Jul 09

Today’s News 9th July 2020

  • 83% Of German Firms With International Exposure Warn of Collapsing Revenues 
    83% Of German Firms With International Exposure Warn of Collapsing Revenues 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/09/2020 – 02:45

    Germany eased strict social distancing restrictions on April 20 and started the process of reopening its economy as the virus pandemic curve flatten. However, the consequence of closing businesses and forcing people to stay home, along with shutdowns of international commerce, resulted in a deep recession in the first half of the year for the exporting nation. 

    A new survey via the German Chambers of Commerce (reported by Reuters) said 83% of domestic firms with high international exposure had experienced a collapse in revenues. Many of these firms, about 93% of respondents, said the global economy could improve in 2021 or beyond. 

    The survey is an eye-opener for Europe’s largest economy, and one of the largest exporting nations in the world, suggesting a global economic recovery in the shape of a “V” is not feasible for the back half of 2020. About 15% of the 3,300 companies surveyed said their annual turnover is expected to be halved. 

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    It was noted the impact of the virus-induced downturn, whereas at the start of the pandemic, crushed travel and tourism, has now impacted other sectors and rippled through the economy in the form of a demand shock. 

    Fifty-nine percent of respondents this month (July) warned of slumping demand for their products and services, up from 57% in April. 

    Under such conditions, firms are unwilling to invest – more than half of the respondents said they’re cutting CapEx abroad, compared with 35% in April.

    We noted on Tuesday, global CapEx is expected to be slashed, on average, 12%, which is much larger than the 11.3% decline during the global financial crisis in 2008-09. Global capital expenditure weakness suggests a weak recovery is ahead.

    German Chambers of Industry and Commerce released a report on Wednesday indicating exports will drop by 15% in 2020 with a slight recovery in 2021. 

    The German government has unveiled a $146 billion stimulus package to jump-start the severely damaged economy. However, it appears the recovery, so far, has been a dead cat bounce that will not revert to 2019 growth activity levels for the next several years, or longer… 

    German industrial production has a long ways to go… 

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    So what must be done to supercharge a recovery? Well, we offer insight here. 

  • Turkey To Hold Massive Naval Exercise Off Libyan Coast In 'Message To Egypt'
    Turkey To Hold Massive Naval Exercise Off Libyan Coast In ‘Message To Egypt’

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/09/2020 – 02:00

    Via AlMasdarNews.com,

    In a noticeable step in terms of timing and location, the Turkish Navy announced that it would soon conduct massive naval exercises off the Libyan coast. Turkish media quoted the navy as saying that the expected maneuvers would be called “Naftex”, and would take place off the Libyan coast in 3 different regions, and each would bear a special name, which is “Barbaros”, “Targot Rais” and “Chaka Bay”.

    Furthermore, the Turkey-based Yeni Safak newspaper revealed that the military exercises will take place imminently, and that they are training in anticipation of any war in the eastern Mediterranean, in addition to what has been described as escalating tensions in Libya between Egypt and Turkey.

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    Commenting on the Turkish military maneuvers off the coast of Libya, Egyptian military expert Major General Samir Ragheb said that it is a dangerous diplomatic message called “battleship diplomacy”.

    Ragheb said in an interview with RT Arabic this week that the Turkish military maneuvers are sending a stern warning to Ankara’s enemies that they are willing to use its armed forces to combat any threat.

    The Egyptian military expert considered that these maneuvers came in response to the destruction of the Turkish air defense system at the Al-Watiyah military base south of the Libyan capital, Tripoli last week.

    In particular, Ragheb believes Turkey is sending a message to Egypt, who is currently watching the events in Libya very closely, especially at the Sirte front in the north-central part of the country.

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    The Egyptian military expert said that the Turkish naval exercises along the Libyan coast is not a surprise because Ankara is trying to scare its enemies.

    He added that these naval exercises will not influence Egypt’s decision about Sirte and Al-Jafra, pointing out that they remain “red lines” for Cairo.

  • The Great Race Bait: Don't Fall For It Conservative America
    The Great Race Bait: Don’t Fall For It Conservative America

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 23:45

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    Isn’t it odd that the political left claims to be so adamantly opposed to racism, yet they are the first people in the room to make generalizations based on race? Maybe it’s not so odd, at least when you consider the history of social justice movements and the people who fund them. There is power to be had in creating a “race war” narrative, and the chaos surrounding such a conflict could be easily exploited. By making everything about race, the political left is perhaps unwittingly serving the interests of the very wealthy elites they claim to despise.

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    As I predicted in my article ‘Order Out Of Chaos: The Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost’ back in 2016:

    “When I mentioned in my last article the crippling of social justice, I did not mention that this could have some negative reverberations. With Trump and conservatives taking near-total power after the Left had assumed they would never lose again, their reaction has been to transform. They are stepping away from the normal activities and mindset of cultural Marxism and evolving into full blown communists. Instead of admitting that their ideology is a failure in every respect, they are doubling down.

    When this evolution is complete, the Left WILL resort to direct violent action on a larger scale, and they will do so with a clear conscience because, in their minds, they are fighting fascism. Ironically, it will be this behavior by leftists that may actually push conservatives towards a fascist model. Conservatives might decide to fight crazy with more crazy.”

    This evolution of the political left is not natural or “grassroots”; it is completely engineered. This past week a group of well armed BLM protesters called the “NFAC” (Not F#&*ing Around Coalition) marched near Atlanta on July 4th demanding the destruction of a confederate monument and trying to goad “white militias” into facing off with them. I don’t view this group as a legitimate threat, only a sign of things to come.  They do appear to be organized well enough and seem to have come out of nowhere, so much so that I’m rather suspicious.

    First, I would point that the media is perfectly on board with the NFAC and similar groups, calling them “peaceful protesters”. Yet, when conservative militias hold armed demonstrations, the media viciously attacks and accuses the right-wing of inciting violence. When BLM protested the death of George Floyd, the media called it stunning and brave. When conservatives protested the Covid lockdowns in Michigan that were destroying the economy, the media attacked them for “spreading the virus”.

    When BLM and Antifa announced they would be busing activists into rural towns, residents organized an armed security response. The protesters remained peaceful, and in some cases decided not to show up. The armed citizens were of course demonized and accused of paranoia over a threat that “did not exist”.

    The convenient thing about extreme left groups is that they have no principles or rules to follow. Meaning, they operate on lies and manipulation. They do not care about being right, they only care about winning. When Antifa fails, or they get caught in the middle of something nefarious, they simply claim they are not a group but an idea, therefore they aren’t culpable for the actions of a “handful of bad apples”. When the BLM or Antifa wimp out and don’t show up to a rural town to protest because they might have to face organized opposition, the media claims that the groups had no plans to protest in those towns anyway.

    It is clear who the establishment supports. BLM and Antifa groups have received millions in donations from corporate sponsors over the past few years. In fact, BLM was initially funded by organizations like George Soros’ Open Society Foundation as well as the Ford Foundation.

    Does this sound like “grassroots” to you?

    I believe the NFAC, represents new trial run in the engineered conflict within America. When compared to groups like the John Brown Gun Club or the “Trigger Warning Gun Club”, which ended up becoming a hilarious joke to most of the country, the NFAC is far more tailored and puts on a much better show. These people are being groomed as bogeymen for conservatives.

    The NFAC’s choice to protest near a confederate monument, as well as calling out “white militias” to fight them, is obvious race baiting for political gain. I have been around militia groups for the better part of a decade, and I can say with some authority that most of them are not “all white”. Liberty groups are made up of people that are willing to defend freedom; that’s it. There is no skin color requirement. In the NFAC videos I can make out one white guy among them (maybe their handler). Perhaps this black progressive militia should attempt to be more inclusive and a little less racist?

    The media’s soft glove treatment of the NFAC reminds me of the conflict in Syria in 2013. Remember when the mainstream media originally tried to present ISIS insurgents funded and trained by western interests as clean-cut and wholesome freedom fighters standing against the “oppressive Assad regime”? Yeah, that’s what this feels like.

    At bottom, it’s not the leftist mobs that present the biggest threat; these groups are ultimately a paper tiger. Instead, the greater danger comes from groups that are directly trained and organized by elitist or government interests. These are the groups that end up being used to trigger attacks, like shootings, bombings, assassinations, etc. And, it’s not the first time in US history this has been done.

    In my article ‘Militant Leftists Are More An Annoyance Than A Real Threat To Liberty’ I outlined how such groups tend to mutate into something more dangerous once they start receiving funding or illicit training from establishment interests. As I noted in 2017:

    “Government and elitist-supported groups, supplied with training and funding, are a greater danger. They tend to operate more like terrorist cells, using bombings, shootings and attrition.

    This is not always simply to instill fear or to achieve an actual political aim in support of leftist “values.” Instead, these groups are sometimes injected into the system as a way to inspire conservatives to overreact or to run into the welcoming arms of a waiting dictatorship.

    Perhaps the most effective example of the creation and exploitation of violent leftist terror was Operation Gladio, a false flag program running from the 1950s to the 1990s in Europe until it was finally exposed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Many of the leftist and “communist” cells involved in the numerous attacks on civilians during this period were in fact either manipulated by government agencies like the CIA, or they were created from scratch by those same agencies.”

    The method of using racial tensions as a driver for domestic conflict is also not new. As I mentioned in the same article:

    “I would also suggest research into more famous and violent leftist activist groups like the Weather Underground; a collective responsible for dozens of bombings and threats against government facilities. Perhaps the most suspicious circumstance of the Weathermen and their seeming immunity in many cases to prosecution is the strange story of Bill Ayers, a leader within the Weather Underground that planned multiple bombings but remains free to this day and is an influential figure among political elites in Washington.

    If you think that the racially charged rhetoric of social justice warriors today is extreme or “new,” just look at the rhetoric of the Weather Underground, which included discussions on “killing all white babies” because they were destined to “grow up to be oppressive racists.” This propaganda has been going on a LONG time.”

    I suggest that we are on a fast path to hard leftist militancy, and that this is being created by special interest groups as a catalyst for war. If the establishment can make the fight about race, then they gain an aggressive advantage over the narrative. Conservatives must continue to assert a non-race based position, and not be lured into allowing the political left and the media to dictate the terms of the fight. Atlanta is just the beginning.

    This battle is not about race, it is not about white vs. black or so called “marginalized” groups against the patriarchy, it’s about collectivism vs. liberty. It’s about socialism and communism vs. voluntarism and free choice. When I look at groups like BLM or the NFAC, I don’t see black people, I see useful idiots being exploited by elitist interests. I see Marxist pawns. The gatekeepers want to make it about race so that the real reasons for the conflict are obscured. We cannot allow this, and we must avoid the trap.

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  • Qatar Selling World's Largest Private Jet As Recession Bites 
    Qatar Selling World’s Largest Private Jet As Recession Bites 

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 23:25

    Qatar’s economy contracted for the first time in two decades in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a prolonged downturn in the Arab country, weighed down primarily by slumping energy prices and collapsed world trade. 

    As a result of the virus-induced downturn, the Qatari government has decided to sell its Boeing Business Jet 747-8i, one of the largest private jets in the world, with less than 1,000 total flight hours on the airframe, reported The Drive.

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    The Qatari 747-8i, with Boeing serial number 37075, was manufactured in Everett, Washington, in 2012, currently sits at AMAC Aerospace Switzerland AG’s hanger in Basel, Switzerland, the company responsible for outfitting the jet with a luxury interior. 

    The private jet entered service with the Qatar Amiri Flight in 2015, a division of the country’s Qatar Airways that serves royal elites and government officials. 

    AMAC’s aircraft specifications show the plane supports up to 18 crew and 89 passengers.

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    “With a master bedroom, guest bedroom, grand staircase, living rooms, private offices and lounges, general lounges, fully stocked galleys, and more, the art deco-inspired and somewhat timeless interior of this aircraft is extremely lavish, to say the least,” said The Drive.

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    The list price remains a mystery – though The Drive points out that a similar 747-8i, not outfitted for service, recently sold for $350 million. 

