Summer Driving Season Starts Off With A Whimper… And A 30% Drop Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/26/2020 – 19:56
It may be time to start shorting oil again.
Memorial Day Weekend, which was closely watched by economists for signs of reopening “green shoots” and an acceleration in the US recovery, ended up being a huge dud. Because while beaches were mostly open and states across the country emerged from lockdowns, Bloomberg notes that demand for gasoline ended up falling over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, not only compared to a year prior but also to last week!
While gasoline consumption was expected to jump to reflect the “pent up” traveling, gasoline demand actually fell 1.34% from Thursday to Monday of the holiday weekend compared to the week prior, Patrick DeHaan, an analyst at GasBuddy, said in a tweet Tuesday. Worse, consumption on Monday fell 0.5% from the week prior, and was a whopping 25% to 35% lower compared with the long weekend a year earlier.
In short, if this is a sign of what to expect from gasoline consumption over the summer, it will be a very painful time for refiners and oil producers.
BREAKING: GasBuddy gasoline demand data shows Monday gasoline demand -0.5% from the Monday prior. Thur-Mon demand is now -1.34% from same period a week ago. #gasoline#oil#OOTTpic.twitter.com/P2z9LoYRRy
According to Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, that may have been because people kept their driving local, when in previous years they had traveled farther. But whatever the reason for the tentative unofficial start to the summer, the lackluster start to what is typically considered the season for peak American fuel demand shows how vulnerable the oil market remains as the fallout from the coronavirus crisis haunts economies according to Bloomberg.
Meanwhile crude prices have surged 80% in May, after a historic collapse below zero in April, on supply cuts by major producers as well as optimism that consumption is recovering as lockdowns ease. That optimism may have been very much premature.
“The public stayed closer to home and consumed less gasoline because they were going to recreational venues nearby rather than traveling long distances around the country,” Lipow said.
And while the demand may not be there, gasoline prices remain on the rise with the national average price rising for four consecutive weeks and gaining 5.5 cents over the last week to $1.96 a gallon, according to GasBuddy.
“Average gasoline prices across the U.S. continue to recover as more motorists take back to the roads as states relax previous shelter-in-place orders and begin filling their tanks, driving demand to continue rising,” DeHaan said in a report.
More motorists may be taking to the roads, but is “more” enough to offset the production surplus that remains in the system? For the answer keep an eye on oil prices, which may resume their slump unless there are far more concrete signs that demand is set to rise substantially from here.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2X43zdd Tyler Durden
India Expands Use Of HCQ To Prevent Coronavirus Based On Three Studies Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/26/2020 – 19:45
India will continue using hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a preventative measure against COVID-19, after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) declared on Tuesday that the drug was found to be very effective with minimal side effects for prophylaxis.
The ICMR’s decision was based on three studies they conducted, which resulted in a Friday advisory to expand the drug’s use, according to ThePrint.
Speaking at a Tuesday press conference, ICMR Director General Dr. Balram Bhargava said “COVID-19 is an evolving field. We don’t know which medicines are working and which are not. There are lots of drugs that have been repurposed for use in COVID whether prophylaxis or as treatment. HCQ is a very old anti-malarial drug that was being widely used and it continues to be widely used. It is safer.“
“We did some invitro study in labs and found that it has antiviral properties. This drug became suddenly popular when the American government also started using it and they got-fast track approval or emergency use authorisation. We also thought that it may be a useful drug for prevention of COVID,” he added.
India’s decision to increase the use of HCQ comes as the World Health Organization announced the temporary halt of its clinical trials involving the drug over concerns in a Friday Lancet report that it may do more harm than good.
The WHO has 3,500 patients from 17 countries enrolled in what it calls the Solidarity Trial. This is an effort overseen by the WHO to find new treatments for COVID-19. The patients in the trial have been randomly assigned to be treated with hydroxychloroquine, which is a common malaria drug, or three other experimental drugs for treating COVID-19 in various combinations. Only the hydroxychloroquine part of the trial is being put on hold. –NPR
The India studies
Investigations were conducted by the ICMR at three central government hospitals in New Delhi, which concluded that “amongst healthcare workers involved in Covid-19 care, those on HCQ prophylaxis were less likely to develop SARS-CoV-2 infection, compared to those who were not on it.”
The advisory also states that the National Institute of Virology in Pune has found in laboratory testing that HCQ reduces the viral load.
The ICMR also analysed data collected previously, known as retrospective case-control analysis, and found “a significant” relationship between “the number of doses taken and frequency of occurrence of Covid-19 infection in symptomatic healthcare workers who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection”.
It further said “the benefit was less pronounced in healthcare workers caring for a general patient population”.
Another observational study was conducted among 334 healthcare workers at the country’s largest public hospital, New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The 248 workers who took HCQ as preventive drug for an average of six weeks had lower incidence of the infection than those not taking the pill. –ThePrint
As a result of the studies, the Indian government will now administer the drug as a ‘prophylaxis’ to asymptomatic healcare workers in non-Covid hospitals, as well as non-Covid blocks of hospitals which have been earmarked for future Covid patients.
It will also be prescribed to contract tracers in containment zones, paramilitary, and police personnel involved in Covid-related activities.
Previous to the announcement, only high-risk individuals (including asymptomatic healthcare workers dealing with coronavirus patients), as well as asymptomatic household contacts of confirmed patients, were receiving the drug.
“With available evidence for its safety and beneficial effect as a prophylactic drug against SARS-CoV-2 during the earlier recommended 8 weeks period, the experts further recommended for its use beyond 8 weeks on weekly dosage with strict monitoring of clinical and ECG parameters, which would also ensure that the therapy is given under supervision,” reads the ICMR advisory.
“In clinical practice, HCQ is commonly prescribed in a daily dose of 200mg to 400mg for treatment of diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus for prolonged treatment periods with good tolerance,” it continues – though it added a warning that it should be discontinued if “rare” side-effects such as nausea, abdominal pain, or irregular heartbeat are detected.
That said, the ICMR studies found nausea in 8.9% of healthcare workers, abdominal pain in 7.3%, vomiting in 1.5%, and cardiovascular issues in 1.9%.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2X6hfEF Tyler Durden
On Memorial Day yesterday, Americans were called upon to remember the American soldiers who have been killed in America’s many foreign wars. U.S. interventionists should have also used the day to apologize not only to the families of those veterans but also to the families who lost loved ones as a consequence of U.S. interventionism in their countries.
Let’s begin with the obvious.
Ever since interventionists turned America toward empire and foreign control and domination in the Spanish American War in 1898, there has been no nation-state that has invaded the United States. There is a simple reason for that: No nation-state in Europe, Africa, and Asia has the money, armaments, personnel, equipment, supplies, or even the interest in crossing the ocean and invading the United States. Moreover, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the same holds true for Canada and Latin American countries.
While U.S. interventionism includes Latin America, America’s deadliest foreign wars have been waged “over there” — in countries thousands of miles away from American shores. Since none of them involved an invasion of the United States, none of them can be said to be have been waged in “self-defense.” They were all based on foreign interventionism.
What about the much-ballyhooed World War II, the big one waged by the so-called greatest generation?
Oh sure, Japan attacked U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and U.S. troops in the Philippines, but let’s put things into context, something that interventionists are loathe to do.
Japan had no interest in going to war against the United States. What would have been the point in doing so? Japanese military forces had invaded China and had their hands filled attempting to subjugate that giant country. Why would Japan want to fight a two-front war, especially against a nation as powerful as the United States? Just for the fun of it?
Of course not. Japan attacked those battleships at Pearl because President Franklin Roosevelt maneuvered and cornered them into doing so. Even though Roosevelt had assured the American people, who were overwhelmingly opposed to entered World War II after the horrific debacle of World War I, that he would never send American boys into another foreign war, the fact is that he was lying. In fact, he was doing everything he could to get the United States into the conflict.
