Tag: finance

With coronavirus cases surging in Latin America, there’s another issue emerging: A sharp economic downturn that may not result in recovery until late next year.

Alberto Ramos, head of Latin America economic research at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC Wednesday that the outlook for Latin American countries is “pretty uninspiring.” 

“We expect to climb (out) of a very deep hole during the second half of the year and throughout 2021,” Ramos said, adding that countries such as Argentina, Peru, and Mexico are expected to record double-digit contractions in growth. He said other countries may experience slightly less severe declines but are “still a record-breaking contraction — at least the worst we’ve seen since the Second World War.”

Ramos explained inflation remains low on the continent, which would allow central banks to ease for a much longer timeframe to support faltering economies. 

“The continuation of the low growth environment can be socially and politically destabilizing and also undermine the credibility of the institutions,” he warned. 

When Latin America emerges out of the pandemic if that is late next year or after, there will be wider wealth inequality, fiscal crises among governments, and more social and political polarization.  

Already, Argentina has had to strike a deal with creditors after the third default in two decades. 

The culprit to this depressing economic outlook, as readers may know, is the COVID-19 pandemic, has transformed several countries in the region into virus hotspots, like Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Chile. 

Even before the virus, many countries in Latin America had ailing economies, massive debt loads, and were battered by sluggish commodity prices: 

“Latin America has not been doing well over the last half-decade,” said Jerry Haar, an international business professor at Florida International University. “This is like a kick to the groin to someone who already has a double hernia.”

MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index remains in a bear market, down 38% from its peak in 4Q17. The index started to plunge in late January, sank 53% during the pandemic, has since had an underwhelming recovery. 

MSCI Latin America lags behind the MSCI World Index.

Calls for a “debt jubilee” in emerging market economies continue to soar this year. 

Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

The Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) are a UK based organisation who have misspelled “centre” in their name. Perhaps they have opted for the U.S spelling in the hope of selling their peculiar brand of morally bankrupt censorship to the American propaganda market.

The Anti-Vaxx Industry, is a propaganda leaflet with two main objectives. The first is to create a false dichotomy in the public imagination and the second is to build a public-private censorship grid in anticipation of forthcoming government legislation. This is proposed to censor legitimate scientific opinion and evidence based debate on a wide range of issues the government and its corporate partners would rather silence. Including any questioning of vaccines.

CCDH Propaganda Leaflet

They insist that anyone who has any doubts about any vaccine rejects all vaccines outright. This isn’t true but the CCDH are censors and propagandists, not rationalists.

Comically, they claim they are a non-governmental organisation (NGO). While technically plausible, their network of links to government, globalist think tanks and private corporations is extensive.

The CCDH espouse the social reform and political philosophy of progressivism. This advocates alleged progress through the advancement of science, technology and economic development. In the UK this is commonly associated with the political movement found on the right wing of the Labour Party and is the dominant ideology of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).

While still maintaining a putative commitment to representative democracy, it has much in common with the concept of Technocracy and, with the addition of a commitment to maintaining the global dominance of the transatlantic alliance, it is the basis of Blairism. It’s acolytes, such as the CCDH, consider themselves enlightened progressives. However, this sense of elitism produces an intolerance of all opposing views.

There is a strong tendency among progressives to label anything they disagree with as right wing and quite frequently far right or antisemitic. They call themselves radicals and whatever they deem not to be progressive they label as hate. Their language is merely a device used to promote division and create hatred among their followers for anyone or anything the doesn’t toe their progressive doctrine, including their own fellow party members.

Though they see themselves as left wing, there is very little within the progressive movement that could be described as being on the political left. Progressivism has far more in common with the modern centre and centre left of the Conservative Party and there is considerable agreement and ideological overlap between the two.

While falsely claiming a position on the left of the political spectrum, their neoliberalism is far from the traditional socialist values of the social democrats who form the rank and file of the Labour Party membership.

Progress – Self claimed radicals who create the mythology of “hate.”

In the modern cancel culture we passively allow to flourish, with it’s deplatforming, demonetisation, censorship and refusal to engage in either critical thought or debate, the word “Fascist” is overused and frequently misused. Its linguistic power, as a stark historical warning to us all, is being lost in the mire of progressive banality.  So it is worth considering what we really mean when we say “fascist”.

In 1935 in The Doctrine of Fascism the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wrote:

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian.”

And:

The Fascist State ……makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.”

And in Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions he said:

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.”

Mussollini – A preposterous posturing Fascist

A Fascist State is a totalitarian public-private partnership where all policy, speech and expression, economic activity and production is controlled via a beneficial arrangement between government and a network of non governmental organisations such as Unions, think tanks, private corporations and “official” charities.

The individual is removed from all decision making because elections are either banned or meaningless, and those who make policy decisions aren’t elected anyway. They form a technocratic elite. There is no diversity of opinion and all information is controlled by the Fascist State.

Any dissent or questioning of the doctrines of the State is considered to be disinformation and is censored. The Fascist State attempts to control opinion through propaganda, censorship and punishment. With the assistance of censor organisations and propagandists, like the CCDH, such a State is currently under construction in the UK.

Anyone who promotes this form of corporate state, who advocates the corporate censorship of information and decrees that the only source of truth is the public-private State and its representatives; those who propose that the free exchange of ideas, freedom of speech and expression be limited by this corporate State; people who call for those who question the “official” truth to be punished, ostracised or identified as “other” can accurately be described as Fascists.

In modern terms, with the degree of control made possible by the rapid evolution of communication technology, we could refer to them as Technofascists. Thus understood, the Technofascist seeks to seize control of the information highway (the Internet) in order to advance their own scientific, technological, economic and historical truths while excluding all others. They will not tolerate any challenge to their progressive ideology.

CCDH PROPAGANDA

CCDH vaccine propaganda is focused upon polarising opinion. This fake division is created through CCDH disinformation. Like many propagandists before them, they deal in inaccurate, empty generalisations. They hope to convince their consumers that anyone who ever questions a vaccine must be a nutter. The same dross was recently promulgated the UK Conservative Prime Minister.

By misleading people that there is no scientific basis for some vaccine scepticism, nor any legitimate concerns about vaccine safety and efficacy, the CCDH are creating fake social divisions in the hope of building real ones. In order to achieve this aim, the CCDH assert that anyone who asks any questions about vaccines is driven by hate and is therefore an extremist who threatens public health, ultimately posing a threat to national security.

They are creating the ludicrous, fake bogeyman of the public health terrorist. The alleged anti-vaxxer as subhuman, a vile, hateful extremist. They are “other.”

Johnson thinks anyone who questions vaccines is a nutter, unlike him

The CCDH propaganda narrative on vaccines is part of a wider slew of nonsense which underpins government efforts to censor the internet and freedom of speech. In the UK we were due to get our first clear sight of the legislative censorship grid with the arrival of the Online Harms Bill.

However, it appears there is a delay in the legislation.

In Part 2 we will discuss the CCHD’s links to government, think tanks and parliamentarians, but it is notable that it is the Labour front benches who are among the most eager to censor freedom of speech. Although petty political point scoring is also a likely factor contributing to their outcry.

The Online Harms Reduction Regulator (Report) Bill sets forth the envisaged role of the regulator who will be empowered to police the Internet, if and when the Online Harms Act comes into force. OFCOM have been selected as the regulator of online service operators which the proposed legislation defines as any Internet service or platform enabling human beings to communicate or exchange ideas. This includes web hosts, because they host websites which have comment sections and forums.

The scope of the proposed censorship grid is limitless. OFCOM will have a the power to regulate, “any other harms that OFCOM deem appropriate.” 

In the meantime, the CCDH are part of the network of so called fact checkers and censors who are using their incredible and seemingly disproportionate influence, suddenly garnered from nowhere, to police opinion on the social media platforms. We will explore how this occurred in more detail in Part 2.

The White Paper, which the Act will be based upon, clearly identifies any and all criticism of vaccines as a target for the censorship network:

Inaccurate information, regardless of intent, can be harmful – for example the spread of inaccurate anti-vaccination messaging online poses a risk to public health. The government is particularly worried about disinformation……Disinformation threatens these values and principles, and can threaten public safety, undermine national security, fracture community cohesion and reduce trust”

Like the government, the CCDH are careful not to mention any of the scientific or historical evidence which questions vaccine efficacy and safety. Instead, they label all who do cite this evidence as radical extremists.

The opening statement in the CCDH’s vaccine propaganda claims:

Vaccines are one of the most consequential, safe, efficient and effective medical discoveries in history. Few other inventions have saved so many lives.”

While it is true that some vaccines have been beneficial in the eradication of disease, there is little evidence that vaccines alone have achieved this. The vast majority of the reduction in mortality rates occurred as a result of broader public health improvements, prior to the widespread use of vaccines.

While the CCDH blithely claim all vaccines are “safe,” they are the only medical discovery where the manufacturers have blanket indemnification against any loss from injury claims. It is not an act of “hate” to ask why this needs to be the case if they are so safe.

The CCDH state that anyone who asks such questions has fringe and extremist views. They claim consideration of vaccine safety and efficacy should not be permitted and sharing any information or evidence which questions vaccines should be banned. For example, they deny people’s right to know any of the information we are about to discuss. They claim it is all hate driven disinformation which presents a threat to national security.

When trialling a vaccine, inoculated animal test subjects can be deliberately exposed to the targeted virus in a challenge trial. The results from challenge trials have blighted all previous attempts to develop a SARS-CoV vaccine.

