t want an angry billionaire with a short fuse to be upset with me,’ or something like that,” Towfiq said.
In an affidavit filed with the court, Boyd said he was “alarmed” to learn that Towfiq had security cameras pointed at his backyard, which allowed him to spot Gross as he toured the property, long before he bought the house. “It was also a bit unsettling to learn Mr. Towfiq was keeping track of my guests in the backyard,” Boyd said in the filing. Towfiq insisted he only began taping Gross’s property after police suggested he “document” the loud music Gross allegedly played to terrorize him.
“Taking videos and pictures on my own property seems like a fundamental right,” he said.
Towfiq also revealed that he had been a PIMCO client for a few years before Gross left the firm, between 2008 and 2012. Testimony is set to continue tomorrow, but the fact that this case is still going on is almost as shocking as anything that’s been revealed so far. Gross is notorious for his puckishness and pigheadedness in legal disputes. It’s almost hard to believe this all started because of a garden statue.
- Iran Suspects Exiled Cult Was Involved In Assassination Of Top Scientist
Iran Suspects Exiled Cult Was Involved In Assassination Of Top Scientist
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 22:45Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
Iran continues to release details surrounding the killing of its top scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. On Monday, a senior Iranian official said a controversial group of Iranian exiles based in Albania could have been involved in the assassination.
“We have some clues but surely the ‘Monafeghin’ group was involved and the criminal element behind it is the Zionist regime and Mossad,” Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, told state TV.
The “Monafeghin” refers to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition led by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). The MEK is a controversial group widely considered to be a cult, and up until 2012, was designated as a terrorist group by the US government.
Rudy Giuliani speaks during a rally for the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Warsaw on Feb. 13, 2019. AFP/Getty Images For their part, the MEK denied any role in Fakhrizadeh’s death. The MEK released a statement and rejected Iran’s claim as “rancor and lies.” The group said the accusation was “nothing new” since they’ve been implicated in previous assassinations of Iranian scientists.
Between 2007 and 2012, five scientists were killed inside Iran. Although never officially acknowledged, the attacks have been attributed to Israel. In February 2012, anonymous US officials told NBC News that the MEK carried out these attacks.
The NBC story said the MEK is “financed, trained and armed” by Israel’s secret service. Later that year, in September 2012, then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton ordered the MEK to be removed from the US terror list after giving heaps of money to US officials.
The MEK started as a Marxist-Islamist group that was founded in the 1960s and opposed the US-backed Shah. Throughout the 1970s, the MEK killed scores of the Shah’s police force, and the group played a role in the 1979 revolution. After the revolution, the MEK was at odds with the Ayatollah and opposed the new Islamist government, staging attacks against the Mullahs.
Trump may only have seven weeks left in office, but he’s given his top advisers the green light to batter the Iranian regime—anything that doesn’t hazard a full-on war before Joe Biden is inauguratedhttps://t.co/zZnjbEPVIZ
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 1, 2020
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After being forced out of Iran in the 1980s, the MEK was welcomed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, who gave the group refuge at a military base known as Camp Ashraf. From the base, the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and sided with Hussein in the brutal eight-year Iran-Iraq war. For these reasons, it is believed the MEK has little to no support inside Iran today.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US government commissioned a report on the MEK from inside their former headquarters at Camp Ashraf. The report concluded that the MEK has “many of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.”
The MEK is now based in Albania and has a presence in France. In July, the group’s leader Maryam Rajavi held the MEK’s annual Free Iran conference virtually from her compound known as Ashraf 3 in Tirana, Albania. The event featured speeches from several former and current US officials, including President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, a MEK favorite. Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) were the only sitting members of Congress to speak at the conference.
US officials are paid well for attending MEK events. President Trump’s Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao collected $50,000 from the MEK for a five-minute speech in 2015. Although he was missing from the latest conference, Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton has collected hefty sums from the MEK. Records show the MEK has paid Bolton at least $180,000 for speeches over the years.
- D.C. Metro Faces Massive Cuts To Rail, Bus Service; A Third Of All Workers To Be Terminated
D.C. Metro Faces Massive Cuts To Rail, Bus Service; A Third Of All Workers To Be Terminated
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 22:25It’s not just New York that is facing draconian cuts to its mass transit infrastructure and workforce as the city slides into financial ruin: the country’s capital is doing everything it can to catch up. Facing a hole in the budget of nearly a half-billion dollars, the general manager of Washington D.C’s Metro is proposing massive budget cuts to rail and bus service that would take effect this summer.
General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said in September that without more federal help, big cuts would be needed. Since then things have only gone from bard to worse and as WJLA reports, overall rail ridership is down more than 85% most weekdays, while bus ridership is less than half what it was in 2019.
Among the things Wiedefeld is proposing for Metrorail:
- Closing 19 stations – Archives, Arlington Cemetery, Cheverly, Clarendon, Cleveland Park, College Park, East Falls Church, Eisenhower Avenue, Federal Center SW, Federal Triangle, Greensboro, Grosvenor-Strathmore, Judiciary Square, McLean, Morgan Boulevard, Mount Vernon Square, Smithsonian, Van Dorn Street, Virginia Square-GMU
- Eliminating rail service on Saturday and Sunday
- Having trains run only every half hour on each line. Stations served by two lines would have trains every 15 minutes as would Red Line stations between Silver Spring and Medical Center
- Closing rail stations early at 9 p.m. weekdays
- Reintroducing “turnbacks” where not all Red and Yellow line trains go to the end of the line, and only having Silver Line service run between Ashburn (when it opens) and Ballston
In addition, Metrobus would also face big cuts. Wiedefeld is proposing only having a total of 41 bus routes. Those routes would be longer, covering the same territory that 60 bus lines currently cover.
Wiedefeld said overall bus service would be about 45% of pre-COVID-19 levels, adding that bus service would actually be added on weekends to try to make up for having no weekend rail service. And although Wiedefeld has been trying to minimize the number through buyouts and negotiations with the union to not give salary increases next year, he says thousands of jobs would be cut under his proposal.
“We’re looking at roughly 2400 hundred positions that we have to eliminate on top of the 1400 that we’re eliminating right now in [current] budget,” he said. “So that’s roughly 3800 positions, almost a third of our entire workforce. So that’s extremely difficult.”
Metro has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in fare money from riders after the pandemic caused ridership numbers to plummet. Although Wiedefeld expects some riders to come back next year, he doesn’t think it will be nearly enough to avoid big cuts. He expects rail and bus ridership combined in the fiscal year 2022 — which runs from July 1, 2021, until June 30, 2022 – to be about 34 percent of what it was pre-pandemic.
