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edisonblog · 6 days

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Ipiranga Museum brings a new look at the history of Brazil to 1 million visitors.

Director Rosaria Ono assesses public participation as the museum reaches the milestone of 1 million visitors since its reopening in 2022

source: https://encurtador.com.br/dDirr

In conversation with Jornal da USP, director Rosaria Ono evaluates integration with the public by carefully participating in the program of exhibitions, workshops and lectures. “The milestone of 1 million visitors certainly has a very special meaning, as it reflects the good reception to the reopening of the museum after nine years of closure. The daily average number of visitors recorded by ticket issuance during this period was approximately 2 thousand people. So, first of all, I would like to thank our visiting public for allowing us to reach this milestone so quickly.”

Rosaria, also a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) at USP, highlights that before the closure, annual visitation was around 300 thousand people, a number that doubled in 2023, reaching the mark of more than 650 thousand visitors to the year. “In addition to finding the historic building fully restored, visitors now have access to a reception area, which we call the welcome area, where they find the ticket office, toilets, luggage storage, an auditorium, two classrooms and two rooms for educational activities, among other support areas, offering greater comfort to visitors".

To Understand the Museum is one of the long-term exhibitions that presents the history of the institution since the construction of the monument building and the transformations of the collection throughout its history. The explanation is on the website https://museudoipiranga.org.br: “When it was created, the museum had varied collections of botany, zoology, ethnology, mineralogy. Over the years, these collections were transferred to other institutions. Part of the art collection was also donated to the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. The objective of these transformations was to make Ipiranga a museum specializing in history”.

It is important to highlight that all 11 exhibitions are presented on the museum's website with an educational and didactic guide that can be downloaded by everyone from this link, especially as teaching material for teachers, providing an immersive experience. “There were several challenges in carrying out and completing the work in time for the reopening of the museum with 11 exhibitions in 49 restored rooms, in celebration of the Bicentenary of Independence, in September 2022”, explains director Rosaria Ono. “The work would not have been completed if it were not for the efforts of all parties involved, whether within the scope of the University of São Paulo — Rectory, SEF and Museu Paulista — in partnership with FUSP (Foundation to Support the University of São Paulo) and the federal, state and municipal governments, whether within the scope of sponsors, supporters and collaborators of the Novo Museu do Ipiranga project. It is important to remember that more than half of the expansion and restoration works took place during the period of the Covid 19 pandemic.”

The professor highlights that the preparation of the exhibitions was an event in itself, with a great effort from the curatorial team made up of five teachers/curators from the Museu Paulista, coordinated by professor Vânia Carneiro de Carvalho, together with the team of educators and museography at the institution. “These teams established, together, the guidelines for the exhibitions, assembled within the lines of research defined in the 1990s and finally reflected, in their entirety, in the new exhibitions. Social inclusion, from the perspective of not only the accessibility of people with disabilities, but also the voices of previously excluded or subjugated populations, is reflected in the exhibitions.”

When visiting the exhibition spaces, visitors will notice details of the building built between 1885 and 1890, designed to be a monument commemorating the Proclamation of Independence in 1822. And they will see how the oldest public museum in São Paulo came to be.

The challenges facing Museu Paulista are renewed every day. They go beyond 1 million stories. “After opening, the museum began to face another challenge, which is to continue dealing with historical issues from various points of view and bringing news to the public periodically. The current goals are actions aimed at increasing visitation to the museum and creating a regular audience that returns several times a year.

#edisonmariotti @edisonblog

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Museu do Ipiranga leva novo olhar sobre a história do Brasil para 1 milhão de visitantes.

A diretora Rosaria Ono avalia a participação do público no momento em que o museu atinge a marca de 1 milhão de visitantes desde a reinauguração em 2022

fonte: https://encurtador.com.br/dDirr

Em conversa com o Jornal da USP, a diretora Rosaria Ono avalia a integração com o público participando atentamente da programação de exposições, oficinas e palestras. “Com certeza a marca de 1 milhão de visitantes tem um significado muito especial, pois reflete a boa recepção à reabertura do museu após nove anos fechado. A média diária de visitantes contabilizada pela emissão de ingressos nesse período foi de aproximadamente 2 mil pessoas. Assim, antes de mais nada, agradeço ao nosso público visitante que nos permitiu atingir essa marca tão rapidamente.”

Rosaria, também professora da Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU) da USP, ressalta que antes do fechamento a visitação anual era de cerca de 300 mil pessoas, número que dobrou no ano de 2023, atingindo a marca de mais de 650 mil visitantes ao ano. “Além de encontrar o edifício histórico totalmente restaurado, os visitantes agora dispõem de uma área de recepção, que chamamos de área de acolhimento, onde eles encontram a bilheteria, os sanitários, o guarda-volumes, um auditório, duas salas de aula e duas salas para atividades educativas, dentre outras áreas de apoio, oferecendo maior conforto aos visitantes".

Para Entender o Museu é uma das exposições de longa duração que traz a história da instituição desde a construção do edifício-monumento e as transformações do acervo no decorrer de sua história. No site https://museudoipiranga.org.br está a explicação: “Quando foi criado, o museu tinha coleções variadas de botânica, zoologia, etnologia, mineralogia. Ao longo dos anos, esses acervos foram sendo transferidos para outras instituições. Parte da coleção de arte também foi cedida para a Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. O objetivo dessas transformações era fazer do Ipiranga um museu especializado em história”.

Importante destacar que todas as 11 exposições são apresentadas no site do museu com um guia educativo e didático que pode ser baixado por todos neste link, especialmente como material didático para professores, propiciando uma experiência imersiva. “Foram vários os desafios para a realização e conclusão da obra a tempo da reabertura do museu com 11 exposições em 49 salas restauradas, nas comemorações do Bicentenário da Independência, em setembro de 2022”, explica a diretora Rosaria Ono. “A obra não teria sido concluída, não fossem os esforços de todas as partes envolvidas, seja no âmbito da Universidade de São Paulo — Reitoria, SEF e Museu Paulista — em parceria com a FUSP (Fundação de Apoio à Universidade de São Paulo) e os governos federal, estadual e municipal, seja no âmbito dos patrocinadores, apoiadores e colaboradores do projeto Novo Museu do Ipiranga. É importante lembrar que mais da metade das obras de ampliação e restauro aconteceram durante o período da pandemia da covid 19.”

A professora destaca que a preparação das exposições foi um evento à parte, com um grande esforço da equipe de curadoria composta de cinco docentes/curadores do Museu Paulista, coordenados pela professora Vânia Carneiro de Carvalho, junto com a equipe de educadores e de museografia da instituição. “Estas equipes estabeleceram, juntas, as diretrizes para as exposições, montadas dentro das linhas de pesquisa definidas na década de 1990 e refletidas, finalmente, em sua plenitude, nas novas exposições. A inclusão social, na perspectiva não só da acessibilidade das pessoas com deficiência, mas também das vozes das populações antes excluídas ou subjugadas, se reflete nas exposições.”

Ao percorrer os espaços das exposições, o visitante vai percebendo detalhes do edifício construído entre 1885 e 1890, projetado para ser um monumento em comemoração à Proclamação da Independência em 1822. E vai acompanhar como surgiu o museu público mais antigo de São Paulo.

Os desafios do Museu Paulista se renovam a cada dia. Vão além de 1 milhão de histórias. “Após a abertura, o museu passou a encarar um outro desafio, que é o de continuar tratando as questões históricas sob vários pontos de vista e trazer novidades ao público de forma periódica. As metas atuais se configuram em ações visando a ampliar a visitação ao museu e a criação de um público frequentador, que volte várias vezes no ano. @edisonblog

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skillzme · 1 year

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Hybrid Work: 7 Ways to make it Less Stressful for Your Team [Infographic]

When we learned in the last 2 years how to work from home and then partially in the office it was not all related to the pandemic of COVID-19. In fact, Hybrid work models were popular before in some jobs or regions across the globe. But what are the challenges, and advantages after the post-COVID-19 pandemic times when you try to embrace a hybrid model, with workers splitting their time between home and the office?

We might experience culture and geographical areas where hybrid working models are more difficult to realize than others. While I have seen in the US this is working very well, I can recognize that areas like the Middle East are still shying away from this model. The reality here comes into culture measurements that the truest between manager and employees is lower when it comes to workload and fulfilling duties. The given fact is related to the way how people are raised, educated, and treated over centuries which reflects back in their culture. When workforces were told to stay home when the pandemic struck, the boundaries of office and home working became increasingly blurred. Once the world began to reopen, 63% of businesses adopted a new hybrid workstyle, dividing employees' time between traditional office spaces and remote working. This transition left many employees struggling to adjust, as new data suggests that 72% of hybrid workers find it exhausting. To debunk some of the worries employees face, we’ve highlighted the pros and cons of hybrid working along with top tips to help your team adapt. The pros and cons of hybrid work Just like traditional office work, hybrid working can have its ups and downs, so we've delved deeper into some of the most common pros and cons experienced by hybrid workforces. PRO Workers feel enabled to reclaim lost commuting time during the working week, leading to 83% of employees feeling more in control of their work-life balance. CON It’s easy for employees to work overtime or ‘check in’ during their free time, with 30% of men and 21% of women reporting they worked an extra 2 hours during the days when they work from home. PRO Hybrid working boosts employee physical activity.

According to a study by Ergoton where 75% of employees are more active in lifestyle while working remotely.

CON Colleagues find it more difficult to communicate and share ideas, with 70% of workers surveyed by Owl Labs finding it more difficult to contribute or be part of a conversation when on video calls. PRO Employee efficiency and satisfaction levels are on the rise, as seen in a survey by HSBC, which found that 77% of higher-growth companies reported increased productivity levels. CON Workers might feel that they are missing out on key information or events, according to a Prodoscorc survey, where 32.7% of U.S. workers felt paranoia due to working from home, with 87.7% of these feeling they had missed important conversations.

7 Ways to make hybrid work less stressful for your team

As employees adjust to hybrid work in their own way, it’s important to help ease your team’s transition wherever possible. The following 7 top tips will help create a stress-free hybrid work environment for your team. Invest in home working spaces for employees Having a dedicated workspace makes working from home much more enjoyable and productive. In addition to work laptops, you should provide your team with ergonomic chairs, height-adjustable desks, monitors, headsets, webcams, keyboards, laptop stands, and any other technology required to work effectively. Pro Tip: Don’t forget to assess everyone's home Wi-Fi plan. Ensuring this is up to scratch, will help everyone stay connected and ease workflows. Implement digital collaboration tools for hybrid teams Research collaboration, communication, and project management tools that would work best for your company, and build a hybrid work stack to suit your needs. Pro Tip: Some good tools to start with are - Slack A workplace instant messaging tool that can be used across multiple devices and platforms - Asana Project management tool that gives teams visibility over what everyone is working on - Zoom Cloud-based video conferencing platform that can be used for virtual meetings and webinars - Google Drive File storage and real-time collaboration service here teams can create and share documents online - Envoy Hot desk booking platform where employees can book a desk right from their phone or on the web - Doodle + Calendly Doodle allows users to pick the best meeting time across time zones, and Calendly simplifies scheduling Create virtual spaces where employees can connect Transitioning from office to hybrid work can leave employees feeling isolated, undervalued, and even forgotten about as they see colleagues less frequently. Creating social channels and maintaining fuss-free lines of communication will help the team stay connected and enable better collaboration. Pro tip: Create a #watercooler channel on Slack where spontaneous discussions happen, or schedule 'Virtual Coffee Hangs' where employees can hop on a 30-minute call with a cup of coffee to learn more about each other. Switch your focus to outcomes over daily progress Without daily face-to-face supervision, employers may find it difficult to assess work performance, and this can lead to micromanaging. That is why achieving outcomes, hitting targets, and meeting deadlines should become the key performance indicators everyone focuses on. Pro tip: Connect goals with tangible outputs that make it clear what "progress" looks like. Agree on work outcomes and outputs, but be flexible over how, where, and when the team delivers those outputs. Increase the frequency of check-in conversations If employees aren't in the office all the time, it can be tricky to gauge how they're getting on. It's vital to find out how they are handling workloads and offer support when needed, to help employees avoid burnout and maintain job satisfaction. Pro tip: For hybrid workers, consider scheduling in-person performance check-ins. For remote workers, make sure that 1-2-ls are conducted in a quiet, distraction-free environment with a solid internet connection. Allow employees to set their own work hours and workplace Give your team the chance to blend personal, family, and work obligations as they see fit, focusing on desired outcomes instead of rigid daily schedules. Pro tip: Give your employees the ability to specify the best times for them when it comes to collaboration and individual work. Consider drafting a hybrid working policy Even though businesses don't need to implement a hybrid working policy by law, developing one for internal use can help bring clarity to everyone around eligibility, expectations, workplace working arrangements, scheduling, and data protection. Pro tip: Start by scheduling a meeting with your managers to set expectations together. In the infographic below you will find questions for you to cover. Personal note A hybrid work model is not always beneficial and requires more attention than traditional ways of working from an office. With decreased time spent in person, issues will increasingly fall by the wayside, and employee stress may go unnoticed, as seen in the rise of frustrated tweets across the U.S. and UK. This is something that I personally can agree to and see with my own team I am working with. Therefore I personally created monthly seminars/workshops to illustrate to the team some things which can help them to be motivated, and decrease their stress level because the focus on priority vanished. By following these stress-busting steps, you'll find yourself ahead of the curve and better placed to create an enjoyable hybrid work environment for all. In addition, don't shy away to get professional help from an outsider which brings always brighter light into your team for more productivity, establishes helping routines, and increases your team's morale.Skillz Middle East makes Digital Transformation happening for your company. We focus on the quick win to ensure Digital Marketing, e-learning, Web Meeting, Web Conferencing, Digital Signature, Digital Asset Management are ready to enhance your organization. Digital Marketing shall save money and bring a more efficient conversion for your brand and products. Read the full article

#EmployeeMotivation #EmployeeProductivity #HappyLife #Selfmotivation #Worklifebalance

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reddancer1 · 2 years

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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

November 17, 2022 (Thursday)

Yesterday, midterm results gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives after a campaign in which they emphasized inflation; today, Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has received his party’s nomination to become speaker of the House, along with other Republican leadership, outlined for reporters their plans for the session.

