iftttwall

Cody Wilson, the self-described anarchist and leader of the 3D-printed gun movement, is absolutely bat sh*t crazy. He released a new promo video, highlighting several ghost guns, himself wearing a 3M N-95 virus mask, and at the end of the video, Wilson takes a bow at the Fannin Memorial Monument in Texas. 

Wilson has pioneered the technology and know-how behind developing plastic guns with three-dimensional printers, something gun-control advocates and the US government are absolutely terrified about.

He is the founder of “Defense Distributed” and “Defcad,” which have had many legal disputes with the federal government over not just the production of the 3D printed weapon parts, but also the right to share the blueprints online. 

For the third time, Wilson has released 3D weapon blueprints to the public: 

“This was the third time he [Wilson] has released such files, but the first time he has abided by US foreign export controls online, using what he said are digital verification tools to ensure legal file downloads,” The Wall Street Journal said. 

Wilson told The Journal that the latest release of blueprints for 3-D weapons would be “impervious” to legal challenge and would allow the public to access the files for a small fee. 

For a yearly subscription fee of $50, or about $4.16 per month, anyone can have access to the “Netflix for 3-D guns” service. This means anyone with a 3-D printer can print a weapon in their garage.

The debut of Wilson’s “Netflix for 3-D guns” service comes as gun stores across the country are seeing a massive influx of people who want guns and ammunition amid a pandemic that is worsening by the day. Reports have indicated that specific weapons and a wide range of ammo have sold out as states are shuttering stores.

Gun advocates have denounced Wilson’s latest move, saying it will lead to the proliferation of 3-D printed weapons. Guns that are printed don’t have a serial number and are considered “ghost guns,” mostly because the government cannot track them. 

“The biggest concern with 3-D-printed guns and the technical data for them is that they’re not traceable,” said Kelly Sampson, counsel at Brady: United Against Gun Violence, a gun-control group. “It’s a huge loophole and opportunity for people who would otherwise be unable to access firearms to be able to do so.”

Wilson said he’s fighting the government’s attempt to limit freedoms of Americans and expects anyone that agrees with him to download weapon blueprints not necessarily to print the guns, but “as a form of internal resistance.” 

“For me, this is a political battle,” he said.

Wilson has been in a protracted legal battle with the federal government, and in 2018 won the case when the State Department authorized him to distribute 3-D weapon blueprints online by issuing Defense Distributed a license to do so.

Another lawsuit was brought against Wilson by the Seattle federal court last year, which recently forced Defense Distributed to offer the blueprints behind “four levels of security, including IP geolocation and proxy detection and technology developed for credit bureaus and anti-money-laundering specialists” on the website, the Journal noted.

“The internet is not an airtight, hack-proof system,” Sampson said. “Even some of our most secure databases are vulnerable. It’s not quite living in reality to assume that you can 100% secure information that’s online.”

Wilson said his new “Netflix for 3-D guns” service is “complaint” with the federal government but can’t prevent people who downloaded blueprints from sharing them online. “I can only tell them that it’s against the law to do so,” he added.

On Wilson’s Defcad website, 5,872 files have been made available, with over 30,585 downloads from 14,016 users.

One weapon that a millennial in their parent’s basement can print is called the FGC-9. The gun is a “9x19mm pistol caliber carbine that is made mostly out of 3D-printed components, utilizes an AR-15 or airsoft M4 rifle fire control group, is compatible with Glock magazines and offers a truly effective, simple to build and reliable tactical option for self-defense and more,” the website said. 

Another weapon to print is the M4A1 Carbine. 

The next big trend that could soon be underway in a pandemic is people printing guns at home. 

As New York deals with its worsening coronavirus outbreak in real time, “terrified” 911 operators find themselves having to make life-or-death decisions on a whim, on a daily basis. 

“It’s all a war zone,” one paramedic said.

 “I’m terrified. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to survive. I’m terrified of what I’ve already possibly brought home,” Phil Suarez, an Iraq war vet who is a paramedic, added.

In fact, some patients are being left behind in their homes as the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed with calls relating to the virus, according to the New York Times. 

