'One orb, slightly used': MBS book reveals fate of Trump's mysterious Saudi sphere

Saudis gave gadget that briefly captivated the internet to the US – but embassy officials fearful of scandal soon hid it away 

Martin Pengelly in New York @MartinPengelly
Wed 4 Mar 2020 THE GUARDIAN

VIDEO
Donald Trump touches glowing orb to open anti-terrorism centre

The mysterious glowing orb which Donald Trump, King Salman and Abdel Fatah al-Sisi clutched in Riyadh in May 2017 is now in US possession, according to a new book – but is hidden away for fear of causing a scandal.

The bizarre factoid is contained in MBS, a new book by the New York Times correspondent Ben Hubbard about the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

'One orb to rule them all': image of Donald Trump and glowing globe perplexes internet

Hubbard recounts the crown prince’s rise to power and his ruthless suppression of rivals; his direction of Saudi foreign policy including the war in Yemen; and his links to the October 2018 murder in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and regime critic who lived in the US and worked for the Washington Post.

The author also details apparent Saudi attempts to hack his phone, an experience which the Guardian recently revealed he allegedly shares with Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the richest man in the world.

But in his examination of the development of Prince Mohammed’s close and controversial relationship with the Trump administration, Hubbard also reveals the fate of the memorable orb, which Trump encountered on his first overseas trip as president.

Local media reported that when the presidents of the US and Egypt and the Saudi monarch caressed the pulsing sphere, it “officially activated” the Saudis’ new Global Centre for Combating Extremist Ideology “and launched a splashy welcome video”.

The internet had other ideas, of course, and images of the bizarre ceremony paired with scenes from The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Star Wars spread rapidly online, to general if predictably short-lived hilarity.

Hubbard reveals that after Trump went home, “an unusual accessory showed up in a hallway at the US embassy in Riyadh: one orb, slightly used”.

The Saudis, he writes, had noticed US visitors to their Centre gleefully taking pictures with the orb, so they decided to give it to their American guests.

Alas, the orb’s fate matched that of many who come into contact with Trump: after shining brightly for a brief but brilliant moment, it was consigned to the chilliest outer darkness.

“It sat in a hallway for a number of days, where diplomats passing by would pose for photos,” Hubbard writes. But then “someone apparently worried that the photos would make their way online and cause a scandal, so the orb was hidden away in embassy storage”.

Hubbard does not report that the orb now lies, like the Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones movie, in a forgotten crate deep in some vast government warehouse, glowing with a faint but ominous pulse.

The Guardian prefers to believe that it does.

'Hail orb!': Trump's Saudi photo op summons black magic jokes on Twitter

Josh K. Elliott CTVNews.ca Published Monday, May 22, 2017 

Internet lights up after Trump holds glowing orb

NOW PLAYING
The internet is buzzing over photos of the U.S. president touching a giant glowing orb.

U.S. President Donald Trump gave the internet a huge, tremendous gift during his visit to Saudi Arabia, when he joined two Arab leaders in touching a big, glowing orb for a photo op. It was very good and also, very unbelievable. People (i.e. internet users) are saying it was the most tremendous orb-touching moment in history, because it looked like they were summoning a demon, not opening an anti-terrorism centre.

The strange moment happened at the opening of the new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, in Saudi Arabia, where Trump met with Arab leaders during a state visit. Trump joined with Saudi King Salaman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to officially open the anti-extremist center with a photo op.

But they didn't cut a ribbon. Instead, they touched an orb.

Photos show Trump, Salaman and al-Sisi each placing both of their hands on the glowing, basketball-sized orb, with delegates all around them and the overhead lights switched off. The result was a mysterious, black magic-looking moment in which the three world leaders' faces are lit by the glow of the orb, while a diverse group of dignitaries watch and smile in the background.

It was fodder for comedic gold, and the internet was quick to pounce. Even the Church of Satan Twitter account poked fun at the bizarre spectacle. "For clarification, this is not a Satanic ritual," the group tweeted.

For clarification, this is not a Satanic ritual. pic.twitter.com/CccP39fqN4— The Church Of Satan (@ChurchofSatan) May 22, 2017




The Art Of The Deal

CHAPTER 6-Evil Orbs Of Power
There comes a time in every deal when you'll be required to siphon energy from an orb... pic.twitter.com/MYTcp5exDr— Jordan (@jordan_stratton) May 21, 2017

I haven't been able to catch up on the news but I know there is no way Trump touched the Glowing Orb of Global Islamic Dominance.— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) May 21, 2017

trump 100% made a wish when he touched the orb pic.twitter.com/S0TlxgxtBY— KRANG T. NELSON (@KrangTNelson) May 21, 2017

Child: do you remember when Trump touched the Orb?

Me: Yes. None of us realized what it would-

Orb Police: HAIL ORB

Me & child: hail orb— Gödel, Escher, Baka (@jephjacques) May 21, 2017

Tale of two leaders...

