North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed a bill that would have allowed bars and private clubs to reopen if they seated customers only outdoors. Cooper closed bars and clubs to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The bill would have also doubled the allowed seating capacity of restaurants by allowing them to seat at full capacity as long as half of customers were seated outside. Cooper is currently limiting restaurants to seating only at 50 percent capacity.
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North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed a bill that would have allowed bars and private clubs to reopen if they seated customers only outdoors. Cooper closed bars and clubs to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The bill would have also doubled the allowed seating capacity of restaurants by allowing them to seat at full capacity as long as half of customers were seated outside. Cooper is currently limiting restaurants to seating only at 50 percent capacity.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2BJFC2D
via IFTTT
What No “V”? World Bank Forecasts “Subdued” Recovery In Global Economy In 2021 Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/10/2020 – 02:45
The World Bank has just released its new “Global Economic Prospects” report, describing how the COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a “devastating blow” on the global economy — shredding all hopes that a V-shaped recovery will be seen this year.
The report goes on to say the global economy will contract for the first time since World War II and emerging market economies will shrink for the first time in six decades — the result of the global economic downturn is between 70 to 100 million people will be thrown into instant poverty.
It said the 2020 baseline forecast for Global GDP would be a contraction of 5.2% — the deepest global recession in eight decades despite unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy by central banks and governments. Emerging markets will shrink by at least 2.5%, the report said, adding that it will be the worst performance for the data since the early 1960s.
The virus-induced recession is the first since 1870 to be triggered solely by a pandemic. The speed and depth at which it hit developed and emerging economies suggest a sluggish recovery will be seen in 2020, with low probabilities of a V-shaped recovery this year. Additional rounds of stimulus to restart the global economy will need to be seen.
“While a global recovery is envisioned in 2021, it is likely to be subdued,” the World Bank said.
The World Bank expects developed economies will contract by 7%, led by a 9.1% decline in growth for Europe this year. Breaking down the numbers, the US is expected to contract by 6.1% — while China could post a 1% expansion.
The global lender proposed two alternative scenarios. The first is a COVID-19 second wave that triggers another round of travel restrictions that would result in the worldwide economy plunging by 8% this year. If the virus can be controlled and reopenings are continued through the back half of the year, the contraction would be around 4% — still, this figure is twice the depth at which it was during the recession a decade ago.
“The global recession would be deeper if bringing the pandemic under control took longer than expected, or if financial stress triggered cascading defaults,” the World Bank said.
As for the socio-economic impacts, the decline may push 70-100 million people into extreme poverty – the economic scarring of today’s downturn will be long-lasting with a new era of high unemployment, low growth, and breakdowns in world trade and supply linkages.
Ukraine was supposed to prevent Russia from deepening energy ties with Germany; it didn’t work out that way…
Once upon a time in Pipelineistan, tales of woe were the norm. Shattered dreams littered the chessboard – from IPI vs. TAPI in the AfPak realm to the neck-twisting Nabucco opera in Europe.
In sharp contrast, whenever China entered the picture, successful completion prevailed. Beijing financed a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Xinjiang, finished in 2009, and will profit from two spectacular Power of Siberia deals with Russia.
And then there’s Ukraine. Maidan was a project of the Barack Obama administration, featuring a sterling cast led by POTUS, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John McCain and last but not least, prime Kiev cookie distributor Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland.
Ukraine was also supposed to prevent Russia from deepening energy ties with Germany, as well as other European destinations.
Well, it did not exactly play like that. Nord Stream was already operational. South Stream was Gazprom’s project to southeast Europe. Relentless pressure by the Obama administration derailed it. Yet that only worked to enable a resurrection: the already completed TurkStream, with gas starting to flow in January 2020.
The battlefield then changed to Nord Stream 2. This time relentless Donald Trump administration pressure did not derail it. On the contrary: it will be completed by the end of 2020.
Richard Grennel, the US ambassador to Germany, branded a “superstar” by President Trump, was furious. True to script, he threatened Nordstream 2 partners – ENGIE, OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, Uniper, and Wintershall – with “new sanctions.”