The 911 system that generally fields about 4,000 calls per day was swamped with over 7,000 calls last Thursday. It is a volume of calls that the city hasn’t seen since September 11, 2001. 

The volume has put Emergency Medical Personnel in the position of having to determine which cases should receive time-consuming medical measures, like CPR and intubation, and which cases are “too far gone”. 

And many of these workers are doing it without the proper protection. Meanwhile, New York remains on a trajectory to pass Wuhan in terms of the severity of its outbreak, assuming you take China’s numbers at face value. 

One paramedic told the New York Times that a woman had “drank a liter of vodka” to try and commit suicide after her cancer treatments were delayed because hospital beds were being occupied by coronavirus patients. Another paramedic said that the battery on her defibrillator died from responding to so many cardiac arrests on one shift. 

The paramedic said: 

“It does not matter where you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. This virus is treating everyone equally.”

Frank Dwyer, a Fire Department spokesman, commented: 

“Our E.M.T.s and paramedics are on the front line during an unprecedented time in the department’s history. They’re doing it professionally, and they’re doing it because they care about their patients. They care about this city.”

The department has said that it is rationing protective gear to try and prevent shortages. 

“The department is carefully managing and monitoring usage of personal protective equipment and critical supplies to ensure we have what’s needed for this long-term operation,” Dwyer continued.

Paramedics said that weeks ago, coronavirus calls were mostly for respiratory distress or fever. Now many of these same patients are dealing with organ failure and cardiac arrest after being sent home from the hospital. 

One Brooklyn paramedic said:

 “We’re getting them at the point where they’re starting to decompensate. The way that it wreaks havoc in the body is almost flying in the face of everything that we know.”

Another paramedic who had previously helped a 65 year old patient in Brooklyn was forced to tell them to stay home and call a doctor. A separate paramedic said that amidst a shortage of protective gear, they had been using the same N95 mask for days. 

And people are doing their best to try and help. The same paramedic said that after leaving a building with her partner after tending to one of its tenants, “the building’s supervisor — noticing the pair’s worn equipment — met them downstairs and shoved new N95 masks and a can of Lysol into their arms.”

Many healthcare workers are scared they have already been infected and have brought the virus home to their families. On March 18, three members of the Fire Department tested positive for the virus. On Friday, that number had grown to 206 people. 

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates was heard on CNN Global Town Hall on Thursday (March 26) as saying six to ten weeks of lockdowns across the country is now necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. 

“It is super painful to drive this very high degree of social isolation I call shutdown. The middle course really isn’t there because it’s hard to say, oh, go back to the theater for a week maybe or maybe not you’ll be infected or infecting people,” Gates said.

“Until we get the certainty we’ve hit these low numbers, you know, I doubt even if you told people that they should be buying new houses and cars and hanging out in restaurants, I doubt they’re going to want to do that. People want to protect older people,” he said. 

“This is kind of the nightmare scenario,” he said as to what is currently unfolding across the US. As of Saturday morning, there are 105,000 confirmed virus cases and 1,711 deaths. The epicenter of the breakout is New York, with more than 46,000 cases. 

Gates said the response in the US was slow and chaotic. He said if the government would have “behaved a little bit like the countries that have done the best on this one” – then maybe the spread could have been suppressed. 

He warned that the “peak” in cases and deaths is not close, indicating that further lockdowns will be needed to flatten the curve and slowdown infections to avoid hospital systems from being overwhelmed. 

“This is kind of the nightmare scenario,” says Bill Gates, who warned about the dangers of a pandemic in 2015. “[I] talked about how we needed to invest in new platforms so that we could quickly make diagnostics, make drugs and make vaccines to stop an epidemic.” #CNNTownHall pic.twitter.com/xPW182yCSR

— CNN (@CNN) March 27, 2020

“Basically, the whole country needs to do what was done in the part of China where they had these infections,” he added.

And to Gate’s point about where the US is in the virus cycle. We noted last week that the US is in the acceleration period. 

Gates has been warning about a pandemic for years. Back in 2015, he told the audience at a TED Talk that his greatest fear wasn’t World War III, but rather a fast-spreading virus that would consume the world. 