Trudeau- Takes pic with prom kids during run

Trump- Puts hand on orb & has daughter make speech for him after pic.twitter.com/KwmJOQxJ4p— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) May 22, 2017

Remember when real estate developer Donald Trump went to Saudi Arabia and touched a magic orb that reset the timeline and made him President— maple cocaine (@historyinflicks) May 22, 2017

I like this one guy who got the warning not to look directly at the orb, lest his face melt like in Raiders of the Lost Ark. pic.twitter.com/nI4um3KVhP— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 22, 2017

@sarahjeong another view of orb pic.twitter.com/Rt4tMQIVHA— Kathryn (@the_castle_gate) May 22, 2017

when that dank orb hits pic.twitter.com/B559plLEnm— Matt Popovich (@mpopv) May 21, 2017

oh you know, a bunch of plutocrats in a darkened room putting their hands on a glowing orb in a totally non-illuminati kind of way pic.twitter.com/Q2Ue2FBi6l— shrill �������� (@theshrillest) May 21, 2017

@NickGreene Spicer:the president has not and will never use the orb to talk to sauron
45: I talked to Sauron, tremendous guy, very bright, he's great.— Boo (@TheSpaceHamster) May 21, 2017

when the squad poses for a group picture but you're all vampires so the only available light source is where ursula keeps ariel's soul pic.twitter.com/UztfWDNI2M— Luke Giordano (@lukegiordano) May 22, 2017

The next Lord of the Rings movie looks terrible. pic.twitter.com/gVhv5bt0rK— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) May 21, 2017

tfw you and your friends unearth an ancient alien hell orb and combine your powers inside it to stop superman >>>>> pic.twitter.com/kzsYEKC4R0— jon hendren (@fart) May 21, 2017

It's unclear what powers, if any, Trump gained from touching the orb.
Trump's encounter with glowing orb sets Twitter alight with evil villain jokes
Veronika Bondarenko and Reuters
May 22, 2017, 7:34 AM

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, Saudi King Salman, U.S. First Lady Melania Trump and President Donald Trump, visit a new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Press AgencyImages of President Donald Trump placing his hands on a glowing orb has set alight the internet, prompting comparisons to science fiction and fantasy villains.

The pictures were taken while Trump — on a nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe — along with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi visited a new Saudi center for combating extremism.


The trio placed their hands on the orb to formally open the center, and set a welcome film in motion. Social media users were swift to let their imaginations run wild.

"Oh my god. Trump has obtained the Bajoran Orb of Time," tweeted games developer and US congressional candidate Brianna Wu, in a reference to a mythical object from the "Star Trek" universe.
—Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) May 21, 2017

"I am gone from Twitter for like a few hours, and now Trump is a holding a Palantír!" Twitter user chrisError wrote, a reference to one of the magical crystal balls used by characters in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" series, notably the evil wizard Saruman, to see across time and space.
—chrisError (@chrisError) May 21, 2017
—Nick Greene (@NickGreene) May 21, 2017

Many users also referenced Hydra, the fictional villains in several Marvel comics properties, with some posting pictures of the event along with the group's catch phrase: "hail Hydra". Others joked that Trump was trying to "take down the illuminati."
—Ben Gross (@bhgross144) May 21, 2017
—The Cosmic Brain (@samthielman) May 21, 2017

Others took a different approach to poking fun at the US president. The Church of Satan, a US-based religious group which claims to have "defined Satanism," posted a picture of the event on its official Twitter account with the comment: "For clarification, this is not a satanic ritual."

—The Church Of Satan (@ChurchofSatan) May 22, 2017

Trump, a famously prolific Twitter user, has thus far not made reference to the activity on his personal or official Twitter accounts. Still, some joked about how Trump's tweets would change now that Trump has touched the orb.
—Pixelated Boat (@pixelatedboat) May 21, 2017

The hilarious Trump orb photo is a nearly perfect metaphor for his foreign policy

Don’t worry, we explain what the orb literally is too.

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com May 22, 2017, 1:30pm EDT

There is one picture from Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East that has come to stand in for the entire thing. It is a photo of Trump, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi holding a creepy glowing orb in a darkened room in Saudi Arabia.

oh you know, a bunch of plutocrats in a darkened room putting their hands on a glowing orb in a totally non-illuminati kind of way pic.twitter.com/Q2Ue2FBi6l— shrill (@theshrillest) May 21, 2017

When the picture came out on Sunday, it blew up on social media with the obvious pop-culture references. The obviously correct one, for my money, is the palantír from Lord of the Rings. 

' 

 (Knaakvey/New Line Cinema)

"find...the...hobbit..." pic.twitter.com/8saqDbl5Nh— darth:™ (@darth) May 21, 2017

But what’s actually going on here?

Trump was attending the opening of Saudi Arabia’s Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, a new organization dedicated to monitoring propaganda from ISIS, al-Qaeda, and similar groups. The opening was attended by more than 50 Muslim heads of state from around the world, some of whom can be seen in the background of the photo.

The Saudi royal family is well known for its opulent tastes and love of theatrics: They literally projected Trump’s face on the hotel he stayed at in Riyadh.