  • A Swarm Of Swarms: Toward Aerospace Warfare Model Of The 21st Century
    A Swarm Of Swarms: Toward Aerospace Warfare Model Of The 21st Century

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 23:05

    Written and produced by SF Team: J.Hawk, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson,

    While the phrase “system of systems” has entered relatively common usage some years ago as a reflection of the need to field systems and assets with complementary capabilities that will operate as part of a synergistic whole in their respective domain of warfare, in the realm of aerospace combat the United States is moving in the direction of the “swarm” as the key organizing principle of its combat paradigm.

    The US Air Force Future Operating Concept which attempts to envision USAF operations in the year 2035 places “interconnectedness” high on the list of buzzwords, and promotes such goals as “Global Integrated Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance” and “Global Precision Strike”, all being controlled from “Multi-Domain Operations Centers” whose ability to manage a wide variety of interconnected systems and assets would guarantee getting inside the adversary’s “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act” (OODA) Loop, a long-standing Holy Grail among US airmen ever since USAF Colonel John Boyd formulated the concept as a result of his Korean War experiences.

    Advances in communications, sensors, and artificial intelligence have meant that munitions have progressed greatly beyond being little more than bullets, launched at a specific target and then guided to it by either its on-board sensors perceiving some aspect of the electromagnetic spectrum emanated by the target, or by an autopilot navigating it and its lethal payload to its destination.

    The swarm approach apparently became attractive to the US military following the cruise missile strikes against targets in Syria, during which the slow-moving trickle of subsonic, non-maneuverable, but very expensive Tomahawk SLCMs was combed out of the sky by a variety of modern air defense systems. Evidently even the current sophisticated Tomahawk mission planning software is incapable of delivering the “time on target” response necessary to overcome local air defenses. On the other hand, an AI-enhanced swarm of smaller, cheaper munitions might succeed where the by now dated Tomahawk had failed.

    In response, the US military had embraced the “swarm” idea with a vengeance, hoping that interconnectedness and AI will deliver the sort of technological overmatch of any and all adversaries that currently does not exist.

    US Air Force and the US Navy have been enormously resistant to the idea of heavy unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) for much of the last decade. Many earlier experiments involving flying wing-style UCAVs such as the X-47 have failed to result in a deployed combat system. This hesitancy was driven by two factors. The first was the “fighter mafia” that rules the USAF and the naval aviation component of the USN, which is jealously guarding its elite status and which is not interested in “fighter jocks” being displaced by a bunch of kids with video game consoles controlling UCAVs. The second was the belief that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would live up to Lockheed-Martin propaganda and be that technological “silver bullet” in both air-to-air and air-to-ground applications, thanks to its stealth, advanced sensors, and the ability to share tactical information in real time. In actuality, however, the incredibly protracted F-35 development allowed for countermeasures to be developed, and secondly the fighter itself was found to have enough shortcomings to practically relegate it to a “niche” weapon system, a sort of second-generation F-117, rather than a workhorse to replace the vast fleet of F-16 fighters in US and allied use.

    With the F-35’s flaws now in plain view, the UCAV has been given a second lease on life as a means of rescuing the most expensive combat aircraft program in history from failure. Remarkably enough, the first air force to recognize these problems was Australia’s, which launched the “loyal wingman” project for which Boeing, a competitor to Lockheed Martin, is already building prototypes. The US equivalent is the considerably more ambitious Skyborg which is still in the conceptual stage, but which also is pursuing the same aim that is close to being achieved in Russia with the Su-57—Okhotnik UCAV combination. While the information about Skyborg is still scarce, once operational it will be procured in large numbers to ensure each F-35 could take at least one into combat by its side.

    USAF’s swarm principle is unlikely to stop there, and will also extend into munitions. The service awarded several contracts in the past couple of years to further the development of stand-off munitions that would be cheaper, longer-ranged, equipped with sensors, and interlinked, in order to facilitate their cooperation while in flight.

    The US “space swarm” so far is the least developed of the three, but its rudiments are already visible. The SpaceX Starlink constellation of small satellites that was advertised as a means of providing the entire world with access to wireless internet has also been revealed to have direct military applications. The US Air Force has acknowledged it will rely on it for broadband access for its combat aircraft. Moreover, if combined with powerful enough signal processing capabilities, Starlink offers the prospect of a global aircraft detection system, possibly even capable of tracking large moving objects on the surface of the planet, such as aircraft carriers. It’s difficult to imagine USAF and USSF would forgot attempting to develop a technology which was demonstrated for the first time with the downing of the F-117 over Serbia in 1999.

    Given the US military’s interest in reusable space-launch vehicles and developing the ability to surge launches whenever needed, it’s doubtful the Starlink will remain the only US application of the swarm concept in space. G_5 (A) – Done.  Sooner or later they will be supplemented by combat vehicles, likely based on the X-37 unmanned and reusable space shuttle that has logged an impressive number of hours in space, and whose payloads and activities remain a closely guarded secret. The recent tests of an anti-drone combat laser aboard a US warship suggest that such a weapon could eventually be deployed aboard X-37-derived combat spacecraft. While the small size of the X-37 means accommodating necessary power supplies to make the lasers effective would be a daunting task indeed, the absence of an atmosphere in low Earth orbit and the fragility of most satellites mean that a space-borne laser would be a more effective anti-satellite than anti-missile weapon.

    The dream of interconnected aerospace swarms extending from the Earth’s surface into low Earth orbit and beyond will encounter major obstacles along the way, to the point that perhaps it will remain yet another US utopian technological project aiming at obtaining permanent military supremacy.

    The first is the existence of the US Space Force, which will fight tooth and nail for organizational turf and control over space-capable assets. Ironically, the establishment of the USSF may undermine the drive toward integrated aerospace operations the same way as the creation of the US Air Force as an independent service led to the promotion of the idea of airpower winning wars entirely on its own, without collaboration with other services. While strategic airpower was a favorite among the US Army Air Corps leadership in part because, in the absence of a large land theater of operations against Germany, the bombers were the only means of bringing the war to Germany, the subordination to the Army meant tactical air could not be ignored. Once that independence from the Army was won, time and again tactical air support capabilities had to be engineered into various combat aircraft only after they became operational. One still remembers “not a pound for air to ground” that accompanied the creation of the F-15 Eagle.

    By the same token, the creation of the USSF means the existence of an organization about as interested in watching USAF develop its space capabilities, which it seems very interested in doing, as USAF is in the US Army having its own fixed-wing combat aircraft. And just as USAF prioritized air superiority and strategic warfare over tactical air support, so is the USSF liable to lose sight of the fact the most important aspect of its mission is the support of combat operations in the atmosphere and on the Earth’s surface.

    The sheer complexity of the goal of building a global swarm of swarms that links all the aerial and space platforms and munitions will also be a major challenge. It should be noted that many of the problems of the F-35 are actually software-based, for example the failed ALIS centralized maintenance monitoring system which USAF finally gave up on and decided to commission an entirely different system. Since US software development do not appear to be on a part with US military’s ambitions, there is no guarantee the US military will be able to achieve its end objective.

    This is not the first time the US military has bet on a technological advance to provide a “game changer” that would give it an irresistible advantage. The Norden bombsight, the nuclear weapon, guided munitions, were all supposed to deliver a similar objective. None of them really delivered what they promised because other powers responded in kind, and the technological capabilities themselves fell short of what was advertised.

  • California 'Utterly Failing' As 2 Million Residents Waiting For Unemployment Checks
    California ‘Utterly Failing’ As 2 Million Residents Waiting For Unemployment Checks

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 22:45

    Approximately two million Californians are still waiting for their unemployment checks from the first three months of the government-mandated COVID-19 lockdowns, according to the San Jose Mercury News which cites government data.

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    Unemployed residents are complaining of clogged phone lines and outdated technology at the Employment Development Department (EDD) despite Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) promising to increase staffing among other reforms.

    “I have done just about everything I know how to do as a public official to make things work, but my colleagues, my staff, my constituents and I are at our wits’ end,” said state Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco) in a tweet.

    “I know people who are on hold every day and can’t get a response,” said San Francisco resident Armand Domalewski, a workforce development expert who co-created a Facebook group for unemployed residents.

    The mounting claims arrive as some county and state government agencies are again moving to shut down an array of business activities as fears escalate that the coronavirus outbreak might intensify — a collective decision that could cause additional workers to lose their jobs.

    “I’m terribly disappointed. The EDD has let us down terribly,” said Rhonda Dias, a San Jose resident and daycare teacher. Dias was temporarily laid off and later returned to her job, but at reduced hours. “The website doesn’t work and you can’t get through on the phone. People have to pay their taxes. Then they can’t help us.”

    Over the three months of March, April and May, 5.01 million California workers filed initial claims for unemployment benefits and the EDD completed first-time payments to just 3.13 million workers, statistics compiled by the U.S. Labor Department show. That points to a grim gap between the initial claims and the first-time payments, leaving 1.88 million claims unfilled and suggests a mammoth backlog of workers who have yet to receive any benefits despite being out of work for weeks or months. –San Jose Mercury News

    “You can’t get a clear answer from anybody with the EDD,” said Laurie Nelson, a resident of Union City who has been unemployed since March. “You go week after week trying to certify your claim and get some sort of unemployment payment. If I hadn’t gotten loans from family members, I would be out on the street. I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent.”

    The backlog was already horrendous before the lockdowns which began in March – with 1.44 million unpaid workers waiting for checks from the EDD. By the end of April, the backlog grew to 1.75 million. Today, the backlog stands at just under 2 million.

    “These numbers show what we have suspected all along: EDD is utterly failing millions of Californians,” said Chiu, who added “EDD’s failure has real human consequences. Californians have depleted their life savings, gone into severe debt, and been unable to feed their families because of bureaucratic incompetence.”

    ““We continue to work around the clock, seven days a week to expand our capacity for processing this unprecedented demand for unemployment benefits as quickly as possible,” EDD spokesman Barry White insisted. “We are enhancing our technology systems to increase efficiencies, and have already hired or have offers extended to more than 4,000 new staff needed as part of an expedited mass hiring effort with the increased federal funding we’ve received.”

    The agency has promised to prioritize older claims from March and April, but gave no indication when the backlog would be cleared.

    California isn’t the only state to face unemployment woes – as the state of Washington has called in the National Guard to help process thousands of unemployment claims.

    This comes after state officials stopped unemployment benefits after they were tricked out of ‘hundreds of millions of dollars‘ in a Nigerian scam.

     

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  • Is Strzok Memo The Rosetta Stone Of Obamagate?
    Is Strzok Memo The Rosetta Stone Of Obamagate?

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 22:25

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    So much happens so fast in a world with a 15-minute news cycle that it’s difficult for a journalist to stop and breathe, let alone ponder the meaning of the latest breathless reporting.

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    As an example, it seems like it was months ago when the D.C. Court of Appeals ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, but it was actually less than two weeks ago. June 24 to be exact, but to Flynn it probably seems like forever. No word from Sullivan about whether he intends to follow the order of the senior court, or continue to stall in an effort to punish Lt. Gen. Flynn for his political crime of supporting President Trump. But based on his record so far, Sullivan can probably be counted on to drag his feet while thumbing his nose at justice.

    Whether it is the Flynn case, or the persecution of one-time Trump adviser Roger Stone for a procedural crime of lying before a malevolent Congress, the implicit reason behind all the over-the-top harassment almost seems to be to goad Trump into pardoning his much-maligned associates in order to create another fake news cycle as we head into the 2020 election. Nobody asks, “Did you see what that corrupt judge did? Or what the Democrat-worshiping DOJ did?” It’s always “Did you hear what that crazy bastard Trump did?”)

    It doesn’t seem to matter to the mainstream media that evidence has mounted into the stratosphere that Trump has been right all along about his campaign being illegally surveilled by the Obama administration. It doesn’t matter that Trump survived a two-plus year investigation by a special counsel and was cleared of any kind of collusion with the Russians. The Democrats and their agents in the Deep State know that whatever they do to harass Trump will be treated as noble and patriotic by the corrupt media, and that whenever evidence surfaces of their criminal behavior it will be promptly buried again.

