Emperor Xi Gonna Force "Containment" By Any Means Necessary

nakedcapitalism |  We’ll focus on China, since the immediate economic concern is how the progress of the disease and efforts to manage it hurt their citizens and companies, which affects the West directly (supply chain disruption, loss of critical supplies, damage to companies that do a lot of business in and with China) and indirectly (the hit to global demand).

So forgive me a US aside before returning to the China front. Even though the plural of anecdote is not data, I see signs of concern even in the currently low-risk US (my scenario for how things might get troublesome here is that coronavirus winters in the global South, particularly Africa and Australia, and is primed to become US health risk during the 2020-2021 flu season). For instance, a friend in Dallas supplied me with several products, including a hand sanitizer used in operating theaters that supposedly kills nasties for five hours. Interestingly, she didn’t view coronavirus as a current risk but felt it was important to establish protective habits and routines well in advance of a potential threat. This suggests that not only will Americans stay well away from China for some time, but some may already be considering foregoing travel not just to Asia, but potentially even non-essential US trips.

Back to the main event. The fact that gas prices at the pump in low-fuel tax states are increasingly at or below $2.00 a gallon ought to be a wake-up call that serious deflationary forces are at work, even if cheaper fillups provide a short-term boost to consumers.

The apparent reason for continued peppy stock markets is that too many investors are mistakenly comparing the coronavirus to China’s 2002-2003 SARS outbreak. There are plenty of reasons why this is wrong-headed. SARS was easier to contain because China was much poorer then, so Chinese traveled less. Its high fatality rate (nearly 10%) also likely resulted in citizens taking social distancing measures of their own, in addition to official ones. Experts in China also claim the government was faster to address the contagion then. One result was the successful identification of “supertransmitters,” which was a considerable aid in containment. 

Economically, China was vastly smaller in global GDP terms. It had just been admitted to the WTO and thus was only beginning to become integrated into global supply chains. And the timing of SARS worked out to be better too. Its major outbreak took place later in the year, as opposed to during a peak travel time. 

And the coronavirus has already surpassed SARS in number of deaths and number of confirmed cases.

China has been fragile for some time. It has managed to avoid a downturn but to a significant degree, that has occurred by virtue of increasing risk, particularly private sector leverage. That might not be such a cause for concern if the additional borrowing were going into productive activities. But China bears have been pointing out for years how borrowing is producing less and less incremental GDP growth, as evidenced by often shoddily built ghost cities. China has been trying to curtail bank lending, but the government has engaged in stop and go tightening, relenting and loosening liquidity when growth flags.

China has already taken damage from the swine flu, with more costly pork hitting consumer budgets, and from the Trump trade wars, where many small and mid-sized Chinese companies reporting considerable delays in getting paid, forcing them to belt-tighten to conserve cash.

The Geopolitical Deployment of Biological Weapoons

globalresearch |  t should be apparent that the launching of bio-warfare, as with conventional warfare, is considerably eased by locating military bases, offensive weapons and delivery systems as physically close as possible to one’s potential enemies. This is one reason the US has established its nearly 1,000 foreign military bases – to ensure the capability of putting an enemy under attack within 30 minutes anywhere in the world. Clearly, the same strategy applies to biological warfare, the US military having created scores of these labs euphemistically defined as “health-security infrastructure” in foreign countries.

 

It is frightening to learn that many of these foreign bio-installations are classified as so “Top-Secret” they are outside the knowledge and control of even the local governments in the nations where they are built. It is also frightening to learn that the Ebola outbreaks all occurred in close proximity to several of these well-known (and top-secret) US bio-weapons labs in Africa.

There were great fears a few years ago when American scientists recreated the Spanish flu virus that killed around 50 million people in 1918. They spent nine years on this effort before succeeding, and now large quantities of this virus are stored in a high-security government laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia. More recently, scientists have created a mutated super-strain of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus that is directly transmissible among humans and would have at least a 50% kill rate, spawning fears in 2005 of a global pandemic that might kill hundreds of millions.

In late 2013, more than 50 of the world’s most eminent scientists severely criticised the research Ron Fouchier and colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, who have been developing mutant varieties of the H5N1 bird-flu virus that are far more dangerous to humans. The scientists wrote that the research was designed to make the virus fully transmissible between humans, and clearly had a dual civil-military function. This engineered flu could kill half the world’s population, and not by accident. The US military funded this research with more than $400 million.