Gates was a part of The Event 201 scenario in October (months before Covid-19) that modeled an outbreak of coronavirus across the world, killing 65 million people by month 18. 

His foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has been pouring millions of dollars into developing and distributing at-home testing kits for COVID-19.

So what do we expect after the nationwide lockdown? Well, Harvard researchers believe “intermittent lockdowns” and “widespread surveillance” of Americans could become the norm through 2022. 

Canada has over 6,243 confirmed coronvirus cases, including 64 deaths as of Sunday, which compared to the United States – at over 135,000 cases and rapidly growing – appears to be doing a much better job at fighting the spread. 

Though nationwide transport systems, including flights and trains, are still active, Canada announced Sunday that starting Monday any passengers showing symptoms related to Covid-19 will be banned from domestic flights and trains. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the new nation-wide rule from his residence in a press briefing, which reads “people showing any signs whatsoever of Covid-19 will be denied boarding on all domestic flights and intercity passenger trains,” according to Politico.

Trudea said that measures to contain the disease are “beginning to work” but still said individuals “need to continue to do what is necessary to prevent the spread of Covid-19.”

The new measures will likely involve more invasive temperature scans and symptom monitoring checks by authorities at transport hubs. But the language of the new order puts the onus on the train and airline companies to monitor and enforce the mandate among their passengers.

Thus far Canadians who are returning from travel abroad are under legal mandate to self-isolate for 14 days upon return.

Trudea’s own wife previously tested positive for coronavirus after a trip to London, and has since been in self-isolation for two weeks, but recently announced her doctor said she was in the clear.

Neither Trudea nor their children have shown symptoms, but over the weekend he indicated he may continue to work in a state of isolation to “set an example” for Canadians. 

Currently Quebec is maintaining police checkpoints around the province’s major cities in order to monitor unnecessary travel, and to tell outside travelers returning to Quebec to self-quarantine upon return to their homes. Quebec has further banned gatherings of 5 people or more in order to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Authored by The Zman,

Has the world gone mad? It certainly seems that way to some of us. Even the most cynical never imagined the government shutting down the country for fear of a virus, but it has suddenly become the new normal. The cynical, if they thought of it at all, would have thought the opposite. Instead of a great lock down, the response would have been for the beautiful people to insulate themselves from harm, while abandoning the rest of us to the plague. Instead, we have all gone mad together.

Not everyone has got the fever, that is this panic fever, not the one caused by the Chinese coronavirus.

Our world is now firmly divided into two camps.

• There are those fully invested in the great panic over the virus and

• there are those who look at the other camp, gobsmacked by what appears to be a general madness.

Those in panic look at the rest of us the same way preppers look at normal people. They just assume the gods will strike us down for doubting the virus.

Of course, the people in the skeptic camp could be the ones suffering from some form of madness that prevents them from seeing the threat. The trouble is, the great plague is not exactly lighting up the scoreboard. America has tested over 600,000 people suspected of having the virus. Over 500,000 tested negative. Of the positives, 12,000 needed hospital care. In a country of over 320 million people with 200,000 empty hospital beds at any one time, that’s not much of a crisis.

Yet, despite the numbers, formerly sober-minded people continue to carry on as if there are bodies in the streets. Steve Sailer, a man not known for excitability, is calling this virus a great adversary of the human race. Greg Cochran has completely lost his marbles over this thing. Geneticist and HBD enthusiast Razib Khan is in hiding, convinced the end times are upon us. In fact, the whole HBD community is a click away from fleeing to Antarctica to wait out the end of civilization.

Of course, part of the panic, a symptom of that particular virus, is a set of abracadabra phrases that have become so common they seem like something from a secret society, understood only by the initiates. The duller sorts chant about “exponential growth” while others talk about “the hospitals being overwhelmed.” That’s why we have to “flatten the curve” and “slow the spread.” These incantations are to chase away doubt and reinforce the belief that people are dying in the streets.

The dying in the streets bit is not much of an exaggeration. A popular bit of folklore now among the panicked is some version of the anonymous ER doctor or nurse relaying how they are overwhelmed and letting people die in the hallways. This urban legend turned up in China, Washington, Italy, New York and now New Orleans. Formerly sensible people now pass these whoppers around on-line, never bothering to think that maybe they are being fed a just-so story by people seeking attention.