While the test subjects developed the hoped for antibodies and proteins, when they were challenged with the virus their immune systems were found to be hypersensitive. This induced life threatening illness and caused a range of serious health conditions.

The interferon gamma (IFN-y) induced protein IP10, encoded in humans by the CXCL10 gene, is thought to be a possible cause of the cytokine storm which leads to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). Persistent high levels of IP10 send the immune system into overdrive. Much of the immunopathological damage sustained by a small minority of SARS infected patients is thought to arise as a consequence of interferon gamma (IFN-y) related cytokine storms. Italian researchers noted:

Accumulating studies indicated that the cytokine storm caused by SARS is mainly related to IL-1β, IL-6, IL12A, IFN-γ, IP10 and MCP1, and the cytokine storm caused by MERS is mainly related to IFNγ, TNFα, IL15 and IL17A.”

It is therefore somewhat concerning that during the challenge trials for the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222 SARS-CoV-2) vaccine, currently being developed in by Atrazeneca and Oxford University, the following was noted:

Cytokines in serum were analysed after challenge to monitor immune responses. We observed an upregulation [increased cellular response] in IFN-γ at 1 DPI in ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccinated animals, but not in control animals.”

While an upregulation in IFN-y potentially has both beneficial and harmful inflammatory effects, we don’t know what the long term IP10 (CXCL10) levels for inoculated test subjects were because it wasn’t investigated in the vaccine trials. However, an upregulation in IFN-y suggests the possibility of the overexpression of the potentially lethal cytokine storm inducing CXCL10.

The ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 study only checked IFN-y upregulation for one day post inoculation (1 DPI). Then again, this really isn’t of any concern for the multinational corporations, like Astrazeneca, who make vaccines. As usual, they have been given immunity from prosecution. They have no liability for vaccine injury, and therefore have everything to gain and absolutely nothing to lose.

Having found these results in all of the 6 macaque monkeys they inoculated, the Astrazeneca Oxford team felt this was nothing to worry about and went ahead with large scale human trials. The results of these trials raised further reason for concern.

Contrary to the claims made by the mainstream media (MSM), this was not a randomised double blind placebo controlled trial (RCT). Instead of an inert placebo, the human test subjects were either given the Astrazeneca / Oxford vaccine or the MenACWY vaccine.

The possible side effects of the MenACWY vaccine include headaches, nausea, fever, elevated heart rate, loss of consciousness, paralysis and seizures. Using the MenACWY vaccine as your control, to measure relative safety, will probably provide a favourable safety profile providing the recipient of your new vaccine doesn’t immediately drop dead the moment you inoculate them.

The people who were selected for the Astrazeneca / Oxford Phase 1 and initial Phase 2 trial were all in good health and aged between 18 – 55 years. The median age of the participants was 35 yrs. The average age for those requiring COVID 19 hospital treatment is at least 60 years.

COVID 19 risks increase appreciably with age. In the UK, more than 89% of those who have died “with” COVID 19 were over 65 years old. 

The UK government have announced their intention to initially vaccinate those in the at risk group and front line key workers. These are primarily older people with serious comorbidity.

With the exception of younger key workers, the initial phases of the trials didn’t test the vaccine with the demographic who will be the first to receive it. While the trials have now been expanded to include some older people and children, early results indicate the need for considerable caution.

Of the vaccinated group 70% reported fatigue, 68% headaches, 60% had muscle pain and more than 50% ran a fever. In addition, 9% reported temperatures of at least 38°C and an alarming 1% reported a high fever of more than 39°C.

While researchers stated that these adverse reaction were “well tolerated,” by the relatively young and healthy test subjects, the same cannot simply be assumed for older at risk groups.

These adverse reactions present a far greater health risk to the most vulnerable in society. The demographic which the vaccine is supposed to protect.

These early trial outcomes have been met with universal, uncritical praise by the UK MSM because the Astrazeneca / Oxford vaccine did stimulate an immune response. However, evidence is now emerging that up to 60% of the population may already have general immunity. If this is the case, the relative benefit to vulnerable people, in light of the adverse reactions, would appear questionable.

According to the CCDH none of these concerns have any basis in either fact or science. By urging the precautionary principle, I am one among millions labelled as a radical extremists by the CCDH.

CCDH FACT LITE CLAPTRAP

The CCDH state that SARS-CoV-2 is:

…a pandemic that will only be overcome by the most ambitious vaccination programme in human history.”

This is not a fact. It is merely the CCDH’s opinion. One that ignores the scientific evidence which shows that people who have already been exposed to other coronavirus strains, which is pretty much the entire population, have developed some level of T-Cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2.

However, unlike the CCDH, I think they have every right to express their opinion. Just as I and millions of others have every right to express ours.

In a free and open democratic society, that values freedom of speech and expression, the dialectic can be used to exchange logical arguments to arrive at new knowledge and understanding. This is not possible in Technofascist State. Opinions are censored to protect the interests of the public-private partnership.

Like most good propaganda there are elements of truth within the CCDH’s report. They quite rightly highlight that some leading so called anti-vaxxers are trying to make money from the growing number of people who question vaccines. While paywall protected content and internet marketing on social media are perfectly legitimate business models, we should be more sceptical of claims made by those who have a vested commercial interest. Like pharmaceutical corporations for example.

Central to the CCDH’s vaccine propaganda is their questionable estimate of the profits made by some who doubt vaccines. They claim this is evidence that all who have concerns about vaccines are quacks and charlatans.

The CCDH allege that the worst offenders leverage economic influence with social media giants to “radicalise” gullible fools into becoming hate filled “extremists.” This premise is fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons.

Not a shred of evidence that this is how radicalisation works

Firstly, if we agree with the CCDH that possible financial incentives render all associated opinion on a subject null and void, we can reject the majority of pro vaccine arguments outright. The pharmaceutical industry’s U.S. social media ad-spend is projected to exceed $4 Bn in 2020.

In the U.S. alone, they invest more than $30 Bn annually on MSM advertising and devote more resources to political lobbying than any other industry.

However, while the CCDH insist that the paltry sums generated by the alleged anti-vaxxer fraudsters exposes their racket, it makes no mention at all of the staggering economic power of vaccine manufacturers. The profits to be made from the estimated $46.9 Bn global vaccine market, conservatively projected to eclipse £107 Bn by 2027, are completely irrelevant. Or so the CCDH would have you believe.

While good propaganda contains elements of truth, it is mainly disinformation. The CCDH make the following claim:

The format of groups makes their members ripe for the process of radicalisation…These secret spaces allow for deeper radicalisation.”

This is unadulterated pseudo-scientific claptrap. According to the Cambridge English dictionary “radicalisation” is defined as follows:

The action or process of making someone become more radical in their political or religious beliefs”

Questioning the efficacy and safety of vaccines is a public health issue, neither a political nor a religious belief. The CCDH use of the word “radicalisation” is nothing other than a cynical attempt to associate people who have some concerns about pharmaceuticals with extremism and ultimately terrorism.

This is deliberately deceptive language from the CCDH. Even if we accept their preposterous notion that asking questions about a drug can ever be “extremist”, there is absolutely no evidence at all that individuals can be radicalised simply by talking to people online.

The most complete scientific review of the research literature into supposed online radicalisation was carried out by a team at Deakin University. They found no evidence that using Facebook, Twitter or Instagram turned people into extremists.

The former U.N. Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson issued a report to the U.N. in which he said:

There is no authoritative statistical data on the pathways towards individual radicalisation.”

CCDH TAKE HYPOCRISY TO A NEW LEVEL

In the space of a few months the CCDH have been instrumental in censoring a number of leading websites, writers and broadcasters they don’t agree with. The technofascist book burning presents a far greater threat to our “way of life” than any of the information they have been instrumental in censoring.

Cited as “experts” by the mainstream media and policy makers, their CEO Imran Ahmed has recently been appointed to the Steering Committee of the UK government’s Commission on Countering Extremism Task Force (CCETF).

The assumed role, backed by the public-private corporate State, of the CCETF, and the CCDH, is that they will gather the evidence of “hateful” opinion. Their subjective judgement will then be used to form policy and censor information.

The UK government’s Commission on Countering Extremism (CCE) 2019 Document called Challenging Hateful Extremism defined, what they call, hateful extremism as follows:

• Behaviours that can incite and amplify hate, or engage in persistent hatred, or equivocate about and make the moral case for violence;

• And that draw on hateful, hostile or supremacist beliefs directed at an out-group who are perceived as a threat to the wellbeing, survival or success of an in-group;

• And that cause, or are likely to cause, harm to individuals, communities or wider society.

In her forward to the report, the CCE lead commissioner Sara Khan noted:

There is a fear that countering extremism can undermine civil liberties and in particular, freedom of expression……. Authoritarian regimes have used ‘counter terrorism’ and ‘counter extremism’ to silence dissent and criticism. Hateful extremists seek to restrict individual liberties and curtail the fundamental freedoms that define our country.”

Our inalienable rights and freedom are protected by our written codified constitution of 1215

In Britain our national identity is, in great part, founded upon our shared belief in fundamental freedoms. These were recorded as the custom of the people in our written, codified constitution the Magna Carta.

Parliamentarians have done everything they possibly can to deny the existence of this codified written constitution for 800 years. They falsely claim the supremacy of Parliament and have unnecessarily re-written their version of our constitutionally guaranteed unalienable rights and freedoms in, among other declarations and Acts, the 1998 Human Rights Act.