We've arrived at the palatial Ritz hotel in Riyadh where Trump will be staying. Very Vegas. But with some extra exterior lighting. pic.twitter.com/9Xibrezo2w— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) May 19, 2017

So having Trump, Sisi, and Salman simultaneously press their hands against the glowing orb — which, if you look closely, is a globe — was just their characteristically flashy way of officially declaring the new center open for business. According to the Saudi press, their hands on the globe “officially activated” the center.

Which, okay, fine — it was just a dumb PR stunt. We get it. But the symbolism here is really remarkable.

Think about it for a second: This is Donald Trump — the guy who campaigned on banning Muslim immigration to the United States and replacing “globalism” in foreign policy with “America First” — literally holding a globe surrounded by Muslims. That’s absurd!

Absurd, yes — but also telling. As much as Trump has been himself when it comes to his never-ending scandals, his actual foreign policy has so far constituted a complete and total reversal of his campaign promises. It’s hard to think of a more potent metaphor for this than what we saw in that photo.
Trump the globalist

At the same event in which Trump held the palantír — er, globe — he delivered a speech to the assembled leaders about Islamic extremism. What’s striking, as my colleague Sarah Wildman notes, is that the speech was utterly and totally banal.

"This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations,” the president said. “This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.”

These are things that have easily could have been said by Barack Obama or George W. Bush — pretty standard “Islam is not the problem, extremists are” type comments. By contrast, the Donald Trump we saw on the campaign:
Said “I think Islam hates us” in an interview with Anderson Cooper;
Told a fake story about a US general executing 50 Muslim prisoners in the Philippines using bullets dipped in pig’s blood, citing it as inspiration for how he wants to deal with prisoners; and
Blamed “political correctness” for blocking Americans from telling the truth about “the hateful ideology of radical Islam.”

That candidate Trump bore approximately zero resemblance to the President Trump we saw in Saudi Arabia. The Muslim ban, the clearest point of continuity between candidate Trump and President Trump on Islam, is currently being blocked in court — and wasn’t mentioned at all publicly, by either the president or the other attendees. It was as if Trump was a normal American president, one who had never spoken of Islam and Muslims in harsh terms, attending a typical counter-extremism event with American partners.

Nor is Islam the only issue on which the president’s foreign policy has ceased to resemble what he promised on the campaign.

The core thing that distinguished Trump from his enemies in the establishment, according to candidate Trump, was his skepticism of so-called “globalism.” That word, a pejorative favorite of the alt-right, referred to the elite consensus in favor of an active US presence in global affairs: membership in international institutions like NATO and the UN, open trade policies, intervention in foreign conflicts, and the like.

“We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism,” Trump said in his first major foreign policy address last April. “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down and will never enter.”

Trump had a series of ideas for how to enact this. He proposed, at various times, ending America’s ironclad commitment to defending its NATO allies, labeling China a currency manipulator (a term which would be accompanied by trade sanctions), opening up to partnership with Russia, and staying out of Middle East quagmires unless they involve killing terrorists. So far, he has reversed himself on most of these proposals:

On NATO, he explicitly reversed himself in an April press conference: "I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete.”

On China, he backed off entirely in an April interview, saying "They're not currency manipulators.”

He has failed to remove any sanctions on Russia imposed after the invasion of Crimea or meaningfully alter America’s stance toward Moscow in any other respect.

He intentionally bombed Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria for the first time in punishment for chemical weapons use — a more aggressive intervention against Assad than anything Obama was willing to do.

A few of Trump’s campaign ideas have made it through to his presidency, like the Muslim ban and a commitment to renegotiating NAFTA (albeit in toned-down form). But right now, these are the exceptions rather than the rule.

On the big, basic, defining issues of American foreign policy — alliances and relations with great powers — Trump has basically committed himself to the “globalist” stance of every other post-Cold War US president. There is no radical, sharp break in basic foreign policy orientation, which is what Trump explicitly promised.

That’s why Trump holding a glowing globe while surrounded by Muslim leaders is such a potent symbol.

Trump During the Campaign: "I will NEVER touch The Orb, even though its mysterious glow seduces and beguiles."
Trump Today: pic.twitter.com/eWoaDeXj8n— Nick Greene (@NickGreene) May 21, 2017

It’s not just that the orb is hilarious. It’s that it’s a perfect stand-in for President Trump’s betrayal of candidate Trump.

They came from outer Finland: the town where everyone saw UFOs – in pictures

The photographer Maria Lax comes from a northern Finnish town where UFO sightings were common – so she set about looking for answers. 