Worse: he stressed that Germany “must stop feeding the beast at a time when it does not pay enough to NATO.”
“Feeding the beast” is not exactly subtle code for energy trade with Russia.
Peter Altmaier, German minister of economic affairs and energy, was not impressed. Berlin does not recognize any legality in extra-territorial sanctions.
Grennel, on top of it, is not exactly popular in Berlin. Diplomats popped the champagne when they knew he was going back home to become the head of US national intelligence.
Trump administration sanctions delayed Nordstream 2 for around one year, at best. What really matters is that in this interval Kiev had to sign a gas transit deal with Gazprom. What no one is talking about is that by 2025 no Russian gas will be transiting across Ukraine towards Europe.
So the whole Maidan project was in fact useless.
It’s a running joke in Brussels that the EU never had and will never have a unified energy policy towards Russia. The EU came up with a gas directive to force the ownership of Nord Stream 2 to be separated from the gas flowing through the pipeline. German courts applied their own “nein.”
Nord Stream 2 is a serious matter of national energy security for Germany. And that is enough to trump whatever Brussels may concoct.
And don’t forget Siberia
The moral of this fable is that now two key Pipelineistan nodes – Turk Stream and Nord Stream 2 – are established as umbilical steel cords linking Russia with two NATO allies.
And true to proverbial win-win scripts, now it’s also time for China to look into solidifying its European relations.
Last week, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese premier Li Keqiang had a video conference to discuss Covid-19 and China-EU economic policy.
That was a day after Merkel and President Xi had spoken, when they agreed that the China-EU summit in Leipzig on September 14 would have to be postponed.
This summit should be the climax of the German presidency of the EU, which starts on July 1. That’s when Germany would be able to present a unified policy towards China, uniting in theory the 27 EU members and not only the 17+1 from Central Europe and the Balkans – including 11 EU members – that already have a privileged relationship with Beijing and are on board for the Belt and Road Initiative.
In contrast with the Trump administration, Merkel does privilege a clear, comprehensive trade partnership with China – way beyond a mere photo op summit. Berlin is way more geoeconomically sophisticated than the vague “engagement and exigence” Paris approach.
Merkel as well as Xi are fully aware of the imminent fragmentation of the world economy post-Lockdown. Yet as much as Beijing is ready to abandon the global circulation strategy from which it has handsomely profited for the past two decades, the emphasis is also on refining very close trade relations with Europe.
Ray McGovern has concisely detailed the current state of US-Russia relations. The heart of the whole matter, from Moscow’s point of view, was summarized by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, an extremely able diplomat:
“We don’t believe the US in its current shape is a counterpart that is reliable, so we have no confidence, no trust whatsoever. So our own calculations and conclusions are less related to what America is doing… We cherish our close and friendly relations with China. We do regard this as a comprehensive strategic partnership in different areas, and we intend to develop it further.”
It’s all here. Russia-China “comprehensive strategic partnership” steadily advancing. Including “Power of Siberia” Pipelineistan. Plus Pipelineistan linking two key NATO allies. Sanctions? What sanctions?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2AkmMPn Tyler Durden
Deaths from COVID-19 are dropping, but we probably can’t resume normal life until someone develops a vaccine. Experts say it will take at least 12 to 18 months.
Why so long?
Because to make sure a vaccine works, researchers must recruit lots of volunteers and wait for them to get sick.
First, they inject the volunteers. Half get the test vaccine; half get a placebo. Then, the test subjects resume their normal lives, and researchers watch to see who gets sick.
For that research to work, there must be enough of the coronavirus around for enough volunteers to get the coronavirus.
But now COVID-19 cases are declining. Researchers worry that there won’t be enough sick people to test it on.
Fortunately, there’s a way to speed testing up, if regulators allow it. It’s called a human challenge trial.
“‘Challenge’ means that you intentionally expose people to the coronavirus…’challenging’ them with the virus,” explains Carson Poltorack in my new video.
