Articles and notes on recent events

Thu Jun 4 22:01:26 PDT 2020

#### Politics ####

## Curfews have been lifted in D.C. andL.A. county. The violence is dying down, and the four officers beingcharged seem to have had an effect. Was there also an effect from theNational guard?

#Jim Craig, an associate professor ofmilitary and veteran studies in relation to the Ferguson civildistress in 2014 said, “calling out the national guard for a floodis one thing, calling out the national guard for riots and unrestmoves say into the extreme.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/what-is-national-guard-ferguson-missouri

#So let’s not discount the extremenature of what has just happened and also the fact that it has becomeobviously much more common since many states deployed the nationguard this last week.

#As of June 2, 23 states activated theNational Guard in reaction to the riots, 17,000 of them on Mondaymorning. 45,000 have already been activated in response to the Covidcrisis. That means about 66,700 National Guard personnel are activeright now in all 50 states. This is multiples of the amount ofactive-duty troops in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/06/02/which-us-states-have-deployed-the-national-guard-in-response-to-the-protests-infographic/#10ed87706195

##Even though things seem to have been dying down and staying peacefulPortland is still dealing with violence as they have a large ANTIFAto citizen ratio, and some rioters abroad have begun to express theirsolidarity with the American rioters by rioting themselves. Greekdemonstrators as the most extravagant of them all threw Molotov cocktails towards the U.S. embassy in Athens.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests-greece/greek-demonstrators-hurl-firebombs-towards-us-embassy-in-athens-idUSKBN23A2ZL

## Nolonger are the protests for justice for George Floyd as that seems tobe well on its way, but the riots are now against white superiority and police brutality.

##This is good, more or less, it’s undoubtedly something that needs tobe addressed. But what comes to mind is Killer Mike’s speech inAtlanta a few days ago. We need to be beating our opposition up in thevoting booth. By putting the the politicians you want into the jobswhere they can make a difference there’s a big chance of changingsome things. But right now the rioters are trying to kill wasps witha shotgun, it’s not going to work, they’re going to cause a lotof damage, and get themselves hurt in the process. Dealing with waspsproperly is going to take more time and effort but will be much moreeffective.

...Whichleads me to, another success in this saga:

## Defund the Police

## NYC Comptroller Wants $1.1B cut fromthe NYPD

#The cut is supposed to happen over thenext four years in order to aid “vulnerable communities mostimpacted by police violence and structural racism.”

#The plan: $265M annually by reducingheadcount through attrition, suspending hiring of new police classes,and scaling back overtime. According to statement from ScottStringer.

https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-to-mayor-de-blasio-cut-1-1-billion-in-nypd-spending-over-four-years-and-reinvest-in-vulnerable-communities-and-vital-services/

#The 1.1B cut is a %19 reduction in the overall budget for the NYPD

## So that’s a win! Or, is it just aconsolation prize? Like we talked about there is a substantial amountof National guard deployed right now. I realize that many of thepeople in the national guard are average citizens on reserve, butthis feels close to martial law! Maybe governors of all the statesare realizing how easy it is to deploy the National Guard reservesduring a crisis and therefore don’t feel the need to have policefunded? This is a major speculation and as I’m sure the NYCcomptroller and Governor Cuomo know each other but it’s a long shotthat they are colluding.

## Never the less, I am alwayssuspicious when the government “cuts back” and ask myself, arethey really cutting back or are they just moving power and influenceform the front-end to the back-end in order to save face but retaincontrol.

## If it is in good faith, is it reallythe most effective route to take? Right now it probably is for manyreasons, the least of them not being that of calming down the angrypeople and showing them that the government cares. But I feel there’smore of a change in the way of a spiritual revolution that could beof a larger benefit.

## Nicolo Machiavelli’s eighth ruleof war: Discipline in war counts more than fury.

https://warontherocks.com/2014/08/machiavellis-27-rules-of-war/

## “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” - Aristotle

#### Covid ####

## NYC hits zero confirmed covid deathsfor first day since march

#NYC hit it’s peak death rate onApril 7

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-deaths-confirmed-covid-de-blasio-20200604-a5dfx2l6hvgwlll4vou67zrqla-story.html

## The fact is that this pandemic hasbeen bad, but not as bad as we expected.

## Another 1.9 million have filed forunemployment, the ninth week of that number declining but still amassive ammount of unemployed. Still more unemployed than during thegreat depression.

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-nyc-us-world-updates-latest-20200529-454anhyubvhtnofqqjqneiaryy-story.html

#### Crypto ####

## MakerDAO weighs accepting real-worldassets as crypto loan collateral.

#Another step towards more robustdecentralized financial services, one of the most promising ideas inthe cryptocurrency space.

https://www.coindesk.com/makerdao-weighs-accepting-real-world-assets-as-crypto-loan-collateral

#With decentralized financial serviceseveryone with an internet connection can take advantage of the samemethods that the ultra rich use in order to protect their wealth.

#That is, creating liquidity fromnonliquid assets and therefore adding a layer of protection frominflation (among other things.)

#Why do you think that the ultrawealthy buy painting for hundreds of millions of dollars? It’s avery slowly appreciating thing and is difficult to take care of.First of all it’s definitely insured so they can recoup much ofthat cost, but it’s also very easy to put that up as collateral andopen a line of credit with a bank that cost them about 1% ininterest. So they do in fact use the money to purchase the paintingbut in a roundabout way make it possible to take that money back outfrom the investment without actually selling the asset itself.

#Projects like Celsius and MakerDAO dothe exact same thing but with cryptocurrency. It requires no creditrating, little KYC, and your loan comes to you with about a 1%interest rate.

#The advancement of Non-fungibletokens, which is what powers crypto kitties, is what will be able toact as lesson between your real world assets and the loan that youtake out (in a USD-pegged stable coin, by the way.)

#Goes to show that most technologicaladvancements become applied to at worst borderline nonsensicalprojects and at best fun things to do before they go on topotentially change the entire world as we know it.

#This is a big deal that could makeMakerDAO a lot of money and enable the common people to takeadvantage of financial services that are currently reserved for thewealthy and well-connected.

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