What on Earth is going on in the world today? It's gone mad

Federberg

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Sorry for the poorly quoted text. My answers in italic.

Friend: Basically Moro, declared himself to be apolitical, then recently found out he was very active for one of the big opposition parties that suffered big losses to PT.

Lie. Nothing was "recently" found out. PT has been accusing Moro of being partial to PSDB for ages, the evidence to that is 5 or 6 years old at least, Moro denies of course, so did the own Bozo-naro time and again. Probably something happened in the conspiracy world those guys live, some "truth" must be circulating on whatsapp, for him to say that, but it did not reach surface (and I am paying attention).

Bozo only way out is to discredit his (latest) accuser. More on that bellow.


Friend: Bolso and the gang have been trying to cut a lot of the cronyism etc, in my view pushed too hard on too many doors

Oh boy, the "he is challenging the system" talk. I could write pages showing how utterly retarded this is. Hopefully the particular points below tell part of the story.

Friend: Not sure Maia has come out and told people to wind their necks in
Friend: They are idiots, my friend who advised him told him to drop them months ago
Friend: But anything they have on them is an accounting error of an accounting error compared to the rest

This name "Maia" will appear more and more, is one of their giant new enemies. No saint, but differently from the Bozo clan he is a skilfull politician (in both good and bad senses). They are scared to death of him.

But now comes the main part. Of course Bozo stole less money than some, because, up to 2 years ago, he was an IRRELEVANT politician. IRRELEVANT politicians are CHEAP, he simply could not
charge much for his favours, because they were almost worthless. His business was with small time criminals, militia, death squads. The already revealed corruption on his side is compatible with his former level of influence.


Me: lol so you actually think Bolso is a clean guy
Friend: By Brazil standard, yes

Answered above.

Friend: He just pissed too many vested interests off
Friend: An engineer working for my business, would earn 10k brl a month, good salary
Friend: For the state companies that Bolso is trying to reform a similar job would pay 80k

Lie. Completely absurd out right fucking lie. If some technical guy get this kind of money, is completely off the curve. There are ones who get that, yes, but due to plain corruption, which everyone knows is there. But the way the guy wrote indicated that a full army of people got astronomical pay checks. Some do, but mainly bureacrats, the problem is corruption itself.


Friend: I know an American Brazilian guy that made 6mm being the marketing co-ordinater for Eletrobras, doubt he could spell marketing
Friend: The political guy that sponsored him made double

That's the way it is, or was, unfortunately. But guess who was the one responsible of dismantling that (Petrobras) scheme? Moro. What was Bozo's contribution to that? Zero. None. Actually he strongly supported the last President of the Low House (Cunha), who was a beneficiary of that scheme. The shoe is on the other foot.



Friend: As I keep saying, Bolso has no filter, but he has the best long term interest of Brazil at heart

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA (stole that line from Broken). The guy whose political symbol is to make a little gun with his fingers has something "at heart". Go fuck yourself.


Friend: The left is like a parasite, they are leaping on to all this shit.
Friend: Nobody talking about the drop in murders

"The left" for those guys is basically everyone who disagrees with them.

Having said that, the murders have been dropping for a while, and, yes, the trend accentuated (not that much,) in this government. But given that data is provided by local (state) police departments themselves (which is quite corrupt in Brazil), and precisely the corrupt ones are the ones related to Bozo (as documented), I have all the reasons in the world to doubt those numbers. Specially given the sharp drop from day 1.




Friend: Or the cost they managed to cut
Friend: The media in Brazil is pretty much all far to left of the daily star

Oh boy. That's so fantastic. I need to tell you this: I follow (given my job) the financial/economical news here (as well as the world's). There are a few news outlets specialized in financial markets (duh). Now, please tell me, who in the face of the earth would think that those sites are "full of communists"? Yes, that's what those guys are saying. It is like saying that Bloomberg is a "Communist" website. I laugh myself to tears because those guys lost a ton of money betting on a bull market, they went all in when the market was at a historical high, now lost the kitchen sink and keep saying the communists are to blame. This is just too good.