Her book Some Kind of Heavenly Fire is published by Setanta Books

Tue 3 Mar 2020 

• ‘The first known UFO sightings in the area were made as early as the 1920s. But because of fears that they would be labelled as crazy by others, people kept what they saw a secret and would only come forward with their experiences decades later - and more than likely most never spoke of what they saw’

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• ‘There is a larger story running alongside the UFO sightings. Rapid industrialisation in the 60s and early 70s meant that people couldn’t support their families by farming and were forced to move to cities in search of jobs. Some towns lost nearly half their populations. A whole lifestyle disappeared in a matter of a few years, and those who lived through it remember it as a painful, uncertain time. It’s little wonder the UFO sightings embodied a fear of the future and the unknown. I wanted to bring all of this in by photographing the abandoned houses and showing the isolation’

‘The first known UFO sightings in the area were made as early as the 1920s. But because of fears that they would be labelled as crazy by others, people kept what they saw a secret and would only come forward with their experiences decades later - and more than likely most never spoke of what they saw’

‘There is a larger story running alongside the UFO sightings. Rapid industrialisation in the 60s and early 70s meant that people couldn’t support their families by farming and were forced to move to cities in search of jobs. Some towns lost nearly half their populations. A whole lifestyle disappeared in a matter of a few years, and those who lived through it remember it as a painful, uncertain time. It’s little wonder the UFO sightings embodied a fear of the future and the unknown. I wanted to bring all of this in by photographing the abandoned houses and showing the isolation’.


‘One of the people I interviewed told me: “I remember waking up one night and the room being awash with the most beautiful colours. I knew it was the aliens but I wasn’t afraid. I knew they didn’t wish me any harm.” Although some locals I spoke to were still visibly scared and cautious of sharing what they had experienced decades ago, others said the strange lights were a thing that gave them hope; a sign they hadn’t been forgotten’

‘The title Some Kind of Heavenly Fire comes from a quote in my grandfather’s book about the alien sightings. When an older woman saw what looked like the forest on fire on a cold winter’s night, she described the strange lights by saying it wasn’t anything from this world - but what she saw was “some kind of heavenly fire”. The town where I come from was, and still is, deeply religious in parts, and I thought that quote was the perfect summary for the different elements for the photo book’

Materialist premises in Hobbes and Kropotkin for antipodean conclusions: 
The state of war and the mutual aid 
Francesco Scotognella11Dipartimento di Fisica, 
Politecnico di Milano, piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202001.0363/v2/download
To whom the correspondence should be addressed: francesco.scotognella@polimi.it

Abstract
A methodological similarity between Thomas Hobbes and Pëtr Kropotkin is the intention to spread a theoretical foundation to everyone, in the sense that they are willing to give to all the people a clear description of the reality and a subsequent political view. To do so, they use a scientific method, deductive (starting from empirical observations) in the case of Hobbes, inductive-deductive in the case of Kropotkin. Kropotkin underlines the educational value of the scientific method. In this work we want to highlight that, although they both start their argumentation's from a materialist ontology, Hobbes and Kropotkin conjecture two completely different states of nature.Hobbes describes the state of nature through the two famous metaphors homo homini lupus (citing Plautus) and bellum omnium contra omnes, while Kropotkin introduced the theory of mutual aid.Both the theory of a state of war by Hobbes and the theory of mutual aid by Kropotkin have been revolutionary. Hobbes has been influenced by the scientific revolution initiated by Francis Bacon,one of his mentors, and Galileo Galilei, together with a criticism towards the ancient Greece philosophers, in particular Aristotle. Kropotkin has been influenced by the ground-breaking writings of Charles Darwin together with a very fruitful Russian scientific environment.We want to stress here that the disenchanted view of the human nature in Hobbes, a state of war due to the fact that everyone has rights on everything, helps him to legitimate sovereignty, while
the positive view of human nature in Kropotkin, a spontaneous mutual aid among people in a community, helps him to legitimate anarchy. Therefore, the fascinating scientific methods of the two materialists Hobbes and Kropotkin to structure a solid political theory cannot neglect different views on human nature due to their historical contexts. broad, or from public or private research centers. 

Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 19 February 2020
doi:10.20944/preprints202001.0363.v2
© 2020 by the author(s). Distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY license.

Borneo
The world’s only known albino orangutan has been spotted alive and well in a rainforest, more than a year after she was released into the wild. Alba, a blue-eyed primate covered in fuzzy white hair, was found in 2017, where she was being kept as a pet in a cage by villagers in the Indonesian section of Borneo, known as Kalimantan
Photograph: Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation/AFP/Getty Images

ALBINISM IS INCREASING AS AN EVOLUTIONARY TRAIT NOT ONLY IN HUMANS BUT ANIMALS AS WELL, IN AFRICA ALBINISM IN HUMANS IS LEADING TO THEIR DEATHS AT THE HANDS OF WITCHDOCTORS. 

SPIRIT ANIMALS DESPITE THEIR RARITY ARE STILL HUNTED AND KILLED RATHER THAN BEING HELD SACRED TO BE LEFT ALONE.

SPIRIT ANIMALS APPEAR IN AREAS OF GAIA VULNERABLE TO 
HUMAN CONQUEST, COLONIZATION AND DESTRUCTION WHETHER VILLAGE, OR METROPOLIS, HUNTER GATHERER OR AGRARIAN INDUSTRIAL. 

GLOBALIZATION SPREADS CAPITALISM AROUND THE GLOBE
WITH ITS CONSUMPTION FETISH AND DESTRUCTIVE NEED FOR 
GROWTH AT ALL COSTS; OR AT LEAST 3% PER YEAR.