This was a time, however, when U.S. presidents were still complying with the Constitution’s declaration of war requirement. FDR knew that owing to the overwhelming opposition among the American people to getting involved in another foreign war, he had no chance of securing a congressional declaration of war, unless he could get Germany or Japan to fire the first shot, in which he could say, “We’ve been attacked! We are shocked by this act of infamy! Now, give me my declaration of war.”
After failing to get Germany to take the bait, FDR shifted his focus to the Pacific, figuring that if he could get Japan to fire the first shot, that could give him his entry into the European war. Even though Japan and the U.S. were not at war, FDR initiated an oil embargo on Japan that proved remarkable effective in threatening Japan with insufficient oil supplies to sustain its military occupation in China. At the same time, FDR illegally froze Japanese bank accounts in the United States. When Japan tried to settle differences with the U.S. without war, FDR issued settlement terms that he knew would be highly humiliating to Japanese officials.
Moreover, FDR’s code-breakers had broken the Japan’s diplomatic codes and possibly also its military codes, which enabled him to read Japan’s secret preparations for war. While FDR craftily removed U.S. aircraft carriers from Pearl, he left the battleships there. He did the same with U.S. troops in the Philippines, a nation 5,000 miles away from the continental United States that the U.S. government had acquired by conquest in the Spanish American War.
When Japan attacked Pearl and the Philippines, it was not with the aim of invading the United States. It was with the limited aim of knocking out the U.S. Pacific fleet so that it could not interfere with Japan’s acquisition of oil in the Dutch East Indies. Thus, if FDR had never engaged in his interventionist antics, Japan would never have attacked those battleships and those U.S. troops in the Philippines because there would have been no reason to do so.
Following World War II, the U.S. government was converted into a national-security state, a totalitarian form of government structure consisting of the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA. The justification for abandoning America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic was that the U.S. could now wage a decades-long “cold war” against America’s World War II partner and ally, the Soviet Union and its “godless” communism.
Combining a national-security state with an interventionist foreign policy proved to be a disaster for the American people in terms of a never-ending series of foreign wars — wars that had nothing to do with defending the United States from an invading power.
The Korean War.
The Vietnam War.
The Grenada War.
The Panama War.
The Iraq War.
The Afghanistan War.
The Somalia War.
And more…
All with the consequence of placing American soldiers, who were made to believe that they were “defending” America, in a position of killing foreigners or being killed by them.
At the same time, the CIA engaged in a never-ending series of regime-change operations, many of which were based on state-sponsored assassinations of foreign leaders. Iran. Guatemala. Cuba. Chile. Brazil. Congo. Nicaragua. Iraq. And more.
It’s worth mentioning that all that interventionism in faraway lands ended up destroying the liberty and privacy of the American people, especially with the perpetual “war on terrorism” that interventionism has produced.
Okay, let’s keep Memorial Day as a way to honor those veterans. But how about adding Apology Day the day after Memorial Day, when all U.S. interventionists would be asked to fall down on their knees, apologize to all the American and foreign families to whom they have brought death and suffering through foreign interventionism, and seek forgiveness from them?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2X4h8td Tyler Durden
YouTube Caught Censoring Comments Deemed ‘Offensive’ To The Communist Party Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/26/2020 – 19:05
Since the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in the US, Alphabet’s YouTube has been repeatedly criticized for deleting popular videos questioning the wisdom of “lockdowns”, Dr. Fauci or other “science-backed” conventional wisdom – or simply using the outbreak as an excuse to censor more conservative content, something that has been a priority for YouTube since long before this all started.
YouTube, like Facebook and Twitter, insists it doesn’t delete conservative content, though a handful of Congressional hearings have been held to investigate these allegations, and President Trump is reportedly looking into the creation of a panel to combat censorship of conservatives on these popular platforms.
But while YouTube’s political motivation to target conservatives is fairly obvious – a large cross-section of the contemporary American left is staunchly pro-censorship when it comes to ideas they don’t agree with or believe to be “offensive” – the company’s motives in this latest scandal hint at a more sinister political agenda for Alphabet and its peers.
A journalist and human-rights advocate has discovered that YouTube is apparently censoring two Chinese-language phrases that are extremely offensive to the Communist Party.
#YouTube “automatically” deletes a comment in Chinese, “Gongfei”, which means “communist bandit”, in 15 seconds.
This person tested 3 times, same result. #油管 15秒內自動刪除「共匪」留言，網友連試三次皆如此。
他們找了個比李飛飛更厲害的AI專家？ pic.twitter.com/MLCeko0SIY
Moved to investigate the suspicious mass-deletions, the Verge discovered that YouTube has indeed added these phrases to a spam filter that automatically deletes user comments containing the phrases, even if they’re used in a positive and politically irrelevant context.
As the Verge points out, the company’s reasons for censoring these phrases is “puzzling,” considering that YouTube is blocked in China (along with all other Google services).
It’s not clear why these phrases are being deleted, but it seems that they’ve been added to comment filters meant to automatically remove spam or offensive text. This is suggested by the fact that the comments are removed quickly (human moderation takes longer) and that they are removed even if the banned phrases are used positively (e.g., “The 五毛 are doing a fantastic job”).
Making the matter more puzzling is that YouTube is currently blocked in China, giving its parent company, Google, even less reason to censor comments critical of the CCP or apply moderation systems in accordance with Chinese censorship laws. We’ve reached out to Google for comment and will update this story when we hear more.
Even if there is a legitimate reason to be suspicious of comments containing these phrases, why would YT feel the need to remove them automatically, without even allowing an opportunity for human review?
The Verge said it has reached out to YouTube for comment. But as the publication also points out, Google has been “frequently criticized” for seeming to kowtow to the wishes of the CCP as the company’s leadership quietly negotiate the company’s return to China over the explicit objections of the company’s employees, and in contravention of the principles that prompted Google to pull out of China a decade ago.
Just remember this next time you see some Silicon Valley bigwig opining about the importance of the bilateral relationship with China, and Trump’s “politically motivated” persecution of China.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3c45EKB Tyler Durden
It’s pretty safe to say we’re living in a world where everything is dramatically different than it was a few months ago. Regardless of how we personally feel about the response to the coronavirus pandemic, we still have to live in a society that has adjusted the parameters of acceptable behavior and has changed irrevocably.
While it’s impossible to guess precisely what comes next (I mean, were you really expecting aliens and murder hornets?), we can surmise from the things happening right now which way the future is headed. And we can use that information to prepare ourselves for it.
The following are some areas in which we may soon (or already) be facing difficulty, as well as some suggestions for meeting them head-on with resolve and preparations. If you’re looking for more information about the second wave of the virus and effects of that, go here.
The economy
It’s no surprise that the economy is in shambles – after all, it’s been all but shut down for months. Back when I wrote about the potential costs of COVID, I underestimated the total destruction of small businesses and the devastation of the workforce. I didn’t go deep enough in my analysis to foresee 40 million people becoming unemployed in the span of two months or that not just small businesses would suffer – that dozens of major corporations would also go under, taking even more jobs with them.
Few would have predicted the mass money printing for stimulus checks and small business loans and grants, putting our nature further in deficit than ever before. There’s even a possibility that the US could willfully default on its debt to China as the government struggles to handle the most exorbitant national debt in history.
Things that could directly affect individuals are:
Unemployment: It may be difficult to keep your job or find another one.
Inflation: As the government continues printing money for “stimulus” it weakens the dollar, reducing its value. This means that the price of goods will increase. So every trip to the store will cost you more money.
