Ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, Campus Reform Digital Reporter Eduardo Neret went to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. to ask students about President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated, $10 million Super Bowl commercial.
Neret first asked students if the NFL should prevent Trump from airing the ad, given his past feuds with the league.
WATCH:
One student replied yes, adding that “[the Super Bowl] should remain nonpartisan.”
“The Super Bowl should kind of be about bringing fans together and not necessarily about political campaigns,” another student added.
Others disagreed.
“I think if [the NFL and TV networks] want to promote freedom of speech, I think they should allow anybody from the right or left side of the aisle to promote what they want,” one student added.
Neret also asked students to name an accomplishment Trump should highlight in his commercial. Some students were unable to name an achievement of the Trump presidency, while others cited things like the economy and unemployment.
“Do you think there’s anything good that [Trump has] done as president that he could talk about in the commercial,” Neret asked one student.
The student responded by saying “no,” and that he doesn’t “like Trump.”
Trump and Democrat presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg both spent millions to air ads during the Super Bowl. According to Politico, Bloomberg dropped $10 million for an ad promoting one of his signature issues, gun control.
Coronavirus Overkill? Gas Mask-Wearing Man Panics American Airlines Flight In Texas
At a moment that virus masks and other protective clothing are in high demand and are increasingly a feature among travelers at busy international hubs, a bizarre incident caused a security scare aboard an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Houston late last week.
Fox reports a man caused flight passengers to briefly panic after he boarded wearing a full gas mask. “The flight was delayed an hour because the unidentified man refused to take off the mask, causing passengers to panic,” according to the report.
An unidentified man wearing a gas mask is seen aboard an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Houston, via ABC/Twitter.
Security board the aircraft before take-off to remove the man after he reportedly told others around him he “wanted to make a statement”. This caused fears that he could have been planning some sort of event or attack and that the mask was “for his own safety”.
“I had a seat in the back,” one eyewitness told Houston ABC station KTRK. “I looked up and saw a guy coming onto the plane wearing a full gas mask, which was kind of odd. He didn’t have a filter though — which I thought was even more strange.”
“Immediately, people start talking in the back of the plane,” the eyewitness added. “You couldn’t see his face. You couldn’t identify any features on him. People were worried he had sneaked something on board and that he had the mask for his own safety.”
“My gut reaction was that he was probably worried about the coronavirus and had put on the gas mask as overkill kind of protection,” the man explained further. “But then I noticed it didn’t have the filter, so that didn’t really make sense.”
Fox described that it “appeared to be an odd reach for shock value” given in the aftermath American Airlines issued a statement saying the man was later cooperative and flew without the mask on a separate flight.
It is important to acknowledge the path forward does not always take us where we would like to go. We as a country and society do not always have as much control over our fate as we tend to believe. Starting life as an idealist that had high hopes for mankind and society, I have become jaded over the years by man’s shortcomings. The combination of laziness, shortsightedness and several other negative traits have weakened my belief our government and society will do the right thing when push comes to shove. The less you leave in the hands of those who couldn’t care less about your fate the better off you will be.
Hunting By Stampeding Your Prey Over A Cliff
Unfortunately, our economy and financial system have been crafted in a way that places our fate in the hands of those who often don’t care about us as individuals. Those in control often do not have “skin in the game” and are not positioned to be held accountable if the system fails. An image of an effective hunting technique can be seen in the picture of Buffalo Jump Wyoming on the right. In the past hunters were known to stampede their prey over the edge of a steep cliff.
This image is in some ways an analogy to the fate I envision awaiting those who have willingly placed their wealth in the hands of others.Far too much faith has been placed in governments doing the right thing. The term “public servant” stands as a monument to our gullibility as a society. In reality few of those employed by the government carry out their duties because of dedication and devotion. Generally, power and compensation coupled with security and little downside or risk are why people choose to take a job in government.