“We must be relentless in our oversight of this administration,” the number 2 Republican in the House, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, told his colleagues. They plan to begin a raft of investigations: into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, the origins of Covid-19, the FBI, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and so on. But not, apparently, inflation.

Republicans have relied on congressional investigations to smear the Democrats since 1994, the year after the Democrats passed the so-called Motor Voter Act, making it easier to register to vote. After that midterm election, they accused two Democratic lawmakers of being elected thanks to “voter fraud” and used their power in Congress to launch long investigations that turned up no wrongdoing but convinced many Americans that the country had a problem with illegal voting (which is vanishingly rare).

House Republicans also led six investigations of the 2012 attack on two United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya. That attack by a militant Islamic group while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state left four Americans dead. After several committees had found no significant wrongdoing, Republicans in the House created a select committee to reopen the case, and Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

And then, of course, there were Secretary of State Clinton’s emails before the 2016 election, and former president Donald Trump’s attempt in 2019 to force Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into a company on whose board Joe Biden’s son Hunter sat in order to weaken Biden before the 2020 election.

House oversight of the executive branch is actually a really important part of the House’s role, and yet it is one that Trump Republicans have rejected when Democrats were at the helm. Just yesterday, former vice president Mike Pence did so, saying that Congress had “no right” to his testimony before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. In fact, presidents and vice presidents have acknowledged their responsibility to testify to Congress back as far as…George Washington.

It is not clear, though, that upcoming Republican investigations will have the teeth the older ones did. True believers are demanding the investigations—and some are already hoping for impeachments—but this tactic might not be as effective now that Americans have been reminded what it’s like to have a Congress that accomplishes major legislation. Democratic strategists are also launching a rapid-response team, the Congressional Integrity Project, to push back on the investigations and the investigators.

The switch in control of the House of Representatives has brought another historic change.

Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced she is stepping down from party leadership, although she will continue to serve in the House. “The hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic Caucus that I so deeply respect,” she told her colleagues. Democratic majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) is also stepping away from a leadership position. Both of them are over 80.

Pelosi was elected to Congress in a special election in 1987, becoming one of 12 Democratic women (now there are more than 90). She was first elected speaker in 2007, the first woman ever to hold that role. She was speaker until the Democrats lost the House in 2011, then was reelected to the position in 2019, and has held it since. Jackie Calmes of the Los Angeles. Times tweeted: “As an ex–Congress reporter, I can speak to the records of 8 of the 55 House speakers, 4 Dem[ocrat]s & 4 R[epublican]s back to Tip O’Neill. I'm not alone in counting Pelosi as the best of the bunch. 2 Dem[ocratic] presidents owe their leg[islati]v[e] successes to her; 2 GOP presidents were repeatedly foiled by her.”

Pelosi began her speech to her colleagues by remembering her first sight of the U.S. Capitol when her father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was sworn in for his fifth congressional term representing Baltimore. She was six.

She called attention to the Capitol in which they stood: “the most beautiful building in the world—because of what it represents. The Capitol is a temple of our Democracy, of our Constitution, of our highest ideals.”

“In this room, our colleagues across history have abolished slavery; granted women the right to vote; established Social Security and Medicare; offered a hand to the weak, care to the sick, education to the young, and hope to the many,” she reminded them, doing “the People’s work.”

“American Democracy is majestic—but it is fragile. Many of us here have witnessed its fragility firsthand—tragically, in this Chamber. And so, Democracy must be forever defended from forces that wish it harm,” she said, and she praised the voters last week who “resoundingly rejected violence and insurrection” and “gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”

Despite our disagreements on policy, she said, “we must remain fully committed to our shared, fundamental mission: to hold strong to our most treasured Democratic ideals, to cherish the spark of divinity in each and every one of us, and to always put our Country first.”

She said it had been her “privilege to play a part in forging extraordinary progress for the American people,” and noted pointedly—because she worked with four presidents—“I have enjoyed working with three Presidents, achieving: Historic investments in clean energy with President George Bush. Transformative health care reform with President Barack Obama. And forging the future—from infrastructure to health care to climate action—with President Joe Biden. Now, we must move boldly into the future….” “A new day is dawning on the horizon,” she said, “And I look forward—always forward—to the unfolding story of our nation. A story of light and love. Of patriotism and progress. Of many becoming one. And, always, an unfinished mission to make the dreams of today the reality of tomorrow.”

November 18, 2022 (Friday)

The price of crude oil this morning was $78.47 a barrel, down from $92.61 a barrel on November 4, falling by at least 18% over the past two weeks. This should help to relieve high costs of gas for consumers, although when the price falls to around $70 a barrel, the administration will begin to refill the strategic petroleum reserve, the release of which has helped to bring down gas prices. Diesel prices, though, are going up because of shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a shortage of refinery capabilities after a 2019 fire shut down a refinery in Pennsylvania.

Shipping prices are also coming down, getting back to a normal range after crazy heights after the pandemic that fed inflation. The dislocations of the coronavirus pandemic sent shipping costs as much as 547% over the usual range by last January, driving up the prices of consumer goods. The return of more normal costs for transportation should help bring those prices down.

As Americans head out of town for the holidays, President Biden reminded them today that his administration is taking on the hidden “junk fees” on airline tickets and hotel rooms.

In other economic news, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has already spurred dramatic investment in American manufacturing of battery equipment. Previously, China was dominating that industry, but now America is developing its own battery sector to help the nation move toward electrical vehicles and other climate-friendly technologies.

Biden pushed for the IRA to combat climate change, provide jobs, and compete with China. By passing the IRA and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Biden administration “has basically seized the bull by the horns,” Sanjiv Malhotra, the chief executive of a company building a battery plant in rural West Virginia told Harry Dempsey and Myles McCormick of the Financial Times. Malhotra’s new plant will hire out-of-work coal miners.

(NOTE - What the hell is Manchin doing for those coal miners???)

Meanwhile, the two parties continue to try to organize themselves into new patterns after the midterms. The far-right, pro-gun “Second Amendment Caucus” today hosted Kyle Rittenhouse, the 19-year-old who shot three men, killing two of them, in summer 2020 during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and who was later acquitted of homicide.

Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO), whose Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, conceded today rather than force a hand recount of their close election, told Emily Brooks of The Hill: “It was an honor to have Kyle join the Second Amendment Caucus. He is a powerful example of why we must never give an inch on our Second Amendment rights, and his perseverance and love for our country was an inspiration to the caucus.” Rittenhouse tweeted a photograph of himself at the Capitol with the caption: “T-minus 5 years until I call this place my office?”

Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is facing opposition from the far-right MAGA Republicans in his quest to be speaker of the House, and welcoming Rittenhouse signals to the base that they will have a strong voice in the new Congress.

New candidates for Democratic leadership in the House are stepping up now that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she is stepping down. Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) today launched a bid to become the Democratic leader. Emphasizing continuity from Pelosi, with whom he is close, Jeffries called for working with Republicans “where possible…to deliver results for the American people,” but noted that “the opposing party appears to have no plan to accomplish anything meaningful. If the Republican Conference continues to major in demagoguery and minor in disinformation, their bankruptcy of ideas must be aggressively exposed on an ongoing basis.”

Jeffries called for Democrats to “unify around an agenda designed to make life better for everyday Americans from all walks of life,” and to center Democratic “communication strategy around the messaging principle that values unite, issues divide. House Democrats are actually the party that defends freedom, promotes economic opportunity and values families by uplifting them. We must make sure that the perception of the Democratic brand matches up with the reality that we do in fact authentically share values that unite the Heartland, Urban America, Rural America, Suburban America and Small Town America.”

Massachusetts Representative Katherine Clark is running for the number two position in the party leadership—the place Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has held since 2003—and California Representative Peter Aguilar is running for the number 3 position. Both Clark and Aguilar are close to Jeffries, and the three are seen as a team.

The coming Republican control of the House means shifting of the investigation into former president Trump. Trump was subpoenaed on November 14 to testify before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol but didn’t acknowledge the subpoena. The committee said it would “evaluate next steps.”

Yesterday, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said he established a subcommittee about a month ago to look at "all outstanding issues" and to consider criminal and civil referrals to the Department of Justice. The members of the subcommittee are all lawyers: Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Liz Cheney (R-WY), Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

Today, days after Trump announced he would seek reelection in 2024, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had appointed a special counsel to assume control over the investigations of the former president. One is the investigation into Trump’s theft of United States documents, including some that were classified at the highest levels, when he left office. The other is Trump’s role in the events leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in an attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election for Trump.

The Department of Justice has been investigating both of these issues since they came to light, but with Trump now in the political ring for 2024—in part because he hoped an announcement would stop his prosecution—and with Biden likely to announce later, Garland said he thought it was important to demonstrate that the investigations were independent. It is also of note that a special counsel can be removed only for misconduct, insulating the investigations from the new Republican majority in the House. The White House was not given advance notice of Garland’s action.

Garland appointed to the position Jack Smith, a graduate of Harvard Law School who served as a prosecutor for government corruption cases and since 2018 has been a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague. A former colleague said of him: “I have no idea what his political beliefs are because he’s completely apolitical. He’s committed to doing what is right.”

The appointment frustrated those who saw no reason to treat Trump differently than any other U.S. citizen and thought it would significantly slow the investigation; others saw it as a sign the Justice Department would indict the former president. Tonight, referring to the issue of the stolen documents, Trump’s attorney general William Barr told CNN, “I personally think they probably have the basis for legitimately indicting [Trump].... They have the case.” November 19, 2022 (Saturday)

For three hot days, from July 1 to July 3, 1863, more than 150,000 soldiers from the armies of the United States of America and the Confederate States of America slashed at each other in the hills and through the fields around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

When the battered armies limped out of town after the brutal battle, they left scattered behind them more than seven thousand corpses in a town with fewer than 2500 inhabitants. With the heat of a summer sun beating down, the townspeople had to get the dead soldiers into the ground as quickly as they possibly could, marking the hasty graves with nothing more than pencil on wooden boards.

A local lawyer, David Wills, who had huddled in his cellar with his family and their neighbors during the battle, called for the creation of a national cemetery in the town, where the bodies of the United States soldiers who had died in the battle could be interred with dignity. Officials agreed, and Wills and an organizing committee planned an elaborate dedication ceremony to be held a few weeks after workers began moving remains into the new national cemetery.

They invited state governors, members of Congress, and cabinet members to attend. To deliver the keynote address, they asked prominent orator Edward Everett, who wanted to do such extensive research into the battle that they had to move the ceremony to November 19, a later date than they had first contemplated.

And, almost as an afterthought, they asked President Abraham Lincoln to make a few appropriate remarks. While they probably thought he would not attend, or that if he came he would simply mouth a few platitudes and sit down, President Lincoln had something different in mind.

On November 19, 1863, about fifteen thousand people gathered in Gettysburg for the dedication ceremony. A program of music and prayers preceded Everett’s two-hour oration. Then, after another hymn, Lincoln stood up to speak. Packed in the midst of a sea of frock coats, he began. In his high-pitched voice, speaking slowly, he delivered a two-minute speech that redefined the nation.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” Lincoln began.

While the southern enslavers who were making war on the United States had stood firm on the Constitution and said that its protection of property rights—including their enslavement of their Black neighbors— was the heart of the nation, Lincoln tied the country's meaning instead to the Declaration of Independence.

The men who wrote the Declaration considered the “truths” they listed “self-evident”: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But Lincoln had no such confidence. By his time, the idea that all men were created equal was a “proposition,” and Americans of his day were “engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Standing near where so many men had died four months before, Lincoln honored “those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.” But he noted that those “brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated” the ground “far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Instead, “[i]t is for us the living,” Lincoln said, “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” He urged the men and women in the audience to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion."