The implosion of credit: As more and more people become unable to make their payments, massive swaths of the economy will suffer, including housing, banking, and the automotive industry. This will result in an inability to get future credit for mortgages or cars, and will also result in a loss of jobs.
What can you do about these things?
It’s more important than ever to have an emergency fund. That might be easier said than done when jobs are difficult to come by and when the money you do have doesn’t stretch as far. If you are getting that extra $600 a week from the CARE Act, I can’t stress this strongly enough: SAVE IT.
Now is not the time to try and pay off all your debts, particularly if your future is looking precarious. Continue making the minimum payments while you wait to see what’s going to happen. Put aside the money you would be using to pay off debt – you can always pay it off in a few months if things are looking up. Remember that the big banks get bailouts. Everyday people do not. Paying off your unsecured debt should not be a financial priority right now.
Don’t get in over your head with expenses. If you can cut back, you should start doing so now. Don’t sign new phone contracts or expensive leases. Reduce your monthly cost of living as much as possible.
The public education system
The public education system was early to exit from normal operations. Children are currently doing “distance learning” online with their teachers and being guided by their parents.
While a lot of parents complain, many others have enjoyed reconnecting with their children. Some parents are also realizing that the education they thought their kids were receiving isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be when they find their children are far behind the curve and the teacher never even mentioned it.
After seeing some of the horrifying plans for schools reopening with “appropriate social distance,” many parents may decide not to let their children return to school at all. Here’s what the CDC is recommending.
While for many the loss of “free childcare” would pose a financial difficulty, a report on the Cato Institute suggests this could be a positive change.
Prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we may be on the brink of a massive educational reset. With families back in charge of their children’s education, free from the constraints of compulsory schooling, they may increasingly demand more educational choice and freedom. Some of these families will choose to opt‐out of schooling altogether, inspired by the learning, growth, and reignited curiosity they witness in their children during this time at home. (source)
We’ve all see bare spaces on the shelves at the grocery stores. There’s a major problem getting food from the farmers to the people who need it. Our system has been designed around the centralization and processing of food.
Interestingly, this problem isn’t necessarily about actual shortages as much as it is processing and distribution.
One of the issues processing. With meat, in particular, this is difficult – most folks aren’t even going to be willing to process their own chickens and it’s wildly unrealistic to imagine a family in the city processing a cow or a pig. With produce, it becomes a little bit easier – anyone can wash fruits and vegetables – but employees are still needed to harvest the food.
A lot of that scarcity could be remedied if we could reallocate things – if janitorial supplies could be sold to the general public, if farmers could sell directly to stores or consumers, and if farmers could donate unpurchased items to food banks.
No matter where you live, you can produce or acquire at least some of the food you eat.
Gardening – Grow food any way you can, from sprouting microgreens in smaller apartments to container gardens on a patio or balcony to full-on vegetable gardens that take up 90% of your back yard. With all the bare shelves at the grocery store, producing any of your own food will be helpful. Here’s some information on how to start a garden inexpensively.
Livestock – If you live in a place where you can have livestock, now might be the time to do it. Many cities allow 3-6 hens in backyard coops, and of course, if you live in the country, it will be no problem to have chickens. Having fresh eggs at your disposal could be very important one of these days. Also, keep in mind that chickens are a great way to dispose of leftovers and vegetable scraps. Here’s some information on raising baby chicks. Rabbits are also a good animal to raise and can be farmed a lot more subtly within city limits because they’re so quiet. They can provide a very sustainable source of meat.
Hunting – If you already have the equipment to do so, hunting can help you to acquire meat. A deer could provide your family with venison for months. Smaller game, like ducks or geese, are also good additions to your freezer. And depending on where you live, you can use snares for rabbit or other small mammals.
Foraging – Even in the midst of the city, a park can be an abundant source of food in season if you know what to look for. Get yourself a good regional guide to the food growing freely in your area. It’s important that the book be regional because there are so many medicinal and edible plants in the US, you’ll want to narrow it down to what you can find where you are now. Makes sure your harvesting from an area not sprayed with toxic pesticides.
Sprouting – The fastest and easiest way to grow something yourself is through sprouting. While supplies for orders are backed up, you can get excellent guidance on sprouting what you already have on this website. Sprouting can be done just about anywhere, in just about any home. They provide high nutritional value and some fresh veggies, any time of year.
The ability to locate or produce food is something that can mean the difference between keeping your family’s bellies filled or hunger. Grocery stores remain low on inventory and food banks cannot keep up with the demand of people who are out of work and who haven’t yet received their unemployment checks.
The supply chain of other goods
It isn’t just food that people are having difficulty finding. Nearly any store you visit right now has a lack of inventory. Some of it isn’t being produced, other things aren’t being imported, and still others are somewhere in limbo in the broken supply chain.
Some of the things that are missing are products that originate in China – see this massive list.
Other items, like paper products, are also sparse even though many of these things are made in the USA. It isn’t just because of so-called “hoarders” either, as the media wants us to believe. There have been shortages of TP across the globe and the main reason is the fact that everyone is now at home most of the time now. Previously, a lot of a person’s toilet paper usage was outside the home – so everyone was using those giant janitorial supply rolls. Most households are now using 40% more toilet paper than before. This interesting article goes into detail about why there isn’t a quick and easy fix for this. (source)
We can expect shortages of everything from medications to automotive parts to hygiene supplies in the near future due to the breakdown of the supply chain.
What can we do about the shortage of goods?
In reality, a lot of the things we used to run to the store and buy simply aren’t essential. We can begin to downsize and to focus on needs instead of wants.
We can begin to be more careful with the resources we do have. How many times have we said, “It’s cheaper to just replace it than try and fix it” when tossing something in the trash? We should be living by the adage, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
It’s also a good time to begin to be more creative with our reuse of things. Can you use the fabric from an item of clothing you’ll no longer wear to make something else that you need? How can you repurpose things? What multiple uses can you get from items? You can’t go wrong with learning new skills like making or repairing commonly used items.
Instead of making a dash to the store your first option, see how you can solve problems without buying anything. Start looking for substitutes and make your items last as long as possible with careful cleaning and maintenance. This way of life has the added bonus of helping you to get a handle on your finances.
As the financial catastrophe our nation is facing becomes more apparent, so will the desperation that people are feeling. And desperate people can behave irrationally and dangerously. Anyone who has ever considered the extreme measures that they would go to in order to feed or protect their children can understand that others feel exactly the same way.
Right now, during these early stages, we’re still in the “good” times. The government is doling out money hand over fist. Food banks are still operating, although supplies are very limited. A lot of people have looked at this as a “paid vacation” from their everyday lives. Many are making more money staying home collecting unemployment than they made at work – for some it’s triple the amount.
But when that money stops coming in…when the food banks are empty…when the jobs don’t reappear…when supplies are short even for those with money…when there’s no more help?
That’s when people will begin to feel desperate.
What can you do about this?
First of all, it’s of the utmost importance that you practice good OpSec. That’s a military term that means “operational security.” Put simply, OpSec means that people outside your inner circle should be completely unaware of your supplies, your level of preparedness, and your willingness and ability to defend what’s yours.
Nobody needs to know you have extra toilet paper or canned goods. If you really want to help someone out, pick up a few things for them at the store and drop it off in the bag from the store saying, “I grabbed a few things for you while I was at the store.” Make sure they don’t think it came from your home because hungry people have very long memories.
Secondly, you need to be prepared so that you don’t feel this same desperation. We’ve been talking about preparedness on this website for almost a decade. If you haven’t put your plan into action, you are truly running out of time to do so, and quickly. Stock up and get ready because the future is going to be bumpy.
The outrage
Last but definitely not least, we can expect outrage.
