Society's ChildS


Bulb

Michigan residents sue Governor Whitmer over coronavirus pandemic orders

michigan whitmer coronavirus lockdown
© YouTube screenshotMichigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer faces at least two federal lawsuits challenging her April 9 executive order to combat the coronavirus outbreak, including requirements that residents stay at home and most businesses close.

In complaints filed on Tuesday and Wednesday, several Michigan residents and one business accused the Democratic governor of violating their constitutional rights by imposing her "Stay Home, Stay Safe" order.

The plaintiffs in Wednesday's lawsuit "reasonably fear that the draconian encroachments on their freedom set forth in this complaint will, unfortunately, become the 'new norm,'" according to their complaint.

Whitmer's office did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment.

Attention

Small-business loan program just hit its $350 billion cap and is now out of money

small businesses
© ohannes Eisele / AFP - Getty ImagesOnly a fraction of the loans processed have actually been credited to the bank accounts of the thousands of businesses suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the main coronavirus relief fund sources for suffering small businesses hit its $350 billion limit Thursday and is no longer accepting any more lenders or applications, the Small Business Administration announced.

"The SBA is currently unable to accept new applications for the Paycheck Protection Program based on available appropriations funding," SBA spokesperson Jennifer Kelly said in a statement. "Similarly, we are unable to enroll new PPP lenders at this time."

The SBA approved 1,661,397 loans from 4,975 lenders before it was exhausted. Due to bottleneck issues between the agency and banks, only a fraction of those have actually been credited to customers' bank accounts.

Bullseye

US Federal Reserve props up zombie companies that should have collapsed - RT's Keiser Report

federal reserve building
© Reuters / Brendan McDermid
The Covid-19 pandemic has been disrupting US supply chains, with problems emerging in the distribution of food and money. And, while the Fed continues printing money, it cannot print agricultural products or supply chains.

RT's Keiser Report talked to Steven McClurg of Exponential Capital about there being 'no limits' to the Fed's money-printing to fight the 'deflationary trap.'

"When you're bailing everybody out, essentially you are bailing nobody out, and certainly hurting the middle class and the working class in the United States in the process," he says.

Bulb

Mikhail Gorbachev: When the pandemic is over, the world must come together

Mikhail Gorbachev
© Martin Schoeller—AUGUSTThroughout his presidency, Gorbachev promoted peaceful diplomacy, which led to the end of the Cold War
During the first months of this year, we have seen once again how fragile is our global world, how great the danger of sliding into chaos. The COVID-19 pandemic is facing all countries with a common threat, and no country can cope with it alone.

The immediate challenge today is to defeat this new, vicious enemy. But even today, we need to start thinking about life after it retreats.

Many are now saying the world will never be the same. But what will it be like? That depends on what lessons will be learned.

I recall how in the mid-1980s, we addressed the nuclear threat. The breakthrough came when we understood that it is our common enemy, a threat to all of us. The leaders of the Soviet Union and the U.S. declared that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Then came Reykjavik and the first treaties eliminating nuclear weapons. But even though by now 85% of those arsenals have been destroyed, the threat is still there.

Yet other global challenges remain and have even become more urgent: poverty and inequality, the degradation of the environment, the depletion of the earth and the oceans, the migration crisis. And now, a grim reminder of another threat: diseases and epidemics that in a global, interconnected world can spread with unprecedented speed.

The response to this new challenge cannot be purely national. While it is the national governments that now bear the brunt of making difficult choices, decisions will be have to be made by the entire world community.

Airplane

Emirates airlines conducts COVID-19 blood tests on pre-flight passengers

Emirates Airlines
© Emirates Airlines
One airline is now administering blood tests to passengers before they board flights amid the coronavirus pandemic, it announced on Wednesday.

Emirates said this week that on a Wednesday flight to Tunisia from Dubai, passengers "were all tested for COVID-19" before departing by way of blood tests conducted by the Dubai Health Authority at the airport's check-in area, and "results were available within 10 minutes."

Emirates called itself the first airline to conduct on-site rapid COVID-19 tests on its passengers. These blood tests are in addition to other precautions the airline has taken, such as requiring passengers to wear masks.

