Did the IMF Chief Pad the Chinese Numbers?

Parker Davis September 28, 2021

The International Monetary Fund has long been mega bullish on the main regarding its characterization of China’s economy the past couple of decades, but, in the past few years, that bullishness was even more bullsh than usual. Now, accusations have emerged that the IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, has been taking kickbacks from the Chinese Communist Party to sugarcoat the reality to assure China continued to be viewed as THE place to invest your money and ship your home nation’s jobs.

What will come of these mounting calls for her resignation? Well, most likely, the whole affair will be counted up to another Russian troll farm or alt right hater or, or, or, you get the pattern of invalidation.

Amid Calls For Resignation, IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva Denies Role In Manipulating Data To Boost China’s Ease Of Doing Business Ranking

From sg.news.y

Yahoo.com
2021-09-27 04:18:42

Excerpt:

Amid mounting calls for her resignation, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva criticized as “false and spurious” the findings of an independent probe into allegations that as World Bank head she pressured staff to manipulate data to make China’s business climate appear more favorable.

On Sep 16, bank announced that it will be discontinuing ‘Ease of Doing Business’ reports after an in-house investigation found that bank staff improperly altered the scores of China and three other countries.

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DC Effort to Make Coronavirus Tests Free Fails Spectactularly, Here’s How

Parker Davis September 28, 2021

Congress passed a law to cover the cost of coronavirus testing for Americans by saddling insurance companies with the responsibility of paying for the tests themselves. The cost of the test would be determined by the cash value of whatever the onlie cost of the tests were by the provider they were contracting to administer the tests. The result has been a 25 percent increase in the cost of coronavirus tests from last year to this year, 2021.

The next shoe to drop will be the rise in insurance premiums as insurance companies pass on the cost of government’s promise to the very people the government was allegedly serving. To be fair, there will be a significant segment of society that will get access to this, as of right now, essential service for whom free access could be argued to be necessary, but we need not profoundly affect an essential market so signfiicantly with these simplistic solutions to short term problems to meet the needs of those who truly need it.

I won’t offer a solution in this moment, but there are many that don’t involve solutions that turn out to be no solution for the vast majority of people the government promised would get free testing, only to pay for it in the long run after all. That’s not actually a solution at all, is it? I can easily compete with ‘not a solution,’ and I bet many of our readers can as well.

Covid Rapid Test Prices: How a Law Allows Labs to Charge Any Price

From www.nytimes.com
2021-09-26 09:00:14

Excerpt:

At the drugstore, a rapid Covid test usually costs less than $20.

Across the country, over a dozen testing sites owned by the start-up company GS Labs regularly bill $380.

There’s a reason they can. When Congress tried to ensure that Americans wouldn’t have to pay for coronavirus testing, it required insurers to pay certain laboratories whatever “cash price” they listed online for the tests, with no limit on what that might be.

GS Labs’s high prices and growing presence — it has performed a half-million rapid tests since the pandemic’s start, and still runs thousands daily — show how the government’s longstanding reluctance to play a role in health prices has hampered its attempt to protect consumers. As a result, Americans could ultimately pay some of the cost of expensive coronavirus tests in the form of higher insurance premiums.

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Infrastructure Loses AOC

Parker Davis September 28, 2021

AOC to Vote ‘No’ on Infrastructure Bill

From www.newsweek.com
2021-09-28 14:32:21

Excerpt:

With the clock ticking to avoid a partial shutdown of the government on Friday, President Joe Biden’s economic agenda is facing a crucial challenge on Capitol Hill as Democrats scramble to get enough votes to pass two key spending bills.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delayed the vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill until Thursday amid efforts to unify progressives and moderates.

Democrats will need to bridge these internal divisions to pass the infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion spending package before the Senate can vote on a stopgap funding bill that would head off a federal shutdown.

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China Was About to Bomb Us, Milley Infers in Defense of “The Call”

Parker Davis September 28, 2021

General Milley claims the reason for contacting the Chinese behind Donald Trump’s then Presidential back was to assuage fears China allegedly had that Donald Trump might be launching a military strike. This was allegedly based on intelligence that asserted China was nervous Donald would launch a nuclear attack on his way out.

Is Milley asking Americans to believe that the Chinese were about to launch a nuclear strike against us for fear of Donald launching one on them? Why did Donald not know this call took place at all? Why did Milley not tell the Donald that such a call had been made in the first place? Questions, many questions, and little hard questions from the folks in the corporate media offices using news platforms as fan fiction production centers that all imagine the party is the answer and all outside the party are imepdiments to human dignity itself.

Milley defends call to Chinese at end of Trump presidency

From news.yahoo.com
2021-09-28 14:15:35

Excerpt:

The top U.S. military officer told Congress on Tuesday that he knew former President Donald Trump wasn’t planning to attack China and that it was his job to reassure the Chinese of that fact in phone calls that have triggered outrage from some lawmakers.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a full-throated defense of two calls he made to his Chinese counterpart, saying he was responding to “concerning intelligence” that China was worried about a U.S. attack.

“I know, I am certain, that President Trump did not intend to attack the Chinese and it was my directed responsibility to convey presidential orders and intent,” Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. “My task at that time was to de-escalate. My message again was consistent: Stay calm, steady, and deescalate. We are not going to attack you.’

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Facebook is Built on Anger, and They Know It

Parker Davis September 27, 2021

The social media platform that wears its moral supremacism on its sleeve, Facebook, has a problem living up to its own moral supremacist standards, which is more often than not when dealing with moral supremacists in general.

The Wall Street Journal has conducted a study that shows that Facebook is LITERALLY relying on the emotion of anger as its best marketing tool. It’s what sells and what builds. Anger is the energy that Facebook must sustain and cultivate if it hopes to continue its unquenchable desire for more. If it wants to gain members, grow revenues, and everyone does, it seems, then it must continue to make hundreds of millions of people angry every day to do so.