In November 1863, after more than two years of deadly fighting, Lincoln rallied Americans not just behind the idea of freedom for Black Americans that he had declared the previous January with the Emancipation Proclamation, but also behind a new concept of America, one that would bring to life the ideas the founders had put in the Declaration but never brought to life: that all men are created equal, and that governments "derive... their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Lincoln urged Americans "to here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

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bikerlovertexas · 3 years

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antoine-roquentin · 4 years

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In 1807, Heinrich von Kleist published a short story called The Earthquake in Chile. Its heroes are a man sitting in prison and a woman in a convent, each confined for the crime of conceiving their child out of wedlock. All of a sudden, an earthquake hits, the buildings that house them collapse, and the couple rediscover each other in the wreckage. Seeking shelter in the woods, they meet people who know of their sin but welcome rather than judge them. In the flush of the emergency, all is transformed: “Instead of the usual trivial tea-table gossip about the ways of the world, everyone was now telling stories of extraordinary heroic deeds.” Exhilarated, the couple follows the masses to the only remaining cathedral, where to their horror, the preacher rages against their transgressions. At the climax of the sermon, the crowd identifies the pair and clubs them to death. The inverted world is gone as soon as it came.

As the Covid-19 contagion passed through China, Western Europe, and the United States, we had our own version of the earthquake. Lockdowns have merged with uncertainty about economic growth to crater oil prices and spike unemployment rates to heights with no historical comparison.

As has become routine during such shocks—from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 to the victories of Trump and Brexit in 2016—the rumor ricocheted through the op-eds and articles, think pieces, and tweets, that neoliberalism was dead.

How could anyone claim that markets were the solution to all social problems when it was the countries with strong states and safety nets—Germany, South Korea, Taiwan—where the virus was under control and those with a libertarian streak—the US and the UK—where leaders hesitated to intervene and let different parts of the country outbid each other for life-saving ventilators, test kits, and face masks? Daily applause for frontline health care workers must mean new value for the agents of social reproduction. Generous tips for delivery drivers and gestures of solidarity with Amazon warehouse workers must mean a clear-eyed look at the underpaid labor that makes modern life so frictionless. Visions of blue sky over Delhi and Beijing, air pollution indices registering green in the center of Los Angeles, companies paying people to take barrels of oil they no longer wanted… Surely, after the pandemic we would recognize we had been living in a cursed world and this is the correct one. Humanity had an unearned chance for redemption.

But if we were the couple in the story taking refuge in the woods, we are all now streaming into the cathedral for the fateful service. In the past weeks, a $2 trillion rescue package breezed through US Congress that will overwhelmingly benefit large corporations and the super rich, not ordinary workers. Speculation of a bailout for the US oil sector will surely keep high-carbon capitalism churning onward, especially as the Environmental Protection Agency has lifted regulations for the duration of the crisis. In Canada, the premier of Alberta pledged $7 billion for its own cherished pipeline project. The value of nurses and other health care workers has been recognized in the United States, but only in the sense that they are one of the few exceptions in a presidential executive order that otherwise provisionally banned all immigration to the country.

America has found its own sin-drenched couple to turn on. This week a strategy memo urged Republican candidates to “Attack China.” More than half of Americans surveyed want reparations from China for the virus; the United States has defunded the World Health Organization in protest against its supposed subordination to the country; and the state of Missouri has sued the People’s Republic of China (and a string of associated institutions) in a domestic court. A Fox News commentator beloved by the president shouted that politicians must “start working on how you’re going to punish, ostracize, alienate, and financially sanction and make China accountable for what they did to us and the rest of the world.” A fragile unity will be restored—as it so often is—by targeting the outsider, the alien, the nonwhite person.

Without intervention, the community after the earthquake reconstitutes the one that preceded it. The interregnum extends only if there are social formations to carry it. And right now, the streets are empty, with would-be marchers self-distancing and juggling children and babies.

The leading mainstream political opponent to Trump is an elderly man in a Delaware basement with a habit of vanishing from the public eye for long stretches of time. Joe Biden was the safety candidate against an insurgent Bernie Sanders. He now sits in a bunker with no movement behind him.

We have seen a world where capitalism stops. But it will start again. When America “reopens,” it will be much like the old America. Big companies will be bigger, ever more beholden to the leader for having saved them. Arguments for austerity will return in the wake of the unprecedented spending.

The “thought leaders” in Trump’s recently announced Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups are all from the “free market” think tanks that have advised the GOP since the days of Ronald Reagan—Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Hoover Institution, American Legislative Exchange Council—they’re the priests arriving to give their sermon. The church of neoliberalism will be rebuilt and the flash of paradise in the emergency snuffed out.

For the real story, look up. Above the steeple, the vultures are circling. The Wall Street Journal predicts a wave of defaults, bankruptcies, and restructurings. Imperiled companies will see their devalued stock scooped by so-called distressed debt specialists, more commonly known as vulture investors, who make use of the generosities of US Chapter 11 law to strip employees of benefits or offload them to the state before flipping their acquisitions at a profit.

A pioneer in vulture investing and now the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross praised bankruptcy in 2003 as “the corporate form of Darwinism.” Howard Marks, director of investment fund Oaktree Capital Management, was even more graphic in a recent letter to shareholders quoted in The Wall Street Journal. “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Catholicism without hell,” he wrote, suggesting that federal bailouts shouldn’t shield market actors from “a healthy fear of loss.” He failed to add that people like himself have learned how to monetize the flames. His own Oaktree Capital Fund is reportedly raising “$15 billion for what would be the biggest-ever distressed-debt fund.”

The next year will be a litany of the “workouts and turnarounds” that bankruptcy specialists are known for, ruthlessly wringing the value out of companies, while ignoring the human or social costs. Distressed debt funds are the loan sharks of the business world, and will feel no compunction about pursuing the bottom line. We have seen a preview of such dispassionate calculation in the last month, as stock values soared alongside record unemployment numbers and mounting deaths. The combination seemed shocking to some people, even scandalous. “The stock market doesn’t care about your feelings,” was the response of a Los Angeles Times business reporter, “nor should it.”

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theotherjourney7 · 4 years

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“The Week In Tory returns for the second time in 4 days.

The weeks grow shorter, but the days last forever...

1. The consultant who advised the government to look for "alternative arrangements" on the Irish Border is in line for a £200m contract if alternative arrangements go ahead.

But to facilitate this, the government has to break international law with the Internal Market Bill (IMB)

Nobody can tell us what the "alternative arrangements" are, but the IMB passed through parliament anyway.

2. The UK’s highest-ranking law officer in Scotland resigned over the IMB

& The UK’s special envoy on media freedom, Amal Clooney (yes, that one) quit over IMB

3. The former (Tory appointed) ambassador to USA said the IMB was "hugely damaging to our international reputation"

4. Those snowflake liberal Remoaners Toby Young, Peter Hitchens and Tim Montgomerie turned on the govt over IMB. As did every living former-Prime Minister.

5. Joe Biden said there would be no UK/US Trade Deal if the IMB went ahead

But, Iain Duncan Smith said "we don’t need lectures" from Joe Biden

Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland also said there would be no Trade Deal

Apparently, Iain Duncan Smith does need lectures. Who knew?

6. Oh, and IMB also includes a provision allowing the government to break absolutely any law, absolutely any time!!!!!

7. Unrelated, I’m sure, but the number of "problem drinkers" in England doubled this year

So the government cut funding to alcohol addiction services

8. Dominic Raab, whose job it is to understand the Good Friday Agreement, admitted he hasn’t read the Good Friday Agreement

His excuse is: "it’s not a novel". True. Novels tend to be longer than 35 pages, aren't vital to solving conflicts that killed 3600 people

9. The Prime Minister, who literally voted to break a deal he signed with the EU, said the EU was "not negotiating in good faith"

The next morning, Northern Ireland minister and arch memo-misser Brandon Lewis went on TV and said "I believe the EU is negotiating in good faith"

10. It was revealed the Smart Freight System to handle post-Brexit trade won’t be ready until at least April 2021.

That’s at least 4 months without a freight handling system, during the time of year we rely on food imports the most

11. The Road Haulage Association said a meeting with Michael Gove to discuss border checks provided "no clarity" and was "a washout"

12. An official report says 2-day queues at Dover in January are "a certainty"

So the government closed a Covid test site in Kent, to convert it into a lorry park, in what experts (well, me) are calling "the world’s shittest game of whack-a-mole"

13. The government said people would be fined £1000 if they don’t self-isolate after getting a positive test

And then all tests ran out in the 10 worst-hit Covid hotspots

And then all home testing kits ran out, nationally

And then the website for booking tests broke, and just showed a series of error messages.

And then the government said the system was under strain because people were asking for tests when they didn’t know they were infected

So [deep breath] you must self-isolate after getting a test that doesn’t exist, and you can only get a test if you already know the result

14. Naturally, honesty no-fly-zone Home Office Secretary Priti Patel went on Radio 4 and announced tests were available everywhere and there were "no problems getting tests"

Same day - same hour, in fact - Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the testing system "has huge problems"

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who simply cannot shut up about fish, said we should stop the "endless carping" about not being tested for a fatal infection

15.Prime Minister Boris Johnson went on national TV and announced a "£100bn moonshot" approach to Covid, which would test "10m people per day"

Three days later, in front of a Parliamentary Committee, said he "didn’t recognise" the figure of 10m a day

And it was reported his half-brother is on the board of the business that would get most of the £100bn budget, which I’m sure is just a massive coincidence

Officials branded the moonshot as "Moonfuck"

16. And then Health Secretary Matt Hancock had to ask other cabinet ministers to stop referring to him as "Matt WankCock"

Despite appearances, these are not 7 year old boys

17. Food news, and Tory MP Douglas Ross said "I have seen the difference free school meals can make, and I want to make sure nobody falls through the cracks"

Douglas Ross voted against free school meals

18. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said we cannot put punitive restrictions on food imports from the EU (to force them to give up on Ireland), or we will starve

And then, minutes later, he agreed with a Brexiter MP who said we SHOULD put punitive restrictions on food imports from the EU

19. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "I venerate our civil service" after sacking the innocent heads of multiple departments to protect friends including Gavin Williamson and Dominic Cummings. And as a result, people leaving the civil service rose 14% in a year

20. Planning-ahead news: an international conglomerate pulled out of a £16bn power project because the government hasn’t performed its part of the deal for the last 20 months

21. Funding cuts since 2010 meant the government had to inject £700m to prevent further education going bankrupt

22. This week it was found the government– which last week voted not to implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry – has also failed to deliver its promise to remove the same dangerous cladding from at least 2000 tower blocks. Sleep well.

And then the government said files on Grenfell were "lost forever", after a laptop was wiped. Because everything is always stored on a single laptop. We all know this.

The government runs G-Cloud, its own dedicated cloud backup service, which has been active since 2012. So... yeah.

23. At a committee in parliament, an MP read out the Covid test figures. Dido Harding, in charge of testing, said “I’m sorry, that’s just not true, I don’t know where that number is from”

It was from her own report. Page 8. In bold type.

Dido Harding said "nobody could predict" a rise in demand for testing

Government scientists predicted it, and in a July report sent to Dido Harding – maybe it was a different one? - said "July and Aug must be a period of intense preparation for a September resurgence in Covid"

Oh, and standard advice says the NHS must always prepare for cold and respiratory infections to spike immediately after the return to school in September

Dido Harding wasted £13m on a "world-beating" testing app that cost £12.3m more than the German app, and didn’t work

She is now in charge of the test-and-trace service which has collapsed completely

So naturally, it was reported the government wants to sack the head of NHS England and install Dido Harding instead. Let's make the most of that successful record, eh?

24. In June the government tweeted "grab a drink and raise a glass, pubs are reopening"

The Prime Minister said "it is your patriotic duty to go out and enjoy yourselves"

This week they said the public is responsible, and "people going to the pub fuelled the rise in Covid"

So the government closed pubs at 10pm, because it’s well-known viruses only pop out for last orders.

25. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government "threw a protective ring around care homes"

A leaked document said care homes are now being asked to accept patients who are known to have Covid

26. Hospitals were banned from launching their own testing regime for staff and patience because… nope, nobody knows why. Just because.

27. There hasn’t been a meeting of COBRA (the government’s committee for national emergencies, headed by the Prime Minister) since 10th May

28. As Covid infections surged, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said restrictions are increasing, and pointed to a chart showing the government has "moved to alert level 3". Level 3 is "a gradual relaxing of restrictions". Not only can't he remember his own alert system, he can't even read it.

