riverfronttimes | How fucking dare you, Wendy. Last I checked this is America, and my
fellow Americans and I have the right to go wherever we want and do
whatever we please. Your proposal to restrict my movement in and out of your dumb online group
is nothing short of tyranny and will be met with revolution! The Tree
of Facebook must, from time to time, be watered with the blood of
patriots!
Listen, we could go all day here. The sad fact is these folks
have already made up their minds, and their actions are going to get
more people sick, and ironically enough are definitely, definitely
going to mean that lockdowns will stay in place longer than if you just
sat still and chilled the fuck out while the medical professionals get a
handle on this thing. You are that group of kids that won't stop
talking during a grade-school timeout and thereby keep getting the
timeout extended. Fucking stop it!
I get that people are losing their livelihoods. Hell, the RFT itself was near-decimated in the last month
as lockdowns cost us our advertisers and forced almost everyone on the
editorial side to be laid off. (That whole "this is all a media
conspiracy" trope is a pretty dumb one when you actually look at how it
actually plays out for newsrooms, isn't it?) I genuinely feel your pain —
so many people I know are out of work right now. It's scary as hell.
But your anger is misdirected. Instead of targeting the media
organizations that are trying to keep you informed, or the politicians
that are trying to keep the death tolls of their constituents down,
maybe direct your ire toward the segments of our society that have
eroded anything even remotely resembling a robust social safety net over
the last 40 years, making us unimaginably vulnerable in a crisis like
this while simultaneously funneling all the country's wealth upward to
the nation's richest.
And I know this is going to fall on deaf ears, but please know
I'm trying to look out for your safety here — not to mention the safety
of my nurse fiancée, my 60-plus-year-old parents and my diabetic sister.
Please, just please reconsider this shit and stay home?
fox4kc | The stay-at-home orders set to expire next week have now been extended in both Kansas and Missouri until May 3.
And Kansas City, Jackson County and now Clay County have taken it a step further until May 15.
But there’s a large group of people who say they won’t do it anymore.
They want to get back to normal immediately, and they’re planning
protests to let local leaders know.
“I think it’s time to try to start working past the fear and get
things reopened,” Jane Shull said. “If not, what are we going to do?
Stay closed forever?”
Shull owns a cleaning company, and her business is down 40-50% due to the coronavirus pandemic.
She said she’s sick and tired of staying home and reading about businesses failing.
“If people are afraid to go out or go to businesses, that’s their
decision,” Shull said. “But let the people open up their businesses and
have people social distance, whatever it takes, but you just cannot keep
everything locked down.”
Groups on social media have been popping up, advocating for reopening the economy.
A group called Reopen Missouri called the stay-at-home order an
“inhumane and ineffective policy.” Another group called Reopen Kansas
called the order a “severe overreaction to the COVID issue.”
They’ve planned protests throughout both states next week. Locally,
there’s a call to flood the now empty streets of downtown Kansas City on
Monday and another protest planned at J.C. Nichols Fountain.
ctvnews | The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a
plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product
contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.
And an official of the World Health Organization's European
operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the
events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in
Orth-Donau, Austria.
"At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health
and occupational risk is minimal at present," medical officer Roberta
Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.
"But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau."
The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and
unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company.
The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of
it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.
The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the
four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the
Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died.
Ferrets shouldn't die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.
Public health authorities concerned about what has been described
as a "serious error" on Baxter's part have assumed the death of the
ferrets meant the H5N1 virus in the product was live. But the company,
Baxter International Inc., has been parsimonious about the amount of
information it has released about the event.
On Friday, the company's director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected.
"It was live," Christopher Bona said in an email.
The contaminated product, which Baxter calls "experimental virus
material," was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes
its flu vaccine -- including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is
expected shortly -- at a facility in the Czech Republic.
People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence
that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the
Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be
allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.
Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.
So, what are these “fundamental” features of GPTs that would allow us to compare one to another? And more generally, what criteria can one use to distinguish a GPT from other technologies?
Bresnahan and Trajtenberg (1996)argue that a GPT should havethe following three characteristics: 1.Pervasiveness– The GPT should spread to most sectors.
2.Improvement– The GPT should get better over time and, hence, should keep low-ering the costs of its users.
3.Innovation spawning– The GPT should make it easier to invent and produce new products or processes.
Most technologies possess each of these characteristics to some degree, and thus a GPT cannot differ qualitatively from these other technologies. Note, too, that the third property is, in a sense, a version of the first property if we phrase the latter to say that the GPT should also spread to the innovation sector. Moreover, this list can be expanded to include more subtle features of GPTs, a subject that we consider in Section3.Yet we find these three basic characteristics to be a useful starting point for evaluating and com-paring the impact of various technologies through history. Investigating how Electricity and IT measure up on these three dimensions is the focus of Section2.
thediplomat | We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest
leaders, but People’s Republic of China leader Xi Jinping’s actions have
forced us to rethink this assumption. Although the emergence of the
novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was probably not due to China’s actions, the emphasis that its authoritarian system places on hiding bad news likely gave the disease a sizable head start infecting the world. But most ominously, China’s obsession with image and Machtpolitik raises serious questions about its lack of moral limits.
At
some point the Chinese Communist Party learned of the epidemic and made
a decision to hide its existence, hoping it went away. Exposés in Hong
Kong’s South China Morning Post and the Chinese mainland’s Caixin
show that the information that did flow out of China early in the
crisis did so only because of the courage of individual Chinese people
in the face of government repression. People in the Wuhan epicenter,
however, began to get wise — and scared (here and here) — by the end of December 2019, forcing their government to say something. The authorities gave the impression of a nontransmissible disease already under containment. We know now this was entirely false, likely designed more to ease civil unrest than protect the people.
