newswars--2020-06-09--Presence of airborne dust could signify increased habitability of distant planets

Scientists have expanded our understanding of potentially habitable planets orbiting distant stars by including a critical climate component—the presence of airborne dust .
The researchers suggest that planets with significant airborne dust—similar to the world portrayed in the classic sci-fi Dune—could be habitable over a greater range of distances from their parent star , therefore increasing the window for planets capable of sustaining life .
The team from the University of Exeter , the Met Office and the University of East Anglia ( UEA ) isolated three primary impacts of dust .
Planets orbiting close to stars smaller and cooler @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are likely to exist in synchronized rotation-orbit states , resulting in permanent day and night sides .
The researchers found that dust cools down the hotter dayside but also warms the night side , effectively widening the planet ’ s ` habitable zone ’ , the range of distances from the star where surface water could exist .
Detection and characterisation of potentially habitable distant planets is currently most effective for these types of worlds .
The results , published today in Nature Communications , also show that for planets in general , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ significant role at the inner edge of this habitable zone , where it gets so hot that planets might lose their surface water and become inhabitable—in a scenario thought to have occurred on Venus .
As water is lost from the planet and its oceans shrink , the amount of dust in the atmosphere can increase and , as a result , cool the planet down .
This process is a so-called negative climate feedback , postponing the planet ’ s loss of its water .
Crucially , the research also suggests that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for in the search for key biomarkers indicative of life—such as the presence of methane—as it can obscure their signatures as observed by astronomers .
The experts suggest that these results mean exoplanets must be very carefully considered before being potentially rejected in the search for habitable distant worlds .
Dr. Ian Boutle , lead author of the study and jointly from the Met Office and the University of Exeter said : ” On Earth and Mars , dust storms have both cooling and warming effects on the surface , with the cooling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ synchronized orbit ’ planets are very different .
Here , the dark sides of these planets are in perpetual night , and the warming effect wins out , whereas on the dayside , the cooling effect wins out .
The effect is to moderate the temperature extremes , thus making the planet more habitable.
” The presence of mineral dust is known to play a substantial role in climate , both regionally as found on Earth and globally , as experienced on Mars .
The research team performed a series of simulations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state-of-the-art climate models , and showed for the first time that naturally occurring mineral dust will have a significant impact on whether exoplanets can support life .
Prof Manoj Joshi from UEA said that this study again shows how the possibility of exoplanets supporting life depends not only on the stellar irradiance—or the amount of light energy from the nearest star—but also on the planet ’ s atmospheric make-up .
“ Airborne dust is something that might keep planets habitable , but also obscures our ability to find signs of life on these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considered in future research.
” The research project included part of an undergraduate project by Duncan Lyster , who features on the paper ’ s list of authors .
Duncan , who now runs his own business crafting surfboards added : “ It ’ s exciting to see the results of the practical research in my final year of study paying off .
I was working on a fascinating exoplanet atmosphere simulation project , and was lucky enough to be part of a group who could take it on to the level of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ habitable planets far beyond our solar system is an integral part of current and future space missions , many focused on answering the question of whether we are alone .
Nathan Mayne , from the University of Exeter , who along with a co-author was able to work on this project thanks to funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council ( STFC ) added : “ Research such as this is only possible by crossing disciplines and combing the excellent understanding and techniques developed to study our own planet ’ s climate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To be able to involve undergraduate physics students in this , and other projects , also provides an excellent opportunity for those studying with us to directly develop the skills needed in such technical and collaborative projects .
”

Scientists have expanded our understanding of potentially habitable planets orbiting distant stars by including a critical climate component—the presence of airborne dust.
The researchers suggest that planets with significant airborne dust—similar to the world portrayed in the classic sci-fi Dune—could be habitable over a greater range of distances from their parent star, therefore increasing the window for planets capable of sustaining life.
The team from the University of Exeter, the Met Office and the University of East Anglia (UEA) isolated three primary impacts of dust.
Planets orbiting close to stars smaller and cooler than the Sun, so-called M—dwarfs, are likely to exist in synchronized rotation-orbit states, resulting in permanent day and night sides.
The researchers found that dust cools down the hotter dayside but also warms the night side, effectively widening the planet’s `habitable zone’, the range of distances from the star where surface water could exist. Detection and characterisation of potentially habitable distant planets is currently most effective for these types of worlds.
The results, published today in Nature Communications, also show that for planets in general, cooling by airborne dust could play a significant role at the inner edge of this habitable zone, where it gets so hot that planets might lose their surface water and become inhabitable—in a scenario thought to have occurred on Venus.
As water is lost from the planet and its oceans shrink, the amount of dust in the atmosphere can increase and, as a result, cool the planet down. This process is a so-called negative climate feedback, postponing the planet’s loss of its water.
Crucially, the research also suggests that the presence of dust must be accounted for in the search for key biomarkers indicative of life—such as the presence of methane—as it can obscure their signatures as observed by astronomers.
The experts suggest that these results mean exoplanets must be very carefully considered before being potentially rejected in the search for habitable distant worlds.
Dr. Ian Boutle, lead author of the study and jointly from the Met Office and the University of Exeter said:” On Earth and Mars, dust storms have both cooling and warming effects on the surface, with the cooling effect typically winning out. But these ‘synchronized orbit’ planets are very different. Here, the dark sides of these planets are in perpetual night, and the warming effect wins out, whereas on the dayside, the cooling effect wins out. The effect is to moderate the temperature extremes, thus making the planet more habitable.”
The presence of mineral dust is known to play a substantial role in climate, both regionally as found on Earth and globally, as experienced on Mars.
The research team performed a series of simulations of terrestrial or Earth-sized exoplanets, using state-of-the-art climate models, and showed for the first time that naturally occurring mineral dust will have a significant impact on whether exoplanets can support life.
Prof Manoj Joshi from UEA said that this study again shows how the possibility of exoplanets supporting life depends not only on the stellar irradiance—or the amount of light energy from the nearest star—but also on the planet’s atmospheric make-up. “Airborne dust is something that might keep planets habitable, but also obscures our ability to find signs of life on these planets. These effects need to be considered in future research.”
The research project included part of an undergraduate project by Duncan Lyster, who features on the paper’s list of authors. Duncan, who now runs his own business crafting surfboards added: “It’s exciting to see the results of the practical research in my final year of study paying off. I was working on a fascinating exoplanet atmosphere simulation project, and was lucky enough to be part of a group who could take it on to the level of world-class research.”
The quest to identify habitable planets far beyond our solar system is an integral part of current and future space missions, many focused on answering the question of whether we are alone.
Nathan Mayne, from the University of Exeter, who along with a co-author was able to work on this project thanks to funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) added: “Research such as this is only possible by crossing disciplines and combing the excellent understanding and techniques developed to study our own planet’s climate, with cutting edge astrophysics.
“To be able to involve undergraduate physics students in this, and other projects, also provides an excellent opportunity for those studying with us to directly develop the skills needed in such technical and collaborative projects.”


