Tag: news

Authored by Elizabeth Vos via ConsortiumNews.com,

Investigation Discovery premiered  a three-hour special, “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” on May 31, the first segment in a three-part series, that  focused on Epstein’s August 2019 death in federal custody. The series addresses Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, his links with billionaire Leslie Wexner, founder of the Victoria Secrets clothing line, and others, as well as the non-prosecution deal he was given.

The special followed on the heels of Netflix’s release of “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” a mini-series that draws on a book of the same name by James Patterson. 

Promotional material for “Who Killed Jeffery Epstein?” promises that:  “… exclusive interviews and in-depth investigations reveal new clues about his seedy underworld, privileged life and controversial death. The three-hour special looks to answer the questions surrounding the death of this enigmatic figure.”  Netflix billed its series this way: “Stories from survivors fuel this docuseries examining how convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein used his wealth and power to carry out his abuses.”

Neither documentary however deals at all with Epstein’s suspected ties to the world of intelligence.

Absent from both are Maxwell’s reported links to Israeli intelligence through her father, Robert Maxwell, former owner of The New York Daily News and The Mirror newspaper in London. Maxwell essentially received a state funeral in Israel and was buried on the Mount of Olives after he mysteriously fell off his yacht in 1991 in the Atlantic Ocean.

Ari Ben-Menashe. (From his memoir, “Profits of War”)

In an interview with Consortium News, former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe said Epstein did not work with Mossad. “Military intelligence was who he was working with,” said Ben-Menashe. “Big difference,” he said. “He never worked with Mossad, and Robert Maxwell never did, either. It was military intelligence.”

Ben-Menashe claimed Robert Maxwell was Epstein’s “tie over. Robert Maxwell was the conduit [in the Iran-Contra scandal]. The financial conduit.”

In “Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” a book published in December, Ben-Menashe is quoted as saying he worked with Robert Maxwell who introduced his daughter and Epstein to Israeli intelligence, after which they engaged in a blackmail operation for Israel. “[Epstein] was taking photos of politicians f**king fourteen-year-old girls — if you want to get it straight. They [Epstein and Maxwell] would just blackmail people, they would just blackmail people like that,” he says in the book.   

Ben-Menashe also claims that Robert Maxwell had attempted to blackmail Mossad. “He really lost his compass once he started playing these games with people,” he told Consortium News.     

Prince Andrew

Prince Andrew in a carriage procession, June 2012. (Carfax2, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

About a week after both documentaries premiered, the U.S. Department of Justice approached the U.K.’s Home Office requesting that Prince Andrew answer questions in the U.K. over his links to Epstein, The Mirror reported.  If he refuses, the paper said, U.S. prosecutors would ask that he be brought to a British court to respond to their questions. Andrew’s lawyers say he three times agreed to be questioned by U.S. authorities, but it is not known if Andrew attached conditions, such as immunity. 

Both documentaries mention Prince Andrew in the context of allegations about him from one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. But neither film goes into much detail about Andrew’s role in the Epstein operation, which Ben-Menashe said, was to lure powerful men into Epstein’s orbit.

“One of the things that are really key to this is that he [Epstein] befriended a very useful idiot called Prince Andrew,” Ben-Menashe told CN. “Now what really happened was that this Prince Andrew, with nothing to do, was having fun with this, and Prince Andrew brings in the fancy people, invites them to play golf with him, and then takes them out for fun. Then Epstein shows up, and these people are basically blackmailed.”

“The only person that can talk, that probably knows quite a bit, is the great prince,” Ben-Menashe said. “He was with him [Epstein] all the time. I really don’t know what his future is going to be like, either.”

Since a number of influential figures were named in a lawsuit filed by Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell the day before Epstein was found dead in his federal prison cell in New York, Ben-Menashe said: “I’m starting to think that lawsuit was his death sentence, because people didn’t want to be named. That’s my guess, it’s just a guess. Obviously, somebody decided that he had to go.”

Epstein’s death was ruled a “suicide” by New York’s chief medical examiner. A pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother said it was homicide.

An Angry Call

Just before Ben-Menashe spoke to Consortium News on Monday, he said he had received an angry telephone call from Israel’s Channel 13 television station.

“They called me, and they went wild: ‘What, you believe Israel would use little girls? You are saying that? You are insulting the nation, you are making us anathema around the world.’ I said, ‘The truth is the truth.’ And Jeffrey Epstein’s story is something that nobody wanted to hear. He was working with the Israelis, he was working with Maxwell,” Ben-Menashe said.

He added: “It’s a very bad story, and I can see why the Israelis are so concerned about it.  I believe [Channel 13] were expressing anger, and I believe this was a message. I don’t like messages like that… it has to do with the timing and these stories coming out about Epstein. They [Israel] are starting to become anathema to the world, this adds to it — the Epstein story.”

Victims’ Voices

The Netflix and Investigation Discovery productions allow survivors to recount their experiences in interviews as well as taped police recordings and focus on the sweetheart plea deal provided to Epstein by former Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta during Acosta’s tenure as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

Each series outlines Epstein’s relationships with Wexner, Maxwell, and a variety of elite figures.  Investigation Discovery focuses on the controversy surrounding Epstein’s death while Netflix’s “Filthy Rich” examines the second attempt to prosecute Epstein in the context of the Me Too movement.

