#hasan trump rally

[gothamcityneedsme]

i cant get over the trump hannibal lector lore like HELP me i cannot get over this

[tomorrowusa]

Trump is trying to normalize his fascist rantings by just repeating them a lot. That way they are no longer considered news and subject to outrage. But it still allows him to fire up his unhinged and violent base.

Donald Trump, just weeks after using the fascist terminology “vermin” to describe sections of American society he dislikes, again declared at a New Hampshire rally that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”. [ ... ] “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done,” Trump told the crowd. “They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America … but all over the world. “They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.” It is the second time Trump has used the poisoned blood phrase, which has been widely condemned for echoing white supremacist rhetoric. The first time he did so, in October, Joe Biden said the former president, who faces 91 criminal charges, was starting to use language heard in Nazi Germany.

Donald Trump is the true poisoner of public discourse in the United States. Things were notably nicer before 2015.

Trump probably is a cinch for the GOP nomination. Even if Nikki Haley does surprisingly well in New Hampshire, that will have little impact on Republican primaries in places like Texas, Tennessee, or Missouri. Trump's rhetoric is focused on the general election.

Mehdi Hasan describes Trump's strategy for fascist normalization.

The broadcaster Mehdi Hasan said on Saturday: “Classic Trump: say something crazy outrageous, neo-Nazi-like and it gets headlines, creates outrage. “So wait a little. Then say it again, no one notices, no coverage, and it gets normalized and mainstreamed. “Let’s be clear: migrants ‘poisoning the blood’ is Hitler rhetoric.”

In this rally Trump was quoting Vladimir Putin. That should give us some idea of whose best interests would be served by a Trump victory. Putin and Trump are certainly on the same page regarding hating liberal democracy.

Trump quotes Putin condemning American democracy, praises autocrat Orban

“Donald Trump sees American democracy as a sham and he wants to convince his followers to see it that way too,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who researches democracy and rhetoric. “Putin hates western values like democracy and the rule of law, so does Trump.” Trump quoted Putin, the dictatorial Russia president who invaded neighboring Ukraine, criticizing the criminal charges against Trump, who is accused in four separate cases of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme, mishandling classified documents, and trying to overturn the 2020 election results. In the quotation, Putin agreed with Trump’s own attempts to portray the prosecutions as politically motivated. [ ... ] He went on to align himself with Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has amassed functionally autocratic power through controlling the media and changing the country’s constitution. Orban has presented his leadership as a model of an “illiberal” state and has opposed immigration for leading to “mixed race” Europeans. Democratic world leaders have sought to isolate Orban for eroding civil liberties and bolstering ties with Putin. [ ... ] In the speech, Trump also repeated his own inflammatory language against undocumented immigrants, by accusing them of “poisoning the blood of our country” — a phrase that immigrant groups and civil rights advocates have condemned as reminiscent as Hitler in his book “Mein Kampf,” in which he told Germans to “care for the purity of their own blood” by eliminating Jews.

Calling out Trump and pointing out his dictator comments will have no effect on his hardcore MAGA fanatics. But the more wishy-washy Trump-curious voters might be a bit more open to well targeted criticisms – as long as we don't use the same type of rhetoric that liberals are usually associated with. In close elections, small groups of voters count a lot.

[truck-fump]

How CNN's <b>Trump</b> Town Hall turned into a <b>Trump</b> campaign rally - YouTube

New Post has been published on https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DN5ogoFTlNug&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjUzM2UwMTY5ZmFhZTIwMGQ6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AOvVaw3Bcq2zVjQWuUX5ZwmnocaY

How CNN's Trump Town Hall turned into a Trump campaign rally - YouTube

Mehdi Hasan gives his review of the CNN Trump Town Hall and, spoiler alert: it’s not a positive review. He explains how CNN ended up giving the …

[mcnuggyy]

What do you think trumps gonna do when biden wins? Aside from enacting violence

You wanna know? Look at what he’s doing now and what him and his team are saying. Trump follows through on the crazy shit he says. THATS what makes him so terrifying. So you can expect more legal fights, him taking it to court as he’s already trying to do, all you gotta do is take a look at any of his speeches and rallies, he even said it himself, his is a BAD loser, and he is going to pull every little stunt he can to try and win back what is an undeniable loss.

[maswartz]

Keeping in mind he was one of the first to get the vaccine.

[newstfionline]

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Republicans Rally Against Impeachment Trial, Signaling Likely Acquittal for Trump (NYT) Senate Republicans rallied on Tuesday against trying former President Donald J. Trump for “incitement of insurrection” at the Capitol, with only five members of his party joining Democrats in a vote to go forward with his impeachment trial. By a vote of 55-to-45, the Senate narrowly killed a Republican effort to dismiss the proceeding as unconstitutional because Mr. Trump is no longer in office. “I think it’s pretty obvious from the vote today that it is extraordinarily unlikely that the president will be convicted,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the five Republicans who voted to proceed to trial. “Just do the math.” It would take two-thirds of senators—67 votes—to attain a conviction, meaning 17 Republicans would have to cross party lines to side with Democrats in finding Mr. Trump guilty. If they did, an additional vote to disqualify him from ever holding office again would take a simple majority.

