The Digital Media Center in Iraq revealed an increase in the number of accounts belonging to the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) and their supporters on social media platforms, especially Facebook.
The center said in a press release that“this return came during the past months that accompanied the coronavirus pandemic and led to a delay in the response of Facebook’s support to delete accounts.”
Illustration via The Wahid Foundation
“The members of ISIS and those who support them took advantage of the opportunity and started creating new accounts or reactivating old accounts, and they published and promoted their terrorist operations through the platform,” Iraqi media monitoring watchdog said.
The Center warned users not to interact with these posts even if it was criticizing them through comments or sharing them, which leads to unintentionally free promotion.
The official government-run Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service also echoed the warning, alerting the public to the “growing number of accounts of ISIS members and supporters on social media platforms, especially Facebook.”
#مركز_الاعلام_الرقمي@iraqDMC يحذر مستخدمي وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي من التفاعل مع هذه المنشورات حتى لو كان بانتقادها من خلال التعليقات او مشاركتها، مما يؤدي الى الترويج المجاني لها دون قصد.
In January of this year, a United Nations warning was issued as follows:
Islamic State has begun to reassert itself in its heartlands in the Middle East and continues to seek opportunities to strike in the west, the United Nations has said.
A report to the UN security council based on recent intelligence from member states describes how the group is mounting increasingly bold insurgent attacks in Iraq and Syria, calling and planning for the breakout of its fighters from detention facilities and exploiting the weaknesses of local security forces.
The report portrays an organisation that has suffered significant setbacks but is tenacious, well-funded and still poses a considerable local and international threat.
Iraq’s counter-terrorism forces further called on users to make “the necessary concerted efforts to counter the terrorist tide through extensive reporting of these accounts so that Facebook closes them.”
A common phrase I have heard lately all around the internet as well as all around the area I live whenever the pandemic situation is broached is that “We are all in this together, and WE will get through this together….”
The sentiment is repeated like a religious mantra and I believe it is rooted in a collectivist reaction in the minds of many. The idea is that if we all comfort each other by repeating the lie that we’re all in the same boat, and if everyone believes it, then the threat of the outbreak along with the economic collapse will somehow simply “disappear”.
The notion that “we are going to get through this together” seems to be based in the assumption that the crisis is going to move quickly, and if we hold tight, our sacrifice will be minimal and all will go back to the way things were before. This is simply not so.
I highly respect the ideal of giving hope to others whenever possible (as Aragorn says in Return Of The King “I give hope to men. I keep none for myself”). However, hope has to come from a legitimate place. It has to be based in some reality. There are too many lies driving public psychology right now to give concrete hope to anyone. The lies have to land, they have to touch ground, and the facts have to hit people hard before we can then come to an understanding of what we have to do to survive this event. In the meantime, the majority of people are going to be trapped in fantasy land, hypnotized by delusions of magical cures and economic silver bullets that will lead to salvation “in just two more weeks”.
On top of all that, the American public has never been more divided than it is right now. Sure, we can soak in a bathtub of brain-dead dreams with worn-out elitist celebrities like Madonna, telling us that the virus “makes us all equal”, but does it really? I’m sorry, but the truth that not all people are equal is about to become more apparent than ever before.
The pandemic along with the economic collapse is going to separate people into clearly definable categories, and many of these groups will be in direct conflict with each other:
The Prepared
These are the people that saw this event coming ahead of time and spent many months if not many years stocking supplies and training to survive it. The Prepared were smarter and had more insight into the reality of the situation than most people. If we were to apply evolutionary standards then The Prepared would be at the top of the food chain, the alpha species, but let’s not let this go to our heads; there are many downsides to being a member of The Prepared.
In a just world, the masses would be going to The Prepared for answers to the crisis, and some do, but overall I think The Prepared will be more hated for their predictive capabilities than admired. This is why prepared people have to stick together, organize and protect one another; because the day is coming when they will be targeted as enemies of the collective.