Poltorack is a member of One Day Sooner, a group of mostly healthy young people who volunteered to be infected with the coronavirus. So far, 24,000 people from 100 countries have volunteered. They are willing to risk their lives if it means the world get a vaccine sooner.
“It’s the right thing to do,” says Poltorack.
The idea of a challenge trial is not new. Such trials were used to find treatments for malaria, typhoid, dengue fever, and cholera. But there were treatments for those diseases. So far, we have no reliable treatment for COVID-19.
“People your age do die from COVID,” I say to Poltorack.
“Absolutely.” He responds. “I’m 23. The risk of somebody from 18 to 30 is about 3 in 10,000, the same as if you were to donate a kidney.”
Poltorack volunteered after reading a paper where bioethicist Nir Eyal argued that challenge trials would develop a vaccine sooner, without much added risk.
“We put people through risks in clinical trials all the time,” says Eyal.
Young people are more likely to take such risks. Some volunteer to fight wars. Fighting this pandemic, say One Day Sooner volunteers, is like that.
One recorded a video where she says it is “maybe the most important thing I will ever do.”
But some doctors say it shouldn’t be done.
“We need to wait,” says Dr. Jennifer Miller, bioethics professor at Yale Medical School.
She says a challenge trial may not save much time. “You have to develop the challenge virus strain…test it in animals…figure out the correct dose. That can take 6 to 18 months.”
Maybe. Virologist Stanley Plotkin, developer of the rubella vaccine, says it could take just two months.
I argue that the length of time shouldn’t matter. “If individuals want to experiment, shouldn’t it be their choice?” I ask Miller. “Why doesn’t the volunteer get to say, ‘I’m an adult. It’s my body, I get to make the decision!?'”
“We have moral limits to what you can do with your freedoms,” replies Miller. “We mandate that you wear helmets when you ride bicycles in some states. We say you have to wear a seatbelt for your protection…I’m not sure the added risks to the participants are justified.”
“That’s a decision that each individual informed volunteer can make for themselves,” says Poltorack, wisely.
I obviously agree. I asked Poltorack, “One month’s difference in the development of a vaccine could save a thousand lives?”
“No, probably far more than that,” he answers. “Probably in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands.”
Some bureaucracies have come around to the idea. Recently, the World Health Organization released a paper on challenge trials. Thirty-five members of Congress wrote the FDA asking it to consider a challenge trial.
We adults should be allowed to make our own decisions about what we do with our own bodies.
If some people want to get infected, let them!
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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Attorney General William Barr worries that making it easier to sue cops for abusing their powers “would result certainly in police pulling back.” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany calls the idea a “nonstarter.”
Americans who have watched the horrifying video showing now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while ignoring the prone, handcuffed man’s desperate pleas, past the point where he stopped moving and no longer had a detectable pulse, might reasonably conclude that some “pulling back” by police is exactly what we need. And once Americans understand the legally reinforced culture of impunity that encourages such abuses, they might view the reform peremptorily rejected by McEnany as a good start rather than a nonstarter.
In other contexts, Barr recognizes the importance of litigation in protecting constitutional rights. He has repeatedly warned that COVID-19 control measures can violate the First Amendment when they discriminate against religious activities and has supported churches challenging such regulations.
Those lawsuits rely on 42 U.S.C. 1983, which allows people to sue anyone who, under color of law, violates their constitutional or statutory rights. Beginning in 1967, the Supreme Court has read into that law exceptions for government officials who act in “good faith” or whose conduct does not violate “clearly established” rights.
Such “qualified immunity”—especially under the latter exception, which the Court invented in 1982—has in many cases prevented victims of police abuse from pursuing their claims. In practice, it often means victims’ lawsuits will be dismissed unless they can cite precedents with nearly identical facts.
Plaintiffs have found it increasingly difficult to locate such rulings since 2009, when the justices said courts can dismiss their lawsuits without even deciding whether their rights were violated. As Don Willett, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, observes, “important constitutional questions go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet unanswered.”
Did Idaho cops violate the Fourth Amendment when they wrecked a woman’s home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades after she agreed to let them inside to arrest her former boyfriend? What about the Georgia sheriff’s deputy who shot a 10-year-old boy while trying to kill his dog after police chased a suspect into their yard?