newswars--2020-06-09--The Great Society: A Lesson in American Central Planning

Most people associate the Great Society initiative with Lyndon Baines Johnson .
There is very good reason for that , to be sure .
As president , Johnson , the “ master of the Senate , ” was the driving force behind the raft of legislation that passed during his administration , the 1964 and 1965 legislation that framed and filled in his vision for a “ great society ” in which the blessings of postwar America ’ s bonanza would be shared by all .
Johnson ’ s spearheading of the Great Deal initiatives in turn stemmed from his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johnson had been a Roosevelt stumper in Texas before finding his feet in Washington politics , and the desire to complete FDR ’ s domestic legacy by positioning government at the center of a vast nationwide redistribution network was the motor of the Great Society as we know it today .
President Johnson was a necessary condition for the Great Society programs that cleared Congress with remarkable regularity and became part of the federal bureaucracy .
No Johnson , no Great Society .
But LBJ was not sufficient condition for the Great Society @ @ @ @ @ @ @ editorial board member and current King ’ s College scholar Amity Shlaes ’ s new book Great Society : A New History shows us that what we might think of as Johnson ’ s pet program was so much more than his baby alone .
Shlaes ’ s biography of the idea of the Great Society reveals that it was planning in general—more precisely the article of faith that government could employ “ the best and the brightest ” to engineer its way over any obstacle that the mere unplanned world might throw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s true parentage ( pp .
7–8 ) .
Johnson was without doubt the broker for the deals , public and private , that allowed the Great Society to take shape .
But , for all that , Johnson was merely one of many at the planning table .
It was faith in planning , not inherent greatness , personal or otherwise , that made the Great Society what it was .
If nobody else in government had believed it possible to plan a great society , then all of Johnson ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The phrase “ the best and the brightest ” calls to mind another president , of course .
John Fitzgerald Kennedy , Johnson ’ s predecessor , had also thrown the weight of the federal government behind the planning regime .
Shlaes remarks that Kennedy “ court historian ” Arthur Schlesinger noted , after a White House visit in 1963 , the tension between Kennedy ’ s “ New Frontier ” space race planners and old-style liberals such as Johnson , for whom the Great Society was , as President Johnson would later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Poverty ” —an attempt not only to defeat being poor , but to cure it as one would a disease ( pp .
80–81 ) .
Both Kennedy and Johnson , then , had their own great societies in mind .
However , both strains of great society planning , the technocratic and the bleeding heart , ended in similar failure .
Neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson visions for how to use the power and riches that had fallen into America ’ s lap after World War II panned out .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ leading to abstraction , an increasing remoteness from the complexities and realities on the ground .
“ The New Deal created a forgotten man , ” Shlaes writes .
“ The Great Society created more ” ( p. 14 ) .
No matter how it was tried , or who tried it—even the best and the brightest—Shlaes shows that planning broke on the shoals of the real world at every turn .
This was perhaps nowhere as evident as in the labor unions .
Walter Reuther , longtime president of the Union of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the major players in Shlaes ’ s narrative , at times even outstripping President Kennedy and President Johnson in importance to Shlaes ’ s arguments .
Reuther held up the Scandinavian democratic socialist countries as the ideal that America should follow , and he spent his life planning for the lives of the army of workers under the UAW umbrella .
But , to his chagrin , workers themselves often preferred to work in nonunion shops .
They didn ’ t want their lives planned by someone else .
“ Since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Shlaes says , “ Reuther and [ American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations ( AFL-CIO ) president ] George Meany had been running a race against time : companies were indeed moving [ to states which had opted for Taft-Hartley provision 14 ( b ) allowing ] state governments to make working with unions optional for employers ” ( p. 67 ) .
Faced with competition from “ right-to-work ” states , Shlaes argues , “ Reuther and Meany had to prove to workers that unionland offered a better life ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was even more and more ambitious planning , but even Reuther was savvy enough to see that domestic bargaining and more centralized planning for unions alone were not enough .
The generous pay packages that Reuther negotiated for UAW members could be undercut by overseas firms , so “ throughout the 1950s and 1960s , ” Shlaes points out , Reuther spent much of his time in Europe and Japan , imploring union workers there , too , to negotiate higher wages ( pp .
68–69 ) .
Inevitably , planning bled over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Once planning started at home , the planners would have to plan the rest of the world economy , too .
Planning is the motif of Shlaes ’ s Great Society .
In the postwar era , America , which had been in the shadow of the Great Depression and two global conflicts over the previous thirty years , suddenly found itself rich .
What to do with all the money was the big problem with which the planners were confronted .
Shlaes ’ s book begins with Bonanza , the long-running ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that strikes it rich in the American West , and uses it as a backdrop for her story about how planners chased ways to make the real-life American bonanza permanent .
But somehow uncertainty and then disaster creep in .
The plans don ’ t work .
Shlaes follows the Midasian procession of wealth becoming quandary along the way .
The more the planners planned , Shlaes shows us , the more the bonanza slipped out of their grasp .
There were those who were against the planning , to be sure .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for example , got his start in politics by starring in prime-time pro–free market television programs sponsored by General Electric , whose antiunion executive Lemuel Boulware worried that unionism would thwart the creative power of American capital .
Shlaes reminds us that GE ’ s founders , Thomas Edison and Charles Albert Coffin , “ believed that the kind of company that sustained American capitalism was the company that stood aloof , that wore no harness , that came to no big negotiating table ” ( p. 27 ) .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book , that capitalism works best , in fact works only , when not fettered by superfluous plans .
“ In the time of Edison and Coffin , ” Shlaes continues : there had been no business school , no military-industrial complex , no electrical workers ’ union , and no federal income taxes….In the day the journalist Ida Tarbell had summarized the attitude of the GE pioneers : “ Research must be free and where it pointed the way business must have the discernment , the ingenuity and courage to follow.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them to unexpected discoveries .
( pp .
27–28 ) Later Shlaes details the rise of another great American firm , Fairchild Semiconductor , founded when Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and other maverick engineers decided to forge a capitalist path free from government entanglement .
Fairchild Semiconductor , which would later become Intel , proved the exception to the emerging rule , however .
The “ military-industrial complex , ” which President Eisenhower had lamented just before leaving office , was too lucrative for most companies to ignore .
It was far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eschew it altogether .
The gravity field of government was everywhere , and it seemed to insinuate itself into everything .
Those who absented themselves from the Fed-led planning scheme more often than not found themselves rendered irrelevant , overlooked .
This even extended into race relations .
For example , Walter Reuther helped bail the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. out of a Birmingham jail , Shlaes notes , but that largesse came with a price .
Reuther enlisted King ’ s help in keeping the civil rights movement a mainstream , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t need any competition from actual black people in planning for black uplift .
When the antiracist arm of activist Tom Hayden ’ s Students for a Democratic Society tried to get seats on the floor of the 1968 Democratic convention , convention planners denied them those seats ( pp .
126–30 ) .
Robert Parris Moses , a militant civil rights fighter who had left his job as a math teacher to become a Freedom Rider in the South , was pushed aside , and Walter Reuther , working under direct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rest of the civil rights leaders into following the union line ( p. 127 ) .
There was too much at stake politically , Shlaes explains , to allow unplanned outbursts to imperil the 1968 Democratic National Convention—but then , of course , this convention now lives in infamy as the site of a much more violent outburst in the streets of the host city Chicago ( pp .
292–99 ) .
Again , the way things were planned was not the way they ended up working out .
This slowly accelerating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a bubble of costs which gradually moved from the peripheries to the center of the presidential day .
The more plans failed , the more money it was going to take to fix things up .
Shlaes shows how Johnson leaned hard on Federal Reserve secretary William McChesney Martin not to raise interest rates so that he , Johnson , could borrow more and more money making society great .
Henry Hammill Fowler , Johnson ’ s Treasury secretary , warned Martin against raising the rate , but Martin did it anyway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this couldn ’ t preserve America ’ s credit rating , however , because , as Shlaes points out , it was by this point obvious to everyone that the US would have to end its currency ’ s relationship with gold .
Gold was keeping the federal government from borrowing what it would take to spread the postwar bonanza around among all .
Veins of subterranean gold underpin much of Shlaes book .
She follows the sources from the time to show that gold was on the minds of politicians and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ postwar American bonanza there was still uneasiness about how long the gold would last .
Readers will remember Goldfinger , the 1964 James Bond movie about a crazed “ foreign businessman ” who plans to irradiate Fort Knox and thereby render the American gold supply unusable ( p. 266 ) .
Shlaes reminds us that this was not entirely a figment of Ian Fleming ’ s imagination .
There was no Goldfinger plot , of course , but the movie , Shlaes points out , was very timely social commentary .
The convertibility @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the federally mandated level of gold reserves of at least 25 percent of circulating currency that had to be kept domestically at all times , were front-and-center international issues during the years when the Great Society was trying to find its feet ( pp .
254–90 ) .
President Kennedy , Shlaes says , fretted constantly about the gold reserves , “ almost like a Victorian banker , ” daily asking his advisors how much was left in the vaults ( p. 44 ) .
President Johnson had an even bigger problem as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s bluff and withdraw gold , preferring specie in the hand to promises in the president ’ s mouth .
As Shlaes pithily sums it all up , “ Johnson was trading in the Great Dollar for the Great Society , and it was a lousy trade ” ( p. 270 ) .
Here was the quandary .
The Great Society was proving to be enormously expensive , and the more money the planners spent , the more the price of their planning kept rising .
There seemed to be no way to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up , the unintended consequences of the plan .
One of the people in Shlaes ’ s narrative who best brings this conundrum to life is Daniel Patrick Moynihan , the autodidact whiz kid who , having been helped out of poverty by government programs himself , wanted to extend the same opportunities to everyone else .
To be sure , Moynihan ’ s real-world experience acted as a brake on the planning impulses of those , such as John F. Kennedy ’ s brother-in-law , Sargent Shriver , who saw the federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the giving of alms .
But even when done with Moynihanian restraint , planning tended to go awry .
Shlaes reminds us , for example , that in 1965 Moynihan penned “ The Negro Family : The Case for National Action , ” which admitted the hard truth that welfare programs perversely tended to destroy black families , exacerbating poverty rather than “ curing ” it ( p. 162 ) .
And Moynihan ’ s suggestion in favor of public sector unions was the impetus behind President Kennedy ’ s 1962 signing of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bargaining rights to federal employees .
This big change to the Wagner Act regime led to gridlock in municipal planning as unions captured Democratic Party machines , which initiated a cycle of successive administrations rubber-stamping union demands and unions duly sluicing a portion of dues into the coffers of Democratic candidates for office .
Rent seeking was the only constant of the postwar period .
Everything else was beyond prediction .
By the time Richard Milhous Nixon took office following Johnson ’ s decision not to seek reelection in 1968 , the ability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way into the future was in serious doubt .
Beset by rising competition from industries in nations that had been bombed into oblivion during the war—nations such as Japan , where an entrepreneur named Toyoda Kiichirō ( helped along by postwar programs pushed through by another great society visionary , General Douglas MacArthur ) realized he could find a niche in the American market by making smaller , higher-quality cars than Detroit did—the US economy lurched ( p. 302 ) .
The bonanza of the 1950s and the planning frenzy of the 1960s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1970s .
Nixon announced his decision to remove the US from the gold standard in 1971 as a way to fight the inflation caused by massive government outlays , signaling the end of the line for the Great Society as Johnson and other planners had conceived of it .
It was no coincidence that Nixon made this announcement on August 15 , the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945 , because decoupling from gold was Nixon ’ s tacit admission that America would have to maneuver to fight Japan again , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Normally , narratives about the 1960s would track the progress of the Vietnam War .
Much to her credit , though , Shlaes demurs .
She might have followed the usual Shakesepearian line and portrayed the 1960s as a bright beginning darkened by a distant war , the walls of reality closing in as the government got the problems and solutions mixed up .
But one of the strengths of Great Society is that Shlaes avoids easy theatricality , and pat answers in general .
That is the whole point , after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as if we did not know what was going to happen next—unplanned .
Even Henry Kissinger , who dominates most Vietnam-era histories , is given just a minor role , and this is entirely in keeping with Shlaes ’ s thematic treatment of the era overall .
Instead , Vietnam becomes just one part of the Great Society debates at home .
Shlaes follows Tom Hayden and socialist Michael Harrington on their journey to North Vietnam—Hayden and his second wife , Jane Fonda , later named their firstborn child “ Troy , after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] who had plotted to kill McNamara ” —but this was not so much about Vietnam as about the USA ( pp .
224 , 226 ) .
In Shlaes ’ s telling , it was not that Vietnam was dragging down the Great Society , but that planning could conquer neither poverty nor the North Vietnamese ( p. 207 ) .
Indeed , in a welcome narrative departure from other books of this kind , the antistrophe to Shlaes ’ s Bonanza motif is not Vietnam , but Pruitt-Igoe , the gigantic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which Shlaes takes as emblematic of the rise and fall of the Great Society idea .
Inspired by the planning spirit which saw social problems as kinds of math problems , codes to be broken , the planners in the federal government poured an extraordinary amount of money into breaking the code of poverty .
Dismissing Moynihan ’ s earlier call for a kind of architectural brutalism in government buildings and hiring New Formalist architect Minoru Yamasaki instead , the government commissioned the Pruitt-Igoe complex .
The hyphen is instructive .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white and black poor people lived in largely separate communities .
At Pruitt-Igoe , as with the federal busing schemes later introduced by the same planners , poor blacks and whites would live cheek by jowl , the Great Society in action , people ’ s lives planned from above .
But the great tragedy is that this new federally mandated bonanza belonged to no one .
Without ownership , Shlaes points out , nobody took care of the facilities .
Vandalism was rampant , with copper flashing and gutters regularly torn out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Elevators—which planners had designed to stop only at every third floor in order to encourage community building—were turned into latrines .
Worse , the lengthened elevator rides often facilitated muggings and rapes .
In 1972 , the government blasted away half of Pruitt-Igoe , a symbol for many of the half-hearted execution of half-baked Great Society plans ( pp .
220–29 ) .
Amity Shlaes ’ s Great Society is a beautifully written , wry , and powerfully understated book about the disastrous era of full-scale government planning in the United States .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time are more than enough to show the folly of the master plan .
Apart from a few typographical hiccups and some very slight repetitiveness here and there , the book is ingeniously executed , motif layered on motif as Shlaes ’ s short , catchy sentences braid into the rope with which , by the end , most of the planners end up hanging themselves .
At times , Shlaes ’ s exposition rivals that of Shelby Foote in its quiet assurance and playful asides .
Even those who lived through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have seen all there is to see about the Great Society will want to buy and read Shlaes ’ s new book .
It is a delight—and , perhaps , sadly , the best thing to come out of two decades of relentless government planning .

