Thursday, April 23, 2020
U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims: 4.4 Million
The coronavirus continued to ravish the U.S. economy last week, with 4.4 million of American filing first-time unemployment claims, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Economists had forecast 4.25 million new claims for this week. The previous week’s claims figure was revised down 2,000 to 5,506,500.
Continuing claims, those made after an initial week of benefits, rose to 15.98 million. Continuing claims, however, are reported with a one week lag. The total number of Americans who have lost their jobs since claims spiked five weeks ago because of coronavirus and shutdowns rose to around 26.4 million, enough to erase all the job gains since the economy began to recover after the financial crisis.
The 4-week moving average was 5,786,500, an increase of 280,000 from the previous week’s revised average.
The CARES Act, passed to offset the economic impact of the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders, expanded the ranks of those eligible to file claims for unemployment benefits and raised the amount paid to unemployed workers. Self-employed workers and independent contractors can now file for benefits, expanding the number of claims.
New claims for state unemployment benefits are a proxy for layoffs. Released weekly, they are some of the few real-time indicators of economic conditions.
Actual job losses may be higher than the most recent figures reveal. Applications in many states have been hampered by websites and phone lines failing due to the rapid rise in the volume of claims.
Employers are slashing their payrolls to try to stay afloat because their revenue has collapsed, especially at restaurants, hotels, gyms, movie theaters, and other venues that depend on face-to-face interaction. Auto sales have sunk, non-healthcare related manufacturing has ground to a halt, and factories have closed.
More than 90 percent of the U.S. population is now under stay-at-home orders, which have been imposed by most U.S. states. This trend has intensified pressure on businesses, most of which face rent, loans, and other bills that must be paid.
The CARES Act included hundreds of billions of dollars for loans for businesses that can be forgiven if borrowers keep workers on their payrolls. That could be holding down the...
Expert Says U.S. is on the Brink of “Mass Civil Unrest”
Has friends on Capitol Hill concerned about violence.An expert with the United States Studies Centre says that America is on the brink of “mass civil unrest” that threatens to emerge out of anti-lockdown protests now taking place nationwide.
Demonstrations against coronavirus stay-at-home measures have exploded across the country over the last week after President Trump encouraged them on social media. The National Guard has been called out in some areas to deal with potential disorder.
Speaking to Sky News Australia, James Brown, a former Australian Army officer who commanded a cavalry troop in southern Iraq, said that the very specific mentality of Americans made them much more likely to rebel against lockdown measures compared to citizens of other countries.
“There is that part of the US political psyche that takes rights to a complete extreme,” said Brown, adding that “mass civil unrest” is an ever present possibility due to Americans sharing a “deep independent streak that believes the government is a nice-to-have not a must-have.”
The host of the show opined that if “anarchy” were to break out across the United States, “the government can’t bring the people to heel” due to the Second Amendment.
Brown said he had friends on Capitol Hill who were very worried about mass social disorder and a “gun battle on the streets.”
Brown said that so long as most people believed that states were...
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ADL Targets Digital Video Game Platforms as New Frontier for Orwellian Censorship
They are coming to inflict censorship on gamers.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is now targeting popular online video game platforms to spread its Orwellian censorship regime.
Daniel Kelley, who works as the assistant director for the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, told Gamesindustry.biz that his organization is looking to impose controls on video game platforms, which serve as a last bastion of freedom of speech.
“On the one hand, games are media,” Kelley said. “You can talk about hate and harassment in the same terms you talk about it with movies or TV. Whose stories are being told? Who’s being included, who’s being excluded?
“At the same time, online games are social platforms. A comic book is not a social platform, so the fandom that exists around it exists on platforms that are not necessarily run by the comics industry. The game industry is creating social spaces. Online games are social spaces, so the responsibility for the form that hate and harassment take in those spaces is the responsibility of the companies that make those games,” he added.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is now targeting popular online video game platforms to spread its Orwellian censorship regime.
Daniel Kelley, who works as the assistant director for the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, told Gamesindustry.biz that his organization is looking to impose controls on video game platforms, which serve as a last bastion of freedom of speech.
“On the one hand, games are media,” Kelley said. “You can talk about hate and harassment in the same terms you talk about it with movies or TV. Whose stories are being told? Who’s being included, who’s being excluded?
“At the same time, online games are social platforms. A comic book is not a social platform, so the fandom that exists around it exists on platforms that are not necessarily run by the comics industry. The game industry is creating social spaces. Online games are social spaces, so the responsibility for the form that hate and harassment take in those spaces is the responsibility of the companies that make those games,” he added.
The ADL is setting their sights on Steam, an online video game platform that features popular games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike, and Blizzard, a platform that features popular games like Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. They want these platforms to institute censorship and are initiating a pressure campaign to coerce them into bending to their will.“There is a lot the game industry could learn from the past ten years around hate, harassment, and extremism in social media that could be applied to game spaces as they become more social,” Kelley said, noting that he hopes that gaming platforms replicate the restrictive policies of monolithic tech platforms.
Kelley wants the video game companies to employ social engineering tactics in order to combat wrong-think in its customers.
“If we’re building this interactive space, how do we not just kick out the worst of the worst, but what is that pathway to radicalization, [or] the pathway to reforming...
Pentagon Leaders Say Trump’s Warning to Iran Is ‘Important, Perfect’
Top Pentagon leaders Wednesday called President Trump’s tweet instructing the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy “any and all Iranian gunboats” if they harassed its ships “an important warning” and “perfect.”
“The president issued an important warning to the Iranians. What he was emphasizing is all of our ships retain the right of self-defense, and people needed to be very careful in their interactions to understand the inherent right of self-defense,” said Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist.
The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, added that every U.S. ship that deploys into harm’s way has the inherent right of self-defense.
“If we see hostile intent, we have the right to respond up to and including lethal force and, if it happens in the Gulf, if it happens anyway, we will respond with overwhelming lethal force, if necessary, to defend ourselves, and it’s really that simple,” Hyten said.
Trump tweeted Wednesday morning: “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.”
I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.
150K people are talking about this
His tweet came after Iranian ships last week harassed U.S. ships conducting exercises in the Arabian Sea, which Iran considers its backyard but which the U.S. is committed to keeping open for international shipping and commerce.
The Navy posted video of the encounters on its Twitter account:
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