The mayor of Wuhan even suggested that the central government prevented him from revealing details
about the epidemic until January 20. Considering the first public
announcements came out of Wuhan on January 1, we can assume that Xi had a
sense of the danger prior to that.
Clearly, downplaying the
disease wasn’t working and it was time for the Party to get serious. But
how serious? Would it provide full cooperation to the international
community? Would being seen as the source of this virus hurt its
international image? Beyond these, there was a darker dimension: the
more Beijing cooperated, the less the disease stood to affect other
countries. This includes countries China sees as a threat to its
existence, like the United States. Why should China suffer the effects
of a pandemic while others stayed safe — and increased their strength
relative to China — based on China’s own costly experience?
strategic-culture | John Birchers are consistent about one thing and that is their abject
racism. Just as they condemned UNESCO and the FAO in the 1970s because
they had African and Arab directors-general – Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow of
Senegal and Edouard Saouma of Lebanon, respectively – they are now
condemning the WHO because it has an Ethiopian director-general, Dr.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a famed microbiologist from Ethiopia. Trump
and his rabid far-right supporters have accused Dr. Tedros of being an
agent=of-influence for China as part of the neo-John Birchers overall
campaign to assign the cause of the coronavirus pandemic to China. The
parents and grandparents of these John Birchers once blamed the
“Communists” and the “Soviet Union” for being behind the fluoridation of
America’s public water supply.
The Birchers even had a degree of success with the Bill Clinton
administration, which withdrew the U.S. from the United Nations
Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the U.N. World Tourism
Organization (UNWTO). Clinton’s reason for withdrawal was pure Bircher
logic: they “lacked purpose” for the United States.
Today, acting under the auspices of front organizations like the
Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society – both bankrolled by the
Charles Koch Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation –
the neo-John Birchers accuse China of being behind the coronavirus
pandemic by intentionally or accidentally releasing the virus as a
biological weapon. In lashing out at China, the far-right, including
senior members of the Trump administration and Republican senators like
Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have also
placed Tedros and the “China-influenced” WHO in their gunsights.
The WHO is not the first UN agency to be singled out by the far-right
as an instrument of China. The Heritage Foundation, whose white papers
are often transformed into Trump administration policy, criticized the
election of Qu Dongyu as director-general of FAO in 2019. Heritage
blasted the UN for electing Qu as the fourth Chinese national to head a
UN specialized agency. Chinese directors-general also lead the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), UNIDO, and the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Four months before the first coronavirus case was reported in Wuhan,
China, Heritage and its neo-John Bircher allies had convinced Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo, a Tea Party founder, to question Chinese influence
at the UN. Heritage made several demands to its fellow-travelers in the
Trump administration. They included: 1) tasking the U.S. intelligence
community to report on Chinese objectives, tactics, and influence in
international organizations; 2) Conduct an objective cost-benefit
analysis of U.S. participation in each international organization; 3)
the U.S. should focus its effort and resources on countering Chinese
influence, advancing U.S. policy preferences, and increasing employment
of U.S. nationals, particularly in senior positions, in those
organizations whose remit affects key U.S. interests; 4) identify and
carefully vet highly qualified candidates for leadership positions in
international organizations well in advance of elections; 5) Counter
Chinese financial and political pressure on foreign governments; 6)
Press the UN, the specialized agencies, and UN funds and programs to
increase employment of U.S. nationals; and 7) Elevate multilateral
affairs and international organizations within the State Department by
establishing an Under Secretary for Multilateral Affairs. 8) the U.S.
should take all reasonable steps to ensure that an American or national
of a like-minded country becomes the next International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) director-general.
As can be seen with Heritage’s bulletized attack on the UN, the
current Trump administration attack on UN agency directors like Dr.
Tedros was already in the planning stages and was part of the old John
Birch playbook of either bending the UN and its specialized agencies to
U.S. will or withdraw from them or cut off dues payments. Trump carried
out his John Bircher-initiated orders by threatening to put a hold on
U.S. payments to the WHO, even as the organization has become
cash-strapped over its campaign to curb the coronavirus around the
world.
strategic-culture | For decades, we were led to believe that the world-system put in
place after WWII provided the U.S. with unrivalled structural power.
Now, all that’s left is structural fragility, grotesque inequalities,
unpayable Himalayas of debt, and a rolling crisis.
No one is fooled anymore by the Fed’s magic quantitative easing
powers, or the acronym salad – TALF, ESF, SPV – built into the Fed/U.S.
Treasury exclusive obsession with big banks, corporations and the
Goddess of the Market, to the detriment of the average American.
It was only a few months ago that a serious discussion evolved around
the $2.5 quadrillion derivatives market imploding and collapsing the
global economy, based on the price of oil skyrocketing, in case the
Strait of Hormuz – for whatever reason – was shut down.
Now it’s about Great Depression 2.0: the whole system crashing as a
result of the shutdown of the global economy. The questions are
absolutely legitimate: is the political and social cataclysm of the
global economic crisis arguably a larger catastrophe than Covid-19
itself? And will it provide an opportunity to end neoliberalism and
usher in a more equitable system, or something even worse?
Wall Street, of course, lives in an alternative universe. In a
nutshell, Wall Street turned the Fed into a hedge fund. The Fed is going
to own at least two thirds of all U.S. Treasury bills in the market
before the end of 2020.
The U.S. Treasury will be buying every security and loan in sight while the Fed will be the banker – financing the whole scheme.