    Which brings us to the infamous handwritten notes by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok about a White House meeting that surfaced in a recent filing in the Flynn case. Strzok had already earned a prominent place in the “Wish I Hadn’t Done That” Hall of Fame for his serial confession via text message of not just marital infidelity but also constitutional perfidy. But the half-page of notes released by Flynn’s defense team rises to the level of a history-altering “Oops!” Indeed, it could well be the Rosetta stone that allows us to penetrate the secrets of the anti-Trump conspiracy that stretched from the FBI to the CIA, the Justice Department and the White House.

    What we know about the provenance of the notes comes from Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell, who said they were written by Strzok about a meeting that took place on Jan. 4, 2017. The only problem is that the cast of characters in the memo duplicates those who were in attendance at the White House on Jan. 5, 2017, to discuss how the Obama administration should proceed in its dealings with Flynn, who was accused of playing footsie with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak prior to assuming his official role as national security adviser. Attorney General William Barr has gone on the record (on the “Verdict With Ted Cruz” podcast) that the notes actually describe the Jan. 5 meeting.

    If so, the notes strongly contradict Susan Rice’s CYA “memo to self” where the Obama national security adviser recounts the Jan. 5 meeting and stresses three times that President Obama and his team were handling the Flynn investigation “by the book.” Methinks the lady doth protest too much, especially now that we have Strzok’s contemporaneous notes to contradict her memo, which suspiciously was written in the final minutes of the Obama administration as Donald Trump was being sworn in at the Capitol.

    From what we can tell, Strzok (unlike Rice) was not writing his memo to protect anyone. He seems to have merely jotted down some notes about what various participants in the meeting said, including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Rice, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Strzok’s boss — FBI Director James Comey. Chances are, at this point Strzok had no idea his dirty laundry was going to be aired or that his role as a master of the universe was going to be toppled.

    But to see the importance of these notes, we need to transcribe them from the cryptic handwritten notes. Words and phrases that are outright guesses are reproduced in brackets. Speakers are noted at the beginning of each line. “NSA” stands for Rice. “D” stands for Comey. “DAG” stands for Yates. “VP” stands for Biden. “P” stands for Obama. “Cuts” is said to refer to summaries of phone calls monitored under a FISA warrant to collect foreign intelligence.

    NSA – D – DAG: Flynn cuts. Other [countries].

    D – DAG: Lean forward on [illegible, but possibly “ambass” as in ambassador. Others have speculated on “useless” or “unless,” which don’t fit the context, or “unclass” as in “unclassified” or even a name beginning with m. We just don’t know.]

    VP: “Logan Act”

    P: These are unusual times

    VP: I’ve been on the Intel Committee for 10 years and I never

    P: Make sure you look at thing[s] + have the right people on it

    P: Is there anything I shouldn’t be telling transition team?

    D: Flynn —> Kislyak calls but appear legit.

    [Apple][??] – Happy New Year – Yeah right

    The reasons why these nine lines are so important have been adequately explored by other writers on most of the relevant topics. Most significantly from a political point of view is confirmation that Biden lied when he said he had nothing to do with the criminal prosecution of Flynn. The Logan Act is a more than 200-year-old statute that forbids ordinary Americans from negotiating with foreign governments that have a dispute with the United States. No one has ever been convicted under the law, and Flynn was not an ordinary American, but rather the incoming national security adviser; nonetheless it was a central plank in the plan to give Flynn enough rope to hang himself. The fact that quotes appear only around the words Logan Act suggest that this was a direct quote from Biden.

    In addition, the order by Obama presumably to Comey to “have the right people on it” suggests that there was a political element to the investigation and that the president wanted loyalists to handle it. What other explanation is there? Who exactly are the “wrong people” in the FBI? (That’s a rhetorical question. Obviously the wrong people were Strzok, Comey and their buddies at the FBI and CIA who were wiretapping honest Americans and framing a president.)

    Finally, and most importantly for Flynn and his attorneys, we have a contemporaneous account of the FBI director assuring the president that Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak were “legit.” In that case, why did Strzok reveal in an instant message on Jan. 4, 2017, the day before this historic meeting, that the FBI agent in charge should NOT close the case against Flynn even though it should have already been closed because no evidence had accrued against him? If Comey thought the general’s conversations with Kislyak were “legit,” then why did Strzok tell another FBI contact that the “7th floor [was] involved” in the decision to keep the Flynn case alive. The seventh floor being where the offices of Comey and the rest of the top FBI brass are located. Strzok was ecstatic to find out that the case had “serendipitously” not been closed, and told his girlfriend Lisa Page, “Our utter incompetence actually helps us.”

    There seems to be no consensus among analysts about the context of Strzok’s notes. According to Rice’s independent recollection of the Jan. 5 meeting, only the principals named above were present. CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had already been booted out of the meeting after giving a briefing on alleged Russian election interference. It seems unlikely that Strzok would have been present in any capacity.

    Andrew McCarthy at National Review speculates that “Strzok’s notes were taken when someone later briefed him about the White House meeting that Strzok did not attend.” The New York Post concludes that the Strzok memo is “plainly Strzok’s notes of FBI chief Jim Comey’s account.” Certainly if Strzok were briefed by someone in attendance, it was most likely Comey. But Ivan Pentchoukov of The Epoch Times floats a much more interesting idea about how Strzok came to be in possession of the facts he recorded in the memo.

    “The on-the-fly nature of the notes suggest that he was either physically present or listened in on a conference call,” Pentchoukov speculates.

    Well, the Washington Post reports that “Strzok’s lawyer told The Fact Checker that Strzok did not attend the meeting,” and then suggests that probably means “the notes may recount what someone else – perhaps Comey – told him about the meeting.” Yes, maybe so, but there is good reason not to skate over the possibility that, as Pentchoukov puts it, Strzok “listened in” on the conversation.

    This is indeed heady stuff, as it is beyond reason to think that Strzok was an invited participant. The last thing anyone at that meeting would want is an independent account of what was said as they planned how to entrap one of the incoming president’s closest aides. Yet that does not eliminate the chance that Strzok benefited from some kind of surveillance technique to eavesdrop on the conversation, either with the knowledge of one person in the room or possibly with none. Of course it is scary to think that the FBI was wiretapping the White House, but they did it to Trump Tower, so who knows?

    It is the nature of the notes themselves that lends credence to this speculation. If they were written after the fact to memorialize a conversation Strzok had with Comey or someone else, there is no way to account for the brevity and choppiness of the account. Rather than just put “Logan Act” next to VP, an after-the-fact recitation would have been more likely to specify, “The Vice President brought up the Logan Act as one statute that could be used to prosecute Flynn’s dangerous dealings with the Russian ambassador.” And most suspiciously, there is no explanation for why Strzok would have cut off the end of Biden’s other contribution to the conversation. “I’ve been on the Intel Committee for 10 years and I never,” the transcript goes. “Never what?” the reader wants to know.

    Of course we can add the words ourselves: “Never heard of anyone being prosecuted for talking to a foreign leader, especially not if they had a legitimate interest in establishing relations with their counterpart prior to a new president taking office.” If Strzok were making leisurely notes while talking to his boss, or especially if he had gone back to his own office and thought it worthwhile to record what he had been told, would it make any sense for him to stop in mid-sentence?

    No, it wouldn’t. It only makes sense if, as Pentchoukov describes it, the notes were written “on the fly.” Certainly not with a tape recorder running, where one could establish an exact transcript, but hurriedly, sloppily, furtively. That would also explain why the handwriting is not exactly consistent with other known samples of Strzok’s script. Presumably, the FBI has validated the handwriting as Strzok’s, but does the FBI have any reason to lie about that? Hmm.

    Ultimately, if Strzok is indeed the author, we need him to testify under oath exactly what is in the notes, and how they came to be written. Hopefully the FBI, the attorney general or someone else will declassify the extensive redactions above and below the nine lines that were released. One has to imagine that in those passages, Strzok revealed his source for the material quoted, as well as confirming the date of the meeting, and possibly the reason for the meeting. He has quite a tale to tell — one that could change history.

    If there were even one Republican senator in charge of a committee who had the curiosity of a 3-year-old, it is likely we could actually get to the bottom of the shenanigans that nearly toppled a president and finally pin the “tale” on the donkey — the Democratic donkey that is.

    But Republican senators in an election year have better things to do than protect and defend the Constitution. There are fundraisers to attend, after all.

  • Hong Kong Schools Must Ensure "Patriotic" Content & Remove Books Breaching China Security Law
    Hong Kong Schools Must Ensure “Patriotic” Content & Remove Books Breaching China Security Law

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 22:05

    Things in Hong Kong have rapidly gone straight Orwellian very quickly after the July 1 enactment of the new national security law.

    As we detailed this week activists are busy scrubbing their digital footprints, including deleting social media profiles and chat histories, given authorities can reportedly pry citizens’ online communications from internet companies without a warrant under the law.

    But it’s not just college-age and ‘professional demonstrators’ and pro-independence organizers that have to worry, as now even schools have been ordered to review textual content in books. This means teachers and young students are coming under threat if they don’t visibly and “positively” conform.

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    Via CNN

    Hong Kong’s Education Bureau this week announced that schools must review their own long in use education material, including books in classrooms and on library shelves, to ensure that no content which violates the law is present.

    The bureau described this as part of an initiative to “positively teach” students regarding the new law. “In accordance with the four types of offences clearly stipulated in the law, the school management and teachers should review teaching and learning materials in a timely manner, including books,” the Education Bureau said.

    “If they find outdated content or content that may concern the four aforementioned offences, they should remove them,” it added. This essentially hearkens back to 1930’s Germany book burning days.

    And in a chilling statement which seems straight of a dystopian novel, the Education Bureau added: “As with other serious crimes or immoral behaviour that is not socially acceptable, materials should be removed and re-selected.”

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    Hong Kong has long prided itself as a city of free expression set apart from the overshadowing mainland. But it appears that’s changing fast, already as prominent anti-Beijing activists have begun fleeing the city, amid fears the national security law could be applied retroactively.

    “Hong Kong has some of Asia’s best universities and a campus culture where topics that would be taboo on the mainland are still discussed and written about,” AFP noted, and added disturbingly: “But Beijing has made clear it wants education in the city to become more ‘patriotic’ especially after a year of huge, often violent and largely youth-led pro-democracy protests.”

    Meanwhile, for the first time since Hong Kong reached its semi-autonomous status, a new Beijing security office has opened in the city, placing mainland Chinese law enforcement and intelligence agents there for the first time.

  • Selective Media Reporting Further Fuels Our Racial Divide
    Selective Media Reporting Further Fuels Our Racial Divide

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 21:45

    Authored by John Lott via RealClearPolitics.com,

    On Saturday, a man drove his car onto a Seattle freeway that had been closed by a Black Lives Matter crowd. The driver killed one person and seriously injured another after going the wrong way up a ramp and then around a barricade. Reports noted that police “don’t believe impairment was a factor.”

    Over the weekend, news outlets replayed the brutal hit, but there’s one thing you won’t learn from their coverage: The driver was black and his victims were white.

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    NPR linked this attack to other car-ramming incidents by “right-wing extremists targeting Black Lives Matter protesters.” They quote a researcher about how these right-wingers were “trying to intimidate the most recent wave of BLM protesters, to stop their movement.”

    The driver was a Seattle local named Dawit Kelete. But you’ll find scant mention of the driver’s ethnicity in mainstream media coverage. You might have more easily learned that Kelete was black by going to the Australia Broadcasting Corporation. The American national media also doesn’t note that Kelete’s two victims were white. You can find that out over at the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

    Among the few U.S. outlets to mention the race of the driver is Heavy.com. The rest of the news media seemingly would rather just have people assume that a white driver attacked two black protesters. Acknowledging the driver’s and victims’ ethnicity wouldn’t advance their narrative of oppression, so it apparently isn’t newsworthy.