The Unprepared
The Unprepared are not all alike. There are people who are arrogant and ignored all evidence of collapse presented to them ahead of time, and now they are going to suffer for that. These are the people I call “grasshoppers”, as in the fable of ‘The Ant And The Grasshopper’. They danced and played all summer and laughed at all the warnings of impending winter. These are the people who will act indignant and vicious when they are deprived of comfort, and they will demand that the ants give up their preps to save them (which is not going to happen).
There are other people who were merely oblivious to the situation and are mostly innocent in their lack of preparation They just weren’t exposed to the available information for whatever reason. They live decent hard working lives and they are mostly innocent in all of this. They too will be faced with hard decisions in the near future – Some of them will try to prepare as best they can while the crisis is still in its early stages. Others will join the grasshoppers out of fear and demand a draconian government response.
The Independents
The Independents are people that will seek to solve the problems surrounding the crisis with their own ingenuity. They will not demand help from the government, nor will they demand that other people “share” their resources with them out of a sense of entitlement. They will ask for help where needed, but they will try to do the best they can to endure the crisis without trying to force others to make things easier for them.
The Independents will understand the difference between collectivism and voluntary organization. The first strategy requires force and fear, the second strategy does not. The Collectivists will try to interfere or even destroy The Independents, because if they are successful in organizing voluntarily and becoming prosperous through free market innovation then this will prove that the collectivist ideology is unnecessary and outdated. The Collectivists would rather “win” than be right in their thinking.
The Collectivists
Collectivist people will applaud the vast expansion of government power and control, because within their cult religion government is god. To them, the pandemic is not a curse but a blessing, because it gives them a rationale to take part in a grand subjugation of other people and feel the power they have always wanted to feel. These are the people with inherent narcissistic and sociopathic traits within our culture. They represent only 1% to 5% of the total population, but they are predatory and single-minded in their goal to control others and feed off the world like parasites.
These people are not always elites. In fact, most of them are just like you and me in terms of status and income. In times of great crisis, these creatures tend to rise to the surface and reveal themselves. They feel particularly energized within environments that fuel tyranny; they love the feeling of power and will exploit crisis events as an excuse to act as evil as they always wanted to but could not during normal times. Take for example Doctor John Rademaker in Louisville, Kentucky who attacked a group of girls and tried to strangle one of them for “not social distancing”. Once we consider the fact that by attacking the girls he was also breaking social distancing guidelines, it becomes clear that people like this don’t actually care about their own rules, they only care that OTHER PEOPLE follow those rules.
They want to be the observers, like the Soviet Cheka. They know will never be at the top of the power totem pole, so they ride the coattails of tyranny and feed on whatever scraps of power they can get.
These people seem like they would not work well with others, but they do tend to congregate in groups as long as there is mutual gain to be had. They have all the character qualities of global elites including a complete lack of empathy, a penchant for self worship and idolization, zero belief in anything greater than themselves, a propensity towards deceit and violence to get what they want, and using disasters to their advantage.
The Global Elites
This is a tiny group of creatures that benefit the most from the pandemic crisis. Through this disaster they will be able to absorb vast amounts of hard assets for pennies on the dollar, devouring wealth and property from the middle class and changing the entire economy into something unrecognizable. The elites don’t want your property and wealth simply because they are greedy; they want your property and wealth because they don’t want YOU to have any. They want to end the concept of private property for all time, for without property and the ability to accumulate wealth through our labors the masses are always dependent on government for their survival.
Beyond this, the ultimate goal of the elites is a one world cashless society, as well as a one world government. Already, the US Senate is considering a bill that would create a digital dollar and a digital wallet system to replace paper currency. Other nations have begun going cashless, and the coronavirus is being used as an excuse to speed up the process. The UN’s World Health Organization has specifically called for going cashless as well. Once the public is trapped into a digital system, they will never be able to trade without using the banks as the middle men, and all transactions will be tracked. Nothing will be private ever again, and with the push of a button what little wealth you are allowed to accumulate can be frozen within the new socialist control culture. You will be at the mercy of the government and the banks.
Moving past the economic, the elites have bigger dreams of a massive surveillance society in which every person is tracked 24 hours a day. Bill Gates is all over the mainstream news lately promoting the idea of tracking apps (like those already being used in China) to “fight the coronavirus”. Apple and Google are pushing the agenda as well and are ready to launch tracking apps whenever the government is ready to write them into law.