We don’t know the answers, because appeals courts dismissed those cases without resolving the constitutional questions they posed. Likewise with the Nebraska sheriff’s deputy who, while responding to an erroneous “domestic assault” report, lifted the purported victim in a bear hug and threw her to the ground, knocking her unconscious and breaking her collarbone; the Tennessee officer who allegedly sicced a police dog on a burglary suspect who had already surrendered and was sitting on the ground with his hands up; and the California cops who allegedly stole cash and property worth more than $225,000 while executing a search warrant.
As UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz notes, such decisions “deny what is often the best available relief to plaintiffs who have been grievously wronged by government actors, suggest to government officials that they can violate the law with impunity, and send the troubling message to victims of misconduct that they are not deserving of constitutional protection.” Or as Willett puts it, “qualified immunity smacks of unqualified impunity, letting public officials duck consequences for bad behavior—no matter how palpably unreasonable—as long as they were the first to behave badly.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg—who don’t agree on much else—also have expressed concern about qualified immunity. Rather than rely on the Supreme Court to reconsider that doctrine, Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) last week introduced a bill that would abolish it, as would a broader package of police reforms that House Democrats unveiled this week.
This should not be a partisan issue. As Amash points out, “Members of Congress have a duty to ensure government officials can be held accountable for violating Americans’ rights, and ending qualified immunity is a crucial part of that.”
Deaths from COVID-19 are dropping, but we probably can’t resume normal life until someone develops a vaccine. Experts say it will take at least 12 to 18 months.
Why so long?
Because to make sure a vaccine works, researchers must recruit lots of volunteers and wait for them to get sick.
First, they inject the volunteers. Half get the test vaccine; half get a placebo. Then, the test subjects resume their normal lives, and researchers watch to see who gets sick.
For that research to work, there must be enough of the coronavirus around for enough volunteers to get the coronavirus.
But now COVID-19 cases are declining. Researchers worry that there won’t be enough sick people to test it on.
Fortunately, there’s a way to speed testing up, if regulators allow it. It’s called a human challenge trial.
“‘Challenge’ means that you intentionally expose people to the coronavirus…’challenging’ them with the virus,” explains Carson Poltorack in my new video.
Poltorack is a member of One Day Sooner, a group of mostly healthy young people who volunteered to be infected with the coronavirus. So far, 24,000 people from 100 countries have volunteered. They are willing to risk their lives if it means the world get a vaccine sooner.
“It’s the right thing to do,” says Poltorack.
The idea of a challenge trial is not new. Such trials were used to find treatments for malaria, typhoid, dengue fever, and cholera. But there were treatments for those diseases. So far, we have no reliable treatment for COVID-19.
“People your age do die from COVID,” I say to Poltorack.
“Absolutely.” He responds. “I’m 23. The risk of somebody from 18 to 30 is about 3 in 10,000, the same as if you were to donate a kidney.”
Poltorack volunteered after reading a paper where bioethicist Nir Eyal argued that challenge trials would develop a vaccine sooner, without much added risk.
“We put people through risks in clinical trials all the time,” says Eyal.
Young people are more likely to take such risks. Some volunteer to fight wars. Fighting this pandemic, say One Day Sooner volunteers, is like that.
One recorded a video where she says it is “maybe the most important thing I will ever do.”
But some doctors say it shouldn’t be done.
“We need to wait,” says Dr. Jennifer Miller, bioethics professor at Yale Medical School.
She says a challenge trial may not save much time. “You have to develop the challenge virus strain…test it in animals…figure out the correct dose. That can take 6 to 18 months.”
Maybe. Virologist Stanley Plotkin, developer of the rubella vaccine, says it could take just two months.
I argue that the length of time shouldn’t matter. “If individuals want to experiment, shouldn’t it be their choice?” I ask Miller. “Why doesn’t the volunteer get to say, ‘I’m an adult. It’s my body, I get to make the decision!?'”