These rights and freedoms include freedom of expression (eg. freedom of speech and publication both online and off), the right to a fair trial, freedom of thought and belief, freedom of assembly and association, respect for privacy (including of information) and protection from discrimination in respect to these rights.

Unlike an inviolable constitution, like the Magna Carta, legislation is simply a set of rules written by governments. It means nothing. Legislation can be rewritten, overturned or ignored as any government of the day sees fit.

For example, the recent 2020 Coronavirus Act not only suspends all alleged democracy, it removes the freedom of association, the right of physical and data privacy and reinforces existing powers of detention without trial.

Clauses about national security and public health in the 1998 Human Right’s Act, enable government to claim the authority to ignore all our rights. Any government’s legislative protections of our freedoms and rights aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

If we truly valued our constitutional customs, freedoms and rights this wouldn’t be possible. However, we don’t and so government can do anything they like to us anytime they wish. Nonetheless, these so called freedoms and rights are supposedly important to the self appointed truth tellers at the CCE, its Task Force and the CCDH.

These pretensions to care about rights and freedom take hypocrisy to a new level. CCDH state:

CCDH have also forced social media companies to…..remove hateful or dangerous speech…….solutions have proven effective against a number of different types of hate and misinformation, like identity-based hate, climate change denial and health misinformation. The aim is to produce practicable, efficient and scalable strategies and tactics to counter hate and misinformation globally.”

The CCDH and their global partners determine what constitutes misinformation and disinformation; they identify who is and who isn’t a fringe movement; they say what constitutes hate and what doesn’t; they decide what the scientific consensus is and they are the arbiters of all truth, the sole custodians of reality and they determine what you can or cannot say. Rights and freedoms be damned.

Never a good sign and typical of Fascism.

The CCDH are among those who seek to restrict individual liberties and curtail the fundamental freedoms that define our country; they espouse supremacist beliefs, as only they, and the burgeoning technofascist State they represent, can ever possibly be right; they direct their hate at an out-group, in this instance anyone who questions vaccines; they perceive the groups they hate as a threat to the wellbeing, survival or success of an in-group, that in-group is the government and its globalist corporate sponsors; their dangerous demonisation of people, their intolerance, deceptions, persecution and censorship already has and will cause harm to individuals, communities or wider society and in their leader, Imran Ahmed , they advocate imprisonment for those he labels anti-vaxxers, which is an act of violence.

If we accept the Commission on Countering Extremism definition then the CCDH, and associated State committees, are “hateful extremists.” But what purpose do such counterproductive and irrational labels have?

Everyone, including the CCE and the CCDH, have the right to express their views and partake in robust and open debate. However, the CCDH supremacist beliefs render them incapable of doing so, as they cannot tolerate anything which contradicts or challenges their ideology and objectives.

By looking at the sprawling web of policy makers, thinks tanks and corporate interests, which form the in-group the CCDH represent, we can reveal exactly who these supremacists are. With the willing complicity of this dangerous body we call government, absent any democratic mandate, the CCDH have already assumed authority and are systematically removing our freedoms while ignoring our rights.

We need to familiarise ourselves with these people who claim exclusive possession of all truth. We are heading towards a real Fascist State and, in Part 2, we’ll take a look at some of those who are taking us there.

You can read more of Iain’s work at his blog In This Together

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

Post-blast Lebanon has everything to gain from rejecting the West’s neoliberal demands and embracing China’s Belt and Road…

As much as Covid-19 has been instrumentalized by the 0.001% to social engineer a Great Reset, the Beirut tragedy is already being instrumentalized by the usual suspects to keep Lebanon enslaved.

Facing oh so timely color revolution-style “protests”, the current Lebanese government led by Prime Minister Diab has already resigned. Even before the port tragedy, Beirut had requested a $10 billion line of credit from the IMF – denied as long as trademark, neoliberal Washington consensus “reforms” were not implemented: radical slashing of public expenses, mass layoffs, across the board privatization.

Post-tragedy, President Emmanuel Macron – who’s not even capable of establishing a dialogue with the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests in France – has opportunistically jumped in full neocolonial mode to pose as “savior” of Lebanon, as long as the same “reforms”, of course, are implemented.

On Sunday, France and the UN organized a videoconference to coordinate donor response – in conjunction with the European Commission (EC), the IMF and the World Bank. The result was not exactly brilliant: a paltry 252 million euros were pledged – once again conditioned by “institutional reforms”.

France came up with 30 million euros, Kuwait with 40 million, Qatar with 50 million and the EC with 68 million. Crucially, neither Russia nor Iran were among the donors. The US – which is harshly sanctioning Lebanon – and GCC allies Saudi Arabia and UAE pledged nothing. China had just a pro forma presence.

In parallel, Maronite Christians in Brazil – a very powerful community – are sending funds for the color revolution protests. Former President Michel Temer and industrialist tycoon Paulo Skaf even flew to Beirut. Former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel (1982-1988) maintained a lot of businesses in Brazil with funds he skimmed when in power.

All of the above points to neoliberalism taking no prisoners when it comes to keeping its deadly grip on Lebanon.

The Hariri model

Lebanon’s profound economic crisis, now aggravated by the Beirut port blast, has nothing to do with Covid-19 or the US proxy war on Syria – which brought a million refugees to the nation. It’s all about proverbial neoliberal shock and awe, conducted non-stop by the Hariri clan: former Prime Ministers Rafiq, assassinated in 2011, and Saad, chased out of power last January.

The Hariri model was focused on real estate speculation and financialization. The Solidere group, controlled by Arab investors and a few Lebanese, Hariri included, destroyed Beirut’s historical downtown and rebuilt it with luxury real estate. That’s the classical rentier neoliberalism model that always profits a tiny elite.

In parallel, the Bank of Lebanon was attracting funds from the tony Lebanese diaspora and assorted Arab investors by practicing very generous interest rates. Lebanon suddenly had an artificially strong currency.

A small middle class sort of flourished throughout the 2000s, comprising import-export traders, the tourism sector and financial market operators. Yet, overall, inequality was the name of the game. According to the World Inequality Database, half of Lebanon’s population now holds less wealth that the top 0.1%.

The bubble finally burst in September last year, when I happened to be in Beirut. With no US dollars in circulation, the Lebanese pound started to collapse in the black market. The Bank of Lebanon went berserk. When the Hariri racket imposed a “Whatsapp tax” over calls, that led to massive protests in October. Capital embarked on free flight and the currency collapsed for good.

There’s absolutely no evidence the IMF, the World Bank and assorted Western/Arab “donors” will extricate a now devastated Lebanon from the neoliberal logic that plunged it into a systemic crisis in the first place.

The way out would be to focus in productive investments, away from finance and geared towards the practical necessities of an austerity-battered and completely impoverished population.

Yet Macron, the IMF and their “partners” are only interested in keeping monetary “stability”; seduce speculative foreign capital; make sure that the rapacious, Western-connected Lebanese oligarchy will get away with murder; and on top of it buy scores of Lebanese assets for peanuts.

BRI or bust

In stark contrast with the exploitative perpetuation of the Western neoliberal model, China is offering Lebanon the chance to Go East, and be part of the New Silk Roads.

In 2017, Lebanon signed to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

In 2018, Lebanon became the 87th member of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Over the past few years, Lebanon was already taking part in the internationalization of the yuan, offering bank accounts in yuan and increasing bilateral trade in yuan.

Beijing was already engaged in discussions revolving around the upgrading of Lebanese infrastructure – including the expansion of Beirut harbor.

This means that now Beijing may be in the position of offering a renewed, joint rebuilding/security deal for Beirut port – just as it was about to clinch a smaller agreement with Diab’s government, focused only on expansion and renovation.

The bottom line is that China has an actual Plan A to extricate Lebanon from its current financial dead end.

And that’s exactly what was, and remains, total anathema to US, NATO and Israel’s interests.

The Trump administration recently went no holds barred to prevent Israel from having China develop the port of Haifa.

The same “offer you can’t refuse” tactics will be applied with full force on whoever leads the new Lebanese government.

Beirut is an absolutely key node in BRI’s geopolitical/geoeconomic connectivity of the Eastern Mediterranean. With Haifa temporarily out of the picture, Beirut grows in importance as a gateway to the EU, complementing the role of Pireus and Italian ports in the Adriatic.

It’s crucial to note that the port itself was not destroyed. The enormous crater on site replaces only a section quayside – and the rest is on water. The buildings destroyed can be rebuilt in record time. Reconstruction of the port is estimated at $15 billion – pocket money for an experienced company such as China Harbor.

Meanwhile, naval traffic is being redirected to Tripoli port, 80 km north of Beirut and only 30 km away from the Lebanon-Syria border. Its director, Ahmed Tamer, confirms “the port has witnessed during the past years the expansion work by Chinese companies, and it has received the largest ships from China, carrying a big number of containers”.

Add to it the fact that Tripoli port will also be essential in the process of Syria reconstruction – to which China is totally committed.

BRI’s Southwest Asia connectivity network is a maze including Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

China is already planning to invest in highway and railroads, further to be developed into high-speed rail. That will connect BRI’s central China-Iran corridor – fresh from the $400 billion, 25-year strategic partnership deal soon to be signed – with the Eastern Mediterranean.

Add to it the role of the port of Tartus in Syria – bearing a strong Russian naval presence. Beijing will inevitably invest in the expansion of Tartus – which is crucially linked by highway to Lebanon. The Russia-China strategic partnership will be involved in the protection of Tartus with S-300 and S-400 missile systems.