Most of Metro’s fare revenue money comes from rail ridership, which is also the ridership that has been hurt the most by the pandemic. A higher percentage of bus riders have continued riding than rail riders.
Wiedefeld says there are potential ways the need for such severe cuts would be minimized. They include if a vaccine is successful and if Congress passes a bill to provide relief money as it did much earlier in the pandemic.
If passed the cuts would take effect July 1.
Wiedefeld is also proposing using $250 million in money that Metro had planned to use on maintenance for capital budget costs instead.
Mayor Bowser provided the following statement in a tweet:
WMATA’s deeply troubling proposal is another reminder of the critical need for federal stimulus to revive our economy and to preserve our way of life. Not too long ago with our partners in the region and our federal government, we put Metro on the right track to meet the needs of residents and visitors alike. Regardless of party or ideology, we must once again come together to save Metro.
Mayor Bowser Statement on WMATA FY2022 Budget Proposal pic.twitter.com/62OTG0B5og
— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) December 1, 2020
- One-World Currency Included In The "Endgame" Reset
One-World Currency Included In The “Endgame” Reset
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 22:05Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
The idea the world would be better served with a single “World Currency” has been growing and looms as a real possibility in the near future. Many people see this as a major part of the “endgame” or something that will constitute a needed reset to a global economy and financial system that has gone off track. Throughout history, before an economic collapse, the masses and society tend to believe things are financially stable. Only after the economy goes over the edge of an abyss and is in free-fall does reality set in. It is not by accident that blinders have been placed upon us but it is the result of distractions being thrown in our path by those wishing to hold onto their power over us. It is wise to remember that when things do become critical, those in power will not be kind to us but that we will be thrown under the bus without a thought.
Over the last one hundred years, equity markets have been a primary tool used by the public to measure the economy. In some ways, the stock markets have become a kind of switch the elites can push at any given time to energize the masses distracting them from the dangers lurking in their economic future. When markets rise despite warnings from negative fiscal indicators, the masses become optimistic. During every upswing of stocks the elites claim they see the “green shoots” of prosperity, however, these shoots seem to always turn brown and die. We have been leaping from one recession to another even though central banks claim they now hold the key to generating true and honest growth. The truth is the current stock market bolstered by easy money and stock buybacks is a poor reflection of the real economy and what is happening in many areas across a broad swath of the world.
History indicates that establishment economists trained and educated in the ivory towers of academia are perhaps the most useless of all analysts and perpetually wrong. Only independent analysts have ever been able to predict anything of value when it comes to our economic future and that is because they have the advantage of not being blinded by the propaganda and brainwashed by lies flowing from those in control. Time and time again it has been proven the appearance of prosperity means nothing if the fundamentals do not support the optimism. A bullish stock market, a high dollar index, and low unemployment mean nothing and are unsustainable if generated by false methods and fiat money. We have seen time and time again throughout history that fundamentals matter.
The markets cannot hide from true price discovery forever. The stock market with its boom and bust cycles has proven to be a false indicator of what is really unfolding. Manipulation by the central banks has rendered this indicator of economic health useless. The problem we face is the horrible options in fiat money, massive debt, and the growth of international businesses have all come together in an explosive way. The banking elites are positioning themselves to avoid blame for this disaster while the rest of us are being sold on the most elaborate recovery con-game ever conceived and perpetuated by those with the most to gain.
Magazine Cover Touting Worry Currency
Those in charge of our financial machinery have indicated to the public their desire for more power. This means creating a truly global centralized economic system and a highly controlled world currency framework dominated by a select cult of banking oligarchs. This would, in effect makes the rest of the human race their slaves.
Over the years, many articles have referred to a 1988 write-up in the financial magazine ‘The Economist’ titled “Get ready for a world currency by 2018.” It outlined the framework for a global currency system administered by the International Monetary Fund. This new system was and is floated on the premise that only by erasing all national economic sovereignty can true stability be obtained. It requires governments to borrow from the world central banking authority, rather than printing currency to finance their infrastructure programs.
This dovetails with efforts to create such a system under the total control of the IMF which should raise the concern of every American. We are hearing more warnings and witnessing a push to destabilize the dollar as the reserve currency by China and several other countries. It is also occurring as Orwellian governments float the idea of going cashless as a way to gain further control over our lives.
For years the IMF has been openly discussing the ascension of the SDR to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency. Many developing nations that are deep in debt are already asking for help from the IMF due to volatility across the world and the BRICS are pushing hard to remove the dollar as the world reserve. This makes it a question of when such a currency reset will occur and in its wake bury the majority of the middle-class and poor throughout America. There is no way around it, the elites are positioned and merely waiting for a geopolitical disaster or catastrophe so overwhelming that when the time arrives they can portray themselves as our saviors during the chaos.
American Dollar Constitutes Bulk Of Reserves
The demise of the dollar harkens back to when President Nixon severed its tie to gold. First, it’s crucial to understand that at the very core of our global economy is a financial system dominated by the U.S. dollar which has been deemed the reserve currency. The USD is unique in that it grants the U.S. the privilege of having a national currency which at the same time serves as the global reserve currency. This was solidified toward the end of World War II with the Bretton Woods agreement, which was accepted because the U.S. agreed to offer sovereign nations holding dollars a right to exchange these dollars for gold at a fixed price, however, with Nixon’s action in 1971, the USD became a fiat currency backed by nothing, the supply of which can be arbitrarily altered and manipulated by a group of unelected bureaucrats in charge of the Federal Reserve. This money system represents the most powerful tool on the planet.
The new world order and globalization pushed by many world leaders and the rich elite that tout “larger, more cooperative governments under one financial unit will benefit us all” feeds into the world currency scenario. Many Americans are oblivious to the fact we gain a great deal by our status of the dollar being the reserve currency by which all others tend to be measured. This means we have a great deal to lose if it is dethroned and stand to suffer the most if the dollar declines in value. Those who will be crucified are the middle-class Americans whose wealth is locked into or are holding long-term USD bonds thinking they are a safe investment.
Currently, a huge mismatch exists between the use of the dollar in the global financial system and the U.S. share of the world economy. This is why China, Russia, and several other countries that are acutely aware of this have been taking major steps to transition to a more multi-polar currency world. This is also why we should prepare and expect that in coming years the world will adopt a completely different global financial system from the one chaotically birthed in the 1970s and when this occurs the USD will lose its total dominance on the world stage, resulting in major implications for America. While many people see this coming, several opinions exist as to how it will unfold and while we engage in speculation, nobody really knows what the world financial system will look like ten or twenty years down the road.