Emperor Xi and the CCP ARE NOT AND CANNOT Be Our Friends

asiatimes |  Besides the economic and military realm, decoupling is also occurring at the local level of academic and people-to-people exchanges. A Bloomberg article in June 2019 revealed that the US is purging ethnic Chinese scientists, including US citizens, from cancer research in top institutions, as well as various other projects in STEM – science, technology, engineering, mathematics – fields. Many institutions have partnered with the FBI to target Chinese scientists and scholars for surveillance, leading to fear among Asian Americans this could be a dangerous lurch down the path of paranoia and racial profiling, similar to China’s campaign of racially profiling Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Back in 2015, after various bungled cases, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and 42 members of Congress raised these concerns with the Department of Justice. But in face of an increasingly fearful and tense environment in academic institutions, there has been a chill in bilateral scholarly exchanges and research collaboration, and this decoupling looks likely to continue.

Given Kissinger is known to have prescient observations, at this critical juncture it appears his warnings in regard to a new Cold War seem apt. Paul Haenle, a former Asia adviser to presidents Bush and Obama, said: “If you talk to folks in the Pentagon, they say they’re no longer debating whether or not China is an enemy. They’re planning for war… and if you talk about cooperation, you’re [seen as] naïve.”

Evan Osnos of The New Yorker noted how Kissinger compares the current bilateral situation to a disturbing analogy about the First World War. In that view, the trade war is an ominous signal of economic polarization, the same kind that pitted Britain against Germany before 1914, which has often been a prelude to real war.

“If it freezes into a permanent conflict, and you have two big blocs confronting each other,” Kissinger said, “then the danger of a pre-World War I situation is huge. Look at history: none of the leaders that started World War I would have done so if they had known what the world would look like at the end. That is the situation we must avoid.”

Yale historian Odd Arne Westad agrees. He noted: “The pre-1914 parallel is, of course, not just the growth in German power. What we, I think, need to focus on, is what actually led to war. What led to war was the German fear of being in a position where their power would not strengthen in the future, where they were, as they put it in the summer of 1914, at the maximum moment.”

Confucious Institutes Help America Restore Its Agro-Industrial Foundations?

Fort-Russ |  Faced with Trump’s often re-stated desires to build positive relations with China and achieve a trade deal, the deep state has gone on overdrive pushing to sabotage this dynamic by promoting the support of Taiwan and Hong Kong independence, while working hard to shut down as many American-based Confucius institutes which had grown to 90 at their max.

In recent months, FBI and CIA pressure has resulted in the closing of 29 of the 100 Confucius institutes in the past 6 years. Most recently, under pressure of the new National Defense Authorization Acts of 2018 and 2019, 22 Institutes have been forced to shut down with sinophobe senators Mark Rubio, and Ted Cruz leading the charge on the republican side and sinophobe democrats like Seth Moulton running the pressure campaign for the democrats. On top of this, hundreds of Chinese scholars, and scientists have been fired from their positions as professors and researchers in universities, and slandered as espionage agents by the new McCarthyite Witch hunt run under the Christopher Wray’s FBI. The policy is blunt and simple: Sever as many intellectual and cultural connections between America and China as humanly possible to prevent any alliance from forming.

Pompeo’s deployment to the Governors’ conference was a major part of this fanatical campaign since the oligarchy is aware that American governors like Matt Bevin of Kentucky, Bill Lee of Tennessee, Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts, and many others see China’s desire to invest in American infrastructure and agricultural products as a life line for survival where no federal relief appears visible and an economic meltdown looms overhead.

The irony which leading deep state operatives managing the anti-China/Russia campaign refuse to acknowledge is that America’s oncoming economic collapse can only be stopped by a FDR-styled bankruptcy reorganisation of Wall Street and a new alliance with actually viable nations like Russia and China who wish to help America rebuild its decayed agro-industrial foundations.

Fewer Chinese Students and Fewer Colleges and Universities Sounds Like a Win To Me

SCMP |  Many Chinese students see the United States as an ideal place for college, despite the current tension between the two economic superpowers.

But students and their parents need to exercise caution. A stark demographic drop is coming for US colleges. The US high school population, which has been declining, will drop significantly by 2026. This will strain an already financially stressed industry.

Like any investor, it will be important to look at a school’s current financial condition and assess how well it is run for future viability. As a start, here are three areas and specific metrics commonly tracked by schools.

First, how good is the college at their core function(s) of teaching and/or research? If they’re poorly run in key functions, they’re likely to be poorly run administratively.

Look at the following for the school overall and by major/college: graduation rates, retention rates, teaching scores, number of books and articles published recently, research funding and per cent of external funding. External funding is a quick measure on how competitive research and approaches are.

Second, how effective is the school in getting students to their goal of discovering a career, getting an advanced degree, or getting a job in their desired country?

Look at the percentage of students using career services, satisfaction rates, and the percentage of students graduating with a job or accepted to graduate school by major/college. Schools should publish these numbers so be wary of any place that doesn’t.

