Tag: news

Investors expect a ruling on ByteDance’s request for an injunction against the Trump Administration order banning TikTok by the end of the weekend (a hearing has been scheduled for Sunday), but in the meantime, it appears the White He is already moving on to its next action item in the ongoing economic war against China.

As was previewed a couple of weeks ago, the Trump Administration is moving to cut off Semiconduct Manufacturing International  Corporation – or SMIC – China’s biggest producer of microchips, with wafer fabrication sites all across the mainland, off from US-made supplies. A letter obtained by the FT dated on Friday orders American companies not to send any more products to SMIC.

The administration argued that the products pose an “unacceptable risk” of being diverted to “military end use,” according to a copy of the letter seen by the Financial Times. Just like sanctions on Huawei, the move threatens to cut off China’s biggest chipmaker from crucial US software and chipmaking equipment. Any companies that do want to export to SMIC will need to secure a special license from the Commerce Department.

“It all depends on how the US implements this. In the worst-case scenario, SMIC is completely cut off, which would severely set back China’s ability to produce chips. This would be a tipping point for US-China relations,” said Paul Triolo, head of tech policy analysis at consultancy Eurasia Group.

It’s clear that the administration’s move goes beyond national security, with the goal of knee-capping another Chinese ‘national champion’. SMIC, a “national champion” that is crucial to Beijing’s aims of achieving chip self-sufficiency, recently oversaw country’s biggest domestic IPO in a decade, when it raised $7.6 billion in Shanghai earlier this year.

The administration’s sanctions against Huawei have already seriously impacted SMIC. The rules appeared almost explicitly designed to stop SIMC from supplying certain chips to its largest customer, Huawei.

But US chipmakers will also feel some blowback: Qualcomm, which uses SMIC’s foundries to fabricate some of its chips, will need to find a new partner, which means the Trump Administration might also rob SIMC of its second-largest customer after Huawei.

On Saturday, SMIC said that it was engaging with the Department of Commerce about the new rules. The company reiterated that it “has no relationship with the Chinese military, and does not manufacture for any military end users or end-uses.”

To be sure, Chinese law requires all companies to cooperate with intelligence and military forces if so ordered by Beijing

SMIC added it had not received any formal notification of the sanctions.

Authored by Tyler O’Neil via PJMedia.com,

President Donald Trump will nominate a woman to succeed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday, and observers expect him to choose Amy Coney Barrett, a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. On Friday, after news outlets reported that Trump would choose Barrett, HBO host Bill Maher saved the potential nominee for her Roman Catholic faith. Yet perhaps no one has given a better response to such anti-religious bigotry than Barrett herself.

“Apparently, the pick is going to be Amy Coney. We’re going to be saying the name a lot because she’s a f***ing nut. Religion, I was right about that one, too,” Maher said.

“Amy Coney Barrett. Catholic. Really Catholic. I mean really, really Catholic, like speaking in tongues. She doesn’t believe in condoms, which she has in common with Trump, because he doesn’t either. We learned that from Stormy Daniels,” Maher quipped.

Maher’s objection to Barrett appears to be grounded in the idea that charismatic Roman Catholics are some dangerous anti-science sect and so they cannot treat legal issues dispassionately. Rather than just attack Catholicism, he attacked the broader Christian trend of believing that people still speak in tongues due to the Holy Spirit (a controversial position in Christianity, but one that extends to a broad swath of Christians). He even suggested that Barrett could not be trusted because of “religion.”

Yet Barrett is an originalist, which means she aims to uphold the original public meaning of the Constitution, rather than reinterpreting it in order to unilaterally amend the Constitution, writing her policy preferences in law as the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade (1973), creating a new “right” to abortion.

Maher was far from the first to attack Barrett for her faith.

Other attacks on Barrett’s faith

During Barrett’s confirmation hearing for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) notoriously imposed something of a religious test.

“The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said, suggesting that Barrett’s religious convictions disqualified her from service on the federal bench.

After Ginsburg’s death, some on the Left have rushed to demonize Barrett. Washington Post book critic Ray Charles suggested that there was something nefarious to Barrett’s statement that she intends to pursue “the kingdom of God.” On the contrary, the “kingdom of God” is a common Christian phrase that has more to do with loving your neighbor as yourself than bringing about some kind of theocracy.