Foot of snow blankets parts of Midwest, disrupts travel (AP) A major winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow on parts of the middle of the country while another system blanketed areas of the Southwest, disrupting travel for a second consecutive day Tuesday and shuttering many schools. Several coronavirus testing sites closed Monday and Tuesday in Nebraska and Iowa, as both states saw 12 to 15 inches (30.5 to 38.1 centimeters) of snow in places. At least 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow was expected through Tuesday across most of an area stretching from central Kansas northeast to Chicago and southern Michigan. National Weather Service meteorologist Taylor Nicolaisen, who is based near Omaha, said up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) was reported in spots between York, Nebraska, and Des Moines, Iowa. He said it’s uncommon for the region to get more than a foot of snow from a single storm, and it has been decades since some cities saw this much.

As variants spread, countries pursue new round of travel restrictions (Washington Post) Governments around the world—including those of the United States, Britain and New Zealand—are moving to impose stricter travel limitations in a bid to slow the spread of new coronavirus variants that experts warn are more contagious. President Biden confirmed Monday that he would extend a ban on travelers from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 other European countries. Visitors from South Africa will be banned from entering the United States starting Saturday. New Zealand, which has been lauded for its handling of the pandemic, may keep its borders closed to visitors for “much of this year,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. The new U.S. restrictions come as several countries reconsider eased travel polices amid worry over virus variants that can make people sicker, spread faster and, in some cases, compromise the effectiveness of vaccines.

Biden and Putin Agree to Extend Nuclear Treaty (NYT) President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia avoided a renewed arms race on Tuesday when they formally agreed to extend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between their countries. But White House officials said Mr. Biden also confronted the Kremlin leader over the poisoning of an opposition activist and a hacking of government and private computer networks in the United States. It was the first call between the leaders of the world’s two largest nuclear powers since Mr. Biden’s inauguration. But it was being watched as much for its tone as its substance: Mr. Biden vowed during the transition to make Russia “pay a price” for the hacking, and his administration, in its opening hours, demanded the release of Aleksei A. Navalny, whose arrest on Jan. 17 prompted protests last weekend across Russia that resulted in more than 3,000 arrests. The call was, in essence, the opening act of what promises to be a deeply adversarial relationship between the two leaders, and most likely the sharpest turn in American foreign policy since President Donald J. Trump left office one week ago.

‘Lying is a thing presidents do’ (The Media Today/CJR) Adam Serwer, of The Atlantic, reminds journalists and the public that “Biden will lie to you,” because lying is a thing presidents do. “The press and the public should resist the temptation to assume that the Biden administration will always be on the level, or that its dishonesties can be forgiven because Biden’s predecessor wielded falsehood with such abandon,” Serwer writes. “Already, Biden has sought to mislead the public by setting expectations for vaccinations that experts have said are too modest—which will allow the president to declare his approach a great success if the goal is exceeded.”

Calm returns to Dutch cities after riots, with police out in force (Reuters) With shops boarded up and riot police out in force, it was relatively calm in Dutch cities on Tuesday night after three days of violence during which nearly 500 people were detained. In several cities, including the capital Amsterdam, some businesses closed early and emergency ordinances were in place to give law enforcement greater powers to respond to the rioting, which was prompted by a nighttime curfew to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The Netherlands’ first curfew since World War Two was imposed on Saturday despite weeks of falling infections, after the National Institute for Health (RIVM) said a faster-spreading variant first found in England was causing a third of cases. A hospital in Rotterdam had warned visitors of patients to stay away, after rioters tried to attack hospitals in various cities. In Amsterdam on Monday, groups of youths threw fireworks, broke store windows and attacked a police truck, but were broken up by a massive police presence.

The World Is Dependent on Taiwan for Semiconductors (Bloomberg) As China pushes the world to avoid official dealings with Taiwan, leaders across the globe are realizing just how dependent they’ve become on the island democracy. Taiwan, which China regards as a province, is being courted for its capacity to make leading-edge computer chips. That’s mostly down to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest foundry and go-to producer of chips for Apple Inc. smartphones, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Taiwan’s role in the world economy largely existed below the radar, until it came to recent prominence as the auto industry suffered shortfalls in chips used for everything from parking sensors to reducing emissions. TSMC’s chip-making skills have handed Taiwan political and economic leverage in a world where technology is being enlisted in the great power rivalry between the U.S. and China—a standoff unlikely to ease under the administration of Joe Biden. Taiwan’s grip on the semiconductor business—despite being under constant threat of invasion by Beijing—also represents a choke point in the global supply chain that’s giving new urgency to plans from Tokyo to Washington and Beijing to increase self-reliance.

Indonesian volcano unleashes river of lava in new eruption (AP) Indonesia’s most active volcano erupted Wednesday with a river of lava and searing gas clouds flowing 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) down its slopes. It was Mount Merapi’s biggest lava flow since authorities raised its danger level in November, said Hanik Humaida, the head of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center. After morning rain, ashfall turned into muck in several villages, where the sound of eruption could be heard 30 kilometers (18 away). Police and rescue services told miners to cease work along rivers but no one was evacuated. The 2,968-meter (9,737-foot) volcano is on the densely populated island of Java and near the ancient city of Yogyakarta. It is the most active of dozens of Indonesian volcanoes and has repeatedly erupted with lava and gas clouds recently.