So essentially this is a Fed/Treasury merger. A behemoth dispensing loads of helicopter money.
And the winner is BlackRock—the biggest money manager on the planet,
with tentacles everywhere, managing the assets of over 170 pension
funds, banks, foundations, insurance companies, in fact a great deal of
the money in private equity and hedge funds. BlackRock — promising to be
fully “transparent” — will buy these securities and manage those dodgy SPVs on behalf of the Treasury.
BlackRock, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, may not be as big as
Vanguard, but it’s the top investor in Goldman Sachs, along with
Vanguard and State Street, and with $6.5 trillion in assets, bigger than
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank combined.
Now, BlackRock is the new operating system (OS) of the Fed and the Treasury. The world’s biggest shadow bank – and no, it’s not Chinese.
Compared to this high-stakes game, mini-scandals such as the one around Georgia Senator Kelly Loffler are
peanuts. Loffler allegedly profited from inside information on Covid-19
by the CDC to make a stock market killing. Loffler is married to
Jeffrey Sprecher – who happens to be the chairman of the NYSE, installed
by Goldman Sachs.
While corporate media followed this story like headless chickens,
post-Covid-19 plans, in Pentagon parlance, “move forward” by stealth.
The price? A meager $1,200 check per person for a month. Anyone knows
that, based on median salary income, a typical American family would
need $12,000 to survive for two months. Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin, in an act of supreme effrontry, allows them a mere 10 percent
of that. So American taxpayers will be left with a tsunami of debt while
selected Wall Street players grab the whole loot, part of an
unparalleled transfer of wealth upwards, complete with bankruptcies en
masse of small and medium businesses.
Fink’s letter to his shareholders almost gives the game away: “I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”
And right on cue, he forecasted that, “in the near future – and
sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant reallocation
of capital.”
economist | Perhaps, though, China is less interested
in running the world than in ensuring that other powers cannot or dare
not attempt to thwart it. It aims to chip away at the dollar’s status as
a reserve currency (see article).
And it is working hard to place its diplomats in influential jobs in
multilateral bodies, so that they will be in a position to shape the
global rules, over human rights, say, or internet governance. One reason
Mr Trump’s broadside against the WHO is bad for America is that it makes China appear more worthy of such positions.
China’s
rulers combine vast ambitions with a caution born from the huge task
they have in governing a country of 1.4bn people. They do not need to
create a new rules-based international order from scratch. They might
prefer to keep pushing on the wobbly pillars of the order built by
America after the second world war, so that a rising China is not
constrained.
That is not a comforting
prospect. The best way to deal with the pandemic and its economic
consequences is globally. So, too, problems like organised crime and
climate change. The 1920s showed what happens when great powers turn
selfish and rush to take advantage of the troubles of others. The
covid-19 outbreak has so far sparked as much jostling for advantage as
far-sighted magnanimity. Mr Trump bears a lot of blame for that. For
China to reinforce such bleak visions of superpower behaviour would be
not a triumph but a tragedy.
npr | Six years ago, Bloomberg News killed an investigation into the wealth
of Communist Party elites in China, fearful of repercussions by the
Chinese government.The company successfully silenced the reporters involved. And it sought to keep the spouse of one of the reporters quiet, too.
"They
assumed that because I was the wife of their employee, I was the wife,"
the author and journalist Leta Hong Fincher tells NPR. "I was just an
appendage of their employee. I was not a human being."
Fincher is married to the journalist Mike Forsythe, a former Beijing correspondent for Bloomberg News who now works at The New York Times. In 2012, Forsythe was part of a Bloomberg team behind an award-winning investigation into the accumulation of wealth by China's ruling classes.
The Chinese ambassador warned Bloomberg executives against
publishing the investigation. But Bloomberg News published the story
anyway. Afterward, Forsythe received what he and Fincher considereddeath threats relayed through other journalists. He and Fincher moved their family to Hong Kong, believing it to be safer.
Even
so, the reporting team pursued the next chapter, focusing on Chinese
leaders' ties to the country's richest man, Wang Jianlin. Among those in
the reporters' sights: the family of new Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The story gained steam throughout 2013.
In emails sent back to
Bloomberg's journalists in China seen by Fincher, senior news editors in
New York City expressed excitement.
And then: radio silence from headquarters. That story never ran.
"Mike
and some of the other reporters and editors who had been working on
this story just were asking for answers about ... why was this story
killed?" Fincher says.
NationalReview | For the last thirty years, the vast majority of powerful institutions
in the United States placed a gargantuan bet on the idea that the
government in Beijing could be a reliable partner in prosperity and
would be a responsible actor on the world stage. Many leading
politicians in both parties chose to believe this, many foreign-policy
wonks chose to believe this, many academics and university
administrators chose to believe this, and obviously, corporate America
loved the idea of both using Chinese labor for imported goods and
receiving access to the Chinese market. This includes Comcast, Disney,
Viacom, AT&T, and Fox Corporation — the parent companies of NBC
News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and Fox News, among other large
multinationals that own major U.S. news organizations.
The problem was, the Chinese government was never the stabilizing,
reasonable force for order that these Americans wanted to believe it
was. We saw the regime’s true nature over three decades of brutal
human-rights abuses and censorship and shameless lies to cover that
brutality.