Outrage will occur for a million different reason when times are tense, not the least of which are:
Loss of constitutional rights
Loss of freedom to move around as you want
Loss of the ability to make a living
Loss of loved ones
Loss of security
Loss of certainty about the future
We’re dealing with a scenario in which loss is rampant. One of the stages of grief is anger and we can absolutely expect this to erupt. We’ve seen some of this anger already, with protests across the country. Of course meeting those protesters are counter-protesters – everyone has a different story so they’re viewing this situation through a different lens.
The sides are being clearly drawn here – people are being cast into the role of caring only about the economy or only about public health. Those who are outraged aren’t looking for the middle ground – they’re furious due to their loss or their fear of loss. And don’t forget, this is an election year, so the media and the political parties will be out there in full force, stirring the pot.
What can you do about this?
You have to be prepared to protect yourself and your family from those who are outraged. This might mean staying at home in order to avoid conflict, enhancing your home security, carrying a weapon (aren’t you doing that already?), or taking measures to isolate and protect the health of the people you love. It might also be staying “gray” and understanding the baseline mood of the place where you are. Regardless of your personal feelings, the best way to avoid drawing attention to yourself is by being just another person in the crowd/neighborhood/office.
I strongly encourage you to be proactive about this and take responsibility for your health. If you are in a vulnerable group (or have a loved one who is) are you really going to trust other people who don’t care to protect them?
If you are in a state with a lot of restrictions, it pays to be attentive. (Of course, it always pays to be attentive.) If you choose to go protest, that’s entirely up to you. If you hope to avoid potential trouble, when there are large, angry groups of people, don’t be there. It only takes a small spark for people who are already angry to erupt and you probably don’t want to be around when they do.
If there are large, angry groups of people, don’t be there. It only takes a small spark for people who are already angry to erupt.
Find things for which you can be grateful.
This may sound like crazy advice, but finding things for which you feel gratitude is the most life-changing thing you can do when you are trying to adjust. And adjusting is exactly what we must do as we prepare to meet a future that is different from what we ever expected.
You may find that your situation has dramatically changed since the beginning of the year. You may have lost one income or all income. You may be depending on checks from unemployment. Your business may not be able to withstand the extended shutdown. You may find yourself unable to pay bills that were never a problem before.
It’s a whole new world out there.
If you can find things to be grateful for, it will give you the encouragement you need to push forward. A full pantry, healthy loved ones, being together with the people you care for, being able to be present in your child’s education, making new and supportive friends online, a thriving garden, a delicious and filling meal, some free time after years of non-stop work–>activities–>bed only to get up and start it all over again – all of these are reasons for gratitude. Every day you’re on the right side of the grass is a good day if you can find things for which you are thankful.
Your attitude is everything. If you wallow in misery, you’re going to be miserable.
Everything has changed, but it’s still important to find reasons to be happy, grateful, and hopeful. These traits will help you find the resilience you need to survive and thrive, regardless of the challenges ahead.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZFVXzi Tyler Durden
In Unprecedented Move, Twitter Tags Trump Tweets As ‘Misinformation’ Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/26/2020 – 18:23
Mere hours after Kara Swisher appeared on CNBC to call on Twitter to establish a panel of ‘content reviewers’ who can help the platform tag and remove “misinformation” – ie information that doesn’t neatly fit the narrative being pushed by one of Swisher’s employers, the New York Times – it looks like the company is taking a major step in that direction.
For the first time, Twitter has tagged tweets by President Trump as “misinformation”, and appended a link where readers can “get the facts” below the tweet’s primary text.
The tweet, sent earlier today by the president, was the latest in a series of missives opposing mail-in ballots, which the president has insisted would lead to widespread voter fraud.
According to Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough, who spoke to the Washington Post about the new policy, Trump’s tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”
But instead of allowing readers to reason this out for themselves (something that shouldn’t be all that difficult given the thousands of replies calling Trump a racist liar), Twitter is stepping in to play the role of arbiter of truth.
An opinion column published in today’s WSJ hinted at a notion that has become increasingly obvious in the Trump era: An absolute truth is an extremely rare thing. Even the NYT has allowed a defined, liberal perspective infect its reporting over the years, as the column’s writer argued, and if the media wants to regain the trust of the public, it’s time to acknowledge that it doesn’t have some kind of monopoly on the truth.
Twitter has reportedly considered affixing warning labels to Trump’s tweets in the past, though Dorsey has insisted that Twitter would never remove a tweet from Trump, as Swisher urged the company to do. However, apparently, a letter sent to Dorsey by the widower of a former intern in then-Congressman Joe Scarborough’s office begging the company to remove several Trump tweets – tweets that allegedly perpetuated a ‘conspiracy’ about the death of the man’s wife – pushed the company over the edge. Though notably those tweets haven’t been touched.
Now, will Twitter apply the same scrutiny to Joe Biden?
And on issues of science, upon which science will twitter rely?
Though the company hasn’t said much, we suspect this won’t be an isolated incident. Will twitter now go full-on CCP and hire a ‘propaganda board’ to review all content on the site? We imagine we’ll learn more about the company’s plans in the coming days.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TD8dNe Tyler Durden
Surveillance firms around the world are licking their lips at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cash in on the coronavirus by repositioning one of their most invasive products: the tracking bracelet.
Body monitors are associated with criminality and guilt in the popular imagination, the accessories of Wall Street crooks under house arrest and menace-to-society parolees. Unlike smartphones, de facto tracking devices in their own right, strapped-on trackers are expressly designed to be attached to the body and exist solely to report the user’s whereabouts and interactions to one or more third parties; they don’t play podcasts or tell you how many steps you took that day to sweeten the surveillance.
But a climate of perpetual bio-anxiety has paved the way for broader acceptance of carceral technologies, with a wave of companies trying to sell tracking accessories to business owners eager to reopen under the aegis of responsible social distancing and to governments hoping to keep a closer eye on people under quarantine.
Take AiRISTA Flow, a Maryland-based outfit that helps corporations track their “assets,” breathing or not. In an April 21 press release, the company announced it would begin selling Bluetooth and Wi-Fi trackers to be worn on an employee’s wrist like a Fitbit — or around their neck like a cowbell.
“When people come within six feet of each other for a period of time,” the company wrote in a press release, “the device makes an audible chirp and a record of the contact is made in the AiRISTA Flow software system.”
But the tracking goes far beyond audible chirps: AiRISTA’s platform allows employers to continuously upload a record of close encounters to a corporate cloud, providing an up-to-date list of presumed social distancing violators that would double as a detailed record of workplace social interactions.
The company’s marketing language is explicit in talking up the nonviral benefits of tracking your workers’ every move: By helping companies “Locate people and things in real time” (the two are seemingly treated interchangeably), they can expect a “Reduction in unplanned downtime,” “Improved asset utilization rates, [and a] reduced need for spares.”
In a press release published just a day after AiRISTA Flow’s, Boston-based Redpoint Positioning Corporation, another player in the business of tracking workers and inanimate objects, announced that it was taking its own “cutting-edge technology … already used by leading companies worldwide in third-party logistics, auto manufacturing, mine operation” and repackaging it for social distancing. Like AiRISTA, Redpoint offers companies the ability to “tag” their equipment and employees using ultra-wideband radio signals, a wireless positioning technology only recently added to the most advanced iPhones. Redpoint boasted in the announcement of its ability to use these tags to “track the location of people and equipment with extremely high accuracy, even in complex industrial environments,” now with a coronavirus-specific augmentation:
“If social distancing parameters, such as a 1- or 2-meter radius, are violated between workers, the tag alarm will alert them to the hazard.” The company will also collect a history of employee interactions:
“If an infection does occur, historical data from the system will allow for highly accurate contact tracing, as records can show the individuals who were near the infected party.”