Few of us who continue to cherish freedom can get excited about transitioning away from the USD and being placed under the thumb of the IMF or an oppressive nation-state currency controlled by a country like China. That is why many of us think the dollar will be ripped from us during a time of crisis when Americans are open to accepting any solution offered to them as a way to ease their woes. While people point to cryptocurrencies as an option we should remember politics plays a massive role in how this all unfolds. To Americans, the fate of dollar-dominated assets and their value when the dust finally settles should be a huge concern but most Americans fail to grasp the implications.
It is my contention the transition to a world currency will take a far greater toll on paper assets than tangible goods. While recognizing the flaws of the dollar and our current system I have come to believe the other fiat currencies such as the euro and yen hold even less merit. This includes cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Regardless, in the end, we should expect to be told and not given an option as to what is coming.
- Not Just Newsom: San Francisco, San Jose Mayors Busted Violating Own COVID Guidelines
Not Just Newsom: San Francisco, San Jose Mayors Busted Violating Own COVID Guidelines
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 21:45The mayors of San Francisco and San Jose both attended gatherings in violation of their own COVID-19 health protocols – and San Jose’s Sam Liccardo initially lied about it.
On Nov. 7, the day after California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) was busted dining at the French Laundry, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Yountville, San Francisco Mayor London Breed dined there the very next night with seven other people to celebrate socialite Gorretti Lo Lui’s 60th birthday.
It’s unclear how many households attended, but state guidelines at the time “strongly discouraged” social gatherings and capped them at three housholds.
“I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that everyone act responsibly to reduce the spread of the virus,” Breed said three days later, adding “Every San Franciscan needs to do their part so that we can start moving in the right direction again.”
Meanwhile, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo apologized on Tuesday for attending a thanksgiving dinner in violation of California health protocols.
“Eight of us representing five households sat around three distanced tables in our own family groups on the back patio,” Liccardo said in a statement, adding “We wore masks when not eating.”
Just one day prior to attending his family Thanksgiving celebration, Liccardo urged his more than 33,000 Twitter followers to cancel “big gatherings this year” and noted the importance of following safety protocols, even with friends and family.
“Cases are spiking,” he wrote. “We’re letting our guard (and masks) down with family and friends.” –NBC Bay Area
Cases are spiking, in part because we’re letting our guard (and masks) down with family & friends. Let’s cancel the big gatherings this year and focus on keeping each other safe https://t.co/oHFXb6DZ82
— Sam Liccardo (@sliccardo) November 25, 2020
When a journalist from NBC Bay Area first asked Liccardo about his plans, a spokesperson for the mayor said on Thanksgiving that he was spending the holiday at home. The next day, the Mayor’s office reached out to correct the information.
“I understand my obligation as a public official to provide exemplary compliance with the public health orders, and certainly not to ignore them,” wrote Liccardo, adding “I commit to do better.”
Leading by example apparently isn’t in California Democrats’ wheelhouse.
- "That's A Dire Warning": Dalio's Chart Hints At What Beijing Is Really Up To
“That’s A Dire Warning”: Dalio’s Chart Hints At What Beijing Is Really Up To
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 21:25By Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator
Another day, another stock record. The S&P 500 soared to a fresh all-time high on Tuesday, while the yield curve steepened on optimism about more fiscal stimulus and the imminent deployment of vaccines. The seeming disconnect between financial markets and the economy is kind of surreal, considering that 11 million people remain unemployed and the virus is spiraling out of control.
The fact that U.S. policy makers are still pedal-to-the-metal with monetary stimulus stands in sharp contrast to China, where officials have set their sights on an exit from loose policy. Consider recent events:
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Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, described China’s property market as the biggest “gray rhino” – an obvious yet ignored financial risk.
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Guo also pledged to impose “special and innovative regulatory measures” on financial technology behemoths such as Jack Ma’s Ant Group. The recent regulation changes have essentially put these fin-tech companies under the similar supervision umbrella as traditional banks to avoid excessive leverage.
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Beijing has allowed a number of SOEs to default, breaking the implicit government guarantee.
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PBOC Governor Yi Gang vowed to avoid monetizing government debt. In addition, officials have said low interest rates contributed to social inequality.
Clearly, there’s a sense of urgency to address financial risks and close the gap between markets and the economy. In the meantime, the buzz in Beijing is that the financial industry should serve the real economy and people.
What China is doing makes perfect sense in the context of the big economic cycle described by Ray Dalio. In his latest essay published Tuesday, Bridgewater’s founder showed that China is in the midst of a debt bubble and the beginning of widening wealth gap. Apparently, China wants to tackle both before it’s too late.
In contrast, the U.S. has passed the peak of its economic power, settling into the stage of money printing after the burst of the debt bubble, according to Dalio.
“It is in this stage when there are bad financial conditions and intensifying conflict,” wrote Dalio. “Classically this stage comes after periods of great excesses in spending and debt and the widening of wealth and political gaps and before there are revolutions and civil wars. United States is at a tipping point in which it could go from manageable internal tension to revolution and/or civil war.”
That’s a dire warning. Apparently, President Xi Jinping is trying to avoid the same path.
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- Watch: Obama Casually Admits His Drone Strikes Killed "Inordinate Amount" Of Innocent Civilians
Watch: Obama Casually Admits His Drone Strikes Killed “Inordinate Amount” Of Innocent Civilians
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 21:05Barack Obama is on his book tour for A Promised Land now four years after leaving office. During his latest interview days ago on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert he was asked about his vastly expanded drone strikes (setting a record far and above that of the prior Bush administration) as a preferred method of taking out America’s ‘enemies’. But it’s very well-documented that drone strikes actually killed just as many or more civilians than terrorists in the process.
The former Democratic president still can’t shake his legacy as the “drone president” given he still holds the record for number of ordered kill missions. Now it appears he’s simply embracing the label. This latest interview may have sealed this legacy – indeed it could be his own Madeleine Albright “we think the price is worth it” moment.
Obama defends his drone strikes, which killed hundreds of civilians: “The problem with the drone program was not that it caused an inordinate amount of civilian casualties, although even 1 civilian casualty is tragic. But the drones probably had less collateral damage.” pic.twitter.com/6SwXj7b52C
— Ibrahim (@Ibrahimpols) December 1, 2020
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In the interview Obama admits that saying “collateral damage” is basically the nicer sanitized way of saying “it killed people who were innocent and not just targets”.
