Germany Reimposes COVID-19 Lockdown As Global Cases Top 9 Million: Live Updates Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/23/2020 – 08:43
Summary:
Global case total tops 9 million
Dr. Fauci prepares to testify
Tennis superstar Novak Djokovic tests positive
Arizona sees positives top 20%
Georgia sees 7-day average climb toward records
Arizona sees 20% positivity rate among all tests
* * *
Late on Monday, public health officials confirmed that the world has passed another grim coronavirus milestone: More than 9.1 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University, breaking above 9 million for the first time as the world starts reporting between 150k and 200k cases per day as outbreaks in Brazil and the American sunbelt flare.
During what has become a particularly fraught moment in the US coronavirus outbreak, with cases are surging across the American sunbelt, Dr. Anthony Fauci and a handful of other senior public health officials, including the heads of the FDA and CDC, will testify before the House Commerce and Energy Committees. The good doctor has warned recently that too many young people in the US aren’t wearing masks or taking proper precautions, which is one reason why cases have surged, but deaths have remained somewhat subdued. His testimony is set to begin at 11amET.
As Dr. Fauci prepares to reiterate his warnings about the risks of the second wave, a new study suggests that while as many as 8.7 million Americans may have been infected with the coronavirus in March, more than 80% of them likely were never diagnosed. A team of researchers looked at the number of people who went to doctors or clinics with influenza-like illnesses that were never diagnosed as coronavirus, influenza or any of the other viruses that usually circulate during the winter months. It’s just the latest in a growing body of research suggesting that the outbreak began earlier, or was more virulent, than expected.
Over in Germany, the district of Gütersloh in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state now says that 1,553 workers at the giant Tönnies meat processing plant have contracted the coronavirus. The outbreak at the meat processing plant has hopelessly skewed Germany’s most critical metrics, and on Tuesday, officials in the area agreed to impose a brief lockdown on the district surrounding the plant, which they announced during a press conference earlier on Tuesday. The move marks the first imposition of a locally limited lockdown in the country, according to Al Jazeera.
The outbreak has prompted the closure of daycare centers and schools in the region and the Robert Koch Institute, a public health body, linked a spike in Germany’s overall coronavirus reproduction rate directly to the meat-processing plant. As numbers spike around the world, south and north America are leading the way with Brazil, currently posting between 30k and 50k cases per day, and the US, which is cranking out roughly 20k to 30k.
The global total on Tuesday passed 9.1 million, while the death toll topped 472k.
Numbers are spiraling around the world as countries work to contain the virus. After wrestling its outbreak under control, Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that this year’s hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to the city of Mecca that normally attracts about 2 million people, will be restricted to “very limited numbers” of people to try and contain the spread of the virus, according to the Washington Post.
Finally, in sports news, tennis superstar Novak Djokovic has tested positive for the coronavirus after world No 1 and fellow players ignored social distancing by partying and playing soccer and basketball during two events organized as part of his Adria Tour tennis project. Many critics stepped up to criticize the suffering player and his insistence in holding the events despite the coronavirus risk, which they’re now describing as “boneheaded.”
Starting Tuesday, some travelers at LAX will be asked to undergo a new experimental screening process long before they get to security checkpoints, with the new screening involving walking past cameras that can flag travelers with a fever, one of several new technologies being tested to try and root out potentially ill individuals who can spread the virus.
In other news, as confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Pakistan have nearly tripled over the past month, forcing aid groups to warn about the increasingly dire situation that is forcing hospitals to turn patients away, Pakistan is pushing ahead with its reopening after its lockdown attempts resulted in mass starvation, in some cases, while cases in India continue to climb at a near-record clip.
Another test showed that universities hoping to bring students back to campus in the fall will need to build out extensive programs to accommodate them like supplies of masks, hand sanitizer and other gear.
Meanwhile, as hospitalizations in the Houston area remain at record levels, and Florida sees its case count surge north of 100k with between 3k and 4k new cases being added per day, Georgia, infectious-disease specialists are warning that residents and state officials have not done nearly enough to curb a concerning uptick in infections.
A rolling seven-day average of cases has been trending upward since the beginning of June, reaching its highest total yet on Monday. In the past week, 1,073 Georgia residents were confirmed to have contracted the virus, bringing the total to almost 66,000 Georgians, while more than 2,600 people have died statewide. Hospitalizations have risen since the start of the month, too.
“What we’re seeing is that people are going out and just basically not realizing the virus is still there,” Carlos del Rio, a professor at Emory University, told reporters Monday, according to the Associated Press.
But that’s not all: In Arizona, more than 20% of those tested across the state came back positive for COVID-19 during the 24 hour period before Monday, officials reported.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3hSk2JW Tyler Durden
We are often told that law enforcement must have a way to get around strong encryption technologies in order to catch bad guys. Such a “backdoor” into security techniques would only be used when necessary and would be closely guarded so it would not fall into the wrong hands, the story goes.
The intelligence community does not yet have a known custom-built backdoor into encryption. But intelligence agencies do hold a trove of publicly unknown vulnerabilities, called “zero days,” they use to obtain hard-to-get data. One would hope that government agencies, especially those explicitly dedicated to security, could adequately protect these potent weapons.
A recently released 2017 DOJ investigation into a breach of the CIA Center for Cyber Intelligence’s (CCI) “Vault 7” hacking tools publicized in 2016 suggests that might be too big of an ask. Not only was the CCI found to be more interested in “building up cyber tools than keeping them secure,” the nation’s top spy agency routinely made rookie security mistakes that ultimately allowed personnel to leak the goods to Wikileaks.
The released portions of the report are frankly embarrassing. The CCI cyber arsenal was not appropriately compartmentalized, users routinely shared admin-level passwords without oversight, there seemed to be little controls over what content users could access, and data was stored and available to all users indefinitely. No wonder there was a breach.
It gets worse. Because the CIA servers lacked activity monitoring and audit capabilities, the agency did not even realize it was hacked until Wikileaks publicly announced it in March of 2017. As the report notes, if the hack was the result of a hostile foreign government like, say, China, the CIA might still be in the dark about the hack. Might there be other unknown breaches that fit this bill?