    One case doesn’t prove a pattern. It could just be that while the American media knows almost everything about this killer, including his name, age, and where he lives, they couldn’t find information on his race. Possibly the foreign news outlets were just lucky to discover that information.

    Of course, the media outlets might honestly not view race as essential to the story. But their selective reporting of it shows that they think race is important when it involves certain races. The problem is that it gives readers a biased perspective, inflaming prejudice and creating stereotypes. 

    Research conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center, of which I am president, on all police shootings from 2013 to 2015 found that while local news coverage will often mention the race of the officer and the suspect, the national coverage is much more selective. While the evidence indicates that black officers are no less likely to shoot suspects than white officers, local news coverage of black officers shooting black suspects gets picked up by the national news in just 9% of cases. By contrast, 38% of the cases in which local news reported on a white officer shooting a black suspect get national coverage.

    The selective coverage creates the belief that white officers are the problem — they are the ones shooting blacks, presumably because white officers treat black suspects differently than white ones. Watching the news, you would never guess that the research found that black officers were just as likely as white officers to shoot an unarmed black suspect. 

    The media’s selective coverage has done real harm. It has heightened racial divides and sown distrust of the police in the communities that need them most. Now, with police sidelined and facing “defunding,” gun violence is rising fast in major cities around the country. 

    The media similarly seems intent on claiming that mass public shooters are disproportionately white and right-wing, when nothing could be further from the truth. While 58% of the mass public shooters from 1998 to 2019 were white (excluding people of Middle Eastern descent), about 75% of the total U.S. population was white. Middle Eastern Arabs made up just 1% of the population, but accounted for 8% of shooters. Of all the mass killers, 72%  have no known political affiliation or views – only 3% are known to be conservative or Republican.

    Race and politics increasingly divide Americans, and selective media reporting is largely to blame. The media, not Trump, is fanning the flames of violence. The destruction and the long-term harm that is being done to heavily minority parts of our cities is their responsibility.  

  • San Francisco Lawmaker Unveils 'CAREN Act' To Stop "Racist, Sexist, Transphobic" 9-1-1 Calls
    San Francisco Lawmaker Unveils ‘CAREN Act’ To Stop “Racist, Sexist, Transphobic” 9-1-1 Calls

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 21:25

    24 hours after Amy Cooper, the Central Park ‘Karen’ in New York City, was charged with a misdemeanor for making a false report when she called the police to accuse a Black man who was bird watching of harassing her, the always-righteous city of San Francisco is taking a stand against Karens (well mostly racist Karens).

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    The Mercury News reports that Supervisor Shamann Walton introduced on Tuesday the Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies (or CAREN) Act, which would make it illegal to “fabricate false racially biased emergency reports.”

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    Member of the San Francisco board of supervisors Shamann Walton

    “Racist 911 calls are unacceptable,” Shamann Walton, a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors, tweeted Tuesday.

    One example given by Walton, according to The Mercury News, was “a woman [calling] the police on a Filipino man stenciling ‘Black Lives Matter’ in chalk in front of his home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood.”

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    “That’s why I’m introducing the CAREN Act at today’s SF Board of Supervisors meeting.”

    The Act “will make it unlawful for an individual to contact law enforcement solely to discriminate on the basis of a person’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing the draft law.

    It would appear the main aim of this law in practice, since it is already illegal to make false 911 calls in California, would be to  designate the act as a racial hate crime.

  • Hydroxychloroquine And Fake News
    Hydroxychloroquine And Fake News

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 21:05

    Authored by Jeremy Gordon via TheDuran.com,

    The anti-hydroxychloroquine media has been full of the supposed dangers of hydroxychloroquine and its failure as a treatment for the virus.

    Does hydroxychloroquine work or does it not, is it safe or dangerous, and should we be using it as a treatment for the virus?

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    Here we examine the evidence for and against it.

    A New York doctor Vladimir Zelenko looked at treatments being used in China and Korea and gave it to 405 patients over 60 or with high-risk problems such as diabetes, asthma, obesity, hypertension or shortness of breath. In this high risk group he claimed to have cut hospital admission and mortality rates compared to what could be expected without treatment by 80 to 90%. https://internetprotocol.co/hype-news/2020/04/14/a-detailed-coronavirus-treatment-plan-from-dr-zelenko/

    Dr Zelenko sent a letter to President Trump urging him to issue an executive order to roll out the treatment which the FDA was blocking. Trump announced that hydroxychloroquine looked like it could be a “game-changer”, and thus the politicization of hydroxychloroquine began.

    Dr Fauci the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was supposed to be advising Trump disagreed with him and backed Gilead’s rival treatment Remdesivir. YouTube deleted a video of Dr. Zelenko talking about the treatment on his Rabbi’s channel and despite objections that there was nothing wrong with the video YouTube never reinstated it.

    In this YouTube video interview with Rudy Giulliani from July 1, which hopefully will not be deleted by the time you read this, Dr. Zelenko claims 99,3% survival rate for the high-risk patients he has treated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFwjY0qe7ro

    Professor Didier Raoult of Marseilles used a similar protocol to Dr. Zelenko without the zinc. His study with a small group using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin showed a fifty-fold benefit. He then went on to get similar results with a much larger group of 1,061 patients. Contrary to the warnings the media had been running that hydroxychloroquine would cause heart problems, no cardiac toxicity was observed and he achieved a mortality rate of only 0.5%. http://covexit.com/professor-didier-raoult-releases-the-results-of-a-new-hydroxychloroquine-treatment-study-on-1061-patients/

    The media quickly found critics who claimed that the only valid proof any treatment worked was a “gold-standard” double-blind clinical trial and dismissed Dr. Zelenko’s and Raoult’s results. Dr. Zelenko and Prof. Raoult both refused on ethical grounds to give placebos to half the patients in clinical trials and they defended their data as sufficient to show the treatment did work. They both stressed that the urgency of the situation made it necessary to act on available evidence, not clinical trials which would take months to produce results and be verified. There have subsequently been over a dozen studies which confirm that Dr. Zelenko’s and Prof. Raoult’s protocols do work.

    A study from the New York University Grossman school of Medicine published in May found patients given hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin at an early stage had a lower need for hospitalization than those who were not. The addition of zinc improved the results even more. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1.full.pdf

    “I’ll tell you what. If this is me, and I am me, and I end up getting this thing, I am going to want Zinc plus Hydroxychloroquine plus Azithromycin. I would want that treatment.” commented Chris Martenson, PhD, in his video series about COVID-19 where he talks about this study. http://covexit.com/i-am-going-to-want-zinc-plus-hydroxychloroquine-plus-azithromycin-chris-masterson-phd/

    Yale Professor Harvey Risch submitted a report of five trials and studies using hydroxychloroquine in the American Journal of Epistemology titled “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis.  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1.

    Prof. Risch agreed that, in an ideal world, randomized double-blinded controlled clinical trials would be preferable but in the meantime “for the great majority I conclude that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, preferably with zinc can be this outpatient treatment, at least until we find or add something better. It is our obligation not to stand by as the old and infirm are killed by this disease and our economy is destroyed by it and we have nothing to offer except high-mortality hospital treatment. Available evidence of efficacy of HCQ+AZ has been repeatedly described in the media as anecdotal, but most certainly is not” http://covexit.com/yale-epidemiology-professor-urges-hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin-early-therapy-for-covid-19/

    A Brazilian study found 4.6 times less hospitalization in patients who took hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin within seven days of infection. Professor Paolo Zanotto reported that there were “41% of deaths among those who did not choose therapy and were hospitalized against 0% among those who chose by therapy.” http://covexit.com/new-brazilian-study-shows-telemedicine-hydroxychloroquine-treatment-reduce-need-for-hospitalization/

    A retrospective study of 2,541 Detroit cases showed up to 71% reduction in mortality in early treatment with hydroxychloroquine azithromycin. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.06.099

    A retrospective study of 3,737 cases in Marseille showed a reduction of 50% in mortality without any adverse effects in the Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin group. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101791

    A meta-analysis of 105,040 cases from 20 studies in 9 countries found a reduction in mortality by up to three times in groups treated early with Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nmni.2020.100709

    A study of 6,493 patients with COVID-19 at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, showed that hydroxychloroquine helped to reduce mortality in hospitalized patients. . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-05983-z

    On July 3 a study by a Michigan team at Henry Ford Health System found that 13 percent of patients who were given the drug early on survived while 26 percent of patients who were not given the drug died. The study which included 2,541 patients was published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases and determined that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin provided a 71% hazard ratio reduction.

    “Our results do differ from some other studies. What we think was important in ours … is that patients were treated early. For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with COVID” said Dr. Marcus Zervos, head of infectious disease for Henry Ford Health System. https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext

    A statement from the Trump campaign hailed the study as fantastic news.

    “Fortunately, the Trump Administration secured a massive supply of hydroxychloroquine for the national stockpile months ago, yet this is the same drug that the media and the Biden campaign spent weeks trying to discredit and spread fear and doubt around because President Trump dared to mention it as a potential treatment for coronavirus. The new study from the Henry Ford Health System should be a clear message to the media and the Democrats: stop the bizarre attempts to discredit hydroxychloroquine to satisfy your own anti-Trump agenda. It may be costing lives.”

    Also on July 3 results from another study by Dr. Takahisa Mikami and his team at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The study analyzed the outcomes of 6,493 patients who had laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in the New York City metropolitan area and found that hydroxychloroquine decreased mortality hazard ratio by 47% percent.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-05983-z

    Many more studies in addition to those above also show that treating early with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and preferably also zinc is the key to ending hospitalization and death.  https://c19study.com/

    The trials that confirm Dr. Zelenko’s and Prof. Raoult’s finding have been mostly ignored or dismissed by the anti-hydroxychloroquine media.

    The trials that they have given attention to are those that supposedly show that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help or even increases the death rate.

    Statistics from the US Veterans hospital study (Magagnoli, 2020) showed patients who were given hydroxychloroquine died more frequently than those who did not. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v2

    In this study hydroxychloroquine was only given to patients who were already seriously ill and those who were getting better without any treatment were not given it. Predictably those given hydroxychloroquine did worse than the untreated group but those conducting the study claimed it as proof that hydroxychloroquine did not work. Professor Raoult commented “In the current period, it seems that passion dominates rigorous and balanced scientific analysis and may lead to scientific misconduct. The study by Magagnoli et al is an absolutely spectacular example of this,” http://covexit.com/the-definitive-guide-to-discrediting-hydroxychloroquine-based-treatments-to-covid-19-part-1/

    One of the collaborators in the trial reportedly received a $260 million grant from Gilead Sciences Inc. which produces the rival treatment Remdesivir.

    The US Secretary of Veteran Affairs Robert Wilkie, acknowledged that the drug was given to veterans at their last stages of life and added “We know the drug has been working on middle-age and young veterans … it is working in stopping the progression of the disease.”

    Another study that supposedly showed that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous and didn’t work came from a group that claimed to have data on hydroxychloroquine use for Covid-19 from hospitals around the world  The study was published on 22 May in the Lancet medical journal. The results were immediately disputed by one of the Australian hospitals from which Surgisphere, the company which supplied the data claimed to have obtained it.

    Following this a group of 140 scientists, researchers, and statisticians wrote an open letter to the Lancet and the authors of the study questioning the data used. A Guardian investigation revealed that Surgisphere was run by employees who lacked any scientific background. One was a science fiction author and fantasy artist and another was an “adult model and events hostess.” The Lancet conducted an independent investigation, retracted the study and in an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Richard Horton, the editor in chief admitted that the study should never have appeared in his journal.  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

    On the basis of the flawed Lancet study the WHO suspended the hydroxychloroquine trials it was sponsoring. When the study was retracted they resumed them briefly but soon after suspended them again on the results of another faulty study, the Oxford University’s “RECOVERY Trial”.