29. Despite travel restrictions, it was reported the Prime Minister flew off for a long weekend in Perugia, where his friend the Russian billionaire Evgeny Lebedev lives. He denies it, but the airport has his landing documents. So either he’s lying or... no, that’s the end of that sentence

30. In June the government spent £500m on a GPS satellite system to replace the one we lose due to Brexit

In July it was reported "we bought the wrong satellites"

This week the government cancelled the programme and began asking the EU if we can keep on using their GPS system

31. A cross-party committee of MPs found nurse-Ratched cosplayer Home Office Secretary Priti Patel "bases immigration policies on anecdotes and prejudice"

It found her dept has "no idea" what its annual spending achieves, and referred to "the wreckage that [Patel’s department’s] ignorance caused"

She is one of the favourites to replace Prime Minister Johnson

32. This is because it was reported the Prime Minister is thinking of quitting because he’s worried about his personal finances: the poor man has to "pay tax", "buy his own food" and "support 4 of his 6 children". Oh, the humanity!

33. And Jonathan Aitken – look him up – continues to get privileged access to parliament despite a ban on MPs who have served more than a year in prison. Which he did. And it was hilarious.

34. And finally, because he always needs a guest appearance, Chris Grayling, the man who awarded a ferry contract to a company with no ships, has got a £100k appointment to advise ports”-Russ

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beebrass38 · 3 years

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New Normality And Outbreaks, Breaking News

After more than 180,000 new cases have been registered, there are already more than 10 million people infected with coronavirus around the world. The death toll rises to 501,000. On the other hand, Spain already has 248,770 cases, including 28,343 confirmed fatalities after updating the figures by the Ministry of Health. However, the number of cured amounts to more than 150,376.

Data on # COVID19 in Spain, from the first initial case, updated to today, July 1:

Confirmed by PCR: 249,659 Deaths: 28,363

Information by CC.AA.: https://t.co/MvIj2aPha6#NoLoTiresPorLaBordapic.twitter.com/A1sy8wmsJb

Last minute of the Coronavirus in Spain today|Sprouts and de-escalation

00.05 Catalonia continues to be the Community with the most infections

Catalonia continues to be the autonomous community with the most daily, weekly and diagnosed coronavirus infections in the last 14 days and has worsened two points since yesterday in the cumulative incidence (AI) of cases diagnosed per 100,000 inhabitants in the last two weeks.

23:30 De-escalation begins in Brazil

The bars and restaurants of Rio de Janeiro have reopened to the public after more than three months closed due to the coronavirus pandemic in a gradual "return to normalcy" considered "premature" by experts. In this new phase of economic reopening, bars, restaurants and cafes in Rio de Janeiro are authorized to receive customers up to 50% of their capacity, with a distance of two meters between tables and priority for open spaces.

22:45 Brussels sees no problem in EU countries being strict when opening borders

The European Commission does not see a problem in that the Member States of the European Union do not reopen their borders to the residents of any of the countries on the list considered "safe" agreed at European level, since this will not have an impact on free movement in the community territory. 22.05 Madrid residents who died from the pandemic will be remembered with a digital historical archive The residents of Madrid who died from the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered with a digital historical archive, as reflected in the 'Villa Pacts' and which has had the support of all municipal groups. people who died from the pandemic, as a "deserved tribute" to them and their families.

21:30 25 players and 10 members of the NBA coaching staff test positive

Just a few days before the teams travel to Orlando (Florida) where they are scheduled to gather from July 7 to resume the league on July 30, the NBA has issued a statement in which he recalled that "any player, coach or member of the coaching staff who will remain in isolation until the public health protocols are complied with in order to break their isolation ". In total, 25 players and 10 members of the NBA coaching staff have tested positive for coronavirus.

for coronavirus in the first eight days of testing, just a few days

21:00 Italy registers 30 deaths and 201 new infections Italy has registered 30 new deaths from coronavirus and 201 new cases in the last 24 hours, according to Civil Protection data. These figures increase the total number of deaths to 34,818 since the pandemic began in the transalpine country on February 21 and the number of infected rises to 240. 961.

20:25 Detected a case of coronavirus in Asturias after three weeks without contagion

Asturias ceases to be the only coronavirus-free community in Spain after a positive was detected after three weeks with zero cases. This is a young woman who works in A Mariña, Lugo, an area where the most worrying outbreak in Galicia is currently concentrated. They are now studying in which community this new case should be located.

19:47 Florida reaches the record of 10,000 cases a day

Florida has registered a record of more than 10,000 cases of COVID-19 in 24 hours after a spike in infections that has forced preventive measures to avoid a hospital collapse in the south of the state. With the 10,019 new cases counted by the Florida Department of Health, the number of people infected since March 1 in this state rises to 169,106.

19:18 Lleida can make selective confinements

The Generalitat would be considering selective confinements in Lleida, according to the director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, Fernando Simón, although, later, it was denied by sources from the Department of Health.

18:41 An infected person from Galicia entered Barajas

The health surveillance systems are behind the traces of a positive coronavirus in the Santiago and Barbanza area that arrived at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport late last week on a flight from South America.

18:21 Five dead and 134 infected in Spain

The Ministry of Health released this Thursday a slight decrease with 134 new infected against the 149 of yesterday. Catalonia leads that table with 28, Aragon (26) and Madrid (25) and the dead already reach 28,368. Read all the information here.

17:47 Roland Garros will be played with 60% of its capacity

The French Tennis Federation has made official this Thursday the planned plans regarding the sale of tickets for fans at the next edition of Roland Garros, from September 27 to October 11. Read all the information here.

16:39 Galicia 'points' to three bars about the re-outbreak of the virus

The president of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, specified that the outbreak of the coronavirus in A Mariña, in which there are 47 positives, in "two or three bars in the port area" of Burela (Lugo).

16:00 Health alerts of the risk of smoking associated with the transmission of COVID

The Ministry of Health has warned of new risks associated with the act of smoking or vaping linked to the transmission of COVID-19, such as the expulsion of droplets that may contain viral load and be highly contagious, the manipulation of the mask or the contact of fingers with mouth after touching cigarettes. This is included in the "Position in relation to tobacco consumption and related issues during the COVID-19 pandemic" approved this Thursday by consensus in the Public Health Commission of the National Health System, as reported by the Ministry of Health. The document points out new risks associated with the act of smoking and vaping related to the coronavirus. Thus, it indicates that the manipulation of the mask and the contact of the fingers with the mouth after touching the cigarettes could act as transmitters of COVID-19.

15:30 Kazakhstan restores quarantine amid rebound in coronavirus cases

Kazakhstan announced on Thursday the reimposition of a two-week quarantine from July 5 due to an increase in cases of the new coronavirus. "Due to the worsening of the epidemiological situation and the increase in coronavirus cases, the decision has been made to introduce new restrictions as of July 5 for a period of 14 days," announced the country's Deputy Prime Minister, Erali Tugzhanov, recently. recovered from COVID-19. The restrictions, he added, include closing hair salons, gyms, museums, cinemas, leisure parks and other non-essential businesses. In addition, the operation of public transport and transit between provinces will be limited.

15:00 Private health says that without it there would be COVID-19 patients without care

The president of the Institute for the Development and Integration of Health (IDIS Foundation), Juan Abarca, has pointed out that without the collaboration of private health, many patients infected by COVID-19 could not have been treated, especially in Madrid and Barcelona. "The contribution of private health has been fundamental. For the first time, the entire system has worked with the patient in mind, not professional, business or political interests. Without the private health sector, a large part of the patients would not have been able to be cared for ", he stressed.

14:30 Andalusia will test teachers for COVID "as many times as necessary"

The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, has assured that teachers will be tested for COVID-19 "as many times as necessary" in addition to those already planned for the beginning of the course, and has opened the door to They can also do to students and other employees of these centers. Moreno has explained in the plenary session of Parliament, in response to the leader of Adelante Andalucía, Teresa Rodríguez, that the action will be marked by the Ministry of Health, who will say "at all times" when the teachers are tested, "but also even to the students or to any worker at the center ". He has guaranteed that Andalusia is "ready to take a face-to-face course", since he has ensured that it is what the parents demanded, and has stressed that to face the "enormous difficulty" posed by the pandemic, "an economic and material effort such as it had never been done "in this community.

14:00 70% of users and 56% infected staff in nursing homes are asymptomatic

70% of residents and 56% of workers infected by SARS-CoV-2 in nursing homes are asymptomatic, according to a study by the Vall d'Hebrón Hospital in Barcelona carried out in 69 residences, with a sample of almost 6,000 people. The study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, is the largest in the world developed so far on the impact of COVID-19 in residences and has shown that 24% of residents and 15% of workers analyzed they were infected.

13:30 Christ the Redeemer returns to pay tribute to the victims of the coronavirus

The Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro was illuminated again this Wednesday and messages were projected on it in tribute to the victims of the coronavirus, which in Brazil exceeded 60,000 deaths and is close to one and a half million infections. The tribute included a religious act in the Sanctuary of Christ the Redeemer, led by the Bishop of Rio de Janeiro, Cardinal Orani Joao Tempesta, but the strong winds and the rains made the celebration, in which a message from Pope Francis was read, was transferred to a nearby church. The projection of this Wednesday exhibited with lights and in several languages, on the gigantic and emblematic statue that crowns the Corcovado hill in Rio de Janeiro, the main tourist point of Brazil, the message "All together for each life."

13:00 They are looking for a minor with coronavirus escaped from a center in Almería

In Almería they are still looking for the 15-year-old minor who escaped from a reception center in the capital yesterday. The boy had tested positive for COVID-19, although he was apparently unaware of it at the time of the escape. He left this center with a colleague who has already been located. The Police consider it a priority to find his whereabouts, since it represents a risk for future infections.

12:30 Tokyo records more than 100 cases of COVID-19 for the first time in two months

Tokyo today recorded 107 cases of coronavirus contagion in the last 24 hours, a figure that exceeds one hundred infected for the first time since last May 2 and more than a month after the health alert was lifted in Japan. Since June 24 and until yesterday, the daily cases of COVID-19 in the Japanese capital remained at fifty, while the city gradually recovered the usual rhythm after almost all the restrictions that affected bars, restaurants were lifted and shops of the city. But today's data, which was provided by the authorities of the Japanese capital, represents a setback in the attempts of Tokyo, of 14 million inhabitants, to gradually return to normality.

12:10 Concern for the eight outbreaks in Lleida with 100 infected people

149 new infections and 8 deaths in the last hours. Asturias, La Rioja and Madrid are the only communities that get rid of the outbreaks. The one that maintains a greater number is Andalusia. The eight outbreaks of Lleida, with 100 infected people are also worrying. Cases that have arisen in food companies, in residences, among the neighbors of this building or in this slaughterhouse. Numerous outbreaks that continue to increase in Huesca and Zaragoza or in Granada, expanding to 63 affected.

11:40 Djokovic donates 40,000 euros to fight against COVID-19 in southern Serbia

Novak Djokovic, world tennis number one, has donated about 40,000 euros to a hospital in the city of Novi Pazar (southwest of Serbia) to fight the coronavirus in that region, one of the most affected in that country. A doctor from a clinic in Novi Pazar told the Serbian news agency Tanjug that the donation will be used to purchase protective equipment, medical devices and medicines. The tennis player's donation comes a week after it became known that he himself tested positive for coronavirus after a controversial tournament organized in Belgrade and Zadar (Croatia), where health safety rules were barely observed

11:20 Spain reinforces security measures before the opening of borders

QR codes, medical exams, temperature and visual control. These are the measures that, from now on, Spain will apply to all passengers arriving in the country by air or sea. Through the link "www.spth.gob.es" they must fill out a form and then receive a QR code that they will scan at the arrival airport. Until July 31, it can also be filled in at the destination terminal itself, it is the adaptation date that the Government has wanted to give for a measure that will be maintained depending on how the health crisis evolves. Agencies must inform their clients about the need to fill in this form when selling their trips. According to the BOE, the rest of the measures will be maintained, such as massive temperature controls with thermal cameras.

10:50 The PP emphasizes that the pact with the PSOE is not closed and depends on the Government

The deputy secretary of Social Policy of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, has warned this Thursday that there are still "intense days" to see if the pact with the PSOE is materialized in the Reconstruction Commission and has stressed that "the ball is on the roof of the Government and Pedro Sánchez ". "We are at the beginning," Gamarra stressed in an interview in RNE, in which he assured the will of his party to reach an agreement. But it has stressed that "for that it is necessary to continue working and deepening in concrete measures and in financing that guarantees that what is reflected in a document is possible". He has insisted on the need to provide the health system with economic capacity so that it can function, which "means financial sufficiency that the Government of Spain has to guarantee to the autonomous communities. 10:20 With almost 53,000 positives in the last hours, Donald Trump minimizes the effects of the disease With almost 53,000 cases in a day, and breaking a new record, Donald Trump's strategy of taking over practically all the production of Remdesivir to treat coronavirus patients may not be enough. Although he downplays the disease, while still not considering masks mandatory. Whose use in Spain and Italy, together with the leadership and collaboration of society, according to the WHO have been key to stop being at the epicenter of the pandemic, where the American continent is now located.