Mike Bloomberg quits 2020 race after spending more than $500m

Billionaire candidate faced controversy over his wealth, stop-and-frisk policy and past remarks against women and minorities

Bloomberg drops out of race – follow live updates


Enjoli Liston and Joanna Walters in New York

Wed 4 Mar 2020  THE GUARDIAN


Play Video
3:49 Mike Bloomberg: four issues that hindered his presidential hopes – video

The billionaire Mike Bloomberg has suspended his Democratic presidential campaign after spending more than $500m on a failed attempt to seize the moderate lane from rival Joe Biden.

Mike Bloomberg drops out of 2020 race as Elizabeth Warren 'to assess path forward' – live

Bloomberg, one of the richest people in the world, blitzed the Super Tuesday voting states with an extensive and expensive advertising campaign, after controversially skipping the early primary voting states – with almost nothing to show for his millions of dollars.

The 78-year-old former New York mayor and media mogul was hit by controversy since entering the race in November and put up weak performances in the two televised presidential debates he took part in.

He has also drawn fierce criticism from fellow candidates for his wealth and self-funding his campaign; for the New York police department’s stop-and-frisk policy, which disproportionately targeted men of color during his time in office as mayor; and his history of derogatory comments against women and minorities.

In effectively dropping out on Wednesday morning, Bloomberg endorsed the moderate candidate he had come in to the race expecting to trounce but instead watched rise to unexpected frontrunner status – Joe Biden.

“I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden,” he said in an official campaign statement and on Twitter.
Mike Bloomberg(@MikeBloomberg)

Three months ago, I entered the race to defeat Donald Trump. Today, I'm leaving for the same reason. Defeating Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. It's clear that is my friend and a great American, @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/cNJDIQHS75March 4, 2020

Bloomberg had a disastrous Super Tuesday, when he was officially tested by voters for the first time having begun his campaign late last year but delayed his official entry onto the ballot until after the first four contests had taken place – in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in February.

As 14 states went to the polls on 3 March, Bloomberg was banking on making a big splash and washing Biden out of the race, to emerge as the savior of the divided centrists and go on to crush the progressive wing of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and clinch the nomination. He failed spectacularly.

Donald Trump rushed to gloat on Wednesday over an old New York ‘frenemy’.
Donald J. Trump(@realDonaldTrump)

Mini Mike Bloomberg just “quit” the race for President. I could have told him long ago that he didn’t have what it takes, and he would have saved himself a billion dollars, the real cost. Now he will pour money into Sleepy Joe’s campaign, hoping to save face. It won’t work!March 4, 2020

Since entering the race in late November, when others began their runs as early as last spring, Bloomberg splashed the cash on slick television and online advertising and held rallies all across the country, organized by a huge paid staff, but didn’t submit to probing media interviews or the ballot box in early voting states.

He touted his record as a supposed get-things-done mayor of New York who guided the city to improved prosperity and lower crime – even if the path to get there was ruthless gentrification amid a developer-friendly environment, and a racist stop-and-frisk crusade focused chiefly on young men of color in minority neighborhoods that was ultimately ruled unconstitutional.

Moves to ban smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places, tackle obesity via food regulation, and build a nationwide coalition of local leaders and activists campaigning for gun control, made the public safer and healthier – but his autocratic style alienated many.

His jump into the presidential race quickly brought back to the surface a fleet of lawsuits accusing his eponymous financial news and information company of discrimination against women.

Bloomberg had a history of making sexist jokes, allegedly undermining women in his workforce and, some of those suing said, openly discriminating against employees who got pregnant, including a corroborated report of him asking one of his workers who was joyously sharing news of her pregnancy with colleagues if she was going to “kill it”.

And having qualified for a late spot at the Democratic debates, he got on stage for the first time in Las Vegas in late February and was almost immediately speared by a laser-like attack from Elizabeth Warren on his record with female employees.

He lacked charisma and articulacy, and despite improving somewhat in the next debate, struggled to look like a top contender.

Bloomberg spent Super Tuesday in Florida and ended the night with a short speech to subdued supporters, signaling a moribund campaign.


Democratic primary 2020: latest delegate count

He lost badly to Biden and Bernie Sanders in every state and, humiliatingly, had just one victory to brandish – the tiny island territory of American Samoa in the Pacific, where he had sent a clutch of well-paid campaigners to get out the vote.

In his statement on Wednesday, Bloomberg continued: “Three months ago, I entered the race for president to defeat Donald Trump. Today, I am leaving the race for the same reason: to defeat Donald Trump – because it is clear to me that staying in would make achieving that goal more difficult.

“I’m a believer in using data to inform decisions. After yesterday’s results, the delegate math has become virtually impossible – and a viable path to the nomination no longer exists.”

He then followed with his endorsement for Biden.

Ironically, given that he has been obliged to apologize repeatedly for his administration’s long stop-and-frisk campaign in New York, he then said: “I am immensely proud of the plans we proposed – including our Greenwood Initiative to right historic wrongs, fight racial inequality, and make the promise of equal opportunity real for the black communities that have endured centuries of exploitation and discrimination.”