Amid crisis, Hezbollah ‘bank’ a lifeline for some Lebanese (AP) When Lebanon’s financial meltdown began in late 2019, Hassan Shoumar was locked out of his dollar savings like everyone else in the country as banks clamped down with capital controls. But the young engineer had an alternative. He could still pull out the dollars in his account at the al-Qard al-Hasan Association, the financial arm of the militant Hezbollah group. Stepping in where the state and financial institutions have failed, Hezbollah is providing a vital lifeline for some Lebanese. In the country’s wrecked economy, everyone is desperate for hard currency and liquidity as the local currency plummets in value. At commercial banks, depositors stand in line for hours and fight with managers in vain to access their dollar savings. Most banks have stopped giving loans. But at Hezbollah’s al-Qard al-Hasan people can take out small, interest-free loans in dollars, enabling them to pay school fees, get married, buy a used car or open a small business. They can also open saving accounts there. With poverty rising across Lebanon, Hezbollah provides its community with low-cost schools and hospitals and distributes heating fuel to the poor. Hezbollah continues to pay its fighters and employees in its institutions in U.S. dollars, while everyone else gets their salaries in Lebanese pounds, which lost about 80% of their value in the crisis.

Missiles over Saudi Arabia (Times of London) Iran-backed militias in Iraq are feared to have opened a new front against Saudi Arabia, after a second suspected drone attack in less than four days over the capital Riyadh. A double blast was heard above the city on Tuesday morning. Witnesses said there appeared to have been some kind of missile interception. A similar incident on Saturday was initially blamed on the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebel group fighting the Saudi-backed recognized government in Yemen to the south. However, the Houthis denied it, although they have claimed numerous previous attacks on Saudi cities during the six-year war. Instead, a new militia based in Iraq issued a statement of responsibility. The Alwiya al-Waad al-Haq, or Brigades of the Righteous Promise, said the attack had been “launched solely by Iraqi hands”. An online news channel close to Iran-backed groups in Iraq said the attacks were intended to make Saudi Arabia the “playground of missiles and drones” and that it would become a target of the “resistance” from both north and south.

France says it bombed an ‘armed terrorist group.’ Witnesses say it was a wedding. (Washington Post) The men gathered for a wedding, they said — one more somber than those of the past. Strict rules have warped life in their central Mali village since the extremists invaded: no music or dancing. No mingling with women. Smoke a cigarette and get beaten. Parties, even conservative ones, invite punishment, so they wanted to celebrate quickly in a remote field, according to two guests. Grilled mutton and beef were about to be served when bombs fell from the sky. “We heard what sounded like a plane and then a loud noise,” said one guest, a 46-year-old teacher. “Suddenly there were wounded people everywhere. Body parts everywhere. What happened on the afternoon of Jan. 3 is hotly disputed. The French military took responsibility for an airstrike near Bounti in the Mopti region, saying in a Jan. 7 statement that a pair of Mirage 2000 fighter jets had dropped three explosives on “a gathering of armed terrorist group members” in an area known to be rife with them. The French armed forces said the airstrike killed about 30 men — all militants. But villagers say there was a tragic misunderstanding: Only men were in the field because extremists had banned socializing with women. Guests provided testimony that aligns with reports from Human Rights Watch and a Malian group that conducted an investigation into the airstrike. Those probes concluded that 19 civilian men — some in their late 60s and 70s — died in the blasts.

Ugandan election aftermath (Foreign Policy) Opposition leader Bobi Wine accused President Yoweri Museveni of using the military and the police “to oppress his opponents and to suppress our rights” after he was freed from 11 days of house arrest following disputed elections on Jan. 14. Museveni was declared to have won Uganda’s presidential election earlier this month, winning roughly 59 percent in an election judged by the United States as fundamentally flawed. Wine’s campaign team will decide whether to contest the results of the presidential election and have until a deadline of Feb. 2 to do so.

Pew: How COVID-19 Changed Faith (CT) “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” James, the brother of Jesus, didn’t have a global pandemic in mind when he wrote these words in the opening chapter of his biblical epistle to “the 12 tribes scattered among the nations.” But as the coronavirus closed churches worldwide, a global survey of more than 14,000 people has found that few lost faith while many of the most faithful gained. Today, the Pew Research Center released a study on how COVID-19 affected levels of faith this past summer in 14 countries with advanced economies: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. “In 11 of 14 countries surveyed, the share who say their religious faith has strengthened is higher than the share who say it has weakened,” noted Pew researchers. Overall, a median of 4 out of 5 of each country’s citizens said their faith was more or less unchanged. Leading the pack in strengthened faith: the United States. Americans were three times more likely to report their religious faith had become stronger due to the pandemic: 28 percent, vs. a global median of 10 percent. Next came Spaniards (16%) and Italians (15%), whose nations were two of the worst hit during the coronavirus’s deadly outbreak in the spring.

[belacqui-pro-quo]

Deconstructed Special: Is Donald Trump Inciting Far-Right Terror in the U.S.?

Over the past few days, 11 people were massacred in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the country’s top Democrats have been targeted with pipe bombs, and two African Americans were executed in a grocery store in Kentucky. It turns out that, contrary to Donald Trump’s warnings, terrorists weren’t coming from Mexico or Syria; they were here in America, and some of them attended his rallies. Trump, of all people, shouldn’t be shocked and stunned by the rise of white nationalism and antisemitism in America: he has repeatedly retweeted white supremacist Twitter accounts, accepted campaign donations from white nationalist leaders, picked a white nationalist favorite — Steve Bannon — as his campaign chair and then White House chief strategist, and was officially endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and was at first reluctant to disavow them. He also tried to rename a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focused solely on Islamist and not white nationalist extremism and praised neo Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people.” On this special episode of Deconstructed, Mehdi Hasan is joined by former Department of Homeland Security senior domestic terrorism analyst Daryl Johnson and Christian Picciolini, a former neo Nazi who left the movement and devoted his life to peace advocacy and deradicalization, to discuss America’s descent into far right terror.