Historically, in a larger axis that went from Samarkand to Cordoba, with strong nodes such as Baghdad and Damascus, what slowly evolved in this part of Eurasia was a syncretic civilization superimposed over an ancestral regional, rural and nomad background. The internal cohesion of the Muslim world was forged from the 7th century to the 11th century: that was the key factor that shaped the lineaments of a coherent Eurasia.

Apart from Islam, Arabic – the language of religion, administration, trade and culture – was an essential unifying factor. This evolving Muslim world was configured as a vast economic and cultural domain whose roots connected to Greek, Semitic, Persian, Indian and Arab thought. It was a marvelous synthesis that formed a unique civilization out of elements of different origin – Persian, Mesopotamian, Byzantine.

The Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean were of course part of it, totally open towards the Indian Ocean, the Caspian routes, Central Asia and China.

Now, centuries later, Lebanon should have everything to gain by ditching the “Paris of the Orient” mythology and looking East – again, thus positioning itself on the right side of History.

What Does The Coffee Supply Chain Look Like?

There’s a good chance your day started with a cappuccino, or a cold brew, and you aren’t alone. In fact, coffee is one of the most consumed drinks on the planet, and it’s also one of the most traded commodities.

According to the National Coffee Association, more than 150 million people drink coffee on a daily basis in the U.S. alone. Globally, consumption is estimated at over 2.25 billion cups per day.

But, as Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach points out, before it gets to your morning cup, coffee beans travel through a complex global supply chain. Today’s illustration from Dan Zettwoch breaks down this journey into 10 distinct steps.

Coffee From Plant to Factory

There are two types of tropical plants that produce coffee, both preferring high altitudes and with production primarily based in South America, Asia, and Africa.

• Coffea arabica is the more plentiful bean, with a more complex flavor and less caffeine. It’s used in most specialty and “high quality” drinks as Arabica coffee.

• Coffea canephora, meanwhile, has stronger and more bitter flavors. It’s also easier to grow, and is most frequently used in espressos and instant blends as Robusta coffee.

However, both types of beans undergo the same journey:

1. Growing
   Plants take anywhere from 4-7 years to produce their first harvest, and grow fruit for around 25 years.

2. Picking
   The fruit of the coffea plant is the coffee berry, containing two beans within. Ripened berries are harvested either by hand or machine.

3. Processing
   Coffee berries are then processed either in a traditional “dry” method using the sun or “wet” method using water and machinery. This removes the outer fruit encasing the sought-after green beans.

4. Milling
   The green coffee beans are hulled, cleaned, sorted, and (optionally) graded.

From Factory to Transport

Once the coffee berry is stripped down to green beans, it’s shipped from producing countries through a global supply network.

Green coffee beans are exported and shipped around the world. In 2018 alone, 7.2 million tonnes of green coffee beans were exported, valued at $19.2 billion.

Arriving primarily in the U.S. and Europe, the beans are now prepared for consumption:

5. Roasting
   Green beans are industrially roasted, becoming darker, oilier, and tasty. Different temperatures and heat duration impact the final color and flavor, with some preferring light roasts to dark roasts.

6. Packaging
   Any imperfect or somehow ruined beans are discarded, and the remaining roasted beans are packaged together by type.

7. Shipping
   Roasted beans are shipped both domestically and internationally. Bulk shipments go to retailers, coffee shops, and in some cases, direct to consumer.

Straight to Your Cup

Roasted coffee beans are almost ready for consumption, and by this stage the remaining steps can happen anywhere.

For example, many factories don’t ship roasted beans until they grind it themselves. Meanwhile, cafes will grind their own beans on-site before preparing drinks. The rapid growth of coffee chains made Starbucks the second-highest-earning U.S. fast food venue.

Regardless of where it happens, the final steps bring coffee straight to your cup:

8. Grinding
   Roasted beans are ground up in order to better extract their flavors, either by machine or by hand. The preferred fineness depends on the darkness of the roast and the brewing method.

9. Brewing
   Water is added to the coffee grounds in a variety of methods. Some involve water being passed or pressured through the grounds (espresso, drip) while others mix the water and grounds (French press, Turkish coffee).

10. Drinking
    Liquid coffee is ready to be enjoyed! One average cup takes 70 roasted beans to make.

The world’s choice of caffeine pick-me-up is made possible by this structured and complex supply chain. Coffee isn’t just a drink, after all, it’s a business.

Authored by ‘ICE-9’ via The Burning Platform blog,

Part one of a two-part series.

One topic missing from historians’ analysis of the West’s transition from a physical gold and silver based money system to a fiat money system is the defining events that facilitated and enabled this transition.  One can find no detailed and critical political / historical assessment of this transition, and it would be not for lack of effort.  The transition is always presented as if it is prima facie the refined and evolved state of things that warrants no investigation other than superficial praise followed with dogmatic platitudes.  But has this transition away from the “barbarous relic” money system actually made mankind more refined and evolved, or has it instead plunged mankind into an even more heightened and efficient state of barbarism?

One encounters additional blank pages when searching for any attempt at correlating the evolution and spread of fiat money to the prevalence and severity of war.  A collective learned silence descends when attempting to identify why it is, as money evolves, that war become more ideological, destructive, widespread, and prolonged.  We are all familiar with the endless adulations describing the global spread of “democracy”, but why is it so many are unwilling converts and it became imperative to spread “democracy” via war and regime change?  And closer to home, as our own nation “evolves” from a Constitutional Republic into pure “democracy”, how is it we as “citizens” feel more and more disenfranchised rather than empowered despite even greater doses of “democracy” at home?

This essay attempts to identify the defining events that facilitated and enabled the West’s transition to a fiat based money system, examines cause and effect between the evolution of money and the prevalence and severity of war, and binds together money evolution with the history of warfare by demonstrating cause and effect between money’s evolution, the rise and necessity of endless war, and the inevitable transition from “citizens” to subjects.

Physical Money, the Limits of War, and the Ancient World

For centuries following the Dorian Invasion, the Greek peninsula in the context of contemporaneous civilizations was of minor influence.  Limited wars between city states, the rise and fall of tyrants within these city states, a Lawgiver here and there, and a steady outflow of residents to the Mediterranean and Black Sea colonies were the main stories for 600 years until a rich silver deposit was discovered in southern Attica.  The wealth derived from these mines was initially distributed to the citizens and used for the great public building projects we see still standing today.  The flow of silver was also used to not only hold the Persians at bay and confine them to Ionia – and thus preserve Western Civilization as we know it today – but to also purchase slaves to work the silver mines, purchase imported goods, produce manufactured wares for export, commission triremes to transport manufactured wares, and hire highly paid rowers to man the triremes.  Trade and prosperity flourished and the Greek world rose quickly in the context of comparative global civilizations, all due to the abundant supply and liberal distribution of silver.

Then in 483 BC, soon after the discovery of a particularly rich silver deposit, the Athenian archon Themistocles convinced his fellow citizens to commission 200 triremes to fight the Persians and in 479 BC the Greek confederacy defeated Persia once and for all at the Battle of Plataea.  Rid of the Persian menace, fresh off defeating the world’s most formidable military force, and armed with 200 triremes with nothing to do, that silver now went more and more into Athenian empire building throughout the Aegean.  The cycle of conquest funded with silver was set – newly mined silver went into funding expeditions of conquest, tribute was extracted from the vanquished and flowed into Athens, and the combined silver from mined and tribute went to defending the city against jealous rivals and towards mounting even larger expeditions of conquest to extort even more tribute.  That is, until the reliable source of silver from the mines began to run out.

Just as silver mining output went into decline, and the tribute became harder and more expensive to extract, in 415 BC the Athenians made the disastrous decision to invade Syracuse at an eventual loss of 10,000 hoplites, 30,000 oarsmen, and over 100 triremes.  Thousands of captured Athenians held as prisoners of war were ransomed by the Syracusians at great expense to their families and effectively drained nearly all Attica’s surplus financial resources.  Most poor Athenians, unable to raise a ransom, permanently lost heads of household to enslavement and death in the Syracusian quarries.  Revolts from tribute paying vassals immediately followed and tribute dried up, and in 404 BC these accumulating losses saw Athenian empire and Aegean hegemony ceded to Sparta.  Thus when the silver ran low, the empire was lost as limited resources were concentrated more and more on defending against Attica’s immediate neighbors.  And that is the main point– when a nation in the ancient world could no longer fund wars of empire with physical money, it could no longer prosecute wars of empire and thus some form of peace attempted to descend.  It is as if a law of economics was at work and in a sense, the exhaustion of silver supplies was ancient empire’s built-in self-destruct mechanism.

We also learn from ancient Attica between the victories over Persia, to the rise and loss of empire, to its eventual defeat by Philip II and incorporation into the Hellenic League, that as the wealth of Attica rose and then declined, the reason its citizens fought wars changed.  Although the Greek city states are referred to by historians as democracies, of practicality only Greek men of means could participate in government to the extent they could afford the time required to build influence.  The average Greek man had to work and earn a living and had no time for civics until a tyrant needed overthrow or war threatened from outside aggressors.  What we observe before the Persian Wars is a nation of modest means and substantial freedom where citizens fight for kinfolk, land, and shared history with their alternatives being death, confiscation, and enslavement.  This is the nature of defensive war, embodied in that which the Athenian / Spartan coalition fought to defeat the Persians.  As Attica increased silver production and extracted more tribute via empire, we see a change in the reason for fighting war, with war then assuming a mercenary objective for many of its citizens.  Citizens were now incentivized to fight wars of conquest with high pay when there was no immediate threat from outside aggressors and instead of citizen soldiers defending kinfolk, land, and shared history, citizens became hired rowers and hoplite combatants.  Thus, as war transitioned from defensive to offensive as wealth increased, a citizen’s motivation for participating in war transitioned from patriot at the start of empire, to mercenary by choice at peak empire, to mercenary by necessity after the collapse of empire.

