Month: February 2020

Second Chinese City Bars Residents From Leaving Their Homes As Hong Kong Workers Demand City Close Border

Second Chinese City Bars Residents From Leaving Their Homes As Hong Kong Workers Demand City Close Border

Since our last update Friday evening, the situation on the ground in China has reportedly gone from bad to worse. The true extent of Beijing’s ‘quarantine’ has been exposed – and not just the ridiculously oppressive tactics exercised on sick people simply out trying to buy food so they don’t starve, but the even more bizarre notion that the WHO has decided to try and validate Beijing’s response when all evidence suggests that public relations is and always will be Beijing’s No. 1 concern.

By most recent count, total cases have eclipsed 12,000, while confirmed deaths inside China have hit 259. More than 100,000 people are still under observation, as we reported last night. The 46 new deaths announced last night (Saturday morning in China) was the largest daily death toll (that was the total from Friday) since the start of the crisis.

To that end, a report reportedly signed by hundreds of doctors blaming the Communist Party’s leadership for waiting a month to inform the Chinese public and the international community that the virus could spread from human-to-human contact. The leadership was apparently aware of this fact as early as mid-December, yet they actively concealed it until the situation started getting out of hand and cases were being confirmed in neighboring countries.

China’s finance ministry has finally announced that it’s going to lift import taxes on American-made medical products needed to help combat the outbreak (it’s interesting how it took them nearly – checks notes – two months since the start of the outbreak to lift the trade-war tariffs).

ABC News is the latest American media outlet to collect footage from Wuhan via drone. The haunting footage clearly shows the scope of the lockdown. An entire city as big as New York, with almost nobody outside or in the streets.

This is becoming an increasingly common sight across China. On Saturday, Huanggang, a city of 6 million people near Wuhan, has banned residents from leaving their homes in an effort to stop the coronavirus. The ban states that 1 person per family can leave every other day to buy basic needs.

It’s the first city to declare a lockdown on par with Wuhan’s total ban of people leaving their homes.

Here’s a video of a doctor from Huanggang saying the media won’t dare report the true infection totals from Huanggang, adding that it’s almost as bad as Wuhan.

The scapegoating of local officials by Beijing continued on Saturday, when more than 300 party officials from Huanggang were punished for failing in their duty.

Though we’re hearing labels like these used far less often than we were just last week, it appears the “fearmongers” and “alarmists” were once again correct to be skeptical of the information coming out of Beijing. A few days ago, Zero Hedge was declared alarmists for discussing the possibility that nCoV could metastasize into a particularly deadly seasonal illness, like the flu. The mainstream press has now apparently decided to take the warnings of epidemiologists seriously.

When the WHO first declared that travel restrictions on China simply weren’t necessary, even as Beijing quarantined more than 50 million of its own people, we wondered how the organization could possibly expect the world to listen, considering that Russia had already closed its border with China, and dozens of countries had already imposed some kind of restriction, while more than 40 airlines had suspended routes to China.

On Saturday morning, Australia joined the US in temporarily blocking all foreigners who have recently visited China. Japan said it would bar visitors who had been to Hubei in the last 2 weeks, or had passports issued in Hubei, according to the New York Times.

 

Then we heard Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam tell the people that complete shutdown of travel to China wouldn’t be necessary. Once again, Lam was doing the leadership’s bidding to the detriment of her local popularity. By doing so, Lam has handed the workers all the ammunition they need to successfully challenge, and defeat, the city government.

Carrie Lam

Thousands of Hong Kong doctors, nurses and hospital employees have voted for a strike which could begin as early as Monday. The reason? To pressure the city government to close all borders with mainland China. This isn’t the first bout of virus-related unrest to rock Hong Kong. Last week, a group of locals set fires and rioted in response to rumors that the government planned to transform a newly built housing project nearby into a quarantine, according to SCMP.

The pledge of action by thousands of nurses and hospital workers is picking up steam as more local unions are joining the movement. Pretty soon, Lam will have no choice but to close the border with China, which would be a major blow to global confidence in Beijing.

The alliance of health care workers have a few other demands: that the government make clear policies to ensure a supply of surgical masks, a halt on non-emergency services and an increase in the number of isolation wards at hospitals, as well as better support for medical practitioners and an open promise not to punish those who participate in the strike.

Back on the mainland, local authorities have taken to using drones to ‘name and shame’ anybody who disobeys the isolation orders. Here are a few examples:

Across China, drones are being loaded with disinfectant to spray public streets (another shock-and-awe measure with little real-world advantage).

Before we go, here’s a complete list of countries that have confirmed cases of the virus: Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia, Macau, Russia, France, the United States, South Korea, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Britain, Vietnam, Italy, India, the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Finland and Sweden.

Meanwhile, Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam, Japan, France and the US has confirmed human-to-human transmission involving at least one person who hadn’t been to China.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 02/01/2020 – 09:05

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Angry 17-Year-Old Girl To Trademark Her Name To “Protect” Against Misuse

Angry 17-Year-Old Girl To Trademark Her Name To “Protect” Against Misuse

Having failed to stir any of the world’s leader in Davos into anything more than virtue-signaling words, and still refusing to verbally attack the real global polluters – India and China – so-called climate-evangelist Greta Thunberg has decided that the world will no longer be able to use her name in vain.

The 17-year-old Swede took to Instagram to explain – in great detail – why she has applied to trademark her name and her movement ‘Fridays for Future’ to prevent them from being misused for commercial reasons.

Impostors, trademarks, commercial interests, royalties and foundation…

First: Unfortunately there are still people who are trying to impersonate me or falsely claim that they “represent” me in order to communicate with high profile people, politicians, media, artists etc. Please be aware that this is happening and be extremely suspicious if you are contacted by ”me” or someone saying they ”represent” me.