A Redpoint spokesperson did not answer when asked if the company has any policies dictating or constraining how their technology can be used by clients.
While the AiRISTA and Redpoint trackers merely evoke the aesthetics of a police state in the workplace, Israeli surveillance outfit SuperCom is literally repackaging as a Covid-19 “solution” technology previously used on incarcerated or criminally convicted people. The security company has customers in 20 countries, including the U.S., and claims decades of experience with what it calls in a press release “secured boundaries projects,” like border crossings and home confinement. It’s the house arrest expertise that the company is now marketing as PureCare, described on the SuperCom website as a “state-of-the-art solution for quarantine and isolation monitoring to aid government efforts in containing and limiting the reach of infectious diseases” and, incredibly, as “a non-intrusive patient friendly system that constantly tracks patient location within buildings, vehicles and outside.”
SuperCom Americas President Ordan Trabelsi declined to tell The Intercept where the company’s ankle bracelets are currently being used for quarantine enforcement, but it named Central America as the location of one pilot deployment, and referenced a second pilot program in some other, unspecified region, in an April 6 press release announcing a “Coronavirus (COVID-19) citizen quarantine and containment tracking technology.” The company announced separately, on April 27, that it had begun selling tracking devices for prisoners released from an unnamed “United States of America correctional facility due to COVID-19.”
In the same press release, SuperCom claimed to see a spike in interest from “government agencies looking to restrict the spread of COVID-19 among their general population” and envisioned “additional potential industry demand for electronic monitoring services coming from the incarcerated American population.”
One might think that a company like SuperCom would shy away from proposing that those exposed to the novel coronavirus be in any way treated like literal criminals. But in a recent promotional YouTube interview, Trabelsi makes a point of stressing that it’s precisely the company’s work with criminal elements that makes its Covid-19 “solution” superior. “In the past, we have spent a lot of our time focusing on very accurate and state of the art tracking of offenders,” he said in the video. “Many customers and potential customers around the world asked us if we could use that same platform to do, you know, Covid-19 home quarantine tracking and compliance. And we thought, of course we can because it’s exactly what we do in the offender tracking space. But now we’ll just be tracking people that are not essentially offenders but unluckily were exposed to the virus.”
When asked in the YouTube interview about the privacy implications of SuperCom’s ankle bracelets, Trabelsi demurred — though he did note that the hardware is “very comfortable and goes underneath their sock.” He went on to say that how the company’s customers use the technology is their call, not his.
“We leave it to them to make their decisions on rules and privacy,” he stated.
In an interview with The Intercept, Trabelsi said interest in SuperCom’s coronavirus product has been “mostly government” so far. Should any of these intrigued governments decide to use SuperCom bracelets to enforce quarantines, Trabelsi said it’s up to them to do so responsibly.
“Everyone has their own rules,” he told me. “Some countries share that they want to put everyone who comes into the country into quarantine for 14 days, some want to put it onto people who are sick, or who have a confirmed case; it depends what [that government’s] regulations are. They define the rules exactly as they want. We just provide them with technology to track people.”
A laissez-faire approach to privacy and accountability will do little to persuade those who see SuperCom’s strategy as a cynical attempt to push lucrative police technology into the civilian world during a period of widespread social crisis. Leonard Rubenstein, a human rights attorney and bioethicist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, told The Intercept that SuperCom’s stance has the distinction of being both dangerous and useless.
“I found the ankle monitor and other tracking methods described [by SuperCom] highly inappropriate and detrimental to a public health response in being unreasonably and unnecessarily coercive,” he said, “a serious invasion of privacy without any safeguards, and promoting an adversarial relationship to public health authorities when the relationship should be built on trust.”
Rubenstein, who is affiliated with the school’s department of epidemiology, said that an invasive technology like a tracking bracelet imposes “limitations on human rights to serve public health ends” and must be held to particularly high standards to determine if it’s worth the trade-off.
Jennifer Granick, an attorney specializing in surveillance and cybersecurity technologies at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Intercept that SuperCom’s Covid-19 marketing efforts put a public health gloss on a police technology and thus helps it to “be normalized among the general population for medical reasons. … This should trouble us all.”
To Rubenstein, even SuperCom’s most humane use case for tracking bracelets, allowing temporary release of incarcerated people to spare them from a coronavirus prison outbreak, doesn’t pass muster. “In the case of released prisoners, less restrictive means are also available,” he said. An always-on surveillance bracelet might be defensible only “where there was an individualized determination that the person poses a high public safety risk upon release in the absence of monitoring/tracking,” he added.
Responding to these concerns, Trabelsi told The Intercept that despite the company’s own emphasis on monitoring criminals, its products shouldn’t be understood as intended only for that purpose. “The product vision [is] to track the location of people to verify they are following the rules in order to protect themselves and our society,” Trabelsi wrote via email. “The product wasn’t necessarily developed for offenders. The technology also tracks patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other issues that require monitoring for their own safety.” Trabelsi argued that tracking bracelets could allow people to avoid being confined to a hospital or “government controlled facility” while under quarantine. “This technology would give these individuals the option to be at their homes instead and be monitored to reduce the risk of causing harm to others,” he added.
When asked if SuperCom had consulted with any public health experts during the design or sale of its tracking hardware, Trabelsi was unsure — “In the past we probably have, I’m not certain.” But he also seemed to push back on the notion, perfectly framing Granick’s worry, that this is even a public health technology to begin with: “The technology is essentially for tracking people. It’s not a health solution. It can just tell you where people are. It’s not going to keep you from getting sick. It’s not going to heal you.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TIOgVh Tyler Durden
Managing editor Ed Harrison and senior editor Ash Bennington break down the brewing tensions between China and the United States. They comprehend the consequences of a potential “decoupling” between the two superpowers and analyze the possibility of a new Cold War. Ed and Ash also analyze the continued rise of U.S. equities and look forward to see whether the ongoing crisis will be the shortest recession in history or if there is some “post-snapback malaise” in store. In the intro, Jack Farley takes a look at what could be the first convertible bond default in the history of Chinese markets.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gqkePR Tyler Durden
Twitter ‘Un-Verifies’ Journalist One Hour After He Tweets About Obama Spying On Journalists Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/26/2020 – 17:45
While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey continues the search for his identity through meditation and fasting, his hyper-partisan San Francisco-based company has escalated its war on wrongthink.
The latest casualty, Mediaite journalist Rudy Takala, was stripped of his blue “verified” checkmark approximately one hour after tweeting his column about the Obama administration spying on journalists last Thursday, according to Breitbart‘s Allum Bokhari.
I tweeted this column about the Obama administration spying on journalists at 5:47 Thursday.
Around an hour later, my verification badge magically disappeared.
Takala’s article suggests that “Obamagate” is just the “latest development in nearly a decade-long battle” for journalists such as former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who has long asserted that she was spied on by the feds from 2011-2014 as part of her reporting on the Obama DOJ’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running debacle, as well as her reporting on the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
While her case against the US government was tossed by a three-judge panel last year, Attkison moved to reopen the case in January after she told the court that a whistleblower had provided new information.
That information implicated five specific individuals, according to court filings — including Rod Rosenstein, a familiar target of Trump’s grievances. Court filings allege Rosenstein, who served as the Obama administration’s U.S. attorney for Maryland, “ordered the unlawful surveillance and hacking” of Attkisson’s devices. (He subsequently served as Trump’s deputy attorney general, a capacity in which he appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump’s staffers.) –Mediaite
For his insolence – providing yet another log on the mounting pyre of scandals in Obama’s “scandal-free” administration – Takala appears to have been punished by the Silicon Valley thought police with the removal of his coveted (by some) blue check.
Takala isn’t the only one… As Bokhari reports, podcast host Josh Lekach similarly lost his verified badge after interviewing Republican congressional candidate Laura Loomer – who is suing Twitter over politically biased censorship.