The Global Elites do not care about saving lives. They do not care about saving the economy as we know it. They do not care about political affiliations. They are on their own side, and they only care about power. Like I said, we are NOT all in this together.
The Sheeple
Sheeple are people that have no capacity for self leadership. They will follow whoever they think has the best chance of securing their survival, even if those people have evil intentions. Sheeple are not necessarily nefarious minded, they just don’t care about the bigger picture and they only see what is right in front of them. This is a different mindset from those of us that look for leadership in people that display integrity, experience and competence; Sheeple don’t care about any of that. They just want to feel protected and secure no matter what, even if they have to sacrifice their freedoms in exchange for that feeling. They are a prime target for The Collectivists and The Global Elites.
Trying to talk sense to sheeple is almost impossible. They will not listen. You probably know a few Sheeple in your life who even now in the midst of a global collapse still think this crisis will be over in a matter of weeks and that the government will save them. Attempting to convince them otherwise is a waste of time.
All you can do is provide a better solution than the collectivists and hope The Sheeple follow your lead instead of the evil empire’s when the crash hits hardest.
Irreconcilable Differences
These different types of people are mostly at odds with each other. There is no “we”, there is no “us” and there is no “getting through this thing together”. I will say that the vast majority of people do have a conscience, unlike the globalists that created this calamity in the first place, but that does not mean we will all end up on the same team. The dark magic of chaos is that it can be used to convince otherwise peaceful people to support horrifying tyranny in the name of the “greater good”.
Beware anyone promoting the notion that we are “all in this together”; this is the gateway to collectivism and it is a blatant lie. As mentioned, there are establishment elites that plan to gain from this event while the rest of us suffer; they are NOT on our side or in our boat. They will use the pandemic and the simultaneous economic collapse (which they have engineered) to maneuver the public into abandoning their freedoms in the name of collective safety.
There are useful idiots and narcopaths out there that thrive in these types of unstable environments. They too are vampires seeking to bleed people dry while using the disaster as cover. These are the people screaming at strangers walking down the street that they need to “go back home” and “flatten the curve”. These are the people calling the cops on their neighbors for talking in a group bigger than two or three. These are the local government officials calling for bans on church services even when they are held outside and follow the “guidelines” of social distancing. These are the people calling preppers “hoarders” and demanding that their supplies be redistributed. These are the people that revel in authoritarianism.
Understand that there are many sides to this conflict and very few of them are honorable. Listen to your conscience, listen to evidence, truth and reason, and choose your side wisely.
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Ford Tests Buzzing Wristbands To Keep Workers Six Feet Apart
Ford Motor Co. is now piloting new wearable social-distancing wristbands for its workers once its factories reopen, reports Bloomberg.
A group of workers at a factory in Plymouth, Michigan, are currently testing the wristbands that vibrate when someone on the assembly line comes within six feet of one another.
Kelli Felker, the company’s spokeswomen, said the new wristbands could be deployed more widely when manufacturing plants reopen next month. She said the new devices would allow employees to work safely with social distancing in mind.
Ford is expected to restart production lines next month after a six-week shutdown. All employees will be subjected thermal-imaging scan before entering any facility. Felker said employees would be given protective medical gear such as masks, face shields, and gloves.
The new health measures are being worked out with the United Auto Workers union (UAW):
“Ford and the UAW are working closely to identify different ways to keep our people safe while they are at work,” Felker said.
The Plymouth plant is also the site where Ford is producing ventilators and respirators for hospitals.
Starting in April, we’re producing a ventilator with @GEHealthcare, leveraging the design of @AironCorp’s FDA-cleared ventilator. It’s designed to operate on air pressure without electricity, making it a versatile solution to help those fighting #COVID19. #BuiltFordProudpic.twitter.com/DtsB0fPGe0
The coronavirus outbreak has been an unprecedented shock to the hourly job market. The past few weeks have seen huge changes in who’s hiring. Snagajob is the largest site for hourly jobs. Its employers include some of the hardest hit categories like sit-down restaurants. It also helps employers in the grocery and warehouse industries—and these jobs are critical to keeping the economy running during this crisis.