    The researchers in this trial gave patients massive doses of hydroxychloroquine without the necessary addition of azithromycin and they started treatment too late. That the RECOVERY Trial was never going to work was pointed out on the Covexit website two months before it started. http://covexit.com/uk-recovery-trial-inadequate-hydroxychloroquine-treatment-predictably-fails/”

    Prof. Raoult compared the Oxford academics who carried out the hydroxychloroquine section of the RECOVERY trial to the Marx Brothers in a video interview titled “The Marx Brothers are Doing Science – the Example of RECOVERY” http://covexit.com/professor-raoult-compares-the-oxford-recovery-trial-academics-to-the-marx-brothers/

    Prof. Raoult sarcastically commented that the good news that came out of the trial was that hydroxychloroquine is not toxic. The RECOVERY trial used a 2,400 mg dose on the first day compared to Dr.Raoult’s 600 mg. Even with such high dosage there were no cardiac side effects with any of the participants. Prof. Raoult recalled that “two weeks ago one was told everybody was dying because of cardiac issues. At least, this trial is good to assess the toxicity of hydroxychloroquine as they did not announce any toxicity, even at such high dosage”.

    Although by now it should have been abundantly clear that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin only worked in combination and if given early, not to patients in hospital more than seven days after infection, in April the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) started hydroxychloroquine trials on hospitalized patients too late, some already in emergency wards, and then abandoned the trials with the conclusion that “hydroxychloroquine does no harm but provides no benefit”. The FDA cancelled its emergency use authorization and the NIH halted their clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine

    The media hostile to hydroxychloroquine successfully whipped up hysteria about its supposed dangers although it has an excellent safety record and it is not even alongside aspirin on the WHO list of the 100 most dangerous drugs.  Specialists and doctors prescribing hydroxychloroquine for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus have confirmed that thousands of patients are being prescribed the same dose Dr. Zelenko is giving for five days for years on end without problems.

    Were the failed studies faulty because of ignorance or by design?

    Who gains from them?

    The drug companies can’t make much money on a generic drug, and they found in the media and the scientific community willing accomplices to stop its use. Gilead Sciences Inc. gives grants in addition to those mentioned above to Oxford University and the WHO. Is it possible that people in these prestigious institutions may have their integrity compromised by money, or is it mere coincidence that Gilead with their rival treatment is funding them?

    Some of the media will do anything to make Trump look like a fool and these faulty trials were the perfect opportunity. The media hostile to hydroxychloroquine downplayed or cast doubt on the many successful studies and trials with hydroxychloroquine and made the most of the faulty trials as proof that the drug Trump had touted didn’t work.

    For the media it seems to have been more about scoring political points and increasing their audience ratings rather than investigative reporting which uncovers the truth. For those who are dying and their families and friends as a result of this treatment not being used because of media misinformation it is lives tragically lost, and for the rest of us it is our economies sinking, businesses failing, and unemployment, poverty and suffering rising.

    Hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved, and los,s ruin, suffering and devastation to our economies and societies avoided if we simply started using this safe, cheap and readily available treatment. It is a ludicrous and tragic farce that because of the massive misinformation on behalf of corporate greed and political point scoring that we are not.

  • Navy Taking "Extraordinary Measures" To Keep South China Sea Carriers COVID-Free
    Navy Taking “Extraordinary Measures” To Keep South China Sea Carriers COVID-Free

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 20:45

    The Pentagon is seeking to assure the US public and the world that “extraordinary measures” are being taken to ensure all sailors currently deployed on two aircraft carriers in the South China Sea remain COVID-19 free. 

    The Navy is enacting strict health measures, including mandatory face masks among sailors, in order to avoid the USS Theodore Roosevelt disaster of months ago, which saw over 1,000 of its nearly 5,000 member crew infected, including the ship’s commander.

    “We’ve taken extraordinary measures to protect our sailors from COVID, but that said it remains a real threat and requires constant vigilance,” Rear Adm. George Wikoff, the commander of Carrier Strike Group 5, led by the USS Ronald Reagan, said in a statement Wednesday. “The entire team underway, everyone on board, is required to wear a mask,” he added. 

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    USS Ronald Reagan, bottom, and USS Nimitz are training in the South China Sea along with support ships, via Reuters.

    The Pentagon has described the South China Sea maneuvers by two supercarriers sent to the region days ago, namely the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz, as necessary to stand up “for the right of all nations to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows” and further as a “symbol of resolve”.

    Each carrier has 90 or more aircraft and about 6,000 personnel, making it a significant display of force off China’s coast. But any potential outbreak among the combined 12,000 navy personnel could be disastrous, and send quite the opposite message of lack of preparedness. 

    Additional measures ensuring the two carriers will avoid the fate of the Roosevelt include spaced out mealtimes, general social distancing measures, and having specialists aboard such as trained microbiologists who can help detect any early cases. Extra medical personnel have also been assigned to the carriers. 

    Beijing officials earlier dismissed the provocative carrier presence in the region as as “nothing more than paper tigers on China’s doorsteps.” 

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    To some degree that does indeed describe the prior USS Roosevelt saga, given COVID-19 did take it out of commission as it was forced to cut short its mission and dock at Guam to deal with the outbreak.

  • California, Texas, Arizona Shatter COVID-19 Records As Global Case Total Nears 12 Million: Live Updates
    California, Texas, Arizona Shatter COVID-19 Records As Global Case Total Nears 12 Million: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 20:37

    Summary:

    • Texas reports record deaths for second day
    • US reports 59,655 new cases
    • California reports record jump in new cases
    • No. of Fla ICUs at 100% capacity drops to 42
    • Miami Mayor calls on Trump to make mask-wearing mandatory
    • White House to issue its own school reopening guidelines
    • Chile tops 300k cases, plans to lift lockdown
    • Miami-Dade occupied hospital beds hit new record
    • Dr Birx urges states with worst outbreaks to revert to phase 1 reopening
    • Decision on reopening NY schools will come first week in August
    • Cuomo warns outbreak in the Sun Belt is putting NY’s progress at risk
    • Arizona hospitalizations rise to another record
    • NYC schools won’t reopen in September, mayor says
    • Dr. Fauci: “I never saw a virus with so many symptoms”
    • Cuomo calls for press briefing at 1130ET
    • Moderna completes trial enrollment
    • WHO finally admits there’s “some evidence” of airborne transmission as US severs ties
    • Kudlow says moving back toward lockdown would be “a mistake”
    • Mt Sinai, Emergent Bio announce plans to test new COVID plasma drug
    • US reports 60k+ new cases on Tuesday
    • NJ orders mandatory mask wearing outside
    • US coronavirus cases top 3 million
    • US reports ~44k new cases Tuesday
    • 56 Florida ICUs hit full capacity
    • Texas hospital occupancy at more than 90%
    • World reports 5k new deaths
    • US sees highest daily death toll since June 9
    • Brazil president says he’s taking hydroxychloroquine
    • Trump demands schools reopen in the fall

    * * *

    Update (1900ET): During a day when a “weekend backlog” Texas posted its second straight day of record virus deaths, at 98, bringing total fatalities in the state to 2,813.

    Virus cases rose 4.7% to 220,564, exceeding the seven-day average of 4%. The 9,979 new cases were second only to yesterday’s record of 10,028. Hospitalizations jumped by 324, or 3.5%, which was less than the 7-day average of 5.2%.

    • TEXAS VIRUS CASES RISE 4.7%, EXCEEDING 7-DAY AVERAGE OF 4%

    As cases continued rising in Houston, epicenter of the state’s biggest outbreak, Mayor Sylvester Turner said he was canceling the Republican Party’s state convention that was to be held in the city next week. The mayor also objected to proposals to reopen public schools in August.

    * * *

    Update (1730ET): California reported 11,694 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday, its biggest yet, as its rate of positive cases over the last 2 weeks has climbed to 7.1%, compared with 5% during the prior 2-week period. Gov Newsom explained away Wednesday’s record jump by saying it includes some of the backlog from LA County from the holiday weekend. 

    The state also reported another 111 deaths.

    Meanwhile, coronavirus cases in the US rose 59,655 from a day earlier to 3.02 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins and Bloomberg. The 2% increase was higher than the average daily increase of 1.8% over the past week. Deaths, meanwhile, rose 0.8% to 131,857.

    Around the world, the total number of COVID-19 cases has reached 11,921,616, leaving it on track to top 12 million by end-of-day tomorrow.

    * * *

    Update (1430ET): CNN Just reported that the number of Florida hospitals with a full ICU had declined to 42 from a record 56 earlier.

    There are currently 42 Florida hospitals that are at zero capacity for intensive care unit beds.

    This is down from 56 hospitals reported on Tuesday, according to Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration. On Wednesday, 54 hospitals around the state were at 10% capacity or less, according to the AHCA dashboard.

    “Hospitals have the ability to convert beds and bring additional ICU beds online in a surge situation when necessary,” the AHCA said in a statement to CNN.

    Boca Raton Hospital in Palm Beach County normally has 230 adult ICU beds, there are just 11 available; lowering their capacity to 4.56%, according to AHCA.

    Miami-Dade County has 992 adult ICU beds in its hospitals but currently 170 are available, 17.14% capacity, AHCA data shows.

    “The state has established a field hospital at the Miami Beach Convention Center with over 450 beds to allow for even greater capacity if necessary,” the AHCA statement said. 

    Broward County, one of the worst-hit in the state, is also saying it might not reopen schools in the fall with the rest of the state if things don’t improve substantially. Meanwhile, Miami’s Mayor is calling for a national mask mandate, while warning that it’s only a matter of time before the death toll in his state rises.

    * * *

    Update (1330ET): After President Trump all but confirmed it earlier after saying he disagreed with the CDC’s guidelines, NBC News reports that the White House is, in fact, preparing its own guidelines, barely an hour after Governor Cuomo finished telling the press that New York won’t be “bullied” into reopening its schools before it’s ready.

    * * *

    Update (1245ET): Chile has just topped 300k confirmed cases of COVID-19, joining the an exclusive group of just a handful of countries that have passed the threshold.

    The country also announced plans to lift its lockdown, but not until Aug. 1.

    Chile surpassed 300,000 coronavirus cases on Tuesday after reporting more than 2,400 new infections over the last 24 hours, prompting the South American country to move ahead with easing its lockdown.

    There were 50 new deaths, bringing the total to more than 6,400, although the health ministry believes another 3,500 deaths were probably caused by the virus.

    Chile’s numbers have been declining for more than three weeks, and the country is now planning to ease confinement measures.

    “We confirm an improvement that has been going on for 23 days,” said Health Minister Enrique Paris.

    The country remains essentially tied with Peru for worst hit country in Latin America.

    * * *

    Update (1215ET): Miami-Dade just announced that its occupied hospital beds have hit a new record high at 358, from 343. As Fla’s hospitals grow more crowded, Dr. Birx said Wednesday that states with the worst outbreaks should “revert” to phase 1 of the reopening.

    * * *

    Update (1154ET): As Cuomo continues to chide the sun belt states for not doing enough to contain the virus, we’d just like to point out that more stories about the state’s futile ‘contact tracing’ efforts have emerged. Today’s comes from San Diego’s KPBS:

    Every day, Asma Al Sabag goes to work and gives people bad news.

    “I’ll say, ‘Hi, I’m calling because you were recently exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19,”‘ she said during a recent call.

    Al Sabag is one of nearly 500 contact tracers working for San Diego County whose job it is to find and notify people who were likely in contact with someone who’s tested positive for the coronavirus. And while she’s likely made hundreds of phone calls by now, all her hard work might not be paying off.

    Since early March when San Diego County’s contact tracing program began tracking COVID-19 cases, tracers have only contacted about 9,000 county residents who were named as a close contact of someone with the virus, according to county spokeswoman Sarah Sweeney.

    That’s likely only a small fraction of those who’ve been exposed countywide. So far there have been about 17,000 known positive cases of COVID-19 in San Diego County, and each case on average has about 10 close contacts — people the infected person has been less than 6 feet away from for more than 15 minutes in the last two weeks.

    In other news, the White House’s Dr. Birx said that she’s “hopeful” Arizona’s cases have finally “plateaued”, while also expressing hope that Florida’s outbreak has also been contained.