But hey, at least they”re not racist or bigoted, though.

Facebook knowingly makes people angry and have worse body image, Wall Street Journal report finds

From www.vox.com
2021-09-21 13:00:00

Excerpt:

Reading the findings from the Wall Street Journal’s massive, three-part investigation into Facebook — that the platform makes people angry and depressed, and that the company exempts a huge class of VIP users from its rules regarding harassment and incitement of violence — my reaction was: Well, obviously.

Anyone who spends a decent amount of time online knows what happens when you shove a bunch of strangers into the same place. We replicate existing power dynamics, we form groups, we troll, we project our biases, we yell until only the most extreme voices are the ones that get heard. We expect the companies that own these platforms to fix it, but nobody can agree on how.

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Markets Might See Return of Semiconductors Next Summer

Parker Davis September 22, 2021

Semiconductor market shortage expected to end by mid-2022

From www.techspot.com
2021-09-21 12:28:00

Excerpt:

Fingers crossed: It’s no secret the semiconductor market has been experiencing a worldwide shortage for months now, but according to a new report signalling growth for the chips industry, the shortage could be over as soon as next year.

In what’s sure to be welcoming news for both consumers and suppliers alike due to the lack of chips, analysts from IDC forecast the semiconductor market will grow by 17.3% in 2021. Comparatively, this is a considerable increase from the 10.8% rise we saw in 2020. IDC also believes the semiconductor shortage will be over by mid-2022, and come 2023 may even experience overproduction.

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Developing Climate-Harsh-Resistant Crops

Parker Davis September 21, 2021

Research collaboration puts climate-resilient crops in sight

From scienceblog.com
2021-09-17 15:02:11
MIT
Excerpt:

But for farmers who make their living by successfully growing plants, and whose crops may nourish hundreds or thousands of people, the devastation of failing flora is that much greater. As climate change is poised to cause increasingly unpredictable weather patterns globally, crops may be subject to more extreme environmental conditions like droughts, fluctuating temperatures, floods, and wildfire.

Climate scientists and food systems researchers worry about the stress climate change may put on crops, and on global food security. In an ambitious interdisciplinary project funded by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), David Des Marais, the Gale Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, and Caroline Uhler, an associate professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, are investigating how plant genes communicate with one another under…

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UN Calls on Halt to Human-Threatening AI

Parker Davis September 21, 2021

UN urges moratorium on use of AI that imperils human rights

From timesofindia.indiatimes.com
2021-09-15 14:45:11

Excerpt:

GENEVA: The UN human rights chief is calling for a moratorium on the use of artificial intelligence technology that poses a serious risk to human rights, including face-scanning systems that track people in public spaces.
Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, also said Wednesday that countries should expressly ban AI applications which don’t comply with international human rights law.
Applications that should be prohibited include government “social scoring” systems that judge people based on their behavior and certain AI-based tools that categorize people into clusters such as by ethnicity or gender.
AI-based technologies can be a force for good but they can also “have negative, even catastrophic, effects if they are used without sufficient regard to how they affect people’s human rights,” Bachelet said in a statement.
Her comments came along with a new UN report that examines how countries and businesses have rushed into applying AI systems that affect people’s lives and livelihoods without setting up proper safeguards to prevent discrimination and other harms.
“This is not about not having AI,” Peggy Hicks, the rights office’s director of thematic engagement, told journalists as she presented the report in Geneva. “It’s about recognizing that if AI is going to be used in these human rights — very critical — function areas, that it’s got to be done the right way. And we simply haven’t yet put in place a framework that ensures that happens.”
Bachelet didn’t call for an outright ban of facial recognition technology, but said governments should halt the scanning of people’s features in real time until they can show the technology is accurate, won’t discriminate and meets certain privacy and data protection standards.
While countries weren’t mentioned by name in the report, China has been among the countries that have rolled out facial recognition technology — particularly for surveillance in the…

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American Teacher Makes Viral Video Equating Good Behavior in Class to Racism

Parker Davis September 20, 2021

Apparently, expecting children to behave in class and not disrupt the learning environment for others is one of many dog whistles for white supremacism, according to California Teacher Josh Thompson, whose online video in which he shared this assertion went viral. The results of the viral video were not favorable to Thompson.

Social media lambastes woke teacher for resurfaced viral video in which he complains that making children behave in class is ‘white supremacy’

From www.theblaze.com
2021-09-15 19:50:01
Sarah Taylor
Excerpt:

Social media users are calling for a Virginia high school teacher to be fired after a May video resurfaced showing the teacher saying that making children behave in class is akin to “white supremacy.”

According to the New York Post, Josh Thompson — an English teacher at Blacksburg High School in Blacksburg, Virginia — raised eyebrows and ruffled feathers after a since-deleted TikTok video of him from May began making rounds on the internet this week.

In the video, Thompson blasted the district’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports program — which is used to help reduce disruptive behaviors in the classroom — by saying that the notion is the very “definition of white supremacy.”

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Ex-Clinton Operative Indicted in Russia Hoax Probe

Parker Davis September 20, 2021

Dem Lawyer Indicted For Lying To FBI About Role In Russia Collusion Hoax

From thefederalist.com
2021-09-17 16:04:53
Margot Cleveland
Excerpt:

Special Counsel John Durham filed a one-count indictment on Thursday against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. It charged Sussmann, who had fed the FBI the fake Alfa Bank-Trump conspiracy story, with lying to government agents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2).

The details included in the 27-page indictment, however, reveal a scandal much deeper than merely Sussmann’s role in a second Russian hoax — a scandal that entangles the Clinton campaign, multiple internet companies, two federally-funded university researchers, and a complicit media.

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