I apologize to anyone who has been contacted – and even misled – by this kind of behavior.

Second: My name and the #FridaysForFuture movement are constantly being used for commercial purposes without any consent whatsoever. It happens for instance in marketing, selling of products and people collecting money in my and the movement’s name.

That is why I’ve applied to register my name, Fridays For Future, Skolstrejk för klimatet etc as trademarks. This action is to protect the movement and its activities. It is also needed to enable my pro bono legal help to take necessary action against people or corporations etc who are trying to use me and the movement in purposes not in line with what the movement stands for. I assure you, I and the other school strikers have absolutely no interests in trademarks. But unfortunately it needs to be done.

Fridays For Future is a global movement founded by me. It belongs to anyone taking part in it, above all the young people. It can – and must – not be used for individual or commercial purposes.

And third: together with my family I’m setting up a foundation. It’s already registered and existing, but it not is not yet up and running. This is strictly nonprofit of course and there are no interests in philanthropy. It is just something that is needed for handling money (book royalties, donations, prize money etc) in a completely transparent way. For instance, taxes have to be paid before we can give them away to specified purposes and charities. This takes a lot of time and work, and when the foundation is fully up and running I will tell you more.

The foundation’s aim will be to promote ecological, climatic and social sustainability as well as mental health.

Love/ Greta

Oh the irony of promoting “mental health.”

However, in the interest of avoiding law suits, we will refer to the angry-at-the-world 17-year-old as “the activist formerly known as Greta.”

 

 

 


Tyler Durden

Sat, 02/01/2020 – 08:45

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Undercover Animal Rights Investigation Snares Iowa State Senator Who Sponsored State’s Unconstitutional Ag-Gag Law

Last week a California-based animal rights group released gruesome photos and other evidence it says it gathered during an undercover investigation it carried out last April at an Iowa pig farm.

The disgusting photos, which you can view here, variously show overcrowding, pigs suffering from abscesses and other open sores, severed limbs scattered on the facility floor, and dead and dying pigs. Additionally, the group says the air inside the facility was “noxious.”

The undercover investigative report, conducted by the group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), which bills itself as a “global grassroots animal rights network,” found what DxE says are horrific conditions at the Rosewood Pork Farm.

“Footage shot by DxE shows the brutal toll of animal agriculture—conditions which spell an agonizing death for many Rosewood Pork pigs, and a life of continual suffering for them all,” the report declares.

While the name of the farm isn’t particularly noteworthy, its owner is Iowa State Sen. Ken Rozenboom (R). He’s both a leader in the state’s agricultural community and a “leading supporter” of Iowa’s reprehensible and unconstitutional agricultural gag (ag-gag) law—which is intended to stifle critical reporting on agricultural facilities and practices.

“Ag-gag laws, which are on the books in eight states, including Idaho, are laws that effectively ban journalists, whistleblowers, and activists from conducting or sharing the results of undercover investigations at agricultural and livestock processing facilities,” I wrote in a 2016 blog post that discussed why I had organized fellow law-school faculty in submitting an amicus brief opposing Idaho’s ag-gag law.

In that brief, we explained the First Amendment and consumer-protection harms ag-gag laws cause, arguing that they “ultimately den[y] consumers a marketplace of ideas in which they are free to weigh competing voices and decide for themselves the truth about food production.”

While Idaho’s ag-gag law was eventually overturned, similar laws are still on the books in a handful of states, including Iowa, where a court challenge has halted enforcement of the law.

This week, State Sen. Rozenboom acknowledged at least some truth behind the shocking allegations. He conceded the investigation revealed “careless animal husbandry practices that violate acceptable animal care protocols.”

“I acknowledge that there were caretaker deficiencies,” Rozenboom told the Des Moines Register. “There were things that not ought to have happened, that we’re not OK with. I’m ashamed of it.”

But he also remained defiant.

“This type of dangerous, illegal activity cannot be condoned,” Rozenboom said of the animal-rights group’s investigation. He also says he’ll ask the state to prosecute DxE investigators on trespassing charges.

“While acknowledging some problems at the facility, state Sen. Ken Rozenboom said Thursday the investigation was a ‘professional hit job’ designed to undermine consumer support for the pork industry,” the Register reports.

That’s an incredibly shortsighted and tone-deaf comment. Rozenboom must know that the conditions alleged to have existed at his farm are what really undermines consumer support for the pork industry. If the DxE investigation had captured a well-run operation that showed a modicum of regard for the animals before their slaughter, no one would be talking about Rozenboom’s farm. 

Various reports indicate Rozenboom was leasing the facility in question to another farmer during the period when the DxE investigation took place. Rozenboom says he ended the business relationship with the lessee last year at least in part over concerns about the farmer’s treatment of pigs.

“He said they made the switch because they were concerned about how the former operator cared for his animals and maintained the building,” the Register reports. “He pointed to delays in removing dead pigs from the facility as an example.”

While there is absolutely no indication Rozenboom participated in any animal abuse that may have occurred on his farm, I’ve also seen no indications that Rozenboom reported the “concern[ing]” actions of his unnamed lessee to law enforcement or state regulators.

If there was a whistle to blow, Rozenboom appears to have kept it in his pocket. That fact alone makes the DxE investigation a vitally important contribution to the marketplace of ideas.

The undercover investigation was led by Matt Johnson, a DxE official who hails from Iowa. I asked Johnson last week about DxE’s goals, including whether he and his colleagues want to end all animal agriculture and meat-eating. He didn’t mince words.

“The short answer is yes, we want to end animal agriculture,” Johnson told me by email. He also says that he and DxE believe all livestock farming is inherently inhumane. “We don’t believe in humane animal ag,” Johnson writes.