[orbemnews]

Fallout From Hedge Fund’s Defaults Spreads Through Markets: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: A Credit Suisse branch in Basel, Switzerland. After the bank warned of significant losses on Monday, its shares fell 14 percent.Credit…Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters The fallout from a series of defaults at a New York hedge fund reverberated through markets for a second day on Monday, as global banks tried to size up their exposure to one firm’s string of bad bets. Shares in Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank, dropped 14 percent on Monday and the Japanese bank Nomura closed 16 percent lower, after the banks said they could face significant losses because of defaults by an American investment firm. U.S. stock futures fell on Monday, with the S&P 500 set to open 0.7 percent weaker. European stock indexes were mixed but an index of European banks was 1.6 percent lower. Neither Credit Suisse nor Nomura named the investment firm whose default could lead to big losses, but Bloomberg identified it as Archegos Capital Management, a New York-based family office that manages the wealth of Bill Hwang, a former hedge fund manager at Tiger Asia Management who was found guilty of wire fraud in 2012. Investment banks that provided services to Archegos, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, dumped huge quantities of stocks including ViacomCBS and Chinese tech companies on Friday. Archegos was forced into the stock sales, worth about $20 billion, after bets the fund made moved the wrong way, Bloomberg reported. Shares in ViacomCBS, one of Archegos’s positions, dropped 23 percent on Wednesday last week. On Friday, the share price plummeted a further 27 percent as the investment banks liquidated positions. Shares in Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were about 3 percent lower in premarket trading. Shares in Deutsche Bank fell more than 4 percent on Monday, after it was said to also have some exposure to Archegos. Credit Suisse has already been roiled this month by the collapse of Greensill Capital, a London-based financial firm it sold funds for, and to whom it extended loans of $140 million. The Swiss bank told investors it would probably report some losses on the loan. “A significant U.S.-based hedge fund defaulted on margin calls made last week by Credit Suisse and certain other banks,” the Swiss bank said on Monday. It did not yet know the exact size of the loss from exiting its positions but “it could be highly significant and material to our first quarter results,” the statement said. Elsewhere in markets Oil prices fell and then recovered early losses after the container ship blocking the Suez Canal was only partially refloated. The movement raised hopes of restoring trade flows but authorities said more work was needed before maritime traffic could restart. Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose 0.3 percent to $64.73 a barrel, after falling as much as 2.2 percent on Monday morning. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes fell 2 basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 1.65 percent. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela promoted an unproven remedy for Covid-19 on Facebook, which prompted the company to freeze his page. Credit…Manaure Quintero/Reuters The Facebook page of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was frozen for “repeated” violations of its misinformation policies, including a post about an unproven remedy for Covid-19, the company said on Sunday, the latest example of the social media giant cracking down on political figures who violate its content policies. Mr. Maduro’s Facebook page will be frozen for 30 days in a “read-only” mode, the company said, “due to repeated violations of our rules.” “We removed a video posted to President Nicolas Maduro’s Page for violating our policies against misinformation about Covid-19 that is likely to put people at risk for harm,” a Facebook spokesman said. “We follow guidance from the W.H.O. that says there is currently no medication to cure the virus.” The spokesman was referring to the World Health Organization. Facebook’s move came after Mr. Maduro posted a video on his page that promoted Carvativir, a drug derived from thyme. He said in January that the medicine was a “miracle,” but did not provide evidence of its effectiveness — and declined to release the name of the “brilliant Venezuelan mind” that created the drug. In the video, Mr. Maduro falsely claimed that Carvativir can be used preventively and therapeutically against the coronavirus. In the past, Facebook has been criticized for its inaction against political figures who test the boundaries of the company’s content policies by spreading misinformation. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, has said he does not want to be the “arbiter of truth” in public discourse. But in recent months, Facebook has cracked down on certain types of misinformation across the network. The company has banned posts containing false or misleading information regarding the coronavirus, and has shown willingness to take action against some political figures. And in the past, it has removed at least one post by Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, for false coronavirus remedy claims regarding the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. In January, after insurgents stormed the United States Capitol, President Donald J. Trump’s account was banned indefinitely for inciting his supporters to violent action using the social network. In response to his account restriction, Mr. Maduro has said Facebook is practicing a form of “digital totalitarianism,” according to Reuters, which first reported Mr. Maduro’s suspension. Mr. Maduro said on Twitter on Sunday that he would continue to broadcast his regular coronavirus briefing from his other digital accounts, including Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. And to circumvent his suspension, he said he would use the Facebook account belonging to his wife, Cilia Flores, to broadcast Covid-19 information. Facebook would not comment on whether it would suspend Ms. Flores’s account. Tankers and freight ships near the entrance of the Suez Canal.Credit…Ahmed Hasan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Oil prices fell and then rose again Monday as news reports suggested that the Suez Canal drama might be drawing to a close. Prices dipped more than 2 percent early in the day after tugboats and dredgers succeeded in partly freeing the giant containership Ever Given, which has been blocking the canal since early last week. News reports raised the prospect that the tankers waiting at the entrances to the canal might be able to transit within days and deliver their cargoes to Europe and Asia. But then prices crept back up again after the Suez Canal authorities said there was more work to be done before maritime traffic could resume. By midday in London, Brent crude, the international benchmark, was selling for $65.15 a barrel, up 0.9 percent on the day. The Suez Canal is a key chokepoint for oil shipping, but so far the impact on the oil market of this major interruption of trade flows has been relatively muted. Though prices jumped after shipping on the canal was halted, oil prices still remain below their nearly two-year highs of about $70 a barrel reached earlier this month. Analysts say that traders are focused on other factors beyond the logjam, including the reimposition of lockdowns in Europe that may hold back the recovery of oil demand from the pandemic. From a global perspective, oil supplies are considered adequate, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers, the group known as OPEC Plus, are withholding an estimated 8 million barrels a day, or about 9 percent of current consumption, from the market. Officials from OPEC Plus are expected to meet by video conference on Thursday to discuss whether to ease output cuts. Goldman