Most people associate the Great Society initiative with Lyndon Baines Johnson.
There is very good reason for that, to be sure. As president, Johnson, the “master of the Senate,” was the driving force behind the raft of legislation that passed during his administration, the 1964 and 1965 legislation that framed and filled in his vision for a “great society” in which the blessings of postwar America’s bonanza would be shared by all. Johnson’s spearheading of the Great Deal initiatives in turn stemmed from his personal attachment to the New Deal. Johnson had been a Roosevelt stumper in Texas before finding his feet in Washington politics, and the desire to complete FDR’s domestic legacy by positioning government at the center of a vast nationwide redistribution network was the motor of the Great Society as we know it today. President Johnson was a necessary condition for the Great Society programs that cleared Congress with remarkable regularity and became part of the federal bureaucracy. No Johnson, no Great Society.
But LBJ was not sufficient condition for the Great Society to arise. Former Wall Street Journal editorial board member and current King’s College scholar Amity Shlaes’s new book Great Society: A New History shows us that what we might think of as Johnson’s pet program was so much more than his baby alone. Shlaes’s biography of the idea of the Great Society reveals that it was planning in general—more precisely the article of faith that government could employ “the best and the brightest” to engineer its way over any obstacle that the mere unplanned world might throw at it—that was the Great Society’s true parentage (pp. 7–8). Johnson was without doubt the broker for the deals, public and private, that allowed the Great Society to take shape. But, for all that, Johnson was merely one of many at the planning table. It was faith in planning, not inherent greatness, personal or otherwise, that made the Great Society what it was. If nobody else in government had believed it possible to plan a great society, then all of Johnson’s efforts would have been in vain.
The phrase “the best and the brightest” calls to mind another president, of course. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Johnson’s predecessor, had also thrown the weight of the federal government behind the planning regime. Shlaes remarks that Kennedy “court historian” Arthur Schlesinger noted, after a White House visit in 1963, the tension between Kennedy’s “New Frontier” space race planners and old-style liberals such as Johnson, for whom the Great Society was, as President Johnson would later put it, actually a “War on Poverty”—an attempt not only to defeat being poor, but to cure it as one would a disease (pp. 80–81). Both Kennedy and Johnson, then, had their own great societies in mind. However, both strains of great society planning, the technocratic and the bleeding heart, ended in similar failure. Neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson visions for how to use the power and riches that had fallen into America’s lap after World War II panned out. Shlaes’s narrative is of planning leading to abstraction, an increasing remoteness from the complexities and realities on the ground. “The New Deal created a forgotten man,” Shlaes writes. “The Great Society created more” (p. 14). No matter how it was tried, or who tried it—even the best and the brightest—Shlaes shows that planning broke on the shoals of the real world at every turn.
This was perhaps nowhere as evident as in the labor unions. Walter Reuther, longtime president of the Union of Auto Workers (UAW), is one of the major players in Shlaes’s narrative, at times even outstripping President Kennedy and President Johnson in importance to Shlaes’s arguments. Reuther held up the Scandinavian democratic socialist countries as the ideal that America should follow, and he spent his life planning for the lives of the army of workers under the UAW umbrella. But, to his chagrin, workers themselves often preferred to work in nonunion shops. They didn’t want their lives planned by someone else. “Since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act,” Shlaes says, “Reuther and [American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) president] George Meany had been running a race against time: companies were indeed moving [to states which had opted for Taft-Hartley provision 14(b) allowing] state governments to make working with unions optional for employers” (p. 67). Faced with competition from “right-to-work” states, Shlaes argues, “Reuther and Meany had to prove to workers that unionland offered a better life” (p. 68). Their solution was even more and more ambitious planning, but even Reuther was savvy enough to see that domestic bargaining and more centralized planning for unions alone were not enough. The generous pay packages that Reuther negotiated for UAW members could be undercut by overseas firms, so “throughout the 1950s and 1960s,” Shlaes points out, Reuther spent much of his time in Europe and Japan, imploring union workers there, too, to negotiate higher wages (pp. 68–69). Inevitably, planning bled over the borders of the United States. Once planning started at home, the planners would have to plan the rest of the world economy, too.
Planning is the motif of Shlaes’s Great Society. In the postwar era, America, which had been in the shadow of the Great Depression and two global conflicts over the previous thirty years, suddenly found itself rich. What to do with all the money was the big problem with which the planners were confronted. Shlaes’s book begins with Bonanza, the long-running (1959–73) TV show about a family that strikes it rich in the American West, and uses it as a backdrop for her story about how planners chased ways to make the real-life American bonanza permanent. But somehow uncertainty and then disaster creep in. The plans don’t work. Shlaes follows the Midasian procession of wealth becoming quandary along the way. The more the planners planned, Shlaes shows us, the more the bonanza slipped out of their grasp.
There were those who were against the planning, to be sure. Former Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan, for example, got his start in politics by starring in prime-time pro–free market television programs sponsored by General Electric, whose antiunion executive Lemuel Boulware worried that unionism would thwart the creative power of American capital. Shlaes reminds us that GE’s founders, Thomas Edison and Charles Albert Coffin, “believed that the kind of company that sustained American capitalism was the company that stood aloof, that wore no harness, that came to no big negotiating table” (p. 27). This is a key point in Shlaes’s book, that capitalism works best, in fact works only, when not fettered by superfluous plans. “In the time of Edison and Coffin,” Shlaes continues:
there had been no business school, no military-industrial complex, no electrical workers’ union, and no federal income taxes….In the day the journalist Ida Tarbell had summarized the attitude of the GE pioneers: “Research must be free and where it pointed the way business must have the discernment, the ingenuity and courage to follow.” Only free researchers allowed serendipity to take them to unexpected discoveries. (pp. 27–28)
Later Shlaes details the rise of another great American firm, Fairchild Semiconductor, founded when Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and other maverick engineers decided to forge a capitalist path free from government entanglement. Fairchild Semiconductor, which would later become Intel, proved the exception to the emerging rule, however. The “military-industrial complex,” which President Eisenhower had lamented just before leaving office, was too lucrative for most companies to ignore. It was far easier to join the state-capital paradigm than eschew it altogether.
The gravity field of government was everywhere, and it seemed to insinuate itself into everything. Those who absented themselves from the Fed-led planning scheme more often than not found themselves rendered irrelevant, overlooked. This even extended into race relations. For example, Walter Reuther helped bail the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. out of a Birmingham jail, Shlaes notes, but that largesse came with a price. Reuther enlisted King’s help in keeping the civil rights movement a mainstream, union-implicated affair. The Great Society didn’t need any competition from actual black people in planning for black uplift. When the antiracist arm of activist Tom Hayden’s Students for a Democratic Society tried to get seats on the floor of the 1968 Democratic convention, convention planners denied them those seats (pp. 126–30). Robert Parris Moses, a militant civil rights fighter who had left his job as a math teacher to become a Freedom Rider in the South, was pushed aside, and Walter Reuther, working under direct orders from President Johnson, quietly strong-armed the rest of the civil rights leaders into following the union line (p. 127). There was too much at stake politically, Shlaes explains, to allow unplanned outbursts to imperil the 1968 Democratic National Convention—but then, of course, this convention now lives in infamy as the site of a much more violent outburst in the streets of the host city Chicago (pp. 292–99). Again, the way things were planned was not the way they ended up working out.
This slowly accelerating dervish of planning chasing the unplannable led to a bubble of costs which gradually moved from the peripheries to the center of the presidential day. The more plans failed, the more money it was going to take to fix things up. Shlaes shows how Johnson leaned hard on Federal Reserve secretary William McChesney Martin not to raise interest rates so that he, Johnson, could borrow more and more money making society great. Henry Hammill Fowler, Johnson’s Treasury secretary, warned Martin against raising the rate, but Martin did it anyway (pp. 199–200). Even this couldn’t preserve America’s credit rating, however, because, as Shlaes points out, it was by this point obvious to everyone that the US would have to end its currency’s relationship with gold. Gold was keeping the federal government from borrowing what it would take to spread the postwar bonanza around among all.
Veins of subterranean gold underpin much of Shlaes book. She follows the sources from the time to show that gold was on the minds of politicians and the general public alike. Even in the postwar American bonanza there was still uneasiness about how long the gold would last. Readers will remember Goldfinger, the 1964 James Bond movie about a crazed “foreign businessman” who plans to irradiate Fort Knox and thereby render the American gold supply unusable (p. 266). Shlaes reminds us that this was not entirely a figment of Ian Fleming’s imagination. There was no Goldfinger plot, of course, but the movie, Shlaes points out, was very timely social commentary. The convertibility of the dollar into gold, and the federally mandated level of gold reserves of at least 25 percent of circulating currency that had to be kept domestically at all times, were front-and-center international issues during the years when the Great Society was trying to find its feet (pp. 254–90). President Kennedy, Shlaes says, fretted constantly about the gold reserves, “almost like a Victorian banker,” daily asking his advisors how much was left in the vaults (p. 44). President Johnson had an even bigger problem as foreign governments began to call America’s bluff and withdraw gold, preferring specie in the hand to promises in the president’s mouth. As Shlaes pithily sums it all up, “Johnson was trading in the Great Dollar for the Great Society, and it was a lousy trade” (p. 270).
Here was the quandary. The Great Society was proving to be enormously expensive, and the more money the planners spent, the more the price of their planning kept rising. There seemed to be no way to plan around the surprises that kept cropping up, the unintended consequences of the plan. One of the people in Shlaes’s narrative who best brings this conundrum to life is Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the autodidact whiz kid who, having been helped out of poverty by government programs himself, wanted to extend the same opportunities to everyone else. To be sure, Moynihan’s real-world experience acted as a brake on the planning impulses of those, such as John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, who saw the federal funding of welfare as an extension of the giving of alms. But even when done with Moynihanian restraint, planning tended to go awry. Shlaes reminds us, for example, that in 1965 Moynihan penned “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” which admitted the hard truth that welfare programs perversely tended to destroy black families, exacerbating poverty rather than “curing” it (p. 162). And Moynihan’s suggestion in favor of public sector unions was the impetus behind President Kennedy’s 1962 signing of Executive Order 10988, which extended collective bargaining rights to federal employees. This big change to the Wagner Act regime led to gridlock in municipal planning as unions captured Democratic Party machines, which initiated a cycle of successive administrations rubber-stamping union demands and unions duly sluicing a portion of dues into the coffers of Democratic candidates for office. Rent seeking was the only constant of the postwar period. Everything else was beyond prediction.
By the time Richard Milhous Nixon took office following Johnson’s decision not to seek reelection in 1968, the ability of the US government to plan its way into the future was in serious doubt. Beset by rising competition from industries in nations that had been bombed into oblivion during the war—nations such as Japan, where an entrepreneur named Toyoda Kiichirō (helped along by postwar programs pushed through by another great society visionary, General Douglas MacArthur) realized he could find a niche in the American market by making smaller, higher-quality cars than Detroit did—the US economy lurched (p. 302). The bonanza of the 1950s and the planning frenzy of the 1960s were both tapped out by the early 1970s. Nixon announced his decision to remove the US from the gold standard in 1971 as a way to fight the inflation caused by massive government outlays, signaling the end of the line for the Great Society as Johnson and other planners had conceived of it. It was no coincidence that Nixon made this announcement on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945, because decoupling from gold was Nixon’s tacit admission that America would have to maneuver to fight Japan again, this time from Detroit instead of from Washington.
Normally, narratives about the 1960s would track the progress of the Vietnam War. Much to her credit, though, Shlaes demurs. She might have followed the usual Shakesepearian line and portrayed the 1960s as a bright beginning darkened by a distant war, the walls of reality closing in as the government got the problems and solutions mixed up. But one of the strengths of Great Society is that Shlaes avoids easy theatricality, and pat answers in general. That is the whole point, after all. Her book reads as spontaneously as if we did not know what was going to happen next—unplanned. Even Henry Kissinger, who dominates most Vietnam-era histories, is given just a minor role, and this is entirely in keeping with Shlaes’s thematic treatment of the era overall. Instead, Vietnam becomes just one part of the Great Society debates at home. Shlaes follows Tom Hayden and socialist Michael Harrington on their journey to North Vietnam—Hayden and his second wife, Jane Fonda, later named their firstborn child “Troy, after the Vietnamese martyr [Nguyễn Văn Trỗi] who had plotted to kill McNamara”—but this was not so much about Vietnam as about the USA (pp. 224, 226). In Shlaes’s telling, it was not that Vietnam was dragging down the Great Society, but that planning could conquer neither poverty nor the North Vietnamese (p. 207).
Indeed, in a welcome narrative departure from other books of this kind, the antistrophe to Shlaes’s Bonanza motif is not Vietnam, but Pruitt-Igoe, the gigantic public housing project in downtown St. Louis, which Shlaes takes as emblematic of the rise and fall of the Great Society idea. Inspired by the planning spirit which saw social problems as kinds of math problems, codes to be broken, the planners in the federal government poured an extraordinary amount of money into breaking the code of poverty. Dismissing Moynihan’s earlier call for a kind of architectural brutalism in government buildings and hiring New Formalist architect Minoru Yamasaki instead, the government commissioned the Pruitt-Igoe complex. The hyphen is instructive. At the time, segregationalist policies meant that white and black poor people lived in largely separate communities. At Pruitt-Igoe, as with the federal busing schemes later introduced by the same planners, poor blacks and whites would live cheek by jowl, the Great Society in action, people’s lives planned from above. But the great tragedy is that this new federally mandated bonanza belonged to no one. Without ownership, Shlaes points out, nobody took care of the facilities. Vandalism was rampant, with copper flashing and gutters regularly torn out by thieves and sold for scrap. Elevators—which planners had designed to stop only at every third floor in order to encourage community building—were turned into latrines. Worse, the lengthened elevator rides often facilitated muggings and rapes. In 1972, the government blasted away half of Pruitt-Igoe, a symbol for many of the half-hearted execution of half-baked Great Society plans (pp. 220–29).
Amity Shlaes’s Great Society is a beautifully written, wry, and powerfully understated book about the disastrous era of full-scale government planning in the United States. Shlaes indulges in no editorializing—the facts of the time are more than enough to show the folly of the master plan. Apart from a few typographical hiccups and some very slight repetitiveness here and there, the book is ingeniously executed, motif layered on motif as Shlaes’s short, catchy sentences braid into the rope with which, by the end, most of the planners end up hanging themselves. At times, Shlaes’s exposition rivals that of Shelby Foote in its quiet assurance and playful asides. Even those who lived through this era of history and think they have seen all there is to see about the Great Society will want to buy and read Shlaes’s new book. It is a delight—and, perhaps, sadly, the best thing to come out of two decades of relentless government planning.