When the Chinese government initially declared this new virus could
not be spread from person to person, and that the situation in Wuhan was
under control, very few people wanted to stand up and say they couldn’t
be trusted. We had just seen the Chinese government try to blow up the business plans of the National Basketball Association over a single general manager’s tweet. If
you cross the Chinese government, you take your livelihood in your
hands, if not your life. On March 4, the state-run Xinhua News Agency
declared, “If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing a travel ban on the United States, it also announces the
strategic control of medical products and the ban on export to the
United States, then the United States will be caught in the sea of new
coronavirus.” Every day, the leaders of China tell us and show
us exactly who they are and how they see the world. They are perfectly
content to watch us die painful deaths if this means greater leverage
and power for themselves.
thehill | Another sudden and unexpected factor will transform this year’s
elections. Many states, cities and counties are about to, suddenly, run
out of money. Wages won’t be paid. Services won’t be delivered.
Institutions will shut down abruptly. Many state colleges may fold. And
yet most state and local political and administrative leaders just sit
and watch. Voters will not be pleased.
Millions of American workers filed for unemployment insurance
during the past two weeks. That is a record and represents a collapse
of our local economies. Across the country, in every state, county and
city, businesses have been shut down, and many will not return after the
coronavirus crisis is over. Tens of millions have lost jobs, homes,
savings and retirement incomes that will never return. Owners of rental
property will go under when their loan payments come due and renters
can’t pay. Across the country, state and local economies are being badly
damaged — many of them permanently.
The result is that state and
local tax revenues will plummet. States and localities will burn through
any reserves they’ve maintained like wildfire. Since most of our
politicians and government managers have been raised during a decade of
expanding economies, their first instinct will be to wait and then panic
and then raise taxes to cover shortfalls — perhaps a special
“coronavirus surtax.” Taxpayers across the country have tolerated
various forms of high state and local taxes; the politicians would
naturally ask, “Why should now be any different?”
But it is different. The resulting increased tax burden would be a
disaster. Businesses that were barely hanging on would go under. Workers
and homeowners who were barely surviving would go under. State and
local tax bases would collapse even faster. There would be social
unrest, possibly requiring martial law.
People would migrate from high-tax states toward new jobs, accelerating
a downward spiral. These large migrations would make the 2020 census
results nonsense.
The only answer for the states, counties and
cities that want to survive is to slash budgets now — probably 30 to 50
percent — eliminate all nonessential spending and reduce taxes today.
Business leaders know that, in these types of situations, the only way
to save a company is to cut costs immediately. There is no other answer,
and those who act first and most aggressively are the most successful
in saving the company and the greatest number of its employees. In
short, “fiscal distancing” — that is, separating politicians from
taxpayers’ money by cutting budgets and taxes now — is literally the
only useful thing that state and local governments can do to prevent
further economic and social catastrophe.
thehill |The governors of six states in the
northeast are working together to create joint recommendations on how
they can reopen their economies in the aftermath of the COVID-19
pandemic.
The effort is being led by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and includes Democratic Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, John Carney of Delaware and Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island.
Later
on Monday, Cuomo's office announced Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker
will also join the coalition, making him the lone Republican.
During a conference call Monday, the
governors said they will name a public health official, an economic
official and their respective chiefs of staff to work on the plan.
The
governors emphasized the importance of working together, so one state
doesn't end up with policies that would put its neighbors at risk or
cause the outbreak to start up again.
"Study
the data, study the research, study the experiences of other countries,
and give us guidelines and parameters to go forward. Let's be smart and
let's be cooperative and let's learn from one another," Cuomo said.
Echoing comments made by Cuomo earlier Monday, Murphy said the decision about easing restrictions will be a delicate balance.
"If
you get that wrong ... if you jam it in too early, you could throw
gasoline on the fire and reignite and that's the last thing any of us
need right now," Murphy said.
Cuomo said the goal is to have recommendations in a matter of weeks.
WashingtonTimes | Thousands of Michiganders protesting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home executive order drove to Lansing, Michigan, for a mass ‘drive-by’ protest on Wednesday.
The Michigan Conservative Coalition
organized “Operation Gridlock” featuring protesters circling the
Michigan State Capitol in their vehicles and honking their horns to show
their opposition to the Democratic governor’s coronavirus-related
restrictions. The protesters observed social distancing practices by
remaining in their vehicles.
“Our Governor and her allies are infecting ALL of us with their radical, progressive agenda,” the Michigan Conservative Coalition
said on its Facebook page organizing the protest. “Dope stores? Open.
Abortion clinics? Open. Churches? Shut down. Local businesses? Going
broke!”
The group added, “People always say: “Conservatives never protest
because they are too busy working.” Well, guess what. You’re not
working—so it’s time to PROTEST.”
The Operation Gridlock rally was set to begin
at noon but thousands of vehicles arrived beforehand on Wednesday,
according to organizers of the protest.
yasha | Tonite Evgenia and I went went to another “hey, asshole!” honking
protest in front of the official mansion residence of Los Angeles mayor
Eric Garcetti — a home that the Getty oil oligarch family gifted to the
city for “public” use.
The COVID-19 lockdown has been going on for
nearly a month now here in LA. I believe it’s day 29 today. Millions
have lost their jobs and millions can’t make rent, but the city has done
nothing to help. There are no ideas, no plans, and there is no action.
As far as I can tell, politicians here have been hoping things will pass
on their own — that the economic and housing crisis will somehow float
past them. So they’re refusing to make any difficult decisions
— especially because anything they do to positively help people is
guaranteed to piss off their donor class. I mean, the city council voted down something as basic and simple as an eviction moratorium. That’s how regressive the politics are in ultra-liberal, progressive LA.