In our modern culture, we as individuals are often far removed from the wealth we have accumulated. At one-time people were surrounded by tangible items representing where their wealth was stored but today that is less common. Now, much of our savings flow into paper or digital promises such as stocks or pensions plans. The further away from us our wealth is removed and stored the less control we have over it. Some people have almost 25% of their pay withheld and placed in a retirement vehicle with only a pledge it will be returned with interest several decades from now. These people are very vulnerable to the possibility their money will vanish into the dark.
Liquidity floats all boats until it doesn’t but that is the part of this economic farce we have yet to see play out. When this happens the inflow of liquidity from policies that have concentrated far too much wealth into equity markets will reverse. This will trigger a negative ripple effect that strikes all segments of the economy and financial sectors. The natural laws of economics dictate that at some point going through the pain of an economic crisis becomes preferable to expanding a bubble that carries with it devastating side-effects. This doesn’t mean we will be given a choice, most likely the general direction we take will be dictated by events outside our control. The possibilities of nuclear war or the current global pandemic are just two examples.
Inequality Is A Growing Problem (click to enlarge)
We are moving down the current path at a time when inequality has exploded. Still, many people are buying into the line that things have never been better. The question is, better for who? After adjusting for real-world inflation many households have seen their net income and wealth decline over the last decade. Despite the endless media propaganda about growth and recovery, it is self-evident to anyone who bothers to look closely that the rich and powerful are increasingly grabbing a larger slice of the economic pie. This is an issue society must address in one form or another.
A recent post questioned the sanity of a market that values Tesla as the second most valuable carmaker on the planet. Tesla’s recent rally has pushed its market value to over $85 billion making it the most valuable US automaker in history with its market cap more than Ford and GM combined. It should be noted that Tesla has never even produced 400 thousand cars in one year and less than a million during its history. Still, within days Tesla’s valuation again jumped, this time to over $100 billion taking it above the world’s second most valuable carmaker, VW, which sold over 10 million vehicles last year.” Now it trails only behind Toyota.
All the money and credit being unleashed by central banks is the equivalent of printing tokens and placing them in digital accounts that can vanish in the blink of an eye. It does not necessarily create real wealth. Oddly enough, this is something the world has come to accept overtime. Belief in a broken or poorly designed system does not mean it will fulfill its desired task. How long we can ignore these flaws before they come back to haunt us is questionable but the seed of financial destruction has begun to grow. This can be seen in our growing debt both public and private as well as in pension plans which are massively underfunded.
This article is not intended to provide glorious answers but to remind and warn you that articles on many media outlets such as the ones titled; A quarter of millennials say they’ve saved $100,000 — here’s how they did it! or This Earnings Season Is Better Than You Think are misleading at best. Like many of you, I’m troubled by a future that is hurling at us with ever greater speed and for which, in reality, all of us have very limited control. Years ago I started this blog as a way to express my views and exchange ideas on a variety of subjects. With that in mind, it is a good time to point out that nobody can time or predict when the economy will fall out of bed but we are in uncharted waters and caution is warranted.
BuzzFeed Journo Reportedly Blogged About Pedo Fantasies, Rape Jokes And Doxing
A BuzzFeed senior reporter who accused Zero Hedge of ‘doxing’ a Chinese scientist has reportedly left a disturbing internet footprint rife with pedophilia and rape jokes… oh, and doxing the owners of a restaurant.
Ryan Broderick, a boy-band aficionado who runs a personal tumblr blog, wrote in a Friday BuzzFeed article that Zero Hedge “has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil.” (for what really happened read our response here).
After his ‘hit piece‘ was published – which included factual mistakes, no outreach to Zero Hedge, an intentional doxing of Zero Hedge, the @zerohedge Twitter account was permanently suspended for violating their ‘abuse and harassment’ policy. Shortly thereafter, Broderick updated his article, writing “Zero Hedge’s Twitter account was suspended Friday, following the publication of the scientist’s name.”
