Tag: news

“Poison The Wells And Salt The Earth”

“Poison The Wells And Salt The Earth”

Tyler Durden

Fri, 09/11/2020 – 10:02

By Michael Every of Rabobank

So how did the European understudy do yesterday? To be fair, it was not a star turn.

ECB President Lagarde did not do as badly this time as in her infamous early press conference where she suggested the bank was not interested in what happened to peripheral Eurozone government yield spreads(!), but still managed to take what was ostensibly a shift in the ECB’s concerns towards the strength of EUR and make it seem as if the bank didn’t care about that either – and so we initially saw a stronger currency. You could almost hear the face-palms and clenched teeth of various ECB officials while she was speaking.

Fortunately, that spike in EUR did not last very long, because what is going on with Brexit took the headlines, as the understudy was shoved offstage into the orchestra pit by one of the chorus line – BoJo in a tutu leaping forward to scream at the world “Look at me!”

As things stand now, the UK government is going to press ahead with the next reading of its controversial new Internal Market Bill on Monday. That is despite the EU saying that it will start legal proceedings if it does, as well as instigate a trade war, with an end-September deadline to drop the bill. This raises the risk of not just a Hard Brexit, but the hardest of all possible Brexits, one where the well is poisoned and the earth salted. (And the fish go uneaten and cheese unsold.)

It should also be noted that the reaction from the US Congressional side, in the form of Nancy Pelosi at least, has been that if this happens, the UK can forget about a US-UK free trade deal. China is also not exactly itching to help the UK out right now too after the whole Hong Kong thing. (On which note, breaking international law and agreements is hardly the ideal platform for the UK from which to critique others for doing the same.) The new, global, free-trading Britannia is about to sink below the waves on launch, it seems – unless Tony Abbot can smuggle in a lot more than budgies, and pronto.

Even within the Tory party itself, a rebellion appears to be brewing between those backing the government line and those who think that things like the international rule of law matter.

At this stage one would assume that the most logical resolution would be for the UK to back down: however, there appears absolutely no sign at all that this is going to happen. It would be a very hard sell, even for a government that enjoys Covid-19 U-turns on a daily basis. Indeed, this is their bread and butter and fish and chips issue – “Getting Brexit Done.”

As such, mark GBP as one of the currencies successfully flagged here recently as susceptible to the kind of geopolitics markets keep saying isn’t going to happen, “because markets”…until it does. Indeed, at time of writing GBP was 1.2827 vs. 1.3031 as yesterday’s intra-day high. Where does one price sterling if the UK heads for an acrimonious Brexit as an international law breaker and with no trade deal with any of the Big 3? BoJo’s tutu doesn’t cover as much as it should, sadly.

Meanwhile, speaking to market events that “nobody sees coming”, the US has confirmed there will be no extension of the deadline to close or divest TikTok. Four days to go, and two of them are a weekend. The problem is that new Chinese rules likely mean a sale cannot proceed, so it may have to just close. That must surely be a further warning shot that in our current global environment, value can rapidly move from a presumed X to 0 if the politics changes.

Similarly, Turkey yesterday floated that its Black Sea gas field could be up to 1tcf. However, besides what is recoverable and how long it takes to extract it (years), the backdrop is seven EU leaders have told Turkey it must agree to talks or face sanctions over its energy exploration in the eastern Med. These are ready for discussion as soon as the September 24-25 EU summit. Indeed, yesterday French President Macron went on a Tweeter storm: “Pax Mediterranea!” and “For stability and security, for biodiversity and the climate, there is a collective interest in the Mediterranean in asserting our European sovereignty.” Greek press underline they expect France to offer Greece full military support, if necessary.