“I interviewed Laura Loomer yesterday, and today my Twitter verification badge is gone,? Lekach tweeted last week.
Listen to my podcast episode with Laura on my Patreon for free, and please subscribe. https://t.co/7tXmZ35tbC
Conservative app developer Doriano Carta, previously a writer for Mashable and GigaOm, reported that his verified badge had also disappeared.
It is unclear how many others have been deverified, or why. Twitter has yet to release any public statements on the matter, and has yet to respond to Breitbart News’ request for comment. –Breitbart
Did any liberal journalists lose their blue checkmarks for promoting debunked russiagate conspiracy theories about the Trump administration?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3d4HWPL Tyler Durden
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
– Patrick Henry
“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
– Samuel Adams
After observing the reaction of the America people, over the last two months, to a virus that will not kill 99.97% of them, I wondered how could a country created upon the blood and courage of patriot farmers and leaders who knew they would hang if their revolution failed, have degenerated into an infantilized nation of obedient slaves to un-Constitutionalized authoritarianism. It saddens me that a country borne by revolutionary means against an overbearing authoritarian monarchy has turned into a nation of bed-wetters curled up in their basements sucking their thumbs, begging government overlords to protect them from a virus.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising after decades of government public school indoctrination where U.S. History facts have been usurped by feelings, diversity and gender agendas pushed by less than mediocre teachers. Government controlled education hasn’t taught children to think critically or question authority, but to obey rules and allow emotions to drive their actions. When multiple generations have been programmed to feel, rather than think, using panic and fear to make them do as they are told isn’t a difficult task. This pandemic reaction is a testament to their decades long propaganda and misinformation campaign. Rather than developing herd immunity the country developed a herd mentality.
I know “they” never let a crisis go to waste, but I’m unsure whether this crisis has been manufactured, and if so, why now and for what ultimate purpose. When in doubt regarding why events develop in a certain way, it is always a safe bet to follow the money. If a particular group receives out-sized benefits as a result of a crisis and the response to the crisis, you can be sure they heavily influenced the outcome. The short-term winners and losers from this plandemic are quite easy to recognize.
It isn’t the 1% who won, as many doctors and small business owners fall into this group and have been royally screwed. It’s the .1% billionaire crowd who have reaped the benefits, including Mr. Vaccine Man himself – Bill Gates. The richest men, running the largest corporations in the world, have increased their net worth by almost a half-trillion dollars in two months – with more to come, as their obedient lackey at the Fed continues to funnel billions into their pockets with his electronic printing press.
As the plebs were thrown $1,200 and an extra $600 of unemployment for a few months by their elected politicians and small businesses were thrown a life preserver attached to an anvil, these same corporately captured political operatives and Wall Street puppets at the Fed delivered trillions of immediate wealth to their true patrons – banking and corporate oligarchs. And to be clear, your government overlords were just giving you back the money they have stolen from your paycheck. But even that is a reach, since every dime handed out to the plebs has been borrowed from your children and grandchildren.
The imminent $30 trillion national debt and $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities is our gift to them. Jerome Powell received his marching orders from his billionaire banker bosses. He was instructed to make Ben Bernanke’s bailout in 2008/2009 look like bush league stuff. He has complied beyond all expectations, driving the stock market up by 32% from its March lows, as more than 38 million Americans lost their jobs and over 100,000 small businesses were forced out of business permanently.
It took Bernanke & Yellen four years of QE1, QE2, and QE3 debt creation to increase the Fed balance sheet by $2 trillion. Powell told Bennie and the troll to hold his beer, as he has taken the balance sheet up by more than $3 trillion in a few months, to $7 trillion. And he ain’t done. J-Po has his minions creating fiat at hypersonic speed, on track to breach $10 trillion by the end of the year.
He is illegally buying junk bonds in a blatant effort to keep horribly run connected companies who should be liquidated in bankruptcy from going bankrupt. Powell and his academic dweebs at the Fed don’t believe in the concept of creative destruction as a key ingredient of capitalism. They believe in creative zombie company creation and a zombie economy with zero interest rates and debt fabrication guaranteed to crash the system. Take one look at the following chart and try to convince yourself we aren’t in a death spiral as a nation.
Not one penny of the trillions generated by the Fed out of thin air is helping the 38.6 million people who were thrown out into the streets by government decree. None of it has trickled down because it wasn’t meant to trickle down. It’s just another example of socialism for the corporate fascists and another screw job for the average working stiff. The Fed’s sole purpose is to enrich their banker benefactors, corporate titans, hedge fund managers and corrupt politicians.
The unemployment rate is headed toward 30%. GDP in the 2nd quarter will approach -40%. We’ve entered a 2nd Great Depression. There will be no V shaped recovery. The damage is permanent and ultimately fatal. The irony of this absurd episode in our nation’s short history is the response to this flu will result in 100,000% more deaths than the actual flu, as the response will result in mass poverty, suicide, civil chaos, deaths from untreated afflictions, and ultimately war with China.
Our beloved government overlords have purposely destroyed our economy and destroyed the lives of millions because of terribly (purposely?) flawed models, clueless IYI medical experts providing horrible advice, outrageously incompetent governors murdering tens of thousands in nursing homes, and those same governors revealing their dictatorial nature by using the Chinese lockdown method of crushing small businesses – while mega-corps like Wal-Mart and Target were “safe” to stay open. The tyrannical dictates of these governors are not based on science, data, or facts. They are just making up the rules as they go along, based upon their political ideology.
They hate you and despise your desire to work and earn a living; hate religion because it gives people hope and an alternative to worshiping the State. They want you hopeless, fearful, and panicked, so you will beg them for sustenance, shelter and protection. They allow mega-corporations to be open so you can consume material goods, but keep houses of worship closed so you are unable to obtain your spiritual needs and the comfort of fellow worshipers. Social distancing is doable at Target, but prohibited in churches. You can buy weed and liquor but not seeds to plant food.
Why is it safe for hundreds of people to be roaming the aisles of Wal-Mart, but not safe for three people to be in a barbershop or nail salon? Why is it OK to stand or walk on a beach, but not sit or swim? Why is it OK to go to Home Depot, but not walk in a national park or swim in a pool? You can surf in the ocean, but not swim. None of the rules make sense or keep you safe.
The rules and masks and regulations and deadlines and color codes and threats are meant to control you and bend your will to the State. Compliance is mandatory, with the threat of corporeal punishment and/or ruining your life through regulatory actions like pulling your business license or imprisonment. We are not in this together as the Madison Avenue ad campaigns claim. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Everybody knows.
It is mind numbing to consider how we arrived at this point.
Nothing but a blizzard of lies, hidden agendas, political maneuverings, incompetent government apparatchiks, media propaganda spreading fear and panic, and authoritarian governors displaying their true dictatorial nature. Let’s summarize. The virus wasn’t transmittable to humans. Then it was. The WHO said not to worry and China had it under control. They applauded the brutal lockdown of Wuhan. Fauci said nothing to worry about in the U.S. Trump said it would be over in a couple weeks.
The “experts” at the CDC said not to wear masks. They don’t help. Now they are mandatory. Only n95 masks would offer enough protection. Now a scarf is fine. The CDC said the virus could live on surfaces for days. Now it doesn’t live on surfaces at all. We needed to quarantine to flatten the curve and keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. Now we must stay locked down until a vaccine is discovered. It should be noted that 95% of the hospitals in this country were never overwhelmed, and 1.4 million hospital employees were laid off in April. I’ll miss all those Tik Tok videos from the heroes.