Yet, while Zero Hedge republished publicly available, professional contact information for the Wuhan scientist – Broderick openly ‘doxed’ the owners of Amy’s Baking Company in 2013, tweeting a link to the private contact information of the husband and wife owners who made headlines for a controversial episode of Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares.” The information included their home address, phone numbers, email addresses, and a ‘dossier’ covering the couple’s marriage and financial history.
Do the right thing, @vijaya. This is nonsensical. Indefensible.
Somehow Broderick avoided a permanent Twitter suspension for ‘targeted harassment.’
Perhaps even more disturbing, however, are several posts uncovered on “Ryan Broderick’s Cool Time Fun Blog,” along with questionable tweets and other writings as documented by internet sleuths in the wake of our Twitter suspension. They include pedophilia, rape jokes, and more.
One post reads “I want to be an erotic children’s photographer. I want to be the Andy Warhol of erotic children’s photography,” followed by the hashtag #It’s not porn though
A hebephile is, according to Google, an adult who has a “strong and persistent sexual interest in pubescent-aged individuals, generally aged 11–14.”
More insight into Broderick’s predilections can be found here, here, here, here and here.
Does any of this matter? Of course not, and we are confident that Twitter will find all these outlandish public statements, doxes and tweets to be in perfectly good humor, confirming once again that when it comes to enforcing its Terms of Service, some have always been more equal than others.
As new cases of the novel coronavirus continue to emerge across East Asia as well as in Europe and North America, another pandemic with possibly more deadly implications has also swept across the globe: the revival of shockingly racist and vile sentiments targeting people of Chinese and East Asian descent in the form of false news reports and general hysteria.
On Thursday, the phenomenon took a heartbreaking turn when a Chinese man collapsed and died from a heart attack in Chinatown in Sydney, Australia. According to reports, onlookers ignored the 60-year-old man as he suffered, refusing to give him CPR and leaving him to die on the sidewalk out of fear that they would catch the coronavirus, according to the Daily Telegraph.
And while the coronavirus reportedly originated in Wuhan, China, those far removed from the outbreak are feeling the devastating impact of the aggravated racism toward Asians.
South Korean newspaper Hankyorehreports that in France, a Korean woman complained that she faced bigoted harassment multiple times thanks to the upswing in xenophobia. The newspaper reports that in a post to a South Korean online message board, the woman complained:
“An older man called me a ‘dirty Chinese [expletive].’ A guy who looked like a high schooler got in my face and told me to ‘get lost.’ I really lost it for a moment when a homeless person walking down the street even called me a [derogatory word for a woman].
Even when I explain I’m Korean, people tell me that all Asians should leave. I’d been afraid this might happen, but experiencing it personally has shown me how hard it is to bear such hatred. It makes me afraid to go to crowded places.”
Meanwhile, on France’s BFM TV, an Asian-descended French person complained:
“When I was coming out of a sports stadium in downtown Paris, a boy made fun of me by shouting, ‘Here comes the coronavirus.’”
The complaints come amid an outcry over a headline published last week in local newspaper Courrier Picard that read “Alerte jaune” (Yellow alert) and “Le péril jaune?” (Yellow peril?) alongside an image of a Chinese woman in a protective mask, harkening back to a racist early 20th-century concept of the so-called “Yellow Peril” pitting the so-called “civilized” white, Western world against the alleged “threat” posed by the peoples of the “orient,” or eastern Asia.
The alarming rise in overt racist abuse across public transportation and social media in France has led to many Asians taking to social media using the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus—or “I’m not a virus.”
From Toronto to even as far as San Diego, Chinese-owned businesses have been sharply impacted. Even across Latin America, seemingly harmless memes about catching the coronavirus from Asian retailers like Chinese variety store Miniso or Korean counterpart Kumuso reflect the irrationality that has gripped the masses.