Sachs’s headquarters in New York. A group of investors is suing the Wall Street bank over claims of fraud. Credit…Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday from Goldman Sachs and pension funds over a claim that the Wall Street giant misled investors about its work selling complex debt investments in the prelude to the 2008 financial crisis. In its latest brief, Goldman makes an interesting argument, the DealBook newsletter reports: Investors shouldn’t rely on statements such as “honesty is at the heart of our business” or “our clients’ interests always come first” that appear in Securities and Exchange Commission filings and annual reports. The case is a test of shareholders’ ability to sue over claims of investment fraud. The pension funds sought to sue as a class over Goldman’s statements, saying they belied those statements of honesty, and lower courts agreed to let them proceed. Goldman has argued that the investors are engaged in “guerrilla warfare” and aren’t providing “serious legal arguments,” relying on support from the federal government instead. However, the Biden administration isn’t taking sides, technically. It will argue as a “friend of the court” on Monday that “meritorious private securities-fraud suits” are “an essential complement” to enforcing securities laws. “I expect the court to be troubled by the claim that companies cannot be held accountable for saying that clients come first and then acting otherwise,” Robert Jackson Jr., who served on the S.E.C. from 2018 to 2020 and is now an N.Y.U. law professor, told DealBook. The justices probably won’t agree with the claim that making a company “mean what it says” will lead to a tsunami of meritless lawsuits,” he added. Regardless, Goldman is right that the stakes are high, because the case is likely to decide whether shareholders can “hold corporate insiders accountable when they tell investors one thing and do another,” Mr. Jackson said. A rally on Friday in support of the Amazon workers outside the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s building in Birmingham, Ala.Credit…Charity Rachelle for The New York Times One of the most closely watched union elections in recent history is wrapping up on Monday, one that could alter the shape of the labor movement and one of America’s largest employers. Almost 6,000 workers at an Amazon warehouse near Birmingham, Ala., one of the company’s largest, are eligible to vote in this election. After years of fierce resistance from the company, they could form the first union at an Amazon operation in the United States. The outcome of the vote may not be known for days, but the union drive has already succeeded in roiling the world’s biggest e-commerce company and spotlighting complaints about its labor practices, The New York Times’s Karen Weise and Michael Corkery write. If the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union succeeds, it would be a huge victory for the labor movement, whose membership has declined for decades. A victory would also give it a foothold inside one of the country’s largest private employers. The company now has 950,000 workers in the United States, after adding more than 400,000 in the last year alone. If the union loses, particularly by a large margin, Amazon will have turned the tide on a unionization drive that seemed to have many winds at its back. A loss could force labor organizers to rethink their overall strategy and give Amazon confidence that its approach is working. Tugboats pulling at the Ever Given in the Suez Canal today.Credit…Suez Canal Authority, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A journey from the Suez Canal in Egypt to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands — Europe’s largest port — typically takes about 11 days. Venturing south around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope adds at least 26 more days, according to Refinitiv, the financial data company. The additional fuel charges for the journey generally run more than $30,000 a day, depending on the vessel, or more than $800,000 total for the longer trip. But the other option is sitting at the entrance of the canal and waiting for the mother of all floating traffic jams to dissipate, while incurring late fees for cargo — which can reach $30,000 a day. Since Tuesday, the Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, has been stuck in the Suez Canal. The disruption now roiling the global shipping industry provides a reminder of why the Suez Canal was constructed in the first place. Only the Panama Canal looms as large in the transport of goods around the planet. The shutdown of the canal is affecting as much as 15 percent of the world’s container shipping capacity, according to Moody’s Investor Service, leading to delays at ports around the globe. Hansjörg Wyss, the former chief executive of the medical device manufacturer Synthes, said he had agreed to join a bid for Tribune Publishing.Credit…Ruben Sprich/Reuters A Swiss billionaire who has donated hundreds of millions to environmental causes is a surprise new player in the bidding for Tribune Publishing, the major newspaper chain that until recently seemed destined to end up in the hands of a New York hedge fund. Hansjörg Wyss (pronounced Hans-yorg Vees), the former chief executive of the medical device manufacturer Synthes, said he had agreed to join with the Maryland hotelier Stewart W. Bainum Jr. in a bid for Tribune, an offer that could upend Alden Global Capital’s plan to take full ownership of the company, Marc Tracy of The New York Times writes. Mr. Wyss, who has given away some of his fortune to help preserve wildlife habitats in Wyoming, Montana and Maine, said he was motivated to join the Tribune bid by his belief in the need for a robust press. “I have an opportunity to do 500 times more than what I’m doing now,” he said. Alden, which already owns roughly 32 percent of Tribune Publishing shares, is known for drastically cutting costs at the newspapers it controls through its MediaNews Group subsidiary. Last month, the hedge fund reached an agreement with Tribune, whose papers include The Daily News, The Baltimore Sun and The Chicago Tribune, to buy the rest of the company’s shares. The sale of Tribune, which the newspaper company hopes to conclude by July, requires regulatory approval and yes votes from company shareholders representing two-thirds of the non-Alden stock. “We are in a hyper-growth industry,” said Dhivya Suryadevara, Stripe’s chief financial officer.Credit…Richard Drew/Associated Press Thousands of financial technology start-ups are riding an investor frenzy driven by a growing realization that the industry is ripe for a tech makeover, writes Erin Griffith of The New York Times. When the pandemic forced businesses to speed up their usage of digital tools, including e-commerce and online banking, the demand for what is known as fintech exploded. Now start-ups with names like Blend, Brex and Dave that provide decidedly unglamorous banking, lending and payment processing offerings are hot tickets. That was punctuated this month when Stripe, a payments company, raised $600 million in a financing that valued it at $95 billion, the highest ever for a private start-up in the United States. Financial technology companies are also making a splash on the stock market. On Tuesday, Robinhood, a stock trading app popular with young adults, filed for an initial public offering. And Coinbase, a cryptocurrency start-up, is scheduled to go public in the next few weeks in what could be a $100 billion listing. In total, venture capital investors poured $44.4 billion into financial technology start-ups last year, up from $1.1 billion in 2009, according to PitchBook, which tracks private financing. Many investors are now making bold predictions that these start-ups will upend big banks, established credit card providers — and in some cases, the entire financial system. Source link Orbem News #Defaults #fallout #funds #Hedge #Live #Markets #Spreads #Updates