Ancient defensive wars continued until the threat was eliminated, the food supplies or health of the combatants were exhausted, or one side was vanquished.  Ancient mercenary war, on the other hand, generally continued so long as there was ample silver.  It was as if silver could conjure armies and armaments at will until it ran out, and then in that instant these same armies and armaments dissolved away.  For a powerful ancient nation that had not been subject to invasion for some time, the mercenary incentive became the primary reason citizens fought wars, as all wars, absent any outside threat, became wars of conquest.  As Attica’s wealth and influence waned between the end of the Peloponnesian War and its defeat at the hands of Macedon, more and more of its citizens turned to mercenary expeditions commanded by whomever was paying.  Eventually many formerly powerful cities were depleted of its fighting fit men and lay open to conquest from outside aggressors and tyrants within.  Combined with sustained decline in silver production and its resulting decline in foreign influence, after the final conquest at the hands of Macedon we find Attica’s transition complete – nearly all wars were henceforth fought by mercenaries on campaigns unrelated to Attica as the resulting collapse in trade due to depleted silver resources left few other means for young men to earn a living.

When there is total collapse of resources, and then influence, the citizens then become nothing more than mercenaries, and it was these legions that made up the entirety of Alexander’s forces.  But as mercenaries, they fought for pay, in physical money, and maybe for a bit of glory thrown in – but they did not fight for ideals.

Rome’s history initially followed a similar path to that of Attica regarding why its citizens waged war in its early days – immediate enemies necessitated over 450 years of continuous defensive war and civil uprisings to fend off or overthrow foreign rule.  The small state of Latium despite all odds managed to eventually defeat its surrounding aggressors, and when it realized it was a truly formidable fighting force it decided to put an end to outside aggression once and for all.  Thus began a protracted series of conquering wars throughout the Italian peninsula.  But Latium had no silver mines and their system of physical money extraction from the vanquished differed from the Greek system of tribute.  Rome instead integrated its vanquished states and, with the exception of Carthage, granted select families Roman citizenship, contracted many of these families as magistrates to maintain internal order on behalf of Rome, and enacted a system of tax farming on the provincial non-citizens.  It was this system of taxation that played the same role as the silver mines of Attica, and the more territory Rome conquered the more taxes it could collect to embark on further wars of conquest.

Once Roman territorial expansion had engulfed both Iberia and Anatolia, it controlled the only sources of gold and the richest silver mines in the Mediterranean.  From about 200 BC to 230 AD, this gold and silver, together with ever increasing tax collection from its expanded portfolio of conquered and integrated provinces, funded a standing professional army with career soldiers paid in silver.  Rome had entered its period of “endless war”, funded by supplies of gold and silver obtained from mining, conquest, and taxes.  However, the immense size of the Roman standing army – about 450,000 troops under Severus in 211 AD – and the tremendous cost of endless war guaranteed expenses always exceeded income to the imperial treasury.  So starting around 60 AD the Romans embarked on a policy of currency debasement and pay raises for soldiers that triggered severe price inflation for basic goods and plunged much of the populace into poverty but did not slow the pace of endless war.  The inflation suffered by the people financed the continuous prosecution of endless military campaigns as the only wages that increased in step with Roman inflation were those paid to soldiers.  It was empire regardless of cost at this point.  Mutinies, civil wars, border incursions, and insurrections were now added to the expense of wars of conquest and endless war didn’t end until 410 AD when the Visigoth king Alaric sacked a nearly bankrupt Rome.  But by that time the empire’s boundaries and tax base and mine holdings had shrunk so considerably that Rome could not finance a defense against the German invaders, and thus we see again another example of ancient empire’s self-destruct mechanism at work – the process of building empire depletes the resources of the nation, and the depleted resources preclude securing that empire indefinitely.  Thus all ancient wars of conquest were ultimately futile.

Unlike the early days of Roman conquest, during their period of endless war Rome dropped the property ownership requirement for military service and the ranks were opened up to landless peasants.  We observe in this period a shift in the allegiance of the soldiers away from the state – whereby the state represents the combination of kinfolk, land, and shared history – towards allegiance to the generals who commanded and paid their respective legions.  But as professional soldiers, they fought for pay, in physical silver, held allegiance to the general who paid them, and maybe received a bit of glory thrown in here and there – but they too did not fight for ideals.

Transition to Fiat Money, Constant War, and the Rise of the Freemen

After the wave of German invasions subsided and with their annexation of the Western Roman Empire complete, the conquering Teutonic armies continued the core Roman system of allegiance to the generals.  The state, as embodied in the king and his noble lieutenants, now existed as the means of extorting revenue to wage war so to secure territorial boundaries and prerogative for the ruling class from a wholly disenfranchised populace.

One major German difference to the deposed Roman system was the elimination of citizenship and the establishment of military service obligations upon a class of peasants who were permanently disenfranchised through heredity.  With citizenship eliminated by the advent of serfdom, nearly all Western Europe’s inhabitants were subjugated and entirely without rights.  These serfs owned little or no property and gained no benefit from existence of the state yet owed taxes and military service to the state.  Thus in early medieval Europe the citizen soldier of the ancient Mediterranean was transformed into a servant soldier, who defended only royal prerogative, by the coercion of military obligation and elimination of property ownership inherent within serfdom.  With no allegiance to this wholly extractive and inimical state, we observe the medieval rise in peasant allegiance to the Catholic Church, replacing the former allegiance to kinfolk, land, and shared history embodied in citizenship with a surrogate “citizenship” comprised of the “righteous” in the “Kingdom of Heaven”.  This marks the beginning of the transition from an outward allegiance to physical things (e.g., kinfolk, land, and shared history) to an inward allegiance towards abstract ideals (e.g., belief, righteousness, piety) and thus lays the collective psychological groundwork for the coming Wars of Ideals in the 18th through 20th centuries.

This new relationship between absolute rulers and abject subjects, together with the collapse of intra-European trade, the loss of gold and silver mines, and the cessation of upward mobility significantly reduced the amounts of physical money going into the royal Germanic treasuries across Western Europe.  Although war continued unabated, its scale and severity never reached the intensity and wide distribution of the Roman Empire and these reduced scale conflicts prevented the establishment of vast, lasting empire by the various Germanic sovereigns.  Thus Europe entered a phase of “Balkanization” into petty fiefdoms connected through confederations of language and culture, held loosely together by the descendants of the invading Germanic tribes and the machinations of the new Papal Empire.

But not all was plague, malnutrition, and misery.  The European medieval period saw great technological advances in agricultural production – e.g., three field crop rotation system, ridge and furrow, horse replace ox, the horse collar, iron ploughs and horseshoes, et cetera.  Over the centuries after western Roman collapse, as these improved farming methods spread, a reliable crop surplus was produced and slowly, trade throughout Western Europe revived.  It was this trade revival that underpinned the eventual rise of the class of freemen within the Third Estate, and it was these freemen that built cities throughout formerly rural Western Europe that provided central hubs for the practice of trades, crafts, and commerce.  Fewer serfs were needed to produce agricultural surplus so people began to fill these cities, and we see some freemen transition into rentiers and creditors whereby the physical money derived from rents could support a new form of pseudo-money in the form of credit “produced” independently from the sovereign.

Along with increasing prosperity of the growing class of Bourgeoisie / Burghers / Borghese and craftsmen rose the increase in the tax base, not only for the state but for the Catholic Church which by the 13th century had established itself as Europe’s first Federal state as it held taxation jurisdiction via tithes over the entirety of Roman Catholic Europe.  For the first time we observe a multi-tiered taxation system where paying taxes to the state keeps the mortal physical body from going to jail, and paying tithes to the Church keeps the immortal spiritual soul from going to purgatory.  Thus the physical / spiritual duality of rule in Europe is established for future exploitation by the proponents of 19th and 20th century ideal based “revolution”.

It is no coincidence that this period of increased population, trade, and tax take saw the reformation of powerful super-states – Spain, France, Britain, Sweden, and Papal – as the revived flow of taxes in physical gold and silver could once again pay soldiers to fund wars of conquest, put down rebellion, and for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, fund the commission of Navies.  Colonial conquest and wealth extraction consolidated this growth and wealth of super-states.

As the wealth generated from proto-industrialization and colonialization grew, the rentier, creditor, and now merchant classes grew to be the wealthiest freemen in Europe, and this class together with other nobles were the core providers of credit to the sovereign needed to fund its wars and growing opulence.  As the sovereign grew to rely more heavily on credit to prosecute these projects of ego, it commissioned proto- central banks within its administration serving to facilitate its credit needs and its needs alone.  Some in this new creditor class began to serve full time as “executives” to the crown forming the genesis of the modern “central banker”.  Royal defaults on its domestic creditors were common, as it was royal prerogative to default, so these nascent central banks had to turn more and more to cross border lending agreements with the nascent central banks of other countries.  Thus by the end of the 18th century, Europe had “evolved” into another phase of endless “Classical” war but this time, funded not by silver but by credit provided by cross border proto-central banks managed by a nascent “central banker” class drawn from the increasingly wealthy and powerful rentier / creditor / merchant pool that grew to maturity out of the freemen of the medieval period.