Every asians are not chinese, every chinese people isn’t affected by the virus you fucking racists #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus
And while many scientists believe that there is a nexus between the coronavirus and animals, with many of those infected having worked in or shopped at a large meat market in Wuhan, a number of uneducated assertions and racist jokes have conflated the diets of Asians and Chinese with the outbreak.
In one clip posted to Twitter by the anonymous user @FreeMindHK, an Asian man can be seen eating live baby mice along with the caption:
“Chinese ‘delicacy,’ probably one of the causes for [the] emergence of #WuhanCoronavirus Source: telegram.”
However, Chinese social media users, including one who claims to reside in Wuhan, deny that live mice is a so-called “delicacy” and have also pointed out that there is nothing in the video that identifies the man as Chinese.
In my Chinese moms chat group, we discussed how to brace ourselves and the kids for the inevitable wave of racism coming our way as this unfolds.
Many of us have never even been to China but know we will not go unscathed. https://t.co/hz7YCPjyb5
As James Palmer wrote in a widely-shared article for Foreign Policy magazine, while many Chinese people have a taste for dishes that seem abhorrent in the West—including exotic and wild animals believed to have medicinal properties, which the government has attempted to clamp down on in recent years—such tastes are hardly the norm. Indeed, as Palmer notes, many inside China joke about the Cantonese dietary habits of eating “everything with four legs save the table and everything that flies but the airplane.”
Regardless, social media users—including commenters on posts by the Mind Unleashed—have been quick to point to groundless rumors, anecdotes, and social media posts to revive decades-old racist tropes about the “bizarre” and “disgusting” diets of Asian and Chinese people, or their supposedly “uncivilized,” “un–evolved,” and “horrible” culture.
Dear the people of China,
Please stop eating bat soup, koalas and hamsters. It’s making us all ill.
But while scientists are still struggling to find a cure for the coronavirus, there is an obvious cure to the shocking revival of anti-Asian discrimination across the West.
This is why people don’t take you seriously. “I, as American, don’t eat bats, therefore everyone else who does should stop because I, as an American, dictate the culinary culture of all of the planet.” Your self centered vantage point is myopic and immature.
Whenever we see inaccurate stories or see racist tropes being trotted out in response to the virus, we should call this out for what it is: blind bigotry and ignorance that can result in tragedy for completely innocent people of Asian descent—including our friends, neighbors, and family members.
China Bans Selling, Plans Massive Liquidity Injection To Prevent Market Crash
Judging by the collapse in Chinese futures and the Offshore Yuan over the past week, China’s key cash equity index – The Shanghai Composite – is set to plunge around 6-8% as the market re-opens for the first time since Lunar New Year (and the coronavorus chaos).
China stock futures have tumbled…
Source: Bloomberg
And Offshore Yuan is fighting at the 7.00/USD level…
Source: Bloomberg
Which of course will not do for the nation has to maintain the appearance of a minor flesh-wound than a catastrophic coronary. And so, as Bloomberg reports, China unveiled a raft of measures over the weekend to aid companies hit by the coronavirus outbreak and also shore up financial markets.
Quarantative easing?
The People’s Bank of China announced that the total injection announced was 1.2 trillion yuan, the largest single-day addition of its kind in data going back to 2004.
The money will be supplied using reverse repurchase agreements to ensure liquidity is “reasonably ample” during the outbreak, according to the PBOC.
The new measures follow the announcement last week that China’s biggest banks will lower interest rates for firms in Hubei, the center of the outbreak.
However, as Tommy Xie, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp notes, the net effect of this admittedly huge liquidity injection is much lower as there are more than 1 trillion yuan of short-term funds scheduled to mature on Monday.
“The amount of the net injection isn’t huge. The PBOC may want to retain some flexibility, which means it can add more liquidity in the rest of the week if the sentiment is too bad.”