I Like Radio Sputnik But I Love Me Some TruNews

kansascitymag |  Radio Sputnik doesn’t really lean left or right, though. It leans hard both ways. Another show, “By Any Means Necessary,” features interviews with the likes of Noam Chomsky, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Black Lives Matter activists. The notion that Democrats are cheating Bernie Sanders out of votes was in heavy rotation on that one.

At first glance, having a program that denounces social justice warriors (SJWs) and another that hosts Chomsky seems wildly inconsistent. Today’s Russian propaganda, however, doesn’t promote any particular political perspective. The point is simply to sow division, according to reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

For example, in 2016, two Russian-controlled Facebook pages organized rallies in Houston. One group, called Heart of Texas but controlled by Russia, held a rally to “Stop Islamification of Texas.” Another Russian-sponsored page, United Muslims of America, organized a “Save Islamic Knowledge” counter-rally.

Sputnik feels a lot like that. If there’s a fault-line in our society (guns, abortion, Meghan Markle) then Russia wants to exploit it. That’s the dark reality too few Americans across the political spectrum seem willing to acknowledge.

If you are looking for a takeaway, though, the real “fault lies not in our stars” moment came when I first tuned into KCXL on a random Tuesday and found myself listening to speculation that Chief Justice John Roberts had been blackmailed by Jeffery Epstein. The show turned out to be TruNews, hosted by Rick Wiles. Texas-based Wiles, purportedly a pastor, has publicly claimed, among other things, that Queen Elizabeth II is a satanist and Bill Clinton is a cannibal. You might also recognize Wiles as the guy who called impeachment proceedings a “Jew coup” and was later given press credentials by the White House.

Yet you’ll notice nobody protests TruNews. It doesn’t make national news for broadcasting in a new city. Nobody at the Star writes an editorial denouncing Wiles.

Spaceweather Skywatcher Breakaway Dude - Offers Cool Liminal Perspective

banditobooks |  Why not actually think this through? I’m especially talking to those who ‘agree with’, say, Jon Rappoport, who believes the China Scare is a complete hoax, i.e., there are no more people dying in China today than two months ago. This is the ‘reasoning’ some of you have used to subtly (in subtext) claim that I am somehow ‘wrong’ in suggesting you prepare for the worst.

Okay, if the scare is a complete hoax, then what’s the motive? And what’s next? Did any of you Rappoport fans even think about these questions, and the questions that follow from them?

Come on, fellas, why would they do that? You haven’t thought about this, have you? Why engineer a completely false pandemic scare? Do I have to do your thinking for you?

‘Well, duhhh,’ you’re going to say, ‘They want to keep us frightened.’ (Therefore being prepared for infrastructure collapse is ‘giving in to fear.’) Is this it?  This is all you’ve got?  How would this even work? I mean when it becomes obvious that there is no pandemic and all’s well? Wouldn’t people start thinking that all the scary shit is really just a hoax or misunderstanding. So in the long run a hoax like this would lessen general fear.

Do you really think they’d go to the media lengths you see now if this was just a hoax?   

‘They’ve done it before,’ you say? ‘Remember the Mexican flu in 2009? How about the bullshit ebola scare?’

See, I was in Mexico for the 2009 ‘scare’ and it was like no one, especially not the locals, seemed to notice. Yes, it was probably a hoax, to keep us nerve-wracked. But neither that one nor the ebola scare (one ebola infected person in the U.S.) were on this scale. Does this seem to be the case with the Chinese Scare? Do you think all those street scenes are faked? Why hasn’t someone blown the whistle on fakery of this magnitude? Do you have an answer?

Don’t you think that at some point they are going to have to come up with the real thing? I mean if they are going to get what they want, be it a one-world economy and/or government, or a culling of the population down to half a billion (their number). 

 

A complete hoax is not going to work in bringing about the world-changing paradigm they yearn for. They will need the real thing.

If the Chinese are behind the hoax, what are they accomplishing?

BuyBull Buddy Has a Different Take on the Wuhan Coronovirus (and Good Data on Falun Gong)

omegashock |  As we move into the second phase of this outbreak, we are starting to understand more and more about this virus. We know who is at greatest risk. We know what to do to avoid it. We are also beginning to understand that our fears about this virus are unnecessary. Being cautious is wise, being fearful is not.

Unfortunately, the hysterical media continue to pump out hysteria and deception. And, we’ll be seeing their clickbait headlines for a while longer, so remember who is engaging in these lies. As we move further into these Last Days, the fearmongers will only drag you down. So, ignore them.

Instead, show a dark and dying world what a true follower of Christ is really like.