According to Snagajob, overall job postings are down almost 40% from their peak a month ago. In particular, sit-down restaurants, staffing firms and entertainment have been the hardest hit. If you’re looking for a job, hiring is up in warehousing (Amazon), logistics (shipping, i.e. more Amazon), retail, groceries (Whole Foods, so even more Amazon) and transportation (you guessed it).
***
Before we start in with the charts, here are a few points to remember. The following data looks at the number of job postings by category and location, before and after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on 3/11/2020.
To start, let’s look at overall jobs posted on Snagajob over the last two months.
You can see that jobs peaked on March 4th, before starting to drop, even before the WHO declared a worldwide pandemic on 3/11. From this peak, job postings have declined 41%. However, compared to the first day of this analysis (2/3/2020), jobs postings are only down 12.6% so far.
There is a bright spot though. There’s a small uptick in job postings in the most recent dates. There is a complete reordering of the hourly job market, where some categories have disappeared for the time-being, but others are growing.
The world is completely different than before the pandemic, but it’s not all bad news when it comes to job postings. Logistics and warehouse job postings are up over 156% since the pandemic declaration. Retail, transportation and grocery job postings are also up. You can still find jobs in essential services that keep people fed and supplied.
There are still a lot of categories, however, that have seen a steep decline in job postings. Temporary staffing jobs have seen the largest drop, falling 74.1%. Entertainment, hospitality, on-demand and sit-down restaurant job postings have all fallen more than 30%.
Lastly, let’s look at the impact on job postings across America. The chart below shows the decline (or increase) in hourly jobs after the declaration of pandemic.
Of the 122 largest metro areas on Snagajob, 113 of them have seen a decline in hourly jobs—just nine have seen an increase so far. At the high end, places like Lafayette, Louisiana have seen a nearly 60% decrease in job postings for hourly workers. Of the top 10 most negatively affected cities, seven of them are in Louisiana or Utah. So far, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle have all seen an increase in job postings on Snagajob after the pandemic.
***
In summary, warehouse and logistics jobs are up over 150% in three weeks. Job postings for grocery stores and retail are also up as people still need to shop for essential items. While job postings may be down overall, the companies that are providing essential services to the country are still hiring. The hourly job market is still in flux and overall job postings are in decline. However, for those who are currently looking for jobs, some employers are hiring more than ever.
For The First Time Ever, The Fed Will Monetize Double The Total Treasury Issuance
While daytraders look transfixed at a stock market which continues to surge higher even as the US has lost around 22 million jobs in the past month alone, something far more nefarious is taking place behind the scenes: the Fed is nationalizing (or privatizing, depending on whether one views the Fed as a public, or a private – which it actually is – entity) the entire capital market at a pace unseen before in history.
AS the following chart from DB’s Torsten Slok shows, the current pace of weekly Treasury purchases is simply staggering, unparalleled by anything seen before in history.
It’s not just the Fed: with QE officially back (and not in the cute “Not-QE” variant, but full blown global debt monetization), every single central bank is now actively injecting billions of liquidity into the stock market.
We show this chart just so all the idiots on TV (and in the Minneapolis Fed) who still claim the Fed has no impact on stock prices and instead stocks are driven off future earnings (which are now expected to be down 70% according to JPM) will mercifully shut up for ever.
But back to the Fed, where we bring up something Torsten Slok said today, and which has to go straight to the heart of the issue whether MMT will unleash a new era of socialist prosperity and utopia for everyone, or instead, it will result in a fiscal crisis and the loss of the dollar’s reserve status, to wit:
At the peak in late March, the Fed was buying $75bn in Treasuries every day, and we are now down to “only” $30bn per day, see also here. These enormous Fed purchases combined with rates moving sideways in recent weeks make you wonder where 10-year rates would have been if the Fed had not intervened. As the Fed gradually steps away over the coming weeks, and Treasury issuance continues to increase to finance the fiscal stimulus, the market will be focusing more and more on demand and supply in the US Treasury market.