Similarly, Newsweek ran a story claiming that Barrett belonged to a secret cult-like organization that inspired Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale. In truth, the pentecostal group to which Barrett belonged, People of Praise, had no connection with People of Hope, the group Atwood seized upon. Newsweek corrected the story but did not retract it.

Amy Coney Barrett’s response to such attacks

Last year at an event with Hillsdale College, Barrett’s student Stephanie Maloney asked the judge “What role, if any, should faith of a nominee have in the confirmation process?”

Barrett said, “None.”

“I mean, we have a long tradition of religious tolerance in this country. And in fact, the religious test clause in the Constitution makes it unconstitutional to impose a religious test on anyone who holds public office,” the judge explained.

“So whether someone is Catholic or Jewish or Evangelical or Muslim or has no faith at all is irrelevant to the job,” Barrett added.

“I do have one thing that I want to add to that, though. I think when you step back and you think about the debate about whether someone’s religion has any bearing on their fitness for office, it seems to me that the premise of the question is that people of faith would have a uniquely difficult time separating out their moral commitments from their obligation to apply the law. And I think people of faith should reject that premise,” she added.

“All people, of course– well, we hope, most people– have deeply held moral convictions, whether or not they come from faith. People who have no faith, people who are not religious, have deeply held moral convictions,” Barrett noted. “And it’s just as important for those people to be sure– I just spent time talking about the job of a judge being to set aside moral convictions, personal moral convictions, and personal preferences, and follow the law. That’s a challenge for those of faith and for those who have no faith.”

“So I think the public should be absolutely concerned about whether a nominee for judicial office will be willing and able to set aside personal preferences, be they moral, be they political, whatever convictions they are,” Barrett explained. “The public should be concerned about whether a nominee can set those aside in favor of following the law.”

“But that’s not a challenge just for religious people. I mean, that’s a challenge for everyone. And so I think it’s a dangerous road to go down to say that only religious people would not be able to separate out moral convictions from their duty,” she said.

On Friday we pointed out that one week after one of the biggest inflows into stock funds on record – when retail traders furiously BTFD in hopes the market’s upward momentum would accelerate – speculators hit a brick wall and reversed furiously as stocks slumped, with US equity funds and ETFs reporting $26.87BN of outflows, the largest weekly outflow since December 2018 and the third largest outflow ever! In other this was the fastest and biggest sentiment reversal on record.

This record sentiment reversal was driven by despair-driven capitulation outflows from high beta and momentum names, as tech-focused ETFs suffered $1.23 billion worth of outflows, the largest since December 2018, when global stock markets tanked. September was also the first month of outflows for the tech sector since the March crash.

But nowhere has the sentiment shift been as clear as in Nasdaq 100 Mini futures, where after more than a year of bullish sentiment with just one tiny dip into bearish territory in May, speculators finally puked, sending the net non-commercial NQ futs to -134,311 contracts, surpassing the peak bearish sentiment during and after the financial crisis…

… and in fact the second highest on record, with just July 2006 more bearish. What happened back then? For the next generation of traders out there, that’s when Fed had just reached the peak of its rate-hike cycle (yes, there was a time when rates above 2% were possible), hammering the Nasdaq.

Back in 2006 the Fed responded by starting an easing cycle in 2007, and the resulting drop in rates from over 5% to 0% eventually allowed the Nasdaq to rebound and hit all time highs.

What is curious is that it took only a modest Nasdaq correction over the past month to send sentiment to the second most bearish on record. And unlike 2006, this time the Fed can’t cut rates any lower to reverse sentiment.

On the other hand, the Fed can and will do everything in its power to push sentiment even higher now that Powell has made it clear the Fed is all in the stock market as the primary wealth effect mechanism, in which case watch out once the near record short-squeeze in NQ futs begins: it can and will send the Nasdaq to all time highs faster than you can spell “Brrrrr.“

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Just as time is a one-way arrow, “the politicization of everything” is a one-way road to dissolution and collapse.

The essence of any Totalitarian society is the politicization of everything, as everything must be either supporting the status quo or it’s a threat to the status quo.

There is no middle ground in a Totalitarian society and so everything–literally everything– must be politicized to assess its true nature of being “for” or “against” the status quo.

In such a society, what cannot be politicized ceases to exist. It isn’t counted or recognized, and so it fades into a netherworld of shadows, a dangerous realm where the mere act of attempting to recognize a non-politicized experience is itself a threat to the status quo.