The report recommended several measures the CIA should take to shore up its internal defenses. Among the few that were not redacted: do a better job of protecting zero days and vetting personnel. Okay, so don’t make all of the same mistakes again: got it.
Well, it looks like even this goal was too ambitious for the CIA. Intelligence gadfly Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), who first publicized the report, wrote a letter Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stating that “the intelligence community is still lagging behind” three years after the report was first published. He demanded public answers for outstanding security problems in the intelligence community, such as a lack of basic practices like multi-factor and email authentication protocols.
What a snafu. It is absurd enough that the CIA of all places cannot even implement basic password protection programs. But when intelligence hacking units cannot even manage to protect its own hacking tools, our troubles multiply.
The CIA is unfortunately not uniquely incompetent among the intelligence community. The National Security Agency (NSA) found itself the victim of a similar zero day link in the 2016 Shadow Brokers dump. These are just two incidents that the public knows about. A culture of lax security practices invites attacks from all kinds of actors. We don’t know how many times such hacking tools may have been discovered by more secretive outfits.
Many policy implications follow. There is a strong case to be made that intelligence agencies should not hoard zero-day vulnerabilities at all but should report them to the appropriate body for quick patching. This limits their toolkit, but it makes everyone safer overall. Of course, foreign and other hostile entities are unlikely to unilaterally disarm in this way.
The intelligence community supposedly has a process for vetting which zero days should be reported and which are appropriate to keep secret, called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP). Agencies must describe a vulnerability to a board who decides whether it’s dangerous enough to need patching or useful enough for spying purposes.
For example, a vulnerability in some technology that is only used in China would probably be kept for operations. Theoretically, a vulnerability in some technology that is widely-used in the United States would be reported for fixing to keep Americans safe. As these incidents show, this does not always happen.
The VEP process is clearly insufficient, given these high-profile breaches. The very least the intelligence community can do is appropriately secure the bugs they’ve got. Efforts like Wyden’s seek to impose more accountability on these practices.
There’s a more general lesson about government efforts to improve security and privacy as well.
As implied earlier, we should strongly resist government efforts to compromise encryption in the name of law enforcement or anything else. Some of the most technically savvy government bodies cannot even secure the secret weapons they have not advertised. Can you imagine the attack vectors if they publicly attain some master encryption-breaking technique?
It also demonstrates the weaknesses of many top-down proposals to promote privacy or security. Government plans often attempt to sketch out master checklists that must be followed perfectly on all levels to work well. They can be time-consuming and burdensome, which means that personnel often cut corners and shirk accountability. Then when disaster inevitably strikes, the conclusion is that “people didn’t stick to the plan hard enough,” not that the plan was generally unrealistic to start.
There isn’t a lot that the public can do about seemingly out-of-control intelligence agencies failing to secure potent cyberweapons beyond making a fuss. “National security” and all that. But it does give us a powerful argument against granting more power to these insecure intelligence bodies to break strong encryption. Governments can’t even protect their secret cyber weapons. They almost certainly will not be able to protect a known backdoor into encryption.
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Yesterday I talked about one way that Lincoln created powerful sentences: he would start with big words derived from Latin, then finish with short words that have Saxon origins. The book from which this discussion comes also talks about Churchill and his way with words. He liked some of the same patterns that Lincoln did. A famous example:
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. —Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1940).
“Human conflict” is Latinate. Every word after it is Saxon. Simply put, the earlier part of the sentence has more complicated words than the later part. The first half sets up the ear for the second, which gains strength by contrast.
But Churchill also made great use of the reverse pattern: starting with simple words, then using language more complex to create a feeling of ascension.
You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. —Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1940).
What we will do is stated in the simplest conceivable language: 30 words in a row of one syllable apiece, every one of them at least partly Germanic. What we are fighting against is then stated in the opposite way: of the last 13 words of the main sentence, more than half are Latinate, and they create a sense of height and climax. The longer words also allow him to end with a flourish for the ear.
Look at the similar structure of this passage from a speech he gave a few weeks later:
The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity. —Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1940).
The good guys are depicted in short and sturdy words. The disastrous threat they faced is depicted in long and appalling ones.
These examples show that you don’t create rhetorical force by just keeping everything simple. You create it by combining simplicity and complexity in ways that take advantage of contrast. The contrasts can move your readers, or amuse them, or hold their attention, or drive a point home.
I’ll talk about another aspect of this theme tomorrow. If you’re enjoying this discussion, you can find more of it here.
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via IFTTT
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration violated the law when it attempted to rescind the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli slammed the decision as a “double standard,” asking: “Does anyone think they’d let @realDonaldTrump just make up ‘laws’ on sticky notes like @BarackObama?”
The answer is clear: Yes, they would. Indeed, just two days after Cuccinelli leveled this criticism, President Donald Trump announced that he will unilaterally impose new restrictions to block foreign workers from entering the country, despite decades-old laws allowing companies to hire foreign workers in certain circumstances.
Trump told Fox News Saturday that the restrictions would be “very tight” with “very little exclusion” for “a period of time.” The president may not be writing the law on sticky notes in his office, but he’s definitely making new laws from his Oval Office just the same—with zero congressional oversight and zero public debate and thrusting it on Americans with barely a day’s notice.
This latest executive sticky note isn’t unique. Trump has essentially rewritten all of U.S. immigration law to his liking. He is just two months removed from a ban on immigrant family members of Americans—a move he had proposed in legislation that failed in Congress. Like his latest restriction, this is supposedly going to “protect jobs.”
Even before COVID-19, the president blocked asylum seekers at the southern border and sharply restricted refugees. He rewrote high-skilled immigration procedures in ways that courts found violated the law. And who could forget his late-night ban on immigrants from a grab bag of majority-Muslim countries, issued just days into his presidency, and the chaos it unleashed at America’s airports?
That “Muslim ban” was a proving ground for all that followed. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in that case that “immigration, even for the President, is not a one-person show” and that Congress did not—and could not—have delegated the authority to the president to exclude anyone he wants. Yet the Supreme Court disagreed, and now, contrary to Cuccinelli, immigration is a one-man show.
A single man’s vision laid out in secret is a far cry from the founders’ vision of two branches of Congress robustly debating and carefully crafting laws in public.
