For First Time Since The Great Depression, Americans Must Wait In Line For The Most Basic Essential Items
July 12th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
The scene can be somewhat dystopian and third world when you look at it: as a result of the pandemic and the new way that our economy is forced to do business, Americans all over the country are waiting in line – even for the most basic of essentials.
For example, Bloomberg points out that food banks in Vermont have to deal with “miles long” lines of cars and at Covid testing sites in Florida, people have to show up with full tanks of gas because of how long they have to wait.
People applying for unemployment have similar horror stories – as we have detailed – trying to pile onto an overwhelmed website to collect benefits and left with no one to call when the system doesn’t function properly. The physical waits in unemployment lines are similarly distressing.
How the CIA Made Afghanistan Safe for the Opium Trade
July 12th, 2020Via: Counterpunch:
American DEA agents were fully apprised of the drug running of the mujahedin in concert with Pakistani intelligence and military leaders. In 1983 the DEA’s congressional liaison, David Melocik, told a congressional committee, “You can say the rebels make their money off the sale of opium. There’s no doubt about it. These rebels keep their cause going through the sale of opium.” But talk about “the cause” depending on drug sales was nonsense at that particular moment. The CIA was paying for everything regardless. The opium revenues were ending up in offshore accounts in the Habib Bank, one of Pakistan’s largest, and in the accounts of BCCI, founded by Agha Hasan Abedi, who began his banking career at Habib. The CIA was simultaneously using BCCI for its own secret transactions.
The DEA had evidence of over forty heroin syndicates operating in Pakistan in the mid-1980s during the Afghan war, and there was evidence of more than 200 heroin labs operating in northwest Pakistan. Even though Islamabad houses one of the largest DEA offices in Asia, no action was ever taken by the DEA agents against any of these operations.
Cops Raid Mansion Of St. Louis Couple Who Defended Home From Protesters, Confiscate AR-15
July 12th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
St. Louis authorities confiscated an AR-15 used by Mark McCloskey, who made headlines with his wife Patricia last month when they defended their historic mansion from protesters who had broken down a gate to trespass on their private road.
It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois
July 12th, 2020Via: The Street:
Why 3 weeks? That’s how long it takes to reserve a one-way U-Haul outbound.
“Everyone is leaving. No one is coming,” a U-Haul agent told us a few weeks ago.
Where Did It All Go Wrong For Intel?
July 12th, 2020Via: Financial Times:
There are two factors behind this massive shift in relative value. The most significant has been Intel’s failure to maintain its flawless execution. Its move to the latest generation of chips — with features that are only 10 nanometres wide — has been plagued with manufacturing problems. For the first time, TSMC has leapt ahead.
Their different business models mean the two are not direct competitors. But TSMC has served as a manufacturing platform for a new raft of new competitors, opening the way to fabless chipmakers that do not own their own plants, including Nvidia and AMD.
The other factor in Intel’s recent eclipse has been the data explosion and rise of machine learning. The most valuable part of the market, for training machine learning algorithms, is one where Nvidia is well ahead.
4 Mysterious Objects Spotted in Deep Space Are Unlike Anything Ever Seen
July 12th, 2020Via: LiveScience:
There’s something unusual lurking out in the depths of space: Astronomers have discovered four faint objects that at radio wavelengths are highly circular and brighter along their edges. And they’re unlike any class of astronomical object ever seen before.
The objects, which look like distant ring-shaped islands, have been dubbed odd radio circles, or ORCs, for their shape and overall peculiarity. Astronomers don’t yet know exactly how far away these ORCs are, but they could be linked to distant galaxies.
Only Half of America’s Population Would Get Covid-19 Vaccine
July 11th, 2020Via: Forbes:
As polling suggests that only half of America’s population would be willing to get the Covid-19 vaccine if it were available, a panel of scientific and academic experts on Thursdays released a set of recommendations for how to boost confidence in vaccines, including appointing community spokespeople and making the vaccine free to all and available at familiar places like centers for worship.
Kevin Spacey and Ghislaine Maxwell Sat in Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s Thrones
July 9th, 2020Via: People:
Prince Andrew’s connection to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has been called into question again, as a photo of Epstein’s alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell sitting alongside Kevin Spacey on thrones at Buckingham Palace emerged.
British newspaper The Telegraph released the shot on July 4, two days after Maxwell was arrested “for her role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein.”
The image from 2002 shows Maxwell and Spacey, who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple people — he pleaded not guilty and the criminal case against him was ultimately dropped — laughing as they sit on the thrones of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip during a tour of Buckingham Palace. The tour of the palace is believed to have been arranged by Prince Andrew, the monarch’s son, though it’s unclear who took the image or if Andrew was in the Throne Room at the time.
The American Economy In Four Words: Neofeudal Extortion, Decline, & Collapse
July 9th, 2020Via: Of Two Minds:
In sector after sector, the quality of the goods and services has declined while costs have soared. This is the acme of neofeudalism: insiders and the New Nobility are skimming fortunes as prices skyrocket and the quality of the goods and services provided plummet.
Novartis: Cash Bribes Paid to Doctors to Prescribe Drugs
July 9th, 2020Via: Daily Mail:
A whistleblower who wore a wire to record evidence of doctors taking cash bribes from a Swiss pharmaceutical giant to prescribe their drugs could now be rewarded with $75 million, following the conclusion of a $628 million settlement.
Oswald Bilotta told NBC News how he thought he’d landed his dream job when he was employed as a sales representative for Novatis Pharmaceuticals in 1999, but quickly the proverbial rose-tinted lenses lost their gleam.
Just over a decade later, Bilotta would play a central role in a huge federal investigation into kickbacks at Novatis, wearing a wire for prosecutors to prove doctors were accepting cash bribes from the firm.
His years-long effort to lift the lid on the kickback scheme finally paid off on July 1.
The Justice Department announced a $678 million settlement with the pharmaceutical company over improper inducements it made to doctors to prescribe 10 of the company’s drugs, including the anti-hypertension drug Lotrel.