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, we wonder if even this additional liquidity injection will be big enough as judging by Dr.Copper, the Chinese economy is about to be hit by the biggest shock in recent history…
Source: Bloomberg
And China’s credit impulse – the lifeline of its economic growth – is barely positive and rolling over…
Source: Bloomberg
In addition to the concrete measures, Bloomberg notes that senior officials from various regulators and the central bank put out statements urging brokerages and funds to guide investors to “rationally and objectively” evaluate the impact of the epidemic, calling it “short-term and temporary.”
Financial regulators said they have “full confidence” they can keep the economy stable in the long term, according to the Saturday statement, which urged investors not to be affected by “irrational sentiment.”
We are not quite sure what they mean by “irrational sentiment,” as it seems entirely rational to expect economic growth to slow and earnings to be pressured lower given the nation is practically on total lockdown for the foreseeable future.
And if you think that is just conjecture, here is a local business owner with the truth on the ground…
CEO of restaurant chain 西贝 says he can only pay salaries for 3 more months before his cash runs out. Calls for relief from stupid govt policy (傻政策）otherwise will have to layoff workers and create social unrest. 100k views before blocked on wechat https://t.co/gkmIvVV8ha
Said back during SARS it was easier to cope since they didn’t have to pay salaries. Now labor makes up 30% of their costs vs just 15% in 2003 and firms have to keep paying.
Says that cutting interest rates is a drop in the bucket, instead wants the government to write off 2020 taxes and take up some of slack when paying salaries
1.2 trillion yuan is nothing like enough…and they have a plan for that – ban selling!
Notice about stock market in #China. No one is allowed to sell when the market resume on Feb. 3. Biding price to be controlled before opening, no net sell before Feb. 7. Needs special permission for sales over 10M yuan. #CCP fearing market crash #Coronavirus#CoronavirusOutbreakpic.twitter.com/lnGIdQJCe2
And 21st Century Herald confirms that China’s securities regulator CSRC has reportedly notified brokerages to suspend short selling of stocks from Feb 3…
#China‘s securities regulator CSRC has reportedly notified brokerages to suspend short selling of stocks from Feb 3, according to the 21st Century Business Herald.
For months now I’ve been convinced that Hillary Clinton will be entering the fray that is the Democratic Party primary season. The affair to date has been a nothing short of high comedy.
Recent events have me more convinced than ever that she will be returning, like some zombie whose head we forgot to cut off, to haunt voters one more time this fall.
After the beginning of an obvious (and planned) PR campaign last week with the release of a big campaign ad documentary on Netflix and a big splash in the Hollywood Reporter Hillary finally stopped being coy. And she announced this week that she now ‘has the urge’ to run again against Donald Trump.
Save us, please, from Hillary’s urges…. Shudder.
And she did so making sure that everyone knew what she thought of the real front-runner for the nomination, Bernie Sanders.
As various anointed ones have dropped out of the race – Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Robert O’Rourke – others have faltered despite huge ad spends while the media and pollsters do their level best to convince us all that Joe Biden’s a serious candidate to take on Donald Trump this fall.
In fact, the only reason Biden is still in the race is to make the impeachment theater going on right now seem relevant and cogent. But, like Biden himself, it is neither.
Then again neither is Hillary, but never underestimate this woman’s narcissistic solipsism.
If you look back on the race to date it’s clear that most of the people running are there to try and distract voters away from the two candidates that resonate most with voters, Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.
Yes, Gabbard is polling low but if you look at poll numbers versus money spent and/or raised to this point, she’s clearly got cache and the ability to build a real following. And as the field shrinks those distractions become irrelevant. Her poll numbers are rising the more the field winnows.
Neither of them is acceptable in any way to the DNC. They are outsiders within their party. I’m no fan of Bernie Sanders. In fact, I think he’s a terrible candidate — because, you know, commie! — but that’s not the point of this article.
Bernie is surging in the early states and panic is setting in with the DNC. And they must have a plan to stop him from running away with the nomination otherwise we could have two outsiders headlining this fall’s reality show.