09:55 Four footballers from the Sports University of Peru test positive for coronavirus

The University of Sports of Peru reported that four of its players, two of them foreigners, have tested positive for COVID-19 to which they were subjected before the restart of training for their squad. "From the results that have been delivered to us, to date, an administrative worker and four of our players, two nationals and two foreigners, are asymptomatic positives for COVID-19," indicated the club's administration, which kept the report secret. identity of those affected, as ordered by Peruvian law. 09:30 Six FC Dallas footballers test positive for coronavirus in the MLS bubble in Orlando MLS officials received the worst news when it was confirmed that six players from FC Dallas, a team that is already in the "bubble" of Orlando (Florida), had tested positive for COVID-19. The event occurs when there are barely seven days left before the preparation tournament begins to later resume the regular season competition that was suspended on March 12 due to the coronavirus. Of the six positive, four had given in the tests that the expedition of the Texan team was carried out before leaving Dallas and the others when they were already in Orlando.

09:10 In China they report only three new infections with coronavirus in the last 24 hours

The Chinese National Health Commission reports three new cases of coronavirus detected in the last 24 hours, the lowest number since the outbreak detected in a Beijing market.

08:50 In Argentina 1,310 people have died from coronavirus

In Argentina they report 44 deaths and 2,667 new ones infected by coronavirus in the last 24 hours. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina, 1 have died. 310 people and 67,197 cases have been detected.

08:30 A groom dies from coronavirus two days after his wedding: 113 infected at the ceremony

A wedding in India ended in tragedy due to the coronavirus. The groom died from COVID-19, and at least 113 guests were infected, two days after the wedding in Patna. Apparently on the day of the wedding the groom had symptoms compatible with COVID-19. In India they have already classified the wedding as a "super-spreader" of the coronavirus.

08:20 United States: 128,028 deaths and 2,678,202 infected by coronavirus

The independent count from Johns Hopkins University reports 128,028 deaths and 2,678,202 infected with coronavirus in the United States. In the last 24 hours in the US, 706 people have died and 48,830 new cases have been confirmed.

08:00 Brazil: 60,632 deaths and 1,448,753 infected by coronavirus

The Brazilian Ministry of Health reported 1,038 deaths and 46,712 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours. In Brazil, 60,632 people have died and 1,448,753 cases have been detected since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

07:40 Colombia exceeds 100,000 coronavirus infections

The Colombian Ministry of Health reported 4,163 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours. In Colombia, about 3,500 people have died and 102,009 cases have been detected since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

07:20 Peru launches the "new normal" after 107 days of quarantine

The Peruvian Ministry of Health reported 3,264 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours. In Peru, which have ended with 107 quarantine and have lived their first day of "new normal", 9,680 people have died and 288,477 cases have been detected since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 07:00 California closes cinemas and restaurants for the July 4 party due to the coronavirus pandemic Gavin News, Governor of California, has ordered the closure of indoor activities such as movie theaters and restaurants in 19 counties for the weekend of July 4. With this measure he wants to stop the spread of the coronavirus in such a popular festival in the United States.

06:40 Treatment of convalescent plasma against coronavirus

El Salvador, which exceeds 200 daily infections due to COVID-19, joins Panama and Costa Rica in the use of convalescent plasma treatment to treat coronavirus patients. 06:20 41 million unemployed in Latin America and the Caribbean due to the coronavirus: "A historical record" Vinicios Pinhero, director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for Latin America and the Caribbean, reported that the coronavirus pandemic has caused 41 million unemployed in Latin America and the Caribbean: "A historical record, the highest unemployment figure".

06:00 In Chile 5,573 people have died from coronavirus

The Chilean Ministry of Health reported 65 deaths and 2,650 new infections from coronavirus in the last 24 hours. In Chile, 5,573 people have died and 282,043 cases have been detected since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

05:40 Masks and gloves, new problems for nature

The newspaper 'El Mundo' reports that gloves, masks and other health products derived from the coronavirus pandemic have been transformed into waste and have reached the natural environment, where they not only represent an uncomfortable visual presence, but also pose an environmental challenge.

05:20 Pandemic. Asymptomatic people spread the same as those who suffer from coronavirus in an obvious way

The newspaper 'El Mundo' reports that a study from Imperial College London suggests that the transmission of asymptomatic and presymptomatic patients contributes significantly to the spread of the disease. Health authorities continue to minimize their role in infections. 05:00 Partial reopening. Europe's veto punishes Spanish airlines while Iberia already parks planes The newspaper 'El Mundo' reports that the partial reopening of borders leaves key routes for Spanish airlines ashore

Coronavirus 132 Comments

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movie-magic · 3 years

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Box Office: ‘Black Widow’ Poised to Race Past ‘F9’s’ Pandemic Record Debut

When it comes to moviegoers, there are few that assemble as forcefully as the ones who pledge allegiance to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Yet for the past two years, superhero enthusiasts have been deprived of Spandex-filled theatrical offerings as the pandemic forced Disney (and Sony) to postpone “Black Widow,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals” over and over again. Sure, there has been a steady supply of Marvel-set TV spinoffs like “WandaVision,” “Loki” and “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” on Disney Plus to fill the comic book-sized void, but movie theater marquees have been without an all-important Marvel superhero tentpole since “Spider-Man: Far From Home” in July of 2019.

Enter Natasha Romanoff. After a year-plus delay, “Black Widow,” the standalone adventure starring Scarlett Johansson, is finally hitting theaters on Friday and is expected to have the best opening weekend of any pandemic-era release. Playing in 4,100 North American locations, “Black Widow” is currently on track to generate between $75 million to $85 million at the domestic box office over its first three days. It’s poised to make an additional $50 million internationally, where the film is playing in 46 overseas markets. In China, a critical moviegoing market for Marvel installments, “Black Widow” still doesn’t have a release date.

Should estimates hold, “Black Widow” will overtake “F9” and its $70 million domestic debut as the best start for a movie released during the pandemic. Making projections tricky, however, is the fact that “Black Widow” is premiering simultaneously on Disney Plus for a $30 rental fee. Disney has deployed a similar strategy for several big titles, including the animated adventure “Raya and the Last Dragon” (which opened to $8.5 million in early May) and “Cruella” with Emma Stone (which opened to a more impressive $21 million later in May), and will repeat the approach with “Jungle Cruise” on July 30. Yet the $200-million budgeted “Black Widow” is the first tentpole of this scale to launch on the big screen and at home on the same day, presenting a potential obstacle for the otherwise unrivaled commercial track record of the MCU.

The projected opening weekend of “Black Widow” would be a strong result for COVID times, but it would represent a steep decline from the debuts of recent standalone Marvel titles, like 2019’s “Captain Marvel” ($153 million), 2018’s “Black Panther” ($202 million), 2017’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” ($146 million) and “Thor: Ragnarok” ($122 million). The franchise’s every-hero-but-the-kitchen-sink mashup adventures, such as 2015 “Avengers: Age of Ultron”($191 million), 2018’s “Infinity War” ($257 million) and 2019’s “Endgame” ($357 million), tend to have stratospheric launches, a reason why Marvel movies regularly blow past the $1 billion mark at the global box office with ease. A start above $75 million wouldn’t be far off from 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home” ($92 million) and 2018’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp” ($75 million), which each ended their theatrical runs with respectable global tallies and focused on a few key characters instead of a cavalcade of costumed vigilantes. Disney isn’t expected to disclose how many people opt to rent the film on its subscription-based streaming service, though it’s expected to put a dent in overall ticket sales.

Fandango, the online movie ticketing service, reported on Wednesday that advanced ticket sales for “Black Widow” are the strongest of the year, outpacing “F9” and “A Quiet Place Part II.” The company noted that “Black Widow” has eclipsed pre-sales for fellow Marvel titles “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and Doctor Strange,” both of which were released far before scientists were aware of the virus that would become known as SARS-CoV-2. For reference, “Doctor Strange” opened to $85 million in 2016 and “Spider-Man: Homecoming” pulled in $117 million in its inaugural weekend in 2017.

Fandango’s managing editor Erik Davis says “Black Widow” offers the kind of cinematic spectacle that demands to be seen on a large screen in a darkened cinema.

“This action-packed film delivers on every level, giving fans the immersive, big-screen summer blockbuster, they’ve come to expect from Marvel Studios, along with a compelling storyline, engaging humor, and a memorable cast of characters, including exciting newcomers to the MCU,” Davis said in a statement.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige echoed that sentiment last week at a “Black Widow” fan event in Los Angeles. He says the $70 million opening weekend of “F9” is an “amazing sign” for the movie theater industry, adding that “we want to root for other people’s success” as the business rebounds.

“Pre-release ticket sales [for ‘Black Widow’] are showing us that people are ready to have that shared communal cinematic experience, which is why Marvel movies exist,” he told Variety.

Movie theaters could use a hero. The film exhibition business has endured its most punishing 18-month period in the medium’s history, one that resulted in prolonged theater closures and endless release date delays. As of this weekend, 80% of North American cinemas have reopened but many in Canada, which accounts for a significant portion of domestic grosses, remain shuttered. At the same time, roughly 17% of international territories, including parts of Southeast Asia and Latin America, have closed again to help curb the spread of new variants of COVID-19. It may be a while before moviegoing rebounds to pre-pandemic levels, but at the very least, “Black Widow” should beget a much-needed boost in popcorn sales.

Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland (“Berlin Syndrome”) directed “Black Widow,” a spy thriller that takes place between the events of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Avengers: Infinity War,” long before Natasha Romanoff (a.k.a. Black Widow) became one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. In the standalone film, she’s forced to confront the darker parts of her past when she’s faced with dangerous conspiracy. Florence Pugh, David Harbour and Rachel Weisz co-star as other members of the Romanoff clan.

#movie magic #mcu #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #movie news #movies #disney+#mcu phase 4 #news #black widow movie #black widow mcu #black widow #scarlett johansson #scar jo #florence pugh #david harbour #f9 #f9: the fast saga

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what-is-your-plan-today · 4 years

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A WEEK IN BRITAIN...

1. Boris Johnson announced a new 3 Tier lockdown system, with the lowest Tier being “medium”, like at McDonalds

2. As part of the announcement, the Chief Medical Officer reassuringly said the plan wouldn’t work

3. The govt said “in all cases, we are following the science”

4. It was revealed the SAGE science committee told the govt to lockdown weeks ago, but that bit of science wasn’t followed very far

5. SAGE went on to say the govt’s “world-beating” £12bn Test and Trace system was having only “a marginal impact on transmission rates”

6. Dido Harding, head of Seemingly Everything, said Test and Trace would be “local by default” and be “highly efficient”

7. She then handed £12bn to Serco, which is highly efficiently charging us £7360 per day for consultants. To trace Covid infections. Which they aren’t doing

8. Serco’s CEO is the brother of an ex-Tory MP. His partner is a Tory donor. Serco’s ex-head of PR is now a Tory Health Minister

9. If you feel all this is a bit corrupt, you can complain to the govt’s Anti-Corruption Champion, John Penrose, who is married to Dido Harding

10. Meanwhile an investigation by the Good Law Project found PPE suppliers owned by Tory donors or associates were paid 30% more per item than similar businesses globally. I'm talling you: John Penrose. He’s your fella. He’ll get to the bottom of it, fo shizzle

11. And only 34 days since the announcement of Boris Johnson’s "brainchild", the £100bn Operation Moonshot, it was quietly scrapped, along with (apparently) Boris Johnson’s brain and around 28% of his children

12. A Tory MP said Boris Johnson’s “personal skillset this doesn't play to this. He's not a details, manager type. He's a picture painter”. On the side of wine-boxes, mostly.

13. Another said “I think it's obvious this is a government happier picking fights than governing”

14. Another said Boris Johnson “prefers to get on with dog-walking” and “let’s Dominic do the work”

15. Chastened by reports local authorities were given only 5 minutes notice of previous lockdowns, this time the govt gave them ... 7 minutes notice of the meeting to discuss it

16. Except some MPs didn't even get that, and were only invited after the meeting had started

17. And the govt invited the MP for Sunderland, who had to inform them she was only of 3 Sunderland MPs. The govt was “surprised to be informed” of this

18. The dep Chief Medical Officer said the infection rate in the north “never dropped” meaning the relaxation of lockdown was at the expense of lives oop north

19. Then the govt said they would “devolve more decision-making” and “give more financial aid to local authorities”

20. But the aid is conditional on the "devolved" local authority doing what the govt wants, which is quite a novel a definition of "devolved"

21. So, following criticism, the govt briefed the press that it was going to consult more with regional govts

22. Literally 2 hours later, the govt briefed the press that Manchester was moving into Tier 3 restrictions. The Mayor of Manchester was not consulted (or even informed) about a decision he must implement, and which affects the largest city-region outside London.