Me: time will tell. he seems like a proper a$$ to me. And it surprises me that someone with your green credentials makes excuses for him!
Friend: Not making excuses
Friend: Just saying what is going on.
Brazil is super green no other country gets close.
Nobody praised Bolso for throwing the kitchen sink at last year's oil spill... They identified which oil field it came from and the ship that it leaked from.
Venezuela and China involved., China is Brazil biggest trading partner, and he still chastised them

Yes, Brazil is green, specially seen from above given the Amazon. What the fuck is this guy saying? Regarding to legislation, Brazil is NOT super green, is "ok", and the legislation is there for AGES.

Bozo DID NOT identified from which oild field it came. UNIVERSITIES, which he HATES, did that. Petrobras, (the company the guy above was saying that is only good to pay ultra high salaries for useless people), did that. He is trying to say that something that the STATE institutions did are Bozo's actions. The very same institutions Bozo supporters say are full of communnists. What a joke.



Me: super green! oh come on mate. What about the burning of the Amazon??
Friend: I could go through it with u, I wrote a long piece for a swf a few months ago
Friend: The chief lobbying group on Amazon, is a US based farm lobby, that knows US cannot subsidize it's farms anymore, and they cannot compete with Brasil on same terms
Friend: Too much disinformation.

There is disinformation about that, ok. This is not the whole story, but it is first rational thing the guy wrote.


Me: disinformation?? Do me a favour! We can see the burning of the forest. The destruction of aboriginal lands. Puh-leeeeze mate...
Friend: I am very happy with my analysis, I grew up in the Amazon, and was there 18months ago.
Friend: if you want to talk about aboriginal rights and politics, you will be shocked to know you are with Bolsonaro
Friend: one of the 1st things he tried to do was reform the 1st nations agency, only 2% of the indians benefit from the govt money...

Oh boy. For example, trying to put a religious guy to be the one in charge of the "non contacted" indigenous people (yes, we have uncontacted tribes here).

Friend: those chiefs that you see protesting, flew their on their own planes
Friend: so the guys left on the tribal land living miserable lives get in touch with the illegal loggers/miners (funded by chinese) to exploit indigenous area, then the chief finds out and asks for a cut, if he doesnt get a cut, he sends his boys round to light them up. So every month about 100 die in clashes...
Bolso wanted to legitimise the way some of these reservations used their resources, and wanted to create a universal income scheme based on royalties, why because one of the generals on his team showed him pictures of kids starving, and he said how is this possible they get billions and free health care
Friend: where I grew up, the Chinese own 3 towers now, full of chinese traders, they send ships full of tat from China, then the ships get loaded with goods (which dont get inspected as they bribe the customs guys)
Friend: Trust me when I say things arent as black and white as the guardian and others would want us to believe

Yes, there are a lot dirty players here. The fact that they exist do not put Bozo on the list of the good guys. They are competing criminals. Bozo sides not exacty with the guys who burn the forest to advance (he just leaves them alone), he sides with the guys who use chemicals like water. The numbers are scary.

Me: well I know Brazilians who have lived there all their lives who strongly disagree with you
Friend: they have probably like 90% of Brazilians never been to the amazon and live on a diet of left wing newspapers
Friend: I arrived in the Amazon in 1969!
Friend: most cariocas and paulista have contact with the amazon from 30,000ft as they go to US

Yes, this is true. Most Brazilians know shit about the Amazon (not my case though, but I am surely no expert).


Me: I would hardly describe them as left wing mate. You're on the wrong path there!
Friend: if they read Brazilian news papers then they are reading left wing, you have no concept, the guardian would be considered right wing
Friend: foreign journalists rely on local news contacts

Oh, yes, always the communists.


Me: anyway I'll pass this on to them, and let you know what they think of your views
Friend: I called up the FT journalist in Brazil writing about the amazon, he lived so far from the amazon and admitted he had never visited
Friend: if you tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth
Friend: I have dealt with a tribal chief... they will sell their mother

What is the fucking point here? Tribal chiefs in semi-civilized areas are not an example of correctness? Oh! What a surprise! And this justifies the shit load of absurd the guys does? Gimme a fucking break.



Friend: I have had the misfortune of seeing a lot of this from the inside...
Friend: I have friends in SP that say that they have never seen corruption, I then go through their everyday and we manage to find several examples, they then get annoyed and say that is how it is...
Friend: I think Bolso says many objectionable things, BUT what he is trying to do is fundamentally correct. the trouble is there are literally 10,000 guys out of jail on appeal, he wanted to leave in jail, these corrupt men and women will never do a day in jail, and they have cost the country 100's of billions.