One emerging aspect to the madness is the moral dimension. The Human Biodiversity (HBD) crowd seems to have been hardest hit. They spend a lot of time contemplating nature and their fellow man’s refusal to respect it. Part of what is driving them now is a sense that nature is going to finally exact some revenge. In other words, this panic is part of a strange revenge fantasy, where they are finally vindicated by biological reality. This sudden sense of moral purpose has made them immune to reason.

Another aspect to this general panic, unrelated to the virus itself, is a different type of revenge fantasy. Many people are cheering the collapse of the economy and civil life on the mistaken belief that what emerges from the rubble will have them at the top of the social hierarchy. This is a phenomenon shared across the political spectrum. It seems to be most popular with young people unhappy with the status quo and far too caught up in purge fantasies to be reached with facts and reason.

Probably the most salient aspect to this panic is the role of women. As has been noted too many times to count, the West is now a gynocracy. It is not a matriarchy, as women have stopped bearing children and stopped caring about children. Look around and you see childless women in positions of authority all over the West. In fact, these are women who reached their status by rejecting every aspect of womanhood. The West is now a world run by middle-aged childless women.

Anyone who has been around women in a crisis has observed a strange phenomenon among childless adult females. Some switch gets flipped in a crisis where their protective instincts get misdirected at the adults in the room. This part of their nature was never allowed to mature in the raising of children, so it comes bursting forth in an incoherent desire to help when their help is not needed. They become like mother ducks loudly herding the brood to safety.

For a society run by such women, every crisis is met with demands that everyone shelter in place. Notice how over the last few decades that public officials no longer call for volunteers or tell people to pitch in and work together. Such independent action violates the frightened female’s sense of duty to her brood. Instead, mild weather events now close the schools and force people to work from home. This virus scare is every middle-aged women’s Hunger Games moment.

Mass panics are a known phenomenon.

The general panic that took place in France between July 22 and August 6 1789 is known as The Great Fear. It was a period of rural unrest, driven by both a grain shortage and rumors of an aristocrats’ “famine plot” to starve the peasants. The exact reason for this panic is in dispute. Ergotism is a favorite reason for those with a certain sense of humor, but most historians consider it one of the primary causes of the French Revolution.

At some point, the bloom comes off this lock-down rose once people start to feel the real cost of listening to madmen. People will remember that the same folks who swore Boris and Natasha had used their mind control devise to install Trump in the White House are the many of the same people peddling this panic. Necessity will force a lot of people to stop going along with what they have suspected from the start is nothing more than a mass panic. Soon, this all comes to an end.

Like the Great Fear, the Great Madness will leave a mark, or at least it should leave a mark on our society. You never can be sure about these things, as the West seems to be unusually immune to learning from these events. Two centuries ago The Great Fear meant the end of the feudal order and eventually a revolution. It was not the sole cause of the revolution, maybe not the main cause. It was certainly an example of how the old order was no longer able to maintain order.

It is too soon to know what this panic means for us. Perhaps it further undermines the legitimacy of the system and the people that profit from it. Perhaps it sets off social changes that slowly transform our society in ways we have yet to imagine. Maybe the fever breaks and this event, like the Russian hoax, gets forgotten.

Given what most likely awaits on the other side of the lock-down, it is hard to imagine this great madness being forgotten. There’s always a price to be paid for following madmen.

Last Friday, around the time of the quad-witching collapse which sent the S&P to levels not seen since Trump’s inauguration, amid the flurry of headlines bombarding shell-shocked traders, was one that was particularly ominous if bizarrely incomplete. Shortly after the close, Bloomberg blasted the following headline:

• CFTC PROVIDING RELIEF TO LARGE U.S. BANK ACTIVE IN OIL, GAS

There was little additional information to go with the report, aside from the CFTC saying it would temporarily exempt a U.S. bank from a requirement to register as a “Major Swap Participant” even though its growing energy swaps exposure would technically require it to do so by the end of the next quarter, and since the bank was not named, traders’ attention quickly shifted to whatever the next crisis du jour, or rather du minute was.