I applaud DxE for exposing what appear by every indication to be brutal, disgusting, inhumane, neglectful, and monstrous conditions at the pig farm. DxE’s investigation benefits animals and American consumers alike. But my boisterous applause ends right about there.

For DxE, investigations such as this one are a means to an end. And that end is the adoption of new laws that outlaw all animal agriculture and completely banish meat from the American diet. I could not disagree more with DxE’s goal to end all animal agriculture. I believe every person has a right to make their own food choices—whatever those may be.

I strongly support the right of farmers everywhere to raise livestock for food, a position I’ve held for years. I also believe that the overwhelming majority of food producers in this country take proper care of the animals they raise for food. In 2016, I toured a pig farm in Iowa and found it predictably smelly but otherwise clean and humane.

After a recent ruling that enjoined Iowa from enforcing its ag-gag law, Rozenboom told the Gazette he was “personally very disgusted that we can’t protect honest, hardworking Iowans but we’ll protect criminals and people that lie for a living.”

This is nonsense. It is entirely possible to support investigations like the one DxE conducted and to oppose the group’s ultimate goal; just as it is possible to support animal agriculture and the people who make it possible while opposing ag-gag laws and the people who treat animals as Rozenboom’s farm lessee reportedly did. 

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On Brexit Day, The Times They Are A’Changing

On Brexit Day, The Times They Are A’Changing

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

It’s finally here after three and a half years, Brexit Day. The U.K. is formally out of the European Union.

And from where I’m sitting it looks like they are only just getting started.

For now though, on Saturday the transition period begins where nothing traumatic changes except that there is no longer the threat of Nigel Farage giving the odious European Parliament what for on a regular basis.

I will miss this. It’s been some of my most favorite television of the last fifteen years. And watching him get cut off is that moment when, for the first time, the mask finally slipped.

Farage was singing and for once they didn’t hear the Swedish National Anthem. They heard him loud and clear.

And the most stirring thing in that speech was Farage’s promise to keep going, to continue opposing the European Union.

Because Brexit is just the beginning of something larger and it’s savvy of Farage to note it in his farewell two fingers up to the EU.

The European Union just lost its first major battle against the people it rules with a disdainful technocratic fist.

It’s in damage control mode, telling us that no one else will be able to achieve what the U.K. has. Good luck with that. There are a lot of newly-minted populists in the world today than there were yesterday.

So, even if this is the acme of Farage’s political career, he’s achieved more by never personally winning an election for himself than any man in modern political history.

The establishment hates him for it. And they will downplay his role in it, but it is a truly astonishing accomplishment, this Brexit thing, no matter how it turns out in the end.

Most importantly, it proves that working within the system is the wrong way to go about societal change. You change things by going directly to the people and building your case from the ground up.

You don’t change anything except yourself by commanding the heights and trickling freedom down to the masses.

When you take a step back it’s also clear there’s more changing within and outside the U.K. that has been sparked by Farage’s calling than The Davos Crowd wants to admit.

Mission Improbable

Since Boris Johnson secured a deal with French President Emmanuel Macron to finally put the Remainer parliament in the U.K. out to pasture back in October, the signs have been building for a kind of reformation in British politics that points to a much different future.

Brexit, symbolically, is about the people finally beating back the long march of the institutions towards global tyranny. That’s what the EU is, a vehicle for global regulatory alignment and governance that is fundamentally, as Farage points out, anti-democratic and anti-individual.

But it is also the cancer that lies at the heart of the corruption we see all across the West. And breaking it down means also breaking down the cabal of oligarchs who have been charting its rise since the end of World War II.

They may be spinning up their latest bribe in the form of combating Climate Change, but that may be the biggest tell yet of how utterly out of touch they are with their reality.

Because none of this was supposed to happen. The EU is inevitable. The EU is eternal. The EU is all-powerful. Just ask them!

As I said previously, a cynical read of the recent British election should have seen Boris Johnson secure BRINO – Brexit in Name Only — for the global establishment. He’s got his Farage-proof majority and a very flawed withdrawal treaty.

But something odd has happened. And I think that cynical read is one that didn’t properly take into account just how much damage has been done to the institution of the British government over the past two years, in particular.

And it looks to me that the Queen is finally making her voice heard, through her proxies.

Let’s start Brexit itself. Johnson’s amendments to the Withdrawal Act put him in a very strong negotiating position with the EU for a trade deal. He enshrined in law that no extension to trade talks will occur.

He left No Deal on the table.

As Mike Shedlock pointed out earlier in the week, Michel Barnier, the chief negotiator for the EU, should be fired for incompetence. But Barnier continues to front he has the whip hand in trade talks.

He doesn’t. Johnson has all the leverage in trade negotiations because Trump stands ready to cut a deal the moment the transition period is over.

The Return of the Queen

The U.K. is not just leaving the EU. The U.K. is leaving on hostile terms. Johnson and the Queen have to re-establish themselves at the top of the competence hierarchy of British society if they are to stave off a political revolution.

And the best way to do that is to play hard ball with the EU whose humiliation tactics hardened British sentiment towards Brexit over time.

I think it’s hard for Americans to wrap their head around how much the British monarchy means to them, and I wouldn’t presume to guess, but it seems clear that if there was ever a time for the Queen to come in and restore faith in the British way of doing things, that time is now.

Embracing a hard Brexit, at least in theory, starts this process. Ignoring the whinging of the globalist Remainer camp and refusing to give them any ground is, in my opinion, the right path to take.

And the commanding rejection of them in the election gives both Johnson and the Queen the mandate to clean house, to drain their swamp, as it were.