[weelectronicstudentreviewstuff]

Iran's Currency Hits Lowest Value Ever Against Dollar Amid Severe US Sanctions

Iran’s Currency Hits Lowest Value Ever Against Dollar Amid Severe US Sanctions

File photo of Iranian money changer with a wad of Iranian notes with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s image in Tehran. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File)

The rial unexpectedly rallied after President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the nuclear deal and reimpose crippling trade sanctions over two years ago.

Associated Press Tehran

Last Updated: June 20, 2020, 5:56 PM IST

[flyingbizdeals]

Iran's Currency Hits Lowest Value Ever Against Dollar Amid Severe US Sanctions

Iran’s Currency Hits Lowest Value Ever Against Dollar Amid Severe US Sanctions

File photo of Iranian money changer with a wad of Iranian notes with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s image in Tehran. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File)

The rial unexpectedly rallied after President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the nuclear deal and reimpose crippling trade sanctions over two years ago.

Associated Press Tehran

Last Updated: June 20, 2020, 5:56 PM IST

[daylflay]

It’s Always Darkest

Before the Dawn

“It’s always darkest before the dawn”; that’s how the old adage goes. Having said that, it’s currently pretty difficult for most of us to see past the dark. COVID-19 continues to spread (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-argentina/argentina-announces-mandatory-quarantine-to-curb-coronavirus-idUSKBN216446), the economy inexorably spirals downward (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/echoes-of-the-great-depression-us-economy-could-post-biggest-contraction-ever-2020-03-19), and my home state of California has just been put into lockdown (https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/19/newsom-orders-all-40m-californians-to-stay-home-in-nations-strictest-state-lockdown-1268248). The world is currently facing a crisis the scale of which arguably hasn’t been seen since said world was at war with itself, and for some, at least in America, that crisis started in 2016 when our current president was elected; for others, it started back during the 2007/2008 financial crisis; regardless of when the crisis started, the only path forward starts with labor. 

During the early 20th century, when industry was changing the nature of then-modern life, global conflict’s grisly violence shocked sensibilities, and the meaning of life in Western culture started being questioned by the masses, a group of writers/artists known as the Modernists rose to the occasion and attempted to encapsulate the malaise and spiritual unease of their milieu. Poets like Edward Arlington Robinson chose to focus on the cynicism of the moment, as portrayed in his poem, Richard Cory. At the end of Robinson’s poem, the titular Richard Cory commits suicide: “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.” I’m personally a highly cynical individual, and can very much understand Robinson’s disposition, but in this particular moment of ours, amidst a pandemic, I believe there’s much merit in the antithesis of my usual misanthropy; I think it’s optimism that gets us through this, not the other way around, and that will take work in our current social climate. Ezra Pound was another Modernist, and famously cynical, but he did have a somewhat famous catchphrase that I think is helpful in spite of his problematic nature: “Make it new”. Though neither Robinson nor Pound achieved the success they desired via their poetry, both economically and otherwise, until their latter years, they still labored on and continued writing, because they understood the importance of what they were creating; they understood that the moment in which they lived demanded their sacrifice. In our current moment of crisis, when nothing is certain and everyone’s on edge, we have to take our usual misplaced hatred and diametric opposition towards each other and work towards transforming it all into something else; we have to make it new.  