“We have moral limits to what you can do with your freedoms,” replies Miller. “We mandate that you wear helmets when you ride bicycles in some states. We say you have to wear a seatbelt for your protection…I’m not sure the added risks to the participants are justified.”
“That’s a decision that each individual informed volunteer can make for themselves,” says Poltorack, wisely.
I obviously agree. I asked Poltorack, “One month’s difference in the development of a vaccine could save a thousand lives?”
“No, probably far more than that,” he answers. “Probably in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands.”
Some bureaucracies have come around to the idea. Recently, the World Health Organization released a paper on challenge trials. Thirty-five members of Congress wrote the FDA asking it to consider a challenge trial.
We adults should be allowed to make our own decisions about what we do with our own bodies.
If some people want to get infected, let them!
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3f5VStl
via IFTTT
Attorney General William Barr worries that making it easier to sue cops for abusing their powers “would result certainly in police pulling back.” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany calls the idea a “nonstarter.”
Americans who have watched the horrifying video showing now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while ignoring the prone, handcuffed man’s desperate pleas, past the point where he stopped moving and no longer had a detectable pulse, might reasonably conclude that some “pulling back” by police is exactly what we need. And once Americans understand the legally reinforced culture of impunity that encourages such abuses, they might view the reform peremptorily rejected by McEnany as a good start rather than a nonstarter.
In other contexts, Barr recognizes the importance of litigation in protecting constitutional rights. He has repeatedly warned that COVID-19 control measures can violate the First Amendment when they discriminate against religious activities and has supported churches challenging such regulations.
Those lawsuits rely on 42 U.S.C. 1983, which allows people to sue anyone who, under color of law, violates their constitutional or statutory rights. Beginning in 1967, the Supreme Court has read into that law exceptions for government officials who act in “good faith” or whose conduct does not violate “clearly established” rights.
Such “qualified immunity”—especially under the latter exception, which the Court invented in 1982—has in many cases prevented victims of police abuse from pursuing their claims. In practice, it often means victims’ lawsuits will be dismissed unless they can cite precedents with nearly identical facts.
Plaintiffs have found it increasingly difficult to locate such rulings since 2009, when the justices said courts can dismiss their lawsuits without even deciding whether their rights were violated. As Don Willett, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, observes, “important constitutional questions go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet unanswered.”
Did Idaho cops violate the Fourth Amendment when they wrecked a woman’s home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades after she agreed to let them inside to arrest her former boyfriend? What about the Georgia sheriff’s deputy who shot a 10-year-old boy while trying to kill his dog after police chased a suspect into their yard?
We don’t know the answers, because appeals courts dismissed those cases without resolving the constitutional questions they posed. Likewise with the Nebraska sheriff’s deputy who, while responding to an erroneous “domestic assault” report, lifted the purported victim in a bear hug and threw her to the ground, knocking her unconscious and breaking her collarbone; the Tennessee officer who allegedly sicced a police dog on a burglary suspect who had already surrendered and was sitting on the ground with his hands up; and the California cops who allegedly stole cash and property worth more than $225,000 while executing a search warrant.
As UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz notes, such decisions “deny what is often the best available relief to plaintiffs who have been grievously wronged by government actors, suggest to government officials that they can violate the law with impunity, and send the troubling message to victims of misconduct that they are not deserving of constitutional protection.” Or as Willett puts it, “qualified immunity smacks of unqualified impunity, letting public officials duck consequences for bad behavior—no matter how palpably unreasonable—as long as they were the first to behave badly.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg—who don’t agree on much else—also have expressed concern about qualified immunity. Rather than rely on the Supreme Court to reconsider that doctrine, Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) last week introduced a bill that would abolish it, as would a broader package of police reforms that House Democrats unveiled this week.
This should not be a partisan issue. As Amash points out, “Members of Congress have a duty to ensure government officials can be held accountable for violating Americans’ rights, and ending qualified immunity is a crucial part of that.”
I have come to the conclusion that collectively Americans are mentally and emotionally stupid. On any given day there is endless evidence that this is the case.