The Netflix series describes the initial investigation of Epstein as it shifted from the state to the federal level, and airs allegations that Florida  journalists  covering the story were threatened. Netflix also interviews psychologist Dr. Kathryn Stamoulis, a specialist in adolescent sexuality, who gives a description of Epstein’s targeting and grooming of young girls. Epstein survivor Giuffre later describes in the film being groomed to tolerate exploitation and sex trafficking as part of a “deranged family.”

The final section of the fourth episode in Netflix’s miniseries includes a survivor stating that this was not simply an Epstein operation, but an “international sex trafficking ring that reached all over the world.” Epstein is described as a “very small piece in a huge network.” But the documentary goes no further than that. 

As in the Belgian Dutroux case, victims alleged that multiple abusers acted in concert with each other, using blackmail to keep each other in line. In both instances, authorities and the media portrayed the abuse as chiefly the product of an aberrant lone predator.

“This wouldn’t be the only time this happened, but this guy got way over his head,” Ben-Menashe told Consortium News. “He probably was blackmailing too many people, too many powerful people. And then, this is a story the Israelis wouldn’t want to come out, anyway.”

Thriving in Murky Waters

Another angle the documentaries did not approach was the environment in which Epstein thrived like an algae bloom in stagnant water, that is, within a long history of child trafficking rings linked with intelligence agencies, often with the aim of gathering blackmail material. It was within this reality that Epstein appeared to be rendered untouchable.

Omitting the intelligence aspect of Epstein’s history allows the Establishment media to portray his case as a mysterious and unsolvable aberration, rather than perhaps a continuation of business-as-usual amongst those in power.

The glaring refusal to address Epstein’s intelligence involvement becomes  clear when Investigation Discovery and Netflix’s programs discuss the role of Acosta in securing Epstein’s “sweetheart” plea deal, but do not reference Acosta’s widely reported explanation as to why Acosta agreed to the deal.  As reported by The Daily Beast, Acosta claimed that he cut the non-prosecution deal because he had been told that “Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

Independent journalist Whitney Webb has reported on Epstein’s many ties with intelligence, telling  CNLive! in August last year that there is evidence this included with the CIA. 

Webb spoke about  Iran-Contra links to Epstein via his and billionaire Wexner’s efforts to relocate Southern Air Transport (formerly the CIA’s Air America) from Florida to Ohio: “What’s significant here is that out of all the airlines in the United States, Wexner and Epstein choose the airline, the only airline that is outed, publicly known at the time, to be a CIA cut-out. Out of all the airlines that exist, that’s the one they go for,” she said.

Webb also cited reporting by Nigel Rosser, a British journalist, who wrote in the Evening Standard in 2001 that Epstein claimed he worked for the CIA in the 1990s.

Lip Service

Investigation Discovery and Netflix give lip service to Wexner’s ties with Epstein, omitting that Wexner gave Epstein the largest private residence in New York City — essentially for free. Investigation Discovery does not mention that the residence was extensively wired with surveillance equipment, per Webb and The New York Times.

“James Patterson, before writing his book on Epstein, ‘Filthy Rich,’ on which this documentary [by Netflix] is based, wrote a novel [‘The President is Missing’] with Bill Clinton , who is of course quite close to the Epstein scandal, so that definitely, in my opinion, raises some eyebrows,” Webb told Consortium News.

“I think that one of the goals of this [Netflix] documentary is to basically imply that Epstein was the head of the operation and that now that he is dead, all of that activity has ceased,” Webb said. “If they had actually bothered to explore the intelligence angle, in some of the more obvious facts about the case, like Leslie Wexner’s role, for example, it becomes clear that Epstein was really just more of a manager of this type of operation, [and] that these activities continue.”

Webb said a main reason for avoiding discussion of the intelligence angle is that mention of state sponsorship would lead to calls for accountability and open inquiry into a history of sexual blackmail by intelligence agencies. “So if they had given even superficial treatment of those ties, it would have exposed threads that if anyone had bothered to pull on a little bit, would start to unravel a lot of things that obviously these powerful people and institutions don’t want exposed,” Webb said.

More than nine months since Epstein’s death, no alleged Epstein co-conspirator has been arrested or charged with a crime despite reports of an active criminal investigation of Maxwell (who has disappeared), and multiple failed attempts of alleged Epstein victims to serve her with civil suits.

“The criminal case against him, and all the evidence that was gathered against him as part of that, will never be made public unless someone else is charged,” said Webb. “So, the fact that they’re not charging anyone else is quite telling, and the fact that the mainstream media isn’t pushing back against that, I think is telling as well.”

The omissions of major aspects of the Epstein case by the media, specifically its links with the intelligence community, seems to be yet another example of a buffer between justice and those responsible for rendering Epstein untouchable.

Amid crushing US sanctions aimed at strangling its defense, aviation and nuclear development sectors, Iran is increasingly focused on ramping up high tech domestic missile defense production.