The New

The idea of making something new can result in positive and negative developments, and Brooke Erin Duffy delves into some of the latter in The romance of work: Gender and aspirational labour in the digital culture industries. In Duffy’s article, she rallies against a new form of exploitative labor unique to the digital era: “While critical discourses of precarity and instability offer a decidedly bleak view of the contemporary labor market, individualist appeals to passion and entrepreneurialism temporally reroute employment concerns. That is, affective mantras like ‘Do What You Love’ shift workers’ focus from the present to the future, dangling the prospect of a career where labour and leisure harmoniously coexist. This illusory coexistence is well suited to descriptions of work in the culture industries, widely understood as environments where low pay and long hours are a tradeoff for creative autonomy”. I think Duffy’s ultimately correct in her assessments, but this present moment of ours compels me to momentarily disregard the nefarious implications of the modern labor market. I think that if you’re able to create entertaining content for people during this dark period of time, and you get to “do what you love” while doing so, then you’re providing a mutually beneficial service when people need such a thing most. It’s during moments like these that the best in people can shine through the ominous haze, and the individuals I’m tracking are (mostly) no exception. For the most part, the people I’m paying attention to are already professionally involved in media to some degree, so they’re not vying for employment on the same level the individuals Duffy refers to in her article are, but that makes their intent clearer to an extent.

Rick Wilson always makes attempts to simultaneously espouse his ideology while humorously attacking individuals on Twitter, but he’s also been posting a lot of entertaining memes/gifs recently. Just today (3/19/20), he posted two of them within a couple of hours of one another: One was a gif pulled from a South Park episode, which itself was a reference to the film The Human Centipede, and it read, “I wonder if Hannity likes the cuttlefish or the vanilla pudding.”; the other was an image of Donald Trump in a Star Trek costume, and it read, “Glad we have a space force instead of a pandemic response team”. Rick was not being incredibly nice to either Sean Hannity or Donald Trump, but the overtly humorous images are bound to brighten the days of folks that are rightfully upset with both Hannity and Trump for their respective roles in exacerbating the current crisis.

Mehdi Hasan is generally a solemn tweeter, which is sensible considering that his occupation as a journalist entails that he maintain a certain sobriety when communicating anything to the public. Mehdi’s approach to producing sunnier-than-usual content today involved (somewhat) praising a man he loathes, and bestowing loving and kind thoughts upon his children: In a tweet directed at Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Mehdi tweeted a link to a Clickhole (a humor/satire website) article whose headline read, “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point”; in another of Mehdi’s heartfelt tweets of the day, only a minute separated from the prior tweet, Mehdi responds to a tweet by Time magazine editor Anand Giridharadas that read, ‘What have you watched, read, or heard in this strange, dark time that has given you comfort and joy?’, to which Mehdi says, “My kids”. It’s a nice moment from Mehdi, and a reminder of what’s important during times like these.

Like with most things in life, women, relative to men, have to deal with additional complications attached to their actions online, and that unfortunately remains true even when it comes to them trying to do moral and selfless things. In The Unwanted Labour Of Social Media: Women Of Colour Call Out Culture As Venture Community Management, Lisa Nakamura, like Brooke Duffy criticizes exploitative digital labor practices, especially germane to women: “Digital labour is ‘difficult to conceptualise’ because the internet creates new styles of labour: it not only traffics far more in the immaterial, it is also arrayed along new axes of production, new forms of compensation, and new forms of gendering and racialisation. It is this kind of labour that interests me. I am specifically interested in the hidden and often-stigmatised and dangerous labour performed by women of colour, queer and trans people, and racial minorities who call out, educate, protest, and design around toxic social environments in digital media.” All of the women I’m following fall into at least one of the aforementioned social/cultural categories, i.e., they’re all women of color, and one of them is trans. These women, even while being entertaining are still politically conscious, and just by existing on Twitter are making a statement while simultaneously making themselves vulnerable. Having said that, they still persist in generating entertaining content for everyone’s sake despite it all. 

Patti Harrison is trans and Vietnamese, and doesn’t hide either from her 100,000-strong Twitter following, so she’s someone whose very public existence is a powerful declaration of pride in of itself. On March 15th, and also today (3/19), Patti shared how she was spending her isolated time at home, in typically candid form: (3/15) “I am playing @AbzuGame right now on PS4 & it is really good also I am high and online! Love the websites on here. This tweet go viral now!”; (3/19) “Uh  oh…craft alert…I hand-painted these @Margiela tabi boots. And Per @tweetrajouhari I added an awful foot tattoo of Elsa from Frozen.” Patti, by simply sharing the details of her seemingly enjoyable time at home, invited her Twitter feed into her life, and she was happy to do so, which must’ve made a plethora of her followers feel markedly less alone with such a vibrant personality keeping them company virtually. 

Kashana Cauley is a black woman, who, like Patti, has upwards of 100,000 followers, which inevitably results in some negative attention, but she tweets on regardless. Kashana hasn’t been very active on Twitter recently, but when she does tweet, she makes it count, as evidenced by this tweet from March 15th: “Ask not what staying home on the couch can do for you, but what staying home on the couch can do for your country.” That tweet of hers was liked by over 100,000 people, which exceeds her follower count. The amount of people that it reached, and the amount of people who interacted with it, is astounding, and the amount of humor and joy she surely brought to those lives, even if just for a moment, is commensurately astounding.