And as we ride into the sunset of US monetary supremacy and into the gaping chasm of economic, financial and fiscal turmoil now that helicopter money has been unleashed without anyone apparently realizing what has just happened, we highlight the following chart, also from Slok, which lays out succinctly what it now takes to avoid a full-blown fiscal crisis: a Fed which is monetizing twice the Treasury’s net issuance. From Slow:
When the Fed did QE in the years following the 2008 financial crisis monthly Treasury purchases never exceeded US Treasury net issuance, but the Fed is now on track to buy double the amount of net issuance
While we have nothing else to add to the chart above, a quote from Shelley: “Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
As most of us are already aware, Hydroxychloroquine has already taken the world by storm as a treatment against COVID-19. Every newspaper is talking about it, and all countries are requesting India to supply it. Now, a curious person might wonder why and how this chemical composition is so deeply entrenched in India, and is there any history behind it. Well, there is an interesting history behind it which goes all the way to the Indian king Tipu Sultan’s defeat.
In 1799, when Tipu was defeated by the British, the whole of Mysore Kingdom with Srirangapatnam as Tipu’s capital, came under British control. For the next few days, the British soldiers had a great time celebrating their victory, but within weeks, many started feeling sick due to Malaria, because Srirangapatnam was a highly marshy area with severe mosquito trouble.
The local Indian population had over the centuries, developed self immunity, and also all the spicy food habits also helped to an extent. Whereas the British soldiers and officers who were suddenly exposed to harsh Indian conditions, started bearing the brunt.
To quickly overcome the mosquito menace, the British Army quickly shifted their station from Srirangapatnam to Bangalore (by establishing the Bangalore Cantonment region), which was a welcome change, especially due to cool weather, which the Brits were gravely longing for ever since they had left their shores. But the malaria problem still persisted because Bangalore was also no exception to mosquitoes.
Around the same time in 18th century, European scientists had discovered a chemical composition called “Quinine” which could be used to treat malaria, but it was yet to be extensively tested at large scale. This malaria crisis among British Army came at an opportune time, and thus Quinine was imported in bulk by the Army and distributed to all their soldiers, who were instructed to take regular dosages (even to healthy soldiers) so that they could build immunity. This was followed up in all other British stations throughout India, because every region in India had malaria problem to some extent.
But there was a small problem. Although sick soldiers quickly recovered, many more soldiers who were exposed to harsh conditions of tropical India continued to become sick, because it was later found that they were not taking dosages of Quinine. Why? Because it was very bitter!! So, by avoiding the bitter Quinine, British soldiers were lagging behind on their immunity, thereby making themselves vulnerable to Malaria in the tropical regions of India.
That’s when all the top British officers and scientists started experimenting ways to persuade their soldiers to strictly take these dosages, and during their experiments, they found that the bitter Quinine mixed with Juniper based liquor, actually turned somewhat into a sweet flavor.
That’s because the molecular structure of the final solution was such that it would almost completely curtail the bitterness of Quinine.
That juniper based liquor was Gin. And the Gin mixed with Quinine was called “Gin & Tonic”, which immediately became an instant hit among British soldiers.
The same British soldiers who were ready to even risk their lives but couldn’t stand the bitterness of Quinine, started swearing by it daily when they mixed it with Gin. In fact, the Army even started issuing few bottles of Gin along with “tonic water” (Quinine) as part of their monthly ration, so that soldiers could themselves prepare Gin & Tonic and consume them everyday to build immunity.
To cater to the growing demand of gin & other forms of liquor among British soldiers, the British East India company built several local breweries in and around Bengaluru, which could then be transported to all other parts of India. And that’s how, due to innumerable breweries and liquor distillation factories, Bengaluru had already become the pub capital of India way back during British times itself.
Eventually, most of these breweries were handed over from British organizations after Indian independence, to none other than Vittal Mallya (the fugitive Vijay Mallya‘s father), who then led the consortium under the group named United Breweries headquartered in Bengaluru.
Coming back to the topic, that’s how Gin & Tonic became a popular cocktail and is still a popular drink even today. The Quinine, which was called Tonic (without gin), was widely prescribed by Doctors as well, for patients who needed cure for fever or any infection. So, that’s how the word “Tonic” became a colloquial word for “Western medicine” in India.