So a small group of activists,
mostly from the Los Angeles Tenants Union, have been organizing these
honking protests on an ongoing basis in front of the homes of various
city politicians to make demands that they stop evictions, cancel rent
payments, and house the homeless in empty hotel rooms. The central idea
here is to make these politicians uncomfortable — all while observing
social distancing rules. It’s clever and smart and Evgenia and I went to
a couple of these already in the last couple of weeks, including one that ended with an angry Guy Fawkes neighbor trying to drench us with his garden hose.
This one didn’t have the same theatrics.
A
convoy of maybe twenty cars showed up at Mayor Garcetti’s mansion and
started circling the block, honking, and annoying the hell out of
everyone in the neighborhood. As we kept making the loop, some of his
neighbors came out to gawk at us from their fancy Hancock Park lawns
with disapproval. The cops arrived ten minutes after we started and
promptly began warning people that they’d give citations if people kept
honking. When I wouldn’t stop, a cop flashed his light in my face. This
is how this things play out when you’re protesting by car!
Anyway,
it felt great to get out and yell at the window at our shitty
politicians. People don’t do this nearly enough. Let me tell you, it’s
much more satisfying that trolling people on Twitter or getting into a
Facebook flame war. But as good as it felt, the problem is that there is
no larger political organization and there is no real economic or
political leverage. So the protest is really about venting anger and
getting people together in the simplest way possible. But you gotta
start somewhere.
visualskies | The main focus of the programme, the awe inspiring Nan Madol, is
an archaeological wonder adjacent to the eastern shore of Pohnpei. Few
places in the Pacific, indeed on the planet, are as intriguing and
mysterious as Nan Madol. Hardly known outside Micronesia, the lost city
of Nan Madol is a hidden gem of Polynesian history and culture and is an
awe inspiring sight for modern people lucky enough to visit or work
there. The name Nan Madol means ‘within the intervals’ and is a
reference to the canals that criss-cross the ruins. The city,
constructed in a lagoon, consists of myriad artificial islands linked by
this network of canals. The core of the site, with its monumental
basalt block walls and coral filled platforms, encompasses an area of
over 18 square kilometres and is the only extant ancient city built on
top of a coral reef. Nan Madol was the ceremonial and political capital
of the Saudeleur Dynasty until the early part of the 17th century;
although Nan Madol was the scene of human activity since the 1st or 2nd
century AD, the construction of the distinctive basalt block
architecture probably began in the 12th century. The colossal scale of
the beautiful edifices, their technical sophistication and the
extraordinary density of the megalithic structures bear testimony to the
complex social and religious organisations of the island society at
this time. In the north eastern part of the site lies the breathtaking
Nan Doas with walls of impossibly massive basalt blocks, in places over 7
metres tall. These surround a central tomb in an impressive courtyard
that was built for the first Saudeleur. These elaborate ruins represent
the ceremonial centre of the Saudeleur Dynasty; a vibrant period in
Pacific Island culture. According to local legend, the basalt blocks
used in the construction of Nan Madol were flown to the site by twin
sorcerors Olisihpa and Olosohpa using black magic. Although
archaeologists have located several quarry sites for the basalt at the
opposite end of Pohnpei, the method of transportation and construction
of these incredibly heavy stone blocks has still not been adequately
explained. The longer you spend at Nan Madol, the more these legends
indeed seem to be a reasonable explanation as to how the place was
built.
The site is inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger due to a
number of threats, notably the silting up of the waterways and the
unchecked, rapid growth of the mangroves and other vegetation that
undermine and otherwise destabilise the remains. The majority of the
megalithic complex at Nan Madol has been rendered almost invisible by
the aggressive invasion of the mangrove forest and other vegetation that
proliferate in the tropical climate on Pohnpei. As a corollary of this
it was impossible to document, digitise and visualise the remains using
any traditional survey techniques. There was simply too much vegetation
to be able to allow more than a tantalising glimpse of disparate parts
of the widescale megalithic structures; so an alternative methodology
had to be utilised. To allow the team to literally find the lost city of
Nan Madol Visualskies used our drone mounted LiDAR technology to
penetrate the vegetation canopy and reveal the remains that, to the
naked eye, remain hidden underneath. Working under intense pressure to
fly multiple sorties every day, in far from ideal weather conditions,
with no power close at hand and then to process and visualise the
results in a matter of days, Visualskies pushed the technology, the
hardware, the software and the team members to their limits and beyond.
For the team from Visualskies, working on Pohnpei was an incredible
journey into the past and a unique professional experience on a tropical
paradise.
sciencealert | There's a small and exclusive list of places where crop cultivation
first got started in the ancient world – and it looks as though that
list might have another entry, according to new research of curious
'islands' in the Amazon basin.
The savannah of the Llanos de Moxos
in northern Bolivia is littered with thousands of patches of forest,
rising a few feet above the surrounding wetlands. Many of these forest
islands, as researchers call them, are thought to be the remnants of
human habitation from the early and mid-Holocene.
Now, thanks to
new analysis of the sediment found in some of these islands, researchers
have unearthed signs that these spots were used to grow cassava (manioc) and squash a little over 10,000 years ago.
That's
impressive, as this timing places them some 8,000 years earlier than
scientists had previously found evidence for, indicating that the people
who lived in this part of the world - the southwestern corner of the
Amazon basin - got a head start on farming practices.
In fact, the
findings suggest that southwestern Amazonia can now join China, the
Middle East, Mesoamerica, and the Andes as one of the areas where
organised plant growing first got going – in the words of the research
team, "one of the most important cultural transitions in human history".