So he basically casually acknowledged on national TV that he killed a lot of innocent people. And then this incredibly awkward line:
“The problem with the drone program was not that it caused an inordinate amount of civilian casualties, although even 1 civilian casualty is tragic. But the drones probably had less collateral damage.”
As journalist Eoin Higgins noted there was “Zero pushback from Colbert here as Obama defends his drone war in pretty revolting terms.”
And Glenn Greenwald, who spent years covering Obama’s drone killings when he was at The Guardian had this to say…
2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner explains his preferences for how to kill people, falsely asserts that — after some unspecified number of years of the bombs falling on weddings and schools — that his conscience was activated and he imposed greater controls. https://t.co/DMfxoEPwjG
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 1, 2020
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Here’s the section his book, where the former president actually attempts to present himself as the well-intentioned ‘savior’ of those victims he ordered killed:
In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.
Further into the interview he said that killing by “machinery” was becoming “too easy”. He says he had to impose what he called internal controls to remind the military and drone operators “this is isn’t target practice”.
Meanwhile, NatSec insider architects of Obama’s drone policies and secretive ‘kill list’ are baaaaaack…
No, I’m being completely genuine. Avril Haines was the architect behind Obama’s disastrous drone policy, which killed civilians and then dehumanized them as “collateral damage.” https://t.co/AwpkCezu5Y
— Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) December 1, 2020
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In the end Obama’s book and interview remarks on drone strikes are full of cringeworthy levels of self-justification and rationalization for killing what many human rights studies have estimated to be multiple hundreds.
- 109 "1 Percent" Days So Far This Year: What 2020's Equity Vol Says About December
109 “1 Percent” Days So Far This Year: What 2020’s Equity Vol Says About December
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 20:45By Jessica Rabe of DataTrek
The S&P 500 has moved more than 1 percent up or down on 108 trading days so far this year (109 with Tuesday’s 1.1% move), or almost half the time. That’s our fundamental benchmark of how much investors “feel” volatility, as any one-day move greater than 1 pct to the upside or downside is +1 standard deviation from the S&P’s mean daily return back to 1958. For reference, there is typically one +/-1 pct day/week in normal times. Here is an update for 2020’s count on a quarterly and annual basis:
- Q1 2020: 30 one percent days versus the Q1 average of 13 since 1958 (first full year of data).
- Q2 2020: 38 one percent days compared to the Q2 average of 13.
- Q3 2020: 21 one percent days versus the Q3 average of 13.
- Q4 2020 QTD through today: 19 one percent days versus the Q4 average of 14.
- 2020 YTD: 108 one percent days, more than double the whole-year average of 53 over the last 6 decades.
Bottom line: the S&P has only registered 100 or more “plus-one percent days” seven times including this year over the past +6 decades, or just 11 percent of the time. Therefore, we looked at what happens in December relative to returns and volatility amid these rare years of elevated equity market churn. Here are the results, clustered into 3 periods:
Period #1:
1974 (115 one percent days total, -25.9 pct total return):
- December: 10 one percent days, down -2.0 pct on a price basis
Comment: This disappointing performance came after another painful year (1973, S&P down 14.3 pct) amid the Saudi Oil Embargo and resultant energy crisis. Despite the Federal Reserve cutting rates in Q4 1974, the S&P still had elevated volatility (should be about 4 one percent days a month) and a negative performance that December. It was not until 1975 that volatility abated (80 one percent days) and the index rebounded 37 pct.
Period #2:
2000 (103 one percent days, -9.0 pct total return):
- December: 10 one percent days, up 0.4 pct
2001 (107 one percent days, -11.9 pct total return):
- December: 6 one percent days, up 0.8 pct
2002 (126 one percent days, -22.0 pct total return):
- December: 9 one percent days, down -6.0 pct
Comment: a slew of shocks that were both economic (Dot Com Bubble Burst) and geopolitical (domestic terror attack and international oil shock) created sharply negative returns and magnified volatility for three consecutive years in the early 2000s. While the S&P managed to end higher slightly in December 2000 and 2001, it had a rough December 2002 amid growing tensions with Iraq and a slow economic recovery from the 2001 recession. It took until 2003 (+28.4 pct total return and 83 one percent days) for volatility to trend lower and performance to start snapping back.
Period #3:
2008 (134 one percent days, -36.6 pct total return):
- December: 15 one percent days, up 0.8 pct
2009 (118 one percent days, +25.9 pct total return):
- December: 5 one percent days, up 1.8 pct
Comment: that unusually high number of one percent days in December 2008 contributed to the quarterly record of 50 in Q4 2008. That’s because the Federal government did not pass the landmark recovery bill for the Financial Crisis until February 2009, or one month before the market bottomed. Nevertheless, the S&P still had a positive return that December ahead of the change in power to end gridlock the next month in January 2009. The S&P also had a positive return in December 2009 after an especially volatile year as the Fed cut rates.
Bottom line: 4 out of the 6 years with especially volatile returns (+100 one percent days) saw the S&P have a positive performance in December with still mostly above average number of one percent days for the month. That’s a small sample size, however, so the greater message is that a series of both economic and geopolitical shocks usually lead to weak performance in December during these types of years (i.e. 1974 and 2002). While we recognize valuations – like in the early 2000s – are lofty, we think the current dynamic most mirrors the 2008/2009 experience. Yes, there was no pandemic back then, but there are finally highly effective vaccines on the way. Additionally, the Fed remains accommodative, and even if lawmakers can’t come to an agreement on a CARES Act II as they return to Congress, President-elect Joe Biden has the opportunity after he is Inaugurated in January.
That said, with the S&P already up double digits for the year (+12.1 pct), we understand why some investors want to lighten up. History shows that even if the S&P is usually positive during December in particularly volatile years like 2020, returns are mostly mild (+0.4 pct to +1.8 pct). But for those still bullish, the data is in your favor for a little more upside to end the year.
- Dalio: The United States Is At A Tipping Point That Could Lead To Revolution Or Civil War
Dalio: The United States Is At A Tipping Point That Could Lead To Revolution Or Civil War
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 20:28It was almost exactly ten years ago that we first predicted that the Fed’s “moronic” QE which has sparked an unprecedented class, income and wealth divide, “positions US society one step closer to civil war if not worse.” This prompted Time magazine to mock our forecast, although we doubt the author, currently at Bloomberg where pretty much every financial op-ed writer eventually ends up, is laughing today after an almost identical assessment of the current situation, if ten years delayed, was published by a far more “respected” by the likes of Time commentator, Ray Dalio.