You will of course be thinking of the former Soviet Union (USSR) and other Totalitarian societies. Here’s an extreme example of how the politicization of everything works: a conventional worker in a conventional factory happens to mention to a co-worker that he dreamed Stalin had fallen ill, and this worried him. The co-worker reported this disturbing dream to the proper authorities, who instantly recognized the true nature of the dream and sentenced the worker to 10 years in the Gulag for having an anti-Soviet dream.

(A 10-year sentence in the Gulag was so common that it was nicknamed “a tenner.”)

In America circa 2020, “a tenner” for the wrong thought, opinion or dream takes other forms. Indeed, even the claim that a dream might not have a political angle is itself cause for being sentenced to “a tenner,” because the core of the Totalitarian society is the politicization of everything.

Every object, entity, image, document, historical “fact,” person, thought, emotion, reaction, narrative, opinion, everything tangible or intangible, has a barely concealed political subtext in a Totalitarian society.

There is nothing innocuous, innocent or whimsical in a Totalitarian society, at least in the public sphere. In an era permeated by the cruel marriage of surveillance capitalism and the bitterly divided state, even the once-private sphere is subject to public exposure and shaming / sentencing.

As in an Orwellian nightmare, your “smart” phone, vehicle, TV or Alexa-powered doorbell can eavesdrop and record your private conversations and behaviors, and somebody somewhere has access to this data and can share it with others.

The ostensible justification is “your safety” or “to catch wrongdoing,” but this is transparently false. The real reason is to discern your political crimes. You need not commit any crimes per se to be persecuted; all that’s needed is some tiny bit of evidence that reflects your true beliefs which by definition must be supportive of the status quo via endless virtual-signaling; if not, then they are necessarily a threat to the status quo.

To remain confidential, everyday life must be treated as wartime. Your hand-written journal is safe, as long as you don’t share it digitally. But since we’ve morphed into an engagement-based social order, your selfhood now depends on engaging others digitally via “likes,” shares, etc. and sharing your most “engaging” images and experiences.

A non-shared, non-digital private life is now a form of non-existence that most people find painful and isolating. Hence the obsessive addiction to social media and “sharing” one’s (carefully edited) life online.

Alas, even the most careful editing cannot conceal your true beliefs which will be revealed by the smallest detail: your location, the brand of items you’re wearing, etc.

In a bitterly divided society, your beliefs will be political crimes to one camp or another. Any attempt to “find common ground” will be dismissed as a self-serving ploy, or more dangerously, as a hidden agenda of the forces attempting to destroy the Party.

Those furiously virtue-signaling to maintain their political righteousness within their chosen camp find the sands shifting beneath their feet. The most extreme virtue-signaling is rewarded until it becomes a new threat, and then those who strayed unknowingly beyond the invisible lines will find themselves cast out for political crimes whose definition is constantly changing.

Science has long be politicized, of course, but now it is being hyper-politicized as the stakes keep rising. Claims of neutrality are necessarily viewed as nothing more than clever facades to mask the real motives of self-interest and collusion.

Just as time is a one-way arrow, the politicization of everything is a one-way road to dissolution and collapse. Wishing it wasn’t so doesn’t make it so.

*  *  *

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*  *  *

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HBO’s Bill Maher attempted to police and chastise third-party voters and “Hillary equivocators” among Democrats who see Joe Biden as just another establishment centrist. During his Friday show he told his audience “You all have to eat it one more time.”

“There’s no catching them in an inconsistency. They don’t care,” Maher said of Republicans. “The only rule Republicans play by is ‘the people who win make the rules.’ Power talks, losers walk.”

He added: “They have the power, and they’re going to use it to make a court with six conservatives. And when the 2020 election winds up in the lap of that court as they’re practically already promising it will, guess who wins?”

“How different it could have been…” Maher said, transitioning to 2016 and the question of Hillary Clinton.

He then he unleashed on fence-sitters and third party voters, which he appeared to blame for Trump’s taking the White House in the first place:

All the Hillary equivocators from 2016, the people who said she was racist, not really that different from Trump, the ones who voted third party, the ones who stayed home because, ‘you know, the lesser of two evils,’ sorry, but you all have to eat it one more time. Because oh how I would love me some of that Hillary evil right now. You know, the evil where liberals would currently have a 6-3 majority on the court, the evil where people wouldn’t be facing having their health care taken away or their right to vote or where America wasn’t sliding into autocracy…

He also provocatively quipped: “I hope you enjoy carrying your rape baby to term, you can name it Jill Stein.”