Just a few selections from news of the last couple of days should suffice to establish the point.
Instead of reforming police training as a rational response to George Floyd’s death from an aggressive restraint technique, the Minneapolis city council voted to disband the Minneapolis police. Council woman Lisa Bender responded to a citizen’s question what she is supposed to do if she faces a threat in her home and there are no police to call:
“Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.”
In other words, the Minneapolis citizen’s concern is not legitimate and merely reflects her privileged assumption that she is entitled to protection by police. The valid concern is to protect blacks from the police by disbanding the police.
The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer had to resign because of the headline on a reporter’s article. The article was very sympathic to the black rioters but didn’t quite see the point of blacks destroying historic buildings in Philadelphia because of what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis. The editor was done in by the article’s headline: “Buildings Matter, Too.”This incensed the woke morons, and despite his groveling apology the editor was removed . So much for “white privilege.” White newspaper editors cannot even exercise freedom of speech in the choice of headlines.
Not even editors at the New York Times, which grovels at the feet of blacks and self-righteous woke, can survive their exercise of freedom of the press. The opinion editor and his deputy had to resign for publishing Senator Tom Cotton’s call to deploy the military to protect people and property from the rioters and looters. I am confident that the NY Times published Sen. Cotton’s article with the intention of damning Cotton for not being more sympathetic to black looters. But the woke creatures and the NY Times publisher A.G.Sulzberger removed the editors because of “the pain they inflicted.”
Pain inflicted on who? The pain inflicted on owners of businesses, buildings, and cars destroyed by rioters using violence to express their disapproval of violence? No. As Lisa Bender put it, these concerns don’t matter as they come “from a place of privilege.” Only the pain of those privileged to riot and loot counts.
As kids we used to say, “sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Today for the woke weaklings the wrong word is like a nuclear weapon. They collapse in tears and recriminations. NY Times Staffers claimed that by publishing Sen. Cotton’s article, the opinion editor had put their lives in danger by not validating looting and rioting as a valid exercise of free speech. Somehow it did not occur to Sulzberger that the protesters must not be so innocent if NY Times staffers are in fear of their lives because of a few words from a US Senator.
JK Rowling is in trouble again from the transgender freaks who reject the word “woman” as transphobic. Rowling took exception to the term “people who menstruate.” and caused “unimaginable pain” by remarking that there used to be a word for “people who menstruate.”
A professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina has been denounced by the university administration for “vile and inexcusable comments,” such as “Don’t shut down the universities; shut down non-essential majors like women’s studies.” The UNC administration says “we are very carefully and assertively reviewing our options in terms of how to proceed.” The hypocritical administration went on to say “Hateful, hurtful language aimed at degrading others is contrary to our university values and our commitment to an environment of respect and dignity. Its appearance on any platform, including the personal platforms of anyone affiliated with UNCW, is absolutely reprehensible.” What nonsense! Everyday on the UNC campus black studies professors teach students that white people are racists and slavers, and women’s studies professors demonize men as misogynists and rapists. The hypocrites that comprise university administrations never do anything about this “reprehensible, hateful, and hurtful language” aimed at white people and at men.
A retired US Navy captain had to resign from the US Naval Academy Alumni Association board after a private conversation with his wife was accidentally streamed on Facebook. The captain used the n-word and said that white men “can’t say anything.” His wife complained of Chinese who “steal all of our intellectual property.” The couple are mortified and deeply sorry to have spoken in derogatory terms “about our fellow man,” a regret that black rioters and intellectual property thiefs do not reciprocate. The alunmi association said that these private comments are “not consistent with our leadership mission.” The couple have committed themselves to “using this experience as an opportunity to grow, listen, learn, and reflect . . . and being better people.”
The groveling of Sulzberger at the NY Times, the groveling at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the groveling by the Minneapolis city council and by submissive police officers will only encourage the black violence that decades of being taught to hate white people has unleashed. As I have said so many times, a diverse, multicultural society cannot be built on hatred. If blacks today had a real leader like Martin Luther King, Jr., that leader would be protesting police violence against people irrespective of race. Such a protest would be a unifying act instead of a divisive one. People such as myself could again see hope for American society.