Meanwhile, off the market radar, Turkish foreign ministry has stated it “completely rejects” the recent Arab League resolution condemning its actions vis-à-vis Libya, and has deplored Macron’s “incompetence.” Reports also suggest Turkey may be dragged into the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute over the Nagorno Karabakh enclave. What’s one more potential military front? A lot more money is what. And on said money, TRY is another currency seeing geopolitics and economics weighing on it, standing at 7.44 at time of writing. Bloomberg reports new efforts are being made to coax gold into the economy: when someone is going for gold, you knows things are serious.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32kuQed Tyler Durden

DoD Confirms $10-$20 Billion COVID Bailout For Contractors After Trump Blasted Military-Industrial Complex

DoD Confirms $10-$20 Billion COVID Bailout For Contractors After Trump Blasted Military-Industrial Complex

Tyler Durden

Fri, 09/11/2020 – 09:45

This is surely the last thing the American people want to hear, but it does confirm President Trump’s recent statements saying that top Pentagon brass essentially seeks out constant wars to keep defense contractors “happy”: the Department of Defense plans to cut major military contractors a $10 billion to $20 billion COVID bailout check.

Defense One reports: “With lawmakers and the White House unable to come to an agreement on a new coronavirus stimulus package, it’s unlikely that money requested to reimburse defense contractors for pandemic-related expenses will reach these companies until at least the second quarter of 2021, according to the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer.”

Defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, Ellen Lord, in recent statements has indicated the private defense firm stimulus would cover the period from March 15 to Sept. 15 and is estimated at “between $10 and $20 billion.”

President Trump at Andrews Air Force Base, via AP.

“Then we want to look at all of the proposals at once,” Lord said at a press briefing Wednesday. “It isn’t going to be a first in, first out, and we have to rationalize using the rules we’ve put in place what would be reimbursable and what’s not.”

And strongly suggesting that it won’t be the last of such stimulus for defense firms who have already profited immensely off post 9/11 ‘wars of choice’ launched under Bush and Obama, Lord said, “I would contend that most of the effects of COVID haven’t yet been seen.”

To recall, here’s what Trump said at the start of this week:

“I’m not saying the military’s in love with me,” Trump added, as he advocated for the removal of U.S. troops from “endless wars” and lambasted NATO allies that he says rip off the U.S. “The soldiers are.”

“The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy,” he added.

“Some people don’t like to come home, some people like to continue to spend money,” the president said. “One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another, that’s what it was.”

The “outrage” that followed included reporters claiming that Trump’s words were “unprecedented”.

But that’s far from the truth, as Glen Greenwald reminded his fellow journalists:

Well over a half-century ago, Eisenhower warned, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

And further: “We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2DOYX3R Tyler Durden

Court Thwarts Trump’s Attempt To Exclude Undocumented Immigrants From Census

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A federal court has thwarted an executive order that said undocumented immigrants should not be counted in the 2020 Census. In a Thursday ruling, the court noted that President Donald Trump’s July 21 order runs contrary to America’s historical method of tallying an area’s population—a count that matters for purposes of determining how many seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that area gets. The judges ordered the secretary of commerce not to enact the order.

“Throughout the Nation’s history, the figures used to determine the apportionment of Congress—in the language of the current statutes, the ‘total population’ and the ‘whole number of persons’ in each State—have included every person residing in the United States at the time of the census, whether citizen or non-citizen and whether living here with legal status or without,” states the decision, penned by a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

“We declare the Presidential Memorandum to be an unlawful exercise of the authority granted to the President by statute,” the judges concluded.

The case—New York Immigration Coalition v. Trump—was brought by the national American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, and Arnold & Porter on behalf of the New York Immigration Coalition, Make the Road New York, CASA, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the ADC Research Institute, and FIEL Houston.

“The constitutional mandate is clear—every person counts in the census,” said Dale Ho, who directs the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, in a statement. “Undocumented immigrants are people—and nothing President Trump does or says changes that fact.”

“The court order bars work by the Census Bureau that would allow it to produce a separate count excluding people in the U.S. illegally,” notes The Wall Street Journal:

There isn’t a citizenship question on the census, after the Supreme Court last year blocked the president’s plan to add one. To carry out the president’s latest order, the bureau had planned to match census responses with citizenship-verified records from state and federal agencies to estimate how many people in each state weren’t legal residents.

This, the judges ruled, would violate the law that requires Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who supervises the bureau, to send a single set of numbers—a “tabulation of total population by States”—to the president. The memo also violated the law because “so long as they reside in the United States, illegal aliens qualify as ‘persons in’ a ‘State’ as Congress used those words,” the panel ruled.