It did not take long for these nascent central bankers to realize the power that the extension or withholding of credit and setting of interest rates granted to those in control of credit.  But if it weren’t for the intervening sovereign, the power this credit held would be tantamount to the power to choose winners and losers in war and opulent society.  The prime example before these nascent central bankers was the conquest, subjugation, and material strip mining of entire overseas civilizations using almost nothing but credit.  So if this model of conquest by credit could work in faraway foreign lands, it could also work on European soil and creditors could, potentially, usurp the sovereign.  But a direct assault on the sovereign would require a large professional army paid in silver, and these nascent central bankers did not yet fully control the royal treasuries.  They needed to create their own army that was paid in credit, and to do that they needed the assistance of the only group that would accept payment in credit – the peasants.

Some description here is warranted regarding the evolution of professional armies in Europe during the transition from medieval to Classical periods.  The ancient mercenary Greek hoplite and Roman centurion were close quarter fighters requiring great strength, training, and endurance.   One’s rank and pay level was directly contingent upon these qualities.  For the most part, this relation between physical strength and pay rate carried into the medieval period up to the advent of cannon – physically fit peasants of fighting age were hired and provisioned as substitutes to fight in place of the wealthy freemen.  As the technology of the instruments of war advanced, many military occupations transitioned into technicians who were increasingly responsible for the maintenance, transport, and operation of cannon, muskets, and siege engines.  Physical strength played less of a factor as weapons technology advanced.  Thus the professional armies of the Classical period were “democratized” and peasants with no special physical attributes comprised the bulk of military campaigns.  And still, these mercenary substitutes held allegiance to the paymaster, and were paid in silver as were their predecessors in antiquity.

This traditional payment in silver was a great obstacle to the nascent central bankers who had eyes on usurping the sovereign.  But as they did not command the amounts of silver required to mount a successful revolt, some other form of payment had to be devised and a new class of soldier created that would fight against his sovereign for this new form of payment.  The democratization of Classical armies left no scarcity of supply of soldiers, but their demands for payment in physical silver did.  Thus enter the series of religious and later, democratic wars that would sweep across Europe as cover for the usurpation of the sovereign by these nascent central bankers…

*  *  *

In Part 2 we discuss the “victory of fiat money” in enabling “endless wars”, “Where is this all going?” and “What is to be done?”…

The US has spent trillions and trillions of dollars under the Trump administration to modernize the military, ahead of what could be a stealth war with either China and or Russia. The Pentagon has been upgrading the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, an all-weather stealth multirole combat aircraft, with advanced technologies, enabling it to conduct a wide range of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.

The National Interest suggests all this new technology packed into the F-35, that being an advanced suite of long-range sensors and targeting systems, could allow it to become a “long-range drone.”  

The idea would be to leverage its advanced suite of long-range sensors and targeting technologies. In fact, it would not be a stretch to say that the F-35 can function as a long-range drone, aerial relay node, missile tracker or surveillance plane. – The National Interest

The F-35 costs between $94 million (F-35A) and $122 million (F-35B) per plane. The entire program is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over its 55-year lifespan. There are no figures publicly available that shed light on how much it would cost taxpayers to transform one of these stealth jets into fully a fully autonomous aircraft. 

While not much is known about the full capabilities of the F-35 potentially operating in autonomous mode, it certainly suggests these planes are double the price of the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper ($64 million per unit). 

The National Interest lists some of the technologies embedded in the F-35 that would allow it to conduct a wide range of missions: 

Its 360-degree surround cameras, called the Distributed Aperture System, and its long-range Electro-Optical infrared targeting technologies were initially conceived as a way to inform pilots about far away enemy aircraft and provide navigational information to empower its multirole attack mission set.

Its 360-degree surround cameras, called the Distributed Aperture System, and its long-range Electro-Optical infrared targeting technologies were initially conceived as a way to inform pilots about far away enemy aircraft and provide navigational information to empower its multirole attack mission set.

While all of this is still true and quite relevant, the Pentagon has increasingly been discovering new uses for the F-35 when it comes to an ability to function as an “aerial node” performing ISR and datalink missions. With a fleet-wide data link and growing “threat library,” the F-35s can network to one another at great distances, enabling an ability to establish a continuous track on traveling threats moving from one field of view to another.

Moreover, the Pentagon recently utilized the F-35 in a host of multi-domain combat attack missions, including networking threat information from incoming air attacks with maritime, air and ground assets. Ultimately, would involve an integrated mesh of sensors and radar called Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS). Alongside connecting with IBCS, an F-35 was also able to connect with a U-2 spy plane to form an “airborne relay” using Lockheed’s Airborne Sensor Adaptation Kit. – The National Interest 

With a stealth war looming, manned, and potentially unmanned F-35s, could be deployed onto the frontlines of the modern battlefield to combat China’s Chengdu J-20 stealth jet and Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57 stealth bomber. 

Authored by Lawrence Sellin via WION.com,

To date, no one has stated the urgent universal need to aggressively investigate the true origin of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, better than Karl and Dan Sirotkin in their August 12, 2020 article “Might SARS‐CoV‐2 Have Arisen via Serial Passage through an Animal Host or Cell Culture?”

“Despite claims from prominent scientists that SARS‐CoV‐2 indubitably emerged naturally, the etiology of this novel coronavirus remains a pressing and open question: Without knowing the true nature of a disease, it is impossible for clinicians to appropriately shape their care, for policy‐makers to correctly gauge the nature and extent of the threat, and for the public to appropriately modify their behaviour.”

As the authors correctly note, serial passage, that is, the repeated re-infection within an animal or human population allows a virus to specifically adapt to the infected species.

That process occurs naturally in the wild, but it can be greatly accelerated in the laboratory by deliberate serial passaging of viruses in cell culture systems or animals, potentially leaving few or no traces as to whether the adapted viruses are naturally-occurring or laboratory-manipulated.

That type of “gain of function” experimentation can become particularly dangerous if viruses are adapted for human infection by serial passaging them through cell cultures and animal models that have been genetically-modified to express human receptors.

There are numerous scientific publications describing serial passaging of coronaviruses through “humanised” cell cultures and animal models, thus potentially creating a new coronavirus “pre-adapted” for human infection.

At present, the scientific consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 came from bats, but how it evolved to infect humans remains unknown.

China has claimed that a bat coronavirus named RaTG13 is the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, but RaTG13 is not actually a virus because no biological samples exist. It is only a genomic sequence of a virus for which there are now serious questions about its accuracy.

In contrast, Dr Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist and whistleblower, has implied that RaTG13 may have been used to divert the world’s attention away from the true source of the COVID-19 pandemic, a novel coronavirus that originated in military laboratories overseen by China’s People’s Liberation Army and created by the manipulation of Zhoushan coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21.

SARS-CoV-2 has signs of serial passaging and the direct genetic insertion of novel amino acids sequences for which no natural evolutionary pathway has been identified.

Although SARS-CoV-2 appears to have the “backbone” of bat coronaviruses, its spike protein, which is responsible for binding to the human cell and its membrane fusion-driven entry, has sections that do not appear in any closely-related bat coronaviruses.

SARS-CoV-2’s receptor binding domain, the specific element that binds to the human cell, has a ten times greater binding affinity than the first SARS virus that caused the 2002-2003 pandemic.

Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be “pre-adapted” for human infection and has not undergone a similar natural mutation process within the human population that was observed during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak.

Those observations plus the inexplicable genetic distance between SARS-CoV-2 and any of its potential bat predecessors suggest an accelerated evolutionary process obtained by laboratory-based serial passaging through genetically-engineered mouse models containing humanised receptors previously developed by China.

The other unique feature of SARS-CoV-2 is a furin polybasic cleavage site that facilitates membrane fusion between the virus and the human cell and widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility, but also is not present in any closely related bat coronaviruses.

There are no readily-available animal models to produce a unique furin polybasic cleavage site by serial passaging, but techniques for the artificial insertion of such furin polybasic cleavage sites by genetic engineering have been used for over ten years.

To paraphrase Karl and Dan Sirotkin, unless the zoonotic hosts necessary for completing a natural jump from animals to humans are identified, the dual‐use gain‐of‐function research practice of viral serial passage and the artificial insertion of unique viral features should be considered viable routes by which SARS-CoV-2 arose and the COVID-19 pandemic was initiated.

*  *  *

Lawrence Sellin, PhD is a retired US Army Reserve colonel. He has previously worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry.

The virus pandemic has led to the closure of many public pools across the country. The latest surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths across Sun Belt states sealed the deal in postponing the reopening of pools. With only a month left of the swimming season, Americans have resorted to an Airbnb-style app that allows them to rent private residential pools. 

Readers living or visiting the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast area have been scorched this summer by absolutely brutal June and July temperatures. Going to the beach has been met with many challenges, especially strict social distancing, and most oceanside restaurants are only open for carryout. The point about going to the beach is being with family and enjoying a delicious meal while watching the sunset. Not this year… 

So given the truly remarkable will of the consumer to shift habits, that is, with beaches under strict social distancing rules, public pools closed and traveling on airplanes to resort towns out of the question, there’s been a massive surge in activity in people not just staying at home but are renting private pools from homeowners using an app described as Airbnb for swimming pools, called Swimply. 