Ultimately it hopes to showcase its domestic military wares to signal the West that sanctions aren’t working. In its latest test Iran’s Navy displayed the abilities of newly developed land-to-sea and sea-to-sea cruise missiles.

The drills were conducted in the Sea of Oman and Indian Ocean this week, and involved live-fire tests against targets nearly 300km away, which Iranian media said were successful. 

Iranian state media hailed what it called “new-generation cruise missiles” which officials confirmed were “designed and developed by experts at home.”

“The coast-to-sea and sea-to-sea missiles were produced by experts at Iran’s Ministry of Defense in cooperation with the Navy,” PressTV described further.

Iran published photos and videos showing that a “dummy” ship had been successfully destroyed at ranges of up to 280km away.

#Iran’s naval forces successfully test domestically-built cruise missiles during military drills in the Sea of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean. pic.twitter.com/rZwGMAMw4W

— Press TV (@PressTV) June 18, 2020

Normally such tests amid still simmering US-Iran tensions in the Persian Gulf would be met with swift headline-grabbing condemnation out of the White House and State Department.

However, multiple domestic crises facing the Trump administration – not to mention other global hot zones like the India-China border clashes or the Korean peninsula situation – have made Iran’s provocative new tests barely a blip of the geopolitical radar.

It’s also likely Washington is less worried about Iran’s domestic missile response capabilities after recent disasters.

First there was the January accidental and tragic shoot down of the Ukrainian passenger jet, resulting in all 176 civilians on board killed. 

And more recently more than two dozen Iranian sailors were killed and injured in disastrous naval drills gone wrong when an Iranian ship mistakenly released a cruise missile on a ‘friendly’ ship also taking part in the drills. 

Authored by Stephen Miller via The American Institute for Economic Research,

Are we on the verge of a second wave of coronavirus infections? Is there a spike in infections in states that reopened first?

The only way to answer that question is to watch as the data roll in. Arguably the best data to look at to see if a second wave is beginning are the hospitalization numbers. The media frequently reports the biggest and most dramatic numbers, often devoid of context. The number of cases has been reported regularly since the early days of the pandemic, and yet we know that the number of cases can be misleading.

As more people are tested and re-tested for the virus, more results will come back positive, with the current number of confirmed cases exceeding 2 million in the U.S. But if we know anything, it is that increases in the number of confirmed cases do not accurately convey how quickly and widely the virus is spreading. Antibody tests and even the examination of sewage in some cities suggest that the number of infections is likely much higher than the number of confirmed cases. 

But on the other side, some of the confirmed cases are double-counted in some states partly because both antibody and active virus tests are being counted separately but then combined in the total number of cases. While the antibody tests have been criticized for their false positive rate, another criticism has been that the antibody studies can underreport infection rates because they are not sensitive enough to detect a past mild infection.

Overall, because the bulk of testing is focused on people who are the sickest and who face the greatest exposure, it seems reasonable to conclude that the true number of U.S. infections is substantially higher than the reported figure. But an attempt to estimate the true number of infections would be little better than a guess.

And this presents a problem with the daily updates. To say that a particular state or city is seeing a “spike” in cases is to say that recently they have had an uptick in positive test results. That could be due to more testing and more ways of testing, or it could be a hint of growth in the infection rate.

Better Data are Available

Rather than focus on test results, i.e. “cases,” it would make more sense to focus on how the virus affects society and our institutions, particularly the strain the virus puts on health care facilities and health care providers. An obvious measure, tracked since the beginning of the pandemic, is the number of deaths. As I and others at AIER have noted, the number of deaths is hard to interpret without important context. 

The coronavirus is obviously deadly, but how deadly it is seems to depend greatly on how it enters a population and the characteristics of that population. The virus has been far deadlier in New York than it has been in California, and has been most deadly in U.S. long-term care facilities. Among children, the coronavirus is considerably less deadly than seasonal influenza.

Nonetheless, deaths tell us something important about the virus’s impact on society. They profoundly affect entire social networks and are rightly emphasized in pandemic reporting. 

When it comes to seeing how things are going now, whether the pandemic is growing worse or fading, deaths are a lagging indicator. They do not begin to spike until infections have already been accelerating rapidly for many days, and they do not decline until well after the virus’s spread has slowed. 

The chart below shows that overall, deaths are clearly declining, although there is a weekly cycle where Sundays seem to result in relatively low death counts and Tuesdays and Wednesdays usually have the highest reported numbers. Overall, the past two weeks have had lower death totals than have been seen in the two months prior. But if a second wave were coming soon, we would not see the deaths from it yet.

Here is another look from the Washington Post. 

In addition to deaths, more attention has shifted to measuring coronavirus-related hospitalizations. Frustratingly, these data tend not to go back as far as numbers on confirmed cases or deaths, but in most states there are hospitalization figures going back over two months. The hospital data are measured two ways, the first being a cumulative measure, similar to the way confirmed cases and deaths are measured. 

