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Bad Guys

Britain's high court "recognised" Guaido as Venezuela's president in case over country's billion dollar gold reserves


Reuters
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 12:02 UTC
Juan guaido
© AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Britain has "recognised" Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's president, the UK High Court has ruled, in case over who controls the country's gold reserves stored in London.

High court judge Nigel Teare handed down a Judgment ruling that Britain's government had formally recognised Guaido as the constitutional interim President of Venezuela, and that due to the 'One Voice' and 'Act of State' doctrines the Court is precluded from investigating the validity of Guaido's acts.


Comment: How convenient.


Sarosh Zaiwalla, a lawyer representing the Nicolas Maduro- backed Venezuelan central bank in the case said the bank would be seeking leave of the court to appeal the judgment.

Comment: Britain would recognise Guaido, it has a lot of gold to gain: UK's "criminal" confiscation of $1.5 billion gold deposits is denying Venezuelans food & healthcare - Venezuela's FM

See also: Legal battle heating up over Venezuela's looted billions

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Attention

Gigantic COVID case-counting deception at the CDC

Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport's Blog
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 20:30 UTC
COVID 19
© Wikipedia
For this piece, we have to enter the official world (of the insane) — where everyone is quite sure a new coronavirus was discovered in China and the worthless diagnostic tests mean something and the case numbers are real and meaningful. Once we execute all those absurd maneuvers, we land square in the middle of yet another scandal — this time at our favorite US agency for scandals, the CDC.

The Atlantic, May 21, has the story, headlined, "How could the CDC make that mistake?"

I'll give you the key quotes, and then comment on the stark inference The Atlantic somehow failed to grasp.

"We've learned that the CDC is making, at best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus...The agency confirmed to The Atlantic on Wednesday that it is mixing the results of viral [PCR] and antibody tests, even though the two tests reveal different information and are used for different reasons."

"Several states — including Pennsylvania, the site of one of the country's largest outbreaks, as well as Texas, Georgia, and Vermont — are blending the data in the same way. Virginia likewise mixed viral and antibody test results until last week, but it reversed course and the governor apologized for the practice after it was covered by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Atlantic. Maine similarly separated its data on Wednesday; Vermont authorities claimed they didn't even know they were doing this."

"'You've got to be kidding me,' Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told us when we described what the CDC was doing. 'How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess'."

"The CDC stopped publishing anything resembling a complete database of daily [COVID] test results on February 29. When it resumed publishing test data last week [the middle of May]..."
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Calculator

Is the UK government misleading the public on COVID tests?

Neil Lock
Watts Up With That
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 19:28 UTC
DHS Coronavirus numbers
So, that's over 9 million COVID tests done in the UK up to June 27th a.m. Sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? As of today (July 1st), that count has moved on to 9,426,631 - fourth in the world in total tests! (The UK is also fourth in the world in COVID deaths per million population, and closing in on Andorra for third place; but that's another story). Now... is that figure believable?

I recently wrote a paper about understanding the published statistics - deaths, cases, tests - on the effects of this virus around the world. It is very long, and a little bit technical - although it does include lots of pretty (and not so pretty) pictures! Those interested in the detail can find it here. I had a bit of a laugh when one commenter at "the world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change" mentioned me (though, I must say, not totally approvingly) in the same breath as Judith Curry, who is a true climate-science expert!

In the course of writing it, I compared the two primary sources of world-wide statistics on this virus. One is worldometers.info. This is kept updated daily with data provided by the national health systems. The other, far more comprehensive because it includes historical daily data from the beginning of the epidemic, is Our World in Data. I used Our World in Data.
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Book 2

What did we learn about Korean issues from Bolton memoir?

Konstantin Asmolov
New Eastern Outlook
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:00 UTC
JBolton
Former national security advisor John Bolton
On 24 June a US court rejected a bid by the US government to block publication of the memoirs of John Bolton, a former national security adviser to US President Donald Trump.

It's worth recalling that John Bolton, the arch-hawk and conservative who was jokingly called the godfather of the DPRK's nuclear program for his activities in the 2000s, worked in the White House for 17 months before being fired by Trump in September 2019 after the pair clashed over various political issues, including North Korea.

Following the book's publication, Trump branded Bolton "a wacko" and accused him of divulging classified information, while Secretary of State Pompeo added:
"It is both sad and dangerous that John Bolton's final public role is that of a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people."
Seoul's official reaction was similar: Moon's national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, said that Bolton's unilateral disclosure of the contents of negotiations violated the core principles of diplomacy and undermined trust between the governments.