In the latest installment of his ongoing series on the changing world order published on his LinkedIn page, Dalio finally turned to ground zero in what will be the conflict of the 21st century – class and power struggles – and mused if the U.S. is at a tipping point that could move it from what he says is “manageable” tension to a full-blown revolution.
“People and politicians are now at each other’s throats to a degree greater than at any time in my 71 years,” Dalio wrote noting that disorder is rising in a number of countries. “How the U.S. handles its disorder will have profound implications for Americans, others around the world, and most economies and markets.”
“It is in this stage when there are bad financial conditions and intensifying conflict,” wrote Dalio. “Classically this stage comes after periods of great excesses in spending and debt and the widening of wealth and political gaps and before there are revolutions and civil wars. United States is at a tipping point in which it could go from manageable internal tension to revolution and/or civil war.”
The founder of Bridgewater urged his readers to think about class issues that can become inflamed during stressful periods, as the struggle over wealth and power tends to be the “biggest thing affecting most people in most countries through time”, Bloomberg recapped.
“One timeless and universal truth that I saw went back as far as I studied history, since before Confucius around 500 BC, is that those societies that draw on the widest range of people and give them responsibilities based on their merits rather than privileges are the most sustainably successful because they find the best talent to do their jobs well, they have diversity of perspectives, and they are perceived as the most fair, which fosters social stability,” Dalio wrote.
We doubt that the pervasive cancel cultures that permeates US society today, or the ubiquitous central planning by the Federal Reserve coupled with manipulated central markets to promote a socialist agenda and to allocated capital and talent as the government sees fit, in the process bypassing capitalism, will allow US society to every again claim to be fair or merit-based.
Below are some of the key quotes from Dalio’s essay:
- “How people are with each other is the primary driver of the outcomes they get.”
- “The United States is at a tipping point in which it could go from manageable internal tension to revolution and/or civil war.”
- “To be clear, I am not saying that the United States or other countries are inevitably headed that way; however, I am saying that now is an especially important time to know and watch the markers in order to understand the full range of possibilities for the period ahead.”
- “The lessons and warnings of history are clear if one looks for them, most people don’t look for them because most people learn from their experiences and a single lifetime is too short to give them those lessons and warnings that they need.”
- “I cannot overstate the importance of class struggles relative to individual struggles. We, especially those in the United States, which is a “melting pot,” tend to think more of individual struggles and not give adequate attention to class struggles. I didn’t fully realize its importance until I did my extensive study of history.”
- “While I love that the United States is the country where these class distinctions matter least, people’s classes still matter in the U.S. and they matter a lot more during stressful times when class conflicts intensify.”
- “When wars—civil or external—happen you will have to decide whether you want to be in them or get out of them. When in doubt get out. You can always get back in, but you might not be able to get out.”
- “You individually, and those who are leading, need to have a realistic understanding of the circumstances you are in, the range of possibilities that exist given these circumstances, and how to make decisions to produce the best possible outcomes given these circumstances.”
- “You also need to be very adaptable in order to do the things you might need to do that are outside your current range of possibilities.”
- “You can have a better future if you put deferred gratification ahead of immediate gratification”
His full essay “The Archetypical Cycle of Internal Order and Disorder“, can be found here.
- "Superforecasters" Now See 90% Odds 200 Million Americans Will Be Vaccinated By October
“Superforecasters” Now See 90% Odds 200 Million Americans Will Be Vaccinated By October
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 20:05With Moderna officially filing for expedited approval from the FDA yesterday, and Pfizer following up by announcing early Tuesday in the New York morning, With vaccine newsflow driving trading activity for yet another week, the team of analysts at Goldman Sachs has produced another handy guide to new developments in the race for a global vaccine.
Like the last update, Goldman’s latest piece focuses on where the top performers are in the process, and which countries and regions have a step up in the race to ‘reserve’ precious resources.
One interesting addition to this week’s chartbook is a summary of the ‘outlook’ for achieving ‘widespread vaccination’ in different parts of the world, featuring notable quotes from Dr. Fauci and Matt Hancock (the secretary of health in the UK).
The team started with an update on the status of the three leading western projects, along with the vaccine from Russia’s Gamaleya Institute.
Before continuing on to some of the other top-tier projects that have released new data or information about trial enrollment etc.
Here’s where things stand in the US, UK and EU as far as vaccine makers and their projections are concerned.
The researchers also broke down the various supply agreements between governments and manufacturers.
In the west, the deals have primarily been structured in the form of purchase options.
For at least the second week in a row, Goldman analysts say, public opinion polling has shown rising “demand” for a vaccine – that is, more people are allegedly willing to take the vaccine as soon as it’s available than a month ago, as authorities attempts to shore up the “credibility” of COVID vaccines appear to be bearing some fruit.
Finally, a team of superforecasters consulted by Goldman see a 71% chance that 25 million Americans – presumably mostly health-care workers, cops and other stuff – will be vaccinated by Jan. 21.
The odds that these vaccination milestones will be delayed until Q2 2021 are seen as pretty small, in the low-single-digits, percentage-wise. Meanwhile, the odds that 200 million Americans will be vaccinated by the start of Q4 are supposedly as high as 90%.
With so much still unknown, and companies like Pfizer and UPS scrambling to build special packages to ship the dry ice necessary to preserve and transport the Pfizer vaccine.
We’ll need to revisit these predictions a year from now and see how they worked out.
- A "Titanic Taper Tantrum"? JPMorgan Expects Bond Demand To Tumble By $600BN In 2021
A “Titanic Taper Tantrum”? JPMorgan Expects Bond Demand To Tumble By $600BN In 2021
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 19:45Two weeks we showed a concerning chart from Bank of America according to which after monetizing virtually all net Treasury issuance in 2020, the Fed’s monetization of debt in 2021 would shrink drastically, and as a result, “Treasury supply will significantly outstrip Fed purchases”, and this is even without factoring in the possibility of another major fiscal stimulus.
This prompted us to ask whether another “crisis” would spontaneously emerge in the coming months to greenlight another massive expansion in the Fed’s QE; and why not – after all we are now well past the point where there is even a trace of monetary prudence with global central banks set to double their balance sheets in just two years :
But let’s (naively) assume there are no major changes to the Fed’s current monetization of $80BN in Treasurys every month. What does that mean for supply and demand for both Treasurys and the broader bond universe, and by extension, equilibrium bond prices?