The number can only go up as more hospitalizations are added to the total. From that number, the daily number of hospitalizations can be plotted; however that number is very noisy because the numbers are submitted at the state level in a variety of ways and do not seem to reflect the true numbers per day.

In other words, the hospitalization numbers seem to come in in clumps. They can be reported as weekly totals or weekly averages, as well. But a weakness of the cumulative data is that they do not tell us much about the burden on hospitals and health care workers. The total number of coronavirus hospitalizations increased dramatically, from zero to nearly 60,000 in a month nationally, and stayed high for weeks afterward. The chart below shows that the decrease in hospitalization has been fairly steady, and overall there is far less strain on the health care system than there was in mid-April.

The northeastern U.S. was hit hardest, but most states are either seeing declining or flat trends in hospitalizations, with a few notable exceptions such as North Carolina, Texas, and Arizona. But in those states the number of hospitalizations is still relatively low, a fraction of the totals that New York and New Jersey were seeing in April. Claims that Alabama, Georgia, and Florida are emerging “hotspots” are not supported by the hospitalization numbers despite media reports to the contrary.

There are some parts of the country still in the midst of the first wave of coronavirus infections, states that had very low numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in April, but are now beginning to see the virus spread more quickly. But those states are unlikely to see the kind of spread Northeastern states did, and there is hope the virus can be far less deadly going forward if policies can be implemented to better-protect the elderly and vulnerable, especially those living in long-term care facilities.

As excerpted from Bloomberg macro commentator Ye Xie

Beijing Sounds Alarm About Demise of Mighty Dollar

With all the money printing and borrowing, is this the beginning of a long decline for the dollar?

Clearly this is on the minds of some senior Chinese officials. Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, delivered a strong warning on the U.S. currency this week.

He made four points in a speech at the Lujiazhui Forum in Shanghai:

• A. The Fed is the de facto central bank of the world. When its policy targets its own economy without considering the spillover effect, the Fed is “very likely to overdraft the credit of the dollar and the U.S.”
• B. The pandemic may persist for a long period of time, and countries keep throwing money at the problem with a diminished impact. “It is recommended that you think twice and reserve some policy space for the future.”
• C. There is no free lunch. Watch out for inflation.
• D. Financial markets are disconnected from the real economy, and such distortions are “unprecedented.” It’s going to be “really painful,” when the policy withdrawal starts.

“Some people say: ‘Domestic debt is not debt, but external debt is debt. For the United States, even external debt is not debt. This seems to have been the case for quite some time in the past, but can it really last for a long time in the future?”

What will China do?

“China cherishes the conventional monetary and fiscal policies very much. We will not engage in flooding the system, nor will we engage in deficit monetization and negative interest rates.”

It’s not the first time China vented frustration against the “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar. After the financial crisis, then-PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan proposed using the SDR to replace the dollar as the main reserve currency.

It went nowhere. But this time, China seems to be determined to enhance its reserve-currency status by avoiding unconventional policies. It won’t dislodge the dollar tomorrow, but its attractiveness is clear in the foreign flows to its bond market.

Authored by Christophe Barraud

More details are emerging about the violent clash on Monday night along a disputed border between India and China high in the Himalayas, which has led to renewed tensions between the two countries. The incident came despite India and China have started to pull back their forces along the border after talks between senior military officials, according to India’s Army Chief Manoj Mukund Naravane on June 13.

According to Bloomberg, “in near sub-zero temperatures in the thin air of 15,000 feet, Chinese and Indian soldiers attacked each other with stones, iron rods and bamboo poles wrapped in barbed wire laced with nails. It is not clear what started the clashes, but by the time they were finished 20 Indian soldiers were dead, along with an unknown number of Chinese casualties.” CNN also confirmed that “they fought with fists, stones, and nail-studded bamboo poles.”

Indian media reported that the battle was fought after Indian troops tried to verify that Chinese soldiers had honoured a pledge to withdraw from a strategic position. The Economic Times noted that “according to one version, the CO (Commander Officer) had gone to the standoff point with a party of 50 men to check if the Chinese had retreated as promised. As the Indian side proceeded to demolish and burn illegal Chinese structures on its side of the LAC, including an observation post constructed on the South bank of the river, a fresh stand off took place as a large force of Chinese troops returned back.” The newspaper added “sources said that a Chinese force in excess of 250 quickly assembled near Patrol Point 14 and were physically stopped by Indian soldiers from entering Indian territory. Soldiers from both sides did not use firearms but the Chinese soldiers carried spiked sticks to attack.”

The Hindu reported that “the Indian Army on Tuesday said 20 Army personnel, including a Colonel, were killed on Monday night in the biggest-ever military confrontation between the two armies in over five decades.” It noted that “China has not yet talked about the number of casualties suffered by the People’s Liberation Army during the clash.” But revealed that “sources in the government are claiming that as per U.S. intelligence reports, the Chinese Army suffered 35 casualties during the violent clash with the Indian military in eastern Ladakh’s Galwan Valley.” “the figure could be a combination of total number of soldiers killed and seriously wounded”, the article added.