23. A Tory MP, anxious about the lockdown affecting businesses over the party season, asked the PM “what can you tell us about Christmas”. Boris Johnson replied, “it’s a religious festival that’s been celebrated 2020 years”, which I’m sure helps us all

24. Matt Hancock insisted we all follow the science and adhere to the 10pm pub curfew that scientists say makes absolutely no improvement on infection rates

25. Then Matt Hancock broke that curfew, in a House of Commons bar

26. And then Matt Hancock said “The drinks are on me but Public Health England are in charge of payment methodology so I will not be paying anything”

27. In August, Public Health England was scrapped by [checks notes ] Matt Hancock

28. But prior to that, Tories imposed budget cuts of 5% to 10% on Public Health England for each of the previous 7 years

29. Unsurprisingly, it was reported that hospitals in the north of England would run out of beds within 7 days

30. The govt said "Hospital Trusts should consider cancelling all non-urgent treatments"

31. The govt then refused to drop fines it imposes on Hospital Trusts which cancel non-urgent treatments

32. So Matt Hancock announced the reopening of Nightingale Hospitals, which were closed last time because nobody could send patients to them, due to them not being staffed

33. They still aren’t staffed: Matt Hancock's' "urgent boost to nursing training" doesn’t start until 2021

34. Fortunately, the govt began a campaign to get ballerinas to retrain, and then scrapped the campaign 24 hours later

35. In June, Boris Johnson announced an "urgent" £1.57bn Arts Rescue Plan

36. A mere 127 days later, it "urgently" got around to paying out some of that money

37. And then Lord West reassuringly said, “we need to deal with migrants in a concentrated place, a camp or whatever”. He didn’t mention whether Arbeit Macht Frei, but it’s still only Thursday, and who can tell what the remainder of the week will bring?

38. Speaking of dates: 15th Oct, the absolute, immoveable deadline for trade talks that mighty, fearsome Boris Johnson laid down to the cowed and quivering EU

39. Talks continue tomorrow. Because obviously, duuur

40. The Road Haulage Assoc pointed out we have only 1,668 of the 33,000 EU Haulage Permits we need on 1 Jan

41. Software to control our borders won’t be ready until 4 months after 1 Jan

42. And the govt is “still in the planning stage” of the “Kent Passports” we need on 1 Jan

43. And construction of Kent's “world’s largest lorry park” is behind schedule, so probably not ready on 1 Jan

44. Fortunately the govt is well-prepared, and plans to install 1000s of Portaloos in Kent, the garden of England, to be used by lorry drivers trapped in 2-day queues

45. And our food standards will still be fine, as Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi tweeted “Our manifesto was clear. We will not compromise our animal welfare and food standards”

46. He then voted to compromise our animal welfare and food standards, as did the rest of the Tory Party

47. And then govt used an obscure rule to deny MPs a vote on whether to allow chlorinated chicken

48. Meanwhile, 20 years after North Sea Cod became so overfished the WWF declared it “economically extinct”, Tory MPs voted to reduce protections designed to let fish stocks recover

49. So, after Brexit, our current plan is to accept tariffs that will destroy our manufacturing sector, and border delays that will destroy farming exports and imperil food supplies, and destroy the farming sector ... all so we can go and catch a fish that doesn’t exist

50. But at least we’ve now "got back control", and therefore we can level up the playing field by implementing the govt's landmark “digital tax” policy on giants such as Amazon

51. This week it was announced Amazon will be exempt from the digital tax

52. Speaking of tax exemptions, it was revealed Dominic Cummings has had a £30,000 council tax bill “written off” because he built the house illegally, so it doesn’t count as a real house, or summat. Sorry, my hurricane-force sarcasm briefly turned me more northern.

53. And on the subject of extreme dodgy dealing, let me direct your attention to Robert Jenrick, who set up the £3.6bn “Towns Fund” for the 101 most deprived town, and then gave the maximum grant of £25m to his own constituency, which is the 270th most deprived town

54. His explanation was that he, Jenrick, did not make the decision. It was made by a colleague, Jake Berry.

55. Jake Berry also got money for his constituency. By a dazzling coincidence, that decision was made by – you guessed it – Robert Jenrick

56. Finally: at a meeting led by Liam Fox, the TaxPayers Alliance (insanity-pushers to the Tory Party) advocated cutting pensions immediately because half of old people “won't be around to vote against you in the next election”, and the other half “will have forgotten by then”

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Colorado Snowstorm Knocks Out Power to Thousands and Snarls Travel (NYT) A snowstorm sweeping through Colorado and Wyoming on Sunday was expected to bring as much as four feet of snow to some parts of the region, and has left nearly 30,000 people without power in Colorado. The storm brought heavy, wet snow and downed trees and power lines. More than 20,000 customers near Greeley, Colo., about 50 miles north of Denver, were without power on Sunday, according to Xcel Energy. More than 2,500 people around Fort Collins, about 1,500 near Loveland and about 3,000 people in the Denver suburbs were also without power. A blizzard warning was in effect on Sunday for Colorado’s Front Range, an area that includes the Interstate 25 corridor from south of Denver up through Cheyenne, Wyo. The National Weather Service warned that an additional two to six inches of snow and wind gusts as high as 45 miles per hour could create “nearly impossible travel conditions.”

Florida’s pandemic response gets a second look from the national media (Axios) After a solid year of living with a pandemic, the national press is beginning to ask the question that even Democrats have been quietly pondering in the Sunshine State: Was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pandemic response right for Florida? More than 32,000 Floridians have died, but our death rate is no worse than the national average—and better than some states with tighter restrictions. On Sunday’s front page, the New York Times explored the positives—from the booming real-estate market to Florida’s low unemployment rate—of an early reopening: “Much of the state has a boomtown feel,” writes Patricia Mazzei, “a sense of making up for months of lost time.” The Times notes that Florida’s unemployment rate is 5.1%, compared to 9.3% in California, 8.7% in New York and 6.9% in Texas. “That debate about reopening schools? It came and went months ago. Children have been in classrooms since the fall.” The closer you are to either loss or to the fullness of life will likely determine how you feel about the state’s response.

Quaking in their beds, sleepless Icelanders await volcanic eruption (Reuters) Icelanders are yearning for some undisturbed shut-eye after tremors from tens of thousands of earthquakes have rattled their sleep for weeks in what scientists call an unprecedented seismic event, which might well end in a spectacular volcanic eruption. “At the moment we’re feeling it constantly. It’s like you’re walking over a fragile suspension bridge,” Rannveig Gudmundsdottir, a lifelong resident in the town of Grindavik, told Reuters. Grindavik lies in the southern part of the Reykjanes Peninsula, a volcanic and seismic hot spot, where more than 40,000 earthquakes have occurred since Feb. 24. Located between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates, Iceland frequently experiences earthquakes as the plates slowly drift in opposite directions at a pace of around 2 centimetres each year. “Everyone here is so tired,” Gudmundsdottir, a 5th grade school teacher, said. “When I go to bed at night, all I think about is: Am I going to get any sleep tonight?” Authorities in Iceland warned of an imminent volcanic eruption on the peninsula in early March, but said they did not expect it to disturb international air traffic or damage critical infrastructure nearby.

Vigil To Reclaim The Streets From Vigilance (CNN) Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, disappeared on March 3 while walking home from a friend’s home in London’s southern neighborhood of Clapham. Her body was found inside a builder’s bag in a wooded area. A 48-year-old police officer has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. On Saturday, thousands of people gathered in Clapham Common to pay tribute to Everard despite planned nationwide vigils having been canceled due to pandemic restrictions. As darkness fell, police officers began grabbing women in the crowd and making arrests. Videos posted on social media showed officers violently dragging some female protesters away and throwing others to the ground and handcuffing them. Women’s rights activists in the UK are reeling from the Metropolitan Police’s heavy-handed approach. There’s also been political fallout, with a member of Parliament reading out the names of 118 women murdered last year. In a new poll, over 70% of UK women said they had been sexually harassed in public spaces. The figure rose to 97% among women aged 18-24. 45% said they didn’t believe reporting the incidents to officials would change anything.

Dutch police break up thousands of anti-lockdown protesters (The Hill) Police in the Netherlands dispersed thousands of anti-lockdown protesters outside the Hague on Sunday, one day before national elections begin in the country. Reuters reports that police used batons and water cannons to disperse the crowd who authorities said were ignoring social distancing rules as well as warnings from authorities. Many of those gathered in the crowd held up yellow umbrellas and signs in opposition that read “Love, freedom, stop dictatorship,” according to Reuters. The country has been under an intense lockdown since January, Reuters notes, with gatherings of more than two people banned and the first night-time curfew issued since World War II. When the lockdown was extended, it sparked several days of rioting across the country. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Netherlands has confirmed over 1.1 million coronavirus cases and more than 16,000 related deaths.

Spain to launch trial of four-day working week (The Guardian) Spain could become one of the first countries in the world to trial the four-day working week after the government agreed to launch a modest pilot project for companies interested in the idea. Earlier this year, the small leftwing Spanish party Más País announced that the government had accepted its proposal to test out the idea. From New Zealand to Germany, the idea has been steadily gaining ground globally. Hailed by its proponents as a means to increase productivity, improve the mental health of workers and fight climate change, the proposal has taken on new significance as the pandemic sharpens issues around wellbeing, burnout and work-life balance. Leftwing parties in Spain—where a 44-day strike in Barcelona in 1919 resulted in the country becoming one of the first in western Europe to adopt the eight-hour workday—have seized on the idea. “Spain is one of the countries where workers put in more hours than the European average. But we’re not among the most productive countries,” said Iñigo Errejón of Más País. “I maintain that working more hours does not mean working better.”

Major European nations suspend use of AstraZeneca vaccine (AP) A cascading number of European countries—including Germany, France, Italy and Spain—suspended use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine Monday over reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients, though the company and international regulators say there is no evidence the shot is to blame. AstraZeneca’s formula is one of three vaccines in use on the continent. But the escalating concern is another setback for the European Union’s vaccination drive, which has been plagued by shortages and other hurdles. The EU’s drug regulatory agency called a meeting for Thursday to review experts’ findings on the AstraZeneca shot and decide whether action needs to be taken.

Myanmar junta orders martial law in 6 Yangon townships (AP) Myanmar’s ruling junta has declared martial law in six townships in the country’s largest city, as security forces killed dozens of protesters over the weekend in an increasingly lethal crackdown on resistance to last month’s military coup. At least 38 people were killed Sunday and dozens were injured in one of the deadliest days of the crackdown on anti-coup protesters, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, an independent group tracking the toll of the violence. Several estimates from other sources gave higher figures.

Flights canceled during China’s worst sandstorm in a decade (AP) China’s capital and a wide swath of the country’s north were enveloped Monday in the worst sandstorm in a decade, forcing the cancelation of hundreds of flights. Skyscrapers in the center of Beijing appeared to drop from sight amid the dust and sand. Traffic was snarled and more than 400 flights out of the capital’s two main airports were canceled amid high winds and low visibility. The National Meteorological Center said Monday’s storm had developed in the Gobi Desert in the Inner Mongolia Region, where schools had been advised to close and bus service added to reduce residents’ exposure to the harsh conditions. The National Meteorological Center forecasted the sand and dust would affect 12 provinces and regions from Xinjiang in the far northwest to Heilongjiang in the northeast and the eastern coastal port city of Tianjin.

Taiwan’s boom (NYT) Taiwan, home to 24 million people, has seen fewer than 1,000 cases of Covid-19 and just 10 coronavirus-related deaths. Prior to 2020, lots of Taiwanese and dual nationals moved abroad and only came back for a visit. After the pandemic hit, Taiwan closed its borders to almost all foreign visitors. Protocols put in place include temperature checks, hand-sanitizing, mask-wearing (except in schools), rigorous contact tracing, and strict quarantines for incoming travelers. Taiwanese nationals returned, and about 270,000 more stayed than left. As a result, the island is experiencing a real economic boom. Exports have been rising for eight months, fueled by shipments of electronics and surging demand for semiconductor chips. Domestic tourism is exploding. The economy grew more than 5% in the fourth quarter compared with the same time period in 2019. And every day restaurants, bars, aFor Law Enforcementnd cafes are packed, office buildings hum, and schools are filled with laughing, unmasked children. “We just feel very lucky and definitely a little guilty,” said a product manager for a Bay Area tech company who returned to Taipei with his wife and young son last May. “We feel like we are the ones who benefited from the pandemic.”

United States and Iran warily circle each other over reactivating nuclear deal (Washington Post) The United States is willing to sit down with Iran “tomorrow” and jointly agree to full compliance with the nuclear accord they and five other world powers signed in 2015, according to a senior Biden administration official. Iran has made equally clear it shares the goal of going back to the terms of the original agreement, before President Donald Trump pulled out of it. But nearly two months into Biden’s presidency, with Iran’s own contentious presidential election approaching in June, the two sides have been unable even to talk to each other about what both say they want. Iran wants all Trump sanctions lifted and an immediate influx of cash from the release of blocked international loans and frozen funds, along with foreign investment and removal of bans on oil sales. It seeks assurances that the next U.S. administration won’t jettison the deal again. For its part, the Biden administration wants a reactivated deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, to serve as a “platform” to renegotiate its sunset provisions—the future dates when certain provisions are set to expire. It wants to move quickly to discussions about its other problems with Iran, including Tehran’s ballistic missile program and its use of proxy forces in Iraq, Syria and beyond, and human rights abuses. Both sides continue to wait for the other to prove its good faith with “you, first” rhetoric.