    “The seven-day average (of coronavirus cases in Arizona) is showing some flattening and I find that encouraging. Also, equally encouraging at this point, because we know that the test positivity rate is the first thing to increase and we’re hoping that it heralds a stability in Arizona of at least reaching a plateau in their curve,” Birx said.

    […]

    “We also understand that we went through a holiday weekend and holiday weekends can impact data on both ends – underreporting through the weekend and catch up reporting on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after a holiday weekend,” she added.

    Cuomo, drawing near the end of his briefing, once again called on President Trump to sign a mandatory executive order on mask wearing, even after Dr. Fauci yesterday said he believed these types of mandates should come from local officials.

    * * *

    Update (1140ET): As expected, Cuomo spent today’s press briefing chiding the worst-hit states for allowing the virus to get so out of control. He claimed that the outbreak around the country, which produced a record 60k+ new cases reported on Tuesday, is now “putting New York’s progress at risk.” He also claimed Florida has asked for assistance in combating its outbreak, and that Cuomo and NY would be happy to provide it.

    But Cuomo assured the public: “Schools won’t reopen if it’s not safe.”

    He also announced that beginning on July 10, malls in certain parts of the state that are entering ‘Phase 4’ of the reopening process may allowed to reopen so long as they have “MERV-13” filters installed. But a decision on when the state’s schools will reopen won’t be released for another month. Cuomo said it should be expected between Aug. 1 and Aug. 7.

    According to Cuomo, “one of those three filters” – MERV-13,12 and 11 – will filter out coronavirus in the air.

    As Cuomo continues, we’d like to highlight an interesting theory that was just brought to our attention by RBC economist Tom Porcelli. The theory attempts to explain why the market hasn’t been badly disturbed by the new record-breaking COVID-19 numbers.

    Perhaps it’s because, with so many young people getting infected, markets are betting that this outbreak is actually bringing the US closer to herd immunity.

    Despite the resurgence of the virus, there’s reason to be optimistic. One of the arguments out there to explain the markets’ resilience to the resurgence is that the U.S. is approaching herd immunity as more young people are infected, which reduces the risk of the next flu season.

    RBC economist Tom Porcelli proposed the theory. He noted that deaths as percentage of new cases from two weeks ago in those hot spots such as Florida and Texas remain low.

    Keep in mind, herd immunity is believed to be extremely difficult to achieve, and no country believes it has achieved it yet.

    Btw, here are NY’s numbers for Wednesday.

    * * *

    Update (1130ET): NYC Mayor Andrew Cuomo will deliver a briefing at 1130…

    …meanwhile Arizona is reporting its latest numbers. By reporting 3,520 (+3.3%), Arizona now has surpassed New York’s epidemic peak, by at least one measure. The 7-day average increase is 4.1%.

    Here’s a breakdown with charts:

    To recap, the state also reported several other disheartening records, aside from the total hospital population

    • Arizona just reported *4,878* new COVID cases in the last 24 hours, a staggering record.
    • Arizona just reported *88* newly-reported COVID deaths, another staggering record.
    • Arizona just reported the percent positive rate of tests today was 28.3%, which is…another record high.

    To help put things in perspective.

    Earlier this week, as Mexico closed its border with Arizona as cases on both sides of it exploded

    * * *

    As we wait to hear from Gov Cuomo at 11:30, NYC Mayor de Blasio has predictably weighed in to announce that the city won’t be reopening schools in September, even though whether the city sticks to this plan will likely be contingent on what happens over the coming months. If there isn’t a resurgence in new cases, it might become difficult to justify.

    The plan shared by de Blasio with the NYT reportedly calls for no more than 12 people including teachers to be in a classroom at a time. Most students will only attend class two or maybe three times a week.

    About four months after 1.1 million New York City children were forced into online learning, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday that public schools would still not fully reopen in September, saying that classroom attendance would instead be limited to only one to three days a week in an effort to continue to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

    The mayor’s release of his plan for the system, by far the nation’s largest, capped weeks of intense debate among elected officials, educators and public health experts over how to bring children back safely to 1,800 public schools.

    The decision to opt for only a partial reopening, which is most likely the only way to accommodate students in school buildings while maintaining social distancing, may hinder hundreds of thousands of parents from returning to their pre-pandemic work lives, undermining the recovery of the sputtering local economy.

    Still, the staggered schedules in New York City schools for September reflect a growing trend among school systems, universities and colleges around the country, which are all trying to find ways of balancing the urgent need to bring students back to classrooms and campuses while also reducing density to prevent the spread of the virus.

    Under the mayor’s plan, there will probably be no more than a dozen people in a classroom at a time, including teachers and aides, a stark change from typical class size in New York City schools, which can hover around 30 children.

    Of course, the city still has months to change its mind. With little evidence available on how the virus spreads among, and affects, young children, the city should have a very good safety reason if it wants to keep schools partially shut, hamstringing and burdening millions of working- and middle-class families.

    * * *

    Update (1030ET): Florida has once again reported roughly 10k new cases of the coronavirus. Florida added 9,989 (+4.7%) new COVID-19  cases Wednesday. Now with 223,783 (up from 213,794 yesterday), the state also reported 14.15% of its 75,865 test results coming back positive. The number of tests run is close to record highs for the state. Florida’s positivity rate has been north of 14% since June 29. The figure is lower than yesterday’s 16.2%.

    • FLORIDA COVID-19 CASES RISE 4.7% VS. PREVIOUS 7-DAY AVG. 5%

    Its the biggest single-day jump in new cases on a Wednesday, and up 50% from last Wednesday’s reading.

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    The median age of those infected ticked lower to 39.

    * * *

    Update (1015ET): Just some food for thought….

    * * *

    Update (1000ET): Doctors have been struggling to explain rare cases of people who are infected with the virus more than once, or whose symptoms just never seem to subside, even after months of infection.

    One Texas man who shared his story with CNN said the second time around, his symptoms got “much worse.”

    * * *

    Update (0950ET): Andrew Cuomo is holding a press conference this morning at 1130ET. The governor previously claimed that he wouldn’t hold another briefing unless he had something notable to share.

    * * *

    Update (0940ET): As stocks move higher after the open, Moderna just announced that it has completed recruitment for the start of the second phase of its testing, which is by far the most rigorous, and requires tens of thousands of participants.

    * * *

    Update (0925ET): After some 200 scientists from dozens of countries urged the WHO to acknowledge the growing body of evidence suggesting that the virus can linger in the air and infect people who inadvertently inhale it, making it an “airborne” virus. The WHO had previously maintained that aersolization via coughing or sneezing via symptomatic patients was the primary means of spread.

    But as the US officially severs its ties from the organization, the NGO has decided to ‘tweak’ its guidelines, but only mildly.

    The World Health Organization confirmed there is “emerging evidence” of airborne transmission of the coronavirus following the publication of a letter Monday signed by 239 scientists that urged the agency to be more forthcoming about the likelihood that people can catch the virus from droplets floating in the air.

    Dr. Benedetta Alleganzi, WHO Technical Lead for Infection Prevention and Control, said during a briefing Tuesday, that the agency has discussed and collaborated with many of the scientists who signed the letter.

    “We acknowledge that there is emerging evidence in this field, as in all other fields regarding the Covid-19 virus and pandemic and therefore we believe that we have to be open to this evidence and understand its implications regarding the modes of transmission and also regarding the precautions that need to be taken,” Alleganzi said.

    Infectious disease epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkove, with WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said many of the letter’s signatories are engineers, “which adds to growing knowledge about the importance of ventilation, which we feel is very important.”

    “We have been talking about the possibility of airborne transmission and aerosol transmission as one of the modes of transmission of Covid-19, as well as droplet. We’ve looked at fomites. We’ve looked at fecal oral. We’ve looked at mother to child. We’ve looked at animal to human, of course as well,” Van Kerkove said.

    She said the agency is working on a scientific brief summarizing the current knowledge around transmission of the deadly virus, which should be available in the coming weeks.

    Even still, the WHO insists that more research is needed on the issue of transmission.

    * * *

    Update (0900ET): As Trump’s push to reopen schools in the fall elicits the inevitable blowback from the left-leaning press, Larry Kudlow took to CNBC Wednesday morning to defend the policy, and reiterate that ‘the data’ continues to point to a V-shaped recovery, and that taking more steps back toward another lockdown would be “a big mistake.”

    Earlier, Mt Sinai and Emergent Bio announced plans to cooperate on testing a newly developed drug that uses plasma harvested from the blood of recovered COVID-19 patients to try and prevent infections in front-line workers

    NEW YORK and GAITHERSBURG, Md. and NEW ORLEANS and LAFAYETTE, La., July 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Mount Sinai Health System, Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS), and ImmunoTek Bio Centers today announced that they will collaborate to develop, manufacture, and conduct clinical trials to evaluate Emergent’s COVID-19 hyperimmune globulin product, COVID-HIG, including a post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) study on health care providers at high risk of COVID-19 infection and other high-risk populations, with $34.6 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND).

    * * *

    Update (0840ET): Following yesterday’s news that the state’s “R” rate had ticked north of 1, the threshold above which the virus is said to be expanding, New Jersey Gov Phil Murphy is reportedly planning to sign an executive order mandating mask wearing even when outdoors, where the benefits of wearing a mask are marginal, at best.

    New Jerseyans may soon be required to wear face coverings outdoors, too, to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, NJ.com reports.

    Meanwhile, according to the latest updated figures released this morning, JHU has actually counted more than 60k new cases on Thursday, a new single day record. That’s more than the roughly 43k we noted earlier. The updated numbers were released just minutes ago.

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    The US reported exactly 60,021 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, according to JHU data cited by CNBC.

    In a graphic produced by a team of BAML analysts, the bank breaks down how the states with the worst outbreaks – Texas, Florida, California and Arizona – are contributing to the bulk of the countrywide outbreak, while the northeastern states that have seen the most effective results have continued to see their numbers dwindle as a percentage of the total cases being counted each day.

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    Still, daily deaths continue to trend lower. And as we await the ‘inevitable’ jump in deaths, here’s some more food for thought, from Mark Cudmore:

    If the surge in U.S. case numbers should result in increasing deaths, why haven’t we seen it by now?

    Market bulls point out that the lag between the April peaks in U.S. daily cases and deaths was only five days. The lag was six days in Italy, eight days in Spain and 11 days in the U.K. We’re way past those spans now in the Sun Belt states where cases have been climbing, which is why several readers rejected my proposition this week that it was premature to relax around the trend in the U.S. death numbers.

    * * *

    The US coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases on Tuesday as more states reported record numbers of new infections, while dozens of hospitals in Florida are facing a shortage of ICU beds.

    Meanwhile, the US reported 44,953 new cases on Tuesday (remember, these numbers are reported with a 24-hour delay).

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    Globally, the world reported roughly 5k new deaths yesterday as the US saw its death toll top 130k.

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    Roughly 20% of new deaths yesterday were recorded in the US as it suffered the biggest jump in deaths in a month.

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    When we left off last night, 43 ICUs in the state of Florida had reached full capacity.

    The number of patients in ICU beds has climbed from 180 on June 25 to 343 as of July 7, according to the data. There were 1,656 Covid-19 patients in hospital as of July 7, with 175 on ventilators, up from 885 patients in hospital on June 25, when there were 84 on ventilators.

    At last count, 56 ICUs across Florida have reached capacity, according to CNN.

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    While Florida’s hospitals appear to be seeing the most problems with capacity, Texas isn’t far behind. Nearly 80% of the state’s hospital beds are in use, and ICUs are filling up in San Antonio and Houston, which are some of the biggest cities in the entire US. As the AP reports, leaders are warning their health facilities could become overwhelmed in the coming days.

    While rising cases have reflected rising tests, and while deaths have continued to trend lower despite yesterday’s spike, Texas has a positive test rate of 13.5%, more than double the share from a month prior, even as the number of tests being carried out each day have increased substantially.

    In North Houston, one hospital, United Memorial has been rapidly dedicating more and more space to virus care. Now, 88 of 117 beds are devoted to such patients, and it’s weighing the possibility of going ‘all-COVID-19’.