Even the Supreme Court’s latest ruling doesn’t limit the president’s authority to terminate DACA. It just requires him to follow the procedures laid out in the law—namely, that he fully explains why he wants to do it. That’s about as low a bar for action as there can be.
But what about President Barack Obama? Did the Supreme Court let him “make up” immigration law too? No. DACA was never challenged in court under Obama, but a similar program was. When the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the program was illegal, an evenly divided Supreme Court affirmed that decision and the president backed off, immediately announcing that he would follow the ruling. We’ve seen no similar announcement from Cuccinelli or Trump about the Supreme Court’s DACA ruling.
The president’s latest action also puts to bed another common trope among immigration opponents: that they just want the laws on the books enforced. Turns out that many of them would prefer that laws allowing immigrants to come here not be enforced. Apparently, “enforcing the law” is fine only as long as it involves removing people from America.
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via IFTTT
We are often told that law enforcement must have a way to get around strong encryption technologies in order to catch bad guys. Such a “backdoor” into security techniques would only be used when necessary and would be closely guarded so it would not fall into the wrong hands, the story goes.
The intelligence community does not yet have a known custom-built backdoor into encryption. But intelligence agencies do hold a trove of publicly unknown vulnerabilities, called “zero days,” they use to obtain hard-to-get data. One would hope that government agencies, especially those explicitly dedicated to security, could adequately protect these potent weapons.
A recently released 2017 DOJ investigation into a breach of the CIA Center for Cyber Intelligence’s (CCI) “Vault 7” hacking tools publicized in 2016 suggests that might be too big of an ask. Not only was the CCI found to be more interested in “building up cyber tools than keeping them secure,” the nation’s top spy agency routinely made rookie security mistakes that ultimately allowed personnel to leak the goods to Wikileaks.
The released portions of the report are frankly embarrassing. The CCI cyber arsenal was not appropriately compartmentalized, users routinely shared admin-level passwords without oversight, there seemed to be little controls over what content users could access, and data was stored and available to all users indefinitely. No wonder there was a breach.
It gets worse. Because the CIA servers lacked activity monitoring and audit capabilities, the agency did not even realize it was hacked until Wikileaks publicly announced it in March of 2017. As the report notes, if the hack was the result of a hostile foreign government like, say, China, the CIA might still be in the dark about the hack. Might there be other unknown breaches that fit this bill?
The report recommended several measures the CIA should take to shore up its internal defenses. Among the few that were not redacted: do a better job of protecting zero days and vetting personnel. Okay, so don’t make all of the same mistakes again: got it.
Well, it looks like even this goal was too ambitious for the CIA. Intelligence gadfly Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), who first publicized the report, wrote a letter Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stating that “the intelligence community is still lagging behind” three years after the report was first published. He demanded public answers for outstanding security problems in the intelligence community, such as a lack of basic practices like multi-factor and email authentication protocols.
What a snafu. It is absurd enough that the CIA of all places cannot even implement basic password protection programs. But when intelligence hacking units cannot even manage to protect its own hacking tools, our troubles multiply.
The CIA is unfortunately not uniquely incompetent among the intelligence community. The National Security Agency (NSA) found itself the victim of a similar zero day link in the 2016 Shadow Brokers dump. These are just two incidents that the public knows about. A culture of lax security practices invites attacks from all kinds of actors. We don’t know how many times such hacking tools may have been discovered by more secretive outfits.
Many policy implications follow. There is a strong case to be made that intelligence agencies should not hoard zero-day vulnerabilities at all but should report them to the appropriate body for quick patching. This limits their toolkit, but it makes everyone safer overall. Of course, foreign and other hostile entities are unlikely to unilaterally disarm in this way.
The intelligence community supposedly has a process for vetting which zero days should be reported and which are appropriate to keep secret, called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP). Agencies must describe a vulnerability to a board who decides whether it’s dangerous enough to need patching or useful enough for spying purposes.
For example, a vulnerability in some technology that is only used in China would probably be kept for operations. Theoretically, a vulnerability in some technology that is widely-used in the United States would be reported for fixing to keep Americans safe. As these incidents show, this does not always happen.
The VEP process is clearly insufficient, given these high-profile breaches. The very least the intelligence community can do is appropriately secure the bugs they’ve got. Efforts like Wyden’s seek to impose more accountability on these practices.
There’s a more general lesson about government efforts to improve security and privacy as well.
As implied earlier, we should strongly resist government efforts to compromise encryption in the name of law enforcement or anything else. Some of the most technically savvy government bodies cannot even secure the secret weapons they have not advertised. Can you imagine the attack vectors if they publicly attain some master encryption-breaking technique?
It also demonstrates the weaknesses of many top-down proposals to promote privacy or security. Government plans often attempt to sketch out master checklists that must be followed perfectly on all levels to work well. They can be time-consuming and burdensome, which means that personnel often cut corners and shirk accountability. Then when disaster inevitably strikes, the conclusion is that “people didn’t stick to the plan hard enough,” not that the plan was generally unrealistic to start.
There isn’t a lot that the public can do about seemingly out-of-control intelligence agencies failing to secure potent cyberweapons beyond making a fuss. “National security” and all that. But it does give us a powerful argument against granting more power to these insecure intelligence bodies to break strong encryption. Governments can’t even protect their secret cyber weapons. They almost certainly will not be able to protect a known backdoor into encryption.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3etwRbp
via IFTTT
Yesterday I talked about one way that Lincoln created powerful sentences: he would start with big words derived from Latin, then finish with short words that have Saxon origins. The book from which this discussion comes also talks about Churchill and his way with words. He liked some of the same patterns that Lincoln did. A famous example:
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. —Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1940).
“Human conflict” is Latinate. Every word after it is Saxon. Simply put, the earlier part of the sentence has more complicated words than the later part. The first half sets up the ear for the second, which gains strength by contrast.
But Churchill also made great use of the reverse pattern: starting with simple words, then using language more complex to create a feeling of ascension.
You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. —Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1940).
What we will do is stated in the simplest conceivable language: 30 words in a row of one syllable apiece, every one of them at least partly Germanic. What we are fighting against is then stated in the opposite way: of the last 13 words of the main sentence, more than half are Latinate, and they create a sense of height and climax. The longer words also allow him to end with a flourish for the ear.