He urged that the only answer for progressives and liberals, even those not at all excited about a Biden presidency, is to give him an overwhelming victory in November.

But then again it is quite telling that this is where the Dems are: just like in 2016, Maher and others like Michael Moore must resort to policing their own amid complete lack of enthusiasm for sleepy Joe Biden.

* * *

Previously in 2017 Maher admitted to CNN of Hillary Clinton, she “wasn’t a great candidate” while also noting she brought no energy to the party compared to Trump’s 2016 appeal to young people.

Summary:

• New York tops 1000 cases for first time since June
• China bars some seafood imports after latest packaging incident
• Russia cases top 7k
• US suffers more than 55k new cases
• Deaths top 900 for fourth straight day

* * *

As Dr. Fauci warns about a “problematic” surge in COVID-19 cases expected in the months ahead, New York reported more than 1,000 new cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, the first time the Empire State has topped 1k new cases since June. Meanwhile, California health officials warned about rising hospitalizations related to the virus.

It comes as more than 55,000 new cases – 55,074, to be exact – were confirmed across the US yesterday, amounting to a rise of 0.8%, higher than the 0.6% 7-day average. It brought America’s total cases to 7,032,595 as of 0630ET on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins data.

Another 948 people died across the US, marking the 4th straight day with deaths north of 900. Total fatalities have climbed to 203,746.

While New York City struggles with new ‘hotspots’ in Brooklyn and Queens, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary also saw notable increases in COVID-19 cases and/or deaths on Saturday, a sign that Western and Central Europe are tightly in the grip of a second wave. Just yesterday, Madrid officials placed more than 1 million people on lockdown, the harshest measures taken since the first wave of the pandemic in the spring.

Globally, the outbreak has reached 32,476,713 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, while the worldwide death toll hit 987,775. Yesterday, Florida Gov Ron DeSantis moved to lift restrictions on bars and restaurants, even as critics warned the virus was already accelerating at a dangerous pace.

Here’s some more COVID-19-linked news from overnight.

Canada’s two most populous provinces move to clamp down further on social gatherings in a bid to slow a second wave of coronavirus infections that since the start of the pandemic now total more than 150,000 nationwide (Source: Nikkei).

In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison claime an inquiry into the origin of COVID-19 would help to minimize the threat of another pandemic. Australia’s support of an investigation into the pandemic has further strained the country’s relationship with Beijing (Source: Nikkei).

China will stop accepting import declarations from two Russian vessels for four weeks, after the novel coronavirus was detected on outer packaging and samples of Russian marine products, Reuters reports. The customs office on Saturday said the coronavirus was detected by authorities in the eastern coastal province of Shandong (Source: Nikkei).

Russia reported 7,523 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, with Moscow posting the most new infections since June 8. There were 169 fatalities nationwide, the most since July 29, taking the total to 20,225. New cases in Moscow rose by 1,792, up 15% from the previous day. On Friday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin asked people over 65 and those with chronic illnesses to stay home from Sept. 28. He also advised companies to switch as many employees as possible back to working from home (Source: Bloomberg).

Germany recorded its highest number of new Covid-19 cases since late April. Still, with 2,366 new infections in one day, the number is well below the additional cases reported by some other European countries. After the start of the new school year in Germany, around 50,000 students are currently in quarantine, Bild-Zeitung reported, citing a survey of local authorities (Source: Bloomberg).

Poland reported 1,584 coronavirus cases on Saturday, the second-highest number after the record of 1,587 on Friday, according to the nation’s health minister. As a result, a total of 85,980 cases were confirmed since the outbreak of the pandemic. Altogether 2,424 deaths were confirmed, including 32 deaths reported on Saturday (Source: Bloomberg).

Hungary reported 12 coronavirus deaths Saturday, continuing the increase in fatalities observed in the past two weeks. There were 950 additional confirmed infections, with 589 people currently being treated in hospitals. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a Facebook video that he expects a further increase in cases. The country has enough hospital capacity and has more beds in dedicated epidemiological units in reserve, Orban added (Source: Bloomberg).