The Trump administration can still appeal the decision. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that “around a half dozen lawsuits around the U.S. were filed by states, cities, immigrant advocates and civil rights groups challenging its legality and constitutionality” of Trump’s July 21 order. “The New York case is the first to get a ruling, but there are other issues the New York judges didn’t address that could be addressed in the other court cases.”

QUICK HITS

• “A veteran Raleigh police detective is off the job while the department and the Wake County District Attorney investigate more than a dozen fraudulent drug cases,” reports a local ABC affiliate. “Some people sat in jail for weeks and months based on evidence that turned out to be fake.”

• Unprecedented wildfires are pummeling Oregon, prompting hundreds of thousands of residents to flee.

• A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study suggests restaurant diners are more likely than those not dining out right now to catch COVID-19. The study has spread a lot of fear about restaurants being coronavirus hotspots, but it’s important to remember that the study merely showed a correlation, not that folks are necessarily picking up the virus while dining out:

• “The American response to COVID is best characterized as…eccentric,” writes Daniel M. Rothschild, executive director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

• Yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court told state election officials “that they can’t mail out absentee ballots until the court decides whether to add the Green Party’s presidential ticket to the ballot,” reports CNN. The ruling comes just a week before “the September 17 deadline for when the 1,850 municipal clerks need to mail out absentee ballots to Wisconsin voters who asked for one is set in state law.”

• Protecting and serving:

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9/11/2001 in Staten Island, New York

I post this essay every year in honor of September 11th, 2001 (see 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019).

Every generation has a defining moment. For my generation, it was 9/11/2001.

Here are my memories of 9/11/2001. It was a Tuesday.

I was a Senior at Staten Island Technical High School, which is about 20 miles from ground zero. We were about 1 week into the school year. I was sitting in Ms. Endriss’s 2nd Period A.P. Political Science class. We were going over some NYC Public School discipline policy, and discussing what kinds of weapons were forbidden in schools (brass knuckles were a no-no). A student walked into the classroom late. He had heard a rumor that a Cessna airplane had hit the World Trade Center. A girl in my class exclaimed that her father worked in the World Trade Center. I could see the look of fear in her eyes, even though none of us had any clue what was going on. She wanted to call her dad. I was the only student in the class with a cell phone, which I promptly gave her. The call did not go through–he worked on one of the upper floors of the tower, and passed away.

We finished second period, apprehensively. I logged onto a computer, and attempted to check the news. I recall one friend told me to check MTV.com for news. At that point, the reports were unclear, and no one knew what was going on. We proceeded to 3rd period A.P. Calculus with Mr. Curry. At that point, someone told us that it was not a Cessna, but in fact a passenger jet. We were all getting nervous, and didn’t quite know what was going on. Later in class, a student came into the class and said a second plane had crashed into the other tower. We also heard that there was an explosion at the Pentagon. At that point, we knew it was not an accident.

I remember leaving the class (something I never did) and walked up to the library where I knew there was a T.V. Just as I arrived in the library, I saw the first tower collapse. I watched it live. I was stunned and could not believe what was happening before my eyes. I grabbed my cellphone to call home, and almost immediately after the tower collapsed, I lost all service. I was not able to call my mom in Staten Island, though I could call my dad who was working in Long Island. Long distance calls seemed to work, but local calls were not working. I remember my dad told me that this was a life-changing event, and he had no idea what would happen. I heard some rumors on TV that there were 15 planes that were hijacked, and unaccounted for in the skies.

By lunch time, the school guidance counselor set up a conference room where students could go to talk. I remember seeing student after student who had a family member or friend who worked in the World Trade Center or in Manhattan. A large number of firefighters and police officers reside in Staten Island. Tragically, many of the emergency responders who perished were from Staten Island. What could we even tell those students?

After that, the day become a blur. I remember hearing that the second tower had collapsed, though I did not see it.  I remember watching the entire United States Congress sing God Bless America on the steps of the Capitol. I had never been so afraid in my life. Later that night, I took a bus home. The New York City public buses were still running, and I remember the driver was not collecting fares.  On the bus, people were talking about the imminent war (against whom,  no one knew) and the imminent draft. Some were saying that students were exempt from the draft.