Look at the similar structure of this passage from a speech he gave a few weeks later:
The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity. —Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1940).
The good guys are depicted in short and sturdy words. The disastrous threat they faced is depicted in long and appalling ones.
These examples show that you don’t create rhetorical force by just keeping everything simple. You create it by combining simplicity and complexity in ways that take advantage of contrast. The contrasts can move your readers, or amuse them, or hold their attention, or drive a point home.
I’ll talk about another aspect of this theme tomorrow. If you’re enjoying this discussion, you can find more of it here.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3eq9ZcU
via IFTTT
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration violated the law when it attempted to rescind the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli slammed the decision as a “double standard,” asking: “Does anyone think they’d let @realDonaldTrump just make up ‘laws’ on sticky notes like @BarackObama?”
The answer is clear: Yes, they would. Indeed, just two days after Cuccinelli leveled this criticism, President Donald Trump announced that he will unilaterally impose new restrictions to block foreign workers from entering the country, despite decades-old laws allowing companies to hire foreign workers in certain circumstances.
Trump told Fox News Saturday that the restrictions would be “very tight” with “very little exclusion” for “a period of time.” The president may not be writing the law on sticky notes in his office, but he’s definitely making new laws from his Oval Office just the same—with zero congressional oversight and zero public debate and thrusting it on Americans with barely a day’s notice.
This latest executive sticky note isn’t unique. Trump has essentially rewritten all of U.S. immigration law to his liking. He is just two months removed from a ban on immigrant family members of Americans—a move he had proposed in legislation that failed in Congress. Like his latest restriction, this is supposedly going to “protect jobs.”
Even before COVID-19, the president blocked asylum seekers at the southern border and sharply restricted refugees. He rewrote high-skilled immigration procedures in ways that courts found violated the law. And who could forget his late-night ban on immigrants from a grab bag of majority-Muslim countries, issued just days into his presidency, and the chaos it unleashed at America’s airports?
That “Muslim ban” was a proving ground for all that followed. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in that case that “immigration, even for the President, is not a one-person show” and that Congress did not—and could not—have delegated the authority to the president to exclude anyone he wants. Yet the Supreme Court disagreed, and now, contrary to Cuccinelli, immigration is a one-man show.
A single man’s vision laid out in secret is a far cry from the founders’ vision of two branches of Congress robustly debating and carefully crafting laws in public.
Even the Supreme Court’s latest ruling doesn’t limit the president’s authority to terminate DACA. It just requires him to follow the procedures laid out in the law—namely, that he fully explains why he wants to do it. That’s about as low a bar for action as there can be.
But what about President Barack Obama? Did the Supreme Court let him “make up” immigration law too? No. DACA was never challenged in court under Obama, but a similar program was. When the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the program was illegal, an evenly divided Supreme Court affirmed that decision and the president backed off, immediately announcing that he would follow the ruling. We’ve seen no similar announcement from Cuccinelli or Trump about the Supreme Court’s DACA ruling.
The president’s latest action also puts to bed another common trope among immigration opponents: that they just want the laws on the books enforced. Turns out that many of them would prefer that laws allowing immigrants to come here not be enforced. Apparently, “enforcing the law” is fine only as long as it involves removing people from America.
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Seattle Mayor Folds On ‘Summer Of Love’ – Moves To Dismantle CHOP Protest Zone After Shootings Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/23/2020 – 08:24
Faced with growing pressure to crack down on the “occupied” protest zone following two weekend shootings, Seattle’s mayor said Monday that officials will move to wind down the blocks-long span of city streets taken over two weeks ago.
As AP reports, Mayor Jenny Durkan said at a news conference that the violence was distracting from changes sought by thousands of peaceful protesters seeking to address racial inequity and police brutality. She said the city is working with the community to bring the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” zone to an end.
“The cumulative impacts of the gatherings and protests and the nighttime atmosphere and violence has led to increasingly difficult circumstances for our businesses and residents,” Durkan said.
“The impacts have increased and the safety has decreased.”
As JustTheNews.com’s John Solomon notes, the announcement was a remarkable turnabout for a Democratic mayor who received significant criticism for allowing rioters and protesters to take control of the neighborhood two weeks ago and then suggesting on CNN that the CHOP might become the epicenter of a long “summer of love.”
“After days of peaceful demonstrations, two nights of shootings have clearly escalated the situation on Capitol Hill,” Durkan’s office said in a statement.
“We have been meeting with residents and small business owners to address their safety and disorder concerns, including the ability of first responders to access emergencies in the area…
As many community groups are also urging, (the) Mayor believes individuals can and should peacefully demonstrate, but the message cannot be lost in the violence.”
Andre Taylor, who founded of the anti-police-shooting organization Not This Time! after his brother was killed by Seattle police in 2016, said Monday that he had warned protest organizers that the city would need to retake the area because of the violence.
“That CHOP area is attracting this kind of activity and it’s unsafe,” Taylor said in a Facebook video.
“I told them, ‘All those people that were supporting you guys, they’re going to start walking away from you, especially all those white people that were following you…
They don’t want to be associated with any part of that violence.”
Trump, who had tweeted that the area was being run by “anarchists” has previously criticized Durkan and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, both Democrats, for not taking control of the area sooner.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2No2MOE Tyler Durden
Crazy Overnight Session Ends With Another Futures Rally Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/23/2020 – 08:14
To anyone who had tight stops heading into the overnight session: our condolences.
Futures were lazily levitating higher in the early after-hours session, when one phrase out of place prompted the fastest plunge since March, sending the ES down 60 points in minutes after Trump’s trade advisor and China hawk Peter Navarro responded to a long question by Fox News interviewer Martha MacCallum asking whether aspects of the deal were “over” by saying: “It’s over. Yes“, linking the breakdown in part to anger over Beijing not sounding the alarm earlier about the coronavirus outbreak. That’s all the algos needed to send risk assets, the Chinese yuan and bond yields, plunging.
However, the digital ink on triggered stop loss alerts was not even dry yet, before a just a violent reversal took place, when Navarro – seeing the dire impact his words had on stocks – said the remark was taken “wildly” out of context, which was followed shortly after by Trump who tweeted that the deal was “fully intact.”