‘Republic of Queues’: 10 years on, Syria is a hungry nation (AP) The lines stretch for miles outside gas stations in Syrian cities, with an average wait of five hours to fill up a tank. At bakeries, people push and shove during long, chaotic waits for their turn to collect the quota of two bread packs a day per family. On the streets in the capital of Damascus, beggars accost motorists and passers-by, pleading for food or money. Medicines, baby milk and diapers can hardly be found. As Syria marks the 10th anniversary Monday of the start of its uprising-turned-civil war, President Bashar Assad may still be in power, propped up by Russia and Iran. But millions of people are being pushed deeper into poverty, and a majority of households can hardly scrape together enough to secure their next meal. “Life here is a portrait of everyday humiliation and suffering,” said one woman in Damascus. Her husband lost his job at an electronics store last month, and now the family is drawing on meager savings that are evaporating fast. With two kids and an elderly father to care for, she said life had become unbearably difficult and she is gripped by anxiety for the future. Until recently, she could smuggle in her father’s medicines from Lebanon, but now Lebanon has its own meltdown and shortages.

#headlines #news

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billehrman · 3 years

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Better Days Ahead

While we are amid an increase in coronavirus cases around the world due to the highly infectious Delta variant, a successful investor will look over this valley, analyze the future landscape, including monetary and fiscal policies, do research on industries and companies looking for positive and negative incremental change and invest accordingly.

This is not a replay of one year ago. We now have vaccines and therapeutics to protect against the virus and help us get better should we contract it. The key is for all of us to get vaccinated so that we reach herd immunity such that we can all return to life as it once was before the virus. We see better days ahead as we get our arms around the Delta variant. Yes, the timing and speed of the global recovery may be altered by the increase in cases. Still, we remain confident that we will have a multi-year global expansion beginning next year supported by accommodative monetary and fiscal policies. We continue to favor the production side of the economy as we envision years of stepped-up capital spending to alleviate shortages while shortening supply lines. Inventories are so low (supported by 2nd quarter GNP data), it may take until the second half of 2022 to return to normal levels.

Technology will remain a mainstay in our portfolios. We are still in the early innings of a technological revolution where companies must spend to stay competitive and be cost-efficient. While we could always have corrections, the conditions for the market top are not present. Don't forget the trillions of excess liquidity in the financial system combined with accommodative monetary and fiscal policies. We still expect the yield curve to steepen slowly over the next year, but it is held back by massive inflows from abroad, where rates are negative.

We need to get all vaccinated to protect ourselves and each other. It is time that the FDA approves the coronavirus vaccine so that it is no longer labeled as experimental. We also need clear and consistent messaging from the CDC as to how best to move forward. The CDC reversed course last week on some masking guidelines, recommending that even vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S., where the Delta variant is surging. Many companies have shifted their policies to recommending the use of masks in their stores and offices.

More than 4.02 billion doses have been administered across 180 countries, with the latest run rate at approximately 39 million doses per day. In the U.S., 344 million doses have been given at an average rate of 615,404 per day. We still expect the U.S. to reach herd immunity by September and by spring 2022 for the rest of the world, which is consistent with our view that we will have a synchronous multi-year global expansion beginning in 2022 supported by accommodative monetary and fiscal policies everywhere.

The Fed met last week, and there was no change in their monetary policy as expected nor its message that the economy is a way away from tapering despite "making significant progress to reaching its goals." Powell went out of his way at the follow-on conference call that tapering is now being discussed in earnest but that the officials want to see "more hiring before pulling back on bond buying." He added that the Fed could reduce mortgage purchases more than treasuries initially, which is what we expect to happen. We have not altered our view that the Fed will announce this fall that it will begin tapering by early 2022 and conclude all bond-buying by the beginning of 2023. Remember that tapering is not tightening, and the Fed will continue to maintain its balance sheet by buying bonds as they roll-off. We do not expect to see the Fed hike its funds' rate until mid-2023 at the earliest, which is a long time away, so don't fret. The Fed will remain our friend for a long time.

The Senate voted on Wednesday to move ahead with a $550 billion traditional infrastructure plan by 67-32. Among the projects to get the most money are $110 billion for roads, bridges major ad projects; $73 billion for electric grid upgrades; $66 billion for rail and Amtrak; $65 billion for broadband expansion; $55 billion for drinking water; $39 billion for transit; $17 billion for ports and $25 billion for airports; and $7.5 billion for electric vehicle chargers. The package would be paid for by re-purposing $200 billion in unspent covid relief funds, strategic petroleum reserves, and fees. The key for passage hangs on whether the Dems hold this bill hostage to the $3.5 trillion social infrastructure bill and reconciliation. We see the moderate Dems pushing for social spending of around $2.5 trillion funded with a hike in top-end individual and capital gains rates but far less than initially proposed, plus an increase in corporate taxes to no more than 25%. There will be much more stimulus from D.C. in the years ahead, supporting higher than historic economic growth rates.

The U.S. economy continues to be very strong despite shortages and supply line issues. Second-quarter GNP fell short at 6.5% annualized even as consumer spending rose 11.8% as inventories reduced growth by 1.1 percentage points while residential purchases reduced growth by 0.5 points. Personal savings was $1.97 trillion In the quarter, with an individual savings rate that remains elevated at 10.9%. Other essential data points reported last week include a drop in jobless claims to 400,000; new home sales rose 6.6% in June; the NABE Business Conditions Survey remained very strong in July; durable goods orders rose 0.8% in June while unfilled orders increased 0.9%; inflationary expectations are falling; the Shiller price index for homes rose an astonishing 16.6% in May year over year, and consumer confidence remains elevated at 129.1. The dynamics of the U.S economy continue very strong and will only get better as more people get vaccinated, shortages are alleviated, supply line issues are solved, and additional stimulus is passed.

European growth rebounded sharply in the second quarter as businesses reopened. Output in the 19 nations increased by 2%, beating estimates. Interestingly Germany was the only country to disappoint, expanding by 1.5%. Shortages and supply line issues hamper growth here, too, but that should improve as we move into 2022. China's economy continued its stable pace of recovery in July, and officials are optimistic of hitting its 8% growth target for the year, especially after monetary conditions were recently eased. China's Politburo pledged more support for its economy yesterday as well as more IPO oversight.

Interestingly investors added nearly $4 billion into Chinese stocks last week despite all the negative press on increased oversight of the tech leaders. We found it interesting that China is looking to raise tariffs on its domestic steel supply to curb prices. That will undoubtedly help our steel companies.

We remain confident that the global economy is on the cusp of a synchronous economic expansion that will last many years as we put the coronavirus in the rear-view mirror. In addition, there will remain an unprecedented level of monetary and fiscal accommodation supporting above historical average growth rates.

Investment Conclusions

We continue to favor the economically sensitive areas of the market as we see the need worldwide to increase capacity after years of underspending to alleviate shortages and bring supply lines closer to home. All of this excludes the benefits of significant government-funded infrastructure spending plans over the next several years. Heightened technology spending will remain strong for many years to stay competitive and reduce costs. We remain impressed how well corporations have navigated the challenges due to the virus and are coming out more profitable and generating more free cash flow than ever before.

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livinwlina · 3 years

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Not ready for a pandemic to end?

My life changed on July 2nd of 2018, I started this job with a credit union and had just enrolled to begin my associates degree, I found myself at a peak in life, working somewhere I loved, with people I liked, and had genuine connections with. The next year and a half were, nothing short of amazing, and then, it was almost like a horror movie played out before my eyes.

On March 11th 2020, the World Health Organization announced the Novel Coronavirus a global pandemic, in the very beginning, there was an overwhelming amount of uncertainty and doubt about just how strange and fatal the virus was. Grocery stores were practically barren as people rushed to stock pile on food, toilet paper, and disinfectant. Schools, libraries, restaurants, venues, malls, practically everything was closed and shut down for almost three whole months while everyone quarantined at home and entertained themselves on… unique documentaries, such as Tiger King, okay mostly Tiger King. However, I, in the last couple semesters of my associates degree at Forsyth Technical Community College, continued going to work every day (socially distanced of course). Truliant Federal Credit Union (where I have been employed in the Member Contact Center since July of 2018) sent anyone who could work remotely, home. Those of us on the phones stayed in the office or were across the building. Now I have to admit that when the pandemic begun, I, much like everyone else, was quite anxious about the next couple months, and was especially careful to avoid falling ill. The idea that all meetings and classes were being moved online was quite stressful to regular students, however, this switch to an online school format was routine for me. I had been taking exclusively online classes at Forsyth for the past 6 months and adjusted rather quickly. Suddenly, I found time to study and work on projects where I had not before. Having meetings and doctors’ appointments digitally, only benefitted me more, since I did not have to drive all over Winston Salem and could be home at a decent time so I could study. I did this and even connected with old friends and extended family thanks to the increased use of platforms like Zoom, WhatsApp and Skype.

So maybe the pandemic had not changed everything quite as dramatically as I thought it would…

Other than increased feelings of worry and anxiety, I was doing well in these first early months of the pandemic, I was in my final semester at Forsyth Tech when one day in June of 2020, I felt warm and noticed that my cheeks were very red, I had also noticed that all of a sudden, I had lost my sense of smell and taste. On June 19th I had been officially diagnosed with COVID-19 and took a 10-day quarantine per CDC guidelines. After the first initial days of general illness, I took up working on final projects during my quarantine and eventually graduated from Forsyth Technical Community College in July of 2020. I continued working full time and by this time had been accepted as a transfer student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Communication Studies. Some areas of life had begun to reopen and life was slowly gaining some degree of normalcy again. Classes for the most part still remained online, I had gotten into a routine that worked well for me, I got up and went to work in the mornings, worked all day long until 5:45 pm, got home at 6:00 pm, had dinners, worked out a bit and got started on class at 7:30 pm to about 10:30pm and then went to bed. I would even have some time to work on some school work during lunches and breaks at work, so I was feeling quite confident in my abilities of juggling UNC Greensboro’s classes and work just as I had been before, so confident in fact that I had decided that I would declare not one, but two minors in addition to my Communication Studies major, I was now going to be seeing Psychology and Spanish in the Spring. Since there was still only speculation of when a COVID vaccine would be approved for human use, I thought I had plenty of time before having to worry about face-to-face classes.

Well, I was wrong…

In December of 2020, finishing the fall (and my first) semester, the United Kingdom announced that it had approved Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for use, and the vaccines would soon be distributed for the elderly and health care workers across the U.K. Soon enough the U.S would follow suit and approve the Pfitzer and Moderna vaccines. Okay, I thought, surely it will take a long time before I or anyone close in age could be vaccinated, right? I was wrong again. Just yesterday I got an email from UNCG stating that residents on campus could get vaccinated starting on March 24th, and while that is amazing news and I am more than excited at the idea of normal life and travel, this also means that my classes will be moving to a face-to-face format again. This announcement lined up quite well with the release of the Fall 2021 schedule for classes and for the first time in a year, I was met with a conflicting schedule. Most of the classes that I need to take are all on campus, in Greensboro, during the day, and I work in Winston-Salem, from 8:45 am to 5:45 pm. So, what now? Well, any logical person would say, just change your schedule at work! And while I am fortunate enough that Truliant has been incredibly supportive and willing to work with my schedule in the past, I only have so much wiggle room I could possibly ask for. 3 out of the 4 classes I will be taking have meeting times, and 2 of them are on campus, both more than an hour long and 30 minutes both ways from work, so now I am in a position where I am just not quite sure what to do. Being so close to the finish line (rising senior) but also being content with my job to the point where I see myself staying with the company for many, many years. There is always the option to work part-time for Truliant (which is actually how I started with them) but there is of course no guarantee that there will be a full-time position available as soon as I am done with school. In conclusion, I am ready for normal life to return, however, it would be beneficial to some of us, if universities and colleges, kept the online option for classes.

Resources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55280671

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen

#School Uncg

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bikerlovertexas · 4 years

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jordanianroyals · 3 years

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2 February 2021: King Abdullah II met with a number of figures from the governorates at Al Husseiniya Palace, as part of ongoing outreach.

He said the battle against COVID-19 is not over, stressing the importance of maintaining commitment to safety measures and mask-wearing, to ensure progress in reopening sectors safely while limiting the spread of the virus. His Majesty added that Jordan, in its second centennial, will continue administrative reform efforts, as well as economic, political, and social development, noting the importance of coordination among various stakeholders to develop the agricultural sector. (Source: Petra)

For his part, Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh said the government has agreed with the Senate and the House of Representatives to reach out to various political parties and powers, as well as civil society institutions, in order to enhance the laws regulating political life, in implementation of Royal directives. Prime Minister Khasawneh also stressed the need to move forward with administrative reform to improve performance and address shortcomings. For their part, the attendees highlighted the importance of the topics addressed by the King in his interview with the Jordan News Agency (Petra), adding that it included directives to develop a number of sectors, especially administrative reform and the laws regulating political life. They called for building on the state’s achievements, noting the need to attract investments, launch and support agricultural projects, and reopen the tourism sector if the epidemiological situation allows.