Comment: It has long been suspected that Bolton set the stage for sabotaging relations, agreements and progress with both North and South Korea.

See also

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Attention

The chain reaction, now in progress

Max Rangeley
The Cobden Centre
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00 UTC
Debt sign
© Money & Markets
Much has been written about the economic consequences of Covid-19, yet, just as in many of the analyses of the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, the years of accumulating debt preceding the event do not attract the attention they deserve. Covid-19 — or to be more precise, the lockdown — has initiated a cascading liquidation of the debt bubble which has been building for a generation. From the early 1980s, each recession has been responded to with iteratively lower interest rates. Following the bursting of the late-1980s credit bubble, Greenspan inaugurated the loosest monetary policy for a generation, creating the Dot Com Bubble. When this burst in 2000, it was responded to with even lower interest rates, reaching 1% from 2003-4, generating the Housing Bubble. When this burst in 2007/8, the response was zero percent interest rates, turning a $150 trillion global debt bubble as it was then — already the largest In history — into a $250 trillion global debt bubble.

At the Cobden Centre we have organised many talks around the world on the nature of the debt bubble, including in the European Parliament, the Bank of England and the OECD headquarters. When central banks set interest rates it fundamentally distorts the pricing mechanisms of credit markets, just like price setting in other parts of the economy. Friedrich von Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for articulating that interest rates, like other prices, should be set by the market rather than central planning committees. We are not surprised when the government setting the price of food in Venezuela leads to food shortages so we should not be surprised that zero percent interest rates have led to a $250 trillion global debt bubble. Below is a speech I gave in the European Parliament in 2018 in which I adumbrated these points for a political audience:

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House

AFFH: Biden and Democrats plan to abolish the suburbs!

Stanley Kurtz
National Review
Tue, 30 Jun 2020 09:42 UTC
Biden
© Matt Rourke/AP Photo.jpgFormer VP and presidential candidate Joe Biden
President Trump had a great riff at his rally the other day in Phoenix. It was all about "abolish," about how the Left wants to abolish the police, ICE, bail, even borders. Trump's riff is effective because it is true. The Left has gone off the deep end, and they're taking the Democrats with them.

Well, there's another "abolish" the president can add to his list, and it just might be enough to tip the scales this November. Joe Biden and the Democrats want to abolish America's suburbs. Biden and his party have embraced yet another dream of the radical Left: a federal takeover, transformation, and de facto urbanization of America's suburbs. What's more, Biden just might be able to pull off this "fundamental transformation."

The suburbs are the swing constituency in our national elections. If suburban voters knew what the Democrats had in store for them, they'd run screaming in the other direction. Unfortunately, Republicans have been too clueless or timid to make an issue of the Democrats' anti-suburban plans. It's time to tell voters the truth.

I've been studying Joe Biden's housing plans, and what I've seen is both surprising and frightening. I expected that a President Biden would enforce the Obama administration's radical AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) regulation to the hilt. That is exactly what Biden promises to do. By itself, that would be more than enough to end America's suburbs as we've known them, as I've explained repeatedly here at NRO.
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Arrow Down

Joe Biden setting the lowest bar ever for a potential US president: 'I'll read my daily briefings'


RT
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:15 UTC
Bidentweet
© Quartz/KJN/Twitter
Presumptive Democratic nominee for President Joe Biden has perplexed the Internet by making a highly confusing brag against sitting President Donald Trump, by saying that he will "read his daily briefings."

Biden's tweet came on the heels of unconfirmed media speculation that Trump did not read his presidential briefings, supposedly including the one that said Russia offered bounties for the killing of US troops in Afghanistan. Trump dismissed the bounty report claims as a "fake-news tale," and said he wasn't briefed on the matter, as it "did not rise to that level of threat."


Comment: See also:


Former President Barack Obama reportedly counseled Biden to keep his tweets short, but the strategy seems to have backfired, as Biden provoked very mixed reactions from Twitter users.

The lack of overt context in his statement quickly led many commenters to declare his pledge the "lowest bar ever" for a presidential hopeful.
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Propaganda

NYT advice: Punish Putin for anonymous bounty claims without evidence; let ISIS kill Russian troops in Syria


RT
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 19:13 UTC
Thomas Friedman
© Jewish Broadcasting ServiceThomas Friedman, journalist, columnist for NYT
The same New York Times reporting anonymous claims of Russian bounties on US troops in Afghanistan opined in 2017 that President Trump should let ISIS "bleed" Russian forces in Syria rather than help defeat the terrorists.