newswars--2020-06-09--Study: Birth Defects Linked to Flame Retardant

A new study from the University of Georgia has shown that exposure to a now-banned flame retardant can alter the genetic code in sperm , leading to major health defects in children of exposed parents .
Published recently in Scientific Reports , the study is the first to investigate how polybrominated biphenyl-153 ( PBB153 ) , the primary chemical component of the flame retardant FireMaster , impacts paternal reproduction .
In 1973 , an estimated 6.5 million Michigan residents were exposed to PBB153 when FireMaster was accidentally sent to state grain mills where it made its way into the food @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a range of health problems including skin discoloration , headache , dizziness , joint pain and even some cancers have been linked to the exposure .
More striking , the children of those who were exposed seemed to experience a host of health issues as well , including reports of hernia or buildup in the scrotum for newborn sons and a higher chance of stillbirth or miscarriage among adult daughters .
Yet , little work has been done to understand how the chemical exposure could have impacted genes passed from an exposed father @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It is still a relatively new idea that a man ’ s exposures prior to conception can impact the health of his children , ” said Greeson , an environmental health science doctoral student in Charles Easley ’ s lab at UGA ’ s College of Public Health and Regenerative Bioscience Center .
“ Most studies where a toxic effect is observed in children look only to the mothers and the same has been true of studies conducted on PBB153 , ” she said .
Greeson and a team of researchers from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combination of observational and laboratory approaches to demonstrate how PBB153 acted on sperm cells .
“ Typically , scientific studies are either epidemiological in nature and inherently observational or focus on bench science , but in this study , we did both , ” said Greeson .
This approach allowed the researchers to mimic the known blood exposure levels of PBB153 in a lab environment .
“ We were uniquely able to recreate this effect using our previously characterized human stem cell model for spermatogenesis , ” she said , “ which allowed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this effect in humans.
” The team looked at the expression of different genes in their human spermatogenesis model after dosing with PBB153 and found marked alterations in gene expression between dosed and undosed cells , specifically at genes important to development , such as embryonic organ , limb , muscle , and nervous system development .
“ PBB153 causes changes to the DNA in sperm in a way that changes how the genes are turned on and off , ” said Greeson .
“ PBB153 seems to turn on these genes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Greeson , which may explain some of the endocrine-related health issues observed in the children of exposed parents .
Though the study used this model to directly replicate exposure to PBB153 , Greeson says this approach could be used to better understand the impact of other environmental exposures on reproduction , including large-scale accidental exposures to toxic chemicals or everyday exposures .
“ Hopefully this work will lead to more studies combining epidemiology and bench science in the future , which will tell us more about why we ’ re seeing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human populations and encourage experimental studies to more closely mimic human exposures , ” she said .
Alex Jones exposes the goblin king Bill Gates and the globalist agenda designed to bring humanity to heel .