This is why Prince Harry was allowed to leave his duties to the Royal Family. He’s an embarrassment. So is Prince Andrew, who needs to be shunted out of sight. And it’s why it’s very possible Prince Charles will be skipped in the succession and William handed the crown.

The British crown has been a captured piece for generations to British globalists and Communists, but I repeat myself. They have dominated British foreign and domestic policy for decades.

And if there is one thing we know about Elizabeth, she hates Commies.

But Brexit, along with the growing relationship between Johnson, the Queen and President Trump, created an opportunity to expose the rot that’s been on display for the past three and a half years.

The people see it now with stunning clarity and going forward will have less tolerance for it than they have in generations.

Steele Wheels

The signs have been building for weeks. But, the event that solidified for me that things are changing fundamentally is the Times of London story that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele “fabricated” most of the infamous Trump Dossier which spawned three years of political turmoil surrounding Donald Trump.

Watch The Duran’s immense video breaking this down to see the further implications here.

That Times article clearly leaves Steele out to hang and that doesn’t happen if there hasn’t been a complete change of scenery at the top of British governance.

The timing on this was note perfect. As the Senate waffled on whether to prolong this sham, the lynch pin to the case against the Trump campaign is cast aside by British Intelligence.

And, to me, taken with everything happening within the Royal Family tells me the Queen has finally returned to the board.

If Britain is sovereign again, then the Sovereign should be a factor again. Don’t think Trump treating her with deference and EU leadership with open disdain isn’t a factor here.

If there is a quid pro quo involving Donald Trump, look no further than his chat with the Queen last fall which the crazies tried so hard to stop. I’m sure Trump pledged an easy path to a trade deal in exchange for support in defeating the CIA coup against him.

And oh, look, right on time when the Democrats were about to drag this thing out into a circus, MI6 is leaving Steele out to hang.

Trump now beats the impeachment. No more witnesses he’s free to begin indicting everyone involved.

The coup has failed just like Remain did.

The Democrats will have no choice but to shift into full on insurrection against this “impeached and illegitimate” president. The next ten months will be off the charts weird.

But for the Brits it’s all downhill from here. They won the big fight. They have an irrepressible former commodities trader to thank for giving them a voice long suppressed.

And they can lead the rest of Europe out of its current nightmare. Because once they begin to succeed on their own terms, the EU emperor will truly stand naked before the world.

*  *  *

Join my Patreon if you think Brexit is the beginning of a new story.  Install the Brave Browser to help combat the media’s grip on what story we’re allowed to tell.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 02/01/2020 – 08:10

Tags
Politics

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Negative Rates Are Forcing German Banks To Hoard So Much Cash They’re Running Out Of Space

Negative Rates Are Forcing German Banks To Hoard So Much Cash They’re Running Out Of Space

The increasingly unstable and unpredictable world isn’t the only reason why betting on safe-makers and security companies might not seem like a bad idea to some savvy investors. But those aren’t the only reasons.

In the era of NIRP, “cashless societies” like Sweden are at a clear disadvantage. When banks are charging wealthy customers additional fees for storing their cash on deposit, the option to transition a chunk of one’s fortune to cash suddenly makes sense. And as Bloomberg reported Friday, this phenomenon hasn’t been lost on German banks.

To help them keep as little money in reserve accounts as possible, banks in Germany are reportedly stuffing vaults with euro banknotes in to keep them handy for customers (and avoid the additional NIRP tax on deposits). Some banks have hoarded so much cash that they’re running out of room and are searching for more storage. This behavior has been going on for years, practically since Draghi introduced negative rates almost six years ago.

But the trend has gotten so out of hand German banks are running out of space to stash the notes.

The physical cash holdings of German banks rose to a record 43.4 billion euros ($48 billion) in December, according to Bundesbank data published on Friday. That’s almost triple the amount at the end of May 2014, the month before the European Central Bank started charging for deposits and raising the pressure on Germany’s already beleaguered banks.

By the end of last year, German banks were holding a record amount of physical cash.

In theory, negative interest rates are supposed to spur inflation and economy growth by encouraging businesses to borrow, however, the policy has arguably failed in Europe, as growth has remained sluggish over the last five years, while the eurozone’s savers and bankers have suffered.

“These days it’s better to keep funds in cash rather than park them at the ECB,” said Andreas Schulz, who runs a savings bank close to Berlin. “That’s despite the risk, insurance costs and logistical hassle involved. It’s a ludicrous demonstration of the consequences of the ECB’s interest-rate policy.”

Munich-based precious metals trader Pro Aurum said it has received several requests from banks to store notes in its vaults, but the company had to turn them down.

“The ECB’s negative interest rates make hoarding cash attractive,” said Frank Schaeffler, a German member of parliament with the opposition Free Democrats. “This is just the beginning. If it continues, we’ll see a boom for vault makers and security companies.”

European banks have repeatedly warned that they can’t pass on all the liquidity they have as credit, but holding cash won’t help banks escape the entirety of the burden of negative rates. In fact, the volume of notes that banks are hoarding is still small compared with their overall deposits. But the trend has become grist for German critics of the ECB, who argue that negative interest rates are causing more harm than good.

Demand for safe deposit boxes has been growing for “months” according to one business owner.

“We’re seeing increased demand for our safe deposit boxes, frequently for storing cash,” said Markus Weiss, a managing director at Degussa Goldhandel. “That high demand has lasted for months now and we’re continuously expanding our capacities,” said Weiss, whose company sells gold and offers clients space to store their valuables.

German banks have been especially hard hit (look at Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank), as Germans tend to keep most of their savings in low-yielding investments.