To answer that question, JPMorgan quant Nick Panigirtzoglou looked at bond supply and demand in 2021 and projected that while there will be a substantial decline in global bond supply next year, he anticipates an even more dramatic drop in bond demand, largely driven by a reduction in G4 central bank purchases.
Starting with supply, in 2021 JPMorgan sees bond supply declining by just over $1 trillion “largely due to a decline in spread product supply where our credit strategists see an effective halving of net issuance in US HG corporate bonds from nearly $1tr in 2020 to around $450bn in 2021. By contrast, government supply looks set to decline only marginally, as a decline in government bond issuance outside the US is largely offset by an increase in US Treasury issuance. This in turn arises from the fact that this year’s funding of the deficit came largely in the form of T-bills in 1H20, with the Treasury gradually increasing bond issuance from May onward.” However, in 2021, JPM expects a $670bn contraction in T-bills outstanding which together with the deficit are set to be absorbed by $2.8tr of bond supply, vs. $2.29tr T-bill supply and $1.75tr of bond supply in 2020.
Meanwhile, on the demand side, “the biggest shift this year has been the central bank QE response.” Among the G4 (US, Euro area, Japan, UK) central banks, bond purchases look set to reach $5.1tr in 2020, driven by the aggressive expansion in Fed QE in late March to provide liquidity coupled with the expansion of ECB purchases in early April. However, for 2021, JPM sees central bank QE impulse declining to around $3.6tr, largely as a continuation of the Fed’s current pace in 2021 will still see a reduction in overall purchases given the aggressive nature of the initial response. And while the largest US bank expects the Fed to provide some further stimulus at the December meeting, it expects this to come in the form of an extension of the average maturity of its Treasury purchases rather than an increase in the pace. As for the ECB, JPM sees a modest increase overall relative to 2020, expecting a €500bn expansion in the PEPP programme in Dec20 and another €250bn expansion in 2H21. Elsewhere, the BoE has already announced a £150bn expansion for 2021, while net buying by the BoJ should be around ¥30tr in JGBs. “Overall, this means we see a deterioration in bond demand from G4 central banks of around $1.5tr in 2021 relative to this year”, according to the Panigirtzoglou.
To be sure, other sources will also be a major supply/demand wildcard as follows:
- G4 commercial banks were the second largest source of bond demand in 2020 after central banks, with purchases of around $1.5tr. For 2021, JPM pencils in a 1/3rd decline in commercial bank demand in 2021, or a deterioration in bond demand of around $500bn to $1 trillion.
- Foreign official demand (i.e., reserve managers), as measured by the IMF’s COFER data, suggest that FX reserves contracted by around $310bn in 1Q20 as many central banks responded to the pandemic by supporting their currencies. Two thirds of this decline, or around $200bn, was reversed in 2Q20. JPM calculations suggest a continuation of gradual reserve accumulation in 2H20, bringing overall bond demand from FX reserve managers to around $20bn for this year. For 2021, a continuation of a modest dollar depreciation centred could see a gradual accumulation of reserves and the bank pencils in an $80bn increase in bond demand vs. 2020.
- G4 pension funds and insurance companies bought around $270b of bonds in 1H20, broadly consistent with an annualized pace of around $540bn and in-line with the previous year’s pace. In principle, the strong gains in equities in 2H20 could arguably have seen an increase in the pace of bond purchases. However, while the recovery of equities has helped reduce funding deficits of US defined benefit pension funds to a level where they are little changed YTD. Looking ahead, JPM pencils in a modest increase in pension fund bond demand of around $100bn in 2021 vs. this year.
- Finally, retail investors are currently tracking an annualized demand pace of around $340bn, which however masks significant outlaws in 1Q20 of $180bn, after which bond fund inflows reached nearly $500bn, broadly consistent with its average over the past decade. JPM pencils in a similar $500bn bond fund demand backdrop for 2021, which would imply an increase in bond demand of around $160bn.
Putting it all together, JPMorgan now sees a nearly $1.7 trillion deterioration in global bond demand and a $1 trillion decline in global bond supply, or around $600bn deterioration in the supply/demand balance for 2021.
Of course, less demand can quickly turn into more demand if the price is lower (yield higher), and according to JPM this deterioration in the supply/demand imbalance “implies upward pressure on bond yields next year of just over 20bp based on the relationship between annual changes in excess supply and global agg yields over the past decade, effectively reversing a third of this year’s decline.”
Obviously this begs the question of how much of the above is already priced in; alternatively one can also ask a market which has habituated to Fed intervention how much excess QE (or maturity extension, or yield curve control) is priced into today’s 10Y yield of 0.93%. Because while JPM’s sanguine conclusion that a $600 billion shortfall in demand can be offset with a simple 20bps increase in yields would surely be taken advantage of by the Fed which is certainly eager to steepen the yield curve to give struggling domestic banks some more bang for the NIM buck. And yet we doubt it because the moment the Fed’s unveils new forward guidance indicating that not only is more QE not coming but the current $80BN/monthly is set to shrink, we expect surge in bond yields.
Why? Because that’s precisely what happened in May 2013 when Bernanke unleashed the infamous taper tantrum. That’s when yields soared by 150 bps, sparking a cascade of VaR shocks as the market freaked out. Well, back then it was just QE3 that was being tapered: considering that the size and scope of the current QE is far, far greater, we can only imagine just how dire the “titanic taper tantrum of 2021” will be.
- GOP Plaintiffs Ask SCOTUS To Block Pennsylvania Certification
GOP Plaintiffs Ask SCOTUS To Block Pennsylvania Certification
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 19:25Authored by Simon Veazey via The Epoch Times,
The Republican plaintiffs who are challenging legislation that allowed mail-in ballots from all comers in Pennsylvania, today filed a request to the Supreme Court to block the state from certifying the election.
The state Supreme Court had dismissed the case on Nov. 28, overturning a temporary block on election certification issued by a lower court.
Challenging that ruling, the emergency application for injunction, dated Dec. 1, asks the Supreme Court to prohibit the Pennsylvania governor and secretary of state from “taking official action to tabulate, compute, canvass, certify, or otherwise finalize the results of the election.”
“To the extent that the above-prohibited actions have already taken place, petitioners seek an injunction to restore the status quo ante, compelling respondents to nullify any such actions already taken, until further order of this court,” says the petition.
The emergency application essentially asks the court to put a temporary hold on certifying the state election pending the filing of a full writ of certiorari – asking the court to review the lower court decisions.
The case was filed by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and others. They claim that an act passed last year by the state legislature that allows voting by mail without excuse violated the state constitution.