Over the years, Quinine was developed further into many of its variants and derivatives and widely prescribed by Indian doctors.
One such descendant of Quinine, called Hydroxychloroquine, eventually became the defacto cure for malaria, which is now suddenly the most sought after drug in the world today.
“A Bad Global Precedent” – Chinese GDP Collapses More Than Expected, Worse Since At Least 1992
So, the question is – just how ‘manufactured’ will this smorgasbord of Chinese macro data be? As v-shaped as the incredible ‘survey’ data? Or as realistic as the traffic and pollution numbers suggest?
The red oval is the ChiNext stock index’s reaction to the worst of China’s virus impact… green is PMI and red is the macro surprise index (which will be smashed one way or the other tonight)…
Source: Bloomberg
Of course the big one tonight is Chinese GDP growth. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for a 6% contraction in the first three months of the year, when the coronavirus outbreak forced an unprecedented lockdown of factories, stores and schools across the country (ING Bank saw a +3.6% print and at the other end of the spectrum, Capital Economics forecast a 16.0% contraction in GDP).
“China’s economy is going to recover only gradually,” said Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
“If the government over-stimulates, the only result will be a lot of wasted spending and greater debt. And that won’t help resolve the core problem of China’s economy: low productivity.”
Additionally, the government will also release data for retail sales, fixed asset investment and industrial output for March, offering the most complete picture yet of the economic destruction since the virus outbreak (but we have already seen the collapse in this monthly data for February and expectations are for a rebound or slowdown in the collapse).
And so here we go… the magic number for tonight is… a miss – Chinese GDP shrank by 6.8% from a year ago (considerably worse than the 6.0% drop expected) and the worst drop on record (since 1992)
As Bloomberg notes, the sharp contraction underscores the pressure that Chinese policy makers face as they attempt to revive the economy without nullifying efforts to contain the virus. The continued spread around the world also threatens to add fresh downward pressure on China’s exporters in a feedback loop that could throw millions out of work.
“The economic loss is unprecedented,” Pacific Investment Management Co. economists wrote.
“The global recession will hit exports primarily in the second and third quarters of 2020, domestic demand is still hampered by quarantine curbs, and stimulus transmission is weak amid spreading bankruptcies and job losses.”
And the rest of the Chinese data improved marginally but:
Industrial Production fell 8.4% YTD YoY (better than -10.0% exp)
Retail Sales fell 19.0% YTD YoY (worse than -12.5% exp)
As Bloomberg’s Asia Economy Team Manager, Malcolm Scott notes, the March numbers probably tell us a bit about human psychology as well as economics — you can turn factories back on and rev up production lines, but it’s tougher to restore consumer confidence that’s been so badly shaken. And while the consumer plays a larger role in China’s economy today than in the past, it’s nothing like the contribution in most advanced economies. That could be a bad precedent globally.
Finally, International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said in an online media briefing on Tuesday that the fund is tipping 1.2% growth for China this year.
“The rest of the global economy is now in the grips of the pandemic and there are severe containment measures around the world so that would have a big negative impact in terms of external demand on China’s growth.”
However, “until there is a usable vaccine, it is tough to see life getting anything like being back to vague normality,” warned Jim O’Neill, Chair of Chatham House and the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist who coined the term BRIC.
And for those craving the next stimulus move by Chinese officials, Shang-Jin Wei, a China expert at Columbia Business School in New York and formerly chief economist of the Asian Development Bank, warns: “Prevention of a return or the ‘second wave’ of the virus outbreak is more important than getting a high growth rate for the remainder of the year.”
Eric Holder Sees Coronavirus As ‘Opportunity’ To Redesign US Election System
Eric Holder thinks the COVID-19 pandemic is a great opportunity to fundamentally change the way America votes.
“Coronavirus gives us an opportunity to revamp our electoral system so that it permanently becomes more inclusive and becomes easier for the American people to access,” Holder told Time magazine.