    Finally, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Wednesday, one day after confirming he had tested positive for the virus, that he was taking hydroxychloroquine as part of his treatment regimen, and that he was feeling fine.

    As the White House ratchets up pressure on Hong Kong, which reported 24 new COVID cases, with 19 of them locally transmitted infections, and 5 imported cases.

    President Trump, meanwhile, is doubling down on his demands that schools across the US prepare to reopen in the fall, while accusing local officials (who have total control over education since education is handled at the local level in the US) of putting politics before the best interests of the community, according to the NYT.

  • The Planes Are Safe, It's The People Who Aren't
    The Planes Are Safe, It’s The People Who Aren’t

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 20:25

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    Airplane circulations filters effectively handle Covid-19. That’s not the problem.

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    Leeham writer Bjorn Fehrm has said that the aircraft recirculation system is effective in controlling spread of virus. Here is part 1 of a multi-part series.

    In part 9, Fehrm says the HEPA filters in the cabin return path are hospital-grade and remove 99.9% of the viruses.

    Fehrm also comments on the need to stay hydrated because the recirculated air is very dry.

    Today Leeham has a different take, but not about the recirculation system. itself.

    Why I Won’t be Flying Soon

    Please consider Pontifications: Why I Won’t be Flying Soon by Scott Hamilton.

    Some airlines block center seats. Others abandoned the practice recently or didn’t do so from the start. (When flights were operating 10% full, blocking seats didn’t matter.)

    Blocking center seats really is cosmetic. Social distancing guidelines call for six feet between you and the next person. Blocking a center seat provides about 18 inches wide and 29-30 inches fore-and-aft.

    The problem is not the airplane. It’s the people who fly. Passengers flying without masks put everyone at risk in those 2-4 minutes, as well as during enplaning and deplaning.

    And most airlines aren’t enforcing a mask policy. The federal government won’t issue a rule requiring masks. Containing the virus requires passenger cooperation. It’s not there yet.

    User’s Guide To Masks

    NPR has User’s Guide To Masks that some may be interested in.

  • CNN's Don Lemon Offers 5 Tips To "End The Violence & Chaos" In Black Communities
    CNN’s Don Lemon Offers 5 Tips To “End The Violence & Chaos” In Black Communities

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 20:04

    This is going to be a little awkward for some.

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    Having recently gone to battle with Terry Crews over the semantic difference between the “Black Lives Matter” movement (which appears not to care about ‘some’ black lives) and Crews’ argument that “all black lives matter”, video from 2013 has exposed CNN’s infamously outspoken African American anchor Don Lemon as a thoughtful, pensive, open-minded pundit who truly went out on a limb to help America’s black communities lift themselves up… by agreeing with none other than Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.

    From July 2013, courtesy of Ian Stewart at RealClearPolitics.com,

    DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: I want to talk to you because we’re going to take a break from the headlines to talk about something I’ve had on my mind for quite some time now. So much so that I felt compelled to bring back our segment where we hold politicians, leaders, and pundits accountable for what comes out of their mouths. It’s time now, again, for No Talking Points.

    The Trayvon Martin murder case got just about everybody talking about race, and not just specifically how it related to the case. It got some, many on the political right, wondering why the so-called liberal media wasn’t talking about other problems in the black community.

    Ok, so far so good, but it sounds like Lemon is about to rail on the ‘rightist’ racism… But wait…

    LEMON: Someone on another network got the chance to go first because I couldn’t go during the week. I’m only here on the weekend, so listen to this

    BILL O’REILLY, FOX NEWS HOST: The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African- American family.

    LEMON: He’s got a point. In fact, he’s got more than a point. Bill?

    O’REILLY: Raised without much structure, young black men often reject education and gravitate towards the street culture, drugs, hustling, gangs. Nobody forces them to do that, again, it is a personal decision.

    LEMON: He is right about that, too.

    Ok, now remove all fluids from your mouth and put down all sharp objects, things are about to get very real and very Twilight Zone at the same time. CNN’s Don Lemon then offers black people five things they should think about doing if they want to, in his words “fix their problem.” (annotated below, see the full transcript here)

    Number five. Pull up your pants… 

    Sagging pants, whether Justin Bieber or No-name Derek around the way, walking around with your ass and your underwear showing is not OK.

    Number four is the n-word…

    By promoting the use of that word when it’s not germane to the conversation, have you ever considered that you may be just perpetuating the stereotype the master intended acting like a n***er?

    Number three. Respect where you live…

    Start small by not dropping trash, littering in your own communities.

    Number two, finish school…

    You want to break the cycle of poverty? Stop telling kids they’re acting white because they go to school or they speak proper English.

    Number one, and probably the most important, just because you can have a baby, it doesn’t mean you should… 

    Studies show that lack of a male role model is an express train right to prison and the cycle continues.

    Lemon concludes:

    “So, please, black folks, as I said if this doesn’t apply to you, I’m not talking to you. Pay attention to and think about what has been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior. Pay close attention to the hip-hop and rap culture that many of you embrace. A culture that glorifies everything I just mentioned, thug and reprehensible behavior, a culture that is making a lot of people rich, just not you.”

    Watch the full clip below (before it is banned for its clear racism):

    We wonder what would happen if President Trump held a press conference and suggested these five steps as a starting point for “Making Black America Great Again”? We suspect Lemon would be the first to exclaim “racism” at the President’s “white supremacist” attitude, daring to offer an opinion on what might help.

    What a difference seven years (and a different president) makes.

    Is Don Lemon about to be #canceled?

  • Biden Embraces 'Green New Deal' In Newly Released "Biden-Sanders" Policy Platform
    Biden Embraces ‘Green New Deal’ In Newly Released “Biden-Sanders” Policy Platform

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 19:48

    While Joe Biden was hanging out in the basement, his team was hard at work liaising with the remnants of the Bernie Sanders campaign people to craft a policy agenda that, they hope, will motivate the young people who came out in droves for Bernie to come out and vote for Biden.

    And unsurprisingly, Biden’s plan is a hodge-podge of mostly incompatible ideas obviously intended to pander to the white working class swing voters in the Midwest, and the young AOC-worshipping DSA members and crypto-marxists who powered Sanders to his second straight second-place finish in a Democratic presidential primary.

    According to information released by the campaign, the outline of Biden’s plan covers four areas: A push to ‘buy American’ and incentivizing American jobs, as well as embracing ‘clean energy’ (mostly via extreme policy proposals outlined in the Green New Deal), while also working to boost the “caring” economy – whatever that means. The Biden campaign said it would commit to bolstering child care and elder care, as well as racial equity.

    Here’s one quote from the policy paper released by the campaign:

    Ensure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050. On day one, Biden will sign a series of new executive orders with unprecedented reach that go well beyond the Obama-Biden Administration platform and put us on the right track. And, he will demand that Congress enacts legislation in the first year of his presidency that: 1) establishes an enforcement mechanism that includes milestone targets no later than the end of his first term in 2025, 2) makes a historic investment in clean energy and climate research and innovation, 3) incentivizes the rapid deployment of clean energy innovations across the economy, especially in communities most impacted by climate change.

    He followed this up with a video promising to take “drastic action” to confront climate change.

    Biden will follow this all up with a speech on Thursday’ detailing his agenda in the run up to the Aug. 17 Democratic convention.

    “Biden wants to get to the same place that many to his left want to get to but he firmly believes that it will take an incremental path to get there and that you can’t leapfrog the political reality that he has come to know in many decades in politics,” said Jared Bernstein, who is advising the campaign after serving as Biden’s chief economic adviser in the vice president’s office.

    Some in the media described the proposals as an attempt to address areas discussed by the right and the left. 

    * * *

    But we see it as what it truly is: A clumsy attempt to pander to swing voters. For those who want to learn more, they can check out the full policy sheet below:

    1. Ensure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050. On day one, Biden will sign a series of new executive orders with unprecedented reach that go well beyond the Obama-Biden Administration platform and put us on the right track. And, he will demand that Congress enacts legislation in the first year of his presidency that: 1) establishes an enforcement mechanism that includes milestone targets no later than the end of his first term in 2025, 2) makes a historic investment in clean energy and climate research and innovation, 3) incentivizes the rapid deployment of clean energy innovations across the economy, especially in communities most impacted by climate change.

    2. Build a stronger, more resilient nation. On day one, Biden will make smart infrastructure investments to rebuild the nation and to ensure that our buildings, water, transportation, and energy infrastructure can withstand the impacts of climate change.  Every dollar spent toward rebuilding our roads, bridges, buildings, the electric grid, and our water infrastructure will be used to prevent, reduce, and withstand a changing climate. As President, Biden will use the convening power of government to boost climate resilience efforts by developing regional climate resilience plans, in partnership with local universities and national labs, for local access to the most relevant science, data, information, tools, and training.

    3. Rally the rest of the world to meet the threat of climate change. Climate change is a global challenge that requires decisive action from every country around the world. Joe Biden knows how to stand with America’s allies, stand up to adversaries, and level with any world leader about what must be done. He will not only recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change – he will go much further than that. He will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets. He will make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable, and stop countries from cheating by using America’s economic leverage and power of example. He will fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as our approach to trade.

    4. Stand up to the abuse of power by polluters who disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities. Vulnerable communities are disproportionately impacted by the climate emergency and pollution. The Biden Administration will take action against fossil fuel companies and other polluters who put profit over people and knowingly harm our environment and poison our communities’ air, land, and water, or conceal information regarding potential environmental and health risks. The Biden plan will ensure that communities across the country from Flint, Michigan to Harlan, Kentucky to the New Hampshire Seacoast have access to clean, safe drinking water. And he’ll make sure the development of solutions is an inclusive, community-driven process.

    5. Fulfill our obligation to workers and communities who powered our industrial revolution and subsequent decades of economic growth. This is support they’ve earned for fueling our country’s industrial revolution and decades of economic growth. We’re not going to leave any workers or communities behind.

    * * *

    Oh, and Biden for America has committed to not accepting contributions from oil, gas and coal industry, and their executives.

  • Cancel Culture Targets Broadway Hit 'Hamilton' As Racial Politics Grow More Uncompromising
    Cancel Culture Targets Broadway Hit ‘Hamilton’ As Racial Politics Grow More Uncompromising

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 19:45

    Authored by Daniel Payne via JustTheNews.com,

    “Hamilton”, the Broadway play which for half a decade has been a nearly unsurpassed cultural phenomenon across the globe, may be on the verge of a denouement. 

    The play, written and originally starring the actor and musician Lin-Manuel Miranda, took America and the world by storm when it debuted in 2015. Combining a clever, lightning-quick hip-hop musical score with an imaginative yet mostly faithful take on American history — and with the vast majority of the cast being made up of nonwhite actors — it would go on to win nearly a dozen Tony awards as well as a Pulitzer Prize. 

    Inspired by historian Ron Chernow’s exhaustive biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, Miranda’s play depicts Hamilton’s role in the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, including his actions as a soldier and aide-de-camp to George Washington during the Revolutionary War, his turn as Washington’s Treasury Secretary, his relationship with his wife Elizabeth, the death of his son, and his own eventual death in a duel with Aaron Burr. 

    The production has spawned a franchise — including an album, merchandise, and books — that has grossed over $1 billion worldwide. A filmed version of the play, released this month on the streaming service Disney+, has been met with acclaim. The show has been so highly regarded that New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley once suggested that people should “mortgage their houses and lease their children” to see it. 

    Yet a growing chorus of voices may be turning on both the play and the man who produced it.

    The ongoing political moment in which America finds itself – where the dictates of Black Lives Matter have become something of a moral litmus test, and every aspect of American culture and history is under unforgiving scrutiny by ideologues and activists – may bring down the curtain on perhaps the premier cultural touchstone of the 21st century so far. 

    [ZH: is that why the King is smiling?]

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    At issue for a growing number of activists is the contention that Miranda’s play largely glosses over the issue of slavery in 18th century America.