The justice system here is a mess, 99% of the people in jail are from the bottom of pyramid. Jails are literally a crime factory -- and guys like Bozo need them just like that. 10.000 guys cost 100's of billions. Then one guy costs 10's of millions... good math.


Friend: but he is a guy that doesn't have the polish of his foreign educated opponents, so doesn't know when to shut up.
He was always going to be on a sticky wicket when he cancelled all govt advertising (10's of billions of reais) so the media decided right then he had to go. I worked on a deal with a big TV co, the govt kick backs even then were massive, and this wasn't Globo!!
he then cut the funding for the artists which was meant for new and emerging talent, but was being exploited by the big names to the tune of billions, these two savings they re-directed to healthcare and education for the lower classes.

He could not miss Globo. He ticks all the boxes. Yes, it is a big media company here (in fact, there is a very good BBC documentary about it, called "Beyond Citizen Kane". It is about Globo taking down exactly Lula and PT 30 years ago. Maybe they were not that communists back then). Now Bozo is giving state money to a TV station run by a tele-evangelist of the worst kind.

Yes, former governments misused the money for culture (not exactly for new and emerging talent, but ok). But the part were he says that Bozo redirected it health care and education is priceless.



Friend: I am not expecting much, sadly Brazil like US has become highly polarized, which kills debate and reason. all about the soundbite and the next shocking headline

It is fucking unbelievable. The guys that resort to "communist" every two phrases complain about "polarization". Bozo fired the head of our aerospace institute (completely technical guy) simply because the institute published the usual satellite images of the Amazon -- and accused him of political motivation and/or taking money from NGO's. There are countless examples of those (the last minister of health is the latest victim).

Unfortunately I have very little time. I would love tear those "arguments" (gasp) to pieces with calm and collected evidences.



P.S, Oh, I just remembered something I wanted to share. Unfortunately my own sister is one "Bozo believer". So she sent me one week ago a link were one Bozo supporter took the last two weeks Covid-19 data from Brazil (active cases) valid at that point, using that to show that the numbers were coming down. But the guy chose the initial date carefully. He started one day before a weekend and a holiday (which was local maximum of the curve). In weekends and holydays the number of REPORTED cases is generally smaller (this is supported by basically all the data here). This way he can "find" an initial downward trend. But the main trick was that those two weeks included one day were all recoveries from the whole two preceeding months were counted (in other words, incorrect data), so the total number of cases has a sharp drop in one day. And he chose the final point of the curve just after a weekend (local minimum). Put it all together and -- at that time -- looking at that precise stripe of data, it could seem it was all coming down.

My sister sent that piece of absolute shit in the family whatsapp group. The very fucking definition of disinformation. Then I had to get all the data, see what was going on, found out the trick the guy made, calmly debunked everything. One precious hour lost.

And then she answered that I was intellectually dishonest. So, yeah, it is pretty polarized. The question is by whom.

(sorry about the rant folks. Bozo supporters go to the front of hospitals to honk their car horns to "protest". I have fucking seen it with my own eyes more than once. Really hard to take these people seriously)
Excellent! I can't wait to pass this on! :)
 

Federberg

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Thought this was a very interesting article, and something people like Kudlow need to factor in when they talk about a rapid economic recovery. There's a very real chance that behaviours could change after this, and profound economic consequences could result. For one thing, I won't be investing in commercial property anytime soon!


My urge to splurge is over and won’t be returning soon


Last weekend I was lolling on the sofa reading the papers in the afternoon sun when I was struck by an awful thought. I realised I am so dull that, even though I have spent more than a month in Covid captivity, I miss remarkably little of the life I led before.It turns out I can live easily without Friday nights in a restaurant or Saturdays in a bar. I always thought I loved going out to the cinema but apparently I am just as happy at home with Netflix. The hundreds of pounds I spend each year on the gym also look increasingly pointless. I can get by with a bike ride involving hills and the odd lope around the block.It was while I was on one of those lopes, down the local high street, that a more profound realisation dawned. Shop after shuttered shop existed to sell stuff for a rushed, commuting office life that I — and millions like me — may never lead again. Assuming I manage to keep my job, there seems a high chance I will be asked to spend more time slobbing about at home. So I won’t need so many visits to my favourite dry-cleaner to freshen a batch of blouses, or the nice shoe repair man to fix a rickety heel. I doubt I will spend as much on hair and general upkeep either, or the all too occasional frock.I probably won’t be alone. The mass Covid experiment in home working is already prompting the bosses of big employers such as Barclays bank and the Mondelez food group to wonder aloud if their reams of big city offices might be a thing of the past. The question is, now that people like me have had a taste of frugality, how long will it last once a semblance of normality returns? Will there be a pent-up splurge of excess? Or will we look back and wonder what made so many of us spend what the British ecological economist, Professor Tim Jackson, has called money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last, on people we don’t care about?