“There has to be a sea change in our thinking there,” Holder told the magazine, adding “Allow people to access their primary American right by voting at home. It’s not as if this is an untried concept. Oregon has been doing this for years. But we have to make sure that we’re being sensitive to the needs of poor communities and communities of color by doing things like having prepaid postage on envelopes. Construct a system so that you’ve got expanded in-person voting, you’ve got expanded at-home voting and expanded no-excuse absentee vote-at-home measures.”
The changes, according to Holder, will help “enhance our democracy.”
Democrats across the country have been pushing for increased mail-in voting during the coronavirus crisis despite reports over the past week suggesting over 28 million mail-in ballots have been lost in the past 10 years and that thousands of ineligible voters could possibly receive mail-in ballots, including many dead people.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his show this week he believes these efforts to push mail-in voting are part of a broader effort on behalf of Democrats to “encourage” voter fraud to win elections. –Washington Examiner
The push for mail-in ballots has gained steam in Congress, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) suggesting that the new system would “remove all obstacles to participation” in the 2020 election.
Trump and GOP lawmakers have suggested that the scheme is a politically motivated power-grab – warning that the system is “corrupt” and would invite widespread fraud.
“They grab thousands of mail-in ballots and they dump it,” Trump told reporters earlier this month, adding that vote-by-mail “doesn’t work out for Republicans.”
Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans. @foxandfriends
Holder and Pelosi are joined by House Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) reportedly suggesting in a March conference call that coronavirus presents political opportunities – referring to it as a “tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”
The Baltimore Police Department and “Persistent Surveillance,” an Ohio-based company, signed a deal together to spy on the residents of Baltimore, Maryland with drones. In Nazi Germany, fascism was characterized by the fusion between corporate and government power.
This shady company was under fire almost 4 years ago in 2016, for doing surveillance with the Baltimore Police Department and violating their own 45-day data retention policy.
Give an inch, they take a mile. Their client, the BPD was able to violate their official policy with impunity.
“All media will be stored in a secure area with access restricted to authorized persons,” states the official policy of Persistent Surveillance Systems.
“Recordings not otherwise needed for criminal evidence or for official reasons are retained for a period of 45 days and then destroyed.”
The company used drones to collect over 300 hours of aerial surveillance footage over Baltimore throughout 8 months in 2016.
This was directly after nationwide scrutiny came to the department in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray, which sparked nationwide protests.
City officials approved the new deal on April 1, and then the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department about a week and a half later on April 9.
How invasive is surveillance in Baltimore?
The drones will be equipped with high-resolution cameras, capable of posing a real threat to the security of anyone deemed a “criminal.”
The ACLU emphasized that this crosses a massive line, explaining that the plan places every resident of Baltimore “under constant aerial surveillance.”
“It is equivalent to having a police officer follow us, each of us, outside all the time in case we might commit a crime,” senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Maryland, David Rocah said. “If that happened in real life, everyone would clearly understand the privacy and First Amendment implications, and it would never be tolerated.”
The high definition surveillance drones can reportedly cover around 90% of the City of Baltimore’s land area at any particular moment.
The ACLU noted that in combination with cameras on the ground accessed by the Baltimore Police Department, license plate readers, and other sources of info, it can all be combined to provide detailed information about the actions, identities, whatever you can think of, in regard to residents.
Representing the philosophical split between the fundamentally opposed sides of totalitarian vs not totalitarian, a Baltimore Police Commissioner admitted the police will in fact combine the data and have massively increased power.
“This actually can serve as a force multiplier for the police department, and perhaps can be used as an investigative tool while we are practicing social distancing,” said Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.
This week happens to be the 5 year anniversary of Freddie Gray’s tragic death at the hands of the Baltimore Police Department.
It sparked protests throughout 2015 from Baltimore, Maryland to Sacramento, California, coast to coast in the US during a year of police brutality-awareness.
“Putting residents under continuous, aerial surveillance will impact the privacy rights of everyone, but it is especially dangerous for Black and Brown communities,”the ACLU representative said. “Baltimore is a city with a terrible history of racism and lack of accountability for abuses by police. It’s the last place a novel system of mass surveillance should be tested.”
Will your city be next?