    Numerous historical characters in the production – George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson – in real life owned significant numbers of slaves; the play more or less skates around these facts, and it goes to great lengths to portray Washington in an almost hagiographic light. 

    Hamilton, too, is subject to a similar sort of hagiography, even though his historical relevance largely comes from his service to Washington the slaveowner. Hamilton was an outspoken and committed abolitionist, but he appears to have had few compunctions about working for Washington and with other slavers. Moreover, there is evidence that he may have facilitated some slavery transactions for his wife’s slaveowning family. 

    Those tensions, which were mostly ignored in the early years of the play’s meteoric success, are becoming more apparent today, as the nation engages in a protracted debate about whether we should rip down statues of not just Confederate generals but Founding Fathers and even Union heroes of the Civil War as well. 

    Writing at CNN last week, journalist Ed Morales asked: “Is [Hamilton’s] strategy of non-traditional casting a triumph that allows people of color to ‘rise up’ or are they undermined by the irony of how their embodiment as founding fathers ignores the fact that most of the characters they play were slave owners?“

    Writer Tracy Clayton, meanwhile, wrote last week that “Hamilton” is “a flawed play about flawed people written by an imperfect person,” though she claimed it gave her life “a big boost” when she first saw it. She wrote that she “would have appreciated more context [in the play] about hamilton & slavery,” but she counseled against “lump[ing] it in with statues of columbus and robert e lee.”

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    Earlier this month, a 2016 interview with Harvard historian Annette Gordon-Reed resurfaced in which the professor, who confessed she liked the play, nevertheless argued against interpreting Hamilton in too charitable a light.

    “He was not an abolitionist,” Gordon-Reed said. “He bought and sold slaves for his in-laws, and opposing slavery was never at the forefront of his agenda.

    Esquire this week, meanwhile, echoed that criticism by noting that “Hamilton’s actual relationship to slavery and slave owners was much more complex, and not as progressive as the play depicts.”

    Washington Post writer Gregory Schneider argued last week that Hamilton’s “relationship with Washington, his marriage into the wealthy Schuyler family, his slaveholding friends — all advanced him socially while requiring him to turn his head from the toughest issue of the day.”

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    Miranda’s office did not respond to an interview request from Just the News. But the artist was clearly well aware of the growing backlash against his most famous work — a backlash which includes criticism that he has uttered the word the N-word on more than one occasion. On Monday, he briefly and favorably acknowledged the burgeoning reevaluation of his play.

    “All the criticisms are valid,” he wrote on Twitter, responding to Clayton’s thread. “The sheer tonnage of complexities & failings of these people I couldn’t get. Or wrestled with but cut.”

    “I took 6 years and fit as much as I could in a 2.5 hour musical. Did my best. It’s all fair game,” he added.

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    Whether that will be enough to save his show from “cancelation” remains to be seen, and may very well be determined by the course of American politics in 2020: If Black Lives Matter continues its dominating march through American academic, cultural, corporate, legal and political life, it may end up that Miranda’s play will get the axe due to its relative soft-pedaling of American slavery.

    Reflecting on the difference between the 2015 of the play’s release and the 2020 of today,  Clayton observed, “Hamilton the play and the movie were given to us in two different worlds.”

    “Our willingness to interrogate things in this way,” she continued, “feels like a clear sign of change.”

  • Google Abandons Another Shady China Venture
    Google Abandons Another Shady China Venture

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 19:25

    Google is competing fiercely against Amazon and Microsoft to build out a cloud computing offering that can establish itself as a serious competitor to AWS, but two employees have reportedly told Bloomberg that Google has abandoned a cloud computing project in China and other politically-sensitive countries, largely due to concerns over worsening bilateral relations with the US.

    The tech behemoth reportedly shut down the project, known internally as “Isolated Region,” which sought to address nations’ desires to control data within their borders, the employees said. The decision to close the program was a “massive strategy shift,” according to one of the employees, who said hundreds of employees around the world had worked on  “Isolated Region”.

    Given the ominous description, it’s not too difficult to understand the true nature of this project: Google would essentially help empower China to enforce its “Great Firewall,” which it is now trying to expand to Hong Kong.

    A Google spokesperson who commented on the record to Bloomberg insisted that the project was scrapped for reasons that were totally innocuous.

    A Google spokeswoman said Isolated Region was shelved because “other approaches we were actively pursuing offered better outcomes.” She declined to detail those approaches. “We have a comprehensive approach to addressing these requirements that covers the governance of data, operational practices and survivability of software,” the spokeswoman said. “Isolated Region was just one of the paths we explored to address these requirements.”

    “What we learned from customer conversations and input from government shareholders in Europe and elsewhere is that other approaches we were actively pursuing offered better outcomes,” the spokeswoman said. “Google does not offer and has not offered cloud platform services inside China.”

    According to one of the employees, the plan involved selling cloud services in what Google calls “sovereignty sensitive markets,” such as China and the E.U., where there are strict laws for companies offering services that involve the collection or processing of people’s data.

    The project, which began in early 2018, sought to address rules in China that require Western companies to form a joint venture with a Chinese partner company when they provide data or networking services, one of the employees said. In such a relationship, the partner company would have retained both physical and administrative control over user data. The arrangement was intended to satisfy Chinese authorities while also providing a barrier between Google’s Isolated Region cloud services and the rest of its data center network, which stores and processes emails, documents, photographs and other data from its users, the employee said.

    By handing over control of user data to third party companies in foreign countries, Isolated Region also aimed to appease privacy concerns about the U.S. government’s potential ability to carry out covert surveillance of Google’s Cloud services, the employee said. Those concerns increased in March 2018, following the passing of the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, better known as the CLOUD Act, a federal law that granted U.S. law enforcement agencies more power to request personal data stored by American technology companies even if the data is stored on servers located outside of the U.S., the employee said.

    Interestingly enough, the Bloomberg’s editors slotted the first paragraph addressing the company’s controversial business practices involving its work in China and the CCP

    Some employees expressed concern about the Cloud project in China and questioned their superiors about it, according to one of the employees. But it’s not known if employee opposition was a factor in Google’s decision to stop the initiative in China or elsewhere.
    Isolated Region was part of a larger Google project known as “Sharded Google,” which has sought to develop new data storage and processing facilities, known as “shards,” that are walled off from the rest of the company’s systems, according to the employees.
    Major cloud providers are all racing to develop data centers that are either physically separated or rely on complex software to keep information flows apart.

    It’s a costly process, driven by rising demand on two fronts. One is from firms in specific industries, such as finance, that want isolated machinery for security reasons. Another comes from laws that require data reaped inside the country to stay there, with China being perhaps the most stringent example.

    Both trends are accelerating. More than 100 countries have some sort of data sovereignty laws in place, according to David Gilmore, chief executive officer of DataFleets Ltd., an enterprise software firm. In the U.S., state policies, such as California’s new consumer privacy law, provide further restrictions on how cloud companies handle data. “It’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

    France and Germany recently started Gaia-X, an effort to build the continent’s own data storage systems over the internet without relying on U.S. technology giants.

    We’re certainly curious to hear more about this “data sovereignty” project. For all the reporting BBG did here, the reader isn’t walking away with a clear understanding of what this even means.

    And as we’ve learned with ‘Project Dragonfly’, once Google declares a project dead, that doesn’t mean it actually is.

  • In An Insane World, Madness Looks Moderate And Sanity Looks Radical
    In An Insane World, Madness Looks Moderate And Sanity Looks Radical

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 07/08/2020 – 19:05

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    There are no moderate, mainstream centrists in the US-centralized empire. They do not exist.

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    It’s not that moderate, mainstream centrism is an inherently impossible position. In a healthy world, that’s exactly what the predominant worldview would be. But we do not live in a healthy world.

    There are no moderate, mainstream centrists anywhere in the tight alliance of nations which function as a single empire on foreign policy, because that functional empire is built upon murder, terrorism, exploitation, oppression, ecocide and the stockpiling of armageddon weapons.

    People who support the status quo of this empire are called “moderates”, but, just like the so-called “moderate rebels” of Syria, they are in fact violent extremists.

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    This is the reality of living in a world that is profoundly psychologically unhealthy. If you make a career out of facilitating wars which cause explosives to be dropped from the sky on top of innocent human beings causing their bodies to be ripped to shreds and buried in rubble, then you are treated as an exemplar of ideal leadership and rewarded with prestigious positions in politics, punditry, book publishing and think tankery. If you oppose those same wars, you are marginalized and smeared as at best an extremist whack job and at worst a literal traitor conducting psyops for a foreign government.

    Because the plutocratic class owns the political class which advances depraved plutocratic agendas and the media class which normalizes and justifies those agendas, a mainstream consensus has been forcibly manufactured that maintaining the oppressive, exploitative, omnicidal, ecocidal status quo is a good and sane thing to do. Voices which point out that this is bat shit crazy are marginalized and ignored when possible and smeared and demonized when necessary.

    The ability of our plutocratic rulers and their lackeys to do this is the only reason why defenders of the status quo get to call themselves “centrists” and “moderates”. It’s not because their position is middle-of-the-road in any way whatsoever, it’s because they stand in alignment with the consensus that has been deliberately artificially manufactured and shoved into the mainstream by sheer force of narrative control.

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    This consensus manufacturing is then carried home by a glitch in human cognition known as status quo bias, which causes us to tend toward holding to the familiar as a default preference and perceive the risk of losing what we have as far less favorable than the reward gaining something better. Psychology Today explains:

    Research from Kahneman and Tversky suggests that losses are twice as psychologically harmful as gains are beneficial. In other words, individuals feel twice as much psychological pain from losing $100 as pleasure from gaining $100. One interpretation is that in order for an individual to change course from their current state of affairs is that the alternative must be perceived as twice as beneficial. This highlights the challenges we may face when considering a change to our usual way of doing things.

    When military members are considering their choices as their contract comes to an end, many consider re-enlisting simply because they are unaware of the many opportunities that exist for them. Even when we understand our current path is no longer beneficial or no longer makes us happy, we must still overcome the natural urge to stay on the path unless the alternative is sufficiently attractive. In order for us to readily pursue an alternate path, we must believe that the alternative is clearly superior to the current state of affairs.

    The status quo effect is pervasive in both inconsequential and major decisions. Oftentimes we are held back by what we believe to be the safe option, simply because it is the default. Bearing in mind our natural propensity for the status quo will enable us to recognize the allure of inertia and more effectively overcome it.

    Status quo bias is further exacerbated in our current predicament by the fact that so many people are now so close to the brink of financial ruin and so terrified of what can happen to them if things change in a sudden and unpredictable way. The result of this is that now you’ve got the majority of people in the most dominant country on earth supporting the “slow incremental change” philosophy of so-called centrism, which in practice has always ended up meaning no change whatsoever. Meanwhile our ecosystem is dying and the US is escalating nuclear tensions with Russia and China and everyone’s getting more and more crazy and miserable under the oppressive and exploitative status quo.

    Did you ever climb a tree when you were a kid and get stuck because you were afraid to climb down? It’s a common experience for a lot of us. You get lost in the joy of the climb and so pleased with yourself in how well you’re doing, then suddenly you notice that the branches are getting a lot thinner and the wind is starting to sway you back and forth, and suddenly you look down and get terrified.

    Maybe you called out for your mother and she came out and told you to climb down, calling up “Well you can’t stay up there!” And you knew she was right, but in that moment the idea of looking down and letting go of the thin branches you were clinging to felt so much scarier than just staying put in your precarious and unsustainable position.

    That’s exactly where we’re at right now with status quo bias in our current predicament. People know things need to change, but they’re in such a precarious position that the risk of change feels far too scary to take the leap and force a deviation from our trajectory toward disaster.

    But that is our only choice if we are to survive as a species. We know we were able to climb down from whatever trees we got stuck in as kids, and we know that our mother was as right then as that small inner voice inside us is now: we can’t stay here. We’ve got to wake up from the status quo narrative management and find a way to get down from our precarious and unsustainable position to the stable ground of sanity.

    *  *  *

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

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