Bloomberg has promised to carry on spending on the Democratic ticket for rest of the election cycle.

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/republican-bloomberg-spends-half.html

BESIDES THE CORONAVIRUS THERE 

IS ANOTHER GROWING PLAGUE OF PARASITES

The super-rich: another 31,000 people join the ultra-wealthy elite

Ranks of those worth over $30m swell to 513,000 despite global growth slowdown

Rupert Neate Wealth correspondent @RupertNeate

Wed 4 Mar 2020
 

2019 was a bumper year for the very wealthy, according to an annual wealth report. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

More than 31,000 people joined the ranks of the “ultra-wealthy” last year as the fortunes of the already very rich benefitted from rising global stock markets and increased property prices.

The number of ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) – those with assets of more than $30m (£26.5m) – rose by 6% last year to 513,244, according to a report by the property consultants Knight Frank.

If the rich are getting richer, then where are they hiding it?


That means there are more ultra-wealthy people around the world than the populations of Iceland, Malta or Belize.

The UHNWI population is expected to swell by a further 27% to 650,000 by 2024, the report estimates, as huge fortunes are being made in India, Egypt, Vietnam, China and Indonesia.

Those with slightly more modest fortunes also increased. There are now 50m dollar millionaires (£770,000), up from 46.9m in 2019. That’s more than the population of Spain.

Knight Frank said in its annual wealth report that while 2019 was a “ tumultuous year” for many investors and pension funds, most of the very wealthy reported a bumper year for their personal fortunes.

Gap between rich and poor grows alongside rise in UK's total wealth

“Economically, 2019 was outwardly a tumultuous year, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reducing its forecast for global GDP growth from 3.5% in January 2019 to just 2.9% in January 2020 – a 10-year low,” the report said.

“Despite this, the world’s UHNWI population rose by 6.4% ... This is borne out by the results of our attitudes survey, in which 63% of [wealth managers] said their clients’ wealth had increased in 2019, with only 11% reporting a decrease.”

Liam Bailey, Knight Frank’s global head of research, says while almost half of the UHNWIs were in the US (where there are 240,000 people with more than $30m) the countries with the fastest-growing numbers of ultra-wealthy are in Asia and Africa.Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

“It’s exciting to see how wealth is developing across Asia and, with the number of ultra-wealthy in India, Vietnam, China and Malaysia outpacing many other markets over the next five years,” Bailey said. “It will be interesting to see how this impacts the global property market.”

The UHNWI population in India is expected to increase by 73% over the next five years, from 6,000 in 2019. Knight Frank expects Egypt, where there are 764, to be the second-fastest growing and increase by 66% by 2024. They are followed by Vietnam, China and Indonesia.

The UK’s UHNWI population increased by 4% to 14,400, putting the UK in sixth-place behind the US, China (61,600), Germany (23,000), France (18,800) and Japan (17,000).

The overall numbers of UHNWI people in Knight Frank’s study sharply increased compared with its 2018 study, after the firm changed its methodology to include the value of individuals’ homes.

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Locals attack journalist reporting on migrant crisis on Greek island and stop people getting off boat

‘My cameras were thrown in the water,’ alleged victim claims

Zoe Tidman
THE INDEPENDENT

Locals have allegedly beaten up a journalist and stopped migrants from getting off a boat in Lesbos, a Greek island which has seen an influx in refugees arriving on its shores in recent days.

Images show a group of men kicking the reporter on the ground and punching him on top of a ledge.

The locals prevented migrants from leaving a dinghy in the port of Thermi in Lesbos, where hundreds of people have arrived on boats since Turkey re-opened its border with Greece last week.

Michael Trammer, a photojournalist, has claimed that he was the victim of the attack while reporting on the ongoing migrant crisis on the island.

“My cameras were thrown in the water,” he tweeted after the incident on Sunday. “I was beaten and kicked heavily”.

“This lasted a while,” he said, sharing an image of his head bandaged up.

“I am (kinda) ok,” he wrote on the same day as the attack. “The refugees though are still sitting in the boat. Plastic bottles are [being] thrown at them”

The Foreign Press Association of Greece said after the assault that “certain groups on the island of Lesbos move in an organised manner to intimate and attack journalists covering the flow of refugees and migrants arriving from Turkey”.

They said: “At least two colleagues have already suffered such attacks, resulting in grave injury, pursuits and misappropriation or damage of their equipment.”

The island has seen more refugees approaching its shore after Turkey announced that it would open its border with Europe and let migrants leave the country.

Turkey is already home to over 3 million Syrian refugees, and the country fears that renewed violence in Syria’s northwest will see many more crossing over.

Crowds gathered at its border with Greece after people heard the crossing points would open, and Greek authorities fired teargas and stun grenades to try and push them back.

Police said that at least 1,000 migrants had reached Greece’s eastern Aegean islands since Sunday morning, and their arrival has been met with resistance by some residents and authorities.