A new study from the University of Georgia has shown that exposure to a now-banned flame retardant can alter the genetic code in sperm, leading to major health defects in children of exposed parents.
Published recently in Scientific Reports, the study is the first to investigate how polybrominated biphenyl-153 (PBB153), the primary chemical component of the flame retardant FireMaster, impacts paternal reproduction.
In 1973, an estimated 6.5 million Michigan residents were exposed to PBB153 when FireMaster was accidentally sent to state grain mills where it made its way into the food supply. In the decades since, a range of health problems including skin discoloration, headache, dizziness, joint pain and even some cancers have been linked to the exposure.
More striking, the children of those who were exposed seemed to experience a host of health issues as well, including reports of hernia or buildup in the scrotum for newborn sons and a higher chance of stillbirth or miscarriage among adult daughters.
Yet, little work has been done to understand how the chemical exposure could have impacted genes passed from an exposed father, said study author Katherine Greeson.
“It is still a relatively new idea that a man’s exposures prior to conception can impact the health of his children,” said Greeson, an environmental health science doctoral student in Charles Easley’s lab at UGA’s College of Public Health and Regenerative Bioscience Center.
“Most studies where a toxic effect is observed in children look only to the mothers and the same has been true of studies conducted on PBB153,” she said.
Greeson and a team of researchers from UGA and Emory University used a unique combination of observational and laboratory approaches to demonstrate how PBB153 acted on sperm cells.
“Typically, scientific studies are either epidemiological in nature and inherently observational or focus on bench science, but in this study, we did both,” said Greeson.
This approach allowed the researchers to mimic the known blood exposure levels of PBB153 in a lab environment.
“We were uniquely able to recreate this effect using our previously characterized human stem cell model for spermatogenesis,” she said, “which allowed us to study the mechanism that causes this effect in humans.”
The team looked at the expression of different genes in their human spermatogenesis model after dosing with PBB153 and found marked alterations in gene expression between dosed and undosed cells, specifically at genes important to development, such as embryonic organ, limb, muscle, and nervous system development.
“PBB153 causes changes to the DNA in sperm in a way that changes how the genes are turned on and off,” said Greeson. “PBB153 seems to turn on these genes in sperm which should be turned off,” said Greeson, which may explain some of the endocrine-related health issues observed in the children of exposed parents.
Though the study used this model to directly replicate exposure to PBB153, Greeson says this approach could be used to better understand the impact of other environmental exposures on reproduction, including large-scale accidental exposures to toxic chemicals or everyday exposures.
“Hopefully this work will lead to more studies combining epidemiology and bench science in the future, which will tell us more about why we’re seeing an effect from an environmental exposure in human populations and encourage experimental studies to more closely mimic human exposures,” she said.
Alex Jones exposes the goblin king Bill Gates and the globalist agenda designed to bring humanity to heel.


newswars--2020-06-09--Black Lives Matter Is A Globalist Trojan Horse

Black Lives Matter is a dangerous organization built upon a mountain of lies and when black Americans figure this out @ @ @ @ @ totally screwed .
In this exclusive report , Greg Reese exposes statistics and facts BLM @ @ @ @ @ to see .

Black Lives Matter is a dangerous organization built upon a mountain of lies and when black Americans figure this out, the establishment will be totally screwed.
In this exclusive report, Greg Reese exposes statistics and facts BLM doesn’t want people to see.


newswars--2020-06-09--Economic Collapse Has Turned Many Europeans against the EU

Since the beginning of the year , the corona crisis has monopolized news coverage to the extent that a lot of very important stories and developments either went underreported or were ignored altogether .
One such example was the very surprising ruling that came out of the German Constitutional Court in early May , which challenged the actions and remit of the European Central Bank ( ECB ) .
In essence , the court ’ s decision made it clear that the ECB ’ s quantitative easing ( QE ) program did not respect the “ principle of proportionality , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the German government failed to challenge the bank ’ s policies as it should have .
The ruling also mentioned the side effects of the program and of the ECB ’ s overall ultraloose policy direction , such as the penalizing of savers and pensioners .
As was highlighted in the official decision , “ the ECB fails to conduct the necessary balancing of the monetary policy objective against the economic policy effects arising from the program .
Therefore , the decisions at issue…exceed the monetary policy mandate of the ECB.
” As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ultimatum and directly asked the Bundesbank to comply with its ruling and therefore to stop buying government bonds under the ECB ’ s QE program in the next three months .
Although the German court ruling had nothing to do with this latest wave of easing and money printing triggered by the coronavirus crisis , its timing puts the present situation in a different perspective .
This crisis has served as a “ judgment day ” of sorts .
It has revealed the countless failures , the incompetence , and the disarray at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just in Europe , but globally .
The more decentralized nations fared relatively better than those with a high degree of centralization , the latter unfortunately being the majority .
In the more centralized nations the lack of consistency and of clear leadership , the contradictory messages , the failures of public healthcare that cost countless lives , and the political decisions that cost millions their jobs and livelihoods all exposed the defects of centralization and the unreliability of both national governments and international organizations .
And that ’ s just the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immediately seen and felt .
There are even more grave consequences and aftereffects in the pipeline , which most citizens haven ’ t even realized yet , such as the inevitable breakdown of welfare systems and the debt time bombs in most major economies .
Specifically in the EU , the moral shortcomings , the small-time power games , the hypocrisy , and the sheer panic of the bloc ’ s leadership were laid bare for all to see .
All that talk of friendship and cooperation between European nations , all the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great European family , instantly proved shallow when this perfect union was confronted with the COVID threat .
Shipments of medical supplies destined for one nation were seized in transit by its neighbor , drugs were hoarded , borders were shut down , trade was frozen .
The first and hardest-hit member of the “ family ” went unaided and was helpless for weeks .
The first EU rescue package , meant to help keep the economy alive in the face of the forced shutdown , was delayed by political horse trading , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions rendered unemployed .
The scale of the economic disaster is only now starting to become clear , and the future looks bleak even without all the risks being understood and accounted for yet .
The deterioration and the economic downturn that is just beginning is projected to be comparable to or possibly worse than the Great Depression , and it could last longer too .
Already the eurozone economy has seen the steepest decline in its history , according to Eurostat figures , while the unfolding recession is projected to be much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ cures ” that worked before are unlikely to stop this tsunami , while the unprecedented levels of spending we now see in most member states are not sustainable .
The “ emergency checks ” and worker protections can not stick around forever .
Not unless they are formalized and normalized as we saw in Spain , where a basic income scheme is being introduced , the first ever in Europe , which the Spanish government hopes will indeed “ stay forever.
” This of course is no “ solution , ” but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Central planning , income redistribution , and the state takeover of the private sector are all at the core of various “ rescue ” efforts and ideas being pushed at the moment , and we know where this road actually leads .
If the countless historical examples aren ’ t enough to demonstrate the inevitable and inescapable results of these policies , one only need look at contemporary China .
Still , the economic pain is already so widespread that demonstrations and new movements are starting to have an impact .
Antilockdown protests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police have all been increasingly frequent in many European capitals .
The political winds are also shifting , and once again public sentiment is turning decisively against the EU .
According to a recent survey by Tecné , 42 percent of Italians said that they would leave the EU , up from 26 percent in November 2018 , while 88 percent felt that the EU failed to support their country .
Over in France , around six out of ten people “ do no not trust ” Brussels according to a Jacques Delors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of nations taking back control of their economies couldn ’ t have come at a worse time for the EU and those who see an opportunity to push for further centralization in the corona crisis .
Support for measures that would lead to tighter integration and even more power handed to Brussels is high among institutional figures ; however , these plans are very unlikely to be popular among citizens .
Although the north-south economic divide has grown exponentially deeper in just a few months , the corona crisis has arguably managed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard-hit south , especially in countries such as Italy and Spain , have become markedly more mistrustful and disillusioned with the EU and are turning away from it , as they feel that it turned away from them in their hour of need .
On the other hand , citizens of the more prosperous north see exactly how this “ rescue ” effort is going to end , as it has a thousand times before , with them having to foot the bill to support southern economies that were already failing long before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wuhan .
Overall , it is unlikely that the legal challenge from the German court will make a practical difference in the unlimited QE plans of the ECB .
Especially at a time like this , negative interest rates and money flooding the markets are simply a fact of life , and there is no conceivable way for the ECB to just stop , the same way that it is impossible for governments to reverse course in their massive spending sprees anytime soon .
The scale of the damage that has been done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any kind of private productivity , the job-killing shutdowns , and the desperation among officials to plug the holes of a sinking ship all render these measures necessary , both politically and realistically .
What the court ’ s ruling might achieve , however , is not a monetary change , but a political one .
It could serve as a signal that national sovereignty is still on the table , still worth debating and defending .
In this regard , we do seem to be approaching a crossroads and there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either passively accept a centralized future , where the individual becomes irrelevant , valueless , and expendable , or we reclaim control , through the principles of subsidiarity , in which decisions are made on the lowest possible level and all voices are heard .
In the aftermath of the corona crisis the latter option already seems to be gaining momentum , and understandably so .
After so many were let down , betrayed , and ignored , after basic rights were trampled and the promise of security in exchange for freedom has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indeed , it is no wonder that alternatives are sorely needed and that a hard turn toward individual responsibility , independent thought , and decentralization is already underway .
This article was originally published at claudiograss.ch .