The next morning, September 12, 2001, I woke up and smelled this horrible smell. The air had this pungent odor, that reminded me of burned flesh at a BBQ. I went to school that morning, and attendance was low. In all of my classes, we were talking about war. I asked whether the US would need to use nuclear weapons. My teacher explained that carpet bombing–a phrase I had never heard of–could wreak plenty of damage in Afghanistan. Later that week students began making sandwiches for the relief workers, and collecting goods to donate to the relief effort.

From Staten Island, I could see the smoldering Ground Zero. It was surreal. The skyline looked so very empty. To this day, whenever I look at the Skyline, a sight I had seen thousands of times, I have the most bizarre feeling. Additionally, whenever we saw an airplane fly overhead, we all freaked out. This lasted for months.

For days, weeks, and months after 9/11, people in Staten Island were waiting for their loved ones to come home. Many patients were alive, but were so badly burned that they could not be identified. People prayed that these unnamed patients would soon come home. One woman whose husband was a firefighter waited outside her home every single night for months. She eventually put a candle in her window every night. Later, she put a memorial lamp in her window. He never came home. Others were simply waiting for remains of their loved ones to be returned. Many were never identified.

I ordered a gas mask from eBay, which I kept in my car, fearing a biological weapon attack on New York City. I remember I tried it on once and I almost suffocated. I wanted to order some Cipro for an anthrax attack, but I could not locate any.

It is hard to encapsulate what a New Yorker went through on 9/11. Thinking back on that day, when I was just 17 years old, I realized that I had to grow up awfully quick. It was a new world we were living in.

Never forget. Ever.

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Surprise! Politicians aren’t following their own COVID rules…

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

Philadelphia Mayor caught dining indoors despite his own ban

In March, the Mayor of Philadelphia banned indoor dining throughout the entire city, because of COVID.

The ban was still in effect last week when the Mayor was caught dining indoors at a friend’s restaurant in Maryland.

Apparently, he was not actually that worried about the dangers of indoor dining.

But instead of allowing Philidelphians to make their own decisions, like he did, the Mayor destroyed their restaurant businesses in the name of COVID safety.

His rules are only for the peasants.

Click here to read the full story.

Gyms forced closed in San Francisco– except for government gyms

Business owners in San Francisco are still prohibited from opening their gyms.

Meanwhile, gyms in government buildings have been open since July.

Police, prosecutors, judges, bailiffs, and paralegals are all free to go to their taxpayer-funded gyms.

And after a weight session, they return to work to enforce the shut down of the peasants’ gyms.

(This is the same city that shut down indoor hair salons for everyone except Nancy Pelosi. She was caught breaking the rules and getting her hair done indoors last week.)

The woke Bolsheviks are demonstrating what equality will look like under their system.

Click here to read the full story.

College civics: the correct answer is that the Constitution was racist

“The largest class Vanderbilt [University] has ever taught,” is a civics course taught to 800 college students.

One question on an online quiz asked students, “Was the Constitution designed to perpetuate white supremacy and protect the institution of slavery?”

You’d think something like that would at least be a lengthy essay question. But on this civics quiz, it was a true or false question.

No gray area, no nuance, no intellectual debate.

And, ding ding, you guessed it, the answer was true, the Constitution was designed to perpetuate white supremacy.

(Amazingly enough, according to the university’s website, undergraduate students pay $52,780 per year in tuition to be indoctrinated into this intellectual jihad.)

Click here to read the full story.

Hiring a “happy” stylist discriminates against unhappy people

A salon owner in England put out a job description to a local government-run job center.

The ad for a hair stylist said, “This is a busy, friendly, small salon, so only happy, friendly stylists need apply.”

But the job center called just an hour later, saying they could not run the ad.

The job description was discriminatory, they said, because it asked only for “happy” stylists to apply for the job.

And that might make miserable pessimists think they cannot apply for the job.

Click here to read the full story.

Tedx London explains what a Womxn is

Tedx London is a chapter of Ted Talks which hosts educational speakers.

They announced on Twitter that “TEDxLondonWomxn is coming back.”