That result was nothing less than a stop-busting nuclear bomb which left virtually anyone who had any tight or trailing stops overnight with substantial losses.
European stocks levitated sharply higher, with banks, carmakers and technology shares leading gains, while the euro almost got above $1.13 and Italian and Spanish government debt benefitted in the bond markets. Euro zone PMIs recovered to 47.5 from May’s 31.9 and April’s record low of 13.6. The future output index, which had been below the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction for three months, recovered to 55.7 from 46.8 too.
“PMIs are coming in much better than expected and are another bullish arrow pushing markets back to the highs of May,” said CMC Markets senior analyst Michael Hewson. “The bar for second lockdowns is going to be a lot higher as well, so a second wave (of COVID-19 infections) is not going to be nearly as damaging economically as the first wave.”
The Stoxx 600 Automobiles & Parts Index rises as much as 3.8% and was the best-performing subgroup on the wider European gauge on Tuesday amid a market rally, led by French stocks including Renault and Peugeot. SXAP +3.4% as of 12:34pm CET; best performers on the SXAP include: Renault +7.1%, PSA Group +6.7%, Faurecia +5.5%, Fiat +5.2%, Nokian Renkaat +5.3%, Valeo +4.9%, VW +3.9%
Asian stocks also gained, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng ending up about 1.6% after the early trade deal wobbles, South Korea’s KOSPI index added 0.2% and Japan’s Nikkei climbed 0.5% Communications and consumer discretionary sector led the gains. The Topix gained 0.5%, with Yasunaga and UMC Electronics rising the most. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.2%, with Jiangsu Lugang Culture and Anhui Golden Seed Winery posting the biggest advances. China on Tuesday reported 22 new coronavirus cases, of which 13 were located in Beijing, and the city’s government has started to restrict people from moving to help contain the outbreak.
World stocks have rallied since hitting a low in March amid worries about the jolt to the global economy from the coronavirus-driven shutdown. Ord Minnett investment advisor John Milroy said equity market sentiment was positive despite ongoing bursts of volatility across regional markets.
“It’s worth noting our clients here have been net buyers since the depths of market despair,” Milroy told Reuters from Sydney. “I should think any pullback would be a catalyst for that pattern to resume, the conversations that I am having with clients is all about what to buy not what to sell.” Maybe all of his clients are 18-year-old Robinhooders.
In rates, long-end Treasuries are cheaper by 3bp-4bp as U.S. stock futures extended Monday’s advance, with S&P 500 E-minis testing Friday’s highs. Treasury auction cycle beings at 1pm ET with 2-year note sale, followed by 5- and 7-year notes Wednesday and Thursday. Front-end yields remain little changed, steepening 2s10s by ~2bp, 5s30s by ~3bp; 10-year yields around 0.727%, cheaper by ~2bp on the day, while bunds lag by ~1bp following strong European PMIs. Today’s $46BN 2-year note auction is $2b larger than last month’s, which tailed by 0.2bp; WI yield ~0.195% is ~1.7bp cheaper than May’s record low stop (0.178%).
In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index reversed an earlier gain and the greenback fell against most of its Group-of-10 peers, as haven demand waned after President Trump said the phase one trade deal with China remained “fully intact.” Risk currencies recovered after earlier being sold aggressively after Navarro was reported as saying that the U.S. trade deal with China is “over.”
Gold, which initially rose on Navarro’s remarks, then sold off on the clarification, but has since rebounded as the dollar sang, while risk-sensitive currencies staged a recovery aided by a softer dollar.
“The saving grace for markets is liquidity, which is in abundance and will offer a backstop as the bulls and bears stage a tussle and cause market volatility,” said Vasu Menon, Singapore-based senior investment strategist at OCBC Bank Wealth Management.
Despite Trump’s assurances on Tuesday, Menon expects U.S.-China tensions to escalate in the run-up to the U.S. elections. “So expect markets to be very bumpy in second half of this year because of the double whammy from COVID-19 and U.S.-China tensions.”
In commodities, oil pared its decline from a three-month high as investors turned their attention back to improving demand and easing supply after the market was momentarily roiled by the U.S.-China trade confusion. Brent was up 30 cents at a more than three-month high of $43.33, while WTI was up above $41 a barrel.
PMIs on manufacturing and services are due, as well as data on new home sales. Scheduled earnings include IHS Markit and La-Z-Boy
Market Snapshot
S&P 500 futures up 0.5% to 3,127.75
STOXX Europe 600 up 1.5% to 367.97
MXAP up 0.7% to 160.27
MXAPJ up 1% to 518.28
Nikkei up 0.5% to 22,549.05
Topix up 0.5% to 1,587.14
Hang Seng Index up 1.6% to 24,907.34
Shanghai Composite up 0.2% to 2,970.62
Sensex up 1.1% to 35,277.77
Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 0.2% to 5,954.41
Kospi up 0.2% to 2,131.24
German 10Y yield rose 2.3 bps to -0.416%
Euro up 0.2% to $1.1286
Brent Futures up 1% to $43.52/bbl
Italian 10Y yield fell 6.9 bps to 1.16%
Spanish 10Y yield rose 0.2 bps to 0.463%
Brent Futures up 0.6% to $43.33/bbl
Gold spot unchanged at $1,754.48
U.S. Dollar Index down 0.2% to 96.88
Top Overnight News from Bloomberg
Less than 15% of funds made available by governments in Europe via banks as loan guarantees for business has been used, according to figures from seven of region’s largest economies compiled by Bloomberg News
Spain is weighing plans to significantly increase the size of its 100 billion-euro ($113 billion) loan-guarantee fund after the program attracted huge demand from businesses struggling to weather the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter
The June Purchasing Managers Index from IHS Markit showed an improvement at the eurozone’s manufacturers and service firms, and confidence at the highest since February. It also had plenty of reason for caution, with the headline number still signaling contraction, new orders declining and employment falling
Japan is aiming to conclude its current trade negotiations with the U.K. by the end of next month, according to a Japanese government official familiar with the talks
The Indian and Chinese militaries arrived at a mutual consensus during Lieutenant General-level talks to disengage from eastern Ladakh, Press Trust of India reported, citing people it didn’t identify
Asian equity markets traded positive overall following the tech led gains stateside where Apple shares advanced amid its Worldwide Developers Conference and the Nasdaq notched a record closing high, although gains in the broader market were limited given the rising infection rates in some US states and as US-China tensions persisted. Furthermore, risk sentiment saw a bout of volatility overnight after comments from White House Trade Adviser Navarro circulated in which the known China hawk reportedly stated that the trade deal with China is over and cited the breakdown was due to Beijing not alerting the US about the coronavirus outbreak sooner. This triggered a risk averse tone across Asian bourses and dragged the Emini S&P and DJIA futures below the 3100 and 26000 levels respectively, although the moves were then reversed after Navarro noted that his comments were taken out of context and were concerning trust, not the Phase 1 trade deal which remains in place. As such, ASX 200 (+0.2%) and Nikkei 225 (+0.5%) swung between gains and losses before recovering back from the dip amid the turbulence from Navarro’s comments on the trade deal, which President Trump also clarified was still intact and that he hopes China will live up to the terms. Elsewhere, the Hang Seng (+1.6%) and Shanghai Comp. (+0.2%) were susceptible to the erroneous trade commentary and eventually kept afloat following another firm liquidity operation by the PBoC, although upside in the mainland was limited by lingering tensions after the US designated 4 Chinese media outlets as foreign missions and US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin suggested the possibility of a future decoupling from China. Finally, 10yr JGBs were choppy as stocks whipsawed but then returned flat after the dust settled, with demand hampered by the eventual broad upbeat tone in stocks and with the BoJ only present in the market today for Treasury Discount Bills.