Our job, as Christians, is to love the Truth. This means that we need to be extremely careful to never pass on a lie. And, if we should ever send out a lie, by mistake, we need to bend-over-backwards to make sure that this mistake was corrected. It should horrify us, if we should ever promote a lie.

Unfortunately, the men/websites that I have listed above have all been found to have promoted lies, without a shred of remorse. I have caught each and every one of them in a lie, and they have refused to even retract what they said – let alone apologize. And, this means that none of them can be trusted.

It also means that they are corrupt.

I really do not enjoy saying this about people, but those who do not love the truth are dangerous. They might not make up the lies that they peddle, but they are still doing grave damage to those of us who are seeking to warn others about what is coming.

Unfortunately, it is one thing to pass on a lie. It is quite another thing to actually create the lies. And, I have found these sites and people to be unflinching liars:

Rick Wiles – TruNews

Debkafile (Giora Shamis)

V The Guerilla Economist – (Viji Varghese)

The Epoch Times

Hal Turner – Hal Turner Radio Show

GreatGameIndia

These people KNOW that they are lying. I’ve caught them at it, and they are unashamed by their lies. And, that lack of conscience over their deception is truly nauseating. We could speculate all day about how they could be so evil, but it really isn’t important. And, I’ve already shared some speculation in previous articles and videos.

The Epoch Times Is Lying

The only one that I have not really talked about is The Epoch Times. That ‘newspaper’ has been passing on a lot of deception about the Wuhan Coronavirus, and I strongly suspect that they are making up a lot of it all by themselves.

Why are they deceptive?

They are the media arm of the Falun Gong.

 

The Falun Gong are a Buddhist/Daoist mystical, shmystical cult started by Li Hongzhi in China. He made the mistake of challenging the Chinese Communist Party, which responded in a brutal crackdown that continues today. If you go to China to get an organ transplant, chances are high that the organ that you received came from a Falun Gong practitioner that was murdered by the Chinese Communist Party.

The Falun Gong might be a cult, and Li Hongzhi might be a moron for going up against the CCP. But, what China is doing to the Falun Gong is pure evil. And, it’s understandable that the media arm of the Falun Gong, The Epoch Times, would be interested in painting the Chinese government in as unfavorable a light as possible.

Unfortunately, a lie is a lie. And, we should never be a party to lies. And, that means avoiding The Epoch Times.

Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC): Making Maps of Strategic Silence

Dust-Off Your Bugout Bags and Arrange to Visit Your Favorite Country Cousins

theguardian |  The coronavirus epidemic could spread to about two-thirds of the world’s population if it cannot be controlled, according to Hong Kong’s leading public health epidemiologist.

His warning came after the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said recent cases of coronavirus patients who had never visited China could be the “tip of the iceberg”.

Prof Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, said the overriding question was to figure out the size and shape of the iceberg. Most experts thought that each person infected would go on to transmit the virus to about 2.5 other people. That gave an “attack rate” of 60-80%.

 “Sixty per cent of the world’s population is an awfully big number,” Leung told the Guardian in London, en route to an expert meeting at the WHO in Geneva on Tuesday.

Even if the general fatality rate is as low as 1%, which Leung thinks is possible once milder cases are taken into account, the death toll would be massive.

He will tell the WHO meeting that the main issue is the scale of the growing worldwide epidemic and the second priority is to find out whether the drastic measures taken by China to prevent the spread have worked – because if so, other countries should think about adopting them.

Serious People Say "This is Not a Test" CAN YOU DIG IT?

medrxiv |  The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is a recently emerged human pathogen that has spread widely since January 2020. Initially, the basic reproductive number, R0, was estimated to be 2.2 to 2.7. Here we provide a new estimate of this quantity. We collected extensive individual case reports and estimated key epidemiology parameters, including the incubation period. Integrating these estimates and high-resolution real-time human travel and infection data with mathematical models, we estimated that the number of infected individuals during early epidemic double every 2.4 days, and the R0 value is likely to be between 4.7 and 6.6. We further show that quarantine and contact tracing of symptomatic individuals alone may not be effective and early, strong control measures are needed to stop transmission of the virus.

Author Information

1. Steven Sanche (steven.sanche@lanl.gov),
2. Yen Ting Lin (yentingl@lanl.gov),
3. Chonggang Xu (cxu@lanl.gov),
4. Ethan Romero-Severson (eoromero@lanl.gov),
5. Nick Hengartner (nickh@lanl.gov) and
6. Ruian Ke1 (rke.work@gmail.com)

1. Los Alamos National Laboratory

Gatekeepers Hate Sputnik On KC Radio For The Same Reasons They Hated The Joker

off-guardian |  Joker does something that has been beyond the bounds of acceptable Hollywood film-making for 20 years (if not more) – it holds a mirror up to the real problems of society. It challenges the American meme that absolutely everyone is just a day away from realising their wildest dreams. It admits that some people truly are alone, with no prospect of help or happiness. Ever.