CNBC said the 2-year-old app saw a 2,000% jump in growth this summer, according to its founder.

The process in reserving a pool works on a smartphone app is a  contactless way to rent a pool from residential homeowners on a per hour basis. Prices range from $15 to $300 per hour, all dependent on the pool size, location, and additional amenities. 

Swimply makes money by facilitating the booking and then takes a 15% finders fee. 

“We’ve seen demand skyrocket. We simply cannot keep up,” said Asher Weinberger, co-founder of Swimply.

Weinberger said, “There are people who are now desperate to get out of their homes. They’re working from home. There’s no school. There’s no camp. What are parents supposed to do with their kids?” 

He said some hosts “are making $30,000 to $40,000 in the summer. This is not just — rent out your home for $200 bucks a night — you can make $1,000, $2,000 a day, and that’s real money that’s not just paying for your pool’s upkeep but it’s even paying for your whole mortgage.”

Here are some of the examples of pools for rent on the app: 

Pools in the Miami area ranged from $45 to $60 per hour. 

Pools in San Diego ranged from $45 to $60 per hour.

Pools in Vegas ranged from $15 to $60 per hour.

Swimply’s appears to be launching a new platform called “JoySpace,” where users of the app can rent or share “all kind of unique private spaces from tennis and basketball courts to home gyms and decked out backyard.” 

With much of the country having paused or taken steps to reverse reopenings, Americans have found creative ways to still have fun during a pandemic, even if that means renting a stranger’s pool while public ones are closed. 

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Might as well call it a social experiment. Any other name, like “coup” or “fishing expedition” or “hookers peeing on a bed” or “justice being done” would just inflame “passions” and lead away from what should be the actual topic.

Whatever you call it, the fact remains that Donald Trump has been the first US president to be under continued investigation for the entire 4 years of his first term, and for about a year before it as well. And that should be a cause for alarm for anyone who cares even a little bit about the American political system, including those who abhor Trump.

Because once you do that, it’s no longer about just one president, it’s about all who will follow him, and inevitably about the integrity and validity of the system as a whole.

In principle, there should be no investigations of a sitting president, and not even of a presidential candidate, because this risks endangering 1) the entire electoral process, and 2) the Office of the President (not for once, but for ever). In principle. If there must be an investigation, it must be based on solid evidence available beforehand, it must be short, and the President must be removed. If all of these three things are not guaranteed, no investigation is warranted, and the accusing parties should be “liberated” from the positions they held when they initiated the investigation regardless. Skin in the game.

It gets increasingly harder to write about American politics, or express an opinion in any other way, without being dumped into one of two camps, never to be heard from again in the other (except for ridicule or slander). There is no such thing as a neutral or objective viewpoint anymore. You’re either with us or you’re against us – or them.

Seeing -and projecting- the world in black and white is a tempting proposal for anyone afraid of being confused; it should, however, never be an excuse for the media to not present its viewers and readers with a full color palette. But we can see every single day how that went. Black and white it is. And in that environment, too claustrophobic to be put in a box, I might as well paint the picture as I see it. Yes, in color.

The “social experiment” I see progressing has two parts:

1) can a political party, aided and abetted by the media and intelligence services, unseat an elected president it has just lost an election to?

2) can a presidential candidate be elected while shunning the media, debates, etc., and only appear at times and in forms that have been pre-selected by her/his handlers for maximum effect, while hiding his/her weaknesses?

As for no. 1, it has evidently not succeeded, but that is certainly not for lack of trying. One investigation has followed the other non-stop since 2016, in public and behind the scenes, and they have all come up empty. Of course one side would contest that and still say there was lots of evidence, but if so, it obviously wasn’t very strong, or Trump would have been gone.

People may also claim that the mandate of the Mueller investigation was too narrow, but really, go back and watch the man’s pathetic (sorry, but it was) testimony in Congress after the fact, that should be enough. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and others have promised solid and inconvertible evidence many times, but we never saw any. Rest assured, whatever Trump may have done wrong, you would have heard about it by now.

Or to put it another way: he probably did many things wrong, but not the things he was accused of. In fact, the entire Putin puppet narrative is so idiotic it’s impossible not to ponder from time to time that it was designed from the get-go to support Trump, not hurt him.

As for no. 2, that looks even more experimental. The approach is helped along “wonderfully” by the pandemic, which provides plenty excuses to keep Biden hidden, but it goes against everything presidential campaigns have been built upon throughout American history: contact with voters. That very few people would believe Biden is his own man, and not a sock puppet, can’t help.

But there is more at stake. Presidential campaigns are one element of a much bigger process, and you can’t separate the two. Both parts of the “social experiment” seem to run afoul of the respect that bigger process, and ultimately the entire political system, necessarily demands from all participants, from an individual voter to a President. And that is much more important than either candidate. You can’t temporarily switch off that respect if and when that might suit your purpose, because you risk for it never to be switched on again.

You may dislike a presidential candidate, perhaps even intensely so, but that should never make you lose sight of the integrity, if not the sacredness, of the election process, of the political system, of the institutions, of the Constitution, and certainly not of the Office of the President of the United States. Because once you do that, you open the door for everyone to do the same in the future. And no, you can’t blame that on the candidate you don’t like, you do it.

When a candidate is selected through the primaries of his/her party, you must respect that, because if you don’t respect the process, you are lost, the system is lost, and there’s no telling when you’ll see it back, if ever. If that candidate is then elected President, a lot of doors that before allowed you to question and criticize him/her, should be closed. The country at that point has either a new President, or a second-term one. A different phase of the political process starts.

The House and the Senate become the critics, empowered by the system to hold the President accountable. But only the House and the Senate. Not the media, whose role it is, other than in the occasional opinion piece, to report on decisions made; not intelligence services, whose role it is to serve the country, and the new President it just elected; and not the opposition party, whose role it is to prepare for the next election, and to provide a degree of counterbalance, depending on how bad their loss was, on Capitol Hill.

The entire picture is crystal clear. So is everybody’s role in it. But now and then people -try to- refuse to accept their roles, obviously believing that they are more important than the integrity of the political system, and ignoring that in doing so they put the whole system at risk.

What was happening first became apparent in late 2015 – early 2016, when the New York Times began running multiple stories every day directed against Donald Trump. Mostly small bits, based on innuendo about his past, with a whiff of truth perhaps, but not more. The word “gratuitous” comes to mind. At a certain point, they did a dozen per day of the stories, it became assembly line work for the writers and editors..

The Washington Post chimed in, and so did CNN, MSNBC and others, including international press. It turned into a feeding frenzy, with all of them completely losing sight, voluntarily or not, of their roles as news providers. They all shape-shifted into opinion-only-makers, confident that their audience would not notice the difference, at least not at first. At that point it became a very Pavlovian thing.

Which is why I was initially going to name this essay “Trump vs Pavlov”. 100+ years ago, Ivan Pavlov “found” that if he rang a bell in front of a dog, and then gave her food, she would start to associate the two. When he increased the time-lapse between first, the bell, and then, the food, the dog would salivate in expectation of food at just the sound of the bell. In the end, all he had to do was ring the bell, with no food around, and the dog would salivate. So he had nothing to offer, no food, no substance, but the reaction was the same.

That is a very accurate description of what a large part of the US media have done -and become-. All they have to do at this point is mention Trump, or just show his picture, and their public will react the same every single time: Orange Man Bad. There doesn’t have to be any substance, any factual journalistic reports of wrongdoing. The “conditioned reflex” as Pavlov described it, has set in.

And their readers and viewers have become addicted to this. How could they not? They’ve been bombarded with 1000s of these bells ringing, and the substance may not be there, but the expectation of it is. If you’re a regular viewer of Rachel Maddow, what are the odds that your opinion is still your own after hearing RussiaRussia a million times? The only way it could be yours is if you switch her off.

I’ve written before that I don’t even think they really set out to do this. Initially, there were probably just some CEOs and owners and editors who didn’t like Trump and/or were affiliated in one way or another with the other party -and later candidate-. Who was counted on to win big anyway, so why not (well, because of the integrity of the political system!).

It was only later that they found out 24/7 anti-Trump “reporting” was a great business model for them. CNN was dying in early 2016, the New York Times was nor far behind, and all of a sudden numbers of viewers and readers and subscribers went through the roof.

Their problem is that if they succeed in making Trump lose in November, they will be back to where they came from before he appeared on the political scene. All of their “reporting” on US politics has devolved into a scheme based on ringing a bell, and on the scandal and anger their non-stop salivating audience have become addicted to, and mistake for substance.

If Joe Biden should win, that scheme is dead. They may hope to last a bit longer on the angry scandal of a possible persecution of Trump if he leaves office, but that would be it, and that’s not a business model. They can’t very well now turn on Biden and his puppeteers.

New York Times writer and editor Bari Weiss said it very well when she left the paper a few weeks ago, she summarized the essence of the MSM problem in just a few words:

“[..] the lessons that ought to have followed the election – lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else”.

Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world?

That’s the media.

Second in line is US intelligence.

Which, there’s no other way to put it, conspired against a presidential candidate and, when he was elected, a sitting president. The Strzok-Page “insurance policy”, the Obama Oval Office conversations where Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice were present, plus 1,000 other things, the overall picture doesn’t exactly point to that famous seamless transition, and US Intel played a pivotal, because accommodating, role in that.