Unfortunately for them, the ECB selected Christine Lagarde as its new leader, a former finance minister who has given every indication that she intends to continue with Mario Draghi’s unprecedented monetary stimulus.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 02/01/2020 – 07:35

Tags
Business Finance

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UK Came & Went, Leaving Europe In A Mess

UK Came & Went, Leaving Europe In A Mess

Authored by Diana Johnstone via ConsortiumNews,com,

Whew.  Finally, at last, the United Kingdom has formally left the European Union.  Here in Paris, the champions of French withdrawal from the EU are celebrating. They see Brexit as the harbinger of a future “Frexit,” a French departure from undemocratic governance, and the beginning of the end of a failed project to unify Europe around the demands of neoliberal capitalism.

But the paradox is that the champions of European unification might be celebrating even more – if it weren’t too late. Because years of British membership have already helped shatter the original dreams of a united Europe, whether the aspirations of the federalists for political unity or the project of a European confederation of independent states advocated by Charles De Gaulle some 60 years ago. 

Way back then, when De Gaulle was meeting with the aged West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to promote Franco-German reconciliation, the two old statesmen were thinking in terms of working gradually toward a partnership of core European states that would preserve their sovereignty within a confederation ensuring peace and cooperation.

French President Charles de Gaulle, left, and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1961. (Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

From the start, the question of British membership appeared as a thorn in the side of European unity. Initially, London was opposed to the Common Market.  In 1958, Prime Minister Harold MacMillan assailed it as “the Continental Blockade” (alluding to Napoleon’s 1806 European policy) and said England would not stand for it.  But as the project seemed to take shape, London sought accommodation.

De Gaulle warned from the start that Great Britain didn’t belong in a unified Europe, geographically, economically or above all psychologically.

The remark has become famous: in 1944, on the eve of the Normandy invasion, in a quarrelsome exchange, U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill reportedly told De Gaulle that if Britain had to choose, it would always go for “the open sea” rather than the European continent.

Of course, Britain long ago lost both Churchill and its empire.  Nevertheless, Brits remain psychologically wedded to their island status, the origin of their overwhelming maritime power that built the empire and has left traces of English-speaking nations and preferred trade relations all around the world.  They do not normally feel part of “the continent” and the traditional policy of their governments was always to keep the continent divided and weak.  This policy was passed on to London’s pupils in Washington, echoed in the description of NATO’s purpose: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down” – the joke that tells the truth.

De Gaulle Envisioned American Trojan Horse

Sixty years ago, De Gaulle, who envisaged a European confederation as a way to achieve independence from the American liberators (who came to stay), saw very clearly that the U.K. would be America’s Trojan horse in the European community. That is called vision, the quality of a statesman – a breed that seems to have died out in the West.  He opposed British membership as long as he could, but the American influence was too great.  And curiously enough, the ardent European federalists joined in promoting British membership, seemingly unaware that such membership was totally incompatible with the political unity they desired.

British leaders, firmly attached to their parliament, their royalty, their class system, and their unique role in the world — now largely passed on to their heirs in Washington — never would consider genuine political unity with the continent.  But as a trading nation, they wanted to be part of a Europe that would favor free trade, period.

The United Kingdom first applied for membership in 1961, at a time when it comprised the central core made up of France, Germany, the Benelux countries and Italy.

But as long as De Gaulle was president of France, this was not possible, despite U.S. support (the United States has always supported enlargement, notably Turkish membership, now considered out of the question).  The United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community only on Jan. 1, 1973, bringing with it both Ireland and Denmark, another advocate of free trade.

Bringing in Britain was the decisive step toward making unified Europe into a vast free market, a step toward globalization.  This was indeed the program of Jean Monnet, a totally Americanized French businessman who plotted the path to European unity through purely economic measures, indifferent to political issues. But it took British weight to pull Europe firmly in that direction, away from the original Common Market idea (removing trade barriers only among Member States) toward an open market, with minimum trade barriers, extending the benefits of its “free competition” doctrine to such giants as the United States and China.

Leon Brittan Enforced Neoliberalism 


Leon Brittan in February 2011. (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Wikimedia Commons)

In 1989, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appointed Leon Brittan to the post of European Commissioner for competition, where he stayed until 1999 in charge of trade and external affairs. In Brussels his was the most powerful influence in confirming the EU’s role as chief enforcer of neoliberal policies. At the same time, Thatcher demanded “her money back” and strengthened the U.K.’s own freedom from European institutional constraints.

The U.K. never agreed to the Schengen agreement on EU borders and declined to scrap the pound sterling for the euro — a wise move, no doubt.  But also symptomatic of the essential incapacity of the U.K. to fully merge with the continent.

At the same time, the presence of London has certainly contributed to the total inability of the EU to develop a foreign policy that deviates from that of Washington. Britain supported the enlargement to the East which has made the EU more politically disunited than ever and has been the strongest supporter of the paranoid Russophobia of Poland and the Baltic States which pushes other European countries into a dangerous conflict with Russia that is contrary to their own interests.

EU Members’ Own Mistakes

Not that Britain is responsible for everything that is wrong with the European Union today.  A major mistake was made by French President François Mitterrand in the 1980s when he insisted on a “common European currency” under the illusion that this would help France contain Germany — when it turned out not only to do the contrary but to ruin Greece and cause ravages in Portugal, Spain and Italy.

And there are plenty of other mistakes that have been made, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s invitation to come to Europe, ostensibly addressed to Syrian war refugees but understood by millions of unfortunates in the Middle East and Africa as meant for themselves. 

And certainly, there were and are a minority of U.K. residents who sincerely identify with Europe and want to feel part of it.  But they are a minority.  Britain has for too many centuries cherished and celebrated its uniqueness for that to be erased by complex impersonal institutions.