Six months after parliament passed the Coronavirus Act 2020, which gives the government powers to impose lockdowns and other restrictive social distancing measures (measures that have been accompanied by stiff fines), thousands of Britons packed London’s Trafalgar Square bearing signs reading “We Do Not Consent” and “Think Before It’s Illegal” during a rally that was billed as a “We Do Not Consent” anti-lockdown demonstration.

The event was organized by a coalition of political groups, and supporters have been galvanized by the talk of another London lockdown by mayor Sadiq Khan, as well as PM Boris Johnson’s assurances that a lockdown would be imposed if the government felt all other measures had failed.

Protests are exempt from the rule of six, a rule that threatens fines for groups of more than six people, which has created much aggravation in the UK. Organizers of the rally had to submit a “risk assessment” and agree to comply with social distancing rules. While police told the press that the organizers had completed these requirements, the metropolitan police promised to crack down on those not wearing masks and violating other rules.

They added that enforcement “remains a last resort but will be undertaken if required.”

Demonstrators waved signs and British flags and cheered as speakers – including several notable “conspiracy theories”, according to the Guardian – addressed the crowd. Crowds chanted “freedom” as people whistled and clapped.

#WeDoNotConsent
The crowds get bigger at every protest.
More people are waking up.
Stand up and fight for your rights.
Trafalgar Square pic.twitter.com/gugLqUfLs6

— Charlotte Gracias (@Charlotte3003G) September 26, 2020

Thousand of people have joined a #NoNewNormal demonstration against #lockdown, mass vaccination and other Covid-19 measures in Trafalgar Square. pic.twitter.com/n30bIoVJVe

— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020

“I’ve been shouting that mandatory vaccines are coming, no one believed me. No we can see it’s just around the corner, we’ve never been closer.”

Kerry Dunn, 41, from Bath, whose son, Beau, suffered severe brain damage after he was vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/lhZrLp022E

— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020

“What is see is fear and negativity being propagated. In Ayurveda, which is the root of western medicine, we say the thing that weakens the immune system the most is negativity.”

Vinothini Apok, 40, a former doctor from north London. pic.twitter.com/ZvBzzGquDB

— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020

At points, police fulfilled their promise to break up crowds. Before they began, the protests received a warning from the Metropolitan Police, which said it would intervene if the protesters don’t abide by social distancing guidelines.

Police have moved in to break up the crowd at the #NoNewNormal demo pic.twitter.com/1gwbo200sB

— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020

Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, expressed hope that law enforcement would allow the group to protest “as they did with [Extinction Rebellion] and BLM.”

Thousands have gathered in Trafalgar Square to protest against the lockdown. I hope the police allow them to peacefully protest, as they did the BLM and XR protestors. pic.twitter.com/Ef4H7uoC0x

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) September 26, 2020

Attending the protest, Kerry Dunn, 41, from Bath, claimed her son, Beau, suffered adverse affects after being vaccinated.
“I’ve been shouting that mandatory vaccines are coming, no one believed me,” she said. “Now we can see it’s just around the corner, we’ve never been closer.”

Another event, billed as a “People’s network and family picnic”, is also being organised by the same activists for Sunday in Hyde Park.

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the role of the world’s central bankers going forward. With that in mind, now seems like a good time to recap the market bailout operations during the past few years… to get some insights into how this all ends (spoiler alert – not well)!

GnSEconomics.com’s Tumoas Maalinen has written a detailed (and ominous) twitter-thread on the ‘stealth socialization’ of the financial markets by the central bankers.

How we got here…

In late November 2008, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it would start buying the debt of Government Sponsored Enterprises and mortgage-related securities in the secondary market.

In March 2009, the Fed extended the program to include US Treasuries. QE -program was born.

The Fed ran three sequential QE -programs.

The Bank of England started its QE program in March 2009, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) in October 2010, the European Central Bank (ECB) in March 2015 and the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) in July 2015.

In October 2010, the BoJ started to buy Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) linked to the Japanese stock market.

It became customary that the BoJ to start buying whenever the Topix stock market index fell more than a 0.2 percentage points by midday.

In August 2012, the European Central bank enacted the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program to halt the rise in sovereign yields in the Eurozone (to save it).

In 2015, the Swiss National Bank started to “invest” in foreign assets, including US equities.