The best way to show this is perhaps that US intelligence themselves did not (could not) come up with a report on alleged links between the -prospective- president’s team and Russia, but took a dossier paid for by the president’s opposition and used it to discredit and persecute him and people in his team. The dossier was written by a two-bit MI6 hustler who hadn’t set foot in Russia in at least a decade, and whose main ‘Russian source’ wasn’t there either, but sitting in an office in the US.

That source in turn had contacts with a group of Russians whose very business model it was to make up and embellish whatever stories the highest bidder required, while failing to deal with their own severe drinking problems. That dossier was the entire foundation (or 99% of it) behind Rod Rosenstein appointing Bob Mueller as a Special Counsel. The appointment would never have been made, never have been possible, without the Steele dossier.

How was the dossier vetted by US intelligence, if at all? It’s very clear now what was wrong with it, but the all knowing and very clever intelligence people could not have figured that out 4 years ago, and instead cleared it for Mueller, for further FBI use, for FISA applications? How about their treatment of Michael Flynn, who they had already cleared only to resurrect the dead corpse of their investigation into his talks with Russian ambassador Kislyak? How would you, personally, spell “in good faith”?

We will see in the near future what the Durham investigation into all Russiagate players will come to. Apparently, Durham has just another three weeks to present at least something, because there is a two-month “no-go-zone” before the election, during which he would be accused of tampering with the election. And the premise for the Democrats and their sympathizers is that if Biden wins, all slates will be wiped clean.

They won’t, by the way. America still has a justice system, even if it is oftentimes crippled and grinding(ly) slow. Just watch Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell and her team. They have vowed to not only have their client be exonerated, but to fully clear his name, which according to their view has been besmirched by everyone up to and including Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

The third leg of the “creature” is the Democratic party. Who have stepped so far over their boundaries, nobody recognizes anymore that there were any. Or that the political system they are an integral part of, dictates that there are things they cannot do, lest they corrupt that system to the core.

Once you lose a presidential election, you prepare for the next one. You don’t use the next 4 years to try and frustrate the president you just lost to with all you got. The system should not allow it and can not tolerate it. There should be skin in the game for opposition politicians, who when they come with accusations of gross misconduct serious enough to remove a president, should be forced to step down when the accusations don’t lead to the intended result.

It should never be a free for all, in which you can simply try again the next morning. Because the system cannot work if that is possible. It can’t be that if you win a midterm election and get a majority in the House, you can then use that majority to make it impossible for a president to work on the agenda that made millions vote for him/her. That would cause the system to grind to a halt, and the system must always be more important than its temporary participants (even those who “sit” for 40-50 years).

When you look at the speaker’s list for the Democrat -non- convention next week where Joe Biden will be confirmed as their -virtual- candidate, you see that other than AOC, it’s just a long list of the same old people who were already there when they lost in 2016, and co-losers Hillary and Obama still have a very tight grip on the power and the purse strings.

Why they stick with Joe Biden, g-d only knows, and the same goes for whichever highly unpopular black woman they pick as VP who could soon be president. And sorry, but they all are. Kamala Harris was among the first to step down during the primaries because she didn’t get any votes. Susan Rice is not exactly “loved by the people” either, and the rest are no-names, except for Warren, but she’s both too left and much too white.

So you’re thinking: what’s going on there? That’s really the best you can do? But it does seem to be, likely because Barackillary have a small group of confidantes to choose from who they themselves are confident will be willing to cede all actual power to them once elected. And if Harris and Rice don’t get picked as VP, they’ll still exert a lot of power.

As will Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, there’s more new blood at Madame Tussaud’s than at the upper echelons of the Democratic party. Yes, AOC can come in to represent the squad in a cynical move (no power but brings in lots of votes), but that’s it. For the rest it’s still just the broken left wing of the war party. But you’re right, they’re none of them, Trump. And that at the same time is the sole identity they possess.

Anti-Trumpism has become a political religion.

Because Trump is the only topic that attracts clickbait and viewers. The only topic that rings a bell. Joe Biden rings no bells whatsoever. A while back Donald Trump jr tweeted:

Trump is really running against the media, Silicon Valley, the establishment, the swamp, Hollywood and maybe Joe Biden.

While investor GreekFire23 did even better:

Trump is running against himself in this election. The vote will come down to those who love him vs those who hate him. Biden is totally irrelevant and not even campaigning. Biden has no platform, no slogan, no stickers, no signs, no rallies, no followers. It’s Trump vs Trump.

What can still sink Trump is obvious: it’s the economy and the pandemic. America’s problem is that no matter who wins, those will still be its main problems by January 2021. And another problem has been added in the course of 2020: protests and violence in the streets.

Update: I thought I could leave it at that for now, step out for a moment, have a glass of wine, let it all sink in, and write a closing paragraph. But then I was sitting outside in gorgeous Athens and this popped up, which I very obviously can’t leave out:

Senate Chairman Subpoenas FBI Director Wray For Russiagate Records; Puts Bidens On Notice

FBI Director Christopher Wray has been subpoenaed by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to produce “all documents related to the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” which includes “all records provided or made available to the Inspector General” regarding the FISA probe, as well as documents regarding the 2016-2017 presidential transition..

[..] The subpoena was issued by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) as part of his investigation into the origins of Russiagate. It gives Wray until 5 p.m. on Aug. 20 to produce the documents. Johnson also released a lengthy letter on Monday in which he defended his Committee’s investigation and accused Democrats of initiating “a coordinated disinformation campaign and effort to personally attack” himself and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in order to distract from evidence his committee has gathered on Joe and Hunter Biden’s Ukraine dealings.

[..] Johnson’s committee has secured testimony from at least one State Department official who worked in Ukraine, and says the Bidens’ conduct created the appearance of a conflict of interest. “The appearance of family profiteering off of Vice President Biden’s official responsibilities is not unique to the circumstances involving Ukraine and Burisma,” wrote Johnson. “Public reporting has also shown Hunter Biden following his father into China and coincidentally landing lucrative business deals and investments there.

“Additionally, the former vice president’s brothers and sister-in-law, Frank, James and Sara Biden, also are reported to have benefited financially from his work as well.

I can’t let that go because it addresses exactly what my closing paragraph would have been about. Which is the risk of the giant divide that has developed in US society, getting even wider, and potentially leading to utter mayhem. Actually, it’s not even ‘potentially’ anymore, there already has been a lot of violence.

The Democrats think they will win easily on November 3, and then push through all of their their policies, after dumping on Trump for 4 years with their media and intelligence friends, but the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump, and most of their family and friends with them, don’t think so. That’s not a threat, it’s an observation.

They feel cheated out of their 2016 victory. They realize (or should I say “suspect”) that Russiagate and the Mueller probe and the Zelensky-linked impeachment “hearings” were empty vessels directed against the election outcome that they won fair and square, and I guarantee you they won’t take it sitting down.

Which means that no matter who wins, polarization will reach levels America has never seen, and, frankly, should never wish to. Because all of the people involved, bar just a precious few, will have to live together in the same country, and share the same society, streets, highways, stores and resources.

And sometimes I wonder: how are they going to do that?

If Trump should win, how will the entire so-called left react, from the Democrats through the MSM to BLM? Will they just increase the protests and the violence in the streets?

Alternatively, if Joe Biden wins, how will the Conservative side of America react? Will they all go home and wait for what the DNC has in store for them, or will their reaction be pro-active? I know which reaction I would see them lean towards.

You have these two sides in society who appear further apart than even Moses could have hoped to bring back together again, you have the media who thrive on widening that divide even further, it’s a scary picture.

And in the meantime, while everyone’s busy blaming each other, who’s going to take care of the country?

*  *  *

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, your support is now an integral part of the publishing process. Which seems only fair and just.

Readers may recall our earlier notes identifying the mass exodus of folks abandoning US metro areas, fleeing to suburbia and or rural communities, first due to the virus pandemic, then social unrest.

City dwellers began the journey out of metros in late March/early April, at the start of the virus pandemic lockdowns. When late May/early June rolled around, just as the social unrest erupted across major metros, the second exodus round was seen. 

For more color on this evolving trend, and the importance of understanding the exodus, could, at some point, correct metro home prices, Coast to Coast Network, a real estate team of agents affiliated with Compass, is reporting a massive “boom” in the second home real estate market. 

Nicole Blair from the Compass Tahoe team said Bay Area folks are quickly exiting the metro area for Lake Tahoe as they now have the ability to work remotely, reported Tahoe Daily Tribune. 

Blair said this has led to a massive demand surge for the rural area located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

“The Lake Tahoe market has never seen activity like this,” said Blair. “Bay Area residents are flocking to the area as they realize they can work from home and they also want more space around them.”

She said, “for example, in the month of July, our Multiple Listing Service has gone up 4% in new listings, up 60% in sold listings, down 28% in average days on the market, and up 30% on average listing price which is now equated to $1,140,000.”

“The biggest problem realtors are facing right now is too many buyers with not enough inventory,” Blair added. “We would have never predicted this outcome back in March.”

On the East Coast, Joan Witter of Witter & Witter Boston Cape Cod Connection at Compass said the real estate market is on fire:

“The Cape Cod Market is bustling, I have been selling real estate in this market for over 26 years and have never seen anything like this,” said Witter.

And the question every reader has to ask: How long will this exodus from cities last? 

We might have found the answer in our latest piece titled “Real Estate Expert Warns’ Exodus’ From Cities Will Last Two Years.”