Top Asian News
Tencent Smashes Record High After Stock’s $307 Billion Rebound
India Urgently Seeks Russian Missile System After China Clash
Singapore Calls for General Elections Amid Pandemic
Defying Dire Predictions, China Is the Bubble That Never Pops
European stocks remain on a firmer footing early-doors [Euro Stoxx 50 +2.0%], having had seen a bout of selling overnight amid comments from White House Trade Adviser Navarro who, in his initial remarks, deemed the China trade deal “over”, before the official, alongside US President Trump, walked back on the remarks prompting a recovery in sentiment. Stocks continue grinding higher following the raft of flash PMIs for Europe, which showed sentiment among respondents less dire than expected MM, and as such the region saw a leg higher in which DAX cash (+1.9%) briefly eclipsed 12500 to the upside whilst the CAC (+1.5%) reclaimed 5000 to the upside. Broader sectors are all in the green with a more cyclical bias as defensives underperform, whilst the breakdown paints a similar picture with healthcare towards the bottom of the pile whilst Auto, Banks, Insurance and IT lead the gains, with the latter possibly propped up on Apple’s performance following its WWDC conference – Travel and Leisure however remains relatively subdued vs. the broad performance in cyclicals. In terms of individual movers, Wirecard (+15%) shares consolidate following recent hefty back-to-back losses as the scandal deepens, whilst the latest reports note of the detention of former CEO Braun amid accusations of inflating the group’s balance sheet and revenue. Meanwhile, reports of a tie-up with Deutsche Bank (+1.9%), which was swiftly terminated last year, did little to influence price action. Elsewhere, Hikma Pharmaceuticals (-7.0%) holds onto losses as shareholder Ingelheim is to exit the entirety of his 16.45% stake in the group. Bayer (+6.2%) shares opened higher after the Co. won a court ruling which blocks the state mandate for glyphosate products to carry a warning in the state of California – further upside was spuured amid reports Co. are reportedly close to a settlement agreement with glyphosate plaintiffs, board are to discuss and vote on such a settlement in the coming days, a settlement could be worth USD 8-10bln.
Top European News
Europe Leaves $2 Trillion on the Table in Virus Recession Fight
Spain Weighs Major Boost to $113 Billion Loan Guarantee Plan
U.K. Carmakers Seek State Aid With Pandemic Threatening Jobs
Wirecard’s Former CEO Braun Arrested in Accounting Scandal
In FX, GBP/EUR – The Pound and Euro tested resistance against the Dollar around 1.2500 and 1.1300 respectively in wake of preliminary UK and Eurozone PMIs, as all sectors in France returned to growth alongside UK manufacturing, while the rest comfortably exceeded forecasts to underpin economic recovery expectations. Stops are said to have been tripped in Cable above 1.2507, but not to the extent that a Fib or the 21 DMA were seriously threatened and Eur/Usd extended gains after breaching the 200 HMA (1.1261) on the way through a Fib retracement (1.1295) before fading just above the big figure. Hence, Eur/Gbp is holding within a 0.9070-20 range amidst more COVID-19 cases in Germany and the RKI warning about a potential 2nd wave given that the R value remains elevated.
CHF/AUD/NZD – All firmer vs the Greenback, as the DXY pivots 97.000 ahead of US Markit PMIs and new home sales data, with the Franc probing 0.9450, Aussie back on the 0.6900 handle and Kiwi hovering just shy of 0.6500 following divergent moves overnight on the back of hastily retracted or clarifies remarks made by US Trade Advisor Navarro to the effect that the Phase 1 deal with China is over. Note also, Aud/Usd is also well off lows following much improved CBA PMIs and Moody’s reaffirming the sovereign’s AAA rating with a stable outlook, but Usd/Chf has not really been impacted by comments from SNB’s Zurbruegg reiterating that there is no upper limit for the balance sheet. However, Nzd/Usd will be prone to any tweaks in RBNZ policy guidance on Wednesday as the markets are not anticipating rates to be adjusted.
CAD/JPY – The Loonie and Yen are lagging after Usd/Cad failed penetrate bid/support at 1.3500 and Usd/Jpy only declined to 106.75 on the aforementioned negative US-China headlines before returning to pivot 107.00 again. For the record, mixed Japanese PMIs were largely overlooked, but the upcoming BoJ Summary of Opinions may provide some independent impetus beyond broader risk sentiment.