Which led some people to ask, what is a womxn?

TedxLondon responded:

“No, that’s not a typo: ‘womxn’ is a spelling of ‘women’ that’s more inclusive and progressive. The term sheds light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers womxn have faced, and explicitly includes non-cisgender women.”

It’s unclear how exactly adding an x to a word is more inclusive. It is also unclear how this new word is supposed to be pronounced…

But these sorts of logical details never seem to matter to the woke warriors.

Click here to read the full story.

Source

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Court Thwarts Trump’s Attempt To Exclude Undocumented Immigrants From Census

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A federal court has thwarted an executive order that said undocumented immigrants should not be counted in the 2020 Census. In a Thursday ruling, the court noted that President Donald Trump’s July 21 order runs contrary to America’s historical method of tallying an area’s population—a count that matters for purposes of determining how many seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that area gets. The judges ordered the secretary of commerce not to enact the order.

“Throughout the Nation’s history, the figures used to determine the apportionment of Congress—in the language of the current statutes, the ‘total population’ and the ‘whole number of persons’ in each State—have included every person residing in the United States at the time of the census, whether citizen or non-citizen and whether living here with legal status or without,” states the decision, penned by a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

“We declare the Presidential Memorandum to be an unlawful exercise of the authority granted to the President by statute,” the judges concluded.

The case—New York Immigration Coalition v. Trump—was brought by the national American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, and Arnold & Porter on behalf of the New York Immigration Coalition, Make the Road New York, CASA, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the ADC Research Institute, and FIEL Houston.

“The constitutional mandate is clear—every person counts in the census,” said Dale Ho, who directs the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, in a statement. “Undocumented immigrants are people—and nothing President Trump does or says changes that fact.”

“The court order bars work by the Census Bureau that would allow it to produce a separate count excluding people in the U.S. illegally,” notes The Wall Street Journal:

There isn’t a citizenship question on the census, after the Supreme Court last year blocked the president’s plan to add one. To carry out the president’s latest order, the bureau had planned to match census responses with citizenship-verified records from state and federal agencies to estimate how many people in each state weren’t legal residents.

This, the judges ruled, would violate the law that requires Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who supervises the bureau, to send a single set of numbers—a “tabulation of total population by States”—to the president. The memo also violated the law because “so long as they reside in the United States, illegal aliens qualify as ‘persons in’ a ‘State’ as Congress used those words,” the panel ruled.

The Trump administration can still appeal the decision. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that “around a half dozen lawsuits around the U.S. were filed by states, cities, immigrant advocates and civil rights groups challenging its legality and constitutionality” of Trump’s July 21 order. “The New York case is the first to get a ruling, but there are other issues the New York judges didn’t address that could be addressed in the other court cases.”

QUICK HITS

• “A veteran Raleigh police detective is off the job while the department and the Wake County District Attorney investigate more than a dozen fraudulent drug cases,” reports a local ABC affiliate. “Some people sat in jail for weeks and months based on evidence that turned out to be fake.”

• Unprecedented wildfires are pummeling Oregon, prompting hundreds of thousands of residents to flee.

• A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study suggests restaurant diners are more likely than those not dining out right now to catch COVID-19. The study has spread a lot of fear about restaurants being coronavirus hotspots, but it’s important to remember that the study merely showed a correlation, not that folks are necessarily picking up the virus while dining out:

• “The American response to COVID is best characterized as…eccentric,” writes Daniel M. Rothschild, executive director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

• Yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court told state election officials “that they can’t mail out absentee ballots until the court decides whether to add the Green Party’s presidential ticket to the ballot,” reports CNN. The ruling comes just a week before “the September 17 deadline for when the 1,850 municipal clerks need to mail out absentee ballots to Wisconsin voters who asked for one is set in state law.”

• Protecting and serving:

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9/11/2001 in Staten Island, New York

I post this essay every year in honor of September 11th, 2001 (see 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019).

Every generation has a defining moment. For my generation, it was 9/11/2001.

Here are my memories of 9/11/2001. It was a Tuesday.