As Great Britain returns to the uncertainties of the open sea, it leaves behind a European Union that is bureaucratically governed to serve the interests of financial capital. Member States, such as Macron’s France, are governed according to EU decrees against the will of their people. British membership contributed to this denial of democracy, but paradoxically, the British people themselves are the first to reject it and demand a return to full national sovereignty. 

Even the ardent fans of European Unity increasingly insist that they want “a different Europe,” recognizing that the project has failed to produce the wonders that were promised. But changing this particular Europe would require unanimity between the 27 remaining, and increasingly quarrelsome, member states.

That is why the idea is growing that it may be time to give up this failed European union and start all over, seeking political understanding issue by issue between sovereign democracies rather than a nonfunctional economic unity as decreed by transnational capitalist bureaucracy.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 02/01/2020 – 07:00

Tags
Politics

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36KO2AQ Tyler Durden

How the War on Sex Work Crushes Underprivileged Women

That prohibitionist laws are always, always, enforced more heavily upon the poor, the disadvantaged, and minorities is not, I think, controversial. One would have to contort one’s brain in a manner worthy of a Cirque du Soleil performance to ignore the facts that cops more heavily patrol poor and minority neighborhoods and actively look for people to arrest; that judges and juries have less sympathy for those they perceive as “others”; and that, because poor people overwhelmingly lack the resources to mount an adequate criminal defense (or even bail), they are far more likely to plead guilty to whatever a prosecutor offers, just so they can get it over with and at least try to get back to their lives. Protectionist laws (including occupational licensing) similarly harm those who are not yet established in a field, since nonincumbents are less likely to be consulted about the content of those laws and far less likely to be able to afford compliance costs after the regulations take effect.

These are among the reasons sex workers almost universally prefer prostitution “decriminalization” to the regulatory systems characteristic of what is called “legalization.” The former—unlike so-called drug decriminalization—takes sex work out of the hands of the police altogether, while the latter plants a thicket of special sex-work-specific rules, regulations, laws, licenses, permits, codes, and prohibitions that invariably creates a two-tiered system: one for those who have the money, knowhow, political or business connections, and other resources to comply and thus function “legally,” and one for those who do not. In every country with a “legalized” system, we see the same pattern: Well-connected businesspeople who have never themselves done sex work buy up all the brothel licenses, while racial or gender minorities, migrants, and other disadvantaged groups are far more likely to be arrested for working illegally within that “legal” system—often for violating the same kinds of ridiculous and unnecessary rules that governments love foisting upon industries to which politicians or the cartels who own them have taken a dislike.

Even within the fully criminalized systems typical in the United States, there are glaring disparities of enforcement. Most of y’all reading this probably already know that while white and nonwhite Americans use recreational drugs at roughly equal rates, minorities are arrested more frequently, charged more heavily, and more frequently caged (and for longer terms). And most of y’all can probably guess that it’s the same with sex work: While there are sex workers and clients of every description, sex workers of color, trans sex workers, and street workers are dramatically more likely to be hassled, arrested, and even robbed or raped by police than their white, cisgender, and indoor-working counterparts. Black trans street workers, falling into all of these groups, practically have targets painted on their backs; they’re often arrested merely for daring to show their faces outdoors, a phenomenon that activists call “walking while trans.” The same is true for their clients: Poor minority men who can only afford the (generally lower-priced) services of street workers are far more likely to be ensnared by policewomen looking to entrap them into committing a crime than are affluent white men who visit “high-end” escorts who discreetly do business in apartments or houses in “nice” neighborhoods. In one raid a few years ago, nearly every surname of the men arrested in a “john sting” in Seattle was Hispanic, despite the fact that Seattle is, to put it politely, much less ethnically diverse than most U.S. cities.

Just as poverty, minority status, and other disadvantages make people more vulnerable to the predations of police and prosecutors, so too do such attributes expose them to a greater likelihood of exploitation by criminals and unscrupulous businesspeople who don’t quite qualify as criminals (but are bad enough). Disadvantaged sex workers face a greater likelihood of violence from people—whether law enforcement or civilian sexual predators—posing as clients. And they usually lack the resources to set themselves up as indoor escorts, which requires things like professional photos, quality lingerie, a professional-looking website, advertising, beauty treatments, the rent for an “incall” location in a neighborhood wealthier men won’t be afraid to visit, the cost of a dependable car for doing “outcalls”—I could go on, but I suspect you get the picture.

It shouldn’t be surprising that, in desperation, some women will become involved with smooth-talking boyfriends or other middlemen who promise to help them access those things and thereby move off the street into a safer mode of work. But often, the boyfriend is a liar, or the middleman wants more money or more control than the sex worker anticipated, and before she knows it she finds herself in an exploitative or abusive situation. Both the frequency and the severity of such situations have been outrageously exaggerated by moralists, who liberally bandy about the label “sex trafficking,” who characterize the workers involved as passive victims rather than rational actors trying to do the best they can with very limited options, and who pretend that exploitation is the norm in our trade rather than an outlier (and an occurrence that would be even less common in the absence of prohibition). Nonetheless, as you can imagine, these situations are more common among poor women, migrants, underage sex workers, and so on.

The artificial hysteria around “sex trafficking” has made it an effective excuse for any oppressive law the government wants to pass, beginning with more money for cops and expanding into mass surveillance, greater restrictions on women’s movement in public, and—perhaps most pernicious of all—internet censorship.

In March 2018, Congress passed a legislative package colloquially known as FOSTA-SESTA and formally known as the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. Even before President Donald Trump signed it into law a few weeks later, it had done tremendous damage to the sex work ecosystem.