CNN notes that "serology (blood) tests aren't meant to diagnose active coronavirus infections," but they "check for proteins in the immune system, known as antibodies, through a blood sample," and "their presence means a person was exposed to the virus and developed antibodies against it."

Corona

Trump says US 'passed the peak'; Austria to test all patients & staff of nursing homes; and other Covid-19 news

medical mask nyc
© Reuters / Eduardo MunozA woman walks by a face mask left on the ground near Trump Tower in New York City.
US President Donald Trump said the data so far suggests the number of new cases nationwide has peaked, and promised to unveil guidelines for reopening the country on Thursday.

Speaking at the daily press conference in the White House garden on Wednesday, the president said the "war against the invisible enemy" isn't over, but that the latest data shows the number of new cases declining as testing is ramped up across the nation, with more than three million carried out in total.
The battle continues, but the data suggests that nationwide, we have passed the peak on new cases.
"These encouraging developments have put us in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country," Trump said.

New infections are falling in New York City's metropolitan area - by far the country's worst-hit region - as well as in other hotspots like Detroit and Denver, the president said, adding that in total, 29 states were in "really good shape" and showing signs of improvement.

Comment: As reported yesterday, Austria has eased its lockdown; it has also developed a "containment" strategy which involves testing all residents and employees of retirement homes as opposed to just symptomatic individuals, as they have been doing until now. After that, all medical personnel and retail staff will be tested. Despite Austria and other nations' lifting draconian lockdown measures, the WHO is still warning that Europe is in the "eye of the storm". The UK's health minister similarly warned that lifting the lockdown there would allow the coronavirus to "run rampant" - as if it's not doing so already...


The London Metro Police are behaving like little authoritarians:


The crisis may end up costing Russia $242 billion as oil prices start affecting the state budget. And over in California, $125 million in relief has been announced for illegal immigrants. And in France, 1/3 crew members of its only aircraft carrier tested positive.

See also:


Георгиевская ленточка

Putin puts off Russia's Victory Day events as coronavirus concerns rule out celebrations of 75th anniversary of Nazi defeat

military service member russia
© Sputnik / Pavel LisitsinA Russian military service member during a rehearsal of the Victory Day parade.
Holding planned commemorations of the 75th anniversary of Soviet Russia's World War Two victory over Nazi Germany, across the country, would be too risky with Covid-19 spreading nationwide, President Vladimir Putin has said.

As a result, he has postponed the events until after the current coronavirus crisis has eased. The celebrations on May 9 were expected to be a major date in Russia, with military parades and other public gatherings planned throughout the country, and world leaders set to descend on Moscow.

However, proceeding under the cloud of coronavirus would be too great a risk to public health, Putin acknowledged on Thursday.

Fire

No serious injuries after massive explosion at Maine paper mill: 'Nothing short of a miracle'

androscoggin mill explosion jay maine
© Russ Dillingham/Sun JournalIn this aerial view, bent and charred metal remains after an explosion at the Jay paper mill Wednesday. The explosion shook the ground and produced a plume of black smoke that was visible for miles around.
The explosion that rocked the Androscoggin Mill on Wednesday afternoon, left many with a sickening sense of deja vu.

High in the minds of some was the blast in Farmington in September that killed a veteran firefighter and injured seven others.

But when the smoke cleared Wednesday afternoon in Jay, fire officials announced, with evident relief, that no one had been seriously injured.

"After Farmington seven months ago, we were fearing the worst," state fire marshal's office Sgt. Joel Davis said, "but by the grace of God, it turned out much different today."

The explosion, Davis said, occurred in the digester area of the mill. A mill official described the digester as a large container used to cook the chips in order to reduce them into individual fiber for the paper-making process.

Black Magic

Microsoft publishes, then takes down commercial with 'spirit cooker' Marina Abramović

Marina_abramovic
© Andrej ISAKOVIC/AFP
Microsoft released and then deleted an ad for its VR technology featuring Marina Abramović, the performance artist infamous for hosting a "spirit cooking" dinner at her house in 2015, to which Clinton campaign manager Tony Podesta and his brother were invited. The ad originally went live on Good Friday.