And that plan starts with the impeachment and potential removal of Donald Trump.
The impeachment is a distraction for Trump but it is a real problem for the Senators running for the Democratic nomination. They have to spend all day listening to Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler lie while they could be out campaigning and raising money.
This hurts Bernie the most because Bernie is the one who will get zero help from the DNC’s big donors. None of them are behind him and with good reason. He’s hostile to most of them (and most of us as well, but that’s a different article).
Of the people running for President as Democrats the only person less acceptable to Wall St. than Elizabeth Warren is Bernie Sanders. Warren’s entire campaign has been designed to push Bernie farther left by out-lefting him at every turn. Bernie says 70% top marginal tax rate, Warren says 77%. Bernie wants debt restructuring? Warren says forgive all student loan debt.
Her job is to make Bernie as unacceptable to mainstream U.S. voters as possible. Unfortunately, that makes Bernie more and more acceptable to a lot of people voting in the Democratic primaries. And this Catch-22 is beginning to show up in the polls for Iowa and New Hampshire.
Then there’s the serious money behind Pete Buttigieg trying to create slightly gayer version of Barack Obama. Again, he’s just another distraction to suck support away from Sanders and keep the field relatively close and the odds of an uncommitted primary season high.
Because the goal is to get to a brokered convention this summer. So, the impeachment was slowed down to hurt Sanders, Warren and Amy Klobuchar and help give Biden the bump he needs to get some momentum coming into Iowa.
It’s not working.
But I also don’t think it’s going to matter. If you keep watching the headlines the attack dogs are out in full to discredit and hurt Sanders. They know he’s a real force to be reckoned with. And worse, his attack dog, Gabbard, has been muzzled by keeping her off the debate stage so she can’t take anyone else out, like she roasted that pig Kamala Harris last summer.
But I truly feel the DNC is looking to steal the nomination again from Sanders. And the impeachment of Trump continues to somehow, against all odds, get worse for him, even though his party is supposed to be in charge of the proceedings.
I told everyone back in September when Nancy Pelosi announced she was going through with the impeachment process that this was all about getting rid of Trump. But it was in October when Hillary went after Tulsi Gabbard that Gabbard’s response was beyond epic and I wrote about it then.
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a …
Gabbard throws down the gauntlet here outing Hillary as the mastermind behind the DNC strategy of allowing the current crop of future losers to fall all over themselves to alienate as many centrist voters as possible.
This paves the way for Hillary to swoop in on her broom, pointed hat in hand, and declare herself the savior of the Democratic Party’s chances to defeat Donald Trump next November.
So, Hillary’s running, the DNC is trying to stop Bernie and Tulsi Gabbard is still an also-ran in New Hampshire and Iowa, polling between 5% and 7%. So what?
Well, I feel at this point it’s been game-planned by Gabbard and Sanders that they know what’s coming. I felt the endorsement from Joe Rogan of Sanders was timed to distract from Hillary’s attack on Bernie in that Hollywood Reporter piece.
Rogan is far more influential than the dead tree media Hillary’s publicist works with. And her attack dogs were out in full to attack Rogan and smear Sanders with their typical guilt-by-association nonsense.
I don’t tweet much folks, but this one gets to the truth of what’s going on in the murk and slime of Democratic Party politics.
If you ever wanted proof that hyper-sensitive identity politics was nothing more than a cheap political tool of the worst kind. I give you Joe Rogan is a Nazi.
Sanders and Gabbard know the DNC is out to destroy him. And the question then becomes what’s next?
What do they do to combat this? Gabbard is not running for re-election in Hawaii. She says she’s committed to running for President. I don’t think she’s getting the nomination and, frankly, I don’t think she is either.
She just filed a defamation of character lawsuit against Hillary for the smears Hillary threw around I linked to above. She puts financial pressure on Hillary knowing that the Clintons couldn’t drum up support and dollars last year during their expensive speaking tour no one went to.