The law makes a web platform liable for “facilitating prostitution” and “sex trafficking” (neither of which it defines adequately) if someone uses it to advertise illegal services. The chilling effect was dramatic; the majority of sites frequented by sex workers immediately shut down, closed themselves off to U.S. visitors, enacted draconian censorship policies, or—if the site’s entire business model was based in sex work advertising, as with industry leader Eros.com—established a series of continually changing, increasingly incomprehensible, and confusingly silly rules about the types of pictures, links, and words that would be allowed. At about the same time, the feds shut down Backpage, the colossus of inexpensive sex work ads; its former owners have been subjected to a campaign of persecution that has not yet run its course.

Almost overnight, the industry was thrown into chaos worldwide. Although it was founded by Americans, Backpage was popular in Australia and many other places where prostitution is legal to one degree or another. Sex workers in those countries were forced to scramble for new ways to advertise their services. In some cases, they opted to build their own websites, domiciled and hosted in countries beyond the reach of American puritanism.

In the United States, the consequences have been nothing less than catastrophic. Many disadvantaged sex workers were forced to return to street work. Some younger women who had never worked without online ads were pushed to the street for the first time, placing them in far greater danger than either their indoor-working sisters or the older outdoor workers who at least knew what to expect. Naturally, “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) interests reacted badly to the increasing number of street workers, and many police departments have responded with more raids and arrests on popular strolls.

Other U.S. sex workers were able to scrape together the resources to move to more expensive ad sites, such as the aforementioned Eros. But the personal information that platform now demands that advertisers share—scans of a photo ID with legal name clearly displayed, full-face photos in the same outfits used in face-blurred ad shots, etc.—have become so terrifyingly invasive that many established escorts, myself included, have abandoned it on the theory that the company may be amassing data to offer as a bargaining chip when the feds come after it, as the Department of Justice has already indicated it will.

Even those who have succeeded in moving into more “upscale” forms of work have a big problem: In recent years, U.S. law enforcement agencies have been adopting the faux-feminist “end demand” model of prohibition, which involves prosecuting clients more heavily than sex workers. A goal of this strategy is to win the support of carceral feminists who can’t or won’t comprehend that attacking a business’s clients is an attack on the business, regardless of rhetoric.

The shift has understandably made potential clients much warier that the “escort” behind an ad might actually be a gang of cops out to ruin their lives—and that in turn has made many men more reluctant to provide the personal information that sex workers use to screen potential customers. Of course, established providers will generally have a considerable online footprint (ratings and reviews, a blog or Twitter account, a personal website, videos, searchable pictures—even articles in libertarian magazines!) that would-be clients can examine to help them be sure a sex worker is the real McCoy and not a trap. More mature ladies also generally have a healthy number of regular clients built up over years. I’ll be just fine, for example—and every time I’m quoted in an interview or appear in a documentary, I get more requests for dates.

You know who isn’t likely to have such an unmistakably real internet presence? Those who are trying to move indoors from the street. Those who used to take out cheap Backpage ads and don’t have their own professional websites. Part-timers who can’t be too conspicuous about their side hustle for fear of losing their day jobs (or their kids). Those who were new to the industry when FOSTA-SESTA hit. 

In short, the disadvantaged. And so, as is always the case, the effects of prohibition and policing fall most heavily on those members of society who already suffer far more than their share of misfortune and violence.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3aYlnvk
via IFTTT

How the War on Sex Work Crushes Underprivileged Women

That prohibitionist laws are always, always, enforced more heavily upon the poor, the disadvantaged, and minorities is not, I think, controversial. One would have to contort one’s brain in a manner worthy of a Cirque du Soleil performance to ignore the facts that cops more heavily patrol poor and minority neighborhoods and actively look for people to arrest; that judges and juries have less sympathy for those they perceive as “others”; and that, because poor people overwhelmingly lack the resources to mount an adequate criminal defense (or even bail), they are far more likely to plead guilty to whatever a prosecutor offers, just so they can get it over with and at least try to get back to their lives. Protectionist laws (including occupational licensing) similarly harm those who are not yet established in a field, since nonincumbents are less likely to be consulted about the content of those laws and far less likely to be able to afford compliance costs after the regulations take effect.

These are among the reasons sex workers almost universally prefer prostitution “decriminalization” to the regulatory systems characteristic of what is called “legalization.” The former—unlike so-called drug decriminalization—takes sex work out of the hands of the police altogether, while the latter plants a thicket of special sex-work-specific rules, regulations, laws, licenses, permits, codes, and prohibitions that invariably creates a two-tiered system: one for those who have the money, knowhow, political or business connections, and other resources to comply and thus function “legally,” and one for those who do not. In every country with a “legalized” system, we see the same pattern: Well-connected businesspeople who have never themselves done sex work buy up all the brothel licenses, while racial or gender minorities, migrants, and other disadvantaged groups are far more likely to be arrested for working illegally within that “legal” system—often for violating the same kinds of ridiculous and unnecessary rules that governments love foisting upon industries to which politicians or the cartels who own them have taken a dislike.

Even within the fully criminalized systems typical in the United States, there are glaring disparities of enforcement. Most of y’all reading this probably already know that while white and nonwhite Americans use recreational drugs at roughly equal rates, minorities are arrested more frequently, charged more heavily, and more frequently caged (and for longer terms). And most of y’all can probably guess that it’s the same with sex work: While there are sex workers and clients of every description, sex workers of color, trans sex workers, and street workers are dramatically more likely to be hassled, arrested, and even robbed or raped by police than their white, cisgender, and indoor-working counterparts. Black trans street workers, falling into all of these groups, practically have targets painted on their backs; they’re often arrested merely for daring to show their faces outdoors, a phenomenon that activists call “walking while trans.” The same is true for their clients: Poor minority men who can only afford the (generally lower-priced) services of street workers are far more likely to be ensnared by policewomen looking to entrap them into committing a crime than are affluent white men who visit “high-end” escorts who discreetly do business in apartments or houses in “nice” neighborhoods. In one raid a few years ago, nearly every surname of the men arrested in a “john sting” in Seattle was Hispanic, despite the fact that Seattle is, to put it politely, much less ethnically diverse than most U.S. cities.