SCANDI/EM – The Nok and Sek are outperforming on a combination of improved risk appetite and firm crude prices, with the former towards the upper end of a 10.8890-7360 band vs the Eur and latter edging above 10.5000 in advance of Sweden’s latest Economic Tendency Survey due on Wednesday. Similarly, most EM currencies are trading higher and even the Zar awaiting tomorrow’s SA budget review, while the Brl will be looking for direction via BCB minutes and Huf from the NBH that is seen standing pat.
In commodities, WTI and Brent crude futures wobbled overnight amid Navarro’s initial comments which prompted WTI and Brent futures below USD 40/bbl and USD 42.50/bbl respectively before the benchmarks recoiled on the rebuttal of the comments, albeit prices failed to completely reverse the move. Nonetheless, a broad improvement in EZ flash PMIs underpinned risk and sees the benchmarks approach USD 41.50/bbl and USD 44.00/bbl to the upside. On the OPEC front, some desks note that the fact OPEC+ is haggling under-complying countries for plans to make up for their poor performance does offer markets some confidence that compliance could improve, but tail risks remain given the absence of an enforcement mechanism. News flow specifically for the complex remains light early doors with eyes more so on broader macro narratives ahead of the weekly inventory data later today. On this, forecasts are looking for a headline build of 2mln BPD. Spot gold, meanwhile, has been trading in tandem with the USD post-Navarro, which saw the yellow metal print a high of USD 1760/oz ahead of its 18th May high at USD 1765/oz. Copper prices mimic the gains in stocks having had seen a blip lower on the initially Navarro headlines.
US Event Calendar
9:45am: Markit US Manufacturing PMI, est. 50, prior 39.8; Services PMI, est. 48, prior 37.5; Composite PMI, prior 37
10am: New Home Sales, est. 640,000, prior 623,000; New Home Sales MoM, est. 2.73%, prior 0.6%
10am: Richmond Fed Manufact. Index, est. -2, prior -27
DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
My new posh desk arrives at home today so if you’re looking for peak WFH this might be it. My office was the final room in the house to be decorated and my wife has styled it around a theme of eccentric English gentleman (I’m not sure if that’s a hint of her thoughts about her husband). Her signature calling card is a zebra in a bowler hat coming out of one of the walls. It’s not been screwed in yet but I’ll be sure to record a new research video when it has been so you can all work out whether she has lost her mind or is a design genius. I have my own suspicions.
On the last day of my cheap desk from Amazon, yesterday saw a continuation of the divergent news between the US and Europe on the coronavirus, with the US continuing to see relatively large amounts of new cases in many states just as parts of Europe achieves new lows in terms of case numbers. The total number of global confirmed cases passed 9 million yesterday. It took eight days for the most recent million, which was the fastest yet even if the percentage gap between millions gets smaller. The immense new caseloads in South America and India as well as the new hotspots in the US have caused the global improvement in case suppression to plateau. The 7-day average of daily case growth globally has evened off at roughly 1.75-2.0% per day over the last 30 days after previous steadily falling from its 12% peak in March. Don’t forget the latest case and fatality tables appear in the pdf if you click “view report” at the top.
Starting with the US and daily new cases are getting closer to their March/April peaks in absolute terms now with the 5-day average at around 30k per day – up 10k this month and only 2-3k below its spring peaks. In terms of the hotspots, in Florida the total number of cases yesterday rose above 100,000, even if the growth rate of 3% on the previous day was somewhat below the previous 7-day average growth of 3.7%. The Mayor of Miami has slowed down the city’s reopening and now mandated that everyone wears masks in public. Elsewhere in the US, Texas reported that their positivity rate for covid testing has risen to almost 9%, after being as low as 4.5% in late May. Cases in the state have risen by 4.2% in the last day and by 3.9% on average over the last week and 2.4% the week before. Governor Abbott, who has been ardent for reopening the economy up quickly said “Closing down Texas again will always be the last option”. However he has ordered state regulators to shut down bars and restaurants that are not enforcing CDC guidelines. Elsewhere California continues to have mixed news. The most populous US state recorded record daily infections over the weekend, but is not seeing large case growth everywhere. San Francisco has moved up their next phase of reopening to June 29th from what was initially mid-July, after registering very low case numbers in recent days (only one case cited in the county yesterday). Residents will make the final decision about whether the economy will truly reopen though, and the increasing case counts around the country could very well lead to lower economic activity, but this time out of personal choice rather than governmental decree.
In more positive news however, the UK announced that the number of new daily cases fell below 1,000 for the first time since the full lockdown was imposed back on March 23rd, albeit slightly flattered by weekend reporting. Today we’re expecting that Prime Minister Johnson will make a statement to the House of Commons, where he’ll outline a further easing of coronavirus restrictions. Discussion has centered round an announcement that the hospitality sector will be able to reopen from 4 July, as well as a possible relaxation in the 2m social-distancing rule. Meanwhile in the Netherlands, no new deaths were reported in the country for the first time since March 12th. As countries continue to reopen, focus continues to shift toward restarting economies. Last night, Spain was reportedly considering increasing the size of its €100bn loan guarantee fund by as much as a further €50bn after the program attracted huge demand from businesses.
Even as the narratives surrounding the virus are seemingly more worrisome for the US than Europe, US equities went back to outperforming those in Europe yesterday. Looking in more depth, the S&P 500 ended the session up +0.65%, supported by the outperformance of tech stocks, as the NASDAQ closed up +1.11%. The tech-centric index finished higher for the seventh day in a row, the longest streak since December 26 when it capped off 11 positive sessions. On the other hand Europe underperformed, with the STOXX 600 seeing a -0.76% decline, as bourses fell across the continent. Once again, Wirecard stood out, being the worst performer on the STOXX 600 for the 3rd day running thanks to another -45.98% fall, which brings the company’s losses to over -87% compared with its closing level only last Wednesday. It came after the company’s management board said in a statement on Monday morning that the €1.9bn that had gone missing might not exist.
The narrative has shifted overnight to some curious comments from White House trade advisor Peter Navarro. A few hours ago, Navarro said that the trade deal with China is “over” and he linked the breakdown in part to Washington’s anger over Beijing not sounding the alarm earlier about the coronavirus outbreak. He also said that “So I think that this election is going to be about jobs, China, and law and order.” However, within an hour Navarro clarified that his comments were taken out of context and added that he was trying to make a point about ‘Trust’. Subsequently, President Trump tweeted that “The China Trade Deal is fully intact. Hopefully they will continue to live up to the terms of the Agreement!” Futures on the S&P 500 were down as much as -1.6% after the initial comment by Navarro but have fully retraced since Trump’s tweet. Elsewhere, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin told Fox Business overnight that “There may be a time when we have decoupling” of trade from China, “That’s something that the president may consider.”