On Sunday, a group of locals gathered as a migrant boat arrived in Lesbos, shouting at those onboard and pushing their dinghy away from the shore for around an hour.
Watch more

Coastguard attacks refugee boat with stick, as child drowns off Greece

Video footage emerged the next day showing Greek coastguards seemingly trying to capsize a boat that had arrived off the shore and hitting the people onboard with sticks.

A Syrian child drowned at sea on Monday while trying to reach Lesbos, officials said, marking the first official casualty since Turkey opened its borders last week. It was unclear if the child was on the same boat in the video.

Over 20,000 asylum seekers are currently living on Lesbos, many forced to stay in one overcrowded camp, Moria, which was originally intended to accommodate fewer than 3,000 people.

Additional reporting by Reuters

White House's 'muzzled' coronavirus messaging is dangerous, experts say


Trump administration’s lack of transparency can make problem worse by sowing mistrust and can ‘endanger the public’

Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases attend a meeting at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on Tuesday. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images


Amanda Holpuch and Lauren Aratani in New York

THE GUARDIAN
Published on Wed 4 Mar 2020

Two days before Larry Kudlow was announced as a member of the White House taskforce on coronavirus, the director of the National Economic Council declared coronavirus “contained” in the US, despite a plethora of data that suggested it was not.

“I won’t say airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight,” Kudlow told CNBC, swaddling himself in a comforting narrative that was probably destroyed in his first meeting with the taskforce.


Coronavirus: health experts concerned US hospitals are not prepared

Kudlow’s public statements on the level of threat to the US posed by the virus outbreak sit uneasily in the minds of health experts warning of its severity, but they probably rested far more peacefully in the White House, where the favored message seems to be: there is nothing to see here.


There have been seven deaths from coronavirus in Washington state and many more positive cases are expected in the US, prompting public health experts to warn that honest, measured communication is of the utmost importance.

But that has not been the case with the Trump administration’s response so far, which has been marked by late action, delays, a lack of resourcing on tests, attacks on Democrats for warning of the seriousness of the crisis and, critics say, a politicized emphasis on placating the political concerns of the occupant of the Oval Office, rather than pursuing effective virus containment policy.

Michael Carome, director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, a not-for-profit consumer advocacy organization, said if the government’s response was not transparent, it could make the problem worse by sowing mistrust.

“People may do things that undermine the public health response to it because they may not believe what the government is saying, they may not follow instructions for how they protect themselves and respond to disruptions that may result,” Carome said.

Anthony Fauci, center, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, looks on next to Donald Trump during a tour of the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Tuesday. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images


Carome also drew a line between Trump’s communication style – which is often brash, unreliable and incoherent – to the traditionally measured, fact-based style of health experts.

Last week, a senior health department official alleged that she was retaliated against after raising concerns that staff had been sent to assist Americans evacuated from China because of coronavirus without proper training or appropriate protective gear.

“If efforts are being made to muzzle them, to control messaging so that it suits the political needs of the administration, that’s ultimately going to endanger the public,” Carome said.

The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, hinted that publicly discussing facts while keeping the president happy was easier said than done.

“You should never destroy your own credibility,” Fauci, told Politico. “And you don’t want to go to war with a president. But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.”

For 35 years, Fauci has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. He said he was not being muzzled from speaking about the coronavirus outbreak – which he does not expect the US to escape “unscathed” – but that he has been told to run interviews past the vice-president’s office for clearance.

Fauci was one of several top public health officials reportedly told to run their messaging past Pence, after a CDC official warned the spread of coronavirus was inevitable.

An ambulance transports a person from the Life Care Center of Kirkland, a long-term care facility linked to several confirmed coronavirus cases, in Kirkland, Washington, on Tuesday. Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters


The CDC’s announcement triggered a dramatic response from the media and public health officials across the US, but Trump insisted everything was fine.

Last week, Trump tweeted: “Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” He has repeatedly claimed warmer weather will cause coronavirus to disappear, though it is too early to know if that’s true. The day after the CDC said coronavirus’s spread was inevitable, the president said it wasn’t.

Over the weekend, he said Democrats were politicizing the crisis, and compared it to impeachment as their latest “hoax”.

Political appointees of the Trump administration, and the president’s children, have lined up to defend Trump’s response.

The acting white house chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, told people to turn off the television and ignore media reports about the virus last week.

Mulvaney said the media had started paying attention to coronavirus because “they think this is going to be what brings down the president”. He did not mention the increased attention came days after the CDC declared coronavirus’s spread in the US was inevitable.

“When politics starts to get into the conversation, then people might start to feel they need to take a side and they might start filtering public health information through a partisan lens,” said Nathan Myers, associate professor in the political science department at Indiana State University.

If a health crisis is seen as a political issue, it can affect support for emergency funding to fight the outbreak and policies meant to stem its spread.

Myers highlighted how only Democrats signed on to a congressional letter asking for more information about faulty coronavirus test kits distributed by the CDC, a demonstrable problem that has even been raised by a few conservative media commentators.

“Oversight over something like a public health emergency should very much be a bipartisan thing,” Myers said. “Republicans can ask for information about these kinds of topics without attacking the administration or attacking the president.”