The state Supreme Court dismissed the case with prejudice, saying that the lawsuit had not been filed in a “timely manner,” since the act in question was signed into law on Oct. 31, 2019.
That ruling, however, appears to leave open the broader merits of the case – that the law, Act 77, requires an amendment to the state constitution.
In this screenshot from the RNC’s livestream of the 2020 Republican National Convention, Pennsylvania congressional nominee Sean Parnell addresses the virtual convention on Aug. 24, 2020. (Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)
One of the plaintiffs, Republican congressional candidate Sean Parnell, told KDKA on Nov. 30:
“While we believe that Act 77 is certainly a state issue, we also believe that there are very important federal questions nested within it. So what we’re doing is we’re looking to appeal to the Supreme Court on those federal questions.”
The petition, filed with Judge Samuel A. Alito, poses two questions for the Supreme Court to answer:
-
Can a state violate its own constitutional restrictions without violating the U.S. constitutional clauses relating to elections and due process?
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And did the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution “by dismissing with prejudice the case below, on the basis of laches, thereby foreclosing any opportunity for petitioners to seek retrospective and prospective relief for ongoing constitutional violations?”
The state Supreme Court said on Nov. 28 that the petitioners waited until days before the county of boards of election were required to certify the election results, which could “result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters” who voted by mail.
“It is beyond cavil that petitioners failed to act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim,” the court wrote.
Parnell told KDKA that it was a “Catch-22” situation.
“Had I filed it earlier, I would have probably not been able to bring the case into court because I wouldn’t have had legal standing,” he said.
“So they would have probably said, ‘Well, the harm that you’re alleging is speculative.’”
Parnell said that the case was not about whether mail-in ballots are good or bad per se, but about state constitutional procedure.
“Democrat or Republican, if the citizen learns that his law is unconstitutional, it’s our duty and responsibility as citizens to challenge that law,” he said, noting that he was being criticized by some Republicans for his actions.
The lawsuit is filed against the state, the majority Republican general assembly, Gov. Tom Wolf, and Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
In the state Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice Thomas Saylor issued a separate opinion agreeing to reverse the preliminary injunction. However, Saylor said he believes the Republican petitioners should still be able to argue their case about the constitutional validity of Act 77.
“I find that the relevant substantive challenge raised by appellees presents troublesome questions about the constitutional validity of the new mail-in voting scheme,” Saylor wrote.
Shortly after the appeal was filed, Senator Ted Cruz issued a statement in support:
#SCOTUS should hear the emergency appeal on the Pennsylvania election challenge. pic.twitter.com/mzwr4eaHR8
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 1, 2020
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- Facebook Says It Will Provide The "Authoritative Information" On COVID Vaccines
Facebook Says It Will Provide The “Authoritative Information” On COVID Vaccines
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 19:05No sooner did we just get finishing penning a piece about how the British Army is being used to fight “anti-vaccine” protests and vaccine “disinformation” – including by “work[ing] closely with social media companies” – than Mark Zuckerberg has also thrown his hat into the fray.
The Facebook CEO has said he wants to provide platform users with “authoritative information about Covid-19 vaccines,” according to CNBC. The company has “already reached out to the Biden administration,” Zuckerberg has said. We don’t know about you, but we already feel safer and more informed…
Meanwhile, “authoritative” is a great word choice.
On a livestream with Dr. Anthony Fauci this week, Zuckerberg said: “There’ll be a few important things that we can do together. We’re already planning a push around authoritative information about the vaccines.”
He did not clarify on how he planned on distributing the information, but if it’s anything like how Facebook informed its users on how to vote, it will be a non-stop bludgeoning of banners, alerts and messages that will completely override what little true “user experience” is left on Facebook, between the ads.
Recall, we also wrote hours ago that the British Army’s Information Warfare Unit is being deployed to deal with “anti-vaccine propaganda” heading into the rollout of the vaccine overseas. Some in the country have said they will refuse the vaccine and will do the same for the children. Others have called it a “mass sterilization program”. Other Brits simply “feel the Government is wielding too much power,” the Daily Mail noted.
The U.K. is also launching a probe into “vaccine disinformation”, including an investigation into (of course) Russia.
A U.K. Cabinet Office spokesman said late last week: “As we edge closer to a vaccine we continue to work closely with social media companies and other organizations to anticipate and mitigate any emerging anti-vax narratives and promote authoritative sources of information.”
We’re sure the Biden administration will do the same and anoint Facebook as its official Covid press secretary.
- Texas, California See Record COVID Numbers, SF Mayor Hints At Another Lockdown: Live Updates
Texas, California See Record COVID Numbers, SF Mayor Hints At Another Lockdown: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 18:51Summary:
- Texas, California see record numbers
- Cuomo says hospital capacity expansion a “top priority”
- France to prioritize vaccinating nursing home residents
- San Francisco warns new measures coming as soon as this week
- Denmark announces new restrictions
- The Netherlands sees decline in new cases
- US hospitalizations hit new record
- Vietnam halts international flights
- Ireland begins reopening Tuesday
- CureVac chairman says vaccine will be ready in Q1
* * *
Update (1820ET): We’re getting some more dire numbers out of the US, as cases look set to surge in today’s nationwide tally following a new record in daily cases in Texas, and a record hospitalization tally in California.
California has a record 9,049 patients hospitalized with the virus after only recently exceeding levels from July. Now that California’s hospitalizations are back in record territory, the state is already acting, moving more counties into its most dire ‘purple’ designation, while Gov Gavin Newsom hints at another lockdown. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed hinted at another lockdown, warning that more-stringent measures may be coming as soon as this week.
In Texas, officials reported 15,182 new cases, and 170 new deaths, raising the tally to 21,549 deaths.
New Jersey reported 90 deaths, by far the most in more than six months. The state now has 15,254 lab-confirmed virus fatalities and 1,829 with an untested but probable link.
Meanwhile, the CDC has voted on a protocol for prioritizing the distribution of the first batches of COVID-19 vaccines.
* * *
Update (1310ET): As coronavirus hospitalizations in the US hit new highs, virus-related hospitalizations in New York jumped by 242 in one day, the most since early April. There were 3,774 hospitalizations on Monday, and 66 virus-related deaths, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday during a briefing via conference call.
Cuomo reminded New Yorkers that hospital capacity is a “top priority” and that orders have already been given to increase the number of available beds as hospitalizations in the state surge. These include a backup facility on Staten Island.