Gabbard denies any kind of third party run, getting the Ron Paul treatment from the media. But, she’s a very acceptable person to a lot of disaffected Trump voters like myself. She speaks to them and can help carry Bernie as his running mate if he somehow makes it through the convention to be the Democratic nominee.
So, yes, Gabbard isn’t running for re-election because she’s running as Sanders’ Vice-Presidential candidate.
And it may not be for the Democratic party in the end. That’s the part you have to factor in here.
Game-planning this out, these two are running a real insurgency within the DNC to either get the nomination or split off and run as Independents. This is Bernie’s last kick at the can. He’s already gotten the gold watch from the DNC in 2016, living the high life only a high member of the Politburo can.
Gabbard has burned all the bridges within the DNC she can, almost gleefully. That makes her a person of integrity, of authenticity, in a U.S. political wasteland of charlatans, reality show hucksters and outright thieves.
The quicker she climbs out of the basement in Pelosi’s House, the better off she’ll be.
I don’t put it past either of these people to think that preventing Hillary from regaining control of the Democrats and spoiling her return is the best outcome for America, even if it re-elects Donald Trump.
But, if Trump is removed to make way for Hillary, then the Race to 270 electoral votes becomes a non-binary affair.
Putin Sends Air Force To Evacuate Hundreds Of Russian Citizens From China
As the list of countries both shutting their borders to China and canceling major carrier flights in and out of the country grows, Russia is set to take drastic action by airlifting its nationals out of the country via Air Force planes.
“The evacuation of Russian nationals from China on the Aerospace Force’s aircraft is scheduled for February 3-4, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday,” reports TASS news agency, which further indicated the evacuation order came directly from President Putin.
Russian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 plane file image, via Airborne Cinematics/YouTube.
This also after the first two cases of coronavirus in Russia were confirmed on Friday. Two Chinese nationals have been quarantined in the Siberian region of Tyumen and the far eastern Zabaykalsky region, and are expected to recover.
Russian authorities promptly restricted direct flights to China and shut the massive land border with China, which extends over 4,000km. No doubt this will have significant economic impact for both countries, given China remains Russia’s largest and most important trading partner.
Peskov announced further in the Kremlin statement: “Due to the fact that it has taken certain time to finalize the coordination of flight information by the Chinese side, the evacuation of Russian nationals from China by planes of the Aerospace Force will be carried out on February 3-4.”
Russian media reports have indicated there remain 300 Russians in Wuhan, with another 341 across Hubei province. Peskov also indicated Saturday that while all Russian nationals will be taken out by Monday and Tuesday, “They will start carrying out [evacuation] flights as of today.”
Image source: AP via TASS
And Russia’s embassy in China said in a Sunday statement: “We have established contact with 202 fellow countrymen and 130 of them have expressed readiness to leave the Hubei province.”
Russia joins a growing list of others who have sent emergency charter flights or military aircraft to take evacuate their citizens trapped in quarantined Wuhan, including the US, France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Japan, Spain and others.
But then a crucial question remains: at this late point could the evacuation flights set to commence Monday simply be unwittingly be bringing the deadly virus back into Russia?
Russian authorities have said they will take extreme precautions, including making each returnee spend at least 14 days in quarantine.
Over 3,000 supporters Sen. Bernie Sanders came out to rally for the White House hopeful in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Saturday night, a showing that the Vermont senator’s backers said is all the polling needed to show the momentum that’s made Sanders a frontrunner in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
“Our campaign has officially held the three largest rallies in Iowa,” Bernie 2020 Iowa state director Misty Rebik said in a statement. “We’ve knocked over half a million doors in the last month. That is what we mean by ‘Not Me, Us.'”
Sanders was expected Saturday night to place first in the influential and “gold standard” Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll, but the poll was shelved after the campaign of former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg claimed a supporter had encountered an irregularity with the pollsters.