"Archaeologists, geographers, and biologists have argued for many
years that southwestern Amazonia was a probable centre of early plant
domestication because many important cultivars like manioc, squash,
peanuts and some varieties of chili pepper and beans are genetically
very close to wild plants living here," says earth scientist Umberto Lombardo from the University of Bern in Switzerland.
"However,
until this recent study, scientists had neither searched for, nor
excavated, old archaeological sites in this region that might document
the pre-Columbian domestication of these globally important crops."
Around
10,000 years ago (or more), many of the forest islands would have
formed due to how human activity - dumping food waste, for example -
changed the quality of the soil as the ice age receded.
"Anthropic
forest islands are entirely artificial, and do not take advantage of
pre-existing landscape features," the researchers note in the study. "These accumulative middens constituted fertility hotspots amid poor savannah soils."
There
are thousands of forest islands in the region, and the researchers used
remote sensing data to map 6,643 of them. The team also surveyed 82 of
these islands, extracting sediment samples. Further analysis revealed
tiny bits of phytolith – structures made of silica that are known to form inside the cells of plants, and get left behind after they decay.
youtube |Hey guys, today we are going to look at a very strange place called Baksei Chamkrong in the Angkor Wat Complex in Cambodia. This is a very strange site because this is the only stepped pyramid in this temple complex.
This pyramid in Cambodia is almost identical to the pyramid found in Mesoamerica.
There is a pyramid called Tikal. There is a pyramid in a place called Tikal and that pyramid looks not even similar but almost identical.
The Tikal Pyramid is in the country of Guatemala, in central America and this is roughly 10,000 miles from the Baksei Chamkrong Pyramid in Cambodia. But when you look at them side by side, it is mind boggling. There is no doubt, they were both built by the same builders.
Or did these 2 civilizations, separated by 10,000 miles, contacting and communicating with each other using advanced technology, just like what we do today?
How else do you explain these similarities? Look at the construction style in both temples. The masonry is the same, Make rectangular blocks of stone, and place them on top of one other.
Look at the basic design: Not even similar, almost identical. Both of them pyramids, both of them are stepped pyramids, both of them have a staircase laid out in the center. Both of them have a dome like structure built on the top, both have them have a doorway in the center of the dome. It is impossible that all these similarities are a result of mere coincidence.
Think about this, if these 2 structures were constructed within a 10 mile radius or a 100 mile radius, archeologists and historians would swear they were built by the same builders. However, simply because they are separated by 10,000 miles, experts now swear that this is a pure coincidence, built by 2 completely different civilizations which had no contact with each other.
youtube |Hey guys, today, let us explore the ancient statues in Colombia. There are statues here which are more than a thousand years old and they have a strange connection with Indian culture.
For example, take a look at the mysterious SpaceMan at San Agustin Archeological Park in Colombia. This is a remote site in South America, and there are hundreds of statues here, but this one is the eye-catcher. Who is he?
The very first impression is that he is some kind of an ancient astronaut because it is clear that he is wearing a helmet or a visor, he has 2 rectangular eyes, a rectangular mouth, and has no nose. Look at the size of his head and the body, it is very disproportionate, his body is too small for that giant head, and he is definitely wearing shoes.
But the most important detail is that he is holding a cylinder, a long tool which goes into the earth, look how it goes even below his feet.
This is a very interesting detail and archeologists and historians have no explanation for it. The tour guides here, also have no idea and claim this is just a flute, a musical instrument. What kind of a flute goes into the ground, how would it even be able to produce music like that?
Tell me what this is. So what is this all about?
Conversation in Spanish
While there is no explanation for this mysterious Spaceman in Colombia, in Hinduism, there are 2 Gods which are portrayed remarkably similar to this. The first one is called SwarnaAkarshana Bhairava. He is the god of Gold and it is said he could extract gold from the earth directly using his tools.
But there is another important deity known as Vaisravana, he is the half-brother of the demon king Ravana. Who is this Vaisravana, what does he do?. He is the God of wealth, especially gold. He is always shown with a tool that goes into the ground. But remember India and Colombia are about 10,000 miles apart, so how could a Hindu god be carved in Colombia? This is a very valid question, and we need to take a look at this logically.
In India, Vaisravana is portrayed like this. This statue is about 1600 years old, He is shown with a potbelly, a symbol of wealth. The most important detail is this rod in his hand, which usually goes into the ground.
youtube |Even though we can see these lingams vaguely from outside, the real view can be obtained only if we get underwater and for the very first time and this has never been shot before, I am going to go underwater and show you how it feels.
Hey guys, today we are going up a mountain called Phnom Kulen in Cambodia. This place has many ancient lingams constructed underwater. So, let's go take a look and see what this mountain has to offer.
We are at this place called Phnom Kulen Mountain; we are not at the ground level. There is a stream here, but there is something spectacular inside this stream.
Look, do you see what this is? You see a rectangle inside a rectangle, inside a rectangle, inside a rectangle, inside a rectangle. Now you may wonder what this is. This is a lingam. Or at least, there used to be a cylindrical lingam in the center. Now it is gone. But that is not the only remarkable feature. And that is not even the only lingam, look. LOOK. the entire stream is full of lingams.
You see there are lingams of various sizes, here there are smaller lingams and look over there, there is a huge rectangle there. These are all lingams carved underwater here in Cambodia.
And let us go into the water and see how these multiple lingams look. There is a square around another square, and in the center, there is a cylindrical protrusion. There are so many of them. This is a huge lingam, seems like it has some kind of mystical energy to it.
This huge rectangle once must have had a cylindrical lingam inside, it is great to see how it looks underwater. Look we can even see fish swimming alongside the camera.