There is no real way of knowing, even if the answer is vital to businesses worldwide. But it is possible to talk to Michael Landy, a London artist who catalogued everything he owned and took it to a disused department store in the shopping mecca of Oxford Street in early 2001, where he systematically destroyed the lot in an arresting piece of performance art called Break Down. Passport. Love letters. Birth certificate. Paintings from famous artist friends. A Saab car. All of it went, leaving him with a pair of boots and the boiler suit he was standing in at the time. I still remember watching a BBC documentary about it, mouth agape, just after I moved to London a year later. Considering how Covid-19 has unexpectedly revealed my own capacity for cutbacks, I called Mr Landy last week to find out if his extreme act of deprivation had had any lasting effects.“It changed me as a consumer, most definitely,” he said. “I have a lot less things than I had before.” He also became much more aware of what he was buying, he said, and prone to periodic clear-outs.On the other hand, he did get another car and has a “normal” home in east London, as well as a studio. When the UK lockdown stopped him going to the gym recently, he bought a punch bag, which is in the studio next to a cross-trainer exercise machine.So he is not a total loss to the consumerist cause. But when he thinks back to his public bout of destruction in 2001, he mentions two things that seem relevant to today’s unsettling times. First, a lot of the thousands of people who came to gawk at him began to talk unprompted about their own possessions, and how they really only cared about photos, gifts or things they had made themselves. I suspect a lot of us have thought about what really matters lately.Second, he says people were unexpectedly kind to him. Strangers bought him clothes. Friends gave him necessities. Ultimately, he was left with a sense that feels familiar in today’s strained times, with their unusual public displays of gratitude to the workers we rely on. “I came away thinking,” he said, “that on the whole, the British public are alright.”
 

tented

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not sure about his last comment advocating owning s&p 500 exposure. At the moment he hasn't dipped into the market (he has billions in cash at the moment), which implies that it goes much lower before we get a genuine turn. I would actually agree. My bias is still bearish at the moment, I still believe the bounce we've seen while extraordinary is to be expected in a bear market, and the violence of the bounce is not unreasonable given the speed of the initial collapse. We may have seen the fullness of the bounce actually, we've tested key retracement levels and the 200 day moving average seems to be capping the bounce so far. Risk reward remains to the downside in my view... just my opinion

The latest, focusing on Buffet’s sale of airline stocks.
 

tented

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As if 2020 weren’t bad enough, now this ...

Asian giant hornet invasion becomes latest 2020 concern

Look at the size of these things:

A0CE5C4B-1891-44CD-BD22-81F072804B41.jpeg
 
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Federberg

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The latest, focusing on Buffet’s sale of airline stocks.
this is telling you that we won't go back to "normal" after this. There will be sectors of the economy that will be damaged long term. Airlines and commercial property are amongst the most obvious victims of this pandemic. As of right now it seems that his cash hoard is growing which implies that he hasn't settled on a sector that he's identified as a longer term beneficiary. If and when you hear that he's piling into consumer stocks that will be the signal that he thinks that we're on the path to recovery. I'm guessing he won't do that at these levels, which implies he still thinks the broader industries will go much lower (if he thought they were only going to go down 10% that would be a rounding error for him), and I agree!
 

Horsa

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calitennis127

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This story is very funny and shows what a crock this whole COVID saga really has been from the start.

So the man who scared the shit out of everyone in the UK and Europe and many people in the U.S. with his Imperial College Study in order to usher in the reign of SOCIAL DISTANCING just had to, well, resign from his job because he violated social distancing.