I was a Senior at Staten Island Technical High School, which is about 20 miles from ground zero. We were about 1 week into the school year. I was sitting in Ms. Endriss’s 2nd Period A.P. Political Science class. We were going over some NYC Public School discipline policy, and discussing what kinds of weapons were forbidden in schools (brass knuckles were a no-no). A student walked into the classroom late. He had heard a rumor that a Cessna airplane had hit the World Trade Center. A girl in my class exclaimed that her father worked in the World Trade Center. I could see the look of fear in her eyes, even though none of us had any clue what was going on. She wanted to call her dad. I was the only student in the class with a cell phone, which I promptly gave her. The call did not go through–he worked on one of the upper floors of the tower, and passed away.

We finished second period, apprehensively. I logged onto a computer, and attempted to check the news. I recall one friend told me to check MTV.com for news. At that point, the reports were unclear, and no one knew what was going on. We proceeded to 3rd period A.P. Calculus with Mr. Curry. At that point, someone told us that it was not a Cessna, but in fact a passenger jet. We were all getting nervous, and didn’t quite know what was going on. Later in class, a student came into the class and said a second plane had crashed into the other tower. We also heard that there was an explosion at the Pentagon. At that point, we knew it was not an accident.

I remember leaving the class (something I never did) and walked up to the library where I knew there was a T.V. Just as I arrived in the library, I saw the first tower collapse. I watched it live. I was stunned and could not believe what was happening before my eyes. I grabbed my cellphone to call home, and almost immediately after the tower collapsed, I lost all service. I was not able to call my mom in Staten Island, though I could call my dad who was working in Long Island. Long distance calls seemed to work, but local calls were not working. I remember my dad told me that this was a life-changing event, and he had no idea what would happen. I heard some rumors on TV that there were 15 planes that were hijacked, and unaccounted for in the skies.

By lunch time, the school guidance counselor set up a conference room where students could go to talk. I remember seeing student after student who had a family member or friend who worked in the World Trade Center or in Manhattan. A large number of firefighters and police officers reside in Staten Island. Tragically, many of the emergency responders who perished were from Staten Island. What could we even tell those students?

After that, the day become a blur. I remember hearing that the second tower had collapsed, though I did not see it.  I remember watching the entire United States Congress sing God Bless America on the steps of the Capitol. I had never been so afraid in my life. Later that night, I took a bus home. The New York City public buses were still running, and I remember the driver was not collecting fares.  On the bus, people were talking about the imminent war (against whom,  no one knew) and the imminent draft. Some were saying that students were exempt from the draft.

The next morning, September 12, 2001, I woke up and smelled this horrible smell. The air had this pungent odor, that reminded me of burned flesh at a BBQ. I went to school that morning, and attendance was low. In all of my classes, we were talking about war. I asked whether the US would need to use nuclear weapons. My teacher explained that carpet bombing–a phrase I had never heard of–could wreak plenty of damage in Afghanistan. Later that week students began making sandwiches for the relief workers, and collecting goods to donate to the relief effort.

From Staten Island, I could see the smoldering Ground Zero. It was surreal. The skyline looked so very empty. To this day, whenever I look at the Skyline, a sight I had seen thousands of times, I have the most bizarre feeling. Additionally, whenever we saw an airplane fly overhead, we all freaked out. This lasted for months.

For days, weeks, and months after 9/11, people in Staten Island were waiting for their loved ones to come home. Many patients were alive, but were so badly burned that they could not be identified. People prayed that these unnamed patients would soon come home. One woman whose husband was a firefighter waited outside her home every single night for months. She eventually put a candle in her window every night. Later, she put a memorial lamp in her window. He never came home. Others were simply waiting for remains of their loved ones to be returned. Many were never identified.

I ordered a gas mask from eBay, which I kept in my car, fearing a biological weapon attack on New York City. I remember I tried it on once and I almost suffocated. I wanted to order some Cipro for an anthrax attack, but I could not locate any.

It is hard to encapsulate what a New Yorker went through on 9/11. Thinking back on that day, when I was just 17 years old, I realized that I had to grow up awfully quick. It was a new world we were living in.

Never forget. Ever.