However, late last week, Reuters reported citing two sources, that the bank in question was Virginia-based Capital One, best known for questionable retail lending and cheesy credit card commercials starting Samuel L Jackson.

So what exactly happened? According to a spokesman for the CFTC, the commodities regulator issued a waiver to protect the bank and its energy clients from “undue disruption,” given the unprecedented market conditions over the past month amid the coronavirus outbreak.

“We have actively encouraged all market participants to identify regulatory relief or other assistance that may be needed to help support robust, orderly and liquid markets in the face of this pandemic,” the spokesman said, implicitly admitting that the CFTC intervention amounted to what was an effective bailout of the bank.

At the core of the issue were plunging oil prices, which ended up having a margin call effect on the bank’s swaps exposure; and since Capital One’s waiver lasts until Sept. 30, if energy prices remain low or the bank’s exposure remains above the threshold, it will register as a swap participant or make business adjustments, the CFTC said on Friday.

And here is why anyone who currently has a deposit account at CapitalOne may consider quietly moving the money elsewhere: according to Reuters, the CFTC designation entails a number of complex and costly reporting and compliance obligations, which the CFTC spokesman said could hurt the institution’s ability to keep lending.

In short, CapitalOne made a terrible trade, betting via derivatives that oil would not plunge to where it is now – at 17 year lows – and only CFTC intervention prevented a margin call of unknown magnitude from being sent to Capital One’s corner office. Which is surprising considering that the bank is a relatively small player in the energy lending and financing business, with energy loans accounting for just 1.4% of its total loan book, according to its filings.

As part of that business, Capital One enters into commodity swaps with its commercial oil and gas clients to help them mitigate the risk of energy price swings and the related borrowing risks. Typically, those trades do not bring Capital One’s swaps exposure anywhere close to the CFTC’s registration threshold, according to the CFTC’s Friday notice.

But the 50% plunge in crude oil prices caused by the coronavirus and a flood of supply by top producers has seen its exposure on those swaps balloon, putting it on course to hit the threshold by the end of this month, the CFTC said.

As Reuters details, the threshold kicks in if a bank has $1 billion in daily average aggregate commodity swap exposure that is not secured by collateral, such as cash margin. Which, it appears, was the case with CapitalOne.

Following the 2007-2009 financial crisis during which several major institutions were toppled by their derivatives exposure, Congress created a slew of swap trading laws to reduce systemic risk and increase the visibility of the market. However, the ad hoc decision to grant a waiver in this case has sparked worries that regulators are going too easy on banks in a bid to prop up lending, exposing them to more risk down the road if energy prices do not rebound.

In effect, the CFTC allowed CapitalOne to incur even greater ongoing losses, while buying it a quarter’s worth of time, in hopes that oil rebounds. But what happens if instead of rebounding, oil keeps grinding lower and, as we warned earlier today, actually goes negative as oil storage space runs out? The cumulative exposure facing CapitalOne would be many billions, and could potentially render the bank insolvent.

That said, COF is not the only one: across the board, regulators have scrambled to grant regulatory relief, worried banks will pull back from lending and exacerbate corporate liquidity stress.

“The priority of the CFTC is not to prop up an ailing sector. It’s to ensure that the market is protected from risks,” said Tyson Slocum, a director at government watchdog group Public Citizen and a member of the CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee.

But then, in an surprising and sobering admission that the CFTC did in fact participate in a quiet bailout of CapitalOne – because had the bank announced it was facing a $1+ billion margin call one can imagine what its depositors would do – Slocum added he was worried the agency would give exemptions to other banks caught flatfooted by the market turmoil.

“I’ve got concerns with over-leveraged banks in the oil and gas sector. I don’t want this to spread across the financial sector.”

Dear Tyson: by letting CapitalOne get away with it, you have once again propagated moral hazard and guaranteed that this will spread across the financial sector, as bank after bank comes begging for a similar stealthy bailout, all the while doing nothing but praying that oil miraculously rebounds in the next three months. But what if it doesn’t, and who will tell CapitalOne’s depositors that they are now sitting on a ticking time bomb? This guy?