Since the beginning of the year, the corona crisis has monopolized news coverage to the extent that a lot of very important stories and developments either went underreported or were ignored altogether.
One such example was the very surprising ruling that came out of the German Constitutional Court in early May, which challenged the actions and remit of the European Central Bank (ECB).
In essence, the court’s decision made it clear that the ECB’s quantitative easing (QE) program did not respect the “principle of proportionality,” abusing the ECB mandate, while the German government failed to challenge the bank’s policies as it should have. The ruling also mentioned the side effects of the program and of the ECB’s overall ultraloose policy direction, such as the penalizing of savers and pensioners. As was highlighted in the official decision, “the ECB fails to conduct the necessary balancing of the monetary policy objective against the economic policy effects arising from the program. Therefore, the decisions at issue…exceed the monetary policy mandate of the ECB.” As a result, the court issued an ultimatum and directly asked the Bundesbank to comply with its ruling and therefore to stop buying government bonds under the ECB’s QE program in the next three months.
Although the German court ruling had nothing to do with this latest wave of easing and money printing triggered by the coronavirus crisis, its timing puts the present situation in a different perspective.
This crisis has served as a “judgment day” of sorts. It has revealed the countless failures, the incompetence, and the disarray at the very core of most institutions, not just in Europe, but globally. The more decentralized nations fared relatively better than those with a high degree of centralization, the latter unfortunately being the majority. In the more centralized nations the lack of consistency and of clear leadership, the contradictory messages, the failures of public healthcare that cost countless lives, and the political decisions that cost millions their jobs and livelihoods all exposed the defects of centralization and the unreliability of both national governments and international organizations. And that’s just the first wave of disasters, the ones immediately seen and felt. There are even more grave consequences and aftereffects in the pipeline, which most citizens haven’t even realized yet, such as the inevitable breakdown of welfare systems and the debt time bombs in most major economies.
Specifically in the EU, the moral shortcomings, the small-time power games, the hypocrisy, and the sheer panic of the bloc’s leadership were laid bare for all to see. All that talk of friendship and cooperation between European nations, all the speeches about “solidarity” and the great European family, instantly proved shallow when this perfect union was confronted with the COVID threat. Shipments of medical supplies destined for one nation were seized in transit by its neighbor, drugs were hoarded, borders were shut down, trade was frozen. The first and hardest-hit member of the “family” went unaided and was helpless for weeks. The first EU rescue package, meant to help keep the economy alive in the face of the forced shutdown, was delayed by political horse trading, all while entire industries were decimated and millions rendered unemployed.
The scale of the economic disaster is only now starting to become clear, and the future looks bleak even without all the risks being understood and accounted for yet. The deterioration and the economic downturn that is just beginning is projected to be comparable to or possibly worse than the Great Depression, and it could last longer too. Already the eurozone economy has seen the steepest decline in its history, according to Eurostat figures, while the unfolding recession is projected to be much worse than the last crisis. The “cures” that worked before are unlikely to stop this tsunami, while the unprecedented levels of spending we now see in most member states are not sustainable. The “emergency checks” and worker protections cannot stick around forever. Not unless they are formalized and normalized as we saw in Spain, where a basic income scheme is being introduced, the first ever in Europe, which the Spanish government hopes will indeed “stay forever.” This of course is no “solution,” but simply the nationalization of the economy. Central planning, income redistribution, and the state takeover of the private sector are all at the core of various “rescue” efforts and ideas being pushed at the moment, and we know where this road actually leads. If the countless historical examples aren’t enough to demonstrate the inevitable and inescapable results of these policies, one only need look at contemporary China.
Still, the economic pain is already so widespread that demonstrations and new movements are starting to have an impact. Antilockdown protests, rent strikes, and clashes with police have all been increasingly frequent in many European capitals. The political winds are also shifting, and once again public sentiment is turning decisively against the EU. According to a recent survey by Tecné, 42 percent of Italians said that they would leave the EU, up from 26 percent in November 2018, while 88 percent felt that the EU failed to support their country. Over in France, around six out of ten people “do no not trust” Brussels according to a Jacques Delors Institute study.
Therefore, this idea of nations taking back control of their economies couldn’t have come at a worse time for the EU and those who see an opportunity to push for further centralization in the corona crisis. Support for measures that would lead to tighter integration and even more power handed to Brussels is high among institutional figures; however, these plans are very unlikely to be popular among citizens.
Although the north-south economic divide has grown exponentially deeper in just a few months, the corona crisis has arguably managed to bridge political gaps. Citizens of the hard-hit south, especially in countries such as Italy and Spain, have become markedly more mistrustful and disillusioned with the EU and are turning away from it, as they feel that it turned away from them in their hour of need. On the other hand, citizens of the more prosperous north see exactly how this “rescue” effort is going to end, as it has a thousand times before, with them having to foot the bill to support southern economies that were already failing long before the coronavirus ever made it out of Wuhan.
What Lies Ahead
Overall, it is unlikely that the legal challenge from the German court will make a practical difference in the unlimited QE plans of the ECB. Especially at a time like this, negative interest rates and money flooding the markets are simply a fact of life, and there is no conceivable way for the ECB to just stop, the same way that it is impossible for governments to reverse course in their massive spending sprees anytime soon. The scale of the damage that has been done to the economy, the destruction of any kind of private productivity, the job-killing shutdowns, and the desperation among officials to plug the holes of a sinking ship all render these measures necessary, both politically and realistically.
What the court’s ruling might achieve, however, is not a monetary change, but a political one. It could serve as a signal that national sovereignty is still on the table, still worth debating and defending. In this regard, we do seem to be approaching a crossroads and there’s a choice to be made.
We either passively accept a centralized future, where the individual becomes irrelevant, valueless, and expendable, or we reclaim control, through the principles of subsidiarity, in which decisions are made on the lowest possible level and all voices are heard. In the aftermath of the corona crisis the latter option already seems to be gaining momentum, and understandably so. After so many were let down, betrayed, and ignored, after basic rights were trampled and the promise of security in exchange for freedom has proven to be a very bad deal indeed, it is no wonder that alternatives are sorely needed and that a hard turn toward individual responsibility, independent thought, and decentralization is already underway.
This article was originally published at claudiograss.ch.


newswars--2020-06-09--IBM Wants to Keep Facial Recognition Technology Away From Police, Halt Development Altogether

By Elliot Leavy , former editor of the technology and innovation magazine maize and editor of culture magazine BOZO .
He has written for numerous publications around the world focussing on technology , belief systems , and culture .
Following the mass anti-police protests sweeping the world , IBM ’ s CEO has said the company will stop developing and researching facial recognition tech and reconsider selling it to law enforcement .
In a letter to Congress , IBM CEO Arvind Krishna stated that the company will no longer offer general purpose facial recognition analysis software .
The company also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ longer develop nor research such technology .
“ IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any [ facial recognition ] technology , including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors , for mass surveillance , racial profiling , violations of basic human rights and freedoms , or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and principles of trust and transparency , ” Krishna said in the letter .
“ We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Krishna addressed the letter to Senators Cory Booker ( D-NJ ) and Kamala Harris ( D-CA ) and Representatives Karen Bass ( D-CA ) , Hakeem Jeffries ( D-NY ) , and Jerrold Nadler ( D-NY ) .
The letter also called for police reform , saying that “ new federal rules should hold police more accountable for misconduct.
” In recent years , facial recognition technology has come on in leaps and bounds thanks to advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence .
However , as with most new technologies , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there are discrepancies in how facial recognition sees people of different races , ages and ethnicity .
On Tuesday , Microsoft ’ s AI journalists , used to select imagery for articles on MSN , mistook Little Mix ’ s Jade Thirlwall for her bandmate Leigh-Anne Pinnock , leading to accusations of racism .
Although not foolproof , this hasn ’ t meant that companies have not been producing and selling the technology to police departments .
Amazon , for example , was criticized for pitching its facial recognition tech to law enforcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described as “ primed for abuse in the hands of governments ” by the American Civil Liberties Union .
The ACLU also found that Rekognition incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress to faces picked from 25,000 public mugshots .
In the UK , a government-funded AI program aims to make unconstrained face recognition “ ubiquitous by 2020.
” The research program , Face Matching for Automatic Identity Retrieval , Recognition , Verification and Management ( FACER2VM ) will use machine learning to overcome previous limitations that have held the technology back .
Alex @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Memorandum 7277 : The UN Plan for Total Disarmament .