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Memories Of 9/11 During A Different Kind Of Painful Time For America

Memories Of 9/11 During A Different Kind Of Painful Time For America

Tyler Durden

Fri, 09/11/2020 – 09:25

Authored by Stephen Kruiser via PJMedia.com,

As America navigates – none too gracefully – these trying times we now pause for a day to remember a different kind of trying time. A horrific time.

The United States of America has been through a lot of rough stuff in its relatively short history as the greatest nation on Earth. People are fond of saying that we are more divided now than ever before. If we were able to ask anyone who lived through the Civil War I’m fairly certain they’d disagree.

Comparing a nation’s struggles from different eras is silly. What the hell do I know about what the WWII generation went through? Heck, I was a kid when we were in Vietnam and all of the civil unrest that was raging here at home and I barely remember any of that.

My adult daughter doesn’t remember 9/11 because she was very young that day. Those of us who weren’t very young still feel like it was yesterday almost two decades later.

The greatest nation on Earth isn’t used to being attacked at home. Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, 9/11 shocked, then united, then galvanized America. However briefly, we behaved like the United States of America.

(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

As I look around America in 2020 I wonder how we would react to another 9/11 if, God forbid, something like that happened again soon. It’s difficult to imagine that kind of unity again, especially when the progressive idiots view patriotism and unity as toxic nationalism. We may not be as fractured as we were during the Civil War but, let’s be honest, we’re pretty beat up internally at the moment.

The wounds are all self-inflicted during this time of trial, which makes it worse. Sure, we can focus on coronavirus as an “enemy,” but it’s not the virus that’s setting our cities on fire.

It’s a terrible fact of the human condition that it usually takes some unforeseen tragedy to bring us together. I’m not so sure 2020 America has the coping skills even in that kind of situation. Of course, I pray we never have to find out.

Because the plague has to ruin everything, there won’t be a live reading of the victims’ names at the 9/11 Memorial this year. There will be a recorded recitation, but that seems a bit sterile and disrespectful. The science-free social distance Kabuki theater must go on, however.

It goes without saying that the horror of that day must never be forgotten. America is now facing the rise of a political force that would seek to rewrite history. This is a national tragedy that can’t be purged easily, but they will attempt to alter it as much as possible.

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Their families will forever grieve. America needs to never forget and to continue to pray for the victims of 9/11. Maybe that shared remembrance can heal our current situation just a little…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32hfKWO Tyler Durden

Half Million People Evacuated in Oregon As Wildfires Spread, Arson Concerns Grow 

Half Million People Evacuated in Oregon As Wildfires Spread, Arson Concerns Grow 

Tyler Durden

Fri, 09/11/2020 – 09:10

Wildfires continue to rage throughout Oregon Friday morning, have killed at least three people and forced more than half a million from their homes. 

AP cites data from the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, which shows about 12% of the state’s 4.2 million population, or about 500,000 residents, have been evacuated. As much as 1,400 square miles (3,625 square kilometers) have burned across the state this week. State officials said wildfire activity flourished Thursday afternoon in northwestern Oregon as hot weather and windy conditions fueled the fires.

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center’s latest fire map shows there are many uncontained wildfires across the state. 

Readers may recall the U.S. Climate Prediction Center confirmed a broad shift in a weather pattern across the U.S. last month, called La Nina, which has transformed the western U.S. into a tinder box. 

“We’re already in a bad position, and La Nina puts us in a situation where fire-weather conditions persist into November and possibly even December,” Ryan Truchelut, president of Weather Tiger LLC, told Bloomberg. “It is exacerbating existing heat and drought issues.”

Gov. Kate Brown has declared a state emergency for the wildfires that extends into early November. She said Thursday, “this could be the greatest loss of life and structures due to wildfire in state history. “

Even though La Nina has been confirmed, or depending on who you speak to, ‘climate change’, these have been some of the mainstream consensus themes of what could be fueling the fires. But, according to a new report via Reuters, arson investigators have been called to investigate fires as suspicion grows on the origins. 

Earlier this week, there was at least one instance, according to Oregon State Trooper Ryan Burke, who tweeted a 36-year-old “Puyallup resident” was arrested on Wednesday (Sept. 9) for starting a fire on the “median on SR-167.” 