From the beginning, the medical “experts” knew elderly people with weak immune systems were most susceptible to the virus, but Cuomo, Wolf, Whitmer, Murphy and a slew of other Democrat boneheads purposely put infected seniors back into nursing homes, causing a mass slaughter of senior citizens. The lame ass excuse from these ego-maniacal blowhards is they wanted to relieve their overburdened hospitals.
Remember the fanfare when Trump sent USNS Comfort to NYC, the Javits Center was converted into a hospital and a $21 million hospital was built in Brooklyn? Complete waste of money, as they were never used. Nothing but hysterical overreaction based upon completely wrong models and the corporate media scaring the masses with a false narrative. Maybe Cuomo should have used them for nursing home patients.
In my state, 70% of the deaths have been in nursing homes, with 83% in my county. This is consistent across the country and the world. Our government leaders, who act like they know what they are doing, have been criminally negligent in protecting our most vulnerable citizens, while acting like nazis with regards to small business owners and young healthy citizens with no risk of dying from this flu.
The fact that millions have had this flu and were asymptomatic, will prove the mortality rate of this China flu is only marginally higher than the seasonal flu. A national lockdown was not warranted or necessary. When you purposely destroy an economy over a flu that will not kill 99.97% of the people in the country, it’s not about health. It’s about power, control, and the wealth of the ruling class.
If you are safe by leaving six feet of space between you and others, why do you need a mask? If a mask protects you and others, why do you need six feet of space? Why six feet and not five feet or seven feet? What science determined these proclamations from our leaders? They don’t know shit. Dictator Wolf and his minister of health Rachel (aka Dick) Levine have created a color coded (red, yellow, green) system for PA based upon their idiotic analysis of data.
They have set arbitrary numerical requirements in order for counties to move from red to green. When more than two thirds of cases are in nursing homes, what does that have to do with the general population? As testing increases, more asymptomatic cases are recorded, not allowing the county to meet their arbitrary goal. These control freak bureaucrats are drunk with power and are just making the rules up as they go, shitting on the Constitution all the way.
Government drones love color coding because they believe the dumbed down masses need to be led using simple herding techniques. It’s reminiscent of the threat level color coding at the outset of “The War on Terror”, used to keep the masses panicked and fearful. When was the last time you heard about the terror threat color? It served its purpose of instituting the Patriot Act and the all-encompassing surveillance state.
We now have the “War on a Flu” which we are told will change our lives forever, require obedience to all new government mandates, and of course mandatory vaccinations. I bet you can’t wait to receive your immunity certificate, which will be required to fly, attend sporting events, shop and dine. How come the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, Asian Flu pandemic of 1957, and Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968, which killed far more people (millions more), didn’t change the lives of Americans one iota?
It’s because this pandemic is being used by powers that be to further their own agendas. There isn’t one monolithic Deep State with one single agenda, but powerful factions which cooperate when the right crisis comes along, or is manufactured. The same scientists who peddle the global warming nonsense were all-in on Neil Ferguson’s ridiculously (purposely) flawed death model, predicting 20 times more deaths from the virus than have occurred.
These people want companies to go bankrupt and no one be allowed to drive. They want people to be imprisoned in their homes with just enough money electronically transferred into their bank accounts to survive. This is Nirvana for the green crowd. AOC doesn’t think anyone should want to go back to work, instagramming from her luxury townhome in DC, still collecting her $174,000 salary, paid by working taxpayers. Then there is Gates and his paid servants at the WHO and CDC. His global population control and mass vaccination fantasies are within his reach. He is almost giddy when expounding on how the world will be changed forever by this bio-lab virus pandemic.
It is probably just a coincidence that after a three-year coup attempt by the Deep State against Trump, which failed, with the tables about to be turned on the conspirators, a global pandemic magically appeared to take the focus off their failed plot. With an economy in its eleventh year of growth, unemployment around 3%, the stock market hitting all-time highs, and the Democrats running barely coherent badfinger Joe Biden as their candidate, Trump’s chances of victory in November seemed pretty solid. With four more years, he would be able to exact retribution on Obama, Clinton, Schiff, Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Rice and the rest of the co-conspirators.
They used this plandemic to lure Trump into destroying his chances for victory in November. With 30% unemployment, -40% GDP, 38.6 million unemployed (so far), and not a chance of recovery by November, his chances would normally be zero in November. But with a senile, rapist, bigot running against him, he still has a chance. That is why Biden will likely be cast aside by the Deep State before the election, for a winnable candidate.
As devious and undeniably diabolical as it would appear, Democrat governors almost seem to be sabotaging their state economies long enough to ensure Trump loses in November. The idiocy of this national lockdown will eventually become clear to even the densest mask wearing Karen, when the second derivative consequences of this economic disaster hit like a ton of bricks. You cannot just turn off the biggest economy in world history and then turn it back on, expecting everything to go back to normal. But maybe they don’t want anything to return to normal. We know 38.6 million have lost their jobs in the first eight weeks of this self-imposed disaster.
We know thousands of small businesses have already closed permanently. Now larger companies (JC Penney, Hertz, Neiman Marcus, J. Crew) are declaring bankruptcy. The government-imposed restrictions for re-opening will guarantee hundreds of thousands more small companies will throw in the towel. Restaurants and bars operate on thin margins and cannot possibly survive at 50% or 75% of their previous capacity.
Plus, the coronavirus fearmongers have permanently scared a large portion of the population into never eating out or enjoying a drink at the local bar again. Capacity reduced and demand lower equals going out of business for formerly profitable businesses. Every organization in America is now planning for lower revenues and profits, meaning they are going to lay-off more workers. I can guarantee you there will be a second wave of mass layoffs.
The governors, county commissioners, and mayors who continue to keep their states closed don’t have the same ability as the Feds to print money and run deficits. They are required by law to balance their budgets. Their constituents, who they imprisoned, can’t pay taxes without jobs. Income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes and the myriad of other fees siphoned from their citizens are going down by 20% to 40%. They will be forced to layoff government “heroes”. No more fire engine birthday parades broadcast on your local news stations every night. Government employment exceeds 19 million today. It will be drastically lower in the next two years.
The avalanche of unemployed has only just begun. When the Fed’s market rigging fails again and the stock market reverts to fair market value, even the Wall Street titans will start firing their Harvard MBA high frequency lemming traders. This is going to be an L shaped non-recovery. Trump, Mnuchin, Kudlow and Powell can yammer about recovery and 2021 being the best year ever, but they chose this path into depression and will go down in the history books as men who made dreadfully bad decisions, putting the final nails in the coffin of this empire of debt.
How did the American people allow this fatal farce make them kneel down and beg their “always sure, but never right” government overlords to save them from this invisible enemy? Where is the American spirit which founded this country? Where is the fortitude that compelled farmer soldiers to withstand the brutal winter at Valley Forge to create a fledgling republic? Where is the courage that compelled Pickett’s 15,000 infantrymen to charge across an open field for three-quarters of a mile towards the crest of Cemetery Ridge under heavy artillery and rifle fire for their cause? Where is the bravery of the young men on landing craft at Normandy beach where 90% of them would be dead by days end? Today, we watch commercial after commercial from mega-corporations telling us how brave we are by sheltering in place to avoid a virus with a .03% chance of killing us. What would Cool Hand Luke or Virgil Hilts think of today’s heroes?
I can’t think of two more iconic characters representative of the spirit of toughness, anti-authoritarianism, sacrifice, unflagging spirit, and a willingness to take a beating or die for their cause. They refused to conform or obey. Their insolence and resistance to authority got them thrown into the cooler on a consistent basis. They are lone wolves who inspire their fellow captives to resist and never stop fighting for freedom.