Common sense tells us that if one American city is under totalitarian drone surveillance, more will follow.
The ACLU recognized that possibility as well. A staff attorney with the ACLU stated that they are concerned if the drones are deployed in Baltimore, police across America will try to use police drones.
This month, in April 2020 the drones are set to launch, and this “trial period” of their use will last 180 days. A decision will be made by April 24, regarding the ACLU lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department.
If the police drones are deployed, it will probably happen around the end of April.
If the trial comes to an end and the drone use is discontinued, according to their promises, the drones will be out of the sky around 6 months from their launch: the end of October.
If the drones were deployed and accepted, one might see a city like Chicago or Atlanta, San Francisco or New York adopt them. San Diego-area city Chula Vista, California is already using police drones equipped with similar night vision cameras, to spot people breaking quarantine rules.
A line into totalitarianism is being crossed.
5 years after one of the most protested police murders in American history, the city of Baltimore is threatened with becoming the location of the line being crossed. Baltimore is threatened with becoming the location of a new paradigm of totalitarian surveillance, a fork in the road in history that we can either fight now or be subject to for who knows how many years.
It will definitely take more than civil liberties organizations and lawsuits to shut down a movement like this, directly aimed at the civilian class. This could be considered equal to a declaration of war against the common people: a very clear line being crossed that could usher in true totalitarianism.
What scenarios might people see if these drones were deployed throughout America? Jails and prisons might fill up with people charged with new crimes, destruction of surveillance drones and things like that. Your every move could be watched when you’re outside your home. Where you go who you go there with…and yes, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you do have something to worry about: your complete invasion of privacy.
It’s difficult to believe people will be accepting of this. Either way, this moment of the line being crossed is extremely important to recognize. Whatever social power we have, it should be utilized to oppose the persistent advances of totalitarianism and the surveillance state.
Wholesale Gasoline Hits 12 Cents A Gallon In Midwest
Two weeks ago we reported how the “steepest decline in global oil consumption ever recorded” spelled negative prices for crude in what Goldman’s Jeffrey Currie as “the largest economic shock of our lifetimes.”
Now, the unprecedented collapse in consumption has hit the other end of the industry – gasoline.
According to Bloomberg, gasoline in Fargo, North Dakota has hit 12 cents a gallon at ‘the rack’ – the wholesale market where gas station owners buy fuel before marking it up at the pumps – which have become “little more than makeshift storage for ballooning inventories.”
“When you see gasoline down around 12 cents a gallon, no one is going to be making money,” said Ron Ness, President of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, who added that it’s nearly impossible for retailers to turn a profit at that price.
“Our gasoline business has been cut in half,” said David Olson, general manager of RJ’s Gas Station outside of Fargo. Nearby, Shaun Lugurt told Bloomberg that he estimates sales at his station have tumbled 80% in a month.
“The biggest part for us that has been so hard is the unknown,” said Lugurt, adding “It’s been kind of a roller coaster.” Lugert co-owns Don’s Car Washes, and has also been forced too cut back store and worker hours.
The slump in rack prices, which are typically stable due to intense competition among distributors, is the latest sign that the coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc on every aspect of the fuel market. American gasoline consumption fell to the lowest level on record last week as lockdowns take drivers off the road while gasoline stockpiles rose to a record high. That’s caused rack prices across the U.S to collapse. Milwaukee this week beat out Fargo for the lowest price in the nation. –Bloomberg
“The local racks are just inundated with material,” according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy – who suggested that some refineries may be selling gasoline “at a break even or even a loss.”
“What we are seeing is that a lot of the big pipelines are being used as storage, and the product will just get pushed and pushed until it has no place else to go,” said DTN refined products analyst, Brian Milne. “Those places are at the end of the line.”
Retail gas prices, meanwhile, are catching up.
“You’re not going to be able to flip a switch and go back to what it was before coronavirus,” said Olson, the station manager at RJ’s. “Even with businesses opened back up again, people are going to be apprehensive.“
Olson is probably right – as a recent Gallup poll found that 80% of Americans say they will wait to return to normal activities after the government lifts the nationwide coronavirus lockdown.