Turnout for a Bernie Sanders event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Saturday reportedly exceeded 3,000 people. (Photo: Pat Rynard/Twitter)
“Release the poll or don’t, I think we’ve got a pretty good idea already of who’s ahead,” tweeted Iowa Starting Line editor Pat Rynard.
The only poll that mattered before the only poll that matters has been canceled.
The Des Moines Register and CNN decided late Saturday not to release their highly anticipated poll of Monday’s Iowa caucuses after a potential error was brought to their attention by the campaign of Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. — NBC
Turnout at the Cedar Rapids event stunned observers.
The poll, which is conducted by expert J. Ann Selzer, is widely respected as one of the top political polls in the country and paints a good picture of where Iowans are two days before the state goes to vote.
Turnout on Monday is expected to exceed 2016, when around 171,000 people came out to choose a winner in the open Democratic primary. Des Moines area Democratic strategist Jeff Link toldHuffPost he expected “close to 2008” levels of turnout on Monday, close to 240,000.
This is the third campaign event I have been to today. Biden and Buttigieg each had a couple hundred. Sanders campaign says there are 3,000 people here in Cedar Rapids. pic.twitter.com/UAsOdORYH1
As Common Dreams reported, Sanders is headed down the home stretch with a strong team on the ground and is using his “Not me, us” slogan as a rallying cry for voters.
The senator called for a collective movement of compassion in a tweet Saturday.
“Our job is to give people hope,” said Sanders. “If we stand together, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.”
Coronavirus Won’t Turn You Into A ‘Zombie,’ Says Malaysian Government
As China sends 14,000 military medical staff to the Wuhan hospital region, the government’s official death toll on Saturday night topped 300, with more than 14,550 cases reported globally.
Fear of a deadly outbreak continues to mount over the weekend. So much so, that the Malaysian government had to tell its citizens that coronavirus won’t turn them into zombies.
The official Twitter account for the Malaysian Ministry of Health tweeted Friday, dismissing rumors that coronavirus will spark a zombie apocalypse, reported China News Asia.
The ministry tweeted, “The claim that individuals infected with this virus will behave like zombies is not true … Patients can recover.”
Tiga fakta novel coronavirus 2019 yang perlu ditular.
1. Tidak benar dakwaan individu yang dijangkiti virus ini berkelakuan seperti ZOMBIE. ❌
2. Pesakit boleh SEMBUH. ✔️Rawatan simptom yg dialami pesakit. Jika demam, rawatan untuk baik demam.
“The death rate is low (between two to three percent) as compared to MERS-CoV (around 34 percent) and SARS (about 10 percent),” the ministry added in the series of tweets directed at calming citizens and avoid panicking in the streets.
Tiga fakta novel coronavirus 2019 yang perlu ditular.
1. Tidak benar dakwaan individu yang dijangkiti virus ini berkelakuan seperti ZOMBIE. ❌
2. Pesakit boleh SEMBUH. ✔️Rawatan simptom yg dialami pesakit. Jika demam, rawatan untuk baik demam.
The Royal Malaysia Police arrested six people for spreading misinformation about coronavirus last week, a statement from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said.
So far, eight people in the country have been confirmed to have contracted the virus — all were Chinese nationals.
As far as coronavirus not turning people into zombies, here are several videos from China detailing otherwise:
Footage from Wuhan, China as CoronaVirus outbreak rings alarm bells across the world.
This video is scary – people passing out on street, bodies lying around, overcrowded hospitals.
You have seen this in Zombie films.
Now watch them in real life!pic.twitter.com/oeXj32mP65
Really Scary *CoronaVirus* Epidemic, Video from China.people falling down like birds.situation looks very bad.
In India More Scarier. M00DI virus. pic.twitter.com/a8dtzzYS7Y
Governments across the world are concealing the severity of the deadly outbreak to avoid full-blown social destabilization, in their respected countries.