New York City is urging older adults and those with underlying health conditions to stay home and refuse any guests in order to moderate the spread of the virus. City hospitalizations have doubled in recent weeks and are now 1,100, the highest since June. The seven-day average of daily reported cases has climbed to 1,685, the highest since May. A month ago, the daily case average was 621. The percentage of people testing positive continues to climb, to a seven-day average of 4.14%.
It’s evening in Western Europe, and Denmark has become the latest country to impose new restrictions that will hit the greater Copenhagen area and take effect next week. Denmark is struggling to contain the latest surge in cases, while in the Netherlands, right next door, authorities revealed that new cases dropped 8% over the past week, attributing their success to the COVID-19 measures.
* * *
As warnings about a “long dark winter” ahead intensify, with the NYT once again quoting scientists projecting death tolls and case tallies several times larger than what we have seen already, hospitalizations in the US have hit a new record high with more than 96k patients admitted to hospitals around the country.
However, even as daily tests now top 2 million, the number of new cases in the US is still falling, continuing an incipient trend that started just before the Thanksgiving holiday.
Source: COVID Tracking Project
Still, the alarming surge in hospitalizations over the past month would suggest that higher death tolls might be in store, as rural hospitals are overwhelmed by the crush of severely ill patients.
Meanwhile, the biggest news on the vaccine front has to do with Pfizer’s latest vaccine development: the company has officially filed for emergency use approval in the EU on Tuesday – after making the same request of authorities in the US last week.
Outside the US, Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered the country’s aviation authority to halt international commercial flights after health authorities reported the country’s first local cases in almost three months, according to a posting on the government’s website. The premier – who added that “rescue” flights bringing Vietnamese home from abroad should continue – instructed the Ho Chi Minh City government to quickly trace and isolate everyone who came in contact with those who tested positive this week.
Here’s a roundup of COVID news from around the world and in the US:
Ireland, one of the first countries in western Europe to return to lockdown in late October, began reopening its economy on Tuesday. Non-essential stores welcomed shoppers back. Restaurants will reopen later this week, as well as bars serving food. Bars that only serve drinks will remain closed (Source: Bloomberg).
Jean Stephenne, chairman of German biotech company CureVac NV, said he is confident the company’s Covid vaccine will be ready in the first quarter of 2021, and there is no reason to suggest its efficiency won’t match that of rivals. “We’re running a few months behind Pfizer, but confident on prospect for February-March,” he said (Source: Bloomberg).
- SpaceX Starlink User TOS Declares Mars As 'Free Planet'
SpaceX Starlink User TOS Declares Mars As ‘Free Planet’
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 18:45Authored by Mike Brown via Inverse.com
Starlink’s beta test is requiring participants to recognize Mars as a “free planet.”
It’s an unusual bit of fine print, and the implications go far beyond securing good internet on Earth.
SpaceX’s internet connectivity constellation Starlink, which began forming in May 2019, has started inviting interested fans to the “Better Than Nothing” beta test. While the final version aims to offer gigabit download speeds at low latency to anyone with a view of the sky, the beta is offering more like 50 to 150 megabits per second – hence the humble-brag test name.
But the Starlink terms of service, as spotted by Twitter account “WholeMarsBlog” and confirmed by Reddit moderator “Smoke-away,” require users to agree that “no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.”
Starlink’s dish design. SpaceX Under section nine of the terms, SpaceX explains how services provided around the Earth or Moon will follow the law as governed by the state of California in the United States. But for Mars, the story changes a bit:
“For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
The comments highlight one of SpaceX’s biggest ambitions for the coming decades: to send the first humans to Mars and ultimately establish a city by 2050.
To achieve that goal, the firm is developing the Starship, a fully-reusable rocket measuring around 400 feet tall when paired with the booster. SpaceX wants to send the first cargo ships to the Red Planet in the next few years.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, has commented before about the sort of government he’d like to see emerge on the planet. In a March 2018 interview, he predicted the city would operate on some sort of direct democracy. He compared it to the early United States, where representative democracy was most logical due to the sheer size of the nascent state.
“Everyone votes on every issue and that’s how it goes,” Musk explained. “There’s a few things I’d recommend. Keep laws short. […] Something suspicious is going on if there’s long laws.”
Not everyone follows Musk’s logic. Jim Pass, CEO of the Astrosociology Research Institute, told Inverse in April 2019 that he believed the determiner will be who is sponsoring the settlement. A religious organization could lead to a theocracy, whereas military types may lead to a more autocratic structure.
Like other features of the “Better Than Nothing” beta, it’s possible that Starlink’s terms right now don’t make it to the final version. The company is expected to start offering services in the United States and Canada by 2020, before moving to a larger breadth of the populated world by 2021.
The Inverse analysis – As with many of Musk’s projects, it seems Starlink includes some tongue-in-cheek references, too.
Another joke was spotted in the new Android app by Reddit user “joehalfrack.” In the app, an animated character called Dishy attempts to help. The easter egg, seemingly a reference to Microsoft Office’s much-hated “Clippy” assistant, is an example of the sort of references Musk likes to make, whether in his company’s products or on his personal Twitter account.
It’s difficult to imagine Starlink’s terms trumping international laws and treaties, but if the clause was designed to draw attention to the service it worked — how many other satellite broadband providers do you know that have people sharing their terms of service on Twitter?
- How Many COVID-19 Vaccines Has Trump's Operation Warpspeed Secured?
How Many COVID-19 Vaccines Has Trump’s Operation Warpspeed Secured?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/01/2020 – 18:25Moderna has reported some more good news from its trials, stating that its Covid-19 vaccine candidate has a final efficacy of just over 94 percent with nobody who received it during trials falling severely ill. That has paved the way for the company to apply for emergency usage authorization in the U.S. and Europe. That puts Moderna around a week behind Pfizer and BioNTech who already took that step with their own vaccine that emerged from trials with an efficacy of 95 percent.
With the pandemic worsening and the race to roll out the first vaccine heating up, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that governments around the world have already reserved close to 10 billion doses before a single candidate has even reached the market. 2.6 billion further doses are under negotiation or reserved as optional expansions of existing deals. The findings come from Duke University who have been aggregating and analyzing publicly available data on vaccine procurement and manufacturing.
The research shows that the U.S. had secured 1.01 billion doses from six different companies up to November 20 which represents the highest quantity of any government apart from India which has made agreements for 1.6 billion.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna both account for 100 million U.S. doses each while the U.S. is also set for 500 million doses of the vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.
It offers 70 percent protection according to trials, though it is believed this can be increased to 90 percent by tweaking the dose. The rest of the U.S. supply is made up of candidates that have not reported detailed testing results and it includes vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and Sanofi-GSK.
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