Meanwhile, India Today reported “Indian troops assaulted the Chinese post with brutal strength and seriously injured nearly 55-56 Chinese solider. Many casualties were inflicted at this point. Sources said there were many fatalities on the Chinese side but there was no confirmation on the exact number.”

Separately, although ABC news confirmed that “India has reported 20 Indian soldiers, including a colonel, have died of severe injuries in the dispute on Monday night local time”, it reported that “Indian news outlet ANI cited unnamed sources saying at least 43 Chinese troops were dead or seriously injured.”

All in all, the real number of Chinese casualties remain uncertain. When questioned about this topic, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said: “the border troops of the two sides are dealing with the specifics on the ground.” In addition, Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times, said in a Twitter post the Chinese side had suffered casualties. In another tweet, he underlined that his understanding is “the Chinese side doesn’t want people of the two countries to compare the casualties number so to avoid stoking public mood.”

Based on what I know, Chinese side also suffered casualties in the Galwan Valley physical clash. I want to tell the Indian side, don’t be arrogant and misread China’s restraint as being weak. China doesn’t want to have a clash with India, but we don’t fear it.

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) June 16, 2020

Chinese side didn’t release number of PLA casualties in clash with Indian soldiers. My understanding is the Chinese side doesn’t want people of the two countries to compare the casualties number so to avoid stoking public mood. This is goodwill from Beijing.

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) June 16, 2020

In this context, Xinhua reported that “Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi suggested on Wednesday that China and India strengthen communication and coordination on properly addressing the border situation and jointly maintain the peace and tranquility in the border areas.” However, he also blamed the Indians for the deadly border clash. The article highlighted that “in a telephone conversation with Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Wang said that Indian frontline border defense troops on Monday night blatantly broke the consensus reached at the commander-level talks between the militaries of the two sides.” “The hazardous move of the Indian army severely violated the agreement reached between the two countries on the border issue and the basic norms of international relations, he said, while voicing China’s strong opposition to the move of the Indian side.”

On the other hand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed India will defend its sovereignty in his first public statement. According to Bloomberg, “India wants peace,” Modi said in a televised address Wednesday. “But when provoked India will and is capable of giving an appropriate answer under any circumstances. And on the subject of our martyred, brave soldiers — the nation will be proud that they died while hitting back.”

Lastly, on the economic front, Bloomberg suggested that the clash posed “an escalation risks disruption for firms from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Xiaomi Corp. to Tata Motors Ltd. that have customers — and investors — in two of the world’s biggest economies.”

An escalation in the #IndiaChinaFaceOff risks disruption for firms from Alibaba and Xiaomi to Tata Motors that have customers—and investors—in two of the world’s biggest economies.https://t.co/zS4IYiEvnu

— Kaushik Vaidya (@KaushikVaidya) June 18, 2020

After maintaining a foreboding silence for roughly a day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a top Trump Administration official who was of course present for many of the episodes described by former NSA John Bolton in the salaciously leaked details from his book, which the White House is struggling to suppress on grounds it contains classified information.

In a statement entitled “I Was In The Room Too,” Pompeo slammed Bolton as a “traitor” who is spreading “fully-spun” lies. He also claimed Bolton “violated his sacred trust with [America’s] people”.

“I’ve not read the book, but from the excerpts I’ve seen published, John Bolton is spreading a number of lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods. It is both sad and dangerous that John Bolton’s final public role is that of a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people. To our friends around the world: you know President Trump’s America is a force for good in the world.”

President Trump’s twitter feed has been a non-stop stream of insults and quoted insults slamming the infamous neo-con and Bush-era relic whom President Trump brought in after pushing out HR McMaster, who stepped into the job during the first chaotic weeks of the Trump administration, as the White House was reeling from its first major scandal, the firing of Michael Flynn.

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday addressing the nation on police reforms amid widespread social unrest across many large metropolitan areas. As the president signed the order at the White House Rose Garden surrounded by law enforcement officers, he pointed out that a majority of homicides last year in Baltimore City went unsolved. 

“In many cases, local law enforcement is underfunded understaffed, and under support,” the president said. “Forty-seven percent of all murders in Chicago and 68% of all murders in Baltimore went without arrests last year.”

Current homicides trends in Baltimore City (data pulled from The Baltimore Sun) suggest 300 deaths could be seen for the fifth year in a row. With the city’s collapsing population, now around the 600k – on a per capita basis, the area is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. 

Homicides spiked across the metro area post-2015 riots. Since then, the city has never been the same, as residents continue to flee the downtown district in droves (similar to the “white flight” of the 1960s) – collapsing the total population to century lows as the inner city implodes. Let’s be frank, the implosion of the city is due to widespread wealth, health, and education inequalities of the African American community, some of the most severe in the nation. If not properly addressed, the city will dive further into chaos. 

When it comes to law and order, there is none of it on the east and west parts of the city. Drug gangs govern entire neighborhoods, and police tend to keep their distance as lawlessness thrives. Respect for police and government officials is at a low among many residents – the local economy has crashed, unemployment is high – the opioid crisis continues to rage – signaling there has been very little progress made in lifting these folks out of poverty who’ve been stuck in a multi-decade depression. 