Abramović, the daughter of high-ranking officials in Yugoslavia's communist dictatorship, authored a book in 1996 called Spirit Cooking with Essential Aphrodisiac Recipes. The ingredients include "fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk" to be eaten on "earthquake nights."

Comment: RT's Helen Buyniski weighs in:
A tone-deaf Microsoft ad featuring performance artist Marina Abramovic has been memory-holed after it was pilloried online. Was it her 'spirit cooking' notoriety from the Podesta emails or are people just sick of wealth-flaunting?

An ad featuring the Serbian performer's latest project, a "mixed reality" installation incorporating Microsoft's HoloLens virtual-reality platform, clearly touched a nerve before it was removed earlier this week. The video received over 25,000 "thumbs down" on YouTube before it was yanked and, while comments were turned off, it's safe to say the reception was a frosty one.

Abramovic is probably the most famous performance artist alive today, but she's also the most notorious - in no small part because of WikiLeaks' 2016 release of emails pilfered from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's then-campaign director. The emails appeared to open a window onto what the rich and famous get up to behind closed doors that was either tantalizing or repulsive, depending on one's tastes. Immediately following their release, internet sleuths dug up endless footage of Abramovic carving cakes shaped like human bodies, writing on walls with blood, and posing with various satanic-looking objects.

While many of the 'thumbs down' were no doubt from aficionados of the Podesta emails, Pizzagaters and other conspiracy analysts, 25,000 is an awfully large number to write off as "fringe types." When one considers that not everyone looking at the video saw the YouTube version, or had an account to register their displeasure, it's likely the tip of a sizable iceberg.

Abramovic's performance work - transient by definition - is a little more difficult to sell, but Microsoft seemed to have nailed it down with the HoloLens thing. Add in the general bad feeling against Microsoft founder and world's second-richest-man Bill Gates, who has been ubiquitous throughout the coronavirus epidemic pushing "digital certificates" and 18-month lockdowns as the answer to the virus, despite lacking a medical degree or any expertise in the field beyond the money he's poured into mass vaccination campaigns, and the backlash becomes understandable.

Hashtags like #BillGatesIsNotYourFriend and #BillGatesPublicEnemyNumber1 have proliferated in recent weeks as many of the same researchers who probed Abramovic's performance past have dug into Gates' questionable statements in support of microchipping the world and the myriad apparent conflicts of interest between the companies he invests in and the global health causes he promotes. Given his track record, his stated goal of vaccinating seven billion people has also raised a few eyebrows.

Even if Abramovic's "satanism" is wholly performative, and Gates really believes in the healing power of universal vaccination (from which he still wants legal indemnification), rubbing in the public's face the income inequality that has thrived amid the coronavirus epidemic - eight billionaires have hoarded half the world's wealth, according to Oxfam - will only pour gas on the fire.

Microsoft's Abramovic ad looks for all the world like a deliberate attempt to set off the very firestorm of outrage it accomplished. The ad may have been pulled, but the mission was accomplished.



Mr. Potato

MSNBC host suggests Biden create his own 'shadow government, shadow cabinet, shadow SWAT team' to counter Trump


Comment: If that isn't high treason, we don't know what is.

Then again, her 'side' already has a shadow govt, aka the deep state.


Biden
© REUTERS/Shannon StapletonJoe Biden at fourth U.S. Democratic presidential candidates 2020 election debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.
MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle went beyond the point of shilling for Joe Biden by asking whether the former vice president should set up a "shadow government" to counter Donald Trump's coronavirus daily briefings.

Biden may be riding the momentum of endorsements from previous competitors Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, as well as from former President Barack Obama, but one MSNBC host thinks he needs to do more to "counter-program" Trump during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow cabinet, shadow SWAT team, and getting up there on a podium every night saying, 'here's the crisis we're in,'" Ruhle said, after a guest referred to Trump's daily coronavirus press briefings as "clown" shows on Wednesday.