Myers’s book Pandemics and Polarization examined how a Republican-held Congress’s distrust of Barack Obama’s administration affected the government’s response to the Zika virus. Months before the 2016 presidential election, Republicans held up $1.1bn in funding to the outbreak by inserting provisions that would restrict funding to Planned Parenthood and reverse a ban on flying the Confederate flag at veterans’ cemeteries.

“This is why people hate Congress,” Senator Tim Kaine said at the time.

One of the few serious bipartisan efforts to emerge during the coronavirus outbreak is legislation to create automatic funding to respond to public health emergencies, much like existing processes to respond to natural disasters.

“That’s almost saying we don’t think Congress can be bipartisan enough to come together on these supplemental funding bills so we need to have a preparedness fund in place so it takes the politics out of the situation,” Myers said.

Despite a wave of support from Republican lawmakers, there has been pushback to Trump’s subdued messaging in the conservative magazine National Review. The writer Michael Brendan Dougherty said: “The wrong Donald Trump has shown up to deal with the coronavirus.”

Noting that Trump is a germaphobe who has been critical of China, Dougherty writes that instead “we’re getting Trump the market whisperer. We’re getting a Trump who is obviously bothered by the drop in the Dow Jones. We’re getting a Trump who plans to campaign on the conventional measures of success favored by his predecessors. We’re getting a Trump who is downplaying the seriousness of this disease, who is probably acting too late, and who is making promises he can’t keep.”

The National Review editor, Rich Lowry, was also critical of the administration’s decision to downplay the outbreak.

“By pooh-poohing worries about the virus and saying everything is under control, it is setting itself up for the charge, if things get even a little bad, that it was self-deluding and overly complacent,” Lowry wrote. “It will be accused of making mission-accomplished statements before the mission truly began.”

Those articles were missing from a missive the White House sent Monday night to reporters with subject line “Praise for the President’s Coronavirus Response”.

The message linked to tweets from lawmakers and three editorials in two right-leaning newspapers applauding the president.

HERSTORY WOMEN'S MARCH 2020

TZAR PUTIN OF ORTHODOX RUSSIA

Putin proposes amending Russia’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage
Raft of conservative changes to country’s founding document would also proclaim Russians’ ‘belief in God’ and stop future governments from handing Crimea back to Ukraine

Chris Baynes THE INDEPENDENT 

Vladimir Putin, pictured talking to the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill

 of Moscow, has proposed constitutional amendments including a mention

 of God and effectively a ban on same-sex marriage ( AP )
Vladimir Putin has submitted a proposal to enshrine a ban on same-sex marriage in Russia‘s constitution.

PUTIN IS A REPUBLICAN
A draft amendment put forward by the Russian president would alter the country’s founding document to state that marriage is a “union of a man and a woman”.

It is one of several proposed changes that would make the constitution more conservative.

Other amendments include specific mentions of Russians’ “belief in God” and an homage to “ancestors who bequeathed to us their ideals”.

The president first proposed updating the constitution in his state-of-the-nation speech of January. He claimed it was necessary to broaden the powers of parliament and bolster democracy, but opponents say the move is part of his efforts to remain in power at the end of his six-year term in 2024.

The Kremlin-controlled parliament quickly endorsed Mr Putin’s initial draft amendments in the first of three required readings last month.

Following proposals from a Kremlin working group that operates parallel to MPs, he tabled 24 pages of additional amendments on Monday ahead of the second reading on 10 March.
They are likely to get final parliamentary approval next week, setting the stage for a nationwide vote on 22 April.

Other amendments proposed for inclusion in the revised constitution define Russians as a “state-forming” ethnic group.

Read more

The horrific plight of LGBT+ asylum seekers in Russia

Almost one in three Russians would disown a gay friend, study finds

After proposals to outlaw disparaging the Soviet role in the Second World War, Mr Putin added an article pledging to protect “historic truth” and forbid “belittling the people’s heroic protection of the Motherland”.​

Another amendment states Russia should never surrender any territory — a change proposed in response to a working group member’s suggestion of measures to prevent any future ruler from giving away Crimea, the region annexed from Ukraine in 2014.


Mr Putin, who has aligned himself with the Russian Orthodox Church and sought to distance his country from liberal Western values, is said to see the constitutional overhaul as an opportunity to enshrine what he sees as his country’s core moral and geopolitical values.

The president vowed last month that Russia would not legalise gay marriage as long as he was in the Kremlin, saying he would not let the traditional notion of a mother and father be subverted by what he called “parent number 1” and “parent number 2”.

Homosexuality in Russia was a criminal offence until 1993 and classed as a mental illness until 1999, and same-sex couples are still banned from adopting children.

Homophobia remains widespread in the country, and western governments and human rights activists have criticised the Russian authorities for their treatment of LGBT+ people.

A law introduced to ban “gay propaganda” in 2013 has been been used to stop pride marches and detain rights activists

Mr Putin was claimed he is not prejudiced against gay people, but says he finds a Western willingness to embrace homosexuality and gender fluidity out of step with traditional Russian values.