In an attempt to reform the police and drive better relations with communities, the president’s order is shaped by three key components: “credentialing and certifying police departments, boosting information-sharing to better track officers with excessive use-of-force complaints and creating services for addressing mental health, drug addiction, and homelessness. But it doesn’t make federal funding conditional to those reforms, but instead potentially prioritizes some grants for departments that meet all those guidelines,” CBS News reported. 

“Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals,” the president said. 

When it comes to the numbers, WJZ Baltimore said the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) confirmed the president’s statistic that 68% of all murders in the area went unsolved in 2019. 

“Baltimore City police confirmed the president’s statistic Tuesday saying they had a 31% homicide clearance rate, or rate of closing cases, in 2019.

“A spokesperson said since Commissioner Michael Harrison arrived in 2019, the department has re-assessed assets and invested into the homicide unit, including 14 new investigators.

“Now, the department is focusing on staffing and reduction in caseloads for homicide.

“Additionally, the department is investing into accountability tools being put into place and the unit is building on Consent Decree policies and training.

“So far this year, the clearance rate is higher at 45%.” – WJZ Baltimore 

“The Baltimore Police Department recognizes the need to improve our Homicide clearance rate and continues to make the necessary changes to be more effective and efficient. There have been several important improvements made, which include not only increasing staffing levels and developing training but implementing necessary accountability measures to improve investigations. Improving the clearance rate involves collaboration with the community and other local, state, and federal partners, which the Baltimore Police Department is committed to continuing doing and expanding on,” BPD told WJZ. 

“Overall, BPD recognizes the need for continuous improvement and is up for the challenge of changing this narrative. Our department embraces reforms because the residents of our city deserve a world-class police force that inspires trust, ensures the safety and protects the constitutional rights of the people we serve. Rebuilding trust is critical to a safer Baltimore.” 

At a time when BPD needs all the assistance – City Council has voted to defund the police department by about $22 million and redirect the funding to public services. 

“This round of cuts that came with these hearings have demonstrated the will of the people,” Commissioner Michael Harrison said. “We are really kind of a basic functioning police department. There are impacts. Some of them could be negative.”

Defunding BPD as the city implodes could lead to decreased patrols and out of control violent crime. With that being said, it’s probably best to avoid the area as lawlessness continues. 

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: The Lancet recently retracted an anti-hydroxychloroquine study, which the media had used to attack Trump.

Trump had admitted to taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against the coronavirus. The media then went into a frenzy. The talking heads often cited The Lancet study as proof hydroxychloroquine was dangerous.

The bottom line is that bogus research made its way—likely deliberately—into one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. People then used this “science” as a political weapon.

What is your take on this?

Doug Casey: I’d say the whole charade is tragic, except that “tragic” has become the most overused word in the language today. It bears a short discussion.

Look at the recent death of a small-time career criminal, George Floyd. It’s as if “tragic” were part of his name. It’s as if people no longer understand the meaning of the word. A tragedy used to mean that a heroic protagonist succumbed to a cosmic force. There are no heroes in the degraded melodrama, just villains, where a costumed thug murdered a street thug under the color of law.

Sorry to go off on a tangent. But it’s a timely instance of another word whose meaning has been twisted. It’s Orwellian, like so many other things in our devolving society.

Let’s talk about something that’s actually tragic: the corruption of science over the last couple of generations.

I’ve subscribed to Scientific American, Discover, and New Scientist  for many years. During this time, I’ve noticed a distinct change in their respective editorial policies. They’ve all been politicized, captured by the PC left. These popular magazines are nowhere near the quality they once were. But this is just symptomatic of a bigger problem.

You might recall the 2018 hoax where three academics, disgusted with widespread incompetence and dishonesty in research, submitted absurd “spoof” papers to twenty leading journals. They were written in gobbledygook, full of made-up facts and flawed reasoning. But most, as I recall, were peer-reviewed and published.

If you research the subject a bit, you come to the conclusion half the peer-reviewed papers—absolutely in “soft” fields like psychology, sociology, political science, race and gender studies, etc.—are unreadable, dishonest, useless, and pointless.

Why might this be? If an academic wants to advance in today’s university system, he has to publish research. It’s Pareto’s Law in action, the 80–20 rule. It’s pretty reliable, 80% of this sort of thing is crap because it’s written mainly to fabricate credentials, not advance knowledge.

This is a bad thing.

It’s causing the average guy, who may not know anything about science but still has some respect for it, to lose that respect. That’s because science has become politicized.

You can see it with the conflicting information about COVID-19. Is it deadly or just another seasonal flu? Does it affect everyone, like the black death, or mainly the old and sick? Does almost everyone who contracts the virus get very sick or die or only a tiny percentage? Should you quarantine or live normally?

So far, as near as I can tell, the great virus hysteria has gone from being the next black plague to basically a big nothing. It’s not nearly as bad as the Asian Flu from the 50s or the Hong Kong Flu from the 60s. Forget about the Spanish Flu—there’s no comparison whatsoever. The main effect of COVID isn’t medical; it’s the hysteria that’s destroyed the economy. And political actions are even more insane than those after 9/11.