Their mental toughness and refusal to bow down to their captors, infuriates the sadistic jailers, resulting in increasingly sadistic punishment and ultimately death for one. Luke Jackson was a decorated war veteran who advanced to sergeant, but was discharged as a buck private. The unspoken story is that he failed to follow the ridiculous orders of a clueless superior officer.
Upon arrival at the prison for a fairly minor property crime, he doesn’t adhere to the pecking order among the prisoners and ends up in a boxing match with Dragline, the unofficial leader of the prisoners. He gets knocked down over and over again, but refuses to give up. Dragline eventually walks away, not wanting to inflict more damage to Luke. His tenacity and refusal to back down earned him the respect of his fellow inmates, but distinguished himself as troublemaker to the guards and warden. He later wins a poker game by bluffing with a hand worth nothing. Luke comments that “sometimes, nothing can be a real cool hand”, prompting Dragline to nickname him “Cool Hand Luke”. His continued successful efforts to escape make him a hero in the eyes of the inmates, a man worthy of worship.
Luke’s character takes on a Christ-like connotation. After winning the egg eating challenge, Luke is laid out like Christ on the cross. Toward the end of the film Luke speaks to God evoking the Garden of Gethsemane, just before Dragline (Judas) betrays him by leading the authorities to his hideout. After Luke is executed by the authorities in a church and allowed to bleed-out we are left with the impression of Christ’s sacrifice for the benefit of humanity.
The closing shot shows inmates working on crossroads from far above, such that the intersection is in the shape of the cross. Superimposed on this is the repaired photo Luke took during his second escape, the distinct creases of which also form the shape of the cross. Surrendering one’s life fighting against evil authoritarians is the ultimate sacrifice. Are there such men among us today?
The Great Escape, loosely based upon an actual mass escape of POWs from a German prison camp during World War II, had numerous big-time actors playing key roles, but Steve McQueen stole the movie with his performance as Virgil Hilts – The Cooler King. Reflecting the true American spirit of resisting authority and flaunting the rules and regulations, Hilts escapes from the prison numerous times, even purposely being caught so he can further the greater good of his fellow captives.
His insolence towards his captors is reflected in the ball and glove he takes into the cooler, repeatedly bouncing the ball off the wall – reminding him, the other inmates, and the Nazi guards that apple pie and baseball were truly examples of American freedom, and they could not destroy his spirit of dissent and desire to be free. He refused to be broken or admit defeat. At one time, this trait was widespread among Americans, but sadly is no longer prevalent.
This dialogue between Hilts and the camp commandant reflects his utter contempt for authority and unwillingness to bend to their will.
Von Luger: Are all American officers so ill-mannered?
Hilts: Yeah, about 99 percent.
Von Luger: Then perhaps while you are with us you will have a chance to learn some. Ten days isolation, Hilts.
Hilts: CAPTAIN Hilts.
Von Luger: Twenty days.
Hilts: Right. Oh, uh, you’ll still be here when I get out?
Von Luger: [visibly annoyed] Cooler!
Arbitrary rules and regulations imposed by mediocre minds deserve to be treated with contempt and ignored. Muzzled and masked Americans could learn a lesson from Hilts’ disruptive disrespect for self-proclaimed authoritarians by refusing to abide by un-Constitutional directives and utterly preposterous proclamations.
The lack of mental toughness and unwillingness to push back against the ludicrous rules imposed by our overlords is the result of decades of indoctrination by the State and perpetuation of falsehoods by the Deep State controlled media, using the techniques created by Edward Bernays to control and manipulate the masses for the benefit of the few. It is sad watching a vast swath of Americans unquestioningly following the orders of psychopaths in suits and government bureaucrats pretending to be medical experts, as they purposely lead the country into an abyss with no escape route.
This country was created by men “illegally” resisting the legal authorities. Where is the loyalty to the country and Constitution, instead of loyalty to a government controlled by enemies of the people who seek nothing more than power, control and wealth at your expense? Why are people, not only willing, but enthusiastically cheering, for their rights, freedoms and liberties to be stripped in order to obtain false security and the succor of a vast surveillance state hell-bent on enslaving you in debt and consumption servitude?
How can we remain loyal to a government run by criminals, knaves, fools, and billionaire oligarchs who see us as nothing but cows to be milked and sheep to be slaughtered? When did the land of the free and home of the brave become the land of the self-imprisoned and home of the willfully ignorant cowering masses? Where are the Cool Hand Lukes and Virgil Hiltses?
We are not in this together, no matter how many insipid propaganda commercials appear on your boob tube telling you to stay safe, stay strong and stay home. While your humanity and individuality are stripped through the wearing of muzzles (I mean personal protective equipment) and other newspeak terms like “social distancing”, “stronger together”, “flatten the curve” and “see something, say something” have been introduced by your Big Brother overlords to dumb down our language into simplistic slogans mouthed continuously by media talking heads, Hollywood influencers, low IQ athletes, and government rulers.
Any thoughtcrime which contradicts the narrative of the State, voiced on Twitter, Youtube, or Facebook is immediately disappeared and censored as conspiracy theory dissent. Those who fail to obey, conform, and adhere to the narrative are demonetized, ridiculed, prosecuted, and ruined.
I do see embers of dissent and courage flaring up in communities across the country, but will they ignite into a full-fledged firestorm against the all-powerful State, continuously trampling our rights? True courage is the willingness to fight when you know you will lose before the fight has begun. Those in power use fear of retribution to control the masses. Fear is real, but true courage is resistance to fear. And sometimes courage is found in the most unlikely places, like hair salons, barber shops and gyms.
Dallas hair salon owner Shelley Luther, New Jersey Atilis Gym co-owner Ian Smith, and Michigan barber Karl Manke have all defied the un-Constitutional shutdown of their businesses by the State and have been imprisoned, fined, harassed and had their business licenses revoked. Meanwhile, Gretchen Himmler Whitmer screeches that all protestors against her death producing lockdown are racists and nazis, while she lounges at her lakeside mansion this weekend. The irony of her actions versus her words is lost on this vacuous twit.
The State has the power to destroy your life, but each individual has the ability to resist in a small way, whether by not wearing the government mandated muzzle; bartering with locals and denying the state their vig; going Galt and reducing their financial footprint; taking your money out of Wall Street banks; not buying from mega-retailers; eliminating debt from your life; planting gardens; raising livestock; buying guns and ammo; spreading dissent on a one by one basis; supporting truth telling websites; buying gold and silver; and committing the revolutionary act of telling the truth in a time of deceit.
For the time being, we still have the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear. I believe the ruling class has gone too far this time. Their arrogance and hubris have convinced them they could use this crisis to consolidate their power, wealth and control, but they have mistakenly lit the fuse of revolution.
I’m not willing to surrender just yet. One by one, more people are channeling their inner Luke and Virgil and taking the red pill. We are faced with unpleasant truths and once enough critical thinking people decide to accept that reality, a tipping point will be reached. Courage and a complete disrespect for authority will be essential as the inevitable conflict approaches. I know we are fighting an uphill battle against a deeply rooted powerful foe.
I know the Deep State (The Party) has no intention of relinquishing power and has no interest in our well being or what is best for future generations. They are consumed by greed and an unquenchable thirst for power. They won’t blink in sentencing millions to a death sentence. It will require guile, guts and guns to defeat this entrenched vicious enemy. Voting for a different faction of the Party will not change our path or our fate. Only determined resistance using whatever means necessary and a willingness to sacrifice our lives for the sake of our children and grandchildren, along with a good bit of luck, can give us a chance to defeat The Party.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
– George Orwell, 1984
Our choice is to continue to accept beatings from the Captain and consent to their vision of the future – a boot stomping on our faces forever, or a 2nd Civil War. I didn’t say the choices were good. But that’s the unpleasant truth.
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So, you get what we had here last week. Which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don’t like it any more than you men.” – Captain