So even though we call this place Phnom Kulen Today, originally this place was called Sahasralinga, which means one thousand lingas. And this is not a misnomer, and this is not even an exaggeration. This is actually an understatement because we have more than one thousand lingams underwater if you look closely. If you See there, there is one huge rectangle, and you can see here, so many lingams.
If you look all over the stream, we can see a lot of lingams, going all the way on both directions.
The name sahasralinga means one thousand lingas in Sanskrit, which used to be the main language here in Cambodia, more than a thousand years ago.
WaPo | Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S.
Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of
Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington
about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies
on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside
the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the
source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of
repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of
Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to
achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as
BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these
visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by
Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the
embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last
week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so
much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as
Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about
safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more
attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that
the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human
transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
“During
interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new
lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and
investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment
laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two
officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections
who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to
comment on this and other details of the story.)
The
Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston
National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other
U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The
cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further
support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important
but also dangerous.
As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of
the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat
coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research
showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan
province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the
SARS coronavirus in 2003.
SCMP | Even
if Congress is able to return to regular business in the coming months,
attention from legislative matters will quickly be pulled away again –
this time by election season. In the run-up to November 3, not only will
President Trump be seeking re-election, but most members of the House
and around a third of the Senate will also be absorbed in fights to stay
in office.
“In
an election year, really anything after July is not likely to happen,”
said Chris Lu, a former House oversight committee lawyer who later
served as Barack Obama’s White House cabinet secretary.
“This
will be an incredibly short legislating year with the exception of,
obviously, continuing to provide relief and possible stimulus [relating
to the coronavirus outbreak],” said Lu, who also served as a
commissioner on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an
influential advisory panel on human rights issues in the country.
Neither
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – one of Beijing’s most vocal critics – or
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to requests for comment
on whether they anticipated scheduling floor time for any of the
China-related bills that still await votes. One House aide on the
Democratic side, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the chance of
any non-coronavirus legislation moving ahead was “pretty, pretty
limited”.
Yet
despite the narrowing window for China-related legislation to reach
Trump by January, many lawmakers are pressing ahead, both with
intensifying rhetoric and several pieces of legislation about Beijing’s
handling of the outbreak.
“Not
much of what gets proposed or introduced in the upcoming days
[regarding China] will become policy, but everyone wants to message that
they’re on it,” said a senior congressional staffer, who requested
anonymity to discuss lawmakers’ internal deliberations.
In
March alone, lawmakers introduced at least 20 China-related bills,
ranging from demands that China pay for the US pandemic costs to calls
for an international investigation of Beijing’s coronavirus response.
With
criticism intensifying about the US government’s own response,
Republicans’ complaints have become ever louder. On Friday, Senator
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proclaimed on Twitter that the Chinese
government was “responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million
Americans being unemployed”.
thediplomat | Trust can never be earned; it must be given. This is true in all
relationships, including geopolitical ones. Vietnam and the United
States are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the establishment of
diplomatic relations this year. While sailing has not always been
smooth, both countries have worked hard to enhance trust. Late last
week, both nations took a big step to catapult mutual trust to a new
level – and it had China’s attention.
Vietnam hosted the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt
and a ship from its strike group through the weekend at the commercial
port of Da Nang. There can be no more powerful symbol of America’s
commitment to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific than the presence of
a United States aircraft carrier. The visit comes two years to the day
from the historic first post-war aircraft carrier visit to the country. I
coordinated the first visit and witnessed how such port calls, if
managed correctly, enhance strategic trust.
Hanoi carefully
balances its security relations with both Washington and Beijing. The
presence of a hundred thousand tons of steel can easily tip the balance
and complicate Vietnam’s willingness to welcome future U.S. Navy ship
visits. During the March 2018 port call, the U.S. Navy downplayed the
ship’s obvious “hard power” capabilities. Instead, we emphasized
professional exchanges between cooks and firefighters, and organized
band concerts around town and community events at local schools. The
visit did nothing to provoke Sino-Vietnamese tensions. Rather, it
deepened strategic trust and helped to establish the positive conditions
necessary for this year’s event.
The port call of the Theodore Roosevelt
has already helped to deepen bilateral trust. Six thousand sailors
visiting a nation adjacent to the epicenter of the ongoing coronavirus
health crisis certainly stimulated a debate in both Hanoi and Washington
about proceeding with the visit. Both countries have legitimate health
concerns. For its part, the United States Pacific Fleet has directed
its ships to remain at sea for 14 days following a foreign port call in
Asia to identify any spread of the contagion.
The easiest and safest
choice would be to for one side or the other to have postponed this
significant event. Mutual willingness to proceed with the visit,
however, indicates that the trust between Washington and Hanoi has
reached a new level.
technologyreview | Imagine, a few weeks or months from now, having a covid-19 test kit
sent to your home. It’s small and portable, but pretty easy to figure
out. You prick your finger as in a blood sugar test for diabetics, wait
maybe 15 minutes, and bam—you now know whether or not you’re immune to
coronavirus.
If you are, you can request government-issued
documentation that says so. This is your “immunity passport.” You are
now free to leave your home, go back to work, and take part in all
facets of normal life—many of which are in the process of being booted
back up by “immunes” like yourself.
Pretty enticing, right? Some countries are taking the idea seriously. German researcherswant to send out hundreds of thousands of tests to
citizens over the next few weeks to see who is immune to covid-19 and
who is not, and certify people as being healthy enough to return to
society. The UK, which has stockpiled over 17.5 million home antibody
testing kits, has raised the prospect of doing something similar,
although this has come undermajor scrutiny from scientists who
have raised concerns that the test may not be accurate enough to be
useful. As the pressure builds from a public that has been cooped up for
weeks, more countries are looking for a way out of strict social
distancing measures that doesn’t require waiting 12 to 18 months for a
vaccine (if one even comes).
