Puppet MastersS


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Japan takes the first step towards a digital currency with virtual Yen experiment

Charlie Osborne
ZDNet
Fri, 03 Jul 2020 16:45 UTC
Japanese yen
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) intends to start experimenting with digital versions of the Japanese Yen to test the feasibility of virtual currencies.

As reported by Coin Telegraph, the bank issued a report on Thursday -- "Technical Hurdles for CBDC" -- that noted upcoming experiments with a central bank digital currency (CBDC) could provide an alternative to the traditional Yen.

The bank has no plans -- as of yet -- to issue a digital currency, but says the organization is willing to explore the concept due to the increased use of digital payments, potentially adopted at a higher rate than expected due to the novel coronavirus pandemic and the shift by many vendors to contactless or card-based transactions.

The BoJ wants to research two specific areas which the financial institution believes are the main hurdles to adopting digital currency: resilience and access.

Resilience relates to scenarios such as a loss of power or access to IT systems -- an important concept in a country that experiences earthquakes frequently. If there is no means to access a currency when systems are down, this could provide economically damaging.

Comment: A cashless society is a controlled society. But as with coronavirus lockdowns, the population seems to be asking for it.

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Briefcase

DC Court Of Appeals slams Judge Sullivan for Flynn power grabs

John Lucas
The Federalist
Mon, 29 Jun 2020 15:51 UTC
emmett sullivan
© CBS News/YouTubeU.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan
Make no mistake about it, Wednesday's decision granting a writ of mandamus compelling U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant the government's motion to dismiss the disgraceful prosecution of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was a sharp rebuke of Sullivan.

Although couched in judicious language, the majority opinion leaves no doubt that Sullivan's actions, including both his refusal to grant the government's dismissal request and his appointment of a clearly biased "friend of the court" to argue for Flynn's continued persecution were not just wrong but a fundamental abuse of our system of government.

The story of this sorry episode is well known by now. After initially pleading guilty to making false statements to the FBI, Flynn tried to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing he was innocent and that the government had coerced him into pleading guilty by threatening to indict and ruin his son.

Comment: Sullivan is so compromised he got his own lawyer to defend his actions:

Judge Sullivan (well, his lawyer actually) finally responds to mandamus petition in Flynn case

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Smoking

Jordanian government bans smoking, vaping in indoor public spaces

Michael Safi
The Guardian, UK
Fri, 03 Jul 2020 00:28 UTC
No smoking sign in Jordan
© Alamy
The Jordanian government has banned smoking and vaping in all indoor public spaces a week after a Guardian investigation revealed tobacco use in the country had become the highest in the world.

The country's health ministry said on Wednesday all enclosed public areas would now be "100% smoke-free environments", building on an existing but widely flouted ban on smoking inside government buildings, and ending an exemption for hotels, cafes and restaurants provided they separated smokers from non-smokers.

Public health campaigners cautiously welcomed the announcement as a major step forward in a country where more than 82% of men smoke or consume nicotine in some form, according to government and World Health Organization data published by the Guardian last week.

"[It's] a first step to applying the public-health law to combat the scourge of smoking in our beloved Jordan," said Princess Dina Mired, the president of the Union for International Cancer Control and a member of the country's royal family, in a tweet. "We hope the smoke-prevention law will be implemented in all public places in its entirety."

Comment: See also:

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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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