Western civilization is collapsing because allegations from the least credible sources carry more weight than facts. Emotions have displaced facts as the basis for understanding. Emotion routinely shouts down facts. It has become commonplace in universities for distinguished authorities to be shut down because the facts are unacceptable to the ignorant woke students, backed up by a roster of administrative thought police.
Universities have abandoned their mission of searching for truth. They have become propaganda ministries that spew the acids that eat away foundations of civilization.
In Western Civilization today, the best way to destroy yourself is to stand up for truth. I am getting tired of it as support for the defense of truth is declining away.
There is a lesson for the warmonger neoconservatives in the extraordinary weakness that is now the core of Western Civilization, a civilization that is a discredited concept in every American university and is being damned again by the NY Times’ 1619 Project. It is hilarious that neoconservatives proclaimed a people as divided as the US, with the majority white population on the defensive, to be an exceptional and indispensable people.
The US armed forces are a hodgepod of men, women, lesbians, homosexuals, a racial medley, and every element in it has been instructed by Identity Politics to hate and distrust the other. Armies devoid of the homogeneity that gives unity are useless. Only a fool would put an American or any European army against Russia and China. What will be our fate if the aggressive bombast that the neoconservatives and fellow travelers such as Liz Cheney keep pumping out of Washington results in concerted Russian/Chinese action against the threat that the West is determined to portray itself to be?
The hope for humanity is that the Russians and Chinese remain patient as the West continues its collapse under the weight of its own self-hate.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30rYM7J Tyler Durden
Today’s infographic pulls data from Layoffs.fyi, and navigates the cascading layoffs across 30 of the most recognizable startups in America. Each of the companies have slashed over 250 employees between March 11 and May 26, 2020—capturing a snapshot of the continuing fallout of COVID-19.
Silicon Valley Takes a Hit
Unsurprisingly, many of the hardest hit startups are related to the travel and mobility industry.
Closing 45 offices, Uber has laid off 6,700 employees since mid-March. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who was granted a $45M earnings package in 2018, announced he will also waive his $1M base salary for the remainder of the year.
Meanwhile, as room bookings dropped by over 40% across several countries, Airbnb laid off a quarter of its workforce. The tech darling is anticipating a $2.4B revenue shortfall in 2020.
Like many other big names—including Lyft, Uber, and WeWork—Airbnb is struggling to achieve profitability. In the first nine months of 2019, it lost $322M at the height of the market cycle.
Until 2021, gig-economy revenues are projected to drop by at least 30%.
International Startups Struggling
Startups in the U.S. aren’t the only ones scrambling to conserve cash and cut costs.
Brazil-based unicorn Stone has let go of 20% of its workforce. The rapidly growing digital payments company includes Warren Buffett as a major stakeholder, holding an 8% share as of March 2020.
At the same time, India-based ride-hailing Ola has witnessed revenue declines of 95% since mid-March. It laid off 1,400 employees as bookings drastically declined.
Similarly, Uber India has rivaled Ola in dominance across India’s $10B ride-hailing market since launching three years after Ola, in 2013. Now, almost 25% of the Uber India workforce have been laid off.
Of course, these reports do not fully take into account the growing impact of COVID-19, but help paint a picture as the cracks emerge.
Pandemic-Proof?
While the job market remains murky, what startups are looking to hire?
Coursera, an online education startup, listed 60 openings in May. By the end of the year, the company plans to hire 250 additional staff. Within the peak of widespread global lockdowns, the platform attracted 10M new users.
Meanwhile, Canva, an Australia-based graphic design unicorn, is seeking to fill 100 positions worldwide. In partnership with Google for Education, Canva offers project-based learning tools designed for classrooms, in addition to free graphic design resources.
At the same time, tech heavyweights Facebook and Amazon reported openings. Booming startups such as Plaid, Zoom, and Pinterest are also listing new positions as shifting consumer demand continues to shape unpredictable and historic hiring markets.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3hbq7AQ Tyler Durden