2017 set the pre-corona record for central bank stimulus.

During that year, central banks across the globe pushed over $2 trillion worth of artificial central bank liquidity into the global markets mostly through their asset purchase programs.

In December 2018, the People’s Bank of China started to support the domestic banking sector by injecting hundreds of US billions worth of liquidity into the system.

In January 4, 2019, the Fed pivoted from its previous statements of several interest rate rises in 2019 and automated balance sheet run-off. This was to stop the market rout which threatened to topple the US credit markets.

Between January and March 2019, the Federal Reserve made a complete U-turn. In early December 2018, Chairman Powell was still anticipating several interest rate rises for 2019, but by March they had turned to possible cuts and ending the balance sheet normalization program.

In August and September 2019, the market bailout operations continued. Fed cut its interest rates for the second time for the year in August, and the ECB pushed rates further into negative and restarted the QE -program in September.

In September 16, 2019, the repo-markets clogged up and the Fed started its emergency repo-operations for the first time since 2009.

In October 16th, 2019, the Fed started to buy US Treasury bills with the rate of $60 billion per month.

So, without the market bailout operations, the global financial crisis would have probably started no later than January 2019 by the toppling of the US credit markets.

The Fed and central bankers were able to postpone the crisis till mid-September, 2019, when the repo-markets ‘blew up’.

Since then the US financial markets have been in constant resuscitation.

In the spring 2020, things naturally went from desperate to absurd.

On the 16th, 2020, the New York Fed announced that it would add $500 billion in overnight loans to the repo market.

On Tuesday the 17th the Fed announced that it would use $1 trillion to mop-up corporate paper from issuers. 13/

On the 19th, 2020, the Fed announced that it would create a lending facility to unlock frozen money market mutual funds.

The Fed ended-up backstopping U.S. Treasury markets, corporate commercial-paper and municipal bond markets and short-term money-markets.

Thus, by June 2020, the #Fed had effectively became the financial markets of the US.

What many do not seem to get is how dangerous all this central bank meddling in the markets is.

When rates were cut to zero, it invited the use of maximal leverage. When QEs started, they started to push investors to ever-riskier financial market products.

When the central bankers tried to withdraw these perverse supportive means, markets cratered, like we warned in March 2018.

And, when one adds continuous market bailouts, introducing massive moral hazard into the system, we get extremely fragile capital markets in a risk of a catastrophic collapse.

Moreover, when one compares the similarities between the biggest stock market crash in history, many worrying similarities emerge.

Most notably, the 1929 crash occurred, precisely when investors realized that a recession was about to hit.

Central bankers have been playing an extremely dangerous game of “extend and pretend”.

To keep the markets afloat in a darkening economic picture requires ever larger bailouts and, eventually, the full socialization of the financial markets.

The balance sheets of central banks would turn into investment vehicles with no boundaries.

Central bankers would decide which countries, corporations or even households would survive. They would effectively turn into Gosbanks (former CB of the Soviet Union).

This would lead to an utter global economic dystopia.

I’ve visited the Soviet Union as a boy (two times). The horrors of socialization of the financial markets and thus the economy should not be underestimated.

I dearly hope we’ll be spared from that fate.

Coronavirus-sniffing dogs are being used at Helsinki Airport in Finland to detect infected passengers. 

A pilot program with ten coronavirus-sniffing canines began work on Wednesday (Sept. 23) to detect infections using travelers’ sweat. The dogs allow the airport to “speed up the process of identifying those infected with COVID-19,” reported ABC News. 

Helsinki Airport director Ulla Lettijeff said the pilot program is revolutionizing the way the airport detects infections. 

 “As far as we know, no other airport has attempted to use canine scent detection on such a large scale against COVID-19,” Lettijeff said.

Each shift will include four dogs that will sniff out infections. Passengers, who agree to participate in the voluntary program, will be asked by airport authorities to wipe their skin to collect sweat placed in a jar and given to the dogs to sniff out for the virus. At no point will dogs directly interact with travelers. 

“Covid-19 dogs started their work today at the Helsinki Airport at arrival hall 2B. Dogs have been trained to detect the coronavirus from the test wipes given by the test person. Service is voluntary and primarily targeted for passengers arriving from abroad,” Helsinki Aoport’s Twitter account tweeted. 