Local TV station, Q13 FOX, reports “Jeff Demologik” was reportedly arrested by state troopers – here’s the man filming his arrest for setting fire in the median on the highway. 

In a separate incident, one Twitter user tweets: 

“Right wing militia members in Oregon who are convinced anti-fascists set fire to their town set up checkpoints with guns on roads ppl were using to flee. Who had this on their 2020 bingo card?” 

It appears possible that some of these wildfires were not just started by lighting strikes or mishaps with utility companies but possibly there’s a chance arson could be involved. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZJZRXp Tyler Durden

Nikola Offers 5 Paragraph Response To Yesterday’s Hindenburg Research Report, Threatens Legal Action

Nikola Offers 5 Paragraph Response To Yesterday’s Hindenburg Research Report, Threatens Legal Action

Tyler Durden

Fri, 09/11/2020 – 08:57

Update 9/11/2020 0846AM EST: Nikola has published a brief response to yesterday’s almost 100 page report by Hindenburg Research on Friday morning. A press release, which does not debunk individual points of the report, simply says the company will refute allegations, then mentions that Nikola hired a law firm and will bring the actions of the short seller to the SEC:

“Yesterday, an activist short-seller whose motivation is to manipulate the market and profit from a manufactured decline in our stock price published a so-called “report” replete with misleading information and salacious accusations directed at our founder and executive chairman. To be clear, this was not a research report and it is not accurate. This was a hit job for short sale profit driven by greed.

We have nothing to hide and we will refute these allegations. They have already taken up more time and attention than they deserve. We have retained leading law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP to evaluate potential legal recourse, including with respect to the activist short seller and any others acting in concert.

Nikola also intends to bring the actions of the activist short-seller, together with evidence and documentation, to the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

We respect the rights of investors and the integrity of the market and will be back to you after we have advanced the process with the SEC.

Most importantly, Nikola remains focused on delivering on the promises we’ve made to our stakeholders.”

Headlines started hitting the wire on Friday morning: 

  • NIKOLA SAYS SHORT SELLER REPORT IS NOT ACCURATE
  • NIKOLA SAYS MAY TAKE LEGAL ACTION, WILL BRING TO SEC ATTENTION
  • NIKOLA RESPONDS TO SHORT SELLER REPORT BY HINDENBURG
  • NIKOLA: ‘NOTHING TO HIDE’, REFUTES ALLEGATIONS

Nikola did not appear to answer any of the 53 questions that Hindenburg Research posed at the bottom of its report that was issued on Thursday morning. Some in the industry did not seem to be won over by the company’s response:

One short seller even had it pinned yesterday…

—

Update 9/10/2020 0939AM EST: Nikola’s CEO has responded on Twitter, saying he “needs a few hours” to respond to the report. 

—

Nikola shares are selling off pre-market in response to a new report from Hindenburg Research, which calls it an “intricate fraud” based on conversations with former employees.

“Today, we reveal why we believe Nikola is an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies over the course of its Founder and Executive Chairman Trevor Milton’s career,” the report claims.

“We have gathered extensive evidence—including recorded phone calls, text messages, private emails and behind-the-scenes photographs—detailing dozens of false statements by Nikola Founder Trevor Milton. We have never seen this level of deception at a public company, especially of this size.”

The report was followed by Tweets that appear to show various types of deception from the company. For example, one Tweet claims that Nikola’s “One” semi truck was just rolling down a hill in a video where the company claimed it was “in motion.

Similar claims seem to show that the Nikola One was not powered on its own during its 2016 reveal, previously called into question by Bloomberg several months. Rather, the report notes there was 

The report calls the reveal a “total farce”.

Additionally, the report points out that inverters claimed to be made in-house from Nikola appear to have been bought from another company, with pieces of masking tape covering up their logo.

The report also questions some key hires at Nikola.

And calls into question the company’s supposed battery technology. 

The report comes just days after Nikola inked a partnership with General Motors, wherein GM would be supplying Nikola with fuel cells and production capacity – leaving many to wonder what, if anything Nikola was bringing to the deal. We imagine those skeptics will want to dig through this morning’s report.

You can read the entire report here.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3bKABos Tyler Durden