The poor of this film are not Steinbeck’s “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”, they are just poor. And will be for the rest of their lives. This film dares to tell a secret truth – that for a lot of people, life is a struggle. Not a “there aren’t enough black Oscar nominees” struggle, or a “this man whistled at me on my way home struggle”, or a “some guy on twitter got my pronouns wrong” struggle. An actual struggle. To survive.

The violence of this film is not the vicarious, sanitized catharsis of a hero, nor the malign recourse of the soulless monster, a series of disconnected incidents linked by nothing but the inhumanity of the perpetrators. No, here, violence is a slow build to a sudden shock. Not a disease but a symptom. A boil bursting out societal puss. Understandable maybe, but not justifiable. Exactly the sort of subtle position which today’s media are inoculated against.

The politics of this film are neither left or nor right. Puppets in coloured ties don’t debate non-issues here, the world isn’t blue or red. It is flat grey. Austerity measures kill off social programs which help those with mental illnesses get medication, therapy and employment.

Thomas Wayne, a billionaire politician, goes on TV to berate, belittle and insult the victims of poverty as “not trying hard enough”, they never say which party he represents. They recognise it does not matter.

An out of touch media class – personified by Robert De Niro’s late-night chatshow host – punches down, mocking the victims of society’s decline and protected, by his media bubble, from ever having to see the way the world truly is.

In that sense, it’s a truly realistic comic book film. Joker‘s world could nearly be our own. All it takes is a little push.

Look at the months of protests in France. Look at the soaring poverty and food-bank use here in the UK. Look at the homeless tent cities sprouting like fields of crops around Los Angeles and San Francisco.

It IS getting crazier out there. But that’s a message the media are no longer capable of comprehending.

*

Like I said earlier, Joker is not an all-time great movie. But it is a great movie for our time. It tells a lot of hard truths, and explores ideas that are being bullied out of vogue by the increasingly authoritarian “liberal” class.

Why Does the Anglo-Zionist Establishment Fear and Despise Russia So Much?

thesaker |  Whatever we all may think of Jewish identity politics or whatever our opinion of the Soviet Union, it is undeniable that Hitler’s policies inflicted unspeakable suffering upon both Russians and Jews. Western Alt-Righters, who still delude themselves into thinking that Russians share in their racist delusions, can deny and denounce this, but the fact is that history has forever created a bond between Jews and Russians: their common memory of the mass atrocities perpetuated against them by the Nazis. No amount of political gesticulations will change that.

That does not, of course, mean that Putin, the Kremlin or anybody else is an “ally” of Israel or that Putin and Bibi Netanyahu are working together (or for each other). This utter nonsense is a completely false conclusion resulting from a fundamental and profound misreading of Russian history and Russian culture. But it goes even further than that. I would argue that the history of the Russian culture is also fundamentally incompatible with any racist/racialist ideas.

Conclusion two: Putin, Zelenskii and the Israelis

The recent trip of both Zelenskii and Putin to Israel has, again, brought the topic of the Jewish, Russian and Ukrainian “triangle” to the front page news. The Poles also seized the opportunity to make things worse for themselves when they chimed in on it all. You read the stories, so no need to repeat it all here. What was most impressive about this event was that Zelenskii decided that he would travel to Israel, only to then declare that he would not participate in the commemorative events. Why? Clearly, he was terrified that the Ukronazis will denounce him for caving in to Zionist pressure.

Putin did the exact opposite, not only did he travel to Israel and he spoke at the event, he also reminded the (mostly Jewish) audience of the horrors which the Russian people also suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Clearly, Putin did not fear that some Russian nationalists would accuse him of caving in to Zionist pressure. Why not?

Why could Putin speak so freely?

For two very simple reasons:

First, and unlike the Ukrainians or the Poles, the Russians have exactly zero guilt about what happened in WWII. In spite of all the lies currently spread in the West, the Soviet Union did not start WWII – the Soviet Union pretty much single-handedly defeated Hitler and ended the war (the entire Anglo effort was worth no more than 20% and only came after the Soviets defeated the Wehrmacht and the SS in Stalingrad and elsewhere).

Second, Jewish supremacism was very short lived in the USSR (roughly from 1917 to 1937) and neither Putin nor any other Russian political leader will let claims of exclusive “special” Jewish suffering go unchallenged. And while most Russian politicians don’t feel the need to express any doubts about the “official” 6 million figure, they do like to remind their Jewish friends that the Russian nation suffered anywhere between 20 to 27 million dead people during WWII, thus denying Jewish victims any superior victim status over non-Jewish victims.

Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler and Jews

Likewise, it is BECAUSE Russians have zero sense of guilt towards Jews, that Putin could mention this figure of 80-85% of Jews in the first Bolshevik regime in front of an assembly of Haredi rabbis (see the video here for yourself: https://youtu.be/7bSAB5OPkwQ).

Can you imagine Merkel or Trump daring to say these things in front of such an audience?

Unthinkable!

Conclusion three:

Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia has been gradually and steadily separating herself from the collective West. This process is not so much about being “against” the West as it is about being “different” from the West, but unapologetically so! This is especially visible in the nature and quality of the political discourse in Russia which is truly dramatically different from the kind of hyper-controlled (and, of course, hyper-manipulated) political discourse in the West. Simply put, Russians live in a much more open and diverse intellectual landscape than their western neighbors. As a result, it would be a major mistake to assume, for example, that Russian patriots hold views similar to those held by western nationalists. Hence the existence of what we could call “Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler, Jews and race”.

KCXL Put the Useful Idiot Grifter On When Nobody Else Would!!!

NYTimes |  Sputnik argues that the station is not trying to sow distrust or to undermine public confidence, but rather is seeking to express opinions that cannot be heard in other venues. “They know perfectly well that they are not going to be allowed to say that on CNN or Fox or MSNBC,” said Mindia Gavasheli, a veteran Russian television journalist who runs Sputnik’s Washington bureau.

Sputnik produces eight hours of daily material in Washington, filling the rest with feeds from its bureau in Edinburgh, from RT broadcasts and from shows that highlight aspects of Russia, like traveling to the Caspian Sea. In Kansas City, Sputnik airs six hours every day, during commuting times in the morning and evening as well as on weekends.

There are no immediate plans to expand elsewhere, Mr. Gavasheli said, although what he described as the “brouhaha” over Kansas City had prompted inquiries from other markets in the United States.

 The Sputnik hosts seemed to revel in having a new audience. The morning show did a couple of segments on Kansas City barbecue and tried to make light of Russian influence by joking that Mr. Putin had ordered that the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl. (That was before the game, which the Chiefs won.)

Sputnik shares its Kansas City stations with a cast of far-right conspiracy theorists, evangelical pastors and anti-Semites. The host of one program, TruNews, recently described the impeachment of Mr. Trump as a “Jew coup.”

“He calls things the way that he sees them,” Mr. Schartel said of Rick Wiles, who made the remark. “I feel that he has got a right to say what he is saying.”

“We’ve always put on voices and people that wouldn’t be able to get on anyplace else,” said Mr. Schartel, who has owned the station for 26 years.

A mission statement on KCXL’s website says the United States has become a different country that now looks down on traditional values. “We tell you the things that the liberal media” will not, it said.

Grifter Scum: This is Why We Cain't Have Nothing Nice in Kansas City!

kcur |  After more than two years of litigation, a leadership fight over a Kansas City jazz landmark wrapped up Wednesday morning with nearly two hours of closing arguments.

But the verdict on who will lead the Mutual Musicians Foundation is not out yet. Circuit Court Judge Charles McKenzie said Wednesday he was taking the case under advisement. 

The bench trial started in late November at the Jackson County Circuit Court in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Tuesday marked the fourth and final day of testimony. 

"Each side is pointing fingers at taking away some of the money or resources of the foundation," jazz historian Larry Kopitnik told KCUR. 

Once the union hall for the Colored Musicians Local 627, the foundation is one of only two National Historic Landmarks in Kansas City (the other one is the Liberty Memorial). These days it is known for its after-hours jam sessions on Saturdays and Sundays.

THE DRAMATIC CONCLUSION

kbia | A judge has delivered a verdict in a lawsuit over control of Kansas City's Mutual Musicians Foundation, and it's a draw.   

Once the union hall for the Colored Musicians Local 627, the foundation is one of only two National Historic Landmarks in Kansas City (the other one is the Liberty Memorial). These days it is known for its after-hours jam sessions on Saturdays and Sundays.

Anita Dixon, who served as the board's vice president, often represented the organization as the spokesperson. But in August 2016, she was ousted after a heated board meeting. In a lawsuit filed in October 2016 and updated in March 2017, Dixon claimed other board members, including chairman James Hathaway, failed to comply with bylaws, took a cut from jam session entry fees, and retaliated against her. 

A counterclaim by the defendants, including Hathaway, alleged that Dixon used foundation funds for her own use, took artifacts, photographs, and other items, and left the foundation more than $8,000 in debt. 

After a bench trial, Circuit Court Judge Charles McKenzie on Friday ruled for the defendants; he denied Dixon's request for payment for damages and for the removal of the defendants as directors. 