By Elliot Leavy, former editor of the technology and innovation magazine maize and editor of culture magazine BOZO. He has written for numerous publications around the world focussing on technology, belief systems, and culture.
Following the mass anti-police protests sweeping the world, IBM’s CEO has said the company will stop developing and researching facial recognition tech and reconsider selling it to law enforcement.
In a letter to Congress, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna stated that the company will no longer offer general purpose facial recognition analysis software. The company also told the Verge that it would no longer develop nor research such technology.
“IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any [facial recognition] technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and principles of trust and transparency,” Krishna said in the letter. “We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.”
Krishna addressed the letter to Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Representatives Karen Bass (D-CA), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). The letter also called for police reform, saying that “new federal rules should hold police more accountable for misconduct.”
In recent years, facial recognition technology has come on in leaps and bounds thanks to advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence. However, as with most new technologies, it is not without its hiccups, and there are discrepancies in how facial recognition sees people of different races, ages and ethnicity.
On Tuesday, Microsoft’s AI journalists, used to select imagery for articles on MSN, mistook Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall for her bandmate Leigh-Anne Pinnock, leading to accusations of racism.
Although not foolproof, this hasn’t meant that companies have not been producing and selling the technology to police departments.
Amazon, for example, was criticized for pitching its facial recognition tech to law enforcement in 2018, with its Rekognition system described as “primed for abuse in the hands of governments” by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU also found that Rekognition incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress to faces picked from 25,000 public mugshots.
In the UK, a government-funded AI program aims to make unconstrained face recognition “ubiquitous by 2020.” The research program, Face Matching for Automatic Identity Retrieval, Recognition, Verification and Management (FACER2VM) will use machine learning to overcome previous limitations that have held the technology back.
Alex Jones breaks down the State Dept. Memorandum 7277: The UN Plan for Total Disarmament.


newswars--2020-06-09--Border Patrol Has Already Encountered as Many Sex Predators in 2020 as All of Last Year

Border Patrol agents have encountered nearly as many convicted sexual predators in the first half of 2020 as the entirety of 2019 .
After apprehending or repelling 23 convicted sex offenders during the month of May , Customs and Border Protection ( CBP ) is already leveling with last year ’ s totals .
“ Every day , Border Patrol agents protect the US from dangerous criminals and drugs , ” CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan tweeted on Monday .
“ In May alone , USBP agents encountered 23 convicted sex offenders .
They ’ ve encountered almost as many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of FY19 .
It ’ s only June.
” Additionally , three more child sex predators were arrested during the past weekend , all of whom are Mexican nationals .
“ Saturday morning , Falfurrias agents arrested a Mexican national attempting to circumvent the checkpoint by traveling on the vast ranch lands of Brooks County , ” CBP reports regarding one suspect .
“ During processing , record checks revealed an active warrant for his arrest issued by the Morgantown North Carolina Police Department .
The warrant is for sexual assault , statutory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County Sheriff ’ s Office took custody of the subject.
” CBP has provided a list of examples of recent apprehensions in a related press release .
“ Transnational criminal networks don ’ t do background checks on the people they help smuggle into the country , ” said Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott .
“ Our vigilance makes this country safer , one encounter at a time.
” Watch Tucker Carlson call out major corporations for funding nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that have turned into violent riots .

Border Patrol agents have encountered nearly as many convicted sexual predators in the first half of 2020 as the entirety of 2019.
After apprehending or repelling 23 convicted sex offenders during the month of May, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is already leveling with last year’s totals.
“Every day, Border Patrol agents protect the US from dangerous criminals and drugs,” CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan tweeted on Monday.
“In May alone, USBP agents encountered 23 convicted sex offenders. They’ve encountered almost as many sex offenders as they did in all of FY19. It’s only June.”
Over the weekend, @CBPRGV Border Patrol agents arrested 3 illegal aliens convicted of or wanted for child-sex crimes. We will not let these dangerous criminals enter the country. @CBP agents and officers remain vigilant! https://t.co/ORrG9Wdo6W https://t.co/h7Bco4N0w9 — Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan (@CBPMarkMorgan) June 9, 2020
Additionally, three more child sex predators were arrested during the past weekend, all of whom are Mexican nationals.
“Saturday morning, Falfurrias agents arrested a Mexican national attempting to circumvent the checkpoint by traveling on the vast ranch lands of Brooks County,” CBP reports regarding one suspect.
“During processing, record checks revealed an active warrant for his arrest issued by the Morgantown North Carolina Police Department. The warrant is for sexual assault, statutory rape of a child. The Brooks County Sheriff’s Office took custody of the subject.”
CBP has provided a list of examples of recent apprehensions in a related press release.
“Transnational criminal networks don’t do background checks on the people they help smuggle into the country,” said Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott. “Our vigilance makes this country safer, one encounter at a time.”
Watch Tucker Carlson call out major corporations for funding nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that have turned into violent riots.
Dan Lyman: Follow @CitizenAnalyst


newswars--2020-06-09--Trump to Restart Campaign Rallies in Wake of Protests

President Trump ’ s popular Make America Great Again rallies are set to stage a comeback , as protests across the world have largely undermined the coronavirus contagion .
Following weeks of demonstrations , along with violent riots , in the names of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd , Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale on Monday said he ’ s presenting POTUS with a list of possible locations for rallies in the coming days .
“ Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump , ” Parscale said in a statement obtained by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is real and the rallies will be tremendous.
” “ You ’ ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of , ” Parscale said .
On Twitter Tuesday , Trump retweeted Washington Examiner editor Byron York , who showed pictures of thousands of protesters gathered , and offered tips to Trump about holding rallies possibly outdoors to conform with COVID-19 social distancing policies , with masks handed out for voluntary use .
“ Given recent gatherings , seems reasonable time for President Trump to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Could be held outside .
Give out masks at entrance , encourage use .
But mass gatherings are now OK. Biden could re-start , too , of course.
” Trump enthusiastically agreed , tweeting , “ BIG DEMAND !
Starting up again soon , maybe next week !
” If Democrats were hoping the coronavirus lockdowns would keep their candidate Joe Biden from stumbling on the campaign trail , and looking to avoid messy debates with Trump , they ’ ll have to think up a new strategy .
Alex Jones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coronavirus hoax and more…

President Trump’s popular Make America Great Again rallies are set to stage a comeback, as protests across the world have largely undermined the coronavirus contagion.
Following weeks of demonstrations, along with violent riots, in the names of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale on Monday said he’s presenting POTUS with a list of possible locations for rallies in the coming days.
“Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump,” Parscale said in a statement obtained by Politico. “The great American comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous.”
“You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of,” Parscale said.
On Twitter Tuesday, Trump retweeted Washington Examiner editor Byron York, who showed pictures of thousands of protesters gathered, and offered tips to Trump about holding rallies possibly outdoors to conform with COVID-19 social distancing policies, with masks handed out for voluntary use.
Given recent gatherings, seems reasonable time for President Trump to resume holding rallies. Could be held outside. Give out masks at entrance, encourage use. But mass gatherings are now OK. Biden could re-start, too, of course. pic.twitter.com/4zk0otNSf1 — Byron York (@ByronYork) June 8, 2020
“Given recent gatherings, seems reasonable time for President Trump to resume holding rallies,” York tweeted. “Could be held outside. Give out masks at entrance, encourage use. But mass gatherings are now OK. Biden could re-start, too, of course.”
BIG DEMAND! Starting up again soon, maybe next week! https://t.co/ToNLAGl5Fz — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2020
Trump enthusiastically agreed, tweeting, “BIG DEMAND! Starting up again soon, maybe next week!”
If Democrats were hoping the coronavirus lockdowns would keep their candidate Joe Biden from stumbling on the campaign trail, and looking to avoid messy debates with Trump, they’ll have to think up a new strategy.
Alex Jones discusses Trump’s plan to expose the coronavirus hoax and more…


newswars--2020-06-09--Democrats and Chinese Communists Launch Coordinated Attack on America: Watch Live

Also catch the streams at infowars.com/show and Banned.video .
Alex Jones Show : America Is In A Midst of a @ @ @ @ @ You Can Save Her Alex Jones , David Knight and others break down the shocking @ @ @ @ @ political correctness breaks down humanity Make no mistake , the ongoing riots and protests in @ @ @ @ @ about police brutality , but they ’ re also intended to permanently alter the American @ @ @ @ @ enacting Cultural Marxism and by eradicating the nuclear family model in which the ‘ community @ @ @ @ @ of the parents : David Knight Show : Kneel Before Them – No Dissent Allowed @ @ @ @ @ Media Cabal The establishment will not tolerate any difference of opinion On this Tuesday edition @ @ @ @ @ , your host will dive into the agenda of the globalists and how they use @ @ @ @ @ push the planet into a universal government .
Meanwhile , the CDC wants to separate @ @ @ @ @ them for coronavirus and Bill Gates wants to vaccinate them against the illness .