#King Abdullah II

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antoine-roquentin · 4 years

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Like the US president, Jair Bolsonaro has raged against the quarantine implemented by his own government and has just dismissed his level-headed health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. A few days after the first shutdown measures were announced in São Paulo, the president blatantly defied them by encouraging his supporters to attend a mass rally on March 15, filling part of the megalopolis’s wide Avenida Paulista in support of Bolsonaro and against Congress. Covid-19 is just a gripezinha (sniffle), he insists, while heading a campaign on social media to reopen the economy under the slogan “Brazil cannot close.” On Sunday, he headed a second small rally in the capital of Brasília, where social distancing was replaced by manic jostling to get close to the president, along with chants demanding that the army intervene to get people back to work.

Bolsonaro has dismissed as “hysteria” the lockdown measures, implemented swiftly in Brazil despite the president’s rhetoric. “Let’s face the virus like men, not kids,” he urged, as he visited a Brasília street market last month. Perhaps the only head of state able to out-Trump Trump in sheer recklessness and social-networked delirium, Bolsonaro has mobilized his three loyal sons, two of them members of Congress, to help peddle conspiracy theories concerning China and snake-oil remedies such as chloroquine. Ironically, Bolsonaro, 66, was lucky to escape infection on March 7, when he attended a neoconservative get-together hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, after which several members of the Brazilian delegation came down with severe symptoms.

The terrifying implications of such a cavalier approach to the pandemic in a country with a stretched health care system and vast slum cities where social isolation, and even the routine precaution of washing hands, is an impossible challenge, soon forced the Brazilian establishment into action. When Bolsonaro—following the Trumpian script—announced that he would reverse the lockdowns in São Paulo, Rio, and other cities, the Supreme Court reiterated that under Brazil’s federal system, it is state and city authorities who decide such matters. Leaders of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies supported Mandetta, while governors like João Doria in São Paulo and Wilson Witzel in Rio—allies of Bolsonaro in the presidential elections of 2018—maintained the city lockdowns. Justice minister and super judge Sérgio Moro, who led the “car wash” anti-corruption probe and sentenced former president Lula da Silva to nine years in prison, dared to defy the president whom he had helped into power.

The other super minister in the Bolsonaro government, billionaire financier Paulo Guedes, whose global investment funds are now staring into the abyss, also seemed skeptical of Bolsonaro’s antics, despite his concern that the lockdowns and a pandemic-driven 5 percent drop in GDP this year (an IMF forecast) might scupper his plans to privatize the Brazilian economy. Pots and pans were banged from the balconies of locked-down apartment blocks in middle-class districts of Rio and São Paulo in protest against Bolsonaro, just as they had been five or six years before against the soon-to-be-impeached President Dilma Rousseff. Like Trump’s health adviser Anthony Fauci, also a doctor, Mandetta had emerged as a voice of reason, with better ratings in the polls than Bolsonaro’s, and appeared to have cleverly outmaneuvered the president. At least, until his dismissal last week.

Even the armed forces—well represented in the Bolsonaro cabinet—seemed prepared to intervene against the madness of President Jair, despite the Bolsonaristas’ calls for military action in favor of the president. A report in DefesaNet, an online media outlet used by the military to get its message out, said that effective control of the government’s strategy on Covid-19 had devolved to the chief of staff, Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto. “The president will thus be able to behave democratically as if he did not belong to his own government,” explained DefesaNet, a contorted phrase that perfectly captures the Brazilian establishment and military’s paternal approach to Bolsonaro’s childish outbursts.

When Mandetta was confirmed in his post after Bolsonaro’s initial threats to oust him, many concluded that the lunatic had been removed from control of the asylum, or at least the intensive care ward. “The general feeling here is that Bolsonaro is a puppet,” remarked an employee early last week at the country’s state development bank, BNDES, whose role in successfully fending off the global economic crisis in 2009 will be sorely missed this time, after Guedes’s decision to downsize it. But the removal of Mandetta, and Bolsonaro’s paranoid appeal to his base Friday to help him fight off an alleged coup attempt orchestrated by Doria in São Paulo and Rodrigo Maia, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, suggest an alternate reading. Could the president glimpse opportunity in the chaos?

“There is method in the madness,” explained the anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares in an interview. Soares is co-author of Elite da Tropa, a gripping 2006 account of police brutality and extreme-right-wing death squads in Rio’s favelas that was turned into two blockbuster films, Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2. Soares, whose latest book, O Brasil e Seu Duplo (Brazil and Its Duplicate), explores the origins of Bolsonaro and Brazilian neofascism, says Covid-19 will either stop the Bolsonaro project in its tracks or accelerate its progress. “Bolsonaro has been advised to deny the threat of the pandemic,” said Soares. “He feels sure of himself, in part because he’s mimicking Trump. But his authority has diminished, and he’s in danger of becoming a lame-duck president only a year into his term.”

But the president has a plan. Behaving, as the generals suggested, “as if he did not belong to his own government,” Bolsonaro may be able to escape the blame for the devastating economic crisis now unfolding. A brutal recession triggered, as elsewhere, by the pandemic, comes after seven years of stagnation. Even before the pandemic, 60 million Brazilians had fallen back into poverty (defined as earning less than $5 a day) after the advances of the Lula years. “The plan is to transfer responsibility and accuse the others for allowing the tremendous crisis which we are going to encounter,” said Soares.

The worsening social conditions will undoubtedly create fertile ground for Bolsonaro’s bid to capitalize on discontent. A survey cited by piauí magazine found that 72 percent of Brazilians have enough savings to cushion lost earnings for just one week before entering serious hardship, and 32 percent already report problems buying essential goods like food. “We are staying in, but food is scarce, and without work there is no money,” said a mother of two who lives in the enormous Rio favela of Rocinha, where at least 50,000 inhabitants are packed into the hillside above Ipanema and Leblon. “Practically everybody in the favela works in the informal economy, so the lockdown doesn’t really apply here; businesses are open but close earlier. People are wearing masks; there is little information,” said Macarrao, a rapper from Cinco Bocas, a favela in the North Zone of Rio, whose daughter has Covid-19. “She got treatment fairly quickly,” he added. This may not be the case now. Epidemiologists at five important institutes in Brazil forecast recently that the health system could reach the point of collapse by late April.

The Bolsonaro government has guaranteed a basic monthly income of 600 reales ($112) to those with no income, but the electronic application has failed, and long lines of people—practicing scant social distancing—have waited outside the public savings bank Caixa Econômica, only to discover that their transfer has not arrived. In any case, $4 a day is a pittance, and Guedes seems reluctant to take any other measures to soften the blow for Brazil’s poor, even though he has passed tax cuts for business. There is a logical link to Guedes’s neoliberal stance, as millions descend into poverty and hunger, and Bolsonaro’s populist plan to blame it all on Mandetta and the governors of the two big cities: Both governors are potential rivals for the next presidential elections, and Bolsonaro will use his media to pinpoint them as responsible for the hardship.

While registered cases of the coronavirus in Brazil are 40,000, the real figure is probably over 10 times that, as indicated by the current unnaturally high mortality rate. According to official data, by the end of last week some 2,600 people had died from the virus—low compared with Europe and the United States, but Brazil is late in the curve. And Brazil’s intensive care units are fast approaching capacity, just as they have in Europe. Manaus, the Amazon metropolis where the reports of contagion in the indigenous territories make harrowing reading, is already at 100 percent capacity and is transferring patients to other sites. A survey by the University of Pelotas in Rio Grande do Sul, in the south of the country, estimates that there are at least seven times more cases than the official figures suggest.

Bolsonaro will try to build a strategy from his base of support among evangelicals and people in the orbit of the police and military. Evangelicals have been another element of the Covid-19 denial, but they are fired by conviction rather than nonchalance. Edir Macedo, the billionaire pastor whose TV networks are used by Bolsonaro in preference to the establishment Rede Globo, said the WHO’s warnings on Covid-19 were the “work of Satan.” “Our position from the first moment has been to keep the churches open, because God will defeat the virus,” said Washington Reis, the evangelical mayor of the Rio working-class district of Duque de Caxias last week. Days later, God had spoken, and Reis was hospitalized with Covid-19. The tactic may be working. Bolsonaro appears to have maintained support in the pandemic, despite the pot banging and international horror at his stance. A poll by Datafolha last week showed that 36 percent of Brazilians believe his management of the health crisis is “good or great,” slightly more support than before the pandemic. And 52 percent say he’s capable of leading the country through the crisis.

There may even be a second phase to Bolsonaro’s strategy of leveraging Covid-19 to stay in power, said Soares. “Building on the contradictions of his own government and the coming crisis in the health system and the economy, Bolsonaro may be hoping for some kind of a social explosion in the streets,” he said. “That would create the conditions for a state of emergency and the end of democratic institutions that are still blocking the path of Bolsonaro’s basic project: a dictatorship and the perpetuation in power of his family.”

The call for a coup against Congress—pitched, at Sunday’s rally, at more extremist elements in the armed forces—may be a first step in this direction. By first denouncing an alleged coup plot against his own presidency, allegedly planned by Congress and the big-city governors, and then calling for military action in his defense, “Bolsonaro is following the example of many authoritarian presidents, starting with Hitler in 1933,” writes Nabil Bonduki, former São Paulo culture secretary, in an article in Folha de S.Paulo. “The allegation of an attempted coup is thus the pretext for a coup planned by the president himself.” The idea might sound fanciful, and as paranoid as Bolsonaro’s own rhetoric. But the former army captain was a reluctant recruit to democratic politics even before the devastating arrival of Covid-19.

Bolsonaro’s close links to right-wing militias made up of former military police and firemen, which run whole swaths of the West Zone of Rio, may help. “The militias have always been close to the Bolsonaro family, and now they are becoming more ideological, part of a Bolsonarist movement. They could help in a coup if he wants that,” said Soares. The militia Escritório do Crime (the Crime Office) is known to be implicated in the assassination of left-wing Rio city councilor Marielle Franco over two years ago. To square the circle of fascism and Covid-19, reports are just out that the militias in Itanhangá and Rio das Pedras, adjacent to the kitsch beach resort of Barra da Tijuca, where the Bolsonaro family has its base, are forcing businesses to stay open during the lockdown so they can continue to charge for protection.

as ian kershaw points out, the latin american cold war governments that were called fascism don’t really correspond with the italian and german examples because they lack the mass movements that brought hitler and mussolini to power. they, like salazar and franco, used symbols of fascism to exude power, but did not share the key characteristics of the movement. for instance, the nazi party numbered in the hundreds of thousands before it took power, while the falange only had 10,000 members at the outbreak of the spanish civil war. bolsonaro, in contrast, has a mass movement behind him, with the parties that back him having membership in the millions. his supporters are not older men, like most conservatives, but men in their 20s and 30s who are willing to go out and rally and brawl for him. like nazis, they have developed an intellectualized but conspiratorial and religiously-imbued notion of national salvation from international threats. they are often armed and control territory, with more favelas actually being under control of paramilitary groups than drug gangs.

on the other hand, many definitions of fascism, particularly on the left, require an economic component. a crude form of trotsky’s theory of fascism essentially labels these groups as pinkertons who took over a state, who come when the rate of profit is low and force labour to give up more of its share of national income. brazil is indeed experiencing a low rate of profit, but its labour movement is not well organized enough to seriously defend its prerogatives from a traditional state-backed approach. it can be pointed out that PT, which was attempting such an approach, was removed from power by those who viewed the party as defenders of labour. this grouping, based in the traditional military power centres of the brazilian regime, did not have any real support on their own among the brazilian populace, with temer’s government having a 5% approval rating. bolsonaro was seized upon by this grouping because it offered the chance for a government that largely agreed with its goals but could muster a far greater base of support among the populace. this partially mirrors the rise of hitler, who was also seen by supporters of the former military dictatorship as their ticket back into such a situation. the combination of hitler’s love of the military contrasted with the disdain of him by actual military figures (hindenburg called him “the little corporal”) can be seen in the current bolsonaro-generals dynamic. it took the nazi party leadership a year and a half to subsume the military to its own prerogatives, while bolsonaro has done far less in that time. however, bolsonaro’s base has been primed for a coup they view as a countercoup, with rumours of a military takeover having spread across the pro-bolsonaro blogosphere starting in march along with rhetoric of defending him from such an event.

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quakerjoe · 4 years

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In the first employment report after social distancing measures had taken hold in many US states, the Department of Labor announced that 3.3 million people had filed jobless claims. A week later, in the first week in April, an additional 6.6 million claims came in—almost unfathomable compared with the previous record of 695,000, which was set in 1982.

As bad as those numbers are, though, they greatly understate the crisis, since they don’t take into account many part-time, self-employed, and gig workers who are also losing their livelihoods. Financial experts predict that US GDP will drop as much as 30% to 50% by summer.