But on the defendants' counterclaim of embezzlement and theft, McKenzie sided with Dixon. 

According to the judgment, both parties will be responsible for their own attorney fees, but the costs of the litigation would be paid by Dixon.  

Dixon's response to the verdict: "Of course, sadness."  

She added, "Essentially, we're back where we started. The judge didn't give them what I wanted. And the judge didn't give them what they wanted against me." 

Hathaway's attorney, Roy King, described the verdict as a "summary judgment," short and final. King told KCUR he's advised his client not to comment in the event that an appeal is filed within the 30-day window. 

"If it looks like there's a viable appeal, I will," said Dixon. "But, if not, I'm going to throw myself into making a difference, wherever I go, whatever I do." 

How Savage Will the Han Elite Be to Reinstate Their Damaged Controlocracy?

project-syndicate |  In his 2016 book The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century, Norwegian political scientist Stein Ringen describes contemporary China as a “controlocracy,” arguing that its system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than what came before. China’s “controlocracy” now bears primary responsibility for the coronavirus epidemic that is sweeping across that country and the world.

Over the past eight years, the central leadership of the Communist Party of China has taken steps to bolster President Xi Jinping’s personal authority, as well as expanding the CPC’s own powers, at the expense of ministries and local and provincial governments. The central authorities have also waged a sustained crackdown on dissent, which has been felt across all domains of Chinese social and political life.

Under the controlocracy, websites have been shut down; lawyers, activists, and writers have been arrested; and a general chill has descended upon online expression and media reporting. Equally important, the system Xi has installed since 2012 is also driving the direction of new technologies in China. Cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all being deployed to strengthen the central government’s control over society. 

The first coronavirus case appeared in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, on December 1, 2019, and, as early as the middle of the month, the Chinese authorities had evidence that the virus could be transmitted between humans. Nonetheless, the government did not officially acknowledge the epidemic on national television until January 20. During those seven weeks, Wuhan police punished eight health workers for attempting to sound the alarm on social media. They were accused of “spreading rumors” and disrupting “social order.”

Meanwhile, the Hubei regional government continued to conceal the real number of coronavirus cases until after local officials had met with the central government in mid-January. In the event, overbearing censorship and bureaucratic obfuscation had squandered any opportunity to get the virus under control before it had spread across Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. By January 23, when the government finally announced a quarantine on Wuhan residents, around five million people had already left the city, triggering the epidemic that is now spreading across China and the rest of the world.

Xi Jinping and Han Elite Governance Have Epically Failed

chinafile |  The cause of all of this lies with The Axlerod [that is, Xi Jinping] and the cabal that surrounds him. It began with the imposition of stern bans on the reporting of factual information that served to embolden deception at every level of government, although it only struck its true stride when bureaucrats throughout the system shrugged off responsibility for the unfolding situation while continuing to seek the approbation of their superiors. They all blithely stood by as the crucial window of opportunity to deal with the outbreak of the infection snapped shut in their faces.

Ours is a system in which The Ultimate Arbiter [an imperial-era term used by state media to describe Xi Jinping] monopolizes power. It results in what I call “organizational discombobulation” that, in turn, has served to enable a dangerous “systemic impotence” at every level. A political culture has thereby been nurtured that, in terms of the real public good, is ethically bankrupt, for it is one that strains to vouchsafe its privatized Party-State, or what they call their “Mountains and Rivers” while abandoning the people over which it holds sway to suffer the vicissitudes of a cruel fate. It is a system that turns every natural disaster into an even greater man-made catastrophe. The coronavirus epidemic has revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance; the fragile and vacuous heart of the jittering edifice of state has thereby shown up as never before.

This viral outbreak, which has been exacerbated into a national calamity by the power-holders, is more perilous perhaps than total war itself, for everything is being caught up by the struggle—the nation’s ethical fabric, its politics, our society, as well as the economy. Let me say that again—it is even more perilous than total war, for it lays the nation open to a kind of devastation that even foreign invaders in the past had failed to visit upon us. The ancients put it well, “Only thieves nurtured at home can truly despoil a homeland.” Although the Americans may well be trying to undermine our economy, here at home The Axlerod is himself beating them to it! Please note: just as the epidemic was reaching a critical moment, He made a big deal about being “Personally This” and “Personally That“ [when meeting Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO on 29 January, Xi made a point of saying that he was “personally commanding” the response to the outbreak, a statement that was widely derided online]. Empty words that only serve to highlight the hypocrisy. Such claims served merely to elicit nationwide outrage and sow desolation in the hearts of the people.  