Owen Shroyer hosts this LIVE edition of War Room, weekdays 3-6 p.m. CT.
Also catch the streams at infowars.com/show and Banned.video.
Alex Jones Show: America Is In A Midst of a Communist Takeover, But Only You Can Save Her
Alex Jones, David Knight and others break down the shocking developments as the religion of political correctness breaks down humanity
Make no mistake, the ongoing riots and protests in America isn’t just about police brutality, but they’re also intended to permanently alter the American way of life forever by enacting Cultural Marxism and by eradicating the nuclear family model in which the ‘community’ raises a child instead of the parents:
Follow Alex Jones on Telegram:
David Knight Show: Kneel Before Them – No Dissent Allowed In Lightning War Of Global Media Cabal
The establishment will not tolerate any difference of opinion
On this Tuesday edition of The David Knight Show, your host will dive into the agenda of the globalists and how they use their propaganda machines worldwide to push the planet into a universal government.
Meanwhile, the CDC wants to separate infants from mothers to test them for coronavirus and Bill Gates wants to vaccinate them against the illness.
Watch Live: Kneel Before Them: No Dissent Allowed In Lightning War Of Global Media Cabal https://t.co/Qzq1QKfzTX — David Knight (@libertytarian) June 9, 2020
Today’s Show LIVE 9AM EASTERN
➡Kneel Before Them: No Dissent Allowed in Lightning War of Global Media Cabal
2nd Blitzkrieg in 90 days
➡CDC wants newborns separated for COVID testing, #Gates wants them #vaccinated
➡#DefundPolice or Reform? What each would look like pic.twitter.com/DguiVzOeDZ — David Knight (@libertytarian) June 9, 2020
Follow David on Telegram:


newswars--2020-06-09--NPR Gushes Over Massive Protests While Claiming Trump Rallies Are Dangerous Due To COVID-19

Two tweets from National Public Radio ( NPR ) perfectly represent the hypocrisy of the left-leaning outlet .
On one hand , NPR praises the thousands of people closely gathered to protest police brutality in the name of George Floyd , but days later , they criticized President Trump for announcing he ’ ll be holding rallies soon .
The first tweet , posted on Saturday , reads , “ Thousands of voices at a protest in D.C. came together to sing the Bill Withers classic ‘ Lean on Me , ’ led by local musician Kenny Sway .
‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ he says .
‘ It sounded like love and pureness of the people.
’ ” Thousands of voices at a protest in D.C. came together to sing the Bill Withers classic “ Lean on Me , ” led by local musician Kenny Sway .
“ It sounded like unity and togetherness , ” he says .
“ It sounded like love and pureness of the people.
” https : //t.co/KdDHFuVbTf Maintain peak vigilance by taking advantage of our latest sale now !
Then , on Monday , NPR tweeted , “ President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month — despite the deadly coronavirus pandemic , which continues to impact the lives and livelihoods of households across the country .
‘ The rallies will be tremendous , ’ a campaign manager said.
” President Trump will hit the campaign trail this month — despite the deadly coronavirus pandemic , which continues to impact the lives and livelihoods of households across the country .
“ The rallies will be tremendous , ” a campaign manager said .
https : //t.co/hZ1nV45d00 Below is another tweet where NPR promotes “ throngs of protesters gathered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a rally ” and “ over a dozen similar events.
” Other Twitter users have noticed NPR ’ s hypocrisy as well : Perhaps the outlet truly believes combatting racism is worth the chance contracting coronavirus .
They did publish an article weighing the risks of protesting amid COVID-19 , tweeting out , “ White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.
” It ’ s no wonder President Trump has called for the defunding of the outlet for years now !
NPR needs to set its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gatherings are dangerous to public health or not .

Two tweets from National Public Radio (NPR) perfectly represent the hypocrisy of the left-leaning outlet.
On one hand, NPR praises the thousands of people closely gathered to protest police brutality in the name of George Floyd, but days later, they criticized President Trump for announcing he’ll be holding rallies soon.
The first tweet, posted on Saturday, reads, “Thousands of voices at a protest in D.C. came together to sing the Bill Withers classic ‘Lean on Me,’ led by local musician Kenny Sway. ‘It sounded like unity and togetherness,’ he says. ‘It sounded like love and pureness of the people.’”
Thousands of voices at a protest in D.C. came together to sing the Bill Withers classic “Lean on Me,” led by local musician Kenny Sway. “It sounded like unity and togetherness,” he says. “It sounded like love and pureness of the people.”
https://t.co/KdDHFuVbTf — NPR (@NPR) June 6, 2020 Look sharp by wearing exclusive gear found only at our store.
Then, on Monday, NPR tweeted, “President Trump will hit the campaign trail this month — despite the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which continues to impact the lives and livelihoods of households across the country. ‘The rallies will be tremendous,’ a campaign manager said.”
President Trump will hit the campaign trail this month — despite the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which continues to impact the lives and livelihoods of households across the country. “The rallies will be tremendous,” a campaign manager said. https://t.co/hZ1nV45d00 — NPR (@NPR) June 9, 2020
Below is another tweet where NPR promotes “throngs of protesters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for a rally” and “over a dozen similar events.”
Throngs of protesters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for a rally that was slated to be just the first of over a dozen similar events at landmarks around the greater D.C. region on Saturday. https://t.co/1hZILsxjQp pic.twitter.com/2MECU3GDUC — NPR (@NPR) June 6, 2020
Other Twitter users have noticed NPR’s hypocrisy as well:
14 minutes apart. That has to be a record. pic.twitter.com/UaskL6W8v5 — Garby Jooman (@GarbyJooman2020) June 9, 2020
Perhaps the outlet truly believes combatting racism is worth the chance contracting coronavirus.
They did publish an article weighing the risks of protesting amid COVID-19, tweeting out, “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.”
Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” they wrote.https://t.co/yFjEN5VlVS — NPR (@NPR) June 8, 2020
It’s no wonder President Trump has called for the defunding of the outlet for years now!
A very good question! https://t.co/8z6uQLKz8M — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2020
NPR needs to set its political bias aside and decide whether mass gatherings are dangerous to public health or not.


newswars--2020-06-09--Trump Orders Polar Icebreaker Fleet Build-up for ‘Strong Arctic Security Presence’

President Donald Trump has instructed his agencies to begin the buildup of a “ fleet of polar security icebreakers ” that would be fully operational by 2029 , citing the need to protect US interests in the Arctic and the Antarctic .
In a memo issued to the State Department , Pentagon , Commerce , Energy and Homeland Security on Tuesday , Trump said the US needs to “ develop and execute a polar security icebreaking fleet acquisition program.
” Homeland Security was put in charge of the effort to develop requirements for the build-up with a note that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Offshore Patrol Cutters for the US Coast Guard .
The fleet will include “ at least three heavy polar-class security cutters ( PSC ) , ” and a class of medium PSCs based on the “ full range of national and economic security missions ” such as resource exploitation and undersea cable maintenance .
The studies will determine the optimal number of icebreakers for “ ensuring a persistent presence in both the Arctic and , as appropriate , the Antarctic regions.
” The US currently only has one operational heavy icebreaker , USCGC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , USCGC Healy .
The Polar Star was built in the 1970s and is quickly approaching obsolescence .
Trump instructed the agencies to identify options to “ bridge the gap ” until the fleet is ready , including buying or leasing vessels from other nations .
Moreover , the fleet will require at least two US basing locations and at least two international ones , which the agencies were ordered to identify and assess in light of the outlined mission .
The assessment “ shall account for potential burden-sharing opportunities for basing with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ partners , as appropriate , ” says the memo .
The State Department was instructed to work with Homeland Security to identify “ partner nations ” with shipbuilding expertise and capability .
Trump has long had his eye on the Arctic , floating the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark in August 2019 .
Though the Danes snubbed the US offer , Washington has continued to explore the possibility of acquiring the world ’ s largest island and the gateway to the Arctic ever since .
His predecessor Barack Obama vowed in 2015 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Russia – which at the time operated 34 such ships , 11 times as many as the US – but nothing came of that initiative .
Since then , Russia has built several major nuclear-powered icebreakers , while China also got into the Arctic action by launching its first icebreaker in 2019 .
It is highly unlikely the US will ask for any assistance from Russia , which currently has the lead in both the sheer number of icebreakers and the expertise to build and maintain them .
Moscow has been bolstering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arctic for years , both because the northern ocean is its longest frontier and because the receding ice has opened the sea route between Europe and Asia for longer stretches of the year , with great commercial promise .
Alex Jones breaks down the State Dept .
Memorandum 7277 : The UN Plan for Total Disarmament .

President Donald Trump has instructed his agencies to begin the buildup of a “fleet of polar security icebreakers” that would be fully operational by 2029, citing the need to protect US interests in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
In a memo issued to the State Department, Pentagon, Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security on Tuesday, Trump said the US needs to “develop and execute a polar security icebreaking fleet acquisition program.”
Homeland Security was put in charge of the effort to develop requirements for the build-up with a note that it must not adversely affect the acquisition of Offshore Patrol Cutters for the US Coast Guard.
The fleet will include “at least three heavy polar-class security cutters (PSC),” and a class of medium PSCs based on the “full range of national and economic security missions” such as resource exploitation and undersea cable maintenance.
The studies will determine the optimal number of icebreakers for “ensuring a persistent presence in both the Arctic and, as appropriate, the Antarctic regions.”
The US currently only has one operational heavy icebreaker, USCGC Polar Star, and one medium icebreaker, USCGC Healy. The Polar Star was built in the 1970s and is quickly approaching obsolescence. Trump instructed the agencies to identify options to “bridge the gap” until the fleet is ready, including buying or leasing vessels from other nations.
Moreover, the fleet will require at least two US basing locations and at least two international ones, which the agencies were ordered to identify and assess in light of the outlined mission. The assessment “shall account for potential burden-sharing opportunities for basing with the Department of Defense and allies and partners, as appropriate,” says the memo.
The State Department was instructed to work with Homeland Security to identify “partner nations” with shipbuilding expertise and capability.
Trump has long had his eye on the Arctic, floating the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark in August 2019. Though the Danes snubbed the US offer, Washington has continued to explore the possibility of acquiring the world’s largest island and the gateway to the Arctic ever since.
His predecessor Barack Obama vowed in 2015 to close the “icebreaker gap” with Russia – which at the time operated 34 such ships, 11 times as many as the US – but nothing came of that initiative. Since then, Russia has built several major nuclear-powered icebreakers, while China also got into the Arctic action by launching its first icebreaker in 2019.
It is highly unlikely the US will ask for any assistance from Russia, which currently has the lead in both the sheer number of icebreakers and the expertise to build and maintain them. Moscow has been bolstering its military and civilian presence in the Arctic for years, both because the northern ocean is its longest frontier and because the receding ice has opened the sea route between Europe and Asia for longer stretches of the year, with great commercial promise.
Alex Jones breaks down the State Dept. Memorandum 7277: The UN Plan for Total Disarmament.