Asian markets also swung around with the headlines. The Nikkei (+0.81%), Hang Seng (+0.97%), Shanghai Comp (+0.17%) and Kospi (+0.41%) are now up after all bourses dipped into the red following Navarro’s comments. In FX, the Japanese yen is down -0.27% after initially gaining on the comments. Elsewhere, WTI crude oil prices are down -0.61% to $40.48.
In other overnight news, the SCMP reported this morning that EU leaders have warned Chinese president Xi Jinping of “very negative consequences” over Beijing’s plan to introduce a national security law in Hong Kong, while pressing for progress on market access and climate change. The report further added that Ursula von der Leyen, who leads the European Commission, called on Chinese leaders to step up the political attention for the ongoing investment talks by the “end of summer” in order to clinch a treaty by year end. Separately, the SCMP also reported that China’s NPC Standing Committee might ultimately pass the HK National Security Law as early as this month.
Back to markets yesterday, and the move towards safe assets benefited sovereign bonds, and yields on 30-year German bunds traded in negative territory for the first time since late May, even though they closed just above zero by the end of the session, finishing at 0.01%. Yields on 10yr bunds also fell -2.4bps, while those on US Treasuries were up +1.5bps. Sovereign bonds in the European periphery similarly saw a decline in yields, with 10yr Spanish (-3.1bps), Italian (-6.9bps) and Portuguese (-2.1bp) yields all falling to their lowest levels since March.
Over in foreign exchange markets, sterling strengthened against the dollar yesterday following a Bloomberg op-ed by Bank of England Governor Bailey. The main takeaway was his view that “When the time comes to withdraw monetary stimulus, in my opinion it may be better to consider adjusting the level of reserves first without waiting to raise interest rates on a sustained basis.” So signalling that the BoE will keep rates lower for longer with a focus on reducing the balance sheet first. Remember that our economists’ view is that on balance more QE from the BoE this year is still likely. The other headline from FX yesterday was the dollar’s decline, seeing a -0.60% fall, while gold prices rose by +0.61% to a fresh 7-year high.
Moving on, and today the main highlight will be the flash PMIs coming out from around the world. Overnight, we’ve already had the numbers from Australia and Japan which showed notable jump in preliminary June services PMI for both. Australia’s services PMI printed at 53.2 (vs. 26.9 last month) while the manufacturing PMI came at 49.8 (vs. 44.0 last month) bringing the composite reading to 52.6 (vs. 28.1 last month). Similarly, Japan’s services PMI came in at 42.3 (vs. 26.5 last month) and the manufacturing PMI printed at 37.8 (vs. 38.4 last month) bringing the composite reading to 37.9 (vs. 27.8 last month).
As we mentioned yesterday, the consensus expectations are generally in the low-to-mid 40s, so that’s still below the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction, even if this would represent a rebound from last month’s numbers. In fact, the only PMI where the consensus is forecasting a 50-or-above reading (just at 50.0) is for US manufacturing. That said, it’s worth being cautious with the PMIs at the moment, because they simply measure changes in activity versus the previous month, so can prove rather volatile when you have the sort of economic dislocation we’ve seen since the shutdowns. Indeed, as economies continue to reopen, it’s quite plausible that we’ll see the PMIs move well above 50 as activity returns to more “normal” levels. In fact surely the risks are on the upside for today’s numbers given the low starting base and the re-openings across the board. It’ll be difficult to read through much on such an outcome though.
There wasn’t a great deal of economic data out yesterday, though we did get existing home sales in the US, which fell to an annualised rate of 3.91m (vs. 4.09m expected), its lowest level since October 2010. On the other hand, the Chicago Fed’s national activity index rebounded to 2.61 in May (vs. -10 expected). Here in Europe, the European Commission’s June consumer confidence indicator for the Euro Area also saw a continued recovery from its low in April, now standing at -14.7.
To the day ahead now, and the aforementioned flash PMIs from around the world are likely to be the highlight. Otherwise, from the US we’ll get May’s data on new home sales and the Richmond Fed manufacturing index for June. On the central bank front, we’ll hear from the BoE’s Governor Bailey, St. Louis Fed President Bullard and the ECB’s Hernandez de Cos.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YrJAWQ Tyler Durden
Trump Threatens Anyone Caught Vandalizing Federal Statues With Ten Years In Prison Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/23/2020 – 07:49
Continuing the tough talk on protesters and vandals whom he has accused of sowing unrest across the US while actively working to “destroy” our collective history, US President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to arrest anyone caught trying to tear down monuments or statues, and threatening to throw them in jail for up to ten years.
Trump added that the new order applies “retroactively”, meaning the numerous clips of mobs of hysterical leftists toppling statutes and spraypainting derogatory messages can be used as evidence against potential defendants.
“I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the US with up to 10 years in prison, per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act,” the president said in a tweet on Tuesday.
…..This action is taken effective immediately, but may also be used retroactively for destruction or vandalism already caused. There will be no exceptions!
Once again, Trump’s order comes too little, too late as the SJW rage mobs have already turned their attention on institutions like the Museum of Natural History which has apparently started expunging its collection of artifacts depicting certain past presidents, like Theodor Roosevelt, a notorious and dedicated reformer frequently ranked among the top 10 greatest presidents.
A wave of nationwide rallies calling for racial justice has swept the US since the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, murdered by a white cop in Minneapolis. Since then, monuments from the civil war era or the colonial period have been targeted by rage mobs.
However, these mobs have also vandalized statues and artifacts depicting leading anti-slavery figures. On Monday night protesters tried to pull down a statue of former US president Andrew Jackson near the White House before being dispersed by police. But not before videos posted to social media captured members of the mob climbing all over the statue, tying ropes around it and unsuccessfully trying to drag it off its pedestal.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3fNrmom Tyler Durden