Candace Owens, unlike the aforementioned women, is not exactly one to diffuse joy; in fact Candace loves doing the exact opposite. Her presence on Twitter is almost exclusively designed to anger people and start fights, which is why I’m so shocked that even she is attempting to lighten up the mood during this somber period of time. This is a tweet of hers from today (3/19): “I wanted to do panic buying, but then I checked my account. Turns out I can only afford to panic…#CoronavirusHumor…Lighten up folks.” If even Candace is willing to perform humorously in favor of the greater good, as opposed to inflaming tensions with her usual provocative rhetoric, then I have hope for the dawn.

The Dawn

In Of Modern Poetry, Wallace Stevens communicates the spirit of Ezra Pound’s directive to “make it new”: “The poem of the mind is the act of finding what will suffice. It has not always had to find: The scene was set; it repeated what was in the script. Then the theatre was changed.” Our global theatre has officially changed, and each and every one of us has a responsibility to work towards finding what will suffice in this maelstrom of ever-changing circumstances. For me, that means working on a script for a movie that has zero chance of actually existing (which means that I have zero chance of profiting off of any of this), because I’m just hoping that it makes someone out there smile.

In my last blog post, I imagined what a contemporary addition to George A. Romero’s living dead cinematic universe might look like. Personally, the act of simply thinking and writing about this silly, hypothetical project has brought me some sense of joy during all of this, and that’s saying a lot for someone as typically nihilistic as myself. I’m going to add to said hypothetical entry in Romero’s saga, entitled Gen-Z, with a speech delivered towards the end of the “film”. This speech is delivered by a Communications student at the university in Fullerton, California in which the living dead outbreak originated. A number of the university’s students have barricaded themselves in the campus, and are about to engage in a last stand against the hordes of living dead. Their survival is unlikely, so they’ve decided to gather one last time in an attempt to rouse one another before their climactic battle. 

This is the speech that the student delivers: “I remember my first official day on this campus vividly, but not fondly. It was the first day of the Fall ’18 semester, and I guess classes just let out because I saw what felt like thousands of people suddenly rush across campus. It was like the running of the Titans, and I was wearing orange. Or the running of the dead, and I was alive, as the case may be. College was never part of my plan, so I had never toured any university campuses, and I did not know what to expect. I kind of freaked out and started questioning all of my decisions, like: Why did I decide to attend a school with 40,000 students if I don’t even like small groups of people? And why did I major in Human Communication Studies if I don’t even like myself? It was overwhelming to me that I could be surrounded by people, yet feel so alone. Then I walked over to my first class, and I saw some of the same faces that I’m looking at today. Everything can be overwhelming when you feel like you’re alone, but what I started to learn that very first day, and what this major continues to teach me, is that I am not alone; none of us are. I have not had the pleasure of knowing everyone on this campus, but we have all walked this path together despite that: We have all been stressed out because of Finals, we have all battled personal demons, and zombies, we have all lived life with its many complexities, and we did it all together on this campus. To this day, I still do not like myself all that much, but that’s okay, because none of this is really about me; it’s about all of you. Look to your right, and to your left, and in front of you, and maybe behind you; that is why we do what we do; we fight alongside each other, for each other. In this era of social media, divisiveness, and the living dead, nothing is more important than empathy, and that is the core tenet of our work here. We have been trained to understand each other, and that means that it is incumbent upon us to help mend our fractured communities; our fractured country; our fractured world. It is going to be a lot of work, but it’s work worth doing, because we’re not just doing it for ourselves. As Zac Efron once said in the 2006 hit film, High School Musical: ‘We’re all in this together.’ Rest in peace, Zac, this one’s for you. Now let’s go kill some fucking zombies!”  

[disillusioned41]

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, The Washington Post reported Tuesday night, a political coup for the Vermont senator as he looks to increase his standing in the polls for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

"This is big," said Politico campaign reporter Holly Otterbein after confirming the news with members of the Sanders campaign.

According to the Post:

The endorsement could be a blow for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who, like Sanders, is running on a platform of sweeping liberal change and who has emphasized her role as a female pioneer. Ocasio-Cortez had worked as a volunteer organizer for Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid; she was recruited to run for Congress in 2018 by Justice Democrats, a group that grew out of the Sanders campaign.

Her backing was a sought-after prize in the Democratic primary, and it was widely assumed that she would endorse either Sanders or Warren, the most liberal figures in the contest.

"This was always to be expected," The Intercept's Medhi Hasan said on Twitter. "He's the candidate most in line with her values and policies—even more so than Warren."

Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) will also endorse Sanders, reported CNN's Greg Krieg.

"Bernie is leading a working class movement to defeat Donald Trump that transcends generation, ethnicity and geography," Omar said in a statement, adding, "it's why I believe Bernie Sanders is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump in 2020."

"Ilhan is a leader of strength and courage," said Sanders. "She will not back down from a fight with billionaires and the world’s most powerful corporations to transform our country so it works for all of us. I'm proud of what we've done in Congress, and together we will build a multiracial working class coalition to win the White House."

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar—representing three of the four progressive House freshman known as "the Squad"—are expected to appear alongside Sanders at a rally in New York City Saturday.

"We're looking forward to Saturday," Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent told the Post.