Thomas Friedman, who has won three Pulitzer prizes as a journalist and columnist for the Times, argued in an April 2017 column that the US should "back off" fighting ISIS in Syria because the terrorist group "plays as dirty as Iran and Russia" and would prevent government forces from crushing "moderate rebels" in the country. "This is a time for Trump to be Trump - utterly cynical and unpredictable," Friedman wrote in 2017.

Comment: The Times has wiggled all over this story making claims and insinuations, a standard tactic when it comes to 'anything Trump'. National security advisor Robert O'Brien provided some clarification:
A career CIA officer decided not to brief President Donald Trump about intelligence speculation that Russia was paying bounties for deaths of US troops in Afghanistan, his national security adviser Robert O'Brien has revealed.

"She made that decision because she didn't have the confidence in the intelligence that came up. She made that call and you know what? She made the right call. And knowing the facts I know now, I stand behind that call."

The New York Times published a story last week, sourced to anonymous intelligence officials, claiming that the "assessment" about the bounties was briefed to Trump in March, later changing that to a February written brief.

The White House has denied it outright. Trump himself denounced it as
"just another made up by Fake News tale" and "another HOAX! This was something that never got presented to me ... because it didn't rise to that level. Many of the intelligence people didn't think it was something that even happened."
Democrat lawmakers have suggested that it was a political appointee who may have withheld the intelligence from the president, but O'Brien's comments make it clear it was a career CIA official that made the decision.

The leak to the Times has been referred to the Justice Department, the adviser added, because the revelation has now made it "almost impossible for us to find out what happened."
The White House has referred to the Times reporting as "unverified intelligence that is currently being assessed." Directors of the CIA and NSA are expected to brief the 'Gang of Eight' congressional leaders about the alleged bounties on Thursday.
See also:

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Arrow Up

Wake-up call: Overwhelming support for Putin's constitution changes proves Russian system is not ready to collapse

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:53 UTC
Russian polling station
© Reuters/Evgenia Novozhenina.Members of a local electoral commission count ballots at a polling station following a seven-day nationwide vote on constitutional reforms, in Moscow, Russia, July 1, 2020.
The outcome of Russia's 'national vote' on a series of amendments to the constitution serves to reaffirm that most Russians want the country to plow its own furrow, regardless of what outsiders think.

In the end, the margin was huge. Exit polls suggested around 70 percent of voters said 'yes' to 206 amendments to their constitution, and close to 30 percent rejected the changes. Official results put the 'yes' vote to above 78 percent, with 99 percent of ballots counted.

Even Moscow liberal political organizers conceded that their own exit polls showed the capital had supported Vladimir Putin's proposals. What's more, those tallies revealed how a majority of voters in numerous Moscow districts with opposition-controlled local councils had backed the 'yes' side.

One thing forgotten in almost all Western speculation about the process (erroneously labeled a 'referendum' by some US/UK media) was that it wasn't strictly necessary at all. The backing Putin obtained in spring from the Duma (parliament), the Constitutional Court, and all 85 federal subjects sufficed. However, the President decided to stage a 'confirmatory plebiscite' to obtain broad public legitimacy for his project. Thus, the vote itself was mostly about establishing whether Putin still has a popular mandate to uphold his domination of Russian politics.
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Arrow Down

US Senate kills bipartisan bill to end Afghanistan war and repeal 2001 authorization for the War on Terror


RT
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 22:34 UTC
2 US soldiers
© Reuters/Lucas JacksonA US soldier from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment uses the optic on his rifle to observe Afghans in the distance, near forward operating base Gamberi, in the Laghman province of Afghanistan.
The US Senate has voted to table a bill that would have ended the war in Afghanistan and repealed the 2001 law authorizing the War on Terror, shooting down a rare attempt to wind down the longest conflict in American history.

Lawmakers voted 60-33 on Wednesday to kill legislation introduced by Senators Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) as an amendment for a broader defense spending bill. Dubbed the AFGHAN Act, the measure would have directed the Pentagon to begin an "orderly withdrawal" from Afghanistan and pay a $2,500 bonus to American soldiers.

Ahead of the vote, Senator Paul castigated the nearly 20-year-old conflict as wasteful of American lives and tax dollars, urging lawmakers to send the troops home.

"It is not sustainable to keep fighting in Afghanistan generation after generation," Paul said on the Senate floor, noting that some of the soldiers taking part in the conflict were not even born when it was launched in 2001. "Many people have said we should end the war. Today you get to vote."

Comment: Another sane opportunity missed, bypassed, thrown out by today's congressional mess. Congress wants to keep its authority over war decisions, but it forgets it works for 'the people'.

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