Covid-19 dogs started their work today at the Helsinki Airport at arrival hall 2B. Dogs have been trained to detect the coronavirus from the test wipes given by the testperson. Service is voluntary and primarily targeted for passengers arriving from abroad. pic.twitter.com/ieMLm0KuZY

— Helsinki Airport (@HelsinkiAirport) September 22, 2020

Susanna Paavilainen, CEO of WiseNose Ry, University of Helsinki’s DogRisk research, said virus-sniffing dogs are mainly for “passengers arriving from outside the country.”

Preliminary tests at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Helsinki concluded the “dogs are able to smell the virus with almost 100% certainty.” 

Several studies have shown dogs can be trained to sniff out coronavirus in sweat, saliva, and urine samples. Finland is the only country globally, testing man’s best friend as the first defense line against the virus. The US, Australia, France, and Germany are also conducting tests. 

The Transportation Security Administration and US Customs and Border Protection told ABC there are now plans to use dogs for coronavirus detection. 

Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

When Judge Amy Coney Barrett came before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for her nomination to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Senator Diane Feinstein generated considerable controversy when she said to Barrett:

“The dogma lives loudly in you.”

This was a reference to Barrett’s deep Catholic faith. Under our Constitution, Senator Feinstein’s statement crossed the line. Ours was the first Constitution in history to provide that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Although Feinstein did not explicitly impose a religious test, she suggested that personal religious views — which she called dogma — might disqualify a nominee from being confirmed.

That would clearly be unconstitutional.

When Justice Louis Brandeis was nominated to the United States Supreme Court in 1916, numerous leaders of the bar and prominent Americans, including the president of Harvard, opposed his nomination, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, on the ground that he was Jewish. That was wrong then, and it is equally wrong today with regard to a nominee of the Catholic faith.

Indeed, today’s Supreme Court has five justices who are Catholic, two who are Jewish, and one who is Protestant. Religious tests have no place in America. But what does have a place in the confirmation process are questions about whether a nominee will put faith before the Constitution and refuse to apply the Constitution if it conflicts with his or her faith. That issue would be true of any nominee regardless of their faith or faithlessness. President John F. Kennedy assured us that his Catholicism would not determine the nation’s policy. Justice Antonin Scalia said the same about his Catholicism and his jurisprudence.

It is impossible, of course, to psychoanalyze a nominee or justice to determine what role if any their faith may play in their jurisprudence. We are all influenced by our personal views, including but not limited to religious views. When Justice Pierce Butler issued the sole dissent in the notorious case of Buck v. Bell — in which the Supreme Court, led by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, permitted the sterilization of supposed “mental defectives” — many speculated that his dissent, which is now seen by most historians and lawyers as the correct view, may have been motivated consciously or unconsciously by his deep Catholic faith. The Catholic Church was inalterably opposed to sterilization of the mentally disabled, whereas the “progressive view,” centered at Harvard University, strongly favored such “eugenic” procedures to “improve” the “race.” The church was right and Harvard was wrong on this one, and it was a good thing that there was a religious Catholic on the high court to register a dissent to what we have now come to believe was an outrageous violation of human rights.

The role of religion in judicial decision-making is complex, nuanced and sometimes difficult to discuss. There is no sharp line between ideology and jurisprudence, but a line must be drawn nonetheless, especially when questioning a candidate for the Supreme Court.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett is now the leading candidate, followed by Judge Barbara Lagoa, who is also a deeply religious Catholic woman of Cuban American background. So, the issue of religion is likely to come up at any confirmation hearing. It must be handled with delicacy and sensitivity to the Constitution’s prohibition against religious tests, as well as to the respect we must all pay to people of faith.

Several years ago, a United States Senator declared that he would never vote to confirm an atheist to the Supreme Court. Such a position is in direct conflict with the Constitution. But because questions about religion are generally not asked of candidates, it is highly likely that several atheists and agnostics have served on the high court. Oliver Wendell Holmes publicly acknowledged his disbelief in religion and several other justices have privately acknowledged their lack of religious faith. One’s religion is a private matter, but one’s judicial philosophy is highly relevant in the confirmation process.

The confirmation process has become so politicized, so personal, and often so unfair, that it is especially important to draw careful distinctions with regard to religious beliefs and observance. Let us hope the Senate handles this nomination better than they have handled other recent nominations.