It is true: the level of popular fury is volcanic and a people thus enraged may, in the end, also cast aside their fear. Herein I offer my understanding of these developments in the broader context of the global system. Being mindful also of the cyclical nature of the political zeitgeist, and with a steady eye on what has been happening here in China since 2018 [when Xi Jinping was granted limitless tenure and Xu published his famous broadside aimed at the Party-State], I have formulated my thoughts under nine headings. Compatriots: they are respectfully offered here for your consideration.

The Full Woo: Roghan 400

greatgameindia |  In a bizarre coincidence, a 1981 fictional novel The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz predicts a Coronavirus like outbreak and its origin. The book talks about how the virus called Wuhan-400, was developed in military labs around the Chinese city of Wuhan from where it got its name. The top secret information of the Biological  weapons Program is later acquired by US intelligence from a Chinese defector. The American military is ultimately successful in creating a vaccine which the Chinese could not.

The Effect of Travel Restrictions on the Spread of Covid-19

medrxiv |  Motivated by the rapid spread of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Mainland China, we use a global metapopulation disease transmission model to project the impact of both domestic and international travel limitations on the national and international spread of the epidemic. The model is calibrated on the evidence of internationally imported cases before the implementation of the travel quarantine of Wuhan. By assuming a generation time of 7.5 days, the reproduction number is estimated to be 2.4 [90% CI 2.2-2.6]. The median estimate for number of cases before the travel ban implementation on January 23, 2020 is 58,956 [90% CI 40,759 - 87,471] in Wuhan and 3,491 [90% CI 1,924 - 7,360] in other locations in Mainland China. The model shows that as of January 23, most Chinese cities had already received a considerable number of infected cases, and the travel quarantine delays the overall epidemic progression by only 3 to 5 days. The travel quarantine has a more marked effect at the international scale, where we estimate the number of case importations to be reduced by 80% until the end of February. Modeling results also indicate that sustained 90% travel restrictions to and from Mainland China only modestly affect the epidemic trajectory unless combined with a 50% or higher reduction of transmission in the community.

Covid-19 Spread Modeling

medrxiv |  In December 2019, Wuhan, China reported an outbreak of atypicalpneumonia caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). As of February7, 2020, the total numberof the confirmed cases in mainland Chinareached to 34,546of whom 722have died and 2,050recovered. While most Chinese cities have confirmed cases, the city-level epidemical dynamics is unknown. The aim of this study is to model the dynamics of 2019-nCoVat city level and predict the trend under different scenarios in mainland China. Weused mobile phone data and modified the classic epidemiological Susceptible -Infectious -Recovered (SIR) model toconsider several unique characteristics of the outbreak of 2019-nCoVin mainland China. The modified SIR model was trained using the confirmed cases from January25 to February1 and validated by the data collected on February2, 2020. The predictionaccuracy of new infected cases on February 2 (R2= 0.94, RMSE = 18.24) is higher than using the classic SIR model (R2= 0.69, RMSE = 40.18). We usedthe trained model to predict the trend in the next 30 days (up to March 2, 2020) under different scenarios: keeping the early-stage trend, controlling the disease as successfully as SARS in 2003, and increasing person-to-person contactsdue to work/school resuming. Results show that the total infected population in mainland China will be 10.53, 0.15, and 0.41 million and 67%, 100%, 91% Chinese cities will control the virus spreadingby March 2, 2020 under the above three scenarios.Our study also providesthe city-level spatial pattern of the epidemic trend for decision makers to allocate resources for controllingvirusspreading. 

Wuhan, a large city with 14 million residents and a major air and train transportation hub of central China, identified a cluster of unexplained cases of pneumonia on December 29, 2019 (Li et al., 2020). Four patients were initially reported and all these initial cases were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market (Zhu et al., 2020). Chinese health authorities and scientists did immediate investigation and isolated a novel coronavirus from these patients by January 7, 2020, which is then named as 2019-nCoVby the World Health Organization (Chen et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). 2019-nCoVcan cause acute respiratory diseases that progress to severe pneumonia (Huang et al., 2020). The infection fatality risk is around 3% estimated from the data of early outbreak (Perlman, 2020; Wang et al., 2020). Information on new cases strongly indicates human-to-human spread (Fuk-Woo Chan et al., 2020; Li et al., 2020; Riou and Althaus, 2020). Infection of 2019-nCoVquickly spread to other cities in China and other countries(Figure 1). It becomes an event of global health concern (Hui et al., 2020). Up to February7,2020, according to the reports published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, allprovinces of mainland China have confirmed cases and the total number reaches to 3,4546, of whom 722have died and 2050recovered; 24oversea countries have 285confirmed cases (1 died).Chinese government took immediate actions to control the spread of disease, including closing the public transportation from and to Wuhan on January23, extending the Spring Festival holiday, postponing the school-back day, and suspending all domestic and international group tours.