Saturday, October 3, 2020

In the news, Thursday, September 24, 2020


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SEP 23      INDEX      SEP 25
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from CNBC
TV Network in Englewood Cliffs, NJ

House Democrats are putting together another coronavirus stimulus plan, which would cost about $2.4 trillion. The chamber could vote on the legislation, which would include unemployment benefits, direct payments, small business loans and airline aid, as soon as next week. Democrats aim to restart stalled aid talks with the White House. 

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from DW News (Deutsche Welle)
Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Bonn, Germany

When Syrian President Bashar Assad used military violence against his own people during protests in 2011, US President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on representatives of his regime. The measures targeted wealthy Syrians, including Mahir al-Assad, the president's brother, aiming to ensure that those responsible for the violence would not be able to move their money around the globe. The European Union followed suit shortly after, and sanctions were quickly extended. The regime's access to weapons, to gasoline, to the international financial market was to be blocked. Such targeted sanctions are considered the means of choice for exerting pressure on despots and their associates. But do such sanctions work? There has always been some doubt about that. The FinCEN Files show once again: Sanctions can be circumvented — with the help of banks and a network of offshore companies.

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from HISTORY

Five hundred thirty-seven votes. That's all that separated Democrat Al Gore and his Republican challenger George W. Bush when, on November 26, 2000, three weeks after Election Day, the state of Florida declared Bush the winner of its 25 electoral votes in the race for U.S. president. After a wild election night on November 7, 2000, during which TV networks first called the key state of Florida for Gore, then for Bush, followed by a concession by Gore that was soon rescinded, the results for who would be the nation’s 43rd president were simply too close to call. In the 36 days that followed, Americans learned Gore had won the popular vote by 543,895 votes. But it's winning the Electoral College that counts. As accusations of fraud and voter suppression, calls for recounts and the filing of lawsuits ensued, the terms “hanging chads,” “dimpled chads” and “pregnant chads” became part of the lexicon.

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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website

Our twelfth Center of Progress is Hangzhou in 12th century CE China, during the late Song Dynasty’s so-called premodern “economic revolution” or period of proto-industrialization. With its innovations in printing and manufacturing, it has been said that the “Song came closer to initiating an industrial revolution than any other premodern state.” The Song dynasty, which spanned from 969 to 1276 CE, was a time of dynamism and invention. Through trade and industry, the Song empire became the richest on Earth. The dynastic capital, Hangzhou, was the wealthiest and most populous city in the world. Song-era China became the first country to print paper money, which is far easier to carry in large amounts than metal coins. Hangzhou served as a money-printing center and a hub of innovation and creativity.

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from Institute for the Study of War
Nonprofit Organization in Washington, D.C.

Russia’s military activity in the Western Military District (WMD) is anomalously high during ongoing Kavkaz-2020 exercises in the Southern Military District.  ISW has observed a larger-than-anticipated number of unscheduled Russian exercises in the vicinity of Belarus and throughout the WMD.[i] The Russian Defense Ministry holds annual strategic exercises to test the readiness of Russia’s four main military districts. Each such annual exercise occurs in a different military district in a rotating order and usually precipitates a decrease in military exercises in the other military districts. This year’s “Kavkaz-2020” exercises began on September 15 in the SMD and should have coincided with a decrease in Russian military activity in the WMD.

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from Military Times
and Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, and Navy Times

Ospreys draw eyes over Ukraine during special ops exercises
Air Force CV-22 Ospreys and other aircraft teamed up with the Ukrainian military this week in training exercises, and turned heads as they passed over Kyiv. The Ospreys, as well as MC-130Js, were from the 352nd Special Operations Wing out of RAF Mildenhall, and were taking part in Exercise Fiction Urchin with Ukrainian special operations forces, the wing said in a Facebook post Wednesday. The exercise marked the first time AFSOC Ospreys and MC-130Js have supported the Ukrainian SOF Qualification Course for special operations air-ground integration training, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said in a Sept. 17 release.

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from MyNorthwest.com
Media/News Company in Seattle

The City of Seattle gave a $150,000 contract to Andre Taylor, a former pimp, to offer expertise on de-escalation and alternatives to policing. Taylor has no formal training (or expertise) on de-escalation. Taylor’s role is a “street czar” — a made-up title that hasn’t provided many public victories, since Seattle homicides, arsons, and stabbings are on the uptick. The controversial contract comes to light as the Seattle City Council voted to override Mayor Jenny Durkan’s veto of their three bills to defund the police. A former pimp earns a lucrative contract, but up to 100 officers will be fired.

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from Reuters
International news agency headquartered in London, UK

Facebook Inc FB.O said on Thursday it has dismantled three networks of fake accounts which could be used by Russia's intelligence services to leak hacked documents as part of efforts to disrupt the upcoming U.S. election. The company said the accounts, which it suspended for using fake identities and other types of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour,” were linked to Russian intelligence and people associated with a St. Petersburg-based organisation accused by U.S. officials of working to sway the 2016 presidential vote. The Russian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment after normal working hours in Moscow. Russia has repeatedly denied allegations of election meddling and says it does not interfere in the domestic politics of other countries.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from Zero Hedge
EXTREME RIGHT BIAS, CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE, MIXED, website registered in Bulgaria

Over the past decade, the one common theme despite the political upheaval and growing social and geopolitical instability, was that the market would keep marching higher and the Fed would continue injecting liquidity into the system. The second common theme is that despite sparking unprecedented asset price inflation, prices as measured across the broader economy - using the flawed CPI metric and certainly stagnant worker wages - would remain subdued (as a reminder, the Fed is desperate to ignite broad inflation as that is the only way the countless trillions of excess debt can be eliminated and has so far failed to do so). ... Absent a massive burst of inflation in the coming years which inflates away the hundreds of trillions in federal debt, the unprecedented debt tsunami that is coming would mean the end to the American way of life as we know it. And to do that, the Fed is now finalizing the last steps of a process that revolutionizes the entire fiat monetary system, launching digital dollars which effectively remove commercial banks as financial intermediaries, as they will allow the Fed itself to make direct deposits into Americans' "digital wallets", in the process also making Congress and the entire Legislative branch redundant, as a handful of technocrats quietly take over the United States.

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