There are some serious problems with trying to use the tests to
determine immunity status. For example, we still know very little about
what human immunity to the disease looks like, how long it lasts, whether an immune response prevents reinfection,
and whether you might still be contagious even after symptoms have
dissipated and you’ve developed IgG antibodies. Immune responses vary
greatly between patients, and we still don’t know why. Genetics could
play a role.
“We’ve only known about this virus for four
months,” says Donald Thea, a professor of global health at Boston
University. “There’s a real paucity of data out there.”
SARS-CoV-1, the virus that causes SARS and whose genome is about 76% similar to that of SARS-CoV-2, seems to elicit an immunity that lasts up to three years.
Other coronaviruses that cause the common cold seem to elicit a far
shorter immunity, although the data on that is limited—perhaps, says
Thea, because there has been far less urgency to study them in such
detail. It’s too early to tell right now where SARS-CoV-2 will fall in
that time range
state.gov | Last year, I announced that I would give a series of speeches on
China, and this is part of that. It’s the context in which state and
local government officials ought to think about the way they lead with
respect to our relationship. It’s important. China matters.
It’s been part of my mission at the State Department to mobilize all
parts of the United States Government. I was out in Silicon Valley a
couple weeks ago to talk to America’s leading tech companies about this
very set of issues.
And I need your help, too.
What China does in Topeka and Sacramento reverberates in Washington,
in Beijing, and far beyond. Competition with China is happening. It’s
happening in your state.
In fact, I would be surprised if most of you in the audience have not been lobbied by the Chinese Communist Party directly.
Chinese Communist Party friendship organizations like the one that I
referenced earlier are in Richmond; Minneapolis; Portland; Jupiter,
Florida; and many other cities around the country.
But sometimes China’s activities aren’t quite that public, and I want
to talk about some of that today.
Let me read you an excerpt of a
letter from a Chinese diplomat. It was China’s Consul General in New
York sent a letter last month to the speaker of one of your state
legislatures.
Here’s what the letter said in part. It said, quote, “As we all know,
Taiwan is part of China… avoid engaging in any official contact with
Taiwan, including sending congratulatory messages to the electeds,
introducing bills and proclamations for the election, sending officials
and representatives to attend the inauguration ceremony, and inviting
officials in Taiwan to visit the United States.” End of quote from the
letter.
Think about that. You had a diplomat from China assigned here to the
United States, a representative of the Chinese Communist Party in New
York City, sending an official letter urging that an American elected
official shouldn’t exercise his right to freedom of speech.
Let that sink in for just a minute.
And this isn’t a one-off event. It’s happening all across the country.
Chinese consulates in New York, in Illinois, in Texas, and two in
California, bound by the diplomatic responsibilities and rights of the
Vienna Convention, are very politically active at the state level, as is
the embassy right here in Washington, D.C.
Maybe some of you have heard about the time when the Chinese consulate paid the UC-San Diego students to protest the Dalai Lama.
Or last August, when former governor Phil Bryant of Mississippi
received a letter from a diplomat in the consul’s office in Houston,
threatening to cancel a Chinese investment if the governor chose to
travel to Taiwan. Phil went anyway.
mises | As of April 6, forty-one states have statewide "stay-at-home" decrees in place. These orders vary widely from place to place.
In some states, there are long lists of exempted industries including
marijuana dispensaries, liquor stores, hardware stores, and of course,
grocery stores. In some states with these edicts, public lands, state
parks, and beaches remain
open. In some states, city parks are more crowded than ever as local
residents, with little else to do, attempt to recreate. In other
places—such as California—one can be arrested for paddleboarding all alone in the ocean.
Yet in all of these places, the current regime of rule by decree will
have—and already has had—a devastating effect on many small and
medium-sized businesses and their employees. As governments have created
new arbitrary definitions of what constitutes an "essential" business,
some businesses find themselves forced to close. Employees have lost
these jobs. The owners of these enterprises will likely lose far more as
debts mount and business investments are destroyed. As unemployment and
poverty increase, the usual pathologies will arise as well: suicides, child abuse, and stress-induced death.
Yet the politicians—mostly state governors, mayors, and unelected
bureaucrats—remain popular. In New York State, where the lockdown orders
are among the most draconian in the nation, it is now claimed that 87 percent of those polled approve of
Governor Andrew Cuomo's handling of the situation. As Donald Trump's
administration has recommended ever harsher government limits on the
freedom of Americans, his poll numbers have only improved.
Meanwhile, among critics there appears to be a misconception of these
lockdowns (which are very often only partially imposed or enforced) as
being imposed over the howls of the local population, which is being
silenced and cowed by jackbooted local police.
If only that were true. In most places, it appears clear that a great
many residents approve of the lockdowns. We see this support in the
form of all the local scolds who complain on Nextdoor.com about
neighborhood children who don't properly engage in "social distancing."
We see it in the people who call the police to report violators of stay-at-home orders. We see it in those who report local businesses for allowing too many people inside.
Viewed in this way, it may be more likely that state governors and other politicians are afraid of being seen as doing too little, rather than as overstepping their authority to impose public safety measures.
Begrudgingly Acknowledged Country Bangers
-
When someone says they hate country music, they’re typically referring,
whether they know it or not, to the neotraditionalist “young country” that
arose in...
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...