Just as poverty, minority status, and other disadvantages make people more vulnerable to the predations of police and prosecutors, so too do such attributes expose them to a greater likelihood of exploitation by criminals and unscrupulous businesspeople who don’t quite qualify as criminals (but are bad enough). Disadvantaged sex workers face a greater likelihood of violence from people—whether law enforcement or civilian sexual predators—posing as clients. And they usually lack the resources to set themselves up as indoor escorts, which requires things like professional photos, quality lingerie, a professional-looking website, advertising, beauty treatments, the rent for an “incall” location in a neighborhood wealthier men won’t be afraid to visit, the cost of a dependable car for doing “outcalls”—I could go on, but I suspect you get the picture.

It shouldn’t be surprising that, in desperation, some women will become involved with smooth-talking boyfriends or other middlemen who promise to help them access those things and thereby move off the street into a safer mode of work. But often, the boyfriend is a liar, or the middleman wants more money or more control than the sex worker anticipated, and before she knows it she finds herself in an exploitative or abusive situation. Both the frequency and the severity of such situations have been outrageously exaggerated by moralists, who liberally bandy about the label “sex trafficking,” who characterize the workers involved as passive victims rather than rational actors trying to do the best they can with very limited options, and who pretend that exploitation is the norm in our trade rather than an outlier (and an occurrence that would be even less common in the absence of prohibition). Nonetheless, as you can imagine, these situations are more common among poor women, migrants, underage sex workers, and so on.

The artificial hysteria around “sex trafficking” has made it an effective excuse for any oppressive law the government wants to pass, beginning with more money for cops and expanding into mass surveillance, greater restrictions on women’s movement in public, and—perhaps most pernicious of all—internet censorship.

In March 2018, Congress passed a legislative package colloquially known as FOSTA-SESTA and formally known as the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. Even before President Donald Trump signed it into law a few weeks later, it had done tremendous damage to the sex work ecosystem.

The law makes a web platform liable for “facilitating prostitution” and “sex trafficking” (neither of which it defines adequately) if someone uses it to advertise illegal services. The chilling effect was dramatic; the majority of sites frequented by sex workers immediately shut down, closed themselves off to U.S. visitors, enacted draconian censorship policies, or—if the site’s entire business model was based in sex work advertising, as with industry leader Eros.com—established a series of continually changing, increasingly incomprehensible, and confusingly silly rules about the types of pictures, links, and words that would be allowed. At about the same time, the feds shut down Backpage, the colossus of inexpensive sex work ads; its former owners have been subjected to a campaign of persecution that has not yet run its course.

Almost overnight, the industry was thrown into chaos worldwide. Although it was founded by Americans, Backpage was popular in Australia and many other places where prostitution is legal to one degree or another. Sex workers in those countries were forced to scramble for new ways to advertise their services. In some cases, they opted to build their own websites, domiciled and hosted in countries beyond the reach of American puritanism.

In the United States, the consequences have been nothing less than catastrophic. Many disadvantaged sex workers were forced to return to street work. Some younger women who had never worked without online ads were pushed to the street for the first time, placing them in far greater danger than either their indoor-working sisters or the older outdoor workers who at least knew what to expect. Naturally, “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) interests reacted badly to the increasing number of street workers, and many police departments have responded with more raids and arrests on popular strolls.

Other U.S. sex workers were able to scrape together the resources to move to more expensive ad sites, such as the aforementioned Eros. But the personal information that platform now demands that advertisers share—scans of a photo ID with legal name clearly displayed, full-face photos in the same outfits used in face-blurred ad shots, etc.—have become so terrifyingly invasive that many established escorts, myself included, have abandoned it on the theory that the company may be amassing data to offer as a bargaining chip when the feds come after it, as the Department of Justice has already indicated it will.

Even those who have succeeded in moving into more “upscale” forms of work have a big problem: In recent years, U.S. law enforcement agencies have been adopting the faux-feminist “end demand” model of prohibition, which involves prosecuting clients more heavily than sex workers. A goal of this strategy is to win the support of carceral feminists who can’t or won’t comprehend that attacking a business’s clients is an attack on the business, regardless of rhetoric.

The shift has understandably made potential clients much warier that the “escort” behind an ad might actually be a gang of cops out to ruin their lives—and that in turn has made many men more reluctant to provide the personal information that sex workers use to screen potential customers. Of course, established providers will generally have a considerable online footprint (ratings and reviews, a blog or Twitter account, a personal website, videos, searchable pictures—even articles in libertarian magazines!) that would-be clients can examine to help them be sure a sex worker is the real McCoy and not a trap. More mature ladies also generally have a healthy number of regular clients built up over years. I’ll be just fine, for example—and every time I’m quoted in an interview or appear in a documentary, I get more requests for dates.

You know who isn’t likely to have such an unmistakably real internet presence? Those who are trying to move indoors from the street. Those who used to take out cheap Backpage ads and don’t have their own professional websites. Part-timers who can’t be too conspicuous about their side hustle for fear of losing their day jobs (or their kids). Those who were new to the industry when FOSTA-SESTA hit. 

In short, the disadvantaged. And so, as is always the case, the effects of prohibition and policing fall most heavily on those members of society who already suffer far more than their share of misfortune and violence.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3aYlnvk
via IFTTT