Politics thrives on hysteria. The politicization of everything is the real problem. And it’s not just about the total disruption of society and multitrillion-dollar deficits. For instance, I’ve played poker with a bunch of guys in Aspen every Monday night for years. Now, even though the lockdown in town is easing, the group is breaking up because most of them insist that everyone wear a mask. I won’t, nor will a couple of other guys. So, between that and a few guys who are now scared to socialize no matter what … game over. It may also mean the end of a larger Friday business lunch group I belong to that’s been around for decades.

There are millions of similar small rips in the social fabric taking place everywhere now. And they’re largely justified by “the science.”

The real problem is that the knock-on effects of the virus will last much, much longer than the trivial virus itself—which will soon burn out and be forgotten. The political, economic, and social changes, however, will linger for years, as will attitudes toward “science.”

International Man: What are the implications of people corrupting the scientific process to launder their political propaganda to shape mainstream opinions?

Doug Casey: You might think this is a new thing, but the left, in particular—who have always been advocates of social engineering— love using “science” to further their political agenda.

The first important instance of this was Karl Marx and his notion of “scientific socialism”—a totally bogus idea.

Since he first promoted it over 150 years ago, the concept has become ingrained in the culture, especially academia. People have been taught to believe there’s such a thing as “scientific socialism,” and that it’s not just inevitable, but desirable. In fact, it’s pseudoscience. But that’s just the first example of corruption of science in modern times.

Keynesianism is another example. Keynesians believe that they can manipulate the economy as if it were a machine.

A machine is a horrible analogy for the economy, however. It’s not a machine or a factory where you can pull levers to make magic happen—which is precisely what the Keynesians (who run the economic world today) think they can do.

The economy is more like a rainforest, which is very complex. It can’t be manipulated from outside by apparatchiks enforcing rules. And if you do try to manipulate a rainforest from outside, you’re likely to destroy it.

Keynesianism is a perfect example of scientism (that’s the use of the vocabulary and trappings of science for inappropriate subjects). You can see scientism used everywhere in the humanities and “soft” sciences. This is usually to legitimize some type of state intervention.

Sociology and psychology are basically about social engineering. They’re not generally scientific so much as scientistic. They often try to put a scientific patina on forcing people to interact with each other in prescribed ways.

But it goes way beyond just sociology and psychology. English departments are notorious for using leftist literary works to insinuate certain ideas in students. Economics departments use arcane math formulas to describe human action—pure scientism, with lots of ideological baggage. Marx himself was primarily a historian. Many college degrees today are completely bogus and worthless. An example? There are degrees in gender studies.

The trend is way out of control. Ridiculous scientific concepts that started with Marx are everywhere.

The same people—by that, I mean those with Marxist, socialist, and Keynesian outlooks—are behind the global warming frenzy, which is full of pseudoscience, fudged numbers, and bogus statistics.

The latest manifestation of all this, of course, is the COVID hysteria.

But behind it all is state funding of science—Big Science. It started in earnest after World War II.

Government funding is authorized by politicians. They make decisions for political reasons. In order to qualify, you have to come up with results that are politically acceptable, which itself is the best reason for not having any government funding.

But some might ask: Without the government, where would Big Science get the billions needed for giant projects?

In fact, most of the capital that goes into scientific research from the state would still go into science; knowledge has value. But money would be allocated economically, not politically, thereby creating more wealth—much more than today, when much is wasted on politically caused boondoggles. Most government science spending is necessarily misallocated.

The increasingly political nature of science funding has served to discredit the idea of science itself.

International Man: The Democrats liken themselves as the so-called “Party of Science.” What do you think?

Doug Casey: It’s nonsense, but it’s very clever marketing on their part.

They get away with it because the Republicans are basically the party of business. And more importantly, the people who vote Republican tend to be traditionalist and religion-oriented.

That’s a problem because scientific thinkers tend to see religion as irrelevant, dangerous, or even laughable—at best, as an inaccurate or bogus way to describe the world.

Democrats, on the other hand, are notoriously secular and non-religious. Coincidentally, so are most scientists. That’s resulted in some unfortunate confusion. Democrats, illogically, seem to believe that just because they’re secular, they must be scientific.

The fact is, however, that the Democrats are not the party of science.

In fact, they’re the party of pseudoscience, bogus science, and scientism. Science doesn’t mix well with politics—or religion.

But Democrats are clever marketers, linking themselves with science to differentiate themselves from Republicans, the party of tradition and religion.

When you think about tradition and religion, it can bring to mind flat earth theories, geocentric astronomy, Torquemada, the persecution of Galileo, and witch trials. Democrats love to paint themselves as rational advanced thinkers and Republicans as superstitious atavists.

Of course, religion and science have been at each other’s throats forever. Another reason I’ve always said the Dems are more the evil party and the Reps more the stupid party. But a pox on both their houses…

International Man: Events like this seem to be a prime reason why a growing number of people are losing confidence in previously credible institutions and the self-anointed “experts.”

What does this mean?