Exclusive: Government scientist Neil Ferguson resigns after breaking lockdown rules to meet his married lover

Prof Ferguson allowed the woman to visit him at home during the lockdown while lecturing the public on the need for strict social distancing


5 May 2020 • 7:17pm

 

mrzz

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Excellent! I can't wait to pass this on! :)

New developments since my last post:

Bozo is -- according to himself -- since August last year trying to change the boss of the Rio de Janeiro (his home state) Federal Police (Brazil's equivalent to the FBI). This is the (admitted by both sides) ultimate cause for Moro's resignation. This Monday he finally did it. He changed the general director of the PF who in turn (in his first move) changed that local superintendent (the guy, as we say here, "fell upwards", landing a higher post, but a bureaucratic one, AWAY from all investigations). The obvious question is: why the hell a president spends all this energy to change a local police chief? Check my answer above and see that I mentioned "death squads" and small time criminals. Yeah, as unbelievable as that.

Second -- this is a detail but an interesting one regarding your friend.

A lot of dirty laundry being washed in public, so super genious Bozo made one of his classic bravatas, took his cell phone from his pocket and showed some messages that he exchanged with Moro when he was still the minister of justice. Problem is that he showed more than he wanted to show (he keeps producing evidence against himself, as a lot of people here are saying), and in that movement he showed one message were he complains that environmental agency here is destroying machinery used in illegal panning in the Amazon(!!!!!!). He tried to interfere in that, he thought at first that was the Brazilian equivalent of the US National Guard that was doing that (thus under some influence of Moro), Moro explained that the National Force was only providing security for the environmental agency, the next day he fired the head of it -- some months before all that he fired the head of the aerospace agency for publishing satellite pictures of the Amazon (detail, that is an automatic process). Those guys in illegal panning usually invade indigenous lands, and exterminate them. Your friend wa saying that those indigenous leaders are not to be trusted... See the picture?

All that was showed by Bozo himself. Quite frankly I suspect your friend might be one beneficiary of all that, even if a secondary one. Nobody with one and a half neurons could still back this guy for nothing.
 
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Jelenafan

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Listen, I understand that they are uncomfortable, (and despite all the suggestions my glasses still fog up), that they are culturally not compatible with people's mindset. Our individual rights hairs stand up. Not disputing that the change from public advisory of "masks aren't necessary and don't help" to "wears mask in public" is annoying and raises eyebrows. I get that it conveys to some cowing in to fear or panic. Understand they are not visually or aesthetically pleasing or let you look in command/authoritative. Yes, the visceral reaction to others telling you what to do, in a "We know best" draconian manner is genuine and human.

However, if they aid in preventing the spread of the virus, suck it up and just wear the damn mask.
 
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Federberg

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This is really disturbing. Why would you not want to recruit someone who has had the virus but survived. Surely that's exactly who you would want assuming that immunity is a thing. What do we not know about what happens to survivors?? :astonished-face:

 

britbox

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This is food for thought. The video will get deleted by Youtube, so watch it while you get the chance.



Even if this is only 10% true, it raises concerns.
 

Moxie

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This is food for thought. The video will get deleted by Youtube, so watch it while you get the chance.



Even if this is only 10% true, it raises concerns.

There is a lot in there, and worth investigating. One thing I would say from the outset is that Larry Kramer, playwright and AIDS activist, and Anthony Fauci, for all of their antipathy, and because of it, have become good friends over how they worked together on the AIDS pandemic. If Kramer trusts Fauci, I'm inclined to. As to much of the rest, if you're going to be paranoid, it's hard to dispute, because then everything becomes a bit "deep state." However, I will also say this right out: I've called Cali's youtube one-off's as not exactly evidence, and I'll have to call this as one, too, though it's much more professional.

This is the wiki on Judy Mikovits. She "might" be a bit of an anti-vaxxer, and a conspiracy theorist, though she says she's not against vaccines on your video. (And then she says it might kill thousands of people, so, grain of salt.)

What else perked your ear from it?
 

calitennis127

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Great video here.....I'm not buying the numbers out of Italy, just as I certainly am not buying the numbers out of the U.S.

There have clearly been a slew of cases where coronavirus was cited as cause of death for people when it wasn't actually the cause.

I'm glad this Italian politician agrees. An epic rant right here from Vittorio Sgarbi.

Italian Leader Slams 'False COVID-19 Numbers: 25K Did Not Die, it's a way to Impose a Dictatorship'