Doug Casey: Tens of millions now have college degrees that they think mean something. In fact, they’re worth less than a high school diploma was before World War 2. People go on to get PhDs, which, it’s always been said, stands for “piled higher and deeper.”

Especially since World War 2, government has gotten vastly bigger and involved in everything. Huge mistake…

The government’s role is simple—to protect people from coercion: protection from domestic coercion, which implies the police force; protection from transnational coercion, which implies an army; and providing justice within the country, which implies a judicial system.

The government shouldn’t do anything else.

But since it’s now involved in absolutely everything, you need “experts” to decide what’s to be done.

We see this today with people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who’s nothing more than a lifelong bureaucrat. He’s lived in the swamp his entire life, and he’s a typical technocrat. He believes he knows what’s best for you.

People like Fauci have assumed tremendous power over other people and the way society works. He’s a clever politician and has been effective at backslapping and backstabbing. And wheedling his way into a high bureaucratic position. The government is full of people like him.

Another important thing about COVID is that they call it a “health crisis.”

That’s untrue for several reasons. First, health is something that you take care of yourself. It’s personal, not public. As wonderful and as advanced as medicine has become, it’s of little use for maintaining your health.

You maintain your health through proper diet, exercise, and good habits. Medicine is about repairing damage if you have a serious injury or illness. It overlaps, obviously, but is essentially very different from health care.

Anyway, COVID has been dressed up as an excuse to not just destroy the economy, but in many ways, destroy society itself. Similar to global warming, Keynesianism, Marxism, and other forms of scientism.

It’s one of many signs of how society is degrading at an accelerating rate.

I don’t know what the next massive boondoggle is going to be after this is over. You might recall the police state pictured in the excellent movie “V for Vendetta” was brought into being because of a fake virus epidemic. Talk about life imitating art! If things keep going in this direction, the US will start looking like the old USSR.

International Man: Society is degrading at an accelerating pace. What can people do to protect themselves?

Doug Casey: Unfortunately, the whole world seems to worship democracy. Democracy, however, is really just mob rule dressed in a coat and tie. Worse, that trend is not only still in motion, but it’s accelerating.

What can you do to protect yourself? It’s becoming a situation of sauve qui peut—every man for himself. That’s where gold comes in.

I’ve always been a fan of gold—always for savings and often as a speculation. It’s been great, and gold bugs have done very well. It’s gone from $35 to over $1,700. And it’s going much higher.

It’s a great way to save money and build capital over time. At the moment, I’m speculating in gold mining stocks, which are extremely cheap. I expect the next mania to be in them.

But I don’t have any political solutions for people, except to stop looking to politics as the solution to problems. And stop acting like a bunch of chimpanzees looking for a leader.

Politics is the problem, the cause of most of today’s problems. It’s not the solution.

*  *  *

Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path that’s not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country but accelerating quickly toward boundless decay. It’s contributing to a growing wave of misguided socialist ideas. That is precisely why NY Times best selling author, Doug Casey just released this urgent new video titled The Most Dangerous Event of the 21st Century which outlines what comes next and what you need to do to be ready.

Click here to watch it now.

One of the curiosities about the current global financial crisis is that unlike the global financial crisis of 2008 when a massive credit injection by China sparked a generous reflationary wave around the world which pulled it out of a deflationary slump, this time around China has been far more modest as the following chart shows.

All that may be about to change.

Speaking in a financial forum in Shangha, China’s central bank governor Yi Gang said that China will keep liquidity ample in the second half of the year, but it should consider in advance the timely withdrawal of policy measures aimed at countering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The financial support during the epidemic response period is (being) phased, we should pay attention to the hangover of the policy,” Yi said. “We should consider the timely withdrawal of policy tools in advance.”

In other words, just like the Fed, China is pretending that whatever is coming will be temporary. Which, in a world of helicopter money will never again be the case.

But more importantly, we know that in order to boost its stagnating economy, China is about to unleash a historic credit injection: Yi said that new loans are likely to hit nearly 20 trillion yuan ($2.83 trillion) this year, up from a record 16.81 trillion yuan in 2019, and total social financing could increase by more than 30 trillion yuan ($4.2 trillion), or about 30% of GDP. A similar number for the US would be about $7 trillion which is more or less what the US deficit will be over the next 12 months.

In other words, we’re going to need a much bigger chart of China’s broad credit.

Yi added that the bank’s balance sheet remains stable around 36 trillion yuan.

While the PBOC has already rolled out a raft of easing steps since early February, including cuts in reserve requirements and lending rates and targeted lending support for virus-hit firms, it has yet to proceed with a major fiscal blast. Meanwhile, analysts expect the central bank to ease policy further to bolster economy.

An in an amusing tangent, Reuters reported that Guo Shuqing, chairman of the banking and insurance regulator, told the same forum that China will not monetize fiscal deficits – in other words launch full-blown quantitative easing – and will not adopt negative interest rates. We wonder how long this promise will be kept.

It takes time for global supply chains to recover, and economies around the world have to re-think how to exit from massive easing measures that were rolled out in response to the coronavirus pandemic, said Guo.